In The Tules

: Selected Stories

He had never seen a steamboat in his life. Born and reared in one of the

Western Territories, far from a navigable river, he had only known the

"dugout" or canoe as a means of conveyance across the scant streams

whose fordable waters made even those scarcely a necessity. The long,

narrow, hooded wagon, drawn by swaying oxen, known familiarly as

a "prairie schooner," in which he journeyed across the plains to

California
in '53, did not help his conception by that nautical figure.

And when at last he dropped upon the land of promise through one of the

Southern mountain passes he halted all unconsciously upon the low banks

of a great yellow river amidst a tangled brake of strange, reed-like

grasses that were unknown to him. The river, broadening as it debouched

through many channels into a lordly bay, seemed to him the ULTIMA THULE

of his journeyings. Unyoking his oxen on the edge of the luxuriant

meadows which blended with scarcely any line of demarcation into the

great stream itself, he found the prospect "good" according to his

lights and prairial experiences, and, converting his halted wagon into a

temporary cabin, he resolved to rest here and "settle."



There was little difficulty in so doing. The cultivated clearings he had

passed were few and far between; the land would be his by discovery

and occupation; his habits of loneliness and self-reliance made him

independent of neighbors. He took his first meal in his new solitude

under a spreading willow, but so near his natural boundary that the

waters gurgled and oozed in the reeds but a few feet from him. The

sun sank, deepening the gold of the river until it might have been the

stream of Pactolus itself. But Martin Morse had no imagination; he was

not even a gold-seeker; he had simply obeyed the roving instincts of the

frontiersman in coming hither. The land was virgin and unoccupied; it

was his; he was alone. These questions settled, he smoked his pipe with

less concern over his three thousand miles' transference of habitation

than the man of cities who had moved into a next street. When the

sun sank, he rolled himself in his blankets in the wagon bed and went

quietly to sleep.



But he was presently awakened by something which at first he could

not determine to be a noise or an intangible sensation. It was a deep

throbbing through the silence of the night--a pulsation that seemed even

to be communicated to the rude bed whereon he lay. As it came nearer

it separated itself into a labored, monotonous panting, continuous, but

distinct from an equally monotonous but fainter beating of the waters,

as if the whole track of the river were being coursed and trodden by a

multitude of swiftly trampling feet. A strange feeling took possession

of him--half of fear, half of curious expectation. It was coming nearer.

He rose, leaped hurriedly from the wagon, and ran to the bank. The night

was dark; at first he saw nothing before him but the steel-black sky

pierced with far-spaced, irregularly scattered stars. Then there seemed

to be approaching him, from the left, another and more symmetrical

constellation--a few red and blue stars high above the river, with

three compact lines of larger planetary lights flashing towards him and

apparently on his own level. It was almost upon him; he involuntarily

drew back as the strange phenomenon swept abreast of where he stood, and

resolved itself into a dark yet airy bulk, whose vagueness, topped by

enormous towers, was yet illuminated by those open squares of light

that he had taken for stars, but which he saw now were brilliantly lit

windows.



Their vivid rays shot through the reeds and sent broad bands across the

meadow, the stationary wagon, and the slumbering oxen. But all this was

nothing to the inner life they disclosed through lifted curtains and

open blinds, which was the crowning revelation of this strange and

wonderful spectacle. Elegantly dressed men and women moved through

brilliantly lit and elaborately gilt saloons; in one a banquet seemed

to be spread, served by white-jacketed servants; in another were men

playing cards around marble-topped tables; in another the light flashed

back again from the mirrors and glistening glasses and decanters of

a gorgeous refreshment saloon; in smaller openings there was the shy

disclosure of dainty white curtains and velvet lounges of more intimate

apartments.



Martin Morse stood enthralled and mystified. It was as if some invisible

Asmodeus had revealed to this simple frontiersman a world of which he

had never dreamed. It was THE world--a world of which he knew nothing

in his simple, rustic habits and profound Western isolation--sweeping by

him with the rush of an unknown planet. In another moment it was gone; a

shower of sparks shot up from one of the towers and fell all around him,

and then vanished, even as he remembered the set piece of "Fourth of

July" fireworks had vanished in his own rural town when he was a boy.

The darkness fell with it too. But such was his utter absorption and

breathless preoccupation that only a cold chill recalled him to himself,

and he found he was standing mid-leg deep in the surge cast over the low

banks by this passage of the first steamboat he had ever seen!



He waited for it the next night, when it appeared a little later from

the opposite direction on its return trip. He watched it the next night

and the next. Hereafter he never missed it, coming or going--whatever

the hard and weary preoccupations of his new and lonely life. He felt he

could not have slept without seeing it go by. Oddly enough, his interest

and desire did not go further. Even had he the time and money to spend

in a passage on the boat, and thus actively realize the great world of

which he had only these rare glimpses, a certain proud, rustic shyness

kept him from it. It was not HIS world; he could not affront the snubs

that his ignorance and inexperience would have provoked, and he was

dimly conscious, as so many of us are in our ignorance, that in mingling

with it he would simply lose the easy privileges of alien criticism. For

there was much that he did not understand, and some things that grated

upon his lonely independence.



One night, a lighter one than those previous, he lingered a little

longer in the moonlight to watch the phosphorescent wake of the

retreating boat. Suddenly it struck him that there was a certain

irregular splashing in the water, quite different from the regular,

diagonally crossing surges that the boat swept upon the bank. Looking

at it more intently, he saw a black object turning in the water like

a porpoise, and then the unmistakable uplifting of a black arm in an

unskillful swimmer's overhand stroke. It was a struggling man. But it

was quickly evident that the current was too strong and the turbulence

of the shallow water too great for his efforts. Without a moment's

hesitation, clad as he was in only his shirt and trousers, Morse

strode into the reeds, and the next moment, with a call of warning, was

swimming toward the now wildly struggling figure. But, from some unknown

reason, as Morse approached him nearer the man uttered some incoherent

protest and desperately turned away, throwing off Morse's extended arm.



Attributing this only to the vague convulsions of a drowning man, Morse,

a skilled swimmer, managed to clutch his shoulder, and propelled him at

arm's length, still struggling, apparently with as much reluctance as

incapacity, toward the bank. As their feet touched the reeds and slimy

bottom the man's resistance ceased, and he lapsed quite listlessly in

Morse's arms. Half lifting, half dragging his burden, he succeeded at

last in gaining the strip of meadow, and deposited the unconscious man

beneath the willow tree. Then he ran to his wagon for whisky.



But, to his surprise, on his return the man was already sitting up and

wringing the water from his clothes. He then saw for the first time,

by the clear moonlight, that the stranger was elegantly dressed and

of striking appearance, and was clearly a part of that bright and

fascinating world which Morse had been contemplating in his solitude. He

eagerly took the proffered tin cup and drank the whisky. Then he rose

to his feet, staggered a few steps forward, and glanced curiously around

him at the still motionless wagon, the few felled trees and evidence of

"clearing," and even at the rude cabin of logs and canvas just beginning

to rise from the ground a few paces distant, and said, impatiently:



"Where the devil am I?"



Morse hesitated. He was unable to name the locality of his

dwelling-place. He answered briefly:



"On the right bank of the Sacramento."



The stranger turned upon him a look of suspicion not unmingled with

resentment. "Oh!" he said, with ironical gravity, "and I suppose that

this water you picked me out of was the Sacramento River. Thank you!"



Morse, with slow Western patience, explained that he had only settled

there three weeks ago, and the place had no name.



"What's your nearest town, then?"



"Thar ain't any. Thar's a blacksmith's shop and grocery at the

crossroads, twenty miles further on, but it's got no name as I've heard

on."



The stranger's look of suspicion passed. "Well," he said, in an imperative

fashion, which, however, seemed as much the result of habit as the

occasion, "I want a horse, and mighty quick, too."



"H'ain't got any."



"No horse? How did you get to this place?"



Morse pointed to the slumbering oxen.



The stranger again stared curiously at him. After a pause he said, with

a half-pitying, half-humorous smile: "Pike--aren't you?"



Whether Morse did or did not know that this current California slang

for a denizen of the bucolic West implied a certain contempt, he replied

simply:



"I'm from Pike County, Mizzouri."



"Well," said the stranger, resuming his impatient manner, "you must beg

or steal a horse from your neighbors."



"Thar ain't any neighbor nearer than fifteen miles."



"Then send fifteen miles! Stop." He opened his still clinging shirt

and drew out a belt pouch, which he threw to Morse. "There! there's two

hundred and fifty dollars in that. Now, I want a horse. Sabe?"



"Thar ain't anyone to send," said Morse, quietly.



"Do you mean to say you are all alone here?"



"Yes.



"And you fished me out--all by yourself?"



"Yes."



The stranger again examined him curiously. Then he suddenly stretched

out his hand and grasped his companion's.



"All right; if you can't send, I reckon I can manage to walk over there

tomorrow."



"I was goin' on to say," said Morse, simply, "that if you'll lie by

tonight, I'll start over sunup, after puttin' out the cattle, and fetch

you back a horse afore noon."



"That's enough." He, however, remained looking curiously at Morse. "Did

you never hear," he said, with a singular smile, "that it was about the

meanest kind of luck that could happen to you to save a drowning man?"



"No," said Morse, simply. "I reckon it orter be the meanest if you

DIDN'T."



"That depends upon the man you save," said the stranger, with the same

ambiguous smile, "and whether the SAVING him is only putting things off.

Look here," he added, with an abrupt return to his imperative style,

"can't you give me some dry clothes?"



Morse brought him a pair of overalls and a "hickory shirt," well worn,

but smelling strongly of a recent wash with coarse soap. The stranger

put them on while his companion busied himself in collecting a pile of

sticks and dry leaves.



"What's that for?" said the stranger, suddenly.



"A fire to dry your clothes."



The stranger calmly kicked the pile aside.



"Not any fire tonight if I know it," he said, brusquely. Before Morse

could resent his quickly changing moods he continued, in another tone,

dropping to an easy reclining position beneath the tree, "Now, tell me

all about yourself, and what you are doing here."



Thus commanded, Morse patiently repeated his story from the time he

had left his backwoods cabin to his selection of the river bank for a

"location." He pointed out the rich quality of this alluvial bottom

and its adaptability for the raising of stock, which he hoped soon

to acquire. The stranger smiled grimly, raised himself to a sitting

position, and, taking a penknife from his damp clothes, began to clean

his nails in the bright moonlight--an occupation which made the simple

Morse wander vaguely in his narration.



"And you don't know that this hole will give you chills and fever till

you'll shake yourself out of your boots?"



Morse had lived before in aguish districts, and had no fear.



"And you never heard that some night the whole river will rise up and

walk over you and your cabin and your stock?"



"No. For I reckon to move my shanty farther back."



The man shut up his penknife with a click and rose.



"If you've got to get up at sunrise, we'd better be turning in. I

suppose you can give me a pair of blankets?"



Morse pointed to the wagon. "Thar's a shakedown in the wagon bed; you

kin lie there." Nevertheless he hesitated, and, with the inconsequence

and abruptness of a shy man, continued the previous conversation.



"I shouldn't like to move far away, for them steamboats is pow'ful

kempany o' nights. I never seed one afore I kem here," and then, with

the inconsistency of a reserved man, and without a word of further

preliminary, he launched into a confidential disclosure of his late

experiences. The stranger listened with a singular interest and a

quietly searching eye.



"Then you were watching the boat very closely just now when you saw me.

What else did you see? Anything before that--before you saw me in the

water?"



"No--the boat had got well off before I saw you at all."



"Ah," said the stranger. "Well, I'm going to turn in." He walked to the

wagon, mounted it, and by the time that Morse had reached it with his

wet clothes he was already wrapped in the blankets. A moment later he

seemed to be in a profound slumber.



It was only then, when his guest was lying helplessly at his mercy, that

he began to realize his strange experiences. The domination of this

man had been so complete that Morse, although by nature independent

and self-reliant, had not permitted himself to question his right or

to resent his rudeness. He had accepted his guest's careless or

premeditated silence regarding the particulars of his accident as a

matter of course, and had never dreamed of questioning him. That it was

a natural accident of that great world so apart from his own experiences

he did not doubt, and thought no more about it. The advent of the man

himself was greater to him than the causes which brought him there. He

was as yet quite unconscious of the complete fascination this mysterious

stranger held over him, but he found himself shyly pleased with even the

slight interest he had displayed in his affairs, and his hand felt yet

warm and tingling from his sudden soft but expressive grasp, as if it

had been a woman's. There is a simple intuition of friendship in some

lonely, self-abstracted natures that is nearly akin to love at first

sight. Even the audacities and insolence of this stranger affected

Morse as he might have been touched and captivated by the coquetries

or imperiousness of some bucolic virgin. And this reserved and shy

frontiersman found himself that night sleepless, and hovering with an

abashed timidity and consciousness around the wagon that sheltered his

guest, as if he had been a very Corydon watching the moonlit couch of

some slumbering Amaryllis.



He was off by daylight--after having placed a rude breakfast by the side

of the still sleeping guest--and before midday he had returned with a

horse. When he handed the stranger his pouch, less the amount he had

paid for the horse, the man said curtly:



"What's that for?"



"Your change. I paid only fifty dollars for the horse."



The stranger regarded him with his peculiar smile. Then, replacing the

pouch in his belt, he shook Morse's hand again and mounted the horse.



"So your name's Martin Morse! Well--goodby, Morsey!"



Morse hesitated. A blush rose to his dark check. "You didn't tell me

your name," he said. "In case--"



"In case I'm WANTED? Well, you can call me Captain Jack." He smiled,

and, nodding his head, put spurs to his mustang and cantered away.



Morse did not do much work that day, falling into abstracted moods and

living over his experiences of the previous night, until he fancied he

could almost see his strange guest again. The narrow strip of meadow was

haunted by him. There was the tree under which he had first placed

him, and that was where he had seen him sitting up in his dripping but

well-fitting clothes. In the rough garments he had worn and returned

lingered a new scent of some delicate soap, overpowering the strong

alkali flavor of his own. He was early by the river side, having a vague

hope, he knew not why, that he should again see him and recognize him

among the passengers. He was wading out among the reeds, in the faint

light of the rising moon, recalling the exact spot where he had first

seen the stranger, when he was suddenly startled by the rolling over in

the water of some black object that had caught against the bank, but

had been dislodged by his movements. To his horror it bore a faint

resemblance to his first vision of the preceding night. But a second

glance at the helplessly floating hair and bloated outline showed him

that it was a DEAD man, and of a type and build far different from his

former companion. There was a bruise upon his matted forehead and an

enormous wound in his throat already washed bloodless, white, and waxen.

An inexplicable fear came upon him, not at the sight of the corpse, for

he had been in Indian massacres and had rescued bodies mutilated beyond

recognition; but from some moral dread that, strangely enough, quickened

and deepened with the far-off pant of the advancing steamboat. Scarcely

knowing why, he dragged the body hurriedly ashore, concealing it in the

reeds, as if he were disposing of the evidence of his own crime. Then,

to his preposterous terror, he noticed that the panting of the steamboat

and the beat of its paddles were "slowing" as the vague bulk came in

sight, until a huge wave from the suddenly arrested wheels sent a

surge like an enormous heartbeat pulsating through the sedge that half

submerged him. The flashing of three or four lanterns on deck and the

motionless line of lights abreast of him dazzled his eyes, but he knew

that the low fringe of willows hid his house and wagon completely from

view. A vague murmur of voices from the deck was suddenly overridden by

a sharp order, and to his relief the slowly revolving wheels again sent

a pulsation through the water, and the great fabric moved solemnly away.

A sense of relief came over him, he knew not why, and he was conscious

that for the first time he had not cared to look at the boat.



When the moon arose he again examined the body, and took from its

clothing a few articles of identification and some papers of formality

and precision, which he vaguely conjectured to be some law papers from

their resemblance to the phrasing of sheriffs' and electors' notices

which he had seen in the papers. He then buried the corpse in a shallow

trench, which he dug by the light of the moon. He had no question of

responsibility; his pioneer training had not included coroners' inquests

in its experience; in giving the body a speedy and secure burial

from predatory animals he did what one frontiersman would do for

another--what he hoped might be done for him. If his previous

unaccountable feelings returned occasionally, it was not from that;

but rather from some uneasiness in regard to his late guest's possible

feelings, and a regret that he had not been here at the finding of the

body. That it would in some way have explained his own accident he did

not doubt.



The boat did not "slow up" the next night, but passed as usual; yet

three or four days elapsed before he could look forward to its coming

with his old extravagant and half-exalted curiosity--which was his

nearest approach to imagination. He was then able to examine it more

closely, for the appearance of the stranger whom he now began to call

"his friend" in his verbal communings with himself--but whom he did not

seem destined to again discover; until one day, to his astonishment, a

couple of fine horses were brought to his clearing by a stock-drover.

They had been "ordered" to be left there. In vain Morse expostulated and

questioned.



"Your name's Martin Morse, ain't it?" said the drover, with business

brusqueness; "and I reckon there ain't no other man o' that name around

here?"



"No," said Morse.



"Well, then, they're YOURS."



"But who sent them?" insisted Morse. "What was his name, and where does

he live?"



"I didn't know ez I was called upon to give the pedigree o' buyers,"

said the drover dryly; "but the horses is 'Morgan,' you can bet your

life." He grinned as he rode away.



That Captain Jack sent them, and that it was a natural prelude to his

again visiting him, Morse did not doubt, and for a few days he lived

in that dream. But Captain Jack did not come. The animals were of great

service to him in "rounding up" the stock he now easily took in for

pasturage, and saved him the necessity of having a partner or a hired

man. The idea that this superior gentleman in fine clothes might ever

appear to him in the former capacity had even flitted through his brain,

but he had rejected it with a sigh. But the thought that, with luck and

industry, he himself might, in course of time, approximate to Captain

Jack's evident station, DID occur to him, and was an incentive to

energy. Yet it was quite distinct from the ordinary working man's

ambition of wealth and state. It was only that it might make him more

worthy of his friend. The great world was still as it had appeared

to him in the passing boat--a thing to wonder at--to be above--and to

criticize.



For all that, he prospered in his occupation. But one day he woke with

listless limbs and feet that scarcely carried him through his daily

labors. At night his listlessness changed to active pain and a

feverishness that seemed to impel him toward the fateful river, as if

his one aim in life was to drink up its waters and bathe in its yellow

stream. But whenever he seemed to attempt it, strange dreams assailed

him of dead bodies arising with swollen and distorted lips to touch his

own as he strove to drink, or of his mysterious guest battling with him

in its current, and driving him ashore. Again, when he essayed to bathe

his parched and crackling limbs in its flood, he would be confronted

with the dazzling lights of the motionless steamboat and the glare of

stony eyes--until he fled in aimless terror. How long this lasted he

knew not, until one morning he awoke in his new cabin with a strange man

sitting by his bed and a Negress in the doorway.



"You've had a sharp attack of 'tule fever,'" said the stranger, dropping

Morse's listless wrist and answering his questioning eyes, "but you're

all right now, and will pull through."



"Who are you?" stammered Morse feebly.



"Dr. Duchesne, of Sacramento."



"How did you come here?"



"I was ordered to come to you and bring a nurse, as you were alone.

There she is." He pointed to the smiling Negress.



"WHO ordered you?"



The doctor smiled with professional tolerance. "One of your friends, of

course."



"But what was his name?"



"Really, I don't remember. But don't distress yourself. He has settled

for everything right royally. You have only to get strong now. My duty

is ended, and I can safely leave you with the nurse. Only when you are

strong again, I say--and HE says--keep back farther from the river."



And that was all he knew. For even the nurse who attended him through

the first days of his brief convalescence would tell him nothing more.

He quickly got rid of her and resumed his work, for a new and strange

phase of his simple, childish affection for his benefactor, partly

superinduced by his illness, was affecting him. He was beginning to

feel the pain of an unequal friendship; he was dimly conscious that his

mysterious guest was only coldly returning his hospitality and benefits,

while holding aloof from any association with him--and indicating the

immeasurable distance that separated their future intercourse. He had

withheld any kind message or sympathetic greeting; he had kept back even

his NAME. The shy, proud, ignorant heart of the frontiersman swelled

beneath the fancied slight, which left him helpless alike of reproach

or resentment. He could not return the horses, although in a fit of

childish indignation he had resolved not to use them; he could not

reimburse him for the doctor's bill, although he had sent away the

nurse.



He took a foolish satisfaction in not moving back from the river, with a

faint hope that his ignoring of Captain Jack's advice might mysteriously

be conveyed to him. He even thought of selling out his location and

abandoning it, that he might escape the cold surveillance of his

heartless friend. All this was undoubtedly childish--but there is an

irrepressible simplicity of youth in all deep feeling, and the worldly

inexperience of the frontiersman left him as innocent as a child. In

this phase of his unrequited affection he even went so far as to seek

some news of Captain Jack at Sacramento, and, following out his foolish

quest, even to take the steamboat from thence to Stockton.



What happened to him then was perhaps the common experience of such

natures. Once upon the boat the illusion of the great world it contained

for him utterly vanished. He found it noisy, formal, insincere, and--had

he ever understood or used the word in his limited vocabulary--VULGAR.

Rather, perhaps, it seemed to him that the prevailing sentiment and

action of those who frequented it--and for whom it was built--were of a

lower grade than his own. And, strangely enough, this gave him none of

his former sense of critical superiority, but only of his own utter and

complete isolation. He wandered in his rough frontiersman's clothes from

deck to cabin, from airy galleries to long saloons, alone, unchallenged,

unrecognized, as if he were again haunting it only in spirit, as he had

so often done in his dreams.



His presence on the fringe of some voluble crowd caused no interruption;

to him their speech was almost foreign in its allusions to things he did

not understand, or, worse, seemed inconsistent with their eagerness and

excitement. How different from all this were his old recollections of

slowly oncoming teams, uplifted above the level horizon of the plains in

his former wanderings; the few sauntering figures that met him as man

to man, and exchanged the chronicle of the road; the record of Indian

tracks; the finding of a spring; the discovery of pasturage, with

the lazy, restful hospitality of the night! And how fierce here this

continual struggle for dominance and existence, even in this lull of

passage. For above all and through all he was conscious of the feverish

haste of speed and exertion.



The boat trembled, vibrated, and shook with every stroke of the

ponderous piston. The laughter of the crowd, the exchange of gossip and

news, the banquet at the long table, the newspapers and books in the

reading-room, even the luxurious couches in the staterooms, were all

dominated, thrilled, and pulsating with the perpetual throb of the demon

of hurry and unrest. And when at last a horrible fascination dragged him

into the engine room, and he saw the cruel relentless machinery at work,

he seemed to recognize and understand some intelligent but pitiless

Moloch, who was dragging this feverish world at its heels.



Later he was seated in a corner of the hurricane deck, whence he could

view the monotonous banks of the river; yet, perhaps by certain signs

unobservable to others, he knew he was approaching his own locality.

He knew that his cabin and clearing would be undiscernible behind the

fringe of willows on the bank, but he already distinguished the points

where a few cottonwoods struggled into a promontory of lighter foliage

beyond them. Here voices fell upon his ear, and he was suddenly aware

that two men had lazily crossed over from the other side of the boat,

and were standing before him looking upon the bank.



"It was about here, I reckon," said one, listlessly, as if continuing a

previous lagging conversation, "that it must have happened. For it was

after we were making for the bend we've just passed that the deputy,

goin' to the stateroom below us, found the door locked and the window

open. But both men--Jack Despard and Seth Hall, the sheriff--weren't

to be found. Not a trace of 'em. The boat was searched, but all for

nothing. The idea is that the sheriff, arter getting his prisoner

comf'ble in the stateroom, took off Jack's handcuffs and locked the

door; that Jack, who was mighty desp'rate, bolted through the window

into the river, and the sheriff, who was no slouch, arter him.

Others allow--for the chairs and things was all tossed about in the

stateroom--that the two men clinched THAR, and Jack choked Hall and

chucked him out, and then slipped cl'ar into the water himself, for the

stateroom window was just ahead of the paddle box, and the cap'n allows

that no man or men could fall afore the paddles and live. Anyhow, that

was all they ever knew of it."



"And there wasn't no trace of them found?" said the second man, after a

long pause.



"No. Cap'n says them paddles would hev' just snatched 'em and slung 'em

round and round and buried 'em way down in the ooze of the river bed,

with all the silt of the current atop of 'em, and they mightn't come up

for ages; or else the wheels might have waltzed 'em way up to Sacramento

until there wasn't enough left of 'em to float, and dropped 'em when the

boat stopped."



"It was a mighty fool risk for a man like Despard to take," resumed the

second speaker as he turned away with a slight yawn.



"Bet your life! but he was desp'rate, and the sheriff had got him sure!

And they DO say that he was superstitious, like all them gamblers, and

allowed that a man who was fixed to die by a rope or a pistol wasn't to

be washed out of life by water."



The two figures drifted lazily away, but Morse sat rigid and motionless.

Yet, strange to say, only one idea came to him clearly out of this awful

revelation--the thought that his friend was still true to him--and that

his strange absence and mysterious silence were fully accounted for and

explained. And with it came the more thrilling fancy that this man was

alive now to HIM alone.



HE was the sole custodian of his secret. The morality of the question,

while it profoundly disturbed him, was rather in reference to its effect

upon the chances of Captain Jack and the power it gave his enemies than

his own conscience. He would rather that his friend should have proven

the proscribed outlaw who retained an unselfish interest in him than the

superior gentleman who was coldly wiping out his gratitude. He thought

he understood now the reason of his visitor's strange and varying

moods--even his bitter superstitious warning in regard to the probable

curse entailed upon one who should save a drowning man. Of this he

recked little; enough that he fancied that Captain Jack's concern in

his illness was heightened by that fear, and this assurance of his

protecting friendship thrilled him with pleasure.



There was no reason now why he should not at once go back to his farm,

where, at least, Captain Jack would always find him; and he did so,

returning on the same boat. He was now fully recovered from his illness,

and calmer in mind; he redoubled his labors to put himself in a position

to help the mysterious fugitive when the time should come. The remote

farm should always be a haven of refuge for him, and in this hope he

forbore to take any outside help, remaining solitary and alone, that

Captain Jack's retreat should be inviolate. And so the long, dry season

passed, the hay was gathered, the pasturing herds sent home, and the

first rains, dimpling like shot the broadening surface of the river,

were all that broke his unending solitude. In this enforced attitude of

waiting and expectancy he was exalted and strengthened by a new idea. He

was not a religious man, but, dimly remembering the exhortations of some

camp meeting of his boyhood, he conceived the idea that he might have

been selected to work out the regeneration of Captain Jack. What might

not come of this meeting and communing together in this lonely spot?

That anything was due to the memory of the murdered sheriff, whose bones

were rotting in the trench that he daily but unconcernedly passed, did

not occur to him. Perhaps his mind was not large enough for the double

consideration. Friendship and love--and, for the matter of that,

religion--are eminently one-ideaed.



But one night he awakened with a start. His hand, which was hanging out

of his bunk, was dabbling idly in water. He had barely time to spring

to his middle in what seemed to be a slowly filling tank before the door

fell out as from that inward pressure, and his whole shanty collapsed

like a pack of cards. But it fell outwards, the roof sliding from over

his head like a withdrawn canopy; and he was swept from his feet against

it, and thence out into what might have been another world! For the

rain had ceased, and the full moon revealed only one vast, illimitable

expanse of water! It was not an overflow, but the whole rushing river

magnified and repeated a thousand times, which, even as he gasped for

breath and clung to the roof, was bearing him away he knew not whither.

But it was bearing him away upon its center, for as he cast one swift

glance toward his meadows he saw they were covered by the same sweeping

torrent, dotted with his sailing hayricks and reaching to the wooded

foothills. It was the great flood of '54. In its awe-inspiring

completeness it might have seemed to him the primeval Deluge.



As his frail raft swept under a cottonwood he caught at one of the

overhanging limbs, and, working his way desperately along the bough, at

last reached a secure position in the fork of the tree. Here he was for

the moment safe. But the devastation viewed from this height was only

the more appalling. Every sign of his clearing, all evidence of his past

year's industry, had disappeared. He was now conscious for the first

time of the lowing of the few cattle he had kept as, huddled together

on a slight eminence, they one by one slipped over struggling into the

flood. The shining bodies of his dead horses rolled by him as he gazed.

The lower-lying limbs of the sycamore near him were bending with the

burden of the lighter articles from his overturned wagon and cabin which

they had caught and retained, and a rake was securely lodged in a bough.

The habitual solitude of his locality was now strangely invaded by

drifting sheds, agricultural implements, and fence rails from unknown

and remote neighbors, and he could faintly hear the far-off calling

of some unhappy farmer adrift upon a spar of his wrecked and shattered

house. When day broke he was cold and hungry.



Hours passed in hopeless monotony, with no slackening or diminution of

the waters. Even the drifts became less, and a vacant sea at last spread

before him on which nothing moved. An awful silence impressed him. In

the afternoon rain again began to fall on this gray, nebulous expanse,

until the whole world seemed made of aqueous vapor. He had but one idea

now--the coming of the evening boat, and he would reserve his strength

to swim to it. He did not know until later that it could no longer

follow the old channel of the river, and passed far beyond his sight and

hearing. With his disappointment and exposure that night came a return

of his old fever. His limbs were alternately racked with pain or

benumbed and lifeless. He could scarcely retain his position--at times

he scarcely cared to--and speculated upon ending his sufferings by a

quick plunge downward. In other moments of lucid misery he was conscious

of having wandered in his mind; of having seen the dead face of the

murdered sheriff, washed out of his shallow grave by the flood, staring

at him from the water; to this was added the hallucination of noises. He

heard voices, his own name called by a voice he knew--Captain Jack's!



Suddenly he started, but in that fatal movement lost his balance and

plunged downward. But before the water closed above his head he had had

a cruel glimpse of help near him; of a flashing light--of the black

hull of a tug not many yards away--of moving figures--the sensation of

a sudden plunge following his own, the grip of a strong hand upon his

collar, and--unconsciousness!



When he came to he was being lifted in a boat from the tug and rowed

through the deserted streets of a large city, until he was taken in

through the second-story window of a half-submerged hotel and cared

for. But all his questions yielded only the information that the

tug--a privately procured one, not belonging to the Public Relief

Association--had been dispatched for him with special directions, by a

man who acted as one of the crew, and who was the one who had plunged in

for him at the last moment. The man had left the boat at Stockton.

There was nothing more? Yes!--he had left a letter. Morse seized it

feverishly. It contained only a few lines:





We are quits now. You are all right. I have saved YOU from drowning, and

shifted the curse to my own shoulders. Good-by.



CAPTAIN JACK.





The astounded man attempted to rise--to utter an exclamation--but fell

back, unconscious.



Weeks passed before he was able to leave his bed--and then only as an

impoverished and physically shattered man. He had no means to restock

the farm left bare by the subsiding water. A kindly train-packer offered

him a situation as muleteer in a pack train going to the mountains--for

he knew tracks and passes and could ride. The mountains gave him back

a little of the vigor he had lost in the river valley, but none of its

dreams and ambitions. One day, while tracking a lost mule, he stopped

to slake his thirst in a waterhole--all that the summer had left of a

lonely mountain torrent. Enlarging the hole to give drink to his beast

also, he was obliged to dislodge and throw out with the red soil some

bits of honeycomb rock, which were so queer-looking and so heavy as to

attract his attention. Two of the largest he took back to camp with

him. They were gold! From the locality he took out a fortune. Nobody

wondered. To the Californian's superstition it was perfectly natural.

It was "nigger luck"--the luck of the stupid, the ignorant, the

inexperienced, the nonseeker--the irony of the gods!



But the simple, bucolic nature that had sustained itself against

temptation with patient industry and lonely self-concentration succumbed

to rapidly acquired wealth. So it chanced that one day, with a crowd of

excitement-loving spendthrifts and companions, he found himself on

the outskirts of a lawless mountain town. An eager, frantic crowd had

already assembled there--a desperado was to be lynched! Pushing his

way through the crowd for a nearer view of the exciting spectacle, the

changed and reckless Morse was stopped by armed men only at the foot of

a cart, which upheld a quiet, determined man, who, with a rope around

his neck, was scornfully surveying the mob, that held the other end

of the rope drawn across the limb of a tree above him. The eyes of the

doomed man caught those of Morse--his expression changed--a kindly smile

lit his face--he bowed his proud head for the first time, with an easy

gesture of farewell.



And then, with a cry, Morse threw himself upon the nearest armed guard,

and a fierce struggle began. He had overpowered one adversary and seized

another in his hopeless fight toward the cart when the half-astonished

crowd felt that something must be done. It was done with a sharp report,

the upward curl of smoke and the falling back of the guard as Morse

staggered forward FREE--with a bullet in his heart. Yet even then he did

not fall until he reached the cart, when he lapsed forward, dead, with

his arms outstretched and his head at the doomed man's feet.



There was something so supreme and all-powerful in this hopeless act

of devotion that the heart of the multitude thrilled and then recoiled

aghast at its work, and a single word or a gesture from the doomed

man himself would have set him free. But they say--and it is credibly

recorded--that as Captain Jack Despard looked down upon the hopeless

sacrifice at his feet his eyes blazed, and he flung upon the crowd a

curse so awful and sweeping that, hardened as they were, their blood ran

cold, and then leaped furiously to their cheeks.



"And now," he said, coolly tightening the rope around his neck with a

jerk of his head--"Go on, and be damned to you! I'm ready."



They did not hesitate this time. And Martin Morse and Captain Jack

Despard were buried in the same grave.



More

;