The Comstock Club Part 5

"We had been having rough times for a good while; thar had been sickness in the train; some of the best animals had been poisoned with alkali; thar had been some Injun scares--it was in '57--and we all had been broken, more or less, of our rest, I in particular, was a good deal jolted up; was nervous and full of starts and s.h.i.+vers. I suspect thar was a little fever on me. We halted one morning on the desert, to rest the stock, and make some coffee. It was about eight o'clock. We had been traveling since sundown the night before, crossing the great desert, and hoped to reach Truckee River that afternoon.

"While resting, a mighty desire took possession of me to see the river, and to feel that the desert was crossed.

"I had a saddle mule that was still in good condition. I had petted him since he was three days old, had broken him, and he and myself were the best of friends. His mother was a thoroughbred Kentucky mare; from her he had inherited his courage and staying qualities, while he had also just enough of his father's stubbornness to be useful, for it held his heart up to the work when things got rough.

"I looked over the train; it was all right; I was not needed; would not be any more that day.

"The mule was brought up in the Osage hills, and I had named him Osage, which after awhile became contracted to Sage. I went to him and looked him over. He was quietly munching a bacon sack. I took a couple of quarts of wheaten flour, mixed it into a soft paste, with water from one of the kegs which had been brought along, and gave it to him. He drank it as a hungry boy drinks porridge, and licked the dish clean. The journey had impressed upon him the absolute need of exercising the closest economy.

"When he had finished his rather light breakfast, I whispered to him that if he would stand in with me, I would show him, before night, the prettiest stream of water--snow water--in the world. I think he understood me perfectly. Telling the people of the train that I would go ahead and look out a camping place, I took my shotgun, put a couple of biscuits in my pocket, and mounted Sage. He struck out at once on his long swinging walk.

"It was an August morning and had been hot ever since the sun rose. That is a feature out thar on the desert in the summer. The nights get cold, but so soon as the sun comes up, it is like going down into the Comstock. In fifteen minutes everything is steaming. Old Ben Allen, down on the borders of the Cherokee Nation, never of a morning, warmed up his n.i.g.g.e.rs any livelier than the sun does the desert.

"I rode for a couple of hours. As I said, I was weak and nervous. In the sand, Sage's feet hardly made any sound, and the glare and the silence of the desert were around and upon me. If you never experienced it you don't know what the silence of the desert means. Take a day when the winds are laid; when in all directions, as far as your vision extends, thar is not a moving thing; when all that you can see is the brazen sky overhead, and the scarred breast of the earth, as if smitten and transfixed by Thor's thunderbolts, lying p.r.o.ne and desolate like the face of a dead world, before you; and withal not one sound: absolute stillness; and strong nerves after awhile become strained. On me, that forenoon, my surroundings became almost intolerable. I had been on foot driving team all night; I had eaten nothing since midnight, and then had only forced down a small slice of bread and a cup of horrible black coffee, and was really not more than half myself. One moment I was chilly; the next was perspiring, and sometimes it seemed as though I should suffocate. With my nerves strung up as they were, I guess it would not have required much to give me a panic.

"Just then, out against the sun to the southward, and apparently a mile away, I saw something. Talk about being impressed! that was my time. I was sure I saw five hundred Indian warriors, all mounted. They were wheeling in black squadrons on the desert, wheeling and forming, as I thought. Horses and men were all black, and now and then as they wheeled or swung to and fro, I marked what I was sure was the gleam of steel.

They evidently had seen me: I expected every moment to hear their yell and wondered that I did not feel the tremble of the earth beneath their horses' feet; I was too nearly paralyzed to try to escape. I slipped or fell, I don't know which, from my mule, and lay panting like a tired hound upon the sand. But I could not keep my eyes from the terrible sight before me. Still those tawny warriors kept wheeling and forming, and as I believed, menacing me.

"At length I grew a little calmer, and remember that I explained to myself that the reason I did not hear the thunder of their horses' feet, was because of the sand, and from the fact that the ponies could not be shod. But I wondered more and more where an Indian tribe could get so many black horses.

"Once, when they seemed particularly furious, and just on the point of charging down upon me; I remember that I said to myself: 'If they eat me they will have to broil me in the sun, for thar is no fuel here.' All the time too, I was pitying Sage, and my own voice frightened me as I unconsciously said: 'Poor Sage, it is a hard fate to be faithful and suffer as you have and then fall into the hands of savages.'

"When a little more under my own control, I cautiously rose to my feet and looked at the mule. It was no use. On top of the fatigue of coming quite two thousand miles, he had, on that morning, been constantly traveling for fourteen hours, with only two rests of thirty minutes each. He never could get away from those fresh ponies. I looked back in the direction of the train; it was nowhar in sight and must have been back probably five miles.

"In this strait I looked up again toward my savages. At that very moment the charge commenced; the whole array was bearing down upon me. I took my gun from the horn of the saddle and sat down on the ground. I felt--but no matter how I felt; I only know that at that moment I would have given my note for a large sum to have been back in Missouri.

"On they swept, and I watched them coming. But somehow they began to grow smaller and smaller, and in an instant more the squadron vanished.

Where the moment before an armed band, terrible with life and bristling with fury, had shone upon my eyes, now all that there was to be seen was a flock of perhaps twenty ravens, flying with short flights, and hopping and lighting around some little thing, which lay above the level of the desert. I mounted Sage and rode out to the spot, some four hundred yards away.

"I found another road, and strung along it, were the carca.s.ses of a good many cattle that had died in emigrant trains. The ravens were hopping about these carca.s.ses and flying from one to another. I had heard of the mirage of the desert, when a boy in school, and suddenly 'I dropped upon' the whole business. By some mighty refraction of the beams of light, these miserable scavengers of the desert had been magnified into formidable, mounted warriors, and the glint of steel that I had seen, was but the s.h.i.+mmer of sunbeams upon their black wings.

"Again I headed Sage for the river. In a little while he commenced to stretch out his nose; soon, of his own accord, he quickened his pace to a trot, a little later he took up his long lope and never relaxed his speed until he drove his nose into the delicious water of the Truckee. I dismounted and joined him. Right there we each took the biggest and longest drink of our lives; then I gave Sage one of my biscuits and ate the other myself, and we both felt immensely refreshed. I stripped the saddle and bridle from the mule and let him go. The river bank was green with gra.s.s and Sage was happy.

"Throwing myself upon the ground, and laying my head upon the saddle, I composed myself for a sleep.

"I was greatly in need of sleep, but the moment I closed my eyes, here came my black cavalry charging down upon me again, and I sprang up with a cry. Of all impressive scenes, that was my biggest one sure. I see it in my dreams still, at times, and I never, from this mountain side, look down to where the sand clouds are piling up their dunes over toward the Sink of the Carson, that I do not instinctively take one furtive glance in search of my savages."

"I had a livelier mirage than that once," said Miller with a laugh. "I was prospecting for quartz in the foothills of Rogue River Valley, Oregon, and looking up, I thought I saw four or five deer, lying under a tree, on a hill side, about three hundred yards away. I raised the sight on my gun, took as good aim as I could on horseback, and blazed away.

"In a second, four of those Rogue River Indians sprang from the ground and made for me. I had a good horse, but they ran me six miles before they gave up the chase. No more mirages like that for me, if you please."

"I had a worse one than either of yees," chimed in Corrigan. "It was in that tough winter of '69. I had been placer mining up by Pine Grove, in California, all summer. I had a fair surface claim, and by wurking half the time, I paid me way and had a few dollars besides. The other half of the time I was wurking upon a dape cut, through bid rock, to get a fall in which I could place heavy sluices, and calculated that with the spring I could put in a pipe, and hydraulic more ground in one sason than I could wurk in the ould way in tin. One day, late in the autumn, I went up to La Porte to buy supplies, and on the night that I made that camp it began to snow. When once it got shtarted, it just continued to snow, as it can up in those mountains, and niver "lit up" for four hours at a time for thray wakes. It began to look as though the glacial period had returned to the wurld.

"When I wint into town, I put up at Mrs. O'Kelly's boardin' and lodgin'

house. Mrs. O'Kelly was a big woman, weighin' full two hundred pounds, and she was a business woman. She didn't pretind to be remainin' in La Porte jist for her hilth.

"But there was a beautiful girl waitin' on the table in Mrs. O'Kelly's home. Her name was Maggie Murphy, and she was as thrim and purty a girl as you would wish to mate. She had bright, cheery ways, and whin she wint up to a table and sung out 'Soup'? all the crockery in the dinin'

room would dance for joy.

"Of an avenin' I used, after a few days, to visit a bit with Maggie.

Some one had told about the camp that I had a great mine, and was all solid, and I was willin' to have the delusion kipt up, anyway until the storm saised. Maggie, I have a suspicion, had hurd the same story, for she was exceedingly gracious loike to me. One avenin,' as I was sayin'

'good night'--we were growin' mighty familiar loike thin--I said 'Maggie,' says I, 'the last woman I iver kissed was my ould mother, may I not kiss you, for I love you, darlint?' 'Indade you shall not,' says she, but in spite of that, somethin' in her eyes made me bould loike, and I saised upon and hild her--but she did not hould so very hard--and I kissed her upon chake and lips and eyes, and me arms were around her, and her heart was throbbin' warm against mine, and me soul was in the siventh heaven.

"After awhile we quieted down a bit, and with me arms shtill around her, I asked, didn't she think Corrigan was a purtier name nor Murphy, and as I could not change my name fur her sake, wouldn't she change hers fur moine?

"Thin with the tears s.h.i.+nin' loike shtars in her beautiful eyes, she raised up her arms, let thim shtale round me neck, and layin' her chake against me breast, which was throbbin' loike a stone bruise, said, said she, 'Yis, Barney, darlint.'

"I had niver thought Barney was a very beautiful name before, but jist then it shtruck upon me ear swater thin marriage bells."

Here Miller interrupted with, "You felt pretty proud just then, did you not, Barney?"

"The Koohinoor would not hiv made a collar b.u.t.ton fur me."

"Don't interrupt him, Miller," interposed Carlin; "let Barney tell us the rest of the story."

"There was a sofay near by. I drew Maggie to it, sat down and hild her to me side. She was pale, and we were both sort of trembly loike.

"We did not talk much at first, but after awile Maggie said, suddent, said she: 'What a liar you are, Barney!'

"And I said 'for why?' And she said 'to say you had niver kissed a woman since you had lift your ould mother. You have had plinty of practice.'

"'And how do you know,' says I, and thin--but no matter, we had to begin all over again.

"After awhile I wint away to bid, and talk about your mirages; all that night there was a convoy of angels around me, and the batein' of their wings was swater than the echoes that float in whin soft music comes from afar over still wathers.

"One of the angels had just folded her wings and taken the form of Maggie, and was jist bend in' over me, whisperin' beautiful loike, whin, oh murther, I was wakened with a cry of: 'Are ye there now, ye blackguard?' I opened me eyes, and there stood Mrs. O'Kelly, with a broomstick over her head, and somethin' in her eye that looked moighty like a cloudburst.

"'Ye thavin' villin,' said she, 'pertendin' to be a rich miner, and atin' up a poor woman all the time.' Thin she broke down intoirely and comminced wailin.

"'Oh, Mr. Corrigan,' she howled through her sobs, 'How could yees come here and impose upon a unsuspectin' widdie; you know how hard I wurk; that I am up from early mornin' until the middle of the night, cookin'

and shwapin' and makin' beds, and slavin' loike a black n.i.g.g.e.r, and----'

by this time she recovered her timper and complated the sintence with: 'If yees don't pay me at once I'll--I'll, I'll--'

"I found breath enough after awhile to tell her to hould on. My pantaloons were on a chair within aisy rache; I s.n.a.t.c.hed thim up, sayin'

as I did so: 'How much is your bill, Mrs. O'Kelly?'

"'Thray wakes at iliven dollars is thray and thirty dollars, and one extra day is a dollar and five bits, or altogither, thirty-four dollars and five bits.'

"I shtill had siveral twinty-dollar paces; I plunged me hand into the pocket of me pants, saized them all, thin let them drop upon aich other, all but two, and holdin' these out, said sharply, and still with the grand air of a millionaire: 'The change, if you plase, Mrs. O'Kelly.'

"She took the money, gazed upon it a moment with a dazed and surprised look; thin suddenly her face was wrathed in smiles, and as softly as a woman with her voice (it sounded loike a m.u.f.fled thres.h.i.+ng machine) could, said: 'Take back your money. Mr. Corrigan, and remain as long as you plase. I was only jist after playin' a bit of a trick upon yees.

What do yees think I care for a few beggarly dollars?'

"But I could not see it; I remained firm. Again I said: 'The change, if you plase, Mrs. O'Kelly, and as soon too as convanient.'

"She brought me the change, sayin': 'I'll have your brikfast smokin' hot for yees, in five minutes, Mr. Corrigan.'

"I put on me clothes and looked out. The storm had worn itself out at last. I wint down stairs to the dinin' room door, and beckoned to Maggie. She came to me, and there ware the rale love-light in her beautiful eyes. I can see her now. She was straight as a pump rod; her head sat upon her nick like a picture; the nick itsilf was white loike snow--but niver mind.