Mr. Jack Fleming was indeed “not much of a miner.” He and his
partners--both as young, hopeful, and inefficient as himself--had
for three months worked a claim in a mountain mining settlement
which yielded them a certain amount of healthy exercise, good-humored
grumbling, and exalted independence. To dig for three or four hours in
the morning, smoke their pipes under a redwood-tree for an hour at
noon, take up their labors again until sunset, when they “washed up”
and gathered sufficient gold to pay for their daily wants, was, without
their seeking it, or even knowing it, the realization of a charming
socialistic ideal which better men than themselves had only dreamed of.
Fleming fell back into this refined barbarism, giving little thought to
his woodland experience, and no revelation of it to his partners. He had
transacted their business at the mining town. His deviations en route
were nothing to them, and small account to himself.
The third day after his return he was lying under a redwood when his
partner approached him.
“You aren't uneasy in your mind about any unpaid bill--say a wash
bill--that you're owing?”
“Why?”
“There's a big nigger woman in camp looking for you; she's got a folded
account paper in her hand. It looks deucedly like a bill.”
“There must be some mistake,” suggested Fleming, sitting up.
“She says not, and she's got your name pat enough! Faulkner” (his other
partner) “headed her straight up the gulch, away from camp, while I came
down to warn you. So if you choose to skedaddle into the brush out there
and lie low until we get her away, we'll fix it!”
“Nonsense! I'll see her.”
His partner looked aghast at this temerity, but Fleming, jumping to his
feet, at once set out to meet his mysterious visitor. This was no easy
matter, as the ingenious Faulkner was laboriously leading his charge up
the steep gulch road, with great politeness, but many audible misgivings
as to whether this was not “Jack Fleming's day for going to Jamestown.”
He was further lightening the journey by cheering accounts of the recent
depredations of bears and panthers in that immediate locality. When
overtaken by Fleming he affected a start of joyful surprise, to conceal
the look of warning which Fleming did not heed,--having no eyes but
for Faulkners companion. She was a very fat negro woman, panting with
exertion and suppressed impatience. Fleming's heart was filled with
compunction.
“Is you Marse Fleming?” she gasped.
“Yes,” said Fleming gently. “What can I do for you?”
“Well! Ye kin pick dis yar insek, dis caterpillier,” she said, pointing
to Faulkner, “off my paf. Ye kin tell dis yar chipmunk dat when he comes
to showin' me mule tracks for b'ar tracks, he's barkin' up de wrong
tree! Dat when he tells me dat he sees panfers a-promenadin' round in de
short grass or hidin' behime rocks in de open, he hain't talkin' to no
nigger chile, but a growed woman! Ye kin tell him dat Mammy Curtis lived
in de woods afo' he was born, and hez seen more b'ars and mountain lyuns
dan he hez hairs in his mustarches.”
The word “Mammy” brought a flash of recollection to Fleming.
“I am very sorry,” he began; but to his surprise the negro woman burst
into a good-tempered laugh.
“All right, honey! S'long's you is Marse Fleming and de man dat took
dat 'ar pan offer Tinka de odder day, I ain't mindin' yo' frens'
bedevilments. I've got somefin fo' you, yar, and a little box,” and she
handed him a folded paper.
Fleming felt himself reddening, he knew not why, at which Faulkner
discreetly but ostentatiously withdrew, conveying to his other partner
painful conviction that Fleming had borrowed a pan from a traveling
tinker, whose negro wife was even now presenting a bill for the same,
and demanding a settlement. Relieved by his departure, Fleming hurriedly
tore open the folded paper. It was a letter written upon a leaf torn
out of an old account book, whose ruled lines had undoubtedly given
his partners the idea that it was a bill. Fleming hurriedly read the
following, traced with a pencil in a schoolgirl's hand:--
Mr. J. FLEMING.
Dear Sir,--After you went away that day I took that pan you brought back
to mix a batch of bread and biscuits. The next morning at breakfast dad
says: “What's gone o' them thar biscuits--my teeth is just broke with
them--they're so gritty--they're abominable! What's this?” says he, and
with that he chucks over to me two or three flakes of gold that was in
them. You see what had happened, Mr. Fleming, was this! You had better
luck than you was knowing of! It was this way! Some of the gold you
washed had got slipped into the sides of the pan where it was broke,
and the sticky dough must have brought it out, and I kneaded them up
unbeknowing. Of course I had to tell a wicked lie, but “Be ye all things
to all men,” says the Book, and I thought you ought to know your good
luck, and I send mammy with this and the gold in a little box. Of
course, if dad was a hunter of Mammon and not of God's own beasts, he
would have been mighty keen about finding where it came from, but he
allows it was in the water in our near spring. So good-by. Do you care
for your ring now as much as you did?
Yours very respectfully,
KATINKA JALLINGER.
As Mr. Fleming glanced up from the paper, mammy put a small cardboard
box in his hand. For an instant he hesitated to open it, not knowing how
far mammy was intrusted with the secret. To his great relief she said
briskly: “Well, dar! now dat job's done gone and often my han's, I allow
to quit and jest get off dis yer camp afo' ye kin shake a stick. So
don't tell me nuffin I ain't gotter tell when I goes back.”
Fleming understood. “You can tell her I thank her--and--I'll attend to
it,” he said vaguely; “that is--I”--
“Hold dar! that's just enuff, honey--no mo'! So long to ye and youse
folks.”
He watched her striding away toward the main road, and then opened the
box.
It contained three flakes of placer or surface gold, weighing in all
about a quarter of an ounce. They could easily have slipped into the
interstices of the broken pan and not have been observed by him. If this
was the result of the washing of a single pan--and he could now easily
imagine that other flakes might have escaped--what--But he stopped,
dazed and bewildered at the bare suggestion. He gazed upon the vanishing
figure of “mammy.” Could she--could Katinka--have the least suspicion of
the possibilities of this discovery? Or had Providence put the keeping
of this secret into the hands of those who least understood its
importance? For an instant he thought of running after her with a
word of caution; but on reflection he saw that this might awaken her
suspicion and precipitate a discovery by another.
His only safety for the present was silence, until he could repeat his
experiment. And that must be done quickly.
How should he get away without his partners' knowledge of his purpose?
He was too loyal to them to wish to keep this good fortune to himself,
but he was not yet sure of his good fortune. It might be only a little
“pocket” which he had just emptied; it might be a larger one which
another trial would exhaust.
He had put up no “notice;” he might find it already in possession of
Katinka's father, or any chance prospector like himself. In either case
he would be covered with ridicule by his partners and the camp, or more
seriously rebuked for his carelessness and stupidity. No! he could not
tell them the truth; nor could he lie. He would say he was called away
for a day on private business.
Luckily for him, the active imagination of his partners was even now
helping him. The theory of the “tinker” and the “pan” was indignantly
rejected by his other partner. His blushes and embarrassment were
suddenly remembered by Faulkner, and by the time he reached his cabin,
they had settled that the negro woman had brought him a love letter! He
was young and good looking; what was more natural than that he should
have some distant love affair?
His embarrassed statement that he must leave early the next morning
on business that he could not at PRESENT disclose was considered amply
confirmatory, and received with maliciously significant acquiescence.
“Only,” said Faulkner, “at YOUR age, sonny,”--he was nine months older
than Fleming,--“I should have gone TO-NIGHT.” Surely Providence was
favoring him!
He was off early the next morning. He was sorely tempted to go first to
the cabin, but every moment was precious until he had tested the proof
of his good fortune.
It was high noon before he reached the fringe of forest. A few paces
farther and he found the spring and outcrop. To avert his partners'
suspicions he had not brought his own implements, but had borrowed a
pan, spade, and pick from a neighbor's claim before setting out. The
spot was apparently in the same condition as when he left it, and with
a beating heart he at once set to work, an easy task with his new
implements. He nervously watched the water overflow the pan of dirt
at its edges until, emptied of earth and gravel, the black sand alone
covered the bottom. A slight premonition of disappointment followed;
a rich indication would have shown itself before this! A few more
workings, and the pan was quite empty except for a few pin-points of
“color,” almost exactly the quantity he found before. He washed another
pan with the same result. Another taken from a different level of the
outcrop yielded neither more nor less! There was no mistake: it was
a failure! His discovery had been only a little “pocket,” and the few
flakes she had sent him were the first and last of that discovery.
He sat down with a sense of relief; he could face his partners again
without disloyalty; he could see that pretty little figure once more
without the compunction of having incurred her father's prejudices by
locating a permanent claim so near his cabin. In fact, he could carry
out his partners' fancy to the letter!
He quickly heaped his implements together and turned to leave the wood;
but he was confronted by a figure that at first he scarcely recognized.
Yet--it was Katinka! the young girl of the cabin, who had sent him the
gold. She was dressed differently--perhaps in her ordinary every-day
garments--a bright sprigged muslin, a chip hat with blue ribbons set
upon a coil of luxurious brown hair. But what struck him most was that
the girlish and diminutive character of the figure had vanished with
her ill-fitting clothes; the girl that stood before him was of ordinary
height, and of a prettiness and grace of figure that he felt would
have attracted anywhere. Fleming felt himself suddenly embarrassed,--a
feeling that was not lessened when he noticed that her pretty lip was
compressed and her eyebrows a little straightened as she gazed at him.
“Ye made a bee line for the woods, I see,” she said coldly. “I allowed
ye might have been droppin' in to our house first.”
“So I should,” said Fleming quickly, “but I thought I ought to first
make sure of the information you took the trouble to send me.” He
hesitated to speak of the ill luck he had just experienced; he could
laugh at it himself--but would she?
“And ye got a new pan?” she said half poutingly.
Here seemed his opportunity. “Yes, but I'm afraid it hasn't the magic
of yours. I haven't even got the color. I believe you bewitched your old
pan.”
Her face flushed a little and brightened, and her lip relaxed with a
smile. “Go 'long with yer! Ye don't mean to say ye had no luck to-day?”
“None--but in seeing you.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Ye see, I said all 'long ye weren't much o' a miner.
Ye ain't got no faith. Ef ye had as much as a grain o' mustard seed,
ye'd remove mountains; it's in the Book.”
“Yes, and this mountain is on the bedrock, and my faith is not strong
enough,” he said laughingly. “And then, that would be having faith in
Mammon, and you don't want me to have THAT.”
She looked at him curiously. “I jest reckon ye don't care a picayune
whether ye strike anything or not,” she said half admiringly.
“To please you I'll try again, if you'll look on. Perhaps you'll bring
me luck as you did before. You shall take the pan. I will fill it and
you shall wash it out. You'll be my MASCOT.”
She stiffened a little at this, and then said pertly, “Wot's that?”
“My good fairy.”
She smiled again, this time with a new color in her pale face. “Maybe I
am,” she said, with sudden gravity.
He quickly filled the pan again with soil, brought it to the spring,
and first washed out the greater bulk of loose soil. “Now come here and
kneel down beside me,” he said, “and take the pan and do as I show you.”
She knelt down obediently. Suddenly she lifted her little hand with a
gesture of warning. “Wait a minit--jest a minit--till the water runs
clear again.”
The pool had become slightly discolored from the first washing.
“That makes no difference,” he said quickly.
“Ah! but wait, please!” She laid her brown hand upon his arm; a pleasant
warmth seemed to follow her touch. Then she said joyously, “Look down
there.”
“Where?” he asked.
“There--don't ye see it?”
“See what?”
“You and me!”
He looked where she pointed. The pool had settled, resumed its
mirror-like calm, and reflected distinctly, not only their two bending
faces, but their two figures kneeling side by side. Two tall redwoods
rose on either side of them, like the columns before an altar.
There was a moment of silence. The drone of a bumble-bee near by seemed
to make the silence swim drowsily in their ears; far off they heard the
faint beat of a woodpecker. The suggestion of their kneeling figures in
this magic mirror was vague, unreasoning, yet for the moment none the
less irresistible. His arm instinctively crept around her little waist
as he whispered,--he scarce knew what he said,--“Perhaps here is the
treasure I am seeking.”
The girl laughed, released herself, and sprang up; the pan sank
ingloriously to the bottom of the pool, where Fleming had to grope for
it, assisted by Tinka, who rolled up her sleeve to her elbow. For a
minute or two they washed gravely, but with no better success than
attended his own individual efforts. The result in the bottom of the pan
was the same. Fleming laughed.
“You see,” he said gayly, “the Mammon of unrighteousness is not for
me--at least, so near your father's tabernacle.”
“That makes no difference now,” said the girl quickly, “for dad is goin'
to move, anyway, farther up the mountains. He says it's gettin' too
crowded for him here--when the last settler took up a section three
miles off.”
“And are YOU going too?” asked the young man earnestly.
Tinka nodded her brown head. Fleming heaved a genuine sigh. “Well, I'll
try my hand here a little longer. I'll put up a notice of claim; I don't
suppose your father would object. You know he couldn't LEGALLY.”
“I reckon ye might do it ef ye wanted--ef ye was THAT keen on gettin'
gold!” said Tinka, looking away. There was something in the girl's tone
which this budding lover resented. He had become sensitive.
“Oh, well,” he said, “I see that it might make unpleasantness with your
father. I only thought,” he went on, with tenderer tentativeness, “that
it would be pleasant to work here near you.”
“Ye'd be only wastin' yer time,” she said darkly.
Fleming rose gravely. “Perhaps you're right,” he answered sadly and a
little bitterly, “and I'll go at once.”
He walked to the spring, and gathered up his tools. “Thank you again for
your kindness, and good-by.”
He held out his hand, which she took passively, and he moved away.
But he had not gone far before she called him. He turned to find her
still standing where he had left her, her little hands clinched at her
side, and her widely opened eyes staring at him. Suddenly she ran
at him, and, catching the lapels of his coat in both hands, held him
rigidly fast.
“No! no! ye sha'n't go--ye mustn't go!” she said, with hysterical
intensity. “I want to tell ye something! Listen!--you--you--Mr. Fleming!
I've been a wicked, wicked girl! I've told lies to dad--to mammy--to
YOU! I've borne false witness--I'm worse than Sapphira--I've acted a
big lie. Oh, Mr. Fleming, I've made you come back here for nothing!
Ye didn't find no gold the other day. There wasn't any. It was all me!
I--I--SALTED THAT PAN!”
“Salted it!” echoed Fleming, in amazement.
“Yes, 'salted it,'” she faltered; “that's what dad says they call
it--what those wicked sons of Mammon do to their claims to sell them.
I--put gold in the pan myself; it wasn't there before.”
“But why?” gasped Fleming.
She stopped. Then suddenly the fountains in the deep of her blue eyes
were broken up; she burst into a sob, and buried her head in her hands,
and her hands on his shoulder. “Because--because”--she sobbed against
him--“I WANTED YOU to come back!”
He folded her in his arms. He kissed her lovingly, forgivingly,
gratefully, tearfully, smilingly--and paused; then he kissed her
sympathetically, understandingly, apologetically, explanatorily, in lieu
of other conversation. Then, becoming coherent, he asked,--
“But WHERE did you get the gold?”
“Oh,” she said between fitful and despairing sobs, “somewhere!--I don't
know--out of the old Run--long ago--when I was little! I didn't never
dare say anything to dad--he'd have been crazy mad at his own daughter
diggin'--and I never cared nor thought a single bit about it until I saw
you.”
“And you have never been there since?”
“Never.”
“Nor anybody else?”
“No.”
Suddenly she threw back her head; her chip hat fell back from her
face, rosy with a dawning inspiration! “Oh, say, Jack!--you don't
think that--after all this time--there might”--She did not finish the
sentence, but, grasping his hand, cried, “Come!”
She caught up the pan, he seized the shovel and pick, and they raced
like boy and girl down the hill. When within a few hundred feet of the
house she turned at right angles into the clearing, and saying, “Don't
be skeered; dad's away,” ran boldly on, still holding his hand, along
the little valley. At its farther extremity they came to the “Run,” a
half-dried watercourse whose rocky sides were marked by the erosion of
winter torrents. It was apparently as wild and secluded as the forest
spring. “Nobody ever came here,” said the girl hurriedly, “after dad
sunk the well at the house.”
One or two pools still remained in the Run from the last season's flow,
water enough to wash out several pans of dirt.
Selecting a spot where the white quartz was visible, Fleming attacked
the bank with the pick. After one or two blows it began to yield and
crumble away at his feet. He washed out a panful perfunctorily, more
intent on the girl than his work; she, eager, alert, and breathless,
had changed places with him, and become the anxious prospector! But the
result was the same. He threw away the pan with a laugh, to take her
little hand! But she whispered, “Try again.”
He attacked the bank once more with such energy that a great part of
it caved and fell, filling the pan and even burying the shovel in the
debris. He unearthed the latter while Tinka was struggling to get out
the pan.
“The mean thing is stuck and won't move,” she said pettishly. “I think
it's broken now, too, just like ours.”
Fleming came laughingly forward, and, putting one arm around the girl's
waist, attempted to assist her with the other. The pan was immovable,
and, indeed, seemed to be broken and bent. Suddenly he uttered an
exclamation and began hurriedly to brush away the dirt and throw the
soil out of the pan.
In another moment he had revealed a fragment of decomposed quartz, like
discolored honeycombed cheese, half filling the pan. But on its side,
where the pick had struck it glancingly, there was a yellow streak
like a ray of sunshine! And as he strove to lift it he felt in that
unmistakable omnipotency of weight that it was seamed and celled with
gold.
The news of Mr. Fleming's engagement, two weeks later, to the daughter
of the recluse religious hunter who had made a big strike at Lone Run,
excited some skeptical discussion, even among the honest congratulations
of his partners.
“That's a mighty queer story how Jack got that girl sweet on him just by
borrowin' a prospectin' pan of her,” said Faulkner, between the whiffs
of his pipe under the trees. “You and me might have borrowed a hundred
prospectin' pans and never got even a drink thrown in. Then to think
of that old preachin' coon-hunter hevin' to give in and pass his strike
over to his daughter's feller, jest because he had scruples about gold
diggin' himself. He'd hev booted you and me outer his ranch first.”
“Lord, ye ain't takin' no stock in that hogwash,” responded the other.
“Why, everybody knows old man Jallinger pretended to be sick o' miners
and minin' camps, and couldn't bear to hev 'em near him, only jest
because he himself was all the while secretly prospectin' the whole lode
and didn't want no interlopers. It was only when Fleming nippled in by
gettin' hold o' the girl that Jallinger knew the secret was out, and
that's the way he bought him off. Why, Jack wasn't no miner--never
was--ye could see that. HE never struck anything. The only treasure he
found in the woods was Tinka Jallinger!”
A BELLE OF CANADA CITY
Cissy was tying her hat under her round chin before a small glass at
her window. The window gave upon a background of serrated mountain and
olive-shadowed canyon, with a faint additional outline of a higher snow
level--the only dreamy suggestion of the whole landscape. The foreground
was a glaringly fresh and unpicturesque mining town, whose irregular
attempts at regularity were set forth with all the cruel, uncompromising
clearness of the Californian atmosphere. There was the straight Main
Street with its new brick block of “stores,” ending abruptly against a
tangled bluff; there was the ruthless clearing in the sedate pines where
the hideous spire of the new church imitated the soaring of the solemn
shafts it had displaced with almost irreligious mockery. Yet this
foreground was Cissy's world--her life, her sole girlish experience. She
did not, however, bother her pretty head with the view just then, but
moved her cheek up and down before the glass, the better to examine
by the merciless glare of the sunlight a few freckles that starred the
hollows of her temples. Like others of her sex, she was a poor critic
of what was her real beauty, and quarreled with that peculiar texture of
her healthy skin which made her face as eloquent in her sun-kissed cheek
as in her bright eyes and expression. Nevertheless, she was somewhat
consoled by the ravishing effect of the bowknot she had just tied, and
turned away not wholly dissatisfied. Indeed, as the acknowledged belle
of Canada City and the daughter of its principal banker, small wonder
that a certain frank vanity and childlike imperiousness were among her
faults--and her attractions.
She bounded down the stairs and into the front parlor, for their house
possessed the unheard-of luxury of a double drawing-room, albeit the
second apartment contained a desk, and was occasionally used by Cissy's
father in private business interviews with anxious seekers of “advances”
who shunned the publicity of the bank. Here she instantly flew into the
arms of her bosom friend, Miss Piney Tibbs, a girl only a shade or two
less pretty than herself, who, always more or less ill at ease in these
splendors, was awaiting her impatiently. For Miss Tibbs was merely the
daughter of the hotel-keeper; and although Tibbs was a Southerner, and
had owned “his own niggers” in the States, she was of inferior position
and a protegee of Cissy's.
“Thank goodness you've come,” exclaimed Miss Tibbs, “for I've bin
sittin' here till I nigh took root. What kep' ye?”
“How does it look?” responded Cissy, as a relevant reply.
The “it” referred to Cissy's new hat, and to the young girl the
coherence was perfectly plain. Miss Tibbs looked at “it” severely. It
would not do for a protegee to be too complaisant.
“Hem! Must have cost a heap o' money.”
“It did! Came from the best milliner in San Francisco.”
“Of course,” said Piney, with half assumed envy. “When your popper runs
the bank and just wallows in gold!”
“Never mind, dear,” replied Cissy cheerfully. “So'll YOUR popper some
day. I'm goin' to get mine to let YOUR popper into something--Ditch
stocks and such. Yes! True, O King! Popper'll do anything for me,” she
added a little loftily.
Loyal as Piney was to her friend, she was by no means convinced of
this. She knew the difference between the two men, and had a vivid
recollection of hearing her own father express his opinion of Cissy's
respected parent as a “Gold Shark” and “Quartz Miner Crusher.” It did
not, however, affect her friendship for Cissy. She only said, “Let's
come!” caught Cissy around the waist, pranced with her out into the
veranda, and gasped, out of breath, “Where are we goin' first?”
“Down Main Street,” said Cissy promptly.
“And let's stop at Markham's store. They've got some new things in from
Sacramento,” added Piney.
“Country styles,” returned Cissy, with a supercilious air. “No! Besides,
Markham's head clerk is gettin' too presumptuous. Just guess! He asked
me, while I was buyin' something, if I enjoyed the dance last Monday!”
“But you danced with him,” said the simple Piney, in astonishment.
“But not in his store among his customers,” said Cissy sapiently. “No!
we're going down Main Street past Secamps'. Those Secamp girls are
sure to be at their windows, looking out. This hat will just turn 'em
green--greener than ever.”
“You're just horrid, Ciss!” said Piney, with admiration.
“And then,” continued Cissy, “we'll just sail down past the new block to
the parson's and make a call.”
“Oh, I see,” said Piney archly. “It'll be just about the time when the
new engineer of the mill works has a clean shirt on, and is smoking his
cigyar before the office.”
Cissy tossed her hat disdainfully. “Much anybody cares whether he's
there or not! I haven't forgotten how he showed us over the mill the
other day in a pair of overalls, just like a workman.”
“But they say he's awfully smart and well educated, and needn't work,
and I'm sure it's very nice of him to dress just like the other men when
he's with 'em,” urged Piney.
“Bah! That was just to show that he didn't care what we thought of him,
he's that conceited! And it wasn't respectful, considering one of the
directors was there, all dressed up. Don't tell me! You can see it in
his eye, looking you over without blinking and then turning away as if
he'd got enough of you. He makes me tired.”
Piney did not reply. The engineer had seemed to her to be a singularly
attractive young man, yet she was equally impressed with Cissy's
superior condition, which could find flaws in such perfection. Following
her friend down the steps of the veranda, they passed into the staring
graveled walk of the new garden, only recently recovered from the wild
wood, its accurate diamond and heart shaped beds of vivid green set
in white quartz borders giving it the appearance of elaborately iced
confectionery. A few steps further brought them to the road and the
wooden “sidewalk” to Main Street, which carried civic improvements
to the hillside, and Mr. Trixit's very door. Turning down this
thoroughfare, they stopped laughing, and otherwise assumed a conscious
half artificial air; for it was the hour when Canada City lounged
listlessly before its shops, its saloons, its offices and mills, or even
held lazy meetings in the dust of the roadway, and the passage down the
principal street of its two prettiest girls was an event to be viewed as
if it were a civic procession. Hats flew off as they passed; place was
freely given; impeding barrels and sacks were removed from the wooden
pavement, and preoccupied indwellers hastily summoned to the front door
to do homage to Cissy Trixit and Piney as they went by. Not but that
Canada City, in the fierce and unregenerate days of its youth, had
seen fairer and higher colored faces, more gayly bedizened, on its
thoroughfares, but never anything so fresh and innocent. Men stood
there all unconsciously, reverencing their absent mothers, sisters, and
daughters, in their spontaneous homage to the pair, and seemed to feel
the wholesome breath of their Eastern homes wafted from the freshly
ironed skirts of these foolish virgins as they rustled by. I am afraid
that neither Cissy nor Piney appreciated this feeling; few women did at
that time; indeed, these young ladies assumed a slight air of hauteur.
“Really, they do stare so,” said Cissy, with eyes dilating with
pleasurable emotion; “we'll have to take the back street next time!”
Piney, proud in the glory reflected from Cissy, and in her own,
answered, “We will--sure!”
There was only one interruption to this triumphal progress, and that was
so slight as to be noticed by only one of the two girls. As they passed
the new works at the mill, the new engineer, as Piney had foreseen, was
leaning against the doorpost, smoking a pipe. He took his hat from his
head and his pipe from his month as they approached, and greeted them
with an easy “Good-afternoon,” yet with a glance that was quietly
observant and tolerantly critical.
“There!” said Cissy, when they had passed, “didn't I tell you? Did you
ever see such conceit in your born days? I hope you did not look at
him.”
Piney, conscious of having done so, and of having blushed under his
scrutiny, nevertheless stoutly asserted that she had merely looked at
him “to see who it was.” But Cissy was placated by passing the Secamps'
cottage, from whose window the three strapping daughters of John
Secamp, lately an emigrant from Missouri, were, as Cissy had surmised,
lightening the household duties by gazing at the--to them--unwonted
wonders of the street. Whether their complexions, still bearing traces
of the alkali dust and inefficient nourishment of the plains, took a
more yellow tone from the spectacle of Cissy's hat, I cannot say. Cissy
thought they did; perhaps Piney was nearer the truth when she suggested
that they were only “looking” to enable them to make a home-made copy of
the hat next week.
Their progress forward and through the outskirts of the town was of
the same triumphal character. Teamsters withheld their oaths and their
uplifted whips as the two girls passed by; weary miners, toiling in
ditches, looked up with a pleasure that was half reminiscent of their
past; younger skylarkers stopped in their horse-play with half smiling,
half apologetic faces; more ambitious riders on the highway urged their
horses to greater speed under the girls' inspiring eyes, and “Vaquero
Billy,” charging them, full tilt, brought up his mustang on its haunches
and rigid forelegs, with a sweeping bow of his sombrero, within a foot
of their artfully simulated terror! In this way they at last reached the
clearing in the forest, the church with its ostentatious spire, and the
Reverend Mr. Windibrook's dwelling, otherwise humorously known as “The
Pastorage,” where Cissy intended to call.
The Reverend Mr. Windibrook had been selected by his ecclesiastical
superiors to minister to the spiritual wants of Canada City as being
what was called a “hearty” man. Certainly, if considerable lung
capacity, absence of reserve, and power of handshaking and back slapping
were necessary to the redemption of Canada City, Mr. Windibrook's
ministration would have been successful. But, singularly enough, the
rude miner was apt to resent this familiarity, and it is recorded that
Isaac Wood, otherwise known as “Grizzly Woods,” once responded to a
cheerful back slap from the reverend gentleman by an ostentatiously
friendly hug which nearly dislocated the parson's ribs. Perhaps Mr.
Windibrook was more popular on account of his admiring enthusiasm of the
prosperous money-getting members of his flock and a singular sympathy
with their methods, and Mr. Trixit's daring speculations were an
especially delightful theme to him.
“Ah, Miss Trixit,” he said, as Cissy entered the little parlor, “and how
is your dear father? Still startling the money market with his fearless
speculations? This, brother Jones,” turning to a visitor, “is the
daughter of our Napoleon of finance, Montagu Trixit. Only last week,
in that deal in 'the Comstock,' he cleared fifty thousand dollars! Yes,
sir,” repeating it with unction, “fifty--thousand--dollars!--in about
two hours, and with a single stroke of the pen! I believe I am
not overstating, Miss Trixit?” he added, appealing to Cissy with
a portentous politeness that was as badly fitting as his previous
“heartiness.”
Cissy colored slightly. “I don't know,” she said simply. She was
perfectly truthful. She knew nothing of her father's business, except
the vague reputation of his success.
Her modesty, however, produced a singular hilarity in Mr. Windibrook,
and a playful push. “YOU don't know? Ha, but I do. Yes, sir,”--to the
visitor,--“I have reason to remember it. I called upon him the next day.
I used, sir, the freedom of an old friend. 'Trixit,' I said, clapping
my hand on his shoulder, 'the Lord has been good to you. I congratulate
you.'
“'H'm!' he said, without looking up. 'What do you reckon those
congratulations are worth?'
“Many a man, sir, who didn't know his style, would have been staggered.
But I knew my man. I looked him straight in the eye. 'A new organ,' I
said, 'and as good a one as Sacramento can turn out.'
“He took up a piece of paper, scrawled a few lines on it to his cashier,
and said, 'Will that do?'” Mr. Windibrook's voice sank to a thrilling
whisper. “It was an order for one thousand dollars! Fact, sir. THAT is
the father of this young lady.”
“Ye had better luck than Bishop Briggs had with old Johnson, the
Excelsior Bank president,” said the visitor, encouraged by Windibrook's
“heartiness” into a humorous retrospect. “Briggs goes to him for a
subscription for a new fence round the buryin'-ground--the old one
havin' rotted away. 'Ye don't want no fence,' sez Johnson, short like.
'No fence round a buryin'-ground?' sez Briggs, starin'. 'No! Them as is
IN the buryin'-ground can't get OUT, and them as ISN'T don't want to
get IN, nohow! So you kin just travel--I ain't givin' money away on
uselessnesses!' Ha! ha!”
A chill silence followed, which checked even Piney's giggle. Mr.
Windibrook evidently had no “heartiness” for non-subscribing
humor. “There are those who can jest with sacred subjects,” he said
ponderously, “but I have always found Mr. Trixit, though blunt,
eminently practical. Your father is still away,” he added, shifting the
conversation to Cissy, “hovering wherever he can extract the honey to
store up for the provision of age. An industrious worker.”
“He's still away,” said Cissy, feeling herself on safe ground, though
she was not aware of her father's entomological habits. “In San
Francisco, I think.”
She was glad to get away from Mr. Windibrook's “heartiness” and console
herself with Mrs. Windibrook's constitutional depression, which was
partly the result of nervous dyspepsia and her husband's boisterous
cordiality. “I suppose, dear, you are dreadfully anxious about your
father when he is away from home?” she said to Cissy, with a sympathetic
sigh.
Cissy, conscious of never having felt a moment's anxiety, and accustomed
to his absences, replied naively, “Why?”
“Oh,” responded Mrs. Windibrook, “on account of his great business
responsibilities, you know; so much depends upon him.”
Again Cissy did not comprehend; she could not understand why this
masterful man, her father, who was equal to her own and, it seemed,
everybody's needs, had any responsibility, or was not as infallible
and constant as the sunshine or the air she breathed. Without being his
confidante, or even his associate, she had since her mother's death no
other experience; youthfully alive to the importance of their wealth, it
seemed to her, however, only a natural result of being HIS daughter. She
smiled vaguely and a little impatiently. They might have talked to
her about HERSELF; it was a little tiresome to always have to answer
questions about her “popper.” Nevertheless, she availed herself of
Mrs. Windibrook's invitation to go into the garden and see the new
summerhouse that had been put up among the pines, and gradually diverted
her hostess's conversation into gossip of the town. If it was somewhat
lugubrious and hesitating, it was, however, a relief to Cissy, and
bearing chiefly upon the vicissitudes of others, gave her the comforting
glow of comparison.
Touching the complexion of the Secamp girls, Mrs. Windibrook attributed
it to their great privations in the alkali desert. “One day,” continued
Mrs. Windibrook, “when their father was ill with fever and ague, they
drove the cattle twenty miles to water through that dreadful poisonous
dust, and when they got there their lips were cracked and bleeding and
their eyelids like burning knives, and Mamie Secamp's hair, which used
to be a beautiful brown like your own, my dear, was bleached into a
rusty yellow.”
“And they WILL wear colors that don't suit them,” said Cissy
impatiently.
“Never mind, dear,” said Mrs. Windibrook ambiguously; “I suppose they
will have their reward.”
Nor was the young engineer discussed in a lighter vein. “It pains me
dreadfully to see that young man working with the common laborers and
giving himself no rest, just because he says he wants to know exactly
'how the thing is done' and why the old works failed,” she remarked
sadly. “When Mr. Windibrook knew he was the son of Judge Masterton and
had rich relations, he wished, of course, to be civil, but somehow young
Masterton and he didn't 'hit off.' Indeed, Mr. Windibrook was told that
he had declared that the prosperity of Canada City was only a mushroom
growth, and it seems too shocking to repeat, dear, but they say he said
that the new church--OUR church--was simply using the Almighty as a big
bluff to the other towns. Of course, Mr. Windibrook couldn't see him
after that. Why, he even said your father ought to send you to school
somewhere, and not let you grow up in this half civilized place.”
Strangely enough, Cissy did not hail this corroboration of her dislike
to young Masterton with the liveliness one might have expected. Perhaps
it was because Piney Tibbs was no longer present, having left Cissy at
the parsonage and returned home. Still she enjoyed her visit after a
fashion, romped with the younger Windibrooks and climbed a tree in
the security of her sylvan seclusion and the promptings of her still
healthy, girlish blood, and only came back to cake and tea and her
new hat, which she had prudently hung up in the summer-house, as the
afternoon was waning. When they returned to the house, they found that
Mr. Windibrook had gone out with his visitor, and Cissy was spared the
advertisement of a boisterous escort home, which he generally insisted
upon. She gayly took leave of the infant Windibrook and his mother,
sallied out into the empty road, and once more became conscious of her
new hat.
The shadows were already lengthening, and a cool breeze stirred the deep
aisles of the pines on either side of the highway. One or two
people passed her hurriedly, talking and gesticulating, evidently so
preoccupied that they did not notice her. Again, a rapid horseman rode
by without glancing round, overtook the pedestrians, exchanged a few
hurried words with them, and then spurred swiftly away as one of them
shouted after him, “There's another dispatch confirming it.” A group
of men talking by the roadside failed to look up as she passed. Cissy
pouted slightly at this want of taste, which made some late election
news or the report of a horse race more enthralling than her new hat and
its owner. Even the toilers in the ditches had left their work, and were
congregated around a man who was reading aloud from a widely margined
“extra” of the “Canada City Press.” It seemed provoking, as she knew
her cheeks were glowing from her romp, and was conscious that she was
looking her best. However, the Secamps' cottage was just before her, and
the girls were sure to be on the lookout! She shook out her skirts and
straightened her pretty little figure as she approached the house. But
to her surprise, her coming had evidently been anticipated by them,
and they were actually--and unexpectedly--awaiting her behind the low
whitewashed garden palings! As she neared them they burst into a
shrill, discordant laugh, so full of irony, gratified malice, and mean
exaltation that Cissy was for a moment startled. But only for a moment;
she had her father's reckless audacity, and bore them down with a
display of such pink cheeks and flashing eyes that their laughter was
checked, and they remained open-mouthed as she swept by them.
Perhaps this incident prevented her from noticing another but more
passive one. A group of men standing before the new mill--the same
men who had so solicitously challenged her attention with their bows a
couple of hours ago--turned as she approached and suddenly dispersed. It
was not until this was repeated by another group that its oddity forced
itself upon her still angry consciousness. Then the street seemed to
be full of those excited preoccupied groups who melted away as she
advanced. Only one man met her curious eyes,--the engineer,--yet she
missed the usual critical smile with which he was wont to greet her,
and he gave her a bow of such profound respect and gravity that for the
first time she felt really uneasy. Was there something wrong with her
hat? That dreadful, fateful hat! Was it too conspicuous? Did he think
it was vulgar? She was eager to cross the street on the next block where
there were large plate-glass windows which she and Piney--if Piney were
only with her now!--had often used as mirrors.
But there was a great crowd on the next block, congregated around the
bank,--her father's bank! A vague terror, she knew not what, now began
to creep over her. She would have turned into a side street, but mingled
with her fear was a resolution not to show it,--not to even THINK of
it,--to combat it as she had combated the horrid laugh of the Secamp
girls, and she kept her way with a beating heart but erect head, without
looking across the street.
There was another crowd before the newspaper office--also on the other
side--and a bulletin board, but she would not try to read it. Only one
idea was in her mind,--to reach home before any one should speak to her;
for the last intelligible sound that had reached her was the laugh of
the Secamp girls, and this was still ringing in her ears, seeming to
voice the hidden strangeness of all she saw, and stirring her, as that
had, with childish indignation. She kept on with unmoved face, however,
and at last turned into the planked side-terrace,--a part of her
father's munificence,--and reached the symmetrical garden-beds and
graveled walk. She ran up the steps of the veranda and entered the
drawing-room through the open French window. Glancing around the
familiar room, at her father's closed desk, at the open piano with the
piece of music she had been practicing that morning, the whole walk
seemed only a foolish dream that had frightened her. She was Cissy
Trixit, the daughter of the richest man in the town! This was her
father's house, the wonder of Canada City!
A ring at the front doorbell startled her; without waiting for the
servant to answer it, she stepped out on the veranda, and saw a boy whom
she recognized as a waiter at the hotel kept by Piney's father. He
was holding a note in his hand, and staring intently at the house and
garden. Seeing Cissy, he transferred his stare to her. Snatching the
note from him, she tore it open, and read in Piney's well-known scrawl,
“Dad won't let me come to you now, dear, but I'll try to slip out late
to-night.” Why should she want to come? She had said nothing about
coming NOW--and why should her father prevent her? Cissy crushed the
note between her fingers, and faced the boy.
“What are you staring at--idiot?”
The boy grinned hysterically, a little frightened at Cissy's
straightened brows and snapping eyes.
“Get away! there's no answer.”
The boy ran off, and Cissy returned to the drawing-room. Then it
occurred to her that the servant had not answered the bell. She rang
again furiously. There was no response. She called down the basement
staircase, and heard only the echo of her voice in the depths. How still
the house was! Were they ALL out,--Susan, Norah, the cook, the Chinaman,
and the gardener? She ran down into the kitchen; the back door was open,
the fires were burning, dishes were upon the table, but the kitchen was
empty. Upon the floor lay a damp copy of the “extra.” She picked it
up quickly. Several black headlines stared her in the face. “Enormous
Defalcation!” “Montagu Trixit Absconded!” “50,000 Dollars Missing!” “Run
on the Bank!”
She threw the paper through the open door as she would have hurled back
the accusation from living lips. Then, in a revulsion of feeling lest
any one should find her there, she ran upstairs and locked herself in
her own room.
So that was what it all meant! All!--from the laugh of the Secamp girls
to the turning away of the townspeople as she went by. Her father was a
thief who had stolen money from the bank and run away leaving her alone
to bear it! No! It was all a lie--a wicked, jealous lie! A foolish lie,
for how could he steal money from HIS OWN bank? Cissy knew very little
of her father--perhaps that was why she believed in him; she knew still
less of business, but she knew that HE did. She had often heard them
say it--perhaps the very ones who now called him names. He! who had made
Canada City what it was! HE, who, Windibrook said, only to-day, had,
like Moses, touched the rocks of the Canada with his magic wand of
Finance, and streams of public credit and prosperity had gushed from
it! She would never speak to them again! She would shut herself up here,
dismiss all the servants but the Chinaman, and wait until her father
returned.
There was a knock, and the entreating voice of Norah, the cook, outside
the door. Cissy unlocked it and flung it open indignantly.
“Ah! It's yourself, miss--and I never knew ye kem back till I met that
gossoon of a hotel waiter in the street,” said the panting servant.
“Sure it was only an hour ago while I was at me woorrck in the kitchen,
and Jim rushes in and sez: 'For the love of God, if iver ye want to see
a blessed cint of the money ye put in the masther's bank, off wid ye now
and draw it out--for there's a run on the bank!'”
“It was an infamous lie,” said Cissy fiercely.
“Sure, miss, how was oi to know? And if the masther HAS gone away, it's
ownly takin' me money from the other divils down there that's drawin' it
out and dividin' it betwixt and between them.”
Cissy had a very vague idea of what a “run on the bank” meant, but
Norah's logic seemed to satisfy her feminine reason. She softened a
little.
“Mr. Windibrook is in the parlor, miss, and a jintleman on the veranda,”
continued Norah, encouraged.
Cissy started. “I'll come down,” she said briefly.
Mr. Windibrook was waiting beside the piano, with his soft hat in one
hand and a large white handkerchief in the other. He had confidently
expected to find Cissy in tears, and was ready with boisterous
condolement, but was a little taken aback as the young girl entered
with a pale face, straightened brows, and eyes that shone with audacious
rebellion. However, it was too late to change his attitude. “Ah, my
young friend,” he said a little awkwardly, “we must not give way to our
emotions, but try to recognize in our trials the benefits of a great
lesson. But,” he added hurriedly, seeing her stand still silent but
erect before him, “I see that you do!” He paused, coughed slightly, cast
a glance at the veranda,--where Cissy now for the first time observed
a man standing in an obviously assumed attitude of negligent
abstraction,--moved towards the back room, and in a lower voice said, “A
word with you in private.”
Without replying, Cissy followed him.
“If,” said Mr. Windibrook, with a sickly smile, “you are questioned
regarding your father's affairs, you may remember his peculiar and
utterly unsolicited gift of a certain sum towards a new organ, to which
I alluded to-day. You can say that he always expressed great liberality
towards the church, and it was no surprise to you.”
Cissy only stared at him with dangerous eyes.
“Mrs. Windibrook,” continued the reverend gentleman in his highest,
heartiest voice, albeit a little hurried, “wished me to say to you that
until you heard from--your friends--she wanted you to come and stay with
her. DO come! DO!”
Cissy, with her bright eyes fixed upon her visitor, said, “I shall stay
here.”
“But,” said Mr. Windibrook impatiently, “you cannot. That man you see on
the veranda is the sheriff's officer. The house and all that it contains
are in the hands of the law.”
Cissy's face whitened in proportion as her eyes grew darker, but she
said stoutly, “I shall stay here till my popper tells me to go.”
“Till your popper tells you to go!” repeated Mr. Windibrook harshly,
dropping his heartiness and his handkerchief in a burst of unguarded
temper. “Your papa is a thief escaping from justice, you foolish girl;
a disgraced felon, who dare not show his face again in Canada City; and
you are lucky, yes! lucky, miss, if you do not share his disgrace!”
“And you're a wicked, wicked liar!” said Cissy, clinching her little
fists at her side and edging towards him with a sidelong bantam-like
movement as she advanced her freckled cheek close to his with an
effrontery so like her absconding father that he recoiled before it.
“And a mean, double-faced hypocrite, too! Didn't you always praise him?
Didn't you call him a Napoleon, and a--Moses? Didn't you say he was
the making of Canada City? Didn't you get him to raise your salary, and
start a subscription for your new house? Oh, you--you--stinking beast!”
Here the stranger on the veranda, still gazing abstractedly at
the landscape, gave a low and apparently unconscious murmur, as if
enraptured with the view. Mr. Windibrook, recalled to an attempt at
dignity, took up his hat and handkerchief. “When you have remembered
yourself and your position, Miss Trixit,” he said loftily, “the offer I
have made you”--
“I despise it! I'd sooner stay in the woods with the grizzlies and
rattlesnakes?” said Cissy pantingly. “Go and leave me alone! Do you
hear?” She stamped her little foot. “Are you listening? Go!”
Mr. Windibrook promptly retreated through the door and down the steps
into the garden, at which the stranger on the veranda reluctantly tore
himself away from the landscape and slowly entered the parlor through
the open French window. Here, however, he became equally absorbed and
abstracted in the condition of his beard, carefully stroking his shaven
cheek and lips and pulling his goatee.
After a pause he turned to the angry Cissy, standing by the piano,
radiant with glowing cheeks and flashing eyes, and said slowly, “I
reckon you gave the parson as good as he sent. It kinder settles a man
to hear the frozen truth about himself sometimes, and you've helped old
Shadbelly considerably on the way towards salvation. But he was right
about one thing, Miss Trixit. The house IS in the hands of the law. I'm
representing it as deputy sheriff. Mebbe you might remember me--Jake
Poole--when your father was addressing the last Citizen's meeting,
sittin' next to him on the platform--I'M in possession. It isn't a job
I'm hankerin' much arter; I'd a lief rather hunt hoss thieves or track
down road agents than this kind o' fancy, underhand work. So you'll
excuse me, miss, if I ain't got the style.” He paused, rubbed his chin
thoughtfully, and then said slowly and with great deliberation: “Ef
there's any little thing here, miss,--any keepsakes or such trifles
ez you keer for in partickler, things you wouldn't like strangers to
have,--you just make a little pile of 'em and drop 'em down somewhere
outside the back door. There ain't no inventory taken nor sealin' up
of anythin' done just yet, though I have to see there ain't anythin'
disturbed. But I kalkilate to walk out on that veranda for a spell
and look at the landscape.” He paused again, and said, with a sigh of
satisfaction, “It's a mighty pooty view out thar; it just takes me every
time.”
As he turned and walked out through the French window, Cissy did not
for a moment comprehend him; then, strangely enough, his act of rude
courtesy for the first time awakened her to the full sense of the
situation. This house, her father's house, was no longer hers! If her
father should NEVER return, she wanted nothing from it, NOTHING! She
gripped her beating heart with the little hand she had clinched so
valiantly a moment ago. Suddenly her hand dropped. Some one had glided
noiselessly into the back room; a figure in a blue blouse; a Chinaman,
their house servant, Ah Fe. He cast a furtive glance at the stranger on
the veranda, and then beckoned to her stealthily. She came towards him
wonderingly, when he suddenly whipped a note from his sleeve, and with
a dexterous movement slipped it into her fingers. She tore it open. A
single glance showed her a small key inclosed in a line of her father's
handwriting. Drawing quickly back into the corner, she read as follows:
“If this reaches you in time, take from the second drawer of my desk an
envelope marked 'Private Contracts' and give it to the bearer.” There
was neither signature nor address.
Putting her finger to her lips, she cast a quick glance at the absorbed
figure on the veranda and stepped before the desk. She fitted the key
to the drawer and opened it rapidly but noiselessly. There lay
the envelope, and among other ticketed papers a small roll of
greenbacks--such as her father often kept there. It was HIS money; she
did not scruple to take it with the envelope. Handing the latter to
the Chinaman, who made it instantly disappear up his sleeve like a
conjurer's act, she signed him to follow her into the hall.
“Who gave you that note, Ah Fe?” she whispered breathlessly.
“Chinaman.”
“Who gave it to him?”
“Chinaman.”
“And to HIM?”
“Nollee Chinaman.”
“Another Chinaman?”
“Yes--heap Chinaman--allee same as gang.”
“You mean it passed from one Chinaman's hand to another?”
“Allee same.”
“Why didn't the first Chinaman who got it bring it here?”
“S'pose Mellikan man want to catchee lettel. He spotty Chinaman. He
follee Chinaman. Chinaman passee lettel nex' Chinaman. He no get.
Mellikan man no habe got. Sabe?”
“Then this package will go back the same way?”
“Allee same.”
“And who will YOU give it to now?”
“Allee same man blingee me lettel. Hop Li--who makee washee.”
An idea here struck Cissy which made her heart jump and her cheeks
flame. Ah Fe gazed at her with an infantile smile of admiration.
“How far did that letter come?” she asked, with eager questioning eyes.
“Lettee me see him,” said Ah Fe.
Cissy handed him the missive; he examined closely some half-a-dozen
Chinese characters that were scrawled along the length of the outer
fold, and which she had innocently supposed were a part of the markings
of the rice paper on which the note was written.
“Heap Chinaman velly much walkee--longee way! S'pose you look.” He
pointed through the open front door to the prospect beyond. It was a
familiar one to Cissy,--the long Canada, the crest on crest of serried
pines, and beyond the dim snow-line. Ah Fe's brown finger seemed to
linger there.
“In the snow,” she whispered, her cheek whitening like that dim line,
but her eyes sparkling like the sunshine over it.
“Allee same, John,” said Ah Fe plaintively.
“Ah Fe,” whispered Cissy, “take ME with you to Hop Li.”
“No good,” said Ah Fe stolidly. “Hop Li, he givee this”--he indicated
the envelope in his sleeve--“to next Chinaman. HE no go. S'pose you go
with me, Hop Li--you no makee nothing--allee same, makee foolee!”
“I know; but you just take me there. DO!”
The young girl was irresistible. Ah Fe's face relaxed. “Allee litee!” he
said, with a resigned smile.
“You wait here a moment,” said Cissy, brightening. She flew up the
staircase. In a few minutes she was back again. She had exchanged her
smart rose-sprigged chintz for a pathetic little blue-checked frock of
her school-days; the fateful hat had given way to a brown straw “flat,”
bent like a frame around her charming face. All the girlishness, and
indeed a certain honest boyishness of her nature, seemed to have come
out in her glowing, freckled cheek, brilliant, audacious eyes, and the
quick stride which brought her to Ah Fe's side.
“Now let's go,” she said, “out the back way and down the side streets.”
She paused, cast a glance through the drawing-room at the contemplative
figure of the sheriff's deputy on the veranda, and then passed out of
the house forever.
*****
The excitement over the failure of Montagu Trixit's bank did not burn
itself out until midnight. By that time, however, it was pretty well
known that the amount of the defalcations had been exaggerated; that
it had been preceded by the suspension of the “Excelsior Bank” of San
Francisco, of which Trixit was also a managing director, occasioned by
the discovery of the withdrawal of securities for use in the branch bank
at Canada City; that he had fled the State eastward across the Sierras;
yet that, owing to the vigilance of the police on the frontier, he had
failed to escape and was in hiding. But there were adverse reports of a
more sinister nature. It was said that others were implicated; that they
dared not bring him to justice; it was pointed out that there was more
concern among many who were not openly connected with the bank than
among its unfortunate depositors. Besides the inevitable downfall of
those who had invested their fortunes in it, there was distrust or
suspicion everywhere. Even Trixit's enemies were forced to admit the
saying that “Canada City was the bank, and the bank was Trixit.”
Perhaps this had something to do with an excited meeting of the
directors of the New Mill, to whose discussions Dick Masterton, the
engineer, had been hurriedly summoned. When the president told him that
he had been selected to undertake the difficult and delicate mission
of discovering the whereabouts of Montagu Trixit, and, if possible,
procuring an interview with him, he was amazed. What had the New Mill,
which had always kept itself aloof from the bank and its methods, to
do with the disgraced manager? He was still more astonished when the
president added bluntly:--
“Trixit holds securities of ours for money advanced to the mill by
himself privately. They do not appear on the books, but if he chooses
to declare them as assets of the bank, it's a bad thing for us. If he
is bold enough to keep them, he may be willing to make some arrangement
with us to carry them on. If he has got away or committed suicide, as
some say, it's for you to find the whereabouts of the securities and get
them. He is said to have been last seen near the Summit. You understand
our position?”
Masterton did, with suppressed disgust. But he was young, and there was
the thrill of adventure in this. “I will go,” he said quietly.
“We thought you would. You must take the up stage to-night. Come
again and get your final instructions. By the way, you might get some
information at Trixit's house. You--er--er--are acquainted with his
daughter, I think?”
“Which makes it quite impossible for me to seek her for such a purpose,”
said Masterton coldly.
A few hours later he was on the coach. As they cleared the outskirts of
the town, they passed two Chinamen plodding sturdily along in the dust
of the highway.
*****
Mr. Masterton started from a slight doze in the heavy, lumbering
“mountain wagon” which had taken the place of the smart Concord coach
that he had left at the last station. The scenery, too, had changed; the
four horses threaded their way through rocky defiles of stunted larches
and hardy “brush,” with here and there open patches of shrunken snow.
Yet at the edge of declivities he could still see through the rolled-up
leather curtains the valley below bathed in autumn, the glistening
rivers half spent with the long summer drought, and the green slopes
rolling upward into crest after crest of ascending pines. At times a
drifting haze, always imperceptible from below, veiled the view; a chill
wind blew through the vehicle, and made the steel sledge-runners that
hung beneath the wagon, ready to be shipped under the useless wheels,
an ominous provision. A few rude “stations,” half blacksmith shops, half
grocery, marked the deserted but wellworn road; along, narrow “packer's”
wagon, or a tortuous file of Chinamen carrying mysterious bundles
depending from bamboo poles, was their rare and only company. The rough
sheepskin jackets which these men wore over their characteristic blue
blouses and their heavy leggings were a new revelation to Masterton,
accustomed to the thinly clad coolie of the mines. They seemed a
distinct race.
“I never knew those chaps get so high up, but they seem to understand
the cold,” he remarked.
The driver looked up, and ejaculated his disgust and his tobacco juice
at the same moment.
“I reckon they're everywhar in Californy whar you want 'em and whar you
don't; you take my word for it, afore long Californy will hev to reckon
that she ginerally DON'T want 'em, ef a white man has to live here. With
a race tied up together in a language ye can't understand, ways that no
feller knows,--from their prayin' to devils, swappin' their wives, and
havin' their bones sent back to Chiny,--wot are ye goin' to do, and
where are ye? Wot are ye goin' to make outer men that look so much alike
ye can't tell 'em apart; that think alike and act alike, and never in
ways that ye kin catch on to! Fellers knotted together in some underhand
secret way o' communicatin' with each other, so that ef ye kick a
Chinaman up here on the Summit, another Chinaman will squeal in the
valley! And the way they do it just gets me! Look yer! I'll tell ye
somethin' that happened, that's gospel truth! Some of the boys that
reckoned to hev some fun with the Chinee gang over at Cedar Camp started
out one afternoon to raid 'em. They groped along through the woods whar
nobody could see 'em, kalkilatin' to come down with a rush on the camp,
over two miles away. And nobody DID see 'em, only ONE Chinaman wot they
met a mile from the camp, burnin' punk to his joss or devil, and he
scooted away just in the contrary direction. Well, sir, when they
waltzed into that camp, darn my skin! ef there was a Chinaman there, or
as much as a grain of rice to grab! Somebody had warned 'em! Well! this
sort o' got the boys, and they set about discoverin' how it was done.
One of 'em noticed that there was some of them bits of tissue paper
slips that they toss around at funerals lyin' along the road near the
camp, and another remembered that the Chinaman they met on the hill
tossed a lot of that paper in the air afore he scooted. Well, sir, the
wind carried just enough of that paper straight down the hill into
that camp ten minutes afore THEY could get there, to give them Chinamen
warnin'--whatever it was! Fact! Why, I've seen 'em stringin' along the
road just like them fellers we passed just now, and then stop all of a
suddent like hounds off the scent, jabber among themselves, and start
off in a different direction”--
“Just what they're doing now! By thunder!” interrupted another
passenger, who was looking through the rolled-up curtain at his side.
All the passengers turned by one accord and looked out. The file of
Chinamen under observation had indeed turned, and was even then moving
rapidly away at right angles from the road.
“Got some signal, you bet!” said the driver; “some yeller paper or piece
o' joss stick in the road. What?”
The remark was addressed to the passenger who had just placed his finger
on his lip, and indicated a stolid-looking Chinaman, overlooked before,
who was sitting in the back or “steerage” seat.
“Oh, he be darned!” said the driver impatiently. “HE is no account; he's
only the laundryman from Rocky Canyon. I'm talkin' of the coolie gang.”
But here the conversation flagged, and the air growing keener, the flaps
of the leather side curtains were battened down. Masterton gave himself
up to conflicting reflections. The information that he had gathered
was meagre and unsatisfactory, and he could only trust to luck and
circumstance to fulfill his mission. The first glow of adventure having
passed, he was uneasily conscious that the mission was not to his taste.
The pretty, flushed but defiant face of Cissy that afternoon haunted
him; he had not known the immediate cause of it, but made no doubt that
she had already heard the news of her father's disgrace when he met
her. He regretted now that he hadn't spoken to her, if only a few formal
words of sympathy. He had always been half tenderly amused at her frank
conceit and her “airs,”--the innocent, undisguised pride of the country
belle, so different from the hard aplomb of the city girl! And now the
foolish little moth, dancing in the sunshine of prosperity, had felt the
chill of winter in its pretty wings. The contempt he had for the father
had hitherto shown itself in tolerant pity for the daughter, so proud
of her father's position and what it brought her. In the revelation that
his own directors had availed themselves of that father's methods, and
the ignoble character of his present mission, he felt a stirring of
self-reproach. What would become of her? Of course, frivolous as she
was, she would not feel the keenness of this misfortune like another,
nor yet rise superior to it. She would succumb for the present, to
revive another season in a dimmer glory elsewhere. His critical, cynical
observation of her had determined that any filial affection she
might have would be merged and lost in the greater deprivation of her
position.
A sudden darkening of the landscape below, and a singular opaque
whitening of the air around them, aroused him from his thoughts. The
driver drew up the collar of his overcoat and laid his whip smartly over
the backs of his cattle. The air grew gradually darker, until suddenly
it seemed to disintegrate into invisible gritty particles that swept
through the wagon. Presently these particles became heavier, more
perceptible, and polished like small shot, and a keen wind drove them
stingingly into the faces of the passengers, or insidiously into their
pockets, collars, or the folds of their clothes. The snow forced itself
through the smallest crevice.
“We'll get over this when once we've passed the bend; the road seems to
dip beyond,” said Masterton cheerfully from his seat beside the driver.
The driver gave him a single scornful look, and turned to the passenger
who occupied the seat on the other side of him. “I don't like the look
o' things down there, but ef we are stuck, we'll have to strike out for
the next station.”
“But,” said Masterton, as the wind volleyed the sharp snow pellets in
their faces and the leaders were scarcely distinguishable through the
smoke-like discharges, “it can't be worse than here.”
The driver did not speak, but the other passenger craned over his back,
and said explanatorily:--
“I reckon ye don't know these storms; this kind o' dry snow don't stick
and don't clog. Look!”
Indeed, between the volleys, Masterton could see that the road was
perfectly bare and wind-swept, and except slight drifts and banks beside
outlying bushes and shrubs,--which even then were again blown away
before his eyes,--the level landscape was unclothed and unchanged. Where
these mysterious snow pellets went to puzzled and confused him; they
seemed to vanish, as they had appeared, into the air about them.
“I'd make a straight rush for the next station,” said the other
passenger confidently to the driver. “If we're stuck, we're that much on
the way; if we turn back now, we'll have to take the grade anyway when
the storm's over, and neither you nor I know when THAT'll be. It may be
only a squall just now, but it's gettin' rather late in the season. Just
pitch in and drive all ye know.”
The driver laid his lash on the horses, and for a few moments the heavy
vehicle dashed forward in violent conflict with the storm. At times the
elastic hickory framework of its domed leather roof swayed and bent like
the ribs of an umbrella; at times it seemed as if it would be lifted
bodily off; at times the whole interior of the vehicle was filled with a
thin smoke by drifts through every cranny. But presently, to Masterton's
great relief, the interminable level seemed to end, and between the
whitened blasts he could see that the road was descending. Again the
horses were urged forward, and at last he could feel that the vehicle
began to add the momentum of its descent to its conflict with the storm.
The blasts grew less violent, or became only the natural resistance of
the air to their dominant rush. With the cessation of the snow volleys
and the clearing of the atmosphere, the road became more strongly
defined as it plunged downward to a terrace on the mountain flank,
several hundred feet below. Presently they came again upon a thicker
growth of bushes, and here and there a solitary fir. The wind died away;
the cold seemed to be less bitter. Masterton, in his relief, glanced
smilingly at his companions on the box, but the driver's mouth was
compressed as he urged his team forward, and the other passenger looked
hardly less anxious. They were now upon the level terrace, and the storm
apparently spending its fury high up and behind them. But in spite of
the clearing of the air, he could not but notice that it was singularly
dark. What was more singular, the darkness seemed to have risen from
below, and to flow in upon them as they descended. A curtain of profound
obscurity, darker even than the mountain wall at their side, shut out
the horizon and the valley below. But for the temperature, Masterton
would have thought a thunderstorm was closing in upon them. An odd
feeling of uneasiness crept over him.
A few fitful gusts now came from the obscurity; one of them was
accompanied by what seemed a flight of small startled birds crossing the
road ahead of them. A second larger and more sustained flight showed his
astonished eyes that they were white, and each bird an enormous flake
of SNOW! For an instant the air was filled with these disks, shreds,
patches,--two or three clinging together,--like the downfall shaken from
a tree, striking the leather roof and sides with a dull thud, spattering
the road into which they descended with large rosettes that melted away
only to be followed by hundreds more that stuck and STAYED. In five
minutes the ground was white with it, the long road gleaming out ahead
in the darkness; the roof and sides of the wagon were overlaid with it
as with a coating of plaster of Paris; the harness of the horses,
and even the reins, stood out over their steaming backs like white
trappings. In five minutes more the steaming backs themselves were
blanketed with it; the arms and legs of the outside passengers pinioned
to the seats with it, and the arms of the driver kept free only by
incessant motion. It was no longer snowing; it was “snowballing;” it
was an avalanche out of the slopes of the sky. The exhausted horses
floundered in it; the clogging wheels dragged in it; the vehicle at last
plunged into a billow of it--and stopped.
The bewildered and half blinded passengers hurried out into the road
to assist the driver to unship the wheels and fit the steel runners
in their axles. But it was too late! By the time the heavy wagon was
converted into a sledge, it was deeply imbedded in wet and clinging
snow. The narrow, long-handled shovels borrowed from the prospectors'
kits were powerless before this heavy, half liquid impediment. At last
the driver, with an oath, relinquished the attempt, and, unhitching his
horses, collected the passengers and led them forward by a narrower and
more sheltered trail toward the next stations now scarce a mile away.
The led horses broke a path before them, the snow fell less heavily,
but it was nearly an hour before the straggling procession reached the
house, and the snow-coated and exhausted passengers huddled and steamed
round the red-hot stove in the bar-room. The driver had vanished with
his team into the shed; Masterton's fellow passenger on the box-seat,
after a few whispered words to the landlord, also disappeared.
“I see you've got Jake Poole with you,” said one of the bar-room
loungers to Masterton, indicating the passenger who had just left. “I
reckon he's here on the same fool business.”
Masterton looked his surprise and mystification.
“Jake Poole, the deputy sheriff,” repeated the other. “I reckon he's
here pretendin' to hunt for Montagu Trixit like the San Francisco
detectives that kem up yesterday.”
Masterton with difficulty repressed a start. He had heard of Poole, but
did not know him by sight. “I don't think I understand,” he said coolly.
“I reckon you're a stranger in these parts,” returned the lounger,
looking at Masterton curiously. “Ef you warn't, ye'd know that about the
last man San Francisco or Canada City WANTED to ketch is Monty Trixit!
He knows too much and THEY know it. But they've got to keep up a show
chase--a kind o' cirkis-ridin'--up here to satisfy the stockholders. You
bet that Jake Poole hez got his orders--they might kill him to shut his
mouth, ef they got an excuse--and he made a fight--but he ain't no such
fool. No, sir! Why, the sickest man you ever saw was that director that
kem up here with a detective when he found that Monty HADN'T left the
State.”
“Then he IS hiding about here?” said Masterton, with assumed calmness.
The man paused, lowered his voice, and said: “I wouldn't swear he wasn't
a mile from whar we're talkin' now. Why, they do allow that he's taken a
drink at this very bar SINCE the news came!--and that thar's a hoss kept
handy in the stable already saddled just to tempt him ef he was inclined
to scoot.”
“That's only a bluff to start him goin' so that they kin shoot him in
his tracks,” said a bystander.
“That ain't no good ef he has, as they SAY he has, papers stowed away
with a friend that would frighten some mighty partickler men out o'
their boots,” returned the first speaker. “But he's got his spies too,
and thar ain't a man that crosses the Divide as ain't spotted by them.
The officers brag about havin' put a cordon around the district, and yet
they've just found out that he managed to send a telegraphic dispatch
from Black Rock station right under their noses. Why, only an hour or
so arter the detectives and the news arrived here, thar kem along one o'
them emigrant teams from Pike, and the driver said that a smart-lookin'
chap in store-clothes had come out of an old prospector's cabin up
thar on the rise about a mile away and asked for a newspaper. And the
description the teamster gave just fitted Trixit to a T. Well, the
information was give so public like that the detectives HAD to make a
rush over thar, and b'gosh! although thar wasn't a soul passed them
but a file of Chinese coolies, when they got thar they found
NOTHIN',--nothin' but them Chinamen cookin' their rice by the roadside.”
Masterton smiled carelessly, and walked to the window, as if intent upon
the still falling snow. But he had at once grasped the situation that
seemed now almost providential for his inexperience and his mission. The
man he was seeking was within his possible reach, if the story he had
heard was true. The detectives would not be likely to interfere with his
plans, for he was the only man who really wished to meet the fugitive.
The presence of Poole made him uneasy, though he had never met the man
before. Was it barely possible that he was on the same mission on behalf
of others? IF what he heard was true, there might be others equally
involved with the absconding manager. But then the spies--how could the
deputy sheriff elude them, and how could HE?
He was turning impatiently away from the window when his eye caught
sight of a straggling file of Chinamen breasting the storm on their way
up the hill. A sudden idea seized him. Perhaps THEY were the spies in
question. He remembered the driver's story. A sudden flash of intuition
made him now understand the singular way the file of coolies which
they met had diverted their course after passing the wagon. They had
recognized the deputy on the box. Stay!--there was another Chinaman in
the coach; HE might have given them the signal. He glanced hurriedly
around the room for him; he was gone. Perhaps he had already joined the
file he had just seen. His only hope was to follow them--but how? and
how to do it quietly? The afternoon was waning; it would be three or
four hours before the down coach would arrive, from which the driver
expected assistance. Now, if ever, was his opportunity.
He made his way through the back door, and found himself among the straw
and chips of the stable-yard and woodshed. Still uncertain what to do,
he mechanically passed before the long shed which served as temporary
stalls for the steaming wagon horses. At the further end, to his
surprise, was a tethered mustang ready saddled and bridled--the
opportune horse left for the fugitive, according to the lounger's story.
Masterton cast a quick glance around the stable; it was deserted by all
save the feeding animals.
He was new to adventures of this kind, or he would probably have weighed
the possibilities and consequences. He was ordinarily a thoughtful,
reflective man, but like most men of intellect, he was also imaginative
and superstitious, and this crowning accident of the providential
situation in which he found himself was superior to his logic. There
would also be a grim irony in his taking this horse for such a purpose.
He again looked and listened. There was no one within sight or hearing.
He untied the rope from the bit-ring, leaped into the saddle, and
emerged cautiously from the shed. The wet snow muffled the sound of the
horse's hoofs. Moving round to the rear of the stable so as to bring it
between himself and the station, he clapped his heels into the mustang's
flanks and dashed into the open.
At first he was confused and bewildered by the half hidden boulders and
snow-shrouded bushes that beset the broken ground, and dazzled by the
still driving storm. But he knew that they would also divert attention
from his flight, and beyond, he could now see a white slope slowly
rising before him, near whose crest a few dark spots were crawling in
file, like Alpine climbers. They were the Chinamen he was seeking. He
had reasoned that when they discovered they were followed they would, in
the absence of any chance of signaling through the storm, detach one
of their number to give the alarm. HIM he would follow. He felt
his revolver safe on his hip; he would use it only if necessary to
intimidate the spies.
For some moments his ascent through the wet snow was slow and difficult,
but as he advanced, he felt a change of temperature corresponding to
that he had experienced that afternoon on the wagon coming down. The air
grew keener, the snow drier and finer. He kept a sharp lookout for
the moving figures, and scanned the horizon for some indication of the
prospector's deserted hut. Suddenly the line of figures he was watching
seemed to be broken, and then gathered together as a group. Had they
detected him? Evidently they had, for, as he had expected, one of them
had been detached, and was now moving at right angles from the party
towards the right. With a thrill of excitement he urged his horse
forward; the group was far to the left, and he was nearing the solitary
figure. But to his astonishment, as he approached the top of the slope
he now observed another figure, as far to the left of the group as he
was to the right, and that figure he could see, even at that distance,
was NOT a Chinaman. He halted for a better observation; for an
instant he thought it might be the fugitive himself, but as quickly he
recognized it was another man--the deputy. It was HE whom the Chinaman
had discovered; it was HE who had caused the diversion and the dispatch
of the vedette to warn the fugitive. His own figure had evidently
not yet been detected. His heart beat high with hope; he again dashed
forward after the flying messenger, who was undoubtedly seeking the
prospector's ruined hut and--Trixit.
But it was no easy matter. At this elevation the snow had formed a
crust, over which the single Chinaman--a lithe young figure--skimmed
like a skater, while Masterton's horse crashed though it into unexpected
depths. Again, the runner could deviate by a shorter cut, while the
horseman was condemned to the one half obliterated trail. The only thing
in Masterton's favor, however, was that he was steadily increasing his
distance from the group and the deputy sheriff, and so cutting off
their connection with the messenger. But the trail grew more and more
indistinct as it neared the summit, until at last it utterly vanished.
Still he kept up his speed toward the active little figure--which now
seemed to be that of a mere boy--skimming over the frozen snow. Twice
a stumble and flounder of the mustang through the broken crust ought
to have warned him of his recklessness, but now a distinct glimpse of
a low, blackened shanty, the prospector's ruined hut, toward which
the messenger was making, made him forget all else. The distance was
lessening between them; he could see the long pigtail of the fugitive
standing out from his bent head, when suddenly his horse plunged forward
and downward. In an awful instant of suspense and twilight, such as
he might have seen in a dream, he felt himself pitched headlong into
suffocating depths, followed by a shock, the crushing weight and
steaming flank of his horse across his shoulder, utter darkness,
and--merciful unconsciousness.
How long he lay there thus he never knew. With his returning
consciousness came this strange twilight again,--the twilight of a
dream. He was sitting in the new church at Canada City, as he had sat
the first Sunday of his arrival there, gazing at the pretty face of
Cissy Trixit in the pew opposite him, and wondering who she was. Again
he saw the startled, awakened light that came into her adorable eyes,
the faint blush that suffused her cheek as she met his inquiring gaze,
and the conscious, half conceited, half girlish toss of her little
head as she turned her eyes away, and then a file of brown Chinamen,
muttering some harsh, uncouth gibberish, interposed between them. This
was followed by what seemed to be the crashing in of the church roof, a
stifling heat succeeded by a long, deadly chill. But he knew that
THIS last was all a dream, and he tried to struggle to his feet to see
Cissy's face again,--a reality that he felt would take him out of this
horrible trance,--and he called to her across the pew and heard her
sweet voice again in answer, and then a wave of unconsciousness once
more submerged him.
He came back to life with a sharp tingling of his whole frame as if
pierced with a thousand needles. He knew he was being rubbed, and in his
attempts to throw his torturers aside, he saw faintly by the light of a
flickering fire that they were Chinamen, and he was lying on the floor
of a rude hut. With his first movements they ceased, and, wrapping him
like a mummy in warm blankets, dragged him out of the heap of loose snow
with which they had been rubbing him, toward the fire that glowed upon
the large adobe hearth. The stinging pain was succeeded by a warm glow;
a pleasant languor, which made even thought a burden, came over him, and
yet his perceptions were keenly alive to his surroundings. He heard
the Chinamen mutter something and then depart, leaving him alone. But
presently he was aware of another figure that had entered, and was now
sitting with its back to him at a rude table, roughly extemporized from
a packing-box, apparently engaged in writing. It was a small Chinaman,
evidently the one he had chased! The events of the past few hours--his
mission, his intentions, and every incident of the pursuit--flashed back
upon him. Where was he? What was he doing here? Had Trixit escaped him?
In his exhausted state he was unable to formulate a question which even
then he doubted if the Chinaman could understand. So he simply watched
him lazily, and with a certain kind of fascination, until he should
finish his writing and turn round. His long pigtail, which seemed
ridiculously disproportionate to his size,--the pigtail which he
remembered had streamed into the air in his flight,--had partly escaped
from the discovered hat under which it had been coiled. But what was
singular, it was not the wiry black pigtail of his Mongolian fellows,
but soft and silky, and as the firelight played upon it, it seemed of a
shining chestnut brown! It was like--like--he stopped--was he dreaming
again? A long sigh escaped him.
The figure instantly turned. He started. It was Cissy Trixit! There
was no mistaking that charming, sensitive face, glowing with health and
excitement, albeit showing here and there the mark of the pigment with
which it had been stained, now hurriedly washed off. A little of it had
run into the corners of her eyelids, and enhanced the brilliancy of her
eyes.
He found his tongue with an effort. “What are you doing here?” he asked
with a faint voice, and a fainter attempt to smile.
“That's what I might ask about you,” she said pertly, but with a slight
touch of scorn; “but I guess I know as well as I do about the others. I
came here to see my father,” she added defiantly.
“And you are the--the--one--I chased?”
“Yes; and I'd have outrun you easily, even with your horse to help
you,” she said proudly, “only I turned back when you went down into that
prospector's hole with your horse and his broken neck atop of you.”
He groaned slightly, but more from shame than pain. The young girl took
up a glass of whiskey ready on the table and brought it to him. “Take
that; it will fetch you all right in a moment. Popper says no bones are
broken.”
Masterton waived the proffered glass. “Your father--is he here?” he
asked hurriedly, recalling his mission.
“Not now; he's gone to the station--to--fetch--my clothes,” she said,
with a little laugh.
“To the station?” repeated Masterton, bewildered.
“Yes,” she replied, “to the station. Of course you don't know the news,”
she added, with an air of girlish importance. “They've stopped all
proceedings against him, and he's as free as you are.”
Masterton tried to rise, but another groan escaped him. He was really
in pain. Cissy's bright eyes softened. She knelt beside him, her soft
breath fanning his hair, and lifted him gently to a sitting position.
“Oh, I've done it before,” she laughed, as she read his wonder, with
his gratitude, in his eyes. “The horse was already stiff, and you
were nearly so, by the time I came up to you and got”--she laughed
again--“the OTHER Chinaman to help me pull you out of that hole.”
“I know I owe you my life,” he said, his face flushing.
“It was lucky I was there,” she returned naively; “perhaps lucky you
were chasing me.”
“I'm afraid that of the many who would run after you I should be the
least lucky,” he said, with an attempt to laugh that did not, however,
conceal his mortification; “but I assure you that I only wished to have
an interview with your father,--a BUSINESS interview, perhaps as much in
his interest as my own.”
The old look of audacity came back to her face. “I guess that's what
they all came here for, except one, but it didn't keep them from
believing and saying he was a thief behind his back. Yet they all wanted
his--confidence,” she added bitterly.
Masterton felt that his burning cheeks were confessing the truth of
this. “You excepted one,” he said hesitatingly.
“Yes--the deputy sheriff. He came to help ME.”
“You!”
“Yes, ME!” A coquettish little toss of her head added to his confusion.
“He threw up his job just to follow me, without my knowing it, to see
that I didn't come to any harm. He saw me only once, too, at the house
when he came to take possession. He said he thought I was 'clear grit'
to risk everything to find father, and he said he saw it in me when he
was there; that's how he guessed where I was gone when I ran away, and
followed me.”
“He was as right as he was lucky,” said Masterton gravely. “But how did
you get here?”
She slipped down on the floor beside him with an unconscious movement
that her masculine garments only made the more quaintly girlish, and,
clasping her knee with both hands, looked at the fire as she rocked
herself slightly backward and forward as she spoke.
“It will shock a proper man like you, I know,” she began demurely, “but
I came ALONE, with only a Chinaman to guide me. I got these clothes from
our laundryman, so that I shouldn't attract attention. I would have got
a Chinese lady's dress, but I couldn't walk in THEIR shoes,”--she looked
down at her little feet encased in wooden sandals,--“and I had a long
way to walk. But even if I didn't look quite right to Chinamen, no white
man was able to detect the difference. You passed me twice in the stage,
and you didn't know me. I traveled night and day, most of the time
walking, and being passed along from one Chinaman to another, or, when
we were alone, being slung on a pole between two coolies like a bale of
goods. I ate what they could give me, for I dared not go into a shop or
a restaurant; I couldn't shut my eyes in their dens, so I stayed awake
all night. Yet I got ahead of you and the sheriff,--though I didn't know
at the time what YOU were after,” she added presently.
He was overcome with wondering admiration of her courage, and of
self-reproach at his own short-sightedness. This was the girl he had
looked upon as a spoiled village beauty, satisfied with her small
triumphs and provincial elevation, and vacant of all other purpose. Here
was she--the all-unconscious heroine--and he her critic helpless at
her feet! It was not a cheerful reflection, and yet he took a certain
delight in his expiation. Perhaps he had half believed in her without
knowing it. What could he do or say? I regret to say he dodged the
question meanly.
“And you think your disguise escaped detection?” he said, looking
markedly at her escaped braid of hair.
She followed his eyes rather than his words, half pettishly caught up
the loosened braid, swiftly coiled it around the top of her head, and,
clapping the weather-beaten and battered conical hat back again upon it,
defiantly said: “Yes! Everybody isn't as critical as you are, and even
you wouldn't be--of a Chinaman!”
He had never seen her except when she was arrayed with the full
intention to affect the beholders and perfectly conscious of her
attractions; he was utterly unprepared for this complete ignoring of
adornment now, albeit he was for the first time aware how her real
prettiness made it unnecessary. She looked fully as charming in this
grotesque head-covering as she had in that paragon of fashion, the new
hat, which had excited his tolerant amusement.
“I'm afraid I'm a very poor critic,” he said bluntly. “I never conceived
that this sort of thing was at all to your taste.”
“I came to see my father because I wanted to,” she said, with equal
bluntness.
“And I came to see him though I DIDN'T want to,” he said, with a cynical
laugh.
She turned, and fixed her brown eyes inquiringly upon him.
“Why did you come, then?”
“I was ordered by my directors.”
“Then you did not believe he was a thief?” she asked, her eyes
softening.
“It would ill become me to accuse your father or my directors,” he
answered diplomatically.
She was quick enough to detect the suggestion of moral superiority
in his tone, but woman enough to forgive it. “You're no friend of
Windibrook,” she said, “I know.”
“I am not,” he replied frankly.
“If you would like to see my popper, I can manage it,” she said
hesitatingly. “He'll do anything for me,” she added, with a touch of her
old pride.
“Who could blame him?” returned Masterton gravely. “But if he is a free
man now, and able to go where he likes, and to see whom he likes, he may
not care to give an audience to a mere messenger.”
“You wait and let me see him first,” said the girl quickly. Then, as the
sound of sleigh-bells came from the road outside, she added, “Here he
is. I'll get your clothes; they are out here drying by the fire in
the shed.” She disappeared through a back door, and returned presently
bearing his dried garments. “Dress yourself while I take popper into the
shed,” she said quickly, and ran out into the road.
Masterton dressed himself with difficulty. Although circulation was now
restored, and he felt a glow through his warmed clothes, he had been
sorely bruised and shaken by his fall. He had scarcely finished dressing
when Montagu Trixit entered from the shed. Masterton looked at him with
a new interest and a respect he had never felt before. There certainly
was little of the daughter in this keen-faced, resolute-lipped man,
though his brown eyes, like hers, had the same frank, steadfast
audacity. With a business brevity that was hurried but not unkindly, he
hoped Masterton had fully recovered.
“Thanks to your daughter, I'm all right now,” said Masterton. “I need
not tell you that I believe I owe my life to her energy and courage, for
I think you have experienced what she can do in that way. But YOU have
had the advantage of those who have only enjoyed her social
acquaintance in knowing all the time what she was capable of,” he added
significantly.
“She is a good girl,” said Trixit briefly, yet with a slight rise in
color on his dark, sallow cheek, and a sudden wavering of his steadfast
eyes. “She tells me you have a message from your directors. I think I
know what it is, but we won't discuss it now. As I am going directly to
Sacramento, I shall not see them, but I will give you an answer to take
to them when we reach the station. I am going to give you a lift there
when my daughter is ready. And here she is.”
It was the old Cissy that stepped into the room, dressed as she was when
she left her father's house two days before. Oddly enough, he fancied
that something of her old conscious manner had returned with her
clothes, and as he stepped with her into the back seat of the covered
sleigh in waiting, he could not help saying, “I really think I
understand you better in your other clothes.”
A slight blush mounted to Cissy's cheek, but her eyes were still
audacious. “All the same, I don't think you'd like to walk down Main
Street with me in that rig, although you once thought nothing of taking
me over your old mill in your blue blouse and overalls.” And having
apparently greatly relieved her proud little heart by this enigmatic
statement, she grew so chatty and confidential that the young man was
satisfied that he had been in love with her from the first!
When they reached the station, Trixit drew him aside. Taking an envelope
marked “Private Contracts” from his pocket, he opened it and displayed
some papers. “These are the securities. Tell your directors that you
have seen them safe in my hands, and that no one else has seen them.
Tell them that if they will send me their renewed notes, dated from
to-day, to Sacramento within the next three days, I will return the
securities. That is my message.”
The young man bowed. But before the coach started he managed to draw
near to Cissy. “You are not returning to Canada City,” he said.
The young girl made a gesture of indignation. “No! I am never going
there again. I go with my popper to Sacramento.”
“Then I suppose I must say 'good-by.'”
The girl looked at him in surprise. “Popper says you are coming to
Sacramento in three days!”
“Am I?”
He looked at her fixedly. She returned his glance audaciously,
steadfastly.
“You are,” she said, in her low but distinct voice.
“I will.”
And he did.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FONDA