in reality only a mound-like elevation above the dead level of the flat,
and the few trees were merely recent young willows and alders. The area
of actual depression was much greater than he had imagined, and its
resemblance to the bed of some prehistoric inland sea struck him
forcibly. A previous larger inundation than Jules' brief experience had
ever known had been by no means improbable. His cheek reddened at his
previous hasty indictment of the settlers' ignorance and shiftlessness,
and the thought that he had probably committed his employers to his
own rash confidence and superiority of judgment. However, there was no
evidence that this diluvial record was not of the remote past. He smiled
again with greater security as he thought of the geological changes that
had since tempered these cataclysms, and the amelioration brought by
settlement and cultivation. Nevertheless, he would make a thorough
examination to-morrow.
Stanton's cabin was the furthest of these temporary habitations, and
was partly on the declivity which began to slope to the river's bank. It
was, like the others, a rough shanty of unplaned boards, but, unlike the
others, it had a base of logs laid lengthwise on the ground and parallel
with each other, on which the flooring and structure were securely
fastened. This gave it the appearance of a box slid on runners, or a
Noah's Ark whose bulk had been reduced. Jules explained that the logs,
laid in that manner, kept the shanty warmer and free from damp. In reply
to Hemmingway's suggestion that it was a great waste of material, Jules
simply replied that the logs were the “flotsam and jetsam” of the creek
from the overflowed mills below.
Hemmingway again smiled. It was again the old story of Western waste
and prodigality. Accompanied by Jules, however, he climbed up the huge,
slippery logs which made a platform before the door, and entered.
The single room was unequally divided; the larger part containing three
beds, by day rolled in a single pile in one corner to make room for a
table and chairs. A few dresses hanging from nails on the wall showed
that it was the women's room. The smaller compartment was again
subdivided by a hanging blanket, behind which was a rude bunk or berth
against the wall, a table made of a packing-box, containing a tin basin
and a can of water. This was his apartment.
“The women-folks are down the creek, bakin', to-day,” said Jules
explanatorily; “but I reckon that one of 'em will be up here in a jiffy
to make supper, so you just take it easy till they come. I've got to
meander over to the claim afore I turn in, but you just lie by to-night
and take a rest.”
He turned away, leaving Hemmingway standing in the doorway still
distraught and hesitating. Nor did the young man recognize the delicacy
of Jules' leave-taking until he had unstrapped his portmanteau and found
himself alone, free to make his toilet, unembarrassed by company. But
even then he would have preferred the rough companionship of the miners
in the common dormitory of the general store to this intrusion upon
the half-civilization of the women, their pitiable little comforts and
secret makeshifts. His disgust of his own indecision which brought him
there naturally recoiled in the direction of his host and hostesses, and
after a hurried ablution, a change of linen, and an attempt to remove
the stains of travel from his clothes, he strode out impatiently into
the open air again.
It was singularly mild even for the season. The southwest trades blew
softly, and whispered to him of San Francisco and the distant Pacific,
with its long, steady swell. He turned again to the overflowed Flat
beneath him, and the sluggish yellow water that scarcely broke a ripple
against the walls of the half-submerged cabins. And this was the water
for whose going down they were waiting with an immobility as tranquil
as the waters themselves! What marvelous incompetency,--or what infinite
patience! He knew, of course, their expected compensation in this
“ground sluicing” at Nature's own hand; the long rifts in the banks of
the creek which so often showed “the color” in the sparkling scales of
river gold disclosed by the action of the water; the heaps of reddish
mud left after its subsidence around the walls of the cabins,--a deposit
that often contained a treasure a dozen times more valuable than the
cabin itself! And then he heard behind him a laugh, a short and panting
breath, and turning, beheld a young woman running towards him.
In his first astounded sight of her, in her limp nankeen sunbonnet,
thrown back from her head by the impetus of her flight, he saw only too
much hair, two much white teeth, too much eye-flash, and, above
all,--as it appeared to him,--too much confidence in the power of these
qualities. Even as she ran, it seemed to him that she was pulling down
ostentatiously the rolled-up sleeves of her pink calico gown over her
shapely arms. I am inclined to think that the young gentleman's temper
was at fault, and his conclusion hasty; a calmer observer would have
detected nothing of this in her frankly cheerful voice. Nevertheless,
her evident pleasure in the meeting seemed to him only obtrusive
coquetry.
“Lordy! I reckoned to git here afore you'd get through fixin' up, and in
time to do a little prinkin' myself, and here you're out already.” She
laughed, glancing at his clean shirt and damp hair. “But all the same,
we kin have a talk, and you kin tell me all the news afore the other
wimmen get up here. It's a coon's age since I was at Sacramento and
saw anybody or anything.” She stopped and, instinctively detecting some
vague reticence in the man before her, said, still laughing, “You're Mr.
Hemmingway, ain't you?”
Hemmingway took off his hat quickly, with a slight start at his
forgetfulness. “I beg your pardon; yes, certainly.”
“Aunty Stanton thought it was 'Hummingbird,'” said the girl, with a
laugh, “but I reckoned not. I'm Jinney Jules, you know; folks call me
'J. J.' It wouldn't do for a Hummingbird and a Jay Jay to be in the same
camp, would it? It would be just TOO funny!”
Hemmingway did not find the humor of this so singularly exhaustive, but
he was already beginning to be ashamed of his attitude towards her. “I'm
very sorry to be giving you all this trouble by my intrusion, for I was
quite willing to stay at the store yonder. Indeed,” he added, with
a burst of frankness quite as sincere as her own, “if you think your
father will not be offended, I would gladly go there now.”
If he still believed in her coquetry and vanity, he would have been
undeceived and crushed by the equal and sincere frankness with which she
met this ungallant speech.
“No! I reckon he wouldn't care, if you'd be as comf'ble and fit for
to-morrow. But ye WOULDN'T,” she said reflectively. “The boys thar
sit up late over euchre, and swear a heap, and Simpson, who'd sleep
alongside of ye, snores pow'ful, I've heard. Aunty Stanton kin do her
level at that, too, and they say”--with a laugh--“that I kin, too, but
you're away off in that corner, and it won't reach you. So, takin' it
all, by the large, you'd better stay whar ye are. We wimmen, that is,
the most of us, will be off and away down to Rattlesnake Bar shoppin'
afore sun up, so ye'll sleep ez long ez ye want to, and find yer
breakfast ready when ye wake. So I'll jest set to and get ye some
supper, and ye kin tell me all the doin's in Sacramento and 'Frisco
while I'm workin'.”
In spite of her unconscious rebuff to his own vanity, Hemmingway felt a
sense of relief and less constraint in his relations to this decidedly
provincial hostess.
“Can I help you in any way?” he asked eagerly.
“Well, ye MIGHT bring me an armful o' wood from the pile under the
alders, ef ye ain't afraid o' dirtyin' your coat,” she said tentatively.
Mr. Hemmingway was not afraid; he declared himself delighted. He brought
a generous armful of small cut willow boughs, and deposited them before
a small stove, which seemed a temporary substitute for the usual large
adobe chimney that generally occupied the entire gable of a miner's
cabin. An elbow and short length of stovepipe carried the smoke through
the cabin side. But he also noticed that his fair companion had used
the interval to put on a pair of white cuffs and a collar. However, she
brushed the green moss from his sleeve with some toweling, and although
this operation brought her so near to him that her breath--as soft and
warm as the southwest trades--stirred his hair, it was evident that this
contiguity was only frontier familiarity, as far removed from conscious
coquetry as it was, perhaps, from educated delicacy.
“The boys gin'rally kem to take up enough wood for me to begin with,”
she said, “but I reckon they didn't know I was comin' up so soon.”
Hemmingway's distrust returned a little at this obvious suggestion that
he was only a substitute for their general gallantry, but he smiled and
said somewhat bluntly, “I don't suppose you lack for admirers here.”
The girl, however, took him literally. “Lordy, no! Me and Mamie Robinson
are the only girls for fifteen miles along the creek. ADMIRIN'! I call
it jest PESTERIN' sometimes! I reckon I'll hev to keep a dog!”
Hemmingway shivered. Yes, she was not only conscious, but spoilt
already. He pictured to himself the uncouth gallantries of the
settlement, the provincial badinage, the feeble rivalries of the young
men whom he had seen at the general store. Undoubtedly this was what she
was expecting in HIM!
“Well,” she said, turning from the fire she had kindled, “while I'm
settin' the table, tell me what's a-doin' in Sacramento! I reckon you've
got heaps of lady friends thar,--I'm told there's lots of fashions just
from the States.”
“I'm afraid I don't know enough of them to interest you,” he said dryly.
“Go on and talk,” she replied. “Why, when Tom Flynn kem back from
Sacramento, and he warn't thar more nor a week, he jest slung yarns
about his doin's thar to last the hull rainy season.”
Half amused and half annoyed, Hemmingway seated himself on the little
platform beside the open door, and began a conscientious description of
the progress of Sacramento, its new buildings, hotels, and theatres,
as it had struck him on his last visit. For a while he was somewhat
entertained by the girl's vivacity and eager questioning, but presently
it began to pall. He continued, however, with a grim sense of duty, and
partly as a reason for watching her in her household duties. Certainly
she was graceful! Her tall, lithe, but beautifully moulded figure,
even in its characteristic southwestern indolence, fell into poses as
picturesque as they were unconscious. She lifted the big molasses-can
from its shelf on the rafters with the attitude of a Greek water-bearer.
She upheaved the heavy flour-sack to the same secure shelf with the
upraised palms of an Egyptian caryatid. Suddenly she interrupted
Hemmingway's perfunctory talk with a hearty laugh. He started, looked
up from his seat on the platform, and saw that she was standing over him
and regarding him with a kind of mischievous pity.
“Look here,” she said, “I reckon that'll do! You kin pull up short! I
kin see what's the matter with you; you're jest plumb tired, tuckered
out, and want to turn in! So jest you sit that quiet until I get supper
ready and never mind me.” In vain Hemmingway protested, with a rising
color. The girl only shook her head. “Don't tell me! You ain't keering
to talk, and you're only playin' Sacramento statistics on me,” she
retorted, with unfeigned cheerfulness. “Anyhow, here's the wimmen
comin', and supper is ready.”
There was a sound of weary, resigned ejaculations and pantings, and
three gaunt women in lustreless alpaca gowns appeared before the cabin.
They seemed prematurely aged and worn with labor, anxiety, and ill
nourishment. Doubtless somewhere in these ruins a flower like Jay Jules
had once flourished; doubtless somewhere in that graceful nymph herself
the germ of this dreary maturity was hidden. Hemmingway welcomed them
with a seriousness equal to their own. The supper was partaken with the
kind of joyless formality which in the southwest is supposed to indicate
deep respect, even the cheerful Jay falling under the influence, and it
was with a feeling of relief that at last the young man retired to his
fenced-off corner for solitude and repose. He gathered, however,
that before “sun up” the next morning the elder women were going to
Rattlesnake Bar for the weekly shopping, leaving Jay as before to
prepare his breakfast and then join them later. It was already a change
in his sentiments to find himself looking forward to that tete-a-tete
with the young girl, as a chance of redeeming his character in her
eyes. He was beginning to feel he had been stupid, unready, and withal
prejudiced. He undressed himself in his seclusion, broken only by the
monotonous voices in the adjoining apartment. From time to time he
heard fragments and scraps of their conversation, always in reference to
affairs of the household and settlement, but never of himself,--not even
the suggestion of a prudent lowering of their voices,--and fell asleep.
He woke up twice in the night with a sensation of cold so marked and
distinct from his experience of the early evening, that he was fain to
pile his clothes over his blankets to keep warm. He fell asleep again,
coming once more to consciousness with a sense of a slight jar, but
relapsing again into slumber for he knew not how long. Then he was
fully awakened by a voice calling him, and, opening his eyes, beheld the
blanket partition put aside, and the face of Jay thrust forward. To
his surprise it wore a look of excited astonishment dominated by
irrepressible laughter.
“Get up quick as you kin,” she said gaspingly; “this is about the
killingest thing that ever happened!”
She disappeared, but he could still hear her laughing, and to his utter
astonishment with her disappearance the floor seemed to change its
level. A giddy feeling seized him; he put his feet to the floor; it
was unmistakably wet and oozing. He hurriedly clothed himself, still
accompanied by the strange feeling of oscillation and giddiness, and
passed though the opening into the next room. Again his step produced
the same effect upon the floor, and he actually stumbled against her
shaking figure, as she wiped the tears of uncontrollable mirth from her
eyes with her apron. The contact seemed to upset her remaining gravity.
She dropped into a chair, and, pointing to the open door, gasped, “Look
thar! Lordy! How's that for high?” threw her apron over her head, and
gave way to an uproarious fit of laughter.
Hemmingway turned to the open door. A lake was before him on the level
of the cabin. He stepped forward on the platform; the water was right
and left, all around him. The platform dipped slightly to his step. The
cabin was afloat,--afloat upon its base of logs like a raft, the whole
structure upheld by the floor on which the logs were securely fastened.
The high ground had disappeared--the river--its banks the green area
beyond. They, and THEY alone, were afloat upon an inland sea.
He turned an astounded and serious face upon her mirth. “When did it
happen?” he demanded. She checked her laugh, more from a sense of polite
deference to his mood than any fear, and said quietly, “That gets me.
Everything was all right two hours ago when the wimmen left. It was
too early to get your breakfast and rouse ye out, and I felt asleep, I
reckon, until I felt a kind o' slump and a jar.” Hemmingway remembered
his own half-conscious sensation. “Then I got up and saw we was adrift.
I didn't waken ye, for I thought it was only a sort of wave that would
pass. It wasn't until I saw we were movin' and the hull rising ground
gettin' away, that I thought o' callin' ye.”
He thought of the vanished general store, of her father, the workers on
the bank, the helpless women on their way to the Bar, and turned almost
savagely on her.
“But the others,--where are they?” he said indignantly. “Do you call
that a laughing matter?”
She stopped at the sound of his voice as at a blow. Her face hardened
into immobility, yet when she replied it was with the deliberate
indolence of her father. “The wimmen are up on the hills by this time.
The boys hev bin drowned out many times afore this and got clear off,
on sluice boxes and timber, without squealing. Tom Flynn went down
ten miles to Sayer's once on two bar'ls, and I never heard that HE was
cryin' when they picked him up.”
A flush came to Hemmingway's cheek, but with it a gleam of intelligence.
Of course the inundation was known to them FIRST, and there was the
wreckage to support them. They had clearly saved themselves. If they had
abandoned the cabin, it was because they knew its security, perhaps had
even seen it safely adrift.
“Has this ever happened to the cabin before?” he asked, as he thought of
its peculiar base.
“No.”
He looked at the water again. There was a decided current. The overflow
was evidently no part of the original inundation. He put his hand in
the water. It was icy cold. Yes, he understood it now. It was the sudden
melting of snow in the Sierras which had brought this volume down the
canyon. But was there more still to come?
“Have you anything like a long pole or stick in the cabin?”
“Nary,” said the girl, opening her big eyes and shaking her head with
a simulation of despair, which was, however, flatly contradicted by her
laughing mouth.
“Nor any cord or twine?” he continued.
She handed him a ball of coarse twine.
“May I take a couple of these hooks?” he asked, pointing to some rough
iron hooks in the rafters, on which bacon and jerked beef were hanging.
She nodded. He dislodged the hooks, greased them with the bacon rind,
and affixed them to the twine.
“Fishin'?” she asked demurely.
“Exactly,” he replied gravely.
He threw the line in the water. It slackened at about six feet,
straightened, and became taut at an angle, and then dragged. After one
or two sharp jerks he pulled it up. A few leaves and grasses were caught
in the hooks. He examined them attentively.
“We're not in the creek,” he said, “nor in the old overflow. There's no
mud or gravel on the hooks, and these grasses don't grow near water.”
“Now, that's mighty cute of you,” she said admiringly, as she knelt
beside him on the platform. “Let's see what you've caught. Look yer!”
she added, suddenly lifting a limp stalk, “that's 'old man,' and thar
ain't a scrap of it grows nearer than Springer's Rise,--four miles from
home.”
“Are you sure?” he asked quickly.
“Sure as pop! I used to go huntin' it for smellidge.”
“For what?” he said, with a bewildered smile.
“For this,”--she thrust the leaves to his nose and then to her own
pink nostrils; “for--for”--she hesitated, and then with a mischievous
simulation of correctness added, “for the perfume.”
He looked at her admiringly. For all her five feet ten inches, what
a mere child she was, after all! What a fool he was to have taken a
resentful attitude towards her! How charming and graceful she looked,
kneeling there beside him!
“Tell me,” he said suddenly, in a gentler voice, “what were you laughing
at just now?”
Her brown eyes wavered for a moment, and then brimmed with merriment.
She threw herself sideways, in a leaning posture, supporting herself on
one arm, while with her other hand she slowly drew out her apron string,
as she said, in a demure voice:--
“Well, I reckoned it was jest too killin' to think of you, who didn't
want to talk to me, and would hev given your hull pile to hev skipped
out o' this, jest stuck here alongside o' me, whether you would or no,
for Lord knows how long!”
“But that was last night,” he said, in a tone of raillery. “I was tired,
and you said so yourself, you know. But I'm ready to talk now. What
shall I tell you?”
“Anything,” said the girl, with a laugh.
“What I am thinking of?” he said, with frankly admiring eyes.
“Yes.”
“Everything?”
“Yes, everything.” She stopped, and leaning forward, suddenly caught
the brim of his soft felt hat, and drawing it down smartly over his
audacious eyes, said, “Everything BUT THAT.”
It was with some difficulty and some greater embarrassment that he
succeeded in getting his eyes free again. When he did so, she had risen
and entered the cabin. Disconcerted as he was, he was relieved to see
that her expression of amusement was unchanged. Was her act a piece
of rustic coquetry, or had she resented his advances? Nor did her next
words settle the question.
“Ye kin do yer nice talk and philanderin' after we've settled whar we
are, what we're goin', and what's goin' to happen. Jest now it 'pears
to me that ez these yere logs are the only thing betwixt us and 'kingdom
come,' ye'd better be hustlin' round with a few spikes to clinch 'em to
the floor.”
She handed him a hammer and a few spikes. He obediently set to work,
with little confidence, however, in the security of the fastening. There
was neither rope nor chain for lashing the logs together; a stronger
current and a collision with some submerged stump or wreckage would
loosen them and wreck the cabin. But he said nothing. It was the girl
who broke the silence.
“What's your front name?”
“Miles.”
“MILES,--that's a funny name. I reckon that's why you war so FAR OFF and
DISTANT at first.”
Mr. Hemmingway thought this very witty, and said so. “But,” he added,
“when I was a little nearer a moment ago, you stopped me.”
“But you was moving faster than the shanty was. I reckon you don't take
that gait with your lady friends at Sacramento! However, you kin talk
now.”
“But you forget I don't know 'where we are,' nor 'what's going to
happen.'”
“But I do,” she said quietly. “In a couple of hours we'll be picked up,
so you'll be free again.”
Something in the confidence of her manner made him go to the door again
and look out. There was scarcely any current now, and the cabin seemed
motionless. Even the wind, which might have acted upon it, was
wanting. They were apparently in the same position as before, but his
sounding-line showed that the water was slightly falling. He came back
and imparted the fact with a certain confidence born of her previous
praise of his knowledge. To his surprise she only laughed and said
lazily, “We'll be all right, and you'll be free, in about two hours.”
“I see no sign of it,” he said, looking through the door again.
“That's because you're looking in the water and the sky and the mud for
it,” she said, with a laugh. “I reckon you've been trained to watch them
things a heap better than to study the folks about here.”
“I daresay you're right,” said Hemmingway cheerfully, “but I don't
clearly see what the folks about here have to do with our situation just
now.”
“You'll see,” she said, with a smile of mischievous mystery. “All the
same,” she added, with a sudden and dangerous softness in her eyes, “I
ain't sayin' that YOU ain't kinder right neither.”
An hour ago he would have laughed at the thought that a mere look and
sentence like this from the girl could have made his heart beat. “Then I
may go on and talk?”
She smiled, but her eyes said, “Yes,” plainly.
He turned to take a chair near her. Suddenly the cabin trembled, there
was a sound of scraping, a bump, and then the whole structure tilted to
one side and they were both thrown violently towards the corner, with a
swift inrush of water. Hemmingway quickly caught the girl by the waist;
she clung to him instinctively, yet still laughing, as with a desperate
effort he succeeded in dragging her to the upper side of the slanting
cabin, and momentarily restoring its equilibrium. They remained for an
instant breathless. But in that instant he had drawn her face to his and
kissed her.
She disengaged herself gently with neither excitement nor emotion, and
pointing to the open door said, “Look there!”
Two of the logs which formed the foundation of their floor were quietly
floating in the water before the cabin! The submerged obstacle or snag
which had torn them from their fastening was still holding the cabin
fast. Hemmingway saw the danger. He ran along the narrow ledge to the
point of contact and unhesitatingly leaped into the icy cold water. It
reached his armpits before his feet struck the obstacle,--evidently a
stump with a projecting branch. Bracing himself against it, he shoved
off the cabin. But when he struck out to follow it, he found that the
log nearest him was loose and his grasp might tear it away. At the
same moment, however, a pink calico arm fluttered above his head, and a
strong grasp seized his coat collar. The cabin half revolved as the girl
dragged him into the open door.