"And are you a family man?"

"No."

"And you say she's bilked us?"

"Yes."

"You're a darn'd infernal liar!" The gambler rose as he said this, s.n.a.t.c.hed up his silver box and dashed it into the teeth of Hatchet-face.

And he, coward as he was, put up his hands and held them to his mouth while the blood ran down between his fingers.

"I don't keer, Judge, I don't keer, if I broke every tooth in his head.

I don't 'low no white-livered son of a gun to go about a-talking about a woman like that."

Then the gambler, walking off, said to those around him in a lower tone, "It don't take no twelve months nohow. Now there's the yaller cat; 'bout four litters in a year. Twelve months be blowed! That's an old woman's story. Then that's in Missoury, anyhow, and what's the climate of Missoury got to do with Californy, I'd like to know? No, gentlemen; some apples gits ripe soon, and some don't git ripe till frost comes.

Them's things, gentlemen, as we don't know nothing about. Them's mysteries, and none of our business, nohow. Show me the man," and here he began to roar like a Numidian lion, and to tower up above the crowd, while a face like a razor shot out through the door, looking back frightened as it fled, "Show me the man as says it's not all right, and I'll shake him out of his boots."

The gambler picked up his battered box, but he was evidently not in a good humor. He wiped it on his coat-sleeve, and polished it up and down, but was ill content. At last, looking out from under his great slouch hat, he saw the top in the center of a little knot of men holding up his hand and counting his fingers. He threw the box down on the table and rushed into the knot of men.

"A bully set you are, ain't you? Gw'yne around a-counting up after a sick woman. And what do you know, anyhow?" He took hold of the nervous top, and again set it spinning. "That little woman, she come as we come. G.o.d Almighty didn't set no mark and gauge on you, and you shan't go 'round and count up after her. Do you hear? Now you git. You're wanted. Hatchet-face wants yer. Do you hear?"

The man spun his top about till its face was to the door, and it went out as a sort of handle to the hatchet, and was seen no more that night.

Yet for all this there had been a great ripple in the wave that had to run even to the sh.o.r.e before it could disappear from the face of things at the Forks.

CHAPTER XXII.

DEBATABLE GROUND.

The next day when Sandy came down, the enthusiasm was at a low ebb. He missed the great reception he had expected, and went back home that night a troubled and anxious man.

What could be the matter? He asked Limber Tim, but Limber Tim had learned the power and security of silence, and either could not or would not venture on any revelations. Besides that, he was very busy helping Bunker Hill with the baby. The camp openly and at all convenient times discussed the question now, and it began to gradually take shape in the minds of men that something was really wrong. Kind old Sandy did not dream what the trouble could be. He feared he had not been generous enough under his good fortune, and was all the time opening the mouth of his leather bag at the bar and pouring gold dust into the scales, and entreating the boys to drink to the health of their little Half-a-pint.

"Yes, our little Half-a-pint it is, I reckons; leastwise it's pretty certain it ain't yourn." Sandy looked at the man, and then the man set down his gla.s.s untouched and went off. He had not meant all that he had said, but having blurted it out in a very awkward way and at the very worst time, got off and out of it as best he could.

Sandy was tortured. The dear little Widow saw it, and asked him what the trouble was, and the man, blunt, honest fellow, told all that had happened.

The camp was disgusted with the man who had mooted this question. They counted him a traitor to the Forks--a sort of Judas. If he had gone and hung himself the camp would have been perfectly satisfied. In fact, it is pretty certain that the camp would have been very glad to have had any excuse, even the least bit of an excuse, to do that office for him.

Then the camp was angry with Sandy, too, on general principles. He had betrayed them into a sort of idol-worship under a mistake. He had lured it into the expression of an enthusiasm quite out of keeping with the dignity of a rough and hardy race of men, and it did not like it.

"The great big idiot!" said the camp. "Didn't he know any better? Don't he know any better now than to go on in this way half-tickled to death, thinking himself the happiest and the most blest of men?" The camp was ashamed of him.

The little Judge, finding things going against the first family of the Forks, felt also that he in some way was concerned, and felt called upon to explain. This was his theory and explanation.

"The Widow was a widow?"

"Yes."

"The Legislature met at San Jose on the first day of September?"

"Yes."

"The Legislature granted that first session enough divorces to fill a book?"

"Well?"

"This young woman, this Widow, might 'a bin married; she might 'a bin on her way to the mountains; she might 'a stopped in there and got her divorce, one day on her way up; she might 'a come right on here and got coaxed into marrying Sandy."

"Rather quick work, wouldn't it be, Judge?"

"Well, considering the climate of Californy, I think not." And the little man pushed out his legs under the card-table, puffed out his little red cheeks, leaned back, and felt perfectly certain that he had made a great point, while the wise men of the camp sat there more confused than before.

However, as the days went by men went on with their work in their mines down in the boiling, foaming, full little streams, now over-flowing from the snows that melted in the warm Spring sun, and said but little more on the subject. It was certain that they were very doubtful, for they only shook their heads as a rule when the subject was mentioned now in the great center. That was a bad sign, and very hard evidence of displeasure with their patron saint of the Autumn and the long weary Winter.

The Widow must have known all this. Not that Sandy had said a word further than she had almost forced him to speak; not that she had yet ventured down into the Forks, or that Bunker Hill had breathed a word about it, but I fancy that women know these things by instinct. They somehow have a singularly clear way of coming upon such things.

Day after day she read Sandy's face as he came up from his mine, dripping with the yellow water spurted from the sluice all over his broad slouch hat, long brown beard, and stiff duck breeches; she read it eagerly as one reads the papers after a battle, and read it truly as if it had been a broadsheet in print, and found herself in disfavor with the camp.

Then she began to think if Sandy was thinking of his promise; if he had remembered, and still remembered the time when in her great agony he promised, though all the world turned against her and cried "shame!" he would not upbraid her.

She wondered if he ever wished he had gone when she commanded him and implored him to go, and she began to read his face for the truth. She read, read him all through, page after page, chapter after chapter. She found there was not a doubt in all the realm of his soul, and her face took on again a little of its gladness. Yet the touch of tenderness deepened, the old sadness had settled back again, and this time to remain.

The still blue skies of California were bending over the camp. Not a cloud sailed east or west, or hovered about the snow-peaks. It was full Summer-time in the Sierras before it was yet mid-Spring, and men began to pour over the mountains across the settled and solid banks of snow.

Birds flew low and idly about the cabins, and sang as the men went on with their work down in the foaming, muddy little rivers, and all the world seemed glad and strong with life and hope.

Still the Widow was glad no more, and men began to notice that Sandy did not come to town at all. It was even observed that he had found a cut-off across the spur of the hill, by which he went and came to and from his mining claim without once setting foot in the Howling Wilderness, or even the Forks.

Limber Tim, too, seemed sad and sorely troubled. Sunshine and singing birds do not always bring delight to all. There is nothing so sad as sadness at such a time.

CHAPTER XXIII.

ANOTHER WEDDING AT THE FORKS.

Limber Tim no longer wrestled with saplings or picket-fences, or even his limber legs. He had other and graver matters on hand. The birds were building their nests all about him, and he too wanted to gather moss.

At last the boy-man was happy. At least, he came one night very late to "Sandy's," as the Widow's home was now called, and standing outside of the house and backing up against the fence, and sticking his hands in behind him, and twisting his left leg around the right, he called out to Sandy in a voice that was wild and uncertain as a wind that is lost in the trees.

Sandy laid it down tenderly, covered it up, and watching it a minute and making sure that it was sound asleep and well, went out. Limber Tim was writhing and twisting more than ever before. Sandy was glad, for he now knew that he was perfectly well, and that he had got the great matter settled, and that in a way perfectly satisfactory to himself.

And yet the two men were terribly embarra.s.sed. What made the embarra.s.sment very much the worse was the fact that they were at least half-a-mile from the nearest saloon. Fortunately it was very dark for a Californian night, and the men could look each other in the face without seeing each other.