insignificance and “impossibility” of that individual;--a lanky,
red-haired youth, incapacitated for manual labor through lameness,--a
clerk in a general store at the Cross Roads! He had never been the
recipient of Judge Piper's hospitality; he had never visited the house
even with parcels; apparently his only interviews with her or any of
the family had been over the counter. To do him justice he certainly had
never seemed to seek any nearer acquaintance; he was not at the church
door when her sisters, beautiful in their Sunday gowns, filed into the
aisle, with little Delaware bringing up the rear; he was not at the
Democratic barbecue, that we attended without reference to our personal
politics, and solely for the sake of Judge Piper and the girls; nor
did he go to the Agricultural Fair Ball--open to all. His abstention we
believed to be owing to his lameness; to a wholesome consciousness
of his own social defects; or an inordinate passion for reading cheap
scientific textbooks, which did not, however, add fluency nor conviction
to his speech. Neither had he the abstraction of a student, for his
accounts were kept with an accuracy which struck us, who dealt at the
store, as ignobly practical, and even malignant. Possibly we might have
expressed this opinion more strongly but for a certain rude vigor of
repartee which he possessed, and a suggestion that he might have a
temper on occasion. “Them red-haired chaps is like to be tetchy and
to kinder see blood through their eyelashes,” had been suggested by an
observing customer.
In short, little as we knew of the youngest Miss Piper, he was the last
man we should have suspected her to select as an admirer. What we did
know of their public relations, purely commercial ones, implied the
reverse of any cordial understanding. The provisioning of the Piper
household was entrusted to Del, with other practical odds and ends of
housekeeping, not ornamental, and the following is said to be a truthful
record of one of their overheard interviews at the store:--
The youngest Miss Piper, entering, displacing a quantity of goods in the
centre to make a sideways seat for herself, and looking around loftily
as she took a memorandum-book and pencil from her pocket.
“Ahem! If I ain't taking you away from your studies, Mr. Sparrell,
maybe you'll be good enough to look here a minit;--but” (in affected
politeness) “if I'm disturbing you I can come another time.”
Sparrell, placing the book he had been reading carefully under the
counter, and advancing to Miss Delaware with a complete ignoring of her
irony: “What can we do for you to-day, Miss Piper?”
Miss Delaware, with great suavity of manner, examining her
memorandum-book: “I suppose it wouldn't be shocking your delicate
feelings too much to inform you that the canned lobster and oysters you
sent us yesterday wasn't fit for hogs?”
Sparrell (blandly): “They weren't intended for them, Miss Piper. If
we had known you were having company over from Red Gulch to dinner, we
might have provided something more suitable for them. We have a fair
quality of oil-cake and corn-cobs in stock, at reduced figures. But the
canned provisions were for your own family.”
Miss Delaware (secretly pleased at this sarcastic allusion to her
sister's friends, but concealing her delight): “I admire to hear you
talk that way, Mr. Sparrell; it's better than minstrels or a circus. I
suppose you get it outer that book,” indicating the concealed volume.
“What do you call it?”
Sparrell (politely): “The First Principles of Geology.”
Miss Delaware, leaning sideways and curling her little fingers around
her pink ear: “Did you say the first principles of 'geology' or
'politeness'? You know I am so deaf; but, of course, it couldn't be
that.”
Sparrell (easily): “Oh no, you seem to have that in your hand”--pointing
to Miss Delaware's memorandum-book--“you were quoting from it when you
came in.”
Miss Delaware, after an affected silence of deep resignation: “Well!
it's too bad folks can't just spend their lives listenin' to such
elegant talk; I'd admire to do nothing else! But there's my family up at
Cottonwood--and they must eat. They're that low that they expect me
to waste my time getting food for 'em here, instead of drinking in the
First Principles of the Grocery.”
“Geology,” suggested Sparrell blandly. “The history of rock formation.”
“Geology,” accepted Miss Delaware apologetically; “the history of rocks,
which is so necessary for knowing just how much sand you can put in the
sugar. So I reckon I'll leave my list here, and you can have the things
toted to Cottonwood when you've got through with your First Principles.”
She tore out a list of her commissions from a page of her
memorandum-book, leaped lightly from the counter, threw her brown braid
from her left shoulder to its proper place down her back, shook out
her skirts deliberately, and saying, “Thank you for a most improvin'
afternoon, Mr. Sparrell,” sailed demurely out of the store.
A few auditors of this narrative thought it inconsistent that a daughter
of Judge Piper and a sister of the angelic host should put up with a
mere clerk's familiarity, but it was pointed out that “she gave him as
good as he sent,” and the story was generally credited. But certainly
no one ever dreamed that it pointed to any more precious confidences
between them.
I think the secret burst upon the family, with other things, at the big
picnic at Reservoir Canyon. This festivity had been arranged for weeks
previously, and was undertaken chiefly by the “Red Gulch Contingent,”
as we were called, as a slight return to the Piper family for their
frequent hospitality. The Piper sisters were expected to bring nothing
but their own personal graces and attend to the ministration of such
viands and delicacies as the boys had profusely supplied.
The site selected was Reservoir Canyon, a beautiful, triangular valley
with very steep sides, one of which was crowned by the immense reservoir
of the Pioneer Ditch Company. The sheer flanks of the canyon descended
in furrowed lines of vines and clinging bushes, like folds of falling
skirts, until they broke again into flounces of spangled shrubbery over
a broad level carpet of monkshood, mariposas, lupines, poppies, and
daisies. Tempered and secluded from the sun's rays by its lofty shadows,
the delicious obscurity of the canyon was in sharp contrast to the
fiery mountain trail that in the full glare of the noonday sky made
its tortuous way down the hillside, like a stream of lava, to plunge
suddenly into the valley and extinguish itself in its coolness as in a
lake. The heavy odors of wild honeysuckle, syringa, and ceanothus that
hung over it were lightened and freshened by the sharp spicing of pine
and bay. The mountain breeze which sometimes shook the serrated tops of
the large redwoods above with a chill from the remote snow peaks even in
the heart of summer, never reached the little valley.
It seemed an ideal place for a picnic. Everybody was therefore
astonished to hear that an objection was suddenly raised to this perfect
site. They were still more astonished to know that the objector was the
youngest Miss Piper! Pressed to give her reasons, she had replied that
the locality was dangerous; that the reservoir placed upon the mountain,
notoriously old and worn out, had been rendered more unsafe by
false economy in unskillful and hasty repairs to satisfy speculating
stockbrokers, and that it had lately shown signs of leakage and sapping
of its outer walls; that, in the event of an outbreak, the little
triangular valley, from which there was no outlet, would be instantly
flooded. Asked still more pressingly to give her authority for these
details, she at first hesitated, and then gave the name of Tom Sparrell.
The derision with which this statement was received by us all, as the
opinion of a sedentary clerk, was quite natural and obvious, but not
the anger which it excited in the breast of Judge Piper; for it was not
generally known that the judge was the holder of a considerable number
of shares in the Pioneer Ditch Company, and that large dividends had
been lately kept up by a false economy of expenditure, to expedite a
“sharp deal” in the stock, by which the judge and others could sell out
of a failing company. Rather, it was believed, that the judge's anger
was due only to the discovery of Sparrell's influence over his daughter
and his interference with the social affairs of Cottonwood. It was said
that there was a sharp scene between the youngest Miss Piper and the
combined forces of the judge and the elder sisters, which ended in the
former's resolute refusal to attend the picnic at all if that site was
selected.
As Delaware was known to be fearless even to the point of recklessness,
and fond of gayety, her refusal only intensified the belief that she was
merely “stickin' up for Sparrell's judgment” without any reference to
her own personal safety or that of her sisters. The warning was laughed
away; the opinion of Sparrell treated with ridicule as the dyspeptic and
envious expression of an impractical man. It was pointed out that the
reservoir had lasted a long time even in its alleged ruinous state; that
only a miracle of coincidence could make it break down that particular
afternoon of the picnic; that even if it did happen, there was no direct
proof that it would seriously flood the valley, or at best add more than
a spice of excitement to the affair. The “Red Gulch Contingent,” who
WOULD be there, was quite as capable of taking care of the ladies, in
case of any accident, as any lame crank who wouldn't, but could only
croak a warning to them from a distance. A few even wished something
might happen that they might have an opportunity of showing their
superior devotion; indeed, the prospect of carrying the half-submerged
sisters, in a condition of helpless loveliness, in their arms to a place
of safety was a fascinating possibility. The warning was conspicuously
ineffective; everybody looked eagerly forward to the day and the
unchanged locality; to the greatest hopefulness and anticipation was
added the stirring of defiance, and when at last the appointed hour
had arrived, the picnic party passed down the twisting mountain trail
through the heat and glare in a fever of enthusiasm.
It was a pretty sight to view this sparkling procession--the girls cool
and radiant in their white, blue, and yellow muslins and flying ribbons,
the “Contingent” in its cleanest ducks, and blue and red flannel shirts,
the judge white-waistcoated and panama-hatted, with a new dignity
borrowed from the previous circumstances, and three or four impressive
Chinamen bringing up the rear with hampers--as it at last debouched into
Reservoir Canyon.
Here they dispersed themselves over the limited area, scarcely half an
acre, with the freedom of escaped school children. They were secure in
their woodland privacy. They were overlooked by no high road and
its passing teams; they were safe from accidental intrusion from the
settlement; indeed they went so far as to effect the exclusiveness of
“clique.” At first they amused themselves by casting humorously defiant
eyes at the long low Ditch Reservoir, which peeped over the green wall
of the ridge, six hundred feet above them; at times they even simulated
an exaggerated terror of it, and one recognized humorist declaimed a
grotesque appeal to its forbearance, with delightful local allusions.
Others pretended to discover near a woodman's hut, among the belt of
pines at the top of the descending trail, the peeping figure of the
ridiculous and envious Sparrell. But all this was presently forgotten
in the actual festivity. Small as was the range of the valley, it
still allowed retreats during the dances for waiting couples among the
convenient laurel and manzanita bushes which flounced the mountain side.
After the dancing, old-fashioned children's games were revived with
great laughter and half-hearted and coy protests from the ladies;
notably one pastime known as “I'm a-pinin',” in which ingenious
performance the victim was obliged to stand in the centre of a circle
and publicly “pine” for a member of the opposite sex. Some hilarity was
occasioned by the mischievous Miss “Georgy” Piper declaring, when it
came to her turn, that she was “pinin'” for a look at the face of Tom
Sparrell just now!
In this local trifling two hours passed, until the party sat down to the
long-looked for repast. It was here that the health of Judge Piper was
neatly proposed by the editor of the “Argus.” The judge responded with
great dignity and some emotion. He reminded them that it had been his
humble endeavor to promote harmony--that harmony so characteristic
of American principles--in social as he had in political circles,
and particularly among the strangely constituted yet purely American
elements of frontier life. He accepted the present festivity with
its overflowing hospitalities, not in recognition of himself--(“yes!
yes!”)--nor of his family--(enthusiastic protests)--but of that American
principle! If at one time it seemed probable that these festivities
might be marred by the machinations of envy--(groans)--or that
harmony interrupted by the importation of low-toned material
interests--(groans)--he could say that, looking around him, he had never
before felt--er--that--Here the judge stopped short, reeled slightly
forward, caught at a camp-stool, recovered himself with an apologetic
smile, and turned inquiringly to his neighbor.
A light laugh--instantly suppressed--at what was at first supposed to
be the effect of the “overflowing hospitality” upon the speaker himself,
went around the male circle until it suddenly appeared that half a dozen
others had started to their feet at the same time, with white faces, and
that one of the ladies had screamed.
“What is it?” everybody was asking with interrogatory smiles.
It was Judge Piper who replied:--
“A little shock of earthquake,” he said blandly; “a mere thrill! I
think,” he added with a faint smile, “we may say that Nature herself has
applauded our efforts in good old Californian fashion, and signified her
assent. What are you saying, Fludder?”
“I was thinking, sir,” said Fludder deferentially, in a lower voice,
“that if anything was wrong in the reservoir, this shock, you know,
might”--
He was interrupted by a faint crashing and crackling sound, and looking
up, beheld a good-sized boulder, evidently detached from some greater
height, strike the upland plateau at the left of the trail and bound
into the fringe of forest beside it. A slight cloud of dust marked its
course, and then lazily floated away in mid air. But it had been watched
agitatedly, and it was evident that that singular loss of nervous
balance which is apt to affect all those who go through the slightest
earthquake experience was felt by all. But some sense of humor, however,
remained.
“Looks as if the water risks we took ain't goin' to cover earthquakes,”
drawled Dick Frisney; “still that wasn't a bad shot, if we only knew
what they were aiming at.”
“Do be quiet,” said Virginia Piper, her cheeks pink with excitement.
“Listen, can't you? What's that funny murmuring you hear now and then up
there?”
“It's only the snow-wind playin' with the pines on the summit. You girls
won't allow anybody any fun but yourselves.”
But here a scream from “Georgy,” who, assisted by Captain Fairfax, had
mounted a camp-stool at the mouth of the valley, attracted everybody's
attention. She was standing upright, with dilated eyes, staring at
the top of the trail. “Look!” she said excitedly, “if the trail isn't
moving!”
Everybody faced in that direction. At the first glance it seemed indeed
as if the trail was actually moving; wriggling and undulating its
tortuous way down the mountain like a huge snake, only swollen to twice
its usual size. But the second glance showed it to be no longer a trail
but a channel of water, whose stream, lifted in a bore-like wall four or
five feet high, was plunging down into the devoted valley.
For an instant they were unable to comprehend even the nature of the
catastrophe. The reservoir was directly over their heads; the bursting
of its wall they had imagined would naturally bring down the water in a
dozen trickling streams or falls over the cliff above them and along the
flanks of the mountain. But that its suddenly liberated volume should
overflow the upland beyond and then descend in a pent-up flood by their
own trail and their only avenue of escape, had been beyond their wildest
fancy.
They met this smiting truth with that characteristic short laugh
with which the American usually receives the blow of Fate or the
unexpected--as if he recognized only the absurdity of the situation.
Then they ran to the women, collected them together, and dragged them
to vantages of fancied security among the bushes which flounced the long
skirts of the mountain walls. But I leave this part of the description
to the characteristic language of one of the party:--
“When the flood struck us, it did not seem to take any stock of us in
particular, but laid itself out to 'go for' that picnic for all it
was worth! It wiped it off the face of the earth in about twenty-five
seconds! It first made a clean break from stem to stern, carrying
everything along with it. The first thing I saw was old Judge Piper,
puttin' on his best licks to get away from a big can of strawberry ice
cream that was trundling after him and trying to empty itself on his
collar, whenever a bigger wave lifted it. He was followed by what was
left of the brass band; the big drum just humpin' itself to keep
abreast o' the ice cream, mixed up with camp-stools, music-stands, a few
Chinamen, and then what they call in them big San Francisco processions
'citizens generally.' The hull thing swept up the canyon inside o'
thirty seconds. Then, what Captain Fairfax called 'the reflex action in
the laws o' motion' happened, and darned if the hull blamed procession
didn't sweep back again--this time all the heavy artillery, such as
camp-kettles, lager beer kegs, bottles, glasses, and crockery that was
left behind takin' the lead now, and Judge Piper and that ice cream can
bringin' up the rear. As the jedge passed us the second time, we noticed
that that ice cream can--hevin' swallowed water--was kinder losing its
wind, and we encouraged the old man by shoutin' out, 'Five to one on
him!' And then, you wouldn't believe what followed. Why, darn my skin,
when that 'reflex' met the current at the other end, it just swirled
around again in what Captain Fairfax called the 'centrifugal curve,' and
just went round and round the canyon like ez when yer washin' the dirt
out o' a prospectin' pan--every now and then washin' some one of the
boys that was in it, like scum, up ag'in the banks.
“We managed in this way to snake out the judge, jest ez he was sailin'
round on the home stretch, passin' the quarter post two lengths ahead
o' the can. A good deal o' the ice cream had washed away, but it took
us ten minutes to shake the cracked ice and powdered salt out o' the
old man's clothes, and warm him up again in the laurel bush where he
was clinging. This sort o' 'Here we go round the mulberry bush' kep'
on until most o' the humans was got out, and only the furniture o'
the picnic was left in the race. Then it got kinder mixed up, and went
sloshin' round here and there, ez the water kep' comin' down by the
trail. Then Lulu Piper, what I was holdin' up all the time in a laurel
bush, gets an idea, for all she was wet and draggled; and ez the things
went bobbin' round, she calls out the figures o' a cotillon to 'em.
'Two camp-stools forward.' 'Sashay and back to your places.' 'Change
partners.' 'Hands all round.'
“She was clear grit, you bet! And the joke caught on and the other
girls jined in, and it kinder cheered 'em, for they was wantin' it. Then
Fludder allowed to pacify 'em by sayin' he just figured up the size o'
the reservoir and the size o' the canyon, and he kalkilated that the
cube was about ekal, and the canyon couldn't flood any more. And then
Lulu--who was peart as a jay and couldn't be fooled--speaks up and says,
'What's the matter with the ditch, Dick?'
“Lord! then we knew that she knew the worst; for of course all the water
in the ditch itself--fifty miles of it!--was drainin' now into that
reservoir and was bound to come down to the canyon.”
It was at this point that the situation became really desperate, for
they had now crawled up the steep sides as far as the bushes afforded
foothold, and the water was still rising. The chatter of the girls
ceased, there were long silences, in which the men discussed the wildest
plans, and proposed to tear their shirts into strips to make ropes to
support the girls by sticks driven into the mountain side. It was in
one of those intervals that the distinct strokes of a woodman's axe were
heard high on the upland at the point where the trail descended to the
canyon. Every ear was alert, but only those on one side of the canyon
could get a fair view of the spot. This was the good fortune of Captain
Fairfax and Georgy Piper, who had climbed to the highest bush on that
side, and were now standing up, gazing excitedly in that direction.
“Some one is cutting down a tree at the head of the trail,” shouted
Fairfax. The response and joyful explanation, “for a dam across the
trail,” was on everybody's lips at the same time.
But the strokes of the axe were slow and painfully intermittent.
Impatience burst out.
“Yell to him to hurry up! Why haven't they brought two men?”
“It's only one man,” shouted the captain, “and he seems to be a cripple.
By Jiminy!--it is--yes!--it's Tom Sparrell!”
There was a dead silence. Then, I grieve to say, shame and its twin
brother rage took possession of their weak humanity. Oh, yes! It was all
of a piece! Why in the name of Folly hadn't he sent for an able-bodied
man. Were they to be drowned through his cranky obstinacy?
The blows still went on slowly. Presently, however, they seemed to
alternate with other blows--but alas! they were slower, and if possible
feebler!
“Have they got another cripple to work?” roared the Contingent in one
furious voice.
“No--it's a woman--a little one--yes! a girl. Hello! Why, sure as you
live, it's Delaware!”
A spontaneous cheer burst from the Contingent, partly as a rebuke to
Sparrell, I think, partly from some shame over their previous rage. He
could take it as he liked.
Still the blows went on distressingly slow. The girls were hoisted
on the men's shoulders; the men were half submerged. Then there was a
painful pause; then a crumbling crash. Another cheer went up from the
canyon.
“It's down! straight across the trail,” shouted Fairfax, “and a part of
the bank on the top of it.”
There was another moment of suspense. Would it hold or be carried away
by the momentum of the flood? It held! In a few moments Fairfax again
gave voice to the cheering news that the flow had stopped and the
submerged trail was reappearing. In twenty minutes it was clear--a muddy
river bed, but possible of ascent! Of course there was no diminution of
the water in the canyon, which had no outlet, yet it now was possible
for the party to swing from bush to bush along the mountain side until
the foot of the trail--no longer an opposing one--was reached. There
were some missteps and mishaps,--flounderings in the water, and some
dangerous rescues,--but in half an hour the whole concourse stood
upon the trail and commenced the ascent. It was a slow, difficult, and
lugubrious procession--I fear not the best-tempered one, now that the
stimulus of danger and chivalry was past. When they reached the dam made
by the fallen tree, although they were obliged to make a long detour to
avoid its steep sides, they could see how successfully it had diverted
the current to a declivity on the other side.
But strangely enough they were greeted by nothing else! Sparrell and
the youngest Miss Piper were gone; and when they at last reached the
highroad, they were astounded to hear from a passing teamster that no
one in the settlement knew anything of the disaster!