Chapter 5
“The pot bubbles loudest when the water's nearest the bottom,” he muttered, and turned to pick a fastidious way through the mud.
Life that night in the gambling hell went on much as usual. Teddy Karns “poured the rye,” and Faro Sam “slipped the cards,” whilst Babe worried over Bouncing Bet's intoxicated condition.
“It's Allie, you know,” Babe confided to Red Shirt Pete at midnight. “She took it awful hard, and Spellman, the new boss, wouldn't let 'er off tonight. I bin tellin' 'er Allie's better off, but she won't listen to nobody. She's just bin pourin' 'em down all evenin'. What's that?” at a loud banging on the doors. Some one opened them and Curly rode into the place on the handsome horse he had bought that morning.
“Well, boys, I'm cleaned! Tried to copper the jack in Hangtown and the whole $50,000 went. George, I'll be askin' for this place back, I guess.”
“This place belongs to me, Curly Gillmore.”
“Who says so?”
“This old lady says so,” covering him with his pistol.
Curly laughed, not too musically. “Well, boys, what am I bid for this horse? I need a grubstake.”
“Play you for him,” said Faro Sam, laconically.
“Done,” said Curly. A moment later he laughed once more and swung down off the Spanish thoroughbred. “He's yours. Well, good-night, boys.”
No one answered. He had, like Hadji the beggar, become in twenty-four hours again a drifter.
Babe sneaked out after him. “Here, Curly,” she slipped her hand into her bosom and held out the octagonal slug. “When Bet an' I reached Allie last night she was holdin' it in her little dead hand, an' there was such a smile on her face! You gave her that happy smile. God bless you for it! Now, you take this--”
But Curly turned away, blinking his eyes, and trying to swallow the lump in his throat. Babe stood watching him through her tears as he tramped down the street, out of the town on the road to the south.
* * * * *
Two years later in a hall in Sonora, a man strolled in to the card tables.
“Why, hel-lo, Curly!”
Curly glanced up briefly. “Hello, George.”
“Hear you've made another strike.”
“You can hear a lot that ain't true. This happens to be.”
“You know, I was telling--”
“Well, the sight of you don't put me in the mood to be told much.” There was an imperceptible shifting of the crowd around the table. They were moving away from Spellman.
“I was telling my wife--”
“My girl, you mean! It wasn't enough to keep my business, you had to go home an' marry my girl, too, didn't you?”
“Curly, for the love of heaven--”
“Take your hand off my arm, Pete. I'm going to kill this--. He's not the kind of man I thought he was.”
Two shots crashed in the room!
Spellman wavered through the smoke haze, then dropped his pistol and fell slowly across the card table littered with shining cards and poker chips. An overturned tallow-dip dropped in a pool of wine and rolled down against the dead man's cheek, dabbling it with the color which would never return to it again.
* * * * *
“Bet, ain't that Curly Gillmore that we knew three years ago at Coloma, when Allie died?”
“Must be a-gittin' blind! Where?”
“The feller all dressed up an' walkin' with the lady. Sure it is! Hi, Curly, hel-lo! It's Babe. Well, ain't I glad--”
The woman with Curly fixed Babe with a stony glare. “If you wish to converse with this... woman, kindly do so when your wife is not accompanying you,” she said to him in an angry undertone, and went majestically on.
“I'll come back, Babe. We've been married just a month and she doesn't understand. I'll be back later,” and he hurried off.
“Bet, did you see who that was with Curly? His wife, he said.”
“Aw-w, Babe, don't you fret! I guess we fill our little place out here in Californy near as much as some o' the fine ladies do.”
“I didn't care. No, I was thinkin' that the ways o' the Lord are curious. That lady used to be married to George Spellman.”
“An' Curly shot him, down at Sonora, last year!”
“Ye-aw.”
“Well, I'll be--.”
The Race of the Shoestring Gamblers
VIII
“Judge not too idly that our toils are mean, Though no new levies marshall on our green; Nor deem too rashly that our gains are small, Weighed with the prizes for which heroes fall.”
--Bret Harte.
If dancing was the first form of amusement to emanate from prehistoric savagery, then racing must surely have come next. It may possibly have come first. However, we shall leave the “theorizin”' to be settled by the lips of the first mummy whose centuries-old tissues shall be roused to full life by modern science. What has science not achieved? We have gone beyond wonder. We can only believe, and become blase!
Meantime there is still enough red blood in the modern effete productions of humans to enjoy a contest of stress and strain, and brain and brawn, and to gamble upon the outcome.
In the '49 days, racing was one of the most popular forms of chance, and it often reverted in bizarre tangents. This, then, is what happened at a golden fiesta during the week of races:
“Sweet Lady, are all my importunities to be in vain?”
“I must confess that I can not bring my mind to a decision, Mr. Saul,” answered Mistress Patty Laughton, blushing and curtsying prettily.
“It is surely not for your lack of worldly goods that you hesitate,” persisted Slick-heels Saul. “As for what your father is owing me, it shall, at the moment of your acceptance, be wiped entirely from the books.”
Patty was incensed at the hint of insolence in the gambler's allusion to her improvident father's financial condition.
“Believe me, Mr. Saul,” she said, with spirit, “no ulterior motive for worldly advancement has the power to coerce my afflections.”
“But you will consider my proposition of marriage?”
Patty's honest gaze encountered the appraising glint in the coot grey eyes of the foppish scape-grace before her. She lowered her own eys quickly to hid a hunted look in their dark depths as she answered:
“Sir, after the week of races, you shall have your answer.”
“And then I shall give up my present means of gaining a livelihood, and, repairing to San Francisco, shall enter into a profession more fitting the social station of the lady who is to become my wife.” He bowed deeply and withdrew, leaving Patty with a sad face and tearfilled eyes.
At last she straightened her tall figure resolutely. “I must not give way to tears. I can not! I will not! There must be some way to pay my father's debts beside this extremity, to which death is almost preferable. There is still a week's time. A week--only a week.” Panic overwhelmed her, and when someone gently took her hand, she cried aloud in terror.
“Why, Sweetheart, do I frighten you so? I waited long upon the mesa near the speed-track at the spot we had agreed upon, and when you did not come I fared forth to meet you.”
“Eric, it is Saul again. What can I do?”
“Dear, I have about $2000 which I am resolved to play on the races. I will win. I must. Old Irish Mike has brought over his whole stableful of saddle horses and I was raised in Kentucky. Do not despair, we shall beat the gambler at his own game. Here is Mike, now. Perhaps--Mike, it's a fine string of horses you've picked up.
“It is so. Many a thoroughbred I've bought that came all the way from Kentucky or Missouri. All that had the stamina to get to Californy, the one thing left that many of the poor devils could sell when they reached the coast.”
“Mike, some of them are faster than others, I suppose.”
“'Tis what half the shoe-string gamblers in the camp have tried to find out. I may have me own opinion, but it's to meself I'll kape it till afther the races are run. I will not spile sport. Have ye seen the last cayuse that's bein' put in?
“You mean the cow pony that came in with the bunch of cattle from the Napa Valley yesterday?”
“The same. The auld boy, whilst in his cups, is bettin' she can beat anythin' on four legs, even jack rabbits an' antelope. The precious gamblin' riff-raff are fillin' him up with tanglefoot, proper.”
“Why, Mike?” Mike glanced at the silent girl and then down into the gulch below.
“Miss Patty, have ye visited the claims?”
“No, but I should like to.”
“Come, then, if ye will so pleasure an old man. The men will not be workin' tomorrow. They will be that pleased to show a lady how to wash a pan o' dirt, they will be saltin' ivery pan wit' nuggets for ye! Eric, lad,” he called back to the tall young man, “ye might look the cow horse over. She has not been curried for long; yet, whisper, beauty is but skin deep an' the finest rapier is often encased in a rusty scabbard.”
“There is something going forward that Mike wishes me to see,” though Eric, as he hurried off to the livery stable. “That is why he took Patty away.”
A crowd of gamblers were just putting up a pair of riders on two horses.
“Hey, Eric Tallman, you used to own this horse. Can he beat this rat-tailed kyoodle that runs after steers?”
Eric laid a hand fondly on the magnificent black “half breed,” who had just enough mustang to give him the stamina and spirit and wildness characteristic of the Spanish-bred horse.
“Keep him on a steady rein and he'll beat anything in the mountains. I'd never have sold him except--.” He sighed, turning to the cattle horse. She was long necked, long legged, long haired, wall-eyed, lean, and badly in need of currying, and yet Irish Mike was no fool, and Mike knew Eric's extremity--his and the girl's whom he loved.
He noted the deep, broad chest, the tapering barrel and the tremendous driving power in the steel muscles of the hind quarters, but she drooped, spiritless. He turned again to the satin-coated half-breed.
“Any dust up yet?”
“Ye-aw, about ten thousand. Old fool seems to be well heeled. We've got 'im full to the eyes, down at String-halt Eddie's place, an' the boys are goin' to try the plugs out before they put up any more.” Two trial races were ridden and the sad cow horse was outrun with apparent ease.
The next morning as Patty went on her daily stroll to “take the air,” her way was blocked by a clamoring crowd of undesirables who were baiting a miserable old cattle man.
“I tell ye, gentlemen, I was indisposed. 'Twas the liquor talking. Surely you would not take advantage of a poor old man and his honest, hard-working little mount. Every day of her life she works. Gentlemen, I beg you--”
“Begging will get you nothing better than a good drubbing, you filthy cattle lout! If you don't pay up your bets, we'll take it out of your hide. I, for one, have a special use for my money at the week's end.”
It was Slick-heels Saul. Patty turned aside, sick at heart. This was the creature in whose power she was “like to fall.”
Upon her return she found the old cowboy sitting dejectedly under a liveoak bush. “Sir,” she began timidly, “you are in trouble. I should like to express my sympathy.”
He rose with suspicious nimbleness. “Now, bless your kind heart, Miss, to stop to console a sad old man.”
“I overheard what Mr. Saul said to you, sir. He is--”
“Without doubt, without doubt, he is everything you mention. Could you, now, be Mistress Patty Laughton, of Kentucky?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I knew your Grandfather Laughton, my child, and since I came here I have heard-of you,” he finished, with innate delicacy. Indeed, who had not heard her story?
She opened her silken reticule and drew forth a small, buckskin bag. “Will you not accept it? Yesterday, at the claims, I panned it out myself. I am sorry for your plight. I am sorry for anyone in the clutches of Slick-heels Saul.”
“But--. Can you--?”
“It does not matter. Your extremity is greater than mine.”
He stood looking after the slim girl who carried her head so high. “How like a Kentucky Laughton. Thoroughbred stock, all!” He tossed the bag in his hand. “'Tis why they are where they are today.” Then his keen old eyes softened. “And why they are what they are, today. Bless her tender heart to stoop to an old cattle man in the mire. As for this--I must see Irish Mike,” and he hurried off with surprising speed.
Bets rose. Every gambler had been apprised of the sure thing and flocked to the betting like bears to a honey tree.
“Have ye put up ye'r money, Eric?” asked Irish Mike, late the next night.
“Yes,” said Eric, briefly.
“Ah. So.” Mike's shrewd gave slid from the young man's face.
“They do say that Slick-heels Saul is beginnin' to worry over the $20,000 he's staked. The shoestring gang have gathered in the information fr'm th' express agent that the auld cattle man owns a big Spanish grant down in the valley, and has $50,00 to his credit in certificates of deposit from the express company. 'Tis as good as gold.”
“Mike, have you ever seen him before?”
“I never spile sport, me boy.”
It was the last day of the fiesta and the famous race was at hand.
“There is the old cattle man with his vaqueros.”
“Faith, they're a tough lookin' lot, all armed with a brace o' Colts apiece. 'Tis fun they'd have, cleanin' out a Fandango House.”
“Patty, girl, you are pale today.”
“Oh, Eric, 'tis the last day of grace. Heaven help us if--”
“See, Patty, gir-r-rl, they're fixin' for the foot race between Cherokee Bob an' that Australian squirt fr'm Sacramento.”
“Why are they placing men with guns every ten feet along the track?”
“The Indian can beat the Australian, but he thried to sell the boys out, an' if he slackens his gait by ever so little, the b'ys will begin shootin' sthraight before them. An' maybe afther the race, he'd better be runnin' right on into the next county.”
“What next?”
“Next is a jackass fight, an' then, the race!”
After the billigerent jacks had been led away, Red Pete suddenly took to the brush, accelerated by a fusillade of bullets.
“Welchin' his bets, he is, an' ivery man he owes is lettin' him have it.”
“Nary a hit!” wailed old Jack Horner. “The shootin' in this camp is a-gittin' vile! Time we was quittin so d---- much pick handlin, an' a-practicin' up. It's a reflection on the community. Why, there ain't been a Chinaman drilled with a bullet decent an' clean for weeks!”
“They're leading out the horses! Where did that little nigger jockey come from? The mare's got more ginger today.”
“Eric, surely your horse can win!”
“I don't know, dear.”
“He must! He must, or--”
“Slick-heels Saul's face is turnin' the color of me native isle,” chuckled Irish Mike. “Patty, me little ladybird, 'tis no time to be faintin'!”
“Oh, you can't know--”
“Faith, an' I know more than you t'ink. Bear up, Asthore, the darkest hour is just forninst the dawn. Whisht, now! They're off!”
“Here they come! The black is ahead! See, the nigger is lying flat on the mare's neck. She's closing up! Oh, they are neck and neck! I cannot look. Eric--The black is getting the whip. Good horse! They are even again! Ah, it is only for a moment. The mare... is over the line, first... It is all ended, life, love, honor, happiness... I cannot belong to that man! My poor old father. Dear old... for his sake, I must. I--”
“Patty, girl.”
“Eric, you are not to blame. You would wager on your own horse. 'Tis but natural. I must accept my fate with what fortitude I can summon. Please take me home. All the people staring. I cannot bear it long.”
But when Slick-heels Saul pressed forward to her side at the boarding-house steps, she was as stately and cold as the snow-hooded rocks of Granite Mountain.
“I have lost everything, but still I hold you to your promise.”
“I made no promise, sir,” she said haughtily.
“'But you will,” he answered meaningly, “tomorrow.”
“Stand aside!” thundered Eric.
“Come awn,” soothed Irish Mike. “Not with the lady here, Eric, b'y.”
“Patty, I cannot let you go! I will shoot the beast on sight.”
“That would not vindicate my father's honor. Hush, he is coming. I must remember that I am a Laughton.”
Eric turned to stare moodily out the dusty window. “There goes the cattle man with his followers and his strong-box. What he must have won! Here comes Mike. In a hurry, too! I wonder--”
Slick-heels Saul was bowing before the girl.
“Forgive an auld Irishman for intrudin' upon so tender a scene--” (Slick-heels glared at him malevolently), “but I have he-e-re a something for Mistress Patty Laughton,” pretending to read the inscription on the package he held out, “from the auld boy, there, who is just leavin' us.”
“'Bread cast upon the waters of sweet charity shall be returned an hundred fold. Blessed are the pure in heart for they are of the children of God,' he has written. Why, it is money!” gasped Patty, “and such a large amount!”
“He had me put up ye'r little bag o' gold on his mare. These are y'er winnings.” Mike smiled inwardly at the sum of money. “Sure, auld Andy must have put a rock or two in the wee buckskin bag,” he thought, but aloud he said, “I never spile sport, an' I could not tell ye before, but 'tis auld Andy Magee an' his famous racin' mare, the fastest quarter mile horse bechune the state of Missouri and the Pacific ocean.
“'Tis the same game he's pulled on the gamblin' crooks all the way from the Oregon line to Mariposa in the south. Even gettin' filled wit' tanglefoot is part of the dodge. They cannot touch him an' the vaqueros protect him fr'm the shootin'.”
“But what about the tryout?”
“Also in the schame. The mare was cross-shod; meanin', two of her shoes, the near front, an' the off hind wans, were twice as heavy as the others She could not run top speed in th'm f'r love nor gold. Yesterday she was shod in light racin' pads, an' under her own jockey. No horse on the coast could catch her. An' always, the smart racin' gamblers play th' auld man for a fool. Such is often the end of greed.
“Pay up the dad's gamblin' debts, an' bid this Knight o 'the Green Cloth a swate an' long fare-ye-well. Then go an' be happy, me child.”
The Dragon and the Tomahawk
IX
“Which I wish to remark, And my language is plain, That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar, Which the same I would rise to explain.”
--Bret Harte.
Certain learned archaeologists maintain that there are marked racial similarities between the American Indians and the Chinese--physical characteristics dating from unknown centuries, when the widely sundered continents were probably one.
However that may be, in the days of gold in California the greatest animosity existed between the Indians and the Chinamen. The feeling began, presumably, through intermarriage and flourished like the celebrated milkweed vine of the foothills, which has been known to grow--I quote a '49er, now dead, which is perhaps taking an advantage--12 inches in a day.
The tale is told of a Chinaman crossing a suspension footbridge, high over a winter torrent, from one part of a mining camp to another. An Indian ran to meet him. John Chinaman started back as quickly as he could on the swaying bridge. The faster Indian caught him, and, though miners on both shores sought to save the unfortunate “Chink” by a rain of bullets, it was too long range, and the Indian threw him to certain death in the river.
But the Indians did not always win, and this, then, is the tale of an encounter between Hop Sing and Digger Dan.
“In a game which held accountin', On an old Sierra mountain--”
* * * * *
“Whassa malla, to-o much nail-o ketchem clo'e (clothes)?” snorted Hop Sing, coming around to the side verandah with two pins in his hand, to where Miss Jo Halstead was embroidering an antimacassar in bright worsteds.
“Oh, Sing, did you hurt your hand?” she cried.
“'Nother boy heap mad.”
“Another boy? Aren't you doing the washing?”
“No do. Me--” but Jo had gone to the back yard. She found the tallest Chinaman she had ever seen, meekly bending to the washing, and quickly obeying the sharp orders rained upon his queue-circled poll by Hop Sing.
“But--Sing,” protested Jo, stifling any sort of smile.
“Him no good! No got place! Me pay one-dollar-hop him stop one month, Chinee house. He no pay. Me makem work.”
“Yes, but--what is that? Those are shots on the stage road over the hill! Oh, it must be another holdup! And Rand is shotgun messenger on the stage today. Hark! Hear the horses running! They're coming--fast. They're trying to make the town!”
“Ketchem, more horse run behind,” answered Sing, listening intently, his slanting eyes glittering.
“Sing, you go and see what--”
“Can do! You get that boy, make 'em wash, alle same. He no good! You look see?” Joe turned to spy the frightened deputy washerman wriggling under the verandah. “Bime-by I kill 'um,” remarked Sing, composedly. “No got time now. Missie Jo, wagon come, maybeso better you stop house-o.”
Six horses topped the long hill, pulling the huge rockaway stage. They were coming at full speed, and the near wheeler was dripping with blood. A dead man hung over the high dashboard, where his feet had caught when he fell.
Leaning far out over the team was a young man holding the reins in one hand, while he lashed the shot-crazed horses to their last ounce of speed with the fifteen-foot whip. His sawed-off shotgun lay on the seat beside him. It was Rand!
“Oh, thank God!” moaned Joe, but in another moment, “Poor old Salt Peter! They must have killed him when he wouldn't stop. Sing--” but Hop Sing had vanished, leaving only his white apron across the wash bench.
As the stage thundered around the turn at the end of the main street, the wounded horse threw up his head, coughed bloody spume over the pointers (the second pair), and fell. Men were already scrambling onto their horses, and loping in from all directions. Rand cut out a buckskin leader, mounted, and dashed frantically back up the road followed by a dozen horsemen.
“Rand, who was it?”
“I don't know, exactly. Thought I saw Digger Dan--” They were over the hill, and Jo heard no more.
Hop Sing did not turn up for supper, but his tall substitute did fairly well, and Jo did not worry. Some time after dark, a weary Rand appeared.
“Well, Miss Jo, we got Digger Dan. At least we thought it was, but he won't say a word except that he wants to see you. I've come to escort you over to the jail. Will you trust yourself to me that far?”
“That far, yes,” archly, “'tis but a short space.” Not for worlds would she have him guess her anxiety of the afternoon.
“I wish that 'twere for always.”
“What can Digger Dan want of me,” she evaded, thankful for the darkness which hid her blushes. “Rand, hear the wolves howling!”
“They are only coyotes, dear--Miss Joe, and afraid to venture into town except to the chicken roosts.”
“Why, it's Hop Sing!” exclaimed Jo, upon first sight of the prisoner. “They've cut off half his queue and braided his hair in two pig tails, and put different clothes on him, and he does look like an Indian. How very extraordinary!”
“Kethem Digger Dan cloe,” blazed Sing.
“That's a likely tale,” said the sheriff, “betcha he knows more about stage robbin' than he'll let out.”
“I am sure he does not about this one. He was with me every moment.” Nevertheless, she could not help remembering the substitute Chinaman whom Sing had put in to do his washing. But, though the complex Oriental nature will never be quite understood by the Occidental, she had confidence in the loyalty of the Chinaman, who had served them for five years, and whose life had once been saved by her father.
“Ah Sing, will you tell me what happened,” she asked, knowing well that a command would only elicit a stolid “No savvey.” Put as a favor, or a confidence, he might respond.
“Him Digger Dan, no good! He stealem me clo'e. Ketchem. Missa Land (Rand) an' plenty man come, he lun (run). I ketchem him! Tlee (three) lobber (robber) come. To-o muchee men. I no can fight! He--”
“They tied him on a horse and drove it down the canyon for us to follow, while they got away.”
“I tell you, he knows more about it than he's telling!”
“I don't think so, sheriff,” said Rand, positively. The man turned to him, suspiciously.