THE ESCAPE.
_O tranquil moon! O pitying moon!
Put forth thy cool, protecting palms,
And cool their eyes with cooling alms,
Against the burning tears of noon._
_O saintly, noiseless-footed nun!
O sad-browed patient mother, keep
Thy homeless children while they sleep,
And kiss them, weeping, every one._
At first there was a loud demonstration against Logan by the mob, that
always gathers about where a man is captured by his fellows--the wolves
that come up when the wounded buffalo falls. There was talk of a
vigilance committee and of lynching.
But when the stout, resolute sheriff led the man in chains down the
trail through the deep snow, and turned him over to the officer in
charge of a little squad of soldiers at the other side of the valley, no
man interfered further. Indeed, Dosson and Emens were too anxious about
the promised reward to make any demonstration against this man's life
now. He was worth to them a thousand dollars.
A lawyer reading this, will smile here at the loose way in which the law
was administered there in the outer edge of the world at that time. Here
is a sheriff, with a warrant in his pocket, made returnable to a
magistrate. The sheriff arrests the man on this warrant and takes him
directly to the military authorities, which have been so long seeking
him, utterly unconscious that he is doing aught but the proper thing.
And yet, after all, it was the shortest and best course to take.
I shall not forget the face of the prisoner as we stood beside the trail
in the snow, while he was led past down the mouth of the canyon toward
the other side of the valley. It was grand!
Some strangers, standing in the street, spoke of the majesty of the
man's bearing. They openly dared to admire his lifted face, and to speak
with derision of his captors as the party passed on. This made the low
element, out of which mobs are always created, a little bit timid.
Possibly it was this that saved the prisoner. But most likely it was the
resolute face of the honest sheriff. For, say what you will, there is
nothing so cowardly as a mob. Throw what romance you please over the
actions of the Vigilantes of California, they were murderers--coarse,
cowardly and brutal; murderers, legally and morally, every one of them.
It is to be admitted that they did good work at first. But their
example, followed even down to this day, has been fruitful of the
darkest crimes.
When Forty-nine awoke next morning from his long drunken slumber, the
children were not there. Dosson called, arrayed in his best; but Carrie
was not to be seen. Forty-nine could give no account of her. This day of
triumph for Dosson did not yield him so much as he had all the night
before fancied. He was furious.
Forty-nine, as usual, after a spree, meekly took up his pick, after a
breakfast on a piece of bread and the drawings of coffee grounds that
had been thrice boiled over, and stumbled away towards his tunnel, and
was soon lost in the deeps of the earth.
You may be certain that this desperate character, just taken after so
much trouble and cost, was securely ironed at the little military camp
across the valley. An old log cabin was made a temporary prison, and
soldiers strode up and down on the four sides of it day and night.
And yet there was hardly need of such heavy irons. True, the soldiers
outside, as they walked up and down at night and shifted their muskets
from side to side, and slapped their shoulders with their arms and hands
to keep from freezing, heard the chains grate and toss and rattle, often
and often, as if some one was trying to tear and loosen them. But it was
only the man tossing his arms in delirium as he lay on the fir boughs in
the corner.
Dosson, after much inquiry, and many day's watching about Forty-nine's
cabin, called and was admitted to see the prisoner, who by this time,
though weak and worn to a skeleton, was convalescing. The coarse and
insolent intruder started back with dismay. There sat the girl he so
hoped and longed to possess, talking to him tenderly, soothing him,
giving her life for his.
Long and brutal would be the story of the agent's endeavors to tear this
girl away from the bedside of the sufferer--if such a place could be
called a bedside. The girl would not leave John Logan, and the timid boy
who sat shivering back in the corner of the cabin, would not leave the
girl. The three were bound together by a chain stronger than that which
bound the wrists of the prisoner; aye, ten thousand times stronger, for
man had fashioned the one--God the other.
Sudden and swift arrives summer in California. The trail was opened to
the Reservation down the mountain, and the officer collected his few
Indians together in a long, single line, all chained to a long heavy
cable, and prepared to march. About the middle of the chain stood John
Logan, now strong enough to walk. At the front were placed a few
miserable, spiritless Indians, who had been found loafing about the
miners's cabins--the drunkards, thieves, vagabonds of their tribe, such
as all tribes have, such as we have, citizen-reader--while the rear was
brought up by a boy and girl, Carrie and Johnny, a pitiful sight!
Do not be surprised. When you have learned to know the absolute, the
utterly unlimited power and authority of an Indian Agent or sub-Agent,
you have only to ask the capability for villainy he may possess in order
to find the limit of his actions.
Could you have seen the lofty disdain of this girl for her suitor at
that first and every subsequent meeting, as she kept at the bedside of
John Logan, you could have guessed what might follow. The man's love was
turned to rage. He resolved to send her back to the Reservation also. It
is true, the soldiers had learned to respect and to pity her. It is
true, the little Lieutenant said, with a soldierly oath, as she was
being chained, that she was whiter than the man who was having it done.
Yet the soldiers, and their officer as well, had their orders; and a
soldier's duties, as you know, are all bound up in one word.
As for the wretched boy, he might have escaped. He was a negative sort
of a being at best; and no one, save Logan and the girl, either hated
him or loved him greatly, tender and true as he was. They both implored
him to slip between the fingers of the soldiers and not go to the
Reservation. But he would not think of being separated from his sister.
Poor, stunted, starved little thing! There were wrinkles about his face;
his hands were black, short, and hard, from digging roots from the
frosty ground. It is not probable the lad had ever had enough to eat
since he could remember. And so he was a dwarf, a dwarf in body and in
soul; and instead of showing some spirit and standing up now and helping
the girl, as he should, he leaned on her utterly, and left her to be the
man of the two. The little spark of fire that had twice or thrice
flashed up in the last few years, seemed now to die out entirely, and he
stood there chained, looking back now and then over his shoulder at the
soldiers, looking forward trying to catch a glance from his sister now
and then, but never once making any murmur or complaint.
It was a hot, sultry day, such as suddenly enters and takes possession
of canyons in the Sierras, when the little party of prisoners were
marched through the little camp at the end of the canyon on their way to
the Reservation.
And the camp all came out to see, but the camp was silent. It was not a
pleasant sight. A soldier with a bayonet on his loaded musket walking by
the side of a woman with her hands in chains, is not an inspiring
spectacle. With all respect for your superior judgments, Mr. President,
Commander-in-Chief, and Captains of the army, I say there is a nobler
use for the army than this.
Let us hasten on from this subject and this scene. But do not imagine
that the miner, the settler, or even the most hardened about the camp,
felt ennobled at this sight. I tell you there was a murmur of
indignation and disgust heard all up and down the canyon. The newer and
better element of the camp was furious. One man even went so far as to
write a letter to a country paper on the subject.
But when the editor responded in a heavy leader, and assured the camp of
its deadly peril from these prowling savages, and proclaimed that the
Indians were being taken where they would have good medicine, care, food
and clothing, and be educated and taught the arts of agriculture, the
case really did not look so bad; and in less than a week the whole
affair had been forgotten by all the camp. Aye, all, save old
Forty-nine.
By the express order of sub-Agent Dosson, the old man, who had been
declared a dangerous character by him, was not permitted to see the girl
from the first day he discovered that she still clung to Logan. But the
old man had worked on and waited. He had kept constantly sober. He would
see and would save this girl at all hazards.
And now, as the sorrowful remnant of a once great tribe was being taken,
like Israel into captivity, he rushed forward to meet her, to hold her
hands, to press her to his heart, and bid her be strong and hopeful.
The agent saw the old man and shouted to the officer; the officer called
to the soldiers--the line moved forward, the bayonets crossed the old
man's breast as the prisoners passed on down the mountain, and he saw
the sad, pitiful face no more.
Keep the picture before you: Chained together in long lines, marched
always on foot in single file, under the stars and stripes, officers in
uniforms, clanking swords--the uniform of the Union, riding bravely
along the lines! The two men who had done so much to get this desperate
Indian out of the way, remained behind to keep possession of his house
and land. They had not even the decency to build a new cabin. They only
broke down the door, put up a new one with stouter hinges and latch; and
the long-coveted land was theirs.
As for old Forty-nine, all the light had left the mountain and the
valley now. Carrie, whom he had cared for from the first almost, little
Stumps, whom he had found with her, hardly big enough to toddle
about--both were gone. All three gone. John Logan, whom he had taught to
read and taught a thousand things at his own cabin-fire in the long
snowy winters--all these gone together. It was as if the sun had gone
down for Forty-nine forever. There was no sun or moon or stars, or any
thing that shines in the mountains any more for him. His had been a
desolate life all the long years he had delved away into the mountain at
his tunnel. No man had taken his hand in friendship for many and many a
year.
The man now nailed up his cabin door--an idle task, perhaps, for men
instinctively avoided it, and the trail of late took a cut across the
spur of the hill rather than pass by his door. But somehow the old man
felt that he might not be back soon. And as men had kept away from that
cabin while he was there, he did not feel that they should enter it in
his absence.
One evening in the hot, sultry summer, old Forty-nine rode down from the
mountain into the great valley, following the trail taken by the lines
of chained captives, and set his face for the Reservation.
At a risk of repetition, let us look at this Reservation. The government
had ordered a United States officer, of the rank of lieutenant, to set
apart a Reservation for the Indians on land not acquired and not likely
to be desired by the white settlers, and to gather the Indians together
there and keep them there by force, if force should be required. This
young man established a Reservation on the border of a tule lake, shut
in by a crescent of low sage-brush hills. The Indian camp was laid out
on the very edge of this alkali lake. The crescent of sage-brush hills
of a mile in circuit, reaching back and almost around the Reservation,
was mounted at three points by cannon, ready to sweep the camp below. On
this circuit of hills, healthy and pleasant enough the officers and
soldiers had their quarters. Down in the damp, deadly valley, on the
edge of the alkali lake, the newly appointed Indian Agent, with a
tremendous appropriation to be expended in building houses and
establishing the Indians in their new homes, built the village. It was
made up of two rows of low, one-story, one-room huts. Two big lamps hung
in the one street; and from lamp to lamp before the doors of the little
huts with earthen floors and turf-covered roofs, paced soldiers night
and day.
These houses were damp and dismal from the first. Soon they began to be
mouldy; fungi and toadstools and the like began to grow up in the
corners and out of the logs. Little shiny reptiles, in the long hot
rainy days that followed, and worms and all sorts of hideous vermin,
began to creep and crawl through these dreadful dens of death, over the
sick and dying Indians. Long slimy, unnamed, and unknown worms crawled
up out of the earth, as if they could not wait for the victims to die.
The Indians were dying off by hundreds. They went to the officers and
complained. The officers ordered a double guard to be set. And that was
all.
You marvel that these young lieutenants could be so imperious and cruel?
It does seem past belief. But pardon just one paragraph of digression
while we recall the conduct of a younger class only last year on the
Hudson. To me the real question before the courts in the Whitaker case
is not whether this quiet stranger, with a tinge of black man's blood in
his veins, mutilated himself, or no. But the real question is, did they
or did they not, by their determined and persistent persecutions and
insults, drive him in a fit of desperation to do this in the hope of
pulling down ruin on the heads of all? This seems probable to me, and to
me is far more monstrous than if they had, in sudden anger, cut his
ears, or even cut his throat; and if these young bloods could so treat a
stranger there, standing at such a manifest disadvantage, what would
they not be capable of when they are, for the first time, clothed with
a little brief authority, away out on the savage edge of the world?
The water here, as the hot season came on, was something dreadful. It
was slimy with alkali. Little black worms knotted and twisted themselves
together at the bottom of the cup, like bunches of witch-woven
horse-hair. The Indians were dying of malaria. They were burning up with
the fever. And this was the only water these people, who had been used
to the fresh sweet snow-water of the Sierras, could have.
What could they do? They appealed to the officers. They were answered
with insult: "You must get used to it. You must get civilized."
These dying Indians began to fight and quarrel among themselves. Ah,
they were very wicked. They were quarrelsome as dogs; almost as
quarrelsome as Christians!
This was a small Paris in siege. It was Jerusalem surrounded by Titus.
Down there, dying as they were, a savage Simon and a degenerate John, as
in Jerusalem of old, led their followers against each other, even
across their dead that lay unburied in the mouldy death-pens and about
their dark and narrow doors, and slew each other as did God's chosen
people when besieged by the son of Vespasian.
Then the men in brass and blue turned the cannon loose on the howling
savages, and shot them into silence and submission.
John Logan, Carrie and little Stumps, about this time had been brought
with others from the mountains to the Reservation. Logan insisted on
keeping the two children at his side and under his protection. He was
laughed at by agents, and sub-agents.
He was kept chained. He was assigned to a strong hut with gratings
across the window--or rather the little loop-hole which let in the
light. The guards were kept constantly at his door. He was entered on
the books as a very desperate character, a barn-burner, and possible
murderer. And so night and day he was kept under the constant watch of
the soldiers with fixed bayonets. True, he was soon too weak to lift his
manacled hands in strife. But nevertheless he was kept chained and
doubly guarded in the little hut with gratings at the loop-hole.
Would he attempt to escape?
There were many broken fragments of many broken tribes here. Tribes that
had fought each other to the death--fought as Germans and French have
fought. And why not, pray? Has not a heathen as good a right to fight a
heathen as has a Christian to fight a Christian? The only difference is,
we preach and profess peace; they, war.
Logan was alone in this damp hut and deadly pen. He could hear the tramp
of the soldiers; he could see the long thin silver beams of the moon
reach through the gratings, reach on and on, around and over and across
the damp, mouldy floor, as if reaching out, like God's white fingers, to
touch his face, to cool his fever, and comfort him. But he could see,
hear nothing more. He was so utterly alone! They would send an
unfriendly Indian in with his breakfast, foul and unfit for even a well
man, and a tin cup of water in the morning. Soon after the doctor would
call around, also. Then he would see no face again till evening, when
more food and water would be brought. At last the food was brought only
in the morning. This did not at all affect Logan; for from the first
the old pan containing his food had been taken away untouched. The man
was certainly dying. The guard and garrison on the hill were waiting for
this desperate character, whose capture had cost so much time and money,
to attempt to escape.
From the first, even in the face of the blunt refusal, John Logan had
begged for the boy to be brought him. He was certain the little fellow
was dying--dying of desolation and a broken heart.
About the sixth day, the man chanced to hear from an Indian that the boy
had quite broken down, and, refusing all food, lay moaning in his corner
all the time, and all the time crying for John Logan or Carrie. The man
now entreated more persistently than ever before. He promised the Doctor
to eat, to get well, if only the boy could be brought to him and be
permitted to spend his time there. For he knew from what the Doctor said
that he must soon die if things kept on as they were. The weather was
growing hotter and hotter; the water and the food, if possible, more
repulsive than ever. Logan could no longer walk across the pen in which
he was confined. He was so weak that he could not raise his heavily
manacled hands to his face.
After the usual diplomacy and delay, the Doctor reported his condition,
and also his earnest desire for the boy, to the Indian Agent.
There was a consultation. Would this crafty and desperate Indian attempt
to escape? Was not all this a ruse on his part? Would not the United
States imperil its peace and security if this boy and this man were to
be allowed together? This mighty question oppressed the mind of the
agent in charge for a whole day. Then, after the Doctor again urged the
prisoner's request--for man and boy both seemed to be dying--this man
reluctantly consented. Would Logan now escape after all? Could he ever
get through these iron bars and past the four soldiers pacing up and
down outside? Would he escape from the Reservation at last?
And now, at the close of the hottest and most dreadful day they had
endured, an old Indian woman, bent almost double, came shuffling in by
permission of the guard, and laid something on a pile of rushes and
willows in a corner of the pen across from where John Logan lay.
The man heard a noise as of some one breathing heavily, and attempted to
rise. He could hardly move his head. But in trying to support himself to
a sitting posture, he moved his hands, and so rattled his manacles. This
frightened the superstitious old woman, and she ran away. She had laid a
little skeleton on the rushes in the corner.
Logan with great effort managed to sit up and look across into the
corner that was now being slowly illuminated by a beam of bright, white
moonlight, that stole down the wall toward the little heap lying there,
like some holy, white-hooded and noiseless-footed nun. At last he saw
the face. It was that of little Stumps. The man sank back where he lay.
The sight was so pitiful, so dreadful to see, that he forgot his own
misery and was all in tears for the little fellow who lay dying before
him. He forgot his own fearful condition at the sight, and again
attempted to rise and reach the little heap that lay moaning in the
corner. It was impossible; he could not rise.
And how fared Carrie all this time? Little better than the others. She
was no longer beautiful. And so she was left, along with a score or
more of other dying and desperate creatures, in another part of the
Reservation. She was not permitted to see the boy. Least of all was she
permitted to see, or even hear from, John Logan. Day by day she drooped
and sank slowly but surely down toward the grave.
But she did not fear death. She had faced it in all forms before. And
even now death walked the place night and day, and she was not afraid.
She lay down at night with death. She knew no fear at all. She
constantly asked for and wanted to see the helpless little boy, in the
hope that she might help or cheer him. But no one listened to anything
she had to say. Once, after a very hot and horrible day, two of her
companions in captivity were found to be dead. The guard who paced up
and down between the huts was told of it. But he said it was too late to
have them carted away that night. And so this girl lay there all night
by the side of the dead, and was not afraid. Nay, she even wished that
she too, when the cart came in the morning, might be found silent and at
peace. And then she thought of those whom she loved, and reproached
herself for being so selfish as to want to die when she still might be
of use to them.
Let us escape from these dreadful scenes as soon as possible. They are
like a nightmare to me.
And yet the mind turns back constantly to John Logan lying there; the
little heap of bones in the corner; the pure white moonlight creeping
softly down the wall, as if to look into the little fellow's eyes, yet
as if half afraid of wakening him.
Could Logan escape? Chains, double guards, death--all these at his door
holding him back, waiting to take him if he ever passed out at that
door. Mould on the floor, mould on the walls, mould on the very
blankets. The man was burning to death with the fever; the boy, too,
lying over there. The boy moaned now and then. Once Logan heard him cry
for water. That warm, slimy, wormy water! O, for one, just one draught
of cool, sweet water from the mountains--their dearly loved native
mountains--and die!
The moon rose higher still, round and white and large; and at last,
wheeling over the camp of death, seemed to pause in pity and look full
in upon those two dying captives. It seemed to soothe them both.
The little boy saw the moonbeam on the wall, and was pacified. It looked
like the face of an old friend. It brought back the old time; the life,
the woods, the water--above all, the cool sweet waters of the mountains.
He seemed to know where he was. He lay still a long time, and then felt
stronger. He called to John Logan. No answer. Then the feeble, piping
little voice lifted up and called as loud as it could. No answer still.
The boy crawled from off the little pallet and tried to rise. He sank
down on the damp floor, and then tried to crawl to John Logan. He tried
to call again, as he began to slowly crawl towards the other corner. But
the poor little voice was no louder than a whisper. Very weak and very
wild, and almost quite delirious, the boy kept on as best he could. He
at last touched the blankets, the breast, and he drew himself up just as
the moon looked down on the pale upturned face. Then, with a moan, a
wild, pitiful cry, the little fellow fell back on the damp mouldy floor.
John Logan was dead! Despite the chains, the bars at the window, the
double guard at the door, the man had escaped at last!
The pitying moon did not hasten to go. It lingered there, reached down
along the damp, mouldy floor to a little form of skin and bone; and
then, as if this moon-beam were the Savior's mantle spreading out to
cover the white and stainless soul, it covered the pinched and pitiful
little face. For the boy, too, lay dead.
Here was the end of two lives that had known only the long dark shadows,
only the deep solitude and solemnity of the forest. Like tall weeds that
sometimes shoot up in dark and unfrequented places, and that put forth
strange, sweet flowers, these two lives had sprung up there, put forth
after their fashion the best that is in man, and then perished in
darkness, unnamed, unknown.
Who were they? John Logan, it is now whispered, was the son of an
officer made famous in the war annals of the world. The officer had been
stationed here in early manhood, gave his heart as she believed to a
daughter of a brave and powerful chief, whose lands lay near where he
was stationed for a summer, and then? The old, old tale of betrayal and
desertion. The woman was disgraced before her people. And so when they
retreated before the encroachments of the whites, she, being despised
and cast off by her people, remained behind waiting the promised return
of her lover. He? He did not even acknowledge his child. This General,
who had taken the lives of a thousand men, had not the moral courage to
reach out a hand to this one little waif which he had called into
existence.
Do you know, there never was a dog drowned in the pound so base and low
that he would not fight? Yet this brute-valor is largely admired, even
to this day, by Christian people. This man could kill men, could risk
his own life, but he could not give this innocent child his name.
And so it was, the boy, after he had learned to read, by the help of
Forty-nine, and an occasional missionary who sometimes preached to the
miners, and spent the pleasant summer months in the mountains--this boy,
I say, who at last had heard all the story of his father's weakness and
wickedness from Forty-nine's lips disdained to use his name, but chose
one famous in the annals of the Indians. And this brief sketch is about
all there is to tell of the young man who lay dead in chains, in the
prison-pen of the Reservation.
"Civilization kills the Indian," said the Doctor that morning in his
daily round, after he had examined the dead bodies.
"He does not look so desperate, after all," said an officer, as he held
his nose with his thumb and finger, and leaned forward to look at the
dead Indian, while his other hand held his sword gracefully at his side.
And then this officer, after making certain that this desperate
character was quite dead, drew forth his cigar-case, struck a light, and
climbing upon his horse, galloped back to his quarters on the hill.
The Doctor, now left alone, stooped and put back the long silken hair
from the thin baby-face of the boy, as the body was brought out and
being carried to the cart made to receive the dead, and remarked that it
was not at all like that of the other Indians. Another young officer
came by as the Doctor did this, and his attention was called to the
fact. The officer tapped his sword-hilt a little, looked curiously at
the pitiful, pinched little face, and then ordering the soldiers to move
on with their burden, he turned to the Doctor and remarked, as the two
went back together to their quarters on the hill, that "no doubt it was
the effect of the few days of civilization on the Reservation that had
made the boy so white; pity he had died so soon; a year on the
Reservation, and he would have been quite white."
Unlike other parts of the Union, here the races are much mixed. Creoles,
Kanakas, Mexicans, Malays, whites, and blacks, have intermixed with the
natives, till the color line is not clearly drawn. And in one case at
least some orphan children of white parentage were sent to the
Reservation by parties who wanted their property. Though I do not know
that the fact of white children being found on a Reservation makes the
sufferings of the savages less or their wrongs more outrageous. I only
mention it as a frozen fact.
Carrie did not know of the desolation which death had made in her life,
till old Forty-nine, who arrived too late to attend the burial of his
dead, told her. She did not weep. She did not even answer. She only
turned her face to the wall as she lay in her wretched bed, burning up
with the fever, but made no sign. There was nothing more for her to
bear. She had felt all that human nature can feel. She was dull, dazed,
indifferent, now to all that might occur.
To turn back for the space of a paragraph, I am bound to admit that
these dying Indians often behaved very foolishly, and, in their
superstitions brought much of the fatality upon themselves. For example,
they had a horror of the white man's remedies, and refused to take the
medicines administered to them. Brought down from the cool, fresh
mountains, where they lived under the trees in the purest air and in the
most beautiful places, they at once fell ready victims to malarial
fevers. The white man, by a liberal use of quinine and whisky, as well
as by careful diet, lived very well at the Reservation, and suffered but
little, yet had he been forced to live in a pen, crowded together like
pigs in a sty, with the bad air, on the damp, mouldy ground, he had died
too, as fast perhaps as the Indian died.
The old man could do but little for the dying girl. He was in bad odor
with the officers; they treated him with as little consideration almost
as if he too had been a savage. But he was constant at her side; he
brought a lemon which he had begged, on his knees, as it were, and tried
to make her a cool drink of the slimy, wormy water. But the girl could
not drink it. She turned her face once more to the wall, and this time,
it seemed, to die.
One morning, before the sun rose, she recovered her wandering mind and
called old Forty-nine to her side. She was surely dying; but her mind
was clear, and she understood perfectly all she said or did. Her dark
eyes were sunken deep in their places, and her long, sun-browned hands
were only skin and bone. They fell down across her heaving little
breast, as if they were the hands of a skeleton. Little wonder that her
persecutors had turned away with horror, perhaps with fear, from those
deep, hollow eyes, and the pitiful emaciated frame, that could no longer
lift itself where it lay.
The old man fell down on his knees beside her and reached his face
across to hers. With great effort she lifted her two naked long, arms,
and wound them about the old man's neck. He seemed to know that death
was near, as he reached his face over hers. Over his cheeks and down his
long white beard the tears ran like rain and fell on her face and
breast.
"Forty-nine, father! Let me call you father; may I? I never had any
father but you," said the girl feebly, as the tears fell fast on her
face.
"Yes, yes, call me father. Call me father, Carrie, my Carrie; my poor,
dear, dear little Carrie,--do call me father, for of all the world I
have only you to love and live for," sobbed the old man as if his heart
would break.
"Well, then, father, when I die take me back, take me back to the
mountains. I want to hear the water--the cool, sweet, clear water, where
I lie; and the wind in the trees--the cool, pure wind in the trees,
father. And you know the three trees just above the old cabin on the
hill by the water-fall? Bury me, bury me there. Yes, there, where I can
hear the cool water all the time, and the wind in the trees. And--and
won't you please cut my name on the tree by the water? My name,
Carrie--just Carrie, that's all. I have no other name--just Carrie. Will
you? Will you do this for me?"
"As there is a God--as I live, I will!" and the old man lifted his face
as he bared his head, and looked toward heaven.
The girl's mind wandered now. She spoke incoherently for a few moments,
and then was silent. Her form was convulsed, her breast heaved just a
little, her helpless hands reached about the old man's neck as if they
would hold him from passing from her presence; they fell away, and then
all was still. It was now gray dawn.
This man's heart was bursting with rage and a savage sorrow. He was now
stung with a sense of awful injustice. His heart was swelling with
indignation. He took up the form before him; up in his arms, as if it
had been that of an infant. He threw his handkerchief across the face as
he passed out, stooping low through the dark and narrow doorway, and
strode in great, long and hurried steps down the street and over toward
the hills beyond, where his horse was tethered in the long, brown
grass.
As the old man passed the post on the hill, where the officers slept
under the protection of loaded cannon, the guard stopped him with his
bayonet.
"Halt! Where are you going? And what have you there? Come, where are you
going?"
The old man threw back the handkerchief as the guard approached, and the
new sunlight fell on the girl's face.
"I am going to bury my dead."
The guard started back. He almost dropped his gun as he saw that face;
then, recovering himself, he bared his head, bowed his face reverently,
and motioned the old man on.
Forty-nine reached his horse in the brown grass, laid his burden down,
threw on the saddle, drew the girth with sudden strength and energy, as
if for a long and desperate ride. Then resuming his load, tenderly, as
if it were a sleeping infant, he vaulted into the saddle and dashed away
for the Sierras, that lay before him, and lifted like a city of snowy
temples, reared to the worship of the Eternal.
It was a desperate ride for life. The girl's long soft black hair was
in the wind. The air was purer, sweeter here; there was a sense of
liberty, of life, in this ride, right in the face of the rising sun as
it streamed down over the snowy summits of the Sierras. Every plunge of
the strong swift mustang, brought them nearer to home, to hope, to life.
The horse seemed to know that now was his day of mighty enterprise.
Perhaps he was glad to get away and up and out of that awful valley of
death; for he forged ahead as horse never plunged before, with his
strange double burthen, that had frightened many a better trained
mustang than he.
At last they began to climb the chapparal hills. Then they touched the
hills of pine, and the breath of balsam had a sense of health and
healing in it that only the invalid who is dying for his mountain home
can appreciate.
The horse was in a foam; the day was hot; the old man was fainting in
the saddle.
Water! Water at last! Down a steep, mossy crag, hung with brier and
blossom, came tumbling, with loud laughter like merry girls at play, a
little mountain stream. Cool as the snow, sweet as the blossom, it fell
foaming in its pebbly bed at the base of the crag, under the deep, cool
shadows of the pines.
The old man threw himself from his horse, and beast and man drank
together as he held the girl in his arms, where the spray dashed down
like a holy baptismal from the very hand of God upon her hair and face.
The hands clutched, the breast heaved a little, the lips moved as if to
drink in the cool sweet water. Her eyes feebly opened. And then the old
man bore her back under the pines, and laid her on the soft bed of dry
sweet-smelling pine-quills.
Then clasping his hands above her, as he bent his face to hers, he
uttered his first prayer--the first for many and many a weary year. It
was a prayer of thanksgiving, of gratitude. The girl would live; and he
would now have something to live for--to love.
It had been a strange weird sight, that old man, his long hair in the
wind, his strong horse plunging madly ahead, all white with foam,
climbing the Sierras as the sun climbed up. The girl lay in his arms
before him, her long dark hair all down over the horse's neck, tangled
in the horse's mane, catching in the brush and the wild vines and leaves
that hung over the trail as they flew past.
And oftentime back over his shoulder the old man threw his long white
beard and looked back. He felt, he knew, that he was pursued. He fancied
he could all the time hear the sound of horses' feet.
Perhaps if his eyes had been gifted with the vision of the prophets of
old, he would indeed have seen the pursuer. That pursuer was also an old
man, and not much unlike himself; an old man with a scythe--death. Death
following fast from the hot valley of pestilence, where he, death, kept,
if possible, closer watch than the Agents, that no Indian ever returned
to his native mountains. But death gave up the pursuit, and turned back
from the moment the baptismal fountain touched the girl's fevered
forehead. At last the old man who held her in his arms, rose up, rode on
and down to his cabin in the twilight, all secure from pursuit of
Agents, death, or any one. The girl, quite conscious, opened her eyes
and looked around on the tall, nodding pine trees, that stood in long,
dusky lines, as if drawn up to welcome her return to the heart of the
Sierras.
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other
inconsistencies. Corrections in the text are noted below:
Page 34: Typo corrected; replaced "sieze" with "seize":
"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...
Page 56: Added close quote:
"Pard," answered Forty-nine, kindly, and with a nod of the head
back toward the children playing in the corner, "they are not
coppers; no, they are not. I tell you that girl is not copper,
but gold. Yes she is, Pard; she is twenty carats."
Page 81: Added close quote:
"_He caused the dry land to appear._"
--BIBLE.
Page 88: Typo corrected; replaced "villians" with "villains":
"Eh? eh? old Toppy?" and the two men poked each other in the
ribs, and looked the very villains that they were.
Page 164: Typo corrected; replaced "beseiged" with "besieged":
their dark and narrow doors, and slew each other as did God's
chosen people when besieged by the son of Vespasian.
Page 168: Replaced period with comma at end of sentence after "lay":
The man sank back where he lay. The sight was so pitiful, so
dreadful to see
Page 180: Added close quote:
"Halt! Where are you going? And what have you there? Come, where
are you going?"