Overland Tales Part 12

But our "happy family" was broken up, after awhile: the captain was "called to the wars," and, in spite of all I could say, took Kitty with him, as the "most reliable horse." Kitty never returned; and I spent one whole day, during the captain's first visit home, in saying: "I told you so," and crying over Kitty's loss. Next, Tiny was stolen; and d.i.c.k went the way of most all "good dogs"--with our servant-girl's butcher-beau--at whose house I saw him, shortly after Babette's marriage, together with sundry lace-collars, table-cloths, and napkin-rings that had mysteriously left the house about the same time with her. Chicky disappeared the night before Thanksgiving day: perhaps they couldn't get any turkey to give thanks for, and contented themselves with a chicken.

When the captain next came home, he found nothing but a squirrel--but this squirrel was the greatest pet I had yet found. I came by it in this way: two small, ragged boys pulled the bell one day, and, seeing a little wooden cage in their hands, I went to the door immediately myself. How the little wretches knew of my silly propensity for collecting all vagabond, half-starved animals, I don't know; but they showed me a scraggy little squirrel in the cage, and said, with the utmost confidence, they wanted to sell it to me.

"How much do you want for it?" I asked.

"Two dollars," said the oldest, at a venture, and then opened his eyes in astonishment, as much at his own audacity as at my silence--which seemed to imply a.s.sent to his extortion.

You see, I had opened the cage, and bunny had slipped out, scrambled up on my arm, and lodged himself close around my neck, where he lay with his little head tucked under my chin. How could I let the little thing go? So I gave the boy his two dollars, for which he generously offered to leave the cage, which offer I declined, intending to make a house-dog of bunny. The sagacity, gentleness, and playfulness of little Fritz are beyond all description; though his b.u.mp of destructiveness, I must acknowledge, was also very largely developed. He was still young, and I could keep him on a window-sill quite safely, till I felt sure of his attachment to me, and his disinclination to make his escape. The window-sill and the open window remained his favorite post to the end of his life; though when he grew older, he would occasionally jump from my bed-room window, in the second story, to the gra.s.s and flower-beds below. He had not been in the house more than a week before he followed me about like a dog, and took his place close by me at the table, eating and drinking anything I had a mind to offer him. He drank coffee out of a cup, and ate the meat I gave him--holding it in his paws, as little children hold a strip of meat in their hands--nibbling and sucking it, with great gusto.

I cannot conceal that the wood work, the furniture, and all the books, throughout the house, soon displayed ragged edges and torn surfaces; and mother (who had taken up her abode with us), who punished Fritz for his depredations sometimes, was held in high disfavor by him, in consequence. When I was not at home, he would hardly allow her to touch him, and would hide under the pillows on my bed, at her approach, barking and scolding with great vehemence. To me he never said an "unkind word;" on the contrary, I could hardly secure myself from his caresses. Sometimes I would place him on the top of a tall cupboard, or high wardrobe, to get him away from under my feet; but the moment I pa.s.sed anywhere within reaching-distance, he would fly down on me, and, settling on my hand, face, or shoulder, would fall to licking my face, and nibbling at my ears and nose, to a.s.sure me of his favor. I fear I have slapped him more than once for marking my face with his little sharp claws, when making one of these sudden descents. At night, he slept under my pillow; and early in the morning he would creep out, nibble at my eyelids, and switch me with his bushy tail. Without opening my eyes, I would reach out for a handful of nuts--opened and placed within reach the night before--and with these he would amuse himself for a long while, always cleaning his face and paws after disposing of his first breakfast. With sundown he went to sleep; but, of warm nights, when I went to bed late, I would carry his little drinking-cup to him, filled with ice-water. Half asleep, sometimes with his eyes closed, he would take a long drink; but never once, of all those nights, did he return to his pillow without first gratefully pa.s.sing his little tongue over the hand that held him. That he knew it was my hand, I am quite certain; for if the captain ever attempted to touch him, in the middle of the night, when Fritz was ever so sound asleep, he would immediately start up with a snarl, and snap at the captain's fingers; whereas, if I thrust my hand under the pillow, in the dead of night, he would lick it, and rub his nose against it.

With nothing but a little basket to carry him in, I took him with me for a journey, on a Mississippi steamer. I left him in the basket, while looking after my baggage; but when I returned to my state-room, he suddenly jumped on my head from above, having eaten his way out, through the lid of the basket, and climbed to the top-berth. The stewardess on the steamer tried to steal him, when near port, but Fritz had made such good use of his sharp claws and teeth that she was fain to own: "She had on'y wanted to _tech_ the lilly bunny--hadn't wanted to hurt'm, 'tall."

It makes me sad, even now, to think of the closing scene of Fritz's short, but, let me hope, happy life. Once a lady, the mother of a terrible little boy, had come to spend the day with us; and I soon discovered that either Fritz or the little boy must be caged "up and away." So, pretending to be afraid that the boy might get hurt, but in reality fearing only for Fritz's welfare, I carried the squirrel up into the lumber-room, where I brought to him nuts without number, apples, sugar, crackers, and water to bathe in and drink from. There was a pane broken out of the window-sash, but this I covered with a piece of paste-board, and then went down to entertain the lady and her detestable little boy. Seated at the window, not long after, I saw an urchin come running around the next corner, and, when barely within speaking distance, he shouted at the top of his voice: "Say, Missis, they's got him, 'round here in the cooper-yard, and he's dead--the squirrel!" he added, in explanation.

Though by no means in a toilet representing a "street-dress"--in fact, with only one slipper on--I started off on a run, and never stopped till my youthful mentor pointed to a circle of men and boys, gathered around an object lying on the ground. It was Fritz, writhing in the last agonies of death, while the boys were calling each other's attention to the contortions of the poor little body. In a moment, I was among them, had lifted Fritz in my arms, and held him to my face.

"Who did that?" I asked, with pain and anger struggling in my heart; "which of you little brutes killed the poor, harmless thing?"

The little ragam.u.f.fin who had led me to the spot, pointed to two boys making ineffectual attempts to hide a long stick, they were carrying, behind them.

"They was a-hitting 'm like fury, and then I runned to tell you; please, Missis, gimme a dime."

Poor little Fritz! He knew me, even in the death-struggle; for he pa.s.sed his tongue over my hand once more, just before the last convulsive shudder ran through his body, and his little limbs grew stiff and cold.

I don't feel, in the least, ashamed to own that I cried--cried many tears--cried bitterly; and I felt dreadfully lonesome when I woke up at night, and, from the sheer force of habit, put my hand under my pillow without finding Fritz there. I made a vow then never to have any more pets; but it was a rash one.

Some years later, when the war was over, the "theatre of our life" was to be shifted from the crowded, populous city to the lonely wilds of the frontier country. When we reached Fort Leavenworth, the quarters in the barracks were all occupied, and a number of our officers were a.s.signed quarters in the Attache Barracks. The captain had decided to purchase a horse from the government stables, and turn him over to me for saddle-use, as I did not want to go to our frontier-post without a horse of my own to depend on. It was in June; and the little square yards in front of the Attache Barracks were fresh and sweet with gra.s.s and blossoming red clover. The door of our quarters stood open; the captain had gone out, and I was startled by a knock on the door-post. Looking up, I saw the head of an orderly appearing at the door; but, poking over his head, I saw that of a horse evidently taking a strict inventory of everything in the room. Of course, I was at the door, and on the horse's neck, in the course of a very few seconds, for, from the orderly, I soon understood that the captain had sent the horse for me to look at.

Colonel L----, with his two little girls, came up just then, and, as we were all going in the same command, the acquisition of a horse for the march had an interest for all parties. Together, we surrounded and admired the beautiful white animal; and the two little girls and myself were soon braiding clover-blossoms into Toby's tail, and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his head and neck with garlands of b.u.t.ter-cups--operations which did not, in the least, interfere with his good humor, or his appet.i.te for the juicy gra.s.s he was cropping. The captain, it seems, had already tried his speed and mettle; he was not appraised at at any unreasonable figure, and so Toby was mine before we took up the line of march for the Plains.

From the wagon-master I heard, later, that Toby had been captured in Texas, during the war. He had been raised and trained by a woman who had followed him around the country for some time, trying to get her pet back again; but Uncle Sam, no doubt, had the best right to him, and he was placed in the stables of the Fitting-out Depot. One thing certainly spoke for the truth of the story: whenever Toby had been let loose and refused to be tied up again, he would always allow me to come up to him, when he would turn and throw up his heels at the approach of a man.

Toby was soon a universal favorite and proved himself worthy of the preference, though he had one or two tricks about him that were by no means commendable. First: he was an inveterate thief; and then--at times when he was not ridden, but led along by the orderly--he had a mean way of lying back and letting the other horse pull him along, that fairly exasperated me. His thefts, however, were always carried out in such a cunning manner that I readily forgave the sin for the sake of the skill.

We had not been long on the march when Toby perpetrated his first robbery. The captain rode him, and when the command halted for lunch, he would come up to our ambulance, dismount, and let Toby go perfectly free--for we had soon found that he would not stray from the command.

Toby learned to know the contents and appliances of lunch-baskets very soon, particularly as he received his portion from ours regularly every day. One day, after having dispatched his bread-and-b.u.t.ter and lump of sugar in the neighborhood of our ambulance, he walked over to Colonel L----'s, and while Mrs. L---- was leaning out on the other side, speaking to the colonel, Toby quietly lifted the lunch-basket from her lap, deposited it on the gra.s.s, overturned it, and helped himself to the contents. Unfortunately for Toby, Mrs. L---- had spread mustard on her ham-sandwiches, and the sneezing and coughing of the erring horse first called her attention to his presence, and the absence of her lunch-basket.

Not long after, we made camp very early in the day, and the major's folks came to fill a long-standing promise to take tea with us, and spend the evening at our tent. The visit pa.s.sed off very pleasantly, and an engagement was made to return it at an early day. Toby, who was prowling about the tent, no doubt overheard the conversation, and felt it inc.u.mbent on him to fill the engagement as soon as possible.

Consequently, he stationed himself near the major's tent-fly the very next morning, and paid close attention to the preparations going on for tea; and just as the cook had put the finishing-touch to the table, and had stepped back to call the family and set the tea and the meats on the table, Toby gravely walked up, swallowed the b.u.t.ter with one gulp, upset the sugar-bowl, gobbled up the contents, and proceeded leisurely to investigate the inside of a tin jelly-can. The soldiers, who had watched his manoeuvres from a distance, had been too much charmed with the performance to give warning to the cook; but when he made his appearance, meat-dish and tea-pot in hand, they gave such a shout as set the whole camp in an uproar, and Toby was fairly worshipped by the soldiers from that day out.

But the faithfulness and patience of the horse, in time of need, made me forgive him all these tricks. Months later--when still on the march, in the most desolate wilderness, in the midst of the pathless mountains, when other horses "gave up the ghost," and were shot at the rate of a dozen a day--Toby held out, carrying me on his back, day after day, night after night, till his knees trembled with fatigue and faintness, and he turned his head and took my foot between his teeth, at last, to tell me he could carry me no farther! Not once, but a dozen times, has he repeated this manoeuvre; once, too, when we were coming down a very steep hill, he planted his forefeet down firmly, turned his head, and softly bit the foot I held in the stirrup, to tell me that I must dismount.

The most singular devotion of one horse to another, I witnessed while out in New Mexico. The captain found it necessary to draw a saddle-horse for his own use, and selected one from a number which the volunteers had left behind. It had been half-starved latterly, and was vicious, more from ill-treatment than by nature. The first evening when it was brought to our stable, it kicked the orderly so that he could not attend to the horses next morning, and the cook had to look after them. I went into the stable to bring Toby a t.i.tbit of some kind, and here found that Copp (the new horse) was deliberately eating the feed out of Toby's trough.

The cook called my attention to it, and explained that the horse had done the same thing last night; and on interfering, the orderly had been viciously kicked by the animal. I reached over to stroke the creature's mane, but the cook called to me to stop, holding up his arm to show where the horse had bitten him. I went quickly back into the tent, got a large piece of bread, and held it out to Copp. In an instant he had swallowed it, and had fallen back on Toby's feed again, without meeting with the least opposition from that side. Toby evidently had better sense, and more charity, than the men had shown; he knew that the horse was half-starved, and wicked only from hunger.

If I had never believed before that horses were capable of reasoning, and remembering kind actions, Copp's behavior toward Toby would have converted me. Often, when out on timber-cutting or road-making excursions, I accompanied the captain, and, mounted on Toby, would hold Copp by the bridle or picket-rope, so as to allow the orderly to partic.i.p.ate in the pleasures of the day. The gra.s.s was rich up in the mountains, and Toby would give many a tug at the bridle to get his head down where he could crop it; this, however, had been forbidden by the captain, once for all, and Toby was compelled to hold his head up in the proper position. Copp, however, was allowed to crop the gra.s.s; but he never ate a mouthful, of which he did not first give Toby half!

Sometimes he would go off as far as the bridle would reach, gather up a large bunch in his mouth, and then step back to Toby and let him pull his share of it out from between his teeth. But no other horse dare approach Toby in Copp's sight. I have seen him jump quite across the road for the purpose of biting a horse that was rubbing his nose against Toby's mane in a friendly manner. One day we met a party of disappointed gold-hunters, who were anxious to dispose of a little, light wagon they had. The captain bought it, thinking to break Toby and Copp to harness.

Toby took to his new occupation kindly enough, but Copp could only be made to move in his track when I stood at a distance and called to him.

He would work his way up to me with a wild, frightened air; but the moment I was out of his sight, neither beating nor coaxing could induce him to move a step.

But--dear me--those horses have taken up my thoughts so completely, that I have almost exhausted this paper without speaking of the other pets I have had. The horned toad could never make its way into my good graces; nor the land-turtle, neither, after it had once "shut down" on my dog Tom's tail. They were both abolished by simply leaving them on the road.

The prairie-dog refused to be tamed, but ran away, the ungrateful wretch, with collar, chain, and all; a living wonder, no doubt, to his brethren in the prairie-dog village, through which we were pa.s.sing at the time.

But my mink, Max, was a dear little pet. He was given me by a soldier at Fort Union, and had been captured on the Pecos River, near Fort Sumner.

He was of a solid, dark-brown color, and the texture of his coat made it clear at once why a set of mink-furs is so highly prized by the ladies.

His face was anything but intelligent; yet he was as frisky and active as any young mink need be. It was while we were still on the march, that Max took his place in the ambulance by me as regularly as day came. When we made camp in the afternoon, he was allowed to run free, and when it grew dark, I would step to the tent-door, call "Max! Max!" and immediately he would come dashing up, uttering sounds half-chuckle, half-bark, as if he were saying: "Well, well--ain't I coming as fast as I can?"

On long days' marches he would lie so still in the ambulance, that I often put out my hand to feel whether he was beside me; and wherever I happened to thrust my fingers, his mouth would be wide open to receive them, and a sharp bite would instantly apprise me of his whereabouts. He had his faults, too--serious faults--and one of them, I fear, led to his destruction. Travelling over the plains of New Mexico, in the middle of summer, is no joking matter, for man or mink, and a supply of fresh, cool water, after a hot day's march, is not only desirable, but necessary. But it is not always an easy matter to get water; and I have known the men to go two or three miles for a bucketful. Getting back to camp weary and exhausted, they would naturally put the bucket in the only available place--on the ground; and the next moment, Max, who was always on hand for his share of it, would suddenly plunge in and swim "'round and 'round" in pursuit of his tail--choosing to take his drink of water in this manner, to the great disgust of the tired men.

Company "B" was still with us at this time, and the tent of the company commander was pitched not far from ours. Sergeant Brown, of this company, was in possession of a dozen or two of chickens; and these, I suspect, were the cause of the mink's death. Like all animals out in the wilderness, the chickens could be allowed to run free, without ever straying away from their owner: there was thought to be no danger lurking near for them; but suddenly one or two were found with their throats torn open, and the blood sucked from their lifeless bodies. Max was accused, with the greater show of truth, as the cook of the lieutenant had caught him the next day rolling away an egg, which he had purloined from the lieutenant's stock of provisions. The cook, following Max, discovered that he had already three eggs hidden in the neighborhood of our tent. I grew alarmed for the safety of my pet, though I knew that the men of our company would not have harmed a hair of his brown, bear-like head.

One night I stepped to the tent-door to call Max; but no Max answered.

The orderly was sent to look through the tents, as Max sometimes stopped with the men who showed any disposition to play with him--but he could not be found. I spent an uneasy night, calling "Max! Max!" whenever I heard the least noise outside the tent. Next morning I got up betimes, and as soon as I had swallowed my breakfast, went down toward the Rio Grande. The ground grew broken and rocky near the banks of the river, and I half thought he might have returned to his native element. I climbed to a point where I could see the river, and called "Max! Max!"

but heard nothing in answer, save the rolling of a little stone I had loosened with my foot. "Max! Max!" I called again; but the dull roar of the water, where it surged lazily against the few exceptional rocks on the bank, was all I could hear. Going back to camp, I found the tents struck, the command moving, and the ambulance waiting for me. Wiping the tears from my face, I climbed in--shaking the blankets for the fiftieth time to see if Max had not mischievously hidden among them.

From a conversation I overheard long afterward, I concluded that Max had fallen a victim to Sergeant Brown's revengeful spirit--in fact, had been slaughtered in atonement for those a.s.sa.s.sinated chickens.

_POKER-JIM._

Two motherless girls, and only a brother a few years older left to protect them.

When the father died, the mother had turned the old homestead--for there _are_ houses in San Francisco fifteen and twenty years old--into a source of revenue from which she provided for the children. The father had left nothing save debts--gambling debts--and the fraternity had not called on the widow to settle these. For her own existence she seemed to need nothing--absolutely nothing--but the caresses of her children, and the happiness and contentment mirrored in their eyes. When she died the girls were old enough, and competent, to look after the house, which the mother had made a pleasant home to many a "roomer" who had come a stranger to the city, had been badgered and hara.s.sed by flint-eyed, stony-hearted landladies, and had at last, by some good fortune, found his way into the precincts of the widow's cozy, quiet walls. The son had, through the influence of some of the roomers, obtained a position in a wholesale liquor establishment, where the salary was high, and--the temptation great.

That the two young girls should carry on the house just as their dying mother had left it to them, was something no one in San Francisco would think of commenting upon. And as the proverbial chivalry of the Californian would prompt him to suffer inconvenience and loss rather than to deprive women in any way thrown on his care or his protection, they missed only their mother's love and presence in the home, which remained home to them still. After a while the painful truth dawned on them that their brother was being weaned away from it. His evenings were now but seldom spent with them in the little sitting-room whose ivy-mantled bay-window looked out on the garden, where the flower-beds had moved closer up to the house as the lots became more valuable, and the orchard had been cut down to a few trees on the gra.s.s-plot.

At first the excuse was, that customers from the country, buying heavily of the firm, had a right to expect attentions not strictly of a business nature from him, its chief representative. Then his absence from home grew more protracted, and often midnight tolled from St. Mary's before his unsteady feet mounted the door-steps. One night, a lady, attracted to the balcony by an unusually brilliant moon, when she awoke from her midnight slumbers, wonderingly saw a carriage drive up to the house where the two sisters lay in peaceful sleep. She was too far off to see whether there was a number on the carriage, or what the number was.

Neither could she distinguish the face of the driver, nor that of the gentleman who a.s.sisted another, whom she rightly judged to be Edward Ashburne, from the carriage into the house. That the face of the one who supported, or rather carried, young Edward, was deadly white, framed in by a heavy black beard, was all she could tell. "Poor girls!" she soliloquized; "better that the boy was dead than turn drunkard, and gamble, like his father."

The carriage drove off rapidly after the gentleman--who, as she thought, had helped Ned to the door and rang the bell--had re-entered it; and carriage-driver and ghostly-faced gentleman could never be found or heard of afterward.

What the neighbor-lady heard still further that same night was, first, the furious barking, then the doleful howling of the young Newfoundland dog, which the Misses Ashburne had recently "adopted," and, soon after, a wild, heart-rending cry.

"The horrid boy!" she continued, full of sympathy; "is he so beastly drunk? Could he have struck one of his sisters?"

Aye, good woman; struck them both a terrible blow, but not with his hand, for that lay powerless by his side. And the eyes were sightless that stared vacantly into their own, as they bent over him where he lay stretched out on the hall-floor--his coat folded under his head, his latch-key close at hand. Only a painful gasp answered their pitiful entreaties to "speak once more;" and before the sympathizing inmates of the stricken house could remove him to his bed, he had breathed his last.

"Beaten to a jelly," sententiously remarked one of the men, under his breath, to another, as they left the chamber to the sisters and the more intimate friends of the family.

"Some woman sc.r.a.pe--you can bet on that," was the response. And they joined the others in their efforts to discover the perpetrators of the dastard deed.

But no clue was found, and after a while San Francisco forgot the sisters and their sorrow; and one day, when the neighbor-lady told her ever-fresh story to a new-made acquaintance, she added: "And now they have gone, the poor girls, and n.o.body knows where."

From the balcony of the two-story frame hotel-building a young girl was watching the sunlight sinking behind the dimly-outlined range of the Coast Mountains. Perhaps her eyes roved so far away because the immediate surrounding of the hotel was not attractive; though the streets devoted to private residences of this little city--to which the railroad was fast making its way--were pleasing to the eye, and rather Southern in their features. The orange, ripening in one cl.u.s.ter with the fragrant blossom, as well as the tall-growing oleander, embowering cottage alike with mansion, spoke of oppressive weather in the summer, and promised glorious, balmy days during the short California winter.

Had the girl, at whose feet a large Newfoundland dog lay sleeping, stepped to the end of the balcony which ran along the whole length of the house, she could have followed the course of the Feather River, which but a short distance away mingled its clear waters with the muddy waves of the Yuba. But she was evidently not engaged in a study of the "lay of the land," though her eyes seemed to follow with some interest the direction of a particular road leading to the hotel. Directly she spoke to the dog, touching him lightly with her toe: "Cruiser, old dog, come, wake up, they are coming."