Overland Tales Part 15

The ambulance had been waiting at the door for me quite a while; so I thanked the woman for "telling me all about it," and tried to say something cheering to her. When I turned to leave the room she clutched at my dress.

"Stop," she said, nervously; "don't leave me here in the room alone;--I can't bear to stay alone!"

She followed me slowly into the bar-room, and when the man there went to the ambulance to speak to the captain, she crept out after him and stood in the sun till he returned.

"The poor woman," said I, compa.s.sionately; "how I pity her!"

"The poor woman," echoed the station-keeper; "those two Greasers have killed her just as dead as if they had beaten her brains out on the spot."

The shades of night were already falling around Mohawk Station when we reached it. It was quite a pretentious house, built of _adobe_, and boasting of but one story, of course; but it is not every one in Arizona who can build a house with four rooms,--if the doors _do_ consist of old blankets, and the floor and ceiling, like the walls, of mud.

A discharged soldier kept the station now--a large yellow dog his sole companion. The man slept on the same bed that had borne Hendricks's corpse, and the cudgel, with the murdered man's blood dried on it, was lying at the foot of it.

"And where is his grave?" I asked.

The man's eye travelled slowly over the desolate landscape before us.

There were sand, verde, and cactus, on one side of us, and there were sand, verde, and cactus, on the other.

"Well, really now, I couldn't tell. You see, I wasn't here when they put him in the ground, and I haven't thought of his grave since I come. Fact is, I've got to keep my eyes open for live Greasers and Pache-Indians, and don't get much time to hunt up dead folks's graves!"

_LONE LINDEN._

"It is just the place for you; Clara will find it sufficiently romantic, Miss Barbara can have s...o...b..ll and Kickup both with her, and you, dear friend, will be pleased because the rest of us are."

The letter was signed "Christine Ernst;" and Mrs. Wardor, when she had finished reading, continued in her quiet, even tones:

"What an unaccountable being she is; I thought her cold and unfeeling, because she dismissed that fine young fellow so unceremoniously, when we all thought her heart was bound up in him."

"Ah, me!" sighed Clara, fair of face, blue-eyed, and with feathery curls of the palest yellow. "How little we know of the sorrow that sits silent in our neighbor's breast. The sentiment--"

"Oh, bother sentiment!" broke in Miss Barbara, impetuously, flinging back the heavy braids of unquestionably red hair that had strayed over her shoulder. "Daisy, my s...o...b..ll, imagine, if you can, a large lot, a meadow, or paddock, or something with gra.s.s, for Kickup, you and me! Oh, won't it be jolly, though?" And seizing the sweet Daisy, a squat, broad-faced Indian girl, whom Barbara's father, an army contractor, had picked up somewhere around Fort Yuma, they executed a species of war-dance that sent chairs, crickets, and bouquet-stands flying, and caused Mrs. Wardor and her other companion to exchange significant head-shakings.

Having suddenly loosed her hold of Daisy in the wildest of the dance, and sent her spinning into the corner where her head struck the whatnot, Miss Barbara approached the elder lady, panting, and with deep contrition.

"Forgive me, Aunt Wardor; I shan't forget my young-lady manners again for a whole week. But it did seem such a relief, just the thought of getting away from this cramped little house, and into the open air again, that I could not help being rude to Lady Clara." She seized the slender fingers of the young lady, in spite of the little spasmodic motion with which they seemed to shrink from the hearty grasp.

"But, Barbara," urged Mrs. Wardor, somewhat mollified by the affectionate "Aunt," "when a girl of your age avers that she is a young lady, how can she constantly forget herself, and act the child and the romp again."

A flush pa.s.sed over the girl's face, a handsome face, full of life and animation, which a few little freckles seemed really to finish off, as she turned sharply from both, and seated herself in the most stately manner at the grand piano, the recent birthday gift of her father.

Barbara was his only daughter, "and he a widower," who was surprised one day to find that she was receiving the marked attentions of a young gentleman matrimonially inclined, at the springs where she was spending her vacations, with all the a.s.surance and matter-of-course air of a "grown-up lady," when he had never dreamed but that she was only a child. He thought to cut the matter short by returning her instantly to the seminary; but soon learned from the conscientious lady at the head of the establishment that the young gentleman was persistent in his devotions, and Miss Barbara as persistent in breaking the rules of the inst.i.tution. Then he bethought him of a lady whose calm dignity and quiet self-possession had always somewhat oppressed him when he had occasionally met her in his wife's parlors, during that estimable woman's life time. And recollecting how his wife had honestly lamented that her daughter could not live under the influences of a cultivated mind, and the refined manners which she, herself, did not possess, he went boldly to Mrs. Wardor one day, and proposed that she should take charge of the self-willed girl, who insisted on being treated with the consideration due a young lady owning a declared, though forbidden lover. To Mrs. Wardor the proposition was acceptable; some years before, true to the "gambling instincts" of an old Californian, her husband had staked his all on some favorite mining stock, and, after losing, had taken his chances of striking something better in the next world, by blowing his brains out when he found himself "on bedrock" in this. Like a sensible woman, she had given up her elegant establishment without grieving very much, had secured a smaller house, and thought herself fortunate in finding a cla.s.s of boarders who shocked neither her sensitive nerves nor her fastidious taste.

Among the very limited number was a young girl who had left the Fatherland when quite young, and had been educated by an older brother, since dead. Her love and talent for music, together with what she called her Deutsche Geduld, had stood her in good stead, and Miss Ernst was now considered one of the best music teachers on the Coast.

When Barbara Farnsworth was placed in her charge, Mrs. Wardor felt justified in restricting the number of her boarders to two, outside of this young lady--so liberal were the terms Mr. Farnsworth urged upon her. The one other boarder besides Miss Ernst, was the fair lady with the golden curls, who had lost mother and husband within the year, but found an ample fortune at her disposal on the death of the latter. The mother had been Mrs. Wardor's most cherished friend, and the fittest place for Lady Clare, as Miss Barbara called her, seemed Mrs. Wardor's house. Here she had found already domiciled Miss Ernst, who, a few months later, to the astonishment of everybody, left her home and the city, in consequence of a quarrel with her betrothed, as he was supposed to be by people who knew other people's business better than their own. A close friendship had sprung up between the two young women, and Clara, it was surmised, was the only one who knew of Miss Ernst's reasons for the unlooked for departure, just as Miss Ernst was the only one who knew much, or anything, of Clara Hildreth's "heart-sorrows."

That she had had such sorrows, no one could doubt who looked into the large blue eyes, with their melancholy expression, or noticed the droop of the small, gracefully-poised head. It was not surprising that this tender, clinging creature should miss the prop and staff afforded by the resolute yet sympathetic nature of her friend; and when the letter came suggesting that Mrs. Wardor spend the summer in San Jose, where Christine could be one of her family again, the idea was seized upon with avidity by all, and in three days' time, Miss Barbara had convinced her father, Clara, and Mrs. Wardor, that the place Christine Ernst had described was just the place for them.

"Let's go at once," said Miss Barbara, late in the evening, with her usual precipitation; but Mrs. Wardor quieted her by enumerating the thousand and one things to be done before the removal could be effected--first and foremost among which was the task of securing the house before it could be moved into.

It was decided that Mrs. Wardor and Clara should go to San Jose on the next morning's train and return at night, leaving Miss Barbara to the care of her "Indian maid" and the servants in the house.

Arrived at the depot in San Jose, they found Christine, whose dark hair, olive skin, and Roman features utterly belied her purely German descent.

She embraced Clara with the protecting air of an older sister; and pressing Mrs. Wardor's hand, led them to the carriage awaiting them.

"You have worked too hard, I fear, Christine," said Mrs. Wardor. "You look tired and thin."

"Not tired," was the answer, "but I am among strangers, and have so missed my home. You know how we Germans cling to people we love."

"Yes?" Perhaps Mrs. Wardor was thinking of the lover, discarded, among strangers in a strange land. Clara held her friend's hand, and asked how far they would have to go--she felt that Christine was pained.

"Only a short way; but the owner of the place is a queer genius, a German, like myself, with whom no one can live in peace, they say. But I know we can, though he insists on occupying a little hut in one corner of the grounds. Fifty people have wanted the place, but he has never been in a humor to let it since the last occupant moved out. I mean to bring the charms of his mother-tongue to bear upon him, though I know it will make me hoa.r.s.e for a week, more especially as he is slightly deaf."

The carriage had stopped at the gate, and the three women made their way through a well-kept garden to a little shanty they espied at the farthest end of it. The dwelling-house itself consisted of a one-story _adobe_, to which had been added, much later, a frame building of two stories. The _adobe_ part of the building contained kitchen, breakfast and sitting-room, from which a low bay-window reached out into the garden, where flowers stole up almost to within the room, and the ivy, mingling with the bright green of the climbing rose, reached upward to soften the abrupt joining of the gray _adobe_ with the glaring white of the frame portion. This, though the more stately part of the building, had not the home-look of the _adobe_, around the flat roof of which ran a low railing, making a balcony of it for the service of the new wing.

"How happy we shall be here," exclaimed Clara, with genuine delight. At this moment a strange figure, clad in loose garments, and with flowing gray beard, deep-set eyes, and holding a long pipe in his mouth, came into sight. Depositing the pipe carefully behind a garden vase, the man advanced with dignified yet courteous bearing. He looked with the questioning scrutiny peculiar to people hard of hearing, from one to the other; but when Christine's words reached his dull ears at last, it was to fair-faced Clara he turned inquiringly.

"Wie sagten Sie, Fraulein? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

Christine repeated her question, and he turned slowly toward her. "I thought it was she who spoke the German," motioning toward Clara; "but I like your looks, too," he continued, taking Christine's hand into his with a sudden, fatherly impulse. "And you would come and live in my house, lady," he said, addressing Mrs. Wardor in his German-English.

"Take care--I say it to you--take care. It is a lonely place, and makes to be alone in the world every one who lives in it. See me, an old man, alone--alone. It is a bad spell on the place; it will make you alone, too."

The three women exchanged glances. Alone? Whom had they belonging to them? It was only their friendship for each other that made their "alone" different from that of the old man before them.

"And these flowers, so beautiful," he continued, "will you love them, too? I will nurse them for you; but don't be afraid--the old man will not be troublesome to you." He had misunderstood the movement among them; they were only congratulating each other on having accomplished so easily what Christine had been taught to look upon as a difficult task.

They hastened to a.s.sure him how glad they would always be to have him with them; and he looked wistfully at Clara again, muttering, "Ah, I thought she was the German."

"There it is again," said Christine, turning to her; "I never try for a beau but you coax him away from me with your blue eyes and yellow curls.

I shall act out my character of a dark Spanish beauty some day, and leave you with a jewel-hilted dagger in your heart for luring my own true love from his faith to me."

They followed their guide to the other side of the house, where, near his own cabin, arose a little knoll or mound, evidently artificial, though not smoothly finished. A spa.r.s.e growth of gra.s.s covered it, and on one side there was a ragged depression, as though a tree might have been torn from the soil at some past time. Just above this stood a linden tree, lonely enough. There were no other trees on this side of the house, though pepper, poplar, and cypress trees were distributed with a good deal of taste through the rest of the grounds.

"Lone linden," mused Clara; and though the words were spoken low, the old man seemed to have read it from her lips.

"The other people have called it so, and it seems right. The only one left," he said, softly pa.s.sing his hand over the bark of the tree. "You would not think how many they were at one time; but they are all dead and gone. My dear ones all lie buried here."

"Here?" echoed Clara, touching the mound.

"No, not the bodies, you know; es ist nur die Erinnerung," he turned to Christine. She bowed her head silently, and with the deep "verstandnissvolle" look of her honest eyes she had won the old man's confidence forever.

They turned back to the more cheerful part of the garden, trying to shake off the gloom the linden with its deep shadow had thrown on them, and Clara railed at her friend for looking solemn as an owl. "Not a line of poetry have you quoted to-day--not a note have you sung."

At the same time the old man was saying to Mrs. Wardor, "See, lady, all these lilies, white as snow. At home, in Germany, they were my mother's pet flowers, and I am keeping these to be planted on my grave." And Christine stooping to break three of them, chanted dolefully--