Part 2

Soon the hopeful ones were reduced to half a dozen of these. Yankee Sam was the favorite among the betting men, for Sam, knowing the habits of New England damsels, went to Placerville one Friday, and returned next day with a horse and buggy. On Sunday he triumphantly drove Miss Brown to the nearest church. Ten to one was offered on Sam that Sunday afternoon, as the boys saw the demure and contented look on Miss Brown’s face as she returned from church. But Samuel followed in the sad footsteps of many another great man, for so industriously did he drink to his own success that he speedily developed into a bad case of _delirium tremens_.

Then Carondelet Joe, calmly confident in the influence of his wonderful pants, led all odds in betting. But one evening, when Joe had managed to get himself in the front row and directly before the little teacher, that lady turned her head several times and showed signs of discomfort. When it finally struck the latter that the human breath might, perhaps, waft toward a lady perfumes more agreeable than those of mixed drinks, he abruptly quitted the school and the camp.

Flush, the poker champion, carried with him to the singing-school that astounding impudence which had long been the terror and admiration of the camp. But a quality which had always seemed exactly the thing when applied to poker seemed to the boys barely endurable when displayed toward Miss Brown.

One afternoon, Flush indiscreetly indulged in some triumphant and rather slighting remarks about the little teacher. Within fifteen minutes, Flush’s final earthly home had been excavated, and an amateur undertaker was making his coffin.

An untimely proposal by a good-looking young Mexican, And his prompt rejection, left the race between Toledo and a Frenchman named Lecomte. It also left Miss Brown considerably frightened, for until now she had imagined nothing more serious than the rude admiration which had so delighted her at first.

But now, who knew but some one else would be ridiculous? Poor little Miss Brown suffered acutely at the thought of giving pain, and determined to be more demure than ever.

But alas! even her agitation seemed to make her more charming to her two remaining lovers.

Had the boys at the saloon comprehended in the least the cause of Miss Brown’s uneasiness, they would have promptly put both Lecomte and Toledo out of the camp, or out of the world. But to their good-natured, conceited minds it meant only that she was confused, and unable to decide, and unlimited betting was done, to be settled upon the retirement of either of the contestants.

And while patriotic feeling influenced the odds rather in Toledo’s favor, it was fairly admitted that the Frenchman was a formidable rival.

To all the grace of manner, and the knowledge of women that seems to run in Gallic blood, he was a man of tolerable education and excellent taste. Besides, Miss Brown was so totally different from French women, that every development of her character afforded him an entirely new sensation, and doubled his devotion.

Toledo stood his ground manfully, though the boys considered it a very bad sign when he stopped drinking, and spent hours in pacing the ground in front of his hut, with his hands behind him, and his eyes fixed on the ground.

Finally, when he was seen one day to throw away his faithful old pipe, heavy betters hastened to “hedge” as well as they might.

Besides, as one of the boys truthfully observed, “He couldn’t begin to wag a jaw along with that Frenchman.”

But, like many other young men, he could talk quite eloquently with his eyes, and as the language of the eyes is always direct, and purely grammatical, Miss Brown understood everything they said, and, to her great horror, once or twice barely escaped talking back.

The poor little teacher was about to make the whole matter a subject of special prayer, when a knock at the door startled her.

She answered it, and beheld the homely features of the judge.

“I just come in to talk a little matter that’s been botherin’ me some time. Ye’ll pardon me ef I talk a little plain?” said he.

“Certainly,” replied the teacher, wondering if he, too, had joined her persecutors.

“Thank ye,” said the judge, looking relieved. “It’s all right. I’ve got darters to hum ez big ez you be, an’ I want to talk to yer ez ef yer was one uv ’em.”

The judge looked uncertain for a moment, and then proceeded:

“That feller Toledo’s dead in love with yer—uv course you know it, though ’tain’t likely he’s told yer. All I want to say ’bout him is, drop him kindly. He’s been took so bad sence you come, that he’s stopped drinkin’ an’ chewin’ an’ smokin’ an’ cussin’, an’ he hasn’t played a game at The Nugget sence the first singin’-school night. Mebbe this all ain’t much to you, but you’ve read ’bout that woman that was spoke well uv fur doin’ what she could. He’s the fust feller I’ve ever seen in the diggin’s that went back on all the comforts uv life, an’—an’ I’ve been a young man myself, an’ know how big a claim it’s been fur him to work. I ain’t got the heart to see him spiled now; but he _will_ be ef, when yer hev to drop him, yer don’t do it kindly. An’—just one thing more—the quicker he’s out of his misery the better.”

The old jail-bird screwed a tear out of his eye with a dirty knuckle, and departed abruptly, leaving the little teacher just about ready to cry herself.

But before she was quite ready, another knock startled her.

She opened the door, and let in Toledo himself.

“Good-evin’, marm,” said he, gravely. “I just come in to make my last ’fficial call, seein’ I’m goin’ away to-morrer. Ez there anything the schoolhouse wants I ken git an’ send from ’Frisco?”

“Going away!” ejaculated the teacher, heedless of the remainder of Toledo’s sentence.

“Yes, marm; goin’ away fur good. Fact is, I’ve been tryin’ to behave myself lately, an’ I find I need more company at it than I git about the diggin’s. I’m goin’ some place whar I ken learn to be the gentleman I feel like bein’—to be decent an’ honest, an’ useful, an’ there ain’t anybody here that keers to help a feller that way—nobody.”

The ancestor of the Browns of Middle Bethany was at Lexington on that memorable morning in ‘75, and all of his promptness and his courage, ten times multiplied, swelled the heart of his trembling little descendant, as she faltered out:

“There’s one.”

“Who?” asked Toledo, before he could raise his eyes.

But though Miss Brown answered not a word, he did not repeat his question, for such a rare crimson came into the little teacher’s face, that he hid it away in his breast, and acted as if he would never let it out again.

Another knock at the door.

Toledo dropped into a chair, and Miss Brown, hastily smoothing back her hair, opened the door, and again saw the judge.

“I jest dropped back to say——” commenced the judge, when his eye fell upon Toledo.

He darted a quick glance at the teacher, comprehended the situation at once, and with a loud shout of “Out of his misery, by thunder!” started on a run to carry the news to the saloon.

* * * * *

Miss Brown completed her term, and then the minister, who was on the local Board, was called in to formally make her tutor for life to a larger pupil. Lecomte, with true French gallantry, insisted on being groomsman, and the judge gave away the bride. The groom, who gave a name very different from any ever heard at the Flat, placed on his bride’s finger a ring, inscribed within, “Made from gold washed by Huldah Brown.” The little teacher has increased the number of her pupils by several, and her latest one calls her grandma.

JIM HOCKSON’S REVENGE.

I.

“YE don’t say?”

“I do though.”

“Wa’al, I never.”

“Nuther did I—adzackly.”

“Don’t be provokin’, Ephr’m—what makes you talk in that dou’fle way?”

“Wa’al, ma, the world hain’t all squeezed into this yere little town of Crankett. I’ve been elsewheres, some, an’ I’ve seed some funny things, and likewise some that wuzn’t so funny ez they might be.”

“P’r’aps ye hev, but ye needn’t allus be a-settin’ other folks down. Mebbe Crankett ain’t the whole world, but it’s seed that awful case of Molly Capins, and the shipwreck of thirty-four, when the awful nor’easter wuz, an’——”

“Wa’al, wa’al, ma—don’t let’s fight ’bout it,” said Ephr’m, with a sigh, as he tenderly scraped down a new ax-helve with a piece of glass, while his wife made the churn-dasher hurry up and down as if the innocent cream was Ephr’m’s back, and she was avenging thereon Ephr’m’s insults to Crankett and its people.

Deacon Ephraim Crankett was a descendant of the founder of the village, and although now a sixty-year old farmer, he had in his lifetime seen considerable of the world. He had been to the fishing-banks a dozen times, been whaling twice, had carried a cargo of wheat up the Mediterranean, and had been second officer of a ship which had picked up a miscellaneous cargo in the heathen ports of Eastern Asia.

He had picked up a great many ideas, too, wherever he had been, and his wife was immensely proud of him and them, whenever she could compare them with the men and ideas which existed at Crankett; but when Ephr’m displayed his memories and knowledge to her alone—oh, that was a very different thing.

“Anyhow,” resumed Mrs. Crankett, raising the lid of the churn to see if there were any signs of butter, “it’s an everlastin’ shame. Jim Hockson’s a young feller in good standin’ in the Church, an’ Millie Botayne’s an unbeliever—they say her father’s a reg’lar infidel.”

“Easy, ma, easy,” gently remonstrated Ephr’m. “When he seed you lookin’ at his pet rose-bush on yer way to church las’ Sunday, didn’t he hurry an’ pull two or three an’ han’ ’em to ye?”

“Yes, an’ what did he hev’ in t’other han’?—a Boasting paper, an’ not a Sunday one, nuther! Millicent ain’t a Christian name, nohow ye can fix it—it amounts to jest ’bout’s much ez she does, an’ that’s nothing. She’s got a soft face, an’ purty hair—ef it’s all her own, which I powerfully doubt—an’ after that ther’s nothin’ to her. She’s never been to sewin’ meetin’, an’ she’s off a boatin’ with that New York chap every Saturday afternoon, instead of goin’ to the young people’s prayer-meetin’s.”

“She’s most supported Sam Ransom’s wife an’ young uns since Sam’s smack was lost,” suggested Ephr’m.

“That’s you, Deac’n Crankett,” replied his wife, “always stick up for sinners. P’r’aps you’d make better use of your time ef you’d examine yer own evidences.”

“Wa’al, wife,” said the deacon, “she’s engaged to that New York feller, ez you call Mr. Brown, so there’s no danger of Jim bein’ onequally yoked with an onbeliever. An’ I wish her well, from the bottom of my heart.”

“_I_ don’t,” cried Mrs. Crankett, giving the dasher a vicious push, which sent the cream flying frantically up to the top of the churn; “I hope he’ll turn out bad, an’ her pride’ll be tuk down ez——”

The deacon had been long enough at sea to know the signs of a long storm, and to know that prudence suggested a prompt sailing out of the course of such a storm, when possible; so he started for the door, carrying the glass and ax-helve with him. Suddenly the door opened, and a female figure ran so violently against the ax-helve, that the said figure was instantly tumbled to the floor, and seemed an irregular mass of faded pink calico, and subdued plaid shawl.

“Miss Peekin!” exclaimed Mrs. Crankett, dropping the churn-dasher and opening her eyes.

“Like to ha’ not been,” whined the figure, slowly arising and giving the offending ax-helve a glance which would have set it on fire had it not been of green hickory; “but—_hev_ you heerd?”

“What?” asked Mrs. Crankett, hastily setting a chair for the newcomer, while Ephr’m, deacon and sixty though he was, paused in his almost completed exit.

“_He’s_ gone!” exclaimed Miss Peekin.

“Oh, I heerd Jim hed gone to Califor——”

“Pshaw!” said Miss Peekin, contemptuously; “that was days ago! I mean Brown—the New York chap—Millie Botayne’s lover!”

“Ye don’t?”

“But I do; an’ what’s more, he _had_ to. Ther wuz men come after him in the nighttime, but he must hev heard ’em, fur they didn’t find him in his room, an’ this mornin’ they found that his sailboat was gone, too. An’ what’s more, ther’s a printed notice up about him, an’ he’s a defaulter, and there’s five thousand dollars for whoever catches him, an’ he’s stole _twenty-five_, an’ he’s all described in the notice, as p’ticular as if he was a full-blood Alderney cow.”

“Poor fellow,” sighed the deacon, for which interruption he received a withering glance from Miss Peekin.

“They say Millie’s a-goin’ on awful, and that she sez she’ll marry him now if he’ll come back. But it ain’t likely he’ll be such a fool; now he’s got so much money, he don’t need hern. Reckon her an’ her father won’t be so high an’ mighty an’ stuck up now. It’s powerful discouragin’ to the righteous to see the ungodly flourishin’ so, an’ a-rollin’ in ther wealth, when ther betters has to be on needles all year fur fear the next mack’ril catch won’t ‘mount to much. The idee of her bein’ willin’ to marry a defaulter! I can’t understand it.”

“Poor girl!” sighed Mrs. Crankett, wiping one eye with the corner of her apron. “I’d do it myself, ef I was her?”

The deacon dropped the ax-helve, and gave his wife a tender kiss on each eye.

II.

PERHAPS Mr. Darwin can tell inquirers why, out of very common origin, there occasionally spring beings who are very decided improvements on their progenitors; but we are only able to state that Jim Hockson was one of these superior beings, and was himself fully aware of the fact. Not that he was conceited at all, for he was not, but he could not help seeing what every one else saw and acknowledged.

Every one liked him, for he was always kind in word and action, and every one was glad to be Jim Hockson’s friend; but somehow Jim seemed to consider himself his best company.

His mackerel lines were worked as briskly as any others when the fish were biting; but when the fish were gone, he would lean idly on the rail, and stare at the waves and clouds; he could work a cranberry-bog so beautifully that the people for miles around came to look on and take lessons; yet, when the sun tried to hide in the evening behind a ragged row of trees on a ridge beyond Jim’s cranberry-patch, he would lean on his spade, and gaze until everything about him seemed yellow.

He read the Bible incessantly, yet offended alike the pious saints and critical sinners by never preaching or exhorting. And out of everything Jim Hockson seemed to extract what it contained of the ideal and the beautiful; and when he saw Millicent Botayne, he straightway adored the first woman he had met who was alike beautiful, intelligent and refined. Miss Millie, being human, was pleased by the admiration of the handsome, manly fellow who seemed so far the superior of the men of his class; but when, in his honest simplicity, he told her that he loved her, she declined his further attentions in a manner which, though very delicate and kind, opened Jim’s blue eyes to some sad things he had never seen before.

He neither got drunk, nor threatened to kill himself, nor married the first silly girl he met; but he sensibly left the place where he had suffered so greatly, and, in a sort of sad daze, he hurried off to hide himself in the newly discovered gold-fields of California. Perhaps he had suddenly learned certain properties of gold which were heretofore unknown to him; at any rate, it was soon understood at Spanish Stake, where he had located himself, that Jim Hockson got out more gold per week than any man in camp, and that it all went to San Francisco.

“Kind of a mean cuss, I reckon,” remarked a newcomer, one day at the saloon, when Jim alone, of the crowd present, declined to drink with him.

“Not any!” replied Colonel Two, so called because he had two eyes, while another colonel in the camp had but one. “An’ it’s good for _you_, stranger,” continued the colonel, “that you ain’t been long in camp, else some of the boys ’ud put a hole through you for sayin’ anything ’gainst Jim; for we all swear by him, _we_ do. He don’t carry shootin’-irons, but no feller in camp dares to tackle him; he don’t cuss nobody, but ev’rybody does just as he asks ’em to. As to drinkin’, why, I’d swear off myself, ef ’twud make me hold a candle to him. Went to old Bermuda t’other day, when he was ravin’ tight and layin’ for Butcher Pete with a shootin’-iron, an’ he actilly talked Bermuda into soakin’ his head an’ turnin’ in—ev’rybody else was afeard to go nigh old Bermuda that day.”

The newcomer seemed gratified to learn that Jim was so peaceable a man—that was the natural supposition, at least—for he forthwith cultivated Jim with considerable assiduity, and being, it was evident, a man of considerable taste and experience, Jim soon found his companionship very agreeable, and he lavished upon his new acquaintance, who had been nicknamed Tarpaulin, the many kind and thoughtful attentions which had endeared Jim to the other miners.

The two men lived in the same hut, staked claims adjoining each other, and Tarpaulin, who had been thin and nervous-looking when he first came to camp, began to grow peaceable and plump under Jim’s influence.

One night, as Jim and Tarpaulin lay chatting before a fire in their hut, they heard a thin, wiry voice in the next hut inquiring:

“Anybody in this camp look like this?”

Tarpaulin started.

“That’s a funny question,” said he; “let’s see who and what the fellow is.”

And then Tarpaulin started for the next hut. Jim waited some time, and hearing low voices in earnest conversation, went next door himself.

Tarpaulin was not there, but two small, thin, sharp-eyed men were there, displaying an old-fashioned daguerreotype of a handsome-looking young man, dressed in the latest New York style; and more than this Jim did not notice.

“Don’t know him, mister,” said Colonel Two, who happened to be the owner of the hut. “Besides ef, as is most likely, he’s growed long hair an’ a beard since he left the States, his own mother wouldn’t know him from George Washington. Brother o’ yourn?”

“No,” said one of the thin men; “he’s—well, the fact is, we’ll give a thousand dollars to any one who’ll find him for us in twenty-four hours.”

“Deppity sheriffs?” asked the colonel, retiring somewhat hastily under his blankets.

“About the same thing,” said one of the thin men, with a sickly smile.

“Git!” roared the colonel, suddenly springing from his bed, and cocking his revolver. “I b’lieve in the Golden Rule, _I_ do!”

The detectives, with the fine instinct peculiar to their profession, rightly construed the colonel’s action as a hint, and withdrew, and Jim retired to his own hut, and fell asleep while waiting for his partner.

Morning came, but no Tarpaulin; dinner-time arrived, but Jim ate alone, and was rather blue. He loved a sociable chat, and of late Tarpaulin had been almost his sole companion.

Evening came, but Tarpaulin came not.

Jim couldn’t abide the saloon for a whole evening, so he lit a candle in his own hut, and attempted to read.

Tarpaulin was a lover of newspapers—it seemed to Jim he received more papers than all the remaining miners put together.

Jim thought he would read some of these same papers, and unrolled Tarpaulin’s blankets to find them, when out fell a picture-case, opening as it fell. Jim was about to close it again, when he suddenly started, and exclaimed:

“Millicent Botayne!”

He held it under the light, and examined it closely.

There could be no doubt as to identity—there were the same exquisite features which, a few months before, had opened to Jim Hockson a new world of beauty, and had then, with a sweet yet sad smile, knocked down all his fair castles, and destroyed all his exquisite pictures.

Strange that it should appear to him now, and so unexpectedly, but stranger did it seem to Jim that on the opposite side of the case should be a portrait which was a duplicate of the one shown by the detectives!

“That rascal Brown!” exclaimed Jim. “So he succeeded in getting her, did he? But I shouldn’t call him names; he had as much right to make love to her as I. God grant he may make her happy! And he is probably a very fine fellow—_must_ be, by his looks.”

Suddenly Jim started, as if shocked by an electric battery. Hiding all the hair and beard of the portrait, he stared at it a moment, and exclaimed:

“_Tarpaulin!_”

III.

“BOTH gone!” exclaimed Colonel Two, hurrying into the saloon, at noon.

“_Both_ gone?” echoed two or three men.

“Yes,” said the colonel; “and the queerest thing is, they left ev’rything behind—every darned thing! I never _did_ see such a stampede afore—_I_ didn’t! Nobody’s got any idee of whar they be, nor what it’s ’bout neither.”

“Don’t be _too_ sartain, colonel!” piped Weasel, a self-contained mite of a fellow, who was still at work upon his glass, filled at the last general treat, although every one else had finished so long ago that they were growing thirsty again—“don’t be _too_ sartain. Them detectives bunked at my shanty last night.”

“The deuce they did!” cried the colonel. “Good the rest of us didn’t know it.”

“Well,” said Weasel, moving his glass in graceful circles, to be sure that all the sugar dissolved, “I dunno. It’s a respectable business, an’ I wanted to have a good look at ’em.”

“What’s that got to do with Jim and Tarpaulin?” look at demanded the colonel, fiercely.

“Wait, and I’ll tell you,” replied Weasel, provokingly, taking a leisurely sip at his glass. “Jim come down to see ’em——”

“What?” cried the colonel.

“An’ told ’em he knew their man, an’ would help find him,” continued Weasel. “They offered him the thousand dollars——”

“Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!” groaned the colonel; “who’s a feller to trust in this world! The idee of Jim goin’ back on a pardner fur a thousand! I wouldn’t hev b’lieved he’d a-done it fur a million!”

“An’ he told ’em he’d cram it down their throats if they mentioned it again.”

“Bully! Hooray fur Jim!” shouted the colonel. “What’ll yer take, fellers? Fill high! Here’s to Jim! the feller that b’lieves his friend’s innercent!”

The colonel looked thoughtfully into his glass, and remarked, as if to his own reflection therein, “Ain’t many such men here nur nowhars else!” after which he drank the toast himself.

“But that don’t explain what Tarpaulin went fur,” said the colonel, suddenly.

“Yes, it does,” said the exasperating Weasel, shutting his thin lips so tightly that it was hard to see where his mouth was.

“What?” cried the colonel. “’Twould take a four-horse corkscrew to get anything out o’ you, you dried-up little scoundrel!”

“Why!” replied Weasel, greatly pleased by the colonel’s compliment, “after what you said about hair and beard hidin’ a man, one of them fellers cut a card an’ held it over the picture, so as to hide hair an’ chin. The forehead an’ face an’ nose an’ ears wuz Tarpaulin’s, an’ nobody else’s.”

“Lightning’s blazes!” roared the colonel. “Ha, ha, ha! why, Tarpaulin hisself came into my shanty, an’ looked at the pictur’, an’ talked to them ’bout it! Trot out yer glass-ware, barkeeper—_got_ to drink to a feller that’s ez cool ez all that!”

The boys drank with the colonel, but they were too severely astonished to enjoy the liquor particularly. In fact, old Bermuda, who had never taken anything but plain rye, drank three fingers of claret that day, and did not know of it until told.

The colonel’s mind was unusually excited. It seemed to him there were a number of probabilities upon which to hang bets. He walked outside, that his meditation might be undisturbed, but in an instant he was back, crying:

“Lady comin’!”