Devil's Ford

In spite of her cold indignation, and the fact that she could understand only a part of Mattingly’s speech, Christie comprehended enough to make her lift her clear eyes to the speaker, as she replied freezingly that she feared she would not trouble them long with her company.

“Oh, you’ll get over that,” responded Mattingly, with an exasperating confidence that drove her nearly frantic, from the manifest kindliness of intent that made it impossible for her to resent it. “I felt that way myself at first. Things will look strange and unsociable for a while, until you get the hang of them. You’ll naturally stamp round and cuss a little—” He stopped in conscious consternation.

With ready tact, and before Christie could reply, Maryland Joe had put down the trunk and changed hands with his brother.

“You mustn’t mind Dick, or he’ll go off and kill himself with shame,” he whispered laughingly in her ear. “He means all right, but he’s picked up so much slang here that he’s about forgotten how to talk English, and it’s nigh on to four years since he’s met a young lady.”

Christie did not reply. Yet the laughter of her sister in advance with the Kearney brothers seemed to make the reserve with which she tried to crush further familiarity only ridiculous.

“Do you know many operas, Miss Carr?”

She looked at the boyish, interested, sunburnt face so near to her own, and hesitated. After all, why should she add to her other real disappointments by taking this absurd creature seriously?

“In what way?” she returned, with a half smile.

“To play. On the piano, of course. There isn’t one nearer here than Sacramento; but I reckon we could get a small one by Thursday. You couldn’t do anything on a banjo?” he added doubtfully; “Kearney’s got one.”

“I imagine it would be very difficult to carry a piano over those mountains,” said Christie laughingly, to avoid the collateral of the banjo.

“We got a billiard-table over from Stockton,” half bashfully interrupted Dick Mattingly, struggling from his end of the trunk to recover his composure, “and it had to be brought over in sections on the back of a mule, so I don’t see why—” He stopped short again in confusion, at a sign from his brother, and then added, “I mean, of course, that a piano is a heap more delicate, and valuable, and all that sort of thing, but it’s worth trying for.”

“Fairfax was always saying he’d get one for himself, so I reckon it’s possible,” said Joe.

“Does he play?” asked Christie.

“You bet,” said Joe, quite forgetting himself in his enthusiasm. “He can snatch Mozart and Beethoven bald-headed.”

In the embarrassing silence that followed this speech the fringe of pine wood nearest the flat was reached. Here there was a rude “clearing,” and beneath an enormous pine stood the two recently joined tenements. There was no attempt to conceal the point of junction between Kearney’s cabin and the newly-transported saloon from the flat—no architectural illusion of the palpable collusion of the two buildings, which seemed to be telescoped into each other. The front room or living room occupied the whole of Kearney’s cabin. It contained, in addition to the necessary articles for housekeeping, a “bunk” or berth for Mr. Carr, so as to leave the second building entirely to the occupation of his daughters as bedroom and boudoir.

There was a half-humorous, half-apologetic exhibition of the rude utensils of the living room, and then the young men turned away as the two girls entered the open door of the second room. Neither Christie nor Jessie could for a moment understand the delicacy which kept these young men from accompanying them into the room they had but a few moments before decorated and arranged with their own hands, and it was not until they turned to thank their strange entertainers that they found that they were gone.

The arrangement of the second room was rude and bizarre, but not without a singular originality and even tastefulness of conception. What had been the counter or “bar” of the saloon, gorgeous in white and gold, now sawn in two and divided, was set up on opposite sides of the room as separate dressing-tables, decorated with huge bunches of azaleas, that hid the rough earthenware bowls, and gave each table the appearance of a vestal altar.

The huge gilt plate-glass mirror which had hung behind the bar still occupied one side of the room, but its length was artfully divided by an enormous rosette of red, white, and blue muslin—one of the surviving Fourth of July decorations of Thompson’s saloon. On either side of the door two pathetic-looking, convent-like cots, covered with spotless sheeting, and heaped up in the middle, like a snow-covered grave, had attracted their attention. They were still staring at them when Mr. Carr anticipated their curiosity.

“I ought to tell you that the young men confided to me the fact that there was neither bed nor mattress to be had on the Ford. They have filled some flour sacks with clean dry moss from the woods, and put half a dozen blankets on the top, and they hope you can get along until the messenger who starts to-night for La Grange can bring some bedding over.”

Jessie flew with mischievous delight to satisfy herself of the truth of this marvel. “It’s so, Christie,” she said laughingly—“three flour-sacks apiece; but I’m jealous: yours are all marked ‘superfine,’ and mine ‘middlings.’”

Mr. Carr had remained uneasily watching Christie’s shadowed face.

“What matters?” she said drily. “The accommodation is all in keeping.”

“It will be better in a day or two,” he continued, casting a longing look towards the door—the first refuge of masculine weakness in an impending domestic emergency. “I’ll go and see what can be done,” he said feebly, with a sidelong impulse towards the opening and freedom. “I’ve got to see Fairfax again to-night any way.”

“One moment, father,” said Christie, wearily. “Did you know anything of this place and these—these people—before you came?”

“Certainly—of course I did,” he returned, with the sudden testiness of disturbed abstraction. “What are you thinking of? I knew the geological strata and the—the report of Fairfax and his partners before I consented to take charge of the works. And I can tell you that there is a fortune here. I intend to make my own terms, and share in it.”

“And not take a salary or some sum of money down?” said Christie, slowly removing her bonnet in the same resigned way.

“I am not a hired man, or a workman, Christie,” said her father sharply. “You ought not to oblige me to remind you of that.”

“But the hired men—the superintendent and his workmen—were the only ones who ever got anything out of your last experience with Colonel Waters at La Grange, and—and we at least lived among civilized people there.”

“These young men are not common people, Christie; even if they have forgotten the restraints of speech and manners, they’re gentlemen.”

“Who are willing to live like—like negroes.”

“You can make them what you please.”

Christie raised her eyes. There was a certain cynical ring in her father’s voice that was unlike his usual hesitating abstraction. It both puzzled and pained her.

“I mean,” he said hastily, “that you have the same opportunity to direct the lives of these young men into more regular, disciplined channels that I have to regulate and correct their foolish waste of industry and material here. It would at least beguile the time for you.”

Fortunately for Mr. Carr’s escape and Christie’s uneasiness, Jessie, who had been examining the details of the living-room, broke in upon this conversation.

“I’m sure it will be as good as a perpetual picnic. George Kearney says we can have a cooking-stove under the tree outside at the back, and as there will be no rain for three months we can do the cooking there, and that will give us more room for—for the piano when it comes; and there’s an old squaw to do the cleaning and washing-up any day—and—and—it will be real fun.”

She stopped breathlessly, with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes—a charming picture of youth and trustfulness. Mr. Carr had seized the opportunity to escape.

“Really, now, Christie,” said Jessie confidentially, when they were alone, and Christie had begun to unpack her trunk, and to mechanically put her things away, “they’re not so bad.”

“Who?” asked Christie.

“Why, the Kearneys, and Mattinglys, and Fairfax, and the lot, provided you don’t look at their clothes. And think of it! they told me—for they tell one EVERYTHING in the most alarming way—that those clothes were bought to please US. A scramble of things bought at La Grange, without reference to size or style. And to hear these creatures talk, why, you’d think they were Astors or Rothschilds. Think of that little one with the curls—I don’t believe he is over seventeen, for all his baby moustache—says he’s going to build an assembly hall for us to give a dance in next month; and apologizes the next breath to tell us that there isn’t any milk to be had nearer than La Grange, and we must do without it, and use syrup in our tea to-morrow.”

“And where is all this wealth?” said Christie, forcing herself to smile at her sister’s animation.

“Under our very feet, my child, and all along the river. Why, what we thought was pure and simple mud is what they call ‘gold-bearing cement.’”

“I suppose that is why they don’t brush their boots and trousers, it’s so precious,” returned Christie drily. “And have they ever translated this precious dirt into actual coin?”

“Bless you, yes. Why, that dirty little gutter, you know, that ran along the side of the road and followed us down the hill all the way here, that cost them—let me see—yes, nearly sixty thousand dollars. And fancy! papa’s just condemned it—says it won’t do; and they’ve got to build another.”

An impatient sigh from Christie drew Jessie’s attention to her troubled eyebrows.

“Don’t worry about our disappointment, dear. It isn’t so very great. I dare say we’ll be able to get along here in some way, until papa is rich again. You know they intend to make him share with them.”

“It strikes me that he is sharing with them already,” said Christie, glancing bitterly round the cabin; “sharing everything—ourselves, our lives, our tastes.”

“Ye-e-s!” said Jessie, with vaguely hesitating assent. “Yes, even these:” she showed two dice in the palm of her little hand. “I found ‘em in the drawer of our dressing-table.”

“Throw them away,” said Christie impatiently.

But Jessie’s small fingers closed over the dice. “I’ll give them to the little Kearney. I dare say they were the poor boy’s playthings.”

The appearance of these relics of wild dissipation, however, had lifted Christie out of her sublime resignation. “For Heaven’s sake, Jessie,” she said, “look around and see if there is anything more!”