The man handed her the flower, and was again silent. His face had for a moment been almost beautiful. Here Logan came up with a little wood.

"Oh, John Logan, what a pretty flower for your button-hole!" and the fond girl bounded across and eagerly placed it in the young man's breast.

The old man on the keg saw this, and his face grew dark. His hands twisted nervously, and he could hardly keep his seat on his keg. Then he hitched up his pants right and left, sat down more resolutely on the keg than before, but said nothing for a long time.

At last the old man hitched about on his keg, and said sharply, over his shoulder: "I saw a track, a boot-track, coming up. On the watch, there!"

The others looked about as if alarmed. It was now dark. Suddenly the two men appeared, looking right and left, and smiling villainously. They came as if they had followed Forty-nine, and not from behind the rocks, where they had been secreted.

"Good evenin', sir! good evenin', sir! Going to rain, eh? Heard it thunder, and thought best to get shelter. Cattle-men—we're cattle-men, pard and I. Seed your camp-fire, and as it was thunderin,' we came right in. All right, boss? All right, eh? All right?" And the man, cap in hand, bowed from one to the other, as not knowing who was the leader, or whom he should address.

"All right," answered Logan. "You're very welcome. Stand your guns there. You're as welcome under these trees as the birds—eh, Forty-nine?"

But Forty-nine was now silent and thoughtful. He was still breathless, and he only puffed and blowed his answer, and sat down on his keg again with all his might.

"You must be hungry," said the girl kindly, approaching the men.

"Heaps of provisions," puffed Forty-nine, and again he half arose and then sat down on his keg, tighter and harder, if possible, than before.

"Thank you, gents, thank you. It's hungry we are—eh, pard?"

"We'll have a spread right off," answered the good hearted Logan, now spreading a rock, which served for a table, with the food; when he observed the two men look at the girl and make signs. He looked straight and hard at the man-hunters for a moment, and seeing them exchange glances and nod their ill-looking heads at each other he suddenly dropped his handful of things and started forward. He caught the leader by the shoulder, and whirling him about as he stood there with his companion leering at the girl, he cried out:

"Hunting cattle, are you? What's your brand? What's the brand of your cattle, I say? I know every brand in Shasta. Now what is your brand?"

Johnny had strode up angrily toward the two men, and followed them up as they retreated. Old Forty-nine, who now was on the alert, and had his sleeves rolled up almost to his elbows from the first, had not been indifferent, but was reaching his tremendous fist towards the retreating nose of Dosson. Yet it was too dark to distinguish friend from foe.

"Why, we are not rich men, stranger. We are poor men, and have but few cattle, and so, so we have no brand—eh? pardner—eh?"

"No. We got no brand. Poor men, poor men."

"We are poor men, with a few cattle that have gone astray. We are hungry, tired poor men, that have lost their way in the night. Poor men that's hungry, and now you want to drive us out into the storm."

"Oh, Forty-nine,—John Logan,—they're poor hungry men!" interposed Carrie.

"There, there's my hand!" cried impulsive, honest old Forty-nine. "That's enough. You're hungry. Sit down there. And quick, Carrie, pour us the California wine. Here's a gourd, there's a yeast powder can, and there's a tin cup. Thank you. Here's to you. Ah, that sets a fellow all right. It warms the heart; and, I beg your pardon—it's mean to be suspicious. Here, fill us up again. Ah, that's gone just to the spot! Eh, fellows?"

"To the right spot! Keep him a drinkin', and the others, too," whispered Dosson to Emens.

"That's the game!" And the two villains winked at each other, and slapped Forty-nine on the back, and laughed, and pretended to be the best friend he had in the world.

The two men now sat at the table, and Carrie and Johnny bustled about and helped them as they ate and drank. Meantime Logan went for more wood to make a light.

"And here's the bread, and here's the meat, and—and—that's about all there is," said the girl at last. Then she stood by and with alarm saw the men swallow the last mouthful, and feel about over the table and look up to her for more in the dark.

"All there is? All gone?"

"Yes, and to-morrow, Johnny?"

"To-morrow, Carrie?" called out Forty-nine, who was now almost drunk: "We've had a good supper, let to-morrow take care of itself. Eh! Let to-morrow take care of itself! That's my motto—hic—divide the troubles of the year up into three hundred and sixty-five parts, and take the pieces one at a time. Live one day at a time. That's my philosophy." And the poor old man, Forty-nine, held his hat high in the air, and began to hiccough and hold his neck unsteadily.

The girl saw this with alarm. As if by accident she placed herself between the men and their guns. Meantime, the two men were trying in vain to get at the pistols of Forty-nine. They would almost succeed, and then, just as they were about to get hold of them, the drunken man would roll over to the other side or change position. All the time Carrie kept wishing so devoutly that Logan would come.

"Take a drink," said one of the men to the girl, reaching out his cup, after glancing at his companion. But the girl only shook her head, and stepped further back. "Thought you said she was civilized?" "She, she is civilized; but isn't quite civilized enough to get drunk yet," hiccoughed Forty-nine, as he battered his tin-cup on the table, and again foiled the hand just reached for his pistol. The boy saw this, and stole back through the dark behind his sister. To remove the cap and touch his tongue to the tubes of the guns was the work only of a second, and again he was back by the side of the men. Eagerly all the time the girl kept looking over her shoulders into the dark, deep woods, for Logan. The thunder rolled, and it began to grow very dark. She went up to Forty-nine, on pretense of helping him to more wine, and whispered sharply in his ear.

The old man only stared at her in helpless wonder. His head rolled from one side to the other like that of an idiot. His wits were utterly under water.

And now, as the darkness thickened and the men's actions could hardly be observed, one of them pushed the drunken man over, clutched his pistols, and the two sprang up together.

"I've got 'em, Gar," cried Emens, and the two started back for their guns. The girl stood in the way, and Dosson threw his massive body upon her and bore her to the earth, while the other, awkwardly holding the two pistols in one hand, groped in the dark for their guns.

The storm began to beat terribly. The mountains fairly trembled from the rolling thunder. As the man was about to clutch the guns, he felt rather than saw that a tall figure stood between. That instant a flash of lightning showed John Logan standing there, the boy by his side, and two ugly pistols thrust forward. The man-hunters were unmasked in the fiery light of heaven, and Logan knew them for the first time.

"I will not kill you." He said this with look and action that was grand and terrible. "Take your guns and go! Out into the storm! If God can spare you, I can spare you. Go!"

And by the lightning's light, the two men, with two ugly pistol-nozzles in their faces, took their guns and groped and backed down the mountain into the darkness, where they belonged.



CHAPTER IV.

THE OLD GOLD-HUNTER.

"For the Right! as God has given Man to see the Maiden Right!" For the Right, through thickest night, Till the man-brute Wrong be driven From high places; till the Right Shall lift like some grand beacon light.

For the Right! Love, Right and duty; Lift the world up, though you fall Heaped with dead before the wall; God can find a soul of beauty Where it falls, as gems of worth Are found by miners dark in earth.

Old Forty-nine had not cast his life and lot with John Logan at all. Yet this singular and contradictory old man stood ready to lay down his seemingly worthless life at a moment's notice for this boy whom he had almost brought up from childhood. But he was not living with him in the mountains. He had done all he could to protect him, to shelter and feed him, all the time. But now the pursuit was so hot and desperate that the old man, in his sober moments—rare enough, I admit—began to doubt if it would be possible to save this young man much longer from the clutches of the Agents. Indeed, it was only by the sweet persuasion of Carrie that he had this time been induced to go with her and Johnny up on the spur of the mountain, and there meet John Logan with some provisions. From there he was persuaded to go with him to his hiding-place, high up the mountain, where we left him in the last chapter.

But the poor old man's head was soon under water again, as we have seen. That keg of California wine and the few bits of bread and meat, which so suddenly disappeared in the hands of Dosson and Emens, were all he happened to have in the cabin when the two children came in at dusk. But these he had snatched up at once and ran with them to Logan.

But the next morning, when his head was once more above water, and he had been told all that had happened, he pulled his long white beard to the right and to left, and at last rose up and took the two children and led them back down the steep and stupendous mountain to his cabin. He knew that John Logan was now a doomed man. Had he been alone, had there been no one but himself and this hunted man, he would have stayed by his side. As it was, it made the old man a year older to decide. And it was like tearing his heart out by the roots, when he rose up, choking with agony, grasped Logan's hand, bade him farewell, and led the children hurriedly away. Once, twice, the old man stopped and turned suddenly about, and looked sharply and almost savagely up the mountains, as if to return. And then, each time he sighed, shook his head, and hurried on down the hill. He held tightly on to the little brown hands of the children, as if he feared that they, too, like himself, might let their better natures master them, and so turn back and join the desolate and hunted man.

That evening, after the old man had returned from his tunnel, and while he prepared a meager meal from a few potatoes and a heel of bacon found back in the corner of a shelf, and so hard that even the wood-rats had refused to eat it, a passing fellow-miner put his heavy head and shoulders in at the half open cabin and shouted out that a barn had been burned in the valley, a house fired into, and the tomahawk of John Logan found hard by. The children glanced at each other by the low fire-light. But old Forty-nine only went on with his work as the head withdrew and passed on, but he said never a word. He was very thoughtful all the evening. He was now perfectly certain that his course had been the wise one, the only prudent one in fact. Logan he knew was now beyond help. He must use all his art and address to keep the children from further peril. He made them promise to remain in his cabin, to never attempt to reach Logan. He told them that their presence with him would only greatly embarrass him in his flight; that they might be followed if they attempted to reach him, and that he and they would then be taken and sent to the Reservation together. But he told them further—and their black eyes flashed like fire as he spoke in a voice tremulous with emotion and earnestness—that if ever Logan came to that cabin hungry, or for help of any kind, they should help him with every means in their power.

And so the old man went back to work in his tunnel; and as the autumn wore away and winter drew on, the children kept close about the little old cabin, waiting, waiting, waiting; looking up toward the now white, cold mountain, yet obeying Forty-nine to the letter.

Meantime the man-hunt went on; although the children knew nothing for a long time of the deadly energy with which it was conducted.

What a strange place for two bright, budding children was this old, old cabin, with its old, old man, and its dark and miserable interior! How people shunned the lonely old place, and how it sank down into the earth and among the weeds and willows, and long strong yellow tangled grass, as if it wanted to be shunned!

On a dirty old shelf near the fire-place lay a torn and tattered book. It was thumbed and thrumbed all to pieces from long and patient use. When the wind blew through the chinks of the cabin, this old book seemed to have life. It fluttered there like a wounded bird. Its leaves literally whispered. This old book was a Bible.

More houses had been burned in the little valley, and the crime laid to John Logan. He had now been proclaimed an outlaw in effect by every settler. Those two men had made him so odious that many settlers had vowed to shoot him on sight. Dosson at last went before a magistrate and swore that John Logan had shot at him while in the performance of his duty as a sub-agent of the Reservation. By this means he procured a warrant for his arrest by the civil authorities, to be placed in the hands of the newly elected sheriff of the newly organized and sparsely settled country. Things looked desperate indeed. To add to the agony of the crisis, a sharp and bitter winter now wrapped the whole world in snow and ice. It was no longer possible for any one to subsist in the mountains, or survive at all without fire and fire-arms. These the hunted man did not dare use. They were witnesses that would betray his presence, and must not be thought of.

All this time the old man and the children could do nothing. The children hovered over the fire in the wretched old cabin. And what a cold, cheerless place it was!

But if the interior of this old cabin was gloomy, that of the old tunnel was simply terrible. Yet in this dark and dreadful place the old man had spent nearly a quarter of a century.

I wonder if the glad, gay world knows where it gets its gold? Does that fair woman, or well-clad, well-fed man, know anything about the life of the gold-hunter? When the gold is brought to the light and given to the commerce of the world, we see it shining in the sun. It is now a part of the wealth of the nation. But do not forget that every piece of gold you touch or see, or stand credited with at your bank, cost some brave man blood, life!

This old Forty-nine, years before, when the camp was young, had found a piece of gold-bearing quartz in a ledge on the top of a high, sharp ridge, that pointed down into the canyon. This was before quartz mining had been thought of. But the shrewd, thoughtful man saw that from this source came all the gold in the placer. He could see that it was from this vein that all the fine gold in the camp had been fed. He resolved to strike at the fountain head. It was by accident he had made his discovery. The high, sharp and narrow ridge was densely timbered, and now that the miners had settled in the canyon below, the annual fires would not be allowed to sweep over the country, and the woods would soon be almost impenetrable. So argued Forty-nine. For all his mind was bent on keeping his secret till he could pierce the mountains from the canyon-level below, and strike the ledge in the heart of the great high-backed ridge, where he felt certain the gold must lay in great heaps and flakes and wedges. And so it was with a full heart and a strong arm that he had begun his low, dark tunnel—all alone at the bottom of the ridge.

He had begun his tunnel in a secluded place, under a tuft of dense wood, on the steep hillside. He made the mouth of the tunnel very low and narrow. At first he wheeled out the dirt in his wheelbarrow only when the water in the canyon was high enough to carry off the earth which he excavated. He worked very hard and kept very sober for a long time. Day after day he expected to strike the ledge.

But day after day, week after week, month after month, stole away between his fingers, and still no sign of the ledge. A year went by. Then he struck a hard wall of granite. This required drills, fuse-powder, and all the appliance of the quarry. He had to stop work now and then and wash in the fast failing placers, to get money enough to continue his tunnel. Besides, he now could make only a few inches headway each week. Sometimes he would be a whole month making the length of his pick-handle.

All this was discouraging. The man began to grow heart-sick. Who was there at home waiting and waiting all this time? No one in the camp could say. In fact, no one in the camp knew any thing at all about this silent man, who seemed so superior to them all; and as the camp knew nothing at all of the man, either his past or his present, as is usually the case, it made a history of its own for him. And you may be certain it was not at all complimentary to this exclusive and silent man of the tunnel.

Two, three, four, five years passed. The camp had declined; miners had either gone back to the States, gone to new mines, or gone up on the little hill out of the canyon to rest together; and yet this man held on to his tunnel. He was a little bit bent now from long stooping, waiting, toiling, and there were ugly crows-feet about his eyes—eyes that had grown dim and blood-shot from the five years glare of the single candle in that tunnel.

And the man was not so exclusive now. The tunnel was now no secret. It was spoken of now with derision, only to be laughed at.

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten years! The man has grown old. He is bent and gray. But his faith, which the few remaining miners call a madness, is still unbroken. Yet it is not in human nature to endure all this agony of suspense, all this hope deferred from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, and still be human. The man has, in some sense, become a brute. He now is seen to reel and totter to his cabin, late at night oftentimes. He has at last fallen into the habit of the camp. He can drink, gamble, carouse, as late as the latest.

Now and then, it is true, he has his sober spells, and all the good of his great nature is to the surface. Now he takes up a map and diagram which is hidden under the broad stone of the hearth, and examines it, measures and makes calculations by the hour at night, when all the camp is, or ought to be, asleep.

Maybe it is the placing and displacing of this great stone that has given rise to the story in the camp that the old man is not so poor as he pretends. Maybe some of the rough men who hang about the camp have watched him through the chink-holes in the wretched cabin some night, and decided that it is gold which he keeps concealed under the great hearthstone.

Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years! The man's hair is long and hangs in strings. It is growing gray, almost white. Some men have been trying to get into the bent old man's cabin at night to find the buried treasure. The old man's double-barreled shot-gun has barked in their faces; and there has been a thinly attended funeral. The camp is low, miserable. The tide is out. Wrecks of rockers, toms, sluices, flumes, derricks, battered pans, tom-irons, cradles, old cabin, strew the sandy strand.

This last act has left the old man utterly alone; yet he is seen even more frequently than before at the "Deadfall." Is he trying to forget that man had died at his hand?

Now and then you see him leading a tawny boy about, and talking in a low, tender way of better things than his life and appearance would indicate. The man is still on the down grade. And yet how long he has been on this decline! One would say he should be at the bottom by this time.

When we reflect how very far a man can fall, we can estimate something of the height in which he stands when fresh from his Maker's hand.

Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years! The iron-gray hair is white as the snow on the mountain-tops that environ him. The tall man is bent as a tree is bent when the winter snow lies heavily on its branches. The tawny boy is grown a man now. This is John Logan, the fugitive. The two homeless children have long since taken his place.

And still the pick clangs on in that dark, damp tunnel that is always dripping, dripping, dripping, where it looks out at the glaring day, as if in eternal tears for the wasted life within. Yet now there is hope.

New life has been infused into this old camp of late years. The tide is flowing in. The placer mines have perished and passed into history. But there is a new industry discovered. It is quartz mining—the very thing that this old man has given his life to establish. And it is this that has kept the old man up, alive, for the past few years. He is now certain that he will strike it yet.

Is there some one waiting still, far away? We do not know. He does not know now. Years and years ago, utterly discouraged, yet mechanically keeping on, he ceased to write.

But now these two new lives here have ran into his. If he could only strike it now! If he could only strike it for them!

It is mid-winter. The three are almost starving. Old Forty-nine has been prudent, cautious, careful of the two helpless waifs thrown into his hands. Could he, old, broken, destitute, friendless, stand up boldly between the man-hunters and these children? Impossible. And so it is that Dosson and Emens are not strangers at the old man's cabin now, hateful as is their presence there to all. They are allowed to come and go. And Dosson pays court to Carrie. They ply the old man with drink. The poor, broken, brave old miner, still dreams and hopes that he will strike it yet—and then! Sometimes he starts up in his sleep and strikes out with his bony hands—as if to expel them from his cabin and keep Carrie safe, sacred, pure. Then he sinks back with a groan, and Carrie bends over him and her great eyes fill with tears.



CHAPTER V.

THE CAPTURE.

O, the mockery of pity! Weep with fragrant handkerchief, In pompous luxury of grief, Selfish, hollow-hearted city?

O these money-getting times! What's a heart for? What's a hand, But to seize and shake the land, Till it tremble for its crimes?

Midnight, and the mighty trees knock their naked arms together, and creak and cry wildly in the wind. In Forty-nine's cabin, by a flickering log-fire, Carrie sits alone. The wind howls horribly, the door creaks, and the fire snaps wickedly; the wind roars—now the roar of a far-off sea, and now it smites the cabin in shocks, and sifts and shakes the snow through the shingle. The girl draws her tattered blanket tighter about her, and sits a little closer to the fire. Now there is a sudden, savage gust of wind, wilder, fiercer than before, and a sheet of snow sifts in through a crack in the door, and dances over the floor.

"What a storm!" exclaims the girl, as she rises up, looks about, and then takes the blanket from her shoulders and stuffs it in the crack by the door.

She listens, looks about again, and then, going up to the little glass tacked beside the fire-place, carefully arranges her splendid hair that droops down over her shoulders in the careless, perfect fashion of Evangeline.

"Heaven help any one who is out in this storm to-night!"

Then she takes another stick from the corner and places it on the fire.

"Forty-nine will be here soon, and Johnny; Johnny with news about him—about poor John Logan."

She shakes her head and clasps her hands.

"It is nearly half a year since that night. They can't take him—they dare not take him. They are hunting him—hunting him in this storm—hunting him as if he were a wild beast. He hides with the cattle in the sheds, with the very hogs in their pens. They come upon him there; he starts from his sleep and dashes away, while they follow, and track him by the blood of his feet in the snow. Oh, how terrible it is! I must not think of it; I will go mad."

She turns to the door and listens. She draws back the ragged curtains from the window and tries to look out into the storm. She can hear and see nothing, and she walks back again to the fire. "I must set them their supper." As she says this, she goes to a little cupboard and takes a piece of bread, puts it on a plate and sets it on the table. Then she places two plates and two cups of water. "They will be here soon, and they must have their suppers. Oh, that grocery!" She shudders as she says this. "And Johnny will bring me news of him—of John Logan. What's that?"

She springs to the door, lifts the latch, and Stumps steals in, brushing the snow from his neck and shoulders. He has a club in his hand, and looks back and about him as he shuts the door.

"Oh, sister, its awful! I tell you its too awful!"

"Brother—brother! What has happened? What is awful? What is it, Johnny? And he, John Logan?"

"He's been there!" The boy shivers and points in a half-frightened manner toward the little hill. "Yes, he has; he's been up on the hill by his mother's grave; and he's been to 'Squire Field's house—yes, he has; and he couldn't get in, for they had a big dog tied to the gate, and now they have got another dog tied to the gate. Yes, and they tracked him all around by the blood in the snow!"

"Oh brother! don't, don't!"

"Don't be afraid, sister; he has gone away now. Oh, if he would only go away and stay away—far away, and they couldn't catch him, I'd be just as glad as I could be! Yes, I would; so help me, I would."

"And he has been up there, and in this storm!"

She speaks this to herself, as she goes to the window and attempts to look out.

"Poor, poor John Logan!" sighs the boy. "I wish his mother was alive; I do, so help me. She was a good woman, she was; she didn't sick Bose on me, she didn't."

As the boy says this he stands his club in the corner, and looks with his sister for a moment sadly into the fire, and then suddenly says:

"I'm hungry. Sister, ain't you got something to eat. Forty-nine, he's down to the grocery, and Phin Emens he's down to the grocery, too, and he swears awfully about John Logan, and he says it's the Injun that's in him that makes him so bad. Do you think it's the Injun that's in him, sister?"

As the boy says this, the girl turns silently to the little table and pushes it toward him.

"There, Johnny, that's all there is. You must leave some for Forty-nine."

"Poor, poor John Logan!"

He eats greedily for a moment, then stops suddenly and looks into the fire.

Carrie, also looking into the fire, murmurs:

"And Sylvia Fields let them tie a dog there to keep him away! I would have killed that dog first. If John Logan should come here, I would open that door—I would open that door to him!"—There is a dark and terrified face at the window—"And I would give him bread to eat, and let him sit by this fire and get warm!"

"And I would, too—so help me, I would!" The boy pushes back his bread, and rises and goes up to his sister. "Yes, I would. I don't care what Phin Emens, or anybody says; for his mother didn't sick 'Bose' at me, she didn't!"

The pale and pitiful face at the window begins to brighten. There is snow in the long matted black locks that fall to his shoulders. For nearly half a year this man has fled from his fellow-man, a hunted grizzly, a hunted tiger of the jungle.

What wonder that his step is stealthy as he lifts the latch and enters? What wonder that his eyes have an uncommon glare as he looks around, looks back over his shoulder as he shuts the door noiselessly behind him? What wonder that his clothes hang in shreds about him, and his feet and legs are bound in thongs; that his arms are almost bare; that his bloodless face is half hidden in black and shaggy beard?

"Carrie, I have come to you. Yours is the only door that will open to me now."

"John Logan!" She starts; the boy, too, utters a low, stifled cry. Then they draw near the miserable man. For they are bred of the woods, and have nerves of iron, and they know the need and the power of silence, too.

"You here, John Logan?" Carrie whispers, with a shudder.

"Ay, I am here—starving, dying!"

The boy takes up the bread he had dropped, and places it on the table before Logan. The hunted outcast sits down wearily and begins to eat with the greediness of a starved beast. The girl timidly brushes the snow from his hair, and takes a pin from her breast and begins to pin up a great rent in his shirt that shows his naked shoulder.

The boy is glad and full of heart, and of indescribable delight that he has given his bread to the starving man. He stands up, brightly, with his back to the fire for a moment, and then goes back and brushes off the snow from the man's matted hair, then back to the fire.

"I'm awful glad to see you eat, Mr. John Logan," says Stumps; "I wish there was more, I do," and he rocks on his foot and wags his head from shoulder to shoulder gleefully. "It ain't much—it ain't much, Mr. John Logan; but it is all there is."

"All there is, and they were eating it." The man says this aside to himself, and he hides his face for a moment, as if he would conceal a tear. Then, after a time he seems to recover himself, and he lays the bread down on the table, tenderly, silently, carefully indeed, as if it were the most delicate and precious thing on earth. Then, lifting his face, looks at them with an effort to be cheerful, and says:

"I—I forgot; I—I am not hungry. I have had my dinner. I—I, oh yes; I have been eating a great deal. Oh, no, no, no; I'm not hungry—not hungry!"

As the man says this he rises and stands between the others at the fire. He puts his hands over their heads, and looks alternately in their uplifted faces. There is a long silence. "Carrie, they have tied a dog to that door, over yonder."

"There is no dog tied to this door, John Logan."

Low and tender with love, yet very firm and earnest is her voice. And her eyes are lifted to his. He looks down into her soul, and there is an understanding between them. There is a conversation of the eyes too refined for words; too subtle, too sweet, too swift for words.

They stand together but a moment there, soul flowing into soul and tiding forth, and to and fro; but it was as if they had talked together for hours. He leans his head, kisses her lifted and unresisting lips, and says, "God bless you," and that is all.

It is her first kiss, the imprint, the mint-mark on this virgin gold. This maiden of a moment since, is a woman now.

"Do you know that they are after you?" The girl says this in a sort of wild whisper, as she looks toward the door.

"Do I know that they are after me? Father in Heaven, who should know it better than I?" The man throws up his arms, and totters back and falls into a seat from very weakness. "Do I know that they are after me? For more than half a year I have fled; night and day, and day and night I have fled, hidden away; starting up at midnight from down among the cattle, where I had crept to keep warm; and then on, on and on, out into the snow, the storm, over the frozen ground, to the deep canyon and dark woods, where, naked and bleeding, I disputed with the bear for his bed in the hollow tree."

The boy springs to the door. Is it the storm that is tugging and rattling at the latch?

But the girl seems to see, to heed, to hear only John Logan. She clutches his hand in both her own and covers it with kisses and with tears.

"John Logan, I pity you! I—I—" she had almost said, "I love you."

"Thank Heaven! Thank Heaven for one true heart, and one true hand when all the world is against me! Carrie, I could die now content. The bitterness of my heart passes away, and the wild, mad nature that made me an Ishmaelite, with every man's hand against me, and my hand against all, is gone. I am another being. I could die now content;" and he bows his head.

"But you must not, you shall not die! You must go—go far away; why hover about this place?"

"I do not know. But yonder lies the only being who ever befriended me; and somehow I get lonesome when I get far away from her grave. And I go round and round, like the sun around the world, and come back to where I started from."

"But you must go—go far away—go now."

"Do you know what you are saying? I was never outside of this. All would be strange. I would be lost, lost there. And then, do you not imagine they are waiting for me there—everywhere? Look at my face! This tinge of Indian blood, that all men abhor and fear, and call treacherous and bloody. Across my brow at my birth was drawn a brand that marks me forever—a brand—a brand as if it were the brand of Cain."

The man bows his head, and turns away.

Slowly and timidly Carrie approaches him, and she lays her hand on his arm and looks in his face. The boy still watches by the door.

"But you will fly from here?"

His arm drops over her hair, down to her shoulder, and he draws her to his breast, as she looks up tenderly in his face, and pleads:

"You will go now—at once? For you will die here."

"Ah, I will die here." He says this with a calm and dogged determination. "Carrie, I have one wish, one request—only one. I know you are weak and helpless yourself, and can't do much, and I ought not to ask you to do anything."

Stumps has left the door as he hears the man mention that there is something to be done, and stands by their side.

"Whatever it is you ask, John Logan, we will do it—we will do it."

The girl says this with a firmness that convinces him that it will be done.

"We will do it! we will do it! so help me, we will do it!" blubbers Stumps.

"What is it, John Logan, we can do?"

"I will not fly from here." He looks down tenderly into their faces. Then he lifts his face. It is dark and terrible, and his lips are set with resolution. "I will die here. It may be to-night, it may be to-morrow. It may be as I turn to go out at that door they will send their bullets through my heart; it may be while I kneel in the snow at my mother's grave. But, sooner or later, it will come—it will come!"

"But please, John Logan, what is it we can do?"

Her voice is tremulous, and her eyes stream with tears.

"Carrie, I am a man—a strong man—and ought not to ask anything of a helpless girl. But I have no other friend. I have had no friends. All the days of my life have been dark and lonely. And now I am about to die, Carrie, I want you to see that I am buried by my mother yonder. I am so weary, and I could rest there. And then she, poor broken-hearted mother, she might not be so lonesome then. Do you promise?"

"I do promise!" and the boy echoes this scarcely audible but determined answer.

"Thank you—thank you! And now good night. I must be going, lest I draw suspicion on you. Good night, good night; God bless you, Carrie!"

He presses her to his heart, hastily embraces her, and tearing himself away, stoops and kisses the boy as he passes to the door. Drawing his tattered shirt closer about his shoulders, and turning his face as if to conceal his emotion, he lays his hand upon the latch to suddenly dart forth.

Two dark figures pass the window, and in a moment more the latch-string is clutched by a rough, unsteady hand from without.

"Here, here!" cries the girl, as she springs back to the dingy curtain that divides off a portion of the cabin into a bed-room. "Here! in here! Quick! quick!" as she draws the curtain aside, and lets it fall over the retreating fugitive. Forty-nine and Gar Dosson enter. The former is drunk, and therefore dignified and silent. His companion is drunk, and therefore garrulous and familiar. Wine floats a man's real nature nearly to the surface.

Forty-nine lifts his hat, bows politely and respectfully to the children, brushes his hat with his elbow as he meanders across the floor to the peg in the wall, but cannot quite trust himself to speak.

"Hullo, Carats!" cries Gar Dosson, as he chucks her under the chin. "Knowed I was coming, didn't you? Got yourself fixed up. Pretty, ain't she?" and he winks a blood-shot eye toward Stumps. "And when is it going to be my Carats? Pretty soon, now, eh?" and he walks, or rather totters, aside.

"Umph! I have got 'em again, Carrie. Fly around and get us something to eat. Fly around, Carrie, fly around! Oh, I've got the shakes again!" groans Forty-nine.

"Poor old boy!" and she brushes the snow from his beard and his tattered coat. "Why, Forty-nine, you're shaking like a leaf."

"He's drunk—that's what's the matter with him." Gar Dosson growls this out between his teeth as he sets his gun in the corner.

"He's not drunk! Its the ager!" retorts Stumps fiercely.

Gar Dosson, glaring at the boy, steadies himself on his right leg, and diving deep in his left hand pocket, draws forth a large bill or poster. With both hands he manages to spread this out, and swaggering up to the wall near the window he hangs it on two pegs that are there to receive coats or hats.

"Look at that!" and he crookedly points with his crooked fingers at the large letters, and reads: "One thousand dollars (hic) dollars reward for the capture of John Logan! What do you say to that, Carats? That's a fine fellow to have for a lover, now, ain't it?—a waluable lover, now, ain't it? Worth a thousand dollars! Oh, don't I wish he was a-hanging around here now! Wouldn't I sell him, and get a thousand dollars, eh? Yes, I would. I just want that thousand dollars. And I'm the man that's going to get it, too! Eh, old Blossom-nose?" Forty-nine jerks back his dignified head as the bully gesticulates violently.

"You will, will you? Well, may-be you will (hic), but if you get a cent of that money (hic) for catching that man you don't enter that door again; no, you don't lift that latch-string again as long as old Forty-nine has a fist to lift!" and he thrusts his doubled hand hard into the boaster's face.

"Good for you!" cries Carrie. "Dear, good, brave old Forty-nine; I like you—I love you!" and the girl embraces him, while the boy flourishes his club at the back of the bully.

"No, don't you hit a man when he's down, sah," continues Forty-nine. "That's the true doctrine of a gentleman—the true doctrine of a gentleman, sah." He flourishes his hand, totters forward, totters back, and hesitates—"The true doctrine of a gentleman, sah. The little horse in the horse-race, sah—the bottom dog in the dog-fight, sah. The—"

And the poor old man totters back and falls helplessly in the great, home-made chair near the corner, where stands the gun. His head is under water.

"The true doctrines of a gentleman," snaps Dosson; and he throws out a big hand toward the drooping head. "Old Blossom-nose!" Then turning to Carrie. "The sheriff's a coming; he gave me that 'ere bill—yes, he did. He's down to the grocery, now. He's going around to all the cabins, and a-swearing 'em in a book, that they don't know nothing about John Logan. The sheriff, he's a comin' here, Carats, right off."

There is a rift in the curtain, and the pitiful face of the fugitive peers forth.

"The sheriff coming here!" He turns, feels the wall, and tries the logs with his hands. Not a door, not a window. Solid as the solid earth.

"Coming here? But what is he coming here for?" demands Carrie.

"Coming here to find out what you know about John Logan. Oh, he's close after him."

"Close after me!" gasps Logan. The man feels for something to lay hand upon by which to defend himself. "I will not be taken alive; I will die here!" He clutches at last, above the bed, a gun. "Saved, saved!" He holds it tenderly, as if a child, or something dearly loved. He takes it to the light and looks at the lock; he blows in the barrel; he mournfully shakes his head. "It is not loaded! Well, no matter; I can but die," and he clubs the gun and prepares for mortal battle.

"Oh, come, Carats," cries Gar Dosson, "let's have a little frolic before the sheriff comes—a kiss, eh? Come, my beauty!"

The rough man has all this time been stealing up, as nearly as he could to the girl, and now throws his arm about her neck.

"Shall I brain him—be a murderer, indeed?"

All the Indian is again aroused, and John Logan seems more terrible, and more determined to save her than to defend his own life.

"Stand back!" shouts the Girl to Dosson. She attempts to throw him off, but his powerful arm is about her neck. "Forty-nine! Help!" but the old man is unconscious. John Logan is about to start from his corner.

"Take that, you brute! and that!" and Stumps whirls his club and thunders against the ribs of the ruffian.

"You devil! you brat! what do you mean?"

Mad with disappointment and pain, he throws the girl from him, and turns upon the boy. He clutches him by the back of the neck as he starts to escape, and bears him to the ground.

"Look 'ere, do you know what I'm going to do with you? I'm going to break your back across my knee! yes, I am!" and he glares about terribly.

Carrie shrinks back to the side of Forty-nine.

"Oh! Help! He will murder him! He will kill him!"

"No, I won't murder you, you brat, but I'll chuck you out in that snow and let you cool off, while I have your sister all to myself. Come here; give me your ear!" and the great, strong ruffian seizes his ear and fairly carries him along by it toward the door. "Give me your ear!"

"Oh, sister, sister! He will kill me!" howls Stumps.

"Forty-nine! save us! We will be murdered!"

"Come, I say, give me your ear!" thunders the brute, as he fairly draws the boy still toward the door.

"Stop that, or die!"

The frenzied girl, failing to arouse Forty-nine, has caught up the gun from the corner, and brought the muzzle to the ruffian's breast. He totters back, and throws up his arms.

"Go back there and sit down, or I will kill you!"

"Give me your ear! Come!" roars Stumps. It is now his turn. "Give me your ear!" He reaches up and takes that red organ in his hand, and nearly wrenches it from the brute's head, as he leads him back, with many twists and gyrations, slowly to a low seat at the other side of the cabin.

Still holding the gun in level, and in dangerous proximity to the man's breast, Carrie cries:

"Now if you attempt to move you are a dead man!" "Give me your ear!" and Stumps wrenches it again, as he sits the man firmly on his low stool, with his red face making mad distortions from the pain. "John Logan, come!" calls the girl. "No, don't you start, Gar Dosson. Don't you lift a finger; if you do, you die!"

The curtains are parted, and John Logan starts forth. "Go, go! There's not a moment to lose. The sheriff will be here; they are coming! Quick! Go at once! I hear—I hear them coming!"

The man springs to the door; the latch is lifted; a moment more and he will be free—safe, at least for the night. Out into the friendly darkness, where man and beast, where pursuer and pursued, are equal, and equally helpless.

There is a crushing of snow, a stamping of feet, and one, two, three, four, five—five forms hurriedly pass the window. The latch is lifted, and as John Logan again darts back under cover, the party, brushing the snow from their coats and grizzled beards, hastily enter the cabin.

"Fly around, Carrie, fly around! fix yourself up!" The fresh gust of wind and storm from the door just opened, fans the glimmering spark of consciousness into sudden flame, and Forty-nine springs up, perfectly erect, perfectly dignified. "Fly around, Carrie, fly around; fix yourself up. The sheriff is coming—fly around!"

The girl drops the gun in the corner where she had found it, and stands before Forty-nine, smoothing down her apron, and letting her eyes fall on the floor timidly and in a childlike way, as if these little hands of hers had never known a harder task than their present employment of smoothing down her apron.

Dosson springs up before the sheriff. He rubs his eyes, and he looks about as if he had just been startled from some bad, ugly dream. He wonders, indeed, if he has seen John Logan at all. Again he rubs his eyes, and then, looking at his knuckle, says, in a deep, guttural fashion, to himself, "Jim-jams, by gol! I thought I'd seed John Logan!"

"Ah, Forty-nine," says the sheriff, "sorry to disturb you, and your Miss; and good evening to you, sir; and good evening to you;" and the honest sheriff bows to each, and brushes the snow from his fur cap as he speaks.

Gar Dosson advances to his partner, Phin Emens, who has just entered, with that stealthy old tiger-step so familiar to them both, and laying his hand on his shoulder, they move aside.

"Then it's not the jim-jams," mutters he. "I've not got 'em, then."

He stops, pinches himself, looks at his hands, and mutters to himself. Then he lifts his hand to his ear.

"Look at it again!" Phin Emens looks at the ear. "It's red, ain't it? Oh, it feels red; it feels like fire. Then I've not got 'em, and he is here. Hist! Come here! We want that thousand dollars all to ourselves."

He plucks his companion further to one side. They talk and gesticulate together, while now and then a big red rough hand is thrust out savagely toward the curtain.

"Sorry indeed to disturb you, Miss," observes the sheriff; "but you see, I've been searching and swearing of 'em all, and its only fair to serve all alike."

"He is not here. Upon the honor of a gentleman, he is not here," says Forty-nine, emphatically.

"He is here!" howls Dosson; and the tremendous man, with the tremendous voice and tremendous manner, bolts up before the sheriff. "He is here; and I, as an honest man am going to earn a thousand dollars, for the sake of justice. I have found him—found him all by myself; and these fellers can't have no hand in my find." And he holds up John Logan's cap, which had been knocked from his head in his hasty retreat to cover, and he rolls his red eyes toward the bed, takes a step in that direction, reaches a hand, lays hold of the curtain, and is about to dash it aside.

"John Logan is there!" shouts Dosson, and again the curtain is clutched.

Does he dream of what is beyond? If he could only see the panting, breathless wretch that leans there eagerly, with lifted gun, ready to brain him—waiting, waiting for him to come, even wishing that he only would come—he would start back with terror to the other side.

"He is here! I have found him! Come!"

Carrie, springing forward from her posture of anxiety and terror, grasps a powder horn from over the mantel piece, jerks out the stopple with her teeth, and holding it over the fire, cries, with desperation:

"Do it, if you dare! This horn is full of powder, and if any man here dares to move that curtain, I'll blow you all into burning hell!" The man loosens his hold on the curtain, and totters back. He is sober enough to know how terrible is the situation, and he knows her well enough to believe she will do precisely what she says she will do. "Yes, I will! We will all go to the next world together; and now let us see who is best ready to die!"

"Bravo!" shouts Forty-nine.

The sheriff and his men have been moving back slowly from the inspired girl, standing there by the door of death.

Gar Dosson at last steals around by the sheriff. "But he is here, Mr. Sheriff," he says. "I tell you he is here in this house. There! For here is his cap. I found it. I found him, and I want him and I want that thousand dollars. Search!"

"And I tell you he is not here!" cries the girl, "and you shall not search, 'less—"

And the horn is lifted menacingly over the fire. "Won't you take my word?"

"You shall take my word!" shouts Dosson.

"I will take your single word, Miss, against a thousand such men."

And the sheriff puts on his cap, turns, and is about to go.

"But he is here! The thousand dollars, Mr. Sheriff!" cries Dosson.

"Miss, officers sometimes have duties that are more unpleasant to them than to the parties most concerned. You say he is not here?"

"He is not here, Mr. Sheriff—he is not here!" cries Carrie.

The sheriff twists his cap on his head. "And you will be sworn, as the others were?" says the sheriff. "So much the better; and that will be quite satisfactory. Ah, here is the Bible at hand."

And he takes from the little shelf the tattered book. The girl stands still as stone, with the engine of death in her hand. The officer bows, smiles, reaches the book with his left hand, lays his cap on the table, and lifts his right hand in the air. Her little fingers reach out firmly, fearlessly, and rest on the book. Her eyes are looking straight into his.

"It may be my duty, Miss, to search the house, after what that 'un has said, and, Miss, I expect it is my duty. But, Miss, I is not the man to expose you before a man as might like to see you exposed. And then that poor devil that come back here, Miss, on bleeding feet—crawling back here on his hands and knees, to die by his mother's grave."

The voice is tremulous; the hand that is raised in the air comes down. Then lifting it again he says resolutely, "Swear, Miss!"

All are looking—leaning—with the profoundest interest. There is a dark strange face peering through a rift in the half-opened curtain. "God bless her! God bless her! She can, and she will!" mutters Forty-nine.

"She can't!" cries Dosson. "She believes the book and, by gol, she can't!" The man says this over his shoulder, and in a husky whisper as the girl seems to pause.

"Hold your hand on the book, and swear as I shall tell you," says the sheriff.

She only holds more firmly to the book; her eyes are fixed more steadily on his.

"Say it as I say it. I do solemnly swear—"

"I do solemnly swear—"

"That John Logan—"

"That John Logan—"

"Is not here."

"Is—"

"Is here!" The curtain is thrown back, and the fugitive dashes into their midst. The book falls from the sheriff's hand, and there is a murmur of amazement.

"God bless you, my girl!" And there is the stillness of a Sabbath morning over all. "God bless you; and God will reward you for this, for I cannot. You have made me another being, Carrie. I have lost my life, but you have saved my soul!" and turning cheerfully to the sheriff he reaches his hands. "Now, sir, I am ready."



CHAPTER VI.

THE ESCAPE.

O tranquil moon! O pitying moon! Put forth thy cool, protecting palms, And cool their eyes with cooling alms, Against the burning tears of noon.

O saintly, noiseless-footed nun! O sad-browed patient mother, keep Thy homeless children while they sleep, And kiss them, weeping, every one.

At first there was a loud demonstration against Logan by the mob, that always gathers about where a man is captured by his fellows—the wolves that come up when the wounded buffalo falls. There was talk of a vigilance committee and of lynching.

But when the stout, resolute sheriff led the man in chains down the trail through the deep snow, and turned him over to the officer in charge of a little squad of soldiers at the other side of the valley, no man interfered further. Indeed, Dosson and Emens were too anxious about the promised reward to make any demonstration against this man's life now. He was worth to them a thousand dollars.

A lawyer reading this, will smile here at the loose way in which the law was administered there in the outer edge of the world at that time. Here is a sheriff, with a warrant in his pocket, made returnable to a magistrate. The sheriff arrests the man on this warrant and takes him directly to the military authorities, which have been so long seeking him, utterly unconscious that he is doing aught but the proper thing. And yet, after all, it was the shortest and best course to take.

I shall not forget the face of the prisoner as we stood beside the trail in the snow, while he was led past down the mouth of the canyon toward the other side of the valley. It was grand!

Some strangers, standing in the street, spoke of the majesty of the man's bearing. They openly dared to admire his lifted face, and to speak with derision of his captors as the party passed on. This made the low element, out of which mobs are always created, a little bit timid. Possibly it was this that saved the prisoner. But most likely it was the resolute face of the honest sheriff. For, say what you will, there is nothing so cowardly as a mob. Throw what romance you please over the actions of the Vigilantes of California, they were murderers—coarse, cowardly and brutal; murderers, legally and morally, every one of them. It is to be admitted that they did good work at first. But their example, followed even down to this day, has been fruitful of the darkest crimes.

When Forty-nine awoke next morning from his long drunken slumber, the children were not there. Dosson called, arrayed in his best; but Carrie was not to be seen. Forty-nine could give no account of her. This day of triumph for Dosson did not yield him so much as he had all the night before fancied. He was furious.

Forty-nine, as usual, after a spree, meekly took up his pick, after a breakfast on a piece of bread and the drawings of coffee grounds that had been thrice boiled over, and stumbled away towards his tunnel, and was soon lost in the deeps of the earth.

You may be certain that this desperate character, just taken after so much trouble and cost, was securely ironed at the little military camp across the valley. An old log cabin was made a temporary prison, and soldiers strode up and down on the four sides of it day and night.

And yet there was hardly need of such heavy irons. True, the soldiers outside, as they walked up and down at night and shifted their muskets from side to side, and slapped their shoulders with their arms and hands to keep from freezing, heard the chains grate and toss and rattle, often and often, as if some one was trying to tear and loosen them. But it was only the man tossing his arms in delirium as he lay on the fir boughs in the corner.

Dosson, after much inquiry, and many day's watching about Forty-nine's cabin, called and was admitted to see the prisoner, who by this time, though weak and worn to a skeleton, was convalescing. The coarse and insolent intruder started back with dismay. There sat the girl he so hoped and longed to possess, talking to him tenderly, soothing him, giving her life for his.

Long and brutal would be the story of the agent's endeavors to tear this girl away from the bedside of the sufferer—if such a place could be called a bedside. The girl would not leave John Logan, and the timid boy who sat shivering back in the corner of the cabin, would not leave the girl. The three were bound together by a chain stronger than that which bound the wrists of the prisoner; aye, ten thousand times stronger, for man had fashioned the one—God the other.

Sudden and swift arrives summer in California. The trail was opened to the Reservation down the mountain, and the officer collected his few Indians together in a long, single line, all chained to a long heavy cable, and prepared to march. About the middle of the chain stood John Logan, now strong enough to walk. At the front were placed a few miserable, spiritless Indians, who had been found loafing about the miners's cabins—the drunkards, thieves, vagabonds of their tribe, such as all tribes have, such as we have, citizen-reader—while the rear was brought up by a boy and girl, Carrie and Johnny, a pitiful sight!

Do not be surprised. When you have learned to know the absolute, the utterly unlimited power and authority of an Indian Agent or sub-Agent, you have only to ask the capability for villainy he may possess in order to find the limit of his actions.

Could you have seen the lofty disdain of this girl for her suitor at that first and every subsequent meeting, as she kept at the bedside of John Logan, you could have guessed what might follow. The man's love was turned to rage. He resolved to send her back to the Reservation also. It is true, the soldiers had learned to respect and to pity her. It is true, the little Lieutenant said, with a soldierly oath, as she was being chained, that she was whiter than the man who was having it done. Yet the soldiers, and their officer as well, had their orders; and a soldier's duties, as you know, are all bound up in one word.

As for the wretched boy, he might have escaped. He was a negative sort of a being at best; and no one, save Logan and the girl, either hated him or loved him greatly, tender and true as he was. They both implored him to slip between the fingers of the soldiers and not go to the Reservation. But he would not think of being separated from his sister. Poor, stunted, starved little thing! There were wrinkles about his face; his hands were black, short, and hard, from digging roots from the frosty ground. It is not probable the lad had ever had enough to eat since he could remember. And so he was a dwarf, a dwarf in body and in soul; and instead of showing some spirit and standing up now and helping the girl, as he should, he leaned on her utterly, and left her to be the man of the two. The little spark of fire that had twice or thrice flashed up in the last few years, seemed now to die out entirely, and he stood there chained, looking back now and then over his shoulder at the soldiers, looking forward trying to catch a glance from his sister now and then, but never once making any murmur or complaint.

It was a hot, sultry day, such as suddenly enters and takes possession of canyons in the Sierras, when the little party of prisoners were marched through the little camp at the end of the canyon on their way to the Reservation.

And the camp all came out to see, but the camp was silent. It was not a pleasant sight. A soldier with a bayonet on his loaded musket walking by the side of a woman with her hands in chains, is not an inspiring spectacle. With all respect for your superior judgments, Mr. President, Commander-in-Chief, and Captains of the army, I say there is a nobler use for the army than this.

Let us hasten on from this subject and this scene. But do not imagine that the miner, the settler, or even the most hardened about the camp, felt ennobled at this sight. I tell you there was a murmur of indignation and disgust heard all up and down the canyon. The newer and better element of the camp was furious. One man even went so far as to write a letter to a country paper on the subject.

But when the editor responded in a heavy leader, and assured the camp of its deadly peril from these prowling savages, and proclaimed that the Indians were being taken where they would have good medicine, care, food and clothing, and be educated and taught the arts of agriculture, the case really did not look so bad; and in less than a week the whole affair had been forgotten by all the camp. Aye, all, save old Forty-nine.

By the express order of sub-Agent Dosson, the old man, who had been declared a dangerous character by him, was not permitted to see the girl from the first day he discovered that she still clung to Logan. But the old man had worked on and waited. He had kept constantly sober. He would see and would save this girl at all hazards.

And now, as the sorrowful remnant of a once great tribe was being taken, like Israel into captivity, he rushed forward to meet her, to hold her hands, to press her to his heart, and bid her be strong and hopeful.

The agent saw the old man and shouted to the officer; the officer called to the soldiers—the line moved forward, the bayonets crossed the old man's breast as the prisoners passed on down the mountain, and he saw the sad, pitiful face no more.

Keep the picture before you: Chained together in long lines, marched always on foot in single file, under the stars and stripes, officers in uniforms, clanking swords—the uniform of the Union, riding bravely along the lines! The two men who had done so much to get this desperate Indian out of the way, remained behind to keep possession of his house and land. They had not even the decency to build a new cabin. They only broke down the door, put up a new one with stouter hinges and latch; and the long-coveted land was theirs.

As for old Forty-nine, all the light had left the mountain and the valley now. Carrie, whom he had cared for from the first almost, little Stumps, whom he had found with her, hardly big enough to toddle about—both were gone. All three gone. John Logan, whom he had taught to read and taught a thousand things at his own cabin-fire in the long snowy winters—all these gone together. It was as if the sun had gone down for Forty-nine forever. There was no sun or moon or stars, or any thing that shines in the mountains any more for him. His had been a desolate life all the long years he had delved away into the mountain at his tunnel. No man had taken his hand in friendship for many and many a year.

The man now nailed up his cabin door—an idle task, perhaps, for men instinctively avoided it, and the trail of late took a cut across the spur of the hill rather than pass by his door. But somehow the old man felt that he might not be back soon. And as men had kept away from that cabin while he was there, he did not feel that they should enter it in his absence.

One evening in the hot, sultry summer, old Forty-nine rode down from the mountain into the great valley, following the trail taken by the lines of chained captives, and set his face for the Reservation.

At a risk of repetition, let us look at this Reservation. The government had ordered a United States officer, of the rank of lieutenant, to set apart a Reservation for the Indians on land not acquired and not likely to be desired by the white settlers, and to gather the Indians together there and keep them there by force, if force should be required. This young man established a Reservation on the border of a tule lake, shut in by a crescent of low sage-brush hills. The Indian camp was laid out on the very edge of this alkali lake. The crescent of sage-brush hills of a mile in circuit, reaching back and almost around the Reservation, was mounted at three points by cannon, ready to sweep the camp below. On this circuit of hills, healthy and pleasant enough the officers and soldiers had their quarters. Down in the damp, deadly valley, on the edge of the alkali lake, the newly appointed Indian Agent, with a tremendous appropriation to be expended in building houses and establishing the Indians in their new homes, built the village. It was made up of two rows of low, one-story, one-room huts. Two big lamps hung in the one street; and from lamp to lamp before the doors of the little huts with earthen floors and turf-covered roofs, paced soldiers night and day.

These houses were damp and dismal from the first. Soon they began to be mouldy; fungi and toadstools and the like began to grow up in the corners and out of the logs. Little shiny reptiles, in the long hot rainy days that followed, and worms and all sorts of hideous vermin, began to creep and crawl through these dreadful dens of death, over the sick and dying Indians. Long slimy, unnamed, and unknown worms crawled up out of the earth, as if they could not wait for the victims to die.

The Indians were dying off by hundreds. They went to the officers and complained. The officers ordered a double guard to be set. And that was all.

You marvel that these young lieutenants could be so imperious and cruel? It does seem past belief. But pardon just one paragraph of digression while we recall the conduct of a younger class only last year on the Hudson. To me the real question before the courts in the Whitaker case is not whether this quiet stranger, with a tinge of black man's blood in his veins, mutilated himself, or no. But the real question is, did they or did they not, by their determined and persistent persecutions and insults, drive him in a fit of desperation to do this in the hope of pulling down ruin on the heads of all? This seems probable to me, and to me is far more monstrous than if they had, in sudden anger, cut his ears, or even cut his throat; and if these young bloods could so treat a stranger there, standing at such a manifest disadvantage, what would they not be capable of when they are, for the first time, clothed with a little brief authority, away out on the savage edge of the world?

The water here, as the hot season came on, was something dreadful. It was slimy with alkali. Little black worms knotted and twisted themselves together at the bottom of the cup, like bunches of witch-woven horse-hair. The Indians were dying of malaria. They were burning up with the fever. And this was the only water these people, who had been used to the fresh sweet snow-water of the Sierras, could have.

What could they do? They appealed to the officers. They were answered with insult: "You must get used to it. You must get civilized."

These dying Indians began to fight and quarrel among themselves. Ah, they were very wicked. They were quarrelsome as dogs; almost as quarrelsome as Christians!

This was a small Paris in siege. It was Jerusalem surrounded by Titus. Down there, dying as they were, a savage Simon and a degenerate John, as in Jerusalem of old, led their followers against each other, even across their dead that lay unburied in the mouldy death-pens and about their dark and narrow doors, and slew each other as did God's chosen people when besieged by the son of Vespasian.

Then the men in brass and blue turned the cannon loose on the howling savages, and shot them into silence and submission.

John Logan, Carrie and little Stumps, about this time had been brought with others from the mountains to the Reservation. Logan insisted on keeping the two children at his side and under his protection. He was laughed at by agents, and sub-agents.

He was kept chained. He was assigned to a strong hut with gratings across the window—or rather the little loop-hole which let in the light. The guards were kept constantly at his door. He was entered on the books as a very desperate character, a barn-burner, and possible murderer. And so night and day he was kept under the constant watch of the soldiers with fixed bayonets. True, he was soon too weak to lift his manacled hands in strife. But nevertheless he was kept chained and doubly guarded in the little hut with gratings at the loop-hole.

Would he attempt to escape?

There were many broken fragments of many broken tribes here. Tribes that had fought each other to the death—fought as Germans and French have fought. And why not, pray? Has not a heathen as good a right to fight a heathen as has a Christian to fight a Christian? The only difference is, we preach and profess peace; they, war.

Logan was alone in this damp hut and deadly pen. He could hear the tramp of the soldiers; he could see the long thin silver beams of the moon reach through the gratings, reach on and on, around and over and across the damp, mouldy floor, as if reaching out, like God's white fingers, to touch his face, to cool his fever, and comfort him. But he could see, hear nothing more. He was so utterly alone! They would send an unfriendly Indian in with his breakfast, foul and unfit for even a well man, and a tin cup of water in the morning. Soon after the doctor would call around, also. Then he would see no face again till evening, when more food and water would be brought. At last the food was brought only in the morning. This did not at all affect Logan; for from the first the old pan containing his food had been taken away untouched. The man was certainly dying. The guard and garrison on the hill were waiting for this desperate character, whose capture had cost so much time and money, to attempt to escape.

From the first, even in the face of the blunt refusal, John Logan had begged for the boy to be brought him. He was certain the little fellow was dying—dying of desolation and a broken heart.

About the sixth day, the man chanced to hear from an Indian that the boy had quite broken down, and, refusing all food, lay moaning in his corner all the time, and all the time crying for John Logan or Carrie. The man now entreated more persistently than ever before. He promised the Doctor to eat, to get well, if only the boy could be brought to him and be permitted to spend his time there. For he knew from what the Doctor said that he must soon die if things kept on as they were. The weather was growing hotter and hotter; the water and the food, if possible, more repulsive than ever. Logan could no longer walk across the pen in which he was confined. He was so weak that he could not raise his heavily manacled hands to his face.

After the usual diplomacy and delay, the Doctor reported his condition, and also his earnest desire for the boy, to the Indian Agent.

There was a consultation. Would this crafty and desperate Indian attempt to escape? Was not all this a ruse on his part? Would not the United States imperil its peace and security if this boy and this man were to be allowed together? This mighty question oppressed the mind of the agent in charge for a whole day. Then, after the Doctor again urged the prisoner's request—for man and boy both seemed to be dying—this man reluctantly consented. Would Logan now escape after all? Could he ever get through these iron bars and past the four soldiers pacing up and down outside? Would he escape from the Reservation at last?

And now, at the close of the hottest and most dreadful day they had endured, an old Indian woman, bent almost double, came shuffling in by permission of the guard, and laid something on a pile of rushes and willows in a corner of the pen across from where John Logan lay.

The man heard a noise as of some one breathing heavily, and attempted to rise. He could hardly move his head. But in trying to support himself to a sitting posture, he moved his hands, and so rattled his manacles. This frightened the superstitious old woman, and she ran away. She had laid a little skeleton on the rushes in the corner.

Logan with great effort managed to sit up and look across into the corner that was now being slowly illuminated by a beam of bright, white moonlight, that stole down the wall toward the little heap lying there, like some holy, white-hooded and noiseless-footed nun. At last he saw the face. It was that of little Stumps. The man sank back where he lay. The sight was so pitiful, so dreadful to see, that he forgot his own misery and was all in tears for the little fellow who lay dying before him. He forgot his own fearful condition at the sight, and again attempted to rise and reach the little heap that lay moaning in the corner. It was impossible; he could not rise.

And how fared Carrie all this time? Little better than the others. She was no longer beautiful. And so she was left, along with a score or more of other dying and desperate creatures, in another part of the Reservation. She was not permitted to see the boy. Least of all was she permitted to see, or even hear from, John Logan. Day by day she drooped and sank slowly but surely down toward the grave.

But she did not fear death. She had faced it in all forms before. And even now death walked the place night and day, and she was not afraid. She lay down at night with death. She knew no fear at all. She constantly asked for and wanted to see the helpless little boy, in the hope that she might help or cheer him. But no one listened to anything she had to say. Once, after a very hot and horrible day, two of her companions in captivity were found to be dead. The guard who paced up and down between the huts was told of it. But he said it was too late to have them carted away that night. And so this girl lay there all night by the side of the dead, and was not afraid. Nay, she even wished that she too, when the cart came in the morning, might be found silent and at peace. And then she thought of those whom she loved, and reproached herself for being so selfish as to want to die when she still might be of use to them.

Let us escape from these dreadful scenes as soon as possible. They are like a nightmare to me.

And yet the mind turns back constantly to John Logan lying there; the little heap of bones in the corner; the pure white moonlight creeping softly down the wall, as if to look into the little fellow's eyes, yet as if half afraid of wakening him.

Could Logan escape? Chains, double guards, death—all these at his door holding him back, waiting to take him if he ever passed out at that door. Mould on the floor, mould on the walls, mould on the very blankets. The man was burning to death with the fever; the boy, too, lying over there. The boy moaned now and then. Once Logan heard him cry for water. That warm, slimy, wormy water! O, for one, just one draught of cool, sweet water from the mountains—their dearly loved native mountains—and die!

The moon rose higher still, round and white and large; and at last, wheeling over the camp of death, seemed to pause in pity and look full in upon those two dying captives. It seemed to soothe them both.

The little boy saw the moonbeam on the wall, and was pacified. It looked like the face of an old friend. It brought back the old time; the life, the woods, the water—above all, the cool sweet waters of the mountains. He seemed to know where he was. He lay still a long time, and then felt stronger. He called to John Logan. No answer. Then the feeble, piping little voice lifted up and called as loud as it could. No answer still. The boy crawled from off the little pallet and tried to rise. He sank down on the damp floor, and then tried to crawl to John Logan. He tried to call again, as he began to slowly crawl towards the other corner. But the poor little voice was no louder than a whisper. Very weak and very wild, and almost quite delirious, the boy kept on as best he could. He at last touched the blankets, the breast, and he drew himself up just as the moon looked down on the pale upturned face. Then, with a moan, a wild, pitiful cry, the little fellow fell back on the damp mouldy floor.

John Logan was dead! Despite the chains, the bars at the window, the double guard at the door, the man had escaped at last!

The pitying moon did not hasten to go. It lingered there, reached down along the damp, mouldy floor to a little form of skin and bone; and then, as if this moon-beam were the Savior's mantle spreading out to cover the white and stainless soul, it covered the pinched and pitiful little face. For the boy, too, lay dead.

Here was the end of two lives that had known only the long dark shadows, only the deep solitude and solemnity of the forest. Like tall weeds that sometimes shoot up in dark and unfrequented places, and that put forth strange, sweet flowers, these two lives had sprung up there, put forth after their fashion the best that is in man, and then perished in darkness, unnamed, unknown.

Who were they? John Logan, it is now whispered, was the son of an officer made famous in the war annals of the world. The officer had been stationed here in early manhood, gave his heart as she believed to a daughter of a brave and powerful chief, whose lands lay near where he was stationed for a summer, and then? The old, old tale of betrayal and desertion. The woman was disgraced before her people. And so when they retreated before the encroachments of the whites, she, being despised and cast off by her people, remained behind waiting the promised return of her lover. He? He did not even acknowledge his child. This General, who had taken the lives of a thousand men, had not the moral courage to reach out a hand to this one little waif which he had called into existence.

Do you know, there never was a dog drowned in the pound so base and low that he would not fight? Yet this brute-valor is largely admired, even to this day, by Christian people. This man could kill men, could risk his own life, but he could not give this innocent child his name.

And so it was, the boy, after he had learned to read, by the help of Forty-nine, and an occasional missionary who sometimes preached to the miners, and spent the pleasant summer months in the mountains—this boy, I say, who at last had heard all the story of his father's weakness and wickedness from Forty-nine's lips disdained to use his name, but chose one famous in the annals of the Indians. And this brief sketch is about all there is to tell of the young man who lay dead in chains, in the prison-pen of the Reservation.

"Civilization kills the Indian," said the Doctor that morning in his daily round, after he had examined the dead bodies.

"He does not look so desperate, after all," said an officer, as he held his nose with his thumb and finger, and leaned forward to look at the dead Indian, while his other hand held his sword gracefully at his side. And then this officer, after making certain that this desperate character was quite dead, drew forth his cigar-case, struck a light, and climbing upon his horse, galloped back to his quarters on the hill.

The Doctor, now left alone, stooped and put back the long silken hair from the thin baby-face of the boy, as the body was brought out and being carried to the cart made to receive the dead, and remarked that it was not at all like that of the other Indians. Another young officer came by as the Doctor did this, and his attention was called to the fact. The officer tapped his sword-hilt a little, looked curiously at the pitiful, pinched little face, and then ordering the soldiers to move on with their burden, he turned to the Doctor and remarked, as the two went back together to their quarters on the hill, that "no doubt it was the effect of the few days of civilization on the Reservation that had made the boy so white; pity he had died so soon; a year on the Reservation, and he would have been quite white."

Unlike other parts of the Union, here the races are much mixed. Creoles, Kanakas, Mexicans, Malays, whites, and blacks, have intermixed with the natives, till the color line is not clearly drawn. And in one case at least some orphan children of white parentage were sent to the Reservation by parties who wanted their property. Though I do not know that the fact of white children being found on a Reservation makes the sufferings of the savages less or their wrongs more outrageous. I only mention it as a frozen fact.

Carrie did not know of the desolation which death had made in her life, till old Forty-nine, who arrived too late to attend the burial of his dead, told her. She did not weep. She did not even answer. She only turned her face to the wall as she lay in her wretched bed, burning up with the fever, but made no sign. There was nothing more for her to bear. She had felt all that human nature can feel. She was dull, dazed, indifferent, now to all that might occur.

To turn back for the space of a paragraph, I am bound to admit that these dying Indians often behaved very foolishly, and, in their superstitions brought much of the fatality upon themselves. For example, they had a horror of the white man's remedies, and refused to take the medicines administered to them. Brought down from the cool, fresh mountains, where they lived under the trees in the purest air and in the most beautiful places, they at once fell ready victims to malarial fevers. The white man, by a liberal use of quinine and whisky, as well as by careful diet, lived very well at the Reservation, and suffered but little, yet had he been forced to live in a pen, crowded together like pigs in a sty, with the bad air, on the damp, mouldy ground, he had died too, as fast perhaps as the Indian died.

The old man could do but little for the dying girl. He was in bad odor with the officers; they treated him with as little consideration almost as if he too had been a savage. But he was constant at her side; he brought a lemon which he had begged, on his knees, as it were, and tried to make her a cool drink of the slimy, wormy water. But the girl could not drink it. She turned her face once more to the wall, and this time, it seemed, to die.

One morning, before the sun rose, she recovered her wandering mind and called old Forty-nine to her side. She was surely dying; but her mind was clear, and she understood perfectly all she said or did. Her dark eyes were sunken deep in their places, and her long, sun-browned hands were only skin and bone. They fell down across her heaving little breast, as if they were the hands of a skeleton. Little wonder that her persecutors had turned away with horror, perhaps with fear, from those deep, hollow eyes, and the pitiful emaciated frame, that could no longer lift itself where it lay.

The old man fell down on his knees beside her and reached his face across to hers. With great effort she lifted her two naked long, arms, and wound them about the old man's neck. He seemed to know that death was near, as he reached his face over hers. Over his cheeks and down his long white beard the tears ran like rain and fell on her face and breast.

"Forty-nine, father! Let me call you father; may I? I never had any father but you," said the girl feebly, as the tears fell fast on her face.

"Yes, yes, call me father. Call me father, Carrie, my Carrie; my poor, dear, dear little Carrie,—do call me father, for of all the world I have only you to love and live for," sobbed the old man as if his heart would break.

"Well, then, father, when I die take me back, take me back to the mountains. I want to hear the water—the cool, sweet, clear water, where I lie; and the wind in the trees—the cool, pure wind in the trees, father. And you know the three trees just above the old cabin on the hill by the water-fall? Bury me, bury me there. Yes, there, where I can hear the cool water all the time, and the wind in the trees. And—and won't you please cut my name on the tree by the water? My name, Carrie—just Carrie, that's all. I have no other name—just Carrie. Will you? Will you do this for me?"

"As there is a God—as I live, I will!" and the old man lifted his face as he bared his head, and looked toward heaven.

The girl's mind wandered now. She spoke incoherently for a few moments, and then was silent. Her form was convulsed, her breast heaved just a little, her helpless hands reached about the old man's neck as if they would hold him from passing from her presence; they fell away, and then all was still. It was now gray dawn.

This man's heart was bursting with rage and a savage sorrow. He was now stung with a sense of awful injustice. His heart was swelling with indignation. He took up the form before him; up in his arms, as if it had been that of an infant. He threw his handkerchief across the face as he passed out, stooping low through the dark and narrow doorway, and strode in great, long and hurried steps down the street and over toward the hills beyond, where his horse was tethered in the long, brown grass.

As the old man passed the post on the hill, where the officers slept under the protection of loaded cannon, the guard stopped him with his bayonet.

"Halt! Where are you going? And what have you there? Come, where are you going?"

The old man threw back the handkerchief as the guard approached, and the new sunlight fell on the girl's face.

"I am going to bury my dead."

The guard started back. He almost dropped his gun as he saw that face; then, recovering himself, he bared his head, bowed his face reverently, and motioned the old man on.

Forty-nine reached his horse in the brown grass, laid his burden down, threw on the saddle, drew the girth with sudden strength and energy, as if for a long and desperate ride. Then resuming his load, tenderly, as if it were a sleeping infant, he vaulted into the saddle and dashed away for the Sierras, that lay before him, and lifted like a city of snowy temples, reared to the worship of the Eternal.

It was a desperate ride for life. The girl's long soft black hair was in the wind. The air was purer, sweeter here; there was a sense of liberty, of life, in this ride, right in the face of the rising sun as it streamed down over the snowy summits of the Sierras. Every plunge of the strong swift mustang, brought them nearer to home, to hope, to life. The horse seemed to know that now was his day of mighty enterprise. Perhaps he was glad to get away and up and out of that awful valley of death; for he forged ahead as horse never plunged before, with his strange double burthen, that had frightened many a better trained mustang than he.

At last they began to climb the chapparal hills. Then they touched the hills of pine, and the breath of balsam had a sense of health and healing in it that only the invalid who is dying for his mountain home can appreciate.

The horse was in a foam; the day was hot; the old man was fainting in the saddle.

Water! Water at last! Down a steep, mossy crag, hung with brier and blossom, came tumbling, with loud laughter like merry girls at play, a little mountain stream. Cool as the snow, sweet as the blossom, it fell foaming in its pebbly bed at the base of the crag, under the deep, cool shadows of the pines.

The old man threw himself from his horse, and beast and man drank together as he held the girl in his arms, where the spray dashed down like a holy baptismal from the very hand of God upon her hair and face. The hands clutched, the breast heaved a little, the lips moved as if to drink in the cool sweet water. Her eyes feebly opened. And then the old man bore her back under the pines, and laid her on the soft bed of dry sweet-smelling pine-quills.

Then clasping his hands above her, as he bent his face to hers, he uttered his first prayer—the first for many and many a weary year. It was a prayer of thanksgiving, of gratitude. The girl would live; and he would now have something to live for—to love.

It had been a strange weird sight, that old man, his long hair in the wind, his strong horse plunging madly ahead, all white with foam, climbing the Sierras as the sun climbed up. The girl lay in his arms before him, her long dark hair all down over the horse's neck, tangled in the horse's mane, catching in the brush and the wild vines and leaves that hung over the trail as they flew past.

And oftentime back over his shoulder the old man threw his long white beard and looked back. He felt, he knew, that he was pursued. He fancied he could all the time hear the sound of horses' feet.

Perhaps if his eyes had been gifted with the vision of the prophets of old, he would indeed have seen the pursuer. That pursuer was also an old man, and not much unlike himself; an old man with a scythe—death. Death following fast from the hot valley of pestilence, where he, death, kept, if possible, closer watch than the Agents, that no Indian ever returned to his native mountains. But death gave up the pursuit, and turned back from the moment the baptismal fountain touched the girl's fevered forehead. At last the old man who held her in his arms, rose up, rode on and down to his cabin in the twilight, all secure from pursuit of Agents, death, or any one. The girl, quite conscious, opened her eyes and looked around on the tall, nodding pine trees, that stood in long, dusky lines, as if drawn up to welcome her return to the heart of the Sierras.

* * * * *

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other inconsistencies. Corrections in the text are noted below:

Page 34: Typo corrected; replaced "sieze" with "seize":

"I tell you that if you were to wash down mountains and uproot forests in the moon—were such a thing possible—the ague would seize...

Page 56: Added close quote:

"Pard," answered Forty-nine, kindly, and with a nod of the head back toward the children playing in the corner, "they are not coppers; no, they are not. I tell you that girl is not copper, but gold. Yes she is, Pard; she is twenty carats."

Page 81: Added close quote:

"He caused the dry land to appear." —BIBLE.

Page 88: Typo corrected; replaced "villians" with "villains":

"Eh? eh? old Toppy?" and the two men poked each other in the ribs, and looked the very villains that they were.

Page 164: Typo corrected; replaced "beseiged" with "besieged":

their dark and narrow doors, and slew each other as did God's chosen people when besieged by the son of Vespasian.

Page 168: Replaced period with comma at end of sentence after "lay":

The man sank back where he lay. The sight was so pitiful, so dreadful to see

Page 180: Added close quote:

"Halt! Where are you going? And what have you there? Come, where are you going?"