A Summer in a Canyon Part 24

'Prithee, Polly Oliver, why bide ye so still?

Pretty Polly Oliver, we fear you are ill.

I'm singing 'neath thy window, when night dews are chill, For, pretty Polly Oliver, we hear you are ill.'

She was about to despatch Master Jack to his tent with a round scolding, when the last words of the song were frozen on his lips by the sound of a smothered sob, in place of the saucy retort he hoped to provoke. The unexpected sob frightened him more than any fusilade of hot words, and he stole away in the darkness more crestfallen than he had been for many a year.

Mrs. Wins.h.i.+p, more troubled than ever, pulled apart the canvas curtains, and stood in the opening, silently. The sight of the forlorn little figure, huddled together on the straw bed, touched her heart, and, when Polly started up with an eloquent cry and flew into her extended arms, she granted willing forgiveness, and the history of the afternoon was sobbed out upon her motherly shoulder.

The next morning Mrs. Wins.h.i.+p announced that Polly was better, sent breakfast to her tent, and by skilful generals.h.i.+p drove everybody away from the camp but Elsie, who brought Polly to the sitting-room, made her comfortable on the lounge, and, administering much good advice to Margery and Bell concerning topics to be avoided, admitted them one by one into her presence, so that she gradually regained her self-control. And at the dinner-table a very pale Polly was present again, with such a white face and heavy eyes that no one could doubt there had been a headache, while two people, at least, knew that there had been a heartache as well. The next day's mail carried the following letter to Laura Burton:

CAMP CHAPARRAL, August 16, 188-.

My dear Laura,--As I told you when you were leaving, I cannot well say how sorry I am that anything should have occurred to mar your pleasant remembrance of your stay with us. That your dear mother's daughter should have been treated with discourtesy while she was my guest was very disagreeable to me; but I have learned that you were yourself somewhat to blame in the affair, and therefore you should have borne the harsh treatment you received with considerable patience, and perhaps have kept it quite to yourself. ('That little cat told her, after all,' said Laura, when she read this. 'I didn't think she was that kind.') Polly would never have confessed the cause of the quarrel, because she knew nothing could justify her language; but Elsie was lying in the hammock behind the tent and overheard the remark which so roused Polly's anger. You were not aware, of course, how sore a spot you touched upon, or you could never have spoken as you did, though I well know that you were both too angry to reflect. Polly is a peculiarly proud and high-spirited girl--proud, I confess, to a fault; but she comes, on her mother's side, from a long line of people who have had much to be proud of in the way of unblemished honesty, n.o.bility, fine attainments, and splendid achievements. Of her father's honourable services to his country, and his sad and untimely death, you may have heard; but you may not know that Mrs. Oliver's misfortunes have been very many and very bitter, and that the only possibility of supporting and educating Polly lies at present in her taking boarders, for her health will not admit just now of her living anywhere save in Southern California. I fail to see why this is not thoroughly praiseworthy and respectable; but if you do not consider it quite an elegant occupation, I can only say that Mrs. Oliver presides over the table at which her 'boarders' sit with a high-bred dignity and grace of manner that the highest lady in the land might imitate; and that, when health and circ.u.mstances permit her to diminish the distance between herself and the great world, she and her daughter Polly, by reason of their birth and their culture, will find doors swinging wide to admit them where you and I would find it difficult to enter.

Polly apologises sincerely for her rudeness, and will write you to that effect, as of course she does not know of this letter.

Sincerely your friend,

TRUTH WINs.h.i.+P.

CHAPTER IX: ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE

'The time before the fire they sat, And shortened the delay by pleasing chat.'

The August days had slipped away one after another, and September was at hand. There was no perceptible change of weather to mark the advent of the new month. The hills were a little browner, the dust a little deeper, the fleas a little nimbler, and the water in the brook a trifle lower, but otherwise Dame Nature did not concern herself with the change of seasons, inasmuch as she had no old dresses to get rid of, and no new ones to put on for a long time yet; indeed, she is never very fas.h.i.+onable in this locality, and wears very much the same garments throughout the year.

Elsie seemed almost as strong as any of the other girls now, and could enter with zest into all their amus.e.m.e.nts. The appet.i.te of a young bear, the sound, dreamless sleep of a baby, and the constant breathing in of the pure, life-giving air had made her a new creature. Mrs. Howard and Jack felt, day by day, that a burden of dread was being lifted from their hearts; and Mrs. Howard especially felt that she loved every rock and tree in the canyon.

It was a charming morning, and Polly was seated at the dining-room table, deep in the preparation of a lesson in reading and p.r.o.nunciation for Hop Yet. Her forehead was creased with many wrinkles of thought, and she bit the end of her lead-pencil as if she were engaged in solving some difficult problem; but, if that were so, why did the dimples chase each other in and out of her cheeks in such a suspicious fas.h.i.+on? She was a very gentle, a very sedate Polly, these latter days, and not only astonished her friends, but surprised herself, by her good behaviour, her elegant reserve of manner, her patience with Jack, and her abject devotion to d.i.c.ky.

'I'm afraid it won't last,' she sighed to herself occasionally. 'I'm almost too good. That's always the way with me--I must either be so bad that everybody is discouraged, or else so good that I frighten them. Now I catch Bell and Elsie exchanging glances every day, as much as to say, "Poor Polly, she will never hold out at this rate; do you notice that nothing ruffles her--that she is simply angelic?" As if I couldn't be angelic for a fortnight! Why I have often done it for four weeks at a stretch!'

Margery was in the habit of giving Hop Yet an English lesson every other day, as he had been very loath to leave his evening school in Santa Barbara and bury himself in a canyon, away from all educational influences; but she had deserted her post for once and gone to ride with Elsie, so that Polly had taken her place and was evolving an exercise that Hop Yet would remember to the latest day of his life.

It looked simple enough:-

1. The gra.s.s is dry.

2. The fruit is ripe.

3: The chaparral is green.

4. The new road is all right.

5. The bay-'rum' tree is fresh and pretty.

But as no Chinaman can p.r.o.nounce the letter 'r,' it was laboriously rendered thus, when the unhappy time of the lesson came:

1. The-gla.s.s-is-dly.

2. The-fluit-is-lipe.

3. The-chap-lal-is-gleen.

4. The-new-load-is-all-light-ee.

5. The bay-lum-tlee-is-flesh-and-plitty.

Finally, when she attempted to introduce the sentence, 'Around the rough and rugged rock the ragged rascal ran,' Hop Yet rose hurriedly, remarking, 'All lightee; I go no more school jus' now. I lun get lunchee.'

Bell came running down the path just then, and linking her arm in Polly's said, 'Papa has the nicest plan. You know the boys are so disappointed that Colonel Jackson didn't ask them over to that rodeo at his cattle ranch--though a summer rodeo is only to sort out fat cattle to sell, and it is not very exciting; but papa promised to tell them all about the old-fas.h.i.+oned kind some night, and he has just remembered that to-morrow is Admission Day, September 9, so he proposes a real celebration round the camp-fire to amuse Elsie. She doesn't know anything about California even as it is now, and none of us know what it was in the old days. Don't you think it will be fun?'

'Perfectly splendid!'

'And papa wants us each to contribute something.'

'A picnic!--but I don't know anything.'

'That's just what I'm coming to. I have such a bright idea. He said that we might look in any of his books, but Geoff and Jack are at them already, and I'd like a surprise. Now Juan Capistrano, an old vaquero of Colonel Jackson's, is over here. He is a wonderful rider; papa says that he could ride on a comet, if he could get a chance to mount. It was he who told the boys that the rodeo was over. Now I propose that we go and interview Pancho and Juan, and get them to tell us some old California stories. They are both as stupid as they can be, but they must have had some adventures, I suppose, somewhere, sometime. I'll translate and write the things down, for my part, and you and Margery can tell them.'

'Lovely! Oh, if we can only get an exciting grizzly story, so that

Every one's blood upon end it will stand, And the hair run cold in their veins!

And was Dr. Paul out here when California was admitted into the Union--1850, wasn't it?'

'Of course; why, my child, he was one of the delegates called by General Riley, the military governor, to meet in convention at Monterey and make a State const.i.tution. That was September, too--the first day of September 1849. He went back to the East some time afterwards, and stayed ten or fifteen years; but he was a real pioneer and "forty-niner" all the same.

The next night, September 9th, was so cool that the camp-fire was more than ordinarily delightful; accordingly they piled on more wood than usual, and prepared for a grand blaze. It was always built directly in front of the sitting-room tent, so that Mrs. Howard and Mrs. Wins.h.i.+p could sit there if they liked; but the young people preferred to lie lazily on their cus.h.i.+ons and saddles under the oak- tree, a little distance from the blaze. The clear, red firelight danced and flickered, and the sparks rose into the sombre darkness fantastically, while the ruddy glow made the great oak an enchanted palace, into whose hollow dome they never tired of gazing. When the light streamed highest, the bronze green of the foliage was turned into crimson, and, as it died now and then, the stars winked brightly through the thousand tiny windows formed by the interlacing branches.

'Well,' said the doctor, bringing his Chinese lounging-chair into the circle, and lighting his pipe so as to be thoroughly happy and comfortable, 'will you banish distinctions of age and allow me to sit among you this evening?'

'Certainly,' Margery said; 'that's the very point of the celebration.

This is Admission Day, you know, and why shouldn't we admit you?'

'True; and having put myself into a holiday humour by dining off Pancho's dish of guisado (I suppose to-night of all nights we must call beef and onion stew by its local name), I will proceed to business, and we will talk about California. By the way, I shall only conduct the exercises, for I feel rather embarra.s.sed by the fact that I've never killed, or been killed by, a bear, never been bitten by a tarantula, poisoned by a rattlesnake, a.s.saulted by a stage- robber, nor anything of that sort. You have all read my story of crossing the plains. I even did that in a comparatively easy and unheroic fas.h.i.+on. I only wish, my dear girls and boys, that we had with us some one of the brave and energetic men and women who made that terrible journey at the risk of their lives. The history of the California Crusaders, the thirty thousand or more emigrants who crossed the plains in '48, more than equals the great military expeditions of the Middle Ages, in magnitude, peril, and adventure.

Some went by way of Santa Fe and along the hills of the Gila; others, starting from Red River, traversed the Great Stake Desert and went from El Paso del Norte to Sonora; others went through Mexico, and, after spending over a hundred days at sea, ran into San Diego and gave up their vessels; others landed exhausted with their seven months' pa.s.sage round the Horn; and some reached the spot on foot after walking the whole length of the California peninsula.'

'What privations they must have suffered!' said Mrs. Howard. 'I never quite realised it.'

'Why, the amount of suffering that was endured in those mountain pa.s.ses and deserts can never be told in words. Those who went by the Great Desert west of the Colorado found a stretch of burning salt plains, of s.h.i.+fting hills of sand, with bones of animals and men scattered along the trails; of terrible and ghastly odours rising in the hot air from the bodies of hundreds of mules, and human creatures too, that lay half-buried in the glaring white sand. A terrible journey indeed; but if any State in the Union could be fair enough, fertile enough, and rich enough to repay such a lavish expenditure of energy and suffering, California certainly was and is the one. Now who can tell us something of the name "California"? You, Geoffrey?'

'Geoffrey has crammed!' exclaimed Bell, maliciously. 'I believe he's been reading up all day and told papa what question to ask him!'

'I'll pa.s.s it on to you if you like,' laughed Geoffrey.

'No--you'd never get another that you could answer! Go on!'

'In 1534, one Hernando de Grijalva was sent by Hernando Cortez to discover something or other, and it was probably he who then saw the peninsula of California; but a quarter of a century before this a romance called Esplandian had appeared in Spain, narrating the adventures of an Amazonian queen who brought allies from "the right hand of the Indies" to a.s.sist the infidels in their attack upon Constantinople--by the way I forgot to say that she was a pagan.

This queen of the Amazons was called Calafia, and her kingdom, rich in gold and precious stones, was named California. The writer of the romance derived this name, perhaps, from Calif, a successor of Mohammed. He says: "Know that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island named California, very close to the Terrestial Paradise, and it was peopled by black women without any man among them, for they lived in the fas.h.i.+on of the Amazonia. They were of strong and hardy bodies, of ardent courage, and of great force. Their island was the strongest in all the world, with its steep cliffs and rocky sh.o.r.e. Their arms were all of gold, and so was the harness of the wild beasts which they tamed and rode. For in the whole island there was no metal but gold. They lived in caves wrought out of the rocks with much labour, and they had many s.h.i.+ps with which they sailed out to other countries to obtain booty." Cortez and Grijalva believed that they were near the coast of Asia, for they had no conception of the size of the world nor of the vastness of the Pacific Ocean; and as the newly-discovered land corresponded with the country described in the romance, they named the peninsula California.'