A California Girl Part 5

"Mrs. Lenair said, 'I have had a pleasant time lying here, though I did not sleep any.'

"'Why,' I said, 'I could not lie that way. If I was not sleeping I would be nervous, and want to be sitting up or moving about.'

"Then I said to her: 'I should think you must get terribly lonesome up at your place, your son having been away so much, and you all alone with no one to talk to.'

"She said: 'I haven't known what it was to be lonesome since I have lived on the place.'

"'Why,' I said, 'I would not live like you do for ten dollars a day.'

She smiled, and said, 'You could not.'

"'I don't see how you can stand it,' I said, 'for it is all I can do to keep from being lonesome here with Dan, and a team to take me anywhere.

I have more callers in a week than you have in a year. I am fond of company and so is Dan.'

"Mrs. Lenair said: 'All you have just said, Mrs. Cullom, shows your life, your world; we all have different worlds,' she added.

"I could hardly understand just what she meant, so I changed the subject and thought I would talk to her about Penloe.

"'Is he home now,' I asked.

"She said, 'Yes,' he had got through his work and would be at home most of the time.

"I said: 'Did he ever do any of the kind of work he has been doing at the different places he worked at before he came to Orangeville? For he don't look to me,' I said, 'as if he had worked on a ranch or done road work much.'

"She said, 'He never had done hard work till we came to Orangeville, having only returned to this country from India about a month before coming here, and when we were in India, Penloe went to the University of Calcutta as soon as he was ready to enter as a student. I lived in that city nineteen years.'

"'Why, have you lived in India,' I said.

"Yes,' she answered. 'I left New York a year after I was married. My husband represented a New York company in India. He died six years ago, but we continued to reside there until Penloe finished his University course.'

"I was clean taken back by what she said. I said, 'It's none of my business, Mrs. Lenair, but I don't see why a fine looking young man like Penloe, with the education you say he has had, don't get light, pleasant work, if he has to work out, instead of working at such hard places with the toughest crowds of men.'

"All she said was: 'That is his work.'

"Why, Mrs. Herne, do you know that he worked on the streets of the city of Chicago, and for three months with a gang of a thousand men on the Coast Railroad between Los Angeles and San Francisco! Then he was at the Oakdale cattle ranch, cowboying it, with that fast gang of boys that they keep there. Then he worked for awhile at the Simmons ranch, which is four miles from Roseland, and Simmons always keeps the hardest crew of men on his place. They go to Roseland every other night or so and dance at those low dancing-houses with bad women. They get drunk, fight, and swear all the time. Simmons' ranch has got the name of being the toughest place to work anywhere round here.

"One day when Dan was in Roseland, he saw a man he knew from the Simmons ranch, so he thought he would hear what the fellow had to say about Penloe, as we both are curious to find out all we can about that singular young man.

"Dan said: 'Is Penloe working on the Simmons ranch?'

"The man said: 'Yes.'

"Dan said: 'How does he get along?'

"'Get along!' the man said. 'All I have to say is I wish I could get along as well.'

"Dan said: 'What kind of a chap is he, anyway? I kind of want to know, as he is a neighbor of mine.'

"'Well,' the man said, 'I will tell you, and then you can judge for yourself. I never heard him swear or knew of his telling a lie; he don't drink or tell s.m.u.tty yarns, or have anything to do with bad women. The boss says he works well, and when he is not at work he never joins the boys in their foolish talk. He is by himself a great deal, praying, I reckon, but he is very sociable if any one will talk sense. Let me tell you what he did which will show you what kind of a man he is. One cold, chilly night in December, when we were all sleeping in the barn, each man having his own blankets, the boys had just turned in when a tramp came in and asked if he could sleep in the barn. One of the boys said, 'Yes.' The fellow lay down on the hay without any blankets, and as soon as he was laid down his teeth began to chatter and he shook all over, for he had a chill. Penloe instantly got up and lit a lantern, took his blankets over to the tramp and said: 'Here, brother, you have got a chill. Take my blankets and roll yourself up in them; you will be better in the morning.' From where I lay I could just see the tramp's face, for Penloe was holding the lantern so the light went on his face. The fellow looked up at Penloe thunderstruck. I guess he never had a man speak to him that way before. He said: 'Well, stranger, you are mighty kind.' So Penloe helped him to roll the blankets round him, and then he went and lay down on the hay himself without any covering. The boys did a heap of thinking that night, but said nothing. The next morning Penloe asked the tramp how he was, and he said he slept pretty well, but he looked real miserable, as though he had not had a good square meal for a month and was weak from chills. Penloe said to the tramp: 'You stay here till I come back,' and he went to see the boss and told him there was a sick tramp in the barn, and would he let him stay there and eat at the same table with us till he got well and strong, and that the boss should take the tramp's board out of his wages. The boss asked a few questions, studied awhile, then said, all right, he didn't care. Penloe went back to the tramp and told him he had seen the boss and he could stay there till he got well and strong, and to eat his meals with them and it would not cost him a cent. Tears came in the tramp's eyes, and he tried to say, 'Thank you, stranger.'

"During the day one of the men told the boss what Penloe had done last night; about giving his blankets up to a tramp and laying all night himself without any covering. After supper the boss called Penloe and told him there was a bed for him in the house, and he wanted him to sleep in it as long as the tramp was here, and as for the tramp, he would let the fellow stay here and board till he got a job in the neighborhood. He would not charge a cent for his board to Penloe. He himself had no work for the tramp.

"When the boys heard what Simmons said and did in regard to the tramp and Penloe, one of them said he was more taken back than if he had seen the devil come out of h.e.l.l.

"'For you know, Dan,' the man said, 'Old Simmons is a hard nut and as close-fisted as he can be. Some of the boys think now he has got the Penloe fever. I think he got a straight look into Penloe's eyes and saw and felt something he never had seen and felt before. Penloe is a power when you know him.

"The tramp stayed three days and got well. We thought it would be a month before he would be well enough to go to work, but it is that Penloe's doings, I know. He must have some power for healing like they say Christ had. Penloe is never sick. Heat or cold, dry or wet, seem just the same to him.

"'The boss got the tramp a job at Kent's ranch. When he left he gave Penloe his hand, seemed to tremble a moment, tried to speak, but walked away without uttering a word. Penloe told the boss that the way the tramp bid him good-bye and thanked him was eloquently touching and powerful. The boss is very much changed; he is not so close and hard, and you now see a few smiles on his wife's face, where before you only saw lines of sadness; and the children, instead of being scared, as they used to be when they heard his footsteps coming, now run to meet him and hang around him.

"'Simmons says Penloe was the making of him and family. Simmons has a high-priced fancy mare that the boys always have said he thought more of than he did of his family, and no one ever drove her but himself. He would not loan her out to any one for a day for fifty dollars, yet now the boys say 'he would let Penloe have the mare to go to h.e.l.l and back.'

"'Some of the boys also seem to have caught the fever, and it has made a great change in their lives. Penloe will leave the Simmons ranch soon, but his influence is there to stay. The man said, 'If you have any more men like Penloe in Orangeville, send them down this way, for these G.o.d forsaken ranches need men like him!'

"Dan says Penloe is like his mother in regard to tramps. Why, that woman was all alone, and a tramp called at her house to get a job of work. He said work was scarce and he had no money and needed some food; that he was hungry. He told Dan some time afterwards that before she replied she gave him a close look all over. He said her eye seemed to penetrate him, and after scrutinizing him very closely, she said: 'Come in, friend, you can stay here till you can find work.' She set before him plenty of good, hearty food, put a napkin to his plate, and talked to him interestingly about matters which seemed to make him feel that he was a better man. What do you think Mrs. Lenair had him do, Mrs. Herne? Why, he was shown into the bathroom, and given one of Penloe's night-gowns, and after he had taken his bath she had him sleep in her spare bedroom.

'Why,' I said to Mrs. Lenair, 'how could you do such a thing? I would no more have done it than I would have slept in a room with a rattlesnake.'

"She said, 'Mrs. Cullom, that man is my brother, and I treated him as such, and that thought was so impressed on his mind that it touched his better nature, and he could only think of me with the best and purest of feelings. I know that it was impossible for that man to hurt me. I fear no human being in this world.' The tramp stayed at her house for five days, and at the end of that time he got a chance at harvesting on the Thornton ranch. When he came to take leave of Mrs. Lenair, she said to him: 'You have put in five good full days' work, and here is five dollars for you'--handing him a five-dollar gold piece. He said: 'You did not hire me to work, and for what little I have done you have paid me a thousand times more than it is worth, in your conduct towards me.

You took me, a poor, miserable, worthless, homeless tramp into your home, as if I had been your own brother, and you acted the true sister towards me. Now I wish to play the brother's part by giving you my work.

It is the only thing I can do to show you how I appreciate your sisterly kindness toward me. I can earn all the money I need now at the Thornton ranch. I shall never forget you, because you are the only woman I ever met that received me and treated me as a sister would her brother; and if you ever need any work done on your place, and you have not the money to pay for its being done, remember I am your brother, and will do it gladly; more so than if you paid me two dollars a day.' She thanked him and said he had better take the five dollars, and laid it down on the table for him to take. He said he never would take it, and left it there. His last words to her were, 'I am going to be a new man.'

"Dan was on an errand to her place while the tramp was there. He saw him working in the orchard as if he was trying to do two days' work in one.

Dan said he couldn't hire a man to work as he was working.

"I was rather amused at Dan," continued Mrs. Cullom. "When I returned from having taken Mrs. Lenair home in the evening (on the day that I told you that Dan went and brought her in the morning to spend the day), Dan came and took the team. 'Caroline,' he said, 'if you send me after Mrs. Lenair many times more I shall be falling in love with her, for I think she is real good, as well as being smart and bright.' 'What! Dan Cullom,' I said. 'She wouldn't have an awful talking man like you, even if you had a diamond on the end of every hair on your head.'"

When Mrs. Cullom was about to leave, Mrs. Herne said: "I have enjoyed your visit so much, Mrs. Cullom. You have got me interested in Penloe and his mother. I do so want to see them."

That evening Mrs. Herne related part of Mrs. Cullom's conversation to her husband and asked him if he knew Penloe or his mother.

"Penloe I have seen a few times, but his mother I have never seen,"

replied he.

"What kind of a man is he?" asked his wife.

"Well," said Charles, "I hardly know him. He is certainly a remarkable appearing young man. He is so different in his looks and expression from any man I have ever met or seen; so different from the kind that I have always a.s.sociated with, that I could be no judge of such a man any more than I could be a judge of millinery or silks and satins, for I have had just about as much to do with one as I have with the other."

"Well," said his wife, "I want you to arrange in some way so we can meet them, for I am all worked up over them after what Mrs. Cullom has told me, and am very curious to see them."

"Something will happen in some way, so that we will meet them," he replied.

CHAPTER VIII.

BEN WEST'S EXPERIENCE IN THE KLONDIKE.

At the time Ben West went to the Klondike, a long tedious journey on a trail had to be made. He realized that whatever ability he possessed for making his way in that country, he lacked experience as a miner. So he was on the lookout to see if he could find one or two men of experience.