A First Family of Tasajara

“Don’t want it, ‘Lige,” said Harkutt, pushing it back.

“I’d rather leave it.”

“But suppose you have a chance to sell it to somebody at Rawlett’s?” continued Harkutt, with a precaution that seemed ironical.

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”

He remained quiet, looking at Harkutt with an odd expression as he rubbed the edge of the coin that he held between his fingers abstractedly on the counter. Something in his gaze—rather perhaps the apparent absence of anything in it approximate to the present occasion—was beginning to affect Harkutt with a vague uneasiness. Providentially a resumed onslaught of wind and rain against the panes effected a diversion. “Come,” he said, with brisk practicality, “you’d better hurry on to Rawlett’s before it gets worse. Have your clothes dried by his fire, take suthin’ to eat, and you’ll be all right.” He rubbed his hands cheerfully, as if summarily disposing of the situation, and incidentally of all ‘Lige’s troubles, and walked with him to the door. Nevertheless, as the man’s look remained unchanged, he hesitated a moment with his hand on the handle, in the hope that he would say something, even if only to repeat his appeal, but he did not. Then Harkutt opened the door; the man moved mechanically out, and at the distance of a few feet seemed to melt into the rain and darkness. Harkutt remained for a moment with his face pressed against the glass. After an interval he thought he heard the faint splash of hoofs in the shallows of the road; he opened the door softly and looked out.

The light had disappeared from the nearest house; only an uncertain bulk of shapeless shadows remained. Other remoter and more vague outlines near the horizon seemed to have a funereal suggestion of tombs and grave mounds, and one—a low shed near the road—looked not unlike a halted bier. He hurriedly put up the shutters in a momentary lulling of the wind, and re-entering the store began to fasten them from within.

While thus engaged an inner door behind the counter opened softly and cautiously, projecting a brighter light into the deserted apartment from some sacred domestic interior with the warm and wholesome incense of cooking. It served to introduce also the equally agreeable presence of a young girl, who, after assuring herself of the absence of every one but the proprietor, idly slipped into the store, and placing her rounded elbows, from which her sleeves were uprolled, upon the counter, leaned lazily upon them, with both hands supporting her dimpled chin, and gazed indolently at him; so indolently that, with her pretty face once fixed in this comfortable attitude, she was constrained to follow his movements with her eyes alone, and often at an uncomfortable angle. It was evident that she offered the final but charming illustration of the enfeebling listlessness of Sidon.

“So those loafers have gone at last,” she said, meditatively. “They’ll take root here some day, pop. The idea of three strong men like that lazing round for two mortal hours doin’ nothin’. Well!” As if to emphasize her disgust she threw her whole weight upon the counter by swinging her feet from the floor to touch the shelves behind her.

Mr. Harkutt only replied by a slight grunt as he continued to screw on the shutters.

“Want me to help you, dad?” she said, without moving.

Mr. Harkutt muttered something unintelligible, which, however, seemed to imply a negative, and her attention here feebly wandered to the roll of paper, and she began slowly and lazily to read it aloud.

“‘For value received, I hereby sell, assign, and transfer to Daniel D. Harkutt all my right, titles and interest in, and to the undivided half of, Quarter Section 4, Range 5, Tasajara Township’—hum—hum,” she murmured, running her eyes to the bottom of the page. “Why, Lord! It’s that ‘Lige Curtis!” she laughed. “The idea of HIM having property! Why, dad, you ain’t been THAT silly!”

“Put down that paper, miss,” he said, aggrievedly; “bring the candle here, and help me to find one of these infernal screws that’s dropped.”

The girl indolently disengaged herself from the counter and Elijah Curtis’s transfer, and brought the candle to her father. The screw was presently found and the last fastening secured. “Supper gettin’ cold, dad,” she said, with a slight yawn. Her father sympathetically responded by stretching himself from his stooping position, and the two passed through the private door into inner domesticity, leaving the already forgotten paper lying with other articles of barter on the counter.

CHAPER II

With the closing of the little door behind them they seemed to have shut out the turmoil and vibration of the storm. The reason became apparent when, after a few paces, they descended half a dozen steps to a lower landing. This disclosed the fact that the dwelling part of the Sidon General Store was quite below the level of the shop and the road, and on the slope of the solitary undulation of the Tasajara plain,—a little ravine that fell away to a brawling stream below. The only arboreous growth of Tasajara clothed its banks in the shape of willows and alders that set compactly around the quaint, irregular dwelling which straggled down the ravine and looked upon a slope of bracken and foliage on either side. The transition from the black, treeless, storm-swept plain to this sheltered declivity was striking and suggestive. From the opposite bank one might fancy that the youthful and original dwelling had ambitiously mounted the crest, but, appalled at the dreary prospect beyond, had gone no further; while from the road it seemed as if the fastidious proprietor had tried to draw a line between the vulgar trading-post, with which he was obliged to face the coarser civilization of the place, and the privacy of his domestic life. The real fact, however, was that the ravine furnished wood and water; and as Nature also provided one wall of the house,—as in the well-known example of aboriginal cave dwellings,—its peculiar construction commended itself to Sidon on the ground of involving little labor.

Howbeit, from the two open windows of the sitting-room which they had entered only the faint pattering of dripping boughs and a slight murmur from the swollen brook indicated the storm that shook the upper plain, and the cool breath of laurel, syringa, and alder was wafted through the neat apartment. Passing through that pleasant rural atmosphere they entered the kitchen, a much larger room, which appeared to serve occasionally as a dining-room, and where supper was already laid out. A stout, comfortable-looking woman—who had, however, a singularly permanent expression of pained sympathy upon her face—welcomed them in tones of gentle commiseration.

“Ah, there you be, you two! Now sit ye right down, dears; DO. You must be tired out; and you, Phemie, love, draw up by your poor father. There—that’s right. You’ll be better soon.”

There was certainly no visible sign of suffering or exhaustion on the part of either father or daughter, nor the slightest apparent earthly reason why they should be expected to exhibit any. But, as already intimated, it was part of Mrs. Harkutt’s generous idiosyncrasy to look upon all humanity as suffering and toiling; to be petted, humored, condoled with, and fed. It had, in the course of years, imparted a singularly caressing sadness to her voice, and given her the habit of ending her sentences with a melancholy cooing and an unintelligible murmur of agreement. It was undoubtedly sincere and sympathetic, but at times inappropriate and distressing. It had lost her the friendship of the one humorist of Tasajara, whose best jokes she had received with such heartfelt commiseration and such pained appreciation of the evident labor involved as to reduce him to silence.

Accustomed as Mr. Harkutt was to his wife’s peculiarity, he was not above assuming a certain slightly fatigued attitude befitting it. “Yes,” he said, with a vague sigh, “where’s Clemmie?”

“Lyin’ down since dinner; she reckoned she wouldn’t get up to supper,” she returned soothingly. “Phemie’s goin’ to take her up some sass and tea. The poor dear child wants a change.”

“She wants to go to ‘Frisco, and so do I, pop,” said Phemie, leaning her elbow half over her father’s plate. “Come, pop, say do,—just for a week.”

“Only for a week,” murmured the commiserating Mrs. Harkutt.

“Perhaps,” responded Harkutt, with gloomy sarcasm, “ye wouldn’t mind tellin’ me how you’re goin’ to get there, and where the money’s comin’ from to take you? There’s no teamin’ over Tasajara till the rain stops, and no money comin’ in till the ranchmen can move their stuff. There ain’t a hundred dollars in all Tasajara; at least there ain’t been the first red cent of it paid across my counter for a fortnit! Perhaps if you do go you wouldn’t mind takin’ me and the store along with ye, and leavin’ us there.”

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Harkutt, with sympathetic but shameless tergiversation. “Don’t bother your poor father, Phemie, love; don’t you see he’s just tired out? And you’re not eatin’ anything, dad.”

As Mr. Harkutt was uneasily conscious that he had been eating heartily in spite of his financial difficulties, he turned the subject abruptly. “Where’s John Milton?”

Mrs. Harkutt shaded her eyes with her hand, and gazed meditatively on the floor before the fire and in the chimney corner for her only son, baptized under that historic title. “He was here a minit ago,” she said doubtfully. “I really can’t think where he’s gone. But,” assuringly, “it ain’t far.”

“He’s skipped with one o’ those story-books he’s borrowed,” said Phemie. “He’s always doin’ it. Like as not he’s reading with a candle in the wood-shed. We’ll all be burnt up some night.”

“But he’s got through his chores,” interposed Mrs. Harkutt deprecatingly.

“Yes,” continued Harkutt, aggrievedly, “but instead of goin’ to bed, or addin’ up bills, or takin’ count o’ stock, or even doin’ sums or suthin’ useful, he’s ruinin’ his eyes and wastin’ his time over trash.” He rose and walked slowly into the sitting-room, followed by his daughter and a murmur of commiseration from his wife. But Mrs. Harkutt’s ministration for the present did not pass beyond her domain, the kitchen.

“I reckon ye ain’t expectin’ anybody tonight, Phemie?” said Mr. Harkutt, sinking into a chair, and placing his slippered feet against the wall.

“No,” said Phemie, “unless something possesses that sappy little Parmlee to make one of his visitations. John Milton says that out on the road it blows so you can’t stand up. It’s just like that idiot Parmlee to be blown in here, and not have strength of mind enough to get away again.”

Mr. Harkutt smiled. It was that arch yet approving, severe yet satisfied smile with which the deceived male parent usually receives any depreciation of the ordinary young man by his daughters. Euphemia was no giddy thing to be carried away by young men’s attentions,—not she! Sitting back comfortably in his rocking-chair, he said, “Play something.”

The young girl went to the closet and took from the top shelf an excessively ornamented accordion,—the opulent gift of a reckless admirer. It was so inordinately decorated, so gorgeous in the blaze of papier mache, mother-of-pearl, and tortoise-shell on keys and keyboard, and so ostentatiously radiant in the pink silk of its bellows that it seemed to overawe the plainly furnished room with its splendors. “You ought to keep it on the table in a glass vase, Phemie,” said her father admiringly.

“And have HIM think I worshiped it! Not me, indeed! He’s conceited enough already,” she returned, saucily.

Mr. Harkutt again smiled his approbation, then deliberately closed his eyes and threw his head back in comfortable anticipation of the coming strains.

It is to be regretted that in brilliancy, finish, and even cheerfulness of quality they were not up to the suggestions of the keys and keyboard. The most discreet and cautious effort on the part of the young performer seemed only to produce startlingly unexpected, but instantly suppressed complaints from the instrument, accompanied by impatient interjections of “No, no,” from the girl herself. Nevertheless, with her pretty eyebrows knitted in some charming distress of memory, her little mouth half open between an apologetic smile and the exertion of working the bellows, with her white, rounded arms partly lifted up and waving before her, she was pleasantly distracting to the eye. Gradually, as the scattered strains were marshaled into something like an air, she began to sing also, glossing over the instrumental weaknesses, filling in certain dropped notes and omissions, and otherwise assisting the ineffectual accordion with a youthful but not unmusical voice. The song was a lugubrious religious chant; under its influence the house seemed to sink into greater quiet, permitting in the intervals the murmur of the swollen creek to appear more distinct, and even the far moaning of the wind on the plain to become faintly audible. At last, having fairly mastered the instrument, Phemie got into the full swing of the chant. Unconstrained by any criticism, carried away by the sound of her own voice, and perhaps a youthful love for mere uproar, or possibly desirous to drown her father’s voice, which had unexpectedly joined in with a discomposing bass, the conjoined utterances seemed to threaten the frail structure of their dwelling, even as the gale had distended the store behind them. When they ceased at last it was in an accession of dripping from the apparently stirred leaves outside. And then a voice, evidently from the moist depths of the abyss below, called out,—

“Hullo, there!”

Phemie put down the accordion, said, “Who’s that now?” went to the window, lazily leaned her elbows on the sill, and peered into the darkness. Nothing was to be seen; the open space of dimly outlined landscape had that blank, uncommunicative impenetrability with which Nature always confronts and surprises us at such moments. It seemed to Phemie that she was the only human being present. Yet after the feeling had passed she fancied she heard the wash of the current against some object in the stream, half stationary and half resisting.

“Is any one down there? Is that you, Mr. Parmlee?” she called.

There was a pause. Some invisible auditor said to another, “It’s a young lady.” Then the first voice rose again in a more deferential tone: “Are we anywhere near Sidon?”

“This is Sidon,” answered Harkutt, who had risen, and was now quite obliterating his daughter’s outline at the window.

“Thank you,” said the voice. “Can we land anywhere here, on this bank?”

“Run down, pop; they’re strangers,” said the girl, with excited, almost childish eagerness.

“Hold on,” called out Harkutt, “I’ll be thar in a moment!” He hastily thrust his feet into a pair of huge boots, clapped on an oilskin hat and waterproof, and disappeared through a door that led to a lower staircase. Phemie, still at the window, albeit with a newly added sense of self-consciousness, hung out breathlessly. Presently a beam of light from the lower depths of the house shot out into the darkness. It was her father with a bull’s-eye lantern. As he held it up and clambered cautiously down the bank, its rays fell upon the turbid rushing stream, and what appeared to be a rough raft of logs held with difficulty against the bank by two men with long poles. In its centre was a roll of blankets, a valise and saddle-bags, and the shining brasses of some odd-looking instruments.

As Mr. Harkutt, supporting himself by a willow branch that overhung the current, held up the lantern, the two men rapidly transferred their freight from the raft to the bank, and leaped ashore. The action gave an impulse to the raft, which, no longer held in position by the poles, swung broadside to the current and was instantly swept into the darkness.

Not a word had been spoken, but now the voices of the men rose freely together. Phemie listened with intense expectation. The explanation was simple. They were surveyors who had been caught by the overflow on Tasajara plain, had abandoned their horses on the bank of Tasajara Creek, and with a hastily constructed raft had intrusted themselves and their instruments to the current. “But,” said Harkutt quickly, “there is no connection between Tasajara Creek and this stream.”

The two men laughed. “There is NOW,” said one of them.

“But Tasajara Creek is a part of the bay,” said the astonished Harkutt, “and this stream rises inland and only runs into the bay four miles lower down. And I don’t see how—

“You’re almost twelve feet lower here than Tasajara Creek,” said the first man, with a certain professional authority, “and that’s WHY. There’s more water than Tasajara Creek can carry, and it’s seeking the bay this way. Look,” he continued, taking the lantern from Harkutt’s hand and casting its rays on the stream, “that’s salt drift from the upper bay, and part of Tasajara Creek’s running by your house now! Don’t be alarmed,” he added reassuringly, glancing at the staring storekeeper. “You’re all right here; this is only the overflow and will find its level soon.”