The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories Part 2

"I hate the word!" retorted the petted cripple. "When I'm a man I'll be my own master, and switch Duty off the track."

The obnoxious word came up again in the course of the evening. In reading aloud to his teacher they happened upon this definition of "a hero," given by one of the characters in the story under his eyes: "One who, in a n.o.ble work or enterprise, does more than his duty."

Junior looked up disappointed. "Is _that_ the meaning of hero?" he said, intensely chagrined.

"That is one way of stating it. I doubt, myself, if we can do more than our duty. What do you think, Mrs. Briggs?" asked the young woman. She esteemed the honest couple for their sterling worth and sense, and liked to draw them out.

"A person ken ondertake more, I 'spose. Ef they don't carry it through, it's a sign 'twas meant fur them to go jest that fur, an' no further.

'Twon't do fur us to be skeery 'bout layin' holt of the handle the Good Lord puts nighest to us, fur fear it's too big a thing fur us to manage.

That's what my husband says. An' if ever a man lived up to it, he does."

Top, Junior, looked sober and mortified. The heroism of common life does not commend itself to the youthful imagination. When his lesson was finished it was time for him to go to bed. "Wake me when father comes in!" was the formula without which he never closed his eyes.

His mother never failed to do it, but he wanted to make sure of it. She put on a lump of coal, just enough to keep the fire "in," and sat down to the weekly mending. At eleven-forty, she would open the draughts and cook the sausages ready-laid in the pan on the table. Top, Senior, liked "something hot and hearty," after his midnight run, and this dispatched, smoked the nightcap pipe of peace, Junior, rolled in a shawl, on his knee. The wife's face and heart were calm with thankful content as the hours moved on. She was rosy and plump, with pleasant blue eyes and brown hair, a wholesome presence at the hearthstone, in her gown of clean chocolate calico with her linen collar and scarlet cravat. Top, Senior, had noticed and praised the new red ribbon. He comprehended that it was put on to please him and Junior, both of whom liked to see "Mother fixed up." In this life, they were her all, and she accounted that life full and rich.

As she served, she heard the slow patter of February rain on the shelf outside of the window, where her flowers stood in summer. The great city was sinking into such half-sleep as it took between midnight and dawn; the shriek and rush of incoming and outgoing trains grew less frequent.

She did not fret over the disagreeable weather. Top, Senior, had often said that such made home and fire and supper more welcome.

At Junior's bed-time, he was eighty miles away, walking up and down the muddy platform of the princ.i.p.al station of Agapolis, stamping his feet at each turn in his promenade to restore the circulation. His was a fast Express train, and he stood during most of the run, on the alert to guard against accident. There was no more careful engineer on the road.

Fireman and brakeman were off for supper in or near the station. He slouched as he walked, his hands thrust deep into his pockets; his overcoat was heavy and too loose even for his bulky figure. He had "taken it off the hands" of an engineer's widow whose husband was dragged from under a wrecked train one night last summer. "Mother" used to look grave when Top, Senior, began to wear it, but she was not a mite notional--Mother wasn't, and she was glad now that poor Mrs. Wilson had the money and he had the beaver-cloth coat. His face was begrimed with smoke, his beard clogged with cinders and vapor. A lady, travelling alone, hesitated visibly before she asked a question, looked surprised when he touched his hat and turned to go half the length of the platform that he might point out the parlor-car. He observed and interpreted hesitation and surprise, and was good-humoredly amused.

"I s'pose I don't look much like what Junior calls 'a hero,'" he meditated with a broader gleam. "What a cute young one he is! Please G.o.d! he'll make a better figure in the world 'n his father hes done. I hope that lily-flower o' hisn will be open in the mornin'.

'Seems if I got softer-hearted 'bout hevin thet boy disapp'inted every day I live. Come summer, he sh.e.l.l hev a run or two on Her every week.

Mother 'n me hes got to make up to him for what he loses in not bein'

strong an' like other chillren. Mother--she's disposed to spile him jest a leetle. But dear me! what a fustrate fault that is in a woman! She did look good in that ere red neck-tie, to-night, an' she was always pretty."

The rain was fine and close, like a slanting mist that pierced the pores, when the Express drew out of the station, and as it fell, it froze. Stokes growled that "the track would be one glare of ice before they got Her in." He was inclined to be surly to-night, an uncommon circ.u.mstance with the young fellow, and after several attempts to enliven him, Top, Senior, let him alone. He was not in a talkative mood himself. The tea-table chat ran in his head and set him to dreaming and calculating. In five years Junior would be seventeen--old enough, even for a lad who was "not strong," to earn his living. If all went well, there ought to be a hundred and fifty dollars in the bank by then. There might be something in Mother's idea of setting him up as a florist. And Mother could help with the flowers.

"h.e.l.lo! ole feller! look out!"

Stokes had stumbled over the fuel in the tender, in replenishing the boiler-fires. He recovered himself with an oath at the "slippery rubbish." Something had upset his temper, but he neither spoke nor looked like a man who had been drinking. The teazing, chilling drizzle continued. The headlight of the locomotive glanced sharply from glazed rails and embankments; the long barrel-back of the engine shone as with fresh varnish.

"D'ye know that on a night like this She beats out the tune o' _Home, Sweet Home_, 's plain as ever you heerd a band play it?" said Top, Senior, cheerily out of the thickening damps. "It makes me see Mother 'n the boy clear 's ken be. It's a great thing fur a man to hev a comfortable home, 'n a good woman in it!"

Stokes burst out vehemently at that: "This is worse than a dog's life!

We--you 'n me--are no more to them selfish creturs in there"--nodding backwards at the pa.s.senger cars--"then the ingine that draws 'em. I'm sick o' freezin' an' slavin' an' bein' despised by men no better 'n I be! How a man of any sperrit 'n' ambition ken stan' it fur twenty years as you hev, beats my onderstandin'."

He will always remember the pause that prefaced the reply, and how Top, Senior, patted the polished lever under his hand as he spoke: "She's a pretty respectable cretur, take Her all in all. When you 'n I run into the las' dark deepo that's waitin' fur us at the end, I hope we'll be able to show's good stiffikits as hern. Here's the bridge! Will be soon home, now."

It was a long bridge, built far out to be above high tides. As they touched it the furnace-door flew open. Some said, afterwards, that the door was not properly secured, others spoke of a "back-draught," others suspected that the fire was over-fed. The volume of flame that leaped out licked the very faces of the two men. They recoiled with a bound and made a simultaneous rush for the air-brake in the forward pa.s.senger-car to stop the train and check the backward sweep of the blaze. The pa.s.sengers, seeing the flash and hearing the whistle and shouts of "Down brakes!" pressed against the front windows and a dense living ma.s.s blocked the door against which Topliffe Briggs flung all his weight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE HELD FAST!]

"Git in ef you ken," he said to the fireman. "I'll try Her!" He fastened the s.h.a.ggy great-coat up to his chin as he faced the pursuing fires, walked forward to the stand where lapped and curled the fiercest flames, laid hold of steam-brake and the lever by which he "drove" the engine.

His fur-lined gauntlets scorched and shrivelled as he grasped the bar; the fire seized upon his hair and garments with an exultant roar. He held fast. He must get the pa.s.sengers off the floorless bridge that might ignite at any moment. He must check the engine as soon as he cleared the last pier, or the cars would take fire before they could be uncoupled. He shut his eyes from the maddening heat and glare, and drove straight on. Not so fast as to hurry the greedy flames that were doing their worst upon him, but at a rate that ran them over the river and upon solid earth as the fuel in the tender burst into a blaze and the forward car began to crackle and smoke in the hot draught. At that point steam and air-brakes did their work in effecting a safe halt.

"The fireman was badly scorched," reported the press next day, "but train and pa.s.sengers were saved by the heroism of the engineer."

The words flashed along the wires over land and ocean; were set up in startling type in hundreds of newspaper offices while he who did not know heroism by name was breathing his last on a mattress laid on the yellow-painted floor of the room he had seen so "clear" when the engine-throb and piston-beat played _Home, Sweet Home_. The sunshine that had followed the rain touched the white cheek of the opened lily before falling on his sightless eyes and charred right hand.

When they brought him in he knew whose silent tears dropped so fast upon his face, and the poor burned lips moved in a husky whisper. The wife put her ear close to his mouth not to lose his dying words:

"_I was afraid you'd see that we was a-fire. From the winder. I hope you--didn't--wake Junior!_" The boy who had begged his father to be a hero!

BENNY'S WIGWAM.

"Now, Pettikins," said Benny Briggs, on the first day of vacation, "come along if you want to see the old Witch."

Pettikins got her little straw hat, and holding Benny's hand with a desperate clutch, trotted along beside him, giving frequent glances at his heroic face to keep up her courage. Her heart beat hard as they took their way across to the island. The island is really no island at all, but a lonely, lovely portion of Still Harbor, between Benny's home and Grandma Potter's, which by means of a small inlet and a little creek, and one watery thing and another, is so nearly surrounded by water as to feel justified in calling itself an island. They crossed over the little bridge that took them to this would-be island, and following an almost imperceptible wood path, came within sight of the Witch's hut. It was a deserted, useless, wood-chopper's hut, which the mysterious creature whom the children called a witch had taken possession of not long before. Here f.a.n.n.y drew back. "O Benny, I _am_ afraid," said she.

"Humph! she can't hurt you in the _daytime_," said Benny. "She ain't no different in the daytime from any other old woman. It's only nights she is a witch."

f.a.n.n.y allowed herself to be led a few steps further, and then drew back again. "O Benny," said she, "there's her broomstick! there it is, right outside o' the door--and O Benny, Benny, there's her old black cat!"

"Wal, what on it, hey? What on it?" creaked a dreadful voice close behind them. Then, indeed, f.a.n.n.y shrieked and tried to run, but Benny's hand held her fast. She hid her face against Benny's arm and sobbed.

It was the old Witch her very self. She looked at them out of her glittering eyes--O how she did look at them!--with her head drooped until her chin rested on her chest. This seemed to bring the arrows of her eyes to bear upon the enemy with greater force and precision.

"There ain't any law ag'in my having a _cat_ and a _broomstick_, is there?" she asked in a voice like the cawing of a crow, bringing her staff down with a thump at the words "cat" and "broomstick." "What are you skeered of?"

"Why, you're queer, you know," said Benny desperately.

"Queer, _queer_?" piped the Witch; and then she laughed, or had a dreadful convulsion, Benny couldn't tell which, ending in a long, gurgling "Hoo-oo-oo!" on a very high key. "Now, s'pose you tell me what is 't makes me queer," said she, sitting down on a log and extracting from the rags on her bosom a pipe, which she prepared to smoke.

"Whew!" whistled Benny, "'twould take me from now till Christmas; I'd rather you'd tell me."

The crone lighted her pipe. The match flaring upon her wrinkled, copper-colored face and its gaunt features made her hideous. Poor little f.a.n.n.y, who ventured to peep out at this moment, sobbed louder, and begged to go to her mother. The old woman puffed away at her pipe, fixing her gaze upon the children.

"Got a mother, hey?" said she.

"Yes."

"And a father?"

"Yes."

"Um-m-m."

She puffed and gazed.

"You wouldn't like to see 'em shot?"

At this Benny stood speechless, and f.a.n.n.y set up such a cry to go home that Benny was afraid he should have to take her away--that is, if the Witch would let him. He began to consider his chances. Still the more terrible the old Witch seemed, the more Benny wanted to see and hear her. He whispered to f.a.n.n.y:

"_She_ won't hurt you, Pettikins--she _can't_; I won't let her. Hush a minute, and see what I'm going to say to her!"