Tales of the Argonauts by Bret Harte (digital ebook reader .txt) 📖

by day for a miserable pittance, and a fare that a self-respecting Eastern mechanic would have scornfully rejected,— were not a part of the Eastern visitors’ recollection. But the hoisting works and machinery of the “Blazing Star Tunnel Company” was,—the Blazing Star Tunnel Company, whose “gentlemanly superintendent” had received private information from San Francisco to do the “proper thing” for the party. Wherefore the valuable heaps of ore in the company’s works were shown; the oblong bars of gold, ready for shipment, were playfully offered to the ladies who could lift and carry them away unaided; and even the tunnel itself, gloomy, fateful, and peculiar, was shown as part of the experience; and, in the noble language of one correspondent, “The wealth of Five Forks, and the peculiar inducements that it offered to Eastern capitalists,” were established beyond a doubt. And then occurred a little incident, which, as an unbiassed spectator, I am free to say offered no inducements to anybody whatever, but which, for its bearing upon the central figure of this veracious chronicle, I cannot pass over.

It had become apparent to one or two more practical and sober-minded in the party, that certain portions of the “Blazing Star” tunnel (owing, perhaps, to the exigencies of a flattering annual dividend) were economically and imperfectly “shored” and supported, and were, consequently, unsafe, insecure, and to be avoided. Nevertheless, at a time when champagne corks were popping in dark corners, and enthusiastic voices and happy laughter rang through the half-lighted levels and galleries, there came a sudden and mysterious silence. A few lights dashed swiftly by in the direction of a distant part of the gallery, and then there was a sudden sharp issuing of orders, and a dull, ominous rumble. Some of the visitors turned pale: one woman fainted.

Something had happened. What? “Nothing” (the speaker is fluent, but uneasy)—“one of the gentlemen, in trying to dislodge a ‘specimen’ from the wall, had knocked away a support. There had been a ‘cave’—the gentleman was caught, and buried below his shoulders. It was all right, they’d get him out in a moment—only it required great care to keep from extending the ‘cave.’ Didn’t know his name. It was that little man, the husband of that lively lady with the black eyes. Eh! Hullo, there! Stop her! For God’s sake! Not that way! She’ll fall from that shaft. She’ll be killed!”

But the lively lady was already gone. With staring black eyes, imploringly trying to pierce the gloom, with hands and feet that sought to batter and break down the thick darkness, with incoherent cries and supplications following the moving of ignis fatuus lights ahead, she ran, and ran swiftly!—ran over treacherous foundations, ran by yawning gulfs, ran past branching galleries and arches, ran wildly, ran despairingly, ran blindly, and at last ran into the arms of the “Fool of Five Forks.”

In an instant she caught at his hand. “Oh, save him!” she cried. “You belong here; you know this dreadful place: bring me to him. Tell me where to go, and what to do, I implore you! Quick, he is dying! Come!”

He raised his eyes to hers, and then, with a sudden cry, dropped the rope and crowbar he was carrying, and reeled against the wall.

“Annie!” he gasped slowly. “Is it you?”

She caught at both his hands, brought her face to his with staring eyes, murmured, “Good God, Cyrus!” and sank upon her knees before him.

He tried to disengage the hand that she wrung with passionate entreaty.

“No, no! Cyrus, you will forgive me—you will forget the past! God has sent you here to-day. You will come with me. You will— you must—save him!”

“Save who?” cried Cyrus hoarsely.

“My husband!”

The blow was so direct, so strong and overwhelming, that, even through her own stronger and more selfish absorption, she saw it in the face of the man, and pitied him.

“I thought—you—knew—it,” she faltered.

He did not speak, but looked at her with fixed, dumb eyes. And then the sound of distant voices and hurrying feet started her again into passionate life. She once more caught his hand.

“O Cyrus, hear me! If you have loved me through all these years, you will not fail me now. You must save him! You can! You are brave and strong—you always were, Cyrus. You will save him, Cyrus, for my sake, for the sake of your love for me! You will— I know it. God bless you!”

She rose as if to follow him, but, at a gesture of command, she stood still. He picked up the rope and crowbar slowly, and in a dazed, blinded way, that, in her agony of impatience and alarm, seemed protracted to cruel infinity. Then he turned, and, raising her hand to his lips, kissed it slowly, looked at her again, and the next moment was gone.

He did not return; for at the end of the next half-hour, when they laid before her the half-conscious, breathing body of her husband, safe and unharmed, but for exhaustion and some slight bruises, she learned that the worst fears of the workmen had been realized. In releasing him, a second cave had taken place. They had barely time to snatch away the helpless body of her husband, before the strong frame of his rescuer, Cyrus Hawkins, was struck and smitten down in his place.

For two hours he lay there, crushed and broken-limbed, with a heavy beam lying across his breast, in sight of all, conscious and patient. For two hours they had labored around him, wildly, despairingly, hopefully, with the wills of gods and the strength of giants; and at the end of that time they came to an upright timber, which rested its base upon the beam. There was a cry for axes, and one was already swinging in the air, when the dying man called to them feebly,—

“Don’t cut that upright!”

“Why?”

“It will bring down the whole gallery with it.”

“How?”

“It’s one of the foundations of my house.”

The axe fell from the workman’s hand, and with a blanched face he turned to his fellows. It was too true. They were in the uppermost gallery; and the “cave” had taken place directly below the new house. After a pause, the “Fool” spoke again more feebly.

“The lady—quick!”

They brought her,—a wretched, fainting creature, with pallid face and streaming eyes,—and fell back as she bent her face above him.

“It was built for you, Annie darling,” he said in a hurried whisper, “and has been waiting up there for you and me all these long days. it’s deeded to you, Annie; and you must—live there— with HIM! He will not mind that I shall be always near you; for it stands above—my grave.”

And he was right. In a few minutes later, when he had passed away, they did not move him, but sat by his body all night with a torch at his feet and head. And the next day they walled up the gallery as a vault; but they put no mark or any sign thereon, trusting, rather, to the monument, that, bright and cheerful, rose above him in the sunlight of the hill. And those who heard the story said, “This is not an evidence of death and gloom and sorrow, as are other monuments, but is a sign of life and light and hope, wherefore shall all know that he who lies under it is what men call—“a fool.”

 

BABY SYLVESTER.

 

It was at a little mining-camp in the California Sierras that he first dawned upon me in all his grotesque sweetness.

I had arrived early in the morning, but not in time to intercept the friend who was the object of my visit. He had gone “prospecting,”—so they told me on the river,—and would not probably return until late in the afternoon. They could not say what direction he had taken; they could not suggest that I would be likely to find him if I followed. But it was the general opinion that I had better wait.

I looked around me. I was standing upon the bank of the river; and apparently the only other human beings in the world were my interlocutors, who were even then just disappearing from my horizon, down the steep bank, toward the river’s dry bed. I approached the edge of the bank.

Where could I wait?

Oh! anywhere,—down with them on the river-bar, where they were working, if I liked. Or I could make myself at home in any of those cabins that I found lying round loose. Or perhaps it would be cooler and pleasanter for me in my friend’s cabin on the hill. Did I see those three large sugar-pines, and, a little to the right, a canvas roof and chimney, over the bushes? Well, that was my friend’s,—that was Dick Sylvester’s cabin. I could stake my horse in that little hollow, and just hang round there till he came. I would find some books in the shanty. I could amuse myself with them or I could play with the baby.

Do what?

But they had already gone. I leaned over the bank, and called after their vanishing figures,—“What did you say I could do?” The answer floated slowly up on the hot, sluggish air,—

“Pla-a-y with the ba-by.”

The lazy echoes took it up, and tossed it languidly from hill to hill, until Bald Mountain opposite made some incoherent remark about the baby; and then all was still.

I must have been mistaken. My friend was not a man of family; there was not a woman within forty miles of the river camp; he never was so passionately devoted to children as to import a luxury so expensive. I must have been mistaken.

I turned my horse’s head toward the hill. As we slowly climbed the narrow trail, the little settlement might have been some exhumed Pompeiian suburb, so deserted and silent were its habitations. The open doors plainly disclosed each rudely-furnished interior,—the rough pine table, with the scant equipage of the morning meal still standing; the wooden bunk, with its tumbled and dishevelled blankets. A golden lizard, the very genius of desolate stillness, had stopped breathless upon the threshold of one cabin; a squirrel peeped impudently into the window of another; a woodpecker, with the general flavor of undertaking which distinguishes that bird, withheld his sepulchral hammer from the coffin-lid of the roof on which he was professionally engaged, as we passed. For a moment I half regretted that I had not accepted the invitation to the river-bed; but, the next moment, a breeze swept up the long, dark canyon, and the waiting files of the pines beyond bent toward me in salutation. I think my horse understood, as well as myself, that it was the cabins that made the solitude human, and therefore unbearable; for he quickened his pace, and with a gentle trot brought me to the edge of the wood, and the three pines that stood like vedettes before the Sylvester outpost.

Unsaddling my horse in the little hollow, I unslung the long riata from the saddle-bow, and, tethering him to a young sapling, turned toward the cabin. But I had gone only a few steps, when I heard a quick trot behind me; and poor Pomposo, with every fibre tingling with fear, was at my heels. I looked hurriedly around. The breeze had died away; and only an occasional breath from the deep-chested woods, more like a long sigh than any articulate sound, or the dry singing of a cicala in the heated canyon, were to be heard. I examined the ground carefully for rattlesnakes, but in vain. Yet here was Pomposo shivering from his arched neck to his sensitive haunches, his very flanks pulsating with terror. I soothed him as well as I could, and then walked to the edge of the wood, and