Project Gutenberg Etext Jeff Briggs's Love Story, by Bret Harte
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Title:  Jeff Briggs's Love Story

Author:  Bret Harte

July, 2001  [Etext #2695]


Project Gutenberg Etext Jeff Briggs's Love Story, by Bret Harte
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JEFF BRIGGS'S LOVE STORY

by Bret Harte




JEFF BRIGGS'S LOVE STORY.


I.


It was raining and blowing at Eldridge's Crossing.  From the 
stately pine-trees on the hill-tops, which were dignifiedly 
protesting through their rigid spines upward, to the hysterical 
willows in the hollow, that had whipped themselves into a maudlin 
fury, there was a general tumult.  When the wind lulled, the rain 
kept up the distraction, firing long volleys across the road, 
letting loose miniature cataracts from the hill-sides to brawl in 
the ditches, and beating down the heavy heads of wild oats on the 
levels; when the rain ceased for a moment the wind charged over the 
already defeated field, ruffled the gullies, scattered the spray 
from the roadside pines, and added insult to injury.  But both wind 
and rain concentrated their energies in a malevolent attempt to 
utterly disperse and scatter the "Half-way House," which seemed to 
have wholly lost its way, and strayed into the open, where, dazed 
and bewildered, unprepared and unprotected, it was exposed to the 
taunting fury of the blast.  A loose, shambling, disjointed, 
hastily built structure--representing the worst features of Pioneer 
renaissance--it rattled its loose window-sashes like chattering 
teeth, banged its ill-hung shutters, and admitted so much of the 
invading storm, that it might have blown up or blown down with 
equal facility.

Jefferson Briggs, proprietor and landlord of the "Half-way House," 
had just gone through the formality of closing his house for the 
night, hanging dangerously out of the window in the vain attempt to 
subdue a rebellious shutter that had evidently entered into 
conspiracy with the invaders, and, shutting a door as against a 
sheriff's posse, was going to bed--i. e., to read himself asleep, 
as was his custom.  As he entered his little bedroom in the attic 
with a highly exciting novel in his pocket and a kerosene lamp in 
his hand, the wind, lying in wait for him, instantly extinguished 
his lamp and slammed the door behind him.  Jefferson Briggs 
relighted the lamp, as if confidentially, in a corner, and, 
shielding it in the bosom of his red flannel shirt, which gave him 
the appearance of an illuminated shrine, hung a heavy bear-skin 
across the window, and then carefully deposited his lamp upon a 
chair at his bedside.  This done, he kicked off his boots, flung 
them into a corner, and, rolling himself in a blanket, lay down 
upon the bed.  A habit of early rising, bringing with it, 
presumably, the proverbial accompaniment of health, wisdom, and 
pecuniary emoluments, had also brought with it certain ideas of the 
effeminacy of separate toilettes and the virtue of readiness.

In a few moments he was deep in a chapter.

A vague pecking at his door--as of an unseasonable woodpecker, 
finally asserted itself to his consciousness.  "Come in," he said, 
with his eye still on the page.

The door opened to a gaunt figure, partly composed of bed-quilt and 
partly of plaid shawl.  A predominance of the latter and a long 
wisp of iron-gray hair determined her sex.  She leaned against the 
post with an air of fatigue, half moral and half physical.

"How ye kin lie thar, abed, Jeff, and read and smoke on sich a 
night!  The sperrit o' the Lord abroad over the yearth--and up 
stage not gone by yet.  Well, well! it's well thar ez SOME EZ CAN'T 
SLEEP."

"The up coach, like as not, is stopped by high water on the North 
Fork, ten miles away, aunty," responded Jeff, keeping to the facts.  
Possibly not recognizing the hand of the beneficent Creator in the 
rebellious window shutter, he avoided theology.

"Well," responded the figure, with an air of delivering an unheeded 
and thankless warning, "it is not for ME to say.  P'raps it's all 
His wisdom that some will keep to their own mind.  It's well ez 
some hezn't narves, and kin luxuriate in terbacker in the night 
watches.  But He says, 'I'll come like a thief in the night!'--like 
a thief in the night, Jeff."

Totally unable to reconcile this illustration with the delayed 
"Pioneer" coach and Yuba Bill, its driver, Jeff lay silent.  In his 
own way, perhaps, he was uneasy--not to say shocked--at his aunt's 
habitual freedom of scriptural quotation, as that good lady herself 
was with an occasional oath from his lips; a fact, by the way, not 
generally understood by purveyors of Scripture, licensed and 
unlicensed.

"I'd take a pull at them bitters, aunty," said Jeff feebly, with 
his wandering eye still recurring to his page.  "They'll do ye a 
power of good in the way o' calmin' yer narves."

"Ef I was like some folks I wouldn't want bitters--though made 
outer the simplest yarbs of the yearth, with jest enough sperrit to 
bring out the vartoos--ez Deacon Stoer's Balm 'er Gilead is--what 
yer meaning?  Ef I was like some folks I could lie thar and smoke 
in the lap o' idleness--with fourteen beds in the house empty, and 
nary lodger for one of 'em.  Ef I was that indifferent to havin' 
invested my fortin in the good will o' this house, and not ez much 
ez a single transient lookin' in, I could lie down and take comfort 
in profane literatoor.  But it ain't in me to do it.  And it wasn't 
your father's way, Jeff, neither!"

As the elder Briggs's way had been to seek surcease from such 
trouble at the gambling table, and eventually, in suicide, Jeff 
could not deny it.  But he did not say that a full realization of 
his unhappy venture overcame him as he closed the blinds of the 
hotel that night; and that the half desperate idea of abandoning it 
then and there to the warring elements that had resented his 
trespass on Nature seemed to him an act of simple reason and 
justice.  He did not say this, for easy-going natures are not apt 
to explain the processes by which their content or resignation is 
reached, and are therefore supposed to have none.  Keeping to the 
facts, he simply suggested the weather was unfavorable to 
travelers, and again found his place on the page before him.  
Fixing it with his thumb, he looked up resignedly.  The figure 
wearily detached itself from the door-post, and Jeff's eyes fell on 
his book.  "You won't stop, aunty?" he asked mechanically, as if 
reading aloud from the page; but she was gone.

A little ashamed, although much relieved, Jeff fell back again to 
literature, interrupted only by the charging of the wind and the 
heavy volleys of rain.  Presently he found himself wondering if a 
certain banging were really a shutter, and then, having settled in 
his mind that it WAS, he was startled by a shout.  Another, and in 
the road before the house!

Jeff put down the book, and marked the place by turning down the 
leaf, being one of that large class of readers whose mental 
faculties are butter-fingered, and easily slip their hold.  Then he 
resumed his boots and was duly caparisoned.  He extinguished the 
kerosene lamp, and braved the outer air, and strong currents of the 
hall and stairway in the darkness.  Lighting two candles in the 
bar-room, he proceeded to unlock the hall door.  At the same 
instant a furious blast shook the house, the door yielded slightly 
and impelled a thin, meek-looking stranger violently against Jeff, 
who still struggled with it.

"An accident has occurred," began the stranger, "and"--but here the 
wind charged again, blew open the door, pinned Jeff behind it back 
against the wall, overturned the dripping stranger, dashed up the 
staircase, and slammed every door in the house, ending triumphantly 
with No. 14, and a crash of glass in the window.

"'Come, rouse up!" said Jeff, still struggling with the door, 
"rouse up and lend a hand yer!"

Thus abjured, the stranger crept along the wall towards Jeff and 
began again, "We have met with an accident."  But here another and 
mightier gust left him speechless, covered him with spray of a 
wildly disorganized water-spout that, dangling from the roof, 
seemed to be playing on the front door, drove him into black 
obscurity and again sandwiched his host between the door and the 
wall.  Then there was a lull, and in the midst of it Yuba Bill, 
driver of the "Pioneer" coach, quietly and coolly, impervious in 
waterproof, walked into the hall, entered the bar-room, took a 
candle, and, going behind the bar, selected a bottle, critically 
examined it, and, returning, poured out a quantity of whiskey in a 
glass and gulped it in a single draught.

All this while Jeff was closing the door, and the meek-looking man 
was coming into the light again.

Yuba Bill squared his elbows behind him and rested them on the bar, 
crossed his legs easily and awaited them.  In reply to Jeff's 
inquiring but respectful look, he said shortly--

"Oh, you're thar, are ye?"

"Yes, Bill."

"Well, this yer new-fangled road o' yours is ten feet deep in the 
hollow with back water from the North Fork!  I've taken that yar 
coach inter fower feet of it, and then I reckoned I couldn't hev 
any more.  'I'll stand on this yer hand,' sez I; I brought the 
horses up yer and landed 'em in your barn to eat their blessed 
heads off till the water goes down.  That's wot's the matter, old 
man, and jist about wot I kalkilated on from those durned old 
improvements o' yours."

Coloring a little at this new count in the general indictment 
against the uselessness of the "Half-way House," Jeff asked if 
there were "any passengers?"

Yuba Bill indicated the meek stranger with a jerk of his thumb.  
"And his wife and darter in the coach.  They're all right and 
tight, ez if they was in the Fifth Avenue Hotel.  But I reckon he 
allows to fetch 'em up yer," added Bill, as if he strongly doubted 
the wisdom of the transfer.

The meek man, much meeker for the presence of Bill, here suggested 
that such indeed was his wish, and further prayed that Jeff would 
accompany him to the coach to assist in bringing them up.  "It's 
rather wet and dark," said the man apologetically; "my daughter is 
not strong.  Have you such a thing as a waterproof?"

Jeff had not; but would a bear-skin do?

It would.

Jeff ran, tore down his extempore window curtain, and returned with 
it.  Yuba Bill, who had quietly and disapprovingly surveyed the 
proceeding, here disengaged himself from the bar with evident 
reluctance.

"You'll want another man," he said to Jeff, "onless ye can carry 
double.  Ez HE," indicating the stranger, "ez no sort o' use, he'd 
better stay here and 'tend bar,' while you and me fetch the wimmen 
off.  'Specially ez I reckon we've got to do some tall wadin' by 
this time to reach 'em."

The meek man sat down helplessly in a chair indicated by Bill, who 
at once strode after Jeff.  In another moment they were both 
fighting their way, step by step, against the storm, in that 
peculiar, drunken, spasmodic way so amusing to the spectator and so 
exasperating to the performer.  It was no time for conversation, 
even interjectional profanity was dangerously exhaustive.

The coach was scarcely a thousand yards away, but its bright lights 
were reflected in a sheet of dark silent water that stretched 
between it and the two men.  Wading and splashing, they soon 
reached it, and a gully where the surplus water was pouring into 
the valley below.  "Fower feet o' water round her, but can't get 
any higher.  So ye see she's all right for a month o' sich 
weather."  Inwardly admiring the perspicacity of his companion, 
Jeff was about to open the coach door when Bill interrupted.

"I'll pack the old woman, if you'll look arter the darter and enny 
little traps."

A female face, anxious and elderly, here appeared at the window.

"Thet's my little game," said Bill, sotto voce.

"Is there any danger? where is my husband?" asked the woman 
impatiently.

"Ez to the danger, ma'am,--thar ain't any.  Yer ez safe HERE ez 
ye'd be in a Sacramento steamer; ez to your husband, he allowed I 
was to come yer and fetch yer up to the hotel.  That's his look-
out!"  With this cheering speech, Bill proceeded to make two or 
three ineffectual scoops into the dark interior, manifestly with 
the idea of scooping out the lady in question.  In another instant 
he had caught her, lifted her gently but firmly in his arms, and 
was turning away.

"But my child!--my daughter! she's asleep!"--expostulated the 
woman; but Bill was already swiftly splashing through the darkness.  
Jeff, left to himself, hastily examined the coach: on the back seat 
a slight small figure, enveloped in a shawl, lay motionless.  Jeff 
threw the bear-skin over it gently, lifted it on one arm, and 
gathering a few travelling bags and baskets with the other, 
prepared to follow his quickly disappearing leader.  A few feet 
from the coach the water appeared to deepen, and the bear-skin to 
draggle.  Jeff drew the figure up higher, in vain.

"Sis," he said softly.

No reply.

"Sis," shaking her gently.

There was a slight movement within the wrappings.

"Couldn't ye climb up on my shoulder, honey? that's a good child!"

There were one or two spasmodic jerks of the bear-skin, and, aided 
by Jeff, the bundle was presently seated on his shoulder.

"Are you all right now, Sis?"

Something like a laugh came from the bear-skin.  Then a childish 
voice said, "Thank you, I think I am!"

"Ain't you afraid you'll fall off?"

"A little."

Jeff hesitated.  It was beginning to blow again.

"You couldn't reach down and put your arm round my neck, could ye, 
honey?"

"I am afraid not!"--although there WAS a slight attempt to do so.

"No?"

"No!"

"Well, then, take a good holt, a firm strong holt, o' my hair!  
Don't be afraid!"

A small hand timidly began to rummage in Jeff's thick curls.

"Take a firm holt; thar, just back o' my neck!  That's right."

The little hand closed over half a dozen curls.  The little figure 
shook, and giggled.

"Now don't you see, honey, if I'm keerless with you, and don't keep 
you plump level up thar, you jist give me a pull and fetch me up 
all standing!"

"I see!"

"Of course you do!  That's because you're a little lady!"

Jeff strode on.  It was pleasant to feel the soft warm fingers in 
his hair, pleasant to hear the faint childish voice, pleasant to 
draw the feet of the enwrapped figure against his broad breast.  
Altogether he was sorry when they reached the dry land and the lee 
of the "Half-way House," where a slight movement of the figure 
expressed a wish to dismount.

"Not yet, missy," said Jeff; "not yet!  You'll get blown away, 
sure!  And then what'll they say?  No, honey!  I'll take you right 
in to your papa, just as ye are!"

A few steps more and Jeff strode into the hall, made his way to the 
sitting-room, walked to the sofa, and deposited his burden.  The 
bear-skin fell back, the shawl fell back, and Jeff--fell back too!  
For before him lay a small, slight, but beautiful and perfectly 
formed woman.

He had time to see that the meek man, no longer meek, but 
apparently a stern uncompromising parent, was standing at the head 
of the sofa; that the elderly and nervous female was hovering at 
the foot, that his aunt, with every symptom of religious and moral 
disapproval of his conduct, sat rigidly in one of the rigid chairs--
he had time to see all this before the quick, hot blood, flying to 
his face, sent the water into his eyes, and he could see nothing!

The cause of all this smiled--a dazzling smile though a faint one--
that momentarily lit up the austere gloom of the room and its 
occupants.  "You must thank this gentleman, papa," said she, 
languidly turning to her father, "for his kindness and his trouble.  
He has carried me here as gently and as carefully as if I were a 
child."  Seeing symptoms of a return of Jeff's distress in his 
coloring face, she added softly, as if to herself, "It's a great 
thing to be strong--a greater thing to be strong AND gentle."

The voice thrilled through Jeff.  But into this dangerous human 
voice twanged the accents of special spiritual revelation, and 
called him to himself again, "Be ye wise as sarpints, but harmless 
as duvs," said Jeff's aunt, generally, "and let 'em be thankful ez 
doesn't aboos the stren'th the Lord gives 'em, but be allers ready 
to answer for it at the bar o' their Maker."  Possibly some 
suggestion in her figure of speech reminded her of Jeff's forgotten 
duties, so she added in the same breath and tone, "especially when 
transient customers is waiting for their licker, and Yuba Bill 
hammerin' on the counter with his glass; and yer ye stand, Jeff, 
never even takin' up that wet bar-skin--enuff to give that young 
woman her death."

Stammering out an incoherent apology, addressed vaguely to the 
occupants of the room, but looking toward the languid goddess on 
the sofa, Jeff seized the bear-skin and backed out the door.  Then 
he flew to his room with it, and then returned to the bar-room; but 
the impatient William of Yuba had characteristically helped himself 
and gone off to the stable.  Then Jeff stole into the hall and 
halted before the closed door of the sitting-room.  A bold idea of 
going in again, as became a landlord of the "Half-way House," with 
an inquiry if they wished anything further, had seized him, but the 
remembrance that he had always meekly allowed that duty to devolve 
upon his aunt, and that she would probably resent it with 
scriptural authority and bring him to shame again, stayed his timid 
knuckles at the door.  In this hesitation he stumbled upon his aunt 
coming down the stairs with an armful of blankets and pillows, 
attended by their small Indian servant, staggering under a mattress.

"Is everything all right, aunty?"

"Ye kin be thankful to the Lord, Jeff Briggs, that this didn't 
happen last week when I was down on my back with rheumatiz.  But 
ye're never grateful."

"The young lady--is SHE comfortable?" said Jeff, accepting his 
aunt's previous remark as confirmatory.

"Ez well ez enny critter marked by the finger of the Lord with 
gallopin' consumption kin be, I reckon.  And she, ez oughter be 
putting off airthly vanities, askin' for a lookin'-glass!  And you! 
trapesin' through the hall with her on yer shoulder, and dancin' 
and jouncin' her up and down ez if it was a ball-room!"  A guilty 
recollection that he had skipped with her through the passage 
struck him with remorse as his aunt went on: "It's a mercy that 
betwixt you and the wet bar-skin she ain't got her deth!"

"Don't ye think, aunty," stammered Jeff, "that--that--my bein' the 
landlord, yer know, it would be the square thing--just out o' 
respect, ye know--for me to drop in thar and ask 'em if thar's 
anythin' they wanted?"

His aunt stopped, and resignedly put down the pillows.  "Sarah," 
she said meekly to the handmaiden, "ye kin leave go that mattress.  
Yer's Mr. Jefferson thinks we ain't good enough to make the beds 
for them two city women folks, and he allows he'll do it himself!"

"No, no! aunty!" began the horrified Jeff; but failing to placate 
his injured relative, took safety in flight.

Once safe in his own room his eye fell on the bear-skin.  It 
certainly WAS wet.  Perhaps he had been careless--perhaps he had 
imperiled her life!  His cheeks flushed as he threw it hastily in 
the corner.  Something fell from it to the floor.  Jeff picked it 
up and held it to the light.  It was a small, a very small, lady's 
slipper.  Holding it within the palm of his hand as if it had been 
some delicate flower which the pressure of a finger might crush, he 
strode to the door, but stopped.  Should he give it to his aunt?  
Even if she overlooked this evident proof of HIS carelessness, what 
would she think of the young lady's?  Ought he--seductive thought!--
go downstairs again, knock at the door, and give it to its fair 
owner, with the apology he was longing to make?  Then he remembered 
that he had but a few moments before been dismissed from the room 
very much as if he were the original proprietor of the skin he had 
taken.  Perhaps they were right; perhaps he WAS only a foolish 
clumsy animal!  Yet SHE had thanked him--and had said in her sweet 
childlike voice, "It is a great thing to be strong; a greater thing 
to be strong and gentle."  He was strong; strong men had said so.  
He did not know if he was gentle too.  Had she meant THAT, when she 
turned her strangely soft dark eyes upon him?  For some moments he 
held the slipper hesitatingly in his hand, then he opened his 
trunk, and disposing various articles around it as if it were some 
fragile, perishable object, laid it carefully therein.

This done, he drew off his boots, and rolling himself in his 
blanket, lay down upon the bed.  He did not open his novel--he did 
not follow up the exciting love episode of his favorite hero--so 
ungrateful is humanity to us poor romancers, in the first stages of 
their real passion.  Ah, me! 'tis the jongleurs and troubadours 
they want then, not us!  When Master Slender, sick for sweet Anne 
Page, would "rather than forty shillings" he had his "book of songs 
and sonnets" there, what availed it that the Italian Boccaccio had 
contemporaneously discoursed wisely and sweetly of love in prose?  
I doubt not that Master Jeff would have mumbled some verse to 
himself had he known any: knowing none, he lay there and listened 
to the wind.

Did she hear it; did it keep her awake?  He had an uneasy suspicion 
that the shutter that was banging so outrageously was the shutter 
of her room.  Filled with this miserable thought, he arose softly, 
stole down the staircase, and listened.  The sound was repeated.  
It was truly the refractory shutter of No. 7--the best bedroom 
adjoining the sitting-room.  The next room, No. 8, was vacant.  
Jeff entered it softly, as softly opened the window, and leaning 
far out in the tempest, essayed to secure the nocturnal disturber.  
But in vain.  Cord or rope he had none, nor could he procure either 
without alarming his aunt--an extremity not to be considered.  Jeff 
was a man of clumsy but forceful expedients.  He hung far out of 
the window, and with one powerful hand lifted the shutter off its 
hinges and dragged it softly into No. 8.  Then as softly he crept 
upstairs to bed.  The wind howled and tore round the house; the 
crazy water-pipe below Jeff's window creaked, the chimneys 
whistled, but the shutter banged no more.  Jeff began to doze.  
"It's a great thing to be strong," the wind seemed to say as it 
charged upon the defenseless house, and then another voice seemed 
to reply, "A greater thing to be strong and gentle;" and hearing 
this he fell asleep.


II.


It was not yet daylight when he awoke with an idea that brought him 
hurriedly to his feet.  Quickly dressing himself, he began to count 
the money in his pocket.  Apparently the total was not satisfactory,
as he endeavored to augment it by loose coins fished from the
pockets of his other garments, and from the corner of his washstand
drawer.  Then he cautiously crept downstairs, seized his gun, and
stole out of the still sleeping house.  The wind had gone down, the
rain had ceased, a few stars shone steadily in the north, and the
shapeless bulk of the coach, its lamps extinguished, loomed high and
dry above the lessening water, in the twilight.  With a swinging
tread Jeff strode up the hill and was soon upon the highway and
stage road.  A half-hour's brisk walk brought him to the summit, and
the first rosy flashes of morning light.  This enabled him to knock
over half-a-dozen early quail, lured by the proverb, who were
seeking their breakfast in the chaparral, and gave him courage to
continue on his mission, which his perplexed face and irresolute
manner had for the last few moments shown to be an embarrassing one.
At last the white fences and imposing outbuildings of the "Summit
Hotel" rose before him, and he uttered a deep sigh.  There, basking
in the first rays of the morning sun, stood his successful rival!
Jeff looked at the well-built, comfortable structure, the commanding
site, and the air of serene independence that seemed to possess it,
and no longer wondered that the great world passed him by to linger
and refresh itself there.

He was relieved to find the landlord was not present in person, and 
so confided his business to the bar-keeper.  At first it appeared 
that that functionary declined interference, and with many head-
shakings and audible misgivings was inclined to await the coming of 
his principal, but a nearer view of Jeff's perplexed face, and an 
examination of Jeff's gun, and the few coins spread before him, 
finally induced him to produce certain articles, which he packed in 
a basket and handed to Jeff, taking the gun and coins in exchange.  
Thus relieved, Jeff set his face homewards, and ran a race with the 
morning into the valley, reaching the "Half-way House" as the sun 
laid waste its bare, bleak outlines, and relentlessly pointed out 
its defects one by one.  It was cruel to Jeff at that moment, but 
he hugged his basket close and slipped to the back door and the 
kitchen, where his aunt was already at work.

"I didn't know ye were up yet, aunty," said Jeff submissively.  "It 
isn't more than six o'clock."

"Thar's four more to feed at breakfast," said his aunt severely, 
"and yer's the top blown off the kitchen chimbly, and the fire only 
just got to go."

Jeff saw that he was in time.  The ordinary breakfast of the "Half-
way House," not yet prepared, consisted of codfish, ham, yellow-
ochre biscuit, made after a peculiar receipt of his aunt's, and 
potatoes.

"I got a few fancy fixin's up at the Summit this morning, aunty," 
he began apologetically, "seein' we had sick folks, you know--you 
and the young lady--and thinkin' it might save you trouble.  I've 
got 'em here," and he shyly produced the basket.

"If ye kin afford it, Jeff," responded his aunt resignedly, "I'm 
thankful."

The reply was so unexpectedly mild for Aunt Sally, that Jeff put 
his arms around her and kissed her hard cheek.  "And I've got some 
quail, aunty, knowin' you liked em."

"I reckoned you was up to some such foolishness," said Aunt Sally,
wiping her cheek with her apron," when I missed yer gun from the
hall."  But the allusion was a dangerous one, and Jeff slipped away.

He breakfasted early with Yuba Bill that morning; the latter
gentleman's taciturnity being intensified at such moments through a
long habit of confining himself strictly to eating in the limited
time allowed his daily repasts, and it was not until they had taken
the horses from the stable and were harnessing them to the coach that
Jeff extracted from his companion some facts about his guests.  They
were Mr. and Mrs. Mayfield, Eastern tourists, who had been to the
Sandwich Islands for the benefit of their daughter's health, and
before returning to New York, intended, under the advice of their
physician, to further try the effects of mountain air at the "Summit
Hotel," on the invalid.  They were apparently rich people, the coach
had been engaged for them solely--even the mail and express had been
sent on by a separate conveyance, so that they might be more
independent.  It is hardly necessary to say that this fact was by no
means palatable to Bill--debarring him not only the social contact
and attentions of the "Express Agent," but the selection of a box-
seated passenger who always "acted like a man."

"Ye kin kalkilate what kind of a pardner that 'ar yaller-livered
Mayfield would make up on that box, partik'ly ez I heard before we
started that he'd requested the kimpany's agent in Sacramento to
select a driver ez didn't cuss, smoke, or drink.  He did, sir, by
gum!"

"I reckon you were very careful, then, Bill," said Jeff.

"In course," returned Bill, with a perfectly diabolical wink.  "In
course!  You know that 'Blue Grass,'" pointing out a spirited leader;
"she's a fair horse ez horses go, but she's apt to feel her oats on a
down grade, and takes a pow'ful deal o' soothin' and explanation
afore she buckles down to her reg'lar work.  Well, sir, I exhorted
and labored in a Christian-like way with that mare to that extent
that I'm cussed if that chap didn't want to get down afore we got to
the level!"

"And the ladies?" asked Jeff, whose laugh--possibly from his
morning's experience--was not as ready as formerly.

"The ladies!  Ef you mean that 'ar livin' skellington I packed up to
yer house," said Bill promptly, "it's a pair of them in size and
color, and ready for any first-class undertaker's team in the kintry. 
Why, you remember that curve on Break Neck hill, where the leaders
allus look as if they was alongside o' the coach and faced the other
way?  Well, that woman sticks her skull outer the window, and sez
she, confidential-like to old yaller-belly, sez she, 'William Henry,'
sez she, 'tell that man his horses are running away!'"

"You didn't get to see the--the--daughter, Bill, did you?" asked
Jeff, whose laugh had become quite uneasy.

"No, I didn't," said Bill, with sudden and inexplicable vehemence,
"and the less you see of her, Jefferson Briggs, the better for you."

Too confounded and confused by Bill's manner to question further,
Jeff remained silent until they drew up at the door of the "Half-way
House."  But here another surprise awaited him.  Mr. Mayfield, erect
and dignified, stood upon the front porch as the coach drove up.

"Driver!" began Mr. Mayfield.

There was no reply.

"Driver," said Mr. Mayfield, slightly weakening under Bill's eye, "I
shall want you no longer.  I have"--
 
"Is he speaking to me?" said Bill audibly to Jeff, "'cause they call
me 'Yuba Bill' yer abouts."

"He is," said Jeff hastily.

"Mebbee he's drunk," said Bill audibly; "a drop or two afore
breakfast sometimes upsets his kind."

"I was saying, Bill," said Mr. Mayfield, becoming utterly limp and
weak again under Bill's cold gray eyes, "that I've changed my mind,
and shall stop here awhile.  My daughter seems already benefited by
the change.  You can take my traps from the boot and leave them
here."

Bill laid down his lines resignedly, coolly surveyed Mr. Mayfield,
the house, and the half-pleased, half-frightened Jeff, and then
proceeded to remove the luggage from the boot, all the while
whistling loud and offensive incredulity.  Then he climbed back to
his box.  Mr. Mayfield, completely demoralized under this treatment,
as a last resort essayed patronage.

"You can say to the Sacramento agents, Bill, that I am entirely
satisfied, and"--
 
"Ye needn't fear but I'll give ye a good character," interrupted Bill
coolly, gathering up his lines.  The whip snapped, the six horses
dashed forward as one, the coach plunged down the road and was gone.

With its disappearance, Mr. Mayfield stiffened slightly again.  "I
have just told your aunt, Mr. Briggs," he said, turning upon Jeff, 
"that my daughter has expressed a desire to remain here a few days;
she has slept well, seems to be invigorated by the air, and although
we expected to go on to the 'Summit,' Mrs. Mayfield and myself are
willing to accede to her wishes.  Your house seems to be new and
clean.  Your table--judging from the breakfast this morning--is quite
satisfactory."

Jeff, in the first flush of delight at this news, forgot what that
breakfast had cost him--forgot all his morning's experience, and, I
fear, when he did remember it, was too full of a vague, hopeful
courage to appreciate it.  Conscious of showing too much pleasure, he
affected the necessity of an immediate interview with his aunt, in
the kitchen.  But his short cut round the house was arrested by a
voice and figure.  It was Miss Mayfield, wrapped in a shawl and
seated in a chair, basking in the sunlight at one of the bleakest and
barest angles of the house.  Jeff stopped in a delicious tremor.

As we are dealing with facts, however, it would be well to look at
the cause of this tremor with our own eyes and not Jeff's.  To be
plain, my dear madam, as she basked in that remorseless, matter-of-
fact California sunshine, she looked her full age-twenty-five, if a
day!  There were wrinkles in the corners of her dark eyes, contracted
and frowning in that strong, merciless light; there was a nervous
pallor in her complexion; but being one of those "fast colored"
brunettes, whose dyes are a part of their temperament, no sickness
nor wear could bleach it out.  The red of her small mouth was darker
than yours, I wot, and there were certain faint lines from the
corners of her delicate nostrils indicating alternate repression and
excitement under certain experiences, which are not found in the
classic ideals.  Now Jeff knew nothing of the classic ideal--did not
know that a thousand years ago certain sensual idiots had, with brush
and chisel, inflicted upon the world the personification of the
strongest and most delicate, most controlling and most subtle passion
that humanity is capable of, in the likeness of a thick-waisted,
idealess, expressionless, perfectly contented female animal; and that
thousands of idiots had since then insisted upon perpetuating this
model for the benefit of a world that had gone on sighing for, pining
for, fighting for, and occasionally blowing its brains out over types
far removed from that idiotic standard.

Consequently Jeff saw only a face full of possibilities and
probabilities, framed in a small delicate oval, saw a slight woman's
form--more than usually small--and heard a low voice, to him full of
gentle pride, passion, pathos, and human weakness, and was helpless.

"I only said 'Good-morning,'" said Miss Mayfield, with that slight,
arch satisfaction in the observation of masculine bashfulness, which
the best of her sex cannot forego.

"Thank you, miss; good-morning.  I've been wanting to say to you that
I hope you wasn't mad, you know," stammered Jeff, desperately intent
upon getting off his apology.

"It is so lovely this morning--such a change!" continued Miss
Mayfield.

"Yes, miss!  You know I reckoned--at least what your father said, made
me kalkilate that you"--

Miss Mayfield, still smiling, knitted her brows and went on: "I slept
so well last night," she said gratefully, "and feel so much better
this morning, that I ventured out.  I seem to be drinking in health
in this clear sunlight."

"Certainly miss.  As I was sayin', your father says his daughter is
in the coach; and Bill says, says he to me, 'I'll pack--I'll carry
the old--I'll bring up Mrs. Mayfield, if you'll bring up the
daughter;' and when we come to the coach I saw you asleep--like in
the corner, and bein' small, why miss, you know how nat'ral it is,
I"--
 
"Oh, Mr. Jeff!  Mr. Briggs!" said Miss Mayfield plaintively, "don't,
please--don't spoil the best compliment I've had in many a year.  You
thought I was a child, I know, and--well, you find," she said
audaciously, suddenly bringing her black eyes to bear on him like a
rifle, "you find--well?"

What Jeff thought was inaudible but not invisible.  Miss Mayfield saw
enough of it in his eye to protest with a faint color in her cheek. 
Thus does Nature betray itself to Nature the world over.

The color faded.  "It's a dreadful thing to be so weak and helpless,
and to put everybody to such trouble, isn't it, Mr. Jeff?  I beg
your pardon--your aunt calls you Jeff."

"Please call me Jeff," said Jeff, to his own surprise rapidly gaining
courage.  "Everybody calls me that."

Miss Mayfield smiled.  "I suppose I must do what everybody does.  So
it seems that we are to give you the trouble of keeping us here until
I get better or worse?"

"Yes, miss."

"Therefore I won't detain you now.  I only wanted to thank you for
your gentleness last night, and to assure you that the bear-skin did
not give me my death."

She smiled and nodded her small head, and wrapped her shawl again
closely around her shoulders, and turned her eyes upon the mountains,
gestures which the now quick-minded Jeff interpreted as a gentle
dismissal, and flew to seek his aunt.

Here he grew practical.  Ready money was needed; for the "Half-way
House" was such a public monument of ill-luck, that Jeff had no
credit.  He must keep up the table to the level of that fortunate
breakfast--to do which he had $1.50 in the till, left by Bill, and
$2.50 produced by his Aunt Sally from her work-basket.

"Why not ask Mr. Mayfield to advance ye suthin?" said Aunt Sally.

The blood flew to Jeff's face.  "Never!  Don't say that again, aunty."

The tone and manner were so unlike Jeff that the old lady sat down
half frightened, and taking the corners of her apron in her hands
began to whimper.

"Thar now, aunty!  I didn't mean nothin',--only if you care to have
me about the place any longer, and I reckon it's little good I am any
way," he added, with a new-found bitterness in his tone, "ye'll not
ask me to do that."

"What's gone o' ye, Jeff?" said his aunt lugubriously; "ye ain't
nat'ral like."

Jeff laughed.  "See here, aunty; I'm goin' to take your advice.  You
know Rabbit?"

"The mare?"

"Yes; I'm going to sell her.  The blacksmith offered me a hundred
dollars for her last week."

"Ef ye'd done that a month ago, Jeff, ez I wanted ye to, instead o'
keeping the brute to eat ye out o' house and home, ye'd be better
off."  Aunt Sally never let slip an opportunity to "improve the
occasion," but preferred to exhort over the prostrate body of the
"improved."  "Well, I hope he mayn't change his mind."

Jeff smiled at such suggestion regarding the best horse within fifty
miles of the "Half-way House."  Nevertheless he went briskly to the
stable, led out and saddled a handsome grey mare, petting her the
while, and keeping up a running commentary of caressing epithets to
which Rabbit responded with a whinny and playful reaches after Jeff's
red flannel sleeve.  Whereat Jeff, having loved the horse until it
was displaced by another mistress, grew grave and suddenly threw his
arms around Rabbit's neck, and then taking Rabbit's nose, thrust it
in the bosom of his shirt and held it there silently for a moment. 
Rabbit becoming uneasy, Jeff's mood changed too, and having
caparisoned himself and charger in true vaquero style, not without a
little Mexican dandyism as to the set of his doeskin trousers, and
the tie of his red sash, put a sombrero rakishly on his curls and
leaped into the saddle.

Jeff was a fair rider in a country where riding was understood as a
natural instinct, and not as a purely artificial habit of horse and
rider, consequently he was not perched up, jockey fashion, with a
knee-grip for his body, and a rein-rest for his arms on the beast's
mouth, but rode with long, loose stirrups, his legs clasping the
barrel of his horse, his single rein lying loose upon her neck,
leaving her head free as the wind.  After this fashion he had often
emerged from a cloud of dust on the red mountain road, striking
admiration into the hearts of the wayfarers and coach-passengers, and
leaving a trail of pleasant incense in the dust behind him.  It was
therefore with considerable confidence in himself, and a little human
vanity, that he dashed round the house, and threw his mare skilfully
on her haunches exactly a foot before Miss Mayfield--himself a
resplendent vision of flying riata, crimson scarf, fawn-colored
trousers, and jingling silver spurs.

"Kin I do anythin' for ye, miss, at the Forks?"

Miss Mayfield looked up quietly.  "I think not," she said
indifferently, as if the flaming-Jeff was a very common occurrence.

Jeff here permitted the mare to bolt fifty yards, caught her up
sharply, swung her round on her off hind heel, permitted her to paw
the air once or twice with her white-stockinged fore-feet, and then,
with another dash forward, pulled her up again just before she
apparently took Miss Mayfield and her chair in a running leap.

"Are you sure, miss?" asked Jeff, with a flushed face and a rather
lugubrious voice.

"Quite so, thank you," she said coldly, looking past this centaur to
the wooded mountain beyond.

Jeff, thoroughly crushed, was pacing meekly away when a childlike
voice stopped him.

"If you are going near a carpenter's shop you might get a new shutter
for my window; it blew away last night."

"It did, miss?"

"Yes," said the shrill voice of Aunt Sally, from the doorway, 
"in course it did!  Ye must be crazy, Jeff, for thar it stands in 
No. 8, whar ye must have put it after ye picked it up outside."

Jeff, conscious that Miss Mayfield's eyes were on his suffused face,
stammered "that he would attend to it," and put spurs to the mare,
eager only to escape.

It was not his only discomfiture; for the blacksmith, seeing Jeff's
nervousness and anxiety, was suspicious of something wrong, as the
world is apt to be, and appeased his conscience after the worldly
fashion, by driving a hard bargain with the doubtful brother in
affliction--the morality of a horse trade residing always with the
seller.  Whereby Master Jeff received only eighty dollars for horse
and outfit--worth at least two hundred--and was also mulcted of forty
dollars, principal and interest for past service of the blacksmith. 
Jeff walked home with forty dollars in his pocket--capital to
prosecute his honest calling of innkeeper; the blacksmith retired to
an adjoining tavern to discuss Jeff's affairs, and further reduce his
credit.  Yet I doubt which was the happier--the blacksmith estimating
his possible gains, and doubtful of some uncertain sequence in his
luck, or Jeff, temporarily relieved, boundlessly hopeful, and filled
with the vague delights of a first passion.  The only discontented
brute in the whole transaction was poor Rabbit, who, missing certain
attentions, became indignant, after the manner of her sex, bit a
piece out of her crib, kicked a hole in her box, and receiving a bad
character from the blacksmith, gave a worse one to her late master.

Jeff's purchases were of a temporary and ornamental quality, but not
always judicious as a permanent investment.  Overhearing some remark
from Miss Mayfield concerning the dangerous character of the two-
tined steel fork, which was part of the table equipage of the "Half-
way House," he purchased half a dozen of what his aunt was pleased to
specify as "split spoons," and thereby lost his late good standing
with her.  He not only repaired the window-shutter, but tempered the
glaring window itself with a bit of curtain; he half carpeted Miss
Mayfield's bed-room with wild-cat skins and the now historical bear-
skin, and felt himself overpaid when that young lady, passing the
soft tabbyskins across her cheek, declared they were "lovely."  For
Miss Mayfield, deprecating slaughter in the abstract, accepted its
results gratefully, like the rest of her sex, and while willing to
"let the hart ungalled play," nevertheless was able to console
herself with its venison.  The woods, besides yielding aid and
comfort of this kind to the distressed damsel, were flamboyant with
vivid spring blossoms, and Jeff lit up the cold, white walls of her
virgin cell with demonstrative color, and made--what his aunt, a
cleanly soul, whose ideas of that quality were based upon the absence
of any color whatever, called--"a litter."

The result of which was to make Miss Mayfield, otherwise lanquid and
ennuye, welcome Jeff's presence with a smile; to make Jeff, otherwise
anxious, eager, and keenly attentive, mute and silent in her
presence.  Two symptoms bad for Jeff.

Meantime Mr. Mayfield's small conventional spirit pined for
fellowship, only to be found in larger civilizations, and sought,
under plea of business, a visit to Sacramento, where a few of the
Mayfield type, still surviving, were to be found.

This was a relief to Jeff, who only through his regard for the
daughter, was kept from open quarrel with the father.  He fancied
Miss Mayfield felt relieved too, although Jeff had noticed that
Mayfield had deferred to his daughter more often than his wife--over
whom your conventional small autocrat is always victorious.  It takes
the legal matrimonial contract to properly develop the first-class
tyrant, male or female.

On one of these days Jeff was returning through the woods from
marketing at the Forks, which, since the sale of Rabbit, had became a
foot-sore and tedious business.  He had reached the edge of the
forest, and through the wider-spaced trees, the bleak sunlit plateau
of his house was beginning to open out, when he stopped instantly.  
I know not what Jeff had been thinking of, as he trudged along, but
here, all at once, he was thrilled and possessed with the odor of
some faint, foreign perfume.  He flushed a little at first, and then
turned pale.  Now the woods were as full of as delicate, as subtle,
as grateful, and, I wot, far healthier and purer odors than this; but
this represented to Jeff the physical contiguity of Miss Mayfield,
who had the knack--peculiar to some of her sex--of selecting a
perfume that ideally identified her.  Jeff looked around cautiously;
at the foot of a tree hard by lay one of her wraps, still redolent of
her.  Jeff put down the bag which, in lieu of a market basket, he was
carrying on his shoulder, and with a blushing face hid it behind a
tree.  It contained her dinner!

He took a few steps forwards with an assumption of ease and
unconsciousness.  Then he stopped, for not a hundred yards distant
sat--Miss Mayfield on a mossy boulder, her cloak hanging from her
shoulders, her hands clasped round her crossed knees, and one little
foot out--an exasperating combination of Evangeline and little Red
Riding Hood in everything, I fear, but credulousness and self-
devotion.  She looked up as he walked towards her (non constat that
the little witch had not already seen him half a mile away!) and
smiled sweetly as she looked at him.  So sweetly, indeed, that poor
Jeff felt like the hulking wolf of the old world fable, and
hesitated--as that wolf did not.  The California faunae have 
possibly depreciated.

"Come here!" she cried, in a small head voice, not unlike a bird's
twitter.

Jeff lumbered on clumsily.  His high boots had become suddenly very
heavy.

"I'm so glad to see you.  I've just tired poor mother out--I'm always
tiring people out--and she's gone back to the house to write letters. 
Sit down, Mr. Jeff, do, please!"

Jeff, feeling uncomfortably large in Miss Mayfield's presence,
painfully seated himself on the edge of a very low stone, which had
the effect of bringing his knees up on a level with his chin, and
affected an ease glaringly simulated.

"Or lie down, there, Mr. Jeff--it is so comfortable."

Jeff, with a dreadful conviction that he was crashing down like a
falling pine-tree, managed at last to acquire a recumbent position at
a respectful distance from the little figure.

"There, isn't it nice?"

"Yes, Miss Mayfield."

"But, perhaps," said Miss Mayfield, now that she had him down,
"perhaps you too have got something to do.  Dear me!  I'm like that
naughty boy in the story-book, who went round to all the animals, in
turn, asking them to play with him.  He could only find the butterfly
who had nothing to do.  I don't wonder he was disgusted.  I hate
butterflies."

Love clarifies the intellect!  Jeff, astonished at himself, burst
out, "Why, look yer, Miss Mayfield, the butterfly only hez a day or
two to--to--to live and--be happy!"

Miss Mayfield crossed her knees again, and instantly, after the
sublime fashion of her sex, scattered his intellect by a swift
transition from the abstract to the concrete.  "But you're not a
butterfly, Mr. Jeff.  You're always doing something.  You've been
hunting."

"No-o!" said Jeff, scarlet, as he thought of his gun in pawn at the
"Summit."

"But you do hunt; I know it."

"How?"

"You shot those quail for me the morning after I came.  I heard you
go out--early--very early."

"Why, you allowed you slept so well that night, Miss Mayfield."

"Yes; but there's a kind of delicious half-sleep that sick people
have sometimes, when they know and are gratefully conscious that
other people are doing things for them, and it makes them rest all
the sweeter."

There was a dead silence.  Jeff, thrilling all over, dared not say
anything to dispel his delicious dream.  Miss Mayfield, alarmed at
his readiness with the butterfly illustration, stopped short.  They
both looked at the prospect, at the distant "Summit Hotel"--a mere
snow-drift on the mountain--at the clear sunlight on the barren
plateau, at the bleak, uncompromising "Half-way House," and said
nothing.

"I ought to be very grateful," at last began Miss Mayfield, in quite
another voice, and a suggestion that she was now approaching real and
profitable conversation, "that I'm so much better.  This mountain air
has been like balm to me.  I feel I am growing stronger day by day. 
I do not wonder that you are so healthy and so strong as you are, 
Mr. Jeff."

Jeff, who really did not know before that he was so healthy,
apologetically admitted the fact.  At the same time, he was miserably
conscious that Miss Mayfield's condition, despite her ill health, was
very superior to his own.

"A month ago," she continued reflectively, "my mother would never
have thought it possible to leave me here alone.  Perhaps she may be
getting worried now."

Miss Mayfield had calculated over much on Jeff's recumbent position. 
To her surprise and slight mortification, he rose instantly to his
feet, and said anxiously

"Ef you think so, miss, p'raps I'm keeping you here."

"Not at all, Mr. Jeff.  Your being here is a sufficient excuse for my
staying," she replied, with the large dignity of a small body.

Jeff, mentally and physically crushed again, came down a little
heavier than before, and reclined humbly at her feet.  Second knock-
down blow for Miss Mayfield.

"Come, Mr. Jeff," said the triumphant goddess, in her first voice,
"tell me something about yourself.  How do you live here--I mean;
what do you do?  You ride, of course--and very well too, I can tell
you!  But you know that.  And of course that scarf and the silver
spurs and the whole dashing equipage are not intended entirely for
yourself.  No!  Some young woman is made happy by that exhibition, of
course.  Well, then, there's the riding down to see her, and perhaps
the riding out with her, and--what else?"

"Miss Mayfield," said Jeff, suddenly rising above his elbow and his
grammar, "thar isn't no young woman!  Thar isn't another soul except
yourself that I've laid eyes on, or cared to see since I've been yer. 
Ef my aunt hez been telling ye that--she's--she--she--she--she--
lies."

Absolute, undiluted truth, even of a complimentary nature, is
confounding to most women.  Miss Mayfield was no exception to her
sex.  She first laughed, as she felt she ought to, and properly might
with any other man than Jeff; then she got frightened, and said
hurriedly, "No, no! you misunderstand me.  Your aunt has said
nothing."  And then she stopped with a pink spot on her cheek-bones. 
First blood for Jeff!

Now this would never do; it was worse than the butterflies!  She rose
to her full height--four feet eleven and a half--and drew her cloak
over her shoulders.  "I think I will return to the house," she said
quietly; "I suppose I ought not to overtask my strength."

"You'd better let me go with you, miss," said Jeff submissively.

"I will, on one condition," she said, recovering her archness, with a
little venom in it, I fear.  "You were going home, too, when I called
to you.  Now, I do not intend to let you leave that bag behind that
tree, and then have to come back for it, just because you feel
obliged to go with me.  Bring it with you on one arm, and I'll take
the other, or else--I'll go alone.  Don't be alarmed," she added
softly; "I'm stronger than I was the first night I came, when you
carried me and all my worldly goods besides."

She turned upon him her subtle magnetic eyes, and looked at him as
she had the first night they met.  Jeff turned away bewildered, but
presently appeared again with the bag on his shoulder, and her wrap
on his arm.  As she slipped her little hand over his sleeve, he
began, apologetically and nervously 
 
"When I said that about Aunt Sally, miss, I"-- 

The hand immediately became limp, the grasp conventional.

"I was mad, miss," Jeff blundered on, "and I don't see how you
believed it--knowing everything ez you do."

"How knowing everything as I do?" asked Miss Mayfield coldly.

"Why, about the quail, and about the bag!"

"Oh," said Miss Mayfield.

Five minutes later, Yuba Bill nearly ditched his coach in his utter
amazement at an apparently simple spectacle--a tall, good-looking
young fellow, in a red shirt and high boots, carrying a bag on his
back, and beside him, hanging confidentially on his arm, a small,
slight, pretty girl in a red cloak.  "Nothing mean about her, eh,
Bill?" said as admiring box-passenger.  "Young couple, I reckon, just
out from the States."

"No!" roared Bill.

"Oh, well, his sweetheart, I reckon?" suggested the box-passenger.

"Nary time!" growled Bill.  "Look yer!  I know 'em both, and they
knows me.  Did ye notiss she never drops his arm when she sees the
stage comin', but kinder trapes along jist the same?  Had they been
courtin', she'd hev dropped his arm like pizen, and walked on t'other 
side the road."

Nevertheless, for some occult reason, Bill was evidently out of
humor; and for the next few miles exhorted the impenitent Blue Grass
horse with considerable fervor.

Meanwhile this pair, outwardly the picture of pastoral conjugality,
slowly descended the hill.  In that brief time, failing to get at any
further facts regarding Jeff's life, or perhaps reading the story
quite plainly, Miss Mayfield had twittered prettily about herself. 
She painted her tropic life in the Sandwich Islands--her delicious
"laziness," as she called it; "for, you know," she added, "although 
I had the excuse of being an invalid, and of living in the laziest
climate in the world, and of having money, I think, Mr. Jeff, that
I'm naturally lazy.  Perhaps if I lived here long enough, and got
well again, I might do something, but I don't think I could ever be
like your aunt.  And there she is now, Mr. Jeff, making signs for
you to hasten.  No, don't mind me, but run on ahead; else I shall
have her blaming me for demoralizing you too.  Go; I insist upon it!
I can walk the rest of the way alone.  Will you go?  You won't?  Then
I shall stop here and not stir another step forward until you do."

She stopped, half jestingly, half earnestly, in the middle of the
road, and emphasized her determination with a nod of her head--an
action that, however, shook her hat first rakishly over one eye, and
then on the ground.  At which Jeff laughed, picked it up, presented
it to her, and then ran off to the house.


III.


His aunt met him angrily on the porch.  "Thar ye are at last, and
yer's a stranger waitin to see you.  He's been axin all sorts 
o' questions, about the house and the business, and kinder snoopin'
round permiskiss.  I don't like his looks, Jeff, but thet's no reason
why ye should be gallivantin' round in business hours."

A large, thick-set man, with a mechanical smile that was an overt 
act of false pretense, was lounging in the bar-room.  Jeff dimly
remembered to have seen him at the last county election, distributing
tickets at the polls.  This gave Jeff a slight prejudice against him,
but a greater presentiment of some vague evil in the air caused him
to motion the stranger to an empty room in the angle of the house
behind the barroom, which was too near the hall through which Miss
Mayfield must presently pass.

It was an infelicitous act of precaution, for at that very moment
Miss Mayfield slowly passed beneath its open window, and seeing her
chair in the sunny angle, dropped into it for rest and possibly
meditation.  Consequently she overheard every word of the following
colloquy.

The Stranger's voice: "Well, now, seein' ez I've been waitin' for ye
over an hour, off and on, and ez my bizness with ye is two words, it
strikes me yer puttin' on a little too much style in this yer
interview, Mr. Jefferson Briggs."

Jeff's voice (a little husky with restraint): "What is yer business?"

The stranger's voice (lazily): "It's an at-tachment on this yer
property for principal, interest, and costs--one hundred and twelve
dollars and' seventy-five cents, at the suit of Cyrus Parker."

Jeff's voice (in quick surprise): "Parker?  Why, I saw him only
yesterday, and he agreed to wait a spell longer."

The Stranger's voice: "Mebbee he did!  Mebbee he heard afterwards
suthin' about the goin's on up yar.  Mebbee he heard suthin' o'
property bein' converted into ready cash--sich property ez horses,
guns, and sich!  Mebbee he heard o' gay and festive doin's--chickin
every day, fresh eggs, butcher's meat, port wine, and sich!  Mebbee
he allowed that his chances o' gettin' his own honest grub outer his
debt was lookin' mighty slim!  Mebbee" (louder) "he thought he'd ask
the man who bought yer horse, and the man you pawned your gun to,
what was goin' on!  Mebbee he thought he'd like to get a holt a
suthin' himself, even if it was only some of that yar chickin and
port wine!"

Jeff's voice (earnestly and hastily): "They're not for me.  I have a
family boarding here, with a sick daughter.  You don't think--"

The Stranger's voice (lazily): "I reckon!  I seed you and her pre-
ambulating down the hill, lockin' arms.  A good deal o' style, 
Jeff--fancy! expensive!  How does Aunt Sally take it?"

A slight shaking of the floor and window--a dead silence.

The Stranger's voice (very faintly): "For God's sake, let me up!"

Jeff's voice (very distinctly): "Another word! raise your voice above
a whisper, and by the living G--"

Silence.

The Stranger's voice (gasping): "I--I--promise!"

Jeff's voice (low and desperate): "Get up out of that!  Sit down
thar!  Now hear me!  I'm not resisting your process.  If you had all
h-ll as witnesses you daren't say that.  I've shut up your foul jaw,
and kept it from poisoning the air, and thar's no law in Californy
agin it!  Now listen.  What!  You will, will you?"

Everything quiet; a bird twittering on the window ledge, nothing
more.

The Stranger's voice (very huskily): "I cave!  Gimme some whiskey."

Jeff's voice: "When we're through.  Now listen!  You can take
possession of the house; you can stand behind the bar and take every
cent that comes in; you can prevent anything going out; but as long
as Mr. Mayfield and his family stay here, by the living God--law or
no law--I'll be boss here, and they shall never know it!"

The Stranger's voice (weakly and submissively): "That sounds square. 
Anythin' not agin the law and in reason, Jeff!"

Jeff's voice: "I mean to be square.  Here is all the money I have,
ten dollars.  Take it for any extra trouble you may have to satisfy
me."

A pause--the clinking of coin.

The Stranger's voice (deprecatingly): "Well! I reckon that would be
about fair.  Consider the trouble" (a weak laugh here) "just now.  
'Tain't every man ez hez your grip.  He! he!  Ef ye hadn't took me
so suddent like--he! he!--well!--how about that ar whiskey?"

Jeff's voice (coolly): "I'll bring it."

Steps, silence, coughing, spitting, and throat-clearing from the
stranger.

Steps again, and the click of glass.

The Stranger's voice (submissively): "In course I must go back to the
Forks and fetch up my duds.  Ye know what I mean!  Thar now--don't,
Mr. Jeff!"

Jeff's voice (sternly): "If I find you go back on me--"

The Stranger's voice (hurriedly): "Thar's my hand on it.  Ye can
count on Jim Dodd."

Steps again.  Silence.  A bird lights on the window ledge, and peers
into the room.  All is at rest.

Jeff and the deputy-sheriff walked through the bar-room and out on
the porch.  Miss Mayfield in an arm-chair looked up from her book.

"I've written a letter to my father that I'd like to have mailed at
the Forks this afternoon," she said, looking from Jeff to the
stranger; "perhaps this gentleman will oblige me by taking it, if
he's going that way."

"I'll take it, miss," said Jeff hurriedly.

"No," said Miss Mayfield archly, "I've taken up too much of your
time already."

"I'm at your service, miss," said the stranger, considerably affected
by the spectacle of this pretty girl, who certainly at that moment,
in her bright eyes and slightly pink cheeks, belied the suggestion of
ill health.

"Thank you.  Dear me!"  She was rummaging in a reticule and in her 
pocket, etc.  "Oh, Mr. Jeff!"

"Yes, miss?"

"I'm so frightened!"

"How, miss?"

"I have--yes!--I have left that letter on the stump in the woods, 
where I was sitting when you came.  Would you--"

Jeff darted into the house, seized his hat, and stopped.  He was 
thinking of the stranger.

"Could you be so kind?"

Jeff looked in her agitated face, cast a meaning glance at the 
stranger, and was off like a shot.

The fire dropped out of Miss Mayfield's eyes and cheeks.  She 
turned toward the stranger.

"Please step this way."

She always hated her own childish treble.  But just at that moment 
she thought she had put force and dignity into it, and was 
correspondingly satisfied.  The deputy sheriff was equally pleased, 
and came towards the upright little figure with open admiration.

"Your name is Dodd--James Dodd?"

"Yes, miss."

"You are the deputy sheriff of the county?  Don't look round--there 
is no one here!"

"Well, miss--if you say so--yes!"

"My father--Mr. Mayfield--understood so.  I regret he is not here.  
I regret still more I could not have seen you before you saw Mr. 
Briggs, as he wished me to."

"Yes, miss."

"My father is a friend of Mr. Briggs, and knows something of his 
affairs.  There was a debt to a Mr. Parker" (here Miss Mayfield 
apparently consulted an entry in her tablets) "of one hundred and 
twelve dollars and seventy-five cents--am I right?"

The deputy, with great respect: "That is the figgers."

"Which he wished to pay without the knowledge of Mr. Briggs, who 
would not have consented to it."

The official opened his eyes.  "Yes, miss."

"Well, as Mr. Mayfield is NOT here, I am here to pay it for him.  
You can take a check on Wells, Fargo & Co., I suppose?"

"Certainly, miss."

She took a check-book and pen and ink from her reticule, and filled 
up a check.  She handed it to him, and the pen and ink.  "You are 
to give me a receipt."

The deputy looked at the matter-of-fact little figure, and signed 
and handed over the receipted bill.

"My father said Mr. Briggs was not to know this."

"Certainly not, miss."

"It was Mr. Briggs's intention to let the judgment take its course, 
and give up the house.  You are a man of business, Mr. Dodd, and 
know that this is ridiculous!"

The deputy laughed.  "In course, miss."

"And whatever Mr. Briggs may have proposed to you to do, when you 
go back to the Forks, you are to write him a letter, and say that 
you will simply hold the judgment without levy."

"All right, miss," said the deputy, not ill-pleased to hold himself 
in this superior attitude to Jeff.

"And--"

"Yes, miss?"

She looked steadily at him.  "Mr. Briggs told my father that he 
would pay you ten dollars for the privilege of staying here."

"Yes, miss."

"And, of course, THAT'S not necessary now."

"No-o, miss."

A very small white hand--a mere child's hand--was here extended, 
palm uppermost.

The official, demoralized completely, looked at it a moment, then 
went into his pockets and counted out into the palm the coins given 
by Jeff; they completely filled the tiny receptacle.

Miss Mayfield counted the money gravely, and placed it in her 
portemonnaie with a snap.

Certain qualities affect certain natures.  This practical business 
act of the diminutive beauty before him--albeit he was just ten 
dollars out of pocket by it--struck the official into helpless 
admiration.  He hesitated.

"That's all," said Miss Mayfield coolly; "you need not wait.  The 
letter was only an excuse to get Mr. Briggs out of the way."

"I understand ye, miss."  He hesitated still.  "Do you reckon to 
stop in these parts long?"

"I don't know."

"'Cause ye ought to come down some day to the Forks."

"Yes."

"Good morning, miss."

"Good morning."

Yet at the corner of the house the rascal turned and looked back at 
the little figure in the sunlight.  He had just been physically 
overcome by a younger man--he had lost ten dollars--he had a wife 
and three children.  He forgot all this.  He had been captivated by 
Miss Mayfield!

That practical heroine sat there five minutes.  At the end of that 
time Jeff came bounding down the hill, his curls damp with 
perspiration; his fresh, honest face the picture of woe, HER woe, 
for the letter could not be found!

"Never mind, Mr. Jeff.  I wrote another and gave it to him."

Two tears were standing on her cheeks.  Jeff turned white.

"Good God, miss!"

"It's nothing.  You were right, Mr. Jeff!  I ought not to have 
walked down here alone.  I'm very, very tired, and--so--so 
miserable."

What woman could withstand the anguish of that honest boyish face?  
I fear Miss Mayfield could, for she looked at him over her 
handkerchief, and said: "Perhaps you had something to say to your 
friend, and I've sent him off."

"Nothing," said Jeff hurriedly; and she saw that all his other 
troubles had vanished at the sight of her weakness.  She rose 
tremblingly from her seat.  "I think I will go in now, but I think--
I think--I must ask you to--to--carry me!"

Oh, lame and impotent conclusion!

The next moment, Jeff, pale, strong, passionate, but tender as a 
mother, lifted her in his arms and brought her into the sitting-
room.  A simultaneous ejaculation broke from Aunt Sally and Mrs. 
Mayfield--the possible comment of posterity on the whole episode.

"Well, Jeff, I reckoned you'd be up to suthin' like that!"

"Well, Jessie!  I knew you couldn't be trusted."


Mr. James Dodd did not return from the Forks that afternoon, to 
Jeff's vague uneasiness.  Towards evening a messenger brought a 
note from him, written on the back of a printed legal form, to this 
effect:


DEAR SIR--Seeing as you Intend to act on the Square in regard to 
that little Mater I have aranged Things so that I ant got to stop 
with you but I'll drop in onct in a wile to keep up a show for a 
Drink--respy yours, J. DODD.


In this latter suggestion our legal Cerberus exhibited all three of 
his heads at once.  One could keep faith with Miss Mayfield, one 
could see her "onct in a wile," and one could drink at Jeff's 
expense.  Innocent Jeff saw only generosity and kindness in the man 
he had half-choked, and a sense of remorse and shame almost 
outweighed the relief of his absence.  "He might hev been ugly," 
said Jeff.  He did not know how, in this selfish world, there is 
very little room for gratuitous, active ugliness.

Miss Mayfield did not leave her room that afternoon.  The wind was 
getting up, and it was growing dark when Jeff, idly sitting on his 
porch, hoping for her appearance, was quite astounded at the 
apparition of Yuba Bill as a pedestrian, dusty and thirsty, making 
for his usual refreshment.  Jeff brought out the bottle, but 
could not refrain from mixing his verbal astonishment with the 
conventional cocktail.  Bill, partaking of his liquor and becoming 
once more a speaking animal, slowly drew off his heavy, baggy 
driving gloves.  No one had ever seen Bill without them--he was 
currently believed to sleep in them--and when he laid them on the 
counter they still retained the grip of his hand, which gave them 
an entertaining likeness to two plethoric and overfed spiders.

"Ef I concluded to pass over my lines to a friend and take a pasear 
up yer this evening," said Bill, eying Jeff sharply, "I don't know 
ez thar's any law agin it!  Onless yer keepin' a private branch o' 
the Occidental Ho-tel, and on'y take in fash'n'ble fammerlies!"

Jeff, with a rising color, protested against such a supposition.

"Because ef ye ARE," said Bill, lifting his voice, and crushing one 
of the overgrown spiders with his fist, "I've got a word or two to 
say to the son of Joe Briggs of Tuolumne.  Yes, sir! Joe Briggs--
yer father--ez blew his brains out for want of a man ez could stand 
up and say a word to him at the right time."

"Bill," said Jeff, in a low, resolute tone--that tone yielded up 
only from the smitten chords of despair and desperation--"thar's a 
sick woman in the house.  I'll listen to anything you've got to say 
if you'll say it quietly.  But you must and SHALL speak low."

Real men quickly recognize real men the world over; it is only your 
shams who fence and spar.  Bill, taking in the voice of the speaker 
more than his words, dropped his own.

"I said I had a kepple of words to say to ye.  Thar isn't any time 
in the last fower months--ever since ye took stock in this old 
shanty, for the matter o' that--that I couldn't hev said them to 
ye.  I've knowed all your doin's.  I've knowed all your debts, 
'spesh'ly that ye owe that sneakin' hound Parker; and thar isn't a 
time that I couldn't and wouldn't hev chipped in and paid 'em for 
ye--for your father's sake--ef I'd allowed it to be the square 
thing for ye.  But I know ye, Jeff.  I know what's in your BLOOD.  
I knew your father--allus dreamin', hopin,' waitin'; I know YOU, 
Jeff, dreamin', hopin', waitin' till the end.  And I stood by, 
givin' you a free rein, and let it come!"

Jeff buried his face in his hands.

"It ain't your blame--it's blood!  It ain't a week ago ez the 
kimpany passes me over a hoss.  'Three-quarters Morgan,' sez they.  
Sez I: 'Wot's the other quarter?'  Sez they: 'A Mexican half-
breed.'  Well, she was a fair sort of hoss.  Comin' down Heavytree 
Hill last trip, we meets a drove o' Spanish steers.  In course she 
goes wild directly.  Blood!"

Bill raised his glass, softly swirled its contents round and round, 
tasted it, and set it down.

"The kepple o' words I had to say to ye was this: Git up and git!"

Something like this had passed through Jeff's mind the day before 
the Mayfields came.  Something like it had haunted him once or 
twice since.  He turned quickly upon the speaker.

"Ez how? you sez," said Bill, catching at the hook.  "I drives up 
yer some night, and you sez to me, 'Bill, hev you got two seats 
over to the Divide for me and aunty--out on a pasear.'  And I sez, 
'I happen to hev one inside and one on the box with me.'  And you 
hands out yer traps and any vallybles ye don't want ter leave, and 
you puts your aunt inside, and gets up on the box with me.  And you 
sez to me, ez man to man, 'Bill,' sez you, 'might you hev a kepple 
o' hundred dollars about ye that ye could lend a man ez was leaving 
the county, dead broke?' and I sez, 'I've got it, and I know of an 
op'nin' for such a man in the next county.'  And you steps into 
THAT op'nin', and your creditors--'spesh'ly Parker--slips into 
THIS, and in a week they offers to settle with ye ten cents on the 
dollar."

Jeff started, flushed, trembled, recovered himself, and after a 
moment said, doggedly: "I can't do it, Bill; I couldn't."

"In course," said Bill, putting his hands slowly into his pockets, 
and stretching his legs out--"in course ye can't because of a 
woman!"

Jeff turned upon him like a hunted bear.  Both men rose, but Bill 
already had his hand on Jeff's shoulder.

"I reckoned a minute ago there was a sick gal in the house!  Who's 
going to make a row now!  Who's going to stamp and tear round, eh?"

Jeff sank back on his chair.

"I said thar was a woman," continued Bill; "thar allus is one!  Let 
a man be hell-bent or heaven-bent, somewhere in his track is a 
woman's feet.  I don't say anythin' agin this gal, ez a gal.  The 
best of 'em, Jeff, is only guide-posts to p'int a fellow on his 
right road, and only a fool or a drunken man holds on to 'em or 
leans agin em.  Allowin' this gal is all you think she is, how far 
is your guide-post goin' with ye, eh?  Is she goin' to leave her 
father and mother for ye?  Is she goin' to give up herself and her 
easy ways and her sicknesses for ye?  Is she willin' to take ye for 
a perpetooal landlord the rest of her life?  And if she is, Jeff, 
are ye the man to let her?  Are ye willin' to run on her errants, 
to fetch her dinners ez ye do?  Thar ez men ez does it; not yer in 
Californy, but over in the States thar's fellows is willing to take 
that situation.  I've heard," continued Bill, in a low, mysterious 
voice, as of one describing the habits of the Anthropophagi--"I've 
heard o' fellows ez call themselves men, sellin' of themselves to 
rich women in that way.  I've heard o' rich gals buyin' of men for 
their shape; sometimes--but thet's in furrin' kintries--for their 
pedigree!  I've heard o' fellows bein' in that business, and 
callin' themselves men instead o' hosses!  Ye ain't that kind o' 
man, Jeff.  'Tain't in yer blood.  Yer father was a fool about 
women, and in course they ruined him, as they allus do the best 
men.  It's on'y the fools and sneaks ez a woman ever makes anythin' 
out of.  When ye hear of a man a woman hez made, ye hears of a 
nincompoop.  And when they does produce 'em in the way o' nater, 
they ain't responsible for 'em, and sez they're the image o' their 
fathers!  Ye ain't a man ez is goin' to trust yer fate to a woman!"

"No," said Jeff darkly.

"I reckoned not," said Bill, putting his hands in his pockets 
again.  "Ye might if ye was one o' them kind o' fellows as kem up 
from 'Frisco with her to Sacramento.  One o' them kind o' fellows 
ez could sling poetry and French and Latin to her--one of HER kind--
but ye ain't!  No, sir!"

Unwise William of Yuba!  In any other breast but Jeff's that random 
shot would have awakened the irregular auxiliary of love--jealousy!  
But Jeff, being at once proud and humble, had neither vanity nor 
conceit, without which jealousy is impossible.  Yet he winced a 
little, for he had feeling, and then said earnestly:

"Do you think that opening you spoke of would hold for a day or two 
longer?"

"I reckon."

"Well, then, I think I can settle up matters here my own way, and 
go with you, Bill."

He had risen, and yet hesitatingly kept his hand on the back of his 
chair.  "Bill!"

"Jeff!"

"I want to ask you a question; speak up, and don't mind me, but say 
the truth."

Our crafty Ulysses, believing that he was about to be entrapped, 
ensconced himself in his pockets, cocked one eye, and said: "Go on, 
Jeff."

"Was my father VERY bad?"

Bill took his hands from his pockets.  "Thar isn't a man ez crawls 
above his grave ez is worthy to lie in the same ground with him!"

"Thank you, Bill.  Good night; I'm going to turn in!"

"Look yar, boy!  G-d d--n it all, Jeff! what do ye mean?"

There were two tears--twin sisters of those in his sweetheart's 
eyes that afternoon--now standing in Jeff's!

Bill caught both his hands in his own.  Had they been of the Latin 
race they would have, right honestly, taken each other in their 
arms, and perhaps kissed!  Being Anglo-Saxons, they gripped each 
other's hands hard, and one, as above stated, swore!

When Jeff ascended to his room that night he went directly to his 
trunk and took out Miss Mayfield's slipper.  Alack! during the day 
Aunt Sally had "put things to rights" in his room, and the trunk 
had been moved.  This had somewhat disordered its contents, and 
Miss Mayfield's slipper contained a dozen shot from a broken Eley's 
cartridge, a few quinine pills, four postage stamps, part of a 
coral earring which Jeff--on the most apocryphal authority--fondly 
believed belonged to his mother, whom he had never seen, and a 
small silver school medal which Jeff had once received for "good 
conduct," much to his own surprise, but which he still religiously 
kept as evidence of former conventional character.  He colored a 
little, rubbed the medal and earring ruefully on his sleeve, 
replaced them in his trunk, and then hastily emptied the rest of 
the slipper's contents on the floor.  This done, he drew off his 
boots, and, gliding noiselessly down the stair, hung the slipper on 
the knob of Miss Mayfield's door, and glided back again without 
detection.

Rolling himself in his blankets, he lay down on his bed.  But not 
to sleep!  Staringly wide awake, he at last felt the lulling of the 
wind that nightly shook his casement, and listened while the great, 
rambling, creaking, disjointed "Half-way House" slowly settled 
itself to repose.  He thought of many things; of himself, of his 
past, of his future, but chiefly, I fear, of the pale proud face 
now sleeping contentedly in the chamber below him.  He tossed with 
many plans and projects, more or less impracticable, and then began 
to doze.  Whereat the moon, creeping in the window, laid a cold 
white arm across him, and eventually dried a few foolish tears upon 
his sleeping lashes.


IV.


Aunt Sally was making pies in the kitchen the next morning when 
Jeff hesitatingly stole upon her.  The moment was not a felicitous 
one.  Pie-making was usually an aggressive pursuit with Aunt Sally, 
entered into severely, and prosecuted unto the bitter end.  After 
watching her a few moments Jeff came up and placed his arms 
tenderly around her.  People very much in love find relief, I am 
told, in this vicarious expression.

"Aunty."

"Well, Jeff!  Thar, now--yer gittin' all dough!"  Nevertheless, the 
hard face relaxed a little.  Something of a smile stole round her 
mouth, showing what she might have been before theology and bitters 
had supplied the natural feminine longings.

"Aunty dear!"

"You--boy!"

It WAS a boy's face--albeit bearded like the pard, with an extra 
fierceness in the mustaches--that looked upon hers.  She could not 
help bestowing a grim floury kiss upon it.

"Well, what is it now?"

"I'm thinking, aunty, it's high time you and me packed up our traps 
and 'shook' this yar shanty, and located somewhere else."  Jeff's 
voice was ostentatiously cheerful, but his eyes were a little 
anxious.

"What for NOW?"

Jeff hastily recounted his ill luck, and the various reasons--
excepting of course the dominant one--for his resolution.

"And when do you kalkilate to go?"

"If you'll look arter things here," hesitated Jeff, "I reckon I'll 
go up along with Bill to-morrow, and look round a bit."

"And how long do you reckon that gal would stay here after yar 
gone?"

This was a new and startling idea to Jeff.  But in his humility he 
saw nothing in it to flatter his conceit.  Rather the reverse.  He 
colored, and then said apologetically,--

"I thought that you and Jinny could get along without me.  The 
butcher will pack the provisions over from the Fork."

Laying down her rolling-pin, Aunt Sally turned upon Jeff with 
ostentatious deliberation.  "Ye ain't," she began slowly, "ez 
taking a man with wimmen ez your father was--that's a fact, Jeff 
Briggs!  They used to say that no woman as he went for could get 
away from him.  But ye don't mean to say yer think yer not good 
enough--such as ye are--for this snip of an old maid, ez big as a 
gold dollar, and as yaller?"

"Aunty," said Jeff, dropping his boyish manner, and his color as 
suddenly, "I'd rather ye wouldn't talk that way of Miss Mayfield.  
Ye don't know her; and there's times," he added, with a sigh, "ez I 
reckon ye don't quite know ME either.  That young lady, bein' sick, 
likes to be looked after.  Any one can do that for her.  She don't 
mind who it is.  She don't care for me except for that, and," added 
Jeff humbly, "it's quite natural."

"I didn't say she did," returned Aunt Sally viciously; "but seeing 
ez you've got an empty house yer on yer hands, and me a-slavin' 
here on jist nothin', if this gal, for the sake o' gallivantin' 
with ye for a spell, chooses to stay here and keep her family here, 
and pay high for it, I don't see why it ain't yer duty to 
Providence and me to take advantage of it."

Jeff raised his eyes to his aunt's face.  For the first time it 
struck him that she might be his father's sister and yet have no 
blood in her veins that answered to his.  There are few shocks more 
startling and overpowering to original natures than this sudden 
sense of loneliness.  Jeff could not speak, but remained looking 
fiercely at her.

Aunt Sally misinterpreted his silence, and returned to her work on 
the pies.  "The gal ain't no fool," she continued, rolling out the 
crust as if she were laying down broad propositions.  "SHE reckons 
on it too, ez if it was charged in the bill with the board and 
lodging.  Why, didn't she say to me, last night, that she 
kalkilated afore she went away to bring up some friends from 
'Frisco for a few days' visit? and didn't she say, in that pipin', 
affected voice o' hers, 'I oughter make some return for yer 
kindness and yer nephew's kindness, Aunt Sally, by showing people 
that can help you, and keep your house full, how pleasant it is up 
here.'  She ain't no fool, with all her faintin's and dyin's away!  
No, Jeff Briggs.  And if she wants to show ye off agin them city 
fellows ez she knows, and ye ain't got spunk enough to stand up and 
show off with her--why"--she turned her head impatiently, but he 
was gone.

If Jeff had ever wavered in his resolution he would have been 
steady enough NOW.  But he had never wavered; the convictions and 
resolutions of suddenly awakened character are seldom moved by 
expediency.  He was eager to taste the bitter dregs of his cup at 
once.  He began to pack his trunk, and make his preparations for 
departure.  Without avoiding Miss Mayfield in this new excitement, 
he no longer felt the need of her presence.  He had satisfied his 
feverish anxieties by placing his trunk in the hall beside his open 
door, and was sitting on his bed, wrestling with a faded and 
overtasked carpet-bag that would not close and accept his hard 
conditions, when a small voice from the staircase thrilled him.  He 
walked to the corridor, and, looking down, beheld Miss Mayfield 
midway on the steps of the staircase.

She had never looked so beautiful before!  Jeff had only seen her 
in those soft enwrappings and half-deshabille that belong to 
invalid femininity.  Always refined and modest thus, in her present 
walking-costume there was added a slight touch of coquettish 
adornment.  There was a brightness of color in her cheek and eye, 
partly the result of climbing the staircase, partly the result of 
that audacious impulse that had led her--a modest virgin--to seek a 
gentleman in this personal fashion.  Modesty in a young girl has a 
comfortable satisfying charm, recognized easily by all humanity; 
but he must be a sorry knave or a worse prig who is not deliciously 
thrilled when Modesty puts her charming little foot just over the 
threshold of Propriety.

"The mountain would not come to Mohammed, so Mohammed must come to 
the mountain," said Miss Mayfield.  "Mother is asleep, Aunt Sally 
is at work in the kitchen, and here am I, already dressed for a 
ramble in this bright afternoon sunshine, and no one to go with me.  
But, perhaps, you, too, are busy?"

"No, miss.  I will be with you in a moment."

I wish I could say that he went back to calm his pulses, which the 
dangerous music of Miss Mayfield's voice had set to throbbing, by 
a few moments' calm and dispassionate reflection.  But he only 
returned to brush his curls out of his eyes and ears, and to button 
over his blue flannel shirt a white linen collar, which he thought 
might better harmonize with Miss Mayfield's attire.

She was sitting on the staircase, poking her parasol through the 
balusters.  "You need not have taken that trouble, Mr. Jeff," she 
said pleasantly.  "YOU are a part of this mountain picture at all 
times; but I am obliged to think of dress."

"It was no trouble, miss."

Something in the tone of his voice made her look in his face as she 
rose.  It was a trifle paler, and a little older.  The result, 
doubtless, thought Miss Mayfield, of his yesterday's experience 
with the deputy-sheriff.

Such was her rapid deduction.  Nevertheless, after the fashion of 
her sex, she immediately began to argue from quite another 
hypothesis.

"You are angry with me, Mr. Jeff."

"What, I--Miss Mayfield?"

"Yes, you!"

"Miss Mayfield!"

"Oh yes, you are.  Don't deny it?"

"Upon my soul--"

"Yes!  You give me punishments and--penances!"

Jeff opened his blue eyes on his tormentor.  Could Aunt Sally have 
been saying anything?

"If anybody, Miss Mayfield--" he began.

"Nobody but you.  Look here!"

She extended her little hand with a smile.  In the centre of her 
palm lay four shining double B SHOT.

"There!  I found those in my slipper this morning!"  Jeff was 
speechless.

"Of course YOU did it!  Of course it was YOU who found my slipper!" 
said Miss Mayfield, laughing.  "But why did you put shot in it, Mr. 
Jeff?  In some Catholic countries, when people have done wrong, the 
priests make them do penance by walking with peas in their shoes!  
What have I ever done to you?  And why SHOT?  They're ever so much 
harder than peas."

Seeing only the mischievous, laughing face before him, and the 
open palm containing the damning evidence of the broken Eley's 
cartridge, Jeff stammered out the truth.

"I found the slipper in the bear-skin, Miss Mayfield.  I put it in 
my trunk to keep, thinking yer wouldn't miss it, and it's being a 
kind of remembrance after you're gone away--of--of the night you 
came here.  Somebody moved the trunk in my room," and he hung his 
head here.  "The things inside all got mixed up."

"And that made you change your mind about keeping it?" said Miss 
Mayfield, still smiling.

"No, miss."

"What was it, then?"

"I gave it back to you, Miss Mayfield, because I was going away."

"Indeed!  Where?"

"I'm going to find another location.  Maybe you've noticed," he 
continued, falling back into his old apologetic manner in spite of 
his pride of resolution--"maybe you've noticed that this place here 
has no advantages for a hotel."

"I had not, indeed.  I have been very comfortable."

"Thank you, miss."

"When do you go?"

"To-night."

For all his pride and fixed purpose he could not help looking 
eagerly in her face.  Miss Mayfield's eyes met his pleasantly and 
quietly.

"I'm sorry to part with you so soon," she said, as she stepped back 
a pace or two with folded hands.  "Of course every moment of your 
time now is occupied.  You must not think of wasting it on me."

But Jeff had recovered his sad composure.  "I'd like to go with 
you, Miss Mayfield.  It's the last time, you know," he added 
simply.

Miss Mayfield did not reply.  It was a tacit assent, however, 
although she moved somewhat stiffly at his side as they walked 
towards the door.  Quite convinced that Jeff's resolution came from 
his pecuniary troubles, Miss Mayfield was wondering if she had not 
better assure him of his security from further annoyance from Dodd.  
Wonderful complexity of female intellect! she was a little hurt at 
his ingratitude to her for a kindness he could not possibly have 
known.  Miss Mayfield felt that in some way she was unjustly 
treated.  How many of our miserable sex, incapable of divination, 
have been crushed under that unreasonable feminine reproof, "You 
ought to have known!"

The afternoon sun was indeed shining brightly as they stepped out 
before the bleak angle of the "Half-way House"; but it failed to 
mitigate the habitually practical austerity of the mountain breeze--
a fact which Miss Mayfield had never before noticed.  The house 
was certainly bleak and exposed; the site by no means a poetical 
one.  She wondered if she had not put a romance into it, and 
perhaps even into the man beside her, which did not belong to 
either.  It was a moment of dangerous doubt.

"I don't know but that you're right, Mr. Jeff," she said finally, 
as they faced the hill, and began the ascent together.  "This place 
is a little queer, and bleak, and--unattractive."

"Yes, miss," said Jeff, with direct simplicity, "I've always 
wondered what you saw in it to make you content to stay, when it 
would be so much prettier, and more suitable for you at the 
'Summit.'"

Miss Mayfield bit her lip, and was silent.  After a few moments' 
climbing she said, almost pettishly, "Where is this famous 
'Summit'?"

Jeff stopped.  They had reached the top of the hill.  He pointed 
across an olive-green chasm to a higher level, where, basking in 
the declining sun, clustered the long rambling outbuildings around 
the white blinking facade of the "Summit House."  Framed in pines 
and hemlocks, tender with soft gray shadows, and nestling beyond a 
foreground of cultivated slope, it was a charming rustic picture.

Miss Mayfield's quick eye took in its details.  Her quick intellect 
took in something else.  She had seated herself on the road-bank, 
and, clasping her knees between her locked fingers, she suddenly 
looked up at Jeff.  "What possessed you to come half-way up a 
mountain, instead of going on to the top?"

"Poverty, miss!"

Miss Mayfield flushed a little at this practical direct answer to 
her half-figurative question.  However, she began to think that 
moral Alpine-climbing youth might have pecuniary restrictions in 
their high ambitions, and that the hero of "Excelsior" might have 
succumbed to more powerful opposition than the wisdom of Age or the 
blandishments of Beauty.

"You mean that poverty up there is more expensive?"

"Yes, miss."

"But you would like to live there?"

"Yes."

They were both silent.  Miss Mayfield glanced at Jeff under the 
corners of her lashes.  He was leaning against a tree, absorbed in 
thought.  Accustomed to look upon him as a pleasing picturesque 
object, quite fresh, original, and characteristic, she was somewhat 
disturbed to find that to-day he presented certain other qualities 
which clearly did not agree with her preconceived ideas of his 
condition.  He had abandoned his usual large top-boots for low 
shoes, and she could not help noticing that his feet were small and 
slender as were his hands, albeit browned by exposure.  His ruddy 
color was gone too, and his face, pale with sorrow and experience, 
had a new expression.  His buttoned-up coat and white collar, so 
unlike his usual self, also had its suggestions--which Miss 
Mayfield was at first inclined to resent.  Women are quick to 
notice and augur more or less wisely from these small details.  
Nevertheless, she began in quite another tone.

"Do you remember your mother--MR.--MR.--BRIGGS?"

Jeff noticed the new epithet.  "No, miss; she died when I was quite 
young."

"Your father, then?"

Jeff's eye kindled a little, aggressively.  "I remember HIM."

"What was he?"

"Miss Mayfield!"

"What was his business or profession?"

"He--hadn't--any!"

"Oh, I see--a gentleman of property."

Jeff hesitated, looked at Miss Mayfield hurriedly, colored, and did 
not reply.

"And lost his property, Mr. Briggs?"  With one of those rare 
impulses of an overtasked gentle nature, Jeff turned upon her 
almost savagely.  "My father was a gambler, and shot himself at a 
gambling table."

Miss Mayfield rose hurriedly.  "I--I beg your pardon, Mr. Jeff."

Jeff was silent.

"You know--you MUST know--I did not mean--"

No reply.

"Mr. Jeff!"

Her little hand fluttered toward him, and lit upon his sleeve, 
where it was suddenly captured and pressed passionately to his 
lips.

"I did not mean to be thoughtless or unkind," said Miss Mayfield, 
discreetly keeping to the point, and trying weakly to disengage her 
hand.  "You know I wouldn't hurt your feelings."

"I know, Miss Mayfield."  (Another kiss.)

"I was ignorant of your history."

"Yes, miss."  (A kiss.)

"And if I could do anything for you, Mr. Jeff--"  She stopped.

It was a very trying position.  Being small, she was drawn after 
her hand quite up to Jeff's shoulder, while he, assenting in 
monosyllables, was parting the fingers, and kissing them 
separately.  Reasonable discourse in this attitude was out of the 
question.  She had recourse to strategy.

"Oh!"

"Miss Mayfield!"

"You hurt my hand."

Jeff dropped it instantly.  Miss Mayfield put it in the pocket of 
her sacque for security.  Besides, it had been so bekissed that it 
seemed unpleasantly conscious.

"I wish you would tell me all about yourself," she went on, with a 
certain charming feminine submission of manner quite unlike her 
ordinary speech; "I should like to help you.  Perhaps I can.  You 
know I am quite independent; I mean--"

She paused, for Jeff's face betrayed no signs of sympathetic 
following.

"I mean I am what people call rich in my own right.  I can do as I 
please with my own.  If any of your trouble, Mr. Jeff, arises from 
want of money, or capital; if any consideration of that kind takes 
you away from your home; if I could save you THAT TROUBLE, and find 
for you--perhaps a little nearer--that which you are seeking, I 
would be so glad to do it.  You will find the world very wide, and 
very cold, Mr. Jeff," she continued, with a certain air of 
practical superiority quite natural to her, but explicable to her 
friends and acquaintances only as the consciousness of pecuniary 
independence; "and I wish you would be frank with me.  Although I 
am a woman, I know something of business."

"I will be frank with you, miss," said Jeff, turning a colorless 
face upon her.  "If you was ez rich as the Bank of California, and 
could throw your money on any fancy or whim that struck you at the 
moment; if you felt you could buy up any man and woman in 
California that was willing to be bought up; and if me and my aunt 
were starving in the road, we wouldn't touch the money that we 
hadn't earned fairly, and didn't belong to us.  No, miss, I ain't 
that sort o' man!"

How much of this speech, in its brusqueness and slang, was an echo 
of Yuba Bill's teaching, how much of it was a part of Jeff's inward 
weakness, I cannot say.  He saw Miss Mayfield recoil from him.  It 
added to his bitterness that his thought, for the first time 
voiced, appeared to him by no means as effective or powerful as he 
had imagined it would be, but he could not recede from it; and 
there was the relief that the worst had come, and was over now.

Miss Mayfield took her hand out of her pocket.  "I don't think you 
quite understand me, Mr. Jeff," she said quietly; "and I HOPE I 
don't understand you."  She walked stiffly at his side for a few 
moments, but finally took the other side of the road.  They had 
both turned, half unconsciously, back again to the "Half-way 
House."

Jeff felt, like all quarrel-seekers, righteous or unrighteous, the 
full burden of the fight.  If he could have relieved his mind, and 
at the next moment leaped upon Yuba Bill's coach, and so passed 
away--without a further word of explanation--all would have been 
well.  But to walk back with this girl, whom he had just shaken 
off, and who must now thoroughly hate him, was something he had not 
preconceived, in that delightful forecast of the imagination, when 
we determine what WE shall say and do without the least consideration
of what may be said or done to us in return.  No quarrel proceeds
exactly as we expect; people have such a way of behaving illogically!
And here was Miss Mayfield, who was clearly derelict, and who should
have acted under that conviction, walking along on the other side of
the road, trailing the splendor of her parasol in the dust like an
offended goddess.

They had almost reached the house.  "At what time do you go, Mr. 
Briggs?" asked the young lady quietly.

"At eleven to-night, by the up stage."

"I expect some friends by that stage--coming with my father."

"My aunt will take good care of them," said Jeff, a little 
bitterly.

"I have no doubt," responded Miss Mayfield gravely; "but I was not 
thinking of that.  I had hoped to introduce them to you to-morrow.  
But I shall not be up so late to-night.  And I had better say 
good-by to you now."

She extended the unkissed hand.  Jeff took it, but presently let 
the limp fingers fall through his own.

"I wish you good fortune, Mr. Briggs."

She made a grave little bow, and vanished into the house.  But 
here, I regret to say, her lady-like calm also vanished.  She 
upbraided her mother peevishly for obliging her to seek the escort 
of Mr. Briggs in her necessary exercise, and flung herself with an 
injured air upon the sofa.

"But I thought you liked this Mr. Briggs.  He seems an accommodating
sort of person."

"Very accommodating.  Going away just as we are expecting company!"

"Going away?" said Mrs. Mayfield in alarm.  "Surely he must be told 
that we expect some preparation for our friends?"

"Oh," said Miss Mayfield quickly, "his aunt will arrange THAT."

Mrs. Mayfield, habitually mystified at her daughter's moods, said 
no more.  She, however, fulfilled her duty conscientiously by 
rising, throwing a wrap over the young girl, tucking it in at her 
feet, and having, as it were, drawn a charitable veil over her 
peculiarities, left her alone.

At half past ten the coach dashed up to the "Half-way House," with 
a flash of lights and a burst of cheery voices.  Jeff, coming upon 
the porch, was met by Mr. Mayfield, accompanying a lady and two 
gentlemen,--evidently the guests alluded to by his daughter.  
Accustomed as Jeff had become to Mr. Mayfield's patronizing 
superiority, it seemed unbearable now, and the easy indifference of 
the guests to his own presence touched him with a new bitterness.  
Here were HER friends, who were to take his place.  It was a relief 
to grasp Yuba Bill's large hand and stand with him alone beside the 
bar.

"I'm ready to go with you to-night, Bill," said Jeff, after a 
pause.

Bill put down his glass--a sign of absorbing interest.

"And these yar strangers I fetched?"

"Aunty will take care of them.  I've fixed everything."

Bill laid both his powerful hands on Jeff's shoulders, backed him 
against the wall, and surveyed him with great gravity.

"Briggs's son clar through!  A little off color, but the grit all 
thar!  Bully for you, Jeff."  He wrung Jeff's hand between his own.

"Bill!" said Jeff hesitatingly.

"Jeff!"

"You wouldn't mind my getting up on the box NOW, before all the 
folks get round?"

"I reckon not.  Thar's the box-seat all ready for ye."

Climbing to his high perch, Jeff, indistinguishable in the 
darkness, looked out upon the porch and the moving figures of the 
passengers, on Bill growling out his orders to his active hostler, 
and on the twinkling lights of the hotel windows.  In the mystery 
of the night and the bitterness of his heart, everything looked 
strange.  There was a light in Miss Mayfield's room, but the 
curtains were drawn.  Once he thought they moved, but then, fearful 
of the fascination of watching them, he turned his face resolutely 
away.

Then, to his relief, the hour came; the passengers re-entered the 
coach; Bill had mounted the box, and was slowly gathering his 
reins, when a shrill voice rose from the porch.

"Oh, Jeff!"

Jeff leaned an anxious face out over the coach lamps.

It was Aunt Sally, breathless and on tiptoe, reaching with a 
letter.  "Suthin' you forgot!"  Then, in a hoarse stage whisper, 
perfectly audible to every one: "From HER!"

Jeff seized the letter with a burning face.  The whip snapped, and 
the stage plunged forward into the darkness.  Presently Yuba Bill 
reached down, coolly detached one of the coach lamps, and handed it 
to Jeff without a word.

Jeff tore open the envelope.  It contained Cyrus Parker's bill 
receipted, and the writ.  Another small inclosure contained ten 
dollars, and a few lines written in pencil in a large masculine 
business hand.  By the light of the lamp Jeff read as follows:--


"I hope you will forgive me for having tried to help you even in 
this accidental way, before I knew how strong were your objections 
to help from me.  Nobody knows this but myself.  Even Mr. Dodd 
thinks my father advanced the money.  The ten dollars the rascal 
would have kept, but I made him disgorge it.  I did it all while 
you were looking for the letter in the woods.  Pray forget all 
about it, and any pain you may have had from J. M."


Frank and practical as this letter appeared to be, and, doubtless, 
as it was intended to be by its writer, the reader will not fail to 
notice that Miss Mayfield said nothing of having overheard Jeff's 
quarrel with the deputy, and left him to infer that that 
functionary had betrayed him.  It was simply one of those 
unpleasant details not affecting the result, usually overlooked in 
feminine ethics.

For a moment Jeff sat pale and dumb, crushed under the ruins of his 
pride and self-love.  For a moment he hated Miss Mayfield, small 
and triumphant!  How she must have inwardly laughed at his speech 
that morning!  With what refined cruelty she had saved this 
evidence of his humiliation, to work her vengeance on him now.  He 
could not stand it!  He could not live under it!  He would go back 
and sell the house--his clothes--everything--to pay this wicked, 
heartless, cruel girl, that was killing--yes, killing--

A strong hand took the swinging-lantern from his unsteady fingers, 
a strong hand possessed itself of the papers and Miss Mayfield's 
note, a strong arm was drawn around him,--for his figure was 
swaying to and fro, his head was giddy, and his hat had fallen 
off,--and a strong voice, albeit a little husky, whispered in his 
ear,--

"Easy, boy! easy on the down grade.  It'll be all one in a minit."

Jeff tried to comprehend him, but his brain was whirling.

"Pull yourself together, Jeff!" said Bill, after a pause.  "Thar!  
Look yar!" he said suddenly.  "Do you think you can drive SIX?"

The words recalled Jeff to his senses.  Bill laid the six reins in 
his hands.  A sense of life, of activity, of POWER, came back to 
the young man, as his fingers closed deliciously on the far-
reaching, thrilling, living leathern sinews that controlled the six 
horses, and seemed to be instinct and magnetic with their bounding 
life.  Jeff, leaning back against them, felt the strong youthful 
tide rush back to his heart, and was himself again.  Bill, 
meantime, took the lamp, examined the papers, and read Miss 
Mayfield's note.  A grim smile stole over his face.  After a pause, 
he said again, "Give Blue Grass her head, Jeff.  D--n it, she ain't 
Miss Mayfield!"

Jeff relaxed the muscles of his wrists, so as to throw the thumb 
and forefingers a trifle forward.  This simple action relieved Blue 
Grass, alias Miss Mayfield, and made the coach steadier and less 
jerky.  Wonderful co-relation of forces.

"Thar!" said Yuba Bill, quietly putting the coach lamp back in its 
place; "you're better already.  Thar's nothing like six horses to 
draw a woman out of a man.  I've knowed a case where it took eight 
mustangs, but it was a mulatter from New Orleans, and they are 
pizen!  Ye might hit up a little on the Pinto hoss--he ain't 
harmin' ye.  So!  Now, Jeff, take your time, and take it easy, 
and what's all this yer about?"

To control six fiery mustangs, and at the same time give picturesque
and affecting exposition of the subtle struggles of Love and Pride,
was a performance beyond Jeff's powers.  He had recourse to an angry
staccato, which somehow seemed to him as ineffective as his previous
discourse to Miss Mayfield; he was a little incoherent, and perhaps
mixed his impressions with his facts, but he nevertheless managed to
convey to Bill some general idea of the events of the past three
days.

"And she sent ye off after that letter, that wasn't thar, while she 
fixed things up with Dodd?"

"Yes," said Jeff furiously.

"Ye needn't bully the Pinto colt, Jeff; he is doin' his level best.  
And she snaked that ar ten dollars outer Dodd?"

"Yes; and sent it back to ME.  To ME, Bill!  At such a time as 
this!  As if I was dead broke!--a mere tramp.  As if--"

"In course! in course!" said Bill soothingly, yet turning his head 
aside to bestow a deceitful smile upon the trees that whirled 
beside them.  "And ye told her ye didn't want her money?"

"Yes, Bill--but it--it--it was AFTER she had done this!"

"Surely!  I'll take the lines now, Jeff."

He took them.  Jeff relapsed into gloomy silence.  The starlight of 
that dewless Sierran night was bright and cold and passionless.  
There was no moon to lead the fancy astray with its faint mysteries 
and suggestions; nothing but a clear, grayish-blue twilight, with 
sharply silhouetted shadows, pointed here and there with bright 
large-spaced constant stars.  The deep breath of the pine-woods, 
the faint, cool resinous spices of bay and laurel, at last brought 
surcease to his wounded spirit.  The blessed weariness of exhausted 
youth stole tenderly on him.  His head nodded, dropped.  Yuba Bill, 
with a grim smile, drew him to his side, enveloped him in his 
blanket, and felt his head at last sink upon his own broad 
shoulder.

A few minutes later the coach drew up at the "Summit House."  Yuba 
Bill did not dismount, an unusual and disturbing circumstance that 
brought the bar-keeper to the veranda.

"What's up, old man?"

"I am."

"Sworn off your reg'lar pizen?"

"My physician," said Bill gravely, "hez ordered me dry champagne 
every three hours." 

Nevertheless, the bar-keeper lingered.

"Who's that you're dry-nussin' up there?"

I regret that I may not give Yuba Bill's literal reply.  It 
suggested a form of inquiry at once distant, indirect, outrageous, 
and impossible.

The bar-keeper flashed a lantern upon Jeff's curls and his drooping 
eyelashes and mustaches.

"It's that son o' Briggs o' Tuolumne--pooty boy, ain't he?"

Bill disdained a reply.

"Played himself out down there, I reckon.  Left his rifle here in 
pawn."

"Young man," said Bill gravely.

"Old man."

"Ef you're looking for a safe investment ez will pay ye better than 
forty-rod whiskey at two bits a glass, jist you hang onter that ar 
rifle.  It may make your fortin yet, or save ye from a drunkard's 
grave."  With this ungracious pleasantry he hurried his dilatory 
passengers back into the coach, cracked his whip, and was again 
upon the road.  The lights of the "Summit House" presently dropped 
here and there into the wasting shadows of the trees.  Another 
stretch through the close-set ranks of pines, another dash through 
the opening, another whirl and rattle by overhanging rocks, and the 
vehicle was swiftly descending.  Bill put his foot on the brake, 
threw his reins loosely on the necks of his cattle, and looked 
leisurely back.  The great mountain was slowly and steadily rising 
between them and the valley they quitted.

And at that same moment Miss Mayfield had crept from her bed, and, 
with a shawl around her pretty little figure, was pressing her eyes 
against a blank window of the "Half-way House," and wondering where 
HE was now.


V.


The "opening" suggested by Bill was not a fortunate one.  Possibly 
views of business openings in the public-house line taken from the 
tops of stage-coaches are not as judicious as those taken from less 
exalted levels.  Certain it is that the "goodwill" of the "Lone 
Star House" promised little more pecuniary value than a conventional
blessing.  It was in an older and more thickly settled locality than
the "Half-way House;" indeed, it was but half a mile away from
Campville, famous in '49--a place with a history and a disaster.
But young communities are impatient of settlements that through any
accident fail to fulfil the extravagant promise of their youth, and
the wounded hamlet of Campville had crept into the woods and died.
The "Lone Star House" was an attempt to woo the passing travelers
from another point; but its road led to Campville, and was already
touched by its dry-rot.  Bill, who honestly conceived that the
infusion of fresh young blood like Jeff's into the stagnant current
would quicken it, had to confess his disappointment.  "I thought ye
could put some go into the shanty, Jeff," said Bill, "and make it
lively and invitin'!"  But the lack of vitality was not in the
landlord, but in the guests.  The regular customers were disappointed,
vacant, hopeless men, who gathered listlessly on the veranda, and
talked vaguely of the past.  Their hollow-eyed, feeble impotency
affected the stranger, even as it checked all ambition among
themselves.  Do what Jeff might, the habits of the locality were
stronger than his individuality; the dead ghosts of the past
Campville held their property by invisible mortmain.

In the midst of this struggle the "Half-way House" was sold.  Spite 
of Bill's prediction, the proceeds barely paid Jeff's debts.  Aunt 
Sally prevented any troublesome consideration of HER future, by 
applying a small surplus of profit to the expenses of a journey 
back to her relatives in Kentucky.  She wrote Jeff a letter of 
cheerless instruction, reminded him of the fulfillment of her worst 
prophecies regarding him, but begged him, in her absence, to rely 
solely upon the "Word."  "For the sperrit killeth," she added 
vaguely.  Whether this referred figuratively to Jeff's business, he 
did not stop to consider.  He was more interested in the 
information that the Mayfields had removed to the "Summit Hotel" 
two days after he had left.  "She allowed it was for her health's 
sake," continued Aunt Sally, "but I reckon it's another name for 
one of them city fellers who j'ined their party and is keepin' 
company with her now.  They talk o' property and stocks and sich 
worldly trifles all the time, and it's easy to see their idees is 
set together.  It's allowed at the Forks that Mr. Mayfield paid 
Parker's bill for you.  I said it wasn't so, fur ye'd hev told me; 
but if it is so, Jeff, and ye didn't tell me, it was for only one 
puppos, and that wos that Mayfield bribed ye to break off with his 
darter!  That was WHY you went off so suddent, 'like a thief in the 
night,' and why Miss Mayfield never let on a word about you after 
you left--not even your name!"

Jeff crushed the letter between his fingers, and, going behind the 
bar, poured out half a glass of stimulant and drank it.  It was not 
the first time since he came to the "Lone Star House" that he had 
found this easy relief from his present thought; it was not the 
first time that he had found this dangerous ally of sure and swift 
service in bringing him up or down to that level of his dreary, 
sodden guests, so necessary to his trade.  Jeff had not the excuse 
of the inborn drunkard's taste.  He was impulsive and extreme.  At 
the end of the four weeks he came out on the porch one night as 
Bill drew up.  "You must take me from this place to-night," he 
said, in a broken voice scarce like his own.  "When we're on the 
road we can arrange matters, but I must go to-night."

"But where?" asked Bill.

"Anywhere!  Only I must go from here.  I shall go if I have to 
walk."

Bill looked hard at the young man.  His face was flushed, his eyes 
blood-shot, and his hands trembled, not with excitement, but with a 
vacant, purposeless impotence.  Bill looked a little relieved.  
"You've been drinking too hard.  Jeff, I thought better of ye than 
that!"

"I think better of MYSELF than that," said Jeff, with a certain 
wild, half-hysterical laugh, "and that is why I want to go.  Don't 
be alarmed, Bill," he added; "I have strength enough to save 
myself, and I shall!  But it isn't worth the struggle HERE."

He left the "Lone Star House" that night.  He would, he said to 
Bill, go on to Sacramento, and try to get a situation as clerk or 
porter there; he was too old to learn a trade.  He said little 
more.  When, after forty-eight hours' inability to eat, drink, or 
sleep, Bill, looking at his haggard face and staring eyes, pressed 
him to partake, medicinally, from a certain black bottle, Jeff 
gently put it aside, and saying, with a sad smile, "I can get along 
without it; I've gone through more than this," left his mentor in a 
state of mingled admiration and perplexity.

At Sacramento he found a commercial "opening."  But certain habits 
of personal independence, combined with a direct truthfulness and 
simplicity, were not conducive to business advancement.  He was 
frank, and in his habits impulsive and selfishly outspoken.  His 
employer, a good-natured man, successful in his way, anxious to 
serve his own interest and Jeff's equally, strove and labored with 
him, but in vain.  His employer's wife, a still more good-natured 
woman, successful in her way, and equally anxious to serve Jeff's 
interests and her own, also strove with him as unsuccessfully.  At 
the end of a month he discharged his employer, after a simple, 
boyish, utterly unbusiness-like interview, and secretly tore up his 
wife's letter.  "I don't know what to make of that chap," said the 
husband to his wife; "he's about as civilized as an Injun."  "And 
as conceited," added the lady.

Howbeit he took his conceit, his sorrows, his curls, mustaches, 
broad shoulders, and fifty dollars into humble lodgings in a back 
street.  The days succeeding this were the most restful he had 
passed since he left the "Half-way House."  To wander through the 
town, half conscious of its strangeness and novel bustling life, 
and to dream of a higher and nobler future with Miss Mayfield--to 
feel no responsibility but that of waiting--was, I regret to say, a 
pleasure to him.  He made no acquaintances except among the poorer 
people and the children.  He was sometimes hungry, he was always 
poorly clad, but these facts carried no degradation with them now.  
He read much, and in his way--Jeff's way--tried to improve his 
mind; his recent commercial experience had shown him various 
infelicities in his speech and accent.  He learned to correct 
certain provincialisms.  He was conscious that Miss Mayfield must 
have noticed them, yet his odd irrational pride kept him from ever 
regretting them, if they had offered a possible excuse for her 
treatment of him.

On one of these nights his steps chanced to lead him into a 
gambling-saloon.  The place had offered no temptation to him; his 
dealings with the goddess Chance had been of less active nature.  
Nevertheless he placed his last five dollars on the turn of a card.  
He won.  He won repeatedly; his gains had reached a considerable 
sum when, flushed, excited, and absorbed, he was suddenly conscious 
that he had become the centre of observation at the table.  Looking 
up, he saw that the dealer had paused, and, with the cards in his 
motionless fingers, was gazing at him with fixed eyes and a white 
face.

Jeff rose and passed hurriedly to his side.  "What's the matter?"

The gambler shrunk slightly as he approached.  "What's your name?"

"Briggs."

"God! I knew it!  How much have you got there?" he continued, in a 
quick whisper, pointing to Jeff's winnings.

"Five hundred dollars."

"I'll give you double if you'll get up and quit the board!"

"Why?" asked Jeff haughtily.

"Why?" repeated the man fiercely; "why?  Well, your father shot 
himself thar, where you're sittin', at this table;" and he added, 
with a half-forced, half-hysterical laugh, "HE'S PLAYIN' AT ME OVER 
YOUR SHOULDERS!"

Jeff lifted a face as colorless as the gambler's own, went back 
to his seat, and placed his entire gains on a single card.  The 
gambler looked at him nervously, but dealt.  There was a pause, a 
slight movement where Jeff stood, and then a simultaneous cry from 
the players as they turned towards him.  But his seat was vacant.  
"Run after him!  Call him back!  HE'S WON AGAIN!"  But he had 
vanished utterly.

HOW he left, or what indeed followed, he never clearly remembered.  
His movements must have been automatic, for when, two hours later, 
he found himself at the "Pioneer" coach office, with his carpet-bag 
and blankets by his side, he could not recall how or why he had 
come!  He had a dumb impression that he had barely escaped some 
dire calamity,--rather that he had only temporarily averted it,--
and that he was still in the shadow of some impending catastrophe 
of destiny.  He must go somewhere, he must do something to be 
saved!  He had no money, he had no friends; even Yuba Bill had been 
transferred to another route, miles away.  Yet, in the midst of 
this stupefaction, it was a part of his strange mental condition 
that trivial details of Miss Mayfield's face and figure, and 
even apparel, were constantly before him, to the exclusion of 
consecutive thought.  A collar she used to wear, a ribbon she had 
once tied around her waist, a blue vein in her dropped eyelid, a 
curve in her soft, full, bird-like throat, the arch of her in-step 
in her small boots--all these were plainer to him than the future, 
or even the present.  But a voice in his ear, a figure before his 
abstracted eyes, at last broke upon his reverie.

"Jeff Briggs!"

Jeff mechanically took the outstretched hand of a young clerk of 
the Pioneer Coach Company, who had once accompanied Yuba Bill and 
stopped at the "Half-way House."  He endeavored to collect his 
thoughts; here seemed to be an opportunity to go somewhere!

"What are you doing now?" said the young man briskly.

"Nothing," said Jeff simply.

"Oh, I see--going home!"

Home! the word stung sharply through Jeff's benumbed consciousness.

"No," he stammered, "that is--"

"Look here, Jeff," broke in the young man, "I've got a chance for 
you that don't fall in a man's way every day.  Wells, Fargo & Co.'s 
treasure messenger from Robinson's Ferry to Mempheys has slipped 
out.  The place is vacant.  I reckon I can get it for you."

"When?"

"Now--to-night."

"I'm ready."

"Come, then."

In ten minutes they were in the company's office, where its manager,
a man famous in those days for his boldness and shrewdness, still
lingered in the dispatch of business.

The young clerk briefly but deferentially stated certain facts.  
A few questions and answers followed, of which Jeff heard only the 
words "Tuolumne" and "Yuba Bill."

"Sit down, Mr. Briggs.  Good-night, Roberts."

The young clerk, with an encouraging smile at Jeff, bowed himself 
out as the manager seated himself at his desk and began to write.

"You know the country pretty well between the Fork and the Summit, 
Mr. Briggs?" he said, without looking up.

"I lived there," said Jeff.

"That was some months ago, wasn't it?"

"Six months," said Jeff, with a sigh.

"It's changed for the worse since your house was shut up.  There's 
a long stretch of unsettled country infested by bad characters."

Jeff sat silent.  "Briggs."

"Sir?"

"The last man but one who preceded you was shot by road agents."*


* Highway robbers.


"Yes, sir."

"We lost sixty thousand dollars up there."

"Yes?"

"Your father was Briggs of Tuolumne?"

"Yes, sir."  Jeff's head dropped, but, glancing shyly up, he saw a 
pleasant smile on his questioner's face.  He was still writing 
rapidly, but was apparently enjoying at the same time some pleasant 
recollection.

"Your father and I lost nearly sixty thousand dollars together one 
night, ten years ago, when we were both younger."

"Yes, sir," said Jeff dubiously.

"But it was OUR OWN MONEY, Jeff."

"Yes, sir."

"Here's your appointment," he said briefly, throwing away his pen, 
folding what he had written, and handing it to Jeff.  It was the 
first time that he had looked at him since he entered.  He now held 
out his hand, grasped Jeff's, and said, "Good-night!"


VI.


It was late the next evening when Jeff drew up at the coach office 
at Robinson's Ferry, where he was to await the coming of the Summit 
coach.  His mind, lifted only temporarily out of its denumbed 
condition during his interview with the manager, again fell back 
into its dull abstraction.  Fully embarked upon his dangerous 
journey, accepting all the meaning of the trust imposed upon him, 
he was yet vaguely conscious that he did not realize its full 
importance.  He had neither the dread nor the stimulation of coming 
danger.  He had faced death before in the boyish confidence of 
animal spirits; his pulse now was scarcely stirred with anticipation.
Once or twice before, in the extravagance of his passion, he had
imagined himself rescuing Miss Mayfield from danger, or even dying
for her.  During his journey his mind had dwelt fully and minutely
on every detail of their brief acquaintance; she was continually
before him, the tones of her voice were in his ears, the suggestive
touch of her fingers, the thrill that his lips had felt when he
kissed them--all were with him now, but only as a memory.  In his
coming fate, in his future life, he saw her not.  He believed it was
a premonition of coming death.

He made a few preparations.  The company's agent had told him that 
the treasure, letters, and dispatches, which had accumulated to a 
considerable amount, would be handed to him on the box; and that 
the arms and ammunition were in the boot.  A less courageous and 
determined man might have been affected by the cold, practical 
brutality of certain advice and instructions offered him by the 
agent, but Jeff recognized this compliment to his determination, 
even before the agent concluded his speech by saying, "But I reckon 
they knew what they were about in the lower office when they sent 
YOU up.  I dare say you kin give me p'ints, ef ye cared to, for all 
ye're soft spoken.  There are only four passengers booked through; 
we hev to be a little partikler, suspectin' spies!  Two of the four 
ye kin depend upon to get the top o' their d----d heads blowed off 
the first fire," he added grimly.

At ten o'clock the Summit coach flashed, rattled, glittered, and 
snapped, like a disorganized firework, up to the door of the 
company's office.  A familiar figure, but more than usually 
truculent and aggressive, slowly descended with violent oaths from 
the box.  Without seeing Jeff, it strode into the office.

"Now then," said Yuba Bill, addressing the agent, "whar's that God-
forsaken fool that Wells, Fargo & Co. hev sent up yar to take 
charge o' their treasure?  Because I'd like to introduce him to the 
champion idgit of Calaveras County, that's been selected to go to 
h-ll with him; and that's me, Yuba Bill!  P'int him out.  Don't 
keep me waitin'!"

The agent grinned and pointed to Jeff.

Both men recoiled in astonishment.  Yuba Bill was the first to 
recover his speech.

"It's a lie!" he roared; "or somebody has been putting up a job on 
ye, Jeff!  Because I've been twenty years in the service, and am 
such a nat'ral born mule that when the company strokes my back and 
sez, 'You're the on'y mule we kin trust, Bill,' I starts up and 
goes out as a blasted wooden figgerhead for road agents to lay fur 
and practice on, it don't follow that YOU'VE any call to go."

"It was my own seeking, Bill," said Jeff, with one of his old, 
sweet, boyish smiles.  "I didn't know YOU were to drive.  But 
you're not going back on me now, Bill, are you? you're not going to 
send me off with another volunteer?"

"That be d----d!" growled Bill.  Nevertheless, for ten minutes he 
reviled the Pioneer Coach Company with picturesque imprecation, 
tendered his resignation repeatedly to the agent, and at the end of 
that time, as everybody expected, mounted the box, and with a final 
malediction, involving the whole settlement, was off.

On the road, Jeff, in a few hurried sentences, told his story.  
Bill scarcely seemed to listen.  "Look yar, Jeff," he said 
suddenly.

"Yes, Bill."

"If the worst happens, and ye go under, you'll tell your father, IF 
I DON'T HAPPEN TO SEE HIM FIRST, it wasn't no job of mine, and I 
did my best to get ye out of it."

"Yes," said Jeff, in a faint voice.

"It mayn't be so bad," said Bill, softening; "they KNOW, d--n 'em, 
we've got a pile aboard, ez well as if they seed that agent gin it 
ye, but they also know we've pre-pared!"

"I wasn't thinking of that, Bill; I was thinking of my father."  
And he told Bill of the gambling episode at Sacramento.

"D'ye mean to say ye left them hounds with a thousand dollars of 
yer hard-earned--"

"Gambling gains, Bill," interrupted Jeff quietly.

"Exactly!  Well!"  Bill subsided into an incoherent growl.  After a 
few moments' pause, he began again.  "Yer ready as ye used to be 
with a six-shooter, Jeff, time's when ye was a boy, and I uster 
chuck half-dollars in the air fur ye to make warts on?"

"I reckon," said Jeff, with a faint smile.

"Thar's two p'ints on the road to be looked to: the woods beyond 
the blacksmith's shop that uster be; the fringe of alder and 
buckeye by the crossing below your house--p'ints where they kin 
fetch you without a show.  Thar's two ways o' meetin' them thar.  
One way ez to pull up and trust to luck and brag.  The other way is 
to whip up and yell, and send the whole six kiting by like h-ll!"

"Yes," said Jeff.

"The only drawback to that plan is this: the road lies along the 
edge of a precipice, straight down a thousand feet into the river.  
Ef these devils get a shot into any one o' the six and it DROPS, 
the coach turns sharp off, and down we go, the whole kerboodle of 
us, plump into the Stanislaus!"

"AND THEY DON'T GET THE MONEY," said Jeff quietly.

"Well, no!" replied Yuba Bill, staring at Jeff, whose face was set 
as a flint against the darkness.  "I should reckon not."  He then 
drew a long breath, glanced at Jeff again, and said between his 
teeth, "Well, I'm d----d!"

At the next station they changed horses, Bill personally supervising,
especially as regarded the welfare and proper condition of Blue
Grass, who here was brought out as a leader.  Formerly there was no
change of horses at this station, and this novelty excited Jeff's
remark.  "These yar chaps say thar's no station at the Summit now,"
growled Bill, in explanation; "the hotel is closed, and it's all
private property, bought by some chap from 'Frisco.  Thar ought to
be a law agin such doin's!"

This suggested obliteration of the last traces of Miss Mayfield 
seemed to Jeff as only a corroboration of his premonition.  He 
should never hear from her again!  Yet to have stood under the roof 
that last sheltered her; to, perchance, have met some one who had 
seen her later--this was a fancy that had haunted him on his 
journey.  It was all over now.  Perhaps it was for the best.

With the sinking behind of the lights of the station, the occupants 
of the coach knew that the dangerous part of the journey had begun.  
The two guards in the coach had already made obtrusive and warlike 
preparations, to the ill-concealed disgust of Yuba Bill.  "I'd hev 
been willin' to get through this yar job without the burnin' of 
powder, but ef any of them devils ez is waitin' for us would be 
content with a shot at them fancy policemen inside, I'd pull up and 
give 'em a show!"  Having relieved his mind, Bill said no more, and 
the two men relapsed into silence.  The moon shone brightly and 
peacefully, a fact pointed out by Bill as unfavorably deepening the 
shadows of the woods, and bringing the coach and the road into 
greater relief.

An hour passed.  What were Yuba Bill's thoughts are not a part of 
this history; that they were turbulent and aggressive might be 
inferred from the occasional growls and interjected oaths that 
broke from his lips.  But Jeff, strange anomaly, due perhaps to 
youth and moonlight, was wrapped in a sensuous dream of Miss 
Mayfield, of the scent of her dark hair as he had drawn her to his 
side, of the outlines of her sweet form, that had for a moment 
lightly touched his own--of anything, I fear, but the death he 
believed he was hastening to.  But--

"Jeff," said Bill, in an unmistakable tone.

"Yes," said Jeff.

"THAT AR CLUMP O' BUCKEYE ON THE RIDGE!  Ready there!"  (Leaning 
over the box, to the guards within.)  A responsive rustle in the 
coach, which now bounded forward as if instinct with life and 
intelligence.

"Jeff," said Bill, in an odd, altered voice, "take the lines a 
minit."  Jeff took them.  Bill stooped towards the boot.  A 
peaceful moment!  A peaceful outlook from the coach; the white 
moonlit road stretching to the ridge, no noise but the steady 
gallop of the horses!

Then a yellow flash, breaking from the darkness of the buckeye; a 
crack like the snap of a whip; Yuba Bill steadying himself for a 
moment, and then dropping at Jeff's feet!

"They got me, Jeff!  But--I DRAWED THEIR FIRE!  Don't drop the 
lines!  Don't speak!  For--they--think I'm YOU and you ME!"

The flash had illuminated Jeff as to the danger, as to Bill's 
sacrifice, but above all, and overwhelming all, to a thrilling 
sense of his own power and ability.

Yet he sat like a statue.  Six masked figures had appeared from 
the very ground, clinging to the bits of the horses.  The coach 
stopped.  Two wild purposeless shots--the first and last fired by 
the guards--were answered by the muzzle of six rifles pointed into 
the windows, and the passengers foolishly and impotently filed out 
into the road.

"Now, Bill," said a voice, which Jeff instantly recognized as the 
blacksmith's, "we won't keep ye long.  So hand down the treasure."

The man's foot was on the wheel; in another instant he would be 
beside Jeff, and discovery was certain.  Jeff leaned over and 
unhooked the coach lamp, as if to assist him with its light.  As if 
in turning, he STUMBLED, broke the lamp, ignited the kerosene, and 
scattered the wick and blazing fluid over the haunches of the 
wheelers!  The maddened animals gave one wild plunge forwards, the 
coach followed twice its length, throwing the blacksmith under its 
wheels, and driving the other horses towards the bank.  But as the 
lamp broke in Jeff's right hand, his practiced left hand discharged 
its hidden Derringer at the head of the robber who had held the bit 
of Blue Grass, and, throwing the useless weapon away, he laid the 
whip smartly on her back.  She leaped forward madly, dragging the 
other leaders with her, and in the next moment they were free and 
wildly careering down the grade.

A dozen shots followed them.  The men were protected by the coach, 
but Yuba Bill groaned.

"Are you hit again?" asked Jeff hastily.  He had forgotten his 
saviour.

"No; but the horses are!  I felt 'em!  Look at 'em, Jeff."

Jeff had gathered up the almost useless reins.  The horses were 
running away; but Blue Grass was limping.

"For God's sake," said Bill, desperately dragging his wounded 
figure above the dash-board, "keep her up!  LIFT HER UP, Jeff, 
till we pass the curve.  Don't let her drop, or we're--"

"Can you hold the reins?" said Jeff quickly.

"Give 'em here!"

Jeff passed them to the wounded man.  Then, with his bowie-knife 
between his teeth, he leaped over the dash-board on the backs of 
the wheelers.  He extinguished the blazing drops that the wind had 
not blown out of their smarting haunches, and with the skill and 
instinct of a Mexican vaquero, made his way over their turbulent 
tossing backs to Blue Grass, cut her traces and reins, and as the 
vehicle neared the curve, with a sharp lash, drove her to the bank, 
where she sank even as the coach darted by.  Bill uttered a feeble 
"Hurrah!" but at the same moment the reins dropped from his 
fingers, and he sank at the bottom of the boot.

Riding postilion-wise, Jeff could control the horses.  The 
dangerous curve was passed, but not the possibility of pursuit.  
The single leader he was bestriding was panting--more than that, 
he was SWEATING, and from the evidence of Jeff's hands, sweating 
BLOOD!  Back of his shoulder was a jagged hole, from which his 
life-blood was welling.  The off-wheel horse was limping too.  That 
last volley was no foolish outburst of useless rage, but was 
deliberate and premeditated skill.  Jeff drew the reins, and as the 
coach stopped, the horse he was riding fell dead.  Into the silence 
that followed broke the measured beat of horses' hoofs on the road 
above.  He was pursued!

To select the best horse of the remaining unscathed three, to break 
open the boot and place the treasure on his back, and to abandon 
and leave the senseless Bill lying there, was the unhesitating work 
of a moment.  Great heroes and great lovers are invariably one-
ideaed men, and Jeff was at that moment both.

Eighty thousand dollars in gold-dust and Jeff's weight was a 
handicap.  Nevertheless he flew forward like the wind.  Presently 
he fell to listening.  A certain hoof-beat in the rear was growing 
more distinct.  A bitter thought flashed through his mind.  He 
looked back.  Over the hill appeared the foremost of his pursuers.  
It was the blacksmith, mounted on the fleetest horse in the county--
Jeff's OWN horse--Rabbit!

But there are compensations in all new trials.  As Jeff faced round 
again, he saw he had reached the open table-land, and the bleak 
walls and ghastly, untenanted windows of the "Half-way House" rose 
before him in the distance.  Jeff was master of the ground here!  
He was entering the shadow of the woods--Miss Mayfield's woods! and 
there was a cut off from the road, and a bridle-path, known only to 
himself, hard by.  To find it, leap the roadside ditch, dash 
through the thicket, and rein up by the road again, was swiftly 
done.

Take a gentle woman, betray her trust, outrage her best feelings, 
drive her into a corner, and you have a fury!  Take a gentle, 
trustful man, abuse him, show him the folly of this gentleness and 
kindness, prove to him that it is weakness, drive him into a 
corner, and you have a savage!  And it was this savage, with an 
Indian's memory, and an Indian's eye and ear, that suddenly 
confronted the blacksmith.

What more!  A single shot from a trained hand and one-ideaed 
intellect settled the blacksmith's business, and temporarily ended 
this Iliad!  I say temporarily, for Mr. Dodd, formerly deputy-
sheriff, prudently pulled up at the top of the hill, and observing 
his principal bend his head forwards and act like a drunken man, 
until he reeled, limp and sideways, from the saddle, and noticing 
further that Jeff took his place with a well-filled saddle-bag, 
concluded to follow cautiously and unobtrusively in the rear.


VII.


But Jeff saw him not.  With mind and will bent on one object--to 
reach the first habitation, the "Summit," and send back help and 
assistance to his wounded comrade--he urged Rabbit forward.  The 
mare knew her rider, but he had no time for caresses.  Through the 
smarting of his hands he had only just noticed that they were badly 
burned, and the skin was peeling from them; he had confounded the 
blood that was flowing from a cut on his scalp, with that from the 
wounded horse.  It was one hour yet to the "Summit," but the road 
was good, the moon was bright, he knew what Rabbit could do, and it 
was not yet ten o'clock.

As the white outbuildings and irregular outlines of the "Summit 
House" began to be visible, Jeff felt a singular return of his 
former dreamy abstraction.  The hour of peril, anger, and 
excitement he had just passed through seemed something of years 
ago, or rather to be obliterated with all else that had passed 
since he had looked upon that scene.  Yet it was all changed--
strangely changed!  What Jeff had taken for the white, wooden barns 
and outhouses were greenhouses and conservatories.  The "Summit 
Hotel" was a picturesque villa, nestling in the self-same trees, 
but approached through cultivated fields, dwellings of laborers, 
parklike gates and walls, and all the bountiful appointments of 
wealth and security.  Jeff thought of Yuba Bill's malediction, and 
understood it as he gazed.

The barking of dogs announced his near approach to the principal 
entrance.  Lights were still burning in the upper windows of the 
house and its offices.  He was at once surrounded by the strange 
medley of a Californian ranchero's service, peons, Chinese, and 
vaqueros.  Jeff briefly stated his business.  "Ah, Carrajo!"  This 
was a matter for the major-domo, or, better, the padrone--Wilson!  
But the padrone, Wilson, called out by the tumult, appeared in 
person--a handsome, resolute, middle-aged man, who, in a twinkling, 
dispersed the group to barn and stable with a dozen orders of 
preparation, and then turned to Jeff.

"You are hurt; come in."

Jeff followed him dazedly into the house.  The same sense of remote 
abstraction, of vague dreaminess, was overcoming him.  He resented 
it, and fought against it, but in vain; he was only half conscious 
that his host had bathed his head and given him some slight 
restorative, had said something to him soothingly, and had left 
him.  Jeff wondered if he had fainted, or was about to faint,--he 
had a nervous dread of that womanish weakness,--or if he were 
really hurt worse than he believed.  He tried to master himself and 
grasp the situation by minutely examining the room.  It was 
luxuriously furnished; Jeff had but once before sat in such an arm-
chair as the one that half embraced him, and as a boy he had dim 
recollections of a life like this, of which his father was part.  
To poor Jeff, with his throbbing head, his smarting hands, and his 
lapsing moments of half forgetfulness, this seemed to be a return 
of his old premonition.  There was a vague perfume in the room, 
like that which he remembered when he was in the woods with Miss 
Mayfield.  He believed he was growing faint again, and was about to 
rise, when the door opened behind him.

"Is there anything we can do for you?  Mr. Wilson has gone to seek 
your friend, and has sent Manuel for a doctor."

HER voice!  He rose hurriedly, turned; SHE was standing in the 
doorway!

She uttered a slight cry, turned very pale, advanced towards him, 
stopped and leaned against the chimney-piece.

"I didn't know it was YOU."

With her actual presence Jeff's dream and weakness fled.  He rose 
up before her, his old bashful, stammering, awkward self.

"I didn't know YOU lived here, Miss Mayfield."

"If you had sent word you were coming," said Miss Mayfield, 
recovering her color brightly in one cheek.

The possibility of having sent a messenger in advance to advise 
Miss Mayfield of his projected visit did not strike Jeff as 
ridiculous.  Your true lover is far beyond such trivialities.  
He accepted the rebuke meekly.  He said he was sorry.

"You might have known it."

"What, Miss Mayfield?"

"That I was here, if you WISHED to know."

Jeff did not reply.  He bowed his head and clasped his burned hands 
together.  Miss Mayfield saw their raw surfaces, saw the ugly cut 
on his head, pitied him, but went on hastily, with both cheeks 
burning, to say, womanlike, what was then deepest in her heart:

"My brother-in-law told me your adventure; but I did not know until 
I entered this room that the gentleman I wished to help was one who 
had once rejected my assistance, who had misunderstood me, and 
cruelly insulted me!  Oh, forgive me, Mr. Briggs"  (Jeff had 
risen).  "I did not mean THAT.  But, Mr. Jeff--Jeff--oh!"  (She had 
caught his tortured hand and had wrung a movement of pain from 
him.)  "Oh, dear! what did I do now?  But Mr. Jeff, after what has 
passed, after what you said to me when you went away, when you were 
at that dreadful place, Campville, when you were two months in 
Sacramento, you might--YOU OUGHT TO HAVE LET ME KNOW IT!"

Jeff turned.  Her face, more beautiful than he had ever seen it, 
alive and eloquent with every thought that her woman's speech but 
half expressed, was very near his--so near, that under her honest 
eyes the wretched scales fell from his own, his self-wrought 
shackles crumbled away, and he dropped upon his knees at her feet 
as she sank into the chair he had quitted.  Both his hands were 
grasped in her own.

"YOU went away, and I STAYED," she said reflectively.

"I had no home, Miss Mayfield."

"Nor had I.  I had to buy this," she said, with a delicious 
simplicity; "and bring a family here too," she added, "in case 
YOU"--she stopped, with a slight color.

"Forgive me," said Jeff, burying his face in her hands.

"Jeff."

"Jessie."

"Don't you think you were a LITTLE--just a little--mean?"

"Yes."

Miss Mayfield uttered a faint sigh.  He looked into her anxious 
cheeks and eyes, his arm stole round her; their lips met for the 
first time in one long lingering kiss.  Then, I fear, for the 
second time.

"Jeff," said Miss Mayfield, suddenly becoming practical and sweetly 
possessory, "you must have your hands bound up in cotton."

"Yes," said Jeff cheerfully.

"And you must go instantly to bed."

Jeff stared.

"Because my sister will think it very late for me to be sitting up 
with a gentleman."

The idea that Miss Mayfield was responsible to anybody was something
new to Jeff.  But he said hastily, "I must stay and wait for Bill.
He risked his life for me."

"Oh, yes!  You must tell me all about it.  I may wait for THAT!"

Jeff possessed himself of the chair; in some way he also possessed 
himself of Miss Mayfield without entirely dispossessing her.  Then 
he told his story.  He hesitated over the episode of the blacksmith.
"I'm afraid I killed him, Jessie."

Miss Mayfield betrayed little concern at this possible extreme 
measure with a dangerous neighbor.  "He cut your head, Jeff," she 
said, passing her little hand through his curls.

"No," said Jeff hastily, "that must have been done BEFORE."

"Well," said Miss Mayfield conclusively, "he would if he'd dared.  
And you brought off that wretched money in spite of him.  Poor dear 
Jeff."

"Yes," said Jeff, kissing her.

"Where is it?" asked Jessie, looking round the room.

"Oh, just out there!"

"Out where?"

"On my horse, you know, outside the door," continued Jeff, a little 
uneasily, as he rose.  "I'll go and--"

"You careless boy," said Miss Mayfield, jumping up, "I'll go with 
you."

They passed out on the porch together, holding each other's hands, 
like children.  The forgotten Rabbit was not there.  Miss Mayfield 
called a vaquero.

"Ah, yes!--the caballero's horse.  Of a certainty the other 
caballero had taken it!"

"The other caballero!" gasped Jeff.

"Si, senor.  The one who arrived with you, or a moment, the very 
next moment, after you.  'Your friend,' he said."

Jeff staggered against the porch, and cast one despairing 
reproachful look at Miss Mayfield.

"Oh, Jeff! Jeff! don't look so.  I know I ought not to have kept 
you!  It's a mistake, Jeff, believe me."

"It's no mistake," said Jeff hoarsely.  "Go!" he said, turning to 
the vaquero, "go!--bring--"  But his speech failed.  He attempted 
to gesticulate with his hands, ran forward a few steps, staggered, 
and fell fainting on the ground.

"Help me with the caballero into the blue room," said Miss 
Mayfield, white as Jeff.  "And hark ye, Manuel!  You know every 
ruffian, man or woman, on this road.  That horse and those saddle-
bags must be here to-morrow, if you have to pay DOUBLE WHAT THEY'RE 
WORTH!"

"Si, senora."

Jeff went off into fever, into delirium, into helpless stupor.  
From time to time he moaned "Bill" and "the treasure."  On the 
third day, in a lucid interval, as he lay staring at the wall, Miss 
Mayfield put in his hand a letter from the company, acknowledging 
the receipt of the treasure, thanking him for his zeal, and 
inclosing a handsome check.

Jeff sat up, and put his hands to his head.

"I told you it was taken by mistake, and was easily found," said 
Miss Mayfield, "didn't I?"

"Yes,--and Bill?"

"You know he is so much better that he expects to leave us next 
week."

"And--Jessie!"

"There--go to sleep!"

At the end of a week she introduced Jeff to her sister-in-law, 
having previously run her fingers through his hair to insure that 
becomingness to his curls which would better indicate his moral 
character; and spoke of him as one of her oldest Californian 
friends.

At the end of two weeks she again presented him as her affianced 
husband--a long engagement of a year being just passed.  Mr. 
Wilson, who was bored by the mountain life, undertaken to please 
his rich wife and richer sister, saw a chance of escape here, and 
bore willing testimony to the distant Mr. and Mrs. Mayfield of the 
excellence of Miss Jessie's choice.  And Yuba Bill was Jeff's best 
man.

The name of Briggs remained a power in Tuolumne and Calaveras 
County.  Mr. and Mrs. Briggs never had but one word of disagreement 
or discussion.  One day, Jeff, looking over some old accounts of 
his wife's, found an unreceipted, unvouched for expenditure of 
twenty thousand dollars.  "What is this for, Jessie?" he asked.

"Oh, it's all right, Jeff!"

But here the now business-like and practical Mr. Briggs, father of 
a family, felt called upon to make some general remarks regarding 
the necessity of exactitude in accounts, etc.

"But I'd rather not tell you, Jeff."

"But you ought to, Jessie."

"Well then, dear, it was to get those saddle-bags of yours from 
that rascal, Dodd," said little Mrs. Briggs meekly.





End of Project Gutenberg Etext Jeff Briggs's Love Story, by Bret Harte