Stories of the Foot-hills

"It would be strange," she said, "if a wife should need encouragement to stand by her husband when he is in trouble."

Alex had hated the minister ever since, and had made this an excuse for growing neglect of religious duties.

"It is no wonder he dreads to go to preachin', with that awful sin on his conscience," the women whispered to one another. They always whispered when they spoke of sin, as if it were sleeping somewhere near, and were liable to be aroused. Matilda divined their thoughts, and fretted under Alex's neglect of public service. She wished him to carry his head high, with the dignity of innocence. It appalled him at times to see how perfectly she apprehended her own part as the wife of a man wrongfully accused. He was not dull, but he had a stupid masculine candor of soul that stood aghast before her unswerving hypocrisy. She had never asked him to deny his guilt; she had simply set herself to establish his innocence.

Small wonder that she was tried and hampered by his failure to "act like other people," as she would have said if she had ever put her worry into words. It had been one of many disappointments to her that he should go to mill that day, instead of putting on his best coat and sitting in sullen discomfort through the pastor's "catechising." She had felt such pride in his presence at church on Sabbath; and then had come the announcement, "Thursday afternoon, God willing, I shall visit the family of Mr. Alexander Randall." How austerely respectable it had sounded! And the people had glanced toward the pew and seen Alex sitting there, with Wattie on his knee. And after all he had gone to mill, and left her to be pitied as the wife of a man who was afraid to face the preacher in his own house!

Matilda slipped the rustling splendor of her purple silk over her head, and went back to the limpness of her week-day calico with a sigh.

When Alex came in for the milk-pail, she was standing by the stove, turning the long strips of salt pork that curled and sizzled in the skillet. Her shoulders seemed to droop a trifle more in her working-dress, but her face was flushed from the heat of the cooking.

"There wasn't any call to get a warm supper for me, Tildy. I ain't hungry to speak of."

"Well, I guess anyway I'd better make some milk gravy for the children; I didn't have up a fire at noon, see'n' you was away. It ain't much trouble."

Her voice was resolutely cheerful, and Alex knew that the discussion was ended. But after the supper things were cleared away, she said to Mary Frances, "Can't you go and let your pa see how nice you can say your psa'm?"

And the child had gone outside where Alex was sitting, and had stood with her hands behind her, her sharp little shoulders moving in unison with her sing-song as she repeated the verses.

"'That man hath perfect blessednessWho walketh not astrayIn counsel of ungodly men,Nor stands in sinners' way,Nor sitteth in the scorner's chair:But placeth his delightUpon God's law, and meditatesOn his law day and night.'"

The child caught her breath with a long sigh, and hurried on to the end.

"'In judgment, therefore, shall not standSuch as ungodly are;Nor in th' assembly of the justShall wicked men appear.For why? The way of godly menUnto the Lord is known;Whereas the way of wicked menShall quite be overthrown.'"

Then she stood still, waiting for her father's praise.

He caught her thin little arm and drew her toward him, where she could not look into his face.

"You say it very nice, Mary Frances, – very nice indeed."

And Mary Frances smiled, a prim little satisfied smile, and nestled her slim body against him contentedly.

II

Ten years drifted away, and there was a new minister in the congregation at Blue Mound. The Reverend Andrew Turnbull had died, and his successor had come from a Western divinity school, with elocutionary honors thick upon him. Under his genial warmth the congregation had thawed into a staid enthusiasm. To take their orthodoxy with this generous coating of zeal and kindliness and graceful rhetoric, and know that the bitterness that proclaimed it genuine was still there, unimpaired and effective, was a luxury that these devout natures were not slow to appreciate. A few practical sermons delivered with the ardor and enthusiasm of a really earnest youth stamped the newcomer as a "rare pulpiter," and a fresh, bubbling geniality, as sincere as it was effusive, opened a new world to their creed-encompassed souls. Not one of them thought of resenting his youthful patronage. He was the ambassador of God to them, and, while they would have been shocked beyond measure at his appearance in the pulpit in a gray coat, they perceived no incongruity between the brightness of his smile and the gloom of his theology.

This man came into Alex Randall's house with no odor of sanctity about him, and with no knowledge of an unhappy past. Matilda had grown older and stooped more, and her knot of sandy hair was less luxuriant than it had once been, but there were no peevish, fretful lines on her face. It began to grow young again now that she saw Alex becoming "such friends with the minister." Mary Frances was a tall, round-shouldered girl, teaching the summer school, and Wattie was a sturdy boy in roundabouts, galloping over the farm, clinging horizontally to half-broken colts, and suffering from a perpetual peeling of the skin from his sunburned nose. Matilda was proud of her children. She hoped it was not an ungodly pride. She knelt very often on the braided rug, and buried her worn face in the side of her towering feather bed, while she prayed earnestly that they might honor their father and their mother, that their days might be long in the land which the Lord their God had given them. If she laid a stress upon the word "father," was it to be wondered at? And the children did honor their father so far as she knew. If he would only join the church, and share with her the responsibility of their precious souls! It had been hard for her, when Wattie was baptized, to stand there alone and feel the pitying looks of the congregation behind her. Her pulse quickened now at every announcement of communion, and she listened with renewed hopefulness when Mr. Anderson leaned forward in the pulpit and gave the solemn invitation to those who had sat under the kindly influence of the gospel for many years untouched to shake off their soul-destroying lethargy, and come forward and enroll themselves on the Lord's side.

It was the Friday after one of these appeals that Alex came into the kitchen and said awkwardly, —

"I guess I'll change my clothes, Matildy, and go over t' the church this afternoon and meet the Session."

She felt the burden of years lifted from her shoulders. She said simply, —

"I'm real glad of it, Elick. You'll find two shirts in the middle drawer. I think the under one's the best."

Matilda went back to her work, and thought how the stain would be wiped away. "They'll have to give in that he's a good man now," she said to herself. She fought with the smile that would curve her lips. The minister would announce it on Sabbath. "By letter from sister congregations," and then the names; and then, "On profession of faith, Alexander Randall." She tried to stifle her pride. It must be pride, she said, – it must be something evil that could make her so very, very happy.

III

It was late when Alex came home, and he did the chores after supper. Mary Frances and Wattie had gone to singing-school and Matilda was alone in the kitchen when her husband came in. He sat down on the doorstep, with his back to her and his head down, and stuck the blade of his jack-knife into the pine step between his feet. There was a long silence, and when he spoke his voice had a husky embarrassment.

"There's something I suppose I'd ought to have talked to you about all this time, Matildy, but somehow I couldn't seem to do it. I had a talk with Mr. Anderson, and he brought it up before the Session, and they didn't seem to think anything more need to be said about it. It's all dead and gone now, and of course you know I've been sorry time and time and again. I don't suppose I ought to say it, but it wasn't altogether my fault. She never did act right, but then, of course" —

"Elick!"

The man heard his name in a quick gasp behind him. He turned and looked up. Matilda was standing over him, with a white, distorted face.

"Do you mean – to tell me – that it was true?"

She got the words out with an effort. Her chin worked convulsively. She looked an old, old woman.

"True?"

The man lifted a dazed, questioning face to hers. He groped his way back through twenty years. This woman had believed in him all the time! He saw her take two or three steps backward and fall into a chair. They sat there until the room grew dark. The wind began to blow through the house, and Alex got up and put out the cat and shut the door. Then he went to his wife's side.

"Don't you think you'd better go to bed, Matildy?"

She shook her head.

"I suppose there's such a thing as repentance," he went on, with a rasp in his voice, "and a blotting out of sins, isn't there, Matildy?"

She put out her hand and pushed him away. He went into the bedroom and shut the door. She could hear him pulling off his boots on the bootjack. Then he walked about a little in his stocking feet, and presently the bed-cord squeaked, and she knew he was in bed. Later, she could hear his heavy breathing. She sat there in the dark until she heard Wattie whistling; then she got up and lit a candle and opened the door softly. The boy came loping up the path.

"Mary France's got a beau!" he broke out, with a little snort of ridicule.

His mother laid her hand on his arm.

"Wattie," she said, "I want you to go out to the barn and harness up old Doll and the colt. I want you to go with me and Mary Frances over to grandfather Hazlitt's."

The boy's mouth and eyes grew round.

"To-night?"

"Yes, right away. I don't want you to ask any questions, Wattie. Mother never yet told you to do anything wrong. Just go out and get the team, and be as quiet as you can."

The boy "hunched" his shoulders, and started with long, soft strides toward the barn. His mother heard him begin to whistle again and then stop abruptly. She stood on the step until she heard voices at the gate, and Mary Frances came up the walk between the marigolds and zinnias and stood in the square of light from the door. She met her mother with a pink, bashful face.

"I want you to go upstairs, Mary Frances, and get your other cloak and my blanket shawl. Wattie's gone to fetch the horses. You and him and me's goin' over to grandfather Hazlitt's."

"To grandfather Hazlitt's this time o' night! Is anybody sick?"

"No, there's nobody sick. I don't want you should ask any questions, Mary Frances. Just get on your things, and do as mother says; and don't make any more noise than you can help."

The young girl went into the house, and came out presently with her mother's shawl and bonnet. They could hear the wagon driving around to the gate.

Matilda went into the kitchen and blew out the candle. Then she closed the door quietly, and went down the walk with her daughter.

Matilda Randall was not at communion on the next Sabbath. She was "down sick at her father's," the women said, and they thought it hard that she should be absent when Alex joined the church.

"I don't doubt it's been quite a cross to her, the way he's held out," one of them remarked; "and it seems a pity she couldn't have been there to partake with him the first time."

But the weary woman, lying so still in her old room in her father's house, had a heavier cross.

Her mother tiptoed into the room, the morning after her arrival, and stood beside her until she opened her eyes.

"Elick is outside, Matildy. Shall I tell him to come in?"

She shook her head, and closed her eyes again wearily.

The old woman went out, and confronted her gray-haired husband helplessly.

"It beats me, Josiah, what he could 'a' said or done that she's took to heart so, after what she's put up with all these years."

Mr. Anderson preached the funeral sermon very touchingly, when it was all over. The tears came into his young eyes, and there were treacherous breaks in his rhetoric as he talked.

"This sister in Israel, whose lovely and self-sacrificing life has just ended so peacefully, lived to see the dearest wish of her heart gratified, – the conversion of the husband of her youth to the faith of her fathers. We are told that some have died of grief, but if this frail heart ceased to beat from any excess of emotion, it must have been, my friends, from the fullness of joy, – the joy 'that cometh in the morning.'"

But Alex Randall knew better.

IDY

I

Señora Gonzales was leaning upon the corral gate in the shade of the pomegranates, looking out over the lake. The lake itself was not more placid than the señora's face under her black rebozo. Perhaps a long life of leaning and gazing had given her those calm, slow-moving eyes, full of the wisdom of unfathomable ignorance. The landscape on the opposite shore was repeated in the water below, as if to save her the trouble of raising her heavily fringed lids. To the southward a line of wild geese gleamed snow-white, like the crest of a wave. Half a dozen dogs were asleep in the smoothly swept dooryard behind her, and a young Mexican, whose face was pitted by smallpox, like the marks of raindrops in dry sand, leaned against the gnarled trunk of a trellised grapevine, clasping his knees, and sending slow wreaths of smoke from his cigarette. The barley in the field behind the house was beginning to head, and every breath of wind stirred it in glistening waves. Beyond the field shone a yellow mist of wild mustard. The California spring, more languorous, even with its hint of moisture, than the cloudless summer, sent a thousand odors adrift upon the air. Even the smell of garlic hanging about the señora could not drown the scent of the orange-blooms, and as for Ricardo's cigarette, surely no reasonable mortal could object to that. Ricardo himself would have questioned the sanity of any one who might have preferred the faint, musky fragrance of the alfilaria to the soothing odor of tobacco. He closed his eyes in placid unconsciousness of such vagaries of taste, and rocked himself rhythmically, as if he were a part of the earth, and felt its motion.

A wagon was creaking along the road behind the house, but it did not disturb him. There were always wagons now; Ricardo had grown used to them, and so had the señora, who did not even turn her head. These restless Americanos, who bought pieces of land that were not large enough to pasture a goat, and called them ranchos – caramba! what fools they were, always a-hurrying about!

The wagon had stopped. Well, it would be time enough to move when some one called. A dust-colored hound that slept at the corner of the house, stretched flat, as if moulded in relief from the soil upon which he lay, raised his head and pricked up one ear; then arose, as if reluctantly compelled to do the honors, and went slowly around the house.

"Of course they've got a dawg; forty of 'em, like enough!" It was a girl's voice, pitched in a high, didactic key. "I guess I c'n make 'em understand, pappy; I'll try, anyway."

She came around the house, and confronted Ricardo, who took his cigarette from his mouth, and looked at her gravely without moving. The señora turned her head slowly, and glanced over her shoulder.

The girl smiled, displaying two rows of sound teeth shut tightly together.

"How do you do?" she said, raising her voice still higher, and advancing toward the señora with outstretched hand. "I suppose you're Mrs. Gonsallies."

The señora disentangled one arm slowly from her rebozo, and gave the newcomer a large, brown, cushiony hand.

"This is my fawther," continued the girl, waving her left hand toward her companion; "sabby?"

The man stepped forward, and confronted the señora. She looked at him gravely, and shook her head. He was a small, heavily bearded man, with soft, bashful brown eyes, which fell shyly under the señora's placid gaze.

"She don't understand you, Idy," he said helplessly.

The girl caught his hand, and squeezed it reassuringly. "Never mind, pappy," she said, lowering her voice; "I'll fetch her. Now, listen," she went on, fixing her wide gray eyes on the señora, and speaking in a loud, measured voice. "I – am – Idy Starkweather. This – is – my – fawther. There! Now! Sabby?"

Evidently she considered failure to understand English a species of physical disability which might be overcome by strong concentration of the will.

The señora turned a bland, unmoved face upon her son. The eyes of the newcomers followed her gaze. Ricardo held his cigarette between his fingers, and blew a cloud of smoke above his head.

"She don' spik no Englis'," he said, looking at them mildly.

The girl flushed to the roots of her hay-colored frizz of hair. "You're a nice one!" she said. "Why didn't you speak up?"

Ricardo gave her another gentle, undisturbed glance. "Ah on'stan' a leetle Englis'; Ah c'n talk a leetle," he said calmly.

The girl hesitated an instant, letting her desire for information struggle with her resentment. "Well, then," she said, lowering her voice half sullenly, "my fawther here wants to ask you something. We live a mile or so down the road. We've come out from Ioway this summer – me and mother, that is; pappy here come in the spring, didn't you, pappy? An' he bought the Slater place, an' there's ten acres of vineyard, an' Barden, – he's the real 'state agent over t' Elsmore, you know 'im, – he told my fawther they wuz all raisin-grapes, white muscat, – didn't he, pappy? – an' my fawther here paid cash down fer the place, an' the vineyard's comin' into bearin' next fall, an' Parker Lowe, – he has a gov'ment claim on section eighteen, back of our ranch, – maybe you know 'im, – he says they're every one mission grapes – fer makin' wine. He helped set 'em out, an' he says they got the cuttin's from your folks; but I thought he wuz sayin' it just to plague me, so my fawther here thought he'd come an' ask. If they are wine-grapes, that felluh Barden lied – didn't he, pappy?"

The Mexican gazed at her pensively through the smoke of his cigarette.

"Yass, 'm," he said slowly and softly – "yass, 'm; Ah gass he tell good deal lies. Ah gass he don' tell var' much trut'."

"Then they are mission grapes?"

"Yass, 'm; dey all meession grapes; dey mek var' good wahn."

The girl's face flamed an angry red under her crimpled thatch of hair. She put out her hand with a swift, protecting gesture, and caught her father's sleeve.

The little man's cheeks were pale gray above his shaggy beard. He took off his hat, and nervously wiped the damp hair from his forehead. His daughter did not look at him. Ricardo could see the frayed plume on her jaunty turban quiver.

"My fawther here's a temperance man, a prohibitionist: he don't believe in wine; he hates it; he wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. That felluh Barden knowed it – didn't he, pappy? He lied!" She spoke fiercely, catching her breath between her sentences.

The Mexican threw away the end of his cigarette, and gazed after it with pensive regret.

"Some folks don' lak wahn," he said amiably. "Ah lak it var' well mahse'f. Ah gass he al's tell var' big lies, Mist' Barrd'n."

The girl turned away, still grasping her father's arm. Then she came back, with a sudden and somewhat bewildering accession of civility. "Addyoce," she said, bowing loftily toward the señora. The plume in her hat had turned in the afternoon breeze, and curved forward, giving her a slightly martial aspect.

"Addyoce, Mr. Gonsallies. We're much obliged, – ain't we, pappy? Addyoce."

Ricardo touched his sombrero. "Good-evenin', mees," he said in his soft, leisurely voice; "good-evenin', señor."

When the last ruffle of Miss Starkweather's green "polonay" had disappeared around the corner of the adobe house, the señora drifted slowly across the dooryard in her voluminous pink drapery, and sat down beside her son. There was a thin stratum of curiosity away down in her Latin soul. What had Ricardo done to make the señorita so very angry? She was angry, was she not?

Oh, yes, she was very angry, but Ricardo had done nothing. Señor Barden had sold her father ten acres of wine-grapes, and the old man did not like wine; he liked raisins. Santa Maria! Did he mean to eat ten acres of raisins? He need not drink his wine; he could sell it. But the señorita was very angry; she would probably kill Señor Barden. She had said she would kill him with a very long pole – ten feet. Ricardo would not care much if she did. Señor Barden had called him a greaser. But as for a man who did not like wine – caramba!

II

Parker Lowe's government claim was a fractional section, triangular in shape, with its base on the grant line of Rancho la Laguna, and its apex high up on the mountain-side. Parker's cabin was perched upon the highest point, at the mouth of the cañon, in a patch of unconquerable boulders. Other government settlers were wont to remark the remoteness of his residence from the tillable part of his claim, but Parker remained loyal to his own fireside.

"It's a sightly place," he asserted, "and nigh to the water, and it ain't no furder goin' down to work than it would be comin' up fer a drink, besides bein' down-grade. I lay out to quit workin' some o' these days, but I don't never lay out to quit drinkin'."

This latter determination on Parker's part had come to be pretty well understood, and the former would have obtained ready credence except for the fact that one cannot very well quit what he has never begun. Without risking the injustice of the statement that Parker was lazy, it is perhaps safe to say that he belonged by nature to the leisure class, and doubtless felt the accident of his birth even more keenly than the man of unquenchable industry who finds himself born to wealth and idleness. "Holdin' down a claim" had proved an occupation as well adapted to his tastes as anything that had ever fallen to his lot, and his bachelor establishment among the boulders was managed with an economy of labor, and a resultant of physical comfort, hitherto unknown in the annals of housekeeping. The house itself was of unsurfaced redwood, battened with lath to keep out the winter rain. The furniture consisted of a wide shelf upon which he slept, two narrower ones which held the tin cans containing his pantry stores, a bench, a table which "let down" against the wall by means of leathern hinges when not in use, a rusty stove, and a much-mended wooden chair. From numerous nails in the wall smoky ends of bacon were suspended by their original hempen strings, and the size of the grease-spot below testified to the length of the "side" which Parker had carried in a barley sack from Barney Wilson's store at Elsmore, five miles away on the other side of the lake. Parker surveyed these mural decorations with deep, inward satisfaction not untinged with patriotism.

"There wa'n't many folks right here when I filed on to this claim," he had been known to remark, "an' I may have trouble provin' up. But if the Register of the General Land-Office wants to come an' take a look, he c'n figger up from them ends o' bacon just about how long I've lived here, an' satisfy himself that I've acted fair with the gover'ment, which I've aimed to do, besides makin' all these improvements."

The improvements referred to were hardly such as an artist would have so designated, but Parker surveyed them with taste and conscience void of offense. The redwood shanty; a dozen orange-trees, rapidly diminishing in size and number by reason of neglect and gophers; a clump of slender, smoky eucalypti; a patch of perennial tomato-vines; and a few acres of what Barney Wilson called "veteran barley," – it having been sown once, and having "volunteered" ever since, – constituted those additions to the value of the land, if not to the landscape, upon which Parker based his homestead rights.

Since the Laguna Ranch had been subdivided, and settlers had increased, and especially since Eben Starkweather had bought the Slater place, and Ida Starkweather had invaded the foot-hills with her vigorous, self-reliant, breezy personality, Parker had been contemplating further improvements in his domicile – improvements which, in moments of flattered hope, assumed the dignity of a lean-to, a rocking-chair, and a box-spring mattress. The dreams which had led him to a consideration of this domestic expansion he had confided to no one but Mose Doolittle, who had a small stock-ranch high up on the mountain, and who found Parker's cabin a convenient resting-place on his journeys up and down the trail.