Colonel Starbottle's Client
But not to sleep. Perhaps the responsibility towards these solitary children, which Johnson had so lightly shaken off, devolved upon me as I lay there, for I found myself imagining a dozen emergencies of their unprotected state, with which the elder girl could scarcely grapple. There was little to fear from depredatory man or beast—desperadoes of the mountain trail never stooped to ignoble burglary, bear or panther seldom approached a cabin—but there was the chance of sudden illness, fire, the accidents that beset childhood, to say nothing of the narrowing moral and mental effect of their isolation at that tender age. It was scandalous in Johnson to leave them alone.
In the silence I found I could hear quite distinctly the sound of their voices in the extension, and it was evident that Caroline was putting them to bed. Suddenly a voice was uplifted—her own! She began to sing and the others to join her. It was the repetition of a single verse of a well-known lugubrious negro melody. “All the world am sad and dreary,” wailed Caroline, in a high head-note, “everywhere I roam.” “Oh, darkieth,” lisped the younger girl in response, “how my heart growth weary, far from the old folkth at h-o-o-me.” This was repeated two or three times before the others seemed to get the full swing of it, and then the lines rose and fell sadly and monotonously in the darkness. I don’t know why, but I at once got the impression that those motherless little creatures were under a vague belief that their performance was devotional, and was really filling the place of an evening hymn. A brief and indistinct kind of recitation, followed by a dead silence, broken only by the slow creaking of new timber, as if the house were stretching itself to sleep too, confirmed my impression. Then all became quiet again.
But I was more wide awake than before. Finally I rose, dressed myself, and dragging my stool to the fire, took a book from my knapsack, and by the light of a guttering candle, which I discovered in a bottle in the corner of the hearth, began to read. Presently I fell into a doze. How long I slept I could not tell, for it seemed to me that a dreamy consciousness of a dog barking at last forced itself upon me so strongly that I awoke. The barking appeared to come from behind the cabin in the direction of the clearing where I had tethered Chu Chu. I opened the door hurriedly, ran round the cabin towards the hollow, and was almost at once met by the bulk of the frightened Chu Chu, plunging out of the darkness towards me, kept only in check by her reata in the hand of a blanketed shape slowly advancing with a gun over its shoulder out of the hollow. Before I had time to recover from my astonishment I was thrown into greater confusion by recognizing the shape as none other than Caroline!
Without the least embarrassment or even self-consciousness of her appearance, she tossed the end of the reata to me with the curtest explanation as she passed by. Some prowling bear or catamount had frightened the mule. I had better tether it before the cabin away from the wind.
“But I thought wild beasts never came so near,” I said quickly.
“Mule meat’s mighty temptin’,” said the girl sententiously and passed on. I wanted to thank her; I wanted to say how sorry I was that she had been disturbed; I wanted to compliment her on her quiet midnight courage, and yet warn her against recklessness; I wanted to know whether she had been accustomed to such alarms; and if the gun she carried was really a necessity. But I could only respect her reticence, and I was turning away when I was struck by a more inexplicable spectacle. As she neared the end of the extension I distinctly saw the tall figure of a man, moving with a certain diffidence and hesitation that did not, however, suggest any intention of concealment, among the trees; the girl apparently saw him at the same moment and slightly slackened her pace. Not more than a dozen feet separated them. He said something that was inaudible to my ears,—but whether from his hesitation or the distance I could not determine. There was no such uncertainty in her reply, however, which was given in her usual curt fashion: “All right. You can trapse along home now and turn in.”
She turned the corner of the extension and disappeared. The tall figure of the man wavered hesitatingly for a moment, and then vanished also. But I was too much excited by curiosity to accept this unsatisfactory conclusion, and, hastily picketing Chu Chu a few rods from the front door, I ran after him, with an instinctive feeling that he had not gone far. I was right. A few paces distant he had halted in the same dubious, lingering way. “Hallo!” I said.
He turned towards me in the like awkward fashion, but with neither astonishment nor concern.
“Come up and take a drink with me before you go,” I said, “if you’re not in a hurry. I’m alone here, and since I HAVE turned out I don’t see why we mightn’t have a smoke and a talk together.”
“I dursn’t.”
I looked up at the six feet of strength before me and repeated wonderingly, “Dare not?”
“SHE wouldn’t like it.” He made a movement with his right shoulder towards the extension.
“Who?”
“Miss Karline.”
“Nonsense!” I said. “She isn’t in the cabin,—you won’t see HER. Come along.” He hesitated, although from what I could discern of his bearded face it was weakly smiling.
“Come.”
He obeyed, following me not unlike Chu Chu, I fancied, with the same sense of superior size and strength and a slight whitening of the eye, as if ready to shy at any moment. At the door he “backed.” Then he entered sideways. I noticed that he cleared the doorway at the top and the sides only by a hair’s breadth.
By the light of the fire I could see that, in spite of his full first growth of beard, he was young,—even younger than myself,—and that he was by no means bad-looking. As he still showed signs of retreating at any moment, I took my flask and tobacco from my saddle-bags, handed them to him, pointed to the stool, and sat down myself upon the bed.
“You live near here?”
“Yes,” he said a little abstractedly, as if listening for some interruption, “at Ten Mile Crossing.”
“Why, that’s two miles away.”
“I reckon.”
“Then you don’t live here—on the clearing?”
“No. I b’long to the mill at ‘Ten Mile.’”
“You were on your way home?”
“No,” he hesitated, looking at his pipe; “I kinder meander round here at this time, when Johnson’s away, to see if everything’s goin’ straight.”
“I see—you’re a friend of the family.”
“‘Deed no!” He stopped, laughed, looked confused, and added, apparently to his pipe, “That is, a sorter friend. Not much. SHE”—he lowered his voice as if that potential personality filled the whole cabin—“wouldn’t like it.”
“Then at night, when Johnson’s away, you do sentry duty round the house?”
“Yes, ‘sentry dooty,’ that’s it,”—he seemed impressed with the suggestion—“that’s it! Sentry dooty. You’ve struck it, pardner.”
“And how often is Johnson away?”
“‘Bout two or three times a week on an average.”
“But Miss Caroline appears to be able to take care of herself. She has no fear.”
“Fear! Fear wasn’t hangin’ round when SHE was born!” He paused. “No, sir. Did ye ever look into them eyes?”
I hadn’t, on account of the lashes. But I didn’t care to say this, and only nodded.
“There ain’t the created thing livin’ or dead, that she can’t stand straight up to and look at.”
I wondered if he had fancied she experienced any difficulty in standing up before that innocently good-humored face, but I could not resist saying:—
“Then I don’t see the use of your walking four miles to look after her.”
I was sorry for it the next minute, for he seemed to have awkwardly broken his pipe, and had to bend down for a long time afterwards to laboriously pick up the smallest fragments of it. At last he said, cautiously:
“Ye noticed them bits o’ flannin’ round the chillern’s throats?”
I remembered that I had, but was uncertain whether it was intended as a preventive of cold or a child’s idea of decoration. I nodded.
“That’s their trouble. One night, when old Johnson had been off for three days to Coulterville, I was prowling round here and I didn’t git to see no one, though there was a light burnin’ in the shanty all night. The next night I was here again,—the same light twinklin’, but no one about. I reckoned that was mighty queer, and I jess crep’ up to the house an’ listened. I heard suthin’ like a little cough oncet in a while, and at times suthin’ like a little moan. I didn’t durst to sing out for I knew SHE wouldn’t like it, but whistled keerless like, to let the chillern know I was there. But it didn’t seem to take. I was jess goin’ off, when—darn my skin!—if I didn’t come across the bucket of water I’d fetched up from the spring THAT MORNIN’, standin’ there full, and NEVER TAKEN IN! When I saw that I reckoned I’d jess wade in, anyhow, and I knocked. Pooty soon the door was half opened, and I saw her eyes blazin’ at me like them coals. Then SHE ‘lowed I’d better ‘git up and git,’ and shet the door to! Then I ‘lowed she might tell me what was up—through the door. Then she said, through the door, as how the chillern lay all sick with that hoss-distemper, diphthery. Then she ‘lowed she’d use a doctor ef I’d fetch him. Then she ‘lowed again I’d better take the baby that hadn’t ketched it yet along with me, and leave it where it was safe. Then she passed out the baby through the door all wrapped up in a blankit like a papoose, and you bet I made tracks with it. I knowed thar wasn’t no good going to the mill, so I let out for White’s, four miles beyond, whar there was White’s old mother. I told her how things were pointin’, and she lent me a hoss, and I jess rounded on Doctor Green at Mountain Jim’s, and had him back here afore sun-up! And then I heard she wilted,—regularly played out, you see,—for she had it all along wuss than the lot, and never let on or whimpered!”
“It was well you persisted in seeing her that night,” I said, watching the rapt expression of his face. He looked up quickly, became conscious of my scrutiny, and dropped his eyes again, smiled feebly, and drawing a circle in the ashes with the broken pipe-stem, said:—
“But SHE didn’t like it, though.”
I suggested, a little warmly, that if she allowed her father to leave her alone at night with delicate children, she had no right to choose WHO should assist her in an emergency. It struck me afterwards that this was not very complimentary to him, and I added hastily that I wondered if she expected some young lady to be passing along the trail at midnight! But this reminded me of Johnson’s style of argument, and I stopped.
“Yes,” he said meekly, “and ef she didn’t keer enough for herself and her brothers and sisters, she orter remember them Beazeley chillern.”
“Beazeley children?” I repeated wonderingly.
“Yes; them two little ones, the size of Mirandy; they’re Beazeley’s.”
“Who is Beazeley, and what are his children doing here?”
“Beazeley up and died at the mill, and she bedevilled her father to let her take his two young ‘uns here.”
“You don’t mean to say that with her other work she’s taking care of other people’s children too?”
“Yes, and eddicatin’ them.”
“Educating them?”
“Yes; teachin’ them to read and write and do sums. One of our loggers ketched her at it when she was keepin’ tally.”
We were both silent for some moments.
“I suppose you know Johnson?” I said finally.
“Not much.”
“But you call here at other times than when you’re helping her?”
“Never been in the house before.”
He looked slowly around him as he spoke, raising his eyes to the bare rafters above, and drawing a few long breaths, as if he were inhaling the aura of some unseen presence. He appeared so perfectly gratified and contented, and I was so impressed with this humble and silent absorption of the sacred interior, that I felt vaguely conscious that any interruption of it was a profanation, and I sat still, gazing at the dying fire. Presently he arose, stretched out his hand, shook mine warmly, said, “I reckon I’ll meander along,” took another long breath, this time secretly, as if conscious of my eyes, and then slouched sideways out of the house into the darkness again, where he seemed suddenly to attain his full height, and so looming, disappeared. I shut the door, went to bed, and slept soundly.
So soundly that when I awoke the sun was streaming on my bed from the open door. On the table before me my breakfast was already laid. When I had dressed and eaten it, struck by the silence, I went to the door and looked out. ‘Dolphus was holding Chu Chu by the reata a few paces from the cabin.
“Where’s Caroline?” I asked.
He pointed to the woods and said: “Over yon: keeping tally.”
“Did she leave any message?”
“Said I was to git your mule for you.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes; said you was to go.”
I went, but not until I had scrawled a few words of thanks on a leaf of my notebook, which I wrapped about my last Spanish dollar, addressed it to “Miss Johnson,” and laid it upon the table.
It was more than a year later that in the bar-room of the Mariposa Hotel a hand was laid upon my sleeve. I looked up. It was Johnson.
He drew from his pocket a Spanish dollar. “I reckoned,” he said, cheerfully, “I’d run again ye somewhar some time. My old woman told me to give ye that when I did, and say that she ‘didn’t keep no hotel.’ But she allowed she’d keep the letter, and has spelled it out to the chillern.”
Here was the opportunity I had longed for to touch Johnson’s pride and affection in the brave but unprotected girl. “I want to talk to you about Miss Johnson,” I said, eagerly.
“I reckon so,” he said, with an exasperating smile. “Most fellers do. But she ain’t Miss Johnson no more. She’s married.”
“Not to that big chap over from Ten Mile Mills?” I said breathlessly.
“What’s the matter with HIM,” said Johnson. “Ye didn’t expect her to marry a nobleman, did ye?”
I said I didn’t see why she shouldn’t—and believed that she HAD.
THE NEW ASSISTANT AT PINE CLEARING SCHOOL
CHAPTER I
The schoolmistress of Pine Clearing was taking a last look around her schoolroom before leaving it for the day. She might have done so with pride, for the schoolroom was considered a marvel of architectural elegance by the citizens, and even to the ordinary observer was a pretty, villa-like structure, with an open cupola and overhanging roof of diamond-shaped shingles and a deep Elizabethan porch. But it was the monument of a fierce struggle between a newer civilization and a barbarism of the old days, which had resulted in the clearing away of the pines—and a few other things as incongruous to the new life and far less innocent, though no less sincere. It had cost the community fifteen thousand dollars, and the lives of two of its citizens.
Happily there was no stain of this on the clean white walls, the beautifully-written gilt texts, or the shining blackboard that had offered no record which could not be daily wiped away. And, certainly, the last person in the world to suggest any reminiscences of its belligerent foundation was the person of the schoolmistress. Mature, thin, precise,—not pretty enough to have excited Homeric feuds, nor yet so plain as to preclude certain soothing graces,—she was the widow of a poor Congregational minister, and had been expressly imported from San Francisco to squarely mark the issue between the regenerate and unregenerate life. Low-voiced, gentlewomanly, with the pallor of ill-health perhaps unduly accented by her mourning, which was still cut modishly enough to show off her spare but good figure, she was supposed to represent the model of pious, scholastic refinement. The Opposition—sullen in ditches and at the doors of saloons, or in the fields truculent as their own cattle—nevertheless had lowered their crests and buttoned their coats over their revolutionary red shirts when SHE went by.
As she was stepping from the threshold, she was suddenly confronted by a brisk business-looking man, who was about to enter. “Just in time to catch you, Mrs. Martin,” he said hurriedly; then, quickly correcting his manifest familiarity, he added: “I mean, I took the liberty of running in here on my way to the stage office. That matter you spoke of is all arranged. I talked it over with the other trustees, wrote to Sam Barstow, and he’s agreeable, and has sent somebody up, and,” he rapidly consulted his watch, “he ought to be here now; and I’m on my way to meet him with the other trustees.”
Mrs. Martin, who at once recognized her visitor as the Chairman of the School Board, received the abrupt information with the slight tremulousness, faint increase of color, and hurried breathing of a nervous woman.
“But,” she said, “it was only a SUGGESTION of mine, Mr. Sperry; I really have no right to ask—I had no idea”—
“It’s all right, ma’am,—never you mind. We put the case square to Barstow. We allowed that the school was getting too large for you to tackle,—I mean, you know, to superintend single-handed; and that these Pike County boys they’re running in on us are a little too big and sassy for a lady like you to lasso and throw down—I mean, to sorter control—don’t you see? But, bless you, Sam Barstow saw it all in a minit! He just jumped at it. I’ve got his letter here—hold on”—he hastily produced a letter from his pocket, glanced ever it, suddenly closed it again with embarrassed quickness, yet not so quickly but that the woman’s quicker eyes were caught, and nervously fascinated by the expression “I’m d–d” in a large business hand—and said in awkward haste, “No matter about reading it now—keep you too long—but he’s agreed all right, you know. Must go now—they’ll be waiting. Only I thought I’d drop in a-passin’, to keep you posted;” and, taking off his hat, he began to back from the porch.
“Is—is—this gentleman who is to assist me—a—a mature professional man—or a—graduate?” hesitated Mrs. Martin, with a faint smile.
“Don’t really know—I reckon Sam—Mr. Barstow—fixed that all right. Must really go now;” and, still holding his hat in his hand as a polite compromise for his undignified haste, he fairly ran off.
Arrived at the stage office, he found the two other trustees awaiting him, and the still more tardy stage-coach. One, a large, smooth-faced, portly man, was the Presbyterian minister; the other, of thinner and more serious aspect, was a large mill-owner.
“I presume,” said the Rev. Mr. Peaseley, slowly, “that as our good brother Barstow, in the urgency of the occasion, has, to some extent, anticipated OUR functions in engaging this assistant, he is—a—a—satisfied with his capacity?”
“Sam knows what he’s about,” said the mill-owner cheerfully, “and as he’s regularly buckled down to the work here, and will go his bottom dollar on it, you can safely leave things to him.”
“He certainly has exhibited great zeal,” said the reverend gentleman patronizingly.
“Zeal,” echoed Sperry enthusiastically, “zeal? Why, he runs Pine Clearing as he runs his bank and his express company in Sacramento, and he’s as well posted as if he were here all the time. Why, look here;” he nudged the mill-owner secretly, and, as the minister’s back was momentarily turned, pulled out the letter he had avoided reading to Mrs. Martin, and pointed to a paragraph. “I’ll be d–d,” said the writer, “but I’ll have peace and quietness at Pine Clearing, if I have to wipe out or make over the whole Pike County gang. Draw on me for a piano if you think Mrs. Martin can work it. But don’t say anything to Peaseley first, or he’ll want it changed for a harmonium, and that lets us in for psalm-singing till you can’t rest. Mind! I don’t object to Church influence—it’s a good hold!—but you must run IT with other things equal, and not let it run YOU. I’ve got the schoolhouse insured for thirty thousand dollars—special rates too.”
The mill-owner smiled. “Sam’s head is level! But,” he added, “he don’t say much about the new assistant he’s sending.”
“Only here,” he says, “I reckon the man I send will do all round; for Pike County has its claims as well as Boston.”
“What does that mean?” asked the mill-owner.
“I reckon he means he don’t want Pine Clearing to get too high-toned any more than he wants it too low down. He’s mighty square in his averages—is Sam.”
Here speculation was stopped by the rapid oncoming of the stage-coach in all the impotent fury of a belated arrival. “Had to go round by Montezuma to let off Jack Hill,” curtly explained the driver, as he swung himself from the box, and entered the hotel bar-room in company with the new expressman, who had evidently taken Hill’s place on the box-seat. Autocratically indifferent to further inquiry, he called out cheerfully: “Come along, boys, and hear this yer last new yarn about Sam Barstow,—it’s the biggest thing out.” And in another moment the waiting crowd, with glasses in their hands, were eagerly listening to the repetition of the “yarn” from the new expressman, to the apparent exclusion of other matters, mundane and practical.
Thus debarred from information, the three trustees could only watch the passengers as they descended, and try to identify their expected stranger. But in vain: the bulk of the passengers they already knew, the others were ordinary miners and laborers; there was no indication of the new assistant among them. Pending further inquiry they were obliged to wait the conclusion of the expressman’s humorous recital. This was evidently a performance of some artistic merit, depending upon a capital imitation of an Irishman, a German Jew, and another voice, which was universally recognized and applauded as being “Sam’s style all over!” But for the presence of the minister, Sperry and the mill-owner would have joined the enthusiastic auditors, and inwardly regretted the respectable obligations of their official position.
When the story-teller had concluded amidst a general call for more drinks, Sperry approached the driver. The latter recognizing him, turned to his companion carelessly, said, “Here’s one of ‘em,” and was going away when Sperry stopped him.
“We were expecting a young man.”
“Yes,” said the driver, impatiently, “and there he is, I reckon.”
“We don’t mean the new expressman,” said the minister, smiling blandly, “but a young man who”—
“THAT ain’t no new expressman,” returned the driver in scornful deprecation of his interlocutor’s ignorance. “He only took Hill’s place from Montezuma. He’s the new kid reviver and polisher for that University you’re runnin’ here. I say—you fellers oughter get him to tell you that story of Sam Barstow and the Chinaman. It’d limber you fellers up to hear it.”
“I fear there’s some extraordinary mistake here,” said Mr. Peaseley, with a chilling Christian smile.
“Not a bit of it. He’s got a letter from Sam for one of ye. Yere, Charley—what’s your name! Com yere. Yere’s all yer three bosses waiting for ye.”
And the supposed expressman and late narrator of amusing stories came forward and presented his credentials as the assistant teacher of Pine Clearing.
CHAPTER II
Even the practical Mr. Sperry was taken aback. The young man before him was squarely built, with broad shoulders, and a certain air of muscular activity. But his face, although good-humored, was remarkable for offering not the slightest indication of studious preoccupation or mental training. A large mouth, light blue eyes, a square jaw, the other features being indistinctive—were immobile as a mask—except that, unlike a mask, they seemed to actually reflect the vacuity of the mood within, instead of concealing it. But as he saluted the trustees they each had the same feeling that even this expression was imported and not instinctive. His face was clean-shaven, and his hair cut so short as to suggest that a wig of some kind was necessary to give it characteristic or even ordinary human semblance. His manner, self-assured yet lacking reality, and his dress of respectable cut and material, yet worn as if it did not belong to him, completed a picture as unlike a student or schoolmaster as could be possibly conceived.
Yet there was the letter in Mr. Peaseley’s hands from Barstow, introducing Mr. Charles Twing as the first assistant teacher in the Pine Clearing Free Academy!
The three men looked hopelessly at each other. An air of fatigued righteousness and a desire to be spiritually at rest from other trials pervaded Mr. Peaseley. Whether or not the young man felt the evident objection he had raised, he assumed a careless position, with his back and elbows against the bar; but even the attitude was clearly not his own.
