Produced by Donald Lainson
THE BELL-RINGER OF ANGEL'S
By Bret Harte
CONTENTS
THE BELL-RINGER OF ANGEL'S
JOHNNYBOY
YOUNG ROBIN GRAY
THE SHERIFF OF SISKYOU
A ROSE OF GLENBOGIE
THE MYSTERY OF THE HACIENDA
CHU CHU
MY FIRST BOOK
THE BELL-RINGER OF ANGEL'S
CHAPTER I.
Where the North Fork of the Stanislaus River begins to lose its youthful
grace, vigor, and agility, and broadens more maturely into the plain,
there is a little promontory which at certain high stages of water lies
like a small island in the stream. To the strongly-marked heroics of
Sierran landscape it contrasts a singular, pastoral calm. White and
gray mosses from the overhanging rocks and feathery alders trail their
filaments in its slow current, and between the woodland openings there
are glimpses of vivid velvet sward, even at times when the wild oats and
“wire-grasses” of the plains are already yellowing. The placid river,
unstained at this point by mining sluices or mill drift, runs clear
under its contemplative shadows. Originally the camping-ground of a
Digger Chief, it passed from his tenancy with the American rifle bullet
that terminated his career. The pioneer who thus succeeded to its
attractive calm gave way in turn to a well-directed shot from the
revolver of a quartz-prospector, equally impressed with the charm of
its restful tranquillity. How long he might have enjoyed its riparian
seclusion is not known. A sudden rise of the river one March night
quietly removed him, together with the overhanging post oak beneath
which he was profoundly but unconsciously meditating. The demijohn of
whiskey was picked up further down. But no other suggestion of these
successive evictions was ever visible in the reposeful serenity of the
spot.
It was later occupied, and a cabin built upon the spot, by one Alexander
McGee, better known as “the Bell-ringer of Angel's.” This euphonious
title, which might have suggested a consistently peaceful occupation,
however, referred to his accuracy of aim at a mechanical target, where
the piercing of the bull's eye was celebrated by the stroke of a bell.
It is probable that this singular proficiency kept his investment of
that gentle seclusion unchallenged. At all events it was uninvaded. He
shared it only with the birds. Perhaps some suggestion of nest building
may have been in his mind, for one pleasant spring morning he brought
hither a wife. It was his OWN; and in this way he may be said to have
introduced that morality which is supposed to be the accompaniment and
reflection of pastoral life. Mrs. McGee's red petticoat was sometimes
seen through the trees--a cheerful bit of color. Mrs. McGee's red
cheeks, plump little figure, beribboned hat and brown, still-girlish
braids were often seen at sunset on the river bank, in company with
her husband, who seemed to be pleased with the discreet and distant
admiration that followed them. Strolling under the bland shadows of the
cotton-woods, by the fading gold of the river, he doubtless felt that
peace which the mere world cannot give, and which fades not away before
the clear, accurate eye of the perfect marksman.
Their nearest neighbors were the two brothers Wayne, who took up
a claim, and built themselves a cabin on the river bank near the
promontory. Quiet, simple men, suspected somewhat of psalm-singing, and
undue retirement on Sundays, they attracted but little attention. But
when, through some original conception or painstaking deliberation, they
turned the current of the river so as to restrict the overflow between
the promontory and the river bank, disclosing an auriferous “bar” of
inconceivable richness, and establishing their theory that it was really
the former channel of the river, choked and diverted though ages of
alluvial drift, they may be said to have changed, also, the fortunes
of the little settlement. Popular feeling and the new prosperity which
dawned upon the miners recognized the two brothers by giving the name of
Wayne's Bar to the infant settlement and its post-office. The peaceful
promontory, although made easier of access, still preserved its calm
seclusion, and pretty Mrs. McGee could contemplate through the leaves of
her bower the work going on at its base, herself unseen. Nevertheless,
this Arcadian retreat was being slowly and surely invested; more than
that, the character of its surroundings was altered, and the complexion
of the river had changed. The Wayne engines on the point above had
turned the drift and debris into the current that now thickened and ran
yellow around the wooded shore. The fringes of this Eden were already
tainted with the color of gold.
It is doubtful, however, if Mrs. McGee was much affected by this
sentimental reflection, and her husband, in a manner, lent himself to
the desecration of his exclusive domain by accepting a claim along
the shore--tendered by the conscientious Waynes in compensation for
restricting the approach to the promontory--and thus participated in
the fortunes of the Bar. Mrs. McGee amused herself by watching from
her eyrie, with a presumably childish interest, the operations of
the red-shirted brothers on the Bar; her husband, however, always
accompanying her when she crossed the Bar to the bank. Some two or three
other women--wives of miners--had joined the camp, but it was evident
that McGee was as little inclined to intrust his wife to their
companionship as to that of their husbands. An opinion obtained that
McGee, being an old resident, with alleged high connections in Angel's,
was inclined to be aristocratic and exclusive.
Meantime, the two brothers who had founded the fortunes of the Bar were
accorded an equally high position, with an equal amount of reserve.
Their ways were decidedly not those of the other miners, and were as
efficacious in keeping them from familiar advances as the reputation of
Mr. McGee was in isolating his wife. Madison Wayne, the elder, was
tall, well-knit and spare, reticent in speech and slow in deduction;
his brother, Arthur, was of rounder outline, but smaller and of a more
delicate and perhaps a more impressible nature. It was believed by some
that it was within the range of possibility that Arthur would yet be
seen “taking his cocktail like a white man,” or “dropping his scads”
at draw poker. At present, however, they seemed content to spend their
evenings in their own cabin, and their Sundays at a grim Presbyterian
tabernacle in the next town, to which they walked ten miles, where, it
was currently believed, “hell fire was ladled out free,” and “infants
damned for nothing.” When they did not go to meeting it was also
believed that the minister came to them, until it was ascertained that
the sound of sacred recitation overheard in their cabin was simply
Madison Wayne reading the Bible to his younger brother. McGee is said
to have stopped on one of these occasions--unaccompanied by his
wife--before their cabin, moving away afterwards with more than his
usual placid contentment.
It was about eleven o'clock one morning, and Madison Wayne was at work
alone on the Bar. Clad in a dark gray jersey and white duck trousers
rolled up over high india-rubber boots, he looked not unlike a peaceful
fisherman digging stakes for his nets, as he labored in the ooze and
gravel of the still half-reclaimed river bed. He was far out on the Bar,
within a stone's throw of the promontory. Suddenly his quick ear caught
an unfamiliar cry and splash. Looking up hastily, he saw Mrs. McGee's
red petticoat in the water under the singularly agitated boughs of an
overhanging tree. Madison Wayne ran to the bank, threw off his heavy
boots, and sprang into the stream. A few strokes brought him to Mrs.
McGee's petticoat, which, as he had wisely surmised, contained Mrs.
McGee, who was still clinging to a branch of the tree. Grasping her
waist with one hand and the branch with the other, he obtained a
foothold on the bank, and dragged her ashore. A moment later they both
stood erect and dripping at the foot of the tree.
“Well?” said the lady.
Wayne glanced around their seclusion with his habitual caution, slightly
knit his brows perplexedly, and said: “You fell in?”
“I didn't do nothin' of the sort. I JUMPED in.”
Wayne again looked around him, as if expecting her companion, and
squeezed the water out of his thick hair. “Jumped in?” he repeated
slowly. “What for?”
“To make you come over here, Mad Wayne,” she said, with a quick laugh,
putting her arms akimbo.
They stood looking at each other, dripping like two river gods. Like
them, also, Wayne had apparently ignored the fact that his trousers were
rolled up above his bare knees, and Mrs. McGee that her red petticoat
clung closely to her rather pretty figure. But he quickly recovered
himself. “You had better go in and change your clothes,” he said, with
grave concern. “You'll take cold.”
She only shook herself disdainfully. “I'm all right,” she said; “but
YOU, Mad Wayne, what do you mean by not speaking to me--not knowing me?
You can't say that I've changed like that.” She passed her hand down her
long dripping braids as if to press the water from them, and yet with a
half-coquettish suggestion in the act.
Something struggled up into the man's face which was not there before.
There was a new light in his grave eyes. “You look the same,” he said
slowly; “but you are married--you have a husband.”
“You think that changes a girl?” she said, with a laugh “That's where
all you men slip up! You're afraid of his rifle--THAT'S the change that
bothers you, Mad.”
“You know I care little for carnal weapons,” he said quietly. She DID
know it; but it is the privilege of the sex to invent its facts and then
to graciously abandon them as if they were only arguments. “Then why do
you keep off from me? Why do you look the other way when I pass?” she
said quickly.
“Because you are married,” he said slowly.
She again shook the water from her like a Newfoundland dog. “That's it.
You're mad because I got married. You're mad because I wouldn't marry
you and your church over on the cross roads, and sing hymns with you and
become SISTER Wayne. You wanted me to give up dancing and buggy ridin'
Sundays--and you're just mad because I didn't. Yes, mad--just mean, baby
mad, Mr. Maddy Wayne, for all your CHRISTIAN resignation! That's what's
the matter with you.” Yet she looked very pretty and piquant in her
small spitefulness, which was still so general and superficial that
she seemed to shake it out of her wet petticoats in a vicious flap that
disclosed her neat ankles.
“You preferred McGee to me,” he said grimly. “I didn't blame you.”
“Who said I PREFERRED him?” she retorted quickly. “Much you know!”
Then, with swift feminine abandonment of her position, she added, with a
little laugh, “It's all the same whether you're guarded with a rifle or
a Church Presbytery, only”--
“Only what?” said Madison earnestly.
“There's men who'd risk being SHOT for a girl, that couldn't stand
psalm-singin' palaver.”
The quick expression of pain that passed over his hard, dark face seemed
only to heighten her pretty mischievousness. But he simply glanced again
around the solitude, passed his hand over his wet sleeve, and said, “I
must go now; your husband wouldn't like me being here.”
“He's workin' in the claim,--the claim YOU gave him,” said Mrs. McGee,
with cheerful malice. “Wonder what he'd say if he knew it was given to
him by the man who used to spark his wife only two years ago? How does
that suit your Christian conscience, Mad?”
“I should have told him, had I not believed that everything was over
between us, or that it was possible that you and me should ever meet
again,” he returned, in a tone so measured that the girl seemed to hear
the ring of the conventicle in it.
“Should you, BROTHER Wayne?” she said, imitating him. “Well, let me tell
you that you are the one man on the Bar that Sandy has taken a fancy
to.”
Madison's sallow cheek colored a little, but he did not speak.
“Well!” continued Mrs. McGee impatiently. “I don't believe he'd object
to your comin' here to see me--if you cared.”
“But I wouldn't care to come, unless he first knew that I had been once
engaged to you,” said Madison gravely.
“Perhaps he might not think as much of that as you do,” retorted the
woman pertly. “Every one isn't as straitlaced as you, and every girl has
had one or two engagements. But do as you like--stay at home if you want
to, and sing psalms and read the Scriptures to that younger brother of
yours! All the same, I'm thinkin' he'd rather be out with the boys.”
“My brother is God-fearing and conscientious,” said Madison quickly.
“You do not know him. You have never seen him.”
“No,” said Mrs. McGee shortly. She then gave a little shiver (that was,
however, half simulated) in her wet garments, and added: “ONE saint was
enough for me; I couldn't stand the whole church, Mad.”
“You are catching cold,” he said quickly, his whole face brightening
with a sudden tenderness that seemed to transfigure the dark features.
“I am keeping you here when you should be changing your clothes. Go, I
beg you, at once.”
She stood still provokingly, with an affectation of wiping her arms and
shoulders and sopping her wet dress with clusters of moss.
“Go, please do--Safie, please!”
“Ah!”--she drew a quick, triumphant breath. “Then you'll come again to
see me, Mad?”
“Yes,” he said slowly, and even more gravely than before.
“But you must let me show you the way out--round under those
trees--where no one can see you come.” She held out her hand.
“I'll go the way I came,” he said quietly, swinging himself silently
from the nearest bough into the stream. And before she could utter a
protest he was striking out as silently, hand over hand, across the
current.