Part 10

“There's a good many here has a right to feel satisfied,” said Mrs. Grady, looking about, “and they're welcome to their feelings. But if this meeting thinks it is through with its business, I can tell it that it ain't--not if it acts honorable, it ain't. Does those that have had their chance and those that can take home their prizes expect us 6-month mothers come here for nothing? Do they expect I brought my Bosco from Rincon to be insulted, and him the pride of the town?” “Cuba is known to Sharon,” spoke the other lady. “I'll say no more.” “Jumping Jeans!” murmured the orator to himself. “I can't hold this train much longer,” said Gadsden; “she's due at Lordsburg now.” “You'll have made it up by Tucson, Gadsden,” spoke Mrs. Brewton, quietly, across the whole assembly from the Manna Department. “As for towns,” continued Mrs. Grady, “that think anything of a baby that's only got three teeth--” “Ha! Ha!” laughed Cuba's mother, shrilly. “Teeth! Well, we're not proud of bald babies in Sharon.” Bosco was certainly bald. All the men were looking wretched, and all the women were growing more and more like eagles. Moreover, they were separating into two bands and taking their husbands with them--Sharon and Rincon drawing to opposite parts of the tent--and what was coming I cannot say; for we all had to think of something else. A third woman, bringing a man, mounted the platform. It was she I had seen hurry out. “My name's Shot-gun Smith,” said the man, very carefully, “and I'm told you've reached my case.” He was extremely good-looking, with a blue eye and a blond mustache, not above thirty, and was trying hard to be sober, holding himself with dignity. “Are you the judge?” said he to me. “Hell--” I began. “N-not guilty, your honor,” said he. At this his wife looked anxious. “S-self-defence,” he slowly continued; “told you once already.” “Why, Rolfe!” exclaimed his wife, touching his elbow. “Don't you cry, little woman,” said he; “this'll come out all right. Where 're the witnesses?” “Why, Rolfe! Rolfe!” She shook him as you shake a sleepy child. “Now see here,” said he, and wagged a finger at her affectionately, “you promised me you'd not cry if I let you come.” “Rolfe, dear, it's not that to-day; it's the twins.” “It's your twins, Shot-gun, this time,” said many men's voices. “We acquitted you all right last month.” “Justifiable homicide,” said Gadsden. “Don't you remember?” “Twins?” said Shotgun, drowsily. “Oh yes, mine. Why--” He opened on us his blue eyes that looked about as innocent as Aqua Marine's, and he grew more awake. Then he blushed deeply, face and forehead. “I was not coming to this kind of thing,” he explained. “But she wanted the twins to get something.” He put his hand on her shoulder and straightened himself. “I done a heap of prospecting before I struck this claim,” said he, patting her shoulder. “We got married last March a year. It's our first--first--first”--he turned to me with a confiding smile--“it's our first dividend, judge.” “Rolfe! I never! You come right down.” “And now let's go get a prize,” he declared, with his confiding pleasantness. “I remember now! I remember! They claimed twins was barred. And I kicked down the bars. Take me to those twins. They're not named yet, judge. After they get the prize we'll name them fine names, as good as any they got anywhere--Europe, Asia, Africa--anywhere. My gracious! I wish they was boys. Come on, judge! You and me'll go give 'em a prize, and then we'll drink to 'em.” He hugged me suddenly and affectionately, and we half fell down the steps. But Gadsden as suddenly caught him and righted him, and we proceeded to the twins. Mrs. Smith looked at me helplessly, saying: “I'm that sorry, sir! I had no idea he was going to be that gamesome.” “Not at all,” I said; “not at all!” Under many circumstances I should have delighted in Shot-gun's society. He seemed so utterly sure that, now he had explained himself, everybody would rejoice to give the remaining-medal to his little girls. But Bosco and Cuba had not been idle. Shotgun did not notice the spread of whispers, nor feel the divided and jealous currents in the air as he sat, and, in expanding good-will, talked himself almost sober. To entice him out there was no way. Several of his friends had tried it. But beneath his innocence there seemed to lurk something wary, and I grew apprehensive about holding the box this last time. But Gadsden relieved me as our count began. “Shot-gun is a splendid man,” said he, “and he has trailed more train-robbers than any deputy in New Mexico. But he has seen too many friends to-day, and is not quite himself. So when he fell down that time I just took this off him.” He opened the drawer, and there lay a six-shooter. “It was touch and go,” said Gadsden; “but he's thinking that hard about his twins that he's not missed it yet. 'Twould have been the act of an enemy to leave that on him to-day.--Well, d'you say!” he broke off. “Well, well, well!” It was the tickets we took out of the box that set him exclaiming. I began to read them, and saw that the agent was no mere politician, but a statesman. His Aqua Marine had a solid vote. I remembered his extreme praise of both Bosco and Cuba. This had set Rincon and Sharon bitterly against each other. I remembered his modesty about Aqua Marine. Of course. Each town, unable to bear the idea of the other's beating it, had voted for the manna-fed, who had 299 votes. Shot-gun and his wife had voted for their twins. I looked towards the Manna Department, and could see that Aqua Marine was placid once more, and Mrs. Brewton was dancing the ring before her eyes. I hope I announced the returns in a firm voice. “What!” said Shot-gun Smith; and at that sound Mrs. Brewton stopped dancing the ring. He strode to our table. “There's the winner,” said Gadsden, quickly pointing to the Manna Exhibit. “What!” shouted Smith again; “and they quit me for that hammer-headed son-of-a-gun?” He whirled around. The men stood ready, and the women fled shrieking and cowering to their infants in the booths. “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” cried Gadsden, “don't hurt him! Look here!” And from the drawer he displayed Shot-gun's weapon. They understood in a second, and calmly watched the enraged and disappointed Shot-gun. But he was a man. He saw how he had frightened the women, and he stood in the middle of the floor with eyes that did not at all resemble Aqua Marine's at present. “I'm all right now, boys,” he said. “I hope I've harmed no one. Ladies, will you try and forget about me making such a break? It got ahead of me, I guess; for I had promised the little woman--” He stopped himself; and then his eye fell upon the Manna Department. “I guess I don't like one thing much now. I'm not after prizes. I'd not accept one from a gold-bug-combine-trust that comes sneaking around stuffing wholesale concoctions into our children's systems. My twins are not manna-fed. My twins are raised as nature intended. Perhaps if they were swelled out with trash that acts like baking-powder, they would have a medal too--for I notice he has made you vote his way pretty often this afternoon.” I saw the agent at the end of the room look very queer. “That's so!” said several. “I think I'll clear out his boxes,” said Shot-gun, with rising joy. “I feel like I've got to do something before I go home. Come on, judge!” He swooped towards the manna with a yell, and the men swooped with him, and Gadsden and I were swooped with them. Again the women shrieked. But Mrs. Brewton stood out before the boxes with her curl and her chintz.

“Mr. Smith,” said she, “you are not going to do anything like that. You are going to behave yourself like the gentleman you are, and not like the wild beast that's inside you.” Never in his life before, probably, had Shot-gun been addressed in such a manner, and he too became hypnotized, fixing his blue eyes upon the strange lady. “I do not believe in patent foods for children,” said Mrs. Brewton. “We agree on that, Mr. Smith, and I am a grandmother, and I attend to what my grandchildren eat. But this highly adroit young man has done you no harm. If he has the prizes, whose doing is that, please? And who paid for them? Will you tell me, please? Ah, you are all silent!” And she croaked melodiously. “Now let him and his manna go along. But I have enjoyed meeting you all, and I shall not forget you soon. And, Mr. Smith, I want you to remember me. Will you, please?” She walked to Mrs. Smith and the twins, and Shot-gun followed her, entirely hypnotized. She beckoned to me. “Your judge and I,” she said, “consider not only your beautiful twins worthy of a prize, but also the mother and father that can so proudly claim them.” She put her hand in my pocket. “These cat's-eyes,” she said, “you will wear, and think of me and the judge who presents them.” She placed a bracelet on each twin, and the necklace upon Mrs. Smith's neck. “Give him Gadsden's stuff,” she whispered to me. “Do you shave yourself, sir?” said I, taking out the Stropine. “Vaseline and ground shells, and will last your life. Rub the size of a pea on your strop and spread it to an inch.” I placed the box in Shot-gun's motionless hand. “And now, Gadsden, we'll take the train,” said Mrs. Brewton. “Here's your lunch! Here's your wine!” said the orator, forcing a basket upon me. “I don't know what we'd have done without you and your mother.” A flash of indignation crossed Mrs. Brewton's face, but changed to a smile. “You've forgot to name my girls!” exclaimed Shot-gun, suddenly finding his voice. “Suppose you try that,” said Mrs. Brewton to me, a trifle viciously. “Thank you,” I said to Smith. “Thank you. I--” “Something handsome,” he urged. “How would Cynthia do for one?” I suggested. “Shucks, no! I've known two Cynthias. You don't want that?” he asked Mrs. Smith; and she did not at all. “Something extra, something fine, something not stale,” said he. I looked about the room. There was no time for thought, but my eye fell once more upon Cuba. This reminded me of Spain, and the Spanish; and my brain leaped. “I have them!” I cried. “'Armada' and 'Loyola.'” “That's what they're named!” said Shot-gun; “write it for us.” And I did. Once more the band played, and we left them, all calling, “Good-bye, ma'am. Good-bye, judge,” happy as possible. The train was soon going sixty miles an hour through the desert. We had passed Lordsburg, San Simon, and were nearly at Benson before Mrs. Brewton and Gadsden (whom she made sit down with us) and I finished the lunch and champagne. “I wonder how long he'll remember me?” mused Mrs. Brewton at Tucson, where we were on time. “That woman is not worth one of his boots.”

Saturday afternoon, May 6.--Near Los Angeles. I have been writing all day, to be sure and get everything in, and now Sharon is twenty-four hours ago, and here there are roses, gardens, and many nice houses at the way-stations. Oh, George Washington, father of your country, what a brindled litter have you sired!

But here the moral reflections begin again, and I copy no more diary. Mrs. Brewton liked my names for the twins. “They'll pronounce it Loyo'la,” she said, “and that sounds right lovely.” Later she sent me her paper for the Golden Daughters. It is full of poetry and sentiment and all the things I have missed. She wrote that if she had been sure the agent had helped Aqua Marine to swallow the ring, she would have let them smash his boxes. And I think she was a little in love with Shot-gun Smith. But what a pity we shall soon have no more Mrs. Brewtons! The causes that produced her--slavery, isolation, literary tendencies, adversity, game blood--that combination is broken forever. I shall speak to Mr. Howells about her. She ought to be recorded.

The Promised Land

Perhaps there were ten of them--these galloping dots were hard to count--down in the distant bottom across the river. Their swiftly moving dust hung with them close, thinning to a yellow veil when they halted short. They clustered a moment, then parted like beads, and went wide asunder on the plain. They veered singly over the level, merged in twos and threes, apparently racing, shrank together like elastic, and broke ranks again to swerve over the stretching waste. From this visioned pantomime presently came a sound, a tiny shot. The figures were too far for discerning which fired it. It evidently did no harm, and was repeated at once. A babel of diminutive explosions followed, while the horsemen galloped on in unexpected circles. Soon, for no visible reason, the dots ran together, bunching compactly. The shooting stopped, the dust rose thick again from the crowded hoofs, cloaking the group, and so passed back and was lost among the silent barren hills.

Four emigrants had watched this from the high bleak rim of the Big Bend. They stood where the flat of the desert broke and tilted down in grooves and bulges deep to the lurking Columbia. Empty levels lay opposite, narrowing up into the high country.

“That's the Colville Reservation across the river from us,” said the man.

“Another!” sighed his wife.

“The last Indians we'll strike. Our trail to the Okanagon goes over a corner of it.”

“We're going to those hills?” The mother looked at her little girl and back where the cloud had gone.

“Only a corner, Liza. The ferry puts us over on it, and we've got to go by the ferry or stay this side of the Columbia. You wouldn't want to start a home here?”

They had driven twenty-one hundred miles at a walk. Standing by them were the six horses with the wagon, and its tunneled roof of canvas shone duskily on the empty verge of the wilderness. A dry windless air hung over the table-land of the Big Bend, but a sound rose from somewhere, floating voluminous upon the silence, and sank again.

“Rapids!” The man pointed far up the giant rut of the stream to where a streak of white water twinkled at the foot of the hills. “We've struck the river too high,” he added.

“Then we don't cross here?” said the woman, quickly.

“No. By what they told me the cabin and the ferry ought to be five miles down.”

Her face fell. “Only five miles! I was wondering, John--Wouldn't there be a way round for the children to--”

“Now, mother,” interrupted the husband, “that ain't like you. We've crossed plenty Indian reservations this trip already.”

“I don't want to go round,” the little girl said. “Father, don't make me go round.”

Mart, the boy, with a loose hook of hair hanging down to his eyes from his hat, did not trouble to speak. He had been disappointed in the westward journey to find all the Indians peaceful. He knew which way he should go now, and he went to the wagon to look once again down the clean barrel of his rifle.

“Why, Nancy, you don't like Indians?” said her mother.

“Yes, I do. I like chiefs.”

Mrs. Clallam looked across the river. “It was so strange, John, the way they acted. It seems to get stranger, thinking about it.”

“They didn't see us. They didn't have a notion--”

“But if we're going right over?”

“We're not going over there, Liza. That quick water's the Mahkin Rapids, and our ferry's clear down below from this place.”

“What could they have been after, do you think?”

“Those chaps? Oh, nothing, I guess. They weren't killing anybody.”

“Playing cross-tag,” said Mart.

“I'd like to know, John, how you know they weren't killing anybody. They might have been trying to.”

“Then we're perfectly safe, Liza. We can set and let 'em kill us all day.”

“Well, I don't think it's any kind of way to behave, running around shooting right off your horse.”

“And Fourth of July over too,” said Mart from the wagon. He was putting cartridges into the magazine of his Winchester. His common-sense told him that those horsemen would not cross the river, but the notion of a night attack pleased the imagination of young sixteen.

“It was the children,” said Mrs. Clallam. “And nobody's getting me any wood. How am I going to cook supper? Stir yourselves!”

They had carried water in the wagon, and father and son went for wood. Some way down the hill they came upon a gully with some dead brush, and climbed back with this. Supper was eaten on the ground, the horses were watered, given grain, and turned loose to find what pickings they might in the lean growth; and dusk had not turned to dark when the emigrants were in their beds on the soft dust. The noise of the rapids dominated the air with distant sonority, and the children slept at once, the boy with his rifle along his blanket's edge. John Clallam lay till the moon rose hard and brilliant, and then quietly, lest his wife should hear from her bed by the wagon, went to look across the river. Where the downward slope began he came upon her. She had been watching for some time. They were the only objects in that bald moonlight. No shrub grew anywhere that reached to the waist, and the two figures drew together on the lonely hill. They stood hand in hand and motionless, except that the man bent over the woman and kissed her. When she spoke of Iowa they had left, he talked of the new region of their hopes, the country that lay behind the void hills opposite, where it would not be a struggle to live. He dwelt on the home they would make, and her mood followed his at last, till husband and wife were building distant plans together. The Dipper had swung low when he remarked that they were a couple of fools, and they went back to their beds. Cold came over the ground, and their musings turned to dreams. Next morning both were ashamed of their fears.

By four the wagon was on the move. Inside, Nancy's voice was heard discussing with her mother whether the school-teacher where they were going to live now would have a black dog with a white tail, that could swim with a basket in his mouth. They crawled along the edge of the vast descent, making slow progress, for at times the valley widened and they receded far from the river, and then circuitously drew close again where the slant sank abruptly. When the ferryman's cabin came in sight, the canvas interior of the wagon was hot in the long-risen sun. The lay of the land had brought them close above the stream, but no one seemed to be at the cabin on the other side, nor was there any sign of a ferry. Groves of trees lay in the narrow folds of the valley, and the water swept black between untenanted shores. Nothing living could be seen along the scant levels of the bottom-land. Yet there stood the cabin as they had been told, the only one between the rapids and the Okanagon; and bright in the sun the Colville Reservation confronted them. They came upon tracks going down over the hill, marks of wagons and horses, plain in the soil, and charred sticks, with empty cans, lying where camps had been. Heartened by this proof that they were on the right road, John Clallam turned his horses over the brink. The slant steepened suddenly in a hundred yards, tilting the wagon so no brake or shoe would hold it if it moved farther.

“All out!” said Clallam. “Either folks travel light in this country or they unpack.” He went down a little way. “That's the trail too,” he said. “Wheel marks down there, and the little bushes are snapped off.”

Nancy slipped out. “I'm unpacked,” said she. “Oh, what a splendid hill to go down! We'll go like anything.”

“Yes, that surely is the trail,” Clallam pursued. “I can see away down where somebody's left a wheel among them big stones. But where does he keep his ferry-boat? And where does he keep himself?”

“Now, John, if it's here we're to go down, don't you get to studying over something else. It'll be time enough after we're at the bottom. Nancy, here's your chair.” Mrs. Clallam began lifting the lighter things from the wagon.

“Mart,” said the father, “we'll have to chain lock the wheels after we're empty. I guess we'll start with the worst. You and me'll take the stove apart and get her down somehow. We're in luck to have open country and no timber to work through. Drop that bedding mother! Yourself is all you're going to carry. We'll pack that truck on the horses.”

“Then pack it now and let me start first. I'll make two trips while you're at the stove.”

“There's the man!” said Nancy.

A man--a white man--was riding up the other side of the river. Near the cabin he leaned to see something on the ground. Ten yards more and he was off the horse and picked up something and threw it away. He loitered along, picking up and throwing till he was at the door. He pushed it open and took a survey of the interior. Then he went to his horse, and when they saw him going away on the road he had come, they set up a shouting, and Mart fired a signal. The rider dived from his saddle and made headlong into the cabin, where the door clapped to like a trap. Nothing happened further, and the horse stood on the bank.

“That's the funniest man I ever saw,” said Nancy.

“They're all funny over there,” said Mart. “I'll signal him again.” But the cabin remained shut, and the deserted horse turned, took a few first steels of freedom, then trotted briskly down the river.

“Why, then, he don't belong there at all,” said Nancy.

“Wait, child, till we know something about it.”

“She's liable to be right, Liza. The horse, anyway, don't belong, or he'd not run off. That's good judgment, Nancy. Right good for a little girl.”

“I am six years old,” said Nancy, “and I know lots more than that.”

“Well, let's get mother and the bedding started down. It'll be noon before we know it.”

There were two pack-saddles in the wagon, ready against such straits as this. The rolls were made, balanced as side packs, and circled with the swing-ropes, loose cloths, clothes, frying-pans, the lantern, and the axe tossed in to fill the gap in the middle, canvas flung over the whole, and the diamond-hitch hauled taut on the first pack, when a second rider appeared across the river. He came out of a space between the opposite hills, into which the trail seemed to turn, and he was leading the first man's horse. The heavy work before them was forgotten, and the Clallams sat down in a row to watch.

“He's stealing it,” said Mrs. Clallam.

“Then the other man will come out and catch him,” said Nancy.

Mart corrected them. “A man never steals horses that way. He drives them up in the mountains, where the owner don't travel much.”