From Sand Hill to Pine

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FROM SAND HILL TO PINE


By Bret Harte




CONTENTS


FROM SAND HILL TO PINE


A NIECE OF SNAPSHOT HARRY'S

A TREASURE OF THE REDWOODS

A BELLE OF CANADA CITY

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE FONDA

A JACK AND JILL OF THE SIERRAS

MR. BILSON'S HOUSEKEEPER




FROM SAND HILL TO PINE




A NIECE OF SNAPSHOT HARRY'S


I

There was a slight jarring though the whole frame of the coach, a
grinding and hissing from the brakes, and then a sudden jolt as the
vehicle ran upon and recoiled from the taut pole-straps of the now
arrested horses. The murmur of a voice in the road was heard, followed
by the impatient accents of Yuba Bill, the driver.

"Wha-a-t? Speak up, can't ye?"

Here the voice uttered something in a louder key, but equally
unintelligible to the now interested and fully awakened passengers.

One of them dropped the window nearest him and looked out. He could see
the faint glistening of a rain-washed lantern near the wheelers' heads,
mingling with the stronger coach lights, and the glow of a distant open
cabin door through the leaves and branches of the roadside. The sound
of falling rain on the roof, a soft swaying of wind-tossed trees, and an
impatient movement on the box-seat were all they heard. Then Yuba Bill's
voice rose again, apparently in answer to the other.

"Why, that's half a mile away!"

"Yes, but ye might have dropped onto it in the dark, and it's all on the
down grade," responded the strange voice more audibly.

The passengers were now thoroughly aroused.

"What's up, Ned?" asked the one at the window of the nearest of two
figures that had descended from the box.

"Tree fallen across the road," said Ned, the expressman, briefly.

"I don't see no tree," responded the passenger, leaning out of the
window towards the obscurity ahead.

"Now, that's onfortnit!" said Yuba Bill grimly; "but ef any gentleman
will only lend him an opery glass, mebbe he can see round the curve and
over the other side o' the hill where it is. Now, then," addressing the
stranger with the lantern, "bring along your axes, can't ye?"

"Here's one, Bill," said an officious outside passenger, producing
the instrument he had taken from its strap in the boot. It was the
"regulation" axe, beautifully shaped, highly polished, and utterly
ineffective, as Bill well knew.

"We ain't cuttin' no kindlin's," he said scornfully; then he added
brusquely to the stranger: "Fetch out your biggest wood axe--you've got
one, ye know--and look sharp."

"I don't think Bill need be so d----d rough with the stranger,
considering he's saved the coach a very bad smash," suggested a
reflective young journalist in the next seat. "He talks as if the man
was responsible."

"He ain't quite sure if that isn't the fact," said the express
messenger, in a lowered voice.

"Why? What do you mean?" clamored the others excitedly.

"Well--THIS is about the spot where the up coach was robbed six months
ago," returned the messenger.

"Dear me!" said the lady in the back seat, rising with a half hysterical
laugh, "hadn't we better get out before they come?"

"There is not the slightest danger, madam," said a quiet, observant man,
who had scarcely spoken before, "or the expressman would not have told
us; nor would he, I fancy, have left his post beside the treasure on the
box."

The slight sarcasm implied in this was enough to redden the expressman's
cheek in the light of the coach lamp which Yuba Bill had just unshipped
and brought to the window. He would have made some tart rejoinder, but
was prevented by Yuba Bill addressing the passengers: "Ye'll have to put
up with ONE light, I reckon, until we've got this job finished."

"How long will it last, Bill?" asked the man nearest the window.

"Well," said Bill, with a contemptuous glance at the elegant coach axe
he was carrying in his hand, "considerin' these purty first-class highly
expensive hash choppers that the kempany furnishes us, I reckon it may
take an hour."

"But is there no place where we can wait?" asked the lady anxiously. "I
see a light in that house yonder."

"Ye might try it, though the kempany, as a rule, ain't in the habit
o' makin' social calls there," returned Bill, with a certain grim
significance. Then, turning to some outside passengers, he added, "Now,
then! them ez is goin' to help me tackle that tree, trot down! I
reckon that blitherin' idiot" (the stranger with the lantern, who had
disappeared) "will have sense enough to fetch us some ropes with his
darned axe."

The passengers thus addressed, apparently miners and workingmen, good
humoredly descended, all except one, who seemed disinclined to leave the
much coveted seat on the box beside the driver.

"I'll look after your places and keep my own," he said, with a laugh,
as the others followed Bill through the dripping rain. When they had
disappeared, the young journalist turned to the lady.

"If you would really like to go to that house, I will gladly accompany
you." It was possible that in addition to his youthful chivalry there
was a little youthful resentment of Yuba Bill's domineering prejudices
in his attitude. However, the quiet, observant passenger lifted a look
of approval to him, and added, in his previous level, half contemptuous
tone:--

"You'll be quite as well there as here, madam, and there is certainly no
reason for your stopping in the coach when the driver chooses to leave
it."

The passengers looked at each other. The stranger spoke with authority,
and Bill had certainly been a little arbitrary!

"I'll go too," said the passenger by the window. "And you'll come, won't
you, Ned?" he added to the express messenger. The young man hesitated;
he was recently appointed, and as yet fresh to the business--but he
was not to be taught his duty by an officious stranger! He resented the
interference youthfully by doing the very thing he would have preferred
NOT to do, and with assumed carelessness--yet feeling in his pocket to
assure himself that the key of the treasure compartment was safe--turned
to follow them.

"Won't YOU come too?" said the journalist, politely addressing the
cynical passenger.

"No, I thank you! I'll take charge of the coach," was the smiling
rejoinder, as he settled himself more comfortably in his seat.

The little procession moved away in silence. Oddly enough, no one,
except the lady, really cared to go, and two--the expressman and
journalist--would have preferred to remain on the coach. But the
national instinct of questioning any purely arbitrary authority probably
was a sufficient impulse. As they neared the opened door of what
appeared to be a four-roomed, unpainted, redwood boarded cabin, the
passenger who had occupied the seat near the window said,--

"I'll go first and sample the shanty."

He was not, however, so far in advance of them but that the others could
hear quite distinctly his offhand introduction of their party on the
threshold, and the somewhat lukewarm response of the inmates. "We
thought we'd just drop in and be sociable until the coach was ready to
start again," he continued, as the other passengers entered. "This yer
gentleman is Ned Brice, Adams & Co.'s expressman; this yer is Frank
Frenshaw, editor of the 'Mountain Banner;' this yer's a lady, so it
ain't necessary to give HER name, I reckon--even if we knowed it! Mine's
Sam Hexshill, of Hexshill & Dobbs's Flour Mills, of Stockton, whar,
ef you ever come that way, I'll be happy to return the compliment and
hospitality."

The room they had entered had little of comfort and brightness in it
except the fire of pine logs which roared and crackled in the adobe
chimney. The air would have been too warm but for the strong west wind
and rain which entered the open door freely. There was no other light
than the fire, and its tremulous and ever-changing brilliancy gave a
spasmodic mobility to the faces of those turned towards it, or threw
into stronger shadow the features that were turned away. Yet, by this
uncertain light, they could see the figures of a man and two women. The
man rose and, with a certain apathetic gesture that seemed to partake
more of weariness and long suffering than positive discourtesy, tendered
seats on chairs, boxes, and even logs to the self-invited guests. The
stage party were surprised to see that this man was the stranger who had
held the lantern in the road.

"Ah! then you didn't go with Bill to help clear the road?" said the
expressman surprisedly.

The man slowly drew up his tall, shambling figure before the fire, and
then facing them, with his hands behind him, as slowly lowered himself
again as if to bring his speech to the level of his hearers and give a
lazier and more deliberate effect to his long-drawn utterance.

"Well--no!" he said slowly.
"I--didn't--go--with--no--Bill--to--help--clear--the road!
I--don't--reckon--TO go--with--no--Bill--to--clear--ANY road! I've just
whittled this thing down to a pint, and it's this--I ain't no stage
kempany's nigger! So far as turnin' out and warnin' 'em agin goin' to
smash over a fallen tree, and slap down into the canyon with a passel of
innercent passengers, I'm that much a white man, but I ain't no NIGGER
to work clearing things away for 'em, nor I ain't no scrub to work
beside 'em." He slowly straightened himself up again, and, with his
former apathetic air, looking down upon one of the women who was setting
a coffee-pot on the coals, added, "But I reckon my old woman here kin
give you some coffee and whiskey--of you keer for it."

Unfortunately the young expressman was more loyal to Bill than
diplomatic. "If Bill's a little rough," he said, with a heightened
color, "perhaps he has some excuse for it. You forget it's only six
months ago that this coach was 'held up' not a hundred yards from this
spot."

The woman with the coffee-pot here faced about, stood up, and, either
from design or some odd coincidence, fell into the same dogged attitude
that her husband had previously taken, except that she rested her hands
on her hips. She was prematurely aged, like many of her class, and her
black, snake-like locks, twisting loose from her comb as she lifted her
head, showed threads of white against the firelight. Then with slow and
implacable deliberation she said:

"We 'forget'! Well! not much, sonny! We ain't forgot it, and we ain't
goin' to forget it, neither! We ain't bin likely to forget it for
any time the last six months. What with visitations from the county
constables, snoopin's round from 'Frisco detectives, droppin's-in from
newspaper men, and yawpin's and starin's from tramps and strangers on
the road--we haven't had a chance to disremember MUCH! And when at last
Hiram tackled the head stage agent at Marysville, and allowed that this
yer pesterin' and persecutin' had got ter stop--what did that yer head
agent tell him? Told him to 'shet his head,' and be thankful that his
'thievin' old shanty wasn't burnt down around his ears!' Forget that six
months ago the coach was held up near here? Not much, sonny--not much!"

The situation was embarrassing to the guests, as ordinary politeness
called for some expression of sympathy with their gloomy hostess, and
yet a selfish instinct of humanity warned them that there must be some
foundation for this general distrust of the public. The journalist was
troubled in his conscience; the expressman took refuge in an official
reticence; the lady coughed slightly, and drew nearer to the fire with
a vague but safe compliment to its brightness and comfort. It devolved
upon Mr. Heckshill, who felt the responsibility of his late airy
introduction of the party, to boldly keep up his role, with an equally
non-committal, light-hearted philosophy.

"Well, ma'am," he said, addressing his hostess, "it's a queer world,
and no man's got sabe enough to say what's the rights and wrongs o'
anything. Some folks believe one thing and act upon it, and other folks
think differently and act upon THAT! The only thing ye kin safely say is
that THINGS IS EZ THEY BE! My rule here and at the mill is jest to take
things ez I find 'em!"

It occurred to the journalist that Mr. Heckshill had the reputation,
in his earlier career, of "taking" such things as unoccupied lands
and timber "as he found them," without much reference to their actual
owners. Apparently he was acting upon the same principle now, as he
reached for the demijohn of whiskey with the ingenuous pleasantry, "Did
somebody say whiskey, or did I dream it?"

But this did not satisfy Frenshaw. "I suppose," he said, ignoring
Heckshill's diplomatic philosophy, "that you may have been the victim
of some misunderstanding or some unfortunate coincidence. Perhaps the
company may have confounded you with your neighbors, who are believed
to be friendly to the gang; or you may have made some injudicious
acquaintances. Perhaps"--

He was stopped by a suppressed but not unmusical giggle, which appeared
to come from the woman in the corner who had not yet spoken, and whose
face and figure in the shadow he had previously overlooked. But he could
now see that her outline was slim and graceful, and the contour of her
head charming,--facts that had evidently not escaped the observation of
the expressman and Mr. Heckshill, and that might have accounted for
the cautious reticence of the one and the comfortable moralizing of the
other.

The old woman cast an uneasy glance on the fair giggler, but replied to
Frenshaw:

"That's it! 'injerdishus acquaintances!' But just because we might
happen to have friends, or even be sorter related to folks in another
line o' business that ain't none o' ours, the kempany hain't no call to
persecute US for it! S'pose we do happen to know some one like"--

"Spit it out, aunty, now you've started in! I don't mind," said the
fair giggler, now apparently casting off all restraint in an outburst of
laughter.

"Well," said the old woman, with dogged desperation, "suppose, then,
that that young girl thar is the niece of Snapshot Harry, who stopped
the coach the last time"--

"And ain't ashamed of it, either!" interrupted the young girl, rising
and disclosing in the firelight an audacious but wonderfully pretty
face; "and supposing he IS my uncle, that ain't any cause for their
bedevilin' my poor old cousins Hiram and Sophy thar!" For all the
indignation of her words, her little white teeth flashed mischievously
in the dancing light, as if she rather enjoyed the embarrassment of
her audience, not excluding her own relatives. Evidently cousin Sophy
thought so too.

"It's all very well for you to laugh, Flo, you limb!" she retorted
querulously, yet with an admiring glance at the girl, "for ye know thar
ain't a man dare touch ye even with a word; but it's mighty hard on me
and Hiram, all the same."

"Never you mind, Sophy dear," said the girl, placing her hand half
affectionately, half humorously on the old woman's shoulder; "mebbe
I won't always be a discredit and a bother to you. Jest you hold
your hosses, and wait until uncle Harry 'holds up' the next Pioneer
Coach,"--the dancing devil in her eyes glanced as if accidentally on
the young expressman,--"and he'll make a big enough pile to send me to
Europe, and you'll be quit o' me."

The embarrassment, suspiciousness, and uneasiness of the coach party
here found relief in a half hysteric explosion of laughter, in which
even the dogged Hiram and Sophy joined. It seemed as impossible to
withstand the girl's invincible audacity as her beauty. She was quick to
perceive her advantage, and, with a responsive laugh and a picturesque
gesture of invitation, said:--

"Now that's all settled, ye'd better waltz in and have your whiskey and
coffee afore the stage starts. Ye kin comfort yourselves that it ain't
stolen or pizoned, even if it is served up to ye by Snapshot Harry's
niece!" With another easy gesture she swung the demijohn over her arm,
and, offering a tin cup to each of the men, filled them in turn.

The ice thus broken, or perhaps thus perilously skated over, the
passengers were as profuse in their thanks and apologies as they had
been constrained and artificial before. Heckshill and Frenshaw vied with
each other for a glance from the audacious Flo. If their compliments
partook of an extravagance that was at times ironical, the girl was
evidently not deceived by it, but replied in kind. Only the expressman
who seemed to have fallen under the spell of her audacious glances, was
uneasy at the license of the others, yet himself dumb towards her. The
lady discreetly drew nearer to the fire, the old woman, and her coffee;
Hiram subsided into his apathetic attitude by the fire.

A shout from the road at last proclaimed the return of Yuba Bill and his
helpers. It had the singular effect of startling the party into a vague
and uneasy consciousness of indiscretion, as if it had been the voice
of the outer world of law and order, and their manner again became
constrained. The leave-taking was hurried and perfunctory; the
diplomatic Heckshill again lapsed into glittering generalities about
"the best of friends parting." Only the expressman lingered for a moment
on the doorstep in the light of the fire and the girl's dancing eyes.

"I hope," he stammered, with a very youthful blush, "to come the next
time--with--with--a better introduction."

"Uncle Harry's," she said, with a quick laugh and a mock curtsey, as she
turned away.

Once out of hearing, the party broke into hurried comment and criticism
of the scene they had just witnessed, and particularly of the fair
actress who had played so important a part, averring their emphatic
intention of wresting the facts from Yuba Bill at once, and
cross-examining him closely; but oddly enough, reaching the coach and
that redoubted individual, no one seemed to care to take the initiative,
and they all scrambled hurriedly to their seats without a word. How far
Yuba Bill's irritability and imperious haste contributed to this, or a
fear that he might in turn catechise them kept them silent, no one
knew. The cynically observant passenger was not there; he and the sole
occupant of the box-seat, they were told, had joined the clearing party
some moments before, and would be picked up by Yuba Bill later on.

Five minutes after Bill had gathered up the reins, they reached the
scene of obstruction. The great pine-tree which had fallen from the
steep bank above and stretched across the road had been partly lopped
of its branches, divided in two lengths, which were now rolled to either
side of the track, leaving barely space for the coach to pass. The
huge vehicle "slowed up" as Yuba Bill skillfully guided his six horses
through this narrow alley, whose tassels of pine, glistening with wet,
brushed the panels and sides of the coach, and effectually excluded any
view from its windows. Seen from the coach top, the horses appeared to
be cleaving their way through a dark, shining olive sea, that parted
before and closed behind them, as they slowly passed. The leaders were
just emerging from it, and Bill was gathering up his slackened reins,
when a peremptory voice called, "Halt!" At the same moment the coach
lights flashed upon a masked and motionless horseman in the road. Bill
made an impulsive reach for his whip, but in the same instant checked
himself, reined in his horses with a suppressed oath, and sat perfectly
rigid. Not so the expressman, who caught up his rifle, but it was
arrested by Bill's arm, and his voice in his ear!

"Too late!--we're covered!--don't be a d----d fool!"

The inside passengers, still encompassed by obscurity, knew only that
the stage had stopped. The "outsiders" knew, by experience, that they
were covered by unseen guns in the wayside branches, and scarcely moved.

"I didn't think it was the square thing to stop you, Bill, till you'd
got through your work," said a masterful but not unpleasant voice, "and
if you'll just hand down the express box, I'll pass you and the rest of
your load through free. But as we're both in a hurry, you'd better look
lively about it."

"Hand it down," said Bill gruffly to the expressman.

The expressman turned with a white check but blazing eyes to the
compartment below his seat. He lingered, apparently in some difficulty
with the lock of the compartment, but finally brought out the box and
handed it to another armed and masked figure that appeared mysteriously
from the branches beside the wheels.

"Thank you!" said the voice; "you can slide on now."

"And thank you for nothing," said Bill, gathering up his reins. "It's
the first time any of your kind had to throw down a tree to hold me up!"

"You're lying, Bill!--though you don't know it," said the voice
cheerfully. "Far from throwing down a tree to stop you, it was I sent
word along the road to warn you from crashing down upon it, and sending
you and your load to h-ll before your time! Drive on!"

The angry Bill waited for no second comment, but laying his whip over
the backs of his team, drove furiously forward. So rapidly had the whole
scene passed that the inside passengers knew nothing of it, and even
those on the top of the coach roused from their stupor and inglorious
inaction only to cling desperately to the terribly swaying coach as it
thundered down the grade and try to keep their equilibrium. Yet,
furious as was their speed, Yuba Bill could not help noticing that the
expressman from time to time cast a hurried glance behind him. Bill knew
that the young man had shown readiness and nerve in the attack, although
both were hopeless; yet he was so much concerned at his set white face
and compressed lips that when, at the end of three miles' unabated
speed, they galloped up to the first station, he seized the young man
by the arm, and, as the clamor of the news they had brought rose around
them, dragged him past the wondering crowd, caught a decanter from the
bar, and, opening the door of a side room, pushed him into it and closed
the door behind them.

"Look yar, Brice! Stop it! Quit it right thar!" he said emphatically,
laying his large hand on the young fellow's shoulder. "Be a man! You've
shown you are one, green ez you are, for you had the sand in ye--the
clear grit to-night, yet you'd have been a dead man now, if I hadn't
stopped ye! Man! you had no show from the beginning! You've done your
level best to save your treasure, and I'm your witness to the kempany,
and proud of it, too! So shet your head and--and," pouring out a glass
of whiskey, "swaller that!"

But Brice waved him aside with burning eyes and dry lips.

"You don't know it all, Bill!" he said, with a half choked voice.

"All what?"

"Swear that you'll keep it a secret," he said feverishly, gripping
Bill's arm in turn, "and I'll tell you."

"Go on!"

"THE COACH WAS ROBBED BEFORE THAT!"

"Wot yer say?" ejaculated Bill.

"The treasure--a packet of greenbacks--had been taken from the box
before the gang stopped us!"

"The h-ll, you say!"

"Listen! When you told me to hand down the box, I had an idea--a d----d
fool one, perhaps--of taking that package out and jumping from the coach
with it. I knew they would fire at me only; I might get away, but if
they killed me, I'd have done only my duty, and nobody else would have
got hurt. But when I got to the box I found that the lock had been
forced and the money was gone. I managed to snap the lock again before
I handed it down. I thought they might discover it at once and chase us,
but they didn't."

"And then thar war no greenbacks in the box that they took?" gasped
Bill, with staring eyes.

"No!"

Bill raised his hand in the air as if in solemn adjuration, and then
brought it down on his knee, doubling up in a fit of uncontrollable but
perfectly noiseless laughter. "Oh, Lord!" he gasped, "hol' me afore I
bust right open! Hush," he went on, with a jerk of his fingers towards
the next room, "not a word o' this to any one! It's too much to keep,
I know; it's nearly killing me! but we must swaller it ourselves! Oh,
Jerusalem the Golden! Oh, Brice! Think o' that face o' Snapshot Harry's
ez he opened that treasure box afore his gang in the brush! And he
allers so keen and so easy and so cock sure! Created snakes! I'd go
through this every trip for one sight of him as he just riz up from that
box and cussed!" He again shook with inward convulsions till his face
grew purple, and even the red came back to the younger man's cheek.

"But this don't bring the money back, Bill," said Brice gloomily.

Yuba Bill swallowed the glass of whiskey at a gulp, wiped his mouth and
eyes, smothered a second explosion, and then gravely confronted Brice.

"When do you think it was taken, and how?"

"It must have been taken when I left the coach on the road and went
over to that settler's cabin," said Brice bitterly. "Yet I believed
everything was safe, and I left two men--both passengers--one inside and
one on the box, that man who sat the other side of you."

"Jee whillikins!" ejaculated Bill, with his hand to his forehead, "the
men I clean forgot to pick up in the road, and now I reckon they never
intended to be picked up, either."