First Fam'lies of the Sierras Part 12

"Well, not so sudden--not so sudden, considerin' this--this--this glorious climate of Californy."

After awhile, when the monte game had a.s.serted itself again, and things were going on in the saloon just about as they were before the Judge made this announcement, a tall and inquisitive man with a hatchet face and a hump in his shoulder, and a twist in his neck, which made him look like an interrogation point, rose up, and reaching his neck out toward the bar, said in a sharp whisper:

"I'll bet a forty dollar hoss she's the real Nancy Williams."

The red-headed bar-keeper bristled up like a porcupine, and then put out his broad hand as if it was an extinguisher.

CHAPTER XIV.

A WEDDING IN THE SIERRAS.

The wedding-day came. The camp had been invited to a man. There was but one place in the camp that could hold a t.i.the of its people, and that was the Howling Wilderness. The plan had been to have the wedding under the pines on the hill; but the wind came pitching down the mountain, with frost and snow in his beard, that morning, and drove them to the shelter.

What a place was that Howling Wilderness! It was battle-field, prize-ring, dead-house, gambling-h.e.l.l, court-house, chapel, every thing by turns.

There they stood, side by side and hand in hand, before the crackling fire, before the little Judge. The house was hot. It was crowded thick as the men could stand. Tighter than sardines in a tin box, the men stood there bare-headed with hardly room to breathe. The fat little magistrate was terribly embarra.s.sed. He had sent all the way across the mountains by the last pack-train, by the last express, by the last man who had dared the snows, but no pack-train, no express, nothing had returned with the coveted, the so-much-needed marriage ceremony and service, which he had resolved to read to the people, interspersed with such remarks and moral observations as the case might require. Alas! the form of the ceremony had not arrived. He had nothing of the kind to guide him. He had never officiated in this way before. He had never studied up in this branch.

Why should he have studied up in this line, when there was but one woman in all his little world?

As the form had not arrived, he had nothing in the world but his moral observations to use on this imposing occasion, and he was embarra.s.sed as a man had never been embarra.s.sed before.

He stood there trying hard to begin. He could hear the men breathe. The pretty little woman was troubled too. Her face was all the time held down, her eyes drooped, and she did not look up--did not look right or left or anywhere, but seemed to surrender herself to fate, to give herself away. Her soul seemed elsewhere, as if she sat on a high bank above all this, and was not of it or in it at all.

"Do you solemnly swear?"

The Judge had jerked himself together with an effort that made his joints fairly rattle. He hoisted his right hand in the air as he said this, and, having once broken ground, he went on--"Do you solemnly swear to love, and honor, and obey?"

Poor Limber Tim, who had just room enough behind the Judge to turn over, here became embarra.s.sed through sympathy for the little red-faced magistrate, and of course flopped over, and began to write his name and the date, and make pictures on the wall, with a nervous rapidity proportionate to his embarra.s.sment.

"Do you solemnly swear?"

It was very painful. The little man took down his lifted flagstaff to wipe his little bald head, and he could not get it up again, but stood there still and helpless.

You could hear the men breathe deeper than before as they leaned and listened with all their might to hear. They heard the water outside gurgling on down over the great boulders, over their dams, and on through the canon. They heard the little brown wood-mice nibble and nibble at the bits of bacon-rind and old leather boots up in the loft above their heads, but that was all. At last the Judge revived, and began again in a voice that was full of desperation:

"Do you solemnly swear to love, and protect, and honor, and obey, till death do you part; and--"

Here the voice fell down low, lower, and the Judge was again floundering in the water. Then his head went under utterly. Then he rose, and "Now I lay me down to sleep" rolled tremulously through the silent room from the lips of the Judge. Then again the head was under water, then it rose up again, and there was something like "Twinkle, twinkle, little star."

Then the voice died again, again the head was under water. Then it rose again, and the head went up high in the air, and the voice was loud and resolute, and the man rose on his tiptoes, and beginning with--"When in the course of human events," he went on in a deep and splendid tone with the Declaration of Independence, to the very teeth of tyrannical King George, and then bringing his hand down emphatically on the gambling table that stood to his right, said, loud, and clear, and resolute, and authoritatively, as he tilted forward on his toes, "So help you G.o.d, and I p.r.o.nounce you man and wife."

The exhausted Judge sank back against the wall on top of Limber Tim, and then, as if he all at once came to remember a part of the ceremony, and after Sandy and the Widow and all were thinking that it was quite over, he began in a low but clear voice--

"Then by virtue of the authority in me vested, and according to the laws and the statutes of the State of California in such cases made and provided, I p.r.o.nounce you man and wife."

Then he rose up, came forward, and shaking the new bride by the hand, then lifting it to his lips and kissing it gallantly, he said carelessly, and as if nothing had happened, "You will pardon me for pausing occasionally as I did. The room is so warm and the ceremony is so long, that I really began to be exhausted."

He was going on to say something about the glorious climate of California, but the men came forward, crowded around in this day of all days, and quite squeezed the little man away from the "Widow," as she was still called.

It was perfectly splendid! How they did shout, and laugh, and cheer, and how careful they were to shake all the round oaths out of their speech before addressing her. And how they did crowd around, as Sandy led her away, every man of them, even to Washee-Washee, to wish her "G.o.d speed,"

and a long and a pleasant life in their midst, down there in the gorge, in the heart of the great Sierras.

Only two circ.u.mstances in connection with this first family of the Sierras worth mentioning, occurred for some months. The first of these was the banishment of the boy-poet from the presence of the Widow. Sandy led her at once to the "parsonage" with the green window blinds, as he had solemnly promised the Parson to do. Into this house the boy was never seen to enter. Sandy, it was whispered, had forbidden him the house. The verdict of the Camp was: Served him right.

The other little event was, to all appearances, of still less consequence. Yet it showed that there was a storm brewing, and it was a straw which showed which way the wind was blowing. The boy was seen late at night by some men who were pa.s.sing, peering in at the Widow's window.

He ran away like one caught in a crime. But they said he "looked pale as a ghost, and sickly, and sad, and lonesome."

CHAPTER XV.

WHAT'S THE MATTER NOW!

Just exactly how many days or weeks or even months had blown over the Forks through the long bleak winter since the wedding no man knew. These men in the mountains, snowed up for half-a-year, where there is no business, where there is no law, no church, nothing but half-wild men hard at work--these men, I say, sometimes forget the day, the week, even the month. Yet the Day of the week is always kept. Six days they labor in the mine; the seventh, they do not rest, but they at least do not mine.

Certainly there was snow on the day of the wedding, and certain it was that there was a little fall of snow on the high hill-sides, and in the black fir tops, and the great pines were tipped in white, as Sandy hurried from his cabin down to the Forks in search of his now divorced and forgotten Limber Tim. He was pale and excited. He pushed his great black, broad hat down over his eyes as he hurried on down the trail, slipping and sliding over the worn walk, over the new sprinkle of snow, in his great big gum boots. Then he pushed his hat back so as to get the cool wind of March in his face and even the bl.u.s.tering snow in his beard.

He found Limber at last standing on one leg by the great log fire in the Howling Wilderness, lonesome as a crow in March. He pulled his hat again down over his eyes as he approached his old partner, and stooped his shoulders and looked out from under its rim, as if he was half afraid or else was half ashamed.

In all western towns, in all mines, in all cities, great or small for that matter, there is always one common center. Here it was the Howling Wilderness. If a man felt sad, what better place than the Howling Wilderness saloon to go to for distraction? If a man felt glad, where else could he go to share his mirth.

Here was happiness or unhappiness. All great extremes run together.

Tears flow as freely for joy as for grief. Between intense delight or deepest sorrow the wall is so thin you can whisper through it and be heard.

Here, at fifty cents a gla.s.s, you had dealt out to you over a great plank laid up upon a barricade of sand-bags, that were laid there to intercept any stray bullet that might be making its way towards the crimson-headed vendor of poisons, almost any drink that you might name.

And it is safe to say that all of the following popular drinks, that is Old Tiger, Bad Eye, Forty Rod, Rat Pizen, Rot Gut, h.e.l.l's Delight, and Howling Modoc, were all made from the same decoction of bad rum, worse tobacco, and first-cla.s.s cayenne pepper. The difference in proportion of ingredients made the difference in the infernal drinks.

If one of those splendid, misled fellows, who really knew no better, felt very sad, he took one of these drinks; if he felt very glad he took two.

Sandy wheeled on his heel the moment he found his old friend, and went out without saying a word. He stood there in the snow, the wind twisting about his beard, blowing his old hat-rim up and down, and he seemed as one lost. At length he lifted the latch again hastily, hesitated, looked back, around, up towards his cabin on the hill, and then suddenly pushing his hat back again, as if he wanted room to breathe, he tumbled into the saloon, went right up before Limber Tim, and bringing his two hands down on his two shoulders, said tremulously, "Limber Tim."

Sandy had laid hold of him as if he had determined to never let him go again, and the man fairly winced under his great vice-like grasp. He looked at the back log on the fire, looked left and right, but did not look Sandy in the face. If he had, he would for the first time in all his timid experience have been able to have had it all his own way.

"O Limber!"

Sandy had fished up one of his hands high enough to pull his hat down over his eyes, and now nothing was to be seen but a hat rim and the fringe of a grizzly beard.

Limber Tim looked up. He never before had heard his old partner's voice troubled, and he was very sorry, and began to look, or to try to look, Sandy in the face. Up went a big hand from a shoulder, back went the old hat, and then Limber Tim looked to the left at a lot of picks and pans, and tom irons, and crevicing spoons, that lay up against the wall, but did not speak.

"Limber Tim! I tell you. My--my--"

Sandy choked. He never had yet been able to call her his wife. He had tried to do so over and over again. His dear little wife had taught him many things--had made him, in fact, another man, but she never could get him to speak of her to the other miners but as "the Widow." He had gone out by himself and practiced it in the dark to himself; he was certain he could say it in the crowd, but somehow just at the moment he tried to say it he was certain some one was thinking about it just as he was, was watching him, and so it always and for ever stuck in his throat. How he loved her! How tender he was to her all the time! How he did little else but think of her and her happiness day and night; but he had been a savage so long, had been with the "boys" so much, that he could not find it in his power to say that one dear word. It was like a new convert trying to pray in public in one of the great camp meetings of the West; or to stand up before all his neighbors and confess his sins.