In a Hollow of the Hills
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Bret Harte >> In a Hollow of the Hills
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9 IN A HOLLOW OF THE HILLS
Bret Bret Harte
CHAPTER I.
It was very dark, and the wind was increasing. The last gust had
been preceded by an ominous roaring down the whole mountain-side,
which continued for some time after the trees in the little valley
had lapsed into silence. The air was filled with a faint, cool,
sodden odor, as of stirred forest depths. In those intervals of
silence the darkness seemed to increase in proportion and grow
almost palpable. Yet out of this sightless and soundless void now
came the tinkle of a spur's rowels, the dry crackling of saddle
leathers, and the muffled plunge of a hoof in the thick carpet of
dust and desiccated leaves. Then a voice, which in spite of its
matter-of-fact reality the obscurity lent a certain mystery to,
said:--
"I can't make out anything! Where the devil have we got to,
anyway? It's as black as Tophet, here ahead!"
"Strike a light and make a flare with something," returned a second
voice. "Look where you're shoving to--now--keep your horse off,
will ye."
There was more muffled plunging, a silence, the rustle of paper,
the quick spurt of a match, and then the uplifting of a flickering
flame. But it revealed only the heads and shoulders of three
horsemen, framed within a nebulous ring of light, that still left
their horses and even their lower figures in impenetrable shadow.
Then the flame leaped up and died out with a few zigzagging sparks
that were falling to the ground, when a third voice, that was low
but somewhat pleasant in its cadence, said:--
"Be careful where you throw that. You were careless last time.
With this wind and the leaves like tinder, you might send a furnace
blast through the woods."
"Then at least we'd see where we were."
Nevertheless, he moved his horse, whose trampling hoofs beat out
the last fallen spark. Complete darkness and silence again
followed. Presently the first speaker continued:--
"I reckon we'll have to wait here till the next squall clears away
the scud from the sky? Hello! What's that?"
Out of the obscurity before them appeared a faint light,--a dim but
perfectly defined square of radiance,--which, however, did not
appear to illuminate anything around it. Suddenly it disappeared.
"That's a house--it's a light in a window," said the second voice.
"House be d--d!" retorted the first speaker. "A house with a
window on Galloper's Ridge, fifteen miles from anywhere? You're
crazy!"
Nevertheless, from the muffled plunging and tinkling that followed,
they seemed to be moving in the direction where the light had
appeared. Then there was a pause.
"There's nothing but a rocky outcrop here, where a house couldn't
stand, and we're off the trail again," said the first speaker
impatiently.
"Stop!--there it is again!"
The same square of light appeared once more, but the horsemen had
evidently diverged in the darkness, for it seemed to be in a
different direction. But it was more distinct, and as they gazed a
shadow appeared upon its radiant surface--the profile of a human
face. Then the light suddenly went out, and the face vanished with
it.
"It IS a window, and there was some one behind it," said the second
speaker emphatically.
"It was a woman's face," said the pleasant voice.
"Whoever it is, just hail them, so that we can get our bearings.
Sing out! All together!"
The three voices rose in a prolonged shout, in which, however, the
distinguishing quality of the pleasant voice was sustained. But
there was no response from the darkness beyond. The shouting was
repeated after an interval with the same result: the silence and
obscurity remained unchanged.
"Let's get out of this," said the first speaker angrily; "house or
no house, man or woman, we're not wanted, and we'll make nothing
waltzing round here!"
"Hush!" said the second voice. "Sh-h! Listen."
The leaves of the nearest trees were trilling audibly. Then came a
sudden gust that swept the fronds of the taller ferns into their
faces, and laid the thin, lithe whips of alder over their horses'
flanks sharply. It was followed by the distant sea-like roaring of
the mountain-side.
"That's a little more like it!" said the first speaker joyfully.
"Another blow like that and we're all right. And look! there's a
lightenin' up over the trail we came by."
There was indeed a faint glow in that direction, like the first
suffusion of dawn, permitting the huge shoulder of the mountain
along whose flanks they had been journeying to be distinctly seen.
The sodden breath of the stirred forest depths was slightly tainted
with an acrid fume.
"That's the match you threw away two hours ago," said the pleasant
voice deliberately. "It's caught the dry brush in the trail round
the bend."
"Anyhow, it's given us our bearings, boys," said the first speaker,
with satisfied accents. "We're all right now; and the wind's
lifting the sky ahead there. Forward now, all together, and let's
get out of this hell-hole while we can!"
It was so much lighter that the bulk of each horseman could be seen
as they moved forward together. But there was no thinning of the
obscurity on either side of them. Nevertheless the profile of the
horseman with the pleasant voice seemed to be occasionally turned
backward, and he suddenly checked his horse.
"There's the window again!" he said. "Look! There--it's gone
again."
"Let it go and be d--d!" returned the leader. "Come on."
They spurred forward in silence. It was not long before the
wayside trees began to dimly show spaces between them, and the
ferns to give way to lower, thick-set shrubs, which in turn yielded
to a velvety moss, with long quiet intervals of netted and tangled
grasses. The regular fall of the horses' feet became a mere
rhythmic throbbing. Then suddenly a single hoof rang out sharply
on stone, and the first speaker reined in slightly.
"Thank the Lord we're on the ridge now! and the rest is easy. Tell
you what, though, boys, now we're all right, I don't mind saying
that I didn't take no stock in that blamed corpse light down there.
If there ever was a will-o'-the-wisp on a square up mountain, that
was one. It wasn't no window! Some of ye thought ye saw a face
too--eh?"
"Yes, and a rather pretty one," said the pleasant voice
meditatively.
"That's the way they'd build that sort of thing, of course. It's
lucky ye had to satisfy yourself with looking. Gosh! I feel creepy
yet, thinking of it! What are ye looking back for now like Lot's
wife? Blamed if I don't think that face bewitched ye."
"I was only thinking about that fire you started," returned the
other quietly. "I don't see it now."
"Well--if you did?"
"I was wondering whether it could reach that hollow."
"I reckon that hollow could take care of any casual nat'rel fire
that came boomin' along, and go two better every time! Why, I
don't believe there was any fire; it was all a piece of that
infernal ignis fatuus phantasmagoriana that was played upon us down
there!"
With the laugh that followed they started forward again, relapsing
into the silence of tired men at the end of a long journey. Even
their few remarks were interjectional, or reminiscent of topics
whose freshness had been exhausted with the day. The gaining light
which seemed to come from the ground about them rather than from
the still, overcast sky above, defined their individuality more
distinctly. The man who had first spoken, and who seemed to be
their leader, wore the virgin unshaven beard, mustache, and flowing
hair of the Californian pioneer, and might have been the eldest;
the second speaker was close shaven, thin, and energetic; the
third, with the pleasant voice, in height, litheness, and
suppleness of figure appeared to be the youngest of the party. The
trail had now become a grayish streak along the level table-land
they were following, which also had the singular effect of
appearing lighter than the surrounding landscape, yet of plunging
into utter darkness on either side of its precipitous walls.
Nevertheless, at the end of an hour the leader rose in his stirrups
with a sigh of satisfaction.
"There's the light in Collinson's Mill! There's nothing gaudy and
spectacular about that, boys, eh? No, sir! it's a square, honest
beacon that a man can steer by. We'll be there in twenty minutes."
He was pointing into the darkness below the already descending
trail. Only a pioneer's eye could have detected the few pin-pricks
of light in the impenetrable distance, and it was a signal proof of
his leadership that the others accepted it without seeing it.
"It's just ten o'clock," he continued, holding a huge silver watch
to his eye; "we've wasted an hour on those blamed spooks yonder!"
"We weren't off the trail more than ten minutes, Uncle Dick,"
protested the pleasant voice.
"All right, my son; go down there if you like and fetch out your
Witch of Endor, but as for me, I'm going to throw myself the other
side of Collinson's lights. They're good enough for me, and a
blamed sight more stationary!"
The grade was very steep, but they took it, California fashion, at
a gallop, being genuinely good riders, and using their brains as
well as their spurs in the understanding of their horses, and of
certain natural laws, which the more artificial riders of
civilization are apt to overlook. Hence there was no hesitation or
indecision communicated to the nervous creatures they bestrode, who
swept over crumbling stones and slippery ledges with a momentum
that took away half their weight, and made a stumble or false step,
or indeed anything but an actual collision, almost impossible.
Closing together they avoided the latter, and holding each other
well up, became one irresistible wedge-shaped mass. At times they
yelled, not from consciousness nor bravado, but from the purely
animal instinct of warning and to combat the breathlessness of
their descent, until, reaching the level, they charged across the
gravelly bed of a vanished river, and pulled up at Collinson's
Mill. The mill itself had long since vanished with the river, but
the building that had once stood for it was used as a rude hostelry
for travelers, which, however, bore no legend or invitatory sign.
Those who wanted it, knew it; those who passed it by, gave it no
offense.
Collinson himself stood by the door, smoking a contemplative pipe.
As they rode up, he disengaged himself from the doorpost
listlessly, walked slowly towards them, said reflectively to the
leader, "I've been thinking with you that a vote for Thompson is a
vote thrown away," and prepared to lead the horses towards the
water tank. He had parted with them over twelve hours before, but
his air of simply renewing a recently interrupted conversation was
too common a circumstance to attract their notice. They knew, and
he knew, that no one else had passed that way since he had last
spoken; that the same sun had swung silently above him and the
unchanged landscape, and there had been no interruption nor
diversion to his monotonous thought. The wilderness annihilates
time and space with the grim pathos of patience.
Nevertheless he smiled. "Ye don't seem to have got through coming
down yet," he continued, as a few small boulders, loosened in their
rapid descent, came more deliberately rolling and plunging after
the travelers along the gravelly bottom. Then he turned away with
the horses, and, after they were watered, he reentered the house.
His guests had evidently not waited for his ministration. They had
already taken one or two bottles from the shelves behind a wide bar
and helped themselves, and, glasses in hand, were now satisfying
the more imminent cravings of hunger with biscuits from a barrel
and slices of smoked herring from a box. Their equally singular
host, accepting their conduct as not unusual, joined the circle
they had comfortably drawn round the fireplace, and meditatively
kicking a brand back at the fire, said, without looking at them:--
"Well?"
"Well!" returned the leader, leaning back in his chair after
carefully unloosing the buckle of his belt, but with his eyes also
on the fire,--"well! we've prospected every yard of outcrop along
the Divide, and there ain't the ghost of a silver indication
anywhere."
"Not a smell," added the close-shaven guest, without raising his
eyes.
They all remained silent, looking at the fire, as if it were the
one thing they had taken into their confidence. Collinson also
addressed himself to the blaze as he said presently: "It allus
seemed to me that thar was something shiny about that ledge just
round the shoulder of the spur, over the long canyon."
The leader ejaculated a short laugh. "Shiny, eh? shiny! Ye think
THAT a sign? Why, you might as well reckon that because Key's
head, over thar, is gray and silvery that he's got sabe and
experience." As he spoke he looked towards the man with a pleasant
voice. The fire shining full upon him revealed the singular fact
that while his face was still young, and his mustache quite dark,
his hair was perfectly gray. The object of this attention, far
from being disconcerted by the comparison, added with a smile:--
"Or that he had any silver in his pocket."
Another lapse of silence followed. The wind tore round the house
and rumbled in the short, adobe chimney.
"No, gentlemen," said the leader reflectively, "this sort o' thing
is played out. I don't take no more stock in that cock-and-bull
story about the lost Mexican mine. I don't catch on to that
Sunday-school yarn about the pious, scientific sharp who collected
leaves and vegetables all over the Divide, all the while he
scientifically knew that the range was solid silver, only he
wouldn't soil his fingers with God-forsaken lucre. I ain't saying
anything agin that fine-spun theory that Key believes in about
volcanic upheavals that set up on end argentiferous rock, but I
simply say that I don't see it--with the naked eye. And I reckon
it's about time, boys, as the game's up, that we handed in our
checks, and left the board."
There was another silence around the fire, another whirl and
turmoil without. There was no attempt to combat the opinions of
their leader; possibly the same sense of disappointed hopes was
felt by all, only they preferred to let the man of greater
experience voice it. He went on:--
"We've had our little game, boys, ever since we left Rawlin's a
week ago; we've had our ups and downs; we've been starved and
parched, snowed up and half drowned, shot at by road-agents and
horse-thieves, kicked by mules and played with by grizzlies. We've
had a heap o' fun, boys, for our money, but I reckon the picnic is
about over. So we'll shake hands to-morrow all round and call it
square, and go on our ways separately."
"And what do you think you'll do, Uncle Dick?" said his close-
shaven companion listlessly.
"I'll make tracks for a square meal, a bed that a man can
comfortably take off his boots and die in, and some violet-scented
soap. Civilization's good enough for me! I even reckon I wouldn't
mind 'the sound of the church-going bell' ef there was a theatre
handy, as there likely would be. But the wilderness is played
out."
"You'll be back to it again in six months, Uncle Dick," retorted
the other quickly.
Uncle Dick did not reply. It was a peculiarity of the party that
in their isolated companionship they had already exhausted
discussion and argument. A silence followed, in which they all
looked at the fire as if it was its turn to make a suggestion.
"Collinson," said the pleasant voice abruptly, "who lives in the
hollow this side of the Divide, about two miles from the first spur
above the big canyon?"
"Nary soul!"
"Are you sure?"
"Sartin! Thar ain't no one but me betwixt Bald Top and Skinner's--
twenty-five miles."
"Of course, YOU'D know if any one had come there lately?" persisted
the pleasant voice.
"I reckon. It ain't a week ago that I tramped the whole distance
that you fellers just rode over."
"There ain't," said the leader deliberately, "any enchanted castle
or cabin that goes waltzing round the road with revolving windows
and fairy princesses looking out of 'em?"
But Collinson, recognizing this as purely irrelevant humor, with
possibly a trap or pitfall in it, moved away from the fireplace
without a word, and retired to the adjoining kitchen to prepare
supper. Presently he reappeared.
"The pork bar'l's empty, boys, so I'll hev to fix ye up with jerked
beef, potatoes, and flapjacks. Ye see, thar ain't anybody ben over
from Skinner's store for a week."
"All right; only hurry up!" said Uncle Dick cheerfully, settling
himself back in his chair, "I reckon to turn in as soon as I've
rastled with your hash, for I've got to turn out agin and be off at
sun-up."
They were all very quiet again,--so quiet that they could not help
noticing that the sound of Collinson's preparations for their
supper had ceased too. Uncle Dick arose softly and walked to the
kitchen door. Collinson was sitting before a small kitchen stove,
with a fork in his hand, gazing abstractedly before him. At the
sound of his guest's footsteps he started, and the noise of
preparation recommenced. Uncle Dick returned to his chair by the
fire. Leaning towards the chair of the close-shaven man, he said
in a lower voice:--
"He was off agin!"
"What?"
"Thinkin' of that wife of his."
"What about his wife?" asked Key, lowering his voice also.
The three men's heads were close together.
"When Collinson fixed up this mill he sent for his wife in the
States," said Uncle Dick, in a half whisper, "waited a year for
her, hanging round and boarding every emigrant wagon that came
through the Pass. She didn't come--only the news that she was
dead." He paused and nudged his chair still closer--the heads were
almost touching. "They say, over in the Bar"--his voice had sunk
to a complete whisper--"that it was a lie! That she ran away with
the man that was fetchin' her out. Three thousand miles and three
weeks with another man upsets some women. But HE knows nothing
about it, only he sometimes kinder goes off looney-like, thinking
of her." He stopped, the heads separated; Collinson had appeared
at the doorway, his melancholy patience apparently unchanged.
"Grub's on, gentlemen; sit by and eat."
The humble meal was dispatched with zest and silence. A few
interjectional remarks about the uncertainties of prospecting only
accented the other pauses. In ten minutes they were out again by
the fireplace with their lit pipes. As there were only three
chairs, Collinson stood beside the chimney.
"Collinson," said Uncle Dick, after the usual pause, taking his
pipe from his lips, "as we've got to get up and get at sun-up, we
might as well tell you now that we're dead broke. We've been
living for the last few weeks on Preble Key's loose change--and
that's gone. You'll have to let this little account and damage
stand over."
Collinson's brow slightly contracted, without, however, altering
his general expression of resigned patience.
"I'm sorry for you, boys," he said slowly, "and" (diffidently)
"kinder sorry for myself, too. You see, I reckoned on goin' over
to Skinner's to-morrow, to fill up the pork bar'l and vote for
Mesick and the wagon-road. But Skinner can't let me have anything
more until I've paid suthin' on account, as he calls it."
"D'ye mean to say thar's any mountain man as low flung and mean as
that?" said Uncle Dick indignantly.
"But it isn't HIS fault," said Collinson gently; "you see, they
won't send him goods from Sacramento if he don't pay up, and he
CAN'T if I DON'T. Sabe?"
"Ah! that's another thing. They ARE mean--in Sacramento," said
Uncle Dick, somewhat mollified.
The other guests murmured an assent to this general proposition.
Suddenly Uncle Dick's face brightened.
"Look here! I know Skinner, and I'll stop there-- No, blank it
all! I can't, for it's off my route! Well, then, we'll fix it this
way. Key will go there and tell Skinner that I say that I'LL send
the money to that Sacramento hound. That'll fix it!"
Collinson's brow cleared; the solution of the difficulty seemed to
satisfy everybody, and the close-shaven man smiled.
"And I'll secure it," he said, "and give Collinson a sight draft on
myself at San Francisco."
"What's that for?" said Collinson, with a sudden suffusion on each
cheek.
"In case of accident."
"Wot accident?" persisted Collinson, with a dark look of suspicion
on his usually placid face.
"In case we should forget it," said the close-shaven man, with a
laugh.
"And do you suppose that if you boys went and forgot it that I'd
have anything to do with your d--d paper?" said Collinson, a murky
cloud coming into his eyes.
"Why, that's only business, Colly," interposed Uncle Dick quickly;
"that's all Jim Parker means; he's a business man, don't you see.
Suppose we got killed! You've that draft to show."
"Show who?" growled Collinson.
"Why,--hang it!--our friends, our heirs, our relations--to get your
money, hesitated Uncle Dick.
"And do you kalkilate," said Collinson, with deeply laboring
breath, "that if you got killed, that I'd be coming on your folks
for the worth of the d--d truck I giv ye? Go 'way! Lemme git out
o' this. You're makin' me tired." He stalked to the door, lit his
pipe, and began to walk up and down the gravelly river-bed. Uncle
Dick followed him. From time to time the two other guests heard
the sounds of alternate protest and explanation as they passed and
repassed the windows. Preble Key smiled, Parker shrugged his
shoulders.
"He'll be thinkin' you've begrudged him your grub if you don't--
that's the way with these business men," said Uncle Dick's voice in
one of these intervals. Presently they reentered the house, Uncle
Dick saying casually to Parker, "You can leave that draft on the
bar when you're ready to go to-morrow;" and the incident was
presumed to have ended. But Collinson did not glance in the
direction of Parker for the rest of the evening; and, indeed,
standing with his back to the chimney, more than once fell into
that stolid abstraction which was supposed to be the contemplation
of his absent wife.
From this silence, which became infectious, the three guests were
suddenly aroused by a furious clattering down the steep descent of
the mountain, along the trail they had just ridden! It came near,
increasing in sound, until it even seemed to scatter the fine
gravel of the river-bed against the sides of the house, and then
passed in a gust of wind that shook the roof and roared in the
chimney. With one common impulse the three travelers rose and went
to the door. They opened it to a blackness that seemed to stand as
another and an iron door before them, but to nothing else.
"Somebody went by then," said Uncle Dick, turning to Collinson.
"Didn't you hear it?"
"Nary," said Collinson patiently, without moving from the chimney.
"What in God's name was it, then?"
"Only some of them boulders you loosed coming down. It's touch and
go with them for days after. When I first came here I used to
start up and rush out into the road--like as you would--yellin' and
screechin' after folks that never was there and never went by.
Then it got kinder monotonous, and I'd lie still and let 'em slide.
Why, one night I'd a'sworn that some one pulled up with a yell and
shook the door. But I sort of allowed to myself that whatever it
was, it wasn't wantin' to eat, drink, sleep, or it would come in,
and I hadn't any call to interfere. And in the mornin' I found a
rock as big as that box, lying chock-a-block agin the door. Then I
knowed I was right."
Preble Key remained looking from the door.
"There's a glow in the sky over Big Canyon," he said, with a
meaning glance at Uncle Dick.
"Saw it an hour ago," said Collinson. "It must be the woods afire
just round the bend above the canyon. Whoever goes to Skinner's
had better give it a wide berth."
Key turned towards Collinson as if to speak, but apparently changed
his mind, and presently joined his companions, who were already
rolling themselves in their blankets, in a series of wooden bunks
or berths, ranged as in a ship's cabin, around the walls of a
resinous, sawdusty apartment that had been the measuring room of
the mill. Collinson disappeared,--no one knew or seemed to care
where,--and, in less than ten minutes from the time that they had
returned from the door, the hush of sleep and rest seemed to
possess the whole house. There was no light but that of the fire
in the front room, which threw flickering and gigantic shadows on
the walls of the three empty chairs before it. An hour later it
seemed as if one of the chairs were occupied, and a grotesque
profile of Collinson's slumbering--or meditating--face and figure
was projected grimly on the rafters as though it were the hovering
guardian spirit of the house. But even that passed presently and
faded out, and the beleaguering darkness that had encompassed the
house all the evening began to slowly creep in through every chink
and cranny of the rambling, ill-jointed structure, until it at last
obliterated even the faint embers on the hearth. The cool
fragrance of the woodland depths crept in with it until the steep
of human warmth, the reek of human clothing, and the lingering
odors of stale human victual were swept away in that incorruptible
and omnipotent breath. An hour later--and the wilderness had
repossessed itself of all.
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