A Waif of the Mountains

And as an extraordinary, a marvelous resolution simmered and finally crystallized, he chortled.

“What’ll the boys say? What’ll the parson think? What’ll I think? What would that good old mother of mine think, if she was alive? But she died afore she knowed what a good for nothin’ man her boy turned out to be. God rest her soul!” he added softly, “she must have prayed over me a good many hundred times; if she’s kept track of me all these years, this is an answer to her prayers.”

Budge Isham was the partner of Wade, and shared his cabin with him. He slept across the room, and noticed how his friend tossed and muttered in his sleep.

“Great Gee!” he exclaimed, “but Wade’s got it pretty bad; I wonder if it’s the jim jams that is getting hold of him; I’ll sleep with one eye open, for he will need looking after. What a blessed thing it is that he has only one more day. Then he can celebrate and be happy. I have no doubt that by the end of another week, he will have brought things up to their old average.”

And with this conclusion, the man who a few years before took the first honors at Yale, shifted his position, so as to keep an eye on his comrade, and straightway proceeded to drop into a sound slumber, which was not broken until the sun rose on the following morning.

The sympathy for Wade was general. Had he not insisted upon carrying out in spirit and letter the full punishment pronounced upon him, there would have been a unanimous agreement to commute his term by one or two days at least; but all knew the grit or “sand” of the fellow too well to propose it.

His actions on the seventh day caused considerable disquietude. He had labored in the mines, in a desultory fashion up to that time, but he did not do a stroke of work during the concluding hours of his ordeal. It was observed by his partner, Budge Isham, that his appetite was unusually good and he seemed to be in high spirits. His friends attributed this to the closeness of his reward for his abstention, but he took several walks up the mountain side and was gone for a good while. He wore a smiling face and Vose Adams declared that he overheard him communing with himself, when he thought he was too far off for the act to be noticed.

“No use of talkin’,” whispered Vose; “Wade ain’t quite himself; he’s a little off and won’t be exactly right till after two or three days.”

“He has my sympathy,” remarked the parson, “but it will serve as a lesson which he will always remember.”

“And won’t we remember it?” said Ike Hoe, with a shudder. “When we’re disposed to say one of them unproper words, the picture of that miserable scamp going a full week without a touch of Mountain Dew, will freeze up our lips closer than a clam.”

That night the usual group was gathered at the Heavenly Bower. There were the same merry jests, the reminiscences, the conjectures how certain diggings would pan out, the small talk and the general good feeling. Common hardship and suffering had brought these rough men close to one another. They were indulgent and charitable and each one would have eagerly risked his life for the sake of the rest. Quick to anger, they were equally quick to forgive, mutually rejoicing in good fortune, and mutually sympathetic in sorrow.

There was more than one furtive glance at Ruggles, who was among the first arrivals. Whispers had passed around of his strange actions, and the surprise would not have been great had it been found that he had gone clean daft; but nothing in his manner indicated anything of that nature. He was as full of quip and jest as ever, and none was in higher or more buoyant spirits than he.

He suddenly called:

“Dawson, what time is it?”

The latest comer among them carried a watch which he drew out and examined.

“It is exactly half-past nine.”

“When did my punishment begin?”

“A week ago to-night, precisely at this hour; I began to fear that you had forgotten it.”

“No danger of my ever forgetting it,” grimly responded Ruggles; “what I want to know is whether I have served out my full term.”

“You have unquestionably.”

“Is there anyone here disposed to dispute this statement?” asked Wade, standing very erect and looking around in the faces of his friends.

No one interposed an objection. He had not only the sympathy but the respect of every one.

“You sarved your time like a man,” remarked Ike Hoe; “the week is up and you’ve give good measure.”

“Which the same being the case, I invite all to come forward and liquidate.”

Never was an invitation responded to with more enthusiasm. The grinning Ortigies set out a couple of bottles, intending as a matter of course to join in the celebration. He feelingly remarked:

“Wade, my heart bled for you and thar ain’t a pard here that wouldn’t have been willing to take your place–that is for a limited time,” the landlord hastened to add.

Each tumbler was half-filled with the fiery stuff and all looked in smiling expectancy at their host to give the cue. He poured a small quantity into his glass, and elevating it almost to a level with his lips, looked over the top.

“Are you ready, pards? here goes.”

Up went every glass and down went the stuff. But there was one exception. While the glass was at his lips, and while the familiar odor was in his nostrils, Wade Ruggles deliberately inverted the tumbler and emptied the contents on the floor.

It was the strangest incident that had ever occurred in New Constantinople.

CHAPTER VI

TEACHER AND PUPIL

The group looked at Wade Ruggles in breathless amazement. He had invited them to the bar to join in celebrating his release from thralldom; all had filled their glasses and he had raised his own to his lips, though several noticed that there was only a small amount of liquid in the tumbler. Then, when every glass was upraised and there was a general gurgling, he had turned his glass upside down and spilled every drop on the floor.

Before anyone could think of suitable terms in which to express his emotions, Wade said, with a smile that rather added than detracted from his seriousness:

“Pards, never again does a drop of that stuff go down my throat! I’ve suffered hell, but I’ve come out of the flames, and the one that fetched me through is the little gal which lays asleep in the next room.”

He did not attempt to deliver a temperance lecture to his friends, nor did they trifle with him. They questioned him closely as to how he had reached this extraordinary decision, and he gave a vivid and truthful account of his experience. It made several of the men thoughtful, but most of them felt dubious about his persistence in the new path he had laid out for himself.

“You know, boys, whether I’ve got a will of my own,” he quietly replied; “just wait and see how this thing comes out.”

It was noticed that Parson Brush was the most interested inquirer, and, though he had comparatively little to say, he left the Bower unusually early. He had begun his system of instruction with Nellie Dawson, and reported that she was making remarkably good progress. Had the contrary been the fact, it may be doubted whether it would have been safe for him to proclaim it.

And now the scene changes. It is the close of a radiant summer day in the Sierras. Far down in the cañon-like chasm between the mountainous spurs, nestled the little mining settlement, which had been christened but a short time before, New Constantinople. Here and there tiny wounds had been gouged into the ribs of the mountain walls, and the miners were pecking away with pick and shovel, deepening the hurts in their quest for the yellow atoms or dark ore which had been the means of bringing every man thousands of miles to the spot.

Far up toward the clouds were the towering, craggy peaks, with many a rent and yawn and table-land and lesser elevation, until, as if to check the climbing ambition of the prodigious monster, nature had flung an immense blanket of snow, whose ragged and torn edges lapped far down the sides of the crests. Ages ago the chilling blanket was tucked around the mountain tops, there to remain through the long stretch of centuries to follow.

Down the valley, at the bottom of the winding cañon, the air palpitated with the fervor of the torrid zone. He who attempted to plod forward panted and perspired, but a little way up the mountain side, the cool breath crept downward from the regions of perpetual ice and snow, through the balsamic pines and cedars, with a revivifying power that was grateful to all who felt its life-giving embrace.

The sun hovered in a sky of unclouded azure. It shot its arrows into the gullies, ravines and gorges, but made no impression on the frozen covering far up in cloudland itself. Long pointed ravelings on the lower edge of the mantle showed where some of the snow had turned to water, which changed again to ice, when the sun dipped below the horizon.

The miners were pigmies as they toiled in the sides of the towering mountain walls, where they had toiled for many a day. On the lip of a projecting crag, half a mile above were three other pigmies, who neither toiled nor spun. Viewed through a glass, it was seen that they wore stained feathers in their black hair dangling about their shoulders, with the blankets wrapped round their forms descending to their moccasined feet. They were watching in grim silence these proofs of the invasion of their homes by the children of another race, and mayhap were conjuring some scheme for driving them back into the great sea across which they had sailed to occupy the new land.

One of the Indians was a chieftain. He had come in violent contact with these hated creatures and he bore on his person the scars of such meeting. All carried bows and arrows, though others of their tribe had learned the use of the deadly firearms, which has played such havoc with the American race.

Suddenly the chief uttered an exclamation. Then drawing an arrow from the quiver over his shoulder, he fitted it to the string of his long bow, and pointing downward toward the group of miners, launched the shaft. Except for the power of gravity, it would have been a foolhardy effort, but guided by the wisp of feather twisted around the reed, the missile spun far outward over the cañon, and dived through the vast reach of space, as if it were endowed with life and determined to seek out and pierce the intruders. The black eyes of the three warriors followed the arrow until it was only a flickering speck, far below them; but, before that moment arrived, they saw that it was speeding wide of the mark. When at last, the sharp point struck the flinty rock, and the missile doubled over upon itself and dropped harmlessly to the bottom of the cañon, it was at such a distance from the miners, that they knew nothing of it. They never looked up, nor were they aware of the futile anger of the red men, who seeing how useless was everything of that nature, turned about and soon passed from view.

The incident was typical of the futility of the red man struggling against his inevitable doom at the hands of his white brother.

Half way between the bottom of the cañon and the lower fringe of the vast mantle of snow, a waterfall tumbled over the edge of a rock, and with many a twist and eddy found its way to the small stream, which rippled along the bottom of the gorge, until its winding course carried it beyond sight. Now and then a rift of wind blew aside some of the foam, like a wisp of snow, and brought the murmur more clearly to the ear of the listener, shutting out for the time, the faint hollow roar that was wafted from the region of pines and cedars. It was a picture of lonely grandeur and desolation, made all the more impressive by the tiny bits of life, showing in the few spots along the mountain wall.

At the rear of the row of cabins, and elevated perhaps fifty feet above, was the comparatively smooth face of a rock, several square rods in extent. At the base was abundant footing for two persons, Parson Brush and Nellie Dawson. The teacher had marked on the dark face of the rock with a species of chalk, all the letters large and small of the alphabet. They were well drawn, for the parson, like others in the settlement, was a man of education, though his many years of roughing it had greatly rusted his book knowledge.

Standing to one side of his artistic work, like a teacher of the olden time, the parson, with a long, trimmed branch in his hand, pointed at the different letters in turn and patiently waited for his little pupil to pronounce their names.

It never would have done to make the child keep her feet like an ordinary mortal. With great labor, three of the miners had carried a stone of considerable size to the spot, which served her as a seat, while receiving instruction. It is true that she never sat still for more than three minutes at a time, but that was enough to establish the indispensable necessity of a chair.