Chapter XLIII: Jean Is Happy—and Another Person 307 (8)

“August 23. After a long, hot, and arduous journey of over thirty miles, and consuming two days of the most trying experience possible, we reached Malheur River, another tributary of the Snake. But we failed to find any food for the cattle, and were compelled to pull out again the next morning before dawn, headed for what appeared to be a stream of water, as we judged from a fringe of willows. But when we reached the bed of the stream it was dry as a bone. We were compelled to stop, though, as it was then high noon, and it was reported twelve miles to the next water. So a part of our force was detailed to dig a well in the creek bottom for water for domestic use, and the rest were sent back to the Malheur to water the stock, as soon as they had eaten their fill of the dry grass, which to us is more precious than gold, or anything else just now but water.

“On the 24th we left this camp and travelled down the dry bed of the creek for several miles, through a valley that had evidently been missed by the trains ahead, as the grass was fine and abundant. After leaving this valley, we travelled over a blind trail through a hot, dusty ravine till ten o’clock at night, when we reached some sulphur springs and encamped, feeling cross, half sick, and disgusted with all the world. The air is heavy with the fumes of sulphur, and Limpy says we are less than half a mile from hell.”

On the 25th of August Jean’s journal again gave evidence of Captain Ranger’s chirography and style. His characteristic narrative follows: “To-day we made eight miles, which brought us to a deep and rocky canyon debouching into the Snake. This is to be our last encounter with this tortuous, treacherous, and in every way terrible serpent, of whose presence we long ago had much more than enough.

“Three miles farther brought us to Burnt River,—a small, rapid, and crooked stream, with a sandy delta at its disproportionately extended mouth. Here the country changes its entire topography. The bold and abrupt foot-hills are covered to their tops with an abundant coat of seed-bearing bunchgrass; and numerous juniper-trees which somehow in the long ago gained a footing among the sloping shale and sand, lend a peculiar beauty to the scene.”

* * * * *

“Mr. Burns, I’m going to die before long.”

These were the words of little Bobbie, the darling of the family and of the entire company, and were spoken to Scotty on that memorable day in the Black Hills when preparations were in progress for the burial of his mother.

The blow came suddenly. The child had been overjoyed at the prospect of reaching the end of the journey at an early day. The sight of Burnt River filled him with pleasing anticipations. He was never more playful, quaint, and original than when his father stood him on his shoulder to view the last they should see of the Snake River.

“Where is it going now, papa?” he asked artlessly. “Is it always hungry? Is that what makes it in such a hurry? What does it eat? And where does it sleep o’ nights? It’s a sure enough snake, isn’t it?”

At midnight, when the weary party were sound asleep, Mary, who was lying near him, was wakened by an ominous cough, which rapidly developed into an acute attack of croup.

* * * * *

“It was a stubborn case, and quite beyond my poor skill,” said the Little Doctor, as they all stood weeping around the still and beautiful form of the precious dead.

“What do you imagine caused the child to predict his untimely taking off, Mr. Burns?” asked Mrs. McAlpin, as they watched alone.

“I suppose it was merely a child’s fancy,—a coincidence, probably.”

“And I suppose it was a revelation. Many important lessons may be learned from the artless utterances of a child.”

For many weeks Mrs. McAlpin had studiously avoided conversation on any subject with the one man on earth whom she believed to be her counterpart.

“Wait till that human imperfection called the Law has made me legally free,” was her invariable command whenever her suitor showed symptoms of impatience.

But to-night, as they knelt together in the presence of what the world calls Death, he seized her hand, and it was not withdrawn.

“Kneeling in this presence, may I have my answer, Daphne?”

The dim light of a sputtering tallow candle shed a faint glow across the white sheet under which the still form of Bobbie lay in dreamless sleep.

She returned the pressure of his hand in silence. But when he would have caught her in a close embrace, she gently withdrew and whispered: “We will take our first kiss at the altar, darling.”

“I am happy now, and I can wait. God bless you!” he whispered; and as others were about entering the tent, he arose from his knees and went out silently among the stars.

The morning came at last. Amid the tearful silence of the company the train moved on for a couple of miles and halted at the foot of a mountain to consign the mortal remains of the little soul to their last resting-place. High up on the mountain-side, on a natural terrace, the grave was made under a spreading juniper-tree, in whose branches the wild birds chant his requiem as the years roll on, and the eternal breezes sing.

* * * * *

The next morning, August 29, found the face of Nature covered everywhere with a thick coating of hoar-frost. Ice had formed during the night in the water-pails, an eighth of an inch in thickness, and an inspiriting sensation of chilliness filled the air. But as the sun rode high in the brassy heavens, the day grew intensely hot. On and on and up and up the ailing cattle labored; and on and on and up and up the dispirited company toiled, footsore and weary, ragged and dirty. But hope was not dead; for was not the goal of their ambition now almost in sight?

The mountains of Powder River were next crossed, and the weary pilgrims emerged upon an open plain over which the pygmy sagebrush of the desert ran riot. Here a quarter of a century later an enterprising city was destined to arise, in the midst of abounding mines and burdened wheatfields, wherein the irrigated lands would drop fatness and the stockman grow rich among the cattle of a thousand hills.

“This valley,” wrote Jean, under date of September 1, “is beautiful to look upon; but it is considered worthless, as it is too dry for cultivation, and there is no way to rid the land of the ever-obtruding sage. Daddie says it will never be made to sprout white beans.”

The ranchers, stock-raisers, mine-owners, merchants, artisans, mechanics, speculators, newspaper men, politicians, and successful schemers in every walk of life can well afford to forgive Daniel Webster, John Ranger, and every other false prophet who in his day harped on the same string, in view of the continuous fields of wheat, oats, barley, rye, vetch, hops, and fruits of all kinds peculiar to the temperate zone which this wonderfully fertile valley now produces under the impulse of irrigation, not to mention the mines of gold and silver, precious stones, and baser metals with which the hills and mountains are fabulously rich.

The descent of the Ranger company into the now famous Grande Ronde valley was most perilous. It was made long after nightfall, through a precipitous and rocky defile, where a slip of the wagon-wheel or the misstep of an ox would have plunged the adventurous teams, wagons, men, women, children, and all, over sheer bluffs.

Camp was pitched in the edge of the beautiful valley, then a reservation belonging to the Nez Percé Indians. Rye-grass was growing as high as the top of the head of a man on horseback; and at one end of the valley, where now is a famous resort for health and pleasure, a number of hot springs were outlined by great columns of steam, which, rising beneath the arid air, hung low over the foot-hills, and, hanging lower yet in the vale below, spread itself like an enormous fleece over a lake of seething water.

XXXI

_THROUGH THE OREGON MOUNTAINS_

After moving across the Grande Ronde valley through a veritable Eden of untamed verdure, and crossing the Grande Ronde River by ford, our travellers began the ascent of the Blue Mountains.

The air was cool and delicious. The cattle, much refreshed by their luscious feed in the bountiful and beautiful valley, moved more briskly than had been their wont, and were soon in the midst of the grand old forest trees, which, at that time untouched by the woodman’s ax, stood in all their native grandeur upon the grass-grown slopes. In the midst of one of these groves of stately whispering pines the company halted for the night near a sparkling spring, with scenery all around them so enchanting that Jean exclaimed in her journal, “Oh, this beautiful world! how big it is compared to the pygmy mortals who roam over its surface; and yet how little it is compared to the countless stars that gaze upon us from above this ‘boundless contiguity of shade’!”

For several days she had written little. Her thoughts wandered to the Green River experience that had awakened within her being a new life, from which, for her at least, there was to be no ending. She could not write, so she strolled aimlessly away to a mossy rock in a starlit ravine, at the foot of which a rivulet was singing.

“Why can’t I see you, mother dear?” she asked. “And you, Bobbie, can’t you say a word to your sister Jean?”

For a long time she sat thus, lost in reverie, while the eternal silence around her was broken only by the low cadence of the whispering pines.

Suddenly there came into her inner consciousness a call, unspoken yet heard, “Jean!”

She closed her eyes and saw, as plainly as with physical vision, Ashton Ashleigh’s border home; and he was gazing hard at Le-Le, who was kneeling at his feet in beseeching attitude.

“Jean!”

Gradually, as the demon Doubt aroused her senses, a wild, unreasoning jealousy crept into her heart. She turned her face to the eastward and sent out to him an answering call, “Ashleigh!”

She listened eagerly; but no response was felt or heard, and no mental vision reappeared. With her heart like lead, she returned to the wagon and crept into bed.

When she awoke the sun was shining, and she could not recall the vision that had distressed her. Had her soul visited the abode of her heart’s idol? Who knows? and who can tell?

* * * * *

On and on the teams kept crawling, until on the 6th of September the summit of the Blue Mountains was passed, and the wearied travellers gazed for the first time upon the Cascade Mountains, lying to the westward in the purple distance; and in their midst arose, supported by a continuous chain of undulating, tree-crowned, lesser heights, the majestic proportions of Mount Hood, the patriarch of the solitudes, his hoary head uplifted in the shimmering air, and at his feet a drapery of mist.

The Umatilla River left the gorges through which it had fought its way, and glided peacefully through a sagebrush plain toward the great Columbia. But no settlements were yet to be seen. No navigation had yet been started on the broad bosom of the upper Columbia. The rock-ribbed Dalles frowned far below in the misty distance; and no dream of a fleet of palatial river craft, with portage railways around otherwise impassable gorges, had yet taken practical shape. The Cascade locks had not entered the liveliest imagination, and a transcontinental railroad was considered an engineering impossibility, existing only in the mind of an impractical theorist or incurable crank.

A vast and practically level plain or upland lay between the Blue and the Cascade mountains. The Whitman settlement had already made the existence of the infant city of Walla Walla possible. Wallula and Umatilla were not, and the site of Pendleton was an unbroken plain.

But game was plenty and grass was good. Choke-cherries and salmon-berries grew thickly among the deciduous groves that bordered the Umatilla River; and but for the sad bereavements in the Ranger family, which time alone could heal, the company would have been in exuberant spirits.

At Willow Creek station, which is now a veritable oasis in the desert, the party found a trading-post, where some fresh potatoes and onions made a welcome change in the diet.

On the 13th of September Jean wrote: “Old friends and relatives, tried and true, have come to meet us from the Willamette valley, and their unexpected coming fills us with gratitude unspeakable.”

After stopping merely to exchange greetings and gather what meagre tidings they could obtain from each end of the long and tedious road, the jaded immigrants pushed onward through the heat and dust till nightfall, when they came to a small stream, where they were compelled to halt for the night on account of the water, though the grass was poor and the cattle fared badly.

The relief party reported the Willamette valley as the “Garden of Eden,” and gave glowing accounts of the soil, climate, scenery, and plenty with which the western part of the great Oregon country abounded. Even the dumb animals seemed to understand and take courage; for they stepped more briskly under the yoke and chewed the cud to a later hour than had been their wont.

Guided by the advice of the relief party, the train was again put in motion at midnight.

“It is fully twenty miles to the next camping-ground where there are wood and water,” said a kindly recruit who had recently been over the road. It was a forced march, but the animals were well repaid for making it, as they found good water and a tolerable supply of grass.

“September 16. We are encamped near the mouth of the Des Chutes River,” wrote Jean. “It is a clear, swift, and considerable stream which empties its waters into the Columbia.

“I know to-night just how Balboa must have felt when he discovered the Pacific Ocean. For have I not set eyes upon the lordly Columbia, the mighty river of the West, which

“‘Hears no sound save its own dashings’?”

The Des Chutes was safely forded by the teams, under the direction of an Indian guide, and the women and children were taken across it in a canoe.

The wild and broken desolation of the plains now gave way to vast alluvial uplands,—dry, owing to the season, but giving promise of great prosperity for future husbandmen. Numerous gulches intersected the otherwise unbroken level, upon which the teams would often come without warning; therefore travel was difficult and progress slow.

“If the season were not so far advanced, I’d like to stop over at The Dalles and visit the mission,” said Captain Ranger; “but a storm is threatening, and it will never do to risk such an experience in the Cascade Mountains.”

“Quite right you air!” exclaimed a mountaineer, who visited the train avowedly in search of a wife. None of the women or girls saw fit to accept the negotiations proposed; but his advice as to a coming storm was good. The train, in seeking to slip through the mountains by the way of Barlow’s Gap,—a road made passable for teams by the indefatigable labors of an honored pioneer, whose name it perpetuates,—was halted just in time to prevent a disastrous ending.

Captain Ranger’s worn and famishing cattle were reinforced at Barlow’s Gap by two yokes of fat oxen sent to the rescue by an immigrant of 1850,—a grand and enterprising preacher of the gospel, who, all unknown, even to himself, was a striking example of a working parson, imbued with the practical idea of what constitutes a “Church of the Big Licks.” Not that he was pugnacious, but he was philanthropic and practical and enterprising; and many are the beneficiaries of his industry and skill who have long survived his ministry, and date their material progress in Oregon, as well as their spiritual welfare, to this practical promoter of an every-day religion.

Provisions were by this time running short, and the necessity of reaching the settlements was imperative; but there was no appeal from the borderer’s experience, and the impatient wayfarers were compelled to remain in camp for four consecutive days and nights, while the excited heavens warred among the serrated steeps, as

“From rock to rock leaped the live thunder.”

The storm, which condensed its forces into a deluge of rain at both the eastern and western bases of the Cascade Mountains, had raged as snow in the forest-studded heights; and this, melting rapidly under the sunny skies which succeeded the heavy precipitation, made Barlow’s Gap so slippery that the teamsters had to exercise the utmost care in guiding the oxen and to keep their own feet.

Provisions ran lower every day, and finally gave out entirely; and one jolly wayfarer, who had for many weeks professed to be enjoying the prospect of a ten-days’ famine, grew so ravenous when compelled to face the reality at the foot of Laurel Hill, that he begged piteously for some coffee-grounds to ease the cravings of his stomach.

The next morning the three girls crossed the raging torrent of the glacial river Sandy by jumping from rock to rock over the roaring and perilous current, and gathered a bountiful supply of salal-berries for the children; but it was almost night before the half-starved men (who would not eat the purple fruit) were met by a packer, who brought beef and flour; and as soon as a fire could be kindled, a meal was made ready.

On the 27th of September the company descended the last long and rocky steep, and halted with a shout at the foot of the mountains on the famous Foster Ranch, where fresh vegetables, milk, cream, and butter were added to the beef and flour on which they had been glad to subsist when necessary.

On the thirtieth day of the month they reached Oregon City, and were royally welcomed by Dr. John McLoughlin,—the renowned, revered, and idolized hero of Old Oregon.

XXXII

_LETTERS FROM HOME_

Oregon City, in the autumn of 1852 and for more than a decade thereafter, consisted chiefly of a single narrow street bordering the Willamette River and lying under the sheer bluffs of lichen-clad basaltic rock that overlook the Falls of the Willamette, valued at that time only as a fishing site for the wily Indian and a strenuous leaping-place for schools of salmon. But future enterprise was destined to utilize the stupendous water-power for the convenience of man in the city of Portland, a dozen miles below. In this one narrow street the Ranger company halted to read letters from the States. These letters, many of them now nearly six months old, brought to them the first tidings from the old home. The latest was dated August 1, and was from Grandfather Ranger, announcing the transition of “Grannie,” the beloved great-grandmother, whose demise was described with much detail:—

“She was in usual health up to the last day of her sojourn in the body,” he wrote, “and retained her faculties to the last. She had walked to Lijah’s and back during the day, with no companion but Rover, who deemed her his especial charge from the time he took up his abode with us. But she complained of being tired on her return, and ate less dinner than usual. While your mother and I were sitting at the table, we heard a peculiar gasp and gurgle from Grannie’s chair in the next room, and we hastened to her side; but she never spoke again, except in whispered messages of love to us all.

“We laid her precious remains in the family lot, in the dear, peaceful, leafy burying-ground of Glen Eden, and returned to our lonely home, and put away her empty chair. On the last morning of her earth-life, as she sat at breakfast with us, she said, ‘I saw Joseph in my dreams last night. I heard him speak as plainly as if he had been in this room. He had a troubled look, but he said: “Tell mother I have written.”’ We thought little of it at the time; but to-day we had a letter from him, saying he is alive and well. He spoke of having seen you, John, but he said you had quarrelled with him, or rather at him, and had left him in a fit of anger. He did not say why you had quarrelled. But, oh, John, how could you do it? We know he must have given you cause, but you should, for our sakes, have risen above it. My old heart is heavy with sorrow. And your dear, patient mother, who has prayed so long and earnestly for this meeting between you two,—to think when her prayer is answered at last that you would add to it such a sting! No matter which one of you is the more to blame, you, my son, as the elder brother, should be the first to make concessions. I know your gentle Annie joins me in this appeal. She seems strangely near me as I write; and I can almost hear her say: ‘To err is human; to forgive divine.’ Give her and all the children our messages of love and sympathy.”

The strong man wept convulsively. No tidings of his wife’s transition had yet been despatched to the folks at home; nor could letters reach them now for a month to come. There was no overland mail, and all “through” letters sought transit _via_ Panama.

A long postscript was added, over which father and children shed tears in unison. It said: “The dog, Rover, returned at nightfall on the memorable day of your departure, weary, wet, and bedraggled. He would take no notice of me, your mother, or Grannie, although we all tried to pet and console him. But he went straight to your deserted doorstep, where he lay for a long time moaning like a man in pain. Grannie regularly carried him food, but he refused to eat for many days, and his wailing and howling could be heard at all hours of the night. But finally your mother won him over, and he now makes his home with us, and seems quite happy and contented. We all thought he would want to leave us and go back to the old house when Lijah took possession of it, but he didn’t. He just clung all the closer to us old folks in the cottage; and it would have done your soul good to see the faithful watch he kept over dear old Grannie to the last day of her life. He was conspicuous among the chief mourners at the burial, and lingered alone beside the grave long after we all had returned to our homes.”

Jean, recalling her father’s words on that far-away ferry-boat, where she had last seen the faithful animal watching and wailing from the river-bank, said, as she looked up from reading her own letters: “Daddie, don’t you think now that a dog has a soul?” And her father answered huskily: “I don’t see why he hasn’t as good a right to a soul as I have.”

“Here, Mame,” said Jean, “is a letter from Cousin Annie Robinson. Listen. She says: ‘Please break it gently to Cousin Mame that her _beau ideal_ of a man, the Reverend Thomas Rogers, took to himself a wife before she had been gone a week. And who should it have been but that detestable Agnes Winter, who used to say such spiteful things about Mame? She won’t be as happy after a while as she is now, but she’ll know a whole lot more. Who could have believed that so saintly a sinner as the Reverend Thomas would prove so fickle? I hope Mame will see him with our eyes after this. He isn’t worthy of her passing thought.’”

Mary, whose dreams for long and weary months had been of a package of letters from the preacher that never came at all, faced suddenly the first great crisis in her life; and stilling, with a strong effort of the will, the tumultuous beatings of her heart, she walked rapidly on, ahead of the teams, from starting-time until nightfall, fighting her first great battle with herself alone, and gaining the mastery at last without human aid or sympathy.

The immigrants, having concluded their purchases, toiled up the narrow grade to the table-land above the bluffs, and pursued their way through the stately evergreen forests and level plains of the Willamette valley to the homes of relatives, who awaited their coming with joy that was changed to mourning when they learned for the first time of the death of Mrs. Ranger.

After a few days of much-needed rest among the hospitable pioneers who had preceded them by two years and were now installed on a beautiful and valuable donation claim, the immigrant party decided to remain in each other’s vicinity, and removed for the purpose to a beautiful vista of vacant land under the friendly shadow of the Cascade Mountains, with a westward outlook across the Willamette valley to the Coast Range, which alone intervened to shut from sight the surging billows of the Pacific Ocean.

It was here that the genius and education of Scotty, who will hereafter be designated by his lawful name, proved of inestimable value. Supplied only with a rope and a carpenter’s square, he led a private surveying party through the woods and prairies, locating their claims with such accuracy that the government survey, which was made years after, fully approved his work.

“You may not be a success at driving oxen or taking care of steers at night,” said Captain Ranger, “but you are an artist with a rope and a square.”

“Didn’t I tell you he’d be worth his weight in gold when he reached a place where he could have a chance to use his brains?” asked Mrs. McAlpin, who took as kindly and intelligently to her surroundings as if to the manner born.

“Women have a way of divination that I won’t attempt to analyze,” was the laughing reply.

The donation claim of each settler, the acreage of which had by this time been cut into halves by Act of Congress, was still of ample proportions, being a mile long and half a mile wide, and was so surveyed as to allow four families or claimants to settle on extreme corners of their land at points where four corners met.

“This will enable each claimant to build a cabin on his own claim, so he can reside upon and cultivate his own land, as required by the law, and at the same time have neighbors within call in case of accident or other need,” said Mr. Burns.

“What a grand and glorious prospect!” exclaimed Captain Ranger, standing on an eminence where his new house was to go up, and gazing abroad over the wide expanse of the Willamette valley, in which the winding river was gleaming through the openings in the forest; “but I can sense one drawback to your scheme, Mr. Burns.”

“What is it?”

“Some of us will be getting married before long and doubling our opportunity for holding government lands; and as each must reside upon and cultivate his claim and his wife’s, it will make it a little awkward, won’t it?”

“Not if the contracting parties exercise a little ordinary business ability and discretion, sir. They have but to locate their claims with a view to matrimony and settle their own bargains to suit themselves.”

But the Captain, who had dealt with the domestic infelicities of his neighbors too often to look upon all such bargains as imbued with old-time stability, had his doubts.

“If an engaged couple should tire of their bargain, and their change of sentiment should fail to fit the agreement,—what then?”

“It would be a blessing for them to discover their mistake in time to forestall the divorce court,” was the ready reply.

“Mr. Burns is right,” said Mrs. McAlpin. “Two-thirds of the unhappy marriages we hear about are the result of haste and lack of understanding. A couple will marry, and when it is too late to recede from the bargain they want to break it. I don’t mind telling you, Captain Ranger, that Mr. Burns and I expect to marry each other some day, and our claims were chosen accordingly; but we’ll wait until the law frees me from a bargain which I repudiated in spirit before it was consummated. And we’ll not marry then if we conclude we are making a mistake.”

“I am glad to hear you make so open and frank a statement in the presence of so competent a witness,” exclaimed Mrs. Benson, who still carried an important note in her pocket, frayed and travel-soiled, but none the less precious from being scarcely legible.

“I think it is a shame to make a commercial bargain of a matrimonial agreement,” exclaimed Mary Ranger.

“And so do I!” echoed Jean.

Nevertheless, when the boundaries of the several donation claims were established, and the different allotments were assigned to the proper claimants, it was noticed that, in addition to the Captain’s own quota of virgin acres, an extra claim was reserved adjacent to that of each of his daughters, Mary and Jean, and one next to that of Sally O’Dowd.

* * * * *

“Equality before the law is a fundamental idea in the government of the United States of America,” the Captain explained at the Land Office; “and I am glad to see it practically applied to the property rights of the pioneer women of Oregon. It is a good beginning, and none can see the end.”

“Sally O’Dowd isn’t a free woman, and she can’t get married, thank goodness!” cried Jean, as she and her sisters talked the matter over together between themselves alone.

“That’s so,” echoed Mary. “Sally has a husband living, and so there is no danger of our losing father.”

“Let’s not be too certain,” cried Jean. “If you’d kept your eyes open for the last month, as I have, you wouldn’t be surprised at anything. Sally’s case was up on appeal when she left the States, but it has doubtless gone by default. She has the custody of her children, and that was all she asked of Sam O’Dowd.”

“Then Sally is a free woman,” said Marjorie.

“No woman is free when she is married,” retorted Jean. “The laws of men do not recognize the individuality of a married woman. I, for instance, am Jean Ranger to-day, but if I should marry to-morrow, I’d be—”

“Nothing but a nonentity named Mrs. Ashton Ashleigh,” interrupted Mary. “Women delight in surrendering their names in marriage to the man they love.”

“You’re right,” cried Jean, her eyes blazing. “I’d surrender to-morrow if Ashton would come to claim his own. But it would be a partnership, and not a one-sided agreement.”

“That’s what every woman thinks when she puts her neck in the noose,” laughed Marjorie; “but when the man comes along who is able to capture her heart, she is ready to make the venture.”

“That’s because the fundamental principle of matrimony is correct,” retorted Jean.

“Dat’s so, honey,” said Susannah. “Women is jist like pigs. When one of ’em burns his nose in a trough o’ hot mash, dey’ll all hurry to ’vestigate an’ git de same sperience.”

“Of course you’ll get some land,” said Jean.

“I’ve done axed de Cap’n ’bout it, an’ he’s looked up de law. He says I can’t take up no lan’ ’cos I’m nothin’ but a niggah. De laws o’ Oregon are ag’in it; so are de laws o’ de gen’ral gov’ment. A free country’s a great blessin’ to women an’ niggahs! It’s a great blessin’ to be bawn in a free country; ain’t it, Geo’die Wah?”

The coon, who had grown and flourished under his six months’ regimen of flapjacks and bacon, shook his bright brown curls and grinned, displaying an even set of polished ivories.

“I couldn’t git married if I wanted to,” added the negress, “’cos the law is sot ag’in mixed matches; but da’hs no law nowhar ag’in coons”; and she ended hers harangue with a characteristic “Yah! yah! yah!”

“Then, if you can’t marry, you can always work for wages, Susannah; and you’ll be better off than Mrs. McAlpin,”—she was coming to join the group,—“who is going to be married soon, if I can read the stars correctly,” laughed Marjorie.

“No, Marjorie; I cannot even talk of marriage with the man whom God created for me, and me only. I am not even a grass widow. I cannot legally file upon a claim because I am the victim of a marriage I cannot honor. And the law cannot set me free because the party of the second part objects.”

“What’s that you were saying to the Ranger girls, Daphne?” asked Mrs. Benson, who had been engaged in assisting Captain Ranger and Mr. Burns to plan the two sets of log houses that were to be erected a mile apart, and to be so arranged as to form separate abodes for four families.

“Nothing, mamma, only I was bewailing my fate.”

“Come with me, Daphne; I have something to show you,” said Mrs. Benson, in a low tone.

“Listen to this letter,” said the mother, as soon as they were seated among the trees. “The time has come for you to know its contents:—

“MY DEAR MRS. BENSON,—You have been a brave, devoted mother to
an unhappily environed daughter. I have long known that you
and I were made for each other. We became mismatched through
adherence to false customs. Daphne does not love me, and has
never willingly accepted our union, as you have painful reason
to know. You love me! Pardon this abrupt announcement. You have
never told me so, but I have known the truth for years. To have
this opportunity to tell you that I reciprocate, is at present
my only joy.

“I will meet you in the wilds of Oregon. Daphne’s latest
erratic movements to escape me have all along been known. To
follow you I became a wanderer in these Western wilds. I will
take measures to set your beautiful daughter free. A couple
whom God hath _not_ joined together it is man’s duty to put
asunder. Keep your own counsel till such time as you are strong
enough to take your life and destiny into your own hands, and
declare yourself accountable primarily to yourself and God for
your own actions.

“I will be in Portland, Oregon, by November first. We shall
surely meet again.

“Faithfully, through time and for eternity, your devoted but
never yet accredited counterpart,

“DONALD MCPHERSON.”

The daughter clasped her mother’s hand and fervently exclaimed, “Thank God!”

Mrs. Benson wept.

“It will never do for you and me to meet again after this revelation,” said the daughter, after a long silence. “I will take up my permanent abode in this new country, and you can rejoin Donald in New York or Philadelphia, _via_ the city of Panama. But you must go to Portland now. We will not set idle tongues to wagging here. It is fortunate indeed that Donald took his mother’s name as a part of his last inheritance.”

XXXIII

_LOVE FINDS A WAY_

“You needn’t select any lands for me, Captain,” said Mrs. Benson. “I have decided to go to Portland to-morrow with the team that’s going down for supplies. I shall not return. But my daughter will remain and take a claim. She has decided to turn rancher, but I do not like the life.”

“Isn’t this a rather sudden change in your programme, Mrs. Benson?”

“Not at all. I didn’t intend to remain when I came here. I wouldn’t have come any farther than Oregon City, but I wanted to get a view of the future home of Daphne; and now, as she has chosen for herself and has a fair prospect of happiness ahead, I am ready to look out for myself. I shall stop awhile in Portland, and be ready to take the next steamer for San Francisco. I will go to New York by way of the Isthmus, and will spend the evening of my days in Paris or London.”

“I’m sure I wish you well, Mrs. Benson.”

“Thank you, Captain. My heart is too full for words! I know you will always be a friend to my dear daughter.”

“You surely do not mean to go where you can never see your daughter again!”

“Yes, Captain. Do you recall that tall and bronzed and handsome man of whom you bought the buffalo robe you gave to your wife a short time before her death?”

“You mean Donald McPherson?”

“Yes, sir. The fates have settled it. He is to be my husband, and Daphne and I must part.”

“You have my best wishes for success and happiness,” said the Captain, earnestly, as he offered his hand.

“There is some peculiar mystery about all this!” he exclaimed to himself the next day, as Mrs. Benson climbed into the wagon and started off to meet her fate. “But it’s the way of women. They are as fickle as the wind.” He thought bitterly of his own budding and now blighted hopes.

“Don’t grieve for her, Daphne,” said Mr. Burns, in a husky voice, as the wagon disappeared. “She was kind to me when I was crippled and cross, and I shall never forget her watchfulness and care for me under the most trying conditions. She is your mother, too, and that of itself is enough to inspire my everlasting gratitude. I have no respect for the man who fails to appreciate the woman to whom he is indebted for his wife.”

“It is well for the three of us that we have learned our lesson, Rollin. We are all young yet, and all eternity is before us.”

“Yes, Daphne! Eternity is both before and behind us. We are henceforth to be all in all to each other, as I believe we have been in the past, my darling.”

“No, Mr. Burns, do not ‘darling’ me yet. We must await the tardy action of that human imperfection called the law before I can honorably become your ‘darling.’”

Nevertheless, being human, she feigned not to notice the prolonged pressure of his hand at parting, nor did she refrain from answering his eager and tender gaze with a look that quickened every pulse and sent a thrill of gladness to his heart.

* * * * *

At the primitive hotel in the primitive little city of Portland, Mrs. Benson met an Indian woman, the mother of many children, who was introduced to her as Mrs. Addicks. The woman was richly and stylishly gowned and seemed much at home among the guests. Her mien and carriage were queenly, as she moved about the little parlor, exchanging a word here and there among the loiterers, with whom she seemed a general favorite.

“Haven’t I met you somewhere before?” asked Mrs. Benson, with whom, in truth, she had exchanged greetings on the plains under circumstances quite different from the present, as one, at least, had cause to remember.

“I do not recall a former meeting, madam. But you might have met me on the plains. I was on my way to Portland when you saw me, if you saw me at all. A frontier trading-post is no proper place to bring up a lot of Indian half-breeds. I came here to educate my children.”

“Then your husband is a white man?”

“Yes.”

“I beg your pardon, but you do not speak and act like the other Indians I have met.”

“I am a chieftain’s daughter, and I was educated in London. You spoke of travelling in the Ranger train. Mr. Ranger is my husband’s brother.”

“Does Captain Ranger know of this?”

“I neither know nor care! One thing is certain. I shall do my best to train and educate my children in such a way that he will be proud some day to own them as relatives. I have the girls in school at the Academy of the Sacred Heart. The boys are at the Brothers’ School.”

“Do you know Dr. McLoughlin?”

“Yes, and my husband knows him well. I saw him as the children and I passed through Oregon City. He was very kind, and bade me be of good cheer. He has an Indian wife himself, as you know. But he did not ask me in to see her, so we did not meet.”

* * * * *

As Donald McPherson had not yet arrived in Portland, Mrs. Benson had ample leisure for letter-writing.

“My dear Daphne,” she wrote, “a letter from Mr. McPherson awaited me, as I expected. He had sent it forward by a courier from the plains, in care of one of Dr. McLoughlin’s agents. I need not repeat its contents. Suffice it to say, that I am serene and calm. God has been very merciful to us all. Within the letter was a letter of credit, upon which I am now able to draw ample funds. I will place on deposit, subject to your order, all the money you will need. Do not hesitate to accept it. It is mine, to do with as I choose; and this is my choice of methods to expend the portion I have assigned to you.

“I have decided not to meet him till after you are a free woman, Daphne. I know you and Donald will guard our secret carefully; but I have doubts about Jean Ranger. She brought me that unsealed note, and, as you know, she is such a precocious little witch she might have read it before giving it into my possession. Could you, in some way, get at the truth of this without letting her see just what you are after?”

To which Mrs. McAlpin replied: “I will not do Jean the injustice to imagine for a moment that she would read a private note that was intrusted to her care and honor. Tell Donald that I will honor him as my step-father, but I will never see his face again. He was very patient with me during all the trying years when the Juggernaut of public opinion, combined with the inquisition of the law, kept us in bondage; and I thank him for his patience with all my heart. I am as painfully aware of the unconventionality of our proceedings as yourself, dear mamma, but as what the public doesn’t know doesn’t disturb that composite being in the least, we’ll keep our own counsel and be happy.

“My donation claim lies parallel to Sally O’Dowd’s. Captain Ranger’s claim adjoins hers on the south,—a plan that implies foreknowledge, if not foreordination.

“Mr. Burns and Albert Evans, our faithful teamster, have selected their land adjacent to mine. Evans has chosen a double allotment, having in prospect a wife who is a mere child, belonging to a neighbor about three miles away. I am disgusted with the venality of the transaction, which the child’s father regards with satisfaction, and the mother with tears.”

A few days later, Mrs. Benson wrote to Captain Ranger, as follows:—

“I have met here an interesting and highly educated Indian woman, who says she is the wife of the post-trader you met in Utah. She says that trader is your brother Joseph, whom for many years you mourned as dead. She is here to educate her boys at the Brothers’ School, and her girls at the Academy of the Sacred Heart.

“When we saw her on the plains, she looked nothing but an ordinary squaw. Now she and the children are well and fashionably dressed, and as presentable in every way as any family in this primitive hostelry; and that is saying a good deal, for there are ladies here of high rank and breeding from the Eastern cities, and also from over the seas. Mrs. Ranger (she still answers to the name of Addicks) was educated in London, she says, where, as the daughter of an Indian chieftain of the land of the Dakotas, she was admitted into the most aristocratic circles. After completing her education she returned to her native haunts and met your brother, who made her his wife. She seems to have plenty of money; her children are bright and intelligent,—the girls especially so, they being, she says, more like their father than the boys; and for this, as you know, there is a physiological reason.”

“I’ll see that woman the very first time I go to Portland,” said the Captain, aloud, as he folded the letter deliberately.

“What woman?” asked Sally O’Dowd.

“Nobody in particular,” he answered, thrusting the letter hurriedly into his pocket, and looking confused and foolish as he returned to his work.

The labor of felling, hewing, hauling, and finally raising into houses the timbers for the big log buildings which were to afford homes for the half-dozen or more families who had, by common consent, adopted a sort of corporate method for residing upon and cultivating their claims, told heavily upon the men, who, already depleted in strength by much hardship, were poorly equipped for their tasks. But there was no shirking of duties nor complaint over backaches, and the borderers’ homes arose like magic.

“How do you like the appearance of the new buildings?” asked Captain Ranger, addressing Sally O’Dowd.

“Why should you ask me?” was the curt response.

Surprised at her reply but disposed to be communicative, he added: “If all goes well, I’ll have a sawmill up yonder in the timber by this time next year.”

“That’s none of my business,” she retorted testily.

He looked at her for a moment in blank astonishment. “Why isn’t it your business?” he asked, at length. “Haven’t we agreed to first get you free from a bad bargain, and after that take up our line of march together? And won’t your belongings then be mine, and mine yours?”

“What about that other woman you are going to Portland to see? Do you take me for an idiot, Squire?”

He looked her in the face for an instant, nonplussed. Then as the reason for her change of manner dawned upon him, he threw back his head and laughed heartily.

“So that’s what the matter with us, is it?” he exclaimed, approaching her with a proffered caress. “We’ve been a trifle jealous, haven’t we?”

“Behave yourself, sir!” elbowing him away. “Go to Portland and see that other woman. No doubt a party by the name of Benson is expecting you.”

He guffawed again, making her angrier still.

“Come, Sally; let’s have no more nonsense,” he said, after his laughter had ceased, motioning her to a seat beside him on the doorway.

She stood irresolute.

“Very well, if you prefer to do so, you can sit a-standing, like the Dutchman’s hen. I’ve been keeping a letter that’s been burning my pocket for three days waiting for an opportunity to show it to you, Mrs. O’Dowd; but you’ve been so shy I couldn’t touch you with a forty-foot pole.”

“What do you suppose I care for your letters from that other woman?” she asked, dropping into the space in the doorway, all eagerness and attention, in spite of her disclaimer.

“Read it yourself, Sally. It is from my brother-in-law, Lije Robinson.”

“The latest sensation is the suicide of Sam O’Dowd,” the letter went on to say, after the usual preliminaries of the border scribe.

“No!” cried the widow, now such _de facto_, rising to her feet and turning deathly pale. “Sam wouldn’t commit suicide. He’d be afraid to meet his Maker.”

“But he did it, Sally. Read on.”

“He left a confession, saying it was remorse that drove him to it, and extolling his wife as a model woman, whom he had wronged beyond reparation in every way imaginable.

“His mother is wellnigh crazy. The home the two of them had wrested from his wife and her mother, in which the old woman had allotted to spend her days, goes back to Sally now, as, by his confession, his mother has no right to it.”

“Poor Sam!” cried the widow, dropping again into the proffered space in the doorway. “He had his faults, but he wasn’t all bad. This letter and his confession prove it. I shall try hard to think that he atoned for his greatest crime by his voluntary death. But I’d be sorry myself to meet the reception that he’ll get in heaven!”

“Why, Sally? What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Let the dead past bury its dead.”

Captain Ranger, who, in first proposing matrimony, had stated earnestly that his heart was still with Annie, gazed tenderly at the weeping woman, who arose and stood before him in a mute yet beseeching attitude, while a warm love for her sprang spontaneously within him.

“Come, Sally dear,” he pleaded; “sit down by me again, and let us talk it out.”

She obeyed mechanically, her frame convulsed with weeping.

“I can never talk again about a platonic union,” he said feelingly. “I know that Annie would sanction our marriage now if she could speak to us; and I believe with all my heart that she knows of our proposed relations, and that she will, under the peculiar circumstances, also approve.”

Ah, John Ranger! Materialist as you used always to proclaim yourself, you cannot, in the deepest recesses of your soul, rebel against the faith that is “the evidence of things not seen.” What have you done with your agnosticism?

“Captain,” said Sally, in a subdued tone, “I have seen the day when I would have followed Sam O’Dowd to the ends of the earth if he had commanded. I could and would have lived on the acorns of the forest rather than have failed to be his wife. Do not ask me to love you now. I cannot be your wife.”

“Are we not engaged?” he asked, astonished.

“Yes; conditionally. But I cannot think about it now. If I can ever bring myself to think it right for me to be your wife, I will not hesitate to tell you so. But not now, Captain; not now.”

She arose abruptly, and was gone.

XXXIV

_HAPPY JACK INTRODUCES HIMSELF_

“Here,” said Jean, the next morning, approaching her father, who was hard at work by sunrise, “are the letters I promised to write to Mr. Ashleigh and his mother. You stipulated that you should see them, as you will remember.”

His head and heart were aching. “I don’t care a rap for your nonsense,” he exclaimed. “Nothing’ll ever come of it. The fellow has never written to you.”

“That’s so!” thought Jean, strolling off aimlessly into the woods. “Daddie gave him our address as Oregon City. Oh, my God! can it be possible that my other self has been married (or the same as married) to Le-Le, the Indian slave?”

Giant trees rose often to the height of three hundred feet,—one hundred and fifty feet from the ground without a limb,—and so straight that no hand-made colonnade could equal them for grace and symmetry. As Jean stood under these stately monarchs of the soil and listened to the soft sighing of the wind among their evergreen leaves, she heard the roar of rushing water. She clambered through a labyrinth of deciduous undergrowth till she came to a horseshoe bend at the head of a gulch, over which the water foamed and tumbled till lost from sight amid the tangled ferns and foliage.

“Halloa!” cried a voice from an unseen source.

She looked in the direction whence the call seemed to proceed, and beheld, standing on the opposite bluff, a typical young backwoodsman, tall and shapely.

She returned the salutation by waving her sunbonnet, which she had been swinging aimlessly by its strings, exposing her face and head to the caress of the balm-laden air.

A minute later, and the stranger was by her side. She noticed that he carried in a careless way a long, old-fashioned rifle; that a pipe was in his mouth, and a pistol of the “pepper-box” variety protruded from the leg of his boot.

“Are you the Ranger gal what got left at Green River?”

She turned ghastly pale at mention of the locality where her thoughts were centred, but made no audible reply.

“My name is Henry Jackman,—better known as Happy Jack,” he said, as he dropped the butt-end of his rifle to the ground with a thud, and stood waiting for her to speak.

“I’ve heard of you before,” said Jean; “you are the man who’s been talking sawmill to my daddie.”

“That’s what!”

“Then we may as well become acquainted. I am Jean Ranger, and I have an older sister Mary and a younger one named Marjorie, besides my brother Hal and two little sisters.”

“I seed yer dad yisti’dy an’ we talked things over. Thar’s a fine prospec’ hyer fur a sawmill.”

“So I perceive.”

“Yer dad an’ me’s goin’ to go snucks.”

“I do not understand.”