Under the Redwoods Part 12

The junior partner's face reddened as he turned to his shelves ostensibly for consultation. Conscious of his inexperience, the homely praise of even this ignorant man was not ungrateful. He felt, too, that his treatment of the Frenchwoman, though successful, might not be considered remunerative from a business point of view by his partner. He accordingly acted upon the suggestion of the stranger and put up two or three specifics for dyspepsia. They were received with grateful alacrity and the casual display of considerable gold in the stranger's pocket in the process of payment. He was evidently a successful miner.

After bestowing the bottles carefully about his person, he again leaned confidentially towards Kane. "I reckon of course you know this high-toned lady, being in the way of seein' that kind o' folks. I suppose you won't mind telling me, ez a stranger. But" (he added hastily, with a deprecatory wave of his hand), "perhaps ye would."

Mr. Kane, in fact, had hesitated. He knew vaguely and by report that Madame le Blanc was the proprietress of a famous restaurant, over which she had rooms where private gambling was carried on to a great extent.

It was also alleged that she was protected by a famous gambler and a somewhat notorious bully. Mr. Kane's caution suggested that he had no right to expose the reputation of his chance customer. He was silent.

The stranger's face became intensely sympathetic and apologetic. "I see!--not another word, pard! It ain't the square thing to be givin'

her away, and I oughtn't to hev asked. Well--so long! I reckon I'll jest drift back to the hotel. I ain't been in San Francisker mor' 'n three hours, and I calkilate, pard, that I've jest seen about ez square a sample of high-toned life as fellers ez haz bin here a year. Well, hastermanyanner--ez the Greasers say. I'll be droppin' in to-morrow. My name's Reuben Allen o' Mariposa. I know yours; it's on the sign, and it ain't Sparlow."

He cast another lingering glance around the shop, as if loath to leave it, and then slowly sauntered out of the door, pausing in the street a moment, in the glare of the red light, before he faded into darkness.

Without knowing exactly why, Kane had an instinct that the stranger knew no one in San Francisco, and after leaving the shop was going into utter silence and obscurity.

A few moments later Dr. Sparlow returned to relieve his wearied partner.

A pushing, active man, he listened impatiently to Kane's account of his youthful practice with Madame le Blanc, without, however, dwelling much on his methods. "You ought to have charged her more," the elder said decisively. "She'd have paid it. She only came here because she was ashamed to go to a big shop in Montgomery Street--and she won't come again."

"But she wants you to see her to-morrow," urged Kane, "and I told her you would!"

"You say it was only a superficial cut?" queried the doctor, "and you closed it? Umph! what can she want to see ME for?" He paid more attention, however, to the case of the stranger, Allen. "When he comes here again, manage to let me see him." Mr. Kane promised, yet for some indefinable reason he went home that night not quite as well satisfied with himself.

He was much more concerned the next morning when, after relieving the doctor for his regular morning visits, he was startled an hour later by the abrupt return of that gentleman. His face was marked by some excitement and anxiety, which nevertheless struggled with that sense of the ludicrous which Californians in those days imported into most situations of perplexity or catastrophe. Putting his hands deeply into his trousers pockets, he confronted his youthful partner behind the counter.

"How much did you charge that French-woman?" he said gravely.

"Twenty-five cents," said Kane timidly.

"Well, I'd give it back and add two hundred and fifty dollars if she had never entered the shop."

"What's the matter?"

"Her head will be--and a ma.s.s of it, in a day, I reckon! Why, man, you put enough plaster on it to clothe and paper the dome of the Capitol!

You drew her scalp together so that she couldn't shut her eyes without climbing up the bed-post! You mowed her hair off so that she'll have to wear a wig for the next two years--and handed it to her in a beau-ti-ful sealed package! They talk of suing me and killing you out of hand."

"She was bleeding a great deal and looked faint," said the junior partner; "I thought I ought to stop that."

"And you did--by thunder! Though it might have been better business for the shop if I'd found her a crumbling ruin here, than lathed and plastered in this fashion, over there! However," he added, with a laugh, seeing an angry light in his junior partner's eye, "SHE don't seem to mind it--the cursing all comes from THEM. SHE rather likes your style and praises it--that's what gets me! Did you talk to her much," he added, looking critically at his partner.

"I only told her to sit still or she'd bleed to death," said Kane curtly.

"Humph!--she jabbered something about your being 'strong' and knowing just how to handle her. Well, it can't be helped now. I think I came in time for the worst of it and have drawn their fire. Don't do it again.

The next time a woman with a cut head and long hair tackles you, fill up her scalp with lint and tannin, and pack her off to some of the big shops and make THEM pick it out." And with a good-humored nod he started off to finish his interrupted visits.

With a vague sense of remorse, and yet a consciousness of some injustice done him, Mr. Kane resumed his occupation with filters and funnels, and mortars and triturations. He was so gloomily preoccupied that he did not, as usual, glance out of the window, or he would have observed the mining stranger of the previous night before it. It was not until the man's bowed shoulders blocked the light of the doorway that he looked up and recognized him. Kane was in no mood to welcome his appearance. His presence, too, actively recalled the last night's adventure of which he was a witness--albeit a sympathizing one. Kane shrank from the illusions which he felt he would be sure to make. And with his present ill luck, he was by no means sure that his ministrations even to HIM had been any more successful than they had been to the Frenchwoman. But a glance at his good-humored face and kindling eyes removed that suspicion.

Nevertheless, he felt somewhat embarra.s.sed and impatient, and perhaps could not entirely conceal it. He forgot that the rudest natures are sometimes the most delicately sensitive to slights, and the stranger had noticed his manner and began apologetically.

"I allowed I'd just drop in anyway to tell ye that these thar pills you giv' me did me a heap o' good so far--though mebbe it's only fair to give the others a show too, which I'm reckoning to do." He paused, and then in a submissive confidence went on: "But first I wanted to hev you excuse me for havin' asked all them questions about that high-toned lady last night, when it warn't none of my business. I am a darned fool."

Mr. Kane instantly saw that it was no use to keep up his att.i.tude of secrecy, or impose upon the ignorant, simple man, and said hurriedly: "Oh no. The lady is very well known. She is the proprietress of a restaurant down the street--a house open to everybody. Her name is Madame le Blanc; you may have heard of her before?"

To his surprise the man exhibited no diminution of interest nor change of sentiment at this intelligence. "Then," he said slowly, "I reckon I might get to see her again. Ye see, Mr. Kane, I rather took a fancy to her general style and gait--arter seein' her in that fix last night. It was rather like them play pictures on the stage. Ye don't think she'd make any fuss to seein' a rough old 'forty-niner' like me?"

"Hardly," said Kane, "but there might be some objection from her gentlemen friends," he added, with a smile,--"Jack Lane, a gambler, who keeps a faro bank in her rooms, and Jimmy O'Ryan, a prize-fighter, who is one of her 'chuckers out.'"

His further relation of Madame le Blanc's entourage apparently gave the miner no concern. He looked at Kane, nodded, and repeated slowly and appreciatively: "Yes, keeps a gamblin' and faro bank and a prize-fighter--I reckon that might be about her gait and style too. And you say she lives"--

He stopped, for at this moment a man entered the shop quickly, shut the door behind him, and turned the key in the lock. It was done so quickly that Kane instinctively felt that the man had been loitering in the vicinity and had approached from the side street. A single glance at the intruder's face and figure showed him that it was the bully of whom he had just spoken. He had seen that square, brutal face once before, confronting the police in a riot, and had not forgotten it. But today, with the flush of liquor on it, it had an impatient awkwardness and confused embarra.s.sment that he could not account for. He did not comprehend that the genuine bully is seldom deliberate of attack, and is obliged--in common with many of the combative lower animals--to lash himself into a previous fury of provocation. This probably saved him, as perhaps some instinctive feeling that he was in no immediate danger kept him cool. He remained standing quietly behind the counter. Allen glanced around carelessly, looking at the shelves.

The silence of the two men apparently increased the ruffian's rage and embarra.s.sment. Suddenly he leaped into the air with a whoop and clumsily executed a negro double shuffle on the floor, which jarred the gla.s.ses--yet was otherwise so singularly ineffective and void of purpose that he stopped in the midst of it and had to content himself with glaring at Kane.

"Well," said Kane quietly, "what does all this mean? What do you want here?"

"What does it mean?" repeated the bully, finding his voice in a high falsetto, designed to imitate Kane's. "It means I'm going to play merry h-ll with this shop! It means I'm goin' to clean it out and the blank hair-cuttin' blank that keeps it. What do I want here? Well--what I want I intend to help myself to, and all h-ll can't stop me! And" (working himself to the striking point) "who the blank are you to ask me?" He sprang towards the counter, but at the same moment Allen seemed to slip almost imperceptibly and noiselessly between them, and Kane found himself confronted only by the miner's broad back.

"Hol' yer hosses, stranger," said Allen slowly, as the ruffian suddenly collided with his impa.s.sive figure. "I'm a sick man comin' in yer for medicine. I've got somethin' wrong with my heart, and goin's on like this yer kinder sets it to thumpin'."

"Blank you and your blank heart!" screamed the bully, turning in a fury of amazement and contempt at this impotent interruption. "Who"--but his voice stopped. Allen's powerful right arm had pa.s.sed over his head and shoulders like a steel hoop, and pinioned his elbows against his sides.

Held rigidly upright, he attempted to kick, but Allen's right leg here advanced, and firmly held his lower limbs against the counter that shook to his struggles and blasphemous outcries. Allen turned quietly to Kane, and, with a gesture of his unemployed arm, said confidentially:

"Would ye mind pa.s.sing me down that ar Romantic Spirits of Ammonyer ye gave me last night?"

Kane caught the idea, and handed him the bottle.

"Thar," said Allen, taking out the stopper and holding the pungent spirit against the bully's dilated nostrils and vociferous mouth, "thar, smell that, and taste it, it will do ye good; it was powerful kammin' to ME last night."

The ruffian gasped, coughed, choked, but his blaspheming voice died away in a suffocating hiccough.

"Thar," continued Allen, as his now subdued captive relaxed his struggling, "ye 'r' better, and so am I. It's quieter here now, and ye ain't affectin' my heart so bad. A little fresh air will make us both all right." He turned again to Kane in his former subdued confidential manner.

"Would ye mind openin' that door?"

Kane flew to the door, unlocked it, and held it wide open. The bully again began to struggle, but a second inhalation of the hartshorn quelled him, and enabled his captor to drag him to the door. As they emerged upon the sidewalk, the bully, with a final desperate struggle, freed his arm and grasped his pistol at his hip-pocket, but at the same moment Allen deliberately caught his hand, and with a powerful side throw cast him on the pavement, retaining the weapon in his own hand.

"I've one of my own," he said to the prostrate man, "but I reckon I'll keep this yer too, until you're better."

The crowd that had collected quickly, recognizing the notorious and discomfited bully, were not of a cla.s.s to offer him any sympathy, and he slunk away followed by their jeers. Allen returned quietly to the shop. Kane was profuse in his thanks, and yet oppressed with his simple friend's fatuous admiration for a woman who could keep such ruffians in her employ. "You know who that man was, I suppose?" he said.

"I reckon it was that 'er prize-fighter belongin' to that high-toned lady," returned Allen simply. "But he don't know anything about RASTLIN', b'gosh; only that I was afraid o' bringin' on that heart trouble, I mout hev hurt him bad."

"They think"--hesitated Kane, "that--I--was rough in my treatment of that woman and maliciously cut off her hair. This attack was revenge--or"--he hesitated still more, as he remembered Dr. Sparlow's indication of the woman's feeling--"or that bully's idea of revenge."

"I see," nodded Allen, opening his small sympathetic eyes on Kane with an exasperating air of secrecy--"just jealousy."

Kane reddened in sheer hopelessness of explanation. "No; it was earning his wages, as he thought."

"Never ye mind, pard," said Allen confidentially. "I'll set 'em both right. Ye see, this sorter gives me a show to call at that thar restaurant and give HIM back his six-shooter, and set her on the right trail for you. Why, Lordy! I was here when you was fixin' her--I'm testimony o' the way you did it--and she'll remember me. I'll sorter waltz round thar this afternoon. But I reckon I won't be keepin' YOU from your work any longer. And look yar!--I say, pard!--this is seein'

life in 'Frisco--ain't it? Gosh! I've had more high times in this very shop in two days, than I've had in two years of St. Jo. So long, Mr.

Kane!" He waved his hand, lounged slowly out of the shop, gave a parting glance up the street, pa.s.sed the window, and was gone.

The next day being a half-holiday for Kane, he did not reach the shop until afternoon. "Your mining friend Allen has been here," said Doctor Sparlow. "I took the liberty of introducing myself, and induced him to let me carefully examine him. He was a little shy, and I am sorry for it, as I fear he has some serious organic trouble with his heart and ought to have a more thorough examination." Seeing Kane's unaffected concern, he added, "You might influence him to do so. He's a good fellow and ought to take some care of himself. By the way, he told me to tell you that he'd seen Madame le Blanc and made it all right about you. He seems to be quite infatuated with the woman."

"I'm sorry he ever saw her," said Kane bitterly.