Part 18

Mrs. Price gave a short laugh, and was silent for a few minutes. Then this sublime little woman looked up at him. What he might have seen in her eyes was more than he expected, or, I fear, deserved. “Cheer up, Mr. Spindler,” she said manfully. “I'll see you through this thing, don't you mind! But don't you say anything about--about--this Vigilance Committee business to anybody. Nor about your niece--it was your niece, wasn't it?--being divorced. Charley (the late Mr. Price) had a queer sort of sister, who--but that's neither here nor there! And your niece mayn't come, you know; or if she does, you ain't bound to bring her out to the general company.”

At parting, Spindler, in sheer gratefulness, pressed her hand, and lingered so long over it that a little color sprang into the widow's brown cheek. Perhaps a fresh courage sprang into her heart, too, for she went to Sacramento the next day, previously enjoining Spindler on no account to show any answers he might receive. At Sacramento her nieces flew to her with confidences.

“We so wanted to see you, Aunt Huldy, for we've heard something so delightful about your funny Christmas Party!” Mrs. Price's heart sank, but her eyes snapped. “Only think of it! One of Mr. Spindler's long-lost relatives--a Mr. Wragg--lives in this hotel, and papa knows him. He's a sort of half-uncle, I believe, and he's just furious that Spindler should have invited him. He showed papa the letter; said it was the greatest piece of insolence in the world; that Spindler was an ostentatious fool, who had made a little money and wanted to use him to get into society; and the fun of the whole thing was that this half-uncle and whole brute is himself a parvenu,--a vulgar, ostentatious creature, who was only a”--

“Never mind what he was, Kate,” interrupted Mrs. Price hastily. “I call his conduct a shame.”

“So do we,” said both girls eagerly. After a pause Kate clasped her knees with her locked fingers, and rocking backwards and forwards, said, “Milly and I have got an idea, and don't you say 'No' to it. We've had it ever since that brute talked in that way. Now, through him, we know more about this Mr. Spindler's family connections than you do; and we know all the trouble you and he'll have in getting up this party. You understand? Now, we first want to know what Spindler's like. Is he a savage, bearded creature, like the miners we saw on the boat?”

Mrs. Price said that, on the contrary, he was very gentle, soft-spoken, and rather good-looking.

“Young or old?”

“Young,--in fact, a mere boy, as you may judge from his actions,” returned Mrs. Price, with a suggestive matronly air.

Kate here put up a long-handled eyeglass to her fine gray eyes, fitted it ostentatiously over her aquiline nose, and then said, in a voice of simulated horror, “Aunt Huldy,--this revelation is shocking!”

Mrs. Price laughed her usual frank laugh, albeit her brown cheek took upon it a faint tint of Indian red. “If that's the wonderful idea you girls have got, I don't see how it's going to help matters,” she said dryly.

“No, that's not it? We really have an idea. Now look here.”

Mrs. Price “looked here.” This process seemed to the superficial observer to be merely submitting her waist and shoulders to the arms of her nieces, and her ears to their confidential and coaxing voices.

Twice she said “it couldn't be thought of,” and “it was impossible;” once addressed Kate as “You limb!” and finally said that she “wouldn't promise, but might write!”

*****

It was two days before Christmas. There was nothing in the air, sky, or landscape of that Sierran slope to suggest the season to the Eastern stranger. A soft rain had been dropping for a week on laurel, pine, and buckeye, and the blades of springing grasses and shyly opening flowers. Sedate and silent hillsides that had grown dumb and parched towards the end of the dry season became gently articulate again; there were murmurs in hushed and forgotten canyons, the leap and laugh of water among the dry bones of dusty creeks, and the full song of the larger forks and rivers. Southwest winds brought the warm odor of the pine sap swelling in the forest, or the faint, far-off spice of wild mustard springing in the lower valleys. But, as if by some irony of Nature, this gentle invasion of spring in the wild wood brought only disturbance and discomfort to the haunts and works of man. The ditches were overflowed, the fords of the Fork impassable, the sluicing adrift, and the trails and wagon roads to Rough and Ready knee-deep in mud. The stage-coach from Sacramento, entering the settlement by the mountain highway, its wheels and panels clogged and crusted with an unctuous pigment like mud and blood, passed out of it through the overflowed and dangerous ford, and emerged in spotless purity, leaving its stains behind with Rough and Ready. A week of enforced idleness on the river “Bar” had driven the miners to the more comfortable recreation of the saloon bar, its mirrors, its florid paintings, its armchairs, and its stove. The steam of their wet boots and the smoke of their pipes hung over the latter like the sacrificial incense from an altar. But the attitude of the men was more critical and censorious than contented, and showed little of the gentleness of the weather or season.

“Did you hear if the stage brought down any more relations of Spindler's?”

The barkeeper, to whom this question was addressed, shifted his lounging position against the bar and said, “I reckon not, ez far ez I know.”

“And that old bloat of a second cousin--that crimson beak--what kem down yesterday,--he ain't bin hangin' round here today for his reg'lar pizon?”

“No,” said the barkeeper thoughtfully, “I reckon Spindler's got him locked up, and is settin' on him to keep him sober till after Christmas, and prevent you boys gettin' at him.”

“He'll have the jimjams before that,” returned the first speaker; “and how about that dead beat of a half-nephew who borrowed twenty dollars of Yuba Bill on the way down, and then wanted to get off at Shootersvilie, but Bill wouldn't let him, and scooted him down to Spindler's and collected the money from Spindler himself afore he'd give him up?”

“He's up thar with the rest of the menagerie,” said the barkeeper, “but I reckon that Mrs. Price hez bin feedin' him up. And ye know the old woman--that fifty-fifth cousin by marriage--whom Joe Chandler swears he remembers ez an old cook for a Chinese restaurant in Stockton,--darn my skin ef that Mrs. Price hasn't rigged her out in some fancy duds of her own, and made her look quite decent.”

A deep groan here broke from Uncle Jim Starbuck.

“Didn't I tell ye?” he said, turning appealingly to the others. “It's that darned widow that's at the bottom of it all! She first put Spindler up to givin' the party, and now, darn my skin, ef she ain't goin to fix up these ragamuffins and drill 'em so we can't get any fun outer 'em after all! And it's bein' a woman that's bossin' the job, and not Spindler, we've got to draw things mighty fine and not cut up too rough, or some of the boys will kick.”

“You bet,” said a surly but decided voice in the crowd.

“And,” said another voice, “Mrs. Price didn't live in 'Bleeding Kansas' for nothing.”

“Wot's the programme you've settled on, Uncle Jim?” said the barkeeper lightly, to check what seemed to promise a dangerous discussion.

“Well,” said Starbuck, “we kalkilate to gather early Christmas night in Hooper's Hollow and rig ourselves up Injun fashion, and then start for Spindler's with pitch-pine torches, and have a 'torchlight dance' around the house; them who does the dancin' and yellin' outside takin' their turn at goin' in and hevin' refreshment. Jake Cooledge, of Boston, sez if anybody objects to it, we've only got to say we're 'Mummers of the Olden Times,' sabe? Then, later, we'll have 'Them Sabbath Evening Bells' performed on prospectin' pans by the band. Then, at the finish, Jake Cooledge is goin' to give one of his surkastic speeches,--kinder welcomin' Spindler's family to the Free Openin' o' Spindler's Almshouse and Reformatory.” He paused, possibly for that approbation which, however, did not seem to come spontaneously. “It ain't much,” he added apologetically, “for we're hampered by women; but we'll add to the programme ez we see how things pan out. Ye see, from what we can hear, all of Spindler's relations ain't on hand yet! We've got to wait, like in elckshun times, for 'returns from the back counties.' Hello! What's that?”

It was the swish and splutter of hoofs on the road before the door. The Sacramento coach! In an instant every man was expectant, and Starbuck darted outside on the platform. Then there was the usual greeting and bustle, the hurried ingress of thirsty passengers into the saloon, and a pause. Uncle Jim returned, excitedly and pantingly. “Look yer, boys! Ef this ain't the richest thing out! They say there's two more relations o' Spindler's on the coach, come down as express freight, consigned,--d'ye hear?--consigned to Spindler!”