Jessica Trent: Her Life On A Ranch Part 12

Indeed, Elsa had already drawn the child upon her capacious lap, and was tenderly smoothing the tumbled curls with her hard hand, while she asked endless questions, yet waited for no answers.

Till, suddenly remembering, Lady Jess demanded:

"But have you seen our Ephraim? Is he here? Has he been here?"

Elsa's fat form grew quite rigid and her hand ceased its caressing stroke. Not for her to betray the confidence of one who had taken refuge with her.

"Why ask that? What if he has and is? Is he not the old man, already?

Even here there is no room for the old. When one is fifty one should die.

That would be wisdom."

"Elsa Winkler, nonsense! That's not polite for me to say, but it's true. You're fifty, yourself, I guess, and you don't want to die, do you?"

Elsa shivered slightly. "When the right time comes and the usefulness is past. As the Lord wills."

Jessica laughed and kissed the woman's cheek, then sprang to the ground, demanding:

"Where is he? For he's mine, you know. He belongs to Sobrante just as much the sunshine does. If he'd loved us as we love him he'd not have ridden away in the night time just because of one little bit o'

note. Wherever you've hidden him you must find him for me, and he's to go straight away back with me. With us, I mean, for here comes a--a friend of ours; I guess he is. Any way he's a guest and you must make him a cup of your very best coffee, and Otto must show him his carved clock that he is making. He's a pleasant gentleman, and so interested in everything, it's fun to tell him things. In that New York, where he came from, they don't have much of anything nice. No ostriches, nor mines, nor orange groves. Fancy! and he doesn't know--he's only just learning to ride a horse!"

As Mr. Hale now approached, this description ceased and Jessica presented him to her mountain friends:

"This is dear Elsa Winkler, and 'her man,' Wolfgang. And Otto--where's Otto gone? He needn't be shy. Mr. Hale would like to see the carvings and the knittings, and maybe, go down the shaft.

But first of all, he'd like the coffee, Elsa, dear."

The portly Dutchwoman, whose needles could click as fast as her tongue, now thrust the stocking, at which she had resumed working the moment Jessica left her lap, into her ap.r.o.n pocket and waddled inside the cabin.

Already she was beaming with hospitality and calling in harsh chiding to the invisible Otto:

"You bad little boy, where are you at already? Come by, soon's-ever, and lay the dishes. Here's company come to the house and n.o.body but the old mother got a grain of sense left to mind them. Wolfgang! Wolfgang!

Hunt the child and set him drawing a tether o' milk from Gretchen, the goat. Ach! but it shames my good heart when my folks act so foolish, and the Lady Jess just giving the orders so sweet."

Wolfgang heard his wife's commands and obeyed them after his own manner, by lifting his mighty voice and shouting in his native _patois_--"Little heart! Son of my love! Come, come hither."

But he did not, for all that, cease from his respectful attention to the stranger, for whom he had promptly brought out the best chair he owned, and whose horse he had taken to a shaded spot and carefully rubbed down with a handful of dried gra.s.s.

Presently, the "child" appeared, and the Easterner flashed a smile toward Jessica, whose own face was dimpled with mirth; for the "child,"

Otto, proved to be a gaunt six-footer, lean as he was long, and with a manly beard upon his pink and white face. He shambled forward on his great feet and shyly extended his mighty hands.

Mr. Hale grasped them heartily, eager to put the awkward youth at ease; and, nodding toward the chair from which he had risen, exclaimed:

"So, you are he who does that beautiful carving! I congratulate you on your skill, and I hope you will have some trifle of your work to sell a traveler. I've never seen finer."

Otto flushed with pleasure and was about to reply, but again Elsa commanded:

"Milk the goat, little one. After the guest feeds let the household talk."

As if he had been the "child," the "little heart," his parents called him he obediently entered the cabin, tied an ap.r.o.n before his lank body and spread a tablecloth. Then, as deftly as if he had been a girl, he arranged it with the three cups and plates the family possessed, took his mother's cherished spoons from her chest, and, taking a small pail, sought the goat, Gretchen.

"Now, I'm in for it," thought Mr. Hale, regretfully. "My poor dyspepsia! Coffee, honey, and goat's milk! A combination to kill.

But even if it is, one must respond to such whole-souled hospitality as this."

Jessica had no such qualms; and, indeed, the refreshment which her visitor forced himself to accept was far more palatable than he had dared expect; and, besides, he now brought to it that astonishing appet.i.te which had come to him on this eventful trip. When the luncheon was disposed of, Dame Elsa held an exhibition of her wonderful knitting and it seemed to the unappreciative stranger that a small fortune must have been expended in yarns, and that even in this wilderness one might be extravagant and wasteful.

"My wife would know more about such things than I do, but I should think you might easily stock a whole shop with your tidies and things."

"Man alive, do I not? Didst think it was for the pleasure of one's self the fingers are always at toil? Ach! Yet, of course, how could a poor man from a far city understand! It is Elsa's knitting, and Elsa's only, will all the tourists have who come to Sobrante; and in that Los Angeles, so distant, where the master went but once every year already, there is a merchant buys all. Ay. See here. I show you!"

"I--I don't really care--I mean--ought we not to be going, Jessica?"

cried Mr. Hale, hopelessly, foreseeing another exhibition of "trash,"

as he considered it.

But Elsa could not conceive that everybody should not be interested in all that concerned everybody else; and, besides, this was quite another matter. One for pride, indeed, beyond the accomplishment of the most difficult "lacework" or "overshot" st.i.tch.

From the same chest in which her precious half-dozen plated spoons had reposed she now drew forth a buckskin sack; and, from this, with radiant eyes fixed on Mr. Hale's own, another bag, knitted, of course, and seemingly heavy. Sitting before him she spread her own ap.r.o.n over her guest's knees and poured therein a goodly pile of gold and silver coins.

With a little catching of his own breath the lawyer realized that among these were many eagles and double eagles.

"Why, this is wealth. This is _money_. I can see now, after our paper bills and 'checks' how real this seems. You are a fortunate woman, Dame Elsa. Now, I begin to respect your 'tidies' and notions as things of moment. Did you earn it all?"

"Ach! wait. There is more already. This but begins; and it is for the child. Some day, when there is enough, he shall this mine buy and the machinery hire, and the workmen. Then he will repay to the mistress of Sobrante, and our Lady Jess, all that their dead man spent for us. More.

He will make the great money--this but leads the way. Wait."

Trustful and eager of appreciation, which came so rarely into her isolated life, the woman thrust her hand again into the buckskin sack, her shining eyes still fixed upon the stranger's face, and her fingers fumbling nervously in the depths of the narrow bag. Her excitement and delight communicated itself to him, and he found himself watching her broad, beaming face with intense curiosity.

But--the face was changing. The light was dying out of the sparkling eyes, an ashy color succeeding the ruddy hue of the fat cheeks.

Bewilderment, then anxiety, then terror.

"Why, good Elsa, what is it?"

"Gone--gone--but I am robbed, I am ruined! Mein Gott, man! Little one--lost, lost, lost!"

With a shriek the poor creature sprang up, and in so doing scattered far and wide the coins she had already poured into her ap.r.o.n, but heeded nothing of this as she rushed frantically out of doors.

CHAPTER IX

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SHAFT

While Elsa had been entertaining the stranger within doors Jessica had sought Wolfgang and compelled him, by her coaxing, to admit that Ephraim Marsh had been there and, also, that Antonio Bernal had ridden up that morning to give orders about the coal.

"None of it is to be sent down to the ranch, he said, no matter who calls for it, till he comes back. He was going away for a time and----How will you get on at Sobrante without him, Lady Jess?"

"Wolfgang, better than with him. Listen. Look at me. I'm the 'manager' now. The captain. The 'boys' all elected me or made me, whatever way they fixed it. I'm to be the master. I, just Jessica.

Guess I'm proud? Guess I'll do the very, very best ever a girl can do? n.o.body is to be any different, though. You're to go on mining just the same and John Benton says, quite often, it's high time you had another hand to help up here. He says with coal fifteen dollars a ton there's money in it, even if it is a weeny little mine. So, if you want a man, any time, just let me know. Ha!"

With an amusing little strut that was mostly affectation the girl pa.s.sed up and down before the miner, and ended her performance by a hearty hug. It was impossible for her to withhold her caresses from anybody who loved her; and who did not, at Sobrante, save Antonio and Ferd, the dwarf? But she sobered quickly enough and at Wolfgang's pet.i.tion to "Tell me all about it already," gave him a vivid picture of the changes at her home.