Openings in the Old Trail

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OPENINGS IN THE OLD TRAIL

by Bret Harte




CONTENTS


OPENINGS IN THE OLD TRAIL

I. A MERCURY OF THE FOOT-HILLS
II. COLONEL STARBOTTLE FOR THE PLAINTIFF
III. THE LANDLORD OF THE BIG FLUME HOTEL
IV. A BUCKEYE HOLLOW INHERITANCE
V. THE REINCARNATION OF SMITH
VI. LANTY FOSTER'S MISTAKE
VII. AN ALI BABA OF THE SIERRAS
VIII. MISS PEGGY'S PROTEGES
IX. THE GODDESS OF EXCELSIOR





OPENINGS IN THE OLD TRAIL

by Bret Harte




A MERCURY OF THE FOOT-HILLS


It was high hot noon on the Casket Ridge. Its very scant shade was
restricted to a few dwarf Scotch firs, and was so perpendicularly cast
that Leonidas Boone, seeking shelter from the heat, was obliged to draw
himself up under one of them, as if it were an umbrella. Occasionally,
with a boy's perversity, he permitted one bared foot to protrude beyond
the sharply marked shadow until the burning sun forced him to draw it in
again with a thrill of satisfaction. There was no earthly reason why
he had not sought the larger shadows of the pine-trees which reared
themselves against the Ridge on the slope below him, except that he was
a boy, and perhaps even more superstitious and opinionated than most
boys. Having got under this tree with infinite care, he had made up his
mind that he would not move from it until its line of shade reached and
touched a certain stone on the trail near him! WHY he did this he did
not know, but he clung to his sublime purpose with the courage and
tenacity of a youthful Casabianca. He was cramped, tickled by dust and
fir sprays; he was supremely uncomfortable--but he stayed! A woodpecker
was monotonously tapping in an adjacent pine, with measured intervals of
silence, which he always firmly believed was a certain telegraphy of
the bird's own making; a green-and-gold lizard flashed by his foot
to stiffen itself suddenly with a rigidity equal to his own. Still HE
stirred not. The shadow gradually crept nearer the mystic stone--and
touched it. He sprang up, shook himself, and prepared to go about
his business. This was simply an errand to the post-office at the
cross-roads, scarcely a mile from his father's house. He was already
halfway there. He had taken only the better part of one hour for this
desultory journey!

However, he now proceeded on his way, diverging only to follow a fresh
rabbit-track a few hundred yards, to note that the animal had doubled
twice against the wind, and then, naturally, he was obliged to look
closely for other tracks to determine its pursuers. He paused also,
but only for a moment, to rap thrice on the trunk of the pine where the
woodpecker was at work, which he knew would make it cease work for
a time--as it did. Having thus renewed his relations with nature, he
discovered that one of the letters he was taking to the post-office had
slipped in some mysterious way from the bosom of his shirt, where he
carried them, past his waist-band into his trouser-leg, and was about to
make a casual delivery of itself on the trail. This caused him to take
out his letters and count them, when he found one missing. He had been
given four letters to post--he had only three. There was a big one in
his father's handwriting, two indistinctive ones of his mother's, and a
smaller one of his sister's--THAT was gone! Not at all disconcerted,
he calmly retraced his steps, following his own tracks minutely, with
a grim face and a distinct delight in the process, while
looking--perfunctorily--for the letter. In the midst of this slow
progress a bright idea struck him. He walked back to the fir-tree where
he had rested, and found the lost missive. It had slipped out of his
shirt when he shook himself. He was not particularly pleased. He knew
that nobody would give him credit for his trouble in going back for
it, or his astuteness in guessing where it was. He heaved the sigh of
misunderstood genius, and again started for the post-office. This time
he carried the letters openly and ostentatiously in his hand.

Presently he heard a voice say, "Hey!" It was a gentle, musical
voice,--a stranger's voice, for it evidently did not know how to call
him, and did not say, "Oh, Leonidas!" or "You--look here!" He was
abreast of a little clearing, guarded by a low stockade of bark palings,
and beyond it was a small white dwelling-house. Leonidas knew the place
perfectly well. It belonged to the superintendent of a mining tunnel,
who had lately rented it to some strangers from San Francisco. Thus much
he had heard from his family. He had a mountain boy's contempt for city
folks, and was not himself interested in them. Yet as he heard the
call, he was conscious of a slightly guilty feeling. He might have been
trespassing in following the rabbit's track; he might have been seen by
some one when he lost the letter and had to go back for it--all grown-up
people had a way of offering themselves as witnesses against him! He
scowled a little as he glanced around him. Then his eye fell on the
caller on the other side of the stockade.

To his surprise it was a woman: a pretty, gentle, fragile creature, all
soft muslin and laces, with her fingers interlocked, and leaning both
elbows on the top of the stockade as she stood under the checkered
shadow of a buckeye.

"Come here--please--won't you?" she said pleasantly.

It would have been impossible to resist her voice if Leonidas had wanted
to, which he didn't. He walked confidently up to the fence. She really
was very pretty, with eyes like his setter's, and as caressing. And
there were little puckers and satiny creases around her delicate
nostrils and mouth when she spoke, which Leonidas knew were
"expression."

"I--I"--she began, with charming hesitation; then suddenly, "What's your
name?"

"Leonidas."

"Leonidas! That's a pretty name!" He thought it DID sound pretty. "Well,
Leonidas, I want you to be a good boy and do a great favor for me,--a
very great favor."

Leonidas's face fell. This kind of prelude and formula was familiar to
him. It was usually followed by, "Promise me that you will never swear
again," or, "that you will go straight home and wash your face," or some
other irrelevant personality. But nobody with that sort of eyes had ever
said it. So he said, a little shyly but sincerely, "Yes, ma'am."

"You are going to the post-office?"

This seemed a very foolish, womanish question, seeing that he was
holding letters in his hand; but he said, "Yes."

"I want you to put a letter of mine among yours and post them all
together," she said, putting one little hand to her bosom and drawing
out a letter. He noticed that she purposely held the addressed side so
that he could not see it, but he also noticed that her hand was
small, thin, and white, even to a faint tint of blue in it, unlike
his sister's, the baby's, or any other hand he had ever seen. "Can you
read?" she said suddenly, withdrawing the letter.

The boy flushed slightly at the question. "Of course I can," he said
proudly.

"Of course, certainly," she repeated quickly; "but," she added, with
a mischievous smile, "you mustn't NOW! Promise me! Promise me that you
won't read this address, but just post the letter, like one of your own,
in the letter-box with the others."

Leonidas promised readily; it seemed to him a great fuss about nothing;
perhaps it was some kind of game or a bet. He opened his sunburnt hand,
holding his own letters, and she slipped hers, face downward, between
them. Her soft fingers touched his in the operation, and seemed to leave
a pleasant warmth behind them.

"Promise me another thing," she added; "promise me you won't say a word
of this to any one."

"Of course!" said Leonidas.

"That's a good boy, and I know you will keep your word." She hesitated
a moment, smilingly and tentatively, and then held out a bright
half-dollar. Leonidas backed from the fence. "I'd rather not," he said
shyly.

"But as a present from ME?"

Leonidas colored--he was really proud; and he was also bright enough to
understand that the possession of such unbounded wealth would provoke
dangerous inquiry at home. But he didn't like to say it, and only
replied, "I can't."

She looked at him curiously. "Then--thank you," she said, offering her
white hand, which felt like a bird in his. "Now run on, and don't let
me keep you any longer." She drew back from the fence as she spoke, and
waved him a pretty farewell. Leonidas, half sorry, half relieved, darted
away.

He ran to the post-office, which he never had done before. Loyally he
never looked at her letter, nor, indeed, at his own again, swinging
the hand that held them far from his side. He entered the post-office
directly, going at once to the letter-box and depositing the precious
missive with the others. The post-office was also the "country store,"
and Leonidas was in the habit of still further protracting his errands
there by lingering in that stimulating atmosphere of sugar, cheese, and
coffee. But to-day his stay was brief, so transitory that the postmaster
himself inferred audibly that "old man Boone must have been tanning Lee
with a hickory switch." But the simple reason was that Leonidas wished
to go back to the stockade fence and the fair stranger, if haply she
was still there. His heart sank as, breathless with unwonted haste, he
reached the clearing and the empty buckeye shade. He walked slowly and
with sad diffidence by the deserted stockade fence. But presently his
quick eye discerned a glint of white among the laurels near the house.
It was SHE, walking with apparent indifference away from him towards the
corner of the clearing and the road. But this he knew would bring her
to the end of the stockade fence, where he must pass--and it did. She
turned to him with a bright smile of affected surprise. "Why, you're as
swift-footed as Mercury!"

Leonidas understood her perfectly. Mercury was the other name for
quicksilver--and that was lively, you bet! He had often spilt some on
the floor to see it move. She must be awfully cute to have noticed it
too--cuter than his sisters. He was quite breathless with pleasure.

"I put your letter in the box all right," he burst out at last.

"Without any one seeing it?" she asked.

"Sure pop! nary one! The postmaster stuck out his hand to grab it, but I
just let on that I didn't see him, and shoved it in myself."

"You're as sharp as you're good," she said smilingly. "Now, there's just
ONE thing more I want you to do. Forget all about this--won't you?"

Her voice was very caressing. Perhaps that was why he said boldly: "Yes,
ma'am, all except YOU."

"Dear me, what a compliment! How old are you?"

"Goin' on fifteen," said Leonidas confidently.

"And going very fast," said the lady mischievously. "Well, then, you
needn't forget ME. On the contrary," she added, after looking at him
curiously, "I would rather you'd remember me. Good-by--or, rather,
good-afternoon--if I'm to be remembered, Leon."

"Good-afternoon, ma'am."

She moved away, and presently disappeared among the laurels. But her
last words were ringing in his ears. "Leon"--everybody else called him
"Lee" for brevity; "Leon"--it was pretty as she said it.

He turned away. But it so chanced that their parting was not to pass
unnoticed, for, looking up the hill, Leonidas perceived his elder sister
and little brother coming down the road, and knew that they must have
seen him from the hilltop. It was like their "snoopin'"!

They ran to him eagerly.

"You were talking to the stranger," said his sister breathlessly.

"She spoke to me first," said Leonidas, on the defensive.

"What did she say?"

"Wanted to know the eleckshun news," said Leonidas with cool mendacity,
"and I told her."

This improbable fiction nevertheless satisfied them. "What was she like?
Oh, do tell us, Lee!" continued his sister.

Nothing would have delighted him more than to expatiate upon her
loveliness, the soft white beauty of her hands, the "cunning" little
puckers around her lips, her bright tender eyes, the angelic texture
of her robes, and the musical tinkle of her voice. But Leonidas had no
confidant, and what healthy boy ever trusted his sister in such matter!
"YOU saw what she was like," he said, with evasive bluntness.

"But, Lee"--

But Lee was adamant. "Go and ask her," he said.

"Like as not you were sassy to her, and she shut you up," said his
sister artfully. But even this cruel suggestion, which he could have so
easily flouted, did not draw him, and his ingenious relations flounced
disgustedly away.

But Leonidas was not spared any further allusion to the fair stranger;
for the fact of her having spoken to him was duly reported at home, and
at dinner his reticence was again sorely attacked. "Just like her, in
spite of all her airs and graces, to hang out along the fence like any
ordinary hired girl, jabberin' with anybody that went along the road,"
said his mother incisively. He knew that she didn't like her new
neighbors, so this did not surprise nor greatly pain him. Neither did
the prosaic facts that were now first made plain to him. His divinity
was a Mrs. Burroughs, whose husband was conducting a series of mining
operations, and prospecting with a gang of men on the Casket Ridge.
As his duty required his continual presence there, Mrs. Burroughs was
forced to forego the civilized pleasures of San Francisco for a frontier
life, for which she was ill fitted, and in which she had no interest.
All this was a vague irrelevance to Leonidas, who knew her only as a
goddess in white who had been familiar to him, and kind, and to whom he
was tied by the delicious joy of having a secret in common, and having
done her a special favor. Healthy youth clings to its own impressions,
let reason, experience, and even facts argue ever to the contrary.

So he kept her secret and his intact, and was rewarded a few days
afterwards by a distant view of her walking in the garden, with a man
whom he recognized as her husband. It is needless to say that, without
any extraneous thought, the man suffered in Leonidas's estimation by his
propinquity to the goddess, and that he deemed him vastly inferior.

It was a still greater reward to his fidelity that she seized an
opportunity when her husband's head was turned to wave her hand to him.
Leonidas did not approach the fence, partly through shyness and partly
through a more subtle instinct that this man was not in the secret. He
was right, for only the next day, as he passed to the post-office, she
called him to the fence.

"Did you see me wave my hand to you yesterday?" she asked pleasantly.

"Yes, ma'am; but"--he hesitated--"I didn't come up, for I didn't think
you wanted me when any one else was there."

She laughed merrily, and lifting his straw hat from his head, ran the
fingers of the other hand through his damp curls. "You're the brightest,
dearest boy I ever knew, Leon," she said, dropping her pretty face to
the level of his own, "and I ought to have remembered it. But I
don't mind telling you I was dreadfully frightened lest you might
misunderstand me and come and ask for another letter--before HIM." As
she emphasized the personal pronoun, her whole face seemed to change:
the light of her blue eyes became mere glittering points, her nostrils
grew white and contracted, and her pretty little mouth seemed to narrow
into a straight cruel line, like a cat's. "Not a word ever to HIM,
of all men! Do you hear?" she said almost brusquely. Then, seeing the
concern in the boy's face, she laughed, and added explanatorily: "He's a
bad, bad man, Leon, remember that."

The fact that she was speaking of her husband did not shock the boy's
moral sense in the least. The sacredness of those relations, and even of
blood kinship, is, I fear, not always so clear to the youthful mind as
we fondly imagine. That Mr. Burroughs was a bad man to have excited
this change in this lovely woman was Leonidas's only conclusion. He
remembered how his sister's soft, pretty little kitten, purring on her
lap, used to get its back up and spit at the postmaster's yellow hound.

"I never wished to come unless you called me first," he said frankly.

"What?" she said, in her half playful, half reproachful, but wholly
caressing way. "You mean to say you would never come to see me unless I
sent for you? Oh, Leon! and you'd abandon me in that way?"

But Leonidas was set in his own boyish superstition. "I'd just delight
in being sent for by you any time, Mrs. Burroughs, and you kin always
find me," he said shyly, but doggedly; "but"--He stopped.

"What an opinionated young gentleman! Well, I see I must do all the
courting. So consider that I sent for you this morning. I've got another
letter for you to mail." She put her hand to her breast, and out of the
pretty frillings of her frock produced, as before, with the same faint
perfume of violets, a letter like the first. But it was unsealed. "Now,
listen, Leon; we are going to be great friends--you and I." Leonidas
felt his cheeks glowing. "You are going to do me another great favor,
and we are going to have a little fun and a great secret all by our own
selves. Now, first, have you any correspondent--you know--any one who
writes to you--any boy or girl--from San Francisco?"

Leonidas's cheeks grew redder--alas! from a less happy consciousness. He
never received any letters; nobody ever wrote to him. He was obliged to
make this shameful admission.

Mrs. Burroughs looked thoughtful. "But you have some friend in San
Francisco--some one who MIGHT write to you?" she suggested pleasantly.

"I knew a boy once who went to San Francisco," said Leonidas doubtfully.
"At least, he allowed he was goin' there."

"That will do," said Mrs. Burroughs. "I suppose your parents know him or
of him?"

"Why," said Leonidas, "he used to live here."

"Better still. For, you see, it wouldn't be strange if he DID write.
What was the gentleman's name?"

"Jim Belcher," returned Leonidas hesitatingly, by no means sure that the
absent Belcher knew how to write. Mrs. Burroughs took a tiny pencil from
her belt, opened the letter she was holding in her hand, and apparently
wrote the name in it. Then she folded it and sealed it, smiling
charmingly at Leonidas's puzzled face.

"Now, Leon, listen; for here is the favor I am asking. Mr. Jim
Belcher"--she pronounced the name with great gravity--"will write to you
in a few days. But inside of YOUR letter will be a little note to me,
which you will bring me. You can show your letter to your family, if
they want to know who it is from; but no one must see MINE. Can you
manage that?"

"Yes," said Leonidas. Then, as the whole idea flashed upon his quick
intelligence, he smiled until he showed his dimples. Mrs. Burroughs
leaned forward over the fence, lifted his torn straw hat, and dropped
a fluttering little kiss on his forehead. It seemed to the boy, flushed
and rosy as a maid, as if she had left a shining star there for every
one to see.

"Don't smile like that, Leon, you're positively irresistible! It will be
a nice little game, won't it? Nobody in it but you and me--and Belcher!
We'll outwit them yet. And, you see, you'll be obliged to come to me,
after all, without my asking."

They both laughed; indeed, quite a dimpled, bright-eyed, rosy, innocent
pair, though I think Leonidas was the more maidenly.

"And," added Leonidas, with breathless eagerness, "I can sometimes write
to--to--Jim, and inclose your letter."

"Angel of wisdom! certainly. Well, now, let's see--have you got any
letters for the post to-day?" He colored again, for in anticipation of
meeting her he had hurried up the family post that morning. He held out
his letters: she thrust her own among them. "Now," she said, laying her
cool, soft hand against his hot cheek, "run along, dear; you must not be
seen loitering here."

Leonidas ran off, buoyed up on ambient air. It seemed just like a
fairy-book. Here he was, the confidant of the most beautiful creature he
had seen, and there was a mysterious letter coming to him--Leonidas--and
no one to know why. And now he had a "call" to see her often; she would
not forget him--he needn't loiter by the fencepost to see if she wanted
him--and his boyish pride and shyness were appeased. There was no
question of moral ethics raised in Leonidas's mind; he knew that it
would not be the real Jim Belcher who would write to him, but that made
the prospect the more attractive. Nor did another circumstance trouble
his conscience. When he reached the post-office, he was surprised to see
the man whom he knew to be Mr. Burroughs talking with the postmaster.
Leonidas brushed by him and deposited his letters in the box in
discreet triumph. The postmaster was evidently officially resenting some
imputation on his carelessness, and, concluding his defense, "No, sir,"
he said, "you kin bet your boots that ef any letter hez gone astray for
you or your wife--Ye said your wife, didn't ye?"

"Yes," said Burroughs hastily, with a glance around the shop.

"Well, for you or anybody at your house--it ain't here that's the fault.
You hear me! I know every letter that comes in and goes outer this
office, I reckon, and handle 'em all,"--Leonidas pricked up his
ears,--"and if anybody oughter know, it's me. Ye kin paste that in your
hat, Mr. Burroughs." Burroughs, apparently disconcerted by the intrusion
of a third party--Leonidas--upon what was evidently a private inquiry,
murmured something surlily, and passed out.

Leonidas was puzzled. That big man seemed to be "snoopin'" around for
something! He knew that he dared not touch the letter-bag,--Leonidas had
heard somewhere that it was a deadly crime to touch any letters after
the Government had got hold of them once, and he had no fears for the
safety of hers. But ought he not go back at once and tell her about
her husband's visit, and the alarming fact that the postmaster was
personally acquainted with all the letters? He instantly saw, too, the
wisdom of her inclosing her letter hereafter in another address. Yet he
finally resolved not to tell her to-day,--it would look like "hanging
round" again; and--another secret reason--he was afraid that any
allusion to her husband's interference would bring back that change
in her beautiful face which he did not like. The better to resist
temptation, he went back another way.

It must not be supposed that, while Leonidas indulged in this secret
passion for the beautiful stranger, it was to the exclusion of his
boyish habits. It merely took the place of his intellectual visions and
his romantic reading. He no longer carried books in his pocket on his
lazy rambles. What were mediaeval legends of high-born ladies and their
pages to this real romance of himself and Mrs. Burroughs? What were the
exploits of boy captains and juvenile trappers and the Indian maidens
and Spanish senoritas to what was now possible to himself and his
divinity here--upon Casket Ridge! The very ground around her was now
consecrated to romance and adventure. Consequently, he visited a
few traps on his way back which he had set for "jackass-rabbits" and
wildcats,--the latter a vindictive reprisal for aggression upon an
orphan brood of mountain quail which he had taken under his protection.
For, while he nourished a keen love of sport, it was controlled by a
boy's larger understanding of nature: a pantheistic sympathy with
man and beast and plant, which made him keenly alive to the strange
cruelties of creation, revealed to him some queer animal feuds, and made
him a chivalrous partisan of the weaker. He had even gone out of his way
to defend, by ingenious contrivances of his own, the hoard of a golden
squirrel and the treasures of some wild bees from a predatory bear,
although it did not prevent him later from capturing the squirrel by an
equally ingenious contrivance, and from eventually eating some of the
honey.

He was late home that evening. But this was "vacation,"--the district
school was closed, and but for the household "chores," which occupied
his early mornings, each long summer day was a holiday. So two or three
passed; and then one morning, on his going to the post-office, the
postmaster threw down upon the counter a real and rather bulky letter,
duly stamped, and addressed to Mr. Leonidas Boone! Leonidas was too
discreet to open it before witnesses, but in the solitude of the
trail home broke the seal. It contained another letter with no
address--clearly the one SHE expected--and, more marvelous still, a
sheaf of trout-hooks, with delicate gut-snells such as Leonidas had
only dared to dream of. The letter to himself was written in a clear,
distinct hand, and ran as follows:--


DEAR LEE,--How are you getting on on old Casket Ridge? It seems a coon's
age since you and me was together, and times I get to think I must just
run up and see you! We're having bully times in 'Frisco, you bet! though
there ain't anything wild worth shucks to go to see--'cept the sea
lions at the Cliff House. They're just stunning--big as a grizzly, and
bigger--climbing over a big rock or swimming in the sea like an otter or
muskrat. I'm sending you some snells and hooks, such as you can't get at
Casket. Use the fine ones for pot-holes and the bigger ones for running
water or falls. Let me know when you've got 'em. Write to Lock Box No.
1290. That's where dad's letters come. So no more at present.