The string of Peggy's sunbonnet had become untied—so had her right shoe. These were not unusual accidents to a country girl of ten, but as both of her hands were full she felt obliged to put down what she was carrying. This was further complicated by the nature of her burden—a half-fledged shrike and a baby gopher—picked up in her walk. It was impossible to wrap them both in her apron without serious peril to one or the other; she could not put either down without the chance of its escaping. “It's like that dreadful riddle of the ferryman who had to take the wolf and the sheep in his boat,” said Peggy to herself, “though I don't believe anybody was ever so silly as to want to take a wolf across the river.” But, looking up, she beheld the approach of Sam Bedell, a six-foot tunnelman of the “Blue Cement Lead,” and, hailing him, begged him to hold one of her captives. The giant, loathing the little mouse-like ball of fur, chose the shrike. “Hold him by the feet, for he bites AWFUL,” said Peggy, as the bird regarded Sam with the diabolically intense frown of his species. Then, dropping the gopher unconcernedly in her pocket, she proceeded to rearrange her toilet. The tunnelman waited patiently until Peggy had secured the nankeen sunbonnet around her fresh but freckled cheeks, and, with a reckless display of yellow flannel petticoat and stockings like peppermint sticks, had double-knotted her shoestrings viciously when he ventured to speak.
“Same old game, Peggy? Thought you'd got rather discouraged with your 'happy family,' arter that new owl o' yours had gathered 'em in.”
Peggy's cheek flushed slightly at this ungracious allusion to a former collection of hers, which had totally disappeared one evening after the introduction of a new member in the shape of a singularly venerable and peaceful-looking horned owl.
“I could have tamed HIM, too,” said Peggy indignantly, “if Ned Myers, who gave him to me, hadn't been training him to ketch things, and never let on anything about it to me. He was a reg'lar game owl!”
“And wot are ye goin' to do with the Colonel here?” said Sam, indicating under that gallant title the infant shrike, who, with his claws deeply imbedded in Sam's finger, was squatting like a malignant hunchback, and resisting his transfer to Peggy. “Won't HE make it rather lively for the others? He looks pow'ful discontented for one so young.”
“That's his nater,” said Peggy promptly. “Jess wait till I tame him. Ef he'd been left along o' his folks, he'd grow up like 'em. He's a 'butcher bird'—wot they call a 'nine-killer '—kills nine birds a day! Yes! True ez you live! Sticks 'em up on thorns outside his nest, jest like a butcher's shop, till he gets hungry. I've seen 'em!”
“And how do you kalkilate to tame him?” asked Sam.
“By being good to him and lovin' him,” said Peggy, stroking the head of the bird with infinite gentleness.
“That means YOU'VE got to do all the butchering for him?” said the cynical Sam.
Peggy shook her head, disdaining a verbal reply.
“Ye can't bring him up on sugar and crackers, like a Polly,” persisted Sam.
“Ye ken do anythin' with critters, if you ain't afeerd of 'em and love 'em,” said Peggy shyly.
The tall tunnelman, looking down into the depths of Peggy's sunbonnet, saw something in the round blue eyes and grave little mouth that made him think so too. But here Peggy's serious little face took a shade of darker concern as her arm went down deeper into her pocket, and her eyes got rounder.
“It's—it's—BURRERED OUT!” she said breathlessly.
The giant leaped briskly to one side. “Hol' on,” said Peggy abstractedly. With infinite gravity she followed, with her fingers, a seam of her skirt down to the hem, popped them quickly under it, and produced, with a sigh of relief, the missing gopher.
“You'll do,” said Sam, in fearful admiration. “Mebbe you'll make suthin' out o' the Colonel too. But I never took stock in that there owl. He was too durned self-righteous for a decent bird. Now, run along afore anythin' else fetches loose ag'in. So long!”
He patted the top of her sunbonnet, gave a little pull to the short brown braid that hung behind her temptingly,—which no miner was ever known to resist,—and watched her flutter off with her spoils. He had done so many times before, for the great, foolish heart of the Blue Cement Ridge had gone out to Peggy Baker, the little daughter of the blacksmith, quite early. There were others of the family, notably two elder sisters, invincible at picnics and dances, but Peggy was as necessary to these men as the blue jay that swung before them in the dim woods, the squirrel that whisked across their morning path, or the woodpecker who beat his tattoo at their midday meal from the hollow pine above them. She was part of the nature that kept them young. Her truancies and vagrancies concerned them not: she was a law to herself, like the birds and squirrels. There were bearded lips to hail her wherever she went, and a blue or red-shirted arm always stretched out in any perilous pass or dangerous crossing.
Her peculiar tastes were an outcome of her nature, assisted by her surroundings. Left a good deal to herself in her infancy, she made playfellows of animated nature around her, without much reference to selection or fitness, but always with a fearlessness that was the result of her own observation, and unhampered by tradition or other children's timidity. She had no superstition regarding the venom of toads, the poison of spiders, or the ear-penetrating capacity of earwigs. She had experiences and revelations of her own,—which she kept sacredly to herself, as children do,—and one was in regard to a rattlesnake, partly induced, however, by the indiscreet warning of her elders. She was cautioned NOT to take her bread and milk into the woods, and was told the affecting story of the little girl who was once regularly visited by a snake that partook of HER bread and milk, and who was ultimately found rapping the head of the snake for gorging more than his share, and not “taking a 'poon as me do.” It is needless to say that this incautious caution fired Peggy's adventurous spirit. SHE took a bowlful of milk to the haunt of a “rattler” near her home, but, without making the pretense of sharing it, generously left the whole to the reptile. After repeating this hospitality for three or four days, she was amazed one morning on returning to the house to find the snake—an elderly one with a dozen rattles—devotedly following her. Alarmed, not for her own safety nor that of her family, but for the existence of her grateful friend in danger of the blacksmith's hammer, she took a circuitous route leading it away. Then recalling a bit of woodland lore once communicated to her by a charcoal-burner, she broke a spray of the white ash, and laid it before her in the track of the rattlesnake. He stopped instantly, and remained motionless without crossing the slight barrier. She repeated this experiment on later occasions, until the reptile understood her. She kept the experience to herself, but one day it was witnessed by a tunnelman. On that day Peggy's reputation was made!
From this time henceforth the major part of Blue Cement Ridge became serious collectors for what was known as “Peggy's menagerie,” and two of the tunnelmen constructed a stockaded inclosure—not half a mile from the blacksmith's cabin, but unknown to him—for the reception of specimens. For a long time its existence was kept a secret between Peggy and her loyal friends. Her parents, aware of her eccentric tastes only through the introduction of such smaller creatures as lizards, toads, and tarantulas into their house,—which usually escaped from their tin cans and boxes and sought refuge in the family slippers,—had frowned upon her zoological studies. Her mother found that her woodland rambles entailed an extraordinary wear and tear of her clothing. A pinafore reduced to ribbons by a young fox, and a straw hat half swallowed by a mountain kid, did not seem to be a natural incident to an ordinary walk to the schoolhouse. Her sisters thought her tastes “low,” and her familiar association with the miners inconsistent with their own dignity. But Peggy went regularly to school, was a fair scholar in elementary studies (what she knew of natural history, in fact, quite startled her teachers), and being also a teachable child, was allowed some latitude. As for Peggy herself, she kept her own faith unshaken; her little creed, whose shibboleth was not “to be afraid” of God's creatures, but to “love 'em,” sustained her through reprimand, torn clothing, and, it is to be feared, occasional bites and scratches from the loved ones themselves.
The unsuspected contiguity of the “menagerie” to the house had its drawbacks, and once nearly exposed her. A mountain wolf cub, brought especially for her from the higher northern Sierras with great trouble and expense by Jack Ryder, of the Lone Star Lead, unfortunately escaped from the menagerie just as the child seemed to be in a fair way of taming it. Yet it had been already familiarized enough with civilization to induce it to stop in its flight and curiously examine the blacksmith's shop. A shout from the blacksmith and a hurled hammer sent it flying again, with Mr. Baker and his assistant in full pursuit. But it quickly distanced them with its long, tireless gallop, and they were obliged to return to the forge, lost in wonder and conjecture. For the blacksmith had recognized it as a stranger to the locality, and as a man of oracular pretension had a startling theory to account for its presence. This he confided to the editor of the local paper, and the next issue contained an editorial paragraph: “Our presage of a severe winter in the higher Sierras, and consequent spring floods in the valleys, has been startlingly confirmed! Mountain wolves have been seen in Blue Cement Ridge, and our esteemed fellow citizen, Mr. Ephraim Baker, yesterday encountered a half-starved cub entering his premises in search of food. Mr. Baker is of the opinion that the mother of the cub, driven down by stress of weather, was in the immediate vicinity.” Nothing but the distress of the only responsible mother of the cub, Peggy, and loyalty to her, kept Jack Ryder from exposing the absurdity publicly, but for weeks the camp fires of Blue Cement Ridge shook with the suppressed and unhallowed joy of the miners, who were in the guilty secret.
But, fortunately for Peggy, the most favored of her cherished possessions was not obliged to be kept secret. That one exception was an Indian dog! This was also a gift, and had been procured with great “difficulty” by a “packer” from an Indian encampment on the Oregon frontier. The “difficulty” was, in plain English, that it had been stolen from the Indians at some peril to the stealer's scalp. It was a mongrel to all appearances, of no recognized breed or outward significance, yet of a quality distinctly its own. It was absolutely and totally uncivilized. Whether this was a hereditary trait, or the result of degeneracy, no one knew. It refused to enter a house; it would not stay in a kennel. It would not eat in public, but gorged ravenously and stealthily in the shadows. It had the slink of a tramp, and in its patched and mottled hide seemed to simulate the rags of a beggar. It had the tirelessness without the affected limp of a coyote. Yet it had none of the ferocity of barbarians. With teeth that could gnaw through the stoutest rope and toughest lariat, it never bared them in anger. It was cringing without being amiable or submissive; it was gentle without being affectionate.
Yet almost insensibly it began to yield to Peggy's faith and kindness. Gradually it seemed to single her out as the one being in this vast white-faced and fully clothed community that it could trust. It presently allowed her to half drag, half lead it to and fro from school, although on the approach of a stranger it would bite through the rope or frantically endeavor to efface itself in Peggy's petticoats. It was trying, even to the child's sweet gravity, to face the ridicule excited by its appearance on the road; and its habit of carrying its tail between its legs—at such an inflexible curve that, on the authority of Sam Bedell, a misstep caused it to “turn a back somersault”—was painfully disconcerting. But Peggy endured this, as she did the greater dangers of the High Street in the settlement, where she had often, at her own risk, absolutely to drag the dazed and bewildered creature from under the wheels of carts and the heels of horses. But this shyness wore off—or rather was eventually lost in the dog's complete and utter absorption in Peggy. His limited intelligence and imperfect perceptions were excited for her alone. His singularly keen scent detected her wherever or how remote she might be. Her passage along a “blind trail,” her deviations from the school path, her more distant excursions, were all mysteriously known to him. It seemed as if his senses were concentrated in this one faculty. No matter how unexpected or unfamiliar the itinerary, “Lo, the poor Indian”—as the men had nicknamed him (in possible allusion to his “untutored mind”)—always arrived promptly and silently.
It was to this singular faculty that Peggy owed one of her strangest experiences. One Saturday afternoon she was returning from an errand to the village when she was startled by the appearance of Lo in her path. For the reason already given, she no longer took him with her to these active haunts of civilization, but had taught him on such occasions to remain as a guard outside the stockade which contained her treasures. After reading him a severe lecture on this flagrant abandonment of his trust, enforced with great seriousness and an admonitory forefinger, she was concerned to see that the animal appeared less agitated by her reproof than by some other disturbance. He ran ahead of her, instead of at her heels, as was his usual custom, and barked—a thing he rarely did. Presently she thought she discovered the cause of this in the appearance from the wood of a dozen men armed with guns. They seemed to be strangers, but among them she recognized the deputy sheriff of the settlement. The leader noticed her, and, after a word or two with the others, the deputy approached her.
“You and Lo had better be scooting home by the highroad, outer this—or ye might get hurt,” he said, half playfully, half seriously.
Peggy looked fearlessly at the men and their guns.
“Look ez ef you was huntin'?” she said curiously.
“We are!” said the leader.
“Wot you huntin'?”
The deputy glanced at the others. “B'ar!” he replied.
“Ba'r!” repeated the child with the quick resentment which a palpable falsehood always provoked in her. “There ain't no b'ar in ten miles! See yourself huntin' b'ar! Ho!”
The man laughed. “Never you mind, missy,” said the deputy, “you trot along!” He laid his hand very gently on her head, faced her sunbonnet towards the near highway, gave the usual parting pull to her brown pigtail, added, “Make a bee-line home,” and turned away.
Lo uttered the first growl known in his history. Whereat Peggy said, with lofty forbearance, “Serve you jest right ef I set my dog on you.”
But force is no argument, and Peggy felt this truth even of herself and Lo. So she trotted away. Nevertheless, Lo showed signs of hesitation. After a few moments Peggy herself hesitated and looked back. The men had spread out under the trees, and were already lost in the woods. But there was more than one trail through it, and Peggy knew it.
And here an alarming occurrence startled her. A curiously striped brown and white squirrel whisked past her and ran up a tree. Peggy's round eyes became rounder. There was but one squirrel of that kind in all the length and breadth of Blue Cement Ridge, and that was in the menagerie! Even as she looked it vanished. Peggy faced about and ran back to the road in the direction of the stockade, Lo bounding before her. But another surprise awaited her. There was the clutter of short wings under the branches, and the sunlight flashed upon the iris throat of a wood-duck as it swung out of sight past her. But in this single glance Peggy recognized one of the latest and most precious of her acquisitions. There was no mistake now! With a despairing little cry to Lo, “The menagerie's broke loose!” she ran like the wind towards it. She cared no longer for the mandate of the men; the trail she had taken was out of their sight; they were proceeding so slowly and cautiously that she and Lo quickly distanced them in the same direction. She would have yet time to reach the stockade and secure what was left of her treasures before they came up and drove her away. Yet she had to make a long circuit to avoid the blacksmith's shop and cabin, before she saw the stockade, lifting its four-foot walls around an inclosure a dozen feet square, in the midst of a manzanita thicket. But she could see also broken coops, pens, cages, and boxes lying before it, and stopped once, even in her grief and indignation, to pick up a ruby-throated lizard, one of its late inmates that had stopped in the trail, stiffened to stone at her approach. The next moment she was before the roofless walls, and then stopped, stiffened like the lizard. For out of that peaceful ruin which had once held the wild and untamed vagabonds of earth and sky, arose a type of savagery and barbarism the child had never before looked upon,—the head and shoulders of a hunted, desperate man!
His head was bare, and his hair matted with sweat over his forehead; his face was unshorn, and the black roots of his beard showed against the deadly pallor of his skin, except where it was scratched by thorns, or where the red spots over his cheek bones made his cheeks look as if painted. His eyes were as insanely bright, he panted as quickly, he showed his white teeth as perpetually, his movements were as convulsive, as those captured animals she had known. Yet he did not attempt to fly, and it was only when, with a sudden effort and groan of pain, he half lifted himself above the stockade, that she saw that his leg, bandaged with his cravat and handkerchief, stained a dull red, dragged helplessly beneath him. He stared at her vacantly for a moment, and then looked hurriedly into the wood behind her.
The child was more interested than frightened, and more curious than either. She had grasped the situation at a glance. It was the hunted and the hunters. Suddenly he started and reached for his rifle, which he had apparently set down outside when he climbed into the stockade. He had just caught sight of a figure emerging from the wood at a distance. But the weapon was out of his reach.
“Hand me that gun!” he said roughly.
But Peggy did not stir. The figure came more plainly and quite unconsciously into full view, an easy shot at that distance.
The man uttered a horrible curse, and turned a threatening face on the child. But Peggy had seen something like that in animals SHE had captured. She only said gravely,—
“Ef you shoot that gun you'll bring 'em all down on you!”
“All?” he demanded.
“Yes! a dozen folks with guns like yours,” said Peggy. “You jest crouch down and lie low. Don't move! Watch me.”
The man dropped below the stockade. Peggy ran swiftly towards the unsuspecting figure, evidently the leader of the party, but deviated slightly to snatch a tiny spray from a white-ash tree. She never knew that in that brief interval the wounded man, after a supreme effort, had possessed himself of his weapon, and for a moment had covered HER with its deadly muzzle. She ran on fearlessly until she saw that she had attracted the attention of the leader, when she stopped and began to wave the white-ash wand before her. The leader halted, conferred with some one behind him, who proved to be the deputy sheriff. Stepping out he advanced towards Peggy, and called sharply,
“I told you to get out of this! Come, be quick!”
“You'd better get out yourself,” said Peggy, waving her ash spray, “and quicker, too.”
The deputy stopped, staring at the spray. “Wot's up?”
“Rattlers.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere round ye—a reg'lar nest of 'em! That's your way round!” She pointed to the right, and again began beating the underbrush with her wand. The men had, meantime, huddled together in consultation. It was evident that the story of Peggy and her influence on rattlesnakes was well known, and, in all probability, exaggerated. After a pause, the whole party filed off to the right, making a long circuit of the unseen stockade, and were presently lost in the distance. Peggy ran back to the fugitive. The fire of savagery and desperation in his eyes had gone out, but had been succeeded by a glazing film of faintness.
“Can you—get me—some water?” he whispered.
The stockade was near a spring,—a necessity for the menagerie. Peggy brought him water in a dipper. She sighed a little; her “butcher bird”—now lost forever—had been the last to drink from it!
The water seemed to revive him. “The rattlesnakes scared the cowards,” he said, with an attempt to smile. “Were there many rattlers?”
“There wasn't ANY,” said Peggy, a little spitefully, “'cept YOU—a two-legged rattler!”
The rascal grinned at the compliment.
“ONE-legged, you mean,” he said, indicating his helpless limb.
Peggy's heart relented slightly. “Wot you goin' to do now?” she said. “You can't stay on THERE, you know. It b'longs to ME!” She was generous, but practical.
“Were those things I fired out yours?”
“Yes.”
“Mighty rough of me.”
Peggy was slightly softened. “Kin you walk?”
“No.”
“Kin you crawl?”
“Not as far as a rattler.”
“Ez far ez that clearin'?”
“Yes.”
“There's a hoss tethered out in that clearin'. I kin shift him to this end.”
“You're white all through,” said the man gravely.
Peggy ran off to the clearing. The horse belonged to Sam Bedell, but he had given Peggy permission to ride it whenever she wished. This was equivalent, in Peggy's mind, to a permission to PLACE him where she wished. She consequently led him to a point nearest the stockade, and, thoughtfully, close beside a stump. But this took some time, and when she arrived she found the fugitive already there, very thin and weak, but still smiling.
“Ye kin turn him loose when you get through with him; he'll find his way back,” said Peggy. “Now I must go.”
Without again looking at the man, she ran back to the stockade. Then she paused until she heard the sound of hoofs crossing the highway in the opposite direction from which the pursuers had crossed, and knew that the fugitive had got away. Then she took the astonished and still motionless lizard from her pocket, and proceeded to restore the broken coops and cages to the empty stockade.
But she never reconstructed her menagerie nor renewed her collection. People said she had tired of her whim, and that really she was getting too old for such things. Perhaps she was. But she never got old enough to reveal her story of the last wild animal she had tamed by kindness. Nor was she quite sure of it herself, until a few years afterwards on Commencement Day at a boarding-school at San Jose, when they pointed out to her one of the most respectable trustees. But they said he was once a gambler, who had shot a man with whom he had quarreled, and was nearly caught and lynched by a Vigilance Committee.
When the two isolated mining companies encamped on Sycamore Creek discovered on the same day the great “Excelsior Lead,” they met around a neutral camp fire with that grave and almost troubled demeanor which distinguished the successful prospector in those days. Perhaps the term “prospectors” could hardly be used for men who had labored patiently and light-heartedly in the one spot for over three years to gain a daily yield from the soil which gave them barely the necessaries of life. Perhaps this was why, now that their reward was beyond their most sanguine hopes, they mingled with this characteristic gravity an ambition and resolve peculiarly their own. Unlike most successful miners, they had no idea of simply realizing their wealth and departing to invest or spend it elsewhere, as was the common custom. On the contrary, that night they formed a high resolve to stand or fall by their claims, to develop the resources of the locality, to build up a town, and to devote themselves to its growth and welfare. And to this purpose they bound themselves that night by a solemn and legal compact.
Many circumstances lent themselves to so original a determination. The locality was healthful, picturesque, and fertile. Sycamore Creek, a considerable tributary of the Sacramento, furnished them a generous water supply at all seasons; its banks were well wooded and interspersed with undulating meadow land. Its distance from stage-coach communication—nine miles—could easily be abridged by a wagon road over a practically level country. Indeed, all the conditions for a thriving settlement were already there. It was natural, therefore, that the most sanguine anticipations were indulged by the more youthful of the twenty members of this sacred compact. The sites of a hotel, a bank, the express company's office, stage office, and court-house, with other necessary buildings, were all mapped out and supplemented by a theatre, a public park, and a terrace along the river bank! It was only when Clinton Grey, an intelligent but youthful member, on offering a plan of the town with five avenues eighty feet wide, radiating from a central plaza and the court-house, explained that “it could be commanded by artillery in case of an armed attack upon the building,” that it was felt that a line must be drawn in anticipatory suggestion. Nevertheless, although their determination was unabated, at the end of six months little had been done beyond the building of a wagon road and the importation of new machinery for the working of the lead. The peculiarity of their design debarred any tentative or temporary efforts; they wished the whole settlement to spring up in equal perfection, so that the first stage-coach over the new road could arrive upon the completed town. “We don't want to show up in a 'b'iled shirt' and a plug hat, and our trousers stuck in our boots,” said a figurative speaker. Nevertheless, practical necessity compelled them to build the hotel first for their own occupation, pending the erection of their private dwellings on allotted sites. The hotel, a really elaborate structure for the locality and period, was a marvel to the workmen and casual teamsters. It was luxuriously fitted and furnished. Yet it was in connection with this outlay that the event occurred which had a singular effect upon the fancy of the members.
Washington Trigg, a Western member, who had brought up the architect and builder from San Francisco, had returned in a state of excitement. He had seen at an art exhibition in that city a small replica of a famous statue of California, and, without consulting his fellow members, had ordered a larger copy for the new settlement. He, however, made up for his precipitancy by an extravagant description of his purchase, which impressed even the most cautious. “It's the figger of a mighty pretty girl, in them spirit clothes they allus wear, holding a divinin' rod for findin' gold afore her in one hand; all the while she's hidin' behind her, in the other hand, a branch o' thorns out of sight. The idea bein'—don't you see?—that blamed old 'forty-niners like us, or ordinary greenhorns, ain't allowed to see the difficulties they've got to go through before reaching a strike. Mighty cute, ain't it? It's to be made life-size,—that is, about the size of a girl of that kind, don't you see?” he explained somewhat vaguely, “and will look powerful fetchin' standin' onto a pedestal in the hall of the hotel.” In reply to some further cautious inquiry as to the exact details of the raiment and of any possible shock to the modesty of lady guests at the hotel, he replied confidently, “Oh, THAT'S all right! It's the regulation uniform of goddesses and angels,—sorter as if they'd caught up a sheet or a cloud to fling round 'em before coming into this world afore folks; and being an allegory, so to speak, it ain't as if it was me or you prospectin' in high water. And, being of bronze, it”—
“Looks like a squaw, eh?” interrupted a critic, “or a cursed Chinaman?”
“And if it's of metal, it will weigh a ton! How are we going to get it up here?” said another.
But here Mr. Trigg was on sure ground. “I've ordered it cast holler, and, if necessary, in two sections,” he returned triumphantly. “A child could tote it round and set it up.”
Its arrival was therefore looked forward to with great expectancy when the hotel was finished and occupied by the combined Excelsior companies. It was to come from New York via San Francisco, where, however, there was some delay in its transshipment, and still further delay at Sacramento. It finally reached the settlement over the new wagon road, and was among the first freight carried there by the new express company, and delivered into the new express office. The box—a packing-case, nearly three feet square by five feet long—bore superficial marks of travel and misdirection, inasmuch as the original address was quite obliterated and the outside lid covered with corrected labels. It was carried to a private sitting-room in the hotel, where its beauty was to be first disclosed to the president of the united companies, three of the committee, and the excited and triumphant purchaser. A less favored crowd of members and workmen gathered curiously outside the room. Then the lid was carefully removed, revealing a quantity of shavings and packing paper which still hid the outlines of the goddess. When this was promptly lifted a stare of blank astonishment fixed the faces of the party! It was succeeded by a quick, hysteric laugh, and then a dead silence.
Before them lay a dressmaker's dummy, the wire and padded model on which dresses are fitted and shown. With its armless and headless bust, abruptly ending in a hooped wire skirt, it completely filled the sides of the box.
“Shut the door,” said the president promptly.
The order was obeyed. The single hysteric shriek of laughter had been followed by a deadly, ironical silence. The president, with supernatural gravity, lifted it out and set it up on its small, round, disk-like pedestal.
“It's some cussed fool blunder of that confounded express company,” burst out the unlucky purchaser. But there was no echo to his outburst. He looked around with a timid, tentative smile. But no other smile followed his.
“It looks,” said the president, with portentous gravity, “like the beginnings of a fine woman, that MIGHT show up, if you gave her time, into a first-class goddess. Of course she ain't all here; other boxes with sections of her, I reckon, are under way from her factory, and will meander along in the course of the year. Considerin' this as a sample—I think, gentlemen,” he added, with gloomy precision, “we are prepared to accept it, and signify we'll take more.”
“It ain't, perhaps, exactly the idee that we've been led to expect from previous description,” said Dick Flint, with deeper seriousness; “for instance, this yer branch of thorns we heard of ez bein' held behind her is wantin', as is the arms that held it; but even if they had arrived, anybody could see the thorns through them wires, and so give the hull show away.”
“Jam it into its box again, and we'll send it back to the confounded express company with a cussin' letter,” again thundered the wretched purchaser.
“No, sonny,” said the president with gentle but gloomy determination, “we'll fasten on to this little show jest as it is, and see what follows. It ain't every day that a first-class sell like this is worked off on us ACCIDENTALLY.”
It was quite true! The settlement had long since exhausted every possible form of practical joking, and languished for a new sensation. And here it was! It was not a thing to be treated angrily, nor lightly, nor dismissed with that single hysteric laugh. It was capable of the greatest possibilities! Indeed, as Washington Trigg looked around on the imperturbably ironical faces of his companions, he knew that they felt more true joy over the blunder than they would in the possession of the real statue. But an exclamation from the fifth member, who was examining the box, arrested their attention.
“There's suthin' else here!”
He had found under the heavier wrapping a layer of tissue-paper, and under that a further envelope of linen, lightly stitched together. A knife blade quickly separated the stitches, and the linen was carefully unfolded. It displayed a beautifully trimmed evening dress of pale blue satin, with a dressing-gown of some exquisite white fabric armed with lace. The men gazed at it in silence, and then the one single expression broke from their lips,—
“Her duds!”
“Stop, boys,” said “Clint” Grey, as a movement was made to lift the dress towards the model, “leave that to a man who knows. What's the use of my having left five grown-up sisters in the States if I haven't brought a little experience away with me? This sort of thing ain't to be 'pulled on' like trousers. No, sir!—THIS is the way she's worked.”
With considerable dexterity, unexpected gentleness, and some taste, he shook out the folds of the skirt delicately and lifted it over the dummy, settling it skillfully upon the wire hoops, and drawing the bodice over the padded shoulders. This he then proceeded to fasten with hooks and eyes,—a work of some patience. Forty eager fingers stretched out to assist him, but were waved aside, with a look of pained decorum as he gravely completed his task. Then falling back, he bade the others do the same, and they formed a contemplative semicircle before the figure.
Up to that moment a delighted but unsmiling consciousness of their own absurdities, a keen sense of the humorous possibilities of the original blunder, and a mischievous recognition of the mortification of Trigg—whose only safety now lay in accepting the mistake in the same spirit—had determined these grown-up schoolboys to artfully protract a joke that seemed to be providentially delivered into their hands. But NOW an odd change crept on them. The light from the open window that gave upon the enormous pines and the rolling prospect up to the dim heights of the Sierras fell upon this strange, incongruous, yet perfectly artistic figure. For the dress was the skillful creation of a great Parisian artist, and in its exquisite harmony of color, shape, and material it not only hid the absurd model, but clothed it with an alarming grace and refinement! A queer feeling of awe, of shame, and of unwilling admiration took possession of them. Some of them—from remote Western towns—had never seen the like before; those who HAD had forgotten it in those five years of self-exile, of healthy independence, and of contiguity to Nature in her unaffected simplicity. All had been familiar with the garish, extravagant, and dazzling femininity of the Californian towns and cities, but never had they known anything approaching the ideal grace of this type of exalted, even if artificial, womanhood. And although in the fierce freedom of their little republic they had laughed to scorn such artificiality, a few yards of satin and lace cunningly fashioned, and thrown over a frame of wood and wire, touched them now with a strange sense of its superiority. The better to show its attractions, Clinton Grey had placed the figure near a full-length, gold-framed mirror, beside a marble-topped table. Yet how cheap and tawdry these splendors showed beside this work of art! How cruel was the contrast of their own rough working clothes to this miracle of adornment which that same mirror reflected! And even when Clinton Grey, the enthusiast, looked towards his beloved woods for relief, he could not help thinking of them as a more fitting frame for this strange goddess than this new house into which she had strayed. Their gravity became real; their gibes in some strange way had vanished.
“Must have cost a pile of money,” said one, merely to break an embarrassing silence.
“My sister had a friend who brought over a dress from Paris, not as high-toned as that, that cost five hundred dollars,” said Clinton Grey.
“How much did you say that spirit-clad old rag of yours cost—thorns and all?” said the president, turning sharply on Trigg.
Trigg swallowed this depreciation of his own purchase meekly. “Seven hundred and fifty dollars, without the express charges.”
“That's only two-fifty more,” said the president thoughtfully, “if we call it quits.”
“But,” said Trigg in alarm, “we must send it back.”
“Not much, sonny,” said the president promptly. “We'll hang on to this until we hear where that thorny old chump of yours has fetched up and is actin' her conundrums, and mebbe we can swap even.”
“But how will we explain it to the boys?” queried Trigg. “They're waitin' outside to see it.”
“There WON'T be any explanation,” said the president, in the same tone of voice in which he had ordered the door shut. “We'll just say that the statue hasn't come, which is the frozen truth; and this box only contained some silk curtain decorations we'd ordered, which is only half a lie. And,” still more firmly, “THIS SECRET DOESN'T GO OUT OF THIS ROOM, GENTLEMEN—or I ain't your president! I'm not going to let you give yourselves away to that crowd outside—you hear me? Have you ever allowed your unfettered intellect to consider what they'd say about this,—what a godsend it would be to every man we'd ever had a 'pull' on in this camp? Why, it would last 'em a whole year; we'd never hear the end of it! No, gentlemen! I prefer to live here without shootin' my fellow man, but I can't promise it if they once start this joke agin us!”
There was a swift approval of this sentiment, and the five members shook hands solemnly.
“Now,” said the president, “we'll just fold up that dress again, and put it with the figure in this closet”—he opened a large dressing-chest in the suite of rooms in which they stood—“and we'll each keep a key. We'll retain this room for committee purposes, so that no one need see the closet. See? Now take off the dress! Be careful there! You're not handlin' pay dirt, though it's about as expensive! Steady!”
Yet it was wonderful to see the solicitude and care with which the dress was re-covered and folded in its linen wrapper.
“Hold on,” exclaimed Trigg,—as the dummy was lifted into the chest,—“we haven't tried on the other dress!”
“Yes! yes!” repeated the others eagerly; “there's another!”
“We'll keep that for next committee meeting, gentlemen,” said the president decisively. “Lock her up, Trigg.”
The three following months wrought a wonderful change in Excelsior,—wonderful even in that land of rapid growth and progress. Their organized and matured plans, executed by a full force of workmen from the county town, completed the twenty cottages for the members, the bank, and the town hall. Visitors and intending settlers flocked over the new wagon road to see this new Utopia, whose founders, holding the land and its improvements as a corporate company, exercised the right of dictating the terms on which settlers were admitted. The feminine invasion was not yet potent enough to affect their consideration, either through any refinement or attractiveness, being composed chiefly of the industrious wives and daughters of small traders or temporary artisans. Yet it was found necessary to confide the hotel to the management of Mr. Dexter Marsh, his wife, and one intelligent but somewhat plain daughter, who looked after the accounts. There were occasional lady visitors at the hotel, attracted from the neighboring towns and settlements by its picturesqueness and a vague suggestiveness of its being a watering-place—and there was the occasional flash in the decorous street of a Sacramento or San Francisco gown. It is needless to say that to the five men who held the guilty secret of Committee Room No. 4 it only strengthened their belief in the super-elegance of their hidden treasure. At their last meeting they had fitted the second dress—which turned out to be a vapory summer house-frock or morning wrapper—over the dummy, and opinions were divided as to its equality with the first. However, the same subtle harmony of detail and grace of proportion characterized it.
“And you see,” said Clint Grey, “it's jest the sort o' rig in which a man would be most likely to know her—and not in her war-paint, which would be only now and then.”
Already “SHE” had become an individuality!
“Hush!” said the president. He had turned towards the door, at which some one was knocking lightly.
“Come in.”
The door opened upon Miss Marsh, secretary and hotel assistant. She had a business aspect, and an open letter in her hand, but hesitated at the evident confusion she had occasioned. Two of the gentlemen had absolutely blushed, and the others regarded her with inane smiles or affected seriousness. They all coughed slightly.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, not ungracefully, a slight color coming into her sallow cheek, which, in conjunction with the gold eye-glasses, gave her, at least in the eyes of the impressible Clint, a certain piquancy. “But my father said you were here in committee and I might consult you. I can come again, if you are busy.”
She had addressed the president, partly from his office, his comparatively extreme age—he must have been at least thirty!—and possibly for his extremer good looks. He said hurriedly, “It's just an informal meeting;” and then, more politely, “What can we do for you?”
“We have an application for a suite of rooms next week,” she said, referring to the letter, “and as we shall be rather full, father thought you gentlemen might be willing to take another larger room for your meetings, and give up these, which are part of a suite—and perhaps not exactly suitable”—
“Quite impossible!” “Quite so!” “Really out of the question,” said the members, in a rapid chorus.
The young girl was evidently taken aback at this unanimity of opposition. She stared at them curiously, and then glanced around the room. “We're quite comfortable here,” said the president explanatorily, “and—in fact—it's just what we want.”
“We could give you a closet like that which you could lock up, and a mirror,” she suggested, with the faintest trace of a smile.
“Tell your father, Miss Marsh,” said the president, with dignified politeness, “that while we cannot submit to any change, we fully appreciate his business foresight, and are quite prepared to see that the hotel is properly compensated for our retaining these rooms.” As the young girl withdrew with a puzzled curtsy he closed the door, placed his back against it, and said,—
“What the deuce did she mean by speaking of that closet?”
“Reckon she allowed we kept some fancy drinks in there,” said Trigg; “and calkilated that we wanted the marble stand and mirror to put our glasses on and make it look like a swell private bar, that's all!”
“Humph,” said the president.
Their next meeting, however, was a hurried one, and as the president arrived late, when the door closed smartly behind him he was met by the worried faces of his colleagues.
“Here's a go!” said Trigg excitedly, producing a folded paper. “The game's up, the hull show is busted; that cussed old statue—the reg'lar old hag herself—is on her way here! There's a bill o' lading and the express company's letter, and she'll be trundled down here by express at any moment.”
“Well?” said the president quietly.
“Well!” replied the members aghast. “Do you know what that means?”
“That we must rig her up in the hall on a pedestal, as we reckoned to do,” returned the president coolly.
“But you don't sabe,” said Clinton Grey; “that's all very well as to the hag, but now we must give HER up,” with an adoring glance towards the closet.
“Does the letter say so?”
“No,” said Trigg hesitatingly, “no! But I reckon we can't keep BOTH.”
“Why not?” said the president imperturbably, “if we paid for 'em?”
As the men only stared in reply he condescended to explain.
“Look here! I calculated all these risks after our last meeting. While you boys were just fussin' round, doin' nothing, I wrote to the express company that a box of women's damaged duds had arrived here, while we were looking for our statue; that you chaps were so riled at bein' sold by them that you dumped the whole blamed thing in the creek. But I added, if they'd let me know what the damage was, I'd send 'em a draft to cover it. After a spell of waitin' they said they'd call it square for two hundred dollars, considering our disappointment. And I sent the draft. That's spurred them up to get over our statue, I reckon. And, now that it's coming, it will set us right with the boys.”
“And SHE,” said Clinton Grey again, pointing to the locked chest, “belongs to us?”
“Until we can find some lady guest that will take her with the rooms,” returned the president, a little cynically.
But the arrival of the real statue and its erection in the hotel vestibule created a new sensation. The members of the Excelsior Company were loud in its praises except the executive committee, whose coolness was looked upon by the others as an affectation of superiority. It awakened the criticism and jealousy of the nearest town.
“We hear,” said the “Red Dog Advertiser,” “that the long-promised statue has been put up in that high-toned Hash Dispensary they call a hotel at Excelsior. It represents an emaciated squaw in a scanty blanket gathering roots, and carrying a bit of thorn-bush kindlings behind her. The high-toned, close corporation of Excelsior may consider this a fair allegory of California; WE should say it looks mighty like a prophetic forecast of a hard winter on Sycamore Creek and scarcity of provisions. However, it isn't our funeral, though it's rather depressing to the casual visitor on his way to dinner. For a long time this work of art was missing and supposed to be lost, but by being sternly and persistently rejected at every express office on the route, it was at last taken in at Excelsior.”
There was some criticism nearer home.
“What do you think of it, Miss Marsh?” said the president politely to that active young secretary, as he stood before it in the hall. The young woman adjusted her eye-glasses over her aquiline nose.
“As an idea or a woman, sir?”
“As a woman, madam,” said the president, letting his brown eyes slip for a moment from Miss Marsh's corn-colored crest over her straight but scant figure down to her smart slippers.
“Well, sir, she could wear YOUR boots, and there isn't a corset in Sacramento would go round her.”
“Thank you!” he returned gravely, and moved away. For a moment a wild idea of securing possession of the figure some dark night, and, in company with his fellow-conspirators, of trying those beautiful clothes upon her, passed through his mind, but he dismissed it. And then occurred a strange incident, which startled even his cool, American sanity.
It was a beautiful moonlight night, and he was returning to a bedroom at the hotel which he temporarily occupied during the painting of his house. It was quite late, he having spent the evening with a San Francisco friend after a business conference which assured him of the remarkable prosperity of Excelsior. It was therefore with some human exaltation that he looked around the sleeping settlement which had sprung up under the magic wand of their good fortune. The full moon had idealized their youthful designs with something of their own youthful coloring, graciously softening the garish freshness of paint and plaster, hiding with discreet obscurity the disrupted banks and broken woods at the beginning and end of their broad avenues, paving the rough river terrace with tessellated shadows, and even touching the rapid stream which was the source of their wealth with a Pactolean glitter.
The windows of the hotel before him, darkened within, flashed in the moonbeams like the casements of Aladdin's palace. Mingled with his ambition, to-night, were some softer fancies, rarely indulged by him in his forecast of the future of Excelsior—a dream of some fair partner in his life, after this task was accomplished, yet always of some one moving in a larger world than his youth had known. Rousing the half sleeping porter, he found, however, only the spectral gold-seeker in the vestibule,—the rays of his solitary candle falling upon her divining-rod with a quaint persistency that seemed to point to the stairs he was ascending. When he reached the first landing the rising wind through an open window put out his light, but, although the staircase was in darkness, he could see the long corridor above illuminated by the moonlight throughout its whole length. He had nearly reached it when the slow but unmistakable rustle of a dress in the distance caught his ear. He paused, not only in the interest of delicacy, but with a sudden nervous thrill he could not account for. The rustle came nearer—he could hear the distinct frou-frou of satin; and then, to his bewildered eyes, what seemed to be the figure of the dummy, arrayed in the pale blue evening dress he knew so well, passed gracefully and majestically down the corridor. He could see the shapely folds of the skirt, the symmetry of the bodice, even the harmony of the trimmings. He raised his eyes, half affrightedly, prepared to see the headless shoulders, but they—and what seemed to be a head—were concealed in a floating “cloud” or nubia of some fleecy tissue, as if for protection from the evening air. He remained for an instant motionless, dazed by this apparent motion of an inanimate figure; but as the absurdity of the idea struck him he hurriedly but stealthily ascended the remaining stairs, resolved to follow it. But he was only in time to see it turn into the angle of another corridor, which, when he had reached it, was empty. The figure had vanished!
His first thought was to go to the committee room and examine the locked closet. But the key was in his desk at home, he had no light, and the room was on the other side of the house. Besides, he reflected that even the detection of the figure would involve the exposure of the very secret they had kept intact so long. He sought his bedroom, and went quietly to bed. But not to sleep; a curiosity more potent than any sense of the trespass done him kept him tossing half the night. Who was this woman whom the clothes fitted so well? He reviewed in his mind the guests in the house, but he knew none who could have carried off this masquerade so bravely.
In the morning early he made his way to the committee room, but as he approached was startled to observe two pairs of boots, a man's and a woman's, conjugally placed before its door. Now thoroughly indignant, he hurried to the office, and was confronted by the face of the fair secretary. She colored quickly on seeing him—but the reason was obvious.
“You are coming to scold me, sir! But it is not my fault. We were full yesterday afternoon when your friend from San Francisco came here with his wife. We told him those were YOUR rooms, but he said he would make it right with you—and my father thought you would not be displeased for once. Everything of yours was put into another room, and the closet remains locked as you left it.”
Amazed and bewildered, the president could only mutter a vague apology and turn away. Had his friend's wife opened the door with another key in some fit of curiosity and disported herself in those clothes? If so, she DARE not speak of her discovery.
An introduction to the lady at breakfast dispelled this faint hope. She was a plump woman, whose generous proportions could hardly have been confined in that pale blue bodice; she was frank and communicative, with no suggestion of mischievous concealment.
Nevertheless, he made a firm resolution. As soon as his friends left he called a meeting of the committee. He briefly informed them of the accidental occupation of the room, but for certain reasons of his own said nothing of his ghostly experience. But he put it to them plainly that no more risks must be run, and that he should remove the dresses and dummy to his own house. To his considerable surprise this suggestion was received with grave approval and a certain strange relief.
“We kinder thought of suggesting it to you before,” said Mr. Trigg slowly, “and that mebbe we've played this little game long enough—for suthin's happened that's makin' it anything but funny. We'd have told you before, but we dassent! Speak out, Clint, and tell the president what we saw the other night, and don't mince matters.”
The president glanced quickly and warningly around him. “I thought,” he said sternly, “that we'd dropped all fooling. It's no time for practical joking now!”
“Honest Injun—it's gospel truth! Speak up, Clint!”
The president looked on the serious faces around him, and was himself slightly awed.
“It's a matter of two or three nights ago,” said Grey slowly, “that Trigg and I were passing through Sycamore Woods, just below the hotel. It was after twelve—bright moonlight, so that we could see everything as plain as day, and we were dead sober. Just as we passed under the sycamores Trigg grabs my arm, and says, 'Hi!' I looked up, and there, not ten yards away, standing dead in the moonlight, was that dummy! She was all in white—that dress with the fairy frills, you know—and had, what's more, A HEAD! At least, something white all wrapped around it, and over her shoulders. At first we thought you or some of the boys had dressed her up and lifted her out there for a joke, and left her to frighten us! So we started forward, and then—it's the gospel truth!—she MOVED AWAY, gliding like the moonbeams, and vanished among the trees!”
“Did you see her face?” asked the president.
“No; you bet! I didn't try to—it would have haunted me forever.”
“What do you mean?”
“This—I mean it was that GIRL THE BOX BELONGED TO! She's dead somewhere—as you'll find out sooner or later—AND HAS COME BACK FOR HER CLOTHES! I've often heard of such things before.”
Despite his coolness, at this corroboration of his own experience, and impressed by Grey's unmistakable awe, a thrill went through the president. For an instant he was silent.
“That will do, boys,” he said finally. “It's a queer story; but remember, it's all the more reason now for our keeping our secret. As for those things, I'll remove them quietly and at once.”
But he did not.
On the contrary, prolonging his stay at the hotel with plausible reasons, he managed to frequently visit the committee room or its vicinity, at different and unsuspected hours of the day and night. More than that, he found opportunities to visit the office, and under pretexts of business connected with the economy of the hotel management, informed himself through Miss Marsh on many points. A few of these details naturally happened to refer to herself, her prospects, her tastes, and education. He learned incidentally, what he had partly known, that her father had been in better circumstances, and that she had been gently nurtured—though of this she made little account in her pride in her own independence and devotion to her duties. But in his own persistent way he also made private notes of the breadth of her shoulders, the size of her waist, her height, length of her skirt, her movements in walking, and other apparently extraneous circumstances. It was natural that he acquired some supplemental facts,—that her eyes, under her eye-glasses, were a tender gray, and touched with the melancholy beauty of near-sightedness; that her face had a sensitive mobility beyond the mere charm of color, and like most people lacking this primitive and striking element of beauty, what was really fine about her escaped the first sight. As, for instance, it was only by bending over to examine her accounts that he found that her indistinctive hair was as delicate as floss silk and as electrical. It was only by finding her romping with the children of a guest one evening that he was startled by the appalling fact of her youth! But about this time he left the hotel and returned to his house.
On the first yearly anniversary of the great strike at Excelsior there were some changes in the settlement, notably the promotion of Mr. Marsh to a more important position in the company, and the installation of Miss Cassie Marsh as manageress of the hotel. As Miss Marsh read the official letter, signed by the president, conveying in complimentary but formal terms this testimony of their approval and confidence, her lip trembled slightly, and a tear trickling from her light lashes dimmed her eye-glasses, so that she was fain to go up to her room to recover herself alone. When she did so she was startled to find a wire dummy standing near the door, and neatly folded upon the bed two elegant dresses. A note in the president's own hand lay beside them. A swift blush stung her cheek as she read,—
DEAR MISS MARSH,—Will you make me happy by keeping the secret that no other woman but yourself knows, and by accepting the clothes that no other woman but yourself can wear?
The next moment, with the dresses over her arm and the ridiculous dummy swinging by its wires from her other hand, she was flying down the staircase to Committee Room No. 4. The door opened upon its sole occupant, the president.
“Oh, sir, how cruel of you!” she gasped. “It was only a joke of mine. . . . I always intended to tell you. . . . It was very foolish, but it seemed so funny. . . . You see, I thought it was . . . the dress you had bought for your future intended—some young lady you were going to marry!”
“It is!” said the president quietly, and he closed the door behind her.
And it was.