The man's voice was husky with rage and from the contemplation of his awful crime.

"Speak boy! speak! speak but once before I murder you!"

The boy's eyes were lifted to the star, to the flying cloud that was about to cover it, and then to the eyes of the Parson, and he, trembling, half whispering, said, "Please, Parson, may I pray?"

The iron hand relaxed; the man let go his hold, and staggering back to the trail went down the hill in silence, and into the dark, where he belonged.

The two men who had entered the saloon at the Forks so mysteriously and had so terrified the bar-keeper, had disappeared. Yet Sandy, every man, knew that these men or their agents were all the time in their midst. No one knew the face of Nancy Williams; everybody knew the story of her life. At first there was terror in the camp. Could the Widow be Nancy Williams? It was decided that that was impossible. Then all was peace.

CHAPTER VIII.

SANDY'S COURTSHIP.

Swiftly, and very sweetly for Sandy, the days went by in the Forks; down there deep in the earth, almost in the dark of the under-world, in the cool of the forest, in the fragrance and spice and sweetness of the fir, and madrona, and tamarack for ever, dripping with dew, and dropping their fragrant gums and spices on the carpeted, mossy mountain side, filling the deep chasm with an odor found nowhere save in the heart of the Sierras, and Sandy was happy at last.

"You will please come again. You are such good company!" Sandy had come to think he was one of the best talkers in the world; and thinking so he was really able to begin to talk. Such is the tact and power, for good or ill, of woman.

Water will find its level. In this camp, in all new camps, in all new countries, new enterprises, wars, controversies--no matter what, there are certain men who come to the surface. These come to the front, and men stand aside, and they take their place. They stay there, for they belong there. They may not come immediately; but let any great question be taken up, let it be one of enough consequence to stir up the waters, and the waters will find their level.

No man need stilt himself up, or seek applause, or friends in high places, or loud praise. If he belongs to the front he will get there in time, and will remain there when he arrives. If he does not, there is but little need for him to push and bribe and bother at all about it. He will only stand up in the light long enough to show to the world that some one has escaped from the woodcut of a comic almanac, or the Zoological Gardens, and will then sink back, to end his life in complaining of hard treatment and lack of appreciation.

Let us rather accept the situation, good or bad, play the piece out, and look to promotion in the next great drama.

Do not despise my spicy little camp in the Sierras. It was a world of itself. Perhaps it was as large as all Paradise was at the first; and then it was so new, so fresh, so fragrant, sweet, and primitive.

It was something to be the first man in that camp. Caesar, if they have written their chronicles true, would have preferred it to the second place in Rome.

Here only the strong, clear heads towered up. It was not accident that made Sandy, or the Parson either, a head man in the Forks.

The Forks knew just how sterling, and how solid, and how sincere he was.

No flattery here. There was not a penny to win by it. No applause to care for here. No public opinion to appease or woo. If a man did not like the company at the Howling Wilderness he need not put in an appearance. He could stay at home, lord of his castle, toil three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and no man would question him or doubt his motives.

Nor was it any accident that made Limber Tim the partner of Sandy. These things have a deeper root than men suppose. Sandy was the strongest man in the camp, Limber Tim was the weakest. Nothing in nature was more natural than their present relation.

It is as remarkable as it is true, that wild beasts, even when the s.e.xes, more decent than men, are divided from each other, mate thus. The strong bear or the strong buck companions with the weak.

This Sandy never bl.u.s.tered or a.s.serted himself at all. He was born above most men of his cla.s.s, and he stood at their head boldly without knowing it. Had he been born an Indian he would have been a chief, would have led in battle, and dictated in council, without question or without opposition from any one. Had he been born in the old time of kings he would have put out his hand, taken a crown, and worn it as a man wears the most fitting garment, by instinct.

Sandy was born King of the Forks. He was king already, without knowing it or caring to rule it.

There are people just like that in the world, you know,--great, silent, fearless fellows, or at least there are in the Sierra-world, and they are as good as they are great. They are there, throned there, filling up more of the world than any ten thousand of those feeble things that G.o.d sent into the world, in mercy to the poor good men who sit all day silent, and cross-legged, and in nine parts, sewing, on a table.

They will not go higher, they can not go lower. They accept the authority as if they had inherited through a thousand sires.

CHAPTER IX.

"THAT BOY" IS ILL.

How that courtship got on, or where and when Sandy first opened his lips, n.o.body ever knew. At first he took Limber Tim with him. But really Limber was so awkward in the presence of ladies, or at least so thought Sandy to himself, that he was ashamed of him.

It was a great relief to Sandy, if he had only known enough to admit it to himself, to find some one in the room more awkward than himself.

Nothing is a better boon, when embarra.s.sed, than to see some one there a bigger dolt than yourself.

Limber Tim would come in, but he would not sit down. He would go over against the wall and stand there on one leg, with his hands stuck in behind him and his head lolled to one side while his mouth fell open, with his back glued up against the wall, as if he was a sort of statuary that had made up its mind never to fall down on its face.

He would stand in that att.i.tude till the Widow would speak to him or even smile on him, and then he would flop right over with his face to the wall, whip out a great pencil from his canvas pocket, and then slowly begin to scrawl the date, or as near as he could guess it, and sketch grotesque pictures all over the new hewn logs of the cabin.

The Widow used to call that place the Almanac, for Limber Tim knew the date and day of the year, if any man in the Forks knew it. Though it sometimes happened that when the pack-train with the provisions would come in from the outer world they would find they were two, three and even four days behind or ahead in their calculations.

At last Sandy began to get tired of Limber Tim on the wall at the Widow's. Perhaps he was in the way. At all events he "shook" him, as they called it at the Howling Wilderness, and "played it alone."

One evening Sandy had a sorry tale to tell the little woman. She listened as never she had listened before. Poor Little Billie, young Piper the boy poet, the boy who was always so alone, was down with a fever, and was wild and talking in strange ways, and they had no help, no doctor, nothing. "Yes, yes," cried Sandy, "the Forks is a doin' its level best. Watchin' and a watchin', but he won't git up ag'in. It's all up with poor Billie."

And all the Forks was doing its best too. But the boy was very ill. The Forks was good: and it was also very sorry, for it had laughed at this young man with hands white and small and a waist like a woman's, and now that he was dying it wanted to be forgiven.

It was something to the Forks that it had allowed this boy to bear his own Christian name; the only example of the kind on its records.

The Widow was not very talkative after that, and Sandy went away earlier than usual. He thought to drop in and see the boy; but turned aside and called at the Howling Wilderness. In a few minutes he went back to the cabin of the sufferer. Gently he lifted the latch, and on tip-toe he softly entered the room where he lay.

The man was utterly amazed. The Widow sat there, holding his hands now, now pushing back the soft long hair from his face, folding back the blankets, cooling his hot brow with her soft fresh hand, and looking into his eyes all the time with a tenderness that was new to Sandy.

The boy was wild with the fever, and weak and helpless. Men stood back around the wall and in the dark; they had not dared to speak to her as she entered. They were so amazed that a woman would dare do this thing--to come in among them alone, take this boy in her arms, wave them back--wild beasts as they were, they stood there mute with amazement and devotion.

"I will go now!" The boy then reached his hands and tried to rise up. "I will go away up, up, out of it all. I don't fit in here. I don't belong here. I don't know the people, and the people don't know me."

Then he was still, and his mind wandered in another direction, when he began again.

"Now I will go; and I will go alone. I am so, so tired. I am so hot and thirsty here. I will cross on the cool mountain and rest as I go."

The woman looked in his face, took his face in her hands as she sat by the bed, raised him tenderly and talked in a low soft voice all night long; soft and sweet and tender to the stranger as the voice of a mother.

She held his hand all night, as if she would hold him back from crossing over the river, and talked to him tenderly as if to draw him back to earth.

The gray dawn came at last, stealing down the mouth of the great black chimney, through the little window in the wall, where a paper did the duty of a pane, and there the men still stood in a row around the walls of the cabin, and there the Widow still sat holding the boy's hand, cooling his brow, calling him back to the world.

And he came. He opened his eyes and knew his fellow-men, for these fevers of the mountain are sudden and severe, and their work is soon done or abandoned.

After that the camp had a patron saint. The Parson fell ill next, but the boys rated him so soundly about his motive--as if any man could have a motive in falling ill--that he fell to cursing, and cursed himself into a perspiration, and so got well.