First Fam'lies of the Sierras Part 2

"Ginger blue!" cried the Parson, at last, bounding up from his bench, and throwing out his arms, as if throwing the words from the ends of his fingers. "Ginger blue! h.e.l.l-ter-flicker!" And here he danced around the cabin in a terrible state of excitement, to the tune of a string of iron-clad oaths that fell like chain-shot. They called him the Parson, because it was said he could outswear any man in the camp, and that was saying a great deal, wonderful as were his achievements in this line.

After the announcement, every one of the ten men there took a look at the little triangular fragment of looking-gla.s.s that was tacked up over the fire-place.

The arrival of Eve in Paradise was certainly an event; but she came too early in the world's history to create much sensation.

Stop here, and fancy the arrival of the first woman on earth to-day--in this day of committees, conventions, bra.s.s-band receptions, and woman's rights!

You imagine a princess had come to camp, a good angel, with song and harps, or, at the least, carpet-bags, and extended crinoline, waterfalls, and false hair, a pack-train of Saratoga trunks, and all the adjuncts of civilization. Not at all. She had secured a cabin, by some accident, very near to that of the boy poet, and settled down there quietly to go to work.

Yes, Limber Tim had "seed" her. She had ridden the bell mule of the pack-train down the mountain and into town. He told how the hats went up in the air from in and about the Howling Wilderness, and how the boys had gone up in rows to the broken looking-gla.s.s in the new barber-shop, and how some had even polished their bowie-knives on their boots, and sat down and tried to see themselves in the s.h.i.+ning blade, and adjust their dress accordingly.

In a little time Sandy bent silently over the table in the cabin, and with his sleeves rolled up high on his great hairy arms, and kneaded away at the dough in the gold pan in silence, while Limber Tim wrestled nervously with the frying-pan by the fire.

"Is she purty, Limber?"

"Purty, Sandy? She's purtier nur a spotted dog."

Sandy sighed, for he felt that there was little hope for him, and again fell into a moody silence.

There was a run that night on the little Jew shop at the corner of the Howling Wilderness. Before midnight the little kinky-headed Israelite had not a s.h.i.+rt, collar, or handkerchief, or white fabric of any kind whatever in the shop.

It might have been a bit of first-cla.s.s and old-fas.h.i.+oned chivalry that had lain dormant in these great hairy b.r.e.a.s.t.s, or it might have been their strict regard for the appropriateness of names that made these men at once call her the "Widder;" or it might have been some sudden revelation, a sort of inspiration, given to the first man who saw her as she rode down the mountain into camp, or the first man who spoke of her as she rode blus.h.i.+ng through their midst with her pretty face held modestly down; but be all that as it may, certainly there was no design, no delay, no hesitation about it from the first. And yet the appellation was singularly appropriate, and perhaps suggested to this poor, lone little woman, daring to cross the mountains, and to come down into this great chasm of the earth, among utter strangers, the conduct of her life.

The first woman came unheralded. Like all good things on earth, she came quietly as a snowflake down in their midst, without ado or demonstration.

Who she was or where she came from no one seemed to know. Perhaps the propriety of questioning occurred to some of the men of the camp, but it never found expression. I had rather say, however, that when they found there was a real live woman in camp, a decent woman, who was willing to work and take her place beside the men in the great battle--bear her part in the common curse which demands that we shall toil to eat, they quietly accepted the fact, as men do the fact of the baby's arrival, without any question whatever.

This was not really the first woman to come into the camp of this thousand of bearded men; and yet it was the first. There were now five or six, maybe more, down at the Forks--some from Sydney, some from New Orleans--waifs of the foam, painted children of pa.s.sion.

I am not disposed to put all these women in the catalogue of saints.

They were very devils, some of them.

These women set man against man, and that Winter made many a crimson place in the great snow banks in the streets. They started the first graveyard at the Forks; and kept it recruited too, every holiday, and almost every Sunday.

True, they did some good. I do not deny that. For example, I have in my mind now the picture of one, Bunker Hill, holding the head of a brave young fellow, shot through the temple, his long black hair in strings and streaming with blood. She held him so till he died; and mourned and would not be separated from him while a hope or a breath remained--the blood on her hands, on her face, all over her costly silks and lace, and on the floor.

Then she had him buried elegantly as possible; sent for a preacher away over to Yreka to say the funeral service; put evergreens about his grave, and refused to be comforted.

All this was very beautiful--a touch of tenderness in it all; but it was spoiled by the reflection that she had allured and almost forced the fellow into the fight, in hopes of revenging herself on the man whom she hated, and by whose hand he had to fall.

There was another woman there who was very benevolent--in fact, they all were liberal with their money, and were the first and freest to bestow upon the needy. This woman was a Mexican--from Durango, I think; and her name was Dolores. Gentle in her manner, patient, sad; not often in the difficulties that distinguished the others; but generally alone, and by far the best liked of all these poor Magdalens. This good nature of hers made her most accessible, and so she was most sought for deeds of charity. Toward Spring it was said she was ill; but no one seemed to know, or maybe no one cared.

If you will stop here to consider, it will occur to you that it is a man's disposition to avoid a sick woman; but a woman's disposition to seek out a sick man and nurse him back to health. This being true, here is a text for the Sorosis.

A bank had caved on a man--only a prospecter, a German, who lived away in a little cabin on the hill-side--and crushed him frightfully. The man was penniless and alone, and help had to come from the camp.

Some one went to Dolores. She was in her room or cabin, out a little way from any one, alone and ill, sitting up in bed, looking "wild enough,"

as the man afterwards stated. He told her what had happened. She leaned her head on her hand a moment, and then lifted it, looked up, and drew a costly ring from her finger, the only one on her pale, thin hand, and gave it to the man, who hurried away to get other aid elsewhere.

Now there was nothing very odd or unusual in a woman giving a ring. That was often done. In fact, there was scarcely any coin on the Creek. In cases of this kind a man generally gave the biggest nugget or specimen he had in his pocket, a ring if he could not do better, sometimes a six-shooter, and so on, and let them make the best of it, but always something, if that something was possible. Let this be said and remembered of these brave old men of the mountains.

A few days after this, it came out that Dolores was dead. Then it was whispered that she had starved to death. This last was said with a sort of a shudder. It came out with a struggle between the teeth, as if the men were afraid to say it.

On investigation, it was found that the poor woman had been ill some time, had lost her bloom and freshness; and what becomes of a woman of this kind, who has no money, when she has lost her bloom and strength?

never had much money, always gave it away to the needy as fast as she got it, and so had nothing to fight the world with when she fell ill.

Then the man with the rent, the lord of the log cabin--a cross between a Shylock-Jew and a flint-faced Yankee--took her rings and jewels, one by one. The baker grew exacting, and finally the butcher refused to bring her meat. And that was all there was of it. That was the end.

That butcher never succeeded there after that. Some one wrote "Small Pox" over his shop every night for a month, and it was shunned like a pest-house. But all that did not bring poor Dolores back to life. The ring was an antique gold, with a costly stone, and a Spanish name, which showed her to have been of good family. A wedding ring.

But this woman, however, was an exception, and at best, when in health, save her generous and sympathetic nature, was probably no angel.

One of these meddlesome men, a hungry, lean, unsatisfied fellow; a man with a nose sharp and inquisitive enough to open a cast-iron cannon ball, said one night to a knot of men at the Howling Wilderness saloon:

"Why widder? why call her the widder? who knows that she was ever married at all?"

A man silently and slowly arose at this, and firmly doubled up his fist.

He stood there towering above that fellow, and looking down upon that sharp inquisitive nose as if he wanted to drive it back into the middle of his head.

"But maybe she's a maid," answered the terrified nose in haste and fear.

The other sat down, slowly and silently, as he had risen, and perfectly satisfied that no insult had been intended. This was Sandy.

The Judge was there, and as the conversation had fallen through by this man's remark, he felt called upon to resume it in a friendly sort of a way, and said:

"No, no, she's not a maid, I reckon, not an old maid." He scratched his bald head above his ear and went on, for the big man at his side began to double up his knuckles. "I should say she's a widder. You see, the maids never gits this far. They seem to spile first."

The Judge spoke as if talking of a sort of pickled oyster or smoked ham.

CHAPTER IV.

SUNDAY IN THE SIERRAS.

Never did the press feed on a political war, or a calumniated poet, as these men of the Howling Wilderness fed on this one woman of the Forks.

Yet let it be remembered they always, and to a man, with scarce an exception, spoke of her with the profoundest respect. Few of them had had the pleasure of seeing her, fewer still of speaking to her, yet she was the ever-present topic. Even the weather in a London Winter is hardly more popular a theme, than was the Widow when they met in knots in the little town after the day's work was over.

The brave, silent, modest little woman had put her hands to the plow at once. These men knew perfectly well that honest people had no business there but to work; and when her little hands, that did not look at all as if they had been used to toil, took hold of the hard fact of life, and the little face bent above the wash-tub, and the fine white brow glistened with a diadem of diamonds that grew there as a price for bread, they loved her to a man.

What strange savage scenes were enacted here before the arrival of this one good woman. Every Sat.u.r.day night was a sort of carnival of death.

Men went about from drinking-shop to drinking-shop, howling like Modocs, swinging their pistols, proclaiming themselves chiefs, and seeking for b.l.o.o.d.y combat. They gave the country a name and a reputation in this first year of gold mining in the Sierras that will survive them every one.

On Sunday the scene was somewhat changed. With all their savagery and wildness and nonsense, it was always understood that the work of the week must go on, and Sunday was the great day of preparation.

Sunday was not a day of rest. It is true the miners slept a little later on Sunday morning, but Sunday was to all a day of terror and petty troubles beyond measure. It always came to some one's turn, every Sunday morning, in every mess or cabin, to begin his week's cooking for his mess, and for that reason, if for no other, there was at least one man miserable in every cabin whenever the dreaded Sunday came.