"Right?--didn't I marry 'em?"
"But it warn't twelve months."
"Twelve months! don't care ef it warn't six months. I married 'em, and I married 'em good and fast, and that's the end of it."
Public opinion flows and ebbs like the tide of the sea. At one time this little camp was unanimous in the opinion that the mysterious little woman could be none other than Nancy Williams, and it would talk of little else. Then it would tire of this subject, change its opinion, and let the matter drop for months together.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE JUDGE IS LONESOME.
"In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."
This was the song of the fat little Judge, one fine morning, as he wandered down towards the Howling Wilderness, sniffing the glorious balm, the very breath of the forest, and glancing ever and anon over his shoulder towards the cabin of Captain Tommy.
How new, and fresh and sweet, and fragrant the odors of the mighty, mossy woods that climbed and climbed and ever climbed as if to mount the summits, and push their tasselled tops against the indolent summer clouds that hovered like great white-winged birds above the peaks of snow. So new and fresh it seemed that summer morning, that the little Judge stopped on the hill-side and stood there to inhale its sweetness.
"How fresh and fine is this new world of Californy. It is only finished to-day. I can smell the varnish on it."
The Judge took out his great cotton bandanna, took off his hat, and polished his bald head till it shone in the sun like a mirror.
Then the little man stuffed his big handkerchief back in his bosom, and went on down the trail, humming softly to himself:
"In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."
A man in great gum boots, duck breeches, a hat like a tent, with a gold pan under his arm and a pipe sticking out through a mask of matted beard, met the little man in the trail, heard his song as he passed, and looking back over his shoulder, said to himself: "The derned bald-headed old rooster! What's he a-singin' hymns fur now?"
The little Judge could not sit down in the saloon. He felt that something was the matter, and he thought that he was lonesome. The little brown mice upstairs could be heard all day now, for the miners were at work up to their thighs in the water, delving away there in their great gum boots as if they were in a sort of diving-bell.
So the Judge went away from the Howling Wilderness. There was no man to be found who had time to talk, and so he sought a woman.
Captain Tommy stood in the door of her cabin all untroubled. She had seen the little Judge approach, but she was too happy drinking in the great summer's day that filled all things with peace and a calm delight, and she did not stir.
There are days and occasions when even the most plain women are positively beautiful; and when a plain woman is beautiful she is the most beautiful thing in the world.
This was Captain Tommy's day to be beautiful, and perhaps she felt it, for there she stood, really playing the coquette, hardly turning her eyes to look on the little Alcalde, although she knew he was mad in love with her.
He stood before her in the sun with his hat in his hand. Then she looked into the polished mirror which he humbly bowed before her, and she saw that she was really beautiful.
"Captain," said the mirror, and it bowed still lower. "Lady, in this glorious climate of Californy, I have snatched a few moments from my professional duties to come to you, to say to you--to--to beg of you that you will--will you--in this glorious climate of Californy this morning?"
The mirror was close up under her eyes. She smiled, and then she lifted her two hands and began to wind herself up as fast as possible, so that she could answer the eager and earnest little man before her.
The Judge waited in an ecstacy of delight, for he knew by the twinkle in her eye that he should have to send for the black-clad man with the white necktie, who had so terrified the Parson, and he was very happy.
CHAPTER XXV.
AFTER THE DELUGE--WHAT THEN?
By slow degrees, no one knew just when or how, the boy-poet began to find his way back after a year or two to the Widow's cabin. The miners wondered that Sandy did not protest. They saw, with some alarm, that the Widow was even more kind to him than before. Was it the pale pleading face of the consumptive boy that moved her?
Years went by, and the chronicler stood again in the Forks. The town was gone; the miners had uprooted its very foundations. Then came floods and buried the boulders and the banks of the stream, and widened it out and made it even as a new-plowed field.
Then a man, the Hon. Mr. Sandy, who had sat down with his family quite satisfied in the Sierras, extended a fence around the site of the old city, and planted and sowed and then reaped the richest of harvests. On the site of the Howling Wilderness the yellow golden grain reached up till it touched the very beard of the giant. So do perish the mining towns of the Sierras.
The hills are not so wild now; the woods have been mown away, and up on the hill-sides the miners have sat down, old and wrinkled and few in numbers; and around their quiet old cabins have planted fruit trees, and trees even from the tropics. And these trees flourish here too, for though the snow falls deep, and the sun has little room between the walls of the mighty canon, still it seems never now so bleak or cold.
There is one little house on the hill-side, with porches, and Spanish verandahs, and hammocks swinging there, and all that, nestled down among the fruit-trees that bend with fruit and blossom. Around this cabin and back of it, and up the mountains among the firs, you see pretty children passing in and out, laughing as they run, shouting like little Modocs, shaking back their hair all full of the gold and glory of the California sun, and making every one happy who beholds them.
"All in the glorious climate of Californy!" says the little man, as he comes puffing up the hill to his home, and the children of the First Families run to meet him.
Can it be possible? Did they all grow young again? Did they go back and begin life at the beginning? Truly, there is something in the climate, and the fountain of youth flows certainly somewhere out of the Sierras.
For look! there stands a woman winding herself up to welcome her husband; she is only a little stouter, and is even beautiful.
As for Limber Tim, being an "idecated man," he started a newspaper in the nearest town, and after many battles and many defeats, finally climbed high on the ladder of distinction, and is now "the Hon. Mr.
Tim," with a political influence second in that part of the country to no man, and to only one woman.
How things are changed, to be sure! The caravans of clouds that little Billie Piper was wont to look up to and wonder at, still cross the canon, and march and countermarch and curl about the far snow peaks as before. But the coyote has ceased to howl from the hill-side.
And what can that be curling like steam up from out the mighty forest that belts the snow peaks about the heads of the three little streams that make the Forks?
It looks like a train of clouds driven straight through the tree tops--it is so high and fairy-like and far away. It is as if it were on the very summit of the Sierras.
Ah! that is the engine blowing off the clouds of steam as she drops, shoots, slides, glides from the mountain to the sea. The train is a mile in length. The dust of three thousand miles is on her skirts. But before the going down of the sun she will draw rein to rest by the Golden Gate.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE WIDOW IN DISGRACE.
Stick a pin here. Be sure you remember that these settlers of the Sierras were as distinct a people from the settlers by the sea as you can conceive. The one was of the West, the other of the East. The one ate codfish and had a nasal accent and sang hymns. The other had never seen the ocean, he detested codfish, ate bacon and swore like a pirate.
Years went by and people, strangers, came and went, but our First Fam'lies of the Sierras remained.
This is history. The Phoenicians landed and left their impress on Ireland long before England heard of the first Caesar. Their impetuous blood signalizes the Fenian of to-day.
The Pilgrim Fathers refused to return. A world of immigration flowed to and fro. But these few gave to the bleak and barren East the sharp nose, the nationality, good or bad, of the north of North America; while the few first settlers of the South gave spring to a current that will flow on for a thousand years.