What could he do but reply as illogically with a closer embrace, albeit a slight tremor as if a cold wind had blown across the open window, pa.s.sed over him. She may have felt it too, for she presently said, "Kiss me and let me go."

"But we must have a longer talk, darling--when--when--others are not waiting."

"Do you know the far barn near the boundary?" she asked.

"Yes."

"I used to take your books there, afternoons to--to--be with you," she whispered, "and Paw gave orders that no one was to come nigh it while I was there. Come to-morrow, just before sundown."

A long embrace followed, in which all that they had not said seemed, to them at least, to become articulate on their tremulous and clinging lips. Then they separated, he unlocking the door softly to give her egress that way. She caught up a book from a desk in pa.s.sing, and then slipped like a rosy shaft of the coming dawn across the fading moonlight, and a moment after her slow voice, without a tremor of excitement, was heard calling to her companions.

CHAPTER VII.

The conversation which Johnny Filgee had overheard between Uncle Ben and the gorgeous stranger, although unintelligible to his infant mind, was fraught with some significance to the adult settlers of Indian Spring.

The town itself, like most interior settlements, was originally a mining encampment, and as such its founders and settlers derived their possession of the soil under the mining laws that took precedence of all other t.i.tles. But although that t.i.tle was held to be good even after the abandonment of their original occupation, and the establishment of shops, offices, and dwellings on the site of the deserted places, the suburbs of the town and outlying districts were more precariously held by squatters, under the presumption of their being public land open to preemption, or the settlement of school-land warrants upon them. Few of the squatters had taken the trouble to perfect even these easy t.i.tles, merely holding "possession" for agricultural or domiciliary purposes, and subject only to the invasion of "jumpers," a cla.s.s of adventurers who, in the abeyance of recognized legal t.i.tle, "jumped" or forcibly seized such portions of a squatter's domains as were not protected by fencing or superior force. It was therefore with some excitement that Indian Spring received the news that a Mexican grant of three square leagues, which covered the whole district, had been lately confirmed by the Government, and that action would be taken to recover possession. It was understood that it would not affect the adverse possessions held by the town under the mining laws, but it would compel the adjacent squatters like McKinstry, Davis, Masters, and Filgee, and jumpers like the Harrisons, to buy the legal t.i.tle, or defend a slow but losing lawsuit. The holders of the grant--rich capitalists of San Francisco--were open to compromise to those in actual possession, and in the benefits of this compromise the unscrupulous "jumper," who had neither sown nor reaped, but simply dispossessed the squatter who had done both, shared equally with him.

A diversity of opinion as to the effect of the new claim naturally obtained; the older settlers still clung to their experiences of an easy aboriginal holding of the soil, and were sceptical both as to the validity and justice of these revived alien grants; but the newer arrivals hailed this certain tenure of legal t.i.tles as a guarantee to capital and an incentive to improvement. There was also a growing and influential party of Eastern and Northern men, who were not sorry to see a fruitful source of dissension and bloodshed removed. The feuds of the McKinstrys and Harrisons, kept alive over a boundary to which neither had any legal claim, would seem to bring them hereafter within the statute law regarding ordinary a.s.saults without any ethical mystification. On the other hand McKinstry and Harrison would each be able to arrange any compromise with the new t.i.tle holders for the lands they possessed, or make over that "actual possession" for a consideration. It was feared that both men, being naturally lawless, would unite to render any legal eviction a long and dangerous process, and that they would either be left undisturbed till the last, or would force a profitable concession. But a greater excitement followed when it was known that a section of the land had already been sold by the owners of the grant, that this section exactly covered the debatable land of the McKinstry-Harrison boundaries, and that the new landlord would at once attempt its legal possession. The inspiration of genius that had thus effected a division of the Harrison-McKinstry combination at its one weak spot excited even the admiration of the sceptics. No one in Indian Spring knew its real author, for the suit was ostensibly laid in the name of a San Francis...o...b..nker. But the intelligent reader of Johnny Filgee's late experience during the celebration will have already recognized Uncle Ben as the man, and it becomes a part of this veracious chronicle at this moment to allow him to explain, not only his intentions, but the means by which he carried them out, in his own words.

It was one afternoon at the end of his usual solitary lesson, and the master and Uncle Ben were awaiting the arrival of Rupert. Uncle Ben's educational progress lately, through dint of slow tenacity, had somewhat improved, and he had just completed from certain forms and examples in a book before him a "Letter to a Consignee" informing him that he, Uncle Ben, had just shipped "2 cwt. Ivory Elephant Tusks, 80 peculs of rice and 400bbls. prime mess pork from Indian Spring;" and another beginning "Honored Madam," and conveying in admirably artificial phraseology the "lamented decease" of the lady's husband from yellow fever, contracted on the Gold Coast, and Uncle Ben was surveying his work with critical satisfaction when the master, somewhat impatiently, consulted his watch.

Uncle Ben looked up.

"I oughter told ye that Rupe didn't kalkilate to come to day."

"Indeed--why not?"

"I reckon because I told him he needn't. I allowed to--to hev a little private talk with ye, Mr. Ford, if ye didn't mind."

Mr. Ford's face did not shine with invitation. "Very well," he said, "only remember I have an engagement this afternoon."

"But that ain't until about sundown," said Uncle Ben quietly. "I won't keep ye ez long ez that."

Mr. Ford glanced quickly at Uncle Ben with a rising color. "What do you know of my engagements?" he said sharply.

"Nothin', Mr. Ford," returned Uncle Ben simply; "but hevin' bin layin'

round, lookin' for ye here and at the hotel for four or five days allus about that time and not findin' you, I rather kalkilated you might hev suthin' reg'lar on hand."

There was certainly nothing in his face or manner to indicate the least evasion or deceit, or indeed anything but his usual naivete, perhaps a little perturbed and preoccupied by what he was going to say. "I had an idea of writin' you a letter," he continued, "kinder combinin' practice and confidential information, you know. To be square with you, Mr. Ford, in pint o' fact, I've got it HERE. But ez it don't seem to entirely gibe with the facts, and leaves a heap o' things onsaid and onseen, perhaps it's jest ez wall ez I read it to you myself--putten' in a word here and there, and explainin' it gin'rally. Do you sabe?"

The master nodded, and Uncle Ben drew from his desk a rude portfolio made from the two covers of a dilapidated atlas, and took from between them a piece of blotting-paper, which through inordinate application had acquired the color and consistency of a slate, and a few pages of copy-book paper, that to the casual glance looked like sheets of exceedingly difficult music. Surveying them with a blending of chirographic pride, orthographic doubt, and the bashful consciousness of a literary amateur, he traced each line with a forefinger inked to the second joint, and slowly read aloud as follows:--

"'Mr. Ford, Teacher.

"'DEAR SIR,--Yours of the 12th rec'd and contents noted.'" ("I did'nt,"

explained Uncle Ben parenthetically, "receive any letter of yours, but I thought I might heave in that beginning from copy for practice. The rest is ME.") "'In refference to my having munney,"' continued Uncle Ben reading and pointing each word as he read, "'and being able to buy Ditch Stocks an' Land'"--

"One moment," said Mr. Ford interrupting, "I thought you were going to leave out copy. Come to what you have to say."

"But I HEV--this is all real now. Hold on and you'll see," said Uncle Ben. He resumed with triumphant emphasis:--

"'When it were gin'rally allowed that I haddent a red cent, I want to explain to you Mister Ford for the first time a secret. This here is how it was done. When I first came to Injian Spring, I settled down into the old Palmetto claim, near a heap of old taillings. Knowin' it were against rools, and reg'lar Chinyman's bizness to work them I diddn't let on to enyboddy what I did--witch wos to turn over some of the quarts what I thought was likely and Orrifferus. Doing this I kem uppon some pay ore which them Palmetto fellers had overlookt, or more likely had kaved in uppon them from the bank onknown. Workin' at it in od times by and large, sometimes afore sun up and sometimes after sundown, and all the time keeping up a day's work on the clame for a show to the boys, I ema.s.sed a honist fortun in 2 years of 50,000 dolers and still am. But it will be askd by the incredjulos Reeder How did you never let out anything to Injian Spring, and How did you get rid of your yeald? Mister Ford, the Anser is I took it twist a month on hoss back over to La Port and sent it by express to a bank in Sacramento, givin' the name of Daubigny, witch no one in La Port took for me. The Ditch Stok and the Land was all took in the same name, hens the secret was onreviled to the General Eye--stop a minit,'" he interrupted himself quickly as the master in an accession of impatient scepticism was about to break in upon him, "it ain't all." Then dropping his voice to a tremulous and almost funereal climax, he went on:--

"'Thus we see that pashent indurstry is Rewarded in Spite of Mining Rools and Reggylashuns, and Predgudisses agin Furrin Labor is played out and fleeth like a shad-or contenueyeth not long in One Spot, and that a Man may apear to be off no Account and yet Ema.s.s that witch is far abov rubles and Fadith not Away.

"'Hoppin' for a continneyance

"'of your fevors I remain,

"'Yours to command,

"'BENJ D'AUBIGNY."'

The gloomy satisfaction with which Uncle Ben regarded this peroration--a satisfaction that actually appeared to be equal to the revelation itself--only corroborated the master's indignant doubts.

"Come," he said, impulsively taking the paper from Uncle Ben's reluctant hand, "how much of this is a concoction of yours and Rupe's--and how much is a true story? Do you really mean?"--

"Hold on, Mr. Ford!" interrupted Uncle Ben, suddenly fumbling in the breast-pocket of his red shirt, "I reckoned on your being a little hard with me, remembering our first talk 'bout these things--so I allowed I'd bring you some proof." Slowly extracting a long legal envelope from his pocket, he opened it, and drew out two or three crisp certificates of stock, and handed them to the master.

"Ther's one hundred shares made out to Benj Daubigny. I'd hev brought you over the deed of the land too, but ez it's rather hard to read off-hand, on account of the law palaver, I've left it up at the shanty to tackle at odd times by way of practising. But ef you like we'll go up thar, and I'll show it to you."

Still haunted by his belief in Uncle Ben's small duplicities, Mr. Ford hesitated. These were certainly bona fide certificates of stock made out to "Daubigny." But he had never actually accepted Uncle Ben's statement of his ident.i.ty with that person, and now it was offered as a corroboration of a still more improbable story. He looked at Uncle Ben's simple face slightly deepening in color under his scrutiny--perhaps with conscious guilt.

"Have you made anybody your confidant? Rupe, for instance?" he asked significantly.

"In course not," replied Uncle Ben with a slight stiffening of wounded pride. "On'y yourself, Mr. Ford, and the young feller Stacey from the bank--ez was obligated to know it. In fact, I wos kalkilatin' to ask you to help me talk to him about that yer boundary land."

Mr. Ford's scepticism was at last staggered. Any practical joke or foolish complicity between the agent of the bank and a man like Uncle Ben was out of the question, and if the story were his own sole invention, he would have scarcely dared to risk so accessible and uncompromising a denial as the agent had it in his power to give.

He held out his hand to Uncle Ben. "Let me congratulate you," he said heartily, "and forgive me if your story really sounded so wonderful I couldn't quite grasp it. Now let me ask you something more. Have you had any reason for keeping this a secret, other than your fear of confessing that you violated a few bigoted and idiotic mining rules--which, after all, are binding only upon sentiment--and which your success has proved to be utterly impractical?"

"There WAS another reason, Mr. Ford," said Uncle Ben, wiping away an embarra.s.sed smile with the back of his hand, "that is, to be square with you, WHY I thought of consultin' you. I didn't keer to have McKinstry, and"--he added hurriedly, "in course Harrison, too, know that I bought up the t.i.tle to thur boundary."

"I understand," nodded the master. "I shouldn't think you would."

"Why shouldn't ye?" asked Uncle Ben quickly.

"Well--I don't suppose you care to quarrel with two pa.s.sionate men."

Uncle Ben's face changed. Presently, however, with his hand to his face, he managed to manipulate another smile, only it appeared for the purpose of being as awkwardly wiped away.

"Say ONE pa.s.sionate man, Mr. Ford."

"Well, one if you like," returned the master cheerfully. "But for the matter of that, why any? Come--do you mind telling me why you bought the land at all? You know it's of little value to any but McKinstry and Harrison."