The Parson was absent for hours, and the Howling Wilderness began to be impatient.
"He's a heelin' himself like a fighting-cock," said Stubbs; "and if Sandy don't go to kingdom come with his boots on, then chaw me up for a shrimp."
The man here went to the door, opened it, put his head out in the frosty weather, and peered up the creek for Sandy, and across the creek for the Parson, but neither was in sight.
The "Gay Rooster" company knocked off from their work, with many others, and came to town in force to see the fight. The Howling Wilderness was crowded and doing a rushing business.
The two bar-keepers shifted and carefully arranged the sand-bags under the counter, which in that day and country were placed there in every well-regulated drinking saloon, so as to intercept whatever stray bits of lead might be thrown in the direction of their bodies, in the coming battle, and calmly awaited results.
About dark, a thin blue smoke, as from burning paper, curled up from the chimney of the Parsonage, and the Parson came slowly forth.
"Blamed if he hasn't been a makin' of his will and a burnin of his letters. Looks grummer than a deacon, too," added the man, as the Parson neared the saloon.
He spoke quietly to the boys, as he entered, but did not swear. That was thought again remarkable indeed.
He went up to the bar, tapped on the counter with his knuckles, threw his head back over his shoulder toward the crowd, and yet apparently without seeing any one, and said:
"Boys, fall in line, fall in line. Rally around me once again."
They fell in line, or at least the majority did. Some, however, stood off in little knots and groups on the other side, and pretended not to have heard or noticed what was going on. These it was at once understood were fast friends of Sandy's, and unbelievers in the Parson.
The glasses were filled quietly, slowly, and respectfully, almost like filling a grave, and then emptied in silence.
Again it was observed that the Parson did not swear. That was considered as remarkable as the omission of prayer from the service in a well-regulated church, and, I am sure, contributed to throw a spirit of restraint over the whole party friendly to the Parson. Besides, it was noticed that he was pale, haggard, had hardly a word to say, and most of all, had barely touched the glass to his lips.
No one, however, ventured to advise, question, or in any way disturb him. All were quiet and respectful. It was very evident that the feeling in the Forks, at first, was largely with Sandy.
But Sandy did not appear that evening. This, of course, was greatly against him. The Forks began to suspect that he feared to take the responsibility of his act, and meet the man he had so strangely defamed, and, to all appearances, so deeply injured.
The next day the saloon was crowded more densely than before. Men stood off in little knots and groups, talking earnestly. There was but one topic—only the one great subject—the impending meeting between the two leading men of the camp, and the probable result.
The Parson was among the first present that day, pale and careworn. They treated him with all the delicacy of women. Not a word was said in his presence of his misfortune, or the occasion of their meeting. To the further credit of the Forks I am bound to say that there had as yet been no bets as to which one of the two men they should have to bury the next day.
The day passed, and still Sandy did not appear. Had there been any other way out of camp than through the Forks and up the rugged, winding, corkscrew stairway of rocks opposite, and in the face of the town, it might have been suspected that he had taken the Widow and fled to other lands.
The Parson came down a little late next morning, pale and quiet, as before. He did not swear. This time, in fact, he did not even drink. He sat down on a bench behind the monte-table, with his back to the fire and his face to the door. The men respectfully left a rather broad lane between the Parson and the door, and the monte-table was not patronized.
The day passed;—dusk, and still Sandy did not appear. By this time he had hardly three friends in the house.
"Hasn't got the soul of a chicken!" "Caved in at last!" "Gone down in his boots!" "Busted in the snapper!" "Lost his grip!" "Don't dare show his hand!" These and like expressions, thrown out now and then from the little knots of men here and there, were the certain indications that Sandy had lost his place in the hearts of the leading men of the Forks.
Toward midnight the bolt lifted!
Shoo!
The door opened, and Sandy entered, backed up against the wall by the door, and stood there, tall and silent.
His great beard was trimmed a little, his bushy hair carefully combed behind his ears, and the necktie was now subdued into a neat love-knot, in spite of its old persistent habit of twisting around and fluttering out over his left shoulder. His eye met the Parson's but did not quail.
The bar-keeper settled down gracefully behind the bags of sand, so that his eyes only remained visible above the horizon.
The head of the "Gay Roosters" tilted a table up till it made a respectable barricade for his breast, and the crowd silently settled back in the corners, packed tighter than sardines in a tin box.
You might have heard a mouse, had it crossed the floor. Even the fretful fire seemed to hold for the time its snappish red tongue, and the wind without to lean against the door and listen.
The Parson slowly arose from the table. He had his right hand in his pocket, and was very pale.
Experienced shootists, old hands at mortal combat with their kind, glanced from man to man, measured every motion, every look, with all the intense eagerness of artists who are favored with one great and especial sight, not to be met again. Others held their heads down, and only waited in a confused sort of manner for the barking of the bull-dogs.
Neither of Sandy's hands were visible; but, as the Parson took a few steps forward, and partly drew his hand from his pocket, Sandy's right one came up like a steel spring, and the ugly black muzzle of a six-shooter was in the Parson's face.
Still he advanced, till his face almost touched the muzzle of the pistol. He seemed not to see it, or to have the least conception of his danger.
It was strange that Sandy did not pull. Maybe he was surprised at the singular action of the Parson. Perhaps he had his eye on the unlifted right hand of his antagonist. At all events he had the "drop," and could afford to wait the smallest part of a second, and see what he would do.
"I have been a-wait-ing"—the Parson halted and paused at the participle. "I have been a-wait-ing for you, Sandy, a long time."
His voice trembled. The voice that had thundered above a hundred bar-room fights, and had directed the men through many a difficulty in camp, was now low and uncertain.
"Sandy," he began again, and he took hold of the counter with his left hand, "I am a-going-a-way. Your cabin will be too small now, and I want you to promise me to take care of the Parsonage till I come back."
Sandy sank back closer still to the wall, and his arm hung down at his side.
"You will move into the Parsonage when it is all over. It's full of good things for Winter. You will take it, I say, at once. Promise me that."
The Parson's voice was a little severe here—more determined than before; and, as he concluded, he drew the key from his pocket and handed it to Sandy.
"You will?"
"Yes."
The men looked a moment in each other's eyes. Perhaps they were both embarrassed. The door was convenient. That seemed to Sandy the best way out of his confusion, and he opened it softly and disappeared. The Howling Wilderness was paralyzed with wonder.
The Parson looked a little while out in the dark, through the open door and was gone. There was a murmur of disappointment behind him.
"Don't you fear!" at last chimed in the head of the "Gay Roosters." "Don't you never fear! That old sea-dog, the Parson, is deeper than a infernal gulf."
"Look here!" He put up his finger to the side of his nose, after a pause, and stroking his beard mysteriously, said: "I say, look here! Shoo! Not a word! Softly now! Powder! That's what it means. Powder! Gits 'em both into the Parsonage and blows 'em to kingdom come together!"
The Howling Wilderness was reconciled. It was certain that the end was not yet, by a great deal. It was again struck with wonder, however; and, for want of a better expression, took a drink and settled down to a game of monte.
Early next morning—a morning full of unutterable storms and drifts of snow—Sandy entered the Widow's cabin.
The Parson was not to be seen either at the Howling Wilderness or about his own house.
Men stood about the door of the Howling Wilderness, and up and down the single street, in little knots, noting the course of things at the Parsonage, and now and then shaking their loose blanket coats and brushing off the fast falling snow.
After a while, when the smoke rose up from the chimney-top, and curled above the Parsonage with a home-like leisure, as if a woman's hand tended the fire below, a man with his face muffled up was seen making his way slowly up the rugged way that led from town across the Sierra.
It was a desperate and dangerous undertaking at that season of the year. He made but poor headway against the storm that came pelting down in his face from the fields of eternal snow; but he seemed determined, and pushed slowly on. Sometimes it was observed he would turn, and, shading his eyes from the snow, look down intently at the peaceful smoke drifting through the trees above the Parsonage.
"Some poor idiot will pass in his checks to-night, if he don't come back pretty soon," said Stubbs, as he nodded at the man up the hill, brushed the snow from his sleeves, and went back into the saloon.
There were now two subjects of conversation in the camp; the departure of the Parson and the courtship of Sandy.
One day, however, there was quite a riffle in the usually smooth current of affairs. It was this. A busy meddling man was seen to lay hold of Sandy, and talk a long time in a mysterious and suspicious manner. He would point to the cabin of the Widow, then to the cabin of the Poet, and gravely shake his head. The man was heard to couple the two names together. At last Sandy shook this man off, and went on his way with anything but a satisfied look.
After an open demonstration like that, the camp felt that it was privileged to speak openly what it had seriously but silently noted before. It had now three topics to talk about: the departure of the Parson, the courtship of Sandy, but now above all and chiefly the secret and frequent visits of the Poet to the Widow's cabin.
One day a miner laid his two fingers cross-wise, and twisting his head to one side as he spirted a stream of tobacco juice across the saloon, said: "Sandy is a infernal fool." The men winked, and he went on. "He wants to marry that ere Widow. Wal, now, that ere Widow is in love with that ere boy. Nobody to blame. You see if the Widow loves the boy that's the Widow's bizness, not mine; only Sandy mustn't be a fool. Besides,"—and here the man's voice sank low, and he looked around as if he feared a Danite might be standing at his elbow—"besides, its my private opinion that that ere Widow istheNancy Williams."
It was late in the Fall, and it certainly must have been a cold, frosty morning, for Sandy's teeth chattered together as if he had an ague, when he told the Judge.
In fact, he stood around the Howling Wilderness more than half a day, but he could not, or at least would not drink, though he did very many foolish things, and seemed ill at ease and troubled in a way that was new to him.
At last he got the Judge to one side. He took him by the collar with both hands, he backed him up in a corner, and, as he did so, his teeth chattered and ground together as if he stood half-naked on the everlasting snows that surrounded them. He pushed his face down into the red apple-like face of the magistrate, and began as if he was about to reveal the most terrible crime in the annals of the world. All the time he was holding on to the Judge with both hands, as if he feared he might not listen to his proposal, but tear away and attempt to escape.
At last Sandy drew a sharp, short breath, and blurted out what he had to say, as if it was tearing out his lungs.
"Good, good!"
The Judge drew a long breath. He swelled out to nearly twice his usual importance. You could have seen him grow.
It was now the Judge's turn to lay hold of Sandy. For now, as the great strong man had accomplished his fearful task, told his secret, and done all that was necessary to do, he wanted to get away, to go home, go anywhere and collect his thoughts, and to rest.
The Judge held him there, told him the great advantages that would come of it, the high responsibility that he was about to put his shoulder to, and talked to him, in fact, till he grew white and stiff as a sign-post. Yet all that Sandy could remember, for almost all that he said, was something about "the glorious climate of Californy."
Never rode a king into his capital with such majesty as did the Judge the next day enter the Forks. He was swelling, bursting with the importance of his secret. But now he had Sandy's permission to tell the boys, and he went straight to the Howling Wilderness for that purpose.
His face glowed like the fire as he stood there rubbing his hands above the great mounting blaze, and bowing right and left in a patronizing sort of a way to the miners who had sauntered into the saloon.
At last the little red-faced man turned his back to the fire, stuck his two hands back behind his coat-tails, which he kept lifting up and down and fanning carelessly, as if in deep thought—stood almost tip-toe, stuck out his round little belly, and seemed about to burst with his secret.
"O this wonderful Californy climate!" He puffed a little as he said this, and fanned his coat-tails a little bit higher, perked out his belly a little bit further, and stood there as if he expected some one to speak. But as the miners seemed to think they had heard something like this before, or, at least, that the remark was not wholly new, none of them felt called upon to respond.
"Well"—the little man tilted up on his toes as he said this, and took in a long breath—"hit comes off about the next snow fall."
He had said these words one at a time, and by inches as it were, slowly, deliberately, as if he knew perfectly well that he had something to say, and that the men were bound to listen.
This time they all looked up, and half of them spoke. And oh, didn't he torture them! Not that he pretended to keep his secret of half a day—not at all! On the contrary, he kept talking on, and tip-toeing, and fanning his coat-tails, and pushing out his belly, and puffing out his cheeks, just as careless and indifferent as if all the world knew just what he was going to say, and was perfectly familiar with the subject. "Yes, gentlemen," puffed the little man, "on or about the next snow-fall the Widow, as a widow, ceases to exist. That lovely flower, my friends, is to be transplanted from its present bed to—to—into—the—O this wonderful climate of Californy!"
The Howling Wilderness was as silent as the
Catacombs of Rome for nearly a minute.
Then Sandy had not been deterred either by the Widow's strange intimacy with the eccentric little Poet, or by the suspicion of the camp that this woman was the last of the doomed family.
The first thing that was heard was something like a red-hot cannon-shot. The cinnamon-headed man behind the bar dodged down behind his barricade of sand-bags till only his bristling red hair and a six-shooter were visible. The decanters tilted together as if there had been an earthquake.
It was a Missourian swearing.
Somebody back in the corner said "Jer-u-sa-lem!"—said it in joints and pieces, and then came forward and kicked the fire, and stood up by the side of the red little man, and looked down at him as if he would like to eat him for a piece of raw beef.
A fair boy, the dreamer, the poet, went back to a bunk against the further wall, where the bar-keeper's bull-dog lay sleeping in his blankets, and put his arms about his neck, and put his face down and remained there a long time. Perhaps he wept. Was he weeping for joy or for sorrow?
There was a great big grizzly head moved out of the crowd and up to the bar. The head rolled on the shoulders from side to side, as if it was not very firmly fixed there, and did not particularly care at this particular time whether it remained there or not. A big fist fell like a stone on the bar. The glasses jumped as if frightened half to death; they ran up against each other, and clinked and huddled together there, and fairly screamed and split their sides in their terror. A big mouth opened behind an awful barricade of beard, again the big fist fell down, again the glasses screamed and clinked with terror, and the head rolled sidewise again, and the big mouth opened again, and the big voice said:
"By the bald-headed Elijah!" and that was all.
Then there was another calm, and you might have heard the little brown wood-mice nibbling at the old boots, and leather belts, and tin cans stowed away among the other rubbish up in the loft of the Howling Wilderness.
Then the fist came down again, and the big mouth opened, and the big mouth said, slow and loud, and long and savage, like the growl of a grizzly:
"Swaller my grandmother's boots!" Then the man fell back and melted into the crowd; and whatever romance there was in his life, whatever sentiment he may have had, whatever poetry there was pent up in the heart of this great Titan, it found no other expression than this.
The genteel gambler, who sat behind a table with its green cloth and silver faro-box, forgot to throw his card, but held his arm poised in the air till any man could have seen the Jack of Clubs, though a thousand dollars' worth of gold-dust depended on the turn.
Yet all this soon had an end, of course, and there was a confusion of tongues, and a noise that settled gradually over against the bar. Even then, it was afterwards remarked, though the men really interested did not know it at the time, that the cinnamon-headed dealer of drinks put cayenne pepper in a gin cocktail and Scheidam schnapps in a Tom and Jerry.
Limber Tim was there in their midst, but was a sad and a silent man. Perhaps he had been told all about it before, and perhaps not. Tim was not a talker, but a thinker. This to him meant the loss of his partner, the man he loved—a divorce.
Poor Limber! he only backed up against the wall, screwed his back there, twisted one leg in behind the other, stuck his hands in behind him, and so stood there till he saw a man looking at him. Then he flopped over with his face to the wall, dug up his great pencil from his great pocket, and fell to writing on the wall, and trying to hide his face from his fellows.
"Rather sudden, ain't it, Judge?"
"Well, not so sudden—not so sudden, considerin' this—this—this glorious climate of Californy."
After awhile, when the monte game had asserted itself again, and things were going on in the saloon just about as they were before the Judge made this announcement, a tall and inquisitive man with a hatchet face and a hump in his shoulder, and a twist in his neck, which made him look like an interrogation point, rose up, and reaching his neck out toward the bar, said in a sharp whisper:
"I'll bet a forty dollar hoss she's the real Nancy Williams."
The red-headed bar-keeper bristled up like a porcupine, and then put out his broad hand as if it was an extinguisher.
The wedding-day came. The camp had been invited to a man. There was but one place in the camp that could hold a tithe of its people, and that was the Howling Wilderness. The plan had been to have the wedding under the pines on the hill; but the wind came pitching down the mountain, with frost and snow in his beard, that morning, and drove them to the shelter.
What a place was that Howling Wilderness! It was battle-field, prize-ring, dead-house, gambling-hell, court-house, chapel, every thing by turns.
There they stood, side by side and hand in hand, before the crackling fire, before the little Judge. The house was hot. It was crowded thick as the men could stand. Tighter than sardines in a tin box, the men stood there bare-headed with hardly room to breathe. The fat little magistrate was terribly embarrassed. He had sent all the way across the mountains by the last pack-train, by the last express, by the last man who had dared the snows, but no pack-train, no express, nothing had returned with the coveted, the so-much-needed marriage ceremony and service, which he had resolved to read to the people, interspersed with such remarks and moral observations as the case might require. Alas! the form of the ceremony had not arrived. He had nothing of the kind to guide him. He had never officiated in this way before. He had never studied up in this branch.
Why should he have studied up in this line, when there was but one woman in all his little world?
As the form had not arrived, he had nothing in the world but his moral observations to use on this imposing occasion, and he was embarrassed as a man had never been embarrassed before.
He stood there trying hard to begin. He could hear the men breathe. The pretty little woman was troubled too. Her face was all the time held down, her eyes drooped, and she did not look up—did not look right or left or anywhere, but seemed to surrender herself to fate, to give herself away. Her soul seemed elsewhere, as if she sat on a high bank above all this, and was not of it or in it at all.
"Do you solemnly swear?"
The Judge had jerked himself together with an effort that made his joints fairly rattle. He hoisted his right hand in the air as he said this, and, having once broken ground, he went on—"Do you solemnly swear to love, and honor, and obey?"
Poor Limber Tim, who had just room enough behind the Judge to turn over, here became embarrassed through sympathy for the little red-faced magistrate, and of course flopped over, and began to write his name and the date, and make pictures on the wall, with a nervous rapidity proportionate to his embarrassment.
"Do you solemnly swear?"
It was very painful. The little man took down his lifted flagstaff to wipe his little bald head, and he could not get it up again, but stood there still and helpless.
You could hear the men breathe deeper than before as they leaned and listened with all their might to hear. They heard the water outside gurgling on down over the great boulders, over their dams, and on through the cañon. They heard the little brown wood-mice nibble and nibble at the bits of bacon-rind and old leather boots up in the loft above their heads, but that was all. At last the Judge revived, and began again in a voice that was full of desperation:
"Do you solemnly swear to love, and protect, and honor, and obey, till death do you part; and—"
Here the voice fell down low, lower, and the Judge was again floundering in the water. Then his head went under utterly. Then he rose, and "Now I lay me down to sleep" rolled tremulously through the silent room from the lips of the Judge. Then again the head was under water, then it rose up again, and there was something like "Twinkle, twinkle, little star." Then the voice died again, again the head was under water. Then it rose again, and the head went up high in the air, and the voice was loud and resolute, and the man rose on his tiptoes, and beginning with—"When in the course of human events," he went on in a deep and splendid tone with the Declaration of Independence, to the very teeth of tyrannical King George, and then bringing his hand down emphatically on the gambling table that stood to his right, said, loud, and clear, and resolute, and authoritatively, as he tilted forward on his toes, "So help you God, and I pronounce you man and wife."
The exhausted Judge sank back against the wall on top of Limber Tim, and then, as if he all at once came to remember a part of the ceremony, and after Sandy and the Widow and all were thinking that it was quite over, he began in a low but clear voice—
"Then by virtue of the authority in me vested, and according to the laws and the statutes of the State of California in such cases made and provided, I pronounce you man and wife."
Then he rose up, came forward, and shaking the new bride by the hand, then lifting it to his lips and kissing it gallantly, he said carelessly, and as if nothing had happened, "You will pardon me for pausing occasionally as I did. The room is so warm and the ceremony is so long, that I really began to be exhausted."
He was going on to say something about the glorious climate of California, but the men came forward, crowded around in this day of all days, and quite squeezed the little man away from the "Widow," as she was still called.
It was perfectly splendid! How they did shout, and laugh, and cheer, and how careful they were to shake all the round oaths out of their speech before addressing her. And how they did crowd around, as Sandy led her away, every man of them, even to Washee-Washee, to wish her "God speed," and a long and a pleasant life in their midst, down there in the gorge, in the heart of the great Sierras.
Only two circumstances in connection with this first family of the Sierras worth mentioning, occurred for some months. The first of these was the banishment of the boy-poet from the presence of the Widow. Sandy led her at once to the "parsonage" with the green window blinds, as he had solemnly promised the Parson to do. Into this house the boy was never seen to enter. Sandy, it was whispered, had forbidden him the house. The verdict of the Camp was: Served him right.
The other little event was, to all appearances, of still less consequence. Yet it showed that there was a storm brewing, and it was a straw which showed which way the wind was blowing. The boy was seen late at night by some men who were passing, peering in at the Widow's window. He ran away like one caught in a crime. But they said he "looked pale as a ghost, and sickly, and sad, and lonesome."
Just exactly how many days or weeks or even months had blown over the Forks through the long bleak winter since the wedding no man knew. These men in the mountains, snowed up for half-a-year, where there is no business, where there is no law, no church, nothing but half-wild men hard at work—these men, I say, sometimes forget the day, the week, even the month. Yet the Day of the week is always kept. Six days they labor in the mine; the seventh, they do not rest, but they at least do not mine.
Certainly there was snow on the day of the wedding, and certain it was that there was a little fall of snow on the high hill-sides, and in the black fir tops, and the great pines were tipped in white, as Sandy hurried from his cabin down to the Forks in search of his now divorced and forgotten Limber Tim. He was pale and excited. He pushed his great black, broad hat down over his eyes as he hurried on down the trail, slipping and sliding over the worn walk, over the new sprinkle of snow, in his great big gum boots. Then he pushed his hat back so as to get the cool wind of March in his face and even the blustering snow in his beard.
He found Limber at last standing on one leg by the great log fire in the Howling Wilderness, lonesome as a crow in March. He pulled his hat again down over his eyes as he approached his old partner, and stooped his shoulders and looked out from under its rim, as if he was half afraid or else was half ashamed.
In all western towns, in all mines, in all cities, great or small for that matter, there is always one common center. Here it was the Howling Wilderness. If a man felt sad, what better place than the Howling Wilderness saloon to go to for distraction? If a man felt glad, where else could he go to share his mirth.
Here was happiness or unhappiness. All great extremes run together. Tears flow as freely for joy as for grief. Between intense delight or deepest sorrow the wall is so thin you can whisper through it and be heard.
Here, at fifty cents a glass, you had dealt out to you over a great plank laid up upon a barricade of sand-bags, that were laid there to intercept any stray bullet that might be making its way towards the crimson-headed vendor of poisons, almost any drink that you might name. And it is safe to say that all of the following popular drinks, that is Old Tiger, Bad Eye, Forty Rod, Rat Pizen, Rot Gut, Hell's Delight, and Howling Modoc, were all made from the same decoction of bad rum, worse tobacco, and first-class cayenne pepper. The difference in proportion of ingredients made the difference in the infernal drinks.
If one of those splendid, misled fellows, who really knew no better, felt very sad, he took one of these drinks; if he felt very glad he took two.
Sandy wheeled on his heel the moment he found his old friend, and went out without saying a word. He stood there in the snow, the wind twisting about his beard, blowing his old hat-rim up and down, and he seemed as one lost. At length he lifted the latch again hastily, hesitated, looked back, around, up towards his cabin on the hill, and then suddenly pushing his hat back again, as if he wanted room to breathe, he tumbled into the saloon, went right up before Limber Tim, and bringing his two hands down on his two shoulders, said tremulously, "Limber Tim."
Sandy had laid hold of him as if he had determined to never let him go again, and the man fairly winced under his great vice-like grasp. He looked at the back log on the fire, looked left and right, but did not look Sandy in the face. If he had, he would for the first time in all his timid experience have been able to have had it all his own way.
"O Limber!"
Sandy had fished up one of his hands high enough to pull his hat down over his eyes, and now nothing was to be seen but a hat rim and the fringe of a grizzly beard.
Limber Tim looked up. He never before had heard his old partner's voice troubled, and he was very sorry, and began to look, or to try to look, Sandy in the face. Up went a big hand from a shoulder, back went the old hat, and then Limber Tim looked to the left at a lot of picks and pans, and tom irons, and crevicing spoons, that lay up against the wall, but did not speak.
"Limber Tim! I tell you. My—my—"
Sandy choked. He never had yet been able to call her his wife. He had tried to do so over and over again. His dear little wife had taught him many things—had made him, in fact, another man, but she never could get him to speak of her to the other miners but as "the Widow." He had gone out by himself and practiced it in the dark to himself; he was certain he could say it in the crowd, but somehow just at the moment he tried to say it he was certain some one was thinking about it just as he was, was watching him, and so it always and for ever stuck in his throat. How he loved her! How tender he was to her all the time! How he did little else but think of her and her happiness day and night; but he had been a savage so long, had been with the "boys" so much, that he could not find it in his power to say that one dear word. It was like a new convert trying to pray in public in one of the great camp meetings of the West; or to stand up before all his neighbors and confess his sins.
He stood still only a second; in fact, all this took but a moment, for Sandy was in a terrible hurry. Limber Tim had never seen him in such a hurry before. Up shot the hand, down slid the hat, and Sandy was quite hidden away again. It was a moment of terrible embarrassment. When an Englishman is embarrassed he takes snuff; when a Yankee is embarrassed he whips out a jack-knife and falls to whittling anything that he can find, not excepting the ends of his fingers; but a true Californian of Sierras jerks his head at the boys, heads straight up to the bar, knocks his knuckles on the board, winks at the bar-keeper, pecks his nose at his favorite bottle, fills to the brim, nods his head down the line to the left, then to the right, hoists his Poison, throws back his head, and then falls back wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, quite recovered from his confusion.
Sandy backed his partner into a corner rapidly, and then, laying his hands again on his shoulders, said: "Limber Tim! she's sick!"
He had to throw his head forward to say it. It came out as if jerked from his throat by a thousand fish-hooks.
He raised his two great hands, and reaching out his face again clutched the two shoulders, and said, "She's d—d sick!"
Up went the hands, back went the hat, the door was jerked open, a man whirled out of the door as if he had been a whirlwind, up the trail, up over the stones and snow and logs. Sandy climbed to his cabin on the hill, while the boys followed him with their eyes; and then stood looking at each other in wonder as he disappeared in the door.
Through the cabin burst the man, and back to the little bed-room, as if he had been wild as the north wind that whistled and whirled about without.
The little lady lay there, quiet now, but her face was white as ashes. The blood had gone out from her face like a falling tide; the pain was over, but only, like a tide, to return.
How white she was, and how beautiful she was! How helpless she was down there in the deep, hidden in a crack of the world, away from all old friends, away from all her kindred, all her sex and kind. She was very ill, so alone was she; not a doctor this side of that great impassable belt of snow that curved away like a deep white wave around and above the heads of the three little rivers. Sandy saw all this, felt all this. It cut him to the core, and he shook like a leaf.
What a pretty nest of a bed-room! How fragrant it was from the fir-boughs that were gathered under foot. There were little curtains about this bed, there deep in the Sierras. Coarse they were, it is true, very coarse, but white as the snow that whirled about without the cabin. Still, you might have seen here and there that there were cloudy spots that had refused all the time to be quite washed out, rub and soak and soap and boil them as the Widow and Washee-Washee would.
If you had lain in that bed through a spell of sickness, and looked and looked at the curtains and all things as sick people will all the time look and look when they lie there and can do nothing else, you would at last have noticed that these coarse but snowy curtains had been made of as many pieces as Jacob's coat. And lying there and looking and looking, you would have at last in the course of time read there in one of the many cloudy spots, these words stamped in bended rows of fantastic letters:
Self-rising FlourWarranted Superfine.50lbs.
Self-rising FlourWarranted Superfine.50lbs.
There was a little cracked piece of looking-glass on the wall, no bigger than your palm. It was fastened on the wall, over, perhaps, the only illustrated paper that had ever found its way to the Forks. There were little rosettes around this little glass that had been made from leaves of every color by the cunning hand of the Widow. There were great maple-leaves, and leaves of many trees in all the hues of Summer, hung up here and there, sewn together, and made to make the little bed-room beautiful. And what a treasure the little glass was! It seemed to be the great little center of the house. All things rallied, or seemed to be trying to rally, around it. To be sure, the Widow was not at all plain.
Plain! to Sandy she was the center of the world. The rising and the setting of the sun.
The carpet had been finished by the same cunning hand. This had been made of gunny bags sewn together with twine; and under this carpet there was a thick coat of fine fir-boughs that left the room all the time sweet and warm, and fragrant as a forest in the Spring. There were little three-legged benches waiting about in the corners; but by the bedside sat the great work of art in the camp, a rocking-chair made of elk horns. This was the gift of a rejected but generous lover.
On the little wooden mantel-piece above the fire-place there stood a row of nuggets. They lay there as if they were a sort of Winter fruit put by to ripen. They were like oranges which you see lying about the peasants' houses in Italy, and almost as large. These were the gifts of the hardy miners of the Forks to their patron saint; gifts given at such times and in such ways that they could not be well refused.
Once there had been, late in the night, a heavy stone thrown against the door, while the two "turtle doves," as the camp used to call its lovers, sat by the fire.
In less than a second Sandy's pistol stuck its nose out like a little bull-dog and began to look down the hill in the darkness.
A man leaned over the fence and laughed in his face. "Now don't do that, Sandy! now don't." Sandy let his pistol fall half ashamed; for it was the voice of a friend.
"Good-bye, Sandy!" the man called back up the trail in the dark. "Good-bye. That's for the Widder. Made my pile and off for Pike. Good-bye!"
When Washee-Washee went out next morning for wood, there he found lying at the door the cause of the trouble in the night. It was a great nugget of gold that the rough Missourian had thrown to his patron saint as he passed.
Once a miner sent them a great fine salmon. The Widow on opening it found it half full of gold. She took all this back to the man, whom she found seated at the green table at the Howling Wilderness, behind a silver faro box; for to mining the man also attached the profession of gambler. She laid this heap of gold down on the table before the man with the faro box and cards. The miners gathered around. The man with the silver box began to deal his cards.
"All on the single turn, Missus Sandy?"
The Judge came forward, "Don't bet it all on the first deal, do you? That's pretty steep, even for the oldest of us!"
"Bet! I don't bet at all. I bring Poker Jake his money back. I found this all in the fish he sent us. It is his. It is a trick, perhaps. Fish don't eat gold, you know."
"O yes they dus, Missus Sandy."
Poker Jake stopped with the card half turned in the air. The Widow held up her pretty finger and her pretty lips pouted as she made her little speech to the gambler, and told him she could not keep the gold. The miners gathered around in wonder and admiration.
Jake laid down his card.
"Well, can't a salmon eat gold if he likes?"
"No."
"There, Missus Sandy, y'er wrong!" argued the little Judge, and then he began to tell her the story of Jonah and the whale, and wound up with the declaration that there was nothing at all unnatural in a fish eating gold in "this glorious climate of Californy."
"Will you not take back your gold?"
"Nary a red."
There was a pale thoughtful young man, half ill, too feeble to work, to leave, to retreat from the mountains, standing by the fire when the Widow had entered the saloon. It was the boy poet.
She took up the bag of gold, turned around, looked back in the corner of the saloon, for he had retreated out of sight as she entered, saw the young man hiding back in the shade, leaning over the bunk, caressing the dog; possibly he was crying. Her face lighted with a light that was high and beautiful and half divine.
She turned, held the gold out to Poker Jake.
"No!"
"And then is it mine? all mine, to do as I like with it?"
"Yours, lady. Yours to take and go home and git from out of the cañon, out of this hole in the ground, and live like a Christian, as yer are, and not live here like a wild beast in a carawan."
The man stood up as he spoke, and was proud of his speech, and the men cheered and cheered and said:
"Bully for Poker Jake!"
Then the little Widow turned again, went back to the boy leaning over the bull-dog, thrust it in his arms as he rose to look at her, and turning to the men was gone.
They looked at each other in amazement and disgust. They could hardly believe their senses.
"How dare she do it before us all?" said one.
As the boy left the saloon one of the men said, "Now I guess the little cuss will git up and dust." And that thought was their consolation. Not that they hated this boy, but they felt that he was out of place in the cabin of their "Widder."
Other, and equally ingenious ways, all quite as innocent, had been used by the miners to force their gifts upon the one sweet woman, the patron saint of the camp, until she might have been almost as wealthy as the good old saint who lies mouldering before the eyes of all who care to pay a five-franc note, in the mighty cathedral at Milan. But now they would do no more.
Nuggets, and bars, and scales, and specimens, and dust in her home in profusion. And why did the little woman remain in the wilderness? Why did not this little woman rise up some morning, smile a good-bye to those about her, leave the business to Washee-Washee, take her great big bodyguard, mount a mule, turn his head up the corkscrew trail toward the clouds, toward the snow, and find a milder clime?
Who could she have been, this half hermit, this little missionary who had in one winter half civilized, almost christianized, a thousand savage men without preaching a single sermon?
Possibly she knew how rare manhood is where men are thickest, how scarce men are where they stand heaped and huddled up together in millions, and was content to remain with these rough fellows, doing good, receiving their homage.
Possibly there was a point of honor in thus remaining with these men of the mines. It might have been she refused to go away, and leave those behind her in the wilderness to whom she owed all the camp had brought her, because they would have missed her so sadly.
And yet after all had things gone on smoothly there was no great reason for her to hurry away. But as it was, it was certainly going to blow great guns, and she certainly knew it.
But here she was now ill, very ill. All this gold was dross. It was nothing to her now. She could hardly lift her hand to the row of golden oranges that lay there before her on the little mantel. She looked at Sandy as he entered and tried to smile. There were tears in her eyes as she did this, and then she hid her face in her hands.
He went and stood and looked in the fire, and tried to think what he should do. Then he went and stood by her bed, and waited there till she uncovered her face and looked up.
She was very pale, and he tried but could not speak.
"Is it raining, Sandy dear?"
She asked this because as she put her hand out some drops fell down from his head upon her own.
"My pretty baby, my baby in the woods, what in the world is the matter?"
He leaned over her, and his voice trembled as he spoke. Then he went down on his knees, and his beard swept her face.
"Is it cold, Sandy dear? Do you think that we, that I, could cross the mountains to-day? If we went slow and careful, and climbed over the snow on our hands and knees, don't you think it could be done, Sandy?"
She kept on asking this question, and arguing it all the time, because the man kept looking at her in a wild, helpless way, and could not answer a word.
"If we went up the trail a little way at a time, and then rested there under the trees, and waited for the snow to melt, and then went on a little way each day, and so on, as fast as it melted off, up the mountain, don't you think it could be done, Sandy?"
The man was dumb. He kneeled there, grinding his great palms together, looking all the time, and looking at nothing.
There was a long silence then, and still Sandy kneeled by the bed. His eyes kept wandering about till they lighted on a striped gown that hung hard by on the wall. He fell to counting these stripes. He counted them up and down, and across, and then counted them backward, and was quite certain he had got it all wrong, and fell to counting it over again.
The little woman writhed with pain, and that brought the dreamer to his senses again. It passed, and she, pale, fair, beautiful, with her hair about her like folds of sable fur, she put out her round white arms to the great half-grizzly, half-baby, by her side. She was still a long time then; then she called him pretty names, and she cried as if her heart would break.
"Sandy, I told you it was not best, it was not right, it would not do, that you would be sorry some day, and that you would blame and upbraid me, and that the men would laugh at you and at me. But you would not be put off. Do you not remember how I shut myself up and kept away from you, and would not see you, and how you kept watch, and sent round, and would see me whether or no?"
He now remembered. And what then? Had he repented? On the contrary, he had never loved her half so truly as now. His heart was too full to dare to speak.
"Do you not remember that when I told you all this would happen, that you said it could not happen? That, happen what would, no man should mock or laugh or reprove, and live? Well, now, Sandy dear, it will happen. I have done you wrong. I now want to tell you to take back your promise. That is best."
The man rose up. The place where he had hid his face was wet as rain.
"Sandy, Sandy, can we cross the mountains now?"
The little lady lay trembling in her bed with her hands covering her face.
Then she put down her hands and looked up into the face of her husband.
"Sandy, leave me!"
She sprang up in bed as she said this, as if inspired with a new thought.
"There! take that gold, this gold; all of it!" She left her bed with a bound and heaped the gold together and turned to Sandy.
"Take it, I tell you, and go. That is best; that is right. I want you to go—go now! Go! Will you go? Will you not go when I command you to go?"
"Not when you're sick, my pretty; get well, and then I will go; go, and stay till you tell me I may come back."
"Will you not go?"
"Not while you're sick, my pretty."
"Then I will go."
She caught a shawl from the wall. Her face was aflame. She sprang to the door, through the door, and out to the fence, in a moment. Sandy's arms were about her now, and he led her back and laid her in her bed.
She lay there trembling again, and Sandy bent above her.
"Sandy, when all the world turns against me and laughs at me, what will you do?"
He did not understand; he could not answer.
"When men laugh at me when I pass, what can you say, and what will you do?"
"What will I do?"
The man seemed to hear now, and to understand. He sprang up, spun about, and tossed his head.
"What will I do! Shoot 'em!—scalp every mother's son of 'em!" And he brought his fist down on the little mantel-piece till the bits of gold remaining and the little trinkets leapt half way across the room.
The little woman lay a moment silent, and then she threw back the clothes, and pushing Sandy back, as if he had been a great child, sprang up again, and again dashed through the door.
Limber Tim had been standing there all the time, half hidden behind the fence, against which he had glued his back, waiting to be of some use if possible to the guardian angel of the camp. There was also a row of men reaching within hail all the way down to the town, waiting to be of help, for Limber Tim had told them the Widow was ill.
The man started from his fastening on the fence at sight of this apparition, wild, half-clad, with her hair all down about her loose, ungathered garments, and he stood before her.
"I want to go home," the woman cried, wringing her hands. "I want to go home. I will go home. There is something wrong. You do not understand. Sandy is an angel; I am a devil. I want to go home."
The strong man's arms were about her again as she stood there on the edge of the fence, and he bore her back, half fainting and quite exhausted, into the house.
He laid her down, and stood back as if half frightened at what he had done. Never before had he put out a finger, said a word, held a thought, contrary to her slightest and most unreasonable whim. Then he came back timidly, as if he was afraid he would frighten her, for she began to tremble again, and she was whiter than before. She did not look up, she was looking straight ahead, down toward her feet, but she knew he was there—knew he would hear her, let her speak never so low.
"When the great trouble comes, Sandy, when the trouble comes and covers both of us with care, will you remember that you would not put me off? When the trouble comes, will you ever remember that you would not let me go away? that you would not go away? Will you remember, Sandy?"
She was getting wild again, and sprang up in bed as she said this last, and looked the man in his face so earnest, so pleading, so pitiful, that Sandy put up his two hands and swore a solemn oath to remember.
She sank back in bed, drew the clothes about her, hid her face from the light, and then Sandy drew back and stood by the fire, and the awful thought came fully and with all its force upon him that she was insane.
Ah! that was what it was. She feared she would go mad. Mad! mad! He thought of all the mad people he had ever seen or heard of; thought how he had been told that it runs in families; how people go mad and murder their friends, destroy themselves, go into the woods and are eaten by wild beasts, lost in the snow, or drowned in the waters hurrying by wood and mountain wall, and then he feared that he should go mad himself.
"Poor little soul!" he kept saying over to himself. "Poor, noble little soul! would not marry me because she knew she would go mad." And she was dearer to the man now than ever before.
"Sandy."
The sufferer barely breathed his name, but he leaned above her while yet she spoke.
"Sandy, bring Billy Piper."
"What?" He threw up his two hands in the air. The woman did not seem to heed him, but, resting and lying quite still a moment, said, softly—
"Bring Bunker Hill."
"Bring what? who?"
"Go, bring Bunker Hill."
If his wife had said, "Bring Satan," or had repeated her "Bring Billy Piper," the man could not have been more surprised or displeased.
Now this Bunker Hill, or Bunkerhill, was a poor woman of the town—the best one there, it is true, but bad enough, no doubt, at the best. She was called Bunker Hill by the boys, and no one knew her by any other name, because she was a sort of a hunch-back.
"Did you say, my pretty, did you say—"
"Sandy, bring Bunker Hill. And bring her soon. Soon, Sandy, soon; soon, for the love of God."
The woman was writhing with pain again as the man shot through the door, and looked back over his shoulder to be sure that she did not attempt to leave the house or destroy herself the moment his back was turned.
Limber Tim was there waiting silently and patiently. He scratched his head, and wondered, and raised his brim as he ran, and slid, and shuffled with all his speed down the trail toward the town to bring the woman. Men stood by in respectful silence as he passed. They would have given worlds almost to know how the one fair woman fared, but they did not ask the question, did not stop the man a moment. A moment might be precious. It might be worth a life.
There are some rules of etiquette, some principles of feeling in the wild woods among the wild men there, that might be transplanted with advantage to a better society. There might have been a feeling of disappointment or displeasure on the part of the men standing waiting, waiting for an opportunity to be of the least possible service, as they saw Bunker Hill leave town to return with Limber Tim, but it had no expression.
The man who sat behind the silver faro-box no doubt felt this disappointment the keenest of any one.
When we feel displeased or disappointed at any thing, we are always saying that that is about the best that could be done. "What else could she do? The woman's ill; the Widder is sick. She sends for a woman, a bad woman, p'raps, but the best we got. Well, a woman's better as a man, any ways you puts it. What else could she do? A bad woman's better as a good man. What else could she do? I puts it to you, what else could she do?"
The crowd at the Howling Wilderness was satisfied. But the men stood there or sat in knots around the bar-room in silence. The crimson-headed bar-keeper had not seen such a dull day of it since they had the double funeral. What could be the matter? Men made all kinds of guesses, but somehow no one hinted that the little woman was mad.
The Roaring Whirlpool, as the Howling Wilderness was sometimes called, drew in but few victims all that night. Men kept away, kept going out and looking up toward the little cabin on the hill.
The man with the silver faro-box sat by the table with the green cloth, as if in a brown study. The great fire blazed up and snapped as if angry, for but few men gathered about it all that evening. The little brown mice up in the loft could be heard nibbling at the old boots and bacon rinds, and their little teeth ticked and rattled together as if the upper half of the Howling Wilderness had been the shop of a mender of watches. Now and then the man behind the silver faro-box filliped the pack of cards with his fingers, turned up the heels of a jack in the most unexpected sort of way, as if just to keep his hand in, but the mice had it mostly their own way all that night.
One by one the men who stood waiting dropped away and out of the line to get their dinners, but still enough stood there the livelong night to pass a message from mouth to mouth with the speed of a telegram into town.
Then these men standing there, and those who went away, as to that, fell to thinking of Bunker Hill. Somehow, she had advanced wonderfully in the estimation of all from the moment she had been sent for by the Widow. It was a sort of special dignity that had been conferred. This woman, Bunker Hill, had been knighted by their queen. She had been picked out, and set apart and over and above all the other fallen women of the Forks.
Even Limber Tim, who stood there on one leg, with his back screwed tight up against the palings, began to like her overmuch, and to wonder why she also would not make some honest man an honest wife. In fact, many men that night recalled many noble acts on the part of this poor woman, and they almost began to feel ashamed that they had sometimes laughed at her plainness, and promised in their hearts to never do so again.
There was a gray streak of dawn just breaking through the black tree-tops that tossed above the high, far, deep snow, on the mountain that lifted to the east, as the door opened, and Bunker Hill came forth alone. There were ugly clouds rolling overhead, mixing, marching, and counter-marching, as if preparing for a great battle of the elements. On the west wall of the mountain a wolf howled dolefully to his mate on the opposite crest of the cañon. The water tumbled and thundered through the gorge below, and sent up echoes and sounds that were sad and lonesome as the march to the home of the dead.
She came out into the gray day, slowly and thoughtfully, her head was down, and when Limber Tim helped her over the fence she was shy and modest, as if she herself had been the Widow.
He tried to ask about the Widow, but that awful respect for the other sex that seems born with the American of the Far West, kept him silent; and as Bunker Hill led on rapidly towards town and did not say one word about the sufferer, he followed, as ignorant as any man in camp.
On the way the woman slipped on the wet and icy trail and fell, for she was in terrible haste and terribly excited. Perhaps she cut her arm or hand on the sharp stone as she fell, for as she hastily arose and again hurried on, she kept rubbing and holding her right arm with her left.
She led straight to the Howling Wilderness, lifted the latch and entered. She looked all around, but did not speak. She was in a great hurry, and was evidently looking for some one she wished to find at once. No man spoke to her now. The few found there at this hour were the wildest and most reckless in the camp, but they were respectful, as if in the presence of a lady born and bred a lady.
There was something beautiful in this silence and respect. Even the man with the silver faro-box for a breastwork rose up and stood in her presence while she remained. He did not do it on purpose. He would not have done it the day before had she stood before him by the hour. He did not even know when he arose, but when she bowed just the least bit, and turned away and went out again into the cold and did not drink—did not drink, mind you—did not even look at the crimson-headed man who had risen up in perfect confidence, he found himself standing, and found his heart filling with a kind of gallantry that he had not known before. He had risen in her presence by instinct.
"Come, we must find Captain Tommy." The woman said this to Limber Tim as they left the saloon, and then led swiftly on to Captain Tommy's cabin.
This Captain Tommy was a character and a power too, and, wretch as she was, was a woman to be leaned upon, and trusted too to the last.
True, she was very plain. But you may adopt it as one of your rules of life, and act upon it with absolute certainty, that, if you have to trust any woman, trust a plain one, rather than a handsome one; for the plain ones were not made to sell, else they too had been made handsome.
"Not to be too particular about a delicate subject," said old Baldy, who had been fortunate enough to know her, "her memory possibly may reach back to the Black Hawk War."
But the crowning feature of this woman was her enormous head of hair. It was black as night and bushy as a Kanaka's; all about her head in a heap, that seemed to be constantly in motion. But at the back and down between her shoulders it had gathered into a queue, and hung down there like a bell-rope with a black tassel at the end.
She generally kept her mouth closed. But men observed that, when she wanted to say any thing, she pulled up her back, took hold of the bell-rope, and pulled and pulled till her mouth came open; then she would throw out her sunken breast, and wind and wind with her two hands, and corkscrew at her back hair, and pull and twist and wind, until she had wound herself up so tight that it was impossible to close either her mouth or her eyes. After that she could talk faster than any man in the world, and faster than a great many women, until she ran down, and the bell-rope hung loose between her shoulders. Then her mouth would close suddenly, and she would have to stop that instant, even if in the midst of a sentence, until she could seize the bell-rope, pull herself open and wind herself up again.
The Captain had admirers in the Forks; many and many a worshiper, and not altogether without reason. There was about her a certain sweetness of nature that contrasted well with the rough life in which she was thrown; and the strong men noted this, and liked the sense of her presence.
Besides that, this woman had a certain sincerity about her, a virtue that is as rare as it is dear to man. I think, if we look at ourselves clearly, we will discover that this one quality wins upon us more than any other—that is more than beauty, more than gold—sincerity, earnestness. For my part, I only make that one demand on any man or any woman. You can not be graceful at will, or wealthy, or beautiful, or always good-natured; but you can be in earnest. You can refuse to lie, either in word or in deed. I demand that you shall be in earnest before you shall approach me. Be in earnest even in your villainy.
The woman knocked on the door with her knuckles, and called through the hole of the latch-string to the woman within; for Captain Tommy was also a woman, and a woman of the order—of a less order even—than this good Samaritan, who stood calling through the keyhole and shivering with the cold.
There was an answer, and then the two stood there in the bleak, still, cold, gray morning together. There was a noise of somebody dressing in the dark very fast, a hard oath or two, the scratching of a match, the lifting of a latch in the rear of a cabin, the sound of a man's boots scratching over the stones of a back trail that led to the Howling Wilderness, and then the door opened, and Bunker Hill led in instantly, went right up to Captain Tommy, took her hand in her own, and whispered in her ear.
The Captain caught her breath, and then with both hands up, as if to defend herself, staggered close back against the wall. Then, as if suddenly recovering herself, and coming upon a new thought, she relaxed her lifted arms, let them fall, and rounding her shoulders, walked up to the smouldering fire, turned her back, put her hands behind her, looked at Bunker Hill sidewise, and said—
"Yer be darned!"
"It's so, Tommy, sure as gospel, and we want you. She wants you. She sent for you—sent me, and you will come, for you are needed. I can't go it all night. Some people must be there, and that some people must be women."
"No, you don't play me! Go 'long with yer larks! Git!" The Captain was getting out of temper. What was to be done? Bunker Hill went close up to her, and, leaning up, whispered sharply in her ear.
The Captain only said, "Yer be blowed!" and turned and kicked the fire, till it blazed up and filled the room with a rosy light, such only as smouldering pine logs can throw out when roused up into a flame; and then she turned around and looked at Bunker Hill as if she had firmly made up her mind not to be hoaxed. She looked at the good-souled hunch-back before her as if she would look her through; then suddenly her eyes rested on one of her white cuffs. "What the devil's that on yer sleeve? Been in a row again, eh?"
"Come, come, there's no time to lose. It's awful!"
Bunker Hill laid hold of Captain Tommy's arm, and attempted to drag her to the door. She was getting desperate.
Tommy pulled back, and still kept looking at the excited woman's white sleeve or cuff.
"What the devil's that on your sleeve? It looks like blood."
Bunker Hill lifted her arm, looking now herself, pulled back her sleeve, and held it to the light.
"Blood it is! Will you believe me now?"
The stubborn woman, who had been standing on the defensive, with her back to the fire, darted forward now all excitement, all sympathy. She snatched her outer garments from the foot of the bed, where they had lain all this interview, and threw them on her back. She did not stop to fasten them. She caught a blanket from the bed, threw it over her head, as she passed out all breathless, and left the cabin-door wide open, with the fitful pine fire making ghosts on the floor, and the fitful March morning riding in on the wind and sowing it with ashes.