The Twins of Suffering Creek Part 4

At noon the camp began to rouse. The heavy eyes, the languid stretch, the unmeaning contemplation of the noontide sunlight, the slow struggles of a somnolent brain. These things were suggested in the gradual stirring of the place to a ponderous activity. The heavy movement of weary diggers as they lounged into camp for their dinner had no suggestion of the greedy pa.s.sion which possessed them. They had no lightness. Whatever the l.u.s.t for gold that consumed them, all their methods were characterized by a dogged endeavor which took from them every particle of that nervous activity which belongs to the finely tempered business man.

The camp was a single row of egregious dwellings, squat, uncouth, stretching away on either side of the veranda-fronted store and "gambling h.e.l.l" which formed a sort of center-piece around which revolved the whole life of the village. It was a poor, mean place, shapeless, evil-smelling in that pure mountain air. It was a mere shelter, a rough perch for the human carrion l.u.s.ting for the orgy of gold which the time-worn carca.s.s of earth should yield. What had these people to do with comfort or refinement? What had they to do with those things calculated to raise the human mind to a higher spiritual plane? Nothing. All that might come later, when, their desires satisfied, the weary body sick and aching, sends fearful thoughts ahead towards the drab sunset awaiting them. For the moment the full tide of youth is still running strong. Sickness and death have no terrors. The fine strength of powerful bodies will not allow the mind to focus such things.

Out of the rugged hills backing the camp the gold-seekers struggle to their resting-place. Here, one man comes clambering over the rough bowlder-strewn path at the base of a forest-clad hill. Here, an atom of humanity emerges from the depths of a vast woodland that dwarfs all but the towering hills. Another toils up a steep hillside from the sluggish creek. Another slouches along a vague, unmade trail. Yet another scrambles his way through a low, dense-growing scrub which lines the sides of a vast ravine, the favored locality of the gold-seeker.

So they come, one by one, from every direction radiating about the building, which is Minky's store. Their faces are hard. Their skin is tanned to a leathery hue, and is of a texture akin to hide. They are silent, thoughtful men, too. But their silence is of the vast world in which they delve, and their thought is the thought of men absorbed in their quest. No, there is no lightness, even in their happiest moments. To be light, an intelligent swiftness of brain is needed. And these derelicts have little of such. Although, when Minky's spirit has circulated its poison through their veins, they are sometimes apt to a.s.sume a burlesque of it.

Now the camp is wide awake. But it is only the wakefulness of the mother who is roused by the hungry crying of her infant. It will slumber again when appet.i.tes have been duly appeased.

The milk of human kindness is soured by the intense summer heat. The men are "grouchy." They jostle harshly as they push up to Minky's counter for the "appetizers" they do not need. Their greetings are few, and mostly confined to the abrupt demand, "Any luck?" Then, their noon-day drink gulped down, they slouch off into the long, frowsy dining-room at the back of the store, and coa.r.s.ely devour the rough fare provided by the buxom Birdie Mason, who is at once the kindliest and worst caterer imaginable.

This good-natured soul's position was not as enviable as one might reasonably have supposed. The only woman in a camp of men, any one of whom might reasonably strike a fortune in five minutes. The situation suggests possibilities. But, alas, Birdie was just a woman, and, in consequence, from a worldly point of view, her drawbacks were many.

She was attractive--a drawback. She was given to a natural desire to stand first with all men--another drawback. She was eminently sentimental--a still greater drawback. But greatest of all she was a sort of public servant in her position as caterer, and, as such, of less than no account from the moment the "beast" had been satisfied.

She had her moments, moments when the rising good-nature of her customers flattered her, when she was fussed over, and petted, as men are ever ready to treat an attractive member of the opposite s.e.x. But these things led nowhither, from a point of view of worldly advantage, and, being just a woman, warm-hearted, uncalculating and profoundly illogical, she failed to realize the pitfalls that lay before her, the end which, all unsuspecting, she was steadily forging towards.

Scipio, like the rest, came into camp for his dinner. His way lay along the bank of the creek. It was cooler here, and, until he neared his home, there were no hills up which to drag his weary limbs. He had had, as usual, an utterly unprofitable morning amidst the greasy ooze of his claim. Yet the glitter of the mica-studded quartz on the hillside, the bright-green and red-brown shading of the milky-white stone still dazzled his mental sight. There was no wavering in his belief. These toilsome days were merely the necessary probation for the culminating achievement. He a.s.sured himself that gold lay hidden there. And it was only waiting for the lucky strike of his pick. He would find it. It was just a matter of keeping on.

In his simple mind he saw wonderful visions of all that final discovery. He dreamt of the day when he should be able to install his beautiful Jessie in one of those up-town palaces in New York; when an army of servants should antic.i.p.ate her every desire; when the twins should be launched upon the finest academies the country possessed, to gorge their young minds to the full with all that which the minds of the children of earth's most fortunate must be stored. He saw his Jessie clad in gowns which displayed and enhanced all those beauties with which his devoted mind endowed her. She should not only be his queen, but the queen of a social world, which, to his mind, had no rival. And the happiness of such dreams was beyond compare. His labor became the work of a love which stimulated his puny muscles to a pitch which carried him beyond the feeling of any weariness. For himself he wanted nothing. For Jessie and the twins the world was not great enough as a possession.

And was she not worth it? Were they not worth it? Look at her, so splendid! How she bore with him and all his petty, annoying ways! Her disposition was not of this earth, he told himself. Would any other woman put up with his ill-humors, his shortcomings? He realized how very trying he must be to any bright, clever woman. He was not clever, and he knew it, and it made him pity Jessie for the lot he had brought her to.

And the twins. Vada was the image of her mother. The big, round, brown eyes, the soft, childish mouth, the waving brown hair. And Jamie. He had her eyes, too, and her nose, and her beautiful coloring. What a mercy of Providence neither of them resembled him. But, then, how could they, with such a mother? How it delighted him to think that he was working for them, for her. A thrill of delight swept over him, and added a spring to his jaded step. What mattered anything else in the world. He was to give them all that which the world counted as good. He, alone.

But it was not yet. For a moment a shadow crossed his radiant face as he toiled up the hill to his hut. It was gone in a moment, however.

How could it stay there with his thought gilded with such high hopes?

It was not yet, but it would come--must come. His purpose was invincible. He must conquer and wrench this wealth which he demanded from the bosom of the hard old earth. And then--and then--

"h.e.l.lo, kiddies," he cried cheerily, as his head rose above the hilltop and his hut and the two children, playing outside it, came into his view.

"Pop-pa!" shrieked Vada, dropping a paper full of loose dirt and stones upon her sprawling brother's back, in her haste to reach her diminutive parent.

"Uh!" grunted Jamie, scrambling to his feet and tottering heavily in the same direction.

There was a curious difference in the size and growth of these twins.

Probably it utterly escaped the adoring eyes of their father. He only saw the reflected glory of their mother in them. Their resemblance to her was all that really mattered to him, but, as a matter of fact, this resemblance lay chiefly in Vada. She was like her mother in an extraordinary degree. She was well-grown, strong, and quite in advance of her years, in her speech and brightness of intellect. Little Jamie, while he possessed much of his mother in his face, in body was under-sized and weakly, and his mind and speech, backward of development, smacked of his father. He was absolutely dominated by his sister, and followed her lead in everything with adoring rapture.

Vada reached her father and scrambled agilely up into his work-soiled arms. She impulsively hugged his yellow head to her cheeks with both her arms, so that when Jamie came up he had to content himself by similarly hugging the little man's left knee, and kissing the mud-stains on his trousers into liquid patches.

But Scipio was impartial. He sat Vada down and picked her brother up.

Then, taking the former's hand in his h.o.r.n.y clasp, bore the boy towards the house.

"You found any gold?" inquired Vada, repeating a question she had so often heard her mother put.

"'Es any--dold?" echoed Jamie, from his height above Scipio's head.

"No, kiddies," the man replied, with a slight sigh.

"Oh," said Vada. But his answer had little significance for her.

"Where's your momma?" inquired Scipio, after a pause.

"Momma do hoss-ridin'," replied Jamie, forestalling his sister for once.

"Yes," added Vada. "She gone ridin'. An' they'll come an' take us wher' ther's heaps an' heaps o' 'piders, an'--an' bugs an' things. He said so--sure."

"He? Who?"

They had reached the hut and Scipio set Jamie on the ground as he put his question.

"The dark man," said Vada readily, but wrinkling her forehead struggling for the name.

"Uh!" agreed Jamie. "Mister Dames."

Just for a moment a sharp question lit Scipio's pale eyes. But the little ones had no understanding of it. And the next moment, as their father pa.s.sed in through the doorway, they turned to the sand and stone castle they had been laboriously and futilely attempting to mold into some shape.

"Now you bring up more stones," cried Vada authoritatively. "Run along, dear," she added patronizingly, as the boy stood with his small hands on his hips, staring vacantly after his father.

Scipio gazed stupidly about the living-room. The slop-stained table was empty. The cookstove fire was out. And, just for a second, the thought flashed through his mind--had he returned too early for his dinner? No, he knew he had not. It was dinner-time all right. His appet.i.te told him that.

For the moment he had forgotten what the children had told him. His simple nature was not easily open to suspicion, therefore, like all people of slow brain, this startling break in the routine of his daily life simply set him wondering. He moved round the room, and, without being aware of his purpose, lifted the curtain of turkey red, which served as a door to the rough larder, and peered in. Then, as he let the curtain fall again, something stirred within him. He turned towards the inner room, and his mild voice called--

"Jess."

His answer was a hollow echo that somehow jarred his nerves. But he called again--

"Jess."

Again came the echo. Then Vada's small face appeared round the door-casing.

"Mom-ma gone hoss-ridin'," she reminded him.

For an instant Scipio's face flushed. Then it paled icily under its tan. His brain was struggling to grasp something which seemed to be slowly enveloping him, but which his honest heart would not let him believe. He stared stupidly at Vada's dirty face. Then, as the child withdrew to her play, he suddenly crossed the room to the curtained bedroom doorway. He pa.s.sed through, and the flimsy covering fell to behind him.

For a s.p.a.ce the music of childish voices was the only sound to break the stillness. The hum of buzzing insects seemed to intensify the summer heat. For minutes no movement came from the bedroom. It was like the dread silence before a storm.

A strange sound came at last. It was something between a moan and the pained cry of some mild-spirited animal stricken to death. It had no human semblance, and yet--it came from behind the dingy print curtain over the bedroom doorway.

A moment later the curtain stirred and the ghastly face of Scipio suddenly appeared. He moved out into the living-room and almost fell into the Windsor chair which had last been occupied by his wife. A sheet of notepaper was in his shaking hand, and his pale eyes were staring vacantly at it. He was not reading. He had read. And that which he had read had left him dazed and scarcely comprehending. He sat thus for many minutes. And not once did he stir a muscle, or lift his eyes from their fixed contemplation.

A light breeze set the larder curtain fluttering. Scipio started. He stared round apprehensively. Then, as though drawn by a magnet, his eyes came back to the letter in his hand, and once more fixed themselves upon the bold handwriting. But this time there was intelligence in his gaze. There was intelligence, fear, despair, horror; every painful emotion was struggling for uppermost place in mind and heart. He read again carefully, slowly, as though trying to discover some loophole from the horror of what was written there. The note was short--so short--there was not one spark of hope in it for the man who was reading it, not one expression of feeling other than selfishness. It was the death-blow to all his dreams, all his desire.

"I've gone away. I shall never come back. I can't stand this life here any longer. Don't try to find me, for it's no use. Maybe what I'm doing is wicked, but I'm glad I'm doing it. It's not your fault--it's just me. I haven't your courage, I haven't any courage at all. I just can't face the life we're living. I'd have gone before when he first asked me but for my babies, but I just couldn't part with them. Zip, I want to take them with me now, but I don't know what Jim's arrangements are going to be. I must have them. I can't live without them. And if they don't go with us now you'll let them come to me after, won't you? Oh, Zip, I know I'm a wicked woman, but I feel I must go. You won't keep them from me?

Let me have them. I love them so bad. I do. I do. Good-by forever.

"JESSIE."

Mechanically Scipio folded the paper again and sat grasping it tightly in one clenched hand. His eyes were raised and gazing through the doorway at the golden sunlight beyond. His lips were parted, and there was a strange dropping of his lower jaw. The tanning of his russet face looked like a layer of dirt upon a super-whited skin. He scarcely seemed to breathe, so still he sat. As yet his despair was so terrible that his mind and heart were numbed to a sort of stupefaction, deadening the horror of his pain.