A DRIFT FROM REDWOOD CAMP by Bret Harte They had all known him as a shiftless, worthless creature. From thetime he first entered Redwood Camp, carrying his entire effects in ared handkerchief on the end of a long-handled shovel, until he lazilydrifted out of it on a plank in the terrible inundation of '56, theynever expected anything better of him. In a community of strong men withsullen virtues and charmingly fascinating vices, he was tolerated aspossessing neither--not even rising by any dominant human weakness orludicrous quality to the importance of a butt. In the dramatispersonae of Redwood Camp he was a simple "super"--who had only passive, speechless roles in those fierce dramas that were sometimes unrolledbeneath its green-curtained pines. Nameless and penniless, he wasoverlooked by the census and ignored by the tax collector, while in ahotly-contested election for sheriff, when even the head-boards of thescant cemetery were consulted to fill the poll-lists, it was discoveredthat neither candidate had thought fit to avail himself of his actualvote. He was debarred the rude heraldry of a nickname of achievement, and in a camp made up of "Euchre Bills, " "Poker Dicks, " "Profane Pete, "and "Snap-shot Harry, " was known vaguely as "him, " "Skeesicks, " or "thatcoot. " It was remembered long after, with a feeling of superstition, that he had never even met with the dignity of an accident, nor receivedthe fleeting honor of a chance shot meant for somebody else in any ofthe liberal and broadly comprehensive encounters which distinguished thecamp. And the inundation that finally carried him out of it waspartly anticipated by his passive incompetency, for while the othersescaped--or were drowned in escaping--he calmly floated off on his plankwithout an opposing effort. For all that, Elijah Martin--which was his real name--was far from beingunamiable or repellent. That he was cowardly, untruthful, selfish, andlazy, was undoubtedly the fact; perhaps it was his peculiar misfortunethat, just then, courage, frankness, generosity, and activity were thedominant factors in the life of Redwood Camp. His submissive gentleness, his unquestioned modesty, his half refinement, and his amiable exteriorconsequently availed him nothing against the fact that he was missedduring a raid of the Digger Indians, and lied to account for it; or thathe lost his right to a gold discovery by failing to make it good againsta bully, and selfishly kept this discovery from the knowledge of thecamp. Yet this weakness awakened no animosity in his companions, and itis probable that the indifference of the camp to his fate in this finalcatastrophe came purely from a simple forgetfulness of one who at thatsupreme moment was weakly incapable. Such was the reputation and such the antecedents of the man who, on the15th of March, 1856, found himself adrift in a swollen tributary of theMinyo. A spring freshet of unusual volume had flooded the adjacent riveruntil, bursting its bounds, it escaped through the narrow, wedge-shapedvalley that held Redwood Camp. For a day and night the surcharged riverpoured half its waters through the straggling camp. At the end of thattime every vestige of the little settlement was swept away; all that wasleft was scattered far and wide in the country, caught in the hangingbranches of water-side willows and alders, embayed in sluggish pools, dragged over submerged meadows, and one fragment--bearing up ElijahMartin--pursuing the devious courses of an unknown tributary fifty milesaway. Had he been a rash, impatient man, he would have been speedilydrowned in some earlier desperate attempt to reach the shore; had hebeen an ordinary bold man, he would have succeeded in transferringhimself to the branches of some obstructing tree; but he was neither, and he clung to his broken raft-like berth with an endurance thatwas half the paralysis of terror and half the patience of habitualmisfortune. Eventually he was caught in a side current, swept to thebank, and cast ashore on an unexplored wilderness. His first consciousness was one of hunger that usurped any sentimentof gratitude for his escape from drowning. As soon as his cramped limbspermitted, he crawled out of the bushes in search of food. He didnot know where he was; there was no sign of habitation--or evenoccupation--anywhere. He had been too terrified to notice the directionin which he had drifted--even if he had possessed the ordinary knowledgeof a backwoodsman, which he did not. He was helpless. In his bewilderedstate, seeing a squirrel cracking a nut on the branch of a hollow treenear him, he made a half-frenzied dart at the frightened animal, whichran away. But the same association of ideas in his torpid and confusedbrain impelled him to search for the squirrel's hoard in the hollowof the tree. He ate the few hazel-nuts he found there, ravenously. Thepurely animal instinct satisfied, he seemed to have borrowed from it acertain strength and intuition. He limped through the thicket notunlike some awkward, shy quadrumane, stopping here and there to peerout through the openings over the marshes that lay beyond. His sight, hearing, and even the sense of smell had become preternaturally acute. It was the latter which suddenly arrested his steps with the odorof dried fish. It had a significance beyond the mere instincts ofhunger--it indicated the contiguity of some Indian encampment. And assuch--it meant danger, torture, and death. He stopped, trembled violently, and tried to collect his scatteredsenses. Redwood Camp had embroiled itself needlessly and brutally withthe surrounding Indians, and only held its own against them by recklesscourage and unerring marksmanship. The frequent use of a casualwandering Indian as a target for the practising rifles of its membershad kept up an undying hatred in the heart of the aborigines andstimulated them to terrible and isolated reprisals. The scalped andskinned dead body of Jack Trainer, tied on his horse and held hideouslyupright by a cross of wood behind his saddle, had passed, one night, a slow and ghastly apparition, into camp; the corpse of Dick Ryner hadbeen found anchored on the river-bed, disembowelled and filled withstone and gravel. The solitary and unprotected member of Redwood Campwho fell into the enemy's hands was doomed. Elijah Martin remembered this, but his fears gradually began to subsidein a certain apathy of the imagination, which, perhaps, dulled hisapprehensions and allowed the instinct of hunger to become againuppermost. He knew that the low bark tents, or wigwams, of the Indianswere hung with strips of dried salmon, and his whole being was newcentered upon an attempt to stealthily procure a delicious morsel. Asyet he had distinguished no other sign of life or habitation; afew moments later, however, and grown bolder with an animal-liketrustfulness in his momentary security, he crept out of the thicket andfound himself near a long, low mound or burrow-like structure of mud andbark on the river-bank. A single narrow opening, not unlike the entranceof an Esquimau hut, gave upon the river. Martin had no difficulty inrecognizing the character of the building. It was a "sweathouse, " aninstitution common to nearly all the aboriginal tribes of California. Half a religious temple, it was also half a sanitary asylum, was used asa Russian bath or superheated vault, from which the braves, swelteringand stifling all night, by smothered fires, at early dawn plunged, perspiring, into the ice-cold river. The heat and smoke were furtherutilized to dry and cure the long strips of fish hanging from the roof, and it was through the narrow aperture that served as a chimney that theodor escaped which Martin had detected. He knew that as the bathersonly occupied the house from midnight to early morn, it was now probablyempty. He advanced confidently toward it. He was a little surprised to find that the small open space between itand the river was occupied by a rude scaffolding, like that on whichcertain tribes exposed their dead, but in this instance it onlycontained the feathered leggings, fringed blanket, and eagle-plumedhead-dress of some brave. He did not, however, linger in this plainlyvisible area, but quickly dropped on all fours and crept into theinterior of the house. Here he completed his feast with the fish, andwarmed his chilled limbs on the embers of the still smouldering fires. It was while drying his tattered clothes and shoeless feet that hethought of the dead brave's useless leggings and moccasins, and itoccurred to him that he would be less likely to attract the Indians'attention from a distance and provoke a ready arrow, if he weredisguised as one of them. Crawling out again, he quickly secured, notonly the leggings, but the blanket and head-dress, and putting them on, cast his own clothes into the stream. A bolder, more energetic, or moreprovident man would have followed the act by quickly making his wayback to the thicket to reconnoitre, taking with him a supply of fish forfuture needs. But Elijah Martin succumbed again to the recklessnessof inertia; he yielded once more to the animal instinct of momentarysecurity. He returned to the interior of the hut, curled himself againon the ashes, and weakly resolving to sleep until moonrise, and asweakly hesitating, ended by falling into uneasy but helpless stupor. When he awoke, the rising sun, almost level with the low entrance tothe sweat-house, was darting its direct rays into the interior, asif searching it with fiery spears. He had slept ten hours. He rosetremblingly to his knees. Everything was quiet without; he might yetescape. He crawled to the opening. The open space before it was empty, but the scaffolding was gone. The clear, keen air revived him. As hesprang out, erect, a shout that nearly stunned him seemed to rise fromthe earth on all sides. He glanced around him in a helpless agony offear. A dozen concentric circles of squatting Indians, whose heads werevisible above the reeds, encompassed the banks around the sunken baseof the sweat-house with successive dusky rings. Every avenue of escapeseemed closed. Perhaps for that reason the attitude of his surroundingcaptors was passive rather than aggressive, and the shrewd, half-Hebraicprofiles nearest him expressed only stoical waiting. There was a strangesimilarity of expression in his own immovable apathy of despair. Hisonly sense of averting his fate was a confused idea of explaining hisintrusion. His desperate memory yielded a few common Indian words. Hepointed automatically to himself and the stream. His white lips moved. "I come--from--the river!" A guttural cry, as if the whole assembly were clearing their throats, went round the different circles. The nearest rocked themselves toand fro and bent their feathered heads toward him. A hollow-cheeked, decrepit old man arose and said, simply:-- "It is he! The great chief has come!" ***** He was saved. More than that, he was re-created. For, by signs andintimations he was quickly made aware that since the death of theirlate chief, their medicine-men had prophesied that his perfect successorshould appear miraculously before them, borne noiselessly on the riverFROM THE SEA, in the plumes and insignia of his predecessor. This merecoincidence of appearance and costume might not have been convincing tothe braves had not Elijah Martin's actual deficiencies contributed totheir unquestioned faith in him. Not only his inert possession of thesweat-house and his apathetic attitude in their presence, but his utterand complete unlikeness to the white frontiersmen of their knowledge andtradition--creatures of fire and sword and malevolent activity--as wellas his manifest dissimilarity to themselves, settled their convictionof his supernatural origin. His gentle, submissive voice, his yieldingwill, his lazy helplessness, the absence of strange weapons and fierceexplosives in his possession, his unwonted sobriety--all proved him anexception to his apparent race that was in itself miraculous. For itmust be confessed that, in spite of the cherished theories of mostromances and all statesmen and commanders, that FEAR is the greatcivilizer of the savage barbarian, and that he is supposed to regardthe prowess of the white man and his mysterious death-dealing weaponsas evidence of his supernatural origin and superior creation, the factshave generally pointed to the reverse. Elijah Martin was not long indiscovering that when the Minyo hunter, with his obsolete bow, droppeddead by a bullet from a viewless and apparently noiseless space, itwas NOT considered the lightnings of an avenging Deity, but was traceddirectly to the ambushed rifle of Kansas Joe, swayed by a viciousnessquite as human as their own; the spectacle of Blizzard Dick, vergingon delirium tremens, and riding "amuck" into an Indian village with arevolver in each hand, did NOT impress them as a supernatural act, norexcite their respectful awe as much as the less harmful frenzy of oneof their own medicine-men; they were NOT influenced by implacable whitegods, who relaxed only to drive hard bargains and exchange mildewedflour and shoddy blankets for their fish and furs. I am afraid theyregarded these raids of Christian civilization as they looked upongrasshopper plagues, famines, inundations, and epidemics; while anutterly impassive God washed his hands of the means he had employed, andeven encouraged the faithful to resist and overcome his emissaries--thewhite devils! Had Elijah Martin been a student of theology, hewould have been struck with the singular resemblance of thesetheories--although the application thereof was reversed--to theChristian faith. But Elijah Martin had neither the imagination ofa theologian nor the insight of a politician. He only saw that he, hitherto ignored and despised in a community of half-barbaric men, now translated to a community of men wholly savage, was respected andworshipped! It might have turned a stronger head than Elijah's. He was at firstfrightened, fearful lest his reception concealed some hidden irony, or that, like the flower-crowned victim of ancient sacrifice, he wasexalted and sustained to give importance and majesty to some impendingmartyrdom. Then he began to dread that his innocent deceit--if deceit itwas--should be discovered; at last, partly from meekness and partly fromthe animal contentment of present security, he accepted the situation. Fortunately for him it was purely passive. The Great Chief of the Minyotribe was simply an expressionless idol of flesh and blood. The previousincumbent of that office had been an old man, impotent and senselessof late years through age and disease. The chieftains and braves hadconsulted in council before him, and perfunctorily submitted theirdecisions, like offerings, to his unresponsive shrine. In the same way, all material events--expeditions, trophies, industries--were supposedto pass before the dull, impassive eyes of the great chief, for directacceptance. On the second day of Elijah's accession, two of the bravesbrought a bleeding human scalp before him. Elijah turned pale, trembled, and averted his head, and then, remembering the danger of giving wayto his weakness, grew still more ghastly. The warriors watched him withimpassioned faces. A grunt--but whether of astonishment, dissent, orapproval, he would not tell--went round the circle. But the scalp wastaken away and never again appeared in his presence. An incident still more alarming quickly followed. Two captives, whitemen, securely bound, were one day brought before him on their way tothe stake, followed by a crowd of old and young squaws and children. Theunhappy Elijah recognized in the prisoners two packers from a distantsettlement who sometimes passed through Redwood Camp. An agony ofterror, shame, and remorse shook the pseudo chief to his crest of highfeathers, and blanched his face beneath its paint and yellow ochre. Tointerfere to save them from the torture they were evidently to receiveat the hands of those squaws and children, according to custom, would beexposure and death to him as well as themselves; while to assist by hispassive presence at the horrible sacrifice of his countrymen was toomuch for even his weak selfishness. Scarcely knowing what he did as thelugubrious procession passed before him, he hurriedly hid his facein his blanket and turned his back upon the scene. There was a deadsilence. The warriors were evidently unprepared for this extraordinaryconduct of their chief. What might have been their action it wasimpossible to conjecture, for at that moment a little squaw, perhapsimpatient for the sport and partly emboldened by the fact that shehad been selected, only a few days before, as the betrothed of the newchief, approached him slyly from the other side. The horrified eyes ofElijah, momentarily raised from his blanket, saw and recognized her. Thefeebleness of a weak nature, that dared not measure itself directly withthe real cause, vented its rage on a secondary object. He darted a quickglance of indignation and hatred at the young girl. She ran back instartled terror to her companions, a hurried consultation followed, andin another moment the whole bevy of girls, old women, and children wereon the wing, shrieking and crying, to their wigwams. "You see, " said one of the prisoners coolly to the other, in English, "I was right. They never intended to do anything to us. It was only abluff. These Minyos are a different sort from the other tribes. Theynever kill anybody if they can help it. " "You're wrong, " said the other, excitedly. "It was that big chief there, with his head in a blanket, that sent those dogs to the right about. Hell! did you see them run at just a look from him? He's a high andmighty feller, you bet. Look at his dignity!" "That's so--he ain't no slouch, " said the other, gazing at Elijah'smuffled head, critically. "D----d if he ain't a born king. " The sudden conflict and utter revulsion of emotion that those simplewords caused in Elijah's breast was almost incredible. He had been atfirst astounded by the revelation of the peaceful reputation ofthe unknown tribe he had been called upon to govern; but even thiscomforting assurance was as nothing compared to the greater revelationsimplied in the speaker's praise of himself. He, Elijah Martin!the despised, the rejected, the worthless outcast of Redwood Camp, recognized as a "born king, " a leader; his power felt by the very menwho had scorned him! And he had done nothing--stop! had he actually doneNOTHING? Was it not possible that he was REALLY what they thought him?His brain reeled under the strong, unaccustomed wine of praise; actingupon his weak selfishness, it exalted him for a moment to their measureof his strength, even as their former belief in his inefficiency hadkept him down. Courage is too often only the memory of past success. This was his first effort; he forgot he had not earned it, even ashe now ignored the danger of earning it. The few words of unconsciouspraise had fallen like the blade of knighthood on his coweringshoulders; he had risen ennobled from the contact. Though his face wasstill muffled in his blanket, he stood erect and seemed to have gainedin stature. The braves had remained standing irresolute, and yet watchful, a fewpaces from their captives. Suddenly, Elijah, still keeping his backto the prisoners, turned upon the braves, with blazing eyes, violentlythrowing out his hands with the gesture of breaking bonds. Like allsudden demonstrations of undemonstrative men, it was extravagant, weird, and theatrical. But it was more potent than speech--the speech that, even if effective, would still have betrayed him to his countrymen. The braves hurriedly cut the thongs of the prisoners; another impulsivegesture from Elijah, and they, too, fled. When he lifted his eyescautiously from his blanket, captors and captives had dispersed inopposite directions, and he was alone--and triumphant! From that moment Elijah Martin was another man. He went to bed thatnight in an intoxicating dream of power; he arose a man of will, ofstrength. He read it in the eyes of the braves, albeit at times avertedin wonder. He understood, now, that although peace had been theirhabit and custom, they had nevertheless sought to test his theories ofadministration with the offering of the scalps and the captives, and inthis detection of their common weakness he forgot his own. Most heroesrequire the contrast of the unheroic to set them off; and Elijahactually found himself devising means for strengthening the defensiveand offensive character of the tribe, and was himself strengthenedby it. Meanwhile the escaped packers did not fail to heightenthe importance of their adventure by elevating the character andachievements of their deliverer; and it was presently announcedthroughout the frontier settlements that the hitherto insignificant andpeaceful tribe of Minyos, who inhabited a large territory bordering onthe Pacific Ocean, had developed into a powerful nation, only kept fromthe war-path by a more powerful but mysterious chief. The Governmentsent an Indian agent to treat with them, in its usual half-paternal, half-aggressive, and wholly inconsistent policy. Elijah, who stillretained the imitative sense and adaptability to surroundings whichbelong to most lazy, impressible natures, and in striped yellow andvermilion features looked the chief he personated, met the agent withsilent and becoming gravity. The council was carried on by signs. Never before had an Indian treaty been entered into with such perfectknowledge of the intentions and designs of the whites by the Indians, and such profound ignorance of the qualities of the Indians by thewhites. It need scarcely be said that the treaty was an unquestionableIndian success. They did not give up their arable lands; what they didsell to the agent they refused to exchange for extravagant-priced shoddyblankets, worthless guns, damp powder, and mouldy meal. They took pay indollars, and were thus enabled to open more profitable commerce with thetraders at the settlements for better goods and better bargains; theysimply declined beads, whiskey, and Bibles at any price. The resultwas that the traders found it profitable to protect them from theircountrymen, and the chances of wantonly shooting down a possiblevaluable customer stopped the old indiscriminate rifle-practice. The Indians were allowed to cultivate their fields in peace. Elijahpurchased for them a few agricultural implements. The catching, curing, and smoking of salmon became an important branch of trade. They waxedprosperous and rich; they lost their nomadic habits--a centralizedsettlement bearing the external signs of an Indian village took theplace of their old temporary encampments, but the huts were internallyan improvement on the old wigwams. The dried fish were banished from thetent-poles to long sheds especially constructed for that purpose. Thesweat-house was no longer utilized for worldly purposes. The wise andmighty Elijah did not attempt to reform their religion, but to preserveit in its integrity. That these improvements and changes were due to the influence of one manwas undoubtedly true, but that he was necessarily a superior man didnot follow. Elijah's success was due partly to the fact that he had beenenabled to impress certain negative virtues, which were part of his ownnature, upon a community equally constituted to receive them. Each wasstrengthened by the recognition in each other of the unexpected value ofthose qualities; each acquired a confidence begotten of their success. "He-hides-his-face, " as Elijah Martin was known to the tribe after theepisode of the released captives, was really not so much of an autocratas many constitutional rulers. ***** Two years of tranquil prosperity passed. Elijah Martin, foundling, outcast, without civilized ties or relationship of any kind, forgottenby his countrymen, and lifted into alien power, wealth, security, andrespect, became--homesick! It was near the close of a summer afternoon. He was sitting at the doorof his lodge, which overlooked, on one side, the far-shining levelsof the Pacific and, on the other, the slow descent to the cultivatedmeadows and banks of the Minyo River, that debouched through a waste ofsalt-marsh, beach-grass, sand-dunes, and foamy estuary into theocean. The headland, or promontory--the only eminence of the Minyoterritory--had been reserved by him for his lodge, partly on account ofits isolation from the village at its base, and partly for the view itcommanded of his territory. Yet his wearying and discontented eyes weremore often found on the ocean, as a possible highway of escape from hisirksome position, than on the plain and the distant range of mountains, so closely connected with the nearer past and his former detractors. Inhis vague longing he had no desire to return to them, even in triumph inhis present security there still lingered a doubt of his ability tocope with the old conditions. It was more like his easy, indolentnature--which revived in his prosperity--to trust to this leastpractical and remote solution of his trouble. His homesickness was asvague as his plan for escape from it; he did not know exactly whathe regretted, but it was probably some life he had not enjoyed, somepleasure that had escaped his former incompetency and poverty. He had sat thus a hundred times, as aimlessly blinking at the vastpossibilities of the shining sea beyond, turning his back upon thenearer and more practicable mountains, lulled by the far-off beating ofmonotonous rollers, the lonely cry of the curlew and plover, the drowsychanges of alternate breaths of cool, fragrant reeds and warm, spicysands that blew across his eyelids, and succumbed to sleep, as hehad done a hundred times before. The narrow strips of colored cloth, insignia of his dignity, flapped lazily from his tent-poles, and at lastseemed to slumber with him; the shadows of the leaf-tracery thrown bythe bay-tree, on the ground at his feet, scarcely changed its pattern. Nothing moved but the round, restless, berry-like eyes of Wachita, hischild-wife, the former heroine of the incident with the captive packers, who sat near her lord, armed with a willow wand, watchful of intrudingwasps, sand-flies, and even the more ostentatious advances of a rotundand clerical-looking humble-bee, with his monotonous homily. Content, dumb, submissive, vacant, at such times, Wachita, debarred herhusband's confidences through the native customs and his own indifferenttaciturnity, satisfied herself by gazing at him with the wondering butineffectual sympathy of a faithful dog. Unfortunately for Elijah herpurely mechanical ministration could not prevent a more dangerousintrusion upon his security. He awoke with a light start, and eyes that gradually fixed upon thewoman a look of returning consciousness. Wachita pointed timidly to thevillage below. "The Messenger of the Great White Father has come to-day, with hiswagons and horses; he would see the chief of the Minyos, but I would notdisturb my lord. " Elijah's brow contracted. Relieved of its characteristic metaphor, he knew that this meant that the new Indian agent had made his usualofficial visit, and had exhibited the usual anxiety to see the famouschieftain. "Good!" he said. "White Rabbit [his lieutenant] will see the Messengerand exchange gifts. It is enough. " "The white messenger has brought his wangee [white] woman with him. They would look upon the face of him who hides it, " continued Wachita, dubiously. "They would that Wachita should bring them nearer to where mylord is, that they might see him when he knew it not. " Elijah glanced moodily at his wife, with the half suspicion with whichhe still regarded her alien character. "Then let Wachita go back tothe squaws and old women, and let her hide herself with them until thewangee strangers are gone, " he said curtly. "I have spoken. Go!" Accustomed to these abrupt dismissals, which did not necessarilyindicate displeasure, Wachita disappeared without a word. Elijah, whohad risen, remained for a few moments leaning against the tent-poles, gazing abstractedly toward the sea. The bees droned uninterruptedly inhis ears, the far-off roll of the breakers came to him distinctly; butsuddenly, with greater distinctness, came the murmur of a woman's voice. "He don't look savage a bit! Why, he's real handsome. " "Hush! you--" said a second voice, in a frightened whisper. "But if he DID hear he couldn't understand, " returned the first voice. Asuppressed giggle followed. Luckily, Elijah's natural and acquired habits of repression suited theemergency. He did not move, although he felt the quick blood fly to hisface, and the voice of the first speaker had suffused him with a strangeand delicious anticipation. He restrained himself, though the words shehad naively dropped were filling him with new and tremulous suggestion. He was motionless, even while he felt that the vague longing andyearning which had possessed him hitherto was now mysteriously takingsome unknown form and action. The murmuring ceased. The humble-bees' drone again became ascendant--asudden fear seized him. She was GOING; he should never see her! While hehad stood there a dolt and sluggard, she had satisfied her curiosity andstolen away. With a sudden yielding to impulse, he darted quickly inthe direction where he had heard her voice. The thicket moved, parted, crackled, and rustled, and then undulated thirty feet before him in along wave, as if from the passage of some lithe, invisible figure. Butat the same moment a little cry, half of alarm, half of laughter, brokefrom his very feet, and a bent manzanito-bush, relaxed by frightenedfingers, flew back against his breast. Thrusting it hurriedly aside, his stooping, eager face came almost in contact with the pink, flushedcheeks and tangled curls of a woman's head. He was so near, her moistand laughing eyes almost drowned his eager glance; her parted lips andwhite teeth were so close to his that her quick breath took away hisown. She had dropped on one knee, as her companion fled, expecting he wouldoverlook her as he passed, but his direct onset had extracted thefeminine outcry. Yet even then she did not seem greatly frightened. "It's only a joke, sir, " she said, coolly lifting herself to her feet bygrasping his arm. "I'm Mrs. Dall, the Indian agent's wife. They said youwouldn't let anybody see you--and I determined I would. That's all!" Shestopped, threw back her tangled curls behind her ears, shook the briersand thorns from her skirt, and added: "Well, I reckon you aren't afraidof a woman, are you? So no harm's done. Good-by!" She drew slightly back as if to retreat, but the elasticity of themanzanito against which she was leaning threw her forward once more. He again inhaled the perfume of her hair; he saw even the tiny frecklesthat darkened her upper lip and brought out the moist, red curve below. A sudden recollection of a playmate of his vagabond childhood flashedacross his mind; a wild inspiration of lawlessness, begotten of his pastexperience, his solitude, his dictatorial power, and the beauty of thewoman before him, mounted to his brain. He threw his arms passionatelyaround her, pressed his lips to hers, and with a half-hysterical laughdrew back and disappeared in the thicket. Mrs. Dall remained for an instant dazed and stupefied. Then she liftedher arm mechanically, and with her sleeve wiped her bruised mouth andthe ochre-stain that his paint had left, like blood, upon her cheek. Herlaughing face had become instantly grave, but not from fear; her darkeyes had clouded, but not entirely with indignation. She suddenlybrought down her hand sharply against her side with a gesture ofdiscovery. "That's no Injun!" she said, with prompt decision. The next minuteshe plunged back into the trail again, and the dense foliage once moreclosed around her. But as she did so the broad, vacant face and themutely wondering eyes of Wachita rose, like a placid moon, between thebranches of a tree where they had been hidden, and shone serenely andimpassively after her. ***** A month elapsed. But it was a month filled with more experience toElijah than his past two years of exaltation. In the first few daysfollowing his meeting with Mrs. Dall, he was possessed by terror, mingled with flashes of desperation, at the remembrance of his rashimprudence. His recollection of extravagant frontier chivalry towomankind, and the swift retribution of the insulted husband orguardian, alternately filled him with abject fear or extravagantrecklessness. At times prepared for flight, even to the desperateabandonment of himself in a canoe to the waters of the Pacific: at timeshe was on the point of inciting his braves to attack the Indian agencyand precipitate the war that he felt would be inevitable. As the dayspassed, and there seemed to be no interruption to his friendly relationswith the agency, with that relief a new, subtle joy crept into Elijah'sheart. The image of the agent's wife framed in the leafy screen behindhis lodge, the perfume of her hair and breath mingled with the spicingof the bay, the brief thrill and tantalization of the stolen kiss stillhaunted him. Through his long, shy abstention from society, and his twoyears of solitary exile, the fresh beauty of this young Western wife, inwhom the frank artlessness of girlhood still lingered, appeared to himlike a superior creation. He forgot his vague longings in the inceptionof a more tangible but equally unpractical passion. He remembered herunconscious and spontaneous admiration of him; he dared to connect itwith her forgiving silence. If she had withheld her confidences from herhusband, he could hope--he knew not exactly what! One afternoon Wachita put into his hand a folded note. With aninstinctive presentiment of its contents, Elijah turned red andembarrassed in receiving it from the woman who was recognized as hiswife. But the impassive, submissive manner of this household drudge, instead of touching his conscience, seemed to him a vulgar and brutalacceptance of the situation that dulled whatever compunction he mighthave had. He opened the note and read hurriedly as follows:-- "You took a great freedom with me the other day, and I am justified intaking one with you now. I believe you understand English as well as Ido. If you want to explain that and your conduct to me, I will be at thesame place this afternoon. My friend will accompany me, but she need nothear what you have to say. " Elijah read the letter, which might have been written by an ordinaryschool-girl, as if it had conveyed the veiled rendezvous of a princess. The reserve, caution, and shyness which had been the safeguard of hisweak nature were swamped in a flow of immature passion. He flew to theinterview with the eagerness and inexperience of first love. He wascompletely at her mercy. So utterly was he subjugated by her presencethat she did not even run the risk of his passion. Whatever sentimentmight have mingled with her curiosity, she was never conscious of anecessity to guard herself against it. At this second meeting she wasin full possession of his secret. He had told her everything; she hadpromised nothing in return--she had not even accepted anything. Evenher actual after-relations to the denouement of his passion are stillshrouded in mystery. Nevertheless, Elijah lived two weeks on the unsubstantial memory of thismeeting. What might have followed could not be known, for at the end ofthat time an outrage--so atrocious that even the peaceful Minyos werethrilled with savage indignation--was committed on the outskirts of thevillage. An old chief, who had been specially selected to deal with theIndian agent, and who kept a small trading outpost, had been killedand his goods despoiled by a reckless Redwood packer. The murderer hadcoolly said that he was only "serving out" the tool of a fraudulentimposture on the Government, and that he dared the arch-impostorhimself, the so-called Minyo chief, to help himself. A wave ofungovernable fury surged up to the very tent-poles of Elijah's lodge anddemanded vengeance. Elijah trembled and hesitated. In the thraldom ofhis selfish passion for Mrs. Dall he dared not contemplate a collisionwith her countrymen. He would have again sought refuge in his passive, non-committal attitude, but he knew the impersonal character of Indianretribution and compensation--a sacrifice of equal value, withoutreference to the culpability of the victim--and he dreaded somespontaneous outbreak. To prevent the enforced expiation of the crimeby some innocent brother packer, he was obliged to give orders for thepursuit and arrest of the criminal, secretly hoping for his escape orthe interposition of some circumstance to avert his punishment. A day ofsullen expectancy to the old men and squaws in camp, of gloomy anxietyto Elijah alone in his lodge, followed the departure of the braves onthe war-path. It was midnight when they returned. Elijah, who from hishabitual reserve and the accepted etiquette of his exalted station hadremained impassive in his tent, only knew from the guttural rejoicingsof the squaws that the expedition had been successful and the captivewas in their hands. At any other time he might have thought it anevidence of some growing scepticism of his infallibility of judgmentand a diminution of respect that they did not confront him with theirprisoner. But he was too glad to escape from the danger of exposure andpossible arraignment of his past life by the desperate captive, eventhough it might not have been understood by the spectators. He reflectedthat the omission might have arisen from their recollection of hisprevious aversion to a retaliation on other prisoners. Enough that theywould wait his signal for the torture and execution at sunrise the nextday. The night passed slowly. It is more than probable that the selfish andignoble torments of the sleepless and vacillating judge were greaterthan those of the prisoner who dozed at the stake between his curses. Yet it was part of Elijah's fatal weakness that his kinder and morehuman instincts were dominated even at that moment by his lawlesspassion for the Indian agent's wife, and his indecision as to the fateof his captive was as much due to this preoccupation as to a selfishconsideration of her relations to the result. He hated the prisoner forhis infelicitous and untimely crime, yet he could not make up his mindto his death. He paced the ground before his lodge in dishonorableincertitude. The small eyes of the submissive Wachita watched him withvague solicitude. Toward morning he was struck by a shameful inspiration. He would creepunperceived to the victim's side, unloose his bonds, and bid him fly tothe Indian agency. There he was to inform Mrs. Dall that her husband'ssafety depended upon his absenting himself for a few days, but thatshe was to remain and communicate with Elijah. She would understandeverything, perhaps; at least she would know that the prisoner's releasewas to please her, but even if she did not, no harm would be done, a white man's life would be saved, and his real motive would not besuspected. He turned with feverish eagerness to the lodge. Wachita haddisappeared--probably to join the other women. It was well; she wouldnot suspect him. The tree to which the doomed man was bound was, by custom, selectednearest the chief's lodge, within its sacred enclosure, with no otherprotection than that offered by its reserved seclusion and the outersemicircle of warriors' tents before it. To escape, the captive wouldtherefore have to pass beside the chief's lodge to the rear and descendthe hill toward the shore. Elijah would show him the way, and make itappear as if he had escaped unaided. As he glided into the shadow ofa group of pines, he could dimly discern the outline of the destinedvictim, secured against one of the larger trees in a sitting posture, with his head fallen forward on his breast as if in sleep. But at thesame moment another figure glided out from the shadow and approached thefatal tree. It was Wachita! He stopped in amazement. But in another instant a flash of intelligencemade it clear. He remembered her vague uneasiness and solicitude at hisagitation, her sudden disappearance; she had fathomed his perplexity, as she had once before. Of her own accord she was going to release theprisoner! The knife to cut his cords glittered in her hand. Brave andfaithful animal! He held his breath as he drew nearer. But, to his horror, the knifesuddenly flashed in the air and darted down, again and again, uponthe body of the helpless man. There was a convulsive struggle, but nooutcry, and the next moment the body hung limp and inert in its cords. Elijah would himself have fallen, half-fainting, against a tree, but, by a revulsion of feeling, came the quick revelation that the desperategirl had rightly solved the problem! She had done what he ought to havedone--and his loyalty and manhood were preserved. That convictionand the courage to act upon it--to have called the sleeping bravesto witness his sacrifice--would have saved him, but it was orderedotherwise. As the girl rapidly passed him he threw out his hand and seized herwrist. "Who did you do this for?" he demanded. "For you, " she said, stupidly. "And why?" "Because you no kill him--you love his squaw. " "HIS squaw!" He staggered back. A terrible suspicion flashed upon him. He dashed Wachita aside and ran to the tree. It was the body of theIndian agent! Aboriginal justice had been satisfied. The warriorshad not caught the MURDERER, but, true to their idea of vicariousretribution, had determined upon the expiatory sacrifice of a life asvaluable and innocent as the one they had lost. ***** "So the Gov'rment hev at last woke up and wiped out them cussed DiggerMinyos, " said Snapshot Harry, as he laid down the newspaper, in thebrand-new saloon of the brand-new town of Redwood. "I see they'vestampeded both banks of the Minyo River, and sent off a lot to thereservation. I reckon the soldiers at Fort Cass got sick o' sentimentafter those hounds killed the Injun agent, and are beginning to agreewith us that the only 'good Injun' is a dead one. " "And it turns out that that wonderful chief, that them two packers usedto rave about, woz about as big a devil ez any, and tried to run offwith the agent's wife, only the warriors killed her. I'd like to knowwhat become of him. Some says he was killed, others allow that he gotaway. I've heerd tell that he was originally some kind of Methodistpreacher!--a kind o' saint that got a sort o' spiritooal holt on the oldsquaws and children. " "Why don't you ask old Skeesicks? I see he's back here ag'in--andgrubbin' along at a dollar a day on tailin's. He's been somewhere upnorth, they say. " "What, Skeesicks? that shiftless, o'n'ry cuss! You bet he wusn'tanywhere where there was danger of fighting. Why, you might as well hevsuspected HIM of being the big chief himself! There he comes--ask him. " And the laughter was so general that Elijah Martin--aliasSkeesicks--lounging shyly into the bar-room, joined in it weakly.