JANE.
"Wait till the clouds roll by, Jennie,
Wait till the clouds roll by."
It was the clear, high voice of a rosy-cheeked, black-eyed,
short-skirted, barefooted maiden that sang, who, with her long black
tresses blowing in the afternoon breeze, and a pail on her arm, was
gayly skipping down the narrow road that separated the fence of Pine
Tree Ranch from the endless forest that stretched away towards the big
trees and Yosemite. "'Wait till the clouds'--gracious sakes, boy! what
did you scare me for?" Jane Reed cried, as out of the dark woods,
around a sugar pine, a tall, tanned lad strode, with gun over his
shoulder, and a long-eared dog at his heels.
"Oh, just for ducks!" said Job Malden, who, after a celebration of his
sixteenth birthday, was returning from one of his favorite quail hunts
with "Shot," his only playmate on Pine Tree Ranch.
"Where did you get those shoes, sissy?" said the boy, looking at her
bare, bronzed feet.
"From the Lord," quietly answered the girl.
"Humph!" said Job with a sneer, "the only lord I know is the one of
Pine Tree Mountain, and the one that is to be--that's myself--and I'm
mighty sure he or I never made such looking things."
At this, the girl made an unsuccessful attempt to run past him, then
sank down on the ground in a big cry.
With the heartless, contemptuous air of a boy who scorns tears and
girls, Job stood there; and, posing dramatically, sang in a falsetto
voice:
"Wait till the clouds roll by, Jennie,
Wait till the clouds roll by."
I wonder, if his mother could have come back from her far-off grave by
the Sacramento, whether she would have known that insolent, rude
fellow standing there as her pretty, blue-eyed boy whom she had so
tenderly loved.
How quickly, when a fellow starts down hill, he gets under way! That
first Sunday picnic had borne its fruit. The Sunday-school at Frost
Creek never knew him now. That little Testament was at the bottom of
his trunk. Fear of the old man had saved him from an open life of
wrong, and a certain pride made him disdain to be on a level with Dan
Dean and the Gold City gang. Andrew Malden saw the change and yet did
not understand it. He never talked with people enough to hear the
rumors afloat of the Sunday horse-races, or of the midnight revel on
the Fourth of July at the Yellow Jacket. The night that Bess came home
saddleless and riderless, with the white foam on her, and when he
searched till near morning, to at last find Job stretched in a stupor
by the wayside down the Chichilla road, he thought the boy's after
story was true--that story of a frightened runaway--and little knew it
was Pete Wilkins' whisky that had thrown him.
Ah! it was only yesterday the old man had said, "She was a traitor,
and so is the boy. I have loved him, fed him, sheltered him, and yet
all he cares for is to get my money some day. The world's all alike!"
And Andrew Malden shut the door of his heart, which, a few short years
ago, had swung open for the homeless lad.
It was this boy, touched, alas! not alone by the beauty and grandeur
of the mountains, but by the shame and sin of the men who dwelt among
them, that now laughed at a poor girl's feeble wrath. He laughed, and
then a spark of innate good-nature and manhood touched him, and,
picking up the pail, he muttered an apology and offered to escort the
maiden home.
Very soon the clouds did roll by, and under the sky of twilight the
pair walked leisurely along the trail that passed out of the main
road, up across Sugar Pine Hill and down towards Blackberry Valley and
old Tom Reed's cabin, where Jane was both daughter and mistress.
This girl was so different from the crowd he had seen at Wilkins' barn
and down at Mike's, that he could not joke her; he could only play the
gallant, and he rather liked it.
It was a long way over the hill and many stops to rest--at Deer
Spring, Squirrel Run and the Summit--and the picking up cones made it
longer. It was just as they crossed the hill that they heard a
crackling of the branches above them, and both looked up to be struck
with terror. Climbing from one great tree to another was the low, dark
form of a mountain lion. He did not notice them. Job motioned silence
and shrunk into the bushes. The girl instinctively followed and drew
up close to him. With gun cocked and bated breath, they waited and
waited; but whether the wind was away from them, or the vicious animal
had something else in view, he slunk away in the trees and out toward
the Gulch, where he made his lair.
For a half hour Jane and Job sat with hearts beating fast, while both
tried to make a show of being brave. How strange it seemed to Job to
be thus protecting a girl! He felt a queer interest in her; he did not
know what it was. He took her arm a little later to help her over the
rocks, down the hill. He lingered, in a bashful way, at the spring at
the foot of the path to see that she got to the cabin door safely,
then went around by the main road home, so slowly and so thoughtfully
that the moon was high when Shot barked a response to Carlo's bark as
he entered the gate.
That was not the last time he saw Jane Reed. A something of which he
had never heard and of which he was barely conscious drew him to her.
That autumn he often walked home from school with her. When the snows
came and the logging sleds were passing every day loaded for Andrew
Malden's mill, he always managed to find Jane at Sugar Pine Hill at
all odd sorts of hours and give her a ride to the mill on the top of
the logs, and walk back with her, as he let the horses tug the old
sled slowly up the mountain. The only rival he had was Dan, his
pretended friend but certain enemy.
* * * * *
It was at the time of the big snow. Indian Bill, the rheumatic old
native trapper whose family had perished at the massacre of the
Yosemite some years before, and who ever since had lived in a little
cabin on the edge of the Gulch, said it was the biggest in two hundred
moons.
When Job, shivering and chattering, looked out of the little, narrow,
cheerless upstairs room which he called his own, he found himself
apparently in the first story. He gazed on the endless drifts of snow
that rolled away in a silent sea over barn and fences, with only the
shaggy, white-bearded pines shaking their faces at him above the
limitless white. The little ravine back of the house, where the
milk-house stood, had leveled up to the rest of the world, the chicken
corral was missing, and only the loft of the old barn rose above the
snowy waves.
What a busy day that was of shoveling tunnels, and, with the full
force of the mill men and all the logging teams, breaking a path up
the road to the logging camp! By night the whole country round was
out. Dan was there riding the leader, and reaching out to get
snowballs from the high bank to throw at Jane, who had clambered up
on the vantage point of an old shed and was watching the queer
procession, with its shouts and rattle of bells and chains, push its
way up the road.
That night old Andy Malden gave a treat to all the hands at the mill,
with hard cider and apples and nuts a plenty, and even had Blind Dick,
the fiddler, who lived in Tom Reed's upper cabin, to help them make
merry. That is, Andy gave the treat, but his foreman was host; he
never came himself. Jane was there and Dan monopolized her. He knew
her well, so that night he never danced, never drank; but Job, poor
fellow! asked her to dance and she refused him; then he offered her
cider, and her great black eyes snapped fire and she turned from him.
He was mad with rage. He drank. He danced with the Alviso girls, the
lowest Mexicans in the county. He glared after Dan as he saw him start
off with Jane.
The cider, the jealousy in his soul, or the evil in both, probably,
made him start after them. A something whispered to take the short-cut
across to the junction of the road and Blackberry Valley trail, and
face them and have it out. He hurried stumbling over the drifts. He
hid in the shade of a great tree. Up the road he heard them coming,
heard Dan say, "Oh, well, I was afraid Uncle Andy would be fooled when
he took that kid in. Regular chip of the old block; his father went to
the bad, and he is going fast. He came from the city slums; none of
the brave, true blood of the mountains in his veins. Steer clear of
him, Jane." Heard an indistinguishable reply in Jane's voice, felt a
blind passion rising within him, clinched his fists, started with a
bound for the dark shadows coming up the road, felt a terrible blow
on his head, and--well, it must have been a long while before he
thought again. Then he was lying down in the depths of a snow-drift,
where he had fallen when he started so angrily for Dan and had struck
his head against the limb of the old oak at the turn and been hurled
back twenty feet down through the snow on the rock of the creek bed.
[Illustration: He hid in the shade of a tree.]
He tried to rise, but could not. A broken limb refused to act. He
called for help, but the cry rose no higher than the snowbank. He was
in an open grave of white on the sharp rocks and bitterly cold ice of
the stream. He shivered and shook, then gradually a sort of delightful
repose began to steal over him. At first it felt pleasant, then he
realized he was freezing, freezing to death! Death! The thought struck
terror to his heart. Death! It was the last thing for which he was
ready. Memory was unnaturally active. The New England hills, the white
church, grandfather, mother, home, all came back to him. He was
mother's boy again as in those old days before hate and drink and sin
had hurt his life. For a moment the tears came. He forgot himself, he
struggled to rise. He would go to mother and put his head in her lap
and tell her he loved her still. Then the clouds crept over the stars,
the bitter wind whistled above the snow. Mother--ah! He could not go
to her; she had gone forever out of his life; never in this world
would he see her again. And then, like a knife that cut him through
and through, came the bitter consciousness that there was no hope of
seeing mother in the world to come; that long ago he had gone away
from her and the old innocent life of childhood so far that if she
could come back from her grave by the turbid Sacramento, she would not
even know her boy.
The night chill crept over him; the tears froze on his cheeks. He
thought of Dan and Jane and the life he had lived, and love froze in
his heart. And then, alone in the snow-drift, dying, he hated Dan, he
hated Jane, he hated all the world and hated God, and waited, with the
fear of a lost soul, the outer darkness that was coming--coming nearer
and nearer.
* * * * *
They found him there, numb and unconscious, long after midnight, Hans
and Tony, Malden's men, who had searched for him.
* * * * *
The snow had melted on the hill-tops and the flowers were peeping
above the earth, when Job threw aside his crutches and whistled to
Shot that the time had come for another quail hunt.