He stood still only a second; in fact, all this took but a moment, for Sandy was in a terrible hurry. Limber Tim had never seen him in such a hurry before. Up shot the hand, down slid the hat, and Sandy was quite hidden away again. It was a moment of terrible embarra.s.sment. When an Englishman is embarra.s.sed he takes snuff; when a Yankee is embarra.s.sed he whips out a jack-knife and falls to whittling anything that he can find, not excepting the ends of his fingers; but a true Californian of Sierras jerks his head at the boys, heads straight up to the bar, knocks his knuckles on the board, winks at the bar-keeper, pecks his nose at his favorite bottle, fills to the brim, nods his head down the line to the left, then to the right, hoists his Poison, throws back his head, and then falls back wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, quite recovered from his confusion.

Sandy backed his partner into a corner rapidly, and then, laying his hands again on his shoulders, said: "Limber Tim! she's sick!"

He had to throw his head forward to say it. It came out as if jerked from his throat by a thousand fish-hooks.

He raised his two great hands, and reaching out his face again clutched the two shoulders, and said, "She's d--d sick!"

Up went the hands, back went the hat, the door was jerked open, a man whirled out of the door as if he had been a whirlwind, up the trail, up over the stones and snow and logs. Sandy climbed to his cabin on the hill, while the boys followed him with their eyes; and then stood looking at each other in wonder as he disappeared in the door.

Through the cabin burst the man, and back to the little bed-room, as if he had been wild as the north wind that whistled and whirled about without.

The little lady lay there, quiet now, but her face was white as ashes.

The blood had gone out from her face like a falling tide; the pain was over, but only, like a tide, to return.

How white she was, and how beautiful she was! How helpless she was down there in the deep, hidden in a crack of the world, away from all old friends, away from all her kindred, all her s.e.x and kind. She was very ill, so alone was she; not a doctor this side of that great impa.s.sable belt of snow that curved away like a deep white wave around and above the heads of the three little rivers. Sandy saw all this, felt all this.

It cut him to the core, and he shook like a leaf.

What a pretty nest of a bed-room! How fragrant it was from the fir-boughs that were gathered under foot. There were little curtains about this bed, there deep in the Sierras. Coa.r.s.e they were, it is true, very coa.r.s.e, but white as the snow that whirled about without the cabin.

Still, you might have seen here and there that there were cloudy spots that had refused all the time to be quite washed out, rub and soak and soap and boil them as the Widow and Washee-Washee would.

If you had lain in that bed through a spell of sickness, and looked and looked at the curtains and all things as sick people will all the time look and look when they lie there and can do nothing else, you would at last have noticed that these coa.r.s.e but snowy curtains had been made of as many pieces as Jacob's coat. And lying there and looking and looking, you would have at last in the course of time read there in one of the many cloudy spots, these words stamped in bended rows of fantastic letters:

SELF-RISING FLOUR WARRANTED SUPERFINE.

50 LBS.

There was a little cracked piece of looking-gla.s.s on the wall, no bigger than your palm. It was fastened on the wall, over, perhaps, the only ill.u.s.trated paper that had ever found its way to the Forks. There were little rosettes around this little gla.s.s that had been made from leaves of every color by the cunning hand of the Widow. There were great maple-leaves, and leaves of many trees in all the hues of Summer, hung up here and there, sewn together, and made to make the little bed-room beautiful. And what a treasure the little gla.s.s was! It seemed to be the great little center of the house. All things rallied, or seemed to be trying to rally, around it. To be sure, the Widow was not at all plain.

Plain! to Sandy she was the center of the world. The rising and the setting of the sun.

The carpet had been finished by the same cunning hand. This had been made of gunny bags sewn together with twine; and under this carpet there was a thick coat of fine fir-boughs that left the room all the time sweet and warm, and fragrant as a forest in the Spring. There were little three-legged benches waiting about in the corners; but by the bedside sat the great work of art in the camp, a rocking-chair made of elk horns. This was the gift of a rejected but generous lover.

On the little wooden mantel-piece above the fire-place there stood a row of nuggets. They lay there as if they were a sort of Winter fruit put by to ripen. They were like oranges which you see lying about the peasants'

houses in Italy, and almost as large. These were the gifts of the hardy miners of the Forks to their patron saint; gifts given at such times and in such ways that they could not be well refused.

Once there had been, late in the night, a heavy stone thrown against the door, while the two "turtle doves," as the camp used to call its lovers, sat by the fire.

In less than a second Sandy's pistol stuck its nose out like a little bull-dog and began to look down the hill in the darkness.

A man leaned over the fence and laughed in his face. "Now don't do that, Sandy! now don't." Sandy let his pistol fall half ashamed; for it was the voice of a friend.

"Good-bye, Sandy!" the man called back up the trail in the dark.

"Good-bye. That's for the Widder. Made my pile and off for Pike.

Good-bye!"

When Washee-Washee went out next morning for wood, there he found lying at the door the cause of the trouble in the night. It was a great nugget of gold that the rough Missourian had thrown to his patron saint as he pa.s.sed.

Once a miner sent them a great fine salmon. The Widow on opening it found it half full of gold. She took all this back to the man, whom she found seated at the green table at the Howling Wilderness, behind a silver faro box; for to mining the man also attached the profession of gambler. She laid this heap of gold down on the table before the man with the faro box and cards. The miners gathered around. The man with the silver box began to deal his cards.

"All on the single turn, Missus Sandy?"

The Judge came forward, "Don't bet it all on the first deal, do you?

That's pretty steep, even for the oldest of us!"

"Bet! I don't bet at all. I bring Poker Jake his money back. I found this all in the fish he sent us. It is his. It is a trick, perhaps. Fish don't eat gold, you know."

"O yes they dus, Missus Sandy."

Poker Jake stopped with the card half turned in the air. The Widow held up her pretty finger and her pretty lips pouted as she made her little speech to the gambler, and told him she could not keep the gold. The miners gathered around in wonder and admiration.

Jake laid down his card.

"Well, can't a salmon eat gold if he likes?"

"No."

"There, Missus Sandy, y'er wrong!" argued the little Judge, and then he began to tell her the story of Jonah and the whale, and wound up with the declaration that there was nothing at all unnatural in a fish eating gold in "this glorious climate of Californy."

"Will you not take back your gold?"

"Nary a red."

There was a pale thoughtful young man, half ill, too feeble to work, to leave, to retreat from the mountains, standing by the fire when the Widow had entered the saloon. It was the boy poet.

She took up the bag of gold, turned around, looked back in the corner of the saloon, for he had retreated out of sight as she entered, saw the young man hiding back in the shade, leaning over the bunk, caressing the dog; possibly he was crying. Her face lighted with a light that was high and beautiful and half divine.

She turned, held the gold out to Poker Jake.

"No!"

"And then is it mine? all mine, to do as I like with it?"

"Yours, lady. Yours to take and go home and git from out of the canon, out of this hole in the ground, and live like a Christian, as yer are, and not live here like a wild beast in a carawan."

The man stood up as he spoke, and was proud of his speech, and the men cheered and cheered and said:

"Bully for Poker Jake!"

Then the little Widow turned again, went back to the boy leaning over the bull-dog, thrust it in his arms as he rose to look at her, and turning to the men was gone.

They looked at each other in amazement and disgust. They could hardly believe their senses.

"How dare she do it before us all?" said one.

CHAPTER XVI.

WAS THE WOMAN INSANE?