CHAPTER IITHE GRACEY BOYS
The smell of wood smoke and supper was in the air as the Colonel rode down the main street of Foleys. Under the projecting roof that jutted from the second-story windows and made a species of rude arcade, men were sitting in the negligée of shirt sleeves, smoking and spitting in the cool of the evening. They hailed the new-comer with a word of greeting or a hand raised in salute to the side of a head where a hat brim should have been.
The Colonel returned the salutations, and as Kit Carson paced through the red dust to where the drooping fringe of locust trees hid the façade of the hotel, looked curiously about him, noticing a slight stir of life, an appearance of reviving vitality in the once moribund camp. Foleys was not as dead as it had been four years ago. Fewer of the shop doors were boarded up; there were even new stores open.
He was speculating on this when he threw himself off his horse in front of the hotel. The loungers on the piazza, dustered and shirt-sleeved men, let their tilted chairs drop to the front legs, and rose to greet him to a man. Anybody was an acquisitionat Foleys, but Colonel Jim Parrish, with the rumor of bringing a lawsuit into their midst, was welcomed as the harbinger of a new era.
They were all around him shaking hands when Forsythe, the proprietor, armed with a large feather duster, emerged from the front door. He cut the new arrival out from their midst and drew him into the hall. Here, dusting him vigorously, he shouted to Mrs. Forsythe to prepare a room, and between sweeps of the duster, inquired of him on the burning question of the squatter.
“Come to fire old man Allen, eh?” he queried. “Got your work cut out for you with him.”
“He’ll find he’s barked up the wrong tree this time,” said the Colonel grimly, “bringing me up from San Francisco on such a fool’s errand.”
“It’s about the galliest proposition I’ve ever heard. But he’s that kind, drunk a lot of the time, and the rest of it tellin’ the boys round here what a great man he used to be. He was glad enough to get twenty-five dollars a month holdin’ down a small job in the assay office.”
At this moment a door to the right opened, yielding a glimpse of a large bare dining-room set forth with neatly laid tables and decorated with hanging strands of colored paper.
“Say,” said a female voice, “ain’t that Colonel Jim Parrish that just come down the street?”
“That’s just who it is,” answered the Colonel, “and isn’t that Mitty Bruce’s voice?”
This question called to the doorway a female vision in brilliant pink calico. It was a buxom, high-coloredcountry girl of some twenty-one years, coarse featured but not uncomely, her face almost as pink as her dress, her figure of the mature proportions of the early-ripening Californian.
“Well, well, is this Mitty?” said the new-comer, holding out his hand. “You have to come up to the foot-hills to see a handsome girl. I’d never have known you, you’ve grown up so and got so good-looking.”
Mitty sidled up giggling and placed a big, red paw in his.
“Oh, get out!” she said, “ain’t you just awful!”
“I won’t get out and I’m not a bit awful. You’ve got to take care of me at supper and tell me everything that’s happened in Foleys since I was here last.”
“Let her alone to do that,” said Forsythe. “There ain’t anything that goes on in Eldorado and Amador Counties that Mitty don’t know. She’s the best newspaper we got round here.”
Mrs. Forsythe here put her head over the stair-rail and informed the Colonel that his room was ready. He ran up stairs to “wash up” while the other two repaired to the dining-room.
A few minutes later he reappeared and entered the low-ceilinged room that smelled of fresh paint and cooking. It was past the supper hour at Foleys and only a few men lingered over the end of their meal. By a table at the window, cleanly spread and set, Mitty was standing. When she saw him she pulled out a chair and, with its back resting against her waist, pointed to the seat.
“Set right down here,” she said, “everything’s ready for you.”
Then as he obeyed she pushed him in, saying over his shoulder:
“It’s real nice to see you again, Colonel. It seems awful long since you was here last.”
The Colonel looked up at her with an eye of twinkling friendliness. She was gazing at him with childish pleasure and affection. He had known Mitty since her tenth year when Forsythe and his wife had adopted her, the only child of a dying woman whose husband had been killed in a mine.
“Good girl, Mitt,” he said. “Have you got all the gossip of the last four years saved up for me?”
“I guess I can tell you as much as most,” she answered, not without pride, and then flourished off to the hole in the dining-room which communicated with the kitchen.
When she had set his supper before him she sat down opposite, her elbows on the table, comfortably settled for the gossip the traveler had requested.
“Foleys seems to be livening up,” he said. “I noticed several new stores. What’s happening?”
“Foleys!” exclaimed Mitty, with the Californian’s loyalty to his native burg, “Foleys is the liveliest town along the mother lode. There ain’t nothing the matter with Foleys! It’s the Gracey boys’ strike up at the Buckeye Belle mine that’s whooping things up.”
“Oh, that’s it, of course,” said the Colonel. “They say the Gracey boys have really struck it this time.I heard some talk of it before I came up. The report down below was that it was a pretty good thing.”
“You bet,” said the young woman with a knowing air. “Nearly a year ago one of the gentlemen connected with it said to me, ‘We’ve got a mine there; bed-rock’s pitchin’ and there’s two bits to the pan.’ So I wasn’t surprised when I heard they’d struck it. They’re goin’ to build a twenty-stamp mill next thing you know.”
“Good for them!” said the Colonel. “The Gracey boys have been mining for years all over this country and in Mexico and Nevada, and this is the first good thing they’ve got. How far is it from here?”
“About twelve miles up in that direction—” she gave a jerk of her hand to the right—“up on the other side of the South Fork. They have to come here for everything. Barney Sullivan, the superintendent, does most of their buying.”
She looked at the Colonel with a wide-eyed, stolid gaze as she gave this insignificant piece of information. The look suggested to her vis-à-vis that the information was not insignificant to her.
“Barney Sullivan,” he said, “I remember him. He’s been with them for some years, was in Virginia City when they were there. He’s a good-looking fellow with red hair.”
“Good-lookin’, did you say?” exclaimed Mitty, in a high key of scornful disbelief. “Well, that’s more’n I can see. Just a red-headed Irish tarrier, with the freckles on him as big as dimes. It’s a good thing all the world don’t like the same kind of face.”
Her scorn was tinctured with the complacence of one who knows herself exempt from similar charges. Mitty, secure in the knowledge that her own patronymic was Bruce, affected a high disdain of the Irish. She also possessed a natural pride on the score of her Christian name, which in its unique unabbreviated completeness, was Summit, in commemoration of the fact that upon that lofty elevation of the Sierra she had first seen the light.
“You’ll be able to see all the Buckeye Belle crowd to-night,” she continued; “they’ll be in now any time. There’s going to be a party here.”
The Colonel looked up from his plate with the thrust-out lips and raised brows of inquiring astonishment.
“The devil you say!” he ejaculated. “I arrived just at the right moment, didn’t I? I suppose I’ll have to stand round looking at the men knifing each other for a chance to dance with Miss Mitty Bruce.”
Mitty wriggled with delight and grew as pink as her dress.
“Well, not quite’s bad as that,” she said with bridling modesty, “but I can have my pick.”
Her friend had finished the first part of his supper, and placing his knife and fork together, leaned back, looking at her and smiling to himself. She saw the empty plate, and rising, bent across the table and swept it and the other dishes on to her tray with an air of professional expertness. As she came back with the dessert the last diner thumped across the wooden floor in noisy exit.
The plate that she set before the Colonel displayed a large slab of pie. A breakfast cup of coffee went with it. He looked at them with an undismayed eye, remarking:
“Who’s coming to the party? I’ll bet a new hat Barney Sullivan will be here—the first man on deck, and the last to quit the pumps. But I don’t suppose the Gracey boys will show up.”
“Yes, they will—both of ’em.”
“What, Black Dan? Black Dan Gracey doesn’t go to parties.”
“Well, he don’t generally. But he’s goin’ to this one. His daughter, Mercedes, is here, that sort er spidery Spanish girl, and he’s goin’ for her.”
Mitty, having seen that her guest had all that in Foleys made up the last course of a complete and satisfactory supper, went round and took her seat at the opposite side of the table. As she spoke he noticed a change in her voice. Now, as he saw her face, he noticed a change in it, too. There was a withdrawal of joy and sparkle. She looked sullen, almost mournful.
“Black Dan Gracey’s daughter here?” he queried. “What’s she doing so far afield? The last I heard of her she was in school in San Francisco.”
“So she was until two days ago. Then some kind er sickness broke out in the school, and her paw went down to bring her up here. She was so precious she couldn’t come up from San Francisco alone. She had to be brung all the way like she was made of gold and people was tryin’ to steal her. They stopped here for dinner on their way up. I seen her.”
“She promises to be very pretty,” said the Colonel absently. “They say Gracey worships her.”
“Pretty!” echoed Mitty in a very flat voice. “I don’t see what makes her so dreadful pretty. Little black thing! And anybody’d be pretty all togged up that way. She’d diamond ear-rings on, real ones, big diamonds like that.”
She held out the tip of her little finger, nipped between her third and thumb.
“I guess that makes a difference,” she said emphatically, looking at him with a pair of eyes which tried to be defiant, but were really full of forlorn appeal.
“Of course it makes a difference,” said the Colonel cheeringly, without knowing in the least what he meant, “a great difference.”
“They was all staring at her here at dinner. There was four men in the kitchen trying to get a squint through the door, until the Chinaman threw ’em out. And she knew jest as well as any one, and liked it. But you oughter have seen her pretend she didn’t notice it. Jest eat her dinner sort er slow and careless as if they was no one round more important than a yaller dog. Only now and then she’d throw back her head so’s her curls ’ud fall back and the diamond ear-rings ’ud show. I said to paw flat-footed, ‘Go and wait on her yourself, since you think she’s so dreadful handsome. I don’t do no waiting on that stuck-up thing.’”
Mitty turned away to the window. Her recital of the sensation created by the proud Miss Gracey seemed to affect her. There was a tremulous undernotein her voice; her bosom, under its tight-drawn pink calico covering, heaved as if she were about to weep.
The Colonel noted with surprise these signs of storm, and was wondering what would be best to say to divert the conversation into less disturbing channels, when Mitty, looking out of the window, craned her neck and evidently followed with her eyes a passing figure.
“There goes June Allen,” she said; “don’t she look shabby?”
The name caused the Colonel to stop eating. He raised his eyes to his companion. She was looking at him with reviving animation in her glance.
“That’s the daughter of old man Allen what’s squatted on your land,” she explained. “You ain’t ever seen the girls, have you?”
The Colonel, who had finished, laid his napkin on the table.
“No,” he answered, “are they children?”
“Children!” echoed Mitty, “I guess not. June’s twenty and Rosamund’s nineteen. I know ’em real well. They’re friends of mine.”
He raised his eyebrows, surprised and relieved at the information. It would be less hard to oust the squatter if his children were of this age than if they were helpless infants.
“What sort of girls are they?” he asked.
“Oh they’re real lovely girls. And they’ve got a wonderful education. They know lots. They’re learned. Their mother learned it to them—”
Mitty stopped, a sound outside striking her ear. The Colonel was looking at her with quizzical inquiry. The picture of the squatter’s children, as educated, much less “learned,” filled him with amused astonishment. He was just about to ask his informant for a fuller explanation, when she rose to her feet, her face suffused with color, her eyes fastened in a sudden concentration of attention on something outside the window.
“Here they are,” she said in a low, hurried voice. “Get up and look at them.”
He obeyed, not knowing whom she meant. In the bright light of the after-glow he saw four figures on horseback—three men and a girl—approaching down the deserted street. Behind them a pack burro, his back laden with bags and valises, plodded meekly through the dust. The Colonel recognized the men as the Gracey brothers and their superintendent, Barney Sullivan. The girl he had not seen for a year or two, and she was at the age when a year or two makes vast changes. He knew, however, that she was Black Dan Gracey’s daughter, Mercedes, who was expected at the dance.
The cavalcade came to a stop outside the window. From the piazza the front legs of the loungers’ chairs striking the floor produced a series of thuds, and the thuds were followed by a series of hails such as had greeted the Colonel. But the loungers made no attempt to go forward, as they had done in his case. An access of bashfulness in the presence of beauty held them sheepishly spellbound. It remained forForsythe to dash out with his duster and welcome the new arrivals with the effusion of a mining camp Boniface.
The Colonel, unseen, looked at them with perhaps not as avid a curiosity as Mitty, but with undisguised interest. He had long known the Gracey boys, as they were called, though Dan was forty-three and Rion twelve years younger. He had often heard of their mining vicissitudes, not only from men similarly engaged, but from themselves on their occasional visits to San Francisco. The society of that city had not yet expanded to the size when it fell apart into separate sets. Its members not only had a bowing acquaintance, but were, for the most part, intimate. The Gracey boys had, as the newspapers say, “the entrée everywhere,” though they did not, it is true, profit by it to the extent that San Francisco would have liked.
They were not only educated men, who had come from Michigan in their boyhood, but Black Dan Gracey was a figure distinguished—at any rate, to the feminine imagination—by an unusual flavor of romance. Seventeen years before the present date he had met, while mining in Mexico, a young Spanish girl of fourteen, had fallen madly in love with her, and when her parents placed her in a convent to remove her for ever from the hated Gringo, with six of his men, had broken into the convent and carried her off.
It was part of the romance that a year later his child-wife, as passionately loving as he, should have died, leaving him a baby. It was said that BlackDan Gracey had never recovered this sudden severing of the dearest tie of his life. He certainly was proof against the wiles that many sirens in San Francisco and elsewhere had displayed for his subjugation. It was after this, anyway, that the adjective Black had been prefixed to his name. Most people said it had arisen because of his swarthy coloring—he was of an almost Indian darkness of tint—but there were those who declared it was a tribute to his moody taciturnity, for Black Dan Gracey was a man of few words and rare smiles.
Now, standing in the brilliant evening light, the watcher could not but be impressed by the appearance of the two brothers. A fine pair of men, the Gracey boys, muscular, broad-shouldered, and tall; out-door men whose eyes were far-seeing and quiet, who felt cramped in cities, and returned from them with a freshened zest to the stream-bed and the cañon. Rion was obviously many years his brother’s junior. He was a more normal-looking person, not so darkly bearded and heavily browed, more full of the joys and interests of life.
As he slid from his saddle to the ground he was laughing, while his elder, the lower part of his face clothed in a piratical growth of black hair, lowered somberly from under a gray sombrero. In their rough and dust-grimed clothes, they still showed the indefinable air of the well-born and educated man, which curiously distinguished them from Barney Sullivan, their companion. Barney was as tall and well set up as either of them, but beyond a doubt he was what Mitty had called a “tarrier,” in other words anIrish laborer. He, too, was laughing, a laugh that showed strong white teeth under a short red mustache. His hat, pushed back from his forehead, revealed the same colored hair, thick and wiry. He had a broad, turned-up nose, plenteously freckled as were his hands, raised now to assist Miss Gracey from her horse.
Upon the one feminine member of the party the Colonel’s eyes had been fixed, as were those of every man in the vicinity. He calculated that she was nearly sixteen. For a girl with Spanish blood that would mean a young woman, full-grown and marriageable. She still, however, retained a look of childhood that was extremely charming, and in some vague, indistinct way, pathetic, he thought. Perhaps the pathos lay in the fact that she had never had a mother, and that the best care an adoring father could lavish upon her was to hire expensive nurses in her childhood, and send her to still more expensive boarding-schools when she grew older.
She was undoubtedly fulfilling the promise she had always given of being pretty. She sat sidewise on her saddle, looking down at Barney’s raised hands. Her hair, which was as black as her father’s, was arranged in loosely flowing curls that fell over her shoulders and brushed her chest. In this position, her chin down, her eyelashes on her cheeks, her lips curved in a slow, coquettish smile, she presented a truly bewitching appearance. Under her childish demeanor, the woman, conscious of unusual charms, was already awake. The Colonel felt as Mitty had, that though her entire attention seemed concentratedon Barney, she was acutely aware of the staring men on the piazza, and was rejoicing in their bashful admiration. He could not help smiling, her indifference was so coolly complete. His smile died when he felt Mitty give him a vicious dig in the back.
“Did you see the ear-rings?” she said in a hissing undertone.
“Yes, I think I did.”
“Do you suppose they’re real diamonds?”
“Why, of course. Black Dan wouldn’t give his daughter anything else.”
Mitty gave forth a sound that seemed a cross between a snort and a groan.
“And a pack burro!” she exclaimed with fuming scorn. “Did you get on to the pack burro, all loaded up with bags? She has to have her party rig brought along on a pack burro!”
“Well, what’s wrong with that?” he said soothingly. “She couldn’t go to the party in her riding habit all grimed up with dust. Nobody ever saw a girl at a party in a riding habit.”
“Well, the Phillips girl can go all right in a pink flannel skirt and miners’ boots,” declared his companion with combative heat, overlooking the fact that the festal array of the Phillips girl had been a subject of her special derision. “I guess she don’t have to have a pack burro to carry her duds.”
The Colonel realized that the moment for gentle reasoning was over. Only the girl’s burning curiosity kept down the wrathful tears evoked by a newly stirred jealousy. When she saw Black Dan’s daughterslide from her saddle into Barney Sullivan’s arms, an ejaculation of mingled pain and rage escaped her that had a note of suffering in it.
The Colonel, in his time, had known such pangs, a thousand times deeper and more terrible than Mitty had ever experienced. He turned to her smiling, not teasingly, but almost tenderly, and saw her face blighted like a rose dashed by rain, pitiful and a little ludicrous. The pitiful side of it was all that struck him.
“Did you see how mighty easy Barney is with her?” she stammered, making a desperate feminine attempt to speak lightly.
“A gentleman has to help a lady off her horse; he can’t let her climb down all by herself. Barney’s not that kind of a chump. You run along now and get ready. You haven’t got such a lot of time, for you’ve got to help set the tables for supper. And don’t you fret. I just feel that you’re going to look as nice as any girl in the place. That dress of yours is going to be just about right. Hurry up! Here they are.”
Mitty heard the advancing footfalls in the passage and the sound of approaching voices. As the tail of her pink calico skirt disappeared through the kitchen door, the Gracey party entered through the one that led to the office. There were greetings with the Colonel, and he sat down at their table to exchange the latest San Francisco gossip with the mining news of the district, and especially to hear the details of the strike in the Buckeye Belle.