Chapter XLIII: Jean Is Happy—and Another Person 307 (9)

“I mean pardners. He’s got the sabé an’ I’ve got the rocks, so we can make a go of it. The kentry’s settlin’ up powerful fast, an’ thar’ll be lots o’ demand for lumber for bridges an’ barns an’ houses an’ fencin’ an’ sich.”

“I see. We had a lot of spavined, wind-broken old horses for our sawmill power in the States, sir.”

“Thar’s a water-power yander that beats hosses all to thunder, miss.”

“So I see, sir.”

“Thar’s millions o’ feet o’ logs in sight; an’ out yander in the mountains is a place to build a flume, so we kin raf’ the logs down to a lake that I found up thar in the woods. We’ll have a town here some day an’ make things hum.”

“Have you often met my daddie?” asked Jean.

“I’m lookin’ fur him now, every minute. We’re goin’ to survey some timber-land fur the mill-hands, farther up the crick. The curse o’ this kentry is bachelders. Ah! here’s the Cap’n now. It’s lucky you’ve brought along so many weemen folks, ole man; we’ll all be needin’ wives.”

This concluding remark brought the hot blood of indignation to the cheeks of Jean as she turned to meet her father, who was carrying an ax and a gun, followed by Mr. Burns, equipped with a clothes-line and a carpenter’s square.

“What in thunder are you doing out here, Jean?” asked her father, taking no notice of the stranger’s remark. “Don’t you know that the woods are full of wild beasts?”

“I’ve seen nothing wilder than your prospective ‘pardner,’” she answered aside. “He seems harmless; but he’s an ignoramus and a boor.”

“Very well, Jean. But ruin home now, and help the women folks. They have a whole lot o’ work on hand, getting settled, and you do like to shirk.”

“Thar’ll be lots more of it for ’em to do afore this timber is all sawed up,” added the prospective “pardner.” “It takes a mountain o’ grub to keep a lot o’ loggers in workin’ order. I’m mighty glad, Cap’n, that you’ve got a lot a weemin folks; we’ll need ’em in our business.”

“Yes,” retorted Jean. “They’re as handy to have in the house as a coffin with the proper combination of letters on the plate!”

Mr. Burns laughed; but Mr. Jackman dropped his lower jaw and looked the picture of an exaggerated interrogation point. “What’s the gal drivin’ at?” he asked under his breath; and her father said gravely, “Stop talking nonsense, Jean.”

It was mutually agreed upon that a logging-camp should be started at once, and the ground prepared during the coming rainy season for the foundation and erection of a combined sawmill, planer, and shingle-mill, and that Captain Ranger should return, as early as practicable, to the States, _via_ the Isthmus, to purchase the necessary machinery, which could not at that time be procured on the Pacific Coast.

* * * * *

Soon thereafter Captain Ranger went to Portland to purchase the necessary supplies for the winter’s use. Arriving there, he repaired, in his best Sunday suit, to the primitive hotel, and inquired for Mrs. Addicks.

The lady appeared, after long waiting, fastidiously gowned and so thoroughly at ease that all his thought of the superior quality of the white man’s blood departed as he saw her, and he stood in her presence in embarrassed silence.

“Won’t you be seated, Mr.—”

“Ranger,” he said, fumbling his hat awkwardly and shambling into the proffered chair.

“To what am I indebted for this visit, Mr. Ranger?”

“You will please excuse me, ma’am,” he said, crossing his legs clumsily, “but I have come to see you on a little business that concerns us both. Your husband is my brother.”

“Then, sir, you can tell me something about his family. Do his parents yet live?”

“They were alive and well at last accounts; but it takes two months or more for a letter to go and come. Our grandmother died recently.”

“The dear old lady he calls ‘Grannie’?”

“Yes.”

“My husband will be grieved to hear of this. I must write to him at once. Can you give me any particulars concerning her last days? Did she remember Joseph?”

“She had a dream of him, and said his mother would live to see him again.”

“I used to wonder why my husband was so reticent about his family affairs. I supposed when we were married that he would take me back to live among his people. But he steadfastly refused to do it, and would not even let me know their post-office address. But I know all about it now. He left home under a cloud.”

“But it was not nearly so bad as he thought. I set his mind at rest on that score when we had that last interview. The poor fellow was in daily dread of discovery and pursuit for more than a dozen years.”

The woman arose and paced the floor in silence, the coppery hue of her complexion enriched by the blood that rushed to her face. She paused and stood before him, her hands folded over the back of a chair, as she waited for him to speak again.

“I did your husband a grievous wrong when I saw him at the post, madam. I must confess that I had no idea that the Indian woman he told me that he had married was—”

She waved her hand in protest. “There, there, Mr. John; no flattery, if you please. If you had seen me as I was that day, you would have felt justified in spurning your brother’s wife. It was not my fault, though, that he kept me like a common squaw. Your conduct is fully forgiven, since it resulted in an open declaration of independence on my part.

“There were a dozen young chieftains and half as many white men who aspired to my hand and heart in my girlhood; but Joseph was a king among them all. But we had not been married a month before I found that I was doomed to the same treatment, as his wife, that other Indian wives endure. So I lost heart, and accepted the situation as stolidly as my father would have done if he had been doomed to perpetual slavery.”

“Did Joseph always treat you badly after your marriage?”

The woman shrugged her shoulders.

“Hard times came to our tribe. The Hudson Bay Company’s business languished. We had a succession of bitter cold winters, with dry, hot summers following. The different tribes became involved in war. Then famine came, and pestilence. We will draw a veil over what followed, Mr. John. Joseph will never beat his wife again; I have sworn it!

“The fluctuations of fortune brought us at last to the Utah trading-post, where you saw Joseph. We were prosperous then, and might have lived like white folks; but he seemed to prefer to keep me situated like an ordinary squaw, so I gave him all he bargained for. But, ugh! I did detest the life. Finally my father died and left me an ample inheritance, which is mine absolutely. I will educate my children and take them to London, where there is no prejudice against my people such as abounds in this ‘land of the free and home of the brave’!”

“Do you think Joseph is able to repay a part of the money we lost on his account?”

“My husband will waste more money in a single night sometimes, at the gambling-table, than he will expend on his family in a year. I think he is quite able to pay his debts.”

“How would you like to visit our people back in the old home?”

“When our children reach the age of six or seven years, they begin to outgrow the Indian style and complexion,” she said; “but I’ll not take them among my husband’s people while they look like little pappooses.”

“Why not take them out to my donation claim? My family will be glad to welcome you.”

“Couldn’t I take my nurse along?”

“If you did, some fool would coax her to marry him, so he and she could hold a double quota of land. Better leave her here with your little ones, or set her to washing dishes.”

“In either case our landlord would marry her himself, I fear. But I’ll risk it.”

The older girls were out of school for a walk, in the company of their brother John and a black-robed Sister, and thus were permitted at this juncture to enter their mother’s presence for an introduction to their uncle.

“John and Annie are Rangers, as you see, sir. My husband is very proud of them.”

“And well he might be,” thought the Captain, as he scanned them critically.

* * * * *

The sun was sinking behind the Coast Range the next evening, throwing the picturesque valley of the Willamette into deep shadows, and lighting up the tops of the Cascade heights with tinges of rose and gold and purple, when a carriage and pair were seen ascending the narrow grade leading to the great log house occupied temporarily by all the families of the Ranger colony. The unexpected arrival of the Captain created a sensation, which was not at all abated when he vaulted to the ground, followed, before he could turn to assist her, by a large, well-formed, and faultlessly attired Indian woman, with a sheen of gold in her raven-hued hair.

“Mrs. O’Dowd,” said the Captain, offering his hand, “allow me to introduce Mrs. Ranger Number Two,—my brother Joseph’s wife.”

XXXV

_ASHLEIGH MAKES NEW PLANS_

When Henry Jackman saw the wife of Joseph Ranger, whom he had known at the trading-post in Utah as Mr. Addicks, and understood the full significance of her arrival as a welcome visitor and relative of the Ranger family, he shrugged his shoulders and walked away, exclaiming: “I’m dummed!”

“No wonder Uncle Joe was captured by that fine creature,” said Jean to herself. “She must have been as handsome in her girlhood as Le-Le.” And for the first time in her life she fainted away.

When she awoke to consciousness, which was not till the next morning, she was on the big white bed in the spare chamber, whither she had been carried by loving friends and treated through all the watches of the night by the Little Doctor with the untiring faithfulness of a devoted friend.

“Take that Indian away! I cannot bear the sight of her,” cried Jean, as her copper-colored aunt approached her, proffering kindly offices.

“She must be humored in her whims till she has had time to recover, Mrs. Ranger,” said Mrs. McAlpin, aside. “There’s a love story and a disappointment behind all this. Her antipathy is not against you, but another Indian princess whom she thinks she has cause to remember.”

“I didn’t come here to make wounds, but to heal them,” faltered Mrs. Ranger, as, with an indistinct conception of the trouble, she left the room, followed by Sally O’Dowd.

“I want you to know that you have healed my wounds,” said Sally. “I was miserably and unreasonably jealous of—I didn’t know of whom—for a whole week before you came to us. I shall never be such a simpleton again.”

“My wise brother says you and he have concluded to marry each other, Mrs. O’Dowd.”

“We were engaged for a short time, but when I overheard him talking to himself about going to Portland ‘to see a woman,’ and he wouldn’t take me into his confidence about her, I got angry and jealous, and treated him shabbily.”

They found the Captain, of whom they went in quest, in his favorite seat on the front doorstep.

“I don’t see why you and Joseph cannot go together to visit your parents this winter,” said Mrs. Ranger, coming at once to the point. “Your partner can have ample time while you are away to get the foundations ready for the mill and other buildings. I will write to Joseph this very night and urge it if you say so.”

The Captain looked inquiringly at Mrs. O’Dowd.

“I quite agree with your brother’s wife,” she said, extending her hand. “I was an idiot to act toward you as I did.”

“With your permission, I will write at once to Joseph, explaining everything and urging him to come to the ranch at once. The courier goes out to-night, so there is no time to lose.”

“Yes,” said Sally, whose eyes were blazing with a new joy, “it is just as Wahnetta says. You can be spared better this winter than later. Will you go if Joseph consents to accompany you?”

“And leave you behind?”

“It would be very humiliating to your family and embarrassing to both of us for me to return as your wife to the old home of your Annie, John.”

“But you’ll marry me before I start?”

“No, John,” she said, the tears welling to her eyes; “we owe to your Annie’s people a tender regard for their feelings. If we were to be married before you visit them, they could never be reconciled to me.”

“I must consult my partner,” said the Captain. “He may not want me to leave at this time. The fellow is terribly unreasonable at times.”

“Is that ‘fellow,’ as you call him, your master?” asked Mary, who was passing, on her way to the milk-house. “He’s been hanging around the house ever since sun-up, waiting for a chance to see Jean. He’s depending on the three of us to keep the boarding-house, and he wants to marry Jean, to stop her wages.”

“Excuse me, ladies; I must see my partner at once,” said the Captain, as he hurried away.

It required much persuasive argument to secure the consent of Happy Jack to Mrs. Joseph’s proposition; but he yielded at length, as men are wont to do when women to whom they are not married combine to carry a point.

The outgoing courier was to leave Oregon City at sunset, and it was necessary to write many letters for the overland mail, destined for Salt Lake and the few intervening points along the route.

Among the missives was one from Jean to Ashton Ashleigh, containing only a few sentences:—

“I have loved you more than life, but I have awaited tidings from you till hope is dead. I wrote a letter for your mother, but it was not sent to her because I had not heard from you. You will understand. I am deeply wounded, but I shall not die. I shall do my duty and be honest with myself, no matter what others may do or be.

“A man who styles himself Happy Jack has come among us, who wants to make me his wife. He is forming a partnership with daddie in the sawmill business; and he insinuates that you have married Le-Le. Does this explain your silence?”

* * * * *

A fortnight passed, and Ashton Ashleigh read this letter by the flickering light of a smoking kerosene lamp. Siwash lay on a buffalo robe in a corner, reading; and near him sat Le-Le, making a cunningly wrought moccasin.

The wind outside was rising. The ice-laden chains and pulleys of the idle ferry-boat resounded to its attack like a thousand-stringed Æolian harp. Suddenly, under a louder and more furious blast than any that had preceded it, the ice-incrusted cables snapped asunder, and the frozen boat crashed through the ice blockade, her timbers breaking as if made of withes.

Ashleigh opened the door and peered out into the moonlight. White clouds rolled over and over one another, and the stark white landscape seemed alive with flurrying snow.

“Good-bye, Green River Ferry,” he said. “This is a fitting finale to my cherished hopes. Oh, Jean! my bonnie Jean! To think that the end should be like this!”

* * * * *

“The ferry-boat is gone, Le-Le,” he said the next morning. “Your ransom price has been paid, and you are, as you know, a slave no longer. I am going away. Take good care of Le-Le, Siwash, my boy; and take good care of yourself also.”

The girl’s English vocabulary was too meagre to admit of much expostulation in speech, but her wailing was blood-curdling as she knelt at his feet, alternately embracing his knees and tearing her hair.

“I have made a terrible mistake, poor girl,” he cried, tearing himself away, “but I meant only to be kind. It was my dream to set you free and take you with me to—to—her. But now I see that it will be impossible!”

Le-Le, still wailing, prepared his breakfast. Siwash brought his mules to the door, in stolid obedience to orders, his face as expressionless as flint.

“The white man’s heart is hard, like the hoof of the buffalo,” he said to Le-Le in her native tongue. “You mistook his kindness for love. But never mind. You’ll get over it.”

* * * * *

Two days of steady travel through the solitudes brought Ashleigh to the lodgings of the post-trader, Joseph Ranger, alias Addicks.

“Your wife,” John had written to his brother, “has come to visit us at the Ranch of the Whispering Firs, as my girls have named our donation claims, to hold which we have pooled our issues, and have filed upon them as individuals. My family are charmed with her. Do join us here at once. Take a donation claim near to one or more of ours. Forget bygones. And, best of all, go with me this winter, by the Isthmus route, to the dear old home. Do say yes, Joe, and we may all be happy yet.”

“Halloa!” cried Ashleigh, as he alighted at the post.

“Well,” cried Joseph Ranger, as he opened his canvas door; “it’s Ashleigh. Come right in! You’re the very man I wanted to see.”

A savory odor of hot biscuits and frying ham greeted the nostrils of the benumbed and hungry wayfarer.

“This supper smells good, Mr. Addicks.”

“Mr. Addicks no more, if you please, Mr. Ashleigh. My name is Ranger,—Joseph Ranger. I have found myself, and I shall be known by my real name hereafter. But help yourself to pot-luck. And please excuse me. I have just begun to read a letter from the coast. The courier hasn’t been gone five minutes.”

After Ashleigh had finished his meal his host thrust the letter in his face and said, “What do you think of that?”

“What do you propose to do?” asked Ashleigh, after carefully considering the missive.

“Why, go to Oregon, of course. What else could a fellow do? But I don’t know what in the dickens to do with my stuff.”

“You can leave me in charge, if you like. You can invoice at your lowest selling-price, and I’ll make what profit I can on the venture and close it out in the spring; that is, if you do not care to return next year.”

“The good Lord has taken pity on me at last,” cried the delighted host. “My luck has begun to turn.”

XXXVI

_HAPPY JACK IS SURPRISED_

“You don’t seem to like the idea of my going to the States this winter, after all,” said Captain Ranger to his partner, who had been for several days exhibiting a degree of ill temper not assuring to a man of peaceful inclinations.

“Not by a darn sight. Business is business. Them weemen folks o’ yourn is as independent as so many hogs on ice. They are goin’ back on me about the cookin’ for the men. But say! I won’t object to your goin’ no more, if you’ll make Jean marry me afore you start. I could manage her all right if she was my wife; an’ then I could set the pace for the rest of ’em.”

The Captain paused a moment, in doubt whether to give the fellow the toe of his boot or wipe the ground with his whole body. “My daughters are to be their own choosers,” he said. “I have already engaged a crew of loggers to work while I am absent. If the winter is open, we can have everything shipshape by the time the machinery arrives.”

“Stay, daddie,” cried Jean, who, with Mary, had come up unobserved by their father. She was ghastly pale and strangely tremulous. “Mame and I have something important to say to you both before you part.”

“What is it, gals? Don’t hesitate to speak right out.”

“We—that is, Jean and I and Sally O’Dowd—have been talking things over; and we have concluded that we had better settle our side of this business proposition before matters go any further,” said Mary, speaking with unusual decision. “As you, father, have arranged to have a partner, and as—to use his own words—‘business is business,’ I want to say that I will be your cook at the partnership mess-house, but only at a reasonable salary. If you had no partner, the work would be all in the family, and we could settle its dividend among ourselves.”

“I have engaged a dozen pupils and will open a little school in a few days,” interrupted Jean, who had not heard the partner’s proposition in regard to herself, and therefore spoke without embarrassment. “But I shall have plenty of time to keep the books of the concern after school hours, and I will see that everything is done on business principles.”

“The deuce you will!” thought the partner. Then aloud: “I was intendin’ to keep the books myself.”

“Are you a practical book-keeper?” asked Jean.

“No; that is, not edzactly. But I kin keep most any set o’ transactions in my head. I never in my born days hearn tell of any woman or gal that could keep books. An’ I never knowed any woman to git a salary.”

“That was because you never knew the Ranger family,” laughed Marjorie.

“It is arranged that Hal is to have employment in the mill at a salary,” said Mary, “and he is very proud of the opportunity. We girls are all as willing to work as he is. But we do not believe at all in the custom of servitude without salary, to which all married women, and most of the single ones, are subject.”

“Is that the way you look at it, Miss Jean?” asked her would-be suitor.

“Daddie has always taught us that the highest type of humanity is built on the self-dependence of the individual. Haven’t you, daddie?”

“My daughters are right, Mr. Jackman. I have trained them to the idea of self-government. I am glad indeed to see them taking hold of these principles firmly.”

The partner turned away crestfallen. When he was fairly out of hearing, he took off his hat and exclaimed: “I’ll be gol darned! What is the weemin comin’ to?”

* * * * *

“I have engaged Susannah to live at my house,” said the Little Doctor, addressing the Captain as he sauntered toward a spreading fir near the front doorsteps, where the family were holding a consultation with Mrs. Joseph Ranger prior to her departure.

“Then who will assist Mrs. O’Dowd while I am away?” asked the Captain. “She’ll surely need both company and assistance at the Ranch of the Whispering Firs as badly as you will need it at the Four Corners.”

“Don’t worry about me, Captain,” said Sally. “I can manage the whole place without the help of anybody.”

“Thank you, Mrs. O’Dowd. You are a thoroughly unselfish woman.”

“Pardon me, daddie,” said Jean, as soon as she could address him privately. “You make a great mistake if you imagine Sally O’Dowd isn’t as selfish as the rest of us. The Little Doctor was quite taken aback by a remark to the contrary that you made a while ago.”

“I’m sure I meant no offence, Jean. But I confess that I am disappointed in both the Little Doctor and Susannah. They ought not to leave me in an extremity like the present when I have been so kind to them.”

“Everything we attempt is actuated by selfishness, daddie.”

“I can’t agree with you, Jean.”

“Oh, yes, you can! You took the Little Doctor under your wing away back in the States, because you could only hope by that means to get some help that you needed out o’ Scotty. You smuggled Dugs out o’ Missouri because it pleased you to please your wife. I am going to teach a little school from a purely selfish motive.”

“Was it selfishness that prompted you to fall in love with your unfaithful Green River hero, Jean?”

She turned deathly pale. “Yes, daddie dear. I thought I was going to be happy; and that was selfishness, of course. But I’m getting my punishment.”

“If selfishness is a natural attribute of humanity, we ought not to decry it, but should seek to control and guide it, Jean.”

“That is right, daddie. We have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But we also need toughening. I am getting my share of toughening.”

“Do you object to my marrying Sally O’Dowd?”

“That is your affair, daddie; but there is no accounting for tastes.”

“Do you think your angel-mother would approve the step, my child?”

“Ah!” cried Jean, her face brightening, “there is one love that never dies,—the love of a mother for her child. It is the same sort of unselfish love that prompted the Son of Man to lay down His life for the redemption of the race; it is the same love that prompted my mother to risk and lose her life in the wilderness. You will please yourself by marrying Sally O’Dowd. We children will pay her allegiance as our father’s wife, chiefly because we know on which side our bread is buttered. But we will not call her mother; nor do we believe you would ask it.”

“I couldn’t think of taking the step, my child, unless I thought your mother would approve it, if she could know. But I am very sure she doesn’t know.”

“You do not want to believe she knows, daddie. It is always easier to believe or disbelieve anything when the wish is father to the thought.”

“Well, Jean, it will not do to be loitering here. Yonder come the logging crew. There’ll be a lot of hungry men to feed. Some of them are educated men, quite equal in intelligence and culture to Mr. Burns. Don’t go to losing your heart.”

“Don’t speak of hearts to me, daddie dear; mine is dead and buried. But you have no idea how cruelly it was wrung.”

“There, there, daughter, don’t worry! There are as good fish in the sea as any that have ever been caught.”

* * * * *

There was no time for loitering. There was an extra lodge to be built in the wilderness for the crew of loggers, and a long dining-shed to be added; the rails had to be made and fences built; the ground had to be cleared and broken for the spring’s planting; and much rude furniture for the homes had yet to be manufactured. The building of a skid road was another pressing need; and, taken all together, the Captain did not wonder that his partner should take his departure seriously.

That the partner was not lacking in executive ability was evident.

“I tell you, gals, that partner of mine is a corker for business,” said the Captain.

“He may be, daddie,” said Jean, “but that is all he’s good for. If there’s a chance to murder the Queen’s English, he’ll do it. He afflicts me with nausea whenever he speaks.”

“But if you had a man like him for a husband, you would never lack means for the indulgence of the selfish philanthropies you and I have been talking about. You know you promised your grandfather that you would assist him as soon as you could earn some money.”

“That’s so, daddie; but I must earn it honestly. And I’d be getting it through the worst kind of fraudulent practice if I married Happy Jack. Besides, he will be too stingy for anything after he’s married.”

“Don’t be too hard on him, Jean. He’s got good credentials.”

“And so had Sam O’Dowd. No, daddie, I won’t have any money unless I can get it honestly. As soon as I can earn some cash by teaching, I’ll send it to the dear old grandfolks. They capped the climax of their selfishness in jeopardizing the property and happiness of all concerned to gratify their selfish pride in Uncle Joe.”

“Your theories and practices don’t tally, Jean,” laughed her father as he turned, and, with a tender good-bye aside for Sally O’Dowd and an open and hearty adieu to the children, he seated himself in the buggy beside his sister-in-law and drove rapidly away.

“I wonder how many years must elapse before the roads to Portland are as snugly finished and kept in as good repair as they are to-day from one suburb of London town to another?” asked Mrs. Joseph, merely to break an embarrassing silence.

“In another fifty years the people’ll be awake to the need, mebbe. It takes a hundred years to make a new country habitable.”

“My people always want their hunting-grounds to remain wild,” said Mrs. Joseph. “I used to like the most primitive modes of life in my childhood; but I learned a better way in London.”

“Did you learn to like the Indian life again, Wahnetta?”

“Never, sir. But I stooped to conquer, and I have succeeded. But I never could have done the best that was in me, for myself and Joseph, to say nothing of the children, if my father hadn’t made me, instead of my husband, his legatee. It takes money to do things.”

XXXVII

_NEWS FOR JEAN_

The second meeting between the Ranger brothers was much more embarrassing than cordial. Each at sight of the other recalled their last encounter. They shook hands hesitatingly, and after an awkward pause sat down together on the front porch of the primitive hotel.

Joseph, who had been awaiting the arrival of his wife and the Captain for a couple of days, was displeased because his Wahnetta had not been within call from the moment of his advent, as long habit had led him to expect. That she met him now with the air of a friend and an equal, and after a pleasant greeting on her part discreetly left the brothers to themselves while she went in quest of her babies, was a display of good breeding and motherly solicitude which Joseph Ranger would have commended in any woman not his wife. But his will had so long been her only law that her greeting, in connection with his embarrassment at meeting his brother, put him in a very unamiable frame of mind.

“I concluded that you had gone back on your agreement, John,” he growled, after a painful silence.

“Oh, did you? Since when have you made a new record for punctuality, Joe?”

“Since the arrival of the last courier at the trading-post, who brought me your letter.”

“What did you think of my proposition?”

“I accepted it at once, or I would not have been here. Who is Wahnetta going out driving with, I wonder?”

“I called the cab for a drive with the children a little before you came, sir,” said the nurse.

“Oh!”

“You ought to be very proud of your wife, Joe.”

“I am beginning to be. Yet you never can tell what the Indian nature will attempt. She seems to be all right when she lives with white people, but she’d lapse at once into barbarism again if she got a chance. They all do it. It is in the blood.”

“She doesn’t seems to want that sort of a chance, Joe.”

“An Indian is like a wild coyote, John.”

“But you have caught a tame one, Joe. She is above the average, even of white women. Give her the chance she craves. Stand by her like a gentleman. She is as thoroughly civilized as any of us.”

“Did you see her at the trading-post last summer?”

“No; but why do you ask?”

“Because you would have beheld her in her native element. You may capture and tame a coyote, but when you turn him loose among his natural environments, you can’t distinguish him in a short time from the wildest wolf of the pack.”

“That being the case, there is strong need for keeping your wife in her adopted home, among your own people.”

John was thawing toward his brother at a rapid rate; and Joseph, the erring but encouraged and repenting brother, felt a pang of remorse as he arose to welcome his wife and children upon their return from their drive, resolving in his heart that he would never again allow himself to regret the vows he had taken upon himself in his early manhood.

The paper was awaiting the Captain at his table the next morning, with the announcement that the sailing of the ocean steamer was to be delayed for a couple of days on account of an accident to her propeller.

“Then we’ll have time for a spin out to the Ranch of the Whispering Firs, eh, Joe?” he asked, as his brother, accompanied by Wahnetta, who was resplendent in a crimson cashmere robe, over which her black mantilla was carelessly thrown, took his seat at his elbow at breakfast.

“I thought I’d like to take a spin through this embryo city,” was the quiet response.

“But I want you to see the lay of the land. I’m hoping to make you a partner in the ranch and sawmill business. You won’t want to buy a pig in a poke.”

A visit to Joseph’s sons and daughters at school was first in order. Then a carriage was called, and the entire party was conducted around and over stumps, logs, and devious primitive roadways to the heights.

“Why anybody wants to go to the Old World for scenery, when he can enjoy such a prospect as this right at his very door, is one of the mysteries of modern existence,” said Wahnetta. “Away to the north by east of us, in the home of my people, there is a land so different from this that it might be a part of another planet, yet it is passing beautiful. Directly to the north is the traditional Whulge, or Puget Sound, where the enemies of my people live, who, like my own, are dying out. This mighty land is a giant baby; wait half a century, and she will be a full-grown giantess.”

It was three o’clock when they returned to the hotel, but a fresh team from the one livery stable the metropolis of Oregon Territory was able to boast was placed at the disposal of the brothers, who spanned a distance of thirty miles in three hours. A light rain had fallen in the early morning, and the face of Nature was as pure as ether. Resplendent green abounded in the valley, lighted here and there by gleams of the gliding Willamette, on whose silvery current little white steamers were seen at intervals, flitting to and fro like swans. In many spots in the valley, and everywhere on the mountain-sides, stood rows on rows of forest firs, and beyond these, coming frequently into view as the road wound in and out among the trees, arose the snow-crowned monarch of the Cascades, majestic Mount Hood, whose slowly dying glaciers discharged their silt into the milk-white waters of the Sandy.

“What do you think of it all?” asked the elder brother, after a long silence, in which each had been feasting his eyes upon the beauty of the scene and filling his lungs with the exhilarating air.

“I’m thinking of the glories that await the later comers into this beautiful land, after the pioneers have worn their bodies out in their struggles with the native wilderness. I’ve been shutting my eyes and seeing coal mines, iron mines, gold mines, oil mines, silver mines, farms, fisheries, mills, factories, orchards, gardens, everything! I’ve lived in Utah and witnessed the marvels of irrigation there; but God does the irrigating in this country, and He does it well.”

“Did you see the fishes that swarmed in the Sandy, Joe?”

“Yes; and I’ve seen salmon and sturgeon struggling up the Columbia, so thick in the current that they looked like Illinois saw-logs. I think I know how Moses felt when he had

“‘Climbed to Pisgah’s top,
And viewed the landscape o’er.’”

“Wait till we reach the Ranch of the Whispering Firs. Then you will see something worthy of all your rhapsodies. There!” cried the Captain, as they sighted the broad and slightly sloping plateau on which his new log house was built.

In front of it stood a towering fir-tree, like an ever-vigilant sentinel; and behind it rose gigantic colonnades of evergreen forests. Foaming waters surged and leaped through a ragged gulch; and tangled thickets of hazel, alder, dogwood, and elder crowded the luxurious growth of ferns that struggled for the mastery. “There!” he repeated, “what do you think now?”

“That I’d like to transport the entire family of Rangers, root and branch, to the Ranch of the Whispering Firs. Suppose we take your old sawmill off Lije’s hands and remove the whole thing to Oregon, John? It would be a good way to relieve him of his elephant.”

“The machinery is old and old-fashioned, Joe. We’d better buy everything new, and the best of its kind.”

“I was merely thinking of relieving Lije; that’s all.”

As they made the last turn leading to the house, they were accosted impatiently by the Captain’s junior partner.

“At this rate, you won’t git started to the States afore Christmas, Cap’n.”

“This is my brother Joseph, Mr. Jackman. And this, Joseph, is my partner, Mr. Jackman.”

The two men glared at each other for a moment in silence. Jackman was the first to speak,—

“Well, I’m dummed!”

“How came you to be known as Jackman? You posed as Hankins in Utah.”

“An’ you was Joe Addicks, pard. Better not tell tales out o’ school. That’s a game two can play at.”

“There are no tales to tell on my part. I am masquerading no more. Can you say as much?”

“I’m just a-beginnin’, as it were.”

“How in the name of Fate did you come across that chap, John?” asked Joseph, as they alighted from the buggy.

“He has taken a donation claim on the mountain-side which includes the water-power for our mill site. At least, he says it does. Burns and I haven’t had time to survey it yet.”

“Better go slow with that fellow, John.”

“What do you know about him, Joe?”

“Nothing; only he’s been a noted crook and jail-breaker.”

“Jean is to be our book-keeper. She’s been disappointed over that Green River affair. Do you know what became of Ashleigh?”

“I left him at my station in charge of my business. He’s as honest as the day. But, by the way, why didn’t Jean answer the letter he sent out in care of your Happy Jack?”

“She received no letter. But what about Le-Le? Did he marry her?”

“Did Ashleigh marry Le-Le? What a question! Who said he did?”

“Jackman.”

“Jean must know of all this. Will you break it to her, Joe?”

* * * * *

Night had come; and the autumn rains were gently enwrapping the Ranch of the Whispering Firs in a sheet of mist when Joseph Ranger sought Jean in her little schoolroom for a private conversation.

The flickering light of a single kerosene lamp emitted a characteristic odor. A rough table supported the lamp; and on a three-legged stool sat the schoolma’am, trying to bring order out of the chaos of a score or more of papers left by the children.

“Ah!” she said, arising. “Come in, Uncle Joe. You won’t find our crude beginnings very inviting, but we mustn’t despise the day of small things.”

“You’re making a good beginning, Jean. But I have not come to talk about your school. I have brought you some tidings from Mr. Ashleigh.”

Jean turned pale and would have fallen if her uncle had not caught her in his arms.

“Here is a note which he gave me just as I was leaving for the West.”

Jean retained her composure by a supreme effort of the will.

“You were my dream,” the letter began; “I trusted and loved you as I can never trust and love another. And the end is to be your marriage with a fellow you call Happy Jack! Oh, Jean, my bonnie Jean! Why have you been so fickle and so rash? I sent you a letter and a ring. It was my great-great-grandmother’s ring, and a hereditary talisman. The messenger was one Harry Hankins, a borderer and scout, who was going to Oregon City. No, Jean; I did not marry Le-Le, but I did secure her ransom, and I should before now have been on my way to you, but was awaiting your letter. Good-bye, and may God guard and keep you! Think of me as your heartbroken friend and lover.”

“I never received one single word from him,” said Jean; “and I never saw or heard of Harry Hankins.”

“Oh, yes, you did, Jean. He is none other than your father’s partner.”

“How can I reach Mr. Ashleigh with a letter? It must be sent at once.”

“That will be impossible, Jean; there will be no courier going out for a month yet. But we will take a letter to Portland, and leave it in care of Wahnetta. She will see that it is forwarded at the first opportunity.”

* * * * *

Busily the work went forward. But Happy Jack was nowhere to be seen, and the brothers were compelled to take their departure without making the business settlement with him which they so much desired.

“Never mind! We’ll freeze him out, or scare him out, if he shows up here again,” said the Captain, as he and his brother turned their faces Portland-ward.

XXXVIII

_THE BROTHERS JOURNEY HOMEWARD TOGETHER_

The steamer in which the Ranger brothers embarked for San Francisco was an ancient and somewhat decrepit tub, as much unlike the floating palaces that plough the Pacific Ocean to-day as the long railway trains with their Pullman coaches, cushioned seats, and electric bells are unlike the prairie schooners which belabored oxen hauled across deserts and mountains when the oldest pioneer of to-day was young, and Captain Ranger was in his prime.

“We’re at the jumping-off place,” said the elder brother, when the vessel stopped at Astoria. “There will never be a chance for the restive American citizen to get any farther west than the eastern edge of the Pacific Ocean. And yet who knows?” he added, after a pause. “Burns has a theory in which, after all, there may be some logic. He says that the entire planet will some day be under the management of an affiliated government formed by a few great powers, who will organize an alliance to control, and maybe protect, the weaker nationalities from one another. Jean is enthusiastic over the theme.”

“You seem to set great store by Jean.”

“Oh, I don’t know. She’s about raking up a new engagement with that Green River chap. If she does, she’ll marry soon, and get immersed in the cares of a family, like all the rest of the girls. If so, she’ll never amount to much.”

“No great general can do as much for the world, no matter how many nations he conquers, as the mother who rears a family of noble men and women, John. I would rather be in some mothers’ shoes than in the President’s.”

“And so would I. But it is hard, when a man has raised a daughter of great mental promise, to see her talents buried under the selfish domination of some prig of a husband who has all the power though he hasn’t half her sense.”

* * * * *

“Wait long enough,” said John, as they passed Tillamook Head and pursued their undulating way southward; “wait long enough, and the genius of American liberty and enterprise will settle yonder shores with a million or more inhabitants. Railroads by the dozen will cross the continent in time, sending out lateral branches in all directions, till the whole country is gridironed with paths for the iron horse.”

“But the mountains are in the way, John.”

“They will be tunnelled or looped, Joe. New feats of engineering are being developed constantly; and I should not be surprised to hear of the discovery of some new force, or rather of the discovery of the utility of some always existing force, which will revolutionize transportation on the land and the sea. There are islands to the west of us, lots of them. And who knows but they will become a part of the possessions of the United States before the close of the century? I’d like to have Burns and Jean and the Little Doctor here to help me talk it out.”

“I can’t let my mind get away from me, as you do,” laughed Joseph, and they changed the subject.

* * * * *

Days passed, and the timber lines of southern Oregon and northern California gave way to the extensive treeless regions that border the central and southern edges of the Golden State. Immense stretches of barren, sandy wastes rose high in the arid heavens, revealing a region of desolation that seemed good for nothing but range for savage beasts and poisonous serpents.

“It is now my turn to prophesy and philosophize,” said Joseph. “My experience and observation in Utah, where irrigation has relieved the barren soil of its drouth, has taught me that irrigation will develop the latent power of the desert to sustain and perpetuate the race long after the Mississippi basin has ceased to respond to the demands of the husbandman and the vernal lands of the Willamette valley are worn out.”

“But the Willamette valley and the entire northwest coast will always beat the world with the fruits and cereals that thrive in the temperate zone.”

“‘Always’ is a good while, John. It is a pity that we can’t live always.”

“Jean declares that we do.”

“How came she to know so much?”

“I cannot tell; but she has evolved a theory from her studies and conclusions that seems plausible. At any rate, we cannot disprove it; and as it comforts her and hurts nobody, I am glad she can enjoy it. But the gong has sounded for dinner, and I am as hungry as a bear.”

* * * * *

“It is a glorious thing to be alive,” exclaimed the Captain, when they spied the lights of the Farallones to the leeward, while on their left rose Mare Island; and they knew that they were nearing the Golden Gate. Four days of happy, languorous idleness on a glassy sea had been theirs to enjoy. But each decided that he had had enough of leisure, and was glad when Telegraph Hill, the towering head of the city of San Francisco, was seen among its myriads of sand-dunes and rioting patches of native weeds.

“It is indeed a glorious thing to be alive!” said Joseph, as they were being jostled in the streets of the city, where a babel of tongues kept up a continuous clatter, as bewildering as it was unintelligible.

The hotel in which the brothers found lodgings was a little superior to the Portland hostelry, being larger; but the food was far from satisfactory, and they found the sand-fleas and Benicia Bay mosquitoes more voracious than welcome. The sights of the truly cosmopolitan city were new and alluring; and once, but for the intervention of the police, the verdant pair would have been fleeced by a smooth-tongued swindler. They were directed by a big policeman to an immense hardware establishment, where they found a complete up-to-date outfit for their plant. They then continued their journey toward the Isthmus with a feeling of anticipation to which their frequent conversations concerning the legendary lore of the peculiar country for which they were bound possessed a fascinating interest.

“I have read of a lost continent, which is said to have existed in a prehistoric age,” said the younger brother. “The Indians of the Mandan district have many legends in regard to it. They say the Great Spirit submerged the dry land in a fit of anger, thus separating the so-called Old World from the so-called New, and driving the remnant of the surviving inhabitants to the north as far as the Great Lakes, where they speedily relapsed into the barbarism that ensues from isolation, hardships, and necessity, until at last they perished from the face of the earth.”

“But what of the origin of the Indian race?” asked John.

“Their legends tell us that their ancestors came originally from Russia, by the way of Behring Strait, which in winter was closed by ice; that at one time the ice gorges were suddenly broken up by a tremendous gale and were never closed again. There were natives of the great Northland who were caught on the south side of the gorge, and, being unable to return, remained in what is now Alaska, whence they migrated, multiplied, and spread till they covered what is now the United States of America.”

“When we return to Oregon, you must not fail to start Burns on some of these legends, Joe. The Widow McAlpin, whom he means to marry as soon as she will consent, is as deeply interested in the origin of the Indians as he is.”

“But if we knew all about the immediate origin of the Indians, that wouldn’t settle the question, John. Where did the Russians get their start; and how did every island of the great oceans become inhabited?”

“You are carrying me away beyond my depth, Joe. Burns has a theory that different races of people are indigenous to all countries. He calls the story of Adam and Eve a myth, or a sort of cabalistic tale. That reminds me that Jean once completely nonplussed the Reverend Thomas Rogers by asking who were the daughters of men whom the sons of God took as wives. ‘And where,’ she asked, ‘did Cain get his wife?’”

“These speculations, which are by no means new, are as fruitless as they are perplexing, John. We know no more about them than these donkeys do that are floundering, with us on their backs, across this God-forsaken Isthmus. Will there ever be a canal cut across it, I wonder?”

“Guess we’d better talk about spring. That is something we can understand.”

“No, John. We can no more clearly comprehend the springtime, with its many wondrous revelations, than we can comprehend anything else that is unknowable. We know that sunshine, air, and moisture are necessary for the sustenance of organic life; but we don’t know what life itself is. It is as invisible to us, in all its wonderful activities, as God himself. No; we know no more about the life that animates spring than we know about the Atlantans. But we do know that travel is a great eye-opener; and by showing us how little we know, or can learn, it helps to take away much of our overweening self-conceit.”

There being no delay at Acapulco, and but little at New Orleans, our voyagers were soon aboard one of the palatial steamers that ploughed the waters of the Mississippi in the days when steamboating on the river was in the height of its glory. Floating palaces, with hearts of fire and arteries of steam, were equipped in the most sumptuous style. The cuisine of their tables was never excelled in any land. Trained servants were on duty at every hand in all departments, and such river races as the pen of Mark Twain has made immortal infused an alluring element of danger into the daily life of the adventurous traveller.

St. Louis was passed, and Cairo; and the voyage up the Illinois to Peoria was speedily consummated.

The brothers struck out afoot for the old home, which they came into sight of at sundown. A light snow covered the ground, and a bitter wind was blowing hard.

* * * * *

“Down, Rover, down! Don’t you know your master?” exclaimed the returned wanderer, as the great mastiff sprang at him with a low, savage growl, which changed at once to vehement proclamations of welcome as the faithful creature recognized his friend.

“Bless the dog! But be quiet! We want to surprise the old folks.”

In the cosey sitting-room of the little cottage sat a prematurely aged woman, plying her needle and softly crooning a plaintive lullaby. A couple of tallow candles burned dimly on a little table, and a much-worn work-basket sat at her left. In the opposite corner an old man sat, his head bowed, as if sleeping. An open Bible had fallen from his hand.

“There’s but one pair of stockings to mend to-night,” sighed the woman, as she folded her finished work, her thoughts reverting to scenes long vanished.

The white-bearded man aroused himself at her words and spoke.

“John is forty-three to-night,” he said huskily, his finger pointing to the family record.

“God be with him till we meet again!” was the sighing response as the mother struggled to thread her needle by the flickering light.