Three years had passed. The pioneer stage-coach was sweeping down the
long descent to the pastoral valley of Gilead, and I was looking
towards the village with some pardonable interest and anxiety. For I
carried in my pocket my letters of promotion from the box seat of the
coach--where I had performed the functions of treasure messenger for
the Excelsior Express Company--to the resident agency of that company
in the bucolic hamlet before me. The few dusty right-angled streets,
with their rigid and staringly new shops and dwellings, the stern
formality of one or two obelisk-like meeting-house spires, the
illimitable outlying plains of wheat and wild oats beyond, with their
monotony scarcely broken by skeleton stockades, corrals, and
barrack-looking farm buildings, were all certainly unlike the unkempt
freedom of the mountain fastnesses in which I had lately lived and
moved. Yuba Bill, the driver, whose usual expression of humorous
discontent deepened into scorn as he gathered up his reins as if to
charge the village and recklessly sweep it from his path, indicated a
huge, rambling, obtrusively glazed, and capital-lettered building with
a contemptuous flick of his whip as we passed. "Ef you're kalkilatin'
we'll get our partin' drink there you're mistaken. That's wot they call
a TEMPERANCE HOUSE--wot means a place where the licker ye get underhand
is only a trifle worse than the hash ye get above-board. I suppose
it's part o' one o' the mysteries o' Providence that wharever you find
a dusty hole like this--that's naturally THIRSTY--ye run agin a
'temperance' house. But never YOU mind! I shouldn't wonder if thar
was a demijohn o' whiskey in the closet of your back office, kept thar
by the feller you're relievin'--who was a white man and knew the ropes."
A few minutes later, when my brief installation was over, we DID find
the demijohn in the place indicated. As Yuba Bill wiped his mouth with
the back of his heavy buckskin glove, he turned to me not unkindly. "I
don't like to set ye agin Gile-ad, which is a scrip-too-rural place,
and a God-fearin' place, and a nice dry place, and a place ez I've
heard tell whar they grow beans and pertatoes and garden sass; but
afore three weeks is over, old pard, you'll be howlin' to get back on
that box seat with me, whar you uster sit, and be ready to take your
chances agin, like a little man, to get drilled through with buckshot
from road agents. You hear me! I'll give you three weeks, sonny, just
three weeks, to get your butes full o' hayseed and straws in yer har;
and I'll find ye wadin' the North Fork at high water to get out o'
this." He shook my hand with grim tenderness, removing his glove--a
rare favor--to give me the pressure of his large, soft, protecting
palm, and strode away. The next moment he was shaking the white dust
of Gilead from his scornful chariot-wheels.
In the hope of familiarizing myself with the local interests of the
community, I took up a copy of the "Gilead Guardian" which lay on my
desk, forgetting for the moment the usual custom of the country press
to displace local news for long editorials on foreign subjects and
national politics. I found, to my disappointment, that the "Guardian"
exhibited more than the usual dearth of domestic intelligence, although
it was singularly oracular on "The State of Europe," and "Jeffersonian
Democracy." A certain cheap assurance, a copy-book dogmatism, a
colloquial familiarity, even in the impersonal plural, and a series of
inaccuracies and blunders here and there, struck some old chord in my
memory. I was mutely wondering where and when I had become personally
familiar with rhetoric like that, when the door of the office opened
and a man entered. I was surprised to recognize Captain Jim.
I had not seen him since he had indignantly left us, three years
before, in Eureka Gulch. The circumstances of his defection were
certainly not conducive to any voluntary renewal of friendship on
either side; and although, even as a former member of the Eureka Mining
Company, I was not conscious of retaining any sense of injury, yet the
whole occurrence flashed back upon me with awkward distinctness. To my
relief, however, he greeted me with his old cordiality; to my amusement
he added to it a suggestion of the large forgiveness of conscious
rectitude and amiable toleration. I thought, however, I detected, as
he glanced at the paper which was still in my hand and then back again
at my face, the same uneasy canine resemblance I remembered of old. He
had changed but little in appearance; perhaps he was a trifle stouter,
more mature, and slower in his movements. If I may return to my canine
illustration, his grayer, dustier, and more wiry ensemble gave me the
impression that certain pastoral and agricultural conditions had varied
his type, and he looked more like a shepherd's dog in whose brown eyes
there was an abiding consciousness of the care of straying sheep, and
possibly of one black one in particular.
He had, he told me, abandoned mining and taken up farming on a rather
large scale. He had prospered. He had other interests at stake, "A
flour-mill with some improvements--and--and"--here his eyes wandered to
the "Guardian" again, and he asked me somewhat abruptly what I thought
of the paper. Something impelled me to restrain my previous fuller
criticism, and I contented myself by saying briefly that I thought it
rather ambitious for the locality. "That's the word," he said with a
look of gratified relief, "'ambitious'--you've just hit it. And what's
the matter with thet? Ye kan't expect a high-toned man to write down to
the level of every karpin' hound, ken ye now? That's what he says to
me"-- He stopped half confused, and then added abruptly: "That's one
o' my investments."
"Why, Captain Jim, I never suspected that you"--
"Oh, I don't WRITE it," he interrupted hastily. "I only furnish the
money and the advertising, and run it gin'rally, you know; and I'm
responsible for it. And I select the eddyter--and"--he continued, with
a return of the same uneasy wistful look--"thar's suthin' in thet, you
know, eh?"
I was beginning to be perplexed. The memory evoked by the style of the
editorial writing and the presence of Captain Jim was assuming a
suspicious relationship to each other. "And who's your editor?" I
asked.
"Oh, he's--he's--er--Lacy Bassett," he replied, blinking his eyes with
a hopeless assumption of carelessness. "Let's see! Oh yes! You knowed
Lacy down there at Eureka. I disremembered it till now. Yes, sir!" he
repeated suddenly and almost rudely, as if to preclude any adverse
criticism, "he's the eddyter!"
To my surprise he was quite white and tremulous with nervousness. I was
very sorry for him, and as I really cared very little for the
half-forgotten escapade of his friend except so far as it seemed to
render HIM sensitive, I shook his hand again heartily and began to talk
of our old life in the gulch--avoiding as far as possible any allusion
to Lacy Bassett. His face brightened; his old simple cordiality and
trustfulness returned, but unfortunately with it his old disposition to
refer to Bassett. "Yes, they waz high old times, and ez I waz sayin'
to Lacy on'y yesterday, there is a kind o' freedom 'bout that sort o'
life that runs civilization and noospapers mighty hard, however
high-toned they is. Not but what Lacy ain't right," he added quickly,
"when he sez that the opposition the 'Guardian' gets here comes from
ignorant low-down fellers ez wos brought up in played-out camps, and
can't tell a gentleman and a scholar and a scientific man when they
sees him. No! So I sez to Lacy, 'Never you mind, it's high time they
did, and they've got to do it and to swaller the "Guardian," if I sink
double the money I've already put into the paper.'"
I was not long in discovering from other sources that the "Guardian"
was not popular with the more intelligent readers of Gilead, and that
Captain Jim's extravagant estimate of his friend was by no means
indorsed by the community. But criticism took a humorous turn even in
that practical settlement, and it appeared that Lacy Bassett's vanity,
assumption, and ignorance were an unfailing and weekly joy to the
critical, in spite of the vague distrust they induced in the more
homely-witted, and the dull acquiescence of that minority who accepted
the paper for its respectable exterior and advertisements. I was
somewhat grieved, however, to find that Captain Jim shared equally with
his friend in this general verdict of incompetency, and that some of
the most outrageous blunders were put down to HIM. But I was not
prepared to believe that Lacy had directly or by innuendo helped the
public to this opinion.
Whether through accident or design on his part, Lacy Bassett did not
personally obtrude himself upon my remembrance until a month later.
One dazzling afternoon, when the dust and heat had driven the pride of
Gilead's manhood into the surreptitious shadows of the temperance
hotel's back room, and had even cleared the express office of its
loungers, and left me alone with darkened windows in the private
office, the outer door opened and Captain Jim's friend entered as part
of that garish glitter I had shut out. To do the scamp strict justice,
however, he was somewhat subdued in his dress and manner, and, possibly
through some gentle chastening of epigram and revolver since I had seen
him last, was less aggressive and exaggerated. I had the impression,
from certain odors wafted through the apartment and a peculiar physical
exaltation that was inconsistent with his evident moral hesitancy, that
he had prepared himself for the interview by a previous visit to the
hidden fountains of the temperance hotel.
"We don't seem to have run agin each other since you've been here," he
said with an assurance that was nevertheless a trifle forced "but I
reckon we're both busy men, and there's a heap too much loafing goin'
on in Gilead. Captain Jim told me he met you the day you arrived; said
you just cottoned to the 'Guardian' at once and thought it a deal too
good for Gilead; eh? Oh, well, jest ez likely he DIDN'T say it--it was
only his gassin'. He's a queer man--is Captain Jim."
I replied somewhat sharply that I considered him a very honest man, a
very simple man, and a very loyal man.
"That's all very well," said Bassett, twirling his cane with a
patronizing smile, "but, as his friend, don't you find him considerable
of a darned fool?"
I could not help retorting that I thought HE had found that hardly an
objection.
"YOU think so," he said querulously, apparently ignoring everything but
the practical fact,--"and maybe others do; but that's where you're
mistaken. It don't pay. It may pay HIM to be runnin' me as his
particular friend, to be quotin' me here and there, to be gettin'
credit of knowin' me and my friends and ownin' me--by Gosh! but I don't
see where the benefit to ME comes in. Eh? Take your own case down
there at Eureka Gulch; didn't he send for me just to show me up to you
fellers? Did I want to have anything to do with the Eureka Company?
Didn't he set me up to give my opinion about that shaft just to show
off what I knew about science and all that? And what did he get me to
join the company for? Was it for you? No! Was it for me? No! It was
just to keep me there for HIMSELF, and kinder pit me agin you fellers
and crow over you! Now that ain't my style! It may be HIS--it may be
honest and simple and loyal, as you say, and it may be all right for
him to get me to run up accounts at the settlement and then throw off
on me--but it ain't my style. I suppose he let on that I did that.
No? He didn't? Well then, why did he want to run me off with him, and
out the whole concern in an underhand way and make me leave with nary a
character behind me, eh? Now, I never said anything about this
before--did I? It ain't like me. I wouldn't have said anything about
it now, only you talked about MY being benefited by his darned
foolishness. Much I've made outer HIM."
Despicable, false, and disloyal as this was, perhaps it was the
crowning meanness of such confidences that his very weakness seemed
only a reflection of Captain Jim's own, and appeared in some strange
way to degrade his friend as much as himself. The simplicity of his
vanity and selfishness was only equalled by the simplicity of Captain
Jim's admiration of it. It was a part of my youthful inexperience of
humanity that I was not above the common fallacy of believing that a
man is "known by the company he keeps," and that he is in a manner
responsible for its weakness; it was a part of that humanity that I
felt no surprise in being more amused than shocked by this revelation.
It seemed a good joke on Captain Jim!
"Of course YOU kin laugh at his darned foolishness; but, by Gosh, it
ain't a laughing matter to me!"
"But surely he's given you a good position on the 'Guardian,'" I urged.
"That was disinterested, certainly."
"Was it? I call that the cheekiest thing yet. When he found he
couldn't make enough of me in private life, he totes me out in public
as HIS editor--the man who runs HIS paper! And has his name in print
as the proprietor, the only chance he'd ever get of being before the
public. And don't know the whole town is laughing at him!"
"That may be because they think HE writes some of the articles," I
suggested.
Again the insinuation glanced harmlessly from his vanity. "That
couldn't be, because I do all the work, and it ain't his style," he
said with naive discontent. "And it's always the highest style, done
to please him, though between you and me it's sorter castin' pearls
before swine--this 'Frisco editing--and the public would be just as
satisfied with anything I could rattle off that was peart and
sassy,--something spicy or personal. I'm willing to climb down and do
it, for there's nothin' stuck-up about me, you know; but that darned
fool Captain Jim has got the big head about the style of the paper, and
darned if I don't think he's afraid if there's a lettin' down, people
may think it's him! Ez if! Why, you know as well as me that there's a
sort of snap I could give these things that would show it was me and no
slouch did them, in a minute."
I had my doubts about the elegance or playfulness of Mr. Bassett's
trifling, but from some paragraphs that appeared in the next issue of
the "Guardian" I judged that he had won over Captain Jim--if indeed
that gentleman's alleged objections were not entirely the outcome of
Bassett's fancy. The social paragraphs themselves were clumsy and
vulgar. A dull-witted account of a select party at Parson Baxter's,
with a point-blank compliment to Polly Baxter his daughter, might have
made her pretty cheek burn but for her evident prepossession for the
meretricious scamp, its writer. But even this horse-play seemed more
natural than the utterly artificial editorials with their pinchbeck
glitter and cheap erudition; and thus far it appeared harmless.
I grieve to say that these appearances were deceptive. One afternoon,
as I was returning from a business visit to the outskirts of the
village, I was amazed on reentering the main street to find a crowd
collected around the "Guardian" office, gazing at the broken glass of
its windows and a quantity of type scattered on the ground. But my
attention was at that moment more urgently attracted by a similar group
around my own office, who, however, seemed more cautious, and were
holding timorously aloof from the entrance. As I ran rapidly towards
them, a few called out, "Look out--he's in there!" while others made
way to let me pass. With the impression of fire or robbery in my mind,
I entered precipitately, only to find Yuba Bill calmly leaning back in
an arm-chair with his feet on the back of another, a glass of whiskey
from my demijohn in one hand and a huge cigar in his mouth. Across his
lap lay a stumpy shotgun which I at once recognized as "the Left
Bower," whose usual place was at his feet on the box during his
journeys. He looked cool and collected, although there were one or two
splashes of printer's ink on his shirt and trousers, and from the
appearance of my lavatory and towel he had evidently been removing
similar stains from his hands. Putting his gun aside and grasping my
hand warmly without rising, he began with even more than his usual lazy
imperturbability:
"Well, how's Gilead lookin' to-day?"
It struck me as looking rather disturbed, but, as I was still too
bewildered to reply, he continued lazily:
"Ez you didn't hunt me up, I allowed you might hev got kinder petrified
and dried up down yer, and I reckoned to run down and rattle round a
bit and make things lively for ye. I've jist cleared out a newspaper
office over thar. They call it the 'Guardi-an,' though it didn't seem
to offer much pertection to them fellers ez was in it. In fact, it
wasn't ez much a fight ez it orter hev been. It was rather monotonous
for me."
"But what's the row, Bill? What has happened?" I asked excitedly.
"Nothin' to speak of, I tell ye," replied Yuba Bill reflectively. "I
jest meandered into that shop over there, and I sez, 'I want ter see
the man ez runs this yer mill o' literatoor an' progress.' Thar waz two
infants sittin' on high chairs havin' some innocent little game o'
pickin' pieces o' lead outer pill-boxes like, and as soon ez they seed
me one of 'em crawled under his desk and the other scooted outer the
back door. Bimeby the door opens again, and a fluffy coyote-lookin'
feller comes in and allows that HE is responsible for that yer paper.
When I saw the kind of animal he was, and that he hadn't any weppings,
I jist laid the Left Bower down on the floor. Then I sez, 'You allowed
in your paper that I oughter hev a little sevility knocked inter me,
and I'm here to hev it done. You ken begin it now.' With that I
reached for him, and we waltzed oncet or twicet around the room, and
then I put him up on the mantelpiece and on them desks and little
boxes, and took him down again, and kinder wiped the floor with him
gin'rally, until the first thing I knowed he was outside the winder on
the sidewalk. On'y blamed if I didn't forget to open the winder. Ef it
hadn't been for that, it would hev been all quiet and peaceful-like,
and nobody hev knowed it. But the sash being in the way, it sorter
created a disturbance and unpleasantness OUTSIDE."
"But what was it all about?" I repeated. "What had he done to you?"
"Ye'll find it in that paper," he said, indicating a copy of the
"Guardian" that lay on my table with a lazy nod of his head. "P'r'aps
you don't read it? No more do I. But Joe Bilson sez to me yesterday:
'Bill,' sez he, 'they're goin' for ye in the "Guardian."' 'Wot's
that?' sez I. 'Hark to this,' sez he, and reads out that bit that
you'll find there."
I had opened the paper, and he pointed to a paragraph. "There it is.
Pooty, ain't it?" I read with amazement as follows:--
"If the Pioneer Stage Company want to keep up with the times, and not
degenerate into the old style 'one hoss' road-wagon business, they'd
better make some reform on the line. They might begin by shipping off
some of the old-time whiskey-guzzling drivers who are too high and
mighty to do anything but handle the ribbons, and are above speaking to
a passenger unless he's a favorite or one of their set. Over-praise
for an occasional scrimmage with road agents, and flattery from Eastern
greenhorns, have given them the big head. If the fool-killer were let
loose on the line with a big club, and knocked a little civility into
their heads, it wouldn't be a bad thing, and would be a particular
relief to the passengers for Gilead who have to take the stage from
Simpson's Bar."
"That's my stage," said Yuba Bill quietly, when I had ended; "and
that's ME."
"But it's impossible," I said eagerly. "That insult was never written
by Captain Jim."
"Captain Jim," repeated Yuba Bill reflectively. "Captain Jim,--yes,
that was the name o' the man I was playin' with. Shortish hairy
feller, suthin' between a big coyote and the old-style hair-trunk.
Fought pretty well for a hay-footed man from Gil-e-ad."
"But you've whipped the wrong man, Bill," I said. "Think again! Have
you had any quarrel lately?--run against any newspaper man?" The
recollection had flashed upon me that Lacy Bassett had lately returned
from a visit to Stockton.
Yuba Bill regarded his boots on the other arm-chair for a few moments
in profound meditation. "There was a sort o' gaudy insect," he began
presently, "suthin' halfway betwixt a boss-fly and a devil's
darnin'-needle, ez crawled up onter the box seat with me last week, and
buzzed! Now I think on it, he talked high-faluten' o' the inflooence
of the press and sech. I may hev said 'shoo' to him when he was
hummin' the loudest. I mout hev flicked him off oncet or twicet with
my whip. It must be him. Gosh!" he said suddenly, rising and lifting
his heavy hand to his forehead, "now I think agin he was the feller ez
crawled under the desk when the fight was goin' on, and stayed there.
Yes, sir, that was HIM. His face looked sorter familiar, but I didn't
know him moultin' with his feathers off." He turned upon me with the
first expression of trouble and anxiety I had ever seen him wear.
"Yes, sir, that's him. And I've kem--me, Yuba Bill!--kem MYSELF, a
matter of twenty miles, totin' a GUN--a gun, by Gosh!--to fight
that--that--that potatar-bug!" He walked to the window, turned, walked
back again, finished his whiskey with a single gulp, and laid his hand
almost despondingly on my shoulder. "Look ye, old--old fell, you and
me's ole friends. Don't give me away. Don't let on a word o' this to
any one! Say I kem down yer howlin' drunk on a gen'ral tear! Say I
mistook that newspaper office for a cigar-shop, and--got licked by the
boss! Say anythin' you like, 'cept that I took a gun down yer to chase
a fly that had settled onter me. Keep the Left Bower in yer back
office till I send for it. Ef you've got a back door somewhere handy
where I can slip outer this without bein' seen I'd be thankful."
As this desponding suggestion appeared to me as the wisest thing for
him to do in the then threatening state of affairs outside,--which, had
he suspected it, he would have stayed to face,--I quickly opened a door
into a courtyard that communicated through an alley with a side street.
Here we shook hands and parted; his last dejected ejaculation being,
"That potatobug!" Later I ascertained that Captain Jim had retired to
his ranch some four miles distant. He was not seriously hurt, but
looked, to use the words of my informant, "ez ef he'd been hugged by a
playful b'ar." As the "Guardian" made its appearance the next week
without the slightest allusion to the fracas, I did not deem it
necessary to divulge the real facts. When I called to inquire about
Captain Jim's condition, he himself, however, volunteered an
explanation.
"I don't mind tellin' you, ez an old friend o' mine and Lacy's, that
the secret of that there attack on me and the 'Guardian' was
perlitikal. Yes, sir! There was a powerful orginization in the
interest o' Halkins for assemblyman ez didn't like our high-toned
editorials on caucus corruption, and hired a bully to kem down here and
suppress us. Why, this yer Lacy spotted the idea to oncet; yer know
how keen be is."
"Was Lacy present?" I asked as carelessly as I could.
Captain Jim glanced his eyes over his shoulder quite in his old furtive
canine fashion, and then blinked them at me rapidly. "He war! And if
it warn't for HIS pluck and HIS science and HIS strength, I don't know
whar I'D hev been now! Howsomever, it's all right. I've had a fair
offer to sell the 'Guardian' over at Simpson's Bar, and it's time I
quit throwin' away the work of a man like Lacy Bassett upon it. And
between you and me, I've got an idea and suthin' better to put his
talens into."