PART I

Produced by Donald Lainson

FROM SAND HILL TO PINE

By Bret Harte

CONTENTS

FROM SAND HILL TO PINE

A NIECE OF SNAPSHOT HARRY'S

A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS

A BELLE OF CANADA CITY

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FONDA

A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS

MR. BILSON'S HOUSEKEEPER

FROM SAND HILL TO PINE

A NIECE OF SNAPSHOT HARRY'S

I

There was a slight jarring though the whole frame of the coach, a

grinding and hissing from the brakes, and then a sudden jolt as the

vehicle ran upon and recoiled from the taut pole-straps of the now

arrested horses. The murmur of a voice in the road was heard, followed

by the impatient accents of Yuba Bill, the driver.

“Wha-a-t? Speak up, can't ye?”

Here the voice uttered something in a louder key, but equally

unintelligible to the now interested and fully awakened passengers.

One of them dropped the window nearest him and looked out. He could see

the faint glistening of a rain-washed lantern near the wheelers' heads,

mingling with the stronger coach lights, and the glow of a distant open

cabin door through the leaves and branches of the roadside. The sound

of falling rain on the roof, a soft swaying of wind-tossed trees, and an

impatient movement on the box-seat were all they heard. Then Yuba Bill's

voice rose again, apparently in answer to the other.

“Why, that's half a mile away!”

“Yes, but ye might have dropped onto it in the dark, and it's all on the

down grade,” responded the strange voice more audibly.

The passengers were now thoroughly aroused.

“What's up, Ned?” asked the one at the window of the nearest of two

figures that had descended from the box.

“Tree fallen across the road,” said Ned, the expressman, briefly.

“I don't see no tree,” responded the passenger, leaning out of the

window towards the obscurity ahead.

“Now, that's onfortnit!” said Yuba Bill grimly; “but ef any gentleman

will only lend him an opery glass, mebbe he can see round the curve and

over the other side o' the hill where it is. Now, then,” addressing the

stranger with the lantern, “bring along your axes, can't ye?”

“Here's one, Bill,” said an officious outside passenger, producing

the instrument he had taken from its strap in the boot. It was the

“regulation” axe, beautifully shaped, highly polished, and utterly

ineffective, as Bill well knew.

“We ain't cuttin' no kindlin's,” he said scornfully; then he added

brusquely to the stranger: “Fetch out your biggest wood axe--you've got

one, ye know--and look sharp.”

“I don't think Bill need be so d----d rough with the stranger,

considering he's saved the coach a very bad smash,” suggested a

reflective young journalist in the next seat. “He talks as if the man

was responsible.”

“He ain't quite sure if that isn't the fact,” said the express

messenger, in a lowered voice.

“Why? What do you mean?” clamored the others excitedly.

“Well--THIS is about the spot where the up coach was robbed six months

ago,” returned the messenger.

“Dear me!” said the lady in the back seat, rising with a half hysterical

laugh, “hadn't we better get out before they come?”

“There is not the slightest danger, madam,” said a quiet, observant man,

who had scarcely spoken before, “or the expressman would not have told

us; nor would he, I fancy, have left his post beside the treasure on the

box.”

The slight sarcasm implied in this was enough to redden the expressman's

cheek in the light of the coach lamp which Yuba Bill had just unshipped

and brought to the window. He would have made some tart rejoinder, but

was prevented by Yuba Bill addressing the passengers: “Ye'll have to put

up with ONE light, I reckon, until we've got this job finished.”

“How long will it last, Bill?” asked the man nearest the window.

“Well,” said Bill, with a contemptuous glance at the elegant coach axe

he was carrying in his hand, “considerin' these purty first-class highly

expensive hash choppers that the kempany furnishes us, I reckon it may

take an hour.”

“But is there no place where we can wait?” asked the lady anxiously. “I

see a light in that house yonder.”

“Ye might try it, though the kempany, as a rule, ain't in the habit

o' makin' social calls there,” returned Bill, with a certain grim

significance. Then, turning to some outside passengers, he added, “Now,

then! them ez is goin' to help me tackle that tree, trot down! I

reckon that blitherin' idiot” (the stranger with the lantern, who had

disappeared) “will have sense enough to fetch us some ropes with his

darned axe.”

The passengers thus addressed, apparently miners and workingmen, good

humoredly descended, all except one, who seemed disinclined to leave the

much coveted seat on the box beside the driver.

“I'll look after your places and keep my own,” he said, with a laugh,

as the others followed Bill through the dripping rain. When they had

disappeared, the young journalist turned to the lady.

“If you would really like to go to that house, I will gladly accompany

you.” It was possible that in addition to his youthful chivalry there

was a little youthful resentment of Yuba Bill's domineering prejudices

in his attitude. However, the quiet, observant passenger lifted a look

of approval to him, and added, in his previous level, half contemptuous

tone:--

“You'll be quite as well there as here, madam, and there is certainly no

reason for your stopping in the coach when the driver chooses to leave

it.”

The passengers looked at each other. The stranger spoke with authority,

and Bill had certainly been a little arbitrary!

“I'll go too,” said the passenger by the window. “And you'll come, won't

you, Ned?” he added to the express messenger. The young man hesitated;

he was recently appointed, and as yet fresh to the business--but he

was not to be taught his duty by an officious stranger! He resented the

interference youthfully by doing the very thing he would have preferred

NOT to do, and with assumed carelessness--yet feeling in his pocket to

assure himself that the key of the treasure compartment was safe--turned

to follow them.

“Won't YOU come too?” said the journalist, politely addressing the

cynical passenger.

“No, I thank you! I'll take charge of the coach,” was the smiling

rejoinder, as he settled himself more comfortably in his seat.

The little procession moved away in silence. Oddly enough, no one,

except the lady, really cared to go, and two--the expressman and

journalist--would have preferred to remain on the coach. But the

national instinct of questioning any purely arbitrary authority probably

was a sufficient impulse. As they neared the opened door of what

appeared to be a four-roomed, unpainted, redwood boarded cabin, the

passenger who had occupied the seat near the window said,--

“I'll go first and sample the shanty.”

He was not, however, so far in advance of them but that the others could

hear quite distinctly his offhand introduction of their party on the

threshold, and the somewhat lukewarm response of the inmates. “We

thought we'd just drop in and be sociable until the coach was ready to

start again,” he continued, as the other passengers entered. “This yer

gentleman is Ned Brice, Adams & Co.'s expressman; this yer is Frank

Frenshaw, editor of the 'Mountain Banner;' this yer's a lady, so it

ain't necessary to give HER name, I reckon--even if we knowed it! Mine's

Sam Hexshill, of Hexshill & Dobbs's Flour Mills, of Stockton, whar,

ef you ever come that way, I'll be happy to return the compliment and

hospitality.”

The room they had entered had little of comfort and brightness in it

except the fire of pine logs which roared and crackled in the adobe

chimney. The air would have been too warm but for the strong west wind

and rain which entered the open door freely. There was no other light

than the fire, and its tremulous and ever-changing brilliancy gave a

spasmodic mobility to the faces of those turned towards it, or threw

into stronger shadow the features that were turned away. Yet, by this

uncertain light, they could see the figures of a man and two women. The

man rose and, with a certain apathetic gesture that seemed to partake

more of weariness and long suffering than positive discourtesy, tendered

seats on chairs, boxes, and even logs to the self-invited guests. The

stage party were surprised to see that this man was the stranger who had

held the lantern in the road.

“Ah! then you didn't go with Bill to help clear the road?” said the

expressman surprisedly.

The man slowly drew up his tall, shambling figure before the fire, and

then facing them, with his hands behind him, as slowly lowered himself

again as if to bring his speech to the level of his hearers and give a

lazier and more deliberate effect to his long-drawn utterance.

“Well--no!” he said slowly.

“I--didn't--go--with--no--Bill--to--help--clear--the road!

I--don't--reckon--TO go--with--no--Bill--to--clear--ANY road! I've just

whittled this thing down to a pint, and it's this--I ain't no stage

kempany's nigger! So far as turnin' out and warnin' 'em agin goin' to

smash over a fallen tree, and slap down into the canyon with a passel of

innercent passengers, I'm that much a white man, but I ain't no NIGGER

to work clearing things away for 'em, nor I ain't no scrub to work

beside 'em.” He slowly straightened himself up again, and, with his

former apathetic air, looking down upon one of the women who was setting

a coffee-pot on the coals, added, “But I reckon my old woman here kin

give you some coffee and whiskey--of you keer for it.”

Unfortunately the young expressman was more loyal to Bill than

diplomatic. “If Bill's a little rough,” he said, with a heightened

color, “perhaps he has some excuse for it. You forget it's only six

months ago that this coach was 'held up' not a hundred yards from this

spot.”

The woman with the coffee-pot here faced about, stood up, and, either

from design or some odd coincidence, fell into the same dogged attitude

that her husband had previously taken, except that she rested her hands

on her hips. She was prematurely aged, like many of her class, and her

black, snake-like locks, twisting loose from her comb as she lifted her

head, showed threads of white against the firelight. Then with slow and

implacable deliberation she said:

“We 'forget'! Well! not much, sonny! We ain't forgot it, and we ain't

goin' to forget it, neither! We ain't bin likely to forget it for

any time the last six months. What with visitations from the county

constables, snoopin's round from 'Frisco detectives, droppin's-in from

newspaper men, and yawpin's and starin's from tramps and strangers on

the road--we haven't had a chance to disremember MUCH! And when at last

Hiram tackled the head stage agent at Marysville, and allowed that this

yer pesterin' and persecutin' had got ter stop--what did that yer head

agent tell him? Told him to 'shet his head,' and be thankful that his

'thievin' old shanty wasn't burnt down around his ears!' Forget that six

months ago the coach was held up near here? Not much, sonny--not much!”

The situation was embarrassing to the guests, as ordinary politeness

called for some expression of sympathy with their gloomy hostess, and

yet a selfish instinct of humanity warned them that there must be some

foundation for this general distrust of the public. The journalist was

troubled in his conscience; the expressman took refuge in an official

reticence; the lady coughed slightly, and drew nearer to the fire with

a vague but safe compliment to its brightness and comfort. It devolved

upon Mr. Heckshill, who felt the responsibility of his late airy

introduction of the party, to boldly keep up his role, with an equally

non-committal, light-hearted philosophy.

“Well, ma'am,” he said, addressing his hostess, “it's a queer world,

and no man's got sabe enough to say what's the rights and wrongs o'

anything. Some folks believe one thing and act upon it, and other folks

think differently and act upon THAT! The only thing ye kin safely say is

that THINGS IS EZ THEY BE! My rule here and at the mill is jest to take

things ez I find 'em!”

It occurred to the journalist that Mr. Heckshill had the reputation,

in his earlier career, of “taking” such things as unoccupied lands

and timber “as he found them,” without much reference to their actual

owners. Apparently he was acting upon the same principle now, as he

reached for the demijohn of whiskey with the ingenuous pleasantry, “Did

somebody say whiskey, or did I dream it?”

But this did not satisfy Frenshaw. “I suppose,” he said, ignoring

Heckshill's diplomatic philosophy, “that you may have been the victim

of some misunderstanding or some unfortunate coincidence. Perhaps the

company may have confounded you with your neighbors, who are believed

to be friendly to the gang; or you may have made some injudicious

acquaintances. Perhaps”--

He was stopped by a suppressed but not unmusical giggle, which appeared

to come from the woman in the corner who had not yet spoken, and whose

face and figure in the shadow he had previously overlooked. But he could

now see that her outline was slim and graceful, and the contour of her

head charming,--facts that had evidently not escaped the observation of

the expressman and Mr. Heckshill, and that might have accounted for

the cautious reticence of the one and the comfortable moralizing of the

other.

The old woman cast an uneasy glance on the fair giggler, but replied to

Frenshaw:

“That's it! 'injerdishus acquaintances!' But just because we might

happen to have friends, or even be sorter related to folks in another

line o' business that ain't none o' ours, the kempany hain't no call to

persecute US for it! S'pose we do happen to know some one like”--

“Spit it out, aunty, now you've started in! I don't mind,” said the

fair giggler, now apparently casting off all restraint in an outburst of

laughter.

“Well,” said the old woman, with dogged desperation, “suppose, then,

that that young girl thar is the niece of Snapshot Harry, who stopped

the coach the last time”--

“And ain't ashamed of it, either!” interrupted the young girl, rising

and disclosing in the firelight an audacious but wonderfully pretty

face; “and supposing he IS my uncle, that ain't any cause for their

bedevilin' my poor old cousins Hiram and Sophy thar!” For all the

indignation of her words, her little white teeth flashed mischievously

in the dancing light, as if she rather enjoyed the embarrassment of

her audience, not excluding her own relatives. Evidently cousin Sophy

thought so too.

“It's all very well for you to laugh, Flo, you limb!” she retorted

querulously, yet with an admiring glance at the girl, “for ye know thar

ain't a man dare touch ye even with a word; but it's mighty hard on me

and Hiram, all the same.”

“Never you mind, Sophy dear,” said the girl, placing her hand half

affectionately, half humorously on the old woman's shoulder; “mebbe

I won't always be a discredit and a bother to you. Jest you hold

your hosses, and wait until uncle Harry 'holds up' the next Pioneer

Coach,”--the dancing devil in her eyes glanced as if accidentally on

the young expressman,--“and he'll make a big enough pile to send me to

Europe, and you'll be quit o' me.”

The embarrassment, suspiciousness, and uneasiness of the coach party

here found relief in a half hysteric explosion of laughter, in which

even the dogged Hiram and Sophy joined. It seemed as impossible to

withstand the girl's invincible audacity as her beauty. She was quick to

perceive her advantage, and, with a responsive laugh and a picturesque

gesture of invitation, said:--

“Now that's all settled, ye'd better waltz in and have your whiskey and

coffee afore the stage starts. Ye kin comfort yourselves that it ain't

stolen or pizoned, even if it is served up to ye by Snapshot Harry's

niece!” With another easy gesture she swung the demijohn over her arm,

and, offering a tin cup to each of the men, filled them in turn.

The ice thus broken, or perhaps thus perilously skated over, the

passengers were as profuse in their thanks and apologies as they had

been constrained and artificial before. Heckshill and Frenshaw vied with

each other for a glance from the audacious Flo. If their compliments

partook of an extravagance that was at times ironical, the girl was

evidently not deceived by it, but replied in kind. Only the expressman

who seemed to have fallen under the spell of her audacious glances, was

uneasy at the license of the others, yet himself dumb towards her. The

lady discreetly drew nearer to the fire, the old woman, and her coffee;

Hiram subsided into his apathetic attitude by the fire.

A shout from the road at last proclaimed the return of Yuba Bill and his

helpers. It had the singular effect of startling the party into a vague

and uneasy consciousness of indiscretion, as if it had been the voice

of the outer world of law and order, and their manner again became

constrained. The leave-taking was hurried and perfunctory; the

diplomatic Heckshill again lapsed into glittering generalities about

“the best of friends parting.” Only the expressman lingered for a moment

on the doorstep in the light of the fire and the girl's dancing eyes.

“I hope,” he stammered, with a very youthful blush, “to come the next

time--with--with--a better introduction.”

“Uncle Harry's,” she said, with a quick laugh and a mock curtsey, as she

turned away.

Once out of hearing, the party broke into hurried comment and criticism

of the scene they had just witnessed, and particularly of the fair

actress who had played so important a part, averring their emphatic

intention of wresting the facts from Yuba Bill at once, and

cross-examining him closely; but oddly enough, reaching the coach and

that redoubted individual, no one seemed to care to take the initiative,

and they all scrambled hurriedly to their seats without a word. How far

Yuba Bill's irritability and imperious haste contributed to this, or a

fear that he might in turn catechise them kept them silent, no one

knew. The cynically observant passenger was not there; he and the sole

occupant of the box-seat, they were told, had joined the clearing party

some moments before, and would be picked up by Yuba Bill later on.

Five minutes after Bill had gathered up the reins, they reached the

scene of obstruction. The great pine-tree which had fallen from the

steep bank above and stretched across the road had been partly lopped

of its branches, divided in two lengths, which were now rolled to either

side of the track, leaving barely space for the coach to pass. The

huge vehicle “slowed up” as Yuba Bill skillfully guided his six horses

through this narrow alley, whose tassels of pine, glistening with wet,

brushed the panels and sides of the coach, and effectually excluded any

view from its windows. Seen from the coach top, the horses appeared to

be cleaving their way through a dark, shining olive sea, that parted

before and closed behind them, as they slowly passed. The leaders were

just emerging from it, and Bill was gathering up his slackened reins,

when a peremptory voice called, “Halt!” At the same moment the coach

lights flashed upon a masked and motionless horseman in the road. Bill

made an impulsive reach for his whip, but in the same instant checked

himself, reined in his horses with a suppressed oath, and sat perfectly

rigid. Not so the expressman, who caught up his rifle, but it was

arrested by Bill's arm, and his voice in his ear!

“Too late!--we're covered!--don't be a d----d fool!”

The inside passengers, still encompassed by obscurity, knew only that

the stage had stopped. The “outsiders” knew, by experience, that they

were covered by unseen guns in the wayside branches, and scarcely moved.

“I didn't think it was the square thing to stop you, Bill, till you'd

got through your work,” said a masterful but not unpleasant voice, “and

if you'll just hand down the express box, I'll pass you and the rest of

your load through free. But as we're both in a hurry, you'd better look

lively about it.”

“Hand it down,” said Bill gruffly to the expressman.

The expressman turned with a white check but blazing eyes to the

compartment below his seat. He lingered, apparently in some difficulty

with the lock of the compartment, but finally brought out the box and

handed it to another armed and masked figure that appeared mysteriously

from the branches beside the wheels.

“Thank you!” said the voice; “you can slide on now.”

“And thank you for nothing,” said Bill, gathering up his reins. “It's

the first time any of your kind had to throw down a tree to hold me up!”

“You're lying, Bill!--though you don't know it,” said the voice

cheerfully. “Far from throwing down a tree to stop you, it was I sent

word along the road to warn you from crashing down upon it, and sending

you and your load to h-ll before your time! Drive on!”

The angry Bill waited for no second comment, but laying his whip over

the backs of his team, drove furiously forward. So rapidly had the whole

scene passed that the inside passengers knew nothing of it, and even

those on the top of the coach roused from their stupor and inglorious

inaction only to cling desperately to the terribly swaying coach as it

thundered down the grade and try to keep their equilibrium. Yet,

furious as was their speed, Yuba Bill could not help noticing that the

expressman from time to time cast a hurried glance behind him. Bill knew

that the young man had shown readiness and nerve in the attack, although

both were hopeless; yet he was so much concerned at his set white face

and compressed lips that when, at the end of three miles' unabated

speed, they galloped up to the first station, he seized the young man

by the arm, and, as the clamor of the news they had brought rose around

them, dragged him past the wondering crowd, caught a decanter from the

bar, and, opening the door of a side room, pushed him into it and closed

the door behind them.

“Look yar, Brice! Stop it! Quit it right thar!” he said emphatically,

laying his large hand on the young fellow's shoulder. “Be a man! You've

shown you are one, green ez you are, for you had the sand in ye--the

clear grit to-night, yet you'd have been a dead man now, if I hadn't

stopped ye! Man! you had no show from the beginning! You've done your

level best to save your treasure, and I'm your witness to the kempany,

and proud of it, too! So shet your head and--and,” pouring out a glass

of whiskey, “swaller that!”

But Brice waved him aside with burning eyes and dry lips.

“You don't know it all, Bill!” he said, with a half choked voice.

“All what?”

“Swear that you'll keep it a secret,” he said feverishly, gripping

Bill's arm in turn, “and I'll tell you.”

“Go on!”

“THE COACH WAS ROBBED BEFORE THAT!”

“Wot yer say?” ejaculated Bill.

“The treasure--a packet of greenbacks--had been taken from the box

before the gang stopped us!”

“The h-ll, you say!”

“Listen! When you told me to hand down the box, I had an idea--a d----d

fool one, perhaps--of taking that package out and jumping from the coach

with it. I knew they would fire at me only; I might get away, but if

they killed me, I'd have done only my duty, and nobody else would have

got hurt. But when I got to the box I found that the lock had been

forced and the money was gone. I managed to snap the lock again before

I handed it down. I thought they might discover it at once and chase us,

but they didn't.”

“And then thar war no greenbacks in the box that they took?” gasped

Bill, with staring eyes.

“No!”

Bill raised his hand in the air as if in solemn adjuration, and then

brought it down on his knee, doubling up in a fit of uncontrollable but

perfectly noiseless laughter. “Oh, Lord!” he gasped, “hol' me afore I

bust right open! Hush,” he went on, with a jerk of his fingers towards

the next room, “not a word o' this to any one! It's too much to keep,

I know; it's nearly killing me! but we must swaller it ourselves! Oh,

Jerusalem the Golden! Oh, Brice! Think o' that face o' Snapshot Harry's

ez he opened that treasure box afore his gang in the brush! And he

allers so keen and so easy and so cock sure! Created snakes! I'd go

through this every trip for one sight of him as he just riz up from that

box and cussed!” He again shook with inward convulsions till his face

grew purple, and even the red came back to the younger man's cheek.

“But this don't bring the money back, Bill,” said Brice gloomily.

Yuba Bill swallowed the glass of whiskey at a gulp, wiped his mouth and

eyes, smothered a second explosion, and then gravely confronted Brice.

“When do you think it was taken, and how?”

“It must have been taken when I left the coach on the road and went

over to that settler's cabin,” said Brice bitterly. “Yet I believed

everything was safe, and I left two men--both passengers--one inside and

one on the box, that man who sat the other side of you.”

“Jee whillikins!” ejaculated Bill, with his hand to his forehead, “the

men I clean forgot to pick up in the road, and now I reckon they never

intended to be picked up, either.”

“No doubt a part of the gang,” said Brice, with increased bitterness; “I

see it all now.”

“No!” said Bill decisively, “that ain't Snapshot Harry's style; he's a

clean fighter, with no underhand tricks. And I don't believe he threw

down that tree, either. Look yer, sonny!” he added, suddenly laying his

hand on Brice's shoulder, “a hundred to one that that was the work of

a couple o' d----d sneaks or traitors in that gang who kem along as

passengers. I never took any stock in that coyote who paid extra for his

box-seat.”

Brice knew that Bill never looked kindly on any passenger who, by

bribing the ticket agent, secured this favorite seat, which Bill felt

was due to his personal friends and was in his own selection. He only

returned gloomily:--

“I don't see what difference it makes to us which robber got the money.

“Ye don't,” said Bill, raising his head, with a sudden twinkle in his

eyes. “Then ye don't know Snapshot Harry. Do ye suppose he's goin' to

sit down and twiddle his thumbs with that skin game played on him? No,

sir,” he continued, with a thoughtful deliberation, drawing his fingers

slowly through his long beard, “he spotted it--and smelt out the whole

trick ez soon ez he opened that box, and that's why he didn't foller us!

He'll hunt those sneak thieves into h-ll but what he'll get 'em, and,”

he went on still more slowly, “by the livin' hokey! I reckon, sonny,

that's jest how ye'll get your chance to chip in!”

“I don't understand,” said Brice impatiently.

“Well,” said Bill, with more provoking slowness, as if he were communing

with himself rather than Brice, “Harry's mighty proud and high toned,

and to be given away like this has cut down into his heart, you bet. It

ain't the money he's thinkin' of; it's this split in the gang--the loss

of his power ez boss, ye see--and ef he could get hold o' them chaps

he'd let the money slide ez long ez they didn't get it. So you've got a

detective on your side that's worth the whole police force of Californy!

Ye never heard anything about Snapshot Harry, did ye?” asked Bill

carelessly, raising his eyes to Brice's eager face.

The young man flushed slightly. “Very little,” he said. At the same time

a vision of the pretty girl in the settler's cabin flashed upon him with

a new significance.

“He's more than half white, in some ways,” said Bill thoughtfully, “and

they say he lives somewhere about here in a cabin in the bush, with a

crippled sister and her darter, who both swear by him. It mightn't be

hard to find him--ef a man was dead set on it.”

Brice faced about with determined eyes. “I'LL DO IT,” he said quietly.

“Ye might,” said Bill, still more deliberately stroking his beard,

“mention my name, ef ye ever get to see him.”

“Your name,” ejaculated the astonished Brice.

“My name,” repeated Bill calmly. “He knows it's my bounden duty to kill

him ef I get the chance, and I know that he'd plug me full o' holes in

a minit ef thar war a necessity for it. But in these yer affairs, sonny,

it seems to be the understood thing by the kempany that I'm to keep

fiery young squirts like you, and chuckle-headed passengers like

them”--jerking his thumb towards the other room--“from gettin'

themselves killed by their rashness. So ontil the kempany fill the top

o' that coach with men who ain't got any business to do BUT fightin'

other men who ain't got any other business to do BUT to fight them--the

odds are agin us! Harry has always acted square to me--that's how I

know he ain't in this sneak-thief business, and why he didn't foller us,

suspectin' suthin', and I've always acted square to him. All the same,

I'd like ter hev seen his face when that box was opened! Lordy!” Here

Bill again collapsed in his silent paroxysm of mirth. “Ye might tell him

how I laughed!”

“I would hardly do that, Bill,” said the young man, smiling in spite of

himself. “But you've given me an idea, and I'll work it out.”

Bill glanced at the young fellow's kindling eyes and flushing cheek, and

nodded. “Well, rastle with that idea later on, sonny. I'll fix you all

right in my report to the kempany, but the rest you must work alone.

I've started out the usual posse, circus-ridin' down the road after

Harry. He'd be a rough customer to meet just now,” continued Bill, with

a chuckle, “ef thar was the ghost of a chance o' them comin' up with

him, for him and his gang is scattered miles away by this.” He paused,

tossed off another glass of whiskey, wiped his mouth, and saying

to Brice, with a wink, “It's about time to go and comfort them thar

passengers,” led the way through the crowded barroom into the stage

office.

The spectacle of Bill's humorously satisfied face and Brice's bright

eyes and heightened color was singularly effective. The “inside”

passengers, who had experienced neither the excitement nor the danger of

the robbery, yet had been obliged to listen to the hairbreadth escapes

of the others, pooh-poohed the whole affair, and even the “outsides”

themselves were at last convinced that the robbery was a slight one,

with little or no loss to the company. The clamor subsided almost as

suddenly as it had arisen; the wiser passengers fashioned their attitude

on the sang-froid of Yuba Bill, and the whole coach load presently

rolled away as complacently as if nothing had happened.

II

The robbery furnished the usual amount of copy for the local press.

There was the inevitable compliment to Yuba Bill for his well-known

coolness; the conduct of the young expressman, “who, though new to the

service, displayed an intrepidity that only succumbed to numbers,” was

highly commended, and even the passengers received their meed of

praise, not forgetting the lady, “who accepted the incident with the

light-hearted pleasantry characteristic of the Californian woman.” There

was the usual allusion to the necessity of a Vigilance Committee to

cope with this “organized lawlessness” but it is to be feared that the

readers of “The Red Dog Clarion,” however ready to lynch a horse thief,

were of the opinion that rich stage express companies were quite able to

take care of their own property.

It was with full cognizance of these facts and their uselessness to him

that the next morning Mr. Ned Brice turned from the road where the

coach had just halted on the previous night and approached the settler's

cabin. If a little less sanguine than he was in Yuba Bill's presence,

he was still doggedly inflexible in his design, whatever it might have

been, for he had not revealed it even to Yuba Bill. It was his own; it

was probably crude and youthful in its directness, but for that reason

it was probably more convincing than the vacillations of older counsel.

He paused a moment at the closed door, conscious, however, of some

hurried movement within which signified that his approach had been

observed. The door was opened, and disclosed only the old woman. The

same dogged expression was on her face as when he had last seen it,

with the addition of querulous expectancy. In reply to his polite

“Good-morning,” she abruptly faced him with her hands still on the door.

“Ye kin stop right there! Ef yer want ter make any talk about this yar

robbery, ye might ez well skedaddle to oncet, for we ain't 'takin' any'

to-day!”

“I have no wish to talk about the robbery,” said Brice quietly, “and as

far as I can prevent it, you will not be troubled by any questions. If

you doubt my word or the intentions of the company, perhaps you will

kindly read that.”

He drew from his pocket a still damp copy of “The Red Dog Clarion” and

pointed to a paragraph.

“Wot's that?” she said querulously, feeling for her spectacles.

“Shall I read it?”

“Go on.”

He read it slowly aloud. I grieve to say it had been jointly concocted

the night before at the office of the “Clarion” by himself and the young

journalist--the latter's assistance being his own personal tribute to

the graces of Miss Flo. It read as follows:--

“The greatest assistance was rendered by Hiram Tarbox, Esq., a resident

of the vicinity, in removing the obstruction, which was, no doubt,

the preliminary work of some of the robber gang, and in providing

hospitality for the delayed passengers. In fact, but for the timely

warning of Yuba Bill by Mr. Tarbox, the coach might have crashed into

the tree at that dangerous point, and an accident ensued more disastrous

to life and limb than the robbery itself.”

The sudden and unmistakable delight that expanded the old woman's mouth

was so convincing that it might have given Brice a tinge of remorse over

the success of his stratagem, had he not been utterly absorbed in his

purpose. “Hiram!” she shouted suddenly.

The old man appeared from some back door with a promptness that proved

his near proximity, and glanced angrily at Brice until he caught sight

of his wife's face. Then his anger changed to wonder.

“Read that again, young feller,” she said exultingly.

Brice re-read the paragraph aloud for Mr. Tarbox's benefit.

“That 'ar 'Hiram Tarbox, Esquire,' means YOU, Hiram,” she gasped, in

delighted explanation.

Hiram seized the paper, read the paragraph himself, spread out the whole

page, examined it carefully, and then a fatuous grin began slowly to

extend itself over his whole face, invading his eyes and ears, until

the heavy, harsh, dogged lines of his nostrils and jaws had utterly

disappeared.

“B'gosh!” he said, “that's square! Kin I keep it?”

“Certainly,” said Brice. “I brought it for you.”

“Is that all ye came for?” said Hiram, with sudden suspicion.

“No,” said the young man frankly. Yet he hesitated a moment as he added,

“I would like to see Miss Flora.”

His hesitation and heightened color were more disarming to suspicion

than the most elaborate and carefully prepared indifference. With their

knowledge and pride in their relative's fascinations they felt it could

have but one meaning! Hiram wiped his mouth with his hand, assumed a

demure expression, glanced at his wife, and answered:--

“She ain't here now.”

Mr. Brice's face displayed his disappointment. But the true lover

holds a talisman potent with old and young. Mrs. Tarbox felt a sneaking

maternal pity for this suddenly stricken Strephon.

“She's gone home,” she added more gently--“went at sun-up this mornin'.”

“Home,” repeated Brice. “Where's that?”

Mrs. Tarbox looked at her husband and hesitated. Then she said--a little

in her old manner--“Her uncle's.”

“Can you direct me the way there?” asked Brice simply.

The astonishment in their faces presently darkened into suspicion again.

“Ef that's your little game,” began Hiram, with a lowering brow--

“I have no little game but to see her and speak with her,” said Brice

boldly. “I am alone and unarmed, as you see,” he continued, pointing

to his empty belt and small dispatch bag slung on his shoulder, “and

certainly unable to do any one any harm. I am willing to take what risks

there are. And as no one knows of my intention, nor of my coming here,

whatever might happen to me, no one need know it. You would be safe from

questioning.”

There was that hopeful determination in his manner that overrode their

resigned doggedness. “Ef we knew how to direct you thar,” said the old

woman cautiously, “ye'd be killed outer hand afore ye even set eyes on

the girl. The house is in a holler with hills kept by spies; ye'd be a

dead man as soon as ye crossed its boundary.”

“Wot do YOU know about it?” interrupted her husband quickly, in

querulous warning. “Wot are ye talkin' about?”

“You leave me alone, Hiram! I ain't goin' to let that young feller

get popped off without a show, or without knowin' jest wot he's got to

tackle, nohow ye kin fix it! And can't ye see he's bound to go, whatever

ye says?”

Mr. Tarbox saw this fact plainly in Brice's eyes, and hesitated.

“The most that I kin tell ye,” he said gloomily, “is the way the gal

takes when she goes from here, but how far it is, or if it ain't a

blind, I can't swar, for I hevn't bin thar myself, and Harry never comes

here but on an off night, when the coach ain't runnin' and thar's no

travel.” He stopped suddenly and uneasily, as if he had said too much.

“Thar ye go, Hiram, and ye talk of others gabblin'! So ye might as well

tell the young feller how that thar ain't but one way, and that's the

way Harry takes, too, when he comes yer oncet in an age to talk to his

own flesh and blood, and see a Christian face that ain't agin him!”

Mr. Tarbox was silent. “Ye know whar the tree was thrown down on the

road,” he said at last.

“Yes.”

“The mountain rises straight up on the right side of the road, all hazel

brush and thorn--whar a goat couldn't climb.”

“Yes.”

“But that's a lie! for thar's a little trail, not a foot wide, runs up

from the road for a mile, keepin' it in view all the while, but bein'

hidden by the brush. Ye kin see everything from thar, and hear a

teamster spit on the road.”

“Go on,” said Brice impatiently.

“Then it goes up and over the ridge, and down the other side into a

little gulch until it comes to the canyon of the North Fork, where the

stage road crosses over the bridge high up. The trail winds round the

bank of the Fork and comes out on the LEFT side of the stage road about

a thousand feet below it. That's the valley and hollow whar Harry lives,

and that's the only way it can be found. For all along the LEFT of the

stage road is a sheer pitch down that thousand feet, whar no one kin git

up or down.”

“I understand,” said Brice, with sparkling eyes. “I'll find my way all

right.”

“And when ye git thar, look out for yourself!” put in the woman

earnestly. “Ye may have regular greenhorn's luck and pick up Flo afore

ye cross the boundary, for she's that bold that when she gets lonesome

o' stayin' thar she goes wanderin' out o' bounds.”

“Hev ye any weppin,--any shootin'-iron about ye?” asked Tarbox, with a

latent suspicion.

The young man smiled, and again showed his empty belt. “None!” he said

truthfully.

“I ain't sure ef that ain't the safest thing arter all with a shot like

Harry,” remarked the old man grimly. “Well, so long!” he added, and

turned away.

It was clearly a leave-taking, and Brice, warmly thanking them both,

returned to the road.

It was not far to the scene of the obstruction, yet but for Tarbox's

timely hint, the little trail up the mountain side would have escaped

his observation. Ascending, he soon found himself creeping along a

narrow ledge of rock, hidden from the road that ran fifty yards below by

a thick network growth of thorn and bramble, which still enabled him to

see its whole parallel length. Perilous in the extreme to any hesitating

foot, at one point, directly above the obstruction, the ledge itself

was missing--broken away by the fall of the tree from the forest crest

higher up. For an instant Brice stood dizzy and irresolute before the

gap. Looking down for a foothold, his eye caught the faint imprint of

a woman's shoe on a clayey rock projecting midway of the chasm. It must

have been the young girl's footprint made that morning, for the narrow

toe was pointed in the direction she would go! Where SHE could pass

should he shrink from going? Without further hesitation he twined his

fingers around the roots above him, and half swung, half pulled himself

along until he once more felt the ledge below him.

From time to time, as he went on along the difficult track, the narrow

little toe-print pointed the way to him, like an arrow through the

wilds. It was a pleasant thought, and yet a perplexing one. Would he

have undertaken this quest just to see her? Would he be content with

that if his other motive failed? For as he made his way up to the ridge

he was more than once assailed by doubts of the practical success of his

enterprise. In the excitement of last night, and even the hopefulness

of the early morning, it seemed an easy thing to persuade the vain and

eccentric highwayman that their interests might be identical, and

to convince him that his, Brice's, assistance to recover the stolen

greenbacks and insure the punishment of the robber, with the possible

addition of a reward from the express company, would be an inducement

for them to work together. The risks that he was running seemed to his

youthful fancy to atone for any defects in his logic or his plans. Yet

as he crossed the ridge, leaving the civilized highway behind him,

and descended the narrow trail, which grew wilder at each step, his

arguments seemed no longer so convincing. He now hurried forward,

however, with a feverish haste to anticipate the worst that might befall

him.

The trail grew more intricate in the deep ferns; the friendly little

footprint had vanished in this primeval wilderness. As he pushed through

the gorge, he could hear at last the roar of the North Fork forcing its

way through the canyon that crossed the gorge at right angles. At last

he reached its current, shut in by two narrow precipitous walls that

were spanned five hundred feet above by the stage road over a perilous

bridge. As he approached the gloomy canyon, he remembered that the

river, seen from above, seemed to have no banks, but to have cut its way

through the solid rock.

He found, however, a faint ledge made by caught driftwood from the

current and the debris of the overhanging cliffs. Again the narrow

footprint on the ooze was his guide. At last, emerging from the canyon,

a strange view burst upon his sight. The river turned abruptly to the

right, and, following the mountain side, left a small hollow completely

walled in by the surrounding heights. To his left was the ridge he had

descended from on the other side, and he now understood the singular

detour he had made. He was on the other side of the stage road also,

which ran along the mountain shelf a thousand feet above him. The wall,

a sheer cliff, made the hollow inaccessible from that side. Little hills

covered with buckeye encompassed it. It looked like a sylvan retreat,

and yet was as secure in its isolation and approaches as the outlaw's

den that it was.

He was gazing at the singular prospect when a shot rang in the air. It

seemed to come from a distance, and he interpreted it as a signal. But

it was followed presently by another; and putting his hand to his hat to

keep it from falling, he found that the upturned brim had been pierced

by a bullet. He stopped at this evident hint, and, taking his dispatch

bag from his shoulder, placed it significantly upon a boulder, and

looked around as if to await the appearance of the unseen marksman.

The rifle shot rang out again, the bag quivered, and turned over with a

bullet hole through it!

He took out his white handkerchief and waved it. Another shot followed,

and the handkerchief was snapped from his fingers, torn from corner

to corner. A feeling of desperation and fury seized him; he was being

played with by a masked and skillful assassin, who only waited until

it pleased him to fire the deadly shot! But this time he could see the

rifle smoke drifting from under a sycamore not a hundred yards away. He

set his white lips together, but with a determined face and unfaltering

step walked directly towards it. In another moment he believed and

almost hoped that all would be over. With such a marksman he would not

be maimed, but killed outright.

He had not covered half the distance before a man lounged out from

behind the tree carelessly shouldering his rifle. He was tall but

slightly built, with an amused, critical manner, and nothing about him

to suggest the bloodthirsty assassin. He met Brice halfway, dropping his

rifle slantingly across his breast with his hands lightly grasping the

lock, and gazed at the young man curiously.

“You look as if you'd had a big scare, old man, but you've clear grit

for all that!” he said, with a critical and reassuring smile. “Now,

what are you doing here? Stay,” he continued, as Brice's parched lips

prevented him from replying immediately. “I ought to know your face.

Hello! you're the expressman!” His glance suddenly shifted, and swept

past Brice over the ground beyond him to the entrance of the hollow, but

his smile returned as he apparently satisfied himself that the young man

was alone. “Well, what do you want?”

“I want to see Snapshot Harry,” said Brice, with an effort. His voice

came back more slowly than his color, but that was perhaps hurried by a

sense of shame at his physical weakness.

“What you want is a drop o' whiskey,” said the stranger good humoredly,

taking his arm, “and we'll find it in that shanty just behind the tree.”

To Brice's surprise, a few steps in that direction revealed a fair-sized

cabin, with a slight pretentiousness about it of neatness, comfort, and

picturesque effect, far superior to the Tarbox shanty. A few flowers

were in boxes on the window--signs, as Brice fancied, of feminine taste.

When they reached the threshold, somewhat of this quality was also

visible in the interior. When Brice had partaken of the whiskey,

the stranger, who had kept silence, pointed to a chair, and said

smilingly:--

“I am Henry Dimwood, alias Snapshot Harry, and this is my house.”

“I came to speak with you about the robbery of greenbacks from the coach

last night,” began Brice hurriedly, with a sudden access of hope at his

reception. “I mean, of course,”--he stopped and hesitated,--“the actual

robbery before YOU stopped us.”

“What!” said Harry, springing to his feet, “do you mean to say YOU knew

it?”

Brice's heart sank, but he remained steadfast and truthful. “Yes,” he

said, “I knew it when I handed down the box. I saw that the lock had

been forced, but I snapped it together again. It was my fault. Perhaps I

should have warned you, but I am solely to blame.”

“Did Yuba Bill know of it?” asked the highwayman, with singular

excitement.

“Not at the time, I give you my word!” replied Brice quickly, thinking

only of loyalty to his old comrade. “I never told him till we reached

the station.”

“And he knew it then?” repeated Harry eagerly.

“Yes.”

“Did he say anything? Did he do anything? Did he look astonished?”

Brice remembered Bill's uncontrollable merriment, but replied vaguely

and diplomatically, “He was certainly astonished.”

A laugh gathered in Snapshot Harry's eyes which at last overspread his

whole face, and finally shook his frame as he sat helplessly down again.

Then, wiping his eyes, he said in a shaky voice:--

“It would have been sure death to have trusted myself near that station,

but I think I'd have risked it just to have seen Bill's face when you

told him! Just think of it! Bill, who was a match for anybody! Bill,

who was never caught napping! Bill, who only wanted supreme control

of things to wipe me off the face of the earth! Bill, who knew how

everything was done, and could stop it if he chose, and then to have

been ROBBED TWICE IN ONE EVENING BY MY GANG! Yes, sir! Yuba Bill and

his rotten old coach were GONE THROUGH TWICE INSIDE HALF AN HOUR by the

gang!”

“Then you knew of it too?” said Brice, in uneasy astonishment.

“Afterwards, my young friend--like Yuba Bill--afterwards.” He stopped;

his whole expression changed. “It was done by two sneaking hounds,” he

said sharply; “one whom I suspected before, and one, a new hand, a pal

of his. They were detached to watch the coach and be satisfied that the

greenbacks were aboard, for it isn't my style to 'hold up' except

for something special. They were to take seats on the coach as far as

Ringwood Station, three miles below where we held you up, and to get out

there and pass the word to us that it was all right. They didn't; that

made us a little extra careful, seeing something was wrong, but never

suspecting THEM. We found out afterwards that they got one of my scouts

to cut down that tree, saying it was my orders and a part of our game,

calculating in the stoppage and confusion to collar the swag and get off

with it. Without knowing it, YOU played into their hands by going into

Tarbox's cabin.”

“But how did you know this?” interrupted Brice, in wonder.

“They forgot one thing,” continued Snapshot Harry grimly. “They forgot

that half an hour before and half an hour after a stage is stopped we

have that road patrolled, every foot of it. While I was opening the box

in the brush, the two fools, sneaking along the road, came slap upon one

of my patrols, and then tried to run for it. One was dropped, but before

he was plugged full of holes and hung up on a tree, he confessed, and

said the other man who escaped had the greenbacks.”

Brice's face fell. “Then they are lost,” he said bitterly.

“Not unless he eats them--as he may want to do before I'm done on him,

for he must either starve or come out. That road is still watched by my

men from Tarbox's cabin to the bridge. He's there somewhere, and can't

get forward or backward. Look!” he said, rising and going to the door.

“That road,” he pointed to the stage road,--a narrow ledge flanked on

one side by a precipitous mountain wall, and on the other by an equally

precipitate descent,--“is his limit and tether, and he can't escape on

either side.”

“But the trail?”

“There is but one entrance to it,--the way you came, and that is guarded

too. From the time you entered it until you reached the bottom, you were

signaled here from point to point! HE would have been dropped! I merely

gave YOU a hint of what might have happened to you, if you were up to

any little game! You took it like a white man. Come, now! What is your

business?”

Thus challenged, Brice plunged with youthful hopefulness into his plan;

if, as he voiced it, it seemed to him a little extravagant, he was

buoyed up by the frankness of the highwayman, who also had treated

the double robbery with a levity that seemed almost as extravagant. He

suggested that they should work together to recover the money; that the

express company should know that the unprecedented stealthy introduction

of robbers in the guise of passengers was not Snapshot Harry's method,

and he repudiated it as unmanly and unsportsmanlike; and that, by using

his superior skill and knowledge of the locality to recover the money

and deliver the culprit into the company's hands, he would not only earn

the reward that they should offer, but that he would evoke a sentiment

that all Californians would understand and respect. The highwayman

listened with a tolerant smile, but, to Brice's surprise, this appeal

to his vanity touched him less than the prospective punishment of the

thief.

“It would serve the d----d hound right,” he muttered, “if, instead of

being shot like a man, he was made to 'do time' in prison, like the

ordinary sneak thief that he is.” When Brice had concluded, he said

briefly, “The only trouble with your plans, my young friend, is that

about twenty-five men have got to consider them, and have THEIR say

about it. Every man in my gang is a shareholder in these greenbacks, for

I work on the square; and it's for him to say whether he'll give them up

for a reward and the good opinion of the express company. Perhaps,” he

went on, with a peculiar smile, “it's just as well that you tried it on

me first! However, I'll sound the boys, and see what comes of it, but

not until you're safe off the premises.”

“And you'll let me assist you?” said Brice eagerly.

Snapshot Harry smiled again. “Well, if you come across the d----d thief,

and you recognize him and can get the greenbacks from him, I'll pass

over the game to you.” He rose and added, apparently by way of farewell,

“Perhaps it's just as well that I should give you a guide part of the

way to prevent accidents.” He went to a door leading to an adjoining

room, and called “Flo!”

Brice's heart leaped! If he had forgotten her in the excitement of his

interview, he atoned for it by a vivid blush. Her own color was a little

heightened as she slipped into the room, but the two managed to look

demurely at each other, without a word of recognition.

“This is my niece, Flora,” said Snapshot Harry, with a slight wave of

the hand that was by no means uncourtly, “and her company will keep you

from any impertinent questioning as well as if I were with you. This is

Mr. Brice, Flo, who came to see me on business, and has quite forgotten

my practical joking.”

The girl acknowledged Brice's bow with a shyness very different from

her manner of the evening before. Brice felt embarrassed and evidently

showed it, for his host, with a smile, put an end to the constraint

by shaking the young man's hand heartily, bidding him good-by, and

accompanying him to the door.

Once on their way, Mr. Brice's spirits returned. “I told you last

night,” he said, “that I hoped to meet you the next time with a better

introduction. You suggested your uncle's. Well, are you satisfied?”

“But you didn't come to see ME,” said the girl mischievously.

“How do you know what my intentions were?” returned the young man

gayly, gazing at the girl's charming face with a serious doubt as to the

singleness of his own intentions.

“Oh, because I know,” she answered, with a toss of her brown head. “I

heard what you said to uncle Harry.”

Mr. Brice's brow contracted. “Perhaps you saw me, too, when I came,” he

said, with a slight touch of bitterness as he thought of his reception.

Miss Flo laughed. Brice walked on silently; the girl was heartless and

worthy of her education. After a pause she said demurely, “I knew he

wouldn't hurt you--but YOU didn't. That's where you showed your grit in

walking straight on.”

“And I suppose you were greatly amused,” he replied scornfully.

The girl lifted her arms a little wearily, as with a half sigh she

readjusted her brown braids under her uncle's gray slouch hat, which she

had caught up as she passed out. “Thar ain't much to laugh at here!” she

said. “But it was mighty funny when you tried to put your hat straight,

and then found thur was that bullet hole right through the brim! And the

way you stared at it--Lordy!”

Her musical laugh was infectious, and swept away his outraged dignity.

He laughed too. At last she said, gazing at his hat, “It won't do for

you to go back to your folks wearin' that sort o' thing. Here! Take

mine!” With a saucy movement she audaciously lifted his hat from his

head, and placed her own upon it.

“But this is your uncle's hat,” he remonstrated.

“All the same; he spoiled yours,” she laughed, adjusting his hat upon

her own head. “But I'll keep yours to remember you by. I'll loop it up

by this hole, and it'll look mighty purty. Jes' see!” She plucked a

wild rose from a bush by the wayside, and, passing the stalk through the

bullet hole, pinned the brim against the crown by a thorn. “There,” she

said, putting on the hat again with a little affectation of coquetry,

“how's that?”

Mr. Brice thought it very picturesque and becoming to the graceful head

and laughing eyes beneath it, and said so. Then, becoming in his turn

audacious, he drew nearer to her side.

“I suppose you know the forfeit of putting on a gentleman's hat?”

Apparently she did, for she suddenly made a warning gesture, and said,

“Not here! It would be a bigger forfeit than you'd keer fo'.” Before he

could reply she turned aside as if quite innocently, and passed into

the shade of a fringe of buckeyes. He followed quickly. “I didn't mean

that,” she said; but in the mean time he had kissed the pink tip of her

ear under its brown coils. He was, nevertheless, somewhat discomfited

by her undisturbed manner and serene face. “Ye don't seem to mind bein'

shot at,” she said, with an odd smile, “but it won't do for you to

kalkilate that EVERYBODY shoots as keerfully as uncle Harry.”

“I don't understand,” he replied, struck by her manner.

“Ye ain't very complimentary, or you'd allow that other folks might be

wantin' what you took just now, and might consider you was poachin',”

she returned gravely. “My best and strongest holt among those men is

that uncle Harry would kill the first one who tried anything like that

on--and they know it. That's how I get all the liberty I want here, and

can come and go alone as I like.”

Brice's face flushed quickly with genuine shame and remorse. “Do forgive

me,” he said hurriedly. “I didn't think--I'm a brute and a fool!”

“Uncle Harry allowed you was either drunk or a born idiot when you was

promenadin' into the valley just now,” she said, with a smile.

“And what did you think?” he asked a little uneasily.

“I thought you didn't look like a drinkin' man,” she answered

audaciously.

Brice bit his lip and walked on silently, at which she cast a sidelong

glance under her widely spaced heavy lashes and said demurely, “I

thought last night it was mighty good for you to stand up for your

frien' Yuba Bill, and then, after ye knew who I was, to let the folks

see you kinder cottoned to me too. Not in the style o' that land-grabber

Heckshill, nor that peart newspaper man, neither. Of course I gave them

as good as they sent,” she went on, with a little laugh, but Brice could

see that her sensitive lip in profile had the tremulous and resentful

curve of one who was accustomed to slight and annoyance. Was it possible

that this reckless, self-contained girl felt her position keenly?

“I am proud to have your good opinion,” he said, with a certain respect

mingled with his admiring glance, “even if I have not your uncle's.”

“Oh, he likes you well enough, or he wouldn't have hearkened to you a

minute,” she said quickly. “When you opened out about them greenbacks, I

jes' clutched my cheer SO,” she illustrated her words with a gesture

of her hands, and her face actually seemed to grow pale at the

recollection,--“and I nigh started up to stop ye; but that idea of Yuba

Bill bein' robbed TWICE I think tickled him awful. But it was lucky none

o' the gang heard ye or suspected anything. I reckon that's why he sent

me with you,--to keep them from doggin' you and askin' questions that

a straight man like you would be sure to answer. But they daren't

come nigh ye as long as I'm with you!” She threw back her head and

rose-crested hat with a mock air of protection that, however, had a

certain real pride in it.

“I am very glad of that, if it gives me the chance of having your

company alone,” returned Brice, smiling, “and very grateful to your

uncle, whatever were his reasons for making you my guide. But you have

already been that to me,” and he told her of the footprints. “But for

you,” he added, with gentle significance, “I should not have been here.”

She was silent for a moment, and he could only see the back of her head

and its heavy brown coils. After a pause she asked abruptly, “Where's

your handkerchief?”

He took it from his pocket; her ingenious uncle's bullet had torn rather

than pierced the cambric.

“I thought so,” she said, gravely examining it, “but I kin mend it as

good as new. I reckon you allow I can't sew,” she continued, “but I do

heaps of mendin', as the digger squaw and Chinamen we have here do only

the coarser work. I'll send it back to you, and meanwhiles you keep

mine.”

She drew a handkerchief from her pocket and handed it to him. To his

great surprise it was a delicate one, beautifully embroidered, and

utterly incongruous to her station. The idea that flashed upon him,

it is to be feared, showed itself momentarily in his hesitation and

embarrassment.

She gave a quick laugh. “Don't be frightened. It's bought and paid for.

Uncle Harry don't touch passengers' fixin's; that ain't his style.

You oughter know that.” Yet in spite of her laugh, he could see the

sensitive pout of her lower lip.

“I was only thinking,” he said hurriedly and sympathetically, “that it

was too fine for me. But I will be proud to keep it as a souvenir of

you. It's not too pretty for THAT!”

“Uncle gets me these things. He don't keer what they cost,” she went on,

ignoring the compliment. “Why, I've got awfully fine gowns up there that

I only wear when I go to Marysville oncet in a while.”

“Does he take you there?” asked Brice.

“No!” she answered quietly. “Not”--a little defiantly--“that he's

afeard, for they can't prove anything against him; no man kin swear to

him, and thar ain't an officer that keers to go for him. But he's that

shy for ME he don't keer to have me mixed with him.”

“But nobody recognizes you?”

“Sometimes--but I don't keer for that.” She cocked her hat a little

audaciously, but Brice noticed that her arms afterwards dropped at her

side with the same weary gesture he had observed before. “Whenever I go

into shops it's always 'Yes, miss,' and 'No, miss,' and 'Certainly,

Miss Dimwood.' Oh, they're mighty respectful. I reckon they allow that

Snapshot Harry's rifle carries far.”

Presently she faced him again, for their conversation had been carried

on in profile. There was a critical, searching look in her brown eyes.

“Here I'm talkin' to you as if you were one”--Mr. Brice was positive

she was going to say “one of the gang,” but she hesitated and concluded,

“one of my relations--like cousin Hiram.”

“I wish you would think of me as being as true a friend,” said the young

man earnestly.

She did not reply immediately, but seemed to be examining the distance.

They were not far from the canyon now, and the river bank. A fringe of

buckeyes hid the base of the mountain, which had begun to tower up above

them to the invisible stage road overhead. “I am going to be a real

guide to you now,” she said suddenly. “When we reach that buckeye corner

and are out of sight, we will turn into it instead of going through the

canyon. You shall go up the mountain to the stage road, from THIS side.”

“But it is impossible!” he exclaimed, in astonishment. “Your uncle said

so.”

“Coming DOWN, but not going up,” she returned, with a laugh. “I found

it, and no one knows it but myself.”

He glanced up at the towering cliff; its nearly perpendicular flanks

were seamed with fissures, some clefts deeply set with stunted growths

of thorn and “scrub,” but still sheer and forbidding, and then glanced

back at her incredulously. “I will show you,” she said, answering his

look with a smile of triumph. “I haven't tramped over this whole valley

for nothing! But wait until we reach the river bank. They must think

that we've gone through the canyon.”

“They?

“Yes--any one who is watching us,” said the girl dryly.

A few steps further on brought them to the buckeye thicket, which

extended to the river bank and mouth of the canyon. The girl lingered

for a moment ostentatiously before it, and then, saying “Come,” suddenly

turned at right angles into the thicket. Brice followed, and the next

moment they were hidden by its friendly screen from the valley. On the

other side rose the mountain wall, leaving a narrow trail before them.

It was composed of the rocky debris and fallen trees of the cliff, from

which buckeyes and larches were now springing. It was uneven, irregular,

and slowly ascending; but the young girl led the way with the free

footstep of a mountaineer, and yet a grace that was akin to delicacy.

Nor could he fail to notice that, after the Western girl's fashion, she

was shod more elegantly and lightly than was consistent with the rude

and rustic surroundings. It was the same slim shoe-print which had

guided him that morning. Presently she stopped, and seemed to be gazing

curiously at the cliff side. Brice followed the direction of her eyes.

On a protruding bush at the edge of one of the wooded clefts of the

mountain flank something was hanging, and in the freshening southerly

wind was flapping heavily, like a raven's wing, or as if still saturated

with the last night's rain. “That's mighty queer!” said Flo, gazing

intently at the unsightly and incongruous attachment to the shrub, which

had a vague, weird suggestion. “It wasn't there yesterday.”

“It looks like a man's coat,” remarked Brice uneasily.

“Whew!” said the girl. “Then somebody has come down who won't go up

again! There's a lot of fresh rocks and brush here, too. What's that?”

She was pointing to a spot some yards before them where there had been a

recent precipitation of debris and uprooted shrubs. But mingled with it

lay a mass of rags strangely akin to the tattered remnant that flagged

from the bush a hundred feet above them. The girl suddenly uttered a

sharp feminine cry of mingled horror and disgust,--the first weakness

of sex she had shown,--and, recoiling, grasped Brice's arm. “Don't go

there! Come away!”

But Brice had already seen that which, while it shocked him, was urging

him forward with an invincible fascination. Gently releasing himself,

and bidding the girl stand back, he moved toward the unsightly heap.

Gradually it disclosed a grotesque caricature of a human figure, but so

maimed and doubled up that it seemed a stuffed and fallen scarecrow. As

is common in men stricken suddenly down by accident in the fullness of

life, the clothes asserted themselves before all else with a hideous

ludicrousness, obliterating even the majesty of death in their helpless

yet ironical incongruity. The garments seemed to have never fitted the

wearer, but to have been assumed in ghastly jocularity,--a boot half off

the swollen foot, a ripped waistcoat thrown over the shoulder, were like

the properties of some low comedian. At first the body appeared to be

headless; but as Brice cleared away the debris and lifted it, he saw

with horror that the head was twisted under the shoulder, and swung

helplessly from the dislocated neck. But that horror gave way to a more

intense and thrilling emotion as he saw the face--although strangely

free from laceration or disfigurement, and impurpled and distended into

the simulation of a self-complacent smile--was a face he recognized! It

was the face of the cynical traveler in the coach--the man who he was

now satisfied had robbed it.

A strange and selfish resentment took possession of him. Here was the

man through whom he had suffered shame and peril, and who even now

seemed complacently victorious in death. He examined him closely; his

coat and waistcoat had been partly torn away in his fall; his shirt

still clung to him, but through its torn front could be seen a heavy

treasure belt encircling his waist. Forgetting his disgust, Brice tore

away the shirt and unloosed the belt. It was saturated with water like

the rest of the clothing, but its pocket seemed heavy and distended. In

another instant he had opened it, and discovered the envelope containing

the packet of greenbacks, its seal still inviolate and unbroken. It was

the stolen treasure!

A faint sigh recalled him to himself. The girl was standing a few feet

from him, regarding him curiously.

“It's the thief himself!” he said, in a breathless explanation. “In

trying to escape he must have fallen from the road above. But here are

the greenbacks safe! We must go back to your uncle at once,” he said

excitedly. “Come!”

“Are you mad?” she cried, in astonishment.

“No,” returned Brice, in equal astonishment, “but you know I agreed with

him that we should work together to recover the money, and I must show

him our good luck.”

“He told you that if you met the thief and could get the money from him,

you were welcome to it,” said the girl gravely, “and you HAVE got it.”

“But not in the way he meant,” returned Brice hurriedly. “This man's

death is the result of his attempting to escape from your uncle's guards

along the road; the merit of it belongs to them and your uncle. It would

be cowardly and mean of me to take advantage of it.”

The girl looked at him with an expression of mingled admiration and

pity. “But the guards were placed there before he ever saw you,” said

she impatiently. “And whatever uncle Harry may want to do, he must do

what the gang says. And with the money once in their possession, or

even in yours, if they knew it, I wouldn't give much for its chances--or

YOURS either--for gettin' out o' this hollow again.”

“But if THEY are treacherous, that is no reason why I should be so,”

protested Brice stoutly.

“You've no right to say they were treacherous when they knew nothing of

your plans,” said the girl sharply. “Your company would have more call

to say YOU were treacherous to it for making a plan without consultin'

them.” Brice winced, for he had never thought of that before. “You can

offer that reward AFTER you get away from here with the greenbacks.

But,” she added proudly, with a toss of her head, “go back if you want

to! Tell him all! Tell him where you found it--tell him I did not take

you through the canyon, but was showin' you a new trail I had never

shown to THEM! Tell him that I am a traitor, for I have given them and

him away to you, a stranger, and that you consider yourself the only

straight and honest one about here!”

Brice flushed with shame. “Forgive me,” he said hurriedly; “you are

right and I am wrong again. I will do just what you say. I will first

place these greenbacks in a secure place--and then”--

“Get away first--that's your only holt,” she interrupted him quickly,

her eyes still flashing through indignant tears. “Come quick, for I must

put you on the trail before they miss me.”

She darted forward; he followed, but she kept the lead, as much, he

fancied, to evade his observation as to expedite his going. Presently

they stopped before the sloping trunk of a huge pine that had long since

fallen from the height above, but, although splintered where it had

broken ground, had preserved some fifty feet of its straight trunk erect

and leaning like a ladder against the mountain wall. “There,” she

said, hurriedly pointing to its decaying but still projecting lateral

branches, “you climb it--I have. At the top you'll find it's stuck in a

cleft among the brush. There's a little hollow and an old waterway from

a spring above which makes a trail through the brush. It's as good as

the trail you took from the stage road this mornin', but it's not as

safe comin' down. Keep along it to the spring, and it will land ye jest

the other side of uncle Hiram's cabin. Go quick! I'll wait here until

ye've reached the cleft.”

“But you,” he said, turning toward her, “how can I ever thank you?”

As if anticipating a leave-taking, the girl had already withdrawn

herself a few yards away, and simply made an upward gesture with her

hand. “Quick! Up with you! Every minute now is a risk to me.”

Thus appealed to, Brice could only comply. Perhaps he was a little hurt

at the girl's evident desire to avoid a gentler parting. Securing his

prized envelope within his breast, he began to ascend the tree. Its

inclination, and the aid offered by the broken stumps of branches, made

this comparatively easy, and in a few moments he reached its top,

and stood upon a little ledge in the wall. A swift glance around

him revealed the whole waterway or fissure slanting upward along the

mountain face. Then he turned quickly to look down the dizzy height. At

first he could distinguish nothing but the top of the buckeyes and their

white clustering blossoms. Then something fluttered,--the torn white

handkerchief of his that she had kept. And then he caught a single

glimpse of the flower-plumed hat receding rapidly among the trees, and

Flora Dimwood was gone.

III

In twenty-four hours Edward Brice was in San Francisco. But although

successful and the bearer of the treasure, it is doubtful if he

approached this end of his journey with the temerity he had shown on

entering the robbers' valley. A consciousness that the methods he

had employed might excite the ridicule, if not the censure, of his

principals, or that he might have compromised them in his meeting with

Snapshot Harry, considerably modified his youthful exultation. It is

possible that Flora's reproach, which still rankled in his mind, may

have quickened his sensitiveness on that point. However, he had resolved

to tell the whole truth, except his episode with Flora, and to place the

conduct of Snapshot Harry and the Tarboxes in as favorable a light as

possible. But first he had recourse to the manager, a man of shrewd

worldly experience, who had recommended him to his place. When he had

finished and handed him the treasured envelope, the man looked at him

with a critical and yet not unkindly expression. “Perhaps it's just as

well, Brice, that you did come to me at first, and did not make your

report to the president and directors.”

“I suppose,” said Brice diffidently, “that they wouldn't have liked my

communicating with the highwayman without their knowledge?”

“More than that--they wouldn't have believed your story.”

“Not believe it?” cried Brice, flushing quickly. “Do you think”--

The manager checked him with a laugh. “Hold on! I believe every word

of it, and why? Because you've added nothing to it to make yourself the

regular hero. Why, with your opportunity, and no one able to contradict

you, you might have told me you had a hand-to-hand fight with the

thief, and had to kill him to recover the money, and even brought your

handkerchief and hat back with the bullet holes to prove it.” Brice

winked as he thought of the fair possessor of those articles. “But as a

story for general circulation, it won't do. Have you told it to any one

else? Does any one know what happened but yourself?”

Brice thought of Flora, but he had resolved not to compromise her, and

he had a consciousness that she would be equally loyal to him. “No one,”

he answered boldly.

“Very good. And I suppose you wouldn't mind if it were kept out of the

newspapers? You're not hankering after a reputation as a hero?”

“Certainly not,” said Brice indignantly.

“Well, then, we'll keep it where it is. You will say nothing. I will

hand over the greenbacks to the company, but only as much of your story

as I think they'll stand. You're all right as it is. Yuba Bill has

already set you up in his report to the company, and the recovery of

this money will put you higher! Only, the PUBLIC need know nothing about

it.”

“But,” asked Brice amazedly, “how can it be prevented? The shippers who

lost the money will have to know that it has been recovered.”

“Why should they? The company will assume the risk, and repay them just

the same. It's a great deal better to have the reputation for accepting

the responsibility than for the shippers to think that they only get

their money through the accident of its recovery.”

Brice gasped at this large business truth. Besides, it occurred to him

that it kept the secret, and Flora's participation in it, from Snapshot

Harry and the gang. He had not thought of that before.

“Come,” continued the manager, with official curtness. “What do you say?

Are you willing to leave it to me?”

Brice hesitated a moment. It was not what his impulsive truthful nature

had suggested. It was not what his youthful fancy had imagined. He had

not worked upon the sympathies of the company on behalf of Snapshot

Harry as he believed he would do. He had not even impressed the manager.

His story, far from exciting a chivalrous sentiment, had been pronounced

improbable. Yet he reflected he had so far protected HER, and he

consented with a sigh.

Nevertheless, the result ought to have satisfied him. A dazzling check,

inclosed in a letter of thanks from the company the next day, and his

promotion from “the road” to the San Francisco office, would have been

quite enough for any one but Edward Brice. Yet he was grateful, albeit

a little frightened and remorseful over his luck. He could not help

thinking of the kindly tolerance of the highwayman, the miserable death

of the actual thief, which had proved his own salvation, and above all

the generous, high-spirited girl who had aided his escape. While on his

way to San Francisco, and yet in the first glow of his success, he had

written her a few lines from Marysville, inclosed in a letter to Mr.

Tarbox. He had received no reply.

Then a week passed. He wrote again, and still no reply. Then a vague

feeling of jealousy took possession of him as he remembered her warning

hint of the attentions to which she was subjected, and he became

singularly appreciative of Snapshot Harry's proficiency as a marksman.

Then, cruelest of all, for your impassioned lover is no lover at all

if not cruel in his imaginings, he remembered how she had evaded her

uncle's espionage with HIM; could she not equally with ANOTHER? Perhaps

that was why she had hurried him away,--why she had prevented

his returning to her uncle. Following this came another week of

disappointment and equally miserable cynical philosophy, in which

he persuaded himself he was perfectly satisfied with his material

advancement, that it was the only outcome of his adventure to be

recognized; and he was more miserable than ever.

A month had passed, when one morning he received a small package by

post. The address was in a handwriting unknown to him, but opening

the parcel he was surprised to find only a handkerchief neatly folded.

Examining it closely, he found it was his own,--the one he had given

her, the rent made by her uncle's bullet so ingeniously and delicately

mended as to almost simulate embroidery. The joy that suddenly filled

him at this proof of her remembrance showed him too plainly how hollow

had been his cynicism and how lasting his hope! Turning over the wrapper

eagerly, he discovered what he had at first thought was some business

card. It was, indeed, printed and not engraved, in some common newspaper

type, and bore the address, “Hiram Tarbox, Land and Timber Agent, 1101

California Street.” He again examined the parcel; there was nothing

else,--not a line from HER! But it was a clue at last, and she had not

forgotten him! He seized his hat, and ten minutes later was breasting

the steep sand hill into which California Street in those days plunged,

and again emerged at its crest, with a few struggling houses.

But when he reached the summit he could see that the outline of the

street was still plainly marked along the distance by cottages and

new suburban villa-like blocks of houses. No. 1101 was in one of these

blocks, a small tenement enough, but a palace compared to Mr. Tarbox's

Sierran cabin. He impetuously rang the bell, and without waiting to be

announced dashed into the little drawing-room and Mr. Tarbox's presence.

That had changed too; Mr. Tarbox was arrayed in a suit of clothes as

new, as cheaply decorative, as fresh and, apparently, as damp as his own

drawing room.

“Did you get my letter? Did you give her the one I inclosed? Why didn't

you answer?” burst out Brice, after his first breathless greeting.

Mr. Tarbox's face here changed so suddenly into his old dejected

doggedness that Brice could have imagined himself back in the Sierran

cabin. The man straightened and bowed himself at Brice's questions, and

then replied with bold, deliberate emphasis:

“Yes, I DID get your letter. I DIDN'T give no letter o' yours to her.

And I didn't answer your letter BEFORE, for I didn't propose to answer

it AT ALL.”

“Why?” demanded Brice indignantly.

“I didn't give her your letter because I didn't kalkilate to be any

go-between 'twixt you and Snapshot Harry's niece. Look yar, Mr. Brice.

Sense I read that 'ar paragraph in that paper you gave me, I allowed to

myself that it wasn't the square thing for me to have any more doin's

with him, and I quit it. I jest chucked your letter in the fire. I

didn't answer you because I reckoned I'd no call to correspond with ye,

and when I showed ye that trail over to Harry's camp, it was ended. I've

got a house and business to look arter, and it don't jibe with keepin'

company with 'road agents.' That's what I got outer that paper you gave

me, Mr. Brice.”

Rage and disgust filled Brice at the man's utter selfishness and

shameless desertion of his kindred, none the less powerfully that he

remembered the part he himself had played in concocting the paragraph.

“Do you mean to say,” he demanded passionately, “that for the sake of

that foolish paragraph you gave up your own kindred? That you truckled

to the mean prejudices of your neighbors and kept that poor, defenseless

girl from the only honest roof she could find refuge under? That you

dared to destroy my letter to her, and made her believe I was as selfish

and ungrateful as yourself?”

“Young feller,” said Mr. Tarbox still more deliberately, yet with a

certain dignity that Brice had never noticed before, “what's between you

and Flo, and what rights she has fer thinkin' ye 'ez selfish' and 'ez

ongrateful' ez me--ef she does, I dunno!--but when ye talk o' me givin'

up my kindred, and sling such hogwash ez 'ongrateful' and 'selfish'

round this yer sittin'-room, mebbe it mout occur to ye that Harry

Dimwood might hev HIS opinion o' what was 'ongrateful' and 'selfish' ef

I'd played in between his niece and a young man o' the express company,

his nat'ral enemy. It's one thing to hev helped ye to see her in

her uncle's own camp, but another to help ye by makin' a clandecent

post-offis o' my cabin. Ef, instead o' writin', you'd hev posted

yourself by comin' to me, you mout hev found out that when I broke with

Harry I offered to take Flo with me for good and all--ef he'd keep

away from us. And that's the kind o' 'honest roof' that that thar 'poor

defenseless girl' got under when her crippled mother died three

weeks ago, and left Harry free. It was by 'trucklin'' to them 'mean

prejudices,' and readin' that thar 'foolish paragraph,' that I settled

this thing then and thar!”

Brice's revulsion of sentiment was so complete, and the gratitude that

beamed in his eyes was so sincere, that Mr. Tarbox hardly needed the

profuse apologies which broke from him. “Forgive me!” he continued to

stammer, “I have wronged you, wronged HER--everybody. But as you know,

Mr. Tarbox, how I have felt over this, how deeply--how passionately”--

“It DOES make a man loony sometimes,” said Mr. Tarbox, relaxing into

demure dryness again, “so I reckon you DID! Mebbe she reckoned so, too,

for she asked me to give you the handkercher I sent ye. It looked as if

she'd bin doin' some fancy work on it.”

Brice glanced quickly at Mr. Tarbox's face. It was stolid and

imperturbable. She had evidently kept the secret of what passed in

the hollow to herself. For the first time he looked around the room

curiously. “I didn't know you were a land agent before,” he said.

“No more I was! All that kem out o' that paragraph, Mr. Brice. That man

Heckshill, who was so mighty perlite that night, wrote to me afterwards

that he didn't know my name till he'd seed that paragraph, and he wanted

to know ef, ez a 'well-known citizen,' I could recommend him some timber

lands. I recommended him half o' my own quarter section, and he took it.

He's puttin' up a mill thar, and that's another reason why we want peace

and quietness up thar. I'm tryin' (betwixt and between us, Mr. Brice) to

get Harry to cl'ar out and sell his rights in the valley and the water

power on the Fork to Heckshill and me. I'm opening a business here.”

“Then you've left Mrs. Tarbox with Miss Flora in your cabin while you

attend to business here,” said Brice tentatively.

“Not exactly, Mr. Brice. The old woman thought it a good chance to come

to 'Frisco and put Flo in one o' them Catholic convent schools--that

asks no questions whar the raw logs come from, and turns 'em out

first-class plank all round. You foller me, Mr. Brice? But Mrs. Tarbox

is jest in the next room, and would admire to tell ye all this--and I'll

go in and send her to you.” And with a patronizing wave of the hand, Mr.

Tarbox complacently disappeared in the hall.

Mr. Brice was not sorry to be left to himself in his utter bewilderment!

Flo, separated from her detrimental uncle, and placed in a convent

school! Tarbox, the obscure pioneer, a shrewd speculator emerging into

success, and taking the uncle's place! And all this within that month

which he had wasted with absurd repinings. How feeble seemed his own

adventure and advancement; how even ludicrous his pretensions to any

patronage and superiority. How this common backwoodsman had set him in

his place as easily as SHE had evaded the advances of the journalist and

Heckshill! They had taught him a lesson; perhaps even the sending back

of his handkerchief was part of it! His heart grew heavy; he walked to

the window and gazed out with a long sigh.

A light laugh, that might have been an echo of the one which had

attracted him that night in Tarbox's cabin, fell upon his ear. He turned

quickly to meet Flora Dimwood's laughing eyes shining upon him as she

stood in the doorway.

Many a time during that month he had thought of this meeting--had

imagined what it would be like--what would be his manner towards

her--what would be her greeting, and what they would say. He would be

cold, gentle, formal, gallant, gay, sad, trustful, reproachful, even as

the moods in which he thought of her came to his foolish brain. He would

always begin with respectful seriousness, or a frankness equal to her

own, but never, never again would he offend as he had offended under the

buckeyes! And now, with her pretty face shining upon him, all his plans,

his speeches, his preparations vanished, and left him dumb. Yet he moved

towards her with a brief articulate something on his lips,--something

between a laugh and a sigh,--but that really was a kiss, and--in point

of fact--promptly folded her in his arms.

Yet it was certainly direct, and perhaps the best that could be done,

for the young lady did not emerge from it as coolly, as unemotionally,

nor possibly as quickly as she had under the shade of the buckeyes. But

she persuaded him--by still holding his hand--to sit beside her on the

chilly, highly varnished “green rep” sofa, albeit to him it was a bank

in a bower of enchantment. Then she said, with adorable reproachfulness,

“You don't ask what I did with the body.”

Mr. Edward Brice started. He was young, and unfamiliar with the evasive

expansiveness of the female mind at such supreme moments.

“The body--oh, yes--certainly.”

“I buried it myself--it was suthin too awful!--and the gang would have

been sure to have found it, and the empty belt. I burned THAT. So that

nobody knows nothin'.”

It was not a time for strictly grammatical negatives, and I am

afraid that the girl's characteristically familiar speech, even when

pathetically corrected here and there by the influence of the convent,

endeared her the more to him. And when she said, “And now, Mr. Edward

Brice, sit over at that end of the sofy and let's talk,” they talked.

They talked for an hour, more or less continuously, until they were

surprised by a discreet cough and the entrance of Mrs. Tarbox. Then

there was more talk, and the discovery that Mr. Brice was long due at

the office.

“Ye might drop in, now and then, whenever ye feel like it, and Flo is at

home,” suggested Mrs. Tarbox at parting.

Mr. Brice DID drop in frequently during the next month. On one of

these occasions Mr. Tarbox accompanied him to the door. “And now--ez

everything is settled and in order, Mr. Brice, and ef you should be

wantin' to say anything about it to your bosses at the office, ye may

mention MY name ez Flo Dimwood's second cousin, and say I'm a depositor

in their bank. And,” with greater deliberation, “ef anything at any time

should be thrown up at ye for marryin' a niece o' Snapshot Harry's, ye

might mention, keerless like, that Snapshot Harry, under the name o'

Henry J. Dimwood, has held shares in their old bank for years!”

A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS

PART I

Mr. Jack Fleming stopped suddenly before a lifeless and decaying

redwood-tree with an expression of disgust and impatience. It was the

very tree he had passed only an hour before, and he now knew he had been

describing that mysterious and hopeless circle familiar enough to those

lost in the woods.

There was no mistaking the tree, with its one broken branch which

depended at an angle like the arm of a semaphore; nor did it relieve

his mind to reflect that his mishap was partly due to his own foolish

abstraction. He was returning to camp from a neighboring mining town,

and while indulging in the usual day-dreams of a youthful prospector,

had deviated from his path in attempting to make a short cut through the

forest. He had lost the sun, his only guide, in the thickly interlaced

boughs above him, which suffused though the long columnar vault only

a vague, melancholy twilight. He had evidently penetrated some unknown

seclusion, absolutely primeval and untrodden. The thick layers of

decaying bark and the desiccated dust of ages deadened his footfall and

invested the gloom with a profound silence.

As he stood for a moment or two, irresolute, his ear, by this time

attuned to the stillness, caught the faint but distinct lap and trickle

of water. He was hot and thirsty, and turned instinctively in that

direction. A very few paces brought him to a fallen tree; at the foot of

its upturned roots gurgled the spring whose upwelling stream had slowly

but persistently loosened their hold on the soil, and worked their ruin.

A pool of cool and clear water, formed by the disruption of the soil,

overflowed, and after a few yards sank again in the sodden floor.

As he drank and bathed his head and hands in this sylvan basin, he

noticed the white glitter of a quartz ledge in its depths, and was

considerably surprised and relieved to find, hard by, an actual outcrop

of that rock through the thick carpet of bark and dust. This betokened

that he was near the edge of the forest or some rocky opening. He

fancied that the light grew clearer beyond, and the presence of a few

fronds of ferns confirmed him in the belief that he was approaching a

different belt of vegetation. Presently he saw the vertical beams of the

sun again piercing the opening in the distance. With this prospect of

speedy deliverance from the forest at last secure, he did not hurry

forward, but on the contrary coolly retraced his footsteps to the spring

again. The fact was that the instincts and hopes of the prospector were

strongly dominant in him, and having noticed the quartz ledge and the

contiguous outcrop, he determined to examine them more closely. He

had still time to find his way home, and it might not be so easy to

penetrate the wilderness again. Unfortunately, he had neither pick, pan,

nor shovel with him, but a very cursory displacement of the soil around

the spring and at the outcrop with his hands showed him the usual red

soil and decomposed quartz which constituted an “indication.” Yet none

knew better than himself how disappointing and illusive its results

often were, and he regretted that he had not a pan to enable him to test

the soil by washing it at the spring. If there were only a miner's cabin

handy, he could easily borrow what he wanted. It was just the usual

luck,--“the things a man sees when he hasn't his gun with him!”

He turned impatiently away again in the direction of the opening. When

he reached it, he found himself on a rocky hillside sloping toward a

small green valley. A light smoke curled above a clump of willows; it

was from the chimney of a low dwelling, but a second glance told him

that it was no miner's cabin. There was a larger clearing around the

house, and some rude attempt at cultivation in a roughly fenced area.

Nevertheless, he determined to try his luck in borrowing a pick and pan

there; at the worst he could inquire his way to the main road again.

A hurried scramble down the hill brought him to the dwelling,--a

rambling addition of sheds to the usual log cabin. But he was surprised

to find that its exterior, and indeed the palings of the fence around

it, were covered with the stretched and drying skins of animals. The

pelts of bear, panther, wolf, and fox were intermingled with squirrel

and wildcat skins, and the displayed wings of eagle, hawk, and

kingfisher. There was no trail leading to or from the cabin; it seemed

to have been lost in this opening of the encompassing woods and left

alone and solitary.

The barking of a couple of tethered hounds at last brought a figure to

the door of the nearest lean-to shed. It seemed to be that of a

young girl, but it was clad in garments so ridiculously large and

disproportionate that it was difficult to tell her precise age. A calico

dress was pinned up at the skirt, and tightly girt at the waist by an

apron--so long that one corner had to be tucked in at the apron

string diagonally, to keep the wearer from treading on it. An enormous

sunbonnet of yellow nankeen completely concealed her head and face, but

allowed two knotted and twisted brown tails of hair to escape under its

frilled cape behind. She was evidently engaged in some culinary work,

and still held a large tin basin or pan she had been cleaning clasped to

her breast.

Fleming's eye glanced at it covetously, ignoring the figure behind it.

But he was diplomatic.

“I have lost my way in the woods. Can you tell me in what direction the

main road lies?”

She pointed a small red hand apparently in the direction he had come.

“Straight over thar--across the hill.”

Fleming sighed. He had been making a circuit of the forest instead of

going through it--and this open space containing the cabin was on a

remote outskirt!

“How far is it to the road?” he asked.

“Jest a spell arter ye rise the hill, ef ye keep 'longside the woods.

But it's a right smart chance beyond, ef ye go through it.”

This was quite plain to him. In the local dialect a “spell” was under

a mile; “a right smart chance” might be three or four miles farther.

Luckily the spring and outcrop were near the outskirts; he would pass

near them again on his way. He looked longingly at the pan which she

still held in her hands. “Would you mind lending me that pan for a

little while?” he said half laughingly.

“Wot for?” demanded the girl quickly. Yet her tone was one of childish

curiosity rather than suspicion. Fleming would have liked to avoid the

question and the consequent exposure of his discovery which a direct

answer implied. But he saw it was too late now.

“I want to wash a little dirt,” he said bluntly.

The girl turned her deep sunbonnet toward him. Somewhere in its depths

he saw the flash of white teeth. “Go along with ye--ye're funnin'!” she

said.

“I want to wash out some dirt in that pan--I'm prospecting for gold,” he

said; “don't you understand?”

“Are ye a miner?”

“Well, yes--a sort of one,” he returned, with a laugh.

“Then ye'd better be scootin' out o' this mighty quick afore dad comes.

He don't cotton to miners, and won't have 'em around. That's why he

lives out here.”

“Well, I don't live out here,” responded the young man lightly. “I

shouldn't be here if I hadn't lost my way, and in half an hour I'll be

off again. So I'm not likely to bother him. But,” he added, as the girl

still hesitated, “I'll leave a deposit for the pan, if you like.”

“Leave a which?”

“The money that the pan's worth,” said Fleming impatiently.

The huge sunbonnet stiffly swung around like the wind-sail of a ship

and stared at the horizon. “I don't want no money. Ye kin git,” said the

voice in its depths.

“Look here,” he said desperately, “I only wanted to prove to you that

I'll bring your pan back safe. Now look! If you don't like to take

money, I'll leave this ring with you until I come back. There!” He

slipped a small specimen ring, made out of his first gold findings, from

his little finger.

The sunbonnet slowly swung around again and stared at the ring. Then the

little red right hand reached forward, took the ring, placed it on the

forefinger of the left hand, with all the other fingers widely extended

for the sunbonnet to view, and all the while the pan was still held

against her side by the other hand. Fleming noticed that the hands,

though tawny and not over clean, were almost childlike in size, and that

the forefinger was much too small for the ring. He tried to fathom the

depths of the sun-bonnet, but it was dented on one side, and he could

discern only a single pale blue eye and a thin black arch of eyebrow.

“Well,” said Fleming, “is it a go?”

“Of course ye'll be comin' back for it again,” said the girl slowly.

There was so much of hopeless disappointment at that prospect in her

voice that Fleming laughed outright. “I'm afraid I shall, for I value

the ring very much,” he said.

The girl handed him the pan. “It's our bread pan,” she said.

It might have been anything, for it was by no means new; indeed, it was

battered on one side and the bottom seemed to have been broken; but it

would serve, and Fleming was anxious to be off. “Thank you,” he said

briefly, and turned away. The hound barked again as he passed; he heard

the girl say, “Shut your head, Tige!” and saw her turn back into the

kitchen, still holding the ring before the sunbonnet.

When he reached the woods, he attacked the outcrop he had noticed, and

detached with his hands and the aid of a sharp rock enough of the loose

soil to fill the pan. This he took to the spring, and, lowering the

pan in the pool, began to wash out its contents with the centrifugal

movement of the experienced prospector. The saturated red soil

overflowed the brim with that liquid ooze known as “slumgullion,” and

turned the crystal pool to the color of blood until the soil was washed

away. Then the smaller stones were carefully removed and examined, and

then another washing of the now nearly empty pan showed the fine black

sand covering the bottom. This was in turn as gently washed away.

Alas! the clean pan showed only one or two minute glistening yellow

scales, like pinheads, adhering from their specific gravity to the

bottom; gold, indeed, but merely enough to indicate “the color,” and

common to ordinary prospecting in his own locality.

He tried another panful with the same result. He became aware that the

pan was leaky, and that infinite care alone prevented the bottom from

falling out during the washing. Still it was an experiment, and the

result a failure.

Fleming was too old a prospector to take his disappointment seriously.

Indeed, it was characteristic of that performance and that period that

failure left neither hopelessness nor loss of faith behind it; the

prospector had simply miscalculated the exact locality, and was equally

as ready to try his luck again. But Fleming thought it high time to

return to his own mining work in camp, and at once set off to return the

pan to its girlish owner and recover his ring.

As he approached the cabin again, he heard the sound of singing. It was

evidently the girl's voice, uplifted in what seemed to be a fragment of

some negro camp-meeting hymn:--

“Dar was a poor man and his name it was Lazarum,

Lord bress de Lamb--glory hallelugerum!

Lord bress de Lamb!”

The first two lines had a brisk movement, accented apparently by the

clapping of hands or the beating of a tin pan, but the refrain, “Lord

bress de Lamb,” was drawn out in a lugubrious chant of infinite tenuity.

“The rich man died and he went straight to hellerum.

Lord bress de Lamb--glory hallelugerum!

Lord bress de Lamb!”

Fleming paused at the cabin door. Before he could rap the voice rose

again:--

“When ye see a poo' man be sure to give him crumbsorum,

Lord bress de Lamb--glory hallelugerum!

Lord bress de Lamb!”

At the end of this interminable refrain, drawn out in a youthful nasal

contralto, Fleming knocked. The girl instantly appeared, holding the

ring in her fingers. “I reckoned it was you,” she said, with an affected

briskness, to conceal her evident dislike at parting with the trinket.

“There it is!”

But Fleming was too astounded to speak. With the opening of the door

the sunbonnet had fallen back like a buggy top, disclosing for the first

time the head and shoulders of the wearer. She was not a child, but

a smart young woman of seventeen or eighteen, and much of his

embarrassment arose from the consciousness that he had no reason

whatever for having believed her otherwise.

“I hope I didn't interrupt your singing,” he said awkwardly.

“It was only one o' mammy's camp-meetin' songs,” said the girl.

“Your mother? Is she in?” he asked, glancing past the girl into the

kitchen.

“'Tain't mother--she's dead. Mammy's our old nurse. She's gone to

Jimtown, and taken my duds to get some new ones fitted to me. These are

some o' mother's.”

This accounted for her strange appearance; but Fleming noticed that

the girl's manner had not the slightest consciousness of their

unbecomingness, nor of the charms of face and figure they had marred.

She looked at him curiously. “Hev you got religion?”

“Well, no!” said Fleming, laughing; “I'm afraid not.”

“Dad hez--he's got it pow'ful.”

“Is that the reason he don't like miners?” asked Fleming.

“'Take not to yourself the mammon of unrighteousness,'” said the girl,

with the confident air of repeating a lesson. “That's what the Book

says.”

“But I read the Bible, too,” replied the young man.

“Dad says, 'The letter killeth'!” said the girl sententiously.

Fleming looked at the trophies nailed on the walls with a vague wonder

if this peculiar Scriptural destructiveness had anything to do with his

skill as a marksman. The girl followed his eye.

“Dad's a mighty hunter afore the Lord.”

“What does he do with these skins?”

“Trades 'em off for grub and fixin's. But he don't believe in trottin'

round in the mud for gold.”

“Don't you suppose these animals would have preferred it if he had? Gold

hunting takes nothing from anybody.”

The girl stared at him, and then, to his great surprise, laughed instead

of being angry. It was a very fascinating laugh in her imperfectly

nourished pale face, and her little teeth revealed the bluish milky

whiteness of pips of young Indian corn.

“Wot yer lookin' at?” she asked frankly.

“You,” he replied, with equal frankness.

“It's them duds,” she said, looking down at her dress; “I reckon I ain't

got the hang o' 'em.”

Yet there was not the slightest tone of embarrassment or even coquetry

in her manner, as with both hands she tried to gather in the loose folds

around her waist.

“Let me help you,” he said gravely.

She lifted up her arms with childlike simplicity and backed toward him

as he stepped behind her, drew in the folds, and pinned them around what

proved a very small waist indeed. Then he untied the apron, took it

off, folded it in half, and retied its curtailed proportions around the

waist. “It does feel a heap easier,” she said, with a little shiver of

satisfaction, as she lifted her round cheek, and the tail of her blue

eyes with their brown lashes, over her shoulder. It was a tempting

moment--but Jack felt that the whole race of gold hunters was on trial

just then, and was adamant! Perhaps he was a gentle fellow at heart,

too.

“I could loop up that dress also, if I had more pins,” he remarked

tentatively. Jack had sisters of his own.

The pins were forthcoming. In this operation--a kind of festooning--the

girl's petticoat, a piece of common washed-out blue flannel, as pale

as her eyes, but of the commonest material, became visible, but without

fear or reproach to either.

“There, that looks more tidy,” said Jack, critically surveying his work

and a little of the small ankles revealed. The girl also examined it

carefully by its reflection on the surface of the saucepan. “Looks a

little like a chiny girl, don't it?”

Jack would have resented this, thinking she meant a Chinese, until he

saw her pointing to a cheap crockery ornament, representing a Dutch

shepherdess, on the shelf. There was some resemblance.

“You beat mammy out o' sight!” she exclaimed gleefully. “It will jest

set her clear crazy when she sees me.”

“Then you had better say you did it yourself,” said Fleming.

“Why?” asked the girl, suddenly opening her eyes on him with relentless

frankness.

“You said your father didn't like miners, and he mightn't like your

lending your pan to me.”

“I'm more afraid o' lyin' than o' dad,” she said with an elevation of

moral sentiment that was, however, slightly weakened by the addition,

“Mammy'll say anything I'll tell her to say.”

“Well, good-by,” said Fleming, extending his hand.

“Ye didn't tell me what luck ye had with the pan,” she said, delaying

taking his hand.

Fleming shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, my usual luck,--nothing,” he

returned, with a smile.

“Ye seem to keer more for gettin' yer old ring back than for any luck,”

she continued. “I reckon you ain't much o' a miner.”

“I'm afraid not.”

“Ye didn't say wot yer name was, in case dad wants to know.”

“I don't think he will want to; but it's John Fleming.”

She took his hand. “You didn't tell me yours,” he said, holding the

little red fingers, “in case I wanted to know.”

It pleased her to consider the rejoinder intensely witty. She showed all

her little teeth, threw away his hand, and said:--

“G' long with ye, Mr. Fleming. It's Tinka”--

“Tinker?”

“Yes; short for Katinka,--Katinka Jallinger.”

“Good-by, Miss Jallinger.”

“Good-by. Dad's name is Henry Boone Jallinger, of Kentucky, ef ye was

ever askin'.”

“Thank you.”

He turned away as she swiftly re-entered the house. As he walked away,

he half expected to hear her voice uplifted again in the camp-meeting

chant, but he was disappointed. When he reached the top of the hill he

turned and looked back at the cabin.

She was apparently waiting for this, and waved him an adieu with the

humble pan he had borrowed. It flashed a moment dazzlingly as it caught

the declining sun, and then went out, even obliterating the little

figure behind it.