lately come there who thought he could sing. Op'ry Bill, we called
him. We got him started to singing in a saloon one night, and I led
the boys on in making fun of him. We got him wild, but he did n't
offer to shoot, not even when I sent a bullet spinning through his hat.
He knew I was the leader in it all, but he just waited for a good
chance before he hinted at revenge. It was a week or two before the
chance came, and in the meantime he pretended to be friendly with me.
"One afternoon I was in a saloon, and the barkeeper had just told me
how Shirty Smith and Op'ry Bill had had a quarrel, and how Shirty was
tearing around like a mad bull and swearing he 'd shoot Bill on sight,
when in walked Op'ry himself. He came up almost behind me, slapped me
on the shoulder with his left hand, asked me to take a drink with him,
slipped his hand down on my right arm and began feeling of it and
praising my muscle. My eye happened to fall on a broken bit of a
mirror behind the bar, and I saw that his right hand was cocking a
pistol at the back of my head. I called out loudly and angrily,
'Shirty, don't shoot him in the back!'
"Op'ry Bill was so taken aback by what he supposed to be his own danger
that he wheeled around and turned his pistol the other way. Shirty was
n't there, but I had him covered when he turned back, red hot at having
been deceived.
"Did I kill him? No, I thought I 'd give him a lecture first, as I had
him well covered, about being so ornery mean, and while I was talking
Shirty rushed in, hot on the trail, and swore he 'd let daylight
through me if I did n't give him first chance at the sneak.
"A good many of the young fellows, like me, for instance, and plenty of
the older ones, too, were utterly reckless about how much money we made
and how much we lost. Everything went at a fast and furious rate, and
it was all the same to us whether we were raking in or pouring out the
dust. It was many a year after those stirring days before I tried to
figure up how much I took out of the ground and might have got for my
mine locations if I had had a particle of thrift--such as I ought to
have had, considering my New England birth and ancestry. It footed up
past the million mark, and, if I had had sense enough to handle it
properly, would have made me worth several times that amount by the
time I reached middle age.
"But I don't know that I regret it now. I 'm as well off here with my
cats and dogs and burros as if they were so many mines and ranches and
railroads.
"I had a partner once, a fellow a little older than I, and not so
reckless and hare-brained, and together we had been sinking a prospect
hole that promised to be one of the best I ever struck. We had been at
work two or three months, and I was just as sure there was a big
fortune in that hole as I could be of anything. But I got tired of
staying in one place so long,--it was lonely and monotonous,--and I
wanted some excitement. So one evening I challenged him to play
seven-up for the mine, the loser to take his outfit and walk. He
refused and tried to argue me out of my crazy whim, but finally I
taunted him into it. I lost, and the next morning I packed up my
blankets and walked away. A month afterwards he sold the mine for a
hundred thousand dollars, and in less than a year its owners had
realized a round half million out of it.
"But the most exciting part of all those years was the time when I was
called 'Grizzly Dick.' I ought to be ashamed to tell anything about
that portion of my history; but it is all so long ago, and things have
changed so much since then, that it almost seems as if I were talking
about some other man.
"It all began at Grizzly Gulch, where a man named Johnson had taken a
strong dislike to me. I had played some joke on him which made him
ridiculous, and he hated me more than if I 'd tried to kill him. He
started down to the city with his dust, and somebody robbed him, and
half killed him into the bargain. He accused me of being the robber
and I had no witnesses to prove an alibi. They had a trial and
convicted me of the crime, as Johnson swore that he recognized me. I
knew that it was simply a scheme of his to get even with me, and I
didn't believe that he had been robbed at all. But I was sentenced to
prison for two years and I had to go.
"When I got out my teeth were on edge for revenge on Johnson, the
lawyers, the judge, the jury, and the whole law-making system that had
made me, an innocent man, spend those two years fuming in a cell. I
was ready to fight the whole organization of society and the whole
system of government, from President to jailer. I swore the biggest,
hardest kind of an oath that I would give them a reason for being so
anxious to put people in prison. Only, I didn't propose that they
should ever send me there again.
"Well, for two years Grizzly Dick was the terror of that county and all
the adjoining ones. To take him, alive or dead, was the ambition of
half the sheriffs in California. After my first few escapades I had
plenty of helpers. Men as desperate and as dare-devil as I gathered
around me and we carried things with a high hand. I cared nothing for
the profits of being an outlaw. What I wanted was revenge on society,
and the excitement and risk of the game. The greater part of whatever
we took went to my followers, and I never kept more than was necessary
for my immediate needs.
"We had many a desperate fight with sheriffs and their posses, many a
wild ride over the hills and through the pine woods on dark nights, and
many a day of lying hidden in the brush or in caves.
"I followed that sort of life for two years, and then, one day, I
suddenly felt a disgust for it all, and concluded I 'd had enough
revenge and was ready to be an honest man again.
"So I deliberately left that part of the State and everybody supposed
that Grizzly Dick had been killed and his body carried off and buried
by his gang. But nothing of the sort had happened. He reappeared
under another name a good many days' travel from that region.
"Five or six years afterwards I went back to that same county and was
elected sheriff. Yes, I was recognized. A good many people suspected
and two or three openly declared that I was Grizzly Dick. But I made
the best sheriff they had ever had, and I did some work in the way of
catching a stage robber, cleaning out a nest of gamblers, and getting
rid of a couple of desperadoes, which they were so glad to have done
that they didn't care who or what I might have been.
"I served two terms and they wanted me to run again. But by that time
I had come to realize that I had frittered away a big part of my life,
and I began to have some of the ambitions to accomplish something worth
while that I ought to have had a dozen years before.
"So I went down to San Francisco and raised a tidy sum of money to
begin on by going in with an acquaintance on a trip to Bering Sea to
catch otters. We chartered a vessel, spent a whole summer up there,
and realized nearly ten thousand dollars apiece out of it.
"I had a pretty good practical knowledge of mining matters, and so my
operations in mines and mining stocks were generally successful. It
was n't long until I was a rich, a very rich, man, and a prominent one,
too. There is a street named for me in San Francisco. That is, it
bears the name I was known by while I was sheriff and while I lived in
the city. I married and built a fine residence, and altogether I was
as prosperous and had as bright a future as any man in California.
"But one day, after I had been living in San Francisco five or six
years, I made a deal that wasn't a success, and half my fortune went in
less than a week. And at the same time I discovered that my wife was
not all I had thought her. She had evil tendencies that I had not
suspected, and bad companions of whom I had known nothing; and together
they had taken her at a flying pace down the road to destruction. And
when the end came, at the same time that I had my first financial blow,
the surprise was overwhelming. It was an end so shameful and to me so
humiliating that I could not bear at first to go out among men and meet
my friends. It was a critical time and my affairs needed my closest
attention. But I was too broken down and overcome by the disgrace to
attempt to do anything. And when I did go back everything was ruined.
"I did n't care very much, for my greatest desire just then was to get
away from everybody I had known. I wanted to put behind me and forget
everything that would remind me of my wife, and her ruin, and my
disaster.
"So I started out alone with a prospector's outfit, and finally brought
up here. I 've been here now, I guess, about ten years, and it's very
likely that I 'll stay here all the rest of my life. I 've got a
prospect hole over on the other side of that hill that may amount to
something some time. But I don't care whether it does or not. I like
to work in it and think about whether or not I 'm going to strike
anything, but I don't care two bits one way or the other.
"No, I 'm not lonely. My cats and dogs and burros are pretty good
company, and then I have my violin. But just these hills, and the sky,
and the breezes, and the birds and beasts that come around, are as much
company as any man needs to wish for.
"When I came here I was tired of the world, dead tired of it. And I
have n't got rested yet. I shall not leave here until I do. And I
don't suppose that will ever be. For my time will soon come. It's all
I have to look forward to, and I just sit here and wait for it and
wonder what shape Death will have when he does finally find me out.
That is the only thing in the world I have any curiosity about, now;
and I often think about it in much the same way that I used to wonder,
when I was a youth, what the woman would be like whom I was to love."
The next summer we camped at the mouth of a canyon near the foot of
Monte Pinos, but one day we drove across the hills to pay a visit to
Old Dan, and learned at the stage station that he was no more. He had
sickened and died alone, in the early spring, and his body had been
found, after many days, in his cabin by his nearest "neighbor," another
lone man living ten miles away. We drove on to his deserted little
ranch and found that they had made a grave for him on the side of the
hill above the cabin--a grave marked only by its settling mound of
earth and one poor piece of board, cracked, aslant, and weather-beaten,
and bearing neither name nor date.
Doubtless it is as well so. For he that lies beneath was only a piece
of wreckage, with a past that was dead and a future that was empty.
The memory of all those turbulent years was heavy upon his gray head,
and he wished only that the hills might cover him and give him rest and
concealment.
And away on the other side of the continent there is a grave that has
known the tears of love and the hand of remembrance. Its flowers are
bright and its shining marble is graven fair with name and date and
words of praise.
THE STORY, OF A CHINEE KID
"Little Ah Sid
Was a Chinee Kid,
A cute little cuss, you 'd declare,
With eyes full of fun
And a nose that begun
Right up at the roots of his hair."
--M. C. SPEER.
This Chinee Kid was not Ah Sid, but another one whose name was Ah Wing.
He was a Chinee Kid only so far as he was n't a Boy, and just how much
of him was Chinee Kid and how much was Boy is difficult to say.
Sometimes he seemed to be mostly all one, and sometimes just as much
the other, and, again, he was a harmonized mixture of the two.
Wing's father and mother were both Chinese, but Wing had been born and
had lived all his nine years in the town of Tobin, which is in
California, on the overland road, far enough up the Sierra climb for
the east-bound trains to have always two engines when they pass its
depot. He wore Chinese clothes, except upon his head, whereon
invariably reposed the time-honored hat of the American village boy,
that always looks the same whether it is one week or one year old--the
hat that is dirty gray in color, conical as to crown, sloping as to
brim, and dilapidated as to general appearance, the hat that is
irrefragable proof that its wearer is a Boy. This head-gear he wore
over the queue of his forefathers, braided, ebony, shining, and hanging
half-way down his little legs.
Wing could jabber Chinese as shrilly and rapidly as any of his
playmates of the Chinese quarter, and with his young friends of the
white race he could reel off amazing vocabularies of American slang.
And he could swear, and frequently did so, with all the nonchalance of
a Chinaman and the intensity and picturesqueness of an American. He
could, if the occasion seemed to demand it, drop his eyelids and "_No
sabe_" as stupidly as any Celestial who ever entered the Golden Gate.
But with any man, woman, or child whom he chose to favor with his
conversation he could talk volubly in fairly good English. And his
lungs were just as capable, and just as frequently put to the test, as
those of any white boy in Tobin, of the ear-splitting shouts and yells
without which boys' games cannot be played and boys' thoughts
communicated to one another.
Wing had such an amazing ability to seem to be everywhere at the same
time that he was nicknamed "Wings." But no one ever called him that to
his face who wanted him to answer a question or pay any attention to
what was said to him. The first time it was tried he protested, with
all the dignity of George Washington insisting on his title of
President, that his name was Wing. After that he merely met the
nickname with a blank, solemn, "_No sabe_" stare, as uncompromising and
as impenetrable as a stone wall. It was impossible to look out of
doors at any time or in any part of Tobin without seeing Wing. He was
always going somewhere and was always in a hurry, but he was always
ready to stop and chat for a moment with any one, large or small, who
addressed him without giving offence.
Everybody knew him, residents and summer visitors alike. The men all
teased him and the women all petted him. Nobody knew or cared in which
one of the dozen houses of the Chinese quarter Wing's father and mother
lived, nor whether his father had a laundry, a store, or a garden.
They were nobodies; but Wing was a public character.
Wing's chief daily function was to assist at the arrival of the
east-bound passenger train. The west-bound, having only one engine,
was of less consequence. But at the passing of the other he never
missed a day, Sundays, holidays, or rainy season. He inspected the
engines, counted the wheels, considered the possibility of getting a
ride on the pilot of the second engine, dodged around through the
crowd, ran against people, had his toes trodden on, saw everybody who
went away, stared at all who came, capered up and down the car-steps,
put pins on the rail to be flattened by the wheels, stood with one foot
inside the track until the train started, and, after it was all over,
rode away triumphantly, hanging to the steps of the hotel omnibus.
After a while he began to thrill with the desire to know how it would
feel to run backward on the track in front of the moving engine. He
had had a brief glimpse of the possibility of that bliss as he crossed
the track one day when the train was coming in; and the more he thought
about it, the surer he felt that some day he would have to do it. He
was well acquainted by that time with the engines, and the engineers
too, and his trick of standing astride the rail and looking up with
sparkling, defiant eyes at the engine's noble front was only a sort of
preparation for other deeds.
One day he had assisted at the dismounting of the passengers, had seen
the last departing traveller disappear inside the cars, had had his
queue pulled by the news agent, and a narrow escape from being knocked
over by the baggage man's trunk van, when he started off at top speed
to get in front of the engine before the train should start. A young
woman with a baggage check in her hand was standing near an omnibus
waiting for the driver to come. Wing's headlong speed would have
carried him safely past her, but a big man with two suit-cases was
rushing toward him, and as he veered to one side he struck heavily
against the girl. The blow knocked her against the steps of the
omnibus and sent Wing sprawling in the dust.
A slender, trim-looking young man, who had got off the train and was
about to enter the omnibus of another hotel, saw the collision and
sprang to her assistance. Helping her to her feet, he asked anxiously
if she was hurt, and then seized Wing's arm and gave him a little
shaking.
"You young rascal!" he exclaimed. "Why don't you look where you are
going?"
"Oh, don't scold him, please!" the girl pleaded. "He did n't intend to
do it, and I 'm not hurt at all. Wing, how do you do? Did it hurt
you?"
Wing was indignantly tearing himself loose from the young man's hand
and was looking wishfully after the departing train and the lost
opportunity.
"Lemme go," he demanded. "No, didn't hurt."
The young woman blushingly thanked the stranger as he helped her into
the vehicle. Then, instead of returning to the other omnibus, which
was waiting for him, he shook his head at the driver and stepped in
after her. As they rattled up the street he found it difficult to keep
his eyes off her slender, supple figure and the shining glory of
golden-red hair that aureoled the clear, soft brilliance of her pink
and white complexion. When she looked up once and caught his look of
admiration she blushed deeply and endeavored to disguise her
embarrassment in lively talk with some people who sat near her. The
newcomer saw that they were evidently old friends and inferred that she
was a resident of the town. From scraps of their talk that reached his
ears he learned that her name was Annie Millner, and that she was a
physician's daughter.'
The young man inscribed his name on the hotel register, "Robert
Ellison, Worcester, Mass.," and then sauntered out to take a look at
the town. He watched the omnibus from which he had just dismounted, as
it stopped in front of a pretty cottage set back in some pleasant
grounds on the slope of the opposite hill, until he saw Miss Millner
enter the gate.
"I guess I 'll like it better here than I expected to," was his thought
as his eye followed her figure. "This air feels good, the sunshine is
fine, and that's a glorious blue sky. They say I 'm likely to become
an invalid if I try to live East any longer, and so that's cut out.
Well, a fellow could have plenty of out-door life here, and enjoy it,
if there are many days like this. It looks as if there 'd be money in
these orchards too. I reckon Dr. Millner must live in that cottage.
What an inviting looking place it is! I guess I 'd better go back to
the hotel and ask the clerk about the physicians here. I might need
one sometime."
Discreet inquiry of the hotel clerk as to the population of the town,
resident and floating, its general healthfulness, the number of
health-seekers, their success, and the number and relative skill of the
physicians it supported finally elicited for Ellison all the
information his present interest desired concerning Dr. Millner and his
family.
He also learned much about the history of Tobin. In its early days it
had been a mining camp and, as Tobin's Gulch, had been rich and famous.
Then, as the mines petered out, it had dwindled to poverty and two rows
of houses. But, after a long while, new people had begun to come.
Some of them had planted miles upon miles of orchards and vineyards,
others had come to be cured of bodily ills by its climate, at once
bracing and caressing, and still others, there for a brief summer
sojourn, had spread the knowledge that it was a pleasant and
picturesque retreat. So the town had dropped the plebeian "Gulch" from
its name and as "Tobin" counted with ever increasing pride the hundreds
of cars that carried its fruit from ocean to ocean and the growing
numbers of its health-seekers and summer visitors.
"It looks good to me," was Ellison's inward comment as he walked up the
street again. "I think I 'll look into this fruit business. That
would give me an out-door life, and there seems to be money in it.
That's a neat cottage of Dr. Millner's. I 'll walk past and look at
the grounds. Hello, here comes that Chinee Kid--what 'd she call him?
Wing, wasn't it? Queer-looking little critter, but she seemed to like
him. Hello, Wing! Where are you flying to now? Got over your bumps
yet?"
But the Chinee Kid cast one sober, stupid look at Ellison's sociable
countenance, opened his mouth just wide enough to grunt "_No sabe_,"
and hurried on.
Ellison looked after him with a foolish little smile and exclaimed
aloud, "Well, I 'll be hanged! If that is n't a kid!"
He heard the sound of a girl's laugh, and turning quickly, saw a merry
face surrounded by golden-red hair disappearing from a window of the
Millner cottage. He blushed furiously, frowned and muttered an angry
little word, as he thought, "That kid needs to be spanked." But,
although he was smarting a little with the feeling that the boy had
made him seem ridiculous in her eyes, his glance covertly searched her
windows as he walked on, hoping for another glimpse of the girlish
figure and the glowing hair.
A year went by, and Ellison, brown and athletic-looking, was building a
pretty cottage on the crest of a gently sloping hill just outside the
town. Annie Millner, wearing a new ring and carrying a great happiness
in her heart, went often to see how the cottage was progressing and how
the trees were growing. For the hill-slope was covered with the
gray-green of young olive trees, the dense, dark foliage of young
oranges, and the stunted, scraggy boughs of the Japanese persimmon.
His fruit ranch promised well, the day for their bridal was set, and
they were hopeful, glad, and happy.
But Wing was the young man's implacable enemy. He neither forgot nor
forgave the shaking he had received at their first meeting, and he
revenged himself for it as much as lay in his small power whenever he
found opportunity. He succeeded occasionally in making Ellison look
foolish in his own eyes; and he, in consequence, disliked the child and
disapproved of the universal petting that was given him. It
particularly annoyed him that Annie showed his small enemy so much
favor, and he would sometimes think angrily, when irritated by some
trick of the Chinee Kid, that if she had more regard for his feelings
she would not join in the general encouragement that was given to the
heathen brat in being a public nuisance.
As for Wing, if he had known, or could have understood what happiness
his childish sport had been instrumental in bringing to these two
people, it is probable that his antipathy to Ellison would have
extended even to Annie, whom, as it was, he considered one of his best
friends. But he could not know, nor could they, that he was their
kismet and that his small brown hands wound and unwound, tangled and
straightened, the threads of their lives.
One day they were all three at the depot again. Wing, of course, was
there in the discharge of his usual duties. Annie had walked down to
welcome a friend whom she expected, and Ellison had come because it
gave him an opportunity to be with her. As the railroad approached the
town from the west it passed through a deep cut, from which it came out
on a low embankment, and rounded a sharp curve before it reached the
station, a few yards beyond. The roar of the oncoming train was borne
to them on the wind and before it emerged from the cut a ridiculous
little figure darted out of the crowd on the platform and raced down
the track to the curve. It was dressed in a Chinese blouse and
trousers of faded and dirty blue denim, while a pair of old Chinese
slippers, partly covering the feet, left in full view two bare, brown
heels.
"There goes Wing!" exclaimed one man to another. "That kid 's going to
get killed at this little trick of his some day."
The train rushed at the curve with a shout that was thrown back from
the hills, and the people on the platform held their breath--though to
many of them it was nothing new--as with flying feet and monkey-like
agility the Chinee Kid danced backward on the track. There was a brief
vision of a pair of big, blue sleeves waving in the air, of a black,
flying queue, and of a pair of twinkling feet, and then with sparkling
eyes, a triumphant countenance and a loud "Ki-yi!" Wing leaped to the
platform, the engine scarcely a yard behind him.
"Is it lots of fun, Wing?" said Annie, smiling at him indulgently.
"Bet your boots it is!" he shouted as he darted off to inspect the
dismounting passengers.
"See here, Wing," said Ellison, putting his hand in a kindly way on the
boy's shoulder, "you mustn't do that! You'll get killed at it some
day."