Limber Tim all this time had held his back against the wall as firmly as if it was about to fall on all their heads, and their lives depended on his strength. His mouth had been wide open with wonder. He had not understood at all from the first, but now he was more than bewildered—he was terrified.
Blood! blood! He unscrewed himself from the wall, went, winding his long limber legs up the trail, past the Howling Wilderness, after the silent but excited women, and all the time this awful sentence of Bunker Hill's was shooting through his brain—"Blood! blood! it is! Will you believe me now?"
He reached his post by the pine fence, and, being no wiser than before, he again wound himself up against the palings, and reached back his arms and wove them through the pickets, and stood there on one leg looking over his shoulder as the two women disappeared into the Widow's cabin.
Dawn comes slowly down in these dark, deep, wooded cañons of the Sierras. Morning seems to be battling with the night. Night is entrenched in the woods, and retreats only by inches—the Battle of the Wilderness.
In the steel-gray dawn, cold and sharp, Limber Tim heard a cry that knocked him loose from the fence. He picked himself together, and again twisted himself into the pickets; but all the time he kept seeing Bunker Hill pushing back her sleeve, holding up her arm in the ghostly light of the pine-log fire, and saying, "Blood it is! Will you believe me now?"
"Blood," mused the man. "Somebody's hurt. Somebody's hurt awful bad, too, or they wouldn't keep a feller a-standin' agin a fence the whole blessed night."
The man's teeth began to chatter. The thought of blood and the bleak cold morning kept them smiting together as if he had had an ague.
A man in great gum boots came screeching by the cabin; his nose was pointed straight for the Howling Wilderness, but backing against Limber Tim as he hung up against the fence, stopped, and asked timidly and very respectfully of the Widow.
Limber held his head thoughtfully to one side, as if he was trying to balance the important facts in his mind, and reveal only just so much of the condition of the Widow, or Sandy, or Bunker Hill, or whoever it was that was hurt, as was best, and no more, but for a time was silent.
A thought struck him, and he mused: Sandy's cut his foot, or p'raps it's Bunker Hill shot herself with that darned pistol she allers packs in her breeches' pocket.
"Well, an' 'ow's the Widder?" The man was getting impatient for his drink.
"It ain't the Widder at all. It's Sandy. Sandy's cut his foot—cut his foot last night a cuttin' wood in the dark. That's what's the matter."
Limber Tim pecked his head, pursed up his mouth, and for the first time in his life, perhaps, felt that he was really a man of some consequence.
"By the holy poker! thought it was the Widder."
"Not much. It's Sandy. Cut his foot, I tell yer. Blood clean up to his elbows. Blood all over the house. Bunker Hill all over blood. Hell's a poppin', I tell yer." And poor Limber Tim so excited himself by this recital, that he broke loose from the fence, and chattered his teeth together like a chipmunk with a hazel-nut.
Then the man passed on down the trail, and Limber Tim again grew on to the fence, and chattered his teeth together, and waited developments, not at all certain that he had not lied.
"'Ow's the Widder, Limber?"
Limber unloosed himself from the fence, and tried to stand straight up and tell the truth and nothing but the truth.
"Better, thank yer. That is, the blood is stopped, or most of it, you know—the most of it. Bunker Hill is hurt some too, you know. Blood all over her arm. Poor girl, poor girl! but she didn't whimper. Not she. Nary a sniff."
"Both of 'em hurt?"
"Yes, same bullet, you know—same shot—same pistol—same—"
The man had too much to tell already, and almost ran in his haste to reach the Howling Wilderness and tell what had happened.
This time, as Limber Tim screwed himself up against the fence, he felt pretty certain that somewhere or somehow during the morning he had lied like a trooper, and was very miserable.
"Hard on Sandy that," said the bar-keeper to the second early-riser, who had just arrived, as he stood behind his breastwork in his night-shirt, and handed down to his customer his morning bottle, with his hairy arms all naked, and his red uncombed hair reaching up like the blaze from a pine-knot fire.
"Yes," answered the man, as he fired a volley down his throat, and then fell back to the fire, wiping his big bearded mouth with the back of his hand, "Yes, but Limber Tim says she'll soon be up again; says the blood's all stopped, and all that. You see, the signs are all in her favor. It's a good thing for a shot, to see it bleed. Best thing for a bad shot is to see it bleed well. That is, if yer can stop the blood in time. But now, in this 'ere case, the blood's all stopped. Just come down from there. Limber just told me blood's all stopped."
There was a man standing back in the corner by the fire, half in the dark, warming the lower end of his back and listening with both ears all this time. He now came out of the dark, and began—
"You darned infernal fool! Sold clean out. It's not the Widder at all—it's Sandy. Split his foot open with an ax. Blood gushed out all over Bunker Hill. Kivered Bunker Hill with blood clean up to the elbows."
"And what the devil was Bunker Hill a-doin' at Sandy's?"
The man from the dark saw that somebody had been sold, and, fearing it might possibly be himself, simply pecked at the other man, staggered up to the bar, pecked at the head that blazed like a pine-knot fire, and then the three drank in silence. There was a sort of truce, a silent but well-understood agreement, that nothing further should be said, but that, when the truth came out, one should not tell on the other, and turn the laugh of the camp upon him.
Early the men began to drop in to the Great Whirlpool, the one great center of this snow-walled world, to ask gently, and with tender concern in their faces, after the fortunes of the Widow.
It was a great day for the cinnamon-haired little man, and he made the most of it. Men fell into disputes the moment they arrived, but, as no one knew any thing, they always settled it with a treat all round, and then waited for results.
The bar-keeper was appealed to, as bar-keepers, like barbers, are supposed to know all the news. But this man, like most bar-keepers in the wilderness, was a cautious man, and said he knew all about it, but could not take sides or decide between his friends. Time would tell who was right and who was wrong.
At last the Judge rolled in like a little sea on the shore. He had come straight down from the Widow's, had gone up to get the truth of the matter, and had unscrewed Limber Tim from the fence, and made him tell all he knew of the unhappy lady, and how it happened.
Then the boys backed the little Judge up against the bar, and stood him there, and read him from top to bottom, as if he had been a bulletin board.
"Split his foot clean open, you see! Did it while a choppin' wood in the dark."
"Speck he was a lookin' at the Widder when it happened," half laughed a big man with a big mouth, and a voice like a Numidian lion.
"The clumsy cuss!"
That is what Oregon Jake said after catching his breath over his tumbler of Old Tom. And that is all the sympathy that Sandy got after they found out, as they thought, that he had only split open his foot with an ax.
"The clumsy cuss!"
The sun at last shot sharply through the far fir tops tossing over the savage and sublime mountain crest away to the east, with its battlement of snow, and Limber Tim was glad at the sight of it, for he was very cold and stiff, and hungry and thirsty, and tired of his post of honor, and disgusted with himself for the miserable mistakes he had made that morning.
He had been standing there like a forlorn and lonesome cock all the morning on one foot, waiting for the dawn, and now he fairly wanted to crow at the sight of it.
Men came and went now, and every man asked after poor Sandy.
Limber Tim now told the same story right straight through, all about how it happened, how Bunker Hill was "kivered" with blood, and all about it, even to the most minute detail; for certainly, thought he to himself, it is Sandy or Sandy would have come out long ago. He even believed it so firmly, that he began to be sorry for Sandy, and to wonder how long it would be till Sandy would be out and about again on crutches. Then he said to himself, it would be at least a month; and then when the next man came by and inquired after Sandy, he told him that in a month Sandy would be about on crutches. At this piece of information Limber Tim felt a great deal better. He said to himself he was very glad it was no worse, and then he screwed his back tighter up to the fence than before, and stood there trying to warm in the cold sunlight of a moist morning in the Sierras. It was like standing on the Apennines, and turning your back and parting your coat tails, and trying to warm by the fires of Vesuvius.
In the midst of meditations like these the door opened, and Sandy shuffled through it, shot over the fence, slapped his two great hands on the two shoulders as before, and before Limber Tim could unscrew himself from the fence, cried out—
"Whisky, Limber! whisky, quick! The gals is almost tuckered! Go! Split!"
He spun him around and sent him reeling down the trail, then returned and banged the door behind him.
Limber Tim scratched his ear as he stumbled over the rocks in the trail, and wound his stiffened legs about the boulders and over the logs on his way to the Howling Wilderness, and was sorely perplexed.
"Wal, it ain't Sandy, any way. Ef his big hands have lost any of their grip I don't see it, anyhow." He shrugged his shoulders as he said this to himself, for they still ached from the vice-like grip of the giant.
Still Limber Tim was angry, notwithstanding the discovery that his old partner was sound and well, and he lifted the latch with but one resolution, and that was to remain perfectly silent and let his lies take care of themselves.
Men crowded around him as he entered and gave his orders. But this bulletin-board was a blank. He had set his lips together and they kept their place. For the first time in his troubled and shaky existence he began to know and to feel the power and the dignity of silence. He knew that every man there thought that he, who stood next to the throne, knew all; and felt dignified by this, and dared even to look a little severe on those who were about to ask him questions.
He had crammed a bottle of so-called "Bourbon" in his left boot, and was just pushing into the right a "phial of wrath," when some one in the cabin sighed, "Poor Sandy!"
Still Limber Tim went on pushing the phial of wrath into his gum boot as well as he could with his stiffened fingers.
Then a man came up sharply out of the crowd, and throwing a big, heavy bag of gold dust, as fat as a pet squirrel, down on the counter, proposed to raise a "puss" for Sandy.
This was too much. Limber Tim raised his head, and slipping as fast as he could through the crowd for the door, said, back over his shoulder—
"It ain't Sandy at all. It's Bunker Hill. It's the gals. The gals is almost tuckered."
There was the confusion of Babel in the Howling Wilderness. The strange and contradictory accounts that had come down from the Widow's—their shrine, the little log house that to them was as a temple, a city set upon a hill—were anything but satisfactory. The men began to get nervous, and then they began to drink, and then they began to dispute again, and then they began to bet high and recklessly who it was that had cut his foot.
"Got it all right now," said poor Limber Tim to himself as he made his way up the trail as fast as possible, with the two bottles in the legs of his great gum boots for safe carriage. "Got it all right now! That's it. Bunker Hill cut her foot or shot her hand with that darned derringer, or something of the kind. That's it, that's where the blood came from, that's why she's tuckered—that's what's the matter." And so saying and musing to himself, he reached his post, uncorked the phial of wrath, as it was called, looked in at the contents, turned it up towards the sun as if it had been a sort of telescope, and smacking his lips felt slightly confirmed in his opinion. He also resolved to ask Sandy, like a man, what the devil was up the moment he appeared.
Again the door flew open, Sandy flew out, rushed over the fence, took the Bourbon from the trembling hand of Limber Tim, and before he could get his wits together had disappeared and banged the door behind him.
Limber Tim did not like this silent-dignity business a bit. "Lookee here!" he said, as he again turned the telescope up to the sun, and then looked at the door, "I'll see what's what, I reckon."
He went up to the fence, leaned over, but his heart failed him.
Then he resorted to the phial of wrath, again looked at the sun, and as he replaced it in his boot felt bold as a lion. The man was drunk. He climbed the fence, staggered up to the door, lifted the latch and pushed it open.
Bunker Hill came softly out of the bed-room, pushed the man back gently as if he had been a child, shut the door slowly, and the man went back to his post.
Men have curiosity as well as women. Weak women over weaker tea, discussing strong scandal in some little would-be-fashionable shoddy saloon in Paris, are not more curious than were these half-wild men here in the woods. The difference however is, this was an honest sympathetic interest. It was all these men had outside of hard work to interest them. They wanted to know what was the matter in their little temple on the hill. The camp was getting wild.
Limber Tim tried to screw himself up against the fence for some time, and failing in this, turned his attention again to the phial of wrath. He was leaning over, trying to get it out of his boot leg, when the door opened and Bunker Hill stepped out carefully, but supple and straight as he had ever seen her.
Limber Tim was quite overcome. He looked up the cañon and then down the cañon.
"They'll be a comet next." He shook his head hopelessly at this remark of his, and again bent down and wrestled with the boot leg and bottle.
"Bully for Bunker Hill. Guess she's not hurt much after all."
The men went out of the Howling Wilderness as the man who shot this injunction or observation in at the door went in, and to their amazement saw the woman alluded to walk rapidly on past the saloon. She did not look up, she did not turn right or left or stop at the saloon or speak to any one; she went straight to her own cabin. Then the men knew for a certainty that it was the little Widow who was ill, and they knew that it was this woman who was nursing her, and they almost worshiped the ground that the good Samaritan walked upon.
Soon Bunker Hill came out again, and again took the trail for the Widow's cabin, and walking all the time rapidly as before. The men as she passed took off their hats and stood there in silence.
There was a smile of satisfaction on her plain face as she climbed the hill. She went up that hill as if she had been borne on wings. Her heart had never been so light before. For the first time since she had been in camp, she had noticed that she was treated with respect. It was a rare sensation, new and most delightful. The hump on her back was barely noticed as she passed Limber Tim trying to lean up against the fence, and entered with a noiseless step, and almost tip-toe, the home of the sufferer.
The men respected this woman now more than ever before. They also respected her silence. At another time they would have called out to her; sent banter after her in rough unhewn speech, and got in return as good, or better, than they sent. But now no man spoke to her. She had been dignified, sanctified, by her mission of mercy, whatever it meant or whatever was the matter, and she was to them a better woman. Men who met her on her return gave her all the trail, and held their hats as she passed. One old man gave her his hand as she crossed a little snow stream in the trail, and helped her over it as if she had been his own child. Yet this old man had despised her and all her kind the day before.
She went and came many times that day, and always with the same respect, the same silent regard from the great Missourians whom the day found about the Forks.
Then Captain Tommy came forth in the evening, and also went on straight to her cabin, and her face was full of concern. The Captain had not been a person of any dignity at all the day before, but now not a man had the audacity to address her as she passed on with her eyes fixed on the trail before her.
When she returned, the man at his post had fallen. Poor Limber Tim! He would not leave his station, and Sandy had something else to think of now; and so he fell on the field.
It was not that he had drunk so much, but that he had eaten so little. His last recollections of that day were a long and protracted and fruitless wrestle with the phial of wrath in his boot-leg, and an ineffectual attempt to screw the picket fence on to his back.
It was no new thing to find a man spilt out in the trail in these days, and his fall excited no remark.
They would carry men in out of the night and away from the wolves, or else would sit down and camp by them till they were able to care for themselves.
A man took a leg under each arm, another man took hold of his shoulders, and Limber Tim, now the limpest thing dead or alive was borne to his cabin.
One—two—three days. The camp, that at first was excited almost beyond bounds, had gone back to its work, and only now and then sent up a man from the mines below, or sent down a man from the mines above, to inquire if there was yet any news from the Widow. But not a word was to be heard.
All these days the two women went and came right through the thick of the men, but no man there was found rude enough to ask a question.
Never had the camp been so sober. Never had the Forks been so thoughtful. The cinnamon-headed bar-keeper leaned over his bar and said confidentially to the man at the table behind the silver faro-box, who had just awakened from a long nap,
"Ef this 'ere thing keps up, I busts." Then the red-haired man drew a cork and went on a protracted spree all by himself.
"Send for a gospel sharp all to once, Jake. Let's go the whole hog. The Forks only wants to get religion now, and die."
How beautiful was all this profound veneration for woman in this wild Eden! How high and holy the influence of this one woman over these half-grizzlies, these hairy-faced men who had drunk water from the same spring with the wild beasts of the Sierras.
Now they would not drink, would hardly shout or speak sharp, while she lay ill. Whatever was the matter, or the misfortune, they had too much respect for her, for themselves, to carouse till she should again show her face, or at least while her life was uncertain.
The fourth day came down into the cañon, and sat down there as a sort of pioneer Summer. Birds flew over the camp from one mountain side to the other, and sang as they flew. Men whistled old tunes in a dreamy sort of a way as they came up from their work that day, and recalled other days, and were boys once more in imagination, away in the world that lay beyond the Rocky Mountains.
"There is something in this glorious climate of Californy, say what you will," mused the Judge, as he lit his pipe and sat down on a stump in the street.
Limber Tim and the cinnamon-haired man had settled down into that collapse which always follows a protracted spree or a heavy carouse, and they too sat on their respective stumps out in the open air, while the saloon was left all to the little brown mice upstairs.
Men were lounging all up and down the street on old knotty logs that no ax could reduce to firewood, or leaning against the cabins on the warm sides that were still warm with the sunshine gone away, or loafing up and down with their pipes in their mouths, and their ragged coats thrown over one shoulder, like the bravos of Italy. Certainly there was something in the glorious climate of California.
There had been no news from the Widow all this time.
A keen-eyed man just now lifted his eyes in the direction of the cabin. In fact, it was a custom—an instinct, to lift the face in that direction many times a day. If any of these men ever prayed in that camp, and the truth could be told, you would find that that man first turned the face and kneeled looking in that direction. Her house was a sort of second Mecca.
The camp, however, after being a long time patient and silent, had got a little cross. Yet it had not lost a bit of its blunt and honest manhood. It had simply made up its mind that the Widow and Sandy were both of age, and able to take care of themselves. If they were willing to get the toothache, or something of the kind, and then retreat into their cabin, and pull the latch-string inside after them, they could do so, and the camp would not interfere.
The man who had been looking up the hill now turned to his partner, drew his pipe from his mouth, wrinkled up his brows, and then slowly reached out his arm and with his pipe-stem pointed inquiringly up the hill.
A man and a woman were coming slowly and cautiously down the way from the Widow's cabin. They were coming straight for the great center of the Forks, the Howling Wilderness.
The woman had something in her arms. She walked as carefully as if she had been bearing a waiter of wine. Could this be the Widow? It could hardly be Bunker Hill, thought the Forks, as it rose up from its seat on the stumps, and lifted its face up the trail, for she is almost as tall and comely and steps as nimbly as any woman in camp.
Could this be Sandy? He looked larger than ever before—a sort of Gog or Magog.
The man stuck his pipe between his teeth again and puffed furiously for a minute, and then sat down over the log again, let his feet dangle in the air, and, leaning forward, rocked to and fro as if nursing his stomach, and seemed wrapped in thought.
"Sandy, by the great Cæsar!"
"Bunker Hill, by the holy poker!"
"And what's that she got a carryin'?"
"It's a table-cloth a hangin' out for dinner!"
"It's a flag of truce!" cried the Judge, standing on tip-toe on his stump and straightening his fat little body up towards the Sierras.
"And hasn't Sandy grow'd since we seed 'im, eh!"
"And don't he step high! Jerusalem, don't he step high!"
"And where's Captain Tommy, and where's the Widow?" anxiously inquired the Forks, still looking up the hill towards its little shrine.
At last they entered the town, and the town met them on the edge—at its outer gate, as it were, with all its force.
The woman indeed bore a flag of truce. A long white banner streamed from her arms and fell down to her feet, and almost touched the ground. A close observer would have seen that this flag was made of the very same coarse material from which the Widow had made the curtains of her little bed.
They entered the edge of the town, these three, and the town stood there as silent as if it had risen up on its way to church on a Sunday morning. These three, do you mind, stood there still, right in the track of the town, and the town looking at them as if they had come from another world. And so at least they had, a part of them.
These three: Sandy, Bunker Hill, and the first baby born in the mines of the Sierras.
Bunker Hill held the baby out in one hand, and with the other tenderly lifted back the covering, while Sandy stood by like a tower on a hill, smiling, pushing back his hat, pulling down his whiskers, looking over the little army of men with a splendid sort of sympathy and self-accusation combined. He seemed to be saying, as he turned their eyes to the little red half opened rose-bud, "Just look there! see what I've done." His great face was radiant with delight.
And then there was a shout—such a shout! The spotted clouds that blew about the tall pine tops, indolent and away up on the mountain's brow, seemed to be set in motion again; the coyote rose up from his sleep on the mountain side and called out to his companions across the gorge as if he had been frightened; while Captain Tommy, who had been left with the Widow, came to the door and stood there, listening and looking down into the camp to see what in the world had happened. She saw men's hats go up in the air, and then again the shouts shook the town.
"Three cheers for Sandy!" They were given with a tiger. "Three cheers for the Widow! three cheers for Missus Bunker Hill." And then the poor girl leaning out of the door, took up her apron and wiped tears of joy from her eyes, for "three times three" were given for Captain Tommy. Then she went back into the house, back to the bed-room with the curious little curtains and gunny-bag carpets, and told the Widow, and the two women wept in each other's arms together.
Men slapped each other on the back, bantered each other, and talked loud of old Missouri and the institution of marriage.
Of all things perhaps this baby was the last they had looked for or thought of. In a camp of thousands, where the youngest baby there, save the boy poet, had a beard on his face, the men had forgotten to think of children. It is quite likely they fancied that children would not grow in the Sierras at all.
The Judge was the first to come forward as was his custom. He looked it in the face, began to make a speech, but only could say, "It's this glorious climate of Californy." And then he blushed to the tip of his nose, backed out, and others came in turn to see the wonderful little creature that had come all alone, farther than across the plains, farther than any of them, farther than the farthest of the States, even from the other world, to settle in the Sierras.
"Well ef that ain't the littlest!"
"Is that all the big they is?"
"Well! don't think Sandy hardly got his first planting, did he, Pike?"
"Well, that bangs me all hollow!"
"Dang my cats if it's bigger nor my thumb!"
"Devil of a little thing to make such a big row about, eh?"
Sandy was all submission and pride and tenderness, and received the congratulations and heard the good-humored speeches of the good-humored men as if they were all meant in compliment to him.
How radiant and even half beautiful was the plain face of poor Miss Bunker Hill as she lifted it up before the camp now, conscious that she had done a good thing and had a right to look the world in the face, and receive its kindness and encouragement.
Older men and more thoughtful came up at last, to look upon the little wonder and to read the story of this new volume fresh from the press. They looked long and silently. They were as gentle as lambs. Death had no terror to them, it was not half so solemn, so mysterious, as this birth in the heart of the Sierras. Life was there, then, as well as death. People would come and go there as elsewhere. The hand of God had stretched over the mountain, down into the awful gorge, and set down a little angel at their cabin doors. It was very, very welcome, and the old men bobbed their heads with delight.
At last all was still, and the little Judge felt that this was not an occasion to be lost. In fact, had there been a clergyman there to say a word, it had had more good effect than all the funeral sermons that the little red-faced man had pronounced in the camp. The occasion was a singular one, and the men's hearts were now as mellow as new-plowed land that had long lain fallow and waiting for the seed.
"This, my friends," began the little man, standing upon a stump, and extending his hands towards the baby, "this, my friends, shows us that the wonderful climate of Californy—" Just then some one poked the fat little fellow in the stomach with his pipe-stem, and he doubled up like a jack-knife and quietly got down, as if nothing had happened.
There was a lull then, and things began to look embarrassing. Sandy was now of course too proud, too happy, too much of a man to carouse, but he called the cinnamon-headed man to his side by a crook of his finger, and making the sign so well known in the Sierras, and so well understood by all who are thirsty, the parties divided—the camp to carouse to the little stranger in the Howling Wilderness, and Sandy to return to his "fam'ly."
"Here's to—to—to—here's to it! Here's to the Little Half-a-pint!" The men were standing in a row, their glasses high up, and dipping in every angle and to every point of the compass, but they did not know the baby's name; they did not even know its sex. And so in that moment, without stopping to think, and without any time to spare, they spoke of it as "it," and they named it Little Half-a-pint.
How the Widow's heart had been beating all this time! How she waited, and waited, and listened, and how often she sent Captain Tommy to the door to tell her, if possible, how her baby fared among the half-wild men of the camp.
How glad she was when she saw Sandy enter, all flurry and delight, as if he had been the central figure in some great triumph. Then a bit of the old sadness and cast of care swept over her face, and she nestled down in the pillow and put up her two hands to hide a moment from the light.
The other two were too busy with the little Half-a-pint to notice her trouble then. They laid it down in a cradle that had been made for rocking and washing gold, and good little Bunker Hill sat by it, and crossed her legs and took up her work, and went on sewing and singing to herself, and swinging her leg that hung over, and rocking the cradle with her foot in the old fashioned way when babies were born in the leaves of the woods of the Wabash, and mothers sat singing by the camp-fires, knitting and rocking their babies in their sugar-troughs.
Down in the Howling Wilderness I am bound to say the carousing began early, and with a vigor that promised more headaches than the camp had known since the Widow first set foot in the Forks.
Little Half-a-pint was toasted and talked of in every corner of the house. Was it a girl or was it a boy? Why had they not asked so simple and so civil a question? They called for Limber Tim—they would appeal to him. But Limber Tim was not to be found in all the manifold depths of the Howling Wilderness. He had had his carouse, and was now playing sober Indian. In fact, he was hanging very close about the little rocking cradle up in the front room of the Widow's cabin. Never was the cradle allowed to rest, but rock, rock, till the Widow and Sandy too were both made very sensible, sleeping or waking, that little Half-a-pint, small as it was, was filling up the biggest half of the house.
Nearly midnight it was when Limber Tim, leaning over the cradle and looking, or pretending to look, at the baby, said to Bunker Hill, who bent down over it on the other side, "Pretty, ain't it?"
"Guess it is. Looks just like its father for the world." And little hump-backed Bunker Hill began to make faces, and to shake her head and nod it up and down, and coo and crow to little Half-a-pint as if it was really able to hear, and understand, and answer all she said to it.
Down at the saloon all this time the spirits flowed like water. The cinnamon-haired fellow had fallen upon a harvest, and was making the most of it. He had laid off his coat, run his two hands up through his hair till it stood up like forked flames, and was thumping the glasses as if in feats of legerdemain. How he did score with the charcoal on the hewn logs behind. He marked and scored that night till the wall behind him looked as if it might be the Iliad written in Greek, or all the characters on the obelisk of Saint Peter's.
Yet with all this happiness on the hill, and this merry-making under the hill, in the heart of the Sierras, in commemoration and celebration of the beginning of a new race in a new land, there was one man back in the corner of the saloon who looked on with something of a sneer on his hard, hatchet face, and who refused to take any part. Now and then this man would lift up his left hand, hold out his fingers and count, one, two, three, four, five, to himself with his other hand, and then shake his head.
The men began to look at him and wonder what he meant. Then this man would count again—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Then, when the men would waddle by in their great gum-boots and look back at him over their beards, he would look them square in the face and wink, and screw and shrug his shoulders.
This man stopped there in the middle of the spree, and pursing his brow, and holding up his fingers once more, and looking as profound as if wrestling with a problem in Euclid, said to himself: "Hosses is ten, cows is six, cats is three; but human bein's? Blowed if I know." And he shook his head.
At last this hard, hatchet-faced looking man, standing back alone in the corner, seemed to have got it all counted up to his own satisfaction. He counted, however, again; then he said, as if to himself, "Seven months at the very outside," and slapped his hands together with great glee, and sucked his thin brown lips as if he had just tasted something very delicious.
Then this hatchet-faced fellow, still rubbing his hands and still twirling his lip, and all the time grinning with a grin that was sweet and devilish, turned to the first man at his side, and whispered in his ear.
This man started and spun around when the hard-faced man had finished as if he had been a top, and the hatchet-faced fellow had struck him with a whip.
The man spun about, in fact, till the hard-faced fellow caught hold of his eye with his own and held him there till he could catch his breath. Then the man, after catching his breath, and catching it again, said slowly, but most emphatically:
"Ompossible!"
The hatchet-faced man simply pecked in the face of the other. He did not say any thing more to him, but he pecked at him again, and he pecked emphatically, too, and in a way that would not admit of any two opinions; as if the man were a grain of corn, and he had half a mind to pick him up and swallow him down for daring to hint that it was impossible.
Then the man went off suddenly to one side, and he too fell to counting on his fingers, and to taking a whole knot of men into his confidence.
Then the hatchet-faced fellow went up to another man and whispered in his ear, with his smirk and his sweet devilish smile, and he soon set him to spinning round like a top, and to lifting up his fingers and counting one, two, three, four, five.
Then all around the saloon men began to get sober and to hold up their hands and to count their fingers.
At last the little fat red-faced Judge was heard to say—
"They was married in the Fall."
"About—about—about—eh, about what month, do you remember, eh?" squeaked out the hatchet-faced interrogation point through the nose, as he planted himself before the little Judge.
"About the last cleaning up," said the Judge cheerfully.
"That was about—about—" and the hatchet-faced man with the nasal twang and sharp nose began again to count on his fingers—"about four, five, six, seven months ago?"
"Yes, yes," said the good-natured, unsuspicious, important little Judge, "about six, seven months ago, I reckon." And then he, smiling innocently, fell in between two great bearded giants, as a sort of ham-sandwich filling, to take a drink at the bar.
"Ompossible!" said the first top to the hatchet-face.
"Ask him."
The hatchet-face and sharp-nose looked towards the little fat Judge wedged in between the giants. The top spun up to the little Judge, wedged his head in between the giants' shoulders, and asked a question.
The Judge shook his head, and then wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, said half sadly, "No, I am not. No, I am sorry to say, I am not. That is a happiness still in store. No, I am not a family man. Never was married in my life; but whatever may transpire in this glorious climate of Californy—"
The top had its answer, and spun back to its place without waiting for the last of the speech.
The two men talked together again. Then they appealed to an old man who sat mute and sullen back on the bench by the bull-dog.
"No, he didn't know about such things; didn't care a cuss anyhow." And the two men went away as if a flea or two had left the dog and hopped into their ears. They went to another man. "Don't see the point, blowed ef I do. Six months, seven months, eight months, ten months, all along there, I 'spose. The great Washington, Cæsar, Horace Greeley, all sich big-bugs, it might take one, two, three years. That little cuss to-day only a month or two, I reckon. It's all right, I reckon. It ain't my funeral, any how. And what the devil you come botherin' of me for, anyhow? Ef yer don't want to drink yerself, let a fellow alone what does!" And he shook them off with a gesture of the hand and a jerk of the head that meant a great deal more than he had said.
There were not so many fingers up now as before. The question evidently had been settled in the minds of the men fully in favor of the little Half-a-pint. Few understood these things at all, fewer still cared to go into particulars at this time, and the question would keep till they had more leisure and less whisky.
Finally, the hatchet-faced man went round and sat down opposite the man who sat behind the little silver faro-box by the pine-table, and began to whisper in his ear. The good-natured genius, half-gambler, half-miner, who had played the little prank with the salmon and gold-dust, had had a dull night of it, and most like even for that reason was a little out of humor. At all events he did not answer at once, but set down his little silver box, and, taking up his cards, began to spin them one by one over the heads of the men, or through the crowd as it opened, back at the old bull-dog that lay on the bunk on the bags of gold under the blankets, and half whistling to himself as he did so.
The hatchet-faced man, fearing the man had forgotten his presence and his revelation, leaned over again and began to whisper and to count on his fingers.
Then he looked sharp at the gambler and began again; "Hits my 'pinion that it's that boy, Billie Piper."
"How many months did you say?" asked the gambler at last.
"Seven or eight at the furthest."
"And how many had it ought to be?"
"Twelve!" And the smile that was sweet and devilish played about the thin blue lips below the sharp and meddlesome nose.
"And are you a family man?"
"No."
"And you say she's bilked us?"
"Yes."
"You're a darn'd infernal liar!" The gambler rose as he said this, snatched up his silver box and dashed it into the teeth of Hatchet-face. And he, coward as he was, put up his hands and held them to his mouth while the blood ran down between his fingers.
"I don't keer, Judge, I don't keer, if I broke every tooth in his head. I don't 'low no white-livered son of a gun to go about a-talking about a woman like that."
Then the gambler, walking off, said to those around him in a lower tone, "It don't take no twelve months nohow. Now there's the yaller cat; 'bout four litters in a year. Twelve months be blowed! That's an old woman's story. Then that's in Missoury, anyhow, and what's the climate of Missoury got to do with Californy, I'd like to know? No, gentlemen; some apples gits ripe soon, and some don't git ripe till frost comes. Them's things, gentlemen, as we don't know nothing about. Them's mysteries, and none of our business, nohow. Show me the man," and here he began to roar like a Numidian lion, and to tower up above the crowd, while a face like a razor shot out through the door, looking back frightened as it fled, "Show me the man as says it's not all right, and I'll shake him out of his boots."
The gambler picked up his battered box, but he was evidently not in a good humor. He wiped it on his coat-sleeve, and polished it up and down, but was ill content. At last, looking out from under his great slouch hat, he saw the top in the center of a little knot of men holding up his hand and counting his fingers. He threw the box down on the table and rushed into the knot of men.
"A bully set you are, ain't you? Gw'yne around a-counting up after a sick woman. And what do you know, anyhow?" He took hold of the nervous top, and again set it spinning. "That little woman, she come as we come. God Almighty didn't set no mark and gauge on you, and you shan't go 'round and count up after her. Do you hear? Now you git. You're wanted. Hatchet-face wants yer. Do you hear?"
The man spun his top about till its face was to the door, and it went out as a sort of handle to the hatchet, and was seen no more that night.
Yet for all this there had been a great ripple in the wave that had to run even to the shore before it could disappear from the face of things at the Forks.
The next day when Sandy came down, the enthusiasm was at a low ebb. He missed the great reception he had expected, and went back home that night a troubled and anxious man.
What could be the matter? He asked Limber Tim, but Limber Tim had learned the power and security of silence, and either could not or would not venture on any revelations. Besides that, he was very busy helping Bunker Hill with the baby. The camp openly and at all convenient times discussed the question now, and it began to gradually take shape in the minds of men that something was really wrong. Kind old Sandy did not dream what the trouble could be. He feared he had not been generous enough under his good fortune, and was all the time opening the mouth of his leather bag at the bar and pouring gold dust into the scales, and entreating the boys to drink to the health of their little Half-a-pint.
"Yes, our little Half-a-pint it is, I reckons; leastwise it's pretty certain it ain't yourn." Sandy looked at the man, and then the man set down his glass untouched and went off. He had not meant all that he had said, but having blurted it out in a very awkward way and at the very worst time, got off and out of it as best he could.
Sandy was tortured. The dear little Widow saw it, and asked him what the trouble was, and the man, blunt, honest fellow, told all that had happened.
The camp was disgusted with the man who had mooted this question. They counted him a traitor to the Forks—a sort of Judas. If he had gone and hung himself the camp would have been perfectly satisfied. In fact, it is pretty certain that the camp would have been very glad to have had any excuse, even the least bit of an excuse, to do that office for him.
Then the camp was angry with Sandy, too, on general principles. He had betrayed them into a sort of idol-worship under a mistake. He had lured it into the expression of an enthusiasm quite out of keeping with the dignity of a rough and hardy race of men, and it did not like it.
"The great big idiot!" said the camp. "Didn't he know any better? Don't he know any better now than to go on in this way half-tickled to death, thinking himself the happiest and the most blest of men?" The camp was ashamed of him.
The little Judge, finding things going against the first family of the Forks, felt also that he in some way was concerned, and felt called upon to explain. This was his theory and explanation.
"The Widow was a widow?"
"Yes."
"The Legislature met at San José on the first day of September?"
"Yes."
"The Legislature granted that first session enough divorces to fill a book?"
"Well?"
"This young woman, this Widow, might 'a bin married; she might 'a bin on her way to the mountains; she might 'a stopped in there and got her divorce, one day on her way up; she might 'a come right on here and got coaxed into marrying Sandy."
"Rather quick work, wouldn't it be, Judge?"
"Well, considering the climate of Californy, I think not." And the little man pushed out his legs under the card-table, puffed out his little red cheeks, leaned back, and felt perfectly certain that he had made a great point, while the wise men of the camp sat there more confused than before.
However, as the days went by men went on with their work in their mines down in the boiling, foaming, full little streams, now over-flowing from the snows that melted in the warm Spring sun, and said but little more on the subject. It was certain that they were very doubtful, for they only shook their heads as a rule when the subject was mentioned now in the great center. That was a bad sign, and very hard evidence of displeasure with their patron saint of the Autumn and the long weary Winter.
The Widow must have known all this. Not that Sandy had said a word further than she had almost forced him to speak; not that she had yet ventured down into the Forks, or that Bunker Hill had breathed a word about it, but I fancy that women know these things by instinct. They somehow have a singularly clear way of coming upon such things.
Day after day she read Sandy's face as he came up from his mine, dripping with the yellow water spurted from the sluice all over his broad slouch hat, long brown beard, and stiff duck breeches; she read it eagerly as one reads the papers after a battle, and read it truly as if it had been a broadsheet in print, and found herself in disfavor with the camp.
Then she began to think if Sandy was thinking of his promise; if he had remembered, and still remembered the time when in her great agony he promised, though all the world turned against her and cried "shame!" he would not upbraid her.
She wondered if he ever wished he had gone when she commanded him and implored him to go, and she began to read his face for the truth. She read, read him all through, page after page, chapter after chapter. She found there was not a doubt in all the realm of his soul, and her face took on again a little of its gladness. Yet the touch of tenderness deepened, the old sadness had settled back again, and this time to remain.
The still blue skies of California were bending over the camp. Not a cloud sailed east or west, or hovered about the snow-peaks. It was full Summer-time in the Sierras before it was yet mid-Spring, and men began to pour over the mountains across the settled and solid banks of snow. Birds flew low and idly about the cabins, and sang as the men went on with their work down in the foaming, muddy little rivers, and all the world seemed glad and strong with life and hope.
Still the Widow was glad no more, and men began to notice that Sandy did not come to town at all. It was even observed that he had found a cut-off across the spur of the hill, by which he went and came to and from his mining claim without once setting foot in the Howling Wilderness, or even the Forks.
Limber Tim, too, seemed sad and sorely troubled. Sunshine and singing birds do not always bring delight to all. There is nothing so sad as sadness at such a time.
Limber Tim no longer wrestled with saplings or picket-fences, or even his limber legs. He had other and graver matters on hand. The birds were building their nests all about him, and he too wanted to gather moss.
At last the boy-man was happy. At least, he came one night very late to "Sandy's," as the Widow's home was now called, and standing outside of the house and backing up against the fence, and sticking his hands in behind him, and twisting his left leg around the right, he called out to Sandy in a voice that was wild and uncertain as a wind that is lost in the trees.
Sandy laid it down tenderly, covered it up, and watching it a minute and making sure that it was sound asleep and well, went out. Limber Tim was writhing and twisting more than ever before. Sandy was glad, for he now knew that he was perfectly well, and that he had got the great matter settled, and that in a way perfectly satisfactory to himself.
And yet the two men were terribly embarrassed. What made the embarrassment very much the worse was the fact that they were at least half-a-mile from the nearest saloon. Fortunately it was very dark for a Californian night, and the men could look each other in the face without seeing each other.
There was a long and painful silence. Limber Tim wrestled with his right leg with all his might, and would have thrown it time and again, but from the fact that his two arms were thrust in behind and wound through the palings, so that it was impossible for him to fall.
His mouth was open and his tongue was out, but he could not talk. At last Sandy broke the prolonged and profound silence.
"Win her, Limber?"
"Won her, Sandy."
"Bully for Limber Tim!"
Then there was another painful silence, and Limber Tim twisted a paling off the fence with his arms, and kicked half the bark off his right shin with his left boot-heel.
"Sandy?"
"Limber."
Then Limber Tim reached out his tongue and spun it about as if it had been a fish-line, and he was fishing in the darkness for words. At last he jerked back as if he had got a bite, jerked and jerked as if his throat was full of fish-hooks, and jerked till he jerked himself loose from the fence; and poising on his heel before falling back into the darkness, and twisting himself down the hill, said this:
"Git the Judge, Sandy. Fetch her home to-morrow. Spliced to-morrow. Sandy, git the Judge to-morrow!"
And "to-morrow" kept coming up the hill and out of the darkness till the nervous man was half way to the Howling Wilderness.
The Judge was there, a cooler man now, even though it was midsummer. His shirt was open till his black hairy breast showed through as if it had been a naked bear-skin.
The Forks came in force to its second wedding, but the Forks, too, was cooler, and had put aside to some extent its faith and its folly. And yet it liked Bunker Hill ever so much. Bunker Hill, said the Forks, had not been the best of women in days gone by, but Bunker Hill had never deceived.
She stood alone there that day, the day of all days to any woman in the world, and the boys did not like it at all.
Why had she not asked the Widow to be by her side? Surely she had stood by the Widow in the day of trouble; why was not the Widow there? And then they thought about it a little while, and saw how impossible it was for poor deformed little Bunker Hill to dare to ask the Widow to come and stand with her at her wedding.
The woman who stood there, about to be made the head of the second family in the Forks, had nursed the Widow back to life and health, had seen all the time the line that lay between them, and had not taken a single step to cross it. When her task was finished she had gone back to her home. She carried with her the memory and the recollection of a duty well performed, and felt that it was enough. She had not seen the Widow any more.
The Judge stood there with the Declaration of Independence, the Statutes of California, and the marriage ceremony, all under his arm, and ready to do his office. The sun was pouring down in the open streets. Little Bunker Hill felt hardly, somehow, that she had a right to be married out in the open day, in the fresh, sweet air, and under the trees; and Limber Tim preferred to be married where his partner had been married, and so it was that they had met in the Howling Wilderness as before. All was silence now, all were waiting for the Judge to begin. Up in the loft the mice nibbled away at their endless rations of old boots, and a big red-headed woodpecker pounded away on the wall back by the chimney without.
There was a commotion at the door. Then there was a murmur of admiration and applause.
The men gave way, they pushed and pushed each other back as if they had been pushing cotton bales, they opened a line, and down that line a beautiful woman with her eyes to the ground and a baby in her arms moved on till she came and stood by the side of the little hunch-back, still silent, and looking with the old look of sad, sweet tranquility upon the ground.
It was really too much for the little man, who had opened his bosom, and who all the time had stood there with his books under his arm, perfectly cool, and perfect master of the situation. Now he was all of a heap. He had been acting with a sort of condescension toward the two half-children who had come before him that day, and had even prepared a sort of patronizing, half-missionary, half-reformatory sermon, but now, and all suddenly, he was utterly overthrown. He began to perspire and choke on the spot.
The silence was painful. The woodpecker pounded as if he would knock the house down, and the mice rasped at their old boots and rattled away like men sawing wood.
The Judge began to hear himself breathe. In this moment of crisis he caught a book from his side and proceeded to read. He read from "An Act to amend an Act entitled an Act for the improvement of the breed of sheep in the State of California." Back in the saloon there were men who began to giggle. These were some men not from Missouri. They were of the hatchet-faced order, men who spoke through their noses, "idecated men," the camp called them, and men that, above all others, had put the little Judge in terror.
When he heard the men laugh, then he knew he had opened his book at the wrong place, and his face grew red as fire. He could not see to read to the end, nor could he now be heard. He suddenly closed the book and said, "Then by virtue of the authority in me vested, and under the laws of the State of California in such cases made and provided, I pronounce you man and wife."
Then the little Judge came up, shook them both by the hand, and his voice was suddenly clear as a bell, and he felt that he could now go on and speak by the hour.
The Widow bowed down above her baby and kissed the new-made bride silently and tenderly as if she had been her sister, and then with the same sweet, half sad smile she turned to the door, her face still to the ground, and covering up the little sleeper in her arms and looking neither right nor left, went back alone to her cabin.
The dark day was over. At the play, whenever you see the whole force of the company come forward and stand in a row, and assume the most striking and imposing attitudes, and hear the fiddlers play and the brass trumpets bray as never before, then you may be very sure the tragedy is about over. So it goes in life.
The crowd had melted away a bit because it was very warm, and then the men were getting noisy enough, for this was the day on which every true American was expected to get drunk. It was a sort of Fourth of July.
The old question was being again raised. The bride was standing there in the midst of the men, a true good woman, a woman who had sinned, yet a woman who had suffered. One who had fallen was she, yet one who had resisted more than many a woman who would have cast a stone at her. She was very glad, and not a man but was glad to see it.
"That baby! It is an angel, and its mother's name is Madonna. That little bit of a brat! Why, I seed it first, first of any body, and it wasn't bigger than a pound of soap after a whole day's washing. Make a fuss about that little thing! A man who would make a fuss about a baby no bigger than that, no matter when it was born, is a fool!"
"Bully for Bunk—for—for Missis Tim! Bully for Missis Tim!" and the men shouted, and Mrs. Tim blushed from sheer joy.
The Gopher cheered perhaps more lustily than any one, for he admired the Widow, and knew her love and worth. The Gopher, it is true, was in disgrace, for the story went that the young man, his partner, who was the first to be buried in the Forks, had fallen by his hand. The blow had been struck in a crowd, it was said, and no one saw it, or at least no one cared to tell of it if he did, and so the Gopher had been left alone, and he had left men alone, and lived all the time by himself in a sort of cave, and that is why he was called the Gopher. Strange stories were told of this Gopher, too, and men who pretended to know said his cave was lined with gold.
"That baby!" began the Gopher, lifting up his doubled fist, and bringing it down now and then by way of emphasis. "That baby! Look here! Here's one baby among a thousand men. Here's a thousand men asking if it's got a father. Now does that little baby want a father? I've got a cave full of gold and I'll be its father! I'll be its brother and uncle and aunt and mother!" The Gopher thundered his fist down on the bar as he concluded, and the glasses there jumped up and clinked together, and bowed to each other, as if they had been dancers about to begin a cotillion.
The woodpecker flew away, and the mice were heard no more that day, for the men shouted their approval till they were hoarse-voiced as mules.
Deboon had been sitting there all the time, half doubled over a bench. He perhaps was thinking of the first wedding, for he kept looking straight across the room to the pine-logs on the other side, and then he seemed to fix his eyes on some object there, and to fall to thinking very generally. At last he began to count on his fingers. Then suddenly he fairly laughed with delight. He sprang up, stepped across the room, put his finger on the spot where Limber Tim had stood scrawling with his big pencil the day he was so embarrassed at Sandy's wedding, and shouted out—
"Look here! There it is. That's the date. That's the day they was married—September eighteen hundred and fifty!"
"Just eight months!" roared a man in the crowd.
"Eight months! Ten of 'em!" and he fell to counting on his fingers, as he turned to the crowd and continued right on up to July, with perfect confidence.
The camp roared, and shouted, and danced, as never before. Why had it been so stupid as not to set this thing right from the first? It was the most penitent community that had ever been. The Widow was once more its patron saint.
The Gopher stood up by the wall.
"Are you all satisfied now?"
Satisfied! They would never doubt any woman any more as long as they lived.
He took his bowie-knife while the crowd turned to take a drink, and cut the date from the wall; and the only record, perhaps, of the first marriage in the Sierras was no more.
The sharp-nosed man, one of those miserable men who never are satisfied unless they are either miserable or making some one else so, came up to the wall out of the crowd and began to look on the wall for the date, as if he thought there might have been some mistake, and he wanted to count it all over again.
This man began to count on his fingers and to look along on the wall. Suddenly there was a something gleaming in his face like a flash of lightning.
It was the Gopher's bowie-knife. It was within two inches of his throat.
"Are you satisfied, my friend?" smiled the Gopher, with a smile that meant brimstone.
"Perfectly satisfied," said the wretch in return, and at the same time he bowed and backed as fast as he could till he came to the door, and then he was seen no more.
"Be it really all on the square, Judge?" asked Citizen Tim one day, timidly and in confidence.
"Right?—didn't I marry 'em?"
"But it warn't twelve months."
"Twelve months! don't care ef it warn't six months. I married 'em, and I married 'em good and fast, and that's the end of it."
Public opinion flows and ebbs like the tide of the sea. At one time this little camp was unanimous in the opinion that the mysterious little woman could be none other than Nancy Williams, and it would talk of little else. Then it would tire of this subject, change its opinion, and let the matter drop for months together.