A Waif of the Plains by Bret Harte (13 ebook reader TXT) 📖

bed, were scattered a few mud cabins, strange-looking wooden troughs and gutters, and here and there, glancing through the leaves, the white canvas of tents. The stumps of felled trees and blackened spaces, as of recent fires, marked the stream on either side. A sudden sense of disappointment overcame Clarence. It looked vulgar, common, and worse than all—FAMILIAR. It was like the unlovely outskirts of a dozen other prosaic settlements he had seen in less romantic localities. In that muddy red stream, pouring out of a wooden gutter, in which three or four bearded, slouching, half-naked figures were raking like chiffonniers, there was nothing to suggest the royal metal. Yet he was so absorbed in gazing at the scene, and had walked so rapidly during the past few minutes, that he was startled, on turning a sharp corner of the road, to come abruptly upon an outlying dwelling.

It was a nondescript building, half canvas and half boards. The interior seen through the open door was fitted up with side shelves, a counter carelessly piled with provisions, groceries, clothing, and hardware—with no attempt at display or even ordinary selection—and a table, on which stood a demijohn and three or four dirty glasses. Two roughly dressed men, whose long, matted beards and hair left only their eyes and lips visible in the tangled hirsute wilderness below their slouched hats, were leaning against the opposite sides of the doorway, smoking. Almost thrown against them in the rapid momentum of his descent, Clarence halted violently.

“Well, sonny, you needn’t capsize the shanty,” said the first man, without taking his pipe from his lips.

“If yer looking fur yer ma, she and yer Aunt Jane hev jest gone over to Parson Doolittle’s to take tea,” observed the second man lazily. “She allowed that you’d wait.”

“I’m—I’m—going to—to the mines,” explained Clarence, with some hesitation. “I suppose this is the way.”

The two men took their pipes from their lips, looked at each other, completely wiped every vestige of expression from their faces with the back of their hands, turned their eyes into the interior of the cabin, and said, “Will yer come yer, now WILL yer?” Thus adjured, half a dozen men, also bearded and carrying pipes in their mouths, straggled out of the shanty, and, filing in front of it, squatted down, with their backs against the boards, and gazed comfortably at the boy. Clarence began to feel uneasy.

“I’ll give,” said one, taking out his pipe and grimly eying Clarence, “a hundred dollars for him as he stands.”

“And seein’ as he’s got that bran-new rig-out o’ tools,” said another, “I’ll give a hundred and fifty—and the drinks. I’ve been,” he added apologetically, “wantin’ sunthin’ like this a long time.”

“Well, gen’lemen,” said the man who had first spoken to him, “lookin’ at him by and large; takin’ in, so to speak, the gin’ral gait of him in single harness; bearin’ in mind the perfect freshness of him, and the coolness and size of his cheek—the easy downyness, previousness, and utter don’t-care-a-damnativeness of his coming yer, I think two hundred ain’t too much for him, and we’ll call it a bargain.”

Clarence’s previous experience of this grim, smileless Californian chaff was not calculated to restore his confidence. He drew away from the cabin, and repeated doggedly, “I asked you if this was the way to the mines.”

“It ARE the mines, and these yere are the miners,” said the first speaker gravely. “Permit me to interdoose ‘em. This yere’s Shasta Jim, this yere’s Shotcard Billy, this is Nasty Bob, and this Slumgullion Dick. This yere’s the Dook o’ Chatham Street, the Livin’ Skeleton, and me!”

“May we ask, fair young sir,” said the Living Skeleton, who, however, seemed in fairly robust condition, “whence came ye on the wings of the morning, and whose Marble Halls ye hev left desolate?”

“I came across the plains, and got into Stockton two days ago on Mr. Peyton’s train,” said Clarence, indignantly, seeing no reason now to conceal anything. “I came to Sacramento to find my cousin, who isn’t living there any more. I don’t see anything funny in THAT! I came here to the mines to dig gold—because–because Mr. Silsbee, the man who was to bring me here and might have found my cousin for me, was killed by Indians.”

“Hold up, sonny. Let me help ye,” said the first speaker, rising to his feet. “YOU didn’t get killed by Injins because you got lost out of a train with Silsbee’s infant darter. Peyton picked you up while you was takin’ care of her, and two days arter you kem up to the broken-down Silsbee wagons, with all the folks lyin’ there slartered.”

“Yes, sir,” said Clarence, breathlessly with astonishment.

“And,” continued the man, putting his hand gravely to his head as if to assist his memory, “when you was all alone on the plains with that little child you saw one of those redskins, as near to you as I be, watchin’ the train, and you didn’t breathe or move while he was there?”

“Yes, sir,” said Clarence eagerly.

“And you was shot at by Peyton, he thinkin’ you was an Injun in the mesquite grass? And you once shot a buffalo that had been pitched with you down a gully—all by yourself?”

“Yes,” said Clarence, crimson with wonder and pleasure. “You know me, then?”

“Well, ye-e-es,” said the man gravely, parting his mustache with his fingers. “You see, YOU’VE BEEN HERE BEFORE.”

“Before! Me?” repeated the astounded Clarence.

“Yes, before. Last night. You was taller then, and hadn’t cut your hair. You cursed a good deal more than you do now. You drank a man’s share of whiskey, and you borrowed fifty dollars to get to Sacramento with. I reckon you haven’t got it about you now, eh?”

Clarence’s brain reeled in utter confusion and hopeless terror.

Was he going crazy, or had these cruel men learned his story from his faithless friends, and this was a part of the plot? He staggered forward, but the men had risen and quickly encircled him, as if to prevent his escape. In vague and helpless desperation he gasped—

“What place is this?”

“Folks call it Deadman’s Gulch.”

Deadman’s Gulch! A flash of intelligence lit up the boy’s blind confusion. Deadman’s Gulch! Could it have been Jim Hooker who had really run away, and had taken his name? He turned half-imploringly to the first speaker.

“Wasn’t he older than me, and bigger? Didn’t he have a smooth, round face and little eyes? Didn’t he talk hoarse? Didn’t he—” He stopped hopelessly.

“Yes; oh, he wasn’t a bit like you,” said the man musingly. “Ye see, that’s the h-ll of it! You’re altogether TOO MANY and TOO VARIOUS fur this camp.”

“I don’t know who’s been here before, or what they have said,” said Clarence desperately, yet even in that desperation retaining the dogged loyalty to his old playmate, which was part of his nature. “I don’t know, and I don’t care—there! I’m Clarence Brant of Kentucky; I started in Silsbee’s train from St. Jo, and I’m going to the mines, and you can’t stop me!”

The man who had first spoken started, looked keenly at Clarence, and then turned to the others. The gentleman known as the living skeleton had obtruded his huge bulk in front of the boy, and, gazing at him, said reflectively, “Darned if it don’t look like one of Brant’s pups—sure!”

“Air ye any relation to Kernel Hamilton Brant of Looeyville?” asked the first speaker.

Again that old question! Poor Clarence hesitated, despairingly. Was he to go through the same cross-examination he had undergone with the Peytons? “Yes,” he said doggedly, “I am—but he’s dead, and you know it.”

“Dead—of course.” “Sartin.” “He’s dead.” “The Kernel’s planted,” said the men in chorus.

“Well, yes,” reflected the Living Skeleton ostentatiously, as one who spoke from experience. “Ham Brant’s about as bony now as they make ‘em.”

“You bet! About the dustiest, deadest corpse you kin turn out,” corroborated Slumgullion Dick, nodding his head gloomily to the others; “in point o’ fack, es a corpse, about the last one I should keer to go huntin’ fur.”

“The Kernel’s tech ‘ud be cold and clammy,” concluded the Duke of Chatham Street, who had not yet spoken, “sure. But what did yer mammy say about it? Is she gettin’ married agin? Did SHE send ye here?”

It seemed to Clarence that the Duke of Chatham Street here received a kick from his companions; but the boy repeated doggedly—

“I came to Sacramento to find my cousin, Jackson Brant; but he wasn’t there.”

“Jackson Brant!” echoed the first speaker, glancing at the others. “Did your mother say he was your cousin?”

“Yes,” said Clarence wearily. “Good-by.”

“Hullo, sonny, where are you going?”

“To dig gold,” said the boy. “And you know you can’t prevent me, if it isn’t on your claim. I know the law.” He had heard Mr. Peyton discuss it at Stockton, and he fancied that the men, who were whispering among themselves, looked kinder than before, and as if they were no longer “acting” to him. The first speaker laid his hand on his shoulder, and said, “All right, come with me, and I’ll show you where to dig.”

“Who are you?” said Clarence. “You called yourself only ‘me.’”

“Well, you can call me Flynn—Tom Flynn.”

“And you’ll show me where I can dig—myself?”

“I will.”

“Do you know,” said Clarence timidly, yet with a half-conscious smile, “that I—I kinder bring luck?”

The man looked down upon him, and said gravely, but, as it struck Clarence, with a new kind of gravity, “I believe you.”

“Yes,” said Clarence eagerly, as they walked along together, “I brought luck to a man in Sacramento the other day.” And he related with great earnestness his experience in the gambling saloon. Not content with that—the sealed fountains of his childish deep being broken up by some mysterious sympathy—he spoke of his hospitable exploit with the passengers at the wayside bar, of the finding of his Fortunatus purse and his deposit at the bank. Whether that characteristic old-fashioned reticence which had been such an important factor for good or ill in his future had suddenly deserted him, or whether some extraordinary prepossession in his companion had affected him, he did not know; but by the time the pair had reached the hillside Flynn was in possession of all the boy’s history. On one point only was his reserve unshaken. Conscious although he was of Jim Hooker’s duplicity, he affected to treat it as a comrade’s joke.

They halted at last in the middle of an apparently fertile hillside. Clarence shifted his shovel from his shoulders, unslung his pan, and looked at Flynn. “Dig anywhere here, where you like,” said his companion carelessly, “and you’ll be sure to find the color. Fill your pan with the dirt, go to that sluice, and let the water run in on the top of the pan—workin’ it round so,” he added, illustrating a rotary motion with the vessel. “Keep doing that until all the soil is washed out of it, and you have only the black sand at the bottom. Then work that the same way until you see the color. Don’t be afraid of washing the gold out of the pan—you couldn’t do it if you tried. There, I’ll leave you here, and you wait till I come back.” With another grave nod and something like a smile in the only visible part of his bearded face—his eyes—he strode rapidly away.

Clarence did not lose time. Selecting a spot where the grass was less thick, he broke through the soil and turned up two or three spadefuls of red soil. When he had filled the pan and raised it to his shoulder, he was astounded at its weight. He did not know that it was due to the red precipitate of iron