The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales
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Bret Harte >> The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales
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12 THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales
by
Bret Harte
CONTENTS.
THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH
A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE FOOT-HILLS
A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL
CAPTAIN JIM'S FRIEND
THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH.
I.
The sun was going down on the Dedlow Marshes. The tide was
following it fast as if to meet the reddening lines of sky and
water in the west, leaving the foreground to grow blacker and
blacker every moment, and to bring out in startling contrast the
few half-filled and half-lit pools left behind and forgotten. The
strong breath of the Pacific fanning their surfaces at times
kindled them into a dull glow like dying embers. A cloud of sand-
pipers rose white from one of the nearer lagoons, swept in a long
eddying ring against the sunset, and became a black and dropping
rain to seaward. The long sinuous line of channel, fading with the
light and ebbing with the tide, began to give off here and there
light puffs of gray-winged birds like sudden exhalations. High in
the darkening sky the long arrow-headed lines of geese and 'brant'
pointed towards the upland. As the light grew more uncertain the
air at times was filled with the rush of viewless and melancholy
wings, or became plaintive with far-off cries and lamentations. As
the Marshes grew blacker the far-scattered tussocks and accretions
on its level surface began to loom in exaggerated outline, and two
human figures, suddenly emerging erect on the bank of the hidden
channel, assumed the proportion of giants.
When they had moored their unseen boat, they still appeared for
some moments to be moving vaguely and aimlessly round the spot
where they had disembarked. But as the eye became familiar with
the darkness it was seen that they were really advancing inland,
yet with a slowness of progression and deviousness of course that
appeared inexplicable to the distant spectator. Presently it was
evident that this seemingly even, vast, black expanse was traversed
and intersected by inky creeks and small channels, which made human
progression difficult and dangerous. As they appeared nearer and
their figures took more natural proportions, it could be seen that
each carried a gun; that one was a young girl, although dressed so
like her companion in shaggy pea-jacket and sou'wester as to be
scarcely distinguished from him above the short skirt that came
halfway down her high india-rubber fishing-boots. By the time they
had reached firmer ground, and turned to look back at the sunset,
it could be also seen that the likeness between their faces was
remarkable. Both, had crisp, black, tightly curling hair; both had
dark eyes and heavy eyebrows; both had quick vivid complexions,
slightly heightened by the sea and wind. But more striking than
their similarity of coloring was the likeness of expression and
bearing. Both wore the same air of picturesque energy; both bore
themselves with a like graceful effrontery and self-possession.
The young man continued his way. The young girl lingered for a
moment looking seaward, with her small brown hand lifted to shade
her eyes,--a precaution which her heavy eyebrows and long lashes
seemed to render utterly gratuitous.
"Come along, Mag. What are ye waitin' for?" said the young man
impatiently.
"Nothin'. Lookin' at that boat from the Fort." Her clear eyes
were watching a small skiff, invisible to less keen-sighted
observers, aground upon a flat near the mouth of the channel.
"Them chaps will have a high ole time gunnin' thar, stuck in the
mud, and the tide goin' out like sixty!"
"Never you mind the sodgers," returned her companion, aggressively,
"they kin take care o' their own precious skins, or Uncle Sam will
do it for 'em, I reckon. Anyhow the people--that's you and me,
Mag--is expected to pay for their foolishness. That's what they're
sent yer for. Ye oughter to be satisfied with that," he added with
deep sarcasm.
"I reckon they ain't expected to do much off o' dry land, and they
can't help bein' queer on the water," returned the young girl with
a reflecting sense of justice.
"Then they ain't no call to go gunnin', and wastin' Guv'nment
powder on ducks instead o' Injins."
"Thet's so," said the girl thoughtfully. "Wonder ef Guv'nment pays
for them frocks the Kernel's girls went cavortin' round Logport in
last Sunday--they looked like a cirkis."
"Like ez not the old Kernel gets it outer contracts--one way or
another. WE pay for it all the same," he added gloomily.
"Jest the same ez if they were MY clothes," said the girl, with a
quick, fiery, little laugh, "ain't it? Wonder how they'd like my
sayin' that to 'em when they was prancin' round, eh, Jim?"
But her companion was evidently unprepared for this sweeping
feminine deduction, and stopped it with masculine promptitude.
"Look yer--instead o' botherin' your head about what the Fort girls
wear, you'd better trot along a little more lively. It's late
enough now."
"But these darned boots hurt like pizen," said the girl, limping.
"They swallowed a lot o' water over the tops while I was wadin'
down there, and my feet go swashin' around like in a churn every
step."
"Lean on me, baby," he returned, passing his arm around her waist,
and dropping her head smartly on his shoulder. "Thar!" The act
was brotherly and slightly contemptuous, but it was sufficient to
at once establish their kinship.
They continued on thus for some moments in silence, the girl, I
fear, after the fashion of her sex, taking the fullest advantage of
this slightly sentimental and caressing attitude. They were moving
now along the edge of the Marsh, parallel with the line of rapidly
fading horizon, following some trail only known to their keen
youthful eyes. It was growing darker and darker. The cries of the
sea-birds had ceased; even the call of a belated plover had died
away inland; the hush of death lay over the black funereal pall of
marsh at their side. The tide had run out with the day. Even the
sea-breeze had lulled in this dead slack-water of all nature, as if
waiting outside the bar with the ocean, the stars, and the night.
Suddenly the girl stopped and halted her companion. The faint far
sound of a bugle broke the silence, if the idea of interruption
could have been conveyed by the two or three exquisite vibrations
that seemed born of that silence itself, and to fade and die in it
without break or discord. Yet it was only the 'retreat' call from
the Fort two miles distant and invisible.
The young girl's face had become irradiated, and her small mouth
half opened as she listened. "Do you know, Jim," she said with a
confidential sigh, "I allus put words to that when I hear it--it's
so pow'ful pretty. It allus goes to me like this: 'Goes the day,
Far away, With the light, And the night Comes along--Comes along--
Comes along--Like a-a so-o-ong.'" She here lifted her voice, a
sweet, fresh, boyish contralto, in such an admirable imitation of
the bugle that her brother, after the fashion of more select
auditors, was for a moment quite convinced that the words meant
something. Nevertheless, as a brother, it was his duty to crush
this weakness. "Yes; and it says:'shut your head, Go to bed,'" he
returned irascibly; "and YOU'D better come along, if we're goin' to
hev any supper. There's Yeller Bob hez got ahead of us over there
with the game already."
The girl glanced towards a slouching burdened figure that now
appeared to be preceding them, straightened herself suddenly, and
then looked attentively towards the Marsh.
"Not the sodgers again?" said her brother impatiently.
"No," she said quickly; "but if that don't beat anythin'! I'd hev
sworn, Jim, that Yeller Bob was somewhere behind us. I saw him
only jest now when 'Taps' sounded, somewhere over thar." She
pointed with a half-uneasy expression in quite another direction
from that in which the slouching Yellow Bob had just loomed.
"Tell ye what, Mag, makin' poetry outer bugle calls hez kinder
muddled ye. THAT'S Yeller Bob ahead, and ye orter know Injins well
enuff by this time to remember that they allus crop up jest when ye
don't expect them. And there's the bresh jest afore us. Come!"
The 'bresh,' or low bushes, was really a line of stunted willows
and alders that seemed to have gradually sunk into the level of the
plain, but increased in size farther inland, until they grew to the
height and density of a wood. Seen from the channel it had the
appearance of a green cape or promontory thrust upon the Marsh.
Passing through its tangled recesses, with the aid of some unerring
instinct, the two companions emerged upon another and much larger
level that seemed as illimitable as the bay. The strong breath of
the ocean lying just beyond the bar and estuary they were now
facing came to them salt and humid as another tide. The nearer
expanse of open water reflected the after-glow, and lightened the
landscape. And between the two wayfarers and the horizon rose,
bleak and startling, the strange outlines of their home.
At first it seemed a ruined colonnade of many pillars, whose base
and pediment were buried in the earth, supporting a long
parallelogram of entablature and cornices. But a second glance
showed it to be a one-storied building, upheld above the Marsh by
numberless piles placed at regular distances; some of them sunken
or inclined from the perpendicular, increasing the first illusion.
Between these pillars, which permitted a free circulation of air,
and, at extraordinary tides, even the waters of the bay itself, the
level waste of marsh, the bay, the surges of the bar, and finally
the red horizon line, were distinctly visible. A railed gallery or
platform, supported also on piles, and reached by steps from the
Marsh, ran around the building, and gave access to the several
rooms and offices.
But if the appearance of this lacustrine and amphibious dwelling
was striking, and not without a certain rude and massive grandeur,
its grounds and possessions, through which the brother and sister
were still picking their way, were even more grotesque and
remarkable. Over a space of half a dozen acres the flotsam and
jetsam of years of tidal offerings were collected, and even guarded
with a certain care. The blackened hulks of huge uprooted trees,
scarcely distinguishable from the fragments of genuine wrecks
beside them, were securely fastened by chains to stakes and piles
driven in the marsh, while heaps of broken and disjointed bamboo
orange crates, held together by ropes of fibre, glistened like
ligamented bones heaped in the dead valley. Masts, spars,
fragments of shell-encrusted boats, binnacles, round-houses and
galleys, and part of the after-deck of a coasting schooner, had
ceased their wanderings and found rest in this vast cemetery of the
sea. The legend on a wheel-house, the lettering on a stern or bow,
served for mortuary inscription. Wailed over by the trade winds,
mourned by lamenting sea-birds, once every year the tide visited
its lost dead and left them wet with its tears.
To such a spot and its surroundings the atmosphere of tradition and
mystery was not wanting. Six years ago Boone Culpepper had built
the house, and brought to it his wife--variously believed to be a
gypsy, a Mexican, a bright mulatto, a Digger Indian, a South Sea
princess from Tahiti, somebody else's wife--but in reality a little
Creole woman from New Orleans, with whom he had contracted a
marriage, with other gambling debts, during a winter's vacation
from his home in Virginia. At the end of two years she had died,
succumbing, as differently stated, from perpetual wet feet, or the
misanthropic idiosyncrasies of her husband, and leaving behind her
a girl of twelve and a boy of sixteen to console him. How futile
was this bequest may be guessed from a brief summary of Mr.
Culpepper's peculiarities. They were the development of a singular
form of aggrandizement and misanthropy. On his arrival at Logport
he had bought a part of the apparently valueless Dedlow Marsh from
the Government at less than a dollar an acre, continuing his
singular investment year by year until he was the owner of three
leagues of amphibious domain. It was then discovered that this
property carried with it the WATER FRONT of divers valuable and
convenient sites for manufactures and the commercial ports of a
noble bay, as well as the natural embarcaderos of some 'lumbering'
inland settlements. Boone Culpepper would not sell. Boone
Culpepper would not rent or lease. Boone Culpepper held an
invincible blockade of his neighbors, and the progress and
improvement he despised--granting only, after a royal fashion,
occasional license, revocable at pleasure, in the shape of tolls,
which amply supported him, with the game he shot in his
kingfisher's eyrie on the Marsh. Even the Government that had made
him powerful was obliged to 'condemn' a part of his property at an
equitable price for the purposes of Fort Redwood, in which the
adjacent town of Logport shared. And Boone Culpepper, unable to
resist the act, refused to receive the compensation or quit-claim
the town. In his scant intercourse with his neighbors he always
alluded to it as his own, showed it to his children as part of
their strange inheritance, and exhibited the starry flag that
floated from the Fort as a flaunting insult to their youthful eyes.
Hated, feared, and superstitiously shunned by some, regarded as a
madman by others, familiarly known as 'The Kingfisher of Dedlow,'
Boone Culpepper was one day found floating dead in his skiff, with
a charge of shot through his head and shoulders. The shot-gun
lying at his feet at the bottom of the boat indicated the
'accident' as recorded in the verdict of the coroner's jury--but
not by the people. A thousand rumors of murder or suicide
prevailed, but always with the universal rider, 'Served him right.'
So invincible was this feeling that but few attended his last
rites, which took place at high water. The delay of the
officiating clergyman lost the tide; the homely catafalque--his own
boat--was left aground on the Marsh, and deserted by all mourners
except the two children. Whatever he had instilled into them by
precept and example, whatever took place that night in their lonely
watch by his bier on the black marshes, it was certain that those
who confidently looked for any change in the administration of the
Dedlow Marsh were cruelly mistaken. The old Kingfisher was dead,
but he had left in the nest two young birds, more beautiful and
graceful, it was true, yet as fierce and tenacious of beak and
talon.
II.
Arriving at the house, the young people ascended the outer flight
of wooden steps, which bore an odd likeness to the companion-way of
a vessel, and the gallery, or 'deck,' as it was called--where a
number of nets, floats, and buoys thrown over the railing completed
the nautical resemblance. This part of the building was evidently
devoted to kitchen, dining-room, and domestic offices; the
principal room in the centre serving as hall or living-room, and
communicating on the other side with two sleeping apartments. It
was of considerable size, with heavy lateral beams across the
ceiling--built, like the rest of the house, with a certain maritime
strength--and looked not unlike a saloon cabin. An enormous open
Franklin stove between the windows, as large as a chimney, blazing
with drift-wood, gave light and heat to the apartment, and brought
into flickering relief the boarded walls hung with the spoils of
sea and shore, and glittering with gun-barrels. Fowling-pieces of
all sizes, from the long ducking-gun mounted on a swivel for boat
use to the light single-barrel or carbine, stood in racks against
the walls; game-bags, revolvers in their holsters, hunting and
fishing knives in their sheaths, depended from hooks above them.
In one corner stood a harpoon; in another, two or three Indian
spears for salmon. The carpetless floor and rude chairs and
settles were covered with otter, mink, beaver, and a quantity of
valuable seal-skins, with a few larger pelts of the bear and elk.
The only attempt at decoration was the displayed wings and breasts
of the wood and harlequin duck, the muir, the cormorant, the gull,
the gannet, and the femininely delicate half-mourning of petrel and
plover, nailed against the wall. The influence of the sea was
dominant above all, and asserted its saline odors even through the
spice of the curling drift-wood smoke that half veiled the ceiling.
A berry-eyed old Indian woman with the complexion of dried salmon;
her daughter, also with berry eyes, and with a face that seemed
wholly made of a moist laugh; 'Yellow Bob,' a Digger 'buck,' so
called from the prevailing ochre markings of his cheek, and
'Washooh,' an ex-chief; a nondescript in a blanket, looking like a
cheap and dirty doll whose fibrous hair was badly nailed on his
carved wooden head, composed the Culpepper household. While the
two former were preparing supper in the adjacent dining-room,
Yellow Bob, relieved of his burden of game, appeared on the gallery
and beckoned mysteriously to his master through the window. James
Culpepper went out, returned quickly, and after a minute's
hesitation and an uneasy glance towards his sister, who had
meantime pushed back her sou'wester from her forehead, and without
taking off her jacket had dropped into a chair before the fire with
her back towards him, took his gun noiselessly from the rack, and
saying carelessly that he would be back in a moment, disappeared.
Left to herself, Maggie coolly pulled off her long boots and
stockings, and comfortably opposed to the fire two very pretty feet
and ankles, whose delicate purity was slightly blue-bleached by
confinement in the tepid sea-water. The contrast of their waxen
whiteness with her blue woolen skirt, and with even the skin of her
sunburnt hands and wrists, apparently amused her, and she sat for
some moments with her elbows on her knees, her skirts slightly
raised, contemplating them, and curling her toes with evident
satisfaction. The firelight playing upon the rich coloring of her
face, the fringe of jet-black curls that almost met the thick sweep
of eyebrows, and left her only a white strip of forehead, her short
upper lip and small chin, rounded but resolute, completed a piquant
and striking figure. The rich brown shadows on the smoke-stained
walls and ceiling, the occasional starting into relief of the
scutcheons of brilliant plumage, and the momentary glitter of the
steel barrels, made a quaint background to this charming picture.
Sitting there, and following some lingering memory of her tramp on
the Marsh, she hummed to herself a few notes of the bugle call that
had impressed her--at first softly, and finally with the full pitch
of her voice.
Suddenly she stopped.
There was a faint and unmistakable rapping on the floor beneath
her. It was distinct, but cautiously given, as if intended to be
audible to her alone. For a moment she stood upright, her feet
still bare and glistening, on the otter skin that served as a rug.
There were two doors to the room, one from which her brother had
disappeared, which led to the steps, the other giving on the back
gallery, looking inland. With a quick instinct she caught up her
gun and ran to that one, but not before a rapid scramble near the
railing was followed by a cautious opening of the door. She was
just in time to shut it on the extended arm and light blue sleeve
of an army overcoat that protruded through the opening, and for a
moment threw her whole weight against it.
"A dhrop of whiskey, Miss, for the love of God."
She retained her hold, cocked her weapon, and stepped back a pace
from the door. The blue sleeve was followed by the rest of the
overcoat, and a blue cap with the infantry blazoning, and the
letter H on its peak. They were for the moment more
distinguishable than the man beneath them--grimed and blackened
with the slime of the Marsh. But what could be seen of his mud-
stained face was more grotesque than terrifying. A combination of
weakness and audacity, insinuation and timidity struggled through
the dirt for expression. His small blue eyes were not ill-natured,
and even the intruding arm trembled more from exhaustion than
passion.
"On'y a dhrop, Miss," he repeated piteously, "and av ye pleeze,
quick! afore I'm stharved with the cold entoirely."
She looked at him intently--without lowering her gun.
"Who are you?"
"Thin, it's the truth I'll tell ye, Miss--whisth then!" he said in
a half-whisper; "I'm a desarter!"
"Then it was YOU that was doggin' us on the Marsh?"
"It was the sarjint I was lavin', Miss."
She looked at him hesitatingly.
"Stay outside there; if you move a step into the room, I'll blow
you out of it."
He stepped back on the gallery. She closed the door, bolted it,
and still holding the gun, opened a cupboard, poured out a glass of
whiskey, and returning to the door, opened it and handed him the
liquor.
She watched him drain it eagerly, saw the fiery stimulant put life
into his shivering frame, trembling hands, and kindle his dull eye--
and--quietly raised her gun again.
"Ah, put it down, Miss, put it down! Fwhot's the use? Sure the
bullets yee carry in them oiyes of yours is more deadly! It's out
here oi'll sthand, glory be to God, all night, without movin' a fut
till the sarjint comes to take me, av ye won't levil them oiyes at
me like that. Ah, whirra! look at that now! but it's a gooddess
she is--the livin' Jaynus of warr, standin' there like a statoo,
wid her alybaster fut put forward."
In her pride and conscious superiority, any suggestion of shame at
thus appearing before a common man and a mendicant was as
impossible to her nature as it would have been to a queen or the
goddess of his simile. His presence and his compliment alike
passed her calm modesty unchallenged. The wretched scamp
recognized the fact and felt its power, and it was with a
superstitious reverence asserting itself through his native
extravagance that he raised his grimy hand to his cap in military
salute and became respectfully rigid.
"Then the sodgers were huntin' YOU?" she said thoughtfully,
lowering her weapon.
"Thrue for you, Miss--they worr, and it's meself that was lyin'
flat in the ditch wid me faytures makin' an illigant cast in the
mud--more betoken, as ye see even now--and the sarjint and his
daytail thrampin' round me. It was thin that the mortial cold
sthruck thro' me mouth, and made me wake for the whiskey that would
resthore me."
"What did you desert fer?"
"Ah, list to that now! Fwhat did I desart fer? Shure ev there was
the ghost of an inemy round, it's meself that would be in the front
now! But it was the letthers from me ould mother, Miss, that is
sthruck wid a mortial illness--long life to her!--in County Clare,
and me sisthers in Ninth Avenue in New York, fornint the daypo,
that is brekken their harruts over me listin' in the Fourth
Infanthry to do duty in a haythen wilderness. Av it was the
cavalry--and it's me own father that was in the Innishkillen
Dthragoons, Miss--oi wouldn't moind. Wid a horse betune me legs,
it's on parade oi'd be now, Miss, and not wandhering over the bare
flure of the Marsh, stharved wid the cold, the thirst, and hunger,
wid the mud and the moire thick on me; facin' an illigant young
leddy as is the ekal ov a Fayld Marshal's darter--not to sphake ov
Kernal Preston's--ez couldn't hold a candle to her."
Brought up on the Spanish frontier, Maggie Culpepper was one of the
few American girls who was not familiar with the Irish race. The
rare smile that momentarily lit up her petulant mouth seemed to
justify the intruder's praise. But it passed quickly, and she
returned dryly:
"That means you want more drink, suthin' to eat, and clothes.
Suppose my brother comes back and ketches you here?"
"Shure, Miss, he's just now hunten me, along wid his two haythen
Diggers, beyond the laygoon there. It worr the yellar one that
sphotted me lyin' there in the ditch; it worr only your own oiyes,
Miss--more power to their beauty for that!--that saw me folly him
unbeknownst here; and that desaved them, ye see!"
The young girl remained for an instant silent and thoughtful.
"We're no friends of the Fort," she said finally, "but I don't
reckon for that reason my brother will cotton to YOU. Stay out
thar where ye are, till I come to ye. If you hear me singin'
again, you'll know he's come back, and ye'd better scoot with what
you've already got, and be thankful."
She shut the door again and locked it, went into the dining-room,
returned with some provisions wrapped in paper, took a common
wicker flask from the wall, passed into her brother's bedroom, and
came out with a flannel shirt, overalls, and a coarse Indian
blanket, and, reopening the door, placed them before the astonished
and delighted vagabond. His eye glistened; he began, "Glory be to
God," but for once his habitual extravagance failed him. Nature
triumphed with a more eloquent silence over his well-worn art. He
hurriedly wiped his begrimed face and eyes with the shirt she had
given him, and catching the sleeve of her rough pea-jacket in his
dirty hand, raised it to his lips.
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