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 BANCROFT 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 IN THE NAMES OF 
 
 CHARLOTTE CERF '95 
 
 MARCEL E. CERF '97 
 
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 %OTg4f 1 Captain of the Guard. 
 Oliv^iplte/Olf The Letty Hyde's Lovers. 
 Fusiliti'S. * t | Cavaliers of Fortune. 
 Phantom fe^gimqtit. (Second to None. 
 
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 iderburn's 
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 Adventures of Rob 
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 The Queen's Cadet. 
 
 Published by George Routledge and Sons. 
 

 NOVELS AT TWC SHILLINGS. Continued. 
 
 By FIELDING and SMOLLETT. 
 
 FIELDING. 
 Tom Jones; 
 Joseph Andrews. 
 Amelia. 
 
 SMOLLETT. 
 Roderick Random. 
 Humphrey Clinker. 
 Peregrine Pickle. 
 
 By AMELIA B. EDWARDS. 
 The Ladder of Life. | My Brother's Wife. | Half a Million of Money. 
 
 By Mrs. CROWE. 
 Night Side of Nature. 
 Susan Hopley. 
 Linny Lockwood. 
 
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 Country Curate. 
 
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 First Lieutenant's Story. 
 
 Sir Roland Ashton. 
 By Rev. G. R. GLEIG. 
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 Feathered Arrow. 
 
 Each for Himself. 
 
 Stories of Waterloo. 
 Brian O'Linn ; or, 
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 Captain Blake. 
 The Bivouac. 
 
 By W. H. MAXWELL. 
 
 Hector O'Halloran. Wild Sports in the 
 
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 Captain O'Sullivan. 
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 Highlands. 
 Wild Sports in 
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 Will He Marry Her. Running the Gauntlet. 
 
 The Ex- Wife. Kissing the Rod, 
 
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 Peregrine Bunce. 
 Cousin Geoffry. 
 Gilbert Gurney. 
 Parson's Daughter. 
 All in the Wrong. 
 
 The Widow and the 
 
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 Gurney Married. 
 Jack Brag. 
 Maxwell. 
 Man of Many Friends. 
 
 Passion and Principle. 
 Merton. 
 
 Gervase Skinner. 
 Cousin William. 
 Fathers and Sons. 
 
 Published by George Routledge and Sons. 
 
NOVELS AT TWO SHILLmGS. Continued. 
 
 By G. P. R. JAMES. 
 
 The Brigand. 
 
 The King's Highway. 
 
 Gowrie. 
 
 Morley Ernstein. 
 
 Castle of Ehrenstein. 
 
 The Robber. 
 
 Darnley. 
 
 The Stepmother. 
 
 The Smuggler. 
 
 Richelieu. 
 
 Forest Days. 
 
 Heidelberg. 
 
 The Gipsy. 
 Arabella Stuart. 
 
 The Huguenot 
 The Man-at-Arms. 
 
 The Forgerv. 
 The Gentlem^ a of the 
 
 The Woodman. 
 
 A Whim and its Con- 
 
 Old School. 
 
 Agincourt. 
 
 sequences. 
 
 Philip Augustus. 
 
 Russell. 
 
 The Convict. 
 
 The Black Eagle. 
 
 By RICHARDSON, (as. 6d. each.) 
 
 Clarissa Harlowe. Pamela. 
 
 SirCharlesGrandison. 
 
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 Petticoat Government. Widow Married. 
 
 Widow Bamaby. Barnabys in America, 
 
 Love and Jealousy. 
 
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 Caleb Williams. 
 
 The Attache, by Sam 
 
 Cruise upon Wheels. 
 
 Scottish Chiefs. 
 
 Slick. 
 
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 Matrimonial Ship- 
 
 Annie Thomas. 
 
 Hour and the Man, 
 
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 Nick of the Woods; or, 
 
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 Lewell Pastures. 
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 theFightingQuaker 
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 R. Bell. 
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 Whom to Marry, with 
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 Mabel Vaughan. 
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 Colin Clink. 
 
 Letter Bag of the 
 
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 Hon. Mrs. Norton. 
 
 Clockmaker. (2s.6d.) 
 
 Black and Gold. 
 
 Adventures of a Strol- 
 
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 Phineas Quiddy. 
 
 Vidocq, the French 
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 Solitary Hunter. 
 
 The Pirate of the | Singleton Fontenoy. 
 
 Kaloolah, by W. S. 
 
 Mediterranean. 
 
 Lamplighter. 
 
 Mayo. 
 
 The Pride of Life. 
 
 Gideon Giles, the 
 
 Patience Strong. 
 
 Who is to Have it ? Roper. 
 
 Cavendish, by author 
 
 TheBashful Irishman, j Guy Livingstone. 
 
 of " Will Watch." 
 
 Deeds, not Words. 
 
 Sir Victor's Choice. 
 
 Will Watch, by ditto. 
 
 The Secret of a Life, j Outward Bound. 
 
 Reminiscences of a 
 
 The Iron Cousin; or, j The Flying Dutchman 
 
 Physician. 
 
 Mutual Influence. 
 
 Dr. Goethe's Court- 
 
 Won in a Canter, by 
 
 The Young Curate. 
 
 ship. 
 
 Old Calabar. 
 
 The Greatest Plague 
 
 Clives of Burcot. 
 
 Mornings at Bow 
 
 of Life, with Cruik- 
 
 The Wandering Jew. 
 
 Street, with plates 
 
 shank's plates. 
 
 Mysteries of Paris. 
 
 by Geo.Cruik shank 
 
 The Green Hand. j Land and Sea Tales. 
 
 
 Published by George Routledge and Sons. . ; 
 
FIRST FAMILIES IN THE SIERRAS. 
 
FIRST FAM'UES IN 
 THE SIERRAS. 
 
 BY JOAQUIN MILLER. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, 
 THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE. 
 
 1875. 
 
CHISWICK PRESS ! PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS, 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANH. 
 
i 002. 
 
 i A f/ CROFT UR 
 
 Uieln'catetr 
 
 TO 
 THE TWO KINDEST CRITICS I EVER KNEW, 
 
 MY DEAR PARENTS, 
 
 ON THE FOOTHILLS OF THE NORTH SIERRAS. 
 
\TiMit3U VII 3KT 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. In the Forks 1 
 
 II. The First Woman in the Forks .... 8 
 
 III. Sunday in the Sierras . . . . . . 15 
 
 IV. Washee-Washee . . . . . -. . 21 
 V. Sandy's Courtship 36 
 
 VI. A Scene in the Sierras ...... 42 
 
 VII. The Parson's Wooing . ..'... . . 45 
 
 VIII. A Wedding in the Sierras . . . . .58 
 
 IX. What's the Matter now ? . . . . 66 
 
 X. Captain Tommy . ... . -. .82 
 
 XI. How did it happen ? . . . . . .92 
 
 XII. A Flag of Truce . . . . . . . 99 
 
 XIII. The Question that Nobody could answer . . .106 
 
 XIV. The Judge is lonesome . . . . . 124 
 XV. After the Deluge what then ? . . . .127 
 
 XVI. The Last of the Gopher. . . . . .133 
 
 XVII. A Funeral .140 
 
 XVIII. The Hon. Mr. Sandy 147 
 
FIRST FAMILIES IN THE SIERRAS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN THE FORKS. 
 
 OW there was young Deboon from Boston, 
 who was a very learned man ; in fact he 
 was one of those fearfully learned young 
 men. A man who could talk in all tongues 
 and think in none. Perhaps he had some 
 time been a waiter. I am bound to say that in my ob- 
 servations, reaching over many years of travel, that the 
 most dreadfully learned young men I have ever met are 
 the waiters in the Continental hotels. 
 
 Then there was Chipper Charley smart enough, and 
 a man, too, who had read at least a dozen books ; but 
 the Forks didn't want him for an Alcalde any more than 
 it did Deboon. 
 
 Then there was Limber Tim, and Limber certainly 
 could write his name, fpr he was always leaning up 
 against trees and houses and fences, when he could find 
 them, and writing the day and date, and making gro- 
 tesque pictures with a great carpenter's pencil, which 
 he carried in the capacious depths of his duclj: breeches' 
 pocket. But when Sandy proposed Limber Tim, the 
 
2 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 Camp silently but firmly shook its head, and said, " Not 
 for Joseph." 
 
 At last the new camp pitched upon a man who, it 
 seemed, had been called The Judge from the first. Per- 
 haps he had been born with that name. It would indeed 
 have been hard to think of him under any other appel- 
 lation whatever. It had been easier to imagine that 
 when he had first arrived on earth his parents met him 
 at the door, took his carpet-bag, called him Judge, and 
 invited him in. 
 
 As is usually the case in the far, far West, this man 
 was elected Judge simply because he was fit for nothing 
 else. 
 
 The "boys" didn't want a man above them who 
 knew too much. 
 
 When Chipper Charley had been proposed, an old 
 man rose up, turned his hat wrong side out with his 
 fist, twisted his beard around his left hand, spirted a 
 stream of tobacco juice down through an aisle of rugged 
 men and halfway across the earthen floor of the Howling 
 Wilderness saloon, and then proceeded to make a speech 
 that killed the candidate dead on the spot. 
 
 This was the old man's speech : 
 
 " That won't go down. Too much book larnin. Shove 
 him up." 
 
 But the new Judge, or rather the old, bald-headed, 
 dumpy, dirty-faced little fellow, with the dirty shirt 
 and dirty duck breeches, was not a bad man at all. The 
 "boys" had too much hard sense to set up anything 
 but a sort of wooden king to rule over them in this 
 little isolated remote camp and colony of the Sierras. 
 And they were perfectly content with their log too, and 
 never once called out to Jupiter for King Stork. 
 
 This old idiotic little Judge, with a round head, 
 round red face, and round belly, had no mind he had 
 no memory. He had tried everything in the world 
 almost, and always had failed. He had come to never 
 
In the Forks. 3 
 
 expect anything else. When he rose up to make a 
 speech of thanks to the " boys " for the " unexpected 
 honour," and broke flat down after two or three allu- 
 sions to the "wonderful climate of Californy," he was 
 perfectly serene, perfectly content. He had got used to 
 breaking down, and it didn't hurt him. 
 
 He used to say to his friends in confidence that he 
 certainly would have made a great poet had he begun in 
 his youth. And perhaps he would, for he was certainly 
 fit for nothing else under the sun. 
 
 The Forks was the wildest and the freshest bit of the 
 black- white, fir set, and snow-crowned Sierras that ever 
 the Creator gave, new from His hand, to man. 
 
 One thousand men ! Not a woman, not a child, 
 down in that canon of theirs, so deep that the sun never 
 reached them in the winter and but a little portion of 
 the day in summer. 
 
 Forests, fir and pine, in the canon, and out of the 
 canon, up the hills and up the mountains, black and 
 dense, till they broke against the colossal granite peaks 
 far above and crowned in everlasting snow. 
 
 Three little streams came tumbling down here from 
 the snow peaks in different directions, meeting with a 
 precision which showed that they knew their ways per- 
 fectly through the woods ; and from this little union of 
 waters the camp had taken the name of " The Forks." 
 
 They had no law, no religion ; but, for all that, the 
 men were not bad. It is true they shot and stabbed 
 each other in a rather reckless manner ; but then they 
 did it in such a manly sort of a way that but little of 
 the curse of Cain was supposed to follow. 
 
 Maybe it was because life was so desolate and dreary 
 that these men threw it away so frequently, and with 
 such refreshing indifference, in the misunderstandings 
 at the Forks ; for, after all, they led but wretched lives. 
 That vast freedom of theirs became a sort of desola- 
 tion. 
 
4 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 But men were grandly honest there. They invariably 
 left gold in their gold-pans from day to day open in the 
 claim ounces, pounds of it, thousands of dollars to be 
 had for the taking up. Locks and keys were unknown, 
 and, when the miner went down to town on Saturday 
 night to settle his account, he, as a rule, handed the 
 merchant his purse and let him weigh whatever amount 
 he demanded, without question. 
 
 When the great Californian novel which has been 
 prophesied of, and for which the literary world seems 
 to be waiting, comes to be written, it will not be a bit 
 popular. And that is because every true Californian, 
 no matter how depraved he may be, somehow has some- 
 what of the hero and the real man in his make-up. And 
 as for the women that are there, they are simply angels. 
 So you see there is no one to do the business of the 
 heavy villain. 
 
 Sixty miles from the nearest post and neighbouring 
 mining camp, it was utterly cut off from communication 
 the biggest half of the year by impassable mountains of 
 snow. 
 
 How dark it was down there ! The earth it seemed 
 had been cracked open. Then it seemed as if Nature 
 had reached out a hand, smoothed down the ruggedest 
 places, set the whole in a dense and sable forest, topt 
 the mountains round about with everlasting snow, then 
 reached it on to man. And then it looked as if man 
 had come along just as it was nearly ready, slid into the 
 crack, and not being strong enough to get out, resolved 
 to remain there. 
 
 The wild beasts were utterly amazed. In this place 
 even the red man had never yet set his lodge. Deep, 
 and dark, and still. Even the birds were mute. Great 
 snowy clouds, white as the peaks about which they 
 twined, and to which they flew like flocks of birds at 
 night to rest, would droop and droop through the tops of 
 tossing pines, and all the steep and stupendous moun- 
 
In the Forks. 5 
 
 tain side on either hand glistened with dew and rain in 
 summer, or glittered and gleamed in mail and rime of 
 frost and ice in winter. 
 
 These white, foamy, frightened, little rivers ran and 
 tumbled together, as if glad to get down the rugged, 
 rocky mountain, and from under the deep and ever- 
 lasting shadows of fir, and pine, and tamarack, and 
 spruce, and madrona, and the dark sweeping yew, with 
 its beads of scarlet berries. They fairly shouted as they 
 ran and leapt into the open bit of clearing at the Forks. 
 Perhaps they were glad to get away from the grizzlies 
 up there, and were shouting with delight. At all events, 
 they rose together here, united their forces in the friend- 
 liest sort of manner, and so moved on down together 
 with a great deal more dignity than before. You see it 
 was called the Forks simply because it was the Forks. 
 In California things name themselves, or rather Nature 
 names them, and that name is visibly written on the 
 face of things, and every man may understand who can 
 read. 
 
 If they call a man Smith in that country it is simply 
 because he looks as if he ought to be called Smith 
 Smith, and nothing else. 
 
 JSTow there was Limber Tim, one of the first and best 
 men of all the thousand bearded and brawny set of 
 Missourians, a nervous, weakly, sensitive sort of a fel- 
 low, who kept always twisting his legs and arms around 
 as he walked, or talked, or tried to sit still, who never 
 could face anything or any one two minutes without 
 flopping over, or turning around, or twisting over, or 
 trying to turn himself wrong side out, and of course 
 anybody instinctively knew his name as soon as he saw 
 him. 
 
 The baptismal name of Limber Tim was Thomas 
 Adolphus Grosvenor. And yet these hairy, half-savage, 
 unread Missourians, who had stopped here in their great 
 pilgrimage of the plains, and never yet seen a city, or 
 
6 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 the sea, or a school-house, or a church, knew perfectly- 
 well that there was a mistake in this matter the moment 
 they saw him, and that his name was Limber Tim. 
 
 It is pretty safe to say that if one of these wild and 
 unread Missourians had met this timid limber man mean- 
 dering down the mountain trail met him, I mean, for 
 the first time in all his life, without ever having heard of 
 him before he would have gone straight up to him, 
 taken him by the hand, and shaking it heartily, said, 
 "How d'ye do, Limber Tim ?" 
 
 The Forks had just been " struck." Some Missourians 
 had slid into this crack in the earth, had found the little 
 streams full of gold, and making sure that they had not 
 been followed, and, like Indians, obliterating all signs of 
 their trail, they went out slily as they came, struck the 
 great stream of immigrants from the plains, and turned 
 the current of their friends from Pike into this crack 
 of the earth till it flowed full, and there was room 
 for no more. The Forks was at once a little Republic ; 
 a sort of San Marino without a patron saint or a single 
 tower. 
 
 A thousand men, at least, and not a single woman ; 
 that is, not one woman who was what these men called 
 " on the square." Of course, two or three fallen women, 
 soiled doves, had followed the fortunes of these hardy 
 fellows into the new camp, but they were in some 
 respects worse than no women at all. As was usual 
 with these fallen angels, they kept the camp, or certain 
 elements in the camp, in a constant state of uproar, and 
 contributed more to the rapid filling-up of the new 
 grave-yard up on the hill than all other causes put 
 together. The fat and dirty little judge, who really 
 wanted to keep peace, and who felt that he must always 
 give an opinion, when asked why it was that the boys 
 would fight so dreadfully over these women, and kill 
 each other, said, " It is all owing to this glorious climate 
 of Californy." The truth is, they fought and killed each 
 
In the Forks. 7 
 
 other, and kept up the regular Sunday funeral all summer 
 through, not because these bad women were there, but 
 because the good women were not there. Yet possibly 
 " the glorious climate of Californy " had a bit to do with 
 the hot blood of the men, after all, 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FIRST WOMAN IN THE PORKS. 
 
 NE day Limber Tim came up from the 
 Howling Wilderness, all excitement: all 
 gyrations, and gimlets, and corkscrews, 
 and wiggle -tails. He twisted himself 
 around a sapling this great, overgrown, 
 six-foot boy without a beard and shouting down to his 
 "pardner" in the mine, Old Sandy, who stood at the 
 bottom of the open claim, leaning on his pick, resting a 
 moment, looking into the bright little water that burst 
 laughing from the bank before him, dreaming a bit in 
 the freshness about him ; and said, " Hillo ! I say ! a 
 widder's come to town. D'ye hear ? A widder ; one 
 what's up and up, and on the square." Sandy only 
 looked up, for he was getting old, and grey, and wrinkled. 
 Then he looked at the silver stream that ran from the 
 bank and through the rocks at his feet, and called to 
 him in the pleasant, balmy sunset, sweet with the smell 
 of fir, and he did not disturb the water again with his 
 pick. It looked too pretty, laughed, and sparkled, and 
 leapt, and made him glad and yet sad. A poet was this 
 man, a painter, a sculptor, a mighty moralist ; a man 
 who could not write his name. 
 
 He laid down his pick, for the sun was just pitching 
 
The First Woman in the Forks. 9 
 
 his last lances at the snow -peaks away up yonder above 
 the firs, above the clouds, and night was coming down 
 with steady steps to possess this chasm in the earth. 
 
 Limber Tim untwisted himself from the sapling as 
 Sandy came up from the mine, twisting his great shaggy 
 beard with his right hand, while he carried his black 
 slouch hat in his left, and the two sauntered on toward 
 their cabin together, while Sandy's great gum boots 
 whetted together as he walked. 
 
 The " Parson " was in a neighbouring cabin when it 
 was announced that the first woman had come to the 
 camp. The intelligence was received in a profound 
 silence. 
 
 There was a piece of looking-glass tacked up over the 
 fire-place of this cabin. 
 
 Old Baldy whistled a little air, and walked up to this 
 glass, sidewise, silently, and stood there smoothing down 
 his beard. 
 
 "Ginger blue!" cried the Parson, at last, bounding 
 up from his bench, and throwing out his arms, as if 
 throwing the words from the ends of his fingers . " Ginger 
 blue ! hell-ter-flicker ! " And here he danced around 
 the cabin in a terrible state of excitement, to the tune of 
 a string of iron-clad oaths that fell like chain-shot. 
 They called him the Parson because it was said he could 
 outswear any man on the river, and that was saying a 
 great deal, wonderful as were his achievements in this 
 line. 
 
 After the announcement, every one of the ten men 
 there took a look at the little triangular fragment of 
 looking-glass that was tacked up over the fire-place. 
 
 The arrival of Eve in Paradise was certainly an event ; 
 but she came too early in the world's history to create 
 much sensation. 
 
 Stop here, and fancy the arrival of the first woman 
 on earth to-day in this day of committees, conventions, 
 brass-band receptions, and woman's rights ! 
 
10 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 You imagine a princess had come upon us, a good 
 angel, with song and harps, or, at the least, carpet-bags, 
 and extended crinoline, waterfalls, and false hair, a pack- 
 train of Saratoga trunks, and all the adjuncts of civili- 
 zation. Not at all. She had secured the cabin once 
 occupied by the unhappy Dolores. 
 
 Yes, Limber Tim had " seed " her. She had ridden the 
 bell mule of the pack-train down the mountain and into 
 town. He told how the hats went up in the air from in 
 and about the Howling Wilderness, and how the boys had 
 gone up in rows to the broken looking-glass in the new 
 barber-shop, and how some had even polished their bowie- 
 knives on their boots, and sat down and tried to see 
 themselves in the shining blade, and adjust their dress 
 accordingly. 
 
 In a little time Sandy bent silently over the table in 
 the cabin, and with his sleeves rolled up high on his great 
 hairy arms, kneaded away at the dough in the gold pan 
 in silence, while Limber Tim wrestled nervously with 
 the frying-pan by the fire. 
 
 "Is she purty, Limber?" 
 
 " Purty, Sandy ? She's purtier nur a spotted dog." 
 
 Sandy fairly groaned, for he felt that there was little 
 hope for him, and again fell into a moody silence. 
 
 There was a run that night on the little Jew shop at 
 the corner of the Howling Wilderness. Before midnight 
 the little kinky-headed Israelite had not a shirt, collar, 
 or handkerchief, or white fabric of any kind whatever 
 in his shop. 
 
 It might have been a bit of first-class and old- 
 fashioned chivalry that had lain dormant in these great 
 hairy breasts, or it might have been their strict regard 
 for the appropriateness of names that made these men 
 at ^once call her the "Widder;" or it might have been 
 some sudden revelation, a sort of inspiration, given to 
 the first man who saw her as she rode down the moun- 
 tain into camp, or the first man who spoke of her as she 
 
Tlie First Woman in the Forks. 11 
 
 rode blushing through them with her pretty face held 
 modestly down; but be all that as it may, certainly 
 there was no design, no delay, no hesitation about it 
 from the first. And yet the appellation was singularly 
 appropriate, and perhaps suggested to this poor, lone 
 little woman, daring to cross the mountains, and to 
 come down into this great chasm of the earth, among 
 utter strangers, the conduct of her life. 
 
 The first woman came unheralded. Like all good 
 things on earth, she came quietly as a snowflake down 
 in their midst, without ado or demonstration. 
 
 Who she was or where she came from no one seemed 
 to know. Perhaps the propriety of questioning occurred 
 to some of the men of the camp, but it never found ex- 
 pression. I had rather say, however, that whon they 
 found there was a real live woman in camp, a decent 
 woman, who was willing to .work and take her place 
 beside the men in the great battle bear her part in the 
 common curse which demands that we shall toil to eat, 
 they quietly accepted the fact, as men do the fact of the 
 baby's arrival, without any question whatever. 
 
 This was not really the first woman to come into the 
 camp of this thousand of bearded men ; and yet it was 
 the first. There were five or six, maybe more, down at 
 the Forks some from Sydney, some from New Orleans 
 waifs of the foam, painted children of passion. I am 
 not disposed to put these women in the catalogue of 
 saints. They were very devils, some of them. 
 
 These women set man against man, and that winter 
 made many a crimson place in the great snow banks of 
 the streets. They started the first graveyard at the 
 Forks ; and kept it recruited too, every holiday, and 
 almost every Sunday. 
 
 True, they did some good. I do not deny that. 
 For example, I have in my mind now the picture of one, 
 Bunker Hill, holding the head of a brave young fellow, 
 shot through the temple, his long yellow hair in strings 
 UNIVERSITY C# CAUFOftNiA UBftAftY 
 
12 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 and streaming with blood. She held him so till he died : 
 and mourned and would not be separated from him 
 while a hope or a breath remained the blood on her 
 hands, on her face, all over her costly silks and lace, 
 and on the floor. 
 
 Then she had him buried elegantly as possible ; sent 
 for a preacher away over to Yreka to say the funeral 
 service ; put evergreens about his grave, and refused to 
 be comforted. 
 
 All this was very beautiful a touch of tenderness in 
 it all ; but it was spoiled by the reflection that she had 
 allured and almost forced the poor boy into the fight, in 
 hopes of revenging herself on the man whom she hated 
 and by whose hand he had to fall. 
 
 There was another woman there who was very benevo- 
 lent in fact, they all were liberal with their money, 
 and were the first and freest to bestow upon the needy. 
 This woman was a Mexican from Durango, I think ; 
 and her name was Dolores. Gentle in her manner, 
 patient, sad; not often in the difficulties that distin- 
 guished the others ; but generally alone, and by far the 
 best liked of all these poor Magdalens. This good 
 nature of hers made her most accessible, and so she was 
 most sought for deeds of charity. Toward spring it 
 was said she was ill ; but no one seemed to know, or 
 may be no one cared. 
 
 If you will stop here to consider, it will occur to you 
 that it is a man's disposition to avoid a sick woman; 
 but a woman's disposition to seek out a sick man and 
 nurse him back to health. This being true, here is a 
 text for a sermon. 
 
 A bank had caved on a man only a prospector, a 
 German, who lived alone in a little cabin on the hillside 
 and crushed him frightfully. The man was penniless 
 and alone, and help had to come from the camp. 
 
 Some one went to Dolores. She was in her room or 
 cabin, out a little way from any one, alone and ill, sitting 
 
The First Woman in the Forks. 13 
 
 up in bed, looking " wild enough," as the man afterwards 
 stated. He told her what had happened. She leaned 
 her head on her hand a moment, and then lifted it, 
 looked up, and drew a costly ring from her finger, the 
 only one on her pale, thin hand, and gave it to the man, 
 who hurried away to get other aid elsewhere. 
 
 Now there was nothing very odd or unusual in a 
 woman giving a ring. That was often done. In fact, 
 there was scarcely any coin on the Creek. In cases of 
 this kind a man generally gave the biggest nugget or 
 specimen he had in his pocket, a ring if he could not do 
 better, sometimes a six-shooter, and so on, and let them 
 make the best of it, but always something, if that some- 
 thing was possible. Let this be said and remembered 
 of these brave old men of the mountains. 
 
 A few days after this, it came out that Dolores was 
 dead. Then it was whispered that she had starved to 
 death. This last was said in a sort of whisper. It came 
 out with a shudder like between the teeth, as if the men 
 were afraid to say it. 
 
 On investigation, it was found that the poor woman 
 had been ill some time, had lost her bloom and freshness ; 
 and what becomes of a woman of this kind, who has no 
 money, when she has lost her bloom and strength? 
 never had much money, always gave it away to the 
 needy as fast as she got it, and so had nothing to fight 
 the world with when she fell ill. 
 
 Then the man with the rent, the lord of the log cabin 
 a cross between a Shylock-Jew and a flint- faced 
 Yankee took her rings and jewels, one by one. The 
 baker grew exacting, and finally the butcher refused to 
 bring her meat. And that was all there was of it. 
 That was the end. 
 
 That butcher never succeeded there after that. Some 
 one wrote " Small Pox" over his shop every night for 
 a month, and it was shunned like a pest-house. But all 
 that did not bring poor Dolores back to life. The ring 
 
14 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 was an antique gold, with a costly stone, and a Spanish 
 name, which showed her to have been of good family. 
 A wedding ring. 
 
 But this woman, however, was an exception, and at 
 best, when in health, save her generous and sympathetic 
 nature, was probably no angel. 
 
 One of these meddlesome men, a hungry, lean, un- 
 satisfied fellow ; a man with a nose sharp and inquisitive 
 enough to open a cast-iron cannon ball, said one night 
 to a knot of men at the Howling Wilderness saloon : 
 
 " Why widder ? why call her the widder ? who knows 
 that she was married at all ?" 
 
 A man silently and slowly arose at this, and firmly 
 doubled up his fist. He stood there towering above 
 that fellow, and looking down upon that sharp inquisi- 
 tive nose as if he wanted to drive it back into the middle 
 of his head. 
 
 " But may be she's a maid," answered the terrified 
 nose in haste and fear. 
 
 The man sat down, slowly and silently, as he had 
 risen, and perfectly satisfied that no insult had been 
 intended. This was Sandy. 
 
 The Judge was there, and as the conversation had 
 fallen through by this man's remark, he felt called upon 
 to resume it in a friendly sort of a way, and said : 
 
 " No, no, she's not a maid I reckon, not an old maid." 
 He scratched his bald head above his ear and went on, for 
 the big man at his side began to double up his knuckles. 
 " I should say she's a widder. You see, the maids never 
 gits this far. They seem to spile first." 
 
 The Judge spoke as if talking of a sort of pickled 
 oyster or smoked ham. 
 

 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SUNDAY IN THE SIERRAS. 
 
 EVER did the press feed on a continental 
 war, or a calumniated poet, as these men 
 of the Howling Wilderness fed on this one 
 woman of the Forks. 
 
 Yet let it be remembered they always, and 
 to a man, with scarce an exception, spoke of her with the 
 profoundest respect. Few of them had had the pleasure 
 of seeing her, fewer still of speaking to her, yet she was 
 the ever-present topic. Even the weather in a London 
 winter is hardly more popular a theme, than was the 
 Widow when men met in knots in the little town after 
 the day's work was over. 
 
 The brave, silent, modest little woman had put her 
 hands to the plough at once. These men knew per- 
 fectly well that honest people had no business there 
 but to work ; and when her little hands that did not look 
 at all as if they had been- used to toil, took hold of the 
 hard fact of life, and the Irttle face bent above the 
 wash-tub, and the fine white brow glistened with a 
 diadem of diamonds that grew there as a price for bread, 
 they loved her to a man. 
 
 What strange savage scenes were enacted here before 
 the arrival of this one good woman. Every Saturday 
 
16 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 night was a sort of carAival of death. Men went about 
 from drinking - shop to drinking -shop howling like 
 Modocs, swinging their pistols, proclaiming themselves 
 chiefs, and seeking for bloody combat. They gave the 
 country a name and a reputation in this first year of gold 
 mining in the Sierras that will survive them every one. 
 
 On Sunday the scene was somewhat changed. With 
 all their savagery and wildness and nonsense, it was 
 always understood that the work of the week must go 
 on, and Sunday was the great day of preparation. 
 
 Sunday was not a day of rest. It is true the miners 
 slept a little later on Sunday morning, but Sunday was 
 to all a day of terror and paltry troubles beyond measure. 
 It always came to Someone's turn every Sunday morning, 
 in every mess or cabin, to begin his week's cooking for 
 his mess, and for that reason, if for no other, there was 
 at least one man miserable in every cabin whenever the 
 dreaded Sunday came. 
 
 Then there was the mending of clothes ! Mercy ! 
 great big hairy men sitting up and out on the hillside 
 with their backs up against the pines, sitting there out 
 of sight, half naked, stitching, stitching, stitching, and 
 swearing at every stitch. 
 
 But the great and terrible event of Sunday, before the 
 Widow came, was the washing of clothes. Neither love 
 nor money could induce anyone save the uncertain 
 little Chinaman to undertake this task for them, before 
 the arrival of the Widow. Therefore when Sunday 
 came these brawny, bearded men went down in line, 
 silently and solemnly, to the little mountain stream 
 (allowed to rest and run clear and crystal-like on Sun- 
 day), and stood in a row along its banks, in top-boots, 
 duck breeches, red shirts, and great broad hats. Then, 
 at a word, each man laid aside his hat, undid the bosom 
 of his shirt, straightened his arms, and drew his shirt 
 up and over his head, and then fastened his belt, and 
 squatted by the stream, and rubbed and rubbed and 
 
Sunday in the Sierras. 17 
 
 rubbed. Brawny-muscled men, nude above the waist, 
 " naked and not ashamed," hairy-breasted and bearded, 
 noble, kingly men miners washing their shirts in a 
 mountain- stream of the Sierras. Thoughtful, earnest, 
 splendid men ! Boughs above them, pine-tops toying 
 with the sun that here and there reached through like 
 fingers pointing at them from the far, pure purple of 
 the sky. And a stillness so profound, perfect, holy as 
 a temple ! Nature knows her Sabbath. 
 
 I would give more for a painting of this scene that 
 sun, that sky and wood, the water there, the brave, 
 strong men, the thinkers and the workers there, nude 
 and natural, silent and sincere, bending to their work 
 than for all the battle scenes that could be hung upon a 
 palace wall. When the great man comes, the painter of 
 the true, these men will be remembered. 
 
 It is said that Diogenes, when he saw a boy drinking 
 water from his hand, scooped up from the stream, threw 
 away his cup, the last utensil he had retained. 
 
 This shirt-washing went on in some camps for years. 
 These men were compelled to study simplicity, and did 
 from necessity nearly what the cynic did from caprice. 
 Where every man had to carry his effects on his back 
 for days and days, through steep and rugged paths, an 
 extra garment was not to be thought of. Men got used 
 to the one-shirt system, and seemed to like it. Some 
 stuck to it with a tenacity hardly respectful to the near 
 approach of civilization. 
 
 Once upon a time, to coin a new beginning, a younger 
 brother came out to visit one of these brave old miners, 
 now gray and grizzled, but true to his old traditions and 
 habits of life. He called on him on Sunday, entered his 
 cabin, and found him covered in his blankets. 
 
 " What, my brother, are you sick ? " said he, after the 
 first salutations and embraces were exchanged. 
 
 " Sick ! ISTo, not sick." 
 
 " Then why are you in- bed ?" 
 C 
 
k8 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 " Oh ! I washed my shirt, and got in bed to let il 
 dry." 
 
 " Why ! Haven't yon got but the one shirt ?" 
 
 " Bnt the one shirt ! No ! Do yon think a mar 
 wants a thousand shirts ?" 
 
 These men were mostly shy with their letters anc 
 their tales of love. That was sacred gronnd, npor 
 which no strange, rnde feet conld pass. No gold-huntei 
 there, perhaps, bnt had his love his one only love, 
 without a chance or possibility of changing the object ol 
 his devotion, even if he had desired it. Men must love 
 as well as women. It is the most natural and, conse- 
 quently, the most proper thing on earth. Imagine ho\v 
 intensified and how tender a man's devotion would be- 
 come under circumstances like these. The one image 
 in his heart, the one hope HER. So much time to think 
 bending to the work in the running water under the 
 trees, on the narrow trail beneath the shadows of the 
 forest, by the camp and cabin-fire, her face and hen 
 only, with no new face rising up, crossing his path 
 confronting him for days, for months, for years see 
 how holy a thing his love would grow to be. This, yoi 
 observe, is a new man, a new manner of lover. Love 
 I say, is a requirement, a necessity. It is as necessarj 
 for a complete man to love as it is for him to breathe 
 pure air. And it is as natural. 
 
 These men, being so far removed from any persona 
 contact with the objects of their affections and only no^ 
 and then at long intervals receiving letters, all markec 
 and remarked across the backs from the remailings froir 
 camp to camp, of course, knew of no interruptions ir 
 the current of their devotion and loved in a singularly 
 earnest and sincere way. I doubt if there be anything 
 like it in history. 
 
 When men go to war, they have the glory and excite- 
 ment of battle to allure them, then the eyes of manj 
 women are upon them ; they are not locked up lik< 
 
Sunday in the Sierras. 19 
 
 these men of the Sierras, with only their work and the 
 one thing to think of. When they go to sea, sailors 
 find new faces in every port ; but these men, from the 
 time they crossed the Missouri or left the Atlantic 
 coast, had known no strange gods, hardly heard a 
 woman's voice, till they returned. 
 
 But let us return to this one firm first woman, who 
 had come into camp and taken at once upon her shoulders 
 the task of washing and mending the miners' clothes. 
 
 Men, even the most bloated and besotted, walked as 
 straight as possible up the trail that led by the Widow's 
 cabin, as they passed that way at night ; and kept back 
 their jokes and war-whoops till far up the creek and out 
 of her hearing in the pines. 
 
 A general improvement was noticed in all who dwelt 
 in sight or hearing of her cabin. In fact, that portion 
 of the creek became a sort of West End, and cabin rent 
 went up in that vicinity. Men were made better, gentler. 
 No doubt of that. If, then, one plain, ignorant woman, 
 rude herself by nature, can do so much, what is not left 
 for gentle and cultured woman, who is or should be the 
 true missionary of the West the world ? 
 
 A woman's weakness is her strength. 
 
 She was tall, gentle, genial too, and soon a favourite 
 with her many, many patrons. She had a scar on the 
 left side of her face, they said, reaching from the chin to 
 the cheek ; but with a woman's tact, she always kept 
 her right side to her company, and the scar was not 
 always noticed. 
 
 What had been her history, what troubles she had had, 
 what tempests she had stood against, or what great storm 
 had blown this solitary woman far into the great black 
 sea of firs that belts about and lies in the shadow of the 
 Sierras, like a lone white sea-dove you sometimes find 
 far out in the China seas, no man knew ; and, be it said 
 to the credit of the Forks, no man cared to inquire. 
 
 This meeting together, this coming and going of 
 
20 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 thousands of men from all parts of the earth, wheri 
 each man stood on the character he made there in { 
 day, deadened curiosity, perhaps. 
 
 At all events, you can go, a stranger, to-day, any 
 where along the Pacific, and, if your character indicate! 
 the gentleman, you are accepted as such, and no mai 
 cares to ask of your antecedents. A convenient thing 
 I grant, for many ; but, nevertheless, a good thing, anc 
 a correct thing for any country. 
 
 The old Jewish law of every seven years forgiving 
 each man his debt was an age in advance of our laws o 
 to-day ; and, if any means could be devised by whicl 
 every seven years to forgive all men their offences, anc 
 let them begin life anew all together, an even start, i 
 would be better still. 
 
 How the work did pour in upon this first woman ii 
 this wild Eden set with thorns and with thistles ! Ther< 
 were not many clothes in the Forks that were wortl 
 washing, but the few pieces that were presentable cam< 
 almost every day to the door of the Widow to be taker 
 in by the little hand that ever opened to the knock o: 
 the miners' knuckles on the door, and reached througl 
 the partly opened place, and drew back timidly anc 
 with scarce a word. 
 
 No man had yet entered her cabin. The wise littl< 
 woman ! If one man had been so favoured, without gooc 
 and sufficient reason, then jealousy, unless others hac 
 been allowed to enter also, would have made a funeral 
 and very soon too, with that one favoured man the centra 
 figure. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WASHEE-WASHEE. 
 
 WO days after the Widow had arrived, 
 Washee- Washee, as the " boys " had named 
 him, stood out on the steps of his cabin 
 all the afternoon, looking up the Forks 
 and down the Forks, and wondering what 
 in the world was the reason the " boys " did not come 
 creaking along and screeching their great gum boots 
 together, with their extra shirt for wash wadded down 
 in one of the spacious legs. 
 
 Three days after the Widow had arrived she had 
 absorbed all the business. Four days after she had 
 arrived, she absorbed Washee- Washee. And now it was 
 the brown hand of little moon-eyed Washee- Washee 
 that reached through the door, took the clothes, and 
 handed them out again, or at least such portion as he 
 chose to hand out, to the bearded giants standing there 
 in line, patiently waiting at the door of the Widow's 
 cabin. 
 
 The face of the Widow was now almost entirely 
 invisible. It was as if there was no sun at the Forks, 
 and all the sky was in a perpetual eclipse of clouds. 
 
 Soon there was trouble. Clothes began to disappear. 
 One bearded sawyer, a gallant man, who refused to 
 
22 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 complain because there was a woman in the case, was 
 observed to wear his coat buttoned very closely up tc 
 his chin ; and that too in midday in summer. This gooc 
 man had at first lost only his extra shirt. He did noi 
 complain. He simply went to bed on Sunday, sent his 
 shirt early to the wash, expecting to rise in the afternoon 
 "dress," and go to town. A week went by; the mai 
 could not stay in bed till the day of judgment, so he 
 rose up, buttoned up to the throat, and went down tc 
 buy another supply. 
 
 Other circumstances, not dissimilar in result, begar 
 to be talked of quietly; and men began to questior 
 whether or not after all the camp had been greatly the 
 gainer by this new element in its population. 
 
 One afternoon there was a commotion at the door o: 
 the Widow's cabin. Sandy was in trouble with Washee- 
 Washee. The moon-eyed little man tried to get bad 
 into the house, but the great big giant had been toe 
 long a patient and uncomplaining sufferer to let hiir 
 escape him now, and he reached for his queue, and dre^ 
 him forth as a showman does a black snake from 
 cage. 
 
 The Widow saw the great hairy face of this grizzlj 
 giant, and retreated far back into the cabin. She was 
 perfectly certain she was terribly afraid of this greai 
 big awkward half-clad exasperated man, and therefore 
 with a woman's consistency, she came to the door, anc 
 in a voice softer than running water to Sandy's ears 
 asked what could be the matter ? 
 
 Sandy was taken by surprise, and could not say E 
 word. He only rolled his great head from one shouldei 
 to the other, got his hands lashed up somehow in his 
 leather belt and great gum boots, and stood there like 
 a born idiot. 
 
 Bub who ever saw an embarrassed Chinaman ? The 
 innocent little fellow, turning his soft brown almond 
 eyes up to the widow, told her, as poor Sandy started or 
 
Washee- Washee. 23 
 
 down the hill like an awkward bull, that this dreadful 
 " Amelikan" wanted him to leave her, to go home with 
 him, to be his wife. 
 
 When Sandy heard this last he disappeared, crest- 
 fallen and utterly crushed. He went home ; but not to 
 rest. He told Limber Tim all about what had happened. 
 How he had stood it all in silence, till it came to the 
 last shirt. How the Chinaman had lied, and how he was 
 now certain that it was this same little celestial who 
 was boneing all the tackle. Limber Tim raised himself 
 on his elbow where he lay in his bunk, and looking at 
 Sandy, struck out emphatically with his hand, and 
 cried 
 
 " Lay fur him !" 
 
 Sandy drew on his great gum boots again. Limber 
 Tim rose up, and then the two men kept creaking and 
 screeching and whetting their great boots together as 
 they went without speaking and in single file down the 
 hill towards town. 
 
 There was an expression of ineffable peace and tran- 
 quillity on the face of Washee-Washee that twilight, as 
 he wended his way from the Widow's cabin to his own. 
 His day's work was done ; and the little man's face 
 looked the soul of repose. Possibly he was saying with 
 the great good poet, whose lines you hear at evening 
 time, on the lips of nearly every English artisan 
 
 " Something attempted, something done, 
 Has earn'd a night's repose." 
 
 Washee-Washee looked strangely fat for a Chinaman, 
 as he peacefully toddled down the trail, still wearing, 
 as he neared his cabin, that look of calm delight and 
 perfect innocence, such only as the pure in heart are 
 supposed to wear. His hands were drawn up and folded 
 calmly across his obtruding stomach, as if he feared he 
 might possibly burst open, and wanted to be ready to 
 hold himself together. 
 
24 First Families -in 'Hie Sierras. 
 
 In the great-little republic there, where all had be- 
 gun an even and equal race in the battle of life, where 
 all had begun as beggars, this tawny little man from the 
 far-off Flowery Kingdom was alone ; he was the only 
 representative of his innumerable millions in all that 
 camp. And he did seem so fat, so perfectly full of 
 satisfaction. Perhaps he smiled to think how fat he 
 was, and too, how he had nourished in the little demo- 
 cracy. 
 
 He was making a short turn in the trail, still holding 
 his clasped hands over his extended stomach, still 
 smiling peacefully out of his half-shut eyes : 
 
 "Washee! Washee!" 
 
 A double bolt of thunder was in his ears. A tre- 
 mendous hand reached out from behind a pine, and then 
 the fat little Chinaman squatted down and began to 
 wilt and melt beneath it. 
 
 " Washee- Washee, come ! " 
 
 Washee- Washee was not at all willing to come ; but 
 that made not the slightest difference in the world to 
 Sandy. The little almond-eyed man was not at all heavy. 
 Old flannel shirts, cotton overalls, stockings, cotton 
 collars and cambric handkerchiefs never are heavy, no 
 matter how well they may be wadded in, and padded 
 away, and tucked up, and twisted under an outer gar- 
 ment ; and so before he had time to say a word he was 
 on his way to the Widow's with Sandy, while Limber 
 Tim, with his mouth half-open, came crawling up the 
 trail, and grinding and whetting his screechy gum boots 
 together after them. 
 
 There is a fine marble statue in the great garden at 
 Naples, near the massive marble head of Virgil, which 
 represents some great giant as striding along with some 
 little pigmy thrown over his shoulder, which he is care- 
 lessly holding on by the heel. Sandy looked not wholly 
 unlike that statue, as he strode up the trail with 
 Washee- Washee. 
 
Wdshee- Washee. 25 
 
 He reached the door of the Widow's cabin, knocked 
 with the knuckles of his left hand while his right hand 
 held on to an ankle that hung down over his left 
 shoulder, and calmly waited an answer. 
 
 The door half-way opened. 
 
 "Beg pardon, mum." 
 
 He bowed stiffly as he said this, and then shifting 
 Washee-Washee round, quietly took his other heel in 
 his other hand, and proceeded to shake him up and 
 down and dance him and stand him gently on his head 
 until the clothes began to burst out from under his blue 
 seamless garment, and to peep through his pockets, 
 and to reach down around his throat and dangle about 
 his face, till the little man was nearly smothered. 
 
 Then Sandy set him down a moment to rest, and he 
 looked in his face as he sat there, and it had the same 
 peaceful smile, the same calm satisfaction as before. 
 The little man now put his head to one side, shut his 
 pretty brown eyes a little tighter at the corners, and 
 opened his mouth the least bit in the world, and put 
 out his tongue as if he was about to sing a hymn. 
 
 Then Sandy took him up again. He smiled again 
 sweeter than before. ^ Sandy tilted him sidewise, and 
 shook him again. Then there fell a spoon, then a pep- 
 per-box, and then a small brass candlestick ; and at last, 
 as he rolled him over and shook the other side, there 
 came out a machine strangely and wonderfully made of 
 whalebone and brass, and stays and hooks and eyes, 
 that Sandy had never seen before, and did not at all un- 
 derstand, but supposed was either a fish trap or some 
 new invention for washing gold. 
 
 Then Limber Tim, who had screwed bis back up against 
 the palings, and watched all this with his mouth open, 
 came down, and reaching out with his thumb and finger, 
 as if they had been a pair of tongs, took the garments 
 one by one, named them, for he knew them and their 
 owners well, and laid them silently aside. Then he 
 
26 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 took Washee-Washee from the hands of Sandy and 
 stood him up, or tried to stand him up alone. He 
 looked like a flagstaff with the banner falling loosely 
 around it in an indolent wind. He held him up by the 
 queue awhile, but he wilted and sank down gently at 
 his feet, all the time smiling sweetly as before, all the 
 time looking up with a half-closed eye and half-parted 
 lips, as though he was enjoying himself perfectly and 
 would like to laugh, only that he had too much respect 
 for the present company. 
 
 " If I could only shake the lies out of him, mum, as 
 easily as I did this 'ere spoon, and this 'ere candlestick, 
 and this 'ere, this 'ere " Sandy had stooped and picked 
 up the articles as he spoke, and now was handing them 
 to the widow in triumph. 
 
 " Poor little, helpless, harmless fellow ! " 
 
 The Widow was looking straight at the celestial, who 
 sat there piled up in a little bit of a heap, the limpest 
 thing in all the Forks perhaps, save Limber Tim. 
 
 " Let him go, please ; let him go. Bring the things 
 and come in. You can go now, John ; but don't do so 
 any more. It is not right." 
 
 The Widow smiled in pity as she said this to Washee- 
 Washee. The Chinaman understood the first proposi- 
 tion perfectly, but not the last at all. To him all this 
 was simply a bad investment. To him it was only a 
 little shipwreck ; and having been taught by the philo- 
 sophers of his country to prepare for adversity in the 
 hour of prosperity, he was not at all lacking in resigna- 
 tion now. He rose up, smiled that musical and peaceful 
 smile of his, and wended his way to his home. 
 
 Sandy looked a moment at the retreating, hungry- 
 looking little Chinaman, and then thrust his two great 
 hands into his two great pockets, and tilting his head, 
 first on the left shoulder and then on the right, tried 
 hard to look the Widow in the face, but found himself con- 
 templating the toes of his great gum boots in a second. 
 
Washee- Washee. 27 
 
 " Will you not come in ?" 
 
 The man rolled forward. He sat down in the Widow's 
 cabin in a perfect glow of excitement and delight. 
 
 I am bound to admit that, upright and great as 
 Sandy was, he kept thinking to himself, " What will the 
 Judge and the boys say of this ? " He even was glad in 
 his heart that Limber Tim stood with his back glued 
 up against the palings on the outside, and his hands 
 reached back and wound in and around the rails, so that 
 he could testify to the boys, tell it, in fact, to the world, 
 that he had entered in, and sat down in the Widow's 
 cabin. 
 
 It was not easy work for Sandy sitting there. He 
 soon began to suffer, he hitched about and twisted 
 around on the broad wooden stool as if he had sat down 
 on a very hot stove. 
 
 The Widow sat a little way back across the cabin, a 
 bit of work in her lap, looking up at Sandy now, and 
 now dropping her half-sad blue eyes down to her work, 
 and all the time, in a low sweet way, doing every word 
 of the talking. 
 
 Sandy's hot stove kept getting hotter and hotter. 
 He began to wish he was down with the boys at the 
 Howling Wilderness, consulting the oracle of cocktails. 
 All at once he seemed to discern his great long legs. 
 They seemed to him as if they reached almost clean 
 across the cabin, like two great anacondas going to 
 swallow up the Widow. He fished them up, curved 
 them, threw his two great hands across them, nursed 
 them affectionately, but they seemed more in the way 
 and uglier than ever before. Then he thrust them out 
 again, but jerked them back instantly and drove them 
 back under his bench as if they had been two big and 
 unruly bull-dogs, and he nearly upset himself in doing 
 it. They had fairly frightened him, they were surely 
 never half so long before. It seemed to him as if they 
 would reach across the room, through the wall, and 
 
28 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 even down to the Howling Wilderness. He twisted 
 them up under the bench and got them fast there, and 
 was glad of it, for now they would not and could not 
 run out and rush across the room at the Widow. 
 
 But now poor Sandy saw another skeleton. His eyes 
 came upon them suddenly, in a sort of discovery. It 
 seemed as if he had just found them out for the first time, 
 and knew them for mortal enemies, and determined to 
 do away with them at once and at any sacrifice. Such 
 hands ! had the Widow really been looking at them all 
 this time ? the back of that hand was big and rough as 
 the bark of a tree. That finger nail had a white rim of 
 dough around it ; that thumb nail was as big and about 
 as dirty as a crevicing spoon ! He picked up that hand, 
 thrust it under him, sat firmly over on that side, and 
 held it down and out of sight with all his might. The 
 other one lay there, still in the way. It was uglier than 
 the one he had just slain and hidden away in the bush. 
 There was dirt enough about the nails to make a small 
 mining claim. He rolled the hand over and over on his 
 lap as if it had been somebody's baby ; and a baby with 
 the colic. At last, in a state of desperation, he rolled it 
 off and let it fall and take care of itself. It hung down 
 at his side like a great big felon from the scaffold. 
 It twisted and swung around there as if it had just been 
 hung up by the neck in the expiation of some awful 
 crime. It felt to Sandy as if it weighed a ton. He 
 tried to lift it up again, to take care of it, to nurse it, 
 to turn it over on its stomach, to stroke it, and talk to 
 it, and pity it, and soothe away its colic, but lo ! he 
 could not lift it. He began to perspire, he was so very 
 warm. It was the warmest time that Sandy had ever 
 seen. All this time Sandy had sat close by the door 
 and not one word had he uttered. 
 
 The Widow rose up, laid her work on the table, 
 all the time smiling sweetly, half sadly, and going 
 up to the fireplace, took from the box in the corner 
 
Washee-Washee. 29 
 
 pine knot after pine knot and laid them on the blazing 
 fire. 
 
 " Come, the evening is chilly, will you not sit closei 
 to the fire ? " 
 
 Sandy sat still as the statue of Moses in the Vatican, 
 but that abominable felon hanging by the neck at his 
 side kept twisting around and around and around as if 
 he never would die or be still. The Widow sat down 
 with her work as before, and this time she began to 
 talk about the weather, trusting that on this subject 
 at least, her great good friend could open his lips and 
 speak. 
 
 " How very cold it is this evening. The chill of the 
 snow is in the air; it blows down from the banks of 
 snow on the mountain, and I fancy it may be cold here 
 in this rickety cabin the summer through." 
 
 Still the ugly convict, that now began to grow black 
 in the face, swung and twisted at his side ; but he did 
 not speak. 
 
 " Do you not feel cold?" 
 
 Yes 'urn." 
 
 The two words came out like the bark of a bull-dog ; 
 as if one of the brutes he had drawn back under his 
 bench had stuck out his nose and yelped in the face of 
 the Widow, and Sandy was frightened nearly to death. 
 The perspiration dropped from his brow to his hand, and 
 he knew that things could not last in this way much 
 longer. The bull-dogs would be out, and he knew it, 
 the dead man that he was sitting down upon would 
 rise up to judgment, and the felon at his side was only 
 swinging and turning and twisting more than before. 
 
 Sandy shut his eyes and attempted to rise. His gum 
 boots screeched, the bench creaked as he began to un- 
 double himself, and turned up and hung on behind as 
 if it had been a lobster. He shook it off, and began to 
 tower up like a pine. He feared he would pierce through 
 the roof, and began to look out through the half-open 
 
30 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 door, and to stretch out the prostrate hand. Then he 
 stood still and was more bewildered than before. The 
 Widow was looking straight at him, and expecting 
 him to speak. He wished he had not got up at all. 
 If he was only back on that overthrown bench, with the 
 dead man beneath him, and the bull-dogs below, and the 
 felon swinging loosely at his side, how happy he would 
 be. He tried to speak, tried like a man, but if it 
 had been to save his life, to save her life, the world, he 
 could not find will to shape one word. He backed and 
 blundered and stumbled across the threshold and drew 
 a breath, such a breath ! the first he had drawn for half 
 an hour, as he stood outside, with the Widow's little feet 
 following to the threshold, and her pretty miniature face 
 looking up to his as if looking up to the top of a pine. 
 
 " You will come again, will you not ? you have been 
 so very kind : please to call, step in as you pass, and 
 rest. It is so lonesome here, you know ! nobody that 
 anybody knows. And then you are such good com- 
 pany." 
 
 And then the pretty little Widow with the sad sweet 
 face, laughed the prettiest little laugh that ever was 
 laughed this side that other Eden with its one fair 
 woman. 
 
 Limber Tim closed his mouth and unscrewed himself 
 from the palings on the fence without as Sandy ap- 
 peared, and the two took their way to their cabin. 
 
 "And you are such good company." That was all 
 Sandy could remember. What could he have said? 
 he tried and tried to recall his observations, whatever 
 they may have been, on the various topics of the day, 
 but in vain. He could only remember the circum- 
 stance of driving two ugly bull- dogs back under his 
 bench, of slaying and hiding away his mortal enemy, 
 and then hanging a felon for high treason ; and then 
 chiefest of all, " You will come again, it is lonesome 
 here : you are such good company." 
 
Washee-Washee. 31 
 
 " You are such good company." The wind sang it 
 through the trees as he wended his way home. The 
 water, away down in the canon below the trail, sang it 
 soft and low and sweet, sang it ever and nothing more, 
 and the tea-kettle that night simmered and sang, and 
 sang this one sweet song for Sandy. 
 
 He took the first opportunity after supper to slip out 
 and away from Limber Tim; and there in the dark, 
 with his face to the great black forest, he stood saying 
 over and over to himself, in his great coarse voice, 
 trying to catch the soft tones of the Widow, " You are 
 such good company." 
 
 That evening Limber Tim leaned up against the logs 
 of the Howling Wilderness, and told all that had 
 happened, and how Sandy had seen the Widow, how he 
 had sat in her cabin, how he had talked, and how she 
 had smiled, and what a very hero his "pardner" had 
 become. He told of Washee-Washee. The story of 
 Washee-Washee went through the Forks, and then the 
 next morning the Forks rose up and "went through" 
 Washee-Washee. 
 
 Perhaps it was what the Widow had said about the 
 " poor little, helpless, harmless man," that saved him, 
 but certain it was, for some unknown reason the 
 miners dealt gently with this strange little stranger. 
 Had this been one, or even a dozen, of their own kind, 
 some tree in the neighbourhood of the Forks would have 
 borne in less than an hour one, or even a dozen, of 
 strange and ugly fruit. They went to Washee-Washee's 
 cabin. He smiled as he saw them approach, half shut his 
 eyes as they entered, laid his head a little to one side 
 as they tore up his bunk, and looked perfectly happy, 
 and peaceful as a lamb, as they pulled out from under 
 it enough old clothes to open a shop in Petticoat Lane 
 or even in Bow Street. 
 
 They found a riffle-blanket in one of his wooden 
 shoes, and it was heavy with gold-dust. Poor Washee- 
 
32 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 Washee, when called upon to explain, said timidly thai 
 he had found it floating up the river past his cabin, and 
 took it in to dry it. He seemed hurt when they refused 
 to believe him. They found a hose coiled up in his great 
 bamboo hat. One of the men took hold of his queue, 
 his beautiful long black queue that swept the ground 
 with its braided folds and black silk tassels tipped with 
 red and gold, and found it heavy with nuggets, hidden 
 away for what purpose goodness only knows. It was 
 heavy enough to sink it like a shot were it a fish line 
 and all this gold was his ! 
 
 They threatened hard things to Washee- Washee, these 
 rough, outraged, hairy fellows who had patronized him 
 and helped him and tried to get him along in the world, 
 but he was perfectly passive and tranquil. A man who 
 stood there with a bundle of recovered treasure-trove, 
 in the shape of shirts and coats of many colours, because 
 of many patches, took Washee- Washee by the little pink 
 ear, and twisted him up and around till he saw his face. 
 Then he let him go, and catching his clothes up under 
 his arm strode on out of the cabin and on down to his 
 claim and his work. The meekest man that the world 
 has seen since Socrates, was Washee- Washee. He sat 
 there with the same semi-grin on his face, the same half 
 smile in his almond eyes, though a man shook a rope 
 in his face, jerked it up, thrust out his tongue, pointed 
 to a tree, and hung himself in pantomime before this 
 placid Chinaman. 
 
 "What will we do with him?" A bearded citizen 
 stood there with a bundle of clothes under his arm, 
 waiting to be gone. 
 
 " Poor, lonesome, harmless little man." Sandy stood 
 there, repeating the words of the little Widow without 
 knowing it. 
 
 " He does lie so helplessly," said one. " If he could 
 only lie decently, we might hang him decently." 
 
 " Tell you what, flog him and send him adrift." The 
 
Washee-Washee. 33 
 
 man who proposed this was a stranger with an anchor 
 and other hall-marks of the sea on his hairy arms. 
 
 " Wolves would eat 'im in the bush." 
 
 " Wolves eat a Chinaman ! They'd eat a gum boot 
 fust ! " 
 
 " Tell you what we'll do," growled the Gopher, " re- 
 form him." 
 
 " Eeform hell !" said the sailor to himself. 
 
 " Come, let's do a little missionary business, and begin 
 at home," urged the Gopher. " Get the Judge to repri- 
 mand him. Have him talk to him an hour, then let the 
 Parson speak to him another hour. If he lives that 
 through he will be an honest man, or if not honest he 
 will at least be harmless." 
 
 Now they had no parson in the Forks, not even the 
 semblance of one yet, neither had they a lawyer or 
 doctor, but this Parson was a power in the camp. He 
 was perhaps the most popular man there. He was cer- 
 tainly the most influential, for he was a man who could 
 talk. They called him the Parson because he was cer- 
 tainly the wickedest man in all the mines. 
 
 The idea was novel and was at once adopted. 
 
 Here at last was a practical application of the popu- 
 lar feeling, in older republics, that the officers are the 
 servants of the public. 
 
 The little Judge here was certainly the people's ser- 
 vant. If he had not been, if he had asserted himself at 
 all and taken up arms and fortified himself behind a bar- 
 ricade of books, they would simply have called a miners' 
 meeting in half an hour, and in half an hour would have 
 had the little man ousted and another man in his place, 
 and then back to their work as if nothing ever had 
 happened. Never in the world had men known such 
 absolute liberty as was attained here. There was not 
 even the dominion of woman. And yet they were not 
 happy. 
 
 They marched Washee-Washee to the Howling Wil- 
 
34 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 derness, told the sentence, and called upon the Parson to 
 enforce judgment. 
 
 He now took a cordial and began. Washee-Washee 
 sat before him on a bench, leaning against the wall. 
 The little man seemed as if .he was about to go to sleep ; 
 possibly his conscience had kept him awake the night 
 before, when he found that all his little investments had 
 been a failure in the Forks. 
 
 The Parson began. Washee-Washee flinched, jerked 
 back, sat bolt upright, and seemed to suffer. 
 
 Then the Parson shot another oath. This time it 
 came like a cannon ball, and red hot too, for Washee- 
 Washee was almost lifted out of his seat. 
 
 Then the Parson took his breath a bit, rolled the quid 
 of tobacco in his mouth from left to right and from 
 right to left, and as he did so he selected the very 
 broadest, knottiest, and ugliest oaths that he had found 
 in all his fifty years of life on the border. 
 
 Washee-Washee had lost his expression of peace. He 
 had evidently been terribly shaken. The Parson had 
 rested a good spell, however, and the little, slim, brown 
 man before him, who had crawled out over the great 
 wall of China, sailed across the sea of seas, climbed the 
 Sierras, and sat down in their midst to begin the old 
 clothes business, without pay or promise, was again 
 settling back, as if about to surrender to sleep. 
 
 Cannon balls ! conical shot ! chain shot ! and shot red 
 hot ! Never were such oaths heard in the world before ! 
 
 The Chinaman fell over. 
 
 " Stop ! " cried the bar keeper of the Howling Wil- 
 derness, who didn't want the expense of the funeral ; 
 " stop ! do you mean to curse him to death ? " 
 
 The Chinaman was allowed time to recover, and then 
 they sat him again on the bench. A man fanned him 
 with his broad bamboo hat, lest he should faint before 
 the last half of the sentence was nearly through, and 
 the Judge was called upon to enforce the remainder of 
 their sentence. 
 
Washee-Washee. 35 
 
 " Washee-Washee ! In this glorious climate of Cali- 
 fomy how could you ?" 
 
 Washee-Washee nodded, and the Judge broke down 
 badly embarrassed. At last he recovered himself, and 
 began in a deep, earnest, and entreating tone : 
 
 " Washee-Washee, in this glorious climate of Cali- 
 forny you should remember the seventh Commandment, 
 and never, under any circumstances or temptations that 
 beset you, should you covet your neighbour's goods, or 
 his boots, or his shirt, or his socks, or his handkerchief, 
 or anything that is his, or " 
 
 The Judge paused, the men giggled, and then they 
 roared, and laughed, and danced about their little Judge ; 
 for Washee-Washee had folded his little brown hands in 
 his lap, and was sleeping as sweetly as a baby in its 
 cradle. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 SANDY'S COURTSHIP. 
 
 WIFTLY, and very swiftly for Sandy, the 
 days went by in the Forks : down there 
 deep in the earth, almost in the dark of the 
 under- world, in the cool of the forest, in 
 the fragrance and spice and sweetness of 
 the fir, and madrona, and tamarack for ever, dripping 
 with dew, and dropping their fragrant gums and spices 
 on the carpeted, mossy mountain side, filling the deep 
 chasm with an odour found nowhere save in the heart 
 of the Sierras, and Sandy was happy at last. 
 
 " You will please come again. You are such good 
 company ! " Sandy had come to think he was one of 
 the best talkers in the world ; and thinking so he was 
 really able to begin to talk. Such is the tact and 
 power, and good or ill, of woman. 
 
 Water will find its level. In this camp, in all new 
 camps, in all new countries, new enterprises, wars, con- 
 troversies no matter what, there are certain men who 
 come to the surface. These come to the front, and 
 men stand aside, and they take their place. They stay 
 there, for they belong there. They may not come im- 
 mediately; but let the thing be taken up, be one of 
 enough consequence to stir up the waters, and the 
 
Sandy 9 s Courtship. 87 
 
 waters will find their level. No man need stilt himself 
 up, or seek applause, or friends in high places, or loud 
 praise. If he belongs to the front he will get there in 
 time, and will remain there when he arrives. If he 
 does not, there is but little need for him to push and 
 bribe and bother at all about it. He will only stand up 
 in the light long enough to show to the world that some 
 one has escaped from the woodcut of a comic almanack, 
 or the Zoological Gardens, and then will sink back, 
 to end his life in complaining of hard treatment and 
 lack of appreciation. Let us rather accept the situation, 
 good or bad, play the piece out, and look to promotion 
 in the next great drama. 
 
 Do not despise my spicy little camp in the Sierras. It 
 was a world of itself. Perhaps it was as large as all 
 Paradise was at the first ; and then it was so new, so 
 fresh, so fragrant, sweet, and primitive. 
 
 It was something to be the first man in that camp. 
 Caesar, if they have written their chronicles true, would 
 have preferred it to the second place in Rome. 
 
 Here only the strong, clear heads towered up. It 
 was not accident that made Sandy, or the Parson either, 
 a head man in the Forks. 
 
 The Forks knew just how sterling, and how solid, 
 and how sincere he was. No flattery here. There was 
 not a penny to win by it. No applause to care for here. 
 No public opinion to appease or woo. If a man did not 
 like the company at the Howling Wilderness he need 
 not put in an appearance. He could stay at home, lord 
 of his castle, toil three hundred and sixty-five days in 
 the year, and no man would question him or doubt his 
 motives. 
 
 Nor was it any accident that made Limber Tim the 
 partner of Sandy. These things have a deeper root than 
 men suppose. Sandy was the strongest man in the 
 camp, Limber Tim was the weakest. Nothing in nature 
 was more natural than their present relation. It is as 
 
38 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 remarkable as it is true, that wild beasts, even when 
 the sexes, more decent than man, are divided from each 
 other, mate thus. The strong Hear or the strong buck 
 companions with the weak. 
 
 This Sandy never blustered or asserted himself at all. 
 He was born above most men of his class, and he stood 
 at their head boldly without knowing it. Had he been 
 born an Indian he would have been a chief, would have 
 led in battle, and dictated in council, without question 
 or without opposition from any one. Had he been born 
 in the old time of kings he would have put out his 
 hand, taken a crown, and worn it as a man wears the 
 most fitting garment, by instinct. 
 
 Sandy was born King of the Forks. He was king 
 already, without knowing it or caring to rule it. 
 
 There are people just like that in the world, you 
 know, great, silent, fearless fellows, or at least there 
 are in the Sierra- world, and they are as good as they are 
 great. They are there, throned there, filling up more of 
 the world than any ten thousand of those feeble things 
 that God sent into the world, in mercy to the poor good 
 men who sit all day silent, and cross-legged, and in 
 nine parts, sewing, on a table. 
 
 They will not go higher, they cannot go lower. They 
 accept the authority as if they had inherited through a 
 thousand sires. 
 
 How that courtship got on, or where and when Sandy 
 first opened his lips, nobody ever knew. At first he 
 took Limber Tim with him. But really Limber was so 
 awkward in the presence of ladies, or at least so thought 
 Sandy to himself, that he was ashamed of him. 
 
 It was a great relief to Sandy, if he had only known 
 enough to admit it to himself, to find some one in the 
 room more awkward than himself. Nothing is a better 
 boon, when embarrassed, than to see some one there a 
 bigger dolt than yourself. 
 
 Limber Tim would come in, but he would not sit 
 
Sandy's Courtship. 89 
 
 down. He would go over against the wall and stand 
 there on one leg, with his hands stuck in behind him 
 and his head lolled to one side while his mouth, fell 
 open, with his back glued up against the wall, as if he 
 was a sort of statuary that had made up its mind never 
 to fall down on its face. 
 
 He would stand in that attitude till the Widow would 
 speak to him or even smile on him, and then he would 
 flop right over with his face to the wall, whip out a great 
 pencil from his canvas pocket, and then slowly begin to 
 scrawl the date, or as near as he could guess it, and 
 sketch grotesque pictures all over the new hewn logs 
 of the cabin. 
 
 The widow used to call that place the Almanack, for 
 Limber Tim knew the date and day of the year, if any 
 man in the Forks knew it. For it sometimes happened 
 that when the pack-train with the provisions would come 
 in from the outer world they would find they were two, 
 three, and even four days behind or ahead in their 
 calculations. 
 
 At last Sandy began to get tired of Limber Tim on 
 the wall at the Widow's. Perhaps he was in the way. 
 At all events he " shook " him, as they called it at the 
 Howling Wilderness, and " played it alone." 
 
 One evening Sandy had a sorry tale to tell the little 
 woman. She listened as never she had listened before. 
 Poor Deboon, young Deboon, the boy who had "too 
 much book larnin'," was down with a fever, and was 
 wild and talking in strange ways, and they had no help, 
 no doctor, nothing. "Yes, yes," cried Sandy, "the 
 Forks is a doin' its level best. Watchin' and a watchin', 
 but he won't git up ag'in. It's all up with poor Deboon." 
 
 And all the Forks was doing its best too. But the 
 boy was very ill. The Forks was good : and it was also 
 very sorry, for it had laughed at this young man with 
 hands white and small and a waist like a woman's, and 
 now that he was dying it wanted to be forgiven- 
 
40 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 It was something to the Forks that it had allowed 
 this boy to bear his own Christian name ; the only ex- 
 ample of the kind on its records. 
 
 The Widow was not very talkative after that, and 
 Sandy went away earlier than usual. He thought to 
 drop down and see the boy; but on his way called 
 at the Howling Wilderness. In a few minutes he 
 went on to the cabin of the sufferer. Gently he lifted 
 the latch, and on tip-toe he softly entered the room 
 where he lay. 
 
 The man was almost appalled. The Widow sat there, 
 holding his hands now, now pushing back the soft long 
 hair from his face, folding back the blankets, cooling his 
 hot brow with her soft fresh hand, and looking into his 
 eyes all the time with a tenderness that was new to 
 Sandy. 
 
 The boy was wild with the fever, and weak and help- 
 less. Men stood back around the wall and in the dark ; 
 they had not dared to speak to her as she entered. They 
 were so amazed that a woman would dare do this thing 
 to come in among them alone, take this man in her 
 arms, wave them back wild beasts as they were, they 
 stood there mute with amazement and devotion. 
 
 " I will go now ! " The boy then bent his hands and 
 tried to rise up. " I will go away up, up, out of it all. 
 I don't fit in here. I don't belong here. I don't know 
 the people, and the people don't know me." 
 
 Then he was still, and his mind wandered in another 
 direction, when he began again. 
 
 " Now I will go ; and I will go alone. I am so, so 
 tired. I am so hot and thirsty here. I will cross on 
 the cool water and rest as I go." 
 
 The woman looked in his face, took his face in her 
 hand as she sat by the bed, raised him tenderly and 
 talked in a low soft voice all night long ; soft and sweet 
 and tender to the stranger as the voice of a mother. 
 
 She held his hand all night, as if she would hold him 
 
Sandy's Courtship. 41 
 
 back from crossing over the river, and talked to him 
 tenderly as if to draw him back to earth. 
 
 The grey dawn came at last, stealing down the month 
 of the great black chimney, through the little window 
 in the wall, where a paper did the duty of a pane, and 
 there the men still stood in a row around the walls of 
 the cabin, and there the Widow still sat holding the 
 man's hand, cooling his brow, calling him back to the 
 world. And he came. He opened his eyes and knew 
 his fellow-men, for these fevers of the mountain are sud- 
 den and severe, and their work is soon done or aban- 
 doned. 
 
 After that the camp had a patron saint. The Parson 
 fell ill next, but the boys rated him so soundly about 
 his motive as if any man could have a motive in falling 
 ill that he fell to cursing, and cursed himself into a 
 perspiration, and so got well. 
 
 One morning the "Widow found a nugget of gold .on 
 her doorstep. What particular goose of the camp had 
 laid that great gold egg before her door she did not 
 know. Maybe, after all, it was only the devotion of 
 some honest, clear-headed man, some wealthy, fortunate 
 fellow who wanted to quietly reward her for her noble 
 deeds in the day of trouble. 
 
 Then came another nugget, and then another. She 
 laid them in a row on her mantle-piece, and men (for 
 visitors were not so infrequent now as at first) would 
 come in, handle them, make their observations, guess 
 from what claim this one came or that; and no man 
 there ever told or hinted or in any way remarked that 
 he had sent this or that, or had had any part in the 
 -splendid gifts that lay so carelessly on the little Widow's 
 mantle-piece. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A SCENE IN THE SIERRAS. 
 
 the amazement of all the Forks, one day, 
 when a bearded man in gum boots, slouch 
 hat, and blue shirt, reached in at the Widow's 
 for his washing, the hand that reached it 
 out was not the Widow's. It was the little 
 brown lazy hand of Washee-Washee. 
 
 Of course the camp did not like this. This Chinaman 
 to them was a sort of eclipse, a dark body passing between 
 the miners and their sun. They remonstrated, and the 
 Parson bore the remonstrance in a speech of his own ; 
 and, to his own great surprise, it was not ornamented 
 with a single oath. 
 
 "The Forks began his reformation; let me go on 
 with it. Why not ? " 
 
 " You will be plundered." 
 "Of what?" 
 
 The Parson looked at the gold nuggets on the mantel- 
 piece, and shifted the quid of tobacco from right to left. 
 " Washee-Washee will lie," began the Widow so- 
 berly. " He can lie, and he does lie, very cheerfully 
 and very rapidly, in spite of his name, which might 
 suggest better things ; but he steals no more do you, 
 little brownie?" 
 
A Scene in the Sierras. 43 
 
 Washee-Washee's little black eyes glistened with 
 gratitude. The little pagan was coming up in the social 
 scale. The Widow had begun her missionary business 
 where all the world ought to begin it at home. 
 
 The Parson went away. He felt that somehoAV his 
 footing with the Widow was shaken, and that he must 
 do something to redeem the day. 
 
 The Parson was always trying to do something ori- 
 ginal. He concluded to " lay for" the Chinaman. 
 
 He took a fresh quid of tobacco, stowed himself away 
 in the bush, and waited. 
 
 In the twilight, the mournful, the sad, but beautiful 
 ghost of the great golden days of the Sierras, a hand 
 reached out and took Washee-Washee by the queue as 
 a man would take a tethered horse by the lariat. 
 
 The little man did not smile as before. He even 
 struck back with his little brown bony hands. He 
 wound one of them in the Parson's beard, and shouted 
 aloud to the empty woods. The valour of honesty was 
 on him. 
 
 However, kick as he might and shout as he could, it 
 all did but little good, and the Parson proceeded very 
 coolly to take him by the two heels, hold him up in the 
 trail, and shake him in a smooth level part of it, just as 
 if he was about to empty a bag, and did not wish to 
 waste the contents. 
 
 Now, the Parson was not at all vicious ; he had no 
 wish to harm the Chinaman ; he only wished to help the 
 Widow. He shook Washee-Washee in perfect confidence 
 that he would find all the gold nuggets, half the spoons, 
 and nearly all the household goods in the little Widow's 
 warm and sparely furnished room. lie had not been a 
 bit surprised if he had shaken out the Widow's washing 
 clothes, her wash tub, and clothes line. " Ah, certainly," 
 said the Parson, pausing, to himself, " for is not Washee- 
 Washee's line the clothes line ?" 
 
 Shake, shake, shake. It was of no use. Something 
 
44 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 had fallen from his blue blouse, but it was not gold. 
 He stood the little man down, with the other end up, 
 and was a bit angry that he did not go on smiling as 
 before. He stooped, and picked up the little black ob- 
 ject that had been shaken from the brown little fellow 
 before him. The Parson began to swear. It was only 
 a . little ten cent Testament, in diamond type, with a 
 cloth cover. The Parson put his head to one side, 
 filliped the leaves with his thumb and finger, and then, 
 feeling perfectly certain that it did not belong to any of 
 the boys in the camp, and equally certain that it was 
 not an article that he cared to carry around loose with 
 him, he filliped the leaves again, and, handing it back to 
 Washee-Washee, said, " Git ! " 
 
 The Parson took one end of the trail, and the little 
 pagan the other. 
 
 A Missourian who lay in his bunk up against the 
 wall, smoking the pipe of " pigtail" after dinner, looked 
 out from his cabin window through the wood and up 
 towards the Parson's cabin, where the trail wound on 
 the hillside above him. 
 
 " It's a thunderin' and a lightnin' like cats and dogs. 
 There's a-gwyne to be a storm to-night." 
 
 But it was only the Parson swearing at his bad luck 
 and that Chinaman. 
 
 " Only a Testament ! " Then an idea struck him like 
 an inspiration. Did not the good little Widow give the 
 brown wretch this thing ? 
 
 He stopped swearing, stood still in the trail a moment, 
 and then, giving a long whistle as he drew a long breath, 
 he went on to his cabin in .silence, and more in love 
 with the brave little woman than ever. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE PARSON'S WOOING. 
 
 S the summer wore away, her suitors dropped 
 off like early candidates for office, and left 
 the field almost entirely to the two leading 
 men of the camp Sandy and the Parson. 
 
 Sandy was a man of magnificent stature, 
 with a graceful flow of sandy beard, but, as I have said, 
 an awkward child of nature. A born leader of men, but 
 a man who declined to lead unless forced to come to the 
 front by his fellows, and for the time take charge of 
 whatever matter was under consideration in the camp. 
 Sandy was a man you believed in, trusted, and honoured 
 from the first. There was not a crafty fibre or thought 
 in his physical or mental make-up. 
 
 The Parson was a successful miner ; a massive, 
 Gothic man, though not so tall as Sandy. He had been 
 a sailor, I think. At all events, he had a blue band of 
 Indian ink, with little diamonds of red set in between the 
 bands, on his left wrist. Possibly it was his right wrist, 
 for I cannot recall positively at this distance of time, 
 but I think it was the left. 
 
 The Parson was the first authority in history, politics, 
 theology, anything whatever that came up. I do not 
 think he was learned; but he was always so positive, 
 
46 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 and always so ready with his opinions, and always so 
 ready to back them up too, that all were willing to ask 
 his opinion in matters of doubt, and few were willing to 
 question his replies. 
 
 After a while it became talked about that Sandy was 
 losing ground with the Widow or, rather, that the 
 Parson was having it pretty much his own way there, as 
 in other things in the camp, and that Sandy "rarely put 
 in an appearance. 
 
 About this time a pretty little cottage began to peep 
 through the trees from a little hill back of town ; and 
 then it came out that this, with its glass windows and 
 green window-blinds, was the property of the Parson, and 
 destined as the home of the Widow. 
 
 I think the camp was rather pleased at this. True 
 there was a bit of ambition and a grain of cunning too 
 in the Parson's nature, which made the free, wild men 
 of the mountains look upon him sometimes with less 
 favour than they did on Sandy. Still they liked him, 
 and were glad that the Widow was to have a home at 
 last. 
 
 But somehow the wedding did not come on as soon 
 as was expected, and the Widow kept on rubbing, rub- 
 bing, day after day, week after week, as if nothing of 
 the kind was ever to happen to her. 
 
 Late in the fall, one evening, as the men stood in a 
 semicircle in the Howling Wilderness saloon, with their 
 backs to the blazing log fire, Sandy brought his fist 
 down emphatically on the bar, as he took part in the 
 conversation, and, turning to the crowd, said : 
 
 " It's an everlastin' and a burnin' shame !" 
 
 He rested his right elbow on the bar, and drew the 
 back of his left hand across his mouth, as if embarrassed, 
 and again began : 
 
 " It's a breathin' and a burnin' shame, I say, that the 
 woman has got for to go on in this way, a washin' of 
 duds for us fellows of this here camp. If this here camp 
 
The Parson's Wooing. 47 
 
 can't afford one lady in its precincts, why, then I shall 
 pull up stakes and go to where the tall cedars cast their 
 shadows over t}ie coyote, and the coyote howls and 
 howls and and' ' 
 
 He wiped his mouth again, and broke down utterly. 
 But he had said enough. A responsive chord was 
 touched, and the men fairly sprang to their feet with 
 delight at the thought. 
 
 Some of the best things in life are like leads of gold 
 we come upon them in a kind of sudden discovery. 
 
 The Parson's eyes twinkled with delight. " I move 
 that Sandy take the chair for this occasion, and second 
 the motion, and plank down twenty ounces for the 
 Widow." 
 
 Sandy removed his slouch hat, blushed behind his 
 beard at the new dignity, and said : 
 
 " Bully for you ! I raise you five ounces and ante 
 the dust." 
 
 Here he drew a long, heavy purse from his pocket, 
 and passed it over to the barkeeper, who thereby became 
 treasurer of the enterprise without further remark. 
 The Parson's eye twinkled again. 
 
 " I see your five ounces and go you ten better." 
 
 " Called," said Sandy, and he pecked at the bar-keeper, 
 which little motion of the head meant that that further 
 amount was to be weighed from the purse for the benefit 
 of the Widow. 
 
 One by one the boys came forward ; and, as the en- 
 terprise got noised about the camp, they came down to 
 the Howling Wilderness saloon till far in the night, to 
 contribute what they called their " Widow's mite." 
 
 Even the head man of the company up the creek 
 known as the " Gay Roosters," and who was notoriously 
 the most rough and reckless man in the camp, jumped 
 a first-class poker game, where he was playing at 
 twenty dollars ante and pass the buck, to come in and 
 weigh out dust enough to " call " the Parson and Sandy. 
 
48 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 The Forks felt proud of itself for the deed. Men 
 slept sounder and awoke in a better humour with them- 
 selves for the act. 
 
 Yet all this time it was pretty well conceded that the 
 gold, and the Widow too, would very soon fall to the 
 possession of the Parson. 
 
 " Set 'em deep, Parson ! Set 'em deep ! " said the 
 head of the Gay Roosters, as he shook hands with the 
 Parson that night, winked at the "boys," and returned 
 to his game of poker. 
 
 There had been many a funeral at the Forks ; but 
 never a birth or a wedding. But now this last, with all 
 its rites and mysteries, was about to come upon the 
 Forks ; and the Forks felt dignified and elated. Not 
 one of all these thousand bearded men showed uncon- 
 cern. It was the great topic the Presidential cam- 
 paign, the Dolly Yarden of the day. The approaching 
 wedding was the morning talk, the talk at noon, and 
 the talk at night. 
 
 And it was good for the camp. The last fight was 
 forgotten. Monte took a back seat in the minds of 
 these strange, strong men ; and, if the truth could be 
 told, I dare say the German undertaker, who had set 
 up under the hill, noted a marked decline in his 
 business. 
 
 The "boys" were with the Parson, and the Parson 
 with the " boys." They all conceded that he was a royal 
 good fellow, and that the Widow could not well do 
 better. 
 
 The amount of gold raised by the men in their sudden 
 and impulsive charity was in itself, for one in the 
 Widow's station, a reasonable fortune. 
 
 "What if she gits up and gits ?" 
 
 The man who said that was a narrow-minded, one- 
 eyed, suspicious fellow, who barely escaped being knocked 
 down by the head of the " Gay Roosters," and kicked 
 into the street by the crowd. 
 
The Parson's Wooing. 49 
 
 The Parson and Sandy were sent in a committee to 
 the Widow with the gold. She smiled, took the heavy 
 bag in her hand, turned, shut the door in their faces, but 
 did not say a word. That evening she was seen to 
 enter the crippled Dutchman's cabin. The next day the 
 crippled Dutchman rode up the trail out of camp, and 
 was seen no more. 
 
 Still later in the fall the Parson sat in the Howling 
 Wilderness, with his back to the blazing, crackling fire, 
 having it all his own way at his favourite game of old 
 sledge. He had led his queen for the jack just as 
 though he knew where every card in the pack was en- 
 trenched. Then he led the king with like composure, 
 and was just crooking his fingers up his sleeve for the 
 ace, when a man in black, with a, beaver hat and white 
 necktie, rode by the window on a black horse. 
 
 " Somebody's a dyin' up the creek, I 'speck," said 
 Stubbs. " Maybe it's old Yallar. He allers was a kind 
 of a prayin' codfish eatin' cuss, anyhow." 
 
 Here Stubbs turned and kicked nervously at the fire. 
 
 The game did not go on after that. No one said any- 
 thing. Perhaps that was the trouble. The men fell to 
 thinking, and the game lost its interest. 
 
 There was no fight of importance at the Howling 
 Wilderness that night, and by midnight the frequenters 
 of the saloon had withdrawn. The candles were then 
 put out, and the proprietors barricaded the door against 
 belated drunkards, spread their blankets on a monte- 
 table, with their pistols under their heads, and by the 
 smouldering fire were at rest. 
 
 The ground was frozen hard next morning, and the 
 miners flocked into the Howling Wilderness. The Par- 
 son was leading off gaily again, and swearing with 
 unusual eloquence and brilliancy, when a tall, thin, and 
 sallow man, from Missouri, known as the "Jumper," 
 entered. He looked wild and excited, and stepped high, 
 as if on stilts. 
 
50 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 The tall, thin man went straight up to the bar, struck 
 his knuckles on the counter, and nodded at the red 
 bottle before him. It came forward, with a glass tum- 
 bler, and he drank deep, alone and in silence. 
 
 When a miner of the Sierras enters a saloon where 
 other men are seated, and drinks alone, without inviting 
 any one, it is meant as a deliberate insult to those pre- 
 sent, unless there is some dreadful thing on his mind. 
 
 The Jumper, tall and fidgety, turned to the Parson, 
 bent his back against the counter, and pushed back his 
 hat. Then he drew his right sleeve across his mouth, 
 and let his arms fall down at his side limp and helpless, 
 and his round, brown butternut head roll loose and 
 awkward from shoulder to shoulder. 
 
 "Parson." 
 
 "Well ! well ! Spit it out ! " cried the Parson as he 
 arose from the bench, with a dreadful oath. "Spit 
 it out ! What in h is busted now ? " 
 
 " Parson." 
 
 Here the head rolled and the arms swung more than 
 ever, and the man seemed in dreadful agony of mind. 
 
 The Parson sprang across the room and caught him 
 by the shoulder. He shook him till his teeth rattled 
 like quartz in a mill. 
 
 " The the man in black," gasped the Jumper. " The 
 black man, on the black horse, with a white choker. 
 Well, he's gone back ; and he won't marry yer. Cause 
 why, he says Sandy says yer got one wife now anyhow 
 in Missouri, and maybe two." 
 
 The Parson sunk into a seat, dropped his face in his 
 hands for a moment, trembled only a little, and arose 
 pale and silent. He did not swear at all. I am per- 
 fectly certain he did not swear. I know we all spoke 
 of that for a long time afterward, and considered it one 
 of the most remarkable things in all the strange con- 
 duct of this man. 
 
 When the Parson arose the Jumper shook himself 
 
The Parson's Wooing. 51 
 
 loose from the counter, and tilted across to the other 
 side of the room, to give him place. 
 
 The stricken man put his hands on the counter, 
 peaked over the bar-keeper's shoulder at his favourite 
 bottle, as if mournfully to a friend, but said not a word. 
 He emptied a glass, and then, without looking right or 
 left, opened the door, and went straight up to the Par- 
 sonage. The Parsonage was the name the boys gave to 
 the cottage on the hill among the trees. 
 
 " Gone for his two little bull-pups," said Stubbs. 
 That was what the Parson called his silver-mounted 
 derringers. 
 
 " There will be a funeral at the Forks to-morrow," 
 gasped the Jumper. 
 
 Here th& German undertaker arose cheerfully, and 
 went down to his shop. 
 
 " Well, Sandy is no sardine. Bet your boots Sandy 
 ain't no sardine!" said Stubbs. "And, anyhow, he's 
 got the start just a little, if the Parson does nail him. 
 For he's won her heart ; and that's a heap, I think, for 
 wimmen's mighty precious in the mines sumthin' to 
 die for, you bet." 
 
 The Parson was absent for hours, and the Howling 
 Wilderness began to be impatient. 
 
 " He's a heeling himself like a fighting-cock," said 
 Stubbs ; " and, if Sandy don't go to kingdom come with 
 his boots on, then chaw me up for a shrimp." 
 
 The man here went to the door, opened it, put his 
 head out in the frosty weather, and peered up the creek 
 for Sandy, and across the creek for the Parson, but 
 neither was in sight. 
 
 The " Gay Eooster " company knocked off from their 
 work, with many others, and came to town in force to 
 see the fight. The Howling Wilderness was crowded 
 and doing a rushing business. 
 
 The two bar-keepers shifted and carefully arranged 
 the sand-bags under the counter, which in that day 
 
52 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 and country were placed there in every well-regulated 
 drinking saloon, so as to intercept whatever stray bits 
 of lead might be thrown in the direction of their bodies, 
 in the coming battle, and calmly awaited results. 
 
 About dark, a thin blue smoke, as from burning 
 paper, curled up from the chimney of the Parsonage, 
 and the Parson came slowly forth. 
 
 "Blamed if he hasn't been a making of his will and a 
 burning of his letters. Looks grummer than a deacon, 
 too," added the man, as the Parson neared the saloon. 
 
 He spoke quietly to the boys, as he entered, but did 
 not swear. That was thought again remarkable indeed. 
 
 He went up to the bar, tapped on the counter with 
 his knuckles, threw his head back over his shoulder 
 toward the crowd, and yet apparently without seeing 
 any one, and said : 
 
 " Boys, fall in line, fall in line. Rally around me once 
 again." 
 
 They fell in line, or at least the majority did. Some, 
 however, stood off in little knots and groups on the 
 other side, and pretended not to have heard or noticed 
 what was going on. These it was at once understood 
 were fast friends of Sandy's and unbelievers in the 
 Parson. 
 
 The glasses were filled quietly, slowly, and respect- 
 fully, almost like filling a grave, and then emptied in 
 silence. 
 
 Again it was observed that the Parson did not swear. 
 That was considered as remarkable as the omission of 
 prayer from the service in a well-regulated church, and 
 I am sure contributed to throw a spirit of restraint over 
 the whole party friendly to the Parson. Besides, it was 
 noticed that he was pale, haggard, had hardly a word 
 to say, and most of all, had barely touched the glass to 
 his lips. 
 
 No one, however, ventured to advise, question, or in 
 any way disturb him. All were quiet and respectful. 
 
The Parson's Wooing. 53 
 
 It was very evident that the feeling in the Forks was 
 largely with the Parson. 
 
 Sandy did not appear that evening. This, of course, 
 was greatly against him. The Forks began to suspect 
 that he feared to take the responsibility of his acfc, and 
 meet the man he had so strangely deceived and so 
 deeply injured. 
 
 The next day the saloon was crowded more densely 
 than before. Men stood off in little knots and groups, 
 talking earnestly. There was .but one topic only the 
 one great subject the impending meeting between the 
 two leading men of the camp, and the probable result. 
 
 The Parson was among the first present that day, 
 pale and careworn. They treated him with all the deli- 
 cacy of women. Not a word was said in his presence of 
 his misfortune, or the occasion of their meeting. To 
 the further credit of the Forks I am bound to say that 
 there was scarcely an intoxicated man present. 
 
 The day passed, and still Sandy did not appear. Had 
 there been any other way out of camp than through the 
 Forks and up the rugged, winding, corkscrew stairway 
 of rocks opposite, and in the face of the town, it might 
 have been suspected that he had taken the Widow and 
 fled to other lands. 
 
 The Parson came down a little late next morning, 
 pale and quiet, as before. He did not swear. This 
 time, in fact, he did not even drink. He sat down on a 
 bench behind the monte-table, with his back to the fire 
 and his face to the door. The men respectfully left a 
 rather broad lane between the Parson and the door, and 
 the monte-table was not patronized. 
 
 The day passed ; dusk, and still Sandy did not 
 appear. By this time he had hardly three friends in 
 the house. 
 
 "Hasn't got the soul of a chicken!" "Caved in at 
 last!" "Gone down in his boots!" "Busted in the 
 snapper!" "Lost his grip!" "Don't dare show his 
 
54 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 hand!" These and like expressions, thrown out now 
 and then from the little knots of men here and there, 
 were the certain indications that Sandy had lost his 
 place in the hearts of the leading men of the Forks. 
 
 Toward midnight the bolt lifted ! Shoo ! The door 
 opened, and Sandy entered, backed np against the wall 
 by the door, and stood there, tall and silent. 
 
 His great beard was trimmed a little, his bushy hair 
 carefully combed behind his ears, and the neck-tie was 
 now subdued into a neat love-knot, in spite of its old 
 persistent habit of twisting around and fluttering out 
 over his left shoulder. His eye met the Parson's but 
 did not quail. 
 
 The bar-keeper settled down gracefully behind the 
 bags of sand, so that his eyes only remained visible 
 above the horizon. 
 
 The head of the "Gay Roosters" tilted a table up 
 till it made a respectable barricade for his breast, and 
 the crowd silently settled back in the corners, packed 
 tighter than sardines in a tin box. 
 
 You might have heard a mouse, had it crossed the 
 floor. Even the fretful fire seemed to hold for the time 
 its snappish red tongue, and the wind without to lean 
 against the door and listen. 
 
 The Parson slowly arose from the table. He had his 
 right hand in his pocket, and was very pale. 
 
 Experienced shootists, old hands at mortal combat 
 with their kind, glanced from man to man, measured 
 every motion, every look, with all the intense eagerness 
 of artists who are favoured with one great and especial 
 sight, not to be met again. Others held their heads 
 down, and only waited in a confused sort of manner for 
 the barking of the dogs. 
 
 Neither of Sandy's hands were visible; but, as the 
 Parson took a few steps forward, and partly drew his 
 hand from his pocket, Sandy's right one came up like a 
 steel spring, and the ugly black muzzle of a six-shooter 
 was in the Parson's face. 
 
The Parson's Wooing. 55 
 
 Still lie advanced, till his face almost touched the 
 muzzle of the pistol. He seemed not to see it, or to 
 have the least conception of his danger. 
 
 It was strange that Sandy did not pull. Maybe he 
 was surprised at the singular action of the Parson. 
 Perhaps he had his eye on the unlifted right hand of 
 his antagonist. At all events he had the " drop," and 
 could afford to wait the smallest part of a second, and 
 see what he would do. 
 
 " I have been a- wait-ing " the Parson halted a long 
 time at the participle. " I have been a- waiting for you, 
 Sandy, a long time." 
 
 His voice trembled. The voice that had thundered 
 above a hundred bar-room fights, and had directed the 
 men through many a difficulty in camp, was now low 
 and uncertain. 
 
 " Sandy," he began again, and he took hold of the 
 counter with his left hand, " I am going away. Your 
 cabin will be too small now, and I want you to promise 
 me to take care of the Parsonage till I come back." 
 
 Sandy sank back closer still to the wall, and his arm 
 hung down at his side. 
 
 " You will move into the Parsonage when it is all 
 over. It's full of good things for winter. You will 
 take it, I say, at once. Promise me that." 
 
 The Parson's voice was a little severe here more 
 determined than before ; and, as he concluded, he drew 
 the key from his pocket and handed it to Sandy. 
 
 "You will?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 The men looked a moment in each other's eyes. Per- 
 haps they were both embarrassed. The door was con- 
 venient. That seemed to Sandy the best way out of 
 his confusion, and he opened it softly and disap- 
 peared. The Howling Wilderness was paralyzed with 
 wonder. 
 
 The Parson looked a little while out in the dark, 
 
56 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 through the open door, and was gone. There was a 
 murmur of disappointment behind him. 
 
 " Don't you fear ! " at last chimed in the head of the 
 " Gay Roosters." " Don't you never fear ! That old 
 sea-dog, the Parson, is deeper than a infernal gulf." 
 
 "Look here!" He put up his finger to the side of 
 his nose, after a pause, and stroking his beard mysteri- 
 ously, said : " I say, look here ! Shoo ! Not a word ! 
 Softly now! Powder! That's what it means. Powder! 
 Gits 'em both into the Parsonage and blows 'em to 
 kingdom come together ! 
 
 The Howling Wilderness was reconciled. It was 
 certain that the end was not yet, by a great deal. It 
 was again struck with wonder, however ; and, for want 
 of a better expression, took a drink and settled down to 
 a game of monte. 
 
 Early next morning a morning full of unutterable 
 storms and drifts of snow Sandy, with his blankets 
 and his few effects, entered the Parsonage, as he had 
 promised. 
 
 The Parson was not to be seen. 
 
 Men stood about the door of the Howling Wilderness, 
 and up and down the single street, in little knots, noting 
 the course of things at the Parsonage, and now and then 
 shaking their loose blanket coats and brushing off the 
 fast falling snow. 
 
 After a while, when the smoke rose up from the 
 chimney-top, and curled above the Parsonage with a 
 home-like leisure, as if a woman's hand tended the fire 
 below, a man with his face muffled up was seen making 
 his way slowly up the rugged way that led from town 
 across the Sierra. 
 
 It was a desperate and dangerous undertaking at that 
 season of the year. He made but poor headway, in the 
 face of the storm that came pelting down in his face 
 from the fields of eternal snow ; but he seemed deter- 
 mined, and pushed slowly on. Sometimes it was 
 
The Parsons Wooing. 57 
 
 observed he would turn, and, shading his eyes from the 
 snow, look down intently at the peaceful smoke drifting 
 through the trees above the Parsonage. 
 
 " Some poor idiot will pass in his checks to-night, if 
 he don't come back pretty soon," said Stubbs, as he 
 nodded at the man up the hill, brushed the snow from 
 his sleeves, and went back into the saloon. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 A WEDDING IN THE SIEEEAS. 
 
 T was late in the fall, and it certainly must 
 have been a cold, frosty morning, for Sandy's 
 teeth chattered together as if he had an 
 ague, when he told the Judge. 
 
 In fact, he stood around the Howling 
 Wilderness more than half a day, but he could not, or at 
 least would not, drink, though he did very many foolish 
 things, and seemed ill at ease and troubled in a way 
 that was new to him. 
 
 At last he got the Judge cornered. He took him by 
 the collar with both hands, he backed him up in a 
 corner, and, as he did so, his teeth chattered and ground 
 together as if he stood half-naked on the everlasting 
 snows that surrounded them. He pushed his face down 
 into the red apple- like face of the magistrate, and began 
 as if he was about to reveal the most terrible crime in 
 the annals of the world. All the time he was holding 
 on to the Judge with both hands, as if he feared he 
 might not listen to his proposal, but tear away and 
 attempt to escape. 
 " Good, good !" 
 The Judge drew a long breath. He swelled out 
 
A Wedding in the Sierras. 59 
 
 almost instantly to nearly twice his usual importance. 
 You could have seen him grow. 
 
 It was now the Judge's turn to lay hold of Sandy. 
 For now, as the great strong man had accomplished his 
 fearful task, told his secret, and done all that was neces- 
 sary to do, he wanted to get away, to go home, go any- 
 where and collect his thoughts, and to rest. 
 
 The Judge held him there, told him the great ad- 
 vantages that would come of it, the high responsibility 
 that he was about to put his shoulder to, and talked to 
 him, in fact, till he grew white and stiff as a sign-post. 
 Yet all that Sandy could remember, for almost all that 
 he said, was something about " the glorious climate of 
 Californy." 
 
 Never rode a king into his capital with such majesty 
 as did the Judge that day enter the Forks. He was 
 swelling, bursting with the importance of his secret. 
 But now he had Sandy's permission to tell the boys, and 
 he went straight to the Howling Wilderness for that 
 purpose. 
 
 His face glowed like the fire as he stood there rubbing 
 his hands above the great mounting blaze, and bowing 
 right and left in a patronizing sort of a way to the 
 miners who had sauntered into the saloon. 
 
 At last the little red-faced man turned his back to the 
 fire, stuck his two hands back behind his coat-tails, which 
 he kept lifting up and down and fanning carelessly, as if 
 in deep thought stood almost tiptoe, stuck out his round 
 little belly, and seemed about to burst with his secret. 
 
 " O this wonderful Californy climate ! " He puffed a 
 little as he said this, and fanned his coat-tails a little 
 bit higher, perked out his belly a little bit further, 
 and stood there as if he expected some one to speak. 
 But as the miners seemed to think they had heard 
 something like this before, or, at least, that the remark 
 was not wholly new, none of them felt called upon to 
 respond. 
 
60 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 " Well " the little man tilted up on his toes as he 
 said this, and took in a long breath " hit comes off 
 about the next snow-fall." 
 
 He had said these words one at a time, and by inches 
 as it were, slowly, deliberately, as if he knew perfectly 
 well that he had something to say, and that men were 
 bound to listen. 
 
 This time they all looked up, and half of them spoke. 
 And oh, didn't he torture them ! Not that he pretended 
 to keep his secret of half a day not at all ! On the 
 contrary, he kept talking on, and tiptoeing, and fanning 
 his coat-tails, and pushing out his belly, and puffing out 
 his cheeks, just as careless and indifferent as if all the 
 world knew just what he was going to say, and was 
 perfectly familiar with the subject. " Yes, gentlemen," 
 puffed the little man, " on or about the next snow-fall 
 the Widow, as a widow, ceases to exist. That lovely 
 flower, my friends, is to be transplanted from its present 
 bed to to into the the wonderful climate of Cali- 
 forny!" 
 
 The Howling Wilderness was as silent as the Cata- 
 combs of Rome for nearly a minute. 
 
 The first thing that was heard was something like a red- 
 hot cannon-shot. The cinnamon-headed man behind the 
 bar dodged down behind his barricade of sandbags till 
 only his bristling red hair and a six-shooter were visible. 
 The decanters tilted together as if there had been an 
 earthquake. 
 
 It was a Missourian swearing. 
 
 Somebody back in the corner said " Jerusalem ! " 
 said it in joints and pieces, and then came forward and 
 kicked the fire, and stood up by the side of the red 
 little man, and looked down at him as if he would like 
 to eat him for a piece of raw beef. 
 
 A tall fair boy went back to a bunk against the 
 further wall, where the barkeeper's bulldog lay sleeping 
 in his blankets^ and put his arms about his neck, and put 
 
A Wedding in the Sierras. 61 
 
 his face down and remained there a long time. Perhaps 
 he wept. 
 
 There was a great big hairy head moved out of the 
 crowd and up to the bar. The head rolled on the 
 shoulders from side to side, as if it was not very firmly 
 fixed there, and did not particularly care at this 
 particular time whether it remained there or not. 
 A big fist fell like a stone on the bar. The glasses 
 jumped as if frightened half to death; they ran up 
 against each other, and clinked and huddled together 
 there, and fairly screamed and split their sides in their 
 terror. A big mouth opened behind an awful barricade 
 of beard, again the big fist fell down, again the glasses 
 screamed and clinked with terror, and the head rolled 
 sidewise again, and the big mouth opened again, and 
 the big voice said : 
 
 " By the bald-headed Elijah !" and that was all. 
 
 Then there was another calm, and you might have 
 heard the little brown wood-mice nibbling at the old 
 boots, and leather belts, and tin cans stowed away among 
 the other rubbish up in the loft of the Howling Wilder- 
 ness. 
 
 Then the fist came down again, and the big mouth 
 opened, and the big mouth said, slow and loud, and long 
 and savage, like the growl of a grizzly : 
 
 " Swaller my grandmother's boots !" Then the man 
 fell back and melted into the crowd; and whatever 
 romance there was in his life, whatever sentiment he 
 may have had, whatever poetry there was pent up in the 
 heart of this great Titan, it found no other expression 
 than this. 
 
 The genteel gambler, who sat behind a table with its 
 green cloth and silver faro-box, forgot to throw his 
 card, but held his arm poised in the air till any man 
 could haTe seen the Jack of Clubs, though a thousand 
 dollars' worth of gold-dust depended on the turn. 
 
 Yet all this soon had an end, of course, and there was 
 
62 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 a confusion of tongues, and a noise that settled gra- 
 dually over against the bar. Even there it was after- 
 wards remarked, though the men really interested did 
 not know it at the time, that the cinnamon -headed dealer 
 of drinks put cayenne pepper in a gin cocktail and 
 Schiedam schnapps in a Tom and Jerry. 
 
 Limber Tim was there in their midst, but was a sad 
 and a silent man. Perhaps he had been told all about 
 it before, and perhaps not. Tim was not a talker, but 
 a thinker. This to him meant the loss of his partner, 
 the man he loved a divorce. 
 
 Poor Limber ! he only backed up against the wall, 
 screwed his back there, twisted one leg in behind the 
 other, stuck his hands in behind him, and so stood there 
 till he saw a man looking at him. Then he flopped over 
 with his face to the wall, dug up his great pencil from 
 his great pocket, and fell to writing on the wall, and 
 trying to hide his face from his fellows. 
 
 " Bather sudden, ain't it, Judge ? " 
 
 "Well, not so sudden not so sudden, considerin' 
 this this this glorious climate of Californy." 
 
 The wedding-day came. The camp had been invited 
 to a man. There was but one place in the camp that 
 could hold a tithe of its people, and that was the 
 Howling Wilderness. The plan had been to have the 
 wedding under the pines on the hill ; but the wind came 
 pitching down the mountain, with frost and snow in his 
 beard, that morning, and drove them to the shelter. 
 
 What a place was that Howling Wilderness ! It was 
 battle-field, prize-ring, dead-house, gambling-hell, court- 
 house, chapel, everything by turns. 
 
 There they stood, side by side and hand in hand, 
 before the crackling fire, before the little Judge. The 
 house was hot. It was crowded thick as the men could 
 stand. Tighter than sardines in a tin box, the men 
 stood there bareheaded with hardly room to breathe. 
 The fat little magistrate was terribly embarrassed. 
 
A Wedding in the Sierras. 63 
 
 He had sent all the way across the mountains by the 
 last pack-train, by the last express, by the last 
 man who had dared the snows, but no pack-train, no 
 express, nothing had returned with the coveted, the 
 so-much-needed marriage ceremony and service, which 
 he had resolved to read to the people, interspersed with 
 such remarks and moral observations as the case might 
 require. Alas ! the form of the ceremony had not 
 arrived. He had nothing of the kind to guide him. 
 He had never officiated in this way before. He had 
 never studied up in this branch. Why should he have 
 studied up in this line when there was but one woman 
 in all his little world ? 
 
 As the form had not arrived, he had nothing in the 
 world but his moral observations to use on this imposing 
 occasion, and he was embarrassed as man had never 
 been embarrassed before. 
 
 He stood there trying hard to begin. He could hear 
 the men breathe. The pretty little woman was troubled 
 too. Her face was all the time held down, her eyes 
 drooped, and she did not look up did not look right 
 or left or anywhere, but seemed to surrender herself to 
 fate, to give herself away. Her soul seemed elsewhere, 
 as if she sat on a high bank above all this, and was not 
 of it or in it at all. 
 
 " Do you solemnly swear ?" 
 
 The Judge had jerked himself together with an effort 
 that made his joints fairly rattle. He hoisted his right 
 hand in the air as he said this, and, having once broken 
 ground, he went on " Do you solemnly swear to love, 
 and honour, and obey ?" 
 
 Poor Limber Tim, who had just room enough behind 
 the Judge to turn over, here became embarrassed through 
 sympathy for the little red-faced magistrate, and of 
 course flopped over, and began to write his name and 
 the date, and make pictures on the wall, with a nervous 
 rapidity proportionate to his embarrassment. 
 
64 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 li Do you solemnly swear ?" 
 
 It was very painful. The little man took down his 
 lifted flagstaff to wipe his little bald head, and he 
 could not get it up again, but stood there still and help- 
 less. 
 
 You could hear the men breathe as they leaned and 
 listened with all their might to hear. They heard the 
 water outside gurgling on down over the great boulders, 
 over their dams, and on through the canon. They heard 
 the little brown wood-mice nibble and nibble and nibble 
 at the bits of bacon-rind and old leather boots up in the 
 loft above their heads, but that was all. At last the 
 Judge revived, and began again in a voice that was full 
 of desperation : 
 
 "Do you solemnly swear to love, and protect, and 
 honour, and obey, till death do you part ; and " 
 
 Here the voice fell down low, lower, and the Judge 
 was again floundering in the water. Then his head 
 went under utterly. Then he rose, and " Now I lay me 
 down to sleep " rolled tremulously through the silent 
 room from the lips of the Judge. Then again the head 
 was under water, then it rose up again, and there was 
 something like "Twinkle, twinkle, little star." Then 
 the voice died again, the head was under water. Then 
 it rose again, and the head went up high in the air, and 
 the voice was loud and resolute, and the man rose on 
 his tiptoes, and beginning with " When in the course 
 of human events," he went on in a deep and splendid 
 tone with the Declaration of Independence, to the very 
 teeth of tyrannical King George, and then bringing his 
 hand down emphatically on the gambling table that 
 stood to his right, said loud, and clear, and resolute, and 
 authoritatively, as he tilted forward on his toes, " So 
 help you God, and I pronounce you man and wife." 
 
 The exhausted Judge sank back against the wall on 
 top of Limber Tim, and then, as if he all at once came 
 to remember a part of the ceremony, and after Sandy 
 
A Wedding in the Sierras. 65 
 
 
 
 and the Widow and all were thinking that it was quite 
 over, he began in a low but clear voice 
 
 " Then by virtue of the authority in me vested, and 
 according to the laws and the statutes of the State of 
 California in such cases made and provided, I pronounce 
 you man and wife." 
 
 Then he rose up, came forward, and shaking the new 
 bride by the hand, then lifting it to his lips and kissing 
 it gallantly, he said carelessly, and as if nothing had 
 happened, " You will pardon me for pausing occasionally 
 as I did. The room is so warm and the ceremony is so 
 long, that I really began to be exhausted." 
 
 He was going on to say something about the climate 
 of " Californy," but the men came forward, crowded 
 around in this day of all days, and quite squeezed the 
 little man away from the "Widow," as she was still 
 called. 
 
 It was perfectly splendid ! How they did shout, and 
 laugh, and cheer, and how careful they were to shake 
 all the round oaths out of their speech before addressing 
 her. And how they did crowd around, as Sandy led 
 her away, every man of them, even to Washee-Washee, 
 and wished her " God speed," and a long and a pleasant 
 life in their midst, down there in the gorge, in the heart 
 of the great Sierras, 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 WHAT S THE MATTER NOW f 
 
 UST exactly how many days or weeks or 
 even months had blown over the Porks 
 through the long bleak winter since the 
 wedding no man knew. These men in the 
 mountains, snowed up for half a-year, where 
 there is no business, where there is no law, no church, 
 nothing but half- wild men hard at work these men, I 
 say, sometimes forget the day, the week, even the month. 
 Yet the Day of the week is always kept.; Six days they 
 labour in the mine ; the seventh, they do not rest, but 
 they at least do not mine. 
 
 Certainly there was snow on the day of the wedding, 
 and certain it was that there was a little fall of snow on 
 the high hill-sides, and in the black fir tops, as if the 
 great pines were tipped in white, as Sandy hurried 
 from his cabin down to the Porks in search of his now 
 divorced and forgotten Limber Tim. He was pale and ex- 
 cited. He pushed his great black, broad hat down over 
 his eyes as he hurried on down the trail, slipping and 
 sliding over the worn walk, over the new sprinkle of 
 snow, in his great big gum boots. Then he pushed his 
 hat back so as to get the cool wind of March in his face 
 and even the blustering snow in his beard. 
 
What's the matter now ? 67 
 
 He found Limber at last standing on one leg by the 
 great log fire in the Howling Wilderness, lonesome as a 
 crow in March. He pnlled his hat again down over 
 his eyes as he approached his old partner, and stooped 
 his shoulders and looked out from under its rim, as if 
 he was half afraid or else was half ashamed. 
 
 In all western towns, in all mines, in all cities, great 
 or small for that matter, there is always one common 
 centre. Here it was the Howling' Wilderness. If a 
 man felt sad, what better place than the Howling Wil- 
 derness Saloon to go to for distraction ? If a man felt 
 glad, where else could he go to share his mirth ? 
 
 Here was happiness or unhappiness. All great ex- 
 tremes run together. Tears flow *as freely for joy as 
 for grief. Between intense ' delight or deepest sorrow 
 the wall is so thin you can whisper through it and be 
 heard. 
 
 Here, at fifty cents a glass, you had dealt out to you 
 over a great plank laid up upon a barricade of sand- 
 bags, that were laid there to intercept any stray bullet 
 that might be making its way towards the crimson- 
 headed vendor of poisons, almost any drink that you 
 might name. And it is safe to say that all of the fol- 
 lowing popular drinks, that is Old Tiger, Bad Eye, Forty 
 Rod, Rat Pizen, Rot Gut, Hell's Delight, and Howling 
 Modoc, were all made from the same decoction of bad 
 rum, worse tobacco, and first-class cayenne pepper. The 
 difference in proportion of ingredients made the differ- 
 ence in the infernal drinks. 
 
 If one of those splendid, misled fellows, who really 
 knew no better, felt very sad, he took one of these 
 drinks; if he felt very glad he took two. 
 
 Sandy wheeled on his heel the moment he found his 
 old friend, and went out without saying a word. He stood 
 there in the snow, the wind twisting about his beard, 
 blowing his old hat rim up and down, and he seemed get- 
 ting hitched. At length he lifted the latch again hastily, 
 
68 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 hesitated, looked back, around, up towards his cabin on 
 the hill, and then suddenly pushing his hat back again, 
 as if he wanted room to breathe, he tumbled into the 
 saloon, went right up before Limber Tim, and bringing 
 his two hands down on his two shoulders, said tremul- 
 ously, " Limber Tim." 
 
 Sandy had laid hold of him as if he had determined to 
 never let him go again, and the man fairly winced under 
 his great vice-like grasp. He looked at the log hut on 
 the bank, looked left and right, but did not look Sandy 
 in the face. If he had, he would for the first time in all 
 his timid experience have been able to have had it all 
 his own way. 
 
 "O Limber!" 
 
 Sandy had fished up one of his hands high enough to 
 pull his hat down over his eyes, and now nothing was 
 to be seen but a hat rim and the fringe of a grizzly 
 beard. 
 
 Limber Tim looked up. He never before had heard 
 his old partner's voice troubled, and he was very sorry, 
 and began to look, or to try to look, Sandy in the face. 
 Up went a big hand from a shoulder, back went the old 
 hat, and then Limber Tim looked to the left at a lot of 
 picks and pans, and torn irons, and crevicing spoons, 
 that lay up against the wall, but did not speak. 
 
 " Limber Tim ! I tell you. My my " 
 
 Sandy choked. He never had yet been able to call 
 her his wife. He had tried to do so over and over again. 
 His dear little wife had taught him many things had 
 made him, in fact, another man, but she never could 
 get him to speak of her to the other miners but as " the 
 Widow." He had gone out by himself and practised it 
 in the dark to himself; he was certain he could say it 
 in the crowd, but somehow just at the moment he tried 
 to say it he was certain someone was thinking about it 
 just as he was, was watching him, and so it always and 
 for ever stuck in his throat. How he loved her ! How 
 
What's the matter now ? 69 
 
 tender he was to her all the time ! How he did little 
 else but think of her and her happiness day and night ; 
 but he had been a savage so long, had been with the 
 "boys " so much, that he could not find it in his power 
 to say that one dear word. It was like a new convert 
 trying to pray in public in one of the great camp meetings 
 of the West ; or to stand up before all his neighbours 
 and confess his sins. 
 
 He stood still only a second ; in fact, all this took but 
 a moment, for Sandy was in a terrible hurry. Limber 
 Tim had never seen him in such a hurry before. Up 
 shot the hand, down slid the hat, and Sandy was quite 
 hidden away again. 
 
 It was a moment of terrible embarrassment. When 
 an Englishman is embarrassed he takes snuff; when a 
 Yankee is embarrassed he whips out a jack-knife and falls' 
 to whittling anything that he can find, not excepting the 
 ends of his fingers ; but a true Californian of the Sierras 
 jerks his head at the boys, heads straight up to the bar, 
 knocks his knuckles on the board, winks at the bar- 
 keeper, pecks his nose at his favourite bottle, fills to the 
 brim, nods his head down the line to the left, then to the 
 right, hoists his Poison, throws back his head, and then 
 falls back wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, 
 quite recovered from his confusion. 
 
 Sandy backed his partner into a corner rapidly, and 
 then, laying his hands again on his shoulders, said: 
 " Limber Tim ! she's sick ! " 
 
 He had to throw his head forward to say it. It came 
 out as if jerked from his throat by a thousand fish-hooks. 
 
 He raised his two great hands, and reaching out his face 
 again clutched the two shoulders, and said, "She's 
 d dsick!" 
 
 Up went the hands, back went the hat, the door was 
 jerked open, a man whirled out of the door as if he had 
 been a whirlwind, up the trail, up over the stones and 
 snow and logs, and sharply climbed to his cabin on the 
 
70 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 hill, while the boys followed him with their eyes ; and 
 then stood looking at each other in wonder as he dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 Through the cabin burst the man, and back to the 
 little bedroom, as if he had been wild as the north wind 
 that whistled and whirled about without. 
 
 The little lady lay there, quiet now, but her face was 
 white as ashes. The blood had gone out from her face 
 like a falling tide ; the pain was over, but only, like a 
 tide, to return. 
 
 How white she was, and how beautiful she was ! How 
 helpless she was down there in the deep, hidden in a 
 crack of the world, away from all old friends, away from 
 all the kindred, all her sex and kind. She was very 
 ill, so alone was she ; not a doctor this side of that great 
 , impassable belt of snow that curved away like a deep 
 white wave around and above the heads of the three 
 little rivers. Sandy saw all this, felt all this. It cut 
 him to the core, and he shook like a leaf. 
 
 What a pretty nest of a bed-room ! How fragrant it 
 was from the fir-boughs that were gathered underfoot. 
 There were little curtains about this bed, there deep in 
 the Sierras. Coarse they were, it is true, very coarse, 
 but white as the snow that whirled about without the 
 cabin. Still, you might have seen here and there that 
 there were cloudy spots that had refused all the time to 
 be quite washed out, rub and soak and soap and boil 
 them as the Widow and Washee-Washee would. 
 
 If you had lain in that bed through a spell of sickness, 
 and looked and looked at the curtains and all things as 
 sick people will all the time look and look when they 
 lie there and can do nothing else, you would at last have 
 noticed that these coarse but snowy curtains had been 
 made of as many pieces as Jacob's coat. And lying there 
 and looking and looking, you would have at last in the 
 course of time read there in one of the many cloudy spots, 
 these words stamped in bended rows of fantastic letters : 
 
WJiat's the matter now? 71 
 
 SELF-RISING FLOUR. 
 
 WARRANTED SUPERFINE. 
 
 50 LBS. 
 
 There was a little cracked piece of lookiifg-glass on 
 the wall, no bigger than your palm. It was fastened on 
 the wall, over, perhaps, the only illustrated paper that 
 had ever found its way to the Forks. There were little 
 rosettes around this little glass that had been made from 
 leaves of every colour by the cunning hand of the Widow. 
 There were great maple-leaves, and leaves of many trees 
 in all the hues of summer, hung up here and there, sewn 
 together, and made to make the little bedroom beautiful. 
 And what a treasure the little glass was ! It seemed to 
 be the great little centre of the house. All things rallied, 
 or seemed to be trying to rally, around it. To be sure, 
 the Widow was not at all plain. 
 
 Plain ! to Sandy she was the centre of the world. 
 The rising and the setting of the sun. 
 
 The carpet had been finished by the same cunning 
 hand. This had been made of gunny bags sewn to- 
 gether with twine ; and under this carpet there was a 
 thick coat of fine fir boughs that left the room all the 
 time sweet and warm, and fragrant as a forest in the 
 spring. There were little three-legged benches waiting 
 about in the corners ; but by the bedside sat the great 
 work of art in the camp, a rocking-chair made of elk 
 horns. This was the gift of a rejected but generous 
 lover. 
 
 On the little wooden mantel-piece above the fire-place 
 there stood a row of nuggets. They lay there as if they 
 were a sort of winter fruit put by to ripen. They were 
 like oranges which you see lying about the peasants' 
 houses in Italy, and almost as large. These were the 
 gifts of the hardy miners of the Forks to their patron 
 saint ; gifts given at such times and in such ways that 
 they could not be well refused. 
 
 Once there had been, late in the night, a heavy stone 
 
72 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 thrown against the door, while the two " turtle doves," 
 as the camp used to call its lovers, sat by the fire. 
 
 In less than a second Sandy's pistol stuck its nose out 
 like a little* bull-dog and began to look down the hill in 
 the darkness. 
 
 A man leaned over the fence and laughed in his face. 
 " Now don't do that, Sandy ! now don't." Sandy let 
 his pistol fall half ashamed ; for it was the voice of a 
 friend. 
 
 " G-ood bye, Sandy ! " the man called back up the trail 
 in the dark. "Goodbye. That's for the Widder. Made 
 my pill and off for Pike. Good bye ! " 
 
 When Washee-Washee went out next morning for 
 wood, there he found lying at the door the cause of the 
 trouble in the night. It was a great nugget of gold 
 that the rough Missourian had thrown to his patron saint 
 as he passed. 
 
 Once a miner sent them a great fine salmon. The 
 Widow on opening it found it half full of gold. She 
 took all this back to the man, whom she found seated at 
 the green table at the Howling Wilderness, behind a 
 silver faro box ; for to mining the man also attached the 
 profession of the gambler. She laid this heap of gold 
 down on the table before the man with the faro box and 
 cards. The miners gathered around. The man with 
 the silver box began to deal his cards. 
 
 " All on the single turn, Missus Sandy ? " 
 
 The Judge came forward, " Don't bet it all on the 
 first deal, do you? That's pretty steep, even for the 
 oldest of us!" 
 
 " Bet ! I don't bet at all. I bring Poker Jake his 
 money back. I found this all in the fish he sent us. 
 It is his. It is a trick, perhaps. Fish don't eat gold, 
 you know." 
 
 " yes they dus, Missus Sandy." 
 
 Poker Jake stopped with the card half turned in the 
 air. The Widow held up her pretty finger and her 
 
What's the matter now ? 73 
 
 pretty lips pouted as she made her little speech to the 
 gambler, and told him she could not keep the gold. 
 The miners gathered around in wonder and admiration. 
 
 Jake laid down his card. 
 
 " Well, can't a salmon eat gold if he likes ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " There, Missus Sandy, y'er wrong ! " argued the little 
 Judge, and then he began to tell her the story of Jonah 
 and the whale, and wound up with the declaration that 
 there was nothing at all unnatural in a fish eating gold 
 in " this glorious climate of Calif orny." 
 
 " Will you not take back your gold ?" 
 
 " Nary a red." 
 
 There was a pale thoughtful young man, half ill, too 
 feeble to work, to leave, to retreat from the mountains, 
 standing by the fire when the Widow had entered the 
 saloon. It was young Deboon. 
 
 She took up the bag of gold, turned instantly around, 
 saw the young man hiding back in the shade, leaning 
 over the bunk, caressing the dog; possibly he was 
 crying. Her face lighted with a light that was high 
 and beautiful and half divine. 
 
 She turned, held the gold out to Poker Jake. 
 
 "No!" 
 
 " And then is it mine ? all mine to do as I like with 
 it?" 
 
 " Yours, lady. Yours to take and go home and git 
 from out of the bush, out of this hole in the ground, 
 and live like a Christian as yer are, and not live here 
 like a wild beast in a caravan." 
 
 The man stood up as he spoke, and was proud of his 
 speech, and the men cheered and cheered and said : 
 
 "Bully for Poker Jake!" 
 
 Then the little Widow turned again, went back to the 
 boy leaning over the bull-dog, thrust it in his arms as 
 he rose to look at her, and turning to the men was 
 gone. 
 
74 Mrst Families in the Sierras. 
 
 They looked at each other; and then they almost 
 lifted the roof with their cheers. 
 
 Other, and equally ingenious ways, all quite as inno- 
 cent, had been used by the miners to force their gifts 
 upon the one sweet woman, the patron saint of the 
 camp, until she was almost as wealthy as the good old 
 saint who lies mouldering before the eyes of all who 
 care to pay a five-franc note, in the mighty cathedral of 
 Milan. 
 
 Nuggets, and bars, and scales, and specimens, and 
 dust lay there in profusion. And why did the little 
 woman remain in the wilderness ? Why did not this 
 little woman rise up some morning, smile a good bye to 
 those about her, leave the business to Washee-Washee, 
 take her great big bodyguard, mount a mule, turn his 
 head up the corkscrew trail toward the clouds, toward 
 the snow, and find a milder clime ? 
 
 Who could she have been, this half hermit, this little 
 missionary who had in one winter half civilized, almost 
 christianized, a thousand savage men without preaching 
 a single sermon ? 
 
 Possibly she knew how rare manhood is where men 
 are thickest, how scarce men are where they stand 
 heaped and huddled up together in millions, and was 
 content to remain with these rough fellows, doing good, 
 receiving their homage. 
 
 Possibly there was a point of honour in it all too. It 
 might have been she refused to go away, and leave 
 those behind her in the wilderness to whom she owed 
 all the camp had brought her, because they would have 
 missed her so sadly. 
 
 And yet after all had things gone on smoothly there 
 was no great reason for her to hurry away. But as it was, 
 it was certainly going to blow great guns, and she cer- 
 tainly knew it. 
 
 But here she was now ill, very ill. All this gold was 
 dross. It was nothing to her now. She could hardly 
 
What's the matter now ? 75 
 
 lift her hand to the row of golden oranges that lay there 
 before her on the little mantel. She looked at Sandy 
 as he entered and tried to smile. There were tears in 
 her eyes as she did this, and then she hid her face in 
 her hands. 
 
 He went and stood and looked in the fire, and tried 
 to think what he should do. Then he went and stood 
 by her bed, and waited there till she uncovered her face 
 and looked up. 
 
 She was very pale, and he tried but could not speak. 
 
 " Is it raining, Sandy dear ? " 
 
 She asked this because as she put her hand out some 
 drops fell down from his head upon her own. 
 
 " My pretty baby, my baby in the woods, what in the 
 world is the matter ?" 
 
 He leaned over her, and his voice trembled as he 
 spoke. Then he went down on his knees, and his beard 
 swept her face. 
 
 " Is it cold, Sandy dear?" Do you think that we, 
 that I, could cross the mountains to-day ? If we went 
 slow and careful, and climbed over the snow on our 
 hands and knees, don't you think it could be done, 
 Sandy?" 
 
 She kept on asking this question, and arguing it all 
 the time, because the man kept looking at her in a wild, 
 helpless way, and could not answer a word. 
 
 " If we went up the trail a little way at a time, and 
 then rested there under the trees, and waited for the 
 snow to melt, and then went on a little way each day, 
 and so on, as fast as it melted off, up the mountain, 
 don't you think it could be done, Sandy ?" 
 
 The man was dumb. He kneeled there, grinding his 
 great palms together, looking all the time, and looking 
 at nothing. 
 
 There was a long silence then, and still Sandy kneeled 
 by the bed. His eyes kept wandering about till they 
 lighted on a striped gown that hung hard by on the 
 
76 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 wall. He fell to counting these stripes. He counted 
 them up and down, and across, and then counted them 
 backward, and was quite certain he had got it all 
 wrong, and fell to counting it over again. 
 
 The little woman writhed with pain, and that brought 
 the dreamer to his senses again. It passed, -and she, 
 pale, fair, beautiful, with her hair about her like folds of 
 sable fur, she put out her round white arms to the great 
 half-grizzly, half-baby, by her side. She was still a 
 long time then ; then she called him pretty names, and 
 she cried as if her heart would break. 
 
 " Sandy, I told you it was not best, it was not right, 
 it would not do, that you would be sorry some day, and 
 that you would blame and upbraid me, and that the 
 men would laugh at you and at me. But you would 
 not be put off. Do you not remember how I shut my- 
 self up and kept away from you, and would not see you, 
 and how you kept watch, and sent round, and would see 
 me whether or no ? " 
 
 He now remembered. And what then ? Had he re- 
 pented ? On the contrary, he had never loved her half 
 so truly as now. His heart was too full to dare to 
 speak. 
 
 " Do you not remember that when I told you all this 
 would happen that you said it could not happen ? That 
 happen what would, no man should mock or laugh or 
 reprove, and live? Well now, Sandy dear, it will 
 happen. I have done you wrong. I now want to tell 
 you to take back your promise. That is best." 
 
 The man rose up. The place where he had hid his face 
 was wet as rain. 
 
 " Sandy, Sandy, can we cross the mountains now ? " 
 
 The little lady lay trembling in her bed with her 
 hands covering her face. 
 
 Then she put down her hands and looked up into the 
 face of her husband. 
 
 " Sandy, leave me !" 
 
What's the matter now? 77 
 
 She sprang up in bed as she said this, as if inspired 
 with a new thought. 
 
 " There, take that gold, this gold ; all of it ! " She 
 left her bed with a bound and heaped the gold together 
 and turned to Sandy. 
 
 "Take it, I tell you, and go. That is best; that is 
 right. I want you to go go now ! Go ! Will you go ? 
 Will you not go when I command you to go ? " 
 
 " Not when you're sick, my pretty; git well, and then I 
 will go; go, and stay till you tell me I may come back." 
 
 "Will you not go?" 
 
 " Not while you're sick, my pretty." 
 
 " Then I will go." 
 
 She caught a shawl from the wall. Her face was 
 aflame. She sprang to the door, through the door, and 
 out to the fence, in a moment. Sandy's arms were about 
 her now, and he led her back and laid her in her little 
 bed. 
 
 She lay there trembling again, and Sandy bent above 
 her. 
 
 " Sandy, when all the world turns against me, and 
 laughs at me, what will you do ?" 
 
 He did not understand ; he could not answer. 
 
 " When men laugh at me when I pass, what can you 
 say, and what will you do ?" 
 
 "What will I do?" 
 
 The man seemed to hear now, and to understand. He 
 sprang up, spun about, and tossed his head. 
 
 " What will I do ! Shoot 'em ! scalp every mother's 
 son of 'em!" And he brought his fist down on the 
 little mantelpiece till the bits of gold remaining and 
 the little trinkets leapt half way across the room. 
 
 The little woman lay a moment silent, and then she 
 threw back the clothes, and pushing Sandy back, as if 
 he had been a great child, sprang up again, and again 
 dashed through the door. 
 
 Limber Tim had been standing there all the time, 
 
78 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 half hidden behind the fence, against which he had 
 glued his back, waiting to be of some use if possible to 
 the guardian angel of the camp. There was also a row 
 of men reaching within hail all the way down to the 
 town, waiting to be of help, for Limber Tim had told 
 them the Widow was ill. 
 
 The man started from his fastening on the fence at 
 sight of this apparition, wild, half- clad, with her hair 
 all down about her loose, ungathered garments, and he 
 stood before her. 
 
 " I want to go home," the woman cried, wringing her 
 hands. " I want to go home. I will go home. There 
 is something wrong. You do not understand. Sandy 
 is an angel ; I am a devil. I want to go home." 
 
 The strong man's arms were about her again as she 
 stood there on the edge of the fence, and he bore her back, 
 half fainting and quite exhausted, into the house. , 
 
 He laid her down, and stood back as if half frightened 
 at what he had done. Never before had he put out a 
 finger, said a word, held a thought, contrary to her 
 slightest and most unreasonable whim. Then he came 
 back timidly, as if he was afraid ne would frighten her, 
 for she began to tremble again, and she was whiter than 
 before. She did not look up, she was looking straight 
 ahead, down toward her feet, but she .knew he was there 
 knew he would hear her, let her speak never so low. 
 
 "When the great trouble comes, Sandy, when the 
 trouble comes and covers both of us with shame, will 
 you remember that you would not be put off? When 
 the trouble comes, will you ever remember that you 
 would not let me go away? that you would not go away? 
 Will you remember, Sandy ?" 
 
 She was getting wild again, and sprang up in bed as 
 she said this last, and looked the man in his face so, so 
 earnest, so pleading, so pitiful, that Sandy put up his 
 two hands and swore a solemn oath to remember. 
 
 She sank back in bed, drew the clothes aboufc her, hid 
 

 WJiat's the matter now ? 79 
 
 her face from the light, and then Sandy drew back and 
 stood by the fire, and the awful thought came fully 
 and with all its force upon him that she was insane. 
 
 Ah! that was what it was. She feared she would 
 go mad. Mad ! mad ! He thought of all the mad people 
 he had ever seen or heard of ; thought how he had been 
 told that it runs in families ; how people go mad and 
 murder their friends, destroy themselves, go into the 
 woods and are eaten by wild beasts, lost in the snow, or 
 drowned in the waters hurrying by wood and mountain 
 wall, and then he feared that he should go mad himself. 
 
 "Poor little soul !" he kept saying over to himself. 
 "Poor, noble little soul! would not marry me because 
 she knew she would go mad." And she was dearer to 
 the man now than ever before. 
 
 " Sandy." 
 
 The sufferer barely breathed his name, but he leaned 
 above her while yet she spoke. 
 
 " Bring Bunker Hill." 
 
 "Bring what? who?" 
 
 " Go, bring Bunker Hill." 
 
 If his wife had said, "Bring the devil," the man could 
 not have been more surprised or displeased. 
 
 Now this Bunker Hill, or Bunkerhill, was a poor 
 woman of the town the best one there, it is true, but 
 bad enough, no doubt, at the best. She was called 
 Bunker Hill by the boys, and no one knew her by any 
 other name, because she was a sort of a hunchback. 
 
 " Did you say, my pretty, did you say " 
 
 "Sandy, bring Bunker Hill. And bring her soon. 
 Soon, Sandy, soon ; soon, for the love of God." 
 
 The woman was writhing with pain again as the man 
 shot through the door, and looked back over his shoulder 
 to be sure that she did not attempt to leave the house 
 or destroy herself the moment his back was turned. 
 
 Limber Tim was there waiting silently and patiently. 
 He scratched his head, and wondered, and raised his 
 
80 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 brim as he ran, and slid, and shuffled with all his speed 
 down the trail toward the town to bring the woman. 
 Men stood by in respectful silence as he passed. They 
 would have given worlds almost to know how the one 
 fair woman fared, but they did not ask a question, did 
 not stop the man a moment. A moment might be 
 precious. It might be worth a life. 
 
 There are some rules of etiquette, some principles of 
 eeling in the wild woods among the wild men there, 
 that might be transplanted with advantage to a better 
 society. There might have been a feeling of disappoint- 
 ment or displeasure on the part of the men standing 
 waiting, waiting for an opportunity to be of the least 
 possible service, as they saw Bunker Hill leave town to 
 return with Limber Tim, but it had no expression. 
 
 The man who sat behind the silver faro-box no doubt 
 felt this disappointment the keenest of any one. 
 
 When we feel displeased or disappointed at anything, 
 we are always saying that that is about the best that 
 could be done. " What else could she do ? The woman's 
 ill ; the Widder is sick. She sends for a woman, a bad 
 woman, p'raps, but the best we got. Well, a woman's 
 better as a man, any ways you puts it. What else could 
 she do ? A bad woman's better as a good man. What 
 else could she do ? I puts it to you, what else could 
 she do?" 
 
 The crowd at the Howling Wilderness was satisfied. 
 But the men stood there or sat in knots around the bar- 
 room in silence. The crimson-headed bar-keeper had 
 not seen such a dull day of it since they had the double 
 funeral. What could be the matter? Men made all 
 kinds of guesses, but somehow no one hinted that the 
 little woman was mad. 
 
 The Roaring Whirlpool, as the Howling Wilderness 
 was sometimes called, drew in but few victims all that 
 night. Men kept away, kept going out and looking tip 
 toward the little cabin on the hill. 
 
What's the matter now? 81 
 
 The man with the silver faro-box sat by the table 
 with the green cloth, as if in a brown study. The great 
 fire blazed up and snapped as if angry, for but few men 
 gathered about it all that evening. The little brown 
 mice up in the loft could be heard nibbling at the old 
 boots and bacon rinds, and .their little teeth ticked and 
 rattled together as if the upper half of the Howling 
 Wilderness had been the shop of a mender of watches. 
 Now and then the man behind the silver faro-box filliped 
 the pack of cards with. his fingers, turned up the heels 
 of a jack in the most unexpected sort of way, as if just 
 to keep his hand in, but the mice had it mostly their own 
 way all that night. 
 
 One by one the men who stood waiting dropped away 
 and out of line to get their dinners, but still enough 
 stood there the livelong night to pass a message from 
 mouth to mouth with the speed of a telegram into 
 town. 
 
 Then these men standing there, and those who went 
 away, as to that, fell to thinking of Bunker Hill. Some- 
 how, s*he had advanced wonderfully in the estimation of 
 all from the moment she had been sent for by the Widow. 
 It was a sort of special dignity that had been conferred. 
 This woman, Bunker Hill, had been knighted by their 
 queen. She had been picked out, and set apart and over 
 and above all the other fallen women of the Forks. 
 
 Even Limber Tim, who stood there on one leg, with 
 his back screwed tight up against the palings, began to 
 like her over much, and to wonder why she also would 
 not make some honest man an honest wife. In fact, 
 many men that night recalled many noble acts on the 
 part of this poor woman, and they almost began to feel 
 ashamed that they had sometimes laughed at her plain- 
 ness, and promised in their hearts to never do so again. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 CAPTAIN TOMMY. 
 
 HERE was a grey streak of dawn just 
 breaking through the black tree-tops that 
 tossed above the high, far, deep snow, on 
 the mountain that lifted to the east, as the 
 door opened, and Bunker Hill came forth 
 alone. There were ugly clouds rolling overhead, mixing, 
 marching, and counter-marching, as if preparing for a 
 great battle of the elements. On the west wall of the 
 mountain a wolf howled dolefully to his mate on the 
 opposite crest of the canon. The water tumbled and 
 thundered through the gorge below, and sent up echoes 
 and sounds that were sad and lonesome as the march to 
 the home of the dead. 
 
 She came out into the grey day, slowly and thought- 
 fully, her head was down, and when Limber Tim helped 
 her over the fence she was shy and modest, as if she 
 herself had been the Widow. 
 
 He tried to ask about the Widow, but that awful 
 respect for the other sex that seems born with the 
 American of the Far West kept him silent ; and as 
 Bunker Hill led on rapidly towards town and did not 
 say one word about the sufferer, he followed, as ignorant 
 as any man in camp. 
 
Captain Tommy. 83 
 
 On the way the woman slipped on the wet and icy 
 trail and fell, for she was in terrible haste and terribly 
 excited. Perhaps she cut her arm or hand on the sharp 
 stone as she fell, for as she hastily arose and again 
 hurried on, she kept rubbing and holding her right arm 
 with her left. 
 
 She led straight to the Howling Wilderness, lifted 
 the latch and entered. She looked all around, but did 
 not speak. She was in a great hurry, and was evidently 
 looking for some one she wished to find at once. No 
 man spoke to her now. The few found there at this 
 hour were the wildest and most reckless in the camp, 
 but they were respectful, as if in the presence of a lady 
 born and bred a lady. 
 
 There was something beautiful in this silence and 
 respect. Even the man with the silver faro-box for a 
 breastwork rose up and stood in her presence while she 
 remained. He did not do it on purpose. He would not 
 have done it the day before had she stood before him by 
 the hour. He did not even know when he arose, but 
 when she bowed just the least bit, and turned away and 
 went out again into the cold and did not drink did not 
 drink, mind you did not even look at the crimson- 
 headed man who had risen up in perfect confidence, he 
 found himself standing, and found his heart filling with 
 a kind of gallantry that he had not known before. He 
 had risen in her presence by instinct. 
 
 " Come, we must find Captain Tommy." The woman 
 said this to Limber Tim as they left the saloon, and 
 then led swiftly on to Captain Tommy's cabin. 
 
 This Captain Tommy was a character and a power 
 too, and, wretch as she was, was a woman to be leaned 
 upon, and trusted too to the last. 
 
 True, she is very plain. But you may adopt it as one 
 of your rules of life, and act upon it with absolute cer- 
 tainty, that, if you have to trust any woman, trust _a. 
 plain one, rather than a handsome one ; for the plain 
 
84 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 ones were not made to sell, else they too had been made 
 handsome. 
 
 " Not to be too particular about a delicate subject," 
 said old Baldy, who had been fortunate enough to know 
 her, " her memory possibly may reach back to the Black 
 Hawk War." 
 
 But the crowning feature of this woman was her 
 enormous head of hair. It was black as night and 
 bushy as a Kanaka's ; all about her head in a heap, that 
 seemed to be constantly in motion. But at the back 
 and down between her shoulders it had gathered into a 
 queue, and hung down there like a bell-rope with a black 
 tassel at the end. 
 
 She generally kept her mouth closed. But men ob- 
 served that, when she wanted to say anything, she 
 pulled up her back, took hold of the bell-rope, and 
 pulled and pulled till her mouth came open ; then she 
 would throw out her sunken breast, and wind and wind 
 with her two hands, and corkscrew at her back hair, 
 and pull and twist and wind, until she had wound her- 
 self up so tight that it was impossible to close either her 
 mouth or her eyes. After that she could talk faster 
 than any man in the world, and faster than a great 
 many women, until she ran down, and the bell-rope 
 hung loose between her shoulders. Then her mouth 
 would close suddenly, and she would have to stop that 
 instant, even if in the midst of a sentence, until she 
 could seize the bell-rope, pull herself open and wind 
 herself up again. 
 
 The Captain had admirers in the Forks ; many and 
 many a worshipper, and not altogether without reason. 
 There was about her a certain sweetness of nature that 
 contrasted well with the rough life in which she was 
 thrown ; and the strong men noted this, and liked the 
 sense of her presence. 
 
 Besides that, this woman had a certain sincerity about 
 her, a virtue that is as rare as it is dear to man. I 
 
Captain Tommy. 85 
 
 think, if we look at ourselves clearly, we will dis- 
 cover that this one quality wins upon us more than any 
 other that is more than beauty, more than gold sin- 
 cerity, earnestness. For my part, I only make that one 
 demand on any man or any woman. You cannot be 
 graceful at will, or wealthy, or beautiful, or always good- 
 natured ; but you can be in earnest. You can refuse to 
 lie, either in word or in deed. I demand that you shall 
 be in earnest before you shall approach me. Be in 
 earnest even in your villainy. 
 
 The woman knocked on the door with her knuckles, 
 and called through the hole of the latch-string to the 
 woman within ; for Captain Tommy was also a woman, 
 and a woman of the order of a less order even than 
 this good Samaritan, who stood calling through the 
 key-hole and shivering with the cold. 
 
 There was an answer, and then the two stood there in 
 the bleak, still, cold, grey morning together. There was 
 a noise of somebody dressing in the dark very fast, a 
 hard oath or two, the scratching of a match, the lifting 
 of a latch in the rear of the cabin, the sound of a man's 
 boots scratching over the stones of a back trail that led to 
 the Howling Wilderness, and then the door opened, and 
 Bunker Hill led in instantly, went right up to Captain 
 Tommy, took her hand in her own, and whispered in 
 her ear. 
 
 The Captain caught her breath, and then with both 
 hands up, as if to defend herself, staggered close back 
 against the wall. Then, as if suddenly recovering her- 
 self, and coming upon a new thought, she relaxed her 
 lifted arms, let them fall, and rounding her shoulders, 
 walked up to the smouldering fire, turned her back, put 
 her hands behind her, looked at Bunker Hill sidewise, 
 and said 
 
 "Yer be darned!" 
 
 " It's so, Tommy, sure as gospel, and we want you. 
 She wants you. She sent for you sent me, and you 
 
86 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 will come, for you are needed. I can't go it all night. 
 Some people must be there, and that some people must 
 be women." 
 
 " No, you don't play me ! Go 'long with yer larks ! 
 Git ! " The Captain was getting out of temper. What 
 was to be done ? Bunker Hill went close up to her, 
 and, leaning up, whispered sharply in her ear. 
 
 The Captain only said, " Yer be blowed ! " and turned 
 and kicked the fire, till it blazed up and filled the room 
 with a rosy light, such only as smouldering pine logs 
 can throw out when roused up into a flame ; and then 
 she turned round and looked at Bunker Hill as if she 
 had firmly made up her mind not to be hoaxed. She 
 looked at the good-souled hunchback before her as if she 
 would look her through ; then suddenly her eyes rested 
 on one of her white cuffs. " What the devil's that on 
 yer sleeve ? Been in a row again, eh ?" 
 
 " Come, come, there's no time to lose. It's awful ! " 
 
 Bunker Hill laid hold of Captain Tommy's arm, and 
 attempted to drag her to the door. She was getting 
 desperate. 
 
 Tommy pulled back, and still kept looking at the 
 excited woman's white sleeve or cuff. 
 
 "What the devil's that on your sleeve? It looks 
 like blood." 
 
 Bunker Hill lifted her arm, looked now herself, pulled 
 back her sleeve, and held it to the light. 
 
 " Blood it is ! Will you believe me now ?" 
 
 The stubborn woman, who had been standing on the 
 defensive with her back to the fire, darted forward now 
 all excitement, all sympathy. She snatched her outer 
 garments from the foot of the bed, where they had 
 lain all this interview, and threw them on her back. 
 She did not stop to fasten them. She caught a blanket 
 from the bed, threw it over her head, as she passed out 
 all breathless, and left the cabin-door wide open, with 
 the fitful pine fire making ghosts on the floor, and the 
 
Captain Tommy. 87 
 
 fitful March morning riding in on the wind and sowing 
 it with ashes. 
 
 Limber Tim all this time had held his back against 
 the wall as firmly as if it was about to fall on all their 
 heads, and their lives depended on his strength. His 
 mouth had been wide open with wonder. He had not 
 understood at all from the first, but now he was more 
 than bewildered he was terrified. 
 
 Blood ! blood ! He unscrewed himself from the wall, 
 went, winding his long limber legs up the trail, past 
 the Howling Wilderness, after the silent but excited 
 women ; and all the time this awful sentence of Bunker 
 Hill's was shooting through his brain " Blood ! blood 
 it is ! Will you believe me now ?" 
 
 He reached his post by the pine fence, and, being no 
 wiser than before, he again wound himself up against 
 the palings, and reached back his arms and wove them 
 through the pickets, and stood there on one leg looking 
 over his shoulder as the two women disappeared into 
 the Widow's cabin. 
 
 Dawn comes slowly down in these dark, deep, wooded 
 canons of the Sierras. Morning seems to be battling 
 with the night. Night is entrenched in the woods, and 
 retreats only by inches the Battle of the Wilderness. 
 
 In the steel-grey dawn, cold and sharp, Limber Tim 
 heard a cry that knocked him loose from the fence. 
 He picked himself together, and again twisted himself 
 into the pickets ; but all the time he kept seeing Bunker 
 Hill pushing back her sleeve, holding up her arm in the 
 ghostly light of the pine-log fire, and saying, " Blood it 
 is ! Will you believe me now ? " 
 
 " Blood," mused the man. " Somebody's hurt. Some- 
 body's hurt awful bad, too, or they wouldn't keep a 
 feller a-standin' agin a fence the whole blessed night." 
 
 The man's teeth began to chatter. The thought of 
 blood and the bleak cold morning kept them smiting 
 together as if he had had an ague. 
 
88 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 A man in great guin boots came screeching by the 
 cabin ; his nose was pointed straight for the Howling 
 Wilderness, but backing against Limber Tim as he 
 hung up against the fence, stopped, and asked bimidly 
 and very respectfully of the Widow. 
 
 Limber held his head thoughtfully to one side, as if 
 he was trying to balance the important facts in his 
 mind, and reveal only just so much of the condition of 
 the Widow, or Sandy, or Bunker Hill, or whoever it 
 was that was hurt, as was best, and no more. 
 
 A thought struck him. " It's Sandy. Sandy's cut 
 his foot, or p'raps it's Bunker Hill shot herself with 
 that darned pistol she allers packs in her breeches' 
 pocket." 
 
 " Well, an' 'ow's the Widder ? " The man was getting 
 impatient for his drink. 
 
 " It ain't the Widder at all. It's Sandy. Sandy's 
 cut his foot cut his- foot last night a cuttin' wood in 
 the dark. That's what's the matter." 
 
 Limber Tim pecked his head, pursed up his mouth, 
 and for the first time in his life, perhaps, felt that he 
 was really a man of some consequence. 
 
 " By the holy poker ! thought it was the Widder." 
 
 " Not much. It's Sandy. Cut his foot, I tell yer. 
 Blood clean up to his elbows. Blood all over the house. 
 Bunker Hill all over blood. Hell's a poppin', I tell yer." 
 And poor Limber Tim so excited himself by this recital 
 that he broke loose from the fence, and chattered his 
 teeth together like a chipmunk with a hazel-nut. 
 
 Then the man passed on down the claim, and Limber 
 Tim again grew on to the fence, and chattered his teeth 
 together, and waited developments, not at all certain 
 that he had not lied. 
 
 " 'Ow's the Widder, Limber ?" 
 
 Limber unloosed himself from the fence, and tried to 
 stand straight up and tell the truth and nothing but 
 the truth. 
 
Captain Tommy. 89 
 
 " Better, thank yer. That is, the blood is stopped, 
 or most of it, you know the most of it. Bunker Hill 
 is hurt some too, you know. Blood all over her arm. 
 Poor girl, poor girl ! but she didn't whimper. Not she. 
 Nary a sniff." 
 
 "Both of 'em hurt?" 
 
 "Yes, same bullet, you know same shot same 
 pistol same 
 
 The man had too much to tell already, and almost 
 ran in his haste to reach the Howling Wilderness and 
 tell what had happened. 
 
 This time, as Limber Tim screwed himself up against 
 the fence, he felt pretty certain that somewhere or 
 somehow during the morning he had lied like a trooper, 
 and was very miserable. . 
 
 " Hard on Sandy that," said the bar-keeper to the 
 second early-riser, who had just arrived, as he stood 
 behind his breastwork in his nightshirt, and handed 
 down to his customer his morning bottle, with his 
 hairy arms all naked, and his red uncombed hair reach- 
 ing up like the blaze from a pine-knot fire. 
 
 " Yes," answered the man, as he fired a volley down 
 his throat, and then fell back to the fire, wiping his big 
 bearded mouth with the back of his hand, " Yes, but 
 Limber Tim says she'll soon be up again; says the 
 blood's all stopped, and all that. You see, ther signs are 
 all in her favour. It's a good thing for a shot, to see it 
 bleed. Best thing for a bad shot is to see it bleed well. 
 That is, if yer can stop the blood in time. But now, 
 in this 'ere case, the blood's all stopped. Just come 
 down from there. Limber just told me blood's all 
 stopped." 
 
 There was a man standing back in the corner by the 
 fire, half in the dark, warming the lower end of his 
 back and listening with, both ears all this time. He 
 now came out of the dark, and began 
 
 " You darned infernal fool ! Sold clean out. It's 
 
90 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 not the Widder at all it's Sandy. Split his foot open 
 with an axe. Blood gushed out all over Bunker Hill. 
 Kivered Bunker Hill with blood clean up to the elbows." 
 
 " And what the devil was Bunker Hill a-doin' at 
 Sandy's ?" 
 
 The man from the dark saw that somebody had been 
 sold, and, fearing it might possibly be himself, simply 
 pecked at the other man, staggered up to the bar, pecked 
 at the head that blazed like a pine-knot fire, and then 
 the three drank in silence. There was a sort of truce, 
 a silent but well-understood agreement, that nothing 
 further should be said, but that, when the tale came 
 out, one should not tell on the other, and turn the 
 laugh of the camp upon him. 
 
 Early the men began to drop in to the Great Whirl- 
 pool, the one great centre of this snow-walled world, to 
 ask gently, and with tender concern in their faces, after 
 the fortunes of the Widow. 
 
 It was a great day for the cinnamon-haired little 
 man, and he made the most of it. Men fell into dis- 
 putes the moment they arrived, but, as no one knew 
 anything, they always settled it with a treat all round, 
 and then waited for results. 
 
 The bar-keeper was appealed to, as bar-keepers, like 
 barbers, are supposed to know all the news. But this 
 man, like most bar-keepers in the wilderness, was a 
 cautious man, and said he knew all about it, but could 
 not take sides or decide between his friends. Time 
 would tell who was right and who was wrong. 
 
 At last the Judge rolled in like a little sea on the 
 shore. He had come straight down from the Widow's ; 
 had gone up to get the truth of the matter, and had un- 
 screwed Limber Tim from the fence, and made him tell 
 all he knew of the unhappy lady, and how it happened. 
 
 Then the boys backed the little Judge up against the 
 bar, and stood him there, and read him from top to 
 bottom, as if he had been a bulletin board. 
 
Captain Tommy, 91 
 
 " Split his foot clean open, you see ! Did it while 
 a choppin' wood in the dark." 
 
 " Speck he was a lookin' at the Widder when it hap- 
 pened," half laughed a big man with a big mouth, and 
 a voice like a Numidian lion. 
 
 "The clumsy cuss!" 
 
 That is what Oregon Jake said after catching his 
 breath over his tumbler of Old Tom. And that is all 
 the sympathy that Sandy got after they found out, as 
 they thought, that he had only split open his foot with 
 an axe. 
 
 " The clumsy cuss ! " 
 
'CHAPTER XL 
 
 HOW DID IT HAPPEN? 
 
 HE sun at last shot sharply through the far 
 fir tops tossing over the savage and sub- 
 lime mountain crest away to the east, with 
 its battlement of snow, and Limber Tim 
 was glad at the sight of it, for he was very 
 cold and stiff, and hungry and thirsty, and tired of his 
 post of honour, and disgusted with himself for the mise- 
 rable mistakes he had made that morning. 
 
 He had been standing there like a forlorn and lone- 
 some cock all the morning on one foot, waiting for the 
 dawn, and now he fairly wanted to crow at the sight 
 of it. 
 
 Men came and went now, and every man asked after 
 poor Sandy. 
 
 Limber Tim now told the same story right straight 
 through, all about how it happened, how Bunker Hill 
 was " kivered " with blood, and all about it, even to the 
 most minute detail ; for certainly, thought he to him- 
 self, it is Sandy or Sandy would have come out long 
 ago. He even believed it so firmly, that he began to be 
 sorry for Sandy, and to wonder how long it would be 
 till Sandy would be out and about again on crutches. 
 Then he said to himself, it would be at least a month j 
 
How did it happen ? 93 
 
 and then when the next man came by and enquired 
 after Sandy, he told him that in a month Sandy would 
 be about on crutches. At this piece of information 
 Limber Tim felt a great deal better. He said to himself 
 he was very glad it was no worse, and then he screwed 
 his back tighter up to the fence than before, and stood 
 there trying to warm in the cold sunlight of a moist 
 morning in the Sierras. It was like standing on the 
 Apennines, and turning your back and parting your 
 coat tails, and trying to warm by the fires of Vesuvius. 
 
 Again Limber Tim tried to set his wits to work as he 
 began to thaw out in the sun, and he felt certain that 
 he had, when cold, and weak, and sleepy, and anxious 
 about his partner, with only his imagination well awake, 
 told some very long stories. The only thing upper- 
 most in 'his mind, and that seemed at all tangible, was 
 the image of Bunker Hill lifting up her arm with stains 
 on her sleeve, and crying out, " Blood !" 
 
 Then he sifted it all over again, and began to con- 
 clude, even after he had got pretty well thawed out, that 
 he was not so far away after all, for if Sandy had not 
 split his foot open he had, anyhow, split his head, or 
 else he would have come out of the house, and long ago. 
 
 In the midst of meditations like these the door 
 opened, and Sandy shuffled through it, shot over the 
 fence, slapped his two great hands on the two shoulders 
 as before, and before Limber Tim could unscrew himself 
 from the fence, cried out 
 
 "Whisky, Limber! whisky, quick! The gals is 
 almost tuckered ! Go ! Split ! " 
 
 He spun him around and sent him reeling down the 
 trail, tore over the fence, and banged the door behind 
 him. 
 
 Limber Tim scratched his ear as he stumbled over the 
 rocks in the trail, and wound his stiffened legs about 
 the boulders and over the logs on his way to the Howl- 
 ing Wilderness, and was sorely perplexed. 
 
94 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 " Wai, it ain't Sandy, any way. Ef his big hands 
 have lost any of their grip I don't see it, anyhow." He 
 shrugged his shoulders as he said this to himself, for 
 they still ached from the vice-like grip of the giant. 
 
 Still Limber Tim was angry, notwithstanding the dis- 
 covery that his old partner was sound and well, and he 
 lifted the latch with but one resolution, and that was to 
 remain perfectly silent and let his lies take care of 
 themselves. 
 
 Men crowded around him as he entered and gave his 
 orders. But this bulletin-board was a blank. He had 
 set his lips together and they kept their place. For the 
 first time in his troubled and shaky existence he began 
 to know and to feel the power and the dignity of silence. 
 He knew that every man there thought that he, who 
 stood next to the throne, knew all ; and felt dignified by 
 this, and dared even to look a little severe on those who 
 were about to ask him questions. 
 
 He had crammed a bottle of so-called " Bourbon " in 
 his left boot, and was just pushing into the right a 
 " phial of wrath," when some one in the cabin sighed, 
 "Poor Sandy!" 
 
 Still Limber Tim went on pushing the phial of wrath 
 into his gum boot as well as he could with his stiffened 
 fingers. 
 
 Then a man came up sharply out of the crowd, and 
 throwing a big heavy bag of gold dust, as fat as a pet 
 squirrel, down on the counter, proposed to raise a 
 "puss" for Sandy. 
 
 This was too much. Limber Tim raised his head, and 
 slipping as fast as he could through the crowd for the 
 door, said, back over his shoulder 
 
 " It ain't Sandy at all. It's Bunker Hill. It's the 
 gals. The gals is almost tuckered." 
 
 There was the confusion of Babel in the Howling 
 Wilderness. The strange and contradictory accounts 
 that had come down from the Widow's their shrine, the 
 
How did it happen ? 95 
 
 little log house that to them was as a temple, a city set 
 upon a hill were anything but satisfactory. The men 
 began to get nervous, and then they began to drink, and 
 then they began to dispute again, and then they began 
 to bet high and recklessly who it was that had cut his 
 foot. 
 
 " Got it all right now," said poor Limber Tim to him- 
 self as he made his way up the trail as fast as possible, 
 with the two bottles in the legs of his great gum boots 
 for safe carriage. " Got it all right now ! That's it. 
 Bunker Hill cut her foot or shot her hand with that 
 darned deringer, or something of the kind. That's it, 
 that's where the blood came from, that's why she's 
 tuckered that's what's the matter." And so saying and 
 musing to himself, he reached his post, uncorked the 
 phial of wrath, as it was called, looked in at the con- 
 tents, turned it up towards the sun as if it had been a 
 sort of telescope, and smacking his lips felt slightly con- 
 firmed in his opinion. He also resolved to ask Sandy 
 like a man, what the devil was up the moment he 
 appeared. 
 
 Again the door flew open, Sandy flew out, rushed 
 over the fence, took the Bourbon from the trembling 
 hand of Limber Tim, and before he could get his wits 
 together had disappeared and banged the door behind 
 him. 
 
 Limber Tim did not like this silent-dignity business 
 a bit. " Lookee here ! " he said, as he again turned the 
 telescope up to the sun, and then looked at the door, 
 " I'll see what's what, I reckon." 
 
 He went up to the fence, leaned over, but his heart 
 failed him. 
 
 Then he resorted to the phial of wrath, again looked 
 at the sun, and as he replaced it in his boot felt bold as 
 a lion. The man was drunk. He climbed the fence, 
 staggered up to the door, lifted the latch and pushed 
 it open. 
 
96 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 Bunker Hill came softly out of the bed-room, pushed 
 the man back gently as if he had been a child, shut the 
 door slowly, and the man went back to his post no wiser 
 than before. 
 
 Men have curiosity as well as women. Weak women 
 over weaker tea, discussing strong scandal in some little 
 would-be-fashionable shoddy saloon in Paris, are not 
 more curious than were these half- wild men here in the 
 woods. The difference however is, this was an honest 
 sympathetic interest. It was all these men had outside 
 of hard work to interest them. They wanted to know 
 what was the matter in their little temple on the hill. 
 The camp was getting wild. 
 
 Limber Tim tried to screw himself up against the 
 fence for some time, and failing in this, turned his atten- 
 tion again to the phial of wrath. He was leaning over, 
 trying to get it out of his boot leg, when the door 
 opened and Bunker Hill stepped out carefully, but sup- 
 ple and straight as he had ever seen. 
 
 Limber Tim was quite overcome. He looked up the 
 canon and then down the canon. 
 
 " They'll be a comet next." He shook his head hope- 
 lessly at this remark of his, and again bent down and 
 wrestled with the boot leg and bottle. 
 
 " Bully for Bunker Hill. Guess she's not hurt much 
 after all." 
 
 The men went out of the Howling Wilderness as the 
 man who shot this injunction or observation in at the 
 door went in, and to their amazement saw the woman 
 alluded to walk rapidly on past the saloon. She did 
 not look up, she did not turn right or left or stop at the 
 saloon or speak to any one : she went straight to her 
 own cabin. Then the men knew for a certainty that it 
 was the little Widow who was ill, and they knew that 
 it was this woman who was nursing her, and they 
 almost worshipped the ground that the good Samaritan 
 walked upon. 
 
How did it happen ? 97 
 
 Soon Bunker Hill came out again, and again took the 
 trail for the Widow's cabin, and walking all the time 
 rapidly as before. The men as she passed took off their 
 hats and stood there in silence. 
 
 There was a smile of satisfaction on her plain face as 
 she climbed the hill. She went up that hill as if she 
 had been borne on wings. Her heart had never been 
 so light before. For the first time since she had been in 
 camp, she had noticed that she was treated with respect. 
 It was a rare sensation, new and most delightful. The 
 hnmp on her back was barely noticed as she passed 
 Limber Tim trying to lean up against the fence, and 
 entered with a noiseless step, and almost tip-toe, the 
 home of the sufferer. 
 
 The men respected this woman now more than ever 
 before. They also respected her silence. At another 
 time they would have called out to her ; sent banter 
 after her in rough unhewn speech, and got in return as 
 good, or better, than they sent. But now no man spoke 
 to her. She had been dignified, sanctified, by her 
 mission of mercy, whatever it meant or whatever was the 
 matter, and she was to them a better woman. Men who 
 met her on her return gave her all the trail, and held 
 their hats as she passed. One old man gave her his 
 hand as she crossed a little snow stream in the trail, and 
 helped her over it as if she had been his own child. 
 Yet this old man had despised her and all her kind the 
 day before. 
 
 She went and came many times that day, and always 
 with the same respect, the same silent regard from the 
 great Missourians whom the day found about the Forks. 
 
 Then Captairi Tommy came forth in the evening, and 
 also went on straight to her cabin, and her face was full 
 of concern. The Captain had not been a person of any 
 dignity at all the day before, but now not a man had 
 the audacity to address her as she passed on with her 
 eyes fixed on the trail before her. 
 
 H 
 
98 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 When she returned, the man at his post had fallen. 
 Poor Limber Tim ! He would not leave his station, 
 and Sandy had something else to think of now ; and so 
 he fell on the field. 
 
 It was not that he had drunk so much, but that he 
 had eaten so little. His last recollections of that day 
 were a long and protracted and fruitless wrestle with 
 the phial of wrath in his boot-leg, and an ineffectual 
 attempt to screw the picket fence on to his back. 
 
 It was no new thing to find a man spilt out in the 
 trail in these days, and his fall excited no remark. 
 
 They would carry men in out of the night and away 
 from the wolves, or else would sit down and camp by 
 them till they were able to care for themselves. 
 
 A man took a leg under each arm, another man took 
 hold of his shoulders, and Limber Tim, now the limpest 
 thing dead or alive, was borne to his cabin. 
 
 One two three days. The camp, that at first was 
 excited almost beyond bounds, had gone back to its 
 work, and only now and then sent up a man from the 
 mines below, or sent down a man from the mines above, 
 to inquire if there was yet any news from the Widow. 
 But not a word was to be heard. 
 
 All these days the two women went and came right 
 through the thick of the men, but no man there was 
 found rude enough to ask a question. 
 
 Never had the camp been so sober. Never had the 
 Forks been so thoughtful. The cinnamon-headed bar- 
 keeper leaned over his bar and said confidentially to 
 the man at the table behind the silver faro-box, who 
 had just awakened from a long nap, 
 
 " Ef this 'ere thing keps up, I busts." Then the red- 
 haired man drew a cork and went on a protracted spree 
 all by himself. 
 
 " Send for a gospel sharp all to once, Jake. Let's go 
 the whole hog. The Forks only wants to git religion 
 now, and die." 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A FLAG OF TEUCE. 
 
 OW beautiful was all this profound vene- 
 ration for woman in this wild Eden ! How 
 high and holy the influence of this one 
 woman over these half- grizzlies, these hairy- 
 faced men who had drunk water from the 
 same spring with the wild beasts of the Sierras. Now 
 they would not drink, would hardly shout or speak 
 sharp, while she lay ill. Whatever was the matter, or 
 the misfortune, they had too much respect for her, for 
 themselves, to carouse till she should again show her 
 face, or at least while her life was uncertain. 
 
 The fourth day came down into the canon, and sat down 
 there as a sort of pioneer summer. Birds flew over the 
 camp from one mountain side to the other, and sang as 
 they flew. Men whistled old tunes in a dreamy sort of 
 a way as they came up from their work that day, 
 and recalled other days, and were boys once more in 
 imagination, away in the world that lay beyond the 
 "Rocky Mountains. 
 
 " There is something in this glorious climate of Cali- 
 forny, say what you will," mused the Judge, as he lit 
 his pipe and sat down on a stump in the street. 
 
 Limber Tim and the cinnamon-haired man had settled 
 
100 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 down into that collapse which always follows a pro- 
 tracted spree or a heavy carouse, and they too sat on 
 their respective stumps out in the open air, while the 
 saloon was left all to the little brown mice upstairs. 
 
 Men were lounging all up and down the street on old 
 knotty logs that no axe could reduce to firewood, or 
 leaning against the cabins on the warm sides that were 
 still warm with the sunshine gone away, or loafing up 
 and down with their pipes in their mouths, and their 
 ragged coats thrown over one shoulder, like the bravos 
 of Italy. Certainly there was something in the glorious 
 climate of California. 
 
 There had been no news from the Widow all this 
 time. 
 
 A keen-eyed man just now lifted his eyes in the 
 direction of the cabin. In fact, it was a custom an 
 instinct, to lift the face in that direction many times a 
 day. If any of these men ever prayed in that camp, 
 and the truth could be told, you would find that man, 
 or men, first turned the face and kneeled looking in 
 that direction. Her house was a sort of second Mecca. 
 
 The camp, however, after being a long time patient 
 and silent, had got a little cross. Yet it had not lost a 
 bit of its blunt and honest manhood. It had simply 
 made up its mind that the Widow and Sandy were both 
 of age, and able to take care of themselves. If they 
 were willing to get the toothache, or something of the 
 kind, and then retreat into their cabin, and pull the latch- 
 string inside after them, they could do so, and the 
 camp would not interfere. 
 
 The man who had been looking up the hill now 
 turned to his partner, drew his pipe from his mouth, 
 wrinkled up his brows, and then slowly reached out 
 his arm and with his pipe-stem pointed inquiringly up 
 the hill. 
 
 A man and a woman were coming slowly and cau- 
 tiously down the way from the Widow's cabin. They 
 
A Flag of Truce. 101 
 
 were coming straight for the great centre of the Forks, 
 
 the Howling Wilderness. 
 
 The woman had something in her arms. She walked 
 
 as carefully as if she had been bearing a waiter of wine. 
 
 Could this be the Widow ? It could hardly be Bunker 
 
 Hill, thought the Forks, as it rose up from its seat on 
 
 the stumps, and lifted its face up the trail, for she is 
 
 almost as tall and comely and steps as nimbly as any 
 
 woman in camp. 
 
 Could this be Sandy ? He looked larger than ever 
 
 before a sort of Gog or Magog. 
 
 The man stuck his pipe between his teeth again 
 
 and puffed furiously for a minute, and then sat down 
 
 over the log again, let his feet dangle in the air, 
 
 and, leaning forward, rocked to and fro as if nursing 
 
 his stomach, and seemed wrapped in thought. 
 " Sandy, by the great Caesar ! " 
 
 " Hither of Moses ! and it's Miss Bunker Hill too ! " 
 " Bunker Hill, by the holy poker ! " 
 " And what's that she got a carryin' ? " 
 " Be the Moses, it's a plate of holy wafers ! " 
 "It's a table-cloth a hangin' out for dinner ! " 
 " It's a flag of truce ! " cried the Judge, standing on 
 
 tiptoe on his stump and straightening his fat little body 
 
 up towards the Sierras. 
 
 " And hasn't Sandy grow'd since we seed 'im, eh ! " 
 " And don't he step high ! Jerusalem, don't he step 
 
 high!" 
 
 " And where's Captain Tommy, and where's the 
 
 Widow?" anxiously inquired the Forks, still looking 
 
 up the hill towards its little shrine. 
 
 At last they entered the town, and the town met them 
 
 on the edge at its outer gate as it were, with all its 
 
 force. 
 
 The woman indeed bore a flag of truce. A long 
 
 white banner streamed from her arms and fell down to 
 
 her feet, and almost touched the ground. A close 
 
102 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 observer would have seen that this flag was made of the 
 very same coarse material from which the Widow had 
 made the curtains of her little bed. 
 
 They entered the edge of the town, these three, and 
 the town stood there as silent as if it had risen up on 
 its way to church on a Sunday morning. These three, 
 do you mind, stood there still, right in the track of the 
 town, and the town looking at them as if they had come 
 from another world. And so at least they had, a part 
 of them. 
 
 These three ; Sandy, Bunker Hill, and the first baby 
 born in the mines of the Sierras. 
 
 Bunker Hill held the baby out in one hand, and with 
 the other tenderly lifted back the covering, while Sandy 
 stood by like a tower on a hill, smiling, pushing back 
 his hat, pulling down his whiskers, looking over the little 
 army of men with a splendid sort of sympathy and self- 
 accusation combined. He seemed to be saying, as he 
 turned their eyes to the little red half opened rose-bud, 
 " Just look there ! see what I've done ; and all in such 
 a short time too." His great face was radiant with 
 delight. 
 
 And then there was a shout such a shout ! The 
 spotted clouds that blew about the tall pine tops, indo- 
 lent and away up on the mountain's brow, seemed to be 
 set in motion again ; the coyote rose up from his sleep 
 on the mountain side and called out to his companions 
 across the gorge as if he had been frightened ; while Cap- 
 tain Tommy, who had been left with the Widow, came 
 to the door and stood there, listening and looking down 
 into the camp to see what in the world had happened. 
 She saw men's hats go up in the air, and then again the 
 shouts shook the town. 
 
 " Three cheers for Sandy ! " They were given with a 
 tiger. " Three cheers for the Widow ! three cheers for 
 Missus Bunker Hill." And then the poor girl leaning 
 out of the door, took up her apron and wiped tears of 
 
A Flag of Truce. 103 
 
 joy from her eyes, for " three times three " were given 
 for Captain Tommy. Then she went back into the 
 house, back to the bed room with the curious little cur- 
 tains and gunny-bag carpets and told the Widow, and 
 the two women wept in each other's arms together. 
 
 Men slapped each other on the back, bantered each 
 other, and talked loud of old Missouri and the institu- 
 tion of marriage. Of all things perhaps this was the 
 last they had looked for or thought of. In a camp of 
 thousands, where the youngest baby there had a beard 
 on his face, the men had forgotten to think of children. 
 It is quite likely they fancied that children would not 
 grow in the Sierras at all. 
 
 The Judge was the first to come forward, as was his 
 custom. He looked it in the face, began to make a 
 speech, but only could say, " It's this glorious climate of 
 Calif orny." And then he blushed to the tip of his nose, 
 backed out, and others came in turn to see the wonder- 
 ful little creature that had come all alone, farther than 
 any of them, farther than the farthest of the States, even 
 from the other world, to settle in the Sierras. 
 
 " Well ef that ain't the littlest !" 
 
 " Is that all the big they is ?" 
 
 " Ain't mor'n a half-a-pint ! is it, Gopher ?" 
 
 "Well ! don't think Sandy hardly got his first plant- 
 ing, did he, Pike?" 
 
 " Well, that bangs me all hollow ! " 
 
 " Dang my cats if it's bigger nor my thumb !" 
 
 " Devil of a little thing to make such a big row about, 
 eh?" 
 
 Sandy was all submission and pride and tenderness, 
 and received the congratulations and heard the good- 
 humoured speeches of the good-humoured men as if 
 they were all meant in compliment to him. 
 
 How radiant and even half beautiful was the plain 
 face of poor Miss Bunker Hill as she lifted it up before 
 the camp now, conscious that she had done a good thing 
 
104 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 and had a right to look the world in the face, and re- 
 ceive its kindness and encouragement. 
 
 Older men and more thoughtful came up at last, to 
 look upon the little wonder and to read the story of this 
 new volume fresh from the press. They looked long 
 and silently. They were as gentle as lambs. Death 
 had no terror to them, it was not half so solemn, so 
 mysterious, as this birth in the heart of the Sierras. 
 Life was there, then, as well as death. People would 
 come and go there as elsewhere. The hand of God had 
 stretched over the mountain, down into the awful gorge, 
 and set down a little angel at their cabin doors. It 
 was very, very welcome, and the old men bobbed their 
 heads with delight. 
 
 At last all was' still, and the little Judge felt that 
 this was not an occasion to be lost. In fact, had there 
 been a clergyman there to say a word, it had had more 
 good effect than all the funeral sermons that the little 
 red-faced man had pronounced in the camp. The occa- 
 sion was a singular one, and the men's hearts were now 
 as mellow as new-ploughed land that had long lain fal- 
 low and waiting for the seed. 
 
 " This, my friends, " began the little man, standing 
 upon a stump, and extending his hands towards the 
 baby, " this, my friends, shows us that the wonderful 
 climate of Calif orny " Just then some one poked the 
 fat little fellow in the stomach with his pipe-stem, and 
 he doubled up like a jack-knife and quietly got down, 
 as if nothing had happened. 
 
 There was a lull then, and things began to look em- 
 barrassing. Sandy was now of course too proud, too 
 happy, too much of a man to carouse, but he called the 
 cinnamon-headed man to his side by a crook of his 
 finger, and making the sign so well known in the 
 Sierras, and so well understood by all who are thirsty, 
 the parties divided the camp to carouse to the little 
 stranger in the Howling Wilderness, and Sandy to return 
 to his "fam'ly." 
 
A Flag of Truce. 
 
 105 
 
 "Here's to to to here's to it! Here's to the 
 Little Half-a-pint !" The men were standing in a row, 
 their glasses high up, and dipping in every angle and 
 to every point of the compass, but they did not know 
 the baby's name ; they did not even know its sex. 
 And so in that moment, without stopping to think, and 
 without any time to spare, they spoke of it as "it," 
 and they named it Little Half-a-pint. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE QUESTION THAT NOBODY COULD ANSWER. 
 
 OW the Widow's heart had been beating 
 all this time ! How she waited, and waited, 
 and listened, and how often she sent Cap- 
 tain Tommy to the door to tell her, if 
 possible, how her baby fared among the 
 half- wild men of the camp. 
 
 How glad she was when she saw Sandy enter, all 
 flurry and delight, as if he had been the centre figure 
 in some great triumph. Then a bit of the old sadness 
 and cast of care swept over her face, and she nestled 
 down in the pillow and put up her two hands to hide a 
 moment from the light. 
 
 The other two were too busy with the little Half-a- 
 pint to notice her trouble then. They laid it down in a 
 cradle that had been made for rocking and washing gold, 
 and good little Bunker Hill sat by it, and crossed her 
 legs and took up her work, and went on sewing and 
 singing to herself, and swinging her leg that hung over, 
 and rocking the cradle with her foot in the old-fashioned 
 way when babies were born in the leaves of the woods 
 of the Wabash, and mothers sat singing by the camp- 
 fires, knitting and rocking their babies in their sugar- 
 troughs. 
 
The question that nobody could answer. 107 
 
 Down in the Howling Wilderness I am bound to say 
 the carousing began early, and with a vigour that pro- 
 mised more headaches than the camp had known since 
 the Widow first set foot in the Forks. 
 
 Little Half-a-pint was toasted and talked of in every 
 corner of the house. Was it a girl or was it a boy ? 
 Why had they not asked so simple and so civil a ques- 
 tion ? They called for Limber Tim they would appeal 
 to him. But Limber Tim was not to be found in all the 
 manifold depths of the Howling Wilderness. He had 
 had his carouse, and was now playing sober Indian. In 
 fact, he was hanging very close about the little rocking 
 cradle up in the front room of the Widow's cabin. Never 
 was the cradle allowed to rest, but rock, rock, rock, till 
 the Widow and Sandy too were both made very sensible, 
 sleeping or waking, that little Half-a-pint, small as it 
 was, was filling up the biggest half of the house. 
 
 Nearly midnight it was when Limber Tim, leaning 
 over the cradle and looking, or pretending to look, at the 
 baby, said to Bunker Hill, who bent down over it on 
 the other side, "Pretty, ain't it?" 
 
 " Guess it is. Looks just like its father for the world." 
 And little hump-backed Bunker Hill began to make 
 faces, and to shake her head and nod it up and down, 
 ind coo and crow to little Half-a-pint as if it was really 
 able to hear, and understand, and answer all she said 
 to it. 
 
 Down at the saloon all this time the spirits flowed 
 like water. The cinnamon-haired fellow had fallen upon 
 a harvest, and was making the most of it. He had laid 
 off his coat, run his two hands up through his hair till 
 it stood up like forked flames, and was thumping the 
 glasses as if in feats of legerdemain. How he did score 
 with the charcoal on the hewn logs behind. He marked 
 and scored that night till the wall behind him looked as 
 if it might be the Iliad written in Greek, or all the cha- 
 racters on the obelisk of Saint Peter's. 
 
108 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 Yet with, all this happiness on the hill, and this merry- 
 making under the hill, in the heart of the Sierras, in 
 commemoration and celebration of the beginning of a 
 new race in a new land, there was one man back in the 
 corner of the saloon who looked on with something of a 
 sneer on his hard, hatchet face, and who refused to 
 take any part. Now and then this man would lift up 
 his left hand, hold out his fingers and count, one, two, 
 three, four, five, to himself with his other hand, and then 
 shake his head. 
 
 The men began to look -at him and wonder what he 
 meant. Then this man would count again one, two, 
 three, four, five. Then, when the men would waddle by 
 in their great gum-boots and look back at him over their 
 beards, he would look them square in the face and wink, 
 and screw and shrug his shoulders. 
 
 This man stopped there in the middle of the spree, 
 and pursing his brow, and holding up his fingers once 
 more, and looking as profound as if wrestling with a 
 problem in Euclid, said to himself: " Hosses is ten, 
 cows is six, cats is three : but human bein's ? Blowed 
 if I know." And he shook his head. 
 
 At last this hard, hatchet-faced looking man, standing 
 back alone in the corner, seemed to have got it all counted 
 up to his own satisfaction. He counted, however, again; 
 then he said, as if to himself, " Six months at the very 
 outside," and slapped his hands together with great glee, 
 and sucked his thin brown lips as if he had just tasted 
 something very delicious. 
 
 Then this hatchet-faced fellow, still rubbing his hands 
 and still twirling his lip, and all the time grinning with 
 a grin that was sweet and devilish, turned to the first 
 man at his side, and whispered in his ear. 
 
 This man started and spun around when the hard- 
 faced man had finished as if he had been a top, and the 
 hatchet-faced fellow had struck him with a whip. 
 
 The man spun about, in fact, till the hard-faced fellow 
 
The question that nobody could answer. 109 
 
 caught hold of his eye with his own and held him there 
 till he could catch his breath. Then the man, -after 
 catching his breath, and catching it again, said slowly, 
 but most emphatically : 
 
 " Ompossible ! " 
 
 The hatchet-faced man simply pecked in the face of 
 the other. He did not say anything more to him, but 
 he pecked at him again, and he pecked emphatically, too, 
 and in a way that would not admit of any two opinions ; 
 as if the man were a grain of corn, and he had half a 
 mind to pick him up and swallow him down for daring 
 to hint that it was impossible. 
 
 Then the man went off suddenly to one side, and he 
 too fell to counting on his fingers, and to taking a whole 
 knot of men into his confidence. 
 
 Then the hatchet-faced fellow went up to another 
 man and whispered in his ear, with his smirk and his 
 sweet devilish smile, and he soon set him to spinning 
 round like a top, and to lifting up his fingers and count- 
 ing one, two, three, four, five. 
 
 Then all around the saloon men began to get sober 
 and to hold up their hands and to count their fingers. 
 
 At last the little fat red-faced Judge was heard to say, 
 
 " They was married in the fall." 
 
 " About about about eh, about what month, do 
 you remember, eh?" squeaked out the hatchet-faced 
 man through his nose, as he planted himself before the 
 little Judge. 
 
 " About the last cleaning up," said the Judge cheer- 
 fully. 
 
 " That was about about " and the hatchet-faced 
 man with the nasal twang and sharp nose began again 
 to count on his fingers " about four, five, six months 
 ago?" 
 
 " Yes, yes," said the good-natured, unsuspicious, im- 
 portant little Judge, "about six months ago, I reckon." 
 And then he, smiling innocently, fell in between two 
 
110 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 great bearded giants, as a sort of ham-sandwich filling, 
 to take a drink at the bar. 
 
 " Ompossible ! " said the first top to the hatchet-face. 
 
 Ask him." 
 
 The hatchet-face and sharp-nose looked towards the 
 little fat Jndge wedged in between the giants. The top 
 spnn np to the little Judge, wedged his head in between 
 the giants' shoulders, and asked a question. 
 
 The Judge shook his head, and then wiping his mouth 
 with the back of his hand, said half sadly, " No, I am 
 not. No, I am sorry to say, I am not. That is a 
 happiness still in store. No, I am not a family man. 
 Never was married in my life ; but whatever may tran- 
 spire in this glorious climate of Calif orny " 
 
 The top had its answer, and spun back to its place 
 without waiting for the last of the speech. 
 
 The two men talked together again. Then they 
 appealed to an old man who sat mute and sullen back 
 on the bench by the bulldog. 
 
 " No, he didn't know about such things ; didn't care 
 a cuss anyhow." And the two men went away as if a 
 flea or two had left the dog and hopped into their ears. 
 They went to another man. " Don't see the point, 
 blowed ef I do. Six months, seven months, eight months, 
 ten months, all a long there, I 'spose. The great Wash- 
 ington, Cassar, Horace Greeley, all sich big-bugs, it might 
 take one, two, three years. That little cuss to-day only 
 a month or two, I reckon. It's all right, I reckon. It 
 ain't my funeral, anyhow. And what the devil you 
 come a botherin' of me for, anyhow ? Ef yer don't want 
 ter drink yerself, let a feller alone what does ! " And 
 he shook them off with a gesture of the hand and a jerk 
 of the head that meant a great deal more than he had 
 said. 
 
 There were not so many fingers up now as before. 
 The question evidently had been settled in the minds of 
 the men fully in favour of the little Half-a-pint. Few 
 
The question that nobody could answer. Ill 
 
 understood these things at all, fewer still cared to go into 
 particulars at this time, and the question would keep 
 till they had more leisure and less whisky. 
 
 Finally, the hatchet-faced man went round and sat 
 down opposite the man who sat behind the little silver 
 faro-box by the pine-table, and began to whisper in his 
 ear. The good-natured genius, half-gambler, half-miner, 
 who had played the little prank with the salmon and gold- 
 dust, had had a dull night of it, and most like even for 
 that reason was a little out of humour. At all events 
 he did not answer at once, but set down his little silver 
 box, and, taking up his cards, began to spin them one 
 by one over the heads of the men, or through the crowd 
 as it opened, back at the old bull-dog that lay on the bunk 
 on the bags of gold under the blankets, and half whistling 
 to himself as he did so. 
 
 The hatchet-faced man, fearing the man had forgotten 
 his presence and his revelation, leaned over again and 
 began to whisper and to count on his fingers. 
 
 " How many months did you say ?" 
 
 " Seven or eight at the furthest." 
 
 " And how many had it ought to be ?" 
 
 "Twelve!" And the smile that was sweet and 
 devilish played about the thin blue lips below the sharp 
 and meddlesome nose. 
 
 " And are you a family man ?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 " And you say she's bilked us ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You're a darn'd infernal liar !" The gambler rose 
 as he said this, snatched up his silver box and dashed it 
 into the teeth of Hatchet-face. And he, coward as he 
 was, put up his hands and held them to his mouth while 
 the blood ran down between his fingers. 
 
 " I don't keer, Judge, I don't keer if I broke every 
 tooth in his head. I don't 'low no white-livered son of 
 a gun to go about a- talking about a woman like that." 
 
112 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 Then the gambler, walking off, said to those aronnd 
 him in a lower tone, " It don't take no twelve months 
 nohow. Now there's the yaller cat; 'bout four litters in a 
 year. Twelve months be blowed! That's an old woman's 
 story. Then that's in Missonry, anyhow, and what's the 
 climate of Missonry got to do with Californy, I'd like to 
 know ? No, gentlemen ; some apples gits ripe soon, and 
 some don't git ripe till frost comes. Them's things, 
 gentlemen, as we don't know nothing abont. Them's 
 mysteries, and none of our business, nohow. Show me 
 the man," and here he began to roar like a Numidian 
 lion, and to tower np above the crowd, while a face like 
 a razor shot out through the door, looking back frightened 
 as it fled, " Show me the man as says it's not all right, 
 and I'll shake him out of his boots." 
 
 The gambler picked up his battered box, but he was 
 evidently not in a good humour. He wiped it on his 
 coat- sleeve, and polished it up and down, but was ill 
 content. At last, looking out from under his great 
 slouch hat, he saw the top in the centre of a little knot 
 of men holding up his hand and counting his fingers. 
 He threw the box down on the table and rushed into the 
 knot of men like a mad bull. 
 
 " A bully set you are, ain't you ? Gw'yne around 
 a-counting up after a sick woman ! And what do you 
 know, anyhow ?" He took hold of the nervous top, and 
 again set it spinning. " That little woman, she come as 
 we come. God Almighty didn't set no mark and gauge 
 on you, and you shan't go 'round and count up after her. 
 Do you hear ? Now you git. You're wanted. Hatchet- 
 face wants yer. Do you hear ? " 
 
 The man spun his top about till its face was to the 
 door, and it went out as a sort of handle to the hatchet, 
 and was seen no more that night. 
 
 Yet for all this there had been a great ripple in the 
 wave that had to run even to the shore before it could 
 disappear from the face of things at the Forks. 
 
The question that nobody could answer. 113 
 
 The next day when Sandy came down, the enthusiasm 
 was at a low ebb. He missed the great reception he had 
 expected, and went back home that night a troubled and 
 anxious man. 
 
 What could be the matter ? He asked Limber Tim, 
 but Limber Tim had learned the power and security of 
 silence, and either could not or would not venture on any 
 revelations. Besides that, he was very busy helping 
 Bunker Hill with the baby. The camp openly and at 
 all convenient times discussed the question now, and it 
 began to gradually take shape in the minds of men that 
 something was really wrong. Kind old Sandy did not 
 dream what the trouble could be. He feared he had not 
 been generous enough under his good fortune, and was 
 all the time opening the mouth of his leather bag at 
 the bar and pouring gold dust into the scales, and en- 
 treating the boys to drink to the health of their little 
 Half-a-pint. 
 
 " Yes, our little Half-a-pint it is, I reckons ; leastwise 
 it's pretty certain it ain't yourn." Sandy looked at the 
 man, and then the man set down his glass untouched 
 and went off. He had not meant all that he had said, 
 but having blurted it out in a very awkward way and 
 at the very worst time, got off and out of it as best he 
 could. 
 
 Sandy was tortured. The dear little Widow saw it, 
 and asked him what the trouble was, and the man, blunt, 
 honest fellow, told all that had happened. 
 
 The camp was disgusted with the man who had mooted 
 this question. They counted him a traitor to the Forks : 
 a sort of Judas. If he had gone and hung himself the 
 camp would have been perfectly satisfied. In fact, it is 
 pretty certain that the camp would have been very glad 
 to have had any excuse, even the least bit of an excuse, 
 to do that office for him. 
 
 Then the camp was angry with Sandy, too, on general 
 principles. He had betrayed them into a sort of idol- 
 
114 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 worship under a mistake. He had lured it into the ex- 
 pression of an enthusiasm quite out of keeping with the 
 dignity of a rough and hardy race of men, and it did 
 not like it. 
 
 " The great big idiot !" said the camp. " Didn't he 
 know any better ? Don't he know any better now than 
 to go on in this way half- tickled to death, thinking him- 
 self the happiest and the most blest of men?" The 
 camp was ashamed of him. 
 
 The little Judge, finding things going against the first 
 family in the Forks, felt also that he in some way was 
 concerned, and felt called upon to explain. This was his 
 theory and explanation. 
 
 " The Widow was a widow ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " The Legislature met at San Jose on the first day of 
 September?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " The Legislature granted that first Session enough 
 1 divorces to fill a book ?" 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " This young woman, this widow, might 'a bin married; 
 she might 'a bin on her way to the mountains ; she might 
 'a stopped in time and got her divorce, one day on her 
 way up ; she might 'a come right on here and got coaxed 
 into marrying Sandy." 
 
 " Bather quick work, wouldn't it be, Judge ?" 
 
 " Well, considering the climate of Californy, I think 
 not." And the little man pushed out his legs under the 
 card-table, puffed out his little red cheeks, leaned back, 
 and felt perfectly certain that he had made a great point, 
 while the wise men of the camp sat there more muddled 
 than before. 
 
 However, as the days went by men went on with their 
 Work in their mines down in the boiling, foaming, full 
 little streams, now overflowing from the snows that melted 
 in the warm spring sun, and said but little more on the 
 
The question thai nobody could answer. 115 
 
 subject. It was certain that they were very doubtful, for 
 they only shook their heads as a rule when the subject 
 was mentioned now in the great centre. That was a bad 
 sign, and very hard evidence of displeasure with their 
 patron saint of the autumn and the long weary winter. 
 
 The Widow must have known all this. Not that 
 Sandy had said a word further than she had almost forced 
 him to speak ; not that she had yet ventured down into 
 the Forks, or that Bunker Hill had breathed a word about 
 it, but I fancy that women know these things by instinct. 
 They somehow have a singularly clear way of coming 
 upon such things. 
 
 Day after day she read Sandy's face as he came up 
 from his mine, dripping with the yellow water spurted 
 from the sluice all over his broad slouch hat, long brown 
 beard, and stiff duck breeches ; she read it eagerly as one 
 reads the papers after a battle, and read it truly as if it 
 had been a broadsheet in print, and found herself in dis- 
 favour with the camp. Then she began to think if Sandy 
 was thinking of his promise ; if he had remembered, and 
 still remembered the time when in her great agony he 
 promised, though all the world turned against her and 
 cried " shame ! " he would not upbraid her. She wondered 
 if he ever wished he had gone when she commanded him 
 and implored him to go, and she began to read his face 
 for the truth. She read, read him all through, page after 
 page, chapter after chapter. She found there was not a 
 doubt in all the realm of his soul, and her face took on 
 again a little of its gladness. Yet the touch of tenderness 
 deepened, the old sadness had settled back again, and 
 this time to remain. 
 
 The still blue skies of California were bending over 
 the camp. Not a cloud sailed east or west, or hovered 
 about the snow-peaks. It was full summer-time in the 
 Sierras before it was yet mid-spring, and men began to 
 pour over the mountains across the settled and solid 
 banks of snow. Birds flew low and idly about the cabins, 
 
116 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 and sang as the men went on with their work down in 
 the foaming, muddy little rivers, and all the world seemed 
 glad and strong with life and hope. 
 
 Still the Widow was glad no more, and men began to 
 notice that Sandy did not come to town at all. It was 
 even observed that he had fonnd a cut-off across the spur 
 of the hill, by which he went and came to and from his 
 mining claim without once setting foot in the Howling 
 Wilderness, or even the Forks. 
 
 Limber Tim, too, seemed sad and sorely troubled. 
 Sunshine and singing birds do not always bring delight 
 to all. There is nothing so sad as sadness at such a 
 time. 
 
 Limber Tim no longer wrestled with saplings or picket- 
 fences, or even his limber legs. He had other and graver 
 matter on hand. The birds were building their nests 
 all about him, and he too wanted to gather moss. 
 
 At last the boy-man was happy. At least, he came 
 one night very late to " Sandy's," as the Widow's place 
 was now called, and standing outside of the house and 
 backing up against the fence, and sticking his hands in 
 behind him, and twisting his left leg around the right, 
 he called out to Sandy in a voice that was wild and un- 
 certain as a wind that is lost in the trees. 
 
 Sandy laid it down tenderly, covered it up, and 
 watching it a minute and making sure that it was sound 
 asleep and well, went out. Limber Tim was writhing 
 and twisting more than ever before. Sandy was glad, 
 for he now knew that he was perfectly well, and that he 
 had got the great matter settled and that in a way per- 
 fectly satisfactory to himself. 
 
 And yet the two men were terribly embarrassed. 
 What made the embarrassment very much the worse was 
 the fact that they were at least half-a-mile from the 
 nearest saloon. Fortunatelv it was very dark for a 
 Californian night, and the men could look each other in 
 the face without seeing each other. 
 
The question that nobody could answer. 117 
 
 There was a long and painful silence. Limber Tim 
 wrestled with his right leg with all his might, and would 
 have thrown it time and again, but from the fact that 
 his two arms were thrust in behind and wound through 
 the palings, so that it was impossible for him to fall. 
 
 His mouth was open and his tongue was out, but he 
 could not talk. At last Sandy broke the prolonged and 
 profound silence. 
 
 " Catch her, Limber ? " 
 
 "Fotchther, Sandy." 
 
 "Bully for Limber Tim !" 
 
 Then there was another painful silence, and Limber 
 Tim twisted a paling off the fence with his arms, and 
 kicked half the bark off his right shin with his left 
 ! boot-heel. 
 
 "Sandy?" 
 
 "Limber?" 
 
 Then Limber Tim reached out his tongue and spun it 
 about as if it had been a fish-line, and he was fishing in 
 the darkness for words. At last he jerked back as if he 
 had got a bite, jerked and jerked as if his throat was full 
 offish-hooks, and jerked till he jerked himself loose from 
 the fence ; and poising on his heel before falling back 
 into the darkness, and twisting himself down the hill, 
 said this : 
 
 " Git the Judge, Sandy. Fetch her home to-morrow. 
 Spliced to-morrow. Sandy, git the Judge to-morrow ! " 
 
 And "to-morrow" kept coming up the hill and out 
 of the darkness till the nervous boy-man was half way 
 to the Howling Wilderness. 
 
 The Judge was there, a cooler man now, even though 
 it was midsummer. His shirt was open till his black 
 hairy breast showed through as if it had been a naked 
 bear-skin. 
 
 The Forks came in force to its second wedding, but 
 the Forks, too, was cooler, and had put aside to some 
 extent its faith and its folly. And yet it liked Bunker 
 
118 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 Hill ever so much. Bunker Hill, said the Forks, was 
 not the best of women in days gone by, but Bunker Hill 
 had never deceived. 
 
 She stood alone there that day, the day of all days to 
 any woman in the world, and the boys did not like it 
 at all. 
 
 Why had she not asked the Widow to be by her side ? 
 Surely she had stood by the Widow in the day of trouble ; 
 why was not the Widow there ? And then they thought 
 about it a little while, and saw how impossible it was for 
 poor deformed little Bunker Hill to dare ask the Widow 
 to come and stand with her at her wedding. 
 
 The woman who stood there, about to be made the 
 head of the second family in the Forks, had nursed the 
 Widow back to life and health, had seen all the time the 
 line that lay between them, and had not taken a single 
 step to cross it. When her task was finished she had 
 gone back to her home. She carried with her the 
 memory and the recollection of a duty well performed, 
 and felt that it was enough. She had not seen the Widow 
 any more. 
 
 The Judge stood there with the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, the Statutes of California, and the marriage 
 ceremony, all under his arm, and ready to do his office. 
 The sun was pouring down in the open streets. Little 
 Bunker Hill felt hardly, somehow, that she had a right 
 to be married out in the open day, in the fresh, sweet 
 air, and under the trees ; and Limber Tim preferred to 
 be married where his partner had been married, and so 
 it was that they had met in the Howling Wilderness 
 as before. All was silence now, all were waiting for 
 the Judge to begin. Up in the loft the mice nibbled 
 away at their endless rations of old boots, and a big red- 
 headed woodpecker pounded away on the wall back by 
 the chimney without. 
 
 There was a commotion at the door. Then there was 
 a murmur of admiration and applause. 
 
The question that nobody could answer. 119 
 
 The men gave way, they pushed and pushed each other 
 back as if they had been pushing cotton bales, they opened 
 a line, and down that line a beautiful woman with her 
 eyes to the ground and a baby in her arms moved on till 
 she came and stood by the side of the little hunchback, 
 still silent, and looking with the old look of sad, sweet 
 tranquillity upon the ground. 
 
 It was really too much for the little man, who had opened 
 his bosom, and who all the time had stood there with his 
 books under his arm, perfectly cool, and perfect master of 
 the situation. Now he was all of a heap. He had been 
 acting with a sort of condescension toward the two half- 
 children who had come before him that day, and had 
 even prepared a sort of patronising, half-missionary, half- 
 reformatory sermon, but now, and all suddenly, he was 
 utterly overthrown. He began to perspire and choke 
 on the spot. 
 
 The silence was painful. The woodpecker pounded 
 as if he would knock the house down, and the mice rasped 
 at their old boots and rattled away like men sawing 
 wood. 
 
 The Judge began to hear himself breathe. In this 
 moment of crisis he caught a book from his side and 
 proceeded to read. He read from " An Act to amend 
 an Act entitled an Act for the improvement of the breed 
 of sheep in the State of California." Back in the saloon 
 there were men who began to giggle. These were some 
 men not from Missouri. They were of the hatchet-faced 
 order, men who spoke through their noses, "idecated 
 men" the camp called them, and men that, above all 
 others, had put the little Judge in terror. 
 
 When he heard the men laugh, then he knew he had 
 opened his book at the wrong place, and his face grew 
 red as fire. He could not see to read to the end, nor 
 could he now be heard. He suddenly closed the book 
 and said, " Then by virtue of the authority in me vested, 
 and under the laws of the State of California in such 
 
120 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 cases made and provided, I pronounce you man and 
 wife." 
 
 Then the little Judge came up, shook them both by 
 the hand, and his voice was suddenly clear as a bell, and 
 he felt that he could now go on and speak by the hour. 
 
 The Widow bowed down above her baby and kissed 
 the new-made bride silently and tenderly as if she had 
 been her sister, and then with the same sweet, half sad 
 smile she turned to the door, her face still to the ground, 
 and covering up the little sleeper in her arms and looking 
 neither right nor left, went back alone to her cabin. 
 
 The dark day was over. At the play, whenever you 
 see the whole force of the company come forward and 
 stand in a row, and assume the most striking and im- 
 posing attitudes, and hear the fiddlers play and the brass 
 trumpets bray as never before, then you may be very sure 
 the tragedy is about over. So it goes in life. 
 
 Sandy remained with the men that evening, and made 
 merry over the marriage of his partner. He was now 
 more popular than ever. He had acted the man, and 
 they knew it. Right or wrong, he had gone on straight 
 ahead, had said no unkind word to his wife, worked like 
 a man, and waited. 
 
 The crowd had melted away a bit because it was very 
 warm, and then the men were getting noisy enough, for 
 this was the day on which every true American was ex- 
 pected to get drunk. It was a sort of 4th of July. 
 
 The old question was being again raised. The bride 
 was standing there in the midst of the men, a true good 
 woman, a woman who had sinned, yet a woman who had 
 suffered. One who had fallen was she, yet one who 
 had also resisted more than many a woman who would 
 have cast a stone at her. She was very glad, and not a 
 man but was glad to see it. 
 
 " That baby ! It is an angel, and its mother's name 
 is Madonna. That little bit of a brat ! Why, I seed it 
 first, first of any body, and it wasn't bigger than a 
 
The question that nobody could answer. 121 
 
 pound of soap after a whole day's washing. Make a 
 fuss about that little thing ! A man who would make 
 a fuss about a baby no bigger than that, no matter 
 when it is born, is a infernal fool ! " 
 
 " Bully for Bunk for for Missis Tim ! Bully for 
 Missis Tim ! " and the men shouted, and Mrs. Tim 
 blushed from sheer joy. 
 
 The Gopher cheered perhaps more lustily than any 
 one, for he admired the Widow, and knew her love and 
 worth. The Gopher, it is true, was in disgrace, for the 
 story went that the young man his partner, who was the 
 first to be buried in the Forks, had fallen by his hand. 
 The blow had been struck in a crowd, it is true, and no 
 one saw it, or at least no one cared to tell of it if he 
 did, and so the Gopher had been left alone, and he had 
 left men alone, and lived all the time by himself in a 
 sort of cave, and that is why he was called the Gopher. 
 Strange stories were told of this Gopher, too, and men 
 who pretended to know said his cave was lined with 
 gold. 
 
 " That baby ! " began the Gopher, lifting up his 
 doubled fist, and bringing it down now and then by 
 way of emphasis. " That baby ! Look here ! Here's 
 one baby among a thousand men. Here's a thousand 
 men asking if it's got a father. Now does that little baby 
 want a father ? I've got a cave full of gold and I'll be 
 its father ! I'll be its brother and uncle and aunt and 
 mother!" The Gopher thundered his fist down on the 
 bar as he concluded, and the glasses there jumped up 
 and clinked together, and bowed to each other, as if 
 they had been dancers about to begin a cotillon. 
 
 The woodpecker flew away, and the mice were heard 
 no more that day, for the men shouted their approval 
 till they were hoarse- voiced as mules. 
 
 Sandy had been sitting there all the time, half 
 doubled over a bench. He perhaps was thinking of his 
 own wedding, for he kept looking straight across the 
 
122 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 room to the pine logs on the other side, and then he 
 seemed to fix his eyes on some object there, and to fall 
 to thinking very generally. At last he began to count 
 on his fingers. Then suddenly he fairly laughed with 
 delight. He sprang up, stepped across the room, put 
 his finger on the spot where Limber Tim had stood 
 scrawling with his big pencil the day he was so embar- 
 rassed at his wedding, and shouted out 
 
 " Look here ! There it is. That's the date. That's 
 the day I was married September, eighteen hundred 
 and.fifty!" 
 
 "Just eight months ! " roared a man in the crowd. 
 
 " Eight months ! Ten of 'em !" and he fell to counting 
 on his fingers, as he turned to the crowd and continued 
 r ght on up to July, with perfect confidence. 
 
 The camp roared, and shouted, and danced, as never 
 before. Why had it been so stupid as not to set this 
 thing right from the first ? It was the most penitent 
 community that had ever been. The Widow was once 
 more its patron saint. 
 
 The Gopher stood up by the wall. 
 
 " Are you all satisfied now ?" 
 
 Satisfied ! They would never doubt any woman any 
 more as long as they lived. 
 
 He took his bowie-knife while the crowd turned to take 
 a drink, and cut the date from the wall ; and the only 
 record, perhaps, of the first marriage in the Sierras was 
 no more. 
 
 A sharp-nosed man, one of those miserable men who 
 never are satisfied unless they are either miserable or 
 making some one else so, came up to the wall out of the 
 crowd and began to look on the wall for the date, as if 
 he thought there might have been some mistake, and he 
 wanted to count it all over again. 
 
 This man began to count on his fingers and to look 
 along on the wall. Suddenly there was a something 
 gleaming in his face like a flash of lightning. 
 
The question that nobody could answer. 123 
 
 It was the Gopher's bowie-knife. It was within two 
 inches of his throat. 
 
 " Are you satisfied, my friend ? " smiled the Gopher, 
 with a smile that meant brimstone. 
 
 " Perfectly satisfied," said the wretch in return, and at 
 the same time he bowed and backed as fast as he could 
 till he came to the door, and then he was seen no more. 
 
 " Be it really all on the square, Judge ? " asked Citizen 
 Tim one day, timidly and in confidence. 
 
 " Right ? didn't I marry 'em ? " 
 
 "But it warn't twelve months." 
 
 " Twelve months ! don't care ef it warn't six months. 
 I married 'em, and I married 'em good and fast, and 
 that's the end of it." 
 
 " Bein' a fain'ly man myself," began Limber Tim again, 
 as he twisted his arms in behind him, and rolled the back 
 of his head on a house-log while he looked up at a white 
 cloud that led its caravan of camels over the desert sky 
 toward the east; "bein' a fam'ly man myself, and as 
 seeing as how Missis Tim's a making some awful small 
 little bits of clothes, and as seeing as how, you know, 
 it struck me as pretty soon as as how " Here 
 Limber Tim knocked the bark off his left shin with his 
 right boot-heel, and, coming to a full stop, stood again 
 rolling his head back while he looked up at his caravan 
 of camels. 
 
 " Nothin' more nat'ral, my dear Mr. Tim, nothin' more 
 nat'ral. It's all in the climate. All in this wonderful 
 climate of Californy." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE JUDGE IS LONESOME. 
 "In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." 
 
 HIS was the song of the fat little Judge 
 one fine morning, as he wandered down 
 towards the Howling Wilderness, sniffing 
 the glorious balm, the very breath of the 
 forest, and glancing ever and anon over his 
 shoulder towards the cabin of Captain Tommy. 
 
 How new, and fresh, and sweet, and fragrant the 
 odours of the mighty, mossy woods that climbed and 
 climbed and ever climbed as if to mount the summits, 
 and push their tasselled tops against the indolent summer 
 clouds that hovered like great white-winged birds above 
 the peaks of snow. So new and fresh it seemed that 
 summer morning, that the little Judge stopped on the 
 hill-side and stood there to inhale its sweetness. 
 
 " How fresh and fine is this new, world of Californy. 
 It is only finished to-day. I can smell the varnish 
 on it." 
 
 The Judge took out his great cotton bandanna, took 
 off his hat, and polished his bald head till it shone in 
 the sun like a mirror. Then the little man stuffed his big 
 
The Judge is lonesome. 125 
 
 handkerchief back in his bosom, and went on down the 
 trail, humming softly to himself: 
 
 " In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." 
 
 A man in great gnm boots, duck breeches, a hat like 
 a tent, with a gold-pan under his arm and a pipe sticking 
 out through a mask of matted beard, met the little man 
 in the trail, heard his song as he passed, and looking back 
 over his shoulder, said to himself: "The derned bald- 
 headed old rooster! What's he a-singin' hymns fur 
 now?" 
 
 The little Judge could not sit down in the Saloon, 
 He felt that something was the matter, and he thought 
 that he was lonesome. The little brown mice upstairs 
 could be heard all day now, for the miners were at work 
 up to their thighs in the water, delving away there in 
 their great gum boots as if they were in a sort of diving, 
 bell. 
 
 So the Judge went away from the Howling Wilder- 
 ness. There was no man to be found who had time to 
 talk, and so he sought a woman. 
 
 Captain Tommy stood in the door of her cabin all 
 untroubled. She had seen the little Judge approach, 
 but she was too happy drinking in the great summer's 
 day that filled all things with peace and a calm delight, 
 and she did not stir. 
 
 There are days and occasions when even the most plain 
 women are positively beautiful ; and when a plain woman 
 is beautiful she is the most beautiful thing in the world. 
 
 This was Captain Tommy's day to be beautiful, and 
 perhaps she felt it, for there she stood, really playing the 
 coquette, hardly turning her eyes to look on the little 
 Alcalde, although she knew he was mad in love with her. 
 
 He stood before her in the sun with his hat in his 
 hand. Then she looked into the polished mirror which 
 he humbly bowed before her, and she saw that she was 
 really beautiful. 
 
126 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 " Captain," said the mirror, and it bowed still lower, 
 "Lady, in this glorious climate of Californy, I have 
 snatched a few moments from my professional duties to 
 come to yon, to say to you to to beg of you will 
 you? will you in this glorious climate of Californy 
 this morning ? " 
 
 The mirror was close up under her eyes. She smiled, 
 and then she lifted her two hands and began to wind 
 herself up as fast as possible so that she could answer 
 the eager and earnest little man before her. 
 
 The Judge waited in an ecstasy of delight, for he 
 knew by the twinkle in her eye that he should have to 
 send for the black-clad man with the white necktie 
 who had so terrified the Parson, and he was very happy. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 APTEE THE DELUGE WHAT THEN? 
 
 EARS went by, and the chronicler stood 
 again in the Forks. The town was gone; the 
 miners had uprooted its very foundations. 
 Then came floods and buried the boulders 
 and the banks of the stream, and widened 
 it out and made it even as a new-ploughed field. 
 
 Then a man, the Hon. Mr. Sandy, who had sat down 
 with his family quite satisfied in the Sierras, extended 
 a fence around the site of the old city, and planted and 
 sowed and then reaped the richest of harvests. On the 
 site of the Howling Wilderness the yellow golden grain 
 reached up till it touched the very beard of the giant. 
 So do perish the mining towns of the Sierras. 
 
 The hills are not so wild now ; the woods have been 
 mown away, and up on the hill-sides the miners have 
 sat down, old and wrinkled now, and few in numbers ; 
 and around their quiet old cabins have planted fruit 
 trees, and trees even from the tropics. And these trees 
 flourish here too, for though the snow falls deep, and 
 the sun has little room between the walls of the mighty 
 canon, still it seems never now so bleak or cold. 
 
 There is one little house on the hill- side, with porches, 
 and Spanish verandahs, and hammocks swinging there, 
 
128 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 and all that, nestled down among the fruit-trees that 
 bend with fruit and blossom. Around this cabin and 
 back of it, and up the mountains among the firs, you see 
 pretty children passing in and out, laughing as they run, 
 shouting like little Modocs, shaking back their hair all 
 full of the gold and glory of the California sun, and 
 making every one happy who beholds them. 
 
 "All in the glorious climate of Calif orny !" says the 
 little man, as he comes puffing up the hill to his home, 
 and the children run to meet him. Can it be possible ? 
 Did she grow young again ? Did she go back and begin 
 life at the beginning ? Truly, there is something in the 
 climate, and the fountain of youth flows certainly some- 
 how out of the Sierras. 
 
 For look ! as she stands there winding herself up to 
 welcome her husband, she is only a little stouter, and ten 
 times as beautiful. 
 
 As for Limber Tim, being an "idecated man," he 
 started a newspaper in the nearest town, and after many 
 battles and many defeats, finally climbed high on the 
 ladder of distinction, and is now "the Hon. Mr. Tim," 
 with a political influence second in that part of the 
 country to no man, and to only one woman, his kind 
 and much-esteemed wife. 
 
 How things are changed, to be sure ! The caravans 
 of clouds that little Limber Tim was wont to look up to 
 and wonder at, still cross the canon, and march and coun- 
 termarch and curl about the far snow peaks as before. 
 But the coyote has ceased to howl from the hill-side. 
 
 And what can that be curling like steam up from out 
 the mighty forest that belts the snow peaks about the 
 heads of the three little streams that make the Forks ? 
 
 It looks like a train of clouds driven straight through 
 the tree tops it is so high and fairy-like and far away. 
 It is as if it were on the very summit of the Sierras. 
 
 Ah ! that is the engine blowing off the clouds of 
 steam as she drops, shoots, slides, glides from the 
 
After the deluge what then ? 129 
 
 mountain to the sea. The train is a mile in length. 
 The dust of three thousand miles is on her skirts. But 
 before the sun is down she will rest on the Bay of San 
 Francisco. 
 
 What became of the little brown man with the meek 
 almond eyes and the peaceful smile that for ever hovered 
 about the corner of his mouth ? 
 
 Poor little Washee-Washee ! When the Widow got 
 married he had to go. He could not embark in business 
 again, and he would not go away. The Widow always 
 gave him all he asked when he came to her, but that 
 was very little. She even tried to persuade him to 
 accept little gifts, and to take some delicacies for his 
 stomach's sake, but the little pagan would only shake 
 his head, smile the least bit out of one corner of his 
 mouth, and then go away as if half offended. 
 
 Every five years there is a curious sort of mule cara- 
 van seen meandering up and down the mining streams 
 of California, where Chinamen are to be found. It is a 
 quiet train, and quite unlike those to be found there 
 driven by Mexicans, and bearing whisky and dry goods. 
 In this train or caravan the drivers do not shout or 
 scream. The mules, it always seemed to me, do not 
 even bray. This caravan travels almost always by night, 
 and it is driven and managed almost altogether by China- 
 men. These Chinamen are civil, very respectful, very 
 quiet, very mournful both in their dress and manner. 
 
 These mules, both in coming in and in going out of a 
 camp, are loaded with little beech- wood boxes of about 
 three feet in length and one foot square. 
 
 When the train arrives in a camp these boxes are 
 taken from off the backs of the mules, stored in some 
 Chinaman's cabin close to the trail, and there they lie, 
 so far as the world knows, undisturbed for two or three 
 days ; when, about midnight, the mules are quietly drawn 
 up to the cabin- door, the boxes are brought out, and the 
 mules are loaded, and the line winds away up the hill 
 
 K 
 
130 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 and out on the mountain to where their freight can be 
 taken down to the sea on wheels. 
 
 The only apparent difference in these boxes now is 
 the lead label at either end, which was not there when 
 they entered the camp. 
 
 This is the caravan of the dead. No Chinaman will 
 consent to let his bones lie in the land of the barbarian. 
 The bones of every Chinaman, even to the beggar if 
 there ever was such a thing as a Chinese beggar in 
 California are taken back to the land of his fathers. 
 
 Washee-Washee stood watching the train climb the 
 corkscrew trail in the grey dawn one morning, and then 
 shaking his head he went to the Widow and said 
 
 " By'ee, by'ee. Washee-Washee allee sammee." 
 
 And it was so. His first great commercial enterprise 
 had been a disastrous failure, and the brown little 
 fellow never recovered. Other Chinamen poured into 
 camp, and he certainly had friends among them all, but 
 he went to none in his griefs as he did to the Widow ; 
 she who had been his friend in his first great trouble. 
 
 The little brown man took to opium, and gradually 
 grew almost black. His little bright black eyes grew 
 brighter, his thin face grew thinner, and he became a 
 little more than a shadow. Still he would smile a bit 
 out of that corner of his mouth. Would smile as if he 
 was smiling at Death, and was trying to cheat him into 
 the idea that he felt perfectly well. 
 
 The caravan came in due time ; as before, it rested, 
 loaded, climbed the hill, and as the train led up against 
 the morning star, you might have read on one little 
 box, wherein a skeleton lay doubled up like a jack 
 knife, this name : 
 
 " WASHEE-WASHEE." 
 
 And what of the genteel boy, Peter Deboon ? He 
 took the money the Widow gave and invested it in a 
 mine, and went to work. A few weeks of luckless 
 
After the deluge what then ? 131 
 
 ventures, however, left him unable to respond to his 
 landlady's bill. She said fiercely, " You are no gentle- 
 man." He answered quietly, "Neither are you, Mrs. 
 Flanagan;" and as quietly left the house. He felt that 
 he had lost or left something behind him. He had. 
 The " Esq." had been knocked from his name as easily as 
 you would wish to kick a hat from the pavement on 
 the first day of April. 
 
 Another week of wandering about the town in dirty 
 linen, and his acquaintances treated the tail-end of his 
 Christian name as Alcibiades did the celebrated dog of 
 Athens. He was now simply "Peter Deboon." A few 
 months of hard usage, and he found the whole front of 
 his name ripped off and lost. " Deboon " was all that 
 was left. 
 
 Ten years now passed. Ten terrible years, in which 
 this brave and resolute man had dared more than Caesar, 
 had endured more than Ney ; and he found that the en- 
 tire end of his father's name had been, somewhere in the 
 Sierras, worn or torn away, and hid or covered up for ever 
 in the tailings. He was now nothing but "Bab." Here, 
 while ground- sluicing one night on Big Humbug, and 
 possibly wondering what other deduction could be made 
 and not leave him nameless, he was caught in a cave, 
 sluiced out, and carried head-first through the flume. 
 This last venture wore him down to about the condition 
 of an old quarter-coin, where neither date, name, nor 
 nationality can be deciphered. His jaws were crushed, 
 and limbs broken, till they lay in every direction, like 
 the claws of a sea-crab. They took him to the County 
 Hospital, and there they called him " Old Bab." It was 
 a year before he got about ; and then he came leaning 
 on a staff, with a frightful face. He had lost all spirit. 
 He sat moodily about the hospital, and sometimes said 
 bitter things. 
 
 One day he said of Grasshopper Jim, who was a great 
 talker, " That man must necessarily lie. There is not 
 
132 . First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 truth enough in the United States to keep his tongue 
 going for ever as it does." One evening a young candi- 
 date told him he was going to make a speech, and very 
 patronizingly asked him to come out and hear him. Old 
 Bab looked straight at the wall, as if counting the 
 stripes on the paper, then said, half to himself, " The 
 fact of Balaam's ass making a speech has had a more 
 demoralizing influence than any other event told in the 
 Holy Bible ; for ever since that time every lineal de- 
 scendant seems determined to follow his example." His 
 face was never relieved by a smile, and his chin stuck 
 out fearfully ; so that one day, when Snapping Andy, 
 who was licensed by the miners to be the champion 
 growler of the camp, called him " Old Baboon," it was 
 as complete as a baptismal ceremony, and he was known 
 by no other name. 
 
 Some women visited him one evening : fallen angels 
 women with the trail of the serpent all over them. 
 They gave him gifts and money, and, above all, words 
 of encouragement and kindness. He moodily filled the 
 meerschaum they had brought him, and after driving a 
 volume of smoke through his nose, looked quietly up 
 and said: "Society is wrong. These women are not 
 bad women. For my part, I begin to find so much that 
 is evil in that which the world calls good, and so much 
 that is good in what the world calls evil, that I refuse 
 to draw a distinction where God has not." Then he 
 fired a double-barrelled volley at society through his 
 nose, and throwing out volume after volume of smoke 
 as a sort of redoubt between himself and the world he 
 hated, drifted silently into a tropical, golden land of 
 dreams. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE LAST OP THE GOPHER. 
 
 OOR old Gopher ! His was another story. 
 He died first, before Baboon found his for- 
 tune, else they might have set up together, 
 and behind their bulldogs and grizzlies 
 growled at the world a day or two with 
 perfect satisfaction. But fate said otherwise. 
 
 The Gopher had always been misunderstood, even 
 from the first. If the camp held him at arm's length in 
 the old days it shunned him now, when new men came 
 in, and murder began to be a word with a terrible 
 meaning, and even the good Widow forgot him. 
 
 The camp went down, and cabins were deserted by 
 hundreds. But there was one cabin that was never 
 vacant ; it stood apart from town, on the brown hill-side, 
 and as it was one of the first, so it promised to be the 
 last of the camp. It always had an ugly bulldog tied 
 to the door, and was itself a low, suspicious-looking 
 structure that year by year sank lower as the grass grew 
 taller around it, till it seemed trying to hide in the 
 chaparral. It had but one occupant, a silent, selfish 
 man, who never came out by day except to bury himself 
 alone in his claim at work. Nothing was known of him 
 at all, save the story that he had killed his partner in a 
 
134 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 gambling-house away back somewhere in '51. He was 
 shunned and feared by all, and he approached and spoke 
 to no one except the butcher, the grocer, and express- 
 man ; and to these only briefly, on business. I believe, 
 however, that the old outcast, Baboon, sometimes sat on 
 the bank and talked to the murderer at work in his claim. 
 It was even said that Baboon was on fair terms with the 
 dog at the door. 
 
 This solitary man of the savage dog was known as 
 "The Gopher." That was not the name given him by 
 his parents, but it was the name the camp had given 
 him a generation before, and it was now the only name 
 by which he was known. The amount of gold which he 
 had hoarded and hidden away in that dismal old cabin, 
 through years and years of incessant toil, was computed 
 to be enormous. 
 
 Year after year the grass stole farther down from the 
 hill-tops to which it had been driven, as it were, in the 
 early settlement of the camp ; at last it environed the 
 few remaining cabins, as if they were besieged, and it 
 stood up tall and undisturbed in the only remaining 
 street. Still regularly three times a day the smoke curled 
 up from the Gopher's cabin, and the bulldog kept un- 
 broken sentry at the door. 
 
 A quartz lead had been struck a little way farther up 
 the gulch, and a rival town established. The proprietors 
 named the new camp " Orodelphi," but the man of the 
 Howling "Wilderness saloon, who always insisted he was 
 born a genius, called it " Hogem." It stuck like wax, 
 and " Hogem " is the only name by which the little town 
 is known to this day. 
 
 One evening there was consternation among the idlers 
 of the first camp. It was announced that the last saloon 
 was to be removed to Hogem. A remonstrance was talked 
 of; but when the Judge urged that the calamity was not 
 so great after all, since each man could easily trans- 
 port his blankets and frying-pan to the vacant cabins of 
 Hogem, no more was said. 
 
The last of the Gopher. 135 
 
 The next winter the Gopher was left utterly alone, 
 and in the January spring that followed, the grass and 
 clover crept down strong and thick from the hills, and 
 spread in a pretty carpet across the unmeasured streets 
 of the once populous and prosperous camp. Little gray 
 horned toads sunned themselves on the great flat rocks 
 that had served for hearth-stones, and the wild hop- 
 vines clambered up and across the toppling and shape- 
 less chimneys. 
 
 About this time a closely-contested election drew near. 
 It was a bold and original thought of a candidate to ap- 
 proach the Gopher and solicit his vote. His friends 
 shook their heads, but his case was desperate, and he 
 ventured down upon the old gray cabin hiding in the 
 grass and chaparral. The dog protested, and the office- 
 seeker was proceeding to knock his ugly teeth down his 
 throat with a pick-handle, when the door opened, and 
 he found the muzzle of a double-barrelled shot-gun in 
 his face. The candidate did not stay to urge his claims, 
 and the Gopher's politics remained a mystery. 
 
 One dark night two men of questionable character 
 were found in the trail, trying to drag themselves to 
 Hogem. They were riddled with shot like a torn-iron. 
 They had been prospecting around for the Gopher's gold, 
 and had received their "baptism of fire" in attempting 
 to descend his chimney. 
 
 Here in this land of the sun the days trench deep 
 into the nights of northern countries, and birds and 
 beasts retire before the sunset : a habit which the trans- 
 planted Saxon declines to adopt. 
 
 Some idlers sat at sunset on the verandah of the 
 saloon at Hogem, looking down the gulch as the man- 
 zanita smoke curled up from the Gopher's cabin. 
 
 There is an hour when the best that is in man comes 
 to the surface ; sometimes the outcroppings are not pro- 
 mising of any great inner wealth ; but the indications, 
 whatever they may be, are not false. It is dulse and 
 
136 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 drift coining to the surface when the storm of the day 
 is over. Yet the best thoughts are never uttered : often 
 because no fit words are found to array them in ; oftener 
 because no fit ear is found to receive them. 
 
 How lonesome it looked, that little storm-stained 
 cabin thus alone, stooping down, hiding away in the 
 long strong grass, as if half-ashamed of the mournful 
 history of its sad and lonely occupant. 
 
 A sailor broke silence: "Looks like a Feejee camp 
 on a South Sea ^sland." 
 
 " Robinson Crusoe the last man of the original camp 
 the last rose of summer." This was said by a young 
 man who had sent some verses to the Hangtown Weekly. 
 
 " Looks to me, in its crow's nest of chaparral, like 
 the lucky ace of spades," added a man who sat apart 
 contemplating the wax under the nail of his right fore- 
 finger. 
 
 The schoolmaster here picked up the ace of hearts, 
 drew out his pencil and figured rapidly. 
 
 " There !" he cried, flourishing the card, " I put it an 
 ounce a day for eighteen years, and that is the result." 
 The figures astonished them all. It was decided that 
 the old miser had at least a mule-load of gold in his 
 cabin. 
 
 " It is my opinion," said the new Squire, who was 
 small of stature, and consequently insolent and imper- 
 tinent, " he had ought to be taken up, tried, and hung 
 for killing his partner in '51." 
 
 " The time has run out," said the Coroner, who now 
 came up, adjusting a tall hat to which he was evidently 
 not accustomed ; " the time for such cases by the law 
 made and provided has run out, and it is my opinion it 
 can't be did." 
 
 Not long after this it was discovered that the Gopher 
 was not at work. Then it came out that he was very 
 ill, and that Old Baboon was seen to enter his cabin. 
 
 Early one frosty morning in the fall following, Old 
 
The last of the Gopher. 137 
 
 Baboon sat by the door of the only saloon at Hogem. 
 He held an old bull- dog by a tow-string, and both man 
 and dog were pictures of distress as they shivered from 
 the keen cold wind that came pitching down from the 
 snow-peaks. As a man approached, the man shivered 
 till his teeth chattered, and clutching at the string, 
 looked helplessly over his shoulder at the uncom- 
 promising bar-keeper, who had just arisen and opened 
 the door to let out the bad odours of his den. The dog 
 shivered too, and came up and sat down close enough 
 to receive the sympathetic hand of Old Baboon on his 
 broad bowed head. This man was a relic and a wreck. 
 Nearly twenty years of miner's life and labour in the 
 mountains, interrupted of late only by periodical sprees 
 governed in their duration solely by the results of his 
 last " clean up " had made him one of a type of men 
 known only to the Pacific. 
 
 True, he had failed to negotiate with the savage cin- 
 namon-headed vendor of poison ; but he was no beggar. 
 It was simply a failure to obtain a Wall Street accommo- 
 dation in a small way. I doubt if the bristle-haired 
 barkeeper himself questioned the honesty of Baboon. 
 It was merely a question of ability to pay, and the de- 
 cision of the autocrat had been promptly and firmly 
 given against the applicant. Perhaps, in strict justice 
 to the red-haired wretch that washed his tumblers and 
 watched for victims that frosty morning, I should state 
 that appearances were certainly against Baboon. You 
 can with tolerable certainty, in the placer mines, tell 
 how a miner's claim is paying by the condition and 
 quality of his top-boots. Baboon had no boots, only a 
 pair of slippers improvised from " what had been," and 
 between the top of these and the legs of his pantaloons 
 there was no compromise across the naked, cold-blue 
 ankles. These signs, together with a buttonless blue 
 shirt that showed his hairy bosom, a frightful beard 
 and hair beneath a hat that drooped like a wilted 
 
138 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 palm-leaf, were the circumstantial evidences from which 
 Judge Barkeep made his decision. 
 
 It would perhaps be more pleasant for us all if we 
 could know that such men were a race to themselves ; 
 that they never saw civilisation ; that there never was 
 a time when they were petted by pretty sisters, and sat, 
 pure and strong, the central figures of Christian house- 
 holds ; or at least we would like to think that they grew 
 upon the border, and belonged there. But the truth is, 
 nine cases out of ten, they came of the gentlest blood 
 and life. The border man, born and bred in storms, 
 never gets discouraged ; it is the man of culture, refine- 
 ment, and sensitive nature who falls from the front in 
 the hard-fought battles of the West. 
 
 This man's brow was broad and full ; had his beard and 
 hair been combed and cared for, his head had looked 
 a very picture. But, after all, there was one weak 
 point in his face. He had a small, hesitating nose. 
 
 As a rule, in any great struggle involving any degree 
 of strategy and strength, the small nose must go to the 
 wall. It may have pluck, spirit, refinement, sensitive- 
 ness, and, in fact, to the casual observer, every quality 
 requisite to success ; but somehow invariably at the 
 very crisis it gives way. Small noses are a failure. 
 This is the verdict of history. Give me a man, or 
 woman either, with a big nose, not a nose of flesh, not 
 a loose flabby nose like a camel's lips, nor a thin, starved 
 nose that the eyes have crowded out and forced into 
 prominence, but a full, strong, substantial nose, that is 
 willing and able to take the lead; one that asserts it- 
 self boldly between the eyes, and reaches up towards 
 the brows, and has room enough to sit down there and 
 be at home. Give me a man, or woman either, with a 
 nose like that, and I will have a nose that will accom- 
 plish something. I grant you that such a nose may be 
 a knave ; it may be equally a genius ; but it is never 
 a coward nor a fool never ! 
 
The last of the Gopher. 139 
 
 In the strong stream of miners' life as it was, no man 
 could stand still. He either went up or down. The 
 strong and not always the best went up. The weak 
 which often embraced the gentlest and sweetest natures 
 were borne down and stranded here and there all 
 along the river. 
 
 .1 have noticed that those who stop, stand, and look 
 longest at the tempting display of viands in cook-shop 
 windows, are those that have not a penny to purchase 
 with. Perhaps there was something of this nature in 
 Old Baboon that impelled him to look again and again 
 over his shoulder as he clutched tighter to the tow- 
 string at the cinnamon-headed bottle-washer behind 
 the bar at Hogem. 
 
 As the stranger stood before this man, he turned his 
 eyes from the barkeeper and lifted them helplessly to 
 his. 
 
 " Charlie is dead." 
 
 " Charlie who ? Who is Charlie ' ? " 
 
 " Charlie Godfrey, The Gopher, and here is his dog ; " 
 and as he spoke, the dog, as if knowing his master's 
 name and feeling his loss, crouched close to the old 
 man's legs. 
 
 A new commotion in Hogem. Say what you will 
 of gold, whenever any one shuts his eyes and turns 
 for ever from it, as if in contempt, his name, for a day 
 at least, assumes a majesty proportionate with the 
 amount he has left behind and seems to despise. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 A FUNEEAL. 
 
 HE Coroner, who was a candidate for a 
 higher office, marshalled the leading spi- 
 rits at Hogem and proceeded to the cabin 
 where the dead man lay. He felt that his 
 reputation was at stake, and entering the 
 cabin, said in a solemn voice : "In the name of the law, 
 I take possession of this primesis." Some one at the 
 door, evidently not a friend to the Coroner's political 
 aspirations, called out : " O what a hat ! " The officer 
 was not abashed, but towered up till his tall hat touched 
 the roof, and repeated, " In the name of the law, I take 
 possession of this primesis." This time there was no 
 response or note of derision, and it was quietly con- 
 ceded that The Gopher and all his gold were in the 
 hands of the Coroner. 
 
 The cabin was a true and perfect relic of what might, 
 geologically speaking, be termed a period in the plastic 
 formation of the Republic. Great pine logs, one above 
 the other, formed three of its walls; the fourth was 
 made up by a fire-place, constructed of boulders and 
 adobe. The bed had but one post ; a pine slab, sup- 
 ported by legs set in the centre of the earthen floor, 
 formed a table ; the windows were holes, chiselled out 
 
A Funeral. 141 
 
 between the logs, that could be closed with wooden 
 plugs in darkness or danger. Let these cabins not be 
 despised. Their builders have done more for the com- 
 merce of the world than is supposed. Some day some 
 cunning and earnest hand will picture them faithfully, 
 and they will not be forgotten. 
 
 It is to be admitted that the dead man did not look 
 so terrible, even in death, as the mind had pictured him. 
 His unclosed eyes looked straight at those who came 
 only to reproach him, and wonder where his money was 
 buried, till they were abashed. 
 
 Standing there, the jury, under direction of the 
 Coroner, gave a verdict of "death from general debility." 
 Some one tried to bring the Coroner into contempt 
 again, by afterwards calling attention to the fact that 
 he had forgotten to swear the jury ; but the officer 
 replied, "It is not necessary in such cases by the law 
 made and provided," and so was counted wise and 
 correct. 
 
 They bore the body of the last man in this camp to 
 the graveyard on the hill may be a little nearer to 
 heaven. How odd, that nearly all graveyards are on 
 a hill. The places of chief mourners were assigned to 
 Baboon and the dog. Whether these places were given 
 because Baboon was the only present acquaintance of 
 the deceased, or whether the dog quietly asserted a 
 right that no one cared to dispute, is not certain. Most 
 likely it was one of those things that naturally, and 
 therefore correctly, adjust themselves. 
 
 When these bearded men in blue shirts rested their 
 burden at the open grave, they looked at each other, 
 and there was an unpleasant pause. Perhaps they 
 thought of the Christian burial-service in other lands, 
 and felt that something was wanting. At last Baboon 
 stole up close to the head of the grave, hesitated, lifted 
 and laid aside his old slouch hat, and looking straight 
 down into the earth, said, in a low and helpless way : 
 
142 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 " Earth to earth and dust to dust ! " hesitated again 
 and then continued : " The mustard and the clover seed 
 are but little things, and no man can tell the one from 
 the other ; yet bury them in the uttermost parts of the 
 earth, and each will bring its kind perfect and beau- 
 tiful, and and man is surely more than a little 
 seed and and;" here he broke down utterly, and 
 knelt and kissed the face of the dead. 
 
 The men looked away for a while, as if to objects in 
 the heavens, and then, without looking at each other, 
 or breaking silence, lowered the unshapely box, caught 
 up the spades, and found a positive relief in heaping 
 the grave. 
 
 Then the Coroner, as in duty bound, or, as he ex- 
 pressed it, " as required by the law in such cases made 
 and provided," directed his attentions to a search for 
 the buried treasure. 
 
 Yeast-powder boxes, oyster-cans, and sardine-boxes, 
 old boots and quicksilver tanks, were carried out to 
 the light and inspected, without results. " In the 
 straw of the bunk," said the Coroner ; and blankets, 
 bunk, and straw were carried out to the sun ; but not 
 an ounce of gold. To make sure against intrusion of 
 the ill-disposed, the unwearied Coroner slept on the spot. 
 The next day the hearth was taken up carefully, piece 
 by piece, but only crickets clad in black, arid little pink- 
 eyed mice met the eager eyes of the men. At last some 
 one suggested that as the hard-baked earthen floor was 
 the last place in which one would look for hidden trea- 
 sures, that was probably the first and only place in which 
 the Gopher had buried his gold. The thought made 
 the Coroner enthusiastic. He sent for picks, and, if we 
 must tell the truth, and the whole truth, he sent for 
 whisky also. By sunset the entire earthen floor had 
 been dug to the depth of many feet, and emptied outside 
 the door. Not a farthing's-worth of gold was found. 
 The next day the chimney was taken down. Lizards, 
 
A Funeral. 143 
 
 dust of adobes, but nothing more. About this time, the 
 memory of the man just taken to the hill was held in but 
 little respect, and a good or bad name, so far as the over- 
 zealous Coroner was concerned, depended entirely on the 
 final results of the search. But one more .thing remained 
 to be done : that was, to remove the cabin. Shingle by 
 shingle, log by log, the structure was levelled. Wood- 
 rats, kangaroo-mice, horned toads, a rattlesnake or two 
 that had gone into winter- quarters under the great logs, 
 and thafc was all. Not an ounce of gold was found in 
 the last cabin of the Missouri camp. 
 
 The flat was then staked off as mining-ground by some 
 enterprising strangers, and they began in the centre 
 to sluice it to the bed-rock. They sluiced up the gulch 
 for a month, and then down the gulch for a month, until 
 the whole hill-side was scalped, as it were, to the bone, 
 and the treasure-hunters were bankrupt, but not 
 even so much as the colour of the dead man's gold 
 was found. 
 
 Hogem was disgusted, and the Gopher was voted a 
 worse man dead than living. 
 
 It began to be noticed, however, that Baboon had 
 mended somewhat in his personal appearance since the 
 death of the Gopher, and it was whispered that he knew 
 where the treasure was. Some even went so far as to 
 say that he had the whole pile of it in his possession. 
 " Some of these nights he'll come up a-missing," said the 
 butcher, striking savagely at his steel across his block. 
 In justice to Hogem it must be observed she was not 
 without grounds to go upon in her suspicions. For was 
 not Baboon near the man at his death ? And if he could 
 get his dog, why not get his gold also ? 
 
 One night Baboon, holding tight to a tow-string, 
 shuffled up to the stranger in the Saloon, and timidly 
 plucking his sleeve, said : 
 
 " Going away, I hear ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
144 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 "To the States?' 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "To Missouri?" 
 
 "Maybe." 
 
 "Well, then, look here: come with me !" and with 
 an old dog bumping his head against his heels, he led 
 the way out the door down the gulch to the cabin. He 
 pulled the latch-string, entered, and finally struck a light. 
 Sticking the candle in a whisky-bottle that stood on a 
 greasy table in the centre of the earthen floor, he picked 
 up the tow-string, and pointing to the bunk in the corner, 
 they sat down together, and the old dog rested his nose 
 between the old man's legs. 
 
 After looking about the cabin in nervous silence for 
 a time, Baboon arose with a look of resolution, handed 
 the man his string, stepped to a niche in the wall, and 
 taking an old crevicing-knife, struck it in stoutly above 
 the latch. 
 
 "This means something," said the man to himself; 
 " here will be a revelation," and a vision of the Gopher's 
 gold-bags crossed his mind with tempting vividness. 
 After a while the old man came back, took up the whisky- 
 bottle, removed the candle from its neck, and holding 
 it up between his face and the light, which he held in 
 the other hand, seemed to decide some weighty propo- 
 sition by the run of the beads in the bottle, and then 
 turned and offered it in silence. As the stranger declined 
 his kindness, he hurriedly took a long draught, replaced 
 the candle, then came and sat down close at his side, 
 took his string, and the old dog again thrust his nose 
 between his knees. 
 
 " You see," and the man leaned over to the other, 
 and began in a whisper and strangeness of manner that 
 suggested that his mind was wandering, "you see, we 
 all come out here together : Godfrey, that's the Gopher, 
 Wilson, that's Curly, and I. Things didn't go right 
 with me there, after I came away, so I just let them drift 
 
A Funeral. 145 
 
 here. Lost my 'grip,' as they say, didn't havea ny 'snap ' 
 any more, as people call it. Godfrey and Wilson got on 
 very well, though, till Wilson was killed." 
 
 " Till the Gopher killed him ?" 
 
 " Well, now, there's where it is," said Old Baboon, and 
 he shuddered. The dog, too, seemed to grow nervous, 
 and crowded his ugly head up tighter between the old 
 man's legs. 
 
 " There's where it is. Godfrey did not kill Wilson. 
 The Gopher did not kill Curly no more than did you. 
 You see, Curly was young, a bright, beautiful, sunny- 
 faced boy, that had been petted to death by his mother 
 and a house-full of sisters, and somehow, out here, he fell 
 to gambling and taking a bit too much, and one night, 
 when Godfrey tried to get him away from a game, a set 
 of roughs got up a row, upset the table, and Curly got 
 knifed by some one of the set, who made a rumpus to 
 get a grab at the money. Godfrey was holding the boy 
 at the time to keep him from striking, for he was mad 
 drunk. Poor Curly only said, * Don't let them know it 
 at home,' and died in his arms. Everybody was stranger 
 to everybody then, and no one took stock in that which 
 did not concern him. People said Godfrey was right 
 that it was a case of self-defence, and Godfrey never said 
 a word, never denied he killed him, but went back to the 
 cabin, took possession of everything, and had it all his 
 own way. He worked like a Chinaman, and never took 
 any part in miners' meetings, or any thing of the kind, 
 and people began to fear and shun him. By-and-by all 
 his old acquaintances had gone but me ; and he was only 
 known as the Gopher." 
 
 Again Baboon paused, and the dog crept closer than 
 before, as if he knew the name of his master. 
 
 Once more the man arose, lifted the candle, contem- 
 plated the beads in the bottle, as before, and returned. 
 He did not sit down, but took up and pulled back the 
 blankets at the end of the bunk. 
 
146 First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 "I thought as much," said the stranger to himself. 
 " The gold is hidden in the straw." 
 
 " Look at them," said he ; and he threw down a bundle 
 of papers, and held down the dim candle. 
 
 There were hundreds of letters, all written in a fine 
 steel-plate lady's hand. Some addressed to Godfrey, 
 and some to Wilson. Now and then was one with a 
 border of black, telling that some one at home no 
 longer waited the return. " Come home, come home," 
 was at the bottom of them all. One addressed to 
 Wilson, of a recent date, thanked him with all a 
 mother's and sister's tenderness for the money he had 
 so constantly sent them through all the weary years. 
 
 "That was it, you see; that was it. As Godfrey, 
 that's the Gopher, is dead, and can send them no more 
 money, and as you was a going to the States-, I thought 
 best that you should drop in and tell the two families 
 gently, somehow, that they both are dead. Say that 
 they died together. He sent them the last ounce he 
 had the week before he died, and made me take these 
 letters to keep them away from the Coroner, so that he 
 might not know his address, and So that they might not 
 know at home that Curly had died long ago, and died a 
 gambler. Take one of the letters along, and that will 
 tell you where they are." 
 
 Again Old Baboon resumed the tow-string. He looked 
 toward the door, and when the man had stepped across 
 the sill he put out the light, and the two stood together. 
 
 The old dog knew there was but the one place for his 
 master outside his cabin at such a time, and, blind 
 leading the blind, thither he led him through the dark 
 to the Saloon. And that was the end of the Gopher. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE HON. MR. SANDY. 
 
 OW much your children look like their 
 father ! " That is what everybody, poli- 
 ticians particularly, say to the good little 
 Widow when they call, or sit down, or 
 swing in the hammock on the verandah. 
 They say this because in the first place it pleases the 
 Widow beyond all things, and secondly which, how- 
 ever, is not much of a reason as the world runs now 
 because it is the truth. 
 
 As for fortune, Sandy has it. His herds are on a 
 thousand hills. Politically and socially he is a power 
 in the land. If he is not happy it is entirely his own 
 fault. But he is. And as good as he is happy. He is 
 perhaps the only man who is on first-rate terms with 
 the two grizzlies that prowl around loose and wallow in 
 the garden of Old Baboon. 
 
 When a member of the legislature was required from 
 Northern California, and he signified his intention of 
 running, not a voice was raised against him. There was 
 not even so much as an opposition candidate in the field. 
 And this could not be set down to fear. It is true that 
 the idlers about the saloons and some others had great 
 regard for their lives chiefly, perhaps, because they 
 
148 'First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 were utterly worthless and no one else had ; but the 
 true men of the Sierras, as they then lived, did not, as 
 a rule, know the meaning of fear. 
 
 But the reason of this was not that the opposition, 
 which was entirely made up of strangers, or "immi- 
 grants" as they were called, men from the East, "idecated 
 men," loved Sandy at all, they only feared him, and 
 gave him the road as they would have given the road to 
 a grizzly bear. They did not know the man at all. 
 
 One man said he wanted him to go to the legislature, 
 in the hope that he would " clean out " the "law shop " 
 at Sacramento, and let the men there go to work like 
 honest miners. 
 
 "He'll keep his seat there," said Hunkey, as he 
 crammed his tobacco-plug back in his pocket, " about 
 sixty minutes, when some fellow from Los Angeles will 
 bldw him to kingdom come with a Derringer." 
 
 The plan did not succeed. While at the capital it 
 seems he was always respectfully alluded to as " the 
 member from Shasta," and got on very well, without 
 any disturbance whatever through the whole term. 
 
 One fine day in early summer, to the utter conster- 
 nation of the opposition, Sandy gaily walked down the 
 rocky, winding, narrow, corkscrew trail, dismounted, 
 and took his usual place in the Howling Wilderness 
 Saloon. 
 
 The early members of the California legislature will 
 remember the singular movement of the Gothic, massive 
 figure. It was not unlike that of a slow, jerky engine ; 
 stupid, indolent, indifferent, conscious of suppressed 
 strength. 
 
 He figures in early annals of state legislature only as 
 the author of what was popularly known as the " Ram 
 Bill" a bill to provide for the improvement of the 
 breed of sheep in California. It cannot well be urged 
 that there was anything selfish or sectional in this 
 bill, since there was not even so much as a pet lamb 
 
The Hon. Mr. Sandy. 149 
 
 in all the wide range of country represented by our 
 legislator. 
 
 The beard of the lawmaker had, on his return to the 
 mines, something of a modern cut, and his shirt was 
 buttoned up genteelly to the throat. But the beard 
 grew long and bushy again, the shirt-bosom burst open 
 again as naturally as the shell of a locust, and in a little 
 while he came to be the same ferocious man in appear- 
 ance that he was before he went to the capital. 
 
 And whither went the Parson that cold blustering 
 morning ? He set his face against the snow and started 
 out alone up the corkscrew trail to try to reach, no one 
 knew where. Or did he try to reach any place at all ? 
 Did he not take this course so that he might leave the 
 mind of the woman he had loved, free and careless of 
 his fate ? 
 
 Sandy had promised and so he had led his new wife 
 to the Parsonage and taken possession as he had agreed. 
 But rough as he was he often wished he had not done 
 so. He could see the hand of his great rival the Parson 
 in all things around him. Sometimes he almost fancied 
 he could see his face, mournful, sad, looking in out of 
 the storm of that fearful morning. 
 
 His wife was the sun and moon and the particular 
 star of the camp ; and the Parson was for a time almost 
 forgotten, save by the two people at the Parsonage. 
 Often Sandy sought him, up and down the creek, but 
 he was not to be found. He had evidently left the 
 camp. 
 
 After a month or two the talk became more general 
 and respectful about the Parson. 
 
 It was with a little surprise that the Forks discovered 
 one evening, while discussing his merits and recounting 
 his achievements, that he had never really killed a man 
 during all his stay in the camp. How a man could 
 have maintained the reputation for courage that this 
 man had, and have held the influence over men that he 
 
150 ' First Families in the Sierras. 
 
 did, without having killed a single man, seemed to the 
 Forks unaccountable. Still they spoke of this man 
 with kindness and almost with gentleness, and missed 
 him through all the long, weary winter more than they 
 were willing to admit. 
 
 Spring came at last; but not the Parson. The 
 summer passed; but the Parson still refused to appear. 
 Years passed, but still no Parson. 
 
 Early one autumn some prospectors pushed far up the 
 Fork running parallel with the trail leading out of 
 camp; and there, in the leaves, they found a skull. 
 There was a hole in the temple, and the marks of sharp 
 teeth on the smooth white surface. They also found a 
 few other bones, badly eaten by wolves, and a small 
 silver-mounted pistol. 
 
 The party came down to the Forks one night, where 
 Sandy and his friends were enjoying themselves at the 
 Hogem Saloon. 
 
 The leader told what they had found, and laid the 
 pistol on the counter. 
 
 It was one of the Parson's little " bull-pups.' ' 
 
 The pistol was empty. Sandy touched it tenderly, 
 almost reverently. 
 
 . The boys stood in line at the bar. The glasses were 
 filled in silence. 
 
 Then Sandy pushed baok his black slouched hat, 
 pulled it from his head, and laid it on the counter. 
 
 " Boys," he began, as he stood on one leg, leaning 
 against the counter, and looking sadly down into the 
 tumbler. " Boys, here's to here's to the " 
 
 He looked down, and began again. 
 
 " Boys, he was deep, deep down to the bed-rock, boys ; 
 bat the pay grit was there pure, pure gold. " 
 
 The strong men drank, and wiped their beards and 
 eyes with their sleeves, as they turned away. Sandy 
 did not touch the glass to his lips ; but his brown face 
 and beard were wet somehow, as he took up his hat 
 
The Hon. Mr. Sandy. 151 
 
 and went to the door. He looked up the hill, along 
 the rocky trail ; then, brushing his eyes with his hands 
 went slowly and sadly back to the cottage in the trees, 
 to tell the sad news to his " fam'ly." 
 
 One final word of the once fair, timid, and genteel 
 boy, Deboon, with whom this story opens, and we de- 
 scend from the Sierras. Buffeted, beaten down, and 
 blown about, still he lingered about his old haunts in 
 the Forks. 
 
 At last, the broken old man, who was now known as 
 Old Baboon, because he was so ugly, and twisted, and 
 bent, and crooked, when he had no home, no mine, no 
 money, nothing at all, and did not want anything at all 
 but a grave, stumbled on to a mine that made him 
 almost a prince in fortune. Still he would not leave the 
 Sierras. He settled there. Here is an extract from a 
 letter in which he invites a distinguished Yankee phil- 
 anthropist to come to him and make his house his home. 
 After describing the house and lands, he says : 
 
 " The house stands in this wood of pine. We have 
 two California grizzlies, and a pair of bulldogs. Sandy 
 keeps the dogs chained, but I let the grizzlies go free. 
 We are not troubled with visitors." 
 
 THE END. 
 
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