Jeff Briggs's Love Story

I regret that I may not give Yuba Bill’s literal reply. It suggested a form of inquiry at once distant, indirect, outrageous, and impossible.

The bar-keeper flashed a lantern upon Jeff’s curls and his drooping eyelashes and mustaches.

“It’s that son o’ Briggs o’ Tuolumne—pooty boy, ain’t he?”

Bill disdained a reply.

“Played himself out down there, I reckon. Left his rifle here in pawn.”

“Young man,” said Bill gravely.

“Old man.”

“Ef you’re looking for a safe investment ez will pay ye better than forty-rod whiskey at two bits a glass, jist you hang onter that ar rifle. It may make your fortin yet, or save ye from a drunkard’s grave.” With this ungracious pleasantry he hurried his dilatory passengers back into the coach, cracked his whip, and was again upon the road. The lights of the “Summit House” presently dropped here and there into the wasting shadows of the trees. Another stretch through the close-set ranks of pines, another dash through the opening, another whirl and rattle by overhanging rocks, and the vehicle was swiftly descending. Bill put his foot on the brake, threw his reins loosely on the necks of his cattle, and looked leisurely back. The great mountain was slowly and steadily rising between them and the valley they quitted.

And at that same moment Miss Mayfield had crept from her bed, and, with a shawl around her pretty little figure, was pressing her eyes against a blank window of the “Half-way House,” and wondering where HE was now.

V

The “opening” suggested by Bill was not a fortunate one. Possibly views of business openings in the public-house line taken from the tops of stage-coaches are not as judicious as those taken from less exalted levels. Certain it is that the “goodwill” of the “Lone Star House” promised little more pecuniary value than a conventional blessing. It was in an older and more thickly settled locality than the “Half-way House;” indeed, it was but half a mile away from Campville, famous in ‘49—a place with a history and a disaster. But young communities are impatient of settlements that through any accident fail to fulfil the extravagant promise of their youth, and the wounded hamlet of Campville had crept into the woods and died. The “Lone Star House” was an attempt to woo the passing travelers from another point; but its road led to Campville, and was already touched by its dry-rot. Bill, who honestly conceived that the infusion of fresh young blood like Jeff’s into the stagnant current would quicken it, had to confess his disappointment. “I thought ye could put some go into the shanty, Jeff,” said Bill, “and make it lively and invitin’!” But the lack of vitality was not in the landlord, but in the guests. The regular customers were disappointed, vacant, hopeless men, who gathered listlessly on the veranda, and talked vaguely of the past. Their hollow-eyed, feeble impotency affected the stranger, even as it checked all ambition among themselves. Do what Jeff might, the habits of the locality were stronger than his individuality; the dead ghosts of the past Campville held their property by invisible mortmain.

In the midst of this struggle the “Half-way House” was sold. Spite of Bill’s prediction, the proceeds barely paid Jeff’s debts. Aunt Sally prevented any troublesome consideration of HER future, by applying a small surplus of profit to the expenses of a journey back to her relatives in Kentucky. She wrote Jeff a letter of cheerless instruction, reminded him of the fulfillment of her worst prophecies regarding him, but begged him, in her absence, to rely solely upon the “Word.” “For the sperrit killeth,” she added vaguely. Whether this referred figuratively to Jeff’s business, he did not stop to consider. He was more interested in the information that the Mayfields had removed to the “Summit Hotel” two days after he had left. “She allowed it was for her health’s sake,” continued Aunt Sally, “but I reckon it’s another name for one of them city fellers who j’ined their party and is keepin’ company with her now. They talk o’ property and stocks and sich worldly trifles all the time, and it’s easy to see their idees is set together. It’s allowed at the Forks that Mr. Mayfield paid Parker’s bill for you. I said it wasn’t so, fur ye’d hev told me; but if it is so, Jeff, and ye didn’t tell me, it was for only one puppos, and that wos that Mayfield bribed ye to break off with his darter! That was WHY you went off so suddent, ‘like a thief in the night,’ and why Miss Mayfield never let on a word about you after you left—not even your name!”

Jeff crushed the letter between his fingers, and, going behind the bar, poured out half a glass of stimulant and drank it. It was not the first time since he came to the “Lone Star House” that he had found this easy relief from his present thought; it was not the first time that he had found this dangerous ally of sure and swift service in bringing him up or down to that level of his dreary, sodden guests, so necessary to his trade. Jeff had not the excuse of the inborn drunkard’s taste. He was impulsive and extreme. At the end of the four weeks he came out on the porch one night as Bill drew up. “You must take me from this place to-night,” he said, in a broken voice scarce like his own. “When we’re on the road we can arrange matters, but I must go to-night.”

“But where?” asked Bill.

“Anywhere! Only I must go from here. I shall go if I have to walk.”

Bill looked hard at the young man. His face was flushed, his eyes blood-shot, and his hands trembled, not with excitement, but with a vacant, purposeless impotence. Bill looked a little relieved. “You’ve been drinking too hard. Jeff, I thought better of ye than that!”

“I think better of MYSELF than that,” said Jeff, with a certain wild, half-hysterical laugh, “and that is why I want to go. Don’t be alarmed, Bill,” he added; “I have strength enough to save myself, and I shall! But it isn’t worth the struggle HERE.”

He left the “Lone Star House” that night. He would, he said to Bill, go on to Sacramento, and try to get a situation as clerk or porter there; he was too old to learn a trade. He said little more. When, after forty-eight hours’ inability to eat, drink, or sleep, Bill, looking at his haggard face and staring eyes, pressed him to partake, medicinally, from a certain black bottle, Jeff gently put it aside, and saying, with a sad smile, “I can get along without it; I’ve gone through more than this,” left his mentor in a state of mingled admiration and perplexity.

At Sacramento he found a commercial “opening.” But certain habits of personal independence, combined with a direct truthfulness and simplicity, were not conducive to business advancement. He was frank, and in his habits impulsive and selfishly outspoken. His employer, a good-natured man, successful in his way, anxious to serve his own interest and Jeff’s equally, strove and labored with him, but in vain. His employer’s wife, a still more good-natured woman, successful in her way, and equally anxious to serve Jeff’s interests and her own, also strove with him as unsuccessfully. At the end of a month he discharged his employer, after a simple, boyish, utterly unbusiness-like interview, and secretly tore up his wife’s letter. “I don’t know what to make of that chap,” said the husband to his wife; “he’s about as civilized as an Injun.” “And as conceited,” added the lady.

Howbeit he took his conceit, his sorrows, his curls, mustaches, broad shoulders, and fifty dollars into humble lodgings in a back street. The days succeeding this were the most restful he had passed since he left the “Half-way House.” To wander through the town, half conscious of its strangeness and novel bustling life, and to dream of a higher and nobler future with Miss Mayfield—to feel no responsibility but that of waiting—was, I regret to say, a pleasure to him. He made no acquaintances except among the poorer people and the children. He was sometimes hungry, he was always poorly clad, but these facts carried no degradation with them now. He read much, and in his way—Jeff’s way—tried to improve his mind; his recent commercial experience had shown him various infelicities in his speech and accent. He learned to correct certain provincialisms. He was conscious that Miss Mayfield must have noticed them, yet his odd irrational pride kept him from ever regretting them, if they had offered a possible excuse for her treatment of him.

On one of these nights his steps chanced to lead him into a gambling-saloon. The place had offered no temptation to him; his dealings with the goddess Chance had been of less active nature. Nevertheless he placed his last five dollars on the turn of a card. He won. He won repeatedly; his gains had reached a considerable sum when, flushed, excited, and absorbed, he was suddenly conscious that he had become the centre of observation at the table. Looking up, he saw that the dealer had paused, and, with the cards in his motionless fingers, was gazing at him with fixed eyes and a white face.

Jeff rose and passed hurriedly to his side. “What’s the matter?”

The gambler shrunk slightly as he approached. “What’s your name?”

“Briggs.”

“God! I knew it! How much have you got there?” he continued, in a quick whisper, pointing to Jeff’s winnings.

“Five hundred dollars.”

“I’ll give you double if you’ll get up and quit the board!”

“Why?” asked Jeff haughtily.

“Why?” repeated the man fiercely; “why? Well, your father shot himself thar, where you’re sittin’, at this table;” and he added, with a half-forced, half-hysterical laugh, “HE’S PLAYIN’ AT ME OVER YOUR SHOULDERS!”

Jeff lifted a face as colorless as the gambler’s own, went back to his seat, and placed his entire gains on a single card. The gambler looked at him nervously, but dealt. There was a pause, a slight movement where Jeff stood, and then a simultaneous cry from the players as they turned towards him. But his seat was vacant. “Run after him! Call him back! HE’S WON AGAIN!” But he had vanished utterly.

HOW he left, or what indeed followed, he never clearly remembered. His movements must have been automatic, for when, two hours later, he found himself at the “Pioneer” coach office, with his carpet-bag and blankets by his side, he could not recall how or why he had come! He had a dumb impression that he had barely escaped some dire calamity,—rather that he had only temporarily averted it,—and that he was still in the shadow of some impending catastrophe of destiny. He must go somewhere, he must do something to be saved! He had no money, he had no friends; even Yuba Bill had been transferred to another route, miles away. Yet, in the midst of this stupefaction, it was a part of his strange mental condition that trivial details of Miss Mayfield’s face and figure, and even apparel, were constantly before him, to the exclusion of consecutive thought. A collar she used to wear, a ribbon she had once tied around her waist, a blue vein in her dropped eyelid, a curve in her soft, full, bird-like throat, the arch of her in-step in her small boots—all these were plainer to him than the future, or even the present. But a voice in his ear, a figure before his abstracted eyes, at last broke upon his reverie.

“Jeff Briggs!”

Jeff mechanically took the outstretched hand of a young clerk of the Pioneer Coach Company, who had once accompanied Yuba Bill and stopped at the “Half-way House.” He endeavored to collect his thoughts; here seemed to be an opportunity to go somewhere!

“What are you doing now?” said the young man briskly.

“Nothing,” said Jeff simply.

“Oh, I see—going home!”

Home! the word stung sharply through Jeff’s benumbed consciousness.

“No,” he stammered, “that is—”

“Look here, Jeff,” broke in the young man, “I’ve got a chance for you that don’t fall in a man’s way every day. Wells, Fargo & Co.‘s treasure messenger from Robinson’s Ferry to Mempheys has slipped out. The place is vacant. I reckon I can get it for you.”

“When?”

“Now—to-night.”

“I’m ready.”

“Come, then.”

In ten minutes they were in the company’s office, where its manager, a man famous in those days for his boldness and shrewdness, still lingered in the dispatch of business.

The young clerk briefly but deferentially stated certain facts. A few questions and answers followed, of which Jeff heard only the words “Tuolumne” and “Yuba Bill.”

“Sit down, Mr. Briggs. Good-night, Roberts.”

The young clerk, with an encouraging smile at Jeff, bowed himself out as the manager seated himself at his desk and began to write.

“You know the country pretty well between the Fork and the Summit, Mr. Briggs?” he said, without looking up.

“I lived there,” said Jeff.

“That was some months ago, wasn’t it?”