CHAPTER III.

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Somewhat less spiteful in her intercourse with
other scholars, Mliss still retained an offensive
attitude in regard to Clytemnestra. Perhaps the
jealous element was not entirely lulled in her
passionate little breast. Perhaps it was only that
the round curves and plump outline offered more
extended pinching surface. But while such ebullitions
were under the master's control, her enmity
occasionally took a new and irrepressible
form.

The master in his first estimate of the child's
character could not conceive that she had ever
possessed a doll. But the master, like many other
professed readers of character, was safer in a posteriori
than a priori reasoning. Mliss had a doll,
but then it was emphatically Mliss's doll, — a smaller
copy of herself. Its unhappy existence had
been a secret discovered accidentally by Mrs. Morpher.
It had been the old-time companion of
Mliss's wanderings, and bore evident marks of
suffering. Its original complexion was long since
washed away by the weather and anointed by the
slime of ditches. It looked very much as Mliss
had in days past. Its one gown of faded stuff was
dirty and ragged as hers had been. Mliss had

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

never been known to apply to it any childish
term of endearment. She never exhibited it in
the presence of other children. It was put severely
to bed in a hollow tree near the school-house, and
only allowed exercise during Mliss's rambles. Fulfilling
a stern duty to her doll, as she would to
herself, it knew no luxuries.

Now Mrs. Morpher, obeying a commendable
impulse, bought another doll and gave it to Mliss.
The child received it gravely and curiously. The
master on looking at it one day fancied he saw a
slight resemblance in its round red cheeks and
mild blue eyes to Clytemnestra. It became evident
before long that Mliss had also noticed the
same resemblance. Accordingly she hammered its
waxen head on the rocks when she was alone, and
sometimes dragged it with a string round its neck
to and from school. At other times, setting it up
on her desk, she made a pin-cushion of its patient
and inoffensive body. Whether this was done in
revenge of what she considered a second figurative
obtrusion of Clytie's excellences upon her, or
whether she had an intuitive appreciation of the
rites of certain other heathens, and, indulging in
that “Fetish” ceremony, imagined that the original
of her wax model would pine away and finally die, is
a metaphysical question I shall not now consider.

In spite of these moral vagaries, the master
could not help noticing in her different tasks the

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working of a quick, restless, and vigorous perception.
She knew neither the hesitancy nor the
doubts of childhood. Her answers in class were
always slightly dashed with audacity. Of course
she was not infallible. But her courage and daring
in passing beyond her own depth and that
of the floundering little swimmers around her, in
their minds outweighed all errors of judgment.
Children are not better than grown people in this
respect, I fancy; and whenever the little red hand
flashed above her desk, there was a wondering
silence, and even the master was sometimes oppressed
with a doubt of his own experience and
judgment.

Nevertheless, certain attributes which at first
amused and entertained his fancy began to afflict
him with grave doubts. He could not but see that
Mliss was revengeful, irreverent, and wilful. That
there was but one better quality which pertained
to her semi-savage disposition, — the faculty of
physical fortitude and self-sacrifice, and another,
though not always an attribute of the noble savage,—
Truth. Mliss was both fearless and sincere;
perhaps in such a character the adjectives were
synonymous.

The master had been doing some hard thinking
on this subject, and had arrived at that conclusion
quite common to all who think sincerely, that he
was generally the slave of his own prejudices,

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when he determined to call on the Rev. McSnagley
for advice. This decision was somewhat
humiliating to his pride, as he and McSnagley were
not friends. But he thought of Mliss, and the
evening of their first meeting; and perhaps with
a pardonable superstition that it was not chance
alone that had guided her wilful feet to the school-house,
and perhaps with a complacent consciousness
of the rare magnanimity of the act, he choked
back his dislike and went to McSnagley.

The reverend gentleman was glad to see him.
Moreover, he observed that the master was looking
“peartish,” and hoped he had got over the “neuralgy”
and “rheumatiz.” He himself had been
troubled with a dumb “ager” since last conference.
But he had learned to “rastle and pray.”

Pausing a moment to enable the master to write
his certain method of curing the dumb “ager”
upon the book and volume of his brain, Mr. McSnagley
proceeded to inquire after Sister Morpher.
“She is an adornment to Christewanity, and has a
likely growin' young family,” added Mr. McSnagley;
“and there 's that mannerly young gal, — so
well behaved, — Miss Clytie.” In fact, Clytie's
perfections seemed to affect him to such an extent
that he dwelt for several minutes upon them. The
master was doubly embarrassed. In the first place,
there was an enforced contrast with poor Mliss
in all this praise of Clytie. Secondly, there was

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something unpleasantly confidential in his tone of
speaking of Mrs. Morpher's earliest born. So that
the master, after a few futile efforts to say something
natural, found it convenient to recall another
engagement, and left without asking the
information required, but in his after reflections
somewhat unjustly giving the Rev. Mr. McSnagley
the full benefit of having refused it.

Perhaps this rebuff placed the master and pupil
once more in the close communion of old. The
child seemed to notice the change in the master's
manner, which had of late been constrained, and in
one of their long post-prandial walks she stopped
suddenly, and, mounting a stump, looked full in
his face with big, searching eyes. “You ain't mad?”
said she, with an interrogative shake of the black
braids. “No.” “Nor bothered?” “No.” “Nor
hungry?” (Hunger was to Mliss a sickness that
might attack a person at any moment.) “No.”
“Nor thinking of her?” “Of whom, Lissy?”
“That white girl.” (This was the latest epithet
invented by Mliss, who was a very dark brunette,
to express Clytemnestra.) “No.” “Upon your
word?” (A substitute for “Hope you 'll die!”
proposed by the master.) “Yes.” “And sacred
honor?” “Yes.” Then Mliss gave him a fierce
little kiss, and, hopping down, fluttered off. For
two or three days after that she condescended to
appear more like other children, and be, as she
expressed it, “good.”

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Two years had passed since the master's advent
at Smith's Pocket, and as his salary was not large,
and the prospects of Smith's Pocket eventually becoming
the capital of the State not entirely definite,
he contemplated a change. He had informed
the school trustees privately of his intentions, but,
educated young men of unblemished moral character
being scarce at that time, he consented to continue
his school term through the winter to early
spring. None else knew of his intention except
his one friend, a Dr. Duchesne, a young Creole
physician known to the people of Wingdam as
“Duchesny.” He never mentioned it to Mrs. Morpher,
Clytie, or any of his scholars. His reticence
was partly the result of a constitutional indisposition
to fuss, partly a desire to be spared the questions
and surmises of vulgar curiosity, and partly
that he never really believed he was going to do
anything before it was done.

He did not like to think of Mliss. It was a
selfish instinct, perhaps, which made him try to
fancy his feeling for the child was foolish, romantic,
and unpractical. He even tried to imagine
that she would do better under the control of an
older and sterner teacher. Then she was nearly
eleven, and in a few years, by the rules of Red
Mountain, would be a woman. He had done his
duty. After Smith's death he addressed letters to
Smith's relatives, and received one answer from a

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sister of Melissa's mother. Thanking the master,
she stated her intention of leaving the Atlantic
States for California with her husband in a few
months. This was a slight superstructure for the
airy castle which the master pictured for Mliss's
home, but it was easy to fancy that some loving,
sympathetic woman, with the claims of kindred,
might better guide her wayward nature. Yet, when
the master had read the letter, Mliss listened to it
carelessly, received it submissively, and afterwards
cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to
represent Clytemnestra, labelled “the white girl,”
to prevent mistakes, and impaled them upon the
outer walls of the school-house.

When the summer was about spent, and the
last harvest had been gathered in the valleys, the
master bethought him of gathering in a few ripened
shoots of the young idea, and of having his
Harvest-Home, or Examination. So the savans
and professionals of Smith's Pocket were gathered
to witness that time-honored custom of placing
timid children in a constrained position, and bullying
them as in a witness-box. As usual in such
cases, the most audacious and self-possessed were
the lucky recipients of the honors. The reader
will imagine that in the present instance Mliss
and Clytie were pre-eminent, and divided public
attention; Mliss with her clearness of material
perception and self-reliance, Clytie with her placid

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self-esteem and saint-like correctness of deportment.
The other little ones were timid and blundering.
Mliss's readiness and brilliancy, of course,
captivated the greatest number and provoked the
greatest applause. Mliss's antecedents had unconsciously
awakened the strongest sympathies of a
class whose athletic forms were ranged against the
walls, or whose handsome bearded faces looked in
at the windows. But Mliss's popularity was over-thrown
by an unexpected circumstance.

McSnagley had invited himself, and had been
going through the pleasing entertainment of frightening
the more timid pupils by the vaguest and most
ambiguous questions delivered in an impressive funereal
tone; and Mliss had soared into Astronomy,
and was tracking the course of our spotted ball
through space, and keeping time with the music of
the spheres, and defining the tethered orbits of
the planets, when McSnagley impressively arose.
“Meelissy! ye were speaking of the revolutions
of this yere yearth and the move-ments of the sun,
and I think ye said it had been a doing of it since
the creashun, eh?” Mliss nodded a scornful affirmative.
“Well, war that the truth?” said McSnagley,
folding his arms. “Yes,” said Mliss, shutting
up her little red lips tightly. The handsome outlines
at the windows peered further in the school-room,
and a saintly Raphael-face, with blond beard
and soft blue eyes, belonging to the biggest scamp

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in the diggings, turned toward the child and whispered,
“Stick to it, Mliss!” The reverend gentleman
heaved a deep sigh, and cast a compassionate
glance at the master, then at the children, and
then rested his look on Clytie. That young woman
softly elevated her round, white arm. Its seductive
curves were enhanced by a gorgeous and massive
specimen bracelet, the gift of one of her humblest
worshippers, worn in honor of the occasion.
There was a momentary silence. Clytie's round
cheeks were very pink and soft. Clytie's big eyes
were very bright and blue. Clytie's low-necked
white book-muslin rested softly on Clytie's white,
plump shoulders. Clytie looked at the master, and
the master nodded. Then Clytie spoke softly:—

“Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and
it obeyed him!” There was a low hum of applause
in the school-room, a triumphant expression
on McSnagley's face, a grave shadow on the master's,
and a comical look of disappointment reflected
from the windows. Mliss skimmed rapidly
over her Astronomy, and then shut the book with
a loud snap. A groan burst from McSnagley, an
expression of astonishment from the school-room,
a yell from the windows, as Mliss brought her red
fist down on the desk, with the emphatic declaration,—

“It 's a d—n lie. I don't believe it!”

CHAPTER IV.

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The long wet season had drawn near its close.
Signs of spring were visible in the swelling buds
and rushing torrents. The pine-forests exhaled
the fresher spicery. The azaleas were already budding,
the Ceanothus getting ready its lilac livery
for spring. On the green upland which climbed
Red Mountain at its southern aspect the long
spike of the monk's-hood shot up from its broad-leaved
stool, and once more shook its dark-blue
bells. Again the billow above Smith's grave was
soft and green, its crest just tossed with the foam
of daisies and buttercups. The little graveyard
had gathered a few new dwellers in the past year,
and the mounds were placed two by two by the
little paling until they reached Smith's grave, and
there there was but one. General superstition
had shunned it, and the plot beside Smith was
vacant.

There had been several placards posted about
the town, intimating that, at a certain period, a
celebrated dramatic company would perform, for
a few days, a series of “side-splitting” and
“screaming farces”; that, alternating pleasantly
with this, there would be some melodrama and a
grand divertisement, which would include singing,

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dancing, etc. These announcements occasioned a
great fluttering among the little folk, and were
the theme of much excitement and great speculation
among the master's scholars. The master
had promised Mliss, to whom this sort of thing
was sacred and rare, that she should go, and on
that momentous evening the master and Mliss
“assisted.”

The performance was the prevalent style of
heavy mediocrity; the melodrama was not bad
enough to laugh at nor good enough to excite.
But the master, turning wearily to the child, was
astonished, and felt something like self-accusation
in noticing the peculiar effect upon her excitable
nature. The red blood flushed in her cheeks at
each stroke of her panting little heart. Her small
passionate lips were slightly parted to give vent
to her hurried breath. Her widely opened lids
threw up and arched her black eyebrows. She did
not laugh at the dismal comicalities of the funny
man, for Mliss seldom laughed. Nor was she discreetly
affected to the delicate extremes of the
corner of a white handkerchief, as was the tender-hearted
“Clytie,” who was talking with her “feller”
and ogling the master at the same moment. But
when the performance was over, and the green
curtain fell on the little stage, Mliss drew a long
deep breath, and turned to the master's grave face
with a half-apologetic smile and wearied gesture.

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Then she said, “Now take me home!” and dropped
the lids of her black eyes, as if to dwell once more
in fancy on the mimic stage.

On their way to Mrs. Morpher's the master
thought proper to ridicule the whole performance.
Now he should n't wonder if Mliss thought that
the young lady who acted so beautifully was
really in earnest, and in love with the gentleman
who wore such fine clothes. Well, if she were in
love with him it was a very unfortunate thing!
“Why?” said Mliss, with an upward sweep of the
drooping lid. “Oh! well, he could n't support his
wife at his present salary, and pay so much a week
for his fine clothes, and then they would n't receive
as much wages if they were married as if
they were merely lovers, — that is,” added the
master, “if they are not already married to somebody
else; but I think the husband of the pretty
young countess takes the tickets at the door, or
pulls up the curtain, or snuffs the candles, or does
something equally refined and elegant. As to the
young man with nice clothes, which are really nice
now, and must cost at least two and a half or
three dollars, not to speak of that mantle of
red drugget which I happen to know the price of,
for I bought some of it for my room once, — as to
this young man, Lissy, he is a pretty good fellow,
and if he does drink occasionally, I don't think
people ought to take advantage of it and give him

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black eyes and throw him in the mud. Do you?
I am sure he might owe me two dollars and a half
a long time, before I would throw it up in his face,
as the fellow did the other night at Wingdam.”

Mliss had taken his hand in both of hers and
was trying to look in his eyes, which the young
man kept as resolutely averted. Mliss had a
faint idea of irony, indulging herself sometimes in
a species of sardonic humor, which was equally
visible in her actions and her speech. But the
young man continued in this strain until they had
reached Mrs. Morpher's, and he had deposited
Mliss in her maternal charge. Waiving the invitation
of Mrs. Morpher to refreshment and rest, and
shading his eyes with his hand to keep out the
blue-eyed Clytemnestra's siren glances, he excused
himself, and went home.

For two or three days after the advent of the
dramatic company, Mliss was late at school, and
the master's usual Friday afternoon ramble was
for once omitted, owing to the absence of his
trustworthy guide. As he was putting away his
books and preparing to leave the school-house, a
small voice piped at his side, “Please, sir?” The
master turned and there stood Aristides Morpher.

“Well, my little man,” said the master, impatiently,
“what is it? quick!”

“Please, sir, me and `Kerg' thinks that Mliss
is going to run away agin.”

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“What 's that, sir?” said the master, with that
unjust testiness with which we always receive disagreeable
news.

“Why, sir, she don't stay home any more, and
`Kerg' and me see her talking with one of those
actor fellers, and she 's with him now; and please,
sir, yesterday she told `Kerg' and me she could
make a speech as well as Miss Cellerstina Montmoressy,
and she spouted right off by heart,” and
the little fellow paused in a collapsed condition.

“What actor?” asked the master.

“Him as wears the shiny hat. And hair. And
gold pin. And gold chain,” said the just Aristides,
putting periods for commas to eke out his breath.

The master put on his gloves and hat, feeling an
unpleasant tightness in his chest and thorax, and
walked out in the road. Aristides trotted along
by his side, endeavoring to keep pace with his
short legs to the master's strides, when the master
stopped suddenly, and Aristides bumped up against
him. “Where were they talking?” asked the master,
as if continuing the conversation.

“At the Arcade,” said Aristides.

When they reached the main street the master
paused. “Run down home,” said he to the boy.
“If Mliss is there, come to the Arcade and tell me.
If she is n't there, stay home; run!” And off
trotted the short-legged Aristides.

The Arcade was just across the way, — a long,

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rambling building containing a bar-room, billiard-room,
and restaurant. As the young man crossed
the plaza he noticed that two or three of the passers-by
turned and looked after him. He looked at his
clothes, took out his handkerchief and wiped his
face, before he entered the bar-room. It contained
the usual number of loungers, who stared at him as
he entered. One of them looked at him so fixedly
and with such a strange expression that the master
stopped and looked again, and then saw it was only
his own reflection in a large mirror. This made the
master think that perhaps he was a little excited,
and so he took up a copy of the Red Mountain
Banner from one of the tables, and tried to recover
his composure by reading the column of advertisements.

He then walked through the bar-room, through
the restaurant, and into the billiard-room. The
child was not there. In the latter apartment a
person was standing by one of the tables with a
broad-brimmed glazed hat on his head. The master
recognized him as the agent of the dramatic
company; he had taken a dislike to him at their
first meeting, from the peculiar fashion of wearing
his beard and hair. Satisfied that the object of his
search was not there, he turned to the man with a
glazed hat. He had noticed the master, but tried
that common trick of unconsciousness, in which
vulgar natures always fail. Balancing a

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billiard-cue in his hand, he pretended to play with a ball
in the centre of the table. The master stood opposite
to him until he raised his eyes; when their
glances met, the master walked up to him.

He had intended to avoid a scene or quarrel, but
when he began to speak, something kept rising in
his throat and retarded his utterance, and his own
voice frightened him, it sounded so distant, low,
and resonant. “I understand,” he began, “that
Melissa Smith, an orphan, and one of my scholars,
has talked with you about adopting your profession.
Is that so?”

The man with the glazed hat leaned over the
table, and made an imaginary shot, that sent the
ball spinning round the cushions. Then walking
round the table he recovered the ball and placed
it upon the spot. This duty discharged, getting
ready for another shot, he said, —

“S'pose she has?”

The master choked up again, but, squeezing the
cushion of the table in his gloved hand, he went
on: —

“If you are a gentleman, I have only to tell you
that I am her guardian, and responsible for her career.
You know as well as I do the kind of life
you offer her. As you may learn of any one here,
I have already brought her out of an existence
worse than death, — out of the streets and the contamination
of vice. I am trying to do so again.

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

Let us talk like men. She has neither father,
mother, sister, or brother. Are you seeking to give
her an equivalent for these?”

The man with the glazed hat examined the point
of his cue, and then looked around for somebody
to enjoy the joke with him.

“I know that she is a strange, wilful girl,” continued
the master, “but she is better than she was.
I believe that I have some influence over her still.
I beg and hope, therefore, that you will take no
further steps in this matter, but as a man, as a gentleman,
leave her to me. I am willing —” But
here something rose again in the master's throat,
and the sentence remained unfinished.

The man with the glazed hat, mistaking the
master's silence, raised his head with a coarse,
brutal laugh, and said in a loud voice, —

“Want her yourself, do you? That cock won't
fight here, young man!”

The insult was more in the tone than the words,
more in the glance than tone, and more in the
man's instinctive nature than all these. The
best appreciable rhetoric to this kind of animal is
a blow. The master felt this, and, with his pent-up,
nervous energy finding expression in the one
act, he struck the brute full in his grinning face.
The blow sent the glazed hat one way and the cue
another, and tore the glove and skin from the
master's hand from knuckle to joint. It opened

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

up the corners of the fellow's mouth, and spoilt
the peculiar shape of his beard for some time to
come.

There was a shout, an imprecation, a scuffle, and
the trampling of many feet. Then the crowd
parted right and left, and two sharp quick reports
followed each other in rapid succession. Then
they closed again about his opponent, and the master
was standing alone. He remembered picking
bits of burning wadding from his coat-sleeve with
his left hand. Some one was holding his other
hand. Looking at it, he saw it was still bleeding
from the blow, but his fingers were clenched
around the handle of a glittering knife. He could
not remember when or how he got it.

The man who was holding his hand was Mr.
Morpher. He hurried the master to the door, but
the master held back, and tried to tell him as well
as he could with his parched throat about “Mliss.”
“It 's all right, my boy,” said Mr. Morpher. “She 's
home!” And they passed out into the street together.
As they walked along Mr. Morpher said
that Mliss had come running into the house a few
moments before, and had dragged him out, saying
that somebody was trying to kill the master at the
Arcade. Wishing to be alone, the master promised
Mr. Morpher that he would not seek the Agent
again that night, and parted from him, taking the
road toward the school-house. He was surprised

[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]

in nearing it to find the door open, — still more
surprised to find Mliss sitting there.

The master's nature, as I have hinted before,
had, like most sensitive organizations, a selfish
basis. The brutal taunt thrown out by his late
adversary still rankled in his heart. It was possible,
he thought, that such a construction might
be put upon his affection for the child, which
at best was foolish and Quixotic. Besides, had
she not voluntarily abnegated his authority and
affection? And what had everybody else said
about her? Why should he alone combat the
opinion of all, and be at last obliged tacitly to
confess the truth of all they had predicted? And
he had been a participant in a low bar-room fight
with a common boor, and risked his life, to prove
what? What had he proved? Nothing? What
would the people say? What would his friends
say? What would McSnagley say?

In his self-accusation the last person he should
have wished to meet was Mliss. He entered the
door, and, going up to his desk, told the child, in a
few cold words, that he was busy, and wished to
be alone. As she rose he took her vacant seat, and,
sitting down, buried his head in his hands. When
he looked up again she was still standing there.
She was looking at his face with an anxious expression.

“Did you kill him?” she asked.

[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]

“No!” said the master.

“That 's what I gave you the knife for!” said
the child, quickly.

“Gave me the knife?” repeated the master, in
bewilderment.

“Yes, gave you the knife. I was there under the
bar. Saw you hit him. Saw you both fall. He
dropped his old knife. I gave it to you. Why
did n't you stick him?” said Mliss rapidly, with an
expressive twinkle of the black eyes and a gesture
of the little red hand.

The master could only look his astonishment.

“Yes,” said Mliss. “If you 'd asked me, I 'd
told you I was off with the play-actors. Why
was I off with the play-actors? Because you
would n't tell me you was going away. I knew
it. I heard you tell the Doctor so. I was n't
a goin' to stay here alone with those Morphers.
I 'd rather die first.”

With a dramatic gesture which was perfectly
consistent with her character, she drew from her
bosom a few limp green leaves, and, holding them
out at arm's-length, said in her quick vivid way,
and in the queer pronunciation of her old life,
which she fell into when unduly excited, —

“That 's the poison plant you said would kill
me. I 'll go with the play-actors, or I 'll eat this
and die here. I don't care which. I won't stay
here, where they hate and despise me! Neither

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

would you let me, if you did n't hate and despise
me too!”

The passionate little breast heaved, and two big
tears peeped over the edge of Mliss's eyelids, but
she whisked them away with the corner of her
apron as if they had been wasps.

“If you lock me up in jail,” said Mliss, fiercely,
“to keep me from the play-actors, I 'll poison
myself. Father killed himself, — why should n't
I? You said a mouthful of that root would kill
me, and I always carry it here,” and she struck
her breast with her elenched fist.

The master thought of the vacant plot beside
Smith's grave, and of the passionate little figure
before him. Seizing her hands in his and looking
full into her truthful eyes, he said, —

“Lissy, will you go with me?”

The child put her arms around his neck, and
said joyfully, “Yes.”

“But now — to-night?”

“To-night.”

And, hand in hand, they passed into the road,—
the narrow road that had once brought her
weary feet to the master's door, and which it
seemed she should not tread again alone. The
stars glittered brightly above them. For good or
ill the lesson had been learned, and behind them
the school of Red Mountain closed upon them forever.

p568-179

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The year of grace 1797 passed away on the
coast of California in a southwesterly gale.
The little bay of San Carlos, albeit sheltered by
the headlands of the blessed Trinity, was rough
and turbulent; its foam clung quivering to the
seaward wall of the Mission garden; the air
was filled with flying sand and spume, and as
the Señor Comandante, Hermenegildo Salvatierra,
looked from the deep embrasured window of the
Presidio guard-room, he felt the salt breath of the
distant sea buffet a color into his smoke-dried
cheeks.

The Commander, I have said, was gazing thoughtfully
from the window of the guard-room. He
may have been reviewing the events of the year
now about to pass away. But, like the garrison
at the Presidio, there was little to review;
the year, like its predecessors, had been uneventful, —
the days had slipped by in a delicious monotony
of simple duties, unbroken by incident
or interruption. The regularly recurring feasts
and saints' days, the half-yearly courier from San
Diego, the rare transport-ship and rarer foreign

[figure description] Page 167.[end figure description]

vessel, were the mere details of his patriarchal
life. If there was no achievement, there was certainly
no failure. Abundant harvests and patient
industry amply supplied the wants of Presidio and
Mission. Isolated from the family of nations, the
wars which shook the world concerned them not
so much as the last earthquake; the struggle that
emancipated their sister colonies on the other side
of the continent to them had no suggestiveness.
In short, it was that glorious Indian summer of
California history, around which so much poetical
haze still lingers, — that bland, indolent autumn
of Spanish rule, so soon to be followed by the
wintry storms of Mexican independence and the
reviving spring of American conquest.

The Commander turned from the window and
walked toward the fire that burned brightly on
the deep oven-like hearth. A pile of copy-books,
the work of the Presidio school, lay on the table.
As he turned over the leaves with a paternal
interest, and surveyed the fair round Scripture
text, — the first pious pot-hooks of the pupils of
San Carlos, — an audible commentary fell from
his lips: “`Abimelech took her from Abraham' —
ah, little one, excellent!— `Jacob sent to see his
brother' — body of Christ! that up-stroke of
thine, Paquita, is marvellous; the Governor shall
see it!” A film of honest pride dimmed the Commander's
left eye, — the right, alas! twenty years

[figure description] Page 168.[end figure description]

before had been sealed by an Indian arrow. He
rubbed it softly with the sleeve of his leather
jacket, and continued: “`The Ishmaelites having
arrived — ”'

He stopped, for there was a step in the courtyard,
a foot upon the threshold, and a stranger
entered. With the instinct of an old soldier,
the Commander, after one glance at the intruder,
turned quickly toward the wall, where his trusty
Toledo hung, or should have been hanging. But
it was not there, and as he recalled that the last
time he had seen that weapon it was being ridden
up and down the gallery by Pepito, the infant son
of Bautista, the tortilio-maker, he blushed and
then contented himself with frowning upon the
intruder.

But the stranger's air, though irreverent, was
decidedly peaceful. He was unarmed, and wore
the ordinary cape of tarpauling and sea-boots of a
mariner. Except a villanous smell of codfish,
there was little about him that was peculiar.

His name, as he informed the Commander, in
Spanish that was more fluent than elegant or precise, —
his name was Peleg Scudder. He was master
of the schooner “General Court,” of the port
of Salem, in Massachusetts, on a trading-voyage
to the South Seas, but now driven by stress of
weather into the bay of San Carlos. He begged
permission to ride out the gale under the

[figure description] Page 169.[end figure description]

headlands of the blessed Trinity, and no more. Water
he did not need, having taken in a supply at
Bodega. He knew the strict surveillance of the
Spanish port regulations in regard to foreign vessels,
and would do nothing against the severe discipline
and good order of the settlement. There
was a slight tinge of sarcasm in his tone as he
glanced toward the desolate parade-ground of the
Presidio and the open unguarded gate. The fact
was that the sentry, Felipe Gomez, had discreetly
retired to shelter at the beginning of the storm,
and was then sound asleep in the corridor.

The Commander hesitated. The port regulations
were severe, but he was accustomed to exercise
individual authority, and beyond an old order
issued ten years before, regarding the American
ship “Columbia,” there was no precedent to guide
him. The storm was severe, and a sentiment of
humanity urged him to grant the stranger's request.
It is but just to the Commander to say, that his
inability to enforce a refusal did not weigh with
his decision. He would have denied with equal
disregard of consequences that right to a seventy-four
gun ship which he now yielded so gracefully
to this Yankee trading-schooner. He stipulated
only, that there should be no communication
between the ship and shore. “For yourself,
Señor Captain,” he continued, “accept my hospitality.
The fort is yours as long as you shall

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

grace it with your distinguished presence”; and
with old-fashioned courtesy, he made the semblance
of withdrawing from the guard-room.

Master Peleg Scudder smiled as he thought of
the half-dismantled fort, the two mouldy brass
cannon, cast in Manila a century previous, and the
shiftless garrison. A wild thought of accepting
the Commander's offer literally, conceived in the
reckless spirit of a man who never let slip an
offer for trade, for a moment filled his brain, but a
timely reflection of the commercial unimportance
of the transaction checked him. He only took
a capacious quid of tobacco, as the Commander
gravely drew a settle before the fire, and in honor
of his guest untied the black silk handkerchief that
bound his grizzled brows.

What passed between Salvatierra and his guest
that night it becomes me not, as a grave chronicler
of the salient points of history, to relate. I have
said that Master Peleg Scudder was a fluent talker,
and under the influence of divers strong waters,
furnished by his host, he became still more loquacious.
And think of a man with a twenty years'
budget of gossip! The Commander learned, for
the first time, how Great Britain lost her colonies;
of the French Revolution; of the great Napoleon,
whose achievements, perhaps, Peleg colored more
highly than the Commander's superiors would have
liked. And when Peleg turned questioner, the

[figure description] Page 171.[end figure description]

Commander was at his mercy. He gradually made
himself master of the gossip of the Mission and
Presidio, the “small-beer” chronicles of that pastoral
age, the conversion of the heathen, the Presidio
schools, and even asked the Commander how
he had lost his eye! It is said that at this point
of the conversation Master Peleg produced from
about his person divers small trinkets, kick-shaws
and new-fangled trifles, and even forced some of
them upon his host. It is further alleged that
under the malign influence of Peleg and several
glasses of aguardiente, the Commander lost somewhat
of his decorum, and behaved in a manner
unseemly for one in his position, reciting high-flown
Spanish poetry, and even piping in a thin,
high voice, divers madrigals and heathen canzonets
of an amorous complexion; chiefly in regard to a
“little one” who was his, the Commander's, “soul”!
These allegations, perhaps unworthy the notice of
a serious chronicler, should be received with great
caution, and are introduced here as simple hearsay.
That the Commander, however, took a handkerchief
and attempted to show his guest the mysteries of
the sembi cuacua, capering in an agile but indecorous
manner about the apartment, has been
denied. Enough for the purposes of this narrative,
that at midnight Peleg assisted his host to
bed with many protestations of undying friendship,
and then, as the gale had abated, took his

[figure description] Page 172.[end figure description]

leave of the Presidio and hurried aboard the
“General Court.” When the day broke the ship
was gone.

I know not if Peleg kept his word with his
host. It is said that the holy fathers at the Mission
that night heard a loud chanting in the plaza,
as of the heathens singing psalms through their
noses; that for many days after an odor of salt
codfish prevailed in the settlement; that a dozen
hard nutmegs, which were unfit for spice or seed,
were found in the possession of the wife of the
baker, and that several bushels of shoe-pegs, which
bore a pleasing resemblance to oats, but were quite
inadequate to the purposes of provender, were
discovered in the stable of the blacksmith. But
when the reader reflects upon the sacredness of a
Yankee trader's word, the stringent discipline of
the Spanish port regulations, and the proverbial
indisposition of my countrymen to impose upon
the confidence of a simple people, he will at once
reject this part of the story.

A roll of drums, ushering in the year 1798,
awoke the Commander. The sun was shining
brightly, and the storm had ceased. He sat up in
bed, and through the force of habit rubbed his left
eye. As the remembrance of the previous night
came back to him, he jumped from his couch and
ran to the window. There was no ship in the

[figure description] Page 173.[end figure description]

bay. A sudden thought seemed to strike him, and
he rubbed both of his eyes. Not content with
this, he consulted the metallic mirror which hung
beside his crucifix. There was no mistake; the
Commander had a visible second eye, — a right
one, — as good, save for the purposes of vision, as
the left.

Whatever might have been the true secret of this
transformation, but one opinion prevailed at San
Carlos. It was one of those rare miracles vouchsafed
a pious Catholic community as an evidence
to the heathen, through the intercession of the
blessed San Carlos himself. That their beloved
Commander, the temporal defender of the Faith,
should be the recipient of this miraculous manifestation
was most fit and seemly. The Commander
himself was reticent; he could not tell a
falsehood, — he dared not tell the truth. After all,
if the good folk of San Carlos believed that the
powers of his right eye were actually restored,
was it wise and discreet for him to undeceive
them? For the first time in his life the Commander
thought of policy, — for the first time he
quoted that text which has been the lure of so
many well-meaning but easy Christians, of being
“all things to all men.” Infeliz Hermenegildo
Salvatierra!

For by degrees an ominous whisper crept through
the little settlement. The Right Eye of the

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

Commander, although miraculous, seemed to exercise a
baleful effect upon the beholder. No one could
look at it without winking. It was cold, hard,
relentless and unflinching. More than that, it
seemed to be endowed with a dreadful prescience,—
a faculty of seeing through and into the inarticulate
thoughts of those it looked upon. The soldiers
of the garrison obeyed the eye rather than
the voice of their commander, and answered his
glance rather than his lips in questioning. The
servants could not evade the ever-watchful, but
cold attention that seemed to pursue them. The
children of the Presidio School smirched their
copy-books under the awful supervision, and poor
Paquita, the prize pupil, failed utterly in that
marvellous up-stroke when her patron stood beside
her. Gradually distrust, suspicion, self-accusation,
and timidity took the place of trust, confidence,
and security throughout San Carlos. Whenever the
Right Eye of the Commander fell, a shadow fell
with it.

Nor was Salvatierra entirely free from the baleful
influence of his miraculous acquisition. Unconscious
of its effect upon others, he only saw in
their actions evidence of certain things that the
crafty Peleg had hinted on that eventful New
Year's eve. His most trusty retainers stammered,
blushed, and faltered before him. Self-accusations,
confessions of minor faults and delinquencies, or

[figure description] Page 175.[end figure description]

extravagant excuses and apologies met his mildest
inquiries. The very children that he loved — his
pet pupil, Paquita — seemed to be conscious of
some hidden sin. The result of this constant irritation
showed itself more plainly. For the first
half-year the Commander's voice and eye were at
variance. He was still kind, tender, and thoughtful
in speech. Gradually, however, his voice took
upon itself the hardness of his glance and its
sceptical, impassive quality, and as the year again
neared its close it was plain that the Commander
had fitted himself to the eye, and not the eye to
the Commander.

It may be surmised that these changes did not
escape the watchful solicitude of the Fathers. Indeed,
the few who were first to ascribe the right
eye of Salvatierra to miraculous origin and the
special grace of the blessed San Carlos, now talked
openly of witchcraft and the agency of Luzbel,
the evil one. It would have fared ill with Hermenegildo
Salvatierra had he been aught but Commander
or amenable to local authority. But the
reverend father, Friar Manuel de Cortes, had no
power over the political executive, and all attempts
at spiritual advice failed signally. He retired baffled
and confused from his first interview with the
Commander, who seemed now to take a grim satisfaction
in the fateful power of his glance. The
holy father contradicted himself, exposed the

[figure description] Page 176.[end figure description]

fallacies of his own arguments, and even, it is asserted,
committed himself to several undoubted
heresies. When the Commander stood up at mass,
if the officiating priest caught that sceptical and
searching eye, the service was inevitably ruined.
Even the power of the Holy Church seemed to be
lost, and the last hold upon the affections of the
people and the good order of the settlement departed
from San Carlos.

As the long dry summer passed, the low hills
that surrounded the white walls of the Presidio
grew more and more to resemble in hue the leathern
jacket of the Commander, and Nature herself
seemed to have borrowed his dry, hard glare. The
earth was cracked and seamed with drought; a
blight had fallen upon the orchards and vineyards,
and the rain, long delayed and ardently prayed for,
came not. The sky was as tearless as the right
eye of the Commander. Murmurs of discontent,
insubordination, and plotting among the Indians
reached his ears; he only set his teeth the more
firmly, tightened the knot of his black silk handkerchief,
and looked up his Toledo.

The last day of the year 1798 found the Commander
sitting, at the hour of evening prayers,
alone in the guard-room. He no longer attended
the services of the Holy Church, but crept away
at such times to some solitary spot, where he spent
the interval in silent meditation. The firelight

[figure description] Page 177.[end figure description]

played upon the low beams and rafters, but left
the bowed figure of Salvatierra in darkness. Sitting
thus, he felt a small hand touch his arm, and,
looking down, saw the figure of Paquita, his little
Indian pupil, at his knee. “Ah, littlest of all,”
said the Commander, with something of his old
tenderness, lingering over the endearing diminutives
of his native speech, — “sweet one, what
doest thou here? Art thou not afraid of him
whom every one shuns and fears?”

“No,” said the little Indian, readily, “not in the
dark. I hear your voice, — the old voice; I feel
your touch, — the old touch; but I see not your
eye, Señor Comandante. That only I fear, — and
that, O Señor, O my father,” said the child, lifting
her little arms towards his, — “that I know
is not thine own!”

The Commander shuddered and turned away.
Then, recovering himself, he kissed Paquita gravely
on the forehead and bade her retire. A few
hours later, when silence had fallen upon the Presidio,
he sought his own couch and slept peacefully.

At about the middle watch of the night a
dusky figure crept through the low embrasure of
the Commander's apartment. Other figures were
flitting through the parade-ground, which the Commander
might have seen had he not slept so quietly.
The intruder stepped noiselessly to the couch

[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]

and listened to the sleeper's deep-drawn inspiration.
Something glittered in the firelight as the savage
lifted his arm; another moment and the sore perplexities
of Hermenegildo Salvatierra would have
been over, when suddenly the savage started and
fell back in a paroxysm of terror. The Commander
slept peacefully, but his right eye, widely
opened, fixed and unaltered, glared coldly on the
would-be assassin. The man fell to the earth in a
fit, and the noise awoke the sleeper.

To rise to his feet, grasp his sword, and deal
blows thick and fast upon the mutinous savages
who now thronged the room, was the work of a moment.
Help opportunely arrived, and the undisciplined
Indians were speedily driven beyond the
walls, but in the scuffle the Commander received
a blow upon his right eye, and, lifting his hand
to that mysterious organ, it was gone. Never
again was it found, and never again, for bale or
bliss, did it adorn the right orbit of the Commander.

With it passed away the spell that had fallen
upon San Carlos. The rain returned to invigorate
the languid soil, harmony was restored between
priest and soldier, the green grass presently waved
over the sere hillsides, the children flocked again
to the side of their martial preceptor, a Te Deum
was sung in the Mission Church, and pastoral content
once more smiled upon the gentle valleys of

[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]

San Carlos. And far southward crept the “General
Court” with its master, Peleg Scudder, trafficking in
beads and peltries with the Indians, and offering
glass eyes, wooden legs, and other Boston notions
to the chiefs.

p568-193

[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]

IT was near the close of an October day that I
began to be disagreeably conscious of the Sacramento
Valley. I had been riding since sunrise,
and my course through the depressing monotony
of the long level landscape affected me more like
a dull dyspeptic dream than a business journey,
performed under that sincerest of natural phenomena, —
a California sky. The recurring stretches of
brown and baked fields, the gaping fissures in the
dusty trail, the hard outline of the distant hills,
and the herds of slowly moving cattle, seemed like
features of some glittering stereoscopic picture that
never changed. Active exercise might have removed
this feeling, but my horse by some subtle
instinct had long since given up all ambitious
effort, and had lapsed into a dogged trot.

It was autumn, but not the season suggested to
the Atlantic reader under that title. The sharply
defined boundaries of the wet and dry seasons were
prefigured in the clear outlines of the distant hills.
In the dry atmosphere the decay of vegetation was

[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]

too rapid for the slow hectic which overtakes an
Eastern landscape, or else Nature was too practical
for such thin disguises. She merely turned the
Hippocratic face to the spectator, with the old diagnosis
of Death in her sharp, contracted features.

In the contemplation of such a prospect there
was little to excite any but a morbid fancy. There
were no clouds in the flinty blue heavens, and the
setting of the sun was accompanied with as little
ostentation as was consistent with the dryly practical
atmosphere. Darkness soon followed, with a
rising wind, which increased as the shadows deepened
on the plain. The fringe of alder by the
watercourse began to loom up as I urged my horse
forward. A half-hour's active spurring brought
me to a corral, and a little beyond a house, so low
and broad it seemed at first sight to be half buried
in the earth.

My second impression was that it had grown out
of the soil, like some monstrous vegetable, its
dreary proportions were so in keeping with the
vast prospect. There were no recesses along its
roughly boarded walls for vagrant and unprofitable
shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. No
projection for the wind by night to grow musical
over, to wail, whistle, or whisper to; only a long
wooden shelf containing a chilly-looking tin basin,
and a bar of soap. Its uncurtained windows were
red with the sinking sun, as though bloodshot and

[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]

inflamed from a too long unlidded existence. The
tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly closed
against the rattling wind.

To avoid being confounded with this familiar
element, I walked to the rear of the house, which
was connected with a smaller building by a slight
platform. A grizzled, hard-faced old man was
standing there, and met my salutation with a look
of inquiry, and, without speaking, led the way to
the principal room. As I entered, four young men,
who were reclining by the fire, slightly altered
their attitudes of perfect repose, but beyond that
betrayed neither curiosity nor interest. A hound
started from a dark corner with a growl, but was
immediately kicked by the old man into obscurity,
and silenced again. I can't tell why, but I instantly
received the impression that for a long time
the group by the fire had not uttered a word or
moved a muscle. Taking a seat, I briefly stated
my business.

Was a United States surveyor. Had come on
account of the Espíritu Santo Rancho. Wanted
to correct the exterior boundaries of township
lines, so as to connect with the near exteriors of
private grants. There had been some intervention
to the old survey by a Mr. Tryan who had preempted
adjacent — “settled land warrants,” interrupted
the old man. “Ah, yes! Land Warrants,—
and then this was Mr. Tryan?”

[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]

I had spoken mechanically, for I was preoccupied
in connecting other public lines with private
surveys, as I looked in his face. It was certainly
a hard face, and reminded me of the singular effect
of that mining operation known as “ground sluicing”;
the harder lines of underlying character
were exposed, and what were once plastic curves
and soft outlines were obliterated by some powerful
agency.

There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the
prevailing atmosphere of the valley, as he launched
into an ex parte statement of the contest, with a
fluency, which, like the wind without, showed frequent
and unrestrained expression. He told me—
what I had already learned — that the boundary
line of the old Spanish grant was a creek, described
in the loose phraseology of the deseño as beginning
in the valda or skirt of the hill, its precise location
long the subject of litigation. I listened and
answered with little interest, for my mind was still
distracted by the wind which swept violently by
the house, as well as by his odd face, which was
again reflected in the resemblance that the silent
group by the fire bore toward him. He was still
talking, and the wind was yet blowing, when my
confused attention was aroused by a remark addressed
to the recumbent figures.

“Now, then, which on ye 'll see the stranger up
the creek to Altascar's, to-morrow?”

[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]

There was a general movement of opposition in
the group, but no decided answer.

“Kin you go, Kerg?”

“Who 's to look up stock in Strarberry perar-ie?”

This seemed to imply a negative, and the old
man turned to another hopeful, who was pulling
the fur from a mangy bear-skin on which he was
lying, with an expression as though it were somebody's
hair.

“Well, Tom, wot 's to hinder you from goin'?”

“Man 's goin' to Brown's store at sun-up, and I
s'pose I 've got to pack her and the baby agin.”

I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate
youth exhibited for the filial duty into which he
had been evidently beguiled, was one of the finest
things I had ever seen.

“Wise?”

Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively
thrust a worn and patched boot into the discourse.
The old man flushed quickly.

“I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the
last time you war down the river.”

“Said he would n't without'en order. Said it
was like pulling gum-teeth to get the money from
you even then.”

There was a grim smile at this local hit at the
old man's parsimony, and Wise, who was clearly
the privileged wit of the family, sank back in honorable
retirement.

[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]

“Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you are
n't pestered with wimmin and children, p'r'aps
you 'll go,” said Tryan, with a nervous twitching,
intended for a smile, about a mouth not remarkably
mirthful.

Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows, and said
shortly, —

“Got no saddle.”

“Wot 's gone of your saddle?”

“Kerg, there,” — indicating his brother with a
look such as Cain might have worn at the sacrifice.

“You lie!” returned Kerg, cheerfully.

Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing
it around his head and gazing furiously in
the hard young faces which fearlessly met his own.
But it was only for a moment; his arm soon
dropped by his side, and a look of hopeless fatality
crossed his face. He allowed me to take the chair
from his hand, and I was trying to pacify him by
the assurance that I required no guide, when the
irrepressible Wise again lifted his voice:—

“Theer 's George comin'! why don't ye ask him?
He 'll go and introduce you to Don Fernandy's
darter, too, ef you ain't pertickler.”

The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently
had some domestic allusion (the general
tendency of rural pleasantry), was followed by a
light step on the platform, and the young man entered.
Seeing a stranger present, he stopped and

[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]

colored; made a shy salute and colored again, and
then, drawing a box from the corner, sat down, his
hands clasped lightly together and his very handsome
bright blue eyes turned frankly on mine.

Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic
impression he made upon me, and I took
it upon myself to ask his company as guide, and
he cheerfully assented. But some domestic duty
called him presently away.

The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no
longer resisting the prevailing influence, I silently
watched the spirting flame, listening to the wind
which continually shook the tenement. Besides
the one chair which had acquired a new importance
in my eyes, I presently discovered a crazy
table in one corner, with an ink-bottle and pen; the
latter in that greasy state of decomposition peculiar
to country taverns and farm-houses. A goodly
array of rifles and double-barrelled guns stocked
the corner; half a dozen saddles and blankets lay
near, with a mild flavor of the horse about them.
Some deer and bear skins completed the inventory.
As I sat there, with the silent group around me,
the shadowy gloom within and the dominant wind
without, I found it difficult to believe I had ever
known a different existence. My profession had
often led me to wilder scenes, but rarely among
those whose unrestrained habits and easy unconsciousness
made me feel so lonely and

[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]

uncomfortable. I shrank closer to myself, not without grave
doubts — which I think occur naturally to people
in like situations — that this was the general rule
of humanity, and I was a solitary and somewhat
gratuitous exception.

It was a relief when a laconic announcement of
supper by a weak-eyed girl caused a general movement
in the family. We walked across the dark
platform, which led to another low-ceiled room.
Its entire length was occupied by a table, at the
farther end of which a weak-eyed woman was already
taking her repast, as she, at the same time,
gave nourishment to a weak-eyed baby. As the
formalities of introduction had been dispensed
with, and as she took no notice of me, I was enabled
to slip into a seat without discomposing or interrupting
her. Tryan extemporized a grace, and the
attention of the family became absorbed in bacon,
potatoes, and dried apples.

The meal was a sincere one. Gentle gurglings
at the upper end of the table often betrayed the
presence of the “wellspring of pleasure.” The
conversation generally referred to the labors of the
day, and comparing notes as to the whereabouts
of missing stock. Yet the supper was such a vast
improvement upon the previous intellectual feast,
that when a chance allusion of mine to the business
of my visit brought out the elder Tryan, the
interest grew quite exciting. I remember he

[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]

inveighed bitterly against the system of ranch-holding
by the “greasers,” as he was pleased to term
the native Californians. As the same ideas have
been sometimes advanced under more pretentious
circumstances, they may be worthy of record.

“Look at 'em holdin' the finest grazin' land that
ever lay outer doors? Whar 's the papers for it?
Was it grants? Mighty fine grants, — most of
'em made arter the 'Merrikans got possession.
More fools the 'Merrikans for lettin' 'em hold 'em.
Wat paid for 'em? 'Merrikan blood and money.

“Did n't they oughter have suthin out of their
native country? Wot for? Did they ever improve?
Got a lot of yaller-skinned diggers, not
so sensible as niggers to look arter stock, and they
a sittin' home and smokin'. With their gold and
silver candlesticks, and missions, and crucifixens,
priests and graven idols, and sich? Them sort
things wurent allowed in Mizzoori.”

At the mention of improvements, I involuntarily
lifted my eyes, and met the half-laughing,
half-embarrassed look of George. The act did
not escape detection, and I had at once the satisfaction
of seeing that the rest of the family had
formed an offensive alliance against us.

“It was agin Nater, and agin God,” added
Tryan. “God never intended gold in the rocks to
be made into heathen candlesticks and crucifixens.
That 's why he sent 'Merrikins here. Nater never

[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]

intended such a climate for lazy lopers. She
never gin six months' sunshine to be slept and
smoked away.”

How long he continued, and with what further
illustration I could not say, for I took an early opportunity
to escape to the sitting-room. I was
soon followed by George, who called me to an open
door leading to a smaller room, and pointed to a
bed.

“You 'd better sleep there to-night,” he said;
“you 'll be more comfortable, and I 'll call you
early.”

I thanked him, and would have asked him
several questions which were then troubling me,
but he shyly slipped to the door and vanished.

A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he
had gone. The “boys” returned, one by one, and
shuffled to their old places. A larger log was
thrown on the fire, and the huge chimney glowed
like a furnace, but it did not seem to melt or subdue
a single line of the hard faces that it lit. In
half an hour later, the furs which had served as
chairs by day undertook the nightly office of mattresses,
and each received its owner's full-length
figure. Mr. Tryan had not returned, and I missed
George. I sat there, until, wakeful and nervous, I
saw the fire fall and shadows mount the wall.
There was no sound but the rushing of the wind
and the snoring of the sleepers. At last, feeling

[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]

the place insupportable, I seized my hat and, opening
the door, ran out briskly into the night.

The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen
fight with the wind, whose violence was almost
equal to that of a tornado, and the familiar faces
of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed
relief. I ran not knowing whither, and when I
halted, the square outline of the house was lost
in the alder-bushes. An uninterrupted plain
stretched before me, like a vast sea beaten flat by
the force of the gale. As I kept on I noticed a
slight elevation toward the horizon, and presently
my progress was impeded by the ascent of an Indian
mound. It struck me forcibly as resembling
an island in the sea. Its height gave me a better
view of the expanding plain. But even here
I found no rest. The ridiculous interpretation
Tryan had given the climate was somehow sung
in my ears, and echoed in my throbbing pulse,
as, guided by the star, I sought the house again.

But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped
upon the platform. The door of the lower building
was open, and the old man was sitting beside
the table, thumbing the leaves of a Bible with a
look in his face as though he were hunting up
prophecies against the “Greaser.” I turned to
enter, but my attention was attracted by a blanketed
figure lying beside the house, on the platform.
The broad chest heaving with healthy slumber,

[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]

and the open, honest face were familiar. It was
George, who had given up his bed to the stranger
among his people. I was about to wake him, but
he lay so peaceful and quiet, I felt awed and
hushed. And I went to bed with a pleasant impression
of his handsome face and tranquil figure
soothing me to sleep.

I was awakened the next morning from a sense
of lulled repose and grateful silence by the cheery
voice of George, who stood beside my bed, ostentatiously
twirling a “riata,” as if to recall the
duties of the day to my sleep-bewildered eyes. I
looked around me. The wind had been magically
laid, and the sun shone warmly through the windows.
A dash of cold water, with an extra chill
on from the tin basin, helped to brighten me. It
was still early, but the family had already breakfasted
and dispersed, and a wagon winding far in
the distance showed that the unfortunate Tom had
already “packed” his relatives away. I felt more
cheerful, — there are few troubles Youth cannot
distance with the start of a good night's rest.
After a substantial breakfast, prepared by George,
in a few moments we were mounted and dashing
down the plain.

We followed the line of alder that defined the
creek, now dry and baked with summer's heat,
but which in winter, George told me, overflowed

[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]

its banks. I still retain a vivid impression of that
morning's ride, the far-off mountains, like silhouettes,
against the steel-blue sky, the crisp dry air, and
the expanding track before me, animated often by
the well-knit figure of George Tryan, musical with
jingling spurs, and picturesque with flying “riata.”
He rode a powerful native roan, wild-eyed, untiring
in stride and unbroken in nature. Alas!
the curves of beauty were concealed by the cumbrous
machillas of the Spanish saddle, which levels
all equine distinctions. The single rein lay
loosely on the cruel bit that can gripe, and, if need
be, crush the jaw it controls.

Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises
before me, as we again bear down into sunlit
space. Can this be “Chu-Chu,” staid and respectable
filly of American pedigree, — “Chu-Chu,” forgetful
of plank-roads and cobble-stones, wild with
excitement, twinkling her small white feet beneath
me? George laughs out of a cloud of dust, “Give
her her head; don't you see she likes it?” and
“Chu-Chu” seems to like it, and, whether bitten
by native tarantula into native barbarism or
emulous of the roan, “blood” asserts itself, and
in a moment the peaceful servitude of years is
beaten out in the music of her clattering hoofs.
The creek widens to a deep gully. We dive into
it and up on the opposite side, carrying a moving
cloud of impalpable powder with us. Cattle are

[figure description] Page 193.[end figure description]

scattered over the plain, grazing quietly, or banded
together in vast restless herds. George makes a
wide, indefinite sweep with the “riata,” as if to
include them all in his vaquero's loop, and says,
“Ours!”

“About how many, George?”

“Don't know.”

“How many?”

“Well, p'r'aps three thousand head,” says George,
reflecting. “We don't know, takes five men to
look 'em up and keep run.”

“What are they worth?”

“About thirty dollars a head.”

I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment
at the laughing George. Perhaps a recollection
of the domestic economy of the Tryan household
is expressed in that look, for George averts
his eye and says, apologetically, —

“I 've tried to get the old man to sell and
build, but you know he says it ain't no use to
settle down, just yet. We must keep movin'.
In fact, he built the shanty for that purpose, lest
titles should fall through, and we 'd have to get
up and move stakes further down.”

Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual
sight in a herd we are passing, and with an exclamation
he puts his roan into the centre of the
mass. I follow, or rather “Chu-Chu” darts after
the roan, and in a few moments we are in the

[figure description] Page 194.[end figure description]

midst of apparently inextricable horns and hoofs.
“Toro!” shouts George, with vaquero enthusiasm,
and the band opens a way for the swinging “riata.”
I can feel their steaming breaths, and their spume
is cast on “Chu-Chu's” quivering flank.

Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they; not
such shapes as Jove might have chosen to woo a
goddess, nor such as peacefully range the downs of
Devon, but lean and hungry Cassius-like bovines,
economically got up to meet the exigencies of a
six months' rainless climate, and accustomed to
wrestle with the distracting wind and the blinding
dust.

“That 's not our brand,” says George; “they 're
strange stock,” and he points to what my scientific
eye recognizes as the astrological sign of Venus
deeply seared in the brown flanks of the bull he is
chasing. But the herd are closing round us with
low mutterings, and George has again recourse to
the authoritative “Toro,” and with swinging “riata”
divides the “bossy bucklers” on either side. When
we are free, and breathing somewhat more easily, I
venture to ask George if they ever attack any
one.

“Never horsemen, — sometimes footmen. Not
through rage, you know, but curiosity. They think
a man and his horse are one, and if they meet a
chap afoot, they run him down and trample him
under hoof, in the pursuit of knowledge. But,”

[figure description] Page 195.[end figure description]

adds George, “here 's the lower bench of the foot-hills,
and here 's Altascar's corral, and that white
building you see yonder is the casa.”

A whitewashed wall enclosed a court containing
another adobe building, baked with the solar beams
of many summers. Leaving our horses in the charge
of a few peons in the courtyard, who were basking
lazily in the sun, we entered a low doorway, where
a deep shadow and an agreeable coolness fell upon
us, as sudden and grateful as a plunge in cool
water, from its contrast with the external glare
and heat. In the centre of a low-ceiled apartment
sat an old man with a black silk handkerchief tied
about his head; the few gray hairs that escaped
from its folds relieving his gamboge-colored face.
The odor of cigarritos was as incense added to the
cathedral gloom of the building.

As Señor Altascar rose with well-bred gravity
to receive us, George advanced with such a heightened
color, and such a blending of tenderness and
respect in his manner, that I was touched to the
heart by so much devotion in the careless youth.
In fact, my eyes were still dazzled by the effect of
the outer sunshine, and at first I did not see the
white teeth and black eyes of Pepita, who slipped
into the corridor as we entered.

It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars
of business which would deprive the old Señor of
the greater part of that land we had just ridden

[figure description] Page 196.[end figure description]

over, and I did it with great embarrassment. But
he listened calmly, — not a muscle of his dark face
stirring, — and the smoke curling placidly from
his lips showed his regular respiration. When I
had finished, he offered quietly to accompany us
to the line of demarcation. George had meanwhile
disappeared, but a suspicious conversation in
broken Spanish and English, in the corridor, betrayed
his vicinity. When he returned again, a
little absent-minded, the old man, by far the coolest
and most self-possessed of the party, extinguished
his black silk cap beneath that stiff, uncomely
sombrero which all native Californians
affect. A serapa thrown over his shoulders hinted
that he was waiting. Horses are always ready
saddled in Spanish ranchos, and in half an hour
from the time of our arrival we were again “loping”
in the staring sunlight.

But not as cheerfully as before. George and
myself were weighed down by restraint, and Altascar
was gravely quiet. To break the silence, and
by way of a consolatory essay, I hinted to him
that there might be further intervention or appeal,
but the proffered oil and wine were returned with
a careless shrug of the shoulders and a sententious
“Que bueno? — Your courts are always
just.”

The Indian mound of the previous night's discovery
was a bearing monument of the new line,

[figure description] Page 197.[end figure description]

and there we halted. We were surprised to find
the old man Tryan waiting us. For the first time
during our interview the old Spaniard seemed
moved, and the blood rose in his yellow cheek.
I was anxious to close the scene, and pointed out
the corner boundaries as clearly as my recollection
served.

“The deputies will be here to-morrow to run
the lines from this initial point, and there will be
no further trouble, I believe, gentlemen.”

Señor Altascar had dismounted and was gathering
a few tufts of dried grass in his hands. George
and I exchanged glances. He presently arose from
his stooping posture, and, advancing to within a
few paces of Joseph Tryan, said, in a voice broken
with passion, —

“And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put
you in possession of my land in the fashion of my
country.”

He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.

“I don't know your courts, your judges, or your
corregidores. Take the llano! — and take this
with it. May the drought seize your cattle till
their tongues hang down as long as those of your
lying lawyers! May it be the curse and torment
of your old age, as you and yours have made it of
mine!”

We stepped between the principal actors in this
scene, which only the passion of Altascar made

[figure description] Page 198.[end figure description]

tragical, but Tryan, with a humility but ill concealing
his triumph, interrupted: —

“Let him curse on. He 'll find 'em coming home
to him sooner than the cattle he has lost through
his sloth and pride. The Lord is on the side of
the just, as well as agin all slanderers and revilers.”

Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the
Missourian, yet sufficiently to drive from his mind
all but the extravagant power of his native invective.

“Stealer of the Sacrament! Open not! — open
not, I say, your lying, Judas lips to me! Ah!
half-breed, with the soul of a cayote! — Car-r-r-ramba!”

With his passion reverberating among the consonants
like distant thunder, he laid his hand
upon the mane of his horse as though it had been
the gray locks of his adversary, swung himself
into the saddle and galloped away.

George turned to me: —

“Will you go back with us to-night?”

I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures
by the fire, and the roaring wind, and hesitated.

“Well then, good by.”

“Good by, George.”

Another wring of the hands, and we parted. I
had not ridden far, when I turned and looked back.
The wind had risen early that afternoon, and was

[figure description] Page 199.[end figure description]

already sweeping across the plain. A cloud of dust
travelled before it, and a picturesque figure occasionally
emerging therefrom was my last indistinct
impression of George Tryan.

Three months after the survey of the Espíritu
Santo Rancho, I was again in the valley of the
Sacramento. But a general and terrible visitation
had erased the memory of that event as completely
as I supposed it had obliterated the boundary
monuments I had planted. The great flood of
1861 - 62 was at its height, when, obeying some
indefinite yearning, I took my carpet-bag and embarked
for the inundated valley.

There was nothing to be seen from the bright
cabin windows of the “Golden City” but night
deepening over the water. The only sound was
the pattering rain, and that had grown monotonous
for the past two weeks, and did not disturb
the national gravity of my countrymen as they
silently sat around the cabin stove. Some on
errands of relief to friends and relatives wore
anxious faces, and conversed soberly on the one
absorbing topic. Others, like myself, attracted by
curiosity, listened eagerly to newer details. But

[figure description] Page 200.[end figure description]

with that human disposition to seize upon any
circumstance that might give chance event the
exaggerated importance of instinct, I was half
conscious of something more than curiosity as an
impelling motive.

The dripping of rain, the low gurgle of water,
and a leaden sky greeted us the next morning as
we lay beside the half-submerged levee of Sacramento.
Here, however, the novelty of boats to
convey us to the hotels was an appeal that was
irresistible. I resigned myself to a dripping rubber-cased
mariner called “Joe,” and, wrapping myself
in a shining cloak of the like material, about
as suggestive of warmth as court-plaster might
have been, took my seat in the stern-sheets of his
boat. It was no slight inward struggle to part
from the steamer, that to most of the passengers
was the only visible connecting link between us
and the dry and habitable earth, but we pulled
away and entered the city, stemming a rapid current
as we shot the levee.

We glided up the long level of K Street, — once
a cheerful, busy thoroughfare, now distressing in
its silent desolation. The turbid water which seemed
to meet the horizon edge before us flowed at right
angles in sluggish rivers through the streets. Nature
had revenged herself on the local taste by
disarraying the regular rectangles by huddling
houses on street corners, where they presented

[figure description] Page 201.[end figure description]

abrupt gables to the current, or by capsizing them
in compact ruin. Crafts of all kinds were gliding
in and out of low-arched doorways. The water
was over the top of the fences surrounding well-kept
gardens, in the first stories of hotels and
private dwellings, trailing its slime on velvet carpets
as well as roughly boarded floors. And a
silence quite as suggestive as the visible desolation
was in the voiceless streets that no longer
echoed to carriage-wheel or footfall. The low
ripple of water, the occasional splash of oars, or
the warning cry of boatmen were the few signs of
life and habitation.

With such scenes before my eyes and such
sounds in my ears, as I lie lazily in the boat, is
mingled the song of my gondolier who sings to the
music of his oars. It is not quite as romantic as
his brother of the Lido might improvise, but my
Yankee “Giuseppe” has the advantage of earnestness
and energy, and gives a graphic description
of the terrors of the past week and of noble deeds
of self-sacrifice and devotion, occasionally pointing
out a balcony from which some California Bianca
or Laura had been snatched, half clothed and famished.
Giuseppe is otherwise peculiar, and refuses
the proffered fare, for — am I not a citizen
of San Francisco, which was first to respond to the
suffering cry of Sacramento? and is not he, Giuseppe,
a member of the Howard Society? No!

[figure description] Page 202.[end figure description]

Giuseppe is poor, but cannot take my money.
Still, if I must spend it, there is the Howard
Society, and the women and children without food
and clothes at the Agricultural Hall.

I thank the generous gondolier, and we go to
the Hall, — a dismal, bleak place, ghastly with
the memories of last year's opulence and plenty,
and here Giuseppe's fare is swelled by the stranger's
mite. But here Giuseppe tells me of the “Relief
Boat” which leaves for the flooded district in the
interior, and here, profiting by the lesson he has
taught me, I make the resolve to turn my curiosity
to the account of others, and am accepted of
those who go forth to succor and help the afflicted.
Giuseppe takes charge of my carpet-bag, and does
not part from me until I stand on the slippery
deck of “Relief Boat No. 3.”

An hour later I am in the pilot-house, looking
down upon what was once the channel of a peaceful
river. But its banks are only defined by tossing
tufts of willow washed by the long swell that
breaks over a vast inland sea. Stretches of “tule”
land fertilized by its once regular channel and
dotted by flourishing ranchos are now cleanly
erased. The cultivated profile of the old landscape
had faded. Dotted lines in symmetrical
perspective mark orchards that are buried and
chilled in the turbid flood. The roofs of a few
farm-houses are visible, and here and there the

[figure description] Page 203.[end figure description]

smoke curling from chimneys of half-submerged
tenements show an undaunted life within. Cattle
and sheep are gathered on Indian mounds waiting
the fate of their companions whose carcasses drift
by us, or swing in eddies with the wrecks of barns
and out-houses. Wagons are stranded everywhere
where the tide could carry them. As I wipe the
moistened glass, I see nothing but water, pattering
on the deck from the lowering clouds, dashing
against the window, dripping from the willows,
hissing by the wheels, everywhere washing, coiling,
sapping, hurrying in rapids, or swelling at last
into deeper and vaster lakes, awful in their suggestive
quiet and concealment.

As day fades into night the monotony of this
strange prospect grows oppressive. I seek the
engine-room, and in the company of some of the
few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked
up from temporary rafts, I forget the general
aspect of desolation in their individual misery.
Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and
transfer a number of our passengers. From them
we learn how inward-bound vessels report to having
struck the well-defined channel of the Sacramento,
fifty miles beyond the bar. There is
a voluntary contribution taken among the generous
travellers for the use of our afflicted, and we
part company with a hearty “God speed” on
either side. But our signal-lights are not far

[figure description] Page 204.[end figure description]

distant before a familiar sound comes back to us, —
an indomitable Yankee cheer, — which scatters the
gloom.

Our course is altered, and we are steaming over
the obliterated banks far in the interior. Once or
twice black objects loom up near us, — the wrecks
of houses floating by. There is a slight rift in the
sky towards the north, and a few bearing stars to
guide us over the waste. As we penetrate into
shallower water, it is deemed advisable to divide
our party into smaller boats, and diverge over the
submerged prairie. I borrow a pea-coat of one of
the crew, and in that practical disguise am doubtfully
permitted to pass into one of the boats. We
give way northerly. It is quite dark yet, although
the rift of cloud has widened.

It must have been about three o'clock, and we
were lying upon our oars in an eddy formed by a
clump of cottonwood, and the light of the steamer
is a solitary, bright star in the distance, when the
silence is broken by the “bow oar”: —

“Light ahead.”

All eyes are turned in that direction. In a few
seconds a twinkling light appears, shines steadily,
and again disappears as if by the shifting position
of some black object apparently drifting close
upon us.

“Stern, all; a steamer!”

“Hold hard there! Steamer be d—d!” is the

[figure description] Page 205.[end figure description]

reply of the coxswain. “It 's a house, and a big
one too.”

It is a big one, looming in the starlight like a
huge fragment of the darkness. The light comes
from a single candle, which shines through a
window as the great shape swings by. Some
recollection is drifting back to me with it, as I
listen with beating heart.

“There 's some one in it, by Heavens! Give
way, boys, — lay her alongside. Handsomely, now!
The door 's fastened; try the window; no! here 's
another!”

In another moment we are trampling in the
water, which washes the floor to the depth of several
inches. It is a large room, at the further end
of which an old man is sitting wrapped in a
blanket, holding a candle in one hand, and apparently
absorbed in the book he holds with the
other. I spring toward him with an exclamation: —

“Joseph Tryan!”

He does not move. We gather closer to him,
and I lay my hand gently on his shoulder, and
say: —

“Look up, old man, look up! Your wife and
children, where are they? The boys, — George!
Are they here? are they safe?”

He raises his head slowly, and turns his eyes to
mine, and we involuntarily recoil before his look.

[figure description] Page 206.[end figure description]

It is a calm and quiet glance, free from fear, anger,
or pain; but it somehow sends the blood curdling
through our veins. He bowed his head over his
book again, taking no further notice of us. The
men look at me compassionately, and hold their
peace. I make one more effort: —

“Joseph Tryan, don't you know me? the surveyor
who surveyed your ranch, — the Espíritu
Santo? Look up, old man!”

He shuddered and wrapped himself closer in his
blanket. Presently he repeated to himself, “The
surveyor who surveyed your ranch, — Espíritu
Santo,” over and over again, as though it were a
lesson he was trying to fix in his memory.

I was turning sadly to the boatmen, when he
suddenly caught me fearfully by the hand and
said, —

“Hush!”

We were silent.

“Listen!” He puts his arm around my neck
and whispers in my ear, “I 'm a moving off!”

“Moving off?”

“Hush! Don't speak so loud. Moving off.
Ah! wot 's that? Don't you hear? — there! listen!”

We listen, and hear the water gurgle and click
beneath the floor.

“It 's them wot he sent! — Old Altascar sent.
They 've been here all night. I heard 'em first in

[figure description] Page 207.[end figure description]

the creek, when they came to tell the old man to
move farther off. They came nearer and nearer.
They whispered under the door, and I saw their
eyes on the step, — their cruel, hard eyes. Ah,
why don't they quit?”

I tell the men to search the room and see if they
can find any further traces of the family, while
Tryan resumes his old attitude. It is so much
like the figure I remember on the breezy night
that a superstitious feeling is fast overcoming me.
When they have returned, I tell them briefly what
I know of him, and the old man murmurs again, —

“Why don't they quit, then? They have the
stock, — all gone — gone, gone for the hides and
hoofs,” and he groans bitterly.

“There are other boats below us. The shanty
cannot have drifted far, and perhaps the family are
safe by this time,” says the coxswain, hopefully.

We lift the old man up, for he is quite helpless,
and carry him to the boat. He is still grasping
the Bible in his right hand, though its strengthening
grace is blank to his vacant eye, and he cowers
in the stern as we pull slowly to the steamer, while
a pale gleam in the sky shows the coming day.

I was weary with excitement, and when we
reached the steamer, and I had seen Joseph Tryan
comfortably bestowed, I wrapped myself in a
blanket near the boiler and presently fell asleep.
But even then the figure of the old man often started

[figure description] Page 208.[end figure description]

before me, and a sense of uneasiness about George
made a strong undercurrent to my drifting dreams.
I was awakened at about eight o'clock in the
morning by the engineer, who told me one of the
old man's sons had been picked up and was now on
board.

“Is it George Tryan?” I ask quickly.

“Don't know; but he 's a sweet one, whoever he
is,” adds the engineer, with a smile at some luscious
remembrance. “You 'll find him for'ard.”

I hurry to the bow of the boat, and find, not
George, but the irrepressible Wise, sitting on a
coil of rope, a little dirtier and rather more dilapidated
than I can remember having seen him.

He is examining, with apparent admiration, some
rough, dry clothes that have been put out for his
disposal. I cannot help thinking that circumstances
have somewhat exalted his usual cheerfulness.
He puts me at my ease by at once addressing
me: —

“These are high old times, ain't they? I say,
what do you reckon 's become o' them thar
bound'ry moniments you stuck? Ah!”

The pause which succeeds this outburst is the
effect of a spasm of admiration at a pair of high
boots, which, by great exertion, he has at last
pulled on his feet.

“So you 've picked up the ole man in the
shanty, clean crazy? He must have been soft

[figure description] Page 209.[end figure description]

to have stuck there instead o' leavin' with the old
woman. Did n't know me from Adam; took me
for George!”

At this affecting instance of paternal forgetfulness,
Wise was evidently divided between amusement
and chagrin. I took advantage of the contending
emotions to ask about George.

“Don't know whar he is! If he 'd tended
stock instead of running about the prairie, packin'
off wimmin and children, he might have saved
suthin. He lost every hoof and hide, I 'll bet a
cookey! Say you,” to a passing boatman, “when
are you goin' to give us some grub? I 'm hungry
'nough to skin and eat a hoss. Reckon I 'll turn
butcher when things is dried up, and save hides,
horns, and taller.”