Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation Part 14

It was with some difficulty and some greater embarra.s.sment that he succeeded in getting his eyes free again. When he did so, she had risen and entered the cabin. Disconcerted as he was, he was relieved to see that her expression of amus.e.m.e.nt was unchanged. Was her act a piece of rustic coquetry, or had she resented his advances? Nor did her next words settle the question.

"Ye kin do yer nice talk and philanderin' after we've settled whar we are, what we're goin', and what's goin' to happen. Jest now it 'pears to me that ez these yere logs are the only thing betwixt us and 'kingdom come,' ye'd better be hustlin' round with a few spikes to clinch 'em to the floor."

She handed him a hammer and a few spikes. He obediently set to work, with little confidence, however, in the security of the fastening. There was neither rope nor chain for las.h.i.+ng the logs together; a stronger current and a collision with some submerged stump or wreckage would loosen them and wreck the cabin. But he said nothing. It was the girl who broke the silence.

"What's your front name?"

"Miles."

"MILES,--that's a funny name. I reckon that's why you war so FAR OFF and DISTANT at first."

Mr. Hemmingway thought this very witty, and said so. "But," he added, "when I was a little nearer a moment ago, you stopped me."

"But you was moving faster than the shanty was. I reckon you don't take that gait with your lady friends at Sacramento! However, you kin talk now."

"But you forget I don't know 'where we are,' nor 'what's going to happen.'"

"But I do," she said quietly. "In a couple of hours we'll be picked up, so you'll be free again."

Something in the confidence of her manner made him go to the door again and look out. There was scarcely any current now, and the cabin seemed motionless. Even the wind, which might have acted upon it, was wanting. They were apparently in the same position as before, but his sounding-line showed that the water was slightly falling. He came back and imparted the fact with a certain confidence born of her previous praise of his knowledge. To his surprise she only laughed and said lazily, "We'll be all right, and you'll be free, in about two hours."

"I see no sign of it," he said, looking through the door again.

"That's because you're looking in the water and the sky and the mud for it," she said, with a laugh. "I reckon you've been trained to watch them things a heap better than to study the folks about here."

"I daresay you're right," said Hemmingway cheerfully, "but I don't clearly see what the folks about here have to do with our situation just now."

"You'll see," she said, with a smile of mischievous mystery. "All the same," she added, with a sudden and dangerous softness in her eyes, "I ain't sayin' that YOU ain't kinder right neither."

An hour ago he would have laughed at the thought that a mere look and sentence like this from the girl could have made his heart beat. "Then I may go on and talk?"

She smiled, but her eyes said, "Yes," plainly.

He turned to take a chair near her. Suddenly the cabin trembled, there was a sound of sc.r.a.ping, a b.u.mp, and then the whole structure tilted to one side and they were both thrown violently towards the corner, with a swift inrush of water. Hemmingway quickly caught the girl by the waist; she clung to him instinctively, yet still laughing, as with a desperate effort he succeeded in dragging her to the upper side of the slanting cabin, and momentarily restoring its equilibrium. They remained for an instant breathless. But in that instant he had drawn her face to his and kissed her.

She disengaged herself gently with neither excitement nor emotion, and pointing to the open door said, "Look there!"

Two of the logs which formed the foundation of their floor were quietly floating in the water before the cabin! The submerged obstacle or snag which had torn them from their fastening was still holding the cabin fast. Hemmingway saw the danger. He ran along the narrow ledge to the point of contact and unhesitatingly leaped into the icy cold water. It reached his armpits before his feet struck the obstacle,--evidently a stump with a projecting branch. Bracing himself against it, he shoved off the cabin. But when he struck out to follow it, he found that the log nearest him was loose and his grasp might tear it away. At the same moment, however, a pink calico arm fluttered above his head, and a strong grasp seized his coat collar. The cabin half revolved as the girl dragged him into the open door.

"You bantam!" she said, with a laugh, "why didn't you let ME do that?

I'm taller than you! But," she added, looking at his dripping clothes and dragging out a blanket from the corner, "I couldn't dry myself as quick as you kin!" To her surprise, however, Hemmingway tossed the blanket aside, and pointing to the floor, which was already filmed with water, ran to the still warm stove, detached it from its pipe, and threw it overboard. The sack of flour, bacon, mola.s.ses, and sugar, and all the heavier articles followed it into the stream. Relieved of their weight the cabin base rose an inch or two higher. Then he sat down and said, "There! that may keep us afloat for that 'couple of hours' you speak of.

So I suppose I may talk now!"

"Ye haven't no time," she said, in a graver voice. "It won't be as long as a couple of hours now. Look over thar!"

He looked where she pointed across the gray expanse of water. At first he could see nothing. Presently he saw a mere dot on its face which at times changed to a single black line.

"It's a log, like these," he said.

"It's no log. It's an Injun dug-out*--comin' for me."

* A canoe made from a hollowed log.

"Your father?" he said joyfully.

She smiled pityingly. "It's Tom Flynn. Father's got suthin' else to look arter. Tom Flynn hasn't."

"And who's Tom Flynn?" he asked, with an odd sensation.

"The man I'm engaged to," she said gravely, with a slight color.

The rose that blossomed on her cheek faded in his. There was a moment of silence. Then he said frankly, "I owe you some apology. Forgive my folly and impertinence a moment ago. How could I have known this?"

"You took no more than you deserved, or that Tom would have objected to," she said, with a little laugh. "You've been mighty kind and handy."

She held out her hand; their fingers closed together in a frank pressure. Then his mind went back to his work, which he had forgotten,--to his first impressions of the camp and of her. They both stood silent, watching the canoe, now quite visible, and the man that was paddling it, with an intensity that both felt was insincere.

"I'm afraid," he said, with a forced laugh, "that I was a little too hasty in disposing of your goods and possessions. We could have kept afloat a little longer."

"It's all the same," she said, with a slight laugh; "it's jest as well we didn't look too comf'ble--to HIM."

He did not reply; he did not dare to look at her. Yes! It was the same coquette he had seen last night. His first impressions were correct.

The canoe came on rapidly now, propelled by a powerful arm. In a few moments it was alongside, and its owner leaped on the platform. It was the gentleman with his trousers tucked in his boots, the second voice in the gloomy discussion in the general store last evening. He nodded simply to the girl, and shook Hemmingway's hand warmly.

Then he made a hurried apology for his delay: it was so difficult to find "the lay" of the drifted cabin. He had struck out first for the most dangerous spot,--the "old clearing," on the right bank, with its stumps and new growths,--and it seemed he was right. And all the rest were safe, and "n.o.body was hurt."

"All the same, Tom," she said, when they were seated and paddling off again, "you don't know HOW NEAR YOU CAME TO LOSING ME." Then she raised her beautiful eyes and looked significantly, not at HIM, but at Hemmingway.

When the water was down at "Jules'" the next day, they found certain curious changes and some gold, and the secretary was able to make a favorable report. But he made none whatever of his impressions "when the water was up at 'Jules','" though he often wondered if they were strictly trustworthy.

THE BOOM IN THE "CALAVERAS CLARION"

The editorial sanctum of the "Calaveras Clarion" opened upon the "composing-room" of that paper on the one side, and gave apparently upon the rest of Calaveras County upon the other. For, situated on the very outskirts of the settlement and the summit of a very steep hill, the pines sloped away from the editorial windows to the long valley of the South Fork and--infinity. The little wooden building had invaded Nature without subduing it. It was filled night and day with the murmur of pines and their fragrance. Squirrels scampered over its roof when it was not preoccupied by woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, and a printer's devil had once seen a nest-building blue jay enter the composing window, flutter before one of the slanting type-cases with an air of deliberate selection, and then fly off with a vowel in its bill.

Amidst these sylvan surroundings the temporary editor of the "Clarion"

sat at his sanctum, reading the proofs of an editorial. As he was occupying that position during a six weeks' absence of the bona fide editor and proprietor, he was consequently reading the proof with some anxiety and responsibility. It had been suggested to him by certain citizens that the "Clarion" needed a firmer and more aggressive policy towards the Bill before the Legislature for the wagon road to the South Fork. Several a.s.sembly men had been "got at" by the rival settlement of Liberty Hill, and a scathing exposure and denunciation of such methods was necessary. The interests of their own towns.h.i.+p were also to be "whooped up." All this had been vigorously explained to him, and he had grasped the spirit, if not always the facts, of his informants. It is to be feared, therefore, that he was perusing his article more with reference to its vigor than his own convictions. And yet he was not so greatly absorbed as to be unmindful of the murmur of the pines without, his half-savage environment, and the lazy talk of his sole companions,--the foreman and printer in the adjoining room.

"Bet your life! I've always said that a man INSIDE a newspaper office could hold his own agin any outsider that wanted to play rough or tried to raid the office! Thar's the press, and thar's the printin' ink and roller! Folks talk a heap o' the power o' the Press!--I tell ye, ye don't half know it. Why, when old Kernel Fish was editin' the 'Sierra Banner,' one o' them bullies that he'd lampooned in the 'Banner' fought his way past the Kernel in the office, into the composin'-room, to wreck everythin' and 'pye' all the types. Spoffrel--ye don't remember Spoffrel?--little red-haired man?--was foreman. Spoffrel fended him off with the roller and got one good dab inter his eyes that blinded him, and then Spoffrel sorter skirmished him over to the press,--a plain lever just like ours,--whar the locked-up form of the inside was still a-lyin'! Then, quick as lightnin', Spoffrel tilts him over agin it, and HE throws out his hand and ketches hold o' the form to steady himself, when Spoffrel just runs the form and the hand under the press and down with the lever! And that held the feller fast as grim death! And when at last he begs off, and Spoff lets him loose, the hull o' that 'ere lampooning article he objected to was printed right onto the skin o' his hand! Fact, and it wouldn't come off, either."

"Gosh, but I'd like to hev seen it," said the printer. "There ain't any chance, I reckon, o' such a sight here. The boss don't take no risks lampoonin', and he" (the editor knew he was being indicated by some unseen gesture of the unseen workman) "ain't that style."

"Ye never kin tell," said the foreman didactically, "what might happen!

I've known editors to get into a fight jest for a little innercent bedevilin' o' the opposite party. Sometimes for a misprint. Old man Pritchard of the 'Argus' oncet had a hole blown through his arm because his proofreader had called Colonel Starbottle's speech an 'ignominious'