The Black Cat (magazine)/Volume 1/Number 1/In Gold Time

by Roberta Littlehale

In Gold Time.

by Roberta Littlehele.

HE was straight, and grizzled, and keen of eye. He had worked, and fought, and gambled his way through the lawlessness and passion of the State's early life into the decency and up rightness of a successful contractor.

His name was Bill Bowen.

As a civil engineer, I came more or less in contact with him, and rejoiced in the largeness of his mental mold, as well as in the business sense of security he let me enjoy. One summer's night we took a drive to a distant town on the San Joaquin River. We were to look at stone for bridge building, and the blistering heat of the day made us willing to lose our sleep for the more comfortable traveling by starlight.

The horses jogged lazily through the coarse, thick dust on the river's levee, and the insects from the grain fields and the frogs from the sloughs had things wholly to themselves until Bill suddenly interrupted.

"Mrs. Chase is pretty enough yet to understand why she sent two fellows to the devil, isn't she?"

"What are you talking about?" I answered.

"Oh," said Bill, pulling himself up, "I forgot you didn't struggle with the rest of us through those groggy days."

I knew Bill well enough to let him relapse just so many minutes; then I said: "Judge Chase's wife is lovelier at sixty than most girls at sixteen, but I hadn't an idea she figured so romantic ally in the early days as to send anybody overboard."

"H'm," replied Bill reflectively.

The horses traveled on without attention, and I waited in patience.

"You know what it was like," he began at last. "Men with guns from all over the Union and gold the heaven we sweated for. Prayers, and court, and the gambling tables all running under one roof, and nary a woman's face showing up in the mass to give us courage. To be sure, there were vixenish ribs o' Satan who robbed, and killed, and drank with the worst of us; but until '51 we'd never the woman for reverence. Then, by degrees, the lawyers and a stray merchant or two aired their families, but things wasn't dizzy till pretty Grace Blanchard got out with her father.

"Understand, she carried herself as she'd ought to; but, understand, there was men among us as was born and bred to live with blood. The mass of us had to take out our satisfaction in looking at her; but for two the favor in old Blanchard's eyes was easy reading, and it wasn't long seeing the course the straw took.

"Ned Emory was a long, lean, blond fellow, with a blamed fine face and a way that made friends of the toughest. They said he looked a swell when he called at the Blanchards', but I never saw him but like the rest of us,—red-shirted and overalled, and an angle to his pistols that made him a joy.

"George Stokes—'Shorty,' we called him—was a man with an answer that ripped like a knife and a head that made success of everything, because it could work crooked as well as straight. He'd been on the bench, but he'd located a vein at Mariposa, and was overseeing up there in '52. Naturally, he lost opportunities, not being right on the spot, and the danger began.

"The Blanchard house was swelled larger than most of the cabins, and had two long windows that opened onto a porch. Things might never have been so bad but for those two lidless eyes in front.

"One fatal night Shorty Stokes rode into the settlement,—but I'm getting ahead of affairs."

Bill tossed his cigar into the tules, and hurried the horses into effort as the interest of his reminiscence swept him on.

"The girl carried herself after the fashion of high steppers, and neither fellow could swear where he stood. It was laughter and spirit for both of them, they said, and nip and tuck for the yielding. The pace was the sort that exhausts men, and Shorty's brain for lawyering cooked up a scheme for his rescue. He was for their going together some night before her, and, after a formal marriage proposal, each argue his claim and fitness for ten minutes by the clock, their honor at stake to stand by her decision.

"It got about afterwards that Emory wouldn't consent till he saw the devil to pay in Shorty's earnestness, and they swore with their fists in each other's to carry the thing through to the finish. The date and hour were arranged for the following Sunday night at eight, and they drank to it with gall in the cup.

"When the evening came the clock had already struck eight when Stokes reached the Blanchard house.

"The lights from the room fell over the porch, and from the shadow of the steps he saw the something that in all the world he couldn't bear to see,—Emory crossing the room to take Grace Blanchard in his arms; Emory with passion paling his face and Grace Blanchard in the beauty of a disturbing humility.

"He cursed as he watched them cling to each other, and he cursed his way back to the saloons and his Mariposa mining.

"The next day he turned up again in the settlement, with liquor enough aboard to put a wheel in his head, and, after a losing fling at the tables, he started to find Emory.

"After a little ineffectual riding, he leaped from the back of his vicious-eyed piebald at the corner that bulged thickest with saloons, and stood close to the stirrup with his hand on his hip. Some one who noticed him said his face had the steely intensity of a razor edge.

"Then out of the crowd, unconscious, with the music of love in his heart, swung Ned Emory. His hat was pushed back on his fair hair, and he was whistling the overflow out of his veins.

"In one instant a bullet rang through the air, followed by another. Eniory fell in his own blood, and a horseman was riding off wildly and safe through the shower of bullets that rained around him. Every man with a cayuse tore in pursuit, but they only brought back eight half-dead horses. Stokes had staked relay beasts at different points along the road, and was then safe in the chaparral cañons toward the north.

"The gambling dens choked up with the crowds; gold-dust was heaped on gold-dust for the reward of the cowardly hound. Murders weren't rare then, but there was only one Ned Emory, remember.

"Four of us wouldn't drop the search. We let the blood-money men get out of the way, and then we worked as we'd toil for only our own.

"There was scarcely no scent to follow, for Stokes had bribed the greasers who furnished his horses; but we forced our way along on nothing. Day and night we rode with our eyes open, sometimes bullying and sometimes begging. It began to seem hopeless. The days were running into summer again.

"One afternoon, toward twilight, we rested on the crest of a mountain where the path took a sudden turn away from a two hundred-foot precipice.

"We were torn with the snapping branches of the greasewood, and full of extremest dirt and disgust. Suddenly we heard the rustle of a step on the fallen leaves. Under a live oak, not thirty yards away, on the very edge of the cliff, stood Shorty Stokes. He had not heard us, and he stood looking at the moon which hung a sickle in the hot sky. The evening star was showing.

"The four of us were like stones. He could have got to Guinea before motion 'd have come to us. Then, simultaneously with our steps forward, he turned and looked into our faces.

"It was a moment to test the nerve of any man. He stood it as we were used to seeing him face all things.

"'I suppose I'm the man you're after,' he said.

"He said it with the dignity of a parson.

"In a second he had thrown down his pistols. He unsheathed his knives and dropped them to the ground.

"'Take me,' he said.

Four of us looked into the unflinching clearness of his eyes. As we hesitated , he spoke again.

"'Listen. It is not in excuse that I speak, nor in weakening. It is to tell you that those among you who are men will follow my steps under like circumstances.

"'Emory gave me his hand and his oath, in the manner of his frankness, to stand by an arranged agreement.

"'We were to meet at eight o'clock on that Sunday night. A—a beautifully good woman was to decide on our argument which man she would marry. In riding to meet my engagement I happened on an accident. Within half a mile of the settlement, close onto time, my piebald went back on his haunches and the groan of a man came up from the roadside. I found an overloaded miner, hurt in the leg, and the hope in my own heart aroused my sympathy. I mounted the man on my beast and headed him back toward camp.

"'Walk as I never walked, I reached the meeting place three minutes late. Ah—God—out in the darkness I saw Emory taking advantage of the delay.

"'None of you is so much a cur as to let the life run in a man who, under his honor, couldn't yield a rival three minutes' grace.

"'But, with the camp against me and Emory the friend of the sorriest, I couldn't face the music when the justice was done.

"'It is not mercy I ask. It is life hereafter. Come.'

"With a common impulse we started forward, only to halt in a frozen horror as Stoke's broncho threw up his head in alarm to watch with us the backward somersaulting of his master's body over the precipice.

"Though there was but one verdict, even Chase said as we rode down over the mountain that night, 'Emory might have given Shorty a few minutes' grace.'"