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SHADOWS OF SHASTA.
BY
JOAQUIN MILLER,
AUTHOR OF "SONGS OF THE SIERRAS,"
"THE DANITES IN THE SIERRAS," ETC.
CHICAGO:
JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY.
1881.
COPYRIGHT.
JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY.
A. D. 1881.
_All rights of Dramatization reserved to the Author._
TO
WHITELAW REID.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 7
MOUNT SHASTA 17
TWENTY CARATS FINE 49
MAN-HUNTERS 81
THE OLD GOLD-HUNTER 108
THE CAPTURE 122
THE ESCAPE 150
SHADOWS OF SHASTA.
INTRODUCTORY.
_With vast foundations seamed and knit,
And wrought and bound by golden bars,
Sierra's peaks serenely sit
And challenge heaven's sentry-stars._
Why this book? Because last year, in the heart of the Sierras, I saw
women and children chained together and marched down from their cool,
healthy homes to degradation and death on the Reservation. At the side
of this long, chained line, urged on and kept in order by bayonets, rode
a young officer, splendid in gold and brass, and newly burnished, from
that now famous charity-school on the Hudson. These women and children
were guilty of no crime; they were not even accused of wrong. But their
fathers and brothers lay dead in battle-harness, on the mountain
heights and in the lava beds; and these few silent survivors, like
Israel of old, were being led into captivity--but, unlike the chosen
children, never to return to the beloved heart of their mountains.
Do you doubt these statements about the treatment of the Indians? Then
read this, from the man--the fiend in the form of man--who for years,
and until recently, had charge of all the Indians in the United States:
"From reports and testimony before me, I find that Indians
removed to the Reservation or Indian Territory, die off so
rapidly that the race must soon become extinct if they are so
removed. _In this connection, I recommend the early removal of
all the Indians to the Indian Territory._"
The above coarse attempt at second-hand wit is quoted from memory. But
if the exact words are not given, the substance is there; and, indeed,
the idea and expression is not at all new.
I know if you contemplate the Indian from the railroad platform, as you
cross the plains, you will almost conclude, from the dreadful specimens
there seen, that the Indian Commissioner was not so widely out of the
way in that brutal desire. But the real Indian is not there. The Special
Correspondent will not find him, though he travel ten thousand miles. He
is in the mountains, a free man yet; not a beggar, not a thief, but the
brightest, bravest, truest man alive. Every few years, the soldiers find
him; and they do not despise him when found. Think of Captain Jack, with
his sixty braves, holding the whole army at bay for half a year! Think
of Chief Joseph, to whose valor and virtues the brave and brilliant
soldiers sent to fight him bear immortal testimony. Seamed with scars of
battle, and bloody from the fight of the deadly day and the night
preceding; his wife dying from a bullet; his boy lying dead at his feet;
his command decimated; bullets flying thick as hail; this Indian walked
right into the camp of his enemy, gun in hand, and then--not like a
beaten man, not like a captive, but like a king--demanded to know the
terms upon which his few remaining people could be allowed to live. When
a brave man beats a brave man in battle, he likes to treat him well--as
witness Grant and Lee; and so Generals Howard and Miles made fair terms
with the conquered chief. The action of the Government which followed
makes one sick at heart. Let us in charity call it _imbecility_. But
before whose door shall we lay the dead? Months after the surrender,
this brave but now heart-broken chief, cried out:
"Give my people water, or they will die. This is mud and slime
that we have to drink here on this Reservation. More than half
are dead already. Give us the water of our mountains. And will
you not give us back just one mountain too? There are not many
of us left now. We will not want much now. Give us back just one
mountain, so that these women and children may live. Take all
the valleys. But you cannot plow the mountains. Give us back
just one little mountain, with cool, clear water, and then these
children can live."
And think of Standing Bear and his people, taken by fraud and force from
their lands to the Indian Territory Reservation, and after the usual
hardships and wrongs incident to such removals, with no hope from a
Government which neither kept its promises nor listened to their
appeals, setting out to try to get back to Omaha. Think of these men,
stealing away in the night, leaving their little children, their wives
and parents, prostrate, dying, destitute! They were told that they could
not leave--that they must stay there; that they would be followed and
shot if they attempted to go away. They had no money; they had no food.
They were sick and faint. They were on foot, and but poorly clad. Yet
they struggled on through the snow day after day, week after week,
leaving a bloody trail where they passed; leaving their dead in the snow
where they passed. And this awful journey lasted for more than fifty
days! And what happened to these poor Indians after that fearful
journey? They did not go to the white man for help. They did not go back
to their old homes. They troubled no one. They went to a neighboring
friendly tribe. This tribe gave them a little land, and they instantly
went to work to make homes and prepare a place for the few of their
number still alive whom they had left behind. Then came the order from
Washington, and the Chief was arrested while plowing in the field. In a
speech made by him after the arrest, and when he was about to be taken
back, the Chief said:
"I wanted to go back to my old place north. I wanted to save
myself and my tribe. I built a good stable. I raised cattle and
hogs and all kinds of stock. I broke land. All these things I
lost by some bad man. Any one knows to take a man from a cold
climate and put him in the hot sun, down in the south, it would
kill him. We refused to go down there. We afterwards went down
to see our friends, and see how they liked it. Brothers, I come
home now. I took my brothers and friends and came back here. We
went to work. I had hold of the handles of my plow. Eight days
ago I was at work on my farm, which the Omahas gave me. I had
sowed some spring wheat, and wished to sow some more. I was
living peaceably with all men. I have never committed any crime.
I was arrested and brought back as a prisoner. Does your law do
that? I have been told, since the great war all men were free
men, and that no man can be made a prisoner unless he does
wrong. I have done no wrong, and yet I am here a prisoner. Have
you a law for white men, and a different law for those who are
not white?
"I have been going around for three years. I have lost all my
property. My constant thought is, 'What man has done this?' Of
course I know I cannot say 'no.' Whatever they say I must do, I
must do it. I know you have an order to send me to the Indian
Territory, and we must obey it."
Afterwards, speaking of the terrible days at the Reservation, this
Indian said to an officer:
"We counted our dead for awhile, but when all my children and
half the tribe were dead, we did not take any notice of anything
much. When my son was dying, he begged me to take his bones back
to the old home, if ever I got away. In that little box are the
bones of my son; I have tried to take them back to be buried
with our fathers."
I may here add, that in the meantime the brother of this Indian, who was
left in charge of the tribe, was accused of trying to get away also. He
protested his innocence, but the agent had him arrested and brought
before him. Then he ordered him to be ironed. The proud, free savage
begged not to be put in irons, but the brutal agent persisted. The
Indian resisted, _and was shot dead on the spot_.
Think of the Cheyennes last year. They, too, had tried to escape from
the Reservation, and reach their homes through the deep snow. This was
their only offense. No man had ever accused them of any other crime than
this love of their native haunts, this longing for home. They were dying
there on the Reservation; more than half had already died. And now, when
taken, they refused to go back. The officer attempted to starve them
into submission. They were shut up in a pen without food, naked,
starving, the snow whistling through the pen, children freezing to death
in their mother's arms! But they would not submit. Knowing now that they
must die, they determined to die in action rather than freeze and
starve, like beasts in a pen. At a concerted signal, they attempted to
break through the soldiers and reach the open plain. An old man was
carried on the back of his tottering son; a mounted soldier pursued
them, and hacked father and son to pieces with the same sabre-cuts. A
mother was seen flying over the snow with two children clinging about
her neck. The wretched savages separated and ran in all directions. But
the mounted men cut them down in the snow. No one asked, or even would
accept, quarter. They fought with sticks, stones, fists, their teeth,
like wild beasts. They wanted to die. One little group escaped to a
ravine. There they were found killing each other with a sort of knife
made from an old piece of hoop.
And yet you believe man-hunting is over in America!
It is impossible to write with composure or evenness on this subject.
One wants to rise up and crush things.
I have mentioned two tribes near at hand, whose histories are not
unfamiliar to the public ear. But what if I should recite the wrongs of
tribes far away--far beyond the Rocky Mountains--where the Indian Agent
has to answer to no one? You would not believe one-tenth part told you.
The terrible stories of the Cheyennes and the Poncas are very mild
chapters in the history of our Indian policy.
Under the stars and stripes, these scenes are repeated year after year;
and they will be continued until they are made impossible by the
civilization and sense of justice which righted that other though far
less terrible wrong.
As that greatest man has said, "We are making history in America." This
is a conspicuous fact, that no one who would be remembered in this
century should forget. We are making dreadful history, dreadfully fast.
How terrible it will all read when the writer and reader of these lines
are long since forgotten! Ages may roll by. We may build a city over
every dead tribe's bones. We may bury the last Indian deep as the
eternal gulf. But these records will remain, and will rise up in
testimony against us to the last day of our race.
J. M.
CHAPTER I.
MOUNT SHASTA.
_To lord all Godland! lift the brow
Familiar to the moon, to top
The universal world, to prop
The hollow heavens up, to vow
Stern constancy with stars, to keep
Eternal watch while eons sleep;
To tower proudly up and touch
God's purple garment-hems that sweep
The cold blue north! Oh, this were much!_
_Where storm-born shadows hide and hunt
I knew thee, in thy glorious youth,
And loved thy vast face, white as truth;
I stood where thunderbolts were wont
To smite thy Titan-fashioned front,
And heard dark mountains rock and roll;
I saw the lightning's gleaming rod
Reach forth and write on heaven's scroll
The awful autograph of God!_
And what a mighty heart these Sierras have! Kissing the purple of heaven
now, and now in their awful deeps hiding the shrinking form of darkness
from the sun.
The shaggy monsters that prowl there, the mountains of gold that lie
waiting there, the mystery and the splendor! Oh keep with me, my friend,
for a little while in the Sierras; breathe their balm and health, see
their sublimity, feel their might and their majesty; step upward, as on
stepping stairs to heaven; and my word for it, you will be none the
worse.
In a canyon here, deep, deep, away down in the darkness, where night
seems to have an abiding place, where the sun sifts through the
pine-tops timidly, where the loftiest trees tip-toe up and seem to
strive to reach out of the edge of the chasm, there gurgles a little
muddy stream among the boulders, about the miners' legs, as they bend
their backs wearily and toil for gold.
Here the smoke curls up from a low log cabin; there a squirrel barks a
nut on the roof of a ruined and deserted miner's home, and away up
yonder, where the deep gorge is so narrow you can almost leap across it,
the wild beasts prowl as if it were really night, and great owls beat
their wings against the boughs of the dense wood in everlasting
darkness. But high over gorge and wilderness, gleaming against the cold
blue sky, towers Mount Shasta, the monarch of the Sierras.
Here, where the canyon debouches into the little valley, once stood a
populous mining camp; and a little further on, where the sun fell in
full splendor, a few farms of a primitive kind, tended by broken-down
old miners, lay.
The old glory of the camp was gone, and only a few battered and crippled
men were left. It was as if there had been a great battle of the giants,
and the victorious and successful had gone away with all the fruits of
victory, and left the wounded, the helpless, the half-hearted behind.
The mining camp at the mouth of the great canyon had been worked out, so
far as the placer mines went, and these few broken men who remained, as
a rule, were turning their attention to other things. Here one had
planted a little garden on the hillside, on a spot that had once been a
graveyard. There, an old lawyer had grown grape-vines all over and about
the door and chimney of his cabin, till men said it looked like a
spider-web.
But old Forty-nine only bored deeper and deeper into the spur of the
mountain, and paid but little attention to any of the changes that went
on around him. He had been working in that tunnel alone for nearly
twenty-five years. He was a man with a history--men said a murderer. He
shunned men, and men shunned him. Was he rich? He professed to be very
poor; men said he must be worth a million. Would a man work on
twenty-five years in one tunnel, and all alone, for nothing? But if
rich, why did he remain?
Still further down, and quite on the edge of the valley, stood another
cabin. And this was quite overgrown with vines, and was quite hidden
away in a growth of pines that gathered over it. Then there was an
undergrowth of fruit trees that grew inside the fence and about the
lonely porch. On this porch had sat, for years and years, a tawny,
silent old woman. She was sickly--had neither wealth, wit nor
beauty--and so, so far as the world went, was left quite alone.
But there was another and an all-sufficient reason why neither man or
woman came that way. She was an Indian. Do not imagine this a wild
Indian woman. Indian she was; but remember, the Catholics had more than
half civilized nearly all the native Californians long before we
undertook to kill them.
This Indian woman would have been called by strangers a Mexican woman.
She was very religious, and had imbued her boy with all her beautiful
faith and simple piety.
I know that the spectacle of an old Indian woman and her "half-breed"
son, represented as the morality and religion of a camp made up of
"civilized" Saxons, will seem somewhat novel to you. But I knew this
Indian boy and his mother well, and know every foot of the ground I
intend to go over, and every fact I propose to narrate. And if you are
not prepared to receive this as truth, I prefer you to close this page
right here.
To make a moment's digression, with your permission, let me state
briefly and frankly, once for all, that the only really religious,
unquestioning and absolutely devout Christians I ever met in America are
the Indians. I know of no other people so faithful and so blindly true
to their belief, outside of the peasantry of Italy. Be their beautiful
faith born of ignorance or what, I do not say. I simply assert that it
exists. There is no devotion so true as that of a converted Indian.
Maybe it is the devotion of idolatry, the faith of superstition. But I
repeat, it is sincere. And let me further say, it seems to me whatever
is worth believing at all, is worth believing utterly and entirely--just
as these simple children of the wilderness believe, without doubt or
question.
I know nothing so beautiful--may I say picturesque?--as the Ummatilla
Indians of Oregon at worship on Sunday. Not a man, woman or child of all
the tribe absent. Not one voice silent when the hymns are given out, in
all that vast, gaily colored and singular assemblage.
This is the tribe of which the white settlers asked and received
protection last year when the Shoshonees ravaged the country, beat off
the soldiers, and slew some of the settlers. And yet there is a bill
before Congress to-day to take away the few remaining acres from this
tribe and open up the place to white settlers. Indeed, it seems that
every member of Congress from Oregon has just this one mission; for the
first, and almost the only thing he does while there, is to introduce
and urge the passage of this bill, whereby the red man is to be turned
out of his well-tilled fields, and the white man turned into them.
In truth, these very fields have long been staked off and claimed by
bold, bad white men, who hover about the borders of this Reservation,
waiting for the long-promised law which is to take this land from the
owners and give it to them. They nominate their members of Congress on
his pledge and bond, and constant promise, to take this land from the
Indian. They vote for and elect the only member of Congress from this
State on that promise, certain that their absolute ownership of this
graveyard of the Indian is only a question of time. Year by year the
graveyard grows broader; the fields grow narrower; they grow less in
number; for now and then an Indian is found wandering away from the
Reservation to his former hunting-grounds and ancient graves of his
fathers. He seldom comes back. Sometimes his murderers trouble
themselves to throw the body in the brush or some gorge or canyon. But
most frequently it is left where it falls. To say that all the people or
the best people of this brave young State approve of this, would be
unfair--untrue. Yet this does not save the Indian, who is doing his best
to fit into the new order of things around him. He is shot down, and
neither grand or petit jury can be found to punish his murderer.
But to the story. This little piece of land where the old Indian woman
had lived and brought up her boy, was rich and valuable. It was
therefore coveted by the white man. At first men had said: "She will die
soon; the boy will then sell the hut for a song, gamble off the money,
and then go the way of all who are stained with the dark and tawny blood
of the savage--death in a ditch from some unknown rifle, or death by the
fever in the new Reservation." But the old woman still lived on; and the
boy, by his industry, sobriety, duty and devotion to his mother, put to
shame the very best among the new generation of white men in the
mountains. The singular manhood of John Logan was the subject of remark
by all who knew him. With the few true men on this savage edge of the
world it made him fast friends; with the many outlaws and evil natures
it made him the subject of envy and bitter hatred.
What power behind this boy had lifted him up and led him on? Surely no
Indian woman, wholly unlettered in the ways of the white man, good and
true as she may have been, had brought him up to this high place on
which he now stood. Who was his father? and what strong hand had reached
out all these years and kept his mother there in that little hut with
her boy, while her tribe perished or passed away to the hated and
horrible Reservation down toward the sea?
Who was his father? The Camp had asked this a thousand times. The boy
himself had looked into the deep, pathetic eyes of his mother, and asked
the question in his heart for many and many a year; but he never opened
his lips to ask her. It was too sad, too sacred a subject, and he would
not ask of her what she would not freely give. And now she lay dying
there alone on the porch, as her boy stopped to talk with the two
children, "the babes in the wood," and her secret hidden in her own
heart.
And who were the "babes in the wood?" Little waifs, fugitives, hiding
from the man-hunters. As a rule in early days, when the settlers killed
off the adult Indians in their forays, they took the children and
brought them up in slavery. But the girl--the eldest, stronger and
lither of these two dark little creatures--darting, hiding, stealing
about this ruined old camp, was so wild and spirited, even from the
first, that no one wanted her. And then she was dangerously bright, and
above all, she did not quite look the Indian; men doubted if she really
were an Indian or no, sometimes. But I remember hearing old
Leather-Nose, as he sat on a barrel one night in the grocery, and
squirted amber at the back-log, say: "I guess, by gol, she's Injun:
She's devilish enough. She don't look the Injun, I know; but its the
cussedness that makes me know she's Injun."
"And when did she come to the camp?" asked a respectable stranger.
"Don't know. That's it. Nobody don't know, and nobody don't care, I
guess."
"Well, don't you know where she came from? Children don't come down, you
know, like rain or snow. There were about fifty little children left in
the Mountain-meadow massacre. They are somewhere. These may be some of
them. Don't you know who brought them here, or how they came?" asked the
honest stranger, leaning forward and looking into the faces of the
wrinkled and hairy old miners.
An old miner turned his quid again and again, and at last feeling scant
interest in the ragged little sister who led her little brother about by
the hand, and stood between him and peril as she kept their
liberty--drily answered, along with his fellows, as follows: "Some said
an old Indian that died had her; but I don't know. Forty-nine knows most
about her. When he's short of grub, and that's pretty often now, I
guess, why she has to do the best she can."
"O, it was a sick looking thing at first. Why, it wasn't that high, and
was all hair and bones," growled out an old gray miner, in reply to the
man.
"Yes; and don't you know when we called it the 'baby,' and it used to
beg around about the cabins? The poor little barefooted brat."
"Yes, and when the 'baby' nearly starved, and eat some raw turnips that
made it sick."
"Yes, and got the colic--"
"Yes, and Gambler Jake got on his mule and started for the doctor."
"Yes, an' got in a poker game at Mariposa, and didn't get back for four
days."
"Yes, and the doctor didn't come; and so the baby got well."
"Yes, just so, just so." And old Col. Billy bobbed his head, and fell to
thinking of other days.
This little piece of land where the old Indian woman had lived so long,
and about which she had built a fence, was very valuable indeed. Valley
land was scarce here in the mountains; and there was a young orchard,
the only thing of the kind in the country. And then the roads forked
there, and two little rivers ran together there, and that meant that a
town would spring up there as the country became settled, farms opened,
and the Indians were swept away. Evil-minded men are never without
resources. The laws are made to restrain such men; but on the border
there is no law enforced. So you see how powerful are the wicked there;
how powerless the weak, though never so well disposed.
In the far West, if an Indian is in your way, you have only to report
him to the Agent of the Indian Reservation. That is all you have to do.
He disappears, or dies. This Indian Agent is only too anxious to fill up
his wasting ranks of Indians. They are dying every day. And if they all
should die, sooner or later the fact may be known at Washington, and in
the course of a few years the Reservation and office would be abolished
together. And then each additional Indian contributes greatly to the
Agent's income, for each Indian must be fed and clothed--or at least,
the Agent is permitted to draw clothing, blankets and food for every
Indian brought upon the Reservation. As to the Indians receiving these
things, that is quite another affair.
Well, here were men wanting this land. Down yonder, far away to the
scorching South, at the edge of the level alkali lands, in a tule swamp,
where the Indians taken from the mountains were penned up and dying like
sheep in a corral, was a bold, enterprising Indian Agent who was
gathering in, under orders of his Government, all the Indians of
Northern California. He could appoint a hundred deputies, and authorize
them to bring in the Indians wherever found.
The two children--"the babes in the wood"--had been taken to the
Reservation; but being bold and active, they contrived to soon escape
and return to the mountains. Men whispered that the girl owed her escape
to the great and growing favor in which she was held by one of the
deputy agents, who, with his partner, a rough and coarse-grained man,
had their homes in this camp. The cabin of these two deputy agents,
Dosson and Emens, stood not far from that of old Forty-Nine. But so far
as I can remember, the old man and the newly appointed deputy agents had
always been at enmity.
This Dosson was certainly a bad man. He was in every sense of the word a
desperado, and so was his partner; just the men most wanted by the head
agent at the Reservation to capture and bring in Indians.
But whether this girl owed her escape or not to this ruffian, Dosson,
certain it is that on her return she avoided his cabin, and when not in
the woods, hovered about that of old Forty-Nine. This enraged Dosson
beyond degree. To add to his anger, she now began to show a particular
preference for John Logan. The idea of having an Indian for a rival was
more than this ignorant and brutal Deputy Agent could well bear, and he
set to work at once to rid himself of the object of his hatred.
The hard and merciless man-hunter almost shouted with delight at a new
idea which now came upon him with the light and suddeness of a
revelation. He ran at once to his partner, and told him of his
determination.
Then these two men sat down and talked a long time together. They made
marks in the sand with sticks. They set up little stakes in the sand,
and seemed delighted as they reached their heads out and looked down
from the mouth of their tunnel toward the Indian farm.
That night these two men stole down together, and set up stakes and made
corner marks about John Logan's land while he slept, and then rolled
themselves in their blankets, and spent the night inside the limits of
their new location. Having done this, and sent a notice of their
pre-emption to the Surveyor General, to be filed as their declaration of
claim to the little farm with the orchard, they entered complaint
against John Logan, and so sat down to await results.
Meantime, this old woman sat alone, with a great dog by her side, sick
and desolate, waiting her sun of life to set, piously waiting, dark
browed, thoughtful; while her tall handsome boy, meek, obedient, with
the awful curse of Cain upon his brow, the mark of Indian blood, was
toiling on up in the canyon alone.
You had better be a negro--you had better be ten times a negro, were it
possible--than be one-tenth part an Indian in the West. The Indian will
have little to do with one who is part Indian. And as for the white man,
unless the Indian is willing to be his slave, do him homage and service,
he would sooner take a leper in his house or to his heart.
Up and above the Indian woman's house, in the dense wood and on the spur
of the mountain, wound an old Indian trail. Along this trail, above the
hidden house, stole two little creatures--tawny, sunburnt, ragged,
wretched, yet full of affection for each other. These were the two
wretched children escaped from the Reservation. They were now being
harbored by old Forty-nine. For this he was liable to be arrested and
punished. Knowing this, he kept his gun loaded and standing in the
corner of his cabin, where the children slept at night.
How strange that this one man, the most despised and miserable, should
be the only one to reach a hand to help these little waifs of the woods!
And who knew or who cared from where they came? They did not look the
Indian, though they acted it to perfection. They would run away and hide
from the face of man. Yet the girl, under the passionate California sun,
was almost blossoming into womanhood. They were called brother and
sister. God knows if they were or no. Break up tribes, families, as
these had been broken up--fire into a flock of young quails all day--and
who knows how soon or where the few that escape may gather together
again, or if they will know each other when they meet, years after in
the woods?
Children are so impressionable. They had heard some one in the camp call
the old Indian woman who sat forever on the porch in the dense foliage,
with the big dog beside her, a witch. They did not know what that
meant. But they knew it was something dreadful, and they shunned and
abhorred her accordingly. Yet the girl knew John Logan, her tall
handsome son, well, and liked him, too.
As they stole along the dim old Indian trail, their necks were stretched
toward the old Indian woman's hut below. They were as noiseless as two
panthers. At last the girl stopped, stood still, pointed and half pushed
the boy before and in through the thicket, past an occasional lonely
cabin, toward the widow's woody home.
This old woman had long been ailing. She was now very ill. You are
surprised to learn of sickness in the heart of the Sierras? I tell you
that if you were to wash down mountains and uproot forests in the
moon--were such a thing possible--the ague would seize hold of you
and shake you for it. Nature is revengeful. But to return to the
wilderness.
What a wilderness this was! Only here and there, at long intervals, a
little cabin down in the deep, dense wood; these cabins scattered as if
the hand of some mighty sower had reached out over the wilderness, and
had sown and strown them there, to take root and grow to some great
harvest of civilization. The narrow Indian trail wound along, almost
entirely hidden by overhanging woods--a trail that turned and twisted at
every little obstacle; here it was the prostrate form of some patriarch
tree, or here it curved and cork-screwed in and out through mighty
forest-kings, that stood like comrades in ranks of battle.
Where did this little Indian trail lead to? Where did it begin? How many
a love-tale had been told in the shadow of those mighty trees that
reached their long, strong arms out over the heads of all passers-by, in
a sort of priestly benediction?
Where did the Indian trail lead to? To the West. But leaves were strewn
thick along it now. The Indian had gone, to come back no more. Ever to
the West points the Indian's path. Ever down to the great gold shore of
the vast west sea leads the Indian's path. And there the waves sweep in
and obliterate his foot-prints forever.
The two half-wild children who had disappeared down the dim trail a few
moments before, now suddenly re-appear. They are eager and excited.
This boy cannot be above ten years old; yet he looks old as a man. The
girl may be twelve, fifteen, or even sixteen. Age at such a period is a
matter of either blood or climate. She has a shock of unkempt hair; she
wears a tattered dress of as many colors as Jacob's coat. She has one
toeless boot on one foot; on the other she wears a shoe so big that it
might hold both her feet. Down over this shoe rolls a large red woolen
stocking, leaving her shapely little ankle bleeding from
brier-scratches. In her hand she swings a large, coarse straw hat by its
broad red ribbons. Her every limb is full of force and fire; her voice
is firm and resolute, but not rapid. Hers is a splendid energy, needing
but proper direction.
Her brother, who puffs and pants at her side, is named Johnny; but the
wild West, which has a habit of naming things because they look it, has
dubbed him "Stumps," since he is short and fat. He is half-clad in a
pair of tattered pants, a great straw hat, and a full, stuffy, check
shirt, which is held in subjection by a pair of hand-made woolen
suspenders--the work of his sister.
Both are out of breath--both are looking back wildly; but Stumps huddles
up again and again close under his sister's arm, as if he fears he might
be followed, and looks to her for protection. She draws him close to
her, and then looking back, and then down into his upturned face, says
breathlessly:
"Stumps! Oh, Stumps, did you get 'em, Stumps?"
The boy shrinks closer to his sister, and again looking back, and then
seeing for a certainty that he is not followed, he grows bolder and
says:
"Git 'em, Carats? Look there! And that 'un is your'n, Carats; and you
can have both of 'em if you want 'em, for I don't feel hungry now,
Carats," and here he hitches up his pants, and wipes his nose on his
sleeve.
"Why, Stumps, don't you feel hungry now?" Then suddenly beholding two
upheld ruddy peaches, she catches her breath, and says: "Oh, oh!" and
she starts back and throws up her hands. "Oh, the pretty, pretty
peaches!"
"Here, take 'em both, Carrie--I ain't hungry now."
"No, I don't want but one, Stumps--one 's enough. Why, how you tore your
pants; and your shin 's a bleeding, too. Why, poor Stumps!"
Stumps, looking back, cries:
"Shoo! Thar war a dog--yes, thar war a dog! And what do you think! Shoo!
I thought I heard somethin' a comin'. Carats, old Miss Logan, the Injun
woman, seed me!"
"Why, Stumps! No?"
"Yes, she did. When I clim' the fence, and slid down that sapling in the
yard, there she laid on the porch on her shuck-bed a-shaking with the
ager. And, Carats, she was a-looking right straight at me--yes, she was;
so help me, she was."
"Why, Stumps; and what did she do! Didn't she holler, and say 'Seek 'em,
Bose?'"
"Carats, she didn't; and that's what's the matter--and that's why I
don't want to eat any peaches, Carats. Carats, I wish she had--I do, I
do, so help me. Let's not eat 'em--let's take 'em back--Carrie, sister
Carrie, let's take 'em back."
Carrie thoughtfully and tenderly gazes in his face.
"Let's take 'em to old Forty-nine, Johnny. There ain't nothing he can
eat, you know; an' then he's been a-shakin' since melon-time,--an'
Johnny, I don't think we are very good to him, anyhow."
Stumps, scratching his bleeding shin with his foot, exclaims:
"I've barked my shin, and I've tore'd my pants, an' I don't care! But I
won't take him a peach that I've stoled. Why, what would he think,
Carats? He'd die dead, he would, if he thought I'd stoled them peaches
from the poor old sick Injun woman; yes he would, Carats."
"Johnny, I'll tell him we found 'em," as Stumps looks doubtingly at her,
"tell him we found 'em in a tree, Stumps. Yes tell him we found 'em away
up in the top of a cedar tree."
"But I don't want to tell no lie, nor do nothin' bad no more, and I want
to go home, I do."
"Well, Stumps--Johnny, brother Johnny, what will we do with them? We
can't stand here all day. I want to go home, too. Oh, this hateful,
hateful peach! I want to go right off!" and the girl, hiding her face
in her hands, begins to weep.
"Oh, sister Carrie--sister, don't, don't; sister, don't, don't!"
"Then let's eat 'em."
"I don't like peaches."
"I don't like peaches either!" cries Carrie, throwing back her hair,
wiping her eyes, and trying to be bright and cheerful. "I never could
eat peaches. I like pine-nuts, and cowcumbers, and tomatuses,
and--pine-nuts. Oh, I'm very fond of pine-nuts. I like pine-nuts
roasted, and tomatuses, an' I like chestnuts raw, an' tomatuses. Don't
you like pine-nuts and tomatuses, Johnny, and cowcumbers."
"I don't like nothin' any more."
"Then, Johnny, take 'em back."
"I--I--I take 'em back by myself? I take 'em back, an' hear old Bose
growl, and look into her holler eyes?" Here the boy shudders, and
looking around timidly, he creeps closer to his sister and says, as he
again gazes back in the direction of the Indian woman's cabin: "I'd be
afraid she might be dead, Carats, an' there'd be nobody to hold the
dog. Oh, I see her holler eyes looking at me all the time. If she'd
only let the dog come. Confound her! If she'd only let the dog come!"
"Oh, Johnny, Johnny--brother Johnny, come, lets go home! Shoo! There's
somebody coming. It's John Logan, coming home from his work."
As the girl speaks, John Logan, the sick woman's son, a strong handsome
man, only brown as if browned by the sun, with a pick on his shoulder
and a gold-pan slanting under his arm, comes whistling along the trail.
Seeing the children, he stops and says:
"Why, children, good evening! What are you running away for? Come, come
now, don't be so shy, my little neighbors, and don't give the trail all
to me because I happen to be a man, and the strongest. Come, Johnny,
give me your hand. There! an honest, chubby little fist it is. Why, what
have you got in your other hand? Been gathering nuts, hey? You little
squirrel! Give me a nut, won't you."
Carrie approaches, dives her hand into her ragged pocket and reaches the
man a heaped handful of nuts.
"There, if you'll have nuts I'll bring you nuts; I'll bring you lots of
nuts, I will; I'll bring you a bushel of nuts, an'--some tomatuses."
"Oh, you are too kind. But now I must hasten home to mother. Come, shake
hands again, and say good-bye." The girl gives her left hand. "No your
right hand."
Carrie is bothered, and slips the peach in her left hand behind, and,
with a lifted face, full of glow and enthusiasm, says:
"I'll bring you a whole bag full of nuts, I will," and she reaches him
her hand eagerly.
"Oh Carrie, I have a nice little surprise for you, and if you won't tell
I'll let you into the secret. You won't tell?"
He comes close to her, sits down his gold-pan, and resting his pick on
the ground, with his two hands on the top of the handle, leans toward
her and looks into her innocent uplifted face.
The girl's eyes brighten, and she seems to grow tall and beautiful under
his earnest gaze.
"I won't tell, sir. Oh, please to trust me, sir--I won't tell, Mr. John
Logan!"
The boy eagerly comes forward also.
"I won't tell, neither. I won't tell neither; so help me!"
"Well, then, come close to me, Johnny, come close up here, and look in
my face--there! Why, I declare the pleasure I now have, telling you
this, is more than gold! And I need money sadly enough."
"You're awful poor, ain't you?" asked Stumps, hitching up his pants.
"Been workin' all day and ain't got much in the pan," says Carrie,
looking sidewise at the few colors of gold in the bottom edge of the
pan.
"Ah, yes, Carrie. Look at my hands--hard and rough as the bark of a
tree; but I don't mind that, Carrie, I was born here, I was born poor, I
shall live poor and die poor. But I don't mind it, Carrie. I have my
mother to love and look after, and while she lives I am content."
The girl looks at the woods, looks at the man, and then once more at the
woods, and at last in her helplessness to solve the problem, falls to
eating nuts, as usual; while the man continues, as if talking to
himself:
"This is the peace of Paradise; and see the burning bush! Now I can
well understand that Moses saw the face of God in the bush of fire."
"Oh," the girl says to herself, "if he only would be cross! If he only
would say something rough to us! If he only would cuss."
She resolves to say or do something to break the spell. She asks
eagerly:
"Are you going to give something to Stumps and me?--I mean Johnny and
me?"
"Yes, yes, to-morrow evening, after my work is done. And now I am going
to tell you and Johnny what it is. It ain't much; it's the least little
thing in the world; but I don't deserve any credit for even that--it's
my poor dear old mother's idea. She has laid there, day after day, on
the porch, and she has been thinking, not all the time of her own
sickness and sorrow, but of others, as well; and she has thought much of
you."
The boy stands far aside, and at mention of this he jerks himself into a
knot, his head drops down between his shoulders, his mouth puckers up,
and he exclaims "Oh, hoka!"
"Thought of me?" says Carrie.
"Of you, Carrie. And listen; I must tell you a little story. When I was
a very young man, and killed my first grizzly bear, I bought a little
peach-tree and planted it in the corner of the yard, as people sometimes
plant trees to remember things. Well, my mother, she had the ague that
day powerful, for it was after melon-time, and she sat on the porch and
shook, and shook, and shook, and watched me plant it, and when I got
done, my mother she cried. I don't know why she cried, Carrie, but she
did. She cried and she cried, and when I went up to her, and put my arms
around her neck and kissed her, she only cried the more, for she was
sort of hysteric-like, you know, and she said she knew she'd never live
to eat any fruit off of that tree."
Carrie stops eating nuts a moment.
"But she will--she will get well, Mr. John Logan--she will get well,
won't she?"
"Ah, indeed, I believe she will get well, but whether she ever gets
right well or not, she certainly will live to eat peaches from that
tree. Carrie, we've talked it all over, and what do you think? Why, now
listen, I will tell you. This tree that I planted, and that my poor sick
mother was afraid she would not live to eat the fruit from--this tree
was a peach tree."
Carrie again takes out a handful of nuts from her pocket, as if she
would like to eat them. She looks at them a second, throws them away,
and hastens to one side.
"I want to go home," cries Stumps. "I don't like peaches, Mr. John
Logan. I don't--I don't--so help me," and the boy jerks at his pants
wildly.
John Logan turns to him kindly. "Why, you never had a peach in your
little hand in your life." Then turning to Carrie: "Yes, Carrie, there
has grown this year, high up in the sun on that tree, side by side,
two--and only two--red, ripe peaches. Why, children, don't run away!
Wait one moment, and I will go a little way with you. As I was about to
say, these two peaches are at last ripe. I own I was the least bit
afraid, even after I saw them there on that bough one Summer morning,
that even then my mother might die before they became fully ripe. But
now they are ripe, and this evening I shall pull them. And to-morrow,
after my day's work is done, my sick mother shall eat one, and you two
shall eat the other."
Carrie puts up her hand and backs away.
"Don't--don't--don't call me Carrie; call me
Carats--Carats--Carats--like the others do!"
"Why, Carrie! What in the world is the matter with you?"
"If a body steals, Mr. John Logan--if a body steals--what had a body
better do?"
"Why, the Preacher says a body should confess--confess it, feel sorry,
and be forgiven."
"I can't--I can't confess, and I can't be forgiven!"
John Logan starts!
"You--you, Carrie; is it you? Then you have already confessed, and He
will forgive you!"
"But such stealing as this nobody--nothing--can forgive," falling on her
knees. "I--I made my little brother steal your peaches!"
"You!--you made him steal my two peaches that I wanted for my sick
mother? You--_you_, Carrie?"
Stumps rushed forward.
"No--No! I done it myself! I done it all myself--I did, so help me!"
"But I made him do it!" cries Carrie. "I am the biggest, and I knew
better--I knew better. But we couldn't eat 'em. Here they are--oh I am
so glad we couldn't eat 'em!" And they fall on their knees at his feet
together; four little hands reach out the peaches to him eagerly,
earnestly, as if in prayer to Heaven.
The man takes their little hands, and, choking with tears, says, in a
voice full of pathos and pity, and uncovering his head, with lifted
face, as he remembers something of the story the good Priest so often
read to his mother: "and there was more joy in Heaven over the one that
was found, than over the ninety-and-nine that went not astray."