A Waif of the Mountains

CHAPTER IV
SUITING THE PUNISHMENT TO THE CRIME

Wade Ruggles was speechless. He sat with his mouth wide open and his eyes staring at the little figure, as if it were a veritable apparition. All the others looked in the same direction. Nellie Dawson stood for a moment with her finger pointed reprovingly at the chairman, and then turning about ran back into the rear room and plunged into her bed.

“Max, quick!” said Ruggles faintly, pointing to the black bottle at the rear of the bar. The landlord hastily poured out some of the fiery stuff, and the miserable fellow swallowed it at a gulp. It served partly to revive him, but he was really on the verge of collapse.

The only one of the company not impressed was Maurice Dawson, father of the little girl. He was sitting well back of the rest, where no one paid attention to him. Comprehending the meaning of this incident, he drew his hand across his mouth to conceal the smile that could not be wholly restrained. Then he hurried back into the room to see that his child was “tucked up” and properly covered for the night. Finding himself in the dark, where he could not be observed, he laughed deeply and silently, his mirth all the greater because of the oppressive gravity of every one else. Then bending over, he said, as he kissed the little one:

“I thought you were asleep, Nellie?”

“So I was, but Mr. Ruggles spoke those bad words so loud he woked me.”

“You mustn’t get up again, will you?”

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

“I have just told you I don’t wish you to.”

“Then I wont get up.”

The father lingered in the room, until he mastered his disposition to laugh, and then, when he walked out among his friends no countenance was graver than his.

“I say, Dawson,” said Ruggles, swallowing a lump in his throat, “will you oblige me by acting as chairman?–I don’t feel–very–well.”

The gentleman walked forward to where Ruggles had been standing with his back against the bar, looking down in the faces of his friends. The poor fellow seemed to have aged ten years, as he slouched off to an upturned box near the door, where he dejectedly seated himself.

“What is your pleasure, gentlemen?” asked Dawson, as if presiding over the deliberations of one of the most august assemblages in the land; “I am ready to hear any suggestion or motion.”

Al Bidwell rose to his feet.

“Mr. Chairman, I wish to endorse with all my heart, the soul-stirring, eloquent address to which we have just listened from the late Mr. Ruggles,–I mean the late Chairman. Them sentiments of his is as sound as a gold dollar. He maintains that any gent that uses an unproper word, such as he used and which I scorn to repeat, in the presence of the young lady, who has just listened to his remarks, oughter to be sent to the individooal whose name is too shocking fur me to pronounce, since the aforesaid young lady is in the adjoining apartment, from whence she was awoke by the awful profanity of the gent who lately served as our chairman.”

And having gotten back on Ruggles in this masterly manner, Bidwell sat down, slung one leg over the other, and relit his pipe. The oppressive silence was broken by a prodigious sigh from Ruggles.

Parson Brush, after the stillness had continued some minutes, rose to his feet.

“Mr. Chairman, an extraordinary state of affairs has arisen. You have not forgotten that I plead for charity for Mr. Bidwell, because it was his first offence. My plea was not well received, but my sentiments are unchanged, and I now make the same plea for Mr. Ruggles and on the same grounds. When he was denouncing in fitting terms the sin of Bidwell, he had no thought of committing the crime himself, but in his earnestness he did. This being plain to all of us, I renew–”

Wade Ruggles bounded to his feet.

“I don’t want any one to plead for me! I ain’t pleading fur myself! I can take my medicine like a man; if there’s any galoot here–”

He suddenly checked himself with an apprehensive glance at the door of the rear room, and then resumed in a more subdued voice:

“I insist that Al Bidwell shall suffer for his onspeakable crime and me too, ’cause mine was onspeakabler. Jedgin’ from the evidence that showed itself, I must have awoke the little gal from peaceful slumber, by them awful words of mine.”

He paused and looked inquiringly at the chairman, who calmly returned his gaze, without speaking. It was Parson Brush who interposed:

“I should like to ask, Mr. Dawson, whether the supposition of Mr. Ruggles has any foundation in fact.”

“It has; when I asked Nellie what caused her to awake, she said it was Mr. Ruggles when he used those bad words.”

“Just what I thought!” exclaimed Ruggles, as if he enjoyed heaping fire upon his own head; “there ain’t any depth of infamy which I hain’t reached. For me to try to sneak out now, when I made such a–(Here he again threw a startled glance at the rear of the room) would be to do something which Wade Ruggles never done in his variegated career of nigh onto forty years. All I ask is that you’ll git through it as soon as you kin and fix our terms of imprisonment or our deaths and hev done with it.”

Al Bidwell took an unworthy delight in prodding the man who had been so severe upon him.

“I beg humbly to suggest to the gent that there are plenty of places in the mountains where he can make a jump of a thousand feet or two into the kenyons. Wouldn’t it be a good idee fur the gent to try it?”

“I will if you’ll join me,” retorted Wade, turning upon him like a flash.

“I’ll let you try it first and see how it works,” replied Bidwell, so crushed that he remained silent henceforward.

“Since I am chairman,” said Dawson, with becoming dignity, “it is my duty to listen to suggestions and to hear motions. What is your pleasure, gentlemen?”

No one in looking at the countenance of Maurice Dawson would have suspected he was extracting the keenest enjoyment from these proceedings, yet such was the fact. There was something so intensely ludicrous in the whole business, that only by assuming preternatural gravity could he refrain from breaking into merriment. His policy was to egg on the discussion until the company were ready for a decision, when he would interpose with the proposal to wipe out the whole matter and begin over again. The earnestness of Wade Ruggles, however, threatened to check anything of that nature. He was on his feet several times until Budge Isham, who shrewdly suspected the sentiments of the chairman, protested.

“With all due respect to the parson, to Ruggles and to Bidwell, it strikes me, Mr. Chairman, that they should give the rest of us a show. We have listened to their yawping until it has grown monotonous. Having told us a dozen times, more or less, that he wants us to punish him all he deserves, Mr. Ruggles ought to let it rest with that; but he shouldn’t forget,” added Budge, with the solemn manner which always marked his waggery, “that, if we took him at his word, he would be kicking vacancy this minute. However, this hasn’t anything to do with his general cussedness, but concerns his offence against the young lady. That is all there is before the house, and I insist that we confine ourselves to that–”

“Isn’t that what I’ve been insistin’ on?” demanded Wade Ruggles.

“There you go again! I have the floor, and you have no parliamentary right to interrupt me with your frivolous remarks. Am I correct, Mr. Chairman?”

“You are most unquestionably; proceed.”

“Well, to bring this tiresome matter to a close, I move that Mr. Bidwell be deprived of the bar privileges of the Heavenly Bower for a period of four days, and that the same be denied to Mr. Ruggles for a period of one week. Did I hear a groan?” asked Budge, looking round at the two men, who were trying bravely to bear up under the threatened punishment.

Both shook their heads, afraid to trust their voices by way of reply.

“If the gentlemen will permit me,” said the chairman, “I should like to say a few words.”

“I am sure we shall be glad to hear from Mr. Dawson,” remarked the parson.

“Thank you. What I had in mind is this:–It is creditable to your honor that you should pledge yourselves to refrain from unbecoming language in the hearing of my little girl, for you cannot help being her instructors, no matter how much you may wish it were otherwise. But you are magnifying the matter. I am sure every man of you will strive just as hard, without being incited thereto by the fear of punishment. I would beg to suggest–”

He paused, for, looking at Wade Ruggles, he saw it was useless to go further. Bidwell would have been glad to receive leniency, but his partner in crime was immovable, and it would not do to punish one and allow the other to go free. Dawson was wise enough to accept the situation promptly.

“You have heard the penalties suggested for the offences of the two gentlemen accused. All who favor such punishment will show it by raising their right hands.”

Every man in the room, except the chairman, voted in the affirmative.

“It isn’t worth while to put the negative. The accused have heard the verdict, which is that Mr. Bidwell shall not drink a drop of anything except water or coffee for a period of four days, dating from this moment, while Mr. Ruggles is to undergo the same penalty for a period of one week.”

“That’s right,” growled Bidwell; “for he drank about half of what was in the bottle only a few minutes ago.”

“And you would have drunk it all,” retorted Ruggles, “if you’d knowed what was coming.”

CHAPTER V
A HUNDRED FOLD

All this may seem a trifling matter to the reader who does not understand the real punishment suffered by these two men, who, like all the rest of their companions, had been accustomed to the use of ardent spirits for many years. There was no deprivation which they could not have borne with less distress, but their great consolation was that both knew the penalty was fully deserved, and they would not have complained had it been made more severe.

“I tell you,” said Bidwell, at the end of the fourth day, when he had celebrated his release from purgatory, “it pays, Ruggles.”

“What pays?”

“The reward you git for all this. At the end of a week you’ll have a thirst that you wouldn’t take a thousand dollars fur.”

“But the week isn’t much more’n half gone and I’d sell my thirst mighty cheap now.”

“Don’t you do it! Hold fast to it.”

“That’s what I’m doing, ’cause I can’t help myself. Howsumever it’s the thirst that’s holding fast to me.”

“That’s the beauty of it; it’ll git stronger and stronger, and then it’s so big that you can’t well handle it. It seems to me that ten minutes after I’ve had a drink, I’m thirsty agin, which reminds me; I’d like to invite you, Wade.”

“Invite all you want to, ’cause it won’t do any more hurt than good; don’t let me keep you,” added Ruggles, observing the longing eyes his friend cast in the direction of the Heavenly Bower. Bidwell moved off with pretended reluctance, out of consideration for the feelings of his friend, but once inside, he gave another demonstration of the truth of his remarks concerning thirst.

As for Ruggles, only he who has been similarly placed can appreciate his trial. No man is so deserving of sympathy as he who is making a resolute effort to conquer the debasing appetite that has brought him to the gutter.

On that fourth night the thirst of the fellow was a raging fever. He drank copious draughts of spring water, but all the help it gave was to fill him up. The insatiate craving remained and could not be soothed. It seemed as if every nerve was crying out for the stimulant which it was denied.

“The only time I ever went through anything like this,” he said to himself, “was twenty years ago, when a party of us were lost in the Death Valley. Three of ’em died of thirst, and I come so nigh it that it makes me shudder to think of it even at this late day.”

A wonderful experience came to Wade Ruggles. To his unbounded amazement, he noticed a sensible diminution, on the fifth day, of his thirst. It startled him at first and caused something in the nature of alarm. He feared some radical change had taken place in his system which threatened a dangerous issue. When this misgiving passed, it was succeeded by something of the nature of regret. One consoling reflection from the moment his torture began, was the reward which Al Bidwell had named, that is,–the glorious enjoyment of fully quenching his terrific craving, but, if that craving diminished, the future bliss must shrink in a corresponding ratio, and that was a calamity to make a man like him shudder.

On the evening of the fifth day, he ventured for the first time during his penal term, to enter the Heavenly Bower. He wished to test his self-control. When he sat quietly and saw his friends imbibing, and was yet able to restrain himself from a headlong rush to join them, he knew that beyond all question, his fearful appetite had lost a part of its control over him. Still he believed it was only a temporary disarrangement, and that the following day would bring a renewal of his thirst, with all its merciless violence.

But lo! on the sixth morning, the appetite was weaker than ever. His craving was so moderate that, after a deep draught of mountain spring water, he was hardly conscious of any longing for liquor. He seemed to be losing his memory of it.

“I don’t understand it,” he mused, keeping the astonishing truth to himself; “It’s less than a week ago that I was one of the heaviest drinkers in New Constantinople, and if anyone had told me of this, I would have been sure he’d lost his senses, which the same may be what’s the matter with me.”

But there was no awakening of his torment during the day, and when he lay down at night, he was disturbed by strange musings.

“If we had a doctor in the place, I would ask him to tell me what it means. The queerest thing ’bout the whole bus’ness is that I feel three thousand per cent. better. I wonder if it can be on ’count of my not swallerin’ any of Ortigies’ pison which the same he calls Mountain Dew. I guess it must be that.”

But that night he was restless, and gradually his thoughts turned into a new channel. A momentous problem presented itself for solution.

“If I’ve improved so much after goin’ six days without drinkin’, won’t I feel a blamed sight better, if I try it for six weeks–six months–six years–forever.”

And as an extraordinary, a marvelous resolution simmered and finally crystallized, he chortled.

“What’ll the boys say? What’ll the parson think? What’ll I think? What would that good old mother of mine think, if she was alive? But she died afore she knowed what a good for nothin’ man her boy turned out to be. God rest her soul!” he added softly, “she must have prayed over me a good many hundred times; if she’s kept track of me all these years, this is an answer to her prayers.”

Budge Isham was the partner of Wade, and shared his cabin with him. He slept across the room, and noticed how his friend tossed and muttered in his sleep.

“Great Gee!” he exclaimed, “but Wade’s got it pretty bad; I wonder if it’s the jim jams that is getting hold of him; I’ll sleep with one eye open, for he will need looking after. What a blessed thing it is that he has only one more day. Then he can celebrate and be happy. I have no doubt that by the end of another week, he will have brought things up to their old average.”

And with this conclusion, the man who a few years before took the first honors at Yale, shifted his position, so as to keep an eye on his comrade, and straightway proceeded to drop into a sound slumber, which was not broken until the sun rose on the following morning.

The sympathy for Wade was general. Had he not insisted upon carrying out in spirit and letter the full punishment pronounced upon him, there would have been a unanimous agreement to commute his term by one or two days at least; but all knew the grit or “sand” of the fellow too well to propose it.

His actions on the seventh day caused considerable disquietude. He had labored in the mines, in a desultory fashion up to that time, but he did not do a stroke of work during the concluding hours of his ordeal. It was observed by his partner, Budge Isham, that his appetite was unusually good and he seemed to be in high spirits. His friends attributed this to the closeness of his reward for his abstention, but he took several walks up the mountain side and was gone for a good while. He wore a smiling face and Vose Adams declared that he overheard him communing with himself, when he thought he was too far off for the act to be noticed.

“No use of talkin’,” whispered Vose; “Wade ain’t quite himself; he’s a little off and won’t be exactly right till after two or three days.”

“He has my sympathy,” remarked the parson, “but it will serve as a lesson which he will always remember.”

“And won’t we remember it?” said Ike Hoe, with a shudder. “When we’re disposed to say one of them unproper words, the picture of that miserable scamp going a full week without a touch of Mountain Dew, will freeze up our lips closer than a clam.”

That night the usual group was gathered at the Heavenly Bower. There were the same merry jests, the reminiscences, the conjectures how certain diggings would pan out, the small talk and the general good feeling. Common hardship and suffering had brought these rough men close to one another. They were indulgent and charitable and each one would have eagerly risked his life for the sake of the rest. Quick to anger, they were equally quick to forgive, mutually rejoicing in good fortune, and mutually sympathetic in sorrow.

There was more than one furtive glance at Ruggles, who was among the first arrivals. Whispers had passed around of his strange actions, and the surprise would not have been great had it been found that he had gone clean daft; but nothing in his manner indicated anything of that nature. He was as full of quip and jest as ever, and none was in higher or more buoyant spirits than he.

He suddenly called:

“Dawson, what time is it?”

The latest comer among them carried a watch which he drew out and examined.

“It is exactly half-past nine.”

“When did my punishment begin?”

“A week ago to-night, precisely at this hour; I began to fear that you had forgotten it.”

“No danger of my ever forgetting it,” grimly responded Ruggles; “what I want to know is whether I have served out my full term.”

“You have unquestionably.”

“Is there anyone here disposed to dispute this statement?” asked Wade, standing very erect and looking around in the faces of his friends.

No one interposed an objection. He had not only the sympathy but the respect of every one.

“You sarved your time like a man,” remarked Ike Hoe; “the week is up and you’ve give good measure.”

“Which the same being the case, I invite all to come forward and liquidate.”

Never was an invitation responded to with more enthusiasm. The grinning Ortigies set out a couple of bottles, intending as a matter of course to join in the celebration. He feelingly remarked:

“Wade, my heart bled for you and thar ain’t a pard here that wouldn’t have been willing to take your place–that is for a limited time,” the landlord hastened to add.

Each tumbler was half-filled with the fiery stuff and all looked in smiling expectancy at their host to give the cue. He poured a small quantity into his glass, and elevating it almost to a level with his lips, looked over the top.

“Are you ready, pards? here goes.”

Up went every glass and down went the stuff. But there was one exception. While the glass was at his lips, and while the familiar odor was in his nostrils, Wade Ruggles deliberately inverted the tumbler and emptied the contents on the floor.

It was the strangest incident that had ever occurred in New Constantinople.

CHAPTER VI
TEACHER AND PUPIL

The group looked at Wade Ruggles in breathless amazement. He had invited them to the bar to join in celebrating his release from thralldom; all had filled their glasses and he had raised his own to his lips, though several noticed that there was only a small amount of liquid in the tumbler. Then, when every glass was upraised and there was a general gurgling, he had turned his glass upside down and spilled every drop on the floor.

Before anyone could think of suitable terms in which to express his emotions, Wade said, with a smile that rather added than detracted from his seriousness:

“Pards, never again does a drop of that stuff go down my throat! I’ve suffered hell, but I’ve come out of the flames, and the one that fetched me through is the little gal which lays asleep in the next room.”

He did not attempt to deliver a temperance lecture to his friends, nor did they trifle with him. They questioned him closely as to how he had reached this extraordinary decision, and he gave a vivid and truthful account of his experience. It made several of the men thoughtful, but most of them felt dubious about his persistence in the new path he had laid out for himself.

“You know, boys, whether I’ve got a will of my own,” he quietly replied; “just wait and see how this thing comes out.”

It was noticed that Parson Brush was the most interested inquirer, and, though he had comparatively little to say, he left the Bower unusually early. He had begun his system of instruction with Nellie Dawson, and reported that she was making remarkably good progress. Had the contrary been the fact, it may be doubted whether it would have been safe for him to proclaim it.

And now the scene changes. It is the close of a radiant summer day in the Sierras. Far down in the cañon-like chasm between the mountainous spurs, nestled the little mining settlement, which had been christened but a short time before, New Constantinople. Here and there tiny wounds had been gouged into the ribs of the mountain walls, and the miners were pecking away with pick and shovel, deepening the hurts in their quest for the yellow atoms or dark ore which had been the means of bringing every man thousands of miles to the spot.

Far up toward the clouds were the towering, craggy peaks, with many a rent and yawn and table-land and lesser elevation, until, as if to check the climbing ambition of the prodigious monster, nature had flung an immense blanket of snow, whose ragged and torn edges lapped far down the sides of the crests. Ages ago the chilling blanket was tucked around the mountain tops, there to remain through the long stretch of centuries to follow.

Down the valley, at the bottom of the winding cañon, the air palpitated with the fervor of the torrid zone. He who attempted to plod forward panted and perspired, but a little way up the mountain side, the cool breath crept downward from the regions of perpetual ice and snow, through the balsamic pines and cedars, with a revivifying power that was grateful to all who felt its life-giving embrace.

The sun hovered in a sky of unclouded azure. It shot its arrows into the gullies, ravines and gorges, but made no impression on the frozen covering far up in cloudland itself. Long pointed ravelings on the lower edge of the mantle showed where some of the snow had turned to water, which changed again to ice, when the sun dipped below the horizon.

The miners were pigmies as they toiled in the sides of the towering mountain walls, where they had toiled for many a day. On the lip of a projecting crag, half a mile above were three other pigmies, who neither toiled nor spun. Viewed through a glass, it was seen that they wore stained feathers in their black hair dangling about their shoulders, with the blankets wrapped round their forms descending to their moccasined feet. They were watching in grim silence these proofs of the invasion of their homes by the children of another race, and mayhap were conjuring some scheme for driving them back into the great sea across which they had sailed to occupy the new land.

One of the Indians was a chieftain. He had come in violent contact with these hated creatures and he bore on his person the scars of such meeting. All carried bows and arrows, though others of their tribe had learned the use of the deadly firearms, which has played such havoc with the American race.

Suddenly the chief uttered an exclamation. Then drawing an arrow from the quiver over his shoulder, he fitted it to the string of his long bow, and pointing downward toward the group of miners, launched the shaft. Except for the power of gravity, it would have been a foolhardy effort, but guided by the wisp of feather twisted around the reed, the missile spun far outward over the cañon, and dived through the vast reach of space, as if it were endowed with life and determined to seek out and pierce the intruders. The black eyes of the three warriors followed the arrow until it was only a flickering speck, far below them; but, before that moment arrived, they saw that it was speeding wide of the mark. When at last, the sharp point struck the flinty rock, and the missile doubled over upon itself and dropped harmlessly to the bottom of the cañon, it was at such a distance from the miners, that they knew nothing of it. They never looked up, nor were they aware of the futile anger of the red men, who seeing how useless was everything of that nature, turned about and soon passed from view.

The incident was typical of the futility of the red man struggling against his inevitable doom at the hands of his white brother.

Half way between the bottom of the cañon and the lower fringe of the vast mantle of snow, a waterfall tumbled over the edge of a rock, and with many a twist and eddy found its way to the small stream, which rippled along the bottom of the gorge, until its winding course carried it beyond sight. Now and then a rift of wind blew aside some of the foam, like a wisp of snow, and brought the murmur more clearly to the ear of the listener, shutting out for the time, the faint hollow roar that was wafted from the region of pines and cedars. It was a picture of lonely grandeur and desolation, made all the more impressive by the tiny bits of life, showing in the few spots along the mountain wall.

At the rear of the row of cabins, and elevated perhaps fifty feet above, was the comparatively smooth face of a rock, several square rods in extent. At the base was abundant footing for two persons, Parson Brush and Nellie Dawson. The teacher had marked on the dark face of the rock with a species of chalk, all the letters large and small of the alphabet. They were well drawn, for the parson, like others in the settlement, was a man of education, though his many years of roughing it had greatly rusted his book knowledge.

Standing to one side of his artistic work, like a teacher of the olden time, the parson, with a long, trimmed branch in his hand, pointed at the different letters in turn and patiently waited for his little pupil to pronounce their names.

It never would have done to make the child keep her feet like an ordinary mortal. With great labor, three of the miners had carried a stone of considerable size to the spot, which served her as a seat, while receiving instruction. It is true that she never sat still for more than three minutes at a time, but that was enough to establish the indispensable necessity of a chair.

“You are doing very well, my dear,” said the parson, encouragingly; “you have received only a few lessons, but have mastered the alphabet. I notice that the ‘d’s’ and ‘b’s’ and ‘h’s’ and ‘q’s’ puzzle you a little now and then, but you have got them straight, and it is now time that we took a lesson in spelling.”

“Oh, I can’t do that, Mr. Brush,” protested the queen, rising from the chair, adjusting her skirts and sitting down again; “I never can spell.”

“What is it to spell?”

“I don’t know; what is it?”

“I can best answer your question by showing you. Have you ever seen a cat?”

“Do you mean a pussy?”

“Yes; some folks call it that.”

“Oh, yes; when we came from where we used to live,–I guess it must have been three or four hundred years ago, we brought my pussy along. Her name was Nellie, the same as mine.”

“What became of her?”

“She died,” was the sorrowful reply; “I guess she was homesick.”

“That was too bad. Now will you tell me what letter that is?”

“Why, Mr. Brush, don’t you know?”

“Yes, but I wish to find out whether you know.”

“It is C; anybody knows that.”

“And this one?”

“A.”

“That is right; now this one?”

“T; I hope you will remember, Mr. Brush, because I don’t like to tell you so often.”

The teacher continued to drill her, skipping about and pointing at the letters so rapidly in turn that he was kept bowing and straightening up like a jumping-jack. Then, allowing her to rest, he pronounced the letters in their regular order, giving them the sounds proper to the word itself. Nellie, who was watching closely and listening, suddenly exclaimed with glowing face:

“Why, that’s ‘cat’!”

“Of course; now can you say the letters without looking at them?”

After one or two trials she did it successfully.

“There! you have learned to spell ‘cat.’ You see how easy it is.”

“Does that spell ‘pussy’ too?”

“No,–only ‘cat.’ After a time you will be able to spell big words.”

“Let me try something else, Mr. Brush.”

The next word tackled was ‘dog,’ which was soon mastered. When this was accomplished, the teacher paused for a moment. He was trying to think of another word of three letters, but oddly enough could not readily do so.

“Ah,” he exclaimed, “here is another. Now give me the name of that letter,”

“D.”

“And that?”

“A.”

“And that?”

“M.”

“Now say them quickly, ‘d-a-m;’ what is the word?”

“Why, it’s ‘dam’; O, Mr. Brush, I heard you say that is a bad word.”

The teacher was thunderstruck and stammered:

“I didn’t think of that, but there are two kinds of ‘dam’ and this one is not a bad word. It means a bank of earth or stones or wood, that is put up to stop the flow of water.”