Chapter VII.
COLONEL WARLOW'S STORY--CONCLUDED.
An hour later the party sat under the drooping boughs of an elm, nearthickets of snowy elder and blooming wild-roses, which filled all theair with their delicious fragrance; the shallow stream murmured andgurgled along between its willow-fringed banks, glimmering like silverunder the beams of the rising moon.
At the request of the group, the colonel resumed, as follows:--
"When the wool had been allotted to the captains, in equal proportions,the leaders divided the company in two parties. It was understood thatthe side first finishing its task of picking the burrs and other foreignmatter from the fleeces of wool, should crown its captain and carry herin triumph around the room on a chair; then she should be awarded thehonor of opening the ball, which was to follow in the wide kitchen.
"Mary and I were the last to finish, but were helped through our task byseveral smiling friends. Then our captain--wild, saucy PegSickle--bounded up with the cry, 'Crown the captain!' which wasre-echoed by her noisy followers, who proceeded, with ludicrousceremony, to carry the order into execution.
"The violins struck up a lively air, and the gay Peg, wearing hertowering head-dress of wool, led off in the inspiriting quadrille; butthe lively dance was watched ruefully through the open doorway by theother party, who still were at their unfinished task; but our hilaritywas interrupted by cries of--
"'Fraud!--Shame!--Peggy has been hiding the fleece!'
"It transpired that the treacherous Peg had concealed nearly half thewool allotted to our party, and it had been discovered, in itshiding-place, under the bed; so poor Peg was dragged ignominiously fromthe unfinished set, and made to abdicate her woolly crown, which wasquickly replaced by a diadem of cockle-burrs, with which her irate foesdecked her brow, with the taunting reminder that 'uneasy _lies_ the headthat wears a crown.'
"We slunk back to our unfinished task, as our opponents finished theirs,and re-enacted the mummery; but we toiled faithfully, notwithstandingtheir jeers, and soon were allowed to join the revelers.
"I noticed, with gratification, that Amy appeared to still beheart-free; and as we were dancing together, later in the evening, Itold her of finding Roger at Acapulco, and when she almost cried withdelight at his escape, I began at once to build 'castles in Spain,' butprudently omitted mentioning the incident of the picture.
"Dancing and singing continued until a late hour, relieved, however, byhuge baskets of hickory-nuts and apples, with supplementary pitchers ofcider. Of that ride home through the moonlight I'll say nothing, indeference to that lady by the camp-fire yonder; but suffice it that shewas the heroine of that very happy occasion, and the 10th of May was setfor our wedding, which, in view of my four years' probation, I thoughtan age to wait.
"Next day I bought the 'Nolan farm,' which was only three miles fromMary's home, and at once proceeded to put the place in thorough repair.The premises were rather tumble-down, and 'the bildin's a leetleshackelty,' as the fox-hunting squire remarked; but I put such a forceof workmen on the old stone house and broken-backed barn that the placewas soon completely transformed.
"The fences were the most demoralized and dilapidated that I have everbeheld. In fact, brother Dick asserted that the 'Nolan boys, Bill andIke, were never known to open a gap,' but rode their horses at therail-fence, knocking it down for rods; then half of the next day wouldbe devoted to repairing the unpicturesque nuisance--said repairsconsisting of a load of brush, dumped where the festive youths had madethe floundering leap.
"Often I would come upon an unsightly place in the fields--the squire's'barrier,' a great thornbush, spiked to the earth with brambles andthistle--and I would smile at the vision of the sport-loving farmerunhitching his team amid-field to chase the venturesome coon orstiff-legged deer that had caught his roving eye.
"My carpenters were finishing a stile and two large gates in front ofthe house, which was temporarily occupied by its former owner, whenMaster Dave Nolan, a scion of the old stock, came upon the scene. Heviewed the improvements with great displeasure, and, crawling under oneof the large gates, he said, as he wriggled out, lizard style:--
"'Gates is all nonsense; aint half as handy as a gap in the fence and aslick rail!'
"The 10th of May found the house thoroughly renovated and furnishednewly throughout; so, after the wedding ceremony, when we had discussedthe dinner, Mary and I took a 'bridal tour' by going to our new home,and in the evening our neighbors and relatives gathered in to give us ahouse-warming.
"Soon after, I wrote Roger an invitation to spend the summer with us,Mary and Amy adding a feminine postscript, in which they expressed theirvaluation of one who had proved so noble a friend in my distress, andearnestly begging him to give them an opportunity of thanking himpersonally.
"To which he responded that he would 'do himself the honor' of payinghis respects in person the following July--a visit which terminated in awedding between my old friend and sister Amy. On their bridal day I gavethem the deed to the Maple Dale plantation, which adjoined our own, andas I handed the astonished pair the papers I remarked that it was infulfillment of the contract which Roger and I had made at Los Angeles,and they might charge it to 'Profit and Loss.'
"The newly-wedded pair left the plantation in charge of an overseer, andreturned to Acapulco; but Roger resigned his position after a fewmonths, and returned home to the quiet life of a planter.
"We enjoyed a long period of uninterrupted prosperity; but when the Warof the Rebellion began, I raised a company and joined the Southern army.At the close of that terrible conflict all that was left me was my titleand family, with the wreck of my once comfortable fortune.
"I shall hurry over the history of the struggling years that followed;how on returning from the war I found Mary and the children had fled tothe city, and how I gathered them once more together on the farm, wherethe dear old homestead lay, a blackened ruin. But earnestly we tried toretrieve the lost years.
"The county in which I lived was 'reconstructed,' and from the bondsissued by the officers, and the taxes levied to run the costly, corruptmachine, there followed wide-spread financial distress.
"A treasurer had been appointed to finger our money. He was ahawk-nosed, black-haired little reprobate, named Toler, and the way hetolled all the grists which came to his tax-mill led us to believe thathe was well named indeed. It was reported that he had once held the postof sutler in a regiment of Eastern troops. Whether that was true or not,he was undoubtedly the most subtle villain that ever sold scabby sheepor slipped a flag-stone into a sack of bacon. Finally, this 'patriotic'officer, having stuffed his 'grip-sack' with county funds, one darknight took an excursion for his health, considerately leaving thecounty, which he only refrained from stealing from the fact that it wasnot portable.
"The reckless extravagance of that class of men, cursed and abhorred byboth parties, led eventually to wide-spread ruin and bankruptcy; but outof the wreck of my once comfortable fortune I saved a few thousands,and, hearing favorable reports from the fertile Kansas prairies, weturned our steps westward toward the setting sun. Fate seemed to lead mehere; so I will begin the life-struggle over again on the spot where Ilost my friends and the gold doubloons here, near the shadows of the OldStone Corral."
* * * * *
When the colonel had finished the long and eventful history of his pastlife, a silence fell on the group--a silence tinged with sadness as theythought of the fate of Walraven and his wife; and as the camp-firemingled its flickering light with the pale moonbeams, throwing anuncertain, wavering shimmer over the tangled vines and milk-whiteelder-blooms, a sense of their lone, isolated position slowly dawnedupon them. They were far out on the verge of an untried, mysteriousland, no evidences of civilization for miles around, and all the future,with its trials and struggles, looming grimly on the morrow. Is it anywonder that a feeling of dread, awe, and fear stole over the stoutestheart at the thought of the direful, tragic past haunting t
he spot withits painful memories, and the black veil of futurity hovering overthem--hiding the joys and fears, the tears and graves, that lay beyond?
The colonel sat gazing, sad and thoughtful, out toward the knoll, where,resting in the moonlight, the victims of that horrible tragedy now slepttheir sleep of eternity in the lone, grassy grave.
The winds whispered softly among the trees; a song-bird twittereddrowsily in its nest; then a long, mournful howl from a wolf on thedistant hills broke the silence of the summer night. Maud, lookingwistfully out to the west, where the great planets, those mute sentinelsof time, kept their watch in the sky, repeated the sweet, pathetic"Dirge" of Tennyson:--
"Round thee blow, self pleached deep, Bramble-roses, faint and pale, And long purples of the dale,-- Let them rave; These in every shower creep Through the green that folds thy grave. Let them rave.
Chanteth not the brooding bee Sweeter tones than calumny?"
A wild cry from Mrs. Moreland startled the group from their reverie andbroke in abruptly upon their musing. As they lifted their eyes or sprangto their feet in dismay, she pointed, with trembling finger, to wherethe uncertain moonlight flickered through the willows, and there theybeheld a sight which froze them with horror, and haunted them with itsmystery for long months thereafter.
But a few paces from where they sat stood the form of a strange, grayfigure, in a loose, long robe, its locks and flowing beard of snowywhite, its wildly gleaming eyes and snaggled fangs, showing dimly inthe spectral light. With a long, bony finger pointed at the group, thefigure stood for a brief moment; then, with a blood-chilling scream, itfaded away amid the shadows.
Clifford Warlow and Ralph Moreland sprang after the vanishing figure,unheeding the wild shrieks of Maud and Grace, who begged them not tofollow the frightful apparition. As the young men disappeared among thetrees, Mrs. Warlow fell prone upon the earth with a low moan; and whileall of the party that remained forgot their terror in their efforts torestore her from the death-like swoon in which she had fallen, the youngmen returned, reporting a fruitless search.
It was now proposed, as Mrs. Warlow had revived, that theboys--Clifford, Ralph, Scott, and Robbie--should make a more extendedsearch with the three dogs; but they could not force the terror-strickenanimals to leave the camp-fire, where they cowered trembling with fear.So the search again proved unavailing.
A Fortune Hunter; Or, The Old Stone Corral: A Tale of the Santa Fe Trail Page 8
