Chapter IV: Part 4

The years wax and wane. Every third one brings in fulfillment of the promise, the very commonplace-looking brother who is something of a mystery to her metropolitan friends. Time has brought brother and sister a little more closely together, but it will never bridge the chasm. Always there is a restraint, a reserve, which comes from a common knowledge that there are things in his past life he may not tell--yet, which she guesses with an unspoken, unnamed fear.

Once (when the bronze-brown woman was dead), he tried to accept civilized life as a finality. The month had not rounded out to fullness when each saw the futility of the attempt.

Back on the rough Oregon mountains were sons and daughters, “flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone,” brown-skinned though they were; and he turned his back on the White Man and his unfamiliar ways, and set his face toward those whom he knew best and loved.

Somehow, you like and respect the man for going, as you couldn’t had he stayed.

The story reads like fiction, doesn’t it? But the pity of it is that it is true.

ACCORDING TO ONE’S STANDPOINT

There were three people in the group on the station platform at Humboldt. The two who were standing were a white man and a white woman.

The man was tall, with breadth in his shoulders, five-and-thirty, and rather good looking. His dress evidenced prosperity, and his manner betokened long residence in a city--one of the cities east of the Mississippi.

The woman also was tall; and graceful, and very pretty, and not over twenty-five years of age. She was, without doubt, a bride, and--equally without doubt--a fit mate for the man. She carried her chin high (a trick common to those wearing eye-glasses) and moved with an air of being quite sure of her social position. She was inconspicuously dressed, but her gown, when she walked, rustled in the way that speaks of silken linings. She looked like a woman whose boots were always made to order, and who, each night, had an hour spent upon brushing her hair.

The third person in the group was an Indian. A Paiute fifty years old, but who looked twenty years older. Old George. His little withered brown face was puckered into a whimsical smile as with head aslant he looked up from where he sat on the bench that was built round a tree-box. This was his frequent seat when the trains came in, and here he came daily to answer the inquisitive questions of people who deem themselves well bred.

He was old, and much dirtier than even the others of his race. But he afforded entertainment for the travelers whose pleasure it was to put questions.

“Yep, me old. ‘Forty?’ I guess so. ‘One hundred?’ Maybe so; I no know.” He chuckled. It was the same thing over and over again that they--on the trains--asked him every day. Not a whit cared he what they asked, nor was it worth while telling the truth. When they asked he answered; saying the things they wanted to hear. And sometimes they gave him nickels. That was all there was about it.

“Where did he live?” “What did he eat?” “Did he work?” his inquisitors queried. “Was he married?” and “Had he any children?” “Had he ever killed any white men?” Then they would note his maimed, misshapen limbs. “How long ago had his leg been broken?” “In what way had he crippled his hands?” But to all there were the same replies:

“I no know. Maybe so. I guess so.”

What did it matter? They were satisfied. And meddlers they were. Yet----generally he got the waited-for nickel.

So today he answered even as they questioned. Then the woman (pretty, and with an unmistakable air of good breeding) nodded and said: “Good-by!” and the man (well-mannered, well-groomed and self-complacent) gave him a silver quarter as he went back to the “Pullman.”

“Henry, dear,” she asked, after they had settled themselves comfortably again in their compartment of the sleeping-car, “how do such creatures exist? Do they work, or only sit idly in the sun waiting for someone to give them one or two nickels?”

“Oh, he is a confirmed beggar, one can see! They never work--these Paiutes. Mere animals are they, eating, drinking and sleeping as animals,” her husband replied. “So degenerate have they become since the days when they were a wild tribe and warriors that they go through life now in docile stupidity, without anything rousing them to what we would call a live interest in their surroundings. I doubt very much if, in the life of any one of them, there ever occurs any stirring event. Perhaps it is just as well, for at least it gives them a peaceful old age, and they can have no harassing recollections.”

“And no happy ones, either,” the woman said. “Think what it must be to live out one’s allotted time of physical existence without ever experiencing the faintest romance--without even a gleam of what love means! I presume that the sense of attachment is unknown to them; such affection as----”

“As ours?” he interrupted laughingly. “Well, rather unknown I should say.”

The man looked with fond eyes into the eyes of the woman; then, as the train pulled out of the station, they saw the old Indian limping away toward his camp.

* * * * *

Are the individual histories of Indians--even Paiutes--even the “degenerate tribes”--uneventful or wholly devoid of human interest? Let us see.

Old George can tell you a different story, it may be. From his point of view there is perhaps love; perhaps even romance. Much depends upon the standpoint one takes. The hills that look high from the valley, seem low looking down from the mountain.

When I first knew George (he was “Young George” then), he was married and had children. Four; two boys and two girls. More than other Indians, he aped the Whites in their ways, and was reckoned (for a Paiute) a decent fellow. His camp was the best, his food the most plentiful, and his children the best kept and cleanest. The mother sewed well, and neither she nor the children ever went ragged. Among Indians they were as the hard-working, temperate laborer’s family is among the white men who work--work with their hands for a living.

George had money laid by--joint earnings of his own and of Susan, his wife. He worked at the settlers’ wood-piles in winter, chopping wood; and in summer he worked in the hay fields. She washed and ironed for the white families. Wage was high in those days, and George and Susan prospered. That was a contented little camp built there in the tall sagebrush, and they were happy as needs be.

And then----

There happened that which is not always confined to the camp of the red man. It was the old story-- another woman. Well, has not the world seen such things before? There are women--even those without the dower of beauty--of whose strange power no explanation can be given save that they can, and do, “charm men.” And in no less measure was this brown-skinned woman a charmer. She had already parted more than one husband and wife--had destroyed the peace and quiet of more than one home, when she and George stood where the ways met.

If this had happened some three thousand years ago, and she had lived on the banks of the Nile, and if you were a poet, or a recorder of history, no doubt you would have written her down a siren--a dark-eyed charmer of men--a sorceress of Egypt; but she lived on the Humboldt river instead, and all this happened within the last four decades, and she was only a squaw of one of our North American tribes. Neither was she a pretty squaw judged by our cañons of beauty. Yet are not such things matters of geography governed by traditions? And when a man is bewitched by a man, brown-skinned or white, he is very apt to see charms where another cannot discover them.

Sophy, the siren, came into the camp, and with her coming fled peace. Poor Susan, unloved and deserted, sat apart and cried her heart out--as many a white woman has done before her, and since--when powerless to prevent, or right the wrong that was done her. So, bewitched and befooled, George gave himself up to the madness that was his undoing. The money which had been laid by went like water held in the hand. The camp was neglected; the stores were wasted. The children, from whom the mother had been banished, went ragged and oftentimes hungry.

It took George a long time to awake from his delirium, but he did awaken finally--after many months. All things come--some day--to the writing of “finis.” And no joy falls so soon and so completely as the joy built on an unsound foundation. One day George came to his senses. Then he cast the woman out; cast her out, and forever. He brought back to his home the mother of his children, and she foregave him. Well, what would you?--she was his wife, and a woman forgives much for the sake of the children she has held to her breast. So the camp was made tidy again and the children cared for as of old, and there were new stores gathered, and money was again saved.

Now George--being an Indian, being a Paiute--had never heard of Colley Cibber, else he might have been reminded that “we shall find no fiend in hell can match the fury of a disappointed woman--scorned! slighted! dismissed without a parting pang.” Neither did George--being a Paiute Indian--know the meaning of the word “Nemesis.”

That was more than twenty years ago; and for more than twenty years the woman, Sophy, made his life a series of persecutions. If he builded aught at the camp, it was torn down; what he raised in his garden was destroyed; what he bought, was quickly broken. Horses were driven far astray; and his favorite dogs were poisoned. Then, when she had exhausted all her ingenuity in these and a hundred other ways of making his life a torment, she turned her wiles on Doctor Jim, one of the great medicine men of the tribe, married to Susan’s mother, and an inmate of George’s camp. Doctor Jim’s long residence in the house had given to George a certain enviable status among the Indians, and this prestige the woman now meant to destroy. On Doctor Jim were bestowed her blandishments, and--like George before him--he was fain to follow whither she led. With the medicine man’s going, departed the glory of the house. And it left, in the person of the deserted wife, another mouth for George to feed; while at the same time the assisting support which Doctor Jim had given the household was taken away.

Troubles came thick and fast to Old George. He had begun to be called “Old” George now. One day while he was handling a cartridge it accidentally exploded and tore away part of his hand. This hampered him in what work he got to do; and sometimes because of it he was refused employment. Then the evil fate that had chosen him for a plaything, threw him from a train running at full speed, and left him lying on the track with broken legs, and pitifully crippled. He got well after many weary months while Susan nursed him, and between whiles of nursing earned the living for the dwellers within the camp. When Spring came, Susan died.

On George fell the care of the four children. It was harder for him to work now, and there was less to be earned; yet he worked the harder for his four. Another year; and there were but two for him to shelter and to feed. The great White Plague stops not at the camps of the White man, but has hunted out the Red man in his wick-i-up, and is fast decreasing the number of the tribe; so two--the older two--of the children had gone to answer its call, and George was alone with the two that were hardly more than babies. Mourning for his dead, he must yet work for the living.

We give our sympathy to the woman left widowed who has little children looking to her for support. But she seldom fails in her trust, for the world is usually kind to a woman and ready to lend her aid. Rather give of your pity to the father who has babes to provide for when there is no woman to take up the burden with him. He must care for the home, and must go out in the world, as well, to work. Remember the burden is no less hard for him to bear even so be he is an Indian. It may not seem so to you, a white man, but you must recollect that the Indian takes a different point of view.

Long, long after his children were grown, and the old grandmother was dead, and George was living in his camp with grandchildren about him, the woman came again--she, Sophy, came to him--trying to win him back now that the woman he cared most for was dead. Sophy at last had tired of her revenge, had tired of jealousy and strife; had tired of everything in life but the one man who had once cast her off. Doctor Jim was dead--had died many years before. And so she came to the one she cared for still--as even she had cared most for. For George she cared always; so she came and stood at his door. Many snows had come and gone since his blood had moved at her will; and now it was too late for her influence to weigh with him. He was old; and when he sat before the campfire and saw a woman’s face move to and fro in the the smoke wreaths, it was the face of the woman who best loved him, always--not the face of the one he had loved for a time--that he saw.

So she went away, and at last there was peace between them. She died the other day. But George--Old George--lives still, and alone. He goes to the station day after day, as is his habit, and watches the trains as they come in, and answers the questions of the inquisitive travelers.

* * * * *

If my characters were white you might call this a love story with a bit of romance threaded in. Perhaps you will, anyway. For it all depends upon how you look at it. It is just a little story of what is happening all the while everywhere in the world. Love and jealousy; hatred and revenge. It does not very much matter whether they live on the water side of Beacon street (as they do who stood talking to Old George yesterday); or whether it is in the wick-i-ups of the sagebrush out on the great Nevada plains. These things come into the lives of all races alike.

George paid for the folly of his youth, as the transgressor usually does have to pay. If you live by the sea in the East, you will perhaps call this a punishment for George laid upon him as a rebuke by the “hand of divine Providence.” But if your home is by the Western sea, and you have knocked about a bit on the rough trails in the West, you will mayhap see in it only the workings of “natural law.”

That is all. It is a little story, but quite true. It might very easily have been made a White man’s story; but it isn’t, it is only the true story of a Paiute.

George is an Indian; but one in a whole tribe--each having his own story. And the tribe is but one of the race. And the race----

Are we not brothers?

For, the world over, under white skin or skin of bronze-brown, the human heart throbs the same; for we are brothers--ay! brothers all.

Yet, even so, there is still the point of view.

WHERE THE BURROS BROWSED

“Hello, Dick!”

“Hello, Reddy!”

Seven little gray burros--browsing upon the dust-covered chamiso--lifted their heads at the words; and turned seven mealy noses and seven pairs of inquisitive ears toward the speakers in indolent curiosity.

The two men who met upon the mesa had been drawing slowly together on the long white road winding up toward the mountain a dozen miles away. The dust, raised by the shuffling feet of their horses, floated--a long streamer of white--down toward the muddy, crooked river in the valley far below. The dust had whitened, too, the slouch hats and worn blue overalls they wore; and their faces were marked with furrows, burned deep by the harsh, relentless sun of the plains. It was pouring its rays down now with the fierce malignance of some demon bent on destroying every vestige of plant-life that had the temerity to put forth its young shoots; and save for the scant bunch-grass, and the sage, and the greasewood, and a few distant and scattering junipers that grew dark upon the mountains beyond, no growth of vegetation was to be seen. It was within an hour of noon, and the scorching rays descended upon the blistered earth through a silver-gray haze that--reaching across the valley--quivered over the scene like the heat that comes through an open furnace-door.

Little gray lizards with black, shining eyes; little horned toads with prickly backs, lay with palpitating bodies in the scant shade. The saucy Paiute squirrels which earlier in the day darted in and out of their burrows, had now disappeared into subterranean darkness. Jack-rabbits, with limp ears lying back, crouched under the edges of the greasewood. The three horses stood with listless, drooping heads; the two men sat with listless, drooping bodies--one leaning forward to rest his crossed arms on the horn of the Mexican saddle he bestrode; the other, with loosely held reins between his fingers, leaned with his elbows on his knees.

After the brief Western greeting, the one on the buckskin horse asked carelessly:

“Been in with some hides, Reddy?”

“Yep.”

“What luck you been havin’?”

“Poor. Tell you what ’tis, Dick, I ain’t seen more’n fifty head o’ horses sence we been a-campin’ at Big Deer Spring; an’ the’re so wild you can’t git to within a mile of ’em. Tommy an’ me are goin’ to move. They’re waterin’ over to them deep springs north.”

“Yaas,” drawled the other, “they’ve been shot among so much they’re gittin’ scarry. Me an’ my pardner are campin’ over at the mine with them Dagos there; but we don’t see many bunches of horses around, nohow. Guess we’ll skin out next week, an’ go over to The Cedars. I don’t s’pose----” he moved his horse nearer to the wagon, and bent a contemplative gaze upon one of the front wheels--“I don’t s’pose Austin an’ the Kid’ll kick if we do crowd over on their lay-out a little; for there must be near a thousand head o’ mustangs over ’round them Cedars that ain’t never heard a gun yit. So’t there’d be good shootin’ for all of us, an’ plenty o’ horses to go ’round. Hey?”

The other nodded his head affirmatively.

“But that Austin’s a queer sort of a feller! Wanted him to come in with my pardner an’ me (he’s an all-fired good shot--good as I am myself; an’ I c’n shoot all I c’n skin in a day), an’ I thought him an’ me could do the shootin’, an’ my pardner an’ the Kid could do the skinnin.’ But, no sir-ee; he wouldn’t have it! Just said the Kid couldn’t come; an’ ’t two was enough in a camp, anyway. He’s about as stand-offish as anybody I ever see. I ain’t sorry now’t he didn’t take up with my offer; for the boys say that the Kid wouldn’t be no ’count along anyway. He can’t shoot; and he just nat’rally won’t skin ’em--too squeamish an’ ladylike. Aw!”

“I know. He just tags ’round after Austin all day; an’ don’t never seem to want to git more’n a hunderd yards from him. An’ Austin’s just about as bad stuck on the Kid,” said Reddy.

“Yaas, I know it; an’ that’s what beats me. I don’t see what they’re stuck so on each other for,” said Dick, as he leaned back in the saddle and rammed a hand into the depths of a pocket of his overalls. As he drew forth a section of “star plug” he tapped the buckskin’s flanks with his heels to urge the sorry specimen of horseflesh closer to the wagon.

“Chaw?”

The smaller man accepted. Turning the square over and giving each side a cursory glance, he picked off the tin tag--a tiny star--and set his jaws into an inviting corner, bending it back and forth in his endeavor to wrench off a generous mouthful. Passing it in silence back to the owner (who regaled himself also with a like quantity before returning it to his pocket), and having--with the aid of thumbnail and forefinger--snapped the shining little star at a big horse-fly that was industriously sucking blood from the roan’s back, he remarked:

“Hides is gone up.”

“That so?” exclaimed Dick, with animation; “what they worth now?”

“Dollar an’ a quarter, to a dollar an’ six bits; and three dollars for extra big ones. Manes is worth two bits a pound. What you comin’ in for?”

“Ca’tridges. Shot mine all away.”

“I c’n let you have some till you git your’n, if you want. What’s your gun--forty-five eighty-five Marlin?” asked Reddy.

“Nope--won’t do,” answered Dick; “mine’s Remington forty-ninety. Much ’bliged, though.”

“Say, Dick!” exclaimed Reddy, “them Mexicans down on the river are comin’ out to run mustangs. I saw that Black Joaquin an’ his brother yist’day, an’ told ’em if they wanted to run ’em anywheres out on our lay-out, that we wouldn’t make no kick if they’d let us in for a share. See? They think they c’n run in about a hunderd an’ fifty head, anyway. An’ they’ll furnish the manada, an’ the saddle horses, an’ all, for the whole crowd. So, I told ’em. ‘All right! go ahead, as far as me an’ my pardner are concerned.’ He says Austin’s agreed. How are you an’ Johnny? Willin’?”

“Oh, yes; I’m willin’,” answered Dick, as he jerked at the bridle-rein, disturbing the buckskin’s doze. “Well, good luck to you! See you again!”

“Same to yourself. So long!” answered Reddy.

The saddle-horse fell into a jog trot again to the pricking of the spur; and the sorry span started the wagon groaning and rattling on its way up the road whose furrows were cut deep by the great teams that hauled sulphur and borax from the furthest mountains down to the railroad in the valley.

The creaking and rattling of the wagon had only just recommenced, when Reddy stopped his team to call back.

“Oh, Dick!”

“Hello!”

The little burros that had returned to nibbling on the brush, again lifted their heads at this second interruption.

“Say! Austin ast me to git him a San Fr’ncisco paper so as he could see what hides is quoted at; an’ I plum clean forgot it. Wisht you’d bring out one to him when you come!”

“All right! So long!”

“So long!”

The men moved on again. And the two streamers of white dust grew farther and farther apart, till they had faded out of sight in the hazy distance.

The burros were left in undisturbed possession of the mesa the rest of the stifling hot day, while they browsed along on the greasewood. Late in the afternoon their little hoofs turned into a wild horse trail which led them, single-file, down to the river where the mealy muzzles were plunged into the swift, muddy current for a drink.

But while they had been munching the uninviting brush and sage, and flicking the flies away with their absurd paint-brush tails, Harvey Austin, over on the foothills near the Cedars, sat in the tent which was now the only home he knew; and with his hat fanned the face of the one whom the horse-hunters had named “The Kid.”

The boy, who had been ailing, was asleep now; but the flushed cheeks, and parched lips that were always calling for water, were cause enough for the fear that came over Austin as he sat there. What if this were but the beginning of a long fever? Suppose there should be a serious illness for him?

Again Austin asked himself the same questions that he was putting to himself daily. What had the future in store for them? From here, where were they to go? To stay through the long winter, with the mercury below zero, and the wild blasts of wind about their tent--perhaps to be buried in deep snow--all these things were not to be considered for a moment. Before the coming of winter they must go. But where? Only away from civilization were they safe.

He had come to see, at last, that they had both made a horrible mistake of life. In the beginning of this, it had not seemed so; things looked differently--at first. But, at times, of late there had come a feeling of repulsion over him for which he could not account. Was it the aftermath of wrong-doing? Well, he must make the best of it; it was too late to undo all that had been done. He must bear it--the larger share--as best he could. He said to himself that, thank God! at least he was enough of a man to hide from the “little one” what he himself was beginning to feel.

It is the great immutable law that the fruits of pleasure, plucked by the hands of sin, shall turn to bitterness between the lips. For sin, there is suffering; and for wrong-doing, regret. None escape the great law of compensation. Justice must have payment for the defiance of her laws.

Austin drew his breath in sharply. Oh, merciful God! how long was this way of living to last? Why, he might live on thirty--forty--fifty years yet! Penniless, what was their future to be? To return to that world which, through their past years, had surrounded them with all those things that make life worth living, would be to tempt a worse fate than awaited them here. The desolation which spread around them in the foothills of the bare, lonely mountains was as naught to the humiliation of returning to the peopled places where most would know them, yet few would choose to recognize.

It had not seemed that the price they would have to pay would be so dear when first he had faced the possible results of their rash act. Was it only a twelve-month ago? Why, it might have been twelve times twelve, so long ago did it seem since he was walking among men holding his head up, and looking fearlessly into the eyes of honest fellows who greeted him with warm hand-clasps.

His face had a strained look as he let his eyes fall on the unconscious figure beside him; and a strange expression--almost one of aversion--swept across his features. But he drew himself up quickly, tossing his head back with a movement as though--by the act--he could cast off something which might, perhaps, master him. For some time he sat there, his sensitive, refined face rigid and set, fixing his eyes on vacancy. Then he sank back, sighing wearily.

Before him was memory’s moving panorama of a splendid past. Out of the many pictures--plainer than all the rest--rose the face of the man who had befriended him; the one to whom he owed all he had ever been, or enjoyed. The one but for whom he would have been left, when a boy, to the chill charity of strangers. From that generous hand he had received an education befitting the heir to great wealth, and that noble heart had given such love and care as few sons receive from a parent. He could now, in recollection, see the austere face of his guardian softening into affectionate smiles as his tender gaze fell on his two wards--himself, and the pretty, willful Mildred. Only they whom he so fondly loved knew the great depths of tenderness and gentleness in his nature. It stung Austin now to think of it; it shamed him as well.

* * * * *

And was he--this coward hiding in the mountains of the West, leading a hateful existence hunting wild horses for the few dollars that the hides would bring, that he might be able to buy the necessaries of life, since he had failed to get work in any other calling--was he the one whom John Morton had once loved and trusted? He shuddered with disgust; no man could feel a greater contempt for him, than he felt for himself.

He rose abruptly and walked to the opening of the tent, looking out on the sweep of sagebrush-covered foothills about him. It was useless to think of the past, or to give way to remorse or idle regrets. What was done could not be undone. He must arrange, as best he could, for the future years, and provide for the needs of the present. He must do his best in caring for and protecting the one for whom this life was harder--far harder--than for himself.

He turned his back on the dreary landscape before him, and came back into the tent, busying himself about camp duties till the other awoke. And the young eyes--wistful and sad--that kept seeking Austin’s, saw no trace of the heartache and remorse he was bravely trying to bury.

When the sun had gone down behind their mountain, and a welcome coolness had settled itself over the burning ground, they went to sit by the spring that bubbled out of the hillside. All through the twilight they sat without speaking, their thoughts far away. Then darkness came and hid the barren hills, mercifully shutting from their sight the pitiful poverty of the life that was now theirs. A soft west wind sprung up; and the balmy night air, cool and dry, seemed to have driven away much of the illness the boy had felt through the day. They sat in a silence unbroken only by the crickets’ perpetual shrilling, the hoot of a ground owl, and a coyote yelping to its mate across the cañon. When the first prolonged cry pierced the air, the slight form had nestled instinctively closer to Austin. Then the mournful wail of the little gray ghost of the plains grew fainter and fainter, and finally ceased altogether, as he trotted away over the ridge, in quest of a freshly-skinned carcass where some unfortunate horse had fallen a victim to the sure aim of some horse hunter.

They sat for nearly an hour in the silence of night in the mountains, Austin wondering if the time would ever come when the “little one” would guess how miserably tired of it he had become in less than a year. He hoped--prayed, the other would never know. And (worse still) would a sickening disgust ever find its way into that other heart, as it had into his own? With all his soul he silently prayed it might never be so.

“Come, little one,” he said, gently, “we must go in. It is late.”

The other made no response.

“Don’t you want to go yet? Are you not sleepy--and a little bit tired, poor child?”

Still no answer, though Austin knew he was heard. He waited. Then----

“Harvey,”--the voice was almost a whisper--“we have seen some happy days--sometimes--and you have always been good to me; but, do you---- I mean, when you remember what we have lost, and what we are and must always remain, do you find in this life we are living, compensation enough for all that we suffer? Do you? Tell me!”

So! it had come to the other one, too.

* * * * *

A day of fast, hard riding had drawn to its close. Reddy and Dick, and their “pardners,” and Black Joaquin and his brother, together with two or three others had made their first day’s run of wild mustangs. Three or four “bunches” of native wild horses had been surrounded and driven with a rush, in a whirl of alkali dust, into a juniper corral far down in the cañon. Then the circling riatas had brought them--bucking and kicking--down to the earth; and biting and striking at their captors, they fought for their liberty till exhausted and dripping with sweat--their heads and knees skinned and mouths bleeding--they found themselves conquered, necked to gentler horses, or else hoppled.

At early morning Dick had come to Austin’s camp, bringing the newspaper; and the two had ridden away together. And now that each man had made his selection in the division of the day’s spoils, Austin turned his pony’s head toward the far-off tent--a little white speck in the light of the sunset on one of the distant foothills.

“Well, good-night, boys! I’ll join you again in the morning.” He loped away to the place where the “little one” was awaiting him.

* * * * *

The morrow’s sun shone blood-red--an enormous ruby disc, in the east through the smoky haze that hung over the valley still. By eight o’clock the air was stifling, and the men standing about camp ready for the second day’s run were impatient to be off. It was easier to endure the heat when in the saddle and in action, than to be idling here at the corral. They were wondering at Austin’s delay. And most of them had been swearing. Finally, Black Joaquin was told to go across to the white speck on the foothills, and “hustle him up;” for they were short of men to do the work, if he did not come. So the Mexican threw himself across the saddle, and digging his spurs into the flanks of the ugly-looking sorrel, loped over the hill to Austin’s camp.

Half an hour later he came back at racing speed to tell a story which made the men look at each other with startled glances, and even with suspicion at himself (so surely are evil deeds laid at the door of one with an evil reputation); but when they rode over to where the stilled forms lay beside the rifle whose aim had been true, they saw it had not been Black Joaquin.

Who, then? Too plainly, they saw. But why?

The newspaper Dick had brought lay folded open at an article that told the pitiful story of their love, and their sin, and their shame. It was Johnny, Dick’s partner, who saw it, and read:

“Living among Horse Hunters--An Erring Couple Traced to Nevada--Harvey Ashton and Mrs. John Q. Morton Seen--The Woman in Male Attire.

“The public no doubt remembers press dispatches of a year ago from Boston, regarding the sensational elopement of Harvey Ashton and the young and beautiful wife of John Q. Morton, a prominent and wealthy commission merchant of that city. All parties concerned moved in the most exclusive circles of society.

“Young Ashton had returned home from a prolonged tour of Europe to find that Morton (who, though not related to him, has always assumed the part of an indulgent father) had just wedded his ward, Miss Mildred Walters, a handsome young woman many years his junior; and whose play-fellow he--Ashton--had been when a boy, but whom she had not seen for a number of years. She had matured into a beautiful, attractive woman, and Ashton soon fell a willing victim to her charms. Soon after, society of the Hub was startled and shocked to hear of the elopement of Harvey Ashton with his benefactor’s wife.

“Subsequently they were discovered to have been in San Francisco, where all traces of them, for the time, were lost. Nothing was heard of them again till, some two months ago, when they were seen in Reno, Nevada, by an old acquaintance who cannot be mistaken in their identity.

“He states he had come down from Virginia City, and was waiting to take the train for the East, when he saw Ashton pass by the station once or twice, in company with what was apparently a small, slightly-built young man, but who, he is positive, is none other than Mrs. Morton in male attire. He purposely avoided the couple, but inquiries elicited the facts that Ashton was passing under the name of Austin, and had stated that his companion was a young brother. It was also learned that they were practically without means, and were leaving Reno for the interior part of the State. Later reports locate them in a range of mountains a short distance from the railroad, where they are with a number of cowboys and sheep-herders who are out of work, and who are at present engaged in shooting wild horses, furnishing hides for the San Francisco market.

“The friend who recognized the couple at once communicated with the deserted husband, who, it is reported, is on his way West in quest of the erring pair.”

* * * * *

This was their story, then! The story waiting in the newspaper for Austin when he got back to the “little one” the evening before.

* * * * *

The afternoon’s shadows were slanting down the valley when the seven little burros saw Reddy’s wagon come down the long, dusty road leading toward the river. From where they browsed they could see it go over the bridge and the alkali flats, on its way to the railroad station in the hazy valley. The big sheet of canvas, taken from Dick’s bed, covered something that lay in the bottom of the wagon. Two somethings there were--side by side, rigid and cold--sharply outlined under the folds of white canvas.

The wagon creaked, and rattled, and groaned on its way. The afternoon sun parched and burned the earth, as it had done for weeks. Rabbits hid under the edges of the greasewood on the side where the greater shadows fell. The burros still flicked with their absurd tails at the sand-flies. Buzzing above the canvas were some big green flies that followed the wagon till after the sun went down. A buzzard circled overhead; and a lean coyote trotted behind the wagon on the mesa for a mile or more.

The burros, too, crossed the bridge that night, and morning found them browsing along the foothills nestling against the mountains across the valley, where feed was better. Near the base of the mountain, and not far from the little railroad station, was a graveyard. Treeless, flowerless, unfenced. There were no headstones, ’tis true; but the graves were well banked with broken rock, to keep the hungry coyotes and badgers from digging up the dead.

At the station Black Joaquin had helped lift the new pine boxes into the wagon. As he watched them start on their ride to the place of rock-covered mounds near the foothills, he said to the men gathered about:

“Por Dios! Not so muchos hombres to shoot mostang now!”

And his brother Domingo, who had been drinking, answered with more freedom:

“’Sta ’ueno! Not so muchos hombres; more mostang por me. ’Sta ’ueno; si, ’sta muy ’ueno!”

He laughed slyly. Then he went over to the saloon, followed by the other men.

* * * * *

The little gray burros watched the wagon for a long time, as it went rattle--rattle--rattle over the stony road. By and by it stopped. Then they began nibbling again on the scant bunch-grass and white sage.

AT THE WILL OF THE WATERS

“Blockhead! idiot! ass! ‘Tenderfoot’ isn’t adequate for such a fool as I have been!” he exclaimed bitterly.

He tried not to care; even he tried to forget that the good-looking, successful mining engineer had given him a title which had made him wince: “the deckle-edged tenderfoot!” But it stung, nevertheless. Perhaps the reason that it hurt, was because of its fitness. And what hurt more, was the fact Cadwallader had taken pains that Evaleen Blaine should hear it said--Cadwallader, who seemed so well fitted to take his place in the rough Western way of battling with life, where he himself did but blunder and stumble, and earn the name of “the deckle-edged tenderfoot!” That Teamster Bill had christened him “this yer gentlemanly burro frum Bost’n,” cut far less keenly. But then, Bill wasn’t trying to move heaven and earth to get Miss Blaine. Whereas Elwyn Cadwallader was.

However, on all sides opinion was the same, if differently expressed. The fact of his being a gentleman had not prevented him from becoming a fool--chiefest of fools--else he never would have trusted so implicitly in old Zeke Runkle’s misrepresentations of the group of mining claims in those foothills that lay just below the Monarch group. The Monarch was the talk of the camp for its richness. If there was a fortune in the one group (he argued to himself), then why not also in those so nearly adjoining. At any rate, it seemed to him it was his one chance to find a fortune by a short cut; so, paying for them with all he had, save a few hundreds that afterwards went for useless development work, the mines became his. The camp welcomed him into its midst, and winked, and grinned when he wasn’t looking; and (to a man) voted him “an easy thing!”

His eyes not having been focused for fraud, he never doubted but that the rich samples shown him had come from the mines represented; nor ever suspected that, under his very eyes, the tests he himself made had been tampered with.

Old Zeke Runkle’s annual swindles had been a camp joke for a score of years; but Sherwood--being an in-experienced stranger--saw only in him an honest (if usually drunken) prospector. A kindly, if simple, old man, too; for Zeke had generously made him a gift of an entire mining claim which had not been included in the original number--one quite distinct from the original group. True, it seemed to be but an undeveloped claim--its one tunnel only running in ten or fifteen feet. And the gift had been tendered him at the suggestion of Cadwallader, from whom Sherwood was surprised to receive evidence of a kindly feeling which had not been previously displayed. That this unusual interest in him had surprised old Zeke, too, was plain; for he seemed puzzled at first, as though it were not possible for him to comprehend Cadwallader’s meaning. After a few whispered words from the younger man, however, Zeke’s face had brightened with understanding, and he turned to Sherwood insisting he must accept it. The unexpected part Cadwallader had taken, and the old man’s unselfish attitude, showed to Sherwood such a fine glimpse of Western good-fellowship that he warmed to the place and the people as he had done at no time before. It turned the scale and the bargain was closed.

So he became sole owner of the seven mines on the sagebrush-covered hills, that comprised the Golden Eagle group; and of the one isolated claim in the foot of the bluffs that rose abruptly at the edge of an old-time ruined mining camp which had been deserted for more than thirty years.

It lay there in a cañon where once men came in search of precious metals; and in that cleft of the mountains they built their homes. Along the cañon sides, from end to end, there trailed a double line of houses, now all in ruins--fallen walls of adobe or stone. Roofless and floorless, with empty casements and doorways, the houses stood mute witnesses of the false hopes which once led men to squander money, and youth, and strength of purpose there in the long-ago, when the State was new.

Almost a double score of years had gone since the place knew human voice or human movement, save when some lone prospector passed along the brush-grown street that crept upward with the cañon’s slope. The dead town’s very stillness and desolation were full of charm, albeit tempered with that sadness a ruin always has for the beholder. For through the empty doorways came the whisperings of those who were gone; and looking through the sashless windows as you rode by, you saw wraithlike figures pass and repass within. It might have been only the wind’s breath as it rustled the dark leaves of branches overhanging the crumbling walls, and the ghosts, mayhap, were but the waving boughs which tremulously moved over the gray adobes; but when you were there--in that stillness and amid all that mystery--you felt it was true. You hushed your quickening breath to listen for the breath of some other. You moved through the silence with wide-lidded eyes looking for--you knew not what. You felt yourself out of place there--an alien. Only the lizards on the decaying walls, and the little brown birds that pecked at berries growing on the bushes along the creek, and the cottontails that scurried away to hide in the brush, seemed to have honest claim there.

On a level with the dead camp’s one street, the short tunnel of the Spencer mine ran into the cliff which pushed itself forward from the cañon’s general contour--the mouth itself being all but hidden by the falling walls of what had once been an adobe dwelling, its rear wall but a few feet from the limestone bluffs. To it, old Zeke brought Sherwood and showed him the tunnel below and the croppings of white quartz on the cliff top. It looked barren and worthless; but an assay certificate, in which the values were marked in four figures, held before Sherwood’s astonished eyes, sent his hopes up to fever mark, and left him eager to begin the work whereby he might reach the precious stuff hidden well away within the dull-colored bluffs. If the croppings promised such wealth, what might not the mine itself yield when he extended the tunnel, and had tapped the ledge at a greater depth? He felt his heart beating the faster for his dreams. A fortune! His, and--hers! All that was needed to bring it about were pick strokes, powder and patience. It all seemed very simple to Hume Sherwood. Without doubt he was a “tenderfoot.”

So the Summer found him putting every pulse-throb into his labor. Was it not for her that he wanted it? For what other end was he working, than to win the maid who had come into this land of enchantment? To him, it was as Paradise--these great broad levels of alkali, and sand (blotches of white on a blur of gray) and the sagebrush and greasewood-covered foothills that lay, fold upon fold, against the base of grim mountains--prickly with splintered and uncovered rocks.

Each day he blessed the fate which had called her from her home by the Western sea and placed her under the same roof that sheltered him in the rough little Nevada camp that called itself a town since a railroad had found it, and given it a name.

Here Judge Blaine and his daughter settled themselves for the Summer. That is, an array of suit-cases and handbags, great and small, and a trunk or two, proclaimed the hotel their headquarters. That was all. Every day saw the Judge up near the top of the mountain, getting the Monarch’s new machinery into running order; while trails, and roads--old and new--and even the jack-rabbit paths that lay like a network over the land, saw more of the young woman in khaki than ever the hotel did, so long as daylight lasted--the light which she grudged to have go.

It was Evaleen herself who had suggested coming to Nevada with her father, instead of spending the season in the usual way with Mrs. Blaine and the other girls at whatsoever place fashion might dictate as the Summer’s especial (and expensive) favorite for the time.

“Daddy, dear,” she had said, standing behind his chair, with both arms tight clasped around his neck, “I’ve made up my mind to do something that is going to surprise you. Listen; I’m not going with Mamma and the girls when she shuts up the house for the Summer. But, I--am--going--with--you! Oh, yes, I am! No, no! Not a word! I’ve always wanted to know what a mining camp was like; and this is my golden opportunity. You know you do want me there. Say so! While you are putting up the new works, I can go roaming over the country in old clothes. Listen to that, Daddy--old clothes! A lovely Summer; and not a cent spent on gowns!”

Ways and means at just that time being matters of difficult solution with the Judge, her argument had force and bore fruit. Midsummer found them where the alkali plains stretched away to distant ranges, and the duns and drabs of valleys reached across to the blended purples and blues. Such distances! And such silence! She had never dreamed of their like before.

On the levels or on the heights, she was day by day finding life a new and a beautiful thing. It was all so good; so fresh, and sweet, and strong! How easily she had fitted into her new surroundings and the new order of things--crude though they were, beyond any of her preconceived ideas. And now how far away seemed all the other Summers she had ever known. She felt that, after all, this was the real life. The other (that which Jean and Lili had their part in) was to her, now, as something known only in a dream. She was learning a grander, fuller sense of living since all that other world was shut away. So (companioned by her would-be lovers, Hume Sherwood and Elwyn Cadwallader, through a Summer of glad, free, full indrawn breaths) she rode the days away, while under the campaign hat she wore her face was being browned by the desert winds. Hot winds. But, oh, how she had learned to love their ardent touch! No sun was ever too hot, nor road too rough or long, to keep her back from this life in the open; and in the saddle she had come to know the valleys and mountains as one born to them.

The cañon which held the ruined walls had for her an especial charm, and toward it she often turned her horse’s head. It lay but a short distance from the road leading to her father’s mines. So, turning aside, she often took this short cut through the deserted town. There, one day she heard from Cadwallader the story of Crazy Dan, whose home had once been within the walls that hid the entrance to the tunnel of the Spencer--the mine which had been a gift to Sherwood.

Daniel Spencer--Crazy Dan (for whom old Zeke named the claim he had given away, because on the very ground there Dan had made his home) had worked in the creek for placer gold during all the long gone years when others worked the higher ground for silver lodes. An ill-featured, ill-natured old man, having no friends, and seeking none; he had burrowed the cañon’s length for gold as persistently as a gopher does the ground for roots, and--as all had prophesied--with as little showing of the yellow metal. Only a crazy man, they said, would ever have prospected that cañon for gold. It was a cañon for ledges, not placers; for silver, not gold. So the miserly, morose old man followed a phantom to the last; working alone from day-dawn till dusk with rocker and pan, in ground that pitying neighbors vainly tried to lead him away from. Admitting he had never found gold, yet working day after day, Crazy Dan could be seen there for twelve long years. Twelve years of toil that showed no reward for his labor. Then he died. One morning they saw there was no smoke issuing from the cabin chimney; and guessing what they would find, they pushed the door open.

Death had come when he was alone; there had been none to close the staring eyes. He had been near to starvation; there was scarcely any food within the cabin; there were no comforts. Years of toiling for something that was always just beyond; and a lonely death at the end--that was the story.

As she heard, Miss Blaine was stirred with a profound pity. When Cadwallader ceased speaking, her thoughts went straying to those far days, in wonder of the man who made up the sum of the town’s life. Dead, or scattered to the four corners of the earth. Crazy Dan’s death was no more pathetic, perhaps, than that of many another of their number. She rode on in silence, saddened by the recital.

Suddenly Cadwallader’s ringing laugh startled her. But as quickly he checked himself, saying:

“I beg of you, Miss Blaine, don’t misjudge me. I wasn’t thinking then of poor old Dan’s tragic death, or more than tragic life. I happened to remember the sequel to this story; and which, I’m sure, you’ve never heard. Let me tell you----” He hesitated. “Or, no; you’ve heard enough for today, and its humor would jar now on what you’ve just heard. I’ll tell you some other time.”

Nothing more was said about it by either; but she felt confident it related in some way to Hume Sherwood and the Spencer mine.