Shadows of Shasta Part 13

And he takes from the little shelf the tattered book. The girl stands still as stone, with the engine of death in her hand. The officer bows, smiles, reaches the book with his left hand, lays his cap on the table, and lifts his right hand in the air. Her little fingers reach out firmly, fearlessly, and rest on the book. Her eyes are looking straight into his.

"It may be my duty, Miss, to search the house, after what that 'un has said, and, Miss, I expect it is my duty. But, Miss, I is not the man to expose you before a man as might like to see you exposed. And then that poor devil that come back here, Miss, on bleeding feet--crawling back here on his hands and knees, to die by his mother's grave."

The voice is tremulous; the hand that is raised in the air comes down.

Then lifting it again he says resolutely, "Swear, Miss!"

All are looking--leaning--with the profoundest interest. There is a dark strange face peering through a rift in the half-opened curtain. "G.o.d bless her! G.o.d bless her! She can, and she will!" mutters Forty-nine.

"She can't!" cries Dosson. "She believes the book and, by gol, she can't!" The man says this over his shoulder, and in a husky whisper as the girl seems to pause.

"Hold your hand on the book, and swear as I shall tell you," says the sheriff.

She only holds more firmly to the book; her eyes are fixed more steadily on his.

"Say it as I say it. I do solemnly swear--"

"I do solemnly swear--"

"That John Logan--"

"That John Logan--"

"Is not here."

"Is--"

"Is _here_!" The curtain is thrown back, and the fugitive dashes into their midst. The book falls from the sheriff's hand, and there is a murmur of amazement.

"G.o.d bless you, my girl!" And there is the stillness of a Sabbath morning over all. "G.o.d bless you; and G.o.d will reward you for this, for I cannot. You have made me another being, Carrie. I have lost my life, but you have saved my soul!" and turning cheerfully to the sheriff he reaches his hands. "Now, sir, I am ready."

CHAPTER VI.

THE ESCAPE.

_O tranquil moon! O pitying moon!

Put forth thy cool, protecting palms, And cool their eyes with cooling alms, Against the burning tears of noon._

_O saintly, noiseless-footed nun!

O sad-browed patient mother, keep Thy homeless children while they sleep, And kiss them, weeping, every one._

At first there was a loud demonstration against Logan by the mob, that always gathers about where a man is captured by his fellows--the wolves that come up when the wounded buffalo falls. There was talk of a vigilance committee and of lynching.

But when the stout, resolute sheriff led the man in chains down the trail through the deep snow, and turned him over to the officer in charge of a little squad of soldiers at the other side of the valley, no man interfered further. Indeed, Dosson and Emens were too anxious about the promised reward to make any demonstration against this man's life now. He was worth to them a thousand dollars.

A lawyer reading this, will smile here at the loose way in which the law was administered there in the outer edge of the world at that time. Here is a sheriff, with a warrant in his pocket, made returnable to a magistrate. The sheriff arrests the man on this warrant and takes him directly to the military authorities, which have been so long seeking him, utterly unconscious that he is doing aught but the proper thing.

And yet, after all, it was the shortest and best course to take.

I shall not forget the face of the prisoner as we stood beside the trail in the snow, while he was led past down the mouth of the canyon toward the other side of the valley. It was grand!

Some strangers, standing in the street, spoke of the majesty of the man's bearing. They openly dared to admire his lifted face, and to speak with derision of his captors as the party pa.s.sed on. This made the low element, out of which mobs are always created, a little bit timid.

Possibly it was this that saved the prisoner. But most likely it was the resolute face of the honest sheriff. For, say what you will, there is nothing so cowardly as a mob. Throw what romance you please over the actions of the Vigilantes of California, they were murderers--coa.r.s.e, cowardly and brutal; murderers, legally and morally, every one of them.

It is to be admitted that they did good work at first. But their example, followed even down to this day, has been fruitful of the darkest crimes.

When Forty-nine awoke next morning from his long drunken slumber, the children were not there. Dosson called, arrayed in his best; but Carrie was not to be seen. Forty-nine could give no account of her. This day of triumph for Dosson did not yield him so much as he had all the night before fancied. He was furious.

Forty-nine, as usual, after a spree, meekly took up his pick, after a breakfast on a piece of bread and the drawings of coffee grounds that had been thrice boiled over, and stumbled away towards his tunnel, and was soon lost in the deeps of the earth.

You may be certain that this desperate character, just taken after so much trouble and cost, was securely ironed at the little military camp across the valley. An old log cabin was made a temporary prison, and soldiers strode up and down on the four sides of it day and night.

And yet there was hardly need of such heavy irons. True, the soldiers outside, as they walked up and down at night and shifted their muskets from side to side, and slapped their shoulders with their arms and hands to keep from freezing, heard the chains grate and toss and rattle, often and often, as if some one was trying to tear and loosen them. But it was only the man tossing his arms in delirium as he lay on the fir boughs in the corner.

Dosson, after much inquiry, and many day's watching about Forty-nine's cabin, called and was admitted to see the prisoner, who by this time, though weak and worn to a skeleton, was convalescing. The coa.r.s.e and insolent intruder started back with dismay. There sat the girl he so hoped and longed to possess, talking to him tenderly, soothing him, giving her life for his.

Long and brutal would be the story of the agent's endeavors to tear this girl away from the bedside of the sufferer--if such a place could be called a bedside. The girl would not leave John Logan, and the timid boy who sat shivering back in the corner of the cabin, would not leave the girl. The three were bound together by a chain stronger than that which bound the wrists of the prisoner; aye, ten thousand times stronger, for man had fashioned the one--G.o.d the other.

Sudden and swift arrives summer in California. The trail was opened to the Reservation down the mountain, and the officer collected his few Indians together in a long, single line, all chained to a long heavy cable, and prepared to march. About the middle of the chain stood John Logan, now strong enough to walk. At the front were placed a few miserable, spiritless Indians, who had been found loafing about the miners's cabins--the drunkards, thieves, vagabonds of their tribe, such as all tribes have, such as we have, citizen-reader--while the rear was brought up by a boy and girl, Carrie and Johnny, a pitiful sight!

Do not be surprised. When you have learned to know the absolute, the utterly unlimited power and authority of an Indian Agent or sub-Agent, you have only to ask the capability for villainy he may possess in order to find the limit of his actions.

Could you have seen the lofty disdain of this girl for her suitor at that first and every subsequent meeting, as she kept at the bedside of John Logan, you could have guessed what might follow. The man's love was turned to rage. He resolved to send her back to the Reservation also. It is true, the soldiers had learned to respect and to pity her. It is true, the little Lieutenant said, with a soldierly oath, as she was being chained, that she was whiter than the man who was having it done.

Yet the soldiers, and their officer as well, had their orders; and a soldier's duties, as you know, are all bound up in one word.

As for the wretched boy, he might have escaped. He was a negative sort of a being at best; and no one, save Logan and the girl, either hated him or loved him greatly, tender and true as he was. They both implored him to slip between the fingers of the soldiers and not go to the Reservation. But he would not think of being separated from his sister.

Poor, stunted, starved little thing! There were wrinkles about his face; his hands were black, short, and hard, from digging roots from the frosty ground. It is not probable the lad had ever had enough to eat since he could remember. And so he was a dwarf, a dwarf in body and in soul; and instead of showing some spirit and standing up now and helping the girl, as he should, he leaned on her utterly, and left her to be the man of the two. The little spark of fire that had twice or thrice flashed up in the last few years, seemed now to die out entirely, and he stood there chained, looking back now and then over his shoulder at the soldiers, looking forward trying to catch a glance from his sister now and then, but never once making any murmur or complaint.

It was a hot, sultry day, such as suddenly enters and takes possession of canyons in the Sierras, when the little party of prisoners were marched through the little camp at the end of the canyon on their way to the Reservation.

And the camp all came out to see, but the camp was silent. It was not a pleasant sight. A soldier with a bayonet on his loaded musket walking by the side of a woman with her hands in chains, is not an inspiring spectacle. With all respect for your superior judgments, Mr. President, Commander-in-Chief, and Captains of the army, I say there is a n.o.bler use for the army than this.

Let us hasten on from this subject and this scene. But do not imagine that the miner, the settler, or even the most hardened about the camp, felt enn.o.bled at this sight. I tell you there was a murmur of indignation and disgust heard all up and down the canyon. The newer and better element of the camp was furious. One man even went so far as to write a letter to a country paper on the subject.

But when the editor responded in a heavy leader, and a.s.sured the camp of its deadly peril from these prowling savages, and proclaimed that the Indians were being taken where they would have good medicine, care, food and clothing, and be educated and taught the arts of agriculture, the case really did not look so bad; and in less than a week the whole affair had been forgotten by all the camp. Aye, all, save old Forty-nine.

By the express order of sub-Agent Dosson, the old man, who had been declared a dangerous character by him, was not permitted to see the girl from the first day he discovered that she still clung to Logan. But the old man had worked on and waited. He had kept constantly sober. He would see and would save this girl at all hazards.

And now, as the sorrowful remnant of a once great tribe was being taken, like Israel into captivity, he rushed forward to meet her, to hold her hands, to press her to his heart, and bid her be strong and hopeful.

The agent saw the old man and shouted to the officer; the officer called to the soldiers--the line moved forward, the bayonets crossed the old man's breast as the prisoners pa.s.sed on down the mountain, and he saw the sad, pitiful face no more.

Keep the picture before you: Chained together in long lines, marched always on foot in single file, under the stars and stripes, officers in uniforms, clanking swords--the uniform of the Union, riding bravely along the lines! The two men who had done so much to get this desperate Indian out of the way, remained behind to keep possession of his house and land. They had not even the decency to build a new cabin. They only broke down the door, put up a new one with stouter hinges and latch; and the long-coveted land was theirs.

As for old Forty-nine, all the light had left the mountain and the valley now. Carrie, whom he had cared for from the first almost, little Stumps, whom he had found with her, hardly big enough to toddle about--both were gone. All three gone. John Logan, whom he had taught to read and taught a thousand things at his own cabin-fire in the long snowy winters--all these gone together. It was as if the sun had gone down for Forty-nine forever. There was no sun or moon or stars, or any thing that shines in the mountains any more for him. His had been a desolate life all the long years he had delved away into the mountain at his tunnel. No man had taken his hand in friendship for many and many a year.

The man now nailed up his cabin door--an idle task, perhaps, for men instinctively avoided it, and the trail of late took a cut across the spur of the hill rather than pa.s.s by his door. But somehow the old man felt that he might not be back soon. And as men had kept away from that cabin while he was there, he did not feel that they should enter it in his absence.