The Twins of Table Mountain, and Other Stories Part 8

"Don't be a d----d fool," said the man quickly. "Thar's fifty agin' you down thar. But why in h-ll didn't you wipe out old Nixon when you had such a good chance?"

"Wipe out old Nixon?" repeated Ruth.

"Yes; just now, when you had him covered."

"What!"

The bar-keeper turned quickly upon Ruth, stared at him, and then suddenly burst into a fit of laughter. "Well, I've knowed you two were twins, but d.a.m.n me if I ever thought I'd be sold like this!" And he again burst into a roar of laughter.

"What do you mean?" demanded Ruth savagely.

"What do I mean?" returned the barkeeper. "Why, I mean this. I mean that your brother Rand, as you call him, he'z bin--for a young feller, and a pious feller--doin' about the tallest kind o' fightin' to-day that's been done at the Ferry. He laid out that ar Kanaka Joe and two of his chums. He was pitched into on your quarrel, and he took it up for you like a little man. I managed to drag him off, up yer in the hazel-bush for safety, and out you pops, and I thought you was him. He can't be far away. Halloo! There they're comin'; and thar's the doctor, trying to keep them back!"

A crowd of angry, excited faces, filled the road suddenly; but before them Dr. d.u.c.h.esne, mounted, and with a pistol in his hand, opposed their further progress.

"Back in the bush!" whispered the barkeeper. "Now's your time!"

But Ruth stirred not. "Go you back," he said in a low voice, "find Rand, and take him away. I will fill his place here." He drew his revolver, and stepped into the road.

A shout, a report, and the spatter of red dust from a bullet near his feet, told him he was recognized. He stirred not; but another shout, and a cry, "There they are--BOTH of 'em!" made him turn.

His brother Rand, with a smile on his lip and fire in his eye, stood by his side. Neither spoke. Then Rand, quietly, as of old, slipped his hand into his brother's strong palm. Two or three bullets sang by them; a splinter flew from the blacksmith's shed: but the brothers, hard gripping each other's hands, and looking into each other's faces with a quiet joy, stood there calm and imperturbable.

There was a momentary pause. The voice of Dr. d.u.c.h.esne rose above the crowd.

"Keep back, I say! keep back! Or hear me!--for five years I've worked among you, and mended and patched the holes you've drilled through each other's carca.s.ses--Keep back, I say!--or the next man that pulls trigger, or steps forward, will get a hole from me that no surgeon can stop. I'm sick of your bungling ball practice! Keep back!--or, by the living Jingo, I'll show you where a man's vitals are!"

There was a burst of laughter from the crowd, and for a moment the twins were forgotten in this audacious speech and coolly impertinent presence.

"That's right! Now let that infernal old hypocritical drunkard, Mat Nixon, step to the front."

The crowd parted right and left, and half pushed, half dragged Nixon before him.

"Gentlemen," said the doctor, "this is the man who has just shot at Rand Pinkney for hiding his daughter. Now, I tell you, gentlemen, and I tell him, that for the last week his daughter, Mornie Nixon, has been under my care as a patient, and my protection as a friend. If there's anybody to be shot, the job must begin with me!"

There was another laugh, and a cry of "Bully for old Sawbones!" Ruth started convulsively, and Rand answered his look with a confirming pressure of his hand.

"That isn't all, gentlemen: this drunken brute has just shot at a gentleman whose only offence, to my knowledge, is, that he has, for the last week, treated her with a brother's kindness, has taken her into his own home, and cared for her wants as if she were his own sister."

Ruth's hand again grasped his brother's. Rand colored and hung his head.

"There's more yet, gentlemen. I tell you that that girl, Mornie Nixon, has, to my knowledge, been treated like a lady, has been cared for as she never was cared for in her father's house, and, while that father has been proclaiming her shame in every bar-room at the Ferry, has had the sympathy and care, night and day, of two of the most accomplished ladies of the Ferry,--Mrs. Sol Saunders, gentlemen, and Miss Euphemia."

There was a shout of approbation from the crowd. Nixon would have slipped away, but the doctor stopped him.

"Not yet! I've one thing more to say. I've to tell you, gentlemen, on my professional word of honor, that, besides being an old hypocrite, this same old Mat Nixon is the ungrateful, unnatural GRANDFATHER of the first boy born in the district."

A wild huzza greeted the doctor's climax. By a common consent the crowd turned toward the Twins, who, grasping each other's hands, stood apart.

The doctor nodded his head. The next moment the Twins were surrounded, and lifted in the arms of the laughing throng, and borne in triumph to the bar-room of the Mansion House.

"Gentlemen," said the bar-keeper, "call for what you like: the Mansion House treats to-day in honor of its being the first time that Rand Pinkney has been admitted to the bar."

It was agreed, that, as her condition was still precarious, the news should be broken to her gradually and indirectly. The indefatigable Sol had a professional idea, which was not displeasing to the Twins. It being a lovely summer afternoon, the couch of Mornie was lifted out on the ledge, and she lay there basking in the sunlight, drinking in the pure air, and looking bravely ahead in the daylight as she had in the darkness, for her couch commanded a view of the mountain flank. And, lying there, she dreamed a pleasant dream, and in her dream saw Rand returning up the mountain-trail. She was half conscious that he had good news for her; and, when he at last reached her bedside, he began gently and kindly to tell his news. But she heard him not, or rather in her dream was most occupied with his ways and manners, which seemed unlike him, yet inexpressibly sweet and tender. The tears were fast coming in her eyes, when he suddenly dropped on his knees beside her, threw away Rand's disguising hat and coat, and clasped her in his arms. And by that she KNEW it was Ruth.

But what they said; what hurried words of mutual explanation and forgiveness pa.s.sed between them; what bitter yet tender recollections of hidden fears and doubts, now forever chased away in the rain of tears and joyous sunshine of that mountain-top, were then whispered; whatever of this little chronicle that to the reader seems strange and inconsistent (as all human record must ever be strange and imperfect, except to the actors) was then made clear,--was never divulged by them, and must remain with them forever. The rest of the party had withdrawn, and they were alone. But when Mornie turned, and placed the baby in its father's arms, they were so isolated in their happiness, that the lower world beneath them might have swung and drifted away, and left that mountain-top the beginning and creation of a better planet.

"You know all about it now," said Sol the next day, explaining the previous episodes of this history to Ruth: "you've got the whole plot before you. It dragged a little in the second act, for the actors weren't up in their parts. But for an amateur performance, on the whole, it wasn't bad."

"I don't know, I'm sure," said Rand impulsively, "how we'd have got on without Euphemia. It's too bad she couldn't be here to-day."

"She wanted to come," said Sol; "but the gentleman she's engaged to came up from Marysville last night."

"Gentleman--engaged!" repeated Rand, white and red by turns.

"Well, yes. I say, 'gentleman,' although he's in the variety profession.

She always said," said Sol, quietly looking at Rand, "that she'd never marry OUT of it."

AN HEIRESS OF RED DOG.

The first intimation given of the eccentricity of the testator was, I think, in the spring of 1854. He was at that time in possession of a considerable property, heavily mortgaged to one friend, and a wife of some attraction, on whose affections another friend held an enc.u.mbering lien. One day it was found that he had secretly dug, or caused to be dug, a deep trap before the front-door of his dwelling, into which a few friends, in the course of the evening, casually and familiarly dropped.

This circ.u.mstance, slight in itself, seemed to point to the existence of a certain humor in the man, which might eventually get into literature, although his wife's lover--a man of quick discernment, whose leg was broken by the fall--took other views. It was some weeks later, that, while dining with certain other friends of his wife, he excused himself from the table to quietly re-appear at the front-window with a three-quarter inch hydraulic pipe, and a stream of water projected at the a.s.sembled company. An attempt was made to take public cognizance of this; but a majority of the citizens of Red Dog, who were not at dinner, decided that a man had a right to choose his own methods of diverting his company. Nevertheless, there were some hints of his insanity; his wife recalled other acts clearly attributable to dementia; the crippled lover argued from his own experience that the integrity of her limbs could only be secured by leaving her husband's house; and the mortgagee, fearing a further damage to his property, foreclosed. But here the cause of all this anxiety took matters into his own hands, and disappeared.

When we next heard from him, he had, in some mysterious way, been relieved alike of his wife and property, and was living alone at Rockville fifty miles away, and editing a newspaper. But that originality he had displayed when dealing with the problems of his own private life, when applied to politics in the columns of "The Rockville Vanguard" was singularly unsuccessful. An amusing exaggeration, purporting to be an exact account of the manner in which the opposing candidate had murdered his Chinese laundryman, was, I regret to say, answered only by a.s.sault and battery. A gratuitous and purely imaginative description of a great religious revival in Calaveras, in which the sheriff of the county--a notoriously profane sceptic--was alleged to have been the chief exhorter, resulted only in the withdrawal of the county advertising from the paper. In the midst of this practical confusion he suddenly died. It was then discovered, as a crowning proof of his absurdity, that he had left a will, bequeathing his entire effects to a freckle-faced maid-servant at the Rockville Hotel. But that absurdity became serious when it was also discovered that among these effects were a thousand shares in the Rising Sun Mining Company, which a day or two after his demise, and while people were still laughing at his grotesque benefaction, suddenly sprang into opulence and celebrity.

Three millions of dollars was roughly estimated as the value of the estate thus wantonly sacrificed. For it is only fair to state, as a just tribute to the enterprise and energy of that young and thriving settlement, that there was not probably a single citizen who did not feel himself better able to control the deceased humorist's property.

Some had expressed a doubt of their ability to support a family; others had felt perhaps too keenly the deep responsibility resting upon them when chosen from the panel as jurors, and had evaded their public duties; a few had declined office and a low salary: but no one shrank from the possibility of having been called upon to a.s.sume the functions of Peggy Moffat, the heiress.

The will was contested,--first by the widow, who it now appeared had never been legally divorced from the deceased; next by four of his cousins, who awoke, only too late, to a consciousness of his moral and pecuniary worth. But the humble legatee--a singularly plain, unpretending, uneducated Western girl--exhibited a dogged pertinacity in claiming her rights. She rejected all compromises. A rough sense of justice in the community, while doubting her ability to take care of the whole fortune, suggested that she ought to be content with three hundred thousand dollars. "She's bound to throw even THAT away on some derned skunk of a man, natoorally; but three millions is too much to give a chap for makin' her onhappy. It's offerin' a temptation to cussedness."

The only opposing voice to this counsel came from the sardonic lips of Mr. Jack Hamlin. "Suppose," suggested that gentleman, turning abruptly on the speaker,--"suppose, when you won twenty thousand dollars of me last Friday night--suppose that, instead of handing you over the money as I did--suppose I'd got up on my hind-legs, and said, 'Look yer, Bill Wethersbee, you're a d----d fool. If I give ye that twenty thousand, you'll throw it away in the first skin-game in 'Frisco, and hand it over to the first short-card sharp you'll meet. There's a thousand,--enough for you to fling away,--take it and get!' Suppose what I'd said to you was the frozen truth, and you know'd it, would that have been the square thing to play on you?" But here Wethersbee quickly pointed out the inefficiency of the comparison by stating that HE had won the money fairly with a STAKE. "And how do you know," demanded Hamlin savagely, bending his black eyes on the astounded casuist,--"how do you know that the gal hezn't put down a stake?" The man stammered an unintelligible reply. The gambler laid his white hand on Wethersbee's shoulder. "Look yer, old man," he said, "every gal stakes her WHOLE pile,--you can bet your life on that,--whatever's her little game. If she took to keerds instead of her feelings, if she'd put up 'chips' instead o' body and soul, she'd bust every bank 'twixt this and 'Frisco! You hear me?"

Somewhat of this idea was conveyed, I fear not quite as sentimentally, to Peggy Moffat herself. The best legal wisdom of San Francisco, retained by the widow and relatives, took occasion, in a private interview with Peggy, to point out that she stood in the quasi-criminal att.i.tude of having unlawfully practised upon the affections of an insane elderly gentleman, with a view of getting possession of his property, and suggested to her that no vestige of her moral character would remain after the trial, if she persisted in forcing her claims to that issue.

It is said that Peggy, on hearing this, stopped washing the plate she had in her hands, and, twisting the towel around her fingers, fixed her small pale blue eyes at the lawyer.

"And ez that the kind o' chirpin these critters keep up?"

"I regret to say, my dear young lady," responded the lawyer, "that the world is censorious. I must add," he continued, with engaging frankness, "that we professional lawyers are apt to study the opinion of the world, and that such will be the theory of--our side."

"Then," said Peggy stoutly, "ez I allow I've got to go into court to defend my character, I might as well pack in them three millions too."

There is hearsay evidence that Peg added to this speech a wish and desire to "bust the crust" of her traducers, and, remarking that "that was the kind of hairpin" she was, closed the conversation with an unfortunate accident to the plate, that left a severe contusion on the legal brow of her companion. But this story, popular in the bar-rooms and gulches, lacked confirmation in higher circles. Better authenticated was the legend related of an interview with her own lawyer. That gentleman had pointed out to her the advantage of being able to show some reasonable cause for the singular generosity of the testator.