CHAPTER V

The two men kept their secret. Mr. Poindexter convinced Mrs. Tucker that

the sale of Los Cuervos could not be effected until the notoriety of her

husband's flight had been fairly forgotten, and she was forced to accept

her fate. The sale of her diamonds, which seemed to her to have realized

a singularly extravagant sum, enabled her to quietly reinstate the

Pattersons in the tienda and to discharge in full her husband's

liabilities to the rancheros and his humbler retainers.

Meanwhile the winter rains had ceased. It seemed to her as if the clouds

had suddenly one night struck their white tents and stolen away, leaving

the unvanquished sun to mount the vacant sky the next morning alone,

and possess it thenceforward unchallenged. One afternoon she thought

the long sad waste before her window had caught some tint of gayer

color from the sunset; a week later she found it a blazing landscape of

poppies, broken here and there by blue lagoons of lupine, by pools of

daisies, by banks of dog-roses, by broad outlying shores of dandelions

that scattered their lavish gold to the foot of the hills, where the

green billows of wild oats carried it on and upwards to the darker crest

of pines. For two months she was dazzled and bewildered with color. She

had never before been face to face with this spendthrift Californian

Flora, in her virgin wastefulness, her more than goddess-like

prodigality. The teeming earth seemed to quicken and throb beneath

her feet; the few circuits of a plough around the outlying corral were

enough to call out a jungle growth of giant grain that almost hid the

low walls of the hacienda. In this glorious fecundity of the earth,

in this joyous renewal of life and color, in this opulent youth and

freshness of soil and sky, it alone remained, the dead and sterile Past,

left in the midst of buoyant rejuvenescence and resurrection, like an

empty churchyard skull upturned on the springing turf. Its bronzed adobe

walls mocked the green vine that embraced them, the crumbling dust of

its courtyard remained ungerminating and unfruitful; to the thousand

stirring voices without, its dry lips alone remained mute, unresponsive

and unchanged.

During this time Don Jose had become a frequent visitor at Los Cuervos,

bringing with him at first his niece and sister in a stately precision

of politeness that was not lost on the proud Blue Grass stranger.

She returned their visit at Los Gatos, and there made the formal

acquaintance of Don Jose's grandmother, a lady who still regarded the

decrepit Concha as a giddy muchacha, and who herself glittered as with

the phosphorescence of refined decay. Through this circumstance she

learned that Don Jose was not yet fifty, and that his gravity of

manner and sedateness was more the result of fastidious isolation and

temperament than years. She could not tell why the information gave

her a feeling of annoyance, but it caused her to regret the absence of

Poindexter, and to wonder, also somewhat nervously, why he had lately

avoided her presence. The thought that he might be doing so from a

recollection of the innuendoes of Mrs. Patterson caused a little tremor

of indignation in her pulses. “As if--” but she did not finish the

sentence even to herself, and her eyes filled with bitter tears.

Yet she had thought of the husband who had so cruelly wronged her less

feverishly, less impatiently than before. For she thought she loved him

now the more deeply, because, although she was not reconciled to his

absence, it seemed to keep alive the memory of what he had been before

his one wild act separated them. She had never seen the reflection of

another woman's eyes in his; the past contained no haunting recollection

of waning or alienated affection; she could meet him again, and,

clasping her arms around him, awaken as if from a troubled dream without

reproach or explanation. Her strong belief in this made her patient;

she no longer sought to know the particulars of his flight, and never

dreamed that her passive submission to his absence was partly due to

a fear that something in his actual presence at that moment would have

destroyed that belief forever.

For this reason the delicate reticence of the people at Los Gatos, and

their seclusion from the world which knew of her husband's fault, had

made her encourage the visits of Don Jose, until from the instinct

already alluded to she one day summoned Poindexter to Los Cuervos, on

the day that Don Jose usually called. But to her surprise the two men

met more or less awkwardly and coldly, and her tact as hostess was tried

to the utmost to keep their evident antagonism from being too apparent.

The effort to reconcile their mutual discontent, and some other feeling

she did not quite understand, produced a nervous excitement which called

the blood to her cheek and gave a dangerous brilliancy to her eyes, two

circumstances not unnoticed nor unappreciated by her two guests. But

instead of reuniting them, the prettier Mrs. Tucker became, the more

distant and reserved grew the men, until Don Jose rose before the usual

hour, and with more than usual ceremoniousness departed.

“Then my business does not seem to be with HIM?” said Poindexter,

with quiet coolness, as Mrs. Tucker turned her somewhat mystified face

towards him. “Or have you anything to say to me about him in private?”

“I am sure I don't know what you both mean,” she returned with a slight

tremor of voice. “I had no idea you were not on good terms. I thought

you were! It's very awkward.” Without coquetry and unconsciously she

raised her blue eyes under her lids until the clear pupils coyly and

softly hid themselves in the corners of the brown lashes, and added,

“You have both been so kind to me.”

“Perhaps that is the reason,” said Poindexter, gravely. But Mrs. Tucker

refused to accept the suggestion with equal gravity, and began to laugh.

The laugh, which was at first frank, spontaneous, and almost child-like,

was becoming hysterical and nervous as she went on, until it was

suddenly checked by Poindexter.

“I have had no difficulties with Don Jose Santierra,” he said, somewhat

coldly ignoring her hilarity, “but perhaps he is not inclined to be as

polite to the friend of the husband as he is to the wife.”

“Mr. Poindexter!” said Mrs. Tucker quickly, her face becoming pale

again.

“I beg your pardon!” said Poindexter, flushing; “but--”

“You want to say,” she interrupted coolly, “that you are not friends, I

see. Is that the reason why you have avoided this house?” she continued

gently.

“I thought I could be of more service to you elsewhere,” he replied

evasively. “I have been lately following up a certain clue rather

closely. I think I am on the track of a confidante of--of--that woman.”

A quick shadow passed over Mrs. Tucker's face. “Indeed!” she said

coldly. “Then I am to believe that you prefer to spend your leisure

moments in looking after that creature to calling here?”

Poindexter was stupefied. Was this the woman who only four months ago

was almost vindictively eager to pursue her husband's paramour! There

could be but one answer to it--Don Jose! Four months ago he would have

smiled compassionately at it from his cynical pre-eminence. Now he

managed with difficulty to stifle the bitterness of his reply.

“If you do not wish the inquiry carried on,” he began, “of course--”

“I? What does it matter to me?” she said coolly. “Do as you please.”

Nevertheless, half an hour later, as he was leaving, she said, with a

certain hesitating timidity, “Do not leave me so much alone here, and

let that woman go.”

This was not the only unlooked-for sequel to her innocent desire to

propitiate her best friends. Don Jose did not call again upon his usual

day, but in his place came Dona Clara, his younger sister. When Mrs.

Tucker had politely asked after the absent Don Jose, Dona Clara wound

her swarthy arms around the fair American's waist and replied, “But why

did you send for the abogado Poindexter when my brother called?”

“But Captain Poindexter calls as one of my friends,” said the amazed

Mrs. Tucker. “He is a gentleman, and has been a soldier and an officer,”

she added with some warmth.

“Ah, yes, a soldier of the law, what you call an oficial de policia,

a chief of gendarmes, my sister, but not a gentleman--a camarero to

protect a lady.”

Mrs. Tucker would have uttered a hasty reply, but the perfect and

good-natured simplicity of Dona Clara withheld her. Nevertheless, she

treated Don Jose with a certain reserve at their next meeting, until

it brought the simple-minded Castilian so dangerously near the point of

demanding an explanation which implied too much that she was obliged to

restore him temporarily to his old footing. Meantime she had a brilliant

idea. She would write to Calhoun Weaver, whom she had avoided since that

memorable day. She would say she wished to consult him. He would come to

Los Cuervos; he might suggest something to lighten this weary waiting;

at least she would show them all that she had still old friends. Yet she

did not dream of returning to her Blue Grass home; her parents had died

since she left; she shrank from the thought of dragging her ruined life

before the hopeful youth of her girlhood's companions.

Mr. Calhoun Weaver arrived promptly, ostentatiously, oracularly, and

cordially, but a little coarsely. He had--did she remember?--expected

this from the first. Spencer had lost his head through vanity, and

had attempted too much. It required foresight and firmness, as he

himself--who had lately made successful “combinations” which she might

perhaps have heard of--well knew. But Spencer had got the “big head.”

“As to that woman--a devilish handsome woman too!--well, everybody knew

that Spencer always had a weakness that way, and he would say--but if

she didn't care to hear any more about her--well, perhaps she was right.

That was the best way to take it.” Sitting before her, prosperous,

weak, egotistical, incompetent, unavailable, and yet filled with a vague

kindliness of intent, Mrs. Tucker loathed him. A sickening perception of

her own weakness in sending for him, a new and aching sense of her utter

isolation and helplessness, seemed to paralyze her.

“Nat'rally you feel bad,” he continued, with the large air of a profound

student of human nature. “Nat'rally, nat'rally you're kept in an

uncomfortable state, not knowing jist how you stand. There ain't but one

thing to do. Jist rise up, quiet like, and get a divorce agin Spencer.

Hold on! There ain't a judge or jury in California that wouldn't give it

to you right off the nail, without asking questions. Why, you 'ld get it

by default if you wanted to; you 'ld just have to walk over the course!

And then, Belle,” he drew his chair still nearer her, “when you've

settled down again--well!--I don't mind renewing that offer I once made

ye, before Spencer ever came round ye--I don't mind, Belle, I swear I

don't! Honest Injin! I'm in earnest, there's my hand!”

Mrs. Tucker's reply has not been recorded. Enough that half an hour

later Mr. Weaver appeared in the courtyard with traces of tears on his

foolish face, a broken falsetto voice, and other evidence of mental and

moral disturbance. His cordiality and oracular predisposition remained

sufficiently to enable him to suggest the magical words “Blue Grass”

mysteriously to Concha, with an indication of his hand to the erect

figure of her pale mistress in the doorway, who waved to him a silent

but half-compassionate farewell.

At about this time a slight change in her manner was noticed by the few

who saw her more frequently. Her apparently invincible girlishness of

spirit had given way to a certain matronly seriousness. She applied

herself to her household cares and the improvement of the hacienda with

a new sense of duty and a settled earnestness, until by degrees she

wrought into it not only her instinctive delicacy and taste, but part

of her own individuality. Even the rude rancheros and tradesmen who were

permitted to enter the walls in the exercise of their calling began to

speak mysteriously of the beauty of this garden of the almarjal. She

went out but seldom, and then accompanied by the one or the other of her

female servants, in long drives on unfrequented roads. On Sundays she

sometimes drove to the half-ruined mission church of Santa Inez, and

hid herself, during mass, in the dim monastic shadows of the choir.

Gradually the poorer people whom she met in these journeys began to

show an almost devotional reverence for her, stopping in the roads with

uncovered heads for her to pass, or making way for her in the tienda

or plaza of the wretched town with dumb courtesy. She began to feel a

strange sense of widowhood, that, while it at times brought tears to

her eyes, was, not without a certain tender solace. In the sympathy and

simpleness of this impulse she went as far as to revive the mourning she

had worn for her parents, but with such a fatal accenting of her beauty,

and dangerous misinterpreting of her condition to eligible bachelors

strange to the country, that she was obliged to put it off again. Her

reserve and dignified manner caused others to mistake her nationality

for that of the Santierras, and in “Dona Bella” the simple Mrs.

Tucker was for a while forgotten. At times she even forgot it herself.

Accustomed now almost entirely to the accents of another language and

the features of another race, she would sit for hours in the corridor,

whose massive bronzed inclosure even her tasteful care could only make

an embowered mausoleum of the Past, or gaze abstractedly from the dark

embrasures of her windows across the stretching almarjal to the shining

lagoon beyond that terminated the estuary. She had a strange fondness

for this tranquil mirror, which under sun or stars always retained the

passive reflex of the sky above, and seemed to rest her weary eyes. She

had objected to one of the plans projected by Poindexter to redeem the

land and deepen the water at the embarcadero, as it would have drained

the lagoon, and the lawyer had postponed the improvement to gratify

her fancy. So she kept it through the long summer unchanged save by the

shadows of passing wings or the lazy files of sleeping sea-fowl.

On one of these afternoons she noticed a slowly moving carriage leave

the high road and cross the almarjal skirting the edge of the lagoon. If

it contained visitors for Los Cuervos they had evidently taken a shorter

cut without waiting to go on to the regular road which intersected the

highway at right angles a mile farther on. It was with some sense of

annoyance and irritation that she watched the trespass, and finally saw

the vehicle approach the house. A few moments later the servant informed

her that Mr. Patterson would like to see her alone. When she entered the

corridor, which in the dry season served as a reception hall, she

was surprised to see that Patterson was not alone. Near him stood

a well-dressed handsome woman, gazing about her with good-humored

admiration of Mrs. Tucker's taste and ingenuity.

“It don't look much like it did two years ago,” said the stranger

cheerfully. “You've improved it wonderfully.”

Stiffening slightly, Mrs. Tucker turned inquiringly to Mr. Patterson.

But that gentleman's usual profound melancholy appeared to be

intensified by the hilarity of his companion. He only sighed deeply and

rubbed his leg with the brim of his hat in gloomy abstraction.

“Well! go on, then,” said the woman, laughing and nudging him. “Go

on--introduce me--can't you? Don't stand there like a tombstone. You

won't? Well, I'll introduce myself.” She laughed again, and then, with

an excellent imitation of Patterson's lugubrious accents, said, “Mr.

Spencer Tucker's wife that IS, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Spencer

Tucker's sweetheart that WAS! Hold on! I said THAT WAS. For true as

I stand here, ma'am--and I reckon I wouldn't stand here if it wasn't

true--I haven't set eyes on him since the day he left you.”

“It's the Gospel truth, every word,” said Patterson, stirred into a

sudden activity by Mrs. Tucker's white and rigid face. “It's the frozen

truth, and I kin prove it. For I kin swear that when that there young

woman was sailin' outer the Golden Gate, Spencer Tucker was in my bar

room; I kin swear that I fed him, lickered him, give him a hoss and set

him in his road to Monterey that very night.”

“Then, where is he now?” said Mrs. Tucker, suddenly facing them.

They looked at each other, and then looked at Mrs. Tucker.

Then both together replied slowly and in perfect unison,

“That's--what--we--want--to--know.” They seemed so satisfied

with this effect that they as deliberately repeated,

“Yes--that's--what--we--want--to--know.”

Between the shock of meeting the partner of her husband's guilt and

the unexpected revelation to her inexperience, that in suggestion and

appearance there was nothing beyond the recollection of that guilt that

was really shocking in the woman--between the extravagant extremes

of hope and fear suggested by their words, there was something so

grotesquely absurd in the melodramatic chorus that she with difficulty

suppressed a hysterical laugh.

“That's the way to take it,” said the woman, putting her own

good-humored interpretation upon Mrs. Tucker's expression. “Now, look

here! I'll tell you all about it.” She carefully selected the most

comfortable chair, and sitting down, lightly crossed her hands in her

lap. “Well, I left here on the 13th of last January on the ship Argo,

calculating that your husband would join the ship just inside the Heads.

That was our arrangement, but if anything happened to prevent him, he

was to join me in Acapulco. Well! He didn't come aboard, and we sailed

without him. But it appears now he did attempt to join the ship, but his

boat was capsized. There, now, don't be alarmed! he wasn't drowned, as

Patterson can swear to--no, catch HIM! not a hair of him was hurt; but

I--I was bundled off to the end of the earth in Mexico, alone, without a

cent to bless me. For true as you live, that hound of a captain, when he

found, as he thought, that Spencer was nabbed, he just confiscated all

his trunks and valuables and left me in the lurch. If I hadn't met a man

down there that offered to marry me and brought me here, I might have

died there, I reckon. But I did, and here I am. I went down there as

your husband's sweetheart, I've come back as the wife of an honest man,

and I reckon it's about square!”

There was something so startlingly frank, so hopelessly self-satisfied,

so contagiously good-humored in the woman's perfect moral

unconsciousness, that even if Mrs. Tucker had been less preoccupied her

resentment would have abated. But her eyes were fixed on the gloomy face

of Patterson, who was beginning to unlock the sepulchres of his memory

and disinter his deeply buried thoughts.

“You kin bet your whole pile on what this Mrs. Capting Baxter--ez used

to be French Inez of New Orleans--hez told ye. Ye kin take everything

she's unloaded. And it's only doin' the square thing to her to say, she

hain't done it out o' no cussedness, but just to satisfy herself, now

she's a married woman and past such foolishness. But that ain't neither

here nor there. The gist of the whole matter is that Spencer Tucker was

at the tienda the day after she sailed and after his boat capsized.” He

then gave a detailed account of the interview, with the unnecessary but

truthful minutiae of his class, adding to the particulars already known

that the following week he visited the Summit House and was surprised

to find that Spencer had never been there, nor had he ever sailed from

Monterey.

“But why was this not told to me before?” said Mrs. Tucker, suddenly.

“Why not at the time? Why,” she demanded almost fiercely, turning from

the one to the other, “has this been kept from me?”

“I'll tell ye why,” said Patterson, sinking with crushed submission into

a chair. “When I found he wasn't where he ought to be, I got to lookin'

elsewhere. I knew the track of the hoss I lent him by a loose shoe. I

examined; and found he had turned off the high road somewhere beyond the

lagoon, jist as if he was makin' a bee line here.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Tucker, breathlessly.

“Well,” said Patterson, with the resigned tone of an accustomed martyr,

“mebbe I'm a God-forsaken idiot, but I reckon he DID come yer. And mebbe

I'm that much of a habitooal lunatic, but thinking so, I calkilated

you'ld know it without tellin'.”

With their eyes fixed upon her, Mrs. Tucker felt the quick blood rush

to her cheeks, although she knew not why. But they were apparently

satisfied with her ignorance, for Patterson resumed, yet more

gloomily:--

“Then if he wasn't hidin' here beknownst to you, he must have changed

his mind agin and got away by the embarcadero. The only thing wantin' to

prove that idea is to know how he got a boat, and what he did with the

hoss. And thar's one more idea, and ez that can't be proved,” continued

Patterson, sinking his voice still lower, “mebbe it's accordin' to God's

laws.”

Unsympathetic to her as the speaker had always been and still was, Mrs.

Tucker felt a vague chill creep over her that seemed to be the result of

his manner more than his words. “And that idea is . . . ?” she suggested

with pale lips.

“It's this! Fust, I don't say it means much to anybody but me. I've

heard of these warnings afore now, ez comin' only to folks ez hear them

for themselves alone, and I reckon I kin stand it, if it's the will o'

God. The idea is then--that--Spencer Tucker--WAS DROWNDED in that boat;

the idea is”--his voice was almost lost in a hoarse whisper--“that it

was no living man that kem to me that night, but a spirit that kem out

of the darkness and went back into it! No eye saw him but mine--no ears

heard him but mine. I reckon it weren't intended it should.” He paused,

and passed the flap of his hat across his eyes. “The pie, you'll say, is

agin it,” he continued in the same tone of voice,--“the whiskey is agin

it--a few cuss words that dropped from him, accidental like, may have

been agin it. All the same they mout have been only the little signs and

tokens that it was him.”

But Mrs. Baxter's ready laugh somewhat rudely dispelled the infection

of Patterson's gloom. “I reckon the only spirit was that which you and

Spencer consumed,” she said, cheerfully. “I don't wonder you're a little

mixed. Like as not you've misunderstood his plans.” Patterson shook

his head. “He'll turn up yet, alive and kicking! Like as not, then,

Poindexter knows where he is all the time.”

“Impossible! He would have told me,” said Mrs. Tucker, quickly.

Mrs. Baxter looked at Patterson without speaking. Patterson replied by a

long lugubrious whistle.

“I don't understand you,” said Mrs. Tucker, drawing back with cold

dignity.

“You don't?” returned Mrs. Baxter. “Bless your innocent heart! Why was

he so keen to hunt me up at first, shadowing my friends and all that,

and why has he dropped it now he knows I'm here, if he didn't know where

Spencer was?”

“I can explain that,” interrupted Mrs. Tucker, hastily, with a blush of

confusion. “That is--I--”

“Then mebbe you kin explain too,” broke in Patterson with gloomy

significance, “why he has bought up most of Spencer's debts himself, and

perhaps you're satisfied it ISN'T to hold the whip hand of him and keep

him from coming back openly. Pr'aps you know why he's movin' heaven and

earth to make Don Jose Santierra sell the ranch, and why the Don don't

see it all.”

“Don Jose sell Los Cuervos! Buy it, you mean?” said Mrs. Tucker. “I

offered to sell it to him.”

Patterson arose from the chair, looked despairingly around him, passed

his hand sadly across his forehead, and said: “It's come! I knew it

would. It's the warning! It's suthing betwixt jim-jams and doddering

idjiocy. Here I'd hev been willin' to swear that Mrs. Baxter here told

me SHE had sold this yer ranch nearly two years ago to Don Jose, and now

you--”

“Stop!” said Mrs. Tucker, in a voice that chilled them.

She was standing upright and rigid, as if stricken to stone. “I command

you to tell me what this means!” she said, turning only her blazing eyes

upon the woman.

Even the ready smile faded from Mrs. Baxter's lips as she replied

hesitatingly and submissively: “I thought you knew already that Spencer

had given this ranch to me. I sold it to Don Jose to get the money for

us to go away with. It was Spencer's idea--”

“You lie!” said Mrs. Tucker.

There was a dead silence. The wrathful blood that had quickly mounted

to Mrs. Baxter's cheek, to Patterson's additional bewilderment, faded as

quickly. She did not lift her eyes again to Mrs. Tucker's, but, slowly

raising herself from her seat, said, “I wish to God I did lie; but it's

true. And it's true that I never touched a cent of the money, but gave

it all to him!” She laid her hand on Patterson's arm, and said, “Come!

let us go,” and led him a few steps towards the gateway. But here

Patterson paused, and again passed his hand over his melancholy brow.

The necessity of coherently and logically closing the conversation

impressed itself upon his darkening mind. “Then you don't happen to have

heard anything of Spencer?” he said sadly, and vanished with Mrs. Baxter

through the gate.

Left alone to herself, Mrs. Tucker raised her hands above her head with

a little cry, interlocked her rigid fingers, and slowly brought her

palms down upon her upturned face and eyes, pressing hard as if to crush

out all light and sense of life before her. She stood thus for a moment

motionless and silent, with the rising wind whispering without and

flecking her white morning dress with gusty shadows from the arbor.

Then, with closed eyes, dropping her hands to her breast, still pressing

hard, she slowly passed them down the shapely contours of her figure to

the waist, and with another cry cast them off as if she were stripping

herself of some loathsome garment. Then she walked quickly to the

gateway, looked out, returned to the corridor, unloosening and taking

off her wedding-ring from her finger as she walked. Here she paused,

then slowly and deliberately rearranged the chairs and adjusted the

gay-colored rugs that draped them, and quietly re-entered her chamber.

Two days afterwards the sweating steed of Captain Poindexter was

turned loose in the corral, and a moment later the captain entered the

corridor. Handing a letter to the decrepit Concha, who seemed to be

utterly disorganized by its contents, and the few curt words with which

it was delivered, he gazed silently upon the vacant bower, still fresh

and redolent with the delicacy and perfume of its graceful occupant,

until his dark eyes filled with unaccustomed moisture. But his reverie

was interrupted by the sound of jingling spurs without, and the old

humor struggled back in his eyes as Don Jose impetuously entered. The

Spaniard started back, but instantly recovered himself.

“So I find you here. Ah! it is well!” he said passionately, producing a

letter from his bosom. “Look! Do you call this honor? Look how you keep

your compact!”

Poindexter coolly took the letter. It contained a few words of gentle

dignity from Mrs. Tucker, informing Don Jose that she had only that

instant learned of his just claims upon Los Cuervos, tendering him her

gratitude for his delicate intentions, but pointing out with respectful

firmness that he must know that a moment's further acceptance of his

courtesy was impossible.

“She has gained this knowledge from no word of mine,” said Poindexter,

calmly. “Right or wrong, I have kept my promise to you. I have as much

reason to accuse you of betraying my secret in this,” he added coldly,

as he took another letter from his pocket and handed it to Don Jose.

It seemed briefer and colder, but was neither. It reminded Poindexter

that as he had again deceived her she must take the government of her

affairs in her own hands henceforth. She abandoned all the furniture and

improvements she had put in Los Cuervos to him, to whom she now knew

she was indebted for them. She could not thank him for what his habitual

generosity impelled him to do for any woman, but she could forgive him

for misunderstanding her like any other woman, perhaps she should say,

like a child. When he received this she would be already on her way to

her old home in Kentucky, where she still hoped to be able by her own

efforts to amass enough to discharge her obligations to him.

“She does not speak of her husband, this woman,” said Don Jose, scanning

Poindexter's face. “It is possible she rejoins him, eh?”

“Perhaps in one way she has never left him, Don Jose,” said Poindexter,

with grave significance.

Don Jose's face flushed, but he returned carelessly, “And the rancho,

naturally you will not buy it now?”

“On the contrary, I shall abide by my offer,” said Poindexter, quietly.

Don Jose eyed him narrowly, and then said, “Ah, we shall consider of

it.”

He did consider it, and accepted the offer. With the full control of the

land, Captain Poindexter's improvements, so indefinitely postponed, were

actively pushed forward. The thick walls of the hacienda were the first

to melt away before them; the low lines of corral were effaced, and the

early breath of the summer trade winds swept uninterruptedly across the

now leveled plain to the embarcadero, where a newer structure arose. A

more vivid green alone marked the spot where the crumbling adobe walls

of the casa had returned to the parent soil that gave it. The channel

was deepened, the lagoon was drained, until one evening the magic mirror

that had so long reflected the weary waiting of the Blue Grass Penelope

lay dull, dead, lustreless, an opaque quagmire of noisome corruption

and decay to be put away from the sight of man forever. On this spot

the crows, the titular tenants of Los Cuervos, assembled in tumultuous

congress, coming and going in mysterious clouds, or laboring in thick

and writhing masses, as if they were continuing the work of improvement

begun by human agency. So well had they done the work that by the end

of a week only a few scattered white objects remained glittering on

the surface of the quickly drying soil. But they were the bones of the

missing outcast, Spencer Tucker!

*****

The same spring a breath of war swept over a foul, decaying quagmire of

the whole land, before which such passing deeds as these were blown as

vapor. It called men of all rank and condition to battle for a nation's

life, and among the first to respond were those into whose boyish

hands had been placed the nation's honor. It returned the epaulets to

Poindexter's shoulder with the addition of a double star, carried him

triumphantly to the front, and left him, at the end of a summer's

day and a hard-won fight, sorely wounded, at the door of a Blue Grass

farmhouse. And the woman who sought him out and ministered to his wants

said timidly, as she left her hand in his, “I told you I should live to

repay you.”

LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN.

CHAPTER I

There was little doubt that the Lone Star claim was “played out.” Not

dug out, worked out, washed out, but PLAYED out. For two years its

five sanguine proprietors had gone through the various stages of mining

enthusiasm; had prospected and planned, dug and doubted. They had

borrowed money with hearty but unredeeming frankness, established a

credit with unselfish abnegation of all responsibility, and had borne

the disappointment of their creditors with a cheerful resignation which

only the consciousness of some deep Compensating Future could give.

Giving little else, however, a singular dissatisfaction obtained with

the traders, and, being accompanied with a reluctance to make further

advances, at last touched the gentle stoicism of the proprietors

themselves. The youthful enthusiasm which had at first lifted the

most ineffectual trial, the most useless essay, to the plane of actual

achievement, died out, leaving them only the dull, prosaic record of

half-finished ditches, purposeless shafts, untenable pits, abandoned

engines, and meaningless disruptions of the soil upon the Lone Star

claim, and empty flour sacks and pork barrels in the Lone Star cabin.

They had borne their poverty, if that term could be applied to a

light renunciation of all superfluities in food, dress, or ornament,

ameliorated by the gentle depredations already alluded to, with

unassuming levity. More than that: having segregated themselves from

their fellow-miners of Red Gulch, and entered upon the possession of the

little manzanita-thicketed valley five miles away, the failure of their

enterprise had assumed in their eyes only the vague significance of the

decline and fall of a general community, and to that extent relieved

them of individual responsibility. It was easier for them to admit

that the Lone Star claim was “played out” than confess to a personal

bankruptcy. Moreover, they still retained the sacred right of criticism

of government, and rose superior in their private opinions to their own

collective wisdom. Each one experienced a grateful sense of the entire

responsibility of the other four in the fate of their enterprise.

On December 24, 1863, a gentle rain was still falling over the length

and breadth of the Lone Star claim. It had been falling for several

days, had already called a faint spring color to the wan landscape,

repairing with tender touches the ravages wrought by the proprietors, or

charitably covering their faults. The ragged seams in gulch and canyon

lost their harsh outlines, a thin green mantle faintly clothed the torn

and abraded hillside. A few weeks more, and a veil of forgetfulness

would be drawn over the feeble failures of the Lone Star claim. The

charming derelicts themselves, listening to the raindrops on the roof

of their little cabin, gazed philosophically from the open door, and

accepted the prospect as a moral discharge from their obligations. Four

of the five partners were present. The Right and Left Bowers, Union

Mills, and the Judge.

It is scarcely necessary to say that not one of these titles was the

genuine name of its possessor. The Right and Left Bowers were two

brothers; their sobriquets, a cheerful adaptation from the favorite game

of euchre, expressing their relative value in the camp. The mere fact

that Union Mills had at one time patched his trousers with an old flour

sack legibly bearing that brand of its fabrication, was a tempting

baptismal suggestion that the other partners could not forego. The

Judge, a singularly inequitable Missourian, with no knowledge whatever

of the law, was an inspiration of gratuitous irony.

Union Mills, who had been for some time sitting placidly on the

threshold with one leg exposed to the rain, from a sheer indolent

inability to change his position, finally withdrew that weather-beaten

member, and stood up. The movement more or less deranged the attitudes

of the other partners, and was received with cynical disfavor. It was

somewhat remarkable that, although generally giving the appearance of

healthy youth and perfect physical condition, they one and all simulated

the decrepitude of age and invalidism, and after limping about for a few

moments, settled back again upon their bunks and stools in their former

positions. The Left Bower lazily replaced a bandage that he had worn

around his ankle for weeks without any apparent necessity, and the Judge

scrutinized with tender solicitude the faded cicatrix of a scratch upon

his arm. A passive hypochondria, born of their isolation, was the last

ludicrously pathetic touch to their situation.

The immediate cause of this commotion felt the necessity of an

explanation.

“It would have been just as easy for you to have stayed outside with

your business leg, instead of dragging it into private life in that

obtrusive way,” retorted the Right Bower; “but that exhaustive

effort isn't going to fill the pork barrel. The grocery man at Dalton

says--what's that he said?” he appealed lazily to the Judge.

“Said he reckoned the Lone Star was about played out, and he didn't want

any more in his--thank you!” repeated the Judge with a mechanical effort

of memory utterly devoid of personal or present interest.

“I always suspected that man, after Grimshaw begun to deal with him,”

said the Left Bower. “They're just mean enough to join hands against

us.” It was a fixed belief of the Lone Star partners that they were

pursued by personal enmities.

“More than likely those new strangers over in the Fork have been paying

cash and filled him up with conceit,” said Union Mills, trying to dry

his leg by alternately beating it or rubbing it against the cabin wall.

“Once begin wrong with that kind of snipe and you drag everybody down

with you.”

This vague conclusion was received with dead silence. Everybody had

become interested in the speaker's peculiar method of drying his leg,

to the exclusion of the previous topic. A few offered criticism, no one

assistance.

“Who did the grocery man say that to?” asked the Right Bower, finally

returning to the question.

“The Old man,” answered the Judge.

“Of course,” ejaculated the Right Bower sarcastically.

“Of course,” echoed the other partners together. “That's like him. The

Old Man all over!”

It did not appear exactly what was like the Old Man, or why it was like

him, but generally that he alone was responsible for the grocery man's

defection. It was put more concisely by Union Mills.

“That comes of letting him go there! It's just a fair provocation to

any man to have the Old Man sent to him. They can't, sorter, restrain

themselves at him. He's enough to spoil the credit of the Rothschilds.”

“That's so,” chimed in the Judge. “And look at his prospecting. Why, he

was out two nights last week, all night, prospecting in the moonlight

for blind leads, just out of sheer foolishness.”

“It was quite enough for me,” broke in the Left Bower, “when the other

day, you remember when, he proposed to us white men to settle down to

plain ground sluicing, making 'grub' wages just like any Chinaman. It

just showed his idea of the Lone Star claim.”

“Well, I never said it afore,” added Union Mills, “but when that one

of the Mattison boys came over here to examine the claim with an eye to

purchasin', it was the Old Man that took the conceit out of him. He just

as good as admitted that a lot of work had got to be done afore any pay

ore could be realized. Never even asked him over to the shanty here to

jine us in a friendly game; just kept him, so to speak, to himself. And

naturally the Mattisons didn't see it.”

A silence followed, broken only by the rain monotonously falling on

the roof, and occasionally through the broad adobe chimney, where it

provoked a retaliating hiss and splutter from the dying embers of the

hearth. The Right Bower, with a sudden access of energy, drew the empty

barrel before him, and taking a pack of well-worn cards from his pocket,

began to make a “solitaire” upon the lid. The others gazed at him with

languid interest.

“Makin' it for anythin'?” asked Mills.

The Right Bower nodded.

The Judge and Left Bower, who were partly lying in their respective

bunks, sat up to get a better view of the game. Union Mills slowly

disengaged himself from the wall and leaned over the “solitaire” player.

The Right Bower turned the last card in a pause of almost thrilling

suspense, and clapped it down on the lid with fateful emphasis.

“It went!” said the Judge in a voice of hushed respect. “What did you

make it for?” he almost whispered.

“To know if we'd make the break we talked about and vamose the ranch.

It's the FIFTH time today,” continued the Right Bower in a voice of

gloomy significance. “And it went agin bad cards too.”

“I ain't superstitious,” said the Judge, with awe and fatuity beaming

from every line of his credulous face, “but it's flyin' in the face of

Providence to go agin such signs as that.”

“Make it again, to see if the Old Man must go,” suggested the Left

Bower.

The suggestion was received with favor, the three men gathering

breathlessly around the player. Again the fateful cards were shuffled

deliberately, placed in their mysterious combination, with the same

ominous result. Yet everybody seemed to breathe more freely, as if

relieved from some responsibility, the Judge accepting this manifest

expression of Providence with resigned self-righteousness.

“Yes, gentlemen,” resumed the Left Bower, serenely, as if a calm legal

decision had just been recorded, “we must not let any foolishness or

sentiment get mixed up with this thing, but look at it like business

men. The only sensible move is to get up and get out of the camp.”

“And the Old Man?” queried the Judge.

“The Old Man--hush! he's coming.”

The doorway was darkened by a slight lissome shadow. It was the absent

partner, otherwise known as “the Old Man.” Need it be added that he was

a BOY of nineteen, with a slight down just clothing his upper lip!

“The creek is up over the ford, and I had to 'shin' up a willow on the

bank and swing myself across,” he said, with a quick, frank laugh; “but

all the same, boys, it's going to clear up in about an hour, you bet.

It's breaking away over Bald Mountain, and there's a sun flash on a bit

of snow on Lone Peak. Look! you can see it from here. It's for all the

world like Noah's dove just landed on Mount Ararat. It's a good omen.”

From sheer force of habit the men had momentarily brightened up at

the Old Man's entrance. But the unblushing exhibition of degrading

superstition shown in the last sentence recalled their just severity.

They exchanged meaning glances. Union Mills uttered hopelessly to

himself: “Hell's full of such omens.”

Too occupied with his subject to notice this ominous reception, the Old

Man continued: “I reckon I struck a fresh lead in the new grocery man

at the Crossing. He says he'll let the Judge have a pair of boots on

credit, but he can't send them over here; and considering that the Judge

has got to try them anyway, it don't seem to be asking too much for the

Judge to go over there. He says he'll give us a barrel of pork and a bag

of flour if we'll give him the right of using our tail-race and clean

out the lower end of it.”

“It's the work of a Chinaman, and a four days' job,” broke in the Left

Bower.

“It took one white man only two hours to clean out a third of it,”

retorted the Old Man triumphantly, “for I pitched in at once with a pick

he let me have on credit, and did that amount of work this morning, and

told him the rest of you boys would finish it this afternoon.”

A slight gesture from the Right Bower checked an angry exclamation from

the Left. The Old Man did not notice either, but, knitting his smooth

young brow in a paternally reflective fashion, went on: “You'll have

to get a new pair of trousers, Mills, but as he doesn't keep clothing,

we'll have to get some canvas and cut you out a pair. I traded off the

beans he let me have for some tobacco for the Right Bower at the other

shop, and got them to throw in a new pack of cards. These are about

played out. We'll be wanting some brushwood for the fire; there's a heap

in the hollow. Who's going to bring it in? It's the Judge's turn, isn't

it? Why, what's the matter with you all?”

The restraint and evident uneasiness of his companions had at last

touched him. He turned his frank young eyes upon them; they glanced

helplessly at each other. Yet his first concern was for them, his first

instinct paternal and protecting. He ran his eyes quickly over them;

they were all there and apparently in their usual condition. “Anything

wrong with the claim?” he suggested.

Without looking at him the Right Bower rose, leaned against the open

door with his hands behind him and his face towards the landscape, and

said, apparently to the distant prospect: “The claim's played out, the

partnership's played out, and the sooner we skedaddle out of this the

better. If,” he added, turning to the Old Man, “if YOU want to stay, if

you want to do Chinaman's work at Chinaman's wages, if you want to hang

on to the charity of the traders at the Crossing, you can do it, and

enjoy the prospects and the Noah's doves alone. But we're calculatin' to

step out of it.”

“But I haven't said I wanted to do it ALONE,” protested the Old Man with

a gesture of bewilderment.

“If these are your general ideas of the partnership,” continued the

Right Bower, clinging to the established hypothesis of the other

partners for support, “it ain't ours, and the only way we can prove it

is to stop the foolishness right here. We calculated to dissolve the

partnership and strike out for ourselves elsewhere. You're no longer

responsible for us, nor we for you. And we reckon it's the square thing

to leave you the claim and the cabin, and all it contains. To prevent

any trouble with the traders, we've drawn up a paper here--”

“With a bonus of fifty thousand dollars each down, and the rest to be

settled on my children,” interrupted the Old Man, with a half-uneasy

laugh. “Of course. But--” he stopped suddenly, the blood dropped from

his fresh cheek, and he again glanced quickly round the group. “I don't

think--I--I quite sabe, boys,” he added, with a slight tremor of voice

and lip. “If it's a conundrum, ask me an easier one.”

Any lingering doubt he might have had of their meaning was dispelled by

the Judge. “It's about the softest thing you kin drop into, Old Man,”

he said confidentially; “if I hadn't promised the other boys to go with

them, and if I didn't need the best medical advice in Sacramento for my

lungs, I'd just enjoy staying with you.”

“It gives a sorter freedom to a young fellow like you, Old Man, like

goin' into the world on your own capital, that every Californian boy

hasn't got,” said Union Mills, patronizingly.

“Of course it's rather hard papers on us, you know, givin' up

everything, so to speak; but it's for your good, and we ain't goin' back

on you,” said the Left Bower, “are we, boys?”

The color had returned to the Old Man's face a little more quickly and

freely than usual. He picked up the hat he had cast down, put it on

carefully over his brown curls, drew the flap down on the side towards

his companions, and put his hands in his pockets. “All right,” he said,

in a slightly altered voice. “When do you go?”

“To-day,” answered the Left Bower. “We calculate to take a moonlight

pasear over to the Cross Roads and meet the down stage at about twelve

to-night. There's plenty of time yet,” he added, with a slight laugh;

“it's only three o'clock now.”

There was a dead silence. Even the rain withheld its continuous patter,

a dumb, gray film covered the ashes of the hushed hearth. For the first

time the Right Bower exhibited some slight embarrassment.

“I reckon it's held up for a spell,” he said, ostentatiously examining

the weather, “and we might as well take a run round the claim to see

if we've forgotten nothing. Of course, we'll be back again,” he added

hastily, without looking at the Old Man, “before we go, you know.”

The others began to look for their hats, but so awkwardly and with such

evident preoccupation of mind that it was not at first discovered that

the Judge had his already on. This raised a laugh, as did also a clumsy

stumble of Union Mills against the pork barrel, although that gentleman

took refuge from his confusion and secured a decent retreat by a gross

exaggeration of his lameness, as he limped after the Right Bower. The

Judge whistled feebly. The Left Bower, in a more ambitious effort to

impart a certain gayety to his exit, stopped on the threshold and said,

as if in arch confidence to his companions, “Darned if the Old Man

don't look two inches higher since he became a proprietor,” laughed

patronizingly, and vanished.

If the newly-made proprietor had increased in stature, he had not

otherwise changed his demeanor. He remained in the same attitude until

the last figure disappeared behind the fringe of buckeye that hid the

distant highway. Then he walked slowly to the fire-place, and, leaning

against the chimney, kicked the dying embers together with his foot.

Something dropped and spattered in the film of hot ashes. Surely the

rain had not yet ceased!

His high color had already fled except for a spot on either cheek-bone

that lent a brightness to his eyes. He glanced around the cabin. It

looked familiar and yet strange. Rather, it looked strange BECAUSE

still familiar, and therefore incongruous with the new atmosphere that

surrounded it--discordant with the echo of their last meeting, and

painfully accenting the change. There were the four “bunks,” or sleeping

berths, of his companions, each still bearing some traces of the

individuality of its late occupant with a dumb loyalty that seemed to

make their light-hearted defection monstrous. In the dead ashes of the

Judge's pipe, scattered on his shelf, still lived his old fire; in

the whittled and carved edges of the Left Bower's bunk still were the

memories of bygone days of delicious indolence; in the bullet-holes

clustered round a knot of one of the beams there was still the record of

the Right Bower's old-time skill and practice; in the few engravings

of female loveliness stuck upon each headboard there were the proofs of

their old extravagant devotion--all a mute protest to the change.

He remembered how, a fatherless, truant schoolboy, he had drifted into

their adventurous, nomadic life, itself a life of grown-up truancy like

his own, and became one of that gypsy family. How they had taken the

place of relations and household in his boyish fancy, filling it with

the unsubstantial pageantry of a child's play at grown-up existence,

he knew only too well. But how, from being a pet and protege, he had

gradually and unconsciously asserted his own individuality and taken

upon his younger shoulders not only a poet's keen appreciation of that

life, but its actual responsibilities and half-childish burdens, he

never suspected. He had fondly believed that he was a neophyte in their

ways, a novice in their charming faith and indolent creed, and they had

encouraged it; now their renunciation of that faith could only be an

excuse for a renunciation of HIM. The poetry that had for two years

invested the material and sometimes even mean details of their existence

was too much a part of himself to be lightly dispelled. The lesson of

those ingenuous moralists failed, as such lessons are apt to fail; their

discipline provoked but did not subdue; a rising indignation, stirred by

a sense of injury, mounted to his cheek and eyes. It was slow to come,

but was none the less violent that it had been preceded by the benumbing

shock of shame and pride.

I hope I shall not prejudice the reader's sympathies if my duty as a

simple chronicler compels me to state, therefore, that the sober second

thought of this gentle poet was to burn down the cabin on the spot with

all its contents. This yielded to a milder counsel--waiting for the

return of the party, challenging the Right Bower, a duel to the death,

perhaps himself the victim, with a crushing explanation in extremis,

“It seems we are ONE too many. No matter; it is settled now. Farewell!”

Dimly remembering, however, that there was something of this in the last

well-worn novel they had read together, and that his antagonist might

recognize it, or even worse, anticipate it himself, the idea was quickly

rejected. Besides, the opportunity for an apotheosis of self-sacrifice

was past. Nothing remained now but to refuse the proffered bribe of

claim and cabin by letter, for he must not wait their return. He tore a

leaf from a blotted diary, begun and abandoned long since, and essayed

to write. Scrawl after scrawl was torn up, until his fury had cooled

down to a frigid third personality. “Mr. John Ford regrets to inform his

late partners that their tender of house, of furniture,” however, seemed

too inconsistent with the pork-barrel table he was writing on; a more

eloquent renunciation of their offer became frivolous and idiotic from a

caricature of Union Mills, label and all, that appeared suddenly on the

other side of the leaf; and when he at last indited a satisfactory and

impassioned exposition of his feelings, the legible addendum of “Oh,

ain't you glad you're out of the wilderness!”--the forgotten first line

of a popular song, which no scratching would erase--seemed too like an

ironical postscript to be thought of for a moment. He threw aside his

pen and cast the discordant record of past foolish pastime into the dead

ashes of the hearth.

How quiet it was. With the cessation of the rain the wind too had gone

down, and scarcely a breath of air came through the open door. He walked

to the threshold and gazed on the hushed prospect. In this listless

attitude he was faintly conscious of a distant reverberation, a mere

phantom of sound--perhaps the explosion of a distant blast in the

hills--that left the silence more marked and oppressive. As he turned

again into the cabin a change seemed to have come over it. It already

looked old and decayed. The loneliness of years of desertion seemed to

have taken possession of it; the atmosphere of dry rot was in the

beams and rafters. To his excited fancy the few disordered blankets

and articles of clothing seemed dropping to pieces; in one of the bunks

there was a hideous resemblance in the longitudinal heap of clothing to

a withered and mummied corpse. So it might look in after years when some

passing stranger--but he stopped. A dread of the place was beginning

to creep over him; a dread of the days to come, when the monotonous

sunshine should lay bare the loneliness of these walls; the long, long

days of endless blue and cloudless, overhanging solitude; summer days

when the wearying, incessant trade winds should sing around that empty

shell and voice its desolation. He gathered together hastily a few

articles that were especially his own--rather that the free communion

of the camp, from indifference or accident, had left wholly to him. He

hesitated for a moment over his rifle, but, scrupulous in his wounded

pride, turned away and left the familiar weapon that in the dark days

had so often provided the dinner or breakfast of the little household.

Candor compels me to state that his equipment was not large nor

eminently practical. His scant pack was a light weight for even his

young shoulders, but I fear he thought more of getting away from the

Past than providing for the Future.

With this vague but sole purpose he left the cabin, and almost

mechanically turned his steps towards the creek he had crossed

that morning. He knew that by this route he would avoid meeting his

companions; its difficulties and circuitousness would exercise his

feverish limbs and give him time for reflection. He had determined to

leave the claim, but whence he had not yet considered. He reached the

bank of the creek where he had stood two hours before; it seemed to him

two years. He looked curiously at his reflection in one of the broad

pools of overflow, and fancied he looked older. He watched the rush and

outset of the turbid current hurrying to meet the South Fork, and

to eventually lose itself in the yellow Sacramento. Even in his

preoccupation he was impressed with a likeness to himself and his

companions in this flood that had burst its peaceful boundaries. In

the drifting fragments of one of their forgotten flumes washed from the

bank, he fancied he saw an omen of the disintegration and decay of the

Lone Star claim.

The strange hush in the air that he had noticed before--a calm so

inconsistent with that hour and the season as to seem portentous--became

more marked in contrast to the feverish rush of the turbulent

water-course. A few clouds lazily huddled in the west apparently had

gone to rest with the sun on beds of somnolent poppies. There was a

gleam as of golden water everywhere along the horizon, washing out the

cold snowpeaks, and drowning even the rising moon. The creek caught it

here and there, until, in grim irony, it seemed to bear their broken

sluice-boxes and useless engines on the very Pactolian stream they had

been hopefully created to direct and carry. But by some peculiar trick

of the atmosphere, the perfect plenitude of that golden sunset glory

was lavished on the rugged sides and tangled crest of the Lone Star

mountain. That isolated peak, the landmark of their claim, the gaunt

monument of their folly, transfigured in the evening splendor, kept its

radiance unquenched long after the glow had fallen from the encompassing

skies, and when at last the rising moon, step by step, put out the fires

along the winding valley and plains, and crept up the bosky sides of

the canyon, the vanishing sunset was lost only to reappear as a golden

crown.

The eyes of the young man were fixed upon it with more than a momentary

picturesque interest. It had been the favorite ground of his prospecting

exploits, its lowest flank had been scarred in the old enthusiastic days

with hydraulic engines, or pierced with shafts, but its central position

in the claim and its superior height had always given it a commanding

view of the extent of their valley and its approaches, and it was this

practical pre-eminence that alone attracted him at that moment. He knew

that from its crest he would be able to distinguish the figures of his

companions, as they crossed the valley near the cabin, in the growing

moonlight. Thus he could avoid encountering them on his way to the high

road, and yet see them, perhaps, for the last time. Even in his sense of

injury there was a strange satisfaction in the thought.

The ascent was toilsome, but familiar. All along the dim trail he was

accompanied by gentler memories of the past, that seemed, like the faint

odor of spiced leaves and fragrant grasses wet with the rain and crushed

beneath his ascending tread, to exhale the sweeter perfume in his effort

to subdue or rise above them. There was the thicket of manzanita, where

they had broken noonday bread together; here was the rock beside their

maiden shaft, where they had poured a wild libation in boyish enthusiasm

of success; and here the ledge where their first flag, a red shirt

heroically sacrificed, was displayed from a long-handled shovel to

the gaze of admirers below. When he at last reached the summit, the

mysterious hush was still in the air, as if in breathless sympathy with

his expedition. In the west, the plain was faintly illuminated, but

disclosed no moving figures. He turned towards the rising moon, and

moved slowly to the eastern edge. Suddenly he stopped. Another step

would have been his last! He stood upon the crumbling edge of a

precipice. A landslip had taken place on the eastern flank, leaving

the gaunt ribs and fleshless bones of Lone Star mountain bare in the

moonlight. He understood now the strange rumble and reverberation he had

heard; he understood now the strange hush of bird and beast in brake and

thicket!

Although a single rapid glance convinced him that the slide had taken

place in an unfrequented part of the mountain, above an inaccessible

canyon, and reflection assured him his companions could not have reached

that distance when it took place, a feverish impulse led him to descend

a few rods in the track of the avalanche. The frequent recurrence of

outcrop and angle made this comparatively easy. Here he called aloud;

the feeble echo of his own voice seemed only a dull impertinence to the

significant silence. He turned to reascend; the furrowed flank of the

mountain before him lay full in the moonlight. To his excited fancy, a

dozen luminous star-like points in the rocky crevices started into

life as he faced them. Throwing his arm over the ledge above him, he

supported himself for a moment by what appeared to be a projection of

the solid rock. It trembled slightly. As he raised himself to its level,

his heart stopped beating. It was simply a fragment detached from the

outcrop, lying loosely on the ledge but upholding him by ITS OWN WEIGHT

ONLY. He examined it with trembling fingers; the encumbering soil fell

from its sides and left its smoothed and worn protuberances glistening

in the moonlight. It was virgin gold!

Looking back upon that moment afterwards, he remembered that he was not

dazed, dazzled, or startled. It did not come to him as a discovery or an

accident, a stroke of chance or a caprice of fortune. He saw it all in

that supreme moment; Nature had worked out their poor deduction. What

their feeble engines had essayed spasmodically and helplessly against

the curtain of soil that hid the treasure, the elements had achieved

with mightier but more patient forces. The slow sapping of the winter

rains had loosened the soil from the auriferous rock, even while the

swollen stream was carrying their impotent and shattered engines to the

sea.

What mattered that his single arm could not lift the treasure he had

found! What mattered that to unfix those glittering stars would still

tax both skill and patience! The work was done, the goal was reached!

even his boyish impatience was content with that. He rose slowly to his

feet, unstrapped his long-handled shovel from his back, secured it in

the crevice, and quietly regained the summit.

It was all his own! His own by right of discovery under the law of the

land, and without accepting a favor from THEM. He recalled even the fact

that it was HIS prospecting on the mountain that first suggested the

existence of gold in the outcrop and the use of the hydraulic. HE had

never abandoned that belief, whatever the others had done. He dwelt

somewhat indignantly to himself on this circumstance, and half

unconsciously faced defiantly towards the plain below. But it was

sleeping peacefully in the full sight of the moon, without life or

motion. He looked at the stars; it was still far from midnight. His

companions had no doubt long since returned to the cabin to prepare for

their midnight journey. They were discussing him, perhaps laughing at

him, or worse, pitying him and his bargain. Yet here was his bargain! A

slight laugh he gave vent to here startled him a little, it sounded

so hard and so unmirthful, and so unlike, as he oddly fancied, what he

really THOUGHT. But WHAT did he think?

Nothing mean or revengeful; no, they never would say THAT. When he had

taken out all the surface gold and put the mine in working order, he

would send them each a draft for a thousand dollars. Of course, if they

were ever ill or poor he would do more. One of the first, the very first

things he should do would be to send them each a handsome gun and tell

them that he only asked in return the old-fashioned rifle that once was

his. Looking back at the moment in after years, he wondered that, with

this exception, he made no plans for his own future, or the way he

should dispose of his newly acquired wealth. This was the more singular

as it had been the custom of the five partners to lie awake at night,

audibly comparing with each other what they would do in case they made

a strike. He remembered how, Alnaschar-like, they nearly separated once

over a difference in the disposal of a hundred thousand dollars that

they never had, nor expected to have. He remembered how Union Mills

always began his career as a millionnaire by a “square meal” at

Delmonico's; how the Right Bower's initial step was always a trip home

“to see his mother”; how the Left Bower would immediately placate the

parents of his beloved with priceless gifts (it may be parenthetically

remarked that the parents and the beloved one were as hypothetical

as the fortune); and how the Judge would make his first start as a

capitalist by breaking a certain faro bank in Sacramento. He himself had

been equally eloquent in extravagant fancy in those penniless days,

he who now was quite cold and impassive beside the more extravagant

reality.

How different it might have been! If they had only waited a day longer!

if they had only broken their resolves to him kindly and parted in good

will! How he would long ere this have rushed to greet them with the

joyful news! How they would have danced around it, sung themselves

hoarse, laughed down their enemies, and run up the flag triumphantly on

the summit of the Lone Star Mountain! How they would have crowned him

“the Old Man,” “the hero of the camp!” How he would have told them the

whole story; how some strange instinct had impelled him to ascend the

summit, and how another step on that summit would have precipitated him

into the canyon! And how--but what if somebody else, Union Mills or the

Judge, had been the first discoverer? Might they not have meanly kept

the secret from him; have selfishly helped themselves and done--

“What YOU are doing now.”

The hot blood rushed to his cheek, as if a strange voice were at his

ear. For a moment he could not believe that it came from his own pale

lips until he found himself speaking. He rose to his feet, tingling with

shame, and began hurriedly to descend the mountain.

He would go to them, tell them of his discovery, let them give him his

share, and leave them forever. It was the only thing to be done, strange

that he had not thought of it at once. Yet it was hard, very hard and

cruel to be forced to meet them again. What had he done to suffer this

mortification? For a moment he actually hated this vulgar treasure that

had forever buried under its gross ponderability the light and careless

past, and utterly crushed out the poetry of their old, indolent, happy

existence.

He was sure to find them waiting at the Cross Roads where the coach

came past. It was three miles away, yet he could get there in time if he

hastened. It was a wise and practical conclusion of his evening's work,

a lame and impotent conclusion to his evening's indignation. No matter.

They would perhaps at first think he had come to weakly follow them,

perhaps they would at first doubt his story. No matter. He bit his lips

to keep down the foolish rising tears, but still went blindly forward.

He saw not the beautiful night, cradled in the dark hills, swathed in

luminous mists, and hushed in the awe of its own loveliness! Here and

there the moon had laid her calm face on lake and overflow, and gone

to sleep embracing them, until the whole plain seemed to be lifted

into infinite quiet. Walking on as in a dream, the black, impenetrable

barriers of skirting thickets opened and gave way to vague distances

that it appeared impossible to reach, dim vistas that seemed

unapproachable. Gradually he seemed himself to become a part of the

mysterious night. He was becoming as pulseless, as calm, as passionless.

What was that? A shot in the direction of the cabin! yet so faint, so

echoless, so ineffective in the vast silence, that he would have thought

it his fancy but for the strange instinctive jar upon his sensitive

nerves. Was it an accident, or was it an intentional signal to him? He

stopped; it was not repeated, the silence reasserted itself, but this

time with an ominous death-like suggestion. A sudden and terrible

thought crossed his mind. He cast aside his pack and all encumbering

weight, took a deep breath, lowered his head and darted like a deer in

the direction of the challenge.

CHAPTER II

The exodus of the seceding partners of the Lone Star claim had been

scarcely an imposing one. For the first five minutes after quitting the

cabin, the procession was straggling and vagabond. Unwonted exertion had

exaggerated the lameness of some, and feebleness of moral purpose had

predisposed the others to obtrusive musical exhibition. Union Mills

limped and whistled with affected abstraction; the Judge whistled and

limped with affected earnestness. The Right Bower led the way with some

show of definite design; the Left Bower followed with his hands in

his pockets. The two feebler natures, drawn together in unconscious

sympathy, looked vaguely at each other for support.

“You see,” said the Judge, suddenly, as if triumphantly concluding

an argument, “there ain't anything better for a young fellow than

independence. Nature, so to speak, points the way. Look at the animals.”

“There's a skunk hereabouts,” said Union Mills, who was supposed to be

gifted with aristocratically sensitive nostrils, “within ten miles

of this place; like as not crossing the Ridge. It's always my luck

to happen out just at such times. I don't see the necessity anyhow of

trapesing round the claim now, if we calculate to leave it to-night.”

Both men waited to observe if the suggestion was taken up by the Right

and Left Bower moodily plodding ahead. No response following, the Judge

shamelessly abandoned his companion.

“You wouldn't stand snoopin' round instead of lettin' the Old Man get

used to the idea alone? No; I could see all along that he was takin' it

in, takin' it in, kindly but slowly, and I reckoned the best thing for

us to do was to git up and git until he'd got round it.” The Judge's

voice was slightly raised for the benefit of the two before him.

“Didn't he say,” remarked the Right Bower, stopping suddenly and facing

the others, “didn't he say that that new trader was goin' to let him

have some provisions anyway?”

Union Mills turned appealingly to the Judge; that gentleman was forced

to reply, “Yes; I remember distinctly he said it. It was one of the

things I was particular about on his account,” responded the Judge,

with the air of having arranged it all himself with the new trader. “I

remember I was easier in my mind about it.”

“But didn't he say,” queried the Left Bower, also stopping short,

“suthin' about it's being contingent on our doing some work on the

race?”

The Judge turned for support to Union Mills, who, however, under the

hollow pretense of preparing for a long conference, had luxuriously

seated himself on a stump. The Judge sat down also, and replied,

hesitatingly, “Well, yes! Us or him.”

“Us or him,” repeated the Right Bower, with gloomy irony. “And you ain't

quite clear in your mind, are you, if YOU haven't done the work already?

You're just killing yourself with this spontaneous, promiscuous, and

premature overwork; that's what's the matter with you.”

“I reckon I heard somebody say suthin' about it's being a Chinaman's

three-day job,” interpolated the Left Bower, with equal irony, “but I

ain't quite clear in my mind about that.”

“It'll be a sorter distraction for the Old Man,” said Union Mills,

feebly--“kinder take his mind off his loneliness.”

Nobody taking the least notice of the remark, union Mills stretched out

his legs more comfortably and took out his pipe. He had scarcely done so

when the Right Bower, wheeling suddenly, set off in the direction of the

creek. The Left Bower, after a slight pause, followed without a word.

The Judge, wisely conceiving it better to join the stronger party,

ran feebly after him, and left Union Mills to bring up a weak and

vacillating rear.

Their course, diverging from Lone Star Mountain, led them now directly

to the bend of the creek, the base of their old ineffectual operations.

Here was the beginning of the famous tail-race that skirted the new

trader's claim, and then lost its way in a swampy hollow. It was choked

with debris; a thin, yellow stream that once ran through it seemed to

have stopped work when they did, and gone into greenish liquidation.

They had scarcely spoken during this brief journey, and had received no

other explanation from the Right Bower, who led them, than that afforded

by his mute example when he reached the race. Leaping into it without a

word, he at once began to clear away the broken timbers and driftwood.

Fired by the spectacle of what appeared to be a new and utterly

frivolous game, the men gayly leaped after him, and were soon engaged

in a fascinating struggle with the impeded race. The Judge forgot his

lameness in springing over a broken sluice-box; Union Mills forgot his

whistle in a happy imitation of a Chinese coolie's song. Nevertheless,

after ten minutes of this mild dissipation, the pastime flagged; Union

Mills was beginning to rub his leg when a distant rumble shook the

earth. The men looked at each other; the diversion was complete; a

languid discussion of the probabilities of its being an earthquake or a

blast followed, in the midst of which the Right Bower, who was working

a little in advance of the others, uttered a warning cry and leaped from

the race. His companions had barely time to follow before a sudden and

inexplicable rise in the waters of the creek sent a swift irruption of

the flood through the race. In an instant its choked and impeded channel

was cleared, the race was free, and the scattered debris of logs and

timber floated upon its easy current. Quick to take advantage of this

labor-saving phenomenon, the Lone Star partners sprang into the water,

and by disentangling and directing the eddying fragments completed their

work.

“The Old Man oughter been here to see this,” said the Left Bower; “it's

just one o' them climaxes of poetic justice he's always huntin' up. It's

easy to see what's happened. One o' them high-toned shrimps over in the

Excelsior claim has put a blast in too near the creek. He's tumbled the

bank into the creek and sent the back water down here just to wash out

our race. That's what I call poetical retribution.”

“And who was it advised us to dam the creek below the race and make it

do the thing?” asked the Right Bower, moodily.

“That was one of the Old Man's ideas, I reckon,” said the Left Bower,

dubiously.

“And you remember,” broke in the Judge with animation, “I allus said,

'Go slow, go slow. You just hold on and suthin' will happen.' And,” he

added, triumphantly, “you see suthin' has happened. I don't want to take

credit to myself, but I reckoned on them Excelsior boys bein' fools, and

took the chances.”

“And what if I happen to know that the Excelsior boys ain't blastin'

to-day?” said the Right Bower, sarcastically.

As the Judge had evidently based his hypothesis on the alleged fact of

a blast, he deftly evaded the point. “I ain't saying the Old Man's head

ain't level on some things; he wants a little more sabe of the world.

He's improved a good deal in euchre lately, and in poker--well! he's got

that sorter dreamy, listenin'-to-the-angels kind o' way that you can't

exactly tell whether he's bluffin' or has got a full hand. Hasn't he?”

he asked, appealing to Union Mills.

But that gentleman, who had been watching the dark face of the Right

Bower, preferred to take what he believed to be his cue from him. “That

ain't the question,” he said virtuously; “we ain't takin' this step to

make a card sharp out of him. We're not doin' Chinamen's work in this

race to-day for that. No, sir! We're teachin' him to paddle his own

canoe.” Not finding the sympathetic response he looked for in the Right

Bower's face, he turned to the Left.

“I reckon we were teachin' him our canoe was too full,” was the Left

Bower's unexpected reply. “That's about the size of it.”

The Right Bower shot a rapid glance under his brows at his brother.

The latter, with his hands in his pockets, stared unconsciously at the

rushing waters, and then quietly turned away. The Right Bower followed

him. “Are you goin' back on us?” he asked.

“Are you?” responded the other.

“No!”

“NO, then it is,” returned the Left Bower quietly. The elder brother

hesitated in half-angry embarrassment.

“Then what did you mean by saying we reckoned our canoe was too full?”

“Wasn't that our idea?” returned the Left Bower, indifferently.

Confounded by this practical expression of his own unformulated good

intentions, the Right Bower was staggered.

“Speakin' of the Old Man,” broke in the Judge, with characteristic

infelicity, “I reckon he'll sort o' miss us, times like these. We were

allers runnin' him and bedevilin' him, after work, just to get him

excited and amusin', and he'll kinder miss that sort o' stimulatin'. I

reckon we'll miss it too, somewhat. Don't you remember, boys, the night

we put up that little sell on him and made him believe we'd struck it

rich in the bank of the creek, and got him so conceited, he wanted to go

off and settle all our debts at once?”

“And how I came bustin' into the cabin with a pan full of iron pyrites

and black sand,” chuckled Union Mills, continuing the reminiscences,

“and how them big gray eyes of his nearly bulged out of his head. Well,

it's some satisfaction to know we did our duty by the young fellow even

in those little things.” He turned for confirmation of their general

disinterestedness to the Right Bower, but he was already striding away,

uneasily conscious of the lazy following of the Left Bower, like a

laggard conscience at his back. This movement again threw Union Mills

and the Judge into feeble complicity in the rear, as the procession

slowly straggled homeward from the creek.

Night had fallen. Their way lay through the shadow of Lone Star

Mountain, deepened here and there by the slight, bosky ridges that,

starting from its base, crept across the plain like vast roots of its

swelling trunk. The shadows were growing blacker as the moon began to

assert itself over the rest of the valley, when the Right Bower halted

suddenly on one of these ridges. The Left Bower lounged up to him, and

stopped also, while the two others came up and completed the group.

“There's no light in the shanty,” said the Right Bower in a low voice,

half to himself and, half in answer to their inquiring attitude. The men

followed the direction of his finger. In the distance the black outline

of the Lone Star cabin stood out distinctly in the illumined space.

There was the blank, sightless, external glitter of moonlight on its two

windows that seemed to reflect its dim vacancy, empty alike of light,

and warmth, and motion.

“That's sing'lar,” said the Judge in an awed whisper.

The Left Bower, by simply altering the position of his hands in his

trousers' pockets, managed to suggest that he knew perfectly the meaning

of it, had always known it; but that being now, so to speak, in the

hands of Fate, he was callous to it. This much, at least, the elder

brother read in his attitude. But anxiety at that moment was the

controlling impulse of the Right Bower, as a certain superstitious

remorse was the instinct of the two others, and without heeding the

cynic, the three started at a rapid pace for the cabin.

They reached it silently, as the moon, now riding high in the heavens,

seemed to touch it with the tender grace and hushed repose of a tomb.

It was with something of this feeling that the Right Bower softly pushed

open the door; it was with something of this dread that the two others

lingered on the threshold, until the Right Bower, after vainly trying

to stir the dead embers on the hearth into life with his foot, struck a

match and lit their solitary candle. Its flickering light revealed the

familiar interior unchanged in aught but one thing. The bunk that

the Old Man had occupied was stripped of its blankets; the few cheap

ornaments and photographs were gone; the rude poverty of the bare boards

and scant pallet looked up at them unrelieved by the bright face and

gracious youth that had once made them tolerable. In the grim irony

of that exposure, their own penury was doubly conscious. The little

knapsack, the teacup and coffee-pot that had hung near his bed, were

gone also. The most indignant protest, the most pathetic of the letters

he had composed and rejected, whose torn fragments still littered the

floor, could never have spoken with the eloquence of this empty space!

The men exchanged no words: the solitude of the cabin, instead of

drawing them together, seemed to isolate each one in selfish distrust of

the others. Even the unthinking garrulity of Union Mills and the Judge

was checked. A moment later, when the Left Bower entered the cabin, his

presence was scarcely noticed.

The silence was broken by a joyous exclamation from the Judge. He had

discovered the Old Man's rifle in the corner, where it had been at first

overlooked. “He ain't gone yet, gentlemen--for yer's his rifle,” he

broke in, with a feverish return of volubility, and a high excited

falsetto. “He wouldn't have left this behind. No! I knowed it from the

first. He's just outside a bit, foraging for wood and water. No, sir!

Coming along here I said to Union Mills--didn't I?--'Bet your life the

Old Man's not far off, even if he ain't in the cabin.' Why, the moment I

stepped foot--”

“And I said coming along,” interrupted Union Mills, with equally

reviving mendacity, “Like as not he's hangin' round yer and lyin' low

just to give us a surprise.' He! ho!”

“He's gone for good, and he left that rifle here on purpose,” said the

Left Bower in a low voice, taking the weapon almost tenderly in his

hands.

“Drop it, then!” said the Right Bower. The voice was that of his

brother, but suddenly changed with passion. The two other partners

instinctively drew back in alarm.

“I'll not leave it here for the first comer,” said the Left Bower,

calmly, “because we've been fools and he too. It's too good a weapon for

that.”

“Drop it, I say!” said the Right Bower, with a savage stride towards

him.

The younger brother brought the rifle to a half charge with a white face

but a steady eye.

“Stop where you are!” he said collectedly. “Don't row with ME, because

you haven't either the grit to stick to your ideas or the heart to

confess them wrong. We've followed your lead, and--here we are! The

camp's broken up--the Old Man's gone--and we're going. And as for the

d----d rifle--”

“Drop it, do you hear!” shouted the Right Bower, clinging to that one

idea with the blind pertinacity of rage and a losing cause. “Drop it!”

The Left Bower drew back, but his brother had seized the barrel

with both hands. There was a momentary struggle, a flash through the

half-lighted cabin, and a shattering report. The two men fell back from

each other; the rifle dropped on the floor between them.

The whole thing was over so quickly that the other two partners had not

had time to obey their common impulse to separate them, and consequently

even now could scarcely understand what had passed. It was over so

quickly that the two actors themselves walked back to their places,

scarcely realizing their own act.

A dead silence followed. The Judge and Union Mills looked at each other

in dazed astonishment, and then nervously set about their former habits,

apparently in that fatuous belief common to such natures, that they were

ignoring a painful situation. The Judge drew the barrel towards him,

picked up the cards, and began mechanically to “make a patience,”

on which Union Mills gazed with ostentatious interest, but with eyes

furtively conscious of the rigid figure of the Right Bower by the

chimney and the abstracted face of the Left Bower at the door. Ten

minutes had passed in this occupation, the Judge and Union Mills

conversing in the furtive whispers of children unavoidably but

fascinatedly present at a family quarrel, when a light step was heard

upon the crackling brushwood outside, and the bright panting face of

the Old Man appeared upon the threshold. There was a shout of joy; in

another moment he was half-buried in the bosom of the Right Bower's

shirt, half-dragged into the lap of the Judge, upsetting the barrel,

and completely encompassed by the Left Bower and Union Mills. With the

enthusiastic utterance of his name the spell was broken.

Happily unconscious of the previous excitement that had provoked this

spontaneous unanimity of greeting, the Old Man, equally relieved, at

once broke into a feverish announcement of his discovery. He painted the

details, with, I fear, a slight exaggeration of coloring, due partly

to his own excitement, and partly to justify their own. But he was

strangely conscious that these bankrupt men appeared less elated with

their personal interest in their stroke of fortune than with his own

success. “I told you he'd do it,” said the Judge, with a reckless

unscrupulousness of statement that carried everybody with it; “look at

him! the game little pup.” “Oh no! he ain't the right breed, is he?”

echoed Union Mills with arch irony, while the Right and Left Bower,

grasping either hand, pressed a proud but silent greeting that was half

new to him, but wholly delicious. It was not without difficulty that he

could at last prevail upon them to return with him to the scene of

his discovery, or even then restrain them from attempting to carry

him thither on their shoulders on the plea of his previous prolonged

exertions. Once only there was a momentary embarrassment. “Then you

fired that shot to bring me back?” said the Old Man, gratefully. In the

awkward silence that followed, the hands of the two brothers sought

and grasped each other, penitently. “Yes,” interposed the Judge, with

delicate tact, “ye see the Right and Left Bower almost quarreled to see

which should be the first to fire for ye. I disremember which did”--“I

never touched the trigger,” said the Left Bower, hastily. With a hurried

backward kick, the Judge resumed, “It went off sorter spontaneous.”

The difference in the sentiment of the procession that once more issued

from the Lone Star cabin did not fail to show itself in each individual

partner according to his temperament. The subtle tact of Union Mills,

however, in expressing an awakened respect for their fortunate partner

by addressing him, as if unconsciously, as “Mr. Ford” was at first

discomposing, but even this was forgotten in their breathless excitement

as they neared the base of the mountain. When they had crossed the creek

the Right Bower stopped reflectively.

“You say you heard the slide come down before you left the cabin?” he

said, turning to the Old Man.

“Yes; but I did not know then what it was. It was about an hour and a

half after you left,” was the reply.

“Then look here, boys,” continued the Right Bower with superstitious

exultation; “it was the SLIDE that tumbled into the creek, overflowed

it, and helped US clear out the race!”

It seemed so clear that Providence had taken the partners of the

Lone Star directly in hand that they faced the toilsome ascent of the

mountain with the assurance of conquerors. They paused only on the

summit to allow the Old Man to lead the way to the slope that held their

treasure. He advanced cautiously to the edge of the crumbling cliff,

stopped, looked bewildered, advanced again, and then remained white and

immovable. In an instant the Right Bower was at his side.

“Is anything the matter? Don't--don't look so, Old Man, for God's sake!”

The Old Man pointed to the dull, smooth, black side of the mountain,

without a crag, break, or protuberance, and said with ashen lips:--

“It's gone!”

*****

And it was gone! A SECOND slide had taken place, stripping the flank of

the mountain, and burying the treasure and the weak implement that had

marked its side deep under a chaos of rock and debris at its base.

“Thank God!” The blank faces of his companions turned quickly to the

Right Bower. “Thank God!” he repeated, with his arm round the neck of

the Old Man. “Had he stayed behind he would have been buried too.” He

paused, and, pointing solemnly to the depths below, said, “And thank God

for showing us where we may yet labor for it in hope and patience like

honest men.”

The men silently bowed their heads and slowly descended the mountain.

But when they had reached the plain one of them called out to the others

to watch a star that seemed to be rising and moving towards them over

the hushed and sleeping valley.

“It's only the stage coach, boys,” said the Left Bower, smiling; “the

coach that was to take us away.”

In the security of their new-found fraternity they resolved to wait

and see it pass. As it swept by with flash of light, beat of hoofs, and

jingle of harness, the only real presence in the dreamy landscape, the

driver shouted a hoarse greeting to the phantom partners, audible only

to the Judge, who was nearest the vehicle.

“Did you hear--DID you hear what he said, boys?” he gasped, turning to

his companions. “No! Shake hands all round, boys! God bless you all,

boys! To think we didn't know it all this while!”

“Know what?”

“Merry Christmas!”