Stories of the Foot-hills

Margaret Collier Graham

Stories of the Foot-hills

THE WITHROW WATER RIGHT

I

Lysander Sproul, driving his dun-colored mules leisurely toward the mesa, looked back now and then at the winery which crowned its low hill like a bit of fortification.

"If I'd really had any idee o' gettin' ahead o' him," he reflected, "or circumventin' him an inch, I reckon I'd been more civil; it's no more 'n fair to be civil to a man when you're gettin' the best of 'im; but I hain't. I don't s'pose Indian Pete's yaller dog, standin' ahead there in the road ready to bark at my team like mad, has any idee of eatin' a mule, much less two, but all the same it's a satisfaction to him to be sassy; an' seein' he's limited in his means of entertainin' hisself, I don't begrudge him. And the Colonel don't begrudge me. When a man has his coat pretty well wadded with greenbacks, he can stand a good deal o' thumpin'."

The ascent was growing rougher and more mountainous. Lysander put on the brake and stopped "to blow" his team. Whiffs of honey-laden air came from the stretch of chaparral on the slope behind him. He turned on the high spring-seat, and, dangling his long legs over the wagon-box, sent a far-reaching, indefinite gaze across the valley. There were broad acres of yellowing vineyard, fields of velvety young barley, orange-trees in dark orderly ranks, and here and there a peach orchard robbed of its leaves, – a cloud of tender maroon upon the landscape. Lysander collected his wandering glance and fixed it upon one of the pale-green barley-fields.

"It's about there, I reckon. Of course the old woman'll kick; but if the Colonel has laid out to do it he'll do it, kickin' or no kickin'. If he can't buy her out or trade her out, he'll freeze her out. Well, well, I ain't a-carin'; she can do as she pleases."

The man turned and took off the brake, and the mules, without further signal, resumed their journey. Boulders began to thicken by the roadside. The sun went down, and the air grew heavy with the soft, resinous mountain odors. Some one stepped from the shadow of a scraggy buckthorn in front of the team.

"Is that you, Sandy?"

It was a woman's voice, but it came from a figure wearing a man's hat and coat. Lysander stopped the mules.

"Why, Minervy! what's up?"

"Oh, nothin'. I just walked a ways to meet you." The woman climbed up beside her husband. "You're later 'n I 'lowed you'd be. Something must 'a' kep' you."

"Yes, I come around by the winery. I saw Poindexter over t' the Mission, an' he said the old Colonel wanted to see me."

"The old Colonel wanted to see you, Sandy?" The woman turned upon him anxiously in the yellow twilight. The rakishness of her attire was grotesquely at variance with her troubled voice and small, freckled face. "What did he want with you?"

"Well, he said he wanted me to help him make a trade with the old man," – Lysander sent a short, explosive laugh through his nostrils; "an' I told 'im I reckoned he knowed that the old woman was the old man, up our way."

"Oh, I'm glad you give it to 'im that way, Sandy," said the woman earnestly, rising to her habiliments. "Mother'll be prouder 'n a peacock of you. I hope you held your head high and sassed him right and left." Mrs. Sproul straightened her manly back and raised her shrill, womanish voice nervously. "Oh, I hope you told him you'd stood at the cannon's mouth before, an' wasn't afraid to face him or any other red-handed destroyer of his country's flag. I hope you told him that, Sandy."

"Well, I wasn't to say brash," returned her husband slowly and soothingly. "It wouldn't do, Minervy; it wouldn't do." Lysander uncoiled his long braided lash and whipped off two or three spikes of the withering, perfumed sage. "I talked up to 'im, though, middlin' impident; but law! it didn't hurt 'im; he's got a hide like a hypothenuse."

Mrs. Sproul drew a long, excited breath.

"I wish mother'd been along, Sandy; she'd 'a' told 'im a thing or two."

Lysander was discreetly silent. The sage and greasewood ended abruptly, and a row of leafless walnut-trees stretched their gaunt white branches above the road. Here and there an almond-tree, lured into premature bloom by the seductive California winter, stood like a wraith by the roadside. They could see the cabin now. A square of flaring and fading light marked the open doorway. The mules quickened their pace, and the wagon rattled over the stony road.

"Talk about increasin' the value o' this piece o' property!" the man broke out contemptuously. "I told 'im it would take a good deal o' chin to convince the old woman that anything would increase the value o' this ranch o' hern, and danged if I didn't think she was right. I'd pegged away at it two years, an' I couldn't."

"What did he say to that, Sandy?" demanded the woman, with admiring eagerness.

"Say? Oh, he said the soil was good. An' I 'lowed it was, – what there was of it; an' so was the boulders good, for boulders, – the trouble was in the mixin'. 'Don't talk to me about your "decomposed granite,"' says I: 'it's the granite what ain't decomposed that bothers me.' But pshaw!" – and Lysander dropped his voice hopelessly, – "he ain't a-carin'. I'd about as soon work the boulders as try to work him; he's harder'n any boulder on the ranch."

The mules turned into a narrow road, and stopped before the stable, a shackly, semi-tropical structure, consisting of four sycamore posts and a brush-covered roof. The lower half of the firelit doorway beyond suddenly darkened, and there was a swift, scurrying sound among the bushes that intervened between the house and the shed. A succession of heads, visible even in the deepening twilight by reason of a uniform glimmering whiteness, appeared in the barnyard.

Mrs. Sproul ran over the number with a rapid maternal calculation.

"Where's the baby, Sheridan?"

"Grammuzgotim."

Lysander climbed out of the wagon, and came around to his wife's side.

"Shan't I h'ist you down, Minervy?"

She gave him her hand, and stood beside him for an instant, meditatively, after he had lifted her to the ground.

"I guess I won't say nothin' to mother till you come in, Sandy. Be as spry as you can with the chores. Mebbe M'lissy'll milk the cow fer you."

She turned, and went up the walk toward the house, her mannish attire and the glimmering white heads that encircled her faintly suggestive of Jupiter and his attendant moons.

The sea-breeze had died away, and the wind was blowing in cooler gusts from the mountain; breezes laden with the aromatic sweetness of the bay-tree and the heavy scent of the shade-loving bracken wandered from far up the cañon into the cabin and out again, only to find themselves profaned and sordid with the smell of frying bacon.

A high, energetic voice was making itself heard even above the sizzle of the meat and the voice of a crying baby.

"What under the sun makes ye set up that yell every night jest at supper-time? Ye ain't a-lackin' anything, as I kin see, exceptin' a spankin', and I'm too busy to give ye that. Hark! There comes your mammy, now. Straighten up yer face and show 'er what a good boy you've been."

Thus adjured, the baby brought his vocalizing to that abrupt termination indicative of feeling not so deep-seated as to be entirely beyond control, and scrambled toward the door on all fours, breaking in upon the approaching planetary system, a somewhat dimmed and bedraggled comet. Mrs. Sproul picked him up, and looked around the room questioningly.

"What's M'lissy doin', mother?"

"Dawdlin'," answered the old woman, with a curtness that was eloquent, lifting the frying-pan from the stove, and shaking it into a more aggravated sputter.

"Is she upstairs?"

"I s'pose so. She gener'ly is, when there's anything doin' down."

Mrs. Sproul put her hand over the baby's mouth and called upward, "M'lissy!"

There was a sound of slow moving above, plainly audible through the unplastered ceiling, leisurely sliding steps on the stairs, and Melissa appeared in the doorway. She was still elevated above them by two or three steps, and leaned against the casement, looking down into the smoke and disorder of the room with a listless, irresponsible gaze. A tall, unformed girl, with a braid of red hair hanging across her shoulder, and ending in a heavy, lustrous curl upon the limp folds of her blue cotton dress.

The baby had resumed a subdued but dismal proclamation of the grief from which his mother's return had afforded him but a temporary relief, and Mrs. Sproul elevated her thin, anxious voice coaxingly.

"Lysander's late, M'lissy, and I thought mebbe you'd milk the cow fer 'im."

"Why, yes, of course," answered the girl, with a soft, good-natured drawl, descending the remaining steps slowly. "Where's the milk-pail, mother?"

"On top o' the chimbly," answered the old woman tartly, pointing with the frying-pan to a bench in the corner. "If it'd 'a' been a snake, it'd 'a' bit you."

The young girl crossed the room, and the satellites surrounding Mrs. Sproul's chair, with an erratic change of orbit, transferred themselves to the newcomer. The older sister took a handkerchief from the pocket of her coat.

"You'd best tie this around your neck, M'lissy; it's gettin' chill."

The girl accepted it carelessly, and stood in the doorway tying the bit of faded silk about her round, white throat.

"Where's the cow, mother?"

"She's staked on the 'fileree, t'other side of the barn. If ye don't find her when ye git there, come an' ask." The old woman drawled the last three words sarcastically.

Melissa smiled, showing a row of teeth, not small, but white and regular.

"Oh, if she's got away, I know where she's gone."

"Yes, I'll bet you do. Some folks has a heap of onnecessary learnin'."

There was no demand upon Melissa's supply of undervalued information. The cow was mooing reproachfully in a cropped circle of musky alfilaria behind the shed. The moon had risen, and rested for an instant upon the edge of Cucamonga, like a silver ball rolling down the mountain-side. Melissa laid her arms on the spotted heifer's back, and gazed at the landscape dreamily. Not discontent, nor longing, nor vague, troublesome aspirations mirrored themselves in the girl's placid face. Gentle, ease-loving natures, that might show in fair relief against a delicate background of luxury, become dull and lifeless in contrast with the coarser tints of poverty. In the parlance of those about her, Melissa was "dawdlin'," – and those about us are likely to be just, for they speak from the righteous standpoint of results.

The moon had floated high above Cucamonga, – so high that every nook and fastness of the mountain lay revealed in her soft, nocturnal splendor; even the tops of the mottled sycamores, far below in Sawpit Cañon, were touched with a vague, ghostly light; and still the council that sat in Lysander Sproul's kitchen was loud-voiced and shrill. The children, huddled in a corner that they might whisper and giggle beyond the reach of manual reproof, had fallen asleep, a confused heap of dejected weariness. The baby's head hung at an alarming angle from his father's arm, and even the acrid, high-pitched notes of his grandmother's voice failed to disturb the sleep of bedraggled innocence.

"So he's a-wantin' to develop the cañon, is he? Time wuz when you'd 'a' thought that cañon wuz good enough even fer him, from the lawin' and the lyin' and the swearin' he done to git his clutches onto it. Well, if he wants to improve it, why don't he improve it? Nobody's goin' to hender."

"That's what I told 'im," answered her son-in-law, taking the pipe from his mouth, and sending a halo of blue smoke about the head of his slumbering charge. "He said he wanted to improve the water. 'Nobody's goin' to kick at that,' says I; 'if they do, they're fools. I think the old lady'll tell you to go ahead. I shouldn't be s'prised, though,' says I, 'if she'd add that the water o' Sawpit Cañon's good enough fer her without any improvin'.'"

Mrs. Sproul glanced at her mother triumphantly.

"I told you Sandy talked up to him, mother. Oh, I do wish you'd 'a' wore your uniform, Sandy; then you could 'a' rose up before him proudly, an' told 'im you'd fought the battles of your country before" —

"Oh, shucks, Minervy!" interrupted the old woman dejectedly; "what does Nate Forrester care for anybody's country? What else'd he say, Lysander?"

"He said – well" – the man hesitated, and hitched his high shoulders a trifle uneasily – "he swore he hated to do business with a woman."

Spots of a deep, coppery red glowed through the tan of the old woman's cheeks.

"He said that, did 'e, Lysander Sproul? Then he must 'a' found some woman hard to cheat. Nate Forrester don't hate to do business with nobody he can cheat. The next time you see 'im, tell 'im it's mut'chal."

"I told 'im that," answered Lysander grimly. "I told 'im he didn't hate to do business with the hull female sect no worse than this partikiler woman hated to do business with him; but I reckoned you wouldn't bother 'im if he wanted to go to work on the cañon, – that'd be onreasonable."

"He hain't no notion o' doin' that," asserted the old woman contemptuously. "Ketch him improvin' anybody else's water right. We're nothin' to him but sticks to boil his pot. What's he up to now?"

"Well," rejoined Lysander skeptically, "he said he wanted to divide that upper volunteer barley-patch into ten-acre lots and put it onto the market. An' he b'lieved he could double the water right by tunnelin'."

"Why don't he tunnel away, then? Nobody's a-carin'," demanded the old woman shrilly.

"That's what I told 'im; and he 'lowed, of course, he wasn't a-goin' to put money into another feller's water right. An' then he figured away, showin' me how it'd increase the value o' this piece o' property; an' I told 'im this property was 'way up now," – Lysander sneered audibly, – "consider'ble higher 'n most folks wanted to go; an' then he went to blowin' about it, braggin' up the ranch, an' tellin' what a big thing he done when he give it to you" —

The old woman broke in upon him fiercely.

"Did he say that, Lysander?" She turned, and bent upon her son-in-law a quick, wrathful glance from under her shaggy brows; the muscles of her weather-beaten face twitched nervously. "I'd 'a' give my right hand to 'a' heerd 'im. I'd like to have Colonel Nate Forrester try to say anything to me about givin' anybody this ranch." She measured her words bitingly. "I s'pose when a feller puts his pistol at yer head, and tells you to hold up yer hands, and goes through yer pockets, if he happens to overlook a ten-cent piece he gives ye that much, does 'e? That's the way Colonel Nate Forrester give me this ranch. Loss Anjelus County hadn't heerd o' him when I settled onto this claim, and it ain't heerd no good of 'im sence."

The old woman's harsh, discordant voice rose higher with her wrath. The baby stirred uneasily in his father's arms. Even Melissa raised her eyes, – Melissa, who sat on the lowest step of the projecting staircase, twisting and untwisting the faded blue silk handkerchief in her lap with a gentle, listless monotony. It was impossible to tell whether ignorance or indifference characterized the girl, so calm, so inert, so absent was she, sitting in the half-shadow of the dimly lighted corner, her lustrous auburn head outlined against the sombre-hued redwood of the wall behind her.

There was a little hush in the room after the tempest.

"No, that's a fact, – that's a fact. Well – then – you see – " continued Lysander, groping for his forgotten place in the recital. "Oh, yes, – I got up and told 'im 'Addyoce,' as if I s'posed he was through, and started off; an' he called me back, an' 'lowed mebbe the old folks didn't have much loose change lyin' 'round to put into water improvements; an' I told 'im I didn't know, – I reckoned you could mortgage the ranch. From the way he talked, he'd make you a handsome loan on it, and jump at the chance; an' after he'd hummed and hawed a while, he offered to give you a clear title to Flutterwheel Spring if you'd deed 'im your int'rest in the rest o' the cañon. I told 'im it wasn't my funeral. I'd tell you what he said, an' you could do as you pleased."

The old woman fixed her small, shrewd eyes on her son-in-law.

"What else 'd he say, Lysander?"

"Nothin' much. Wanted me to use my influence with the old man!"

His mother-in-law gave a short, contemptuous sniff.

"I reckon he'd like to do business with the old man. What'd you tell 'im?"

"I told 'im I'd be sure to put my influence where it'd do the most good, an' I 'dvised him to see you. I 'lowed him an' you'd git on peaceable as a meetin' to 'lect a preacher," – Lysander rubbed his gnarled hand over his face, as if to erase a lurking grin, – "but he didn't seem anxious."

"I reckon not. Is that all he said?"

"'Bout all. He said it was a damned good trade."

"Lysander!" Mrs. Sproul sprang up, placing herself between her husband and the heap of slumbering innocents in the corner. "Lysander Sproul, – and you a father! This comes of consortin' with the ungodly, and settin' in the chair of the scorner."

"Oh, come now, Minervy, I was only quotin'." Lysander's eye twinkled, but he spoke contritely, with generous consideration for his wife's condition, which was imminently delicate.

"Oh, you're hystericky, Minervy. You'd best go to bed," observed her mother. "You're all tuckered out with yer walk. I guess Lysander's told all he knows, hain't you, Lysander?"

"'Bout all, – yes. He followed me out to the wagon, and hinted something about Poindexter wantin' help if he went to work on the tunnel, and 'lowed I'd find it handier to have a job nearder home, now that the grape-haulin' was over. But I told 'im there was no trouble about that. The nearder home I got, the more work I found, gener'ly. Pay was kind o' short, but then a man must be a trifle stickin' that wouldn't do his own work fer nothin'."

Lysander got up and carried the baby into the adjoining room, bending his lank form from habit rather than from necessity, as he passed through the doorway.

Mrs. Sproul, tearfully resentful of the charge of hysterics, investigated the sleeping children with a view to more permanent disposal of them for the night, a process which resulted in much whimpering, and a limp, somnolent sense of injury on the part of the investigated.

"I don't take much stock in Nate Forrester's trades," said the grandmother, elevating her voice so that Lysander could hear; "there's some deviltry back of 'em, gener'ly; the better they look, the more I'm afraid of 'em. I don't purtend to know what he's drivin' at now, not bein' the prince o' darkness, but I reckon he can wait till I do."

II

The next day Melissa turned her gray eyes with a vague, kindling interest toward the "volunteer barley-patch." Two or three points of white gleamed upon it in the afternoon sun. She mused upon them speculatively for awhile, and then consulted Lysander.

"I reckon it's the survey stakes, M'lissy," he said kindly. "Forrester's dividin' it up, as he said. I wouldn't say nothin' 'bout it to yer maw, 'f I was you; it'll only rile her up."

Melissa looked at the field in a quiet, dispassionate way.

"The land's his'n, ain't it, Lysander?" she asked.

"Oh, yes, the land's his'n, an' a good part o' the cañon, too, – all but a little that b'longs to yer maw. But the hull thing used to be hern; quite a spell back, though."

Lysander was hauling stones from a knoll near the house, and dumping them on the edge of the cañon, – a leisurely process, carried on by means of a sled, of unmistakable home manufacture, drawn by one of the dun-colored mules. Melissa was helping him in a desultory, intermittent fashion. There was a very friendly understanding between these two peace-loving members of the family.

The young girl carried two or three speckled granite boulders and dropped them into the rude vehicle, and then sat down on the edge of it meditatively. The dark rim of her hat made a background for her head with its little billows of richly tinted hair. Exertion had brought a faint transitory pink to her fair, freckled face.

"Did Colonel Forrester steal the land and water from mother, Lysander?" she asked, with the calm, unreasoning candor of youth.

Lysander straightened his lank form, and then betook himself to a seat on a neighboring boulder, evidently of the opinion that the judicial nature of the question before him demanded a sitting posture.

"I dunno about that, M'lissy," he said, shutting one eye and squinting across the valley sagaciously. "The Soopreme Court of the State of Californy said he didn't, an' yer maw says he did, – with regards to the cañon, that is. The land, – well, she deeded him the land, but he sort o' had the snap on her when she done it. You'll find, M'lissy," he added, with a careful disavowal of prejudice, "that there's as much difference of 'pinion about stealin' as there is about heaven."

There was a long, serene, comfortable silence. Even the mule seemed dreamily retrospective. Bees reveled in the honeyed wealth of the buckthorn, and chanted their content in drowsy monotony. The upland lavished its spicy sweetness on the still, yellow air. A gopher peered out of its freshly made burrow with quick, wary turns of its little head, and dropped suddenly out of sight as Melissa spoke.

"How come mother to deed him the land, Sandy?"

The weight of decision being lifted from Lysander's shoulders, he got up and resumed his work, evidently esteeming a mild form of activity admissible in purely narrative discourse.

"Well, ye see, M'lissy, yer maw home-stidded the land and filed a claim on the water in the cañon eight or ten years back, when neither of 'em was worth stealin'; an' she 'lowed she done the thing up in good shape, and had everything solid an' reg'lar, till Colonel Forrester come and bought the Santa Elena ranch and a lot o' dry land j'inin' it, and commenced nosin' around the cañon, an' hirin' men to overhaul the county record; an' the fust thing you know, he filed a claim onto the water in the cañon. Then you can guess what kind of a racket there was on hand."

Lysander paused, and sat down on a pile of stones, shaking his head in vague, reminiscent dismay. The young girl turned and looked at him, a sudden gleam of recollection widening her eyes.

"I b'lieve I remember 'bout that, Sandy," she said, with a little thrill of animation in her voice.

"Like enough. You was quite a chunk of a girl then. Minervy an' me was bee-ranchin' over t' the Verdugo, that spring. The rains was late and lodged yer maw's barley, so as 't she didn't have half a crop; an' you know yer paw's kind o' – kind o' – easy," – having chosen the adjective after some hesitation, Lysander lingered over it approvingly, – "and bein' as she was dead set on fightin' the Colonel, she mortgaged the ranch to raise the money for the lawsuit."

Lysander stopped again. Memories of that stormy time appeared to crowd upon him bewilderingly. He shook his head in slow but emphatic denial of his ability to do them dramatic justice in recital.

There was another long silence. The noonday air seemed to pulsate, as if the mountain were sleeping in the sun and breathing regularly. The weeds, which the weight of the sled had crushed, gave out a fragrance of honey and tar. A pair of humming-birds darted into the stillness in a little tempest of shrill-voiced contention, and the mule, aroused from dejected abstraction by the intruders, shook his tassel-like tail and yawned humanly.

Melissa got up and wandered toward the edge of the cañon, and Lysander, aroused from the plentitude of his recollections by her absence, completed his load and drove the dun-colored mule leisurely after her.

The stones fell over the precipice, breaking into the quiet of the depths below with a long, resounding crash that finally rippled off into silence, and the two sat down on the side of the empty sled and rode back to the stone-pile.

"I've always thought," said Lysander, resuming his work and his narrative with equal deliberation, "that there was a good deal missed by yer maw bein' took down with inflammatory rheumatiz jest about the time o' the trial o' that lawsuit. I dunno as it would 'a' made much difference in the end, but it would 'a' made consider'ble as it went along, and I think she'd 'a' rested easier if she'd 'a' had her say. Of course they come up an' took down her testimony in writin'; but it was shorthand, an' yer maw don't speak shorthand fer common. Well, of course, the old Colonel got away with the jury, and then yer maw found out that he'd bought the mortgage; an' about the time it was due he come up here, as smooth as butter, an' offered to give her this little patch o' boulders an' let her move the house onto it, an' give her share 'nough in the cañon to irrigate it, if she'd deed him the rest o' the land, an' save him the trouble o' foreclosin'. So she done it. But I don't think he enj'yed his visit, all the same. She wasn't sparin' o' her remarks to 'im, an' I think some o' 'em must 'a' hurt his feelin's, fer he hain't been here sence." Lysander chuckled with reminiscent relish.