Wayside Pikes

OUR return from Mount Tyndall to such civilization as flourishes around the Kaweah outposts was signalized by us chiefly as to our cuisine, which offered now such bounties as the potato, and once a salad, in which some middle-aged lettuce became the vehicle for a hollow mockery of dressing. Two or three days, during which we dined at brief intervals, served completely to rest us, and put in excellent trim for further campaigning all except Professor Brewer, upon whom a constant toothache wore painfully, − my bullet-mould failing even upon the third trial to extract

the unruly member. It was determined we should ride together to Visalia, seventy miles away, and the more we went the more impatient became my friend, till we agreed to push ahead through day and night, and reached the village at about sunrise in a state of reeling

sleepiness quite indescribably funny. At evening, when it became time to start back for our mountain camp, my friend at last yielded consent to my project of climbing the Kern Sierras to attempt Mount Whitney; so I parted from him, and, remaining at Visalia, outfitted myself with a pack-horse, two mounted men, and provisions enough for

a two weeks’ trip. I purposely avoid telling by what route I entered the Sierras, because there lingers in my breast a desire to see once more that lovely region, and failing, as I do, to confide in the people, I fear lest, if the camp I am going to describe should be recognized, I might, upon revisiting the scene, suffer harm, or even come to an untimely end. I refrain, then, from telling by what road I found myself entering the region of the pines one lovely twilight evening, two days after leaving Visalia. Pines, growing closer and closer, from sentinels gathered to groups, then stately groves, and at last, as the evening wore on, assembled in regular forest, through whose open tops

the stars shone cheerfully. I came upon an open meadow, hearing in front the rush of a large brook, and directly reached two camp-fires, where were a number of persons. My two hirelings caught and unloaded the pack-horse, and set about their duties, looking to supper and the animals, while I prospected the two camps. That just below me, on the same side of the brook, I found to be the bivouac of a company of hunters, who, in the ten minutes of my call, made free with me, hospitably offering a jug of whiskey, and then went on in their old eternal way of making bear-stories

out of whole cloth. I left them with a belief that my protoplasm and theirs must be different, in spite of Mr. Huxley, and passed across the brook to the other camp. Under noble groups of pines smouldered a generous heap of coals, the ruins of a mighty log. A little way from this lay a confused pile of bedclothes, partly old and half-bald buffalo-robes, but, in the main, thick strata of what is known to irony as comforters, upon which, outstretched in wretched awkwardness of position, was a family, all with their feet to the fire, looking as if they had been blown over in one direction, or knocked down by a single bombshell. On the extremities of this common bed, with the air of having got as far from each other as possible, the mother and father of the Pike family reclined ; between them were two small children − a girl and boy − and a huge girl, who, next the old man, lay flat upon her back, her mind absorbed in the simple amusement of waving one foot (a cowhide eleven) slowly across the fire, squinting, with half-shut eye, first at the vast shoe and thence at the fire, alternately hiding bright places and darting the foot quickly in the direction of any new display of heightening flame. The mother was a bony sister, in the yellow, shrunken, of sharp visage, in which were prominent two cold eyes and a positively poisonous mouth ; her hair, the color of faded hay, was tangled about her head. She rocked jerkily to and fro, removing at intervals a clay pipe from her mouth in order to pucker her thin lips up to one side, and spit with precision upon a certain spot in the fire.

I have rarely felt more difficulty in opening a conversation, and was long before venturing to propose, “ You seem to have a pleasant camp-spot here.” The old woman sharply, and in almost a tone of affront, answered, “ They’s wus, and then again they’s better.”

“ Doos well for our hogs,” inserted the old man. “ We’ve a band of pork that make out to find feed.”

“ Oh ! how many have you ? ” I asked.

“ Nigh three thousand.”

“Won’t you set?” asked madam; then, turning, “ You, Susan, can’t you try for to set up, and not spread so ? Hain’t you no manners, say ? ”

At this the massive girl got herself somewhat together, and made room for me, which I declined, however.

“ Prospecting?” inquired madam.

“ I say huntin’,” suggested the man.

“ Maybe he’s a cattle-feller,” interrupted the little girl.

“ Goin’ somewhere, ain’t yer ? ” was Susan’s guess.

I gave brief account of myself, evidently satisfying the social requirements of all but the old woman, who at once classified me as not up to her standard. Susan saw this, so did her father, and it became evident to me in ten minutes’ conversation that they two were always at one, and made it their business to be in antagonism to the mother. They were then allies of mine from nature, and I felt at once at home. I saw, too, that Susan, having slid back to her horizontal position when I declined to share her rightful ground, was watching with subtle solicitude that fated spot in the fire, opposing sympathy and squints accurately aligned by her shoe to the dull spot in the embers, which slowly went out into blackness before the well-directed fire of her mother’s saliva.

The shouts which I heard proceeding from the direction of my camp were easily translatable into summons for supper. Mr. Newty invited me to return later and be sociable, which I promised to do, and, going to my camp, supped quickly and left the men with orders about picketing the animals for the night, then, strolling slowly down to the camp of my friends, seated myself upon a log by the side of the old gentleman. Feeling that this somewhat formal attitude unfitted me for partaking to the fullest degree the social ease around me, and knowing that my buckskin trousers were impervious to dirt, I slid down in a reclining posture with my feet to the fire, in absolute parallelism with the rest of the family.

The old woman was in the exciting dénouement of a coon-story, directed to her little boy, who sat clinging to her skirt and looking in her face with absorbed curiosity. “And when Johnnie fired,” she said, “ the coon fell and busted open.” The little boy had misplaced his sympathies with the raccoon, and having inquired plaintively, “Did it hurt him?” was promptly snubbed with the reply, “Of course it hurt him. What do you suppose coons is made for ? ” Then turning to me she put what was plainly enough with her a test-question : “ I allow you have killed your coon in your day ? ” I saw at once that I must forever sink beneath her standard, but, failing in real experience or accurate knowledge concerning the coon, I knew no subterfuges would work with her. Instinct had taught her that I had never killed a coon, and she had asked me thus ostentatiously to place me at once and forever before the family in my true light. “ No, ma'am,” I said ; “ now you speak of it, I realize that I never have killed a coon.” This was something of a staggerer to Susan and her father, yet as the mother’s pleasurable dissatisfaction with me displayed itself by more and more accurate salivary shots at the fire, they rose to the occasion, and began to palliate my past. “ Maybe,” ventured Mr. Newty, “that they don’t have coon round the city of York ” ; and I felt that I needed no self-defence when Susan firmly and defiantly suggested to her mother that perhaps I was in better business.

Driven in upon herself for some time, the old woman smoked in silence, until Susan, seeing that her mother gradually quenched a larger and larger circle upon the fire, got up and stretched herself, and giving the coals a vigorous poke swept out of sight the quenched spot, thus readily obliterating the result of her mother’s precise and prolonged expectoration ; then flinging a few dry boughs upon the fire, illumined the family with the ruddy blaze, and sat down again, leaning upon her father’s knee with a faint light of triumph in her eye.

I ventured a few platitudes concerning pigs, not penetrating the depths of that branch of rural science enough to betray my ignorance. Such sentiments as “A little piece of bacon well broiled for breakfast is very good,” and “ Nothing better than cold ham for lunch,” were received by Susan and her father in the spirit I meant, − of entire goodwill toward pork generically. I now look back in amusement at having fallen into this weakness, for the Mosaic view of pork has been mine from infancy, and campaigning upon government rations has, in truth, no tendency to dim this ancient faith.

By half past nine the gates of conversation were fairly open, and our part of the circle enjoyed itself socially, − taciturnity and clouds of Virginia plug reigning supreme upon the other. The two little children crept under comforters somewhere near the middle of the bed, and subsided pleasantly to sleep. The old man at last stretched sleepily, finally yawning out, “ Susan, I do believe I am too tired out to go and see if them corral bars are down. I guess you ’ll have to go. I reckon there ain’t no bears round to-night.” Susan rose to her feet, stretched herself with her back to the fire, and I realized for the first time her amusing proportions. In the region of six feet, tall, square-shouldered, of firm iron back and heavy mould of limb, she yet possessed that suppleness which enabled her as she rose to throw herself into nearly all the attitudes of the Niobe children. As her yawn deepened, she waved nearly down to the ground, and then, rising upon tiptoe, stretched up her clinched fists to heaven with a groan of pleasure. Turning to me she asked, “ How would you like to see the hogs ? ” The old man added, as an extra encouragement, “ Pootiest band of hogs in Tulare County! There’s littler of the real sissor-bill nor Mexican racer stock than any band I have ever seen in the State. I driv the original outfit from Pike County to Oregon in ’51 and ’52.” By this time I was actually interested in them, and joining Susan we passed out into the forest.

We walked silently on four or five minutes through the woods, coming at last upon a fence which margined a wide circular opening in the wood. The bars, as her father had feared, were down. We stepped over them, quietly entered the enclosure, put them up behind us, and proceeded to the middle, threading our way among sleeping swine to where a lonely tree rose to the height of about two hundred feet. Against this we placed our backs, and Susan waved her hand in pride over the two acres of tranquil pork. The eye, after accustoming itself to the darkness, took cognizance of a certain ridginess of surface which came to be recognized as the objects of Susan’s pride.

Quite a pretty effect was caused by the shadow of the forest, which, cast obliquely downward by the moon, divided the corral into halves of light and shade.

The air was filled with heavy breathing, interrupted by here and there a snore, and at times by crescendos of tumult, caused by forty or fifty pigs doing battle for some favorite bed-place.

I was informed that Susan did not wish me to judge of them by dark, but to see them again in full light of day. She knew each individual pig by its physiognomy, having, as she said, “ growed with ’em.”

As we strolled back toward the bars a dusky form disputed our way, − two small, sharp eyes and a wild crest of bristles were visible in the obscure light. “ That’s Old Arkansas,” said Susan ; “ he’s eight year old come June, and I never could get him to like me.” I felt for my pistol, but Susan struck a vigorous attitude, ejaculating, “ S-S-oway, Arkansas ! ” She made a dash in his direction ; a wild scuffle ensued, in which I heard the dull thud of Susan’s shoe, accompanied by, “ Take that, dog-on-you ! ” a cloud of dust, one shrill squeal, and Arkansas retreated into the darkness at a business-like trot.

When quite near the bars the mighty girl launched herself in the air, alighting with her stomach across the topmost rail, where she hung a brief moment, made a violent muscular contraction, and alighted upon the ground outside, communicating to it a tremor quite perceptible from where I stood. I climbed over after her, and we sauntered under the trees back to camp.

The family had disappeared, a few dry boughs, however, thrown upon the coals, blazed up, and revealed their forms in the corrugated topography of the bed.

I bade Susan good night, and before I could turn my back she kicked her number-eleven shoes into the air, and with masterly rapidity turned in, as Minerva is said to have done, in full panoply.

Seated upon my blankets next morning, I beheld Susan’s mother drag forth the two children one after another, by the napes of their necks, and, shaking the sleep out of them, propel them spitefully toward the brook ; then taking her pipe from her mouth she bent low over the sleeping form of her huge daughter, and in a high, shrill, nasal key screeched in her ear, “ Yew Suse ! Get up and let the hogs out! ”

The idea thrilled into Susan’s brain, and with a violent suddenness she sat bolt upright, brushing her green-colored hair out of her eyes, and rubbing those valuable but bleared organs with the ponderous knuckles of her forefingers.

By this time I started for the brook for my morning toilet, and the girl and I met upon opposite banks, stooping to wash our faces in the same pool. As I opened my dressing-case her lower jaw fell, revealing a row of ivory teeth rounded out by two well - developed “ wisdoms,” which had all that dazzling grin one sees in the show-windows of certain dental practitioners. It required but a moment to gather up a quart or so of water in her broad palms, and rub it vigorously into a small circle upon the middle of her face, the moisture working outward to a certain high-water mark, which, along her chin and cheeks, defined the limits of former ablution ; then, baring her large red arms to the elbow, she washed her hands, and stood resting them upon her hips, dripping freely, and watching me with intense curiosity.

When I reached the towel process, she herself twisted her body after the manner of the Belvedere torso, bent low her head, gathered up the back breadths of her petticoat, and wiped her face vigorously upon it, which had the effect of tracing concentric streaks irregularly over her countenance.

I parted my hair by the aid of a small dressing - glass, which so fired Susan that she crossed the stream with a mighty jump, and stood in ecstasy by my side. She borrowed the glass, and then my comb, rewashed her face, and fell to work diligently upon her hair.

All this did not so limit my perception as to prevent my watching the general demeanor of the family. The old man lay back at his ease, puffing a cloud of smoke ; his wife, also emitting volumes of the vapor of “ navy plug,” squatted by the camp-fire, frying certain lumps of pork, and communicating an occasional spiral jerk to the coffeepot, with the purpose, apparently, of stirring the grounds. The two children had gotten upon the back of a contemplative ass, who stood by the upper side of the bed quietly munching the corner of a comforter.

My friend was in no haste. She squandered much time upon the arrangement of her towy hair, and there was something like a blush of conscious satisfaction when she handed me back my looking-glass and remarked ironically, “ O no, I guess not, − no, sir.”

I begged her to accept the comb and glass, which she did with maidenly joy.

This unusual toilet had stimulated with self-respect Susan’s every fibre, and as she sprung back across the brook and approached her mother’s camp-fire, I could not fail to admire the magnificent turn of her shoulders and the powerful, queenly poise of her head. Her full, grand form and heavy strength reminded me of the statues of Ceres, yet there was withal a very unpleasant suggestion of fighting trim, a sort of prize-ring manner of swinging the arms and hitching of the shoulders.

It required my Pike County friends but ten minutes to swallow their pork and begin the labors of the day.

Susan, after a second appeal from her mother, ran over to the corral and let out the family capital, who streamed with exultant grunt through the forest, darkening the fair green meadow gardens, and happily passing out of sight.

When I had breakfasted I joined Mr. Newty in his trip to the corral, where we stood together for hours, during which I had mastered the story of his years since, in 1850, he left his old home in Pike of Missouri.

It was one of those histories common enough through this wide West, yet never failing to startle me with its horrible lesson of social disintegration, of human retrogression.

That brave spirit of Westward Ho ! which has been the pillar of fire and cloud leading on the weary march of progress over stretches of desert, lining the way with graves of strong men ; of new-born lives ; of sad, patient mothers, whose pathetic longing for the new home died with them ; of the thousand old and young whose last agony came to them as they marched with eyes straining after the sunken sun, and whose shallow barrows scarcely lift over the drifting dust of the desert ; that restless spirit which has dared to uproot the old and plant the new, kindling the grand energy of California, laying foundations for a State to be, is admirable, is poetic, is to fill an immortal page in the story of America; but when, instead of wresting from new lands something better than the old can give, it degenerates into mere weak-minded restlessness, killing the power of growth, the ideal of home, the faculty of repose, it results in that race of perpetual emigrants who roam as dreary waifs over the West, losing possessions, love of life, love of God, slowly dragging from valley to valley till they fall by the wayside, happy if some chance stranger performs for them the last rites, − often less fortunate, as blanched bones and fluttering rags upon too many hillsides plainly tell.

The Newtys were of this dreary brotherhood. In 1850, with a small family of that authentic strain of highbred swine for which Pike County is widely known, as Mr. Newty avers, they bade Missouri and their snug farm good by, and, having packed their household goods into a wagon drawn by two spotted oxen, set out with the baby Susan for Oregon, where they came after a year’s march, tired, and cursed with a permanent discontent. There they had taken up a rancho, a quarter-section of public domain, which at the end of two years was “ improved ” to the extent of the “ neatest little worm-fence this side of Pike,” a barn, and a smoke-house. “In another year,” said my friend, “ I ’d have dug for a house, but we tuck ager and the second baby died.” One day there came a man who “ let on that he knowed ” land in California much fairer and more worthy tillage than Oregon’s best, so the poor Newtys harnessed up the wagon and turned their backs upon a home nearly ready for comfortable life, and swept south with pigs and plunder. Through all the years this story had repeated itself, new homes got to the verge of completion, more babies born, more graves made, more pigs, which replenished as only the Pike County variety may, till it seemed to me the mere multiplication of them must reach a sufficient dead weight to anchor the family ; but this was dispelled when Newty remarked : “ These yer hogs is awkward about moving, and I’ve pretty much made my mind to put ’em all into bacon this fall, and sell out and start for Montana.”

Poor fellow ! at Montana he will probably find a man from Texas, who in half an hour will persuade him that happiness lies there.

As we walked back to their camp, and when Dame Newty hove in sight, my friend ventured to say, “ Don’t you mind the old woman and her coons. She’s from Arkansas. She used to say no man could have Susan who could n’t show coon-skins enough of his own killing to make a bedquilt, but she’s over that mostly.” In spite of this assurance my heart fell a trifle when, the first moment of our return, she turned to her husband and asked, “ Do you mind what a dead-open-andshut on coons our little Johnny was when he was ten years old ? ” I secretly wondered if the dead-open-and-shut had anything to do with his untimely demise at eleven, but kept silence.

Regarding her as a sad product of the disease of chronic emigration, her hard thin nature, all angles and stings, became to me one of the most depressing and pathetic spectacles, and the more when her fever-and-ague boy, a mass of bilious lymph, came and sat by her, looking up with great haggard eyes as it pleading for something, he knew not what, but which I plainly saw only death could bestow.

Noon brought the hour of my departure. Susan and her father talked apart a moment, then the old man said the two would ride along with me for a few miles, as he had to go in that direction to look for new hog-feed.

I despatched my two men with the pack-horse, directing them to follow the trail, then saddled my Kaweah and waited for the Newtys. The old man saddled a shaggy little mountain pony for himself, and for Susan strapped a sheepskin upon the back of a young and fiery mustang colt.

While they were getting ready, I made my horse fast to a stake and stepped over to bid good by to Mrs. Newty. I said to her in tones of deference, “ I have come to bid you good by, madam, and when I get back this way I hope you will be kind enough to tell me one or two really first-rate coon-stories. I am quite ignorant of that animal, having been raised in countries where they are extremely rare, and I would like to know more of what seems to be to you a creature of such interest.” The wet, gray eyes relaxed, as I fancied, a trifle of their asperity; a faint kindle seemed to light them for an instant as she asked, “ You never see coons catch frogs in a spring branch ? ”

“No, madam,” I answered.

“Well, I wonder! Well, take care of yourself, and when you come back this way stop along with us, and we ’ll kill a yearlin’, and I ’ll tell you about a coon that used to live under grandfather’s barn.” She actually offered me her hand, which I grasped and shook in a friendly manner, chilled to the very bone with its damp coldness.

Mr. Newty mounted, and asked me if I was ready. Susan stood holding her prancing mustang. To put that girl on her horse after the ordinary plan would have required the strength of Samson, or the use of a step-ladder, neither of which I possessed ; so I waited for events to develop themselves. The girl stepped to the left side of her horse, twisted one hand in the mane, laying the other upon his haunches, and, crouching for a jump, sailed through the air, alighting upon the sheepskin. The horse reared, and Susan, twisting herself around, came right side up with her knee upon the sheepskin, shouting, as she did so, "I guess you don’t get me off, sir !" I jumped upon Kaweah, and our two horses sprang forward together, Susan waving her hand to her father, and crying, “ Come along after, old man!” and to her mother, “ Take care of yourself! ” which is the Pike County for Au revoir ! Her mustang tugged at the bit, and bounded wildly into the air. We reached a stream bank at full gallop, the horses clearing it at a bound, sweeping on over the green floor and under the magnificent shadow of the forest. Newty, following at an humble trot, slopped through the creek, and when I last looked he had nearly reached the edge of the wood.

I could but admire the unconscious excellence of Susan’s riding, her firm, immovable seat, and the perfect coolness with which she held the fiery horse. This quite absorbed me for five minutes, when she at last broke the silence by the laconic inquiry, “Does yourn buck?” To which I added the reply that he had only occasionally been guilty of that indiscretion. She then informed me that the first time she had mounted the colt he had “nearly bucked her to pieces ; he had jumped and jounced till she was plum tuckered out ” before he had given up. Gradually reining the horses down and inducing them to walk, we rode side by side through the most magnificent forest of the Sierras, and I determined to probe Susan to see whether there were not, even in the most latent condition, some germs of the appreciation of nature. I looked from base to summit of the magnificent shafts, at the green plumes which traced themselves against the sky, the exquisite fall of purple shadows and golden light upon trunks, at the labyrinth of glowing flowers, at the sparkling whiteness of the mountain brook, and up to the clear matchless blue that vaulted over us, then turned to Susan’s plain, honest face, and gradually introduced the subject of trees. Ideas of lumber and utilitarian notions of fence-rails were uppermost in her mind ; but I briefly penetrated what proved to be only a superficial stratum of the materialistic, and asked her point-blank if she did not admire their stately symmetry. A strange, new light gleamed in her eye as I described to her the growth and distribution of forests, and the marvellous change in their character and aspects as they approached the tropics. The palm and the pine, as I worked them up to her, really filled her with delight, and prompted numerous interested and intelligent queries, showing that she thoroughly comprehended my drift.

In the pleasant hour of our chat I learned a new lesson of the presence of undeveloped seed in the human mind.

Mr. Newty at last came alongside and remarked that he must stop about here. “ But,” he added, “ Susan will go on with you about half a mile, and come back and join me here after I have taken a look at the feed.” As he rode out into the forest a little way he called me to him, and I was a little puzzled at what seemed to be the first traces of embarrassment I had seen in his manner.

“ You ’ll take care of yourself, now, won’t you ? ” he asked. I tried to convince him that I would.

A slight pause.

“ You ’ll take care of yourself, won’t you ? ”

He might rely on it, I was going to say.

He added, “ Thet − thet − thet man what gets Susan has half the hogs! ”

Then turning promptly away, he spurred the pony, and his words as he rode into the forest were, “Take good care of yourself! ”

Susan and I rode on for half a mile, until we reached the brow of a long descent, which she gave me to understand was her limit.

We shook hands and I bade her good by, and as I trotted off these words fell sweetly upon my ear, “ Say, you ’ll take good care of yourself, won’t you, say ? ”

I took pains not to overtake my camp-men, wishing to be alone ; and as I rode for hour after hour the picture of this family stood before me in all its deformity of outline, all its poverty of detail, all its darkness of future, and I believe I thought of it too gravely to enjoy as I might the subtle light of comedy which plays about these hard, repulsive figures.

In conversation I had caught the clew of a better past. Newty’s father was a New-Englander, and he spoke of him as a man of intelligence and, as I should judge, of some education. Mrs. Newty’s father had been an Arkansas judge, not perhaps the most enlightened of men, but still very far in advance of herself. The conspicuous retrogression seemed to me an example of the most hopeless phase of human life. If, as I suppose, we may all sooner or later give in our adhesion to the Darwinian view of development, does not the same law which permits such splendid scope for the better open up to us also possible gulfs of degradation, and are not these chronic emigrants whose broken - down wagons and weary faces greet you along the dusty highways of the far West melancholy examples of beings who have forever lost the conservatism of home and the power of improvement?

One October day, as Kaweah and I travelled by ourselves over a lonely foothill trail, I fell to wondering if ever an artist should arise to paint our Sierras as they are, with all their color-glory, innumerable pine and countless pinnacle, gloom of tempest, or splendor, where rushing light shatters itself upon granite crag, or burns in dying rose upon far fields of snow.

Had I rubbed Aladdin’s lamp ? A turn in the trail brought suddenly in view a man who sat under shadow of oaks, painting upon a large canvas.

As I approached, the artist turned half round upon his stool, rested palette and brushes upon one knee, and in a familiar tone said, “ Dern’d if you ain’t just naturally ketched me at it ! Get off and set down. You ain’t going for no doctor, I know.”

My artist was of short, good-natured, butcher-boy make-up, dressed in what had formerly been black broadcloth, with an enlivening show of red flannel shirt about the throat, wrists, and a considerable display of the same where his waistcoat might once have overlapped a strained but as yet coherent waistband. The cut of these garments, by length of coat-tail and voluminous leg, proudly asserted a “ Bay ” origin. His small feet were squeezed into tight, short boots, with high, raking heels.

A round face, with small full mouth, non-committal nose, and black protruding eyes, showed no more sign of the ideal temperament than did the broad daub upon his square yard of canvas.

“ Going to Copples’s ? ” inquired my friend.

That was my destination, and I answered, “ Yes.”

“ That’s me,” he ejaculated. “ Right over there, down below those two oaks ! Ever there ? ”

“ No.”

“My studio’s there now”; giving impressive accent to the word.

All the while these few words were passing he scrutinized me with unconcealed curiosity, puzzled, as well he might be, by my dress and equipment. Finally, after I had tied Kaweah to a tree and seated myself by the easel, and after he had absently rubbed some raw sienna into his little store of white, he softly ventured : “ Was you looking out a ditch ? ”

“ No,” I replied.

“ He neatly rubbed up the white and sienna with his “blender,” unconsciously adding a dash of Veronese green; gazed at my leggings, then at the barometer, and again meeting my eye with a look as if he feared I might be a disguised duke, said in slow tone, with hyphens of silence between each two syllables, giving to his language all the dignity of an unabridged Webster, “ I would take pleasure in stating that my name is Hank G, Smith, artist ” ; and, seeing me smile, he relaxed a little, and giving the blender another vigorous twist, added, “ I would request yours.”

Mr. Smith having learned my name, occupation, and that my home was on the Hudson, near New York, quickly assumed a familiar me-and-you-old-fel' tone, and rattled on merrily about his winter in New York spent in “going through the Academy,” − a period of deep moment to one who before that only painted wagons for his livelihood.

Storing away canvas, stool, and easel, in a deserted cabin close by, he rejoined me, and, leading Kaweah by his lariat, I walked beside Smith down the trail toward Copples’s.

He talked freely, and as if composing his own biography, beginning : “ California-born and mountain-raised, his nature soon drove him into a painter’s career.” Then he reverted fondly to New York and his experience there.

“ O no !” he mused in pleasant irony, “ he never spread his napkin over his legs and partook French victuals up to old Delmonico’s.”

Mr. Smith found relief in meeting one so near himself, as he conceived me to be, in habit and experience. The long-pent-up emotions and ambitions of his life found ready utterance, and a willing listener.

I learned that his aim was to become a characteristically California painter, with special designs for making himself famous as the delineator of muletrains and ox-wagons ; to be as he expressed it, “ the Pacific Slope Bonheur.”

“There,” he said, “is old Eastman Johnson ; he’s made the riffle on barns, and that everlasting girl with the ears of corn ; but it ain't life, it ain’t got the real git-up. If you want to see the thing, just look at Gerome ; his Arab folks and Egyptian dancing-girls, they ain’t assuming a pleasant expression and looking at spots while their likenesses is took. H. G. will discount Eastman yet.”

He avowed his great admiration of Church, who, though he had a little leaning toward Mr. Gifford, alone met his hearty approval.

“ It’s all Bierstadt and Bierstadt and Bierstadt nowadays ! What has he done but twist and skew and distort and discolor and belittle and be-pretty this whole doggonned country ? Why, his mountains are too high and too slim; they’d blow over in one of our fall winds. I've herded colts two summers in Yosemite, and, honest now, when I stood right up in front of his picture, I did n’t know it. He has n’t what old Ruskin calls for.”

By this time the station buildings were in sight, and far down the cañon, winding in even grade around spur after spur, outlined by a low, clinging cloud of red dust, we could see the great Sierra mule-train, − that industrial gulf-stream flowing from California plains over into arid Nevada, carrying thither materials for life and luxury. In a vast perpetual caravan of heavy wagons, drawn by teams of from eight to fourteen mules, all the supplies of many cities and villages were hauled across the Sierra at an immense cost, and with such skill of driving and generalship of mules as the world has never seen before.

Our trail descended toward the grade, quickly bringing us to a high bank immediately overlooking the trains a few rods below the group of station buildings.

I had by this time learned that Copples, the former station-proprietor, had suffered amputation of the leg three times, receiving from the road-men, in consequence, the name of “ Cut-off,” and that, while his doctors disagreed as to whether they had better try a fourth, the kindly hand of death had spared him that pain, and Mrs. Copples an added extortion in the bill.

The dying “ Cut-off” had made his wife promise she would stay by and carry on the station until all his debts, which were many and heavy, should be paid, and then do as she chose.

The poor woman, a New-Englander of some refinement, lingered, sadly fulfilling her task, though longing for liberty.

When Smith came to speak of Sarah Jane, her niece, a new light kindled in bis eye.

“ You never saw Sarah Jane ? ” he inquired.

I shook my head.

He went on to tell me that he was living in hope of making her Mrs. H. G., but that the bar-keeper also indulged a hope, and as this important functionary was a man of ready cash, and of derringers and few words, it became a delicate matter to avow open rivalry ; but it was evident my friend’s star was in the ascendant, and, learning that he considered himself to possess the “dead-wood,” and to have “gaited” the bar-keeper, I was more than amused, even comforted.

It was a pleasure to sit there leaning against a vigorous old oak while Smith opened his heart to me, in easy confidence, and, with quick eye watching the passing mules, pencilled in a little sketch-book a leg, a head, or such portions of body and harness as seemed to him useful for future works.

“These are notes,” he said, “and I 've pretty much made up my mind to paint my great picture on a gee-pull. I ’ll scumble in a sunset effect, lighting up the dust, and striking across the backs of team and driver, and I ’ll paint a come-up-there-damn-you look on the old teamster’s face, and the mules will be just a humping their little selves and laying down to work like they’d expire. And the wagon ! Don’t you see what fine color-material there is in the heavy load and canvastop with sunlight and shadow in the folds ? And that’s what ’s the matter with H. G. Smith. Orders, sir, orders ; that’s what I ’ll get then, and I ’ll take my little old Sarah Jane and light out for New York, and you ’ll see Smith on a studio doorplate, and folks ’ll say, Fine feeling for nature, has Smith ! ”

I let this singular man speak for himself in his own vernacular, pruning nothing of its idiom or slang, as you shall choose to call it.

The breath of most Californians is as unconsciously charged with slang as an Italian’s with garlic, and the two, after all, have much the same function ; you touch the bowl or your language, but should never let either be fairly recognized in salad or conversation. Yet Smith’s English was the well undefiled when compared with what I every moment heard from the current of teamsters which set constantly by us in the direction of Copples’s.

Smith and I followed, and as we neared the house he punched me familiarly and said, as a brown petticoat disappeared in the station door, “There’s Sarah Jane! When I see that girl I feel like I’d reach out and gather her in ” ; then clasping her imaginary form as if she was about to dance with him, he executed a couple of waltz turns, softly intimating, “ That ’s what’s the matter with H. G.”

As a hotel, Copples’s is on the Mongolian plan, which means that diningroom and kitchen are given over to the mercies−never very tender − of Chinamen ; not such Chinamen as learned the art of pig-roasting that they might be served up by Elia, but the average John, and a sadly low average that John is. I grant him a certain general air of thrift, admitting, too, that his lack of sobriety never makes itself apparent in loud Celtic brawl. But he is, when all is said, and in spite of timid and fawning obedience, a very poor servant.

Now and then at a friend’s house it has happened to me that I dined upon artistic Chinese cookery, and all they who come home from living in China smack their lips over the relishing cuisine. I wish they had sat down that day at Copples’s. No ; on second thought I would spare them.

John may go peacefully to North Adams and make shoes for us, but I shall not solve the awful domestic problem by bringing him into my kitchen.

After the warning bell, fifty or sixty teamsters inserted their dusty heads in buckets of water, turned their once white neck-handkerchiefs inside out, producing a sudden effect of clean linen, and made use of the two mournful wrecks of combs which hung on strings at either side of the Copples mirror. Many went to the bar and partook of a “ dust-cutter.” There was then such clearing of throats, and such loud and prolonged blowing of noses as may not often be heard upon this globe.

In the calm which ensued, conversation sprung up on “ lead harness,” the “ Stockton wagon that had went off the grade,” with here and there a sentiment called out by two framed lithographic belles, who in great richness of color and scantiness of raiment flanked the bar-mirror; − a dazzling reflector chiefly destined to portray the barkeeper’s back hair, which work of art involved much affectionate labor.

A second bell and rolling away of doors revealed a long dining-room, with three parallel tables, cleanly set and watched over by Chinamen, whose fresh white clothes and bright olivebuff skin made a contrast of color which was always chief among my yearnings for the Nile.

While I loitered in the background every seat was taken, and I found myself with a few dilatory teamsters destined to await a second table.

The dining-room communicated with a kitchen beyond by means of two square apertures cut in the partition wall. Through these portholes a glare of red light poured, except when the square framed a Chinese cook’s head, or discharged hundreds of little dishes.

The teamsters sat down in patience, a few of the more elegant sort cleaned their nails with the three-tine forks, others picked their teeth with them, and nearly all speared with this implement small specimens from the dishes before them, securing a pickle or a square inch of pie or even that luxury a dried apple ; a few, on tilted-back chairs, drummed upon the bottom of their plates the latest tune of the road.

When fairly under way the scene became active and animated beyond belief. Waiters, balancing upon their arms twenty or thirty plates, hurried along and shot them dexterously over the teamsters’ heads with crash and spatter. Beans swimming in fat, meats slimed with pale ropy gravy, and over everything a faint Mongol odor, − the flavor of moral degeneracy and of a disintegrating race. Sharks and wolves may no longer be figured as types of prandial haste. My friends, the teamsters, stuffed and swallowed with a rapidity which was alarming but for the dexterity they showed, and which could only have come of long practice. In fifteen minutes the room was empty, and those fellows who were not feeding grain to their mules lighted cigars and lingered around the bar.

Just then my artist rushed in, seized me by the arm, and said in my ear, " We ’ll have our supper over to Mrs. Copples’s. O no, I guess not−Sarah Jane − arms peeled − cooking up stuff − old woman gone into the milk-room with a skimmer.” He then added that if I wanted to see what I had been spared, I might follow him. We went round an angle of the building and came upon a high bank, where, through wide-open windows, I could look into the Chinese kitchen. By this time the second table of teamsters were under way, and the waiters yelled their orders through to the three cooks. This large unpainted kitchen was lighted up by kerosene lamps. Through clouds of smoke and steam dodged and sprang the cooks, dripping with perspiration and grease, grabbing a steak in the hand and slapping it down on the gridiron, slipping and sliding around on the floor, dropping a card of biscuits and picking them up again in their fists, which were garnished by the whole bill of fare. The red papers with Chinese inscriptions, and little joss-sticks here and there pasted upon each wall, the spry devils themselves, and that faint sickening odor of China which pervaded the room, combined to produce a sense of deep sober gratitude that I had not risked their fare.

“ Now',” demanded Smith, “you see that there little white building yonder ? ”

I did.

He struck a contemplative position, leaned against the house, extending one hand after the manner of the minstrel sentimentalist, and softly chanted, −

and there ’s where they ’re getting up as nice a little supper as can be found on this road or any other. Let’s go over! ”

So we strolled across an open space where were two giant pines towering sombre against the twilight, a little mountain brooklet, and a few quiet cows.

“ Stop,” said Smith, leaning his back against a pine, and encircling my neck affectionately with an arm ; “ I told you, as regards Sarah Jane, how my feelings stand. Well now you just bet she’s on the reciprocate! When I told old woman Copples I ’d like to invite you over, Sarah Jane she past me in the doorway, and said she, ‘ Glad to see your friends.’ ” Then sotto voce, for we were very near, he sang again,−

“and C. K.,” he continued familiarly, “ you ’re a judge of wimmen,” chucking his knuckles into my ribs, whereat I jumped; when he added, “There, I knew you was. Well, Sarah jane is a derned magnificent female; number three boot, just the height for me. Venus de Copples, I call her, and would make the most touching artist’s wife in this planet. If I design to paint a head, or a foot, or an arm, get my little old Sarah Jane to peel the particular charm, and just whack her in on the canvas.”

We passed in through low doors, turned from a small dark entry into the family sitting-room, and were alone there in presence of a cheery log-fire which good - naturedly bade us welcome, crackling freely and tossing its sparks out upon floor of pine and coyote-skin rug. A few old framed prints hung upon dark walls, their faces looking serenely down upon the scanty oldfashioned furniture, and windows full of flowering plants. A low-cushioned chair, not long since vacated, was drawn close by the centre-table, whereon were a lamp, and a large open Bible with a pair of silver-bowed spectacles lying upon its lighted page.

Smith made a gesture of silence toward the door, touched the Bible, and whispered, “ Here’s where old woman Copples lives, and it is a good thing ; I read it aloud to her evenings, and I can just feel the high local lights of it. It’ll fetch H. G. yet ! ”

At this juncture the door opened ; a pale, thin, elderly woman entered, and with a tired smile greeted me. While her hard labor-stiffened, needle-roughened hand was in mine, I looked into her face and felt something (it may be, it must be but little, yet something) of the sorrow of her life ; that of a woman large in sympathy, deep in faith, eternal in constancy, thrown away on a rough worthless fellow. All things she hoped for had failed her ; the tenderness which never came, the hopes years ago in ashes, the whole world of her yearnings long buried, leaving only the duty of living and the hope of Heaven. As she sat down, took up her spectacles and knitting, and closed the Bible, she began pleasantly to talk to us of the warm bright autumn nights, of Smith’s work, and then of my own profession, and of her niece, Sarah Jane. Her genuinely sweet spirit and natively gentle manner were very beautiful, and far overbalanced all traces of rustic birth and mountain life.

O that unquenchable Christian fire, how pure the gold of its result ! It needs no practised elegance, no social greatness, for its success; only the warm human heart, and out of it shall come a sacred calm and gentleness, such as no power, no wealth, no culture may ever hope to win. No words of mine would outline the beauty of that plain weary old woman, the sad sweet patience of those gray eyes, nor the spirit of overflowing goodness which cheered and enlivened the halfhour we spent there.

H. G. might perhaps be pardoned for showing an alacrity when the door again opened and Sarah Jane rolled, I might almost say trundled in, and was introduced to me. Sarah Jane was an essentially Californian product, as much so as one of those vast potatoes or massive pears ; she had a suggestion of State-Fair in the fulness of her physique, yet withal was pretty and modest. If I could have rid myself of a fear that her buttons might sooner or later burst off and go singing by my ear, I think I might have felt as H. G. did, that she was a “ magnificent female ” with her smooth brilliant skill and ropes of soft brown hair.

H. G., in presence of the ladies, lost something of his original flavor, and rose into studied elegance, greatly to the comfort of Sarah, whose glow of pride as his talk ran on came without show of restraint.

The supper was delicious.

But Sarah was quiet, quiet to H. G. and to me, until after tea, when the old lady said, “ You young folks will have to excuse me this evening,” and withdrew to her chamber.

More logs were then piled on the sitting-room hearth, and we three gathered in semicircle. Presently H. G. took the poker and twisted it about among coals and ashes, prying up the oak sticks, as he announced in a measured, studied way, “ An artist’s wife, that is,” he explained, “ an Academician’s wife orter, well, she’d orter sabe the beautiful, and take her regular æsthetics ; and then again,” he continued, in explanatory tone, “ she’d orter know how to keep a hotel, derned if she had n’t, for it’s rough like furst off, ’fore a feller gits his name up. But then when he does, though, she’s got a salubrious old time of it. It’s touch a little bell ” (he pressed the andirontop to show us how the thing was done), “ and ‘ Brooks, the morning paper ! ’ Open your regular Herald : −

“ ' ART NOTES. − Another of H. G. Smith’s tender works entitled ‘ Off the Grade,’ so full of out-of-doors and subtle feeling of nature, is now on exhibition at Goupil’s.’

“ Look down a little further.

“ ‘ ITALIAN OPERA. − Between the acts all eyes turned to the distingnée Mrs. H. G. Smith, who looked,’ ” − then turning to me, and waving his hand at Sarah Jane, “ I leave it to you if she don’t,”

Sarah Jane assumed the pleasing color of the sugar-beet without seeming inwardly unhappy.

“It’s only a question of time with H. G.,” continued my friend. “ Art is long, you know, derned long, and it may be a year before I paint my great picture, but after that Smith works in lead harness.”

He used the poker freely, and more and more his flow of hopes turned a shade of sentiment to Sarah Jane, who smiled broader and broader, showing teeth of healthy whiteness.

At last I withdrew and sought my room, which was H. G.’s also, and his studio. I had gone with a candle around the walls whereon were tacked studies and sketches, finding here and there a bit of real merit among the profusion of trash, when the door burst open and my friend entered, kicked off his boots and trousers, and walked up and down at a sort of quadrille step, singing: −

and what’s more, H. G. has just had his genteel good-night kiss ; and when and where is the good old bar-keep ? ”

Slowly from this atmosphere of art I passed away into the tranquil land of dreams.

Clarence King.