Chapter I: ADDRESS myself to all the friends of youth, and conjure them to direct (3)

“Ef I was asked,” he remarked somewhat later—“ef I was asked to pint out a purty little village where a retired sport as didn’t care for money could exercise hisself frequent and lively, I’d say Simpson’s Bar; but for a young man with a large family depending on his exertions, it don’t pay.”

As Mr. Hamlin’s family consisted mainly of female adults, this remark is quoted rather to show the breadth of his humour than the exact extent of his responsibilities.

Howbeit, the unconscious objects of this satire sat that evening in the listless apathy begotten of idleness and lack of excitement.

Even the sudden splashing of hoofs before the door did not arouse them.

Dick Bullen alone paused in the act of scraping out his pipe, and lifted his head; but no other one of the group indicated any interest in, or recognition of, the man who entered.

It was a figure familiar enough to the company, and known in Simpson’s Bar as “The Old Man.”

A man of perhaps fifty years, grizzled and scant of hair, but still fresh and youthful of complexion. A face full of ready, but not very powerful sympathy, with a chameleon-like aptitude for taking on the shade and colour of contiguous moods and feelings.

He had evidently just left some hilarious companions, and did not at first notice the gravity of the group, but clapped the shoulder of the nearest man jocularly, and threw himself into a vacant chair.

“Jest heard the best thing out, boys! Ye know Smiley, over yar—Jim Smiley—funniest man in the Bar? Well, Jim was jest telling the richest yarn about——”

“Smiley’s a —— fool,” interrupted a gloomy voice.

“A particular —— skunk,” added another, in sepulchral accents.

A silence followed these positive statements.

The Old Man glanced quickly around the group. Then his face slowly changed.

“That’s so,” he said reflectively, after a pause; “certainly a sort of a skunk and suthin’ of a fool. In course.”

He was silent for a moment, as in painful contemplation of the unsavouriness and folly of the unpopular Smiley.

“Dismal weather, ain’t it?” he added, now fully embarked on the current of prevailing sentiment. “Mighty rough papers on the boys, and no show for money this season. And to-morrow’s Christmas.”

There was a movement among the men at this announcement, but whether of satisfaction or disgust was not plain.

“Yes,” continued the Old Man in the lugubrious tone he had within the last few moments unconsciously adopted—“yes, Christmas, and to-night’s Christmas-eve. Ye see, boys, I kinder thought—that is, I sorter had an idee, jest passin like you know—that may be ye’d all like to come over to my house to-night and have a sort of tear round. But I suppose, now, you wouldn’t? Don’t feel like it, may be?” he added, with anxious sympathy, peering into the faces of his companions.

“Well, I don’t know,” responded Tom Flynn, with some cheerfulness. “P’r’aps we may. But how about your wife, Old Man? What does she say to it?”

The Old Man hesitated.

His conjugal experience had not been a happy one, and the fact was known to Simpson’s Bar.

His first wife, a delicate, pretty little woman, had suffered keenly and secretly from the jealous suspicions of her husband, until one day he invited the whole Bar to his house to expose her infidelity.

On arriving, the party found the shy, _petite_ creature quietly engaged in her household duties, and retired abashed and discomfited.

But the sensitive woman did not easily recover from the shock of this extraordinary outrage.

It was with difficulty she regained her equanimity sufficiently to release her lover from the closet in which he was concealed, and escape with him.

She left a boy of three years to comfort her bereaved husband.

The Old Man’s present wife had been his cook. She was large, loyal, and aggressive.

Before he could reply, Joe Dimmick suggested with great directness that it was the “Old Man’s house,” and that, invoking the Divine Power, if the case were his own, he would invite who he pleased, even if in so doing he imperilled his salvation. The Powers of Evil, he further remarked, should contend against him vainly.

All this delivered with a terseness and vigour lost in this necessary translation.

“In course. Certainly. Thet’s it,” said the Old Man with a sympathetic frown. “Thar’s no trouble about thet. It’s my own house, built every stick on it myself. Don’t you be afeared o’ her, boys. She may cut up a trifle rough—ez wimmin do—but she’ll come round.”

Secretly the Old Man trusted to the exultation of liquor and the power of a courageous example to sustain him in such an emergency.

As yet, Dick Bullen, the oracle and leader of Simpson’s Bar, had not spoken. He now took his pipe from his lips.

“Old Man, how’s that yer Johnny gettin’ on? Seems to me he didn’t look so peart the last time I seed him on the bluff heavin’ rocks at Chinamen. Didn’t seem to take much interest in it. Thar was a gang of ’em by yar yesterday—drownded out up the river—and I kinder thought o’ Johnny, and how he’d miss ’em! May be now, we’d be in the way ef he was sick?”

The father, evidently touched not only by this pathetic picture of Johnny’s deprivation, but by the considerate delicacy of the speaker, hastened to assure him that Johnny was better, and that a “little fun might ’liven him up.”

Whereupon Dick arose, shook himself, and saying, “I’m ready. Lead the way, Old Man: here goes,” himself led the way with a leap, a characteristic howl, and darted out into the night.

As he passed through the outer room he caught up a blazing brand from the hearth.

The action was repeated by the rest of the party, closely following and elbowing each other, and before the astonished proprietor of Thompson’s grocery was aware of the intention of his guests, the room was deserted.

The night was pitchy dark. In the first gust of wind their temporary torches were extinguished, and only the red brands dancing and flitting in the gloom like drunken will-o’-the-wisps indicated their whereabouts.

Their way led up Pine Tree Cañon, at the head of which a broad, low bark-thatched cabin burrowed in the mountainside.

It was the home of the Old Man, and the entrance to the tunnel in which he worked, when he worked at all.

Here the crowd paused for a moment, out of delicate deference to their host, who came up panting in the rear.

“P’r’aps ye’d better hold on a second out yer, whilst I go in and see thet things is all right,” said the Old Man, with an indifference he was far from feeling.

The suggestion was graciously accepted, the door opened and closed on the host, and the crowd, leaning their backs against the wall, and cowering under the eaves, waited and listened.

For a few moments there was no sound but the dripping of water from the eaves, and the stir and rustle of wrestling boughs above them.

Then the men became uneasy, and whispered suggestion and suspicion passed from the one to the other.

“Reckon she’s caved in his head the first lick!”

“Decoyed him inter the tunnel, and barred him up, likely.”

“Got him down, and sittin’ on him.”

“Prob’ly biling suthing to heave on us; stand clear the door, boys!”

For just then the latch clicked, the door slowly opened, and a voice said—

“Come in out o’ the wet.”

The voice was neither that of the Old Man nor of his wife. It was the voice of a small boy, its weak treble broken by that preternatural hoarseness which only vagabondage and the habit of premature self-assertion can give.

It was the face of a small boy that looked up at theirs—a face that might have been pretty and even refined, but that it was darkened by evil knowledge from within, and dirt and hard experience from without.

He had a blanket around his shoulders, and had evidently just risen from his bed.

“Come in,” he repeated, “and don’t make no noise. The Old Man’s in there talking to mar,” he continued, pointing to an adjacent room which seemed to be a kitchen, from which the Old Man’s voice came in deprecating accents.

“Let me be,” he added, querulously to Dick Bullen, who had caught him up, blanket and all, and was affecting to toss him into the fire; “let go o’ me, you d—d old fool, d’ye hear?”

Thus adjured, Dick Bullen lowered Johnny to the ground with a smothered laugh, while the men, entering quietly, ranged themselves around a long table of rough boards which occupied the centre of the room.

Johnny then gravely proceeded to a cupboard, and brought out several articles which he deposited on the table.

“Thar’s whisky and crackers, and red herons and cheese.” He took a bite of the latter on his way to the table. “And sugar.” He scooped up a mouthful _en route_ with a small and very dirty hand. “And terbacker. Thar’s dried appils too on the shelf, but I don’t admire ’em. Appils is swellin’. Thar,” he continued; “now wade in, and don’t be afeared. I don’t mind the old woman. She don’t b’long to me. S’long.”

He had stepped to the threshold of a small room, scarcely larger than a closet, partitioned off from the main apartment, and holding in its dim recess a small bed.

He stood there a moment looking at the company, his bare feet peeping from the blanket, and nodded.

“Hello, Johnny! You ain’t goin’ to turn in agin, are ye?” said Dick.

“Yes, I are,” responded Johnny, decidedly.

“Why, wot’s up, old fellow?”

“I’m sick.”

“How sick?”

“I’ve got a fevier. And childblains. And roomatiz,” returned Johnny, and vanished within. After a moment’s pause, he added in the dark, apparently from under the bedclothes—“And biles!”

There was an embarrassing silence. The men looked at each other and at the fire.

Even with the appetising banquet before them, it seemed as if they might again fall into the despondency of Thompson’s grocery, when the voice of the Old Man, incautiously lifted, came deprecatingly from the kitchen.

“Certainly! Thet’s so. In course they is. A gang o’ lazy drunken loafers, and that ar Dick Bullen’s the ornariest of all. Didn’t hev no more sabe than to come round yar with sickness in the house and no provision. Thet’s what I said: ‘Bullen,’ sez I, ‘it’s crazy drunk you are, or a fool,’ sez I, ‘to think o’ such a thing.’ ‘Staples,’ I sez, ‘be you a man, Staples, and ’spect to raise h—ll under my roof and invalids lyin’ round?’ But they would come—they would. Thet’s wot you must ’spect o’ such trash as lays round the Bar.”

A burst of laughter from the men followed this unfortunate exposure.

Whether it was overheard in the kitchen, or whether the Old Man’s irate companion had just then exhausted all other modes of expressing her contemptuous indignation, I cannot say, but a back door was suddenly slammed with great violence.

A moment later and the Old Man reappeared, haply unconscious of the cause of the late hilarious outburst, and smiled blandly.

“The old woman thought she’d jest run over to Mrs. McFadden’s for a sociable call,” he explained, with jaunty indifference, as he took a seat at the board.

Oddly enough, it needed this untoward incident to relieve the embarrassment that was beginning to be felt by the party, and their natural audacity returned with their host.

I do not propose to record the convivialities of that evening. The inquisitive reader will accept the statement that the conversation was characterised by the same intellectual exaltation, the same cautious reverence, the same fastidious delicacy, the same rhetorical precision, and the same logical and coherent discourse somewhat later in the evening, which distinguish similar gatherings of the masculine sex in more civilised localities, and under more favourable auspices.

No glasses were broken in the absence of any; no liquor was uselessly spilt on floor or table in the scarcity of that article.

It was nearly midnight when the festivities were interrupted.

“Hush,” said Dick Bullen, holding up his hand.

It was the querulous voice of Johnny from his adjacent closet.

“Oh, dad.”

The Old Man arose hurriedly and disappeared in the closet. Presently he reappeared.

“His rheumatiz is coming on agin bad,” he explained, “and he wants rubbin’.”

He lifted the demijohn of whisky from the table and shook it. It was empty.

Dick Bullen put down his tin cup with an embarrassed laugh. So did the others.

The Old Man examined their contents, and said, hopefully—

“I reckon that’s enough; he don’t need much. You hold on all o’ you for a spell, and I’ll be back;” and vanished in the closet with an old flannel shirt and the whisky.

The door closed but imperfectly, and the following dialogue was distinctly audible:—

“Now, sonny, whar does she ache worst?”

“Sometimes over yar and sometimes under yer; but it’s most powerful from yer to yer. Rub yer, dad.”

A silence seemed to indicate a brisk rubbing. Then Johnny—

“Hevin’ a good time out yer, dad?”

“Yes, sonny.”

“To-morrer’s Chrismiss, ain’t it?”

“Yes, sonny. How does she feel now?”

“Better. Rub a little furder down. Wot’s Chrismiss, anyway? Wot’s it all about?”

“Oh, it’s a day.”

This exhaustive definition was apparently satisfactory, for there was a silent interval of rubbing. Presently Johnny again—

“Mar sez that everywhere else but yer everybody gives things to everybody Chrismiss, and then she just waded inter you. She sez thar’s a man they call Sandy Claws, not a white man, you know, but a kind o’ Chinemin, comes down the chimbley night afore Chrismiss and gives things to chillern—boys likes me. Puts ’em in their butes! Thet’s what she tried to play upon me. Easy now, pop; whar are you rubbin’ to—thet’s a mile from the place. She jest made that up, didn’t she, jest to aggrewate me and you? Don’t rub thar——Why, dad!”

In the great quiet that seemed to have fallen upon the house the sigh of the near pines and the drip of leaves without was very distinct.

Johnny’s voice, too, was lowered as he went on—

“Don’t you take on now, fur I’m gettin’ all right fast. Wot’s the boys doin’ out thar?”

The Old Man partly opened the door and peered through.

His guests were sitting there sociably enough, and there were a few silver coins in a lean buckskin purse on the table.

“Bettin’ on suthin’,—some little game or ’nother. They’re all right,” he replied to Johnny, and recommenced his rubbing.

“I’d like to take a hand and win some money,” said Johnny, reflectively, after a pause.

The Old Man glibly repeated what was evidently a familiar formula, that if Johnny would wait until he struck it rich in the tunnel he’d have lots of money, etc., etc.

“Yes,” said Johnny, “but you don’t. And whether you strike it or I win it, it’s about the same. It’s all luck. But it’s mighty cur’o’s about Chrismiss—ain’t it? Why do they call it Chrismiss?”

Perhaps from some instinctive deference to the overhearing of his guests, or from some vague sense of incongruity, the Old Man’s reply was so low as to be inaudible beyond the room.

“Yes,” said Johnny, with some slight abatement of interest, “I’ve heard o’ him before. Thar, that’ll do, dad. I don’t ache near so bad as I did. Now wrap me tight in this yer blanket. So. Now,” he added in a muffled whisper, “sit down yer by me till I go asleep.”

To assure himself of obedience, he disengaged one hand from the blanket, and grasping his father’s sleeve, again composed himself to rest.

For some moments the Old Man waited patiently.

Then the unwonted stillness of the house excited his curiosity, and without moving from the bed, he cautiously opened the door with his disengaged hand, and looked into the main room.

To his infinite surprise it was dark and deserted.

But even then a smouldering log on the hearth broke, and by the upspringing blaze he saw the figure of Dick Bullen sitting by the dying embers.

“Hello!”

Dick started, rose, and came somewhat unsteadily towards him.

“Whar’s the boys?” said the Old Man.

“Gone up the cañon on a little _pasear_. They’re coming back for me in a minit. I’m waitin’ round for ’em. What are you starin’ at, Old Man?” he added with a forced laugh; “do you think I’m drunk?”

The old man might have been pardoned the supposition, for Dick’s eyes were humid and his face flushed.

He loitered and lounged back to the chimney, yawned, shook himself, buttoned up his coat and laughed.

“Liquor ain’t so plenty as that, Old Man. Now don’t you git up,” he continued, as the Old Man made a movement to release his sleeve from Johnny’s hand. “Don’ you mind manners. Sit jist whar you be; I’m goin’ in a jiffy. Thar, that’s them now.”

There was a low tap at the door.

Dick Bullen opened it quickly, nodded “good night” to his host, and disappeared.

The Old Man would have followed him but for the hand that still unconsciously grasped his sleeve. He could have easily disengaged it; it was small, weak, and emaciated. But perhaps because it was small, weak, and emaciated, he changed his mind, and drawing his chair closer to the bed, rested his head upon it. In this defenceless attitude the potency of his earlier potations surprised him. The room flickered and faded before his eyes, reappeared, faded again, went out, and left him—asleep.

Meantime, Dick Bullen, closing the door, confronted his companions.

“Are you ready?” said Staples.

“Ready!” said Dick; “what’s the time?”

“Past twelve,” was the reply; “can you make it?—it’s nigh on fifty miles, the round trip hither and yon.”

“I reckon,” returned Dick, shortly. “Whar’s the mare?”

“Bill and Jack’s holdin’ her at the crossin’.”

“Let ’em hold on a minit longer,” said Dick.

He turned and re-entered the house softly.

By the light of the guttering candle and dying fire he saw that the door of the little room was open.

He stepped toward it on tiptoe and looked in.

The Old Man had fallen back in his chair, snoring, his helpless feet thrust out in a line with his collapsed shoulders, and his hat pulled over his eyes.

Beside him, on a narrow wooden bedstead, lay Johnny, muffled tightly in a blanket that hid all save a strip of forehead and a few curls damp with perspiration.

Dick Bullen made a step forward, hesitated, and glanced over his shoulder into the deserted room.

Everything was quiet.

With a sudden resolution he parted his huge moustaches with both hands, and stooped over the sleeping boy.

But even as he did so a mischievous blast, lying in wait, swooped down the chimney, rekindling the hearth, and lit up the room with a shameless glow, from which Dick fled in bashful terror.

His companions were already waiting for him at the crossing.

Two of them were struggling in the darkness with some strange misshapen bulk, which, as Dick came nearer, took the semblance of a great yellow horse.

It was the mare.

She was not a pretty picture.

From her Roman nose to her rising haunches, from her arched spine, hidden by the stiff _machillas_ of a Mexican saddle, to her thick, straight, bony legs, there was not a line of equine grace.

In her half-blind but wholly vicious white eyes, in her protruding under lip, in her monstrous colour, there was nothing but ugliness and vice.

“Now then,” said Staples, “stand cl’ar of her heels, boys, and up with you. Don’t miss your first holt of her mane, and mind ye get your off stirrup quick. Ready!”

There was a leap, a scrambling struggle, a bound, a wild retreat of the crowd, a circle of flying hoofs, two springless leaps that jarred the earth, a rapid play and jingle of spurs, a plunge, and then the voice of Dick somewhere in the darkness.

“All right!”

“Don’t take the lower road back onless you’re hard pushed for time! Don’t hold her in down hill! We’ll be at the ford at five. G’lang! Hoopa! Mula! Go!”

A splash, a spark struck from the ledge in the road, a clatter in the rocky cut beyond, and Dick was gone.

* * * * *

Sing, O Muse, the ride of Richard Bullen! Sing, O Muse, of chivalrous men! the sacred quest, the doughty deeds, the battery of low churls, the fearsome ride and gruesome perils of the flower of Simpson’s Bar! Alack! she is dainty, this Muse! She will have none of this bucking brute and swaggering, ragged rider, and I must fain follow him, in prose, afoot!

It was one o’clock; and yet he had only gained Rattlesnake Hill. For in that time Jovita had rehearsed to him all her imperfections and practised all her vices.

Thrice had she stumbled.

Twice had she thrown up her Roman nose in a straight line with the reins, and resisting bit and spur, struck out madly across country.

Twice had she reared, and, rearing, fallen backward; and twice had the agile Dick, unharmed, regained his seat before she found her vicious legs again.

And a mile beyond them, at the foot of a long hill, was Rattlesnake Creek.

Dick knew that here was the crucial test of his ability to perform his enterprise, set his teeth grimly, put his knees well into her flanks, and changed his defensive tactics to brisk aggression.

Bullied and maddened, Jovita began the descent of the hill.

Here the artful Richard pretended to hold her in with ostentatious objurgation and well-feigned cries of alarm.

It is unnecessary to add that Jovita instantly ran away.

Nor need I state the time made in the descent; it is written in the chronicles of Simpson’s Bar.

Enough that in another moment, as it seemed to Dick, she was splashing on the overflowed banks of Rattlesnake Creek.

As Dick expected, the momentum she had acquired carried her beyond the point of balking; and holding her well together for a mighty leap, they dashed into the middle of the swiftly-flowing current.

A few moments of kicking, wading, and swimming, and Dick drew a long breath on the opposite bank.

The road from Rattlesnake Creek to Red Mountain was tolerably level.

Either the plunge in Rattlesnake Creek had dampened her baleful fire, or the art which led to it had shown her the superior wickedness of her rider, for Jovita no longer wasted her surplus energy in wanton conceits.

Once she bucked, but it was from force of habit; once she shied, but it was from a new freshly-painted meeting-house at the crossing of the county road.

Hollows, ditches, gravelly deposits, patches of freshly-springing grasses flew from beneath her rattling hoofs.

She began to smell unpleasantly, once or twice she coughed slightly, but there was no abatement of her strength or speed.

By two o’clock he had passed Red Mountain and begun the descent to the plain.

Ten minutes later the driver of the fast Pioneer coach was overtaken and passed by a “man on a Pinto hoss”—an event sufficiently notable for remark.

At half-past two Dick rose in his stirrups with a great shout.

Stars were glittering through the rifted clouds, and beyond him, out of the plain, rose two spires, a flag-staff, and a straggling line of black objects.

Dick jingled his spurs and swung his _riata_, Jovita bounded forward, and in another moment they swept into Tuttleville, and drew up before the wooden piazza of “The Hotel of All Nations.”

What transpired that night at Tuttleville is not strictly a part of this record.

Briefly I may state, however, that after Jovita had been handed over to a sleepy hostler, whom she at once kicked into unpleasant consciousness, Dick sallied out with the bar-keeper for a tour of the sleeping town.

Lights still gleamed from a few saloons and gambling-houses; but, avoiding these, they stopped before several closed shops, and by persistent tapping and judicious outcry roused the proprietors from their beds, and made them unbar the doors of their magazines and expose their wares.

Sometimes they were met by curses, but oftener by interest and some concern in their needs, and the interview was invariably concluded by a drink.

It was three o’clock before this pleasantry was given over, and with a small water-proof bag of india-rubber strapped on his shoulders, Dick returned to the hotel.

But here he was waylaid by Beauty—Beauty opulent in charms, affluent in dress, persuasive in speech, and Spanish in accent!

In vain she repeated the invitation in “Excelsior,” happily scorned by all Alpine-climbing youth, and rejected by this child of the Sierras—a rejection softened in this instance by a laugh and his last gold coin.

And then he sprang to the saddle and dashed down the lonely street and out into the lonelier plain, where presently the lights, the black line of houses, the spires and the flag-staff sank into the earth behind him again and were lost in the distance.

The storm had cleared away, the air was brisk and cold, the outlines of adjacent landmarks were distinct, but it was half-past four before Dick reached the meeting-house and the crossing of the country road.

To avoid the rising grade he had taken a longer and more circuitous road, in whose viscid mud Jovita sank fetlock deep at every bound.

It was a poor preparation for a steady ascent of five miles more; but Jovita, gathering her legs under her, took it with her usual blind, unreasoning fury, and a half-hour later reached the long level that led to Rattlesnake Creek.

Another half-hour would bring him to the creek.

He threw the reins lightly upon the neck of the mare, chirruped to her and began to sing.

Suddenly Jovita shied with a bound that would have unseated a less practised rider.

Hanging to her rein was a figure that had leaped from the bank, and at the same time from the road before her arose a shadowy horse and rider.

“Throw up your hands,” commanded this second apparition with an oath.

Dick felt the mare tremble, quiver, and apparently sink under him.

He knew what it meant, and was prepared.

“Stand aside, Jack Simpson, I know you, you d—d thief. Let me pass, or——”

He did not finish the sentence.

Jovita rose straight in the air with a terrific bound, throwing the figure from her bit with a single shake of her vicious head, and charged her deadly malevolence down on the impediment before her.

An oath, a pistol-shot, horse and highwayman rolled over in the road, and the next moment Jovita was a hundred yards away.

But the good right arm of her rider, shattered by a bullet, dropped helplessly at his side.

Without slackening his speed he shifted the reins to his left hand.

But a few moments later he was obliged to halt and tighten the saddle-girths that had slipped in the onset.

This in his crippled condition took some time.

He had no fear of pursuit, but looking up he saw that the eastern stars were already paling, and that the distant peaks had lost their ghostly whiteness, and now stood out blackly against a lighter sky.

Day was upon him.

Then completely absorbed in a single idea, he forgot the pain of his wound, and mounting again dashed on towards Rattlesnake Creek.

But now Jovita’s breath came broken by gasps, Dick reeled in his saddle, and brighter and brighter grew the sky.

Ride, Richard; run, Jovita; linger, O day!

For the last few rods there was a roaring in his ears.

Was it exhaustion from loss of blood, or what?

He was dazed and giddy as he swept down the hill, and did not recognise his surroundings.

Had he taken the wrong road, or was this Rattlesnake Creek?

It was.

But the brawling creek he had swum a few hours before had risen, more than doubled its volume, and now rolled a swift and resistless river between him and Rattlesnake Hill.

For the first time that night Richard’s heart sank within him.

The river, the mountain, the quickening east swam before his eyes.

He shut them to recover his self-control.

In that brief interval, by some fantastic mental process, the little room at Simpson’s Bar, and the figures of the sleeping father and son, rose upon him.

He opened his eyes widely, cast off his coat, pistol, boots, and saddle, bound his precious pack tightly to his shoulders, grasped the bare flanks of Jovita with his bared knees, and, with a shout, dashed into the yellow water.

A cry rose from the opposite bank as the head of a man and horse struggled for a few moments against the battling current, and then were swept away, amid uprooted trees and whirling driftwood.

* * * * *

The Old Man started and awoke.

The fire on the hearth was dead, the candle in the outer room flickering in its socket, and somebody was rapping at the door.

He opened it, but fell back with a cry before the dripping half-naked figure that reeled against the door-post.

“Dick?”

“Hush! Is he awake yet?”

“No,—but Dick——?”

“Dry up, you old fool! Get me some whisky _quick_!”

The Old Man flew and returned with—an empty bottle!

Dick would have sworn, but his strength was not equal to the occasion.

He staggered, caught at the handle of the door, and motioned to the Old Man.

“Thar’s suthin’ in my pack yer for Johnny. Take it off. I can’t.”

The Old Man unstrapped the pack and laid it before the exhausted man.

“Open it, quick!”

He did so with trembling fingers.

It contained only a few poor toys—cheap and barbaric enough, goodness knows, but bright with paint and tinsel.

One of them was broken; another, I fear, was irretrievably ruined by water; and on the other, ah me! there was a cruel spot.

“It don’t look like much, that’s a fact,” said Dick ruefully.... “But it’s the best we could do.... Take ’em, Old Man, and put ’em in his stocking, and tell him—tell him, you know—hold me, Old Man.”

The Old Man caught at his sinking figure.

“Tell him,” said Dick, with a weak little laugh—“tell him Sandy Claus has come.”

And even so, bedraggled, ragged, unshaven and unshorn, with one arm hanging helplessly at his side, Santa Claus came to Simpson’s Bar and fell fainting on the first threshold.

The Christmas dawn came slowly after, touching the remoter peaks with the rosy warmth of ineffable love.

And it looked so tenderly on Simpson’s Bar that the whole mountain, as it caught in a generous action, blushed to the skies.

_Bret Harte._

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_THE BREACH OF PROMISE CASE._

AMOS DIXON had not been long gone from the elegant house when Miss Sophia Garr, caparisoned in a jaunty hat and a ready-made cloak, sallied forth on a little business of her own.

She took the nearest way to Montgomery Street, and proceeded almost to the head of that thoroughfare. Ascending a very wide flight of steps, she turned to the right, and went up a narrower flight; turning again to the left, she went up a narrower flight still. Without pausing to take breath, Miss Sophia proceeded, by the help of the skylight, to read the names on a whole army of doors. Making nearly the whole circuit of the long hall, she arrived finally at a door which seemed to meet with her approval, for she nodded her head, knocked, and walked briskly in.

“What a horrid-looking man!” she said, as she threw herself upon a well-worn lounge, and breathed heavily.

“What an ugly old vixen!” replied the gentleman thus apostrophised, looking up from the desk at which he sat writing.

“Hem!” rejoined Miss Sophia, eyeing him wickedly, and still labouring for her breath, after her unwonted exertion.

“Well, madam?”

“How dare you, sir—but this is Mr. Beanson, no doubt?”

“Yes, madam.”

“I called, sir,” pronounced Miss Garr, in an angry tone, “to have you explain to me explicitly, and without reservation, what constitutes a breach of promise.”

Now two different persons had been harassing Mr. Beanson that very morning with unpaid bills. Yet it was a characteristic of this remarkable man that all his greatest troubles were in the future—that undiscovered country of his first brief, and the presidency. He was possessed of a wonderful talent at apprehending evil; and he had not heard Miss Sophia this long without exerting it. He thought instantly of the snares laid for unsuspecting young men by designing females, and did not grow calmer as his visitor repeated—

“Come, sir; you profess to be a lawyer, if you are not. Can you tell me, sir?”

“M—madam, I don’t know you!” exclaimed Mr. Beanson, feeling very much confused, but looking, as he always did, very aggressive.

“I found your card in my card-case, and I want to know, sir, what constitutes a breach of promise.”

“Madam, I tell you I don’t know you _at all_!”

“But did you not leave your card in my card-case at Mrs. Clayton’s?”

“I did, madam, but that does not constitute a breach of promise; and I warn you now,” said Mr. Beanson, raising his voice and his forefinger, and shaking both at her simultaneously, “I warn you now, madam, that you cannot ground an action for breach of promise on a little skilful advertising!”

“What do you mean, sir?”

Mr. Beanson observed a sudden and marked change coming over the features of his visitor, and took it for the herald of her discomfiture and his own triumph.

“What do I mean?” iterated Mr. Beanson. “I mean, madam, that in this latter stage of juridical enlightenment a man cannot be held for breach of promise, or prosecuted for breach of promise, by a woman whom he never saw before in his life—and, for that matter, never wishes to see again—just because he put his business card in her card-case.” Here the speaker, seeing the remarkable effect of his philippic, launched himself upon his feet, the better to enjoy the ovation he was preparing for himself. As he undoubled his exceeding length before Sophia, he had the satisfaction of seeing the additional effect he was producing, even apart from his oratory. It was the very yellow jaundice of tones in which Mr. Beanson concluded—

“No, madam, you would not get any intelligent court in the land, in these premises, to find cause of action. It was nothing but a skilful advertisement—in short, an act of commercial and legal genius. You, I suppose, would make it a crime punishable by marriage with such as you. The thing is simply ridiculous! Madam, I have done. Have you?”

Mr. Beanson resumed his seat triumphantly, and eyed the astonished Garr with an expression that made his head look older than common.

Miss Sophia could not have interrupted the foregoing forensic display if she had tried. In her bewilderment she was mutely deciding whether she, Sophia Garr, or all the men were going stark mad. George Lang had offered himself to Amelia, after being accepted by herself. Then this impudent red-headed wretch—whom she had never attempted to marry—either he or she was certainly crazy. The question was too complicated for a prompt decision.

The two had sat for some moments, glaring at each other, in profound silence, when Miss Garr suddenly exclaimed, “You long-waisted vagabond, shut up!”

This might have been effectual in a contest with a person of her own sex; since it might have shocked into silence or proved an _Ultima Thule_ of feminine virulence. When, however, Mr. Beanson, having taken some time to consider, remembered that he was not talking at all when he was requested to “shut up,” the thing struck him as laughable. Accordingly Mr. Beanson laughed—laughed loud and long, till Mr. Beanson had laughed out all the fun there was in the occurrence, and some of his own anger to boot.

“Now, madam,” said he facetiously, “I am prepared to part with you.”

Miss Garr was more angry than ever.

“I say, madam, I am prepared to part with you. I will not detain you further.”

“You ugly, hateful, impudent wretch!” remarked Sophia, finding speech at last. “You may insult me here as much as you please, since I am without a protector; but you shall not drive me away till you have answered my question. I would as soon marry a keg of nails as you, sir; so you may set your mind at rest! It is somebody else that my outraged feelings are interested in—somebody else of more consequence than you, though I verily believe he is as big a villain——”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Beanson, as any other drowning man might have done before he was swallowed up by any other flood.

“Do you suppose, sir, I would walk all the way here from Folsome Street, and up these interminable stairs, and then go away, without knowing what constitutes a breach of promise? I would have you know, sir, that my case is urgent.”

“Then you did not intend to prosecute me at all?” asked Mr. Beanson, opening his eyes very wide.

“Have I not told you once? Would I prosecute a keg of nails, you ninny?”

As strange as it may seem, a bland smile, which spread over the entire face of Mr. Beanson, was the result of this last poisoned arrow of Miss Garr. The _ignis fatuus_ of his first brief was again rising over the marshes of his present embarrassments. “Well, well, madam,” rejoined Mr. Beanson, “I will do anything in the world to serve you. Who is it, by the way, that you wish to prosecute?”

“I don’t know as that is any of your business at present, sir; I first want an answer to the question I have asked about forty times: What constitutes a breach of promise?”

“To tell the truth, madam, there are so many conditions to a breach of promise that an abstract definition of it would not do the least good in the world; and I could not give one without consulting my books—but do you absolutely insist on mentioning no names?”

“I do, sir.”

“Will you state the case, then, without names?”

“You must see, sir, that my natural delicacy revolts against any revelations to strangers.”

“Why, madam, counsellor and client should never be strangers. Besides, you must be aware that a breach of promise depends on so many things. As I have said before, there are so many conditions that we cannot proceed at all unless you answer certain questions; such as, for instance, whether you—I mean the lady, the plaintiff, in fact—has any proof of a promise, express or implied.”

Miss Garr looked about the room in silent uncertainty.

“Have you—I mean, has the lady—for example, any witnesses—any one who has heard the defendant that is to be,” pursued Mr. Beanson, in the language of the future, “express or imply a promise?”

She could not say that the lady had.

“Had she any letters to show which contained a promise either expressed or implied?”

“The lady,” responded Miss Garr mysteriously; “the lady has not.”

“Has the plaintiff been injured in any way by the defendant?”

“Yes, grossly.”

“Ah, then, I begin to see a case. Set the damages heavy—set the damages heavy. By-the-bye, is the defendant rich?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” said Mr. Beanson, rubbing his hands. “We will make the villain suffer.”

“Thank you, Mr. Beanson. Fifty thousand dollars will be little enough. Thank you, Mr. Beanson.” And Miss Garr actually shook hands with Mr. Beanson on the spot.

“Hem, ah! what was—the—nature of—these injuries—that you say the defendant had inflicted upon you—the lady, I should say, the plaintiff?”

Miss Garr feigned an uneasy look.

“Must I tell?” she demanded, dropping her eyes.

“I am sorry, madam, it is absolutely necessary, since the whole case seems to hang upon that injury, or those injuries alone.”

“Well, then,” said Sophia, riveting her maidenly orbs meekly upon a broken coal-scuttle; “well, then, sir, he kissed her in the dark!”

“Is that all?”

“Is it not enough, sir?”

“It might have been enough,” replied Mr. Beanson, in the stumbling innocence which had been the bane of his life; “it might have been enough, madam, for the defendant, or for the plaintiff even, but it is hardly enough to ground an action of breach of promise upon.”

Miss Garr was angry; Mr. Beanson puzzled; and both were silent. If he had seen a possible chance of securing his first brief in any other way, Mr. Archibald Beanson would most certainly have dismissed Sophia instanter.

Running his long fingers inanely through his red hair, “Madam!” he said at last, “I think I shall be obliged to consult Bishop on Marriage.”

“Now look here, sir,” observed Miss Sophia, wrapping her ready-made cloak tighter around her, “if you keep on, I shall lose my patience and my good manners. Who in the world wants to consult the bishop on marriage? An ordinary minister, or even a justice of the peace, will do me. I am not proud, sir.”

Mr. Beanson, trying to look learned, succeeded in looking confused. Undoubling himself again—this time with abstruse deliberation—he went to a meagre bookcase, and returned to his desk. “It was this book,” said he, “that I had reference to—‘Bishop on Marriage and Divorce!’”

“Well, now you begin to get sensible,” remarked Miss Garr, in a tone and manner which, expressed in words, would have read, “I grant your pardon, sir, for your trivial mistake about ministers and bishops.”

Mr. Beanson opened the book, and, glancing over the table of contents, his eye rested on the heading of a chapter, which read thus—“Want of age.”

In his utter helplessness, Archibald looked up again at Sophia and asked, “Is there any want of age in the parties?”

“Now look here, sir; I did not come here to be insulted. You think I do not understand your irony. I would have you to know that I do.”

“I asked that question,” said Mr. Beanson, soothingly, “with all due reverence for your age. This is the first time you have openly acknowledged that you are the plaintiff in the contemplated suit. I have known it all along, however; and I therefore assure you that the question about age was suggested wholly by my ignorance as to the other party—the defendant.”

Mr. Beanson, without perusing the commentary on this speech written in the face of his client, now glanced his eye back to the table of contents again. The question suggested this time seemed to that astute pundit an honest one, and based on sufficient grounds. “Want of mental capacity,” he read. “That’s it,” he exclaimed.

“There may be a want of mental capacity in one of the parties. Do you think the defence would make that out?” inquired Mr. Beanson.

“It might be,” replied Miss Garr, still pursuing the thought into which she had been drifted, and in which she had gradually drowned some of her indignation at the unsuspecting Archibald. Lang’s late conduct may have been dictated by insanity—proposing to Amelia after engaging himself to her, Sophia Garr! “Really, Mr. Beanson, it might be.”

“Indeed, madam? Then we must guard against that!”

The client looked inquiringly at the lawyer, who was for a moment wrapped in a mute study. “Can the defence, madam,” demanded Mr. Beanson at last, “can—can they prove that you have ever been in Stockton, or any private insane asylum?”

Here the reader who has visited the Sandwich Islands may pause to congratulate himself. Remembering the crater of Mauna Loa, he will have a more vivid idea of Miss Garr’s feelings than anything but that molten sea of lava could possibly suggest. Sophia jumped indignantly to her feet, and poured a tide of epithets, so seething-hot, over the head of the astonished Archibald, that for a moment he succumbed before it, blank and still as some patriarchal porpoise, lava-cooked and cast upon the beach of Hawaii.

“You wretch!” was the comparatively calm peroration of Miss Garr, “you—you horrid wretch! I have a mind to sue you for slander. How dare you put such a stigma on my character when you know, or ought to know, that George Lang is the one that is insane!”

“Oh, ah! George Lang, my employer?” exclaimed Mr. Beanson, coming to life. “That’s the gentleman you would prosecute. Well, now!”

To the intense astonishment of Archibald an increasing bitterness of manner succeeded, and he said, “If you are not insane, madam, you are certainly in your dotage. Why, look at this desk, here! Every one of these papers is a deed made out by order of the gentleman you would rob. Go along with your breach of promise! The court would send you to an asylum as sure as guns!”

Mr. Beanson’s face grew brighter as his indignation grew, and his entire head was girt about with an unwonted appearance of youth. Sophia’s rough handling, like sandpaper upon an antique bust, had rubbed some of the yellow mould away—had lifted that mysterious veil woven by the semblance of years, and had opened up to her eyes and ours, the perfect glories of Mr. Beanson’s Golden Age.

“You came here, no doubt, madam,” continued Archibald, with no such interruption as the foregoing paragraph; “in fact, I feel sure, madam, you came here to prevail on me to enter into a plot against my only present employer, and may be (here Mr. Beanson was very bitter in the curl of his lip and his general tone), may be?—no, I am sure, too, that you would attempt to marry me at last, as a meet punishment for being your accomplice. Oh! I see it in your eye, madam; you need not deny it!”

Miss Garr, at one time or another, since she had read Mr. Beanson’s name on his card, might have thought vaguely of “prospecting” him for a husband, in case of the failure of all other claims; but to do her justice, it was only ineffable rage that Archibald saw in her eye, as he repeated—though Sophia had not attempted to speak—“You need not deny it, for I tell you I see it in your eye! and as for Mr. Lang, I am doing his notary business, and a great deal of it, too, especially of late. He is selling hosts of property—hosts of property, madam, in the name and with the written consent of the Claytons. Why, the very heaviest sale is to be made to-day. Now what does this mutual confidence presuppose? Madam,” said Mr. Beanson, rising and assuming an air of mock politeness, “if you were as sure that you are sane, as I am that he is going to marry the daughter of Mrs. Clayton, you would not have taken up so much of my valuable time from Mr. Lang’s business. But, madam, this is the door,” concluded Mr. Beanson with an urbane wave of the hand, as he resumed his seat and began silently to arrange the papers before him.

Miss Sophia, white with rage, did not stir or speak.

Involuntarily the hands of Mr. Beanson paused in the labours they had undertaken, and fell heavily, one on each side of his chair, almost to the floor. As he sat and gazed at the still shape before him, the idea of the ghost in _Hamlet_ was suddenly suggested to the fertile mind of Mr. Beanson. This was not a remarkable conception, taken apart from its consequences; yet Mr. Beanson, forgetting the matter of gender, not only congratulated himself on the aptness of the allusion, though not expressed in words, but actually chuckled, and at last, laughed outright, as an encouragement to his own genius.

Had it not been for this fatal laugh, Miss Garr could have spoken, and her speech might have been terrible. But something came perversely up into her throat. Turning briskly upon her heel, she darted through the door to be in advance of her own tears; and she and the first brief of Mr. Archibald Beanson disappeared together.

_Ralph Keeler._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_EPITAPH FOR HIMSELF._

THE BODY
OF
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
(LIKE THE COVER OF AN OLD BOOK,
ITS CONTENTS TORN OUT,
AND STRIPT OF ITS LETTERING AND GILDING)
LIES HERE FOOD FOR WORMS;
YET THE WORK ITSELF SHALL NOT BE LOST,
FOR IT WILL (AS HE BELIEVED) APPEAR ONCE MORE
IN A NEW
AND MORE BEAUTIFUL EDITION,
CORRECTED AND AMENDED
BY
THE AUTHOR.

_Benjamin Franklin._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_THE DUKE OF BRIDGEWATER._

ONE of these fellows was about seventy, or upwards, and had a bald head and very grey whiskers. He had an old battered-up slouch hat on, and a greasy blue woollen shirt, and ragged old blue jeans britches stuffed into his boot-tops, and home-knit galluses—no, he only had one. He had an old long-tailed blue jeans coat, with slick brass buttons, flung over his arm, and both of them had big, fat, ratty-looking carpet-bags.

The other fellow was about thirty, and dressed about as ornery. After breakfast we all laid off and talked, and the first thing that come out was that these chaps didn’t know one another.

“What got you into trouble?” says the bald-head to t’other chap.

“Well, I’d been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth—and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it—but I stayed about one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off. So I told you I was expecting trouble myself, and would scatter out _with_ you. That’s the whole yarn—what’s yourn?”

“Well, I’d ben a-runnin’ a little temperance revival thar, ’bout a week, and was the pet of the women-folks, big and little, for I was makin’ it mighty warm for the rummies, I _tell_ you, and takin’ as much as five or six dollars a night—ten cents a head, children and niggers free—and business a growin’ all the time; when somehow or another a little report got around, last night, that I had a way of puttin’ in my time with a private jug, on the sly. A nigger rousted me out this mornin’, and told me the people was getherin’ on the quiet, with their dogs and horses, and they’d be along pretty soon and give me ’bout half-an-hour’s start, and then run me down, if they could; and if they got me they’d tar and feather me, and ride me on a rail, sure. I didn’t wait for no breakfast—I warn’t hungry.”

“Old man,” says the young one, “I reckon we might double-team it together; what do you think?”

“I ain’t undisposed. What’s your line—mainly?”

“Jour printer, by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theatre-actor—tragedy, you know; take a turn at mesmerism and phrenology when there’s a chance; teach singing geography school for a change; sling a lecture, sometimes—oh, I do lots of things—most anything that comes handy, so it ain’t work. What’s your lay?”

“I’ve done considerble in the doctoring way in my time. Layin’ on o’ hands is my best holt—for cancer, and paralysis, and sich things; and I k’n tell a fortune pretty good, when I’ve got somebody along to find out the facts for me. Preachin’s my line, too; and workin’ camp meetin’s; and missionaryin’ around.”

Nobody never said anything for a while; then the young man hove a sigh and says—

“Alas!”

“What’re you alassin’ about?” says the bald-head.

“To think I should have lived to be leading such a life, and be degraded down into such company.” And he begun to wipe the corner of his eye with a rag.

“Dern your skin, ain’t the company good enough for you?” says the bald-head, pretty pert and uppish.

“Yes, it _is_ good enough for me; it’s as good as I deserve; for who fetched me so low, when I was so high? _I_ did myself. I don’t blame _you_, gentlemen—far from it; I don’t blame anybody. I deserve it all. Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know—there’s a grave somewhere for me. The world may go on just as it’s always done, and take everything from me—loved ones, property, everything—but it can’t take that. Some day I’ll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest.” He went on a-wiping.

“Drot your pore broken heart,” says the bald-head; “what are you heaving your pore broken heart at _us_ f’r? _We_ hain’t done nothing.”

“No, I know you haven’t. I ain’t blaming you, gentlemen. I brought myself down—yes, I did it myself. It’s right I should suffer—perfectly right—I don’t make any moan.”

“Brought you down from whar? Whar was you brought down from?”

“Ah, you would not believe me; the world never believes—let it pass—’tis no matter. The secret of my birth——”

“The secret of your birth? Do you mean to say——”

“Gentlemen,” says the young man, very solemn, “I will reveal it to you, for I feel I may have confidence in you. By rights I am a duke!”

Jim’s eyes bugged out when he heard that; and I reckon mine did, too. Then the bald-head says: “No! you can’t mean it?”