Chapter 3

One year Gabriel Lausanne tell me that Filon is lose all his lambs in the Santa Ana. You know that Santa Ana, M'siu? It is one mighty wind. It comes up small, very far away, one little dust like the clouds, creep, creep close by the land. It lies down along the sand; you think it is done? Eh, it is one liar, that Santa Ana. It rise up again, it is pale gold, it seek the sky. That sky is all wide, clean, no speck. Ah, it knows, that sky; it will have nothing lying about when the Santa Ana comes. It is hot then, you have the smell of the earth in your nostrils. _That_, M'siu, is the Santa Ana. It is pale dust and the great push of the wind. The sand bites, there is no seeing the flock's length. They huddle, and the lambs are smothered; they scatter, and the dogs can nothing make. If it blow one day, you thank God; if it blow two days, then is sheepman goin' to lose his sheep. When Gabriel tell me that about Filon, I think he deserve all that. What you think, M'siu? That same night the water of Tinpah rise in his banks afar off by the hills where there is rain. It comes roaring down the wash where I make my camp, for you understand at that time of year there should be no water in the wash of Tinpah, but it come in the night and carry away one-half of my sheep. Eh, how you make that, M'siu; is it the devil or no?

Well, it go like this eight, ten year; then it come last summer, and I meet Filon at the ford of Crèvecoeur. That is the water that comes down eastward from Mineral Mountain between Olancho and Sentinel Rock. It is what you call Mineral Creek, but the French shepherds call it Crèvecoeur. For why; it is a most swift and wide water; it goes darkly between earthy banks upon which it gnaws. It has hot springs which come up in it without reason, so that there is no safe crossing at any time. Its sands are quick; what they take, they take wholly with the life in it, and after a little they spew it out again. And, look you, it makes no singing, this water of Crèvecoeur. Twenty years have I kept sheep between Red Butte and the Temblor Hills, and I say this. Make no fear of singing water, for it goes not too deeply but securely on a rocky bottom; such a one you may trust. But this silent one, that is hot or cold, deep or shallow, and has never its banks the same one season with another, this you may not trust, M'siu. And to get sheep across it--ah--it breaks the heart, this Crèvecoeur.

Nevertheless, there is one place where a great rock runs slantwise of the stream, but under it, so that the water goes shallowly with a whisper, ah, so fast, and below it is a pool. Here on the rocks the shepherds make pine logs to lie with stones so that the sheep cross over. Every year the water carries the logs away and the shepherds build again, and there is no shepherd goes by that water but lose some sheep. Therefore, they call it the ford of Crèvecoeur [Break-heart].

Well, I have been about by the meadow of Angostura when it come last July, and there I see Narcisse Duplin. He is tell me the feed is good about Sentinel Rock, so I think me to go back by the way of Crèvecoeur. There is pine wood all about eastward from that place. It is all shadow there at midday and has a weary sound. Me, I like it not, that pine wood, so I push the flock and am very glad when I hear toward the ford the bark of dogs and the broken sound of bells. I think there is other shepherd that make talk with me. But me, M'siu, _sacre! damn!_ when I come out by the ford there is Filon Geraud. He has come up one side Crèvecoeur, with his flock, as I have come up the other. He laugh.

"Hillo, Raoul," say Filon, "will you cross?"

"I will cross," say I.

"After me," say Filon.

"Before," say I.

M'siu does not know about sheep? Ah, non. It is so that the sheep is most scare of all beasts about water. Never so little a stream will he cross, but if the dogs compel him. It is the great trouble of shepherds to get the flock across the waters that go in and about the Sierras. For that it is the custom to have two, three goats with the flocks to go first across the water, then they will follow. But here at Crèvecoeur it is bad crossing any way you go; also that day it is already afternoon. Therefore I stand at one side that ford and make talk with Filon at the other about who goes first. Then my goat which leads my flock come push by me and I stand on that log while we talk. He is one smart goat.

"Eh, Raoul, let the goats decide," cries Filon, and to that I have agree. Filon push his goat on the log, he is one great black one that is call Diable--I ask you is that a name for a goat? I have call mine Noé. So they two walk on that log very still; for they see what they have to do. Then they push with the head, Diable and Noé, till that log it rock in the water; Filon is cry to his goat and I to mine. Then because of that water one goat slip on the log, and the other is push so hard that he cannot stop; over they go into the pool of swift water, over and over until they come to the shallows; then they find their feet and come up, each on his own side. They will not care to push with the heads again at that time. Filon he walk out on the log to me, and I walk to him.

"My goat have won the ford," says he.

"Your goat cannot keep what he wins."

"But I can," say Filon. Then he look at me with his eyes like--like I have told you, M'siu.

"Raoul," he say, "you is one little man."

With that I remember me all the wrong I have had from this one.

"Go you after your goat, Filon Geraud," say I.

With that I put my staff behind his foot, so, M'siu, and send him into the water, splash! He come to his feet presently in the pool with the water all in his hair and his eyes, and the stream run strong and dark against his middle.

"Hey, you, Raoul, what for you do that?" he say, but also he laugh. "Ah, ha, little man, you have the joke this time."

M'siu, that laugh stop on his face like it been freeze, his mouth is open, his eyes curl up. It is terrible, that dead laugh in the midst of the black water that run down from his hair.

"Raoul," he say, "_the sand is quick_!"

Then he take one step, and I hear the sand suck. I see Filon shiver like a reed in the swift water.

"_My God_," he say, "_the sand is quick_!"

M'siu, I do not know how it is with me. When I throw Filon in the pool, I have not known it is quick-sand; but when I hear that, I think I am glad. I kneel down by that log in the ford and watch Filon. He speak to me very quiet:

"You must get a rope and make fast to that pine and throw the end to me. There is a rope in my pack."

"Yes," say I, "there is a rope."

So I take my flocks across the ford, since Filon is in the water, and take all those silly ones toward La Crevasse, and after I think about that business. Three days after, I meet P'tee Pete. I tell him I find the sheep of Filon in the pine wood below Sentinel Rock. Pete, he say that therefore Filon is come to some hurt, and that he look for him. That make me scare lest he should look by the ford of Crèvecoeur. So after that, five or six days, when Narcisse Duplin is come up with me, I tell him Filon is gone to Sacramento where his money is; therefore I keep care of his sheep. That is a better tale--eh, M'siu,--for I have to say something. Every shepherd in that range is know those sheep of Filon. All this time I think me to take the sheep to Pierre Jullien in the meadow of Black Mountain. He is not much, that Pierre. If I tell him it is one gift from _Le bon Dieu_, that is explain enough for Pierre Jullien. Then I will be quit of the trouble of Filon Geraud.

So, M'siu, would it have been, but for that dog Helène. That is Filon's she-dog that he raise from a pup. She is--she is _une femme_, that dog! All that first night when we come away from the ford, she cry, cry in her throat all through the dark, and in the light she look at me with her eyes, so to say:

"I know, Raoul! I know what is under the water of Crèvecoeur." M'siu, is a man to stand that from a dog? So the next night I beat her, and in the morning she is gone. I think me the good luck to get rid of her. That Helène! M'siu, what you think she do? She have gone back to look in the water for Filon. There she stay, and all sheepmen when they pass that way see that she is a good sheepdog, and that she is much hungry; so they wonder that she will not leave off to look and go with them. After while all people in those parts is been talkin' about that dog of Filon's that look so keen in the water of Crèvecoeur. Mebbe four, five weeks after that I have killed Filon, one goes riding by that place and sees Helène make mourn by the waterside over something that stick in the sand. It is Filon. Yes. That quick-sand have spit him out again. So you say; but me, I think it is the devil.

For the rest the sheriff has told you. Here they have brought me, and there is much talk. Of that I am weary, but for this I tell you all how it is about Filon; M'siu, I would not hang. Look you, so long as I stay in this life I am quit of that man, but if I die--there is Filon. So will he do unto me all that I did at the ford of Crèvecoeur, and more; for he is a bad one, Filon. Therefore it is as I tell you, M'siu, I, Raoul. By the help of God. Yes.

A CALIFORNIAN

BY

GERALDINE BONNER

From _Harper's Magazine_ _Copyright_, 1905, by Harper and Brothers

IT WAS nearly ten o'clock when Jack Faraday ascended the steps of Madame Delmonti's bow-windowed mansion and pressed the electric bell. He was a little out of breath and nervous, for, being young and a stranger to San Francisco, and almost a stranger to Madame Delmonti, he did not exactly know at what hour his hostess's _conversazione_ might begin, and had upon him the young man's violent dread of being conspicuously early or conspicuously late.

It did not seem that he was either. As he stood in the doorway and surveyed the field, he felt, with a little rising breath of relief, that no one appeared to take especial notice of him. Madame Delmonti's rooms were lit with a great blaze of gas, which, thrown back from many long mirrors and the gold mountings of a quantity of furniture and picture frames, made an effect of dazzling yellow brightness, as brilliantly glittering as the transformation scene of a pantomime.

In the middle of the glare Madame Delmonti's company had disposed themselves in a circle, which had some difficulty in accommodating itself to the long narrow shape of the drawing-room. Now and then an obstinate sofa or extra large plush-covered arm-chair broke the harmonious curve of the circle, and its occupant looked furtively ill at ease, as if she felt the embarrassment of her position in not conforming to the general harmony of the curving line.

The eyes of the circle were fixed on a figure at the piano, near the end of the room--a tall dark Jewess in a brown dress and wide hat, who was singing with that peculiar vibrant richness of tone that is so often heard in the voices of the Californian Jewesses. She was perfectly self-possessed, and her velvet eyes, as her impassioned voice rose a little, rested on Jack Faraday with a cheerful but not very lively interest. Then they swept past him to where on a sofa, quite out of the circle, two women sat listening.

One was a young girl, large, well-dressed, and exceedingly handsome; the other a peaked lady, passée and thin, with her hair bleached to a canary yellow. The Jewess, still singing, smiled at them, and the girl gave back a lazy smile in return. Then as the song came to a deep and mellow close, Madame Delmonti, with a delicate rustling of silk brushing against silk, swept across the room and greeted her guest.

Madame Delmonti was an American, very rich, a good deal made up, but still pretty, and extremely well preserved. Signor Delmonti, an Italian baritone, whom she had married, and supported ever since, was useful about the house, as he now proved by standing at a little table and ladling punch into small glasses, which were distributed among the guests by the two little Delmonti girls in green silk frocks. Madame Delmonti, with her rouged cheeks and merry grey eyes, as full of sparkle as they had been twenty years ago, was very cordial to her guest, asking him, as they stood in the doorway, whom he would best like to meet.

"Maud Levy, who has been singing," she said, "is one of the belles in Hebrew society. She has a fine voice. You have no objection, Mr. Faraday, to knowing Jews?"

Faraday hastily disclaimed all race prejudices, and she continued, discreetly designating the ladies on the sofa:

"There are two delightful girls. Mrs. Peck, the blonde, is the society writer for the _Morning Trumpet_. She is an elegant woman of a very fine Southern family, but she has had misfortunes. Her marriage was unhappy. She and Peck are separated now, and she supports herself and her two children. There was no hope of getting alimony out of that man."

"And that is Genevieve Ryan beside her," Madame Delmonti went on. "I think you'd like Genevieve. She's a grand girl. Her father, you know, is Barney Ryan, one of our millionaires. He made his money in a quick turn in Con. Virginia, but before that he used to drive the Marysville coach, and he was once a miner. He's crazy about Genevieve and gives her five hundred a month to dress on. I'm sure you'll get on very well together. She's such a refined, pleasant girl"----and Madame Delmonti, chattering her praises of Barney Ryan's handsome daughter, conducted the stranger to the shrine.

Miss. Genevieve smiled upon him, much as she had upon the singer, and brushing aside her skirts of changeable green and heliotrope silk, showed him a little golden-legged chair beside her. Mrs. Peck and Madame Delmonti conversed with unusual insight and knowledge on the singing of Maud Levy, and Faraday was left to conduct the conversation with the heiress of Barney Ryan.

She was a large, splendid-looking girl, very much corseted, with an ivory-tinted skin, eyes as clear as a young child's and smooth freshly red lips. She was a good deal powdered on the bridge of her nose, and her rich hair was slightly tinted with some reddish dye. She was a picture of health and material well being. Her perfectly fitting clothes sat with wrinkleless exactitude over a figure which in its generous breadth and finely curved outline might have compared with that of the Venus of Milo. She let her eyes, shadowed slightly by the white lace edge of her large hat, whereon two pink roses trembled on large stalks, dwell upon Faraday with a curious and frank interest entirely devoid of coquetry. Her manner, almost boyish in its simple directness, showed the same absence of this feminine trait. While she looked like a goddess dressed by Worth, she seemed merely a good-natured, phlegmatic girl just emerging from her teens.

Faraday had made the first commonplaces of conversation, when she asked, eyeing him closely, "Do you like it out here?"

"Oh, immensely," he responded, politely. "It's such a fine climate."

"It is a good climate," admitted Miss. Ryan, with unenthusiastic acquiescence; "but we are not so proud of that as we are of the good looks of the Californian women. Don't you think the women are handsome?"

Faraday looked into her clear and earnest eyes.

"Oh splendid," he answered, "especially their eyes."

Miss. Ryan appeared to demur to this commendation. "It's generally said by strangers that their figures are unusually handsome. Do you think they are?"

Faraday agreed to this too.

"The girls in the East," said Miss. Ryan, sitting upright with a creaking sound, and drawing her gloves through one satin-smooth, bejeweled hand, "are very thin, aren't they? Here, I sometimes think"--she raised her eyes to his in deep and somewhat anxious query--"that they are too fat?"

Faraday gallantly scouted the idea. He said the California woman was a goddess. For the first time in the interview Miss. Ryan gave a little laugh.

"That's what all you Eastern men say," she said. "They're always telling me I'm a goddess. Even the Englishmen say that."

"Well," answered Faraday, surprised at his own boldness, "what they say is true."

Miss. Ryan silently eyed him for a speculating moment; then, averting her glance, said, pensively: "Perhaps so; but I don't think it's so stylish to be a goddess as it is to be very slim. And then, you know----" Here she suddenly broke off, her eyes fixed upon the crowd of ladies that blocked an opposite doorway in exeunt. "There's mommer. I guess she must be going home, and I suppose I'd better go too, and not keep her waiting."

She rose as she spoke, and with a pat of her hand adjusted her glimmering skirts.

"Oh, Mr. Faraday," she said, as she peered down at them, "I hope you'll give yourself the pleasure of calling on me. I'm at home almost any afternoon after five, and Tuesday is my day. Come whenever you please. I'll be real glad to see you, and I guess popper'd like to talk to you about things in the East. He's been in Massachusetts too."

She held out her large white hand and gave Faraday a vigorous hand-shake.

"I'm glad I came here tonight," she said, smiling. "I wasn't quite decided, but I thought I'd better, as I had some things to tell Mrs. Peck for next Sunday's _Trumpet_. If I hadn't come, I wouldn't have met you. You needn't escort me to Madame Delmonti. I'd rather go by myself. I'm not a bit a ceremonious person. Good-by. Be sure and come and see me."

She rustled away, exchanged farewells with Madame Delmonti, and, by a movement of her head in his direction, appeared to be speaking of Faraday; then joining a fur-muffled female figure near the doorway, swept like a princess out of the room.

For a week after Faraday's meeting with Miss. Genevieve Ryan, he had no time to think of giving himself the pleasure of calling upon that fair and flattering young lady. The position which he had come out from Boston to fill was not an unusually exacting one, but Faraday, who was troubled with a New England conscience, and a certain slowness in adapting himself to new conditions of life, was too engrossed in mastering the duties of his clerkship to think of loitering about the chariot wheels of beauty.

By the second week, however, he had shaken down into the new rut, and a favorable opportunity presenting itself in a sunny Sunday afternoon, he donned his black coat and high hat and repaired to the mansion of Barney Ryan, on California Street.

When Faraday approached the house, he felt quite timid, so imposingly did this great structure loom up from the simpler dwellings which surrounded it. Barney Ryan had built himself a palace, and ever since the day he had first moved into it he had been anxious to move out. The ladies of his family would not allow this, and so Barney endured his grandeur as best he might. It was a great wooden house, with immense bay windows thrown out on every side, and veiled within by long curtains of heavy lace. The sweep of steps that spread so proudly from the portico was flanked by two sleeping lions in stone, both appearing, by the savage expressions which distorted their visages, to be suffering from terrifying dreams. In the garden the spiked foliage of the dark, slender dracænas and the fringed fans of giant filamentosas grew luxuriantly with tropical effect.

The large drawing-room, long, and looking longer with its wide mirrors, was even more golden than Mrs. Delmonti's. There were gold moldings about the mirrors and gold mountings to the chairs. In deserts of gold frames appeared small oases of oil-painting. Faraday, hat in hand, stood some time in wavering indecision, wondering in which of the brocaded and gilded chairs he would look least like a king in an historical play. He was about to decide in favor of a pale blue satin settee, when a rustle behind him made him turn and behold Miss. Genevieve magnificent in a trailing robe of the faintest rose-pink and pearls, with diamond ear-rings in her ears, and the powder that she had hastily rubbed on her face still lying white on her long lashes. She smiled her rare smile as she greeted him, and sitting down in one of the golden chairs, leaned her head against the back, and said, looking at him from under lowered lids:

"Well, I thought you were never coming!"

Faraday, greatly encouraged by this friendly reception, made his excuses, and set the conversation going. After the weather had been exhausted, the topic of the Californian in his social aspect came up. Faraday, with some timidity, ventured a question on the fashionable life in San Francisco. A shade passed over Miss. Ryan's open countenance.

"You know, Mr. Faraday," she said, explanatorily, "I'm not exactly in society."

"No?" murmured Faraday, mightily surprised, and wondering what she was going to say next.

"Not exactly," continued Miss. Ryan, moistening her red under lip in a pondering moment--"not exactly in fash'nable society. Of course we have our friends. But gentlemen from the East that I've met have always been so surprised when I told them that I didn't go out in the most fash'nable circles. They always thought any one with money could get right in it here."

"Yes?" said Faraday, whose part of the conversation appeared to be deteriorating into monosyllables.

"Well, you know, that's not the case at all. With all popper's money, we've never been able to get a real good footing. It seems funny to outsiders, especially as popper and mommer have never been divorced or anything. We've just lived quietly right here in the city always. But," she said, looking tentatively at Faraday to see how he was going to take the statement, "my father's a Northerner. He went back and fought in the war."

"You must be very proud of that," said Faraday, feeling that he could now hazard a remark with safety.

This simple comment, however, appeared to surprise the enigmatic Miss. Ryan.

"Proud of it?" she queried, looking in suspended doubt at Faraday. "Oh, of course I'm proud that he was brave, and didn't run away or get wounded; but if he'd been a Southerner we would have been in society now." She looked pensively at Faraday. "All the fashionable people are Southerners, you know. We would have been, too, if we'd have been Southerners. It's being Northerners that really has been such a drawback."

"But your sympathies," urged Faraday, "aren't they with the North?"

Miss. Ryan ran the pearl fringe of her tea-gown through her large, handsome hands. "I guess so," she said, indifferently, as if she was considering the subject for the first time; "but you can't expect me to have any very violent sympathies about a war that was dead and buried before I was born."

"I don't believe you're a genuine Northerner, or Southerner either," said Faraday, laughing.

"I guess not," said the young lady, with the same placid indifference. "An English gentleman whom I knew real well last year said the sympathy of the English was all with the Southerners. He said they were the most refined people in this country. He said they were thought a great deal of in England?" She again looked at Faraday with her air of deprecating query, as if she half expected him to contradict her.

"Who was this extraordinarily enlightened being?" asked Faraday.

"Mr. Harold Courtney, an elegant Englishman. They said his grandfather was a Lord--Lord Hastings--but you never can be sure about those things. I saw quite a good deal of him, and I sort of liked him, but he was rather quiet. I think if he'd been an American we would have thought him dull. Here they just said it was reserve. We all thought----"

A footstep in the hall outside arrested her recital. The door of the room was opened, and a handsome bonneted head appeared in the aperture.

"Oh, Gen," said this apparition, hastily--"excuse me; I didn't know you had your company in there?"