Chapter XX: Dennis (4)

"Then Sarah and Samanthy married. They married men o' means, and the gall and wormwood entered into my soul, and ate it away. Laban was awful good. He laughed and worked, but we couldn't make it. Times was too hard. I'd see Samanthy trailin' silks and satins in the dust, and --and my underskirts was made o' flour sacks. Yes--flour sacks! And me a Skenk!"

She paused. Neither Ajax nor I spoke. Comedy lies lightly upon all things, like foam upon the dark waters. Beneath are tragedy and the tears of time.

"Then you gentlemen came and bought land. They said you was lords, with money to burn. I told Laban to help you in the buyin' o' horses, and cattle, and barb-wire, and groceries. He got big commissions, but he kept off the other blood-suckers. We paid some of our debts, and Laban bought me a black silk gown. I couldn't rest till Samanthy had felt of it. She'd none better. If we'd only been satisfied with that!

"Well, that black silk made everything else look dreadful mean. 'Twas then you spoke to Laban about choosin' a brand. Satan put it into my head to say--S. It scart Laban. He was butcherin' then, and he surmised what I was after; I persuaded him 'twas for the children's sake. The first steer paid for Emanuel's baby clothes and cradle. They was finer than what Sarah bought for her child. Then we killed the others--one by one. Laban let 'em through the fence and then clapped our brand a-top o' yours. They paid for the tank and windmill. After that we robbed you when and where we could. We put up that bacon scheme meanin' to ship the stuff to the city and to tell you that it had spoiled on us. We robbed none else, only you. And we actually justified ourselves. We surmised 'twas fittin' that Britishers should pay for the support o' good Americans."

"I've read some of your histories," said Ajax drily, "and can understand that point of view."

"Satan fools them as fool themselves, Mr. Ajax. But the truth struck me and Laban when we watched by mother. She was not scared o' death. And she praised me to Laban, and said that I'd chosen the better part in marryin' a poor man for love, and that money hadn't made Christian women of Sarah and Samanthy. She blamed herself, dear soul, for settin' store overly much on dollars and cents. And she said she could die easier thinking that what was good in her had passed to me, and not what was evil. And, Mr. Ajax, that talk just drove me and Laban crazy. Well, mother ain't going to die, and we ain't neither--till we've paid back the last cent, we stole from you. Laban has figgered it out, principal and interest, and he's drawn a note for fifteen hundred dollars, which we've both signed. Here it is."

She tendered us a paper. Ajax stuck his hands into his pockets, and I did the same.

She misinterpreted the action. "You ain't going to prosecute?" she faltered.

Ajax nodded to me. Upon formal occasions he expects me, being the elder, to speak. If I say more or less than he approves I am severely taken to task.

"Mrs. Swiggart," I began, lamely enough, "I am sure that your husband can cure hams----"

Ajax looked at me indignantly. With the best of motives I had given a sore heart a grievous twist.

"We bought that ham," she said sadly, "a-purpose."

"No matter. We have decided to go into this packing business with your husband. When--er--experience goes into partnership with ignorance, ignorance expects to pay a premium. We have paid our premium."

She rose, and we held out our hands.

"No, gentlemen; I won't take your hands till that debt is cancelled. The piano and the team will go some ways towards it. Good-bye, and-- thank you."

VIII

AN EXPERIMENT

My brother and I had just ridden off the range, when Uncle Jake told us that a tramp was hanging about the corrals and wished to speak with us.

"He looks like hell," concluded Uncle Jake.

We found him, a minute later, curled up on a heap of straw on the shady side of our big barn. He got up as we approached, and stared at us with a curious derisive intentness of glance, slightly disconcerting.

"You are Englishmen," he said quietly.

The man's voice was charming, with that unmistakable quality which challenges attention even in Mayfair, and enthrals it in the wilderness. We nodded, and he continued easily: "It is late, and some twenty-six miles, so I hear, to the nearest town. May I spend the night in your barn. I don't smoke--in barns."

While he was speaking, we had time to examine him. His appearance was inexpressibly shocking. Dirty, with a ragged six weeks' growth of dark hair upon his face, out at heel and elbows, shirtless and shiftless, he seemed to have reached the nadir of misery and poverty. Obviously one of the "broken brigade," he had seemingly lost everything except his manners. His amazing absence of self-consciousness made a clown of me. I blurted out a gruff "All right," and turned on my heel, unable to face the derisive smile upon the thin, pale lips. As I walked towards the house, I heard Ajax following me, but he did not speak till we had reached our comfortable sitting-room. Then, as gruffly as I, he said, "Humpty Dumpty--after the fall!"

We lit our pipes in silence, sensible of an extraordinary depression in the moral atmosphere. Five minutes before we had been much elated. The spring round-up of cattle was over; we had sold our bunch of steers at the top price; the money lay in our small safe; we had been talking of a modest celebration as we rode home over the foothills. Now, to use the metaphor of a cow county, we had been brought up with a sharp turn! Our prosperity, measured by the ill-fortune of a fellow- countryman, dwindled. Ajax summed up the situation: "He made me feel cheap."

"Why?" I asked, conscious of a similar feeling. Ajax smoked and reflected.

"It's like this," he answered presently. "That chap has been to the bottom of the pit, but he bobs up with a smile. Did you notice his smile?"

I rang the bell for Quong, our Chinese servant. When he came in I told him to prepare a hot bath. Ajax whistled; but as Quong went away, looking rather cross, my brother added, "Our clothes will fit him."

The bath-house was outside. Quong carried in a couple of pails full of boiling water; we laid out shaving tackle, an old suit of grey flannel, a pair of brown shoes, and the necessary under-linen. A blue bird's-eye tie, I remember, was the last touch. Then Ajax shrugged his shoulders and said significantly, "You know what this means?"

"Rehabilitation."

"Exactly. It may be fun for us to rig out this poor devil, but we must do more than feed and clothe him. Have you thought of that?"

I had not, and said so.

"This is an experiment. First and last, we're going to try to raise a man from the dead. If we get him on to his pins, we'll have to supply some crutches. Are you prepared to do that?"

"If you are."

"Right! Of course, he may refuse our help. It wouldn't surprise me a little bit if he did refuse."

When our preparations were complete, we returned to the barn. In a few words Ajax told the stranger of what had been done.

"After supper," he concluded, "we'll talk things over. Times are rather good just now, and something can be arranged."

"You're very kind," replied the tramp; "but I think you had better leave me in the barn."

"We can't," said my brother. "It's too beastly to think of you like this."

Nevertheless, we had to argue the matter, and I ought to add that although we prevailed in the end, both Ajax and I were aware that the man's acceptance of what we offered imposed an obligation upon us rather than upon him. As he was about to enter the bath-house, he turned with the derisive smile on his lips--

"If it amuses you," he murmured, "I shall have earned my bath and supper."

When he reappeared, nobody would have recognised him. So far, the experiment had succeeded beyond expectation. A new man walked into our sitting-room and glanced with intelligent interest at our household gods. Over the mantel-piece hung an etching of the Grand Canal at Venice. He surveyed it critically, putting up a pair of thin hands, as so to shut off an excess of light.

"Jimmie Whistler taught that fellow a trick or two," he remarked.

"You knew Whistler?"

"Oh yes."

We left him with _Punch_ and a copy of an art journal. Ajax said to me, as we went back to the barn--

"I'll bet he's an artist of sorts."

It happened that we had in our cellar some fine claret; a few magnums of Léoville, '74, a present from a millionaire friend. We never drank it except upon great occasions. Ajax suggested a bottle of this elixir, not entirely out of charity. Such tipple would warm a graven image into speech, and my brother is inordinately curious. Our guest had nothing to give to us except his confidence, and that he had withheld.

We decanted the claret very carefully. As soon as our guest tasted it, he sighed and said quietly--

"I never expected to taste that again. It's Léoville, isn't it? And in exquisite condition."

He sipped the wine in silence, while I thought of the bundle of foul rags upon our rubbish heap. Ajax was talking shop, describing with some humour our latest deal, and the present high price of fat steers. Our guest listened politely, and when Ajax paused, he said ironically--

"Yours is a gospel of hard work. I dare say you have ridden two horses to a standstill to-day? Just so. I can't ride, or plough, or dig."

Ajax opened his lips to reply, and closed them. Our guest smiled.

"You are wondering what brought me to California. As a matter of fact, a private car. No, thanks, no more claret."

Later, we hoped he might melt into confidence over tobacco and toddy. He smoked one cigar slowly, and with evident appreciation; and, as he smoked, he stroked the head of Conan, our Irish setter, an ultra- particular person, who abominated tramps and strangers.

"Conan likes you," said Ajax abruptly.

"Is that his name? 'Conan,' eh? Good Conan, good dog!" Presently, he threw away the stub of his cigar and crossed to a small mirror. With a self-possession rather surprising, he began to examine himself.

"I am renewing acquaintance," he explained gravely, "with a man I have not seen for some months."

"By what name shall we call that man?" said Ajax boldly.

There was a slight pause, and then our guest said quietly--

"Would 'Sponge' do? 'Soapy Sponge'!"

"No," said my brother.

"My father's Christian name was John. Call me 'Johnson.'"

Accordingly, we called him Johnson for the rest of the evening. While the toddies were being consumed, Johnson observed the safe, a purchase of my brother's, in which we kept our papers and accounts and any money we might have. We had bought it, second-hand, and the vendor assured us it was quite burglar-proof. Ajax mentioned this to our guest. He laughed presently.

"No safe is burglar-proof," he said; "and most certainly not that one." He continued in a slightly different tone: "I suppose you are not imprudent enough to keep money in it. I mean gold. On a big, lonely ranch like this all your money affairs should be transacted with cheques."

"We are in the wilds," said Ajax, "and it may surprise you to learn that not so very long ago the Spanish-Californians who owned most of the land kept thousands of pounds in gold slugs. In the attic over this old 'adobe,' Don Juan Soberanes, from whom we bought this ranch, kept his cash in gold dust and slugs in a clothes-basket. His nephew used to take a tile off the roof, drop a big lump of tallow attached to a cord into the basket, and scoop up what he could. The man who bought our steers yesterday has no dealings with banks. He paid us in Uncle Sam's notes."

"Did he?"

Shortly afterwards we went to bed. As our guest turned into the spare room, he said whimsically--

"Have I entertained you? You have entertained me."

Ajax held out his hand. Johnson hesitated a moment--I recalled his hesitation afterwards--and then extended his hand, a singularly slender, well-formed member.

"You have the hand of an artist," said the ever-curious Ajax.

"The most beautiful hand I ever saw," replied Johnson imperturbably, "belonged to a--thief. Good-night."

Ajax frowned, turning down the corners of his lips in exasperation.

"I am eaten up with curiosity," he growled.

* * * * *

Next morning we routed out an old kit-bag, into which we packed a few necessaries. When we insisted upon Johnson accepting this, he shrugged his shoulders and turned the palms of his hands upwards, as if to show their emptiness.

"Why do you do this?" he asked, with a certain indescribable peremptoriness.

Ajax answered simply--

"A man must have clean linen. In the town you are going to, a boiled shirt is a credential. I should like to give you a letter to the cashier of the bank. He is a Britisher, and a good fellow. You are not strong enough for such work as we might offer you, but he will find you a billet."

"You positively overwhelm me," said Johnson. "You must be lineally descended from the Good Samaritan."

Ajax wrote the letter. A neighbour was driving in to town, as we knew, and I had arranged early that morning for our guest's transportation.

"And what am I to do in return for these favours?" Johnson demanded.

"Let us hear from you," said my brother.

"You shall," he replied.

Within half an hour Johnson had vanished in a buckboard and a cloud of fine white dust.

Upon the following afternoon I made an alarming discovery. Our burglar-proof safe had been opened, and the roll of notes was missing. I sought Ajax and told him. He allowed one word only to escape his lips--

"Johnson!"

"What tenderfeet we are!" I groaned.

"Lineal descendants of the Good Samaritan. Well, he has had a long start, but we must catch him."

"If it should not be--Johnson?"

"Conan would have nailed anybody else."

This was unanswerable, for Conan guarded our safe whenever there was anything in it worth guarding. Ajax never is so happy as when he can prove himself a prophet.

"I said he was an artist," he remarked. "The truth is, we tried an experiment upon the wrong man."

A few minutes later we took the road. We had not gone very far, however, before we met the neighbour who had driven Johnson to town. He pulled up and greeted us.

"Boys," said he. "I've a note for ye from that Britisher."

We took the note, but we did not open it till our Californian friend had disappeared. We had been butchered, but as yet the abominable fact that a compatriot had skinned us was something we wished to keep to ourselves.

"Great Minneapolis!" said Ajax. "Look at this!"

I saw a bank receipt for the exact sum which represented our bunch of steers.

"Is that all?" I asked.

Ajax ought to have shouted for joy, but he answered with a groan.

"Yes; there isn't a line of explanation. He said we should hear from him."

"And we have," I replied.

We returned to the ranch very soberly. When Ajax placed the bank receipt in the safe, he kicked that solid piece of furniture.

"We'll drive in comfortably to-morrow, and find out what we can," he observed.

"I don't think we shall find Johnson," I murmured.

Nor did we. The cashier testified to receiving the roll of notes, but not the letter of introduction. We hunted high and low for Johnson; but he was not.

"How did he get away without money?" he asked.

"He had money. I stuck a twenty-dollar bill into his coat pocket."

Before leaving town, we visited our gunmaker, with the intention of ordering some cartridges. By the merest chance, he spoke of Johnson.

"A Britisher was in here yesterday: somethin' o' the cut o' you boys."

"In a grey suit with a brown sombrero?"

"Sure enough."

"Did he buy cartridges?"

"He bought a six-shooter and a few cartridges."

"Oh!" said Ajax.

We found ourselves walking towards a secluded lot at the back of the Old Mission Church. Ajax asked me for an opinion which I was too dazed to express.

"We've done a silly thing, and perhaps a wicked thing," said my brother. "If that poor devil is lying dead in the brush-hills, I shall never forgive myself. We've given a starving man too heavy a meal."

"Bosh!" said I, believing every word he uttered--the echo, indeed, of my own thoughts. "I feel in my bones we are going to see Johnson again."

Twenty-four hours later we heard of him. The Santa Barbara stage had been held up by one man. It happened, however, that a remarkably bold and fearless driver was on the box. The stage had been stopped upon the top of a hill, but not exactly on the crest of it. The driver testified that the would-be robber had leaped out of a clump of manzanita, just as the heavy, lumbering coach was beginning to roll down the steep hill in front of it. To pull up at such a moment was difficult. The driver saw his chance and took it. He lashed the leaders and charged straight at the highwayman, who jumped aside to avoid being run over, and then, being a-foot, abandoned his enterprise. He was wearing a mask fashioned out of a gunny-sack, new overalls, and _brown_ shoes! That same night, at Los Olivos, a man wearing brown shoes was arrested by a deputy sheriff because he refused to give a proper account of himself; but, on being searched, a letter to the cashier of the San Lorenzo bank, signed (so ran the paragraph) by a well-known and responsible Englishman, was found in the pocket of his coat. Whereupon he was allowed to go his ways, with many apologies from the over-zealous official.

"Johnson!" said Ajax.

"Did he hold up the stage?" I asked.

"Of course he did" replied my brother contemptuously.

After this incident, Johnson, who for a brief time had loomed so large in our imaginations, faded into a sort of wraith. Years passed, bringing with them great changes for me. I left California and settled in England. I wrote a book which excited a certain amount of interest, and inspired some of my old school-fellows to renew acquaintance with me. By this time I had forgotten Johnson. He was part of a distant country, where the fine white dust settles thickly upon all things and persons. In England, where the expected, so to speak, comes to five o'clock tea, such surprising individuals as Johnson appear--if they ever do appear--as creatures of a disordered fancy or digestive apparatus. Once I told the story at the Scribblers' Club to a couple of journalists. They winked at each other, and said politely that I spun a good yarn, for an amateur! "I never tell a story," said the elder of my critics, "till I've worked out a climax. You leave us at the top of a confounded hill in California, bang up in the clouds."

And then the climax flitted into sight, masquerading as a barrel of claret. The claret came from Bordeaux. It was Léoville Poyferré, 1899. Not a line of explanation came with it, but all charges were prepaid. I wrote to the shippers. A Monsieur had bought the wine and ordered it to be consigned to me. Readers of this story will say that I ought to have thought of Johnson. I didn't. I thanked effusively half a dozen persons in turn, who had not sent the claret; then, hopelessly befogged, I had the wine bottled.

However, Johnson sent the wine, for he told me so. I had been passing a few days at Blois, and was staring at the Fragonard which hangs in the gallery of the château, when a languid voice said, "This is the best thing here."

"Hullo, Johnson!" I exclaimed.

"Hullo!" said he.

He had recognised me first, and addressed the remark about the picture to me. Nobody else was near us. We shook hands solemnly, eyeing each other, noting the changes. Johnson appeared to be prosperous, but slightly Gallicised.

"How is--Ajax?" he murmured.

"Ajax has grown fat. Can't you dine with me?"

"It's my turn. We must order a bottle of Léoville at once."

"You sent that wine," I exclaimed. There was no note of interrogation in my voice. I knew.

"Yes," he said indifferently; "it will be worth drinking in about ten years' time."

We had an admirable dinner upon a terrace overhanging the Loire, but the measure of my enjoyment was stinted by Johnson's exasperating reticence concerning himself. He talked delightfully of the châteaux in Touraine; he displayed an intimate knowledge of French history and archaeology, but I was tingling with impatience to transport myself and him to California. And he knew this--the rogue!

Finally, as the soft silvery twilight encompassed us, he told what I wanted to know.

"My father was a manufacturer who married a Frenchwoman. My brothers have trodden carefully and securely in my father's footsteps. They are all fairly prosperous--smug, respectable fellows. I resemble my mother. After Eton and Christ Church I was pitchforked into the family business. For a time it absorbed my attention. I will tell you why later. Then, having mastered the really interesting part of it, I grew bored. I wanted to study art. After several scenes with my father, I was allowed to go my own way--a pleasant way, too, but it led downhill, you understand. I spent three winters in Venice. Then my father died, and I came into a small fortune, which I squandered. My mother helped me; then she died. My brothers cut me, condemning me as a Bohemian and a vagabond. I confess that I did take a malicious pleasure in rubbing their sleek fur the wrong way. Then I crossed the Atlantic as the guest of an American millionaire. He took me on in his own car to California. I started a studio in San Francisco--and a life class. That undid me, I found myself bankrupt. Then I fell desperately ill. Each day I felt the quicksands engulfing me."

"But your friends?" I interrupted.

"My friends? Yes, I had friends; but perhaps you will understand me, having seen to what depths I fell, that I couldn't bring myself to apply to my friends. Well, I was at my last gasp when I crawled up to your barn. I mean morally, for my strength was returning. You and your brother rode up. By God! I could have killed you!"

"Killed us?"

"You looked so fit, so prosperous, and I could read you both, could see in flaming capitals your pity, your contempt,--aye, and your disgust that a fellow-Englishman should be festering before your eyes. I asked for leave to spend the night in your barn, and you said, 'All right.' All right, when everything was so cruelly, so pitilessly the other way! Then you came back, taking for granted that I must accept whatever you offered. I wanted to refuse, but the words stuck in my throat. I followed you to the bath-house. Was I grateful? Not a bit. I decided that for your own amusement, and perhaps to staunch your English pride, which I had offended, you meant to lift a poor devil out of hell, so as to drop him again into deeper depths when the comedy was over----"

"Good heavens! You thought that?"

"My dear fellow, you write now, don't you? I'm giving you a bit of psychology--showing you the point of view of the worm writhing beneath the boot of lordly Man. But, always, I meant to turn, if I got the chance. I washed myself; I shaved; I slipped into your nice clean clothes. I'll admit that the warm water removed some encrusted mud from my mind, but it sharpened rather then obscured my resolution to make the most of what looked like a last chance. But when you uncorked that Léoville, shame spoiled it for me."

"You drank only two glasses, I remember."

"It brought everything back--everything! If I had had one more glass, I should have laid myself at your feet, whining and whimpering. The cigar that I smoked afterwards was poppy and mandragora. Through a cloud of smoke I saw all the pleasant years that were gone. Again I weakened. I had aroused your interest. I could have sponged upon you indefinitely. At that moment I saw the safe. Your brother imprudently mentioned that a large sum of money lay inside it. I made up my mind instantly to take the money, and did so that night. The dog was licking my hand as I robbed you. But next morning----"

He paused, then he laughed lightly. "Next morning----"

"You appeared with the kit-bag! That disconcerted me terribly. It proved what I had not perceived--that you two young Englishmen, tenderfeet both of you, had realised what you were doing, had seriously faced the responsibility of resurrecting the dead. The letter to the cashier, the twenty-dollar bill I found in my coat- pocket--these were as scorpions. But I hadn't the nerve to own up. So I carried the money to the bank and deposited it to your account."

"Then you bought a six-shooter."

"Yes; I meant to try another world. I had had enough of this one. I couldn't go back to my wallow."

"What restrained you?"

"The difficulty of finding a hiding-place. If my body were discovered, I knew that it would be awful for you."

"Thanks."

"It's easy to find a hole, but it's not easy to pull a hole in after one--eh? Still, I thought I should find some wild gulch on the Santa Barbara trail, amongst those God-forsaken foothills. The buzzards would pull the hole in within forty-eight hours."

"Ah! the buzzards." I shivered, seeing once more those grim sextons of the Pacific seaboard.

"I found the right place; and just then I saw the stage crawling up the grade. Immediately the excitement of a new sensation gripped me. I had a taste of it when I opened your safe. It seized me again, relentlessly. If I were successful, I might begin again; if I failed, I could shoot myself without imposing an atrocious remorse upon you. Well, the pluck of that driver upset my plans--the plans of an amateur. I ought to have held them up on the upgrade."

"And after you failed----"

"Ah! after I failed I had a lucid interval. Don't laugh! I was hungry and thirsty. The most pressing need of my nature at that moment was a square meal. I walked to a hotel, and was nailed. Your brother's letter to the cashier saved me. I realised dimly that I had become respectable, that I looked--for the deputy sheriff told me so--an English gentleman--Mr. Johnson, your friend. That's about all."

"All?" I echoed, in dismay.

"The rest is so commonplace. I got a small job as clerk in a fruit- packing house. It led to better things. I suppose I am my father's son. I failed to make a living, spoiling canvas, but as a business man I have been a mild success."

"And what are you doing now?"

"I buy and sell claret. Any other question?"

"Yes. How did you open our burglar-proof safe?"

Johnson laughed.

"My father was a manufacturer of safes," he answered. "I know the tricks of my trade."

IX

UNCLE JAP'S LILY

Jaspar Panel owned a section of rough, hilly land to the north-east of Paradise. Everybody called him Uncle Jap. He was very tall, very thin, with a face burnt a brick red by exposure to sun and wind, and, born in Massachusetts, he had marched as a youth with Sherman to the sea. After the war he married, crossed the plains in a "prairie schooner," and, eventually, took up six hundred and forty acres of Government land in San Lorenzo County. With incredible labour, inspired and sustained by his natural acuteness, he wrought a miracle upon a singularly arid and sterile soil. I have been told that he was the first of the foothill settlers to irrigate abundantly, the first to plant out an orchard and vineyard, the first, certainly, to create a garden out of a sage-brush desert. Teamsters hauling wheat from the Carisa plains used to stop to shake the white alkaline dust from their overalls under Uncle Jap's fig trees. They and the cowboys were always made welcome. To such guests Uncle Jap would offer figs, water-melons, peaches, a square meal at noon, and exact nothing in return except appreciation. If a man failed to praise Uncle Jap's fruit or his wife's sweet pickles, he was not pressed to "call again." The old fellow was inordinately proud of his colts, his Poland-China pigs, his "graded" bull, his fountain in the garden.

"Nice place you have, Mr. Panel," a stranger might say.

"Yas; we call it Sunny Bushes. Uster be nothin' but sun an' bushes onst. It's nice, yas, and it's paid for."

"What a good-looking mare!"

"Yas; she's paid for, too."

Everything on the ranch, animal, vegetable, and mineral, was "paid for." Uncle Jap was the last man to hurt anybody's feelings, but the "paid for" rankled on occasion, for some of his visitors stood perilously near the edge of bankruptcy, and, as a rule, had not paid for either the land they occupied, or the cattle they branded, or the clothes they wore. To understand this story you must grasp the fact that Uncle Jap lived with credit and not on it.

His wife, also of New England parentage, had a righteous horror of debt bred in her bone. Uncle Jap adored her. If he set an extravagant value upon his other possessions, what price above rubies did he place upon the meek, silent, angular woman, who had been his partner, companion, and friend for more than a quarter of a century. Sun and wind had burnt her face, also, to the exact tint of her husband's. Her name was Lily.

"And, doggone it, she looks like a lily," Uncle Jap would say, in moments of expansion. "Tall an' slim, yas, an' with a little droop of her head. I'd ought ter be grateful to God fer givin' me sech a flower outer heaven--an' I am, I am. Look at her now! What a mover!"

Uncle Jap's Lily chasing a hen certainly exhibited an activity surprising in one of her years. By a hairbreadth she missed perfection. Uncle Jap had been known to hint, nothing more, that he would have liked a dozen or so of babies. The hint took concrete form in: "I think a heap o' young things, colts, kittens, puppies--an' the like." Then he would sigh.

We came to California in the eighties, and in '93, if my memory serves me, Uncle Jap discovered bituminous rock in a corner of his ranch. He became very excited over this find, and used to carry samples of ore in his pocket which he showed to the neighbours.

"There's petroleum whar that ore is--_sure_. An' ef I could strike it, boys, why, why I'd jest hang my Lily with di'monds from her head to her feet, I would."

This, mind you, was before the discovery of the now famous oil fields. Even in those early days experts were of opinion that oil might be found below the croppings of bituminous rock by any pioneer enterprising enough to bore for it.

About this time we began to notice that Uncle Jap was losing interest in his ranch. Cattle strayed through the fence because he neglected to mend it, calves escaping were caught and branded by unscrupulous neighbours, a colt was found dead, cast in a deep gulch.

"What's the matter with Uncle Jap?" we asked, at the May-Day picnic.

Mrs. Fullalove, a friend of Mrs. Panel, answered the question.

"I'll tell ye," she said sharply. "Jaspar Panel has gotten a disease common enough in Californy. He's sufferin' from a dose o' swelled head."

Mrs. Panel sprang to her feet. Her face was scarlet; her pale eyes snapped; the nostrils of her thin nose were dilated.

"Susan Jane Fullalove," she cried shrilly, "how dare you?"

Mrs. Fullalove remained calm.

"It's so, Lily. Yer so thin, I didn't see ye sittin' edgeways, but ye needn't to ramp an' roar. Yer ranch _is_ flyin' to flinders because Mr. Panel's tuk a notion that it's a-floatin' on a lake of ile."

"An' mebbe it is," replied Mrs. Panel, subsiding.

Shortly afterwards we heard that Uncle Jap was frequenting saloons, hanging about the hotels in the county town, hunting, of course, for a capitalist who would bore for oil on shares, seeking the "angel" with the dollars who would transport him and his Lily into the empyrean of millionaires. When he confided as much to us, my brother Ajax remarked--

"Hang it all, Uncle Jap, you've got all you want."

"That's so. I hev. But Lily----Boys, I don't like ter give her away-- this is between me an' you--she's the finest in the land, ain't she? Yas. An' work? Great Minneapolis! Why, work come mighty near robbin' her of her looks. It did, fer a fact. An' now, she'd ought ter take things easy, an' hev a good time."

"She does have a good time."

"Ajax, yer talkin' through yer hat. What do you know of wimmenfolk? Not a derned thing. They're great at pretendin'. I dessay you, bein' a bachelor, think that my Lily kind o' wallers in washin' my ole duds, an' cookin' the beans and bacon when the thermometer's up to a hundred in the shade, and doin' chores around the hog pens an' chicken yards? Wal--she don't. She pretends, fer my sake, but bein' a lady born an' bred, her mind's naterally set on--silks an' satins, gems, a pianner-- an' statooary."

"I can't believe it," said my brother. "Mrs. Panel has always seemed to me the most sensible woman----"

"Lady, _if_ you please."

"I beg pardon--the most sensible lady of my acquaintance, and the most contented with the little home you've made for her."

"She helped make it. O' course, it's nateral, you bein' so young an' innercent, that you should think you know more about Mis' Panel's inside than I do, but take it from me that she's pined in secret for what I'm a-goin' ter give her before I turn up my toes."

With that he rode away on his old pinto horse, smiling softly and nodding his grizzled head.

Later, he travelled to San Francisco, where he interviewed presidents of banks and other magnates. All and sundry were civil to Uncle Jap, but they refused to look for a needle in a haystack. Uncle Jap confessed, later, that he was beginning to get "cold feet," as he expressed it, when he happened to meet an out-of-elbows individual who claimed positively that he could discover water, gold, or oil, with no tools or instruments other than a hazel twig. Uncle Jap, who forgot to ask why this silver-tongued vagabond had failed to discover gold for himself, returned in triumph to his ranch, bringing with him the wizard, pledged to consecrate his gifts to the "locating" of the lake of oil. In return for his services Uncle Jap agreed to pay him fifty dollars a week, board and lodging included. When he told us of the bargain he had made, his face shone with satisfaction and confidence. He chuckled, as he added slyly--

"I peeked in to some o' them high-toned joolery stores on Montgomery and Kearney Streets. Yas, I did. An' I priced what they call a ti- airy, sort o' di'mond crown. They run up into the thousands o' dollars. Think o' Mis' Panel in a _ti_-airy, boys; but shush-h-h- h! Not a word to her--eh?"

We pledged ourselves to secrecy, but when Uncle Jap's back was turned, Ajax cursed the wizard as the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims cursed the jackdaw. When we saw Mrs. Panel, she seemed to be thinner and more angular, but her lips were firmly compressed, as if she feared that something better left unsaid might leak from them. An old sunbonnet flapped about her red, wrinkled face, her hands, red and wrinkled also, trembled when we inquired after the wizard and his works.

"He's located the lake," she replied. Suppressed wrath boiled over, as she added fiercely: "I wish 'twas a lake o' fire an' brimstone, an' him a-bilin' in the middle of it." Then, reading the sympathy in our eyes, she continued quickly: "I ain't denyin' that Jaspar has a right to do what he pleases with what lies out o' doors. He never interfered with me in my kitchen, never! Would you gen'lemen fancy a glass o' lemonade? No? Wal--I'm glad you called in, fer I hev been feelin' kind o' lonesome lately."

What Uncle Jap's Lily suffered when he mortgaged all his cattle to sink a well nobody knows but herself, and she never told. The wizard indicated a certain spot below the croppings of bituminous rock; a big derrick was built; iron casing was hauled over the Coast Range; the well was bored.

Then, after boring some two thousand feet, operations had to be suspended, because Uncle Jap's dollars were exhausted, and his patience. The wizard swore stoutly that the lake was there, millions and millions of barrels of oil, but he deemed it expedient to leave the country in a hurry, because Uncle Jap intimated to him in the most convincing manner that there was not room in it for so colossal a fraud. The wizard might have argued the question, but the sight of Uncle Jap's old Navy six-shooter seemed to paralyse his tongue.

After this incident Uncle Jap ranched with feverish energy, and Mrs. Fullalove said that the old man had gotten over a real bad dose of swelled head.

* * * * *

Five years later came the oil boom!

Everybody knows now that it flowed in prodigious quantities into the vats of one man, whom we shall speak of with the respect which the billionaire inspires, as the Autocrat of Petroleum. Let us hasten to add that we shall approach him in the person of his agent, who, so far as Uncle Jap was concerned, doubtless acted in defiance of the will of the greatest church builder and philanthropist in the world.

Oil was struck in pints, quarts, gallons, buckets, and finally in thousands and tens of thousands of barrels! It flowed copiously in our cow-county; it greased, so to speak, the wheels--and how ramshackle some of them were!--of a score of enterprises, it saturated all things and persons.

Now, conceive, if you can, the triumphant I-told-you-so-boys expression of Uncle Jap. He swelled again visibly: head first, then body and soul. The county kowtowed to him. Speculators tried to buy his ranch, entreated him to name a price.

"I'll take half a million dollars, in cold cash," said Uncle Jap.

The speculators offered him instead champagne and fat cigars. Uncle Jap refused both. He was not going to be "flimflammed," no, sir! Not twice in his life, _no, Siree Bob_! He, by the Jumping Frog of Calaveras, proposed to paddle his own canoe into and over the lake of oil. If the boys wished him to forgo the delights of that voyage, let 'em pungle up half a million--or get.

They got.

Presently, after due consultation with a famous mining engineer, Uncle Jap mortgaged his cattle for the second time, and sank another well. He discovered oil sand, not a lake. Then he mortgaged his land, every stick and stone on it, and sunk three more wells. It was a case of Bernard Palissy. Was Bernard a married man? I forget. If so, did he consult his wife before he burnt the one and only bed? Did she protest? It is a fact that Uncle Jap's Lily did not protest. She looked on, the picture of misery, and her mouth was a thin line of silence across her wrinkled impassive countenance.

When every available cent had been raised and sunk, the oil spouted out. Who looked at the fountain in the patch of lawn by the old fig trees? Possibly Mrs. Panel. Not Uncle Jap. He, the most temperate of men, became furiously drunk on petroleum. He exuded it from every pore. Of course he was acclaimed by the county and the State (the Sunday editions published his portrait) as the star-spangled epitome of Yankee grit and get-there.

At this point we must present, with apologies, the agent of the Autocrat, _the_ agent, the High-muck-a-muck of the Pacific Slope, with a salary of a hundred thousand a year and _perks_! In his youth Nat Levi smelt of fried fish, unless the smell was overpowered by onions, and he changed his lodgings more often than he changed his linen. Now you meet him as Nathaniel Leveson, Esquire, who travelled in his private car, who assumed the God, when the God was elsewhere, who owned a palace on Nob Hill, and some of the worst, and therefore the most paying, rookeries in Chinatown, who never refused to give a cheque for charitable purposes when it was demanded in a becomingly public manner, who, like the Autocrat, had endowed Christian Churches, and had successfully eliminated out of his life everything which smacked of the Ghetto, except his nose.

Nathaniel Leveson visited our county, opened an office, and began to lay his pulpy white hands upon everything which directly or indirectly might produce petroleum. In due season he invited Uncle Jap to dine with him at the Paloma Hotel, in San Lorenzo. The old man, with the hayseed in his hair, and the stains of bitumen upon his gnarled hands, ate and drank of the best, seeing a glorified vision of his Lily crowned with diamonds at last. The vision faded somewhat when Nathaniel began to talk dollars and cents. Even to Uncle Jap, unversed in such high matters as finance, it seemed plain that Leveson & Company were to have the dollars, and that to him, the star-spangled epitome of Yankee grit and get-there were to be apportioned the cents.

"Lemme see," he said, with the slow, puzzled intonation of the man who does not understand; "I own this yere oil----"

"Subject to the mortgage, Mr. Panel, I believe?"

"That don't amount to shucks," said Uncle Jap.

"Quite so. Forgive me for interrupting you."

"I own this yere oil-field, lake I call it, and, bar the mortgage, it's bin paid for with the sweat of my--soul."

He brought out the word with such startling emphasis, that Nathaniel nearly upset the glass of fine old cognac which he was raising to his lips.

"Yas, my soul," continued Uncle Jap, meditatively. "I risked everything I'd got. Man," he leant across the gaily decorated table, with its crystal, its pink shades, its pretty flowers, and compelled his host to meet his flaming eyes,--"man, I risked my wife's love and respect. And," he drew a deep breath, "by God, I was justified. I got there. If I hadn't," the fire died down in his mild blue eyes, and the thin body seemed to wither and shrink,--"if I hadn't struck it, it would hev killed her, the finest lady in the land, an' me too. It was nip an' tuck with both of us. And now," his voice warmed into life again,--"and now you offer me fifty thousand dollars."

"I am anxious to treat you right, Mr. Panel. Another glass of brandy? No. Between ourselves the market is getting weaker every day. Fifty thousand profit, perhaps, may seem a small sum to you, but I cannot offer more. You are at perfect liberty to refuse my cheque; others, perhaps----"

Uncle Jap rose up grim and gaunt.

"I've ate dinner with you," he murmured, "so I'll say nothing more than 'thank you' and 'good-bye.'"

"Good-bye, Mr. Panel. At any time, if you have reason to change your mind, I shall be glad to talk business with you."

Uncle Jap returned to his own hotel to pass a restless night. Next day he sought a certain rich man who had a huge ranch in our county. The rich man, let us call him Dives, had eaten Uncle Jap's figs, and taken his advice, more than once, about cattle.

"Who's a-buyin' oil lakes?" demanded Uncle Jap.

"Nathaniel Leveson."

"Who else?"

Dives eyed Uncle Jap keenly. Rich men don't tell all they know, otherwise they would not be rich. Still, those figs and that water- melon on a broiling July afternoon had tasted uncommonly good!

"Look here, Mr. Panel, I think I can guess what has happened. Somebody has tried to squeeze you--eh?"

"That's so."

"Um! You're not the first."

"I wan't squeezed."

"Not yet, but----Mr. Panel, I should like to do you a service, and I know you to be an intelligent man. Do you see this sheet of blotting- paper?"

The blotting-paper lay immaculate upon the desk. Dives took a clean quill, dipped it into ink, and held it poised over the white pad. Uncle Jap watched him with interest.

"This," continued Dives, thoughtfully, "represents you and your ranch, Mr. Panel," he made a small dot upon the blotting-paper. "This," he made a much larger dot, "represents me and all I have. Now Leveson represents--_this_."

With a violent motion, quite contrary to his usual gentle, courteous manner, Dives plunged the quill to the bottom of the ink pot, withdrew it quickly, and jerked its contents upon the blotting-paper. A huge purple blot spread and spread till the other small blots were incorporated.

"D--n him!" spluttered Uncle Jap.

Dives shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.

"My advice is: take what Leveson offers."

"Fifty thousand for millions?"

"Possibly. Can you touch them, if Omnipotence forbids?"

Dives stared moodily at the big purple blot; then picking up the sheet of blotting-paper he tore it to pieces with his nervous, finely-formed fingers, and dropped it into the waste-paper basket. When he looked up, he saw that Uncle Jap's mild blue eyes were curiously congested.

"You might see So-and-so," Dives named a banker. "I'll write a note of introduction." Then he added with a faint inflection of derision: "I fear it will be of no service to you, because few business men care to buy trouble even at a bargain."

All this Ajax and I heard from Uncle Jap, after he returned from San Lorenzo without selling Sunny Bushes to So-and-so. None the less, he brought back a pair of small diamond ear-rings.

"Lily's ears ain't pierced," he explained; "but she'll hev a reel splendid time lookin' at 'em, jest as I uster hev with my nightie."

"Your--_nightie_?"

Uncle Jap chuckled and rubbed together his bony hands, cracking the joints.

"Yas, my nightie. Never tole you boys about that, did I? Wal, about a month before Lily an' me was fixin' up to get merried, she made me a nightie. It was mos' too dressy fer a lady to wear, let alone a critter like me who'd allus slep' in his pants an' day shirt. 'Twas of fine linen, pleated, and fixed with ribands, yaller riband, I chose the colour. Lily was kinder stuck on pale blue, but I liked yaller best. Lily knew what I' do with that nightie, an' I done it. I put it away in the tissoo paper 'twas wrapped in, an' I hev it still. I've got more solid satisfaction out of lookin' at it than I ever hev out o' my bank book. An," he concluded warmly, "Lily's goin' ter feel jest that way about these yere sollytaires."

What followed immediately afterwards is county history. Uncle Jap decided to borrow money to develop his bonanza. The Autocrat, with tentacles stretching to the uttermost ends of the earth, may--I dare not affirm that he did--have issued instructions that such money as Jaspar Panel asked for was to be paid. Jaspar Panel asked for a good deal, and got it. He sunk more wells and capped them; he built reservoirs, he laid down pipe line. The day of triumph dawned when an English company offered to take all the oil Uncle Jap could supply, provided it were delivered free on board their vessels. Then came the crushing blow that the railroad would not transport Mr. Panel's petroleum. If they did--this was not the reason given by the shipping agents--the Autocrat might be _displeased_.

Meantime the banks politely requested Jaspar Panel to meet his obligations.

Hitherto, Uncle Jap had been a man of simple and primitive beliefs. He had held, for instance, that a beneficent Providence will uphold Right against Might; he had pinned his faith to the flag under which he fought and bled when a boy; he had told his Lily (who believed him) that American citizenship is a greater thing than a Roman's in Rome's palmiest day: a phrase taken whole from the mouth of a Fourth of July orator. Last of all, he had believed devoutly in his own strong hands and will, the partnership of mind and muscle which confronts seemingly insuperable obstacles confident that it can destroy them.

And now, hour by hour, day by day, conviction settled upon his soul that in this world one only reigned supreme: the Autocrat of Oil, whose High Priest was Nathaniel Leveson. After heart-rending months of humiliation, upon the eve of foreclosure by the banks, Uncle Jap wrote a forlorn letter to Nathaniel, accepting his offer of fifty thousand dollars for the lake of oil. Mr. Leveson, so a subordinate replied, _was not buying oil properties_! For the moment he was interested in other matters ... Uncle Jap happened to read next day that Leveson, treading in the footsteps of his Master, was about to present a splendid church to the people of San Lorenzo. Uncle Jap stared at the paper till it turned white, till he saw in the middle of it a huge purple blot ever-increasing in size.

That evening he cleaned his old six-shooter, which had made the climate of the county so particularly pestilential for the wizard with the hazel twig.

"Pore critter," he muttered as he wiped the barrel, "he was down to his uppers, but this feller------" Mrs. Panel, putting away the supper things, heard her husband swearing softly to himself. She hesitated a moment; then she came in, and seeing the pistol, a gasp escaped her.

"What air you doin' with that, Jaspar Panel?"

Uncle Jap coughed.

"There's bin a skunk around," he said. "I've kind o' smelled him for weeks past, hain't you?"

"I never knowed you to shoot a skunk with anything but a shot-gun."

"That's so. I'd disremembered. Wonder if I kin shoot as straight as I used ter?"

For answer his wife, usually so undemonstrative, bent down, took the pistol from his hand, put it back into the drawer, and, slightly blushing, kissed the old man's cheek.

"Why, Lily, what ails ye?"

His surprise at this unwonted caress brought a faint smile to her thin lips.

"Nothing."

"Ye ain't tuk a notion that yer goin' to die?"

"Nothing ails me, Jaspar," her voice was strong and steady. "I'm strong as I was twenty year ago, or nearly so. I kin begin life over agen, ef I hev to."

"Who said you hed to?" enquired her husband fiercely. "Who said you hed to?" he repeated. "Susan Jane Fullalove? I'd like ter wring her dam neck. Oh, it wan't her, eh? Wal, you take if from me that you ain't agoin' to begin life agen onless it's in a marble hall sech as you've dreamed about ever since you was shortcoated. Let me hear no more sech talk. D'ye hear?"

"I hear," she answered meekly, and went back to her kitchen.

* * * * *

Next day she came to us across the cow-pasture as we were smoking our pipes after the mid-day meal. We guessed that no light matter had brought her afoot, with such distress upon her face.

"I'm in trouble," she said nervously.

"We are your friends," said Ajax gravely.

"Jaspar's gone to town," she gasped.

Uncle Jap, since the striking of the oil, had been in the habit of going to town so often that this statement aroused no surprise. We waited for more information.

"I'm scared plum ter death," Mrs. Panel continued. "I want ter foller him at onst. Jaspar's taken the team. I thought maybe you'd hitch up and drive me in this afternoon--_now_."

The last word left her lips with a violence that was positively imperative.

"Certainly," said Ajax. He turned to leave the room. We neither of us asked a question. Upon the threshold he addressed me:

"I'll bring the buggy round while you change."

I reflected that it was considerate of Ajax to allow me to drive Mrs. Panel the twenty-six miles between our ranch and San Lorenzo. I nodded and went into my bedroom.

* * * * *