Down the Mother Lode Part 12

No one answered. He had, like Hadji the beggar, become in twenty-four hours again a drifter.

Babe sneaked out after him. "Here, Curly," she slipped her hand into her bosom and held out the octagonal slug. "When Bet an' I reached Allie last night she was holdin' it in her little dead hand, an' there was such a smile on her face! You gave her that happy smile. G.o.d bless you for it! Now, you take this--"

But Curly turned away, blinking his eyes, and trying to swallow the lump in his throat. Babe stood watching him through her tears as he tramped down the street, out of the town on the road to the south.

Two years later in a hall in Sonora, a man strolled in to the card tables.

"Why, hel-lo, Curly!"

Curly glanced up briefly. "h.e.l.lo, George."

"Hear you've made another strike."

"You can hear a lot that ain't true. This happens to be."

"You know, I was telling--"

"Well, the sight of you don't put me in the mood to be told much." There was an imperceptible shifting of the crowd around the table. They were moving away from Spellman.

"I was telling my wife--"

"My girl, you mean! It wasn't enough to keep my business, you had to go home an' marry my girl, too, didn't you?"

"Curly, for the love of heaven--"

"Take your hand off my arm, Pete. I'm going to kill this--. He's not the kind of man I thought he was."

Two shots crashed in the room!

Spellman wavered through the smoke haze, then dropped his pistol and fell slowly across the card table littered with shining cards and poker chips. An overturned tallow-dip dropped in a pool of wine and rolled down against the dead man's cheek, dabbling it with the color which would never return to it again.

"Bet, ain't that Curly Gillmore that we knew three years ago at Coloma, when Allie died?"

"Must be a-gittin' blind! Where?"

"The feller all dressed up an' walkin' with the lady. Sure it is! Hi, Curly, hel-lo! It's Babe. Well, ain't I glad--"

The woman with Curly fixed Babe with a stony glare. "If you wish to converse with this... woman, kindly do so when your wife is not accompanying you," she said to him in an angry undertone, and went majestically on.

"I'll come back, Babe. We've been married just a month and she doesn't understand. I'll be back later," and he hurried off.

"Bet, did you see who that was with Curly? His wife, he said."

"Aw-w, Babe, don't you fret! I guess we fill our little place out here in Californy near as much as some o' the fine ladies do."

"I didn't care. No, I was thinkin' that the ways o' the Lord are curious. That lady used to be married to George Spellman."

"An' Curly shot him, down at Sonora, last year!"

"Ye-aw."

"Well, I'll be--."

The Race of the Shoestring Gamblers

VIII

"Judge not too idly that our toils are mean, Though no new levies marshall on our green; Nor deem too rashly that our gains are small, Weighed with the prizes for which heroes fall."

--Bret Harte.

If dancing was the first form of amus.e.m.e.nt to emanate from prehistoric savagery, then racing must surely have come next. It may possibly have come first. However, we shall leave the "theorizin"' to be settled by the lips of the first mummy whose centuries-old tissues shall be roused to full life by modern science. What has science not achieved? We have gone beyond wonder. We can only believe, and become blase!

Meantime there is still enough red blood in the modern effete productions of humans to enjoy a contest of stress and strain, and brain and brawn, and to gamble upon the outcome.

In the '49 days, racing was one of the most popular forms of chance, and it often reverted in bizarre tangents. This, then, is what happened at a golden fiesta during the week of races:

"Sweet Lady, are all my importunities to be in vain?"

"I must confess that I can not bring my mind to a decision, Mr. Saul,"

answered Mistress Patty Laughton, blushing and curtsying prettily.

"It is surely not for your lack of worldly goods that you hesitate,"

persisted Slick-heels Saul. "As for what your father is owing me, it shall, at the moment of your acceptance, be wiped entirely from the books."

Patty was incensed at the hint of insolence in the gambler's allusion to her improvident father's financial condition.

"Believe me, Mr. Saul," she said, with spirit, "no ulterior motive for worldly advancement has the power to coerce my afflections."

"But you will consider my proposition of marriage?"

Patty's honest gaze encountered the appraising glint in the coot grey eyes of the foppish scape-grace before her. She lowered her own eys quickly to hid a hunted look in their dark depths as she answered:

"Sir, after the week of races, you shall have your answer."

"And then I shall give up my present means of gaining a livelihood, and, repairing to San Francisco, shall enter into a profession more fitting the social station of the lady who is to become my wife." He bowed deeply and withdrew, leaving Patty with a sad face and tearfilled eyes.

At last she straightened her tall figure resolutely. "I must not give way to tears. I can not! I will not! There must be some way to pay my father's debts beside this extremity, to which death is almost preferable. There is still a week's time. A week--only a week." Panic overwhelmed her, and when someone gently took her hand, she cried aloud in terror.