CHAPTER I. AURI SACRA FAMES.
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I write in the first person; but I shall not
maunder about myself. I am in no sense the
hero of this drama. Call me Chorus, if you
please, — not Chorus merely observant and impassive;
rather Chorus a sympathizing monitor
and helper. Perhaps I gave a certain crude
momentum to the movement of the play, when
finer forces were ready to flag; but others bore
the keen pangs, others took the great prizes,
while I stood by to lift the maimed and cheer
the victor.
It is a healthy, simple, broad-daylight story.
No mystery in it. There is action enough, primeval
action of the Homeric kind. Deeds of
the heroic and chivalric times do not utterly disdain
our day. There are men as ready to gallop
for love and strike for love now, as in the age of
Amadis.
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Roughs and brutes, as well as gentlemen, take
their places in this drama. None of the characters
have scruples or qualms. They act according
to their laws, and are scourged or crowned,
as their laws suit Nature's or not.
To me these adventures were episode; to my
friend, the hero, the very substance of life.
But enough backing and filling. Enter Richard
Wade — myself — as Chorus.
A few years ago I was working a gold-quartz
mine in California.
It was a worthless mine, under the conditions
of that time. I had been dragged into it by the
shifts and needs of California life. Destiny probably
meant to teach me patience and self-possession
in difficulty. So Destiny thrust me into a
bitter bad business of QUARTZ MINING.
If I had had countless dollars of capital to
work my mine, or quicksilver for amalgamation
as near and plenty as the snow on the Sierra
Nevada, I might have done well enough.
As it was, I got but certain pennyworths of
gold to a most intolerable quantity of quartz.
The precious metal was to the brute mineral in
the proportion of perhaps a hundred pin-heads to
the ton. My partners, down in San Francisco,
wrote to me: “Only find twice as many pin-heads,
and our fortune is made.” So thought
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those ardent fellows, fancying that gold would go
up and labor go down, — that presently I would
strike a vein where the mineral would show yellow
threads and yellow dots, perhaps even yellow
knobs, in the crevices, instead of empty crannies
which Nature had prepared for monetary deposits
and forgotten to fill.
So thought the fellows in San Francisco. They
had been speculating in beef, bread-stuffs, city
lots, Rincon Point, wharf property, mission lands,
Mexican titles, Sacramento boats, politics, Oregon
lumber. They had been burnt out, they had
been cleaned out, they had been drowned out.
They depended upon me and the quartz mine to
set them up again. So there was a small, steady
stream of money flowing up from San Francisco
from the depleted coffers of those sanguine partners,
flowing into our mine, and sinking there,
together with my labor and my life.
Our ore — the San Francisco partners liked to
keep up the complimentary fiction of calling it
ore — was pretty stuff for an amateur mineralogical
cabinet. A professor would have exhibited
specimens to a lecture-room with delight. There
never was any quartz where the matrix was better
defined, better shaped to hold the gold that was
not in it. For Macadam, what royal material it
would have been! Park roads made of it would
have glittered gayer than marble. How
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brilliantly paths covered with its creamy-white fragments
would have meandered through green grass!
If I had had no fond expectations of these
shining white and yellow stones, I should have
deemed their mass useful and ornamental enough,—
useful skeleton material to help hold the world
together, ornamental when it lay in the sun and
sparkled. But this laughing sparkle had something
of a sneer in it. The stuff knew that it
had humbugged me. Let a man or a woman be
victor over man or woman, and the chances are
that generosity will suppress the pæan. But matter
is so often insulted and disdained, that when
it triumphs over mind it is merciless.
Yes; my quartz had humbugged me. Or
rather — let me not be unjust even to undefended
stone, not rich enough to pay an advocate —
I had humbugged myself with false hopes. I
have since ascertained that my experience is
not singular. Other men have had false hopes
of other things than quartz mines. Perhaps it
was to teach me this that the experience came.
Having had my lesson, I am properly cool and
patient now when I see other people suffering
in the same way, — whether they dig for gold,
fame, or bliss; digging for the bread of their
life, and getting only a stone. The quartz was
honest enough as quartz. It was my own fault
that I looked for gold-bearing quartz, and so
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found it bogus and a delusion. What right
have we to demand the noble from the ignoble!
I used sometimes fairly to shake my fist at
my handsome pile of mineral, my bullionless
pockets of ore. There was gold in the quartz;
there are pearls in the Jersey muds; there are
plums in boarding-house puddings; there are
sixpences in the straw of Broadway omnibuses.
Steady disappointment, by and by, informs a
man that he is in the wrong place. All work,
no play, no pay, is a hint to work elsewhere.
But men must dig in the wrong spots to learn
where these are, and so narrow into the right
spot at last. Every man, it seems, must waste
so much life. Every man must have so much
imprisonment to teach him limits and fit him
for freedom.
Nearly enough, however of Miei Prigioni. A
word or two of my companions in jail. A
hard lot they were, my neighbors within twenty
miles! Jail-birds, some of them, of the worst
kind. It was as well, perhaps, that my digging
did not make money, and theirs did. They
would not have scrupled to bag my gold and
butcher me. But they were not all ruffians;
some were only barbarians.
Pikes, most of these latter. America is manufacturing
several new types of men. The
Pike is one of the newest. He is a bastard
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pioneer. With one hand he clutches the pioneer
vices; with the other he beckons forward
the vices of civilization. It is hard to understand
how a man can have so little virtue in
so long a body, unless the shakes are foes to
virtue in the soul, as they are to beauty in the
face.
He is a terrible shock, this unlucky Pike, to
the hope that the new race on the new continent
is to be a handsome race. I lose that faith, which
the people about me now have nourished, when I
recall the Pike. He is hung together, not put
together. He inserts his lank fathom of a man
into a suit of molasses-colored homespun. Frowzy
and husky is the hair Nature crowns him with;
frowzy and stubby the beard. He shambles in
his walk. He drawls in his talk. He drinks
whiskey by the tank. His oaths are to his words
as Falstaff's sack to his bread. I have seen Maltese
beggars, Arab camel-drivers, Dominican friars,
New York Aldermen, Digger Indians; the
foulest, frowziest creatures I have ever seen are
thorough-bred Pikes. The most vigorous of
them leave their native landscape of cotton-wood
and sand-bars along the yellow ditches of the
West, and emigrate with a wagon-load of pork
and pork-fed progeny across the plains to California.
There the miasms are roasted out of
them; the shakes warmed away; they will grow
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rich, and possibly mellow, in the third or fourth
generation. They had not done so in my time.
I lived among them ad nauseam, month after
month, and I take this opportunity to pay them
parting compliments.
I went on toiling, day after day, week after
week, two good years of my life, over that miserable
mine. Nothing came of it. I was growing
poorer with every ton we dug, poorer with every
pound we crushed. In a few months more, I
should have spent my last dollar and have gone
to day labor, perhaps among the Pikes. The
turnpike stuff refused to change into gold. I
saw, of course, that something must be done.
What, I did not know. I was in that state
when one needs an influence without himself to
take him by the hand gently, by the shoulder
forcibly, by the hair roughly, or even by the nose
insultingly, and drag him off into a new region.
The influence came. Bad news reached me.
My only sister, a widow, my only near relative,
died, leaving two young children to my care. It
was strange how this sorrow made the annoyance
and weariness of my life naught! How this responsibility
cheered me! My life seemed no
longer lonely and purposeless. Point was given
to all my intentions at once. I must return
home to New York. Further plans when I am
there! But now for home! If any one wanted
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my quartz mine, he might have it. I could not
pack it in my saddle-bags to present to a college
cabinet of mineralogy.
I determined, as time did not absolutely press,
to ride home across the plains. It is a grand
journey. Two thousand miles, or so, on horseback.
Mountains, deserts, prairies, rivers, Mormons,
Indians, buffalo, — adventures without
number in prospect. A hearty campaign, and
no carpet knighthood about it.
It was late August. I began my preparations
at once.
-- -- p753-018
CHAPTER II. GERRIAN'S RANCH.
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It happened that, on a journey, early in the
same summer, some twenty miles from my mine,
I had come upon a band of horses feeding on the
prairie. They cantered off as I went riding
down the yellow slope, and then, halting just out
of lasso reach, stopped to reconnoitre me. Animals
are always eager to observe man. Perhaps
they want ideas against the time of their promotion
to humanity, so that they need not be awkward,
and introduce quadruped habits into biped
circles.
The mass of the herd inspected me stupidly
enough. Man to them was power, and nothing
else, — a lasso-throwing machine, — something that
put cruel bits into equine mouths, got on equine
backs, and forced equine legs to gallop until they
were stiff. Man was therefore something to admire,
but to avoid, — so these horses seemed to
think; and if they had known man as brother
man alone knows him, perhaps their opinion
would have been confirmed.
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One horse, however, among them, had more
courage, or more curiosity, or more faith. He
withdrew from the gregarious commonalty, — the
haughty aristocrat! — and approached me, circling
about, as if he felt a certain centripetal
influence, — as if he knew himself a higher being
than his mustang comrades, — nearer to man,
and willing to offer him his friendship. He and
I divided the attention of the herd. He seemed
to be, not their leader, but rather one who disdained
leadership. Facile princeps! He was
too far above the noblest of the herd to care for
their unexciting society.
I slipped quietly down from my little Mexican
caballo, and, tethering him to a bush with the
lariat, stood watching the splendid motions of this
free steed of the prairie.
He was an American horse, — so they distinguish
in California one brought from the old
States, — A SUPERB YOUNG STALLION, PERFECTLY
BLACK, WITHOUT MARK. It was magnificent to
see him, as he circled about me, fire in his eye,
pride in his nostril, tail flying like a banner,
power and grace from tip to tip. No one would
ever mount him, or ride him, unless it was his
royal pleasure. He was conscious of his representative
position, and showed his paces handsomely.
It is the business of all beautiful things
to exhibit.
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Imagine the scene. A little hollow in the
prairie, forming a perfect amphitheatre; the yellow
grass and wild oats grazed short; a herd of
horses staring from the slope, myself standing in
the middle, like the ring-master in a circus, and
this wonderful horse performing at his own free
will. He trotted powerfully, he galloped gracefully,
he thundered at full speed, he lifted his
fore-legs to welcome, he flung out his hind-legs
to repel, he leaped as if he were springing over
bayonets, he pranced and curvetted as if he were
the pretty plaything of a girl; finally, when he
had amused himself and delighted me sufficiently,
he trotted up and snuffed about me, just out of
reach.
A horse knows a friend by instinct. So does
a man. But a man, vain creature! is willing
to repel instinct and trust intellect, and so suffers
from the attempt to revise his first impressions,
which, if he is healthy, are infallible.
The black, instinctively knowing me for a
friend, came forward and made the best speech
he could of welcome, — a neigh and no more.
Then, feeling a disappointment that his compliment
could not be more melodiously or gracefully
turned, he approached nearer, and, not
without shying and starts, of which I took no
notice, at last licked my hand, put his head
upon my shoulder, suffered me to put my arm
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round his neck, and in fact lavished upon me
every mark of confidence. We were growing
fast friends, when I heard a sound of coming
hoofs. The black tore away with a snort, and
galloped off with the herd after him. A Mexican
vaquero dashed down the slope in pursuit.
I hailed him.
“A quien es ese caballo — el negrito?”
“Aquel diablo! es del Señor Gerrian.” And
he sped on.
I knew Gerrian. He was a Pike of the better
class. He had found his way early to California,
bought a mission farm, and established
himself as a ranchero. His herds, droves, and
flocks darkened the hills. The name reminded
me of the giant Geryon of old. Were I an
unscrupulous Hercules, free to pillage and name
it protection, I would certainly drive off Gerrian's
herds for the sake of that black horse. So
I thought, as I watched them gallop away.
It chanced that, when I was making my arrangements
to start for home, business took me
within a mile of Gerrian's ranch. I remembered
my interview with the black. It occurred
to me that I would ride down and ask the ranchero
to sell me his horse for my journey.
I found Gerrian, a lank, wire-drawn man,
burnt almost Mexican color, lounging in the
shade of his adobe house. I told him my business
in a word.
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“No bueno, stranger!” said he.
“Why not? Do you want to keep the horse.”
“No, not partickler. Thar ain't a better stallion
nor him this side the South Pass; but I can't
do nothing with him no more 'n yer can with a
steamboat when the cap'n says, `Beat or bust!'
He 's a black devil, ef thar ever was a devil into
a horse's hide. Somebody 's tried to break him
down when he was a colt, an now he wont stan'
nobody goan near him.”
“Sell him to me, and I 'll try him with kindness.”
“No, stranger. I 've tuk a middlin' shine to
you from the way you got off that Chinaman
them Pikes was goan to hang fur stealing the
mule what he had n't stoled. I 've tuk a middlin'
kind er shine to you, and I don't want to see
yer neck broke, long er me. That thar black 'll
shut up the hinge in yer neck so tight that
yer 'll never look up to ther top of a red-wood
again. Allowin' you haint got an old ox-yoke
into yer fur backbone, yer 'll keep off that thar
black kettrypid, till the Injins tie yer on, and
motion yer to let him slide or be shot.”
“My backbone is pretty stiff,” said I; “I
will risk my neck.”
“The Greasers is some on hosses, you 'll give
in, I reckon. Well, thar ain't a Greaser on my
ranch that 'll put leg over that thar streak er
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four-legged lightning; no, not if yer 'd chain
off for him a claim six squar leagues in the raal
old Garden of Paradise, an stock it with ther best
gang er bullocks this side er Santer Fee.”
“But I 'm not a Mexican; I 'm the stiffest kind
of Yankee. I don't give in to horse or man.
Besides, if he throws me and breaks my neck
I get my claim in Paradise at once.”
“Well, stranger, you 've drawed yer bead on
that thar black, as anybody can see. An ef a
man 's drawed his bead, thar ain't no use tellin'
him to pint off.”
“No. If you 'll sell, I 'll buy.”
“Well, if you wunt go fur to ask me to throw
in a coffin to boot, praps we ken scare up a
trade. How much do you own in the Foolonner
Mine?”
I have forgotten to speak of my mine by its
title. A certain Pike named Pegrum, Colonel
Pegrum, a pompous Pike from Pike County,
Missouri, had once owned the mine. The Spaniards,
finding the syllables Pegrum a harsh morsel,
spoke of the colonel, as they might of any
stranger, as Don Fulano, — as we should say,
“John Smith.” It grew to be a nickname, and
finally Pegrum, taking his donship as a title of
honor, had procured an act of the legislature
dubbing him formally Don Fulano Pegrum. As
such he is known, laughed at, become a public
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man and probable Democratic Governor of California.
From him our quartz cavern had taken
its name.
I told Gerrian that I owned one quarter of the
Don Fulano Mine.
“Then you 're jess one quarter richer 'n ef you
owned haff, and jess three quarters richer 'n ef
you owned the hull kit and boodle of it.”
“You are right,” said I. I knew it by bitter
heart.
“Well stranger, less see ef we can't banter fur
a trade. I 've got a hoss that ken kill ayry man.
That 's so; ain't it?”
“You say so.”
“You 've got a mine, that 'll break ayry man,
short pocket or long pocket. That 's so; ain't
it?”
“No doubt of that.”
“Well now; my curwolyow 's got grit into
him, and so 's that thar pile er quartz er yourn
got gold into it. But you cant git the slugs out
er your mineral; and I can get the kicks a blasted
sight thicker 'n anything softer out er my animal.
Here 's horse agin mine, — which 'd yer rether
hev, allowin' 't was toss up and win.”
“Horse!” said I. “I don't know how bad
he is, and I do know that the mine is worse
than nothing to me.”
“Lookerhere, stranger! You 're goan home
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across lots. You want a horse. I 'm goan to
stop here. I 'd jess as lives gamble off a hundred
or two head o' bullocks on that Foolonner
Mine. You can't find ayry man round here to
buy out your interest in that thar heap er stun
an the hole it cum out of. It 'll cost you
more 'n the hul 's wuth ef you go down to
San Frisco and wait tell some fool comes along
what 's got gold he wants to buy quartz with.
Take time now, I 'm goan to make yer a fair
banter.”
“Well, make it.”
“I stump you to a clean swap. My hoss agin
your mine.”
“Done,” said I.
“I allowed you 'd do it. This here is one er
them swaps, when both sides gits stuck. I git
the Foolonner Mine, what I can't make go, and
you 'll be a fool on a crittur what 'll go a heap
more 'n you 'll want. Haw! haw!”
And Gerrian laughed a Pike's laugh at his
pun. It was a laugh that had been stunted in
its childhood by the fever and ague, and so had
grown up husk without heart.
“Have the black caught,” said I, “and we 'll
clinch the bargain at once.”
There was a Mexican vaquero slouching about.
Gerrian called to him.
“O Hozay! kesty Sinyaw cumprader
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curwolyow nigereeto. Wamos addelanty! Corral curwolyose
toethoso!”
Pike Spanish that! If the Mexicans choose to
understand it, why should Pikes study Castilian?
But we must keep a sharp look-out on the new
words that come to us from California, else our
new language will be full of foundlings with no
traceable parentage. We should beware of heaping
up problems for the lexicographers of the
twentieth century: they ought to be free for harmonizing
the universal language, half-Teutonic,
half-Romanic, with little touches of Mandingo
and Mandan.
The bukkarer, as Gerrian's Spanish entitled
Hozay, comprehended enough of the order to
know that he was to drive up the horses. He
gave me a Mexican's sulky stare, muttered a caramba
at my rashness, and lounged off, first taking
a lasso from its peg in the court.
“Come in, stranger,” said Gerrian, “before we
start, and take a drink of some of this here Mission
Dolorous wine.”
“How does that go down?” said he, pouring
out golden juices into a cracked tumbler.
It was the very essence of California sunshine,—
sherry with a richness that no sherry ever had,—
a somewhat fiery beverage, but without any
harshness or crudity. Age would better it, as
age betters the work of a young genius; but still
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there is something in the youth we would not willingly
resign.
“Very fine,” said I; “it is romantic old Spain,
with ardent young America interfused.”
“Some likes it,” says Gerrian; “but taint like
good old Argee to me. I can't git nothin' as
sweet as the taste of yaller corn into sperit. But
I reckon thar ken be stuff made out er grapes
what 'll make all owdoors stan' round. This yer
wuz made by the priests. What ken you spect
of priests? They ain't more 'n haff men nohow.
I 'm goan to plant a wineyard er my own, and
'fore you cum out to buy another quartz mine,
I 'll hev some of ther strychnine what 'll wax
Burbon County 's much 's our inyans here ken
wax them low-lived smellers what they grow to
old Pike.”
-- -- p753-028
CHAPTER III. DON FULANO.
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Hector of Troy, Homer's Hector, was my first
hero in literature. Not because he loved his
wife and she him, as I fancy that noble wives
and husbands love in the times of trial now; but
simply because he was Hippodamos, one that
could master the horse.
As soon as I knew Hector, I began to emulate
him. My boyish experiments were on donkeys,
and failed. “I could n't wallop 'em. O no,
no!” That was my difficulty. Had I but met
an innocent and docile donkey in his downy
years! Alas! only the perverted donkey, bristly
and incorrigible, came under my tutorship. I
was too humane to give him stick enough, and so
he mastered me.
Horses I learned to govern by the law of love.
The relation of friendship once established between
man and horse, there is no trouble. A
centaur is created. The man wills whither; the
horse, at the will of his better half, does his best
to go thither. I became, very early, Hippodamos,
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not by force, but by kindness. All lower beings,—
fiendish beings apart, — unless spoilt by treachery,
seek the society of the higher; as man, by
nature, loves God. Horses will do all they know
for men, if man will only let them. All they
need is a slight hint to help their silly willing
brains, and they dash with ardor at their business
of galloping a mile a minute, or twenty miles an
hour, or of leaping a gully, or pulling tonnage.
They put so much reckless, break-neck frenzy in
their attempt to please and obey the royal personage
on their back, that he needs to be brave
indeed to go thoroughly with them.
The finer the horse, the more delicate the magnetism
between him and man. Knight and his
steed have an affinity for each other. I fancied
that Gerrian's black, after our mutual friendly
recognition on the prairie, would like me better
as our intimacy grew.
After hobnobbing with cracked tumblers of the
Mission Dolores wine, Gerrian and I mounted
our mustangs and rode toward the corral.
All about on the broad slopes, the ranchero's
countless cattle were feeding. It was a patriarchal
scene. The local patriarch, in a red flannel
shirt purpled by sun and shower, in old
buckskin breeches with the fringe worn away
and decimated along its files whenever a thong
was wanted, in red-topped boots with the
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maker's name, Abel Cushing, Lynn, Mass.,
stamped in gilt letters on the red, — in such
costume the local patriarch hardly recalled those
turbaned and white-robed sheiks of yore, Abraham
and his Isaac. But he represented the
same period of history modernized, and the
same type of man Americanized; and I have
no doubt his posterity will turn out better than
Abraham's, and scorn peddling, be it Austrian
loans or “ole clo'.”
The cattle scampered away from us, as we
rode, hardly less wild than the buffaloes on the
Platte. Whenever we rose on the crest of a
hillock, we could see several thousands of the
little fierce bullocks, — some rolling away in
flight, in a black breadth, like a shaken carpet;
some standing in little groups, like field officers
at a review, watching the movements as squadron
after squadron came and went over the
scene; some, as arbitrators and spectators, surrounding
a pair of champion bulls butting and
bellowing in some amphitheatre among the
swells of land.
“I tell you what it is, stranger,” said Gerrian,
halting and looking proudly over the landscape,
“I would n't swop my place with General
Price at the White House.”
“I should think not,” said I; “bullocks are
better company than office-seekers.”
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It was a grand, simple scene. All open country,
north and south, as far as the eye could see.
Eastward rose the noble blue barrier of the Sierra,
with here and there a field, a slope, a spot,
or a pinnacle of the snow that names it Nevada.
A landscape of larger feeling than any we can
show in the old States, on the tame side of the
continent. Those rigorous mountain outlines
on the near horizon utterly dwarf all our wooded
hills, Alleghanies, Greens, Whites. A race
trained within sight of such loftiness of nature
must needs be a loftier race than any this land
has yet known. Put cheap types of mankind
within the influence of the sublimities, and they
are cowed; but the great-hearted expand with
vaster visions. A great snow-peak, like one of
the Tacomas of Oregon, is a terrible monitor
over a land; but it is also a benignant sovereign,
a presence, calm, solemn, yet not without
a cheering and jubilant splendor. A range of
sharp, peremptory mountains, like the Sierra Nevada,
insists upon taking thought away from the
grovelling flats where men do their grubbing for
the bread of daily life, and up to the master
heights, whither in all ages seers have gone to
be nearer mystery and God.
It was late August. All the tall grass and wild
oats and barley, over lift, level, and hollow, were
ripe yellow or warm brown, — a golden mantle
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over the golden soil. There were but two colors
in the simple, broad picture, — clear, deep, scintillating
blue in the sky, melting blue in the
mountains, and all the earth a golden surging
sea.
“It 's a bigger country 'n old Pike or Missourer
anywhar,” says Gerrian, giving his `curwolyow'
the spur. “I 'd ruther hev this, even ef the
shakes wuz here instidd of thar, and havin' their
grab reglar twicet a day all the year round.”
As we rode on, our ponies half hidden in the
dry, rustling grass of a hollow, a tramp of hoofs
came to us with the wind, — a thrilling sound!
with something free and vigorous in it that the
charge of trained squadrons never has.
“Thar they come!” cried Gerrian; “thar 's a
rigiment wuth seeing. They can't show you a
sight like that to the old States.”
“No indeed. The best thing to be hoped there
in the way of stampede is when a horse kicks
through a dash-board, kills a coachman, shatters
a carriage, dissipates a load of women and children,
and goes tearing down a turnpike, with
`sold to an omnibus' awaiting him at the end of
his run-away!”
We halted to pass the coming army of riderless
steeds in review.
There they came! Gerrian's whole band of
horses in full career! First, their heads suddenly
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lifted above a crest of the prairie; then they
burst over, like the foam and spray of a black,
stormy wave when a blast strikes it, and wildly
swept by us with manes and tails flaring in the
wind. It was magnificent. My heart of a horseman
leaped in my breast. “Hurrah!” I cried.
“Hurrah 't is!” said Gerrian.
The herd dashed by in a huddle, making for
the corral.
Just behind, aloof from the rush and scamper
of his less noble brethren, came the black, my
purchase, my old friend.
“Ef you ever ride or back that curwolyow,”
says Gerrian, “I 'll eat a six-shooter, loaded and
capped.”
“You 'd better begin, then, at once,” rejoined
I, “whetting your teeth on Derringers. I mean
to ride him, and you shall be by when I do it.”
It was grand to see a horse that understood
and respected himself so perfectly. One, too,
that meant the world should know that he was
the very chiefest chief of his race, proud with
the blood of a thousand kings. How masterly
he looked! How untamably he stepped! The
herd was galloping furiously. He disdained to
break into a gallop. He trotted after, a hundred
feet behind the hindmost, with large and liberal
action. And even at this half speed easily overtaking
his slower comrades, he from time to time
-- 029 --
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paused, bounded in the air, tossed his head,
flung out his legs, and then strode on again,
writhing all over with suppressed power.
There was not a white spot upon him, except
where a flake of foam from his indignant nostril
had caught upon his flank. A thorough-bred
horse, with the perfect tail and silky mane of a
noble race. His coat glistened, as if the best
groom in England had just given him the final
touches of his toilette for a canter in Rotten
Row. But it seems a sin to compare such a free
rover of the prairie with any less favored brother,
who needs a groom, and has felt a currycomb.
Hard after the riderless horses came José,
the vaquero, on a fast mustang. As he rode, he
whirled his lasso with easy turn of the wrist.
The black, trotting still, and halting still to
curvet and caracole, turned back his head contemptuously
at his pursuer. “Mexicans may
chase their own ponies and break their spirit by
brutality; but an American horse is no more
to be touched by a Mexican than an American
man. Bah! make your cast! Dont trifle with
your lasso! I challenge you. Jerk away, Señor
Greaser! I give you as fair a chance as you
could wish.”
So the black seemed to say, with his provoking
backward glance and his whinny of disdain.
José took the hint. He dug cruel spurs into
-- 030 --
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his horse. The mustang leaped forward. The
black gave a tearing bound and quickened his
pace, but still waited the will of his pursuer.
They were just upon us, chased and chaser,
thundering down the slope, when the vaquero,
checking his wrist at the turn, flung his lasso
straight as an arrow for the black's head.
I could hear the hide rope sing through the
summer air, for a moment breezeless.
Will he be taken! Will horse or man be
victor!
The loop of the lasso opened like a hoop. It
hung poised for one instant a few feet before the
horse's head, vibrating in the air, keeping its
circle perfect, waiting for the vaquero's pull to
tighten about that proud neck and those swelling
shoulders.
Hurrah!
Through it went the black.
With one brave bound he dashed through the
open loop. He touched only to spurn its vain
assault with his hindmost hoof.
“Hurrah!” I cried.
“Hurrah! 't is,” shouted Gerrian.
José dragged in his spurned lasso.
The black, with elated head, and tail waving
like a banner, sprang forward, closed in with the
caballada; they parted for his passage, he took
his leadership, and presently was lost with his
suite over the swells of the prairie.
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“Mucho malicho!” cried Gerrian to José,
not knowing that his Californian Spanish was interpreting
Hamlet. “He ought to hev druv 'em
straight to corral. But I don't feel so sharp set
on lettin' you hev that black after that shine.
Reg'lar circus, only thar never was no sich seen
in no circus! You 'll never ride him, allowin'
he 's cotched, no more 'n you 'll ride a alligator.”
Meantime, loping on, we had come in sight of
the corral. There, to our great surprise, the
whole band of horses had voluntarily entered.
They were putting their heads together as the
manner of social horses is, and going through
kissing manœuvres in little knots, which presently
were broken up by the heels of some ill-mannered
or jealous brother. They were very
probably discussing the black's act of horsemanship,
as men after the ballet discuss the first entrechat
of the danseuse.
We rode up and fastened our horses. The
black was within the corral, pawing the ground,
neighing, and whinnying. His companions kept
at a respectful distance.
“Don't send in José!” said I to Gerrian.
“Only let him keep off the horses, so that I shall
not be kicked, and I will try my hand at the
black alone.”
“I 'll hev 'em all turned out except that black
devil, and then you ken go in and take your own
-- 032 --
[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]
resk with him. Akkee José!” continued the ranchero,
“fwarer toethose! Dayher hel diablo!”
José drove the herd out of the staked enclosure.
The black showed no special disposition
to follow. He trotted about at his ease, snuffing
at the stakes and bars.
I entered alone. Presently he began to repeat
the scene of our first meeting on the prairie. It
was not many minutes before we were good
friends. He would bear my caresses and my arm
about his neck, and that was all for an hour.
At last, after a good hour's work, I persuaded
him to accept a halter. Then by gentle seductions
I induced him to start and accompany me
homeward.
Gerrian and the Mexican looked on in great
wonderment.
“Praps that is the best way,” said the modern
patriarch, “ef a man has got patience. Looker
here, stranger, ain't you a terrible fellow among
women?”
I confessed my want of experience.
“Well, you will be when your time comes. I
allowed from seeing you handle that thar hoss,
that you had got your hand in on women, —
they is the wust devils to tame I ever seed.”
I had made my arrangements to start about
the first of September, with the Sacramento
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mailriders, a brace of jolly dogs, brave fellows, who,
with their scalps as well secured as might be, ran
the gauntlet every alternate month to Salt Lake.
That was long before the days of coaches. No
pony express was dreamed of. A trip across the
plains, without escort or caravan, had still some
elements of heroism, if it have not to-day.
Meantime one of my ardent partners from
San Francisco arrived to take my place at the
mine.
“I don't think that quartz looks quite so goldy
as it did at a distance,” said he.
“Well,” said old Gerrian, who had come over
to take possession of his share of our bargain;
“it is whiter 'n it 's yaller. It does look about
as bad off fur slugs as the cellar of an Indiana
bank. But I b'leeve in luck, and luck is olluz
comin' at me with its head down and both eyes
shet. I 'm goan to shove bullocks down this here
hole, or the price of bullocks, until I make it
pay.”
And it is a fact, that by the aid of Gerrian's
capital, and improved modern machinery, after a
long struggle, the Fulano mine has begun to yield
a sober, quiet profit.
My wooing of the black occupied all my leisure
during my last few days. Every day, a circle of
Pikes collected to see my management. I hope
they took lessons in the law of kindness. The
-- 034 --
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horse was well known throughout the country,
and my bargain with Gerrian was noised abroad.
The black would tolerate no one but me. With
me he established as close a brotherhood as can
be between man and beast. He gave me to understand,
by playful protest, that it was only by
his good pleasure that I was permitted on his
back, and that he endured saddle and bridle; as
to spur or whip, they were not thought of by
either. He did not obey, but consented. I exercised
no control. We were of one mind. We
became a Centaur. I loved that horse as I have
loved nothing else yet, except the other personages
with whom and for whom he acted in this
history.
I named him Don Fulano.
I had put my mine into him. He represented
to me the whole visible, tangible result of two
long, workaday years, dragged out in that dreary
spot among the Pikes, with nothing in view except
barren hill-sides ravaged by mines, and the
unbeautiful shanties of miners as rough as the
landscape.
Don Fulano, a horse that would not sell, was
my profit for the sternest and roughest work of
my life! I looked at him, and looked at the
mine, that pile of pretty pebbles, that pile of
bogus ore, and I did not regret my bargain. I
never have regretted it. “My kingdom for a
-- 035 --
[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]
horse,” — so much of a kingdom as I had, I
had given.
But was that all I had gained, — an unsalable
horse for two years' work? All, — unless, perhaps,
I conclude to calculate the incalculable;
unless I estimate certain moral results I had
grasped, and have succeeded in keeping; unless
I determine to value patience, purpose, and pluck
by dollars and cents. However, I have said
enough of myself, and my share in the preparations
for the work of my story.
Retire, then, Richard Wade, and enter the real
hero of the tale.
-- -- p753-041
CHAPTER IV. JOHN BRENT.
[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]
A man who does not love luxury is merely an
incomplete man, or, if he prefers, an ignoramus.
A man who cannot dispense with luxury, and
who does not love hard fare, hard bed, hard
travel, and all manner of robust, vigorous, tense
work, is a weakling and a soft. Sybaris is a
pretty town, rose-leaves are a delicate mattrass,
Lydian measures are dulcet to soul and body:
also, the wilderness is “no mean city”; hemlock
or heather for couch, brocken for curtain, are not
cruelty; prairie gales are a brave lullaby for
adults.
Simple furniture and simple fare a campaigner
needs for the plains, — for chamber furniture, a
pair of blankets; for kitchen furniture, a frying-pan
and a coffee-pot; for table furniture, a tin
mug and his bowie-knife: Sybaris adds a tin
plate, a spoon, and even a fork. The list of provisions
is as short, — pork, flour, and coffee; that
is all, unless Sybaris should indulge in a modicum
of tea, a dose or two of sugar, and a vial
of vinegar for holidays.
-- 037 --
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I had several days for preparation, until my
companions, the mail-riders, should arrive. One
morning I was busy making up my packs of such
luxuries as I have mentioned for the journey,
when I heard the clatter of horses' feet, and observed
a stranger approach and ride up to the
door of my shanty. He was mounted upon a
powerful iron-gray horse, and drove a pack mule
and an Indian pony.
My name was on an elaborately painted shingle
over the door. It was my own handiwork, and
quite a lion in that region. I felt, whenever I
inspected that bit of high art, that, fail or win at
the mine, I had a resource. Indeed, my Pike
neighbors seemed to consider that I was unjustifiably
burying my artistic talents. Many a not
unseemly octagonal slug, with Moffatt & Co.'s
imprimatur of value, had been offered me if I
would paint up some miner's hell, as “The
True Paradise,” or “The Shades and Caffy de
Paris.”
The new-comer read my autograph on the
shingle, looked about, caught sight of me at
work in the hot shade, dismounted, fastened his
horses, and came toward me. It was not the
fashion in California, at that time, to volunteer
civility or acquaintance. Men had to announce
themselves, and prove their claims. I sat where
I was, and surveyed the stranger.
-- 038 --
[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]
“The Adonis of the copper-skins!” I said to
myself. “This is the `Young Eagle,' or the
`Sucking Dove,' or the `Maiden's Bane,' or
some other great chief of the cleanest Indian
tribe on the continent. A beautiful youth! O
Fenimore, why are you dead! There are a
dozen romances in one look of that young brave.
One chapter might be written on his fringed
buckskin shirt; one on his equally fringed leggings,
with their stripe of porcupine-quills; and
one short chapter on his moccasons, with their
scarlet cloth instep-piece, and his cap of otter fur
decked with an eagle's feather. What a poem
the fellow is! I wish I was an Indian myself for
such a companion; or, better, a squaw, to be
made love to by him.”
As he approached, I perceived that he was
not copper, but bronze. A pale-face certainly!
That is, a pale-face tinged by the brazen sun of
a California summer. Not less handsome, however,
as a Saxon, than an Indian brave. As
soon as I identified him as one of my own race,
I began to fancy I had seen him before.
“If he were but shaved and clipped, blackcoated,
booted, gloved, hatted with a shiny cylinder,
disarmed of his dangerous looking arsenal,
and armed with a plaything of a cane, — in short,
if he were metamorphosed from a knight-errant
into a carpet-knight, changed from a smooth
-- 039 --
[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]
rough into a smooth smooth, — seems to me I
should know him, or know that I had known
him once.”
He came up, laid his hand familiarly on my
arm, and said, “What, Wade? Don't you remember
me? John Brent.”
“I hear your voice. I begin to see you now.
Hurrah!”
“How was it I did not recognize you,” said I,
after a fraternal greeting.
“Ten years have presented me with this for a
disguise,” said he, giving his moustache a twirl.
“Ten years of experience have taken all the girl
out of me.”
“What have you been doing these ten years,
since College, O many-sided man?”
“Grinding my sides against the Adamant,
every one.”
“Has your diamond begun to see light, and
shine?”
“The polishing-dust dims it still.”
“How have you found life, kind or cruel?”
“Certainly not kind, hardly cruel, unless indifference
is cruelty.”
“But indifference, want of sympathy, must
have been a positive relief after the aggressive
cruelty of your younger days.”
“And what have you been doing, Richard?”
“Everything that Yankees do, — digging last.”
-- 040 --
[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]
“That has been my business, too, as well as
polishing.”
“The old work, I suppose, to root out lies
and plant in truth.”
“That same slow task. Tunnelling too, to
find my way out of the prison of doubt into the
freedom of faith.”
“You are out, then, at last. Happy and at
peace, I hope.”
“At peace, hardly happy. How can such a
lonely fellow be happy?”
“We are peers in bereavement now. My
family are all gone, except two little children
of my sister.”
“Not quite peers. You remember your relatives
tenderly. I have no such comfort.”
Odd talk this may seem, to hold with an old
friend. Ten years apart! We ought to have
met in merrier mood. We might, if we had
parted with happy memories. But it was not
so. Youth had been a harsh season to Brent.
If Fate destines a man to teach, she compels him
to learn, — bitter lessons, too, whether he will or
no. Brent was a man of genius. All experience,
therefore, piled itself upon him. He must
learn the immortal consolations by probing all
suffering himself.
Brent's story is a short one or a long one. It
can be told in a page, or in a score of volumes.
-- 041 --
[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]
We had met fourteen years before in the same
pew of Berkeley College Chapel, grammars by
our side and tutors before us, two well-crammed
candidates for the Freshman Class. Brent was
a delicate, beautiful, dreamy boy. My counterpart.
I was plain prose, and needed the poetic
element. We became friends. I was steady;
he was erratic. I was calm; he was passionate.
I was reasonably happy; he was totally miserable.
For good cause.
The cause was this; and it has broken weaker
hearts than Brent's. His heart was made of
stuff that does not know how to break.
Dr. Swerger was the cause of Brent's misery.
The Reverend Dr. Swerger was a brutal man.
One who believes that God is vengeance naturally
imitates his God, and does not better his
model.
Swerger was Brent's step-father. Mrs. Brent
was pretty, silly, rich, and a widow. Swerger
wanted his wife pretty, and not too wise; and
that she was rich balanced, perhaps a little more
than balanced, the slight objection of widowhood.
Swerger naturally hated his step-son. One intuition
of Brent's was worth all the thoughts of
Swerger's life-time. A clergyman who starts
with believing in hells, devils, original sin, and
such crudities, can never be anything in the
-- 042 --
[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]
nineteenth century but a tyrant or a nuisance, if he
has any logic, as fortunately few of such misbelievers
have. Swerger had logic. So had the
boy Brent, — the logic of a true, pure, loving
heart. He could not stand Swerger's coming
into his dead father's house and deluding his
mother with a black fanaticism.
So Swerger gave him to understand that he
was a child of hell. He won his wife to shrink
from her son. Between them they lacerated the
boy. He was a brilliant fellow, facile princeps
of us all. But he worked under a cloud. He
could not get at any better religion than Swerger's;
and perhaps there was none better — or
much better — to be had at that time.
One day matters came to a quarrel. Swerger
cursed his step-son; of course not in the same
terms the sailors used on Long Wharf, but with
no better spirit. The mother, cowed by her
husband, backed him, and abandoned the boy.
They drove him out of the house, to go where he
would. He came to me. I gave him half my
quarters, and tried to cheer him. No use. This
bitter wrong to his love to God and to man almost
crushed him. He brooded and despaired.
He began to fancy himself the lost soul Swerger
had called him. I saw that he would die or go
mad; or, if he had strength enough to react, it
would be toward a hapless rebellion against
-- 043 --
[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]
conventional laws, and so make his blight ruin. I
hurried him off to Europe, for change of scene.
That was ten years ago, and I had not seen him
since. I knew, however, that his mother was
visited by compunctions; that she wished to be
reconciled to her son; that Swerger refused, and
renewed his anathemas; that he bullied the poor
little woman to death; that Brent had to wring
the property out of him by a long lawsuit, which
the Swergerites considered an unconstitutional
and devilish proceeding, another proof of total
depravity. Miserable business! It went near to
crush all the innocence, faith, hope, and religion
out of my friend's life.
Of course this experience had a tendency to
drive Brent out of the common paths, to make
him a seer instead of a doer. The vulgar cannot
comprehend that, when a man is selected by
character and circumstance, acting together under
the name of destiny, to be a seer, he must
see to the end before he begins to say what he
sees, to be a guide, a monitor, and a helper. The
vulgar, therefore, called Brent a wasted life, a
man of genius manqué, a pointless investigator, a
purposeless dreamer. The vulgar loves to make
up its mind prematurely. The vulgar cannot
abide a man who lives a blameless life so far as
personal conduct goes, and yet declines to accept
worldly tests of success, worldly principles of
-- 044 --
[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]
action. If a man rebels against laws, and takes
the side of vice, that the vulgar can comprehend;
but rebellion on the side of virtue is revolutionary,
destroys all the old landmarks, must be
crucified.
Brent, therefore, boy and man, had had tough
experience. I knew of his career, though we
had not met. He had wished and attempted,
perhaps prematurely, to make his fine genius of
definite use. He wanted to make the nation's
prayers; but the Swergerites pronounced his
prayers Paganism. He wanted to put the nation's
holiest thoughts into poetry; they called
his poetry impious. He wanted to stir up the
young men of his day to a franker stand on the
side of genuine liberty, and a keener hatred of
all slavery, and so to uphold chivalry and heroism;
the cynical people scoffed, they said he
would get over his boyish folly, that he ought
to have lived before Bayard, or half-way through
the millennium, but that the kind of stuff he
preached and wrote with such unnecessary fervor
did not suit the nineteenth century, a practical
country and a practical age.
So Brent paused in his work. The boyhood's
unquestioning ardor went out of him. The interregnum
between youth and complete manhood
came. He gave up his unripe attempt to
be a doer, and turned seer again. Observation
-- 045 --
[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]
is the proper business of a man's third decade;
the less a spokesman has to say about his results
until thirty, the better, unless he wants to eat
his words, or to sustain outgrown formulas. Brent
discovered this, and went about the world still
pointless, purposeless, manqué, as they said, —
minding his own business, getting his facts. His
fortune made him independent. He could go
where he pleased.
This was the man who rode up on the iron-gray
horse. This was the Indianesque Saxon
who greeted me. It put color and poetry into
my sulky life to see him.
“Off, old fellow?” said Brent, pointing his
whip at my traps. “I can't hear him squeak,
but I 'm sure there is pig in that gunny-bag,
and flour in that sack. I hope you 're not away
for a long trip just as I have come to squat with
you.”
“No longer than home across the plains.”
“Bravo! then we 'll ride together, instead of
squatting together. Instead of your teaching
me quartz-mining, I 'll guide you across the
Rockys.”
“You know the way, then.”
“Every foot of it. Last fall I hunted up from
Mexico and New Mexico with an English friend.
We made winter head-quarters with Captain Ruby
at Fort Laramie, knocking about all winter
-- 046 --
[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]
in that neighborhood, and at the North among
the Wind River Mountains. Early in the spring
we went off toward Luggernel Alley and the
Luggernel Springs, and camped there for a
month.”
“Luggernel Alley! Luggernel Springs! Those
are new names to me; in fact, my Rocky Mountain
geography is naught.”
“You ought to see them. Luggernel Alley is
one of the wonders of this continent.”
So I think now that I have seen it. It was
odd too, what afterward I remembered as a coincidence,
that our first talk should have turned
to a spot where we were to do and to suffer, by
and by.
“There is something Frenchy in the name
Luggernel,” said I.
“Yes; it is a corruption of La Grenouille.
There was a famous Canadian trapper of that
name, or nickname. He discovered the springs.
The Alley, a magnificent gorge, grand as the Via
Mala, leads to them. I will describe the whole
to you at length, some time.”
“Who was your English friend?”
“Sir Biron Biddulph, — a capital fellow, pink
in the cheeks, warm in the heart, strong in the
shanks, mighty on the hunt.”
“Hunting for love of it?”
“No; for love itself, or rather the lack of love.
-- 047 --
[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]
A lovely lady in his native Lancashire would not
smile; so he turned butcher of buffalo, bears,
and big-horn.”
“Named he the `fair but frozen maid'?”
“Never. It seems there is something hapless
or tragic about her destiny. She did not love
him; so he came away to forget her. He made
no secret of it. We arrived in Utah last July,
on our way to see California. There he got letters
from home, announcing, as he told me, some
coming misfortune to the lady. As a friend, no
longer a lover, he proposed to do what he could
to avert the danger. I left him in Salt Lake,
preparing to return, and came across country
alone.”
“Alone! through the Indian country, with
that tempting iron-gray, those tempting packs,
that tempting scalp, with its love-locks! Why,
the sight of your scalp alone would send a thrill
through every Indian heart from Bear River to
the Dalles of the Columbia! Perhaps, by the
way, you 've been scalped already, and are safe?”
“No; the mop 's my own mop. Scalp 's all
right. Wish I could say the same of the brains.
The Indians would not touch me. I am half
savage, you know. In this and my former trip,
I have become a privileged character, — something
of a medicine-man.”
“I suppose you can talk to them. You used
to have the gift of tongues.”
-- 048 --
[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]
“Yes; I have choked down two or three of
their guttural lingos, and can sputter them up
as easily as I used to gabble iambic trimeters. I
like the fellows. They are not ideal heroes; they
have not succeeded in developing a civilization,
or in adopting ours, and therefore I suppose they
must go down, as pine-trees go down to make
room for tougher stalks and fruitier growth: but
I like the fellows, and don't believe in their utter
deviltry. I have always given the dogs a good
name, and they have been good dogs to me. I
like thorough men, too; and what an Indian
knows, he knows, so that it is a part of him. It
is a good corrective for an artificial man to find
himself less of a man, under certain difficulties,
than a child of nature. You know this, of course,
as well as I do.”
“Yes; we campaigners get close to the heart
of Mother Nature, and she teaches us, tenderly
or roughly, but thoroughly. By the way, how
did you find me out?”
“I heard some Pikes, at a camp last night,
talking of a person who had sold a quartz mine
for a wonderful horse. I asked the name. They
told me yours, and directed me here. Except for
this talk, I should have gone down to San Francisco,
and missed you.”
“Lucky horse! He brings old friends together, —
a good omen! Come and see him.”
-- -- p753-054
CHAPTER V. ACROSS COUNTRY.
[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]
I led my friend toward the corral.
“A fine horse that gray of yours,” said I.
“Yes; a splendid fellow, — stanch and true!
He will go till he dies.”
“In tip-top condition, too. What do you call
him?”
“Pumps.”
“Why Pumps? Why not Pistons? or Cranks?
or Walking-Beams? or some part of the steam-engine
that does the going directly?”
“You have got the wrong clue. I named him
after our old dancing-master. Pumps the horse
has a favorite amble, precisely like that skipping
walk that Pumps the man used to set us for
model, — a mincing gait, that prejudiced me,
until I saw what a stride he kept for the time
when stride was wanting.”
“Here is my black gentleman. What do you
think of him?”
Don Fulano trotted up and licked a handful
of corn from my hand. Corn was four dollars
-- 050 --
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a bushel. The profits of the “Foolonner” Mine
did not allow of such luxuries. But old Gerrian
had presented me with a sack of it.
Fulano crunched his corn, snorted his thanks,
and then snuffed questioningly, and afterwards
approvingly, about the stranger.
“Soul and body of Bucephalus!” says Brent.
“There is a quadruped that is a HORSE.”
“Is n't he?” said I, thrilling with pride for
him.
“To look at such a fellow is a romance. He
is the most beautiful thing I ever saw.”
“No exceptions?”
“Not one.”
“Woman! lovely woman!” I cried, with
mock enthusiasm.
“If I had ever seen a woman to compare with
that horse, after her kind, I should not be here.”
“Where then?”
“Wherever she was. Living for her. Dying
for her. Chasing her if she were dragged from
me. Snatching her from the jaws of death.”
“Hold hard! You talk as furiously as if you
saw such a scene before your eyes.”
“Your horse brings up all the chivalric tales
I have ever read. If these were knightly days,
and two brothers in arms, like you and myself,
ever rescued distressed damsels from the grip of
caitiffs vile, we ought to be mounted upon a pair
-- 051 --
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of Don Fulanos when we rode the miscreants
down.”
The fine sensitiveness of a poetic man like
Brent makes a prophet of him, — that is to say,
a man who has the poet's delicate insight into
character anticipates everything that character
will do. So Brent was never surprised; though
I confess I was, when I found men, horses, and
places doing what he had hinted long before.
“Well,” continued I, “I paid two years' work
for my horse. Was it too much? Is he worth
it?”
“Everything is worth whatever one gives for
it. The less you get, the more you get. Proved
by the fact that the price of all life is death. Jacob
served seven years for an ugly wife; why
should n't an honester man serve two for a beautiful
horse?”
“Jacob, however, had a pretty wife thrown in
when he showed discontent.”
“Perhaps you will. If the Light of the Harem
of Sultan Brigham should see you prancing on
that steed, she would make one bound to your
crupper and leave a dark where the Light was.”
“I do not expect to develop a taste for Mormon
ladies.”
“It is not very likely. They are a secondhand
set. But still one can imagine some luckless
girl with a doltish father; some old chap
-- 052 --
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who had outlived his hopes at home, and fancied
he was going to be Melchisedec, Moses, and
Abraham, rolled into one, in Utah, toted out
there by some beastly Elder, who wanted the
daughter for his thirteenth. That would be a
chance for you and Don Fulano to interfere.
I 'll promise you myself and Pumps, if you
want to stampede anybody's wives from the New
Jerusalem as we go through.”
“I suppose we have no time to lose, if we expect
to make Missouri before winter.”
“No. We will start as soon as you are
ready.”
“To-morrow morning, if you please.”
“To-morrow it is.”
To-morrow it was. Having a comrade, I need
not wait for the mail-riders. Lucky that I did
not. They came only three days after us. But
on the Humboldt, the Indians met them, and
obliged them to doff the tops of their heads, as a
mark of respect to Indian civilization.
We started, two men and seven animals.
Each of us had a pack mule and a roadster
pony, with a spare one, in case accident should
befall either of his wiry brethren.
Pumps and Fulano, as good friends as their
masters, trotted along without burden. We rode
them rarely. Only often enough to remind
-- 053 --
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them how a saddle feels, and that dangling legs
are not frightful. They must be fresh, if we
should ever have to run for it. We might;
Indians might cast fanciful glances at the tops
of our heads. The other horses might give out.
So Pumps, with his fantastic dancing-step, that
would not crush a grasshopper, and Fulano,
grander, prouder, and still untamable to any
one but me, went on waiting for their time of
action.
I skip the first thousand miles of our journey.
Not that it was not exciting, but it might be
anybody's journey. Myriads have made it. It
is an old story. I might perhaps make it a new
story; but I crowd on now to the proper spot
where this drama is to be enacted. The play
halts while the scenes shift.
One figure fills up to my mind this whole
hiatus of the many-leagued skip. I see Brent
every step and every moment. He was a model
comrade.
Camp-life tests a man thoroughly. Common
toil, hardship, peril, and sternly common viaticum
of pork, dough-cakes, and coffee sans everything,
are a daily ordeal of good-nature. It is not hard
for two men to be civil across a clean white tablecloth
at a club. If they feel dull, they can study
the carte; if spiteful, they can row the steward;
if surly, they can muddle themselves cheerful;
-- 054 --
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if they bore each other, finally and hopelessly,
they can exchange cigars and part for all time,
and still be friends, not foes. But the illusions
of sham good-fellowship vanish when the carte
du jour is porc frit au naturel, damper à discretion,
and café à rien, always the same fare, plain
days or lucky days, served on a blanket, on the
ground.
Brent and I stood the test. He was a model
comrade, cavalier, poet, hunter, naturalist, cook.
If there was any knowledge, skill, craft, or sleight
of hand or brain wanted, it always seemed as
if his whole life had been devoted to the one
study to gain it. He would spring out of his
blankets after a night under the stars, improvise
a matin song to Lucifer, sketch the morning's
view into cloudland and the morning's earthly
horizon, take a shot at a gray wolf, book a new
plant, bag a new beetle, and then, reclining on
the lonely prairie, talk our breakfast, whose
Soyer he had been, so full of Eden, Sybaris, the
holocausts of Achilles, the triclinia of Lucullus,
the automaton tables of the Œil de Bœuf, the
cabinets of the Frères Provençaux, and the
dinners of civilization where the wise and the
witty meet to shine and sparkle for the beautiful,
that our meagre provender suffered “change
into something rich and strange”; the flakes of
fried pork became peacocks' tongues, every quoit
-- 055 --
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of tough toasted dough a vol au vent, and the
coffee that never saw milk or muscovado a
diviner porridge than ever was sipped on the
sunny summits of Olympus. Such a magician
is priceless. Every object, when he looked at it,
seemed to revolve about and exhibit its bright
side. Difficulty skulked away from him. Danger
cowered under his eye.
Nothing could damp his enthusiasm. Nothing
could drench his ardor. No drowning his energy.
He never growled, never sulked, never
snapped, never flinched. Frosty nights on the
Sierra tried to cramp him; foggy mornings in
the valleys did their worst to chill him; showers
shrank his buckskins and soaked the macheers
of his saddle to mere pulp; rain pelted his blankets
in the bivouac till he was a moist island in a
muddy lake. Bah, elements! try it on a milksop!
not on John Brent, the invulnerable. He
laughs in the ugly phiz of Trouble. Hit somebody
else, thou grizzly child of Erebus!
Brent was closer to Nature than any man I
ever knew. Not after the manner of an artist.
The artist can hardly escape a certain technicality.
He looks at the world through the spectacles
of his style. He loves mist and hates sunshine,
or loves books and shrinks from the gloom of forests
primeval, or adores meadows and haystacks,
and dreads the far-sweeping plain and the sovran
-- 056 --
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snow-peak. Even the greatest artist runs a risk,
which only the greater than greatest escape, of
suiting Nature to themselves, not themselves to
Nature. Brent with Nature was like a youth
with the maiden he loves. She was always his
love, whatever she could do; however dressed, in
clouds or sunshine, unchanging fair; in whatever
mood, weeping or smiling, at her sweetest;
grand, beautiful for her grandeur; tender, beautiful
for her tenderness; simple, lovely for her
simplicity; careless, prettier than if she were
trim and artful; rough, potent, and impressive,
a barbaric queen.
It is not a charming region, that breadth of the
world between the Foolonner Mine and the Great
Salt Lake. Much is dusty desert; much is
dreary plain, bushed with wild sage, the wretchedest
plant that grows; much is rugged mountain.
A grim and desolate waste. But large
and broad. Unbroken and undisturbed, in its
solemn solitude, by prettiness. No thought of
cottage life there, or of the tame, limited, submissive
civilization that hangs about lattices and
trellises, and pets its chirping pleasures, keeping
life as near the cradle as it may. It is a
region that appeals to the go and the gallop,
that even the veriest cockney, who never saw
beyond a vista of blocks, cannot eliminate from
his being. It does not order man to sink into
-- 057 --
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a ploughman. Ploughmen may tarry in those
dull, boundless plough-fields, the prairie lands
of mid-America. These desert spaces, ribbed
with barren ridges, stretch for the Bedouin tread
of those who
“Love all waste
And solitary places, where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be.”
It may be a dreary region; but the great white
clouds in the noons of that splendid September,
the red dawns before us, the red twilights
behind, the vague mountain lines upon the far
horizon, the sharp crag lines near at hand, the
lambent stars that lit our bivouacs, the moon
that paled the lambent stars, — all these had
their glory, intenser because each fact came
simple and alone, and challenged study and
love with a force that shames the spendthrift
exuberance of fuller landscapes.
In all this time I learned to love the man John
Brent, as I had loved the boy; but as mature
man loves man. I have known no more perfect
union than that one friendship. Nothing so
tender in any of my transitory loves for women.
We were two who thought alike, but saw differently,
and never quarrelled because the shield
was to him gold and to me silver. Such a friendship
justifies life. All bad faith is worth
-- 058 --
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encountering for the sake of such good faith, — all
cold shoulder for such warm heart.
And so I bring our little party over the first
half of its journey.
I will not even delay to describe Utah, not
even for its water-melons' sake, though that tricolor
dainty greatly gladdened our dry jaws, as
we followed the valley from Box Elder, the
northernmost settlement, to the City of the
Great Salt Lake.
In a few days of repose we had exhausted
Mormon civilization, and, horses and men fresh
and in brave heart, we rode out of the modern
Mecca, one glorious day of early October.
-- -- p753-064
CHAPTER VI. JAKE SHAMBERLAIN.
[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]
If Heaven's climate approaches the perfect
charm of an American October, I accept my
place an advance, and book my lodgings for
eternity.
The climate of the best zone in America is
transcendent for its purpose. Its purpose is to
keep men at their keenest, at high edge and high
ardor all the time. Then, for enchanting luxury
of repose, when ardent summer has achieved its
harvest, and all the measure of the year is full,
comes ripe October, with its golden, slumberous
air. The atmosphere is visible sunshine. Every
leaf in the forest changes to a resplendent
blossom. The woods are rich and splendorous,
but not glaring. Nothing breaks the tranquil
wealthy sentiment of the time. It is the year's
delightful holiday.
In such a season we rode through the bare
defiles of the Wasatch Mountains, wall of Utah
on the east. We passed Echo Cañon, and the
other strait gates and rough ways through which
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the Latter-Day Saints win an entrance to their
Sion.
We met them in throngs, hard at work at
such winning. The summer emigration of Mormons
was beginning to come in. No one would
have admitted their claim to saintship from their
appearance. If they had no better passport
than their garb, “Avaunt! Procul este profani!”
would have cried any trustworthy janitor of
Sion. Saints, if I know them, are clean, — are
not ragged, are not even patched. Their garments
renew themselves, shed rain like Macintosh,
repel dust, sweeten unsavoriness. These
sham saints needed unlimited scouring, persons
and raiment. We passed them, when we could,
to windward. Poor creatures! we shall see
more of their kindred anon.
We hastened on, for our way was long, and
autumn's hospitable days were few. Just at the
foot of those bare, bulky mounds of mountain by
which the Wasatch range tones off into the great
plains between it and the Rockys, we overtook
the Salt Lake mail party going eastward. They
were travelling eight or ten men strong, with a
four-mule waggon, and several horses and mules
driven beside for relays.
“If Jake Shamberlain is the captain of the
party,” said Brent, when we caught sight of them
upon the open, “we 'll join them.”
-- 061 --
[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]
“Who is Jake Shamberlain?”
“A happy-go-lucky fellow, whom I have met
and recognized all over the world. He has been
a London policeman. He was pulling stroke-oar
in the captain's gig that took me ashore from a
dinner on board the Firefly, British steamer, at
the Piræus. He has been a lay brother in a Carthusian
convent. He married a pretty girl in
Boston once, went off on a mackerel trip, and
when he came back the pretty girl had bigamized.
That made Mormon and polygamist of him. He
came out two or three years ago, and, being a
thriving fellow, has got to himself lands and
beeves and wives without number. Biddulph
and I stayed several days with him when we came
through in the summer. His ranch is down the
valley, toward Provo. He owns half the United
States mail contract. They told me in the city
that he intended to run this trip himself. You
will see an odd compound of a fellow.”
“I should think so; policeman, acolyte, man-of-war's-man,
Yankee husband, Mormon! Has
he come to his finality?”
“He thinks so. He is a shrewd fellow of many
smatterings. He says there are only two logical
religions in the civilized world, — the Popish and
the Mormon. Those two are the only ones that
have any basis in authority. His convent experience
disenchanted him with Catholicism. He is
-- 062 --
[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]
quite irreverent, is the estimable Jake. He says
monks are a set of snuffy old reprobates. He
says that he found celibacy tended to all manner
of low vice; that monogamy disappointed him;
so he tried the New Revelation, polygamy and
all, and has become an ardent propagandist
and exhorter. Take the man as he is, and he
has plenty of brave, honest qualities.”
We had by this time ridden up to the mail
party. They were moving slowly along. The
night's camping-spot was near. It was a bit of
grassy level on the bank of a river, galloping over
the pebbles with its mountain impetus still in it,—
Green River, perhaps; Green, or White, or
Big Sandy, or Little Stony. My map of memory
is veined with so many such streams, all going in
a hurry through barren plains, and no more than
drains on a water-shed, that I confuse their undistinguishing
names. Such mere business-like
water-courses might as well be numbered, after
the fashion of the monotonous streets of a city,
too new for the consecration of history. Dear
New England's beloved brooks and rivers, slow
through the meadows and beneath the elms,
tumbling and cascading down the mountain-sides
from under the darkling hemlocks into the sparkle
of noon, and leaping into white water between
the files of Northern birches, — they have their
well-remembered titles, friendly and domestic, or
-- 063 --
[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]
of sturdy syllables and wilderness sound. Such
waters have spoiled me for gutters, — Colorados,
Arkansaws, Plattes, and Missouris.
“Hillo, Shamberlain!” hailed Brent, riding
up to the train.
“Howdydo? Howdydo? No swap!” responded
Jake, after the Indian fashion. “Bung
my eyes! ef you 're not the mate of all mates
I 'm glad to see. Pax vobiscrum, my filly! You
look as fresh as an Aperel shad. Praisèd be the
Lord!” continued he, relapsing into Mormon
slang, “who has sent thee again, like a brand
from the burning, to fall into paths of pleasantness
with the Saints, as they wander from the
Promised Land to the mean section where the
low-lived Gentiles ripen their souls for hell.”
Droll farrago! but just as Jake delivered it.
He had the slang and the swearing of all climes
and countries at his tongue's end.
“Hello, stranger!” said he, turning to me.
“I allowed you was the Barrownight.”
“It 's my friend, Richard Wade,” said Brent.
“Yours to command, Brother Wade,” Jake
says hospitably. “Ef you turn out prime, one
of the out and outers, like Brother John Brent,
I 'll tip 'em the wink to let you off easy at the
Judgment Day, Gentile or not. I 've booked
Brother John fur Paradise; Brother Joseph's
got a white robe fur him, blow high, blow low!”
-- 064 --
[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]
We rode along beside Shamberlain.
“What did you mean just now?” asked my
friend. “You spoke of Wade's being the baronet.”
“I allowed you would n't leave him behind.”
“I don't understand. I have not seen him
since we left you in the summer. I 've been on
to California and back.”
“The Barrownight 's ben stoppin' round in
the Valley ever since. He seems to have a call
to stop. Prehaps his heart is tetched, and he is
goan to jine the Lord's people. I left him down
to my ranch, ten days ago, playing with a grizzly
cub, what he 's trying to make a gentleman of.
A pooty average gentleman it 'll make too.”
“Very odd!” says Brent to me. “Biddulph
meant to start for home, at once, when we
parted. He had some errand in behalf of the
lady he had run away from.”
“Probably he found he could not trust his old
wounds under her eyes again. Wants another
year's crust over his scarified heart.”
“Quite likely. Well, I wish we had known
he was in the Valley. We would have carried
him back with us. A fine fellow! Could n't be
a better!”
“Not raw, as Englishmen generally are?”
“No; well ripened by a year or so in America.”
-- 065 --
[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]
“Individuals need that cookery, as the race
did.”
“Yes; I wish our social cuisine were a thought
more scientific.”
“All in good time. We shall separate sauces
by and by, and not compel beef, mutton, and
turkey to submit to the same gravy.”
“Meanwhile some of my countrymen are so
under-done, and some so over-done, that I have
lost my taste for them.”
“Such social dyspepsia is soon cured on the
plains. You will go back with a healthy appetite.
Did your English friend describe the lady
of his love?”
“No; it was evidently too stern a grief to talk
about. He could keep up his spirits only by
resolutely turning his back on the subject.”
“It must needs have been a weak heart or a
mighty passion.”
“The latter. A brave fellow like Biddulph does
not take to his heels from what he can overcome.”
By this time we had reached camp.
Horses first, self afterwards, is the law of the
plains travel. A camp must have, —
1. Water.
2. Fodder.
3. Fuel.
Those are the necessities. Anything else is
luxury.
-- 066 --
[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]
The mail party were a set of jolly roughs.
Jake Shamberlain was the type man. To encounter
such fellows is good healthy education.
As useful in kind, but higher in degree, as going
to a bear conversazione or a lion and tiger concert.
Civilization mollifies the race. It is not
well to have hard knocks and rough usage for
mind or body eliminated from our training.
We joined suppers with our new friends. After
supper we sat smoking our pipes, and talking
horse, Indians, bear-fights, scalping, and other
brutal business, such as the world has not outgrown.
-- -- p753-072
CHAPTER VII. ENTER, THE BRUTES!
[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]
The sun had just gone down. There was a
red wrangle of angry vapors over the mounds
of mountain westward. A brace of travellers
from Salt Lake way rode up and lighted their
camp-fire near ours. More society in that lonely
world. Two families, with two sets of Lares and
Penates.
Not attractive society. They were a sinisterlooking
couple of hounds. A lean wolfish and
a fat bony dog.
One was a rawboned, stringy chap, — as gaunt,
unkempt, and cruel a Pike as ever pillaged the
cabin, insulted the wife, and squirted tobacco over
the dead body of a Free State settler in Kansas.
The other was worse, because craftier. A little
man, stockish, oily, and red in the face. A
jaunty fellow, too, with a certain shabby air of
coxcombry even in his travel-stained attire.
They were well mounted, both. The long ruffian
rode a sorrel, big and bony as himself, and
equally above such accidents as food or no food.
-- 068 --
[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]
The little villain's mount was a red roan, a Flathead
horse, rather naggy, but perfectly hardy and
wiry, — an animal that one would choose to do a
thousand miles in twenty days, or a hundred between
sunrise and sunset. They had also two
capital mules, packed very light. One was branded,
“A. & A.”
Distrust and disgust are infallible instincts.
Men's hearts and lives are written on their faces,
to warn or charm. Never reject that divine or
devilish record!
Brent read the strangers, shivered at me, and
said, sotto voce, “What a precious pair of cutthroats!
We must look sharp for our horses
while they are about.”
“Yes,” returned I, in the same tone; “they
look to me like Sacramento gamblers, who have
murdered somebody, and had to make tracks for
their lives.”
“The Cassius of the pair is bad enough,” said
Brent; “but that oily little wretch sickens me.
I can imagine him when he arrives at St. Louis,
blossomed into a purple coat with velvet lappels,
a brocaded waistcoat, diamond shirt-studs, or a
flamboyant scarf pinned with a pichbeck dog, and
red-legged patent-leather boots, picking his teeth
on the steps of the Planters' House. Faugh! I
feel as if a snake were crawling over me, when I
look at him.”
-- 069 --
[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]
“They are not very welcome neighbors to our
friends here.”
“No. Roughs abhor brutes as much as you
or I do. Roughs are only nature; brutes are
sin. I do not like this brutal element coming in.
It portends misfortune. You and I will inevitably
come into collision with those fellows.”
“You take your hostile attitude at once, and
without much reluctance.”
“You know something of my experience. I
have had a struggle all my life with sin in one
form or other, with brutality in one form or
other. I have been lacerated so often from
unwillingness to strike the first blow, that I have
at last been forced into the offensive.”
“You believe in flooring Apollyon before he
floors you.”
“There must be somebody to do the merciless.
It 's not my business — the melting mood — in
my present era.”
“We are going off into generalities, apropos
of those two brutes. What, O volunteer champion
of virtue, dost thou propose in regard to
them? When will you challenge them to the
ordeal, to prove themselves honest men and good
fellows?”
“Aggression always comes from evil. They
are losels; we are true knights. They will do
some sneaking villany. You and I will thereupon
up and at 'em.”
-- 070 --
[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]
“Odd fellow are you, with your premonitions!”
“They are very vague, of course, but based on
a magnetism which I have learnt to trust, after
much discipline, because I refused to obey it.
Look at that big brute, how he kicks and curses
his mule!”
“Perhaps he has stolen it, and is revenging
his theft on its object. That brand `A. & A.'
may remind him what a thief he is.”
“Here comes the fat brother. He 'll propose
to camp with us.”
“It is quite natural he should, saint or sinner,—
all the more if he is sinner. It must be terrible
for a man who has ugly secrets to wake up at
night, alone in bivouac, with a grisly dream, no
human being near, and find the stars watching
him keenly, or the great white, solemn moon pitying
him, yet saying, with her inflexible look, that,
moan and curse as he may, no remorse will save
him from despair.”
“Yes,” said Brent, knocking the ashes out of
his pipe; “night always seems to judge and sentence
the day. A foul man, or a guilty man, so
long as he intends to remain foul and guilty,
dreads pure, quiet, orderly Nature.”
The objectionable stranger came up to our
camp-fire.
“Hello, men!” said he, with a familiar air,
“it 's a fine night”; and meeting with no
-- 071 --
[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]
response, he continued: “But, I reckon, you don't
allow nothin' else but fine nights in this section.”
“Bad company makes all nights bad,” says
Jake Shamberlain, gruffly enough.
“Ay; and good company betters the orneriest
sort er weather. The more the merrier, eh?”
“Supposin' its more perarer wolves, or more
rattlesnakes, or more horse-thieving, scalpin'
Utes!” says Jake, unpropitiated.
“O,” said the new-comer a little uneasily,
“I don't mean sech. I mean jolly dogs, like me
and my pardener. We allowed you 'd choose
company in camp. We 'd like to stick our pegs
in alongside of yourn, ef no gent haint got
nothin' to say agin it.”
“It 's a free country,” Jake said, “and looks
pooty roomy round here. You ken camp whar
you blame please, — off or on.”
“Well,” says the fellow, laying hold of this
very slight encouragement, “since you 're agreeable,
we 'll fry our pork over your fire, and hev
a smoke to better acquaintance.”
“He ain't squimmidge,” said Jake to us, as
the fellow walked off to call his comrade. “He 's
bound to ring himself into this here party, whoever
says stickleback. He 's one er them Algerines
what don't know a dark hint, till it begins
to make motions, and kicks 'em out. Well, two
more men, with two regiments' allowance of
-- 072 --
[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]
shootin' irons won't do no harm in this Ingine
country.”
“Well, boys!” said the unpleasant fatling, approaching
again. “Here is my pardener, Sam
Smith, from Sacramenter; what he don't know
about a horse ain't worth knowin'. My name is
Jim Robinson. I ken sing a song, tell a story,
or fling a card with any man, in town or out er
town.”
While the strangers cooked their supper, my
friend and I lounged off apart upon the prairie.
A few steps gave us a capital picture. The white
wagon; the horses feeding in the distance, a
dusky group; the men picturesquely disposed
about the fire, now glowing ruddy against the
thickening night. A Gypsy scene. Literal “Vie
de Bohême.”
“I am never bored,” said Brent to me, “with
the company or the talk of men like those, good
or bad. Homo sum; nil humani, and so forth,—
a sentiment of the late Plautus, now first
quoted.”
“You do not yet feel a reaction toward scholarly
society.”
“No; this Homeric life, with its struggle
against elements, which I can deify if I please,
and against crude forces in man or nature, suits
the youth of my manhood, my Achilles time. The
world went through an epoch of just such life as
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we are leading. Every man must, to be complete
and not conventional.”
“A man who wants to know his country and
his age must clash with all the people and all
the kinds of life in it. You and I have had the
college, the salon, the club, the street, Europe,
the Old World, and Yankeedom through and
through; when do you expect to outgrow Ishmael,
my Jonathan?”
“Whenever Destiny gives me the final accolade
of merit, and names me Lover.”
“What! have you never been that happy
wretch?”
“Never. I have had transitory ideals. I have
been enchanted by women willowy and women
dumpy; by the slight and colorless mind and
body, by the tender and couleur de rose, and
by the buxom and ruddy. I have adored Zobeide
and Hildegarde, Dolores and Dorothy Ann,
imp and angel, sprite and fiend. I have had my
little irritation of a foolish fancy, my sharp scourge
of an unworthy passion. I am heart-whole still,
and growing a little expectant of late.”
“You are not cruising the plains for a lady-love!
It is not, `I will wed a savage woman'?
It is not for a Pawnee squaw that you go clad in
skins and disdain the barber?”
“No. My business in Cosmos is not to be the
father of half-breeds. But soberly, old fellow, I
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need peace after a life driven into premature
foemanship. I need tranquillity to let my character
use my facts. I want the bitter drawn out
of me, and the sweet fostered. I yearn to be a
lover.”
As he said this, we had approached the camp-fire.
Jim Robinson, by this time quite at home,
was making his accomplishments of use. He was
debasing his audience with a vulgar song. The
words and air jarred upon both of us.
“Nil humani a me alienum puto, I repeat,”
said Brent, “but that foul stuff is not the voice
of humanity. Let 's go look at the horses. They
do not belie their nobler nature, and are not in
the line of degradation. I cannot harden myself
not to shrink from the brutal element wherever
I find it; whether in two horse-thieves on the
plains, or in a well-dressed reprobate of society
at the club in New York.”
“Brutes in civilization are just as base, but
not so blatant.”
“Old Pumps and the Don, here, are a gentler
and more honorable pair than these strangers.”
“They are the gentlemen of their race.”
“It 's not their cue to talk; but if the gift of
tongues should come to them, they would disdain
all unchivalric and discourteous words. They
do now, with those brave eyes and scornful nostrils,
rebuke whatever is unmanly in men.”
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“Yes; they certainly look ready to co-operate
in all knightly duties.”
“One of those, as I hinted before, is riding
down caitiffs.”
We left our horses, busy at their suppers, beside
the brawling river, and walked back to camp.
It was a Caravaggio scene by the firelight. Jim
Robinson had produced cards. The men of the
mail party were intent over the game. Even Jake
Shamberlain had easily forgotten his distrust of
the strangers. The two suspects, whether with
an eye to future games, or because they could
not offend their comrades and protectors for this
dangerous journey, were evidently playing fair.
Robinson would sometimes exhibit a winning
hand, and say, with an air of large liberality,
“Ye see, boys, I ked rake down yer dimes, ef I
chose; but this here is a game among friends.
I 'm playin' for pastime. I 've made my pile
olreddy, and so 's my pardener.”
The gambler's face and the gambler's manner
are the same all over the world. Always the
same impassible watchfulness. Always the same
bullying cruelty or feline cruelty. Always the
same lurking triumph, and the same lurking
sneer at the victim. The same quiet satisfaction
that gamesters will be geese, and gamblers are
deputed to pluck them; the same suppressed
chuckle over the efforts of the luckless to
-- 076 --
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retrieve bad luck; the same calm confidence that
the lucky player will by and by back the wrong
card, the wrong color, or the wrong number, and
the bank will take back its losses. What hard
faces they wear! Wear, — for their faces seem
masks merely, dropped only at stealthy moments.
Always the same look and the same manner.
Young and beautiful faces curdle into it. Women's
even. I have seen women, the slaves of
the hells their devils kept, whose faces would
have been fair and young, if this ugly mask
could but be torn away. All men and all women
who make prey of their fellows, who lie in
wait to seize and dismember brothers and sisters,
get this same relentless expression. It fixes itself
deepest on a gambler; he must hold the same
countenance from the first lamp-lighting until indignant
dawn pales the sickly light of lamps, and
the first morning air creeps in to stir the heavyhearted
atmosphere, and show that it is poison.”
“I 've seen villains just like those two,” said
Brent, “in every hell in Europe and America.
They always go in pairs; a tiger and a snake; a
bully and a wheedler.
“Mind and matter. The old partnership, like
yours and mine.”
Next morning the two strangers were free and
accepted members of the party. They travelled
on with us without question. Smith the gaunt
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affected a rough frankness of manner. Robinson
was low comedy. His head was packed with
scurvy jokes and stories. He had a foul leer
on his face whenever he was thinking his own
thoughts. But either, if suddenly startled,
showed the unmistakable look that announces
worse crime than mere knavery.
They tangled their names so that we perceived
each was an alias hastily assumed. Smith compared
six-shooters with me. I detected on his the
name Murker, half erased. Once, too, Brent
heard Murker, alias Smith, call his partner Larrap.
“Larrap is appropriate,” said I, when Brent
told me this; “just the name for him, as that
unlucky mule branded `A. & A.' could testify.”
“The long ruffian studied my face, when he
made that slip, to see if I had heard. He might
as well have inspected the air for the mark of
his traitorous syllables.”
“You claim that your phiz is so covered with
hieroglyphs, inscriptions of fine feeling, that there
is no room to write suspicions of other men's
villany?”
“A clean heart keeps a clean face. A guilty
heart will announce itself at eyes and lips and
cheeks, and by a thousand tremors of the nerves.
I have no prejudices against the family Larrap.
But when Larrap's mate spoke the name, he
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looked at me as if he had been committing a murder,
and had by an irresistible impulse proclaimed
the fact. Look at him now! how he starts and
half turns whenever one of our horses makes a
clatter. He dares not quite look back. He
knows there is something after him.”
“The dread of a vengeance, you think. That 's
a blacker follower than `Atra cura post equitem.'”
I tire of these unwholesome characters I am
describing. But I did not put them into the
story. They took their places themselves. I
find that brutality interferes in most dramas and
most lives. Brutality the male sin, disloyalty the
female sin, — these two are always doing their
best to baffle and blight heroism and purity.
Often they succeed. Oftener they fail. And so
the world exists, and is not annulled; its history
is the history of the struggle and the victory.
This episode of my life is a brief of the world's
complete experience.
-- -- p753-084
CHAPTER VIII. A MORMON CARAVAN.
[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]
Still, as we rode along, the same rich, tranquil
days of October; the air always potable
gold, and every breath nepenthe.
Early on one of the fairest of afternoons when
all were fairest, we reached Fort Bridger. Bridger
had been an old hunter, trapper, and by and by
that forlorn hope of civilization, the holder of an
Indian trading-post. The spot is better known
now. It was there that that miserable bungle
and blunder of an Administration more fool, if
that be possible, than knave, — the Mormon Expedition
in 1858, — took refuge, after its disasters on
the Sweetwater.
At the moment of our arrival, Bridger's Fort
had just suffered capture. Its owner was missing.
The old fellow had deemed himself the
squatter sovereign of that bleak and sere region.
He had built an adobe mud fort, with a palisade,
on a sweep of plain a degree less desert than the
deserts hard by. That oasis was his oasis, so he
fondly hoped; that mud fort, his mud fort; those
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willows and alders, his thickets; and that trade,
his trade.
But Bridger was one man, and he had powerful
neighbors. It was a case of “O si angulus
iste!” — a Naboth's-vineyard case. The Mormons
did not love the rugged mountaineer; that
worthy Gentile, in turn, thought the saints no
better than so many of the ungodly. The Mormons
coveted oasis, fort, thicket, and trade.
They accused the old fellow of selling powder
and ball to hostile Indians, — to Walker, chief of
the Utes, a scion, no doubt, of the Hookey Walker
branch of that family. Very likely he had done
so. At all events, it was a good pretext. So, in
the name of the Prophet, and Brigham, successor
of the Prophet, the Latter-Day Saints had made
a raid upon the post. Bridger escaped to the
mountains. The captors occupied the Gentile's
property, and spoiled his goods.
Jake Shamberlain told us this story, not without
some sympathy for the exile.
“It 's olluz so,” says Jake; “Paul plants, and
Apollyon gets the increase. Not that Bridger 's
like Paul, any more 'n we 're like Apollyon; but
we 're goan to have all the cider off his appletrees.”
“I 'm sorry old Bridger has come to grief,”
said Brent to me, as we rode over the plain toward
the fort. “He was a rough, but worth all
-- 081 --
[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]
the Latter-Day Saints this side of the Armageddon.
Biddulph and I stayed a week with him
last summer, when we came from the mountains
about Luggernel Alley.”
“How far is Luggernel Alley from this
spot?”
“Fifty miles or so to the south and east. I
almost fancy I recognize it in that slight notch in
the line of the blue sierra on the horizon. I
wonder if I shall ever see it again! If it were
not so late, I should insist upon taking you there
now. There is no such gorge in the world. And
the springs, bold, liberal fountains, gushing out
on a glittering greensward! There are several
of them, some boiling, some cold as ice; and one,
the Champagne Spring, wastes in the wilderness
the most delicate, sparkling, exhilarating tipple
that ever reddened a lip or freshened a brain.”
“Wait half a century; then you and I will go
there by rail, with our grandchildren, for draughts
of the Fountain of Youth.”
“I should like to spend a honeymoon there, if
I could find a wife plucky enough to cross the
plains.”
How well I remembered all this conversation
afterwards, and not long afterwards!
We rode up to the fort. A dozen or so of
somewhat rubbishy soldiers, the garrison, were
lounging about.
-- 082 --
[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]
“Will they expect a countersign,” asked I, —
“some slogan of their vulgarized Islamism?”
“Hardly!” replied Brent. “Only one man
in the world can care about assailing this dismal
den. They need not be as ceremonious with
strangers as the Dutchmen are at Ehrenbreitstein
and Verona.”
Jake and the main party stopped at the fort.
We rode on a quarter of a mile farther, and
camped near a stream, where the grass was plenteous.
“Fulano and Pumps are in better condition
than when we started,” said I, while we were
staking them out for a long feed. “The mustangs
have had all the drudgery; these aristocrats
must be set to do their share soon.”
“They are in prime racing order. If we had
had them in training for three months for a
steeple-chase, or a flight, or a Sabine adventure,
or a rescue, they could not be in better trim than
this moment. I suppose their time to do their
duty must be at hand, they seem so ardent for it.”
We left our little caballada nibbling daintily at
the sweetest spires of self-cured hay, and walked
back to the fort.
We stood there chatting with the garrison.
Presently Brent's quick eye caught some white
spots far away on the slope of the prairie, like
sails on the edge of a dreamy, sunny sea.
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“Look!” said he, “there comes a Salt Lake
emigration train.”
“Yes,” said a Mormon of the garrison, “that 's
Elder Sizzum's train. Their forerunner came in
this morning to choose the camping-spot. There
they be! two hundred ox-teams, a thousand
Saints, bound for the Promised Land.”
He walked off to announce the arrival, whistling,
“Jordan is a hard road to travel.”
I knew of Sizzum as the most seductive orator
and foreign propagandist of Mormonism. He
had been in England some time, very successful
at the good work. The caravans we had already
met were of his proselytes. He himself was
coming on with the last train, the one now in
view, and steering for Fort Bridger.
As we stood watching, the lengthening file
of white-hooded wagons crept slowly into sight.
They came forward diagonally to our line of
view, travelling apart at regular intervals, like
the vessels of a well-ordered convoy. Now the
whole fleet dipped into a long hollow, and presently
the leader rose slowly up over the ridge,
and then slid over the slope, like a sail winging
down the broad back of a surge. So they made
their way along over the rolling sweep of the
distance.
“Beautiful!” said Brent. “See how the white
canvas goldens in this rich October haze. Such
scenes are the poetry of prairie life.”
-- 084 --
[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]
“I am too sorry for the crews, to enjoy the
sunlit sails.”
“Yes, the safer their voyage, the surer their
wreck in that gulf of superstition beyond the
mountains.”
“Perhaps we waste sympathy. A man who
has no more wit than to believe the trash they
teach, has no business with anything but stupid
drudgery. He will never suffer with discovering
his faith to be a delusion.”
“You may say that of a grown man; but
think of the children, — to grow up in desecrated
homes, and never know the close and tender
influence of family nurture.”
“The state owes them an interference and an
education.”
“So it does; and the women protection from
polygamy, whether they will or no.”
“Certainly. Polygamy makes woman a slave,
either by force, or influence stronger than force.
The state exists only to secure the blessings of
liberty to every soul within its borders, and so
must free her.”
“Good logic, but not likely, quite yet, to guide
legislation in our country.”
“This is Sizzum's last train; if the women
here are no more fascinating than their shabby
sisters of its forerunners, we shall carry our
hearts safe home.”
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[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]
“I cannot laugh about that,” said Brent.
“My old dread revives, whenever I see one of
these caravans, that there may be in it some
innocent girl too young to choose, carried off
by a fanatic father or guardian. Think of the
misery to a woman of any refinement!”
“But we have not seen any such.”
Larrap and Murker here joined us, and, overhearing
the last remarks, began to speak in a
very disgusting tone of the women we had seen
in previous trains.
“I don't wish to hear that kind of stuff,” said
Brent, turning sternly upon Larrap.
“It 's a free country, and I shall say what I
blame please,” the fellow said, with a grin.
“Then say it by yourself, and away from me.”
“You 're blame squimmidge,” said Larrap,
and added a beastly remark.
Brent caught him by the collar, and gave
him a shake.
Murker put his hand to a pistol and looked
“Murder, if I dared!”
“None of that,” said I, stepping before him.
Jake Shamberlain, seeing the quarrel, came
running up. “Now, Brother Brent,” said Jake,
“no shindies in this here Garden of Paradise.
If the gent has made a remark what teches you,
apologies is in order, an he 'll make all far and
squar.”
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[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]
Brent gave the greasy man a fling.
He went down. Then he got up, with a
trace of Bridger's claim on his red shirt.
“Yer need n't be so blame hash with a feller,”
said he. “I did n't mean no offence.”
“Very well. Learn to talk like a man, and
not like a brute!” said Brent.
The two men walked off together, with black
looks.
“You look disappointed, Shamberlain,” said
I. “Did you expect a battle?”
“Ther 's no fight in them fellers,” said Jake;
“but ef they can serve you a mean trick they 'll
do it; and they 're ambushin' now to look in the
dixonary and see what it is. You 'd better keep
the lariats of that black and that gray tied
round your legs to-night, and every good horse-thief
night while they 're along. They may be
jolly dogs, and let their chances slide at cards,
but my notion is they 're layin' low for bigger
hauls.”
“Good advice, Jake; and so we will.”
By this time the head wagons of Elder Sizzum's
train had crept down upon the level near
us. For the length of a long mile behind, the
serpentine line held its way. On the yellow
rim of the world, with softened outlines against
the hazy horizon, the rear wagons were still
climbing up into view. The caravan lay like a
-- 087 --
[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]
slowly writhing hydra over the land. Along
its snaky bends, where dragon-wings should
be, were herds of cattle, plodding beside the
“trailing-footed” teams, and little companies of
Saints lounging leisurely toward their evening's
goal, their unbuilt hostelry on the plain.
Presently the hydra became a two-headed monster.
The foremost wagon bent to the right, the
second led off to the left. Each successor, as it
came to the point of divergence, filed to the right
or left alternately. The split creature expanded
itself. The two wings moved on over a broad
grassy level north of the fort, describing in regular
curve a great ellipse, a third of a mile long,
half as much across.
On either flank the march was timed and ordered
with the precision of practice. This same
manœuvre had been repeated every day of the
long journey. Precisely as the foremost teams
met at the upper end of the curve, the two hindmost
were parting at the lower. The ellipse was
complete. It locked itself top and bottom. The
train came to a halt. Every wagon of the two
hundred stopped close upon the heels of its file
leader.
A tall man, half pioneer, half deacon, in dress
and mien, galloped up and down the ring. This
was Sizzum, so the by-standers informed us. At
a signal from him, the oxen, two and three yoke
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[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]
to a wagon, were unyoked, herded, and driven
off to wash the dust from their protestant nostrils,
and graze over the russet prairie. They huddled
along, a great army, a thousand strong. Their
brown flanks grew ruddy with the low sunshine.
A cloud of golden dust rose and hung over them.
The air was loud with their lowing. Relieved
from their drags, the herd frisked away with
unwiedly gambolling. We turned to the camp,
that improvised city in the wilderness.
Nothing could be more systematic than its arrangement.
Order is welcome in the world.
Order is only second to beauty. It is, indeed,
the skeleton of beauty. Beauty seeks order, and
becomes its raiment. Every great white-hooded,
picturesque wagon of the Mormon caravan was
in its place. The tongue of each rested on the
axle of its forerunner, or was ranged upon the
grass beneath. The ellipse became a fort and a
corral. Within, the cattle could be safely herded.
Marauding Redskins would gallop about in vain.
Nothing stampedable there. Scalping Redskins,
too, would be baffled. They could not make a
dash through the camp, whisk off a scalp, and
vanish untouched. March and encampment both
had been marshalled with masterly skill.
“Sizzum,” Brent avowed to me, sotto voce,
“may be a blind guide with ditchward tendencies
in faith. He certainly knows how to handle
-- 089 --
[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]
his heretics in the field. I have seen old tacticians,
Maréchales and Feldzeugmeisters, in Europe,
with El Dorado on each shoulder, and
Golconda on the left breast, who would have tied
up that train into knots that none of them would
be Alexander enough to cut.”
-- -- p753-095
CHAPTER IX. SIZZUM AND HIS HERETICS.
[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]
No sooner had this nomad town settled itself
quietly for the night, than a town-meeting collected
in the open of the amphitheatre.
“Now, brethren,” says Shamberlain to us, “ef
you want to hear exhortin' as runs without stoppin',
step up and listen to the Apossle of the
Gentiles. Prehaps,” and here Jake winked perceptibly,
“you 'll be teched, and want to jine,
and prehaps you wont. Ef you 're docyle you 'll
be teched, ef you 're bulls of Bashan you wont
be teched.”
“How did you happen to be converted yourself,
Jake?” Brent asked. “You 've never told
me.”
“Why, you see I was naturally of a religious
nater, and I 've tried 'em all, but I never fell foul
of a religion that had real proved miracles, till
I seed a man, born dumb, what was cured by
the Prophet Joseph looking down his throat and
tellin' his palate to speak up, — and it did speak
up, did that there palate, and went on talkin' most
-- 091 --
[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]
oncommon. It's onbeknown tongues it talks,
suthin like gibberidge; but Joseph said that was
how the tongues sounded in the Apossles' time
to them as had n't got the interruption of tongues.
I struck my flag to that there miracle. I 'd seen
'em gettin' up the sham kind, when I was to the
Italian convent, and I knowed the fourth-proof
article. I may talk rough about this business,
but Brother Brent knows I 'm honest about it.”
Jake led us forward, and stationed us in posts
of honor before the crowd of auditors.
Presently Sizzum appeared. He had taken
time to tone down the pioneer and develop the
deacon in his style, and a very sleek personage
he had made of himself. He was clean shaved;
clean shaving is a favorite coxcombry of the deacon
class. His long black hair, growing rank
from a muddy skin, was sleekly put behind his
ears. A large white blossom of cravat expanded
under his nude, beefy chin, and he wore a black
dress-coat, creased with its recent packing. Except
that his pantaloons were thrust into boots
with the maker's name (Abel Cushing, Lynn,
Mass.) stamped in gold on a scarlet morocco
shield in front, he was in correct go-to-meetin'
costume, — a Chadband of the plains.
He took his stand, and began to fulmine over
the assemblage. His manner was coarse and
overbearing, with intervals of oily
-- 092 --
[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]
persuasiveness. He was a big, powerful man, without one
atom of delicacy in him, — a fellow who never
could take a flower or a gentle heart into his
hand without crushing it by a brutal instinct. A
creature with such an amorphous beak of a nose,
such a heavy-lipped mouth, and such wilderness
of jaw, could never perceive the fine savor of
any delicate thing. Coarse joys were the only
joys for such a body; coarse emotions, the pleasures
of force and domination, the only emotions
crude enough for such a soul.
His voice was as repulsive as his mien and
manner. That badly modelled nose had an important
office in his oratory. Through it he
hailed his auditors to open their hearts, as a
canal-boatman hails the locks with a canal horn
of bassoon calibre. But sometimes, when he
wished to be seductive, his sentences took the
channel of his mouth, and his great lips rolled
the words over like fat morsels. Pah! how the
recollection of the fellow disgusts me! And yet
he had an unwholesome fascination, which compelled
us to listen. I could easily understand
how he might overbear feeble minds, and wheedle
those that loved flattery. He had some education.
Travel had polished his base metal, so
that it shone well enough to deceive the vulgar
or the credulous. He did not often allow himself
the broad coarseness of his brother preachers
in the church.
-- 093 --
[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]
Shall I let him speak for himself? Does any
one wish to hear the inspirations of the last faith
humanity has chosen for its guide?
No. Such travesty of true religion is very
sorry comedy, very tragical farce. Vulgar rant
and cant, and a muddle of texts and dogmas, are
disgusting to hear, and would be weariness to
repeat.
Sizzum's sermon suited his mixed character.
He was Aaron and Joshua, high-priest and captain
combined. He made his discourse bulletin
for to-day, general orders for to-morrow. He
warned against the perils of disobedience. He
raved of the joys and privileges of Latter-Day
Saintship on earth and in heaven. He heaped
vindictive and truculent anathemas upon Gentiles.
He gave his audience to understand that
he held the keys of the kingdom; if they yielded
to him without question, they were safe in life
and eternity; if they murmured, they were cast
into outer darkness. It was terrible to see the
man's despotism over his proselytes. A rumble
of Amens from the crowd greeted alike every
threat and every promise.
Sizzum's discourse lasted half an hour. He
dismissed his audience with an Amen, and an injunction
to keep closer to the train on the march
to-morrow, and not be “rabbling off to catch
grasshoppers because they were bigger and handsomer
than the Lancashire kind.”
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[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]
“And this is one of the religions of the nineteenth
century, and such a man is its spokesman,”
said Brent to me, as the meeting broke
up, and we strolled off alone to inspect the camp.
“It is a shame to all churches that they have
not trained men to judge of evidence, and so
rendered such a delusion impossible.”
“But Christianity tolerates, and ever reveres,
myths and mythic histories; and such toleration
and reverence offer premiums on the invention
of new mythologies like this.”
“We, in our churches, teach that phenomena
can add authority to truth; we necessarily
invite miracle-mongers, Joe Smiths, Pio Nonos,
to produce miracles to sustain lies.”
“I suppose,” said Brent, “that superstition
must be the handmaid of religion, except in
minds very holy, or very brave and thorough
in study. By and by, when mankind is educated
to know that theology is a science, to be
investigated and tested like a science, Mormonism
and every like juggle will become forever
impossible.”
“Certainly; false religions always pretend to
a supernatural origin and a fresh batch of mysteries.
Let Christianity discard its mysteries,
and impostors will have no educated credulity
to aid them.”
So Brent and I commented upon the Sizzum
-- 095 --
[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]
heresy and its mouthpiece. We abhorred the
system, and were disgusted with its apostle, as
a tempter and a knave. Yet we could not feel
any close personal interest in the class he deluded.
They seemed too ignorant and doltish
to need purer spiritual food.
Bodily food had been prepared by the women
while the men listened to Sizzum's grace before
meat. A fragrance of baking bread had pervaded
the air. A thousand slices of fat pork
sizzled in two hundred frying-pans, and water
boiled for two hundred coffee or tea pots. Saints
cannot solely live on sermons.
Brent and I walked about to survey the camp.
We stopped wherever we found the emigrants
sociable, and chatted with them. They were
all eager to know how much length of journey
remained.
“We 're comin' to believe, some of us,” said
an old crone, with a wrinkle for every grumble
of her life, “that we 're to be forty year in the
wilderness, like the old Izzerullites. I would n't
have come, Samwell, if I 'd known what you was
bringin' me to.”
“There 's a many of us would n't have come,
mother,” rejoined “Samwell,” a cowed man of
anxious look, “if we 'd known as much as we
do now.”
Samwell glanced sadly at his dirty, travel-worn
-- 096 --
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children, at work at mud pies and dust vol-auvents.
His dowdy wife broke off the colloquy
by announcing, in a tone that she must have
learned from a rattlesnake, that the loaf was
baked, the bacon was fried, and supper should n't
wait for anybody's talking.
All the emigrants were English. Lancashire
their accent and dialect announced, and Lancashire
they told us was their home in the old
step-mother country.
Step-mother, indeed, to these her children!
No wonder that they had found life at home intolerable!
They were the poorest class of townspeople
from the great manufacturing towns, —
penny tradesmen, indoor craftsmen, factory operatives, —
a puny, withered set of beings; hardly
men, if man means strength; hardly women,
if woman means beauty. Their faces told of
long years passed in the foul air of close shops,
or work-rooms, or steamy, oily, flocculent mills.
All work and no play had been their history.
No holidays, no green grass, no flowers, no freshness, —
nothing but hard, ill-paid drudgery, with
starvation standing over the task and scourging
them on. There were children among them already
aged and wrinkled, ancient as the crone,
Samwell's mother, for any childish gayety they
showed. Poor things! they had been for years
their twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours at work in
-- 097 --
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stifling mills, when they should have been tumbling
in the hay, chasing butterflies, expanding
to sunshine and open air.
“We have not seen,” said Brent, “one hearty
John Bull, or buxom Betsy Bull, in the whole
caravan.”
“They look as if husks and slops had been
their meat and drink, instead of beef and beer.”
“Beef and beer belong to fellows that have
red in their cheeks and guffaws in their throats,
not to these lean, pale, dreary wretches.”
“The saints' robes seem as sorry as their persons,”
said I. “No watchman on the hill-tops of
their Sion will hail, `Who are these in bright
array?' when they heave in sight!”
“They have a right to be way-worn, after their
summer of plodding over these dusty wastes.”
“Here comes a group in gayer trim. See!—
actually flounces and parasols!”
Several young women of the Blowsalind order,
dressed in very incongruous toggery of stained
and faded silks, passed us. They seemed to be
on a round of evening visits, and sheltered their
tanned faces against the October sunshine with
ancient fringed parasols. Their costume had a
queer effect in the camp of a Mormon caravan at
Fort Bridger. They were in good spirits, and
went into little panics when they saw Brent in
his Indian rig, and then into “Lor me!” and
-- 098 --
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“Bless us!” when the supposed Pawnee was discovered
to be a handsome pale-face.
“Perhaps we waste sympathy,” said Brent,
“on these people. Why are not they better off
here, and likely to be more comfortable in Utah
than in the slums of Manchester?”
“Drudgery for drudgery, slavery for slavery,
barren as the Salt Lake country is, and rough
the lot of pioneers, I have no doubt they will be.
But then the religion!”
“I do not defend that; but what has England's
done for them to make them regret it? Of what
use to these poor proletaires have the cathedrals
been, or the sweet country churches, or the quiet
cloisters of Oxford and Cambridge? I cannot
wonder that they have given an easy belief to
Mormonism, — an energetic, unscrupulous propagandism,
offering escape from poverty and social
depression, offering acres for the mere trouble
of occupying; promising high thrones in heaven,
and on earth also, if the saints will only gather,
march back, and take possession of their old estates
in Illinois and Missouri.”
We had by this time approached the upper
end of the ellipse. Sizzum, as quartermaster,
had done his duty well. The great blue land-arks,
each roofed with its hood of white canvas
stretched on hoops, were in stout, serviceable order,
wheels, axles, and bodies.
-- 099 --
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Within these nomad cottages order or chaos
reigned, according to the tenants. Some people
seem only to know the value of rubbish. They
guard old shoes, old hats, cracked mugs, battered
tins, as articles of virtu. Some of the wagons
were crowded with such cherished trash. Some
had been lightened of such burdens by the wayside,
and so were snug and orderly nestling-places;
but the rat's-nests quite outnumbered
the wren's-nests.
A small, neat wagon stood near the head of
the train. We might have merely glanced at it,
and passed by, as we had done elsewhere along
the line; but, as we approached, our attention
was caught by Murker and Larrap. They were
nosing about, prying into the wagon, from a little
distance. When they caught sight of us, they
turned and skulked away.
“What are those vermin about?” said Brent.
“Selecting, perhaps, a Mormoness to kidnap
to-night, or planning a burglary.”
“I hate to loathe any one as I loathe those
fellows. I have known brutes enough in my
life to have become hardened or indifferent by
this time, but these freshen my disgust every
time I see them.”
“I thought we had come to a crisis with them
this afternoon, when you collared Larrap.”
“You remember my presentiments about them
-- 100 --
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the night they joined us. I am afraid they will
yet serve us a shabby trick. Their `dixonary,'
as Shamberlain called it, of rascality is an unabridged
edition.”
“Such carrion creatures should not be allowed
about such a pretty cage.”
“It is, indeed, a pretty cage. Some neater-handed
Phyllis than we have seen has had the
arranging of the household gear within.”
“Yes; the mistress of this rolling mansion has
not lost her domestic ambition. This is quite
the model wagon of the train. Refinement does
not disdain Sizzum's pilgrims; as ecce signum
here!”
“The pretty cage has its bird, — pretty too,
perhaps. See! there is some one behind that
shawl screen at the back of the wagon.”
“The bird has divined Murker and Larrap,
and is hiding, probably.”
“Come; we have stared long enough; let us
walk on.”
-- -- p753-106
CHAPTER X. “ELLEN! ELLEN!”
[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]
We were turning away from the pretty cage,
in order not to frighten the bird, pretty or not,
when an oldish man, tending his fire at the farther
side of the wagon, gave us “Good evening!”
There is a small but ancient fraternity in the
world, known as the Order of Gentlemen. It is
a grand old order. A poet has said that Christ
founded it; that he was “the first true gentleman
that ever lived.”
I cannot but distinguish some personages of
far-off antiquity as worthy members of this fellowship.
I believe it coeval with man. But
Christ stated the precept of the order, when he
gave the whole moral law in two clauses, —
Love to God, and Love to the neighbor. Whoever
has this precept so by heart that it shines
through into his life, enters without question
into the inner circles of the order.
But to protect itself against pretenders, this
brotherhood, like any other, has its formulas,
its passwords, its shibboleths, even its uniform.
-- 102 --
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These are external symbols. With some, the
symbol is greater than the thing signified. The
thing signified, the principle, is so beautiful, that
the outward sign is enough to glorify any character.
The demeanor of a gentleman — being
art, the expression of an idea in form — can become
property, like any art. It may be an heirloom
in an ancient house, like the portrait of the
hero who gave a family name and fame, like the
portrait of the maiden martyr or the faithful wife
who made that name beloved, that fame poetry,
to all ages. This precious inheritance, like anything
fine and tender, has sometimes been treated
with over care. Guardians have been so solicitous
that a neophyte should not lose his inherited
rank in the order of gentlemen, that they have
forgotten to make a man of him. Culturing
the flower, they have not thought to make the
stalk sturdy, or even healthy. The demeanor
of a gentleman may be possessed by a weakling,
or even inherited by one whose heart is not worthy
of his manners.
The formulas of this order are not edited; its
passwords are not syllabled; its uniform was never
pictured in a fashion-plate, or so described that a
snob could go to his tailor, and say, “Make me
the habit of a gentleman.” But the brothers
know each other unerringly wherever they meet;
be they of the inner shrine, gentlemen heart and
-- 103 --
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life; be they of the outer court, gentlemen in
feeling and demeanor.
No disguise delays this recognition. No strangeness
of place and circumstances prevents it. The
men meet. The magnetism passes between them.
All is said without words. Gentleman knows gentleman
by what we name instinct. But observe
that this thing, instinct, is character in its finest,
keenest, largest, and most concentrated action.
It is the spirit's touch.
John Brent and I, not to be deemed intruders,
were walking away from the neat wagon at the
upper end of the Mormon camp, when an oldish
man beside the wagon gave us “Good evening.”
“Good evening, gentlemen,” said the wan,
gray-haired, shadowy man before us.
And that was all. It was enough. We knew
each other; we him and he us. Men of the same
order, and so brothers and friends.
Here was improbability that made interest at
once. Greater to us than to him. We were not
out of place. He was, and in the wrong company.
Brent and I looked at each other. We had
half divined our new brother's character at the
first glance.
How legible are some men! All, indeed, that
have had, or are to have, a history, are books in
a well-known tongue to trained decipherers. But
some tragedies stare at us with such an earnest
-- 104 --
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dreariness from helpless faces, that we read with
one look. We turn away sadly. We have comprehended
the whole history of past sorrow; we
prophesy the coming despair.
I will not now anticipate the unfinished, melancholy
story we read in this new face. An
Englishman, an unmistakable gentleman, and in
a Mormon camp, — there was tragedy enough.
Enough to whisper us both to depart, and not
grieve ourselves with vain pity; enough to imperatively
command us to stay and see whether
we, as true knights, foes of wrong, succorers of
feebleness, had any business here. The same
instinct that revealed to us one of our order
where he ought not to be, warned us that he
might have claims on us, and we duties toward
him.
We returned his salutation.
We were about to continue the conversation,
when he opened a fresh page of the tragedy. He
called, in a voice too sad to be querulous, — a
flickering voice, never to be fed vigorous again
by any lusty hope, —
“Ellen! Ellen!”
“What, father dear?”
“The water boils. Please bring the tea, my
child.”
“Yes, father dear.”
The answers came from within the wagon.
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They were the song of the bird whose nest we
had approved. A sad song. A woman's voice
can tell a long history of sorrow in a single word.
This wonderful instrument, our voice, alters its
timbre with every note it yields, as the face
changes with every look, until at last the dominant
emotion is master, and gives quality to tone
and character to expression.
It was a sad, sweet voice that answered the old
gentleman's call. A lady's voice, — the voice of
a high-bred woman, delicate, distinct, self-possessed.
That sound itself was tragedy in such
a spot. No transitory disappointment or distress
ever imprinted its mark so deeply upon a heart's
utterance. The sadness here had been life-long,
had begun long ago, in the days when childhood
should have gone thoughtless, or, if it noted the
worth of its moments, should have known them
as jubilee every one; — a sadness so habitual that
it had become the permanent atmosphere of the
life. The voice announced the person, and commanded
all the tenderest sympathy brother-man
can give to any sorrowful one in the sisterhood
of woman.
And yet this voice, that with so subtle a revelation
gave us the key of the unseen lady's history,
asked for no pity. There was no moan in it, and
no plaint. Not even a murmur, nor any rebel
bitterness or sourness for defeat. The undertone
-- 106 --
[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]
was brave. If not hopeful, still resolute. No
despair could come within sound of that sweet
music of defiance. The tones that challenge
Fate were subdued away; but not the tones that
calmly answer, “No surrender,” to Fate's untimely
pæan. It was a happy thing to know
that, sorrowful as the life might be, here was an
impregnable soul.
There was a manner of half command and
half dependence in the father's call to his daughter, —
a weak nature, still asserting the control
it could not sustain over a stronger. And in her
response an indulgence of this feeble attempt at
authority.
Does all this seem much to find in the few simple
words we had heard? The analysis might
be made indefinitely more thorough. Every look,
tone, gesture of a man is a symbol of his complete
nature. If we apply the microscope severely
enough, we can discern the fine organism
by which the soul sends itself out in every act
of the being. And the more perfectly developed
the creature, the more significant, and yet the
more mysterious, is every habit, and every motion
mightier than habit, of body or soul.
In an instant, the lady so sweetly heralded
stepped from beneath the hood of the wagon, and
sprang to the ground in more busy and cheerful
guise than her voice had promised.
-- 107 --
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Again the same subtle magnetism between her
and us. We could not have been more convinced
of her right to absolute respect and consideration
if she had entered to us in the dusky light of a
rich drawing-room, or if we had been presented
in due form at a picnic of the grandest world,
with far other scenery than this of a “desart
idle,” tenanted for the moment by a Mormon
caravan. The lady, like her father, felt that we
were gentlemen, and therefore would comprehend
her. She saluted us quietly. There was
in her manner a tacit and involuntary protest
against circumstances, just enough for dignity.
A vulgar woman would have snatched up and
put on clumsily a have-seen-better-days air.
This lady knew herself, and knew that she could
not be mistaken for other than she was. Her
base background only made her nobility more
salient.
She did not need any such background, nor
the contrast of the drudges and meretricious
frights of the caravan. She could have borne
full light without any shade. A woman fit to
stand peer among the peerless.
We could not be astonished at this apparition.
We had divined her father rightly, as it afterward
proved. Her voice has already half disclosed
her character. Let her face continue the
development. We had already heard her called
-- 108 --
[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]
by her Christian name, Ellen. That seemed to
bring us, from the beginning, into a certain intimacy
with the woman as woman, sister, daughter,
and to subordinate the circumstances of the
life, to be in future suggested by the social name,
to the life itself.
Ellen, then, the unknown lady of the Mormon
caravan, was a high-bred beauty. Englishwomen
generally lack the fine edge of such beauty as
hers. She owed her dark fairness, perhaps, to
a Sicilian bride, whom her Norman ancestor had
pirated away from some old playground of Proserpine,
and brought with him to England when
he came there as conqueror. Her nose was not
quite aquiline.
Positive aquiline noses should be cut off. They
are ugly; they are immoral; they are sensual;
they love money; they enjoy others' misery.
The worst birds have hooked beaks; and so the
worst men, the eagles and vultures of the race.
Cut off the beaks; they betoken a cruel pounce,
a greedy clutch, and a propensity to carrion.
Save the exceptions, but extirpate the brood.
This lady's nose was sensitive and proud. It
is well when a face has its share of pride in the
nose. Then the lips can give themselves solely
to sweetness and archness. Besides, pride, or, if
the word is dreaded, a conscious and resolute
personality, should be the characteristic of a face.
-- 109 --
[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]
The nose should express this quality. Above, the
eyes may changefully flash intelligence; below,
the mouth may smile affection; the cheeks may
give balance and equability; the chin may show
the cloven dimple of a tender and many-sided, or
the point of a single-hearted and concentrated
nature; the brow, a non-committal feature, may
look wise or wiseacre; but every one of them is
only tributary to the nose, standing royally in the
midst, and with dignity presiding over its wayward
realm.
Halt! My business is to describe a heroine, —
not to discuss physiognomy, with her face for a
type.
As I said, her nose was sensitive and proud.
There might have once been scorn in the curve
of her nostril. Not now. Sorrow and pity had
educated away the scorn, as they had the tones of
challenge from her voice. Firmness, self-respect,
latent indignation, remained untouched. A strong
woman, whose power was intense and passionate.
Calm, till the time came, and then flame. Beware
of arousing her! Not that there was revenge
in her face. No; no stab or poison there.
But she was a woman to die by an act of will,
rather than be wronged. She was one who could
hold an insulter by a steady look, while she grew
paler, paler, purer, purer, with a more unearthly
pureness, until she had crushed the boiling blood
-- 110 --
[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]
back into her heart, and stood before the wretch
white and chill as a statue, marble-dead.
What a woman to meet in a Mormon caravan!
And yet how able to endure whatever a dastard
Fate might send to crush her there!
Her hair was caught back, and severely chided
out of its wish to rebel and be as beautiful as it
knew was its desert. It was tendril hair, black
enough to show blackness against Fulano's shoulder.
Chide her locks as she might, they still
insisted upon flinging out here and there a slender
curling token of their gracefulness, to prove
what it might be if she would but let them have
their sweet and wilful will.
Her eyes were gray, with violet touches. Her
eyebrows defined and square. If she had had
passionate or pleading dark eyes, — the eyes that
hardly repress their tears for sorrow or for joy,—
and the temperament that such eyes reveal,
she would long ago have fevered or wept herself
to death. No woman could have looked at the
disgusts of that life of hers through tears, and
lived. The gray eyes meant steadiness, patience,
hope without flinching, and power to master fate,
or if not to master, to defy.
She was somewhat pale, thin, and sallow.
Plodding wearily and drearily over those dusty
wastes toward exile could not make her a merry
Nut-Brown Maid. Only her thin, red lips proved
-- 111 --
[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]
that there were still blushes lurking out of
sight.
A mature woman; beyond girlhood, body and
soul. With all her grave demeanor, she could
not keep down the wiles of gracefulness that ever
bubbled to the surface. If she could but be her
happy self, what a fair world she would suddenly
create about her!
She was dressed in rough gray cloth, as any
lady might be for a journey. She was evidently
one whose resolute neatness repels travel-stains.
After the tawdry, draggled silks of the young
women we had just seen, her simplicity was
charmingly fresh. Could she and they be of
the same race of beings? They were apart as
far as coarse from fine, as silvern from brazen.
To see her here among this horde was a horror
in itself. No horror the less, that she could
not blind herself to her position and her fate.
She could not fail to see what a bane was
beauty here. That she had done so was evident.
She had essayed by severe plainness of
dress to erase the lady from her appearance. A
very idle attempt! There she was, do what she
would, her beauty triumphing over all the wrong
she did to it for duty's sake.
All these observations I made with one glance.
Description seems idle when one remembers how
eyes can see at a flash what it took æons to
prepare for and a lifetime to form.
-- 112 --
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Brent and I exchanged looks. This was the
result of our fanciful presentiments. Here was
visible the woman we had been dreading to
find. It still seemed an impossible vision. I almost
believed that the old gentleman's blanket
would rise with him and his daughter, like the
carpet of Fortunatus, and transport them suddenly
away, leaving us beside a Mormon wagon
in Sizzum's camp and in the presence of a frowzy
family cooking a supper of pork.
I looked again and again. It was all real.
There was the neat, comfortable wagon; there
was the feeble, timid old gentleman, pottering
about; there was this beautiful girl, busy with
her tea, and smiling tenderly over her father.
-- -- p753-118
CHAPTER XI. FATHER AND DAUGHTER.
[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]
“Come, gentlemen,” said the father, in a lively
way. “We are all campaigners. Sit down and
take a cup of tea with us. No ceremony. A
la guerre, comme à la guerre. I cannot give
you Sèvres porcelain. I am afraid even my
delf is a little cracked; but we 'll fancy it whole
and painted with roses. Now plenty of tea, Ellen
dear. Guests are too rare not to be welcomed
with our very best. Besides, I expect Brother
Sizzum, after his camp duties are over.”
It was inexpressibly dreary, this feeble conviviality.
In the old gentleman's heart it was
plain that disappointment and despondency were
the permanent tenants. His gayety seemed only
a mockery, — a vain essay to delude himself
into the thought that he could be happy even
for a moment. His voice, even while he jested,
was hollow and sorrowful. There was a trepidation
in his manner, half hope, half fear, as
if he dreaded that some one would presently
announce to him a desperate disaster, or fancied
-- 114 --
[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]
that some sudden piece of good luck was about
to befall him, and he must be all attention lest
it pass to another. Nothing of the anxiety of
a guilty man about him, — of one who hears
pursuit in the hum of a cricket or the buzz of
a bee; only the uneasiness of one flying forever
from himself, and hoping that some chance
bliss will hold his flight and give him a moment's
forgetfulness.
We of course accepted the kindly invitation.
Civilization was the novelty to us. Tea with a
gentleman and lady was a privilege quite unheard
of. We should both have been ready to
devote ourselves to a woman far less charming
than our hostess. But here was a pair — the
beautiful daughter, the father astray — whom we
must know more of. I felt myself taking a very
tender interest in their welfare, revolving plans
in my mind to learn their history, and, if it might
be done, to persuade the father out of his delusion.
“Now, gentlemen,” said our friend, playing
his part with mild gracefulness, like an accomplished
host; “sit down on the blankets. I cannot
give you grand arm-chairs, as I might have
done once in Old England, and hope to do if you
ever come to see me at my house in Deseret.
But really we are forgetting something very important.
We have not been formally introduced.
-- 115 --
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Bless me! that will never do. Allow me gentlemen
to present myself, Mr. Hugh Clitheroe,
late of Clitheroe Hall, Clitheroe, Lancashire, —
a good old name, you see. And this is my daughter,
Miss Ellen Clitheroe. These gentlemen, my
dear, will take the liberty to present themselves
to you.”
“Mr. Richard Wade, late of California; Mr.
John Brent, a roving Yankee. Pray let me aid
you Miss Clitheroe.”
Brent took the teakettle from her hand, and
filled the teapot. This little domestic office
opened the way to other civil services.
It was like a masquerading scene. My handsome
friend and the elegant young lady bending
together over four cracked cups and as many
plates of coarse earthenware, spread upon a
shawl, on the dry grass. The circle of wagons,
the groups of Saints about their supper fires,
the cattle and the fort in the distance, made a
strangely unreal background to a woman whose
proper place, for open air, was in the ancient
avenue of some ancestral park, or standing on
the terrace to receive groups of brilliant ladies
coming up the lawn. But character is superior
to circumstance, and Miss Clitheroe's self-possession
controlled her scenery. Her place, wherever
it was, became her right place. The prairie,
and the wagons, and the rough accessories, gave
force to her refinement.
-- 116 --
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Mr. Clitheroe regarded the pair with a dreamy
pleasure.
“Quite patriarchal, is it not?” said he to me.
“I could fancy myself Laban, and my daughter
Rachel. There is a trace of the Oriental in her
looks. We only need camels, and this would be
a scene worthy of the times of the Eastern patriarchs
and the plains of the old Holy Land. We
of the Latter Day Church think much of such
associations; more I suppose than you world's
people.”
And here the old gentleman looked at me
uneasily, as if he dreaded lest I should fling
in a word to disturb his illusion, or perhaps ridicule
his faith.
“I have often been reminded here of the landscape
of Palestine,” said I, “and those bare regions
of the Orient. Your friends in Utah, too,
refresh the association by their choice of Biblical
names.”
“Yes; we love to recall those early days when
Jehovah was near to his people, a chosen people,
who suffered for faith's sake, as we have
done. In fact, our new faith and new revelation
are only revivals and continuations of the old.
Our founder and our prophets give us the doctrines
of the earliest Church, with a larger light
and a surer confidence.”
He said this with the manner of one who is
-- 117 --
[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]
repeating for the thousandth time a lesson, a
formula which he must keep constantly before
him, or its effect will be gone. In fact, his
resolute assertion of his creed showed the weak
belief. As he paused, he looked at me again,
hoping, as I thought, that I would dispute or
differ, and so he might talk against contradiction,
a far less subtle enemy than doubt. As I
did not immediately take up the discussion, he
passed lightly, and with the air of one whose
mind does not love to be consecutive, to another
subject.
“Hunters, are you not?” said he, turning to
Brent. “I am astonished that more of you
American gentlemen do not profit by this great
buffalo-preserve and deer-park. We send you
a good shot occasionally from England.”
“Yes,” said my friend. “I had a capital shot,
and capital fellow too for comrade, this summer,
in the mountains. A countryman of yours, Sir
Biron Biddulph. He was wretchedly out of
sorts, poor fellow, when we started. Fresh air
and bold life quite set him up. A month's
galloping with the buffalo, and a fortnight over
the cliffs, after the big-horn, would `put a soul
under the ribs of death.' Biddulph left me to go
home, a new man. I find that he has stayed in
Utah, for more hunting, I suppose.”
Brent was kneeling at Miss Clitheroe's feet,
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holding a cup for her to fill. He turned toward
her father as he spoke. At the name of Biddulph,
I saw that her red lips' promise of possible
blushes was no false one.
“Ah!” thought I; “here, perhaps, is the romance
of the Baronet's history. No wonder he
found England too narrow for him, if this noble
woman would not smile! Perhaps he has stopped
in Utah to renew his suit, or volunteer his services.
A strange drama! with new elements of
interest coming in.”
I could not refrain from studying Miss Clitheroe
with some curiosity as I thought thus.
She perceived my inquisitive look. She made
some excuse, and stepped into the wagon.
“Biddulph!” said the father. “Ellen dear,
Mr. Brent knows our old neighbor, Biron Biddulph.
O, she has disappeared, `on hospitable
thoughts intent.' I shall be delighted to meet
an old friend in Deseret. We knew him intimately
at home in better days, — no! in those
days I blindly deemed better, before I was illumined
with the glories of the new faith, and saw
the New Jerusalem with eyes of hope.”
Miss Clitheroe rejoined us. She had been absent
only a moment, but, as I could see, long
enough for tears, and the repression of tears. I
should have pitied her more; but she seemed, in
her stout-hearted womanhood, above pity, asking
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no more than the sympathy the brave have always
ready for the sorrowful brave.
Evidently to change the subject, she engaged
Brent again in his tea-table offices. I looked at
that passionate fellow with some anxiety. He
was putting a large share of earnestness in his
manner of holding cups and distributing hardtack.
Why so much fervor and devotion, my
friend? Seems to me I have seen cavaliers before,
aiding beauties with like ardor, on the carpet,
in the parlor, over the Sèvres and the silver-And
when I saw it, I thought, “O cavalier! O
beauty! beware, or do not beware, just as you
deem best, but know that there is peril! For
love can improvise out of the steam of a teapot
a romance as big and sudden and irrepressible as
the Afreet that swelled from the casket by the
sea-shore in the Arabian story.
We sat down upon the grass for our picnic.
I should not invite the late Mr. Watteau, or even
the extant Mr. Diaz, to paint us. The late Mr.
Watteau's heroes and heroines were silk and
satin Arcadians; they had valets de chambre
and filles de chambre, and therefore could be
not fully heroes and heroines, if proverbs be
true. The present Mr. Diaz, too, charming and
pretty as he is, has his place near parterres and
terraces, within the reach of rake and broom.
Mr. Horace Vernet is equally inadmissible, since
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that martial personage does not comprehend a
desert, except with a foreground of blood, smoke,
baggy red pantaloons, and mon General on a
white horse giving the Legion of Honor to mon
enfant on his last legs. But I must wait for
some artist with the gayety of Mr. Watteau, the
refinement of Mr. Diaz, and the soldierly force
of Mr. Vernet, who can perceive the poetry of
American caravan-life, and can get the heroine
of our picnic at Fort Bridger to give him a sitting.
Art is unwise not to perceive the materials
it neglects in such scenes.
Mr. Clitheroe grew more and more genial as
we became better acquainted. He praised the
sunshine and the climate. England had nothing
like it, so our host asserted. The atmosphere of
England crushed the body, as its moral atmosphere
repressed perfect freedom of thought and
action.
“Yes, gentlemen,” said he, “I have escaped
at last into the region I have longed for. I mean
to renew my youth in the Promised Land, — to
have my life over again, with a store of the wisdom
of age.”
Then he talked pleasantly of the incidents of
his journey, — an impressible being, taking easily
the color of the moment, like a child. He liked
travel, he said; it was dramatic action and scene-shifting,
without the tragedy or the
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over-absorbing interest of dramatic plot. He liked to have
facts come to him without being laboriously
sought for, as they do in travel. The eye, without
trouble, took in whatever appeared, and at
the end of the day a traveller found himself
expanded and educated without knowing it.
There was a fine luxury in this, for a mature
man to learn again, just as a child does, and
find his lessons play. He liked this novel, adventurous
life.
“Think of it, sir,” he said, “I have seen real
Indians, splendid fellows, all in their war-paint;
just such as I used to read of with delight in
your Mr. Fenimore's tales. And these prairies
too, — I seem to have visited them already
in the works of your charming Mr. Irving, — a
very pleasant author, very pleasant indeed, and
quite reminding me of our best essayists; though
he has an American savor too. Mr. Irving, I
think, did not come out so far as this. This
region has never been described by any one
with a poetic eye. My brethren in the Church
of the Latter Day have their duties of stern
apostleship; they cannot turn aside to the right
hand nor to the left. But when the Saints are
gathered in, they will begin to see the artistic
features of their land. Those Wind River Mountains—
fine name, by the way — that I saw from
the South Pass, — they seem to me quite an
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ideal Sierra. Their blue edges and gleaming
snow-peaks were great society for us as we
came by. We are very fond of scenery, sir, my
daughter and I, and this breadth of effect is very
impressive after England. England, you know,
sir, is tame, — a snug little place, but quite a
prison for people of scope. Lancashire, my old
home, is very pretty, but not grand; quite the
contrary. I have grown really quite tired of
green grass, and well-kept lawns, and the shaved,
beardless, effeminate look of my native country.
This rough nature is masculine. It reminds
me of the youth of the world. I like to be in
the presence of strong forces. I am not afraid
of the Orson feeling. Besides, in Lancashire,
particularly, we never see the sun; we see
smoke; we breathe smoke; smoke spoils the fragrance
and darkens the hue of all our life. I
hate chimneys, sir; I have seen great fortunes
go up them. I might perhaps tell you something
of my own experience in looking up a
certain tall chimney not a hundred miles from
Clitheroe, and seeing ancestral acres fly up it,
and ancestral pictures and a splendid old mansion
all going off in smoke. But you are a
stranger, and do not care about hearing my old
gossip. Besides, what is the loss of houses and
lands, if one finds the pearl of great price,
and wins the prophet's crown and the saint's
throne?”
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And here the gray-haired, pale, dreamy old
gentleman paused, and a half-quenched fire glimmered
in his eye. His childish, fanatical ambition
stirred him, and he smiled with a look
of triumph.
I was silent in speechless pity.
His daughter turned, and smiled with almost
tearful tenderness upon her father.
“I have not heard you so animated for a long
time, dear father,” she said. “Mr. Wade seems
quite to inspire you.”
“Yes, my dear, he has been talking on many
very interesting topics.”
I had really done nothing except to bow, and
utter those civil monosyllables which are the
“Hear! hear!” of conversation.
If I had been silent, Brent had not. While
the garrulous old gentleman was prattling on at
full speed, I had heard all the time my friend's
low, melodious voice, as he talked to the lady.
He was a trained artist in the fine art of sympathy.
His own early sorrows had made him
infinitely tender with all that suffer. To their
hearts he came as one that had a right to enter,
as one that knew their malady, and was commanded
to lay a gentle touch of soothing there.
It is a great power to have known the worst
and bitterest that can befall the human life, and
yet not be hardened. No sufferer can resist
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the fine magnetism of a wise and unintrusive pity.
It is as mild and healing as music by night
to fevered sleeplessness.
The lady's protective armor of sternness was
presently thrown aside. She perceived that she
need not wear it against a man who was brother
to every desolate soul, — sisterly indeed, so delicate
was his comprehension of the wants of a
woman's nature. In fact, both father and daughter,
as soon as they discovered that we were
ready to be their friends, met us frankly. It was
easy to see, poor souls! that it was long since
they had found any one fit company for them,
any one whose presence could excite the care-beguiling
exhilaration of worthy society. They
savored the aroma of good-breeding with appetite.
-- -- p753-130
CHAPTER XII. A GHOUL AT THE FEAST.
[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]
Mr. Clitheroe's thoughts loved to recur to his
native Lancashire, smoky though its air might
be, and clean-shaved the grass of its lawns. I
could not help believing that all the enthusiasm
of this weak, gentle nature for the bleak plains
and his pioneer life was a delusion. It would
have been pretty talk for an after-dinner rhapsody
at the old mansion he had spoken of in
England. There, as he paced with me, a guest,
after pointing out the gables, wings, oriels,
porches, that had clustered about the old building
age after age, he might have waved it away
into a vision, and spoken with disdain of civilization,
and with delight of the tent and the
caravan. It had the flavor of Arcady, and the
Golden Age, and the simple childhood of the
world, when an enthusiastic Rousseauist Marquis
talked in '89 of the rights of man and universal
fraternity; it would seem a crazy mockery
if the same enthusiast had held the same strain
a few years later, in the tumbril, as he rolled
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slowly along through cruel crowds to the guillotine.
Speaking of Lancashire, we fell upon the subject
of coal-mining. I was surprised to find that
Mr. Clitheroe had a practical knowledge of that
business. He talked for the first time without
any of his dreamy, vague manner. His information
was full and clear. He let daylight into
those darksome pits.
“I am a miner, too,” said I, “but only of
gold, a baser and less honorable substance than
coal. Your account has a professional interest
to me. You talk like an expert.”
“I ought to be. If I once saw half my fortune
fly up a factory chimney, I saw another
half bury itself in a coal-pit. I have been buried
myself in one. I am not ashamed to say
it; I have made daily bread for myself and my
daughter with pick, shovel, and barrow, in a dark
coal-mine, in the same county where I was once
the head of the ancient gentry, and where I saw
the noblest in the land proud to break my bread
and drink my wine. I am not ashamed of it.
No, I glory that in that black cavern, where daylight
never looked, the brightness of the new
faith found me, and showed the better paths
where I now walk, and shall walk upward and
onward until I reach the earthly Sion first, and
then the heavenly.”
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Again the old gentleman's eye kindled, and
his chest expanded. What a tragic life he was
hinting! My heart yearned toward him. I had
never known what it was to have the guidance
and protection of a father. Mine died when I
was a child. I longed to find a compensation
for my own want, — and a bitter one it had
sometimes been, — in being myself the guardian
of this errant wayfarer, launched upon lethal
currents.
“Your faith is as bright as ever, Brother
Hugh,” said a rasping voice behind me, as Mr.
Clitheroe was silent. “You are an example to
us all. The Church is highly blessed in such an
earnest disciple.”
Elder Sizzum was the speaker. He smiled in
a wolfish fashion over the group, and took his
seat beside the lady, like a privileged guest.
“Ah, Brother Sizzum!” said Mr. Clitheroe,
with a cheerless attempt at welcome, very different
from the frank courtesy he had showed toward
us, “we have been expecting you. Ellen
dear, a cup of tea for our friend.”
Miss Clitheroe rose to pour out tea for him.
Sheep's clothing instantly covered the apostle's
rather wolfish demeanor. He assumed a manner
of gamesome, sheepish devotion. When he
called her Sister Ellen, with a familiar, tender
air, I saw painful blushes redden the lady's
cheeks.
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Brent noticed the pain and the blush. He
looked away from the group toward the blue
sierra far away to the south; a hard expression
came into his face, such as I had not seen there
since the old days of his battling with Swerger.
Trouble ahead!
Sizzum's presence quenched the party. And,
indeed, our late cheerfulness was untimely, at
the best. It was mockery, — as if the Marquis
should have sung merry chansons in the tumbril.
Miss Clitheroe at once grew cold and stern.
Nothing could be more distant than her manner
toward the saint. She treated him as a high-bred
woman can treat a scrub, — sounding with
every gesture, and measuring with every word,
the ineffaceable gulf between them. Yet she
was thoroughly civil as hostess. She even
seemed to fight against herself to be friendly.
But it was clear to a by-stander that she loathed
the apostle. That she was not charmed with his
society, even his coarse nature could not fail to
discover. Anywhere else the scene would have
been comic. Here he had the power. No escape;
no refuge. That thrust all comedy out of
the drama, and left only very hateful tragedy.
Still it was a cruel semblance of comedy over a
tragic under-plot, to see the Mormon's cringing
approaches, and that exquisite creature's calm
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rebuffs. Sizzum felt himself pinned in his proper
place, and writhed there, with an evil look, that
said he was noting all and treasuring all against
his day of vengeance.
And the poor, feeble old father, — how all his
geniality was blighted and withered away! He
was no more the master of revels at a festival,
but the ruined man, with a bailiff in disguise at
his dinner-table. Querulous tones murmured in
his voice. The decayed gentleman disappeared;
the hapless fanatic took his place. Phrases of
cant, and the peculiar Mormon slang and profanity,
gave the color to his conversation. He appealed
to Sizzum constantly. He was at once the
bigoted disciple and the cowed slave. Toward his
daughter his manner was sometimes timorously
pleading, sometimes almost surly. Why could
she not repress her disgust at the holy man, at
least in the presence of strangers? — that seemed
to be his feeling; and he strove to withdraw attention
from her by an eager, trepidating attempt
to please his master. In short, the vulgar, hard-headed
knave had this weak, lost gentleman thoroughly
in his power. Mr. Clitheroe was like a
lamb whom the shepherd intends first to shear
close, then to worry to death with curs, and at
last to cut up into keebaubs.
Brent and I kept aloof as much as we might.
We should only have insulted the chosen vessel,
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and so injured our friends. Indeed, our presence
seemed little welcome to Sizzum. He of
course knew that the Gentiles saw through him,
and despised him frankly. There is nothing
more uneasy than a scrub hard at work to please
a woman, while by-standers whom he feels to be
his betters observe without interference. But
we could not amuse ourselves with the scene; it
sickened us more and more.
Sunset came speedily, — the delicious, dreamy
sunset of October. In the tender regions of twilight,
where the sky, so mistily mellow, met the
blue horizon, the western world became a world
of happy hope. Could it be that wrong and sin
dwelt there in that valley far away among the
mountains! Baseness where that glory rested!
Foulness underneath that crescent moon! Could
it be that there was one unhappy, one impure
heart within the cleansing, baptismal flow of that
holy light of evening!
With sunset, Elder Sizzum, after some oily
vulgarisms of compliment to the lady, walked
off on camp duty.
We also rose to take our leave. We must look
after our horses.
Mr. Clitheroe's old manner returned the instant
his spiritual guide left us.
“Pray come and see us again this evening,
gentlemen,” said he.
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“We will certainly,” said Brent, looking toward
Miss Clitheroe for her invitation.
It did not come. And I, from my position
as Chorus, thought, “She is wise not to encourage
in herself or my friend this brief intimacy.
Mormons will not seem any the better
company to-morrow for her relapse into the
society of gentlemen to-night.”
“O yes!” said Mr. Clitheroe, interpreting
Brent's look; “my daughter will be charmed
to see you. To tell you the truth, our brethren
in the camp are worthy people; we sympathize
deeply in the faith; but they are not
altogether in manners or education quite such
as we have been sometimes accustomed to. It
is one of the infamous wrongs of our English
system of caste that it separates brother men,
manners, language, thought, and life. We have
as yet been able to have little except religious
communion with our fellow-travellers toward
the Promised Land, — except, of course, with
Brother Sizzum, who is, as you see, quite a man
of society, as well as an elect apostle of a great
cause. We are quite selfish in asking you to repeat
your visit. Besides the welcome we should
give you for yourselves, we welcome you also
as a novelty.” And then he muttered, half
to himself, “God forgive me for speaking after
the flesh!”
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“Come, Wade,” said my friend. And he
griped my arm almost savagely. “Until this
evening then, Mr. Clitheroe.”
As we moved away from the wagon, where
the lady stood, so worn and sad, and yet so
lovely, her poor father's only guard and friend,
we met Murker and Larrap. They were sauntering
about, prying into the wagons, inspecting
the groups, making observations — that were
perhaps only curiosity — with a base, guilty, burglarious
look.
“He, he!” laughed Larrap, leering at Brent.
“I 'll be switched ef you 're not sharp. You
know where to look for the pooty gals, blowed
ef yer don't!”
“Hold your tongue!” Brent made a spring
at the fellow.
“No offence! no offence!” muttered he, shrinking
back, with a cowardly, venomous look.
“Mind your business, and keep a civil tongue
in your head, or there will be offence!” Brent
turned and walked off in silence. Neither of
us was yet ready to begin our talk on this
evening's meeting.
Our horses, if not their masters, were quite
ready for joyous conversation. They had encountered
no pang in the region of Fort Bridger.
Grass in plenty was there, and they neighed
us good evening in their most dulcet tones.
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They frisked about, and, neighing and frisking,
informed us that, in their opinion, the world
was all right, — a perfectly jolly place, with abundance
to eat, little to do, and everybody a
friend. A capital world! according to Pumps
and Don Fulano. They felt no trouble, and
saw none in store. Who would not be an animal
and a horse, unless perchance an omnibus
horse sprawling on the Russ pavement, or a family
horse before a carryall, or in fact any horse
in slavish position, as most horses are.
We shifted our little caballada to fresh grazing-spots
sheltered by a brake. We meant to
camp there apart from the Mormon caravan. The
talk of our horses had not cheered us. We still
busied ourselves in silence. Presently, as I looked
toward the train, I observed two figures in the
distance lurking about Mr. Clitheroe's wagon.
“See,” said I; “there are those two gamblers
again. I don't like such foul vultures hanging
about that friendless dove. They look villains
enough for any outrage.”
“But they are powerless here.”
“In the presence of a steadier villany they
are. That foul Sizzum is quite sure of his prey.
John Brent, what can be done? I do not know
which I feel most bitterly for, the weary, deluded
old gentleman, doubting his error, or that noble
girl. Poor, friendless souls!”
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“Friendless!” said Brent. “She has made
a friend in me. And in you too, if you are the
man I know.”
“But what can we do?”
“I will never say that we can do nothing until
she repels our aid. If she wants help, she
must have it.”
“Help! how?”
“Viam aut inveniam aut faciam. Sydney's
motto is always good. You and I can never die
in a better cause than this. And now, Dick, do
not let us perplex ourselves with baseless talk
and plans. We will see them again to-night,
when Sizzum is not by. It cannot be that she
is in sympathy with these wretches.”
“No; that horrible ogre, Sizzum, is evidently
disgusting to her; but here he has her in his
den. It is stronger than any four walls in the
world, — all this waste of desert.”
“Don't speak of it; you sicken me.”
Something more in earnest than the tenderest
pity here. I saw that the sudden doom of love
had befallen my friend. In fact, I have never
been quite sure but that the same would have
been my fate, if I had not seen him a step in
advance, and so checked myself. His time had
come. Mine had not. Will it ever?
But love here was next to despair. That consciousness
quickened the passion. A man must
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put his whole being into the cause, or the cause
was hopeless, — must act intensely, as only a
lover acts, or not at all.
I determined not to perplex myself yet with
schemes. I knew my friend's bold genius and
cool judgment. When he was ready to act, I
would back him.
-- -- p753-141
CHAPTER XIII. JAKE SHAMBERLAIN'S BALL.
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It grew dusk. Glimmering camp-fires marked
the circle of the Mormon caravan. The wagons
seemed each one, in the gloaming, a giant white
nightcap of an ogress leaning over her coals.
The world looked drowsy, and invited the pilgrims
toward the Mecca of the new Thingamy
to repose. They did not seem inclined to accept.
The tramping and lowing cattle kept up a tumult
like the noise of a far city. And presently another
din!
As Brent and I approached the fort, forth
issued Jake Shamberlain, with a drummer on
this side and a fifer on that. “Pop goes the
Weasel,” the fifer blew. A tuneless bang resounded
from the drum. If there was one thing
these rival melodists scorned, time was that
one thing. They might have been beating and
blowing with the eight thousand miles of the
globe's diameter between them, instead of Jake
Shamberlain's person, for any consideration they
showed to each other.
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Jake, seeing us, backed out from between his
orchestra, who continued on, beating and blowing
in measureless content.
“We 're going to give a ball, gentlemen, and
request the honor of your company in ten minutes,
precisely. Kids not allowed on account
of popular prejudice. Red-flannel shirts and
boots with yaller tops is rayther the go fur
dress.”
“A ball, Jake! Where?”
“Why, in that rusty hole of old Bridger's.
Some of them John Bulls has got their fiddles
along. I allowed 't would pay to scare up a
dance. Guess them gals wont be the wus fur
a break-down or an old-fashioned hornpiper.
They hain't seen much game along back, ef
their looks tells the story. I never seed sech a
down-heel lot.”
Jake ran off after his music. We heard them,
still disdaining time, march around the camp
announcing the fandango.
“This helps us,” said Brent. “Our friends,
of course, will not join the riot. When the
Mormons are fairly engaged, we will make our
visit.”
“It is a good night for a gallop,” said I.
He nodded, but said nothing.
Presently Jake, still supported by his pair of
melodists, reappeared. A straggling procession
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of Saints followed him. They trooped into the
enclosure, a motley throng indeed. Even that
dry husk of music, hardly even cadence, had put
some spirits into them. Noise, per se, is not
without virtue; it means life. Shamberlain's
guests came together, laughing and talking.
Their laughter was not liquid. But swallowing
prairie-dust does not instruct in dulcet
tones. Rather wrinkled merriment; but still
better than no merriment at all.
We entered with the throng. Within was a
bizarre spectacle. A strange night-scene for a
rough-handed Flemish painter of low life to
portray.
The palisades of old Bridger's Malakoff enclosed
a space of a hundred feet square. A
cattle-shed, house, and trading-shop surrounded
three sides of the square. The rest was open
court, paved with clod, the native carpet of the
region. Adobes, crumbling as the most strawless
bricks ever moulded by a grumbling Hebrew
with an Egyptian taskmaster, were the
principal material of Bridger's messuage. The
cattle on Mr. Mechi's model farm would have
whisked their tails and turned away in utter
contempt from these inelegant accommodations.
No high-minded pig would have consented to
wallow there. The khan of Cheronæa, abhorred
of Grecian travellers, is a sweeter place.
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The khan of Tiberias, terror of pilgrims, is a
cleaner refuge. Bridger's Fort was as musty and
infragrant a caravansary as any of those dirty
cloisters of the Orient, where the disillusioned
howadji sinks into the arms of that misery's bedfellow,
the King of the Fleas, — which kangaroo-legged
caliph, let me say, was himself, or in
the person of a vigorous vizier, on the spot at
the Fort, entertaining us strangers according to
his royal notions of hospitality.
Into this Court of Dirt thronged the Latter-Day
Saints, in raiment also in its latter day.
“The ragamuffin brigade,” whispered I to
Brent. “Jake Shamberlain's red-flannel shirts
and yaller-topped boots would be better than
this seediness of the furbelowed nymphs and
ole clo' swains. Evidently suits of full dress are
not to be hired at a pinch on the boulevards
of Sizzumville.”
Brent made no answer, and surveyed the
throng anxiously.
“They have not come, — the father and daughter,”
he said. “I cannot think of the others
now.”
“Shall we go to them?”
“Not yet. Sizzum sees us and will suspect.”
We stood by regarding, too much concerned
for our new friends to feel thoroughly the humor
of the scene. But it made its impression.
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For lights at the Shamberlain ball, instead
of the gas and wax of civilization, a fire blazed
in one corner of the court, and sundry dips
of unmitigated tallow, with their perfume undiluted,
flared from perches against the wall.
Overhead, up in the still, clear sky, the barefaced
stars stared at the spectacle, and shook
their cheeks over the laughable manœuvres of
terrestrials.
The mundane lights, fire and dips, flashed
and glimmered; the skylights twinkled merrily;
the guests were assembled; the ball waited to
begin.
Jake Shamberlain, the master of ceremonies,
cleared a space in the middle, and “called for
his fiddlers three.”
A board was laid across two barrels, and upon
it Jake arrayed his orchestra, with Brother Bottery,
so called, for leader. Twang went the fiddles.
“Pardners for a kerdrille!” cried Jake.
Sizzum led off the ball with one of the Blowsalinds
before mentioned. Dancing is enjoined
in the Latter-Day Church. They cite Jephthah's
daughter and David dancing by the ark as good
Scriptural authority for the custom.
“Right and left!” cried Jake Shamberlain.
“Forrud the gent! The lady forrud! Forrud
the hull squad. Jerk pardners! Scrape away,
Bottery! Kick out and no walkin'! Prance in,
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gals! Lamm ahead, boys! Time, Time! All
hands round! Catch a gal and spin her! Well,
that was jest as harnsome a kerdrille as ever I
seed.”
And so on with another quadrille, minuet,
and quadrille again. But the subsequent dances
were not so orderly as the first. Filled with noise
and romping, they frequently ended in wild disorder.
The figures tangled themselves into a
labyrinth, and the music, drowned by the tumult,
ceased to be a clew of escape. Nor could Jake's
voice, half suffocated by the dust, be heard above
the din, until, having hushed his orchestra, he
had called “Halt!” a dozen times.
In the intervals between the dances we observed
Larrap distributing whiskey to the better class of
the emigrants. Sizzum did not disdain to accept
the hospitality of the stranger. Old Bridger's
liquid stores, now Mormon property, and for sale
at the price of Johannisberger, diminished fast
on this festal night.
“Shall we go?” whispered I to Brent, after a
while.
“Not quite yet. Old Bottery announces that
he is going to play a polka. Fancy a polka here!
That will engage Sizzum after his potations, so
that he will forget our friends.”
“Now, brethren and saints,” cried Jake, “attention
for the polky! Pipe up, Bottery!”
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Evidently not the first time that this Strauss of
some Manchester casino had played the very rollicking
polka he now rattled off from his strings.
How queerly ignoble those strident notes sounded
in the silence of night in the great wilderness.
For loud as was the uproar in the court, overhead
were the stars, quiet and amazed, and, without,
the great, still prairie protested against the
discordant tumult. Some barbaric harmony, wild
and thrilling, poured forth from strong-lunged
brass, or a strain like that of the horns in Der
Freischutz, would have chimed with the spirit of
the desert. But Bottery's mean twang suited
better the bastard civilization that had invaded
this station of the banished pioneer.
At the sound of the creaking polka, a youth,
pale and unwholesome as a tailor's apprentice,
led out a sister saint. Others followed. Some
danced teetotum fashion. Others bounced clumsily
about. Around them all stood an applauding
circle. The fiddles scraped; the dust flew.
Sizzum and Larrap, two bad elements in combination,
stood together, cheering the dancers.
“Come,” said Brent, “let us get into purer
air and among nobler creatures. How little we
thought,” he continued, “when we were speaking
of such scenes and people as we have just
left as a possible background, what figures would
stand in the foreground!”
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“I am glad to be out of that noisy rabble,”
said I, as we passed from the gate. “The stars
seem to look disdainfully on them. I cannot be
entertained by that low comedy, with tragedy
sitting beside our friends' wagon.”
“The stars,” said Brent, bitterly, “are cold
and cruel as destiny. There is heaven overhead,
pretending to be calming and benignant, and giving
no help, while I am thinking in agony what
can be done to save from any touch of shame or
deeper sorrow that noble daughter.”
“It is a fine night for a gallop,” I repeated.
“There they are. We must keep them out of
the fort, Wade. If you love me, detain the old
man in talk for half an hour.”
“Certainly; half a century, if it will do any
good.”
Mr. Clitheroe and his daughter were walking
slowly toward the fort. He appealed to us as
we approached.
“I am urging my daughter to join in the
amusements of the evening,” said he. “You
know, my dear, that many of our old Lancashire
neighbors still would be pleased to see you a
lady patroness of their innocent sports, and lending
your countenance to their healthy hilarity.
A little gayety will do you good, I am sure. This
ball may not be elegant; but it will be cheerful,
and of course conducted with great propriety,
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since Brother Sizzum is present. I am afraid he
will miss us, and be offended. That must not
be, Ellen dear. We must not offend Brother Sizzum
in any way whatever. We must consider
that his wishes are sovereign; for is he not the
chosen apostle?”
Brent and I could both have wept to hear this
crazy, senile stuff.
“Pray, father dear,” said Miss Clitheroe, “do
not insist upon it. We shall both be wearied
out, if we are up late after our day's march.”
It was clearly out of tenderness to him that
she avoided the real objections she must have to
such a scene.
“It is quite too noisy and dusty for Miss Clitheroe
in the fort,” said I, and I took his arm.
“Come, sir, let us walk about and have a chat
in the open air.”
I led him off, poor old gentleman, facile under
my resolute control. All he had long ago
needed was a firm man friend to take him in
hand and be his despot; but the weaker he was,
the less he could be subject to his daughter.
It is the feeble, unmasculine men who fight
most petulantly against the influence and power
of women.
“Well, Mr. Wade,” said he, “perhaps you are
right. We have only to fancy this the terrace
outside the chateau, and it is as much according
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to rule to promenade here, as to stifle in the ball-room.
You are very kind, gentlemen, both, to
prefer our society to the entertainment inside.
Certainly Brother Bottery's violin is not like one
of our modern bands; but when I was your age
I could dance to anything and anywhere. I
suppose young men see so much more of the
world now, that they outgrow those fancies
sooner.”
So we walked on, away from the harsh sounds
of the ball. Brent dropped behind, talking earnestly
with the lady. How sibylline she looked
in that dim starlight! How Cassandra-like, —
as one dreams that heroic and unflinching prophetess
of ills unheeded or disdained!
-- -- p753-151
CHAPTER XIV. HUGH CLITHEROE.
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Mr. Clitheroe grew more and more communicative,
as we wandered about over the open. I
drew from him, or rather, with few words of
guidance now and then, let him impart, his
history. He seemed to feel that he had an explanation
to offer. Men whose life has been error
and catastrophe rarely have much pride of
reticence. Whatever friendly person will hear
their apology can hear it. That form of more
lamentable error called Guilt is shyer of the
confessional; but it also feels its need of telling
to brother man why it was born in the heart
in the form of some small sin.
Again Mr. Clitheroe talked of the scenes of
his youth and prosperity. He “babbled of green
fields,” and parks, and great country-houses, and
rural life. So he went on to talk of himself, and,
leaving certain blanks, which I afterward found
the means of filling, told me his story. A sad
story! A pitiful story! Sadder and more pitiful
to me because a filial feeling toward this hapless
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gentleman was all the while growing stronger in
my heart. I have already said that I was fatherless
from infancy. This has left a great want in
my life. I cannot find complete compensation
for the lack of a father's love in my premature
manhood and my toughening against the world
too young. I yearned greatly toward the feeble
old man, my companion in that night walk on
the plain of Fort Bridger. I longed to do by
him the duties of sonship; as, indeed, having no
such duties, I have often longed when I found
age weak and weary. And as I began to feel
son-like toward the father, a sentiment simply
brotherly took its place in my heart for the
daughter, whose love my friend, I believe, was
seeking.
A sad history was Mr. Clitheroe's. He was a
prosperous gentleman once, of one of the ancient
families of his country.
“We belong,” he said, “to the oldest gentry
of England. We have been living at Clitheroe
Hall, and where the Hall now stands, for centuries.
Our family history goes back into the
pre-historic times. We have never been very
famous; we have always sustained our dignity.
We might have had a dozen peerages; but we
were too much on the side of liberty, of free
speech and free thought, to act with the powers
that be.
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“There was never a time, until my day, when
one of us was not in Parliament for Clitheroe.
Clitheroe had two members, and one of the old
family that gave its name to the town, and got
for it its franchises, was always chosen without
contest.
“It is a lovely region, sir, where the town, of
Clitheroe and the old manor-house of my family
stand, — the fairest part of Lancashire. If you
have only seen, as you say, the flat country
about Liverpool and Manchester, you do not
know at all what Lancashire can do in scenery.
Why, there is Pendle Hill, — it might better be
called a mountain, — Pendle Hill rises almost at
my door-step, at the door of Clitheroe Hall.
Pendle Hill, sir, is eighteen hundred and odd
feet high. And a beautiful hill it is. I talked
of the Wind River Mountains this afternoon;
they are very fine; but I never should have
learned to love heights, if my boyhood had not
been trained by the presence of Pendle Hill.
“And there is the Ribble, too. A lovely river,
coming from the hills; — such a stream as I have
not seen on this continent. I do not wish to
make harsh comparisons, but your Mississippi
and Missouri are more like ditches than rivers,
and as to the Platte, why, sir, it seems to me
no better than a chain of mud-pools. But the
Ribble is quite another thing. I suppose I love
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it more because I have dabbled in it a boy, and
bathed in it a man, and have seen it flow on
always a friend, whether I was rich or poor.
Nature, sir, does not look coldly on a poor man,
as humanity does. The river Ribble and Pendle
Hill have been faithful to me, — they and my
dear Ellen, always.
“Perhaps I tire you with this chat,” he said.
“O no!” replied I. “I should be a poor
American if I did not love to hear of Mother
England everywhere and always.”
“I almost fear to talk about home — our old
home, I mean — to my dear child. She might
grow a little homesick, you know. And how
could she understand, so young and a woman
too, that duty makes exile needful? Of course
I do not mean to suggest that we deem our new
home in the Promised Land an exile.”
And here he again gave the same anxious look
I had before observed; as if he dreaded that
I had the power to dissolve an unsubstantial
illusion.
“I wish I had thought,” he continued, “to
show you, when you were at tea, a picture of
Clitheroe Hall I have. It is my daughter Ellen's
work. She has a genius for art, really a genius.
We have been living in a cottage near there,
where she could see the Hall from her window, —
dear old place! — and she has made a capital
drawing of it.”
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“You had left it?” I asked. He had paused,
commanded by his melancholy recollections.
“O yes! Did I not tell you about my losses?
I was a rich man and prosperous once. I kept
open house, sir, in my wife's lifetime. She was
a great beauty. My dear Ellen is like her, but
she has no beauty, — a good girl and daughter,
though, like all young people, she has a juvenile
wish to govern, — but no beauty. Perhaps she
will grow handsome when we grow rich again.”
“Few women are so attractive as Miss Clitheroe,”
I said, baldly enough.
“I have tried to be a good father to her, sir.
She should have had diamonds and pearls, and
everything that young ladies want, if I had succeeded.
But you ought to have seen Clitheroe
Hall, sir, in its best days. Such oaks as I had
in my park! One of those oaks is noticed in
Evelyn's Silva. One day, a great many years
ago, I found a young man sitting under that
oak writing verses. I was hospitable to him, and
gave him luncheon, which he ate with very good
appetite, if he was a poet. I did not ask his
name; but not three months after I received
a volume of poems, with a sonnet among them,
really very well done, very well done indeed,
inscribed to the Clitheroe Oak. The volume,
sir, was by Mr. Wordsworth, quite one of our
best poets, in his way, the founder of a new
school.”
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“A very pleasant incident!”
“Yes indeed. The poet was fortunate, was
he not? But if you are fond of pictures, I
should have liked to show you my Vandykes.
We had the famous Clitheroe Beauty, an earl's
daughter, maid of honor to Queen Henrietta
Maria. She chose plain Hugh Clitheroe before
all the noblemen of the court; — we Clitheroes
have always been fortunate in that way. I said
plain Hugh, but he was as handsome a cavalier
as ever wore rapier. He might have been an
earl himself, but he took the part of liberty, and
was killed on the Parliament side at Edgemoor.
I had his portrait too, a Vandyke, and one of
the best pictures he ever painted, as I believe is
agreed by connoisseurs. You should have seen
the white horse, sir, in that picture, — full of
gentleness and spirit, and worthy the handsome
cavalier just ready to mount him.”
As the old gentleman talked of his heroic
ancestor, a name not unknown to history, he
revived a little, and I saw an evanescent look
of his daughter's vigor in his eye. It faded
instantly; he sighed, and went on.
“I should almost have liked to live in those
days. It is easier to die for a holy cause than
to find one's way along through life. I have
found it pretty hard, sir, — pretty hard, — and
I hope my day of peace is nearly come.”
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How could I shatter his delusion, and thunder
in his ear that this hope was a lie?
“I had a happy time of it,” he continued,
“till after my Ellen's birth, and I ought to be
thankful for that. I had my dear wife and hosts
of friends, — so I thought them. To be sure
I spent too much money, and sometimes had
rather too gay an evening over the claret at
my old oak dining-table. But that was harmless
pleasure, sir. I was always a kind landlord.
I never could turn out a tenant nor arrest a
poacher. I suppose I was too kind. I might
better have saved some of the money I gave to
my people in beef and beer on holidays. But
it made them happy. I like to see everybody
happy. That was my chief pleasure. The people
were very poor in England then, sir, — not
that they are not poor now, — and I used to
be very glad when a good old English holiday,
or a birthday, gave me a chance to give them a
little festival.”
I could imagine him the gentle, genial host.
Fate should have left him there in the old
hall, dispensing frank hospitality all his sunny
days and bland seasons through, lunching young
poets, and showing his Vandykes with proper
pride to strangers. His story carried truth on
its face. In fact, the man was all the while an
illustration of his own tale. Every tone and
phrase convicted him of his own character.
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“It sometimes makes me a little melancholy,”
he continued, “to speak of those happy days.
Not that I regret the result I have at last attained!
Ah, no! But the process was a hard
one. I have suffered, sir, suffered greatly on my
way to the peace and confidence I have attained.”
“You have attained these?” I said.
“Yes; thank God and this Latter-Day revelation
of his truth! I used to think rather
carelessly of religion in those times. I suppose
it is only the contact with sin and sorrow that
teaches a man to look from the transitory to
the eternal. Shade makes light precious, as an
artist would say. I was brought up, you know,
sir, in the Church of England; but when I began
to think, its formalism wearied me. I could
not understand what seemed to me then the
complex machinery of its theology. I thought,
sir, as no doubt many people of the poetic temperament
and little experience think, that God
deals with men without go-betweens; that he
acts directly on the character by the facts of
nature and the thoughts in every soul. It was
not until I grew old and sad that I began to
feel the need of something distinct and tangible
to rest my faith upon, and even then, sir,
I was sceptical of the need of revelations and
Messiahs and miracles, until I learnt through
the testimony of living witnesses — yes, of living
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witnesses — that such things have come in the
Latter Day. Yes, sir, the facts of what you call
Mormonism, its miracles, its revelations, which
do not cease, and its new Messiah, have proved
to me the necessity of other like supernatural
systems in the past, and given me faith in their
evidences, which before seemed scanty.”
“Ah! old Mother Church of England!” I
thought, “could you do no better by your son
than this? Whose fault is this credulity? How
is it that he needs phenomena to give him faith
in truth?”
“But I have not told you,” the old gentleman
went on, “about my disasters. Perhaps
you are getting tired of my prattle, sir, my old
man's talk. I am really not so very old, if
my hair is thin, and my beard gray, — barely
fifty, and after this journey I expect to be quite
a boy again. I suppose you were surprised this
afternoon, when I spoke of having worked in a
coal-mine, were you not?”
The old man seemed to have some little pride
in this singularity of fortune. I expressed the
proper interest in such a change of destiny.
“You shall hear how it happened,” he said.
“You remember, — no, you are too young to
remember, but you have heard how we all went
mad about mills and mines in Lancashire some
twenty years ago.”
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“Yes,” said I, “it was then that steam and
cotton began to understand each other, and coal
and negroes became important.”
“What a panic of speculation we all rushed
into in Lancashire!” said the old gentleman.
“We all felt, we gentlemen, that we were mere
idlers, not doing our duty, as England expects
every man to do, unless we were building chimneys,
or digging pits. We were all either grubbing
down in the bowels of the earth for coal,
or rearing great chimneys up in the air to burn
it. I really think most of us began to like
smoke better than blue sky; certainly it tasted
sweeter to us than our good old English fog.
“Well, sir,” continued he, “I was like my
neighbors. I must dabble in milling and mining.
I was willing to be richer. Indeed, as soon
as I began to speculate, I thought myself richer.
I spent more money. I went deeper into my
operations. One can throw a great treasure into
a coal-mine without seeing any return, and can
send a great volume of smoke up a chimney before
the mill begins to pay. It is an old story.
I will not tire you with it. I was all at once a
ruined man.”
He paused a moment, and looked about the
dim, star-lit prairie, with the white wagons and
the low fort in the distance.
“Well,” said he, in the careless, airy manner
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which seemed his characteristic one, “if I had
not been ruined, I should have stayed stupidly at
home, and never worked in a coal-mine, or travelled
on the plains, or had the pleasure of meeting
you and your friend here. It is all fresh and
novel. If it were not for my daughter and my
duties to the church, I should take my adventures
as lightly as you do when your gun misses
fire and you lose a dinner.
“The thing that troubled me most at the time
of my disasters,” he resumed, “was being defeated
for Parliament. There had always been a
Clitheroe there. When my father died, I took
his seat. I used to spend freely on elections; but
I thought they sent me because they liked me, or
for love of the old name. When I lost my fortune
there came a snob, sir, and stood against me.
He accused me of being a free-thinker, — as if
the Clitheroes had not always been liberal! He
got up a cry, and bought votes. My own tenants,
my old tenants, whom I had feasted out of pure
good-will a hundred times, turned against me.
I lost my election and my last shilling.
“It was just then, sir, that my dear wife died,
and my dear Ellen was born.”
He turned sadly around to look at his daughter.
She was walking at some distance with
Brent. The earnest murmur of their voices
came to us through the stillness. I felt what my
friend must be saying in that pleading tone.
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“Everything went disastrously with me,” continued
Mr. Clitheroe. “I tried to recover my
fortunes, fairly and honestly, but it was too late.
My creditors took the old Hall. Hugh Clitheroe
in Harry the Eighth's time built it, on land
where the family had lived from before Egbert.
I lost it, sir. The family came to an end with
me. I found sheriff's officers making beer rings
on my old oak dining-table. The Vandykes
went. Hugh of Cromwell's days was divorced
from his wife, the Beauty. I tried to keep them
together; but scrubs bought them, and stuck
them up in their vulgar parlors. Sorry business!
Sorry business!”
“You kept a brave heart through it all.”
“Yes, until they accused me of dishonesty.
That I felt bitterly. And everybody gave me
the cold shoulder. I could get nothing to do.
There is not much that a broken-down gentleman
can do; but no one would trust me. I
grew poorer than you can conceive. I lost all
heart. Men are poor creatures, — as a desolate
man finds.”
“Not all, I hope,” was my protest.
“Truly not all. But the friends of prosperity
are birds that come to be fed, and fly away when
the crumbs give out. All are not base and time-serving;
but men are busy and careless, and
fancy that others can always take care of
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themselves. I could not beg, sir; but it came near
starvation to me in Christian England, — to me
and my young daughter, within a year after my
misfortunes. Perhaps I was over-proud or over-vain;
but I grew tired of the slights of people
that had known me in my better days, and now
dodged me because I was shabby and poor. I
wanted to get out of sight of the ungrateful,
ungracious world. The blue sky grew hateful to
me. I must live, or, if life was nothing to me,
my daughter must not starve. I had a choice of
factory or coal-mine to hide myself in. I sank
into a coal-mine.”
“A strange contrast!” I said, after a pause.
“I am trying to make the whole history less
dreamy. Each seems unreal, — my luxurious
life at Clitheroe Hall, and my troglodyte life
down in the coal-pit. Idler and slave; either
extreme had its own special unhappiness and
unhealthiness.”
How much wisdom there was in the weakness
of the old man's character! The more I talked
with him, the more pitiable seemed his destiny.
“O John Brent!” I groaned in my heart, “plead
with the daughter as man never pleaded before.
We must save them from the dismal fate before
them. And if she cannot master her father, and
you, John Brent, cannot master her, there is no
hope.”
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My friend made no sign that he was ready to
close his interview with the lady. The noise of
the ball still came to us with the puffs of the
evening wind. I prompted the communicative
old gentleman to renew his story.
“I have seen the interior of some of the Lancashire
mines; I have read the Blue Book upon
them,” I said. “You must have been in a
rough place, with company as rough.”
“It was hard for a man of delicate nurture.
But the men liked me. They were not brutes, —
not all, — if they were roughs. Brutes get away
from places where hard work is done. My mates
down in the mine made it easy for me. They
called me Gentleman Hugh. I was rather
proud, sir, I confess, to find myself liked and
respected for what I was, not for what I had. It
was a hard life and a rough life; but it was an
honest life, and my child was too young to miss
what her birth entitled her to.
“It was in our mine that I first knew of the
Latter-Day Church. For years I had drudged
there, and never thought, or in fact, for myself,
much cared, to come out. I had tried the pleasures
and friendships of gay life; they had nothing
new or good to give me. For years I had
toiled, when the first apostle came out and began
to make proselytes to the faith in our country.
They have never disdained the mean and the
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lowly. I tell you, sir, that we in our coal-pit,
and our brothers in the factories, listened to apostles
who came across seas and labored among us
as if they loved our souls. The false religions
and outgrown religions left us in the dark; but
the true light came to us. My mates in the
Lancashire mine joined the church by hundreds.
I was still blind an careless. It was not until
long afterwards that the time for my conversion
came.
“As my daughter grew up, I felt that I ought
to be by her. I had worked a long time in the
mine, and was known to have some education.
The company gave me a clerkship in their office,
and there I drudged again for years, asking no
help or favor. It was in another part of the
county from my old residence, where nobody
knew me. My dear child, — she has always been
a good child to me, except that she sometimes
wishes to rule a little too much, — my dear Ellen
became almost a woman, and all I lacked was
the means of giving her the position of her rank.
Education she got herself. We were not unhappy,
she and I together, lonely as we might be,
and out of place.”
The old gentleman had been talking of himself
in such a cheerful, healthy way, and showed
that he had borne such a brave heart through his
troubles, that I began to puzzle myself what
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could have again changed his character, and
made of him the weakling I had recognized in
the interview with Sizzum.
“It is very kind of you,” he said, “to listen to
a garrulous old fellow. Your sympathy is very
pleasant; but I must not test it too far. I will
end my long story presently.
“I supposed myself entirely forgotten, as I
was quite willing to be. By and by I was remembered
and sought. A far-away kinsman
had left me a legacy. It was enough for a
quiet subsistence for us two, for Ellen and me.
I returned to the neighborhood of my old home.
I found a little cottage on the banks of Ribble,
within sight of my old friend, Pendle Hill.
There we lived.”
From this point Mr. Clitheroe's manner totally
changed. His voice grew peevish and complaining.
All the manly feeling he had showed in
briefly describing his day-laborer's life passed
away. He detailed to me how the new proprietor
at Clitheroe Hall patronized him insufferably;
how his old neighbors turned up their noses at
him, and insulted him by condescension. How
miserable he found it to cramp himself and save
shillings in a cottage, with the house in sight
where he had lavished pounds as Lord of the
Manor! How he longed to have his daughter as
well dressed as any of the young ladies about,
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her inferiors in blood, — for no one there could
rival the Clitheroes' lineage. How he wished
himself back in his mine, in his industrious
clerkship, and how time hung drearily on his
hands, with nothing to do except dream of by-gone
glories. I saw that he had sighed to be a
great man again, and had a morbid sense of his
insignificance, and that this had made him
touchy, and alienated well-meaning people about
him. He spoke with some triumph of his arguments
with the rector of his parish, who endeavored
to check him when he lent what influence
he had, as a gentleman, to get the Mormons a
hearing about Clitheroe. He did not, as he said,
as yet feel any great interest in their doctrines;
but he remembered them with good-will from his
coal-pit days, and whenever an emissary of the
faith came by, he always found a friend in Hugh
Clitheroe. They had evidently flattered him.
It was rare, of course, to find a protector among
the gentry, and they made the most of the
chance.
Poor old man! I could trace the progress
of his disappointment, and his final fall into that
miserable superstition. He had been a free-thinker;
never industrious or self-possessed enough
to become a fundamental thinker. No man can
stand long on nothing, — he must think out a
religion, or accept a theology. Now that busy
-- 163 --
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days were over, and careless youth gone by,
Mr. Clitheroe began to be uneasy, and was ready
to listen to any scheme which promised peace.
If a Jesuit had happened to find him at this
period, Rome would have got a recruit without
difficulty. The Pope and Brigham Young
are the rival bidders for such weaklings in the
nineteenth century. Brigham with polygamy
is the complement of Pio with celibacy.
Instead of Jesuit, Sizzum arrived. Sizzum
was far abler than any of his Mormon compeers.
He was proselyting about Clitheroe,
where he found it not difficult to persuade the
poor slaves up in the mill and down in the
mine to accept a faith that offered at once a
broad range on earth, and, in good time, a high
seat in heaven.
Sizzum was the guest of the discontented and
decayed gentleman. He saw the opportunity.
There was an old name and a man of gentle
birth to rally followers about. It would be a
triumph for the Latter-Day Saints to march
away from Clitheroe, a thousand strong, headed
by the representative of the family who named
the place, and had once been in Parliament for
it. Here was a proselyte in a class which no
Mormon had dreamed of approaching. Here
too was some little property. And here was
a beautiful daughter.
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I could divine the astute Sizzum's method
and success with his victim, enfeebled in body
and spirit. How, seeing his need of something
final and authoritative in religion, Sizzum showed
him the immanence of inspiration in his church.
How he threatened him with wrath to come,
unless he was gathered from among the Gentiles.
How he persuaded him that a man of his
education and station would be greater among
the saints than ever in his best days in England.
How he touched the old man's enthusiasm
with tales of caravan life, with the dust
of the desert and the pork of the pan quite
left out of view. How, with his national exaggeration
run riot, he depicted the valley of the
Great Salt Lake as a Paradise, and the City
as an apocalyptic wonder, all jasper and sardonyx,
all beryl and chrysoprase; and no mud
and no adobe. How he suggested that in a
new country, under his advice, the old man's
little capital would soon swell to a great inheritance
for his daughter.
By the light of that afternoon's scene, over
the tea, I could comprehend the close of Mr.
Clitheroe's dreary story, and see how at last
Sizzum had got him in his gripe, property, person,
and soul.
Did he wish to escape?
No. On! on! he must go on. Only some
-- 165 --
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force without himself, interposed, could turn
him aside.
What was this force to be?
Nothing that I could say or do; that I saw
clearly. His illusions might be nearly gone;
but he would hate and distrust any one who
ventured to pull the scales from his eyes, and
show him his crazy folly. Indeed, I dreaded
lest any attempt to enlighten him would drive
him into actual madness by despair. If he
had given me a shadow of encouragement, I
was ready to follow out the hint I had dropped
when I said to Brent, “What a night for a
gallop!” My own risk I was willing to take.
But escape for the lady, without him, was barbarous,
and we could not treat him like a Sabine
damsel, and lug him off by the hair.
What could his daughter do? Clearly nothing.
He had evidently long ago revolted against
her. If I did not mistake her faithful face, she
would stand by her father to the last. Plead as
he might, John Brent would never win her to
save herself and lose her father; and indeed that
was a desertion he could never recommend.
A dark look for all parties.
Whence was the force to come that should
solve the difficulty?
-- -- p753-171
CHAPTER XV. A LOVER.
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Two long hours I had kept Mr. Clitheroe in
talk. For my friend's sake I would have prolonged
the interview indefinitely. For my own,
too. He was a new character to me, this gentle
soul, so sadly astray. My filial feeling for him
deepened momently. And as my pity grew more
exquisitely painful, I shrank still from quitting
him, and so acknowledging that the pity was
hopeless.
We approached the fort. The fiddlers three
were dragging their last grumbling notes out of
drowsy strings. The saints began to stream by
toward their wagons. We turned away to avoid
recognition.
Miss Clitheroe and Brent joined us, — a sadder
pair than we. The stars showed me the glimmer
of tears in her eyes. But her look was
brave and steady. She left my friend, and laid
her hand on her father's arm. A marked likeness,
and yet a contrast more marked, between
these two. He had given her his refinement, a
-- 167 --
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quality so in him and of him that he colored
whatever came near him with an emanation from
himself, and so was blinded to its real crude
tints. By this medium he made in his description
that black hole of a coal mine, where so
many of his years had been buried, a grotto of
enchantment. He filled the world with illusions.
Whatever was future and whatever was past,
seen through his poetic imagination, seemed to
him so beautiful, or so strange and interesting,
that he lost all care for the discomforts of the
present. And this same refinement of nature
deluded him in judging character. Bad and
base motives seemed to him so ugly, that he
refused to see them, shrank from belief in
them, and insisted upon trusting that men were
as honorable as himself. He was a man for
prosperity. What did fate mean by maltreating
him with the manifold adversities of his life?
To what end was this sad error?
A strange contrast, with all the likeness, between
his daughter and him. A more vigorous
being had mingled its life with hers. Or perhaps
the stern history of her early days had taught
her to forge the armor of self-protection. She
seemed to have all her father's refinement, but
she used it to surround and seclude herself, not
to change and glorify others. Godiva was not
more delicately hidden from the vulgar world by
-- 168 --
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the mantle of her own golden hair, than this
sweet lady by her veil of gentle breeding.
As she took her father's arm to lead him away
to the camp, I could read in her look that there
were no illusions for her. But she clave to her
father, — the blinder and more hopelessly errant
he might be, the closer she clave. He might
reject her guidance; she still stood by to protect
him, to sweeten his life, and when the darkness
came, which she could not but foresee, to be a
light to him. However adversity had thus far
failed to teach him self-possession, it had made
her a heroine and a martyr, — a noble and unselfish
soul, such as, one among the myriads,
God educates to shame the base and the trifling,
and to hearten and inspire the true.
“Now, dear father,” she said, “we must bid
these kind friends good night. We start early.
We need rest.”
She held out her hand to me.
“Dear lady,” said I, taking her aside a moment
while Brent spoke to Mr. Clitheroe, “we
are acquaintances of to-day; but campaigners
must despise ceremony. Your father has told
me much of your history. I infer your feelings.
Consider me as a brother. Nothing can
be done to aid you?”
“Your kindness and your friend's kindness
touch me greatly. Nothing can be done.”
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She sobbed a little. I still held her hand.
“Nothing!” said I, “nothing! Will you go
on with these people? you, a lady! with your
fate staring you in the face!”
She withdrew her hand and looked at me
steadily with her large gray eyes. What a
woman to follow into the jaws of death!
“My fate,” she said, “can be no worse than
the old common fate of death. That I accept,
any other I defy. God does not leave the worthy
to shame.”
“We say so, when we hope.”
“I say it and believe.”
“Come, Ellen dear,” called her father.
There was always between them, whenever
they spoke, by finer gentleness of tone and words
of endearment, a recognition of how old and close
and exclusive was their union. Only when Sizzum
was present at tea, the tenderness, under
that coarsening influence, passed away from the
father's voice and manner, making the daughter's
more and more tender, that she might win
him back to her.
“Good bye!” she said. “We shall remember
each other kindly.”
“Yes, gentlemen,” said Mr. Clitheroe. “This
has been quite the pleasantest episode of our
journey. You must not forget us when you are
roaming through this region again.”
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He said this with his light, cheerful manner.
They turned away. It seemed as if Death arose
and parted us. We followed at a distance and
watched them safe to their wagon. The night
wind had risen, and went sighing over the desert
reaches, bringing with it the distant howling of
wolves.
“Do not speak to me,” said Brent, “I will
talk to you by and by.”
He left me and went toward our horses. It
had been imprudent to leave them so long at
night, with bad spirits about.
I looked into the fort again. The dancers
had gone. Bottery was fumbling drunkenly
over his fiddle. A score of men were within
the house carousing. Old Bridger's whiskey
had evidently flowed freely. In one corner
Larrap had unrolled a greasy faro-cloth and
was dealing. Murker backed him. They were
winning largely. They bagged their winnings
out of sight, as fast as they fell in. Sizzum,
rather to my surprise, was a little excited with
liquor, and playing recklessly, losing sovereigns
by the handful. As he lost, he became furious.
He struck Larrap in the face and called him
cheat. Larrap gave him an ugly look, and then,
assuming a boozy indifference, caught Sizzum
by the hand and vowed he was his best friend.
Murker kept aloof from the dispute. The game
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began again. Again Sizzum and the Mormons
lost. Again Sizzum slapped the dealer, and,
catching the faro-cloth, tore it in two. The two
gamblers saw that they were in danger. They
had kept themselves sober and got the others
drunk for such a crisis. They hurried out of
the way. Sizzum and his brother saints chased
them; but presently, losing sight of them in the
dusk, they staggered off toward camp, singing
uproariously. Their leader on this festival had
somewhat forgotten the dignity of the apostle
and captain.
This low rioting was doubly disgusting to me,
after the sad evening with our friends. I found
Sizzum more offensive as a man of the world
than as a saint. I say man of the world, because
the gambling scenes of nominal gentlemen
are often just as hateful, if more decorous,
than those of that night. I walked slowly off
toward camp, sorrowful and sick at heart. Baseness
and vulgarity had never seemed to me so
base and vulgar till now.
I suddenly heard a voice in the bushes. It
was Larrap. He was evidently persuading his
comrade to some villany. I caught a suspicious
word or two.
“Ah!” thought I, “you want our horses.
We will see to that.”
I walked softly by. Brent was seated by the
-- 172 --
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embers of a camp-fire, cowered in a heap, like
a cold Indian. He raised his face. All the
light had gone out of him. This trouble had
suddenly worn into his being, like the shirt
of Nessus, and poisoned his life.
“John,” said I, “I never knew you despondent
before.”
“This is not despondency.”
“What then?”
“Despair.”
“I cannot offer to cheer you.”
“It is bitter, Wade. I have yearned to be
a lover for years. All at once I find the woman
I have seen and thought of, and known from my
first conscious moment. The circumstances
crowded my love into sudden intensity. I
made the observations and did the work of
months of acquaintance in those few moments
while we were at tea. My mind always acts
quick. I seem always to have been discussing
my decisions with myself, years before the subject
of decision comes to me. Whatever happens,
falls on me with the force of a doom. I
loved Miss Clitheroe's voice the instant I heard
its brave tenderness answering her father. I
loved her unseen, and would have died for her
that moment. When she appeared, and I saw
her face and read her heart, I knew that it was
the old dream, — the old dream that I never
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thought would be other than a dream. The
ancient hope and expectation, coeval with my
life, was fulfilled. She is the other self I have
been waiting for and seeking for.”
“Have you told her so?”
“Can a man stop the beating of his heart?
Can a man not breathe? Not in words, perhaps.
I did not use the lover words. But she understood
me. She did not seem surprised. She
recognizes such a passion as her right and
desert.”
“A great-hearted woman can see how a man
worthy of her can nullify time and space, and
meet her, soul to soul, in eternity from the first.”
“So I meet her; but circumstances here are
stronger than love.”
“Can she do nothing with her father?”
“Nothing. She failed in England when this
delusion first fell upon him.”
“Did she know what it meant for her and
him?”
“Hardly. She even fancied that they would
be happier in America than at home, where she
saw that his old grandeur was always reproaching
him.”
“Did he conceal from her the goal and object
of his emigration?”
“She knew he was, or supposed himself to be,
a Mormon. But Mormonism was little more
-- 174 --
[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]
than a name to her. She believed his perversion
only a transitory folly. It is but recently, only
since they were away from succor, off in the
desert, that she has perceived her own risk.
She hoped that the voyage from England would
disenchant her father, and that she could keep
him in the States. No; he was committed; he
was impracticable. You have seen yourself how
far his faith is shaken. Just so far that his
crazy cheerfulness has given place to moping;
but he will hear nothing of reason.”
“What does she anticipate?”
“She says she only dares to endure. Day by
day they both wear away. Day by day her
father's bright hope dwindles away. Day by day
she perceives the moment of her own danger
approaching. She could not speak to me of it;
but I could feel by her tone her disgust and disdain
of Sizzum. O, how steady and noble she
is! All for her father! All to guide him with
the fewest pangs to that desolate death she knows
must come! She gave me a few touches of their
past history, so that I could see how much closer
and tenderer than the common bond of parent
and child theirs had been.”
“That I saw, from the old gentleman's story.
Sorrow and poverty ennoble love.”
“She thanked me and you so sweetly for our
society, and the kind words we had given them.
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She had not seen her father so cheerful, so like
himself, since they had left England.”
“What a weary pilgrimage they must have
had, poor errant souls!”
“O Wade, Wade! how this tragedy of theirs
cures me forever of any rebellion against my
own destiny. A helpless woman's tragedy is so
much bitterer than anything that can befall a
man.”
“Must we say helpless, John?”
“Are we two an army, that we can take them
by force? She has definitely closed any further
communication on our part. She said that I
could not have failed to notice how Elder Sizzum
disliked our presence. I must promise her not
to be seen with them in the morning. Sizzum
would find some means to punish her father, and
that would be torture to her. It seems that villain
plays on the old man's religious superstitions,
and can terrify him almost to madness.”
“The villain! And yet how far back of him
lies the blame, that such terrors can exist in any
man's mind, when God is Love.”
“I promised her not to see her again — for
you and myself; to see her no more. That
good-bye was final. Now let me alone for a
while, my dear old boy; I am worn out and
heart-broken.”
He mummied himself in his blankets, and lay
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on the grass, motionless as a dead man. It was
not his way to shirk camp duties. Indeed, his
volunteer services had left me in arrears.
I put our fire-arms in order in case of attack,
and extinguished our fire. Our horses, too, I
drove in and tethered close by. My old suspicion
of Murker and Larrap had revived from their
mutterings. I thought that, after their great
winnings of to-night, they would feel that they
could make nothing more of the mail party, and
might seize the chance to stampede or steal some
of the Mormon horses or ours. It was a capital
chance in the sleepy hours after the revel. Horse-stealing,
since the bad example of Diomed, has
never gone out of fashion. Fulano and Pumps
were great prizes. I knew that Larrap hated
Brent for his undisguised abhorrence and the
ugly words and collision of to-day. The pair
bore good-will to neither of us. Their brutality
had jarred with us from the beginning. I knew
they would take personal pleasure in serving us
a shabby trick out of their dixonary. On the
whole, I determined to watch all night.
Easy to purpose; hard to perform. I leaned
against my saddle and thought over the day.
How I pitied poor Brent! Pitied him the more
thoroughly, since I was hardly less a lover than
he. Long afterwards, long after the misery of
love dead in despair, comes the time when one
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can say, “Ich habe gelebt und geliebet; can
know, “'T is better to have loved and lost, than
never to have loved at all.” But no such soothing
poetry could sing resignation to my friend
in his unselfish misery. All he could do — all
I could do — was to bear the agony of this sudden
cruel wrong; to curse the chances of life
that had so weakened the soul of our new friend
and so darkened his sight that he could not know
truth from falsehood. Doubly to curse the falsehood.
Before, it had only been something to
scorn. Here tragedy entered. The mean, miserable,
ludicrous invention of Mormonism, the foolish
fable of an idler, had grown to be a great
masterly tyranny. These two souls were clutched
by this foul ogre, and locked up in an impregnable
prison. And we two were baffled. Of what
use was our loyalty to woman? What vain
words those unuttered words of our knightly vow
to succor all distressed damsels, — the vow that
every gentleman takes upon himself, as earnestly
now, and wills to keep as faithfully, as any Artegall
in the days gone by, when wrong took cruder
and more monstrous form! More monstrous
form! Could any wrong be more detestable!
Did knight, who loved God and honored his
lady, ever encounter more paynim-like horde
than this, — the ignorant misled by the base?
In such dreary protest and pity I passed an
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hour. The evening breeze had strengthened into
a great gusty wind, blowing from the mountains
to the southward. I drowsed a little. A
perturbed slumber overcame me. The roaring
night-wind aroused me at intervals with a blast
more furious, and I woke to perceive ominous
and turbulent dreams flitting from my brain, —
dreams of violence, tyranny, and infamous outrage.
Suddenly another sensation went creeping
along my nerves. I sat bolt upright. There
was a feeling of human presence, of stealthy approach
coming up against the night-wind and
crushing its roar with a sound more penetrating.
Brent, too, was on the alert.
“Some one at our horses,” he whispered.
We dashed forward. There was a rustle of
flight through the bushes. We each fired a
shot. The noise ceased.
“Stop!” said my friend, as I was giving
chase. “We must not leave the horses. They
will stampede them while we are off.”
“They? perhaps it was only a cayote or a
wolf. Why, Fulano! old fellow!”
Fulano trotted up, neighing, and licked my
hand. His lariat had been cut, — a clean cut
with a knife. We were only just in time.
“We must keep watch till morning,” said I.
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“I have been drowsing. I will take the first
hour.”
Brent, with a moan of weariness, threw himself
down again on the grass. I sat watchful.
The night-wind went roaring on. It loves
those sweeps and surges of untenanted plain,
as it loves the lifts and levels of the barren
sea. The fitful gale rushed down as if it boiled
over the edge of some great hollow in the mountains,
and then stayed to gather force for another
overflow. In its pauses I could hear the
stir and murmur of the Mormon cattle, a thousand
and more. But once there came a larger
pause; the air grew silent, as if it had never
known a breeze, or as if all life and motion
between earth and sky were utterly and forever
quelled.
In that one instant of dead stillness, when the
noise of the cattle was hushed, and our horses
ceased champing to listen, I seemed to hear the
clang of galloping hoofs, not far away to the
southward.
Galloping hoofs, surely I heard them. Or
was it only the charge of a fresh blast down
the mountain-side, uprooting ancient pines, and
flinging great rocks from crag to chasm?
And that strange, terrible, human, inhuman
sound, outringing the noise of the hoofs, and
making the silence a ghastly horror, — was it
a woman's scream?
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No; it could only be my fevered imagination,
that found familiar sounds in the inarticulate
voices of the wilderness. I listened
long and intently. The wind sighed, and raved,
and threatened again. I heard the dismal howling
of wolves far away in the darkness.
I kept a double watch of two hours, and then,
calling Brent to do his share, threw myself on
the grass and slept soundly.
-- -- p753-186
CHAPTER XVI. ARMSTRONG.
[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]
I awoke in the solemn quiet dawn of the
next morning with my forebodings of ill gone,
and in their stead what I could not but deem
a baseless hopefulness for our new friends' welfare.
Brent did not share it. His usual gay matinsong
was dumb. He cowered, chilled and spiritless,
by our camp-fire. Breakfast was an idle
ceremony to both. We sat and looked at each
other. His despair began to infect me. This
would not do.
I left my friend, sitting unnerved and purposeless,
and walked to the mail-riders' camp.
Jake Shamberlain was already stirring about,
as merry as a grig, — and that is much to say
on the Plains. There are two grigs to every
blade of grass from Echo Cañon to the South
Pass, and yet every one sings and skips, as gay as
if merriment would make the desert a meadow.
“You are astir early after the ball, Jake,”
said I.
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“Ef I wait till the gals in the train begins
to polky round, I shan't git my men away
nayry time. They olluz burr to gals, like all
young fellers. We 'll haul off jest as soon as
you 're ready.”
“We are ready,” I said.
I made our packs, and saddled the mustangs.
“Come, Brent,” said I, shaking him by the
shoulder, “start, old fellow! Your ride will
rouse you.”
He obeyed, and mounted. He was quite
cowed and helpless. I did not know my brave,
cheerful friend in this weak being. He seemed
to me as old and dreary as Mr. Clitheroe. Love
must needs have taken a very cruel clutch upon
his heart. Indeed, to the delicate nature of
such a man, love is either life of life, or a murderous
blight worse than death.
As we started, a gray dawn was passing into
the violet light just before sunrise. The gale
had calmed itself away. The tender hues of
morning glorified the blue adobes of Bridger's
shabby fort. It rested on the plain, still as the
grave, — stiller for the contrast of this silent
hour with last night's riot. A deathly quiet,
too, dwelt upon the Mormon caravan. There
were the white-topped wagons just growing rosy
with the fond colors of early day. No abandoned
camp of a fled army could have looked
-- 183 --
[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]
more lonely. Half a mile from the train were
the cattle feeding quietly in a black mass, like
a herd of buffalo. There was not one man,
out of our own party, to be seen.
“Where are their sentinels, Jake?” said I.
“Too much spree for good watch,” says he.
“Elder Sizzum ought to look sharper.”
“He 's a prime leader. But he tuk dance,
argee, and faro last night with a perfect looseness.
I dunno what 's come over Sizzum; bein'
a great apossle 's maybe too much for him. But
then he knows ther ain't no Utes round here, to
stampede his animals or run off any of his gals.
Both er you men could have got you a wife
apiece last night, and ben twenty miles on the
way, and nobody the wiser. Now, boys, be alive
with them mules. I want to be off.”
“Where are Smith and Robinson?” I asked,
missing the two gamblers as we started.
“Let 'em slide, cuss 'em!” said Jake.
“'Taint my business to call 'em up, and fetch
'em hot water, and black their boots. They
moved camp away from us, over into the brush
by you. Reckon they was afeard some on us
would be goin' halves with 'em in the pile they
raked last night. Let 'em slide, the durn ripperbits!
Every man for hisself, I say. They
snaked me to the figure of a slug at their
cheatin' game; an' now they may sleep till
they dry and turn to grasshopper pie, for me.”
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Jake cracked his long whip. The mules
sprang forward together. We started.
I gave one more look at the caravan we had
seen winding so beautifully down on the plain,
no longer ago than yesterday evening. Rosy
morning brightened on every wagon of the great
ellipse. Not a soul was to be seen of all their
tenants. I recognized Mr. Clitheroe's habitation
at the farther end. That, too, had the same
mysterious, deserted air, as if the sad pair who
dwelt in it had desperately wandered away into
the desert by night.
Brent would not turn. He kept his haggard
face bent eastward, toward the horizon, where an
angry sunrise began to thrust out the quiet hues
of dawn.
I followed the train, doggedly refusing to
think more of those desolate friends we were
leaving. Their helpless fate made all the beauty
of the scene only crueller bitterness. What
right had dawn to tinge with sweetest violet and
with hopeful rose the shelters of that camp of
delusion and folly!
We rode steadily on through the cool haze,
and then through the warm, sunny haze, of that
October morning. Brent hardly uttered a word.
He left me the whole task of driving our horses.
A difficult task this morning. Their rest and
feast of yesterday had put Pumps and Fulano in
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[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]
high spirits. I had my hands full to keep them
in the track.
We had ridden some eighteen miles, when
Brent fell back out of the dust of our march,
and beckoned me.
“Dick,” said he, “I have had enough of this.”
He grew more like himself as he spoke.
“I was crushed and cowardly last night and
this morning,” he continued. “For the first
time in my life, my hope and judgment failed me
together. You must despise me for giving up
and quitting Miss Clitheroe.”
“My dear boy,” said I, “we were partners in
our despair.”
“Mine is gone. I have made up my mind. I
will not leave her. I will ride on with you to
the South Pass. That will give the caravan a
start, so that I can follow unobserved. Then I
will follow, and let her know in some way that
she has a friend within call. She must be saved,
sooner or later, whether she will or no. Love or
no love, such a woman shall not be left to will
herself dead, rather than fall into the hands of a
beast like Sizzum. I have no mission, you
know,” and he smiled drearily; “I make one
now. I cannot fight the good fight against villany
and brutishness anywhere better than here.
When I get into the valley, I will camp down at
Jake's. I can keep my courage up hunting
-- 186 --
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grizzlys until she wants me. Perhaps I may
find Biddulph there still. What do you say, old
fellow? I am bound to you for the journey.
Will you forgive me for leaving you?”
“You will find it hard work to leave me.
I go with you and stand by you in this cause,
life or death.”
“My dear friend! my brother!”
We took hands on this.
Our close friendship passed into completed
brotherhood. Doubts and scruples vanished.
We gave ourselves to our knight-errantry.
“We will save her, John,” said I. “She is
my sister from this moment.”
His face lighted up with the beauty of his boyish
days. He straightened himself in his saddle,
gave his fair moustache a twirl, and hummed,
for gayety of heart, “Ah non giunge!” to the
beat of his mustang's hoofs.
We were riding at the bottom of a little
hollow. The dusty trail across the unfenced
wilderness, worn smooth and broad as a turnpike
by the march of myriad caravans, climbed
up the slopes before and behind us, like the
wake of a ship between surges. The mail train
had disappeared over the ridge. Our horses
had gone with it. Brent and I were alone,
as if the world held no other tenants.
Suddenly we heard the rush of a horseman
after us.
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Before we could turn he was down the hillock, —
he was at our side.
He pulled his horse hard upon his haunches
and glared at us. A fierce look it was; yet
a bewildered look, as of one suddenly cheated
of a revenge he had laid finger on.
He glared at us, we gazed at him, an instant,
without a word.
A ghastly pair — this apparition — horse and
man! The horse was a tall, gaunt white. There
were the deep hollows of age over his bloodshot
eyes. His outstretched head showed that
he shared his master's eagerness of pursuit.
Death would have chosen such a steed for a
gallop on one of death's errands.
Death would have commissioned such a rider
to bear a sentence of death. A tall, gaunt man,
with the loose, long frame of a pioneer. But
the brown vigor of a pioneer was gone from
him. His face was lean and bloodless. It was
clear where some of his blood had found issue.
A strip of old white blanket, soiled with dust
and blood, was turbaned askew about his head,
and under it there showed the ugly edges of
a recent wound.
When he pulled up beside us, his stringy
right hand was ready upon the butt of a revolver.
He dropped the muzzle as he looked
at us.
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For what horror was this man the embodied
Nemesis!
“Where are they?”
He whispered this question in a voice thick
with stern purpose, and shuddering with some
recollection that inspired the purpose.
“They! who?”
“The two murderers.”
“They stayed behind at Bridger.”
“No. The Mormons told me they were here.
Don't hide them! Their time is come.”
Still in the same curdling whisper. He
crushed his voice, as if he feared the very hillocks
of the prairie would reverberate his words,
and earth would utter a warning cry to those
he hunted to fly, fly, for the avenger of blood
was at hand.
No need to be told whom he sought. The
two gamblers — the two murderers — the brutes
we had suspected; but where were they? Where
to be sought?
We hailed the mail train. It was but a
hundred yards before us over the ridge. Jake
Shamberlain and his party returned to learn
what delayed us.
The haggard horsemen stared at them all, in
silence.
“I 've seen you before, stranger,” said Shamberlain.
-- 189 --
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“Yes,” said the man, in his shuddering
whisper.
“It 's Armstrong from Oregon, from the Umpqua,
aint it? You don't look as if you were
after cattle this time. Where 's your brother?”
“Murdered.”
“I allowed something had happened, because
he warnt along. I never seed two men stick
so close as you and he did. They didn't kill
him without gettin' a lick at you, I see. Who
was it? Indians?”
“Worse.”
“I reckon I know why you 're after us, then.”
“I can't waste time, Shamberlain,” said Armstrong,
in a hurried whisper. “I'll tell you in
two words what's happened to me, and p'r'aps
you can help me to find the men I mean to
find.”
“I'll help you, if I know how, Armstrong. I
haint seen no two in my life, old country or new
country, saints or gentiles, as I 'd do more for 'n
you and your brother. I 've olluz said, ef the
world was chock full of Armstrongs, Paradise
would n't pay, and Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
mout just as well blow out their candle and go
under a bushel-basket, unless a half-bushel would
kiver 'em.”
The stranger seemed insensible to this compliment.
He went on in the same whisper, full of
-- 190 --
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agony, pain, and weariness. While he talked,
his panting horse drew up his lip and whinnied,
showing his long, yellow teeth. The spirit of his
rider had entered him. He was impatient of
this dalliance.
“We were coming down from the Umpqua,
my brother and I,” says Armstrong, “goan
across to the States, to drive out cattle next
summer. We was a little late one morning,
along of our horses havin' strayed off from
camp, and that was how we met them men.
Two on 'em ther' was, — a tall, most ungodly
Pike, and a little fat, mean-lookin' runt. We
lighted on 'em jest to the crossin' of Bear River.
They was comin' from Sacramenter, they said.
I kinder allowed they was horse-thieves, and
wanted to shy off. But Bill — that was my
brother —”
Here the poor fellow choked a little.
“Bill, he never could n't think wrong of nobody.
Bill, he said, `No. Looks was nothin',' he
said, `and we 'd jine the fellers.' So we did,
and rode together all day, and camped together
on a branch we cum to. I reckon we talked too
much about the cattle we was goan to buy, and
I suppose ther' aint many on the Pacific side
that aint heard of the Armstrongs. They allowed
we had money, — them murderers did.
Well, we camped all right, and went to sleep,
-- 191 --
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and I never knowed nothin', ef it warnt a dream
that a grizzly had wiped me over the head, till I
woke up the next day with the sun brilin' down
on my head, and my head all raw and bloody, as
ef I 'd been scalped. And there was Bill — my
brother Bill — lyin' dead in his blankets.”
A shudder passed through our group. These
were the men we had tolerated, sat with at the
camp-fire, to whose rough stories and foul jokes
we had listened. Brent's instinct was true.
Armstrong was evidently an honest, simple,
kindly fellow. His eyes were pure, gentle blue.
They filled with tears as he spoke. But the
stern look remained, the Rhadamanthine whisper
only grew thicker with vengeance.
“Bill was dead,” he continued. “The hatchet
slipped when they come to hit me, and they was
too skeared, I suppose, to go on choppin' me, as
they had him. P'r'aps his ghost cum round and
told 'em 't warnt the fair thing they 'd ben at,
and 't warnt. But they got our horses, Bill's big
sorrel and my Flathead horse, what 's made a
hunderd and twenty-three miles betwixt sunrise
and sunset of a September day, goan for the doctor,
when Ma Armstrong was tuk to die. They
got the horses, and our money belts. So when
I found Bill was dead, I knowed what my life
was left me for. I tied up my head, and somehow
I crep, and walked, and run, and got to Box
-- 192 --
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Elder. I don't know how long it took, nor who
showed me the way; but I got there.”
Box Elder is the northernmost Mormon settlement,
or was, in those days.
“I'll never say another word again the Mormon
religion, Jake,” Armstrong went on. “They
treated me like a brother to Box Elder. They
outfitted me with a pistol, and this ere horse.
They said he 'd come in from a train what the
Indians had cut off, and was a terrible one to go.
He is; and I believe he knows what he 's goan
for. I 've ben night and day ridin' on them
murderers' trail. Now, men, give me time to
think. Bill's murderers aint at Bridger. They
was there last midnight. They must be somewheres
within fifty miles, and I 'll find 'em, so
help me God!”
His hoarse whisper was still. No one spoke.
Another rush of hoofs down the slope behind!
-- -- p753-198
CHAPTER XVII. CAITIFF BAFFLES OGRE.
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Another rush of horses' feet behind us.
What?
Elder Sizzum!
And that pale, gray shadow of a man, whose
pony the Elder drags by the bridle, and lashes
cruelly forward, — who?
Mr. Clitheroe.
Sizzum rode straight up to Brent.
The two men faced each other, — the big,
hulking, bullying saint; the slight, graceful, self-possessed
gentile. Sizzum quailed a little when
he saw the other did not quail. He seemed to
change his intended form of address.
“Brother Clitheroe wants his daughter,” said
Sizzum.
“Yes, yes, gentlemen,” said Mr. Clitheroe in
feeble echo, “I want my daughter.”
Brent ignored the Mormon. He turned to
the father, and questioned eagerly.
“What is this, dear sir? Is Miss Ellen missing?
She is not here. Speak, sir! Tell us
-- 194 --
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at once how she was lost. We must be on
her track instantly. Wade, shift the saddles
to Fulano and Pumps, while I make up our
packs. Speak, sir! Speak!”
Brent's manner carried conviction, even to
Sizzum.
“I did not like to suspect you, gentlemen,”
said Mr. Clitheroe, “after our pleasant evening
and your kindness; but Brother Sizzum said it
could not be any one else.”
“Get the facts, Wade,” said Brent, “I cannot
trust myself to ask.”
Sizzum smiled a base, triumphant smile over
the agony of my friend.
“Tell us quick,” said I, taking Mr. Clitheroe
firmly by the arm, and fixing his eye.
“In the night, an hour or more after you
left us, I was waked up by two men creeping
into the wagon. They whispered they would
shoot, if I breathed. They passed behind the
curtain. My daughter had sunk on the floor,
tired out, poor child! without undressing. They
threw a blanket over her head, and stifled her
so that she could not utter a sound. They
tied me and gagged me. Then they dragged
her off. God forgive me, gentlemen, for suspecting
you of such brutality! I lay in the
wagon almost strangled to death until the teamster
came to put to the oxen for our journey.
That is all I know.”
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“The two gamblers, murderers, have carried
her off,” said I; “but we 'll save her yet, please
God!”
“O,” said Sizzum, “ef them devils has got
her, that 's the end of her. I haint got no
more interest in her case. I believe I 'll go.
I 've wasted too much time now from the Lord's
business.”
He moved to go.
“What am I to do?” said Mr. Clitheroe.
Forlorn, bereaved, perplexed old man! Any
but a brute would have hesitated to strike him
another blow. Sizzum did not hesitate.
“You may go to the devil across lots, on
that runt pony of yourn, with your new friends,
for all I care. I 've had enough of your daughter's
airs, as if she was too good to be teched
by one of the Lord's chosen. But she 'll get
the Lord's vengeance now, because she would n't
see what was her place and privileges. And
you 're no better than a backslider. You 've
been grumblin' and settin' yourself up for somebody.
I would cuss you now with the wrath
to come if such a poor-spirited granny was wuth
cussin'.”
The base wretch lashed his horse and galloped
off.
Even his own people of the mail party looked
and muttered contempt.
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Mr. Clitheroe seemed utterly stunned. Guide,
Faith, Daughter, all gone! What was he to do,
indeed!
“Never mind, Mr. Clitheroe,” said Brent, tenderly,
“I hope you have not lost a daughter.
I know you have gained a son, — yes, two of
them. Here, Jake Shamberlain!”
“Here, sir! Up to time! Ready to pull my
pound!”
“Wade and I are going after the lady. Do
you take this gentleman, and deliver him safe
and sound to Captain Ruby at Fort Laramie.
Tell Ruby to keep him till we come, and treat
him as he would General Scott. Drive our
mules and the mustangs to Laramie, and leave
them there. We trust the whole to you. There 's
no time to talk. Tell me what money you want
for the work, and I 'll pay you now in advance,
whatever you ask.”
“I 'll be switched round creation ef you do.
Not the first red! You think, bekase I 'm a
Mormon, as you call it, I haint got no nat'ral
feelin's. Why, boys, I 'd go with you myself
after the gal, and let Uncle Sam's mail lie there
and wait till every letter answered itself, ef I
had a kettrypid what could range with yourn.
No, no, Jake Shamberlain aint a hog, and his
mail boys aint of the pork kind. I 'll take keer
of the old gentleman, and put him through jest
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[figure description] Page 197.[end figure description]
'z if he was my own father, and wuth a million
slugs. And ef that aint talkin' fair, I dunno
what is.”
We both griped Jake Shamberlain's friendly
fist.
Mr. Clitheroe, weary with his morning's ride,
faint and sick after his bonds of the night, and
now crushed in spirit and utterly bewildered
with these sudden changes, was handed over to
his new protector.
The emancipating force had found him. He
was free of his Mormonism. His delusion had
discarded him. A rough and cruel termination
of his hopes! How would he bear this disappointment?
Would his heart break? Would
his mind break? his life break?
We could not check ourselves to think of
him. Our thoughts were galloping furiously on
in succor of the daughter, fallen on an evil
fate.
While this hasty talk had been going on, I had
shifted our saddles to Pumps and Fulano. Noble
fellows! they took in the calm excitement of my
mood. They grew eager as a greyhound when
he sees the hare break cover. They divined that
THEIR MOMENT HAD COME! Now their force was
to be pitted against brutality. Horse against
brute, — which would win? I dared not think
of the purpose of our going. Only, Begone!
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Begone! was ringing in my ears, and a figure
I dared not see was before my eyes.
I was frenzied with excitement; but I held
myself steady as one holds his rifle when a buck
comes leaping out of the forest into the prairie,
where rifle and man have been waiting and trembling,
while the hounds' bay came nearer, nearer.
I drew strap and tied knot of our girths, and
doubled the knot. There must be no chafing of
saddles, no dismounting to girth up. That was
to be a gallop, I knew, where a man who fell to
the rear would be too late for the fight.
Brent, meantime, had rolled up a little stock
of provisions in each man's double blanket. We
were going we knew not how far. We must be
ready for work of many days. A moment's
calmness over our preparations now might save
desolate defeat or death hereafter. We lashed
our blankets with their contents on firmly by
the buckskin thongs which are attached to the
cantle of a California saddle, — the only saddle
for such work as we — horses and men — have
on the plains.
“Rifles?” said I.
“No. Knives and six-shooters are enough,”
said Brent, as cool as if our ride were an ornamental
promenade à cheval. “We cannot carry
weight or clumsy weapons on this journey.”
We mounted and were off, with a cheer from
Jake Shamberlain and his boys.
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All this time, we had not noticed Armstrong.
As we struck off southward upon the trackless
prairie, that ghastly figure upon the gaunt white
horse was beside us.
“We 're bound on the same arrant,” whispered
he. “Only the savin 's yourn and the
killin 's mine.”
Did my hope awake, now that the lady I had
chosen for my sister was snatched from that
monstrous ogre of Mormonism?
Yes; for now instant, urgent action was possible.
We could do something. Gallop, gallop,—
that we could do.
God speed us! — and the caitiffs should only
have baffled the ogre, and the lady should be
saved.
If not saved, avenged!
-- -- p753-205
CHAPTER XVIII. A GALLOP OF THREE.
[figure description] Page 200.[end figure description]
We were off, we Three on our Gallop to save
and to slay.
Pumps and Fulano took fire at once. They
were ready to burst into their top speed, and go
off in a frenzy.
“Steady, steady,” cried Brent. “Now we 'll
keep this long easy lope for a while, and I 'll tell
you my plan.
“They have gone to the southward, — those
two men. They could not get away in any other
direction. I have heard Murker say he knows
all the country between here and the Arkansaw.
Thank Heaven! so do I, foot by foot.”
I recalled the sound of galloping hoofs I had
heard in the night to the southward.
“I heard them, then,” said I, “in my watch
after Fulano's lariat was cut. The wind lulled,
and there came a sound of horses, and another
sound, which I then thought a fevered fancy of
my own, a far-away scream of a woman.”
Brent had been quite unimpassioned in his
-- 201 --
[figure description] Page 201.[end figure description]
manner until now. He groaned, as I spoke of
the scream.
“O Wade! O Richard!” he said, “why did
you not know the voice? It was she. They
have terrible hours the start.”
He was silent a moment, looking sternly forward.
Then he began again, and as he spoke, his
iron gray edged on with a looser rein.
“It is well you heard them; it makes their
course unmistakable. We know we are on their
track. Seven or eight full hours! It is long
odds of a start. But they are not mounted as
we are mounted. They did not ride as we shall
ride. They had a woman to carry, and their
mules to drive. They will fear pursuit, and push
on without stopping. But we shall catch them;
we shall catch them before night, so help us
God!”
“You are aiming for the mountains?” I
asked.
“For Luggernel Alley,” he said.
I remembered how, in our very first interview,
a thousand miles away at the Fulano mine, he
had spoken of this spot. All the conversation
then, all the talk about my horse, came back to
me like a Delphic prophecy suddenly fulfilled.
I made a good omen of this remembrance.
“For Luggernel Alley,” said Brent. “Do
you recollect my pointing out a notch in the
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[figure description] Page 202.[end figure description]
Sierra, yesterday, when I said I would like to
spend a honeymoon there, if I could find a
woman brave enough for this plains' life?”
He grew very white as he spoke, and again
Pumps led off by a neck, we ranging up instantly.
“They will make for the Luggernel Springs.
The Alley is the only gate through the mountains
towards the Arkansaw. If they can get
by there, they are safe. They can strike off
New Mexico way; or keep on to the States out
of the line of emigration or any Mormon pursuit.
The Springs are the only water to be had at this
season, without digging, anywhere in that quarter.
They must go there. We are no farther
from the spot than we were at Bridger. We
have been travelling along the base of the triangle.
We have only lost time. And, now that
we are fairly under way, I think we might shake
out another reef. A little faster, friends, — a
little faster yet!”
It was a vast desert level where we were
riding. Here and there a scanty tuft of grass
appeared, to prove that Nature had tried her
benign experiment, and wafted seeds hither to
let the scene be verdant, if it would. Nature
had failed. The land refused any mantle over
its brown desolation. The soil was disintegrated,
igneous rock, fine and well beaten down as the
most thoroughly laid Macadam.
-- 203 --
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Behind was the rolling region where the Great
Trail passes; before and far away, the faint blue
of the Sierra. Not a bird sang in the hot noon;
not a cricket chirped. No sound except the beat
of our horses' hoofs on the pavement. We rode
side by side, taking our strides together. It was
a waiting race. The horses travelled easily.
They learned, as a horse with a self-possessed
rider will, that they were not to waste strength
in rushes. “Spend, but waste not,” — not a step,
not a breath, in that gallop for life! This must
be our motto.
We three rode abreast over the sere brown
plain on our gallop to save and to slay.
Far — ah, how terribly dim and distant! — was
the Sierra, a slowly lifting cloud. Slowly, slowly
they lifted, those gracious heights, while we sped
over the harsh levels of the desert. Harsh levels,
abandoned or unvisited by verdancy. But
better so; there was no long herbage to check
our great pace over the smooth race-course; no
thickets here to baffle us; no forests to mislead.
We galloped abreast, — Armstrong at the right.
His weird, gaunt white held his own with the
best of us. No whip, no spur, for that deathly
creature. He went as if his master's purpose
were stirring him through and through. That
stern intent made his sinews steel, and put an
agony of power into every stride. The man never
-- 204 --
[figure description] Page 204.[end figure description]
stirred, save sometimes to put a hand to that
bloody blanket bandage across his head and temple.
He had told his story, he had spoken his
errand, he breathed not a word; but with his
lean, pallid face set hard, his gentle blue eyes
scourged of their kindliness, and fixed upon those
distant mountains where his vengeance lay, he
rode on like a relentless fate.
Next in the line I galloped. O my glorious
black! The great, killing pace seemed mere
playful canter to him, — such as one might ride
beside a timid girl, thrilling with her first free
dash over a flowery common, or a golden beach
between sea and shore. But from time to time
he surged a little forward with his great shoulders,
and gave a mighty writhe of his body, while
his hind legs came lifting his flanks under me, and
telling of the giant reserve of speed and power
he kept easily controlled. Then his ear would
go back, and his large brown eye, with its purple-black
pupil, would look round at my bridle hand
and then into my eye, saying as well as words
could have said it, “This is mere sport, my
friend and master. You do not know me. I
have stuff in me that you do not dream. Say
the word, and I can double this, treble it. Say
the word! let me show you how I can spurn the
earth.” Then, with the lightest love pressure
on the snaffle, I would say, “Not yet! not yet!
-- 205 --
[figure description] Page 205.[end figure description]
Patience, my noble friend! Your time will
come.”
At the left rode Brent, our leader. He knew
the region; he made the plan; he had the hope;
his was the ruling passion, — stronger than brotherhood,
than revenge. Love made him leader
of that galloping three. His iron-gray went
grandly, with white mane flapping the air like
a signal-flag of reprieve. Eager hope and kindling
purpose made the rider's face more beautiful
than ever. He seemed to behold Sidney's
motto written on the golden haze before him,
“Viam aut inveniam aut faciam.” I felt my
heart grow great, when I looked at his calm features,
and caught his assuring smile, — a gay
smile but for the dark, fateful resolve beneath it.
And when he launched some stirring word of
cheer, and shook another ten of seconds out of
the gray's mile, even Armstrong's countenance
grew less deathly, as he turned to our leader in
silent response. Brent looked a fit chieftain for
such a wild charge over the desert waste, with
his buckskin hunting-shirt and leggins with flaring
fringes, his otter cap and eagle's plume, his
bronzed face, with its close, brown beard, his
elate head, and his seat like a centaur.
So we galloped three abreast, neck and neck,
hoof with hoof, steadily quickening our pace over
the sere width of desert. We must make the
-- 206 --
[figure description] Page 206.[end figure description]
most of the levels. Rougher work, cruel obstacles
were before. All the wild, triumphant music
I had ever heard came and sang in my ears
to the flinging cadence of the resonant feet,
tramping on hollow arches of the volcanic rock,
over great, vacant chasms underneath. Sweet
and soft around us melted the hazy air of October,
and its warm, flickering currents shook like
a veil of gauzy gold, between us and the blue
bloom of the mountains far away, but nearing
now and lifting step by step.
On we galloped, the avenger, the friend, the
lover, on our errand, to save and to slay.
-- -- p753-212
CHAPTER XIX. FASTER.
[figure description] Page 207.[end figure description]
It came afternoon, as we rode on steadily.
The country grew rougher. The horses never
flinched, but they sweated freely, and foam from
their nostrils flecked their shoulders. By and by,
with little pleasant admonitory puffs, a breeze
drew down from the glimmering frosty edges of
the Sierra and cooled us. Horses and men were
cheered and freshened, and lifted anew to their
work.
We had seen and heard no life on the desert.
Now in the broken country, a cayote or two scuttled
away as we passed. Sometimes a lean gray
wolf would skulk out of a brake, canter after us
a little way, and then squat on his haunches,
staring at our strange speed. Flight and chase
he could understand, but ours was not flight for
safety, or chase for food. Men are queer mysteries
to beasts. So our next companions found.
Over the edge of a slope, bending away to a valley
of dry scanty pasture at the left, a herd of
antelopes appeared. They were close to us,
-- 208 --
[figure description] Page 208.[end figure description]
within easy revolver shot. They sprang into
graceful flight, some score of them, with tails up
and black hoofs glancing. Presently, pausing for
curiosity, they saw that we fled, not followed, and
they in turn became pursuers, careering after us
for a mile or more, until our stern business left
their gambolling play far behind.
We held steadily for that notch in the blue
Sierra. The mountain lines grew sharper; the
country where we travelled, rougher, every stride.
We came upon a wide tract covered with wild-sage
bushes. These delayed and baffled us. It
was a pigmy forest of trees, mature and complete,
but no higher than the knee. Every dwarfed,
stunted, gnarled bush, had the trunk, limbs, twigs,
and gray, withered foliage, all in miniature, of
some tree, hapless but sturdy, that has had a
weatherbeaten struggle for life on a storm-threshed
crag by the shore, or on a granite side of a mountain,
with short allowance of soil to eat and water
to drink. Myriads of square miles of that arid
region have no important vegetation except this
wild-sage, or Artemisia, and a meaner brother, not
even good to burn, the greasewood.
One may ride through the tearing thickets of
a forest primeval, as one may shoulder through
a crowd of civilized barbarians at a spectacle.
Our gallop over the top of this pigmy wood was
as difficult as to find passage over the heads of
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the same crowd, tall men and short, men hatted
with slouched hats, wash-bowls, and stove-pipes.
It was a rough scramble. It checked our speed
and chafed our horses. Sometimes we could
find natural pathways for a few rods. Then
these strayed aside or closed up, and we must
plunge straight on. We lost time; moments
we lost, more precious than if every one were
marked by a drop in a clepsydra, and each drop
as it fell changed itself and tinkled in the basin,
a priceless pearl.
“It worries me, this delay,” I said to Brent.
“They lost as much — more time than we,” he
said.
And he crowded on, more desperately, as a
man rides for dearer than life, — as a lover rides
for love.
We tore along, breaking through and over the
sage-bushes, each man where best he could.
Fulano began to show me what leaps were in
him. I gave him his head. No bridle would
have held him. I kept my mastery by the voice,
or rather by the perfect identification of his
will with mine. Our minds acted together.
“Save strength,” I still warned him, “save
strength, my friend, for the mountains and the
last leaps!”
A little pathway in the sage-bushes suddenly
opened before me, as a lane rifts in the press
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of hurrying legions 'mid the crush of a city thoroughfare.
I dashed on a hundred yards in advance
of my comrades.
What was this? The bushes trampled and
broken down, just as we in our passage were
trampling and breaking them. What?
Hoof-marks in the dust!
“The trail!” I cried, “the trail!”
They sprang toward me. Brent followed the
line with his eye. He galloped forward, with a
look of triumph.
Suddenly I saw him fling himself half out of
his saddle, and clutch at some object. Still going
at speed, and holding on by one leg alone, after
the Indian fashion for sport or shelter against
an arrow or a shot, he picked up something
from the bushes, regained his seat, and waved
his treasure to us. We ranged up and rode
beside him over a gap in the sage.
A lady's glove! — that was what he had
stooped to recover. An old buckskin riding
gauntlet, neatly stitched about the wrist, and
pinked on the wristlet. A pretty glove, strangely,
almost tragically, feminine in this desolation.
A well-worn glove, that had seen better days,
like its mistress, but never any day so good as
this, when it proved to us that we were on the
sure path of rescue.
“I take up the gauntlet,” said Brent. “Gare
à qui le touche!”
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We said nothing more; for this unconscious
token, this silent cry for help, made the danger
seem more closely imminent. We pressed on.
No flinching in any of the horses. Where we
could, we were going at speed. Where they
could, the horses kept side by side, nerving each
other. Companionship sustained them in that
terrible ride.
And now in front the purple Sierra was growing
brown, and rising up a distinct wall, cleft
visibly with dell, gully, ravine, and cañon. The
saw-teeth of the ridge defined themselves sharply
into peak and pinnacle. Broad fields of cool
snow gleamed upon the summits.
We were ascending now all the time into
subalpine regions. We crossed great sloping
savannas, deep in dry, rustling grass, where a
nation of cattle might pasture. We plunged
through broad wastes of hot sand. We flung
ourselves down and up the red sides of waterworn
gullies. We took breakneck leaps across
dry quebradas in the clay. We clattered across
stony arroyos, longing thirstily for the gush of
water that had flowed there not many months
before.
The trail was everywhere plain. No prairie
craft was needed to trace it. Here the chase had
gone, but a few hours ago; here, across grassy
slopes, trampling the grass as if a mower had
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passed that way; here, ploughing wearily through
the sand; here, treading the red, crumbling clay;
here, breaking down the side of a bank; here,
leaving a sharp hoof-track in the dry mud of a
fled torrent. Everywhere a straight path, pointing
for that deepening gap in the Sierra, Luggernel
Alley, the only gate of escape.
Brent's unerring judgment had divined the
course aright. On he led, charging along the
trail, as if he were trampling already on the carcasses
of the pursued. On he led and we followed,
drawing nearer, nearer to our goal.
Our horses suffered bitterly for water. Some
five hours we had ridden without a pause. Not
one drop or sign of water in all that arid waste.
The torrents had poured along the dry water-courses
too hastily to let the scanty alders and
willows along their line treasure up any sap
of growth. The wild-sage bushes had plainly
never tasted fluid more plenteous than seldom
dewdrops doled out on certain rare festal days,
enough to keep their meagre foliage a dusty
gray. No pleasant streamlet lurked anywhere
under the long dry grass of the savannas.
The arroyos were parched and hot as rifts in
lava.
It became agonizing to listen to the panting
and gasping of our horses. Their eyes grew
staring and bloodshot. We suffered, ourselves,
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hardly less than they. It was cruel to press on.
But we must hinder a crueller cruelty. Love
against Time, — Vengeance against Time! We
must not flinch for any weak humanity to the
noble allies that struggled on with us, without
one token of resistance.
Fulano suffered least. He turned his brave
eye back, and beckoned me with his ear to listen,
while he seemed to say: “See, this is my Endurance!
I hold my Power ready still to show.”
And he curved his proud neck, shook his mane
like a banner, and galloped the grandest of all.
We came to a broad strip of sand, the dry bed
of a mountain-torrent. The trail followed up
this disappointing path. Heavy ploughing for
the tired horses! How would they bear the
rough work down the ravine yet to come?
Suddenly our leader pulled up and sprang
from the saddle.
“Look!” he cried, “how those fellows spent
their time, and saved ours. Thank Heaven for
this! We shall save her, surely, now.”
It was WATER! No need to go back to Pindar
to know that it was “the Best.”
They had dug a pit deep in the thirsty sand,
and found a lurking river buried there. Nature
never questioned what manner of men they were
that sought. Murderers flying from vengeance
and planning now another villain outrage, — still
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impartial Nature did not change her laws for
them. Sunshine, air, water, life, — these boons
of hers, — she gave them freely. That higher
boon of death, if they were to receive, it must
be from some other power, greater than the undiscriminating
force of Nature.
Good luck and good omen, this well of water
in the sand! It proved that our chase had
suffered as we, and had been delayed as we.
Before they had dared to pause and waste priceless
moments here, their horses must have been
drooping terribly. The pit was nearly five feet
deep. A good hour's work, and no less, had
dug it with such tools as they could bring.
I almost laughed to think of the two, slowly
bailing out the sliding sand with a tin plate,
perhaps, and a frying-pan, while a score of miles
away upon the desert we three were riding hard
upon their tracks to follow them the fleeter for
this refreshment they had left. “Sic vos non
vobis!” I was ready to say triumphantly; but
then I remembered the third figure in their
group, — a woman, like a Sibyl, growing calmer
as her peril grew, and succor seemed to withdraw.
And the pang of this picture crushed
back into my heart any thoughts but a mad
anxiety and a frenzy to be driving on.
We drank thankfully of this well by the wayside.
No gentle beauty hereabouts to enchant
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us to delay. No grand old tree, the shelter and
the landmark of the fountain, proclaiming an
oasis near. Nothing but bare, hot sand. But
the water was pure, cool, and bright. It had
come underground from the Sierra, and still remembered
its parent snows. We drank and
were grateful, almost to the point of pity. Had
we been but avengers, like Armstrong, my friend
and I could wellnigh have felt mercy here, and
turned back pardoning. But rescue was more
imperative than vengeance. Our business tortured
us, as with the fanged scourge of Tisiphone,
while we dallied. We grudged these
moments of refreshment. Before night fell down
the west, and night was soon to be climbing up
the east, we must overtake, — and then?
I wiped the dust and spume away from Fulano's
nostrils and breathed him a moment. Then
I let him drain deep, delicious draughts from the
stirrup-cup. He whinnied thanks and undying
fealty, — my noble comrade! He drank like a
reveller. When I mounted again, he gave a
jubilant curvet and bound. My weight was a
feather to him. All those leagues of our hard,
hot gallop were nothing.
The brown Sierra here was close at hand.
Its glittering, icy summits, above the dark and
sheeny walls, far above the black phalanxes of
clambering pines, stooped forward and hung over
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us as we rode. We were now at the foot of the
range, where it dipped suddenly down upon the
plain. The gap, our goal all day, opened before
us, grand and terrible. Some giant force had
clutched the mountains, and riven them narrowly
apart. The wild defile gaped, and then wound
away and closed, lost between its mighty walls,
a thousand feet high, and bearing two brother
pyramids of purple cliffs aloft far above the
snow line. A fearful portal into a scene of the
throes and agonies of earth! and my excited eyes
seemed to read, gilded over its entrance, in the
dead gold of that hazy October sunshine, words
from Dante's inscription, —
“Per me si va tra la perduta gente;
Lasciate ogni speranza voi, ch' entrate!”
“Here we are,” said Brent, speaking hardly
above his breath. “This is Luggernel Alley at
last, thank God! In an hour, if the horses hold
out, we shall be at the Springs; that is, if we can
go through this breakneck gorge at the same
pace. My horse began to flinch a little before
the water. Perhaps that will set him up. How
are yours?”
“Fulano asserts that he has not begun to show
himself yet. I may have to carry you en croupe,
before we are done.”
Armstrong said nothing, but pointed
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impatiently down the defile. The gaunt white horse
moved on quicker at this gesture. He seemed a
tireless machine, not flesh and blood, — a being
like his master, living and acting by the force
of a purpose alone.
Our chief led the way into the cañon.
-- -- p753-223
CHAPTER XX. A HORSE.
[figure description] Page 218.[end figure description]
Yes, John Brent, you were right when you
called Luggernel Alley a wonder of our continent.
I remember it now, — I only saw it then; — for
those strong scenes of nature assault the soul
whether it will or no, fight in against affirmative
or negative resistance, and bide their time to be
admitted as dominant over the imagination. It
seemed to me then that I was not noticing how
grand the precipices, how stupendous the cleavages,
how rich and gleaming the rock faces in
Luggernel Alley. My business was not to stare
about, but to look sharp and ride hard; and I
did it.
Yet now I can remember, distinct as if I beheld
it, every stride of that pass; and everywhere, as I
recall foot after foot of that fierce chasm, I see
three men with set faces, — one deathly pale and
wearing a bloody turban, — all galloping steadily
on, on an errand to save and to slay.
Terrible riding it was! A pavement of slippery,
-- 219 --
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sheeny rock; great beds of loose stones; barricades
of mighty boulders, where a cliff had fallen
an æon ago, before the days of the road-maker
race; crevices where an unwary foot might catch;
wide rifts where a shaky horse might fall, or a
timid horseman drag him down. Terrible riding!
A pass where a calm traveller would go
quietly picking his steps, thankful if each hour
counted him a safe mile.
Terrible riding! Madness to go as we went!
Horse and man, any moment either might shatter
every limb. But man and horse neither
can know what he can do, until he has dared and
done. On we went, with the old frenzy growing
tenser. Heart almost broken with eagerness.
No whipping or spurring. Our horses were
a part of ourselves. While we could go, they
would go. Since the water, they were full of
leap again. Down in the shady Alley, too, evening
had come before its time. Noon's packing
of hot air had been dislodged by a mountain
breeze drawing through. Horses and men were
braced and cheered to their work; and in such
riding as that, the man and the horse must think
together and move together, — eye and hand of
the rider must choose and command, as bravely
as the horse executes. The blue sky was overhead,
the red sun upon the castellated walls a
thousand feet above us, the purpling chasm
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[figure description] Page 220.[end figure description]
opened before. It was late, these were the last
moments. But we should save the lady yet.
“Yes,” our hearts shouted to us, “we shall
save her yet.”
An arroyo, the channel of a dry torrent, followed
the pass. It had made its way as water
does, not straightway, but by that potent feminine
method of passing under the frowning front of an
obstacle, and leaving the dull rock staring there,
while the wild creature it would have held is
gliding away down the valley. This zigzag channel
baffled us; we must leap it without check
wherever it crossed our path. Every second now
was worth a century. Here was the sign of
horses, passed but now. We could not choose
ground. We must take our leaps on that cruel
rock wherever they offered.
Poor Pumps!
He had carried his master so nobly! There
were so few miles to do! He had chased so
well; he merited to be in at the death.
Brent lifted him at a leap across the arroyo.
Poor Pumps!
His hind feet slipped on the time-smoothed
rock. He fell short. He plunged down a dozen
feet among the rough boulders of the torrentbed.
Brent was out of the saddle almost before
he struck, raising him.
No, he would never rise again. Both his fore
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[figure description] Page 221.[end figure description]
legs were broken at the knee. He rested there,
kneeling on the rocks where he fell.
Brent groaned. The horse screamed horribly,
horribly, — there is no more agonized sound, —
and the scream went echoing high up the cliffs
where the red sunlight rested.
It costs a loving master much to butcher his
brave and trusty horse, the half of his knightly
self; but it costs him more to hear him shriek
in such misery. Brent drew his pistol to put
poor Pumps out of pain.
Armstrong sprang down and caught his hand.
“Stop!” he said in his hoarse whisper.
He had hardly spoken, since we started. My
nerves were so strained, that this mere ghost of
a sound rang through me like a death yell, a
grisly cry of merciless and exultant vengeance.
I seemed to hear its echoes, rising up and swelling
in a flood of thick uproar, until they burst over
the summit of the pass and were wasted in the
crannies of the towering mountain-flanks above.
“Stop!” whispered Armstrong. “No shooting!
They 'll hear. The knife!”
He held out his knife to my friend.
Brent hesitated one heart-beat. Could he stain
his hand with his faithful servant's blood?
Pumps screamed again.
Armstrong snatched the knife and drew it
across the throat of the crippled horse.
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[figure description] Page 222.[end figure description]
Poor Pumps! He sank and died without a
moan. Noble martyr in the old, heroic cause!
I caught the knife from Armstrong. I cut the
thong of my girth. The heavy California saddle,
with its macheers and roll of blankets, fell
to the ground. I cut off my spurs. They had
never yet touched Fulano's flanks. He stood
beside me quiet, but trembling to be off.
“Now Brent! up behind me!” I whispered, —
for the awe of death was upon us.
I mounted. Brent sprang up behind. I ride
light for a tall man. Brent is the slightest body
of an athlete I ever saw.
Fulano stood steady till we were firm in our
seats.
Then he tore down the defile.
Here was that vast reserve of power; here the
tireless spirit; here the hoof striking true as a
thunderbolt, where the brave eye saw footing;
here that writhing agony of speed; here the
great promise fulfilled, the great heart thrilling
to mine, the grand body living to the beating
heart. Noble Fulano!
I rode with a snaffle. I left it hanging loose.
I did not check or guide him. He saw all. He
knew all. All was his doing.
We sat firm, clinging as we could, as we must.
Fulano dashed along the resounding pass.
Armstrong pressed after, — the gaunt white
-- 223 --
[figure description] Page 223.[end figure description]
horse struggled to emulate his leader. Presently
we lost them behind the curves of the Alley.
No other horse that ever lived could have held
with the black in that headlong gallop to save.
Over the slippery rocks, over the sheeny pavement,
plunging through the loose stones, staggering
over the barricades, leaping the arroyo, down,
up, on, always on, — on went the horse, we
clinging as we might.
It seemed one beat of time, it seemed an eternity,
when between the ring of the hoofs I heard
Brent whisper in my ear.
“We are there.”
The crags flung apart, right and left. I saw a
sylvan glade. I saw the gleam of gushing water.
Fulano dashed on, uncontrollable!
There they were, — the Murderers.
Arrived but one moment!
The lady still bound to that pack-mule branded
A. & A.
Murker just beginning to unsaddle.
Larrap not dismounted, in chase of the other
animals as they strayed to graze.
The men heard the tramp and saw us, as we
sprang into the glade.
Both my hands were at the bridle.
Brent, grasping my waist with one arm, was
awkward with his pistol.
Murker saw us first. He snatched his six-shooter
and fired.
-- 224 --
[figure description] Page 224.[end figure description]
Brent shook with a spasm. His pistol arm
dropped.
Before the murderer could cock again, Fulano
was upon him!
He was ridden down. He was beaten, trampled
down upon the grass, — crushed, abolished.
We disentangled ourselves from the mêlée.
Where was the other?
The coward, without firing a shot, was spurring
Armstrong's Flathead horse blindly up the
cañon, whence we had issued.
We turned to Murker.
Fulano was up again, and stood there shuddering.
But the man?
A hoof had battered in the top of his skull;
blood was gushing from his mouth; his ribs were
broken; all his body was a trodden, massacred
carcass.
He breathed once, as we lifted him.
Then a tranquil, childlike look stole over his
face, — that well-known look of the weary body,
thankful that the turbulent soul has gone. Murker
was dead.
Fulano, and not we, had been executioner.
His was the stain of blood.
-- -- p753-230
CHAPTER XXI. LUGGERNEL SPRINGS.
[figure description] Page 225.[end figure description]
“I am shot,” gasped Brent, and sank down
fainting.
Which first? the lady, or my friend, slain perhaps
for her sake?
“Her! see to her!” he moaned.
I unbound her from the saddle. I could not
utter a word for pity. She essayed to speak;
but her lips only moved. She could not change
her look. So many hours hardening herself to
repel, she could not soften yet, even to accept
my offices with a smile of gratitude. She was
cruelly cramped by her lashings to the rough
pack-saddle, rudely cushioned with blankets. But
the horror had not maddened her; the torture
had not broken her; the dread of worse had
not slain her. She was still unblenching and
indomitable. And still she seemed to rule her
fate with quiet, steady eyes, — gray eyes with
violet lights.
I carried her a few steps to the side of a
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[figure description] Page 226.[end figure description]
jubilant fountain lifting beneath a rock, and left her
there to Nature, kindliest leech.
Then I took a cup of that brilliant water to
my friend, my brother.
“I can die now,” he said feebly.
“There is no death in you. You have won
the right to live. Keep a brave heart. Drink!”
And in that exquisite spot, that fair glade of
the sparkling fountains, I gave the noble fellow
long draughts of sweet refreshment. The rescued
lady trailed herself across the grass and
knelt beside us. My horse, still heaving with
his honorable gallop, drooped his head over the
group. A picture to be remembered!
Who says that knighthood is no more? Who
says the days of chivalry are past? Who says
it, is a losel.
Brent was roughly, but not dangerously, shot
along the arm. The bullet had ploughed an ugly
path along the muscles of the fore-arm and upper-arm,
and was lodged in the shoulder. A bad
wound; but no bones broken. If he could but
have rest and peace and surgery! But if not,
after the fever of our day, after the wearing
anguish of our doubtful gallop; if not? —
Ellen Clitheroe revived in a moment, when
she saw another needed her care. Woman's
gentle duty of nurse found her ready for its
offices. My blundering good-will gave place
-- 227 --
[figure description] Page 227.[end figure description]
willingly to her fine-fingered skilfulness. She forgot
her own weariness, while she was magnetizing
away the pangs of the wounded man by her
delicate touch.
He looked at me, and smiled with total content.
“My father?” asked the lady, faintly, as if she
dreaded the answer.
“Safe!” said I. “Free from the Mormons.
He is waiting for you with a friend.”
Her tears began to flow. She was busy bandaging
the wound. All was silent about us, except
the pleasant gurgle of the fountains, when
we heard a shot up the defile.
The sharp sound of a pistol-shot came leaping
down the narrow chasm, flying before the pursuit
of its own thundering echoes. Those grand
old walls of the Alley, facing each other there
for the shade and sunshine of long, peaceful
æons, gilded by the glow of countless summers,
splashed with the gray of antique lichens on their
purple fronts, draped for unnumbered Octobers
with the scarlet wreaths of frost-ripened trailers, —
those solemn walls standing there in old
silence, unbroken save by the uproar of winter
floods, or by the humming flight of summer
winds, or the louder march of tempests crowding
on, — those silent walls, written close with the
record of God's handiwork in the long cycles of
creation, lifted up their indignant voices when
-- 228 --
[figure description] Page 228.[end figure description]
the shot within proclaimed to them the undying
warfare of man with man, and, roaring after,
they hurled that murderous noise forth from
their presence. The quick report sprang out
from the chasm into the quiet glade, where the
lady knelt, busy with offices of mercy, and there
it lost its vengeful tone, and was blended with
the rumble of the mingled rivulets of the springs.
The thundering echoes paused within, slowly
proclaiming quiet up from crag to crag, until
one after another they whispered themselves to
silence. No sound remained, save the rumble
of the stream, as it flowed away down the opening
valley into the haze, violet under gold, of
that warm October sunset.
I sprang up when I heard the shot, and stood
on the alert. There were two up the Alley;
which, after the shot, was living, and which
dead?
Not many moments had passed, when I heard
hoofs coming, and Armstrong rode into view.
The gaunt white horse galloped with the long,
careless fling I had noticed all day. He moved
machine-like, as if without choice or volition of
his own, a horse commissioned to carry a Fate.
Larrap's stolen horse trotted along by his old
master.
Armstrong glanced at Murker's body lying
there, a battered mass.
-- 229 --
[figure description] Page 229.[end figure description]
“Both!” he whispered. “The other was
sent right into my hands to be put to death.
I knew all the time it would be sent to me to
do killing. He was spurring up the Alley on
my own horse. He snapped at me. My pistol
did not know how to snap. See here!”
And he showed me, hanging from his saddlehorn,
that loathliest of all objects a man's eyes
ever lighted upon, a fresh scalp. It sickened
me.
“Shame!” said I. “Do you call yourself a
man, to bring such a thing into a lady's presence?”
“It was rather mean to take the fellow's
hair,” says Armstrong. “I don't believe brother
Bill would have did it. But I felt orful ugly,
when I saw that fat, low-lived devil, and thought
of my brother, a big, hul-hearted man as never
gave a bad word to nobody, and never held on
to a dollar or a slug when ayry man wanted it
more 'n him. Come, I 'll throw the nasty thing
away, if you say so.”
“Help me drag off this corpse, and we 'll bury
man and scalp together,” I said.
We buried him at the gate of the Alley, under
a great cairn of stones.
“God forgive them both,” said I, as I flung
the last stone, “that they were brutes, and not
men.”
-- 230 --
[figure description] Page 230.[end figure description]
“Brutes they was, stranger,” says Armstrong;
“but these things is ordered somehow. I allow
your pardener and you is glad to get that
gal out of a Mormon camp, ef it did cost him a
horse and both on you an all day's tremble.
Men don't ride so hard, and look so wolfish, as
you two men have did, onless their heart is into
it.”
“It is, indeed, strange,” said I, rather thinking
aloud than addressing my companion, “that
this brute force should have achieved for us by
outrage what love failed in. Fate seems to have
played Brute against Brute, that Love might
step between and claim the victory. The lady
is safe; but the lover may have won her life and
lost his own.”
“Look here, stranger,” says Armstrong, “part
of this is yourn,” pointing to the money-belt,
which, with the dead man's knife and pistol, he
had taken from the corpse. “Halves of this
and the other fellow's plunder belongs to your
party.”
I suppose I looked disgusted; yet I have seen
gentle ladies wearing boastfully brooches that
their favorite heroes had taken from Christian
men dead on the field at Inkermann, and shawls
of the loot of Delhi cover many shoulders that
would shudder over a dead worm.
“I 'm not squimmidge,” said Armstrong.
-- 231 --
[figure description] Page 231.[end figure description]
“It 's my own and my brother's money in them
belts. I 'll count that out, and then, ef you wont
take your part, I 'll pass it over to the gal's father.
I allowed from signs ther was, that that
thar boss Mormon had about tuk the old man's
pile. Most likely these shiners they won last
night is some of the very sufferins Sizzum got
from him. It 's right he should hev 'em back.”
I acknowledged the justice of this restitution.
“Now,” said Armstrong again, “you want
to stay by your friend and the gal, so I 'll take
one of the pack mules and fetch your two saddles
along before dark lights down. It was too
bad to lose that iron gray; but there 's more 'n
two horses into the hide of that black of yourn.
He was the best man of the lot for the goin', the
savin', and the killin'. Stranger, I 've ben byin'
and sellin' and breedin' kettrypids ever since
I was raised myself; but I allow I never seed
a HORSE till I seed him lunge off with you two
on his back.”
Armstrong rode up the Alley again. Another
man he was since his commission of vengeance
had been accomplished. In those lawless wilds,
vendetta takes the place of justice, becomes justice
indeed. Armstrong, now that his stern duty
was done, was again the kindly, simple fellow
nature made him, the type of a class between
pioneer and settler, and a strong, brave, effective
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class it is. It was the education, in youth, in
the sturdy habits of this class, that made our
Washington the manly chief he was.
I returned to my friends by the Springs.
Emerging from the austere grandeur of the
Alley, dim with the shadows of twilight, the
scene without was doubly sweet and almost domestic.
The springs, four or five in number,
and one carrying with it a thread of hot steam,
sprang vigorously out along the bold edges of the
cliffs. All the ground was verdure, — green, tender,
and brilliant, a feast to the eyes after long
staring over sere deserts. The wild creatures that
came there every day for refreshment, and perhaps
for intoxication in the aerated tipple of the
Champagne Spring, kept the grass grazed short
as the turf of a park. Two great spruce-trees,
each with one foot under the rocks, and one
edging fountainward, stood, pillar under pyramid.
Some wreaths of drooping creepers, floating
from the crags, had caught and clung, and
so gone winding among the dark foliage of the
twin trees; and now their leaves, ripened by
autumn, shook amid the dusky green like an
alighting of orioles. Except for the spruces
posted against the cliffs, the grassy area of an
acre about the springs was clear of other growth
than grass. Below, the rivulet disappeared in
a green thicket, and farther down were large
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cottonwoods, and one tall stranger tree, the feminine
presence of a drooping elm, as much unlooked
for here as the sweet, delicate woman
whom strange chances had brought to dignify
and grace the spot. This stranger elm filled my
heart with infinite tender memories of home, and
of those early boyish days when Brent and I
lay under the Berkeley College elms, or strayed
beneath the elm-built arches up and down the
avenues of that fair city clustered round the
College. In those bright days, before sorrow
came to him, or to me my harsh necessity, we
two in brotherhood had trained each other to
high thoughts of courtesy and love, — a dreamed-of
love for large heroic souls of women, when
our time of full-completed worthiness should
come. And his time had come. And yet it
might be that the wounded knight would never
know his lady, as much loving as beloved; it
might be that he would never find a sweeter
soothing in her touch, than the mere touch of
gratitude and common charity; it might be that
he would fever away his beautiful life with the
fever of his wound, and never feel the holy
quiet of a lover's joy when the full bliss of love
returned is his.
I gave a few moments to the horses and mules.
They were still to be unsaddled. Healthy Fulano
had found his own way to water, and now
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was feasting on the crisp, short grass along the
outlet of the Champagne Spring, tickling his nose
with the bubbles of gas as they sped by. Sup,
Fulano! This spot was worth the gallop to see.
Sup, Fulano, the brave, and may no stain of this
day's righteous death-doing rest upon your guiltless
life!
Brent was lying under the spruces, drowsing
with fatigue, reaction, and loss of blood. Miss
Clitheroe sat by watching him. These fine beings
have an exquisitely tenacious vitality. The
happiness of release had suddenly kindled all
her life again. As she rose to meet me, there
was light in her eyes and color in her cheeks.
Her whole soul leaped up and spoke its large
gratitude in a smile.
“My dear friend,” she said; and then, with
sudden tearfulness, “God be thanked for your
heroism!”
“God be thanked!” I repeated. “We have
been strangely selected and sent, — you from
England, my friend and I, and my horse, the
hero of the day, from the Pacific, — to interfere
here in each other's lives.”
“It would seem romance, but for the sharp
terror of this day, coming after the long agony
of my journey with my poor, errant father.”
“A sharp terror, indeed!”
“But only terror!” and a glow of maidenly
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thankfulness passed over her face. “Except one
moment of rough usage, when I slipped away
my gag and screamed as they carried me off,
those men were considerate to me. They never
halted except to dig a well in the sand of a river-bed.
I learned from their talk that they had
made an attempt to steal your horses in the
night, and, failing, dreaded lest you, and especially
Mr. Brent, would follow them close. So
they rode hard. They supposed that, when I was
found missing, whoever went in pursuit, and you
they always feared, would lose time along the
emigrant road, searching eastward.”
“We might have done so; but we had ourselves
ridden off that way in despair of aiding
you,” — and I gave her a sketch of the events
of the morning.
“It was the hope of succor from you that sustained
me. After what your friend said to me
last evening, I knew he could not abandon me,
if he had power to act.” And she looked very
tenderly at the sleeper, — a look to repay him
for a thousand wounds.
“Did you find my glove?” she asked.
“He has it. That token assured us. Ah!
you should have seen that dear wounded boy,
our leader, when he knew we were not astray.”
I continued my story of our pursuit, — the
lulling beat of the stream undertoning my words
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in the still twilight. When I came to that last
wild burst of Fulano, and told how his heroic
charge had fulfilled his faithful ardor of the day,
she sprang up, thrilled out of all weariness, and
ran to the noble fellow, where he was taking his
dainty banquet by the brookside.
She flung her arms around his neck and rested
her head upon his shoulder. Locks of her black
hair, escaping into curls, mingled with his mane.
Presently Miss Clitheroe seemed to feel a
maidenly consciousness that her caresses of the
horse might remind the horse's master that he
was not unworthy of a like reward. She returned
to my friend. He was stirring a little in
pain. She busied herself about him tenderly,
and yet with a certain distance of manner, building
a wall of delicate decorum between him and
herself. Indeed, from the beginning of our acquaintance
yesterday, and now in this meeting
of to-day, she had drawn apart from Brent, and
frankly approached me. Her fine instinct knew
the brother from the lover.
Armstrong presently rode out again.
When he saw his brother's sorrel horse feeding
with the others, he wept like a child.
We two, the lady and I, were greatly touched.
“I 've got a daughter myself, to home to the
Umpqua,” said Armstrong, turning to Miss Clitheroe;
“jest about your settin' up, and jest
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about as many corn shuckins old. Ellen is
her name.”
“Ellen is my name.”
“That 's pretty” (pooty he pronounced it).
“Well, I 'll stand father to you, just as ef you
was my own gal. I know what a gal in trouble
wants more 'n young fellows can.”
Ellen Clitheroe gave her hand to Armstrong
in frank acceptance of his offer. He became the
paternal element in our party, — he protecting
her and she humanizing him.
We lighted our camp-fire and supped heartily.
Except for Brent's uneasy stir and unwilling
moans, we might have forgotten the deadly business
of that day.
We made the wounded man comfortable as
might be with blankets, under the sheltering
spruces. After all, if he must be hurt, he could
not have fallen upon a better hospital than the
pure open air of this beautiful shelter; and surely
nowhere was a gentler nurse than his.
Armstrong and I built the lady a bower, a little
lodge of bushes from the thicket.
Then he and I kept watch and watch beneath
the starlight.
Sleeping or waking, our souls and our bodies
thanked God for this peace of a peaceful night,
after the terror and tramp and battle of that
trembling day.
-- -- p753-243
CHAPTER XXII. CHAMPAGNE.
[figure description] Page 238.[end figure description]
How soundly I slept, in my sleeping hours,
after our great victory, — Courage over Space,
Hope over Time, Love over Brutality, the Heavenly
Powers over the Demon Forces!
I sprang up, after my last morning slumber,
with vitality enough for my wounded friend and
myself. I felt that I could carry double responsibility,
as Fulano had carried double weight. God
has given me the blessing of a great, vigorous
life. My body has always been a perfect machine
for my mind's work, such as that may be; and
never a better machine, with every valve, crank,
joint, and journal in good order, than on that
dawn at Luggernel Springs.
If I had not awaked alive from top to toe, from
tip to tip, from end to end, alive in muscle,
nerve, and brain, the Luggernel Champagne
Spring would have put life into me.
Champagne of Rheims and Epernay! Bah!
Avaunt, Veuve Clicquot, thou elderly Hebe!
Avaunt, with thy besugared, begassed, bedevilled,
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becorked, bewired, poptious manufacture! Some
day, at a dull dinner-party, I will think of thee
and poison myself with thy poison, that I may become
deaf to the voice of the vulgar woman to
whom some fatal hostess may consign me. But
now let no thought of Champagne, even of that
which the Veuve may keep for her moment most
lacrymose of “veuvage,” interfere with my remembrance
of the Luggernel Spring.
Champagne to that! More justly a Satyr to
Hyperion; a stage-moon to Luna herself; an Old-World
peach to a peach of New Jersey; a Democratic
Platform to the Declaration of Independence;
a pinching, varnished boot to a winged
sandal of Mercury; Faustina to Charlotte Corday;
a senatorial speech to a speech of Wendell Phillips;
anything crude, base, and sham to anything
fine, fresh, and true.
Ah, poor Kissingen! Alas, unfragrant Sharon!
Alack, stale Saratoga! Ichabod! Adieu
to you all when the world knows the virtues of
Luggernel!
But never when the O-fortunatus-nimium world
has come into this new portion of its heritage, —
never when Luggernel is renowned and fashion
blooms about its brim, — never when gentlemen
of the creamiest cream in the next half-century
offer to ladies as creamy beakers bubbling full
of that hypernectareous tipple, — never will any
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finer body or fairer soul of a woman be seen thereabout
than her whom I served that morning.
And, indeed, among the heroic gentlemen of the
riper time to come, I cannot dream that any will
surpass in all the virtues and courtesies of the
cavalier my friend John Brent, now dismounted
and lying there wounded and patient.
Oranges before breakfast are good. There be
who on awakening gasp for the cocktail. And
others, who, fuddled last night, are limp in their
lazy beds, till soda-water lends them its fizzle.
Eye-openers these of moderate calibre. But, with
all the vigorous vitality I have claimed, perhaps
I might still have remembered yesterday with
its Gallop of Three, its suspense, its eager dash
and its certainty, and remembered them with
new anxieties for to-day, except for my morning
draught of exhilaration from the unbottled, unmixed
sources of Luggernel. Thanks La Grenouille,
rover of the wilderness, for thy froggish
instinct and this blissful discovery!
I stooped and lapped. Long ago Gideon Barakson
recognized the thorough-going braves because
they took their water by the throatful, not
by the palmful. And when I had lapped enough,
and let the great bubbles of laughing gas burst
in my face, I took a beaker, — to be sure it was
battered tin, and had hung at the belt of a dastard, —
a beaker of that “cordial julep” to my
-- 241 --
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friend. He was awake and looking about him,
seeking for some one.
“Come to your gruel, old fellow!” said I.
He drank the airy water and sat up revived.
“It is like swallowing the first sunbeam on the
crown of a snow-peak,” he said.
Miss Clitheroe dawned upon us with this. She
came forth from her lodge, fresh and full of
cheer.
Brent stopped looking about for some one.
The One had entered upon the scene.
I dipped for her also that poetry in a tin pot.
“This,” said she, “is finer balm than the
enchanted cup of Comus; never did lips touch a
draught
`To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst.'
To-day my life is worthy of this nepenthe. My
dear friend, this is the first night of peaceful,
hopeful rest I have had, since my poor father was
betrayed into his delusion. Thank you and God
for it!”
And again her eyes filled with happy tears,
and she knelt by her patient. While she was
tenderly and deftly renewing the bandages, Armstrong
stood by, and inspected the wound in
silence. Presently he walked off and called me
to help him with our camp-fire.
“Pretty well ploughed up, that arm of his'n,”
said he.
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“I have seen amputation performed for less.”
“Then I 'm dum glad there 's no sawbones
about. I don't believe Nater means a man's
leg or arm to go, until she breaks the solid
bone, so that it ain't to be sot nohow. But
what do you allow to do? Lamm ahead or
squat here?”
“You are the oldest; you have most experience;
I will take your advice.”
“October is sweet as the smile of a gal when
she hears that her man has made fifteen hundred
dollars off the purceeds of a half-acre of onions,
to the mines; but these yer fall storms is reg'lar
Injuns; they light down 'thout sendin' on handbills.
We ought to be p'intin' for home if we
can.”
“But Brent's wound! Can he travel?”
“Now, about that wound, there 's two ways of
lookin' at it. We ken stop here, or we ken poot
for Laramie. I allow that it oughter take that
arm of his'n a month to make itself right. Now
in a month ther 'll be p'r'aps three feet of snow
whar we stand.”
“We must go on.”
“Besides, lookerhere! Accordin' to me the
feelin's mean suthin', when a man's got any.
He 'll be all the time worryin' about the gal till
he gets her to her father. It 's my judgment
she'd better never see the old man agin; but I
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[figure description] Page 243.[end figure description]
would n't want my Ellen to quit me, ef I was an
unhealthy gonoph like him. Daughters ought to
stick closer 'n twitch-grass to their fathers, and
sons to their mothers, and she ain't one to knock
off lovin' anybody she 's guv herself to love.
No, she 's one of the stiddy kind, — stiddy as the
stars. He knows that, that there pardener of
yourn knows it, and his feelin's won't give his
arm no rest until she 's got the old man to take
care of and follow off on his next streak. So
we must poot for Laramie, live or die. Thar 'll
be a doctor there. Ef we ken find the way, it
should n't take us more 'n ten days. I 'll poot
him on Bill's sorrel, jest as gentle a horse as Bill
was that rode him, and we 'll see ef we hain't
worked out the bad luck out of all of us, for one
while.”
Armstrong's opinion was only my own, expressed
Oregonly. We went on preparing breakfast.
“That there A. & A. mule,” says Armstrong,
“was Bill's and mine, and this stuff in the packs
was ours. I don't know what the fellers did
with the two mean mustangs they was ridin'
when they found us fust on Bear River, — used
'em up, I reckon.”
Here Brent hailed us cheerily.
“Look alive there, you two cooks! We idlers
here want to be travelling.”
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“I told you so,” said Armstrong. “He understands
this business jest as well as we do.
He 'll go till he draps. Thar 's grit into him, ef
I know grit.”
Yes; but when I saw him sit still with his
back against the spruce-tree, and remembered his
exuberant life of other days, I desponded. He
soon took occasion to speak to me apart.
“Dick,” said he, “you see how it is. I am
not good for much. If we were alone, you and
I might settle here for a month or so, and write
`Bubbles from the Brünnen.' But there is a lady
in the case. It is plain where she belongs. I
know every inch of the way to Laramie. I can
take you through in a week” — he paused and
quavered a little, as he continued — “if I live.
But don't look so anxious. I shall.”
“It would be stupid for you to die now, John
Brent the Lover, with the obstacles cut away and
an heroic basis of operations.”
“A wounded man, perhaps a dying man, has
no business with love. I will never present her
my services and ask pay. But, Dick, if I should
wear out, you will know what to say to her for
me.”
At this she joined us, her face so illumined
with resolution and hope that we both kindled.
All doubt skulked away from her presence.
Brent was nerved to rise and walk a few steps
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to the camp-fire, supported by her arm and
mine.
Armstrong had breakfast ready, such as it was.
And really, the brace of wood grouse he had
shot that morning, not a hundred yards from
camp, were not unworthy of a lady's table,
though they had never made journey in a
crowded box, over a slow railroad, from Chicago
to New York, in a January thaw, and then been
bought at half price of a street pedler, a few
hours before they dropped to pieces.
We grouped to depart.
“I shall remember all this for scores of
sketches,” said Miss Clitheroe.
And indeed there was material. The rocks
behind threading away and narrowing into the
dim gorge of the Alley; the rushing fountains,
one with its cloud of steam; the two great
spruces; the greensward; the thickets; and
above them a far-away glimpse of a world, all
run to top and flinging itself up into heaven, a
tumult of crag and pinnacle. So much for the
scenery. And for personages, there was Armstrong,
with his head turbaned, saddling the
white machine; the two mules, packed and taking
their last nibbles of verdure; Miss Clitheroe, in
her round hat and with a green blanket rigged
as riding-skirt, mounted upon the sturdy roan;
Brent resting on my shoulder, and stepping on
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my knee, as he climbed painfully to his seat on
the tall sorrel; Don Fulano waiting, proud and
eager. And just as we were starting, a stone fell
from overhead into the water; and looking up,
we saw a bighorn studying us from the crags,
wishing, no doubt, that his monster horns were
ears to comprehend our dialect.
I gave the party their stirrup-cup from the
Champagne Spring. The waters gurgled adieu.
Rich sunrise was upon the purple gates of the
pass. We struck a trail through the thicket.
Good bye to the Luggernel Springs and Luggernel
Alley! to that scene of tragedy and tragedy
escaped!
-- -- p753-252
CHAPTER XXIII. AN IDYL OF THE ROCKYS.
[figure description] Page 247.[end figure description]
I shall make short work of our journey to
Laramie.
We bent northeastwardly by ways known to
our leader, — alas! leader no more. He could
guide, but no more gallop in front and beckon
on the cavalcade.
It was a grand journey. A wild one, and
rough for a lady. But this lady was made of
other stuff than the mistresses of lapdogs.
We crossed the backbone of the continent,
climbing up the clefts between the ragged vertebr
æ, and over the top of that meandering spine,
fleshed with great grassy mounds; then plunging
down again among the rifts and glens.
A brilliant quartette ours would have been,
but for my friend's wound. Four people, all
with fresh souls and large and peculiar experience.
Except for my friend's wound!
My friend, closer than a brother, how I felt for
him every mile of that stern journey! He never
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complained. Only once he said to me, “Bodily
agony has something to teach, I find, as well as
mental.”
Never one word of his suffering, except that.
He wore slowly away. Every day he grew a
little weaker in body; but every day the strong
spirit lifted the body to its work. He must live
to be our guide, that he felt. He must be cheerful,
gay even, lest the lady he had saved should
too bitterly feel that her safety was daily paid
for by his increasing agony. Every day that
ichor of love baptized him with new life. He
breathed love and was strong. But it was love
confined to his own consciousness. Wounded,
and dying perhaps, unless his life could beat
time by a day or an hour, he would not throw
any share of his suffering on another, on her,
by calling for the sympathy which a woman
gives to her lover.
Did she love him? Ah! that is the ancient
riddle. Only the Sphinx herself can answer.
Those fair faces of women, with their tender
smiles, their quick blushes, their starting tears,
still wear a mask until the moment comes for
unmasking. If she did not love him, — this
man of all men most lovable, this feminine soul
in the body of a hero, this man who had spilled
his blood for her, whose whole history had
trained him for those crowning hours of a
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chivalric life when the lover led our Gallop of Three;
if she did not love him, she must be, I thought,
some bloodless creature of a type other than
human, an angel and no woman, a creature
not yet truly embodied into the body of love
we seemed to behold.
She was sweetly tender to him; but that the
wound, received for her sake, merited; that was
hardly more than the gracious thankfulness she
lavished upon us all. What an exquisite woman!
How calmly she took her place, lofty and
serene, above all the cloudy atmosphere of such
a bewildering life as hers had been! How large
and deep and mature the charity she had drawn,
even so young, from the strange contrasts of her
history! How her keen observation of a woman
of genius had grasped and stored away the diamond,
or the dust of diamond, in every drift
across her life!
She grew more beautiful daily. Those weary
days when, mile after dreary mile, the listless
march of the Mormon caravan bore her farther
and farther away into hopeless exile, were gone
forever. She breathed ruddy hope now. Before,
she had filtered hope from every breath and only
taken the thin diet of pale endurance. All future
possibility of trial, after her great escape,
seemed nothing. She was confident of Brent's
instant recovery, with repose, and a surgeon
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more skilful than she, at Fort Laramie. She
was sure that now her father's wandering life
was over, and that he would let her find him a
home and win him a living in some quiet region
of America, where all his sickly fancies would
pass away, and his old age would glide serenely.
It would be long, too long, for the movement
of this history, should I attempt to detail the
talks and minor adventures of that trip by which
the character of all my companions became better
known to me.
For the wounded man's sake we made lengthened
rests at noonday, and camped with the earliest
coming of twilight. Those were the moonlight
nights of brilliant October. How strange
and solemn and shadowy the mountains rose
about our bivouacs! It was the poetry of camplife,
and to every scene by a fountain, by a torrent,
in a wild dell, on a mountain meadow with
a vision of a snow-peak watching us all the starry
night and passing through rosiness into splendor
at sunrise, — to every scene, stern or fair, our
comrade gave the poetry of a woman's presence
and a woman's fine perception of the minuter
charm of nature.
And then — think of it! — she had a genius
for cookery. I have known this same power in
other fine poetic and artistic beings. She had a
genius for imaginative cookery, — a rich
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inheritance from her father's days of poverty and
coal-mining. She insisted upon her share of
camp-duty; and her great gray eyes were often
to be seen gravely fixed upon a frying-pan, or
watching a roasting bird, as it twirled slowly
before the fire, with a strip of pork featly disposed
overhead to baste that succulent revolver;
while Brent, poor fellow, lay upon the grass,
wrapped in blankets, slowly accumulating force
for the next day's journey, and watched her with
wonderment and delight that she could condescend
to be a household goddess.
“Ther ain't her ikwill to be scared up,” would
Armstrong say on these occasions. “I 'm gittin'
idees to make my Ellen the head woman on
all the Umpqua. I wish I had her along; for
she 's a doughcyle gal, and takes nat'ral to pooty
notions in thinkin' and behavior and fixin' up
things ginerally.”
Armstrong became more and more the paternal
element in our party. Memory of the Ellen
on the Umpqua made him fatherly thoughtful for
the Ellen here, a wanderer across the Rocky
Mountains. And she returned more than he
gave, in the sweet civilizing despotism of a lady.
That grizzly turban presently disappeared from
his head. Decorous bandages replaced it. With
that token went from him the sternness. He
was a frank, honest, kindly fellow, shrewd and
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[figure description] Page 252.[end figure description]
unflinching, but one who would never have lifted
his hand against a human being except for that
great, solemn duty of an exterminating vengeance.
That done, he was his genial self again.
We never tired of his tales of plains and Oregon
life, told in his own vivid dialect. He was the
patriarchal pioneer, a man with the personal
freedom of a nomad, and the unschooled wisdom
of a founder of states in the wilderness. A
mighty hunter, too, was Armstrong. No day
passed that we did not bag an antelope, a deer,
or a big-horn. It was the very land of Cocaigne
for game. The creatures were so hospitable that
it hardly seemed proper gratitude to kill them;
even that great brown she-bear, who one night
“popped her head into the shop,” and, muttering
something which in the Bruin lingo may have
been, “What! no soap!” smote Armstrong with
a paw which years of sucking had not made
tender.
Except for Brent's wound, we four might
have had a joyous journey, full of the true savor
of brave travel. But that ghastly, murderous
hurt of his needed most skilful surgery, and
needed most of all repose with a mind at peace.
He did not mend; but all the while
“The breath
Of her sweet tendance hovering over him
Filled all the genial courses of his blood
With deeper and with ever deeper love.”
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But he did not mend. He wasted daily. His
sleeps became deathly trances. We could not
wear him out with haste. Brave heart! he bore
up like a brave.
And at last one noon we drew out of the
Black Hills, and saw before us, across the spurs
of Laramie Peak, the broad plain of Fort
Laramie.
Brent revived. We rode steadily. Just before
sunset, we pulled up at our goal.
-- -- p753-259
CHAPTER XXIV. DRAPETOMANIA.
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For the last hour I had ridden close to Brent.
I saw that it was almost up with him. He
swayed in his saddle. His eye was glazed and
dull. But he kept his look fixed on the little
group of Laramie Barracks, and let his horse
carry him.
I lifted up my heart in prayer that this noble
life might not be quenched. He must not die
now that he was enlarged and sanctified by truest
love.
At last we struck open country. Bill Armstrong's
sorrel took a cradling lope; we rode
through a camp of Sioux “tepees,” like so many
great white foolscaps; we turned the angle of a
great white wooden building, and halted. I
sprang from Fulano, Brent quietly drooped down
into my arms.
“Just in time,” said a cheerful, manly voice at
my ear.
“I hope so,” said I. “Is it Captain Ruby?”
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“Yes. We 'll take him into my bed. Dr.
Pathie, here 's a patient for you.”
We carried Brent in. As we crossed the veranda,
I saw Miss Clitheroe's meeting with her
father. He received her almost peevishly.
We laid the wounded man in Ruby's hospital
bed. Evidently a fine fellow, Ruby; and, what
was to the point, fond of John Brent.
Dr. Pathie shook his head.
So surgeons are wont to do when they study
sick men. It is a tacit recognition of the dark
negative upon which they are to turn the glimmer
of their positive, — a recognition of the mystery
of being. They are to experiment upon life,
and their chief facts are certain vaguish theories
why some men die.
The surgeon shook his head. It was a movement
of sympathy for the man, as a man. Then
he proceeded to consider him as a machine,
which it was a surgeon's business to repair.
Ruby and I stood by anxiously, while the skilled
craftsman inspected. Was this insensible, but
still breathing creature, only panting away the
last puffs of his motive power? or was it capable
mechanism still?
“Critical case,” said Dr. Pathie, at last. He
had great, umbrageous eyebrows, and a gentle,
peremptory manner, as of one who had done
much merciful cruelty in his day. “Ugly wound.
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Never saw a worse furrow. Conical ball. He
must have been almost at the muzzle of the
pistol. He ought not to have stirred for a
month. How he has borne such a journey with
that arm, I cannot conceive. Strong character,
eh? Passionate young fellow? Life means
something to him. Well, Nature nominates such
men to get into scrapes for other people; she
gets them wounded, and drains them of their
blood. Lying on their backs is good for them,
and so is feeling weak. They take in more emotion
than they can assimilate while they are wide
awake. They would go frenzied with overcrowded
brain, if they were not shut up into
themselves sometimes, by sickness or sorrow.
There 's not much to do for him. A very neat
hand has been at his bandages. Now, if he is a
man with a distinct and controlling purpose in
his life, — if he has words to say, or deeds, or
duties to do, and knows it, — he will hold by his
life; if not, not. Keep him quiet. And do not
let him see, or hear, or feel the presence of that
beautiful young woman. She is not his sister,
and she will have too much trouble herself to be
a tranquil nurse for him here.”
I left him with his patient, and went out to
care for our horses. Ruby, model host, had
saved me all trouble.
“I have given Miss Clitheroe my sole
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guestchamber,” he said. “She has a lady's-maid in
the brawny person of an Irish corporaless. What
a transcendent being she is! I don't wonder
Brent loves her, as I divined he did from what
Jake Shamberlain — shrewd fellow Jake — said
when he consigned the father to me.”
“I must have a talk with the old gentleman.
O, there he is with Armstrong.”
Armstrong was handing him the money-belt.
His eyes gleamed as he clutched it.
“Walk off with me a step,” said Ruby, “before
you speak to him.”
We strolled off through the Sioux encampment.
The warriors, tall fellows with lithe
forms, togaed in white blankets, were smoking
in a circle. Only the great chiefs were in toggery
of old uniforms, blossoming into brass buttons
wherever a button could bourgeon. And
only the great chiefs resembled frowzy scarecrows.
The women, melancholy, as the abused
women of barbarians always are, were slouching
about at slave work. All greeted Ruby as a
friend, with sonorous grunts.
Society, even of Sioux, dwelling under buffalohide
foolscaps, was humane after our journey.
The barracks of Laramie, lonely outpost on a
bleak plain, were fairly beautiful in their homelike
homeliness. Man without a roof is mere
chaos.
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“Trouble in store, I fear,” said Captain Ruby,
“for Mr. Clitheroe and all who care for him.”
“He ought to be at peace at last.”
“He is not. Dr. Pathie says he is a case of
Drapetomania.”
“I have heard that outlandish word used to
express the tendency — diseased of course — that
negroes have to run away from their masters.”
“Mr. Clitheroe is wild to get away from his
proper master, namely, himself.”
“A desperate malady! At his age almost
fatal.”
“So Pathie says. When a man of Mr. Clitheroe's
age is not at peace within, he goes into
war with his circumstances. He cannot conquer
them, so he runs away. He has always before
him a shadow of a dream of what he might have
been, and that ghost drives him and chases him,
until it wears him out.”
“Yes; but it is not only the forlorn and disappointed
that this pitiable disease attacks. Very
rich and prosperous suffer, become drapetomaniacs,
sell houses and build new, change neighborhoods,
travel furiously, never able to escape
from that inevitable companion of a reproaching
self.”
“Mr. Clitheroe is chafing to be gone. I start
a train for the States to-morrow, — the last chance
to travel with escort this season, — a small
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topographical party going back. He has been for the
last few days in a passion of impatience, almost
scolding me and your party, his daughter, and
circumstances, lest you should not arrive in time
for him to go.”
“To go where? What does he intend?”
“He is full of great schemes. I do not know,
of course, anything of him except what I have
picked up from his communicativeness; but you
would suppose him a duke from his talk. He
speaks of his old manor-house, — I should know
it by sight now, — and says he intends to repurchase
it and be a great man again. He is constantly
inviting me to share his new splendors.
Really, his pictures of life in England will quite
spoil me for another winter of cooling my heels
in this dismal place, with a scalp on my head
and a hundred Sioux looking at it hungrily.”
“He must be deranged by his troubles. I am
sure he has no basis for any hopes in England.
Sizzum stripped him. He has alienated his
friends at home. His daughter is his only friend
and guardian, except ourselves.”
“He sprang up when he saw you coming, and
was frantic with joy, — not for his daughter's
safety, but because he could start with the train
to-morrow. I suppose she is a tested traveller
by this time.”
“As thoroughly as any man on the plains.”
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“She can go very comfortably in the train.
Two or three soldiers' wives go. Females, I believe;
at least their toggery alleges the softer sex,
whatever their looks and voices do.”
“The chance is clearly not to be lost. I do
not like to part with my fascinating comrade. It
was poetry to camp with such a woman. Travel
will seem stale henceforth. I wish we could
keep her, for Brent's sake.”
“Poor fellow! Pathie looks very doubtful.
You must tell me your story more fully after
supper.”
I found Mr. Clitheroe in a panic to be moving.
He thanked me in a grand manner for our services.
But he seemed willing to avoid me. He
could not forget the pang of his disenchantment
from Mormonism. I belonged to the dramatis
personæ of a period he would willingly banish.
He regarded me with a suspicious look, as if he
feared again that my coming would break up
new illusions as baseless as the old. He was full
of large, vague plans. England now; he must
be back in England again. His daughter must
be reinstated in her place. He treated her coldly
enough; but still all his thought seemed to be
ambition for her. The money Armstrong had
given him, too, seemed to increase his confidence
in the future. That was wealth for the moment.
Other would come.
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Miss Clitheroe had yielded to fatigue. I did
not see her that night. In fact, after all the
wearing anxiety of our trip, I was glad to lie
down on a white buffalo-robe, with the Sybaritic
luxury of a pair of clean sheets, and show my
gratitude to Ruby by twelve hours' solid sleep.
A drum-beat awaked me next morning. It
was not reveille, it was not breakfast, it was not
guard mounting. I sprang up, and looked from
the window. How odd it seemed to peer from
a window, after the unwindowed wilderness!
The four white-hooded wagons of the little
homeward train were ready to start. The drum
was calling in the escort. The fifty soldiers of
Ruby's garrison were grouped about, lending a
hand to their luckier comrades, homeward bound.
Ruby was taking leave of his brother officers.
Armstrong stood a little apart with his horses.
A busy scene, and busier when some vixenish
pack-mule shook heels, and scattered the by-standers
into that figure known to packers as
the Blazing Star.
Aloof from the crowd, Mr. Clitheroe was striding
up and down beside the wagons, with the
eager, unobserving tramp of a man concerned
with nothing but a morbid purpose of his own.
He had bought of some discharged soldier a long
military surtout, blue-gray, with a cape. Wearing
this, he marched to and fro like a sentry.
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His thin, gray hair and long, bifid beard gave
him a ghastly look; and then he trod his beat as
if it were a doom, — as if he were a sentinel
over his own last evasive hope.
“Drapetomania!” I thought, “and a hopeless
case.”
A knock at my door, and the brawny corporaless
summoned me to Miss Clitheroe.
“We are going,” she said. “Take me to
him!”
Did she love him?
I braved Dr. Pathie's displeasure, and led her
to the bedside of the lover.
Brent was still in a stupor. We were alone.
She stood looking at him a moment. He was
breathing, but unconscious; dead to the outer
world and her presence. She stood looking at
him, and seeming with her large, solemn eyes to
review those scenes of terror and of relief since
she had known him. Tears gathered in the
brave, quiet eyes.
Suddenly she stooped and kissed his forehead.
Then she passionately kissed his lips. She grew
to him as if she would interfuse anew that ichor
of love into his being.
She turned to me, all crimsoned, but self-possessed.
“I meant you should see me prove my love,”
she said. “I am proud of myself for it, — proud
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of my heart that it can know and love this noblest
and tenderest nature. Tell him so. Tell
him it is not gratitude, but love. He will know
that I could not stay. My life belongs to my
father. Where he goes, I must go. What other
friend has he than me? I go with my father,
but here my heart remains. Tell him so. Please
let me write to you. You will not forget your
comrade. I owe more than life to you. Do let
me keep myself in your memory. I dread my
life before me. I will keep you informed of my
father's plans. And when this dearest one is
well again, if he remembers me, tell him I love
him, and that I parted from him — so.”
She bent again, and kissed him passionately, —
then departed, and her tears were on his cheek.
-- -- p753-269
CHAPTER XXV. NOBLESSE OBLIGÉ.
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Brent's stupor lasted many days. Life had
been strained to its utmost. Body, brain, heart,
all had had exhausting taxes to pay. The realm
must rest.
While his mind slept, Nature was gently renewing
him. Quiet is cure to an untainted life.
There was no old fever of discontent in his
brain. He had regrets, but no remorses. Others
had harmed him; his life had been a sad
one; he had never harmed himself. The thoughts
and images tangled in his brain, the “stuff that
dreams are made of,” were of happy omen. No
Stygian fancies made his trance unrest. Life did
not struggle for recovery that it might plunge
again into base or foul pursuits, or the scuffles
of selfishness. A man whose life is for others is
safe from selfish disappointment when he is commanded
to stand aside and be naught for a
time.
I knew the images that hovered about my
sleeping friend's mind, for I knew the thoughts
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that were the comrades of his waking life. His
memory was crowded full of sights and sounds
of beauty, and those thoughts that are the emanations
of fair visions and sweet tones, and dwell
unuttered poetry in the soul. I knew how, long
ago in childhood, he had made Nature friend,
and found his earliest comrades among flowers
and birds. I knew, for he had been my teacher,
how, when youth first looked widely forth for visions
of the Infinite, he had learned to comprehend,
day after day, night after night, the large
delight of heaven; whether the busy heaven,
when the golden sun makes our sky blue above
us, and reveals on earth the facts that we must
deal with and by which we must be taught our
laws, or the quiet heaven of night, with its
starry tokens of grander fruition, when we shall
live for grander days. Sky and clouds, sun and
stars, brooks and rivers, forests and hills, waves
and winds, — these had received him to their
sweet companionship, as his mind could gradually
grasp the larger conceptions of beauty.
And so, when his time came to perceive the
higher significance of Art, as man's rudimentary
efforts toward creations diviner and more orderly
than those of earth, he had gone to Art with the
unerring eye and interpreting love of a fresh
soul, schooled by Nature only, blind to Art's
baser fancies, and hospitable to its holier dreams.
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No ugly visions could visit the uncontrolled hours
of a brain so stored. His trance was peace.
More than peace; for as I watched his quiet
face, I knew that his spirit was conscious of a
spiritual presence, and Love was hovering over
him, a healing element.
At last he waked. He threw volition into the
scale of recovery. He was well in a trice.
Captain Ruby and Doctor Pathie were disposed
to growl at the rapidity of Brent's cure.
“I have half a mind to turn military despot,
and arrest you,” said Ruby. “A pair of muffs,
even, would be welcome in the winter at Laramie.
You have made a wretched bungle of it,
Pathie. Why did n't you mend your man deliberately,
a muscle a week, a nerve a month, and
so make it a six months' job?”
“He took the matter out of my hands, and
mended himself. There 's cool, patient, determined
vitality in him, enough to set up a legion,
or father a race. Which is it, Mr. Wade, words
to say or duties to do, that has made him condense
his being on recovery?”
“Both, I believe. He is mature now, and
wants, no doubt, to be at his business of saying
and doing.”
“And loving,” said Ruby.
“Ay,” said Pathie. “That has had more to
do with it. I hope he will overtake and win, for
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I love the boy. I keep my oldish heart pretty
well locked against strangers; but there is a
warm cell in it, and in that cell he has, sleeping
and waking, made himself a home.”
“Ah, Doctor,” said Ruby, “you and I, for
want of women to love, have to content ourselves
with poetic rovers like Brent. He and Biddulph
were balls, operas, champagne on tap, new novels,
flirtations, and cigars to me last winter.”
We were smoking our pipes on the veranda
one warm November day, when this conversation
happened.
I had not quite forgotten the Barrownight, as
Jake Shamberlain pronounced him, nor quite
forgotten, in grave cares, my fancy that his stay
in Utah was for Miss Clitheroe's sake.
I was hardly surprised when, that very evening,
a bronzed traveller, face many shades darker
than hair and beard, rode up to the post with a
Delaware Indian, and was hailed by Ruby as
Biddulph.
“We were talking of you not an hour ago,”
said Ruby, greeting him. “Wishing you would
come to make last winter's party complete.
Brent is here, wounded.”
“Has he a lady with him?” said the new-comer.
His voice and manner were manly and
frank, — a chivalrous fellow, one of us, one of
the comradry of knights errant.
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“Mr. Wade will give an account of her.”
“Come in to Brent,” said I, “and we will talk
matters over.”
Ruby, model host, cleared the way for a parley
whose interest he divined.
“I will see after your horses. Don't lose your
appetite for supper. We have potatoes!”
“Potatoes!!” cried Biddulph. “Not I!”
“Yes, and flapjacks and molasses, ready in
half an hour.”
“Flapjacks and molasses! Potatoes and flapjacks! —
Yes, and molasses!” Biddulph again
exclaimed. “Jewel of a Ruby! This is the
Ossa on Pelion of gourmandise. How under-done
and overdone all the banquets of civilization
seem! I charge thee, Ruby, when the potatoes
and the flapjacks and molasses are ready,
that thou peal a jubilee upon the bell. Now,
Mr. Wade, let me see this wounded friend, and
hear and tell.”
The two gentlemen met with cordiality.
Brent, I believe, had never identified Miss Clitheroe
with the lady Biddulph fled from, and
I had never mentioned my suspicions.
“Not one word, John!” said the Briton,
“until I know what you have done with Ellen
Clitheroe. Is she safe?”
Brent comprehended the Baronet's heart and
mind at the word. The other, I think, saw as
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plainly on Brent's face that he was a lover,
and perhaps the more fortunate one. These two
loyal men drew closer at this, as wholly loyal
souls will do, for all the pang of knowing that
one has loved and lost.
Brent told our story in brief.
“I divined that you were one of the pair who
had started on the rescue. I could not mistake
you, man and horse and dress, from the Mormon's
description.”
“You saw Sizzum, then?”
“I saw his dead body.”
“What? Dead!” A sense of relief, that the
world had one temper the less, passed through
our minds.
“Yes, shot dead, just where the Wasatch
Mountains open, and there is that wonderful
view of Salt Lake City. His Nemesis met him
there. I heard the shot fired, as I was riding
out to meet the train, and saw him fall!”
“Who shot him, of the many that had a
right?”
“As mild a mannered man as ever shuddered
at the crack of an egg-shell.”
“Vendetta for woman-stealing?”
“Wife-stealing. The man was a poor music-teacher,
with a pretty spouse in Quincy, Illinois.
He had told me his own story, without proclaiming
his purpose, though I conjectured it. The
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pretty spouse grew tired of poverty and five children.
She went off with Sizzum. The music-master
hired himself to a drover, named Armstrong,
and plodded out to Utah. When he got
there, he found Sizzum gone. He turned hunter.
I met him in the mountains, a crack shot.
He waited his time, ambushed the train, and shot
Sizzum dead, as he first caught sight of the
Valley.”
“A thought of poetry in his justice. What
then?”
“I could see him creeping away among the
rocks, while the Mormons were getting their
rifles. They opened fire, a hundred of them.
Ring, ping! the balls tapped all about him. He
was just clear, just springing over a little ridge
of shelter, when a shot struck him. He flung
out his arms in an attitude of imprecation, and
fell over the rocks. Dead, and doubly dead from
the fall.”
“Our two evil forces are erased from the
world, Wade,” said Brent.
“May it be good omen for coming difficulties!
But how did you learn of the events at Fort
Bridger?” I asked the Baronet.
“The Lancashire people in the train all took
an interest in the Clitheroes. They knew from
Sizzum what happened when he followed you,
and your purpose to give chase. I knew John
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Brent well enough to believe that he would
achieve the rescue. Happy fellow! I forgive
you, John; hard it is, but I forgive you for stepping
in before me. I was waiting there in Utah
to do what I could for my old love and my old
friend. I should like to have had a bullet in my
arm in the cause; but the result is good, whether
I gain or lose.”
“I never thought of you, Biron. In fact, from
the moment I saw her, I thought of no one
else.”
“Yes; that is her power. We were old neighbors
in Lancashire. My father bought the old
Hall after Mr. Clitheroe's disasters. The disappearance
and the mysterious reappearance of
the old gentleman and his beautiful daughter
were the romance of the region. No one knew
where they had been. My father was dead. My
mother tried to befriend them. But the old gentleman
was soured and disappointed. He could
not forgive us for inhabiting the old mansion of
his happier days. God knows how gladly I would
have reinstated him there. But she could not
love me; so I came away, and we looked up Luggernel
Springs and the Alley together, John, to
give you a chance to snatch my destiny away
from me.”
Brent, in his weakness, had no answer to
make, except to give his hand to this gentle rival.
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“How did you learn of their Mormon error?”
I asked.
“My mother wrote me. She loves Miss Clitheroe
like a daughter. She pities the father. His
wife was her friend. A genial, lovable man he
was, she says, until, after his losses, people whom
he had aided turned and accused him of recklessness
and dishonesty, — a charge as false and
cruel as could be made. My mother wrote, told
me of Sizzum's success in Clitheroe, and of our
friends' departure. She ordered me, on my
obedience, never to come back to England until
I could tell her that Ellen was safe out of Sizzum's
power. She had gone to hear him preach,
and abhorred him. I received her letter after we
had parted, John, and I camped with Jake Shamberlain,
waiting for the train. What I could
have done, I do not know; but my life was Miss
Clitheroe's.”
How easy his chivalry seemed to this noble
fellow! “Noblesse obligé”; but the obligation
was no burden.
“You are a stanch friend, Biron,” said Brent.
“She may need you yet.”
“Yes,” said he; “Christian England is a savage,
cruel as any of these brutes she has encountered
here, to a beautiful girl with a helpless,
crazy father. When can you travel, John?”
“Nearly a month I have been here fighting
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death and grasping at life. Give me two days
more to find a horse and ride about a little, and
we are off.”
“Armstrong, fine old fellow, left the sorrel for
you,” I said. “He is in racing trim now.”
“Capital!” said Brent. “One Armstrong is
a brave weight on the true side of the balance,
against an army of pioneers who have gone barbarous.”
“I have something to show you, John,” said
Biddulph. “See here. I bought this of a Mormon.
He had very likely stolen it from Mr.
Clitheroe's wagon. It was the only relic I could
get of them.”
The very drawing of Clitheroe Hall its former
owner had wished to show me at Fort Bridger.
An able sketch of a thoroughly English house.
If England were sunk in the sea, and its whole
history perished, English life, society, and manners
could be reconstructed from the inspection
of such a drawing, as a geologist recalls an æon
from a trilobite. I did not wonder that it had
been heart-breaking to quit the shelter of that
grand old roof. I fixed the picture in my mind.
The time came when that remembrance was
precious.
“Now, Biddulph!” called Ruby, “supper
waits. Potatoes! Flapjacks and molasses!”
“They shall be a part of me instantly.”
-- -- p753-279
CHAPTER XXVI. HAM.
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Two days Biddulph solaced himself on those
rare luxuries of Ruby's ménage; the third, we
started.
Ruby and the surgeon rode with us a score of
miles. It was hard to say good-bye. We were
grateful, and they were sorry.
“What can we do for you, Ruby?”
“Raze Laramie, abolish the plains, level the
Rockys, nullify the Sioux, and disband the
American army.”
“What can we do for you, Doctor?”
“Find me a wife, box her up so that no one
will stop her in transitu, mark Simeon Pathie,
M. D., U. S. A., and ship to Fort Vancouver,
Oregon, where I shall be stationed next summer.
Your English lady in half a day has spoiled my
philosophy of a life.”
“Good-bye and good luck!”
It was late travelling through that houseless
waste. Deep snow already blanched the Black
Hills, and Laramie Peak, their chief. Mr.
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[figure description] Page 275.[end figure description]
Bierstadt, in his fine picture in this year's Academy,
has shown them as they are in the mellow days
of summer. Now, cold and stern, they warned
us to hasten on.
We did hasten. We crowded through the buffalo;
we crossed and recrossed the Platte, already
curdling with winter; we dashed over the prairies
of Kansas, blackened by fire and whitened by
snow, but then unstained by any peaceful settler's
blood.
Jake Shamberlain, returning with his party,
met us on the way.
“I passed the train with the young woman
and her father,” said he. “We camped together
one night, and bein' as I was a friend of your 'n,
she give me a talk. Pooty tall talkin' 't wuz,
and I wuz teched in a new spot. I 've felt mean
as muck ever sence she opened to me on religion,
and when I git home I 'm goan to swing clear of
the Church, ef I ken cut clear, and emigrate to
Oregon. So, Barrownight, next time you come
out, you 'll find me on a claim there, out to the
Willamette or the Umpqua, just as much like
a gentleman's park in England as one grasshopper
is to another, only they hain't got no such
mountains to England as I 'll show you thar.”
“Well, Jake, we 'll try to pay you our respects.”
We hastened on. Why pause for our
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[figure description] Page 276.[end figure description]
adventures? They were but episodes along our new
gallop of three. This time it was not restless,
anxious gallop. We had no doubt but that in
good time we should overtake our friends, in
regions where men are not shot along the right
arm when they protect insulted dames.
Brent was himself again. We rode hard.
Biddulph was as fine a fellow as my grandmother
England has mothered. Find an Englishman
vital enough to be a Come-outer, and you have
found a man worthy to be the peer of an American
with Yankee education, Western scope, and
California irrepressibility.
Winter chased us close. Often we woke at
night, and found our bivouac sheeted with cold
snow, — a cool sheet, but luckily outside our
warm blankets. It was full December when the
plains left us, fell back, and beached us upon the
outer edge of civilization, at Independence, Missouri.
The muddy Missouri was running dregs.
Steamboats were tired of skipping from sand-bar
to sand-bar. Engineer had reported to Captain,
that “Kangaroo No. 5 would bust, if he did n't
stop trying to make her lift herself over the
damp country by her braces.” No more steamboating
on the yellow ditch until there was a
rise; until the Platte sent down sand three and
water one, or the Yellowstone mud three and
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water one, or the Missouri proper grit three and
water one. We must travel by land to St. Louis
and railroads.
We could go with our horses as fast as the
stage-coaches. So we sold our pack beasts, and
started to continue our gallop of three across
Missouri.
Half-way across, we stopped one evening at the
mean best tavern in a mean town, — a frowzy
county town, with a dusty public square, a boxy
church, and a spittley court-house.
Fit entertainment for beast the tavern offered.
We saw our horses stabled, and had our supper.
“Shall we go into the Spittoon?” said Biddulph.
“Certainly,” said Brent. “The bar-room — I
am sorry to hear you speak of it with foreign
prejudice — is an institution, and merits study.
Argee, upon the which the bar-room is based, is
also an institution.”
“Well, I came to study American institutions.
Let us go in and take a whiff of disgust.”
Fit entertainment for brute the bar-room offered.
In that club-room we found the brute
class drinking, swearing, spitting, squabbling
over the price of hemp and the price of “niggers,”
and talking what it called “politics.”
One tall, truculent Pike, the loudest of all that
blatant crew, seemed to Brent and myself an old
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acquaintance. We had seen him or his double
somewhere. But neither of us could fit him with
a pedestal in our long gallery of memory. Saints
one takes pains to remember, and their scenes;
but satyrs one endeavors to lose.
“Have you had enough of the Spittoon?” I
asked Biddulph. “Shall we go up? They 've
put us all three in the same room; but bivouacs
in the same big room — Out-Doors — are what
we are best used to.”
Two and a half beds, one broken-backed chair,
a wash-stand decked with an ancient fringed
towel and an abandoned tooth-brush, one torn
slipper, and a stove-pipe hole, furnished our
bedchamber.
We were about to cast lots for the half-bed, when
we heard two men enter the next room. The
partition was only paper pasted over lath, and
cut up as if a Border Ruffian member of Congress
had practised at it with a bowie-knife before a
street-fight. Every word of our neighbors came
to us. They were talking of a slave bargain. I
eliminate their oaths, though such filtration does
them injustice.
“Eight hundred dollars,” said the first speaker,
and his voice startled us as if a dead man we
knew had spoken. “Eight hundred, — that 's
the top of my pile fur that boy. Ef he warn't so
old and had n't one eye poked out, I agree he 'd
be wuth a heap more.”
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“Waal, a trade 's a trade. I 'll take yer
stump. Count out yer dimes, and I 'll fill out a
blank bill of sale. Murker, the boy 's yourn.”
“Murker!” — we both started at the name.
This was the satyr we had observed in the bar-room.
Had Fulano's victim crept from under
his cairn in Luggernel Alley, and chased us to
take flesh here and harm us again. Such a
superstitious thought crossed my mind.
The likeness — look, voice, and name — was
presently accounted for.
“You 're lookin' fur yer brother out from
Sacramenter, 'bout now, I reckon,” said the
trader.
“He wuz comin' cross lots with a man named
Larrap, a pardener of his'n. Like enough they 've
stayed over winter in Salt Lake. They oughter
rake down a most a mountainious pile thar.”
“Mormons is flush and sarcy with their dimes
sence the emigration. Now thar 's yer bill of
sale, all right.”
“And thar 's yer money, all right.”
“That are 's wut I call a screechin' good price
fur an old one-eyed nigger. Fourteen hundred
dollars, — an all-fired price.”
“Eight hundred, you mean.”
“No; fourteen. Yer see, you 're not up ter
taime on the nigger question. I know 'em like a
church-steeple. When I bought that are boy,
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now comin' three year, I seed he wuz a sprightly
nigger, one er yer ambitious sort, what would be
mighty apt to git fractious, an' be makin' tracks,
onless I got a holt on him. So sez I to him,
`Ham, you 're a sprightly nigger, one of the raal
ambitious sort, now aincher?' He allowed he
warnt nothin' else. `Waal,' sez I, `Ham, how 'd
you like to buy yerself, an' be a free nigger, an'
hev a house of yer own, an' a woman of yer own,
all jess like white folks?' `Lor,' sez he, `Massa,
I 'd like it a heap.' `Waal,' sez I, `you jess
scrabble round an' raise me seven hundred dollars,
an' I 'll sell you to yerself, an' cheap at that.'
So yer see he began to pay up, an' I got a holt
on him. He 's a handy nigger, an' a likely
nigger, an' a pop'lar nigger. He ken play on
ther fiddle like taime, — pooty nigh a minstril is
that are nigger. He ken cut hair an' fry a beefsteak
with ayry man. He ken drive team, an'
do a little j'iner work, an' shoe a mule when thar
ain't no reg'lar blacksmith round. He made
these yer boots, an' reg'lar stompers they is.
He 's one er them chirrupy, smilin' niggers,
with white teeth an' genteel manners, what critturs
an' foaks nat'rally takes to. Waal, he picked
up the bits and quarters right smart. He 's ben
at it, lammin' ahead raal ambitious, for 'bout
three year. Last Sunday, after church, he pinted
up the last ten of the six hundred. So I allowed
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't wuz come time to sell him. He wuz gettin'
his bead drawed, an' his idees sot on freedom
very onhealthy. I did n't like to disapp'int him
to ther last; so I allowed 't wuz jest as well to
let you hev him cheap to go down River. That 's
how to work them fractious runaway niggers.
That are 's my patent. You ken hev it for
nothin'. Haw! haw!”
“Haw, haw, haw! You are one er ther boys.
I 'm dum sorry that are trick can't be did twicet
on the same nigger. I reckon he knows too
much for that. Waal, s'pose we walk round to
the calaboose, 'fore we go to bed, an' see ef he 's
chained up all right.”
They went out.
Biddulph spoke first.
“Shame!”
“Yes,” said Brent; “do you wonder that we
have to run away to the Rockys and spend our
indignation on grizzlys?”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Try to abolish slavery in Ham's case. Come;
we 'll go buy him a file.”
“We seem to have business with the Murker
family,” said I.
“A hard lot they are. Representative brutes!”
“I am getting a knowledge of all classes on
your continent,” said Biddulph. “Some I like
better than others!”
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“Don't be too harsh on us malecontents for the
sin of slavery. It is an ancestral taint. We
shall burn it out before many decades.”
“You had better, or it will set your own
house on fire.”
It was late as we walked along the streets,
channels of fever and ague now frozen up for the
winter. We saw a light through a shop door,
and hammered stoutly for admission.
A clerk, long-haired and frowzy, opened ungraciously.
In the back shop were three others,
also long-haired and frowzy, dealing cards and
drinking a dark compost from tumblers.
“Port wine,” whispered Brent. “Fine Old
London Dock Port is the favorite beverage, when
the editor, the lawyer, the apothecary, and the
merchant meet to play euchre in Missouri.”
We bought our files from the surly clerk, and
made for the calaboose. It was a stout log structure,
with grated windows. At one of these, by
the low moonlight, we saw a negro. It was cold
and late. Nobody was near. We hailed the man.
“Ham.”
“That 's me, Massa.”
“You 're sold to Murker, to go south to-morrow
morning. If you want to get free, catch!”
Brent tossed him up the files.
“Catch again!” said Biddulph, and up went
a rattling purse, England's subsidy.
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Ham's white teeth and genteel manners appeared
at once. He grinned, and whispered
thanks.
“Is that all we can do?” asked the Baronet,
as we walked off.
“Yes,” said Brent, taking a nasal tone.
“Ham 's a pop'lar nigger, a handy nigger, one
er your raal ambitious sort. He ken cut hair,
fry a beefsteak, and play on the fiddle like a
minstril. He ken shoe a mule, drive a team, do
a little j'iner work, and make stompers. Yes,
Biddulph, trust him to gnaw himself free with
that Connecticut rat-tail.”
“Ham against Japhet; I hope he 'll win.”
“Now,” said Brent, “that we 've put in action
Christ's Golden Rule, Jefferson's Declaration of
Independence, and All-the-wisdom's Preamble to
the Constitution, we can sleep the sleep of well-doers,
if we have two man-stealers — and one
the brother of a murderer — only papered off
from us.”
-- -- p753-289
CHAPTER XXVII. FULANO'S BLOOD-STAIN.
[figure description] Page 284.[end figure description]
“What a horse beyond all horses yours is!”
said Biddulph to me next morning, as we rode
along cheerily through the fresh, frosty air of
December. “I think, when your continent gets
to its finality in horse-flesh, you will beat our
island.”
“Think what training such a trip is! This
comrade of mine has come two thousand miles
with me, — big thought, eh! — and he freshens
up with the ozone of this morning, as if he had
been in the stable a week, champing asphodel.”
Fulano felt my commendation. He became
electrified. He stirred under me. I gave him
rein. He shook himself out, and began to recite
his accomplishments.
Whatever gait he had in his legs together, or
portion of a leap in either pair of them; whatever
gesticulations he considered graceful, with
toes in the air before, or heels in the air behind;
whatever serpentine writhe or sinewy bend of
the body, whatever curve of the proud neck,
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[figure description] Page 285.[end figure description]
fling of the head, signal of the ear, toss of the
mane, whisk of the tail, he knew, — all these he
repeated, to remind me what a horse he was, and
justify my praise.
What a HORSE, indeed!
How far away from him every lubberly roadster,
every hack that endures the holidays of a
tailor, every grandpapa's cob, every sloucher in a
sulky! Of other race and other heart was this
steed, both gentle and proud. He was still able
to be the better half of a knight-errant when a
charger worth a kingdom must be had, — when
Love needed his mighty alliance in the battle
with Brutality. He was willing now, in piping
times of peace, to dance along his way, a gay
comrade to the same knight-errant, riding homeward
a quiet gentleman, with armor doffed and
unsuspecting further war.
What sport we had together that morning!
We were drawing near the end of our journey.
Not that that was to part us! No, he was to be
my companion still. I had a vision of him in a
paddock, with a fine young fellow, not unlike
myself, patting his head, while an oldish fellow,
not unlike myself, in fact very me with another
quarter of a century on my head, told the story
of the Gallop of Three and the wild charge
down Luggernel Alley to that unwearying auditor,
while a lady, very like my ideal of a wife,
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[figure description] Page 286.[end figure description]
stood by and thrilled again to the tale. Such a
vision I had of Fulano's future.
But now that our journey was ending, he and
I were willing, on this exhilarating winter's day,
to talk it over. What had he gained by the
chances by flood and field we had encountered
together?
“I have not gone,” Fulano notified me, “two
thousand miles, since my lonely, riderless days
among the herds of Gerrian, since our first meeting
on the prairie and my leap through the loop
of Jose's lasso, — I have not gone my leagues of
continent for nothing.
“See what lessons I have learnt, thanks to
you, my schoolmaster! This is my light step for
heavy sand; this is my cautious step over pebbles;
my high step over boulders; my easy, unwasteful
travelling gait; my sudden stop without
unseating my rider; so I swerve without shying;
and so I spring into top speed without a strain.
Your lady-love could canter me; your baby could
walk me; because I please to be your friend, my
friend. But you know me; I am the untamable
still, except by love.”
And then he rehearsed the gaits he had studied
from the creatures on the plains.
“Look, upper half of the Centaur,” he said,
in the Centaur language; “see how an antelope
goes!”
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[figure description] Page 287.[end figure description]
He doubled his legs under him and went off
in high, jerky leaps, twice his length every one.
“Look! A buffalo!”
He lumbered along, shoulders low, head handled
like a battering-ram, and tail stiff out like a
steering-oar.
“Here 's a gray wolf.”
And he shambled forward in a loose-jointed
canter, looking back furtively, like a thief, sorry
he didn 't stop to steal the other goose, but expecting
Stop thief! every minute.
“And so go I, Don Fulano, the Indomitable, a
chieftain of the chiefest race below the man, —
so go I when walk, pace, gallop, run, leap, career,
tread space and time out of being, to show
the other half of the Centaurship what my half
can do for the love of his.”
“Magnificent!” applauded Biddulph at this
display.
“His coquetries are as beautiful as a woman's,”
said Brent. “One whose sweet wiles
are nature, not artifice.”
And I — but lately trained to believe that a
woman may have the myriad charm of coy withdrawal,
and yet not be the traitress youth learns
from ancient cynics to fear — accepted the comparison.
Ah, peerless Fulano! that was our last love-passage!
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[figure description] Page 288.[end figure description]
The day, after the crisp frostiness of its beginning,
was a belated day of Indian summer; mild
as the golden mornings of that calm, luxurious
time. We stopped to noon in a sunny spot of
open pasture near a wide muddy slough of the
Missouri. This reservoir for the brewage of
shakes for Pikes had been refilled in some autumn
rise of the river, and lay a great stagnant lake
along the road-side, a mile or so long, two hundred
yards broad. Not very exhilarating tipple, but
still water; the horses would not disdain it,
after their education on the plains; we could qualify
it with argee from our flasks, and ice it with
the little films of ice unmelted along the pool's
edges. We were fortified with a bag of corn for
the horses, and a cold chicken for the men.
We camped by a fallen cottonwood near the
slough. The atmosphere was hopeful. We picnicked
merrily, men and beasts. “Three gentlemen
at once” over a chicken soon dissipated this
and its trimmings. We lighted the tranquil calumet,
and lounged, watching our horses at their
corn.
Presently we began to fancy we heard, then to
think we heard, at last to be sure we heard the
baying of hounds through the mild, golden air.
“Tally-ho!” cried Biddulph, “what a day for
a fox-hunt! This haze will make the scent lie
almost as well as the clouds.”
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[figure description] Page 289.[end figure description]
“Music! Music!” cried he again, springing
up, as the sound, increasing, rose and fell
along the peaceful air that lay on earth so lovingly.
“Music, if it were in Merrie England, where
the hunt are gentlemen. A cursed uproar here,
where the hunt are man-stealers,” said Brent.
“No,” said Biddulph. “Those are fables of
the old, barbarous days of the Maroons. I can't
believe in dogs after men, until I see it.”
“I 'm afraid it 's our friend Ham they are after.
This would be his line of escape.”
At the word, a rustling in the bushes along
the slough, and Ham burst through. He turned
to run. We shouted. He knew us, and flung
himself, livid with terror and panting with flight,
on the ground at our feet, — the “pop'lar nigger”!
“O Massa!” he gasped. “Dey 's gone sot
de dogs on me. What 'll I do!”
“Can you swim,” said I, — for to me he was
kneeling.
“No, Massa; or I 'd been across thisyer sloo
fore dis.”
“Can you ride!”
“Reck'n I kin, Massa.”
A burst of baying from the hounds.
The black shook with terror.
I sprang to Fulano. “Work for you, old
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[figure description] Page 290.[end figure description]
boy!” said I to him, as I flung the snaffle over
his head.
“Take mine!” said my two friends at a
breath.
“No; Fulano understands this business. Chase
or flight, all one to him, so he baffles the Brutes.”
Fulano neighed and beat the ground with
eager hoofs as I buckled the bridle.
“Can't we show fight?” said Biddulph.
“There 'll be a dozen on the hunt. It is one
of the entertainments hereabouts. Besides, they
would raise the posse upon us. You forget
we 're in a Slave State, an enemy's country.”
I led Fulano to the brink. He stood motionless,
eying me, just as he eyed me in that terrible
pause in Luggernel Alley.
“Here, Ham, up with you! Put across the
slough. He swims like an alligator. Then make
for the north star, and leave the horse for Mr.
Richard Wade, at the Tremont House, Chicago.
Treat him like a brother, Ham!”
“Lor bress you, Massa! I will dat.”
He vaulted up, like “a sprightly nigger, one
of the raal ambitious sort.”
The baying came nearer, nearer, ringing sweetly
through the golden quiet of noon.
I launched Fulano with an urgent whisper.
Two hundred yards to swim! and then all
clear to Freedom!
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[figure description] Page 291.[end figure description]
Fulano splashed in and took deep water magnificently.
What a sight it is to see a noble horse nobly
breast the flood, — to see his shoulders thrust
aside the stream, his breath come quick, his eyes
flash, his haunches lift, his wake widen after
him!
And then — Act 2 — how grand it is to see
him paw and struggle up with might and main
upon the farther bank, — to see him rise, all
glossy and reeking, shake himself, and, with
a snort, go galloping free and away! Aha! a
sight to be seen!
We stood watching Act 1. The fugitive was
half-way across. The baying came closer, closer
on his trail.
Two thirds across.
The baying ceased. The whole pack drew a
long wail.
“They see him,” said Biddulph.
Almost across! A dozen more plunges, Fulano!
A crowd of armed men on horseback dashed
up to the bank two hundred yards above us. It
was open where they halted. They could not
see us among the bushes on the edge of the
slough.
One of them — it was Murker — sprang from
his saddle. He pointed his rifle quick and
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[figure description] Page 292.[end figure description]
steady. Horse and man, the fugitives, were
close to the bank and the thicket of safety.
Ping!
Almost over, as the rifle cracked, Ham had
turned at the sound of his pursuers crashing
through the bushes. Fulano swam high. He
bore a proud head aloft, conscious of his brave
duty. It was but a moment since he had dashed
away, and the long lines of his wake still rippled
against the hither bank.
We heard the bullet sing. It missed the man
as he turned. It struck Fulano. Blood spirted
from a great artery. He floundered forward.
Ham caught the bushes on the bank, pulled
himself ashore, and clutched for the bridle.
Poor Fulano! He flung his head up and
pawed the surface with a great spasm. He
screamed a death-scream, like that terrible cry of
anguish of his comrade martyred in the old heroic
cause in Luggernel Alley. We could see
his agonized eye turn back in the socket, sending
toward us a glance of farewell.
Noble horse! again a saviour. He yielded and
sank slowly away into that base ditch.
But Ham, was he safe? He had disappeared
in the thicket. His pursuers called the hounds
and galloped off to chase him round the slough.
Ham was safe. He got off to freedom. From
his refuge in Chicago he writes me that he is
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[figure description] Page 293.[end figure description]
“pop'lar”; that he has “sot up a Livery Institootion,
and has a most a bewterful black colt
a growin' up fur me.”
Ham was saved; but Fulano gone. Dead
by Murker's rifle. The brother had strangely
avenged his brother, trampled to death in the far-away
cañon of the Rocky Mountains. Strange
Nemesis for a guiltless crime! That blood-stain
for a righteous execution clung to him. Only
his own blood-shedding could cleanse him.
We three on the bank looked at each other forlornly.
The Horse, our Hero, had passed away
from the scene, a marytr.
We turned to our journey with premonitions
of sorrowful ill.
-- -- p753-299
CHAPTER XXVIII. SHORT'S CUT-OFF.
[figure description] Page 294.[end figure description]
“Dear Mr. Wade: —
“We are hastening on. I can write you but
one word. Our journey has been prosperous.
Mr. Armstrong is very kind. My dear father,
I fear, is shattered out of all steadiness. God
guard him, and guide me! My undying love
to your friend.
“Your sister,
“Ellen Clitheroe.”
Armstrong handed us this note at St. Louis.
Biddulph, once a sentimental pinkling, now a
bronzed man of the wilds, exhibited for this occasion
only the phenomenon of a brace or so of
tears. I loved him for his strong sorrow.
“It 's not for myself, Wade,” he said. “I can
stand her loving John, and not knowing that she
has me for brother too; I 'm not of the lacrymose
classes; but this mad error of the father and this
hopeless faithfulness of the daughter touches me
tenderly. And here we are three weeks or more
behind them.”
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[figure description] Page 295.[end figure description]
“Yes,” said Armstrong, “full three weeks to
the notch; an ef ayry one of you boys sets any
store by 'em, you 'd better be pintin' along their
trail afore it gets cold. That 's what I allow.
He 's onsafe, — the old man is. As fine-hearted
a bein' as ever was; but luck has druv him out
of hisself and made a reg'lar gonoph of him.”
“Gonoph is vernacular for Drapetomaniac, I
suppose,” said I; “and a better word it is. Miss
Ellen bore the journey well, Armstrong?”
“That there young woman is made out of watchspring.
Ther ain't no stop to her. The more
you pile on, the springier she gits. She was a
mile an hour more to the train comin' on. We
did n't have anything ugly happen until we got
to the river. We cum down from Independence
in the Floatin' Pallis, No. 5. Some er them gamblin'
Pikes on board got a holt on the old man.
He 's got his bead drawed on makin' a pile again,
and allows that gamblin' with Pikes on a riverboat
is one of the ways. He sot his white head
down to the poker-table, and stuck thar, lookin'
sometimes sly as a kioty, sometimes mean and
ugly as a gray wolf, and sometimes like a dead
ephergee cut out er chalked wax. She nor I
could n't do nothin' with him. So I ambushed
the gamblers, an twarn't much arter midnight
when I cotched 'em cheatin' the old man. They
could n't wait to take his pile slow an' sure. So I
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[figure description] Page 296.[end figure description]
called an indignation meetin', and when I told the
boys aboard I was Luke Armstrong from Oregon,
they made me chairman, an' guv me three cheers.
I know'd it warn't pollymentary for the chairman
to make motions, but I motioned we shove the
hul kit an boodle of the gamblers ashore on logs.
'T was kerried, quite you-an-I-an-a-muss. So
we guv 'em a fair show, with a big stick of cotton-wood
and a shingle apiece, and told 'em to navigate.
The Cap'n slewed the Pallis's head round
and opened the furnace-doors to light 'em across,
and they poot for shore, with everybody yellin', and
the Pallis blowin' her whistle like all oudoors.”
“That 's the American method, Biddulph,”
said I. “Lynch-law is nothing but the sovereign
people's law, executed without the intervention
of the forms the people usually adopt for convenience.”
“With Armstrong for judge, it may do,” said
Biddulph.
“After that,” continued Armstrong, “we got
on well, except that the old man kep on the
stiddy tramp up an' down the boat, when he
warn't starin' at the engyne, and Ellen could n't
quiet him down. He got hash with her, too, and
that ain't like his nater. His nater is a sweet
nater, with considerable weakenin' into it. Well,
when we got here, I paid their ticket plum
through to York out of my own belt, and shoved
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[figure description] Page 297.[end figure description]
a nest er dimes into the carpet-bag she asked me
to buy her. But money wunt help the old man.
I don't believe anything but dyin' will. I never
would have let 'em go on alone ef I had n't had
my own Ellen, and all my brother Bill's big and
little ones to keep drivin' for. Now, boys, I git
more 'n more oneasy the more I talk about 'em;
but I ken put you on the trail, and if Mr. Brent
is as sharp on trails where men is thick, as he is
where men is scerce, and if she 's got a holt on him
still, he 'll find 'em, and help 'em through.”
“That I will, Armstrong,” said Brent.
And next morning we three pursued our chase
across the continent.
At New York another hurried note for me.
“We sail at once for home. My father cannot
be at peace until he is in Lancashire again.
Don't forget me, dear friends. I go away sick
at heart.
“Ellen Clitheroe.”
They left me, — the lover and the ex-lover, —
and followed on over seas.
I had my sister's orphans to protect and my
bread to win. The bigger the crowd, the more to
pay tribute to an Orson like myself. I fancied that
I could mine to more advantage in New York than
at the Foolonner. There are sixpences in the
straw of every omnibus for somebody to find.
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[figure description] Page 298.[end figure description]
I am not to maunder about myself. So I omit
the story how I saw a vista in new life, hewed in
and took up a “claim,” which I have held good
and am still improving.
Meantime nothing from Brent, — nothing from
Miss Clitheroe. I grew bitterly anxious for both,—
the brother and the sister of my adoption.
These ties of choice are closer than ties of blood,
unless the hearts are kindred as well as the
bodies. My sister Ellen, chosen out of all womanhood
and made precious to me by the agony
I had known for her sake, — I could not endure
the thought that she had forgotten me; still less
the dread that her father had dragged her into
some voiceless misery.
And Brent. I knew that he did not write,
because he must thus set before his eyes in black,
cruel words that his pursuit had been vain. The
love that conquered time and space had beaten
down and slain Brutality, — was it to be baffled
at last? I longed to be with him, lending my
cruder force to his finer skill in the search.
Together we might prevail, as we had before prevailed.
But I saw no chance of joining him. I
must stay and earn my bread at my new business.
Nothing, still nothing from the lady or the
lover, and I suffered for both. I wrote Brent,
and re-wrote him; but no answer.
That winter, my old friend Short perfected his
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famous Cut-off. Everybody now knows Short's
Cut-off. It saves thirty per cent of steam and
fifty per cent of trouble and wear and tear to
engineer and engine.
Short burst into my office one morning. He
and Brent and I, and a set of other fellows
worth knowing, had been comrades in our
younger days. We still hold together, with a
common purpose to boost civilization, so far as
our shoulders will do it.
“Look at that,” cried Short, depositing a
model and sheets of drawings on my table.
“My Cut-off. What do you think of it?”
I looked, and was thrilled. It was a simple,
splendid triumph of inventive genius, — a difficulty
solved so easily, that it seemed laughable
that no one had ever thought of this solution.
“Short,” said I, “this is Fine Art. Hurrah
for the nineteenth century! How did you happen
to hit it? It is an inspiration.”
“It was love that revealed it,” said Short. “I
have been pottering over that cut-off for years,
while She did not smile; when She smiled, it
came to me like a sneeze.”
“Well, you have done the world good, and
made your fortune.”
“Yours too, old fellow, if you like. Pack up
that model and the drawings, go to England,
France, Germany, wherever they know steam
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from tobacco-smoke, take out patents, and introduce
it. Old Churm says he will let me have
half a million dollars, if I want it. You shall
have free tap of funds, and charge what percentage
you think proper.”
So I took steamer for England, with Short's
Cut-off to make known.
-- -- p753-306
CHAPTER XXIX. A LOST TRAIL.
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It was June when I reached London. Business,
not fashion, was my object. I wished to
be at a convenient centre of that mighty huddle
of men and things; so I drove to Smorley's
Hotel, Charing Cross.
In America, landlords dodge personal responsibility.
They name their hotels after men of
letters, statesmen, saints, and other eminent parties.
Guests will perhaps find a great name
compensation for infinitesimal comfort.
They do these things differently in England.
Smorley does not dodge. Not Palmerston, nor
Wordsworth, nor Spurgeon, is emblazoned in
smoky gold on Smorley's sign; but Smorley.
Curses or blessings, therefore, Smorley himself
gets them. Nobody scowls at the sirloin, and
grumbles, sotto voce, “Palmerston has cut it
too fat to-day”; nobody tosses between the sheets
and prays, “O Wordsworth, why didst thou begrudge
me the Insect-Exterminator?” Nobody
complains, “Spurgeon's beer is all froth, and
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small at that.” Smorley, and Smorley alone,
gets credit for beef, beds, and beer.
Smorley's Hotel stands at the verge of the East,
and looks toward the West End of London. The
Strand passes by its side, so thick with men,
horses, and vehicles, that only a sharp eye viewing
it from above detects the pavement. The
mind wearies with the countless throng, going
and coming in that narrow lane, and turns to
look on the permanent features of Smorley's
landscape.
The chief object in the view is a certain second-rate
square, named to commemorate a certain
first-rate victory. But the square, second-rate
though it be, is honored by a first-rate railing, a
balustrade of bulky granite, which may be valuable
for defence when Crapaud arrives to avenge
Trafalgar. Inside the stone railing, which is further
protected by a barricade of cabs, with drivers
asleep and horses in nose-bags, are sundry very
large stone fountains, of very smoky granite,
trickling with very small trickles of water, which
channel the basins as tears channel the face of a
dirty boy. The square is on a slope, and seems
to be sliding away, an avalanche of water-basins,
cabs, and balustrade, from a certain very ugly
edifice, severely classic in some spots, classic as a
monkish Latin ballad in others, and well sprouted
at the top with small sentry-boxes, perhaps
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shelters for sharp-shooters, should anybody venture to
look mustard at the building. A bronze horseman,
on a bronze horse sixteen hands high, is at
work at the upper corner of the square, trying to
drive it down hill. A bronze footman, on a column
sixteen hundred feet high, or thereabouts,
stands at the foot of the square, hailing that fugacious
enclosure from under a nautical cocked
hat to do its duty, as England expects everything
English will, and not to run away from the ugly
edifice above.
Such is the square at the very centre of the
centre of the world, as I saw it from Smorley's
corner window, while dining in the June twilight,
the evening of my arrival in London.
I sat after dinner looking complacently out upon
the landscape. A man never attains to that
stolidity of content except in England, where the
air's exciting oxygen is well weakened with fog,
and the air's exhilarating ozone is quite discharged
from dancing attendance. London and
England were not strange to me; but a great city
is ever new, and after two years' inane staring at
a quartz-mine, town and townsfolk were still
lively contrast to my mind.
I was quietly entertaining myself, sipping
meanwhile my pint of Port, — Fine old Crusty,
it was charged in the bill, when I saw coming
down St. Martin's Lane, between the cabs and
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the balustrade of the square, two gentlemen I
knew.
Brent and Biddulph! Biddulph, surely.
There could be no mistaking that blonde, manly
giant, relapsed again into modified Anglicism of
dress; but walking freely along, with a step that
remembered the prairie.
But that pale, feeble fellow hanging on the
other's arm! Could that be John Brent? He
was slouching along, looking upon the ground,
a care-worn, dejected man. It cost me a sharp
pang to see my brilliant friend so vanquished
by a sorrow I could comprehend.
I sprang up, snatched my hat, and rushed out.
Eight quiet men, dining systematically at eight
tables in the coffee-room, were startled at a rapidity
of movement quite unknown to the precincts
of Smorley, and each of the eight choked
over his mouthful, were it ox-tail, salmon, mutton,
bread, or Fine old Crusty. Eight waiters, caught
in the act of saying “Yessir! D'rectly Sir!”
were likewise shocked into momentary paralysis.
I dashed across the street, knocking the nose-bag
off the forlorn nose of a hungry cab-horse,
and laid my hand on my friend's shoulder. He
turned, in the hasty, nervous manner of a man
who is expecting something, and excited with
waiting.
“I was half inclined to let you pass,” said I.
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“You have not written. I had no right to suppose
you alive.”
“I could only write to pain you and myself.
I have not found her. I am hardly alive. I
shall not long be.”
“Come,” said Biddulph, with his old friendly,
cheery manner; “now that Wade has joined us,
we will have a fresh start, and better luck. Walk
on with us, Wade, and Brent will tell you what
we have been doing.”
“Why should I tire him with the weary story
of a fruitless search?” said Brent.
It was the same utterly disheartened manner,
the same tone of despair, that had so affected
me that evening on the plain of Fort Bridger.
Not finding whom he sought was crushing him
now, as losing her crushed him then. But I
thought by what a strange and fearful mercy
our despair of that desolate time had been
changed to joy. Coming newly to the fact of
loss, I could not see it so darkly as it was
present to him. A great confidence awoke in
me that our old partnership renewed would prosper.
I determined not to yield to his mood.
“Your search, then, is absolutely fruitless,”
said I. “Well, if she is not dead, she must
have forgotten us?”
“Is she a woman to forget?” said Brent,
roused a little by my wilful calumny.
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“Like other women, I suppose.”
“You must have forgotten the woman we
met and saved, and had for our comrade, to
think so.”
I rejoiced at the indignation I had stirred.
“Why, then, has she never written?” I queried.
“I am sure as faith that she has, but that her
father has cunningly suppressed her letters.”
“The same has occurred to me. The poor
old fellow, ashamed of his Mormon life, would
very likely be unwilling that any one who knew
of it should be informed of his whereabouts.”
“He might, too, have an undiscriminating,
senile terror of any letter going to America,
lest it should set Danites upon his track, as a
renegade. He might fear that we would take
his daughter from him. There are twenty suppositions
to make. I will not accept that of
death nor of neglect.”
“No,” said Biddulph; “dead people cannot
hide away their bodies, as living can.”
“You know that they are in England?”
“They landed in Liverpool from the Screw.
There they disappeared. Biddulph took me to
Clitheroe, up to the old Hall. A noble place it
is. It is poetry to have been born there. I do
not wonder Mr. Clitheroe loved it.”
“You must go down with me, Wade, as soon
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as the season is over,” said Biddulph. “I wish I
could quarter you in town. Brent is with me.
But you will dine with us every day, when you
have nothing better to do, and be at home with
us always. I can give you flapjacks and molasses,
Laramie fashion.”
“Thank you, my dear fellow!”
“You must not think,” says Brent, “that I
went up to Clitheroe even for Biron's hospitality.
We were both on the search all through the
country. We thought Mr. Clitheroe might have
betaken himself to a coal-mine again. We discovered
the very mine where he formerly worked.
They remembered him well. The older generation
of those grimy troglodytes well remembered
Gentleman Hugh and his daughter, little Lady
Ellen, and the rough fellows and their rough
wives had a hundred stories to tell of the beautiful,
gentle child, — how she had been a good angel
to them, and already a protectress to her father.
In the office, too, of the coal-mine, we found
traces of him under another name, always faithful,
honest, respected, and a gentleman. It was
interesting to have all his sad story confirmed,
just as he told it to you the night of Jake
Shamberlain's ball; but it did not help our
search. Then we enlarged its scope, and followed
out every line of travel from Liverpool
and to London, the great monster, that draws in
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all, the prosperous and the ruined, the rich to
spend and the poor to beg.
“We have had some queer and some romantic
adventures in our search, eh, Brent? Some
rather comic runaways we 've overhauled,” said
Biddulph; “but we 'll tell you of them, Wade,
when we are in good spirits again, and with our
fugitives by us to hear what pains we took for
their sake.”
“And all this while you have found no trace?”
I said.
“One slight trace only,” replied my friend;
“enough to identify them disappearing among
these millions of London. We found a porter at
the Paddington station, who had seen a young
lady and an old man stepping from a third-class
carriage of a night-train. `You see, sir,' said
the man, — he evidently had a heart under his
olive corduroys, — `I marked the old gent and
the young woman, she was so daughterly with
him. I 've got a little girl of my own, and may-hap
I shall come out old and weakly, and she 'll
have to look after me. It was the gray of the
morning when the train come in. There warn't
many passengers. It was cold winter weather, —
the month of February, I should say. The
young woman, — she had dark hair, and looked
as if she was one to go through thick and thin,—
she jumped out of the carriage, where she had
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been settin' all that cold night, and gave the old
gent her hand. I heard her call him “Father,”
and tell him to take care; and he had need. He
seemed to be stiff with cold. He was an old
gent, such as you don't see every day. He had
a long white beard, — a kind of swallow-tail
beard. His clothes, too, was strange. He had a
long gray top-coat, grayish and bluish, with a
cape of the same over his shoulders, and brass
buttons stamped with an eagle. A milingtary
coat it was. I used to see such coats on the
sentinels in France when I went over to dig on
the Chalong Railway. The old gent looked like
a foreigner, with his swallow-tail beard and that
milingtary coat; but there was an Englishman
under the coat, if I knows 'em. And the young
woman, sir, was English, — I don't believe there 's
any such out of Old England.'”
“It must be they,” cried I. “I saw him in
that very coat, tramping up and down like a
hunted man, beside the wagons that were to take
him from Fort Laramie.”
“You did? That completes the identification.
But what good? This was a trace of them in
London; so is a sailor's cap on a surge a token
of a sailor sunk and lying somewhere under the
gray waste of sea. We lost them again utterly.”
With such talk, we had descended from Trafalgar
Square, gone down Whitehall, turned in
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at the Horse Guards, and, crossing Green Park,
had come out upon Hyde Park Corner. It was
the very top moment of the London season.
The world, all sunshine and smiles and splendor,
was eddying about the corner of Apsley House.
Piccadilly was a flood of eager, busy people. The
Park blossomed with gay crowds. But under
all this laughing surface, I saw with my mind's
eye two solitary figures slowly sinking away and
drowning drearily, — two figures solitary except
for each other, — a pale, calm woman, with gray,
steady eyes, leading a vague old man, with a
white beard and a long military surtout.
“Lost utterly!” said Brent again, as if in
answer to my thought.
“No,” said I, shaking off this despondency.
“We have seemed to lose her twice more desperately
than now. It looked darker when we
left them at Fort Bridger; much darker when
we knew that those ruffians had got time and
space the start of us; darkest of all when poor
Pumps fell dead in Luggernel Alley. Searching
in a Christian city is another thing than our
agonized chase in the wilderness.”
“A Christian city!” said Brent, with a slight
shudder. “You do not know what this Christian
city is for a friendless woman. There are
brutes here as evil and more numerous than
in all barbarism together. Many times, in my
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searches up and down the foul slums of London,
I have longed to exchange their walls for the
walls of Luggernel Alley, and endure again the
frenzy of our gallop there. You think me weak,
perhaps, Wade, for my doubt of success; but
remember that I have been at this vain search
over England and on the Continent for five
months.”
“But understand, Wade,” said Biddulph,
“that we do not give it up, although we have
found no clew.”
“Give it up!” cried Brent with fervor. “I
live for that alone. When the hope ends, I
end.”
How worn he looked, “with grief that 's beauty's
canker!” Life was wasting from him, as
it ever does when man pursues the elusive and
unattained. When a man like Brent once voluntarily
concentrates all his soul on one woman,
worthy of his love, thenceforth he must have
love for daily food, or life burns dim and is a
dying flame.
“To-morrow,” said I, halting at the Park
corner, “I must be at work setting my business
in motion. I have letters to write this evening,
and a dozen of famous mechanicians to see to-morrow.
In the evening we will put our heads
together again.”
“Over my claret and a weed after it, understand,”
said Biddulph.
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“Yes, I 'll try whether you can take the taste
of Missouri argee and pigtail out of my mouth.”
“You must be prepared to be made a lion
of by my mother and cousins. They know the
history of Don Fulano as well as a poet knows
the pedigree of Pegasus. I have brought tears
to many gentle eyes with the story of his martyrdom
for liberty.”
“Ah, Fulano! if we only had him here! He
would know how to aid us.”
I left them, and walked down Piccadilly to
Smorley's. Some of the eight waiters, who had
seen me bolt, still regarded me with affright.
I wrote my letters and went to bed.
My brain was still rolling in my skull with
the inertia of its sea voyage. The blur and
bustle of London perplexed me. I slept; but
in my worried sleep I seemed to hear, above
the roar in the streets, a far-away scream of a
woman, as I had heard it in the pause of the
gale at Fort Bridger. Then I seemed to have
unhorsed the Iron Duke from his seat at Hyde
Park Corner, and, mounted in his place and
armed with the Nelson Column for a lance, to
be charging along the highways and by-ways of
London in chase of two dim, flying figures, — a
lady pale as death, and a weary man in a long
gray surtout.
-- -- p753-318
CHAPTER XXX. LONDON.
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Short's Cut-off shut out all other subjects from
my head next morning.
It was an innovation, a revolution. Mankind
objects to both. It came from America, and
though America has given tobacco, woman's
rights, the potato, model yachts, model States,
and trotting horses to the Old World, that World
still distrusts our work as boyish. We in turn
deem the Old World a mere child, and our youth
based on a completer maturity than they will attain
for half a millennium.
Short's Cut-off was so simple that it puzzled
everybody.
I consulted half a dozen eminent engineers.
“Very pretty, indeed!” they said, and at once
turned the conversation to the explosions on
Western rivers. “Had I ever been blown up?
How did it feel?”
But as to Short's Cut-off, they only thought it
a neat contrivance, but evidently by a person
who did not comprehend intricate machinery.
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I took it to a man of another order. England
is the world's machine-shop; he was England's
chief engineer. A great man he was, dead,
alas! now. A freeman, who recognized the world
as his country, and genius everywhere as his
brother.
He understood Short's Cut-off at a glance.
How I wish old Short could have been there,
to see this great man's eye glow with enthusiasm
as he said: “Admirable! This is what we have
all been waiting for. Padiham must see this. We
must have it in every engine in England. Command
my services to aid in making it known.”
“Can you recommend me,” said I, presently,
“a thorough mechanic. I want some more models
made of these valves and machinery, to illustrate
their action.”
“You must go to Padiham, the best artisan I
know in all England.”
“Worth seeing for himself, as the man whom
you name best among these millions of craftsmen.”
“Padiham is the man.”
“He ought to have name and fame.”
“He might if he chose.”
“Worth knowing, again, for this rare abnegation.”
“He is an oddity. Some unlucky mode of life
stunted him, mind and body, until he was a
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mature man. He is dwarfed in person, and fancies
his mind suffers too. It makes him a little gruff
to feel that he is a man of tools, and not of principles, —
a mechanic, not a philosopher. There is
nothing of morbidness or disappointment in him.
Only he underrates himself, and fancies his powers
blunted by his deformity. He keeps out of the
way, and works alone in a little shop. He will
only do special jobs for me and one or two others.
He says he would be our equal, if he were
full-grown. We deem him our peer, and treat
him as such; but he will not come out and take
the place he could have at once before the world.
I thought of him, and wished him to see this Cut-off,
as soon as you showed it to me. You must
tell him I sent you, or he may be surly at first,
and so drive you away, or perhaps refuse to do
your work.”
“I think I can make my way with such a person;
but if not, I will use your name. Where is
he to be found?”
“This is his address. An out-of-the-way place,
you see, if you know London. A by-street on
the Surrey side of the Thames. He is well to
do; but lives there for a special economy. He has
a method of charity, which is like himself thoroughly
original. More good he does in his odd
way than any man I know. He owns the whole
house over his shop, and uses it as a private
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hospital or hospice for poor but worthy sick and
broken-down people.”
“His own dwarfishness makes him sympathetic?”
“Yes; instead of souring, it softens him to
the feeble. He may perhaps feel a transitory
resentment at big, strong fellows like you and
me; but he is always tender to the weak. His
wonderful knowledge of machinery comes into
play in his hospital. From the machines man
makes, he has passed to a magical knowledge of
the finest machine of all.”
“The human body?”
“The machine that invents and executes machines,
the human body, — the most delicate
mechanism of all, the type of all its own inventions.
Padiham achieves magical cures. He is
working by practice, and lately by study, into
profound surgical skill. There is no man in
England whom I would trust to mend me if I
broke, as I would Padiham.”
“He avenges himself upon Nature for not perfecting
him, by restoring her breakages. Why
do you not suggest to him to become a professed
repairer of mankind?”
“I have suggested it. He says he must take
his own way. Besides, mechanics can hardly
spare him. Many of my own inventions would
have stayed in embryo in my brain, if Padiham
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had not played Vulcan, and split a passage for
them. I talk over my schemes to him; he
catches the idea and puts it into form at once.”
“You interest me very much,” said I. “I
must see the man and know him, for my own
sake as well as for Short's Cut-off.”
“Take care he does not drive you away in a
huff. You 'll find him a rough-hewn bit.”
I went at once. A man who had warred with
Pikes at the Foolonner Mine, to say nothing of
other ruder characters, was not to be baffled, so
he trusted, by a surly genius.
As I walked through the crush of the streets,
again there came to me that vision of the old
man and his daughter lost in the press, — more
sadly lost, more vainly seeking refuge here, than
in the desert solitudes where we had found them.
Every one familiar with great cities knows of
strange rencounters there, and at every turn I
looked narrowly about, fancying that I should
see the forms I sought, just vanishing, but leaving
me a clew of pursuit. This expectation grew
so intense, that I exaggerated slight resemblances
of costume or of port, and often found myself
excitedly hurrying quite out of my way, and
shouldering through huddles of people, to come
at some figure in the distance. But when I overtook
the old man of feeble step, or the young
woman moving fearlessly amid the pitiless crowd,
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or the pair I had followed, and stared at them
eagerly, strange and offended looks met me instead
of the familiar, perhaps the welcome, look
I had hoped; and I turned away forlornly exaggerating
the disappointment as I had the fancy.
I cooled at last from this flurry. Nothing but
blanks in the lottery. It was folly to be wasting
my energy in this way. Trusting Providence, or
rather this semblance of Providence, this mere
chance, was thin basis for action. So I resumed
my proper course, and turned my steps quietly
toward Padiham's shop.
But when presently I stood upon London
Bridge, between two cities of men, between the
millions I had escaped and the million I was to
plunge among, a great despair grew heavier and
heavier upon me.
This terrible throng, here as everywhere hurrying
by me! And I compelled to note every man
and every woman, and to say to myself, “This is
not he,” — “This is not she,” — “These are not
they!” All the while this stream of negatives
rushing by, and every one brazing a little fraction
of hope away.
In that great city — in its nests and its prisons—
were people who had been living side by side
for a life-time, and yet had never had one glimpse
of each other's form or feature; who were, each
to each, but a name on a door, a step overhead, a
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tread on the stair, a moan of anguish, a laugh,
or a curse. There were parallel streets, too,
whose tenants moved parallel and never met, and
never would meet. There were neighborhoods
farther distant than Cornhill is from Cairo, or
Pimlico from Patagonia. It was a dark den —
that monster city — for any one who loved to
lurk, or be buried away from sight of friend or
foe; it was a maze, a clewless labyrinth for one
who sought a foe to punish or a friend to save.
Evening was approaching. I must consider
Short and his Cut-off, and all England wasting
steam at the rate of millions of pounds a year
(enough to save the income tax) until that
Cut-off should be applied. In that populous
realm were ten thousand cylinders devouring
one third more steam than was healthy working
allowance; and I was halting on London Bridge,
staring like a New-Zealander at the passers, a
mere obstacle to progress, a bad example, a stationary
nuisance now, as I had been a mobile
and intrusive one before.
I had some little difficulty in finding Padiham's
retiring-place. I had already dissected it out on
the map, identified it by its neighborhood to a
certain artery and its closer neighborhood to a
certain ganglion. It was Lamely Court, a quiet
retreat in a busy region. It looked, indeed, as if
it had never taken a very active part in the
world, or as if, when it offered itself to bustle
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and traffic, more enterprising localities had hustled
it aside, and bade it decline into a lethargy.
The withered brick houses had the air and visage
of people who have seen better days, and subsided
into the desponding by-ways, apart from
the thoroughfares of the bold and sturdy. Mean
misery and squalor did not abide there. It was
not a den for the ragged, but a shy retreat for
the patched, — for the decent and decorous poor.
Half-way down the court, on the sunny side,
I found Padiham's house. It was quietly, not
obtrusively, neater and fresher than its neighbors.
Its bricks had a less worm-eaten look, and
its window-panes were all of glass and none of
newspaper. The pot roses in an upper story
window were in bloom, and had life enough to
welcome the June sunshine, while sister plants
in other garrets all about the court were too far
blighted ever to dream of gayer product than
some poor jaundiced bud. These roses up in
Padiham's window cheered the whole neighborhood
greatly, with their lively coloring. It was
as if some pretty maiden, with rosy cheeks and
riper rosy lips, were looking down into that
forlorn retreat, and warming every old, faded
soul, within every shabby tenement, with bright
reminiscence of days when life was in its perfume
and its flower.
Such was the aspect of Padiham's abode. His
shop lurked in the basement.
-- -- p753-326
CHAPTER XXXI. A DWARF.
[figure description] Page 321.[end figure description]
It was with much curiosity and interest in
Padiham that I stepped down into the basement,
and entered his shop. I reverence as much a
great mechanic, in degree, perhaps in kind, as I
do any great seer into the mysteries of Nature.
He is a king, whoever can wield the great forces
where other men have not the power. And none
can control material forces without a profound
knowledge, stated or unstated, of the great masterly
laws that order every organism, from dust
to man and a man-freighted world. A great
mechanic ranks with the great chiefs of his time,
prophets, poets, orators, statesmen.
Padiham was in his shop at work. No mistaking
him. A stunted, iron-gray man, not misshapen,
but only shut together, like a one-barrelled
opera-glass.
A very impressive head was Padiham's. No
harm had been done to that by whatever force
had driven in his legs and shut his ribs together.
His head was full grown. In contrast with his
-- 322 --
[figure description] Page 322.[end figure description]
body, it seemed even overgrown. His hair and
beard were iron-gray. He had those heavy,
square eyebrows that compel the eyes from
roving, and shut them down upon the matter
in hand, so that it cannot escape. Not a man,
this, to err on facts or characters. A pretender
person, a sham fact, he would test at once and
dismiss. Short's Cut-off had never met a sterner
critic than this man with the square forehead
and firm nose.
He was hard at work at a bench, low according
to his stature, filing at some fine machinery.
The shop was filled with a rich sunny duskiness.
Here and there surfaces of polished brass sparkled.
Sunbeams, striking through the dim windows,
glinted upon bits of bright steel strewn
about. I perceived the clear pungent odor of
fresh steel filings, very grateful after the musty
streets, seething in June sunshine and the exhalations
of the noisome Thames. It was a
scene of orderly disorder, ruled by the masterworkman
there.
Padiham had, of course, observed my entrance.
He took no notice of me, and continued his
work.
I held my station near the door. I did not
wish to spoil his job by the jar of an interruption.
Besides, I thought it as well to let him
speak first. I was prepared for an odd man;
he might make the advances, if he pleased.
-- 323 --
[figure description] Page 323.[end figure description]
Padiham went on filing, in a grim, intelligent
way. I glanced about the shop.
There were models all about of machines,
some known, some strange to me; disconnected
portions of inventions lying side by side, and
wanting only a bolt or a screw to be organized
and ready to rush at pumping, or lifting, or
dragging, or busy duty of some useful kind.
There was store, too, of interesting rubbish, —
members of futile models, that could not do busy
duty of their kind for some slight error, and
worth careful study as warnings; for failure with
mechanics is the schoolmaster of success. Drawings
of engines hung all about the walls. As
guardian genius of the spot, there was a portrait
of that wise, benignant face of my friend of this
morning, that great engineer who had directed
me hither.
Apart in a dusky corner, by the chimney and
forge, hung two water-color drawings in neat
gilt frames. They were perhaps a little incongruous
with the scenery of the gnome's cavern.
I did not, of course, expect to find here a portrait
of a truculent bruiser or a leering bar-maid.
Beery journeymen keep such low art hanging
before them to seduce them from any ambition
to become master hands and beguile them back
of beer. Padiham would of course need drawings
of models and machines, and enjoy them;
-- 324 --
[figure description] Page 324.[end figure description]
but I did not look for Art proper in his shop.
There, however, in the dim background, hung
the two cheerful drawings, in their neat frames.
They renewed and repeated the feeling which the
gay roses in the upper windows had given me.
My fancy supplied a link between the drawings
and the flowers. They infused a pleasant element
of refinement into the work-a-day atmosphere
of the shop.
One of these drawings — I could just faintly
distinguish their subject, and not the skill, greater
or less, of their handling — was a view of an old
brick many-gabled manor-house on a lawn dotted
with stately oaks. Its companion — and the light
hardly permitted me to decipher it — seemed to
be a group of people seated on the grass, and a
horse bending over them. I glanced at these
objects as my eye made the tour of the shop;
but my head was filled with Short's Cut-off and
this grim dwarf before me.
Presently Padiham laid down his file, and took
up a pair of pincers from the confusion on his
bench. He gave a bit of wire a twist, and, as
he did so, looked at me. The square eyebrows
seemed to hold me stiff, while he inspected. He
studied my face, and then measured me from top
to toe. There was a slight expression of repellence
in his features, as if he thought, “This big
fellow probably fancies that his long legs make
him my master; we 'll try a match.”
-- 325 --
[figure description] Page 325.[end figure description]
He addressed me in a sweet, hearty voice, quite
in discord with his gruff manner. No man could
be a bear and roar so gently. I perceived the
Lancashire accent. The dialect, if it had ever
been there, was worn away. Tones are older in
a man than words. He can learn a new tongue;
his organ he hardly alters. If Nature has ordained
a voice to howl, or snarl, or yelp, or bray,
it will do so now and then, stuff our mouths
with pebbles as we may.
Padiham's frank, amiable voice neutralized his
surly manner, as he said: “Now then, young
man, what are you staring at? Do you want
anything with me? Say so, if you do. If not,
don't stand idling here; but go about your business.”
“I want you to do a job for me.”
“Suppose I say, I don't want to do it?”
“Then I 'll try to find a better man.”
“Umph! where 'll you look for him?”
“In the first shop where there 's one that
knows enough to give good words to a stranger.”
“Well; say what your job is.”
“You 're ready to do it then?
“I 'm not ready to waste any more time in
talk.”
“Nor I. I want some working models of a
new patent Cut-off.”
“I wont undertake any tom-foolery.”
-- 326 --
[figure description] Page 326.[end figure description]
“If you can make tom-foolery out of this,
you 're a cleverer man than I am.”
“That may not be much to say. I 've had
so many shams brought to me in the way of cut-offs
that I shall not spend time on yours unless
it looks right at first glance.
“You 'll see with half an eye that this means
something.”
“Show me your drawings; that will settle
it.”
I produced the working drawings.
Padiham studied them a few moments. I
volunteered no explanation.
Presently he looked up, and fixed me with his
square eyebrows, while he examined me from
head to foot again.
“Did you invent this?” said he.
“No.”
“Umph! Thought not. Too tall. Who
did?”
“Mr. Short.”
“Don't Mister the man that thought out this.
His whole name I want, without handles. He
don't need 'em.”
“George Short.”
“George, — that 's my name too. I suppose
he is a Yankee. I know every man in England
likely to have contrived this; but none of them
have quite head enough.”
-- 327 --
[figure description] Page 327.[end figure description]
“He is an American.”
“Is he a Mormon?”
“No.”
“Are you?”
“No. It is an odd question.”
“I don't know much about your country, except
that you invent machines, keep slaves, blow
up steamboats, and beguile off Englishmen with
your damned Mormonism. The Mormons have
done so much harm in my country, — Lancashire
that is, — that I 've sworn I 'd never have anything
to do with any Yankee, unless I first knew
he was not one of those wolves. But if you 're
not, and George Short is not, I 'll do your job.
Now tell me precisely what you want made, for
I can't spend time with you.”
“I want six sets of these models at once.”
“I 'll order the castings this evening. I have
materials here for the fine parts. Can you handle
tools? — I mean useful tools, — files and saws
and wrenches, not pens and sand-boxes.”
“I 'm a fair workman with your tools.”
“You can help me then. Come over to-morrow
morning at seven. No; you 're an idler,
and I 'll give you till eight. If you 're not here
by that time you 'll find me busy for the day.”
So saying, Padiham turned off to his work.
He gave me no further attention; but filed away
grimly. I watched him a moment. What
-- 328 --
[figure description] Page 328.[end figure description]
intensity and earnestness were in this man! Like
other great artists, who see form hidden within
a mass of brute matter, he seemed to be urged
to give himself, body and soul, to releasing the
form from its cell, to setting free the elemental
spirit of order and action locked up in the
stuff before him.
His brief verdict upon my friend's invention
settled its success in my mind. Not that I
doubted before; but the man's manner was conclusive.
He pronounced the fiat of the practical
world, as finally as the great engineer had done
of the theoretical. I thrilled for old Short, when
this Dwarf, lurking away in a by-court of London,
accepted him as his peer. The excitement
of this interview had for a time quite expelled
my anxieties. For a time I had lost sight of
the two figures that haunted me, and ever vanished
as I pursued. They took their places again as
I left the shop and issued from Lamely Court
into the crowded thoroughfare at hand.
I took a cab, and drove to my hotel, and so to
Biddulph's. The dinner at the Baronet's shall
not figure in these pages. It was my first appearance
as hero. I and my horse were historic
characters in this new circle. I was lionized by
Lady Biddulph, a stately personage, inheritress
of a family rustle, — a rustle as old as the Plantagenets,
and grander now by the accumulations
-- 329 --
[figure description] Page 329.[end figure description]
of ages. A lovely young lady, with dark hair,
who blushed when I took my cue and praised
Biddulph, she also lionized me. A thorough-bred
American finds English life charming, especially
if he is agreeably lionné; a scrubby
American considers England a region of cold
shoulder, too effete to appreciate impertinence.
Lady Biddulph gave me further facts of the
history of the Clitheroes.
“Our dear Ellen!” she concluded. “If she
had known how much I loved her, she would
have disregarded her natural scruples,” — and
she glanced at her son, — “and let me befriend
and protect her. It goes to my heart to see Mr.
Brent so worn and sad. He, too, has become
very dear to us all. I have adopted him as my
son as long as he pleases, and try to give him a
mother's sympathy.”
Brent walked back with me to Smorley's.
“How different we are!” he said, as we
parted. “I am all impulse; you are all steadiness.”
“Suffering might throw me off my balance.
Remember that I have had trial and experience,
but no torture.”
“Torture, that is the word; and it has unmanned
me like a wearing disease. Your coming
makes a man of me again.”
“Give me a day or two for Short's Cut-off and
-- 330 --
[figure description] Page 330.[end figure description]
the mechanical nineteenth century, and we will
take our knight-errantry upon us again. We
are dismounted cavaliers now, to be sure, — no
Pumps or Fulano to help us, — but we shall find,
I will not doubt, some other trusty aid against
the demon forces.”
Brent bade me good night with a revival of his
old self. We were to meet again to-morrow.
I sat down to gladden Short with the story of
my success to-day, and wrote hard and fast to
catch to-morrow's steamer.
The dwarf, I knew, would be a man after
Short's own heart, — these men of iron and steel
are full of magnetism for each other. I gave
Short a minute description of Padiham's shop.
As I described, I found that my observation
had been much keener than I supposed. Every
object in the shop came back to me distinctly. I
saw the Rembrandt interior, barred with warm
sunbeams; the grim master standing there over
his vice; the glinting steel; the polished brass;
the intelligent tools, ready to spring up and do
their duty in the craftsman's hands; that little
pretty plaything of a steam-engine, at rest, but
with its pocket-piece of an oscillating cylinder
hanging alert, so that it could swing off merrily
at a moment's notice, and its piston with a firm
grip on the crank, equally eager to skip up and
down in the cylinder on its elastic cushion of
steam.
-- 331 --
[figure description] Page 331.[end figure description]
All the objects in Padiham's shop, one after
another, caught my look, as I reviewed the whole
in memory. Suddenly I found myself gazing
intently at my image of those two water-color
drawings in neat gilt frames, hanging in a dusky
corner by the chimney, — those two drawings
which had revived in my mind the sentiment of
the bright, healthy roses in the upper windows.
Suddenly these drawings recurred to me. They
stared at me like an old friend neglected. They
insisted upon my recognition. There was a personality
in them which gazed at me with a shy
and sad reproach, that I had given them only a
careless glance, and so passed them by.
The drawings stared at me and I at them.
An ancient, many-gabled brick manor-house,
on a fair lawn dotted with stately oaks, — that
was the first.
Had I not already seen a drawing, the fellow
of this? Yes. In Biddulph's hands at Fort
Laramie. The same gables, the same sweet slope
of lawn, the same broad oaks, and one the monarch
of them all, — perhaps the very one Wordsworth
had rounded into a sonnet.
And the companion drawing that I hardly
deciphered in the dimness, — that group of figures
and a horse bending over them?
How blind I was!
Fulano!
-- 332 --
[figure description] Page 332.[end figure description]
Fulano surely. He and no other.
And that group?
Ourselves at the Luggernel Springs. Brent
lying wounded, while I gave him water, and a
lady bound up his wounds.
Can this be so? Am I not the victim of a
fancy? Is this indeed my noble horse? Is
he again coming forward to bear us along the
trail of our lost friend.
I stared again at my mental image of the two
drawings. I recalled again every word of my interview
with Padiham.
The more I looked, the more confident I became.
Short's Cut-off had held such entire possession
of me in the afternoon, that I could only
observe with eyes, not with volition, could not
value the treasure I was grasping ignorantly.
But I had grasped it. This is Fulano! Except
for him, I might doubt. Except for his presence,
the other drawing of an old brick manor-house
would be a commonplace circumstance.
“Now let me see,” I thought, pushing aside
my letter to Short for a moment, “what are my
facts?
“Mr. Clitheroe and his daughter have disappeared,
and are probably in London.
“I have found — God be thanked! — a clew,
perhaps a clew. Work by the lady's hand.
“And where? In Padiham's shop.
-- 333 --
[figure description] Page 333.[end figure description]
“Padiham is a Lancashire man. So is Mr.
Clitheroe.
“Padiham has a horror of Mormons. Why
was I so hurried as not to pursue the conversation,
and discover what special cause he had for
his disgust?
“Padiham, in a secluded part of London,
keeps a hospital for the poor and the sick.
“There are bright roses in the upper windows.
No masculine fingers know how to lure blossoms
into being so tenderly.
“Bright roses in the rooms above; able drawings
giving refinement to the rusty shop below.
“Can it be that they are there, under the very
roof of that grim good Samaritan?
“In the three millions have I come upon my
two units?
“Going straight forward and minding my own
business, have I effected in one day what Brent
has failed in utterly after a search of months?
“But let me not neglect the counter facts?
“I did not recognize these pictures when I saw
them. Perhaps what I find in them now is fancy.
My own vivid remembrance of the scene at
Luggernel may be doing artist-work, and dignifying
some commonplace illustration of an old ballad.
Ours was not the first such group since
men were made and horses made for them. Fulano
has had no lack of forefathers in heroism.
-- 334 --
[figure description] Page 334.[end figure description]
“And the manor-house? There are, perhaps,
in Padiham's own county, a hundred such ancient
many-gabled brick halls, a hundred lawns
fair as the one that falls away gently from Mr.
Clitheroe's ancestral mansion, scores of oaks as
stately as the one that was lucky enough to
shadow Wordsworth, and so cool his head for
a sonnet in grateful recompense.
“Padiham may have a daughter who draws
horses and houses to delude me, — imaginative
fellow that I am becoming!
“Or, what do I know? Suppose these fugitives
have taken refuge with Padiham, — it may
be to escape pursuit. Poor Mr. Clitheroe! Who
knows what poverty may have permitted him to
do? Better to hide in Lamely Court than to be
stared at in a prison!
“My facts are slender basis for conclusion,” —
so I avowed to myself on this review.
“But I would rather have a hope than no
hope. The filmiest clew is kinder than no clew.
“I will finish my letter to old Short, dear boy,
inventor of a well-omened Cut-off; I will sleep
like a top, with no mysterious disappearances to
disturb me; I will be with the Dwarf by seven.
If that is Fulano in the drawing, he shall carry
double again. He shall conduct the Lover and
Friend to the Lady.”
-- -- p753-340
CHAPTER XXXII. PADIHAM'S SHOP.
[figure description] Page 335.[end figure description]
How jubilant I felt the next morning as I
made my way toward Lamely Court! The
Thames really seemed to me a pure and lucent
current. I began to fancy that there might be
a stray whiff of ozone in the breezes of Albion.
What a cheerful clock it was, in some steeple
near at hand, that struck seven as I set foot
upon Padiham's steps! What a blessing to a
neighborhood to have a clock so utterly incredulous
of dolefulness, — a clock that said All 's well
to the past hour, and prophesied All 's well to the
coming!
“Now,” I thought, “I must have my wits
about me. My business is with Padiham the
mechanic, not with Padiham the good Samaritan.
My time and mind belong to Short's
Cut-off. I must not dash off into impertinent
queries about people the dwarf may know nothing
of, may wish to tell nothing of. Keep cool,
Richard Wade! mind your own business, and
then you can mind other people's. Be ready to
-- 336 --
[figure description] Page 336.[end figure description]
be disappointed! Destiny is not so easy to propitiate
as you seemed to believe last night.
As the clock dallied on its last stroke of seven,
I entered Padiham's shop.
My first glance — eyes never looked more
earnestly — was toward the two drawings.
There they were, — fact not fancy.
I could still hold to the joy of a hope.
They were too far away in this dusky corner
for absolute recognition; but there were the
familiar gables of the old hall; and there was
my horse, yes, himself, bending over that very
group of Luggernel Springs. I must cling to
my confidence; I would not doubt. If I doubted,
I should become a stupid bungler over the models,
and probably disgust Padiham by my awkwardness.
“Good morning, Mr. Padiham.”
“Good morning,” said he, in that hearty voice
which resolutely declined being surly.
He was standing, filing away, just where I had
left him yesterday. Put him on a pair of properly
elongated legs, shake the reefs out of his
ribs, in short, let Procrustes have half an hour
at him, and a very distinguished-looking man
would be George Padiham. In fact, as he was,
his remarkable head raised him above pity. Many
of us would consent to be dwarfed, to be half
man below the Adam's apple, if above it we
-- 337 --
[figure description] Page 337.[end figure description]
could wear the head of a Jupiter Tonans, such a
majestic head as this stunted man, the chief
artisan of all England.
Padiham was as gruff as yesterday, but his
gruffness gave him flavor. Better a boor than
a flunkey. There is excitement in talking with
a man who respects you exactly in proportion
to your power, and ignores you if you are a
muff.
We went at our work without delay. For
nearly two hours I put myself and kept myself
at Short's Cut-off. Padiham's skill and readiness
astonished me. Great artists are labor-saving
machines to themselves; they leap to a conclusion
in a moment, where a potterer would be
becalmed for a tide.
By and by, I found that I could be of no further
use to this master craftsman.
“You understand this job better than I do,”
said I.
“I understand it,” said he.
“I 'll take a short spell,” said I, “and look
about the shop a little.”
“Don't be setting my tools by the ears.”
“No; I want to see those pictures by the
chimney.”
He said nothing. His lathe buzzed. His chisel
tortured bars of metal until they shrieked. The
fragrance of fresh-cut steel filled the shop.
-- 338 --
[figure description] Page 338.[end figure description]
I sprang to the dusky corner. My heart choked
me. I wanted to shout so that John Brent, miles
away across the wilderness of the great city,
could hear and come with one step.
For here was what I hoped.
Here we were, our very selves, in this bold,
masterly drawing. John Brent himself, the
wounded knight; myself, bringing him water
from the fountain; our dear Ellen, kneeling
beside; and bending over us, Don Fulano, the
chiefest hero of that terrible ride through the
cañon.
And more, if I needed proof. For here, in
among the water-plants by the spring, there in
the grass under Wordsworth's oak, lurked the
initials, E. C.
Found! Ah, not yet. A clew; but perhaps
a clew that would break in my hands, as I
traced it.
I lost no time.
“These are pretty pictures,” said I, crushing
myself into self-possession.
“What has that got to do with this job?”
“You think I 'm a pretty good mechanic?”
“Middling. You handle tools well enough for
a gentleman.”
“Well, if I were not a bit of an artist, I should
not even be a middling mechanic. I like to see
fine art, such as these drawings, hung up before
-- 339 --
[figure description] Page 339.[end figure description]
a working man. I can understand how appreciating
such things has helped you to become the
first mechanic in England.”
“Who says I am that?”
“So the first engineer in England told me
when he sent me here.”
“O, he sent you! I supposed you did not
find your own way.”
“There has been no chance in my coming
here,” said I, and my heart thanked God.
“You 're right about those drawings, young
man,” Padiham said, and his voice seemed to
find a sweeter tone even than before. “They
do me good, and put a finer edge on my work.
They 're good work, and by a good hand.”
“Whose?”
The dwarf turned about and surveyed me
strictly. Then he started his lathe again, tore
off a narrow ringlet of steel from a bit he was
shaping, and flung another stream of steely perfume
into the air.
“Whose hand?” I asked again.
“Do you ask because you want to know, or
only to make idle talk?”
“I want to know.”
“What for?”
“I think the drawings are good. I should
like a pair by the same hand. Can you direct
me to the artist?”
-- 340 --
[figure description] Page 340.[end figure description]
“No.”
“Why not?”
“The artist don't like strangers. I will order
you what you want.”
“That will not do. I prefer to talk over the
subjects with the painter.”
The dwarf turned again and gave me a probing
look, and again took up his chisel and cut
shining curls without reply.
I grew impatient of this parley. He knew
something, and it must out.
“Look at me, George Padiham!” I said.
“Stop your lathe a minute, and charge me for
the time a hundred times over! I know the
hand that painted these pictures. My portrait
and my friend's, and my horse's portrait, are
here on your wall. Only one person in the
world can have painted them, Ellen Clitheroe.
Here are her initials in the corner. You know
where she is. I wish to see her. I must see
her, at once, now!”
“Keep cool, young man! This is my shop.
I 'm master here. I 've put bigger men than
you out of this door before. What 's all this
must and shall about? What 's your name?”
“Richard Wade.”
Padiham left his lathe, came toward me, surveyed
me earnestly again, and then took down
the drawing wherein I appeared. He compared
-- 341 --
[figure description] Page 341.[end figure description]
the man standing before him with his counterfeit
presentment. There could be no mistaking
me. I had the honor to resemble myself, as the
artist had remembered me.
“You 're the man,” said Padiham. “I 've
heard of you. I was n't looking sharp not to
have known you when you first came in and
stood there by the door waiting for me to speak
first. Richard Wade, give me your hand! I
suppose if I am the best mechanic in England,
called so on good authority, you wont mind
striking palms with me.”
I shook him by the hand pretty vigorously.
“You 've got a middling strong grip of your
fist for one of the overgrown sort,” said he.
“Where 's your friend, John Brent?”
“Here in London, searching for Miss Clitheroe!”
“Where 's your horse? — the Black?”
“Dead! Shot and drowned in the Missouri,
helping off a fugitive slave.”
“That 's brave. Well, Richard Wade, my
dear child Ellen Clitheroe and her father are
here in my house. They are safe here, after all
their troubles, up in that room where perhaps
you marked the roses in the window. She has
been sick at heart to have heard nothing from
you since she came to England. It will be the
one thing she lacks to see you, and if you will
-- 342 --
[figure description] Page 342.[end figure description]
let me say a few words to you first, I 'll take
you to them.”
“Go on. If you have protected my friends,
you are my friend, and I want to hear what you
have to say.”
-- -- p753-348
CHAPTER XXXIII. “CAST THY BREAD UPON THE WATERS. ”
[figure description] Page 343.[end figure description]
“I am short, and I shall try to make a long
story short,” said Padiham. “I wish to tell you,
in as few words as I may, why Mr. Clitheroe and
his daughter are in my house.
“Look at me, a stunted man! Life in a coal-mine
stunted me. I suppose I was born underground.
I know that I never remember when I
was not at work, either harnessed like a dog, and
dragging coals through a shop where I could not
stand upright, or, when I grew stronger, — bigger
I was not to grow, — down in the darkest holes,
beating out with a pickaxe stuff to make other
men's houses warm and cheery. If I had had
air and sun and light and hope, I might have
been a shapely man.
“It was in Lancashire, the coal-mine where
I had been shut up, boy and man, some twenty
years, as I reckon. There came one day a
weakly man, who had n't been used to work
hard, into the shaft, and they put him at drawing
out the coals I dug. Hugh was the name he
-- 344 --
[figure description] Page 344.[end figure description]
gave, and he had n't been long enough underground
to get his face black, before we 'd baptized
him Gentleman Hugh. I had never seen a gentleman
to know him, but I had a feeling of what
one ought to be, and so had my mates in the pit.
Gentleman Hugh seemed to us to suit the nickname
we gave him. We 're roughs down in the
coal-pits, and some of us are brutes enough; but
Gentleman Hugh managed to get us all on his
side, and there was n't a man of us that would n't
give him a lift.
“Gentleman Hugh took a fancy to me, and so
did I to him. Nature had misused me, and life
had misused him. We had something to pity
each other for. But I had the advantage in the
dark damp hole where we worked. I had lost
nothing; I knew of nothing better; I was healthy
and strong, if I was stunted; I could help Gentleman
Hugh, and save him wearing himself out.
And so I did. He was the first person or creature
I had ever cared for.
“I did what I could for him in lightening his
work; but he gave me back a hundred times
what I could give. I was hands without head,
or without any head that could make my hands
of use. He had head enough, and things in his
head, but his hands were never meant for tools to
get a living. Gentleman Hugh waked up my
brains. I knew how to pick and dig, and
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sometimes wondered if that was all I should ever be
at. But air and daylight seemed as if they did
not belong to me. I was a drudge, and never
thought of anything but drudging, until Gentleman
Hugh came down into my shaft and began
to tell me what there was outside of coal-mines.
“He told me about himself; that he was Hugh
Clitheroe, a gentleman, and how he had been
ruined by factories and coal speculations. It
was his losing his fortune in a coal-mine that set
him on coming into ours to make his bread, and
poor bread too, for a gentleman. He said he
was sick of daylight. It was better to be a
drudge, so he said, down in the blackest and
wettest hole of any coal-pit in Lancashire, than
to beg bread of men that pretended to be his
friends when he was rich, and sneered at him for
his folly in losing his wealth. I found out that
there were wrongs and brutality above ground as
well as under it.
“By and by, when Gentleman Hugh and I had
got to be friends, he took me one holiday and
showed me his daughter. She was a sweet little
lass. He had left her with the rough women, the
miners' wives. But she had her own way with
them, just as he had had with us. They called
her little Lady Ellen, and would have cut up their
own brats, if they had n't been too tough, if she
had wanted such diet. Little Ellen, sweet lass!
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was not afraid of me, Dwarf George and Runt
George as they called me. She did not run
away and cry, or point and laugh at me as the
other children did. She was picking daisies on
the edge of an old coal-pit when we first saw
her, — a little curly-haired lass of five years old.
She was crowned with daisies, and she did n't
seem to me to belong to the same class of beings
as the grimy things I had been among all my
days. She gave me a daisy, and asked me if I
knew who made it. And when I said I did n't
know, unless it came of itself, she named God to
me. Nobody had named God to me before except
in oaths.
“Do I tire you, sir,” said Padiham, “with this
talk about myself?”
“Certainly not; you interest me greatly.”
“The old gentleman will hardly be ready to
see you yet. It is almost nine, and at the stroke
of nine he has his breakfast. I always go up
then to give him good morning. You can go
with me.”
“Meantime, tell me how you found them
again.”
“I found them by a drawing of hers. But I
will go on straightforward with my story.
“I could n't stay a dolt, though I had to
drudge for many a day after I first saw little
Ellen, and she gave me the daisy and named God
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to me. Whenever I could get away, and that
was only once a quarter or a half-year, I went up
to see her. She made a friend of me, and told
me to take care of her father. He was very
much down, quite broken and helpless, with just
enough strength to do half his appointed work.
So I helped him with the rest.
“After a long time the owners found out that
he had education, and they took him into the
office. All the men were sorry to lose Gentleman
Hugh, and when he went, I lost heart, and
took to drinking up my miserable earnings with
the rest. There I was, a drudge in the dark, and
getting to be a drunkard, when Gentleman Hugh
came to me and told me how some one had left
him a legacy, and I must get out of the pit and
share with him. He said little Ellen would not
be happy unless she had me.
“So he took me up into the air and sun, and
put me to school. But I could never learn much
out of books. Put tools in my hands and I can
make things, and that is what my business is in
the world. You see those arms, well made as
your own. You see those hands, strong as a
vice, and those fingers, fine as a woman's. They
are tools, and able to handle tools. The rest of
my body is stunted; my brain is stunted. I 'm
no fool; but I 'm not the man I ought to be.
Every day I feel that I cannot put my thoughts
into the highest form.”
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“Every man of any power feels that,” I said,
“by whatever machinery his power finds expression.”
“Perhaps so. Well, when Mr. Clitheroe had
once given me a start in the open air, and I had
got tools in my hands, pretty soon they began to
talk of me as one of the masters in Lancashire.
There 's a great call in England for thorough
workmen. I came up to London. I fell in with
the gentleman who sent you here, and I got on
well. There 's as much good work goes out of
this little shop as out of some big establishments
with great names over the door. People try to
get me to start a great shop, and make a great
fortune, and have George Padiham talked about.
But I 'm Dwarf George, born in a coal-mine and
stunted in a coal-mine; and Lamely Court, with
my little shop in the basement, suits me best.
“I never forgot how I owed all my good luck
to Gentleman Hugh and my dear little Ellen. If
it had not been for them, I should have died
underground of hard work, before thirty, as most
of my mates did. Their help of me gave me a
kindly feeling toward broken-down gentlefolks.
I owed the class my luck, and when I got on and
had money to spend, having no one of my own
to spend it for, I looked up people as badly off
as Gentleman Hugh was when I first knew him,
and helped them. They are a hard class to help,
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— proud as Lucifer sometimes, with their own
kind. I took this house here, out of the way as
much as any spot in London. Whenever I knew
of a gentleman, or a gentlewoman, given out, or
worn out, so that they could n't take care of
themselves, I brought them in here. If they
were only given out, I put stuff into them again,
cheered them up, and found some work for them
to do. Gentlefolks are not such fools, if they
only had education. If I found one that was
worn out beyond all patching, I packed him into
a snug corner up-stairs, and let him lie there.
They like it better than public hospitals and
retreats.
“All the while I was getting on and getting
rich in a small way, with some small shares in
patents I own. But I kept my eye on Gentleman
Hugh. I knew what would come to him,
and I never took in ten shillings that I did not
put away one for him and his daughter.
“I knew of his going to America with the Mormons, —
damn 'em! I went down to Clitheroe to
persuade him to give up the plan. He would
not. He quarrelled with me, — our first hard
words. He forbade his daughter to write to me.
“I knew he would come back some time or
other, stripped and needy. I watched the packet's
lists of passengers. He did not come under
his own name; but I saw last winter an old
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Lancashire name on a list of arrivals, — the name of
that worn-out shaft where Ellen had picked the
daisy for me. It was a favorite spot of his.
Part of his money had gone down it, and he used
to sit and stare into it as if the money was going
to bubble up again. I traced them by that to
London. Here for a time I lost them.
“He got very low in London, — poor old man!”
continued Padiham.
“Nothing dishonest, I hope,” said I.
“No, no. Only gambling, with a crazy hope of
getting even with the world again. In this way
he spent all that he had left, and Ellen's hard
earnings beside. It made him wild for her to refuse
him; so she was forced to give him all that
she could spare, — all except just enough to pay
for a poor place to live in and poorer fare. She
never knew where he spent the long nights; she
only saw him creep back to his garret in the early
morning destitute and half alive. Richard Wade,
you may read books, and hear tales, and go
through the world looking for women that help
and hope, and never give up helping and hoping;
but you 'll never find another like her, — no, not
like my dear lass, — as grand a beauty, too, as
any at the Queen's court.”
“You are right, Padiham. None like her.”
“But I promised you to talk as short as I
could. I must tell you how I found them. The
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poor gentle-folks that I take care of generally
know something of ornamental work that they
learnt to do, for play, when they were better off.
I set them at doing what they can do best, and
sell it for them. There is always some one
among my family can draw. What of their
drawings I can't dispose of at the print-shops I
buy myself, and scatter 'em round among mechanics
to light up their benches. You were
right when you said a man cannot be a good
artisan unless he has a bit of the artist in him.
“It was by going to a print-shop with drawings
to sell that I found my dear lass. She had
painted me, and sold the picture to the dealer
for bread. I would n't have noticed the picture
except for the dwarf in it, and now I would n't
be a finished man for the world. Yes, there I
was, Dwarf George, picking daisies on the edge
of a coal-pit; there I was, just as I used to look,
with the coal-dust ground into me, trying to
make friends with the fresh innocent daisies in
the sunshine.
“By that picture I found them just in time.
When I got to their garret, Ellen was lying sick,
ill in body, and tired and sorrowed out. Their
money was all gone, for Gentleman Hugh had
been robbed of his last the night before. I
brought my dear child and her father here. What
I had was theirs.
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“As soon as her father was safe with me, his
old friend, she got well. As soon as his daughter
was out of the way of harm and want, and the
old gentleman had nothing to be crazy about and
nothing to run away from, he stopped dead. He
fell into a palsy.
“There he is now up-stairs. Ellen chose the
upper room, where they could look over the
house-tops and of clear days see the Surrey Hills.
I 've got some skill in my fingers for mending
broken men, but Hugh Clitheroe can't be mended.
It 's as well for him that he can't. He 's
been off track too long ever to run steady in this
world. But he has come to himself, and sees
things clearer at last. He lies there contented
and patient, waiting for his end. He sees his
daughter, who has gone with him though thick
and thin, by his side, and knows she will love
him closer every day. And he knows that his
old mate, Dwarf George, is down here in the
basement, strong enough to keep all up and all
together.”
“Let me be the one, Mr. Padiham,” said I,
“to ask the honor of shaking hands with you.
I think better of the world for your sake.”
“Young man,” said he, with his clear, frank
voice, “a noble woman like my Ellen betters
every true man. There strikes nine. A pleasant
church-clock that! I gave it to 'em. Now
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you 're well tired of my talk, I dare say. Come,
Ellen will have all she has missed when she sees
you and your friend. Many times she has told
me of that ride of yours. Many times she has
cried, as a woman only cries for one loss, when
she told me how day after day she waited to hear
from you, and had never heard.”
“She wrote?”
“Repeatedly.”
“We never heard.”
“Her father took her letters from her to
post.”
“And kept them or destroyed them for some
crazy suspicion.”
“She dreaded you might have been chased
and cut off by the Mormons. She would not
believe that you had forgotten her.”
“Forgotten! Come, I 'll follow you.”
-- -- p753-359
CHAPTER XXXIV. THE LAST OF A LOVE-CHASE.
[figure description] Page 354.[end figure description]
“How easy it seems for noble souls to be noble!”
thought I, as I followed Padiham up the
neat staircase of his House of Charity. “What
a beautiful vengeance it is of this man upon
nature for blighting him! A meaner being
would be soured, and turn cynic, and perhaps
chuckle that others were equalized with him by
suffering. He simply, and as if it were a matter
of course, gives himself to baffling sorrow and
blight. It is Godlike.” And I looked with
renewed admiration at the strange figure climbing
the stairs before me.
He was all head and shoulders, and his motions
were like a clumsy child's. I went slowly
after him. Was it true that this long love-chase
over land and sea was at its ending? Joy is
always a giant surprise, — success a disappointment
among the appointed failures. Was this
grim dwarf to be a conjurer of happiness?
Padiham tapped at a door in the upper story.
A voice said, “Come in.”
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Her voice! That sweet, sad voice! That unmurmuring,
unrebellious voice! That voice of
gentle defiance, speaking a soul impregnable!
How full of calm hopefulness! while yet I could
detect in it the power of bursting into all the horror
of that dread scream that had come through
the stillness to our camp at Fort Bridger.
The dwarf opened the door quietly.
The sunshine of that fresh June morning lay
bright upon the roses in the window. My glance
perceived the old blue-gray infantry surtout hanging
in a corner. Mr. Clitheroe was sitting up
in bed, lifting a tea-cup with his left hand. His
long white beard drifted over the cool bedclothes.
An appetizing breakfast, neatly served, was upon
a table beside him. And there in this safe
haven, hovering about him tenderly as ever in
the days of his errant voyaging in the hapless
time gone by, was his ministering angel, that
dear daughter, the sister of my choice.
She turned as we entered.
The old steady, faithful look in the gray eyes.
The same pale, saddened beauty. The unblenching
gaze of patient waiting.
She looked at me vaguely, while life paused
one pulse. Then, as I stepped forward, the eloquent
blood gushed into her face, — for she knew
that the friend could not long outrun the lover.
She sprang into my arms. Forgive me, John
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Brent, if I did put my lips close to her burning
cheek. It was only to whisper, “He is in London,
searching for you. He has never rested
one moment since you were lost to us. In an
hour he will be here.”
“Dear father,” she said, drawing herself away,
and smiling all aglow, while tears proclaimed
a joy too deep for any surface smile to speak,
“this is our dear friend, my preserver, Mr.
Wade.”
Mr. Clitheroe studied me with a bewildered
look, as I have seen an old hulk of a mariner
peer anxiously into a driving sea-fog from the
shore, while he talked of shipmates shaken from
the yard, or of brave ships that sunk in unknown
seas. Then the mist slowly cleared away
from the old gentleman's dim eyes, and he saw
me in the scenery of my acting with him.
“Ah yes!” he said, in a mild, dreamy voice,
“I see it all. Sizzum's train, Fort Bridger, the
Ball, the man with a bloody blanket on his head,
you and your friend galloping off over the prairie, —
I see it all.”
He paused, and seemed to review all that wild
error of his into the wilderness.
“Yes, I see it all,” he continued. “My dear
Mr. Wade, I remember you with unspeakable
gratitude. You and your friend saved me this
dearest daughter. I have suffered wearing
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distress since then, and you must pardon me for
forgetting you one instant. Excuse my left
hand! Dwarf George is a capital machinist,
but he says he cannot put new springs into my
right. That is nothing, my dear Mr. Wade,
that is nothing. God has given me peace of
mind at last, my dear daughter has forgiven
me all my old follies, and my stanch old mate
will never let me want a roof over my head, or
a crust of his bread and a sup of his can.”
There is a Hansom cab-horse, now or late of
London, who must remember me with asperity.
But then there is a cabman who is my friend
for life, if a giant fare can win a cabman's
heart.
By the side of the remembrance of my gallop
down Luggernel Alley, I have a picture in
my mind of myself, in a cab, cutting furiously
through the cañons of London in chase of a
lover. The wolves and cayotes of the by-streets —
there are no antelopes in London — did not attempt
to follow our headlong speed. We rattled
across Westminster Bridge, up Whitehall, and
so into May Fair to Lady Biddulph's door.
The footman — why did he grin when he saw
me? — recognized me as the family friend of yesterday,
and ushered me without ceremony into
the breakfast-room, where the family were all
assembled.
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Why did the footman grin? I perceived, as
I entered. A mirror fronted me. My face was
like a Sioux's in his war-paint. There had been
flies in Padiham's shop, and I had brushed them
away from my face, alas! with hands blackened
over the lathe.
All looked up amazed at this truculent intruder.
It was, —
“Enter Orlando, with his sword drawn.”
“Forbear, and eat no more!”
An injunction not necessary for poor Brent,
who sat dreary and listless.
The rest forbore at my apparition. Egg-spoon
paused at egg's mouth. Sugar sank to the floor
of coffee-cup. Toast silenced its crackle.
Brent recognized me in the grimy pirate before
him.
He sprang to his feet. “You have found
her!” cried he.
“Yes.”
He looked at me eagerly.
“Well and happy,” I said; “in a safe haven
with a faithful friend. Lady Biddulph will pardon
me, bringing such tidings, for rushing in
in my war-paint, American fashion.”
“You are always welcome, Mr. Wade, in what
costume you please,” said she. “Doubly so
with this happy news. My dear Ellen! I must
see her at once, — as soon as closer friends have
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had their hour. But, Mr. Brent, you are not
going without your breakfast!”
Everybody smiled.
“Come! Come!” cried Brent.
“Come!” and as we hurried away, there was
again the same light in his eye, — the same life
and ardor in his whole being, as when, in that
wild Love-Chase on the Plains, we galloped side
by side.
THE END.
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Winthrop, Theodore, 1828-1861 [1862], John Brent (Ticknor and Fields, Boston) [word count] [eaf753T].
