sumptuous wildflowers succeeding the first little scrubby daisy, a
blessed idyl of quaint child life, dear to Simon's heart, had grown out
of the chance meeting on the hillside. It was as if Simon's clearing
were a charmed circle into which no evil could enter, to which no echo
of the greed and brutality of the mining-camp could make its way. When
his permission was respectfully asked to sink a few prospect holes on
his land, Simon unhesitatingly rejected the proposal, with all its
glittering possibilities. As soon would the President and Fellows of
Harvard College permit the sinking of prospect holes in the sacred
"yard" itself, as the Lame Gulch Professor allow his "school" to be
molested.
But, alas! it is written in the books that no earthly circle shall be
forever charmed, no human enterprise exempt from evil. And it was little
Eliza herself, Simon's champion and dictator, faithful, plucky little
Eliza, by whom the evil entered in.
She came, one hot July day, and planted herself quite unconcernedly
beside the professor, and he, looking down into the funny little round
face, beheld a great black-and-blue bump on the forehead. The sight
grieved him to the soul, even before he knew its tragic meaning.
"Did you tumble down, Eliza?" he asked with great concern.
"No," said Eliza.
"Did you bump your head agin something?"
"No."
"Did anybody hurt you?" and already the professor was casting wrathful
glances from boy to boy, well calculated to strike terror to the heart
of the culprit.
"Not much;" said the matter-of-fact little voice.
"I guess 't was her pa done it," spoke up Patsy Linders. "He's a
bloomin' terror when he's drunk."
Without a word, Simon rose and led the little creature into the lean-to,
where he tenderly bathed the bruise in cold water, giving no voice to
the swelling indignation that tore through him. His tone and touch were
but the gentler for that, as he sought to soothe the self-contained
little victim, who, truth to tell, seemed not much in need of his
ministrations.
"My lamb!" he murmured. "My little lamb!"
"Ma said to never mind," the plucky little lamb remarked. "He ain't
often so."
"Do you love your father?" asked Simon, seeking to fathom the blue eyes
for the truth.
The blue eyes were, for the moment, intent upon a swarm of flies
disporting themselves upon the window-pane.
"Do you love your father?" Simon asked again.
"No;" quoth Eliza, "I wish he was dead."
Now Simon Amberley was slow to anger; indeed it may be doubted whether
he had ever in all his life before been thoroughly roused; and perhaps
for that very reason, the surging flood of indignation, so new to his
experience, seemed to him like a call from heaven. All day he fed his
wrath on the deeds of Scripture warriors, reading aloud from the sacred
records, till Patsy Linders exclaimed, enraptured, that "the Bible was a
durned good book, by Jiminy!"
Little Eliza stayed on, as she often did after the school was dispersed,
sure that "her Simon," would find some new and agreeable entertainment
for her.
"Did your father ever hit you before?" Amberley asked casually, as they
strung a handful of painter's-brush into a garland, which it was
thought might prove becoming to Simon Jr.'s complexion.
"Yes," said Eliza.
"More than once?"
"Yes."
"Where did he hit you last time?"
"Here." And Eliza pulled up the blue calico sleeve, and displayed a
pretty bad bruise on the arm.
Simon paused a moment in his cross-examination.
"And you wish he was dead?" he asked at last, between his set teeth.
"Yes."
"What does he look like?"
"Something like you," was the startling response; "only different."
The amendment was, at first blush, more gratifying to Simon than the
original statement. Yet, when Eliza was gone, he went and looked in his
bit of a looking-glass, half hoping to find some touch of the latent
ruffian in his face. All he saw there was a kindly, unalarming
countenance, with a full blond beard, and thick blond hair. The eyes had
a look of bewilderment which did not lessen their habitual mildness. He
straightened his tall form, and threw his shoulders back, and he set his
mouth in a very firm, determined line; but, somehow, the mild eyes would
not flash, and a profound misgiving penetrated his soul. Was he the man
after all, to terrorize a ruffian? The ruffian in question was an
unknown quantity to his would-be intimidator, who boasted but a calling
acquaintance with Eliza's mother,--a pale, consumptive creature, with
that "better-days" air about her, which gives the last touch of
pitifulness to poverty and hardship.
Little as he had frequented the now thriving metropolis of Lame Gulch,
Amberley knew pretty well where to look for his man, and as he sallied
forth that same evening, with the purpose of investigating the "unknown
quantity," he bent his steps, not in the direction of the rickety cabin
in the hollow there, but toward the "Lame Gulch Opera House." This
temple of the muses was easily discoverable, being situated in the main
street of the town, and marked by a long transparency projecting above
the door, upon which the luminous inscription, "Opera House," was
visible from afar.
Upon entering beneath this alluring sign, Amberley found himself in a
full-blown "sample room," the presence of whose glittering pyramids of
bottles was still further emphasized by the following legend, "Patronize
the bar and walk in!" which was inscribed above an inner portal.
The new-comer stepped up to the bar-tender.
"Do you know whether a miner named Conrad Christie is in there?" he
asked.
"I guess likely enough," was the reply. "Mr. Christie is one of our
regular patrons. Won't you take a drink, Mister?"
"No;" said Simon, shortly.
"No? Ain't that ruther a pity? But pass right in, Sir. Any friend of Mr.
Christie's is welcome here."
Whereupon Mr. Christie's "friend" passed through the door, into the
long, narrow "Opera House." It was a dirty, cheerless hole, in spite of
the brilliance of many oil lamps, shining among the flimsy decorations.
At the end of the tunnel-shaped room was a rude stage, festooned with
gaudy, squalid hangings, beneath which a painted siren was singing a
song which Simon did not listen to. The floor of the auditorium was
filled with chairs and tables in disorderly array, the occupants of
which seemed to be paying more attention to their liquor and their cards
than to the cracked voice of the songstress. There was a rattling of
glasses, the occasional clink of money, frequent shrill laughs and
deeper-chested oaths and guffaws; the fumes of beer and whisky mingled
with the heavy canopy of smoke which gave to the flaring lights a lurid
aspect, only too well befitting the place and the occasion.
"Wal, I swan!" exclaimed a familiar voice close at Simon's elbow: and,
turning, he beheld the doughty Enoch, seated at a table close to the
door, imbibing beer at the hands of a gaudy young woman in a red silk
gown.
Simon looked at the elderly transgressor in speechless astonishment.
"Yas, here I be," said Enoch, jauntily, "consortin' with the hosts of
Belial. Take a cheer, Simon, take a cheer."
"I guess not," said Simon, slowly; "I don't have no special hankerin'
after Belial, myself. Do you happen to know a man named Conrad
Christie?"
"Him's the gentleman," the red-silk Hebe volunteered. "Him in the yeller
beard and the red necktie, rakin' in the chips."
Amberley took a critical survey of his adversary. He was a man of forty,
or thereabouts, singularly like Simon himself in build and coloring,
with enough of the ruffian in his aspect to give the professor an
envious sense of inferiority. He was playing cards with a fierce-looking
fellow in a black beard, who seemed to be getting the worst of it.
Simon was conscious afterwards of having turned his back on Enoch rather
abruptly; of having interrupted, by his departure, an outpouring of
confidence in regard to "Mis' Baker's tantrums." At the time, however,
he had but one thought and that was to strike while the iron was hot. He
felt that the iron was becoming very hot indeed, as he stepped up to the
yellow-haired gambler, who was again engaged in the satisfactory
ceremony of "rakin' 'em in."
"Mr. Christie," Simon said, and hot as the iron was, he could not
control a slight tremor in his voice, not of fear, but of excitement.
"Mr. Christie, I've got something to say to you. Will you step outside
with me?"
Christie measured his interlocutor from head to foot, till Simon felt
himself insulted in every inch of his person. The peace-loving hermit
had time for blood-thirsty thoughts before the answer struck his ear.
"Not much!" came the reply at last, while the speaker gathered up the
cards and began dealing. "If this place is good enough for me, I reckon
it's good enough for a blasted Sissy of your description!"
No one would do Mr. Christie the injustice to suppose that his remark
was unembellished by more forcible expressions than are hereby
recorded. Yet, somehow, the worst of them lacked the sting that Simon
managed to get into his reply, as he said, in a suppressed voice: "This
place ain't good enough, as far's that goes, for the meanest skunk God
ever created! But it'll do for what we've got to settle between us."
"Have a seat, Mister?"
A sick-looking girl, with blazing cheeks, had placed a chair for him.
"Have a----"
The words died on her lips before the solemn, reproachful look the
professor turned upon her.
"And Jinny looked smart
As a cranberry tart!"
sang the discordant voice from the stage, which nobody thought of
listening to.
"It's the Lame Gulch Professor," the black-haired man remarked, taking a
look at his cards, before turning to his glass for refreshment.
"Damn the Lame Gulch Professor!" Christie retorted, by way of
acknowledging the introduction.
Then Simon spoke again.
"Mr. Christie, you've got the prettiest and smartest little girl in Lame
Gulch," he declared, laying down his proposition in a tone of extreme
deliberation; "and you hit her over the head last night, and 't ain't
the first time neither."
"Is that the latest news you've got to give us?" asked Christie, passing
his hand caressingly over his pistol, which lay like a lap-dog on his
knees.
"Better let that alone," said the black-haired gambler, persuasively.
"The professor's ben good to my kids."
The threat was so very covert that the sensitive Christie did not feel
himself called upon to recognize it as such.
"_He_ ain't no target," Christie declared, with unutterable contempt.
"I'd as soon shoot a door-mat!" whereupon he proceeded, in a disengaged
manner, to empty the contents of the black bottle into a glass, flinging
the bottle under the table, with a praiseworthy regard for appearances.
Simon breathed deep and hard, and again there was an exasperating tremor
in his low-pitched voice, which drawled more than usual, as he said:
"No; 't ain't the latest news! What I specially come to tell you was,
that if you ever lay hands on that child agin, I'll shoot you deader 'n
any door-mat you ever wiped your great cowardly boots on!"
Each word of this speech seemed to cleave its separate, individual way
with a slow, ponderous significance. Christie passed his hand absently
down the barrel of the pistol on his knees, till his fingers rested on
the trigger. If he had had any murderous intention, however, he seemed
to think better of it, for he contented himself with a shrug and an
oath, and the supercilious inquiry: "What are you givin' us, anyway?"
The man of the black beard eyed his movements with a furtive interest.
Amberley stood a moment, to give a still more deliberate emphasis to his
words, thinking, the while, that in spite of the unvarnished frankness
on either side, neither he nor his adversary had quite made each other
out. Then he turned and threaded his way among the tables to the door,
as quietly and composedly as he had come; while the girl on the stage
repeated the assertion in regard to "Jinny's" smart looks, in which she
seemed still unable to awaken the slightest interest in those who should
have been her auditors. Before he had passed Enoch's chair, which was
placed discreetly near the exit, the pair of gamblers were at it again.
Not even the luck had been turned by the interruption. Christie was
sweeping in the chips to the same refrain of the "cranberry tarts."
When, to Simon's infinite relief, little Eliza appeared at school the
next morning, the teacher scrutinized her jealously in search of bumps
and bruises. There was nothing to be seen but the original bump, and
that was reduced in size, though somewhat intensified in color, since
the day before.
"I wonder how I should feel when I had shot him!" thought Simon, and his
mind reverted to the rattlesnake, and to a sneaking compunction which
had seized him when the tail gave its death-quiver. The possibility of
missing his mark when once obliged to shoot did not enter his mind. He
was fighting on the side of right and justice, and possessing, as he
did, but small knowledge of the world and its ways, he had implicit
faith in the triumphant outcome of all such encounters.
He took small credit to himself for any temerity he had shown. Somehow
it seemed to him that the thing had been made very easy. He felt
moderately sure that he owed his safety to the villainous-looking man in
the black beard; and, indeed, that was quite in order, for he had been
given to understand that Providence was not above making use of the
meanest instruments to the accomplishment of a good end. There were
times when he was even constrained to hope that, by the same Great
Influence, a spark of magnanimity had been awakened in Christie's
abandoned soul; and once, when Eliza reported that her "pa" had given
her a nickle, he almost believed that those seemingly ineffective words
of his had, thanks to that same all-powerful intervention, made an
impression. He became positively hopeful that this might be the case,
when nearly a month had passed, and no further harm had come to his
"lamb."
One morning Bella Jones, who ordinarily kept rather fashionable hours,
came panting up the hill, the first to arrive. She was a dressy young
person, whose father kept a "sample-room." Looking hastily about, to
make sure that no one was there to have forestalled her, she cried,
still quite out of breath:
"Eliza Christie, she's lost her ma! Died in the night of a hemorag!
Eliza ain't cried a drop, 'n her pa he's just settin' there like he was
shot!"
"Like he was shot!" Simon shivered at the words as if a cold wind had
passed, striking a chill through the intense August day.
The professor kept school that morning as usual, but he did not sit on
the settle against the lean-to, and when Patsy Lenders undertook to
hoist himself up on it, the boy got his ears boxed. Patsy stated
afterwards, in maintenance of the justifiable pride of "ten years goin'
on eleven," that he "wouldn't ha' took it from anybody but the
perfessor," and he "wouldn't ha' took it from him, if 't hadn't a ben
for that snake!"
It was high noon. The sun was pouring down upon the group of children in
the clearing in front of the lop-sided cabin, and upon the empty settle
up against it; upon the brooding heights that spanned the horizon beyond
the Gulch, upon the fragrant pine-trees close at hand. Simon Jr. had
just strayed along with a blossoming yucca protruding from his mouth,
and the professor had driven him farther up the slope. Returning from
this short excursion, Simon beheld two figures coming up the Gulch; a
blond-bearded man, and a little girl in blue. He hurried toward them in
real trepidation. He could not bear to see the lamb actually in the
company of the wolf. The three met on the edge of the clearing; Christie
was the first to speak.
"I've brought you Eliza," he said, in a steady, matter-of-fact voice,
something like Eliza's own. "Her ma's dead, 'n you can have her 'f you
want her. She thinks you'd like her."
"What do you mean?" asked Simon, his voice clouding over, so that it was
hardly audible. "Can I hev her for my own?"
"Yes; that's the proposition! 'N there's a hundred dollars in her pocket
which is all the capital I can raise to-day. I can do the funeral on
tick. No; I won't try to get her away from you. She ain't my style."
Simon was stooping down with his eyes on a level with Eliza's.
"Say, Eliza," he asked, "would you like to be my little girl?"
"Yes," quoth Eliza.
"And come and live with me all the time?"
"Yes!" and she put out a little hand and touched his face.
"She won't be no great expense to you," said Christie.
Simon stood up and cast a significant glance about him.
"I guess if I let them prospectors in on my land," he said, "there won't
be no great call for economizing!"
The two men stood a moment facing each other with the same
half-defiant, half-puzzled look they had exchanged at that other
meeting, not so long ago. Christie was the first to break the silence.
"There wa' n't never much love lost between Eliza and me," he remarked,
as if pursuing a train of thought that had been interrupted. "After the
two boys died of the shakes, down in the Missouri Bottoms, both in one
week, I kind o' lost my interest in kids. But I'd like to know she was
in better hands than mine, for her mother's sake."
"Eliza," said Simon, in a tone of gentle authority which the Lame Gulch
Professor rarely assumed. "Eliza, give your pa that money, and tell him
to bury your ma decent."
Christie took the money.
"Well," said he, "I guess you're correct about the prospectors. They're
right after your claim!--Good-bye Eliza."
"Good-bye," said Eliza, digging the heel of her boot into the bed of
pine needles.
Yet Christie did not go.
"I'll send her duds up after the funeral," he said. "And her ma's things
along with them. And, say!" he added with a sort of gulp of
determination, while a dark flush went over his face. "About that
_door-mat_, you know. It wasn't respectful and--_I apologize_!"
With that, Christie strode down the hill to his dead wife, and Simon and
the child turned and walked hand in hand toward the lean-to. Half way
across the clearing Simon Jr. unabashed by his late ejection, joined the
pair.
"She's our little girl now, Simon," said the professor, gravely.
"Yes," quoth Eliza, with equal gravity.
Upon which Simon Jr. kicked up his heels in the most intelligent manner,
and pranced off in pursuit of the succulent yucca.
VII.
THE BOSS OF THE WHEEL.
When contrasted with the ordinary grog-shop and gambling den of Lame
Gulch, the barroom of the _Mountain Lion_ has an air of comfort and
propriety which is almost a justification of its existence. If men must
drink and gamble,--and no one acquainted with a mining-camp would think
of doubting the necessity,--here, at least, is a place where they may do
so with comparative decency and decorum. The _Mountain Lion_, which is
in every respect a well-conducted hostelry, tolerates no disorderly
persons, and it is therefore the chosen resort, not only of the better
class of transient visitors, but of the resident aristocracy as well. In
the spacious office are gathered together each evening, mining-engineer
and real-estate broker, experts and prospectors from Denver, men from
Springtown in search of business and diversion, to say nothing of
visitors from the eastern and western seaboards; and hither, to the more
secluded and less pretentious barroom, at least, come the better class
of miners, those who have no special taste for bloodshed and other
deviltry, and who occasionally go so far as to leave their firearms at
home. Some slight prejudice, to be sure, was created among the
independent Sons of Toil, when it was found that the _Mountain Lion_ did
not permit its waiters to smoke cigarettes while on duty; but such
cavillers were much soothed upon learning that a "bust dude" had been
quite as summarily dealt with when he broke forth into song at the
dinner-table. This latter victim of severity and repression was a
certain Mr. Newcastle, a "gent gone to seed" as he was subsequently
described, and he had protested against unkind restrictions by declaring
that such exhibitions of talent were _typ_-sical of a mining-camp. He
pronounced _typ_-sical with an almost audible hyphen, as if his voice
had stubbed its toe. But Mr. Newcastle's involuntary wit was of no
avail, and he was forced to curb his songful spirit until a more fitting
season.
So it came about that the _Mountain Lion_ had not been in existence ten
days before it had gone on record as a thoroughly "first-class"
establishment. No wonder, then, that an air of peculiar respectability
attached itself to the "wheel" itself which revolved in a corner of the
barroom night after night, whirling into opulence or penury, such as
entrusted their fortunes to its revolutions. Despite its high-toned
patronage, however, the terms "roulette" and "croupier" found small
favor with the devotees at that particular shrine of the fickle goddess,
and Dabney Dirke, its presiding genius, was familiarly known among "the
boys," as "the boss of the wheel." "Waxey" Smithers,--he who was
supposed to have precipitated Jimmy Dolan's exit from a disappointing
world,--had been heard to say that "that feller Dirke" was too
(profanely) high-toned for the job. Nevertheless, the wheel went round
at Dirke's bidding as swiftly and uncompromisingly as heart could wish,
and to most of those gathered about that centre of attraction the "boss"
seemed an integral part of the machine.
Dabney Dirke was an ideal figure for the part he had to play. He was
tall and thin and Mephistophelian, though not of the dark complexion
which is commonly associated with Mephistopheles. His clean-shaven face
got its marked character, not from its coloring but from its cut;
Nature's chisel would seem to have been more freely used than her brush
in this particular production. The face was long and thin and severe,
the nose almost painfully sensitive, the mouth thin and firmly closed
rather than strong. The chin did not support the intention of the lips,
nor did the brows quite do their duty by the eyes, which had a steely
light, and might have gleamed with more effect if they had been somewhat
more deeply set. The hair was sparse and light, and the complexion of
that kind of paleness which takes on no deeper tinge from exposure to
sun or wind or from passing emotion.
There were two indications that "the boss of the wheel" was also a
gentleman;--he put on a clean collar every day, and he did not oil his
hair. It would have been strange indeed if two such glaring
peculiarities had escaped the subtle perception of Mr. Smithers, and it
was rather to be wondered at that such inexcusable pretensions did not
militate against the "boss" in his chosen calling.--That the calling was
in this case deliberately chosen, may as well be admitted at the outset.
Dabney Dirke had once, in a very grievous moment, sworn that he would
"go to the devil," and had afterwards found himself so ill-suited to
that hasty enterprise, that he had been somewhat put to it to get
started on the downward path.
He was the only son of a Wall Street magnate who had had the misfortune
to let his "transactions" get the better of him. Dirke often thought of
his father when he watched the faces of the men about the "wheel." There
was little in the outer aspect, even of the men of civilized traditions
who stood among the gamblers, to remind him of the well-dressed,
well-groomed person of his once prosperous parent. But in their faces,
when the luck went against them, was a look that he was poignantly
familiar with; a look which had first dawned in his father's face,
flickeringly, intermittently, and which had grown and intensified, week
after week, month after month, till it had gone out in the blankness of
despair. That was when the elder Dirke heard his sentence of
imprisonment. For Aaron Dirke's failure had involved moral as well as
financial ruin.
He had died of the shock, as some of his creditors thought it behooved
him to do,--died in prison after one week's durance. His son envied him;
but dying is difficult in early youth, and Dabney Dirke did not quite
know how to set about.