Shadows of Shasta Part 3

Carrie puts up her hand and backs away.

"Don't--don't--don't call me Carrie; call me Carats--Carats--Carats--like the others do!"

"Why, Carrie! What in the world is the matter with you?"

"If a body steals, Mr. John Logan--if a body steals--what had a body better do?"

"Why, the Preacher says a body should confess--confess it, feel sorry, and be forgiven."

"I can't--I can't confess, and I can't be forgiven!"

John Logan starts!

"You--you, Carrie; is it you? Then you have already confessed, and He will forgive you!"

"But such stealing as this n.o.body--nothing--can forgive," falling on her knees. "I--I made my little brother steal your peaches!"

"You!--you made him steal my two peaches that I wanted for my sick mother? You--_you_, Carrie?"

Stumps rushed forward.

"No--No! I done it myself! I done it all myself--I did, so help me!"

"But I made him do it!" cries Carrie. "I am the biggest, and I knew better--I knew better. But we couldn't eat 'em. Here they are--oh I am so glad we couldn't eat 'em!" And they fall on their knees at his feet together; four little hands reach out the peaches to him eagerly, earnestly, as if in prayer to Heaven.

The man takes their little hands, and, choking with tears, says, in a voice full of pathos and pity, and uncovering his head, with lifted face, as he remembers something of the story the good Priest so often read to his mother: "and there was more joy in Heaven over the one that was found, than over the ninety-and-nine that went not astray."

CHAPTER II.

TWENTY CARATS FINE.

_A land that man has newly trod, A land that only G.o.d has known, Through all the soundless cycles flown.

Yet perfect blossoms bless the sod, And perfect birds illume the trees, And perfect unheard harmonies Pour out eternally to G.o.d._

_A thousand miles of mighty wood Where thunder-storms stride fire-shod; A thousand flowers every rod, A stately tree on every rood; Ten thousand leaves on every tree, And each a miracle to me; And yet there be men who question G.o.d!_

At just what time these two waifs of the woods appeared in camp even Forty-nine could not tell. They were first seen with the Indian woman who went about among the miners, picking up bread and bits of coin by dancing, singing and telling fortunes. These two Indian women were great liars, and rogues altogether. I need not add that they were partly civilized.

The little girl had been taught to dance and sing, and was quite a source of revenue to the two Indian women, who had perhaps bought or stolen the children. As for the boy--poor stunted, starved little thing--he hung on to his sister's tattered dress all the time with his little red hand, wherever she went and whatever she did. He was her shadow; and he was at that time little more than a shadow in any way.

Sometimes men pitied the little girl, and gave very liberally. They tried to find out something about her past life; for although she was quite the color of the Indian, she had regular features, and at times her poor pinched face was positively beautiful. The two children looked as if they had been literally stunted in their growth from starvation and hardship.

Once a good-hearted old miner had bribed the squaws to let the children come to his cabin and get something to eat. They came, and while they were gorging themselves, the boy sitting close up to the girl all the time, and looking about and back over his shoulder and holding on to her dress, this man questioned her about her life and history. She did not like to talk; indeed, she talked with difficulty at first, and her few English words fell from her lips in broken bits and in strange confusion. But at length she began to speak more clearly as she proceeded with her story, and became excited in its narration. Then she would stop and seem to forget it all. Then she went on, as if she was telling a dream. Then there would be another long pause, and confusion, and she would stammer on in the most wild and incoherent fashion, till the old miner became quite impatient, and thought her as big an imposter as the Indian woman whom she called her mother. He finally gave them each a loaf of bread, and told them they could go back to their lodge.

This lodge consisted of a few poles set up in wigwam fashion, and covered with skins and old blankets and birch. A foul, ugly place it was, but in this wigwam lived two Indian women and these two children.

Men, or rather beasts--no, beasts are decent creatures; well then, monsters, full of bad rum, would prowl about this wretched lodge at night, and their howls, mixed with those of the savages, whom they had made also drunk, kept up a state of things frightful to think of in connection with these two sensitive, starving little waifs of the woods.

Who were they, and where did they come from? Sometimes these children would start up and fly from the lodge at night, and hide away in the brush like hunted things, and only steal back at morning when all was still. At such times the girl would wrap her little brother (if he was her brother) in her own scant rags, and hold him in her arms as he slept.

One night, while some strange Indians were lodging there, a still more terrible scene transpired in this dreadful little den than had yet been conceived. The two children fled as usual into the darkness, back into the deep woods. Shots were heard, and then a death-yell that echoed far up and down the canyon. Then there were cries, shrieks of women, as if they were being seized and borne away. Fainter and fainter grew their cries; further and further, down on the high ledge of the canyon in the darkness, into the deep wood, they seemed to be borne. And at last their cries died away altogether.

The next morning a dead Indian was found at the door of the empty lodge.

But the women and the children were nowhere to be seen. Some said the Indian Agent's men had come to take the Indians away, and that the man resisting had been shot, while the women and children were taken to the Reservation, where they belonged. But there was a darker story, and told under the breath, and not spoken loud. Let it be told under the breath, and briefly here, also. Some drunken wretches had shot the Indians, carried the women down to the dark woods above the deep swollen river, and then, after the most awful orgies ever chronicled, murdered them and sunk their bodies in the muddy river.

It was nearly a week after that the two children stole down from the wooded hill-side into the trail, where old Forty-nine found them on his return from work. They were so weak they could not speak or cry out for help. They could only reach their little hands and implore help, as, timid and frightened, they tottered towards this first human being they had dared to face for a whole week.

The strong man hesitated a moment; they looked so frightful he wanted to escape from their presence. But his grand, n.o.ble nature came to the surface in a second; and dropping his pick and pan in the trail, he caught up the two children, and in a moment more was, with one in each arm, rushing down the trail to his cabin. He met some men, and pa.s.sed others. They all looked at him with wonder. One even laughed at him.

And it is hard to comprehend this. There were good men--good in a measure; men who would have gallantly died to save a woman--men who were true men on points of honor; yet men who could not think of even being civil to an Indian, or any one with a bit of Indian blood in his veins.

Is our government responsible for this? I do not say so. I only know that it exists; a hatred, a prejudice, more deeply seated and unreasonable than ever was that of the old slave-dealer for the black man.

Forty-nine did not return to his tunnel the next day, nor yet the next.

This cabin, wretched as it became in after years when he had fallen into evil habits, had then plenty to eat, and there the starved little beings ate as they had never eaten before.

At first the little boy would steal and hide away bread while he ate at the table. The first night, after eating all he could, he slept with both his pockets full and a chunk up his sleeve besides.

This boy was never a favorite. He was so weak, so dependent on his sister. It seemed as if he had been at one time frightened almost to death, and had never quite gotten over it. And so Forty-nine took most kindly to the girl, and they were soon fast friends. Yet ever and always her shadow, the little boy, whom Forty-nine named Johnny, kept at her side--as I have said before; his little red hand reached out and clutching at her tattered dress.

After a few weeks the girl began to tell strange, wild stories to the old man. But observing that Forty-nine doubted these, as the other man had, she called them dreams, and so would tell him these wild and terrible dreams of the desert, of blood, of murder and ma.s.sacre, till the old man himself, as the girl shrank up to him in terror, became almost frightened. He did not like to hear these dreams, and she soon learned not to repeat them.

One evening a pa.s.sing miner stopped, placed a broad hand on either door-jamb, and putting his great head in at the open door, asked how the little "copper-colored pets" got on.

"Pard," answered Forty-nine, kindly, and with a nod of the head back toward the children playing in the corner, "they are not coppers; no, they are not. I tell you that girl is not copper, but gold. Yes she is, Pard; she is twenty carats."

"Twenty carats gold! Well, Twenty Carats, come here! Come here, Carats,"

called out the big head at the door.

The girl came forward, and a big hand fell down from the door-jamb on her bushy head of hair, and the man was pleased as he looked down into the uplifted face. And so he called her "Carats," and that became her name.

Other pa.s.sing miners stopped to look in at the open door where the big head had looked and talked to the timid girl, and misunderstanding the name, they called her Carrie; and Carrie she was called ever afterwards.

But the boy who had been so thin, soon grew so fat and chubby that some one named him "Stumps." There was no good trying to get rid of that name. He looked as though his name ought to be Stumps, and Stumps it was, in spite of the persistent efforts of old Forty-nine to keep the name in use which he had given him. And this was all that Forty-nine or any one could tell of these two children.

And now, how beautiful Carrie had grown by the time the leaves turned brown! Often Dosson saw her hovering about the cabin of old Forty-nine, flitting through the woods with her brother, or walking leisurely with Logan on the hill down the dim old Indian trail.

Mother Nature has her golden wedding once a year, and all the world is invited. She has many gala days, too, besides, and she celebrates them with songs and dances of delight. In the full bosomed, teeming, jocund Spring, I have seen the trees lean together and rustle their leaves in whisperings of love. I have seen them reach their long strong arms to each other, and intertwine them as if in fond affection, as the bland, warm winds, coming up from the South, blew over them and warmed their hearts of oak--old trees, too, gnarled and knotted--old fellows that had bobbed their heads together through many and many a Spring; that had leaned their lofty and storm-stained tops together through many and many a Winter; that had stood, like mighty soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, in friendships knit through many centuries. The birds sing and flutter, fly in and out of the dark deep canopies of green, build nests, and make love in myriads. How the squirrels run and chatter and frisk, and fly from branch to branch, with their bushy tails tossing in the warm wind!

Under foot, ten thousand tall strange flowers and weeds and long spindled gra.s.ses grow, and reach up and up, as if to try to touch the sunlight above the tops of the oak and ash and pine and fir and cedar and maple and cherry and sycamore and spruce and tamarack, and all these that grow in common confusion here and shut out the sun from the earth as perfectly as if all things dwelt forever in cloudland.

The cabin of old Forty-nine was very modest; it hid away in the canyon as if it did not wish to be seen at all. And it was right; for verily it was scarcely presentable. It was an old cabin, too, almost as old as little "Carats," if indeed any one could tell how old she was. But it, unlike herself, seemed to be growing tired and weary of the world. She had been growing up as it had been growing down. The moss was gathering all over the round, rough logs on the outside, and the weeds and wild vines each year grew still more ambitious to get quite to the top of the cabin, and peep down into the mysterious crater of a chimney that forever smoked in a mournful and monotonous sort of way, as if watchers were there--Vestal virgins, who dared not let their fires perish, on penalty of death.

"Drunken, wretched, cracked and crazy old Forty-nine," the camp said, "he can never build a new cabin, for he can't stay sober long enough to cut down a tree." And the camp told the ugly truth.

"Why don't Forty-nine build a new cabin?" asked Gar Dosson one day, as he pa.s.sed that way, with a string of fish in his hand and a c.o.o.n on his back.

"Poor dear Forty-nine's got the shakes so he can't get time. It takes him all the time to shake, and it takes all his money to buy his ager medicine. Poor dear old Forty-nine!" and the girl seemed to get a cinder or something in her eye.*****