The string of Peggy's sunbonnet had become untied--so had her right
shoe. These were not unusual accidents to a country girl of ten, but as
both of her hands were full she felt obliged to put down what she was
carrying. This was further complicated by the nature of her burden--a
half-fledged shrike and a baby gopher--picked up in her walk. It was
impossible to wrap them both in her apron without serious peril to one
or the other; she could not put either down without the chance of its
escaping. “It's like that dreadful riddle of the ferryman who had to
take the wolf and the sheep in his boat,” said Peggy to herself, “though
I don't believe anybody was ever so silly as to want to take a wolf
across the river.” But, looking up, she beheld the approach of Sam
Bedell, a six-foot tunnelman of the “Blue Cement Lead,” and, hailing
him, begged him to hold one of her captives. The giant, loathing the
little mouse-like ball of fur, chose the shrike. “Hold him by the feet,
for he bites AWFUL,” said Peggy, as the bird regarded Sam with the
diabolically intense frown of his species. Then, dropping the gopher
unconcernedly in her pocket, she proceeded to rearrange her toilet. The
tunnelman waited patiently until Peggy had secured the nankeen sunbonnet
around her fresh but freckled cheeks, and, with a reckless display
of yellow flannel petticoat and stockings like peppermint sticks, had
double-knotted her shoestrings viciously when he ventured to speak.
“Same old game, Peggy? Thought you'd got rather discouraged with your
'happy family,' arter that new owl o' yours had gathered 'em in.”
Peggy's cheek flushed slightly at this ungracious allusion to a former
collection of hers, which had totally disappeared one evening after the
introduction of a new member in the shape of a singularly venerable and
peaceful-looking horned owl.
“I could have tamed HIM, too,” said Peggy indignantly, “if Ned Myers,
who gave him to me, hadn't been training him to ketch things, and never
let on anything about it to me. He was a reg'lar game owl!”
“And wot are ye goin' to do with the Colonel here?” said Sam, indicating
under that gallant title the infant shrike, who, with his claws deeply
imbedded in Sam's finger, was squatting like a malignant hunchback, and
resisting his transfer to Peggy. “Won't HE make it rather lively for the
others? He looks pow'ful discontented for one so young.”
“That's his nater,” said Peggy promptly. “Jess wait till I tame him.
Ef he'd been left along o' his folks, he'd grow up like 'em. He's a
'butcher bird'--wot they call a 'nine-killer '--kills nine birds a day!
Yes! True ez you live! Sticks 'em up on thorns outside his nest, jest
like a butcher's shop, till he gets hungry. I've seen 'em!”
“And how do you kalkilate to tame him?” asked Sam.
“By being good to him and lovin' him,” said Peggy, stroking the head of
the bird with infinite gentleness.
“That means YOU'VE got to do all the butchering for him?” said the
cynical Sam.
Peggy shook her head, disdaining a verbal reply.
“Ye can't bring him up on sugar and crackers, like a Polly,” persisted
Sam.
“Ye ken do anythin' with critters, if you ain't afeerd of 'em and love
'em,” said Peggy shyly.
The tall tunnelman, looking down into the depths of Peggy's sunbonnet,
saw something in the round blue eyes and grave little mouth that made
him think so too. But here Peggy's serious little face took a shade of
darker concern as her arm went down deeper into her pocket, and her eyes
got rounder.
“It's--it's--BURRERED OUT!” she said breathlessly.
The giant leaped briskly to one side. “Hol' on,” said Peggy
abstractedly. With infinite gravity she followed, with her fingers, a
seam of her skirt down to the hem, popped them quickly under it, and
produced, with a sigh of relief, the missing gopher.
“You'll do,” said Sam, in fearful admiration. “Mebbe you'll make suthin'
out o' the Colonel too. But I never took stock in that there owl. He
was too durned self-righteous for a decent bird. Now, run along afore
anythin' else fetches loose ag'in. So long!”
He patted the top of her sunbonnet, gave a little pull to the short
brown braid that hung behind her temptingly,--which no miner was ever
known to resist,--and watched her flutter off with her spoils. He had
done so many times before, for the great, foolish heart of the Blue
Cement Ridge had gone out to Peggy Baker, the little daughter of the
blacksmith, quite early. There were others of the family, notably
two elder sisters, invincible at picnics and dances, but Peggy was as
necessary to these men as the blue jay that swung before them in the
dim woods, the squirrel that whisked across their morning path, or the
woodpecker who beat his tattoo at their midday meal from the hollow
pine above them. She was part of the nature that kept them young. Her
truancies and vagrancies concerned them not: she was a law to herself,
like the birds and squirrels. There were bearded lips to hail her
wherever she went, and a blue or red-shirted arm always stretched out in
any perilous pass or dangerous crossing.
Her peculiar tastes were an outcome of her nature, assisted by her
surroundings. Left a good deal to herself in her infancy, she made
playfellows of animated nature around her, without much reference to
selection or fitness, but always with a fearlessness that was the result
of her own observation, and unhampered by tradition or other children's
timidity. She had no superstition regarding the venom of toads, the
poison of spiders, or the ear-penetrating capacity of earwigs. She had
experiences and revelations of her own,--which she kept sacredly to
herself, as children do,--and one was in regard to a rattlesnake, partly
induced, however, by the indiscreet warning of her elders. She was
cautioned NOT to take her bread and milk into the woods, and was told
the affecting story of the little girl who was once regularly visited by
a snake that partook of HER bread and milk, and who was ultimately found
rapping the head of the snake for gorging more than his share, and not
“taking a 'poon as me do.” It is needless to say that this incautious
caution fired Peggy's adventurous spirit. SHE took a bowlful of milk to
the haunt of a “rattler” near her home, but, without making the pretense
of sharing it, generously left the whole to the reptile. After repeating
this hospitality for three or four days, she was amazed one morning on
returning to the house to find the snake--an elderly one with a dozen
rattles--devotedly following her. Alarmed, not for her own safety nor
that of her family, but for the existence of her grateful friend in
danger of the blacksmith's hammer, she took a circuitous route leading
it away. Then recalling a bit of woodland lore once communicated to her
by a charcoal-burner, she broke a spray of the white ash, and laid it
before her in the track of the rattlesnake. He stopped instantly, and
remained motionless without crossing the slight barrier. She repeated
this experiment on later occasions, until the reptile understood her.
She kept the experience to herself, but one day it was witnessed by a
tunnelman. On that day Peggy's reputation was made!
From this time henceforth the major part of Blue Cement Ridge became
serious collectors for what was known as “Peggy's menagerie,” and two
of the tunnelmen constructed a stockaded inclosure--not half a mile
from the blacksmith's cabin, but unknown to him--for the reception of
specimens. For a long time its existence was kept a secret between Peggy
and her loyal friends. Her parents, aware of her eccentric tastes only
through the introduction of such smaller creatures as lizards, toads,
and tarantulas into their house,--which usually escaped from their tin
cans and boxes and sought refuge in the family slippers,--had frowned
upon her zoological studies. Her mother found that her woodland rambles
entailed an extraordinary wear and tear of her clothing. A pinafore
reduced to ribbons by a young fox, and a straw hat half swallowed by a
mountain kid, did not seem to be a natural incident to an ordinary
walk to the schoolhouse. Her sisters thought her tastes “low,” and
her familiar association with the miners inconsistent with their own
dignity. But Peggy went regularly to school, was a fair scholar in
elementary studies (what she knew of natural history, in fact, quite
startled her teachers), and being also a teachable child, was allowed
some latitude. As for Peggy herself, she kept her own faith unshaken;
her little creed, whose shibboleth was not “to be afraid” of God's
creatures, but to “love 'em,” sustained her through reprimand, torn
clothing, and, it is to be feared, occasional bites and scratches from
the loved ones themselves.
The unsuspected contiguity of the “menagerie” to the house had its
drawbacks, and once nearly exposed her. A mountain wolf cub, brought
especially for her from the higher northern Sierras with great trouble
and expense by Jack Ryder, of the Lone Star Lead, unfortunately escaped
from the menagerie just as the child seemed to be in a fair way of
taming it. Yet it had been already familiarized enough with civilization
to induce it to stop in its flight and curiously examine the
blacksmith's shop. A shout from the blacksmith and a hurled hammer sent
it flying again, with Mr. Baker and his assistant in full pursuit. But
it quickly distanced them with its long, tireless gallop, and they were
obliged to return to the forge, lost in wonder and conjecture. For the
blacksmith had recognized it as a stranger to the locality, and as a
man of oracular pretension had a startling theory to account for its
presence. This he confided to the editor of the local paper, and the
next issue contained an editorial paragraph: “Our presage of a severe
winter in the higher Sierras, and consequent spring floods in the
valleys, has been startlingly confirmed! Mountain wolves have been
seen in Blue Cement Ridge, and our esteemed fellow citizen, Mr. Ephraim
Baker, yesterday encountered a half-starved cub entering his premises in
search of food. Mr. Baker is of the opinion that the mother of the
cub, driven down by stress of weather, was in the immediate vicinity.”
Nothing but the distress of the only responsible mother of the cub,
Peggy, and loyalty to her, kept Jack Ryder from exposing the absurdity
publicly, but for weeks the camp fires of Blue Cement Ridge shook with
the suppressed and unhallowed joy of the miners, who were in the guilty
secret.
But, fortunately for Peggy, the most favored of her cherished
possessions was not obliged to be kept secret. That one exception was
an Indian dog! This was also a gift, and had been procured with great
“difficulty” by a “packer” from an Indian encampment on the Oregon
frontier. The “difficulty” was, in plain English, that it had been
stolen from the Indians at some peril to the stealer's scalp. It was
a mongrel to all appearances, of no recognized breed or outward
significance, yet of a quality distinctly its own. It was absolutely and
totally uncivilized. Whether this was a hereditary trait, or the result
of degeneracy, no one knew. It refused to enter a house; it would not
stay in a kennel. It would not eat in public, but gorged ravenously
and stealthily in the shadows. It had the slink of a tramp, and in its
patched and mottled hide seemed to simulate the rags of a beggar. It had
the tirelessness without the affected limp of a coyote. Yet it had none
of the ferocity of barbarians. With teeth that could gnaw through the
stoutest rope and toughest lariat, it never bared them in anger. It
was cringing without being amiable or submissive; it was gentle without
being affectionate.
Yet almost insensibly it began to yield to Peggy's faith and kindness.
Gradually it seemed to single her out as the one being in this vast
white-faced and fully clothed community that it could trust. It
presently allowed her to half drag, half lead it to and fro from school,
although on the approach of a stranger it would bite through the rope
or frantically endeavor to efface itself in Peggy's petticoats. It was
trying, even to the child's sweet gravity, to face the ridicule excited
by its appearance on the road; and its habit of carrying its tail
between its legs--at such an inflexible curve that, on the authority
of Sam Bedell, a misstep caused it to “turn a back somersault”--was
painfully disconcerting. But Peggy endured this, as she did the greater
dangers of the High Street in the settlement, where she had often, at
her own risk, absolutely to drag the dazed and bewildered creature from
under the wheels of carts and the heels of horses. But this shyness
wore off--or rather was eventually lost in the dog's complete and utter
absorption in Peggy. His limited intelligence and imperfect perceptions
were excited for her alone. His singularly keen scent detected her
wherever or how remote she might be. Her passage along a “blind trail,”
her deviations from the school path, her more distant excursions,
were all mysteriously known to him. It seemed as if his senses were
concentrated in this one faculty. No matter how unexpected or unfamiliar
the itinerary, “Lo, the poor Indian”--as the men had nicknamed him (in
possible allusion to his “untutored mind”)--always arrived promptly and
silently.
It was to this singular faculty that Peggy owed one of her strangest
experiences. One Saturday afternoon she was returning from an errand to
the village when she was startled by the appearance of Lo in her path.
For the reason already given, she no longer took him with her to these
active haunts of civilization, but had taught him on such occasions to
remain as a guard outside the stockade which contained her treasures.
After reading him a severe lecture on this flagrant abandonment of his
trust, enforced with great seriousness and an admonitory forefinger,
she was concerned to see that the animal appeared less agitated by her
reproof than by some other disturbance. He ran ahead of her, instead
of at her heels, as was his usual custom, and barked--a thing he rarely
did. Presently she thought she discovered the cause of this in the
appearance from the wood of a dozen men armed with guns. They seemed to
be strangers, but among them she recognized the deputy sheriff of the
settlement. The leader noticed her, and, after a word or two with the
others, the deputy approached her.
“You and Lo had better be scooting home by the highroad, outer this--or
ye might get hurt,” he said, half playfully, half seriously.
Peggy looked fearlessly at the men and their guns.
“Look ez ef you was huntin'?” she said curiously.
“We are!” said the leader.
“Wot you huntin'?”
The deputy glanced at the others. “B'ar!” he replied.
“Ba'r!” repeated the child with the quick resentment which a palpable
falsehood always provoked in her. “There ain't no b'ar in ten miles! See
yourself huntin' b'ar! Ho!”
The man laughed. “Never you mind, missy,” said the deputy, “you trot
along!” He laid his hand very gently on her head, faced her sunbonnet
towards the near highway, gave the usual parting pull to her brown
pigtail, added, “Make a bee-line home,” and turned away.
Lo uttered the first growl known in his history. Whereat Peggy said,
with lofty forbearance, “Serve you jest right ef I set my dog on you.”
But force is no argument, and Peggy felt this truth even of herself and
Lo. So she trotted away. Nevertheless, Lo showed signs of hesitation.
After a few moments Peggy herself hesitated and looked back. The men
had spread out under the trees, and were already lost in the woods. But
there was more than one trail through it, and Peggy knew it.
And here an alarming occurrence startled her. A curiously striped brown
and white squirrel whisked past her and ran up a tree. Peggy's round
eyes became rounder. There was but one squirrel of that kind in all the
length and breadth of Blue Cement Ridge, and that was in the menagerie!
Even as she looked it vanished. Peggy faced about and ran back to the
road in the direction of the stockade, Lo bounding before her. But
another surprise awaited her. There was the clutter of short wings
under the branches, and the sunlight flashed upon the iris throat of a
wood-duck as it swung out of sight past her. But in this single
glance Peggy recognized one of the latest and most precious of her
acquisitions. There was no mistake now! With a despairing little cry to
Lo, “The menagerie's broke loose!” she ran like the wind towards it. She
cared no longer for the mandate of the men; the trail she had taken was
out of their sight; they were proceeding so slowly and cautiously that
she and Lo quickly distanced them in the same direction. She would have
yet time to reach the stockade and secure what was left of her treasures
before they came up and drove her away. Yet she had to make a long
circuit to avoid the blacksmith's shop and cabin, before she saw the
stockade, lifting its four-foot walls around an inclosure a dozen feet
square, in the midst of a manzanita thicket. But she could see also
broken coops, pens, cages, and boxes lying before it, and stopped once,
even in her grief and indignation, to pick up a ruby-throated lizard,
one of its late inmates that had stopped in the trail, stiffened to
stone at her approach. The next moment she was before the roofless
walls, and then stopped, stiffened like the lizard. For out of that
peaceful ruin which had once held the wild and untamed vagabonds of
earth and sky, arose a type of savagery and barbarism the child had
never before looked upon,--the head and shoulders of a hunted, desperate
man!
His head was bare, and his hair matted with sweat over his forehead; his
face was unshorn, and the black roots of his beard showed against the
deadly pallor of his skin, except where it was scratched by thorns,
or where the red spots over his cheek bones made his cheeks look as
if painted. His eyes were as insanely bright, he panted as quickly, he
showed his white teeth as perpetually, his movements were as convulsive,
as those captured animals she had known. Yet he did not attempt to fly,
and it was only when, with a sudden effort and groan of pain, he half
lifted himself above the stockade, that she saw that his leg, bandaged
with his cravat and handkerchief, stained a dull red, dragged helplessly
beneath him. He stared at her vacantly for a moment, and then looked
hurriedly into the wood behind her.
The child was more interested than frightened, and more curious than
either. She had grasped the situation at a glance. It was the hunted and
the hunters. Suddenly he started and reached for his rifle, which he had
apparently set down outside when he climbed into the stockade. He had
just caught sight of a figure emerging from the wood at a distance. But
the weapon was out of his reach.
“Hand me that gun!” he said roughly.
But Peggy did not stir. The figure came more plainly and quite
unconsciously into full view, an easy shot at that distance.
The man uttered a horrible curse, and turned a threatening face on
the child. But Peggy had seen something like that in animals SHE had
captured. She only said gravely,--
“Ef you shoot that gun you'll bring 'em all down on you!”
“All?” he demanded.
“Yes! a dozen folks with guns like yours,” said Peggy. “You jest crouch
down and lie low. Don't move! Watch me.”
The man dropped below the stockade. Peggy ran swiftly towards the
unsuspecting figure, evidently the leader of the party, but deviated
slightly to snatch a tiny spray from a white-ash tree. She never knew
that in that brief interval the wounded man, after a supreme effort, had
possessed himself of his weapon, and for a moment had covered HER with
its deadly muzzle. She ran on fearlessly until she saw that she had
attracted the attention of the leader, when she stopped and began to
wave the white-ash wand before her. The leader halted, conferred with
some one behind him, who proved to be the deputy sheriff. Stepping out
he advanced towards Peggy, and called sharply,
“I told you to get out of this! Come, be quick!”
“You'd better get out yourself,” said Peggy, waving her ash spray, “and
quicker, too.”
The deputy stopped, staring at the spray. “Wot's up?”
“Rattlers.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere round ye--a reg'lar nest of 'em! That's your way round!” She
pointed to the right, and again began beating the underbrush with her
wand. The men had, meantime, huddled together in consultation. It was
evident that the story of Peggy and her influence on rattlesnakes was
well known, and, in all probability, exaggerated. After a pause, the
whole party filed off to the right, making a long circuit of the unseen
stockade, and were presently lost in the distance. Peggy ran back to the
fugitive. The fire of savagery and desperation in his eyes had gone out,
but had been succeeded by a glazing film of faintness.
“Can you--get me--some water?” he whispered.
The stockade was near a spring,--a necessity for the menagerie. Peggy
brought him water in a dipper. She sighed a little; her “butcher
bird”--now lost forever--had been the last to drink from it!
The water seemed to revive him. “The rattlesnakes scared the cowards,”
he said, with an attempt to smile. “Were there many rattlers?”
“There wasn't ANY,” said Peggy, a little spitefully, “'cept YOU--a
two-legged rattler!”
The rascal grinned at the compliment.
“ONE-legged, you mean,” he said, indicating his helpless limb.
Peggy's heart relented slightly. “Wot you goin' to do now?” she said.
“You can't stay on THERE, you know. It b'longs to ME!” She was generous,
but practical.
“Were those things I fired out yours?”
“Yes.”
“Mighty rough of me.”
Peggy was slightly softened. “Kin you walk?”
“No.”
“Kin you crawl?”
“Not as far as a rattler.”
“Ez far ez that clearin'?”
“Yes.”
“There's a hoss tethered out in that clearin'. I kin shift him to this
end.”
“You're white all through,” said the man gravely.
Peggy ran off to the clearing. The horse belonged to Sam Bedell, but
he had given Peggy permission to ride it whenever she wished. This was
equivalent, in Peggy's mind, to a permission to PLACE him where she
wished. She consequently led him to a point nearest the stockade, and,
thoughtfully, close beside a stump. But this took some time, and when
she arrived she found the fugitive already there, very thin and weak,
but still smiling.
“Ye kin turn him loose when you get through with him; he'll find his way
back,” said Peggy. “Now I must go.”
Without again looking at the man, she ran back to the stockade. Then she
paused until she heard the sound of hoofs crossing the highway in the
opposite direction from which the pursuers had crossed, and knew that
the fugitive had got away. Then she took the astonished and still
motionless lizard from her pocket, and proceeded to restore the broken
coops and cages to the empty stockade.
But she never reconstructed her menagerie nor renewed her collection.
People said she had tired of her whim, and that really she was getting
too old for such things. Perhaps she was. But she never got old enough
to reveal her story of the last wild animal she had tamed by kindness.
Nor was she quite sure of it herself, until a few years afterwards on
Commencement Day at a boarding-school at San Jose, when they pointed out
to her one of the most respectable trustees. But they said he was once
a gambler, who had shot a man with whom he had quarreled, and was nearly
caught and lynched by a Vigilance Committee.