Under the Redwoods

“It’s only the snow-wind playin’ with the pines on the summit. You girls won’t allow anybody any fun but yourselves.”

But here a scream from “Georgy,” who, assisted by Captain Fairfax, had mounted a camp-stool at the mouth of the valley, attracted everybody’s attention. She was standing upright, with dilated eyes, staring at the top of the trail. “Look!” she said excitedly, “if the trail isn’t moving!”

Everybody faced in that direction. At the first glance it seemed indeed as if the trail was actually moving; wriggling and undulating its tortuous way down the mountain like a huge snake, only swollen to twice its usual size. But the second glance showed it to be no longer a trail but a channel of water, whose stream, lifted in a bore-like wall four or five feet high, was plunging down into the devoted valley.

For an instant they were unable to comprehend even the nature of the catastrophe. The reservoir was directly over their heads; the bursting of its wall they had imagined would naturally bring down the water in a dozen trickling streams or falls over the cliff above them and along the flanks of the mountain. But that its suddenly liberated volume should overflow the upland beyond and then descend in a pent-up flood by their own trail and their only avenue of escape, had been beyond their wildest fancy.

They met this smiting truth with that characteristic short laugh with which the American usually receives the blow of Fate or the unexpected—as if he recognized only the absurdity of the situation. Then they ran to the women, collected them together, and dragged them to vantages of fancied security among the bushes which flounced the long skirts of the mountain walls. But I leave this part of the description to the characteristic language of one of the party:—

“When the flood struck us, it did not seem to take any stock of us in particular, but laid itself out to ‘go for’ that picnic for all it was worth! It wiped it off the face of the earth in about twenty-five seconds! It first made a clean break from stem to stern, carrying everything along with it. The first thing I saw was old Judge Piper, puttin’ on his best licks to get away from a big can of strawberry ice cream that was trundling after him and trying to empty itself on his collar, whenever a bigger wave lifted it. He was followed by what was left of the brass band; the big drum just humpin’ itself to keep abreast o’ the ice cream, mixed up with camp-stools, music-stands, a few Chinamen, and then what they call in them big San Francisco processions ‘citizens generally.’ The hull thing swept up the canyon inside o’ thirty seconds. Then, what Captain Fairfax called ‘the reflex action in the laws o’ motion’ happened, and darned if the hull blamed procession didn’t sweep back again—this time all the heavy artillery, such as camp-kettles, lager beer kegs, bottles, glasses, and crockery that was left behind takin’ the lead now, and Judge Piper and that ice cream can bringin’ up the rear. As the jedge passed us the second time, we noticed that that ice cream can—hevin’ swallowed water—was kinder losing its wind, and we encouraged the old man by shoutin’ out, ‘Five to one on him!’ And then, you wouldn’t believe what followed. Why, darn my skin, when that ‘reflex’ met the current at the other end, it just swirled around again in what Captain Fairfax called the ‘centrifugal curve,’ and just went round and round the canyon like ez when yer washin’ the dirt out o’ a prospectin’ pan—every now and then washin’ some one of the boys that was in it, like scum, up ag’in the banks.

“We managed in this way to snake out the judge, jest ez he was sailin’ round on the home stretch, passin’ the quarter post two lengths ahead o’ the can. A good deal o’ the ice cream had washed away, but it took us ten minutes to shake the cracked ice and powdered salt out o’ the old man’s clothes, and warm him up again in the laurel bush where he was clinging. This sort o’ ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush’ kep’ on until most o’ the humans was got out, and only the furniture o’ the picnic was left in the race. Then it got kinder mixed up, and went sloshin’ round here and there, ez the water kep’ comin’ down by the trail. Then Lulu Piper, what I was holdin’ up all the time in a laurel bush, gets an idea, for all she was wet and draggled; and ez the things went bobbin’ round, she calls out the figures o’ a cotillon to ‘em. ‘Two camp-stools forward.’ ‘Sashay and back to your places.’ ‘Change partners.’ ‘Hands all round.’

“She was clear grit, you bet! And the joke caught on and the other girls jined in, and it kinder cheered ‘em, for they was wantin’ it. Then Fludder allowed to pacify ‘em by sayin’ he just figured up the size o’ the reservoir and the size o’ the canyon, and he kalkilated that the cube was about ekal, and the canyon couldn’t flood any more. And then Lulu—who was peart as a jay and couldn’t be fooled—speaks up and says, ‘What’s the matter with the ditch, Dick?’

“Lord! then we knew that she knew the worst; for of course all the water in the ditch itself—fifty miles of it!—was drainin’ now into that reservoir and was bound to come down to the canyon.”

It was at this point that the situation became really desperate, for they had now crawled up the steep sides as far as the bushes afforded foothold, and the water was still rising. The chatter of the girls ceased, there were long silences, in which the men discussed the wildest plans, and proposed to tear their shirts into strips to make ropes to support the girls by sticks driven into the mountain side. It was in one of those intervals that the distinct strokes of a woodman’s axe were heard high on the upland at the point where the trail descended to the canyon. Every ear was alert, but only those on one side of the canyon could get a fair view of the spot. This was the good fortune of Captain Fairfax and Georgy Piper, who had climbed to the highest bush on that side, and were now standing up, gazing excitedly in that direction.

“Some one is cutting down a tree at the head of the trail,” shouted Fairfax. The response and joyful explanation, “for a dam across the trail,” was on everybody’s lips at the same time.

But the strokes of the axe were slow and painfully intermittent. Impatience burst out.

“Yell to him to hurry up! Why haven’t they brought two men?”

“It’s only one man,” shouted the captain, “and he seems to be a cripple. By Jiminy!—it is—yes!—it’s Tom Sparrell!”

There was a dead silence. Then, I grieve to say, shame and its twin brother rage took possession of their weak humanity. Oh, yes! It was all of a piece! Why in the name of Folly hadn’t he sent for an able-bodied man. Were they to be drowned through his cranky obstinacy?

The blows still went on slowly. Presently, however, they seemed to alternate with other blows—but alas! they were slower, and if possible feebler!

“Have they got another cripple to work?” roared the Contingent in one furious voice.

“No—it’s a woman—a little one—yes! a girl. Hello! Why, sure as you live, it’s Delaware!”

A spontaneous cheer burst from the Contingent, partly as a rebuke to Sparrell, I think, partly from some shame over their previous rage. He could take it as he liked.

Still the blows went on distressingly slow. The girls were hoisted on the men’s shoulders; the men were half submerged. Then there was a painful pause; then a crumbling crash. Another cheer went up from the canyon.

“It’s down! straight across the trail,” shouted Fairfax, “and a part of the bank on the top of it.”

There was another moment of suspense. Would it hold or be carried away by the momentum of the flood? It held! In a few moments Fairfax again gave voice to the cheering news that the flow had stopped and the submerged trail was reappearing. In twenty minutes it was clear—a muddy river bed, but possible of ascent! Of course there was no diminution of the water in the canyon, which had no outlet, yet it now was possible for the party to swing from bush to bush along the mountain side until the foot of the trail—no longer an opposing one—was reached. There were some missteps and mishaps,—flounderings in the water, and some dangerous rescues,—but in half an hour the whole concourse stood upon the trail and commenced the ascent. It was a slow, difficult, and lugubrious procession—I fear not the best-tempered one, now that the stimulus of danger and chivalry was past. When they reached the dam made by the fallen tree, although they were obliged to make a long detour to avoid its steep sides, they could see how successfully it had diverted the current to a declivity on the other side.

But strangely enough they were greeted by nothing else! Sparrell and the youngest Miss Piper were gone; and when they at last reached the highroad, they were astounded to hear from a passing teamster that no one in the settlement knew anything of the disaster!

This was the last drop in their cup of bitterness! They who had expected that the settlement was waiting breathlessly for their rescue, who anticipated that they would be welcomed as heroes, were obliged to meet the ill-concealed amusement of passengers and friends at their dishevelled and bedraggled appearance, which suggested only the blundering mishaps of an ordinary summer outing! “Boatin’ in the reservoir, and fell in?” “Playing at canal-boat in the Ditch?” were some of the cheerful hypotheses. The fleeting sense of gratitude they had felt for their deliverers was dissipated by the time they had reached their homes, and their rancor increased by the information that when the earthquake occurred Mr. Tom Sparrell and Miss Delaware were enjoying a “pasear” in the forest—he having a half-holiday by virtue of the festival—and that the earthquake had revived his fears of a catastrophe. The two had procured axes in the woodman’s hut and did what they thought was necessary to relieve the situation of the picnickers. But the very modesty of this account of their own performance had the effect of belittling the catastrophe itself, and the picnickers’ report of their exceeding peril was received with incredulous laughter.

For the first time in the history of Red Gulch there was a serious division between the Piper family, supported by the Contingent, and the rest of the settlement. Tom Sparrell’s warning was remembered by the latter, and the ingratitude of the picnickers to their rescuers commented upon; the actual calamity to the reservoir was more or less attributed to the imprudent and reckless contiguity of the revelers on that day, and there were not wanting those who referred the accident itself to the machinations of the scheming Ditch Director Piper!

It was said that there was a stormy scene in the Piper household that evening. The judge had demanded that Delaware should break off her acquaintance with Sparrell, and she had refused; the judge had demanded of Sparrell’s employer that he should discharge him, and had been met with the astounding information that Sparrell was already a silent partner in the concern. At this revelation Judge Piper was alarmed; while he might object to a clerk who could not support a wife, as a consistent democrat he could not oppose a fairly prosperous tradesman. A final appeal was made to Delaware; she was implored to consider the situation of her sisters, who had all made more ambitious marriages or were about to make them. Why should she now degrade the family by marrying a country storekeeper?

It is said that here the youngest Miss Piper made a memorable reply, and a revelation the truth of which was never gainsaid:—

“You all wanter know why I’m going to marry Tom Sparrell?” she queried, standing up and facing the whole family circle.

“Yes.”

“Why I prefer him to the hull caboodle that you girls have married or are going to marry?” she continued, meditatively biting the end of her braid.

“Yes.”

“Well, he’s the only man of the whole lot that hasn’t proposed to me first.”

It is presumed that Sparrell made good the omission, or that the family were glad to get rid of her, for they were married that autumn. And really a later comparison of the family records shows that while Captain Fairfax remained “Captain Fairfax,” and the other sons-in-law did not advance proportionately in standing or riches, the lame storekeeper of Red Gulch became the Hon. Senator Tom Sparrell.

A WIDOW OF THE SANTA ANA VALLEY

The Widow Wade was standing at her bedroom window staring out, in that vague instinct which compels humanity in moments of doubt and perplexity to seek this change of observation or superior illumination. Not that Mrs. Wade’s disturbance was of a serious character. She had passed the acute stage of widowhood by at least two years, and the slight redness of her soft eyelids as well as the droop of her pretty mouth were merely the recognized outward and visible signs of the grievously minded religious community in which she lived. The mourning she still wore was also partly in conformity with the sad-colored garments of her neighbors, and the necessities of the rainy season. She was in comfortable circumstances, the mistress of a large ranch in the valley, which had lately become more valuable by the extension of a wagon road through its centre. She was simply worrying whether she should go to a “sociable” ending with “a dance”—a daring innovation of some strangers—at the new hotel, or continue to eschew such follies, that were, according to local belief, unsuited to “a vale of tears.”

Indeed at this moment the prospect she gazed abstractedly upon seemed to justify that lugubrious description. The Santa Ana Valley—a long monotonous level—was dimly visible through moving curtains of rain or veils of mist, to the black mourning edge of the horizon, and had looked like that for months. The valley—in some remote epoch an arm of the San Francisco Bay—every rainy season seemed to be trying to revert to its original condition, and, long after the early spring had laid on its liberal color in strips, bands, and patches of blue and yellow, the blossoms of mustard and lupine glistened like wet paint. Nevertheless on that rich alluvial soil Nature’s tears seemed only to fatten the widow’s acres and increase her crops. Her neighbors, too, were equally prosperous. Yet for six months of the year the recognized expression of Santa Ana was one of sadness, and for the other six months—of resignation. Mrs. Wade had yielded early to this influence, as she had to others, in the weakness of her gentle nature, and partly as it was more becoming the singular tragedy that had made her a widow.

The late Mr. Wade had been found dead with a bullet through his head in a secluded part of the road over Heavy Tree Hill in Sonora County. Near him lay two other bodies, one afterwards identified as John Stubbs, a resident of the Hill, and probably a traveling companion of Wade’s, and the other a noted desperado and highwayman, still masked, as at the moment of the attack. Wade and his companion had probably sold their lives dearly, and against odds, for another mask was found on the ground, indicating that the attack was not single-handed, and as Wade’s body had not yet been rifled, it was evident that the remaining highwayman had fled in haste. The hue and cry had been given by apparently the only one of the travelers who escaped, but as he was hastening to take the overland coach to the East at the time, his testimony could not be submitted to the coroner’s deliberation. The facts, however, were sufficiently plain for a verdict of willful murder against the highwayman, although it was believed that the absent witness had basely deserted his companion and left him to his fate, or, as was suggested by others, that he might even have been an accomplice. It was this circumstance which protracted comment on the incident, and the sufferings of the widow, far beyond that rapid obliteration which usually overtook such affairs in the feverish haste of the early days. It caused her to remove to Santa Ana, where her old father had feebly ranched a “quarter section” in the valley. He survived her husband only a few months, leaving her the property, and once more in mourning. Perhaps this continuity of woe endeared her to a neighborhood where distinctive ravages of diphtheria or scarlet fever gave a kind of social preeminence to any household, and she was so sympathetically assisted by her neighbors in the management of the ranch that, from an unkempt and wasteful wilderness, it became paying property. The slim, willowy figure, soft red-lidded eyes, and deep crape of “Sister Wade” at church or prayer-meeting was grateful to the soul of these gloomy worshipers, and in time she herself found that the arm of these dyspeptics of mind and body was nevertheless strong and sustaining. Small wonder that she should hesitate to-night about plunging into inconsistent, even though trifling, frivolities.

But apart from this superficial reason, there was another instinctive one deep down in the recesses of Mrs. Wade’s timid heart which she had kept to herself, and indeed would have tearfully resented had it been offered by another. The late Mr. Wade had been, in fact, a singular example of this kind of frivolous existence carried to a man-like excess. Besides being a patron of amusements, Mr. Wade gambled, raced, and drank. He was often home late, and sometimes not at all. Not that this conduct was exceptional in the “roaring days” of Heavy Tree Hill, but it had given Mrs. Wade perhaps an undue preference for a less certain, even if a more serious life. His tragic death was, of course, a kind of martyrdom, which exalted him in the feminine mind to a saintly memory; yet Mrs. Wade was not without a certain relief in that. It was voiced, perhaps crudely, by the widow of Abner Drake in a visit of condolence to the tearful Mrs. Wade a few days after Wade’s death. “It’s a vale o’ sorrow, Mrs. Wade,” said the sympathizer, “but it has its ups and downs, and I recken ye’ll be feelin’ soon pretty much as I did about Abner when HE was took. It was mighty soothin’ and comfortin’ to feel that whatever might happen now, I always knew just whar Abner was passin’ his nights.” Poor slim Mrs. Wade had no disquieting sense of humor to interfere with her reception of this large truth, and she accepted it with a burst of reminiscent tears.

A long volleying shower had just passed down the level landscape, and was followed by a rolling mist from the warm saturated soil like the smoke of the discharge. Through it she could see a faint lightening of the hidden sun, again darkening through a sudden onset of rain, and changing as with her conflicting doubts and resolutions. Thus gazing, she was vaguely conscious of an addition to the landscape in the shape of a man who was passing down the road with a pack on his back like the tramping “prospectors” she had often seen at Heavy Tree Hill. That memory apparently settled her vacillating mind; she determined she would NOT go to the dance. But as she was turning away from the window a second figure, a horseman, appeared in another direction by a cross-road, a shorter cut through her domain. This she had no difficulty in recognizing as one of the strangers who were getting up the dance. She had noticed him at church on the previous Sunday. As he passed the house he appeared to be gazing at it so earnestly that she drew back from the window lest she should be seen. And then, for no reason whatever, she changed her mind once more, and resolved to go to the dance. Gravely announcing this fact to the wife of her superintendent who kept house with her in her loneliness, she thought nothing more about it. She should go in her mourning, with perhaps the addition of a white collar and frill.

It was evident, however, that Santa Ana thought a good deal more than she did of this new idea, which seemed a part of the innovation already begun by the building up of the new hotel. It was argued by some that as the new church and new schoolhouse had been opened by prayer, it was only natural that a lighter festivity should inaugurate the opening of the hotel. “I reckon that dancin’ is about the next thing to travelin’ for gettin’ up an appetite for refreshments, and that’s what the landlord is kalkilatin’ to sarve,” was the remark of a gloomy but practical citizen on the veranda of “The Valley Emporium.” “That’s so,” rejoined a bystander; “and I notice on that last box o’ pills I got for chills the directions say that a little ‘agreeable exercise’—not too violent—is a great assistance to the working o’ the pills.”

“I reckon that that Mr. Brooks who’s down here lookin’ arter mill property, got up the dance. He’s bin round town canvassin’ all the women folks and drummin’ up likely gals for it. They say he actooally sent an invite to the Widder Wade,” remarked another lounger. “Gosh! he’s got cheek!”

“Well, gentlemen,” said the proprietor judicially, “while we don’t intend to hev any minin’ camp fandangos or ‘Frisco falals round Santa Any—(Santa Ana was proud of its simple agricultural virtues)—I ain’t so hard-shelled as not to give new things a fair trial. And, after all, it’s the women folk that has the say about it. Why, there’s old Miss Ford sez she hasn’t kicked a fut sence she left Mizoori, but wouldn’t mind trying it agin. Ez to Brooks takin’ that trouble—well, I suppose it’s along o’ his bein’ HEALTHY!” He heaved a deep dyspeptic sigh, which was faintly echoed by the others. “Why, look at him now, ridin’ round on that black hoss o’ his, in the wet since daylight and not carin’ for blind chills or rhumatiz!”

He was looking at a serape-draped horseman, the one the widow had seen on the previous night, who was now cantering slowly up the street. Seeing the group on the veranda, he rode up, threw himself lightly from his saddle, and joined them. He was an alert, determined, good-looking fellow of about thirty-five, whose smooth, smiling face hardly commended itself to Santa Ana, though his eyes were distinctly sympathetic. He glanced at the depressed group around him and became ominously serious.

“When did it happen?” he asked gravely.

“What happen?” said the nearest bystander.

“The Funeral, Flood, Fight, or Fire. Which of the four F’s was it?”

“What are ye talkin’ about?” said the proprietor stiffly, scenting some dangerous humor.

“YOU,” said Brooks promptly. “You’re all standing here, croaking like crows, this fine morning. I passed YOUR farm, Johnson, not an hour ago; the wheat just climbing out of the black adobe mud as thick as rows of pins on paper—what have YOU to grumble at? I saw YOUR stock, Briggs, over on Two-Mile Bottom, waddling along, fat as the adobe they were sticking in, their coats shining like fresh paint—what’s the matter with YOU? And,” turning to the proprietor, “there’s YOUR shed, Saunders, over on the creek, just bursting with last year’s grain that you know has gone up two hundred per cent. since you bought it at a bargain—what are YOU growling at? It’s enough to provoke a fire or a famine to hear you groaning—and take care it don’t, some day, as a lesson to you.”

All this was so perfectly true of the prosperous burghers that they could not for a moment reply. But Briggs had recourse to what he believed to be a retaliatory taunt.

“I heard you’ve been askin’ Widow Wade to come to your dance,” he said, with a wink at the others. “Of course she said ‘Yes.’”