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Read Ebook: The Idler Magazine Vol III. May 1893 An Illustrated Monthly by Various
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Ebook has 324 lines and 39246 words, and 7 pages
THE IDLER. AN INGENUE OF THE SIERRAS. BY BRETT HART.
THE MODERN BABYLON. BY CYNICUS.
MY FIRST BOOKS. "UNDERTONES" AND "IDYLLS AND LEGENDS OF INVERBURN."
BALDER'S BALL. BY P. VON SCH?NTHAN.
THE FEAR OF IT. BY ROBERT BARR.
MEMOIRS OF A FEMALE NILIHILIST. BY SOPHIE WASSILIEFF.
MEMOIRS OF A FEMALE NILIHILIST. BY SOPHIE WASSILIEFF.
PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET. BY SCOTT RANKIN.
MY SERVANT JOHN. BY ARCHIBALD FORBES.
THE IDLER'S CLUB. THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT.
THE IDLER.
BY BRET HARTE.
We all held our breath as the coach rushed through the semi-darkness of Galloper's Ridge. The vehicle itself was only a huge lumbering shadow; its side-lights were carefully extinguished, and Yuba Bill had just politely removed from the lips of an outside passenger even the cigar with which he had been ostentatiously exhibiting his coolness. For it had been rumoured that the Ramon Martinez gang of "road agents" were "laying" for us on the second grade, and would time the passage of our lights across Galloper's in order to intercept us in the "brush" beyond. If we could cross the ridge without being seen, and so get through the brush before they reached it, we were safe. If they followed, it would only be a stern chase with the odds in our favour.
"You aint puttin' any price on that opinion, air ye?" enquired Bill, politely.
"No."
"'Cos thar's a comic paper in 'Frisco pays for them things, and I've seen worse things in it."
"Come off! Bill," retorted the passenger, slightly nettled by the tittering of his companions. "Then what did you put out the lights for?"
The explanation, though unsatisfactory, was by no means an improbable one, and we thought it better to accept it with a laugh. Bill, however, resumed his abstracted manner.
"Who got in at the Summit?" he at last asked abruptly of the Expressman.
"Derrick and Simpson of Cold Spring, and one of the 'Excelsior' boys," responded the Expressman.
"And that Pike County girl from Dow's Flat, with her bundles. Don't forget her," added the outside passenger, ironically.
"Does anybody here know her?" continued Bill, ignoring the irony.
"You'd better ask Judge Thompson; he was mighty attentive to her; gettin' her a seat by the off window, and lookin' after her bundles and things."
"Yes, she wanted to see everything, and wasn't afraid of the shooting."
Bill gave a short grunt--but drove steadily on without further comment or even turning his eyes to the speaker.
We were now not more than a mile from the station at the cross roads where we were to change horses. The lights already glimmered in the distance, and there was a faint suggestion of the coming dawn on the summits of the ridge to the West. We had plunged into a belt of timber, when suddenly a horseman emerged at a sharp canter from a trail that seemed to be parallel with our own. We were all slightly startled; Yuba Bill alone preserving his moody calm.
"Hullo!" he said.
The stranger wheeled to our side as Bill slackened his speed. He seemed to be a "packer" or freight muleteer.
"Ye didn't get 'held up' on the Divide?" continued Bill, cheerfully.
"Yes, but there was suthin' white--a handkerchief or woman's veil, I reckon--hangin' from the window. It was only a movin' spot agin the hillside, but ez I was lookin' out for ye I knew it was you by that. Good night!"
He cantered away. We tried to look at each other's faces, and at Bill's expression in the darkness, but he neither spoke nor stirred until he threw down the reins when we stopped before the station. The passengers quickly descended from the roof; the Expressman was about to follow, but Bill plucked his sleeve.
"I'm goin' to take a look over this yer stage and these yer passengers with ye, afore we start."
"Why, what's up?"
"Well," said Bill, slowly disengaging himself from one of his enormous gloves, "when we waltzed down into the brush up there I saw a man, ez plain ez I see you, rise up from it. I thought our time had come and the band was goin' to play, when he sorter drew back, made a sign, and we just scooted past him."
"Well?"
It was with mixed emotions that the passengers heard that a delay of fifteen minutes to tighten certain screw-bolts had been ordered by the autocratic Bill. Some were anxious to get their breakfast at Sugar Pine, but others were not averse to linger for the daylight that promised greater safety on the road. The Expressman, knowing the real cause of Bill's delay, was nevertheless at a loss to understand the object of it. The passengers were all well known; any idea of complicity with the road agents was wild and impossible, and, even if there was a confederate of the gang among them, he would have been more likely to precipitate a robbery than to check it. Again, the discovery of such a confederate--to whom they clearly owed their safety--and his arrest would have been quite against the Californian sense of justice, if not actually illegal. It seemed evident that Bill's Quixotic sense of honour was leading him astray.
The figure which Bill saw thus engaged, without being otherwise distinguished, certainly seemed to justify the Judge's opinion. She appeared to be a well-matured country girl, whose frank grey eyes and large laughing mouth expressed a wholesome and abiding gratification in her life and surroundings. She was watching the replacing of luggage in the boot. A little feminine start, as one of her own parcels was thrown somewhat roughly on the roof, gave Bill his opportunity. "Now there," he growled to the helper, "ye aint carting stone! Look out, will yer! Some of your things, miss?" he added, with gruff courtesy, turning to her. "These yer trunks, for instance?"
She smiled a pleasant assent, and Bill, pushing aside the helper, seized a large square trunk in his arms. But from excess of zeal, or some other mischance, his foot slipped, and he came down heavily, striking the corner of the trunk on the ground and loosening its hinges and fastenings. It was a cheap, common-looking affair, but the accident discovered in its yawning lid a quantity of white, lace-edged feminine apparel of an apparently superior quality. The young lady uttered another cry and came quickly forward, but Bill was profuse in his apologies, himself girded the broken box with a strap, and declared his intention of having the company "make it good" to her with a new one. Then he casually accompanied her to the door of the waiting-room, entered, made a place for her before the fire by simply lifting the nearest and most youthful passenger by the coat-collar from the stool that he was occupying, and, having installed the lady in it, displaced another man who was standing before the chimney, and, drawing himself up to his full six feet of height in front of her, glanced down upon his fair passenger as he took his waybill from his pocket.
"Your name is down here as Miss Mullins?" he said.
She looked up, became suddenly aware that she and her questioner were the centre of interest to the whole circle of passengers, and, with a slight rise of colour, returned "Yes."
We all thought that Bill's courage and audacity had reached its climax here. To openly and publicly accuse a "lady" before a group of chivalrous Californians, and that lady possessing the further attractions of youth, good looks and innocence, was little short of desperation. There was an evident movement of adhesion towards the fair stranger, a slight muttering broke out on the right, but the very boldness of the act held them in stupefied surprise. Judge Thompson, with a bland propitiatory smile, began: "Really, Bill, I must protest on behalf of this young lady--" when the fair accused, raising her eyes to her accuser, to the consternation of everybody answered with the slight but convincing hesitation of conscientious truthfulness:
"Ahem!" interposed the Judge, hastily, "er--that is--er--you allowed your handkerchief to flutter from the window. I noticed it myself, casually--one might say even playfully--but without any particular significance."
The girl, regarding her apologist with a singular mingling of pride and impatience, returned briefly:
"I signalled."
"Who did you signal to?" asked Bill, gravely.
"The young gentleman I'm going to marry."
A start, followed by a slight titter from the younger passengers, was instantly suppressed by a savage glance from Bill.
"What did you signal to him for?" he continued.
"To tell him I was here, and that it was all right," returned the young girl, with a steadily rising pride and colour.
"Wot was all right?" demanded Bill.
"That I wasn't followed, and that he could meet me on the road beyond Cass's Ridge Station." She hesitated a moment, and then, with a still greater pride, in which a youthful defiance was still mingled, said: "I've run away from home to marry him. And I mean to! No one can stop me. Dad didn't like him just because he was poor, and dad's got money. Dad wanted me to marry a man I hate, and got a lot of dresses and things to bribe me."
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