by Harte, Bret
"Now what are you two men mumblin' and confidin' to each other? You look for all the world like two old women gossips," she said, with languid impertinence.
It was easy to see that a privileged and recognized autocrat spoke. No one had ever questioned Polly Swinger's right to interrupting, interfering, and saucy criticisms. Secure in the hopeless or chivalrous admiration of the men around her, she had repaid it with a frankness that scorned any coquetry; with an indifference to the ordinary feminine effect or provocation in dress or bearing that was as natural as it was invincible. No one had ever known Polly to "fix up" for anybody, yet no one ever doubted the effect, if she had. No one had ever rebuked her charming petulance, or wished to.
Larry gave a weak, vague laugh. Colonel Swinger as ineffectively assumed a mock parental severity. "When you see two gentlemen, miss, discussin' politics together, it ain't behavin' like a lady to interrupt. Better run away and tidy yourself before the stage comes."
The young lady replied to the last innuendo by taking two spirals of soft hair, like "corn silk," from her oval cheek, wetting them with her lips, and tucking them behind her ears. Her father's ungentlemanly suggestion being thus disposed of, she returned to her first charge.
"It ain't no politics; you ain't been swearing enough for THAT! Come, now! It's the mysterious stranger ye've been talking about!"
Both men stared at her with unaffected concern.
"What do YOU know about any mysterious stranger?" demanded her father.
"Do you suppose you men kin keep a secret," scoffed Polly. "Why, Dick Ruggles told me how skeert ye all were over an entire stranger, and he advised me not to wander down the road after dark. I asked him if he thought I was a pickaninny to be frightened by bogies, and that if he hadn't a better excuse for wantin' 'to see me home' from the Injin spring, he might slide."
Larry laughed again, albeit a little bitterly, for it seemed to him that the excuse was fully justified; but the colonel said promptly, "Dick's a fool, and you might have told him there were worse things to be met on the road than bogies. Run away now, and see that the niggers are on hand when the stage comes."
Two hours later the stage came with a clatter of hoofs and a cloud of red dust, which precipitated itself and a dozen thirsty travelers upon the veranda before the hotel bar-room; it brought also the usual "express" newspapers and much talk to Colonel Swinger, who always received his guests in a lofty personal fashion at the door, as he might have done in his old Virginian home; but it brought likewise—marvelous to relate—an ACTUAL GUEST, who had two trunks and asked for a room! He was evidently a stranger to the ways of Buena Vista, and particularly to those of Colonel Swinger, and at first seemed inclined to resent the social attitude of his host, and his frank and free curiosity. When he, however, found that Colonel Swinger was even better satisfied to give an account of HIS OWN affairs, his family, pedigree, and his present residence, he began to betray some interest. The colonel told him all the news, and would no doubt have even expatiated on his ghostly visitant, had he not prudently concluded that his guest might decline to remain in a haunted inn. The stranger had spoken of staying a week; he had some private mining speculations to watch at Wynyard's Gulch,—the next settlement, but he did not care to appear openly at the "Gulch Hotel." He was a man of thirty, with soft, pleasing features and a singular litheness of movement, which, combined with a nut-brown, gypsy complexion, at first suggested a foreigner. But his dialect, to the colonel's ears, was distinctly that of New England, and to this was added a puritanical and sanctimonious drawl. "He looked," said the colonel in after years, "like a blank light mulatter, but talked like a blank Yankee parson." For all that, he was acceptable to his host, who may have felt that his reminiscences of his plantation on the James River were palling on Buena Vista ears, and was glad of his new auditor. It was an advertisement, too, of the hotel, and a promise of its future fortunes. "Gentlemen having propahty interests at the Gulch, sah, prefer to stay at Buena Vista with another man of propahty, than to trust to those new-fangled papah-collared, gingerbread booths for traders that they call 'hotels' there," he had remarked to some of "the boys." In his preoccupation with the new guest, he also became a little neglectful of his old chum and dependent, Larry Hawkins. Nor was this the only circumstance that filled the head of that shiftless loyal retainer of the colonel with bitterness and foreboding. Polly Swinger—the scornfully indifferent, the contemptuously inaccessible, the coldly capricious and petulant—was inclined to be polite to the stranger!
The fact was that Polly, after the fashion of her sex, took it into her pretty head, against all consistency and logic, suddenly to make an exception to her general attitude towards mankind in favor of one individual. The reason-seeking masculine reader will rashly conclude that this individual was the CAUSE as well as the object; but I am satisfied that every fair reader of these pages will instinctively know better. Miss Polly had simply selected the new guest, Mr. Starbuck, to show OTHERS, particularly Larry Hawkins, what she COULD do if she were inclined to be civil. For two days she "fixed up" her distracting hair at him so that its silken floss encircled her head like a nimbus; she tucked her oval chin into a white fichu instead of a buttonless collar; she appeared at dinner in a newly starched yellow frock! She talked to him with "company manners;" said she would "admire to go to San Francisco," and asked if he knew her old friends the Fauquier girls from "Faginia." The colonel was somewhat disturbed; he was glad that his daughter had become less negligent of her personal appearance; he could not but see, with the others, how it enhanced her graces; but he was, with the others, not entirely satisfied with her reasons. And he could not help observing—what was more or less patent to ALL—that Starbuck was far from being equally responsive to her attentions, and at times was indifferent and almost uncivil. Nobody seemed to be satisfied with Polly's transformation but herself.
But eventually she was obliged to assert herself. The third evening after Starbuck's arrival she was going over to the cabin of Aunt Chloe, who not only did the washing for Buena Vista, but assisted Polly in dressmaking. It was not far, and the night was moonlit. As she crossed the garden she saw Starbuck moving in the manzanita bushes beyond; a mischievous light came into her eyes; she had not EXPECTED to meet him, but she had seen him go out, and there were always POSSIBILITIES. To her surprise, however, he merely lifted his hat as she passed, and turned abruptly in another direction. This was more than the little heart-breaker of Buena Vista was accustomed to!
"Oh, Mr. Starbuck!" she called, in her laziest voice.
He turned almost impatiently.
"Since you're so civil and pressing, I thought I'd tell you I was just runnin' over to Aunt Chloe's," she said dryly.
"I should think it was hardly the proper thing for a young lady to do at this time of night," he said superciliously. "But you know best,—you know the people here."
Polly's cheeks and eyes flamed. "Yes, I reckon I do," she said crisply; "it's only a STRANGER here would think of being rude. Good-night, Mr. Starbuck!"
She tripped away after this Parthian shot, yet feeling, even in her triumph, that the conceited fool seemed actually relieved at her departure! And for the first time she now thought that she had seen something in his face that she did not like! But her lazy independence reasserted itself soon, and half an hour later, when she had left Aunt Chloe's cabin, she had regained her self-esteem. Yet, to avoid meeting him again, she took a longer route home, across the dried ditch and over the bluff, scarred by hydraulics, and so fell, presently, upon the old garden at the point where it adjoined the abandoned diggings. She was quite sure she had escaped a meeting with Starbuck, and was gliding along under the shadow of the pear-trees, when she suddenly stopped. An indescribable terror overcame her as she stared at a spot in the garden, perfectly illuminated by the moonlight not fifty yards from where she stood. For she saw on its surface a human head—a man's head!—seemingly on the level of the ground, staring in her direction. A hysterical laugh sprang fro
m her lips, and she caught at the branches above her or she would have fallen! Yet in that moment the head had vanished! The moonlight revealed the empty garden,—the ground she had gazed at,—but nothing more!
She had never been superstitious. As a child she had heard the negroes talk of "the hants,"—that is, "the HAUNTS" or spirits,—but had believed it a part of their ignorance, and unworthy a white child,—the daughter of their master! She had laughed with Dick Ruggles over the illusions of Larry, and had shared her father's contemptuous disbelief of the wandering visitant being anything but a living man; yet she would have screamed for assistance now, only for the greater fear of making her weakness known to Mr. Starbuck, and being dependent upon him for help. And with it came the sudden conviction that HE had seen this awful vision, too. This would account for his impatience of her presence and his rudeness. She felt faint and giddy. Yet after the first shock had passed, her old independence and pride came to her relief. She would go to the spot and examine it. If it were some trick or illusion, she would show her superiority and have the laugh on Starbuck. She set her white teeth, clenched her little hands, and started out into the moonlight. But alas! for women's weakness. The next moment she uttered a scream and almost fell into the arms of Mr. Starbuck, who had stepped out of the shadows beside her.
"So you see you HAVE been frightened," he said, with a strange, forced laugh; "but I warned you about going out alone!"
Even in her fright she could not help seeing that he, too, seemed pale and agitated, at which she recovered her tongue and her self-possession.
"Anybody would be frightened by being dogged about under the trees," she said pertly.
"But you called out before you saw me," he said bluntly, "as if something had frightened you. That was WHY I came towards you."
She knew it was the truth; but as she would not confess to her vision, she fibbed outrageously.
"Frightened," she said, with pale but lofty indignation. "What was there to frighten me? I'm not a baby, to think I see a bogie in the dark!" This was said in the faint hope that HE had seen something too. If it had been Larry or her father who had met her, she would have confessed everything.
"You had better go in," he said curtly. "I will see you safe inside the house."
She demurred at this, but as she could not persist in her first bold intention of examining the locality of the vision without admitting its existence, she permitted him to walk with her to the house, and then at once fled to her own room. Larry and her father noticed their entrance together and their agitated manner, and were uneasy. Yet the colonel's paternal pride and Larry's lover's respect kept the two men from communicating their thoughts to each other.
"The confounded pup has been tryin' to be familiar, and Polly's set him down," thought Larry, with glowing satisfaction.
"He's been trying some of his sanctimonious Yankee abolition talk on Polly, and she shocked him!" thought the colonel exultingly.
But poor Polly had other things to think of in the silence of her room. Another woman would have unburdened herself to a confidante; but Polly was too loyal to her father to shatter his beliefs, and too high-spirited to take another and a lesser person into her confidence. She was certain that Aunt Chloe would be full of sympathetic belief and speculations, but she would not trust a nigger with what she couldn't tell her own father. For Polly really and truly believed that she had seen a ghost, no doubt the ghost of the murdered Sobriente, according to Larry's story. WHY he should appear with only his head above ground puzzled her, although it suggested the Catholic idea of purgatory, and he was a Catholic! Perhaps he would have risen entirely but for that stupid Starbuck's presence; perhaps he had a message for HER alone. The idea pleased Polly, albeit it was a "fearful joy" and attended with some cold shivering. Naturally, as a gentleman, he would appear to HER—the daughter of a gentleman—the successor to his house—rather than to a Yankee stranger. What was she to do? For once her calm nerves were strangely thrilled; she could not think of undressing and going to bed, and two o'clock surprised her, still meditating, and occasionally peeping from her window upon the moonlit but vacant garden. If she saw him again, would she dare to go down alone? Suddenly she started to her feet with a beating heart! There was the unmistakable sound of a stealthy footstep in the passage, coming towards her room. Was it he? In spite of her high resolves she felt that if the door opened she should scream! She held her breath—the footsteps came nearer—were before her door—and PASSED!
Then it was that the blood rushed back to her cheek with a flush of indignation. Her room was at the end of the passage; there was nothing beyond but a private staircase, long disused, except by herself, as a short cut through the old patio to the garden. No one else knew of it, and no one else had the right of access to it! This insolent human intrusion—as she was satisfied it was now—overcame her fear, and she glided to the door. Opening it softly, she could hear the stealthy footsteps descending. She darted back, threw a shawl over her head and shoulders, and taking the small Derringer pistol which it had always been part of her ostentatious independence to place at her bed-head, she as stealthily followed the intruder. But the footsteps had died away before she reached the patio, and she saw only the small deserted, grass-grown courtyard, half hidden in shadows, in whose centre stood the fateful and long sealed-up well! A shudder came over her at again being brought into contact with the cause of her frightful vision, but as her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she saw something more real and appalling! The well was no longer sealed! Fragments of bricks and boards lay around it! One end of a rope, coiled around it like a huge snake, descended its foul depths; and as she gazed with staring eyes, the head and shoulders of a man emerged slowly from it! But it was NOT the ghostly apparition of last evening, and her terror changed to scorn and indignation as she recognized the face of Starbuck!
Their eyes met; an oath broke from his lips. He made a movement to spring from the well, but as the girl started back, the pistol held in her hand was discharged aimlessly in the air, and the report echoed throughout the courtyard. With a curse Starbuck drew back, instantly disappeared in the well, and Polly fell fainting on the steps. When she came to, her father and Larry were at her side. They had been alarmed at the report, and had rushed quickly to the patio, but not in time to prevent the escape of Starbuck and his accomplice. By the time she had recovered her consciousness, they had learned the full extent of that extraordinary revelation which she had so innocently precipitated. Sobriente's well had really concealed a rich gold ledge,—actually tunneled and galleried by him secretly in the past,—and its only other outlet was an opening in the garden hidden by a stone which turned on a swivel. Its existence had been unknown to Sobriente's successor, but was known to the Kanaka who had worked with Sobriente, who fled with his daughter after the murder, but who no doubt was afraid to return and work the mine. He had imparted the secret to Starbuck, another half-breed, son of a Yankee missionary and Hawaiian wife, who had evidently conceived this plan of seeking Buena Vista with an accomplice, and secretly removing such gold as was still accessible. The accomplice, afterwards identified by Larry as the wandering tramp, failed to discover the secret entrance FROM the garden, and Starbuck was consequently obliged to attempt it from the hotel—for which purpose he had introduced himself as a boarder—by opening the disused well secretly at night. These facts were obtained from papers found in the otherwise valueless trunks, weighted with stones for ballast, which Starbuck had brought to the hotel to take away his stolen treasure in, but which he was obliged to leave in his hurried flight. The attempt would have doubtless succeeded but for Polly's courageous and timely interference!
And now that they had told her ALL, they only wanted to know what had first excited HER suspicions, and driven her to seek the well as the object of Starbuck's machinations? THEY had noticed her manner when she entered the house that night, and Starbuck's evident annoyance. Had she taxed him with her suspicions, and so discovered a clue?
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nbsp; It was a terrible temptation to Polly to pose as a more perfect heroine, and one may not blame her if she did not rise entirely superior to it. Her previous belief, that the head of the accomplice at the opening of the garden was that of a GHOST, she now felt was certainly in the way, as was also her conduct to Starbuck, whom she believed to be equally frightened, and whom she never once suspected! So she said, with a certain lofty simplicity, that there were SOME THINGS which she really did not care to talk about, and Larry and her father left her that night with the firm conviction that the rascal Starbuck had tried to tempt her to fly with him and his riches, and had been crushingly foiled. Polly never denied this, and once, in later days, when admiringly taxed with it by Larry, she admitted with dove-like simplicity that she MAY have been too foolishly polite to her father's guest for the sake of her father's hotel.
However, all this was of small account to the thrilling news of a new discovery and working of the "old gold ledge" at Buena Vista! As the three kept their secret from the world, the discovery was accepted in the neighborhood as the result of careful examination and prospecting on the part of Colonel Swinger and his partner Larry Hawkins. And when the latter gentleman afterwards boldly proposed to Polly Swinger, she mischievously declared that she accepted him only that the secret might not go "out of the family."
LIBERTY JONES'S DISCOVERY
It was at best merely a rocky trail winding along a shelf of the eastern slope of the Santa Cruz range, yet the only road between the sea and the inland valley. The hoof-prints of a whole century of zigzagging mules were impressed on the soil, regularly soaked by winter rains and dried by summer suns during that period; the occasional ruts of heavy, rude, wooden wheels—long obsolete—were still preserved and visible. Weather-worn boulders and ledges, lying in the unclouded glare of an August sky, radiated a quivering heat that was intolerable, even while above them the masts of gigantic pines rocked their tops in the cold southwestern trades from the unseen ocean beyond. A red, burning dust lay everywhere, as if the heat were slowly and visibly precipitating itself.
