“Oh, my name it is Johnny from Pike,I'm h-ll on a spree or a strike.” . . .
She stopped as crimson with shame and indignation as if the viewless singer had risen before her.
“I knew when to bet, and get up and get—”
“Hush! D—n it all. Don't you hear?”
There was the sound of hurried whispers, a “No” and “Yes,” and then a dead silence.
Christie crept nearer to the edge of the slope in the shadow of a buckeye. In the clearer view she could distinguish a staggering figure in the trail below who had evidently been stopped by two other expostulating shadows that were approaching from the shelter of a tree.
“Sho!—didn't know!”
The staggering figure endeavored to straighten itself, and then slouched away in the direction of the settlement. The two mysterious shadows retreated again to the tree, and were lost in its deeper shadow. Christie darted back to the cabin, and softly reentered her room.
“I thought I heard a noise that woke me, and I missed you,” said Jessie, rubbing her eyes. “Did you see anything?”
“No,” said Christie, beginning to undress.
“You weren't frightened, dear?”
“Not in the least,” said Christie, with a strange little laugh. “Go to sleep.”
The five impulsive millionaires of Devil's Ford fulfilled not a few of their most extravagant promises. In less than six weeks Mr. Carr and his daughters were installed in a new house, built near the site of the double cabin, which was again transferred to the settlement, in order to give greater seclusion to the fair guests. It was a long, roomy, one-storied villa, with a not unpicturesque combination of deep veranda and trellis work, which relieved the flat monotony of the interior and the barrenness of the freshly-cleared ground. An upright piano, brought from Sacramento, occupied the corner of the parlor. A suite of gorgeous furniture, whose pronounced and extravagant glories the young girls instinctively hid under home-made linen covers, had also been spoils from afar. Elsewhere the house was filled with ornaments and decorations that in their incongruity forcibly recalled the gilded plate-glass mirrors of the bedroom in the old cabin. In the hasty furnishing of this Aladdin's palace, the slaves of the ring had evidently seized upon anything that would add to its glory, without reference always to fitness.
“I wish it didn't look so cussedly like a robber's cave,” said George Kearney, when they were taking a quiet preliminary survey of the unclassified treasures, before the Carrs took possession.
“Or a gambling hell,” said his brother reflectively.
“It's about the same thing, I reckon,” said Dick Mattingly, who was supposed, in his fiery youth, to have encountered the similarity.
Nevertheless, the two girls managed to bestow the heterogeneous collection with tasteful adaptation to their needs. A crystal chandelier, which had once lent a fascinating illusion to the game of Monte, hung unlighted in the broad hall, where a few other bizarre and public articles were relegated. A long red sofa or bench, which had done duty beside a billiard-table found a place here also. Indeed, it is to be feared that some of the more rustic and bashful youths of Devil's Ford, who had felt it incumbent upon them to pay their respects to the new-comers, were more at ease in this vestibule than in the arcana beyond, whose glories they could see through the open door. To others, it represented a recognized state of probation before their re-entree into civilization again. “I reckon, if you don't mind, miss,” said the spokesman of one party, “ez this is our first call, we'll sorter hang out in the hall yer, until you'r used to us.” On another occasion, one Whiskey Dick, impelled by a sense of duty, paid a visit to the new house and its fair occupants, in a fashion frankly recounted by him afterwards at the bar of the Tecumseh Saloon.
“You see, boys, I dropped in there the other night, when some of you fellers was doin' the high-toned 'thankee, marm' business in the parlor. I just came to anchor in the corner of the sofy in the hall, without lettin' on to say that I was there, and took up a Webster's dictionary that was on the table and laid it open—keerless like, on my knees, ez if I was sorter consultin' it—and kinder dozed off there, listenin' to you fellows gassin' with the young ladies, and that yer Miss Christie just snakin' music outer that pianner, and I reckon I fell asleep. Anyhow, I was there nigh on to two hours. It's mighty soothin', them fashionable calls; sorter knocks the old camp dust outer a fellow, and sets him up again.”
It would have been well if the new life of the Devil's Ford had shown no other irregularity than the harmless eccentricities of its original locaters. But the news of its sudden fortune, magnified by report, began presently to flood the settlement with another class of adventurers. A tide of waifs, strays, and malcontents of old camps along the river began to set towards Devil's Ford, in very much the same fashion as the debris, drift, and alluvium had been carried down in bygone days and cast upon its banks. A few immigrant wagons, diverted from the highways of travel by the fame of the new diggings, halted upon the slopes of Devil's Spur and on the arid flats of the Ford, and disgorged their sallow freight of alkali-poisoned, prematurely-aged women and children and maimed and fever-stricken men. Against this rude form of domesticity were opposed the chromo-tinted dresses and extravagant complexions of a few single unattended women—happily seen more often at night behind gilded bars than in the garish light of day—and an equal number of pale-faced, dark-moustached, well-dressed, and suspiciously idle men. A dozen rivals of Thompson's Saloon had sprung up along the narrow main street. There were two new hotels—one a “Temperance House,” whose ascetic quality was confined only to the abnegation of whiskey—a rival stage office, and a small one-storied building, from which the “Sierran Banner” fluttered weekly, for “ten dollars a year, in advance.” Insufferable in the glare of a Sabbath sun, bleak, windy, and flaring in the gloom of a Sabbath night, and hopelessly depressing on all days of the week, the First Presbyterian Church lifted its blunt steeple from the barrenest area of the flats, and was hideous! The civic improvements so enthusiastically contemplated by the five millionaires in the earlier pages of this veracious chronicle—the fountain, reservoir, town-hall, and free library—had not yet been erected. Their sites had been anticipated by more urgent buildings and mining works, unfortunately not considered in the sanguine dreams of the enthusiasts, and, more significant still, their cost and expense had been also anticipated by the enormous outlay of their earnings in the work upon Devil's Ditch.
Nevertheless, the liberal fulfilment of their promise in the new house in the suburbs blinded the young girls' eyes to their shortcomings in the town. Their own remoteness and elevation above its feverish life kept them from the knowledge of much that was strange, and perhaps disturbing to their equanimity. As they did not mix with the immigrant women—Miss Jessie's good-natured intrusion into one of their half-nomadic camps one day having been met with rudeness and suspicion—they gradually fell into the way of trusting the responsibility of new acquaintances to the hands of their original hosts, and of consulting them in the matter of local recreation. It thus occurred that one day the two girls, on their way to the main street for an hour's shopping at the Villa de Paris and Variety Store, were stopped by Dick Mattingly a few yards from their house, with the remark that, as the county election was then in progress, it would be advisable for them to defer their intention for a few hours. As he did not deem it necessary to add that two citizens, in the exercise of a freeman's franchise, had been supplementing their ballots with bullets, in front of an admiring crowd, they knew nothing of that accident that removed from Devil's Ford an entertaining stranger, who had only the night before partaken of their hospitality.
A week or two later, returning one morning from a stroll in the forest, Christie and Jessie were waylaid by George Kearney and Fairfax, and, under pretext of being shown a new and romantic trail, were diverted from the regular path. This enabled Mattingly and Maryland Joe to cut down the body of a man hanged by the Vigilance Committee a few hours before on the regular trail, and to remonstrate with the committee on the incompatibility of such exhibitions with a maidenly worship of nature.
“With the whole county to hang a man in,” expostulated Joe, “you might keep clear of Carr's woods.”
It is needless to add that the young girls never knew of this act of violence, or the delicacy that kept them in ignorance of it. Mr. Carr was too absorbed in business to give heed to what he looked upon as a convulsion of society as natural as a geological upheaval, and too prudent to provoke the criticism of his daughters by comment in their presence.
An equally unexpected confidence, however, took its place. Mr. Carr having finished his coffee one morning, lingered a moment over his perfunctory paternal embraces, with the awkwardness of a preoccupied man endeavoring by the assumption of a lighter interest to veil another abstraction.
“And what are we doing to-day, Christie?” he asked, as Jessie left the dining-room.
“Oh, pretty much the usual thing—nothing in particular. If George Kearney gets the horses from the summit, we're going to ride over to Indian Spring to picnic. Fairfax—Mr. Munroe—I always forget that man's real name in this dreadfully familiar country—well, he's coming to escort us, and take me, I suppose—that is, if Kearney takes Jessie.”
“A very nice arrangement,” returned her father, with a slight nervous contraction of the corners of his mouth and eyelids to indicate mischievousness. “I've no doubt they'll both be here. You know they usually are—ha! ha! And what about the two Mattinglys and Philip Kearney, eh?” he continued; “won't they be jealous?”
“It isn't their turn,” said Christie carelessly; “besides, they'll probably be there.”
“And I suppose they're beginning to be resigned,” said Carr, smiling.
“What on earth are you talking of, father?”
She turned her clear brown eyes upon him, and was regarding him with such manifest unconsciousness of the drift of his speech, and, withal, a little vague impatience of his archness, that Mr. Carr was feebly alarmed. It had the effect of banishing his assumed playfulness, which made his serious explanation the more irritating.
“Well, I rather thought that—that young Kearney was paying considerable attention to—to—to Jessie,” replied her father, with hesitating gravity.
“What! that boy?”
“Young Kearney is one of the original locators, and an equal partner in the mine. A very enterprising young fellow. In fact, much more advanced and bolder in his conceptions than the others. I find no difficulty with him.”
At another time Christie would have questioned the convincing quality of this proof, but she was too much shocked at her father's first suggestion, to think of anything else.
“You don't mean to say, father, that you are talking seriously of these men—your friends—whom we see every day—and our only company?”
“No, no!” said Mr. Carr hastily; “you misunderstand. I don't suppose that Jessie or you—”
“Or ME! Am I included?”
“You don't let me speak, Christie. I mean, I am not talking seriously,” continued Mr. Carr, with his most serious aspect, “of you and Jessie in this matter; but it may be a serious thing to these young men to be thrown continually in the company of two attractive girls.”
“I understand—you mean that we should not see so much of them,” said Christie, with a frank expression of relief so genuine as to utterly discompose her father. “Perhaps you are right, though I fail to discover anything serious in the attentions of young Kearney to Jessie—or—whoever it may be—to me. But it will be very easy to remedy it, and see less of them. Indeed, we might begin to-day with some excuse.”
“Yes—certainly. Of course!” said Mr. Carr, fully convinced of his utter failure, but, like most weak creatures, consoling himself with the reflection that he had not shown his hand or committed himself. “Yes; but it would perhaps be just as well for the present to let things go on as they were. We'll talk of it again—I'm in a hurry now,” and, edging himself through the door, he slipped away.
“What do you think is father's last idea?” said Christie, with, I fear, a slight lack of reverence in her tone, as her sister reentered the room. “He thinks George Kearney is paying you too much attention.”
“No!” said Jessie, replying to her sister's half-interrogative, half-amused glance with a frank, unconscious smile.
“Yes, and he says that Fairfax—I think it's Fairfax—is equally fascinated with ME.”
Jessie's brow slightly contracted as she looked curiously at her sister.
“Of all things,” she said, “I wonder if any one has put that idea into his dear old head. He couldn't have thought it himself.”
“I don't know,” said Christie musingly; “but perhaps it's just as well if we kept a little more to ourselves for a while.”
“Did father say so?” said Jessie quickly.
“No, but that is evidently what he meant.”
“Ye-es,” said Jessie slowly, “unless—”
“Unless what?” said Christie sharply. “Jessie, you don't for a moment mean to say that you could possibly conceive of anything else?”
“I mean to say,” said Jessie, stealing her arm around her sister's waist demurely, “that you are perfectly right. We'll keep away from these fascinating Devil's Forders, and particularly the youngest Kearney. I believe there has been some ill-natured gossip. I remember that the other day, when we passed the shanty of that Pike County family on the slope, there were three women at the door, and one of them said something that made poor little Kearney turn white and pink alternately, and dance with suppressed rage. I suppose the old lady—M'Corkle, that's her name—would like to have a share of our cavaliers for her Euphemy and Mamie. I dare say it's only right; I would lend them the cherub occasionally, and you might let them have Mr. Munroe twice a week.”
She laughed, but her eyes sought her sister's with a certain watchfulness of expression.
Christie shrugged her shoulders, with a suggestion of disgust.
“Don't joke. We ought to have thought of all this before.”
“But when we first knew them, in the dear old cabin, there wasn't any other woman and nobody to gossip, and that's what made it so nice. I don't think so very much of civilization, do you?” said the young lady pertly.
Christie did not reply. Perhaps she was thinking the same thing. It certainly had been very pleasant to enjoy the spontaneous and chivalrous homage of these men, with no further suggestion of recompense or responsibility than the permission to be worshipped; but beyond that she racked her brain in vain to recall any look or act that proclaimed the lover. These men, whom she had found so relapsed into barbarism that they had forgotten the most ordinary forms of civilization; these men, even in whose extravagant admiration there was a certain loss of self-respect, that as a woman she would never forgive; these men, who seemed to belong to another race—impossible! Yet it was so.
“What construction must they have put upon her father's acceptance of their presents—of their company—of her freedom in their presence? No! they must have understood from the beginning that she and her sister had never looked upon them except as transient hosts and chance acquaintances. Any other idea was preposterous. And yet—”
It was the recurrence of this “yet” that alarmed her. For she remembered now that but for their slavish devotion they might claim to be her equal. According to her father's account, they had come from homes as good as their own; they were certainly more than her equal in fortune; and her father had come to them as an employee, until they had taken him into partnership. If there had only been sentiment of any kind connected with any of them! But they were all alike, brave, unselfish, humorous—and often ridiculous. If anything, Dick Mattingly was funniest by nature, and made her laugh more. Maryland Joe, his brother, told better stories (sometimes of Dick), though not so good a mimic as the other Kearney, who had a fairly sympathetic voice in singing. They were all good-looking enough; perhaps they set store on that—men are so vain.
And as for her own rejected suitor, Fairfax Munroe, except for a kind of grave and proper motherliness about his protecting manner, he absolutely was the most indistinctive of them all. He had once brought her some rare tea from the Chinese camp, and had taught her how to make it; he had cautioned her against sitting under the trees at nightfall; he had once taken off his coat to wrap around her. Really, if this were the only evidence of devotion that could be shown, she was safe!
“Well,” said Jessie, “it amuses you, I see.”
Christie checked the smile that had been dimpling the cheek nearest Jessie, and turned upon her the face of an elder sister.
“Tell me, have YOU noticed this extraordinary attention of Mr. Munroe to me?”
“Candidly?” asked Jessie, seating herself comfortably on the table sideways, and endeavoring, to pull her skirt over her little feet. “Honest Injun?”
“Don't be idiotic, and, above all, don't be slangy! Of course, candidly.”
“Well, no. I can't say that I have.”
“Then,” said Christie, “why in the name of all that's preposterous, do they persist in pairing me off with the least interesting man of the lot?”
Jessie leaped from the table.
“Come now,” she said, with a little nervous laugh, “he's not so bad as all that. You don't know him. But what does it matter now, as long as we're not going to see them any more?”
“They're coming here for the ride to-day,” said Christie resignedly. “Father thought it better not to break it off at once.”
“Father thought so!” echoed Jessie, stopping with her hand on the door.
“Yes; why do you ask?”
But Jessie had already left the room, and was singing in the hall.
The afternoon did not, however, bring their expected visitors. It brought, instead, a brief note by the hands of Whiskey Dick from Fairfax, apologizing for some business that kept him and George Kearney from accompanying the ladies. It added that the horses were at the disposal of themselves and any escort they might select, if they would kindly give the message to Whiskey Dick.
The two girls looked at each other awkwardly; Jessie did not attempt to conceal a slight pout.
“It looks as if they were anticipating us,” she said, with a half-forced smile. “I wonder, now, if there really has been any gossip? But no! They wouldn't have stopped for that, unless—” She looked curiously at her sister.
“Unless what?” repeated Christie; “you are horribly mysterious this morning.”
“Am I? It's nothing. But they're wanting an answer. Of course you'll decline.”
“And intimate we only care for their company! No! We'll say we're sorry they can't come, and—accept their horses. We can do without an escort, we two.”
“Capital!” said Jessie, clapping her hands. “We'll show them—”
“We'll show them nothing,” interrupted Christie decidedly. “In our place there's only the one thing to do. Where is this—Whiskey Dick?”
“In the parlor.”
“The parlor!” echoed Christie. “Whiskey Dick? What—is he—”
“Yes; he's all right,” said Jessie confidently. “He's been here before, but he stayed in the hall; he was so shy. I don't think you saw him.”
“I should think not—Whiskey Dick!”
“Oh, you can call him Mr. Hall, if you like,” said Jessie, laughing. “His real name is Dick Hall. If you want to be funny, you can say Alky Hall, as the others do.”
Christie's only reply to this levity was a look of superior resignation as she crossed the hall and entered the parlor.
Then ensued one of those surprising, mystifying, and utterly inexplicable changes that leave the masculine being so helpless in the hands of his feminine master. Before Christie opened the door her face underwent a rapid transformation: the gentle glow of a refined woman's welcome suddenly beamed in her interested eyes; the impulsive courtesy of an expectant hostess eagerly seizing a long-looked-for opportunity broke in a smile upon her lips as she swept across the room, and stopped with her two white outstretched hands before Whiskey Dick.
It needed only the extravagant contrast presented by that gentleman to complete the tableau. Attired in a suit of shining black alpaca, the visitor had evidently prepared himself with some care for a possible interview. He was seated by the French window opening upon the veranda, as if to secure a retreat in case of an emergency. Scrupulously washed and shaven, some of the soap appeared to have lingered in his eyes and inflamed the lids, even while it lent a sleek and shining lustre, not unlike his coat, to his smooth black hair. Nevertheless, leaning back in his chair, he had allowed a large white handkerchief to depend gracefully from his fingers—a pose at once suggesting easy and elegant langour.
“How kind of you to give me an opportunity to make up for my misfortune when you last called! I was so sorry to have missed you. But it was entirely my fault! You were hurried, I think—you conversed with others in the hall—you—”
She stopped to assist him to pick up the handkerchief that had fallen, and the Panama hat that had rolled from his lap towards the window when he had started suddenly to his feet at the apparition of grace and beauty. As he still nervously retained the two hands he had grasped, this would have been a difficult feat, even had he not endeavored at the same moment, by a backward furtive kick, to propel the hat out of the window, at which she laughingly broke from his grasp and flew to the rescue.
“Don't mind it, miss,” he said hurriedly. “It is not worth your demeaning yourself to touch it. Leave it outside thar, miss. I wouldn't have toted it in, anyhow, if some of those high-falutin' fellows hadn't allowed, the other night, ez it were the reg'lar thing to do; as if, miss, any gentleman kalkilated to ever put on his hat in the house afore a lady!”
But Christie had already possessed herself of the unlucky object, and had placed it upon the table. This compelled Whiskey Dick to rise again, and as an act of careless good breeding to drop his handkerchief in it. He then leaned one elbow upon the piano, and, crossing one foot over the other, remained standing in an attitude he remembered to have seen in the pages of an illustrated paper as portraying the hero in some drawing-room scene. It was easy and effective, but seemed to be more favorable to revery than conversation. Indeed, he remembered that he had forgotten to consult the letterpress as to which it represented.
“I see you agree with me, that politeness is quite a matter of intention,” said Christie, “and not of mere fashion and rules. Now, for instance,” she continued, with a dazzling smile, “I suppose, according to the rules, I ought to give you a note to Mr. Munroe, accepting his offer. That is all that is required; but it seems so much nicer, don't you think, to tell it to YOU for HIM, and have the pleasure of your company and a little chat at the same time.”
“That's it, that's just it, Miss Carr; you've hit it in the centre this time,” said Whiskey Dick, now quite convinced that his attitude was not intended for eloquence, and shifting back to his own seat, hat and all; “that's tantamount to what I said to the boys just now. 'You want an excuse,' sez I, 'for not goin' out with the young ladies. So, accorden' to rules, you writes a letter allowin' buzziness and that sorter thing detains you. But wot's the facts? You're a gentleman, and as gentlemen you and George comes to the opinion that you're rather playin' it for all it's worth in this yer house, you know—comin' here night and day, off and on, reg'lar sociable and fam'ly like, and makin' people talk about things they ain't any call to talk about, and, what's a darned sight more, YOU FELLOWS ain't got any right YET to allow 'em to talk about, d'ye see?” he paused, out of breath.
It was Miss Christie's turn to move about. In changing her seat to the piano-stool, so as to be nearer her visitor, she brushed down some loose music, which Whiskey Dick hastened to pick up.
“Pray don't mind it,” she said, “pray don't, really—let it be—” But Whiskey Dick, feeling himself on safe ground in this attention, persisted to the bitter end of a disintegrated and well-worn “Travatore.” “So that is what Mr. Munroe said,” she remarked quietly.
“Not just then, in course, but it's what's bin on his mind and in his talk for days off and on,” returned Dick, with a knowing smile and a nod of mysterious confidence. “Bless your soul, Miss Carr, folks like you and me don't need to have them things explained. That's what I said to him, sez I. 'Don't send no note, but just go up there and hev it out fair and square, and say what you do mean.' But they would hev the note, and I kalkilated to bring it. But when I set my eyes on you, and heard you express yourself as you did just now, I sez to myself, sez I, 'Dick, yer's a young lady, and a fash'nable lady at that, ez don't go foolin' round on rules and etiketts'—excuse my freedom, Miss Carr—'and you and her, sez I, 'kin just discuss this yer matter in a sociable, off-hand, fash'nable way.' They're a good lot o' boys, Miss Carr, a square lot—white men all of 'em; but they're a little soft and green, may be, from livin' in these yer pine woods along o' the other sap. They just worship the ground you and your sister tread on—certain! of course! of course!” he added hurriedly, recognizing Christie's half-conscious, deprecating gesture with more exaggerated deprecation. “I understand. But what I wanter say is that they'd be willin' to be that ground, and lie down and let you walk over them—so to speak, Miss Carr, so to speak—if it would keep the hem of your gown from gettin' soiled in the mud o' the camp. But it wouldn't do for them to make a reg'lar curderoy road o' themselves for the houl camp to trapse over, on the mere chance of your some time passin' that way, would it now?”
“Won't you let me offer you some refreshment, Mr. Hall?” said Christie, rising, with a slight color. “I'm really ashamed of my forgetfulness again, but I'm afraid it's partly YOUR fault for entertaining me to the exclusion of yourself. No, thank you, let me fetch it for you.”
She turned to a handsome sideboard near the door, and presently faced him again with a decanter of whiskey and a glass in her hand, and a return of the bewitching smile she had worn on entering.
“But perhaps you don't take whiskey?” suggested the arch deceiver, with a sudden affected but pretty perplexity of eye, brow, and lips.
For the first time in his life Whiskey Dick hesitated between two forms of intoxication. But he was still nervous and uneasy; habit triumphed, and he took the whiskey. He, however, wiped his lips with a slight wave of his handkerchief, to support a certain easy elegance which he firmly believed relieved the act of any vulgar quality.
“Yes, ma'am,” he continued, after an exhilarated pause. “Ez I said afore, this yer's a matter you and me can discuss after the fashion o' society. My idea is that these yer boys should kinder let up on you and Miss Jessie for a while, and do a little more permiskus attention round the Ford. There's one or two families yer with grown-up gals ez oughter be squared; that is—the boys mighter put in a few fancy touches among them—kinder take 'em buggy riding—or to church—once in a while—just to take the pizen outer their tongues, and make a kind o' bluff to the parents, d'ye see? That would sorter divert their own minds; and even if it didn't, it would kinder get 'em accustomed agin to the old style and their own kind. I want to warn ye agin an idea that might occur to you in a giniral way. I don't say you hev the idea, but it's kind o' nat'ral you might be thinkin' of it some time, and I thought I'd warn you agin it.”
“I think we understand each other too well to differ much, Mr. Hall,” said Christie, still smiling; “but what is the idea?”
The delicate compliment to their confidential relations and the slight stimulus of liquor had tremulously exalted Whiskey Dick. Affecting to look cautiously out of the window and around the room, he ventured to draw nearer the young woman with a half-paternal, half-timid familiarity.
“It might have occurred to you,” he said, laying his handkerchief as if to veil mere vulgar contact, on Christie's shoulder, “that it would be a good thing on YOUR side to invite down some of your high-toned gentlemen friends from 'Frisco to visit you and escort you round. It seems quite nat'ral like, and I don't say it ain't, but—the boys wouldn't stand for it.”
In spite of her self-possession, Christie's eyes suddenly darkened, and she involuntarily drew herself up. But Whiskey Dick, guiltily attributing the movement to his own indiscreet gesture, said, “Excuse me, miss,” recovered himself by lightly dusting her shoulder with his handkerchief, as if to remove the impression, and her smile returned.
“They wouldn't stand for it,” said Dick, “and there'd be some shooting! Not afore you, miss—not afore you, in course! But they'd adjourn to the woods some morning with them city folks, and hev it out with rifles at a hundred yards. Or, seein' ez they're city folks, the boys would do the square thing with pistols at twelve paces. They're good boys, as I said afore; but they're quick and tetchy—George, being the youngest, nat'rally is the tetchiest. You know how it is, Miss Carr; his pretty, gal-like face and little moustaches haz cost him half a dozen scrimmages already. He'z had a fight for every hair that's growed in his moustache since he kem here.”
“Say no more, Mr. Hall!” said Christie, rising and pressing her hands lightly on Dick's tremulous fingers. “If I ever had any such idea, I should abandon it now; you are quite right in this as in your other opinions. I shall never cease to be thankful to Mr. Munroe and Mr. Kearney that they intrusted this delicate matter to your hands.”
“Well,” said the gratified and reddening visitor, “it ain't perhaps the square thing to them or myself to say that they reckoned to have me discuss their delicate affairs for them, but—”
“I understand,” interrupted Christie. “They simply gave you the letter as a friend. It was my good fortune to find you a sympathizing and liberal man of the world.” The delighted Dick, with conscious vanity beaming from every feature of his shining face, lightly waved the compliment aside with his handkerchief, as she continued, “But I am forgetting the message. We accept the horses. Of course we COULD do without an escort; but forgive my speaking so frankly, are YOU engaged this afternoon?”
“Excuse me, miss, I don't take—” stammered Dick, scarcely believing his ears.
“Could you give us your company as an escort?” repeated Christie with a smile.
Was he awake or dreaming, or was this some trick of liquor in his often distorted fancy? He, Whiskey Dick! the butt of his friends, the chartered oracle of the barrooms, even in whose wretched vanity there was always the haunting suspicion that he was despised and scorned; he, who had dared so much in speech, and achieved so little in fact! he, whose habitual weakness had even led him into the wildest indiscretion here; he—now offered a reward for that indiscretion! He, Whiskey Dick, the solicited escort of these two beautiful and peerless girls! What would they say at the Ford? What would his friends think? It would be all over the Ford the next day. His past would be vindicated, his future secured. He grew erect at the thought. It was almost in other voice, and with no trace of his previous exaggeration, that he said, “With pleasure.”
“Then, if you will bring the horses at once, we shall be ready when you return.”
In another instant he had vanished, as if afraid to trust the reality of his good fortune to the dangers of delay. At the end of half an hour he reappeared, leading the two horses, himself mounted on a half-broken mustang. A pair of large, jingling silver spurs and a stiff sombrero, borrowed with the mustang from some mysterious source, were donned to do honor to the occasion.
The young girls were not yet ready, but he was shown by the Chinese servant into the parlor to wait for them. The decanter of whiskey and glasses were still invitingly there. He was hot, trembling, and flushed with triumph. He walked to the table and laid his hand on the decanter, when an odd thought flashed upon him. He would not drink this time. No, it should not be said that he, the selected escort of the elite of Devil's Ford, had to fill himself up with whiskey before they started. The boys might turn to each other in their astonishment, as he proudly passed with his fair companions, and say, “It's Whiskey Dick,” but he'd be d——d if they should add, “and full as ever.” No, sir! Nor when he was riding beside these real ladies, and leaning over them at some confidential moment, should they even know it from his breath! No. . . . Yet a thimbleful, taken straight, only a thimbleful, wouldn't be much, and might help to pull him together. He again reached his trembling hand for the decanter, hesitated, and then, turning his back upon it, resolutely walked to the open window. Almost at the same instant he found himself face to face with Christie on the veranda.
She looked into his bloodshot eyes, and cast a swift glance at the decanter.
“Won't you take something before you go?” she said sweetly.
“I—reckon—not, jest now,” stammered Whiskey Dick, with a heroic effort.
“You're right,” said Christie. “I see you are like me. It's too hot for anything fiery. Come with me.”
She led him into the dining-room, and pouring out a glass of iced tea handed it to him. Poor Dick was not prepared for this terrible culmination. Whiskey Dick and iced tea! But under pretence of seeing if it was properly flavored, Christie raised it to her own lips.
“Try it, to please me.”
He drained the goblet.
“Now, then,” said Christie gayly, “let's find Jessie, and be off!”
Whatever might have been his other deficiencies as an escort, Whiskey Dick was a good horseman, and, in spite of his fractious brute, exhibited such skill and confidence as to at once satisfy the young girls of his value to them in the management of their own horses, to whom side-saddles were still an alarming novelty. Jessie, who had probably already learned from her sister the purport of Dick's confidences, had received him with equal cordiality and perhaps a more unqualified amusement; and now, when fairly lifted into the saddle by his tremulous but respectful hands, made a very charming picture of youthful and rosy satisfaction. And when Christie, more fascinating than ever in her riding-habit, took her place on the other side of Dick, as they sallied from the gate, that gentleman felt his cup of happiness complete. His triumphal entree into the world of civilization and fashion was secure. He did not regret the untasted liquor; here was an experience in after years to lean his back against comfortably in bar-rooms, to entrance or defy mankind. He had even got so far as to formulate in fancy the sentence: “I remember, gentlemen, that one afternoon, being on a pasear with two fash'nable young ladies,” etc., etc.
At present, however, he was obliged to confine himself to the functions of an elegant guide and cicerone—when not engaged in “having it out” with his horse. Their way lay along the slope, crossing the high-road at right angles, to reach the deeper woods beyond. Dick would have lingered on the highway—ostensibly to point out to his companions the new flume that had taken the place of the condemned ditch, but really in the hope of exposing himself in his glory to the curious eyes of the wayfaring world.
Unhappily the road was deserted in the still powerful sunlight, and he was obliged to seek the cover of the woods, with a passing compliment to the parent of his charges. Waving his hands towards the flume, he said, “Look at that work of your father's; there ain't no other man in Californy but Philip Carr ez would hev the grit to hold up such a bluff agin natur and agin luck ez that yer flume stands for. I don't say it 'cause you're his daughters, ladies! That ain't the style, ez YOU know, in sassiety, Miss Carr,” he added, turning to Christie as the more socially experienced. “No! but there ain't another man to be found ez could do it. It cost already two hundred thousand; it'll cost five hundred thousand afore it's done; and every cent of it is got out of the yearth beneath it, or HEZ got to be out of it. 'Tain't ev'ry man, Miss Carr, ez hev got the pluck to pledge not only what he's got, but what he reckons to git.”
“But suppose he don't get it?” said Christie, slightly contracting her brows.
“Then there's the flume to show for it,” said Dick.
“But of what use is the flume, if there isn't any more gold?” continued Christie, almost angrily.
“That's good from YOU, miss,” said Dick, giving way to a fit of hilarity. “That's good for a fash'nable young lady—own daughter of Philip Carr. She sez, says she,” continued Dick, appealing to the sedate pines for appreciation of Christie's rare humor, “'Wot's the use of a flume, when gold ain't there?' I must tell that to the boys.”
“And what's the use of the gold in the ground when the flume isn't there to work it out?” said Jessie to her sister, with a cautioning glance towards Dick.
But Dick did not notice the look that passed between the sisters. The richer humor of Jessie's retort had thrown him into convulsions of laughter.
“And now SHE says, wot's the use o' the gold without the flume? 'Xcuse me, ladies, but that's just puttin' the hull question that's agitatin' this yer camp inter two speeches as clear as crystal. There's the hull crowd outside—and some on 'em inside, like Fairfax, hez their doubts—ez says with Miss Christie; and there's all of us inside, ez holds Miss Jessie's views.”
“I never heard Mr. Munroe say that the flume was wrong,” said Jessie quickly.
“Not to you, nat'rally,” said Dick, with a confidential look at Christie; “but I reckon he'd like some of the money it cost laid out for suthin' else. But what's the odds? The gold is there, and WE'RE bound to get it.”
Dick was the foreman of a gang of paid workmen, who had replaced the millionaires in mere manual labor, and the WE was a polite figure of speech.
The conversation seemed to have taken an unfortunate turn, and both the girls experienced a feeling of relief when they entered the long gulch or defile that led to Indian Spring. The track now becoming narrow, they were obliged to pass in single file along the precipitous hillside, led by this escort. This effectually precluded any further speech, and Christie at once surrendered herself to the calm, obliterating influences of the forest. The settlement and its gossip were far behind and forgotten. In the absorption of nature, her companions passed out of her mind, even as they sometimes passed out of her sight in the windings of the shadowy trail. As she rode alone, the fronds of breast-high ferns seemed to caress her with outstretched and gently-detaining hands; strange wildflowers sprang up through the parting underbrush; even the granite rocks that at times pressed closely upon the trail appeared as if cushioned to her contact with star-rayed mosses, or lightly flung after her long lassoes of delicate vines. She recalled the absolute freedom of their al-fresco life in the old double cabin, when she spent the greater part of her waking hours under the mute trees in the encompassing solitude, and, half regretting the more civilized restraints of this newer and more ambitious abode, forgot that she had ever rebelled against it. The social complication that threatened her now seemed to her rather the outcome of her half-civilized parlor than of the sylvan glade. How easy it would have been to have kept the cabin, and then to have gone away entirely, than for her father to have allowed them to be compromised with the growing fortunes of the settlement! The suspicions and distrust that she had always felt of their fortunes seemed to grow with the involuntary admission of Whiskey Dick that they were shared by others who were practical men. She was fain to have recourse to the prospect again to banish these thoughts, and this opened her eyes to the fact that her companions had been missing from the trail ahead of her for some time. She quickened her pace slightly to reach a projecting point of rock that gave her a more extended prospect. But they had evidently disappeared.
She was neither alarmed nor annoyed. She could easily overtake them soon, for they would miss her, and return or wait for her at the spring. At the worst she would have no difficulty in retracing her steps home. In her present mood, she could readily spare their company; indeed she was not sorry that no other being should interrupt that sympathy with the free woods which was beginning to possess her.
She was destined, however, to be disappointed. She had not proceeded a hundred yards before she noticed the moving figure of a man beyond her in the hillside chaparral above the trail. He seemed to be going in the same direction as herself, and, as she fancied, endeavoring to avoid her. This excited her curiosity to the point of urging her horse forward until the trail broadened into the level forest again, which she now remembered was a part of the environs of Indian Spring. The stranger hesitated, pausing once or twice with his back towards her, as if engaged in carefully examining the dwarf willows to select a switch. Christie slightly checked her speed as she drew nearer; when, as if obedient to a sudden resolution, he turned and advanced towards her. She was relieved and yet surprised to recognize the boyish face and figure of George Kearney. He was quite pale and agitated, although attempting, by a jaunty swinging of the switch he had just cut, to assume the appearance of ease and confidence.
Here was an opportunity. Christie resolved to profit by it. She did not doubt that the young fellow had already passed her sister on the trail, but, from bashfulness, had not dared to approach her. By inviting his confidence, she would doubtless draw something from him that would deny or corroborate her father's opinion of his sentiments. If he was really in love with Jessie, she would learn what reasons he had for expecting a serious culmination of his suit, and perhaps she might be able delicately to open his eyes to the truth. If, as she believed, it was only a boyish fancy, she would laugh him out of it with that camaraderie which had always existed between them. A half motherly sympathy, albeit born quite as much from a contemplation of his beautiful yearning eyes as from his interesting position, lightened the smile with which she greeted him.
“So you contrived to throw over your stupid business and join us, after all,” she said; “or was it that you changed your mind at the last moment?” she added mischievously. “I thought only we women were permitted that!” Indeed, she could not help noticing that there was really a strong feminine suggestion in the shifting color and slightly conscious eyelids of the young fellow.
“Do young girls always change their minds?” asked George, with an embarrassed smile.
“Not, always; but sometimes they don't know their own mind—particularly if they are very young; and when they do at last, you clever creatures of men, who have interpreted their ignorance to please yourselves, abuse them for being fickle.” She stopped to observe the effect of what she believed a rather clear and significant exposition of Jessie's and George's possible situation. But she was not prepared for the look of blank resignation that seemed to drive the color from his face and moisten the fire of his dark eyes.
“I reckon you're right,” he said, looking down.
“Oh! we're not accusing you of fickleness,” said Christie gayly; “although you didn't come, and we were obliged to ask Mr. Hall to join us. I suppose you found him and Jessie just now?”
But George made no reply. The color was slowly coming back to his face, which, as she glanced covertly at him, seemed to have grown so much older that his returning blood might have brought two or three years with it.
“Really, Mr. Kearney,” she said dryly, “one would think that some silly, conceited girl”—she was quite earnest in her epithets, for a sudden, angry conviction of some coquetry and disingenuousness in Jessie had come to her in contemplating its effects upon the young fellow at her side—“some country jilt, had been trying her rustic hand upon you.”
“She is not silly, conceited, nor countrified,” said George, slowly raising his beautiful eyes to the young girl half reproachfully. “It is I who am all that. No, she is right, and you know it.”
Much as Christie admired and valued her sister's charms, she thought this was really going too far. What had Jessie ever done—what was Jessie—to provoke and remain insensible to such a blind devotion as this? And really, looking at him now, he was not so VERY YOUNG for Jessie; whether his unfortunate passion had brought out all his latent manliness, or whether he had hitherto kept his serious nature in the background, certainly he was not a boy. And certainly his was not a passion that he could be laughed out of. It was getting very tiresome. She wished she had not met him—at least until she had had some clearer understanding with her sister. He was still walking beside her, with his hand on her bridle rein, partly to lead her horse over some boulders in the trail, and partly to conceal his first embarrassment. When they had fairly reached the woods, he stopped.
“I am going to say good-by, Miss Carr.”
“Are you not coming further? We must be near Indian Spring, now; Mr. Hall and—and Jessie—cannot be far away. You will keep me company until we meet them?”
“No,” he replied quietly. “I only stopped you to say good-by. I am going away.”
“Not from Devil's Ford?” she asked, in half-incredulous astonishment. “At least, not for long?”
“I am not coming back,” he replied.
“But this is very abrupt,” she said hurriedly, feeling that in some ridiculous way she had precipitated an equally ridiculous catastrophe. “Surely you are not going away in this fashion, without saying good-by to Jessie and—and father?”
“I shall see your father, of course—and you will give my regards to Miss Jessie.”
He evidently was in earnest. Was there ever anything so perfectly preposterous? She became indignant.
“Of course,” she said coldly, “I won't detain you; your business must be urgent, and I forgot—at least I had forgotten until to-day—that you have other duties more important than that of squire of dames. I am afraid this forgetfulness made me think you would not part from us in quite such a business fashion. I presume, if you had not met me just now, we should none of us have seen you again?”
He did not reply.
“Will you say good-by, Miss Carr?”
He held out his hand.
“One moment, Mr. Kearney. If I have said anything which you think justifies this very abrupt leave-taking, I beg you will forgive and forget it—or, at least, let it have no more weight with you than the idle words of any woman. I only spoke generally. You know—I—I might be mistaken.”
His eyes, which had dilated when she began to speak, darkened; his color, which had quickly come, as quickly sank when she had ended.
“Don't say that, Miss Carr. It is not like you, and—it is useless. You know what I meant a moment ago. I read it in your reply. You meant that I, like others, had deceived myself. Did you not?”
She could not meet those honest eyes with less than equal honesty. She knew that Jessie did not love him—would not marry him—whatever coquetry she might have shown.
“I did not mean to offend you,” she said hesitatingly; “I only half suspected it when I spoke.”
“And you wish to spare me the avowal?” he said bitterly.
“To me, perhaps, yes, by anticipating it. I could not tell what ideas you might have gathered from some indiscreet frankness of Jessie—or my father,” she added, with almost equal bitterness.
“I have never spoken to either,” he replied quickly. He stopped, and added, after a moment's mortifying reflection, “I've been brought up in the woods, Miss Carr, and I suppose I have followed my feelings, instead of the etiquette of society.”
Christie was too relieved at the rehabilitation of Jessie's truthfulness to notice the full significance of his speech.
“Good-by,” he said again, holding out his hand.
“Good-by!”
She extended her own, ungloved, with a frank smile. He held it for a moment, with his eyes fixed upon hers. Then suddenly, as if obeying an uncontrollable impulse, he crushed it like a flower again and again against his burning lips, and darted away.
Christie sank back in her saddle with a little cry, half of pain and half of frightened surprise. Had the poor boy suddenly gone mad, or was this vicarious farewell a part of the courtship of Devil's Ford? She looked at her little hand, which had reddened under the pressure, and suddenly felt the flush extending to her cheeks and the roots of her hair. This was intolerable.
“Christie!”
It was her sister emerging from the wood to seek her. In another moment she was at her side.
“We thought you were following,” said Jessie. “Good heavens! how you look! What has happened?”
“Nothing. I met Mr. Kearney a moment ago on the trail. He is going away, and—and—” She stopped, furious and flushing.
“And,” said Jessie, with a burst of merriment, “he told you at last he loved you. Oh, Christie!”