Down the Mother Lode Part 14

"The Indian can beat the Australian, but he thried to sell the boys out, an' if he slackens his gait by ever so little, the b'ys will begin shootin' sthraight before them. An' maybe afther the race, he'd better be runnin' right on into the next county."

"What next?"

"Next is a jacka.s.s fight, an' then, the race!"

After the billigerent jacks had been led away, Red Pete suddenly took to the brush, accelerated by a fusillade of bullets.

"Welchin' his bets, he is, an' ivery man he owes is lettin' him have it."

"Nary a hit!" wailed old Jack Horner. "The shootin' in this camp is a-gittin' vile! Time we was quittin so d---- much pick handlin, an'

a-practicin' up. It's a reflection on the community. Why, there ain't been a Chinaman drilled with a bullet decent an' clean for weeks!"

"They're leading out the horses! Where did that little n.i.g.g.e.r jockey come from? The mare's got more ginger today."

"Eric, surely your horse can win!"

"I don't know, dear."

"He must! He must, or--"

"Slick-heels Saul's face is turnin' the color of me native isle,"

chuckled Irish Mike. "Patty, me little ladybird, 'tis no time to be faintin'!"

"Oh, you can't know--"

"Faith, an' I know more than you t'ink. Bear up, Asth.o.r.e, the darkest hour is just forninst the dawn. Whisht, now! They're off!"

"Here they come! The black is ahead! See, the n.i.g.g.e.r is lying flat on the mare's neck. She's closing up! Oh, they are neck and neck! I cannot look. Eric--The black is getting the whip. Good horse! They are even again! Ah, it is only for a moment. The mare... is over the line, first... It is all ended, life, love, honor, happiness... I cannot belong to that man! My poor old father. Dear old... for his sake, I must. I--"

"Patty, girl."

"Eric, you are not to blame. You would wager on your own horse. 'Tis but natural. I must accept my fate with what fort.i.tude I can summon. Please take me home. All the people staring. I cannot bear it long."

But when Slick-heels Saul pressed forward to her side at the boarding-house steps, she was as stately and cold as the snow-hooded rocks of Granite Mountain.

"I have lost everything, but still I hold you to your promise."

"I made no promise, sir," she said haughtily.

"'But you will," he answered meaningly, "tomorrow."

"Stand aside!" thundered Eric.

"Come awn," soothed Irish Mike. "Not with the lady here, Eric, b'y."

"Patty, I cannot let you go! I will shoot the beast on sight."

"That would not vindicate my father's honor. Hush, he is coming. I must remember that I am a Laughton."

Eric turned to stare moodily out the dusty window. "There goes the cattle man with his followers and his strong-box. What he must have won!

Here comes Mike. In a hurry, too! I wonder--"

Slick-heels Saul was bowing before the girl.

"Forgive an auld Irishman for intrudin' upon so tender a scene--"

(Slick-heels glared at him malevolently), "but I have he-e-re a something for Mistress Patty Laughton," pretending to read the inscription on the package he held out, "from the auld boy, there, who is just leavin' us."

"'Bread cast upon the waters of sweet charity shall be returned an hundred fold. Blessed are the pure in heart for they are of the children of G.o.d,' he has written. Why, it is money!" gasped Patty, "and such a large amount!"

"He had me put up ye'r little bag o' gold on his mare. These are y'er winnings." Mike smiled inwardly at the sum of money. "Sure, auld Andy must have put a rock or two in the wee buckskin bag," he thought, but aloud he said, "I never spile sport, an' I could not tell ye before, but 'tis auld Andy Magee an' his famous racin' mare, the fastest quarter mile horse bechune the state of Missouri and the Pacific ocean.

"'Tis the same game he's pulled on the gamblin' crooks all the way from the Oregon line to Mariposa in the south. Even gettin' filled wit'

tanglefoot is part of the dodge. They cannot touch him an' the vaqueros protect him fr'm the shootin'."

"But what about the tryout?"

"Also in the schame. The mare was cross-shod; meanin', two of her shoes, the near front, an' the off hind wans, were twice as heavy as the others She could not run top speed in th'm f'r love nor gold. Yesterday she was shod in light racin' pads, an' under her own jockey. No horse on the coast could catch her. An' always, the smart racin' gamblers play th'

auld man for a fool. Such is often the end of greed.

"Pay up the dad's gamblin' debts, an' bid this Knight o 'the Green Cloth a swate an' long fare-ye-well. Then go an' be happy, me child."

The Dragon and the Tomahawk

IX

"Which I wish to remark, And my language is plain, That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar, Which the same I would rise to explain."

--Bret Harte.

Certain learned archaeologists maintain that there are marked racial similarities between the American Indians and the Chinese--physical characteristics dating from unknown centuries, when the widely sundered continents were probably one.

However that may be, in the days of gold in California the greatest animosity existed between the Indians and the Chinamen. The feeling began, presumably, through intermarriage and flourished like the celebrated milkweed vine of the foothills, which has been known to grow--I quote a '49er, now dead, which is perhaps taking an advantage--12 inches in a day.

The tale is told of a Chinaman crossing a suspension footbridge, high over a winter torrent, from one part of a mining camp to another. An Indian ran to meet him. John Chinaman started back as quickly as he could on the swaying bridge. The faster Indian caught him, and, though miners on both sh.o.r.es sought to save the unfortunate "c.h.i.n.k" by a rain of bullets, it was too long range, and the Indian threw him to certain death in the river.

But the Indians did not always win, and this, then, is the tale of an encounter between Hop Sing and Digger Dan.

"In a game which held accountin', On an old Sierra mountain--"

"Wha.s.sa malla, to-o much nail-o ketchem clo'e (clothes)?" snorted Hop Sing, coming around to the side verandah with two pins in his hand, to where Miss Jo Halstead was embroidering an antimaca.s.sar in bright worsteds.

"Oh, Sing, did you hurt your hand?" she cried.