First Fam'lies of the Sierras Part 3

Then there was the mending of clothes! Mercy! Great big hairy men sitting up and out on the hill-side with their backs up against the pines, sitting there out of sight, half naked, st.i.tching, st.i.tching, st.i.tching, and swearing at every st.i.tch.

But the great and terrible event of Sunday, before the Widow came, was the was.h.i.+ng of clothes. Neither love nor money could induce any one save the uncertain little Chinaman to undertake this task for them, before the arrival of the Widow. Therefore when Sunday came these men went down in line, silently and solemnly, to the little mountain stream (allowed to rest and run clear and crystal-like on Sunday), and stood in a row along its banks, in top-boots, duck breeches, red s.h.i.+rts, and great broad hats. Then, at a word, each man laid aside his hat, undid the bosom of his s.h.i.+rt, straightened his arms, and drew his s.h.i.+rt up and over his head, and then fastened his belt, and squatted by the stream, and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed. Brawny-muscled men, nude above the waist, "naked and not ashamed," hairy-breasted and bearded, n.o.ble, kingly men--miners was.h.i.+ng their s.h.i.+rts in a mountain-stream of the Sierras. Thoughtful, earnest, splendid men! Boughs above them, pine-tops toying with the sun that here and there reached through like fingers pointing at them from the far, pure purple of the sky. And a stillness so profound, perfect, holy as a temple! Nature knows her Sabbath.

I would give more for a painting of this scene--that sun, that sky and wood, the water there, the brave, strong men, the thinkers and the workers there, nude and natural, silent and sincere, bending to their work--than for all the battle scenes that could be hung upon a palace wall. When the great man comes, the painter of the true and great, these men will be remembered.

It is said that Diogenes, when he saw a boy drinking water from his hand, scooped up from the stream, threw away his cup, the last utensil he had retained.

This s.h.i.+rt-was.h.i.+ng went on in some camps for years. These men were compelled to study simplicity, and did from necessity nearly what the cynic did from caprice. Where every man had to carry his effects on his back for days and days, through steep and rugged paths, an extra garment was not to be thought of. Men got used to the one-s.h.i.+rt system, and seemed to like it. Some stuck to it with a tenacity hardly respectful to the near approach of civilization.

Once upon a time, to coin a new beginning, a younger brother came out to visit one of these brave old miners, now gray and grizzled, but true to his old traditions and habits of life. He called on him on Sunday, entered his cabin, and found him covered in his blankets.

"What, my brother, are you sick?" said he, after the first salutations and embraces were exchanged.

"Sick! No, not sick."

"Then why are you in bed?"

"Oh! I washed my s.h.i.+rt to-day and got in bed to let it dry."

"Why! Haven't you got but the one s.h.i.+rt?"

"But the one s.h.i.+rt! No! Do you think a man wants a _thousand_ s.h.i.+rts?"

These men were mostly shy with their letters and their tales of love.

That was sacred ground, upon which no strange, rude feet could pa.s.s. No gold-hunter there, perhaps, but had his love--his one only love, without a chance or possibility of changing the object of his devotion, even if he had desired it. Men must love as well as women. It is the most natural and, consequently, the most proper thing on earth. Imagine how intensified and how tender a man's devotion would become under circ.u.mstances like these. The one image in his heart, the one hope--HER.

So much time to think, bending to the work in the running water under the trees, on the narrow trail beneath the shadows of the forest, by the camp and cabin-fire, her face and hers only, with no new face rising up, crossing his path, confronting him for days, for months, for years--see how holy a thing his love would grow to be. This, you observe, is a new man, a new manner of lover. Love, I say, is a requirement, a necessity. It is as necessary for a complete man to love as it is for him to breathe pure air. And it is as natural.

These men, being so far removed from any personal contact with the objects of their affections, and only now and then at long intervals receiving letters, all marked and remarked across the backs from the remailings from camp to camp, of course knew of no interruptions in the current of their devotion, and loved in a singularly earnest and sincere way. I doubt if there be anything like it in history.

When men go to war, they have the glory and excitement of battle to allure them, then the eyes of many women are upon them; they are not locked up like these men of the Sierras, with only their work and the one thing to think of. When they go to sea, sailors find new faces in every port; but these men, from the time they crossed the Missouri or left the Atlantic coast, had known no strange G.o.ds, hardly heard a woman's voice, till they returned.

But let us return to this one firm first woman, who had come into camp and taken at once upon her shoulders the task of was.h.i.+ng and mending the miners' clothes.

Men, even the most bloated and besotted, walked as straight as possible up the trail that led by the Widow's cabin, as they pa.s.sed that way at night; and kept back their jokes and war-whoops till far up the creek and out of her hearing in the pines.

A general improvement was noticed in all who dwelt in sight or hearing of her cabin. In fact, that portion of the creek became a sort of West End, and cabin rent went up in that vicinity. Men were made better, gentler. No doubt of that. If, then, one plain woman, rude herself by nature, can do so much, what is not left for gentle and cultured woman, who is or should be the true missionary of the West--the world?

A woman's weakness is her strength.

She was tall, gentle, genial too, and soon a favorite with her many, many patrons. She had a scar on the left side of her face, they said, reaching from the chin to the cheek; but with a woman's tact, she always kept her right side to her company, and the scar was not always noticed.

What had been her history, what troubles she had had, what tempests she had stood against, or what great storm had blown this solitary woman far into the great black sea of firs that belts about and lies in the shadow of the Sierras, like a lone white sea-dove you sometimes find far out in the China seas, no man knew; and, be it said to the credit of the Forks, no man cared to inquire.

This meeting together, this coming and going of thousands of men from all parts of the earth, where each man stood on the character he made there in a day, deadened curiosity, perhaps.

At all events, you can go, a stranger, to-day, any where along the Pacific, and, if your character indicates the gentleman, you are accepted as such, and no man cares to ask of your antecedents. A convenient thing, I grant, for many; but, nevertheless, a good thing, and a correct thing for any country.

The old Jewish law of every seven years forgiving each man his debt was an age in advance of our laws of to-day; and, if any means could be devised by which every seven years to forgive all men their offences, and let them begin life anew all together, an even start, it would be better still.

How the work did pour in upon this first woman in this wild Eden set with thorns and with thistles! There were not many clothes in the Forks that were worth was.h.i.+ng, but the few pieces that were presentable came almost every day to the door of the Widow to be taken in by the little hand that ever opened to the knock of the miners' knuckles on the door, and reached through the partly opened place, and drew back timidly and with scarce a word.

No man had yet entered her cabin. The wise little woman! If one man had been so favored, without good and sufficient reason, then jealousy, unless others had been allowed to enter also, would have made a funeral, and very soon, too, with that one favored man the central figure.

No man had entered that cabin; but a boy had, and oftentime too. In fact from the first little Billie Piper, whose cabin, as I have said, stood hard by, seemed to be as much at home and as much in place with the Widow as he was out of place with the men. The friends.h.i.+p here made him enemies elsewhere. Such is human nature.

CHAPTER V.

WASHEE--WASHEE.

Two days after the Widow had arrived, Washee-Washee, as the "boys" had named him, stood out on the steps of his cabin all the afternoon, looking up the Forks and down the Forks, and wondering what in the world was the reason the "boys" did not come creaking along and screeching their great gum boots together, with their extra s.h.i.+rt for wash wadded down in one of the s.p.a.cious legs.

Three days after the Widow had arrived she had absorbed all the business. Four days after she had arrived, she absorbed Washee-Washee.

And now it was the brown hand of little moon-eyed Washee-Washee that reached through the door, took the clothes, and handed them out again, or at least such portions as he chose to hand out, to the bearded giants standing there, patiently waiting at the door of the Widow's cabin.

The face of the Widow was now almost entirely invisible. It was as if there was no sun at the Forks, and all the sky was in a perpetual eclipse of clouds.

Soon there was trouble. Clothes began to disappear. One bearded sovereign, a gallant man, who refused to complain because there was a woman in the case, was observed to wear his coat b.u.t.toned very closely up to his chin; and that too in midday in Summer. This good man had at first lost only his extra s.h.i.+rt. He did not complain. He simply went to bed on Sunday, sent his s.h.i.+rt early to the wash, expecting to rise in the afternoon, "dress," and go to town. A week went by. The man could not stay in bed till the day of judgment, so he rose up, b.u.t.toned up to the throat, and went down to buy another supply.

Other circ.u.mstances, not dissimilar in result, began to be talked of quietly; and men began to question whether or not after all the camp had been greatly the gainer by this new element in its population.

One afternoon there was a commotion at the door of the Widow's cabin.

Sandy was in trouble with Washee-Washee. The moon-eyed little man tried to get back into the house, but the great big giant had been too long a patient and uncomplaining sufferer to let him escape now, and he reached for his queue, and drew him forth as a showman does a black snake from a cage.

The Widow saw the great hairy face of this grizzly giant, and retreated far back into the cabin. She was certain she was terribly afraid of this great big awkward half-clad exasperated man, and therefore, with a woman's consistency, she came to the door, and in a voice softer than running water to Sandy's ears, asked what could be the matter?

Sandy was taken by surprise, and could not say a word. He only rolled his great head from one shoulder to the other, got his hands lashed up somehow in his leather belt, and stood there sadly embarra.s.sed.

But who ever saw an embarra.s.sed Chinaman? The innocent little fellow, turning his soft brown almond eyes up to the Widow, told her, as poor Sandy stared on straight down the hill, that this dreadful "Amelikan"

wanted him to leave her, and to go home with him, to be his wife.

When Sandy heard this last he disappeared, crestfallen and utterly crushed. He went home; but not to rest. He told Limber Tim all about what had happened. How he had stood it all in silence, till it came to the last s.h.i.+rt. How the Chinaman had lied, and how he was now certain that it was this same little celestial who had been robbing him. Limber Tim raised himself on his elbow where he lay in his bunk, and looking at Sandy, struck out emphatically with his hand, and cried--

"Lay fur him!"

Sandy drew on his great gum boots again. Limber Tim rose up, and then the two men kept creaking, and screeching and whetting their great boots together, as they went, without speaking, and in single file down the hill towards town.

There was an expression of ineffable peace and tranquility on the face of Washee-Washee that twilight, as he wended his way from the Widow's cabin to his own. His day's work was done; and the little man's face looked the soul of repose. Possibly he was saying with the great good poet, whose lines you hear at evening time, on the lips of nearly every English artisan--

"Something attempted, something done, Has earn'd a night's repose."

Washee-Washee looked strangely fat for a Chinaman, as he peacefully toddled down the trail, still wearing, as he neared his cabin, that look of calm delight and perfect innocence, such only as the pure in heart are supposed to wear. His hands were drawn up and folded calmly across his obtruding stomach, as if he feared he might possibly burst open, and wanted to be ready to hold himself together.

In the great-little republic there, where all had begun an even and equal race in the battle of life, where all had begun as beggars, this tawny little man from the far-off Flowery Kingdom was alone; he was the only representative of his innumerable millions in all that camp. And he did seem so fat, so perfectly full of satisfaction. Perhaps he smiled to think how fat he was, and, too, how he had flourished in the little democracy.