Down the Mother Lode Part 4

returned Jim Hutch, sternly. Now Greeley had a fear of what the dour old Scotchman might tell upon him. It would not pay to lose his Celtic temper.

"It was to church I was goin'." he growled. "'Twas why I was wearin' me red-topped high boots."

"Where was church that day, whatever? At the Widow Schmitt's?"

Jimmie squirmed. "You mentioned the beautiful spring, I mind," he countered deftly. Suddenly Jim Hutch grinned.

"I'll tell ye why. I was gaein' down frae Rattlesnake this afternoon an'

Charlie Price an' his Leezie were out in his bit garden a-plowin'. Mon, ye could hear him for miles!"

It was even so. Old Charlie Price had decided that it was high time to put in his vegetable garden. He went out to the lean-to in his corral to inform Lizzie, the mare, of his intention. Lizzie was always the unwilling partner of these agricultural peregrinations, and, now she saw him approaching with the harness, she ran away with much snorting and scattering of sod.

"Hey, you, Liz," roared Charlie, "you goot-for-not'ing buckskin lummix, you com mit!" He flourished the halter rope at her. Lizzie flattened her ears, opened her mouth like a yawning snake, and ran at him. Old Charlie let out a whoop that brought the sheriff from Rattlesnake at full speed, and could be heard (so they say) all the way across the river to Wild Goose Flat, six miles away.

Even Lizzie, accustomed as she was to Charlie's mannerisms, was frankly startled and meekly allowed herself to be caught. She did not like to plow. She was a saddler and a pair of tugs and a collar bored her. With a cinch one could puff out in true wild-horse fas.h.i.+on while the latigo strap was being pulled, and afterward be fairly comfortable, but a slipping collar was neither off nor on. She shook herself impatiently and the collar slid down her neck to her ears.

"Hey!" bellowed Charlie, "you don't vear it so! You--" The mare stamped at a fly, bringing her hoof down on the old Dutchman's foot. His blood-curdling whoops and yells brought the sheriff in on a brilliant finale to a record-breaking run.

"What's the matter? Are you being murdered?"

"Who, I'm?" asked Charlie, absent-mindedly. He was nursing the injured member, wondering whether to kick at Lizzie with it, knowing full well that he stood a good chance of her kicking back again' but when she snapped viciously at the puffing sheriff he decided against it.

"You com' to see me?" he asked, in a bland, so-glad-you've-called tone.

"To see you! Why, I've come to save your life!"

"So? Dot's goot, but Lizzie undt me, ve ain't got so much time today.

It's vegetables I sell in Rattlesnake undt ve go to plow, now."

"Well, you old fool, after this you can call in vain if anything happens to you. I'll never bother with you."

"Oh, vell, ven I got a little excitement I got to yell about it, ain't it?"

"Maybe you have--and after this you can, for all of me," and the wrathful sheriff departed. He was new in the community or he would have known that the plowing of Charlie Price and Lizzie was a regular event of each season, for which an audience gathered to lay bets for and against the probability of his dying of apoplexy before it was finished.

The plowing progressed in this manner:

Charlie put the point of the plow in the soft earth and roared at the motor-power. Lizzie started off at a nimble lope. The plow cut a pretty curve and flew out of the ground. Charlie reefed the reins at once, completely turning off the power. Then he put the reins about his neck, grasped the handles of the plow with both hands, and zoomed commands again at the champing power. "Power" jumped ahead. The reins nearly snapped old Charlie's head off, but effectually brought the mare to a standstill.

"Vait, you dunder-undt-blitzen apful peelings! You--you think dot plowing is not high-toned enough, yet--hey? Vell, I show you!"

He picked up a huge clod of soft dirt held it aloft in both hands and banged it down on Lizzie's back--whereupon she promptly ran away! She galloped furiously to the end of the field with the plow banging in scoops and leaps, and old Charlie, dangling on the end of the reins, flying along in seven-league jumps behind her. As soon as he caught his breath sufficiently for renewed directions, the cavalcade returned to the grandstand and operations were repeated.

Charlie had been a sailor before he came to California, and he plowed (?) each furrow with a collection of forceful admonitions, delivered in a voice of thunder, from a different language. It was all the same to Lizzie! She loathed plowing just as thoroughly in wildcat Spanish, as she did in Dutch or Cingalese, and she did not hesitate to prove it.

Jim Hutch and Jimmie Greeley drifted down to Rattlesnake at sundown and joined the laughter-weakened group perched upon Charlie's snake fence.

"The man grows more daft every year. 'Tis strange, what charms the Widow Schmitt." Old Jimmie merely growled in his beard. "Charlie, mon," he called, "the mare is warm and weary, and so's yoursel'. Come on to town for a bit."

Charlie stayed overlong at the miners' haunts in Rattlesnake and it was very late when he started back to his cabin, carrying in one limp, hot hand a jug which he guarded zealously from harm during his unsteady progress.

The men still sat over the card tables when the first daylight crept over the mountains. Jimmie Greeley was raking in a jackpot, grinning fiendishly at the dour Jim Hutch when they heard heavy, running feet outside. The door crashed open and a frightened, half-grown lad shouted:

"Where's the sheriff? Charlie Price has been hung!"

"What!"

"On a tree near the Widow Schmitt's. I saw him. I know well the sailor coat that he wears--and his best red-topped boots. Where's the sheriff?"

"Over at Ah Quong's, the Chinee store on the edge of town." The boy ran off. Old Jim Hutch rose impressively to his feet.

"Friends, the man ye hae laughed at all day--is dead. The man ye hae always laughed at--and yet, WHO was it that lent ye gold when ye had none? Yea, the gold ye thought it not worth ye'r while to return. Who was ever ready to warm you at his bit fire in winter or to cool ye're whuskey-hot throat with water from his cool spring in summer?

"Who was it that brought his mare into his own kitchen when it snowed, and fed her the rice and beans he went without? Who was it that the Widow Schmitt waits for year after year, with half the ould fools in Placer dancin' after her?"

That was too much for old man Greeley.

"Because he was indifferent-like. When ye want a woman, run away f-r-r-om her and she'll run after."

"Why did ye na do it, then, Jeems?"

"Faith an' I did, but bein' ahl dressed up as I was in me coat, she couldn't see me suspenders to tell was I comin' or goin'!" Jim Hutch turned from him witheringly.

"Who was it staked ye for a new prospectin' trip, an' let his own mine go unworked? Who nursed ye when ye were lyin' seeck unto death, an'

no one would come nigh on account of the smallpox scare? Old Charlie Price."

A boy whirled about to face the window, but not before one uncontrollable sob had sounded through the quiet room.

"Who was it," went on the old Scotchman gently, "found the wee bairn that was lost, last summer; that followed the Indians for thirty miles on his Leezie-mare and got the babe from out the wickiup of White Beaver? Charlie Price.

"Who came bringing it haeme laughing, on the saddle pommel while he sang to it songs from ower seven seas, which we did blush to hear, in a voice to be heard twa miles about? And 'twas only the bairn's mother who thought to thank him.

"Yea, and furthermore, when the incensed people would hae wipet out the while tribe of White Beaver, who dashed at the mob wi' the roars of a bull-bison forcin' them to hear that the squaw was crazed from the death of her own bit bairn, and but tryin' to comfort her sore heart? Who, I'm askin' ye?" and from each man's lips came the murmur like a response to a litany:

"Charlie Price."

From the open door a cool dawn breeze blew in from the Sierras, pure forerunner to the new day. It whirled the heavy smoke plumes into forms of vanished ghosts, like the tortured figments of each man's conscience who had done, and "left undone" that which it was forever too late to amend.

The sheriff walked in.

"This boy says that old Charlie is gone." He stood with his broad hat off, running his fingers nervously through his hair. "Gentlemen--I--I must confess--I heard the poor man calling, but--"

"Mon, in an ancient book named 'Mr. Aesop, His Fables,' there was a tale of the lad who cried 'wolf.' Many there are here who have read it. Come, let us gae after poor Charlie."

In the first daylight they reached the tree with its gruesome burden.

"But--but," sputtered the keen-eyed little Irishman, "'Tis not Charlie at all! 'Tis but an effigy dressed in Charlie's clothes and hung at the Widow Schmitt's gate."

"As a warnin' to him frae some mutton-head lover of hers."