Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878

"Damnation!"

A voice fell like a falling star: "Gentlemen do not use profane language in ladies' company."

He first looked up in the air, as on the whole the likeliest quarter for a voice to come from in this desert, then around. Just on the other side of the track stood Miss Dwyer, smiling with a somewhat constrained attempt at self-possession. Lombard was a good deal taken aback, but in his surprise he did not forget that this was the young lady who had refused him that afternoon.

"I beg your pardon," he replied with a stiff bow: "I did not suppose that there were any ladies within hearing."

"I got out of the car supposing there was plenty of time to get a specimen of sagebrush to carry home," she explained, "but when the cars started, although I was but a little way off, I could not regain the platform;" which, considering that she wore a tie-back of the then prevalent fashion, was not surprising.

"Indeed!" replied Lombard with the same formal manner.

"But won't the train come back for us?" she asked in a more anxious voice.

"That will depend on whether we are missed. Nobody will miss me. Mrs. Eustis, if she hasn't gone to bed, may miss you."

"But she has. She went to bed before I left the car, and is asleep by this time."

"That's unfortunate," was his brief reply as he lit a cigar and began to smoke and contemplate the stars.

His services, so far as he could do anything for her, she should, as a lady, command, but if she thought that he was going to do the agreeable after what had happened a couple of hours ago, she was mightily mistaken.

There was a silence, and then she said, hesitatingly, "What are we going to do?"

He glanced at her. Her attitude and the troubled expression of her face as well as her voice indicated that the logic of the situation was overthrowing the jaunty self-possession which she had at first affected. The desert was staring her out of countenance. How his heart yearned toward her! If she had only given him a right to take care of her, how he would comfort her! what prodigies would he be capable of to succor her! But this rising impulse of tenderness was turned to choking bitterness by the memory of that scornful "No, sir." So he replied, coldly, "I'm not in the habit of being left behind in deserts, and I don't know what is customary to do in such cases. I see nothing except to wait for the next train, which will come along some time within twenty-four hours."

There was another long silence, after which she said in a timid voice, "Hadn't we better walk to the next station?"

At the suggestion of walking he glanced at her close-fitting dress, and a sardonic grin slightly twitched the corners of his mouth as he dryly answered, "It is thirty miles one way and twenty the other to the first station."

Several minutes passed before she spoke again, and then she said, with an accent almost like that of a child in trouble and about to cry, "I'm cold."

The strong, unceasing wind, blowing from snowy mountain-caverns across a plain on which there was not the slightest barrier of hill or tree to check its violence, was indeed bitterly cold, and Lombard himself felt chilled to the marrow of his bones. He took off his overcoat and offered it to her.

"No," said she, "you are as cold as I am."

"You will please take it," he replied in a peremptory manner; and she took it.

"At this rate we shall freeze to death before midnight," he added as if in soliloquy. "I must see if I can't contrive to make some sort of a shelter with this sagebrush."

He began by tearing up a large number of bushes by the roots. Seeing what he was doing, Miss Dwyer was glad to warm her stiffened muscles by taking hold and helping; which she did with a vigor that shortly reduced her gloves to shreds and filled her fingers with scratches from the rough twigs. Lombard next chose an unusually high and thick clump of brush, and cleared a small space three feet across in the centre of it, scattering twigs on the uncovered earth to keep off its chill.

"Now, Miss Dwyer, if you will step inside this spot, I think I can build up the bushes around us so as to make a sort of booth which may save us from freezing."

She silently did as he directed, and he proceeded to pile the brush which they had torn up on the tops of the bushes left standing around the spot where they were, thus making a circular wall about three feet high. Over the top he managed to draw together two or three bushes, and the improvised wigwam was complete.

The moonlight penetrated the loose roof sufficiently to reveal to each other the faces and figures of the two occupants as they sat in opposite corners as far apart as possible, she cold and miserable, he cold and sulky, and both silent. And, as if to mock him, the idea kept recurring to his mind how romantic and delightful, in spite of the cold and discomfort, the situation would be if she had only said Yes, instead of No, that afternoon. People have odd notions sometimes, and it actually seemed to him that his vexation with her for destroying the pleasure of the present occasion was something quite apart and in addition to his main grievance against her. It might have been so jolly, and now she had spoiled it. He could have boxed her pretty little ears.

She wondered why he did not try to light a fire, but she wouldn't ask him another thing if she died. In point of fact, he knew the sagebrush would not burn. Suddenly the wind blew fiercer, there came a rushing sound, and the top and walls of the wigwam were whisked off like a flash, and as they staggered to their feet, buffeted by the whirling bushes, a cloud of fine alkali-dust enveloped them, blinding their eyes, penetrating their ears and noses, and setting them gasping, sneezing and coughing spasmodically. Then, like a puff of smoke, the suffocating storm was dissipated, and when they opened their smarting eyes there was nothing but the silent, glorious desolation of the ghostly desert around them, with the snow-peaks in the distance glittering beneath the moon. A sand-spout had struck them, that was all—one of the whirling dust-columns which they had admired all day from the car-windows.

Wretched enough before both for physical and sentimental reasons, this last experience quite demoralized Miss Dwyer, and she sat down and cried. Now, a few tears, regarded from a practical, middle-aged point of view, would not appear to have greatly complicated the situation, but they threw Lombard into a panic. If she was going to cry, something must be done. Whether anything could be done or not, something must be done.

"Don't leave me," she cried hysterically as he rushed off to reconnoitre the vicinity.

"I'll return presently," he called back.

But five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and he did not come back. Terror dried her tears, and her heart almost stopped beating. She had quite given him up for lost, and herself too, when with inexpressible relief she heard him call to her. She replied, and in a moment more he was at her side, breathless with running.

"I lost my bearings," he said. "If you had not answered me I could not have found you."

"Don't leave me again," she sobbed, clinging to his arm.

He put his arms round her and kissed her. It was mean, base, contemptible to take advantage of her agitation in that way, but she did not resist, and he did it again and again—I forbear to say how many times.

"Isn't it a perfectly beautiful night?" he exclaimed with a fine gush of enthusiasm.

"Isn't it exquisite?" she echoed with a rush of sympathetic feeling.

"See those stars: they look as if they had just been polished," he cried.

"What a droll idea!" she exclaimed gleefully. "But do see that lovely mountain."

Holding her with a firmer clasp, and speaking with what might be styled a fierce tenderness, he demanded, "What did you mean, miss, by refusing me this afternoon?"

"What did you go at me so stupidly for? I had to refuse," she retorted smilingly.

"Will you be my wife?"

"Yes, sir: I meant to be all the time."

The contract having been properly sealed, Lombard said, with a countenance curiously divided between a tragical expression and a smile of fatuous complacency, "There was a clear case of poetical justice in your being left behind in the desert to-night. To see the lights of the train disappearing, leaving you alone in the midst of desolation, gave you a touch of my feeling on being rejected this afternoon. Of all leavings behind, there's none so miserable as the experience of the rejected lover."

"Poor fellow! so he shouldn't be left behind. He shall be conductor of the train," she said with a bewitching laugh. His response was not verbal.

"How cold the wind is!" she said.

"Shall I build you another wigwam?"

"No: let us exercise a little. You whistle 'The Beautiful Blue Danube,' and we'll waltz. This desert is the biggest, jolliest ball-room floor that ever was, and I dare say we shall be the first to waltz on it since the creation of the world. That will be something to boast of when we get home. Come, let's dedicate the Great American Desert to Terpsichore."

They stepped out from among the ruins of their sagebrush booth upon a patch of hard bare earth close to the railroad track. Lombard puckered his lips and struck up the air, and off they went with as much enthusiasm as if inspired by a first-class orchestra. Round and round, to and fro, they swept until, laughing, flushed and panting, they came to a stop.

It was then that they first perceived that they were not without a circle of appreciative spectators. Sitting like statues on their sniffing, pawing ponies, a dozen Piute Indians encircled them. Engrossed with the dance and with each other, they had not noticed them as they rode up, attracted from their route by this marvellous spectacle of a pale-face squaw and brave engaged in a solitary war-dance in the midst of the desert.

At sight of the grim circle of centaurs around them Miss Dwyer would have fainted but for Lombard's firm hold.

"Pretend not to see them: keep on dancing," he hissed in her ear. He had no distinct plan in what he said, but spoke merely from an instinct of self-preservation, which told him that when they stopped the Indians would be upon them. But as she mechanically, and really more dead than alive, obeyed his direction and resumed the dance, and he in his excitement was treading on her feet at every step, the thought flashed upon him that there was a bare chance of escaping violence if they could keep the Indians interested without appearing to notice their presence. In successive whispers he communicated his idea to Miss Dwyer: "Don't act as if you saw them at all, but do everything as if we were alone. That will puzzle them, and may make them think us supernatural beings, or perhaps crazy: Indians have great respect for crazy people. It's our only chance. We will stop dancing now, and sing a while. Give them a burlesque of opera. I'll give you the cues and show you how. Don't be frightened. I don't believe they'll touch us so long as we act as if we didn't see them. Do you understand? Can you do your part?"

"I understand: I'll try," she whispered.

"Now," he said, and as they separated he threw his hat on the ground, and, assuming an extravagantly languishing attitude, burst forth in a most poignant burlesque of a lovelorn tenor's part, rolling his eyes, clasping his hands, striking his breast, and gyrating about Miss Dwyer in the most approved operatic style. He had a fine voice and knew a good deal of music; so that, barring a certain nervousness in the performer, the exhibition was really not bad. In his singing he had used a meaningless gibberish varied with the syllables of the scale, but he closed by singing the words, "Are you ready now? Go ahead, then."

With that she took it up, and rendered the prima donna quite as effectively, interjecting "The Last Rose of Summer" as an aria in a manner that would have been encored in San Francisco. He responded with a few staccato notes, and the scene ended by their rushing into each other's arms and waltzing down the stage with abandon.

The Indians sat motionless on their horses, not even exchanging comments among themselves. They were evidently too utterly astonished by the goings on before them to have any other sentiment as yet beyond pure amazement. Here were two richly-dressed pale-faces, such as only lived in cities, out in the middle of an uninhabitable desert, in the freezing midnight, having a variety and minstrel show all to themselves, and, to make the exhibition the more unaccountable, without apparently seeing their auditors at all. Had they started up the show after being captured, Indian cunning would have recognized in it a device to save their lives, but the two had been at it before the party rode up—had, in fact, first attracted attention by their gyrations, which were visible for miles out on the moony plain.

Lombard, without ever letting his eyes rest a moment on the Indians so as to indicate that he saw them, had still managed by looks askance and sweeping glances to keep close watch upon their demeanor, and noted with prodigious relief that his wild scheme was succeeding better than he had dared to hope. Without any break in the entertainment he communicated his reassurance to Miss Dwyer by singing, to the tune of "My Country, 'tis of Thee," the following original hymn:

"We're doing admir'blee—They're heap much tickledee:Only keep on."

To which she responded, to the lugubrious air of "John Brown's Body,"

"Oh what do you s'pose they'll go for to do,Oh what do you s'pose they'll go for to do,Oh what do you s'pose they'll go for to do,When we can sing no more?"

A thing may be ridiculous without being amusing, and neither of these two felt the least inclination to smile at each other's poetry. After duly joining in the chorus of "Glory, Hallelujah!" Lombard endeavored to cheer his companion by words adapted to the inspiriting air of "Rally Round the Flag, Boys," This was followed by a series of popular airs, with solos, duets and choruses.

But this sort of thing could not go on for ever. Lombard was becoming exhausted in voice and legs, and as for Miss Dwyer, he was expecting to see her drop from moment to moment. Indeed, to the air of "'Way Down upon the S'wanee River" she now began to sing,

"Oh dear! I can't bear up much longer:I'm tired to death;My voice's gone all to pie-ee-ee-ces,My throat is very sore."

They must inevitably give out in a few minutes, and then he—and, terribly worse, she—would be at the mercy of these bestial savages, and this seeming farce would turn into most revolting tragedy. With this sickening conviction coming over him, Lombard cast a despairing look around the horizon to see if there were no help in their bitter extremity. Suddenly he burst forth, to the tune of "The Star-Spangled Banner:"

"Oh, say can you see,Far away to the east,A bright star that doth growMomentarily brighter?'Tis the far-flashing headlightOf a railroad-train:Ten minutes from nowWe shall be safe and sound."

What they did in those ten minutes neither could tell afterward. The same idea was in both their minds—that unless the attention of the Indians could be held until the train arrived, its approach would only precipitate their own fate by impelling the savages to carry out whatever designs of murder, insult or capture they might have. Under the influence of the intense excitement of this critical interval it is to be feared that the performance degenerated from a high-toned concert and variety show into something very like a Howling-Dervish exhibition. But, at any rate, it answered its purpose until, after a period that seemed like a dozen eternities, the West-bound overland express with a tremendous roar and rattle drew up beside them, in response to the waving of Miss Dwyer's handkerchief and to Lombard's shouts.

Even had the Indians contemplated hostile intentions—which they were doubtless in a condition of too great general stupefaction to do—the alacrity with which the two performers clambered aboard the cars would probably have foiled their designs. But as the train gathered headway once more Lombard could not resist the temptation of venting his feelings by shaking his fist ferociously at the audience which he had been so conscientiously trying to please up to that moment. It was a gratification which had like to have cost him dear. There was a quick motion on the part of one of the Indians, and the conductor dragged Lombard within the car just as an arrow struck the door.

Mrs. Eustis had slept sweetly all night, and was awakened the next morning an hour before the train reached Ogden by the sleeping-car porter, who gave her a telegram which had overtaken the train at the last station. It read:

"Am safe and sound. Was left behind by your train last night, and picked up by West-bound express. Will join you at Ogden to-morrow morning."

"Jennie Dwyer."

Mrs. Eustis read the telegram through twice without getting the least idea from it. Then she leaned over and looked down into Jennie's berth. It had not been slept in. Then she began to understand. Heroically resisting a tendency to scream, she thus secured space for second thought, and, being a shrewd woman of the world, ended by making up her mind to tell no one about the matter. Evidently, Jennie had been having some decidedly unconventional experience, and the less publicity given to all such passages in young ladies' lives the better for their prospects. It so happened that in the bustle attending the approach to the terminus and the prospective change of cars everybody was too busy to notice that any passengers were missing. At Ogden, Mrs. Eustis left the train and went to a hotel. The following morning, a few minutes after the arrival of the Central Pacific train, Jennie Dwyer walked into her room, Lombard having stopped at the office to secure berths for the three to Omaha by the Union Pacific. After Jennie had given an outline account of her experiences, and Mrs. Eustis's equilibrium had been measurably restored by proper use of the smelling-salts, the latter lady remarked, "And so Mr. Lombard was alone with you there all night? It's very unfortunate that it should have happened so."

"Why, I was thinking it very fortunate," replied Jennie with her most child-like expression. "If Mr. Lombard had not been there, I should either have frozen to death or by this time been celebrating my honeymoon as bride of a Piute chief."

"Nonsense, child! You know what I mean. People will talk: such unpleasant things will be said! I wouldn't have had it happen for anything. And when you were under my charge too! Do hand me my salts."

"If people are going to say unpleasant things because I pass a night alone with Mr. Lombard," remarked Jennie with a mischievous smile, "you must prepare yourself to hear a good deal said, my dear, for I presume this won't be the last time it will happen. We're engaged to be married."

Edward Bellamy.

RAMBLING TALK ABOUT THE NEGRO

WHAT guides the bee when, turning from the "suck," he wheels in air and strikes his wonderful line for the "gum"? Heaven knows. And by what process does the negro calculate the shortest distance between the point he occupies and the place he would be? That also is a mystery, yet the least observant person familiar with the negro cannot have failed to note his wonderful—we had almost said his preternatural—power to discover, without guide or compass, the shortest possible distance between two given places—to make, as he calls it, a "near cut."

To the right of us lay a berry and wild-fruit tract, on our left was a large village, and our farm was in a certain portion skirted by an old field, through which the negroes had discovered the most direct path to market. At dawn they could be seen winding around the brow of the hill, men, women and children, with baskets on their heads and buckets on their arms, singly and in couples, sometimes three, four or a half dozen together. And how they stole from us! It seemed impossible to prevent, or even limit, their depredations.

One evening Mr. Smith said to me, "The man Tony is sentenced to be hung."

Tony was a village negro accused of murder, and as he had been confined in the village jail and tried at the village court-house, the case naturally created some excitement in our quiet neighborhood.

"Oh, I am so sorry!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, poor devil!" said Mr. Smith. "But it was a clear case. He belonged to Mr. Lamkin before the surrender, and the old man made every effort to get him off—employed the very best counsel. I am sorry for him, but the wind which is so ill for him will blow us good. He is to be hung in the old field that edges our farm, and after the execution takes place we shall have no more negro trespassers in that quarter. I very much doubt whether I shall be able to obtain hands to work that portion of the land."

It would require a psychological study of the negro character to enable one to explain the spirit in which they flocked to the execution of their comrade, their friend, in some instances their kinsman. They came in holiday attire and with hurrying steps, and long before the hour appointed the adjoining fence was crowded with eager spectators, and, like flocks of blackbirds, they had filled every tree within five hundred yards, chatting and bustling and moving around with no apparent emotion except the desire to see.

At length the cart appeared on the brow of the hill, and every neck was craned for a glimpse of the poor creature who sat on the coffin—a pitiful-looking, half-dwarf mulatto, who gave you the idea of deformity and distress without your being able to tell why. He walked bravely to his place on the scaffold, singing and praying, protesting his innocence and bequeathing forgiveness to his enemies, apparently full of faith, like many others who by reason of weariness and despair have attained resignation; but the fictitious piety born of nervous excitement, and the abnormal elevation of feeling induced by continued spiritual exhortation during weeks of unrest and suspense, both gave way when his old mother, unsightly and pitiful as himself, asked leave to bid him good-bye, and came tottering to his side, saying as well as she could for the tears that choked her, "Oh, Tony! mammy ain't gwine back on you! Mammy don't b'lieve you done it, she don't keer who 'kuses you. Good-bye, my baby! good-bye! 'Twon't be long 'fo' mammy jines you an' daddy whar dar ain't no onjestice an' no mizry. Mammy ain't gwine to stay here long arter you goes."

He threw up his arms with a wild, sobbing cry: "Oh, mammy! mammy! can't you do nothin' fer me? Ain't you got no way to he'p me? Oh, de sun do shine so pretty, an' de leaves shakes 'bout on de trees so natchul! An' I nuvver knowed de birds to sing like dey does to-day. It ain't fa'r—no, it's not fa'r to shet me up in de groun' for what I ain't done. So many 'ginst one, an' me so little an' so po'! I ain't got a fren' on top o' de yuth. Nary one outen all dese folks, what I use ter go to shuckin's wid 'em, an' play de banjer, an' hunt possums—nary one uv 'em didn't stand up for me an' try to git me off! Not eben you, mammy, didn't try to git in jail an' gimme somethin' to wu'k my way out, an' I a-lis'nin' night an' day! Night an' day, an' you nuvver come!"

"Lord! Lord! my baby!" sobbed the poor old thing, her trembling limbs hardly able to sustain the feeble frame. "What could yo' ole mammy do 'ginst all dem folks? Ef Mars' Henry couldn't make 'em let you 'lone, what could a po' ole nigger do what ain't got no money, an' no sense, an' no fren's? Lord! Lord! my blessed chile!" she sobbed, the tears raining down her withered black cheeks, "ef mammy had a hundred nakes she would put dat rope 'roun' 'em all to keep it off o' your'n."

That was true, poor soul! but could avail nothing, and the appointed sentence was carried into execution. The soul of the boy returned to its Creator and its Judge, and the old mother was taken to her cabin almost as lifeless as the body that swung in the air half a mile away.

If the fact that they flocked to the place of execution cannot be ascribed to any idiosyncrasy of the negro race, it was curious to see how they were afterward overwhelmed with superstitious fear. We had no more trouble about the melons and grapes. The negroes found another route to the village market, and the little well-worn path became overgrown with grass and ox-eyed daisies, like the rest of the old field. Even after the body had been buried far off and the scaffold removed, in broad daylight they shunned the place, but at dusk or after dark neither bribery nor persuasion could have induced one of them to go near it. Mr. Smith tried some of them.