Sally Dows

Nothing could be ascertained of the facts at the tienda, which at that hour of the day appeared to have been empty of customers, and was occupied only by Miss Mendez and her retainers. All surmises as to the real cause of the quarrel and the reason for the reticence of the two belligerents were suddenly and unexpectedly stopped by their departure from Buckeye as soon as their condition permitted, on the alleged opinion of Dr. Duchesne that the air of the river was dangerous to their convalescence. The momentary indignation against the tienda which the two combatants had checked, eventually subsided altogether. After all, the fight had taken place OUTSIDE; it was not even proven that the provocation had been given AT the tienda! Its popularity was undiminished.

PART III

It was the end of the rainy season, and a wet night. Brace and Parks were looking from the window over the swollen river, with faces quite as troubled as the stream below. Nor was the prospect any longer the same. In the past two years Buckeye had grown into a city. They could now count a half dozen church spires from the window of the three-storied brick building which had taken the place of the old wooden Emporium, but they could also count the brilliantly lit windows of an equal number of saloons and gambling-houses which glittered through the rain, or, to use the words of a local critic, “Shone seven nights in the week to the Gospel shops’ ONE!” A difficulty had arisen which the two men had never dreamed of, and a struggle had taken place between the two rival powers, which was developing a degree of virulence and intolerance on both sides that boded no good to Buckeye. The disease which its infancy had escaped had attacked its adult growth with greater violence. The new American saloons which competed with Jovita Mendez’ Spanish venture had substituted a brutal masculine sincerity for her veiled feminine methods. There was higher play, deeper drinking, darker passion. Yet the opposition, after the fashion of most reformers, were casting back to the origin of the trouble in Jovita, and were confounding principles and growth. “If it had not been for her the rule would never have been broken.” “If there was to be a cleaning out of the gambling houses, she must go first!”

The sounds of a harp and a violin played in the nearest saloon struggled up to them with the opening and shutting of its swinging baize inner doors. There was boisterous chanting from certain belated revelers in the next street which had no such remission. The brawling of the stream below seemed to be echoed in the uneasy streets; the quiet of the old days had departed with the sedate, encompassing woods that no longer fringed the river bank; the restful calm of Nature had receded before the dusty outskirts of the town.

“It’s mighty unfortunate, too,” said Brace moodily, “that Shuttleworth and Saunders, who haven’t been in the place since their row, have come over from Fiddletown to-day, and are banging around town. They haven’t said anything that I know of, but their PRESENCE is quite enough to revive the old feeling against her shop. The Committee,” he added bitterly, “will be sure to say that not only the first gambling, but the first shooting in Buckeye took place there. If they get up that story again—no matter how quiet SHE has become since—no matter what YOU may say as mayor—it will go hard with her. What’s that now?”

They listened breathlessly. Above the brawling of the river, the twanging of the harp-player, and the receding shouts of the revelers, they could hear the hollow wooden sidewalks resounding with the dull, monotonous trampling of closely following feet. Parks rose with a white face.

“Brace!”

“Yes!”

“Will you stand by me—and HER?”

“Stand by YOU AND HER? Eh? What? Good God! Parks!—you don’t mean to say you—it’s gone as far as THAT?”

“Will you or won’t you?”

The sound of the trampling had changed to a shuffling on the pavement below, and then footsteps began to ascend the stairs.

Brace held out his hand quickly and grasped that of Parks as the door opened to half a dozen men. They were evidently the ringleaders of the crowd below. There was no hesitation or doubt in their manner; the unswerving directness which always characterized those illegal demonstrations lent it something of dignity. Nevertheless, Carpenter, the spokesman, flushed slightly before Parks’ white, determined face.

“Come, Parks, you know what we’re after,” he said bluntly. “We didn’t come here to parley. We knew YOUR sentiments and what YOU think is your duty. We know what we consider OURS—and so do you. But we’re here to give you a chance, either as mayor, or, if you prefer it, as the oldest citizen here, to take a hand in our business to-night. We’re not ashamed of what we’re going to do, and we’re willing to abide by it; so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t speak aboveboard of it to you. We even invite you to take part in our last ‘call’ tonight at the Hall.”

“Go!” whispered Brace quickly, “YOU’LL GAIN TIME!”

Parks’ face changed, and he turned to Carpenter. “Enough,” he said gravely. “I reserve what I have to say of these proceedings till I join you there.” He stopped, whispered a few words to Brace, and then disappeared as the men descended the stairs, and, joining the crowd on the pavement, proceeded silently towards the Town Hall. There was nothing in the appearance of that decorous procession to indicate its unlawful character or the recklessness with which it was charged.

There were thirty or forty men already seated in the Hall. The meeting was brief and to the point. The gambling saloons were to be “cleaned out” that night, the tables and appliances thrown into the street and burnt, the doors closed, and the gamblers were to be conducted to the outskirts of the town and forbidden to enter it again on pain of death.

“Does this yer refer to Jovita Mendez’ saloon?” asked a voice.

To their surprise the voice was not Parks’ but Shuttleworth’s. It was also a matter to be noted that he stood a little forward of the crowd, and that there was a corresponding movement of a dozen or more men from Fiddletown who apparently were part of the meeting.

The chairman (No. 10) said there was to be no exception, and certainly not for the originator of disorder in Buckeye! He was surprised that the question should be asked by No. 72, who was an old resident of Buckeye, and who, with No. 73, had suffered from the character of that woman’s saloon.

“That’s jest it,” said Shuttleworth, “and ez I reckon that SAUNDERS AND ME did all the disorder there was, and had to turn ourselves out o’ town on account of it, I don’t see jest where SHE could come into this affair. Only,” he turned and looked around him, “in one way! And that way, gentlemen, would be for her to come here and boot one half o’ this kempany out o’ town, and shoot the other half! You hear me!—that’s so!” He stopped, tugged a moment at his cravat and loosened his shirt-collar as if it impeded his utterance, and went on. “I’ve got to say suthin’ to you gentlemen about me and Saunders and this woman; I’ve got to say suthin’ that’s hard for a white man to say, and him a married man, too—I’ve got to say that me and Saunders never had no QU’OLL, never had NO FIGHT at her shop: I’ve got to say that me and Saunders got shot by Jovita Mendez for INSULTIN’ HER—for tryin’ to treat her as if she was the common dirt of the turnpike—and served us right! I’ve got to say that Saunders and me made a bet that for all her airs she wasn’t no better than she might be, and we went there drunk to try her—and that we got left, with two shots into us like hounds as we were! That’s so!—wasn’t it, Saunders?”

“With two shots inter us like hounds ez we were,” repeated Saunders with deliberate precision.

“And I’ve got to say suthin’ more, gen’lemen,” continued Shuttleworth, now entirely removing his coat and vest, and apparently shaking himself free from any extraneous trammels. “I’ve got to say this—I’ve got to say that thar ain’t a man in Buckeye, from Dirty Dick over yon to the mayor of this town, ez hasn’t tried the same thing on and got left—got left, without shootin’ maybe, more’s the pity, but got left all the same! And I’ve got to say,” lifting his voice, “THAT EF THAT’S WHAT YOU CALL DISORDERLINESS IN HER—if that’s what yo’r turnin’ this woman out o’ town for—why”—

He stopped, absolutely breathless and gasping. For there was a momentary shock of surprise and shame, and then he was overborne by peal after peal of inextinguishable laughter. But it was the laughter that precipitated doubt, enlightened justice, cleared confusion, and—saved them!

In vain a few struggled to remind them that the question of the OTHER saloons was still unaffected. It was lost in the motion enthusiastically put and carried that the Committee should instantly accompany Saunders and Shuttleworth to Jovita’s saloon to make an apology in their presence. Five minutes later they halted hilariously before its door. But it was closed, dark, and silent!

Their sudden onset and alarm brought Sanchicha to the half-opened door. “Ah, yes! the Senorita? Bueno! She had just left for Fiddletown with the Senor Parks, the honorable mayor. They had been married only a few moments before by the Reverend Mr. McCorkle!”

THEIR UNCLE FROM CALIFORNIA

PART I

It was bitterly cold. When night fell over Lakeville, Wisconsin, the sunset, which had flickered rather than glowed in the western sky, took upon itself a still more boreal tremulousness, until at last it seemed to fade away in cold blue shivers to the zenith. Nothing else stirred; in the crisp still air the evening smoke of chimneys rose threadlike and vanished. The stars were early, pale, and pitiless; when the later moonlight fell, it appeared only to whiten the stiffened earth like snow, except where it made a dull, pewter-like film over the three frozen lakes which encompassed the town.

The site of the town itself was rarely beautiful, and its pioneers and founders had carried out the suggestions they had found there with loving taste and intelligence.

Themselves old voyageurs, trappers, and traders, they still loved Nature too well to exclude her from the restful homes they had achieved after years of toiling face to face with her. So a strip of primeval forest on the one side, and rolling level prairie on the other, still came up to the base of the hill, whereon they had built certain solid houses, which a second generation had beautified and improved with modern taste, but which still retained their old honesty of foundation and wholesome rustic space. These yet stood among the old trees, military squares, and broad sloping avenues of the town. Seen from the railway by day, the regularity of streets and blocks was hidden by environing trees; there remained only a picturesque lifting of rustic gardens, brown roofs, gables, spires, and cupolas above the mirroring lake: seen from the railway this bitter night, the invisible terraces and streets were now pricked out by symmetrical lines and curves of sparkling lights, which glittered through the leafless boughs and seemed to encircle the hill like a diadem.

Central in the chiefest square, and yet preserving its old lordly isolation in a wooded garden, the homestead of Enoch Lane stood with all its modern additions and improvements. Already these included not only the latest phases of decoration, but various treasures brought by the second generation from Europe, which they were wont to visit, but from which they always contentedly returned to their little provincial town. Whether there was some instinctive yearning, like the stirred sap of great forests, in their wholesome pioneer blood, or whether there was some occult fascination in the pretty town-crested hill itself, it was still certain that the richest inhabitants always preferred to live in Lakeville. Even the young, who left it to seek their fortune elsewhere, came back to enjoy their success under the sylvan vaults of this vast ancestral roof. And that was why, this 22d of December, 1870, the whole household of Gabriel Lane was awaiting the arrival from California of his brother, Sylvester Lane, at the old homestead which he had left twenty years ago.

“And you don’t know how he looks?” said Kitty Lane to her father.

“I do, perfectly; rather chubby, with blue eyes, curly hair, fair skin, and blushes when you speak to him.”

“Papa!”

“Eh?—Oh, well, he USED to. You see that was twenty-five years ago, when he left here for boarding-school. He ran away from there, as I told you; went to sea, and finally brought up at San Francisco.”

“And you haven’t had any picture, or photograph of him, since?”

“No—that is—I say!—you haven’t, any of you, got a picture of Sylvester, have you?” he turned in a vague parenthetical appeal to the company of relatives and friends collected in the drawing-room after dinner.

“Cousin Jane has; she knows all about him!”

But it appeared that Cousin Jane had only heard Susan Marckland say that Edward Bingham had told her that he was in California when “Uncle Sylvester” had been nearly hanged by a Vigilance Committee for protecting a horse thief or a gambler, or some such person. This was felt to be ineffective as a personal description.

“He’s sure to wear a big beard; they all do when they first come back,” said Amos Gunn, with metropolitan oraculousness.

“He has a big curling mustache, long silken hair, and broad shoulders,” said Marie du Page.

There was such piquant conviction in the manner of the speaker, who was also a very pretty girl, that they all turned towards her, and Kitty quickly said,—

“But YOU’VE never seen him?”

“No—but—” She stopped, and, lifting one shoulder, threw her spirited head sideways, in a pretty deprecatory way, with elevated eyebrows and an expression intended to show the otherwise untranslatable character of her impression. But it showed quite as pleasantly the other fact, that she was the daughter of a foreigner, an old French military explorer, and that she had retained even in Anglo-Saxon Lakeville some of the Gallic animation.

“Well, how many of you girls are going with me to meet him at the station?” said Gabriel, dismissing with masculine promptness the lesser question. “It’s time to be off.”

“I’d like to go,” said Kitty, “and so would Cousin Jane; but really, papa, you see if YOU don’t know him, and WE don’t either, and you’ve got to satisfy yourself that it’s the right man, and then introduce YOURSELF and then us—and all this on the platform before everybody—it makes it rather embarrassing for us. And then, as he’s your younger brother and we’re supposed to be his affectionate nieces, you know, it would make HIM feel SO ridiculous!”

“And if he were to KISS you,” said Marie tragically, “and then turn out not to be him!”

“So,” continued Kitty, “you’d better take Cousin John, who was more in Uncle Sylvester’s time, to represent the Past of the family, and perhaps Mr. Gunn”—

“To represent the future, I suppose?” interrupted Gabriel in a wicked whisper.