"Something attempted, something done,Has earn'd a night's repose."
"Something attempted, something done,Has earn'd a night's repose."
Washee-Washee looked strangely fat for a Chinaman, as he peacefully toddled down the trail, still wearing, as he neared his cabin, that look of calm delight and perfect innocence, such only as the pure in heart are supposed to wear. His hands were drawn up and folded calmly across his obtruding stomach, as if he feared he might possibly burst open, and wanted to be ready to hold himself together.
In the great-little republic there, where all had begun an even and equal race in the battle of life, where all had begun as beggars, this tawny little man from the far-off Flowery Kingdom was alone; he was the only representative of his innumerable millions in all that camp. And he did seem so fat, so perfectly full of satisfaction. Perhaps he smiled to think how fat he was, and, too, how he had flourished in the little democracy.
He was making a short turn in the trail, still holding his clasped hands over his extended stomach, still smiling peacefully out of his half-shut eyes:
"Washee! Washee!"
A double bolt of thunder was in his ears. A tremendous hand reached out from behind a pine, and then the fat little Chinaman squatted down and began to wilt and melt beneath it.
"Washee-Washee, come!"
Washee-Washee was not at all willing to come; but that made not the slightest difference in the world to Sandy. The little almond-eyed man was not at all heavy. Old flannel shirts, cotton overalls, stockings, cotton collars and cambric handkerchiefs never are heavy, no matter how well they may be wadded in, and padded away, and tucked up, and twisted under an outer garment; and so before he had time to say a word he was on his way to the Widow's with Sandy, while Limber Tim, with his mouth half-open, came corkscrewing up the trail, and grinding and whetting his screechy gum boots together after them.
There is a fine marble statue in the garden at Naples, near the massive marble head of Virgil, which represents some great giant as striding along with some little pigmy thrown over his shoulder, which he is carelessly holding on by the heel. Sandy looked not wholly unlike that statue, as he strode up the trail with Washee-Washee.
He reached the door of the Widow's cabin, knocked with the knuckles of his left hand, while his right hand held on to an ankle that hung down over his left shoulder, and calmly waited an answer.
The door half-way opened.
"Beg pardon, mum."
He bowed stiffly as he said this, and then shifting Washee-Washee round, quietly took his other heel in his other hand, and proceeded to shake him up and down, and dance him and stand him gently on his head, until the clothes began to burst out from under his blue seamless garment, and to peep through his pockets, and to reach down around his throat and dangle about his face, till the little man was nearly smothered.
Then Sandy set him down a moment to rest, and he looked in his face as he sat there, and it had the same peaceful smile, the same calm satisfaction as before. The little man now put his head to one side, shut his pretty brown eyes a little tighter at the corners, and opened his mouth the least bit in the world, and put out his tongue as if he was about to sing a hymn.
Then Sandy took him up again. He smiled again sweeter than before. Sandy tilted him side wise, and shook him again. Then there fell a spoon, then a pepper-box, and then a small brass candlestick; and at last, as he rolled him over and shook the other side, there came out a machine strangely and wonderfully made of whalebone and brass, and hooks and eyes, that Sandy had never seen before, and did not at all understand, but supposed was either a fish trap or some new invention for washing gold.
Then Limber Tim, who had screwed his back up against the palings, and watched all this with his mouth open, came down, and reaching out with his thumb and finger, as if they had been a pair of tongs, took the garments one by one, named them, for he knew them and their owners well, and laid them silently aside. Then he took Washee-Washee from the hands of Sandy and stood him up, or tried to stand him up alone. He looked like a flagstaff with the banner falling loosely around it in an indolent wind. He held him up by the queue awhile, but he wilted and sank down gently at his feet, all the time smiling sweetly as before, all the time looking up with a half-closed eye and half-parted lips, as though he was enjoying himself perfectly, and would like to laugh, only that he had too much respect for the present company.
"If I could only shake the lies out of him, mum, as easily as I did this 'ere spoon, and this 'ere candlestick, and this 'ere, this 'ere"—Sandy had stooped and picked up the articles as he spoke, and now was handing them to the Widow in triumph.
"Poor little, helpless, pitiful fellow!"
The Widow was looking straight at the celestial, who sat there piled up in a little bit of a heap, the limpest thing in all the Forks perhaps, save Limber Tim.
"Let him go, please; let him go. Bring the things and come in. You can go now, John; but don't do so any more. It is not right."
The Widow smiled in pity as she said this to Washee-Washee. The Chinaman understood the first proposition perfectly, but not the last at all. To him all this was simply a bad investment. To him it was only a little shipwreck; and having been taught by the philosophers of his country to prepare for adversity in the hour of prosperity, he was not at all lacking in resignation now. He rose up, smiled that patient and peaceful smile of his, and wended his way to his home.
Sandy looked a moment at the retreating hungry-looking little Chinaman, and then thrust his two great hands into his two great pockets, and tilting his head, first on the left shoulder and then on the right, tried hard to look the Widow in the face, but found himself contemplating the toes of his great gum boots.
"Will you not come in?"
The man rolled forward. He sat down in the Widow's cabin in a perfect glow of excitement and delight.
I am bound to admit that, upright and great as Sandy was, he kept thinking to himself, "What will the Judge and the boys say of this?" He even was glad in his heart that Limber Tim stood with his back glued up against the palings on the outside, and his hands reached back and wound in and around the rails, so that he could testify to the boys, tell it, in fact, to the world, that he had entered in, and sat down in the Widow's cabin.
It was not easy work for Sandy sitting there. He soon began to suffer. He hitched about and twisted around on the broad wooden stool as if he had sat down on a very hot stove.
The Widow sat a little way back across the cabin, a bit of work in her lap, looking up at Sandy now, and now dropping her half-sad blue eyes down to her work, and all the time, in a low sweet way, doing every word of the talking.
Sandy's hot stove kept getting hotter and hotter. He began to wish he was down with the boys at the Howling Wilderness, consulting the oracle of cocktails. All at once he seemed to discover his great long legs. They seemed to him as if they reached almost clean across the cabin, like two great anacondas going to swallow up the Widow. He fished them up, curved them, threw his two great hands across them, nursed them affectionately, but they seemed more in the way and uglier than ever before. Then he thrust them out again, but jerked them back instantly, and drove them back under his bench as if they had been two big and unruly bull-dogs, and he nearly upset himself in doing it. They had fairly frightened him, they were surely never half so long before. It seemed to him as if they would reach across the room, through the wall, and even down to the Howling Wilderness. He twisted them up under the bench and got them fast there, and was glad of it, for now they would not and could not run out and rush across the room at the Widow.
But now poor Sandy saw another skeleton. His eyes came upon them suddenly, in a sort of discovery. It seemed as if he had just found them out for the first time, and knew them for mortal enemies, and determined to do away with them at once, and at any sacrifice.
Such hands! had the Widow really been looking at them all this time? the back of that hand was big and rough as the bark of a tree. That finger nail had a white rim of dough around it; that thumb nail was as big and about as dirty as a crevicing spoon! He picked up that hand, thrust it under him, sat firmly over on that side, and held it down and out of sight with all his might. The other one lay there, still in the way. It was uglier than the one he had just slain and hidden away in the bush.
There was dirt enough about the nails to make a small mining claim. He rolled the hand over and over on his lap, as if it had been somebody's baby; and a baby with the colic. At last, in a state of desperation, he rolled it off and let it fall and take care of itself. It hung down at his side like a great big felon from the scaffold.
It twisted and swung around there as if it had just been hung up by the neck in the expiation of some awful crime. It felt to Sandy as if it weighed a ton. He tried to lift it up again, to take care of it, to nurse it, to turn it over on its stomach, to stroke it, and talk to it, and pity it, and soothe away its colic, but lo! he could not lift it. He began to perspire, he was so very warm. It was the warmest time that Sandy had ever seen. All this time Sandy had sat close by the door, and not one word had he uttered.
The Widow rose up, laid her work on the table, all the time smiling sweetly, half sadly, and going up to the fire-place, took from the box in the corner, pine knot after pine knot, and laid them on the blazing fire.
"Come, the evening is chilly, will you not sit closer to the fire?"
Sandy sat still as the statue of Moses in the Vatican, but that abominable felon hanging by the neck at his side kept twisting around and around and around as if he never would die or be still. The Widow sat down with her work as before, and this time she began to talk about the weather, trusting that on this subject at least, her great good friend could open his lips and speak.
"How very cold it is this evening. The chill of the snow is in the air; it blows down from the banks of snow on the mountain, and I fancy it may be cold here in this rickety cabin the Summer through."
Still the ugly convict, that now began to grow black in the face, swung and twisted at his side; but he did not speak.
"Do you not feel cold?"
"Yes 'um."
The two words came out like the bark of a bull-dog; as if one of the brutes he had drawn back under his bench had stuck out his nose and yelped in the face of the Widow, and Sandy was frightened nearly to death. The perspiration dropped from his brow to his hand, and he knew that things could not last in this way much longer. The bull-dogs would be out, and he knew it. The dead man that he was sitting down upon would rise up to judgment, and the felon at his side was only swinging and turning and twisting more than before.
Sandy shut his eyes and attempted to rise. His gum boots screeched, the bench creaked as he began to undouble himself. It turned up and hung on behind him as if it had been a lobster. He shook it off, and began to tower up like a pine. He feared he would pierce through the roof, and began to look out through the half-open door, and to stretch out the prostrate hand. Then he stood still and was more bewildered than before. The Widow was looking straight at him, and expecting him to speak. He wished he had not got up at all. If he was only back on that overthrown bench, with the dead man beneath him, and the bull-dogs below, and the felon swinging loosely at his side, how happy he would be. He tried to speak, tried like a man, but if it had been to save his life, to save her life, the world, he could not find will to shape one word. He backed and blundered and stumbled across the threshold and drew a breath, such a breath! the first he had drawn for half an hour, as he stood outside, with the Widow's little feet following to the threshold, and her pretty miniature face looking up to his as if looking up to the top of a pine.
"You will come again, will you not? you have been so very kind; please to call, step in as you pass, and rest. It is so lonesome here, you know! nobody that anybody knows. And then you are such good company."
And then the pretty little Widow with the sad sweet face, laughed the prettiest little laugh that ever was laughed this side that other Eden with its one fair woman.
Limber Tim closed his mouth and unscrewed himself from the palings on the fence without as Sandy appeared, and the two took their way to their cabin.
"And you are such good company." That was all Sandy could remember. What could he have said? He tried and tried to recall his observations, whatever they may have been, on the various topics of the day, but in vain. He could only remember the circumstance of driving two ugly bull-dogs back under his bench, of slaying and hiding away his mortal enemy, and then hanging a felon for high treason; and then chiefest of all, "You will come again, it is lonesome here; you are such good company."
"You are such good company." The wind sang it through the trees as he wended his way home. The water, away down in the cañon below the trail, sang it soft and low and sweet, sang it ever, and nothing more, and the tea-kettle that night simmered and sang, and sang this one sweet song for Sandy.
He took the first opportunity after supper to slip out and away from Limber Tim; and there in the dark, with his face to the great black forest, he stood saying over and over to himself, in his great coarse voice, trying to catch the soft tones of the Widow, "You are such good company."
That evening Limber Tim leaned up against the logs of the Howling Wilderness, and told all that had happened, and how Sandy had seen the Widow, how he had sat in her cabin, how he had talked, and how she had smiled, and what a very hero his "pardner" had become. He told of Washee-Washee.
The story of Washee-Washee went through the Forks, and then the next morning the Forks rose up and "went through" Washee-Washee.
Perhaps it was what the Widow had said about the "poor little, helpless, harmless man," that saved him, but certain it was, for some unknown reason, the miners dealt gently with this strange little stranger. Had this been one or even a dozen, of their own kind, some tree in the neighborhood of the Forks would have borne in less than an hour one, or even a dozen, of strange and ugly fruit. They went to Washee-Washee's cabin. He smiled as he saw them approach, half shut his eyes as they entered, laid his head a little to one side as they tore up his bunk, and looked perfectly happy, and peaceful as a lamb, as they pulled out from under it enough old clothes to open a shop in Petticoat Lane, or even in Bow Street.
They found a rifle-blanket in one of his wooden shoes, and it was heavy with gold-dust. Poor Washee-Washee, when called upon to explain, said timidly that he had found it floating up the river past his cabin, and took it in to dry it. He seemed hurt when they refused to believe him. They found a hose coiled up in his great bamboo hat. One of the men took hold of his queue, his beautiful long black queue that swept the ground with its braided folds and black silk tassels tipped with red and gold, and found it heavy with nuggets, hidden away, for what purpose goodness only knows. It was heavy enough to sink it like a shot were it a fish line—and all this gold was his!
They threatened hard things to Washee-Washee, these rough, outraged, hairy fellows, who had patronized him and helped him and tried to get him along in the world, but he was perfectly passive and tranquil.
A man who stood there with a bundle of recovered treasure-trove, in the shape of shirts and coats of many colors, because of many patches, took Washee-Washee by the little pink ear, and twisted him up and around till he saw his face. Then he let him go, and catching his clothes up under his arm strode on out of the cabin and on down to his claim and his work. The meekest man that the world has seen since Socrates, was Washee-Washee. He sat there with the same semi-grin on his face, the same half smile in his almond eyes, though a man shook a rope in his face, jerked it up, thrust out his tongue, pointed to a tree, and hung himself in pantomime before this placid Chinaman.
"What will we do with him?" A bearded citizen stood there with a bundle of clothes under his arm, waiting to be gone.
"Poor, lonesome, harmless little man." Sandy stood there, repeating the words of the little Widow without knowing it.
"He does lie so helplessly," said one. "If he could only lie decently, we might hang him decently."
"Tell you what, flog him and send him adrift." The man who proposed this was a stranger, with an anchor and other hall-marks of the sea on his hairy arms.
"Wolves would eat 'im on the mountain."
"Wolves eat a Chinaman! They 'd eat a gum boot fust!"
"Tell you what we'll do," growled the Gopher, "reform him."
"Reform hell!" said the sailor to himself.
"Come, let's do a little missionary business, and begin at home," urged the Gopher. "Get the Judge to reprimand him. Have him talk to him an hour, then let the Parson speak to him another hour. If he lives that through he will be an honest man, or if not honest he will at least be harmless."
Now they had no preacher in the Forks, not even the semblance of one yet, neither had they a lawyer or doctor, but this Parson was a power in the camp. He was perhaps the most popular man there. He was certainly the most influential, for he was a man who could talk. They called him the Parson because he was certainly the profanest man in all the mines.
The idea was novel and was at once adopted.
Here at last was a practical application of the popular feeling, in older republics, that the officers are the servants of the public.
The little Judge here was certainly the people's servant. If he had not been, if he had asserted himself at all and taken up arms and fortified himself behind a barricade of books, they would simply have called a miners' meeting in half an hour, and in half an hour would have had the little man ousted and another man in his place, and then back to their work as if nothing ever had happened. Never in the world had men known such absolute liberty as was attained here. There was not even the dominion of woman. And yet they were not happy.
They marched Washee-Washee to the Howling Wilderness, told the sentence, and called upon the Parson to enforce judgment.
He now took a cordial and began. Washee-Washee sat before him on a bench, leaning against the wall. The little man seemed as if he was about to go to sleep; possibly his conscience had kept him awake the night before, when he found that all his little investments had been a failure in the Forks.
The Parson began. Washee-Washee flinched, jerked back, sat bolt upright, and seemed to suffer.
Then the Parson shot another oath. This time it came like a cannon ball, and red hot too, for Washee-Washee was almost lifted out of his seat.
Then the Parson took his breath a bit, rolled the quid of tobacco in his mouth from left to right and from right to left, and as he did so he selected the very broadest, knottiest, and ugliest oaths that he had found in all his fifty years of life at sea and on the border.
Washee-Washee had lost his expression of peace. He had evidently been terribly shaken. The Parson had rested a good spell, however, and the little, slim, brown man before him, who had crawled out over the great wall of China, sailed across the sea of seas, climbed the Sierras, and sat down in their midst to begin the old clothes business, without pay or promise, was again settling back, as if about to surrender to sleep.
Cannon balls! conical shot! chain shot! and shot red hot! Never were such oaths heard in the world before! The Chinaman fell over.
"Stop!" cried the bar-keeper of the Howling Wilderness, who didn't want the expense of the funeral; "stop! do you mean to cuss him to death?"
The Chinaman was allowed time to recover, and then they sat him again on the bench. A man fanned him with his broad bamboo hat, lest he should faint before the last half of the punishment was nearly through, and the Judge was called upon to enforce the remainder of their sentence.
The Judge come forward slowly, put his two hands back under his coat tails, tilted forward on his toes and began:
"Washee-Washee! In this glorious climate of Californy—how could you?"
Washee-Washee nodded, and the Judge broke down badly embarrassed. At last he recovered himself, and began in a deep, earnest and entreating tone:
"Washee-Washee, in this glorious climate of Californy you should remember the seventh Commandment, and never, under any circumstances or temptations that beset you, should you covet your neighbor's goods, or his boots, or his shirt, or his socks, or his handkerchief, or any thing that is his, or—"
The Judge paused, the men giggled, and then they roared, and laughed, and danced about their little Judge; for Washee-Washee had folded his little brown hands in his lap, and was sleeping as sweetly as a baby in its cradle.
The murder of Joseph Smith, the so-called prophet, meant more than any other similar event in history. This man, as well as his brother, Hiram, was not only an honest, brave gentleman, but also a man of culture and refinement. The latter, it may not be generally known, was a candidate for Congress, when that place was counted the post of honor.
Nothing in the New World ever so intensified the minds of men as the life and death of this singular man, Joseph Smith. On the one hand he was hated to death, on the other hand he was adored while living, worshiped when dead. Men for his memory's sake burned their bridges behind them, as it were, and fled destitute to the wilderness.
With no capital but a hoe and a wheelbarrow, they built up, in a quarter of a century, in the middle of a desert, the most remote and the most remarkable commonwealth that the world has ever seen. Salt Lake City was the one pier upon which was laid the long and unbroken iron chain of the Pacific Railroad.
On what singular foundations lie the corner stones of some of the greatest achievements! I think you can safely say that had there been no Joseph Smith there had been, up to this date at least, no Pacific Railroad.
This tragedy meant everything to those who took part in it, no matter on which side they fought or followed.
No one saw beyond the circle of houses in which they then lived and moved. As a rule those who followed the prophet, as well as those who murdered him, were wild, ignorant men, from the mountains of Tennessee, the wilds of Virginia and their own Missouri.
To these men, as I have said, this tragedy meant all the world. Carthage to them meant all that Carthage ever meant to Rome.
Nearly a hundred men, heavily masked, moving down upon a prison, with its half dozen inmates. A little tussle; one struggle at the door. Then a few shots. Then a few men lying in their blood on the prison floor. Then a leap from a window, a fall; a man lying dead in the jail yard. Some masked men pick up the body. They sit it up against a pump in the yard; and then they, as if to be doubly certain, fire at the dead body of the prophet as they file out of the jail yard and disappear.
All is consternation, terror now, flight! It seems there will not be one human being, save the dead and dying, left in the town. One family alone dares to remain to care for the murdered.
The work was well done. If such a deed can be done well, this certainly was. The secret was kept as never had secret been kept before. Life was depending. Not only the life of the man who had taken part, but the lives of his children, his wife, all his house. Who says the West is not the world of Romance and Tragedy?
A pendulum must swing about as far one way as it does the other. Blood meant blood. From the stains on that prison floor sprang the Draggon's teeth. Out of that awful day came forth a singular conception: the Danites—Destroying Angels.
The prophet of God, as these men professed, had been slain. Unlike the Christians, they proposed to slay in revenge.
I fancy you might trace this on till you came to the awful tragedy of Mountain Meadows. Putting the two tragedies together, side by side, and passing them on to the impartial judgment of some pagan, I am not certain that he would not pronounce in favor of the Mormon.
History trenches closely upon romance, and here we must leave the very uncertain and crudely traced outline of the former and follow on in the latter, as we began.
The story runs that the Danites found trace of one man who had taken an active part in the death of their prophet. His name was Williams, and was a man of a large and refined family.
Williams in the course of a year was found dead—drowned! Drowned he certainly was, but whether by accident or the design of enemies (for suicide does not sever the life of the borderer) was not known. Then his eldest son was found dead in the woods. His empty rifle was in his hand. He too might have perished either by accident or design. The mother was the next victim. There was consternation in the family; in all the settlement.
Another victim! Then another! Now it was certain that some awful agency was at work, and that the family was doomed. The only hope of safety lay in flight. One night the four surviving children, three grown sons and a daughter, set out to cross the plains. They had a team of strong horses, and pushed on in the hope of falling in with some train of emigrants, joining them, and thus blending in with and mixing with their members, throw the enemy from off the track.
They found their train, joined it, crossed the Missouri River, and moving on, began to deem themselves secure.
Soon it came the turn for one of the brothers to stand guard. He kissed his pale, sad sister, as he shouldered his gun and went on duty. And it was well that he said good-bye, for he was never heard of afterwards.
As they neared the Rocky Mountains, a party of half a dozen rode out from the train to take buffalo. One of the two remaining brothers was of this party. He never returned.
Now only two remained. The brother and sister often sat silent and bowed by the campfire, and looked sadly into each others' faces. What could they be thinking of? What was the one question in their minds? The man could only have been saying to himself, "Sister, whose turn next? is it you or I?" His brow darkened as he thought how terrible it would be to leave his sister all alone. And there was an old Roman nobility in the wish that she might die before him.
The question was not long unsettled. As they neared the Sierras, a stray shot from the willows that grow on the banks of the Humboldt, laid the brother dead at his sister's feet.
Nancy Williams was now left alone. One day, as they ascended the Sierras, she too was missed. Little was said. People feared to speak. There was something terrible in this persecution to the death in the dark. Who were these men, and where? Did they sit at your very elbow in camp, and dip from the same dish? They too could keep secrets as well as the assassins of their so-called prophet.
What had become of Nancy Williams? Had she too really been murdered? or had she in terror stolen away in disguise, and made her way into the mines alone? No one knew. People soon became too much concerned with their own affairs, as they neared the gold-fields, and men only now and then thought of the name of Nancy Williams.
One day two strange men entered the Howling Wilderness saloon, and spoke in signs and monosyllables to the cinnamon-haired bar-keeper, and pointed up toward the cabin of the "Widow." Sandy entered as these two men went out.
The bar-keeper looked at Sandy a long time, as if some great question was battling in his mind. At last, in a husky and hurried voice, he said, as he looked out through the door, and over his shoulder, as if he feared the very logs of the house might betray him:
"Them's Danites."
"What in hell do they want at the Forks?" The sledge-hammer fist fell on the counter like a thunder-bolt.
"Shoo!" The red, bristled head of the bar-keeper reached over toward Sandy. The bar-keeper's hand reached out and took Sandy by the loose blue-shirt bosom, and drew him close up to the red head. Then again looking toward the door, and then back over his shoulder, as if he suspected that his own bottles might hear him, he said, in a sharp hissing whisper, "Shoo! They want Nancy Williams!"
Sandy's mind at once turned to the Widow. He dared not trust the bar-keeper. In truth, no man dared trust his best friend where this most terrible and secret order was concerned. He did not answer this man, but silently, and as unconcerned as possible, turned away and went back to his cabin.
As before remarked, the boy poet, Little Billie Piper, sly and timid as he was with the men, was about the first to make friends with this first woman in this wild Eden. Men noted this as they did all things that in any way touched the life or affairs of the Widow, and made their observations accordingly.
"Thim's a bad lot," said the Irishman, as he rested his elbow on the counter, and held his glass poised in the air; "thim's a bad lot fur the woman, as writes poetry."
Then the son of Erin winked at the row of men by his side—winked right and left—lifted his glass, shut both his eyes, and swallowed his "tarantula juice," as they called it in the mines.
Then this man wiped his broad mouth on his red sleeve, hitched up the broad belt that supported his duck breeches, and said, with another wink:
"Jist think of Bryan; that fellow, Lord O'Bryan. Why, gints, I tell yez he was pizen on the six."
But the Parson, the great rival of Sandy for the Widow's affections, took a deeper interest in this than that of an idle gossip.
It was with a lofty sort of derision in his tone and manner, that he now always spoke of the strange little poet, as "That Boy."
The Parson regarded him with bitter envy, as he oftentimes, at dusk and alone, saw him enter the Widow's cabin. At such times the Parson would usually stride up and down the trail, and swear to himself till he fairly tore the bark from the trees.
On one occasion, the boy returning to his own cabin at an earlier hour than usual, was met in the trail, where it ran around the spur of the mountain, on a high bluff, by the infuriated Parson.
Little Billie, as was his custom, gave him the trail, all of the trail, and stood quite aside on the lower hill-side, to let him pass.
But the Parson did not pass on. He came close up to the boy as he stood there alone in the dusk, half trembling with fear, as the Parson approached.
The strong man did not speak at first. His face was terrible with rage and a strange tumult of thought.
The stars were half hidden by the sailing clouds, and the moon had not risen. It was almost dark. Away up on the mountain side a wolf called to his companion, and a lonesome night-bird, with a sharp cracked voice, kept up a mournful monotone in the cañon below.
The boy began to tremble, as the man towered up above him, and looked down into his uplifted face.
"By God, youngster," muttered the man between his teeth. The boy sank on his knees, as he saw the Parson look up and down the trail, as if to make sure that no one was in sight.
Then he reached his great hand and clutched him sharp by the shoulder:
"Come here! come! come with me!"
The broad hand tightened like a vice on the shoulder. The boy tried to rise, but trembled and half fell to the ground. The infuriated, half monster man, held tight to his shoulder, and led toward the precipice.
The boy, half lifted, half led, half dragged, found himself powerless in the hands of the Parson, and was soon on the brink of the cañon.
"Now sir, damn you, what have you been doing at the Widow's?"
The boy stood trembling before him.
"Boy! do you hear; I intend to pitch you over the rocks, and break your infernal slim little neck!"
The boy still was silent. He could not even lift his eyes. He was preparing to die.
"Now sir, tell me the truth; what have you been doing at the Widow's?"
The boy trembled like a bird in the clutches of a hawk, but could not speak.
The Parson looked up the trail and down the trail; all was silent save the roar of the water in the cañon below, the interrupted howl of the wolf on the hill, and the mournful and monotonous call of the night-bird. He looked up through the cañon at the sky. It was a dark and cloudy night. Now and then a star stood out in the fresco of clouds, but it was a gloomy night.
"Now you look here," and he shook the boy by the shoulder and laughed like a demon. "Don't you know that if you go on this way you will fall over this bluff some night and break your cussed little neck? Don't you know that? You boy! You brat!"
Still the boy could not speak or even lift his face.
"I'll save you the trouble," said the Parson between his teeth. "'The boys' will rather like it. They will say they knew you would break your neck some night."
The boy did not speak, but beneath the iron clutch of the Parson settled to his knees.
"Now sir, you have just one minute. Do you see that star? When that flying cloud covers that star, then you die! and may God help you—and me."
The man's voice was husky with rage and from the contemplation of his awful crime.
"Speak boy! speak! speak but once before I murder you!"
The boy's eyes were lifted to the star, to the flying cloud that was about to cover it, and then to the eyes of the Parson, and he, trembling, half whispering, said, "Please, Parson, may I pray?"
The iron hand relaxed; the man let go his hold, and staggering back to the trail went down the hill in silence, and into the dark, where he belonged.
The two men who had entered the saloon at the Forks so mysteriously and had so terrified the bar-keeper, had disappeared. Yet Sandy, every man, knew that these men or their agents were all the time in their midst. No one knew the face of Nancy Williams; everybody knew the story of her life. At first there was terror in the camp. Could the Widow be Nancy Williams? It was decided that that was impossible. Then all was peace.
Swiftly, and very sweetly for Sandy, the days went by in the Forks; down there deep in the earth, almost in the dark of the under-world, in the cool of the forest, in the fragrance and spice and sweetness of the fir, and madrona, and tamarack for ever, dripping with dew, and dropping their fragrant gums and spices on the carpeted, mossy mountain side, filling the deep chasm with an odor found nowhere save in the heart of the Sierras, and Sandy was happy at last.
"You will please come again. You are such good company!" Sandy had come to think he was one of the best talkers in the world; and thinking so he was really able to begin to talk. Such is the tact and power, for good or ill, of woman.
Water will find its level. In this camp, in all new camps, in all new countries, new enterprises, wars, controversies—no matter what, there are certain men who come to the surface. These come to the front, and men stand aside, and they take their place. They stay there, for they belong there. They may not come immediately; but let any great question be taken up, let it be one of enough consequence to stir up the waters, and the waters will find their level.
No man need stilt himself up, or seek applause, or friends in high places, or loud praise. If he belongs to the front he will get there in time, and will remain there when he arrives. If he does not, there is but little need for him to push and bribe and bother at all about it. He will only stand up in the light long enough to show to the world that some one has escaped from the woodcut of a comic almanac, or the Zoological Gardens, and will then sink back, to end his life in complaining of hard treatment and lack of appreciation.
Let us rather accept the situation, good or bad, play the piece out, and look to promotion in the next great drama.
Do not despise my spicy little camp in the Sierras. It was a world of itself. Perhaps it was as large as all Paradise was at the first; and then it was so new, so fresh, so fragrant, sweet, and primitive.
It was something to be the first man in that camp. Cæsar, if they have written their chronicles true, would have preferred it to the second place in Rome.
Here only the strong, clear heads towered up. It was not accident that made Sandy, or the Parson either, a head man in the Forks.
The Forks knew just how sterling, and how solid, and how sincere he was. No flattery here. There was not a penny to win by it. No applause to care for here. No public opinion to appease or woo. If a man did not like the company at the Howling Wilderness he need not put in an appearance. He could stay at home, lord of his castle, toil three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and no man would question him or doubt his motives.
Nor was it any accident that made Limber Tim the partner of Sandy. These things have a deeper root than men suppose. Sandy was the strongest man in the camp, Limber Tim was the weakest. Nothing in nature was more natural than their present relation.
It is as remarkable as it is true, that wild beasts, even when the sexes, more decent than men, are divided from each other, mate thus. The strong bear or the strong buck companions with the weak.
This Sandy never blustered or asserted himself at all. He was born above most men of his class, and he stood at their head boldly without knowing it. Had he been born an Indian he would have been a chief, would have led in battle, and dictated in council, without question or without opposition from any one. Had he been born in the old time of kings he would have put out his hand, taken a crown, and worn it as a man wears the most fitting garment, by instinct.
Sandy was born King of the Forks. He was king already, without knowing it or caring to rule it.
There are people just like that in the world, you know,—great, silent, fearless fellows, or at least there are in the Sierra-world, and they are as good as they are great. They are there, throned there, filling up more of the world than any ten thousand of those feeble things that God sent into the world, in mercy to the poor good men who sit all day silent, and cross-legged, and in nine parts, sewing, on a table.
They will not go higher, they can not go lower. They accept the authority as if they had inherited through a thousand sires.
How that courtship got on, or where and when Sandy first opened his lips, nobody ever knew. At first he took Limber Tim with him. But really Limber was so awkward in the presence of ladies, or at least so thought Sandy to himself, that he was ashamed of him.
It was a great relief to Sandy, if he had only known enough to admit it to himself, to find some one in the room more awkward than himself. Nothing is a better boon, when embarrassed, than to see some one there a bigger dolt than yourself.
Limber Tim would come in, but he would not sit down. He would go over against the wall and stand there on one leg, with his hands stuck in behind him and his head lolled to one side while his mouth fell open, with his back glued up against the wall, as if he was a sort of statuary that had made up its mind never to fall down on its face.
He would stand in that attitude till the Widow would speak to him or even smile on him, and then he would flop right over with his face to the wall, whip out a great pencil from his canvas pocket, and then slowly begin to scrawl the date, or as near as he could guess it, and sketch grotesque pictures all over the new hewn logs of the cabin.
The Widow used to call that place the Almanac, for Limber Tim knew the date and day of the year, if any man in the Forks knew it. Though it sometimes happened that when the pack-train with the provisions would come in from the outer world they would find they were two, three and even four days behind or ahead in their calculations.
At last Sandy began to get tired of Limber Tim on the wall at the Widow's. Perhaps he was in the way. At all events he "shook" him, as they called it at the Howling Wilderness, and "played it alone."
One evening Sandy had a sorry tale to tell the little woman. She listened as never she had listened before. Poor Little Billie, young Piper the boy poet, the boy who was always so alone, was down with a fever, and was wild and talking in strange ways, and they had no help, no doctor, nothing. "Yes, yes," cried Sandy, "the Forks is a doin' its level best. Watchin' and a watchin', but he won't git up ag'in. It's all up with poor Billie."
And all the Forks was doing its best too. But the boy was very ill. The Forks was good: and it was also very sorry, for it had laughed at this young man with hands white and small and a waist like a woman's, and now that he was dying it wanted to be forgiven.
It was something to the Forks that it had allowed this boy to bear his own Christian name; the only example of the kind on its records.
The Widow was not very talkative after that, and Sandy went away earlier than usual. He thought to drop in and see the boy; but turned aside and called at the Howling Wilderness. In a few minutes he went back to the cabin of the sufferer. Gently he lifted the latch, and on tip-toe he softly entered the room where he lay.
The man was utterly amazed. The Widow sat there, holding his hands now, now pushing back the soft long hair from his face, folding back the blankets, cooling his hot brow with her soft fresh hand, and looking into his eyes all the time with a tenderness that was new to Sandy.
The boy was wild with the fever, and weak and helpless. Men stood back around the wall and in the dark; they had not dared to speak to her as she entered. They were so amazed that a woman would dare do this thing—to come in among them alone, take this boy in her arms, wave them back—wild beasts as they were, they stood there mute with amazement and devotion.
"I will go now!" The boy then reached his hands and tried to rise up. "I will go away up, up, out of it all. I don't fit in here. I don't belong here. I don't know the people, and the people don't know me."
Then he was still, and his mind wandered in another direction, when he began again.
"Now I will go; and I will go alone. I am so, so tired. I am so hot and thirsty here. I will cross on the cool mountain and rest as I go."
The woman looked in his face, took his face in her hands as she sat by the bed, raised him tenderly and talked in a low soft voice all night long; soft and sweet and tender to the stranger as the voice of a mother.
She held his hand all night, as if she would hold him back from crossing over the river, and talked to him tenderly as if to draw him back to earth.
The gray dawn came at last, stealing down the mouth of the great black chimney, through the little window in the wall, where a paper did the duty of a pane, and there the men still stood in a row around the walls of the cabin, and there the Widow still sat holding the boy's hand, cooling his brow, calling him back to the world.
And he came. He opened his eyes and knew his fellow-men, for these fevers of the mountain are sudden and severe, and their work is soon done or abandoned.
After that the camp had a patron saint. The Parson fell ill next, but the boys rated him so soundly about his motive—as if any man could have a motive in falling ill—that he fell to cursing, and cursed himself into a perspiration, and so got well.
One morning the Widow found a nugget of gold on her doorstep. What particular goose of the camp had laid that great gold egg before her door she did not know. Maybe, after all, it was only the devotion of some honest, clear-headed man, some wealthy, fortunate fellow who wanted to quietly reward her for her noble deeds in the day of trouble.
Then came another nugget, and then another. She laid them in a row on her mantel-piece, and men (for visitors were not so infrequent now as at first) would come in, handle them, make their observations, guess from what claim this one came or that; and no man there ever told or hinted or in any way remarked that he had sent this or that, or had had any part in the splendid gifts that lay so carelessly on the little Widow's mantel-piece.
The little dreamer, the boy-poet, was once more seen on the trail with his pick and pan looking for gold in the earth by day, for gold in the skies at night. But never a word did he whisper of the awful threat of the Parson.
To the amazement of all the Forks, one day, when a bearded man in gum boots, slouch hat, and blue shirt, reached in at the Widow's for his washing, the hand that reached it out was not the Widow's. It was the little brown lazy hand of Washee-Washee.
Of course the camp did not like this. This Chinaman to them was a sort of eclipse, a dark body passing between the miners and their sun. They remonstrated, and the Parson bore the remonstrance to the Widow in a speech of his own; and, to his own great surprise it was not ornamented with a single oath.
"The Forks began his reformation; let me go on with it. Why not?" answered the woman.
"You will be plundered."
"Of what?"
The Parson looked at the gold nuggets on the mantel-piece, and shifted the quid of tobacco from right to left.
"Washee-Washee will lie," began the Widow soberly. "He can lie, and he does lie, very cheerfully and very rapidly, in spite of his name, which might suggest better things; but he steals no more—do you, little brownie?"
Washee-Washee's little black eyes glistened with gratitude. The little pagan was coming up in the social scale. The Widow had begun her missionary business where all the world ought to begin it—at home.
The Parson went away. He felt that somehow his footing with the Widow was shaken, and that he must do something to redeem the day.
The Parson was always trying to do something original. He concluded to "lay for" the Chinaman.
He took a fresh quid of tobacco, stowed himself away in the bush, and waited.
In the twilight, the mournful, the sad, but beautiful ghost of the great golden days of the Sierras, a hand reached out and took Washee-Washee by the queue as a man would take a tethered horse by the lariat.
The little man did not smile as before. He even struck back with his little brown bony hands. He wound one of them in the Parson's beard, and shouted aloud to the empty woods. The valor of honesty was on him.
However, kick as he might and shout as he could, it all did but little good, and the Parson proceeded very coolly to take him by the two heels, hold him up in the trail, and shake him in a smooth level part of it, just as if he was about to empty a bag, and did not wish to waste the contents.
Now the Parson was not at all vicious on this occasion; he had no wish to harm the Chinaman: he only wished to help the Widow. He shook Washee-Washee in perfect confidence that he would find all the gold nuggets, half the spoons, and nearly all the household goods in the little Widow's warm and sparely furnished room. He had not been a bit surprised if he had shaken out the Widow's goods and wares, her wash-tub, and clothes-line. "Ah, certainly," said the Parson, pausing, to himself, "for is not Washee-Washee's line the clothes-line?"
Shake, shake, shake. It was of no use. Something had fallen from his blue blouse, but it was not gold. He stood the little man down, with the other end up, and was a bit angry that he did not go on smiling as before.
He stooped, and picked up the little black object that had been shaken from the brown little fellow before him. The Parson began to swear. It was only a little ten-cent Testament, in diamond type, with a cloth cover. The Parson put his head to one side, filliped the leaves with his thumb and finger, and then, feeling perfectly certain that it did not belong to any of the boys in the camp, and equally certain that it was not an article that he cared to carry around loose with him, he filliped the leaves again, and, handing it back to Washee-Washee, said, "Git!"
The Parson took one end of the trail, and the little pagan the other.
A Missourian who lay in his bunk up against the wall, smoking his pipe of "pigtail" after supper, looked out from his cabin window through the wood and up towards the Parson's cabin, where the trail wound on the hill-side above him.
"It's a thunderin' and a lightnin' like cats and dogs. There's a-gwyne to be a storm to-night."
But it was only the Parson swearing at his bad luck and that Chinaman.
"Only a Testament!" Then an idea struck him like an inspiration. Did not the good little Widow give the brown wretch this thing?
He stopped swearing, stood still in the trail a moment, and then, giving a long whistle as he drew a long breath, he went on to his cabin in silence.
That Testament troubled the Parson. There was not much religion in the Forks. There was little sign of anything of that kind among the men of the Sierras. Perhaps there were other Testaments hidden away under the bunks of the miners, but they were never visible. I know of one, the gift of a good mother, that forever refused to get lost, or wear out, or disappear under any circumstances. Other books would get themselves borrowed and never come back, other books would get themselves thrummed and thumbed, the backs torn off, and the leaves torn out, but this one little book with its black, modest cover was always the same. It looked as new and nice, as ready to be read, as full of hope and promise, after ten years of service in the Sierras, as it did the day it first nestled down in the bottom of the carpet-bag to wait patiently for the prodigal to return and feed upon its glorious promises.
But the presence of this book had a wider meaning than all this to the Parson.
Williams had been a sort of Calvin. He was a terrible religious enthusiast. It was his devotion, his misled enthusiasm, that made him take part in the persecution and death of the so-called prophet. It was that which brought the awful persecution upon him and his. The children, it was said, inherited their father's religious zeal.
This Testament was to the Parson only another evidence that the Widow was indeed the missing Nancy Williams. He told all this in confidence to a knot of friends the next day.
Deboon only brushed and brushed, with both hands, a pet fox which perched friskily on his shoulder, but said nothing.
The Gopher slowly arose and shook himself. Then he reached out his fist and shook it in the air.
"What if she is? By the eternal Tom Cats! What if she is the real living and breathing Nancy Williams? And what if they do say she killed one of 'em the night before she got away, eh? Here she is and here she stays, and let me see the Destroying Angel, Danite or Devil, that dares to interfere."
The man strode out of the cabin like a king, and Deboon only stroked his frisky fox and walked on after him, looking back quietly at the little crowd over his shoulder.
Yet for all that, these men who were so brave and defiant in open fight, were awed and almost terrified by the strange and mysterious order that moved so secretly and so certainly upon its victims, and no other man there gave any expression to his thoughts.
But the Danites did not again openly appear. The Widow it seemed was now secure, and the men began to forget that they had ever counted her the last of the doomed family, or suspected that there was blood on her hands.
As the Summer wore away, her suitors dropped off like early candidates for office, and left the field almost entirely to the two leading men of the camp—Sandy and the Parson.
Sandy was a man of magnificent stature, with a graceful flow of sandy beard, but, as I have said, an awkward child of nature. A born leader of men, but a man who declined to lead unless forced to come to the front by his fellows and for the time take charge of whatever matter was under consideration in the camp. Sandy was a man you believed in, trusted, and honored from the first. There was not a crafty fiber or thought in his physical or mental make-up.
The Parson was a successful miner; a massive, Gothic man, though not so tall as Sandy. He had been a sailor, I think. At all events, he had a blue band of Indian ink, with little diamonds of red set in between the bands, on his left wrist. Possibly it was his right wrist, for I can not recall positively at this distance of time, but I think it was the left.
The Parson was the first authority in history, politics, theology, anything whatever that came up. I do not think he was learned; but he was always so positive, and always so ready with his opinions, and always so ready to back them up too, that all were willing to ask his opinion in matters of doubt, and few were willing to question his replies.
After awhile it became talked about that Sandy was losing ground with the Widow—or, rather, that the Parson was having it pretty much his own way there, as in other things in the camp, and that Sandy rarely put in an appearance.
A year went by and then a pretty little cottage began to peep through the trees from a little hill back of town; and then it came out that this, with its glass windows and green window-blinds, was the property of the Parson, and destined as the home of the Widow.
I think the camp was rather pleased at this. True there was a bit of ambition and a grain of cunning too in the Parson's nature, which made the free, wild men of the mountains look upon him sometimes with less favor than they did on Sandy. Still some of them liked him, and all were glad that the Widow was to have a home at last.
But somehow the wedding did not come on as soon as was expected, and the Widow kept on rubbing, rubbing, day after day, week after week, as if nothing of the kind was ever to happen to her.
Late in the Fall, one evening, as the men stood in a semicircle in the Howling Wilderness saloon, with their backs to the blazing log fire, Sandy brought his fist down emphatically on the bar, as he took part in the conversation, and, turning to the crowd, said:
"It's an everlastin' and a burnin' shame!"
He rested his right elbow on the bar, and drew the back of his left hand across his mouth, as if embarrassed, and again began:
"It's a breathin' and a burnin' shame, I say, that the woman has got for to go on in this way, a washin' of duds for us fellows of this here camp. If this here camp can't afford one lady in its precincts, why, then I shall pull up stakes and go to where the tall cedars cast their shadows over the coyote, and the coyote howls and howls—and—and—"
He wiped his mouth again, and broke down utterly. But he had said enough. A responsive chord was touched, and the men fairly sprang to their feet with delight at the thought.
Some of the best things in life are like leads of gold—we come upon them in a kind of sudden discovery.
The Parson's eyes twinkled with delight. "I move that Sandy take the chair for this occasion, and second the motion, and plank down twenty ounces for the Widow."
Sandy removed his slouch hat, blushed behind his beard at the new dignity, and said:
"Bully for you! I raise you five ounces and ante the dust."
Here he drew a long, heavy purse from his pocket, and passed it over to the bar-keeper, who thereby became treasurer of the enterprise without further remark. The Parson's eye twinkled again.
"I see your five ounces and go you ten better."
"Called," said Sandy, and he pecked at the bar-keeper, which little motion of the head meant that that further amount was to be weighed from the purse for the benefit of the Widow.
One by one the boys came forward; and, as the enterprise got noised about the camp, they came down to the Howling Wilderness saloon till far in the night, to contribute what they called their "Widow's mite."
Even the head man of the company up the creek known as the "Gay Roosters," and who was notoriously the most rough and reckless man in the camp, jumped a first-class poker game, where he was playing at twenty dollars ante and pass the buck, to come in and weigh out dust enough to "call" the Parson and Sandy.
The Forks felt proud of itself for the deed. Men slept sounder and awoke in a better humor with themselves for the act.
Yet all this time it was pretty well conceded that the gold, and the Widow too, would very soon fall to the possession of the Parson.
"Set 'em deep, Parson! Set 'em deep!" said the head of the Gay Roosters, as he shook hands with the Parson that night, winked at the "boys," and returned to his game of poker.
There had been many a funeral at the Forks; but never a birth or a wedding. But now this last, with all its rites and mysteries, was about to come upon the Forks; and the Forks felt dignified and elated. Not one of all these thousand bearded men showed unconcern. It was the great topic—the Presidential campaign, the Dolly Varden of the day. The approaching wedding was the morning talk, the talk at noon, and the talk at night.
And it was good for the camp. The last fight was forgotten. Monte took a back seat in the minds of these strange, strong men; and, if the truth could be told, I dare say the German undertaker, who had set up under the hill, noted a marked decline in his business.
The "boys" were with the Parson, and the Parson with the "boys." They all conceded that he was a royal good fellow, and that the Widow could not well do better.
The amount of gold raised by the men in their sudden and impulsive charity was in itself, for one in the Widow's station, a reasonable fortune.
"What if she gits up and gits?"
The man who said that was a narrow-minded, one-eyed, suspicious fellow, who barely escaped being knocked down by the head of the "Gay Roosters," and kicked into the street by the crowd.
There was a poor Dutchman in the camp who had been crippled in the first settlement of the camp, and who had been all the time too lame to work and too poor to go away.
The Parson and Sandy were sent in a committee to the Widow with the gold. She smiled, took the heavy bag in her hand, turned, shut the door in their faces, but did not say a word. That evening she was seen to enter the crippled Dutchman's cabin. The next day the crippled Dutchman rode up the trail out of camp, and was seen no more.
Still later in the Fall the Parson sat in the Howling Wilderness, with his back to the blazing, crackling fire, having it all his own way at his favorite game of old sledge.
He had led his queen for the jack just as though he knew where every card in the pack was entrenched. Then he led the king with like composure, and was just crooking his fingers up his sleeve for the ace, when a man in black, with a beaver hat and white necktie, rode by the window on a black horse.
"Somebody's a dyin' up the creek, I 'speck," said Stubbs. "Maybe it's old Yallar. He allers was a kind of a prayin' codfish eatin' cuss, any how."
Here Stubbs turned and kicked nervously at the fire.
The game did not go on after that. No one said any thing. Perhaps that was the trouble. The men fell to thinking, and the game lost its interest.
There was no fight of importance at the Howling Wilderness that night, and by midnight the frequenters of the saloon had withdrawn. The candles were then put out, and the proprietors barricaded the door against belated drunkards, spread their blankets on a monte-table, with their pistols under their heads, and by the smouldering fire were at rest.
The ground was frozen hard next morning, and the miners flocked into the Howling Wilderness. The Parson was leading off gaily again, and swearing with unusual eloquence and brilliancy, when a tall, thin, and sallow man, from Missouri, known as the "Jumper," entered. He looked wild and excited, and stepped high, as if on stilts.
The tall, thin man went straight up to the bar, struck his knuckles on the counter, and nodded at the red bottle before him. It came forward, with a glass tumbler, and he drank deep, alone and in silence.
When a miner of the Sierras enters a saloon where other men are seated, and drinks alone, without inviting any one, it is meant as a deliberate insult to those present, unless there is some dreadful thing on his mind.
The Jumper, tall and fidgety, turned to the Parson, bent his back against the counter, and pushed back his hat. Then he drew his right sleeve across his mouth, and let his arms fall down at his side limp and helpless, and his round, brown butternut head rolled loose and awkward from shoulder to shoulder.
"Parson."
"Well! well! Spit it out!" cried the Parson, as he arose from the bench, with a dreadful oath. "Spit it out! What in h—l is busted now?"
"Parson."
Here the head rolled and the arms swung more than ever, and the man seemed in dreadful agony of mind.
The Parson sprang across the room and caught him by the shoulder. He shook him till his teeth rattled like quartz in a mill.
"The—the man in black," gasped the Jumper. "The black man, on the black horse, with a white choker." The Parson looked blank, and staggered back, as the man, gasping for breath, concluded: "Well, he's gone back; and he won't marry yer. Cause why, he says Sandy says yer got one wife now any how, in Missouri, and maybe two."
The Parson sunk into a seat, dropped his face in his hands for a moment, trembled only a little, and arose pale and silent. He did not swear at all. I am perfectly certain he did not swear. I know we all spoke of that for a long time afterward, and considered it one of the most remarkable things in all the strange conduct of this man.
When the Parson arose the Jumper shook himself loose from the counter, and tilted across to the other side of the room, to give him place.
The stricken man put his hands on the counter, peeked over the bar-keeper's shoulder at his favorite bottle, as if mournfully to a friend, but said not a word. He emptied a glass, and then, without looking right or left, opened the door, and went straight up to the Parsonage. The Parsonage was the name the boys gave to the cottage on the hill among the trees.
"Gone for his two little bull-pups," said Stubbs. That was what the Parson called his silver-mounted derringers.
"There will be a funeral at the Forks to-morrow," gasped the Jumper.
Here the German undertaker arose cheerfully, and went down to his shop.
"Well, Sandy is no sardine. Bet your boots Sandy ain't no sardine!" said Stubbs. "And, any how, he's got the start just a little, if the Parson does nail him. For he's won her heart; and that's a heap, I think, for wimmen's mighty scace in the mines—sumthin' to die for, you bet."