Down the Mother Lode Part 2

The woman's dark eyes flashed, but she answered evenly enough:

"He does not stop, the handsome d.i.c.k, so you, senor, have not the cause to be jealous. Is it not so?"

"Cause? Why, you Spanish jade, you've never been the same to me since Rattlesnake d.i.c.k came prowling back from Shasta county to his old haunts in Placer." Rosa's thin, red lips curled.

"Senor, I am what it pleases me to be."

"And Jack Phillips permits you to be!"

She shrugged her slender shoulders.

"He wearies me. Life--this place--wearies me."

"Yes, and I weary you, too--now. Plain as day, it is."

The Phillips woman smiled (she seldom laughed) and there was only cruelty in her smile--no kindliness, no womanly softness of any sort.

"My friend, soon there will be no 'you.' The night is coming and there will be no sunrise."

A man dismounted at the gate and led his horse past the window to the stables in the cellar. He walked with a curious, halting pace.

"There's Jim Driscoll back already. Must bring news," said Bell, leaving her hurriedly, and so neglecting to ask the meaning of her cryptic remark.

Rosa slipped in behind the bar, late that evening, beautifully gowned, and with her dark hair dressed high. Her vivid face glowed like a scarlet poppy and was bright with smiles. Three or four men in the crowded bar-room rose to their feet and drank to her bright eyes and strolled across to the bar.

"Soon now," she whispered, "I shall sweep out the lights. Those two who have just entered--who are they?" She went across the room to the newcomers. "The senors may pay me for the drinks, if they desire," she said to them, meaningly.

"La Rosita shall take what pleases her," one of them laughed. Among the handful of coins and small nuggets he brought from his pocket was a bullet strung on a bit of dirty twine.

"Ah! a love token, senor?"

"Yes, from the throat of Betsy Jane" (a term often used for a rifle).

"In twenty minutes, my friends, there will be opened a chute into purgatory for all who are in this bar room. Your 'love token' names you Senor Bell's men. Before then you will seek the rear of the room--eh?"

She drifted away from them to pause at a small table where sat a young man alone.

"And you, pretty fellow, you are new in California?"

"Yes, I landed in San Francisco only ten days ago." He was new indeed, or he would have realized the danger of telling his business to the first person who asked.

"You go far, senor?"

"Not now. I have come far, but my journey is near to a very happy ending."

"So?"

"Yes. I have come to marry Miss Elena Ashley, at Auburn, to whom I have been long betrothed."

She tapped her white teeth with her fan.

"And yet you linger at Mountaineer House?"

"Horses are expensive, and I am not rich. I walked. I was tired. I saw you in your garden, and you are very beautiful."

Rosa's capricious vanity was touched. The whim seized her to save this exuberant young bridegroom from the fate before him.

"Do you see that peddler--old Rosenthal--close to the bar? He brought in a large and rich pack tonight. It lies in the next room. Do you go there at once. I will come soon, and together we will select a gift for your bride. Go quickly!"

She pa.s.sed again behind the bar. Jack Phillips was at one end, lame Jim Driscoll at the other, Tom Bell in the middle. Rosa paused near a branching candelabra which had once graced the altar of a Spanish church.

"Is Jose below?" whispered Bell. She nodded. "Why did you save that boy, just now? A new lover?" She directed upon him a level glance of hate.

"I do what pleases me, senor." She raised her arm high, beginning the first stamping measure of a Spanish dance. Instantly there was a curious rumbling noise in the stable underneath. Rosa swept over the candelabra.

All the lights in the place were struck out. Phillips and Driscoll slipped two great bolts, and the entire bar-room floor swung downward on hinges.

The chute to purgatory was open!

There was bedlam in that dank pa.s.s to the region of shades, and no quarter was shown to any man; only cries of "The String! The String!"

from members of the gang in order to distinguish the robbers from the robbed, in the darkness. There were curses, the kicking and squealing of horses in their stalls; a verse from the Talmud recited in Yiddish (which suddenly stopped), and above it all the high and hysterical laugh of a woman.

The boy turned from the peddler's pack as Rosa entered the room. "What is that horrible noise?"

"A fight. Come, you had better go." She led him down a dark stair to another section of the cellar. "Jose," she called. An evil looking Mexican pushed open a rough door. "You shall take this man out through the second tunnel."

"Si, senora."

"And, Jose, he shall reach the outer opening alive, and with all his belongings. He has no money. Do you hear?" Jose grunted. "Go, now, under, cover of the noise."

"But the gift for Elena!"

Rosa laughed mockingly. "What a child it is! My gift to Elena tonight, is you--her lover. Ask her to thank me with a prayer from her pure heart for my sins."

Jose led the young man through a long, damp, evil-odored pa.s.sage underground, and out through a trapdoor at the extreme end of the garden. A shrub grew on top of the door, surrounded by a bed of fragrant wild pansies. Jose kicked the staring youth away from the entrance and vanished into the earth looking, in the lantern-light like a malevolent fiend returning to the realm of everlasting fire.

The b.a.l.l.s which were given at the Franklin House on the old Pioneer road were the most pretentious of the year. Feminine loveliness in silks and cameos gathered from every section. General Sutter and his officers sometimes were there, and the Spanish grandees brought to them the lovely, star-eyed beauties of their households.

On this night a brilliant a.s.semblage stood about in the ballroom floor ready for a quadrille. Elena Ashley and her betrothed were near the wide entrance doors.

"There is Sheriff Paul of Calaveras County," she told him. "He does not dance. I wonder what brings him here?"

The doors opened and Rosa Phillips entered, magnificently jewelled and dressed in a rich silk of pearl grey. Elena stared, clutching at her partner's arm.

"Oh, look!" she shrieked, "she is wearing my wedding dress. My wedding dress which was st.i.tched at the shop of Rosenthal the peddler, in Sacramento, and which he was to bring me two weeks ago. I know it is mine! There is the pearl pa.s.se-mentre on it that was my mother's. There is none other like it in California!"

"So?" answered Rosa cooly, glancing down at the voluminous silken folds of her robe. Then she stood waving her big fan, her large, dark eyes roving across the throng.