by Harte, Bret
When I returned, however, I was surprised to find the tallest girl standing by the door. As I approached she retreated before me, and pointing to the corner where a common cot bed had been evidently just put up, said, "Ye can turn in thar, only ye'll have to rouse out early when 'Dolphus does the chores," and was turning towards the extension again, when I stopped her almost appealingly.
"One moment, please. Can I see your mother?"
She stopped and looked at me with a singular expression. Then she said sharply:—
"You know, fust rate, she's dead."
She was turning away again, but I think she must have seen my concern in my face, for she hesitated. "But," I said quickly, "I certainly understood your father, that is, Mr. Johnson," I added, interrogatively, "to say that—that I was to speak to"—I didn't like to repeat the exact phrase—"his WIFE."
"I don't know what he was playin' ye for," she said shortly. "Mar has been dead mor'n a year."
"But," I persisted, "is there no grown-up woman here?"
"No."
"Then who takes care of you and the children?"
"I do."
"Yourself and your father—eh?"
"Dad ain't here two days running, and then on'y to sleep."
"And you take the entire charge of the house?"
"Yes, and the log tallies."
"The log tallies?"
"Yes; keep count and measure the logs that go by the slide."
It flashed upon me that I had passed the slide or declivity on the hillside, where logs were slipped down into the valley, and I inferred that Johnson's business was cutting timber for the mill.
"But you're rather young for all this work," I suggested.
"I'm goin' on sixteen," she said gravely.
Indeed, for the matter of that, she might have been any age. Her face, on which sunburn took the place of complexion, was already hard and set. But on a nearer view I was struck with the fact that her eyes, which were not large, were almost indistinguishable from the presence of the most singular eyelashes I had ever seen. Intensely black, intensely thick, and even tangled in their profusion, they bristled rather than fringed her eyelids, obliterating everything but the shining black pupils beneath, which were like certain lustrous hairy mountain berries. It was this woodland suggestion that seemed to uncannily connect her with the locality. I went on playfully:—
"That's not VERY old—but tell me—does your father, or DID your father, ever speak of you as his 'old woman?'"
She nodded. "Then you thought I was mar?" she said, smiling.
It was such a relief to see her worn face relax its expression of pathetic gravity—although this operation quite buried her eyes in their black thickest hedge again—that I continued cheerfully: "It wasn't much of a mistake, considering all you do for the house and family."
"Then you didn't tell Billy 'to go and be dead in the ground with mar,' as he 'lows you did?" she said half suspiciously, yet trembling on the edge of a smile.
No, I had not, but I admitted that my asking him to go to his mother might have been open to this dismal construction by a sensitive infant mind. She seemed mollified, and again turned to go.
"Good-night, Miss—you know your father didn't tell me your real name," I said.
"Karline!"
"Good-night, Miss Karline."
I held out my hand.
She looked at it and then at me through her intricate eyelashes. Then she struck it aside briskly, but not unkindly, said "Quit foolin', now," as she might have said to one of the children, and disappeared through the inner door. Not knowing whether to be amused or indignant, I remained silent a moment. Then I took a turn outside in the increasing darkness, listened to the now hurrying wind over the tree-tops, re-entered the cabin, closed the door, and went to bed.
But not to sleep. Perhaps the responsibility towards these solitary children, which Johnson had so lightly shaken off, devolved upon me as I lay there, for I found myself imagining a dozen emergencies of their unprotected state, with which the elder girl could scarcely grapple. There was little to fear from depredatory man or beast—desperadoes of the mountain trail never stooped to ignoble burglary, bear or panther seldom approached a cabin—but there was the chance of sudden illness, fire, the accidents that beset childhood, to say nothing of the narrowing moral and mental effect of their isolation at that tender age. It was scandalous in Johnson to leave them alone.
In the silence I found I could hear quite distinctly the sound of their voices in the extension, and it was evident that Caroline was putting them to bed. Suddenly a voice was uplifted—her own! She began to sing and the others to join her. It was the repetition of a single verse of a well-known lugubrious negro melody. "All the world am sad and dreary," wailed Caroline, in a high head-note, "everywhere I roam." "Oh, darkieth," lisped the younger girl in response, "how my heart growth weary, far from the old folkth at h-o-o-me." This was repeated two or three times before the others seemed to get the full swing of it, and then the lines rose and fell sadly and monotonously in the darkness. I don't know why, but I at once got the impression that those motherless little creatures were under a vague belief that their performance was devotional, and was really filling the place of an evening hymn. A brief and indistinct kind of recitation, followed by a dead silence, broken only by the slow creaking of new timber, as if the house were stretching itself to sleep too, confirmed my impression. Then all became quiet again.
But I was more wide awake than before. Finally I rose, dressed myself, and dragging my stool to the fire, took a book from my knapsack, and by the light of a guttering candle, which I discovered in a bottle in the corner of the hearth, began to read. Presently I fell into a doze. How long I slept I could not tell, for it seemed to me that a dreamy consciousness of a dog barking at last forced itself upon me so strongly that I awoke. The barking appeared to come from behind the cabin in the direction of the clearing where I had tethered Chu Chu. I opened the door hurriedly, ran round the cabin towards the hollow, and was almost at once met by the bulk of the frightened Chu Chu, plunging out of the darkness towards me, kept only in check by her reata in the hand of a blanketed shape slowly advancing with a gun over its shoulder out of the hollow. Before I had time to recover from my astonishment I was thrown into greater confusion by recognizing the shape as none other than Caroline!
Without the least embarrassment or even self-consciousness of her appearance, she tossed the end of the reata to me with the curtest explanation as she passed by. Some prowling bear or catamount had frightened the mule. I had better tether it before the cabin away from the wind.
"But I thought wild beasts never came so near," I said quickly.
"Mule meat's mighty temptin'," said the girl sententiously and passed on. I wanted to thank her; I wanted to say how sorry I was that she had been disturbed; I wanted to compliment her on her quiet midnight courage, and yet warn her against recklessness; I wanted to know whether she had been accustomed to such alarms; and if the gun she carried was really a necessity. But I could only respect her reticence, and I was turning away when I was struck by a more inexplicable spectacle. As she neared the end of the extension I distinctly saw the tall figure of a man, moving with a certain diffidence and hesitation that did not, however, suggest any intention of concealment, among the trees; the girl apparently saw him at the same moment and slightly slackened her pace. Not more than a dozen feet separated them. He said something that was inaudible to my ears,—but whether from his hesitation or the distance I could not determine. There was no such uncertainty in her reply, however, which was given in her usual curt fashion: "All right. You can trapse along home now and turn in."
She turned the corner of the extension and disappeared. The tall figure of the man wavered hesitatingly for a moment, and then vanished also. But I was too much excited by curiosity to accept this unsatisfactory conclusion, and, hastily picketing Chu Chu a few rods from the front door, I ran after him, with an instinctive feeling that he had not
gone far. I was right. A few paces distant he had halted in the same dubious, lingering way. "Hallo!" I said.
He turned towards me in the like awkward fashion, but with neither astonishment nor concern.
"Come up and take a drink with me before you go," I said, "if you're not in a hurry. I'm alone here, and since I HAVE turned out I don't see why we mightn't have a smoke and a talk together."
"I dursn't."
I looked up at the six feet of strength before me and repeated wonderingly, "Dare not?"
"SHE wouldn't like it." He made a movement with his right shoulder towards the extension.
"Who?"
"Miss Karline."
"Nonsense!" I said. "She isn't in the cabin,—you won't see HER. Come along." He hesitated, although from what I could discern of his bearded face it was weakly smiling.
"Come."
He obeyed, following me not unlike Chu Chu, I fancied, with the same sense of superior size and strength and a slight whitening of the eye, as if ready to shy at any moment. At the door he "backed." Then he entered sideways. I noticed that he cleared the doorway at the top and the sides only by a hair's breadth.
By the light of the fire I could see that, in spite of his full first growth of beard, he was young,—even younger than myself,—and that he was by no means bad-looking. As he still showed signs of retreating at any moment, I took my flask and tobacco from my saddle-bags, handed them to him, pointed to the stool, and sat down myself upon the bed.
"You live near here?"
"Yes," he said a little abstractedly, as if listening for some interruption, "at Ten Mile Crossing."
"Why, that's two miles away."
"I reckon."
"Then you don't live here—on the clearing?"
"No. I b'long to the mill at 'Ten Mile.'"
"You were on your way home?"
"No," he hesitated, looking at his pipe; "I kinder meander round here at this time, when Johnson's away, to see if everything's goin' straight."
"I see—you're a friend of the family."
"'Deed no!" He stopped, laughed, looked confused, and added, apparently to his pipe, "That is, a sorter friend. Not much. SHE"—he lowered his voice as if that potential personality filled the whole cabin—"wouldn't like it."
"Then at night, when Johnson's away, you do sentry duty round the house?"
"Yes, 'sentry dooty,' that's it,"—he seemed impressed with the suggestion—"that's it! Sentry dooty. You've struck it, pardner."
"And how often is Johnson away?"
"'Bout two or three times a week on an average."
"But Miss Caroline appears to be able to take care of herself. She has no fear."
"Fear! Fear wasn't hangin' round when SHE was born!" He paused. "No, sir. Did ye ever look into them eyes?"
I hadn't, on account of the lashes. But I didn't care to say this, and only nodded.
"There ain't the created thing livin' or dead, that she can't stand straight up to and look at."
I wondered if he had fancied she experienced any difficulty in standing up before that innocently good-humored face, but I could not resist saying:—
"Then I don't see the use of your walking four miles to look after her."
I was sorry for it the next minute, for he seemed to have awkwardly broken his pipe, and had to bend down for a long time afterwards to laboriously pick up the smallest fragments of it. At last he said, cautiously:
"Ye noticed them bits o' flannin' round the chillern's throats?"
I remembered that I had, but was uncertain whether it was intended as a preventive of cold or a child's idea of decoration. I nodded.
"That's their trouble. One night, when old Johnson had been off for three days to Coulterville, I was prowling round here and I didn't git to see no one, though there was a light burnin' in the shanty all night. The next night I was here again,—the same light twinklin', but no one about. I reckoned that was mighty queer, and I jess crep' up to the house an' listened. I heard suthin' like a little cough oncet in a while, and at times suthin' like a little moan. I didn't durst to sing out for I knew SHE wouldn't like it, but whistled keerless like, to let the chillern know I was there. But it didn't seem to take. I was jess goin' off, when—darn my skin!—if I didn't come across the bucket of water I'd fetched up from the spring THAT MORNIN', standin' there full, and NEVER TAKEN IN! When I saw that I reckoned I'd jess wade in, anyhow, and I knocked. Pooty soon the door was half opened, and I saw her eyes blazin' at me like them coals. Then SHE 'lowed I'd better 'git up and git,' and shet the door to! Then I 'lowed she might tell me what was up—through the door. Then she said, through the door, as how the chillern lay all sick with that hoss-distemper, diphthery. Then she 'lowed she'd use a doctor ef I'd fetch him. Then she 'lowed again I'd better take the baby that hadn't ketched it yet along with me, and leave it where it was safe. Then she passed out the baby through the door all wrapped up in a blankit like a papoose, and you bet I made tracks with it. I knowed thar wasn't no good going to the mill, so I let out for White's, four miles beyond, whar there was White's old mother. I told her how things were pointin', and she lent me a hoss, and I jess rounded on Doctor Green at Mountain Jim's, and had him back here afore sun-up! And then I heard she wilted,—regularly played out, you see,—for she had it all along wuss than the lot, and never let on or whimpered!"
"It was well you persisted in seeing her that night," I said, watching the rapt expression of his face. He looked up quickly, became conscious of my scrutiny, and dropped his eyes again, smiled feebly, and drawing a circle in the ashes with the broken pipe-stem, said:—
"But SHE didn't like it, though."
I suggested, a little warmly, that if she allowed her father to leave her alone at night with delicate children, she had no right to choose WHO should assist her in an emergency. It struck me afterwards that this was not very complimentary to him, and I added hastily that I wondered if she expected some young lady to be passing along the trail at midnight! But this reminded me of Johnson's style of argument, and I stopped.
"Yes," he said meekly, "and ef she didn't keer enough for herself and her brothers and sisters, she orter remember them Beazeley chillern."
"Beazeley children?" I repeated wonderingly.
"Yes; them two little ones, the size of Mirandy; they're Beazeley's."
"Who is Beazeley, and what are his children doing here?"
"Beazeley up and died at the mill, and she bedevilled her father to let her take his two young 'uns here."
"You don't mean to say that with her other work she's taking care of other people's children too?"
"Yes, and eddicatin' them."
"Educating them?"
"Yes; teachin' them to read and write and do sums. One of our loggers ketched her at it when she was keepin' tally."
We were both silent for some moments.
"I suppose you know Johnson?" I said finally.
"Not much."
"But you call here at other times than when you're helping her?"
"Never been in the house before."
He looked slowly around him as he spoke, raising his eyes to the bare rafters above, and drawing a few long breaths, as if he were inhaling the aura of some unseen presence. He appeared so perfectly gratified and contented, and I was so impressed with this humble and silent absorption of the sacred interior, that I felt vaguely conscious that any interruption of it was a profanation, and I sat still, gazing at the dying fire. Presently he arose, stretched out his hand, shook mine warmly, said, "I reckon I'll meander along," took another long breath, this time secretly, as if conscious of my eyes, and then slouched sideways out of the house into the darkness again, where he seemed suddenly to attain his full height, and so looming, disappeared. I shut the door, went to bed, and slept soundly.
So soundly that when I awoke the sun was streaming on my bed from the open door. On the table before me my breakfast was already laid. When I had dressed and eaten it, struck by the silence, I went to the door and
looked out. 'Dolphus was holding Chu Chu by the reata a few paces from the cabin.
"Where's Caroline?" I asked.
He pointed to the woods and said: "Over yon: keeping tally."
"Did she leave any message?"
"Said I was to git your mule for you."
"Anything else?"
"Yes; said you was to go."
I went, but not until I had scrawled a few words of thanks on a leaf of my notebook, which I wrapped about my last Spanish dollar, addressed it to "Miss Johnson," and laid it upon the table.
* * *
It was more than a year later that in the bar-room of the Mariposa Hotel a hand was laid upon my sleeve. I looked up. It was Johnson.
He drew from his pocket a Spanish dollar. "I reckoned," he said, cheerfully, "I'd run again ye somewhar some time. My old woman told me to give ye that when I did, and say that she 'didn't keep no hotel.' But she allowed she'd keep the letter, and has spelled it out to the chillern."
Here was the opportunity I had longed for to touch Johnson's pride and affection in the brave but unprotected girl. "I want to talk to you about Miss Johnson," I said, eagerly.
"I reckon so," he said, with an exasperating smile. "Most fellers do. But she ain't Miss Johnson no more. She's married."
"Not to that big chap over from Ten Mile Mills?" I said breathlessly.
"What's the matter with HIM," said Johnson. "Ye didn't expect her to marry a nobleman, did ye?"
