He awoke with a strange sense of heat and suffocation, and with difficulty shook off his covering. Rubbing his eyes, he discovered that an extra blanket had in some mysterious way been added in the night; and beneath his head was a pillow he had no recollection of placing there when he went to sleep. By degrees the events of the past night forced themselves upon his benumbed faculties, and he sat up. The sun was riding high; the door of the cabin was open. Stretching himself, he staggered to his feet, and looked in through the yawning crack at the hinges. He rubbed his eyes again. Was he still asleep, and followed by a dream of yesterday? For there, even in the very attitude he remembered to have seen her sitting at her luncheon on the previous day, with her knitting on her lap, sat Mrs. Sol Saunders! What did it mean? or had she really been sitting there ever since, and all the events that followed only a dream?
A hand was laid upon his arm; and, turning, he saw the murky black eyes and Indian-inked beard of Sol beside him. That gentleman put his finger on his lips with a theatrical gesture, and then, slowly retreating in the well-known manner of the buried Majesty of Denmark, waved him, like another Hamlet, to a remoter part of the ledge. This reached, he grasped Rand warmly by the hand, shook it heartily, and said, “It's all right, my boy; all right!”
“But—” began Rand. The hot blood flowed to his cheeks: he stammered, and stopped short.
“It's all right, I say! Don't you mind! We'll pull you through.”
“But, Mrs. Sol! what does she—”
“Rosey has taken the matter in hand, sir; and when that woman takes a matter in hand, whether it's a baby or a rehearsal, sir, she makes it buzz.”
“But how did she know?” stammered Rand.
“How? Well, sir, the scene opened something like this,” said Sol professionally. “Curtain rises on me and Mrs. Sol. Domestic interior: practicable chairs, table, books, newspapers. Enter Dr. Duchesne,—eccentric character part, very popular with the boys,—tells off-hand affecting story of strange woman—one 'more unfortunate'—having baby in Eagle's Nest, lonely place on 'peaks of Snowdon,' midnight; eagles screaming, you know, and far down unfathomable depths; only attendant, cold-blooded ruffian, evidently father of child, with sinister designs on child and mother.”
“He didn't say THAT!” said Rand, with an agonized smile.
“Order! Sit down in front!” continued Sol easily. “Mrs. Sol—highly interested, a mother herself—demands name of place. 'Table Mountain.' No; it cannot be—it is! Excitement. Mystery! Rosey rises to occasion—comes to front: 'Some one must go; I—I—will go myself!' Myself, coming to center: 'Not alone, dearest; I—I will accompany you!' A shriek at right upper center. Enter the 'Marysville Pet.' 'I have heard all. 'Tis a base calumny. It cannot be HE—Randolph! Never!'—'Dare you accompany us will!' Tableau.
“Is Miss Euphemia—here?” gasped Rand, practical even in his embarrassment.
“Or-r-rder! Scene second. Summit of mountain—moonlight Peaks of Snowdon in distance. Right—lonely cabin. Enter slowly up defile, Sol, Mrs. Sol, the 'Pet.' Advance slowly to cabin. Suppressed shriek from the 'Pet,' who rushes to recumbent figure—Left—discovered lying beside cabin-door. ''Tis he! Hist! he sleeps!' Throws blanket over him, and retires up stage—so.” Here Sol achieved a vile imitation of the “Pet's” most enchanting stage-manner. “Mrs. Sol advances—Center—throws open door. Shriek! ''Tis Mornie, the lost found!' The 'Pet' advances: 'And the father is?'—'Not Rand!' The 'Pet' kneeling: 'Just Heaven, I thank thee!' No, it is—'”
“Hush!” said Rand appealingly, looking toward the cabin.
“Hush it is!” said the actor good-naturedly. “But it's all right, Mr. Rand: we'll pull you through.”
Later in the morning, Rand learned that Mornie's ill-fated connection with the Star Variety Troupe had been a source of anxiety to Mrs. Sol, and she had reproached herself for the girl's infelicitous debut.
“But, Lord bless you, Mr. Rand!” said Sol, “it was all in the way of business. She came to us—was fresh and new. Her chance, looking at it professionally, was as good as any amateur's; but what with her relations here, and her bein' known, she didn't take. We lost money on her! It's natural she should feel a little ugly. We all do when we get sorter kicked back onto ourselves, and find we can't stand alone. Why, you wouldn't believe it,” he continued, with a moist twinkle of his black eyes; “but the night I lost my little Rosey, of diphtheria in Gold Hill, the child was down on the bills for a comic song; and I had to drag Mrs. Sol on, cut up as she was, and filled up with that much of Old Bourbon to keep her nerves stiff, so she could do an old gag with me to gain time, and make up the 'variety.' Why, sir, when I came to the front, I was ugly! And when one of the boys in the front row sang out, 'Don't expose that poor child to the night air, Sol,'—meaning Mrs. Sol,—I acted ugly. No, sir, it's human nature; and it was quite natural that Mornie, when she caught sight o' Mrs. Sol's face last night, should rise up and cuss us both. Lord, if she'd only acted like that! But the old lady got her quiet at last; and, as I said before, it's all right, and we'll pull her through. But don't YOU thank us: it's a little matter betwixt us and Mornie. We've got everything fixed, so that Mrs. Sol can stay right along. We'll pull Mornie through, and get her away from this, and her baby too, as soon as we can. You won't get mad if I tell you something?” said Sol, with a half-apologetic laugh. “Mrs. Sol was rather down on you the other day, hated you on sight, and preferred your brother to you; but when she found he'd run off and left YOU, you,—don't mind my sayin',—a 'mere boy,' to take what oughter be HIS place, why, she just wheeled round agin' him. I suppose he got flustered, and couldn't face the music. Never left a word of explanation? Well, it wasn't exactly square, though I tell the old woman it's human nature. He might have dropped a hint where he was goin'. Well, there, I won't say a word more agin' him. I know how you feel. Hush it is.”
It was the firm conviction of the simple-minded Sol that no one knew the various natural indications of human passion better than himself. Perhaps it was one of the fallacies of his profession that the expression of all human passion was limited to certain conventional signs and sounds. Consequently, when Rand colored violently, became confused, stammered, and at last turned hastily away, the good-hearted fellow instantly recognized the unfailing evidence of modesty and innocence embarrassed by recognition. As for Rand, I fear his shame was only momentary. Confirmed in the belief of his ulterior wisdom and virtue, his first embarrassment over, he was not displeased with this halfway tribute, and really believed that the time would come when Mr. Sol should eventually praise his sagacity and reservation, and acknowledge that he was something more than a mere boy. He, nevertheless, shrank from meeting Mornie that morning, and was glad that the presence of Mrs. Sol relieved him from that duty.
The day passed uneventfully. Rand busied himself in his usual avocations, and constructed a temporary shelter for himself and Sol beside the shaft, besides rudely shaping a few necessary articles of furniture for Mrs. Sol.
“It will be a little spell yet afore Mornie's able to be moved,” suggested Sol, “and you might as well be comfortable.”
Rand sighed at this prospect, yet presently forgot himself in the good humor of his companion, whose admiration for himself he began to patronizingly admit. There was no sense of degradation in accepting the friendship of this man who had traveled so far, seen so much, and yet, as a practical man of the world, Rand felt was so inferior to himself. The absence of Miss Euphemia, who had early left the mountain, was a source of odd, half-definite relief. Indeed, when he closed his eyes to rest that night, it was with a sense that the reality of his situation was not as bad as he had feared. Once only, the figure of his brother—haggard, weary, and footsore, on his hopeless quest, wandering in lonely trails and lonelier settlements—came across his fancy; but with it came the greater fear of his return, and the pathetic figure was banished. “And, besides, he's in Sacramento by this time, and like as not forgotten us all,” he muttered; and, twining this poppy and mandragora around his pillow, he fell asleep.
His spirits had quite returned the next morning, and once or twice he found himself singing while at work in the shaft. The fear that Ruth might return to the mountain before he could get rid of Mornie, and the slight anxiety that had grown upon him to know something of his brother's movements, and to be able to govern them as he wished, caused him to hit upon the plan of constructing an ingenious advertisement to be published in the San Francisco journals, wherein the missing Ruth should be advised that news of his quest should be communicated to him by “a friend,” through the same medium, after an interval of two weeks. Full of this amiable intention, he returned to the surface to dinner. Here, to his momentary confusion, he met Miss Euphemia, who, in absence of Sol, was assisting Mrs. Sol in the details of the household.
If the honest frankness with which that young lady greeted him was not enough to relieve his embarrassment, he would have forgotten it in the utterly new and changed aspect she presented. Her extravagant walking-costume of the previous day was replaced by some bright calico, a little white apron, and a broad-brimmed straw-hat, which seemed to Rand, in some odd fashion, to restore her original girlish simplicity. The change was certainly not unbecoming to her. If her waist was not as tightly pinched, a la mode, there still was an honest, youthful plumpness about it; her step was freer for the absence of her high-heel boots; and even the hand she extended to Rand, if not quite so small as in her tight gloves, and a little brown from exposure, was magnetic in its strong, kindly grasp. There was perhaps a slight suggestion of the practical Mr. Sol in her wholesome presence; and Rand could not help wondering if Mrs. Sol had ever been a Gold Hill “Pet” before her marriage with Mr. Sol. The young girl noticed his curious glance.
“You never saw me in my rehearsal dress before,” she said, with a laugh. “But I'm not 'company' to-day, and didn't put on my best harness to knock round in. I suppose I look dreadful.”
“I don't think you look bad,” said Rand simply.
“Thank you,” said Euphemia, with a laugh and a courtesy. “But this isn't getting the dinner.”
As part of that operation evidently was the taking-off of her hat, the putting-up of some thick blond locks that had escaped, and the rolling-up of her sleeves over a pair of strong, rounded arms, Rand lingered near her. All trace of the “Pet's” previous professional coquetry was gone,—perhaps it was only replaced by a more natural one; but as she looked up, and caught sight of Rand's interested face, she laughed again, and colored a little. Slight as was the blush, it was sufficient to kindle a sympathetic fire in Rand's own cheeks, which was so utterly unexpected to him that he turned on his heel in confusion. “I reckon she thinks I'm soft and silly, like Ruth,” he soliloquized, and, determining not to look at her again, betook himself to a distant and contemplative pipe. In vain did Miss Euphemia address herself to the ostentatious getting of the dinner in full view of him; in vain did she bring the coffee-pot away from the fire, and nearer Rand, with the apparent intention of examining its contents in a better light; in vain, while wiping a plate, did she, absorbed in the distant prospect, walk to the verge of the mountain, and become statuesque and forgetful. The sulky young gentleman took no outward notice of her.
Mrs. Sol's attendance upon Mornie prevented her leaving the cabin, and Rand and Miss Euphemia dined in the open air alone. The ridiculousness of keeping up a formal attitude to his solitary companion caused Rand to relax; but, to his astonishment, the “Pet” seemed to have become correspondingly distant and formal. After a few moments of discomfort, Rand, who had eaten little, arose, and “believed he would go back to work.”
“Ah, yes!” said the “Pet,” with an indifferent air, “I suppose you must. Well, good-by, Mr. Pinkney.”
Rand turned. “YOU are not going?” he asked, in some uneasiness.
“I'VE got some work to do too,” returned Miss Euphemia a little curtly.
“But,” said the practical Rand, “I thought you allowed that you were fixed to stay until to-morrow?”
But here Miss Euphemia, with rising color and slight acerbity of voice, was not aware that she was “fixed to stay” anywhere, least of all when she was in the way. More than that, she MUST say—although perhaps it made no difference, and she ought not to say it—that she was not in the habit of intruding upon gentlemen who plainly gave her to understand that her company was not desirable. She did not know why she said this—of course it could make no difference to anybody who didn't, of course, care—but she only wanted to say that she only came here because her dear friend, her adopted mother,—and a better woman never breathed,—had come, and had asked her to stay. Of course, Mrs. Sol was an intruder herself—Mr. Sol was an intruder—they were all intruders: she only wondered that Mr. Pinkney had borne with them so long. She knew it was an awful thing to be here, taking care of a poor—poor, helpless woman; but perhaps Mr. Rand's BROTHER might forgive them, if he couldn't. But no matter, she would go—Mr. Sol would go—ALL would go; and then, perhaps, Mr, Rand—
She stopped breathless; she stopped with the corner of her apron against her tearful hazel eyes; she stopped with—what was more remarkable than all—Rand's arm actually around her waist, and his astonished, alarmed face within a few inches of her own.
“Why, Miss Euphemia, Phemie, my dear girl! I never meant anything like THAT,” said Rand earnestly. “I really didn't now! Come now!”
“You never once spoke to me when I sat down,” said Miss Euphemia, feebly endeavoring to withdraw from Rand's grasp.
“I really didn't! Oh, come now, look here! I didn't! Don't! There's a dear—THERE!”
This last conclusive exposition was a kiss. Miss Euphemia was not quick enough to release herself from his arms. He anticipated that act a full half-second, and had dropped his own, pale and breathless.
The girl recovered herself first. “There, I declare, I'm forgetting Mrs. Sol's coffee!” she exclaimed hastily, and, snatching up the coffee-pot, disappeared. When she returned, Rand was gone. Miss Euphemia busied herself demurely in clearing up the dishes, with the tail of her eye sweeping the horizon of the summit level around her. But no Rand appeared. Presently she began to laugh quietly to herself. This occurred several times during her occupation, which was somewhat prolonged. The result of this meditative hilarity was summed up in a somewhat grave and thoughtful deduction as she walked slowly back to the cabin: “I do believe I'm the first woman that that boy ever kissed.”
Miss Euphemia staid that day and the next, and Rand forgot his embarrassment. By what means I know not, Miss Euphemia managed to restore Rand's confidence in himself and in her, and in a little ramble on the mountain-side got him to relate, albeit somewhat reluctantly, the particulars of his rescue of Mornie from her dangerous position on the broken trail.
“And, if you hadn't got there as soon as you did, she'd have fallen?” asked the “Pet.”
“I reckon,” returned Rand gloomily: “she was sorter dazed and crazed like.”
“And you saved her life?”
“I suppose so, if you put it that way,” said Rand sulkily.
“But how did you get her up the mountain again?”
“Oh! I got her up,” returned Rand moodily.
“But how? Really, Mr. Rand, you don't know how interesting this is. It's as good as a play,” said the “Pet,” with a little excited laugh.
“Oh, I carried her up!”
“In your arms?”
“Y-e-e-s.”
Miss Euphemia paused, and bit off the stalk of a flower, made a wry face, and threw it away from her in disgust.
Then she dug a few tiny holes in the earth with her parasol, and buried bits of the flower-stalk in them, as if they had been tender memories. “I suppose you knew Mornie very well?” she asked.
“I used to run across her in the woods,” responded Rand shortly, “a year ago. I didn't know her so well then as—” He stopped.
“As what? As NOW?” asked the “Pet” abruptly. Rand, who was coloring over his narrow escape from a topic which a delicate kindness of Sol had excluded from their intercourse on the mountain, stammered, “as YOU do, I meant.”
The “Pet” tossed her head a little. “Oh! I don't know her at all—except through Sol.”
Rand stared hard at this. The “Pet,” who was looking at him intently, said, “Show me the place where you saw Mornie clinging that night.”
“It's dangerous,” suggested Rand.
“You mean I'd be afraid! Try me! I don't believe she was SO dreadfully frightened!”
“Why?” asked Rand, in astonishment.
“Oh—because—”
Rand sat down in vague wonderment.
“Show it to me,” continued the “Pet,” “or—I'll find it ALONE!”
Thus challenged, he rose, and, after a few moments' climbing, stood with her upon the trail. “You see that thorn-bush where the rock has fallen away. It was just there. It is not safe to go farther. No, really! Miss Euphemia! Please don't! It's almost certain death!”
But the giddy girl had darted past him, and, face to the wall of the cliff, was creeping along the dangerous path. Rand followed mechanically. Once or twice the trail crumbled beneath her feet; but she clung to a projecting root of chaparral, and laughed. She had almost reached her elected goal, when, slipping, the treacherous chaparral she clung to yielded in her grasp, and Rand, with a cry, sprung forward.
But the next instant she quickly transferred her hold to a cleft in the cliff, and was safe. Not so her companion. The soil beneath him, loosened by the impulse of his spring, slipped away: he was falling with it, when she caught him sharply with her disengaged hand, and together they scrambled to a more secure footing.
“I could have reached it alone,” said the “Pet,” “if you'd left me alone.”
“Thank Heaven, we're saved!” said Rand gravely.
“AND WITHOUT A ROPE,” said Miss Euphemia significantly.
Rand did not understand her. But, as they slowly returned to the summit, he stammered out the always difficult thanks of a man who has been physically helped by one of the weaker sex. Miss Euphemia was quick to see her error.
“I might have made you lose your footing by catching at you,” she said meekly. “But I was so frightened for you, and could not help it.”
The superior animal, thoroughly bamboozled, thereupon complimented her on her dexterity.
“Oh, that's nothing!” she said, with a sigh. “I used to do the flying-trapeze business with papa when I was a child, and I've not forgotten it.” With this and other confidences of her early life, in which Rand betrayed considerable interest, they beguiled the tedious ascent. “I ought to have made you carry me up,” said the lady, with a little laugh, when they reached the summit; “but you haven't known me as long as you have Mornie, have you?” With this mysterious speech she bade Rand “good-night,” and hurried off to the cabin.
And so a week passed by,—the week so dreaded by Rand, yet passed so pleasantly, that at times it seemed as if that dread were only a trick of his fancy, or as if the circumstances that surrounded him were different from what he believed them to be. On the seventh day the doctor had staid longer than usual; and Rand, who had been sitting with Euphemia on the ledge by the shaft, watching the sunset, had barely time to withdraw his hand from hers, as Mrs. Sol, a trifle pale and wearied-looking, approached him.
“I don't like to trouble you,” she said,—indeed, they had seldom troubled him with the details of Mornie's convalescence, or even her needs and requirements,—“but the doctor is alarmed about Mornie, and she has asked to see you. I think you'd better go in and speak to her. You know,” continued Mrs. Sol delicately, “you haven't been in there since the night she was taken sick, and maybe a new face might do her good.”
The guilty blood flew to Rand's face as he stammered, “I thought I'd be in the way. I didn't believe she cared much to see me. Is she worse?”
“The doctor is looking very anxious,” said Mrs. Sol simply.
The blood returned from Rand's face, and settled around his heart. He turned very pale. He had consoled himself always for his complicity in Ruth's absence, that he was taking good care of Mornie, or—what is considered by most selfish natures an equivalent—permitting or encouraging some one else to “take good care of her;” but here was a contingency utterly unforeseen. It did not occur to him that this “taking good care” of her could result in anything but a perfect solution of her troubles, or that there could be any future to her condition but one of recovery. But what if she should die? A sudden and helpless sense of his responsibility to Ruth, to HER, brought him trembling to his feet.
He hurried to the cabin, where Mrs. Sol left him with a word of caution: “You'll find her changed and quiet,—very quiet. If I was you, I wouldn't say anything to bring back her old self.”
The change which Rand saw was so great, the face that was turned to him so quiet, that, with a new fear upon him, he would have preferred the savage eyes and reckless mien of the old Mornie whom he hated. With his habitual impulsiveness he tried to say something that should express that fact not unkindly, but faltered, and awkwardly sank into the chair by her bedside.
“I don't wonder you stare at me now,” she said in a far-off voice. “It seems to you strange to see me lying here so quiet. You are thinking how wild I was when I came here that night. I must have been crazy, I think. I dreamed that I said dreadful things to you; but you must forgive me, and not mind it. I was crazy then.” She stopped, and folded the blanket between her thin fingers. “I didn't ask you to come here to tell you that, or to remind you of it; but—but when I was crazy, I said so many worse, dreadful things of HIM; and you—YOU will be left behind to tell him of it.”
Rand was vaguely murmuring something to the effect that “he knew she didn't mean anything,” that “she musn't think of it again,” that “he'd forgotten all about it,” when she stopped him with a tired gesture.
“Perhaps I was wrong to think, that, after I am gone, you would care to tell him anything. Perhaps I'm wrong to think of it at all, or to care what he will think of me, except for the sake of the child—his child, Rand—that I must leave behind me. He will know that IT never abused him. No, God bless its sweet heart! IT never was wild and wicked and hateful, like its cruel, crazy mother. And he will love it; and you, perhaps, will love it too—just a little, Rand! Look at it!” She tried to raise the helpless bundle beside her in her arms, but failed. “You must lean over,” she said faintly to Rand. “It looks like him, doesn't it?”
Rand, with wondering, embarrassed eyes, tried to see some resemblance, in the little blue-red oval, to the sad, wistful face of his brother, which even then was haunting him from some mysterious distance. He kissed the child's forehead, but even then so vaguely and perfunctorily, that the mother sighed, and drew it closer to her breast.
“The doctor says,” she continued in a calmer voice, “that I'm not doing as well as I ought to. I don't think,” she faltered, with something of her old bitter laugh, “that I'm ever doing as well as I ought to, and perhaps it's not strange now that I don't. And he says that, in case anything happens to me, I ought to look ahead. I have looked ahead. It's a dark look ahead, Rand—a horror of blackness, without kind faces, without the baby, without—without HIM!”
She turned her face away, and laid it on the bundle by her side. It was so quiet in the cabin, that, through the open door beyond, the faint, rhythmical moan of the pines below was distinctly heard.
“I know it's foolish; but that is what 'looking ahead' always meant to me,” she said, with a sigh. “But, since the doctor has been gone, I've talked to Mrs. Sol, and find it's for the best. And I look ahead, and see more clearly. I look ahead, and see my disgrace removed far away from HIM and you. I look ahead, and see you and HE living together happily, as you did before I came between you. I look ahead, and see my past life forgotten, my faults forgiven; and I think I see you both loving my baby, and perhaps loving me a little for its sake. Thank you, Rand, thank you!”
For Rand's hand had caught hers beside the pillow, and he was standing over her, whiter than she. Something in the pressure of his hand emboldened her to go on, and even lent a certain strength to her voice.
“When it comes to THAT, Rand, you'll not let these people take the baby away. You'll keep it HERE with you until HE comes. And something tells me that he will come when I am gone. You'll keep it here in the pure air and sunlight of the mountain, and out of those wicked depths below; and when I am gone, and they are gone, and only you and Ruth and baby are here, maybe you'll think that it came to you in a cloud on the mountain,—a cloud that lingered only long enough to drop its burden, and faded, leaving the sunlight and dew behind. What is it, Rand? What are you looking at?”
“I was thinking,” said Rand in a strange altered voice, “that I must trouble you to let me take down those duds and furbelows that hang on the wall, so that I can get at some traps of mine behind them.” He took some articles from the wall, replaced the dresses of Mrs. Sol, and answered Mornie's look of inquiry.
“I was only getting at my purse and my revolver,” he said, showing them. “I've got to get some stores at the Ferry by daylight.”
Mornie sighed. “I'm giving you great trouble, Rand, I know; but it won't be for long.”
He muttered something, took her hand again, and bade her “good-night.” When he reached the door, he looked back. The light was shining full upon her face as she lay there, with her babe on her breast, bravely “looking ahead.”
IV. THE CLOUDS PASS.
It was early morning at the Ferry. The “up coach” had passed, with lights unextinguished, and the “outsides” still asleep. The ferryman had gone up to the Ferry Mansion House, swinging his lantern, and had found the sleepy-looking “all night” bar-keeper on the point of withdrawing for the day on a mattress under the bar. An Indian half-breed, porter of the Mansion House, was washing out the stains of recent nocturnal dissipation from the bar-room and veranda; a few birds were twittering on the cotton-woods beside the river; a bolder few had alighted upon the veranda, and were trying to reconcile the existence of so much lemon-peel and cigar-stumps with their ideas of a beneficent Creator. A faint earthly freshness and perfume rose along the river banks. Deep shadow still lay upon the opposite shore; but in the distance, four miles away, Morning along the level crest of Table Mountain walked with rosy tread.
The sleepy bar-keeper was that morning doomed to disappointment; for scarcely had the coach passed, when steps were heard upon the veranda, and a weary, dusty traveller threw his blanket and knapsack to the porter, and then dropped into a vacant arm-chair, with his eyes fixed on the distant crest of Table Mountain. He remained motionless for some time, until the bar-keeper, who had already concocted the conventional welcome of the Mansion House, appeared with it in a glass, put it upon the table, glanced at the stranger, and then, thoroughly awake, cried out,—
“Ruth Pinkney—or I'm a Chinaman!”
The stranger lifted his eyes wearily. Hollow circles were around their orbits; haggard lines were in his checks. But it was Ruth.
He took the glass, and drained it at a single draught. “Yes,” he said absently, “Ruth Pinkney,” and fixed his eyes again on the distant rosy crest.
“On your way up home?” suggested the bar-keeper, following the direction of Ruth's eyes.
“Perhaps.”
“Been upon a pasear, hain't yer? Been havin' a little tear round Sacramento,—seein' the sights?”
Ruth smiled bitterly. “Yes.”
The bar-keeper lingered, ostentatiously wiping a glass. But Ruth again became abstracted in the mountain, and the barkeeper turned away.
How pure and clear that summit looked to him! how restful and steadfast with serenity and calm! how unlike his own feverish, dusty, travel-worn self! A week had elapsed since he had last looked upon it,—a week of disappointment, of anxious fears, of doubts, of wild imaginings, of utter helplessness. In his hopeless quest of the missing Mornie, he had, in fancy, seen this serene eminence haunting his remorseful, passion-stricken soul. And now, without a clew to guide him to her unknown hiding-place, he was back again, to face the brother whom he had deceived, with only the confession of his own weakness. Hard as it was to lose forever the fierce, reproachful glances of the woman he loved, it was still harder, to a man of Ruth's temperament, to look again upon the face of the brother he feared. A hand laid upon his shoulder startled him. It was the bar-keeper.
“If it's a fair question, Ruth Pinkney, I'd like to ask ye how long ye kalkilate to hang around the Ferry to-day.”
“Why?” demanded Ruth haughtily.
“Because, whatever you've been and done, I want ye to have a square show. Ole Nixon has been cavoortin' round yer the last two days, swearin' to kill you on sight for runnin' off with his darter. Sabe? Now, let me ax ye two questions. FIRST, Are you heeled?”
Ruth responded to this dialectical inquiry affirmatively by putting his hand on his revolver.
“Good! Now, SECOND, Have you got the gal along here with you?”
“No,” responded Ruth in a hollow voice.
“That's better yet,” said the man, without heeding the tone of the reply. “A woman—and especially THE woman in a row of this kind—handicaps a man awful.” He paused, and took up the empty glass. “Look yer, Ruth Pinkney, I'm a square man, and I'll be square with you. So I'll just tell you you've got the demdest odds agin' ye. Pr'aps ye know it, and don't keer. Well, the boys around yer are all sidin' with the old man Nixon. It's the first time the old rip ever had a hand in his favor: so the boys will see fair play for Nixon, and agin' YOU. But I reckon you don't mind him!”
“So little, I shall never pull trigger on him,” said Ruth gravely.
The bar-keeper stared, and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, thar's that Kanaka Joe, who used to be sorter sweet on Mornie,—he's an ugly devil,—he's helpin' the old man.”
The sad look faded from Ruth's eyes suddenly. A certain wild Berserker rage—a taint of the blood, inherited from heaven knows what Old-World ancestry, which had made the twin-brothers' Southwestern eccentricities respected in the settlement—glowed in its place. The barkeeper noted it, and augured a lively future for the day's festivities. But it faded again; and Ruth, as he rose, turned hesitatingly towards him.
“Have you seen my brother Rand lately?”
“Nary.”
“He hasn't been here, or about the Ferry?”
“Nary time.”
“You haven't heard,” said Ruth, with a faint attempt at a smile, “if he's been around here asking after me,—sorter looking me up, you know?”
“Not much,” returned the bar-keeper deliberately. “Ez far ez I know Rand,—that ar brother o' yours,—he's one of yer high-toned chaps ez doesn't drink, thinks bar-rooms is pizen, and ain't the sort to come round yer, and sling yarns with me.”
Ruth rose; but the hand that he placed upon the table, albeit a powerful one, trembled so that it was with difficulty he resumed his knapsack. When he did so, his bent figure, stooping shoulders, and haggard face, made him appear another man from the one who had sat down. There was a slight touch of apologetic deference and humility in his manner as he paid his reckoning, and slowly and hesitatingly began to descend the steps.
The bar-keeper looked after him thoughtfully. “Well, dog my skin!” he ejaculated to himself, “ef I hadn't seen that man—that same Ruth Pinkney—straddle a friend's body in this yer very room, and dare a whole crowd to come on, I'd swar that he hadn't any grit in him. Thar's something up!”
But here Ruth reached the last step, and turned again.
“If you see old man Nixon, say I'm in town; if you see that ———— ——” (I regret to say that I cannot repeat his exact, and brief characterization of the present condition and natal antecedents of Kanaka Joe), “say I'm looking out for him,” and was gone.
He wandered down the road, towards the one long, straggling street of the settlement. The few people who met him at that early hour greeted him with a kind of constrained civility; certain cautious souls hurried by without seeing him; all turned and looked after him; and a few followed him at a respectful distance. A somewhat notorious practical joker and recognized wag at the Ferry apparently awaited his coming with something of invitation and expectation, but, catching sight of Ruth's haggard face and blazing eyes, became instantly practical, and by no means jocular in his greeting. At the top of the hill, Ruth turned to look once more upon the distant mountain, now again a mere cloud-line on the horizon. In the firm belief that he would never again see the sun rise upon it, he turned aside into a hazel-thicket, and, tearing out a few leaves from his pocket-book, wrote two letters,—one to Rand, and one to Mornie, but which, as they were never delivered, shall not burden this brief chronicle of that eventful day. For, while transcribing them, he was startled by the sounds of a dozen pistol-shots in the direction of the hotel he had recently quitted. Something in the mere sound provoked the old hereditary fighting instinct, and sent him to his feet with a bound, and a slight distension of the nostrils, and sniffing of the air, not unknown to certain men who become half intoxicated by the smell of powder. He quickly folded his letters, and addressed them carefully, and, taking off his knapsack and blanket, methodically arranged them under a tree, with the letters on top. Then he examined the lock of his revolver, and then, with the step of a man ten years younger, leaped into the road. He had scarcely done so when he was seized, and by sheer force dragged into a blacksmith's shop at the roadside. He turned his savage face and drawn weapon upon his assailant, but was surprised to meet the anxious eyes of the bar-keeper of the Mansion House.
“Don't be a d——d fool,” said the man quickly. “Thar's fifty agin' you down thar. But why in h-ll didn't you wipe out old Nixon when you had such a good chance?”
“Wipe out old Nixon?” repeated Ruth.
“Yes; just now, when you had him covered.”
“What!”
The bar-keeper turned quickly upon Ruth, stared at him, and then suddenly burst into a fit of laughter. “Well, I've knowed you two were twins, but damn me if I ever thought I'd be sold like this!” And he again burst into a roar of laughter.
“What do you mean?” demanded Ruth savagely.
“What do I mean?” returned the barkeeper. “Why, I mean this. I mean that your brother Rand, as you call him, he'z bin—for a young feller, and a pious feller—doin' about the tallest kind o' fightin' to-day that's been done at the Ferry. He laid out that ar Kanaka Joe and two of his chums. He was pitched into on your quarrel, and he took it up for you like a little man. I managed to drag him off, up yer in the hazel-bush for safety, and out you pops, and I thought you was him. He can't be far away. Halloo! There they're comin'; and thar's the doctor, trying to keep them back!”
A crowd of angry, excited faces, filled the road suddenly; but before them Dr. Duchesne, mounted, and with a pistol in his hand, opposed their further progress.
“Back in the bush!” whispered the barkeeper. “Now's your time!”
But Ruth stirred not. “Go you back,” he said in a low voice, “find Rand, and take him away. I will fill his place here.” He drew his revolver, and stepped into the road.
A shout, a report, and the spatter of red dust from a bullet near his feet, told him he was recognized. He stirred not; but another shout, and a cry, “There they are—BOTH of 'em!” made him turn.
His brother Rand, with a smile on his lip and fire in his eye, stood by his side. Neither spoke. Then Rand, quietly, as of old, slipped his hand into his brother's strong palm. Two or three bullets sang by them; a splinter flew from the blacksmith's shed: but the brothers, hard gripping each other's hands, and looking into each other's faces with a quiet joy, stood there calm and imperturbable.
There was a momentary pause. The voice of Dr. Duchesne rose above the crowd.
“Keep back, I say! keep back! Or hear me!—for five years I've worked among you, and mended and patched the holes you've drilled through each other's carcasses—Keep back, I say!—or the next man that pulls trigger, or steps forward, will get a hole from me that no surgeon can stop. I'm sick of your bungling ball practice! Keep back!—or, by the living Jingo, I'll show you where a man's vitals are!”
There was a burst of laughter from the crowd, and for a moment the twins were forgotten in this audacious speech and coolly impertinent presence.
“That's right! Now let that infernal old hypocritical drunkard, Mat Nixon, step to the front.”
The crowd parted right and left, and half pushed, half dragged Nixon before him.
“Gentlemen,” said the doctor, “this is the man who has just shot at Rand Pinkney for hiding his daughter. Now, I tell you, gentlemen, and I tell him, that for the last week his daughter, Mornie Nixon, has been under my care as a patient, and my protection as a friend. If there's anybody to be shot, the job must begin with me!”
There was another laugh, and a cry of “Bully for old Sawbones!” Ruth started convulsively, and Rand answered his look with a confirming pressure of his hand.
“That isn't all, gentlemen: this drunken brute has just shot at a gentleman whose only offence, to my knowledge, is, that he has, for the last week, treated her with a brother's kindness, has taken her into his own home, and cared for her wants as if she were his own sister.”
Ruth's hand again grasped his brother's. Rand colored and hung his head.
“There's more yet, gentlemen. I tell you that that girl, Mornie Nixon, has, to my knowledge, been treated like a lady, has been cared for as she never was cared for in her father's house, and, while that father has been proclaiming her shame in every bar-room at the Ferry, has had the sympathy and care, night and day, of two of the most accomplished ladies of the Ferry,—Mrs. Sol Saunders, gentlemen, and Miss Euphemia.”
There was a shout of approbation from the crowd. Nixon would have slipped away, but the doctor stopped him.
“Not yet! I've one thing more to say. I've to tell you, gentlemen, on my professional word of honor, that, besides being an old hypocrite, this same old Mat Nixon is the ungrateful, unnatural GRANDFATHER of the first boy born in the district.”
A wild huzza greeted the doctor's climax. By a common consent the crowd turned toward the Twins, who, grasping each other's hands, stood apart. The doctor nodded his head. The next moment the Twins were surrounded, and lifted in the arms of the laughing throng, and borne in triumph to the bar-room of the Mansion House.
“Gentlemen,” said the bar-keeper, “call for what you like: the Mansion House treats to-day in honor of its being the first time that Rand Pinkney has been admitted to the bar.”
It was agreed, that, as her condition was still precarious, the news should be broken to her gradually and indirectly. The indefatigable Sol had a professional idea, which was not displeasing to the Twins. It being a lovely summer afternoon, the couch of Mornie was lifted out on the ledge, and she lay there basking in the sunlight, drinking in the pure air, and looking bravely ahead in the daylight as she had in the darkness, for her couch commanded a view of the mountain flank. And, lying there, she dreamed a pleasant dream, and in her dream saw Rand returning up the mountain-trail. She was half conscious that he had good news for her; and, when he at last reached her bedside, he began gently and kindly to tell his news. But she heard him not, or rather in her dream was most occupied with his ways and manners, which seemed unlike him, yet inexpressibly sweet and tender. The tears were fast coming in her eyes, when he suddenly dropped on his knees beside her, threw away Rand's disguising hat and coat, and clasped her in his arms. And by that she KNEW it was Ruth.
But what they said; what hurried words of mutual explanation and forgiveness passed between them; what bitter yet tender recollections of hidden fears and doubts, now forever chased away in the rain of tears and joyous sunshine of that mountain-top, were then whispered; whatever of this little chronicle that to the reader seems strange and inconsistent (as all human record must ever be strange and imperfect, except to the actors) was then made clear,—was never divulged by them, and must remain with them forever. The rest of the party had withdrawn, and they were alone. But when Mornie turned, and placed the baby in its father's arms, they were so isolated in their happiness, that the lower world beneath them might have swung and drifted away, and left that mountain-top the beginning and creation of a better planet.
“You know all about it now,” said Sol the next day, explaining the previous episodes of this history to Ruth: “you've got the whole plot before you. It dragged a little in the second act, for the actors weren't up in their parts. But for an amateur performance, on the whole, it wasn't bad.”
“I don't know, I'm sure,” said Rand impulsively, “how we'd have got on without Euphemia. It's too bad she couldn't be here to-day.”
“She wanted to come,” said Sol; “but the gentleman she's engaged to came up from Marysville last night.”
“Gentleman—engaged!” repeated Rand, white and red by turns.
“Well, yes. I say, 'gentleman,' although he's in the variety profession. She always said,” said Sol, quietly looking at Rand, “that she'd never marry OUT of it.”