UC-NRLF 
 
OF 
 
ON THE FRONTIER 
 
LOXDO3? : PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AXD CO., JfEW-STKEET SQUARE 
 AJfD PABLIAMEXT STEEET 
 
ON THE FRONTIER 
 
 BY 
 
 BEET HAETE 
 
 1. AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL 
 
 2. A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 
 
 3. LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 
 
 LONDON 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO, 
 
 1884 
 
 4-H rights reserved 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL .... 1 
 
 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 57 
 
 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN . . .141 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL 
 
PROLOGUE. 
 
 IT was noon of August 10, 1838. The monotonous coast 
 line between Monterey and San Diego had set its hard 
 outlines against the steady glare of the Californian sky 
 and the metallic glitter of the Pacific Ocean. The weary 
 succession of rounded, dome -like hills obliterated all sense 
 of distance ; the rare whaling vessel, or still rarer trader, 
 drifting past, saw no change in these rusty undulations, 
 barren of distinguishing peak or headland, and bald of 
 wooded crest or timbered ravine. The withered ranks of 
 wild oats gave a dull procession of uniform colour to the 
 hills, unbroken by any relief of shadow in their smooth 
 round curves. As far as the eye could reach, sea and 
 shore met in one bleak monotony, flecked by no passing 
 cloud, stirred by no sign of life or motion. Even sound 
 was absent ; the Angelus rung from the invisible Mission 
 tower far inland, was driven back again by the steady 
 north-west trades that for half the year had swept the 
 coast line and left it abraded of all umbrage and colour. 
 
 But even this monotony soon gave way to a change, 
 and another monotony as uniform and depressing. The 
 western horizon, slowly contracting before a wall of 
 
 B2 
 
4 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CAltMEL. 
 
 vapour, by four o clock had become a mere cold steely 
 strip of sea, into which gradually the northern trend of 
 the coast faded and was lost. As the fog stole with soft 
 step southward, all distance, space, character, and locality 
 again vanished ; the hills upon which the sun still shone 
 bore the same monotonous outline as those just wiped 
 into space. Last of all, before the red sun sank like the 
 descending Host, it gleamed upon the sails of a trading 
 vessel close in shore. It was the last object visible. A 
 damp breath breathed upon it, a soft hand passed over 
 the slate, the sharp pencilling of the picture faded and 
 became a confused grey cloud. 
 
 The wind and waves too went down in the fog ; the 
 now invisible and hushed breakers occasionally sent the 
 surf over the sand in a quick whisper, with grave intervals 
 of silence, but with no continuous murmur as before. In 
 a curving bight of the shore the creaking of oars in their 
 rowlocks began to be distinctly heard, but the boat itself, 
 although apparently only its length from the sands, was 
 invisible. 
 
 Steady, now ; way enough. The voice came from 
 the sea, and was low, as if unconsciously affected by the 
 fog. Silence ! 
 
 The sound of a keel grating the sand was followed by 
 the order, Stern all ! from the invisible speaker. 
 
 Shall we beach her ? asked another vague voice. 
 
 Not yet. Hail again, and all together. 
 
 * Ah hoy oi oi oy ! 
 
 There were four voices, but the hail appeared weak 
 and ineffectual, like a cry in a dream, and seemed to 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 5 
 
 hardly reach beyond the surf before it was suffocated in 
 the creeping cloud. A silence followed, but no response. 
 
 It s no use to beach her and go ashore until we find 
 the boat, said the first voice, gravely ; * and we ll do that 
 if the current has brought her here. Are you sure you ve 
 got the right bearings ? 
 
 As near as a man could off a shore with not a blasted 
 pint to take his bearings by. 
 
 There was a long silence again, broken only by the 
 occasional dip of oars, keeping the invisible boat-head to 
 the sea. 
 
 4 Take my word for it, lads, it s the last we ll see of 
 that boat again, or of Jack Cranch, or the captain s baby. 
 
 It does look mighty queer that the painter should 
 slip. Jack Cranch aint the man to tie a granny knot. 
 
 4 Silence ! said the invisible leader. * Listen. 
 
 A hail, so faint and uncertain that it might have been 
 the long- deferred far-off echo of their own, came from the 
 sea, abreast of them. 
 
 * It s the captain. He hasn t found anything, or he 
 couldn t be so far north. Hark ! 
 
 The hail was repeated again faintly, dreamily. To 
 the seamen s trained ears it seemed to have an intelligent 
 significance, for the first voice gravely responded, Aye, 
 aye ! and then said softly, Oars. 
 
 The word was followed by a splash. The oars clicked 
 sharply and simultaneously in the rowlocks, then more 
 faintly, then still fainter, and then passed out into the 
 darkness. 
 
 The silence and shadow both fell together ; for hours 
 
6 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CAEMEL. 
 
 sea and shore were impenetrable. Yet at times the air 
 was softly moved and troubled, the surrounding gloom 
 faintly lightened as with a misty dawn, and then was 
 dark again, or drowsy, far-off cries and confused noises 
 seemed to grow out of the silence, and, when they had 
 attracted the weary eir, sank away as in a mocking dream, 
 and showed themselves unreal. Nebulous gatherings in 
 the fog seemed to indicate stationary objects that, even 
 as one gazed, moved away ; the recurring lap and ripple 
 on the shingle sometimes took upon itself the semblance 
 of faint articulate laughter or spoken words. But towards 
 morning a certain monotonous grating on the sand, that 
 had for many minutes alternately cheated and piqued the 
 ear, asserted itself more strongly, and a moving, vacillat 
 ing shadow in the gloom became an opaque object on 
 the shore. 
 
 With the first rays of the morning light the fog lifted. 
 As the undraped hills one by one bared their cold bosoms 
 to the sun, the long line of coast struggled back to life 
 again. Everything was unchanged except that a 
 stranded boat lay upon the sands, and in its stern sheets 
 a sleeping child. 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE tenth of August, 1852, brought little change to the 
 dull monotony of wind, fog, and treeless coast line. Only 
 the sea was occasionally flecked with racing sails that 
 outstripped the old, slow creeping trader, or was at times 
 streaked and blurred with the trailing smoke of a steamer. 
 There were a few strange footprints on those virgin sands, 
 and a fresh track that led from the beach over tho 
 rounded hills dropped into the bosky recesses of a hidden 
 valley beyond the coast range. 
 
 It was here that the refectory windows of the Mission 
 of San Carmel had for years looked upon the reverse of 
 that monotonous picture presented to the sea. It was 
 here that the trade winds, shorn of their fury and strength 
 in the heated, oven-like air that rose from the valley, lost 
 their weary way in the tangled recesses of the wooded 
 slopes, and breathed their last at the foot of the stone 
 cross before the Mission. It was on the crest of those 
 slopes that the fog halted and walled in the sun-illumined 
 plain below ; it was in this plain that limitless fields of 
 grain clothed the fat adobe soil ; here the Mission garden 
 smiled over its hedges of fruitful vines, and through the 
 leaves of fig and gnarled pear trees ; and it was here that 
 Father Pedro had lived for fifty years, found the prospect 
 good, and had smiled also. 
 
8 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 Father Pedro s smile was rare. He was not a Las 
 Casas, nor a Junipero Serra, but he had the deep serious 
 ness of all disciples laden with the responsible wording of 
 a gospel not their own. And his smile had an ecclesias 
 tical as well as a human significance the pleasantest 
 object in his prospect being the fair and curly head of his 
 boy acolyte and chorister, Francisco, which appeared 
 among the vines, and his sweetest pastoral music, the 
 high soprano humming of a chant with which the boy 
 accompanied his gardening. 
 
 Suddenly the acolyte s chant changed to a cry of terror. 
 Running rapidly to Father Pedro s side, he grasped 
 his sotana, and even tried to hide his curls among its 
 folds. 
 
 "St ! st ! said the Padre, disengaging himself with 
 some impatience. What new alarm is this? Is it 
 Luzbel hiding among our Catalan vines, or one of those 
 heathen Americanos from Monterey ? Speak ! 
 
 Neither, holy father, said the boy, the colour strug 
 gling back into his pale cheeks, and an apologetic, bash 
 ful smile lighting his clear eyes. Neither ; but oh ! 
 such a gross lethargic toad ! And it almost leaped upon 
 me. 
 
 A toad leaped upon thee ! repeated the good father, 
 with evident vexation. What next ? I tell thee, child, 
 those foolish fears are most unmeet for thee, and must 
 be overcome if necessary, with prayer and penance. 
 Frightened by a toad ! Blood of the Martyrs ! Tis like 
 any foolish girl ! 
 
 Father Pedro stopped and coughed. 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CABMEL. 9 
 
 I am saying that no Christian child should shrink 
 from any of God s harmless creatures. And only last 
 week thou wast disdainful of poor Murieta s pig, forget 
 ting that San Antonio himself did elect one his faithful 
 companion, even in glory. 
 
 Yes, but it was so fat, and so uncleanly, holy father, 
 replied the young acolyte, and it smelt so. 
 
 Smelt so ? echoed the father doubtfully. Have a 
 care, child, that this is not luxuriousness of the senses. I 
 have noticed of late you gather over much of roses and 
 syringa excellent in their way and in moderation, but 
 still not to be compared with the flower of Holy Church 
 the lily. 
 
 But lilies don t look well on the refectory table, and 
 against the adobe wall, returned the acolyte, with a pout 
 of a spoilt child ; and surely the flowers cannot help 
 being sweet, any more than myrrh or incense. And I 
 am not frightened of the heathen Americanos either now. 
 There was a small one in the garden yesterday a boy 
 like me and he spoke kindly and with a pleasant face. 
 
 * What said he to thee, child ? asked Father Pedro 
 anxiously. 
 
 Nay, the matter of his speech I could not understand, 
 laughed the boy, but the manner was as gentle as thine, 
 holy father. 
 
 St, child, said the Padre impatiently. Thy likings 
 arc as unreasonable as thy fears. Besides, have I not 
 told thee it ill becomes a child of Christ to chatter with 
 those sons of Belial? But canst thou not repeat the 
 words the words he said ? he continued suspiciously. 
 
10 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 Tis a harsh tongue the Americanos speak in their 
 throat, replied the boy. But he said " Devilishnisse " 
 and " pretty-as-a-girl," and looked at me. 
 
 The good father made the boy repeat the words 
 gravely, and as gravely repeated them after him with 
 infinite simplicity. They are but heretical words, he 
 replied in answer to the boy s inquiring look, it is well 
 3 r ou understand not English. Enough. Run away, child, 
 and be ready for the Angelus. I will commune with my 
 self awhile under the pear trees. 
 
 Glad to escape so easily, the young acolyte disappeared 
 down the alley of fig trees, not without a furtive look at 
 the patches of chickweed around their roots, the possible 
 ambuscade of creeping or saltant vermin. The good 
 priest heaved a sigh and glanced round the darkening 
 prospect. The sun had already disappeared over the 
 mountain wall that lay between him and the sea, rimmed 
 with a faint white line of outlying fog. A cool zephyr 
 fanned his cheek ; it was the dying breath of the vientos 
 generales beyond the wall. As Father Pedro s eyes were 
 raised to this barrier, which seemed to shut out the bois 
 terous world beyond, he fancied he noticed for the first 
 time a slight breach in the parapet, over which an ad 
 vanced banner of the fog was fluttering. "Was it an 
 omen ? His speculations were cut short by a voice at his 
 very side. 
 
 He turned quickly and beheld one of those heathens 
 whom he had just warned his young acolyte against ; one 
 of that straggling band of adventurers whom the recent 
 gold discoveries had scattered along the coast. Luckily 
 

 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 11 
 
 the fertile alluvium of these valleys, lying parallel with 
 the sea, offered no indications to attract the gold seekers. 
 Nevertheless to Father Pedro even the infrequent contact 
 with the Americanos w r as objectionable ; they were at 
 once inquisitive and careless ; they asked questions with 
 the sharp perspicacity of controversy ; they received his 
 grave replies with the frank indifference of utter worldli- 
 ness. Powerful enough to have been tyrannical oppres 
 sors, they were singularly tolerant and gentle, contenting 
 themselves with a playful, good-natured irreverence, 
 which tormented the good father more than opposition. 
 They were felt to be dangerous and subversive. 
 
 The Americano, however, who stood before him did 
 not offensively suggest these national qualities. A man 
 of middle height, strongly built, bronzed and slightly 
 grey from the vicissitudes of years and exposure, he had 
 an air of practical seriousness that commended itself to 
 Father Pedro. To his religious mind it suggested self- 
 consciousness ; expressed in the dialect of the stranger it 
 only meant business. 
 
 I m rather glad I found you out here alone, began 
 the latter ; it saves time. I haven t got to take my turn 
 with the rest, in there he indicated the church with his 
 thumb and you haven t got to make an appointment. 
 You have got a clear forty minutes before the Angelus 
 rings, he added, consulting a large silver chronometer, 
 * and I reckon I kin git through my part of the job inside 
 of twenty, leaving you ten minutes for remarks. I want 
 to confess. 
 
 Father Pedro drew back with a gesture of dignity. 
 
12 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CAEMEL 
 
 The stranger, however, laid his hand upon the Padre s 
 sleeve with the air of a man anticipating objection, but 
 never refusal, and went on. 
 
 Of course, I know. You want me to come at some 
 other time, and in there. You want it in the reg lar 
 style. That s your way and your time. My answer is : 
 it aint my way and my time. The main idea of confes 
 sion, I take it, is gettin at the facts. I m ready to give 
 em if you ll take em out here, now. If you re willing to 
 drop the Church and confessional, and all that sort o 
 thing, I, on my side, am willing to give up the absolution, 
 and all that sort o thing. You might, he added, with an 
 unconscious touch of pathos in the suggestion, heave in 
 a word or two of advice after I get through ; for instance, 
 what you d do in the circumstances, you see ! That s all. 
 But that s as you please. It aint part of the business. 
 
 Irreverent as this speech appeared, there was really 
 no trace of such intention in his manner, and his evident 
 profound conviction that his suggestion was practical, and 
 not at all inconsistent with ecclesiastical dignity, would 
 alone have been enough to touch the Padre, had not the 
 stranger s dominant personality already over-ridden him. 
 He hesitated. The stranger seized the opportunity to 
 take his arm, and lead him with the half familiarity of 
 powerful protection to a bench beneath the refectory 
 window. Taking out his watch again, he put it in the 
 passive hands of the astonished priest, saying, Time me, 
 cleared his throat, and began : 
 
 Fourteen years ago there was a ship cruisin* in the 
 Pacific, jest off this range, that was ez nigh on to a Hell 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 13 
 
 afloat as anything rigged kin be. If a chap managed to 
 dodge the cap en s belaying-pin for a time, he was bound 
 to be fetched up in the ribs at last by the mate s boots. 
 There was a chap knocked down the fore hatch with a 
 broken leg in the Gulf, and another jumped overboard off 
 Cape Corrientes, crazy as a loon, along a clip of the head 
 from the cap en s trumpet. Them s facts. The ship was 
 a brigantine, trading along the Mexican coast. The cap en 
 had his wife aboard, a little timid Mexican woman he d 
 picked up at Mazatlan. I reckon she did not get on with 
 him any better than the men, for she ups and dies one 
 day, leavin her baby, a year- old gal. One of the crew 
 was fond o that baby. He used to get the black nurse 
 to put it in the dingy, and he d tow it astern, rocking it 
 with the painter like a cradle. He did it hatin the 
 cap en all the same. One day the black nurse got out of 
 the dingy for a moment, when the baby was asleep, leavin 
 him alone with it. An idea took hold on him jest from 
 cussedness, you d say but it was partly from revenge on 
 the cap en and partly to get away from the ship. The 
 ship was well in shore, and the current settin towards it. 
 He slipped the painter that man and set himself adrift 
 with the baby. It was a crazy act, you d reckon, for 
 there wasn t any oars in the boat ; but he had a crazy 
 man s luck, and he contrived, by sculling the boat with 
 one of the seats he tore out, to keep her out of the 
 breakers, till he could find a bight in the shore to run her 
 in. The alarm was given from the ship, but the fog shut 
 down upon him ; he could hear the other boats in pursuit. 
 They seemed to close in on him, and by the sound he 
 
H AT THE MISSION OF SAN CABMEL. 
 
 judged the cap en was just abreast of him in the gig, 
 bearing down upon him in the fog. He slipped out of 
 the dingy into the water without a splash, and struck out 
 for the breakers. He got ashore after havin been knocked 
 down and dragged in four times by the undertow. He 
 had only one idea then thankfulness that he had noo 
 taken the baby with him in the surf. You kin put that 
 down for him : it s a fact. He got off into the hills, and 
 made his way up to Monterey. 
 
 And the child ? asked the Padre, with a sudden 
 and strange asperity that boded no good to the penitent ; 
 the child thus ruthlessly abandoned wiiat became of 
 it? 
 
 That s just it, the child, assented the stranger gravely. 
 Well, if that man was on his death-bed instead of being 
 here talking to you, he d swear that he thought the cap en 
 was sure to come up to it the next minit. That s a fact. 
 But it wasn t until one day that he that s me ran 
 across one of that crew in Frisco. "Hallo, Cranch," sez 
 he to me, " so 3^011 got away, didn t you ? And how s the 
 cap en s baby? Grown a young gal by this time, aint 
 she?" "What are you talking about ?" sez I; "how 
 should I know?" He draws away from me, and sez, 
 
 "D it," sez he, "you don t mean that you . , ." 
 
 I grabs him by the throat and makes him tell me all. 
 And then it appears that the boat and the baby were 
 never found again, and every man of that crew, cap en 
 and all, believed I had stolen it. 
 
 He paused. Father Pedro was staring at the prospect 
 with an uncompromising rigidity of head and shoulder. 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 15 
 
 It s a bad look out for me, ain t it ? the stranger 
 continued, in serious reflection. 
 
 How do I know, said the priest harshly, without 
 turning his head, * that yon did not make away with this 
 child ? 
 
 Beg pardon. 
 
 That you did not complete your revenge by by by 
 killing it as your comrade suspected you ? Ah ! Holy 
 Trinity, continued Father Pedro, throwing out his hands 
 with an impatient gesture, as if to take the place of un 
 utterable thought. 
 
 How do you know ? echoed the stranger coldly. 
 
 Yes. 
 
 The stranger linked his fingers together, and threw 
 them over his knee, drew it up to his chest caressingly 
 and said quietly, Because you do know. 
 
 The Padre rose to his feet. 
 
 What mean you ? he said, sternly fixing his eyes 
 upon the speaker. Their eyes met. The stranger s were 
 grey and persistent, with hanging corner lids that might 
 have concealed even more purpose than they showed. 
 The Padre s were hollow, open, and the whites slightly 
 brown, as if with tobacco stains. Yet they were the first 
 to turn away. 
 
 I mean, returned the stranger, with the same prac 
 tical gravity, that you know it wouldn t pay me to come 
 here, if I d killed the baby, unless I wanted you to fix 
 things right with me up there, pointing skywards, and 
 get absolution ; and I ve told you that wasn t in my 
 line. 
 
16 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 Why do you seek me, then ? demanded the Padre, 
 suspiciously. 
 
 Because I reckon I thought a man might be allowed 
 to confess something short of a murder. If you re going 
 to draw the line below that 
 
 * This is but sacrilegious levity, interrupted Father 
 Pedro, turning as if to go. But the stranger did not make 
 any movement to detain him. 
 
 Have you implored forgiveness of the father the 
 man you wronged before you came here ? asked the 
 priest, lingering. 
 
 Not much. It wouldn t pay if be was living, and he 
 died four years ago. 
 
 * You are sure of that ? 
 1 1 am. 
 
 There are other relations, perhaps ? 
 
 * None ! 
 
 Father Pedro was silent. When he spoke again, it 
 was with a changed voice. What is your purpose, then ? 
 he asked, with the first indication of priestly sympathy in 
 his manner. You cannot ask forgiveness of the earthly 
 father you have injured, you refuse the intercession 
 of Holy Church with the Heavenly Father you have 
 disobeyed. Speak, wretched man ! What is it you 
 want ? 
 
 I want to find the child. 
 
 But if it were possible, if she were still living, are 
 you fit to seek her, to even make yourself known to her 
 to appear before her ? 
 
 Well, if I made it profitable to her, perhaps. 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 17 
 
 Perhaps, echoed the priest, scornfully. So be it. 
 But why coine here ? 
 
 To ask your advice. To know how to begin my 
 search. You know this country. You were here when 
 that boat drifted ashore beyond that mountain. 
 
 Ah, indeed. I have much to do with it. It is an 
 affair of the alcalde the authorities of your your 
 police. 
 
 Is it ? 
 
 The Padre again met the stranger s eyes. He stopped, 
 with the snuffbox he had somewhat ostentatiously drawn 
 from his pocket, still open in his hand. 
 
 Why is it not, Senor ? he demanded. 
 
 If she lives, she is a young lady by this time, and 
 might not want the details of her life known to anyone. 
 
 And how will you recognise your baby in this young 
 lady ? asked Father Pedro, with a rapid gesture, indicat 
 ing the comparative heights of a baby and an adult. 
 
 I reckon I ll know her, and her clothes too ; and 
 whoever found her wouldn t be fool enough to destroy 
 them. 
 
 After fourteen years ! Good ! You have faith, 
 Senor 
 
 Cranch, supplied the stranger, consulting his watch. 
 1 But time s up. Business is business. Good-bye ; don t 
 let me keep you. 
 
 He extended his hand. 
 
 The Padre met it with a dry unsympathetic palm, 
 as sere and yellow as the hills. When their hands separ 
 ated, the father still hesitated, looking at Cranch. If he 
 
TS AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 expected further speech or entreaty from him he was mis 
 taken, for the American, without turning his head, walked 
 in the same serious practical fashion down the avenue 
 of fig trees, and disappeared beyond the hedge of vines. 
 The outlines of the mountain bej^ond were already lost in 
 the fog. Father Pedro turned into the refectory. 
 
 Antonio ! 
 
 A strong flavour of leather, onions, and stable preceded 
 the entrance of a short, stout vaqiiero from the little 
 y>atio. 
 
 Saddle Pinto and thine own mule to accompany 
 Francisco, who will take letters from me to the Father 
 Superior at San Jose to-morrow at daybreak. 
 
 At daybreak, reverend father ? 
 
 At daybreak. Hark ye, go by the mountain trails 
 and avoid the highway. Stop at 110 posada nor fonda, 
 but if the child is weary, rest then awhile at Don Juan 
 Briones or at the rancho of the Blessed Fisherman. Have 
 no converse with stragglers least of all those gentile 
 Americanos. So. . . . 
 
 The first strokes of the Angelus came from the nearer 
 tower. With a gesture Father Pedro waved Antonio 
 aside, and opened the door of the sacristy. 
 
 Ad Major em Dei Gloria. 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 19 
 
 II. 
 
 THE hacienda of Don Juan Briones, nestling in a wooded 
 cleft of the foot-hills, was hidden, as Father Pedro had 
 wisely reflected, from the straying feet of travellers along 
 the dusty highway to San Jose. As Francisco, emerging 
 from the canada, put spurs to his mule at the sight of the 
 whitewashed walls, Antonio grunted : 
 
 ay, little priest ! thou wast tired enough a moment 
 ago, and though we are not three leagues from the 
 Blessed Fisherman, thou couldst scarce sit thy saddle 
 longer. Mother of God ! and all to see that little mongrel, 
 Juanita. 
 
 * But, good Antonio, Juanita was my playfellow, and I 
 may not soon again chance this way. And Juanita is 
 not a mongrel, no more than I am. 
 
 She is a mestizo,, and thou art a child of the Church, 
 though this following of gipsy wenches does not show it. 
 
 But Father Pedro does not object, urged the boy. 
 
 The reverend father has forgotten he was ever young, 
 replied Antonio, sententiously, or he wouldn t set fire 
 and tow together. 
 
 What sayest thou, good Antonio ? asked Francisco 
 quickly, opening his blue eyes in frank curiosity ; who 
 is fire, and who is tow ? 
 
 . The worthy muleteer, utterly abashed and confounded 
 
 c2 
 
20 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 by this display of the acolyte s direct simplicity, contented 
 himself by shrugging his shoulders, and a vague Quien 
 sabe? 
 
 * Come, said the boy, gaily, confess it is only the 
 aguardiente of the Blessed Fisherman thou missest. 
 Never fear, Juanita will find thee some. And see ! here 
 she comes. 
 
 There was a flash of white flounces along the dark 
 brown corridor, the twinkle of satin slippers, the flying 
 out of long black braids, and with a cry of joy a young 
 girl threw herself upon Francisco as he entered the patio, 
 and nearly dragged him from Ms mule. 
 
 Have a care, little sister, laughed the acolyte, look 
 ing at Antonio, or there will be a conflagration. Am I 
 the fire ? he continued, submitting to the two sounding 
 kisses the young girl placed upon either cheek, but still 
 keeping his mischievous glance upon the muleteer. 
 
 Quien sabe ? repeated Antonio gruffly, as the young 
 girl blushed under his significant eyes. * It is no affair of 
 mine, he added to himself, as he led Pinto away. Per- 
 haps Father Pedro is right, and this young twig of the 
 Church is as dry and sapless as himself. Let the mestizo, 
 burn if she likes. 
 
 Quick, Pancho, said the young girl, eagerly leading 
 him along the corridor. * This way. I must talk with 
 thee before thou seest Don Juan ; that is why I ran to 
 intercept thee, and not as that fool Antonio would signify, 
 to shame thee. Wast thou ashamed, my Pancho ? 
 
 The boy threw his arm familiarly around the supple, 
 stayless little waist, accented only by the belt of the light 
 flounced saya, and said, 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 21 
 
 But why this haste and feverishness, Nita? And 
 now I look at thee, thou hast been crying. 
 
 They had emerged from a door in the corridor into 
 the bright sunlight of a walled garden. The girl dropped 
 her eyes, cast a quick glance around her, and said, 
 
 Not here, to the arroyof and half leading, half drag 
 ging him, made her way through a copse of manzanita 
 and alder until they heard the faint tinkling of water. 
 * Dost thou remember, said the girl, it was here, point 
 ing to an embayed pool in the dark current, that I 
 baptized thee, when Father Pedro first brought thee here, 
 when we both played at being monks ? They were dear 
 old days, for Father Pedro would trust no one with thee 
 but me, and always kept us near him. 
 
 1 Ay, and he said I would be profaned by the touch of 
 any other, and so himself always washed and dressed me 
 and made my bed near his. 
 
 And took thee away again, and I saw thee not till 
 thou earnest with Antonio, over a year ago, to the cattle 
 branding. And now, my Pancho, I may never see thee 
 again. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed 
 aloud. 
 
 The little acolyte tried to comfort her, but with such 
 abstraction of manner and inadequacy of warmth that she 
 hastily removed his caressing hand. 
 
 But why ? What has happened ? he asked eagerly. 
 
 The girl s manner had changed. Her eyes flashed, 
 and she put her brown fist on her waist and. began to rock 
 from side to side. 
 
 But I ll not go, she said viciously. 
 
22 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 Go where ? asked the boy. 
 
 Oh, where ? she echoed impatiently. Hear me, 
 Francisco; thou knowest I am, like thee, an orphan ; but 
 I have not, like thee, a parent in the Holy Church. For, 
 alas, she added bitterly, I am not a boy, and have not a 
 lovely voice borrowed from the angels. I was, like thee, 
 a foundling, kept by the charity of the reverend fathers, 
 until Don Juan, a childless widower, adopted me. I was 
 happy, not knowing and caring who were the parents 
 who had abandoned me, happy only in the love of 
 
 him who became my adopted father. And now , 
 
 she paused. 
 
 * And now ? echoed Francisco eagerly. 
 
 And now they say it is discovered who are my 
 parents. 
 
 And they live ? 
 
 Mother of God ! no, said the girl, with scarcely filial 
 piety. There is some one, a thing a mere Don Fulano 
 who knows it all, it seems, who is to be my guardian. 
 
 But how ? Tell me all, dear Juanita, said the boy 
 with a feverish interest, that contrasted so strongly with 
 his previous abstraction that Juanita bit her lips with 
 vexation. 
 
 * Ah ! How ? Santa Barbara ! an extravaganza for 
 children. A necklace of lies. I am lost from a ship of 
 which my father heaven rest him is General, and I am 
 picked up among the weeds on the sea-shore, like Moses 
 in the bulrushes. A pretty story, indeed. 
 
 Oh, how beautiful ! exclaimed Francisco enthusias 
 tically. Ah, Juanita ! would it had been me. 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 23 
 
 Thee I said the girl bitterly thee ! No ! it was 
 a girl wanted. Enough, it was me. 
 
 And when does the guardian come? persisted the 
 boy, with sparkling eyes. - 
 
 He is here, even now, with that pompous fool the 
 American alcalde from Monterey, a wretch who knows 
 nothing of the country or the people, but who helped the 
 other American to claim me. I tell thee, Francisco, like 
 as not it is all a folly, some senseless blunder of those 
 Americanos that imposes upon Don Juan s simplicity and 
 love for them. 
 
 How looks he this Americano who seeks thee ? 
 asked Francisco. 
 
 What care I how he looks, said Juanita, or what 
 he is ? He may have the four S s, for all I care. Yet, 
 she added with a slight touch of coquetry, he is not bad 
 to look upon, now I recall him. 
 
 Had he a long moustache and a sad, sweet smile, and 
 a voice so gentle and yet so strong that you felt he ordered 
 you to do things without saying it? And did his eye 
 read your thoughts ? that very thought that you must 
 obey him ? 
 
 Saints preserve thee, Paiicho ! Of whom dost thou 
 speak ? 
 
 Listen, Juanita. It was a year ago, the eve of Nati- 
 vidad, he was in the church when I sang. Look where 
 I would, I always met his eye. "When the canticle was 
 sung and I was slipping into the sacristy, he was beside 
 me. He spoke kindly, but I understood him not. He 
 put into my hand gold for an aguinaldo. I pretended 
 
24 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 I understood not that also, and put it into the box for the 
 poor. He smiled and went away. Often have I seen 
 him since, and last night, when I left the Mission, he was 
 there again with Father Pedro. 
 
 And Father Pedro what said he of him ? asked 
 Juanita. 
 
 Nothing. The boy hesitated. Perhaps because 
 I said nothing of the stranger. 
 
 Juanita laughed. So thou canst keep a secret from 
 the good father when thou carest. But why dost thou 
 think this stranger is my new guardian ? 
 
 Dost thou not see, little sister ? he was even then 
 seeking thee, said the boy with joyous excitement. 
 Doubtless he knew we were friends and playmates 
 maybe the good father has told him thy secret. For it 
 is no idle tale of the alcalde, believe me. I see it all ! It 
 is true ! 
 
 Then thou wilt let him take me away, said the girl 
 bitterly, withdrawing the little hand he had clasped in 
 his excitement. 
 
 Alas, Juanita, what avails it now ? I am sent to 
 San Jose, charged with a letter to the Father Superior, 
 who will give me further orders. "What they are, or how 
 long I must stay, I know not. But I know this: the 
 good Father Pedro s eyes were troubled when he gave 
 me his blessing, and he held me long in his embrace. 
 Pray Heaven I have committed no fault. Still it may be 
 that the reputation of my gift hath reached the Father 
 Superior, and he would advance me. And Francisco s 
 eyes lit up with youthful pride at the thought. 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 25 
 
 Not so Juanita. Her black eyes snapped suddenly 
 with suspicion, she drew in her breath, and closed her 
 little mouth firmly. Then she began a crescendo. 
 
 Mother of God ! was that all ? Was he a child to be 
 sent away for such time or for such purpose as best 
 pleased the fathers ? Was he to know no more than that ? 
 With such gifts as God had given him, was he not at 
 least to have some word in disposing of them ? Ah ! 
 she would not stand it. 
 
 The boy gazed admiringly at the piquant energy of 
 the little figure before him, and envied her courage. It 
 is the mestizo blood, he murmured to himself. Then 
 aloud, Thou shouldst have been a man, Nita. 
 
 And thou a woman. 
 
 * Or a priest. Eh, what is that ? 
 
 They had both risen Juanita defiantly, her black 
 braids flying as she wheeled and suddenly faced the 
 thicket, Francisco clinging to her with trembling hands 
 and whitened lips. A stone, loosened from the hill- side, 
 had rolled to their feet; there was a crackling in the 
 alders on the slope above them. 
 
 Is it a bear, or a brigand ? whispered Francisco 
 hurriedly, sounding the uttermost depths of his terror 
 in the two words. 
 
 It is an eavesdropper, said Juanita impetuously ; 
 and who and why, I intend to know, and she started 
 towards the thicket. 
 
 4 Do not leave me, good Juanita, said the young 
 acolyte, grasping the girl s skirt. 
 
26 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CAEMEL. 
 
 Nay ; run to the hacienda quickly, and leave me to 
 search the thicket. Eun ! 
 
 The boy did not wait for a second injunction, but 
 scuttled away, his long coat catching in the brambles, 
 while Juanita darted like a kitten into the bushes. Her 
 search was fruitless, however, and she was returning 
 impatiently when her quick eye fell upon a letter lying 
 amidst the dried grass where she and Francisco had been 
 seated the moment before. It had evidently fallen from 
 his breast when he had risen suddenly, and been over 
 looked in his alarm. It was Father Pedro s letter to the 
 Father Superior of San Jose. 
 
 In an instant she had pounced upon it as viciously as 
 if it had been the interloper she was seeking. She knew 
 that she held in her fingers the secret of Francisco s 
 sudden banishment. She felt instinctively that this 
 yellowish envelope, with its red string and its blotch of 
 red seal, was his sentence and her own. The little 
 mestizo, had not been brought up to respect the integrity 
 of either locks or seals, both being unknown in the patri 
 archal life of the hacienda. Yet with a certain feminine 
 instinct she looked furtively around her, and even man 
 aged to dislodge the clumsy wax without marring the 
 pretty effigy of the crossed keys impressed upon it. Then 
 she opened the letter and read. 
 
 Suddenly she stopped and put back her hair from her 
 brown temples. Then a succession of burning blushes 
 followed each other in waves from her neck up, and died 
 in drops of moisture in her eyes. This continued until 
 she was fairly crying, dropping the letter from her hands, 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 27 
 
 and rocking to and fro. In the midst of this she quickly 
 stopped again ; the clouds broke, a sunshine of laughter 
 started from her eyes, she laughed shyly, she laughed 
 loudly, she laughed hysterically. Then she stopped 
 again as suddenly, knitted her brows, swooped down 
 once more upon the letter, and turned to fly. But 
 at the same moment the letter was quietly but firmly 
 taken from her hand, and Mr. Jack Cranch stood beside 
 her. 
 
 Juanita was crimson, but unconquered. She mechani 
 cally held out her hand for the letter ; the American took 
 her little fingers, kissed them, and said : 
 
 How are you again ? 
 
 * The letter, replied Juanita, with a strong disposition 
 to stamp her foot. 
 
 But, said Cranch, with business directness, you ve 
 read enough to know it isn t for you. 
 
 Nor for you either, responded Juanita. 
 
 4 True. It is for the Reverend Father Superior of San 
 Jose Mission. I ll give it to him. 
 
 Juanita was becoming alarmed first at this prospect, 
 second at the power the stranger seemed to be gaining 
 over her. She recalled Francisco s description of him 
 with something like superstitious awe. 
 
 But it concerns Francisco. It contains a secret he 
 should know. 
 
 Then you can tell him it. Perhaps it would come 
 easier from you. 
 
 Juanita blushed again. Why ? she asked, half 
 dreading his reply. 
 
28 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 Because, said the American, quietly, you are old 
 playmates you are attached to each other. 
 
 Juanita bit her lips. Why don t you read it yourself ? 
 she asked bluntly. 
 
 Because I don t read other people s letters, and if it 
 concerns me you ll tell me. 
 
 What if I don t ? 
 
 Then the Father Superior will. 
 
 I believe you know Francisco s secret already, said 
 the girl boldl} 7 . 
 
 Perhaps. 
 
 Then, Mother of God ! Seiior Crancho, what do you 
 want ? 
 
 I do not want to separate two such good friends as 
 you and Francisco. 
 
 Perhaps you d like to claim us both, said the girl, 
 with a sneer that was not devoid of coquetry. 
 
 I should be delighted. 
 
 Then here is your occasion, Seiior, for here comes 
 my adopted father, Don Juan, and your friend, Seiior 
 Br r own, the American alcalde. 
 
 Two men appeared in the garden path below them. 
 The stiff glazed, broad-brimmed black hat, surmounting 
 a dark face of Quixotic gravity and romantic rectitude, 
 indicated Don Juan Briones. His companion, lazy, 
 specious, and red-faced, was Seiior Brown, the American 
 alcalde. 
 
 Well, I reckon we kin about call the thing fixed, 
 said Senor Brown, with a large wave of the hand, suggest 
 ing a sweeping away of all trivial details. Ez I was 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 29 
 
 saying to the Don yer, when two high-toned gents like 
 you and him come together in a delicate matter of this 
 kind, it aint no hoss trade, nor sharp practice. The Don 
 is that lofty in principle that he s willin to sacrifice his 
 affections for the good of the gal ; and you, on your hand, 
 kalkilate to see all he s done for her, and go your whole 
 pile hetter. You ll make the legal formalities good, 
 reckon that old Injin woman who can swear to the find 
 ing of the baby on the shore will set things all right yet. 
 For the matter o that, if you want anything in the way 
 of a certificate, I m on hand always. 
 
 * Juanita and myself are at your disposition, cabal- 
 leros^ said Don Juan, with a grave exaltation. Never 
 let it be said that the Mexican nation was outdone by the 
 great Americanos in deeds of courtesy and affection. Let 
 it rather stand that Juanita was a sacred trust put into 
 my hands years ago by the goddess of American liberty, 
 and nurtured in the Mexican eagle s nest. Is it not so, my 
 soul ? he added, more humanly, to the girl, when he had 
 quite recovered from the intoxication of his own speech. 
 4 We love thee, little one, but we keep our honour. 
 
 There s nothing mean about the old man, said 
 Brown, admiringly, with a slight dropping of his left eye 
 lid ; his head is level, and he goes with his party. 
 
 Thou takest my daughter, Seuor Cranch, continued 
 the old man, carried away by his emotion ; but the 
 American nation gives me a son. 
 
 * You know not what you say, father, said the young 
 girl, angrily, exasperated by a slight twinkle in the 
 American s eye. 
 
30 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 Not so, said Cranch. * Perhaps one of the American 
 nation may take him at his word. 
 
 * Then, caballeros, you will, for the moment at least, 
 possess yourselves of the house and its poor hospitality, 
 said Don Juan, with time-honoured courtesy, producing 
 the rustic key of the gate of the patio. It is at your 
 disposition, caballeros, he repeated, leading the way as 
 his guests passed into the corridor. 
 
 Two hours passed. The hills were darkening on their 
 eastern slopes ; the shadows of the few poplars that 
 sparsedly dotted the dusty highway were falling in long 
 black lines that looked like ditches on the dead level of 
 the tawny fields ; the shadows of slowly moving cattle 
 were mingling with their own silhouettes, and becoming 
 more and more grotesque. A keen wind rising in the 
 hills was already creeping from the Canada as from the 
 mouth of a funnel, and sweeping the plains. Antonio 
 had foregathered with the servants, had pinched the ears 
 of the maids, had partaken of aguardiente, had saddled 
 the mules Antonio was becoming impatient. 
 
 And then a singular commotion disturbed the peaceful 
 monotony of the patriarchal household of Don Juan 
 Briones. The stagnant courtyard was suddenly alive with 
 peons and servants, running hither and thither. The 
 alleys and gardens were filled with retainers. A confu 
 sion of questions, orders, and outcries rent the air, the 
 plains shook with the galloping of a dozen horsemen. 
 For the acolyte Francisco, of the Mission San Carmel, 
 had disappeared and vanished, and from that day the 
 hacienda of Don Juan Briones knew him no moret 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 31 
 
 III. 
 
 WHEN Father Pedro saw the yellow mules vanish under 
 the low branches of the oaks beside the little graveyard, 
 caught the last glitter of the morning sun on Pinto s 
 shining headstall, and heard the last tinkle of Antonio s 
 spurs, something very like a mundane sigh escaped him. 
 To the simple wonder of the majority of early worshippers 
 the half-breed converts who rigorously attended the 
 spiritual ministrations of the Mission, and ate the temporal 
 provisions of the reverend fathers he deputed the func 
 tions of the first mass to a coadjutor, and, breviary in 
 hand, sought the orchard of venerable pear trees. Whether 
 there was any occult sympathy in his reflections with the 
 contemplation of their gnarled, twisted, gouty, and knotty 
 limbs, still bearing gracious and goodly fruit, I know not, 
 but it was his private retreat, and under one of the most 
 rheumatic and mis-shapen trunks there was a rude seat. 
 Here Father Pedro sank, his face towards the mountain 
 wall between him and the invisible sea. The relentless, 
 dry, practical California!! sunlight falling on his face, 
 grimly pointed out a night of vigil and suffering. The 
 snuffy yellow of his eyes was injected yet burning, his 
 temples were ridged and veined like a tobacco leaf ; the 
 odour of desiccation which his garments always exhaled 
 
32 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 was hot and feverish, as if the fire had suddenly awakened 
 among the ashes. 
 
 Of what was Father Pedro thinking ? 
 
 He was thinking of his youth, a youth spent under the 
 shade of those pear trees, even then venerable as now. 
 He was thinking of his youthful dreams of heathen con 
 quest, emulating the sacrifices and labours of Junipero 
 Serra ; a dream cut short by the orders of the archbishop, 
 that sent his companion, Brother Diego, north on a mission 
 to strange lands, and condemned him to the isolation of 
 San Carmel. He was thinking of that fierce struggle 
 with envy of a fellow-creature s better fortune that, con 
 quered by prayer and penance, left him patient, sub 
 missive, and devoted to his humble work ; how he raised 
 up converts to the Faith, even taking them from the 
 breast of heretic mothers. 
 
 He recalled how once, with the zeal of propagandism 
 quickening in the instincts of a childless man, he had 
 dreamed of perpetuating his work through some sinless 
 creation of his own ; of dedicating some virgin soul, one 
 over whom he could have complete control, restricted by 
 no human paternal weakness, to the task he had begun. 
 But how ? Of all the boys eagerly offered to the Church 
 by their parents there seemed none sufficiently pure and 
 free from parental taint. He remembered how one night, 
 through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin herself, 
 as he firmly then believed, this dream was fulfilled. An 
 Indian woman brought him a Waugce child a baby-girl 
 that she had picked up on the sea-shore. There were no 
 parents to divide the responsibility, the child had no past 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CAKMEL. 33 
 
 to confront, except the memory of the ignorant Indian 
 woman, who deemed her duty done, and whose interest 
 ceased in giving it to the Padre. The austere conditions 
 of his monkish life compelled him to the first step in his 
 adoption of it the concealment of its sex. This was 
 easy enough, as he constituted himself from that moment 
 its sole nurse and attendant, and boldly baptized it among 
 the other children by the name of Francisco. No others 
 knew its origin, nor cared to know. Father Pedro had 
 taken a muchacho foundling for adoption ; his jealous 
 seclusion of it and his personal care was doubtless some 
 sacerdotal formula at once high and necessary. 
 
 He remembered with darkening eyes and impeded 
 breath how his close companionship and daily care of this 
 helpless child had revealed to him the fascinations of that 
 paternity denied to him ; how he had deemed it his duty 
 to struggle against the thrill of baby fingers laid upon 
 his yellow cheeks, the pleading of inarticulate words, the 
 eloquence of wonder- seeing and mutely questioning eyes ; 
 how he had succumbed again and again, and then 
 struggled no more, seeing only in them the suggestion 
 of childhood made incarnate in the Holy Babe. And 
 yet, even as he thought, he drew from his gown a little 
 shoe, and laid it beside his breviary. It was Francisco s 
 baby slipper a duplicate to those worn by the miniature 
 waxen figure of the Holy Virgin herself in her niche in 
 the transept. 
 
 Had he felt during these years any qualms of con 
 science at this concealment of the child s sex ? None. 
 For to him the babe was sexless, as most befitted one who 
 
 
34 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 was to live and die at the foot of the altar. There was 
 no attempt to deceive God what mattered else ? Nor 
 was he withholding the child from the ministrations of 
 the sacred sisters ; there was no convent near the Mission, 
 and as each year passed the difficulty of restoring her to 
 the position and duties of her sex became greater and 
 more dangerous. And then the acolyte s destiny was 
 sealed by what again appeared to Father Pedro as a 
 direct interposition of Providence. The child developed 
 a voice of such exquisite sweetness and purity that an 
 angel seemed to have strayed into the little choir, and 
 kneeling worshippers below, transported, gazed upwards, 
 half expectant of a heavenly light breaking through the 
 gloom of the raftered ceiling. The fame of the little 
 singer filled the valley of San Carmel ; it was a miracle 
 vouchsafed the Mission ; Don Jose Peralta remembered, 
 ah, yes ! to have heard in old Spain of boy choristers with 
 such voices ! 
 
 And was this sacred trust to be withdrawn from him ? 
 Was this life which he had brought out of an unknown 
 world of sin, unstained and pure, consecrated and dedi 
 cated to God, just in the dawn of power and promise for 
 the glory of the Mother Church, to be taken from his 
 side ? And at the word of a self-convicted man of sin a 
 man whose tardy repentance was not yet absolved by the 
 Holy Church. Never ! never ! Father Pedro dwelt upon 
 the stranger s rejection of the ministrations of the Church 
 with a pitiable satisfaction ; had he accepted them, he would 
 have had a sacred claim upon Father Pedro s sympathy 
 and confidence. Yet he rose again, uneasily and with 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 35 
 
 irregular steps returned to the corridor, passing the door 
 of the familiar little cell beside his own. The window, 
 the table, and even the scant toilette utensils were filled 
 with the flowers of yesterday, some of them withered and 
 dry ; the white gown of the little chorister was hanging 
 emptily against the wall. Father Pedro started and 
 trembled ; it seemed as if the spiritual life of the child 
 had slipped away with its garments. 
 
 In that slight chill which, even in the hottest days in 
 California, always invests any shadow cast in that white 
 sunlight, Father Pedro shivered in the corridor. Passing 
 again into the garden, he followed in fancy the wayfaring 
 figure of Francisco, saw the child arrive at the rancho of 
 Don Juan, and with the fateful blindness of all dreamers 
 projected a picture most unlike the reality. He followed 
 the pilgrims even to San Jose, and saw the child deliver 
 the missive which gave the secret of her sex and con 
 dition to the Father Superior. That the authority of 
 San Jose might dissent from the Padre of San Carmel, 
 or decline to carry out his designs, did not occur to the one- 
 idead priest. Like all solitary people, isolated from pass 
 ing events, he made no allowances for occurrences outside 
 of his routine. Yet at this moment a sudden thought 
 whitened his yellow cheek. What if the Father Superior 
 deemed it necessary to impart the secret to Francisco ? 
 Would the child recoil at the deception, and, perhaps, 
 cease to love him ? It was the first time, in his supreme 
 selfishness, he had taken the acolyte s feelings into account. 
 He had thought of him only as one owing implicit obe 
 dience to him as a temporal and spiritual guide. 
 
 D2 
 
36 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 * Eeverend father ! 
 
 He turned impatiently. It was his muleteer, Jose. 
 Father Pedro s sunken eye brightened. 
 
 Ah, Jose ! Quickly then, hast thou found San- 
 chicha ? 
 
 Truly, your Eeverence ! And I have brought her 
 with me just as she is ; though if your Keverence make 
 more of her than to fill the six-foot hole and say a prayer 
 over her, I ll give the mule that brought her here for food 
 for the bull s horns. She neither hears nor speaks, but 
 whether from weakness or sheer wantonness, I know 
 not. 
 
 Peace, then ! and let thy tongue take example from 
 hers. Bring her with thee into the sacristy and attend 
 without. Go ! 
 
 Father Pedro watched the disappearing figure of the 
 muleteer and hurriedly swept his thin, dry hand, veined 
 and ribbed like a brown November leaf, over his stony 
 forehead, with a sound that seemed almost a rustle. Then 
 he suddenly stiffened his fingers over his breviary, 
 dropped his arms perpendicularly before him, and with 
 a rigid step returned to the corridor and passed into the 
 sacristy. 
 
 For a moment in the half-darkness the room seemed 
 to be empty. Tossed carelessly in the corner appeared 
 some blankets topped by a few straggling black horse 
 tails, like an unstranded riata. A trembling agitated the 
 mass as Father Pedro approached. He bent over the 
 heap and distinguished in its midst the glowing black 
 eyes of Sanchicha, the Indian centenarian of the Mission 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 37 
 
 San Garmel. Only her eyes lived. Helpless, boneless, 
 and jelly-like, old age had overtaken her with a mild form 
 of deliquescence. 
 
 Listen, Sanchicha, said the father gravely. It is 
 important that thou shouldst refresh thy memory for a 
 moment. Look back fourteen years, mother ; it is but 
 yesterday to thee. Thou dost remember the baby a 
 little muchacha thou broughtest me then fourteen years 
 ago? 
 
 The old woman s eyes became intelligent, and turned 
 with a quick look towards the open door of the church, 
 and thence towards the choir. 
 
 The Padre made a motion of irritation. * No, no ! 
 Thou dost not understand; thou dost not attend me. 
 Knowest thou of any mark of clothing, trinket, or amulet 
 found upon the babe ? 
 
 The light of the old woman s eyes went out. She 
 might have been dead. Father Pedro waited a moment, 
 and then laid his hand impatiently on her shoulder. 
 
 1 Dost thou mean there are none ? 
 
 A ray of light struggled back into her eyes. 
 
 None. 
 
 And thou hast kept back or put away no sign nor 
 mark of her parentage ? Tell me, on this crucifix. 
 
 The eyes caught the crucifix, and became as empty as 
 the orbits of the carven Christ upon it. 
 
 Father Pedro waited patiently. A moment passed ; 
 only the sound of the muleteer s spurs was heard in the 
 courtyard. 
 
 * It is well, he said at last, with a sigh of relief. 
 
38 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMESL. 
 
 Pepita shall give thee some refreshment, and Jose will 
 bring thee back again. I will summon him. 
 
 He passed out of the sacristy door, leaving it open. 
 A ray of sunlight darted eagerly in, and fell upon the 
 grotesque heap in the corner. Sanchicha s eyes lived 
 again ; more than that, a singular movement came over 
 her face. The hideous caverns of her toothless mouth 
 opened she laughed. The step of Jose was heard in the 
 corridor, and she became again inert. 
 
 The third day, which should have brought the return 
 of Antonio, was nearly spent. Father Pedro was impatient 
 but not alarmed. The good fathers at San Jose might 
 naturally detain Antonio for the answer, which might re 
 quire deliberation. If any mischance had occurred to 
 Francisco, Antonio would have returned or sent a special 
 messenger. At sunset he was in his accustomed seat in 
 the orchard, his hands clasped over the breviary in his 
 listless lap, his eyes fixed upon the mountain between him 
 and that mysterious sea that had brought so much into 
 his life. He was filled with a strange desire to see it, a 
 vague curiosity hitherto unknown to his preoccupied life ; 
 he wished to gaze upon that strand, perhaps the very spot 
 where she had been found ; he doubted not his question 
 ing eyes would discover some forgotten trace of her ; under 
 his persistent will and aided by the Holy Virgin, the sea 
 would give up its secret. He looked at the fog creeping 
 along the summit, and recalled the latest gossip of San 
 Carmel ; how that since the advent of the Americanos it 
 was gradually encroaching on the Mission. The hated 
 name vividly recalled to him the features of the stranger 
 

 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 39 
 
 as he had stood before him three nights ago, in this very 
 garden ; so vividly that he sprang to his feet with an ex 
 clamation. It was no fancy, but Seiior Cranch himself 
 advancing from under the shadow of a pear tree. 
 
 * I reckoned I d catch you here, said Mr. Cranch, with 
 the same dry, practical business fashion, as if he was only 
 resuming an interrupted conversation, and I reckon I 
 aint going to keep you a minit longer than I did t other 
 day. He mutely referred to his watch, which he already 
 held in his hand, and then put it back in his pocket. 
 Well ! we found her ! 
 
 * Francisco, interrupted the priest with a single stride, 
 laying his hand upon Cranch s arm, and staring into his 
 eyes. 
 
 Mr. Cranch quietly removed Father Pedro s hand. I 
 reckon that wasn t the name as I caught it, he returned 
 drily. Hadn t you better sit dow T n ?. 
 
 Pardon me pardon me, Senor, said the priest, 
 hastily sinking back on his bench, I was thinking of other 
 things. You you came upon me suddenly. I thought 
 it was the acolyte. Go on, Senor ! I am interested. 
 
 I thought you d be, said Cranch, quietly. * That s 
 why I came. And then you might be of service too. 
 
 * True, true, said the priest, with rapid accents ; * and 
 this girl, Senor, this girl is 
 
 Juanita, the mestizo,, adopted daughter of Don Juan 
 Briones, over on the Santa Clare Valley, replied Cranch, 
 jerking his thumb over his shoulder, and then sitting 
 down upon the bench beside Father Pedro. 
 
 The priest turned his feverish eyes piercingly upon 
 
40 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 his companion for a few seconds, and then doggedly fixed 
 them upon the ground. Cranch drew a plug of tobacco 
 from his pocket, cut off a portion, placed it in his cheek, 
 and then quietly began to strap the blade of his jack 
 knife upon his boot. Father Pedro saw it from under his 
 eyelids, and even in his preoccupation despised him. 
 
 4 Then you are certain she is the babe you seek ? 
 said the father, without looking up. 
 
 I reckon as near as you can be certain of anything. 
 Her age tallies ; she was the only foundling girl baby 
 baptized by you you know he partly turned round 
 appealingly to the Padre that year. Injin woman saj^s 
 she picked up a baby. Looks like a pretty clear case, 
 don t it ? 
 
 And the clothes, friend Cranch ? said the priest, 
 with his eyes still on the ground, and a slight assumption 
 of easy indifference. 
 
 They will be forthcoming, like enough, when the 
 time comes, said Cranch ; the main thing at first was 
 to find the girl ; that was my job ; the lawyers, I reckon, 
 can fit the proofs and say what s wanted, later on. 
 
 But why lawyers, continued Padre Pedro, with a 
 slight sneer he could not repress, if the child is found 
 and Senor Cranch is satisfied ? 
 
 On account of the property. Business is business ! 
 
 The property ? 
 
 Mr. Cranch pressed the back of his knife-blade on his 
 boot, shut it up with a click, and putting it in his pocket 
 said calmly : 
 
 Well, I reckon the million of dollars that her father 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 41 
 
 left when he died, which naturally belongs to her, will 
 require some proof that she is his daughter. 
 
 He had placed both his hands in his pockets, and 
 turned his eyes full upon Father Pedro. The priest arose 
 hurriedly. 
 
 4 But you said nothing of this before, Senor Cranch, 
 said he, with a gesture of indignation, turning his back 
 quite upon Cranch, and taking a step towards the refec 
 tory. 
 
 Why should I ? I was looking after the girl, not the 
 property, returned Cranch, following the Padre with 
 watchful eyes, but still keeping his careless, easy attitude. 
 
 Ah, well! Will it be said so, think you? Eh! 
 Bueno. What will the world think of your sacred quest, 
 eh ? continued the Padre Pedro, forgetting himself in 
 his excitement, but still averting his face from his com 
 panion. 
 
 * The world will look after the proofs, and I reckon 
 not bother if the proofs are all right, replied Cranch, 
 carelessly ; and the girl won t think the worse of me for 
 helping her to a fortune. Hallo ! you ve dropped some 
 thing. He leaped to his feet, picked up the breviary 
 which had fallen from the Padre s fingers, and returned 
 it to him with a slight touch of gentleness that was 
 unsuspected in the man. 
 
 The priest s dry, tremulous hand grasped the volume 
 without acknowledgment. 
 
 But these proofs ? he said hastily ; these proofs, 
 Senor ? 
 
 Oh, well, you ll testify to the baptism, you know. 
 
42 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 But if I refuse ; if I will have nothing to do with 
 this thing ! If I will not give my word that there is not 
 some mistake, said the priest, working himself into a 
 feverish indignation. * That there are not slips of 
 memory, eh ? Of so many children baptized, is it 
 possible for me to know which, eh ? And if this Juanita 
 is not your girl, eh ? 
 
 Then you ll help me to find who is, said Cranch, 
 coolly. 
 
 Father Pedro turned furiously on his tormentor. 
 Overcome by his vigil and anxiety he was oblivious of 
 everything but the presence of the man who seemed to 
 usurp the functions of his own conscience. Who are 
 you, who speak thus ? he said, hoarsely, advancing upon 
 Cranch with outstretched and anathematising fingers. 
 Who are you, Senor Heathen, who dare to dictate to me, 
 a Father of Holy Church ? I tell you, I will have none 
 of this. Never ! I will not. From this moment, you 
 understand nothing. I will never. . . . ! 
 
 He stopped. The first stroke of the Angelus rang 
 from the little tower. The first stroke of that bell before 
 whose magic exorcism all human passions fled ; the 
 peaceful bell that had for fifty years lulled the little fold 
 of San C arm el to prayer and rest, came to his throbbing 
 ear. His trembling hands groped for the crucifix, carried 
 it to his left breast : his lips moved in prayer. His eyes 
 were turned to the cold, passionless sky, where a few 
 faint, far-spaced stars had silently stolen to their places. 
 The Angelus still rang, his trembling ceased, he remained 
 motionless and rigid. 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 43 
 
 The American, who had uncovered in deference to the 
 worshipper rather than the rite, waited patiently. The 
 eyes of Father Pedro returned to the earth, moist as if 
 with dew caught from above. He looked half absently at 
 Cranch. 
 
 Forgive me, my son, he said, in a changed voice. 
 * I am only a worn old man. I must talk with thee more 
 of this but not to night not to night ; to-morrow to 
 morrow to-morrow. 
 
 He turned slowly and appeared to glide rather than 
 move under the trees, until the dark shadow of the 
 Mission tower met and encompassed him. Cranch fol 
 lowed him with anxious eyes. Then he removed the 
 quid of tobacco from his cheek. 
 
 Just as I reckoned, remarked he, quite audibly. 
 He s clean gold on the bed rock after all ! 
 
44 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THAT night Father Pedro dreamed a strange dream. 
 How much of it was reality, how long it lasted, or when 
 he awoke from it, he could not tell. The morbid excite 
 ment of the previous day had culminated in a febrile 
 exaltation in which he lived and moved as in a separate 
 existence. 
 
 This is what he remembered. He thought he had 
 risen at night in a sudden horror of remorse, and making 
 his way to the darkened church had fallen upon his knees 
 before the high altar, when all at once the acolyte s voice 
 broke from the choir, but in accents so dissonant and 
 unnatural that it seemed a sacrilege, and he trembled. 
 He thought he had confessed the secret of the child s sex 
 to Cranch, but whether the next morning or a week later 
 he did not know. He fancied, too, that Cranch had also 
 confessed some trifling deception to him, but what, or 
 why, he could not remember ; so much greater seemed 
 the enormity of his own transgression. He thought 
 Cranch had put in his hands the letter he had written to 
 the Father Superior, saying that his secret was still safe, 
 and that he had been spared the avowal and the scandal 
 that might have ensued. But through all, and above all, 
 he was conscious of one fixed idea to seek the sea-shore 
 with Sanchicha, and upon the spot where she had found 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 45 
 
 Francisco, meet the young girl who had taken his place, 
 and so part from her for ever. He had a dim recollection 
 that this was necessary to some legal identification of her, 
 as arranged by Cranch, but how or why he did not under 
 stand ; enough that it was a part of his penance. 
 
 It was early morning when the faithful Antonio, ac 
 companied by Sanchicha and Jose, rode forth with him 
 from the Mission of San Carmel. Except on the expres 
 sionless features of the old woman, there was anxiety and 
 gloom upon the faces of the little cavalcade. He did not 
 know how heavily his strange abstraction and hallucina 
 tions weighed upon their honest hearts. As they wound 
 up the ascent of the mountain he noticed that Antonio 
 and Jose conversed with bated breath and many pious 
 crossings of themselves, but with eyes always wistfully 
 fixed upon him. He wondered if, as part of his penance, 
 he ought not to proclaim his sin and abase himself before 
 them ; but he knew that his devoted followers would 
 insist upon sharing his punishment ; and he remembered 
 his promise to Cranch, that for her sake he would say 
 nothing. Before they reached the summit he turned 
 once or twice to look back upon the Mission. How small 
 it looked, lying there in the peaceful valley, contrasted 
 with the broad sweep of the landscape beyond, stopped at 
 the further east only by the dim, ghost-like outlines of 
 the Sierras. But the strong breath of the sea was begin 
 ning to be felt ; in a few moments more they were facing 
 it with lowered sombreros and flying scrapes, and the 
 vast, glittering, illimitable Pacific opened out beneath 
 them. 
 
46 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 Dazed and blinded, as it seemed to him, by the shin 
 ing, restless expanse, Father Pedro rode forward as if still 
 in a dream. Suddenly he halted, and called Antonio to 
 his side. 
 
 Tell me, child, didst thou not say that this coast was 
 wild and desolate of man, beast, and habitation ? 
 
 Truly I did, reverend father. 
 
 1 Then what is that ? pointing to the shore. 
 
 Almost at their feet nestled a cluster of houses, at the 
 head of an aroyo reaching up from the beach. They 
 looked down upon the smoke of a manufactory chimney, 
 upon strange heaps of material and curious engines 
 scattered along the sands, with here and there moving 
 specks of human figures. In a little bay a schooner 
 swung at her cables. 
 
 The vaquero crossed himself in stupefied alarm. I 
 know not, your Reverence ; it is only two years ago, 
 before the rodeo, that I was here for strayed colts, and I 
 swear by the blessed bones of San Antonio that it was as 
 I said. 
 
 Ah ! it is like these Americanos, responded the 
 muleteer. I have it from my brother Diego that he 
 went from San Jose* to Pescadero two months ago, across 
 the plains, with never a hut nor fonda to halt at all the 
 way. He returned in seven days, and in the midst of the 
 plain there were three houses and a mill, and many 
 people. And why was it ? Ah ! Mother of God ! one 
 had picked up in the creek where he drank that much of 
 gold ; and the muleteer tapped one of the silver coins 
 that fringed his jacket sleeves in place of buttons. 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 47 
 
 And they are washing the sands for gold there now, 
 Antonio, eagerly pointing to some men gathered 
 rand a machine like an enormous cradle. Let us 
 
 sten on. 
 
 Father Pedro s momentary interest had passed. The 
 words of his companions fell dull and meaningless upon 
 his dreaming ears. He was conscious only that the child 
 was now stranger to him as an outcome of this hard, 
 bustling life, than when he believed her borne to him over 
 the mysterious sea. It perplexed his dazed, disturbed 
 mind to think that if such an antagonistic element could 
 exist within a dozen miles of the Mission, and he not 
 know it, could not such an atmosphere have been around 
 him, even in his monastic isolation, and he remain blind 
 to it ? Had he really lived in the world without knowing 
 it ? Had it been in his blood ? Had it impelled him 
 to . He shuddered and rode on. 
 
 They were at the last slope of the zigzag descent to 
 the shore, when he saw the figures of a man and woman 
 moving slowly through a field of wild oats, not far from 
 the trail. It seemed to his distorted fancy that the man 
 was Cranch. The woman ! His heart stopped beating. 
 Ah ! could it be ? He had never seen her in her proper 
 garb ; would she look like that ? Would she be as tall ? 
 He thought he bade Jos<5 and Antonio go on slowly before 
 with Sanchicha, and dismounted, walking softly between 
 the high stalks of grain, lest he should disturb them. 
 They evidently did not hear his approach, but were talk 
 ing earnestly. It seemed to Father Pedro that they had 
 taken each other s hands, and as he looked Cranch slipped 
 
48 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CAHMEL. 
 
 his arm round her waist. With only a blind instinct of 
 some dreadful sacrilege in this act, Father Pedro would 
 have rushed forward, when the girl s voice struck his ear. 
 He stopped, breathless. It was not Francisco, but Juanita, 
 the little mcstiza. 
 
 But are you sure you are not pretending to love me 
 now, as you pretended to think I was the muchacha you 
 had run away with and lost ? Are you sure it is not 
 pity for the deceit you practised upon me upon Don 
 Juan upon poor Father Pedro ? 
 
 It seemed as if Cranch had tried to answer with a 
 kiss, for the girl drew suddenly away from him with a 
 coquettish fling of the black braids, and whipped her little 
 brown hands behind her. 
 
 Well, look here, said Cranch, with the same easy 
 good-natured, practical directness which the priest re 
 membered, and which would have passed for philosophy 
 in a more thoughtful man, put it squarely then. In the 
 first place, it was Don Juan and the alcalde who first 
 suggested you might be the child. 
 
 But you have said you knew it was Francisco all the 
 time, interrupted Juanita. 
 
 I did ; but when I found the priest would not assist 
 me at first, and admit that the acolyte was a girl, I pre 
 ferred to let him think I was deceived in giving a fortune 
 to another, and leave it to his own conscience to permit 
 it or frustrate it. I was right. I reckon it was pretty 
 hard on the old man, at his time of life, and wrapped up 
 as he was in the girl ; but at the moment he came up 
 to the scratch like a man. 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 49 
 
 And to save him you have deceived me ? Thank 
 on, Seiior, said the girl with a mock curtsy. 
 
 I reckon I preferred to have you for a wife than a 
 aughter, said Cranch, if that s what you mean. When 
 ou know me better, Juanita, he continued gravely, 
 you ll know that I would never have let you believe I 
 ought in you the one if I had not hoped to find in you 
 he other. 
 
 1 Bueno ! And when did you have that pretty hope ? 
 * When I first saw you. 
 And that was two weeks ago. 
 
 4 A year ago, Juanita. When Francisco visited you 
 the Rancho. I followed and saw you. 
 Juanita looked at him a moment, and then suddenly 
 arted at him, caught him by the lapels of his coat and 
 look him like a terrier. 
 
 4 Are you sure that you did not love that Francisco ? 
 Deak ! (She shook him again.) Swear tliat you did 
 not follow her ! 
 
 But I did, said Cranch, laughing and shaking be 
 tween the clenching of the little hands. 
 
 Judas Iscariot ! Swear you do not love her all this 
 while. 
 
 But, Juanita ! 
 * Swear ! 
 
 Cranch swore. Then to Father Pedro s intense aston 
 ishment she drew the American s face towards her own 
 by the ears and kissed him. 
 
 But you might have loved her, and married a fortune, 
 said Juanita after a pause. 
 
 E 
 
50 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 "Whore would have been my reparation my duty ? 
 returned Cranch, with a laugh. 
 
 Separation enough for her to have had you, said 
 Juanita, with that rapid disloyalty of one loving woman 
 to another in an emergency. This provoked another kiss 
 from Cranch, and then Juanita said demurely : 
 
 But we are far from the trail. Let us return, or we 
 shall miss Father Pedro. Are you sure he will come ? 
 
 A week ago he promised to be here to see the proofs 
 to-day. 
 
 The voices were growing fainter and fainter ; they 
 were returning to the trail. 
 
 Father Pedro remained motionless. A week ago ! 
 "Was it a week ago since since what ? And what had 
 he been doing here ? Listening ! He ! Father Pedro, 
 listening like an idle peon to the confidences of two lovers. 
 But they had talked of him, of his crime, and the man 
 had pitied him. "Why did he not speak ? Why did he 
 not call after them ? He tried to raise his voice. It sank 
 in his throat with a horrible choking sensation. The 
 nearest heads of oats began to nod to him, he felt himself 
 swaying backwards and forwards. He fell heavily, 
 down, down, down, from the summit of the mountain to the 
 floor of the Mission chapel, and there he lay in the dark. 
 
 . 
 
 He moves. 
 
 Blessed Saint Anthony, preserve him ! 
 It was Antonio s voice, it was Jose s arm, it was the 
 field of wild oats, the sky above his head all unchanged 
 What has happened ? said the priest feebly. 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 51 
 
 A giddiness seized your Keverenco just now, as we 
 were coming to seek you. 
 
 And you met no one ? 
 
 No one, your Reverence. 
 
 Father Pedro passed his hand across his forehead. 
 
 But who are these ? he said, pointing to two figures 
 who now appeared upon the trail. 
 
 Antonio turned. 
 
 It is the Americano, Senor Cranch, and his adopted 
 daughter, the mestizo, Juanita, seeking your Reverence, 
 methinks. 
 
 Ah ! said Father Pedro. 
 
 Cranch came forward and greeted the priest cordially. 
 
 1 It was kind of you, Father Pedro, he said meaningly, 
 with a significant glance at Jose and Antonio, to come 
 so far to bid me and my adopted daughter farewell. We 
 depart when the tide serves, but not before you partake of 
 our hospitality in yonder cottage. 
 
 Father Pedro gazed at Cranch and then at Juanita. 
 
 I see, he stammered. But she goes not alone. 
 She will be strange at first. She takes some friend, 
 perhaps some companion ? he continued tremulously. 
 
 A very old and dear one, Father Pedro, who is wait 
 ing for us now. 
 
 He led the way to a little white cottage, so little and 
 white, and recent, that it seemed a mere fleck of sea 
 foam cast on the sands. Disposing of Jose and Antonio 
 in the neighbouring workshop and outbuildings, he assisted 
 the venerable Sanchicha to dismount, and, together with 
 Father Pedro and Juanita, entered a white palisaded 
 
 E2 
 
52 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CARMEL. 
 
 enclosure beside the cottage, and halted before what ap 
 peared to be a large folding trap-door, covering a slight 
 sandy mound. It was locked with a padlock ; beside it 
 stood the American alcalde and Don Juan Briones. Father 
 Pedro looked hastily around for another figure, but it was 
 not there. 
 
 Gentlemen, began Cranch, in his practical business 
 way, I reckon you all know we ve come here to identify 
 a young lady, who he hesitated was lately under the 
 care of Father Pedro, with a foundling picked up on this 
 shore fifteen years ago by an Indian woman. How this 
 foundling came here, and how I was concerned in it, you 
 all know. I ve told everybody here how I scrambled 
 ashore leaving that baby in the dingy, supposing it would 
 be picked up by the boat pursuing me. I ve told some of 
 you, he looked at Father Pedro, how I first discovered 
 from one of the men, three years ago, that the child was 
 not found by its father. But I have never told anyone, 
 before now, I knew it was picked up here. 
 
 I never could tell the exact locality where I came 
 ashore, for the fog was coming on as it is now. But two 
 years ago I came up with a party of gold-hunters to work 
 these sands. One day, digging near this creek, I struck 
 something embedded deep below the surface. Well 
 gentlemen, it wasn t gold, but something worth more to 
 me than gold or silver. Here it is. 
 
 At a sign the alcalde unlocked the doors and threw 
 them open. They disclosed an irregular trench, in which, 
 filled with sand, lay the half excavated stern of a boat. 
 
 It was the dingy of the " Trinidad," gentlemen ; you 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CABMEL. 53 
 
 can still read her name. I found hidden away, tucked 
 under the stern sheets, mouldy and water- worn, some 
 clothes that I recognised to be the baby s. I knew then 
 that the child had been taken away alive for some 
 purpose, and the clothes were left so that she should 
 carry no trace with her. I recognised the hand of an 
 Indian. I set to work quietly. I found Sanchicha here ; 
 she confessed to finding a baby, but what she had done 
 with it she would not at first say. But since then, she 
 has declared before the alcalde that she gave it to Father 
 Pedro, of San Carmel, and that here it stands Francisco 
 that was ! Francisca that is ! 
 
 He stepped aside to make way for a tall girl, who had 
 approached from the cottage. 
 
 Father Pedro had neither noticed the concluding 
 words nor the movement of Cranch. His eyes were fixed 
 upon the imbecile Sanchicha, Sanchicha, on whom, to 
 render his rebuke more complete, the Deity seemed to 
 have worked a miracle, and restored intelligence to eye 
 and lip. He passed his hand tremblingly across his fore 
 head, and turned away, when his eye fell upon the last 
 comer. 
 
 It was she. The moment he had longed for and 
 dreaded had come. She stood there, animated, handsome, 
 filled with a hurtful consciousness in her new charms, 
 her fresh finery, and the pitiable trinkets that had sup 
 planted her scapulary, and which played under her foolish 
 fingers. The past had no place in her pre-occupied mind ; 
 her bright eyes were full of eager anticipation of a sub 
 stantial future. The incarnation of a frivolous world 
 
54 AT THE MISSION OF SAN CAHMEL. 
 
 even as she extended one hand to him in half-coquettish 
 embarrassment, she arranged the folds of her dress with 
 the other. At the touch of her fingers, he felt himself 
 growing old and cold. Even the penance of parting, 
 which he had looked forward to, was denied him ; there 
 was no longer sympathy enough for sorrow. He thought 
 of the empty chorister s robe in the little cell, but not 
 now with regret. He only trembled to think of the flesh 
 that he had once caused to inhabit it. 
 
 That s all, gentlemen, broke in the practical voice 
 of Cranch. Whether there are proofs enough to make 
 Francisca the heiress of her father s wealth the lawyers 
 must say. I reckon it s enough for me that they give me 
 the chance of repairing a wrong by taking her father s 
 place. After all, it was a mere chance. 
 
 It was the will of God, said Father Pedro solemnly. 
 
 They were the last words he addressed them. For 
 when the fog had begun to creep in shore, hastening their 
 departure, he only answered their farewells by a silent 
 pressure of the hand, mute lips, and far-off eyes. 
 
 When the sound of their labouring oars grew fainter, 
 he told Antonio to lead him and Sanchicha again to the 
 buried boat. There he bade her kneel beside him. We 
 will do penance here, thee and I, daughter, he said 
 gravely. When the fog had drawn its curtain gently 
 around the strange pair, and sea and shore were blotted 
 out, he whispered, * Tell me, it was even so, w r as it not, 
 daughter, on the night she came ? When the distant 
 clatter of blocks and rattle of cordage came from the 
 unseen vessel now standing out to sea, he whispered 
 
AT THE MISSION OF SAN CAEMEL. 55 
 
 again, * So, this is what them didst hear, even then. And 
 so during the night he marked more or less audibly to 
 the half-conscious woman at his side ; the low whisper of 
 the waves, the murmur of the far-off breakers, the light 
 ening and thickening of the fog, the phantoms of moving 
 shapes, and the slow coming of the dawn. And when 
 the morning sun had rent the veil over land and sea, 
 Antonio and Jose found him, haggard, but erect, beside 
 the trembling old woman, with a blessing on his lips, 
 pointing to the horizon where a single sail still glim 
 mered : 
 
 Va Ustcd con Dios ! 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE 
 

 I. 
 
 SHE was barely twenty-three years old. It is probable 
 that up to that age, and the beginning of this episode, her 
 life had been uneventful. Born to the easy mediocrity of 
 such compensating extremes as a small farmhouse and 
 large lands, a good position and no society in that vast 
 grazing district of Kentucky known as the Blue Grass 
 region, all the possibilities of a Western American girl s 
 existence lay before her. A piano in the bare-walled 
 house, the latest patented mower in the limitless meadows, 
 and a silk dress sweeping the rough floor of the unpainted 
 meeting-house, were already the promise of those possi 
 bilities. Beautiful she was, but the power of that beauty 
 was limited by being equally shared with her few neigh 
 bours. There were small, narrow, arched feet besides her 
 own that trod the uncarpeted floors of outlying log- 
 cabiiis with equal grace and dignity ; bright, clearly 
 opened eyes that were equally capable of looking un 
 abashed upon princes and potentates as a few later did 
 and the heiress of the county judge read her own beauty 
 without envy in the frank glances and unlowered crest 
 of the blacksmith s daughter. Eventually she had 
 married the male of her species, a young stranger, who, 
 as schoolmaster in the nearest town, had utilised to some 
 local extent a scant capital of education. In obedience 
 
60 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 to the unwritten law of the West, after the marriage was 
 celebrated the doors of the ancestral home cheerfully 
 opened, and bride and bridegroom issued forth with 
 out regret and without sentiment, to seek the further 
 possibilities of a life beyond these already too familiar 
 voices. With their departure for California as Mr. and 
 Mrs. Spencer Tucker, the parental nest in the Blue Grass 
 meadows knew them no more. 
 
 They submitted with equal cheerfulness to the priva 
 tions and excesses of their new conditions. Within three 
 years the schoolmaster developed into a lawyer and 
 capitalist, the Blue Grass bride supplying a grace and 
 ease to these transitions that were all her own. She 
 softened the abruptness of sudden wealth, mitigated the 
 austerities of newly acquired power, and made the most 
 glaring incongruity picturesque. Only one thing seemed 
 to limit their progress in the region of these possibilities. 
 They were childless. It was as if they had exhausted the 
 future in their own youth, leaving little or nothing for 
 another generation to do. 
 
 A south-westerly storm was beating against the 
 dressing-room windows of their new house in one of the 
 hilly suburbs of San Francisco, and threatening the un 
 seasonable frivolity of the stucco ornamentation of cornice 
 and balcony. Mrs. Tucker had been called from the con 
 templation of the dreary prospect without by the arrival 
 of a visitor. On entering the drawing-room she found 
 him engaged in a half-admiring, half-resentful examina 
 tion of its new furniture and hangings. Mrs. Tucker at 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 61 
 
 once recognised Mr. Calhoun Weaver, a former Blue 
 Grass neighbour ; with swift feminine intuition she also 
 felt that his slight antagonism was likely to be transferred 
 from her furniture to herself. Waiving it with the lazy 
 amiability of Southern indifference, she welcomed him 
 by the familiarity of a Christian name. 
 
 I reckoned that mebbee you opined old Blue Grass 
 friends wouldn t naturally hitch on to them fancy doins, 
 he said, glancing around the apartment to avoid her clear 
 eyes, as if resolutely setting himself against the old charm 
 of her manner as he had against the more recent glory of 
 her surroundings, but I thought I d just drop in for the 
 sake of old times. 
 
 Why shouldn t you, Cal ? said Mrs. Tucker with a 
 frank smile. 
 
 Especially as I m going up to Sacramento to-night 
 with some influential friends, he continued, with an 
 ostentation calculated to resist the assumption of her 
 charms and her furniture. Senator Dyce of Kentucky 
 and his cousin Judge Briggs perhaps you know em, or 
 may be Spencer I mean Mr. Tucker does. 
 
 I reckon, said Mrs. Tucker smiling ; but tell me 
 something about the boys and girls at Vineville and 
 about yourself. You re looking well, and right smart too. 
 She paused to give due emphasis to this latter recognition 
 of a huge gold chain with which her visitor was somewhat 
 ostentatiously trifling. 
 
 I didn t know as you cared to hear anything about 
 Blue Grass, he returned, a little abashed. I ve been 
 away from there some time myself, he added, his uneasy 
 
62 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 vanity taking fresh alarm at the faint suspicion of patron 
 age on the part of his hostess. They re doiii well 
 though perhaps as well as some others. 
 
 And you re not married yet, continued Mrs. Tucker, 
 oblivious of the innuendo. Ah, Cal, she added archly, 
 I am afraid you are as fickle as ever. What poor girl in 
 Vineville have you left pining ? 
 
 The simple face of the man before her flushed with 
 foolish gratification at this old-fashioned ambiguous 
 flattery. Now, look yer, Belle, he said, chuckling, if 
 you re talking of old times and you think I bear malice 
 ag in Spencer, why 
 
 But Mrs. Tucker interrupted what might have been 
 an inopportune sentimental retrospect with a finger of 
 arch but languid warning. That will do ! I m dying 
 to know all about it, and you must stay to dinner and tell 
 me. It s right mean you can t see Spencer too ; but he 
 isn t back from Sacramento yet. 
 
 Grateful as a tete-a-tete with his old neighbour in her 
 more prosperous surroundings would have been if only 
 for the sake of later gossiping about it he felt it would 
 be inconsistent with his pride and his assumption of 
 present business. More than that, he was uneasily con 
 scious that in Mrs. Tucker s simple and unaffected manner 
 there was a greater superiority than he had ever noticed 
 during their previous acquaintance. He would have felt 
 kinder to her had she shown any airs and graces, which 
 he could have commented upon and forgiven. He 
 stammered some vague excuse of preoccupation, yet 
 lingered in the hope of saying something which, if not 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 63 
 
 aggressively unpleasant, might at least transfer to her 
 indolent serenity some of his own irritation. I reckon, 
 he said as he moved hesitatingly towards the door, * that 
 Spencer has made himself easy and secure in them busi 
 ness risks he s taking. That ere Alameda ditch affair 
 they re talking so much about is a mighty big thing 
 rather too big if it ever got to falling back on him. But 
 I suppose he s accustomed to take risks ? 
 
 Of course he is, said Mrs. Tucker gaily : he 
 married me. 
 
 The visitor smiled feebly, but was not equal to the 
 opportunity offered for gallant repudiation. But suppose 
 you ain t accustomed to risks ? 
 
 Why not ? I married him, said Mrs. Tucker. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun Weaver was human, and succumbed to 
 this last charming audacity. He broke into a noisy but 
 genuine laugh, shook Mrs. Tucker s hand with effusion, 
 said, Now that s regular Blue Grass and no mistake ! 
 and retreated under cover of his hilarity. In the hall he 
 made a rallying stand to repeat confidentially to the 
 servant who had overheard them : Blue Grass, all over 
 you bet your life, and, opening the door, was apparently 
 swallowed up in the tempest. 
 
 Mrs. Tucker s smile kept her lips until she had re 
 turned to her room, and even then languidly shone in her 
 eyes for some minutes after, as she gazed abstractedly 
 from her window on the storm-tossed bay in the distance. 
 Perhaps some girlish vision of the peaceful Blue Grass 
 plain momentarily usurped the prospect ; but it is to be 
 doubted if there was much romance in that retrospect, or 
 
G4 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 that it was more interesting to her than the positive and 
 sharply cut outlines of the practical life she now held. 
 Howbeit she soon forgot this fancy in lazily watching a 
 boat that, in the teeth of the gale, was beating round 
 Alcatraz Island. Although at times a mere black speck 
 oil the grey waste of foam, a closer scrutiny showed it to 
 be one of those lateen-rigged Italian fishing-boats that so 
 often flecked the distant bay. Lost in the sudden darken 
 ing of rain, or reappearing beneath the lifted curtain of 
 the squall, she watched it weather . the island, and then 
 turn its labouring but persistent course towards the 
 open channel. A rent in the Indian-inky sky, that 
 showed the narrowing portals of the Golden Gate be 
 yond, revealed, as unexpectedly the destination of the 
 little craft a tall ship that hitherto lay hidden in the 
 mist of the Sancelito shore. As the distance lessened 
 between boat and ship, they were again lost in the down 
 ward swoop of another squall. "When it lifted the ship 
 was creeping under the headland towards the open sea, 
 but the boat was gone. Mrs. Tucker in vain rubbed the 
 pane with her handkerchief it had vanished. Mean 
 while the ship, as she neared the Gate, drew out from the 
 protecting headland, stood outlined for a moment with 
 spars and canvas hearsed in black against the lurid rent 
 in the horizon, and then seemed to sink slowly into the 
 heaving obscurity beyond. A sudden onset of rain 
 against the windows obliterated the remaining prospect ; 
 the entrance of a servant completed the diversion. 
 
 Captain Poindexter, ma am ! 
 
 Mrs. Tucker lifted her pretty eyebrows interrogatively. 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 65 
 
 Captain Poindexter was a legal friend of her husband, and 
 had dined there frequently ; nevertheless she asked, Did 
 you tell him Mr. Tucker was not at home ? 
 
 Yes, m. 
 
 Did he ask for me ? 
 
 Yes, m. 
 
 Tell him I ll be down directly. 
 
 Mrs. Tucker s quiet face did not betray the fact that 
 this second visitor was even less interesting than the first. 
 In her heart she did not like Captain Poindexter. "With 
 a clever woman s instinct, she had early detected the fact 
 that he had a superior, stronger nature than her husband ; 
 as a loyal wife, she secretly resented the occasional un 
 conscious exhibition of this fact on the part of his inti 
 mate friend, in their familiar intercourse. Added to this 
 slight jealousy, there was a certain moral antagonism 
 between herself and the Captain which none but them 
 selves knew. They were both philosophers, but Mrs. 
 Tucker s serene and languid optimism would not tolerate 
 the compassionate and kind-hearted pessimisms of the 
 lawyer. Knowing what Jack Poindexter does of human 
 nature, her husband had once said, it s mighty fine in 
 him to be so kind and forgiving. You ought to like him 
 better, Belle. And qualify myself to be forgiven, said 
 the lady pertly. I don t see what you re driving at, 
 Belle ; I give it up, had responded the puzzled husband. 
 Mrs. Tucker kissed his high but foolish forehead tenderly, 
 and said, I m glad you don t, dear. 
 
 Meanwhile her second visitor had, like the first, em 
 ployed the interval in a critical survey of the glories of 
 
 F 
 
GO A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 the new furniture, but with apparently more compassion 
 than resentment in his manner. Once only had his ex 
 pression changed. Over the fire-place hung a large 
 photograph of Mr. Spencer Tucker. It was retouched, 
 refined, and idealised in the highest style of that polite 
 and diplomatic art. As Captain Poindexter looked upon 
 the fringed hazel eyes, the drooping raven moustache, the 
 clustering ringlets, and the Bj ronic full throat and 
 turned-down collar of his friend, a smile of exhausted 
 humorous tolerance and affectionate impatience curved 
 his lips. Well, you are a fool, aren t you ? he apostro 
 phised it half audibly. 
 
 He was standing before the picture as she entered. 
 Even in the trying contiguity of that peerless work he 
 would have been called a fine -looking man. As he 
 advanced to greet her, it was evident that his military 
 title was not one of the mere fanciful sobriquets of the 
 locality. In his erect figure and disciplined composure 
 of limb and attitude there were still traces of the refined 
 academic rigors of West Point. The pliant adaptability 
 of Western civilisation which enabled him, three years 
 before, to leave the army and transfer his executive ability 
 to the more profitable profession of the law, had loosed 
 sash and shoulder-strap, but had not entirely removed 
 the restraint of the one or the bearing of the other. 
 
 Spencer is in Sacramento, began Mrs. Tucker in 
 languid explanation, after the first greetings were over. 
 
 I knew he was not here, replied Captain Poindexter 
 gently, as he drew the proffered chair towards her, * but 
 this is business that concerns you both. He stopped 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. G7 
 
 and glanced upwards at the picture. I suppose you 
 know nothing of his business ? Of course not, he added 
 reassuringly, nothing, absolutely nothing, certainly. 
 He said this so kindly, and yet so positively as if to 
 promptly dispose of that question before going further 
 that she assented mechanically. Well, then, he s taken 
 some big risks in the way of business, and well, things 
 have gone bad with him, 3 r ou know. Very bad! Really, 
 they couldn t be worse ! Of course it was dreadfully rash 
 and all that, he went on as if commenting upon the 
 amusing waywardness of a child ; but the result is the 
 usual smash-up of everything, monej 7 ", credit, and all ! 
 He laughed and added, * Yes, he s got cut off mules and 
 baggage regularly routed and dispersed ! I m in earnest. 
 He raised his eyebrows and frowned slightly, as if to de 
 precate any corresponding hilarity on the part of Mrs. 
 Tucker, or any attempt to make too light of the subject, 
 and then rising, placed his hands behind his back, beamed 
 half-humorously upon her from beneath her husband s 
 picture, and repeated, That s so. 
 
 Mrs. Tucker instinctively knew that he spoke the 
 truth, and that it was impossible for him to convey it in 
 any other than his natural manner, but between the shock 
 and the singular influence of that manner she could at 
 first only say, You don t mean it fully conscious of 
 the utter inanity of the remark, and that it seemed 
 scarcely less cold-blooded than his own. 
 
 Poindexter, still smiling, nodded. 
 
 She arose with an effort. She had recovered from 
 
68 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 the first shock, and pride lent her a determined calm 
 ness that more than equalled Poindexter s easy philo 
 sophy. 
 
 * Where is he ? she asked. 
 
 At sea, and I hope by this time where he cannot be 
 found or followed. 
 
 Was her momentary glimpse of the outgoing ship a 
 coincidence or only a vision ? She was confused and 
 giddy, but, mastering her weakness, she managed to con 
 tinue in a lower voice : 
 
 You have no message for me from him ? He told 
 you nothing to tell me ? 
 
 Nothing, absolutely nothing, replied Poindexter. It 
 was as much as he could do, I reckon, to get fairly away 
 before the crash came. 
 
 Then you did not see him go ? 
 
 Well, no, said Poindexter. I d hardly have 
 managed things in this way ; he checked himself and 
 added, with a forgiving smile, but he was the best judge 
 of what he needed, of course. 
 
 I suppose I will hear from him, she said quietly, as 
 soon as he is safe. He must have had enough else to 
 think about, poor fellow ! 
 
 She said this so naturally and quietly that Poindexter 
 was deceived. He had no idea that the collected woman 
 before him was thinking only of solitude and darkness, of 
 her own room, and madly longing to be there. He said 
 Yes, I daresay, in quite another voice, and glanced at 
 the picture. But as she remained standing, he continued 
 more earnestly, I didn t come here to tell you what you 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE, 69 
 
 might read in the newspapers to-morrow morning, and 
 what everybody might tell you. Before that time I 
 want yon to do something to save a fragment of your 
 property from the ruin do you understand? I want 
 you to make a rally, and bring off something in good 
 order. 
 
 For him ? said Mrs. Tucker, with brightening 
 eyes. 
 
 Well yes of course if you like but as if for your 
 self. Do you know the Eancho de los Cuervos ? 
 
 < 1 do. 
 
 It s almost the only bit of real property your husband 
 hasn t sold, mortgaged, or pledged. Why it was exempt 
 or whether only forgotten I can t say. 
 
 4 I ll tell you why, said Mrs. Tucker, with a slight 
 return of colour. It was the first land we ever bought, 
 and Spencer always said it should be mine and he would 
 build a new house on it. 
 
 Captain Poindexter smiled and nodded at the picture. 
 Oh, he did say that, did he ? Well, that s evidence. 
 But you see he never gave you the deed, and by sunrise 
 to-morrow his creditors will attach it unless 
 
 * Unless ? repeated Mrs. Tucker with kindling 
 
 eyes. 
 
 Unless, continued Captain Poindexter, they happen 
 to find you in possession. 
 
 I ll go, said Mrs. Tucker. 
 
 Of course you will, returned Poindexter pleasantly. 
 Only, as it s a big contract to take, suppose we see how 
 you can fill it. It s forty miles to Los Cuervos, and you 
 
70 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 can t trust yourself to steamboat or stage coach. The 
 steamboat left an hour ago. 
 
 If I had only known this then ! ejaculated Mrs. 
 Tucker. 
 
 I knew it, but you had company then, said Poin- 
 dexter with ironical gallantry, and I wouldn t disturb 
 you. Without saying how he knew it, he continued, 
 In the stage-coach you might be recognised. You must 
 go in a private conveyance and alone even I cannot go 
 with you, for I must go on before and meet you there. 
 Can you drive forty miles ? 
 
 Mrs. Tucker lifted up her abstracted pretty lids : I 
 once drove fifty at home, she returned simply. 
 
 Good ! and I daresay you did it then for fun. Do it 
 now for something real and personal as we lawyers say. 
 You will have relays and a plan of the road. It s rough 
 weather for a pasear, but all the better for that. You ll 
 have less company on the road. 
 
 How soon can I go ? she asked. 
 
 The sooner the better. I ve arranged everything for 
 you already, he continued with a laugh. * Come now 
 that s a compliment to you isn t it ? He smiled a 
 moment in her steadfast, earnest face, and then said more 
 gravely, You ll do. Now listen. 
 
 He then carefully detailed his plan. There was so 
 little of excitement or mystery in their manner that the 
 servant, who returned to light the gas, never knew that 
 the ruin and bankruptcy of the house was being told before 
 her, or that its mistress was planning her secret flight. 
 
 * Good afternoon ; I will see you to-morrow then, said 
 

 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 71 
 
 Poindexter, raising his eyes to hers as the servant opened 
 the door for him. 
 
 Good afternoon, repeated Mrs. Tucker quietly 
 answering his look. You need not light- the gas in my 
 room, Mary, she continued in the same tone of voice as 
 the door closed upon him ; I shall lie down for a few 
 moments, and then I may run over to the Eobinsons for 
 the evening. 
 
 She regained her room composedly. The longing 
 desire to bury her head in her pillow and think out her 
 position had gone. She did not apostrophise her fate, she 
 did not weep ; few real women do in the access of calamity, 
 or when there is anything else to be done. She felt that 
 she knew it all ; she believed she had sounded the pro- 
 foundest depths of the disaster, and seemed already so 
 old in her experience that she almost fancied she had been 
 prepared for it. Perhaps she did not fully appreciate it : 
 to a life like hers it was only an incident, the mere turning 
 of a page of the illimitable book of youth ; the breaking up 
 of what she now felt had become a monotony. In fact, 
 she was not quite sure she had ever been satisfied with 
 their present success. Had it brought her all she ex 
 pected ? She wanted to say this to her husband, not only 
 to comfort him, poor fellow, but that they might come to 
 a better understanding of life in the future. She was not 
 perhaps different from other loving women who, believing 
 in this unattainable goal of matrimony, have sought it in 
 the various episodes of fortune or reverses, in the bearing 
 of children, or the loss of friends. In her childless ex 
 perience there was no other life that had taken root in her 
 
72 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 circumstances and might suffer transplantation : only she 
 and her husband could lose or profit by the change. The 
 perfect understanding would come under other condi 
 tions than these. 
 
 She would have gone superstitiously to the window to 
 gaze in the direction of the vanished ship, but another 
 instinct restrained her. She would put aside all yearning 
 for him until she had done something to help him, and 
 earned the confidence he seemed to have withheld. 
 Perhaps it was pride perhaps she never really believed 
 his exodus was distant or complete. 
 
 With a full knowledge that to-morrow the various 
 ornaments and pretty trifles around her would be in the 
 hands of the law, she gathered only a few necessaries for 
 her flight and some familiar personal trinkets. I am 
 constrained to say that this self-abnegation was more 
 fastidious than moral. She had no more idea of the 
 ethics of bankruptcy than any other charming woman ; 
 she simply did not like to take with her any contagious 
 memory of the chapter of the life just closing. She 
 glanced around the home she was leaving without a 
 lingering regret ; there was no sentiment of tradition or 
 custom that might be destroyed ; her roots lay too near 
 the surface to suffer from dislocation ; the happiness of 
 her childless union had depended upon no domestic, 
 centre, nor was its flame sacred to any local hearthstone. 
 It was without a sigh that, when night had fully fallen, 
 she slipped unnoticed down the staircase. At the door of 
 the drawing-room she paused and then entered with the 
 first guilty feeling of shame she had known that evening. 
 

 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 73 
 
 Looking stealthily around she mounted a chair before her 
 husband s picture, kissed the irreproachable moustache 
 hurriedly, said, You foolish darling, you ! and slipped 
 out again. "With this touching endorsement of the views 
 of a rival philosopher, she closed the door softly and left 
 her home for ever. 
 
74 A BLUE GEARS PENELOPE. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE wind and rain had cleared the unfrequented suburb 
 of any observant lounger, and the darkness, lit only by 
 far-spaced, gusty lamps, hid her hastening figure. She 
 had barely crossed the second street when she heard the 
 quick clatter of hoofs behind her ; a buggy drove up to 
 the curbstone, and Poindexter leaped out. She entered 
 quickly, but for a moment he still held the reins of the 
 impatient horse. He s rather fresh, he said, eyeing her 
 keenly ; are you sure you can manage him ? 
 
 Give me the reins, she said simply. 
 
 He placed them in the two firm, well-shaped hands 
 that reached from the depths of the vehicle, and was 
 satisfied. Yet he lingered : 
 
 It s rough work for a lone woman, he said, almost 
 curtly. I can t go with you, but speak frankly is 
 there any man you know whom you can trust well 
 enough to take ? It s not too late yet ; think a moment ! 
 
 He paiised over the buttoning of the leather apron of 
 the vehicle. 
 
 No, there is none, answered the voice from the 
 interior ; and it s better so. Is all ready ? 
 
 One moment more. He had recovered his half- 
 bantering manner. You have a friend and countrvman 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 75 
 
 already with yon, do you know ? Your horse is Blue 
 Grass. Good-night. 
 
 With these words ringing in her ears she began her 
 journey. The horse, as if eager to maintain the reputa 
 tion which his native district had given his race, as well 
 as the race of the pretty woman behind him, leaped im 
 patiently forward. But pulled together by the" fine and 
 firm fingers that seemed to guide rather than check his 
 exuberance, he presently struck into the long swinging 
 pace of his kind, and kept it throughout without break 
 or acceleration. Over the paved streets the light buggy 
 rattled, and the slender shafts danced around his smooth 
 barrel, but when they touched the level high-road horse 
 and vehicle slipped forward through the night a swift 
 and noiseless phantom. Mrs. Tucker could see his grace 
 ful back dimly rising and falling before her with tireless 
 rhythm, and could feel the intelligent pressure of his 
 mouth until it seemed the responsive grasp of a powerful 
 but kindly hand. The faint glow of conquest came to 
 her cold cheek ; the slight stirrings of pride moved her 
 pre-occupied heart. A soft light filled her hazel eyes. A 
 desolate woman, bereft of husband and home, and flying 
 through storm and night she knew not where she still 
 leaned forward towards her horse. Was he Blue Grass, 
 then, dear old boy ? she gently cooed at him in the 
 darkness. He evidently ivas, and responded by blowing 
 her an ostentatious equine kiss. And he would be good 
 to his own forsaken Belle, she murmured caressingly, 
 1 and wouldn t let anyone harm her ? But here, over 
 come by the laxy witchery of her voice, he shook his head 
 
76 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE* 
 
 so violently that Mrs. Tucker, after the fashion of her sex, 
 had the double satisfaction of demurely restraining the 
 passion she had evoked. 
 
 To avoid the more travelled thoroughfare, while the 
 evening was still early, it had been arranged that she 
 should at first take a less direct but less frequented road. 
 This was a famous pleasure-drive from San Francisco a 
 gravelled and sanded stretch of eight miles to the sea and 
 an ultimate cocktail, in a stately pleasure-dome de 
 creed among the surf and rocks of the Pacific shore. It 
 was deserted now, and left to the unobstructed sweep of 
 the wind and rain. Mrs. Tucker would not have chosen 
 this road. With the instinctive jealousy of a bucolic 
 inland race born by great rivers, she did not like the sea ; 
 and again the dim and dreary waste tended to recall the 
 vision connected with her husband s flight, upon which 
 she had resolutely shut her eyes. But when she had 
 reached it the road suddenly turned, following the trend 
 of the beach, and she was exposed to the full power of its 
 dread fascinations. The combined roar of sea and shore 
 was in her ears ; as the direct force of the gale had com 
 pelled her to furl the protecting hood of the buggy to keep 
 the light vehicle from oversetting or drifting to leeward, 
 she could no longer shut out the heaving chaos on the 
 right from which the pallid ghosts of dead and dying 
 breakers dimly rose and sank as if in awful salutation. 
 At times through the darkness a white sheet appeared 
 spread before the path and beneath the wheels of the 
 buggy, which, when withdrawn with a reluctant hiss, 
 seemed striving to drag the exhausted beach seaward 
 

 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 with it. But the blind terror of her horse, who swerved 
 at every sweep of the surge, shamed her own half-super 
 stitious fears, and with the effort to control his alarm she 
 regained her own self-possession albeit with eyelashes 
 wet not altogether with the salt spray from the sea. This 
 was followed by a reaction, perhaps stimulated by her 
 victory over the beaten animal, when for a time she 
 knew not how long she felt only a mad sense of freedom 
 and power, oblivious of even her sorrows, her lost home 
 and husband, and with intense feminine consciousness 
 she longed to be a man. She was scarcely aware, that the 
 track turned again inland until the beat of the horse s 
 hoofs on the firm ground and an acceleration of speed 
 showed her she had left the beach and the mysterious sea 
 behind her, and she remembered that she was near the 
 end of the first stage of her journey. Half an hour later 
 the twinkling lights of the roadside inn where she was to 
 change horses rose out of the darkness. 
 
 Happily for her the ostler considered the horse, who 
 had a local reputation, of more importance than the un 
 known muffled figure in the shadow of the unfurled hood, 
 and confined his attention to the animal. After a careful 
 examination of his feet and a few comments addressed 
 solely to the superior creation, he led him away. Mrs. 
 Tucker would have liked to part more affectionately from 
 her four-footed compatriot, and felt a sudden sense of 
 loneliness at the loss of her new friend, but a recollection 
 of certain cautions of Captain Poindexter s kept her mute. 
 Nevertheless, the ostler s ostentatious adjuration of Now 
 then, aren t you going to bring out that mustang for the 
 
78 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 Seiiora ? puzzled her. It was not until the fresh horse 
 was put to, and she had flung a piece of gold into the 
 attendant s hand, that the Gracias of his unmistakable 
 Saxon speech revealed to her the reason of the lawyer s 
 caution. Poindexter had evidently represented her to 
 these people as a native Californian who did not speak 
 English. In her inconsistency her blood took fire at this 
 first suggestion of deceit, and burned in her face. Why 
 should he try to pass her off as anybody else ? Why 
 should she not use her own her husband s name ? She 
 stopped and bit her lip. 
 
 It was but the beginning of an uneasy train of thought. 
 She suddenly found herself thinking of her visitor, 
 Calhoun Weaver and not pleasantly. He would hear of 
 their ruin to-morrow, perhaps of her own flight. He 
 would remember his visit, and what w r ould he think of 
 her deceitful frivolity ? Would he believe that she was 
 then ignorant of the failure ? It was her first sense of 
 any accountability to others than herself, but even then 
 it was rather owing to an uneasy consciousness of what 
 her husband must feel if he were subjected to the criti 
 cisms of men like Calhoun. She wondered if others knew 
 that ho had kept her in ignorance of his flight. Did 
 Poindexter know it or had he only entrapped her into 
 the admission ? Why had she not been clever enough to 
 make him think that she knew it already ? For the 
 moment she hated Poindexter for sharing that secret. 
 Yet this was again followed by a new impatience of her 
 husband s want of insight into her ability to help him. 
 Of course the poor fellow could not bear to worry her 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 79 
 
 could not Lear to face such men as . Calhoun, or even 
 Poindexter (she added exultingly to herself) but he 
 might have sent her a line as he fled, only to prepare her 
 to meet and combat the shame alone. It did not occur 
 to her unsophisticated singleness of nature that she was 
 accepting as an error of feeling what the world would call 
 cowardly selfishness. 
 
 At midnight the storm lulled and a few stars trembled 
 through the rent clouds. Her eyes had become accus 
 tomed to the darkness, and her country instincts, a little 
 overlaid by the urban experiences of the last few years, 
 came again to the surface. She felt the fresh cool radia 
 tion from outlying upturned fields, the faint sad odours 
 from dim stretches of pricking grain and quickening leaf, 
 and wondered if at Los Cuervos it might be possible to 
 reproduce the peculiar verdure of her native district. 
 She beguiled her fancy by an ambitious plan of retrieving 
 their fortunes by farming ; her comfortable tastes had 
 lately rebelled against the homeless mechanical cultiva 
 tion of these desolate, but teeming, Californian acres, and 
 for a moment indulged in a vision of a vine-clad cottage 
 home that in any other woman would have been senti 
 mental. Her cramped limbs aching, she took advantage 
 of the security of the darkness and the familiar contiguity 
 of the fields to get down from the vehicle, gather her 
 skirts together, and run at the head of the mustang, until 
 her chill blood was thawed, night drawing a modest veil 
 over this charming revelation of the nymph and woman. 
 But the sudden shadow of a coyote checked the scouring 
 feet of this swift Camilla, and sent her back precipitately 
 
80 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 to the buggy. Nevertheless, she was refreshed, and able 
 to pursue her journej 7 , until the cold grey of early morn 
 ing found her at the end of her second stage. 
 
 Her route was changed again from the main highway, 
 rendered dangerous by the approach of day and the con 
 tiguity of the neighbouring rancher os. The road was 
 rough and hilly, her new horse and vehicle in keeping 
 with the rudeness of the route by far the most difficult 
 of her whole journey. The rare waggon tracks that indi 
 cated her road were often scarcely discernible ; at times 
 they led her through openings in the half- cleared woods, 
 skirted suspicious morasses, painfully climbed the smooth 
 dome-like hills, or wound along perilous slopes at a dan 
 gerous angle. Twice she had to alight and cling to the 
 sliding wheels on one of those treacherous inclines, or 
 drag them from impending ruts or immovable mire. In 
 the growing light she could distinguish the distant, low- 
 lying marshes eaten by encroaching sloughs and insidious 
 channels, and beyond them the faint grey waste of the 
 Lower Bay. A darker peninsula in the marsh she knew 
 to be the extreme boundary of her future home the 
 Eancho de los Cuervos. In another hour she began to 
 descend to the plain, and to once more approach the main 
 road, which now ran nearly parallel with her track. She 
 scanned it cautiously for any early traveller ; it stretched 
 north and south in apparent unending solitude. She 
 struck into it boldly, and urged her horse to the top of 
 his speed, until she reached the cross road that led to the 
 rancho. But here she paused, and allowed the reins to 
 drop idly on the mustang s back. A singular and unac- 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 81 
 
 countable irresolution seized her. The difficulties of her 
 journey were over; the rancho lay scarcely two miles 
 away ; she had achieved the most important part of her 
 task in the appointed time, but she hesitated. What had 
 she come for ? She tried to recall Poindexter s words, 
 even her own enthusiasm, but in vain. She was going to 
 take possession of her husband s property, she knew 
 that was all. But the means she had taken seemed now 
 so exaggerated and mysterious for that simple end that 
 she began to dread an impending something, or some 
 vague danger she had not considered, that she was rush 
 ing blindly to meet. Full of this strange feeling, she 
 almost mechanically stopped her horse as she entered the 
 cross road. 
 
 From this momentary hesitation a singular sound 
 aroused her. It seemed at first like the swift hurrying 
 by of some viewless courier of the air, the vague alarm of 
 some invisible flying herald, or like the inarticulate cry 
 that precedes a storm. It seemed to rise and fall around 
 her as if with some changing urgency of purpose. liais 
 ing her eyes, she suddenly recognised the two far-stretch 
 ing lines of telegraph wire above her head, and knew the 
 aeolian cry of the morning wind along its vibrating chords. 
 But it brought another and more practical fear to her 
 active brain. Perhaps even now the telegraph might be 
 anticipating her ! Had Poindexter thought of that ? 
 She hesitated no longer, but laying the whip on the back 
 of her jaded mustang again hurried forward. 
 
 As the level horizon grew more distinct her attention 
 was attracted by the white sail of a small boat lazily 
 
 G 
 
82 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 threading the sinuous channel of the slough. It might 
 be Poindexter arriving by the more direct route from the 
 steamboat that occasionally laid off the ancient embarca- 
 dero of the Los Cuervos Eancho. But even while watch 
 ing it her quick ear caught the sound of galloping hoofs 
 behind her. She turned quickly and saw she was followed 
 by a horseman. But her momentary alarm was suc 
 ceeded by a feeling of relief as she recognised the erect 
 figure and square shoulders of Poindexter. Yet she could 
 not help thinking that he looked more like a militant 
 scout, and less like a cautious legal adviser, than ever. 
 
 With unaffected womanliness she rearranged her 
 slightly disordered hair as he drew up beside her. I 
 thought you were in yonder boat, she said. 
 
 Not I, he laughed ; I distanced you by the high 
 road two hours, and have been reconnoitring, until I saw 
 you hesitate at the cross roads. 
 
 1 But who is in the boat ? asked Mrs. Tucker, partly 
 to hide her embarrassment. 
 
 Only some early Chinese market gardener, I dare 
 say. But you are safe now. You are on your own land. 
 You passed the boundary monument of the rancho five 
 minutes ago. Look ! All you see before you is yours, 
 from the embarcadero to yonder coast range. 
 
 The tone of half-raillery did not, however, cheer Mrs. 
 Tucker. She shuddered slightly and cast her eyes over 
 the monotonous sea of tule and meadow. 
 
 1 It doesn t look pretty, perhaps, continued Poindexter, 
 1 but it s the richest land in the State, and the embarca- 
 dero will some day be a town. I suppose you ll call it 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 83 
 
 Blue Grassville. But you seem tired ! he said, suddenly 
 dropping his voice to a tone of half- humorous sympathy. 
 
 Mrs. Tucker managed to get rid of an impending tear 
 under the pretence of clearing her eyes. Are we nearly 
 there ? she asked. 
 
 4 Nearly. You know, he added, with the same half- 
 mischievous, half -sympathising gaiety, it s not exactly a 
 palace you re coming to. Hardly. It s the old casa that 
 has been deserted for years, but I thought it better you 
 should go into possession there than take up your abode 
 at the shanty where your husband s farm-hands are. No 
 one will know when you take possession of the casa, 
 while the very hour of your arrival at the shanty would 
 be known and if they should make any trouble 
 
 If they should make any trouble ? repeated Mrs. 
 Tucker, lifting her frank, enquiring eyes to Poindexter. 
 
 His horse suddenly rearing from an apparently acci 
 dental prick of the spur, it was a minute or two before he 
 was able to explain. I mean if this ever comes up as a 
 matter of evidence you know. But here we are ! 
 
 What had seemed to be an overgrown mound rising 
 like an island out of the dead level of the grassy sea, now 
 resolved itself into a collection of adobe walls, eaten and 
 encrusted with shrubs and vines that bore some resem 
 blance to the usual uninhabited-looking exterior of a 
 Spanish-American dwelling. Apertures that might have 
 been lance-shaped windows or only cracks and fissures in 
 the walls were choked up with weeds and grass, and gave 
 no passing glimpse of the interior. Entering a ruinous 
 corral they came to a second entrance which proved to be 
 
 G2 
 
84 A BLUE GEASS PENELOPE. 
 
 the patio or courtyard. The deserted wooden corridor, 
 with beams, rafters, and floors whitened by the eternal 
 sun and wind, contained a few withered leaves, drily rot 
 ting skins and thongs of leather, as if undisturbed by 
 human care. But among these scattered debris of former 
 life and habitation there was no noisome or unclean sug 
 gestion of decay. A faint spiced odour of dessication 
 filled the bare walls. There was no slime on stone or 
 sun-dried brick. In place of fungus or discoloured mois 
 ture the dust of efflorescence whitened in the obscured 
 corners. The elements had picked clean the bones of the 
 crumbling tenement ere they should finally absorb it. 
 
 A withered old peon woman, who in dress, complexion, 
 and fibrous hair might have been an animated fragment 
 of the debris, rustled out of a low vaulted passage and 
 welcomed them with a feeble crepitation. Following her 
 into the dim interior, Mrs. Tucker was surprised to find 
 some slight attempt at comfort and even adornment in 
 the two or three habitable apartments. They were scru 
 pulously clean and dry two qualities which in her femi 
 nine eyes atoned for poverty of material. 
 
 * I could not send anything from San Bruno, the 
 nearest village, without attracting attention, explained 
 Poindexter ; but if you can manage to picnic here for a 
 day longer, I ll get one of our Chinese friends here, he 
 pointed to the slough, to bring over, for his return cargo 
 from across the bay, any necessaries you may want. 
 There is no danger of his betraying you, he added, with 
 an ironical smile ; Chinamen and Indians are, by an 
 ingenious provision of the statute of California, incapable 
 

 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 85. 
 
 of giving evidence against a white person. You can trust 
 your handmaiden perfectly even if she can t trust you. 
 That is your sacred privilege under the constitution. 
 And now, as I expect to catch the up-boat ten miles from 
 hence, I must say " good-bye " until to-morrow night. I 
 hope to bring you then some more definite plans for the 
 future. The worst is over. He held her hand for a 
 moment, and with a graver voice continued, You have 
 done it very well do you know very well ! 
 
 In the slight embarrassment produced by his sudden 
 change of manner, she felt that ner thanks seemed 
 awkward and restrained. Don t thank me, he laughed 
 with a prompt return of his former levity, that s my trade. 
 I only advised. You have saved yourself like a plucky 
 woman shall I say like Blue Grass ? Good-bye ! He 
 mounted his horse, but, as if struck by an afterthought, 
 wheeled and drew up by her side again. If I were you 
 I wouldn t see many strangers for a day or two, and listen 
 to as little news as a woman possibly can. He laughed 
 again, waved her a half-gallant, half-military salute, and 
 was gone. The question she had been trying to frame, 
 regarding the probability of communication with her 
 husband, remained unasked. At least she had saved her 
 pride before him. 
 
 Addressing herself to the care of her narrow house 
 hold, she mechanically put away the few things she had 
 brought with her, and began to readjust the scant 
 furniture. She was a little discomposed at first at the 
 absence of bolts, locks, and even window-fastenings until 
 assured, by Concha s evident inability to comprehend her 
 
86 A BLUE GKASS PENELOPE* 
 
 concern, that they were quite unknown at Los Cuervos. 
 Her slight knowledge of Spanish was barely sufficient to 
 make her wants known, so that the relief of conversation 
 with her only companion was debarred her, and she was 
 obliged to content herself with the sapless, crackling 
 smiles and withered genuflexions that the old woman 
 dropped like dead leaves in her path. It was staring noon 
 when, the house singing like an empty shell in the 
 monotonous wind, she felt she could stand the solitude no 
 longer, and, crossing the glaring patio and whistling 
 corridor, made her way to the open gateway. 
 
 But the view without seemed to intensify her desola 
 tion. The broad expanse of the shadowless plain reached 
 apparently to the coast range, trackless and unbroken 
 save by one or two clusters of dwarfed oaks, which at 
 that distance were but mossy excrescences on the surface, 
 barely raised above the dead level. On the other side the 
 marsh took up the monotony and carried it, scarcely 
 interrupted by undefined watercourses, to the faintly 
 marked out horizon line of the remote bay. Scattered 
 and apparently motionless black spots on the meadows 
 that gave a dreary significance to the title of * the Crows 
 which the rancho bore, and sudden grey clouds of sand 
 pipers on the marshes, that rose and vanished down the 
 wind, were the only signs of life. Even the white sail of 
 the early morning was gone. 
 
 She stood there until the aching of her straining eyes 
 and the stiffening of her limbs in the cold wind compelled 
 her to seek the sheltered warmth of the courtyard. Here 
 she endeavoured to make friends with a bright-eyed lizard, 
 
A BLUE GKASS PENELOPE. 87 
 
 who was sunning himself in the corridor a graceful little 
 creature in blue and gold, from whom she felt at other 
 times she might have fled, but whose beauty and harm- 
 lessness solitude had made known to her. With misplaced 
 kindness she tempted it with bread-crumbs, with no other 
 effect than to stiffen it into stony astonishment. She 
 wondered if she should become like the prisoners she had 
 read of in books, who poured out their solitary affections 
 on noisome creatures, and she regretted even the mustang, 
 which with the buggy had disappeared under the charge 
 of some unknown retainer on her arrival. Was she not a 
 prisoner ? The shutterless windows, yawning doors, and 
 open gate refuted the suggestion, but the encompassing 
 solitude and trackless waste still held her captive. Poin- 
 dextcr had told her it was four miles to the shanty ; she 
 might walk there. Why had she given her word that she 
 would remain at the rancho until he returned ? 
 
 The long day crept monotonously away, and she 
 welcomed the night which shut out the dreary prospect. 
 But it brought no cessation of the harassing wind without, 
 nor surcease of the nervous irritation its perpetual and 
 even activity wrought upon her. It haunted her pillow 
 even in her exhausted sleep, and seemed to impatiently 
 beckon her to rise and follow it. It brought her feverish 
 dreams of her husband, footsore and weary, staggering 
 forward under its pitiless lash and clamorous outcry ; 
 she would have gone to his assistance, but when she 
 reached his side and held out her arms to him, it hurried 
 her past with merciless power, and, bearing her away, left 
 him hopelessly behind. It was broad day when she 
 
88 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 awoke. The usual night showers of the waning rainy 
 season had left no trace in sky or meadow ; the fervid 
 morning sun had already dried the patio ; only the rest 
 less harrying wind remained. 
 
 Mrs. Tucker arose with a resolve. She had learned 
 from Concha on the previous evening that a part of the 
 shanty was used as a tienda or shop for the labourers and 
 ranclieros. Under the necessity of purchasing some 
 articles, she would go there and for a moment mingle 
 with those people, who would not recognise her. Even if 
 they did, her instinct told her it would be less to be feared 
 than the hopeless uncertainty of another day. As she 
 left the house the wind seemed to seize her as in her 
 dream and hurry her along with it, until in a few moments 
 the walls of the low casa sank into the earth again and 
 she was alone, but for the breeze on the solitary plain. 
 The level distance glittered in the sharp light, a few 
 crows with slant wings dipped and ran down the wind 
 before her, and a passing gleam on the marsh was 
 explained by the far-off cry of a curlew. 
 
 She had walked for an hour, upheld by the stimulus 
 of light and morning air, when the cluster of scrub oaks, 
 which was her destination, opened enough to show two 
 rambling sheds, before one of which was a wooden plat 
 form containing a few barrels and bones. As she 
 approached nearer, she could see that one or two horses 
 were tethered under the trees, that their riders were 
 lounging by a horse -trough, and that over an open door 
 the word Tienda was rudely painted on a board, and as 
 rudely illustrated by the wares displayed at door and 
 

 A BLUE GEASS PENELOPE. 89 
 
 window. Accustomed as she was to the poverty of frontier 
 architecture, even the crumbling walls of the old hacienda 
 she had just left seemed picturesque to the rigid angles of 
 the thin, blank, unpainted shell before her. One of the 
 loungers, who was reading a newspaper aloud as she 
 advanced, put it aside and stared at her ; there was an 
 evident commotion in the shop as she stepped upon the 
 platform, and when she entered, with breathless lips and 
 beating heart, she found herself the object of a dozen 
 curious eyes. Her quick pride resented the scrutiny and 
 recalled her courage, and it was with a slight coldness in 
 her usual lazy indifference that she -leaned over the 
 counter and asked for the articles she wanted. 
 
 The request was followed by a dead silence. Mrs. 
 Tucker repeated it with some hauteur. 
 
 I reckon you don t seem to know this store is in the 
 hands of the sheriff, said one of the loungers. 
 
 Mrs. Tucker was not aware of it. 
 
 Well, I don t know anyone who s a better right to 
 know than Spence Tucker s wife, said another with a 
 coarse laugh. The laugh was echoed by the others. 
 Mrs. Tucker saw the pit into which she had deliberately 
 walked, but did not flinch. 
 
 Is there anyone to serve here ? she asked, turning 
 her clear eyes full upon the bystanders. 
 
 * You d better ask the Sheriff. He was the last one to 
 sarve here. He sarved an attachment, replied the in 
 evitable humourist of all Californian assemblages. 
 
 Is he here ? asked Mrs. Tucker, disregarding the 
 renewed laughter which followed this subtle witticism. 
 
90 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 The loungers at the door made way for one of their 
 party, who was half dragged, half pushed into the shop. 
 Here he is, said half a dozen eager voices, in the fond 
 belief that his presence might impart additional humour 
 to the situation. He cast a deprecating glance at Mrs. 
 Tucker and said,,, It s so, madam ! This yer place is 
 attached ; but if there s anything you re wanting, why I 
 reckon, boys he turned half appealingly to the crowd 
 we could oblige a lady. There was a vague sound of 
 angry opposition and remonstrance from the back door of 
 the shop, but the majority, partly overcome by Mrs. 
 Tucker s beauty, assented. Only, continued the officer 
 explanatorily, ez these yer goods are in the hands of the 
 creditors, they ought to be represented by an equiva 
 lent in money. If you re expecting they should be 
 charged 
 
 * But I wish to 2 }a y f r them, interrupted Mrs. 
 Tucker, with a slight flush of indignation : I have the 
 money. 
 
 Oh, I bet you have ! screamed a voice, as, over 
 turning all opposition, the malcontent at the back door, 
 in the shape of an infuriated woman, forced her way into 
 the shop. I ll bet you have the money ! Look at her, 
 boys! Look at the wife of the thief, with the stolen 
 money, in diamonds in her ears and rings on her fingers. 
 She s got money if we ve none. She can pay for what 
 she fancies, if we haven t a cent to redeem the bed that s 
 stolen from under us. Oh, yes, buy it all, Mrs. Spencer 
 Tucker ! buy the whole shop, Mrs. Spencer Tucker ! do 
 you hear ? And if you aint satisfied then, buy my 
 

 A BLUE GKASS PENELOPE. 91 
 
 clothes, my wedding ring, the only things your husband 
 hasn t stolen. 
 
 I don t understand you, said Mrs. Tucker coldly, 
 turning towards the door. But with a flying leap across 
 the counter her relentless adversary stood between her 
 and retreat. 
 
 You don t understand ! Perhaps you don t under 
 stand that your husband not only stole the hard labour of 
 these men, but even the little money they brought here 
 and trusted to his thieving hands. Perhaps you don t 
 know that he stole my husband s hard earnings, mort 
 gaged these very goods you want to buy, and that he is 
 to-day a convicted thief, a forger, and a runaway coward. 
 Perhaps, if you can t understand me, you can read the 
 newspaper. Look ! She exultingly opened the paper 
 the sheriff had been reading aloud, and pointed to the 
 displayed headlines. Look ! there are the very words, 
 "Forgery, Swindling, Embezzlement!" Do you see? 
 And perhaps you can t understand this. Look ! " Shame 
 ful flight. Abandons his wife. Runs off with a Noto 
 rious " 
 
 * Easy, old gal, easy now. D n it ! Will you dry 
 up ? I say. Stop I 
 
 It was too late ! The Sheriff had dashed the paper 
 from the woman s hand, but not until Mrs. Tucker had 
 read a single line a line such as she had sometimes turned 
 from with weary scorn in her careless perusal of the daily 
 shameful chronicle of domestic infelicity. Then she had 
 coldly wondered if there could be any such men and 
 women and now ! The crowd fell back before her ; even 
 
92 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 the virago was silenced as she looked at her face. The 
 humourist s face was as white, but not as immobile, as he 
 gasped, Christ ! if I don t believe she knew nothin of 
 it! 
 
 For a moment the full force of such a supposition, 
 with all its poignancy, its dramatic intensity, and its 
 pathos, possessed the crowd. In the momentary clair 
 voyance of enthusiasm they caught a glimpse of the truth, 
 and by one of the strange reactions of human passion 
 they only waited for a w r ord of appeal or explanation from 
 her lips to throw themselves at her feet. Had she simply 
 told her story they would have believed her; had she 
 cried, fainted, or gone into hysterics, they would have 
 pitied her. She did neither. Perhaps she thought o 
 neither or indeed of anything that was then before her 
 eyes. She walked erect to the door and turned upon the 
 threshold. I mean what I say, she said calmly. I 
 don t understand you. But whatever just claims you 
 have upon my husband will be paid by me or by his 
 lawyer, Captain Poindexter. 
 
 She had lost the sympathy but not the respect of her 
 hearers. They made way for her with sullen deference 
 as she passed out on the platform. But her adversary, 
 profiting by the last opportunity, burst into an ironical 
 laugh. 
 
 Captain Poindexter, is it ? Well, perhaps he s safe 
 to pay your bill but as for your husband s 
 
 That s another matter, interrupted a familiar voice 
 with the greatest cheerfulness that s what you were 
 going to say, wasn t it ? Ha ! ha ! Well, Mrs. Patterson, 
 

 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 93 
 
 continued Poindexter, stepping from his buggy, you 
 never spoke a truer word in your life. One moment, Mrs. 
 Tucker. Let me send you back in the buggy. Don t 
 mind me. I can get a fresh horse of the Sheriff. I m 
 quite at home here. I say, Patterson, step a few paces 
 this way, will you ? A little further from your wife, 
 please. That ll do. You ve got a claim of five thousand 
 dollars against the property, haven t you ? 
 
 Yes. 
 
 Well, that woman just driving away is your one 
 solitary chance of getting a cent of it. If your wife 
 insults her again that chance is gone. And if you 
 do 
 
 Well ? 
 
 * As sure as there is a God in Israel and a Supreme 
 Court of the State of California, I ll kill you in your 
 tracks ! . . . Stay ! 
 
 Patterson turned. The irrepressible look of humorous 
 tolerance of all human frailty had suffused Poindexter s 
 black eyes with mischievous moisture. If you think it 
 quite safe to confide to your wife this prospect of her im 
 provement by widowhood you may ! 
 
91 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 III. 
 
 MR. PATTERSON did not inform his wife of the lawyer s 
 personal threat to himself. But he managed, after Poin- 
 dexter had left, to make her conscious that Mrs. Tucker 
 might be a power to be placated and feared. You ve 
 shot off your mouth at her, he said argumentatively, and 
 whether you ve hit the mark or not you ve had your say. 
 Ef you think it s worth a possible five thousand dollars and 
 interest to keep on, heave ahead. Ef you rather have the 
 chance of getting the rest in cash, you ll let up on her. 
 * You don t suppose, returned Mrs. Patterson contemptu 
 ously, that she s got any thing but what that man of hers 
 Poinclexter lets her have ? The Sheriff says, re 
 torted Patterson surlily, that she s notified him that she 
 claims the rancho as a gift from her husband three years 
 ago and she s in possession now, and was so when the 
 execution was out. It don t make no matter, he 
 added with gloomy philosophy, who s got a full hand as 
 long as we ain t got the cards to chip in. I wouldn t a 
 minded it, he continued meditatively, ef Spence Tucker 
 had dropped a hint to me afore he put out. * And I 
 suppose, said Mrs. Patterson angrily, you d have put 
 out too ? I reckon, said Patterson, simply. 
 
 Twice or thrice during the evening he referred, more 
 

 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 95 
 
 or less directly, to this lack of confidence shown by his 
 late debtor and employer, and seemed to feel it more 
 keenly than the loss of property. He confided his senti 
 ments quite openly to the Sheriff in possession, over the 
 whisky and euchre with which these gentlemen avoided 
 the difficulties of their delicate relations. He brooded 
 over it as he handed the keys of the shop to the Sheriff 
 when they parted for the night, and was still thinking of 
 it when the house was closed, everybody gone to bed, and 
 he was fetching a fresh jug of water from the well. The 
 moon was at times obscured by flying clouds the avant- 
 couriers of the regular evening shower. He was stooping 
 over the well, when he sprang suddenly to his feet again : 
 Who s there ? he demanded sharply. 
 
 * Hush ! said a voice so low and faint it might have 
 been a whisper of the wind in the palisades of the corral. 
 But, indistinct as it was, it was the voice of the man he 
 was thinking of as far away, and it sent a thrill of alternate 
 awe and pleasure through his pulses. 
 
 He glanced quickly around. The moon was hidden 
 by a passing cloud, and only the faint outlines of the 
 house he had just quitted were visible. Is that you, 
 Spence ? he said tremulously. 
 
 4 Yes, replied the voice, and a figure dimly emerged 
 from the corner of the corral. 
 
 * Lay low, lay low for God s sake, said Patterson 
 hurriedly throwing himself upon the apparition. The 
 Sheriff and his posse are in there. 
 
 But I must speak to you a moment, said the 
 figure. 
 
96 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 * Wait, said Patterson, glancing towards the building. 
 It s blank, shutterless windows revealed no inner light 
 a profound silence encompassed it. Come quick, he 
 whispered. Letting his grasp slip down to the unresisting 
 hand of the stranger, he half dragged, half led him, brush 
 ing against the wall, into the open door of the deserted 
 bar-room he had just quitted, locked the inner door, 
 poured a glass of whisky from a decanter, gave it to him, 
 and then watched him drain it at a single draught. The 
 moon came out, and falling through the bare windows 
 full upon the stranger s face, revealed the artistic but, 
 slightly dishevelled curls and moustache of the fugitive, 
 Spencer Tucker. 
 
 Whatever may have been the real influence of this 
 unfortunate man upon his fellow r s, it seemed to find ex 
 pression in a singular unanimity of criticism. Patterson 
 looked at him with a half- dismal, half- welcoming smile : 
 Well, you are a h 11 of fellow, aint you ? 
 
 Spencer Tucker passed his hand through his hair and 
 lifted it from his forehead, with a gesture at once emotional 
 and theatrical. * I am a man with a price on me ! he 
 said bitterly : * give me up to the Sheriff, and you ll get 
 five thousand dollars. Help me, and you ll get nothing. 
 That s my luck, and yours too, I suppose. 
 
 I reckon you re right there, said Patterson gloomily. 
 4 But I thought you got clean away. Went off in a 
 ship 
 
 Went off in a boat to a ship, interrupted Tucker 
 savagely ; went off to a ship that had all my things on 
 board everything. The cursed boat capsized in a squall 
 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 97 
 
 just off the Heads. The ship sailed away, the men think 
 ing I was drowned, likely, and that they d make a good 
 thing off my goods I reckon. 
 
 But the girl, Inez, who was with you, didn t she 
 make a row ? 
 
 * Quien sabe ? returned Tucker, with a reckless laugh. 
 1 Well, I hung on like grim death to that boat s keel until 
 one of those Chinese fishermen, in a "dug out," hauled 
 me in opposite Sancelito. I chartered him and his dug 
 out to bring me down here. 
 
 Why here ? asked Patterson, with a certain ostenta 
 tious caution that ill-concealed his pensive satisfaction. 
 
 You may well ask, returned Tucker, with an equal 
 ostentation of bitterness, as he slightly waved his com 
 panion away. But I reckoned I could trust a white man 
 that I d been kind too, and who wouldn t go back on me. 
 No, no, let me go ! Hand me over to the Sheriff ! 
 
 Patterson had suddenly grasped both the hands of the 
 picturesque scamp before him, with an affection that for 
 an instant almost shamed the man who had ruined him. 
 But Tucker s egotism whispered that this affection was 
 only a recognition of his own superiority, and felt flattered. 
 He was beginning to believe that he was really the injured 
 party. 
 
 What I Jiave and what I have had is yours, Spence, 
 returned Patterson, with a sad and simple directness that 
 made any further discussion a gratuitous insult. I only 
 wanted to know what you reckoned to do here. 
 
 I want to get over across the coast range to Mon 
 terey, said Tucker. Once there, one of those coasting 
 
 H 
 
98 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 schooners will bring mo down to Acapulco, where the ship 
 will put in. 
 
 Patterson remained silent for a moment. There s a 
 mustang in the corral you can take leastways, I shan t 
 know that it s gone until to-morrow afternoon. In an 
 hour from now, he added, looking from the window, 
 these clouds will settle down to business. It will rain ; 
 there will be light enough for you to find your way by the 
 regular trail over the mountain, but not enough for any 
 one to know you. If you can t push through to-night, 
 you can lie over at the Posada on the summit. Them 
 Greasers that keep it won t know you, and if they did 
 they won t go back on you. And if they did go back on 
 you nobody would believe them. It s mighty curious, 
 he added, with gloomy philosophy, but I reckon it s the 
 reason why Providence allows this kind of cattle to live 
 among white men and others made in His image. Take 
 a piece of pie, won t you ? he continued, abandoning 
 this abstract reflection and producing half a flat pumpkin 
 pie from the bar. Spencer Tucker grasped the pie with 
 one hand and his friend s fingers with the other, and for a 
 few moments was silent from the hurried deglutition of 
 viand and sentiment. * You re a white man, Patterson, 
 any way, he resumed. * I ll take your horse, and put it 
 down in our account, at your own figure. As soon as 
 this cursed thing is blown over, I ll be back here and see 
 you through, you bet. I don t desert my friends, however 
 rough things go with me. 
 
 I see you don t, returned Patterson, with an un 
 conscious and serious simplicity that had the effect of the 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 09 
 
 most exquisite irony. I was only just saying to the 
 Sheriff that if there was anything I could have done for 
 you, you wouldn t have cut away without letting me 
 know. Tucker glanced uneasily at Patterson, who con 
 tinued, Ye ain t wanting anything else ? Then observ 
 ing that his former friend and patron was roughly but 
 newly clothed, and betrayed no trace of his last escapade, 
 he added, I see you ve got a fresh harness. 
 
 That Chinaman bought me these at the land 
 ing ; they re not much in style or fit, he continued, try 
 ing to get a moonlight view of himself in the mirror 
 behind the bar, but that don t matter here. He filled 
 another glass of spirits, jauntily settled himself back in. 
 his chair, and added, * I don t suppose there are any girls 
 around anyway. 
 
 Cept your wife ; she was down here this afternoon, 
 said Patterson meditatively. 
 
 Mr. Tucker paused with the pie in his hand. All, 
 yes ! He essayed a reckless laugh, but that evident 
 simulation failed before Patterson s melancholy. "With 
 an assumption of falling in with his friend s manner, 
 rather than from any personal anxiety, he continued, 
 Well ? 
 
 That man Poindexter was down here with her. Put 
 her in the hacienda to hold possession afore the news 
 came out. 
 
 * Impossible ! said Tucker, rising hastily. It don t 
 belong that is he hesitated. 
 
 * Yer thinking the creditors 11 get it, mebbee, returned 
 Patterson, gazing, at the floor. Not as long as she s in 
 
 ii 2 
 
100 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 it ; no, sir ! "Whether it s really hers, or she s only keep 
 ing house for Poindexter, she s a fixture, you bet. They re 
 a team when they pull together, they are ! 
 
 The smile slowly faded from Tucker s face, that now 
 looked quite rigid in the moonlight. He put down his 
 glass and walked to the window as Patterson gloomily 
 continued, But that s nothing to you. You ve got ahead 
 of em both, and had your revenge by going off with the 
 gal. That s what I said all along. "When folks specially 
 women folks wondered how you could leave a woman 
 like your wife, and go off with a scalliwag like that gal, 
 I allers said they d find out there was a reason. And 
 when your wife came flaunting down here with Poindexter 
 before she d quite got quit of you, I reckon they began to 
 see the whole little game. No, sir ! I knew it wasn t on 
 account of that gal ! Why, when you came here to-night 
 and told me quite nat ral-like and easy how she went off 
 in the ship, and then calmly ate your pie and drank your 
 whisky after it, I knew you didn t care for her. There s 
 my hand, Spence ; you re a trump, even if you are a little 
 looney, eh ? Why, what s up ? 
 
 Shallow and selfish as Tucker was, Patterson s words 
 seemed like a revelation that shocked him as profoundly 
 as it might have shocked a nobler nature. The simple 
 vanity and selfishness that made him unable to conceive 
 any higher reason for his wife s loyalty than his own per 
 sonal popularity and success, now that he no longer pos 
 sessed that eclat, made him equally capable of the lowest 
 suspicions. He was a dishonoured fugitive, broken in 
 fortune and reputation why should she not desert him ? 
 

 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 101 
 
 He had been unfaithful to her from wildness, from caprice, 
 from the effect of those fascinating qualities ; it seemed 
 to him natural that she should be disloyal from more 
 deliberate motives, and he hugged himself with that 
 belief. Yet there was enough doubt, enough of haunting 
 suspicion that he had lost or alienated a powerful affection 
 to make him thoroughly miserable. He returned his 
 friend s grasp convulsively and buried his face upon his 
 shoulder. But he was not above feeling a certain exulta 
 tion in the effect of his misery upon the dog-like, unrea 
 soning affection of Patterson, nor could he entirely refrain 
 from slightly posing his affliction before that sympathetic 
 but melancholy man. Suddenly he raised his head, drew 
 back and thrust his hand into his bosom with a theatrical 
 gesture. 
 
 * What s to keep me from killing Poindexter in his 
 tracks ? he said wildly. 
 
 4 Nothen but 7m shooting first, returned Patterson, 
 with dismal practicality. He s mighty quick, like all 
 them army men. It s about even, I reckon, that he don t 
 get me first, he added in an ominous voice. 
 
 1 No ! returned Tucker, grasping his hand again. 
 This is not your affair, Patterson ; leave him to me when 
 I come back. 
 
 If he ever gets the drop on me, I reckon he won t 
 wait, continued Patterson lugubriously. He seems to 
 object to my passin criticism on your wife, as if she was 
 a queen or an angel. 
 
 The blood came to Spencer s cheek, and he turned 
 uneasily to the window. It s dark enough now for a 
 
102 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 start, he said hurriedly, and if I could get across the 
 mountain without lying over at the summit, it would be 
 a day gained. 
 
 Patterson arose without a word, filled a flask of spirit, 
 handed it to his friend, and silently led the way through 
 the slowly falling rain and the now settled darkness. 
 The mustang was quickly secured and saddled, a heavy 
 poncho afforded Tucker a disguise as well as a protection 
 from the rain. With a few hurried, disconnected words, 
 and an abstracted air, he once more shook his friend s 
 hand and issued cautiously from the corral. When out 
 of earshot from the house he put spurs to the mustang, 
 and dashed into a gallop. 
 
 To intersect the mountain road he was obliged to 
 traverse part of the highway his wife had walked that 
 afternoon, and to pass within a mile of the casa where 
 she was. Long before he reached that point his eyes 
 were straining the darkness in that direction for some 
 indication of the house which was to him familiar. Be 
 coming now accustomed to the even obscurity, less trying 
 to the vision than the alternate light and shadow of cloud 
 or the full glare of the moonlight, he fancied he could 
 distinguish its low walls over the monotonous level. One 
 of those impulses wiiich had so often taken the place of 
 resolution in his character, suddenly possessed him to 
 diverge from his course and approach the house. Why, 
 he could not have explained. It was not from any feeling 
 of jealous suspicion or contemplated revenge that had 
 passed with the presence of Patterson ; it was not from 
 any vague lingering sentiment for the woman he had 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 103 
 
 wronged he would have shrunk from meeting her at 
 that moment. But it was full of these and more possi 
 bilities by which he might or might not be guided, and 
 was at least a movement towards some vague end, 
 and a distraction from certain thoughts he dared not 
 entertain, and could not entirely dismiss. Inconceivable 
 and inexplicable to human reason, it might have been 
 acceptable to the Divine Omniscience for its predestined 
 result. 
 
 Ho left the road at a point where the marsh 
 encroached upon the meadow, familiar to him already as 
 near the spot where he had debarked from the China 
 man s boat the day before. He remembered that the 
 walls of the hacienda were distinctly visible from the 
 tules where he had hidden all day, and ho now knew 
 that the figures he had observed near the building, which 
 had deterred his first attempts at landing, must have 
 been his wife and his friend. He knew that a long 
 tongue of the slough filled by the rising tide followed the 
 marsh, and lay between him and the hacienda. The 
 sinking of hjs horse s hoofs in the spongy soil determined 
 its proximity, and he made a detour to the right to avoid 
 it. In doing so, a light suddenly rose above the distant 
 horizon ahead of him, trembled faintly, and then burned 
 with a steady lustre. It was a light at the hacienda. 
 Guiding his horse half abstractedly in this direction, his 
 progress was presently checked by the splashing of the 
 animal s hoofs in the water. But the turf below was 
 firm, and a salt drop that had spattered to his lips told 
 him that it wag only the encroaching of the tide in the 
 
lOt A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 meadow. "With his eyes on the light, he again urged his 
 horse forward. The rain lulled, the clouds began to break, 
 the landscape alternately lightened and grew dark ; the 
 outlines of the crumbling hacienda walls that enshrined 
 the light grew more visible. A strange and dreamy re 
 semblance to the long blue grass plain before his wife s 
 paternal house, as seen by him during his evening rides 
 to courtship, pressed itself upon him. He remembered, 
 too, that she used to put a light in the window to indicate 
 her presence. Following this retrospect, the moon came 
 boldly out, sparkled upon the overflow of silver at his 
 feet, seemed to show the dark, opaque meadow beyond 
 for a moment, and then disappeared. It was dark now, 
 but the lesser earthly star still shone before him as a 
 guide, and pushing towards it, he passed in the all-em 
 bracing shadow. 
 
A BLUE GBASS PENELOPE. 105 
 
 IV. 
 
 As Mrs. Tucker, erect, white, and rigid, drove away from the 
 tienda, it seemed to her to sink again into the monotonous 
 plain, with all its horrible realities. Except that there 
 was now a new and heart-breaking significance to the 
 solitude and loneliness of the landscape, all that had 
 passed might have been a dream. But as the blood 
 came back to her cheek, and little by little her tingling 
 consciousness returned, it seemed as if her life had been 
 the dream, and this last scene the awakening reality. 
 With eyes smarting with the moisture of shame, the 
 scarlet blood at times dyeing her very neck and temples, 
 she muffled her lowered crest in her shawl and bent over 
 the reins. Bit by bit she recalled, in Poindexter s 
 mysterious caution and strange allusions, the corrobora- 
 tion of her husband s shame and her own disgrace. This 
 was why she was brought hither the deserted wife, the 
 abandoned confederate ! The mocking glitter of the 
 concave vault above her, scoured by the incessant wind, 
 the cold stare of the shining pools beyond, the hard out 
 lines of the coast range, and the jarring accompaniment 
 of her horse s hoofs and rattling buggy wheels alternately 
 goaded and distracted her. She found herself repeating 
 No ! no ! no ! with the dogged reiteration of fever. She 
 scarcely knew when or how she reached the hacienda. 
 
106 A BLUE GBASS PENELOPE. 
 
 She was only conscious that as she entered the patio the 
 dusty solitude that had before filled her with unrest now 
 came to her like balm. A benumbing peace seemed to 
 fall from the crumbling walls the peace of utter seclu 
 sion, isolation, oblivion, death ! Nevertheless, an hour 
 later, when the jingle of spurs and bridle were again 
 heard in the road, she started to her feet with bent brows 
 and a kindling eye, and confronted Captain Poindexter in 
 the corridor. 
 
 I would not have intruded upon you so soon again, 
 he said gravely, but I thought I might perhaps spare 
 you a repetition of the scene of this morning. Hear me 
 out, please, he added, with a gentle, half-deprecating 
 gesture, as she lifted the beautiful scorn of her eyes to 
 his. I have just heard that your neighbour, Don Jose 
 Santierra, of Los Gatos, is on his way to this house. He 
 once claimed this land and hated your husband, who 
 bought of the rival claimant, whose grant was confirmed. 
 I tell you this, he added, slightly flushing as Mrs. Tucker 
 turned impatiently away, only to show you that legally 
 he has 110 rights, and you need not see him unless you 
 choose. I could not stop his coming without perhaps 
 doing you more harm than good ; but when he does 
 come, my presence under this roof as your legal counsel 
 will enable you to refer him to me. He stopped. She 
 was pacing the corridor with short, impatient steps, her 
 arms dropped and her hands clasped rigidly before her. 
 Have I your permission to stay ? 
 
 She suddenly stopped in her walk, approached him 
 rapidly, and fixing her eyes on his, said : 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 107 
 
 Do I know all now everything ? 
 
 He could only reply that she had not yet told him 
 ivhat she had heard. 
 
 Well, she said scornfully, that my husband has 
 been cruelly imposed upon imposed upon by some 
 wretched woman, who has made him sacrifice his 
 property, his friends, his honour everything but me ? 
 
 Everything but whom ? gasped Poiridexter. 
 
 But ME ! 
 
 Poindexter gazed at the sky, the air, the deserted 
 corridor, the stones of the patio itself, and then at the 
 inexplicable woman before him. Then he said gravely, 
 I think you know everything. 
 
 Then if my husband has left me all he could this 
 property, she went on rapidly, twisting her handkerchief 
 between her fingers I can do with it what I like, 
 can t I ? 
 
 You certainly can. 
 
 Then sell it, she said, with passionate vehemence. 
 Sell it all ! everything ! And sell these. She darted 
 into her bedroom, and returned with the diamond rings 
 she had torn from her fingers and ears when she entered 
 the house. Sell them for anything they ll bring only 
 sell them at once. 
 
 But for what ? asked Poindexter, with demure lips 
 but twinkling eyes. 
 
 To pay the debts that this this woman has led 
 him into ; to return the money she has stolen ! she went 
 on rapidly, to keep him from sharing her infamy ! Can t 
 you understand ? 
 
IDS A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 But, my dear madam, began Poindexter, even if 
 this could bo done 
 
 Don t tell me " if it could " it must be done. Do 
 you think I could sleep under this roof, propped up by 
 the timbers of that ruined tienda? Do you think I 
 could wear those diamonds again, while that termagant 
 shopwoman can say that her money bought them ? No. 
 If you are my husband s friend you will do this for 
 for his sake. She stopped, locked and interlocked her 
 cold fingers before her, and said hesitating and mechani 
 cally, You meant well, Captain Poindexter, in bringing 
 me here, I know ! You must not think that I blame you 
 for it or for the miserable result of it that you have 
 just witnessed. But if I have gained anything by it, for 
 God s sake let me reap it quickly, that I may give it to 
 these people and go ! I have a friend who can aid 
 me to get to my husband or to my home in Kentucky, 
 where Spencer will yet find me, I know. I want 
 nothing more. She stopped again. With another woman 
 the pause would have been one of tears. But she kept 
 her head above the flood that filled her heart, and the 
 clear eyes fixed upon Poindexter, albeit pained, were un- 
 dimmed. 
 
 But this would require time, said Poindexter, with 
 a smile of compassionate explanation ; you could not sell 
 now, nobody would buy. You are safe to hold this 
 property while you are in actual possession, but you are 
 not strong enough to guarantee it to another. There 
 may still be litigation ; your husband has other creditors 
 than these people you have talked with. But while no- 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 100 
 
 body could oust you the wife who would have the 
 sympathies of judge and jury it might be a different 
 case with anyone who derived title from 3*011. Any 
 purchaser would know that you could not sell, or if you 
 did, it would be at a ridiculous sacrifice. 
 
 She listened to him abstractedly, walked to the end 
 of the corridor, returned, and without looking up. said : 
 
 1 1 suppose you know her ? 
 
 I beg your pardon ? 
 
 This woman. You have seen her ? 
 
 Never, to my knowledge. 
 
 And you are his friend ! That s strange. She 
 raised her eyes to his. Well, she continued impatiently, 
 who is she ? and what is she ? You know that surely ? 
 
 I know no more of her than what I have said, said 
 Poindexter. She is a notorious woman. 
 
 The swift colour came to Mrs. Tucker s face as if the 
 epithet had been applied to herself. I suppose, she 
 said in a dry voice, as if she were asking a business 
 question, but with an eye that showed her rising anger 
 I suppose there is some law by which creatures of this 
 kind can be followed and brought to justice some law 
 that would keep innocent people from suffering for their 
 crimes ? 
 
 I am afraid, said Poindexter, that arresting her 
 would hardly help these people over in the tiendaS 
 
 I am not speaking of them, responded Mrs. Tucker, 
 with a sudden sublime contempt for the people whose 
 cause she had espoused ; I am talking of my husband. 
 
 Poindexter bit his lip. You d hardly think of 
 
110 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 bringing back the strongest witness against him, lie said 
 bluntly. 
 
 Mrs. Tucker dropped her eyes and was silent. A 
 sudden shame suffused Poindexter s cheek ; he felt as if 
 he had struck that woman a blow. I beg your pardon, 
 he said hastily ; I am talking like a lawyer to a lawyer. 
 He would have taken any other woman by the hand in 
 the honest fulness of his apology, but something restrained 
 him here. He only looked down gently on her lowered 
 lashes, and repeated his question if he should remain 
 during the coming interview with Don Jose. I must 
 beg you to determine quickly, he added, for I already 
 hear him entering the gate. 
 
 Stay, said Mrs. Tucker, as the ringing of spurs and 
 clatter of hoofs came from the corral. One moment. 
 She looked up suddenly, and said, How long had he 
 known her ? But before he could reply there was a 
 step in the doorway, and the figure of Don Jose Santierra 
 emerged from the archway. 
 
 He was a man slightly past middle age, fair and well 
 shaven, wearing a black broadcloth scrape, the deeply 
 embroidered opening of which formed a collar of silver 
 rays around his neck, while a row of silver buttons down 
 the side seams of his riding trousers, and silver spurs 
 completed his singular equipment. Mrs. Tucker s swift 
 feminine glance took in these details as well as the deep 
 salutation, more formal than the exuberant frontier polite 
 ness she was accustomed to, with which he greeted her. 
 It was enough to arrest her first impulse to retreat. She 
 hesitated and stopped as Poindexter stepped forward, 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. Ill 
 
 partly interposing between them, acknowledging Don 
 Jose s distant recognition of himself with an ironical 
 accession of his usual humorous tolerance. The Spaniard 
 did not seem to notice it, but remained gravely silent 
 before Mrs. Tucker, gazing at her with an expression of 
 intent and unconscious absorption. 
 
 You are quite right, Don Jose, said Poindexter, with 
 ironical concern, it is Mrs. Tucker. Your eyes do not 
 deceive you. She will be glad to do the honours of her 
 house, he continued, with a simulation of appealing 
 to her, unless you visit her on business, when I need 
 not say I shall be only too happy to attend you as 
 before. 
 
 Don Jose, with a slight lifting of the eyebrows, 
 allowed himself to become conscious of the lawyer s mean 
 ing. It is not of business that I come to kiss the Seiiora s 
 hand to-day, he replied, with a melancholy softness ; it 
 is as her neighbour, to put myself at her disposition. Ah ! 
 the what have we here for a lady ? he continued, raising 
 his eyes in deprecation of the surroundings ; a house of 
 nothing, a place of winds and dry bones, without refresh 
 ments, or satisfaction, or delicacy. The Seiiora will not 
 refuse to make us proud this day to send her of that 
 which we have in our poor home at Los Gatos, to make 
 her more complete. Of what shall it be ? Let her make 
 choice. Or if she would commemorate this day by 
 accepting of our hospitality at Los Gatos, until she shall 
 arrange herself the more to receive us here, we shall have 
 too much honour. 
 
 The Sefiora would only find it the more difficult to 
 
112 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 return to this humble roof again, after once leaving it for 
 Don Jose s hospitality, said Poindexter, with a demure 
 glance at Mrs. Tucker. But the innuendo seemed to 
 lapse equally unheeded by his fair client and the stranger. 
 Raising her eyes with a certain timid dignity which Don 
 Jose s presence seemed to have called out, she addressed 
 herself to him : 
 
 You are very kind and considerate, Mister Santierra, 
 and I thank you. I know that my husband she let the 
 clear beauty of her translucent eyes rest full on both 
 men would thank you, too. But I shall not be here 
 long enough to accept your kindness in this house or in 
 your own. I have but one desire and object now. It is 
 to dispose of this property and indeed all I possess to 
 pay the debt of my husband. It is in your power, per 
 haps, to help me. I am told that you wish to possess 
 Los Cuervos, she went on, equally oblivious of the con 
 sciousness that appeared in Don Jose s face, and a 
 humorous perplexity on the brow of Poindexter. If you 
 can arrange it with Mr. Poindexter, you will find me a 
 liberal vendor. That much you can do, and I know you 
 will believe I shall be grateful. You can do no more, 
 unless it be to say to your friends that Mrs. Belle Tucker 
 remains here only for that purpose, and to carry out what 
 she knows to be the wishes of her husband. She paused, 
 bent her pretty crest, dropped a quaint curtsey to the 
 superior age, the silver braid, and the gentlemanly bear 
 ing of Don Jose, and with the passing sunshine of a smile 
 disappeared from the corridor. 
 
 The two men remained silent for a moment, Don Jose 
 

 A J3LUE GRASS PENELOPE. 113 
 
 gazing abstractedly on the door through which she had 
 vanished, until Poiiidexter, with a return of his tolerant 
 smile, said, You have heard the views of Mrs. Tucker. 
 You know the situation as well as she does. 
 
 Ah, yes possibly better. 
 
 Poiiidexter darted a quick glance at the grave, sallow 
 face of Don Jose, but detecting no unusual significance 
 in his manner, continued, As you see, she leaves this 
 matter in my hands. Let us talk like business men. 
 Have you any idea of purchasing this property ? 
 
 Of purchasing ah, no. 
 
 Poindexter bent his brows, but quickly relaxed them 
 with a smile of humorous forgiveness. If you have any 
 other idea, Don Jose, I ought to warn you, as Mrs. 
 Tucker s lawyer, that she is in legal possession here, 
 and that nothing but her own act can chajige that 
 position. 
 
 Ah so. 
 
 Irritated at the shrug which accompanied this, Poin- 
 dextev continued haughtily, If I am to understand, you 
 have nothing to say 
 
 To say ah, yes, possibly. But he glanced toward 
 the door of Mrs. Tucker s room not here. He stopped, 
 appeared to v ecall himself, and with an apologetic smile, 
 and a studied but graceful gesture of invitation, he 
 motioned to the gateway, and said, Will you ride ? 
 
 What can the fellow be up to ? muttered Poiiidexter, 
 as with ail assenting nod he proceeded to remount his 
 horse. If he wasn t an old hidalgo I d mistrust him. 
 No matter ! here goes ! 
 
1H A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 The. Don also remounted his half-broken mustang; 
 they proceeded in solemn silence through the corral, and 
 side by side emerged on the open plain. Poindexter 
 glanced around ; no other being was in sight. It was not 
 until the lonely hacienda had also sunk behind them that 
 Don Jose broke the silence. 
 
 You say just now we shall speak as business men. I 
 say no, Don Marco ; I will not. I shall speak we shall 
 speak as gentlemen. 
 
 Go on, said Poindexter, who was beginning to be 
 amused. 
 
 I say just now I will not purchase the rancho from 
 the Senora. And why ? Look you, Don Marco ; he 
 reined in his horse, thrust his hand under his serajje, and 
 drew out a folded document : * this is why. 
 
 With a smile, Poindexter took the paper from his 
 hand and opened it. But the smile faded from his lips as 
 he read. "With blazing eyes he spurred his horse beside 
 the Spaniard, almost unseating him, and said sternly, 
 What does this mean ? 
 
 1 What does it mean ? repeated Don Jose, with 
 equally flashing eyes, I ll tell you. It means that your 
 client, this man Spencer Tucker, is a Judas a traitor ! 
 It means that he gave Los Cuervos to his mistress a year 
 ago, and that she sold it to me to me, you hear ! me, 
 Jose" Santierra, the day before she left ! It means that 
 the coyote of a Spencer, the thief, who bought these lands 
 of a thief, and gave them to a thief, has tricked you all. 
 Look, he said, rising in his saddle, holding the paper like 
 a baton, and denning with a sweep of his arm the whole 
 

 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 115 
 
 level plain, all these lands were once mine they are 
 mine again to day. Do I want to purchase Los Cuervos ? 
 you ask, for you will speak of the business. Well, listen, 
 I have purchased Los Cuervos, and here is the deed. 
 
 But it has never been recorded, said Poindexter, 
 with a carelessness he was far from feeling. 
 
 Of a verity, no. Do you wish that I should record 
 it ? asked Don Jose, with a return of his simple 
 gravity. 
 
 Poindexter bit his lip. You said we were to talk 
 like gentlemen, he returned. Do you think you have 
 come into possession of this alleged deed like a gentle 
 man ? 
 
 Don Jose shrugged his shoulders. I found it tossed 
 in the lap of a harlot. I bought it for a song. Eh what 
 would you ? 
 
 Would you sell it again for a song ? asked Poin 
 dexter. 
 
 Ah, what is this ? said Don Jose, lifting his iron- 
 grey brows ; but a moment ago we would sell everything 
 for any money. Now we would buy. Is it so ? 
 
 One moment, Don Jose, said Poindexter, with a 
 baleful light in his dark eyes. Do I understand that 
 you are the ally of Spencer Tucker and his mistress 
 that you intend to turn this doubly betrayed wife from 
 the only roof she has to cover her ? 
 
 Ah, I comprehend not. You heard her say she 
 wished to go. Perhaps it may please me to distribute 
 largess to these cattle yonder, I do not say no. More she 
 does not ask. But you, Don Marco, of whom are you 
 
116 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 advocate ? You abandon your client s mistress for the 
 wife is it so ? 
 
 What I may do you will learn hereafter, said Poin- 
 dexter, who had regained his composure, suddenly reining 
 up his horse. As our paths seem likely to diverge, they 
 had better begin now. Good morning. 
 
 Patience, my friend, patience ! Ah, blessed St. 
 Anthony, what these Americans are ! Listen. For what 
 you shall do, I do not inquire. The question is to me, 
 what I he emphasised the pronoun by tapping himself 
 on the breast I, Jose Santierra, will do. Well, I shall 
 tell you. To-day nothing. To-morrow nothing. For 
 a week, for a month nothing ! After, we shall see. 
 
 Poindexter paused thoughtfully. Will you give your 
 word," Don Jose, that you will not press the claim for a 
 month ? 
 
 Truly, on one condition. Observe ! I do not ask you 
 for ail equal promise that you will not take this time to 
 defend yourself. He shrugged his shoulders. No ! It 
 is only this. You shall promise that during that time the 
 Seiiora Tucker shall remain ignorant of this document. 
 
 Poindexter hesitated a moment. * I promise, he said 
 at last. 
 
 * Good. Adios, Don Marco. 
 
 Adios, Don Jose. 
 
 The Spaniard put spurs to his mustang and galloped 
 off in the direction of Los Gatos. The lawyer remained 
 for a moment gazing on his retreating but victorious 
 figure. For the first time the old look of humorous 
 toleration with which Mr. Poindexter was in the habit of 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. H7 
 
 regarding all human infirmity gave way to something 
 like bitterness. I might have guessed it, he said, with 
 a slight rise of colour. He s an old fool ; and she well, 
 perhaps it s all the better for her ! He glanced back 
 wards almost tenderly in the direction of Los Cuervos, 
 and then turned his head towards the cmbarcadero. 
 
 As the afternoon wore on, a creaking, antiquated ox 
 cart arrived at Los Cuervos, bearing several articles of 
 furniture, and some tasteful ornaments from Los Gatos, 
 at the same time that a young Mexican girl mysteriously 
 appeared in the kitchen, as a temporary assistant to the 
 decrepit Concha. These were both clearly attributable 
 to Don Jose, whose visit was not so remote but that these 
 delicate attentions might have been already projected 
 before Mrs. Tucker had declined them, and she could not, 
 without marked discourtesy, return them now. She did 
 not wish to seem discourteous ; she would have liked to have 
 been more civil to this old gentleman, who still retained 
 the evidences of a picturesque and decorous past, and a 
 repose so different from the life that was perplexing her. 
 Reflecting that if he bought the estate these things would 
 be ready to his hand, and with a woman s instinct re 
 cognising their value in setting off the house to other 
 purchasers eyes, she took a pleasure in tastefully arrang 
 ing them, and even found herself speculating how she 
 might have enjoyed them herself had she been able to 
 keep possession of the property. After all, it would not 
 have been so lonely if refined and gentle neighbours, like 
 this old man, would have sympathised with her ; she had 
 an instinctive feeling that, in their own hopeless decay 
 
118 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 and hereditary unfitness for this new civilisation, they 
 would have been more tolerant of her husband s failure 
 than his own kind. She could not believe that Don Jose 
 really hated her husband for buying of the successful 
 claimant, as there was no other legal title. Allowing her 
 self to become interested in the guileless gossip of the 
 new handmaiden proud of her broken English she was 
 drawn into a sympathy with the grave simplicity of Don 
 Jose s character a relic of that true nobility which 
 placed this descendant of the Castilians and the daughter 
 of a free people on the same level. 
 
 In this way the second day of her occupancy of Los 
 Cuervos closed, with dumb clouds along the grey horizon, 
 and the paroxysms of hysterical wind growing fainter and 
 fainter outside the walls ; with the moon rising after 
 nightfall, and losing itself in silent and mysterious con 
 fidences with drifting scud. She went to bed early, but 
 woke past midnight, hearing, as she thought, her own 
 name called. The impression was so strong upon her 
 that she rose, and, hastily enwrapping herself, went to 
 the dark embrasures of the oven-shaped windows, and 
 looked out. The dwarfed oak beside the window was 
 still dropping from a past shower, but the level waste of 
 marsh and meadow beyond seemed to advance and recede 
 with the coming and going of the moon. Again she 
 heard her name called, and this time in accents so 
 strangely familiar that with a slight cry she ran into the 
 corridor, crossed the patio, and reached the open gate. 
 The darkness that had, even in this brief interval, again 
 fallen upon the prospect she tried in vain to pierce with 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 119 
 
 eye and voice. A blank silence followed. Then the veil 
 was suddenly withdrawn ; the vast plain, stretching from 
 the mountain to the sea, shone as clearly as in the light 
 of day ; the moving current of the channel glittered like 
 black pearls, the stagnant pools like molten lead ; but not 
 a sign of life nor motion broke the monotony of the 
 broad expanse. She must have surely dreamed it. A 
 chill wind drove her back to the house again ; she 
 entered her bed-room, and in half an hour she was in a 
 peaceful sleep. 
 
120 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 V. 
 
 THE two men kept their secret. Mr. Poindexter con 
 vinced Mrs. Tucker that the sale of Los Cuervos could 
 not be effected until the notoriety of her husband s flight 
 had been fairly forgotten, and she was forced to accept 
 her fate. The sale of her diamonds, which seemed to her 
 to have realised a singularly extravagant sum, enabled 
 her to quietly reinstate the Pattersons in the ticnda and 
 to discharge in full her husband s liabilities to the ran- 
 clieros and his humbler retainers. 
 
 Meanwhile the winter rains had ceased. It seemed 
 to her as if the clouds had suddenly one night struck 
 their white tents and stolen away, leaving the unvan- 
 quished sun to mount the vacant sky the next morning 
 alone, and possess it thenceforward unchallenged. One 
 afternoon she thought the long sad waste before her 
 window had caught some tint of gayer colour from the 
 sunset ; a week later she found it a blazing landscape of 
 poppies, broken here and there by blue lagoons of lupine, 
 by pools of daisies, by banks of dog-roses, by broad out 
 lying shores of dandelions that scattered their lavish gold 
 to the foot of the hills, where the green billows of wild 
 oats carried it on and upwards to the darker crest of 
 pines. For two months she was dazzled and bewildered 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 121 
 
 with colour. She had never before been face to face with 
 this spendthrift California!! Flora, in her virgin wastefulness 
 her mere than goddess-like prodigality. The teeming 
 earth seemed to quicken and throb beneath her feet ; 
 the few circuits of a plough around the outlying corral 
 were enough to call out a jungle growth of giant grain 
 that almost hid the low walls of the liacienda. In this 
 glorious fecundity of the earth, in this joyous renewal of 
 life and colour, in this opulent youth and freshness of soil 
 and sky it alone remained the dead and sterile Past 
 left in the midst of buoyant rejuvenescence and resurrec 
 tion, like an empty church-yard skull upturned on the 
 springing turf. Its bronzed adobe walls mocked the 
 green vine that embraced them, the crumbling dust of its 
 courtyard remained ungermmating and unfruitful ; to 
 the thousand stirring voices without, its dry lips alone 
 remained mute, unresponsive and unchanged. 
 
 During this time Don Jose had become a frequent 
 visitor at Los Cuervos, bringing with him at first his 
 niece and sister in a stately precision of politeness that 
 was not lost on the proud Blue Grass stranger. She re 
 turned their visit at Los Gatos, and there made the formal 
 acquaintance of Don Jose s grandmother a lady who 
 still regarded the decrepit Concha as a giddy mucliacha, 
 and who herself glittered as with the phosphorescence of 
 refined decay. Through this circumstance she learned 
 that Don Jose was not yet fifty, and that his gravity of 
 manner and sedateness were more the result of fastidious 
 isolation and temperament than years. She could not 
 tell why the information gave her a feeling of annoyance, 
 
122 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 but it caused her to regret the absence of Poindexter, and 
 to wonder, also somewhat nervously, why he had lately 
 avoided her presence. The thought that he might be 
 doing so from a recollection of the innuendoes of Mrs. 
 Patterson caused a little tremor of indignation in her 
 
 pulses. As if but she did not finish the sentence 
 
 even to herself, and her eyes filled with bitter tears. 
 
 Yet she had thought of the husband who had so cruelly 
 wronged her less feverishly, less impatiently than before. 
 For she thought she loved him now the more deeply, be 
 cause, although she was not reconciled to his absence, it 
 seemed to keep alive the memory of w r hat he had been 
 before his one wild act separated them. She had never 
 seen the reflection of another woman s eyes in his; the 
 past contained no haunting recollection of waning or 
 alienated affection ; she could meet him again, and, clasp 
 ing her arms around him, awaken as if from a troubled 
 dream without reproach or explanation. Her strong 
 belief in this made her patient ; she no longer sought to 
 know the particulars of his flight, and never dreamed 
 that her passive submission to his absence was partly due 
 to a fear that something in his actual presence at that 
 moment would have destroyed that belief for ever. 
 
 For this reason the delicate reticence of the people at 
 Los Gatos, and their seclusion from the world which knew 
 of her husband s fault, had made her encourage the visits 
 of Don Jose, until, from the instinct already alluded to, 
 she one day summoned Poindexter to Los Cuervos, on 
 the day that Don Jose usually called. But to her sur 
 prise the two men met more or less awkwardly and 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 123 
 
 coldly, and her tact as hostess was tried to the utmost to 
 keep their evident antagonism from being too apparent. 
 The effort to reconcile their mutual discontent, and some 
 other feeling she did not quite understand, produced a ner 
 vous excitement which called the blood to her fair cheek 
 and gave a dangerous brilliancy to her eyes two cir 
 cumstances not unnoticed nor unappreciated by her two 
 guests. But instead of reuniting them, the prettier Mrs. 
 Tucker became, the more distant and reserved grew the 
 men, until Don Jose rose before his usual hour, and with 
 more than usual ceremoniousness departed. 
 
 Then my business does not seem to be with him ? 
 said Poindexter, with quiet coolness, as Mrs. Tucker 
 turned her somewhat mystified face towards him. Or 
 have you anything to say to me about him in private ? 
 
 * I am sure I don t know what you both mean, she 
 returned with a slight tremor of voice. I had no idea 
 you were not on good terms. I thought you were ! It s 
 very awkward. Without coquetry, and unconsciously, 
 she raised her blue eyes under her lids until the clear 
 pupils coyly and softly hid themselves in the corners of 
 the brown lashes, and added You have both been so 
 kind to me. 
 
 Perhaps that is the reason, said Poindexter gravely. 
 But Mrs. Tucker refused to accept the suggestion with 
 equal gravity, and began to laugh. The laugh, which was 
 at first frank, spontaneous, and almost child-like, was 
 becoming hysterical and nervous as she went on, until it 
 was suddenly checked by Poindexter. 
 
 * I have had no difficulties with Don Jose Santierra, 
 
124 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 he said, somewhat coldly ignoring her hilarity, but per 
 haps he is not inclined to be as polite to the friend of the 
 husband as he is to the wife. 
 
 Mr. Poindexter ! said Mrs. Tucker quickly, her face 
 becoming pale again. 
 
 I beg your pardon ! said Poindexter flushing ; 
 but 
 
 You want to say, she interrupted coolly, that you 
 are not friends, I see. Is that the reason why you have 
 avoided this house ? she continued gently. 
 
 I thought I could be of more service to you else 
 where, he replied evasively. I have been lately follow 
 ing up a certain clue rather closely. I think I am on 
 the track of a confidante of of that woman. 
 
 A quick shadow passed over Mrs. Tucker s face. 
 { Indeed ! she said coldly. Then I am to believe that 
 you prefer to spend your leisure moments in looking after 
 that creature than in calling here ? 
 
 Poindexter was stupefied. Was this the woman who 
 only four months ago was almost vindictively eager to 
 pursue her husband s paramour ? There could be but 
 one answer to it Don Jose ! Four months ago he would 
 have smiled compassionately at it from his cynical pre 
 eminence. Now he managed with difficulty to stifle the 
 bitterness of his reply. 
 
 If you do not wish he enquiry carried on, he began, 
 
 * of course 
 
 I ? What does it matter to me ? she said coolly. 
 
 * Do as you please. 
 
 Nevertheless, half-an-hour later, as he was leaving, 
 

 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 125 
 
 she said, with a certain hesitating timidity, Do not leave 
 me so much alone here and let that woman go. 
 
 This was not the only unlooked-for sequel to her 
 innocent desire to propitiate her best friends. Don 
 Jose did not call again upon his usual day, but in his 
 place came Dona Clara, his younger sister. When 
 Mrs. Tucker had politely asked after the absent Don Jose, 
 Doiia Clara wound her swarthy arms around the fair 
 American s waist and replied, But why did you send for 
 the abogado, Poindexter, when my brother called ? 
 
 But Captain Poindexter calls as one of my friends ! 
 said the amazed Mrs. Tucker. He is a gentleman, and 
 has been a soldier and an officer, she added with some 
 warmth. 
 
 Ah, yes a soldier of the law, what you call an 
 ojicial dc policia a chief of gendarmes, my sister, but 
 not a gentleman a camarero to protect a lady. 
 
 Mrs. Tucker would have uttered a hasty reply, but 
 the perfect and good-natured simplicity of Doiia Clara 
 withheld her. Nevertheless she treated Don Jose with 
 a certain reserve at their next meeting, until it brought 
 the simple-minded Castilian so dangerously near the 
 point of demanding an explanation which implied too 
 much, that she was obliged to restore him temporarily to 
 his old footing. Meantime she had a brilliant idea. She 
 would write to Calhoun Weaver, whom she had avoided 
 since that memorable daj^. She would say she wished to 
 consult him. He would come to Los Cuervos ; he might 
 suggest something to lighten this weary waiting at least 
 she would show them all that she had still old friends. 
 
126 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 Yet she did not dream of returning to her Blue Grass 
 home : her parents had died since she left ; she shrank 
 from the thought of dragging her ruined life before the 
 hopeful youth of her girlhood s companions. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun Weaver arrived promptly, ostentatiously, 
 oracularly, and cordially but a little coarsely. He had 
 did she remember? expected this from the first. 
 Spencer had lost his head through vanity, and had 
 attempted too much. It required foresight and firmness, 
 as he himself who had lately made successful combina 
 tions which she might perhaps have heard of well 
 knew. But Spencer had got the big head. As to that 
 woman a devilish handsome woman too ! well, every 
 body knew that Spencer always had a weakness that 
 W ay and he would say but if she didn t care to hear 
 any more about her, well, perhaps she was right. That 
 was the best way to take it. Sitting before her, pro 
 sperous, weak, egotistical, incompetent, unavailable, and 
 yet filled with a vague kindliness of intent, Mrs. Tucker 
 loathed him. A sickening perception of her own weak 
 ness in sending for him, a new and aching sense of 
 her utter isolation and helplessness, seemed to paralyse 
 her. 
 
 Nat rally you feel bad, he continued, with the large 
 air of a profound student of human nature. Nat rally, 
 nat rally, you re kept in an uncomfortable state, not 
 knowing jist how you stand. There ain t but one thing 
 to do. Jist rise up, quiet like, and get a divorce ag in 
 Spencer. Hold on ! There ain t a judge or jury in 
 California that .wouldn t give it to you right off the nail, 
 

 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 127 
 
 without asking questions. Why, you ld get it by default 
 if you wanted to you ld just have to walk over the 
 course 1 And then, Belle he drew his chair nearer her 
 when you ve settled down again well ! I don t mind 
 renewing that offer I once made ye, before Spencer ever 
 came round ye I don t mind, Belle, I swear I don t ! 
 Honest Injin ! I m in earnest, there s my hand ! 
 
 Mrs. Tucker s reply has not been recorded. Enough 
 that half an hour later Mr. Weaver appeared in the court 
 yard with traces of tears on his foolish face, a broken 
 falsetto voice, and other evidence of mental and moral 
 disturbance. His cordiality and oracular predisposition 
 remained sufficiently to enable him to suggest the magical 
 words Blue Grass mysteriously to Concha, with an in 
 dication of his hand to the erect figure of her pale mistress 
 in the doorway, who waved to him a silent but half-com 
 passionate farewell. 
 
 At about this time a slight change in her manner was 
 noticed by the few who saw her more frequently. Her 
 apparently invincible girlishness of spirit had given way 
 to a certain matronly seriousness. She applied herself 
 to her household cares and the improvement of the 
 hacienda with a new sense of duty and a settled earnest 
 ness, until by degrees she wrought into it not only her 
 instinctive delicacy and taste, but part of her own in 
 dividuality. Even the rude rancheros and tradesmen, 
 who were permitted to enter the walls in the exercise of 
 their calling, began to speak mysteriously of the beauty of 
 this garden of the almarjal. She went out but seldom, 
 and then accompanied by the one or the other of her 
 
12S A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 female servants, in long drives on Unfrequented roads. 
 On Sundays she sometimes drove to the half-ruined 
 mission- church of Santa Inez, and hid herself, during 
 Mass, in the dim monastic shadows of the choir. 
 Gradually the poorer people whom she met in these 
 journeys began to show an almost devotional reverence 
 for her, stopping in the roads with uncovered heads for 
 her to pass, or making way for her in the ticnda or plaza, 
 of the wretched town with dumb courtesy. She began to 
 feel a strange sense of widowhood, that, while it at times 
 brought tears to her eyes, was not without a certain 
 tender solace. In the sympathy and simpleness of this 
 impulse she went as far as to revive the mourning she 
 had worn for her parents, but with such a fatal accenting 
 of her beauty, and dangerous misinterpreting of her con 
 dition to eligible bachelors strange to the country, that 
 she was obliged to put it off again. Her reserve and 
 dignified manner caused others to mistake her nationality 
 for that of the Santierras, and in Dona Bella the simple 
 Mrs. Tucker was for a while forgotten. At times she 
 even forgot it herself. Accustomed now almost entirely 
 to the accents of another language and the features of 
 another race, she would sit for hours in the corridor, 
 whose massive bronzed inclosure even her tasteful care 
 could only make an embow r ered mausoleum, of the Past, 
 or gaze abstractedly from the dark embrasures of her 
 windows across the stretching almarjal to the shining 
 lagoon beyond that terminated the estuary. She had a 
 strange fondness for this tranquil mirror, which under 
 sun or stars always retained the passive reflex of the sky 
 
A ELITE GRASS PENELOPE. 129 
 
 above and seemed to rest her weary eyes. She had ob 
 jected to one of the plans projected by Poindexter to 
 redeem the land and deepen the water at the cmbarcadero, 
 as it would have drained the lagoon, and the lawyer had 
 postponed the improvement to gratify her fancy. So she 
 kept it through the long summer unchanged save by the 
 shadows of passing wings or the lazy files of sleeping sea- 
 fowl. 
 
 On one of these afternoons she noticed a slowly moving 
 carriage leave the high road and cross the almarjal 
 skirting the edge of the lagoon. If it contained visitors 
 for Los Cuervos, they had evidently taken a shorter cut 
 without waiting to go on to the regular road which inter 
 sected the highway at right angles a mile farther on. It 
 was with some sense of annoyance and irritation that she 
 watched the trespass, and finally saw the vehicle approach 
 the house. A few moments later the servant informed 
 her that Mr. Patterson would like to see her alone. 
 "When she entered the corridor, which in the dry season 
 served as a reception-hall, she was surprised to see that 
 Mr. Patterson was not alone. Near him stood a well- 
 dressed handsome woman, gazing about her with good- 
 humoured admiration of Mrs. Tucker s taste and ingenuity. 
 
 * It don t look much like it did two years ago, said the 
 stranger cheerfully : you ve improved it wonderfully. 
 
 Stiffening slightly, Mrs. Tucker turned inquiringly to 
 Mr. Patterson. But that gentleman s usual profound 
 melancholy appeared to be intensified by the hilarity of 
 his companion. He only sighed deeply and rubbed his 
 leg with the brim of his hat in gloomy abstraction. 
 
 K 
 
130 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 Well ! go on, then, said the woman, laughing and 
 nudging him. Go on introduce me can t you ? Don t 
 stand there like a tombstone. You won t ? Well, I ll 
 introduce myself. She laughed again, and then, with an 
 excellent imitation of Patterson s lugubrious accents, said, 
 Mr. Spencer Tucker s wife that is allow me to introduce 
 you to Mr. Spencer Tucker s sweetheart that was ! Hold 
 on ! I said that was. For true as I stand here, ma am 
 and I reckon I wouldn t stand here if it wasn t true I 
 haven t set eyes on him since the day he left you. 
 
 * It s the Gospel truth, every word, said Patterson, 
 stirred into a sudden activity by Mrs. Tucker s white and 
 rigid face. It s the frozen truth, and I kin prove it. 
 For I kin swear that when that there young woman was 
 sailin outer the Golden Gate, Spencer Tucker was in my 
 bar room ; I kin swear that I fed him, lickored him, give 
 him a hoss and set him in his road to Monterey that very 
 night. 
 
 Then where is he now ? said Mrs. Tucker, suddenly 
 facing them. 
 
 They looked at each other and then looked at Mrs. 
 Tucker. Then both together replied slowly and in 
 perfect unison : That s what we want to know. 
 They seemed so satisfied with this effect that they as 
 deliberately repeated, Yes that s what we want 
 to know. 
 
 Between the shock of meeting the partner of her 
 husband s guilt and the unexpected revelation to her in 
 experience, that in suggestion and appearance there was 
 nothing beyond the recollection of that guilt that was 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 131 
 
 really shocking in the woman between the extravagant 
 extremes of hope and fear suggested by their words, 
 there was something so grotesquely absurd in the melo 
 dramatic chorus that she with difficulty suppressed a 
 hysterical laugh. 
 
 That s the way to take it, said the woman, putting 
 her own good-humoured interpretation upon Mrs. Tucker s 
 expression. Now look here ! I ll tell you all about it. 
 She carefully selected the most comfortable chair, and 
 sitting down, lightly crossed her hands in her lap. Well, 
 I left here on the 13th of last January on the ship Argo, 
 calculating that your husband would join the ship just 
 inside the Heads. That was our arrangement, but if 
 anything happened to prevent him, he was to join me in 
 Acapulco. Well ! He didn t come aboard, and we sailed 
 without him. But it appears now he did attempt to join 
 the ship, but his boat was capsized. There now don t 
 be alarmed ! he wasn t drowned, as Patterson can swear 
 to no, catch him I not a hair of him was hurt but / 
 I was bundled off to the end of the earth in Mexico, 
 alone, without a cent to bless me. For, true as you live, 
 that hound of a captain, when he found, as he thought, 
 that Spencer was nabbed, he just confiscated all his 
 trunks and valuables and left me in the lurch. If I 
 hadn t met a man down there that offered to marry me 
 and brought me here, I might have died there, I reckon. 
 But I did, and here I am. I went down there as your 
 husband s sweetheart, I ve come back as the wife of an 
 honest man, and I reckon it s about square ! 
 
 There was something so startlingly frank, so hope- 
 
 s2 
 
132 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 lessly self-satisfied, so contagiously good-humoured in the 
 woman s perfect moral unconsciousness, that even if Mrs. 
 Tucker had been less preoccupied her resentment would 
 have abated. But her eyes were fixed on the gloomy 
 face of Patterson, who was beginning to unlock the 
 sepulchres of his memory and disinter his deeply buried 
 thoughts. 
 
 You kin bet your w r hole pile on what this Mrs. 
 Capting Baxter ez used to be French Inez of New 
 Orleans hez told ye. Ye kin take everything she s on- 
 loaded. And it s only doin the square thing to her to say, 
 she hain t done it out o no cussedness, but just to satisfy 
 herself, now she s a married woman, and past such 
 foolishness. But that ain t neither here nor there. The 
 gist of the whole matter is that Spencer Tucker was at 
 the tienda the day after she sailed and after his boat 
 capsized. He then gave a detailed account of the inter 
 view, with the unnecessary but truthful minutice of his 
 class, adding to the particulars already known that the 
 following week he visited the Summit House and was 
 surprised to find that Spencer had never been there, nor 
 had he ever sailed from Monterey. 
 
 But why was this not told to me before ? said Mrs. 
 Tucker suddenly. Why not at the time ? Why, she 
 demanded almost fiercely, turning from the one to the 
 other, has this been kept from me ? 
 
 I ll tell ye why, said Patterson, sinking with crushed 
 submission into a chair. When I found he wasn t where 
 he ought to be, I got to lookin elsewhere. I knew the 
 track of the hoss I lent him by a loose shoe. I examined, 
 

 A BLUE GBASS PENELOPE. 133 
 
 and found he had turned off the high road somewhere 
 beyond the lagoon, jist as if he was makin a bee line 
 here. 
 
 Well ? said Mrs. Tucker, breathlessly. 
 
 * Well, said Patterson, with the resigned tone of an 
 accustomed martyr, mebbee. I m a God-forsaken idiot, 
 but I reckon he did come yer. And mebbee I m that 
 much of a habitooal lunatic, but thinking so, I calkilated 
 you ld know it without tellin . 
 
 With their eyes fixed upon her, Mrs. Tucker felt the 
 quick blood rush to her cheeks, although she knew not 
 why. But they were apparently satisfied with her 
 ignorance, for Patterson resumed, yet more gloomily : 
 
 4 Then if he wasn t hidin here beknownst to you, he 
 must have changed his mind ag in and got away by the 
 embarcadero. The only thing wantin to prove that idea 
 is to know how he got a boat, and what he did with the 
 hoss. And thar s one more idea, and ez that can t be 
 proved, continued Patterson, sinking his voice still lower, 
 mebbee it s accordin to God s laws. 
 
 Unsympathetic to her as the speaker had always been 
 and still was, Mrs. Tucker felt a vague chill creep over 
 her that seemed to be the result of his manner more than 
 his words. And that idea is . . . ? she suggested with 
 pale lips. 
 
 It s this ! Fust, I don t say it means much to any 
 body but me. I ve heard of these warnings afore now, 
 ez comin only to folks ez hear them for themselves 
 alone, and I reckon I kin stand it, if it s the will o God. 
 The idea is then that Spencer Tucker ivas drownded 
 
134 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 in that boat the idea is his voice was almost lost in a 
 hoarse whisper that it was no living man that kem to 
 me that night, but a spirit that kem out of the darkness 
 and went back into it ! No eye saw him but mine no 
 ears heard him but mine. I reckon it weren t intended 
 it should. He paused, and passed the flap of his hat 
 across his eyes. The pie, you ll say, is ag in it, he con 
 tinued in the same tone of voice the whisky is ag in 
 it a few cuss words that dropped from him, accidental 
 like, may have been ag in it. All the same they mout 
 have been only the little signs and tokens that it was him. 
 
 But Mrs. Baxter s ready laugh somewhat rudely dis 
 pelled the infection of Patterson s gloom. I reckon the 
 only spirit was that which you and Spencer consumed, 
 she said cheerfully. I don t wonder you re a little 
 mixed. Like as not you ve misunderstood his plans. 
 Patterson shook his head. He ll turn up yet, alive and 
 kicking ! Like as not, then, Poindexter knows where he 
 is all the time. 
 
 Impossible ! He would have told me, said Mrs. 
 Tucker quickly. - 
 
 Mrs. Baxter looked at Patterson without speaking. 
 Patterson replied by a long lugubrious whistle. 
 
 I don t understand you, said Mrs. Tucker, drawing 
 back with cold dignity. 
 
 You don t ? returned Mrs. Baxter. Bless your 
 innocent heart ! Why was he so keen to hunt me up at 
 first, shadowing my friends and all that, and why has he 
 dropped it now he knows I m here, if he didn t know 
 where Spencer was ? 
 
A BLUE GEASS PENELOPE. 135 
 
 I can explain that, interrupted Mrs. Tucker, hastily, 
 with a blush of confusion. That is I 
 
 Then niebbee you kin explain, too, broke in Patterson 
 with gloomy significance, why he has bought up most of 
 Spencer s debts himself, and perhaps you re satisfied it 
 isn t to hold the whip hand of him and keep him from 
 coming back openly. P r aps you know why he s movin 
 heaven and earth to make Don Jose Santierra sell the 
 ranch, and why the Don don t see it at all. 
 
 Don Jose sell Los Cuervos ! Buy it, you mean ? 
 said Mrs. Tucker. / offered to sell it to him. 
 
 Patterson arose from the chair, looked despairingly 
 around him, passed his hand sadly across his forehead, 
 and said, It s come ! I knew it would. It s the warn 
 ing ! It s suthing betwixt jim-jams and doddering 
 idjiocy. Here I d hev been willin to swear that Mrs, 
 Baxter here told me she had sold this yer ranch nearly 
 two years ago to Don Jose, and now you 
 
 Stop ! said Mrs. Tucker in a voice that chilled 
 them. 
 
 She was standing upright and rigid, as if stricken to 
 stone. I command you to tell me what this means ! 
 she said, turning only her blazing eyes upon the woman. 
 
 Even the ready smile faded from Mrs. Baxter s lips 
 as she replied, hesitatingly and submissively : I thought 
 you knew already that Spencer had given this ranch to 
 me. I sold it to Don Jose to get the money for us to go 
 away with. It was Spencer s idea 
 
 You lie ! said Mrs. Tucker. 
 
 There was a dead silence. The wrathful blood that 
 
136 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 had quickly mounted to Mrs. Baxter s cheek, to Patter 
 son s additional bewilderment, faded as quickly. She did 
 not lift her eyes again to Mrs. Tucker s, but, slowly raising 
 herself from her seat, said, I wish to God I did lie ; but 
 it s true. And it s true that I never touched a cent of 
 the money, but gave it all to him ! She laid her hand 
 on Patterson s arm, and said, Come ! let us go, and led 
 him a few steps towards the gateway. But here Patter 
 son paused, and again passed his hand over his melancholy 
 brow. The necessity of coherently and logically closing 
 the conversation impressed itself upon his darkening 
 mind. Then you don t happen to have heard anything 
 of Spencer ? he said sadly, and vanished with Mrs. 
 Baxter through the gate. 
 
 Left alone to herself, Mrs. Tucker raised her hands 
 above her head with a little cry, interlocked her rigid 
 fingers, and slowly brought her palms down upon her 
 upturned face and eyes, pressing hard as if to crush out 
 all light and sense of life before her. She stood thus for 
 a moment motionless and silent, with the rising wind 
 whispering without and flecking her white morning dress 
 with gusty shadows from the arbour. Then, with closed 
 eyes, dropping her hands to her breast, still pressing hard, 
 she slowly passed them down the shapely contours of her 
 figure to the waist, and with another cry cast them off as 
 if she were stripping herself of some loathsome garment. 
 Then she walked quickly to the gateway, looked out, 
 returned to the corridor, unloosening and taking off her 
 wedding-ring from her finger as she walked. Here she 
 paused, then slowly and deliberately rearranged the chairs 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 137 
 
 and adjusted the gay-coloured rugs that draped them and 
 quietly re-entered her chamber. 
 
 Two days afterwards the sweating steed of Captain 
 Poindexter was turned loose in the corral, and a moment 
 later the Captain entered the corridor. Handing a letter 
 to the decrepit Concha, who seemed to be utterly dis 
 organised by its contents, and the few curt words with 
 which it was delivered, he gazed silently upon the vacant 
 bower, still fresh and redolent with the delicacy and 
 perfume of its graceful occupant, until his dark eyes filled 
 with unaccustomed moisture. But his reverie was inter 
 rupted by the sound of jingling spurs without, and the old 
 humour struggled back in his eyes as Don Jose impetu 
 ously entered. 
 
 The Spaniard started back, but instantly recovered 
 himself: So, I find you here. Ah ! it is well ! he said 
 passionately, producing a letter from his bosom. Look ! 
 Do you call this honour ? Look how you keep your 
 compact ! 
 
 Poindexter coolly took the letter. It contained a few 
 words of gentle dignity from Mrs. Tucker, informing Don 
 Jose that she had only that instant learned of his just 
 claims upon Los Cuervos, tendering him her gratitude for 
 his delicate intentions, but pointing out with respectful 
 firmness that he must know that a moment s further 
 acceptance of his courtesy was impossible. 
 
 * She has gained this knowledge from no word of mine, 
 said Poindexter, calmly. Eight or wrong, I have kept 
 my promise to you. I have as much reason to accuse 
 
138 A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 you of betraying iny secret in this, he added coldly, as 
 he took another letter from his pocket and handed it to 
 Don Jose. 
 
 It seemed briefer and colder, but was neither. It 
 reminded Poiiidexter that as he had again deceived her 
 she must take the government of her affairs in her own 
 hands henceforth. She abandoned all the furniture and 
 improvements she had put in Los Cuervos to him, to 
 whom she now knew she was indebted for them. She 
 could not thank him for what his habitual generosity 
 impelled him to do for any woman, but she could forgive 
 him for misunderstanding her like any other woman 
 perhaps she should say, like a child. "When he received 
 this she would be already on her way to her old home in 
 Kentucky, where she still hoped to be able by her own 
 efforts to amass enough to discharge her obligations to him. 
 
 She does not speak of her husband this woman, 
 said Don Jose, scanning Poindexter s face. It is possible 
 she rejoins him eh ? 
 
 Perhaps in one way she has never left him, Don 
 Jose, said Poindexter, with grave significance. 
 
 Don Jose s face flushed, but he returned carelessly, 
 And the rancho naturally you will not buy it now ? 
 
 On the contrary, I shall abide by my offer, said 
 Poindexter, quietly. 
 
 Don Jose eyed him narrowly, and then said, * Ah, we 
 shall consider of it. 
 
 He did consider it, and accepted the offer. With the 
 full control of the land, Captain Poindexter s improve 
 ments, so indefinitely postponed, w T ere actively pushed 
 
A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 130 
 
 forward. The thick walls of the hacienda were the first 
 to melt away before them ; the low lines of corral were 
 effaced, and the early breath of the summer trade-winds 
 swept uninterruptedly across the now levelled plain to 
 the embarcadero, where a newer structure arose. A 
 more vivid green alone marked the spot where the 
 crumbling adobe walls of the casa had returned to the 
 parent soil that gave it. The channel was deepened, the 
 lagoon was drained, until one evening the magic mirror 
 that had so long reflected the weary waiting of the Blue 
 Grass Penelope lay dull, dead, lustreless an opaque 
 quagmire of noisome corruption and decay to be put away 
 from the sight of man for ever. On this spot the crows 
 the titular tenants of Los Cuervos assembled in tumul 
 tuous congress, coming and going in mysterious clouds, 
 or labouring in thick and writhing masses, as if they were 
 continuing the work of improvement begun by human 
 agency. So well had they done that work that by the 
 end of a week only a few scattered white objects remained 
 glittering on the surface of the quickly drying soil. But 
 they were the bones of the missing outcast, Spencer 
 Tucker ! 
 
 The same spring a breath of war swept over a foul, 
 decaying quagmire of the whole land, before which such 
 passing deeds as these were blown as vapour. It called 
 men of every rank and condition to battle for a nation s 
 life, and among the first to respond were those into whose 
 boyish hands had been placed the nation s honour. It 
 returned the epaulets to Poindexter s shoulder with the 
 
HO A BLUE GRASS PENELOPE. 
 
 addition of a double star, carried him triumphantly to the 
 front, and left him, at the end of a summer s day and a 
 hard-won fight, sorely wounded, at the door of a Blue 
 Grass farmhouse. And the woman who sought him out 
 and ministered to his wants said timidly as she left her 
 hand in his, I told you I should live to repay you. 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN 
 
I. 
 
 THERE was little doubt that the Lone Star claim was 
 * played out. Not dug out, worked out, washed out but 
 played out. For two years its five sanguine proprietors 
 had gone through the various stages of mining enthu 
 siasm ; had prospected and planned, dug and doubted. 
 They had borrowed money with hearty, but unredeeming, 
 frankness ; established a credit with unselfish abnegation 
 of all responsibility ; and had borne the disappointment of 
 their creditors with a cheerful resignation, which only the 
 consciousness of some deep Compensating Future could 
 give. Giving little else, however, a singular dissatisfac 
 tion obtained with the traders, and, being accompanied 
 with a reluctance to make further advances, at last 
 touched the gentle stoicism of the proprietors themselves. 
 The youthful enthusiasm which had at first lifted the 
 most ineffectual trial the most useless essay to the 
 plane of actual achievement, died out, leaving them only 
 the dull, prosaic record of half-finished ditches, purposeless 
 shafts, untenable pits, abandoned engines, and meaning 
 less disruptions of the soil upon the Lone Star claim, 
 and empty flour sacks and pork barrels in the Lone Star 
 cabin. 
 
 They had borne their poverty if that term could be 
 applied to a light renunciation of all superfluities in food, 
 
144 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 dress, or ornament, ameliorated by the gentle depredations 
 already alluded to with unassuming levity. More 
 than that : having segregated themselves from their 
 fellow-miners of Ked Gulch, and entered upon the pos 
 session of the little manzanita-thicketed valley five miles 
 away, the failure of their enterprise had assumed in their 
 eyes only the vague significance of the decline and fall of 
 a general community, and to that extent relieved them of 
 individual responsibility. It was easier for them to admit 
 that the * Lone Star claim was played out than confess 
 to a personal bankruptcy. Moreover, they still retained 
 the sacred right of criticism of Government, and rose 
 superior in their private opinions to their own collective 
 wisdom. Each one experienced a grateful sense of the 
 entire responsibility of the other four in the fate of their 
 enterprise. 
 
 On December 24, 18G3, a gentle rain was still falling 
 over the length and breadth of the Lone Star claim. 
 It had been falling for several days, had already called a 
 faint spring colour to the wan landscape, repairing with 
 tender touches the ravages wrought by the proprietors, or 
 charitably covering their faults. The ragged seams in 
 gulch and canon lost their harsh outlines, a thin, green 
 mantle faintly clothed the torn and abraded hillside. A 
 few weeks more, and a veil of forgetfulness would be 
 drawn over the feeble failures of the Lone Star claim. 
 The charming derelicts themselves, listening to the rain 
 drops on the roof of their little cabin, gazed philosophi 
 cally from the open door, and accepted the prospect as 
 a moral discharge from their obligations. Four of the 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 145 
 
 five partners were present : the Right and Left 
 Bowers, Union Mills, and the Judge. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that not one of these 
 titles was the genuine name of its possessor. The Bight 
 and Left Bowers were two brothers ; their sobriquets a 
 cheerful adaptation from the favourite game of euchre, 
 expressing their relative value in the camp. The mere 
 fact that Union Mills had at one time patched his 
 trousers w r ith an old flour sack legibly bearing that brand 
 of its fabrication, was a tempting baptismal suggestion 
 that the other partners could not forego. The Judge, a 
 singularly inequitable Missourian, with no knowledge 
 whatever of the law, was an inspiration of gratuitous 
 irony. 
 
 Union Mills, who had been for some time sitting 
 placidly on the threshold with one leg exposed to the rain, 
 from a sheer indolent inability to change his position, 
 finally withdrew that weather-beaten member, and stood 
 up. The movement more or less deranged the attitudes 
 of the other partners, and was received with cynical dis 
 favour. It was somewhat remarkable that, although 
 generally giving the appearance of healthy youth and 
 perfect physical condition, they one and all simulated the 
 decrepitude of age and invalidisrn, and after limping 
 about for a few moments, settled back again upon their 
 bunks and stools in their former positions. The Left 
 Bower lazily replaced a bandage that he had worn around 
 his ankle for weeks without any apparent necessity ; and 
 the Judge scrutinised with tender solicitude the faded 
 cicatrix of a scratch upon his arm. A passive hypochondria, 
 
146 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 borne of their isolation, was the last ludicrously pathetic 
 touch to their situation. 
 
 The immediate cause of this commotion felt the 
 necessity of an explanation. 
 
 It would have been just as easy for you to have 
 stayed outside with your business leg, instead of dragging 
 it into private life in that obtrusive way, retorted the 
 Eight Bower ; but that exhaustive effort isn t going to 
 fill the pork barrel. The grocery man at Dalton says 
 what s that he said ? he appealed lazily to the Judge. 
 
 * Said he reckoned the Lone Star was about played 
 out, and he didn t want any more in his thank you ! 
 repeated the Judge with a mechanical effort of memory 
 utterly devoid of personal or present interest. 
 
 I always suspected that man after Grimshaw begun 
 to deal with him, said the Left Bower. They re just 
 mean enough to join hands against us. It was a fixed 
 belief of the Lone Star partners that they were pursued 
 by personal enmities. 
 
 More than likely those new strangers over in the 
 Fork have been paying cash and filled him up with conceit, 
 said Union Mills, trying to dry his leg by alternately 
 beating it or rubbing it against the cabin wall. Once 
 begin wrong with that kind of snipe and you drag every 
 body down with you. 
 
 This vague conclusion was received with dead silence. 
 Everybody had become interested in the speaker s 
 peculiar method of drying his leg, to the exclusion 
 of the previous topic, A few offered criticism no one 
 assistance. 
 

 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 147 
 
 Who did the grocery man say that to ? asked tho 
 Right Bower, finally returning to the question. 
 
 4 The Old Man, answered the Judge. 
 
 Of course, ejaculated the Eight Bower sarcastically. 
 
 Of course, echoed the other partners together. 
 1 That s like him. The Old Man all over ! 
 
 It did not appear exactly what was like the Old Man, 
 or why it was like him, but generally that he alone was 
 responsible for the grocery man s defection. It was put 
 more concisely by Union Mills : 
 
 That comes of letting him go there ! It s just a fair 
 provocation to any man to have the Old Man sent to him. 
 They can t sorter restrain themselves at him. He s 
 enough to spoil the credit of the Rothschilds. 
 
 That s so, chimed in the Judge. * And look at his 
 prospecting. Why, he was out two nights last week all 
 night prospecting in the moonlight for blind leads just 
 out of sheer foolishness. 
 
 It was quite enough for me, broke in the Left Bower, 
 when the other day you remember when he proposed 
 to us white men to settle down to plain ground sluicing 
 making " grub " wages just like any Chinaman. It 
 just showed his idea of the Lone Star claim. 
 
 Well, I never said it afore, added Union Mills, but 
 when that one of the Mattison boys came over here to 
 examine the claim with an eye to purchasing it was the 
 Old Man that took the conceit out of him. He just as 
 good as admitted that a lot of work had got to be done 
 afore any pay ore could be realised. Never even asked 
 him over to the shanty here to jine us in a friendly game 
 
 L2 
 
148 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 just kept him, so to speak, to himself. And naturally 
 the Mattisons didn t see it. 
 
 A silence followed, broken only by the rain mono 
 tonously falling on the roof, and occasionally through the 
 broad adobe chimney, where it provoked a retaliating hiss 
 and splutter from the dying embers of the hearth. The 
 Eight Bower, with a sudden access of energy, drew the 
 empty barrel before him, and taking a pack of well- 
 worn cards from his pocket, began to make a solitaire 
 upon the lid. The others gazed at him with languid 
 interest. 
 
 * Makin it for any thin ? asked Mills. 
 The Eight Bower nodded. 
 
 The Judge and Left Bower, who were partly lying in 
 their respective bunks, sat up to get a better view of the 
 game. Union Mills slowly disengaged himself from the 
 wall, and leaned over the solitaire player. The Eight 
 Bower turned the last card in a pause of almost thrilling 
 suspense, and clapped it down on the lid with fateful 
 emphasis. 
 
 It went ! said the Judge in a voice of hushed re 
 spect. What did you make it for ? he almost whispered. 
 
 * To know if we d make the break we talked about and 
 vamose the Eanch. It s the fifth time to-day, continued 
 the Eight Bower in a voice of gloomy significance. And 
 it went ag in bad cards too. 
 
 * I ain t superstitious, said the Judge, with awe and 
 fatuity beaming from every line of his credulous face, 
 but it s flyin in the face of Providence to go ag in such 
 signs as that. 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 149 
 
 * Make it again to see if the Old Man must go, sug 
 gested the Left Bower. 
 
 The suggestion was received with favour, the three 
 men gathering breathlessly around the player. Again the 
 fateful cards were shuffled deliberately, placed in their 
 mysterious combination, with the same ominous result. 
 Yet everybody seemed to breathe more freely, as if 
 relieved from some responsibility, the Judge accepting 
 this manifest expression of Providence with resigned 
 self-righteousness. 
 
 Yes, gentlemen, resumed the Left Bower, serenely, 
 as if a calm legal decision has just been recorded, we 
 must not let any foolishness or sentiment get mixed up 
 with this thing, but look at it like business men. The 
 only sensible move is to get up and get out of the camp. 
 
 And the Old Man ? queried the Judge. 
 
 The Old Man hush ! he s coming. 
 
 The doorway was darkened by a slight lissome 
 shadow. It was the absent partner, otherwise known as 
 the Old Man. Need it be added that he was a boy of 
 nineteen, with a slight down just clothing his upper lip ! 
 
 The creek is up over the ford, and I had to " shin " 
 up a willow on the bank and swing myself across, he 
 said, with a quick, frank laugh ; but all the same, boys, 
 it s going to clear up in about an hour you bet.. It s 
 breaking away over Bald Mountain, and there s a sun 
 flash on a bit of snow on Lone Peak. Look ! you can see 
 it from here. It s for all the world like Noah s dove just 
 landed on Mount Ararat. It s a good omen. 
 
 From sheer force of habit the men had momentarily 
 
150 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN". 
 
 brightened up at the Old Man s entrance. But the 
 unblushing exhibition of degrading superstition shown in 
 the last sentence recalled their just severity. They 
 exchanged meaning glances. Union Mills uttered hope 
 lessly to himself: Hell s full of such omens. 
 
 Too occupied with his subject to notice this ominous 
 reception, the Old Man continued : I reckon I struck a 
 fresh lead in the new grocery man at the Crossing. He 
 says he ll let the Judge have a pair of boots on credit, 
 but he can t send them over here ; and considering that 
 the Judge has got to try them anyway, it don t seem to 
 be asking too much for the Judge to go over there. He 
 says he ll give us a barrel of pork and a bag of flour if 
 we ll give him the right of using our tail-race and clean 
 out the lower end of it. 
 
 It s the work of a Chinaman, and a four days job, 
 broke in the Left Bower. 
 
 It took one white man only two hours to clean out 
 a third of it, retorted the Old Man triumphantly, for I 
 pitched in at once with a pick he let me have on credit, 
 and did that amount of work this morning, and told him 
 the rest of you boys w r ould finish it this afternoon. 
 
 A slight gesture from the Right Bower checked an 
 angry exclamation from the Left. The Old Man did not 
 notice either, but, knitting his smooth young brow in a 
 paternally reflective fashion, went on : You ll have to 
 get a new pair of trousers, Mills, but as he doesn t keep 
 clothing, we ll have to get some canvas and cut you out 
 a pair. I traded off the beans he let me have for some 
 tobacco for the Eight Bower at the other shop, and got 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAB MOUNTAIN. 151 
 
 them to throw in a new pack of cards. These are about 
 played out. We ll be wanting some brushwood for the 
 fire ; there s a heap in the hollow. Who s going to bring 
 it in ? It s the Judge s turn, isn t it ? Why what s the 
 matter with you all ? 
 
 The restraint and evident uneasiness of his companions 
 had at last touched him. He turned his frank young 
 eyes upon them ; they glanced helplessly at each other. 
 Yet his first concern was for them his first instinct 
 paternal and protecting. He ran his eyes quickly over 
 them ; they were all there and apparently in their usual 
 condition. * Anything wrong with the claim ? he sug 
 gested. 
 
 Without looking at him the Eight Bower rose, leaned 
 against the open door with his hands behind him and his 
 face towards the landscape, and said apparently to the 
 distant prospect The claim s played out the partner 
 ship s played out and the sooner we skedaddle out of 
 this the better. If, he added, turning to the Old Man, 
 if you want to stay if you want to do Chinaman s work 
 at Chinaman s wages if you want to hang on to the 
 charity of the traders at the Crossing you can do it, and 
 enjoy the prospects and the Noah s doves alone. But 
 we re calculaten to step out of it. 
 
 4 But I haven t said I wanted to do it alone, protested 
 the Old Man with a gesture of bewilderment. 
 
 If these are your general ideas of the partnership, 
 continued the Eight Bower, clinging to the established 
 hypothesis of the other partners for support, it ain t 
 ours, and the only way we can prove it is to stop the 
 
152 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 foolishness right here. We calculated to dissolve the 
 partnership and strike out for ourselves elsewhere. 
 You re no longer responsible for us, nor we for you. 
 And we reckon it s the square thing to leave you the 
 claim and the cabin, and all it contains. To prevent any 
 trouble with the traders, we ve drawn up a paper 
 here 
 
 * With a bonus of fifty thousand dollars each down, 
 and the rest to be settled on my children, interrupted 
 the Old Man, with a half-uneasy laugh. Of course. 
 
 But He stopped suddenly, the blood dropped from 
 
 his fresh cheek, and he again glanced quickly round the 
 group. I don t think I I quite sabe, boys, he added, 
 with a slight tremor of voice and lip. If it s a conun 
 drum, ask me an easier one. 
 
 Any lingering doubt he might have had of their mean 
 ing was dispelled by the Judge. * It s about the softest 
 thing you kin drop into, Old Man, he said confidentially ; 
 if I hadn t promised the other boys to go with them, and 
 if I didn t need the best medical advice in Sacramento for 
 my lungs, I d just enjoy staying with you. 
 
 It gives a sorter freedom to a young fellow like you, 
 Old Man like goin into the world on your own capital 
 that every Californian boy hasn t got, said Union Mills, 
 patronisingly. 
 
 Of course it s rather hard papers on us, you know, 
 givin up everything, so to speak ; but it s for your good, 
 and we ain t goin back on you, said the Left Bower, are 
 we, boys ? 
 
 The colour had returned to the Old Man s face a little 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAB MOUNTAIN. 153 
 
 more quickly and freely than usual. He picked up the 
 hat he had cast down, put it on carefully over his brown 
 curls, drew the flap down on the side towards his com 
 panions, and put his hands in his pockets. All right, he 
 said, in a slightly altered voice. When do you go ? 
 
 To-day, answered the Left Bower. We calculate 
 to take a moonlight pasear over to the Cross Roads and 
 meet the down stage at about twelve to-night. There s 
 plenty of time yet, he added, with a slight laugh ; it s 
 only three o clock now. 
 
 There was a dead silence. Even the rain withheld its 
 continuous patter ; a dumb, grey film covered the ashes of 
 the hushed hearth. For the first time the Eight Bower 
 exhibited some slight embarrassment. 
 
 I reckon it s held up for a spell, he said, ostenta 
 tiously examining the weather, and we might as well 
 take a run round the claim to see if we ve forgotten 
 nothing. Of course, we ll be back again, he added 
 hastily, without looking at the Old Man, before we go, 
 you know. 
 
 The others began to look for their hats, but so awk 
 wardly and with such evident pre- occupation of mind that 
 it was not at first discovered that the Judge had his 
 already on. This raised a laugh, as did also a clumsy 
 stumble of Union Mills against the pork-barrel, although 
 that gentleman took refuge from his confusion and secured a 
 decent retreat by a gross exaggeration of his lameness, as he 
 limped after the Right Bower. The Judge whistled feebly. 
 The Left Bower, in a more ambitious effort to impart 
 a certain gaiety to his exit, stopped on the threshold 
 
154 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 and said, as if in arch confidence to his companions : 
 Darned if the Old Man don t look two inches higher, 
 since he became a proprietor, laughed patronisingly, and 
 vanished. 
 
 If the newly-made proprietor had increased in stature, 
 he had not otherwise changed his demeanour. He re 
 mained in the same attitude until the last figure dis 
 appeared behind the fringe of buckeye that hid the distant 
 highway. Then he walked slowly to the fire-place, and, 
 leaning against the chimney, kicked the dying embers 
 together with his foot. Something dropped and spattered in 
 the film of hot ashes. Surely the rain had not yet 
 ceased ! 
 
 His high colour had already fled except for a spot on 
 either cheek-bone that lent a brightness to his eyes. He 
 glanced around the cabin. It looked familiar and yet 
 strange. Rather, it looked strange because still familiar, 
 and therefore incongruous with the new atmosphere that 
 surrounded it discordant with the echo of their last 
 meeting and painfully accenting the change. There were 
 the four bunks, or sleeping berths, of his companions, 
 each still bearing some traces of the individuality of its 
 late occupant with a dumb loyalty that seemed to make 
 their light-hearted defection monstrous. In the dead 
 ashes of the Judge s pipe scattered on his shelf still lived 
 his old fire ; in the whittled and carved edges of the Left 
 Bower s bunk still were the memories of bygone days of 
 delicious indolence ; in the bullet-holes clustered round a 
 knot of one of the beams there was still the record of the 
 Eight Bower s old-time skill and practice ; in the few en- 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 155 
 
 gravings of female loveliness stuck upon each head-board 
 there were the proofs of their old extravagant devotion 
 all a mute protest to the change. 
 
 He remembered how, a fatherless, truant schoolboy, he 
 had drifted into their adventurous nomadic life itself a 
 life of grown-up truancy like his own and became one of 
 that gipsy family. How they had taken the place of re 
 lations and household in his boyish fancy filling it with 
 the unsubstantial pageantry of a child s play at grown-up 
 existence he knew only too well. But how, from being 
 a pet and protege, he had gradually and unconsciously 
 asserted his own individuality and taken upon his younger 
 shoulders not only a poet s keen appreciation of that life, 
 but its actual responsibilities and half-childish burdens, 
 he never suspected. He had fondly believed that he was a 
 neophyte in their ways a novice in their charming faith 
 and indolent creed and they had encouraged it ; now their 
 renunciation of that faith could only be an excuse for a 
 renunciation of him. The poetry that had for two years 
 invested the material and sometimes even mean details 
 of their existence was too much a part of himself to be 
 lightly dispelled. The lesson of those ingenuous moralists 
 failed, as such lessons are apt to fail : their discipline 
 provoked but did not subdue ; a rising indignation, stirred 
 by a sense of injury, mounted to his cheek and eyes. It 
 was slow to come, but was none the less violent that it 
 had been preceded by the benumbing shock of shame and 
 pride. 
 
 I hope I shall not prejudice the reader s sympathies 
 if my duty as a simple chronicler compels me to state, 
 
156 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 therefore, that the sober second thought of this gentle 
 poet was to burn down the cabin on the spot with all its 
 contents. This yielded to a milder counsel waiting for 
 the return of the party, challenging the Eight Bower, a 
 duel to the death, perhaps himself the victim, with the 
 crushing explanation in extremis, It seems we are one 
 too many. No matter ; it is settled now. Farewell ! 
 Dimly remembering, however, that there was something 
 of this in the last well-worn novel they had read together, 
 and that his antagonist might recognise it or even worse, 
 anticipate it himself, the idea was quickly rejected. Be 
 sides, the opportunity for an apotheosis of self-sacrifice 
 was past. Nothing remained now but to refuse the 
 proffered bribe of claim and cabin by letter, for he must 
 not wait their return. He tore a leaf from a blotted 
 diary, begun and abandoned long since, and essayed to 
 write. Scrawl after scrawl was torn up until his fury 
 had cooled down to a frigid third personality. Mr. John 
 Ford regrets to inform his late partners that their tender 
 of house of furniture, however, seemed too inconsistent 
 with the pork-barrel table he was writing on ; a more 
 eloquent renunciation of their offer became frivolous and 
 idiotic from a caricature of Union Mills, label and all, 
 that appeared suddenly on the other side of the leaf ; and 
 when he at last indited a satisfactory and impassioned 
 exposition of his feelings, the legible addendum of * Oh, 
 ain t you glad you re out of the wilderness ! the for 
 gotten first line of a popular song, which no scratching 
 would erase, seemed too like an ironical postscript to be 
 thought of for a moment. He threw aside his pen and 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 157 
 
 cast the discordant record of past foolish pastime into the 
 dead ashes of the hearth. 
 
 How quiet it was ! With the cessation of the rain the 
 wind, too, had gone down, and scarcely a breath of air 
 came through the open door. He walked to the threshold 
 and gazed on the hushed prospect. In this listless 
 attitude he was faintly conscious of a distant reverbera 
 tion, a mere phantom of sound perhaps the explosion of 
 a distant blast in the hills that left the silence more 
 marked and oppressive. As he turned again into the 
 cabin a change seemed to have come over it. It already 
 looked old and decayed. The loneliness of je&TS of 
 desertion seemed to have taken possession of it ; the 
 atmosphere of dry rot was in the beams and rafters. To 
 his excited fancy the few disordered blankets and articles 
 of clothing seemed dropping to pieces ; in one of the 
 bunks there was a hideous resemblance in the longitu 
 dinal heap of clothing to a withered and mummied corpse. 
 So it might look in after years when some passing 
 stranger but he stopped. A dread of the place was 
 beginning to creep over him; a dread of the days to 
 come, when the monotonous sunshine should lay bare the 
 loneliness of these w^alls : the long, long days of endless 
 blue and cloudless overhanging solitude ; summer days 
 when the wearying, incessant trade-winds should sing 
 around that empty shell and voice its desolation. He 
 gathered together hastily a few articles that were espe 
 cially his own rather that the free communion of the 
 camp, from indifference or accident, had left wholly to 
 him. He hesitated for a moment over his rifle, but, 
 
158 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 scrupulous in his wounded pride, turned away and left 
 the familiar weapon that in the dark days had so often 
 provided the dinner or breakfast of the little household. 
 Candour compels me to state that his equipment was not 
 large nor eminently practical. His scant pack was a 
 light weight for even his young shoulders, but I fear he 
 thought more of getting away from the Past than pro 
 viding for the Future. 
 
 With this vague but sole purpose he left the cabin, 
 and almost mechanically turned his steps towards the 
 creek he had crossed that morning. He knew that by 
 this route he would avoid meeting his companions ; its 
 difficulties and circuitousness would exercise his feverish 
 limbs and give him time for reflection. He had deter 
 mined to leave the claim, but whence he had not yet 
 considered. He reached the bank of the creek where he 
 had stood two hours before ; it seemed to him two years. 
 He looked curiously at his reflection in one of the broad 
 pools of overflow and fancied he looked older. He 
 watched the rush and outset of the turbid current hurry 
 ing to meet the South Fork, and to eventually lose itself 
 in the yellow Sacramento. Even in his pre -occupation 
 he was impressed with a likeness to himself and his 
 companions in this flood that had burst its peaceful 
 boundaries. In the drifting fragments of one of their 
 forgotten flumes washed from the bank, he fancied he 
 saw an omen of the disintegration and decay of the 
 Lone Star claim. 
 
 The strange hush in the air that he had noticed before 
 a calm so inconsistent with that hour and the season as 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. Io9 
 
 to seem portentous became more marked in contrast to 
 the feverish rush of the turbulent watercourse. A few 
 clouds lazily huddled in the west apparently had gone to 
 rest with the sun on beds of somnolent poppies. There 
 was a gleam as of golden water everywhere along the 
 horizon, washing out the cold snow peaks, and drowning 
 even the rising moon. The Creek caught it here and 
 there, until, in grim irony, it seemed to bear their broken 
 sluice-boxes and useless engines on the very Pactolian 
 stream they had been hopefully created to direct and 
 carry. But by some peculiar trick of the atmosphere, the 
 perfect plenitude of that golden sunset glory was lavished 
 on the rugged sides and tangled crest of the Lone Star 
 mountain. That isolated peak the landmark of their 
 claim, the gaunt monument of their folly transfigured 
 in the evening splendour, kept its radiance uiiquenched, 
 long after the glow had fallen from the encompassing 
 skies, and when at last the rising moon, step by step, put 
 out the fires along the winding valley and plains, and 
 crept up the bosky sides of the canon, the vanishing 
 sunset was lost only to reappear as a golden crown. 
 
 The eyes of the young man were fixed upon it with 
 more than a momentary picturesque interest. It had 
 been the favourite ground of his prospecting exploits, its 
 lowest flank had been scarred in the old enthusiastic days 
 with hydraulic engines, or pierced with shafts, but its 
 central position in the claim and its superior height had 
 always given it a commanding view of the extent of their 
 valley and its approaches, and it was this practical pre 
 eminence that alone attracted him at that moment. He 
 
160 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 knew that from its crest he would be able to distinguish 
 the figures of his companions, as they crossed the valley 
 near the cabin, in the growing moonlight. Thus he could 
 avoid encountering them on his way to the high road, and 
 yet see them, perhaps, for the last time. Even in his 
 sense of injury there was a strange satisfaction in the 
 thought. 
 
 The ascent was toilsome, but familiar. All along the 
 dim trail he was accompanied by gentler memories of the 
 past, that seemed like the faint odour of spiced leaves and 
 fragrant grasses wet with the rain and crushed beneath 
 his ascending tread, to exhale the sweeter perfume in his 
 effort to subdue or rise above them. There was the 
 thicket of manzanita, where they had broken noonday 
 bread together ; here was the rock beside their maiden 
 shaft, where they had poured a wild libation in boyish 
 enthusiasm of success ; and here the ledge where their 
 first flag a red shirt heroically sacrificed was displayed 
 from a long-handled shovel to the gaze of admirers below. 
 When he at last reached the summit, the mysterious hush 
 was still in the air, as if in breathless sympathy with his 
 expedition. In the west, the plain was faintly illuminated, 
 but disclosed 110 moving figures. He turned towards the 
 rising moon, and moved slowly to the eastern edge. 
 Suddenly he stopped. Another step would have been his 
 last ! He stood upon the crumbling edge of a precipice. 
 A landslip had taken place on the eastern flank, leaving 
 the gaunt ribs and fleshless bones of Lone Star Mountain 
 bare in the moonlight. He understood now the strange 
 rumble and reverberation he had heard ; he understood 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 161 
 
 now the strange hush of bird and beast in brake and 
 thicket ! 
 
 Although a single rapid glance convinced him that the 
 slide had taken place in an unfrequented part of the 
 mountain, above an inaccessible canon, and reflection 
 assured him his companions could not have reached that 
 distance when it took place, a feverish impulse led him 
 to descend a few rods in the track of the avalanche. The 
 frequent recurrence of outcrop and angle made this com 
 paratively easy. Here he called aloud ; the feeble echo 
 of his own voice seemed only a dull impertinence to the 
 significant silence. He turned to reascend ; the furrowed 
 flank of the mountain before him lay full in the moon 
 light. To his excited fancy, a dozen luminous star-like 
 points in the rocky crevices started into life as he faced 
 them. Throwing his arm over the ledge above him, he 
 supported himself for a moment by what appeared to be 
 a projection of the solid rock. It trembled slightly. As 
 he raised himself to its level, his heart stopped beating. 
 It was simply a fragment detached from the outcrop lying 
 loosely on the ledge, but upholding him by its own weight 
 only. He examined it with trembling fingers ; the en 
 cumbering soil fell from its sides and left its smoothed and 
 worn protuberances glistening in the moonlight. It was 
 virgin gold ! 
 
 Looking back upon that moment afterwards, he re 
 membered that he was not dazed, dazzled, or startled. 
 It did not come to him as a discovery or an accident, a 
 stroke of chance or a caprice of fortune. He saw it all 
 in that supreme moment ; Nature had worked out their 
 
 M 
 
162 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 poor deduction. What their feeble engines had essayed 
 spasmodically and helplessly against the curtain of soil 
 that hid the treasure, the elements had achieved with 
 mightier but more patient forces. The slow sapping of 
 the winter rains had loosened the soil from the auriferous 
 rock, even while the swollen stream was carrying their 
 impotent and shattered engines to the sea. What 
 mattered that his single arm could not lift the treasure 
 he had found ; what mattered that to unfix those glitter 
 ing stars would still tax both skill and patience ! The 
 work was done the goal was reached ! even his boyish 
 impatience was content with that. He rose slowly to his 
 feet, unstrapped his long-handled shovel from his back, 
 secured it in the crevice, and quietly regained the 
 summit. 
 
 It was all his own ! His own by right of discovery 
 under the law of the land, and without accepting a favour 
 from them. He recalled even the fact that it was his 
 prospecting on the mountain that first suggested the ex 
 istence of gold in the outcrop and the use of the hydraulic. 
 He had never abandoned that belief, whatever the others 
 had done. He dwelt somewhat indignantly to himself on 
 this circumstance, and half unconsciously faced defiantly 
 towards the plain below. But it was sleeping peacefully 
 in the full sight of the nioon, without life or motion. He 
 looked at the stars, it was still far from midnight. His 
 companions had no doubt long since returned to the 
 cabin to prepare for their midnight journey. They were 
 discussing him perhaps laughing at him, or worse, pity 
 ing him and his bargain. Yet here was his bargain ! A 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 163 
 
 slight laugh he gave vent to here startled him a little, it 
 sounded so hard and so unmirthful, and so unlike, as he 
 oddly fancied, what he really thought. But what did he 
 think ? 
 
 Nothing mean or revengeful ; no, they never would 
 pay that. When he had taken out all the surface gold 
 and put the mine in working order, he would send them 
 each a draft for a thousand dollars. Of course, if they 
 w r ere ever ill or poor he would do more. One of the first, 
 the very first, things he should do would be to send them 
 each a handsome gun and tell them that he only asked in 
 return the old-fashioned rifle that once was his. Looking 
 back at the moment in after years, he wondered that, with 
 this exception, he made no plans for his own future, or 
 the w r ay he should dispose of his newly-acquired wealth. 
 This was the more singular as it had been the custom of 
 the five partners to lie awake at night, audibly comparing 
 with each other what they would do in case they made a 
 strike. He remembered how, Ahiaschar like, they nearly 
 separated once over a difference in the disposal of a 
 hundred thousand dollars that they never had, nor ex 
 pected to have. He remembered how Union Mills always 
 began his career as a millionaire by a square meal at 
 Delmonico s ; how the Bight Bower s initial step was 
 always a trip home to see his mother ; how the Left 
 Bower would immediately placate the parents of his 
 beloved with priceless gifts (it may be parenthetically 
 remarked that the parents and the beloved one were as 
 hypothetical as the fortune) and how the Judge would 
 make his first start as a capitalist by breaking a certain 
 
 31 2 
 
164 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN* 
 
 faro Lank in Sacramento. He himself had been equally 
 eloquent in extravagant fancy in those penniless days 
 he who now was quite cold and impassive beside the 
 more extravagant reality. 
 
 How different it might have been ! If they had only 
 waited a day longer ! if they had only broken their re 
 solves to him kindly and parted in good will ! How he 
 would long ere this have rushed to greet them with the 
 joyful news ! How they would have danced around it, 
 sung themselves hoarse, laughed down their enemies, and 
 run up the flag triumphantly on the summit of the Lone 
 Star Mountain ! How they would have crowned him, 
 the Old Man, the hero of the camp ! How he would 
 have told them the old story : how some strange instinct 
 had impelled him to ascend the summit, and how 
 another step on that summit would have precipitated 
 him into the canon ! And how but what if somebody 
 else Union Mills or the Judge had been the first dis 
 coverer ? Might they not have meanly kept the secret 
 from him ; have selfishly .helped themselves and done 
 
 What you are doing now. 
 
 The hot blood rushed to his cheek, as if a strange 
 voice were at his ear. For a moment he could not 
 believe that it came from his own pale lips until he found 
 himself speaking. He rose to his feet, tingling with 
 shame, and began hurriedly to descend the mountain. 
 
 He would go to them, tell them of his discovery, let 
 them give him his share, and leave them for ever. It 
 was the only thing to be done strange that he had not 
 thought of it at once. Yet it was hard, very hard and 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAK MOUNTAIN. 165 
 
 cruel to be forced to meet them again. What had he 
 done to suffer this mortification? For a moment he 
 actually hated this vulgar treasure that had for ever 
 buried under its gross ponderability the light and careless 
 past, and utterly crushed out the poetry of their old 
 indolent happy existence. 
 
 He was sure to find them waiting at the cross-roads 
 where the coach came past. It was three miles away, 
 yet he could get there in time if he hastened. It was a 
 wise and practical conclusion of his evening s work a 
 lame and impotent conclusion to his evening s indignation. 
 No matter ! They would perhaps at first think he had 
 come to weakly follow them perhaps they would at first 
 doubt his story. No matter ! He bit his lips to keep 
 down the foolish rising tears, but still went blindly 
 forward. 
 
 He saw not the beautiful night, cradled in the dark 
 hills, swathed in luminous mists, and hushed in the awe 
 of its own loveliness ! Here and there the moon had laid 
 her calm face on lake and overflow, and gone to sleep 
 embracing them, until the whole plain seemed to be 
 lifted into infinite quiet. Walking on as in a dream, the 
 black, impenetrable barriers of skirting thickets opened 
 and gave way to vague distances that it appeared 
 impossible to reach dim vistas that seemed unapproach 
 able. Gradually he seemed himself to become a part of 
 the mysterious night. He was becoming as pulseless, as 
 calm, as passionless. 
 
 What was that ? A shot in the direction of the cabin ! 
 yet so faint, so echoless, so ineffective in the vast silence, 
 
166 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 that he would have thought it his fancy but for the strange 
 instinctive jar upon his sensitive nerves. Was it an 
 accident, or was it an intentional signal to him ? He 
 stopped ; it was not repeated the silence reasserted 
 itself, but this time with an ominous death-like sugges 
 tion. A sudden and terrible thought crossed his mind, 
 He cast aside his pack and all encumbering weight, took 
 a deep breath, lowered his head and darted like a deer in 
 the direction of the challenge. 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 167 
 
 II. 
 
 THE exodus of the seceding partners of the Lone Star 
 claim had been scarcely an imposing one. For the first 
 five minutes after quitting the cabin, the procession was 
 straggling and vagabond. Unwonted exertion had exag 
 gerated the lameness of some, and feebleness of moral 
 purpose had predisposed the others to obtrusive musical 
 exhibition. Union Mills limped and whistled with 
 affected abstraction; the Judge whistled and limped 
 with affected earnestness. The Eight Bower led the 
 way with some show of definite design ; the Left Bower 
 followed with his hands in his pockets. The two feebler 
 natures, drawn together in unconscious sympathy, looked 
 vaguely at each other for support. 
 
 You see, said the Judge, suddenly, as if triumphantly 
 concluding an argument, there ain t anything better for 
 a young fellow than independence. Nature, so to speak, 
 points the way. Look at the animals. 
 
 There s a skunk hereabouts, said Union Mills, who 
 was supposed to be gifted with aristocratically sensitive 
 nostrils, within ten miles of this place ; like as not 
 crossing the Eidge. It s always my luck to happen out 
 just at such times. I don t see the necessity anyhow of 
 trapesing round the claim now if we calculate to leave it 
 to-night. 
 
168 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAB MOUNTAIN* 
 
 Both men waited to observe if the suggestion was 
 taken up by the Eight and Left Bower moodily plodding 
 ahead. No response following, the Judge shamelessly 
 abandoned his companion. 
 
 You wouldn t stand snoopin round instead of lettin 
 the Old Man get used to the idea alone ? No ; I could 
 see all along that he was takin it in takin it in 
 kindly, but slowly, and I reckoned the best thing for 
 us to do was to git up and git until he d got round 
 it. The Judge s voice was slightly raised for the benefit 
 of the two before him. 
 
 Didn t he say, remarked the Right Bower, stopping 
 suddenly and facing the others didn t he say that that 
 new trader was goin to let him have some provisions 
 anyway ? 
 
 Union Mills turned appealingly to the Judge ; that 
 gentleman was forced to reply, Yes ; I remember dis 
 tinctly he said it. It was one of the things I was 
 particular about on his account, responded the Judge, 
 with the air of having arranged it all himself with the 
 new trader. I remember I was easier in my mind 
 about it. 
 
 But didn t he say, queried the Left Bower, also 
 stopping short, suthin about it s being contingent on 
 our doing some work on the race ? 
 
 The Judge turned for support to Union Mills, who, 
 however, under the hollow pretence of preparing for a 
 long conference, had luxuriously seated himself on a 
 stump. The Judge sat down also, and replied hesitatingly, 
 Well, yes ! Us or him. 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 169 
 
 * Us or him, repeated the Eight Bower, with gloomy 
 irony. And you ain t quite clear in your mind, are you, 
 if you haven t done the work already? You re just 
 killing yourself with this spontaneous, promiscuous, and 
 premature overwork ; that s what s the matter with you. 
 
 I reckon I heard somebody say suthin about it s 
 being a Chinaman s three-day job, interpolated the Left 
 Bower, with equal irony, but I ain t quite clear in my 
 mind about that. 
 
 It ll be a sorter distraction for the Old Man, said 
 Union Mills feebly kinder take his mind off his loneli 
 ness. 
 
 Nobody taking the least notice of the remark, Union 
 Mills stretched out his legs more comfortably and took 
 out his pipe. He had scarcely done so when the Eight 
 Bower, wheeling suddenly, set off in the direction of the 
 creek. The Left Bower, after a slight pause, followed 
 without a word. The Judge, wisely conceiving it better 
 to join the stronger party, ran feebly after him, and 
 left Union Mills to bring up a weak and vacillating 
 rear. 
 
 Their course, diverging from Lone Star Mountain, led 
 them now directly to the bend of the Creek the base of 
 their old ineffectual operations. Here was the beginning 
 of the famous tail-race that skirted the new trader s claim, 
 and then lost its way in a swampy hollow. It was choked 
 with debris ; a thin, yellow stream that once ran through 
 it seemed to have stopped work when they did, and gone 
 into greenish liquidation. 
 
 They had scarcely spoken during this brief journey, 
 
170 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 and had received no other explanation from the Eight 
 Bower, who led them, than that afforded by his mute 
 example when he reached the race. Leaping into it 
 without a word, he at once began to clear away the broken 
 timbers and drift wood. Fired by the spectacle of what 
 appeared to be a new and utterly frivolous game, the 
 men gaily leaped after him, and were soon engaged in a 
 fascinating struggle with the impeded race. The Judge 
 forgot his lameness in springing over a broken sluice- 
 box ; Union Mills forgot his whistle in a happy imitation 
 of a Chinese coolie s song. Nevertheless, after ten 
 minutes of this mild dissipation, the pastime flagged. 
 Union Mills was beginning to rub his leg when a distant 
 rumble shook the earth. The men looked at each other ; 
 the diversion was complete ; a languid discussion of the 
 probabilities of its being an earthquake or a blast followed, 
 in the midst of which the Bight Bower, who was working 
 a little in advance of the others, uttered a warning cry 
 and leaped from the race. His companions had barely 
 time to follow before a sudden and inexplicable rise in the 
 waters of the creek sent a swift irruption of the flood 
 through the race. In an instant its choked and impeded 
 channel was cleared, the race was free, and the scattered 
 debris of logs and timber floated upon its easy current. 
 Quick to take advantage of this labour-saving pheno 
 menon, the Lone Star partners sprang into the water, 
 and by disentangling -and directing the eddying fragments 
 completed their work. 
 
 * The Old Man oughter been here to see this, said the 
 Left Bowery it s just one o them climaxes of poetic 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 171 
 
 justice lie s always Imntin up. It s easy to see what s 
 happened. One o them high-toned shrimps over in the 
 Excelsior claim .has put a blast in too near the creek. 
 He s tumbled the bank into the creek, and sent the back 
 water down here just to wash out our race. That s what 
 I call poetical retribution. 
 
 And who was it advised us to dam the creek below 
 the race, and make it do the same thing ? asked the 
 Bight Bower, moodily. 
 
 That was one of the Old Man s ideas, I reckon, said 
 the Left Bower, dubiously. 
 
 And you remember, broke in the Judge with anima 
 tion, I allus said, " Go slow, go slow. You just hold on 
 and suthin will happen." And, he added triumphantly, 
 you see suthin has happened. I don t want to take 
 credit to myself, but I reckoned on them Excelsior boys 
 bein fools, and took the chances. 
 
 And what if I happen to know that the Excelsior 
 boys ain t blastin to-day ? said the Bight Bower, sar 
 castically. 
 
 As the Judge had evidently based his hypothesis on 
 the alleged fact of a blast, he deftly evaded the point. I 
 ain t saying the Old Man s head ain t level on some 
 things ; he wants a little more sale of the world. He s 
 improved a good deal in euchre lately, and in poker 
 well ! he s got that sorter dreamy, listenin -to-the-angels 
 kind o way, that you can t exactly tell whether he s 
 bluffin or has got a full hand. Hasn t he ? he asked 
 appealing to Union Mills. 
 
 But that gentleman, who had been watching the dark 
 
172 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 face of the Eight Bower, preferred to take what he be 
 lieved to be his cue from him. That ain t the question, 
 he said virtuously ; we ain t takin this step to make a 
 card sharp out of him. We re not doin Chinamen s 
 work in this race to-day for that. No, sir ! We re 
 teachin him to paddle his own canoe. Not finding the 
 sympathetic response he looked for in the Eight Bower s 
 face, he turned to the Left. 
 
 I reckon we were teachin him our canoe was too 
 full, was the Left Bower s unexpected reply. That s 
 about the size of it. 
 
 The Eight Bower shot a rapid glance under his brows 
 at his brother. The latter, with his hands in his pockets, 
 stared unconsciously at the rushing water, and then 
 quietly turned away. The Eight Bower followed him. 
 * Are you goin back on us ? he asked. 
 
 Are you ? responded the other. 
 
 No! 
 
 No, then it is, returned the Left Bower, quietly. The 
 elder brother hesitated in half-angry embarrassment. 
 
 Then what did you mean by saying we reckoned our 
 canoe was too full ? 
 
 Wasn t that our idea ? returned the Left Bower, 
 indifferently. Confounded by this practical expression of 
 his own unformulated good intentions, the Eight Bower 
 was staggered. 
 
 Speakin of the Old Man, broke in the Judge, with 
 characteristic infelicity, I reckon he ll sort o miss us, 
 times like these. We were allers runnin him and be- 
 devilin him after work, just to get him excited and 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 1?3 
 
 amusin , and he ll kinder miss that sorter stimulatin. I 
 reckon we ll miss it too somewhat. Don t you remem 
 ber, boys, the night we put up that little sell on him and 
 made him believe we d struck it rich in the bank of the 
 creek, and got him so conceited, he wanted to go off and 
 settle all our debts at once ? 
 
 And how I came bustin into the cabin with a pan 
 ful of iron pyrites and black sand, chuckled Union 
 Mills, continuing the reminiscences, and how them big 
 grey eyes of his nearly bulged out of his head. WeH, it s 
 some satisfaction to know we did our duty by the young 
 fellow even in those little things. He turned for con 
 firmation of their general disinterestedness to the Eight 
 Bower, but he was already striding away, uneasily con 
 scious of the lazy following of the Left Bower, like a 
 laggard conscience at his back. This movement again 
 threw Union Mills and the Judge into feeble complicity 
 in the rear, as the procession slowly straggled homeward 
 from the creek. 
 
 Night had fallen. Their way lay through the shadow 
 of Lone Star Mountain, deepened here and there by the 
 slight bosky ridges that starting from its base crept 
 across the plain like vast roots of its swelling trunk. The 
 shadows were growing blacker as the moon began to 
 assert itself over the rest of the valley, when the Bight 
 Bower halted suddenly on one of these ridges. The Left 
 Bower lounged up to him, and stopped also, while the 
 two others came up and completed the group. There s 
 no light in the shanty, said the Bight Bower in a low 
 voice, half to himself and half in answer to their inquiring 
 
17 i LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 attitude. The men followed the direction of his finger. 
 In the distance the black outline of the Lone Star cabin 
 stood out distinctly in the illumined space. There was 
 the blank, sightless, external glitter of moonlight on its 
 two windows that seemed to reflect its dim vacancy 
 empty alike of light, and warmth, and motion. 
 
 * That s sing lar, said the Judge in an awed whisper. 
 
 The Left Bower, by simply altering the position of 
 his hands in his trousers pockets, managed to suggest 
 that he knew perfectly the meaning of it had always 
 known it but that being now, so to speak, in the hands 
 of Fate, he was callous to it. This much, at least, the 
 elder brother read in his attitude. But anxiety at that 
 moment was the controlling impulse of the Eight Bower, 
 as a certain superstitious remorse was the instinct of the 
 two others, and without heeding the cynic, the three 
 started at a rapid pace for the cabin. 
 
 They reached it silently, as the moon, now riding high 
 in the heavens, seemed to touch it with the tender grace 
 and hushed repose of a tomb. It was with something of 
 this feeling that the Bight Bower softly pushed open the 
 door ; it was with something of this dread that the two 
 others lingered on the threshold, until the Right Bower, 
 after vainly trying to stir the dead embers on the hearth 
 into life with his foot, struck a match and lit their 
 solitary candle. Its flickering light revealed the familiar 
 interior unchanged in aught but one thing. The bunk 
 that the Old Man had occupied was stripped of its 
 blankets ; the few cheap ornaments and photographs 
 were gone; the rude poverty of the bare boards and 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 175 
 
 scant pallet looked up at them unrelieved by the bright 
 face and gracious youth that had once made them 
 tolerable. In the grim irony of that exposure, their own 
 penury was doubly conscious. The little knapsack, the 
 tea-cup and coffee-pot that had hung near his bed, were 
 gone also. The most indignant protest, the most pa 
 thetic of the letters he had composed and rejected, whose 
 torn fragments still littered the flour, could never have 
 spoken with the eloquence of this empty space ! The 
 men exchanged no words ; the solitude of the cabin, 
 instead of drawing them together, seemed to isolate each 
 one in selfish distrust of the others. Even the unthinking 
 garrulity of Union Mills and the Judge was checked. A 
 moment later, when the Left Bower entered the cabin, 
 his presence was scarcely noticed. 
 
 The silence was broken by a joyous exclamation from 
 the Judge. He had discovered the Old Man s rifle in the 
 corner, where it had been at first overlooked. He ain t 
 gone yet, gentlemen for yer s his rifle, he broke in, with 
 a feverish return of volubility, and a high excited falsetto. 
 He wouldn t have left this behind. No ! I knowed it 
 from the first. He s just outside a bit, foraging for wood 
 and water. No, sir ! Coming along here I said to 
 Union Mills didn t I ? " Bet your life the Old Man s 
 not far off, even if he ain t in the cabin." Why, the 
 moment I stepped foot 
 
 And I said coming along, interrupted Union Mills, 
 with equally reviving mendacity, " Like as not he s 
 hangin round yer, and lyin low just to give us a 
 surprise." He! ho! 
 
176 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 He s gone for good, and he left that rifle here on 
 purpose, said the Left Bower in a low voice, taking the 
 weapon almost tenderly in his hands. 
 
 Drop it then ! said the Eight Bower. The voice 
 was that of his brother, but suddenly changed with 
 passion. The two other partners instinctively drew back 
 in alarm. 
 
 I ll not leave it here for the first comer, said the 
 Left Bower, calmly, because we ve been fools and he 
 too. It s too good a weapon for that. 
 
 Drop it I say ! said the Right Bower, with a savage 
 stride towards him. 
 
 The younger brother brought the rifle to a half charge, 
 with a white face but a steady eye. 
 
 Stop where you are ! he said collectedly. Don t 
 row with me, because you haven t cither the grit to stick 
 to your ideas or the heart to confess them wrong. We ve 
 followed your lead, and here we are ! The camp s 
 broken up the Old Man s gone and we re going. And 
 as for the d d rifle 
 
 * Drop it, do you hear ! shouted the Eight Bower, 
 clinging to that one idea with the blind pertinacity of 
 rage and a losing cause. Drop it ! 
 
 The Left Bower drew back, but his brother had 
 seized the barrel with both hands. There was a m< 
 mentary struggle, a flash through the half-lighted cabin, 
 and a shattering report. The two men fell back from 
 each other ; the rifle dropped on the floor between 
 them. 
 
 The whole thing was over so quickly that the other 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 177 
 
 two partners had not hatl time to obey their common im 
 pulse to separate them, and consequently even now could 
 scarcely understand what had passed. It was over so 
 quickly that the two actors themselves walked back to 
 their places, scarcely realising their own act. 
 
 A dead silence followed. The Judge and Union Mills 
 looked at each other in dazed astonishment, and then 
 nervously set about their former habits, apparently in 
 that fatuous belief common to such natures, that they 
 were ignoring a painful situation. The Judge drew the 
 barrel towards him, picked up the cards and began me 
 chanically to make a patience, on which Union Mills 
 gazed with ostentatious interest, but with eyes furtively 
 conscious of the rigid figure of the Bight Bower by the 
 chimney and the abstracted face of the Left Bower at the 
 door. Ten minutes had passed in this occupation, the 
 Judge and Union Mills conversing in the furtive whispers 
 of children unavoidably but fascinatedly present at a 
 family quarrel, when a light step was heard upon the 
 crackling brushwood outside, and the bright panting face 
 of the Old Man appeared upon the threshold. There was 
 a shout of joy ; in another moment he was half-buried in 
 the bosom of the Bight Bower!s shirt, half-dragged into 
 the lap of the Judge, upsetting the barrel, and completely 
 encompassed by the Left Bower and Union Mills. With 
 the enthusiastic utterance of his name the spel} was 
 broken. 
 
 Happily unconscious of the previous excitement that 
 had provoked this spontaneous unanimity of greeting, the 
 Old Man, equally relieved, at once broke into a feverish 
 
 N 
 
178 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 
 announcement of his discovery. He painted the details, 
 with, I fear, a slight exaggeration of colouring, due 
 partly to his own excitement, and partly to justify their 
 own. But he was strangely conscious that these bank 
 rupt men appeared less elated with their personal interest 
 in their stroke of fortune than with his own success. I 
 told you he d do it, said the Judge, with a reckless un- 
 scrupulousness of statement that carried everybody with 
 it. Look at him ! the game little pup. no ! he ain t 
 the right breed is he ? echoed Union Mills with arch 
 irony, while the Eight and Left Bower, grasping either 
 hand, pressed a proud but silent greeting that was half 
 new to him, but wholly delicious. It was not without 
 difficulty that he could at last prevail upon them to return 
 with him to the scene of his discovery, or even then 
 restrain them from attempting to carry him thither on 
 their shoulders on the plea of his previous prolonged 
 exertions. Once only there was a momentary embarrass 
 ment. Then you fired that shot to bring me back ? 
 said the Old Man, gratefully. In the awkward silence 
 that followed, the hands of the two brothers sought and 
 grasped each other, penitently. Yes, interposed the 
 Judge, with delicate tact, ye see the Eight and Left 
 Bower almost quarrelled to see which should be the first 
 
 to fire for ye. I disremember which did I never 
 
 touched the trigger, said the Left, Bower, hastily. With 
 a hurried backward kick, the Judge resumed, It went off 
 sorter spontaneous. 
 
 The difference in the sentiment of the procession that 
 once more issued from the Lone Star cabin did not fail 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 179 
 
 to show itself in each individual partner according to his 
 temperament. The subtle tact of Union Mills, however, 
 in expressing an awakened respect for their fortunate 
 partner by addressing him, as if unconsciously, as * Mr. 
 Ford, was at first discomposing, but even this was for 
 gotten in their breathless excitement as they neared the 
 base of the mountain. When they had crossed the creek 
 the Right Bower stopped reflectively : 
 
 You say you heard the slide come down before you 
 left the cabin ? he said, turning to the Old Man. 
 
 Yes ; but I did not know, then what it was. It was 
 about an hour and a half after you left, was the reply. 
 
 Then look here, boys, continued the Eight Bower 
 with superstitious exultation ; it was the slide that 
 tumbled into the creek, overflowed it, and helped us 
 clear out the race I 
 
 It seemed so clearly that Proyidence had taken the 
 partners of the Lone Star directly in hand that they 
 faced the toilsome ascent of the mountain with the as 
 surance of conquerors. They paused only on the summit 
 to allow the Old Man to lead the way to the slope that 
 held their treasure. He advanced cautiously to the edge 
 of the crumbling cliff, stopped, looked bewildered, ad 
 vanced again, and then remained white and immovable. 
 In an instant the Right Bower was at his side. 
 
 Is anything the matter ? Don t don t look so, Old 
 Man, for God s sake ! 
 
 The Old Man pointed to the dull, smooth, black side 
 of the mountain, without a crag, break, or protuberance, 
 and said with ashen lips : 
 
180 LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 
 It s gone ! 
 
 !< I 
 
 And it was gone ! A second slide had taken place, 
 stripping the flank of the mountain, and burying the 
 treasure and the weak implement that had marked 
 its side deep under a chaos of rock and debris at its 
 base. 
 
 Thank God ! The blank faces of his companions 
 turned quickly to the Eight Bower. Thank God ! he 
 repeated, with his arm round the neck of the Old Man. 
 Had he stayed behind he would have been buried 
 too. He paused, and, pointing solemnly to the depths 
 below, said, And thank God for showing us where we 
 may yet labour for it in hope and patience like honest 
 men. 
 
 The men silently bowed their heads and slowly de 
 scended the mountain. But when they had reached the 
 plain one of them called out to the others to watch a star 
 that seemed to be rising and moving towards them over 
 the hushed and sleeping valley. 
 
 It s only the stage-coach, boys, said the Left Bower, 
 smiling; the coach that was to take us away. 
 
 In the security of their new-found fraternity they 
 resolved to wait and see it pass. As it swept by with 
 flash of light, beat of hoofs, and jingle of harness, the 
 only real presence in the dreamy landscape, the driver 
 shouted a hoarse greeting to the phantom partners, 
 audible only to the Judge, who was nearest the 
 vehicle. 
 
 Did you hear did you hear what he said, boys ? lie 
 
LEFT OUT ON LONE STAR MOUNTAIN. 181 
 
 gasped, turning to his companions. - No ! Shake hands 
 all round, boys ! God bless you all, boys ! To think we 
 didn t know it all this while ! 
 
 Know what ? 
 
 * Merry Christinas ! 
 
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