GIFT OF m m THE LAND OF PURPLE SHADOWS To the courtesy of the editors of "Sports Afield," "Munsey s," "The Land of Sunshine, * "The San Francisco Call," "The Chicago Record- Herald," and " The Los Angeles Times" in which publications some of these sketches have already seen print is due their reappearance in more permanent form. "Chasms where the sun comes late, and leaves while yet it is early afternoon. "-Page 2. The Land of Purple Shadows Idah Meacham Strobridge THE ARTEMISIA BINDERY Los Angeles MCMIX Copyright, 1909, by Moh Meacham Strobridge Of this autographed edition of "The Land of Purple Shadows," one thousand copies were made; this one being 283075 To YOU Who were born in the West-who live in the West-who love the West. FOREWORD At various times in various places ; in many moods, and in different mediums, are the studies and sketches made, which the painter brings back to his studio after his working-vacation is over. Mere suggestions and rough outlines are they the first impressions of what he saw; what he felt; what he lived. Not for the galleries did he make them, nor for the critics, nor the careless. But the portfolio is opened to those who will understand; those who in the incomplete sketch, the half-finished study see The Truth. Even as the painter shows you such, so, too, are put before you these studies of the West this land of golden sunlight and purple shadows. IN QUIET CANONS. F YOU are a mountain lover, and live here in Sunset-Land, you count the clefts and chasms of the Coast Range and the Sierras, as among old friends such friends as one well loves, and loves long. They are dark and beautiful with pine, and tama rack, and fir ; but far back from the sea, on the eastern slopes, are some which do not have the rich blue-green coloring. What of these, and other canons that lie in purple mountains far to the eastward, where gray foothills go down to meet the leprous white of the great plains? Do you know these quiet canons; or, are they only strangers to you? Yet they are ours, even as the others are. Not to the desert States only must you go to find them. Nor is it in canons teeming with active life, where mills are grinding ores all day all night amid the deafening roar of tireless machinery; nor where the houses hang like swallows nests against the canon s terraced sides, and men and mines fill the busy day with noisy work, that one feels the complete fascina tion of these Western mountains. Not where human life and human interests are found; but in the little known, passed by and forgotten canons of the States that lie west and away from the Missouri s flood, and The Land of Purple Shadows In Qiriet Canons east of the Sierra s eternal battlements, where they lift above the line of pine-tree, and tamarack, and fir. The mountains are furrowed and gashed by ravine and gorge chasms where the sun comes late and leaves while yet it is early afternoon. And their sides are hollowed, too, into sunny hiding places of repose and calm for those who love the heights. Here, in these quiet canons, one goes hand in hand with Nature in all her charm of waywardness when unrestrained by meddling man. In Spring-time they are fair to look upon, as all things are fair which are fresh and sweet with budding youth; but it is in the Autumn, when they take on all the gorgeousness of changing leaf and vine, when every shade of the colors of fire and blood is seen, that one finds them in their fullest beauty and at their best. Some there are, it is true, that are bare of that luxuriance of color in which the others revel; and you may turn your horse s head up one of these, upon some Autumn day of mountain climbing, and only find scattered clumps of buck-brush and willow growing in a hollow between two hills. Beneath them are hidden springs springs which have no water to spare now to turn a rivulet loose that it may dance and sparkle down the way to meet you, but which keep the sparce shade green throughout the hot Summer, and the roots moist and growing. Grass grows here a patch of wild rye, browned now by the suns of the long Summer. Rabbit-brush is everywhere; the nettles and hoarhound are brown and dead. White butterflies are fluttering above weeds that are a-bloom with blossoms of gold. How still the world is! The only sounds are your horse s hoof -falls, his labored breathing as he climbs the heights through the rarefied air, and the creaking of your saddle-leathers. The Land of Purple Shadows You startle a mountain quail into flight, catching but a flash of her red-brown wing as she sweeps across your sight. The thistles and Mariposa lilies, which earlier in the year grew white and purple up and down the canon s length, have dry seed-pods now. You turn your bridle-rein across your horse s neck to guide him over the ridge into the next ravine, and as he begins the steeper ascent your fingers twist themselves into his mane, to aid you in keeping your place in the saddle. Higher and higher you climb. Up, and still up, at last to reach the dividing ridge, where you can give your sweating horse a breathing spell. As he stands panting and trembling there, your eyes go up to the summit s rugged peaks that with all your climbing seem as far away as ever. How grandly beautiful they are! How pure and restful the mountain tops seem, capped with their eternal snows! How far, and how fair! How you long to climb till you reach their inviting peace and quiet, to be there alone in the awful still ness of those heights where God speaks to one through the silence. But it is too far for you to climb today; the sun is slanting to the west. You descend into the canon beneath you, into a gorge so deep that the sun s rays only find its granite-gravelled floor at mid-day. There you come across a min.dfl.Tn, resting from its useful work of years gone by. The waters overflow its stony rim in a series of trickling, creamy little rills, and falling on the boulders down below come tumbling down in a thousand fantastic forms of glittering, sparkling spray. The water drips from the neglected flume that a dozen years ago gave power to a mill a mile or two further down the canon, where it stands through the changing seasons, silent and at rest. In Quiet Canons The Land of Purple Shadows In Quiet Canons The creek is bordered with rose-thickets, and thickets of wild plum. It is walled with tall cliffs that in the early afternoon begin to throw long, pur ple-black shadows across the canon to rest upon the sheer walls of other cliffs that face them. The coral-red upon that bush which catches on your clothing as you ride by is the seed-buds of wild sweet- brier which, earlier in the year, made the creek banks lovely with a mass of pink and fragrant bloom. Rose bushes, and the bushes of the wild gooseberry, are turning red and yellow as New England s Autumn woods. A pair of turtle doves are busily picking at some tall, brown weeds which rattle as you pass. The doves, from the higher ground where they have flown, are darting their pretty heads back and forth in fright at the unwonted presence of man. Oh, the charm of these Western canons! But, some day, you may come across others burned bare of all their beauty; canons which lie between high and rolling hills, and where there are neither cliffs nor chasms. Fire has swept out every tree and shrub to make a pathway through the tangle of brier bushes that have plucked at the fleece of the passing flocks which graze on these mountains in summer. The canon is burned and bare. Your horse s hoofs beat up the dust in blackened puffs of burned brush; and in the air is a smell of charred wood at which your nostrils revolt, while your eyes rove in pity over the desecrated spot. Fire and flame have here de stroyed some of the choicest pictures that Nature has hung in the royal art galleries of the West. From the head of the ravine down to its mouth, not one growing thing remains. Though with another year the bunch-grass will spring up for nibbling mouths to munch, now you look only on desolation. The trail The Land of Purple Shadows of the sheepherder is over it all. And where this year you find the burned and blackened earth, the next will show you a spot made white with the countless small, snowy stars of the wild tobacco-plant the deer s daintiest morsel. To burn the brush in one of these canons, is to invite the star-like, blossoming weed to grow. And wherever it grows you may be reasonably sure to find a deer s track in the trails. And the birds! They are everywhere. Go where you will in these canons, the birds are there. Though the trail of fire has passed through here, yet a meadow lark flies away as you approach, and you catch the glint of yellow on his breast. You frighten little Paiute squirrels and a hare by your tread. There are caves in the limestone cliffs where impudent wood- rats build their nests. The cliffs are carved and hewn into arch and archi trave by the elements in the hand of Time. Higher, you see where an avalanche of rocks has fallen and left an arch so wide, so high, that a great patch of the deep blue sky shines through. Three chariots abreast might pass beneath its span at once. You cross half a dozen canons that are but shallow ravines; where no stream flows except early in ithe year. The wash is parching in the sun; but under the willow clumps little springs give forth enough water to quench the thirst of the mountain s birds and beasts that come this way. Cowslips and brookmint are here. Here, too, in the dust of the wild-horse trail which leads down to water, you see the pads of coyote and wild-cat; and near the spring, oozing from ground moist and spongy under the cover of water-cress and weeds, is a track which fresh and sharp-cut in the damp earth tells you that a deer has just been down to drink. Involuntarily you raise your eyes to the In Quiet Canons The Land of Purple Shadows Quiet Canons clump of willows higher on the hillside where the spring is dry. Is he hiding there? Are his soft eyes watching you through the leafy screen of green and silver-gray? You look intently for perhaps a full minute ; but you see nothing. Then your gaze goes to the higher hills up at the sky-line, far, far above. So high they are, they seem to touch the thin crescent moon where it rides the blue depths of the infinite sky like a skeleton ship on the sea. "When the moon is up, deer are feeding." As you repeat to yourself the saying of an old hunter, you feel sure that there is no sleek, dun-coated animal hidden away down in the canon. He is feeding on the heights; and safe, at least, today. But, though you carried a gun across your arm this quiet afternoon, I doubt if you could have it in your heart to disturb the perfect peace of the place and the hour with the startling sound of a rifle shot. How silent it all is! You stop and listen; and you hear the beating of your own heart. Down the canon you ride, and come upon a grove of aspens where there is always a whispering sound going through their shivering leaves, as they stand in the midst of the circling silence. It is not the sough ing of the wind as you have heard it through the trees in a pine forest; but a gossiping, whispering little wind which says things of you not to you as you pass them by. Down the canon you ride, and come to a place all green with wire-grass and moss, still keeping its Sum mer freshness while other things are turning brown. A spring is there. In the wet places, late columbines are growing, and marsh-mallows not yet gone to seed. Yellow evening primroses fading and pink-tinted at the edges hang wilted on their stalks. A hundred yards away, half an acre of wild poppies the thistle- The Land of Purple Shadows poppy of the desert country have tossed their thin white petals to breezes which have carried them afar. You dismount, and slip the bridle from your horse s head that he may drink. Then, when he begins to nibble at the grass growing there, you throw yourself down beside him, and with hat drawn low over your eyes in the hushed solitude, with the afternoon shadows purpling in the canon, you drift into reverie. So, with narrowed eyelids, you fall to studying the tints and tones of these, Nature s etchings and water colors. There are pictures all about you ; pictures to delight the artistic sense which is in each one of us who loves these mountains and their ravines. How their beauty thrills one! How their loveliness enters like wine into the veins to set the blood aglow! Pictures pictures everywhere ! Fine feathery grasses are growing at the base of a great granite boulder where, lying against it, is a dead, bare-of-leaf bush whose skeleton branches show as deli cate as a bit of sea-moss from the coral isles of the Pacific. Across the boulder runs a clinging vine with stems of claret-red. Seams and crevices are touched with gray and brown mosses and lichens. Gnarled, rough-twisted, and devoid of all bark, pearly-tinted and shading into darker tones of gray, part of a dead juniper riven from its parent trunk lies where it fell against the boulder, just as it has lain ever since it came tumbling down into the ravine. When? How long ago? Who shall say? Higher, the canon s side is slashed with a deep and rugged cut where once a cloud-burst struck on the crest of the ridge, and the water came plowing a fur row down the mountain, washing away everything in its course. Boulders have been carried along by the force of the flood. In the wake of destruction you In Quiet Canons The Land of Purple Shadows Quiet Canons see that weeds and brushwood were bent downward and half buried in the soil; and there, where a jutting ledge caught them as they came with the freshet, are two uprooted trees. The magpie which flew up from the spring with a hoarse " Cheep!" when you frightened him away, sits tilting backward and forward on a branch of the dead juniper, regarding you with evident suspicion. A chipmunk brown-striped and bonny on the highest point of the granite boulder, is saying "Tst tst tst tst" in a nervous flutter of excitement at your proximity. Lower, on the rock s vertical side, a little glossy black lizard clings motionless; his head turned toward where you are lying. He is ready to dart out of sight if you but move a finger. A big, black-shelled beetle tip-tilted, with its nose to the ground is going back and forth in desperation at the bottom of a deep and dusty hoof -print just beyond the spring. Back and forth, round and round, it goes in a frantic and fruitless endeavor to find a way out of its prison. The moments pass, and you have forgotten to reckon time. Is it an hour you have been here, or only five minutes? Through half -closed eyelids you have been gazing, but they are falling even lower and lower. The air is so soft, so soothing (for you are a bit tired after the hours you have been in the saddle), that you are carried almost to the gates of slumber. Hark! What was that? What made that pebble come rolling down the hillside just over there? Lis ten! ! With bated breath you strain your ars, but you hear nothing. You sit up and look intently at the spot whence came the small rolling stone. There is nothing moving there, that your eyes can detect. From top to bottom of the canon s sloping sides, you see only the gray of granite rocks, and bushes of stunted sage. For a full minute and more alert and The Land of Purple Shadows intent you watch in silence. Then, to yourself, you softly say: "No, there is nothing there. Strange, though, what started that stone rolling down!" Again you lie back, still keeping your eyes, however, on the spot where instinctively you feel there is some thing which is watching you something which notes your every movement, though you can not see it, what ever it may be. Nothing breaks the uniform gray of the long slope. And again you are dominated by the supreme stillness of this quiet canon. For a long time you lie so, and slumber comes creeping back, and almost lays her gentle touch upon your eyelids, when There! What is that? Ah! something is moving there, after all! Something that a moment ago your eyes rested lightly upon, as you glanced along the sagebrush of the hillside; but now you see it is mov ing coming down (oh! so carefully) to the spring. Larger than a barnyard fowl, and not quite twenty feet away, now you see the sage-hen which your searching eyes could not hitherto discover. A dozen times in the past ten minutes you looked directly at her, but you thought it only a bush of gray sage. In her speckled dress, so like the bushes of these hills that she seems to be one of them, she comes cautiously, carefully, slowly down the slope. How slowly she picks her way that her approach may be noiseless! See how carefully she lifts her foot at each step she takes! Observe her head turned sidewise as she cautiously looks in your direction to see if she dare venture for her afternoon drink! See how she avoids coming out into the open places, but directs her course so that there is always a bunch of grass, or a rock, or a bush between you and herself, as she moves toward her goal! She has seen you, you know, but she keeps In Quiet Canons 10 The Land of Purple Shadows Quiet Canons bravely on to the spring. How near she is! You are sure you could hit her with one of the bits of stone at your elbow, were you to try. The hunter s instinct stirs within you; but as you carefully raise yourself on your arm, half tempted to test the accuracy of your aim, there is a whir of wings She has sailed straight away over the ridge, without an instant s warning, and your opportunity is gone. Whir!! Whir!! There go two others! Where did they start from? You saw them not. You did not even guess others were there. You had forgotten how you might stand within three feet of one of these wary sage hens, and lest it move you would pass on without knowing its presence. Only sharp and well- trained eyes may discover these clever, gray-robed birds of the hills. As you spring to your feet, trying to follow their flight with your eyes, a dozen others take wing then two, then a single bird, then half a dozen more and the whole flock of a score sweeps over the ridge into the next ravine, straight as the arrow shot from a bow. All these canons will somewhere show you quartz. Sometimes of little worth; but silver and gold, copper and lead, are in the ledges that crop out everywhere. There are gorges walled with granite and porphyry, and the walls are streaked with ledges of white quartz. Night comes soon in these deep-cleft canons, yet in their depths are creeks where riotous sweet-brier blushes and blooms when the melting snows of the early months of the year feed the streams, filling them bank-full with sparkling, crystalline waters. Riding through these mountains, some day you will come unexpectedly upon the ruins of a long-forgotten town, relic of dead mining days. Adobes and stones which made the walls of the houses more than a quar ter of a century ago, are now crumbling tumbling The Land of Purple Shadows down. All around you are inclines, and tunnels, and shafts; their entrances choked by the slipping, sliding earth which Winter brings down each year to hide the work of those men who put into useless labor, heart and soul, and the best efforts of a long-gone youth. Time is obliterating their work, and little silvery lizards, wearing vermilion collars, hold possession. Here is an old orchard of trees which no longer bear the apples and peaches or the pears and plums that the one who planted in youth s hopeful season saw hang ing on the limbs. Nature is taking back her own ; the canon is returning to its wild tangle of brush and vine. You see that once, in the long ago past, some one planted locust seeds which grew, and had their seasons of blossom and of seedtime, in turn to scatter their own seeds broadcast, and a little grove of locust trees has sprung up in what was once the town s public thoroughfare. The pallid bloom on the dead-ripe fruit of the elders catches your eye as you ride by. Great bunches of berries, that soon will be drying, weigh the boughs down till they rest upon the growth of lower bushes underneath. On the thorny boughs of the wild gooseberry little brown birds are pecking at some of the purple fruit which has withered in the Autumn air. Choke-cherries grow here ; black and shining, though dried, on limbs which bend so low you bow your head as you ride under their shade. Beneath their thick screen it is cool and dark. They grow tall and strong, and at last bar your way. Turning aside, you follow a trail along the hillside to where, ahead, you see an opening in the grove. Down through the elders, and red willows, and quaking asps you go. The leaves are turning; spots of brown and russet shine out from In Quiet Canons 12 The Land of Purple Shadows In Quiet Canons the background of cool, dark green. Orange and pal est yellow, crimson and vermilion are here. And here, in a group, stand a dozen dead trees. Naked of leaf, and bleaching, their white boles and bare boughs show with the delicacy of an etching against the darkness of the shadowed growth beyond. An empty nest an oriole s swings from a barren limb. Higher, are sticks and ragged stems woven together in a crotch of the tree where a hawk has builded. Below the dead grove, is a living one, though the leaves are yellow a sulphur yellow now. The top most boughs of many of the trees are caught together in a tangle of wild ivy. Long shadows slant across the road, and through the waving branches of the cot ton-woods rays of sunshine fall to dance along your path. There comes into your mind a line from a loved author: "Through the shimmering leaves the sun shine drips in weightless showers of gold." Ah, he who wrote the words is one who lives close to the heart of Nature! He writes from an overflowing soul; and you, in reading, are thrilled to your heart s core as it beats in unison with the heart of the world under the influence of his genius. It was such a day as this, you are sure, when he saw the dripping yellow of the sun, and told you of it in words whose memory is a strain of golden melody raining down on you as you ride. Ahead of you a cottontail scurries down the road way. A breeze comes comes up the canon and plays about you ; but so delicate and light a thing is it, noth ing else is stirred by it but the tendrils of hair which grow about your forehead, and which the little wind lifts and lets fall over and over again as if hiding tender, little kisses underneath. Soft as a baby s hand on your face is its touch on your eyelids and your The Land of Purple Shadows 13 cheek. You look about you and find that no other thing is being moved by it; no spear of grass, or leaf of bush or tree is trembling in the silent atmosphere. It is only here by you for you. To you alone are whispered the secrets which your willing ears are lis tening to; on your face only fall the lingering, cling ing caresses. When you ride forward, it goes with you; when you stop made glad by its touch it en circles you as if it were some creature of sentient life. Then, as you ride on down the trail, it goes with you, following you to the end. Presently you hear the roar of water rushing over the rocks down in the gorge. Guided by the sound, your eye finds a succession of laughing, tumbling, rol licking cascades, and leaping, plunging waterfalls. But another roaring comes up the canon, not from the wind or the waters. Up from the valley it comes, bearing to your ears a sound that increasing in volume each moment is like that of the mighty storm- driven winds of the mountain as they sweep down from the snow heights in Winter. Away down so far perhaps half a dozen miles beneath you and away to the plains, a freight-train is creeping along the twin threads of shining steel that are the bands binding the West to the East. You are so close to the civilized world, and yet so remote! How good a thing it seems to be away from the petty meannesses of the daily routine of your life in a bickering, bartering, bullying world of mankind and money-making! When you dismount to examine a seam of quartz running down the face of a porphyry cliff, and before turning away, stand there a moment in the shadow of its great height, with your cheek laid close to its cool surface, you seem to hear it saying to you : "Why go away? Stay, and I will tell you secrets In Quiet Canons 14 The Land of Purple Shadows In Qqiet Canons of what is hidden hundreds of feet down where the quartz seam goes. Do you want to know how it will be in a thousand years? Do you wonder if the delight ful solitude of my canons will still be unbroken, or if in the world s transformation they will have been changed with all else in a world made of changes? Do not go. Be wise, and stay in the mountains. Why go back to the places where men toil and drudge, and moil and slave just for the few short years which they can call their own? How they labor and weep ! How they work and worry! And for what? Stay, let me teach you the lesson of life. Let me show you how to read its teachings aright. Take no heed of that world where busy men fret their days out in trying to solve the problem of how they should live, and ere the lesson is learned return to the dust from whence they came. I am here through all the fretting and fuming of puny man; fire and flood, war and pestilence may come and go, yet I endure impassive immutable eternal. Ah, if you but turn to me to learn how to live a life of perfect calm and peace I would lead you to those places where in the clefts and chasms Nature stands ready to fold round you that shelter and quiet which enwrap one as with a garment." The place and the hour have so strongly influenced your mental being that it is with an effort you now rouse yourself and move on. Even as you ride away from this canon into another you are still musing on the wonderful ways of the wise old world when these mountains lay under glacial ice aeons ago in ages of which we know nothing. Thinking and thinking, the hours slide by without your ken, and the day is almost done. Katydids and crickets fill the late afternoon with their shrilling. Dry grasses in the trail are be ginning to shiver in the evening wind. Daylight has The Land of Purple Shadows 15 vanished so swiftly that darkness encompasses you ere you are aware. From far up in the topmost branches of a half-dead tree comes a sharp noise the sudden snapping of dry twigs. Startled at the sound, your horse springs quickly aside from the trail, and your own heart is set to throbbing violently in your throat. As you chirrup to him to urge him to faster speed, an owl flies forth with slow-flapping wings, disappearing in the gather ing darkness. You raise your eyes aloft and look into the measure less deep of the Heavens. Faint stars are coming in the twilight sky. In Quiet Canons THE QUAIL S CANON. RISTLING with rocky cliffs and deep ravines its face is furrowed and scarred where cloudbursts have warred their way; but all softly beautiful in its blending of violet-blues and shadowy purples as you view it from afar, is this rugged mountain where in the long ago miners and prospectors burrowed its sides full of holes, as the badgers burrow the plains away down below, making their tunnels and inclines and shafts in the quest for silver. For these things of which I tell you, happened in the days when silver, not gold, was the metal men went a-seeking. Ledges were there in every cliff; and in a sunny- canon lying to the west they built their cabins, setting them in two long rows at the sides of the creek that came down in rowdy fashion (making much noise, and taking up much room) after it left the sky-line where it was born under the melting edges of the snow-banks. The mining camp nestled happily between two un even ridges ; and there it grew lustily, and the miners called it a "city," and great things were expected of it. A busy, hopeful little community it was which had gathered there in those old days of honest endeavor and steadfast work ; and all signs pointed (they would The Land of Purple Shadows 17 tell you) to the time that it would become a great silver camp. But all signs fail in dry weather"; and al though it was indeed a dry land, and although there came seasons of unprecedented wet, and snow, and cold, as in other lands, one could not tell if it was in spite of the signs, or because of them, that none of the good things prophesied and hoped-for ever came true. The mountain was a network of ledges, and in them silver was found in abundance. Willing hands were ready to do the work the hands of men who were young and brave and strong as they must be who go to blaze the way through a new country. But a score of unforeseen difficulties leagued against them, and as they saw their chances for success diminish, their num bers decreased they drifted away, one after another, going back to the old homes in the cities from whence they came. First one cabin, then another, became tenantless each owner taking with him all that was possible for him to carry. Down along the home road to the sea, they would find purchasers for all which they had no use for; so windows, and doors, and roofing were taken away, to be sold to other miners in other canons farther toward the West. Lumber was priceless in a land which had neither railways nor water transporta tion. Far away, across a continent, a civil war was rend ing our country, but the meager news which came to the miners in the isolated canon seemed but as a story. Letters and newspapers must journey many a week ere ships, and ponies could bring them to their destina tion. "The world forgetting, and by the world for got," the few who were left there numbered but two score when the Winter of the Great Snow descended on them. Their supplies cached in abandoned tunnels had The Quail s Canon 18 The Land of Purple Shadows The Quail s Canon been growing less and less, with no immediate means of being renewed. Each man was looking forward to the Spring when he, too, would return to the Coast. There would be enough to carry them through the Win ter months, if the season were short, and nothing un foreseen occurred. They had ammunition in camp not much, but what seemed to be enough for their needs; and rabbits were to be had for the shooting, while powder and shot lasted. Other fresh meat, there was none. They now saw, only too well, how great a mistake it had been for them to remain behind the others. It was too late in the season for them to start back on the long trail toward the sea. They must wait for Spring to open. Winter would be upon them soon. Winter came came cruelly, that year. What man among them ever forgot it while he lived! The sun went out of the sky, and darker and darker grew the heavens. There was no wind. Nothing but a leaden stillness. Then the heavy skies began to sift soft flakes of snow earthward. At first, they came fine as the grains of alkali dust that had been whirled up by the Summer winds down on the dreary plains. Larger, and larger they grew as they hurried onward toward the little colony in the canon. From big flakes, they grew into great snow-feathers ; and these came so fast and so thick, that the sky which had been dark ened was now white from the flakes, and shut out the leaden-colored roof of their little world. Under the snow-drifts, where the wild rose-bushes and willows made a shelter for the stream, the creek shouted and laughed at their dismay and dread, and went babbling on down to the desert where the road was snowed under, and where no living thing moved across the shoreless, silent, ghostly sea. There were nights when the storm roused itself to a fury that brought winds down from the heights roar- The Land of Purple Shadows 19 ing like wild beasts roaming through the canon. The storm in its frenzy would beat against the rocks as though to rend them from their very foundations ; and then would go shrieking over the ridge, and away. Morning would come, and the storm-fury would have spent itself; but not the snow. Always, and always it snowed. Each day dawned upon down-drifting flakes which fell upon a world of unearthly silence. There was no work done among the men. Who could climb the mountain-sides to the tunnels and inclines? For more than three weeks they had been without tea, or coffee, or flour, bacon, or beans, or any of the things they most needed to ward off starvation. For a man may starve, even with food to eat, if it be not the right sort. There were yet a few articles of food though little else than sugar and dried "jerky." Not many of the men had ever been without wholesome food before most of them were from the East, from the cities. The hard life began to tell on them. They grew thin; grew weak very weak. Some among them sickened, and lay down too ill to care what the end might be. Then the first one died. Not much more than a boy, and unused to hardships unable to stand the rough fare, he died for the lack of nourishing food. It was two hundred and fifty miles to Virginia City, where there were both food and medicine to be had; but who could make the trip in the face of the relentless storm which daily piled higher and higher the white barriers between them and that distant help! So Gilbert Bend died died just as the storm, wearied of its weeks of warring, ceased. The flakes at last stopped floating earthward stopped suddenly one day ; and there was the sun ! But oh ! what a world it showed. A vast, trackless waste of dazzling white, The Quail s Canon 20 The Land of Purple Shadows The Quail s Canon unrelieved by even a solitary touch of any color or shading. Snowed in. In the center of the town, among the deserted stores, was a saloon, also deserted. It was the one building there having a floor. This, they tore up ; and making a rude box from the boards thus obtained, they laid in it the body of their dead comrade. Then, taking it on their shoulders, the six strongest men among them bore it down to the top of the mesa where others ere the storm had fallen had been buried before. Plow ing their way through the soft drifts of blinding whiteness, under the warmth of the dazzling noon-day sun, they came at last to the rocky point amid the foot hills. Two, who had broken a trail there before them, had the shallow grave ready; and there they laid him away one of the unknown Trail-Makers of the West while, together, they sang a hymn that most of them knew, and had sung in the old days "back home." Then one his partner tried to speak of the dead, but sobbing turned away; and so they slowly tramped back through the heavy drifts to their cabins. When the first rider made his way into the canon, after the suns of many days had made the roads pass able, the men whom he found were very near to star vation; and some who had been among the number when the first flakes of the great snow had fallen, were no longer there. Again and again had the old saloon- floor gone to the making of the rough boxes, which the few who were left had carried down to the lonely mesa where they left their dead comrades to sleep in an unkind land. So the trail grew wider, and the drifts were beaten down by the feet that passed on the way. Years came and went ; yet never again did the snow fall as it fell that year; the year that (far away) Lee had marched "horse and foot into Fredericktown. " To the East, they counted time by the great battles; The Land of Purple Shadows 21 here in the West events were dated from the "Win ter of the Great Snow." Now, time dulls the sharp edges of history, and finally there were those (they were new-comers in the country) who said it was but a fanciful story that no such heavy snows had ever fallen. But the old men of the old days, shook their gray heads, knowing better. Colonists had come into the country since that time, and had made their homes. A railroad cut across the flat valley. Other canons now held other camps; but this one still remained deserted. The last man had gone, long before. Not a roof was left ; only the melt ing adobe walls showed where the houses had been, or the fallen stones marked the site of a miner s cabin. The last to go was the first to build in the valley. Down there, in the midst of green fields and orchards which he planted, was the home of one of the pioneers. He plowed and planted; and he prospered. And he was content in the home he had made ; and was happy. A grove grew up of trees that were his planting; and birds came to the trees, as birds come whenever and wherever trees are made to grow in desert-land. Birds in numbers came, and of many kinds. Yet what the man wanted to see were quail the mountain and val ley quail he had known long before, in his life among the poppies and pines of California. Try as he would, he could never quite forget those days when he had carried a gun across his shoulder along the Contra Costa foothills. He was lonely for quail! Back in the old days they had been the oftenest-seen birds about him those speckled black and steel fellows of the field, trig and trim ; with cousins on the uplands, that flash a ruddy-brown wing past your sight as they take flight. There were larks, and robins, and doves here in the canons; and on the heights were great flocks of sage-chickens ; and water-fowl of many kinds The Quail s Canon The Land of Purple Shadows The Quail s Canon were down on the river, but he longed for the sound of the quail-call, and the sight of their whirring flight the quail of the valleys and mountains of California! Persistent were the recollections that haunted him of old hunting days; and he spent many hours thinking, and thinking. Finally he said to himself, that there was but one thing to be done to fetch them over the Sierras, from the fields and foothills beyond, and then wait until their numbers multiplied. So crate after crate of trapped birds came over in that first season when the trans-continental railroad was an established fact. Valley quail, and mountain quail, both. Crate after crate, and still more and more. And all were taken up to the canons where there was plenty of water, and the wild grasses which yielded seeds; and there they were turned loose scattering over the ridges or scurrying into the brush. There in the/ old deserted "city" they were freed; and among the tall, blossoming weeds, and the spicy juni pers on the hillsides. The little emigrants took very kindly to the change ; and another year saw several flocks far from the range where they had been given their freedom. Most Indians have as great a sense of honor as have some white men in respecting the rights of others when not protected by law, and the Paiutes when they came to understand the purpose of bringing the stranger birds were as zealous as the white man in their joint guardianship of the new bird-colony. No one seemed to have any thought of hunting them they had become a sort of public charge. They multi plied amazingly. On the hills they were as numerous as were the jackrabbits down along the valley. Away off in other ranges in canons miles and miles away across the valleys that lay between, and where on the mountain-sides green spots marked springs and The Land of Purple Shadows shade, one could always find flocks coming in to water. They were everywhere! At last they were plentiful enough that the sports man might be allowed to hunt them; and for one short, sport-full season (when everyone went gunning) did the hunters have their will. Only one. Then, with no foreshadowing of that which was to come, there fell upon the land a Winter more terrible in its bitter chill than that other one, more than five- and-twenty years before, when the little handful of early prospectors in the snowbound canon waited through the long, white silence for the coming of the Spring. Earlier much earlier than had ever been its wont, did the storms begin. Nor was it rain that came, as in the other years. Rains softened the brush, and swelled the seeds among the dried grasses and weeds on the mesas where the sheep and cattle grazed. Rain was good. Here, too, had the quail thrived, even as they had in their home on the other side of the high Sierras. But with deep snows overlying the land ! What were the little emigrants to do in their struggle to live if the wild elements waged battle against them? How were their small hearts to keep on beating throughout the chill Winter, and until the warmth of the Spring suns should set all the little creeks and rills running down the rugged old moun tain s canons and crevasses, to bring the grasses again? On mountain and plain were the wild things helpless furred and feathered creatures, who would find death in the storms if they were many or long. So the days went by; and on the plains the snow fell so deep that the chill layers of ghostly white hid the brush and sage as completely as though they had been sucked down and swallowed by these quicksands of the Winter. Along the foothills where the valley quail had loved The Quail s Canon 24 The Land of Purple Shadows The Quail s Canon to run, the drifts filled the shallow ravines; on the higher elevations where among the rocks and stunted junipers the mountain quail had lived and found life good now the sharp outlines were smoothed out under the rounded whiteness. Farther down, in the valley, the river ranches were blotted out. Snowflakes like grains of icy sand fell thickly, steadily, gently; with that soft insistence which is harder to do battle against than fire or flood. Then winds cruelly cold, and deal ing death where they touched animal life would come and whirl the sharp grains (fine and dry as sand) into high drifts which in turn were buried under the stinging flakes that were ever falling falling falling, until it was once again a vast, unsounded level. From the high lands where they grazed, the storm drove the stock into the valleys where it followed them, and where they died. Sheep dropped by the thousands at its icy touch ; cattle weakened staggered fell. The birds and the four-footed wild things came down out of the mountains, no longer afraid, and too weak to flee. They, too, like the sheep and the cattle, died as though a pestilence had swept over the land. So they died everywhere, and each day the num ber grew. There were times when a sickly sun tried to shine from out the sky, only to be beaten back by the storm. Colder and colder grew the days; lower and lower fell the mercury. Five below zero. Ten. Then eigh teen twenty thirty thirty -six! The stoves were kept (nine of them) choked with the hardwood crowded in; and all day the fires roared up the chim neys, and red-hot patches glowed on their iron sides. More than half the night the fires burned; but by and by they would die down, and in those early hours of the new day, one could hear the crack and creak of the timbers as the house grew colder. The Land of Purple Shadows 25 Morning brought increased labors to keep alive the suffering animals that turned to man in their ex tremity. Life resolved itself into a monotonous repe tition of those duties that were most necessary for the present hour. No one looked ahead; no one dared. It would be time enough for the cattle-owner to count the fearful cost when Spring should come, and he rode the range and reckoned up his losses. Now he must see that his men hauled feed to the cattle that were too weak to get on their feet; that the ice was cut in the river so that horses and cattle might drink; that snow enough was melted for household needs (for the water- pipes had long ago frozen and burst) ; that the wood- boxes were heaped high with split logs ; that the bread, and meat, and milk was thawed freed from the flakes of ice that they gathered. Up the valley where the railroad ran, the tracks were under the snow. Over them had no wheel passed for seventeen long days. Blockaded. The great, mon strous machinery of man s making, with its noise and its grime, was silenced its strength and power crushed out by this soft, white, silent thing that never missed one day out of the twenty-seven in falling. When the frost, and the cold, and the drifting snow were gone, and the sun came back, it shone on a crystal world. We looked out over a wide, trackless, shipless, chartless sea of eye-tiring snow-fields. But it stormed no more. And the quail? Poor little emigrants into an unkind country! For more than five years thereafter no one ever saw any quail. We looked for them whenever we rode through canons, or over the mesas. It was always the same never a one did we see. And we mourned for them, as we do for things that have eaten out of our hand; The Quail s Canon 26 The Land of Purple Shadows The Quail s Canon for had we not guarded them as something that was our very own? They had all perished, we said, the cold had been too severe for the strangers-to-snow. Then, one day riding up through a wash all filled with tall rabbit-brush, and wild plum-bushes, I saw a touch of red-brown on a wing that flashed across my sight, and my heart gave a great bound. A quail! Then a long time went by before I saw another. Then others saw them, too. Sometimes a pair; then a small flock. Then another a larger one; and another one and another. And now? The quail have come again! We say "come again" because we hate to think of those that met the chill of that awful Winter, and with the horses and cattle, and sheep on the ranges, died by the hun dreds thousands. Hunters, we, and we have no com punction in going forth with dog and gun, and filling the game-bag. But one would be less than human to think unmovedly of the slow death by starvation and cold that came to so many birds and beasts that Win ter of eighty-eight and nine. So we would rather persuade ourselves that the quail which are now in the mountains, are the same bonny little feathered friends that took up their habitation there so long ago. Once again they are everywhere. Once again the flocks have increased sufficiently to permit one shooting them with out fear of extermination. Once again they are on every mountain, and on the low-lying foothills. There are fewer of the valley quail, however, than there are of their little relatives. Yes ; they have come back again. But the great est numbers have gone to that canon where the miners lived the Winter of the first great snow. It was the quail s first home; for there it was that they were loosed in the year they were brought from beyond the snow mountains. The Land of Purple Shadows 27 Chinese placer miners working in the creek found gold much gold; but the silver ledges still lie on the hillsides undisturbed, the tunnel entrances choked with thistles and briar bushes. No longer do men go a-search for silver. Only gold in the ledges up above, or down on the bed-rock of the water course lures them in their quests. The little yellow-skinned men of the Orient came, and went, and came again. They made their dug-outs in the banks back from the gray and crumbling walls which were built by miners of old. Up and down the creek bed they move so noise lessly, working with pick and pan, that one can very easily fancy them but gray ghosts haunting the quiet canons, even as the shadowy wraiths of the dead years linger about the unroofed walls and weed-grown trails. Silently they go about their work, leaving the quail to go their ways. If you go among the old adobes and fallen stone walls in the ruined town, you will see them scurrying by twos and threes out of the tumble-down, crumbling cabins, to find hiding places in the tall rabbit-wood or sage-brush; or flushing by flocks to sail straight away to the hillsides. It is the quail s canon. Once again they claim the solitude of the place as their own. Before they went away they were less shy than now; for they are beginning to know the fear of man. A while back, in the peace of the tumbling walls, there came no more disturbing sound to the canon than the rumble of the train down on the desert, or the far away shriek of its whistle. But they have learned a new sound, and with it has come fear. The sunlight lies warm on the hillsides ; and the soft West winds come to rattle the pods of dried weeds, shaking the seeds in showers to the ground. The quail run hither and thither, undisturbed by the sea sons or the little yellow men working among the gravel The Quail s Canon The Land of Purple Shadows The Quail s Canon and boulders in the bottom of the creek ; but away up on the slope where the brush and bunch-grass does not grow so thick, you hear the crack of a breech loader where some hunter has gone hunting. It is the sound the quail have learned to fear. HAWKS. OUR heart-throbs are quickened at the sight of a beautiful painting? Your blood bounds when you look on a mag nificent picture? Yes? Then come with me to a rough stone cabin I know built away up on the side of a great mountain, yet walled about by still greater heights, and set upon a shelf of rock overhanging a gorge where winds and waters make music all day and all night and there, standing before the east window, I will show you that which (for the brief little hour you may stay) shall delight you; even as, day after day, I, too, am made glad through its exquisite charm. You love color, and form, and sound when fresh from Nature s touch they have not yet been marred by the clumsy handling of Man? Then shall you revel in the beauties of this picture a picture I have framed only with the unpainted pine casing about the window sash; where the ledge is littered with matches and candles, cards and cartridges, and numerous specimens of gold quartz. You do not see these things, though; you look be yond. Here! let me slide back the window in its grooves, that there shall be no glass, even, between you and the picture s perfection. 30 The Land of Purple Shadows Hawks Pouff ff! The winds come in with a rush; and there is a tempestuous sweeping of loose letters from the bare table, and these go sliding over the plank floor; while it sets papers and magazine leaves a-flut- tering noisily where they lie. The winds surge and swell through the canon. Within, they have madly invaded our calm, and in an instant the supreme quiet which was erst ours is changed to movement and sound. What mightily magnificent winds these are! Gods of Olympus! did you ever know their like on your heights ! I doubt if you ever felt about you such winds as these. Ah! but their rough tug and tussle is good to feel ! And we stand here in their boisterous company, looking out of the wide-set window through which they entered, and behold the picture I have brought you to see. A Picture of Hawks! Porphyry that counts its height in feet which meas ure hundreds, reaching from the thicket-hidden creek to the sapphire sky, is the background. But such a wall! Sheer; yet of splintered facing which holds a thousand varying forms, as light and shadow move across it. Rent and riven; battered by Time and broken by the elements, it is a wealth of shading and form to the picture lover. The ruddy-brown surface is splotched with lichens yellow as sulphur, gray as dead ashes, velvety-black as soot. All up and down its perpendicular face in the crevices have roots of a little stiff-leaved plant found place to hold; the dark-green, short-stemmed foliage growing in matted patches, indifferent to the buffetings of the wind. This is the Home of the Wind. Daily it comes with the first afternoon slant of the purple shadows, to die away before dusk. It roars and rushes through the canon wildly enough now; but it will go down with the down-going of the sun, and only the faintest breeze The Land of Purple Shadows 31 soft and murmurous will linger on these heights through the star-lit night. Two-thirds up the way of the great cliff is a little shelf not more than a double hand-span in width where a hawk has built her nest. The gorge, deep as it is, is narrow, very narrow; the sunlight only find ing its way to the bottom hours after its yellow shine has brightened all the valley and outer slopes. So little is the space between wall and wall, that you and I here in my eyrie can look across into the hawk s eyrie over the way, and see there the two baby birds on the nest s edge defiantly fearless above the sheer descent. So narrow is the gorge, we hear their young cry as clearly as does the mother-hawk circling just above. Watch her! What wonderful sweep of mighty sinewed wing is there! What marvellous poise! Then, a tilt, and she drops cutting the crystal- clear air with a grace no other living creature may ever sur pass. A breath and she rises. Skimming the heights with a majesty of motion defying all description, she wheels and circles over the gorge on a level with your eyes your eyes that look, and look, and still follow her flight when she mounts higher higher, till you have to lean far out of the casement to see into the vivid ocean-blue of the heavens, hidden else by the overhanging eaves. A speck two! Up there, they go drifting across space. And you come back to the cliff and the young ones in the nest. My small neigh bors over the way! Do you hear them hear the cry of their hungry mouths? Like the exaggerated peeping of young chicks, they are lifting up a perpetual plaint for food. "Peep peep peep! . . . Peep!" If they perch on the nest edge, slowly turning around in a pivotal way, with now and then a clumsy lifting and limber ing of their young wings, they may be silent for a Hawks 32 The Land of Purple Shadows Hawks while; but the lull is only temporary. Again you will hear the vociferous demand for meat-food which the small beaks are so eager to tear. When they have turned about to their satisfaction a number of times, and have done much flapping of the young wings, they re-commence their pitiful plaint of "Peep! peep!" Come, mother-bird, your hawklings are calling you! "Peep! peep!" Now lift your eyes, friend, again to the infinite blue space where she found such grand scope for her flight. Gone! The far specks are no longer there; nothing is moving through the ether between you and that per fect sky. And the rock walls? Across the gorge these mighty cliffs rise cliffs worthy of such a roofing. And flank ing the central wall, what wonderful cleft domes the rocks are fashioned into! What slender spires reach heavenward from their tops! What architecture is there! How good oh, how good it is to look at! How more than good it is not only to be able to see, but to feel the beauty of it all! You could never tire of looking at this cathedral-like cliff built up from the very earth s foundations this noble achievement of the Master Architect! Did ever stained glass window, set within the temples of Man, hold more gorgeous coloring than you see here, where the blue and purple stains of the rock, just there at the right, have mixed with emerald patches of moss, and the splotchings of lichen-tufts in all the shades of yellow of velvety- black of grayish-white! And mingled with this is the red-brown of the great rock itself. Oh ! it is beau tiful wondrous beautiful, wet with the rain that fell early this morning, and which the sun has not yet dried for this sheer cliff has just crawled out of its half day of shadow. Hark! Above the shrill cry of the hawks, you hear The Land of Purple Shadows 33 the anthem sung by the canon winds, mingled with the waters chanting. You hold your breath as you listen, and the swelling volume of sound which comes up between the gorge-walls stirs you with deeper feeling than you have known this many a day. Surely, God s own music is here. Down, down far down below the hawk s nest is the creek, rushing noisily over boulders hidden by brush and willows. And now a vagrant wave of wind paints a silvery path along the place where the gray willows grow! How lovely that was that shiver of light that ran along on the yellow leaves and tender branches ! Something sweeps past the cabin window. See! The old hawk has carried a mouse over to her young. Ah! but they made short work of it; and are now clamoring louder than ever, as the mother again goes forth in quest of yet other rodents that live in the rocks. Not long, and a day will come when (as young beaks and talons fasten onto some dainty bit brought them when they have been left long without food and are ravenously hungry) she will not yield it as now; but keeping her own clutch on it the while she will suddenly dip from the shelf of rock and, outspreading her wings, will sail away over the chasm, dragging a youngster out of the nest as she takes flight. Then ! There will be a tumble into space; a clutching at the vanished nest at the bare cliff at the empty air ! But instantly will follow the instinctive spreading of young wings. The mother-hawk, in alarm and appre hension, will shrill a new note; not the hawk-scream of every day, but a sound like unto a seagull s cry. The canon will be filled with the noise of her perturbed clamoring, as dipping and darting under her young one she will bear its weight for one brief instant, to Hawks 34 The Land of Purple Shadows Hawks give the assistance and assurance of safety which is needed to encourage the frightened small body, that it may find some friendly and near projection of rock. Not only her mate will join in the shrill lamentations, but alien little birds, disturbed by the unwonted noise, will add their cries to the general clamoring. Such a din as there will be! And all the while will be the sweep of wide wings circling close about a frightened young thing, to whom the big world is unknown, un tried space. Then the other wee hawk will be dragged from the nest in like wise; and the mother s alarm-cry, mingled with the chatterings of little perturbed birds, will be repeated. Then will come a week or two of bewildered baby-bird life the young ones protesting against the new regime a week or two of crying for the mother- care. But self-reliance will come with the new days, and then they will know themselves young hawks. Babies no more. No longer fledglings, you will have to fight your world for a living then; but oh! you will find com pensation in just the joy of life ! No longer fed by the mother-beak, you will have to go far a-search for food, little ones, when that time comes, lest hunger hunt you down! But is it not worth it, to go all the length and breadth of the land, while you follow your work-ways, just for the sake of the great things one meets the while? Hawk-flight and hawk-life oh, you will know then what that means ! The storms and the snow that will here seek you out in the rough Winter months will be well worth battling with when they call forth all your powers of resistance. Life is worth while when one meets the things which tests one s fighting ability one s capacity to overcome difficulties! Not long, and all this will become yours to be and to The Land of Purple Shadows 35 do. But, oh! I will miss my hawk-babies when there is an empty nest over the way. You are here today, though, little ones; and above, is the mother, watchful for your well-being. Circling and circling, she hovers over that jutting bench further down the canon; yet not so far away but that we can see the turn of her head as the keen eyes are bent upon every foot of ground she passes over. She is search ing now where chaparral is growing among the loose fragments of a rock slide, below the palisades. Cease your clamoring, you noisy wee ones! Never fear but that those penetrating eyes will discover what you want, and she will fetch you other rare morsels, if you will but have patience. The small talons are grasping the side of the nest (the rough nest of sticks and twigs which I watched so long, in the past weeks, waiting to see the first fuzzy head rise above its rim), and the shrill cries grow louder. You, friend, like myself, have grown an affectionate interest in the little fellows in the hawk s nest, and you laugh, and call to them imitating their own cry. A wee head slowly turns toward you then another; and the lamenting ceases for a moment, while the four eyes stare toward where you stand. Verily, we are becoming friends, you and I, with our little neighbors over the way! And so the day, here on the heights, wears on ; and in like wise it is repeated in other days which are good to know. Full days. It is a beautiful world. It is good to live. Days there are of cloudless skies of sapphire-blue; other days clouds of white wool drift overhead, chas ing the shadows that run over the rocks underneath. Rock swallows dip and skim over the great cleft in the canon. The hawk s cry comes down from the heights and the linnet lifts its lilt from below, Hawks The Land of Purple Shadows Hawks "And 0! and O! between the two, Go the wonderful winds of God" outsinging the songs of birds! Not a human footstep to jar its perfection. The place is all one s own. The din of the working-day world is too far away to reach one s ears. The cry of the hawks by day; the owl s hooting in the darkness that is all. And the mingled melody of chanting winds and waters! They are always here. And always, too, is the picture framed by the un- painted casing of pine wood, before which I sit so very often a picture that lives! Whether it be seen beneath the sun, or by the stars light, it is a master piece, and one to take to your heart of hearts this, my Picture of Hawks! SUBDUING A LITTLE SAVAGE. TRANGEST of all gifts ever bestowed upon any member of my family was the little seven-year-old wild Indian which a friend an army officer sent to my mother when I was a child. We were living in an isolated canon of the West. For more than a year we had seen no white woman; and only a very few squaws belonging to the tribe of friendly Paiutes living about us. If you depend upon people for your pleasures, a more lonely existence than such as ours cannot be imagined. But my mother was a woman of infinite resource and entertainment, and she not only made us see a duty in the things to be done, but to find a pleas ure in the doing, as well. So our months of self-im posed exile went by, not altogether unhappily for any of us, and for one small girl not at all. Yet the nearest city of any size to the westward was far off in the Sac ramento valley, more than three hundred miles away. Neither toward the East were there any cities nearer. Between, lay only scattering little mining camps. Hos tile Paiutes were committing depredations all around us, and the killing of the whites became more and more frequent. These Paiutes, together with the still more murderous Shoshones and Bannocks and the offshoots 38 The Land of Purple Shadows Subduing a Little Savage of those tribes, caused the settlers to live in hourly dread of the issue of each morrow. The Indians that year had been unusually trouble some one little band of renegade Bannocks to the Northeast, in particular, had especially alarmed the people. A detachment of troops under command of Lieutenant Hosmer from the military post at Dun Glen started out with the avowed intention of exterminating them. They were but a small band, these mongrel Bannocks, at most but two or three score, but they were notoriously desperate, as well as keen and shrewd in their maneuvering. It was therefore deemed best to have the aid of some of the friendly Paiutes in effect ing the plan of action as laid out by the soldiers. So Cap Sue, selecting twenty picked men of his tribe, vol unteered their services, and one midwinter day we saw them ride out of our canon to join the soldiers and hunt down the hostiles in canons far away. The story of the many days of trailing them through the snow, and how they had all but given up the quest when Cap Sue pointed out the blue spiral of the enemy s distant campfire, has passed into history. It is not for me to tell it here, or how they fousfht them to the death, so that when daybreak came there was but one of all the hostile camp that lived. It is only of him the little enemy, the one small boy of an alien Deople I shall have ausrht to tell now. It was this little fellow brown of skin, bright of eye; with un- Indian features, and white teeth (such beautiful teeth as he had!) yet withal terrified and trembling who was sent by the Lieutenant to my mother, when my father was returning, several weeks later, from a trip to Dun Glen. It was late in the afternoon of an April day when we saw him drive up the one long street of the deserted mining camp, where the tide of fortune had cast us The Land of Purple Shadows ashore with the rest of the wreckage left there when the hopes of the early silver miners went down. Though we had not been of them, we were, at that time, with them, and had been caught in the mael strom. In those uncertain days, the temporary absence of any member of the family was fraught with grave fears of danger (a messenger coming to us when one of the household was away, would send a chill to the heart until we were assured all was well), and a safe return was the cause of double rejoicing and welcome; but my astonishment at the sight of the quaint-looking little fellow, who had climbed down from the wagon-seat and now stood looking at us in timid bewilderment, took such complete possession of me that I quite forgot to rush into my father s arms with my usual welcome. Such a little fellow! What an odd-looking being he was that day, to be sure! When, in answer to my mother s puzzled questioning, I heard father laugh ingly tell her that it being the seventh of April, he had brought the boy to her for a birthday present, it seemed almost too good to be true that he was to be "truly ours for keeps." I experienced such a succes sion of emotions as would be difficult for me to de scribe ; but I remember that the first thought was that, at last, I was to have a real playmate like other chil dren. Then succeeded the fear that as he was such a very dirty little boy it was doubtful if, after all, my mother would let me play with him. It occurred to me, later, that as he was wild, really a wild Indian he might any day go on the war-path and take my scalp; but that was something of minor importance. Children live in the present, only ; and I did not dwell on what might be, after all, only a remote possibility. I was to have a playmate! A real live playmate! Nothing else mattered. Subduing a Little Savage 40 The Land of Purple Shadows Subduing a LfcUe Savage Therefore, the principal thing to do was to lend my aid in getting him into the condition of cleanliness necessary to win my mother s approval of an Indian boy as a playfellow; and such a siege as it was to get him into that particular condition poor, dirty, miser able little wretch that he was! The soldiers, having found him in a state of semi-nudity, felt they had made a distinct advance in dressing him when they put him into a pair of old soldier-trousers cut off far above the knees that their length might conform the better to his short little legs. A very much worn blue blouse, whose sleeves were lopped oif far above the elbows, really did duty for all other apparel, and made quite unnec essary and extravagant the wearing of trousers, as it reached easily to the floor, even dragging a little. An old fatigue cap completed the outfit. I smile as I write this, in recollection of the absurd figure he cut; but there was no smile on my face then nor on his own, poor little survivor of a wild band ! He stood looking from one to another with watchful, frightened eyes; and it was not until long afterward, when he had learned our tongue, that I came to know how the small stranger had thought he had been sent to us that we might put him to death. The White Man had killed his father and mother; all his family; all his friends; all his wild clan. How was he to know that we intended him no harm? The plate of food put down for him at that first meal he received from our hands, was partaken of at first cautiously suspiciously; for he believed we wanted to poison him. When hunger asserted itself, he ate ravenously, tearing his food apart with tooth and nail like some wild animal. As I watched my possible playmate, shocked at his ignorance of good table man ners, I am afraid he fell many degrees in my estima tion. After he had eaten his fill literally, as the The Land of Purple Shadows 41 Indian does eat by signs and motions he was directed toward the pile of wood just beyond the back door; there, when he was seated on a big juniper log, he was shorn of the thick and long black hair, which was orna mented with buckskin strings strung with bits of carved bone. Long, long afterward he told me how, when he saw the scissors, and the axe at the wood pile, he thought he was to be killed with these strange kind of knives (as he deemed the scissors to be), or struck down with the sharp blade of the axe. He had never bathed otherwise than in the Indian s "sweat- house," and when a tub of soapsuds was prepared for a cleansing of the small body according to our methods, he saw in us only enemies who would drown him therein. When the dirty, discarded clothing, together with the matted black locks, went into the flames of a bonfire, the little stoic made no sign of what he be lieved was in store for him the burning alive of him self, as he had seen his people burn their enemies even as he had once seen his father burn a white man. In our every movement he saw something significant of torture or death being prepared for him, horrible things that were only being delayed in their execution, but which would surely come in time. Yet he gave no sign. After he had been barbered and bathed, and was ready for clean clothing, the question arose where was the clothing to come from? There were no stores within many hundreds of miles, neither was there a boy anywhere on our side of the mountain. Clothes he must have, of some sort, however, and at once. A search was made among our own rather meagre ward robes. It was not a time to consider his sex when it came to dressing him, ar?d it would have been a prob lem to tell whether the comical-looking little Indian was boy or girl, when we had done. How we laughed Subduing a Little Savage 42 The Land of Purple Shadows Subduing a Little Savage at the figure he cut laughing the louder the longer we looked! But he stood there an unsmiling, unemo tional, unmoving small savage with hatred in his heart of which we had no thought. Nor did the hot fires die down for many and many a moon. All this, and more, we did not come to know until years had passed, and he and we were friends. The soldiers, when he was leaving the fort, had given to my father a full suit of the soldier-blue such as they, themselves, wore. These, my mother reconstructed (after I had "ripped them up carefully, and picked all the stitches out") on a less generous plan, fitting them nicely to the sturdy, well-built little body. They were reserved for Sunday use, and some state occasion ; and when he donned the suit with its shining brass buttons, he felt himself every inch a soldier, and car ried himself as one. The children of the friendly Paiutes living near, could get no recognition from him then. It was only when dressed in the suit which was made for every day use, and he no longer represented the great American army (which all Indians little and big alike were beginning to respect, as they began to realize its strength) that he descended from his pedestal, and relaxing from military dignity, deigned to notice them. Even then, it was but a haughty recognition he accorded them. He would rather be my slave than their chief, even in childish plays; and this remained so to the end. When he came to us he knew no word of English, and by signs only could we, at first, communicate with him ; but I have never known anyone to learn a language so rapidly as he with an intuition that was little short of the miraculous. His intelligence was that of any child of his age among our own people. What he was ignorant of, was by reason of his past environment, not through lack of a fine mental endowment. The Land of Purple Shadows 43 Each day, after my own lessons were repeated to my mother, I took the teacher s seat and taught Frank. And no preceptor was ever prouder of pupil than I, when the time came that perfect lessons, signed "Frank Bannock," were handed in for my examina tion, and there was seldom a criticism to make. Would there were more Frank Bannocks in the world! Naturally studious, he was equally eager to gain knowledge and apply it to some practical use ; seeming to feel it would be unworthy of one to simply acquire knowledge and hoard it that it was its application to anything worth while which created its value. And the lessons he learned caused him to ask questions be yond my power to answer! He told me how unsatis factory to him were the Indian theories of light and darkness; one of the first questions he asked us when he could express himself clearly being: "Where dark go when light come?" He wanted to know what were the moon, and the sun, and the stars what caused seasons, or colors of what was beyond the mountains ; of what was beyond the grave? What was the mystery of life? and why was death here? Whence? whither? why? Indian that he was, and even Indian child that he was, he asked the questions we all come to ask sooner or later. And I knowing no more than he tried to teach what little I knew; and before my halt ing explanations would be made, he would ever grasp the unuttered thought back of the spoken word; and together we would go to my mother to straighten for us the tangle. When we got beyond our depth in theology, she would give us leave to take down what we would from the book shelves, the books that had many engravings, and among the pictures we got away from problems too big for us. "Shakespeare," "Byron s Poems," "Godey s Lady s Book 1850"! I can remember now, these many decades later, how he Subduing a Little Savage The Land of Purple Shadows Subduing a Little Savage loved the picture of Mazeppa bound to the back of the wild stallion, in the red morocco volume of Byron! I wish that the children of today were as careful in handling books, as was this little wild Indian of the far-away, little-known mountains. And of those mountains where he was born where he was one of a savage tribe where no white man might go, and live to return, he would tell me stories of his people and their ways, that was the strangest entertainment a small girl-child ever listened to! He and I used to go up the steep side of the canon, above our house, where we could watch the sun go down on the mountains that hid his one-time home, and there he would relate to me the things that were in that wild life of his, far away across the river and the purple range of mountains, and a still farther range to the northwest. No tale of Grimm s could hold such com plete fascination for a child as did the terrible recount- ings of massacres along the old emigrant road, and the burning of wagons by the way; of the scalps his kins folk brought home from battles where the soldiers had been driven back; of raids upon small settlements, and killing of white men that they might bring back horses, and cattle for "jerky." Strange tales for a child to hear; still stranger for another to tell! I knew they were true; but they never seemed real. He was my playmate, and shared all my games; how could I con nect him with the things I heard from his lips? No, the tales were possessed of a horrible fascination, and when he would tell such things to me (which was not often he would rather play to live in the present to be one of us) the interest I felt was not born of con viction. They were to me as the fairy-stories of genii and dragon; never of what was about me everywhere through those years of my childhood. Could I have felt the truth, I would have better understood what lay The Land of Purple Shadows 45 back of the calm, expressionless little face the day he was brought to our home when he expected to receive as his portion what his people had meted out to the invading whites. The wonder is that he ever freed himself from the terror he had of us when he came. It was weeks before he was reassured; months before he began to evince any confidence in us. But with the years came affec tion an affection which we returned in like measure. What a marvel it was ; the opening of the doorway of that savage mind ! The opening of the doorway of his lonely little heart! I understand you now, Frank, as I did not then. Dear little playmate of the dead and gone years! When he was not telling me wonderful tales, he would show me no less wonderful things. I learned how to catch rabbits with a noose on the end of a green willow sapling set in the ground to be sprung by the rabbit as he loped down the rabbit-trails. I learned, as the Indian children learn, to twist cords out of veg etable fiber. He showed me how to make bone and wooden fish-hooks ; and how to set them in a row along the twisted fish-line. Then I learned a way of making a spring out of my left thumb and two forefingers so that a small pebble could be sent spinning out of sight. (The other evening, when some of us had climbed to the top of the highest point in Los Angeles to watch a crimson and purple sunset, I picked up some pebbles, and with the others began sending them as far as I could down into the shadow-filled canons. Suddenly there came back to me the recollection of my childhood days up on the lonely mountain, and I forgot those who were with me. It was little Frank who was beside me as I placed the pebble against the lower joint of my left fore-finger, and with my right finger and other thumb sent the bit of stone far and away, out of sight. Subduing a Little Savage The Land of Purple Shadows Stbduing a LfcUe Savage I had not forgotten the trick learned from the wild little Bannock years and years ago.) He taught me in those dim years how to string a bow; and how to tip an arrow with flint sharpened against the ball of the thumb with another stone ; and how to turn the feather right, on the shaft of the arrow. I learned more of the signs of the big out-of-doors while he and I played together those years there, than throughout all the rest of my life. Woodcraft and stonecraft were pleasant studying, and every day brought some new knowledge. It has served me good turns in the time since, more than once. Most wonderful of all, he could rub a greasewood stick so fast between his palms that the point of it placed in a hollow of a bit of dry wood, with a pinch of dry (very, very dry) dust, would presently blaze into a little flame and ignite the dry shredded bark put there to catch the spark. It was marvellous ! And what was more marvellous still was the fact that he never failed to make it burn ; while I never succeeded in all the time I was with him, no matter how hard I tried. I did precisely as he showed me. It would smoke oh! so encouragingly but to blaze, and burn, it refused absolutely and always. It was just the same with the "gorkies" (the Indian s wild onion) that he taught me to find. Whenever I dug down for them the root and stem would separate an inch or two from the surface of the ground, and then the succulent little bulb would be lost. Not so with Frank. He never failed to get them out without severing the slender little root. Then, with the splendid generosity which was so marked a characteristic of his nature, he would pour his whole store of "gorkies" into my lap, while he would dig others for himself or, if the day was late, go without. It was his will always to give me the best of his spoils of the canon, whether it was of ber- The Land of Purple Shadows 47 ries, or flowers, nests with speckled eggs, or bits of bright and pretty rock, where every cliff held a "ledge." What halcyon days those were! Looking back to that time, it now seems to me that he was frequently less playmate than slave. Slave to my imperious whims; but it was a self-imposed bond age. I fancy at times I must have made of him a veritable little beast of burden. All the tasks I dis liked to perform he would willingly undertake, in the household duties which my mother had assigned to each of us impartially. In my childish games and plays he submitted to my dictatorial management with a willingness of which I always took full advantage. I ordered; he obeyed. Whether it was to drag me about all day on a sled, or to haul many hundreds of heavy rocks to build a stone wall around my playhouse (and which not finding to my liking I had him tear down, and take away), or to dam the creek to fish for min nows, it was always the same I was the ruler, he the slave. How unselfish he was ! I have a memory of the day when, in gathering great branches of sweetbrier along the creek s edge, as I slashed at the thorny shoots with a sharp knife brought from the house, my eyes on the pink blossoms, I did not see the little brown hand reaching out to help me, and the blade struck the end of his finger taking away the tip and a portion of the fingernail. Frightened at what I had done, the knife fell into the stream, and I burst into tears. When my mother came attracted by my frantic wails of grief she found Frank trying to dry my tears and comfort ing me by saying: " Don t cry please don t cry! It don t matter; it it don t hurt me a bit. Don t cry any more. I m sorry ! " He was ; was sorry for me and with no thought for himself. He had no thought Subduing a Little Savage 48 The Land of Purple Shadows Subduing a Little Savage of his own pain while he beheld my remorse. Unsel fish little Frank! How his gaze followed mother as she moved about the room where he lay sick so very, very sick with typhoid fever! She had nursed him through weary weeks of an illness that wasted his small body to but little more than a skeleton ; but he lived, and her nurs ing it was that saved him. This he knew without the telling; and in those days after the delirium had passed he would watch her with the look of devotion one sometimes sees in the eyes of a faithful dog. So, it came to pass that we were unprepared for the change in him that time wrought. In justice to him I must say that he did not alter until there were changed conditions in the country. The first transcontinental railway came through the valley at the foot of the mountain, and it brought white people in great num bers; and these he came to know the bad with the good. And somehow the bad influenced him most. The inherent traits of a savage race had not been so easily eradicated, after all. Idleness and slovenly ways took the place of the former ways of neatness and industry. The eager desire for knowledge gave place to sullen... indifference. He had been gentle and courteous when alone with us ; now led by those who set an unfortunate example he was cruel and insolent. The glib lie took the place of absolute truth ; and where there had been honesty of purpose and action, now was deceit and artifice. He would go away; and return ing, beg forgiveness, and that he might begin again with us as before. But it was not to be. By-and-by he went, and did not come home again ever. He dis appeared as completely as though he had gone out of the world; and all our inquiries of white people and Indians alike, through the years which followed, never The Land of Purple Shadows brought us any knowledge of him. Finally we gave him up for dead; and as we do of the dead we for gave him much that he had done. Almost thirty years afterward after he had gone out of our home and our lives on a blue-and-gold day during one Summer that I spent in the arid country long after I had gone away to live where white people were, I was riding with an Indian woman along the ridge between two canons, where we could look down into one and see the fallen walls of buildings which had been, for a time, my childhood s home. For a long time I sat on my horse, looking down at the silent and broken adobes, as memories came trooping back. Then I said: "Come!" and we rode down into the deserted and dead mining camp of the forgotten years. We loosened the cinchas, and took off the bridles that the horses might rest, too; and on a moss-bank where wild violets grew we sat down in the golden sunlight, under that wonderful sapphire sky. The creek that was fed all the year by the melting snows up up up at the peaks above sang, and laughed, and danced its way to the dry sands of the valley. And birds that builded here sang too. Yet, somehow, I heard only minor notes in all the song! Back, and back went memory to those days when, a child, I played through the sun or the snow with my little Indian playfellow. The Indian by me was as silent as the gray adobes; for they are a people who respect your silence when you would be still. So she, too, was silent as I; and, like me, perhaps, was living in days now dead. Once again I was a small girl in gingham apron and stout shoes, building stone forts at the creek-edge, from which we rode forth to kill off whole tribes of hostile Indians. Then (but this as a concession to him and his race, and for which I expected him to be properly Subduing a Little Savage so The Land of Purple Shadows Subduing a LitUe Savage grateful) we would be the wild Indians, and the porphyry walls of the canon would resound to our war cries, as we fell upon an emigrant train going to Cali fornia. (What a little savage I was!) Then, when the lure of the chase was upon us, we would shoot the antelope, and deer, and mountain-sheep which our imagination created out of the white sage on the hill side, and drag our game to the campoodie of our family. (And I remembered how I had used a hair-ribbon for this purpose, and vainly tried to restore its ruined lustre afterward, lest it invoke maternal reprimand!) Right there it was, in the rocks, that I lost my first penknife, and never found it. Such a beautiful knife it was pearl-handled, and with four blades that would cut anything! Mr. Clark from the river had given it to me, saying I must not lose it; and then I lost it, and neither Frank nor I could ever find it. Strange, how long one remembers ! And there is the place where he and I buried my kitten under the wild rose, where the brookmint grows still. Or, he buried it; and I stayed home and mourned and mourned, and would not be comforted. Why does one remember such foolish things for three times ten years? So the afternoon wore on, and in dreams and memo ries I lived again where I had lived in the days of gingham aprons and stout shoes. The stream and the bird sang on, while I thought of my childhood s strange setting, and the strange playmate of those years. By and by I came back to the present, and to the Paiute woman beside me I told the story of the little boy of an alien tribe of his baby days as I had heard of them from him ; of his boyhood days as I had known them to be. Of his youth his manhood, I knew noth ing; he had come, and been of us, and gone. That was all I knew. When I had done, I said: The Land of Purple Shadows 51 "I think Frank is dead." In Indian-way she sat still looking down at the broad levels of the valley below us. After we had seen the shadows lengthen, and lie against the walls of the canon back of the adobes, she rose, and put the bridle on her horse, and tightened the cincha for the ride forward into the warm glow of the dying sun light. When I, too, had re-set my saddle, and mounted, we came away from the old ruined mining camp and its haunting shadows of the past. Out on the mesa, loping slowly down, I was thinking of other things when the Indian woman spoke. "I know that Frank. He no dead." "Not dead! You know him?" She was of another tribe ; I could not credit it, for no Paiute had ever told us aught of him. "Maybe some other Frank; are you sure?" She nodded. "He live close up by that place call J m Austin. Plenty times I see him. Every time he ask bout all you. He work plenty for white people. He good man. Everybody like m. He never git married. He never go back to Bannock country. He stay here all time bout one hun ed miles up there. He never forget bout you family; he heap like m all yon." So he was living, and lived near that part of the country in which we had been much through the long years ; and yet never a sign had he made that we might know of him! Yet he had not forgotten us, else he never would have asked of us whenever he met those Paiutes whom he knew. She said he "liked us heap liked us." And she would not have said it, had it not been true. But he had never once in all the thirty years given one sign! It is the way of the Indian. Subduing a LfcUe Savage THE WONDER OF SUI SEEN FAH. Y HORSE shied as the lightning flashed in our faces. There was a heavy crash of pealing thunder, and before the last reverberation had died away the big rain-drops began to come down on my riding-habit, while I urged him to still faster pace on the steep and rugged trail leading down the canon. A great rush of wind swept up through the gorge, bringing with it the slap of driving sleet. Nowhere was the footing safe beyond a fast walk ; and my horse was already doing his best in making as rapid a de scent as possible down the slipping, sliding rocks which were brightening their tints in the fast falling rain. Tall, dry grasses, and the brushwood on the banks of the creek, bent and swayed with the winds sweeping through the deep-cleft canon. Birds with tip-tilted wings were buffeted hither and thither by the strength of the storm, as they fought their way to shelter. It was one of those sudden storms which one may encounter up on the heights of a mountain ragged with shattered rocks, and cut into cliff and gorge; storms that may not last over an hour, at most, but which while they do last rage with a fury that makes them something not to be braved. So I looked anxiously "There stood a cabin under the lee of the sheer wall." Page 53 The Land of Purple Shadows 53 about me for some cover under which I might hide, and an overhanging wall where my horse could find shelter from the brunt of the beating rain-sheets. Lowering my head to the storm, and looking out eagerly from beneath the brim of my hat, I saw noth ing absolutely nothing offering the protection I so desired. I had about resigned myself to what seemed to be the inevitable, when a sudden turn in the canon s winding trail disclosed to me the roof of a habitable building. Made of the jagged, unevenly broken rocks that littered the mountain s western slope, the chinks cemented with a rough plastering of mud, there stood a cabin under the lee of the sheer wall which rose from almost the very edge of the trail. Riding quickly up to the cabin, I slipped from my saddle to the ground. As I did so, the rude door swung open, disclosing a little, lean, yellow-skinned son of the Orient, who seemed rather startled by my unex pected appearance. "May I come in, John," I asked, "until it stops raining?" "Certainly. You go inside. I tie your horse," was the reply, in better English than one usually hears from Chinamen. While he was securing my poor, dripping, shivering beast, and fastening a rice mat over the saddle in an effort to protect it from further dampness, I entered the one-room dwelling, and found there two other coolies sitting before a stove radiating a generous warmth. Both nodded pleasantly as they looked up, and one of them offered me a three-legged stool, asking me in broken English to be seated. This I declined, prefer ring to stand by the fire until I had dried my water soaked clothing. The Wonder of Sui Seen Fob The Land of Purple Shadows The Wonder of Sui Seen Fah My eyes roved over the strangely assorted objects filling the low-ceiled room. A typical "China camp" of the West! Dozens of domestic utensils were lying about, ingeniously contrived from what must have been a meagre supply of manufacturing material. Surely the little yellow man has a wonderful ingenuity! A collection vast, varied, and chaotic of ill-looking bags and boxes were stuffed with articles whose uses were, mainly, unguessed by me. Odds and ends of clothing, American-made and of Chinese make, were tossed about. Foul-smelling fish, dried, and surely from China, hung from the rafters. Boxes of tea, mats of rice, vegetables smelling of earth and decay, to gether with the flotsam and jetsam of a placer camp, littered the mud floor. Bunks built against the stone walls of the room were strewn with blankets and quilts which had strange to say the appearance of cleanli ness; while curled upon one of the beds was a cross- looking dog that eyed me evilly, without, however, raising his head. Chinese bowls and cups, with gro tesque figures in gray and blue, were scattered about on the table. Like the beds they bespoke cleanliness. Standing on the table was an earthen jar of Chinese brandy and a pot of preserved ginger. An opium "kit" was in full view; and the air was filled with the mingled odors of opium, tobacco, dried fish, stove- smoke, and the heavy tuberose-like fragrance which exhaled from a great bowl of exquisitely beautiful Chinese lilies set upon a small shelf near the one win dow of the squalid room. White as snow is white, with a center all yellow as gold; sweet as orange flowers, and altogether lovely, they seemed strangely out of place in the dingy, dusky stone cabin under the cliffs. It was as though a feather from some passing angel s wing had fluttered down to fall in the mud and mire of a sty. The Land of Purple Shadows 55 My eyes went burrowing among the strange, shad owed corners of this habitation of creatures who seemed to me scarcely human. There was something wonderfully interesting in studying their environment. With what squalor were they surrounded! And what barrenness of perceptions was theirs! They lived a life wholly limited to victuals and drink, sleep and rude shelter, totally devoid of Nature s poetry, or the beautiful in the world that is lent us by Art the things that glorify even the meanest surroundings. "Poor, ignorant, starved wretches!" I said to my self. "Life has never in the remotest degree even once touched their days with the finger of graceful thought, nor has the Creator given them the faculty of wandering through lands of delightful fancy. Hard realities, unredeemed by a single quality of poetic imagery (such as, consciously or unconsciously, we are ever adorning our daily lives with), make the sum total of their degraded existence. Animals all miserable, soulless animals." I declared, "And yet we call them human beings!" And I sighed impatiently. One of the little yellow men had been busying him self about the stove, and now proffered me a bowl of steaming, fragrant tea; for who can brew the bowl equal to a Chinaman? "I makee you some tea," he said, pleasantly. "You dlink it, you no catchee cold, I thlink. You gettee plitty wet now ; maybe you no dlink, you catchee sick. More better you dlink. You savvy?" I " savvy ed," and smiling an acceptance, drank the delicious beverage. The third Chinaman nodded and smiled at me in the most friendly way ; but evidently he spoke no English. The first one I had met now re-entered the cabin, and a moment later engaged himself in adding fresh water to the bowl holding the lily bulbs that were bedded in The Wonder of SuiSeen Fob 56 The Land of Purple Shadows The Wonder of Sui Seen Fah bits of sugar-white quartz rock. I noted how his slim, brown, tapering fingers touched with tender care and almost lovingly the tall shoots loaded with their clus ters of sweet, white flowers. It was the month in which the greatest celebration of their year occurred, "Chinese New Year," and I knew that the blossoming of the lily, as it might be prolific or blighted in bloom, augured well or ill for the luck of the ensuing year to its owner. I commented upon the perfection and pro fusion of its blossoms, in acknowledgement of the pretty superstition. He looked up with a quick, appre ciative smile. "Yes, I think I have very much good luck this year. I guess I find plenty gold in the creek (I got placer claims here in Black Canon), so that I get very rich and can go back to China and give my mother nice things. I be very glad, then. " He called my attention to a half-tone portrait of Li Hung Chang, evidently torn from the pages of some magazine, and which was now tacked to the wall above the lilies, and near the shrine-like shelf where a great number of burning punks and gaudy red paper slips gave evidence of an unashamed devotion to the reli gious observances of a people who shame our own in their infrequent prayers. As I stepped nearer the picture to look closer at the peculiar face, so unlike anyone of my own race, I saw that part of the text of the article for which the print had been used as an illustration, was there; and my eyes caught the line: "Li has always been something of a mystic, a dreamer, a poet." (My lip curled deri sively. A Chinaman! One of the same race as these little oblique-eyed men here? I smiled disdainfully.) "Dr. Bedloe thus translates one of his stanzas;" I read, The Land of Purple Shadows 57 "Dragon, who rul st the shoreless sea of death, When I lie dreaming on my loved one s lip. And thou dost come to steal away her breath, 0, take me with her on thy phantom ship ! I stared. It was indeed poetry! Could it be possi ble that such a gem had fallen from the pen a pointed brush rolled in India ink, and held by the long-nailed fingers of a Chinaman? Had the four lines really found birth in the brain of a tip-eyed, be-queued, shaven-headed Celestial? even the great Li for a great statesman I must needs admit his being. But a poet he, a Chinaman! Why, the sentiment the music of the quatrain were something any man, white- skinned or yellow, might be proud to father. I was confounded amazed! Ah, but then (I said to myself) his was an exceptional mind ! He was not to be classed with ordinary coolies. His public life had shown of what unusual material the great dictator was made. I granted that foreign as the idea had been to my mind before he might possess the grace of poetic thought. He was a great statesman therefore he might be, also, a great poet. But these men here in the mountain cabin half dug-out, half hovel they were of his race, but not of his kind; they were mere opium-smoking animals. "You like that?" A voice broke in upon my mus ing. The little Mongolian was watching me with inter est. I can read some English, he said, And I think that very good kind reading. " He pointed to the verse. "But, not so good in English as in China." His lips moved as he whispered the Chinese words softly to him self. "Sound very pretty read that kind in China book." I was mute. The little man, after all, could appre ciate that which the great man had written ; and I had but just said in my ignorance that these coolies did not The Wonder of Sui Seen Fah 58 The Land of Purple Shadows The Wonder of Sui Seen Fah know the charm of the beautiful! I turned away to the window, shamed into silence, and watched the drip, drip, drip of the rain from the casing outside where it ran in trickling streams against the glass. Heaven was shedding a flood of tears in ceaseless weeping; weeping as though never, since the birth of time, had it known aught to grieve over until now, and was giving way to sorrow with the abandon of some young heart hitherto untouched by woe; wailing and weeping as if to wash the wicked old earth free from all its sins, and make it once more pure and clean as when it came fresh from the hand of its creator. A cheap nickel clock, hanging against the wall, noisily ticked away the moments. Five minutes ten a quarter of an hour! Rain rain rain; and no promise of cessation. I came back and seated myself near the lilies of China, lifting my face to inhale their fragrance. How lovely they were! A cup of ivory with a heart of gold. And then ? Then ! How it came about how the story began, I do not know, nor how long it took for the telling; but, sitting there in that squalid cabin of Chinese miners, I heard for the first time the Legend of the Chinese Lily. I do not know if he meant to relate the story to me, or if he was simply repeating to himself the lovely legend, as one repeats over and over that which is pleasant to the ear ; nor do I remember the exact words he used in the telling of the tale. I only know that there circled by strange surroundings, with the storm raging through the canon and beating its water-wings against the window-pane it fell to my lot, that after noon on the heights of a great Western mountain, to listen to a fanciful story out of fairyland, and which The Land of Purple Shadows held me fascinated, and forgetful of all else in the world as I heard. And this was the story: Long ago so long that the world, and all in it, was new; even as all now is old, very old there dwelt in that oldest of all lands, China, a man great, and good, and with money and possessions too plentiful to be counted. And he had wives two, three, or four, as a rich man may. But only the children of the first two wives have to do with this story. Each wife bore a son. And the first-born he that was the son of the first wife was the father s favorite. But the second son it was who loved the father best. This the sire did not know, for the boy hid his great love; yet ever obeying to the most minute particular each request asked of him. For goodness, and honor, and duty, and truth, for loyalty, and for love this son was one man among ten thousand times ten thousand. But the father went about with an invisible fold of cloth, bound across his eyes by an evil spirit, which blinded him to this noble son s worthiness. And the evil spirit re moved the bandage whenever the father looked on the elder son, and put, instead, before his eyes a magic glass which made that son s vices seem as virtues, and his treachery as loyalty, and his lies as truth, and his deceitful bearing as love. So the father was ever de ceived, and lived out the measure of long life believing that good was evil, and that that which was evil was good. Then when the measure of his days was done, he died; and the people mourned. For he had been well beloved for his many virtues, and honored for his greatness and his riches. Now, when his father died the elder son fell to lamenting; and he lamented loudly and long the first The Wonder of Sui Seen Fah The Land of Purple Shadows The Wonder of Sui Seen Fob day, and lamented less loud the second day, and the third day lamented not at all. For his heart was bad ; and in secret he rejoiced that his sire was dead, for now all these great possessions would be his own. Money, and hills where the tea plants grew, and houses in the village, and rice swamps, and riches of many kinds much of all were his own. All that his father had left was his. All but one small bit of waste land far up on the side of a great mountain. A barren tract up there in a hollow of the heights was deemed of no worth; for it had never grown tea-tree, nor rice, nor grass, nor flower, nor weed. So this was the father s bequest to the younger son. For the law was that to every son a man had, must be given a portion little or great of his lands when he died; and to this son, to whom he wished to leave nothing, he could give no less. To the elder and favorite went all else; but to the younger, who was worthier than any other child of China, was given but this tract covered with fine bits of broken rock, where no green thing had ever grown, and where the ground was dry and forbidding. Yet against the unjust division this noble son re belled not; but only mourned the father that was dead. Mourned sincerely mourned without ceasing, and without comfort that the beloved and honorable being was gone beyond the reach of his gaze. Of the injustice done him of the smallness of his portion of the inheritance he thought little. His father was dead; his father whom he had so loved whom he still loved beyond all expression was gone from him. Nothing else mattered. And days went by. The elder one went abroad among his newly acquired possessions, saying: "This is mine, now ; and this ; and this, also. And, because The Land of Purple Shadows 61 he was what he was, he forgot the dead man whose gift all these things had been. But his brother, whose heart was heavy with grief, and who counted not the value of his portion, nor the lack, only longed to see his father s face once more. Then the new moon came and looked down upon them both the evil son, and the son who was good. And the moon grew to the full lessened and waxed old. And in the old of the moon the younger son jour neyed to the mountain where his poor inheritance lay; to the miserable and barren land which was awaiting him. His eyes looked with sadness upon it ; not because of its barrenness, but that it was the last gift his father had bestowed upon him. His heart swelled with sorrow; and tears which scorched and stung, flowed down his cheeks as he flung himself on the ground in his grief. He lay there long, so long a time he had lost all count of the hours, mourn ing as only they can mourn who are true of heart. It was a great night, full of stars. A night when they burn like fire in the Heavens. A band filmy and far stretched across the arc like the ragged white smoke in the wake of a fast speeding steamer. Meteors shot through the infinite blue-black depth, and the vastness of space could be felt, like the presence of a thing alive, in the vitalized atmosphere. Though he did not raise his head, he was aware that something most strange had happened. Though hear ing no sound, yet he felt near him a presence. Then a voice spoke to him from out the Heavens ; and its vibrations fell upon his ear like the multitudinous cadence of birds in song. "Why weep you?" the voice asked, and he replied: "Because I loved my father, and he is dead." "Though he is gone hence, he loves you in measure The Wonder of SuiSeen Fah 62 The Land of Purple Shadows The Wonder of Sui Seen Fah now as you have ever loved him," he heard the voice say; and it sounded like the ringing of silver bells. And now his heart bounded within him with a great thrill of joy that a father s love was at last his. Yet it was in fear and trembling that he asked, f alteringly : "Even as he loved my brother?" "Even as he loved your brother once; but he loves not your brother, now," the voice of music answered him. "The evil bandage across his eyes has been re moved, and the magic glass is broken. He now sees into his children s hearts with the penetrating eye which belongs to the dead, and he knows the truth at last. Weep no more; your father sees you touches you loves you. And because of your faithfulness and loyalty through all trials, your reward shall be great. Here, where only sterility has been, shall henceforth be bountiful yield. Never again will the earth here be dry and barren ; for your tears have wetted the ground so that for a thousand times a thousand years a gener ous moisture shall keep the plant-roots healthily grow ing. The prayers you have breathed here for the dead shall ward off all evil from the living from you and the family that will be yours. The warmth of your true heart, as it has lain beating and breaking here on the earth, shall call forth blossoms of unearthly beauty. "Dig into the soil, O, most dutiful of dutiful sons, and tell me what it is that you find." And in the starlight the young man began scraping with his fingers; and digging, he found an unknown bulb. "What is it?" asked the voice. "A strange, new kind of root," he answered; "I do not know its name, and he covered it over again with the earth and bits of broken rock. Then once more the voice of sweet music spoke: "Out of the land from whence your father looks The Land of Purple Shadows 63 down on you here these roots came, sent by him in his remorseful love ; and the flower which grows from the root and stalk is called the Flower of Filial Affection. Go, and come again the third day at noon ! Then the young man went away. And when, at noontide of the second day, he came again, he was amazed, for green shoots had sprung up from among the stones that were now wetted with water which oozed from the ground. The voice he had heard before, spoke at his elbow. "What see you?" And he answered: "I see the earth rich with plant- life where it was barren before." "Even as your father now sees the living evergreen truth of your soul, where once his blinded eyes saw but barrenness ! Mourn no more ; go, now, and come again tomorrow, which will be the third day, at early morn ing light when the sun first shines here on the moun tain." At early morning of the third day he came, as he was bidden ; and lo ! the air was weighted heavy with deli cious perfume. It seemed to drop down from the Heavens and fall, fold upon fold, on the earth in inex pressible, ineffable sweetness. All about him green plants were in bloom. From the root came the plant, and the plant bore a beautiful flower. From filial love, rooted deep in the heart of a man, springs all that is noble and good; and the re ward of virtues in a good son shall be made manifest. The whole earth seemed to be covered over with blos soms of waxen purity wax-white blossoms were about him where he stood, like the flowers of Heaven that we dream we see under the full moon. All the world seemed snowed under by petals of fragrance; and as he gazed in awe at the wondrous beauty of the scene, he shook with the intensity of his emotions. Moved The Wonder of Sui Seen Fob The Land of Purple Shadows The Wonder of SuiSeen Fob to helpless weakness by the spirituality of what he saw, he fell upon his knees in worship of the great Power that had caused such exquisite loveliness to grow, and bowed his forehead on the ground. Then, out of the Heavenly surroundings, spoke the voice. "My son," it said, tenderly, and oh! so sweetly; and now he recognized the loved accents, for it was his father s voice that was speaking that had been speak ing since the hour he had first come to mourn on the mountain "Oh, my son son beloved once a burden you bore, bore it with uncomplaining lips. Life has set no greater task for a child than to be loyal and loving in the face of injustice and misunderstanding. So, for this, your reward shall be great. Because of your heart s loving loyalty these flowers shall hence forth be made sacred to your race, and shall grow only upon this land of yours, and in that way be only for your family. Nowhere else East or West, North or South shall they ever be made to grow in the earth to the perfection of blossoming; yet here on this tear- bedewed land shall they forever thrive, on this spot made sacred by your faithfulness. Yours, shall they be only; yours, and your sons , and your sons sons, through all coming generations. "The bulbs shall grow for you and yours to sell for others to buy ; and riches past all counting shall be yours. Greater riches will be yours than can ever come to him who is your brother. And now I go. Even as I love you I bless you; going hence to await you in that land from whence these white blossoms came. Farewell, beloved child; most honorable son, farewell!" And the one who was prostrate on the ground raised himself and though he had seen nothing knew that The Land of Purple Shadows 65 the presence had gone, and that he was alone, his heart was comfort and everlasting peace. But in This was the tale brought out of legend-land by the Chinaman for my charmed ear to hear. And this, and the poetic gem of the great minister both alike, refuted my earlier conceptions of the race. I could say nothing. It was a time for silence ; but I think he understood, and knew how the beauty of the legend had entered my heart. For some time it was very still in the dusky little dug-out, then the older Chinaman spoke. "Chinaboy, he no b lieve him stoly tlue. Jus plitty stoly; tha s all. That pla in China country where flow glow b long all time jus one fam ly more one hun ed year b long one same fam ly. Chinaboy, he say same fam ly like talk bout stoly; cause flow nebber glow aly pla else." Only a legend. Only a story made by the fairies for children and these simple minded folk, who saw its poetic charm as did I. Only a tale brought out of lily -land for those to hear who have the poet-hearts of little children. I was still under the glamour of the beautiful legend, when looking window-ward I saw that the storm had long abated. A shaft of yellow sunlight pierced the window-pane, and fell upon the lilies. I saw a speck of gold gleaming in the bright light, from one of the broken bits of pure white quartz. I touched it lightly with my finger, looking questioningly at the story -teller of the canon. He glanced at the one who spoke no English, smiling as he did so ; the other said something in Chinese. To me the younger man said: "My cousin have few gold specimens that man gave The Wonder of Sui Seen Fah The Land of Purple Shadows The Wonder of SuiSeen Fah him from quartz claim up in the canon, and that been very rich show much free gold in every piece. He want put all that rich kind in dish here, cause he say he think that flower lonesome in this country and want to go to China again. So he give best kind rocks he can get for this flower to grow in, and then the flower maybe glad, cause it know Chinaboy do best he can for it." Did I once say these people had no poetic feeling? Never again would I think so. My eyes, too, had been blinded with the bandage of an evil spirit ; but the gentle spirit out of lily land had torn it away, and I saw in the hearts of those little peo ple a fineness of feeling which vied with the delicacy of the gold-hearted snowy blossoms growing in the bowl filled full of snow-white stones, each bearing a golden star. As I rode away from the little, low cabin at the edge of the mountain-trail, I was thinking that, after all, there is a quality in all peoples which answers to our poetic thought even in the blue-bloused, bequeued yellow men though I had been sceptical before. Down through the canon I went; riding over grow ing, young grass glistening with wet, and through brush which was dripping diamonds. Away below me, in the valley, a twin rainbow big and beautiful- arched over the flats and meadows, across which my road ran straight to the hills beyond. ONE DAY AT PACHECO S. HE air was drowsy with afternoon warmth, and the hills of the Coast Range, showing but blurred outlines through the violet haze, melted into the misty skyline. The sky itself was dap pled with fine white clouds. To the West, where the harbor usually glistened and glittered under the yellow California sun shining out of a cobalt sky, today there was but a great sheet of water un ruffled by any breeze. It might rain tomorrow it probably would; and the wind would come tearing in through the Golden Gate, churning the bay into foam and washing away the soft pastels of the hills. But today it was a world of dreams. That is, if you were a dreamer. Here, at the water s edge it was bustle and stir. Of dreams, or of rainy days to come, no one thought or cared. It was the day of a great race. The steam cars, the trolleys, machines, everything on wheels, poured their thousands into the race-track enclosure, to see the pick of California horseflesh run. Nothing else mattered. There were two who might have been taken for father and son, who were seated by themselves; the younger full of excitement, and trying to interest the The Land of Purple Shadows One Day at Pacheco s older man in what most interested himself the beauty and breeding of the three-year-olds, famous the world over. The young man was twenty-two, and looked thirty. The other had passed three score and ten, and looked thirty years younger. He had seen life ; he had loved life; it had kept him young. This is true of most Forty-niners. "You think, because I don t grow enthusiastic over this horserace today, that I don t know what it is to enjoy seeing a good horse run, and a good rider keep his seat? Why, my dear boy, I have seen riding and running which stirred a man s blood so that this sort of thing wasn t to be mentioned in the same day with it. "You men of another generation miss what we old fellows remember. "While we are waiting for the start, let me tell you of a day one day at Pacheco s. "The Major and I had been over to Antioch, and on our return accepted the old Don s invitation to turn aside at his rancho, and witness the sport of a Cali fornia Spanish gala day. Casa Pacheco was one of those big, delightful old houses of the early Califor- nians, standing on rising ground in the center of the Don s domain, where fine live oaks dotted the rancho as far as eye could see. But no house of old Spaniard, or newer gringo, was ever big enough to accommodate the crowd we found there that day in July. Men and women were there thick as bees swarming about the place in the honey -sweet air. Tall, handsome ca- balleros, and pretty, plump senoritas, ninos laughing for joy, and healthy as only those children can be who breathe the salt air that comes in from Pacific seas; old men and women with the fire of life still shining in their bead-bright eyes, though their skin was withered The Land of Purple Shadows and flesh was shrunken; young men and girls, laugh ing and gay, and in love. These, and the Indians scores upon scores of them and the horses (such as you never see now on the ranchos), these, I say, made up a mass of moving, glowing life that day at Pacheco s. "In the corral were two or three hundred head of wild cattle; steers, stags, and old bulls. Hot un tamed restless they surged back and forth in their narrow confine, while a perpetual cloud of light dust hung over them in the heat of the Summer sun. "There was movement, excitement, life everywhere! The attitude of your race-track habitues here today would be called apathetic in comparison with what those flesh and blood beings the old Spaniards showed, and felt. Ah, my boy, you missed a great deal not being born at least a quarter of a century earlier ! And I, too, would have missed it all, had I not sailed in through the Golden Gate before the close of the Fifties. "Well; the crowd at Pacheco s had flocked in at his bidding from the country for leagues and leagues around. From Ciprian s, and Moraga s, and Briones , and from San Ramon, and Alamo, and Castro Valley. From Livermore they came, and Romero Valley, too; and Martinez. From everywhere that day the people poured in to Pacheco s. "Every vaquero rode a good horse. Why, men like Jose Moraga and Martinez wouldn t have taken a double handful of gold slugs for any one of their saddle horses, and they numbered them by the hundreds! You never saw such horses, my boy, as we used to have in California in the old days, in the golden Fifties. Great, big, fine animals; every one of them a picture. Made of muscle and bone, and more than all mettle. That was the kind of a horse a man rode in the days when to be a Spaniard was to be a first-class vaquero. One Day at Pacheco s 70 The Land of Purple Shadows One Day at Pacheco s There were no "cowboys" then; the word hadn t been invented. Why, sir, the horses you fellows use now would fall down under the weight of the old Spanish saddles the kind we used to have in the Fifties. They were embroidered with silver and gold threads; made heavy with such embroidery, and worked with silks in beautiful colors. The tapaderos almost touch ing the ground; and the saddles made with great machillas that half covered a horse. All heavily mounted with silver. Conchas on the spurs that were big as saucers; and silver chains jangling from the bit, to make silvery music. "In those days a horse seemed to possess more intel ligence than your horses of the present day do; and when he got fitted out with the fixings the old Spaniards used to put on, why, by George, sir, he carried himself like those who are of the blood royal! "Everyone used to ride in the old days, just as no one rides now. What s that? You? You ride? Nonsense! What do you know about riding, when the most you ever do is to throw your leg over some pretty, prancing saddler for a short canter out through the park and the Presidio, or along the beach in the sun shine of a Sunday afternoon. Get on a horse on a horse, sir and ride in a storm, or at night, as we old chaps used to do, time and again, fifty years aero, and you ll wake up to the delights of some new sensations. "I can remember riding at night with the wind shrieking in my ears, and the slap of sleet in mv face as I rode neck and neck with the storm. Forked lightning flashing in my eyes, and a flying road under my feet; fording a river, finding my way in the dark through a canon, climbing a hill, then descending into a gully on, and on, in the nip-ht! Riding, riding, rid ing! Wet to the skin, but asflow with excitement and the electric current that made myself and my horse a The Land of Purple Shadows 71 part of the storm and the elements ! Ah, but it makes a man young again only to think of it! "But you fellows who go for a gallop over asphalt roads on days when it is sunny and pleasant, and then trot leisurely home again to tell what you know about riding, you Bah, what do you know! "Eh? Oh, about that day at Pacheco s? Why, that s what I m telling you about. The young Span iards there, who were to ride (and there must have been a full three score of them), had their horses trimmed up so, that it was worth a day s journey just to look at them where they were standing, to say nothing of what it was when they were responding to the touch of hand and heel. That was one of the finest sights a man could ever imagine, and one such as you never have seen. "The riders who were to take part in the contest, where each would try to excel in the display of fine horsemanship, sat in their saddles forming two lines on either side of the opening of the corral. Lean, lithe fellows they were, wearing their picturesque clothes as only a Spaniard can wear them. Girt round the waist with silk sashes; most of them a vivid crimson, but some wearing blue ones. And every face was shaded by the stiff, broad-rimmed sombrero worn with a chin- strap, and tilted down on the forehead. "The horses pawed at the ground, tossing their heads and rolling their bits under their tongues. Quiv ering with excitement, and twitching their sleek skins in nervous expectancy, they were as eager to be off as were their masters. "Then the bars were let down. The corral itself was built like most of the old-time corrals stockade- fashion, out of stout limbs cut from the live oaks, and set deep in the ground ; and lashed together with raw hide thongs. There was no gate to swing easily on One Day at Pacheco s 72 The Land of Purple Shadows One Day at Pacheco s oiled hinges, but big bars were lifted in place after the cattle were corraled, and lashed tight and fast with the rawhides. It took time to open or shut the corral, but what matter? The people of the Pacific had time plenty of it in the old days ; with Indians in plenty to do their bidding. "The bars down, an old steer (big, broad-horned, his eyes red and ugly, and his mouth slavering), comes to the opening of the corral. He stops. Motionless he stands, eying the multitude outside for a minute. His hoofs paw at the ground, and he moves a few feet for ward, shaking his head and lashing his tail. Again he stops, and putting his nose down, smells of the un certain ground; smells and snorts, afraid to pass through. " Vaya! Vaya! The shouts startle him into ac tion. Vaya! vaya! There is a quick rush forward, and he is out in the open. It is a dash for liberty; and he makes straight away for the bottom-land, down where the oaks are the thickest. Then there is a shout from the people and another and another; and out of the crowd of waiting vaqueros, two (one from each side of the line), clap spurs into the flanks of their horses, and are off, after the steer which is running with head up and tail stiff ened, at a pace which only a good horse can equal. "But, look! One of the men is gaining on him! More and more closer and closer almost up to him only a length behind now half a length ah! he is closing the gap he is there, now; running with the steer, close side by side. Then "There is a quick movement of his arm as he bends low from the saddle, and (just how it is done, you can not see) he has caught the animal by the tail, and The Land of Purple Shadows 73 taken a turn with it around the horn of the saddle. Spurring his horse, which leaps forward at the touch, he whirls the steer s hind-quarters around as horse and rider rush past, and releasing his hold at the precise instant the animal is tripped and thrown to the ground, where it rolls over and over from the force of the impact. "A burst of cheers sounds from the hilltop; wild hurrahs for the victor. But the steer has bounded to his feet, and is up and off again. Away go the pursuers after it. They have forgotten the danger; their blood is stirred by the daring. If at the moment of releasing the turns which have been taken the long, strong hair should catch on the horn, and hold, horse and rider would be hurled to the earth with the steer. But this fellow acts quickly; and he is as cautious as he is quick, though in his picturesque grace he seems never to hurry. The supple figure leans from the saddle ; there is a dextrous turn of the wrist, and the steer is down once more. This time thrown by the other vaquero. Again the air is filled with loud cheering. The Major and I are cheering, too! Cuidado ! Look out, there ! The steer is up again ; maddened, and eager to fight; ready to make a quick rush and gore man or beast that may stand in his way. But, suddenly turning, he is off and away, and they after him; and again he is thrown. He is getting bewildered and exhausted from the repeated quick falls. Sometimes he starts up the hillside, instead of on down to the bottoms. He is dizzy and dazed, scarce knowing which way to go. Tired and panting, and with tongue lolling while the glistening slaver parches under his hot breath, he has no strength left to run. So at last they let him trot slowly off, while they One Day at Pacheco s 74 The Land of Purple Shadows One Day at Pacheco s slowly turn back to rest themselves and their horses, and then later to follow a fresh one. But ere the bridle reins are drawn across the necks of the blowing, sweating horses, another wild yell goes up to the heavens; and another steer passes out of the gap in the corral, followed by two fresh riders. The two coming up from the bottomland swing out one to the right, to the left, the other to give a free sweep to those who are charging like a whirlwind after the steer which is running straight to the lowlands. "The bars are let down, and steer after steer is turned out steers, stags, and old toros. And each is made to run a hard race for the freedom which is his when once he reaches the oak trees. "There is shouting, and cheering, and laughing; and the vaqueros race down, and ride back, and rest as they sit in the shade and eat watermelons. Those who fail in the throwing are good-naturedly derided and jeered at by those who rest under the trees, and smoke, and laugh, and are happy these children of a Summer- land. "Shouts, and laughter, and song; and the simple joys of a happy people! Losing or winning, the hours are golden ones that day in the blue and gold of a Cali fornia July. That was back in the Fifties! "And the winners? They found their reward in dark eyes ; in soft, melting glances which bore to each victor a promise. As the two pairs of eyes met, a mes sage sped ere the long lashes fell on cheeks that blushed red with the red blood of youth and a promise was given; for each knight had his ladye. All day all day long in the warm Summer sunshine "Eh? What s that you re saying? It s a go! They re off! Have they started? Bless my soul! so The Land of Purple Shadows 75 they have. There they go! A good start! Gad! but it s a fine sight to see a good rider on a good mount; and the finest sight in the world is to see them on a dead run! "How I wish, my dear boy, you could have seen them that day at Pacheco s." One Day at Pacheco s UNDER THE CAMPANERIO. ID you ever know the little old graveyard under the eaves of the Mission Dolores? Travel a full day s journey away from the city that lies by the beautiful bay whichsoever way you would, yet nowhere could you find another spot more full of peaceful calm and inviting beauty than God s acre under the shadow of the old gray church. It was a place for rest, and solitude, and dreams. No sadness was there ; only the silence that charms the quiet that soothes. Although it lay almost within the heart of the big city of busy, bustling life, comparatively few ever came to stand before the portals of the old Mission after they were no longer opened for service, or to pass within the cemetery inclosure when the dead were no more permitted burial there. One might, perhaps, sometimes see a solitary tourist walking slowly among the mounds, or a poet or a painter in sympathy with the quiet corners of the great town, or some mourner (gray, and wrinkled, and old) who had come to pray at the grave of some dear one, long dead. Even in those days there were few new graves already they were laying away their dead elsewhere. You tried to decipher the lettering on some of the moldering stones, but the carving had been eaten into The Land of Purple Shadows 77 by the years, and lichens and moss dulled the lines you could no longer read. Of the newer ones, none had been carved within a double decade; and these were scattered, and so few you could have counted them on your two hands. Here it was, more than a hundred years ago, that they buried the early Mission Indians who died believers in the faith to which (ere ever the gringo came to crowd them out of the land of their birth) they had been guided by the gentle teachings of the holy father good Father Palou. Padre Palou the first priest of the gray -walled, tile-roofed Mission with its graceful columns, and beautiful campanile where they priest and peon, and soldier heard the bells ring out when San Francisco was born. Above, where swallows darted in and out of the open belfry arches, you saw hanging the bells that were brought over-sea from old Castile. Over there, the women of Spain (so the priest told you), had, ere the bells were cast, flung into the hot, molten metal their chalices and chains of silver and of gold; and so these went to the making of that melody which rang forth from the shadowed campanile as the people of the new world came to San Francisco s first temple to pray. Do you remember the pealing of those bells? If you are one of those who ever heard their clanging as you passed under the archway of the door to the cool shadows within, and you saw the shafts of golden sun light slanting down from high windows to rest upon the bowed heads of devotees beneath if you saw the filmy blue strands of incense float upward from the swinging censer, while you listened to the monotone of Latin words in chanting invocation, or the softer Spanish coming from the lips of the dark young priest if you ever heard the Gloria swell from the recesses of the choir, where tenor notes (clear and sweet as the singing of the angels) thrilled you to your heart s core Under the Canvpan- erio 78 The Land of Purple Shadows Under the Campan- erio with their melody if you ever knew any of these under the old tiles and rafters in the days that were, then surely you have not forgotten. And you remember how a time came that the church was found to be too small for the numbers who gath ered there to worship ; and you know how it was soon flanked by a larger, finer, newer edifice of red brick, and the little Mission was closed. No longer did priest or penitent pass within to prayers. Save only on Sat urdays and Sundays, of mornings when the doors opened to visitors might one enter. Finally (so few there were who ever came) it was not opened at all. Good Father Palou had lain for more than a century dead; time had made the Mission old and us a for getting people. And all the while the work-a-day city had kept crowding up to its walls, clamoring for the ground on which it stood. It pushed back the graves where had been buried first, the Indians; and then the soldiers (Spanish and American side by side) ; and then all those others who may lie in consecrated ground. Years afterward, on a clear Spring morning when the air was fresh-washed by the rain of but a day and a night before, and the blue sky still held in its infinite vault the great cumulus clouds which the wind had not yet found to blow away, I went to see once more the spot that was, so soon, to be a thing of the past. The city authorities had decided upon cutting a street through; and the dead must move on. As I closed the little picket gate behind me, all the rude sounds of the city s traffic seemed to be shut with out. The din of the great living ferment echoed faint and far. How very still it was ! A hush that fell like a brooding peace upon the fret of one s days! I wan dered at will and undisturbed through the neglected The Land of Purple Shadows shrubbery, where the yellow shine of the morning sun was drying the rain-wetted grass and weeds. I sud denly felt myself far very far away from the com mercialism of the world that was but just outside; that outside world which was stopped from entering in, as though the sword of a guardian angel at the gate forbade it coming further, a disturbing element which had no place in the garden of those who sleep, and where the old Franciscan Fathers walked in the days when they were hewing a way for civilization to tread in their march to the Western sea. How we for get them when we of the West boast of our deeds and our progress ; how little of gratitude we give to those who made the way possible and easy for our feet! The wooden fencing about the graves was rotting and awry; the iron red with rust. On marble and granite, moss (kept green all the year around by the wet fogs that nightly came in over Twin Peaks from the sea) had long since obliterated names and dates. Headstones leaned slantwise, and the flagging under neath was cracked and scattered. The church walls (boarded over to guard against the vandal fingers of relic-hunting tourists) were still lying in morning- shadow; but elsewhere the sun was shining warmly down from between the wool-white clouds which hung motionless in the California sky. It was drying the outer leaves of thick woven masses of vines it could not penetrate climbing roses, growing wild; and jas mine, yellow and white, and ivy which held them to gether in its strong clasp. The old churchyard had long been un tended by man ; but Nature was lavish in her care, and there had grown a wealth of glossy -leafed plants which ran riot every where, hiding what time had touched with decay. Such a wreathing and twining of tombstones with myrtle and ivy! Such thick growths of wide-bladed Under the Campan- erio 80 The Land of Purple Shadows Under the Campan- erio grasses as there were! They choked the old gravelled walks, and hid the broken flagging. Castilian rose bushes grew as their own sweet fancy dictated un- trimmed, untrained, and beautiful in their fragrant pinkness. White moss-roses nestled against the weather-beaten wood of railing and fallen posts. And so under tall, wide-branching pepper-trees and cypresses that grew as Nature willed all trees should grow I went, walking knee-deep through the rank, lush growth, and tangle of shrubs and unrestrained vines; only now and then finding some path made by the feet that went their way to the later graves. I scraped the moss away, and spelled thereon names that marked the epochs of California history ; and other names that belonged to far away lands. I came to the tall shaft under the eaves close to the church s side door where lies California s first Mexican governor: Aqui yacen los restos del Capitan DON LUIS ANTONIO ARGUELLO Primer Gobernador del Alta California Bajo el Gobierno Mejicano Nacio en San Francisco el 21 de Jimio, 1774 y nwrio en el mismo lugar el 27 de Marzo, 183O Farther along was a brown stone monument quite the most conspicuous there; it was adorned with fire men s helmets and bugles in stone. The shadows of The Land of Purple Shadows 81 the drooping pepper sprays moved across its face as I read: SACRED to the Memory of JAMES P. CASEY who Departed this Life May 23, 1856 Aged 27 Years May God forgive my Persecutors Requiescat en pace Casey who shot James King of William Casey who was hanged by the Vigilantes! The stone was placed there by the members of the famous fire company to which he had belonged. It recalled a strange, wild chapter of California history, oddly out of keeping with the hour and the place. But a few feet away I came upon a baby s grave a babe of sixty years before. On the white marble clung a butterfly slowly opening and closing wings splotched in lovely color. It was as though that emblem of im mortality were the innocent soul come forth from the mold into the sunlight of the incomparable day, un afraid of the shadows past or to come. And there lay one who came from lands across the sea. A wayfarer among a strange people, he lay down by the Pacific s shores; and there had slept in alien Under the Campan- erio The Land of Purple Shadows Under the Campan- erio earth for a double score of years. Twas the tomb of the Chevalier: ICI repose PIERRE ROMAIN de BOOM Chevalier de 1 ordre DE LEOPOLD NE EN LELGIQUE decede a San Francisco le 3 Mars, 1857 Age de 44 ans. The myrtle a tangled mass of purple bloom and green leaf had grown until it filled the square wooden enclosure, stacking it railing-high, hiding the mound completely. Out through the little gate I passed, and back to the world. Softly I latched it, and turned away from those who "after life s fitful fever" slept well; and whose rest would be undisturbed, though the traffic of a great city should roll above them. IN THE DAYS OF HANK MONK. H, the fine, free days the old-time days of the Sierra Nevada mountains ere ever they knew tie or rail, or the discordant sound of whistle or bell ! When the long, brown road had many a twist and turn, and it was a joy to follow it in its wind ings as the six-horse stage swung around the grades on the sides of the pine-clad mountains! The day was never too long, nor the way too far, when one went with wine in the blood and song in the heart, in those years when we and the world were young. Time has grown gray, and we have grown old, and nothing is ever the same. The world goes round and round, and the years go over and over ; but the cycles of progress bring us little compensation for those precious things we lost and loved when the open road was before us. What did we care for discomforts, or delays, or the things which, today, annoy, and worry, and wear? We were young, and the world was our own; we were ready for any experience for the rough-and-tumble of life and adventure. Back, through the years, my memory goes to a trip I made over the mountains in the Sixties. We were to cross the Sierras to a mining camp on the farther side, starting from San Francisco. The Land of Purple Shadows in the Days of Hank Monk It had been raining incessantly for days, and the city s gutters were running with water to the curbs. Men hurried along bending their umbrellas against the storm; few women were seen on the streets. Rain, and wind, and the dirge of fog whistles on the bay! Not a well-chosen time for a trip into the very home of the Storm King! But with that fine disregard youth has for consequences we went up the gang plank on board the old Chrysopolis, and began the first stage of our journey. Out through the gray rain, over the gray waters, she churned her storm-tossed way up the harbor, and into the Sacramento river. We ate dinner on dishes which refused to maintain their equi librium, as the old steamer rolled and pitched in the face of the wind; and all night long, as we lay in our berths, we hearkened to the lashing of the storm. The wind was a gale; the rainfall had become a deluge. Yet we were undismayed at what was in store for us when we should be set into the heart of the mountains. Verily the faith of youth in youth s own ability to meet obstacles is a good thing. Morning found us at Freeport (I wonder if it is still on the map?) but we found no abatement of the storm. Far as we could see, the country seemed a vast gray ocean. And out into the dripping sheets of wind blown rain we went, and transferred to the State s earliest railway a little stretch of track which later became (so I am told) a part of the Placerville branch of the Southern Pacific. But that was in the days before the Southern Pacific had come into existence. Through the leaky roofs of those primitive coaches the water dripped; it dripped into the laps of the women, and down the backs of the men. Tiny rivulets found their way under the passengers feet, as streams of rain found their way inside. Middle-aged pessimists stared at each other in gloomy silence, for now it was The Land of Purple Shadows 85 impossible to see anything out through the rain-washed window-panes. Optimistic youth found interest in studying the effect of the situation on the different tem peraments, and in speculating on the depth of the snow in the high Sierras for snow was a joy and a delight to the native-born Calif ornian who lived down by the bay. Conditions did not change until the train (rocking from side to side over the uncertain roadbed, and drag ging itself slowly on) came to the terminus of its thirty-mile run to Latrobe a town somewhere in El dorado County. The name comes back to me after these many years, but of the place I can recall nothing but the blur of rain. Here it was that wading through mud and water which was over our shoe-tops we again transferred; this time to one of the three six-horse stages which, together with a fast-freight wagon, evolved themselves out of the worse than Scotch mist. In these days we complain if a light shower leaves a dozen raindrops on us as we pass from railway car to covered motor-car at a station. The moving years make us hypercritical of our luxuries. Once within the stage, where we packed ourselves and our small luggage in close quarters (for every seat was taken) quick fingers outside fastened us in, but toning down closely the leather curtains; leaving us in a dismal half-darkness that was wholly eerie, but a delight to the young mind that wove stories out of the mysterious gloom, peopling it with creatures quite as real as the passengers who sat with hat-brims turned down, and coat-collars turned up, listening to the pelt ing of the storm. It seemed as though all the heavens had united their rains into one vast cloudburst. The stages lurched, and rocked, and rolled their way up toward the mountains. Overhead, rain rain rain; and mud, and endless mud beneath us. Condi- In the Days of Hank Monk 86 The Land of Purple Shadows In the Days of Hank Monk tions were too depressing to even permit of the ex change of jokes, and telling of best stories, that comes to those who are shut up in close quarters on a long journey. Only a girl a very young girl found it diverting. Up the rough road, on over the uplands, across mesas and low hills, and finally the horses splashed along the roadway leading into Placerville. In those days it was full of bustle and life that even the drizzle could not dampen; and an interesting crowd stood on the plat form of Wells, Fargo & Company s office where the steaming horses stopped, and the drivers unloaded, and took on mail. An interested crowd they were, too, for they peered curiously into the stage where sat a woman brave enough to tempt Providence by crossing the mountains during a midwinter storm. They stared at the woman and the very young girl; and the latter as frankly returned the stare of those in mud-spattered oilskins which shed oceans of rainwatery tears when ever their wearers moved this way or that. For three long weeks, they told us, there had been no cessation of the rain ; not one hour of clear skies had there been. Business men called across the mountains reaching Placerville, had become fearful of what they might en counter beyond, and had not dared to venture, so had ,one back to their homes at "the Bay." No wonder it was that those there found an interest in seeing the mother and daughter bent on essaying what men had turned back from. Afternoon found the stages encountering less mud, as the road now leading up among the pine trees and granite boulders reached higher altitudes. Then climbing the "slippery ford" which all the old-time teamsters knew only too well. Ford indeed! A slope of granite had here inclined against the mountain, which was well-night impossible to cross. Like a plane The Land of Purple Shadows 87 of polished glass it had been for any man or horse to attempt to find footing on, until the Stage Company had blasted off the smooth surface and, by macadamiz ing it, had given animals a foothold there. Even so, it was the dreaded spot in the road, and teams and drivers alike drew a sigh of relief when once it was passed. Our horses plunged up the so-called ford in leaps which brought more than one down with skinned knees, to at last reach the top; then on to higher lands, where the rain turned to sleet, and the sleet to fine snow. A bit ter wind was in our faces, and the leather curtains which we had rolled up when the rain ceased, now came down again; and we sat in semi-darkness for hours till the creaking of the stage stopped, and our driver unbuttoned the curtains, saying cheerily: "Yere s whur we git supper and stay all night! Git out." Oh, how good was the hot supper we sat down to about the long table in the "Strawberry Valley Hotel!" How the pine-log blazed! How delightful was the sleep that came to us in the warm, soft beds after the day-long ride punctuated with jolts and bumps! How hard it was to awaken before dawn, when thumpings on the panel of the door aroused us from deep and pleasing dreams, and to realize that the " Passengers for the sta age! Breakfast in thirty min utes!" was meant for us. Why, we had but just nestled into the soft blankets and clean sheets a moment ago how could it be morning? But morning it was, though not yet daylight; and we ate breakfast under the yellow shine of the swinging coal oil lamps sus pended above the long table. Someone came in from the street, shaking the snow from his overcoat, and stamping his feet to warm the chilled blood. Outside, we could see as the door swung in, it was yet dark. But when breakfast was eaten, and our luggage and In the Days of Hank Monk 88 The Land of Purple Shadows In the Days of Hank Monk ourselves again made ready for resuming the journey, and we went forth to take our places in the stages drawn up to the door, we found the dawn there, and all about was a great snowy world. Only ourselves and those engaged in getting us off, moved in the white silence. Where were the wheels of yesterday s stage? These had been replaced by coach bodies set upon runners; we were to go sleighing over the summit ! So into our seats, with the fur robes tucked tightly around us to keep out the cold; then to give the drivers free rein on the road! Oh! And now befell the wondrous thing that made that ride the most memorable of all the trips in those, my early days! It will not seem so wonderful to you of a younger generation, who know nothing of the glamor that hung about the heroes of that far time; but to those who lived in the old days, and who knew the old 61 characters" that belonged to the unspoiled West, it explains itself when I tell you that our own stage was to be) driven by Hank Monk! Hank Monk, the incomparable! The most daring the most reckless of drivers; and the luckiest. The oddest, the drollest of all the whimsical characters who made Western staging famous the world over. Hank Monk, the hero of the thousand-time-told-story of the great record-run he made to get Horace Greeley " there on time" when the great editor was to lecture in a little mountain "city." In my mind s eye I see him now his clumsy, awk ward movements his slow and bungling way of gath ering up the reins, or reaching for the long-lashed whip. But, oh! the magic of his touch, as the horses answered the drawling "Gid-dap!" of the man whose The Land of Purple Shadows master hand they instinctively gave their allegiance to. His fingers on the reins a message went down the telegraph-line of leathers, unread by us, which every horse understood as a wire operator understands the Morse code. They leaped forward into the snowy road in answer, while I drew a long breath of delight. I was riding behind six strong and splendid young horses that were driven by Hank Monk! It was a dream come true ! I am quite sure that had anyone asked me which of the two I would rather see hear speak to, Hank Monk or the President (and that meant Abraham Lincoln), it would have been the former I unhesitatingly would have chosen. Without doubt, my youthful judgment was biased, but the fact remains. Oh, the joy of that ride! I wish there was to be found anything now, in this year of grace one thousand nine hundred and nine, that could give me the delight I knew that day! Fresh horses every twelve miles; and every horse "driven for all he was worth!" With the sharp air stinging our ears, and the big white flakes whirling into our faces, we awoke to the exhilaration of being car ried onward to the heights of pines and firs, while Hank encouraged his galloping team with the most unique and amazing language ever used for such purpose. From the bundle of furs on the box came that unceas ing flow of words forceful, grotesque and amusing which kept the six horses at a pace that put the miles of lower roads quickly behind us. Before, and above, was the mountain, a seemingly illimitable mass of the softest of deep snow. Snow everywhere; underfoot, overhead. Tamaracks, and firs, and pines were so heavily burdened that the branches were bent down ward till their tips were buried in the snow-covering of the ground. Where the snowfall of a few days before In the Days of Honk Monk The Land of Purple Shadows In the Days of Honk Monk had half -thawed, and then again frozen, it had encased the spines and leaves of every tree on the mountain in a glittering crystalline network of indescribable love liness; and all the while soft, new flakes were falling and weighing down the branches more and more, until grown into great unwieldy masses they would of a sudden tumble off, and the boughs released of their burden would spring up again, bare and green, to their wonted places. Telegraph wires hung heavy; so coated with the frozen particles that large as a ship s cable they sagged from the poles; the buried poles themselves seeming to be great daggers driven hilt-deep into the bosom of the virgin snow. The bells jangling their riotous music, the sleighs dashed through half a mile of white fog a huge fog- bank that but made the cloudland scene the lovelier; for while a fog from the sea always seems to hide some thing that is dark and unlovely, a mountain fog in Winter suggests a whole world of white and radiant objects. Through that enchanted fairyland, walled by the clouds and the snow, over the Summit; past dark Tahoe (frozen and cold), out of the land of the pines, and tamaracks and firs, on, and still on we dashed ; and so down the other slope of the mountain that looked into the Carson Valley. Twice had the other stages gained upon us twice had they passed ; only to be, in turn, repassed by Hank and his matchless six. The snapping of the long lash cutting through the still air sounded like firecrackers on a Chinese New Year. He was putting his big bays to the utmost test of their speed, and now we were racing in earnest. Down the eastern slope of the Sierras we flew as though flung by some giant force from the crest of the mountain. The galloping horses leaped madly down, urged to renewed efforts by the cut of the lash The Land of Purple Shadows 91 swung far out over the leaders backs by the driver, as in and out of ravines and canons, swinging around sharp curves, tearing along the edge of precipices, where the slightest miscalculation would have hurled us hundreds of feet below, and where every turn must be figured to a nicety, we raced, and raced wildly the snow striking back from the horses beating hoofs pelted us like snowballs, while the sharp wind cut our faces like a whip-lash. Twice had horses been changed since the race began. We had passed the other stages with a wild hurrah, coupled with Hank s jeers of derision ; and the big ani mals jumped their length each time they threw their feet forward, gaining, steadily gaming at every spring. Still was he urging them on. The pace was terrific for any but the best of roads which this one was not ; here it was the maddest of reckless daring to attempt it. No one thought of that now ; for the spirit that had possession of all the gambler s chance to win (or lose) dominated each one of us. To win! To be first in at the finish ! The disregard of life and limb the taking chances with death it was all forgotten. We were going like the wind when, without warning, we (horses, sleigh, passengers, driver and all), were flung into a tangled heap at the edge of the road, by the breaking of the tongue. But, Heaven be praised! it was at the upper edge. Hank had shot head-first into the soft snow, never losing his grip for one instant on the reins; and before the floundering horses could make the mishap any worse, he had been dragged out by the passengers who had topped the heap and were unaffected by the spill, and though dazed a bit for a few minutes in a marvellously short time he had straightened out the tangle, and spliced the broken tongue with short bits of rope, which, however, looked none too strong for safety. We were not yet back in In the Days of Hank Monk 92 The Land of Purple Shadows In the Days of Hank Monk our places when the rival stages and the fast freight wagon (racing, too) exulting in our mishap went by with whoops that would put an Indian on the war-path to shame, and we felt that the race was lost. We did not greatly care ; for the little accident had brought us back to a world of realities, and we noted how far it was down to the bottom of the canon. Our blood was cooling, and with it our ardor for racing along grades. "Go slower, Hank!" all cautioned him. He shook his old head. Why, I broke that pole on a purpose, so I could fix a jint in the middle; it ll turn sharp corners quicker." Importunities were of no avail. And, like Gilpin, away we went again; the "jint" working much better than might be expected. Or, it might have been we were too much occupied in keeping our seats to note precisely how it worked. Faster than ever, now, went the team down the slopes of the Sierra Nevadas; and Hank shouted, and whipped, and swore his six whirlwinds into a fury of speed. The stage lurched from side to side of the road, and we swung perilously near the outer edge of the grade as the jointed pole snapped us around the sharp turns ; but he only redoubled his yells and let the long lash sting the flanks of the flying horses. Faster and faster. It seemed the speed was like that of a comet, as Hank coaxed and cursed his living comets into a pace that was killing. We waited for them to break their necks and ours. They did not. And no doubt they enjoyed the mad run as well as their master. Hank was too good a horseman to force them to their injury. And as to his language Why, he cursed his team roundly, but always lovingly cursed them. His oaths were terms of endearment which they and he understood. Past our rivals we dashed, as we came down into the valley; and in spite of delay and the broken tongue The Land of Purple Shadows 93 (or perhaps because of it), with the great Hank Monk driving them as no other stage-driver ever did or could guide horses the six big bays were first in at the finish when we drew up in front of the Carson City stage office. Stories of Hank Monk s driving are many ; and these have grown threadbare with the telling. Yet there is no one who ever rode with him as he sent his horses on a run with that unerring precision which was surely a gift of the gods, but that recalls the old golden days with a longing for their realization again, and all it once stood for. To once more know the old delight that was half-akin to fear, when he sent his team along under the singing of the lash, up and down the roads of the Sierras! The old stages are rotting by the roadside; and the old ways, and old days are forever gone. And Hank Hank Monk (peerless, incomparable) lies at the end of the run, in the graveyard at Carson City. Now we make the trip across the mountains in a few hours, where in the Sixties, it took as many days. We gain in time saved; but when all is counted and we balance the column, do we find we are really the gainers? In the Days of Hank Monk UP-STREAM UNDER A SUMMER MOON. ITTLE waves slapped against the piling, sent hitherward by the craft plowing the Bay. Ships of strange sails, and strange names; other ships home from long months on the sea, and bearing the scars made by rough weather, rose and fell as they strained at their chains in the channel. Ferry boats coming into their slips bumped against the piling which creaked and swayed from the force of the im pact ; and the planks underfoot soaked with salt fogs, and smelling of bilge-water trembled and shuddered in unison. Under the edge of the wharf, long green moss, and slimy sea-grasses brought in by the tides, writhed and coiled on the swell of each wave about the worm-eaten timbers. But away toward the Northeast up the Bay, and beyond the tangle of shipping pink clouds hovered over the hills that were fair and sweet in their Spring time freshness. All along by the Coast Range the light was like mother-o -pearl; and out on the water (away from the wharves) the waves freshened by the wind blowing in from the ocean sparkled in iridescence. There, where the haze was like a pastel in pink, and lavender, and azure, the river came out of the blur of mist, and passed onward and out through the Golden The Land of Purple Shadows 95 Gate, to mingle its waters with the salt blue of the sea. Out of the shell-tinted mists, which were so elusive in their delicate coloring that they seemed not at all of this earth, but rather something brought from a world made of dreams, came a squat craft flying a pennant of black streaks of smoke, dispelling the illusion of un reality. Then I remembered that once or twice each week a flat-bottomed, stern-wheeled steamboat went its lei surely way up and down the river between the Bay city and Sacramento. Time was, when there had been no other means of transportation between San Francisco and the Capital city than this ; but with the building of the great railway, the old river-boats had fallen into disuse, except for carrying freight, and were by most of us quite forgotten. Now and then, some country folk living beyond the sound of the locomotive-whistle who could reach the outer world by no other means, used the water-way. Or, some painter seeking out the picturesque bits off where the plains are yellow with sunlight, and the canons swim in violet mists; or a hunter off for a week s gunning where game was still plentiful; or someone who (like myself) loved vagi ant by-ways leading to vague places these only sought out the little weather-worn boat for a journey through a day of quiet hours. In the days of California s auld lang syne I, too, with the rest had gone up and down the river when traveling between the two cities. How long had it been? How many were the years since I had gone back and forth otherwise than by the railway? I tried to remember the last time ; and with memory dwelling on the past, a sudden inspiration came! Why not put back the hands upon Time s clock? Why not once more go up the river in the old way as in the old days? Up-Stream Under a Summer Moon 96 The Land of Purple Shadows Up Stream Under a Summer Moon What if I did have my transportation by the other route? What if my sleeping-car berth was secured? What if it would be paying two fares ; and losing time in getting to my destination? I did not want to save time; rather, I wanted to squander it. Of a sudden I felt rich; rich in the capacity to live and enjoy! Let the train pull out of the station which, like the head of a great snake lying in the water, rose at the Oakland side of the bay. I would none of it ! I could take up my journey again on the cars from Sacramento. There was no need for me to go tearing through the valleys at steam-speed, through the dust and the smoke, as though life itself depended on haste. Let me go back to the old peace ful, leisurely ways, ere I had fallen in with the world s mob of mad people who hurry their days away. It was so easy to drop out of it all if I would; and I won dered why I had never thought of it before. So it came about that on the morrow, as the little, out-of-date steamer lay at the wharf, I went aboard as a passenger; and the venture was so new and so unique that I felt I was embarking on some long and mysteri ous voyage. Unhampered by any luggage (for already it had been sent forward on the rail way -train) I had nothing to burden myself with but the small handbag I carried. How jolly it was ! I felt like a truant schoolboy with a day s stolen delights ahead of him. The very fact of its unusualness gave to it the zest belonging to things delightful, because forbidden. I smiled as I recalled the perplexed amazement of friends to whom I had con fided my intention of going up the valley by steamboat. "What ever induced me to do such a thing? Were no trains running? What had happened to the railroad?" No one could understand. I went over to the rail, and looked down on those who The Land of Purple Shadows 97 were following me onto the boat. Who were they what were they like these people who (like myself) chose these little-used water-ways? If I were to be on board for three or four days (for I had been duly warned by my friends that the boats had a way of getting on sand-bars, where they remained indefinitely) I wanted to get a comprehensive view of my fellow-voyagers. There were two or three ranchman (looking as though they might be transplanted Middle- West farm ers) in the too-evident discomfort of their seldom-used "city clothes." Equally evident it was that they had been down to "the city" to sell their crops (what, I could not determine), and were now gladly so gladly getting back to their homes. The work, and the wives, and the children were awaiting them. I fancied I could see the delight of the latter when they would be given leave to untie the strings and unwrap the packages the fathers were bringing. Each was so loaded down with packages, and parcels, and bundles, that he looked like a veritable Kris Kringle. Good fathers good hus bands good neighbors, I was sure. Following, came two others ; but young men clear- eyed and alert. Splendid fellows they seemed, and un mistakably of the cities. They were shod for long tramping, and both wore trousers of corduroy and brown canvas hunting-coats showing the stains which come from much service. Each carried a gun-case, and one led a beautiful liver-colored setter her silky hair shining like polished copper in the noon-day sun; her body a-quiver and her eyes a-light with expectancy. What a glorious fortnight was ahead of them for the dog, and her masters ! The happy wag of her tail told of the hunting-dog s delight at getting out of the city at the prospect of going far a-field at the heels of the Up Stream Under a Summer Moon The Land of Purple Shadows Up Stream Under a Summer Moon hunters! And her pleasure but echoed that of the office-man, off for his yearly vacation. Good luck to you ! and a happy, care-free two weeks, with a full game-bag at the end! Up the gang-plank wobbled a Chinese huckster, stag gering under the load which filled two huge baskets hung to the balance pole over his shoulders. He had been to the city to renew his supplies for working the acres he leased from some big land owner. He was through with the business and the pleasure ; now back to the valley! Doubtless he had smoked many pipes with his friends and his cousins ; without doubt he had gambled. In my mind s eye I pictured his week in that part of the city given over to the immigrant people of China. Yen-she, and the fan-tan game ; and then back to his labors ! There was no mistaking the couple that came next. Bride and groom going home from the honeymoon! Home to the new house to the new life. With the other things he carried (she was carrying half of the luggage), was a four-horse lash- whip, and two new, shining shovels. I looked at his hands. They were the hands of the man of the fields broad, freckled, and hardened. His face was burned by the wind and the sun all except where, under the edges of his short- cropped hair, about his ears and at the back of his neck, a narrow, white, untanned line marked the recent work of the barber. How pretty she was! and how young she was! I hope they were happy that he always was kind to her. Just as the gang-plank was to be drawn away, a father, with two little girls came hurrying on, and behind him trotted his panting wife, carrying a fat baby on one arm and leading a very small boy by the hand. Closely following were two older boys. The The Land of Purple Shadows family with all their belongings seemed to fairly over flow one side of the deck. Such radiant, beaming faces! Such radiating joy! Later in the day, sitting near them, I was an involuntary listener to their un ceasing reminiscences of an unclouded week of pleas ure, together in "the city." How happy they were these people who travel the by-ways! One or two more hurried on board, and then I heard the churning of the wheel. Turning, I saw a strip of greenish water edged with froth and foam, where the plank had been. The up-river boat had started. Out through the craft crowding the San Francisco shore ; out, into the beautiful bay encircled with violet hills; out past Goat Island s rocky steeps and grassy hollows; past Angel Island s smooth green hills, lovely in the Summer sunshine, and where, beyond her outlines, we could see Alcatraz the Sentinel stand ing watch and ward over the Golden Gate! Past the other lesser islands, and the scattering ships that lay at anchor in the harbor! As the boat moved slowly up the bay I gave myself up to the quietude which reigned the peaceful delight of the idle hours. When the day had grown into late afternoon, and we had passed sleepy-looking Benecia at the head of the bay, the wide sweep of the water narrowed until the little steamboat found herself between the banks of the Sacramento. Golden California! Where in all the world is her like? There were pictures all around me. Here, Nature usually in her landscapes uses strong color, laying it on broadly with a full brush ; but that day it was a gallery of pastels with which I was surrounded soft blendings of delicate colors. From desert levels to the land s edge where the sun drops down into the Up-Stream Under a Summer Moon 100 The Land of Purple Shadows Up Stream Under a Summer Moon sea, never could you find more exquisite coloring than that with which we were surrounded as the late day found us far up-stream. We had answered the call to dinner a savory meal, wholesome and appetizing of the sort which one finds in country farmhouses; and when we returned to the deck it was to behold a magical transformation. A golden mist (perhaps it was the river- damp showing yellow in the light of the dying sun) rose all about us to glorify the atmosphere. We seemed to float through a gilded sky. When twilight came, it turned to gray, to again be changed by the white full moon to a silver haze when she had taken her place in the heavens after the sun had melted into the rim of the Western sea. Surely, never since the beginning of time that fourth day of Creation, when there was made the "light to shine by night" could there have been more ferfect hours of white splendor than were those when I saw the ordinarily prosaic Sacramento river under the full Summer moon! The silvery mist rose about us, far and wide softening, but not hiding the land scape. Objects along the shore long reaches of tule- land, a deserted house set at the water s edge, an old boat-landing whatever they might be that went slip ping silently by us as the splashing wheel pushed the little steamer up between the low banks of marsh-land meadow all were transformed by the magic of the moon s white light, and through the filmy veil became part of that scene of unsurpassed glory, where even the willows fringing the banks showed with theatrical effect, like the tinselled trees of a Christmas play. At times, deceived by the distance which lay between the guard-rail and the faintly marked lines of the shore, we would smother a cry of alarm at what appeared a too-close approach to the banks, and the danger of The Land of Purple Shadows 101 collision. Crossing from side to side to avoid the strong down-sweep of the current, as the steamer zig zagged her way up the stream, we seemed to fairly brush these objects which so unexpectedly loomed up before us, where in the deceptive lights of the night time they arose from the shore in exaggerated size. The air was full of the blended indescribable sounds of a Summer night ; and through it all one could hear the croaking of frogs, the brave sound of a distant watch dog s bark at a farmhouse hidden behind some mystic grove of trees, or the splash of a great fish leap ing high out of the water in sheer joy to greet the white Lady Moon. Once, as it passed just above me, I heard the squawk of a mallard flying low, and it seemed I could almost feel the eddy of air which was struck aside by the sweep of the strong, swift wings. Now and again the boat swung in to the shore, to leave at some little landing, a passenger or a part of the cargo. Many of these places looked so deserted that one wondered if anyone would ever come to take away the freight; wondered where those who dis embarked would go when they went out into the vague uncertainty of the distance beyond the shore. The broad valley land about us seemed so peaceful and idyllic in the moonlight, so quiet in its remoteness from the fret and jar of the busy mercantile world, it was hard to realize how the morrow and daylight would show grain-fields reaching away to the moun tains, with thrifty orchards scattered here and there. Morning light would reveal the homes of a hundred farmers, and green pastures where under the spread ing live oaks hung with their gray cobweb moss fat cattle and finely bred horses would be feeding in the clover growing knee-deep. It was hard to believe it now as the boat glided up a river which glistened like a stream of running quicksilver. UpStream Under a Summer Moon 102 The Land of Purple Shadows Up-btream Under a Summer Moon Puck and Titania were there ; Mustardseed and Peas- blossom, too. They had trooped down to throw over it the spell of enchantment, and transform it into a land for the fairies and the elves. Softly fanned by the sensuous night wind into a delicious languor, one wished with all one s tired soul that there might never be a return to the bustling world, but that this might go on forever. Sometimes we approached the banks so closely that we caught the sweetness of the garden flowers as we passed on our way mignonette, and old-fashioned roses, and candy-tuft borne to us in heavy fragrance on the night air. Just there, where shone the lamps in houses built close along the shore under tall eucalypti, we saw a woman bending over her work, her face all in shadow. Just as the picture was passing beyond our line of vision, she rose quickly, and as quickly went toward one who came in, taking her in his arms. And so the stories were repeated to us all along our night- journey up the Sacramento! One by one my fellow-passengers were leaving me. Among those first to go were the father and mother, and the six hearty, happy youngsters. A smiling, sweet-faced girl all in pink, greeted them where they landed; her dress making a bit of color there like a wild rose in a hedge, as she stood in the glare of a great oil lamp swinging above her a light which showed garish and out of place in the moon s chastened lustre. At each landing we left them in pairs, or singly, until all were gone save myself, and the two men in corduroys. For another hour I sat on the deck, watching the few passing steamers gay with lights white, green, and red that were taking their places in the lovely river picture. Going down to the harbor city, they were carrying to the markets the fruits and vegetables The Land of Purple Shadows 103 raised in the valley. One passed, with military pris oners being removed to Alcatraz. There was a glimpse of uniforms, and glintings of steel; then it, too, faded into the rainbow river-mists. And the dream went on as the hours went by, but one never had their fill. Finally the Spirit of Sleep began softly pressing lids down on eyes that never grew tired. Reluctantly I went to my wee stateroom, to go from one dream into others. And though the last thing I was conscious of was hearing voices outside my stateroom window, where the canvas and corduroys still sat talking together, and I heard them tell of a wonderful catch of Dolly Varden trout in the McCloud river, and of a glorious month there among the Cali fornia pines, and other incidents connected with a very material hunting and fishing trip of the previous year, yet when I fell asleep, it was to dream that a gold and jewelled spider spun a silver cobweb across the sky, and that Titania and the fairies danced upon its slen der threads. When I awoke in the morning and sleepily opened my eyes, the little stateroom was shining with the yel low light of an early Summer morning s sun, which fil tered through the shutters in fine golden grains. The steamer was lying quietly at the Sacramento City wharf, and as I lay with lazy eyelids, I heard far church-bells ringing for early Mass. Up-Streara Under a Summer Moon JACK BRUIN: THE GOATHERD. A.R up on the side of Cerro Colorado, where you may stand (if you can find a footing so steep are its rocky slopes) and look away off into the lovely valley of the San Joaquin, lying down beneath you ; far up above the snow line of Win ter, among the California pines and manzanitas, there was living a little more than a score of years ago, Lewis Ford, solitary and alone, but for his flock of eight or nine hundred goats, his half dozen horses, and Jack. Jack was a bear. Eight years previous to the time I write of, Ford had found the little, shining, black cub soft and round as a ball and had gathered it up closely to his breast, carrying it to his lonely log-cabin as tenderly as though baby Bruin was the fairest foundling ever born under the perpetual blue of California skies. Neighbors he had none. Visitors were creatures almost unknown up there where a wagon road was an impossibility, and where Ford s own stores had to be carried up on a pack-horse that picked its way care fully along the dizzy trails. The real love of solitude is an acquired taste. Man is, generally speaking, a gregarious animal; and if he .*ysjf;i,;<T-< ; -.kr ;<Wf i "?*((: i*. **. : j*-mi\ "The bear was trained to herd the goats as the shepherd dogs had done." Page 107 The Land of Purple Shadows 105 cannot mix with his own species in his own way, he will instinctively turn to the companionship of the four-footed creatures of mountain and plain. So, Ford wifeless, childless, and alone on the heights of Cerro Colorado, sixty miles away from Mount Diablo s snowy summit, took into his home the little wild waif of the mountain, and which, as the years wore on, won its way into the heart of the lonely man. But opening the cabin door with a "Salve, Bruin!" was not all there was needful to be done in so serious a matter as adopting a very immature bear. Jack had to be provided with a foster-mother; so a frightened, trembling, bleating she-goat was brought to the house to take the place of the parent he so missed. It was only after much combined force and persuasion that "Lillie" could be induced to adopt as her own, the very un-kidlike orphan placed in her care. But finally the time came when foster-mother and foster-child were as happy and content in their relations to one another as if the sight of a nimble-footed, blue-haired "Nanny" suckling a clumsy black bear- cub was of the most ordi nary condition of affairs. Jack waxed fat on goat s milk; and a more docile, tractable beast never grew up under the guardianship of a humane and loving master. In the earlier days of his adoption the baby was a baby in truth. He refused to be left alone. And it would have been a harder heart than Ford s that could have resisted the pitiful whimper of the little fellow whenever he thought that he was to be left alone in the cabin. Had there been any to see it in those days, they would have witnessed a strange sight. The great, broad-shouldered man following his flock as they grazed on the bunch-grass sometimes five or six miles from home and as he walked the steep mountain-side Jack Bruin: The Goatherd 106 The Land of Purple Shadows Jack Bruin: The Goatherd where it was so almost perpendicular that it seemed only the goats themselves could gain a foothold on the rocks, he carried the cub in his arms. Those arms grew very- tired many a time and oft ; grew tired with the growing weight of the pet that was getting "muy gordo," but Ford would not leave the little one to mope and mourn at home, and perhaps be stolen by some straggling stranger in his absence. Sometimes a stray hunter came that way, and Ford would take no risks. Ford was a worker, and he felt it was only right that his charge must learn to work, too. Bears without number are taught to dance and do all sorts of amusing tricks ; but this was no city bear, to waltz to music and hold out a hat for a dime. He was not to be taught accomplishments, but how to put his efforts forth in acquiring useful knowledge to be applied to the daily duties at hand. So Jack s play days were over. He had become a big boy, and must go to work, as other boys in the families of the poor. So farewell to the days when there had been nothing but play ! For Jack, there had been play days in plenty, and playmates; just as though he were a boy instead of a bear. There had been times when Ford left his flock tem porarily in care of a herder Leandro, the Mexican, from the other side of the mountain, forty or fifty miles away and then Jack and Jack s master went off on jaunts, when the master hunted with rifle or shot gun, and the bear chased rabbits and squirrels dig ging into their holes till he captured them. Sometimes their way lay across the mountain to Leandro s own place, and there he would make friends with the chil dren as if he himself was a child among them romp ing with Carmelita, and Rosario, and Petronilla, and even playing with baby Ramona, without so much as a single rough stroke of the great clumsy paws. If The Land of Purple Shadows 107 tired out in play they threw themselves down on the ground, he too would drop down, his huge body across their feet where they sat; and when sitting on the edge of a pond, one day, they shoved him from where he lay sprawled out on their dress-skirts, anchoring the children to the ground, and the push they gave sent him into the pond, he displayed no other evidence of anger than a little growl of rebuke as he shook the water off after he had climbed out. With the boys he would box and wrestle as two boys will when playing together. Sometimes it was the bear that was thrown sometimes little Leandro. All these things came to an end; and Jack was trained to herd the goats as the shepherd dogs had done. The dogs, in time, were given away for Jack could never be made to feel that dogs were other than his avowed enemies; and fights frequent and fierce were the result of their associations. The dogs went ; and Jack stayed. But he was made to take their place. It was wonderful the aptitude he displayed in learn ing to dispense the duties of his new position! True, there were times, when being initiated, that he played the truant ; and was found away off among the manzani- tas, breaking off great branches and eating their dark and shining berries. But that was in the first days of his responsibilities as assistant herder before Ford had trusted him alone with the goats, and made him herder-in-chief. However, a time did come, after much patient teaching, when true as a soldier to his trust Jack was the faithful guardian of his master s flocks, and earned the title of "Jack, the Goatherd of the Cerro Colorado." From sleeping in the cabin at his master s side, he came to sleeping in the gateway of the corral. An Jack Bruin: The Goatherd 108 The Land of Purple Shadows Jack Bruin: The Goatherd army could not have invaded the goats stronghold with the black bear on guard. Nor was the tending of goats his only duty. He car ried all the firewood into the log cabin and laid it down by the stove. The halter ropes of two or three horses would be put between his teeth, and he would lead them to water, and back again to their mangers. Strange horses, like human strangers, were terribly afraid of him at first sight, but Ford s horses knew him as they knew Ford himself. One day, when breaking a two-year-old colt, Ford was obliged to go into the cabin for something needed, and there being no post nearby which was handy to tie his horse to, he gave Jack the halter rope to hold. The horse was unused to the bear, and, after Ford left them, became thoroughly frightened, plunging and rearing about the yard. But though the strain was severe the iron jaws did not relax, albeit the little bear was dragged ruthlessly to and fro, valiantly tug ging at the other end of the rope. There were times when they would go on a hunting expedition, miles away from home; and Ford would leave his horse and saddle, and the raw meat for his luncheon (to be roasted over blazing cones, by and by) and numberless other things in Jack s care. The bear would as little think of touching that raw meat as he would of attacking Ford himself. And the horse would be found herded not twenty feet away from the exact spot where he had been left to graze, with Jack walking around him in a circle, that he might keep his charge well within the limit of his pasture. If Ford must go down to the valley to Livermore, fifty miles away a goat would be killed and given to Jack for food, with instructions to look well after everything while he would be alone with the herd. Who shall say that the words Ford used were not as The Land of Purple Shadows 109 well understood by Jack Bruin as if the message had been given in the silent speech of bear with bear? And is it a matter of any wonder that those two loved each other as man rarely loves his fellow-man? Does man find his fellow-man so faithful so stead fast? By and by a day came when Ford sold the goats. He sold the log-cabin, too, where among the Pacific pines and manzanitas for a double decade he had almost lived the life of a hermit. He was growing old. A sister and a brother across a continent, and far beyond the ocean that laps its Eastern shore, were waiting for him to come home. So there came another day when Ford loped his horse slowly lingeringly down the lower slopes of Cerro Colorado, and the black bear came loping at his heels ; loping for awhile and then stopping to rest, and lying out as flat as if he were stone dead then getting up again, and going on to where Ford waited for him. When they came into the town and the people heard that Ford was leaving the country never to return, a hundred offers were made to him for the bear that had never known muzzle, nor chain, nor collar. "No," said he, "where I go, Jack goes. If, when I get to San Francisco, I find that I can t get a passage for him on the steamer with me to New York, and an other one when I get there that will take him across the Atlantic, why we will both stay on this side." That was more than twenty years ago. Since then, letters have come across the seas from Ford. And Jack is with him. Jack Bruin: The Goatherd THE TRANSFORMATION OF CAMP McGARY. NJUST, because untrue, is the implica tion: "As dirty as an Indian!" How often ones hears this expression used by white Americans who travel in cars through Indian-land! Aye, and how often (although knowing better than to be such a sheep) have I, myself, made use of it! When you, or I, have said it, we referred to the bodily un- cleanliness of our brothers, the First Americans. As to the dirt of the camp itsalf the hogans, the wickiups, the teepees, are mostly, I grant you, dirty. It is dirt without any disguises; but wholesome and healthy in raising large families, if one is to base one s belief upon the living statement made by the fat, roly-poly bits of bronze that tumble about the place playing with the puppies, and emitting such gurgles of laughter that your own heart is set singing at the sound. We who are chiseled out of white marble do not take kindly to the lack of perfect cleanliness we sometimes find in our brother who is cast in bronze ; but as it is mostly the dirt which can be cleansed with a bucket of water, or removed by a broom, let us try to forgive him. It might easily be worse out it isn t. As to him self , Lo keeps his own body clean by way of a bathtub as thorough in its methods as your own. The Land of Purple Shadows Come with me. Let me take you with me across valley and plain riding long hours, with the wind in your face and the love of life in your heart away and away o er the open road, to the range of mountains where, by the edge of the lake with its lava rim, lies old Camp McGary. Incidentally, I will tell you of Indians and show you their bath houses. It may be that you will say (when I have done) that I have told you how Lo bathes, and have but casually mentioned the old fort which was abandoned by our soldiers years upon years ago. Whichever way it may seem to you is immaterial. At least, let me prove that Lo in gen eral, and Paiute Lo in particular, is often traduced. Come, and I will show you a beautiful bathing-place (and there are hundreds more that are to be found like it) where the folk of Caracalla s time, or any other luxury-loving old fellow of those other old times though having more luxuriously appointed bath-houses could never have been made cleaner. Away up near the top of a volcanic mountain (which is all blended blues and violets till you reach it, and all greenish-gray with sage, and mottled with moun tain mahogany when you do) lies a lake, long and nar row, cold and clear. Soundings have never found bot tom. It lies on the shoulder of the mountain almost, but not quite, at the top. By the white people it is called " Summit Lake," but the Paiutes have a very much better name. It is the lake best beloved by the Paiutes; not because of its trout (yet where else are their like to be found?) but because the white man considers the place as one too remote for him to think it worth his while to encroach on his brown brother s domain. Also it is cool deliciously cool there all through the hot arid Summer. I have known fresh snow to whiten the peaks in August. All the year the creek runs bank full, and cold as ice water; for The Transfor mation of Camp McGary 112 The Land of Purple Shadows The Transfor mation of Camp McGary ;he snows, melting, send a stream such a stream of Deauty and song down through the canon to fling itself joyously into the arms of the waiting lake. All up and down the high slopes are antelope and deer not scattering ones, but large herds. Still higher, where the rocks are, live the big horn the Paiute s favorite game. If you go there by the creek when the morning sun first finds it, you will hear the rush of wings the partridge-like whirr which, if you are a sportsman, makes your trigger finger itch for the touch of a shot gun and dropping down by dozens and scores come sage-chickens gray as the sagebrush that here grows tall as the willows, and wild gooseberry and rosebushes that border the banks. This was a favorite haunt of the brown man long ago. He lived here and found it good in the days when his name was a terror to the emigrant whose wagon crept down the valley beyond. This is the place his great-grandchildren seek today, loving it no less than did their grandsires. A little less than half a hundred years ago. men wearing the old-time soldier blue, marched here and, at the creek s edge, built around three sides of a hol low square the substantial stone and adobe buildings that made their shelter in the days when they went a-fighting the bronze men of the mountains. When they came, the brown man drew back and away farther and farther, till there was no more need of soldiers to protect the scattered settlers, or the emi grant down below, winding his way Westward. When the bronze man melted away like a campfire smoke blown by the wind the man in blue went also. There was no further need of him. Only the houses he had builded, remained. Afterward a very, very long time afterward the bronze man came creeping back. The Land of Purple Shadows 113 Quieter now, and wiser. What use was it to take up arms against a foe that could not be counted, so great were the numbers? Back came the brown man, and to the empty and deserted buildings of the fort. Would you see it today? The walls shows the wear and war of the years and the elements, but the name of the old fort survives Camp Me Gary. Still are the buildings inhabited; but those who go in and out of the officers quarters, or greet you at the door of the guard-house, or whom you meet on the parade ground, do not wear the soldier-blue. The Indian brother has sole possession of the walls which were upreared against his arrows, and by those who strived for his undoing. It is here the Paiute today is happiest when he hunts and fishes; here he lives, and loves, and yes, bathes! Down by the creek-edge, fragrant with the breath of sweetbriar and mint and plum-bushes a-bloom, is something that attracts your unaccustomed eye. Bent willows, stripped of their branches and leaves, have been thrust each end arch-like into the ground, forming the framework of a tiny dome-shaped struc ture whose uses you are yet to learn. Willow bands hold it together tied at their crossings with the willow hoops with thongs of buckskin or bits of bright cloth. This one is perhaps four feet in diameter; not more than two-and-a-half high. In one side there has been left an opening large enough for a grown person to crawl through. The floor is smooth and clean, and beaten hard. At one side is a deep hollow in the ground bowl-shaped, and plastered with a sort of cement. There are four or five large stones lying near smooth and clean. Such is Lo s bathtub. His bath room is the wide sapphire sky, the sage-scented hills below, and the cedar-sweet heights above, the rim of The Transfor mation of Camp McGary 114 The Land of Purple Shadows The Transfor mation of Camp McCary the silver lake at one side, the rippling stream at the other. Hark! Hear the songs of larks and linnets! It might be worse. And now Lo, himself, comes down to the place that of old knew the bugle call; that today is echoing to child-laughter the laughter of Indian children. When Lo reaches the framework that the white man has named for him "a sweat-house" he unwraps the blanket from his body, and winds it about the small willow hut, fastening it down tightly everywhere that no cold air may pass through, except at the very small doorway. Then he proceeds to build a fire of the half-dead roots of a sagebush near by. Soon he has a great bed of red coals, and into them he rolls the big smooth stones that were lying near the sweat-house. While they are heating, he sits on his heels, and looks away off into the valley and meditates sits silent and as motionless as well, an Indian. Once in a while he arouses him self and rises to add more fuel to the campfire; to again squat on his heels and with folded arms look long and steadily toward the great white plains. You might easily take him for a figure cast in bronze, he is so still. He has not forgotten, though he sits so quiet you begin to think he no longer remembers what he came down to the edge of the lovely bloom-bordered creek for. By and by he rises, and fills the bowl- shaped hollow in the floor of the sweat-house with water which he brings from the creek fetching it in a basket marvellously woven of willows by some woman of his camp. Then, at last, when the stones are as hot as the fire may make them, they are rolled into the earth-bowl which he has filled with water. There is a hiss of ris ing steam Lo s raiment drops from him as by the The Land of Purple Shadows 115 touch of a magic wand, and he stands bronze-brown and naked as when God made him. He stoops crouches and now has slipped under the curtainec doorway, which he tightly fastens, and Lo is taking his bath. Bathing himself in the fashion known to all nations as the most thorough and cleansing. Lo stays there longer than his white brother could endure those clouds of uprising hot vapor. So long does he stay that you fall to wondering if after all he may not have succumbed to the suffocating heat. But no; after a long a very long time, there is a movement of the blanketed doorway, and a bronze statue emerges therefrom a statue glistening like polished copper. Lo comes forth shining with the per spiration which has cleansed every pore. There is a rush to the creek s edge a plunge into its deepest pool (ice-cold from the melting snows which have gone to its filling), and when Lo comes forth, his body is all aglow from the quickened blood which now courses through his veins; and he is made fresh-skinned and clean by a bath which knows no betters. "Dirty as an Indian?" Lo, I beg your pardon! The Transfor mation of Camp McGary OLD CAMPFIRE DAYS. ERE, in Roseland in this land of the sun, this land by the sea where each night as I fall asleep I am fanned by flower-sweet breezes; where (growing close to the head of my bed) a white La Marque clambers to the wide eaves; where orange and lemon trees in bloom brush the pil lars of the veranda on one side of the patio, making the air heavy with their over-sweet perfume, there come to me recollections of other nights nights spent by the campfires, and under the stars of the desert. Do you care to listen to let me tell you of those nights and their days? Will you let me tell you of one ride, in particular, that memory now brings back to me? Ah! such a glorious dawn it had been that day when we began our journeying. All purple and blue with the morning mists was the valley, turning golden as the sun climbed higher. Out through the gate we rode, and away from the ranch; and on up the wide valley. Across brush-covered mesas, through a narrow pass in a low-lying range of hills hills that were pink and gray, with never a sign of verdure ; falling in with a "cattle outfit" cowboys driving beef-cattle to the railroad, the railroad that was miles and miles away. The Land of Purple Shadows 117 We kept pace behind the lowing herds, on the long drive to water; but at nightfall we reached an invit ing cafiada, where a beautiful stream tumbled and shouted down its rocky way; and there we spread our camp-outfit and built our fires. After the stock had been watered (we had seen to it that they had their suppers ere we had our own) ; and when we had eaten our fill of the roast ribs, hot and juicy, sent over from the cowboys camp, we foregathered about a huge brush-fire and listened to frontier stories, while the low-hanging stars came out in a sky all purple with dark. In the creek we could hear the ripple of water, and the twitterings of sleepy birds disturbed by the fire-glow; but farther off, the cattle made no sound tired, lying down after the long drive. Only the man on guard, whistling "Kathleen Mavourneen," and the crunching of the brush under his horse s hoofs, came to us out of the shadows. Back we went to our camp; and to sleep under a thin thread of a moon. Morning ! Saddle mount, and away ! Up where the air was clear, and cooled by the wind blowing from the snow-heights, under an azure sky where hung clouds like battle smoke. Away down on the plains we could see the dusty banner unfurled by the slow-mov ing cattle on their way to the stockyards! And fur ther down the bleached levels we watched a herd of antelope drift away, looking like balls of thistledown carried along by the wind. We watched a wild stal lion lead his little harem warily up and down hills over a well-worn trail to the springs we had but just left; and we saw him (as he scented our recent presence there) take fright, and without waiting to drink Old Campfire Days 118 The Land of Purple Shadows Old Compfire Days go racing off and away with his little band at his heels. Off to his grazing place, and to safety! Crossing the range, we descended into a long canon filled with groves of cottonwoods where the leaves fell upon us as we passed beneath, and where the quaking aspens shivered and shuddered in the chill autumn wind that swept down from the snow-heights, bringing tidings of approaching storms to levels down below. The trees were arrayed in every imaginable shade of crimson, and russet, and brown. Nature was announc ing her "Fall Opening," and every leaf was dressed for the season s occasion. Some wore small spots of red, others great splotches of the vivid color; streaks and stripes of yellow and of brown dappled the leaves. None went unadorned. Only the jumpers, up near the snow-line, were attired in conventional green quite unconcerned at the frivolous ones gone mad in a riot of gaudy color. The scarlet and yellow of the buffalo berries shone through the greens growing along the creeks. Bunch-grass, blown by the wind that was scat tering its seeds, grew on the slopes; and from it our ponies snatched mouthfuls as we passed. Leaving the cool heights, we went down to the hot, dry valley and joined our slow-moving team which, in our morning hours up aloft, we had almost forgotten. All the rest of the day surrounded by wavering mirages across dry lakes and their shores of drifted sand, we rode. Over the bleached alkali plains, toward the ever receding foothills which we must reach before the violet shadows should grow gray, and gray shadows turn to black. As we rode we tapped our heels against the horses dusty sides at every step, urging them toward the dis tant spot where the steam from the hot springs at the canon s mouth beckoned us on, the long streamer of misty white floating like a magic veil blowing lightly The Land of Purple Shadows to the Southward. It waved and beckoned; but at sunset we seemed no nearer to it than we had been at noon; and twilight found us yet many miles away. Not until the purpled shadows of the night closed in upon us, and faint stars began to shine, did we find ourselves there. We who were in the saddle had been riding far in advance of our commissariat, so while waiting the arrival of the wagon with its supplies for our hungry horses, and ourselves in the dim starlight we went on a voyage of discovery through the labyrinth of wick edly boiling springs (of all sizes, and apparently with out number) that in the darkness seemed an array of frightful monsters with yawning jaws, ready to draw us down with them into the black depths. It was weird uncanny, to go about cautiously pushing a foot along to feel our way lest we step into a too-near caldron. In the faint light we could discern half a dozen ramshackle buildings of unpainted wood. They were grouped irregularly about a half-hundred of the evil-smelling holes where sulphur-waters boiled and bubbled, and steamed and gurgled incessantly. A dense vapor hung over the place; and soon our cloth ing was damp from its touch as though we were under a fine rain. The earth for half a mile around (as morn ing showed us) was crusted with a greenish deposit from the overflow. No spear of grass, not a tree, nor shrub other than the stunted greasewood and sparse sagebrush, grew on the tableland over which the boil ing waters spread. So striking matches (which the desert wind as quickly put out!) we made our timorous way from spring to spring. From a rusty tin we drank of its healing waters each spring yielding a yet more nauseous draught than its predecessor; and we left them, and groped our way through the steam and Old Campfire Days 120 The Land of Purple Shadows Old Campfire Days murkiness (fearful lest we slip into some of the treach erous vent holes), on toward the shacks which loomed up unnaturally tall in the world of mist, waiting us in unfriendly silence. Up and down the length of the porch of the one-time "Hotel" we went; our feet clattering noisily on the loosely laid boards. There had been a time, now long in the past, when the springs had enjoyed something of a reputation as a health resort; but now it would seem they were quite deserted. However, we would try to rouse some one, if human beings were there. We rapped; we stamped; we holloaed to hear our voices come back to us in mocking echoes. Echoes answered echoes through the empty rooms. Again louder, as we struck with doubled fists on the loosely hung doors. Silence absolute silence, save for the hoot of an owl above the springs. On the cracked panes of the cur- tainless windows our knuckles made a vigorous tattoo, but only the scurrying of rats and mice within an swered us. It was evident that no other human beings than ourselves were within many and many a mile; the place was empty abandoned. And an empty house in the desert and at night seems the loneliest thing in the world. The rattle of nearing wheels was answered by quick whinnyings from our horses, and we turned from our eerie surroundings to meet the camp-wagon, and make ready our supper. Soon, in the clearing near the weather-worn shacks, we had a cheery campfire roar ing. What a good thing life is, to be sure, when one is young, and healthy, and hungry, and the feet are eager to go their way on the far-reaching, long, brown trail! Over and over, we turned the spit on which we had skewered tender and juicy slabs of yearling beef -ribs, while we shaded our eyes from the heat and the fire- The Land of Purple Shadows 121 glow, with bent arms held across our foreheads, and watched the meat grow brown and crisp as the fat dripped into the blaze, and the appetite was whetted as it never is at the table that is spread under a roof. Oh! the savory smells that rise from the meal that is cooked on a bed of glowing coals! How hungry we were how light-hearted we were! How good it seemed to be there, where we circled the fire like gypsies ; how glad we were just to live and laugh, and find content in the hour! By and by, we watched the fire die down to a bed of red embers; watched them dull, and then darken, and then become a white ash. And with the smoke from the blackened log, was blended that of the "Golden Scepter" as it floated up from the men s briarwoods. The talk died down with the fire, and we dreamed the time away, as all who watch a dying fire always do dream. In fancy, one goes riding away to that land where all our dearest dreams come true. Then a coyote yelped from a near-by hill, startling us with his staccato cry ; and once more we were roused to a consciousness of the time and place. To bed! A night of deep sleep sleep under the blurred stars; to be ready for the morrow! So the camp beds were un rolled and spread out on the mineral- whitened earth, and we lay down (still amid the fine clouds of warm and sulphurous steam) and fell asleep to the rumblings and mutterings of half a hundred springs, and the mournful wail of the lone, lean coyote. We awakened to a golden day! We had slept late (tired from our long afternoon across sand-hills and alkali flats) and the sun was in our faces. We opened our eyes to a transfiguration! No longer were the vapors gray and ghostly. Changed by the magic of the morning sun, rainbow-colored wreaths of mist Old Caitvplire Days 122 The Land of Purple Shadows Old Campfire Days floated lightly everywhere about us. The early sky was amethyst ; the hills were burnished gold. Up and away ! The day was glorious ; and today the world was ours. Breakfast; break camp; mount; and on ward! Before us were the mountains. The road went up, and higher. It is good to climb the heights when the blood is young. "Sing, riding s a joy! For me, I ride." Away with wheels! Give me the bridle-rein. To drive, is to be a slave to shackle attention to the team and the road; for the road may be filled with badger-holes and boulders, scarcely passed over by man once in five years. But in the saddle! Ah! there one s horse is given his head, and one s thoughts and eyes have freedom free to roam as they will; to go a-seeking out the little things which otherwise would surely be missed. To know the desert well (to be close friends with it, and then finally to be taken into its confidence) one must of necessity either travel on foot or ride in the saddle. If the distance one would journey be far, then into the saddle! But to drive Why, one misses most of the pleasures, and all of the little discoveries. We left our team that followed the road which ran along by the foothills while up and down deep canons we went, and where there was never a sign of road, or track, or trail. Riding in sunlighted shallows, where high walls, close at hand, still lay in their deep morn ing-shadow. Quail ran swiftly up the slopes; and sage-chickens that the horses flushed where they scrambled through the slate-strewn uplands rose with a whirr and rush of strong wings, as they flew in great flocks to hillsides beyond. The loaded shotguns lay in our laps, and we shot from the saddle; and riding The Land of Purple Shadows 123 along the steep slopes we picked up our game without dismounting. Less than a mile away, three deer calmly looked down on us as we laboriously climbed upward; but when we stopped, taking fright they went like a wave over the hills and melted into the distance. Up and down another ridge; and we came upon a Shoshone village tucked so out of sight that it was startling to discover our brown brothers living there. Far from the railroad and the towns that so soon teach them the white man s ways, they were almost aboriginal in dress, and seemed a different clan from any we had known. Theirs was the dress of those who lived in the land when the white invader first found his way there. Still they were eating dried seeds and the things eaten by their forebears before them ; still they lived in huts wattled with rabbit-brush and willows. None spoke any English, though some of them knew what we said. So, giving to one of their number an old, old man crooked of limb, and weather-furrowed of face cigarette papers and a sack of tobacco, we turned our reins again across the horses necks, and were off once more on the long trail. We found an abandoned mining-claim scarcely more than a prospect yet there had been enough work done to show us that some one some time had hoped, and worked, and failed, and lost heart, as so many had before him. The broken rock was red-rusted with age and the storms ; an elderberry tree had grown up, bar ring the doorway of the cabin. How strong he must have been when climbing the mountains in the begin ning! How wearily his feet must have dragged when he turned and went down, and away ! And then ; was the itch for the pick-handle in his palm again and did he go to other mountains, to meet other failures? It is the old, old story of the old prospector. Old Campfire Days 124 The Land of Purple Shadows Old Campfire Days We shot at a coyote, and missed him; and could not find it in our hearts to be sorry. We sat by a spring a full hour, watching an "ant-lion that lay in wait for unwary ants, which trapping, he dragged mercilessly down to his dungeon. We found a place where bees had hidden their stores; and became their robbers. Arrowheads, we found ; fashioned by the un tamed Red Man in the days when he made war on his white brother. We saw a mother-coyote carry a jack- rabbit home to her young ones; and we left her at peace in her den. No mountain sheep had we seen, though finding their tracks; and in one of the water-trails made by wild creatures we saw the pad of a mountain lion. We reined in our horses on the high ridge of a bald mountain, where the wild winds buffetted our clothing, and we held to our hats with both hands ; while we sat there among trees that grew slantwise trees which from long bowing their heads to the storms, now leaned to the ground like old and bowed men. We faced the four winds; they seemed all blowing at once. We looked at the world beneath and about us. Our eyes sought still other mountains far away, yet hemming us in, lying fold upon fold; gray here, and blue in the distance, the highest peaks hooded with the first snowfall of the year. At our left blue in the sunshine, in the shadows shading to lilac lay Table Mountain. Vertical rocks rose from its top, walling its uttermost rim close- walled with granite and porphyry rising from one to three hundred feet high, and through which but three or four breaks gave entrance to the level, grass-cov ered plateau there. To that haven, hundreds of wild horses came daily to graze, till deep snows drove them into the valley. The Land of Purple Shadows 125 Tales have been told of how cowboys riding hard after a fast-running herd of wild horses, have caught an instant s glimpse of rare little black foxes that live in the rocks. In a ravine beyond the mountain, is the wonder of all that range, Unnamed by any, almost unknown by any except the stockman who rides the ranges, is the Canon of the Titans. At least, that is the name we gave it. Immense, imposing, the symmetrical rocks rose in huge masses from the point of a sage-covered hill pro jecting, like a promontory, into the wide canon. Surely they must have been sawn in some mill of the gods, for no haphazard chance could make them so true. From eighteen inches in thickness to those that were more than two feet through, the dark, reddish-brown mono liths seemed to have been squared, and sawed, and planed as though by a giant master-workman. Thirty feet high they stood, some standing higher; some not over ten. Side by side, like posts, standing on end, they covered acres innumerable. Here, they stood in perpendicular masses, like tim bers suddenly turned to stone; over there, hundreds were lying horizontally as though piled in that way by giants who had placed them there for building their castles. As before the Giant s Causeway, and the Devil s Post Pile, and others of Nature s similar fan ciful vagaries, one stands and wonders, overwhelmed and silent. We climbed to the divide at the farther side of the canon and gazed down on them from that height. We went up the canon to get a long vista. We drew deep breaths of wonderment, and regretfully turned away. We were in the saddle many days, going whither our fancy willed. It was late October, and the air was Old Campflre Days 126 The Land of Purple Shadows like wine. Long distances were covered without either tiring our horses or ourselves. The spicy smell of the junipers; the bitter-sweet of the sage; the mingled odors of many weeds that the horses trampled under foot all these come to me now and here; and I close my eyes and am back again on the wild-horse trails over the Kennedy mountain! The memory of it all is so fresh that it comes close to me is here. Again I journey through the desert-dried seas; once more I cross plains of shifting sand, with their leprous spots of alkali. I remember how we lost our trail one day and were ourselves lost, and spent long hours stray ing hither and thither trying to find an old road. Then, when night suddenly fell, we were forced to halt at that pool of stygian blackness " The Mud-Hole" and under the clouded sky make our camp. No sup per had we, nor could we drink of the inky waters of that mysterious spring. Under the sunlighted sky they might have seemed less eerie, but we came in the dusk and left before the sun had found us out. On the badger-bored, dust-harried clearing about the pool, we spread out our blankets, and laid down to sleep. But no, we slept not. Whirlwinds of black dust, and the troops of wild horses that came down to drink, were not of those things that encourage sweet slumber ; and in the gray dawn we harnessed, saddled, and rode out to meet the brightening day. Even the mishap that made us enforced campers at the "Mud-Hole" had not spoiled the day, or our joy; there had been so many more things that were delightful, that this was only as a passing event on a long and happy journey. It seems but a day since I rode those heights with a good horse under me, and all the great blue arch of the desert-sky overhead. Yet, it is all the world away! Sighing, I look down at my wrists, almost fancying I The Land of Purple Shadows 127 will see shackles which have been snapped thereon. A prisoner! For call ourselves free agents as we may, yet are we slaves to the work-world, and always always necessity somewhere tugs. Sometimes in the night, when I lie down to sleep here among the roses of the Southland of the West, I hear the querulous barking of a little coyote that comes down the arroyo perhaps to make raids on the chickens of my neighbors across the way. I have a very friendly feeling for the little fellow, even so be he does come with malice prepense; for the sounds of the sharp young barks are reminders of those I have heard under the desert stars, and I grow homesick for the old life of the alkali plains, and sorry for the little gray waif that has the courage to come so close to the fringe of the big city. I hope that no one will kill him that he will not get caught in a trap ; poor, little, vagrant coyotito! One cloudy day s end we halted beside a stream flowing out of a canon, which was part of a ranch where we found a quartette of Mexicans. The old house was falling to pieces, but such as it was, they offered us the shelter it afforded. For a dust storm was blowing up the mesa. We declined their proffered courtesy, preferring to spread our blankets on the sweet, fresh-cut hay stacked in the barn. But gladly did we gather with them when they brought from the little lean-to kitchen (which smelt of onions, and gar lic; and had "jerky" and strings of red chiles hang ing on the wall) the things so tempting and savory. The carne, and corn and frijoles, and many and various other dishes of Mexican cookery. Ripe, red tomatoes, lettuce fresh from the garden, bread white and sweet, and just out of the oven ; coffee, hot, strong, and with- Old Campfire Days 128 The Land of Purple Shadows Old Campfire Days out milk; fresh meat taken from the glowing coals; fruit that was but now picked from the trees! What would you better, or more? Then when supper was over, and the table cleared of its dishes resting on a couch of furs arranged for my comfort (for what Mexican is ever unmindful of the courtesy due a woman?) I listened to songs, and to stories. Songs which have never been written, learned from the lips of another. Songs that are fast disap pearing crowded out by the new education. Now years after the lilt of the music comes back and I hear again, in fancy, the voices of those dark- skinned men singing to us, away off there in the dilap idated old ranch-house, at the foot of the gray, grim mountains. All around was the desert s night-silence; and within, the songs and the stories. Stories of wild days back in rough districts; of deeds of daring, coupled with bits of outlawry; of reckless, dare-devil riding, and raiding. Tales told in broken English, mixed with the soft, sibilant language of Spain. The evening winds came up from the sage-scented lowlands, across the alfalfa-fields, and the orchard, and in at the open windows of the smoke-blackened room, blowing the flickering candle-light alternately into brightness, and then semi-oblivion. The candle, thrust into the neck of an empty bottle for support, stood on the bare boards of the rough table around which, or in shadowy corners, were scattered the men whose dark- skinned faces showed dimly in the glow of the fickle flame. The wind-blown candlelight in its vagaries made strange, grotesque expressions to come and go on the half-hidden faces of Mateo, and black-bearded Manuel, and little Vitoriano, and the big Basilic Basilio of the sweet tenor voice, singing to us the simpatica songs of Spain. The smoke from the cigar- The Land of Purple Shadows 129 ettos made blue streamers float toward the ceiling in lazy undulations. Our eyelids, by and by, grew heavy; and lulled by the melody of the singer, we lis tened dreamily, and so went drifting drifting Then some one sprang up to say that the hour was late, and there was mucho trabajo to be done on the morrow; so with a hearty "buenas noches!" all around we left them and went down to our beds in the barn-loft, on the fresh-stacked alfalfa, where we dreamed of the Alhambra, and the dark eyes of Spain, and those things they have lent to the New World since the far days of Cortez. So we drifted into sleep in our clover-sweet beds, with the horses in the stalls beneath steadily grinding their hay. We rode ; and rode the days away ! And on one of those last days we came to an open canon that, once given up to Chinese placer miners, is (other Chinamen will tell you) now given over to two little moon-eyed ghosts. It is such a pretty, pleasant hollow in the hills that one is prone to doubt the truth of their story ; but they will tell you that once upon a time gold-dust was found in the gravel in the bottom of the little rosebush- edged stream, and that because of it the creek banks were soon lined with Chinese dug-outs and tents made of old sacking. The gold mining prospered, and the little men planted gardens where they raised the veg etables that they used; and one of their number molded bricks of mud the sun-baked abodes and he built him a good house, and started a store. In it, on the shelves, were Oriental supplies ; and under the counters were stored the things gotten from the "white devils"; and a portion of the largest room was set apart for Joss, where they could worship before his image, and so propitiate him. The smoke from the tapers as cended and mingled with the odors from the "yen-she" Old Campfire Days 130 The Land of Purple Shadows Old Campfire Days pipes; and there the little blue-bloused men sat to gether of evenings, and gossiped, and gambled, and were happy. But one day an unseen evil Spirit came among them, and in a black hour stood at the ear of one, saying: "Do murder! Do it! Do it now!" And listening to the persuasive voice of the evil one, and seeing a shin ing and sharp knife lying on his palm, he yielded for he had not prayed to Joss nor burned as many tapers as formerly, and the god was angry, and he was left un protected and in that hour a foul murder was done. So, lessened by one was the number of yellow-skinned miners who kept on digging in the creek-bed for gold. There followed a trial, by white men; and then the conviction; and then a hanging in the jail-yard off at the County-seat. But the little yellow-skinned men dug daily in the creek, seeking gold; and their num ber was lessened by two. But those who were left working day after day in the placers, began telling strange tales soon telling how shovels, and buckets, and picks which they laid down when quitting work with the sun, were taken up by mysterious hands, and used every night. In the dark some one stood at the windlass turning and turning hoisting up the gravel from the shaft; while another, down in the bottom, filled the buckets all the night long. In the dark, every night, these two came; came back from the Nowhere. Then the little miners, affrighted, fled as stampeded sheep scatter; and so the place became deserted. Here, one night, we camped near the store where still (it is said) little yellow ghosts sell goods over the counters all covered with dust, to others who come out of ghostland; and by the shaft where the creaking windlass (they say) still turns and turns in the night time. The Land of Purple Shadows 131 Just at twilight, when the day s violet shadows were turning to gray, we halted our horses, and there in the gravel-dump at the shaft when I washed out a bit of the diggings I found a nugget. A very, very small one it is true, but it was gold. So the story of gold being there is true. That being true, may not the story of the little blue-bloused ghosts be true, also? I, for one, shall not dispute it. It was Hallow-e en when we camped there. Perhaps that fact may have had something to do with strength ening my belief. On the creek-bank, among the wild sweet-brier and brook-mint, we spread our beds. And there, that last night of October, by our campfire of blazing juniper- boughs, we told stories of past Hallow-e ens. With the warm fire-glow on our faces we sat in the lonely canon many and many a mile from other creatures of our kind. Deer were in the hills, and down below bands of antelope swept along the plain. Remembering they were there, we did not feel lonely. We had dragged huge branches of the green juniper to camp, and we built a great fire; it lighted a wide circle where at the edge the dug-outs and the old adobe stood in the shadows. Into the fire we threw great boughs of the resinous greens, and each would blaze up in a magnificent illumination a veritable Christmas-tree with every branch and twig a-glitter with tinsel and gilt. And each of us hung wish-gifts there for the dear ones who were not with us for who ever looks into the heart of a campfire whose own heart does not go out to some unnamed ausente? With outward-turned palms shading our faces from the heat of the roaring, crackling green limbs, while golden sparks went flying upward toward the silver stars, we watched the green boughs burn to pink, look ing like branches of pale rose-coral from far Hawaii. Old Campfire Days 132 The Land of Purple Shadows OM Complire Days And we grew silent with the dying fire, and we saw ghosts ghosts in the coals where wavering shadows danced and flickered; but they were only memory s spirit forms, and those that were well beloved. The two little Orientals who (it is told) haunt the canon, came not; or, if they did, came while we slept, and moving ever so softly made no sound at the windlass, and our sleep was undisturbed. After the day dawned, yet before the sun broke the morning twilight of the canon, with my face pressed close to the pane, I peered through the dusty windows of the old adobe. My curiosity whetted, I was not sat isfied in seeing no more I must pass within. So finally I effected an entrance. Spiders stretched nets across dusky corners for unwary flies, and mice scur ried away into the rubbish which littered the place. On the counters built in "Melican-man" fashion, and which made me wonder why lay dust an inch deep; and as I moved (instinctively stepping as lightly as I could, lest someone something be disturbed) the empty house echoed loudly my tread. Save in the larger of the three rooms, nothing remained bearing witness to any former occupancy. A gallery high up at one end of the store held a small temple erected to Joss the Joss that had not been great enough, after all, to ward off evil spirits ; and now deserted by those who had placed him in the midst of a shrine greatly bedizened and betinselled, and decked with gaudy rice- paper flowers, and many-hued tassels of silk. About him grinned, and grimaced, and stared an imposing array of small gods ; all arranged in the long shelf -like gallery from which depended dozens of paper strips, vividly crimson, and inscribed with big, black Chinese characters. These fluttered and rustled in the morning breeze blowing in through the open door the only movement in the empty house. The Land of Purple Shadows 133 Much incense had been burned, if one was to judge by the many half-consumed tapers still there. One god hideous and gnome-like seemed to have been especially chosen for the supplicating prayers. Was it the "god who sends money?" Doubtless the weather- beaten coolies, washing the creek for gold, prayed oftenest to the gold-god. It is to be feared, however, that the supplications miscarried, and the little yellow men with the tip-tilted eyes lighted the punks in vain. Ah, well ! we whose eyes are set at a less oblique angle, sometimes find the money -god is deaf to our prayers, in spite of the punks we also burn. In this fact may be found a tie of kinship between the little men of the Orient and their Occidental brothers. I came out of the shadows that lurked in the old house which the little yellow man had built out of the sun-dried bricks he molded in the long-ago. I turned from the shadows and the silence, and met the morning sun coming in across the threshold. The years had been many since his rays had trailed across the bare floor; it was not for me to bid him enter. I closed the door tightly behind me, forcing the sunlight back back! Again the house was left to the ghosts and the gods, and the squirrels and mice, and the little black crickets in the walls, that shrilled to the silence. Up from the canon depths we went. Up and away to the heights of purer, sweeter air. Old Campfire Days And here ends "The Land of Purple Shadows," as written by Idah Meacham Strobridge, with illustrations made by Maynard Dixon, and printed on the R. Y. McBride Press, and Published by the Artemisia Bindery, which is in Los Angeles, California; and completed on the First* day of December, One thousand, nine hundred and nine. rXIYKRSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW 29May5?8D WAY2819531U NOV 1 1 1979 CIS, DEC 2 7 30m-6, 14 i U Uoo I UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY