If Dad had been a coal baron, like Mr. Tudor Carstairs, or a
stock-watering captain of industry, like Mrs. Sanderson-Spear's husband,
or descended from a long line of whisky distillers, like Mrs.
Carmichael Porter, why, then his little Elizabeth would have been
allowed the to sit in seat of the scornful with the rest of the Four
Hundred, and this story would never have been written. But Dad
wasn't any of these things; he was just an old love who had made
seven million dollars by the luckiest fluke in the world.
Everybody in southern California knew it was a fluke, too, so the
seven millions came in for all the respect that would otherwise have
fallen to Dad. Of course we were celebrities, in a way, but in a
very horrid way. Dad was Old Tom Middleton, who used to keep a
livery-stable in San Bernardino, and I was Old Tom Middleton's girl,
"who actually used to live over a livery-stable, my dear!" It sounds
fearfully sordid, doesn't it?
But it wasn't sordid, really, for I never actually lived over a
stable. Indeed, we had the sweetest cottage in all San Bernardino. I
remember it so well: the long, cool porch, the wonderful gold-of-Ophir
roses, the honeysuckle where the linnets nested, the mocking
birds that sang all night long; the perfume of the jasmine, of the
orange-blossoms, the pink flame of the peach trees in April, the
ever-changing color of the mountains. And I remember Ninette, my
little Creole mother, gay as a butterfly, carefree as a meadow-lark.
'Twas she who planted the jasmine.
My little mother died when I was seven years old. Dad and I and my
old black mammy, Rachel, stayed on in the cottage. The mocking-birds
still sang, and the linnets still nested in the honeysuckle, but
nothing was ever quite the same again. It was like a different
world; it was a different world. There were gold-of-Ophir roses,
and, peach blossoms in April, but there was no more jasmine; Dad had
it all dug up. To this day he turns pale at the sight of it--poor
Dad!
When I was twelve years old, Dad sold out his hardware business,
intending to put his money in an orange grove at Riverside, but the
nicest livery-stable in San Bernardino happened to be for sale just
then, so he bought that instead, for he was always crazy about
horses.
To see me trotting about in Paquin gowns and Doucet models, you'd
never think I owed them to three owlish little burros, would you?
But it's a fact. When Dad took over the livery-stable, he found he
was the proud possessor of three donkeys, as well as some twenty-odd
horses, and a dozen or so buggies, buckboards and surries. The
burros ate their solemn heads off all winter, but in May it had been
the custom to send them to Strawberry Valley in charge of a Mexican
who hired them out to the boarders at the summer hotel there.
Luckily for us, when Fortune came stalking down the main street of
San Bernardino to knock at the door of the Golden Eagle Stables,
both dad and the burros were at home. If either had been out, we
might be poor this very minute.
It is generally understood that when Fortune goes a-visiting, she
goes disguised, so it's small wonder Dad didn't recognize her at
first. She wasn't even a "her"; she was a he, a great, awkward Swede
with mouse-colored hair and a Yon Yonsen accent--you know the kind--slow
to anger; slow to everything, without "j" in his alphabet--by
the name of Olaf Knutsen.
Now Olaf was a dreamer. Not the conventional sort of a dreamer, who
sees beauty in everything but an honest day's work, but a brawny,
pick-swinging dreamer who had dug holes in the ground at the end of
many rainbows. That he had never yet uncovered the elusive pot of
gold didn't seem to bother him in the least; for him, that tender
plant called Hope flowered perennially. And now he was bent on
following another rainbow; a rainbow which; arching over the
mountains, ended in that arid, pitiless waste known in the south
country as Death Valley.
He wouldn't fail this time. No, by Yimminy! With Dad's three burros,
and plenty of bacon and beans and water--it was to be a grub-stake,
of course--he would make both their fortunes. And the beautiful part
about it was, he did.
No doubt you have heard of the famous Golden Eagle mine. Well,
that's what Olaf and the three burros found in Death Valley. Good
old Olaf! He named the mine after Dad's livery-stable in San
Bernardino, and he insisted on keeping only a half interest, even
though Dad fought him about it. You see, Dad didn't have the
reputation of being the squarest man in San Bernardino for nothing.