Miss Moccasins

Front matter

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To A. R M.

II The Returning Californian

The night express rushing over the foothills to make up an hour lost in crossing the range, suddenly came to a halt with a jar and a quiver, causing timid folk enjoying their breakfast during the " last call for the dining car! " to give vent to their fears in the various ways used by people in a mixed assembly threatened with annihilation.

"Freight wreck ahead! parted rails! no one hurt!" was the reassuring cry of the attaches. " Our train will be delayed until road is cleared," they added later. " How long? — oh, six or eight hours."

There were tourists aboard of the catapult type, — the sort to go in a canter through the Grand Canon. And to lose six hours from their "personally conducted" sight-seeing! There was an outcry, a hunt for the conductor, and a volley of protests when they found him.

" No help for it, ladies — very sorry of course — glad to do anything we can to make you comfortable. Telegrams? Yes, Tyler Junction is only a mile down the track. No, — no hotel, only a junction of the south branch to the mines and the stage route from Timber Line."

Then he turned to the one lady in the car who was traveling alone, who had listened but made no comments, and who had been up and dressed at dawn to watch the sun lighting the Sierras.

"Can I telegraph any message for you?" he inquired. " Your friends may be anxious "

" No, I think not," said the girl, smiling a little. " You are very kind, but no one will be hysterical over my delay. I am a surprise party." Then, glancing quizzically at the exclaiming, protesting tourists — " Haven't you trouble enough without looking for more? " she asked.

A humorous twinkle shone in the conductor's eyes as he met her frank glance. The comradery of the American spirit was abroad in the land, lightening his day's work !

"Will it be an eight hours' wait?" she continued. He glanced at the others before replying.

" More than that. There is a landslide on the south branch, and there has been a collision. The wrecker for this division is over there. The late rains made the trouble. At the best, we shall have to wait most of the day. So, if there is anything I can do for you "

But there was not. She returned to her enjoyment of the picture, spread in faintest tints of early spring to the far south. Palest of greens in the distant ranges, olive tints close against the black of the pines, and, high to the north, misty peaks, where the snow lay like a white cloud against the clear sky. She was drinking it in with parted lips and eager eyes, as if she had entered some longed-for land of dreams.

" If only there was a hotel at that junction! " lamented one of the " personally conducted " — " then we might see something! "

' Yes, it would be very jolly if we could get a carriage and look around," conceded another. ' This is perfectly horrid ! " Then she turned to the girl with a conciliating smile — a sort of appeal to a partner in distress. " Can you imagine anything worse? "

" Several things," retorted the girl. " You might have made the trip by way of Panama, you know, and been tied on donkeys' backs to cross the ranges, like they used to do before the days of railroads. You might have eaten tortillas and frigolles instead of your dining-car breakfast, and, altogether, you might have had a charming time, — if you had lived to tell of it ! "

The woman addressed laughed with her companions, yet looked dubious.

' Did they actually tie women — ladies — on donkeys? "

'They actually did; and if a donkey slipped the trail, it was worse for the rider than a freight car blocking the road. My father crossed in the '50*8 that way."

"Oh — are you a — a native?" queried the other. " I rather fancied you of the East."

" What have I done to deserve that? "

"Done — deserve?" repeated the woman, mildly puzzled at the little ironic smile. u Oh, — I don't know exactly. Or of the South? When I first heard you speak to the porter, I thought you suggested the South, — your voice, you know !"

" If I am of a South, it is this South," said the girl, with a sweeping gesture to the lands spread to the far hills, " the most beautiful South in all the world." She laughed and blushed a little at her over-enthusiasm. " Of course," she conceded, " it's a bore for you to have to wait, but I would cheerfully camp at the junction for a week, or walk barefoot to the sea, just to feel California soil under my feet again ! "

" How strange," decided the woman, contemplating the enthusiast. " Now, I can't fancy myself feeling like that about Pennsylvania or New Hampshire, — can any of you? "

None of them could, and after a few equally congenial exchanges of remarks, the tourists filed out of the car to view the overturned freight, and that task accomplished, they sauntered idly to the junction.

The Californian was ahead of them and was already making .some purchases of Indian bead work from the agent, who had quite a little museum of baskets and trinkets in his office. He had spread out the finest for her admiration and received a good day's wages on the profit from the beaded belt, a pair of moccasins, and a string of really fine turquoise.

" I should like to put them on this minute! " she confided to the conductor, who was an amused witness to the bargaining. " My foot is on my native heath, and my name's McGregor. I want to celebrate — and I simply can't do much in that line with the complaints of those tourists in my ears, — they spoil the music for me. I hear you have a lot of colonists coming in now; — is that a fair type? "

" Pretty much," was the amused reply.

The girl shrugged her fine shoulders and walked over to a map of the region that hung between the windows. The moccasins and beads were in her hand and the belt she had thrown over her shoulder. Many eyes turned to watch her. She was by far the most distinctive woman of the train — or rather girl, for she looked scarcely eighteen.

Her plain corduroy of brown and the soft hat to match, had nothing of the masculine touch, so often suggested by such material. The jacket covered a waist of creamy silk, with a soft collar turned down over the brown tie. A tiny pin — an anchor set in rubies — held the knot of silk and was the only touch of color in her costume.

Her hair had escaped from the braids and curled loosely around her neck and ears. Her eyes were gray and chameleon-like in their swift changes, almost blue-green in repose, almost black when her enthusiasm enlarged the pupils until they fairly filled the iris; but changeful as they were in color, they were very keen in their regard, detecting most things within their radius. And the beautifully curved mouth told many delightful things without speech.

" Eight hours," she mused, looking at the map; u perhaps more ! That means reaching Olivette at dark, an eight or ten-mile carriage drive after that, and no one to meet me ! I hope Phil's wife is not a prim housekeeper, or one of those creatures of ironclad rules. One never can tell what a woman is by the letters she writes! But if she is like that, she will begin by hating me for swooping down on them, unannounced, and at bed-time! Hence, Anchor Darrett, the necessity of prompt and sensible decision : Telegram or no telegram ? "

A little woman with faded blue eyes, and a green veil swathed around her black hat, who was moving away from the map, halted as she noticed the girl's examination of the crossed and re-crossed maze of lines and dots. " Excuse me, please," she ventured after a brief hesitation, " but are you going on the stage? "

" Stage? No. I'm wreck-bound and I'm waiting on this train."

" Oh, I didn't know. I saw you looking at that part of the country," she continued, mildly apologetic. " I was hoping there would be some lady on the stage besides myself. I'm going to Hermosa Dam."

" Hermosa, Hermosa Dam?" echoed the girl. " Why, that is "

" It is just about here," said the other, using her umbrella for a pointer. " I am too short-sighted to be sure, and that map is hung for tall folks; but I think it is about there."

" So it is," assented the girl, after a closer examination, " but — but I never supposed it could be reached by stage from here."

" They say it was the only way to reach it before the railroad sent a branch through here, and even now the railroad has to make a big circle to catch the valley freight, while the stage road goes straight across."

" You are sure it goes to Hermosa, the place near Olivette station? " queried the girl, delighted, yet doubtful.

" Yes, that's the place. But the dam, the new dam, is full ten miles from the railroad. There is some talk about a branch road striking across from here, but it won't be yet awhile. There is quite a settlement at the new dam now, extra men to finish the work before the snow comes down; but I don't know "

"Snow here?"

" Melted. From the mountains."

"Oh!" Then, after a speculative pause, — " What time does the stage reach the settlement? "

" About dark, when it's on time. I've been waiting here over two hours. They say it is late on account of the rains; they make the roads heavy."

" But if the train was on time, could you not go more quickly by way of Olivette? "

" Carriage hire from Olivette to the dam costs more than the stage rate from here," stated the little woman promptly. ' You see it saves the entire car fare, if a person has time for the stage and don't object to the dusty ride."

" Dusty? There is not a speck of dust to-day; the rains have settled that and it is glorious ! Time for the stage? Wouldn't you reach there just as soon to-day as by waiting for the train? "

"Oh, yes; sooner to-day, and cheaper, too."

' Then there will be one woman besides yourself on that stage," said the girl, with sudden decision. "What! — stay here among those croakers for a whole day, when I can be riding across the hills? Not any! Think of riding across those hills, as Dad used to do ! " she added, under her breath, with a sigh of utter delight. " Oh" — turning to the amazed little woman, " I am so glad I met you! so glad you told mel I would not have missed going that way for anything!"

Her informant evidently did not see cause for so much enthusiasm; — a parlor-car journey was a thing greatly to be desired in her eyes.

" I ain't used to stage travel myself, — we called them mostly hacks back East, where I came from," she replied. " And I can't honestly say that I prefer a stage to a railroad, but "

" But," said the girl impulsively, " you have not been hungering for the sight of a California hill for years and years, as I have ! You have not dreamed, waking and sleeping, of one garden beside an orange grove, as I have. It makes all the difference imaginable!"

"Oh!" with a little accent of surprise and kindly curiosity, " then you are not a newcomer, like us? You are coming back? "

' That's it ! I'm coming back to a little rancho beside a little river, where the dearest brother in the world has had the roses pruned and the garden planted every year in the hope that before the leaves fell I might get back. Dear old Phil," breathed the girl, with happiness in her voice and a mist in her darkening eyes.

" You've been away a long time? "

" An age ! Ten years ! With grand aunts, who adopted me when my father died. Oh, they were good as gold. There were three of them, and folks called them the Ogden girls until the youngest was seventy. That sort, you know! and I did care for them — dearly ! but I never could see why — why — why — they stayed their lives out in that black land. Aunt Louisa was the last. She died only six weeks ago. And here I am! No more three-month summers for the rest of my natural life, — and no six-foot snow drifts closer to me than those peaks ! "

"Ogden?1' said the other, ruminatively, — there was a family of Ogdens lived near neighbors to us, back in Ohio. He was a doctor. My name is Watson, and I came out here to live with my brother, over in Kern county. But the place was not quite — not quite — all I thought it would be — so — I — well, I declare, Miss Ogden, there comes the stage at last ! "

The girl stared a little at the name given her.

" Oh, I did not mean that I " — she began, and then remembered the traveling impediments. " But I must see about my traps. I'll be in the stage with you ! " she added, nodding brightly as she left her new-found traveling companion and hurried in quest of satchel and wraps.

The tourists streamed out onto the platform to view that much-exploited California institution, the old-fashioned, four-horse stage coach, and the girl followed them and assailed the driver as he was exchanging mail-bags with the agent.

His practiced glance took in the trim perfection of her traveling dress, the general air of unobtrusive affluence: she belonged to the private car rather than the stage coach, he concluded.

"Alone, Miss?"

" All alone."

" Hermosa, — which Hermosa? "

" Which — why " — and the girl looked her blank dismay, — " is there more than one? "

" There is the Hermosa rancho, the Hacienda, you know. Then there is the old Hermosa dam, the one built by the mission folks, the old padres. Only a few Mexicans live at that corner of the place. We change horses there. And the new Hermosa dam is about four mile beyond." He had looked at her questioningly as he enumerated each point, but she did not indicate which of the three she intended to visit. Accordingly, he added, "The Hacienda is not on the road; it is four miles across from the new Hermosa dam."

" And we will reach it — when? "

"Well — it will be dark at the best, to-night; we are a little behind time."

" Is there any sort of hotel at the new dam, at the settlement there ? "

He shook his head, good naturedly, but not encouragingly.

" Well, there must be some house where they would keep a stranger for a night; — they would not turn me out in January, would they? "

The driver smiled, as he glanced at her. " I don't reckon you'd find any one doing that along this road any month in the year," he remarked. And she laughed frankly.

" You make me realize that I am really and truly in the Calif ornias," she said, as she counted out the coach fare.

"Any baggage, Miss?"

" Not a thing; it is all resting in San Francisco. I meant to come that way, but changed my mind at St. Louis. I shall have to telegraph about that, if I have time."

" Five minutes ! Dinner at Berkley rancho."

The telegraph operator was busy, and after a moment's thought, she remarked that to-morrow would do — there was no real hurry. And turning to look for Miss Watson of the green veil, a name spoken beside her caught her attention, and the contemptuous tone in which it was uttered caused her to gasp in amazement or anger, as she halted abruptly and regarded with darkening eyes two men who had alighted from the stage.

' Yes," the older man was saying, " Felipe Darrett's another case of the same sort! Had some good, clean blood in him too, but the Greaser strain drowned it! He's neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, and as slippery as they make them. There's some talk of him selling out, bag and baggage. Well, the sooner the Darrett name is wiped off the Hermosa valley, the better it will be for the valley."

" Why," said the other man, in a conciliating manner, " I've always heard that the old man Darrett "

" Oh, yes," — and the speaker seated himself on a barrel, his back to the girl, and lowered his tone a trifle, because of some people passing in front. Neither of the speakers noticed the rigid figure of the girl, whose face was turned from them, facing the hills, but who was listening with parted lips and clenched fingers. ' Yes, I knew him well, John Darrett, and a squarer man never lived, — square clear through, else he never would have married that Mexican woman. No man would have needed to, but Darrett was easy and did not know that. After she died he married a white woman, one of the best ones ever came over the range. All dead now but this handsome duck, Felipe, and a girl, a half-sister, somewhere in the East."

u Well, he must be clever."

"Clever! That's it! The tricky cleverness of the half-breed. But his head is not level enough to keep what he wins. He's got Hermosa affairs tangled up in hard knots already."

" I thought Mac Leighton was managing the Hermosa. Seems to me I heard once he was to marry the heiress."

" Darrett spoiled that, — blew down here from Frisco and eloped with the girl. Yes, she was really a sort of ward of Leighton's. The old man left the rancho and the girl in Mac's charge, you know. But he handed it over to her, of course, when she married. No one seemed to know whether he was broke up over it, or glad to get out of it! He left for Mexico anyway, and that was a year ago. Things have gone crooked with the Hermosa since then. He is needed there and needed badly."

"Who looks after his place? He had good property joining the old dam when I left."

The older man said that Mac Leighton owned it yet, but he had not heard who was running it, neither did he suppose that it was Galbraith, as usual. He added, however, with a degree of certainty, that it was sure to be a " reliable," for Leighton was one of the fellows who always had luck.

The girl, who had been listening all the while, sank down on a crate of bee boxes for some foothill apiary as the men arose and walked across the platform. All the brightness and glow was gone from her face. Her eyes were still turned toward the hills, but the varied greens were veiled in mist for her. The Indian trinkets slipped unheeded beside her.

"Dad! — Dad!" she whispered, as if conjuring something to cling to, — " Dad! "

" The stage is ready, Miss Ogden," said the little woman beside her. At first she made no sign of hearing her and the woman touched her on the shoulder. Then she arose and followed, bitterly, and whether through accident or deliberately, she made no attempt to correct the stranger's mistake in her name, as she had been moved to do a few moments before.

The station agent followed with the neglected belt and moccasins, as she entered the stage. She took them with quiet thanks, and sank back in the seat to face the two men whose conversation had taken away all of her anticipated joy in the ride over the hills. And this was her home-coming !

Ill

IN THE FOOTHILLS.

With a flourish of whip and lines, the driver swung his four-in-hand with commendable pride around the circle of the little hill, and gave the tourists a satisfying picture of the old days.

That was the California they had expected to see, the California they had read of! Only one item was missing, and they all felt cheated in consequence: not a gun was in sight, not a cartridge belt, not even a little silver-mounted revolver peeping from a holster; the driver and passengers all looked as safe and tame, — as Massachusetts!

u All but the stunning girl with the moccasins," agreed one of the men. " She looked like a California dream come true."

Miss Watson clung desperately to the seat and strap as the coach rocked and rolled on its way. Occasionally she cast appealing and deprecating glances at the others.

" I n-never im-agined it would be so rough as th-this ! " she quavered, as a particularly rocky section was reached.

" I will change places with you, if you prefer this side," said the girl.

" N-no — thank you, Miss Ogden. I d-don't know that I do. If we should go over that precipice, I don't think there'd be much difference as to which side I had been on."

The girl smiled and the older man chuckled, indulgently.

" Not the slightest danger, I assure you, Madame," he said kindly. ' There, we are over the rough bit. You are evidently a stranger to stagecoach rides."

" I'm a stranger to the whole country," she replied, and settled back with a sigh of relief as the wheels rolled smoothly over a level stretch of ground. " I'm from Ohio, and we have no such gullies or acres of rocks on end — there ! "

" Nor such January sunshine," said the girl, with a gesture toward the uplands, where shimmering rays alternated with flying clouds in a way most suggestive of April.

' Yes, it's fine for you folks that see it that way," agreed the woman from Ohio, " but I maintain that it is not seasonable. I've been over at my brother's place in Kern County, and* I declare I was fairly sick of the endless sunshine and garden making in the fall. I never could get into the way of it. I'm going now to take the place of a teacher that's sick at Hermosa Dam."

' Why, I directed a teacher there yesterday," said the younger man; and then, as he noticed her change of expression — her utter disappointment — he added, awkwardly, '' Of course she may not suit."

" More than likely she will," said Miss Watson, who could control her words better than her facial expression. Then with a weary sort of smile she added, "That's my sort of luck! I came west to take care of my brother's family, but he was married again before I got here. Married," she added with a little sigh, " to a hustling sort of woman, who doesn't need anybody's help ! It was she who planned that teacher's place for me. It would be a sort of introduction to the school boards out here, she said. She's a fine manager."

The latter part of her communication was addressed to the girl, who seemed suddenly to appreciate the whole insignificant tragedy of the gray, faded-out life. Her sort of luck! Ever too late, always the one unnecessary addition ! A life so gray the sunshine could not gild it. And yet with it all she possessed a sturdy sort of philosophy of work; she never expected more than second best, and was content if only she could gain that !

The little white teeth set hard, and a steely look came into the gray eyes. Was she, with all her strength and advantages, to succumb to the first rough wind of chance, when this little faded life faced its gales with a smile, and came out of the storms with energy to try again?

u She is heroic and perhaps no one has ever guessed it," thought the girl, contemplating the wearer of the green veil in a new light. " And I — they have always vaunted my personal bravery— all of them; yet I have collapsed and gone under at the first capful of wind! Little gray life, you've taught me the day's lesson."

But her buoyant spirits were quelled despite her philosophy. She no longer had the desire to share her joy and her dreams of joy with the chance traveling acquaintance. The others in the coach fell easily into conversation concerning the country, its picturesque past and its equally golden future. But the girl who had confessed it the ideal land of her dreams remained apart, and kept her gaze on the varied sunlit pictures they were passing.

Once she awakened from her over self-absorption to say kindly to the little school teacher: " You must give me your address in Hermosa. In case you find the position filled, I might be able to help you to another."

" Oh, you're real kind," fluttered Miss Watson. " Do you — will you be living there? "

The girl was conscious that there was an abrupt lull in the conversation of the men opposite, and framed her reply accordingly.

" Not exactly in Hermosa settlement, but I

^expect to find some friends between there and 'Olivette."

" I didn't expect you lived there, for you said your brother's rancho was near the river. There are nothing but creeks around Hermosa."

Then she fished around in a satchel she was carrying and found a card with an address written 'on it. ,

" That's where I'm to board, if I stay there," she said. " And if we get in late I suppose it is as good a place as you can find, too. He's some sort of overseer. The most of the ditch diggers and such like live below the dam. This place is American, anyway. I'm willing to take my chances with the most of folks, but I do draw the line at a Mexican table or a Mexican bed. If you ever could see the babies and pigs and puppies rolling together on the dirt floor, — well, they're just impossible! "

" Yet their ancestors were lords of the land, not so long ago,1' remarked the girl. " At least the Spanish were, and made the life here an ideal bit of Arcady."

" Maybe they did," agreed the Ohio woman, who lacked the imagination to see beyond the present actualities of pigs and babies; " maybe they did, but I never saw any of that kind."

The girl again turned her attention to the green stretch of the ranges, dotted with great bands of sheep or cattle, and with great grainfields springing into life with the winter rains, to the timber belts marking the water courses, and thence high up the hills, to where the pines were as a dark girdle beneath the snowy breasts of the Sierras.

The land she had loved and longed for! — of which she had been so proud! — the land she would ever see with the eyes of the spirit instead of retaining photographs of its mud floors, where the Mexican children played.

She had childish memories of an adobe where peppers were festooned like strung jewels from the eaves ; of one immense rose tree covering every vestige of the dwelling except the door-way; of heliotrope thickets in which she would hide, half smothered with sweetness; a great garden of color and fragrance for which she had longed through all those bleak winters on the Atlantic Coast.

Pigs on the earthen floors? Maybe. Poverty among the ne'er-do-well? No doubt, for that is found everywhere. But there never was here the cold, shivering poverty of the far East, of that she was sure. All her memories of it had been of warmth and fragrance and music, — a harmony she had come back to seek.

Her eyes closed, and the men lowered their voices, thinking she slept. An occasional ques* tion from the school teacher made the conversation general. The younger man had moved over into the Santa Clara valley a year before, but retained some herds up in the hills, and was making a trip back to see about selling them. He was to leave the stage at old Hermosa Dam and go horseback to the rancho where he was to stop. The older man had an interest in some mining ventures to the south, and had been down looking over the country. He was now going on to the end of the stage line, ten miles beyond the Hermosa.

He had been in the country since '57 and was a storehouse of reminiscences, some of them tragic, others comic, all of them interesting.