Tales of Trail and Town - Bret Harte (best short novels of all time .TXT) 📗

was and to tell them. And they were going to give her a new dolly and a hunk of gingerbread. “But I won’t—and I sha’n’t!” she said passionately. She was quite pale again.

Johnny was convinced, but thoughtful. “Tell ‘em,” he said hoarsely, “tell ‘em a big whopper! They won’t know no better. They’ll never guess where.” And he briefly recounted the wild-goose chase he had given the minister.

“And get the dolly and the cake,” said Florry, her eyes shining through her tears.

“In course,” said Johnny. “They’ll get the dolly back, but you kin have eated the cake first.” They looked at each other, and their eyes danced together over this heavensent inspiration. Then Johnny took off her shoes and stockings, rubbed her cold feet with his dirty handkerchief, and said: “Now you trot over to your mar!”

He helped her through the loose picket of the fence and was turning away when her faint voice again called him.

“Johnny!”

He turned back; she was standing on the other side of the fence holding out her arms to him. He went to her with shining eyes, lifted her up, and from her hot but loving little lips took a fatal kiss.

For only an hour later Mrs. Fraser found Florry in her bed, tossing with a high fever and a light head. She was talking of “Johnny” and “gold,” and had a flake of the metal in her tiny fist. When Mr. Staples was sent for, and with the mother and father, hung anxiously above her bed, to their eager questioning they could only find out that Florry had been to a high mountain, ever so far away, and on the top of it there was gold lying around, and a shining figure was giving it away to the people.

“And who were the people, Florry dear,” said Mr. Staples persuasively; “anybody ye know here?”

“They woz angels,” said Florry, with a frightened glance over her shoulder.

I grieve to say that Mr. Staples did not look as pleased at the celestial vision as he might have, and poor Mrs. Fraser probably saw that in her child’s face which drove other things from her mind. Yet Mr. Staples persisted:—

“And who led you to this beautiful mountain? Was it Johnny?”

“No.”

“Who then?”

Florry opened her eyes on the speaker. “I fink it was Dod,” she said, and closed them again.

But here Dr. Duchesne hurried in, and after a single glance at the child hustled Mr. Staples from the room. For there were grave complications that puzzled him, Florry seemed easier and quieter under his kindly voice and touch, but did not speak again,—and so, slowly sinking, passed away that night in a dreamless sleep. This was followed by a mad panic at Burnt Spring the next day, and Mrs. Medliker fled with her two girls to Sacramento, leaving Johnny, ostensibly strong and active, to keep house until his father’s return. But Mr. Medliker’s return was again delayed, and in the epidemic, which had now taken a fast hold of the settlement, Johnny’s secret—and indeed the boy himself—was quite forgotten. It was only on Mr. Medliker’s arrival it was known that he had been lying dangerously ill, alone, in the abandoned house. In his strange reticence and firmness of purpose he had kept his sufferings to himself,—as he had his other secret,—and they were revealed only in the wasted, hollow figure that feebly opened the door to his father.

On which intelligence Mr. Staples was, as usual, promptly on the spot with his story of Johnny’s secret to the father, and his usual eager questioning to the fast-sinking boy. “And now, Johnny,” he said, leaning over the bed, “tell us ALL. There is One from whom no secrets are hid. Remember, too, that dear Florry, who is now with the angels, has already confessed.”

Perhaps it was because Johnny, even at that moment, hated the man; perhaps it was because at that moment he loved and believed in Florry, or perhaps it was only that because at that moment he was nearer the greater Truth than his questioner, but he said, in a husky voice, “You lie!”

Staples drew back with a flushed face, but lips that writhed in a pained and still persistent eagerness. “But, Johnny, at least tell us where—wh—wow—wow.”

I am obliged to admit that these undignified accents came from Mr. Staples’ own lips, and were due to the sudden pressure of Mr. Medliker’s arm around his throat. The teamster was irascible and prompt through much mule-driving, and his arm was, from the same reason, strong and sinewy. Mr. Staples felt himself garroted and dragged from the room, and only came to under the stars outside, with the hoarse voice of Mr. Medliker in his ears:—

“You’re a minister of the gospel, I know, but ef ye say another word to my Johnny, I’ll knock the gospel stuffin’ out of ye. Ye hear me! I’VE DRIVEN MULES AFORE!”

He then strode back into the room. “Ye needn’t answer, Johnny, he’s gone.”

But so, too, had Johnny, for he never answered the question in this world, nor, please God, was he required to in the next. He lay still and dead. The community was scandalized the next day when Mr. Medliker sent for a minister from Sacramento to officiate at his child’s funeral, in place of Mr. Staples, and then the subject was dropped.

 

… …

 

But the influence of Johnny’s hidden treasure still remained as a superstition in the locality. Prospecting parties were continually made up to discover the unknown claim, but always from evidence and data altogether apocryphal. It was even alleged that a miner had one night seen the little figures of Johnny and Florry walking over the hilltop, hand in hand, but that they had vanished among the stars at the very moment he thought he had discovered their secret. And then it was forgotten; the prosperous Mr. Medliker, now the proprietor of a stage-coach route, moved away to Sacramento; Medliker’s Ranch became a station for changing horses, and, as the new railway in time superseded even that, sank into a blacksmith’s shop on the outskirts of the new town of Burnt Spring. And then one day, six years after, news fell as a bolt from the blue!

It was thus recorded in the county paper: “A piece of rare good fortune, involving, it is said, the development of a lead of extraordinary value, has lately fallen to the lot of Mr. John Silsbee, the popular blacksmith, on the site of the old Medliker Ranch. In clearing out the failing water-course known as Burnt Spring, Mr. Silsbee came upon a rich ledge or pocket at the actual source of the spring,—a fissure in the ground a few rods from the road. The present yield has been estimated to be from eight to ten thousand dollars. But the event is considered as one of the most remarkable instances of the vagaries of ‘prospecting’ ever known, as this valuable ‘pot-hole’ existed undisturbed for EIGHT YEARS not FIFTY YARDS from the old cabin that was in former times the residence of J. Medliker, Esq., and the station of the Pioneer Stage Company, and was utterly unknown and unsuspected by the previous inhabitants! Verily truth is stranger than fiction!”

A TALE OF THREE TRUANTS

The schoolmaster at Hemlock Hill was troubled that morning. Three of his boys were missing. This was not only a notable deficit in a roll-call of twenty, but the absentees were his three most original and distinctive scholars. He had received no preliminary warning or excuse. Nor could he attribute their absence to any common local detention or difficulty of travel. They lived widely apart and in different directions. Neither were they generally known as “chums,” or comrades, who might have entered into an unhallowed combination to “play hookey.”

He looked at the vacant places before him with a concern which his other scholars little shared, having, after their first lively curiosity, not unmixed with some envy of the derelicts, apparently forgotten them. He missed the cropped head and inquisitive glances of Jackson Tribbs on the third bench, the red hair and brown eyes of Providence Smith in the corner, and there was a blank space in the first bench where Julian Fleming, a lanky giant of seventeen, had sat. Still, it would not do to show his concern openly, and, as became a man who was at least three years the senior of the eldest, Julian Fleming, he reflected that they were “only boys,” and that their friends were probably ignorant of the good he was doing them, and so dismissed the subject. Nevertheless, it struck him as wonderful how the little world beneath him got on without them. Hanky Rogers, bully, who had been kept in wholesome check by Julian Fleming, was lively and exuberant, and his conduct was quietly accepted by the whole school; Johnny Stebbins, Tribbs’s bosom friend, consorted openly with Tribbs’s particular enemy; some of the girls were singularly gay and conceited. It was evident that some superior masculine oppression had been removed.

He was particularly struck by this last fact, when, the next morning, no news coming of the absentees, he was impelled to question his flock somewhat precisely concerning them. There was the usual shy silence which follows a general inquiry from the teacher’s desk; the children looked at one another, giggled nervously, and said nothing.

“Can you give me any idea as to what might have kept them away?” said the master.

Hanky Rogers looked quickly around, began, “Playin’ hook—” in a loud voice, but stopped suddenly without finishing the word, and became inaudible. The master saw fit to ignore him.

“Bee-huntin’,” said Annie Roker vivaciously.

“Who is?” asked the master.

“Provy Smith, of course. Allers bee-huntin’. Gets lots o’ honey. Got two full combs in his desk last week. He’s awful on bees and honey. Ain’t he, Jinny?” This in a high voice to her sister.

The younger Miss Roker, thus appealed to, was heard to murmur that of all the sneakin’ bee-hunters she had ever seed, Provy Smith was the worst. “And squirrels—for nuts,” she added.

The master became attentive,—a clue seemed probable here. “Would Tribbs and Fleming be likely to go with him?” he asked.

A significant silence followed. The master felt that the children recognized a doubt of this, knowing the boys were not “chums;” possibly they also recognized something incriminating to them, and with characteristic freemasonry looked at one another and were dumb.

He asked no further questions, but, when school was dismissed, mounted his horse and started for the dwelling of the nearest culprit, Jackson Tribbs, four miles distant. He had often admired the endurance of the boy, who had accomplished the distance, including the usual meanderings of a country youth, twice a day, on foot, in all weathers, with no diminution of spirits or energy. He was still more surprised when he found it a mountain road, and that the house lay well up on the ascent of the pass. Autumn was visible only in a few flaming sumacs set among the climbing pines, and here, in a little clearing to the right, appeared the dwelling he was seeking.

“Tribbses,” or “Tribbs’s Run,” was devoted to the work of cutting down the pines midway on a long regularly sloping mountainside, which allowed the trunks, after they were trimmed and cut into suitable lengths, to be slid down through rude runs, or artificial channels, into the valley below, where they were collected by teams and conveyed to the nearest mills. The business was simple in the extreme, and was carried on by Tribbs senior, two men with saws and axes, and the natural laws of gravitation. The house was a long log cabin; several sheds roofed with bark or canvas seemed consistent with the still lingering summer and the heated odors of the pines,