It is to be feared that Jackson would have suppressed this also, but the
keen eyes of his partners, excited by the abruptness of the messenger,
were upon him. He smiled feebly, and laid the letter before them. But
he was unprepared for their exaggerated indignation, and with difficulty
restrained them from dashing off in the direction of the vanished
herald. “And what could you do?” he said. “The boy's only a messenger.”
“I'll get at that d----d skunk Brown, who's back of him,” said Dexter
Rice.
“And what then?” persisted Jackson, with a certain show of independence.
“If this stuff belongs to the girl, I'm not certain I shan't give them
up without any fuss. Lord! I want nothing but what the old man left
me--and certainly nothing of HERS.”
Here Ned Wyngate was heard to murmur that Jackson was one of those
men who would lie down and let coyotes crawl over him if they first
presented a girl's visiting card, but he was stopped by Rice demanding
paper and pencil. The former being torn from a memorandum book, and a
stub of the latter produced from another pocket, he wrote as follows:--
SIR,--In reply to the hogwash you have kindly exuded in your letter of
to-day, I have to inform you that you can have what you ask for Miss
Wells, and perhaps a trifle on your own account, by calling this
afternoon on--Yours truly--
“Now, sign it,” continued Rice, handing him the pencil.
“But this will look as if we were angry and wanted to keep the plants,”
protested Wells.
“Never you mind, sonny, but sign! Leave the rest to your partners,
and when you lay your head on your pillow to-night return thanks to an
overruling Providence for providing you with the right gang of ruffians
to look after you!”
Wells signed reluctantly, and Wyngate offered to find a Chinaman in the
gulch who would take the missive. “And being a Chinaman, Brown can do
any cussin' or buck talk THROUGH him!” he added.
The afternoon wore on; the tall Douglas pines near the water pools
wheeled their long shadows round and halfway up the slope, and the sun
began to peer into the faces of the reclining men. Subtle odors of mint
and southern-wood, stragglers from the garden, bruised by their limbs,
replaced the fumes of their smoked-out pipes, and the hammers of the
woodpeckers were busy in the grove as they lay lazily nibbling the
fragrant leaves like peaceful ruminants. Then came the sound of
approaching wheels along the invisible highway beyond the buckeyes,
and then a halt and silence. Rice rose slowly, bright pin points in the
pupils of his gray eyes.
“Bringin' a wagon with him to tote the hull shanty away,” suggested
Wyngate.
“Or fetched his own ambulance,” said Briggs.
Nevertheless, after a pause, the wheels presently rolled away again.
“We'd better go and meet him at the gate,” said Rice, hitching his
revolver holster nearer his hip. “That wagon stopped long enough to put
down three or four men.”
They walked leisurely but silently to the gate. It is probable that none
of them believed in a serious collision, but now the prospect had enough
possibility in it to quicken their pulses. They reached the gate. But it
was still closed; the road beyond it empty.
“Mebbe they've sneaked round to the cabin,” said Briggs, “and are
holdin' it inside.”
They were turning quickly in that direction, when Wyngate said,
“Hush!--some one's there in the brush under the buckeyes.”
They listened; there was a faint rustling in the shadows.
“Come out o' that, Brown--into the open. Don't be shy,” called out Rice
in cheerful irony. “We're waitin' for ye.”
But Briggs, who was nearest the wood, here suddenly uttered an
exclamation,--“B'gosh!” and fell back, open-mouthed, upon his
companions. They too, in another moment, broke into a feeble laugh, and
lapsed against each other in sheepish silence. For a very pretty girl,
handsomely dressed, swept out of the wood and advanced towards them.
Even at any time she would have been an enchanting vision to these men,
but in the glow of exercise and sparkle of anger she was bewildering.
Her wonderful hair, the color of freshly hewn redwood, had escaped from
her hat in her passage through the underbrush, and even as she swept
down upon them in her majesty she was jabbing a hairpin into it with a
dexterous feminine hand.
The three partners turned quite the color of her hair; Jackson Wells
alone remained white and rigid. She came on, her very short upper lip
showing her white teeth with her panting breath.
Rice was first to speak. “I beg--your pardon, Miss--I thought it was
Brown--you know,” he stammered.
But she only turned a blighting brown eye on the culprit, curled her
short lip till it almost vanished in her scornful nostrils, drew her
skirt aside with a jerk, and continued her way straight to Jackson
Wells, where she halted.
“We did not know you were--here alone,” he said apologetically.
“Thought I was afraid to come alone, didn't you? Well, you see, I'm not.
There!” She made another dive at her hat and hair, and brought the hat
down wickedly over her eyebrows. “Gimme my plants.”
Jackson had been astonished. He would have scarcely recognized in this
willful beauty the red-haired girl whom he had boyishly hated, and with
whom he had often quarreled. But there was a recollection--and with that
recollection came an instinct of habit. He looked her squarely in the
face, and, to the horror of his partners, said, “Say please!”
They had expected to see him fall, smitten with the hairpin! But she
only stopped, and then in bitter irony said, “Please, Mr. Jackson
Wells.”
“I haven't dug them up yet--and it would serve you just right if I
made you get them for yourself. But perhaps my friends here might help
you--if you were civil.”
The three partners seized spades and hoes and rushed forward eagerly.
“Only show us what you want,” they said in one voice. The young girl
stared at them, and at Jackson. Then with swift determination she turned
her back scornfully upon him, and with a dazzling smile which reduced
the three men to absolute idiocy, said to the others, “I'll show YOU,”
and marched away to the cabin.
“Ye mustn't mind Jacksey,” said Rice, sycophantically edging to her
side, “he's so cut up with losin' your father that he loved like a son,
he isn't himself, and don't seem to know whether to ante up or pass out.
And as for yourself, Miss--why--What was it he was sayin' only just as
the young lady came?” he added, turning abruptly to Wyngate.
“Everything that cousin Josey planted with her own hands must be took up
carefully and sent back--even though it's killin' me to part with it,”
quoted Wyngate unblushingly, as he slouched along on the other side.
Miss Wells's eyes glared at them, though her mouth still smiled
ravishingly. “I'm sure I'm troubling you.”
In a few moments the plants were dug up and carefully laid together;
indeed, the servile Briggs had added a few that she had not indicated.
“Would you mind bringing them as far as the buggy that's coming down
the hill?” she said, pointing to a buggy driven by a small boy which
was slowly approaching the gate. The men tenderly lifted the uprooted
plants, and proceeded solemnly, Miss Wells bringing up the rear, towards
the gate, where Jackson Wells was still surlily lounging.
They passed out first. Miss Wells lingered for an instant, and then
advancing her beautiful but audacious face within an inch of Jackson's,
hissed out, “Make-believe! and hypocrite!”
“Cross-patch and sauce-box!” returned Jackson readily, still under the
malign influence of his boyish past, as she flounced away.
Presently he heard the buggy rattle away with his persecutor. But his
partners still lingered on the road in earnest conversation, and when
they did return it was with a singular awkwardness and embarrassment,
which he naturally put down to a guilty consciousness of their foolish
weakness in succumbing to the girl's demands.
But he was a little surprised when Dexter Rice approached him gloomily.
“Of course,” he began, “it ain't no call of ours to interfere in family
affairs, and you've a right to keep 'em to yourself, but if you'd been
fair and square and above board in what you got off on us about this
per--”
“What do you mean?” demanded the astonished Wells.
“Well--callin' her a 'red-haired gal.'”
“Well--she is a red-haired girl!” said Wells impatiently.
“A man,” continued Rice pityingly, “that is so prejudiced as to apply
such language to a beautiful orphan--torn with grief at the loss of a
beloved but d----d misconstruing parent--merely because she begs a few
vegetables out of his potato patch, ain't to be reasoned with. But when
you come to look at this thing by and large, and as a fa'r-minded man,
sonny, you'll agree with us that the sooner you make terms with her the
better. Considerin' your interest, Jacksey,--let alone the claims of
humanity,--we've concluded to withdraw from here until this thing is
settled. She's sort o' mixed us up with your feelings agin her, and
naturally supposed we object to the color of her hair! and bein' a
penniless orphan, rejected by her relations”--
“What stuff are you talking?” burst in Jackson. “Why, YOU saw she
treated you better than she did me.”
“Steady! There you go with that temper of yours that frightened the
girl! Of course she could see that WE were fa'r-minded men, accustomed
to the ways of society, and not upset by the visit of a lady, or the
givin' up of a few green sticks! But let that slide! We're goin' back
home to-night, sonny, and when you've thought this thing over and are
straightened up and get your right bearin's, we'll stand by you as
before. We'll put a man on to do your work on the Ledge, so ye needn't
worry about that.”
They were quite firm in this decision,--however absurd or obscure their
conclusions,--and Jackson, after his first flash of indignation, felt
a certain relief in their departure. But strangely enough, while he had
hesitated about keeping the property when they were violently in favor
of it, he now felt he was right in retaining it against their advice to
compromise. The sentimental idea had vanished with his recognition of
his hateful cousin in the role of the injured orphan. And for the same
odd reason her prettiness only increased his resentment. He was not
deceived,--it was the same capricious, willful, red-haired girl.
The next day he set himself to work with that dogged steadiness that
belonged to his simple nature, and which had endeared him to his
partners. He set half a dozen Chinamen to work, and followed, although
apparently directing, their methods. The great difficulty was to
restrain and control the excessive vegetation, and he matched the small
economies of the Chinese against the opulence of the Californian soil.
The “garden patch” prospered; the neighbors spoke well of it and of
him. But Jackson knew that this fierce harvest of early spring was to be
followed by the sterility of the dry season, and that irrigation could
alone make his work profitable in the end. He brought a pump to force
the water from the little stream at the foot of the slope to the top,
and allowed it to flow back through parallel trenches. Again Buckeye
applauded! Only the gloomy barkeeper shook his head. “The moment you get
that thing to pay, Mr. Wells, you'll find the hand of Brown, somewhere,
getting ready to squeeze it dry!”
But Jackson Wells did not trouble himself about Brown, whom he scarcely
knew. Once indeed, while trenching the slope, he was conscious that he
was watched by two men from the opposite bank; but they were apparently
satisfied by their scrutiny, and turned away. Still less did he concern
himself with the movements of his cousin, who once or twice passed him
superciliously in her buggy on the road. Again, she met him as one of
a cavalcade of riders, mounted on a handsome but ill-tempered mustang,
which she was managing with an ill-temper and grace equal to the
brute's, to the alternate delight and terror of her cavalier. He could
see that she had been petted and spoiled by her new guardian and his
friends far beyond his conception. But why she should grudge him the
little garden and the pastoral life for which she was so unsuited,
puzzled him greatly.
One afternoon he was working near the road, when he was startled by
an outcry from his Chinese laborers, their rapid dispersal from the
strawberry beds where they were working, the splintering crash of his
fence rails, and a commotion among the buckeyes. Furious at what seemed
to him one of the usual wanton attacks upon coolie labor, he seized
his pick and ran to their assistance. But he was surprised to find
Jocelinda's mustang caught by the saddle and struggling between two
trees, and its unfortunate mistress lying upon the strawberry bed.
Shocked but cool-headed, Jackson released the horse first, who was
lashing out and destroying everything within his reach, and then turned
to his cousin. But she had already lifted herself to her elbow, and
with a trickle of blood and mud on one fair cheek was surveying him
scornfully under her tumbled hair and hanging hat.
“You don't suppose I was trespassing on your wretched patch again, do
you?” she said in a voice she was trying to keep from breaking. “It was
that brute--who bolted.”
“I don't suppose you were bullying ME this time,” he said, “but you were
YOUR HORSE--or it wouldn't have happened. Are you hurt?”
She tried to move; he offered her his hand, but she shied from it and
struggled to her feet. She took a step forward--but limped.
“If you don't want my arm, let me call a Chinaman,” he suggested.
She glared at him. “If you do I'll scream!” she said in a low voice, and
he knew she would. But at the same moment her face whitened, at which he
slipped his arm under hers in a dexterous, business-like way, so as to
support her weight. Then her hat got askew, and down came a long braid
over his shoulder. He remembered it of old, only it was darker than then
and two or three feet longer.
“If you could manage to limp as far as the gate and sit down on the
bank, I'd get your horse for you,” he said. “I hitched it to a sapling.”
“I saw you did--before you even offered to help me,” she said
scornfully.
“The horse would have got away--YOU couldn't.”
“If you only knew how I hated you,” she said, with a white face, but a
trembling lip.
“I don't see how that would make things any better,” he said. “Better
wipe your face; it's scratched and muddy, and you've been rubbing your
nose in my strawberry bed.”
She snatched his proffered handkerchief suddenly, applied it to her
face, and said: “I suppose it looks dreadful.”
“Like a pig's,” he returned cheerfully.
She walked a little more firmly after this, until they reached the gate.
He seated her on the bank, and went back for the mustang. That beautiful
brute, astounded and sore from its contact with the top rail and
brambles, was cowed and subdued as he led it back.
She had finished wiping her face, and was hurriedly disentangling
two stinging tears from her long lashes, before she threw back his
handkerchief. Her sprained ankle obliged him to lift her into the saddle
and adjust her little shoe in the stirrup. He remembered when it
was still smaller. “You used to ride astride,” he said, a flood of
recollection coming over him, “and it's much safer with your temper and
that brute.”
“And you,” she said in a lower voice, “used to be”--But the rest of her
sentence was lost in the switch of the whip and the jump of her horse,
but he thought the word was “kinder.”
Perhaps this was why, after he watched her canter away, he went back to
the garden, and from the bruised and trampled strawberry bed gathered
a small basket of the finest fruit, covered them with leaves, added a
paper with the highly ingenious witticism, “Picked up with you,” and
sent them to her by one of the Chinamen. Her forcible entry moved
Li Sing, his foreman, also chief laundryman to the settlement, to
reminiscences:
“Me heap knew Missy Wells and ole man, who go dead. Ole man allee
time make chin music to Missy. Allee time jaw jaw--allee time make
lows--allee time cuttee up Missy! Plenty time lockee up Missy topside
house; no can walkee--no can talkee--no hab got--how can get?--must
washee washee allee same Chinaman. Ole man go dead--Missy all lightee
now. Plenty fun. Plenty stay in Blown's big house, top-side hill; Blown
first-chop man.”
Had he inquired he might have found this pagan testimony, for once,
corroborated by the Christian neighbors.
But another incident drove all this from his mind. The little
stream--the life blood of his garden--ran dry! Inquiry showed that it
had been diverted two miles away into Brown's ditch! Wells's indignant
protest elicited a formal reply from Brown, stating that he owned the
adjacent mining claims, and reminding him that mining rights to water
took precedence of the agricultural claim, but offering, by way of
compensation, to purchase the land thus made useless and sterile.
Jackson suddenly recalled the prophecy of the gloomy barkeeper. The end,
had come! But what could the scheming capitalist want with the land,
equally useless--as his uncle had proved--for mining purposes? Could it
be sheer malignity, incited by his vengeful cousin? But here he paused,
rejecting the idea as quickly as it came. No! his partners were right!
He was a trespasser on his cousin's heritage--there was no luck in
it--he was wrong, and this was his punishment! Instead of yielding
gracefully as he might, he must back down now, and she would never know
his first real feelings. Even now he would make over the property to
her as a free gift. But his partners had advanced him money from their
scanty means to plant and work it. He believed that an appeal to their
feelings would persuade them to forego even that, but he shrank even
more from confessing his defeat to THEM than to her.
He had little heart in his labors that day, and dismissed the Chinamen
early. He again examined his uncle's old mining claim on the top of
the slope, but was satisfied that it had been a hopeless enterprise
and wisely abandoned. It was sunset when he stood under the buckeyes,
gloomily looking at the glow fade out of the west, as it had out of his
boyish hopes. He had grown to like the place. It was the hour, too, when
the few flowers he had cultivated gave back their pleasant odors, as if
grateful for his care. And then he heard his name called.
It was his cousin, standing a few yards from him in evident hesitation.
She was quite pale, and for a moment he thought she was still suffering
from her fall, until he saw in her nervous, half-embarrassed manner that
it had no physical cause. Her old audacity and anger seemed gone, yet
there was a queer determination in her pretty brows.
“Good-evening,” he said.
She did not return his greeting, but pulling uneasily at her glove, said
hesitatingly: “Uncle has asked you to sell him this land?”
“Yes.”
“Well--don't!” she burst out abruptly.
He stared at her.
“Oh, I'm not trying to keep you here,” she went on, flashing back into
her old temper; “so you needn't stare like that. I say, 'Don't,' because
it ain't right, it ain't fair.”
“Why, he's left me no alternative,” he said.
“That's just it--that's why it's mean and low. I don't care if he is our
uncle.”
Jackson was bewildered and shocked.
“I know it's horrid to say it,” she said, with a white face; “but it's
horrider to keep it in! Oh, Jack! when we were little, and used to fight
and quarrel, I never was mean--was I? I never was underhanded--was I?
I never lied--did I? And I can't lie now. Jack,” she looked hurriedly
around her, “HE wants to get hold of the land--HE thinks there's gold in
the slope and bank by the stream. He says dad was a fool to have located
his claim so high up. Jack! did you ever prospect the bank?”
A dawning of intelligence came upon Jackson. “No,” he said; “but,” he
added bitterly, “what's the use? He owns the water now,--I couldn't work
it.”
“But, Jack, IF you found the color, this would be a MINING claim! You
could claim the water right; and, as it's your land, your claim would be
first!”
Jackson was startled. “Yes, IF I found the color.”
“You WOULD find it.”
“WOULD?”
“Yes! I DID--on the sly! Yesterday morning on your slope by the stream,
when no one was up! I washed a panful and got that.” She took a piece of
tissue paper from her pocket, opened it, and shook into her little palm
three tiny pin points of gold.
“And that was your own idea, Jossy?”
“Yes!”
“Your very own?”
“Honest Injin!”
“Wish you may die?”
“True, O King!”
He opened his arms, and they mutually embraced. Then they separated,
taking hold of each other's hands solemnly, and falling back until they
were at arm's length. Then they slowly extended their arms sideways at
full length, until this action naturally brought their faces and lips
together. They did this with the utmost gravity three times, and then
embraced again, rocking on pivoted feet like a metronome. Alas! it was
no momentary inspiration. The most casual and indifferent observer
could see that it was the result of long previous practice and shameless
experience. And as such--it was a revelation and an explanation.
*****
“I always suspected that Jackson was playin' us about that red-haired
cousin,” said Rice two weeks later; “but I can't swallow that purp stuff
about her puttin' him up to that dodge about a new gold discovery on
a fresh claim, just to knock out Brown. No, sir. He found that gold in
openin' these irrigatin' trenches,--the usual nigger luck, findin' what
you're not lookin' arter.”
“Well, we can't complain, for he's offered to work it on shares with
us,” said Briggs.
“Yes--until he's ready to take in another partner.”
“Not--Brown?” said his horrified companions.
“No!--but Brown's adopted daughter--that red-haired cousin!”