A MILLIONAIRE OF ROUGH-AND-READY
by
BRET HARTE
JTABLE 4 7 1
PROLOGUE
There was no mistake this time: he had struck gold at last!
It had lain there before him a moment ago--a misshapen piece of
brown-stained quartz, interspersed with dull yellow metal; yielding
enough to have allowed the points of his pick to penetrate its
honeycombed recesses, yet heavy enough to drop from the point of his
pick as he endeavored to lift it from the red earth.
He was seeing all this plainly, although he found himself, he knew not
why, at some distance from the scene of his discovery, his heart
foolishly beating, his breath impotently hurried. Yet he was walking
slowly and vaguely; conscious of stopping and staring at the landscape,
which no longer looked familiar to him. He was hoping for some
instinct or force of habit to recall him to himself; yet when he saw a
neighbor at work in an adjacent claim, he hesitated, and then turned
his back upon him. Yet only a moment before he had thought of running
to him, saying, "By Jingo! I've struck it," or "D--n it, old man, I've
got it"; but that moment had passed, and now it seemed to him that he
could scarce raise his voice, or, if he did, the ejaculation would
appear forced and artificial. Neither could he go over to him coolly
and tell his good fortune; and, partly from this strange shyness, and
partly with a hope that another survey of the treasure might restore
him to natural expression, he walked back to his tunnel.
Yes; it was there! No mere "pocket" or "deposit," but a part of the
actual vein he had been so long seeking. It was there, sure enough,
lying beside the pick and the debris of the "face" of the vein that he
had exposed sufficiently, after the first shock of discovery, to assure
himself of the fact and the permanence of his fortune. It was there,
and with it the refutation of his enemies' sneers, the corroboration of
his friends' belief, the practical demonstration of his own theories,
the reward of his patient labors. It was there, sure enough. But,
somehow, he not only failed to recall the first joy of discovery, but
was conscious of a vague sense of responsibility and unrest. It was,
no doubt, an enormous fortune to a man in his circumstances: perhaps it
meant a couple of hundred thousand dollars, or more, judging from the
value of the old Martin lead, which was not as rich as this, but it
required to be worked constantly and judiciously. It was with a
decided sense of uneasiness that he again sought the open sunlight of
the hillside. His neighbor was still visible on the adjacent claim;
but he had apparently stopped working, and was contemplatively smoking
a pipe under a large pine-tree. For an instant he envied him his
apparent contentment. He had a sudden fierce and inexplicable desire
to go over to him and exasperate his easy poverty by a revelation of
his own new-found treasure. But even that sensation quickly passed,
and left him staring blankly at the landscape again.
As soon as he had made his discovery known, and settled its value, he
would send for his wife and her children in the States. He would build
a fine house on the opposite hillside, if she would consent to it,
unless she preferred, for the children's sake, to live in San
Francisco. A sense of a loss of independence--of a change of
circumstances that left him no longer his own master--began to perplex
him, in the midst of his brightest projects. Certain other relations
with other members of his family, which had lapsed by absence and his
insignificance, must now be taken up anew. He must do something for
his sister Jane, for his brother William, for his wife's poor
connections. It would be unfair to him to say that he contemplated
those things with any other instinct than that of generosity; yet he
was conscious of being already perplexed and puzzled.
Meantime, however, the neighbor had apparently finished his pipe, and,
knocking the ashes out of it, rose suddenly, and ended any further
uncertainty of their meeting by walking over directly towards him. The
treasure-finder advanced a few steps on his side, and then stopped
irresolutely.
"Hollo, Slinn!" said the neighbor, confidently.
"Hollo, Masters," responded Slinn, faintly. From the sound of the two
voices a stranger might have mistaken their relative condition. "What
in thunder are you mooning about for? What's up?" Then, catching
sight of Slinn's pale and anxious face, he added abruptly, "Are you
sick?"
Slinn was on the point of telling him his good fortune, but stopped.
The unlucky question confirmed his consciousness of his physical and
mental disturbance, and he dreaded the ready ridicule of his companion.
He would tell him later; Masters need not know WHEN he had made the
strike. Besides, in his present vagueness, he shrank from the brusque,
practical questioning that would be sure to follow the revelation to a
man of Masters' temperament.
"I'm a little giddy here," he answered, putting his hand to his head,
"and I thought I'd knock off until I was better."
Masters examined him with two very critical gray eyes. "Tell ye what,
old man!--if you don't quit this dog-goned foolin' of yours in that
God-forsaken tunnel you'll get loony! Times you get so tangled up in
follerin' that blind lead o' yours you ain't sensible!"
Here was the opportunity to tell him all, and vindicate the justice of
his theories! But he shrank from it again; and now, adding to the
confusion, was a singular sense of dread at the mental labor of
explanation. He only smiled painfully, and began to move away. "Look
you!" said Masters, peremptorily, "ye want about three fingers of
straight whiskey to set you right, and you've got to take it with me.
D--n it, man, it may be the last drink we take together! Don't look so
skeered! I mean--I made up my mind about ten minutes ago to cut the
whole d--d thing, and light out for fresh diggings. I'm sick of
getting only grub wages out o' this bill. So that's what I mean by
saying it's the last drink you and me'll take together. You know my
ways: sayin' and doin' with me's the same thing."
It was true. Slinn had often envied Masters' promptness of decision
and resolution. But he only looked at the grim face of his
interlocutor with a feeble sense of relief. He was GOING. And he,
Slinn, would not have to explain anything!
He murmured something about having to go over to the settlement on
business. He dreaded lest Masters should insist upon going into the
tunnel.
"I suppose you want to mail that letter," said Masters, drily. "The
mail don't go till to-morrow, so you've got time to finish it, and put
it in an envelope."
Following the direction of Masters' eyes, Slinn looked down and saw, to
his utter surprise, that he was holding an unfinished pencilled note in
his hand. How it came there, when he had written it, he could not
tell; he dimly remembered that one of his first impulses was to write
to his wife, but that he had already done so he had forgotten. He
hastily concealed the note in his breast-pocket, with a vacant smile.
Masters eyed him half contemptuously, half compassionately.
"Don't forget yourself and drop it in some hollow tree for a
letter-box," he said. "Well--so long!--since you won't drink. Take
care of yourself," and, turning on his heel, Masters walked away.
Slinn watched him as he crossed over to his abandoned claim, saw him
gather his few mining utensils, strap his blanket over his back, lift
his hat on his long-handled shovel as a token of farewell, and then
stride light-heartedly over the ridge.
He was alone now with his secret and his treasure. The only man in the
world who knew of the exact position of his tunnel had gone away
forever. It was not likely that this chance companion of a few weeks
would ever remember him or the locality again; he would now leave his
treasure alone--for even a day perhaps--until he had thought out some
plan and sought out some friend in whom to confide. His secluded life,
the singular habits of concentration which had at last proved so
successful had, at the same time, left him few acquaintances and no
associates. And in all his well-laid plans and patiently-digested
theories for finding the treasure, the means and methods of working it
and disposing of it had never entered.
And now, at the hour when he most needed his faculties, what was the
meaning of this strange benumbing of them!
Patience! He only wanted a little rest--a little time to recover
himself. There was a large boulder under a tree in the highway of the
settlement--a sheltered spot where he had often waited for the coming
of the stage-coach. He would go there, and when he was sufficiently
rested and composed he would go on.
Nevertheless, on his way he diverged and turned into the woods, for no
other apparent purpose than to find a hollow tree. "A hollow tree."
Yes! that was what Masters had said; he remembered it distinctly; and
something was to be done there, but what it was, or why it should be
done, he could not tell. However, it was done, and very luckily, for
his limbs could scarcely support him further, and reaching that boulder
he dropped upon it like another stone.
And now, strange to say, the uneasiness and perplexity which had
possessed him ever since he had stood before his revealed wealth
dropped from him like a burden laid upon the wayside. A measureless
peace stole over him, in which visions of his new-found fortune, no
longer a trouble and perplexity, but crowned with happiness and
blessing to all around him, assumed proportions far beyond his own
weak, selfish plans. In its even-handed benefaction, his wife and
children, his friends and relations, even his late poor companion of
the hillside, met and moved harmoniously together; in its far-reaching
consequences there was only the influence of good. It was not strange
that this poor finite mind should never have conceived the meaning of
the wealth extended to him; or that conceiving it he should faint and
falter under the revelation. Enough that for a few minutes he must
have tasted a joy of perfect anticipation that years of actual
possession might never bring.
The sun seemed to go down in a rosy dream of his own happiness, as he
still sat there. Later, the shadows of the trees thickened and
surrounded him, and still later fell the calm of a quiet evening sky
with far-spaced passionless stars, that seemed as little troubled by
what they looked upon as he was by the stealthy creeping life in the
grasses and underbrush at his feet. The dull patter of soft little
feet in the soft dust of the road, the gentle gleam of moist and
wondering little eyes on the branches and in the mossy edges of the
boulder, did not disturb him. He sat patiently through it all, as if
he had not yet made up his mind.
But when the stage came with the flashing sun the next morning, and the
irresistible clamor of life and action, the driver suddenly laid his
four spirited horses on their haunches before the quiet spot. The
express messenger clambered down from the box, and approached what
seemed to be a heap of cast-off clothes upon the boulder.
"He don't seem to be drunk," he said, in reply to a querulous
interrogation from the passengers. "I can't make him out. His eyes
are open, but he cannot speak or move. Take a look at him, Doc."
A rough unprofessional-looking man here descended from the inside of
the coach, and, carelessly thrusting aside the other curious
passengers, suddenly leant over the heap of clothes in a professional
attitude.
"He is dead," said one of the passengers.
The rough man let the passive head sink softly down again. "No such
luck for him," he said curtly, but not unkindly. "It's a stroke of
paralysis--and about as big as they make 'em. It's a toss-up if he
ever speaks or moves again as long as he lives."
CHAPTER I
When Alvin Mulrady announced his intention of growing potatoes and
garden "truck" on the green slopes of Los Gatos, the mining community
of that region, and the adjacent hamlet of "Rough-and-Ready," regarded
it with the contemptuous indifference usually shown by those
adventurers towards all bucolic pursuits. There was certainly no
active objection to the occupation of two hillsides, which gave so
little promise to the prospector for gold that it was currently
reported that a single prospector, called "Slinn," had once gone mad or
imbecile through repeated failures. The only opposition came,
incongruously enough, from the original pastoral owner of the soil, one
Don Ramon Alvarado, whose claim for seven leagues of hill and valley,
including the now prosperous towns of Rough-and-Ready and Red Dog, was
met with simple derision from the squatters and miners. "Looks ez ef
we woz goin' to travel three thousand miles to open up his d--d old
wilderness, and then pay for the increased valoo we give it--don't it?
Oh, yes, certainly!" was their ironical commentary. Mulrady might have
been pardoned for adopting this popular opinion; but by an equally
incongruous sentiment, peculiar, however, to the man, he called upon
Don Ramon, and actually offered to purchase the land, or "go shares"
with him in the agricultural profits. It was alleged that the Don was
so struck with this concession that he not only granted the land, but
struck up a quaint reserved friendship for the simple-minded
agriculturist and his family. It is scarcely necessary to add that
this intimacy was viewed by the miners with the contempt that it
deserved. They would have been more contemptuous, however, had they
known the opinion that Don Ramon entertained of their particular
vocation, and which he early confided to Mulrady.
"They are savages who expect to reap where they have not sown; to take
out of the earth without returning anything to it but their precious
carcasses; heathens, who worship the mere stones they dig up." "And
was there no Spaniard who ever dug gold?" asked Mulrady, simply. "Ah,
there are Spaniards and Moors," responded Don Ramon, sententiously.
"Gold has been dug, and by caballeros; but no good ever came of it.
There were Alvarados in Sonora, look you, who had mines of SILVER, and
worked them with peons and mules, and lost their money--a gold mine to
work a silver one--like gentlemen! But this grubbing in the dirt with
one's fingers, that a little gold may stick to them, is not for
caballeros. And then, one says nothing of the curse."
"The curse!" echoed Mary Mulrady, with youthful feminine superstition.
"What is that?"
"You knew not, friend Mulrady, that when these lands were given to my
ancestors by Charles V., the Bishop of Monterey laid a curse upon any
who should desecrate them. Good! Let us see! Of the three Americanos
who founded yonder town, one was shot, another died of a
fever--poisoned, you understand, by the soil--and the last got himself
crazy of aguardiente. Even the scientifico,[1] who came here years ago
and spied into the trees and the herbs: he was afterwards punished for
his profanation, and died of an accident in other lands. But," added
Don Ramon, with grave courtesy, "this touches not yourself. Through
me, YOU are of the soil."
Indeed, it would seem as if a secure if not a rapid prosperity was the
result of Don Ramon's manorial patronage. The potato patch and market
garden flourished exceedingly; the rich soil responded with magnificent
vagaries of growth; the even sunshine set the seasons at defiance with
extraordinary and premature crops. The salt pork and biscuit consuming
settlers did not allow their contempt of Mulrady's occupation to
prevent their profiting by this opportunity for changing their diet.
The gold they had taken from the soil presently began to flow into his
pockets in exchange for his more modest treasures. The little cabin,
which barely sheltered his family--a wife, son, and daughter--was
enlarged, extended, and refitted, but in turn abandoned for a more
pretentious house on the opposite hill. A whitewashed fence replaced
the rudely-split rails, which had kept out the wilderness. By degrees,
the first evidences of cultivation--the gashes of red soil, the piles
of brush and undergrowth, the bared boulders, and heaps of
stone--melted away, and were lost under a carpet of lighter green,
which made an oasis in the tawny desert of wild oats on the hillside.
Water was the only free boon denied this Garden of Eden; what was
necessary for irrigation had to be brought from a mining ditch at great
expense, and was of insufficient quantity. In this emergency Mulrady
thought of sinking an artesian well on the sunny slope beside his
house; not, however, without serious consultation and much objection
from his Spanish patron. With great austerity Don Ramon pointed out
that this trifling with the entrails of the earth was not only an
indignity to Nature almost equal to shaft-sinking and tunneling, but
was a disturbance of vested interests. "I and my fathers, San Diego
rest them!" said Don Ramon, crossing himself, "were content with wells
and cisterns, filled by Heaven at its appointed seasons; the cattle,
dumb brutes though they were, knew where to find water when they wanted
it. But thou sayest truly," he added, with a sigh, "that was before
streams and rain were choked with hellish engines, and poisoned with
their spume. Go on, friend Mulrady, dig and bore if thou wilt, but in
a seemly fashion, and not with impious earthquakes of devilish
gunpowder."
With this concession Alvin Mulrady began to sink his first artesian
shaft. Being debarred the auxiliaries of steam and gunpowder, the work
went on slowly. The market garden did not suffer meantime, as Mulrady
had employed two Chinamen to take charge of the ruder tillage, while he
superintended the engineering work of the well. This trifling incident
marked an epoch in the social condition of the family. Mrs. Mulrady at
once assumed a conscious importance among her neighbors. She spoke of
her husband's "men"; she alluded to the well as "the works"; she
checked the easy frontier familiarity of her customers with pretty Mary
Mulrady, her seventeen-year-old daughter. Simple Alvin Mulrady looked
with astonishment at this sudden development of the germ planted in all
feminine nature to expand in the slightest sunshine of prosperity.
"Look yer, Malviny; ain't ye rather puttin' on airs with the boys that
want to be civil to Mamie? Like as not one of 'em may be makin' up to
her already." "You don't mean to say, Alvin Mulrady," responded Mrs.
Mulrady, with sudden severity, "that you ever thought of givin' your
daughter to a common miner, or that I'm goin' to allow her to marry out
of our own set?" "Our own set!" echoed Mulrady feebly, blinking at her
in astonishment, and then glancing hurriedly across at his
freckle-faced son and the two Chinamen at work in the cabbages. "Oh,
you know what I mean," said Mrs. Mulrady sharply; "the set that we move
in. The Alvarados and their friends! Doesn't the old Don come here
every day, and ain't his son the right age for Mamie? And ain't they
the real first families here--all the same as if they were noblemen?
No, leave Mamie to me, and keep to your shaft; there never was a man
yet had the least sabe about these things, or knew what was due to his
family." Like most of his larger minded, but feebler equipped sex,
Mulrady was too glad to accept the truth of the latter proposition,
which left the meannesses of life to feminine manipulation, and went
off to his shaft on the hillside. But during that afternoon he was
perplexed and troubled. He was too loyal a husband not to be pleased
with this proof of an unexpected and superior foresight in his wife,
although he was, like all husbands, a little startled by it. He tried
to dismiss it from his mind. But looking down from the hillside upon
his little venture, where gradual increase and prosperity had not been
beyond his faculties to control and understand, he found himself
haunted by the more ambitious projects of his helpmate. From his own
knowledge of men, he doubted if Don Ramon, any more than himself, had
ever thought of the possibility of a matrimonial connection between the
families. He doubted if he would consent to it. And unfortunately it
was this very doubt that, touching his own pride as a self-made man,
made him first seriously consider his wife's proposition. He was as
good as Don Ramon, any day! With this subtle feminine poison instilled
in his veins, carried completely away by the logic of his wife's
illogical premises, he almost hated his old benefactor. He looked down
upon the little Garden of Eden, where his Eve had just tempted him with
the fatal fruit, and felt a curious consciousness that he was losing
its simple and innocent enjoyment forever.
Happily, about this time Don Ramon died. It is not probable that he
ever knew the amiable intentions of Mrs. Mulrady in regard to his son,
who now succeeded to the paternal estate, sadly partitioned by
relatives and lawsuits. The feminine Mulradys attended the funeral, in
expensive mourning from Sacramento; even the gentle Alvin was forced
into ready-made broadcloth, which accented his good-natured but
unmistakably common presence. Mrs. Mulrady spoke openly of her "loss";
declared that the old families were dying out; and impressed the wives
of a few new arrivals at Red Dog with the belief that her own family
was contemporary with the Alvarados, and that her husband's health was
far from perfect. She extended a motherly sympathy to the orphaned Don
Caesar. Reserved, like his father, in natural disposition, he was still
more gravely ceremonious from his loss; and, perhaps from the shyness
of an evident partiality for Mamie Mulrady, he rarely availed himself
of her mother's sympathizing hospitality. But he carried out the
intentions of his father by consenting to sell to Mulrady, for a small
sum, the property he had leased. The idea of purchasing had originated
with Mrs. Mulrady.
"It'll be all in the family," had observed that astute lady, "and it's
better for the looks of the things that we shouldn't he his tenants."
It was only a few weeks later that she was startled by hearing her
husband's voice calling her from the hillside as he rapidly approached
the house. Mamie was in her room putting on a new pink cotton gown, in
honor of an expected visit from young Don Caesar, and Mrs. Mulrady was
tidying the house in view of the same event. Something in the tone of
her good man's voice, and the unusual circumstance of his return to the
house before work was done, caused her, however, to drop her dusting
cloth, and run to the kitchen door to meet him. She saw him running
through the rows of cabbages, his face shining with perspiration and
excitement, a light in his eyes which she had not seen for years. She
recalled, without sentiment, that he looked like that when she had
called him--a poor farm hand of her father's--out of the brush heap at
the back of their former home, in Illinois, to learn the consent of her
parents. The recollection was the more embarrassing as he threw his
arms around her, and pressed a resounding kiss upon her sallow cheek.
"Sakes alive! Mulrady!" she said, exorcising the ghost of a blush that
had also been recalled from the past with her housewife's apron, "what
are you doin', and company expected every minit?"
"Malviny, I've struck it; and struck it rich!"
She disengaged herself from his arms, without excitement, and looked at
him with bright but shrewdly observant eyes.
"I've struck it in the well--the regular vein that the boys have been
looking fer. There's a fortin' fer you and Mamie: thousands and tens
of thousands!"
"Wait a minit."
She left him quickly, and went to the foot of the stairs. He could
hear her wonderingly and distinctly. "Ye can take off that new frock,
Mamie," she called out.
There was a sound of undisguised expostulation from Mamie.
"I'm speaking," said Mrs. Mulrady, emphatically.
The murmuring ceased. Mrs. Mulrady returned to her husband. The
interruption seemed to have taken off the keen edge of his enjoyment.
He at once abdicated his momentary elevation as a discoverer, and
waited for her to speak.
"Ye haven't told any one yet?" she asked.
"No. I was alone, down in the shaft. Ye see, Malviny, I wasn't
expectin' of anything." He began, with an attempt at fresh enjoyment,
"I was just clearin' out, and hadn't reckoned on anythin'."
"You see, I was right when I advised you taking the land," she said,
without heeding him.
Mulrady's face fell. "I hope Don Caesar won't think"--he began,
hesitatingly. "I reckon, perhaps, I oughter make some sorter
compensation--you know."
"Stuff!" said Mrs. Mulrady, decidedly. "Don't be a fool. Any gold
discovery, anyhow, would have been yours--that's the law. And you
bought the land without any restrictions. Besides, you never had any
idea of this!"--she stopped, and looked him suddenly in the face--"had
you?"
Mulrady opened his honest, pale-gray eyes widely.
"Why, Malviny! You know I hadn't. I could swear!"
"Don't swear, and don't let on to anybody but what you DID know it was
there. Now, Alvin Mulrady, listen to me." Her voice here took the
strident form of action. "Knock off work at the shaft, and send your
man away at once. Put on your things, catch the next stage to
Sacramento at four o'clock, and take Mamie with you."
"Mamie!" echoed Mulrady, feebly.
"You want to see Lawyer Cole and my brother Jim at once," she went on,
without heeding him, "and Mamie wants a change and some proper.
clothes. Leave the rest to me and Abner. I'll break it to Mamie, and
get her ready."
Mulrady passed his hands through his tangled hair, wet with
perspiration. He was proud of his wife's energy and action; he did not
dream of opposing her, but somehow he was disappointed. The charming
glamour and joy of his discovery had vanished before he could fairly
dazzle her with it; or, rather, she was not dazzled with it at all. It
had become like business, and the expression "breaking it" to Mamie
jarred upon him. He would have preferred to tell her himself; to watch
the color come into her delicate oval face, to have seen her soft eyes
light with an innocent joy he had not seen in his wife's; and he felt a
sinking conviction that his wife was the last one to awaken it.
"You ain't got any time to lose," she said, impatiently, as he
hesitated.
Perhaps it was her impatience that struck harshly upon him; perhaps, if
she had not accepted her good fortune so confidently, he would not have
spoken what was in his mind at the time; but he said gravely, "Wait a
minit, Malviny; I've suthin' to tell you 'bout this find of mine that's
sing'lar."
"Go on," she said, quickly.
"Lyin' among the rotten quartz of the vein was a pick," he said,
constrainedly; "and the face of the vein sorter looked ez if it had
been worked at. Follering the line outside to the base of the hill
there was signs of there having been an old tunnel; but it had fallen
in, and was blocked up."
"Well?" said Mrs. Mulrady, contemptuously.
"Well," returned her husband, somewhat disconnectedly, "it kinder
looked as if some feller might have discovered it before."
"And went away, and left it for others! That's likely--ain't it?"
interrupted his wife, with ill-disguised intolerance. "Everybody knows
the hill wasn't worth that for prospectin'; and it was abandoned when
we came here. It's your property and you've paid for it. Are you
goin' to wait to advertise for the owner, Alvin Mulrady, or are you
going to Sacramento at four o'clock to-day?"
Mulrady started. He had never seriously believed in the possibility of
a previous discovery; but his conscientious nature had prompted him to
give it a fair consideration. She was probably right. What he might
have thought had she treated it with equal conscientiousness he did not
consider. "All right," he said simply. "I reckon we'll go at once."
"And when you talk to Lawyer Cole and Jim, keep that silly stuff about
the pick to yourself. There's no use of putting queer ideas into other
people's heads because you happen to have 'em yourself."
When the hurried arrangements were at last completed, and Mr. Mulrady
and Mamie, accompanied by a taciturn and discreet Chinaman, carrying
their scant luggage, were on their way to the high road to meet the up
stage, the father gazed somewhat anxiously and wistfully into his
daughter's face. He had looked forward to those few moments to enjoy
the freshness and naivete of Mamie's youthful delight and enthusiasm as
a relief to his wife's practical, far-sighted realism. There was a
pretty pink suffusion in her delicate cheek, the breathless happiness
of a child in her half-opened little mouth, and a beautiful absorption
in her large gray eyes that augured well for him.
"Well, Mamie, how do we like bein' an heiress? How do we like layin'
over all the gals between this and 'Frisco?"
"Eh?"
She had not heard him. The tender beautiful eyes were engaged in an
anticipatory examination of the remembered shelves in the "Fancy
Emporium" at Sacramento; in reading the admiration of the clerks; in
glancing down a little criticisingly at the broad cowhide brogues that
strode at her side; in looking up the road for the stage-coach; in
regarding the fit of her new gloves--everywhere but in the loving eyes
of the man beside her.
He, however, repeated the question, touched with her charming
preoccupation, and passing his arm around her little waist.
"I like it well enough, pa, you know!" she said, slightly disengaging
his arm, but adding a perfunctory little squeeze to his elbow to soften
the separation. "I always had an idea SOMETHING would happen. I
suppose I'm looking like a fright," she added; "but ma made me hurry to
get away before Don Caesar came."
"And you didn't want to go without seeing him?" he added, archly.
"I didn't want him to see me in this frock," said Mamie, simply. "I
reckon that's why ma made me change," she added, with a slight laugh.
"Well I reckon you're allus good enough for him in any dress," said
Mulrady, watching her attentively; "and more than a match for him NOW,"
he added, triumphantly.
"I don't know about that," said Mamie. "He's been rich all the time,
and his father and grandfather before him; while we've been poor and
his tenants."
His face changed; the look of bewilderment, with which he had followed
her words, gave way to one of pain, and then of anger. "Did he get off
such stuff as that?" he asked, quickly.
"No. I'd like to catch him at it," responded Mamie, promptly. "There's
better nor him to be had for the asking now."
They had walked on a few moments in aggrieved silence, and the Chinaman
might have imagined some misfortune had just befallen them. But
Mamie's teeth shone again between her parted lips. "La, pa! it ain't
that! He cares everything for me, and I do for him; and if ma hadn't
got new ideas--" She stopped suddenly.
"What new ideas?" queried her father, anxiously.
"Oh, nothing! I wish, pa, you'd put on your other boots! Everybody can
see these are made for the farrows. And you ain't a market gardener
any more."
"What am I, then?" asked Mulrady, with a half-pleased, half-uneasy
laugh.
"You're a capitalist, I say; but ma says a landed proprietor."
Nevertheless, the landed proprietor, when he reached the boulder on the
Red Dog highway, sat down in somewhat moody contemplation, with his
head bowed over the broad cowhide brogues, that seemed to have already
gathered enough of the soil to indicate his right to that title.
Mamie, who had recovered her spirits, but had not lost her
preoccupation, wandered off by herself in the meadow, or ascended the
hillside, as her occasional impatience at the delay of the coach, or
the following of some ambitious fancy, alternately prompted her. She
was so far away at one time that the stage-coach, which finally drew up
before Mulrady, was obliged to wait for her.
When she was deposited safely inside, and Mulrady had climbed to the
box beside the driver, the latter remarked, curtly,--
"Ye gave me a right smart skeer, a minit ago, stranger."
"Ez how?"
"Well, about three years ago, I was comin' down this yer grade, at just
this time, and sittin' right on that stone, in just your attitude, was
a man about your build and years. I pulled up to let him in, when,
darn my skin! if he ever moved, but sorter looked at me without
speakin'. I called to him, and he never answered, 'cept with that
idiotic stare. I then let him have my opinion of him, in mighty strong
English, and drove off, leavin' him there. The next morning, when I
came by on the up-trip, darn my skin! if he wasn't thar, but lyin' all
of a heap on the boulder. Jim drops down and picks him up. Doctor
Duchesne, ez was along, allowst it was a played-out prospector, with a
big case of paralysis, and we expressed him through to the County
Hospital, like so much dead freight. I've allus been kinder
superstitious about passin' that rock, and when I saw you jist now,
sittin' thar, dazed like, with your head down like the other chap, it
rather threw me off my centre."
In the inexplicable and half-superstitious uneasiness that this
coincidence awakened in Mulrady's unimaginative mind, he was almost on
the point of disclosing his good fortune to the driver, in order to
prove how preposterous was the parallel, but checked himself in time.
"Did you find out who he was?" broke in a rash passenger. "Did you
ever get over it?" added another unfortunate.
With a pause of insulting scorn at the interruption, the driver
resumed, pointedly, to Mulrady: "The pint of the whole thing was my
cussin' a helpless man, ez could neither cuss back nor shoot; and then
afterwards takin' you for his ghost layin' for me to get even." He
paused again, and then added, carelessly, "They say he never kem to
enuff to let on who he was or whar he kem from; and he was eventooally
taken to a 'Sylum for Doddering Idjits and Gin'ral and Permiskus
Imbeciles at Sacramento. I've heerd it's considered a first-class
institooshun, not only for them ez is paralyzed and can't talk, as for
them ez is the reverse and is too chipper. Now," he added, languidly
turning for the first time to his miserable questioners, "how did YOU
find it?"
[1] Don Ramon probably alluded to the eminent naturalist Douglas, who
visited California before the gold excitement, and died of an accident
in the Sandwich Islands.