First Fam'lies of the Sierras Part 23

I am all the time wondering when I think of the people of the Sierras, what women, or men and women, the traveler of a century hence will find there.

I think he will not find a coward or a miser. I think he will find a brave, generous, open-handed and unsuspicious people. A people full of freedom, of lofty aspiration, of purity, partaking of the awful sublimity that environs them.

And somewhere in these Sierras will they name the new Parna.s.sus. The nine sisters, in the far New Day, will have their habitation here when the gold hunter has gone away, and the last pick lies rusting in the mine.

The sea of seas shall rave and knock at the Golden Gate, but this shall be the vine-land, the place of rest, that the old Greeks sought forever to find. This will be the land of eternal afternoon.

A land born of storm and rounded into shape by the blows of hardy and enduring men, it shall have its reaction--its rest.

The great singer of the future, born of the gleaming snows and the gloomy forests of the Sierras, shall some day swing his harp in the wind and move down these watered and wooded slopes to conquer the world with a song for Peace.

Now you would have me say that we never once sinned in this Eden of ours in the Sierras.

There is an old and a beautiful story. You knew it long before you learned to read. It was in that other Eden. There the living G.o.d spake face to face with man. He visited him every day in his own form. And yet he fell. We do not claim to be much better than they were in Eden, even in the Sierras.

The Forks, like every other place in the world, had its little center of Aristocracy. There was here, as in any other little community, one leading woman of fas.h.i.+on; the one tyrant who admitted this or that one to the Social Center. This woman, an ancient "School-marm," had firmly set her face against the Widow from the first. From this there was no appeal. The Widow was in disgrace. Still she refused to banish the boy-poet from her presence.

The old suspicion hung in the minds of the miners at the Forks. One day there were two old men, made mellow from the juice of grapes they had planted and grown on the hill-sides about their cabins, who grimly wagged their heads and looked wise at the mention of "the Widow," as she was still called, and sympathized with Sandy.

"Yes, pra'ps it was and pra'ps it wasn't," one would say as he thought of little "Half-a-pint," now a noisy little tom-boy filling the fir woods with laughter, "but then her having that 'ere poet about her all the time, that's what sticks in my crop."

"That's what sticks in my crop," echoes his fellow, as he pushes the bushy beard from his mouth and lifts his gourd of wine.

"The reputation of this ere camp," says another, as he sets down his empty gourd and lays his fore-finger in his palm, and settles his head wisely to one side, "the reputation of this ere camp depends on a havin'

of this ere thing cleared up about the Widder."

"It looks pesky black," put in the other garrulous old woman in duck breeches, "'Cause why? she still sees him."

"And Sandy?"

Three old heads, helpless, good-natured old women, who had spent their manhood and their strength long before their grape-vines were growing on the hill-side, huddled close together in half maudlin conversation.

"Sandy!"

"He's a chuckle-headed old idiart."

"He's a gitten old and he can't help hisself."

"He's a gitten old."

"The chuckle-headed old idiart."

"Lookee here!"

An old forty-niner rose half way up, felt that his spine was not very reliable, and so spread out his two great hands on the two shoulders of his boon companion, and peered down in his face till their two beards, white as foam, almost flowed together.

"Let's run 'im out!"

At these words an old crippled man suddenly started up from his place back in the corner, and tottered forward to where the three old heads were huddled together.

"Run out Billie! Little Billie Piper, that never gits any older, never has a beard! that come here, that come--when did little Billie Piper come? Gintlemen, you listen to me. When you run out little Billie Piper, by G.o.d, you run him out over my bones!" And here the Gopher thundered his two fists down on to the pine-board table, and turning on his heel tottered out and up the hill-side to his cabin.

CHAPTER XXVII.

BILLIE PIPER AND DEBOON.

It is more than possible that we, in America, did once have a real Bourbon amongst us. If a Bonaparte could come and wed with us, and cast his fortune with us, why certainly a very heir to the crown of France might come and spend his life with us, live and die unknown. I don't know that we ever had any kings, or sons of kings, or daughters of kings, or any thing of the kind with us in the little Eden of the Sierras, but I do know that we had some odd men there, and some great men too, men that deserved to be kings, whatever they may have been.

And what they were, what they had been, no man ever knew. There was a truce to investigation. The family tree stood in the form of a sombre pine at each man's cabin door. That was enough. You could not go outside of the camp for inquiry. The eternal girdle of snow lifted its front in everlasting protest. How then shall I tell you who this silent widow that refused to go away, that refused to surrender, that refused to open her lips--how shall I tell you who she was, why she remained, or from whence she came?

As for Billie Piper, the majority of the camp of course had long settled down to the unalterable conviction that he remained for the love of the Widow. And the camp hated him for it. He was shunned, despised, for he did not look the man; he did not even act the man. When he was insulted he did not resent it. He only held his head at such times, gave the road to all, avoided all for weeks together, went on with his work in a feeble way, for he was very feeble now, and never made answer to any one.

About this time he fell ill; or at least the report ran that he was ill.

Sandy was absent on business in the valley below.

One evening the Widow was seen to enter his cabin. The camp was indignant. There were now many women in the place, and her actions did not pa.s.s un.o.bserved.

The next day the woman, the leader of society in the little mountain metropolis, cut the Widow in the street, or rather on the hill-side, for the mining town had pa.s.sed away, and there was no street now.

Two sun-bonnets, made of paste-board and calico, that reached far out over the faces of the wearers, like the cover of a pedler's wagon, met that afternoon on the hill-side.

"It's awful!"

"It's just awful!"

The two covered wagons were poked up close against each other.

"She staid all night!"

"She staid with him till daylight!"

"I will cut her."

"I have cut her."

The two covered wagons parted and pa.s.sed on.

You remember Deboon? Well, let us see how the California gold mines treated some of the bold fellows who once courted fortune nearly a quarter of a century ago in the Sierras. These mines were great mills.

They ground men, soul and body, to powder. Time, like a great river, turned the stones, and this man, like thousands and thousands of others, was ground down to nothing.

Twenty years had now pa.s.sed. Twenty terrible years, in which this brave and resolute man had dared more than Caesar, had endured more than Ney; and he now found that the entire end of his father's name had been, somewhere in the Sierras, worn or torn away, and hid or covered up for ever in the tailings. He was now nothing but "Bab." While ground-sluicing one night, and possibly wondering what other deduction could be made and not leave him nameless, he was caught in a cave, sluiced out, and carried head-first through the flume.

This last venture wore him down to about the condition of an old quarter-coin, where neither date, name, nor nationality can be deciphered. His jaws were crushed, and limbs broken, till they lay in every direction, like the claws of a sea-crab.