TWO WYOMING GIRLS

And Their Homestead Claim

A Story for Girls

BY

MRS. CARRIE L. MARSHALL

Author of “The Girl Ranchers,” Etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY IDA WAUGH

THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA MDCCCXCIX

Copyright 1899 by The Penn Publishing Company

THE FLAMES REACHED TOWARD ME GREEDILY
(Page [63])

CONTENTS

TWO WYOMING GIRLS

CHAPTER I

I GO ON AN ERRAND

A fierce gust of wind and rain struck the windows, and Jessie, on her way to the breakfast table, dish in hand, paused to listen.

“Raining again!” she exclaimed, setting the dish down emphatically. “It seems to me that it has rained every day this spring. When it hasn’t poured here in the valley, it has more than made up for it in the mountains.”

“You are more than half right,” father said, drawing his chair up to the table. “Is breakfast ready, dear? I am going to work in the mines to-day, and I’m in something of a hurry.”

“Going to work in the mines!” Jessie echoed the words, as, I am sure, I did also. I was sitting in the corner dressing little Ralph, or, to be strictly accurate, trying to dress him. No three year-old that ever lived could be more exasperating than he sometimes was during that ordeal or could show a more pronounced distaste for the bondage of civilized garments.

Jessie made haste to dish up the breakfast, but she inquired: “Do you remember, papa, what that old miner who was here the other day told us about mines in the wet season? About what was liable to happen sometimes, and did happen here once, a good many years ago?”

“I don’t know that I do,” father answered, glancing toward Ralph and me, to see if we were ready. As we were anything but that, he continued; “I guess I won’t wait for you children.”

“Don’t, please!” I exclaimed, “Ralph is a perfect little buzz-saw this morning. Keep still, Ralph!”

“Me want to do barefoot! Me want to wade in ’e puddle!” cried the child, pulling one soft little foot out of the stocking that I had just succeeded in getting upon it.

“Ralph!” I cried, angrily: “I’ve a good notion to spank you!”

“Don’t, Leslie!” father interposed, mildly; “I remember so well how I liked to wade in the mud-puddles when I was a little shaver; but it’s too early in the season, and too cold for that sort of sport now. So, Ralph, my boy, let sister dress you, and don’t hinder.”

Ralph always obeyed father’s slightest word, no matter how gently the word was spoken; so now he sat demurely silent while I completed his toilet.

“What was it that your friend, the miner, said, Jessie?” father asked, as Jessie took her seat and poured out his coffee.

“He said that there had been so much rain on the mountains, and that the Crusoe mines were on such a low level that there was some danger of an inrush of water, like that which ruined the Lost Chance, before we came here.”

“I recollect hearing something about the Lost Chance,” father said, going on with his breakfast indifferently. “There may have been water crevices in it. The accident was probably caused by them—and neglect.”

“I don’t see how it could be all due to neglect,” Jessie persisted. “The miner said that the springs and rivers were all booming full, just as they are now. People never thought of danger from the water, because it was so often warm and dry in the valley—as it is, you know, often, even when it is raining hard on the mountains. The miner said that the men went on with their work in the mine, as usual, until, one afternoon, the timbered walls of the tunnels slumped in like so much wet sand. What had been underground passages became, in a moment, underground rivers, for the water that had been held back and dammed up so long just poured in in a drowning flood. He said that the rainfall seeped through the bogs up on the mountains, and fed underground reservoirs that held the water safely until they were overtaxed. When that happened the water would burst out, finding an outlet for itself in some new place. The only reason that any one of the force of thirty men usually employed in the mine escaped was that the accident occurred just as they were putting on a new shift. I remember very well what he told us.”

“I see that you do,” father responded, with a thoughtful glance at her earnest face, “but I reckon he rather overdid the business. These old miners are always full of whims and forecasts; they are as superstitious as sailors.”

“What he told was not superstition; it was a fact,” replied Jessie, with unexpected logic.

Father smiled. “Well, anyway, don’t you get to worrying about the Gray Eagle, daughter. It’s rather damp these days, I admit, but as safe as this kitchen.”

“Do you really think so, papa?” Jessie asked, evidently reassured.

“Well, perhaps not quite as safe,” father answered, with half a smile. “It’s a good deal darker for one thing, you know, and there are noises—”

He lapsed into that kind of listening silence that comes to one who is striving to recall something that has been heard, not seen, or felt, and I was about to insist upon a further elucidation of those subterranean sounds when the door opened and a man, whom father had hired for the day, put in his head:

“Say, Mr. Gordon, I can’t find a spade anywhere,” he announced.

“Well, there!” father exclaimed, with a disturbed look, “our spade was left at the mine the last day that we worked there.”

“That’s too bad!” the man, who was a neighbor, as neighbors go on the frontier, said regretfully. “I can go back home and get mine, but the team’s hitched up; it’s stopped raining, an’ there’s a load of posts on the wagon. Seems ’most a pity for me to take time to go an’ hunt up a spade, but I reckon I’ll have to do it. I never saw the man yet that could dig post holes without one.”

“Oh, no, Reynolds, don’t stop your work for that; I’ll have to bring mine down; it’s about as near to get it from the Gray Eagle as to go to one of the neighbors; you just go on with your work.”

Reynolds withdrew accordingly, and, as the door closed upon him, father said:

“I’m anxious to earn every dollar I can to help fence that wheat field, before Horton’s cattle ‘accidentally’ stray into it. I was out to look at it this morning. The field looks as if covered with a green carpet, it’s coming up so thick. I count it good luck to be able to get Reynolds to go on with the fence-building while I work in the mine, for I can exchange work to pay him, while the pay that comes from the mine is so much cash.”

“And when we get our title clear, won’t I shoo Mr. Horton’s cattle to the ends of the earth!” I said, resentfully, for we all understood well enough that the reason that father was so anxious to earn money was to pay for the final “proving up” on his homestead claim, as well as to build fences. “I’m teaching Guard to ‘heel’ on purpose to keep track of those cattle,” I concluded, audaciously, for father didn’t approve of a policy of retaliation.

“Horton’s cattle are not to blame,” he said now, but the shadow that always came over his patient face at the mention of our intractable neighbor settled heavily upon it as he spoke.

“I know the cattle are not to blame,” I retorted, with a good deal of temper. “I just wish that their master himself would come out and trample on our corn and wallow in our wheat field, instead of driving his cattle up so that they may do it; I’d set Guard on him with the greatest pleasure.”

“Now, now, Leslie, you shouldn’t talk so!” father remonstrated gently.

But here Jessie, whose disposition is much more placid than mine, broke in, abruptly:

“I don’t blame Leslie for feeling so, father. Only think, we’ve been on this place nearly five years, and we’ve never yet raised a crop, because Mr. Horton’s cattle, no matter where they may be ranging, always get up here just in time—the right time—to do the most damage. The other neighbors’ cattle hardly ever stray into our fields, and when they do the neighbors are good about it. Think of the time when Mr. Rollins’s herd got into the corn field and ate the corn rows down, one after another. Mr. Rollins came after them himself, and paid the damage, without a word of complaint. Besides, he said that it shouldn’t happen again; and it didn’t. When has Mr. Horton ever done a thing like that?”

“He’s been kept busy other ways,” father said, and his voice had none of the resentment that Jessie’s expressed. “The last time that his cattle got in here I went to see him about it, and he said that the field was a part of the range, being unfenced, and that any lawyer in the United States would sustain him in saying so. He was quite right, too—only he was not neighborly.”

“Neighborly! I should say not,” Jessie exclaimed, with a lowering brow. “His horses have trampled down our garden and girdled all our fruit trees, even to the Seckel pear that mother brought from grandfather’s.”

“I know; it is very trying,” father said, stifling a sigh; “but it can do no good to dwell on these things, daughter. An enemy of any kind does you more injury when he destroys your peace of mind, and causes you to harbor revengeful feelings, than he can possibly achieve in any other way. We must keep up our courage, and make the best of present circumstances, bad as they sometimes are. A change is bound to come.”

“Me wants more breakfuss,” Ralph broke in, suddenly, extending his empty milk-cup toward me, his chief servitor. I refilled it from the pitcher beside me, and as I absently crumbled bits of bread into it I sought enlightenment. “I never quite understood, father, why Mr. Horton is so spiteful toward us.”

“It is easily understood, Leslie. He wants this homestead claim, and hopes to weary us into giving it up.”

“He can find plenty of other claims,” I argued.

“Yes; but not such as this. This is an upper valley, as you know, and just above our claim five mountain streams join the main river as the fingers of a hand join the palm, the main river being the palm. Every square foot of our claim can be irrigated, and it takes in about all of the valley that is worth taking—enough to control the water rights for all the land below us. That is the reason why Horton is trying so hard to dislodge us. He would like to be able to make the ranchmen on the lower ranches come to his terms about the water.”

“But the law regulates the water rights,” said Jessie.

“It is supposed to do so, and does it, after a fashion, but no human laws have ever yet been able to satisfactorily regulate a mean man. It would be a great misfortune to the ranchmen below if Horton were to get a title to this place; he likes to make people feel his authority, and one effective way of doing that would be to worry people about the water supply, just when they needed it most, of course. I feel now that our danger of losing the place is past. It has been a hard struggle to bear up against nearly five years of such sly, petty persecutions. Horton is careful not to oppose us openly. When he’s found out, as he is occasionally, it always appears that he has been careful to keep within the letter of the law. Well, as Leslie says, we’ll get our title clear, and then the wind will be out of Mr. Horton’s sails. I’ve been afraid to make a move, or to do anything except curl down and study the homestead laws all this time. If I had come to an open rupture with him he might have gone down to the land office and told some story of his own invention to the agent that would injure me greatly, for land agents are only too ready to believe evil of land claimants, it seems to me. Now my notice for offering final proof is in one of the papers; it must be published three times, and the period of publication must not range over more than three months at the outside, so you see, at the farthest, if our proof is accepted, we shall have a deed to this place within three months. I do not see how we can fail to get it; we have complied with all the requirements.”

“Yes,” Jessie assented, gravely. “We have two cows, two horses, a cat, a dog, a clock, some chairs, some dishes, a table, a stove, and some poultry.”

Father smiled, the slow, serious smile that had replaced his cheery laugh since mother’s death two years before. “You are well posted on homestead laws, daughter,” he said, rising from the table. “Where’s my coat, Leslie, did you get it mended?”

For answer I took down a worn, light, gray coat from a nail behind the kitchen door.

“Look at that!” I said, pointing proudly to a very conspicuous patch on the elbow of one sleeve. An older seamstress would have felt, perhaps, that the patch asserted its existence almost too defiantly; it seemed almost to vaunt itself, but conscious of the rectitude of my intentions, if not of my work, I raised my face, expectantly, awaiting the praise that I felt to be my due. I was not disappointed. Father held the garment up to the light and examined the mending with critical approval.

“That’s what I call a good job, my little girl,” he said heartily, but Jessie, glancing at the proof of my housewifely skill, as evidenced by the coat, laughed.

“‘A tear may be the accident of a moment,’” she quoted, “‘but a patch is premeditated poverty.’ And such a patch! You could see it a mile away. Really, Leslie, it looks like Jeremiah Porlock’s cattle brand.”

I felt my face crimsoning with indignation, but was happily prevented from making the retort that sprang to my lips, as father murmured ruefully:

“Dear, dear, what a pity that Joe left the spade! It will just about spoil my whole forenoon to be obliged to stop and bring it down. However, there’s no help for it.”

“Yes, there is, papa,” I cried, springing to my feet. “I’ll go up with you and bring it back.”

It was characteristic of father’s gentleness toward us his motherless young daughters, that he had not once thought of the possibility of either of us acting, in this instance, as his substitute.

“It’s a long walk,” he objected, looking at me doubtfully.

“Long! Why, papa, I’ve taken longer walks than that, lots of times. It isn’t above a mile and a half; I could run every step of the way!”

“Me, too,” proclaimed Ralph, descending from his high chair in such haste that he fell sprawling on the floor. Disdaining, on this occasion, to weep for an accident that, under ordinary circumstances, would have opened the flood-gates of woe, he scrambled to his feet: “Me do wiv ’oo, ’Essie!” A battered old hat of Joe’s was hanging on the wall, within reach of his chubby hand; he snatched it down and set it quickly on his head, pulling down the wide brim until his brown curls and the upper part of his rosy little face were completely extinguished. “Me ready, ’Essie,” he said. He was a comical little figure. Papa took him in his arms and kissed him. Then he set him gently on his feet again; “You can’t go with sister to-day, my boy.”

“’Ess,” Ralph declared, with unusual persistence, “Me do!”

“No,” father reiterated. He opened the door, and we slipped out, followed for some distance along the trail by the deserted youngster’s ear-splitting shrieks. Father halted once, looking irresolutely at me as a peculiarly heart-rending outburst came to our ears. “I could easily carry him up there,” he said, with a somewhat sheepish look, “but I suppose you couldn’t fetch him home?”

“Come along, father,” I retorted, slipping my hand under his arm. “Jessie will have Ralph consoled before you could get back to the house, and, when we started, you were in some doubt as to whether I could carry a spade home from the mine.”

“That’s true,” father confessed. “But hasn’t the boy got a pair of lungs, though? I doubt if I was ever able to yell like that. I dare say it’s partly owing to the climate; it’s very healthy.”

CHAPTER II

THE WILL OF THE WATERS

Crusoe was the generic name of the collection of rough shanties that clustered about and among the various shaft-houses. Not all of the mines had attained to the dignity of shaft-houses and regular hours, many of them, indeed, being mere prospect-holes, but all were named, and a student of human nature might have accurately gauged the past experience or present hopefulness of their respective owners by some of the curious freaks of nomenclature.

The shaft-house of the Gray Eagle was the last but one at the upper extremity of the ravine along which Crusoe straggled. Father and I, hurrying past the cabins, had nearly reached it, when a loud call from the open doorway of one of the larger cabins brought us to a halt.

“There’s old Joe!” father said, glancing at the individual who had shouted; “I was in hopes that I could slip past without his seeing me.”

“No such good luck as that,” I said, with what I felt to be uncharitable impatience; “I almost believe that Joe sits up nights to watch for you. It’s a shame, too, for him to try to work in the mines. Just look at him!”

“I’ve looked at him a good many times, Leslie, dear, but he would be in a ten times worse position if I were to tell him that I am old enough to take care of myself. Since the day I was born he has spent his life in watching over me.”

From all accounts that was strictly true. The white-wooled old negro who, in his shirt sleeves, now came limping down the pathway toward us, had once been a slave on grandfather Gordon’s estate. When freedom came to all the slaves, old Joe—who was young Joe then—declined to accept of any liberty, or to follow any occupation that might take him away from his master’s oldest son, Ralph Gordon, our father. The negro’s mission in life, as he understood it, was simply to keep an eye on the young man, for the young man’s good. The flight of years did not lessen his sense of responsibility any more than it did his devotion, which was immeasurable. But, curiously enough, he seemed to prefer, on the whole, not to reside with the object of his adoration. It was enough for him if he could but hover around in father’s vicinity, and this he did with such tireless persistency that in all the changes, the shifting scenes of his Western life, the one thing that father owned to being absolutely sure of was, that no matter where he went, or how quietly, the place that knew him presently became familiar also with the white wool and shambling figure of old Joe.

“I ’clar ter goodness!” groaned Joe, reaching us at last, and hobbling on beside us, “I didn’ ’low fur t’ wuck ter-day; my rheumatiz is tuck dat bad!”

“Don’t work, then, Joe; the mine is as wet as a sponge. You’ll be the worse to-morrow for going into it,” remonstrated father, kindly.

“No; I reckons I’s wuck ef yo’ does; hit ain’ out o’ place, noway, fur me ter crope inter a hole like dat; but w’at fur yo’ keep w’alin’ at wuck in de mine? ’Pears like a gen’leman might fin’ more fittin’ kine o’ wuck dan dat.”

“The kind of work neither makes nor unmakes one, Joe,” returned father, good-humoredly; “but I’m not going to do this sort of work much longer. I’m calculating on opening up the ranch in fine shape, with your help, when I get the title to it.”

“W’en yo’ ’low fur ter git dat titull?”

“In about three months. You’ll have to come and live with us then, Joe, so as to be on hand to help us.”

“Yes,” the old man assented, with unexpected readiness, “I ’spect I shall. I’se mighty good farmer, yo’ knows, Mas’r Ralph. Hit goin’ take nigh a week ter tell all dat I knows erbout raisin’ ob watermillions an’ goobers. Yo’ ’low dat goobers grow in dish yer kentry, Mas’r Ralph?”

“Yes, indeed. Why not?” father returned, cheerily, evidently glad of old Joe’s implied willingness to take up his abode with us.

We presently entered the shaft-house. Rutledge, the mine superintendent, was standing by the shaft, and the hoisting-cage, with its first load of ore from the dump below, was moving slowly upward.

“You’re late,” was his greeting.

“A trifle late,” father returned, pleasantly, adding, “you can dock my day’s wages for it if you like.”

“I know that without you telling me, but I shouldn’t like,” Rutledge said, crossly. We all knew him slightly, and I had thought him a pleasant young gentleman, but he was looking sullen to-day, almost angry, it seemed to me. We stood there waiting, and the cage had reached the surface and automatically dumped its load before Rutledge spoke again.

“I thought you weren’t coming, in spite of your promise,” he then said, looking toward father. “No one could have blamed you if you had shown the white feather—”

“Say, yo’ heah me!” broke in old Joe, suddenly and savagely, his voice quivering with indignation. “Ole Cunnel Gordon’s son ain’ one o’ de kine w’at done breaks promises, ner yit w’at’s a-showin’ w’ite fedders. Ef yo’s lookin’ fer dat kine of a man, git a lookin’-glass an’ study de face dat yo’ sees in hit, den maybe yo’ fine ’im!”

Rutledge smiled, although he still scowled disapproval.

“That’s all right, Joe; there are no cowards around the Gray Eagle shaft-house, but I couldn’t blame any one for keeping out of the mine to-day—not but what it’s safe enough, as far as I can see—I’ve just been down.”

For an instant his words startled and thrilled me. Could it be that there was so much danger in working in the mine then? I glanced at father. He was just stepping into the cage, and his face was as serene as if Rutledge’s discourse had been of some possible disturbance in the moon. The look of displeasure on Rutledge’s face deepened as I caught hold of one of the ropes and swung myself lightly into the cage, following father and Joe. Delaying the signal for descent, Rutledge said:

“While it may be safe enough down there, it isn’t exactly like a lady’s parlor, Gordon—not to-day, anyway.”

“Oh, Leslie is just going down on an errand,” father explained. “But, Leslie, perhaps you had better wait here and let me send the spade up to you.”

“And make you walk from your tunnel clear back to the hoisting cage again!” I remonstrated. “Why, Mr. Rutledge, I’ve been down lots of times, you know, and I’m not at all afraid.”

The superintendent had looked relieved when he heard that my stay in the mine was likely to be a short one. I wondered, inconsequently, as the cage started on its downward passage, if he had thought that I was going down on a tour of inspection. There would have been nothing for him to fear from any one’s inspection; he was a good superintendent. “Don’t stay long, Miss Leslie,” he called down after us. I could no longer see his face, but his voice sounded anxious, and father remarked:

“Rutledge seems quite uneasy, somehow.”

“Dese yer minin’ bosses, dey knows dey business,” muttered old Joe. “Dey knows dat de rheumatiz hit lays in wait, like a wile beas’ scentin’ hits prey. ’Spect’s Mas’r Rutledge he hate fur ter see a spry young gal like Miss Leslie git all crippled up, same’s a ole lame nigger.”

“Yes; it must be that he feared Leslie would get the rheumatism,” father said, in a lighter tone. Old Joe’s explanations and reasons for things were always a source of unfailing delight to him. The cage reached the bottom of the shaft and we stepped out. By the light that was always burning at the tunnel’s mouth father and Joe each selected a miner’s lamp from the stock in a corner, and, as father was lighting his, he said: “You had better carry a lamp, too, Leslie.” I picked one up while father slipped the bar of his under his cap band. Then he glanced at my big hat. “You’ll have to carry yours in your hand, child; there’s no room for so small a thing as a miner’s lamp on that great island of straw that you call a shade hat.”

The Gray Eagle was a quartz gold mine. Tunnels drifted this way and that, wherever deposits of the elusive metal led them; sometimes they even made turns so sharp as to almost double back on themselves. I was glad to see that the point where father and Joe halted, at last, to pick up the tools that they had thrown down when they quit work in the mine, was within sight of the twinkling yellow star that marked the location of the hoisting cage. The place seemed less eerie somehow, with this means of escape signaled in the darkness. I had been, as I told Mr. Rutledge, in the mines a good many times, but never had its darkness seemed so impenetrable, so encroaching, as on this morning.

“It seems to me that our lamps don’t give so much light as usual, or else what they do give does not go so far,” I remarked to father as I lingered beside him a few moments, watching him work.

He was using a drill on the face of the rock wall in front of him. He suspended operations now to say: “I noticed that myself. The air is thick and damp; the light is lost much as it is in a fog.” Then he called my attention to an object lying on the ground at his feet. “There’s the spade; I guess you’d better be going back with it, dear; Reynolds will be needing it.”

Accordingly, with the spade in one hand and the lamp in the other, I started to retrace my steps to the hoisting cage. The sound of the drill that father was now plying vigorously followed me, becoming muffled, rather than fainter in the distance as I proceeded. From the various tunnels, branching off to the right and left, came the sound of other drills, and, occasionally, the plaintive “hee-haw” of one of the half-dozen or more little Andalusian mules used in hauling the loaded cars to and from the ore dumps near the hoisting cage. With all these sounds I was more or less familiar, but to-day, underneath them all, it seemed to me that there were others, myriads of them. To my lively young fancy the silence teemed with mysterious noises; low groans and sighing whispers that wandered bodiless through dark tunnels, dripping with a soft, unusual ooze. Knowing that Reynolds was in a hurry for the spade I hastened along, listening and speculating, until coming opposite one of the side extensions I was suddenly taken with the whim to see if its walls were as damp as those of the tunnel that I was then standing in. I turned into it accordingly, but stopped doubtfully after a few yards. Holding the lamp aloft I looked inquiringly along the walls. Damp! I understood now why my father wore a coat, a circumstance that had already impressed itself upon my mind as being very unusual among these underground workers. The water was almost running down the sides of the rocky tunnel, and the light of my lamp was reflected back at me in a thousand sliding, mischievous drops.

“Where does it all come from?” I thought, laying my hand on the face of the rock before which I stood. My hand had touched it for a single heart-beat, no more, when I felt the color go out of my face, leaving me with wide, staring eyes, while I stood trembling and ghastly white in the breathless gloom. Like one suddenly bereft of all power of speech or motion I stared mutely at the black wall before me. I had felt the rock move!

Standing there in that awful darkness, hundreds of feet underground, I understood what had happened, what was happening, and, dumb with the horror of that awful knowledge, stood motionless. All the stories that I had ever heard or read of sudden irruptions of water in mines, of dreadful cavings-in, flashed into my mind, and then, breaking the paralyzing trance of terror, I turned and ran toward the main tunnel. I tried to utter a warning shout as I ran, but my stiffened lips gave forth no sound. Happily, as I reached the main tunnel, the light at the foot of the shaft was in direct range with my vision, and between the shaft and myself I plainly saw a man hastening toward it. He was wearing a light gray coat. A quick glance toward the spot where I had left father and Joe showed nothing but darkness. They had both left. The hoisting cage was down, and, as I raced toward it, the man in the gray coat scrambled in. Even in my terror and excitement I was conscious of an unreasonable, desolate sense of desertion when I saw that. Yet, underneath it all a lingering fragment of common sense told me that father would believe me, by this, safe above; he had told me to go—and I had not obeyed him.

Behind me, as I ran, arose a shrill and terrible chorus, a crashing of timbers, yells and shrieks of men, the terrific braying of the Andalusian mules, and above all, a new sound; the mighty voice, the swelling roar of imprisoned waters taking possession of the channels that man had inadvertently prepared for them. I reached the hoisting cage so nearly too late that it had already started on its upward journey, when, seeing me, one of its occupants reached down, caught both my upstretched hands and swung me up to a place by his side. It chanced, providentially, that the cage was at the bottom of the shaft when the inrush of waters came, and it had been held there for a brief, dangerous moment while the men nearest the shaft fled to its protection. It rose slowly upward, not too soon, for in an incredibly short time an inky flood rolled beneath it; rolled beneath, but seemed to keep pace with it as it arose. The water was coming up the shaft.

CHAPTER III

AT THE MOUTH OF THE SHAFT

Rutledge was standing by the windlass as the cage drew slowly up into the light. The men sprang out, not forgetting to lift me out with them, and the superintendent craned his neck, looking down into the black hole from which we had ascended. “Keep back!” he shouted, as some of the men crowded about him. “Keep back; the water is coming up the shaft. We’ll soon have a spouting geyser, at this rate. How many of you are there?” He glanced over the group and answered his own question, in an awed voice: “Seven—and the girl—God help us! Only seven!”

I had been so blinded by the fierce white glare of sunlight, following on the darkness of the shaft, and so dazed by the awful nature of the calamity that had befallen us that at first I comprehended almost nothing. The events of the day recorded themselves automatically upon my mind, to be clearly recalled afterward. In a numb, dazed way I saw a man in a light gray coat creep stiffly from the cage, last of all, and, as he staggered away up the dump, I took a step toward him, looked in his face, and recoiled with a wild, heart-broken cry.

The wearer of the coat was old Joe. Facing around, I looked on the rescued men, my heart beginning to beat in slow, suffocating throbs—my father was not among them.

For a moment I was quite beside myself. Like one gone suddenly mad, I sprang at the negro, and, seizing his arm, shook it furiously, crying:

“Father, father—where is my father? What have you done with my father?”

The old man began to whimper, “I ain’ done nuffin’! I wish’t I had! I wish’t hit was me dat done gone to respec’ dat ole Watkin’s Lateral, den I’d ’a’ been drownded, an’ he wouldn’t!”

“Watkin’s Lateral?” echoed one of the men who had so narrowly escaped. “Was Gordon in there? That’s where the water burst through first. I thought that some one might have gone in there to test the walls, and they’d given way.”

“You are probably right, Johnson. Not but what the walls would have caved in, just the same, whether they were struck or not.”

Little heed as I paid, at the moment, to what was going on or being said, yet it all impressed itself upon my mind, to be recalled afterward, and afterward I knew that this last observation of Mr. Rutledge’s was intended to exonerate father from any charge of carelessness in going into that place at just that time. But every employee of the Gray Eagle knew that Watkin’s Lateral—a long, diagonal passage, with which the main tunnel was connected by a number of side extensions—was a treacherous place in which to work at all times, and must, of necessity, have been trebly so this morning. Loosing my frenzied hold of old Joe, I crouched to the ground, while Joe sank down on the dump, covering his face with his gnarled old hands. “He made me tuck an’ put on his coat, he did, an’ tole me fur t’ start fur home; I was dat racked wid de misery in my back!” he moaned.

The men were again clustering about the shaft. I got up and went and stood beside them. A hollow roar came up from the depths into which we gazed. The black water had risen, and risen, until, touched by a ray of sunlight, it threw back at us a sinister, mocking gleam, as the eye of a demon might. And father was down there in that black grave! That was my one coherent thought as, after the first wild look, I suddenly grasped one of the ropes of the cage that still swung above the shaft’s mouth, and swung myself aboard. My reckless hand was on the starting lever when Mr. Rutledge, with a cry, and a spring as quick as my own had been, landed beside me. He snatched my hand from the lever. “Are you mad?” he asked, sternly, “What are you going to do?”

“I am going down to my father; I am going to bring him up!” I cried wildly.

As though the words had held a charm to break the spell of silence, they were followed by a babel of groans, of outcries and entreaties. It seemed that all the surface population of Crusoe were already on the spot; all, and especially the women, were wild to go to the rescue of the doomed men below. Doomed! Ah, they were past that now—all of them—all! It was this solemn thought that suddenly calmed me, that made me yield quietly to Rutledge’s guiding hand as he drew me from the cage. “There are men here,” he said. “Stand back, all of you women.” He took his place in the cage again; then he looked around on the assembled men.

“Dick,” he said, signalling out a square-built Scotch miner, “stand beside the hoist, and do exactly as I tell you.”

“I wull that!” returned the miner, taking the station indicated.

“I’m going down as far as the water will allow,” Rutledge explained. “Who comes with me?” A dozen men volunteered instantly. Rutledge selected two who stepped into the cage beside him.

“There may be fire-damp—gas,” the Scotchman said, warningly.

“I know; there is, probably; I’ll look out for that. Lower away!” Rutledge had lighted one of the miner’s candles which was suspended by a cord from a crack in the bottom of the cage. We above leaned over that dreadful well and watched the tiny flicker of light as the cage swung down and down toward the sinister eye that came steadily up as it went down. The tiny flame burned bravely for a space, then it went out as suddenly as if snuffed out by invisible fingers while the water below moved and sparkled as it might have done if the owner of the demoniac eye had laughed. “Choke damp!” said the Scotch miner succinctly, and began hoisting up.

I was crouching on the ground with my face hidden on Joe’s shoulder when the cage came up again. The men sprang out silently, and the hush on the waiting throng seemed to deepen.

“We will set the pumps at work as soon as it can be done; that is the only thing left for us to do,” I heard Rutledge say, and his voice sounded far away to my reeling senses as it might have sounded had I heard it in some dreadful vision of the night. Then he came and knelt down beside me; he took my hands in a close grasp. “Go home, Leslie,” he said, “go home and do not come back. We will do all that can be done.”

Not many hours thereafter the pumps were at work, lifting the water out of the mine—a Herculean task, but not so long a one, or so hopeless, as had been anticipated by many. Soon fresh mounds of earth began to appear in the lonely little hillside cemetery; mounds beneath which the rescued bodies of the drowned miners were reverently laid. Among them was one where father lay peacefully sleeping by mother’s side, and leaving him there at rest, we turned sadly away to take up again the dreary routine of our every-day life.

CHAPTER IV

A PLOT FOILED

It was a full month after the mine accident, and things had settled back as nearly into the old routine as was possible with the head of the household gone. I doubt if Jessie and I could have carried the burden of responsibility that now fell upon our unaccustomed shoulders had it not been for Joe. The day after father’s funeral he walked quietly into the kitchen with the announcement:

“I’se come ter stay, chillen! Whar yo’ gwine want me ter drap dis bun’le?”

The bundle was done up in a handkerchief—not a large one at that—and it contained all of Joe’s worldly possessions. Jessie gave him the little bed-room off the kitchen, and there Joe established himself, to our great satisfaction. He was not less reticent than usual, but there was immense comfort to us, even in Joe’s silence. The only explanation that he ever gave as to his intentions was contained in the brief declaration:

“Yo’s no ’casion fur t’ worry yo’se’ves no mo’, chillen; I’se come ter tek holt.”

And take hold he did. Early and late the faithful black hands were toiling for the children of the man whom he had so devotedly loved.

On this particular morning Jessie and I were seated in the kitchen busily employed in doing some much-needed mending, when I dropped my work and said to Jessie: “I believe something is taking the chickens, Jessie.”

Jessie glanced at the garment that I had let fall, a torn little dress of Ralph’s. “Do you?” she said.

“Yes; I’m sure there are not so many as there should be.”

“Don’t you count them every night?”

“Yes, I do; but they should be counted oftener. At mid-day, too, I should say.” I submitted this proposition deferentially, but with a covert glance at the clock; it was nearly twelve, and I did so dislike mending.

“Very well,” Jessie said, “count them a dozen times a day if you think best, of course.”

The elation with which I arose to comply with this generous permission was tempered somewhat by a little haunting sense of meanness. “Still,” I reasoned, “when one’s home depends on such things as cats, dogs, and chickens, one cannot take account of stock too often. Besides, Jessie likes to mend, at least I’ve never heard her say she does not, but I have heard her say that she doesn’t like to tend poultry.”

When I re-entered the house, after conscientiously enumerating every pair of yellow legs on the place, and finding, somewhat to my chagrin, that the tally was the same as that of the previous evening, I found Jessie sitting at the table with her face hidden in her hands. Afraid that she was crying I at first pretended not to notice. We had more than enough cause for tears. I picked up the discarded little dress and, in a spasm of repentance, murmured ostensibly to Ralph, who was playing near the table, but really for Jessie’s benefit: “Sister is going to mend the pretty blouse that you tore on the oak bush after she gets this dress done.”

“’En w’en oo’ puts it on me, me do in ’e oak bush an’ tear it adain,” the child declared, cheerfully.

“You naughty boy!”

“’Es; me notty boy,” with which announcement he went and leaned against Jessie’s knees. Jessie looked up; she was not crying, but her face was haggard with pain.

“I’ve got a dreadful toothache,” she said, and then I remembered that she had been very restless during the night. “I’m afraid I shall know no peace until it is out,” Jessie went on, “and it’s half a day’s journey to a dentist.”

“And Joe has taken both the horses to go up into the Jerusalem settlement after that seed-corn, and he can’t get back before to-morrow night!” I exclaimed, in consternation. As I sat looking at her with eyes more tearful than her own there came to our ears the welcome sound of wheels, and a wagon stopped at the gate. I sprang up and ran to the door, with some faint hope, for the moment, that Joe had returned. It was not Joe who was sitting immovable on the seat of the light wagon that was drawn up before the gate, but my astonishment would not have been so great if it had been. The small, bronzed-faced, wiry individual who sat still, calmly returning my inquiring gaze was none other than our persevering enemy, Mr. Jacob Horton. I did not fancy our caller, but thinking that he would not have called if he had not some reason for so doing, I walked out and down the path toward him, saying, “Good morning, Mr. Horton.”

“Mornin’, Miss Leslie. Folks all well?”

“Not very well; at least, Jessie isn’t. She’s got a dreadful toothache.”

“Toothache, eh? That’s bad. Nothin’ like yankin’ out fur an achin’ tooth. That’s my experience, and you may pass it along to Miss Jessie for what it’s worth.”

“I don’t know what good it will do her if I do,” I replied, rather irritably, for Jessie was sobbing now, and the sound hurt me almost as much as a physical pain could have done.

“Why, the good it will do is that that old nigger of yours—Joe, you call him—will tackle up, she’ll tie on her bunnet, hop into the wagon, and away for Dr. Green’s office in Antonito, and she’ll set as still as a mouse while the doctor yanks out that tooth; that’s the good it’ll do.”

“Yes, that might all be if Joe wasn’t away with the team.”

“Wal’, that does rather spoil my program. Goin’ to be gone all day, is he?”

“Yes; maybe for two or three days. He’s gone up to the Archer settlement on the Jerusalem trail.”

“Oh, has he? Wal’, now!”

Mr. Horton had been sitting all this time with the reins in one hand, his hat in the other. He now replaced the hat on his head and stood up. He remained standing so, motionless, for more than a minute, gazing steadfastly at his horses’ ears, while his brow puckered and his small eyes narrowed like those of a person in deep thought. Finally he exclaimed:

“Say, I tell you how we’ll fix it. You all get in here with me and come over to my house. Maria, she’ll be sure to think of something to ease that tooth the minute she claps eyes on ye; then, in the mornin’, she or I’ll take ye over to the doctor’s office, and bring ye home afterward. Hey, what do you say, Miss Jessie?” for Jessie had by this time come out of the gate, with Ralph clinging to her hand.

Jessie, the pain of her aching tooth dulled for the moment by sheer amazement, said that he was very kind. She said it almost timidly. We had had so little reason hitherto to look for any neighborly kindness at Mr. Horton’s hands.

“Then ye’ll go?” Mr. Horton insisted.

Jessie looked inquiringly at me. Her face was swollen and her eyes red with crying.

“Yes, Jessie, do go. There’s no knowing when Joe will be back, and you—”

“Why, you’d better all come,” Mr. Horton interposed again. “There’s two seats in the wagon—plenty of room. Here, where’s the little shaver’s hat? Get your hat and climb in here, youngster.”

Ralph, who was enterprising and fearless, obeyed without protest. Peremptorily declining Mr. Horton’s invitation to sit with him, he took his station on the back seat, and from that vantage urged his sisters to make haste.

“Come, ’Essie, us yeady.”

Jessie ran in and got her hat, tossed her old coat over her shoulders without stopping to put her arms in the sleeves, and, by aid of the wheel, mounted to the seat beside Ralph. I, too, had put on my hat, but waited to secure the windows, and then to get the door-key. Mr. Horton, sitting silent on the front seat, observed my proceedings with interest; “You’re awful careful, ain’t ye?” he said, at length, and, in spite of his friendliness, it seemed to my sensitive fancy that there was a sneer in his voice. However, that did not greatly trouble me, for, from my slight speaking acquaintance with him before this, I had come to believe that he never spoke without one, so I replied, cheerfully:

“Yes; I guess I am careful enough.”

I had locked the door, and was approaching the wagon when Mr. Horton asked:

“Where’s your dog—you’ve got one, ain’t ye?”

“Guard? Yes, he’s with Joe. Why?”

I stopped short as I suddenly realized what Joe’s absence for the night meant.

“Why, I can’t go, Jessie; I shall have to milk both the cows to-night!”

“Oh, that’s true!” groaned Jessie. She started up.

“I’m sorry we have detained you at all, Mr. Horton, but Leslie can’t stay here alone all night, and the cows must be milked. Come, Ralph, we must get out.”

As Ralph slid obediently off his seat, Mr. Horton laid a detaining hand on his arm. Ralph wriggled himself loose, looking defiant.

“Wait!” Mr. Horton urged. “It’s too bad for you to have to keep on sufferin’ all night, Miss Jessie, when you might be helped.”

“Oh, I know it!” Jessie moaned, sinking back on the seat and covering her face with her hands.

“I’ve never had the toothache myself, but I know it must be dreadful. By the way, where are the cows?” Mr. Horton stood up and looked around as if he might spy them in the tree-tops or anywhere. “I do’no—I wisht’ ’twas so I could spend the time—” he muttered reflectively. Then, suddenly: “How long will it take ye to milk ’em? I might wait.”

“Oh, no! No indeed! I couldn’t think of asking you to do that on my account!” I exclaimed, feeling very grateful, nevertheless, for the interest he displayed. “The cows haven’t come up yet; besides, it would do no good to milk them now, at noon, for this evening,” I explained, although Mr. Horton, being a cattleman, should have known that without my telling him.

“I’ve thought what I can do,” I said, after a moment. “You and Ralph go with Mr. Horton, Jessie, and after the chores are done this evening I’ll slip over to Crusoe to Mrs. Riley’s.” Mrs. Riley being the kindly Irish-woman with whom old Joe usually boarded when working in the mines.

“That’s a good plan,” Jessie said. “I couldn’t bear to leave you here alone all night.”

Mr. Horton had seemed considerably nonplussed when he found that I was not coming with him; he now brightened visibly, remarking: “Yes, you can do that; lonesome work for a young gal stayin’ alone all night; no tellin’ what might happen,” and then, with that curious fatality that so often induces people to say exactly the wrong thing for their purpose, he added: “I should ’a’ thought your nigger would ’a’ left the dog here to purtect you young women whilst he was gone. But niggers is always thoughtless, and yourn is no exception.”

Inwardly resenting both the tone and words, I instantly resolved, in a spirit of loyalty to Joe, to remain where I was that night. Why should I not, indeed? I had never spent a night alone in my life, but I would let Mr. Horton know that I was not afraid to do it—I would let him know afterward—just at present I nodded my head in apparent acquiescence with his views, and bidding good-by to the trio, walked away toward the corral, intent on beguiling them into the belief, should they look back, that I was anxiously awaiting the arrival of the cows in order that I might the sooner get away myself. In the silence that followed upon the last faint rumble of their disappearing wheels I thought of something else. Something that made my blood run cold with a sickening apprehension of the calamity that had so nearly befallen us. A moment more and, the numb fit of terror passed, I was dancing down the corral path, saying jubilantly to myself: “Oh, ho, Mr. Horton! But it isn’t left alone! The homestead isn’t left alone. I’m here, I’m here!”

Jessie was half crazed with pain, no wonder that she had forgotten, but why should it have escaped my mind, until almost too late, that, under the homestead laws, the laws by which we hoped to obtain a title to this beautiful valley ranch, the house must not be left untenanted for a single night, until the deed to it was in the claimant’s possession. We had heard so much about the homestead laws from poor father that we accounted ourselves quite able to comply with them all—yet—how nearly we had come to leaving the house vacant that night!

And it was Mr. Horton, of all others, who had urged us to do so, and he understood the homestead laws; no one better.

The thought of our narrow escape was still with me when, towards evening, I heard the tinkle of old Cleo’s bell, coming musically down the mountain side, and went out to the corral to let down the bars. “After all,” I thought, looking back at the house as I stood waiting by the bars, “it might not have been a complete success for Mr. Horton if he had got us all away from home for the night. The house and furniture would be pretty good proof to the land agent of the honesty of our intentions.”

CHAPTER V

AN EXCITING EXPERIENCE

I had never been left entirely without human companionship before, not even for a night, and I soon began to wonder at the amount of loneliness that can be compressed into a few hours. Before the afternoon was half spent I was mentally reviewing the history of Robinson Crusoe, and was feeling an intense sympathy for that resourceful castaway.

I lingered over my evening tasks, and, sooner than seemed possible, dusk came and night was at hand, so at last I reluctantly closed and made fast the kitchen door. Reluctantly, for to-night, this common and necessary precaution seemed, somehow, to cut me adrift from all chance of human aid, and by this time my mind was running on wild tales of bandits, of lonely camps, and the far sweep of the cattle ranges where, in darkened hollow or at the foot of shadowy buttes, great gray wolves lay in wait for their midnight prey, indifferent as to whether the prey consisted of cattle or cattleman.

Still, I am sure that I was not really cowardly; it was only the unusual situation that set me thinking of these things. Father’s light rifle hung in its accustomed place over the kitchen fireplace, and, as a last precaution, I took it down, and, after ascertaining that it was properly loaded, put it near the head of the bed, within reach of my hand. To be expert with firearms is almost a matter of course for girls on Western ranches, and I was an unusually good marksman. As it would, to my fancy, but intensify the emptiness and loneliness of the house if I were to light a lamp, I decided to go straight to bed without a light, and, if possible, forget my troubles in sleep. But I had hardly reached this sensible conclusion when I became convinced that I was thirsty. It is not in the least probable that I should have even thought of needing a drink if it had not suddenly occurred to me that there was no water in the house. I had used it all, and had neglected to fill the pail again. There is no surer provocative of thirst than the knowledge that there is no water to be had, and, as I thought the matter over, my lips grew dry and my throat parched. It was unendurable. In desperation I slipped on the shoes that I had just taken off, and, taking the empty pail from the kitchen sink, unlocked the door and made a hurried trip to the spring, a few rods west of the house.

Returning with a brimming pailful, and disdaining to acknowledge, even to myself, that my knees were shaking, I set the pail on a chair by the bed-room window. I was determined to have water close at hand, in case my thirst became torturing during the night. The cat was mewing plaintively on the kitchen doorstep. I re-opened the door and let her in, then re-locked the door and, disrobing, crept quickly into bed. Curled down snugly under the blankets I was almost dozing when a sudden recollection caused me to laugh softly to myself, there in the darkness. In spite of my terrible thirst I had entirely forgotten to take a drink after the water was at hand. “I’ll get up after a while if I find that I can’t get along without it,” I told myself, sleepily, and with the sense of amusement still upon me, I was far away into dreamland.

I suppose that very few people have escaped the unpleasant, breathless sensation of awakening suddenly and completely under the spell of some unknown challenge, a warning of some impending danger passed by the alert mind to the slumbering senses of the body. I had slept far into the night when I awoke, seemingly without cause, to find myself sitting upright in bed, listening intently. For a moment I heard nothing but the soft padded foot-fall of the cat as, stealing from her place on the foot of the bed, she moved restlessly about the room. “It must have been her springing off the bed that awoke me,” I thought, nestling back into the pillows again. I closed my eyes, but opened them quickly as a soft rustling outside of, and almost directly underneath the bed-room window, came to my ears.

The window-shade was pulled down, but it was hung several inches below the top of the window, which had been left open for ventilation. Through this uncurtained space the moonlight streamed into the room; by its light I saw the cat retreating into a corner farthest from the window, her tail swelled out like that of a fox, her hair bristling, and her yellow eyes glaring vindictively. She disliked strangers, and commonly resented their presence in just this manner. I wondered, as my eyes followed the cat’s movements with growing apprehension, if she would act this way because of the vicinity of any large prowling animal. I was sure now, as I crouched tremblingly under the blankets, that the increasing noise that I heard was not made by any harmless midnight prowler. If it had been, the cat, being a great hunter, would have shown an eager desire to get outside the window, instead of away from it. Accustomed to the knowledge that there were wild animals in plenty up on the mountain slopes and in the encircling forests above us, and having abundant reason to know that they often made stealthy visits to the valley settlements at night, I soon reasoned myself into quietude. Whatever the beast might be, I was in no personal danger; the cows were safe in the high-walled corral, and the poultry-house securely locked. Reassured, as I recalled these facts, I did not get up to make any investigation as to the cause of the noise. “If it’s a bear, it isn’t mine,” I told myself, drowsily; “as Joe says, ‘I ain’ los’ no bear ’roun’ yer.’”

I was half asleep again when a curious sensation, as of a bright light playing over my closed eyelids caused me to open them suddenly. Then I bounded out of bed, uttering a scream that might, I should think, have been heard a mile. A broad sheet of yellow flame was streaming up beside the house and over the uncurtained window space. Obeying an impulse as irresponsible as the one that had caused that useless scream, I seized the loaded rifle at my bedside, and sent a bullet whistling and crashing through the window panes. The impression that some prowling wild animal was about was probably still strong upon me, and, in any case, the shot was not without effect. My shriek and the report of the rifle rang out almost at the same instant. Following them came a cry, a smothered oath, and the sound of running footsteps. Throwing down the yet smoking gun, I ran to the window, tore down the obstructing shade with one sweep of my impatient hand, and leaned forward, scanning the hillside. The flames reached toward me greedily through the opening that my bullet had made, but, although their hot breath half blinded me, I saw a man running swiftly for the shelter of the hillside pines. I glanced toward the rifle—I was a good shot, then. “Thou shalt not kill,” I said aloud, but it had occurred to me also, that the gun was not loaded. An instant more and I was throwing water on the fire from the pailful beside the window ledge. After all, as I soon found, the bullet had done more apparent harm than the fire, for the heap of inflammable rubbish underneath the window was quickly drenched and the fire extinguished. To make all doubly secure, however, I reloaded the gun and with that faithful friend in hand brought water and poured over the rubbish until it ceased even to smoke. The heap was composed of pine needles, pine cones, and resinous pitch pine, and once fairly started would have set the house on fire, past all saving, in a very short time. When the blackened pile was so thoroughly drenched that I could poke around in the ashes with my bare hands I gave up pouring water on it, went back into the house, locked the door, tacked a heavy blanket up over the dismantled window, and, shivering with cold and excitement, again crept into bed. As I lay with my finger on the trigger of the rifle, with its muzzle trained on the window, I was surer of nothing than that there was no more sleep for me that night. But, soothed by the sensation of returning warmth, and by the feeling of security that the touch of the rifle gave, I closed my eyes—not to sleep, but the better to think. Sleep! I could not sleep. Nevertheless—

The sunlight was pouring into the adjoining room when I again opened my eyes. Night with its terrors was a thing of the past. I heard the imprisoned cows lowing for their milk-maid and realized with a pang of self-reproach that I had slept later than I ought. Sitting up in bed I looked around, blinking sleepily. The light from the window was effectually excluded by the thick blanket, and my slumber had been so peaceful that I had scarcely stirred; my relaxed hand had merely dropped away from the trigger of the rifle lying beside me. The cat was in her old place at my feet, and I smiled to see her trying to thrust an inquisitive paw into the muzzle of the gun. Finding the hole too small for that purpose she wriggled around lazily until she had brought an eye to bear on the cavity that she seemed to suspect might contain a mouse. When I had dressed and gone outside I was filled with wonder at the narrowness of the escape that the house had had. There had been no rain for weeks; scarcely a drop, indeed, since the dreadful accident that had left us fatherless—and everything was as dry as tinder. Once started, a fire would have devastated the whole valley. In the retrospect the danger that we had escaped seemed even more terrifying than in the hurry and excitement of the fire itself. And—how came that heap of combustible stuff under the window? Who was that man whom I had seen running up the hillside as if pursued by the furies?

The morning’s chores done, I procured broom and rake and set about clearing away the unsightly heap from under the window. I was raking industriously, when my eye was suddenly attracted by a small glittering object near the outer edge of the pile. Stooping, I picked it up. It lay in the hollow of my hand, and I stood looking at it for a long, long time. “All things come to him who waits.” The origin of the fire was no longer a mystery, but there were other things. We had suffered nearly five years of petty, relentless persecution, and had never, never by any chance, been able to produce any direct evidence against our enemy. The wind sweeping through the pine boughs on the hillside above had, to my fancy, the sound that a great fire makes; a great fire that, rioting unchecked, leaves suffering and death in its wake. “Much harm would have been done to others besides us if I had not been here to put the fire out,” I thought, gravely regarding the thing in my hand. “Much harm; and the law punishes any one convicted of setting a fire, here in the mountains in a dry time, very severely.” Then I went into the house to put the glittering trifle safely out of sight.

CHAPTER VI

A VISIT FROM MRS. HORTON

I had not looked for Jessie and Ralph to return before night, but the article that I had found was scarcely hidden when, chancing to glance down the road, I saw Mr. Horton’s team, with the light wagon attached, trotting briskly toward the house.

Only Jessie, Ralph, and Mrs. Horton were in the wagon, and it startled me at first to observe that Ralph was driving. My astonishment changed to amusement as they drew nearer, and I saw that Mrs. Horton’s capable hands held a firm grip of the lines, just far enough behind Ralph’s not to deprive him of the glory of the idea that he was doing all the driving.

“’Oo! ’oo, dere!” he called imperiously, bringing the horses—with Mrs. Horton’s help—to a standstill before the gate. Jessie sprang out and turned to lift the little driver to the ground, while we all began talking at once. But our mutual torrent of questions was abruptly checked by the contumacious conduct of that same small driver, who deeply resented Jessie’s invitation to him to come off his perch. “Me is doin’ tek care of ’e ’orses,” he declared, scowling defiance at his sister. “Mis ’Orton, ’oo dit out if ’oo p’ease!”

No better description of Mrs. Horton could be given than to say that she was all that her husband was not—the dearest soul. She laughed as she surveyed the conceited little fellow and then said seriously: “How in the world am I to get out if you don’t get out first and help me down?”

Ralph was unprepared for this emergency, but the objection appeared to him reasonable; he slid slowly off the seat—he was so short that it seemed a long time before his tiny toes touched the bottom of the wagon-box—and began climbing laboriously down, over the wheel. When he had at length reached the ground Mrs. Horton stood up and with the reins held securely in one hand she gained the hub of the near wheel. From that vantage she reached down to meet Ralph’s upstretched mite of a hand, and so was gallantly assisted to alight.

To my delight Mrs. Horton announced that she had come to spend the day with us. She led the team to the barn and we proceeded to unharness them without assistance from their late driver, who had already forgotten his intention and his dignity in a romp with his friend and playmate, the cat.

“I suppose your tooth stopped aching and you decided not to have it out,” I said to Jessie, as we were helping Mrs. Horton.

“No,” Mrs. Horton explained, cheerfully; “by the best of luck, Dr. Green chanced to be passing our house last night, soon after Jake brought Jessie. We called him in, and as he had his forceps—toothers, my little brother used to call them—with him, he had that aching tooth out in no time.”

“I’m afraid it hurt you dreadfully, didn’t it, Jessie?” I inquired, sympathetically.

“Not so much as I thought it would; not so much as the aching did,” Jessie replied. “People are so cowardly about such things!” she added, and the sly look that Mrs. Horton bestowed on Jessie’s sister behind her back, awoke a suspicion in my mind that, perhaps, Jessie herself had betrayed some shrinking dread before the operation took place.

“How glad I am that you didn’t have to go clear over to Antonito,” I said. “You wouldn’t have been home for hours yet, and Mrs. Horton wouldn’t have been making us a visit.”

“And Mrs. Horton would a good deal rather be making you a visit than driving these horses to Antonito, I can tell you!” said that lady. “They’re quiet as lambs until it comes to cars and engines, and the sight of them scares them both nigh to death, and the railway track runs along right beside the highway for a mile before you get into Antonito. I’d have been obliged to drive Jessie over, for the hired man is gone, and Mr. Horton met with an accident to one of his hands last night, and couldn’t have driven.”

“An accident! How did it happen?” I inquired, with feigned carelessness.

“Why, I declare, I can hardly make out how it did happen!” exclaimed Mr. Horton’s wife, with a troubled look. “There, Jessie, that’s hay enough to last them a week, and I don’t expect to stay that long. You see,” she went on, slipping the harness deftly off the nigh horse, and tossing it down on the pile of hay, “nothing would do Jake last night but he must go up to the north pasture to salt the cattle. I told him there was no need—they were salted only last Sunday—but go he would, and go he did. It got to be so late before he came back that I got real uneasy about him. It’s a good bit to the north pasture, but I knew it ought not to keep him out so very late. Why, it was after twelve o’clock when he came in at last, with his clothes torn, and his hand done up in his handkerchief and just dripping with blood! Jessie and Ralph had gone to bed, hours before, and I was thankful that she wasn’t up to see it, for it fairly scared me, and I’m not a mite nervous, generally. I expect I was the more scared because of Jake’s way of taking it. He’s as steady as iron, most times, but last night he was all kind of trembly and excited. He tried to explain to me how the accident took place, but I couldn’t make out hardly what he did mean. It appears, though, that he was coming home along the ravine—where it’s always dark, no matter how bright the moonlight—and he jabbed his hand, as he was walking fast, up against a sharp jack oak stub—at least, he thought it must have been some such thing—and he got an awful cut. You wouldn’t believe, if you didn’t see it with your own eyes, that a stub of any kind could make such a wound! There’s a long, slanting cut clean through the palm of his hand. I wanted him to let me look in it for splinters, but he’s real touchy about it; wouldn’t even let me bathe it,” she concluded sadly.

Everybody liked Mrs. Horton, and a good many things that her husband did would have been less easily condoned by their neighbors if she had been as little of a favorite as he, and one of the things that people liked best, while finding it most incomprehensible, was that she believed in him and his good intentions most implicitly.

“I don’t see how he could possibly have run against an oak stub in a ravine,” observed Jessie, musingly. “Oaks, and especially jack oaks, grow only on the dry hillsides.” Jessie is very observing when it comes to a question of the flora of a country, and what she said was true, as Mrs. Horton hastened to admit.

“I never thought of it before, but I believe that’s so,” she said. “It might have been something else, but Jake himself said that there wasn’t any other kind of wood that he knew of, tough enough and hard enough to make such a cut as that.”

Having cared for the horses we three started for the house. “Did you have a good bed at Mrs. Riley’s?” Jessie now asked, bestowing direct attention on me for the first time. We were just entering the house, and before I could reply Jessie cried out in surprise at the unfamiliar aspect of the bed-room, where the heavy quilt still excluded the daylight from the window.

“Why, what is that for?” she asked, perceiving the cause of the semi-darkness.

I had purposely refrained from telling my story until now. Now I told it, to the consternation of my auditors. Jessie could scarcely credit the evidence of her senses, and Mrs. Horton said feelingly:

“Thank God that you have a brave heart and good sense, Leslie! If you hadn’t thought of that clause in the homestead law in time, and had gone away last night, I tell you this settlement would have been in mourning this morning! Seems to me that I just couldn’t bear for you children to lose this place now—this place that your poor pa had set his heart on! And to think that such an accident should take place so near the time of your proving up makes it so much the worse, for, if the house had gone, I don’t believe you could have got your title. No, not if you had taken down a dozen witnesses to testify to the burning. The law is strict. I doubt if the agent would have the power to give you a deed unless there was a house standing on the land at the moment that the deed was issued, no matter if he wanted to ever so badly.”

She was full of sympathy and kindness, poor soul, and, listening to her exclamations and condolences, I was sorry for her. Jessie was right: there were no jack oaks in the ravine down which Mr. Horton must have passed on the way from the north pasture to his home.

CHAPTER VII

SURMISES

Mrs. Horton and Jessie walked around the house to the bed-room window, and stood surveying the pile of rubbish beneath it, wondering greatly why a fire should break out in that place.

“The only way I can account for it is that a spark from the chimney must have fallen into this pile and set it afire,” Mrs. Horton observed, turning bits of the pile in question over with the toe of her shoe. “I’m not blaming you, Leslie, but it is true that young folks can’t be too careful with fire. I wouldn’t be a mite surprised now, if you just filled the kitchen stove full of dry stuff and set it off when you built a fire to get your supper.”

“Leslie always does use lots of kindling,” interposed Jessie, who was, it must be admitted, more careful about small savings than I.

“You may depend on it, then, that that’s just how it happened,” Mrs. Horton went on, while I remained silent. “You see, when you start a fire like that, lots of live sparks are carried up the chimney, and it’s just a mercy that there are not more houses burned than there are on account of it. I say it for your good, Leslie, when I say that I hope this will be a lesson to you; you’ve had a narrow escape. My! but it makes me shudder to think of it!”

As she stopped talking to shudder more effectively I ventured to make an observation that, it was strange, had occurred to neither Jessie nor herself:

“It took that spark—supposing the fire was started by a spark from the chimney—a long time to fall, didn’t it? It was after twelve when the fire broke out, and I had supper at six, besides—” but there I checked myself. The more I thought the matter over, the more desirable it seemed that I should keep to myself the dreadful certainty that I felt in regard to the origin of the fire. If people liked to believe that it was caused by some negligence or carelessness of mine, it would only complicate matters, beside robbing them of a comfortable conviction, for me to tell that I had had no fire on the previous evening. Yet such was the case. I had made my solitary meal of bread and milk.

“What a girl you are, to be sure!” Mrs. Horton exclaimed, in genuine admiration, as we turned back into the house. “Now, why couldn’t Jessie or I think of that! Twelve hours to fall! No, it would have been six hours falling, wouldn’t it? You said the fire broke out about midnight. Well, you can think of more things and keep more quiet about them than any ten men that ever I saw. When I think of anything I like to tell of it, and I expect likely that’s the reason that I never think of real smart things; I don’t hold on to them long enough; I pick them before they’re ripe.”

Jessie went to the stove and lifted a lid to peep inquiringly into the fire-box. “I’m not so sure that the fire wasn’t started as Mrs. Horton says,” she declared. “This stove holds fire for a long time, you know, Leslie. A gust of wind might have come up and made such a draft that the embers started to burning again.”

“If all the world were apple-pie, and all the sea were ink, and all the trees were bread and cheese, what should we have to drink?” was my not irrelevant thought. In strict accordance, however, with the character for sagacity that Mrs. Horton had just given me, I said nothing; but Mrs. Horton assented to the proposition with energy enough for both. Ralph was giving unmistakable signs of sleepiness. Mrs. Horton sat down and took him on her lap; the small head drooped on her shoulder while she went on to the creaking accompaniment of the old rocking chair. “I’ve just thought of another way in which that fire might have been started”—she evidently had it upon her conscience to furnish a satisfactory solution of the mystery—“I have been noticing that you keep matches in that china saucer over the mantel-piece, and it’s right alongside the window-sill. Now, girls, I don’t want to seem to find fault with any of your arrangements; but I do like an iron match safe, with a heavy lid, better myself; then there’s no danger of their getting out, and you can’t be too careful about such things. Suppose, now, that one of those mountain rats that are always prying around, getting into every crack and crevice that they can wedge themselves into—suppose one of them had come into the house, and crept out again with a lot of matches—they’ll eat anything—and suppose that rat went through the rubbish pile and rubbed against—”

But this line of reasoning proved too much for Jessie, who, with good cause, prided herself upon her housekeeping.

“There isn’t a hole big enough for a rat to crawl through in the house!” she declared, with some warmth.

The rooms were all lathed and plastered. Mrs. Horton looked around. “One might come in at a window,” she suggested, with less confidence.

Knowing the truth, and having in my possession the means of proving it, if need be, I took a somewhat wicked pleasure in this game of wild conjecture. It was, at all events, a satisfaction to be able to veto this last proposition.

“There were only two windows open, Mrs. Horton, and they were open only a few inches at the top,” I said.

“A rat might climb up the side of the window, and come in that way,” was the reply to this. “But”—her face suddenly brightening as a new solution of the mystery flashed upon her mind—“I don’t think it was a rat, after all, and I’ll warrant I know now just how it happened. Last night was Wednesday night, you know, and they always have those dancing-parties out at Morley’s tavern, beyond the Eastern Slope, of a Wednesday night. Lots of those Crusoe miners go to them, and they all smoke. Now what’ll you chance that as one of them was coming home—they have to go right past here—he didn’t light a match for his cigar, and when he was through with it, fling the match right down against the house, or, maybe, he threw the stub of a cigar down?”

“It might be, I suppose,” Jessie admitted, rather reluctantly. She was evidently disposed to abide by her own theory of reviving embers and falling sparks.

“Oh, I’m well-nigh sure, now that I think of it, that that was the way it happened,” Mrs. Horton insisted, pausing to brush Ralph’s damp curls back from his forehead. “You see, I wouldn’t feel so positive that it was done in just that way if it wasn’t for an experience that we had, here in the valley a long spell ago.”

“You refer to the time when the great forest was burned?” Jessie inquired rather absently. She had seated herself at the sewing machine and was busily running up the seams of Ralph’s new kilt.

“Yes; that’s the time. It was before you came here. And the fire was set in the way I spoke of. A couple of young men—they weren’t much more than boys—came up from town, and they were just at that age when they thought it a smart thing to be able to smoke a cigar without turning sick after it. They were staying at the hotel, and one day they went with a party from there up to see the marble quarries. There’d been an awful dry spell; it had lasted for weeks, and everything was just as dry as touch-wood. There were notices posted all along the roads and trails, forbidding folks building camp-fires, or anything of that kind. The boys, after they had been to the quarries, started home ahead of the others, and on foot. I don’t reckon that they’d got above a quarter of a mile from the quarries when they pulled out some cigars and matches, intending, of course, to have a smoke. Well, they had it, but it wasn’t just the kind they’d expected. First one, then the other, threw down their lighted matches, after they’d got their cigars to going. The wind was blowing hard in their faces and toward the quarry, as it happened, and the next thing they knew they heard a great roaring, and as they said afterward, two pillars of flame seemed to spring right out of the ground, one on either side of the trail, and to reach so high that they almost touched the tree-tops. In less time than I’m taking in telling of it they had reached the tree-tops, and then the two little pillars of fire became a great blazing ocean of fire up in mid-air. You know how ’tis with pine needles and cones; they make a blaze as if the end of the world had come. No wonder the poor boys were scared! It was right in the thickest part of the woods, and what with the fire roaring away before the wind on either side of them, and the clouds of smoke and sparks roaring away above the burning tree-tops, it must have been an awful sight. They were in no particular danger themselves, because the fire was going away from them, but as they stood there, blistering in the heat, they thought of their parents—their parents, who were right in the path of the flames, and in the way they acted up to that thought, you may see the difference in folks. One of them—Dick Adams, his name was—pulled his hat down over his eyes, shook out his handkerchief and tied it over his mouth to save his lungs, and said to the other, ‘If anything happens to our folks we are the ones to blame for it; come on and help;’ and with that he gave a leap down the trail as if he would overtake the fire itself. But the other boy, he wasn’t made of that kind of stuff. He just turned and ran the other way, and folks did say that he never stopped running until he reached town, twenty miles away. When poor Dick, blackened with grime and smoke, with his hair singed and his burnt shoes dropping off his feet, staggered into the open space about the quarry, there were the folks, and even the horses, all safe. They hadn’t started when they saw the fire coming, and so, knowing that they were safe where they were, they stayed. The fire swept past them on either side, and all they had to do was to wait till the trail got cool enough to travel over. There was no great damage done after all, though a great many trees were destroyed, but so were acres and acres of underbrush, and that was a big help to stockmen. Dick was pretty well done up, but he didn’t care for any more cigars, and his father paid the fine that the township’s trustees assessed against him, cheerful on that account, though he said he was sorry he couldn’t save the timber. Now, Leslie,” she concluded her story, abruptly, “if you’ll just move those hats a little I’ll lay the baby on the bed.”

After I had complied, and Ralph’s head was on a pillow instead of her arm, she came to Jessie’s side and stood regarding her work thoughtfully.

“You’re real spry on the machine, aren’t you?” she at length remarked, admiringly. “Now me, I’m as slow!” She looked around the room and continued, with seeming irrelevance: “I s’pose the furnishings must have cost you a good deal?” Her tone was very gentle.

“Yes,” Jessie returned, comprehending her meaning with the quick intuition that grief gives. “Yes; they did.”

“Well, he’s at rest. You can visit his grave. They’re worth all they cost and more, but I was thinking now if you felt like taking in a little sewing to help along until—”

“Why, I’d like to do it, dear Mrs. Horton!” Jessie interrupted, looking up with sparkling eyes. “I’ve never thought of it before, but if I could get it to do I would be so glad! Every little toward the proving up is just so much gained.”

“That is what I was thinking. I can let you have quite a little work myself, and I know there are others who will be glad of a chance to get sewing done. I declare, I’m glad I thought of it! It will be so nice for you to do something to help out right here at home. And,” she went on, her kind eyes shining, “maybe you can learn to be a dressmaker—”

“No, no!” interposed Jessie, who had her future comfortably mapped out in her mind. “I mean to be a teacher.”

“Do you? That’s a good, respectable trade, too, and a teacher you shall be if I can do anything to help you get a school.”