Tales of the Argonauts by Bret Harte (top books to read .txt) 📕

to his seat by the fire. A smile that had been playing upon his face, deepening the curves behind his mustache, and gradually overrunning his clear gray eyes, presently faded away. It was last to go from his eyes; and it left there, oddly enough to those who did not know him, a tear.

He sat there for a long time, leaning forward, his head upon his hands. The wind that had been striving with the canvas roof all at once lifted its edges, and a moonbeam slipped suddenly in, and lay for a moment like a shining blade upon his shoulder; and, knighted by its touch, straightway plain Henry York arose, sustained, high-purposed and self-reliant.

 

The rains had come at last. There was already a visible greenness on the slopes of Heavytree Hill; and the long, white track of the Wingdam road was lost in outlying pools and ponds a hundred rods from Monte Flat. The spent water-courses, whose white bones had been sinuously trailed over the flat, like the vertebrae of some forgotten saurian, were full again; the dry bones moved once more in the valley; and there was joy in the ditches, and a pardonable extravagance in the columns of “The Monte Flat Monitor.” “Never before in the history of the county has the yield been so satisfactory. Our contemporary of ‘The Hillside Beacon,’ who yesterday facetiously alluded to the fact (?) that our best citizens were leaving town in ‘dugouts,’ on account of the flood, will be glad to hear that our distinguished fellow-townsman, Mr. Henry York, now on a visit to his relatives in the East, lately took with him in his ‘dugout’ the modest sum of fifty thousand dollars, the result of one week’s clean-up. We can imagine,” continued that sprightly journal, “that no such misfortune is likely to overtake Hillside this season. And yet we believe ‘The Beacon’ man wants a railroad.” A few journals broke out into poetry. The operator at Simpson’s Crossing telegraphed to “The Sacramento Universe” “All day the low clouds have shook their garnered fulness down.” A San Francisco journal lapsed into noble verse, thinly disguised as editorial prose: “Rejoice: the gentle rain has come, the bright and pearly rain, which scatters blessings on the hills, and sifts them o’er the plain. Rejoice,” &c. Indeed, there was only one to whom the rain had not brought blessing, and that was Plunkett. In some mysterious and darksome way, it had interfered with the perfection of his new method of reducing ores, and thrown the advent of that invention back another season. It had brought him down to an habitual seat in the bar-room, where, to heedless and inattentive ears, he sat and discoursed of the East and his family.

No one disturbed him. Indeed, it was rumored that some funds had been lodged with the landlord, by a person or persons unknown, whereby his few wants were provided for. His mania—for that was the charitable construction which Monte Flat put upon his conduct— was indulged, even to the extent of Monte Flat’s accepting his invitation to dine with his family on Christmas Day,—an invitation extended frankly to every one with whom the old man drank or talked. But one day, to everybody’s astonishment, he burst into the bar-room, holding an open letter in his hand. It read as follows:—

 

“Be ready to meet your family at the new cottage on Heavytree Hill on Christmas Day. Invite what friends you choose.

“HENRY YORK.”

 

The letter was handed round in silence. The old man, with a look alternating between hope and fear, gazed in the faces of the group. The doctor looked up significantly, after a pause. “It’s a forgery evidently,” he said in a low voice. “He’s cunning enough to conceive it (they always are); but you’ll find he’ll fail in executing it. Watch his face!—Old man,” he said suddenly, in a loud peremptory tone, “this is a trick, a forgery, and you know it. Answer me squarely, and look me in the eye. Isn’t it so?”

The eyes of Plunkett stared a moment, and then dropped weakly. Then, with a feebler smile, he said, “You’re too many for me, boys. The Doc’s right. The little game’s up. You can take the old man’s hat;” and so, tottering, trembling, and chuckling, he dropped into silence and his accustomed seat. But the next day he seemed to have forgotten this episode, and talked as glibly as ever of the approaching festivity.

And so the days and weeks passed until Christmas—a bright, clear day, warmed with south winds, and joyous with the resurrection of springing grasses—broke upon Monte Flat. And then there was a sudden commotion in the hotel bar-room; and Abner Dean stood beside the old man’s chair, and shook him out of a slumber to his feet. “Rouse up, old man. York is here, with your wife and daughter, at the cottage on Heavytree. Come, old man. Here, boys, give him a lift;” and in another moment a dozen strong and willing hands had raised the old man, and bore him in triumph to the street up the steep grade of Heavytree Hill, and deposited him, struggling and confused, in the porch of a little cottage. At the same instant two women rushed forward, but were restrained by a gesture from Henry York. The old man was struggling to his feet. With an effort at last, he stood erect, trembling, his eye fixed, a gray pallor on his cheek, and a deep resonance in his voice.

“It’s all a trick, and a lie! They ain’t no flesh and blood or kin o’ mine. It ain’t my wife, nor child. My daughter’s a beautiful girl—a beautiful girl, d’ye hear? She’s in New York with her mother, and I’m going to fetch her here. I said I’d go home, and I’ve been home: d’ye hear me? I’ve been home! It’s a mean trick you’re playin’ on the old man. Let me go: d’ye hear? Keep them women off me! Let me go! I’m going—I’m going—home!”

His hands were thrown up convulsively in the air, and, half turning round, he fell sideways on the porch, and so to the ground. They picked him up hurriedly, but too late. He had gone home.

THE FOOL OF FIVE FORKS

He lived alone. I do not think this peculiarity arose from any wish to withdraw his foolishness from the rest of the camp, nor was it probable that the combined wisdom of Five Forks ever drove him into exile. My impression is, that he lived alone from choice,—a choice he made long before the camp indulged in any criticism of his mental capacity. He was much given to moody reticence, and, although to outward appearances a strong man, was always complaining of ill-health. Indeed, one theory of his isolation was, that it afforded him better opportunities for taking medicine, of which he habitually consumed large quantities.

His folly first dawned upon Five Forks through the post-office windows. He was, for a long time, the only man who wrote home by every mail; his letters being always directed to the same person,— a woman. Now, it so happened that the bulk of the Five Forks correspondence was usually the other way. There were many letters received (the majority being in the female hand), but very few answered. The men received them indifferently, or as a matter of course. A few opened and read them on the spot, with a barely repressed smile of self-conceit, or quite as frequently glanced over them with undisguised impatience. Some of the letters began with “My dear husband;” and some were never called for. But the fact that the only regular correspondent of Five Forks never received any reply became at last quite notorious. Consequently, when an envelope was received, bearing the stamp of the “dead letter office,” addressed to “The Fool,” under the more conventional title of “Cyrus Hawkins,” there was quite a fever of excitement. I do not know how the secret leaked out; but it was eventually known to the camp, that the envelope contained Hawkins’s own letters returned. This was the first evidence of his weakness. Any man who repeatedly wrote to a woman who did not reply must be a fool. I think Hawkins suspected that his folly was known to the camp; but he took refuge in symptoms of chills and fever, which he at once developed, and effected a diversion with three bottles of Indian cholagogue and two boxes of pills. At all events, at the end of a week, he resumed a pen stiffened by tonics, with all his old epistolatory pertinacity. This time the letters had a new address.

In those days a popular belief obtained in the mines, that luck particularly favored the foolish and unscientific. Consequently, when Hawkins struck a “pocket” in the hillside near his solitary cabin, there was but little surprise. “He will sink it all in the next hole” was the prevailing belief, predicated upon the usual manner in which the possessor of “nigger luck” disposed of his fortune. To everybody’s astonishment, Hawkins, after taking out about eight thousand dollars, and exhausting the pocket, did not prospect for another. The camp then waited patiently to see what he would do with his money. I think, however, that it was with the greatest difficulty their indignation was kept from taking the form of a personal assault when it became known that he had purchased a draft for eight thousand dollars, in favor of “that woman.” More than this, it was finally whispered that the draft was returned to him as his letters had been, and that he was ashamed to reclaim the money at the express-office. “It wouldn’t be a bad specilation to go East, get some smart gal, for a hundred dollars, to dress herself up and represent that ‘Hag,’ and jest freeze onto that eight thousand,” suggested a far-seeing financier. I may state here, that we always alluded to Hawkins’s fair unknown as the “Hag” without having, I am confident, the least justification for that epithet.

That the “Fool” should gamble seemed eminently fit and proper. That he should occasionally win a large stake, according to that popular theory which I have recorded in the preceding paragraph, appeared, also, a not improbable or inconsistent fact. That he should, however, break the faro bank which Mr. John Hamlin had set up in Five Forks, and carry off a sum variously estimated at from ten to twenty thousand dollars, and not return the next day, and lose the money at the same table, really appeared incredible. Yet such was the fact. A day or two passed without any known investment of Mr. Hawkins’s recently-acquired capital. “Ef he allows to send it to that ‘Hag,’” said one prominent citizen, “suthin’ ought to be done. It’s jest ruinin’ the reputation of this yer camp,—this sloshin’ around o’ capital on non-residents ez don’t claim it!” “It’s settin’ an example o’ extravagance,” said another, “ez is little better nor a swindle. Thais mor’n five men in this camp, thet, hearin’ thet Hawkins hed sent home eight thousand dollars, must jest rise up and send home their hard earnings too! And then to think thet thet eight thousand was only a bluff, after all, and thet it’s lyin’ there on call in Adams & Co.‘s bank! Well, I say it’s one o’ them things a vigilance committee oughter look into.”

When there seemed no possibility of this repetition of Hawkins’s folly, the anxiety to know what he had really done with his money became intense. At last a self-appointed committee of four citizens dropped artfully, but to outward appearances carelessly, upon him in his seclusion. When some polite formalities had been exchanged, and some easy vituperation of a backward season offered by each of the parties, Tom Wingate approached the subject.

“Sorter dropped heavy on Jack Hamlin the other night, didn’t