Conroy"s chamber.
"Thet"s it, Olly," said Gabriel, "Mrs. Conroy"s goin" to "Frisco to see some friends. She"s thet bent on goin" thet nothin" "il stop her. Ye see, Olly, it"s the fashion fur new married folks to kinder go way and visit absent and sufferin" friends. Thar"s them little ways about the married state, that, bein" onmarried yourself, you don"t sabe. But it"s all right, she"s goin". Bein" a lady, and raised, so to speak, "mong fashi"n"ble people, she"s got to folly the fashin. She"s goin" for three months, mebbe four. I disremember now wot"s the fashi"n"ble time. But she"ll do it, Olly."
Olly cast a penetrating look at her brother.
"She ain"t goin" on my account, Gabe?"
"Lord love the child, no! Wot put thet into your head, Olly? Why," said Gabriel with cheerful mendacity, "she"s been takin" a shine to ye o"
late. On"y to-night she was wonderin" whar you be."
As if to give credence to his words, and much to his inward astonishment, the door of Mrs. Conroy"s room opened, and the lady herself, with a gracious smile on her lips and a brightly beaming eye, albeit somewhat reddened around the lids, crossed the hall, and, going up to Olly, kissed her round cheek.
"I thought it was your voice, and although I was just going to bed," she added gaily, with a slightly apologetic look at her charming dishabille, "I had to come in and be sure it was you. And where have you been, you naughty girl? Do you know I shall be dreadfully jealous of this Mrs. Markle. Come and tell me all about her. Come. You shall stay with me to-night and we won"t let brother Gabe hear our little secrets--shall we? Come!"
And before the awe-struck Gabriel could believe his own senses she had actually whisked the half-pleased, half-frightened child into her own room, and he was left standing alone. Nor was he the less amazed, although relieved of a certain undefined anxiety for the child, when, a moment later, Olly herself thrust her curly head out of the door, and, calling out, "Good-night, old Gabe," with a mischievous accent, shut and locked the door in his face. For a moment Gabriel stood petrified on his own hearthstone. Was he mistaken, and had Mrs. Conroy"s anger actually been nothing but a joke? Was Olly really sincere in her dislike of his wife? There was but one apparent solution to these various and perplexing problems, and that was the general incomprehensibility of the s.e.x.
"The ways o" woman is awful onsartin," said Gabriel, as he sought the solitary little room which had been set apart for Olly, "and somehow I ain"t the man ez hez the gift o" findin" them out."
And with these reflections he went apologetically, yet, to a certain extent, contentedly, as was his usual habit, to bed.
CHAPTER II.
IN WHICH THE TREASURE IS FOUND--AND LOST.
As no word has been handed down of the conversation that night between Olly and her sister-in-law, I fear the masculine reader must view their subsequent conduct in the light of Gabriel"s abstract proportion. The feminine reader--to whose well-known sense of justice and readiness to acknowledge a characteristic weakness, I chiefly commend these pages--will of course require no further explanation, and will be quite ready to believe that the next morning Olly and Mrs. Conroy were apparently firm friends, and that Gabriel was incontinently snubbed by both of these ladies as he deserved.
"You don"t treat July right," said Olly, one morning, to Gabriel, during five minutes that she had s.n.a.t.c.hed from the inseparable company of Mrs.
Conroy.
Gabriel opened his eyes in wonder. "I hain"t been "round the house much, because I allowed you and July didn"t want my kempany," he began apologetically, "and ef it"s shortness of provisions, I"ve fooled away so much time, Olly, in prospectin" that ledge that I had no time to clar up and get any dust. I reckon, may be the pork bar"l _is_ low. But I"ll fix thet straight soon, Olly, soon."
"But it ain"t thet, Gabe--it ain"t provisions--it"s--it"s--O! you ain"t got no sabe ez a husband--thar!" burst out the direct Olly at last.
Without the least sign of resentment, Gabriel looked thoughtfully at his sister.
"Thet"s so--I reckon thet _is_ the thing. Not hevin" been married afore, and bein", so to speak, strange and green-handed, like as not I don"t exactly come up to the views of a woman ez hez hed thet experience. And her husband a savang! a savang! Olly, and a larned man."
"You"re as good as him!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Olly, hastily, whose parts of speech were less accurately placed than her feelings, "and I reckon she loves you a heap better, Gabe. But you ain"t quite lovin" enough," she added, as Gabriel started. "Why, thar was thet young couple thet came up from Simpson"s last week, and stayed over at Mrs. Markle"s. Thar was no end of the attentions thet thet man paid to thet thar woman--fixin" her shawl, histin" the winder and puttin" it down, and askin" after her health every five minnits--and they"d sit and sit, just like this,"----here Olly, in the interests of domestic felicity, improvised the favourite att.i.tude of the bridegroom, as far as the great girth of Gabriel"s waist and chest could be "clipped" by her small arms.
"Wot! afore folks?" asked Gabriel, looking down a little shamefully on the twining arms of his sister.
"Yes--in course--afore folks. Why, they want it to be known thet they"re married."
"Olly," broke out Gabriel desperately, "your sister-in-law ain"t thet kind of woman. She"d reckon thet kind o" thing was low."
But Olly only replied by casting a mischievous look at her brother, shaking her curls, and with the mysterious admonition, "Try it!" left him, and went back to Mrs. Conroy.
Happily for Gabriel, Mrs. Conroy did not offer an opportunity for the exhibition of any tenderness on Gabriel"s part. Although she did not make any allusion to the past, and even utterly ignored any previous quarrel, she still preserved a certain coy demeanour toward him, that, while it relieved him of an onerous duty, very greatly weakened his faith in the infallibility of Olly"s judgment. When, out of respect to that judgment, he went so far as to throw his arms ostentatiously around his wife"s waist one Sunday, while perambulating the single long public street of One Horse Gulch, and that lady, with great decision, quietly slipped out of his embrace, he doubted still more.
"I did it on account o" what you said, Olly, and darn my skin if she seemed to like it at all, and even the boys hangin" around seemed to think it was queer. Jo Hobson snickered right out."
"When was it?" said Olly.
"Sunday."
Olly, sharply--"Where?"
Gabriel--"On Main Street."
Olly, apostrophising heaven with her blue eyes--"Ef thar ever was a blunderin" mule, Gabe, it"s YOU!"
Gabriel, mildly and thoughtfully--"Thet"s so."
Howbeit, some kind of a hollow truce was patched up between these three belligerents, and Mrs. Conroy did not go to San Francisco on business.
It is presumed that the urgency of her affairs there was relieved by correspondence, for during the next two weeks she expressed much anxiety on the arrival of the regular tri-weekly mails. And one day it brought her not only a letter, but an individual of some importance in this history.
He got down from the Wingdam coach amid considerable local enthusiasm.
Apart from the fact that it was well known that he was a rich San Francis...o...b..nker and capitalist, his brusque, sharp energy, his easy, sceptical familiarity and general contempt for and ignoring of everything but the practical and material, and, above all, his reputation for success, which seemed to make that success a wholesome business princ.i.p.al rather than good fortune, had already fascinated the pa.s.sengers who had listened to his curt speech and half oracular axioms.
They had forgiven dogmatisms voiced in such a hearty manner, and emphasised possibly with a slap on the back of the listener. He had already converted them to his broad materialism--less, perhaps, by his curt rhetoric than by the logic of his habitual business success, and the respectability that it commanded. It was easy to accept scepticism from a man who evidently had not suffered by it. Radicalism and democracy are much more fascinating to us when the apostle is in comfortable case and easy circ.u.mstances, than when he is clad in fustian, and consistently out of a situation. Human nature thirsts for the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but would prefer to receive it from the happy owner of a latch-key to the Garden of Eden, rather than from the pilferer who had just been ejected from the premises.
It is probable, however, that the possessor of these admirable qualities had none of that fine scorn for a mankind accessible to this weakness which at present fills the breast of the writer, and, I trust, the reader, of these pages. If he had, I doubt if he would have been successful. Like a true hero, he was quite unconscious of the quality of his heroism, and utterly unable to a.n.a.lyse it. So that, without any previous calculations or pre-arranged plan, he managed to get rid of his admirers, and apply himself to the business he had in hand without either wilfully misleading the public of One Horse Gulch, or giving the slightest intimation of what that real business was. That the general interests of One Horse Gulch had attracted the attention of this powerful capitalist--that he intended to erect a new Hotel, or "start"
an independent line of stage-coaches from Sacramento, were among the accepted theories. Everybody offered him vast and gratuitous information, and out of the various facts and theories submitted to him he gained the particular knowledge he required without asking for it.
Given a reputation for business shrewdness and omnipresence in any one individual, and the world will speedily place him beyond the necessity of using them.
And so in a casual, general way, the stranger was shown over the length and breadth and thickness and present and future of One Horse Gulch.
When he had reached the farther extremity of the Gulch he turned to his escort--"I"ll make the inquiry you ask now."
"How?"
"By telegraph--if you"ll take it."
He tore a leaf from a memorandum-book and wrote a few lines.
"And you?"
"Oh, I"ll look around here--I suppose there"s not much beyond this?"
"No; the next claim is Gabriel Conroy"s."
"Not much account, I reckon?"
"No? It pays him grub!"
"Well, dine with me at three o"clock, when and where you choose--you know best. Invite whom you like. Good-bye!" And the great man"s escort, thus dismissed, departed, lost in admiration of the decisive prompt.i.tude and liberality of his guest.