Chapter II: Part 2

“Some good advice,--you know,” said Harkutt, hastily. “But come, you'd better hurry over to the squire's. You know YOU'VE made the discovery; YOUR evidence is important, and there's a law that obliges you to give information at once.”

The excitement of discovery and the triumph over his disputants being spent, Peters, after the Sidon fashion, evidently did not relish activity as a duty. “You know,” he said dubiously, “he mightn't be dead, after all.”

Harkutt became a trifle distant. “You know your own opinion of the thing,” he replied after a pause. “You've circumstantial evidence enough to see the squire, and set others to work on it; and,” he added significantly, “you've done your share then, and can wipe your hands of it, eh?”

“That's so,” said Peters, eagerly. “I'll just run over to the squire.”

“And on account of the women folks, you know, and the strangers here, I'll say nothin' about it to-night,” added Harkutt.

Peters nodded his head, and taking up the hat of the unfortunate Elijah with a certain hesitation, as if he feared it had already lost its dramatic intensity as a witness, disappeared into the storm and darkness again. A lurking gust of wind lying in ambush somewhere seemed to swoop down on him as if to prevent further indecision and whirl him away in the direction of the justice's house; and Mr. Harkutt shut the door, bolted it, and walked aimlessly back to the counter.

From a slow, deliberate and cautious man, he seemed to have changed within an hour to an irresolute and capricious one. He took the paper from his pocket, and, unlocking the money drawer of his counter, folded into a small compass that which now seemed to be the last testament of Elijah Curtis, and placed it in a recess. Then he went to the back door and paused, then returned, reopened the money drawer, took out the paper and again buttoned it in his hip pocket, standing by the stove and staring abstractedly at the dull glow of the fire. He even went through the mechanical process of raking down the ashes,--solely to gain time and as an excuse for delaying some other necessary action.

He was thinking what he should do. Had the question of his right to retain and make use of that paper been squarely offered to him an hour ago, he would without doubt have decided that he ought not to keep it. Even now, looking at it as an abstract principle, he did not deceive himself in the least. But Nature has the reprehensible habit of not presenting these questions to us squarely and fairly, and it is remarkable that in most of our offending the abstract principle is never the direct issue. Mr. Harkutt was conscious of having been unwillingly led step by step into a difficult, not to say dishonest, situation, and against his own seeking. He had never asked Elijah to sell him the property; he had distinctly declined it; it had even been forced upon him as security for the pittance he so freely gave him. This proved (to himself) that he himself was honest; it was only the circumstances that were queer. Of course if Elijah had lived, he, Harkutt, might have tried to drive some bargain with him before the news of the railroad survey came out--for THAT was only business. But now that Elijah was dead, who would be a penny the worse or better but himself if he chose to consider the whole thing as a lucky speculation, and his gift of five dollars as the price he paid for it? Nobody could think that he had calculated upon 'Lige's suicide, any more than that the property would become valuable. In fact if it came to that, if 'Lige had really contemplated killing himself as a hopeless bankrupt after taking Harkutt's money as a loan, it was a swindle on his--Harkutt's--good-nature. He worked himself into a rage, which he felt was innately virtuous, at this tyranny of cold principle over his own warm-hearted instincts, but if it came to the LAW, he'd stand by law and not sentiment. He'd just let them--by which he vaguely meant the world, Tasajara, and possibly his own conscience--see that he wasn't a sentimental fool, and he'd freeze on to that paper and that property!

Only he ought to have spoken out before. He ought to have told the surveyor at once that he owned the land. He ought to have said: “Why, that's my land. I bought it of that drunken 'Lige Curtis for a song and out of charity.” Yes, that was the only real trouble, and that came from his own goodness, his own extravagant sense of justice and right,--his own cursed good-nature. Yet, on second thoughts, he didn't know why he was obliged to tell the surveyor. Time enough when the company wanted to buy the land. As soon as it was settled that 'Lige was dead he'd openly claim the property. But what if he wasn't dead? or they couldn't find his body? or he had only disappeared? His plain, matter-of-fact face contracted and darkened. Of course he couldn't ask the company to wait for him to settle that point. He had the power to dispose of the property under that paper, and--he should do it. If 'Lige turned up, that was another matter, and he and 'Lige could arrange it between them. He was quite firm here, and oddly enough quite relieved in getting rid of what appeared only a simple question of detail. He never suspected that he was contemplating the one irretrievable step, and summarily dismissing the whole ethical question.

He turned away from the stove, opened the back door, and walked with a more determined step through the passage to the sitting-room. But here he halted again on the threshold with a quick return of his old habits of caution. The door was slightly open; apparently his angry outbreak of an hour ago had not affected the spirits of his daughters, for he could hear their hilarious voices mingling with those of the strangers. They were evidently still fortune-telling, but this time it was the prophetic and divining accents of Mr. Rice addressed to Clementina which were now plainly audible.

“I see heaps of money and a great many friends in the change that is coming to you. Dear me! how many suitors! But I cannot promise you any marriage as brilliant as my friend has just offered your sister. You may be certain, however, that you'll have your own choice in this, as you have in all things.”

“Thank you for nothing,” said Clementina's voice. “But what are those horrid black cards beside them?--that's trouble, I'm sure.”

“Not for you, though near you. Perhaps some one you don't care much for and don't understand will have a heap of trouble on your account,--yes, on account of these very riches; see, he follows the ten of diamonds. It may be a suitor; it may be some one now in the house, perhaps.”

“He means himself, Miss Clementina,” struck in Grant's voice laughingly.

“You're not listening, Miss Harkutt,” said Rice with half-serious reproach. “Perhaps you know who it is?”

But Miss Clementina's reply was simply a hurried recognition of her father's pale face that here suddenly confronted her with the opening door.

“Why, it's father!”

CHAPER III.

In his strange mental condition even the change from Harkutt's feeble candle to the outer darkness for a moment blinded Elijah Curtis, yet it was part of that mental condition that he kept moving steadily forward as in a trance or dream, though at first purposelessly. Then it occurred to him that he was really looking for his horse, and that the animal was not there. This for a moment confused and frightened him, first with the supposition that he had not brought him at all, but that it was part of his delusion; secondly, with the conviction that without his horse he could neither proceed on the course suggested by Harkutt, nor take another more vague one that was dimly in his mind. Yet in his hopeless vacillation it seemed a relief that now neither was practicable, and that he need do nothing. Perhaps it was a mysterious providence!

The explanation, however, was much simpler. The horse had been taken by the luxurious and indolent Billings unknown to his companions. Overcome at the dreadful prospect of walking home in that weather, this perfect product of lethargic Sidon had artfully allowed Peters and Wingate to precede him, and, cautiously unloosing the tethered animal, had safely passed them in the darkness. When he gained his own inclosure he had lazily dismounted, and, with a sharp cut on the mustang's haunches, sent him galloping back to rejoin his master, with what result has been already told by the unsuspecting Peters in the preceding chapter.

Yet no conception of this possibility entered 'Lige Curtis's alcoholized consciousness, part of whose morbid phantasy it was to distort or exaggerate all natural phenomena. He had a vague idea that he could not go back to Harkutt's; already his visit seemed to have happened long, long ago, and could not be repeated. He would walk on, enwrapped in this uncompromising darkness which concealed everything, suggested everything, and was responsible for everything.

It was very dark, for the wind, having lulled, no longer thinned the veil of clouds above, nor dissipated a steaming mist that appeared to rise from the sodden plain. Yet he moved easily through the darkness, seeming to be upheld by it as something tangible, upon which he might lean. At times he thought he heard voices,--not a particular voice he was thinking of, but strange voices--of course unreal to his present fancy. And then he heard one of these voices, unlike any voice in Sidon, and very faint and far off, asking if it “was anywhere near Sidon?”--evidently some one lost like himself. He answered in a voice that seemed quite as unreal and as faint, and turned in the direction from which it came. There was a light moving like a will-o'-the-wisp far before him, yet below him as if coming out of the depths of the earth. It must be fancy, but he would see--ah!

He had fallen violently forward, and at the same moment felt his revolver leap from his breast pocket like a living thing, and an instant after explode upon the rock where it struck, blindingly illuminating the declivity down which he was plunging. The sulphurous sting of burning powder was in his eyes and nose, yet in that swift revealing flash he had time to clutch the stems of a trailing vine beside him, but not to save his head from sharp contact with the same rocky ledge that had caught his pistol. The pain and shock gave way to a sickening sense of warmth at the roots of his hair. Giddy and faint, his fingers relaxed, he felt himself sinking, with a languor that was half acquiescence, down, down,--until, with another shock, a wild gasping for air, and a swift reaction, he awoke in the cold, rushing water!

Clear and perfectly conscious now, though frantically fighting for existence with the current, he could dimly see a floating black object shooting by the shore, at times striking the projections of the bank, until in its recoil it swung half round and drifted broadside on towards him. He was near enough to catch the frayed ends of a trailing rope that fastened the structure, which seemed to be a few logs, together. With a convulsive effort he at last gained a footing upon it, and then fell fainting along its length. It was the raft which the surveyors from the embarcadero had just abandoned.

He did not know this, nor would he have thought it otherwise strange that a raft might be a part of the drift of the overflow, even had he been entirely conscious; but his senses were failing, though he was still able to keep a secure position on the raft, and to vaguely believe that it would carry him to some relief and succor. How long he lay unconscious he never knew; in his after-recollections of that night, it seemed to have been haunted by dreams of passing dim banks and strange places; of a face and voice that had been pleasant to him; of a terror coming upon him as he appeared to be nearing a place like that home that he had abandoned in the lonely tules. He was roused at last by a violent headache, as if his soft felt hat had been changed into a tightening crown of iron. Lifting his hand to his head to tear off its covering, he was surprised to find that he was wearing no hat, but that his matted hair, stiffened and dried with blood and ooze, was clinging like a cap to his skull in the hot morning sunlight. His eyelids and lashes were glued together and weighted down by the same sanguinary plaster. He crawled to the edge of his frail raft, not without difficulty, for it oscillated and rocked strangely, and dipped his hand in the current. When he had cleared his eyes he lifted them with a shock of amazement. Creeks, banks, and plain had disappeared; he was alone on a bend of the tossing bay of San Francisco!

His first and only sense--cleared by fasting and quickened by reaction--was one of infinite relief. He was not only free from the vague terrors of the preceding days and nights, but his whole past seemed to be lost and sunk forever in this illimitable expanse. The low plain of Tasajara, with its steadfast monotony of light and shadow, had sunk beneath another level, but one that glistened, sparkled, was instinct with varying life, and moved and even danced below him. The low palisades of regularly recurring tules that had fenced in, impeded, but never relieved the blankness of his horizon, were forever swallowed up behind him. All trail of past degradation, all record of pain and suffering, all footprints of his wandering and misguided feet were smoothly wiped out in that obliterating sea. He was physically helpless, and he felt it; he was in danger, and he knew it,--but he was free!

Happily there was but little wind and the sea was slight. The raft was still intact so far as he could judge, but even in his ignorance he knew it would scarcely stand the surges of the lower bay. Like most Californians who had passed the straits of Carquinez at night in a steamer, he did not recognize the locality, nor even the distant peak of Tamalpais. There were a few dotting sails that seemed as remote, as uncertain, and as unfriendly as sea birds. The raft was motionless, almost as motionless as he was in his cramped limbs and sun-dried, stiffened clothes. Too weak to keep an upright position, without mast, stick, or oar to lift a signal above that vast expanse, it seemed impossible for him to attract attention. Even his pistol was gone.

Suddenly, in an attempt to raise himself, he was struck by a flash so blinding that it seemed to pierce his aching eyes and brain and turned him sick. It appeared to come from a crevice between the logs at the further end of the raft. Creeping painfully towards it he saw that it was a triangular slip of highly polished metal that he had hitherto overlooked. He did not know that it was a “flashing” mirror used in topographical observation, which had slipped from the surveyors' instruments when they abandoned the raft, but his excited faculties instinctively detected its value to him. He lifted it, and, facing the sun, raised it at different angles with his feeble arms. But the effort was too much for him; the raft presently seemed to be whirling with his movement, and he again fell.

*****

“Ahoy there!”

The voice was close upon--in his very ears. He opened his eyes. The sea still stretched emptily before him; the dotting sails still unchanged and distant. Yet a strange shadow lay upon the raft. He turned his head with difficulty. On the opposite side--so close upon him as to be almost over his head--the great white sails of a schooner hovered above him like the wings of some enormous sea bird. Then a heavy boom swung across the raft, so low that it would have swept him away had he been in an upright position; the sides of the vessel grazed the raft and she fell slowly off. A terrible fear of abandonment took possession of him; he tried to speak, but could not. The vessel moved further away, but the raft followed! He could see now it was being held by a boat-hook,--could see the odd, eager curiosity on two faces that were raised above the taffrail, and with that sense of relief his eyes again closed in unconsciousness.

A feeling of chilliness, followed by a grateful sensation of drawing closer under some warm covering, a stinging taste in his mouth of fiery liquor and the aromatic steam of hot coffee, were his first returning sensations. His head and neck were swathed in coarse bandages, and his skin stiffened and smarting with soap. He was lying in a rude berth under a half-deck from which he could see the sky and the bellying sail, and presently a bearded face filled with rough and practical concern that peered down upon him.

“Hulloo! comin' round, eh? Hold on!” The next moment the stranger had leaped down beside Elijah. He seemed to be an odd mingling of the sailor and ranchero with the shrewdness of a seaport trader.

“Hulloo, boss! What was it? A free fight, or a wash-out?”

“A wash-out!”* Elijah grasped the idea as an inspiration. Yes, his cabin had been inundated, he had taken to a raft, had been knocked off twice or thrice, and had lost everything--even his revolver!

* A mining term for the temporary inundation of a claim by
flood; also used for the sterilizing effect of flood on
fertile soil.

The man looked relieved. “Then it ain't a free fight, nor havin' your crust busted and bein' robbed by beach combers, eh?”

“No,” said Elijah, with his first faint smile.

“Glad o' that,” said the man bluntly. “Then thar ain't no police business to tie up to in 'Frisco? We were stuck thar a week once, just because we chanced to pick up a feller who'd been found gagged and then thrown overboard by wharf thieves. Had to dance attendance at court thar and lost our trip.” He stopped and looked half-pathetically at the prostrate Elijah. “Look yer! ye ain't just dyin' to go ashore NOW and see yer friends and send messages, are ye?”

Elijah shuddered inwardly, but outwardly smiled faintly as he replied, “No!”

“And the tide and wind jest servin' us now, ye wouldn't mind keepin' straight on with us this trip?”

“Where to?” asked Elijah.

“Santy Barbara.”

“No,” said Elijah, after a moment's pause. “I'll go with you.”

The man leaped to his feet, lifted his head above the upper deck, shouted “Let her go free, Jerry!” and then turned gratefully to his passenger. “Look yer! A wash-out is a wash-out, I reckon, put it any way you like; it don't put anything back into the land, or anything back into your pocket afterwards, eh? No! And yer well out of it, pardner! Now there's a right smart chance for locatin' jest back of Santy Barbara, where thar ain't no God-forsaken tules to overflow; and ez far ez the land and licker lies ye 'needn't take any water in yours' ef ye don't want it. You kin start fresh thar, pardner, and brail up. What's the matter with you, old man, is only fever 'n' agur ketched in them tules! I kin see it in your eyes. Now you hold on whar you be till I go forrard and see everything taut, and then I'll come back and we'll have a talk.”

And they did. The result of which was that at the end of a week's tossing and seasickness, Elijah Curtis was landed at Santa Barbara, pale, thin, but self-contained and resolute. And having found favor in the eyes of the skipper of the Kitty Hawk, general trader, lumber-dealer, and ranch-man, a week later he was located on the skipper's land and installed in the skipper's service. And from that day, for five years Sidon and Tasajara knew him no more.

CHAPER IV.

It was part of the functions of John Milton Harkutt to take down the early morning shutters and sweep out the store for his father each day before going to school. It was a peculiarity of this performance that he was apt to linger over it, partly from the fact that it put off the evil hour of lessons, partly that he imparted into the process a purely imaginative and romantic element gathered from his latest novel-reading. In this he was usually assisted by one or two school-fellows on their way to school, who always envied him his superior menial occupation. To go to school, it was felt, was a common calamity of boyhood that called into play only the simplest forms of evasion, whereas to take down actual shutters in a bona fide store, and wield a real broom that raised a palpable cloud of dust, was something that really taxed the noblest exertions. And it was the morning after the arrival of the strangers that John Milton stood on the veranda of the store ostentatiously examining the horizon, with his hand shading his eyes, as one of his companions appeared.

“Hollo, Milt! wot yer doin'?”

John Milton started dramatically, and then violently dashed at one of the shutters and began to detach it. “Ha!” he said hoarsely. “Clear the ship for action! Open the ports! On deck there! Steady, you lubbers!” In an instant his enthusiastic school-fellow was at his side attacking another shutter. “A long, low schooner bearing down upon us! Lively, lads, lively!” continued John Milton, desisting a moment to take another dramatic look at the distant plain. “How does she head now?” he demanded fiercely.

“Sou' by sou'east, sir,” responded the other boy, frantically dancing before the window. “But she'll weather it.”

They each then wrested another shutter away, violently depositing them, as they ran to and fro, in a rack at the corner of the veranda. Added to an extraordinary and unnecessary clattering with their feet, they accompanied their movements with a singular hissing sound, supposed to indicate in one breath the fury of the elements, the bustle of the eager crew, and the wild excitement of the coming conflict. When the last shutter was cleared away, John Milton, with the cry “Man the starboard guns!” dashed into the store, whose floor was marked by the muddy footprints of yesterday's buyers, seized a broom and began to sweep violently. A cloud of dust arose, into which his companion at once precipitated himself with another broom and a loud BANG! to indicate the somewhat belated sound of cannon. For a few seconds the two boys plied their brooms desperately in that stifling atmosphere, accompanying each long sweep and puff of dust out of the open door with the report of explosions and loud HA'S! of defiance, until not only the store, but the veranda was obscured with a cloud which the morning sun struggled vainly to pierce. In the midst of this tumult and dusty confusion--happily unheard and unsuspected in the secluded domestic interior of the building--a shrill little voice arose from the road.

“Think you're mighty smart, don't ye?”

The two naval heroes stopped in their imaginary fury, and, as the dust of conflict cleared away, recognized little Johnny Peters gazing at them with mingled inquisitiveness and envy.

“Guess ye don't know what happened down the run last night,” he continued impatiently. “'Lige Curtis got killed, or killed hisself! Blood all over the rock down thar. Seed it, myseff. Dad picked up his six-shooter,--one barrel gone off. My dad was the first to find it out, and he's bin to Squire Kerby tellin' him.”

The two companions, albeit burning with curiosity, affected indifference and pre-knowledge.

“Dad sez your father druv 'Lige outer the store lass night! Dad sez your father's 'sponsible. Dad sez your father ez good ez killed him. Dad sez the squire'll set the constable on your father. Yah!” But here the small insulter incontinently fled, pursued by both the boys. Nevertheless, when he had made good his escape, John Milton showed neither a disposition to take up his former nautical role, nor to follow his companion to visit the sanguinary scene of Elijah's disappearance. He walked slowly back to the store and continued his work of sweeping and putting in order with an abstracted regularity, and no trace of his former exuberant spirits.

The first one of those instinctive fears which are common to imaginative children, and often assume the functions of premonition, had taken possession of him. The oddity of his father's manner the evening before, which had only half consciously made its indelible impression on his sensitive fancy, had recurred to him with Johnny Peters's speech. He had no idea of literally accepting the boy's charges; he scarcely understood their gravity; but he had a miserable feeling that his father's anger and excitement last night was because he had been discovered hunting in the dark for that paper of 'Lige Curtis's. It WAS 'Lige Curtis's paper, for he had seen it lying there. A sudden dreadful conviction came over him that he must never, never let any one know that he had seen his father take up that paper; that he must never admit it, even to HIM. It was not the boy's first knowledge of that attitude of hypocrisy which the grownup world assumes towards childhood, and in which the innocent victims eventually acquiesce with a Machiavellian subtlety that at last avenges them,--but it was his first knowledge that that hypocrisy might not be so innocent. His father had concealed something from him, because it was not right.

But if childhood does not forget, it seldom broods and is not above being diverted. And the two surveyors--of whose heroic advent in a raft John Milton had only heard that morning with their traveled ways, their strange instruments and stranger talk, captured his fancy. Kept in the background by his sisters when visitors came, as an unpresentable feature in the household, he however managed to linger near the strangers when, in company with Euphemia and Clementina, after breakfast they strolled beneath the sparkling sunlight in the rude garden inclosure along the sloping banks of the creek. It was with the average brother's supreme contempt that he listened to his sisters' “practicin'” upon the goodness of these superior beings; it was with an exceptional pity that he regarded the evident admiration of the strangers in return. He felt that in the case of Euphemia, who sometimes evinced a laudable curiosity in his pleasures, and a flattering ignorance of his reading, this might be pardonable; but what any one could find in the useless statuesque Clementina passed his comprehension. Could they not see at once that she was “just that kind of person” who would lie abed in the morning, pretending she was sick, in order to make Phemie do the housework, and make him, John Milton, clean her boots and fetch things for her? Was it not perfectly plain to them that her present sickening politeness was solely with a view to extract from them caramels, rock-candy, and gum drops, which she would meanly keep herself, and perhaps some “buggy-riding” later? Alas, John Milton, it was not! For standing there with her tall, perfectly-proportioned figure outlined against a willow, an elastic branch of which she had drawn down by one curved arm above her head, and on which she leaned--as everybody leaned against something in Sidon--the two young men saw only a straying goddess in a glorified rosebud print. Whether the clearly-cut profile presented to Rice, or the full face that captivated Grant, each suggested possibilities of position, pride, poetry, and passion that astonished while it fascinated them. By one of those instincts known only to the freemasonry of the sex, Euphemia lent herself to this advertisement of her sister's charms by subtle comparison with her own prettinesses, and thus combined against their common enemy, man.

“Clementina certainly is perfect, to keep her supremacy over that pretty little sister,” thought Rice.

“What a fascinating little creature to hold her own against that tall, handsome girl,” thought Grant.

“They're takin' stock o' them two fellers so as to gabble about 'em when their backs is turned,” said John Milton gloomily to himself, with a dismal premonition of the prolonged tea-table gossip he would be obliged to listen to later.

“We were very fortunate to make a landing at all last night,” said Rice, looking down upon the still swollen current, and then raising his eyes to Clementina. “Still more fortunate to make it where we did. I suppose it must have been the singing that lured us on to the bank,--as, you know, the sirens used to lure people,--only with less disastrous consequences.”

John Milton here detected three glaring errors; first, it was NOT Clementina who had sung; secondly, he knew that neither of his sisters had ever read anything about sirens, but he had; thirdly, that the young surveyor was glaringly ignorant of local phenomena and should be corrected.

“It's nothin' but the current,” he said, with that feverish youthful haste that betrays a fatal experience of impending interruption. “It's always leavin' drift and rubbish from everywhere here. There ain't anythin' that's chucked into the creek above that ain't bound to fetch up on this bank. Why, there was two sheep and a dead hoss here long afore YOU thought of coming!” He did not understand why this should provoke the laughter that it did, and to prove that he had no ulterior meaning, added with pointed politeness, “So IT ISN'T YOUR FAULT, you know--YOU couldn't help it;” supplementing this with the distinct courtesy, “otherwise you wouldn't have come.”

“But it would seem that your visitors are not all as accidental as your brother would imply, and one, at least, seems to have been expected last evening. You remember you thought we were a Mr. Parmlee,” said Mr. Rice looking at Clementina.

It would be strange indeed, he thought, if the beautiful girl were not surrounded by admirers. But without a trace of self-consciousness, or any change in her reposeful face, she indicated her sister with a slight gesture, and said: “One of Phemie's friends. He gave her the accordion. She's very popular.”

“And I suppose YOU are very hard to please?” he said with a tentative smile.

She looked at him with her large, clear eyes, and that absence of coquetry or changed expression in her beautiful face which might have stood for indifference or dignity as she said: “I don't know. I am waiting to see.”

But here Miss Phemie broke in saucily with the assertion that Mr. Parmlee might not have a railroad in his pocket, but that at least he didn't have to wait for the Flood to call on young ladies, nor did he usually come in pairs, for all the world as if he had been let out of Noah's Ark, but on horseback and like a Christian by the front door. All this provokingly and bewitchingly delivered, however, and with a simulated exaggeration that was incited apparently more by Mr. Lawrence Grant's evident enjoyment of it, than by any desire to defend the absent Parmlee.

“But where is the front door?” asked Grant laughingly.

The young girl pointed to a narrow zigzag path that ran up the bank beside the house until it stopped at a small picketed gate on the level of the road and store.

“But I should think it would be easier to have a door and private passage through the store,” said Grant.

“WE don't,” said the young lady pertly, “we have nothing to do with the store. I go in to see paw sometimes when he's shutting up and there's nobody there, but Clem has never set foot in it since we came. It's bad enough to have it and the lazy loafers that hang around it as near to us as they are; but paw built the house in such a fashion that we ain't troubled by their noise, and we might be t'other side of the creek as far as our having to come across them. And because paw has to sell pork and flour, we haven't any call to go there and watch him do it.”

The two men glanced at each other. This reserve and fastidiousness were something rare in a pioneer community. Harkutt's manners certainly did not indicate that he was troubled by this sensitiveness; it must have been some individual temperament of his daughters. Stephen felt his respect increase for the goddess-like Clementina; Mr. Lawrence Grant looked at Miss Phemie with a critical smile.

“But you must be very limited in your company,” he said; “or is Mr. Parmlee not a customer of your father's?”

“As Mr. Parmlee does not come to us through the store, and don't talk trade to me, we don't know,” responded Phemie saucily.

“But have you no lady acquaintances--neighbors--who also avoid the store and enter only at the straight and narrow gate up there?” continued Grant mischievously, regardless of the uneasy, half-reproachful glances of Rice.

But Phemie, triumphantly oblivious of any satire, answered promptly: “If you mean the Pike County Billingses who live on the turnpike road as much as they do off it, or the six daughters of that Georgia Cracker who wear men's boots and hats, we haven't.”

“And Mr. Parmlee, your admirer?” suggested Rice. “Hasn't he a mother or sisters here?”

“Yes, but they don't want to know us, and have never called here.”

The embarrassment of the questioner at this unexpected reply, which came from the faultless lips of Clementina, was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the young woman's voice and manner betrayed neither annoyance nor anger.

Here, however, Harkutt appeared from the house with the information that he had secured two horses for the surveyors and their instruments, and that he would himself accompany them a part of the way on their return to Tasajara Creek, to show them the road. His usual listless deliberation had given way to a certain nervous but uneasy energy. If they started at once it would be better, before the loungers gathered at the store and confused them with lazy counsel and languid curiosity. He took it for granted that Mr. Grant wished the railroad survey to be a secret, and he had said nothing, as they would be pestered with questions. “Sidon was inquisitive--and old-fashioned.” The benefit its inhabitants would get from the railroad would not prevent them from throwing obstacles in its way at first; he remembered the way they had acted with a proposed wagon road,--in fact, an idea of his own, something like the railroad; he knew them thoroughly, and if he might advise them, it would be to say nothing here until the thing was settled.

“He evidently does not intend to give us a chance,” said Grant good-humoredly to his companion, as they turned to prepare for their journey; “we are to be conducted in silence to the outskirts of the town like horse-thieves.”

“But you gave him the tip for himself,” said Rice reproachfully; “you cannot blame him for wanting to keep it.”

“I gave it to him in trust for his two incredible daughters,” said Grant with a grimace. “But, hang it! if I don't believe the fellow has more concern in it than I imagined.”

“But isn't she perfect?” said Rice, with charming abstraction.

“Who?”

“Clementina, and so unlike her father.”

“Discomposingly so,” said Grant quietly. “One feels in calling her 'Miss Harkutt' as if one were touching upon a manifest indiscretion. But here comes John Milton. Well, my lad, what can I do for you?”

The boy, who had been regarding them from a distance with wistful and curious eyes as they replaced their instruments for the journey, had gradually approached them. After a moment's timid hesitation he said, looking at Grant: “You don't know anybody in this kind o' business,” pointing to the instruments, “who'd like a boy, about my size?”

“I'm afraid not, J. M.,” said Grant, cheerfully, without suspending his operation. “The fact is, you see, it's not exactly the kind of work for a boy of your size.”

John Milton was silent for a moment, shifting himself slowly from one leg to another as he watched the surveyor. After a pause he said, “There don't seem to be much show in this world for boys o' my size. There don't seem to be much use for 'em any way.” This not bitterly, but philosophically, and even politely, as if to relieve Grant's rejection of any incivility.

“Really you quite pain me, John Milton,” said Grant, looking up as he tightened a buckle. “I never thought of it before, but you're right.”

“Now,” continued the boy slowly, “with girls it's just different. Girls of my size everybody does things for. There's Clemmy,--she's only two years older nor me, and don't know half that I do, and yet she kin lie about all day, and hasn't to get up to breakfast. And Phemie,--who's jest the same age, size, and weight as me,--maw and paw lets her do everything she wants to. And so does everybody. And so would you.”

“But you surely don't want to be like a girl?” said Grant, smiling.

It here occurred to John Milton's youthful but not illogical mind that this was not argument, and he turned disappointedly away. As his father was to accompany the strangers a short distance, he, John Milton, was to-day left in charge of the store. That duty, however, did not involve any pecuniary transactions--the taking of money or making of change but a simple record on a slate behind the counter of articles selected by those customers whose urgent needs could not wait Mr. Harkutt's return. Perhaps on account of this degrading limitation, perhaps for other reasons, the boy did not fancy the task imposed upon him. The presence of the idle loungers who usually occupied the armchairs near the stove, and occasionally the counter, dissipated any romance with which he might have invested his charge; he wearied of the monotony of their dull gossip, but mostly he loathed the attitude of hypercritical counsel and instruction which they saw fit to assume towards him at such moments. “Instead o' lazin' thar behind the counter when your father ain't here to see ye, John,” remarked Billings from the depths of his armchair a few moments after Harkutt had ridden away, “ye orter be bustlin' round, dustin' the shelves. Ye'll never come to anythin' when you're a man ef you go on like that. Ye never heard o' Harry Clay--that was called 'the Mill-boy of the Slashes'--sittin' down doin' nothin' when he was a boy.”

“I never heard of him loafin' round in a grocery store when he was growned up either,” responded John Milton, darkly.

“P'r'aps you reckon he got to be a great man by standin' up sassin' his father's customers,” said Peters, angrily. “I kin tell ye, young man, if you was my boy”--

“If I was YOUR boy, I'd be playin' hookey instead of goin' to school, jest as your boy is doin' now,” interrupted John Milton, with a literal recollection of his quarrel and pursuit of the youth in question that morning.

An undignified silence on the part of the adults followed, the usual sequel to those passages; Sidon generally declining to expose itself to the youthful Harkutt's terrible accuracy of statement.

The men resumed their previous lazy gossip about Elijah Curtis's disappearance, with occasional mysterious allusions in a lower tone, which the boy instinctively knew referred to his father, but which either from indolence or caution, the two great conservators of Sidon, were never formulated distinctly enough for his relentless interference. The morning sunshine was slowly thickening again in an indolent mist that seemed to rise from the saturated plain. A stray lounger shuffled over from the blacksmith's shop to the store to take the place of another idler who had joined an equally lethargic circle around the slumbering forge. A dull intermittent sound of hammering came occasionally from the wheelwright's shed--at sufficiently protracted intervals to indicate the enfeebled progress of Sidon's vehicular repair. A yellow dog left his patch of sunlight on the opposite side of the way and walked deliberately over to what appeared to be more luxurious quarters on the veranda; was manifestly disappointed but not equal to the exertion of returning, and sank down with blinking eyes and a regretful sigh without going further. A procession of six ducks got well into a line for a laborious “march past” the store, but fell out at the first mud puddle and gave it up. A highly nervous but respectable hen, who had ventured upon the veranda evidently against her better instincts, walked painfully on tiptoe to the door, apparently was met by language which no mother of a family could listen to, and retired in strong hysterics. A little later the sun became again obscured, the wind arose, rain fell, and the opportunity for going indoors and doing nothing was once more availed of by all Sidon.

It was afternoon when Mr. Harkutt returned. He did not go into the store, but entered the dwelling from the little picket-gate and steep path. There he called a family council in the sitting-room as being the most reserved and secure. Mrs. Harkutt, sympathizing and cheerfully ready for any affliction, still holding a dust-cloth in her hand, took her seat by the window, with Phemie breathless and sparkling at one side of her, while Clementina, all faultless profile and repose, sat on the other. To Mrs. Harkutt's motherly concern at John Milton's absence, it was pointed out that he was wanted at the store,--was a mere boy anyhow, and could not be trusted. Mr. Harkutt, a little ruddier from weather, excitement, and the unusual fortification of a glass of liquor, a little more rugged in the lines of his face, and with an odd ring of defiant self-assertion in his voice, stood before them in the centre of the room.

He wanted them to listen to him carefully, to remember what he said, for it was important; it might be a matter of “lawing” hereafter,--and he couldn't be always repeating it to them,--he would have enough to do. There was a heap of it that, as women-folks, they couldn't understand, and weren't expected to. But he'd got it all clear now, and what he was saying was gospel. He'd always known to himself that the only good that could ever come to Sidon would come by railroad. When those fools talked wagon road he had said nothing, but he had his own ideas; he had worked for that idea without saying anything to anybody; that idea was to get possession of all the land along the embarcadero, which nobody cared for, and 'Lige Curtis was ready to sell for a song. Well, now, considering what had happened, he didn't mind telling them that he had been gradually getting possession of it, little by little, paying 'Lige Curtis in advances and installments, until it was his own! They had heard what those surveyors said; how that it was the only fit terminus for the railroad. Well, that land, and that water-front, and the terminus were HIS! And all from his own foresight and prudence.

It is needless to say that this was not the truth. But it is necessary to point out that this fabrication was the result of his last night's cogitations and his morning's experience. He had resolved upon a bold course. He had reflected that his neighbors would be more ready to believe in and to respect a hard, mercenary, and speculative foresight in his taking advantage of 'Lige's necessities than if he had--as was the case--merely benefited by them through an accident of circumstance and good humor. In the latter case he would be envied and hated; in the former he would be envied and feared. By logic of circumstance the greater wrong seemed to be less obviously offensive than the minor fault. It was true that it involved the doing of something he had not contemplated, and the certainty of exposure if 'Lige ever returned, but he was nevertheless resolved. The step from passive to active wrong-doing is not only easy, it is often a relief; it is that return to sincerity which we all require. Howbeit, it gave that ring of assertion to Daniel Harkutt's voice already noted, which most women like, and only men are prone to suspect or challenge. The incompleteness of his statement was, for the same reason, overlooked by his feminine auditors.

“And what is it worth, dad?” asked Phemie eagerly.

“Grant says I oughter get at least ten thousand dollars for the site of the terminus from the company, but of course I shall hold on to the rest of the land. The moment they get the terminus there, and the depot and wharf built, I can get my own price and buyers for the rest. Before the year is out Grant thinks it ought to go up ten per cent on the value of the terminus, and that a hundred thousand.”

“Oh, dad!” gasped Phemie, frantically clasping her knees with both hands as if to perfectly assure herself of this good fortune.

Mrs. Harkutt audibly murmured “Poor dear Dan'l,” and stood, as it were, sympathetically by, ready to commiserate the pains and anxieties of wealth as she had those of poverty. Clementina alone remained silent, clear-eyed, and unchanged.

“And to think it all came through THEM!” continued Phemie. “I always had an idea that Mr. Grant was smart, dad. And it was real kind of him to tell you.”

“I reckon father could have found it out without them. I don't know why we should be beholden to them particularly. I hope he isn't expected to let them think that he is bound to consider them our intimate friends just because they happened to drop in here at a time when his plans have succeeded.”

The voice was Clementina's, unexpected but quiet, unemotional and convincing. “It seemed,” as Mrs. Harkutt afterwards said, “as if the child had already touched that hundred thousand.” Phemie reddened with a sense of convicted youthful extravagance.

“You needn't fear for me,” said Harkutt, responding to Clementina's voice as if it were an echo of his own, and instinctively recognizing an unexpected ally. “I've got my own ideas of this thing, and what's to come of it. I've got my own ideas of openin' up that property and showin' its resources. I'm goin' to run it my own way. I'm goin' to have a town along the embarcadero that'll lay over any town in Contra Costa. I'm goin' to have the court-house and county seat there, and a couple of hotels as good as any in the Bay. I'm goin' to build that wagon road through here that those lazy louts slipped up on, and carry it clear over to Five Mile Corner, and open up the whole Tasajara Plain!”

They had never seen him look so strong, so resolute, so intelligent and handsome. A dimly prophetic vision of him in a black broadcloth suit and gold watch-chain addressing a vague multitude, as she remembered to have seen the Hon. Stanley Riggs of Alasco at the “Great Barbecue,” rose before Phemie's blue enraptured eyes. With the exception of Mrs. Harkutt,--equal to any possibilities on the part of her husband,--they had honestly never expected it of him. They were pleased with their father's attitude in prosperity, and felt that perhaps he was not unworthy of being proud of them hereafter.

“But we're goin' to leave Sidon,” said Phemie, “ain't we, paw?”

“As soon as I can run up a new house at the embarcadero,” said Harkutt peevishly, “and that's got to be done mighty quick if I want to make a show to the company and be in possession.”

“And that's easier for you to do, dear, now that 'Lige's disappeared,” said Mrs. Harkutt consolingly.

“What do ye mean by that? What the devil are ye talkin' about?” demanded Harkutt suddenly with unexpected exasperation.

“I mean that that drunken 'Lige would be mighty poor company for the girls if he was our only neighbor,” returned Mrs. Harkutt submissively.

Harkutt, after a fixed survey of his wife, appeared mollified. The two girls, who were mindful of his previous outburst the evening before, exchanged glances which implied that his manners needed correction for prosperity.

“You'll want a heap o' money to build there, Dan'l,” said Mrs. Harkutt in plaintive diffidence.

“Yes! Yes!” said Harkutt impatiently. “I've kalkilated all that, and I'm goin' to 'Frisco to-morrow to raise it and put this bill of sale on record.” He half drew Elijah Curtis's paper from his pocket, but paused and put it back again.

“Then THAT WAS the paper, dad,” said Phemie triumphantly.

“Yes,” said her father, regarding her fixedly, “and you know now why I didn't want anything said about it last night--nor even now.”

“And 'Lige had just given it to you! Wasn't it lucky?”

“He HADN'T just given it to me!” said her father with another unexpected outburst. “God Amighty! ain't I tellin' you all the time it was an old matter! But you jabber, jabber all the time and don't listen! Where's John Milton?” It had occurred to him that the boy might have read the paper--as his sister had--while it lay unheeded on the counter.

“In the store,--you know. You said he wasn't to hear anything of this, but I'll call him,” said Mrs. Harkutt, rising eagerly.

“Never mind,” returned her husband, stopping her reflectively, “best leave it as it is; if it's necessary I'll tell him. But don't any of you say anything, do you hear?”

Nevertheless a few hours later, when the store was momentarily free of loungers, and Harkutt had relieved his son of his monotonous charge, he made a pretense, while abstractedly listening to an account of the boy's stewardship, to look through a drawer as if in search of some missing article.

“You didn't see anything of a paper I left somewhere about here yesterday?” he asked carelessly.

“The one you picked up when you came in last night?” said the boy with discomposing directness.

Harkutt flushed slightly and drew his breath between his set teeth. Not only could he place no reliance upon ordinary youthful inattention, but he must be on his guard against his own son as from a spy! But he restrained himself.

“I don't remember,” he said with affected deliberation, “what it was I picked up. Do you? Did you read it?”

The meaning of his father's attitude instinctively flashed upon the boy. He HAD read the paper, but he answered, as he had already determined, “No.”

An inspiration seized Mr. Harkutt. He drew 'Lige Curtis's bill of sale from his pocket, and opening it before John Milton said, “Was it that?”

“I don't know,” said the boy. “I couldn't tell.” He walked away with affected carelessness, already with a sense of playing some part like his father, and pretended to whistle for the dog across the street. Harkutt coughed ostentatiously, put the paper back in his pocket, set one or two boxes straight on the counter, locked the drawer, and disappeared into the back passage. John Milton remained standing in the doorway looking vacantly out. But he did not see the dull familiar prospect beyond. He only saw the paper his father had opened and unfolded before him. It was the same paper he had read last night. But there were three words written there THAT WERE NOT THERE BEFORE! After the words “Value received” there had been a blank. He remembered that distinctly. This was filled in by the words, “Five hundred dollars.” The handwriting did not seem like his father's, nor yet entirely like 'Lige Curtis's. What it meant he did not know,--he would not try to think. He should forget it, as he had tried to forget what had happened before, and he should never tell it to any one!

There was a feverish gayety in his sisters' manner that afternoon that he did not understand; short colloquies that were suspended with ill concealed impatience when he came near them, and resumed when he was sent, on equally palpable excuses, out of the room. He had been accustomed to this exclusion when there were strangers present, but it seemed odd to him now, when the conversation did not even turn upon the two superior visitors who had been there, and of whom he confidently expected they would talk. Such fragments as he overheard were always in the future tense, and referred to what they intended to do. His mother, whose affection for him had always been shown in excessive and depressing commiseration of him in even his lightest moments, that afternoon seemed to add a prophetic and Cassandra-like sympathy for some vague future of his that would require all her ministration. “You won't need them new boots, Milty dear, in the changes that may be comin' to ye; so don't be bothering your poor father in his worriments over his new plans.”