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BANCROFT LIBRARY
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
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JULY, 1906
S~7 JT«*7
BANCROFT -
Vol. XXV, Nc. 1
LIBRARY
IE NATION . BACK OF U^,
20"S
PY
LOS ANGELES
air new high st
SAN FRANCISCO
28t 1 OCTAVIA «T
$2
A YEAR
OUT WEST
A Magazine of the Old Pacific and the New
Editors
CHAS. F. LUMMIS CHARLES AMADON MOODY SHARLOT M. HALL, Associate Editor
Among thb stockholders and Contributors arb:
DAVID STARR JORDAN
President of Stanford University FREDERICK STARR
Chicago University THEODORE H. HITTELL
The Historian of California MARY HALLOCK FOOTE
Author of "The Led-Horse Claim," etc. MARGARET COLLIER GRAHAM
Author of "Stories of the Foothills" GRACE ELLERY CHANNING
Author of "The Sister of a Saint," etc. ELLA HIGGINSON
Author of "A Forest Orchid," etc. CHARLES WARREN STODDARD
The Poet of the South Seas INA COOLBRITH
Author of "Songs from the Golden Gate," etc EDWIN MARKHAM
Author of "The Man with the Hoe" JOAQUIN MILLER
The Poet of the Sierras BATTERMAN LINDSAY
CHARLES FREDERICK HOLDER
Author of "The Life of Agrassiz," etc. CHAS. DWIGHT WILLARD
CONSTANCE GODDARD DU BOIS
Author of "The Shield of the Fleur de Lis"
WILLIAM E. SMYTHE
Author of "The Conquest of Arid America," etc.
DR. WASHINGTON MATTHEWS
Ex-Prest. American Folk-Lore Society WILLIAM KEITH
The Greatest Western Paiqter CHARLES A. KEELER
LOUISE M. KEELER
GEO. PARKER WINSHIP
The His'.jrian of Coronado's Marches FREDERICK WEBB HODGE
of the Smithsonian Institution, Washing-ton GEO. HAMLIN FITCH
Literary Editor S. F. Chroniclt ALEX. F. HARMER
CHARLOTTE PERKINS STETSON GILMAN
Author of "In This Our World" CHAS. HOWARD SHINN
Author of "The Story of the Mine," etc T. S. VAN DYKE
Author of "Rod and Gun in California," etc. MARY AUSTIN
Author of "The Land of Little Rain" L. MAYNARD DIXON
ELIZABETH AND JOSEPH GRINNELL
Authors of "Our Feathered Friends'"'
Contents — Jxily, 1906
The Making of a Great Mine, illustrated, by Sharlot M. Hall 3
An Archaeological Wedding Journey, illustrated serial, by Theresa Russell, Chapter
VII, A Local Habitation 27-
A Castle in Spain (sonnet), by David Starr Jordan 36
Orleans Indian Legends, by Melcena Burns Denny, (illustrated bv Maynard Dixon)
I, The Legend of Pain 37
Spring in the Santa Cruz, by Virginia Garland 41
In Defense of a Lady (story), by Judith Graves Waldo 48
"Tramp," (Story), by A. V. Hoffman " 57
Widow Brown's Wedding( .story), by A. Hartman 62
Sealed Orders (story), by Eugene Manlove Rhodes 67
Carnations (poem), by Edward W. Barnard 72
The Great Premier of New Zealand, (biographical study of Richard John Seddon),
by Michael Flurscheim 73
That Which is Written (book comment), by Charles Amadou Moody 77
Tulare, illustrated, by V. D. Knutt 81
Porterville, illustrated, by Edward A. DeBlois " 89
The Earlimont Colony, illustrated, by William A. Sears 95
Copyright 19W. Entered at the Los Angeles Postoffiee as second-class matter. (See Publishers' Page)
THE QUALITY STORE
Comfortable Summer Suits
An elegant line of Outing or Negligee shirts for hot weath- er. Neckwear ap- propriate .
Two-piece suits and dressy light weight suits in summer's coolest colors — all the popular natty effects. Every gar- ment of "M. & B." goodness and honesty of price — which means the best of hand-tailoring and perfect fitting.
$12, $15, $18, $20ej^$25
Straw Hats and Panamas
That will keep your Head Cool these Hot Days
Mullen &t Bluett Clothing Co.
Corner Spring and First Streets
For Health Happiness and a Home Come to
Southern California
Write for information and illustrated printed matter, enclosing a 5-cent stamp, to
THE
Chamber of Commerce
Los Angeles, Cal.
Buck Skin Shoes
Men's shoe in pearl or tan buck- skin, widths AAtoE, sizes 4 to 12. Price $3.30
The most desirable shoes for outing and general wear. Light, cool, durable— made on anatomical lasts, which allow the great- est foot freedom. Styles for men, women and children.
Send for our Buckskin Catalogue
WETHERBY KAYSER SHOE (0.
217 S. Broadway, Los Angeles
EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
Los Angeles, California
Occidental College
The College. Four Courses — Classical, Scientific, Literary, and Literary-Musical. Two new brick buildings, costing $80,006 — modern and convenient.
Academy. Prepares for Occidental, or any other college or university. The Occidental School of Mus- ic— Theory, Vocal and Instrumental.
First semester begins September 12, 1906.
Address JOHN WILL'S BAER, L. L. D., President
IMMACULATE HEART COLLEGE
A boarding and day school for young ladies, conducted by the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart.
For prospectus address Mother Superior. Hollywood, Cal.
MAJiZANITA HALL, For Boys.. Palo Alto, Calif.
Life of mountain, valley, sea. While a ma- jority of its graduates enter Stanford, it has had marked success in preparing for Eastern Universities and technical schools. Ideal dormitory system. New cinder track this com- ing year. Every branch under a master. A growing school for growing boys. Send for catalogue. 14th year opens August 22.
J. LeR. DIXON, Head Master.
Saint Vincent's College
Los Angeles, California Boarding and Day College and High School
Military Drill and Calisthenics a Feature. For Catalogue write the President.
APA^I7 HAI I ^ school for boys among the AUMjjIjL IIMLL Sierra pines. Remarkable cli- mate. Prepares for best Colleges and Universities. Out-door Sports; Riding, Hunting, Boating, Fishing, Snow-shoeing, Camping. Boys may enter at any time. For catalogue, address the Headmaster. WILLIAM W. PRICE, M. A., Alta, Placer Co., Cal.
Send For Beauty Booklet
THE celebrated French house of J. Simon has! since 1861 led the World in the manufacture of toilet articles. They have prepared a dainty booklet on beauty hints which will be sent free on request.
Creme Simon
The famous skin preserver and keautiher. Poudre Simon the powder lor keauty or oaky. CrodM Simin Soap softens, whitens and cleans. Samples of this trinity of beauty-makers will be sent free on receipt of 8c. to pay postage and packing. GEO. P. WALLAU, Inc., 2 Stone Street, New York City
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THE ESMERALDE TOURMALINE MINE AT MESA GRANDE, SAN DIEGO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
SAY!!
Did YOU liNOW
that you could buy native California Gems satisfac- torily by mail, just the same as if you were here in our lapidary.
Just address Mail Order Department, stating what kind of stone you want, color and size, and we will send you same by express C. O. D. privilege of ex- amination.
If not satisfactory return at our expense.
All kinds of precious stones cut to order.
Send cutting by mail. Write for catalogue and price list.
We are the largest gem mining and cutting com- pany west of the Rockies.
Saim
H53H B &ftreetf Saim
REFERENCES-. LEADING BANKS
DOC WILSON, Manager
J.H.PACKARD
Banker
and
Broker
Ensenada, Lower California Mexico
Information concerning Mexico and Lower Cal- ifornia cheerfully furn- ished and business entrusted in my hand given my personal attention
State of Sinaloa
ON WEST COAST OF MEXICO
Coast line Four Hundred (400) miles.
Large areas of agricultural, fruit and timber
lands. Annual rainfall thirty (30) inches. Short railroad lines in operation and trunk lines
projected with constructions begun, make
this a peculiarly desirable time to invest. Desirable tracts of from 100 to 100,000 acres
for sale.
For full information about SINALOA, and its resources, address
SINALOA LAND COMPANY
Suite 220-221 J2 Conservative Life Bldg. Los Angeles, California
Exclusive Concessionaries for Survey of Public Lands in State of Sinaloa, Mexico.
Directors and Stockholders: Frederick H. Rindge Estate,
George I. Cochran, A. J. Wallace,
J. C. Drake, R. P. Probasco,
Geo. P. Thresher. Warren Gillelen,
Dan'l Freeman.
TwO-YEAR-OlD RUBBER TRtt ON PALENQUC PLANTATION
RUBBER
"They well deserve to have, that know the strongest and surest way to get."
For sure, large and permanent returns noth- ing equals a well managed tropical plantation.
Our plantation, located in what is known as the true Rubber Zone of Mexico, is under the management of experienced men, who have made a study of Mexican Agriculture.
You invest your money in oil stock — you may strike oil, or in mining stock — you may strike gold; but when you invest in RUBBER shares you are sure to strike RUBBER. It is only a question whether the final returns will yield 100% or 300% on the investment.
It must be borne in mind that Rubber Culti- vation is not a speculation, it is an agricultural (tropical) investment which requires only fairly good management to bring in a few years re- turns that a Northern farmer would not credit if told him.
Writ* for Booklet Do It Now
PALENQUE PLANTATION & COMMERCIAL CO.
Plantation, Department of Palenque, State of Chiapas, Mexico.
GEO. LEONARD, Sec'y Temporary Office, 2100 Scott St., SAN FRANCISCO. CAL.
Designated Depository of the United States
FIRST NATIONAL BANK
OF LOS ANGELES
Special Ladies' Department
Capital Stock $1,250,000.00
Surplus and Undivided Profits 1,392,450.82
Deposits 14,45 1 ,636.63
J. M. Elliott, President Stoddard Jess, Vice-President
W. C. Patterson, Vice-President
G. E. Bittinger, Vice-President
John S. Cravens, Vice-President
VV. T. S. Hammond, Cashier
A. C. Way, Asst. Cashier E. S. Pauly, Asst. Cashier
E. W. Coe, Asst. Cashier A. B. Jones, Asst. Cashier
All departments of a modern banking business
conducted.
The
National Bank of California
at Los Angeles
Northeast Corner 2nd and Spring Streets
John M. C. Marble, Pres.
John E. Marble, Vice-Pres.
J. E. Fishburn, Cashier
F. J. Belcher, Jr., Asst. Cashier
Hon. O. T. Johnson W. D. Woolwine
Judge S. C. Hubbell R. I. Rogers
Directors
Solicits Business and Correspondence
The German Savings and Loan Society
526 California St,, San Francisco
Guaranteed Capital and Surplus $ 2,526,763.61
Capital actually paid up in cash 1,000,000.00
Deposits, Dec. 30, 19C5 39 112,812.82
F. Tillmann, Jr., President
Daniel Meyer, First Vice-President
Emil Rohte, Second Vice-President
A. H. R. Schmidt, Cashier
Wm. Herrmann, Asst. Cashier
George Tourney, Secretary
A. H. Muller, Asst. Secretary
W. S. Goodfellow, General Attorney
Directors
F. Tillman, Jr., Daniel. Meyer, Emil Rohte, Ign. Steinhart, I. N. Walter, N. Ohlandt, J. W. Van Bergen, E. T. Kruse, W. S. Goodfellow
DIVIDEND NOTICES
San Francisco, Cal.
DIVIDEND NOTICE.
German Savings and Loan Society, 526 California st. — For the half year ending June 30, 1906, a dividend has been declared at the rate of three and six-tenths (3 6-10) per cent per annum on all deposits, free of taxes, payable on and after Monday, July 2, 1906. Dividends not called for are added to and bear the same rate of interest as the prin- cipal from July 1, 1906.
GEORGE TOURNY, Secretary.
DIVIDEND NOTICE.
Mutual Savings Bank of San Francisco, 710 Market st. — For the half year ending June 30, 1906, a dividend has been declared at the rate of three and one-quarter (3 1-4) per cent per annum on all deposits, free of taxes, payable on and after Monday, July 2, 1906. Dividends not called for are added to and bear the same rate of interest as the principal from July 1, 1906.
GEORGE A. STORY, Cashier.
DIVIDEND NOTICE.
The Continental Building and Loan Asso- ciation, corner of Market and Church sts., San Francisco, Cal., has declared for the six months ending June 30, 1906, a dividend of five per cent per annum on ordinary deposits, six per cent on term deposits, and six per cent on monthly payment investments. In- terest on deposits payable on and after July 1st. Interest on ordinary deposits not called for will be added to the principal and there- after bear interest at the same rate.
DR. WASHINGTON DODGE, President. WILLIAM CORBIN, Secretary.
DIVIDEND NOTICE.
California Safe Deposit and Trust Co., Cor. California and Montgomery sts. — For the six months ending June 30, 1906, dividends have been declared on the deposits in the savings department of this company as follows: On term deposits at the rate of 3 6-10 per cent per annum, and on ordinary deposits at the rate of 3 1-2 per cent per annum, free of taxes, and payable on and after Monday, July 2, 1906.
J. DALZELL BROWN, Manager.
DIVIDEND NOTICE.
San Francisco Savings Union, N. W. Cor. California and Montgomery sts. — For the half year ending 30th June, 1906, a dividend has been declared at the rates per annum of three and two-thirds (3 2-3) per cent on term deposits and three and one-third (3 1-3) per cent on ordinary deposits, free of taxes, payable on and after Monday, July 2, 1906. Depositors are entitled to draw their divi- dends at any time during the succeeding half year. Dividends not drawn will be added to the deposit account, become a part thereof and earn dividend from July 1st.
LOVELL WHITE, Cashier.
DIVIDEND NOTICE.
Savings and Loan Society, 101 Montgomery St., cor. of Sutter, has declared a dividend for the term ending June 30, 1906, at the rate of three and one-half (3%) per cent per annum on all deposits, free of taxes, and payable on and after July 2, 1906. Dividends not called for are added to and bear the same rate of interest as principal.
EDWIN BONNELL, Cashier.
THE
American National Bank
OF SAN FRANCISCO
Deposit Gro-wtli
Mar. 3.I902 $ 387,72870
Sept. 15, 1002 1,374,98343
Mar. 15, 1903 2,232,582.94
Sept. 15, 1903 3,629,11339
Mar. 15, 1904 3,586,912.31
Sept. 15, 1904 3,825,47171
Mar. 15, 1905 4,349,427.92
Sept. 15,1905 4,938,629.05
Mar. 15, 1906 5,998,431.52
jl ample capital provides se-
_I L' curity; if undivided profits
indicate prosperity; if constant growth is proof of good service, then you should send your Pacific Coast busi- ness to the
American National Bank
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
YOUR
BANK
We Desire to be Your Bank
You are cordially invit- ed to make this your bank. Every facility of modern banking is at your service. Our Trust and Bond Departments offer added conven- iences. You will bo made to feel at home and your business will receive prompt, accurate and cheerful attention.
Merchants Trust Company
CAPITAL, $350,000
209 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, Cal.
JOHN T.
GRIFFITH
COMPANY
Established 1892 Incorporated 1905
John T. Griffith, President H. E. O'Brien, Vice-President John N. Gardiner, Secretary
Mtaica's Lana. Whirl, near falmrfti
Real Estate and Insurance
MAKING A
SPECIALTY OF
High Class Business and Residential Property
CORRESPONDENCE SOLICITED Member of L. A. Realty Board
214-216 Wilcox Building, Los Angeles, Cal.
Reliable help promptly furnished. Hummel Bros. & Co., Tel. Main 509.
Broadway- Vendome Hotel
Broadway and 41st Street, New Yorh
EUROPEAN PLAN.
ABSOLUTELY FIRE PROOF.
A FIRST-CLASS HOTEL AT MODERATE PRICES.
SUBWAY STATION— ONE BLOCK.
GRAND CENTRAL STATION— 5 MINUTES WALK. CITY HALL— EIGHT MINUTES.
LOWER SECTION— EIGHT MINUTES.
WITHIN TWO BLOCKS OF
FIFTEEN PROMINENT THEATRES CENTER OF SHOPPING DISTRICT
Single Rooms, near Bath Single Rooms, with Bath
$1.50 per Day $2.00 per Day
SEND FOR BOOKLET
BROADWAY-VENDOME CO., Proprietors
E. S. Growell, General Manager
•>• I FOR YOUR FARM,
I OCh HOME. BUSINESS OR 1*^1X1 I OTHER PROPERTY.
^**^ We can sell it for you, no _m_ matter where it is or what it is worth. If you desire a quick sale send us description and price. If you want to buy any kind of property anywhere send for our monthly. It is FREE and contains a large list of desirable properties in all parts of the country. C. A. WILSON. Real Estate Dealer, 415 Kansas avenue. Topeka. Kansas.
The American
Collection Agency
No fee charged un- less collection is made. We make col- lections in all parts of the United States.
413 KANSAS AVE.
TOPEKA, KANSAS
1 6 Steuart St. San Trancisco. ^
"JUST AROUND THE CORNER:
&
DENT A CUR A
Tooth Paste
deans and pre- serves the teeth. Mothers should realize the importance of preserve 5 intact the p"' ary set f teeth until ,ie secondary or permanent set is ready to take its place. Let us send you our free booklet on "Taking Care of the Teeth" which contains much information in concise form. Children should be encouraged to use Dentacura Tooth Paste. 25c a tube. Avoid substitutes.
DENTACURA COMPANY,
107 ALLING ST., NEWARK, N. J., U. S. A.
LEADING HOTELS OF THE COAST
Below will be found, for the information of tourists who visit California, a list of the best hotels, both tourist and commercial, in the leading Resorts and Cities of the State. A postal card of inquiry will bring literature and information as to rates, by return mail.
APARTMENTS, Los Angeles
fully furnished, new, 3 rooms, gas, range, hot water, bath, telephone, $14.00 monthly. T. Wiesendanger, jii Merchants Truit Building.
£LARENDON, Los Angeles,
^■^ European plan, tourist and commercial
hotel. Central location, one block from Broad- way. Special rates by the week.
TJOTEL HOLLYWOOD, Hollywood
* A Cal. Only hotel in the beautiful Ca- huenga foothills. Unique for home comforts com- bined with every modern convenience of a first clans hotel.
H
OTEL REDONDO, Redondo, Cal.
18 miles from Los Angeles, at Redondo- by the Sea. "The Queen of the Pacific." Open all the year; even climate.
'"THE NEW ROSSLYN, io. Angelas
Comprising the Lexington and Rosslyn la. American and European plans. Center oi city — 285 rooms — 150 with bath. Rates, Ameri- can. $1.50 up; European, 75 cents up. Fine sample rooms.
TJOTEL VANCE, Eureka
American plan. Noted nishings and superior table Dougherty, Manager.
for excellent fur- service. J. F.
H
OTEL VENDOME, San Jose
A charming summer and winter resort. Headquarters for tourists visiting Lick Observa- tory. Joseph T. Brooks, Manager.
TJOTEL WESTMINSTER,
"^^ LOS ANGELES. Largest and best. Euro- pean plan. $1 per day and upwards. Service best. Cor. Main and 4th Sts. K O. John Prop.
Service the
SON,
OASO ROBLES HOT SPRINGS
■ Hotel, Paso Robles, Cal. New bath house
most complete in the U. S. Hydropathic treat- ment for all ills. Open year round. W. A. Junker. Manager.
CT. FRANCIS, San Francisco
^ America's model hotel. European plan.
Built of stone and steel. Facing a beautiful tropical garden in the heart of city. James Woods, Manager.
Hummel Bros. & Co., "Help Center," 116-118 E. Second St. Tel. Main 509.
i
TRADE MARK
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BEE
BEE
BEE
FLOUR
All rights reserved
The package will make
7 loaves the size of a i-pound baking powder can, or p 0 breakfast muffins of ordinary size, or 1 2 dozen griddle cakes, or 7 fruit puddings the size of the bread loaf.
How to Live
and be Jolly
All the Day
Eat Hot Cakest Breakfast Muffins, Boston Brown Bread or Plum Pud- ding, made fresh from ALLEN'S B*B*B* FLOUR. It is the most healthy and tasteful food you can procure* Try it and you will want no more of the ready made bake shop or canned goods kind* The flour is prepared all ready for the liquids* The ECONOMY in buying* the SIMPLICITY in making and the ASSURANCE of having a pure and wholesome food are points worthy of consideration*
ASK YOUR GROCER FOR IT
ALLEN'S B. B. B. FLOUR CO.
Pacific Coast, Factory, San Jose, Cal.
MEHNEN'S6-
Toilet
Talcum
Powder
AT THE SEA SHORE
Mention's will give Immediate relief from prickly heat. < liiifliiir. sim-burn and all
skin troubles. Ourabsolutely non-rerillable box is for your protection. For sale every- where or by mail 25 cents. Sample free.
GERHARDMENNEN CO., Newark, N.J.
TRY Ml nm VS VIOLET (Borated) TALCUM.
CLEAN HANDS
for everyone by using
BAILEY'S RUBBER TOILET BRUSH
PAT JUNE 4. 89
Price 23o. etch. For sale by all dealers in Toilet Goods. Mailed on receipt of price. 1ST Agents -wanted.
Bailey's Rubber MASSAGE ROLLER
It Makes. Batpt arnl Restores Beauty in Katara*i Own Way.
For sale by all ETi"|r» dealers or mailed Dlllf ■pos receipt of *^vv
RUBBER BOOK
Baby's TeetH
cut without irritation Thr flat-ended teeth of Balley'j TeetMatRiag expand theffums, keeping* them soft, comforts and amuses the child, predent- in* convulsions and cholera infantum
Mtiilttl for tht price (stamps), ioc.
C. J. Bailey & Co., 22 Boylston St., Boston, Mass.
Mothers! Mothers!! Mothers!!!
Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup has been used for over SIXTY YEARS by MILLIONS of MOTHERS for their CHILDREN while TEETHING with PERFECT SUCCESS. It SOOTHES the CHILD, SOFTENS the GUMS, AL- LAYS all PAIN, CURES WIND COLIC, and is the best remedy for DIARRHOEA. Sold by all Druggists in every part of the world. Be sure and ask for "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syr- up," and take no other kind. Twenty- five cents a bottle.
Have you visited the
"Angel's Flight"
If not why not? It is the most unique, interesting and picturesque incline railway in the world. It is in the heart of the city — Hill and Third Streets, Los Angeles, Cal. J. W. EDDY, Mgr.
re Asthma.
KIDDER'S PASTILLES. ^If^,,.
smiiiiiiiiiiBiBiiiiiBiBiBiiB or |)y mftii, m; fonts. STOW ELL A CO., Mfrs. Cbarlestown. Mass.
ON REFLECTION
you will l>e << im lin- ed that there is n< lb ingthat to beautifies I the complexion and I gives such lasting! ■atisfactii n as
Face Powder ***
It prevents and cures sunburn, roughness and otlu i distressing afilii tn.ns eaustd by the wind and lie.it. Its j.ei uliar perfume is extracted from Bow crs and plants. It is pure, cooling, and antiseptic.
RtftiM tubr.tttute*. They may be dangerous
Flesh, White, i'ink.or Cream,. soc. a box, ol di uggisis
Of by mail, Stmd toe, for tttmpU,
,,. BlN. LF-VV & CO., French Perfumers
mfit llrpl. 4 . 126 Mn««lnn St.. Iln.lon,
ysriNcmzTM
.32 and .35 Caliber
Model 1 90S Self Loading Rifle
T
HIS rifle is a six shot hammerless take-down, made in .32 and .35 calibers. It is the first rifle of the Self Loading type made for center fire ammunition, the cartridges it handles being of the modern smokeless powder type, using metal patched bullets. The .32 caliber shoots a 165-grain bullet and gives a velocity of 1400 foot seconds and a penetration of 11 ^ inch dry pine boards with a metal patched soft point bullet. The 35 caliber shoots a 180-grain bullet and gives a veloc- ity of 1400 foot seconds and a penetration of 10 7/% boards with a metal patched soft point bullet, at the standard testing distance of 15 feet from the muzzle. As these figures show, both cartridges give excellent penetration, and with metal patched soft point bullets they have great shocking effect on animal tissue. As its name indicates, this rifle is self- loading. The recoil of the exploded cartridge ejects the empty shell, cocks the hammer and feeds a fresh cartridge from the magazine int<^ *he chamber, leaving the rifle ready to shoot upon the operator's pulli *' e trigger. The operation of this rifle should not be confounded wit, ;'c of machine guns, which reload and fire to the extent of their maga.- :.e capacity without stopping after the trigger is first pulled. In using the Winchester Self-Loading Rifle, it is absolutely necessary to pull the trigger for each shot, which places its operation as completely under the control of the.operator as that of any repeating rifle. The self-loading system permits rapid shooting with great accuracy, and on account of the ease and novelty of its operation adds much to the pleasure of rifle shooting, either at target or game. The list price of the standard rifle of this model is $28.00.
32 WINCH ESTER , SELF LOADING <=OFT POINT
JU'JHMl^iJ:^
SOFT POINT/
SOFT POINT OR FULL METAL
PATCHED, LIST PRICE PER 1000
$27.00
SOFT POINT OR FULL METAL
PATCHED, LIST PRICE PER 1000
$27.50.
Send for illustrated catalogue, mailed free, to Winchester Repeating Arms Co.. San Francisco, California
AY*SI
214 Fran
LOS ANG
reet
*.?»;
W
We make a specialty of Designing and Printing Books, Magazines, Catalogs, and Pamphlets. Commercial Printing of every description
THis Magazine is a Fair Sample of our Product
A Good
Refrigerator
Is very easily obtained if you know our address
We carry a complete line of
80 Different Patterns
I**, -OPAL" t^ "BALDWIN"
These Refrigerators are the leading two manufactured in the country and are famous for their durability and economy of ice Before buying don't fail to examine our line
JAMES W. HELLMAN
161 N. Spring Street Los Angeles, Cal.
Hummel Bros. A Co. furnish best help. 116-118 E. Second.
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THE NATION BACK OF US, THE WORLD IN FRONT
Ht lYak? «
OufWeST
Vol. XXV, No. 1
JULY, 1906
the: making or a great mine
By SHARLOT M. HALL
THIRTY years is no long space to lie between a cliff- rimmed peak shadowing a deep, cleft canon, ribbed back and forth with huge, ragged dykes of "country rock," and one of the great mines of the world ; yet a little less than this lies between the busy works of the United Verde Copper Company at Jerome, Arizona, and the silent canon where the Indian women came to dye their basket-reeds and to snare wild pigeons.
Over-towered by the smelter and the foundry, a big, black spur of rock still stands half-buried in slag; from its base a little thread of copper-stained water used to run down the canon, coloring the sticks and pebbles along its way a dull yellow. The basket-weavers soak their materials — threads of bear grass, slender withes of split mesquite and "cat-claw," or even small Cottonwood twigs cut in narrow strips — in water, to make them tough and pliant. Those soaked in the little stream came out a dull, permanent yellow that made a beautiful background for the shining black strands of the "Devil's claw" with which the patterns were worked. Scraps of the coarse, unbleached muslin issued by the traders, came out of the water the same deep, dull yellow — copperas dyed. So the little spring became a regular summer camping ground for the Tonto- Apaches, and the brown dykes saw many a band wind up the canon, turn the prunes loose to graze on the brush-covered slopes, and go into camp for the basket-making. There was much bear-grass along the foothills, and slender, supple mesquite branches, tied in bundles, were brought Up from the river-bottom to be soaked, split, and re- soaked for the dyeing.
Once, when the Tontos came as usual to the "Place of the Bitter Water." a white man came with them — \1 Sieber, later Chief of Scouts under General Crook. Far below the present mine, the little stream passed over a ledge of lime rock, and had built up
Illiifttrationk are from photogrnphft by M. F. Brennan. Jerome, Arizona.
Copyright 1906, mi Out West Maoazinc Co. All Right* Rcscrvcd
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through uncounted years a rich deposit of copper. To this Sieber came again with George B. Kell and made a location, calling it the Copper Queen ; and here, long after, a quantity of rich ore was taken out.
Sieber and Kell and George W. Hull were probably the first pros- pectors to follow the little thread of colored water up to the cliff- rimmed peak ; though as early as 1858, renegade Mexicans, return- ing from more or less willing captivity with the Indians of the mountains, brought word to Charles D. Poston, in his little kingdom at Tubac, of rich gold and silver and copper in the hills along the headwaters of the Verde river.
After Sieber and Kell and Hull came others along the same trail ; for it was the water nearest to the sprawling dykes flung like weather-worn vertebrae across the canons where the Black Hills break down sharply to the narrow valley of the Verde River. Although the bitter, copper-stained water was their guide, it was not copper those early prospectors looked for. The day of the red metal was yet to come ; the silver bonanzas were still yielding their easy millions, and the gold and silver in the out-croppings led to the first locations.
Among those early comers were Captain Boyd, whose white hair and erect figure may still be seen on the streets of Jerome ; Angus McKinnon, a persistent, raw-boned Scotchman ; and M. A. Ruffner. McKinnon seems to have been the first to suspect the possibility of rich copper values — a suspicion based, perhaps, on the richness of the newly-opened Clifton district in Southeastern Arizona. He ex- tended his locations and tried to enlist outside capital in devloping the section, but not until 1882, when Frederick A. Tritle became sixth governor of Arizona, was he successful.
Governor Tritle had taken his mining degree in Nevada with the famous silver kings, and his faith in the mineral wealth of his new territory was prophetic. Almost at once he employed an expe- rienced mining man, F. F. Thomas, to look up desirable properties for him. In Prescott Mr. Thomas met Angus McKinnon and heard of the big dykes and copper-stained water of Bitter Creek Canon.
The property lay in one of the most rugged and inaccessible cor- ners of the Black Hills range, about twenty-five miles from Pres- cott. The only wagon road, the road to the old government lime- pits in Yaeger Canon, stopped at the foot of the mountain, and the trail on over the peaks was little more than a foothold for deer and big-horn sheep. Thomas and McKinnon had to dismount and lead their ponies more than once before they reached the summit and looked down into the green canon where today the smoke hangs in an ever-renewing cloud, and the roar of machinery comes up dulled bv the distance.
THE MAKING OF A GREAT MINE 5
Even with the crude development possible where every pound of food and powder and drill steel and every tool came in on pack- horses, the claim looked promising. Mr. Thomas was interested to prospect it further. He took a bond on the McKinnon property and gradually acquired control of all the claims in the vicinity, eleven in all. including the rich Eureka property which had passed into the hands of Charles Lennig, of Philadelphia. The idea of consol- idation was borrowed from Nevada, and the name of United Verde chosen for the entire property.
Capital did not pour readily into a land of but two railroads, and those the mere crossing of transcontinental lines, whose last rails were scarcely spiked. Hitherto Arizona had looked to two sources, New York and London, for help in unlocking the strong boxes of her hills ; now again New York was to contribute — but only after some months of persistent effort on the part of Mr. Thomas. Ultimately a company was formed which included Edward S. Searles, W. B. Murray, Eugene Jerome, James A. McDonald, and others. Mr. McDonald was made president, and Jerome secretary and treasurer of the company.
Before leaving the East Mr. Thomas ordered two water-jackets and such other machinery as was needed for reducing the ores. Com- ing back to the new camp, he built a wagon road over the moun- tain, connecting with the road to Prescott — a road for years famous for its long, high grades and beautiful scenery — and surveyed a town-site below the mines and named it Jerome in honor of the secretary-treasurer.
The small jackets were sufficient to prove the value of the ore and a fifty-ton furnace was built and made a remarkable run on the rich oxidized ores near the surface. But the course of mine-making runs as a rule anything but smooth. Dissensions arose in the com- pany, copper took a phenomenal drop in value, and the smelter and mine were shut down, with still no realization on the part of the owners of the richness and extent of the ore bodies.
In 1888 the property was leased to W. A. Clark of Montana, whose previous experience in copper mining fitted him to appreciate the jH)ssibilities of the United Verde claims. The following year he become chief owner; and from this time dates the fuller develop- ment of the great mine.
Progress was handicapped by the broken and precipitous charac- ter of the mountain-side on which the claims were located, and the difficulty of transportation. For a time supplies were freighted in with mule-teams over the rough mountain-road from Ash Pork, on the lately completed Atlantic and Pacific railmad. sixty or seventy miles to the north.
When the grade over the mountains connecting the camp with
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Prescott, was opened for wagons, the problem was lessened, but not solved. The steep ascents and downward plunges became the freighter's anathema;- summer rains and winter snows swept out sections entirely; and from the point where the road turned down the mountain more than one burro, loaded from hoofs to ears with cordwood, lost his balance in giving right of way to the freight wagons and rolled comfortably into the smelter grounds some hun- dreds of yards below.
In 1894, the United Verde railroad was completed — a narrow- gauge line connecting the mine with the outside world at Jerome Junction, fourteen miles distant. This road, built at an approximate cost of $25,000 per mile, has in its short length 186 curves, two of forty-five degrees, and several of forty. Its maximum grades are four per cent, and all the freight that passes over it must be re- loaded; but through it the smelter and mine have grown to present proportions.
The rugged, rock-bound mountain-side, with its saw-toothed ledges criss-crossing everywhere, is bare of the shrubs and grass that clothed it in the day of the Indian and the prospector. Along the summit, dry skeletons of trees stand out ; their bare limbs wrapped in the shimmering arsenic smoke which discharges constantly from the big, black pipe that crawls snake-like up the ledges from the smelter.
The huge central smoke-stack belches its unvarying volume of thick, black smoke, and the lesser stacks send long scarfs of blue vapor wavering across the narrow canon space where the smelter stands, like some Vulcan's workship, on a black slag-dump of its own building. As the dark mass, suggestive of the off-scourings of a volcano, grows, the works have so much more elbow-room ; but just now some of the pile is being fed back into the mine through a tunnel-like uplift and used to fill in old workings — like a beggar returning empty-handed to the home out of which he went with a full purse.
There are shallow excavations and small, dark openings along the mountain-side, and here and there a thread of greenish quartz or an ooze of copper-stained water; but little, even in the hoist-house, to suggest the nearness of a great mine. The hoist-engine, one of the largest in the Southwest, throbs and purrs steadily ; the bells clang their incessant orders to the engineer; the hand on the big dial, which registers the whereabouts of the moving cage, sways back and forth ; and the cages go up and down loaded with ore cars, full or empty, or with men ; yet there is little hint that all this activity is rooted deep in the heart of the earth.
Stepping on the cage, with the "man aboard" signal to the engi- neer, the sunlight falls away ; dim, rough-timbered walls, gleaming
Changing Shift at thk Main Shaft of the United Vkkdi:
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with drops of yellow moisture, press close on all sides ; the darkness is broken now and again by the flash of electric lights and some swift glimpse of long levels, with ore cars waiting.
When the cage stops at last at the main station of the nine-hun- dred-foot level, it might be the gathering hall of some medieval castle — a large, square room, beamed with great tree-trunks, roughly squared ; dim-lighted, cool, silent with the silence of the under- world that no roar of machinery can break ; lines of cars piled high with ore waiting to see the sunlight and be tried with fire ; low doorways leading off into narrow openings beamed and braced with thick timbers ; and men with dark, begrimed faces going in and out — gnomes, guardians of the Rhine-gold.
Car-tracks lead into each drift or stope, and in places the candles show the iron rails corroded with the drip of the copper-charged water and covered with a reddish slime precipitated from it and rich in pure copper. At points where the percentage of copper in solution is highest, the rails have to be renewed frequently and other iron fittings are given what protection is possible.
The shoes of the miners are rapidly rotted to pieces, and clothing is rotted and discolored. Sometimes a rippling stream of deep green water flows along the side-wall of the tunnel, and again moss-like incrustations, like rich-colored jewels, show along the timbers.
In places, great masses of blue-and-green crystals hang down, dripping with drops of bright-colored water and sparkling in the light with wonderful, rich-tinted icicles or frost work — blue and green vitriol formed in a few weeks' time from the heavily charged water.
Everywhere-H:he walls are timbered to within a short distance of the work in progress ; held up by great beams and column-like stulls ; a forest under-ground — millions of feet of yellow pine from the mountains of Northern Arizona, buried forever. As if for everything that she yielded from her under-world treasure-vaults, Nature compelled an equal tribute from the surface — forest for shin- ing ore, human life for the pliant metal.
The method of mine-timbering might furnish needed lessons to above-ground builders. Nothing inadequate here, nothing bungled or ill-done or unnecessary ; every inch of wood serving a purpose, and yet a dignity of line and a massive harmony seldom seen in public or private buildings.
The whole mine is mapped and platted as carefully as the blocks of a great city. Every level has its own page in the big book in the office above, added to as the work progresses ; a perfect record of old and new — exhausted, waste-filled, lean, rich, drift, stope, tunnel — every foot accounted for.
The superintendent, with quiet efficiency in every glance, knows
THE MAKING OF A GREAT MINE 9
the intricate system of workings as a man knows his own street; weighs the probabilities beyond every drill-hole, and plans months ahead his orderly exploitation of the hidden wealth of the mountain.
At the end of the drifts and in the stopes, the naked walls shine in the candle-light ; here barren slate, there ore, sparkling, deep- streaked with threaded yellow veins that gleam like gold — copper sulpurets ; again, black, massy, iron pyrites, and nearer the surface oxide ores dull-hued but rich.
The machine-drills spitting a stream of sparks like fire-works cut into the walls ; a dozen holes and more that loaded with "giant" will throw out carloads of ore.
In one dim, quiet drift the diamond drill purrs softly as its black teeth eat into the virgin rock, throwing back its smooth, round "core"' impatiently, greedy for the richness that may be ahead. It is the pathfinder, seeking out new tracks for the drifts to follow, mapping barren sections as an explorer maps the desert. Whatever ore is in its track is shown in the slim, round core which it brings out. and which is assayed daily ; so that what lies beyond a thousand feet of solid rock may be known and recorded, avoided or sought as its value demands. The ore lies in deposits large and small, not in regular veins, and it is "like drilling through a fruit-cake to strike the raisins," as the man at the drill expressed it.
Much of the ore in the mine is rich in sulphur, and this sulphur is exceedingly sensitive to heat. The friction of ore-masses against each other, as in slides and caves, may cause, has caused more than once, spontaneous combustion. Sections of the mine have burned for years and are yet on fire, bulkheaded strongly from the open workings, that the fire may die out for lack of air. There are places where the rocks are hot to the hand, and the atmosphere suggestive of a Turkish bath ; where the air is pungent with warm wood- and earth-smells; but for the most part it is cleaner and pleasanter to breathe than at the surface. Rig fans, operated by compressed air. sweep fresh air into every part and air-shafts draw out the powder-smoke that would linger.
From the 500- foot level a tunnel goes out to daylight in a deep, rocky canon below the mine, and through it motor-engines whirl car- loads of ore to the roasting pits along the hillsides beyond the tunnel-mouth.
Too much sulphur makes hard work for the smelter, and it is a matter of economy that some of the ore give up its evil-smelling component in the big, open pits rather than in the furnao
The pit beds an- graded out along the hill sides, for there is not level land enough anywhere near the mine "to whip a dog 011." Hen- the ore is burned to a clinker-looking mass BUggestive of vol- canic refiw. Each bed is about fifty feet by t went \ -five, spread
IO
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Slag Dump
Main Hoist
Steel Wood Chute
over on the bottom with an evenly disposed layer of cedar-wood.
One-fourth the pit width is laid at a time, the wood brought down from the end of the long steel wood-chute, which drops down the mountain from the railroad track like a huge, uninviting tobog- gan slide, by the familiar burro train. The motor cars whirl the ore alongside, and it is piled in orderly layers, rounded into a high- topped mound at last and covered smoothly with a blanket of finely crushed ore.
The pits have an under-draft and are fired from below. When the sulphur once catches, the burning goes on till the last trace of it is expelled— four months on an average. The steamy white smoke, green and yellow tinged, rises in a dull, inert cloud — pungent, choking, but beautiful when seen from a distance. The wind drifts it down into the river valley and across the canon, where it lies like shimmering, stagnant water.
Rich yellow and greenish incrustations of sulphur grow like mosses along the roasting pit, and at last the whole heap changes from the greenish gray of the raw ore to a deep, mottled lava-brown. The cold pits show slag-like masses of rock or glittering blocks of ore jewelled with crystals in peacock hues. The pale gleam of iron pyrites has deepened to rich films of purplish rainbow color, and, as crowbar and powder break down the pile, rare flashes of light play through and through.
This roasted ore goes back on the motor-cars to the main station
THE MAKING OF A GREAT MINE
Roasting Pits Precipitation Fi,umes
of the 500-foot level and up by hoist to the big iron storage-bins at the mine-mouth. Here at the ore bins the smelting really begins; for on the proper blending of the "charge" depends the success of the matte and the activity of the furnace.
Four grades of ore come out of the mine, and the trick is to use them so that each shall check the refractory tendencies of its fellows and find its own lack supplied. The silicious must hold the iron- and sulphur-charged ores in check ; the sulphides must blend with oxides and silicious to form the matte, and all must have their quota of lime rock.
There is a touch of alchemy, of mystery in it. Thirty, forty years ago, most of this ore would have been held worthless because "stub- born"— overcharged with sulphur, or iron, or silica. It would have taken two months or more to bring the most docile of it to copper bars. Now a car of ore may leave the deepest level of the mine and in two or three hours discharge its metal into the moulds, while the waste glows and cools on the slag-dump. The great smelter is itself not unlike some wizard's workshop, and the keen- eyed, watchful manager, who for eleven years has studied the output of this one mine, till he knows its closest secrets, is the master alchemist.
At the big iron ore-bins, huge doors, in sets of five, wait till the motor-engine whirls the empty cars into place below. Then they "pen at a touch, and just so much ore falls — silicious; on to the next
THE MAKING OF A GREAT MINE 13
five, and oxide ore joins the blend ; on now for raw iron pyrites ; for "roast." shining from its trial in the pits below ; for the massy "black ore," which is iron, too, but darker and richer than the first ; then for the white topping of egg-sized lime rock, and back to the feeding-floor, where the hungry furnaces wait.
The condition of the furnace governs the blend ; if the matte is low and the molten silicious ore is given to sticking to the sides or throat of the furnace — "freezing," in smelter parlance — an over-plus of raw iron goes in, she responds to the "doping" or "washing-out" (a furnace, like a ship, is always she), and things are right again, i And it "she" doesn't respond, which has happened elsewhere, that sullen, glowing mass settles into the throat, shutting off the blast, and has to cool and harden and be broken with hammers and pried out with crowbars before things are right.)
But now the motor slides the train of ore in to the feeding-floor, two cars line up ready, and the big, stolid iron doors on one side of the furnace open. Down in the deep red throat a mass of gold and red is smoldering and glowing, poked and prodded with long iron bars if it shows any inclination to "freeze." Exquisite, pale, clean flames play over it, and tiny sparks like a sprinkle of star dust.
As the new "charge" slides in, bright vapors and rich-colored fumes leap up, stifling but beautiful. The doors shut, the charge is repeated on the opposite side, coke is spread over the top and four cars, fourteen tons, of ore are left to smoulder and burn into matte.
A furnace may be fed with judicious bleudings of ore for from forty to sixty days ; then it is allowed to cool, the clinkers and waste are removed from the bottom, it is washed out, repaired if need be, and set to work again. Three of the four furnaces here are always in blast, with alternate seasons when the fourth is being cleaned.
\> the ore mattes and settles in the furnace, a molten stream, rich and glowing, flows into the settler below, where the copper, being heavier, sinks to the bottom and the waste runs over in its own channel into the big iron slag-pots, like giant cauldrons on wheels, and is whirled away by the tireless motors and poured in a long, Stream over the cold black edge of the ever-growing dump.
When the molten copper is ready to be taken from the settler, "tapped" as is said, a long iron bar is driven into a small opening just above a narrow little channel or sluiceway leading off to a pit in which a ten-ton dipper is waiting to hold this fiery wine. As the bar breaks through the breast or "tap- jacket." golden drops spurt out. and following the withdrawn bar a swift. gleaming red stream flowing in haste to the big black dipper.
When the cup is full, the smelter Hercules, the ponderous travel-
THE MAKING OF A GREAT MINE 15
ing crane, rolls noiselessly along, drops two huge chain-arms with hooks of strongest Norway iron at the end, and the gold-brimmed cup is swung lightly into position before the converter-mouth and drained at one draught down the clay-lined throat.
This golden, shimmering liquid is now from thirty to forty per cent copper, but the ore-waste must still be blown away by the powerful air-blast sent tirelessly from the great engines in the power-house. The mass bubbles and boils, the clay throat glows deeper and deeper, wavering, rich-hued flame-vapors play over it, and golden drops flung up by the blast fly above the converter- mouth like falling stars.
A man on guard dips a long, trident-toothed iron bar into the converter-mouth, and from the adhering threads of metal knows just when the slag must be poured off, leaving the copper again behind in the bottom. At the right moment the converter tips gently on its side and the great ladle is brimmed with liquid rock, sputtering and steaming, as if reluctant to leave its richer comrade ; the crane lifts again, and the ladle is emptied down a channel leading to the slag-pots.
The copper left is now about seventy-five per cent pure, but again the blast is turned on, and the bubbling mass passes from blue copper to white and on to something more than 99 per cent pure. The flame that shimmers over it is pale and clean, and the surface smooth like oiled water.
When this purity is reached the long, narrow car carrying the thick iron molds is pushed under the converter; again the big vessel tips and a pure, white-lighted stream flows into the pan-like receptacles. It leaps and boils as it strikes the cool iron ; drops fly up like burning rain, and for an instant the full mold heaves and writhes as if some living thing struggled in it. Then the rich gold surface deepens to glowing red and dulls to wine, wrinkling over with an oddly roughened crust like faded garnets.
It is like watching world-making in miniature. So this cold, stable earth must once have glowed and shimmered, and not unlike this, perhaps, the first crust settled over its surface.
When the copper cools the molds are turned bottom-side-up, and the cakes of metal pried out — pure "blister-copper," showing an interior blister, or hollow toward which the gold and silver values tend to gather, and a surface wrinkled and dulled in color but beauti- ful in its soft-blended metal hues.
Other cars wait and the cold bars, weighing approximately 400 pounds each, are hurried away to the testing-room, where every tenth bar is drilled through the center and the filings assayed that the purity may not vary. Then up an incline to the railroad track — and the metal that was so lately ore is ready to start across the conti-
THE MAKING OF ./ GREAT MINE
»7
nent to the refineries of the Atlantic coast. Refined copper was formerly made here: but it can be done at less expense elsewhere, and the entire output is now shipped in the crude bars.
Back in the smoke-wrapped smelter, where the big blasts beat like some eternal pulse, much is going on. At the upper end, the converters are being lined and dried ready for service. It is these big Bessemer converters that have revolutionized the production of copper and made possible the reduction of low-grade ores. By their use the process of making metallic copper is shortened from two or three months to as many hours, and ores once almost valueless yield profitable returns.
The converters are a little like sonic giant dinner-pot with thick
Running Coppkb
iron sides and lid. The lid is lifted off, an oblong iron mold set into the converter, and the space between mold and sides packed full of specially prepared ground silica and fire-clay, and fire-resist- ent. dull red magnesite bricks from Austria.
The lining must be put in carefully, well-mixed, well-tamped, ii" weak spots, tin- air holes ;it the back properly opened; then the lid is lifted on. clamped in place, and a man going inside lines it even more carefully. It thifi work is badly done, trouble and danger will t ; and if the lined converter is not well dried out. the hot matte striking it will cause a terrible explosion.
When the lining is done, the crane lifts the converter in place for drying, a fire of wood and coal is made down in the clay-padded maw. and an air current turned on from the blast engines. In all
THE MAKING OF A GREAT MINE 19
the big plant there is but one thing more beautiful than the drying converters, and that is the pure copper as it leaps and boils in the molds the first moment before it dulls from gold to wine and garnet.
The converters are set in rows and the flames shoot up the narrow iron throats in splendor, leaping, waving lines like flags caught in a rising wind. They swing and sway and climb higher with wonder- ful, ever-changing colors and shapes, till it is as if each were alive and struggling to be free of some chain. At night, against the black bulk of the works with the dark mountain-wall behind and the dim figures of the men moving about, the effect is weird and beautiful indeed.
The flames purr softly as they climb and swing above the edge, the big, clay-packed throats glow redder and redder, and below the color deepens to a gorgeous gold, with a haze of gold-powdered light over it all.
When the lining is dried perfectly, the fire dies down and goes out, and the converter is ready for its charge of molten matte, one ladle- ful to begin with, more as the iron of the ore eats away the silica of the lining and enlarges the interior chamber.
Down below the converters and across the smelter from the other furnaces, is a furnace of a different type and set to a peculiarly interesting use. It is a reverberatory furnace fired with crude oil, and in it the flue-dust from the other furnaces is reduced to copper. This dust is caught in a specially designed dust-chamber, through which the furnace smoke circulates before it is allowed to escape through the central smoke-stack.
Before this system was installed, the flue-cinders fell all about the smelter and town and carried away a good bit of copper and much silver, besides being a source of unwelcome dirt. In the first year this interesting plant had paid its cost and the smelter grounds are now free of smoke-dust.
With this coarse black dust is used another product of the mine, «vcn more interesting. From two levels, the 300- and 500-foot, tunnels extend out to the surface and through these flow streams of greenish, copper-charged water. The water is led through more than a mile of sluiceways, narrow wooden boxes, filled with scrap- iron, tin cans, and all sorts of iron waste. A clean knife-blade thrust into the water and held a moment becomes coated with copper. More slowly a deposil settles on the rusty iron, turning it a bright, gleaming copper in spots and covering it with a red slime, till at last the iron decomposes and disappears entirely.
Each day's deposit is brushed and scraped off the iron and sinks to the bottom of the sluiceway, where it is swept up (the water being temporarily diverted) and spread OH a platform to dry.
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This coarse-grained reddish sand, as it looks to the eye, is 80 per cent copper, and mixed with the flue-dust, produces a matte of high value. Many hundred tons of scrap-iron are eaten up in a year by the green water ; small pieces are lost in a day or two, some of the big ones may last for months. In the sluiceway He scraps of worn- out engine fittings, rust-eaten rails from the bottom of the mine, and worn street-car wheels from Los Angeles, all serving alike as food for the hungry water.
Beyond the smelter is the power-house, full of the orderly rhythm of many machines ; the air vibrates with a great harmony as of deep- toned music; there is a rhythmic pulsation to the floor, the walls — ■ the body unconsciously yields to it. Here, if anywhere, a man might sing the "Song o' Steam," for which McAndrews waited.
Thirteen 250-horse-power boilers, ranged in a double row mouth to mouth with only feeding room between, chuckle and whisper to- gether, knowing that without them the big plant is helpless. Out of them comes the life of the fourteen engines, great and small, that furnish compressed air, electricity, and air for the furnace- and con- verter-blasts. Here is the largest blower in the Southwest, and a second of like size is soon to be installed. As the capacity of the smelter is increased, the power-plant grows.
So much machinery in constant use to its fullest capacity requires that ample means of immediate repair be at hand. The foundry supplies something of this ; here molds are made and many articles, particularly for use about the smelter, cast out of iron ; but the cast- steel fittings are shipped from the East.
In the big warehouse are stored in quantity the things most likely to be needed in the ordinary routine — iron bars in many grades and sizes, from all sorts of native to the finest Norway, used where extreme strength is necessary ; parts of machines, valves, belts, bolts, nuts ; rolls of copper wire, steel cable, fibre ropes ; sheets of thick glass and piles of glass engine-tubes ; electrical repair stock of all sorts ; all the means of meeting an emergency or tiding over a tem- porary isolation from the outer world.
In one room are sacks of cement, more and more in use in mine and smelter work, as in all modern construction where strength and convenience join hands with economy. Here too are sacks of dull- red flour-fine magnesite from Austria, and magnesite bricks for fur- nace- and converter-lining, more fire-resistent than iron and costing twenty-seven cents each laid down. Near them are sacks of fire-clay, and cream-white fire-brick from Swansea in Wales — mother of mod- ern smelting and training-school for some of the ablest smelter- men, among them the superintendent of the United Verde plant.
In the blacksmith shop everything goes on, from tool-sharpening for the miners to the making of the big converters ; compressed air,
THE MAKING OF A GREAT MIXE
like a captive Samson, cuts the huge sheets of iron, marks and punches the holes, and drives the white-hot rivets home with a hammer that seems a plaything but strikes the blows of a giant. The whole plant could almost rise phoenix-like, not from its own ashes, but from its own ware-house, foundry, and workshops.
When mining in the Southwest was new, the first question was, "How far to water?*' A mine near to water was regarded with suspicion, as too good to be true. The little copper-tinged spring- where the Indian children had played was a good guide, but a poor water supply. It still crawls out from under the huge slag-dump and finds its way into its old bed in the canon, but not to play with
Hill's Canon, Kntrance To Hull Mink Par' of the United Verde water supply is obtained here
the pebbles and dye the knotted bundles of basket reeds; now it is caught like a truant and led to the sluiceway, where it gives un its stolen copper among the rusty scrap-iron.
The water for the United Verde comes from other springs, the most distant eleven miles away. It winds along the mountain-side in big pipes into the line of storage-tanks set high above the plant on a ledge scooped out and built up from the sheer wall of the near- est peak. From the tanks it is distributed as necessity indicates. and with economy : for only in seasons of unusual rainfall is there an overplus. Much ingenuity has been displayed in husbanding the supply, and in the big cooler and condenser, just completed, 3000 gallons of hot water is changed every minute to fairly cool; falling
THE MAKING OF A GREAT MINE
23
like a sheet of rain from a height of 63 feet through a series of cunningly slanted shallow troughs into a tank below.
A great mine is like a principality with many dependencies that exist because it does. There is no smiting the rock and idly watch- ing a stream of marketable metal flow out. A dozen other indus- tries must be created and brought to success, before the stability of the central one is assured. Cities are created in the desert; springs taught to rise above their source and discharge their waters into strange and alien channels ; and railroads built where pack-trails shirked to go — all that the rough, red bars may go out to the markets of the world.
Tiik Montana Hotel built for the miners by the United Verde Co.
The busy plant teeming with men and machinery, set in some canon where lately the wild hawks nested, or oh some mountain- side where the stone circles still mark the site of Indian wickiups, mine timbers, steel, iron, food, housing, and human labor skilled and is the center of a far-drawn activity. Coal, coke, wood, lumber, unskilled, are drawn into this net of necessity.
Because the ore under some gaunt, barren mountain yields a cer- tain per cent of copper, men thousands of miles distant shape raw- iron into machinery, turn forests into cut lumber, and count tomor- row's gains before today is ended. No less than other forms of business, mining is dependent upon the entire country, as well as upon one spot, and returns its benefits generally as well as locally.
The first and last impression at Jerome is of the tremendous energy
THE MAKING Of A GREAT MINE 25
that has created this hive of human activity on a barren mountain- side— of the bringing together of so much from such widely-sepa- rated sources. The mine was there, it is true; but it takes men, many men, and much money, and more than men or money or both, to create a great and well-ordered business.
Something more than i ioo men are employed by the United Verde Company in the mine, smelter, workshops, and offices. A good per- centage of the mine workers are Mexicans, Spaniards, Ausfrians, and other foreigners, as in most large mines of the Southwest, and Mexican helpers are used to some extent in the smelter, but the camp is essentially '"white."
The productive life of the mine has not covered much more than twenty years, and in that time it has added many millions of pounds of copper to the world's store. The average recent production has been near 4,000,000 pounds a month ; enough to give the mine place with the seven or eight great mines of the world.
Jerome, the town which has grown up below the mine and smelter, claims a population of 2000, and is a typical mining town, upturned at a dizzy angle against the rocky mountain-side. Its main street dips up and down across the gullies and in it two wagons could pass for perhaps a hundred yards ; beyond that, it is as are all the other strets, a narrow wagon-road graded out of the rocky hillside.
Burros loaded with firewood deliver their freight in backyards to which they climb by stair-like trails ; delivery ponies, a boy in the saddle and a big square basket on either side, bring the morning's marketing up precipitous trails to sky-touching kitchen doors; and the postman, riding along, drops a paper into the porch of the house below and shoves another on the porch of the one above.
The pretty cottages built by the company line up along their narrow terraces like rows of pigeons on a roof; but the big hotel above, built by the company for its employees, loses none of its dig- nity by nearness to the great mountain, and every house in the town overlooks a view to be reckoned little lower than the Grand Canon of the Colorado.
First, the swift dip of the foothills, then the flat green valley with the Verde river, a hand-breadth of silver winding among its cotton- woods; and beyond, the great walls wind- and sand-carved into a thousand fantastic shapes, rich-dyed with shaded reds, the huge but- tressed cliffs and deep-jawed canons of the Red Rocks. Back of these the dark fringe of forest oil the Mogollon plateau and the noble. snow-crowned bulk of the San Francisco peaks.
It is good at sunrise, when the smoke blown down from the roasting-pits lies in the valley like opal-tinted water; better at sunset, when deep blue and purple shadows gather in the canons, blurred strangely into the red of the cliff-walls; best of all, on a moonless night, when the slag-pots send swift, short-lived rivers of flame sweeping over the black dump, and balls of fire go leaping into the dark, smoke-filled canon below.
Then the muffled roar of the machinery, the dull glow of the burn- ing converters, the steady pulse 6i the furnace-blasts speak a human h — not of the copper that has conn- out or the gold that has gone in. but of the lives that have made the great plant — and have been made or unmade by it.
Dewey, Arliotia.
-n
2'/
AN ARCHXOLOGICAL WEDDING JOURNEY
By THERESA RUSSELL
CHAPTER VII. A LOCAL HABITATION
"The bed was made, the room was fit, By punctual eve the stars were lit."
HE reason for the dismemberment was that we had found the thing we long had sought — a ruin that looked suspicious of harboring graveyards.
Out came the shovel and the pick, the measuring rod and the camera. Up went the tents, and, presto, there on the unblossoming desert had sprung forth a full-grown Home. It was immediately as much at home as though its advent had been awaited from the beginning. As though the cedars had been growing all these years but to shade the little tents, whose new- whiteness now shone so entrancingly against their encircling browns and greens. As though tawny sands and sombre sage and rocks of ecru and cream had been blending their harmony for its approving delight. As though over these neutral shades had bent the brilliant blue to brighten its monotony. As though the sunsets, practising
That Lookkd Sisi-kiois <>i- Hakhokjnc; (',ka\ i.vakks
AN ARC1LH0L0G1CAL WEDDING JOURNEY
29
for centuries, had perfected their splendor to bring to a triumphant close its every day.
As for the day, one might not say which part of it were best — whether the morning with its tonic air, the essence of wine inhaled ; whether the glittering noon, when this same air at once quivers with heat and trembles with the errant breeze, unfailing, cool and sweet, as if it came from grottos and dripping, dim retreats; or yet the twilight time, with its deep hush on earth and mystery on high; or even yet the night, with stars shining so close you reach out for them, for no smoke nor dust nor grime floats like a veil between you and their light. Each yielded up its charm to us, and each in its own speech said. "Welcome home!"
There was the thought, too, that it had been home in unknown
'A I'Yu.-r.ROWN Homk"
years gone by to this long-buried people. But though the Archaeolo- gist may wear the flower of sentiment, its fragrance dissipates into the atmosphere of sense, and Science holds full sway.
When we had first set up OUT tiny habitation and furnished it with its bed of cedar boughs and Xavajo blankets, it- boxes of pro- vision.--, trunks, tables and chairs ( '/. <\. things to sit on), we thought its little space was pretty well utilized. But we discovered its capa- city t-) be an cla>tic property. For, as the excavations progressed and the ancient trophies were exhumed, it had to officiate as museum also, until our valued specimen- wire like to turn ns out of QOUSC and home.
No longer could we use empty boxes as chairs, but were obliged disrespectfully to sit above the bones of the departed. Skulls
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O U T IV EST
"Consideration of their Cuisine "
grinned at us from every corner, and the floor was paved with pottery. True, as a Nature-lover says, "A family which lives in a tent never can have a skeleton in the closet," but this family had one in the table. It did not disturb the family any, but caused gaping consternation in Sliver, who stumbled upon it while hunting for the bean bag, and occasioned his precipitate, retrogressive retirement from the unholy scene. For, you must know, to his yet unenlight- ened mind, anything dead is very bad medicine.
Mutton on the Hoof ' '
AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WEDDING JOURNEY 31
This cast to his religious views of course prevented Sliver from delving with a scientific spade, although his broad tolerance and sophisticated commercialism permitted him to associate amiably with those who did. The avenging gods would doubtless visit wrath upon them, but anticipation of their Nemesis was the least of his troubles. It was the consideration of their cuisine that chiefly engaged his attention at this time. He had no objection to digging a little pit in the ground for an oven to bake frijoles in. He enjoyed negotiating with the passing shepherd for mutton on the hoof, that the household might dine on the fat of the lamb. He boiled rice and
"Conventional Representations ok Birds and Animals"
made many biscuits. He hauled water from an arroyo six miles away.
For. with all its preparation, our Promising Land had overlooked the trifling matter of a centrally located, well-filled reservoir. But even the most thoughtful foresight cannot be expected to include . little detail; and for herself, the Desert doesn't think much of water, anyway. The- fluid we secured with such effort was of a rich tan shade, and had, as to taste, a soft, warm effect — very pleasing, regarded as a bit of pastel.
But my religion was not like Sliver's, and 1 was glad to be given a share in the archaeological gold mine; to be allowed to sift sepulchral dirt for turquoise, arrow-heads and various relics; to
32
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clean up the vertebrae; to glue together the fragments of pottery; to pack and catalogue the collection as it grew apace, and was boxed up for the journey to its University home. The bowls and ollas, particularly, were a joy forever, with their quaint shapes and geo- metrical designs, or, perhaps, conventional representations of birds and animals. Two color-schemes seemed to prevail, black and white, and all shades of red, from terra cotta and maroon up to a dull pink. Occasionally one would find a combination of red and black; still more rarely, red and white.
And these, my small vocations, are just urgent enough to give zest to dreaming while thev wait. For in this remote, self-sufficient
The Round Knob of a Hiij, "
world you come to grasp at that dolce far nicntc which must ever be fruitage forbidden to the intimate, interdependent world you have hitherto known. You may even postpone the making up of your rolling bed by reason of your absorption in the morning tablecloth, dwelling avidly on news you scorned to give time for perusal when it really was news, months before — and nobody whispers that you are a delinquent housekeeper.
Then, if you do have any troubles you want to forget, you can become oblivious to them also by climbing the round knob of a hill that forms a part of your front lawn, clambering on up to the top of Nature's feudal, surrounding fortress, and looking around you. You see illimitable plains, all chaotic with chasms and canadas, all
AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WEDDING JOURNEY
33
"Mount Ziltagini "
wrinkled up into ridges and ravines, strewn with disorderly boul- ders, and patched here and there by a vivid bit of Navajo corn. Splashed, too, with shadows of clouds, wavering, shifting, vanish- ing here, appearing there, as restless and as constant as the shadow on the heart.
Illimitable Plains
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This, far and away. Then the delicate, evanescent outline of Mount Ziltagini, tinted peaks and domes and terraces that can be naught else but castles of Fairyland. It was from this little butte of ours that we loved best to watch the sunsets. Sometimes the last light of day was simply clear ; more often, a boasting fantasy, flash- ing its glories east, north and south.
"Isn't it gorgeous?" I exclaimed, on one of these pyrotechnic evenings.
"Sure," agreed the Anthropologist, "and the gorge goes all the wav round."
"Approved by Everything Except the Facts"
Twice during our three weeks at home did we go visiting. Once on a morning the Instigators enjoyed a twelve-mile tramp to call on a neighboring ruin. And once the Bokodokleesh Canon party took another horseback trip. What we went forth to see was an ancient pueblo of good archaeological report. It was thirty-five miles away, and that seemed plenty long enough for a summer-day's journey.
When the spring — which always means the goal of endeavor — was reached at five o'clock, never did water taste so good. Though, in fact, it was alkaline and not good at all. And never did the ground — just plain old ground — feel so good. To lie stretched full length on a bed of sand, with your head hanging over the root of a pinon, and watch Sliver get supper — that was luxury in the concrete.
AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL WEDDING JOURNEY 35
We had intended to see the sights and be gone early in the morn- ing. Intentions are superfluous and might as well be mostly dis- carded in the first place. To see the sights was easy, as they con- sisted chiefly of landscape. It would have been an ideal site for an archaeological camp — approved by everything except the facts. But to be gone was not so easy, owing to the discovery that the White Rat had taken it into his mulish pate to begone himself and do a little nocturnal exploring all his own. Although his hobbled progress had been conservative and slow, he had nevertheless covered ten bountiful miles before Sliver and Bill — always poor, vicariously-
" Necessary to Take their Skimpv Shade in Rotation "
punished Bill — could overtake him and persuade him of the error of his way.
Meantime the Instigators, having nothing to do but wait, sat in the shade of the trees and speculated about Determination and Free Will. "Trees" in the plural advisedly, for, although you could get under one only at a time, owing to their unsocial distribution, it was necessary to take their skimpy shade in rotation, if you would avoid solar impertinence. Owing to her capers with Bill the day before, the Tenderfoot was not able to accomplish these peregrina- tions with that sweet, attractive grace supposedly bequeathed by Mother Eve. Instead, she illustrated the evolutionary rather than the theological theory, by reaching the erect posture through a slow unfolding of humps. I Jut let us be an example, if not exemplary.
Starting late, therefore, we camped on the trail that night and reached home next day in time for a bath before dinner. Xo, indeed,
36 OUT WEST
this was no oh-don't-mention-it occurrence. It was an Event. Dur- ing our "pleasure exertion" (with thanks to Samantha), our ablu- tions had been perforce mainly of the Christian Science description — there wasn't any such thing.
Soon after this, two more events occurred. Secondly, we pulled up stakes, folded our tents, and migrated to the next scientific station. And firstly, our household suffered a subtraction. Nosifor and the mules went home.
By reason of his self-saving disposition, this lad had not proven an ardent archaeologist. Erminio, the awkward, hadn't a lazy bone in his body ; Nosifor, the debonair, hadn't any other kind. It was entertaining, though, that pathetic way of wiping hypothetical sweat from his brow. We missed a few little tricks like that, but were consoled by the fact that his companion, left alone, did as much work in a day as the two of them had ever done together.
But be thou not offended, thou useless little Nosifor. There are yet other factors of the human problem which may be eliminated and still leave the sum total the same, or even greater than before. For some there be who can be attached only by the minus sign, and inevitably lessen the value of any proposition of which they form a part. While some have the property of a plus prefix, and their addition means increase, wherever they are placed.
And if both kinds were not necessary to make the equation work out right, we may fairly take it that both would not be found in the Great Arithmetic.
Stanford University.
a castle: IN SPAIN
By DAVID STARR JORDAN.
1KNOW a castle, in the Heart of Spain, Builded of stone, as if to stand for aye, With tile roof, red against the azure sky- For skies are bluest in the Heart of Spain. So fair a castle men build not again ; 'Neath its broad arches, in its courtyard fair, And through its cloisters — open everywhere — I wander as I will, in sun or rain. Its inmost secrets unto me are known, For mine the castle is. Nor mine alone ; "Tis thine, dear heart, to have and hold alway. Tis all the world's, likewise, as mine and thine ; For whoso passes through its gates shall say, "I dwelt within this castle — it is mine!"
37
ORLEANS INDIAN LEGENDS
By MELCENA BURNS DENNY
ATHERING Indian legends is much the same matter as gathering Indian baskets. In some unguarded moment one acquires a modest squaw-cap, and be- hold, the seed of the collector's mania is planted. One then buys baskets till he is ashamed to look his Other One in the face. So, if any person with a predisposition to care for such things hears a legend from Indian lips, he is compelled by the charm of it to beg for more, to coax, manipulate and scheme till he has piled legend on legend. The heart of every Indian who loafs the street becomes a possible treasure-trove of folk lore — and the way to an Indian's heart is hard and long, not always to be won by money, flattery, or the flask.
Our mountains have many times opened their narrow trails to men from distant colleges, who came, with their learning for a reason, to listen to the simple stories of an inferior race. Too often they have met hostile silence and suspicion, and in the end the full measure of disappointment — for it is not always to the worthy the stories fall. Here begins a series of legends that fell to the unworthy, who liked them because they were stories fresh from the lives of a people who for centuries have lived as brothers with the shv wood-creatures the traditions are framed about.
Orleans Woman Makinu Baskkts
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Some Orleans Baskets
As in all western legends, the coyote is a favorite, a hero rascally and boasting, but seldom cowardly. In the Scott Valley legends he is Quatuk. Over the mountains at Orleans Bar he is Pee- naaf-fich.
Sacramento, Cal.
the: legend or pain
EE-NAAF-FICH, the Coyote, heard of a country where no one lived except bad people who loved to hurt folks. So he said to the Eagle, "Let us go and kill all the bad people in this distant valley we hear about."
So he and the Eagle started out. They traveled and traveled till they came to a valley thick with houses and full of people. It was night-time when they got there.
They went into a house, and there were many people sitting about. They talked in a friendly way to the Coyote and Eagle, and invited them to sleep. But they knew better than to go to sleep in such a place.
So the Coyote said : "We don't feel sleepy. We feel so good we would like to make a big dance. Let us go outside and build a big fire and dance."
Now it is a great thing to watch at a dance, and so while the visitors made a big fire and painted for the dance, all the peo- ple of the place began to gather together to watch. They sent word everywhere, and by the time the fun began all the houses were empty all over the valley, and the people were hurrying to where the flames were shooting up in the midst of the village.
First the Coyote began to dance. Then the Eagle began to dance. The Coyote leaped and the Eagle flew ; and both sang and danced, and sang and danced. It was hard to tell which danced the higher. It grew late in the night, and they kept on singing and dancing, and singing and dancing, and all the people sat
Tin: Dance of thh Coyotk ash Bagli
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still and watched. No one had ever looked on at a dance half so fine.
After a while it grew cloudy up in the sky. Towards mid- night snow began to fall. All the people just watched and watched.
It snowed, and snowed, and snowed — dark snow, thick in the air. The Eagle and the Coyote danced higher still. All the peo- ple watched.
Soon the snow was up to the people's knees. Then it was up to their hips. No one could quit watching the dance. Then towards morning a big frost came.
The Eagle and Coyote just danced, and danced, and danced. The frost grew so thick it was like a crust of ice. When it was morning, and light enough to see, the two dancers saw they could stop and rest. They rested beside the burnt-out fire. And all around them the people clustered, watching and watching. They sat straight and never lifted an arm, even when the dance was finished. They were all wide-eyed and staring, and no company ever sat so still. They were corpses, frozen in the snow.
The Coyote and the Eagle went around among them, laughing and tapping each one on the head, to see if there was one alive. Then they danced a little more for joy, for they thought that in a single night the whole tribe of wicked people was killed off.
But there was one that they didn't know about, who had crawled off to a house when he first began to freeze. The Eagle and Coyote left the valley without finding him, and boasted to all they met about what they had done. And this one man who was left recovered, and has ever since been working out vengeance for his people. He is Pain, and he never visits you but you suffer. Sometimes he kills, but usually he prefers to take his pleasure out of people first, so that really it seems as if it would have been better had the Coyote and the Eagle left the wicked people undisturbed. For those were the days before the change in the world, when no man felt any torment, and a man could even be killed and not suffer.
4»
SPRING IN THE SANTA CRUZ
By VIRGINIA GARLAND
j HAVE sought the Start of the earth, the Rising of the sap and the green in the Santa Cruz.
There are always periods of the year which unfold in the perfection of their ordained beauty at some appointed auspicious spot. Through the many lands in California I have looked for these happy days, the culminative expression of the season born into singing surroundings.
I would know all the ways of the California Open — the benison of her every mood. Storms and their reveling centers ; silences and their hushed over-stretches ; torrents, thunder and peace ; love time, fruitage, calm, and the places where each tonic revival is spent. Through arid lands and tropic, through frozen lands and mellow, I am led. At times by those untamed ones who know all the runways and the trails, oftener by the little winged guides — the birds. But mine is the big wonder-world ; the unfathomable treasure world where one may always find, and be lured always to deeper seeking. You can make no soundings here ; for you are in a realm unbounded and immeasurable. So, if I place the cradling of her fairest Spring in the mountains of Santa Cruz, who knows? — next year she may wave the glamour of some desert green in my eyes and I shall cry, "Here blossoms the fairest Spring!"
In the moist, perennial green of the Santa Cruz highlands, one would not look, perhaps, for the outdancing springtide green to come so stirringly. Yet, in this deep, vernal freshness, with these young-of-heart Evergreens that yield not to any ageing of Summer or of Winter, with the frolicsome baby-green called out upon the breast of ample and oft-tried green, you touch, not Spring's mantle, but Spring Herself.
You are not over-awed by these mountains ; there are no un- ending vistas that overpower the imagination. The summits, high and dense in enormous Sequoias, slope down to your level. Over- running luxuriousness goes with you companionably.
The birds have not that reticence which characterizes them in sterner mountains. Every Chickadee is your friend. As you go by the bush that shadows them, the Spurred Towhees do not cease in their busy two-footed jump and lusty scratching. No feathered wing holds you at too great a distance.
The attitude of the birds is also that of everything that grows. The Manzanita — unlike the Manzanita of the Sierras, matted over in gny expanse — grows openly here, showing plainly every wine- brown, polished bough, spreading out confidently to sunlight and shadow, turning every pretty, burnished branch to your view.
42 OUT WEST
From rising ground you see the slipping steel of the river, guard- ed by the Alders, not jealously, but laced over delicately in smoky, following march ; opening here and there to reveal their silver and foam-white comrade, as she slips confidently among them.
With the beautiful, dapple-barked Chestnut Oaks, many of these Alders hold all Winter long the Summer sunlight tissued deep in shadow splashes on their columns, showing now, while branches are bare, where once the thick canopy of leaves moved aside with the breeze, letting flecks of sunlight burn down on their trunks.
One cold grey the Sierra Alders grow in Winter.
You look in vain for one gloomy tree. The Maple branches, soft grey-purple ; the Black Willows, hung in fluffy, acacia-scented catkins ; the Bay Tree, bright green, aromatic, scattered with creamy, spicy flowering; the bare, silvery-limbed Sycamore, cutting across the creek foliage like thick, forked lightning; the immense drooping sprays of the Redwood, tinged cheerfully in minute, grainy russet bloom, for all its gigantic size not approaching the infinite gravity of the pines of the Sierras.
But if all the other trees stood in gloom, the Madrono alone would fill the landscape with elastic, happy beauty. Far up the mountain its red limbs gleam ; across every canon a satin-smoothed arm stretches. Athwart the spaces of dusky groves its warm, mottled boughs melt in the distance into shimmering pea-green, or color of rose. Near your caressing hand a round bole is solid living velvet, color of copper, surging under your fingers with buoyant sap.
As I rest by the roadside, leaning against a Redwood, a Scale Bird darts out of the brush, crouches in the middle of the road, looking up at me impishly and playful. Back it darts, to repeat its antics as long as I stand there. I remember the shy bird of the higher chaparral and smile at the difference.
There is no austerity, no subtle forbiddingness in tree or flower, cliff or river, mountain top or woodland trail, bird or bee or cush- ioned foot. All are cheerfully, accessibly yours. They meet you half way, coquetting sometimes in retreat, but there again for your closer study on the morrow. Unimpressionable, indeed, is one who lets the life of the Coast Range slip past unnoticed.
To reach the glory of the Sierras, you must break through more rigid barriers than these. But by the very contrast each of the two ranges is enhanced in the comparison. If you have drawn the deep, understanding breath in Alpine lands, you will clasp closer all the Coast Ranges give ; you will strive with greater strength of soul toward the towering heights of the Sierras, if you have lived joy- ously in the heart of the Santa Cruz.
February comes in one warm, sweet rush. Yesterday the hazel bushes were bunches of brown, switchy twigs. Today some odd,
SPRING IN THE SANTA CRUZ 43
open-meshed Japanese screen might be about them, hung as they are with a straight, regular weaving of dripping catkins, a pendulous rain of seed blossoms.
In this month the Alaska Thrush, here for the Winter, is still with us. He has a great liking for round, grey stones, and will run along a space before you until he comes to one. Standing there, he keeps time to your steps with funny little, characteristic twitch of the feet and upbeat of tail till you reach him ; then he lowers his head and runs along, as if on wheels, close to the ground. His indrawn '"chuck, chuck," is often heard ; sometimes his rare, reson- ant song, just before he leaves in March for Alaska. The Varied Robin, another northern bird, is here also; his long-drawn, mystic strain I have heard at twilight.
The big Fox Sparrow keeps company with the California Towhee. The Western Robin winters here, and some Warblers — Audubon's and the Myrtle. I often come upon flocks of the brightly marked Townsend's Warbler. The woods are merry with Nuthatches, Creepers and Kinglets. The Titmouse comes up sometimes from lower oak groves. The Western Bluebird is always here, fluttering gently skyward from the meadowlands, connecting the dark green spires of the Redwoods with a winged line of serene blue.
Once I found a Bluebird's feather, and again the feather of a Bluejay, and laid them side by side. The same shade apparently, yet what difference in the flight tone ! The blue of the Jay rises iridescent, cutting its way. Swooping, steady wings cast off their sheen almost harshly — sombre in the shadow, brilliant in the light, scorning to match any other blue, to mingle with one azured tint of the open.
The wing of the Bluebird takes the air gently, beating up softly — drooping wing-strokes lightly fluttering, floating, calling, melting to all the blue in earth and sky.
There are three birds singing now — the California Thrasher, the Winter Wren, and Hutton's Vireo. These are resident. Not for them the restless uprising of migration, the long journey over land and sea. Brookdale is their home. Here they remain — travelling still, I believe, in that quieter journeying we may all enjoy while yet at home in one loved spot. For life revolves about all in infinite change, if we but follow aright each moment's season and variety. And so T know the Thrasher sees much more than the restless Warblers, which flit from clime to clime, uncontemplative even on the wing.
Hark! — some noise in the village — the creaking of oik Redwood against another — the soft leap of the disappearing cottontail — the quaver of the Flicker. Hear the Thrasher mingling them together in marvelous mocking music, punctured by sudden pauses, heart-
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ripened. Now he is questioning me — "Brook-song, brooksong — hear it now? hear it now? Ripple, ripple, ripple" — and jerks up, emphatic and sweet — "Will you hear it now?" His meter goes sometimes with the swing of a slender redwood shaft swaying in a wide arc ; again with the mad twirling of a leaf the wind has caught and will not let go. Wise singer ! He turns all his world to music.
Hutton's Vireo has a pretty, metallic song, long sustained, with- out shading, reminding one of the fresh, vivid, one-toned green of some leaves.
You are always astonished at the song of the Winter Wren, never far away from an old log, into whose cavities he darts like a wee rodent. It is as if a tiny brown mouse stood up to sing. All shadings and dipping trills in his song — tender wood-tones — deep, mossy shadows — quick outbursts of sunlight-sound, when a sunbeam strikes down on the wee brown thing singing there big- hearted before the door of his mossy log home.
All the birds here now are either resident, nesting early, or Winter visitors, giving only a hint of their restrained rapture — choosing Northern lands for their love-time. Not yet is the time of the Spring migration. A few days more, and there will be a sudden weaving of crossed flight, birds going north, Summer birds winging in.
In the oaks and ceanothus bushes, the Bushtits, still in flock, are hanging, lisping together a buzzing monotone. Their way is to travel from one sunlit tree to another, each day over nearly the same ground, following the sunshine as it slips from hill to ravine, tree to tree, top to branch, branch to leaf ; trusting the sunlight to show minute insect-eggs in all the crannies.
I stand high in the way of this passage, hoping the flock will brush my shoulder if they chance to move toward the tree I have selected as their next feeding-field. One flits out, quivers an instant in air, drops head down on a swinging twig near me. The flock trails after, settling in the oak I clasp like plump grey bees humming over their findings. For a honeyed moment one clings to my sleeve, wondering, no doubt, what kind of a branch I happen to be.
Birds have not always songs to give— gladness of color — labor of useful bill — opening of beckoning new roads. But each is sure to give something if you ask and listen, if it is only the gleam of a startled pin-point eye — the cling of a tiny claw to your sleeve. Only you must ask and listen ; not otherwise shall you hear a song, feel a touch, nor know a bird-truth.
This is the time of leaf-blooming, as beautiful in itself as the later flowering of petal and fruit. All eyes may see the gorgeously col- ored blossom, or full-rounded fruit, but to see these first, fine leaflet- flowers, in their more secret, myriad forms, one must get a bit nearer
SPRING IN THE SANTA CRUZ 45
to the great heart. There is no massing together now, no huddling into green back-ground. Each leaf-shape dances forward, crisp and uncrowded. Still there is the great tender blur of Spring over all, which at times is difficult to penetrate. But stand a moment so — alert and searching. Against brown and beryl openings, one by one, etchings of leaves and bud-dotted twigs spring out to the sight. Sparse ranks of bracken thread up in thin stalks, curled over tight and fuzzily, scarce filling yet with visible growth the space they stand in. Here a brown, swinging bough is lit with upstarting leaf-points. A bank of laced twigs is decorated with clear-cut leaves, laid flatly along the intertwining stems, or, in some vista be- yond, fluttering leaves seem to poise and quiver without support. Leaves everywhere, wonderfully cut and colored — old rose, soft tan, magenta, grey-green and vivid, bloomed over with the faintest suggestion of a shade, or so sparkling green you almost see the color running. Of every conceivable shape — slashed to the stem in slender segments, fashioned in flowing scalloped circles, notched in odd, unique cutting. Sometimes a leaf partly folded like a hand, a bright erect intersection out-pointing, a leafy finger directing the sight to all the thousand-fold marvels to be seen on meadow and hill.
Ever)- wayside weed, that later may overgrow in scraggly, ragged development, has its hour of undeniable beauty — if indeed it is not always beautiful to the closest vision. Nettle and pigweed, hoar- hound, sourgrass, old man and mallow, are spread in dainty, flat, filigreed rosettes on the brown ground. These are mostly trampled underfoot, unnoticed ; for one must have spent much time in the Open to be able to separate and admire intricate hidden designs in all the infinite variety of green that wraps the senses about in the Spring woods. There is no flare of color about this lowly mat- flower, changing into different, geometrically whorled outlines, until the stalk shoots up from the centre. I lay my hand lovingly over a pretty round of Alfilerilla. More dear to me is this humble plant than the newest and costliest bloom that man has laid finger to. And this small pattern in chickweed — perhaps it ripens and flings wide its seed just for the finches.
From the matted undergrowth about the Redwoods, twining close with the ferny Vancouveria, starred in pale lavender and in pink, the Oxalis twinkles up at me. I sniff the incense of the Wild Cur- rant, opening somewhere, unseen ; not for some weeks later will its heavy pink sprays color the canons. A delicate powdering of Mustard-bloom I glimpse below in warm lowland meadows. In high ravines I come upon a few pure white Wake-robins, chaste, as yet, of the kiss of fertilization ; no pink blushing ones, so lately have they found the light. Stalks of Groundsel rise thickly from wet ground. Brown, ribboned rushes push up close to these. If you
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are familiar with the succession of the wild flowers coming in the Santa Cruz, you will hear these early ones say — ''Here I am! Next week comes Wood Violet!" Or — "Manzanita is almost here!" Or — "Azalea is coming on!" If you do not know the Coast Range blooming, some day of the Spring and into the Summer, you will happen upon the red flame of the Columbine, drooping over a stream; or the Dogwood, spreading wide and white; the brilliant, passionless erectness of the Tiger Lily, standing tall; rare, strange Orchids, shining in cool glooms; the Mariposa, pulling at its moor- ing in a highland meadow — and never having seen these before, you will catch your breath in surprised delight that such things are.
In all these you will see, if you are worthy, not alone the luminous light of a flowret, but the Light that illumes the Cosmic Flowering.
In the greyest days of February there are always bits of sunlight in the open, where the river willows have put out curled-up, golden catkins. You cannot see the shine of these sunny touches on a bright and cloudless day ; they are absorbed, then, in the bigger light. But let the sky close down, grey and rain-misted, then they come out against the wet green of the woods in almost luminous gleaming.
The better part of the aroma of Spring is lost, unbreathed, undis- covered, if one goes forth only to the sunshine. If your heart expe- riences no desire for the warm, early storms, the big, level, soaking days, the turbulent, wind-twisting downpours, the seeming ruthless- ness of outrooting flood ; the gentle drip-drip of the rain-call — if you cannot respond to these, and go with the great Response that starts eager and strong with the might of eternities of Springing, you will never know as you were meant to know the perfect sun- filled day. You have not earned the right to bask and enjoy. If you have looked askance on any hour that leads to days of full de- light, just so much will be withheld from you. The flower you stoop to gather, swinging in the golden light on a sunny slope, is not wholly yours; some of its beauty must ever escape you, unless you have gone with that which called it forth, which worked the spell of its summoning from earth to air. Though you gather ft lovingly, sketch it, name each part, cherish it and enjoy, still you have not found all there is to consider in this lily of the field. LTntil the earth and the sky have stormed at you, called you through long, grey hours, gone to the inmost heart of you as they have beaten upon, summoned and thrilled to these petals, you are not yet sister to this flower, nor of one blood with things that grow.
Watch the way a Madrono tree receives the rain, when it comes down in one swift, fierce sheet. The broad leaves bounce up and down in highest, springing delight; the gleaming body is banded in liquid bark ; each leaf plays ball with the rain drops, tossing them down with a musical splash to the next leaf; the whole tree seems
SPRING IN THE SANTA CRUZ M
to bound up, elastic, from the root. If you are standing near, you cannot fail to be affected by what seems to be its laughter in the rain.
A bird's wet wing flashes by. Another, and another. Gold- finches, rising in happy, dipping flight, not one whit dashed by the rain.
Look up the hill-slope, through the wavering, wind-blown vapor ! Color gleams to your eyes which nowhere else will meet them save from a redwood slope seen through this wafting veil of moisture. All the green is softened, misted ; all the brown brightened, bronzed ; all the dull reds warmed and glowing; all the pale and hidden yellow brought out vibrant, golden. Though your clothing is soaked, your hair dripping, your face and lashes wet, yet are your own colors brightened, your heart warmed through and through. The Spring rain has found you ; its message you have not denied. You are going to know the full rapture of brimming Summer, the strong delight, the glory of days that are hastening on — and you stay out in the gentle chastening of the rain, heart to hea'rt with Spring.
Stand anywhere, and listen ! You can hear the happy upward striving, the pushing, the budding, the coming on. Sometimes, in pure and silent moments, I can hear the voice of the hills singing, or a leaf unfolding musically. Everything is meeting, mingling, melt- ing, running together, forming anew.
All the birds are adding little love-thrills to their voices — with some not yet a song, but a trembling undertone, held in rapturous leash. Yesterday I caught the Bluejay practising a musical modifi- cation of his strident call. When he saw me, he fell like a blue rocket into the thicket, and screamed denial of his softer mood. But I had heard, not to forget, and hereafter know him better. For we do not really know a bird, or a bush, or a human, till we know of each the love-side.
Everything is in love with everything else, all starting, springing toward some love-goal. The Budding is upon us! Who can be unseeking, unsinging, mute?
And if the Spring shall pass you (who have encased yourself in house-walls), what wonder if some chance music of hers shall reach you sadly? A vague distrust of yourself, pain of a longing you cannot define, comes to you then with the young year. Conscious, and yet unconscious, you feel your apartness from the vital soil, your banishment from the starting earth, your exile from the loving Spring.
Brookdale, Santa Cruz County.
— ^
»
+8
IN DEFENSE OF A LADY
By JUDITH GRAVES WALDO. 1ARRY DEXTER had shot a man in the Live and Let Live saloon. Barry was very drunk, and so was the man. The man had not liked his beer and had thrown the heavy glass at the girl who had served him across the bar. So Barry shot him. And because he had once before shot a man and because of what had happened after, Barry leaped through the crowd of miners and teamsters thronging the room, into a passage at the rear of the saloon. He heard shots fired as he leaped, and something stung his leg. Then he knew that someone had slammed the door behind him and bolted it on the inside, and he heard the crowd crash against it. Two minutes were all Barry needed, and that gave him one. As he sprang through the yard to his Indian pony at the trough, he heard the crowd yell on the stairs leading to the rooms above the saloon, and, fleeing down the stony road, Barry knew, in a dim way, that in that crowd behind him someone was aiding him.
"Didn't need much time to lead that gang. They ain't on my trail yet !" Just three minutes after the shooting, Barry turned into the canon below the town.
"I'll double back on 'em and make a run for the hills. I can lead that gang!" Barry laughed. But because the sound of flying hoofs came too distinctly to his ear, he jumped suddenly to the ground, hissed a command through his teeth that sent his little beast springing up the steep trail, dropped to his hands and knees and crawled away among the vocks and brush. And he heard the hunt go by. Barry was very sober now.
"They knew I'd double back on 'em! Wonder what I'm in for? They'll follow the pony, an' if she makes the Dagget road before they catch her — an' she will — I'm safe."
He crawled ahead wearily until he reached the ore-dump of an old deserted tunnel. Then he took off his boots and stepped into the tunnel, feeling his way cautiously along by the walls. Occa- sionally he knelt and stretched himself ahead, feeling for pitfalls, and when he had gone into the mountain about two hundred feet, he lighted a match and looked about him.
"It'll do," said Barry. He selected the corner of the tunnel least cumbered with stones, drew on his boots, loosened his pistols, and lay down and slept.
It was broad day when Barry crept to the mouth of the tunnel again, and he knew he had slept long. He could see nothing but the boulders and the sage-brush, and the great walls of streaked rock across the canon. He did not dare go forward far enough to
IN DEFENSE OF A LADY. 49
look on the road below, but from time to time he could hear the shouts of the teamsters, the chug of the great ore-wagons, and the grind of the brakes on the down grades. Life was going on outside the tunnel just the same. He groped his way back and tried to sleep. He was hungry and very thirsty, and his leg hurt him. A ball had torn the flesh just below the knee. He cut away the trousers and bandaged the hurt as best he could with the strips of cloth. He did not dare to smoke, and soon he could not sleep. He wondered who the man was he had shot, and speculated as to whether his hand had been steady enough to kill. And then, his ugly plight sweeping over him, he cursed himself for "having defended the girl.
"Wouldn't ever have took notice if I'd a-been sober. Just be- cause I was drunk I had to be a gentleman." And Barry crawled to the light again. He could remember no one in the room that he knew. Barry was from Dagget, and his best friends were not in the Calico camp.
"If any of the boys 'ud been there they'd seen me through this. Believe a real keen pard could hunt me out now."
And then Barry thought of the bolted door and the yelling crowd on the stairs.
"Now, who done that? It must have been one of the boys was there an' me not seen him!" Things were coming back to Barry as the drink cleared from his brain, and the thought of someone outside, maybe watching for the chance to bring him help, eased his growing apprehension. He went back to the safer depth of the tunnel and slept. His comfort was gone when he woke again, and he felt so despairing that he came clear to the edge of the dump and peered down on the road, but staggered back to the blackness of the cave and did not venture out again, for two men were riding up the trail, each with a Winchester across his saddle. Barry knew they were coming for him, and, savage with fear and thirst, he fixed his pistols ready and lay waiting, with his eye on the speck of light at the tunnel's mouth.
After a while he slept again. When he woke there was no light down the tunnel, and when he tried to crawl to the opening he was too weak, and lay on his face, still clutching his pistols and wonder- ing what had happened. Then suddenly a light came. The light was on the front of a miner's hat. Barry could see that. He saw a canteen, too, and then he saw nothing else. He tried to call out, but could not, and sucked at his lips and tried again.
"Water," he said, "before you shoot!"
Someone said something and Barry felt the water on his face, and a little, a few drops at a time, in his mouth. Suddenly he made a lurch for the canteen, it slipped through his hands and he sprawled on his face. The light was a long way off now and he began to cry piteously.
5o OUT WEST
"You keep your hands off and I'll come back," someone said. Barry promised, sobbing. He was lifted and dragged up against the wall of the tunnel, and given more water, and then food. After that Barry slept.
When Barry again sat up and looked about him, he was not in the place in which he had gone to sleep, but he did not know that. There was a light at one side and he turned toward it. It was the light he had seen on the front of the miner's hat. Barry remem- bered. But now he heeded the person wearing it. It was the girl he had defended. She sat against the wall, with her knees drawn up in front of her and her arms clasped around them.
"Hallo !" said Barry.
"Hallo!' said the girl. "You better?"
"Was it you gave me the stuff?"
"Yes. You can have some more now." She came across to him and put the canteen in his hands and he drank deeply. When he had finished eating the meat and bread she gave him, Barry began to wonder.
"Do they know where I am ?"
"No. They think you went Dagget way and struck the railroad somewheres. Your pony made the home corral an' that threw them off the track."
Barry laughed. "That's what I done it for. Knew she'd make it. How'd you run across me?"
"I was looking. I thought, maybe, you might have dropped in the canon, they was so close on you. I been looking some time and today I saw fresh boot-marks on the dump when I happened up here, an' so I tried the tunnel."
"You been lookin' for me?" Barry stared.
"Yep."
"Is it a big reward?"
The girl got up, stumbling about on the stones.
"How much?" said Barry.
"I never came for no reward !"
Barry stared again.
"Say, you never came because you thought you was anywise to blame?"
"No, I wa'n't to blame. I was minding my own business." The girl sat down again.
"Was it you bolted the door ?" Barry leaned forward with a gleam of understanding in his face.
"Yep."
"And made 'em think I'd gone upstairs?"
"How'd you know that?"
IN DEFENSE OF A LADY. <n
"Heard 'em yelling like they'd got me an' knew they was led off some ways."
The girl laughed.
"I just stood on the stairs and hollered: 'You shan't come here! You shan't come here !' an', of course, they was just bound to come. I thought you'd need a little time."
Barry wagged his head in admiration. But why had she done it?
''How long have I been here?"
"Three days."
"Must have slept through the first and clean round the night again !" Then he laughed, a little ashamed. "Guess I was sleeping it off."
"Yes," said the girl. Barry rallied.
"What's doing, anyhow?"
"Oh, they've got you posted everywhere an' a reward. Three hundred."
Barry was chagrined. "That ain't enough to make the boys work ! No wonder I been starving here three days !"
The girl got up. "I'm going now." She brought from the dark- ness another canteen. "I'll bring you some more grub soon 's I can, an' in a week you can light out all right."
Barry stood up and leaned against the wall.
"You — I — you're awful good."
The girl turned to him, abashed.
"You was awful good to me."
"Me?"
"Men's been rude to me before, but no one ever did anything about it." Barry laughed and slipped to the ground again.
"Lord bless you, girl, you don't need to think about that! I'd never done it in the world if I'd been sober."
The girl started. "You — " she began.
"No, never'd noticed him in the world. Why, I have to be drunk, an' mighty drunk too, to be a gentleman." And then he saw her changed face under the flaring light and dragged himself up by the wall.
"Did you really care that I dropped him over 'cause of that?"
"Yes, I did !" Her words came in a rush. "No one ever thought it mattered before, an' you treated me like a lady, an' shot him right down. An' they've had a heap more respect for me since, they have! An' I — I've left that kind of work — an' all the time you never meant it at all !"
"I did mean it — I do mean it !" Her passionate outburst throbbed through him and her humiliation hurt.
"Oh, I'll take no favors !" Her eyes bit him. "You didn't mean it ! Do you think I want you just to say you meant it ?"
52 OUT WEST
Barry groped for the wall. He felt a bit stunned. This was a thing he could not cope with. He could not even look at her, for the girl's eyes kept his down.
"I might have known you never meant it, or you'd staid and stuck it out 'stead of — of sneaking." She flung off down the tunnel, vio- lently swinging the empty canteen. " 'Spose you've been lying up here cussin' yourself 'cause you done it, ain't you?" She did not wait for his answer, but Barry was pulling himself together with a mighty effort.
"Say, hold on, now — "
The girl turned her head. "Oh, you needn't be scairt. I won't tell 'em where you are. The reward — ain't — big — enough!" But Barry was up now and after her, groping and stumbling and swear- ing steadily. Her injustice gave him strength as well as heart. He had never thought that she might tell. When the girl was some distance from the mouth of the tunnel she put out her lamp and Barry saw there was no light from the opening. She had dared to come to him only at night. Then it was that he discovered that she must have carried or dragged him back from where his weari- ness had left him to the safer distance at the end of the tunnel. He dropped down where he was. Here was a fresh shame possessing him.
"An' for a girl like that I couldn't make a lie that would hold!" His soreness of mind was not lessened when he found that his wound had been carefully dressed and bandaged.
"Done it while I slept an' hauled me back there an' — but what was the use trying to lie with them eyes blazing your back hair off? I don't suppose there's another girl like that — she knew I'd been cussing myself for doing it! If I was to have the chance to do it again, I'd mean it ! Mean it !" Barry rolled about in shame and dis- may, for through the darkness he could still see the scorn that leaped up at his easy lie.
All the next day Barry would not sleep, fearing the girl might come back with more food, and he would miss her. Then he knew she would not come. She could not, after the way he had treated her. Then he would defend himself: "What did I do, anyhow, to make her so thundering mad ! Mad 'cause I told the truth — mad 'cause I lied!" And Barry again went over every detail from the night he entered the saloon and saw the girl behind the bar, until the flicker of her light ceased down the tunnel. He tried to free himself from her accusing eyes and vindicate himself, but could not.
"It would 'a' gone better with her if I'd left out that lie. But it come to me like it was no lie. With her a-quivering there before
IN DEFENSE OF A LADY. 53
me, I'd swore to myself I'd meant it. Did mean it. Don't believe I was so awful drunk, anyhow !"
At night he slept, being too exhausted to keep awake, and when he made his way to the opening again the first streaks of day were lighting the great walls across the canon. He staid there until the sun was well up and the halloos of the teamsters came to him from the road below. As he returned, about half way down the tunnel, he stumbled over something that made him stoop quickly and strike a match. He had kicked against a canteen of fresh water, and by it was a miner's dinner-pail of food. He carried them to the end of the tunnel. The care with which the food had been put up and its abundance took away his last shred of fortitude and Barry sniv- eled.
"Now, ain't that just like a woman ! Mad enough to cuss you, but caring for you just so long as you need 'er. An' I couldn't tell a lie to hold !"
And then Barry had a new thought.
"If I meant it, she said, I'd stuck it out. Wonder if I would? It was the respect she was caring about. Oh, I seen that quick enough ! She never flung an eye to me ! If I'd a-stayed and stood trial — wonder if that fellow got up? Never asked her! Guess my hand was pretty steady — if I'd stuck it out — " Barry stopped eat- ing and put his bread and meat in the pail. "I guess that's so about me. If I'd stuck it out, they'd knowed, everybody 'd knowed — she'd knowed I meant it." Barry stood up, suddenly strong with the great purpose beating through him. It was not too late. He could yet clear himself, glorify himself, before her and give her that precious thing, respect, which she coveted. He would give himself up ! It was a decision, and Barry began putting the food hastily into his pockets. For not at Calico would he do it. They might take him on the trail and claim the reward. He'd have to be tried at the county-seat, anyway, and eighty miles across the desert — He laughed aloud in the triumph of this double atonement. He flung the canteen over his shoulder and started down the tunnel. Half way down he stopped and fixed his pistols. Ahead he could see the hot sunshine gleaming on the old ore-dump. He sat down and waited — waited until the heated noon-day had passed and the west canon-wall was in shadow. Then he moved down to the mouth of the tunnel and heard the last ore-teams lumbering and scraping down the grade. And when darkness had lost to human eyes the difference in form of man or bush or stone, Barry walked boldly out of the tunnel, clambered down to the trail that led to the main road, and limped away into the desert.
When the news reached Calico that Barry Dexter had given him- self up to the authorities at San Bernardino, and was to stand trial
54 OUT WEST
for shooting Lem Cook in the Live and Let Live saloon, the excite- ment was far greater than when the shooting had taken place. A man shot down no one knew why, least of all the two most closely connected with the affair, was not uncommon ; but it was not in the history of desert crime that a man in full possession of liberty and his good senses had coolly given himself up for trial. The men swore and speculated in baffled groups as the shifts changed. It was against reason; it was against understanding; it was against all codes. And when the sheriff jingled into camp to subpoena his wit- nesses, he found the matter difficult, for every one had been in the Live and Let Live that night, and knew exactly some telling piece of evidence. The sheriff winked at the proprietor of the saloon.
"Seems there wa'n't no shifts that night. Seems the mills and mines shut down just while this little shooting affair was on. Well, I'll do the best I can for you boys to give you a free show. But it's the lady I'm after. Where's she? He done it, Barry says, de- fendin' her." The lady? The girl behind the bar? No one had seen her for days. She had left the saloon the day after the shooting, and, though she had been in camp for some time, no one remembered seeing her for two weeks, at least. She had quite disappeared. The sheriff had to content himself with Lem Cook, now almost well, and a few wisely chosen miners. And though the summons for "The Lady" was published in a number of the outlying camps, she did not appear at the trial.
Barry was cleared. As he sat atop the Dagget stage he thought he wished that he had been sentenced to a life term. He knew such conduct as his warranted it. His gloom was so deep that the jovial driver, who wanted to know all about it, poked him socially in the ribs and winked at a flask sticking from his own duster pocket. Barry turned away. Drink! It was drink that had brought him to the first crime. But what, he asked himself, had whirled him to this last? For a crime it was to Barry now. The mirage that had lured him from the tunnel and dragged him across those blistering, blinding, aching desert miles, with two days' food and water to last him four, in fear of his life from some reward-seeking rifle, and making himself keep on in spite of it — in spite of it! — the mirage had been caught up with at last and was — why, a mirage, of course ! It was hot shame that shot Barry's eyes with blood now. He had seen only the crowded court-room, himself the careless center and the trial going on. "In defense of a lady." How many times he had said it over until it had fairly picked off the miles of the desert trail. And the decision — cleared, of course — and then the hero-strut down the court-room, mindful only of the fleeing scorn and conquering gratitude in one freckled, girlish face. Of course, it was a mirage ! There were other interests at the county-seat, and Barry had slouched out past empty benches, and the girl — she did not even know.
IN DEFENSE OF A LADY. 55
"You let me off this," Barry said roughly to the driver. "I'll catch you up when you breath 'em at the summit." A trail through the canon cut across the distance to the summit, and Barry struck into this. He felt that the driver must know his shame, and he wanted to be alone with it and kill something, if he could find anything to kill. He caught his pistol from his hip and shot at a fleeing lizard. Some one stepped into the trail above him and stood looking down. It was a girl wearing a blue-and-white checked sun-bonnet, and she carried a large tin pail, which as she watched Barry coming up, she began to swing back and forth across her knees.
"Guess I scairt her," Barry thought and slipped his pistol home. "She must come from the bee-ranch up the canon." When he had almost reached her, Barry raised his head and would have pulled off his hat in salute, but his hand dropped and he stood still.
"What you here for?" There was idle unconcern in the girl's voice.
"Well, I didn't come lookin' for you, you can just bet your sweet life." Barry's abused soul was in his eyes.
"Well, I hope you know you're on my land and there's the way off! We don't want no skulkers 'round here!" Her carelessness was gone and she flung aside to let him pass. But self-pity made Barry hold his ground. He took out his pistol, removed the empty shell, and carefully replaced it with a fresh one.
"Not very drunk today, I see." Barry started. "Or you'd prob- ably be a gentleman and leave when you wasn't wanted."
But Barry's hurt was beyond repartee. He polished his pistol on his sleeve.
"Why don't you go — or else say something?"
"I'm trying to, but I can't think of anything mean enough."
"Mean enough? Well, I like that!"
"You wouldn't like it if I was to think of it once."
The girl's astonished eyes covered him. Barry suddenly remem- bered there was an old score of gratitude. It baffled with his self- pity. The girl spoke again in quite another voice — for there was a ring of anxiety :
"It don't make a bit of difference to me whether you are took again or not — but — the Dagget stage is due about now, and there may be folks on her that know you. You'd better go further down the canon."
"I come on the Dagget stage. She's 'most to the summit now." A new thought was in Barry's mind. "Didn't you know I was cleared ?"
"Cleared?" The girl sat down by the side of the trail and took the pail on her knees. She clasped her arms about it and looked at Barry over the rim. There began to be hope and beauty in Barry's life again. He sat down, too.
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"Who took you?" Her eyes were big with confused fear and vindication. "I never told — they couldn't have tracked me — "
"I gave myself up." Barry could not keep the triumph out of his voice.
"What for ? You could have lit out, easy !"
"I— wanted to."
"Good Lord!"
"Didn't you hear nothing, sure?"
"Haven't heard a thing. Been here with my folks for three weeks. Oh, go on!"
"Oh, I come into San Bernardino and stood trial. Didn't you know they summoned you?"
"Did they?"
"Of course! You were the most important witness."
"And I never knew a word !"
"I thought you were paying me off for what I said in the tunnel." Barry fell to polishing his pistol again.
"But — but how did they clear you?"
"Oh, I had a pretty good defense, you see." Barry looked at the girl, and she looked into the pail. And because he would not say. it without her question, she asked, at last :
"What?"
And Barry's voice would hardly hold the words.
"My defense was I shot him defending a lady."
"But you didn't — you never meant it !" .
"Look here. I did mean it! I was drunk when I done it, an' I cut an' run, because — well, I knew what was good for me. But I tell you, if I hadn't meant it — well, I guess I'd never have stumped all those miles, dead with hunger and thirst and a leg 'most off, thinking I might get hanged when I got there ! I didn't know whether Lem Cook was alive or not! I just come along thinking 'bout you all the time. I tell you, I made that jury understand how I done it. There wa'n't no doubt with them ! They knew I meant it. They went out only just to get turned 'round to come back in." This was better than the court-room mirage to Barry.
"Well, even if you only meant it drunk, you made them believe it sober, and I — guess I'm — satisfied — but — I ain't taking back what I said in the tunnel."
"I ain't asking you to," said Barry. He sat sticking his knife into the dirt of the trail. Some one was hallooing a long way off.
"Who's that ?" said the girl, starting up.
"That's that fool driver on the Dagget stage," said Barry, quietly. He went on jabbing the dirt with his knife.
"Don't you have to catch up with 'em?" The question showed no concern, but the girl pulled the sun-bonnet over her face.
"Not unless you're in an all-fired hurry to get me off your land just now?" The bonnet slipped back and the girl stood up and laughed into Barry's eyes.
"I have to bring a pail of water from the creek, the hill is steep — you might — "
"You just bet!" cried Barry. And as they moved along the trail, swinging the pail between them, they could hear in the distance the squealing brakes as the Dagget stage swung down the grade from the summit.
Berkeley, Cal.
57
'TRAMP- by A. V. HOFFMAN.
T HAD been a hot June day, and from early in the morning great flocks of sheep and droves of cattle had passed, on their way to the pastures of the high Sierra I Nevada range. Heavy clouds of yellow, choking dust had risen steadily upward, spreading away and settling upon everything, and drifting into the house, where it aroused the wrath of "Mom," who spent most of her time warring against it. Weary, patient dogs, with bloodshot eyes and tender feet, marched gravely behind the bleating, crowding flocks. Faithful, intelligent little fellows they were. With sterling vigilance they kept watch over the long grey lines entrusted to their care, and often the drivers, who followed in the wake of the yellow clouds, did not see them for hours.
Some of the dogs wore little moccasins of buckskin or leather, but the greater part of them did not. The ground was hard and hot, and their feet went lame. Sometimes they squatted* in the shade of a tree, licked their bleeding paws, whimpered a little, and then resignedly took up their monotonous march toward the north. Only when there were bridges to cross did the drivers hurry ahead and give the dogs assistance. Then the little shaggy guards looked up, wagged their tails in greeting, and relapsed into silent watchful- ness again.
The last flock had passed, the dust had settled, and the sun, a lurid red, hung low above the western range of hills. We were sitting upon the broad, old-fashioned front porch, talking in the quiet, intermittent way of people who have not much to talk about. It was then we saw Tramp for the first time. Slowly and painfully he came up the long path that led from the house to the highway. Straight to "Pap" he went, instinctively recognizing him as the one highest in authority, laid his dusty nose across his knee, wagged his tail and looked beseechingly into the heavily bearded face above him.
"Poor chap!" said Pap. "I wonder what he wants? Bring him some water."
When the water was brought he drank long and deeply. Then, with a sigh, he stretched himself at Pap's feet, dropped his nose between his paws, and closed his eyes wearily.
"Poor chap!" said Pap again. "He's just about tuckered out. Look at his feet ; they're bleeding."
The dog looked up as he spoke — a quick lifting of his dark, hazel-brown eyes, as if he understood all that had been said.
"He's a Newfoundland," continued Pap, "and a mighty big one.
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Driving sheep ain't fit work for him — he's too heavy on his feet. Takes the little black-and-tan shepherds to stand the work. This chap's place is on a ranch, where there's children."
Little Clarice, the baby, just old enough to toddle about and get entangled with her own chubby legs, was sleeping in her mother's lap when the dog arrived. Pap's voice disturbed her, and she opened her big blue eyes. A moment later they settled upon the big New- foundland.
"O-o-oooh !" she cried, and, slipping to the floor, ran to him, dropping down beside him and burying her dimpled face in his shaggy neck. "O-oooh!" she cooed again, and the dog accepted her friendship with a queer little guttural grunt. From that moment they were fast and abiding chums.
We gave the dog a hearty supper, and when we retired for the night he was lying near the front entrance. We did not expect to see him again, but he was there in the morning, and evidently intent upon getting better acquainted with us. The day passed and he did not leave us. A few small flocks, the last of the "drive," went by, and we gave voice to our thankfulness.
"Well," said Pap, "the dog's here yet, anyway. Perhaps he has made up his mind to quit the driving business. He's a good dog, and I hope he'll stay. I'd never feel worried any more about Clarice and the ditch — if he's like some of the Newfoundland dogs I have known."
"I wonder what his name is?" said Mom.
"Don't know," answered Pap. "Might as well call him Tramp, I guess."
The dog accepted his new name cheerfully, as became a philos- opher, and settled into his proper groove at once. It was evident from the first that he was not an ordinary animal. No doubt he could have told us, had we been able to understand his language, that his ancestors were of a high-born and aristocratic family, and that his blood was unmixed with that of any mongrel strain. He carried himself with the graceful dignity of good breeding, and after taking a swim in one of the deep pools of the creek, was always careful of his appearance. A daily bath was never omitted, and we often wondered how so fastidious a dog could ever have endured the long, hot, dusty work upon the road and on the range. His coat was a deep black, his feet, the tip of his muzzle and his breast a spotless white.
Tramp assumed at once the duties of a watchman, and no prowl- ing Indian, Chinaman, peddler or hobo ever approached the house without an earnest investigation. He knew intuitively whom to trust. As our home stood upon the highway extending from the Sacramento valley to the summit of the Sierra Nevada mountains,
"TRAMP." 59
passing directly through the mining district, there were countless pedestrians of all degrees of quality constantly going by. Many of them stopped and asked for food or for the privilege of sleeping in the barns. Some of them were villainous wretches, and it was necessary to keep all portable articles of value securely locked up. An eighth of a mile away was a wayside store and saloon, and it often happened that some of the travelers stopped there to drink and carouse until their money was spent. At such times there was always danger of annoyance, if nothing worse.
One afternoon, when Pap had gone to a neighboring ranch, and Mom and I and the baby were alone, Tramp lay upon the porch, with little Clarice near him, busy with her family of dolls. The dog was restless and uneasy. In his eyes there was an angry, defiant gleam, and every little while he raised his head, gazed stead- ily at a clump of trees in one of the near-by fields, and uttered a low growl. Mom was working in her garden in the back yard. I went to the barn in quest of something and found that half a dozen stray cattle had wrenched a board from one of the sheds and were pulling out the hay stored there. I called for Tramp, and he came at once with the long swinging bounds that made his strength so gracefully apparent, and we drove the cattle away. Heading them down the road, I said to the dog :
"Take them, Tramp ; drive 'em along !"
The dog understood me, but he was reluctant. He hesitated, looked up appealingly, and with a whine turned toward the house, which was partly hidden by trees. Just then we heard little Clarice scream, and instantly his eyes blazed, his lips were drawn, exposing his teeth, and the hair upon his back went up and forward like a brush. With a harsh snarl he dashed away, cleared the high board fence without touching it, and, as my eyes followed him, I saw, staggering down the path, with Clarice in his arms and one hand upon her mouth, a huge, burly, drunken negro. His face was distorted and his eyes were rolling.
Straight as a bullet went Tramp. There was a hoarse cry, a crash upon the gravelled path, and then the dog, seizing the baby's dress, carried her swiftly away toward the house. Seeing me ap- proaching at a run, he dropped the child and bounded back to the spot where the negro was still writhing upon the ground. Taking him by the throat, he shook him as he might have shaken a rat, and it was only by dint of much effort that I persuaded him to relinquish his grip.
Pap was a very undemonstrative man, but when he returned and I had told him, he called the dog to him, put his arms around his neck, and gave him one long, generous hug. Tramp cuddled against him and emitted a series of little grunts of satisfaction. It was
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all the reward he asked. After this occurrence he scarcely ever left the baby alone, but there were times when his services were required about the fields and barns, and, while he performed all his work cheerfully and with skilled intelligence, as quickly as possible he hastened back to the house.
Our home stood upon a point of high land; a spur projecting from the range of hills skirting the valley. Passing the foot of this spur was a creek. A ditch, carrying five thousand inches of water, followed the edge of the valley until it reached the spur, and then went around the top of it, forming a great bend, like a horse's shoe. Just where one of the heel-calks of a horse's shoe would have been, the ditch ended, and the water plunged over a number of little cliffs to the creek, where it was caught up again in a large flume and con- veyed across the stream. Around this bend the grade of the ditch was very steep, and the water ran with the swiftness of a mill-race. All through the summer time it boomed and roared as it churned its way to the creek, and it was this dangerous ditch which Pap had in his mind when he said that if the dog was as good as some which he had seen, he would not worry any more about Clarice.
That his faith in Tramp was well founded was proved to us one day when the dog had been with us about a month. We were in the fields, turning over some clover which had not been curing well, and as we worked we heard Clarice give utterance to one of her shrill cries of delight. We both looked up and saw our baby tod- dling across a narrow bridge which spanned the ditch, tossing up her hands and cooing to the yellow, hissing water beneath her. With a shout Pap dropped his pitchfork and ran, but it was a long way to the bridge, and there was the steep, rocky spur to climb. I ran, too, and as I ran I wondered how the child could have slipped away from Tramp. I stopped, put my hands to my mouth, and called with all the strength of my voice :
"Tramp ! O, Tramp !"
I saw him leap to his feet from one corner of the porch ; saw him lift his great shaggy head; saw him spring far out with the force of a catapult. For a moment he passed from my sight, then came into view again, gave one leap that cleared the entire length of the bridge, grasped the laughing child and bore her away to safety. Then I gave a gasp of relief and sat down suddenly, my heart beating like a steam hammer.
"I always said we could trust him," said Pap that evening, as he sat on the steps with one hand on Tramp's head. "I always said he was a good dog, and he is."
In those days highwaymen were plentiful in the rough, broken, heavily-timbered mining districts. There were no railroads, and all the bullion taken from the mines was carried by special messengers
"TRAMP." 6 1
to Marysville, or shipped through the offices of the Wells-Fargo Express Company, the gold being enclosed in wooden boxes, iron- bound, which were transported by the stage companies. Every morning a big yellow Concord coach, drawn by six horses, and with a messenger armed with a "sawed-off" shotgun, flashed by our gate. A mile south of our home was a big bend in the road, and this big bend afforded peculiar facilities for the proper "pulling off" of a robbery. A man, concealed in the thicket upon the point of high and rocky ground which formed the interior curve of the bend, could obtain a clear view of the road for a long distance either way. This was an important advantage for the robbers, as it enabled them to ascertain beforehand just how many passengers were in the coach and whether the messenger was in his usual place upon the seat with the driver. Sometimes the messenger sat inside the coach, and under more ordinary circumstances his presence could not be detected utnil the coach had been halted. Then, with the sides of the vehicle forming a screen, he could fire upon the highwaymen before they discovered him. Generally, however, the messenger rode outside with the driver, as his presence inside the coach greatly increased the danger to which the passengers would be subjected in case a fight occurred. It was the duty of the messenger to fight, and the robbers knew it was very essential that they should "get the drop on him" at the earliest possible moment, before he realized their presence. Sometimes the messengers failed to recognize the potency of the "drop" and the bullets sang their sibilant dirge of death in the dim gray morning light, but over and over again the boxes of treasure were taken, and the posses that went out in search for the robbers came back as wise as they were before.
The highwaymen never carried tools with them when they went upon the road, but levied upon the workshops of the ranchers who lived in the vicinity of their depredations. Somewhere in California, in a forgotten corner of a forgotten room, perhaps, there are three axes, a steel crowbar and two sledges that belong to Pap. Robbers borrowed them in the night, left them with the splintered boxes, and the State is still holding them as evidence.
One night, when Tramp had been with us three months or more, we were awakened by a scuffling noise in the back yard, followed by a sharp cry of pain, and then silence. Pap and I dressed hurriedly and, taking a lantern, went to investigate. The first thing we saw, as we stepped into the yard, was Tramp. He was lying upon the ground, with a gaping wound behind one shoulder, quite dead. A highwayman had knifed him.
Later on we found near the spot a fragment of dark gray cloth, freshly torn and deeply stained with blood. Pap gave it to the Sheriff when he came the next day to investigate the robbery of the coach and the killing of the messenger, but nothing ever came of it. We took our guns and joined in the hunt, but no trace of the robbers could be found. In the evening when we returned, Pap sat a long time on the steps, his head clasped in his hands, and I heard him whisper to himself:
"I hope they'll catch 'em! I hope they'll catch 'em! If I could only help pull on the rope !"
Stockton, Cal.
62
WIDOW BROWN'S WEDDING
By A. HARTMAN
O A STRANGER standing on the rear platform of the one car attached to an antiquated locomotive, which makes up El Cajon's one daily train, the view from Eucalyptus Pass is anything but inspir- ing. A scalloped bowl of brown country barred with white roads that seem to be cut off squarely at the foothills, is the first impression as you emerge from the Pass. The eye, searching for detail, soon notes a few red roofs beyond the trees. These houses make up the town of El Cajon. Beyond are ranch-houses, setting like scattered checker-men on a board. If the train is on time, the dusk of evening is not too deep for you to make out the squares of green that mark the Bostonia raisin-fields which give the one touch of freshness to the landscape throughout summer and autumn. By the time you gather up your gun and other traps, and hand them down to George Barton, you feel in the very atmosphere that this is the real California — unspoiled by association with Eastern thought, and the gilding of Eastern money. That was my feeling, the first evening I landed in El Cajon on my way to a month's hunting in the mountains — where I found later, as I felt sure I would, that up in those winding canons off to the east there were deer with kingly antlers, that had never heard the crack of a hunter's gun.
"Lucky to get a seat to-night," drawled George Barton, the driver of the 'bus, as I climbed into the one vacant place beside him. He stowed away a part of my belongings, put a foot on the brake and reached for his whip.
"Quite a crowd," said I. "Always have as many?" "Oh, my, no ! Seldom ! Weddin' in the mawnin'." I gave a sidelong glance at the four stalwart men who occupied one side-seat of the canopy-topped wagon, and the four or five women on the other side who looked as though they had been to the city on a shopping expedition, judging from their tired faces and the number of their bundles.
Barton evidently saw I was puzzled, for he said : "Don't look like a weddin' party, does it? The four are deputies."
I was still darkly at sea, and might have asked for further en- lightenment had not a forward wheel gone suddenly into a chuck- hole, followed quickly by its traveling companion, throwing us so forcibly forward and back that we were in front of the hotel before we had fully recovered our equilibrium. As he stopped,
WIDOW BROWN'S WEDDING 63
Barton called, "Hello, Jack !" to a man who had just ridden up, and was tying his horse to the railing. For the first time since I had started on my trip my fingers ached for a brush instead of a gun ! Here was a most splendid bit of color ! A jet-black horse with a saddle-blanket of Navajo red, and entire Mexican riding outfit — and the man himself the most interesting part of the picture. Tall, brown, rugged ; face finely cut and settled in firm lines ; straight lips firmly closed — the face of a man not to be trifled with. Barton's elbow touched mine, and the usually resonant voice was so toned that the words scarcely impressed their meaning upon my mind until the man had passed through the swing-doors.
"He's the man who's goin' to make the trouble in the mawnin'," was what Barton had said as he climbed over the wheel and whistled to his horses.
This remark, combined with "deputies" and "trouble," was quite sufficient to arouse my curiosity, but after one of Mrs. Doty's fine suppers and the sweet, cooling influence of the night air, that invited sleep after a long, warm day, the desire to learn more of what promised to be an interesting story was overcome, and I sought my room.
"Haven't a team on the place, nor a driver," said the livery^ man in the morning. "Wedding to-day." Again that wedding! "Even George is off, and I'm driving the 'bus myself." At this instant George emerged through the swinging doors of the one place of public refreshment in the town, dressed in his Sunday- best, clean-shaven, newly shorn.
"I'll take care of you," he said. "Whar you goin'?"
"Anywhere that there's deer," I answered.
"All right; I'll do the best I can for you."
"Goin' to the weddin', George?" asked an innocent bystander.
"Uh-huh !" he replied, as we started up the long, white road.
"Tell me," I said, "what's so interesting about this wedding?'
"Widow Brown, she's goin' to be married this mawnin'. Lives up heah in Dakotaville; everybody knows her." He flourished his whip in a sort of indefinite way before him. "Brown came from Dakota. Nice fellow, but a sickly chap. Hadn't been here long before he just kind o' faded away. Left the widow with two little kids, small ranch, some lemons and muscats, a cow and a few chickens. She's had a pretty hard time, but she's man- aged to live. Brave little woman, I tell you ! Pretty, too. One of them white women that stay white. Most women that come from the East burn up and tan up, just as the men do, but she slays white, and the kids are two little beauties/'
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Barton was evidently a close observer, and a man who gave some thought to the personality and welfare of his neighbors.
"Everybody felt sorry for the widow, but pretty soon we heard that Jack Dare was paying her some attention, and that meant that she would be provided for in the future, for Jack has piles of money and could take care of a wife in style. You saw Jack last night. He lives up in Julian," and with his whip he pointed to the highest peak outlined ahead of us against the sky, probably forty miles away.
"When Jack writes his name on the hotel register he puts it down cJack Dare, Miner,' but I guess he's been most everything. One of the real old-timers. He used to punch cattle in Texas. Came here years ago from Dallas. Wore a gun on both sides. All sorts of stories followed him here. They said he had a good many notches on his gun when he came from Texas. He added one, anyway, up at Julian soon after he came. Indian had too much red stuff, and got obstreperous. Jack is pretty decent, but nobody cares to cross him, and a good many wondered where the widow got nerve enough to ever consider him as a successor to Brown. Jack was pretty steady after he got going to see the widow. He'd come down to Cajon on Saturday, and instead of hangin' around Harry's, as he used to do, he'd sit on the veranda and talk to the boys, tellin' them about old times in Texas. Then, on Sunday, he'd fix up and ride over to see the widow.
"Everything was settled all right, exceptin', maybe, the time. Then a chap from the East came to town. He staid awhile at the hotel, but he couldn't stand it long. He was pale and peaked lookin', and the Ladies' Aid got interested in him and asked Widow Brown to take him to board. He was pretty sick, but she gave him mighty good care, and after a while it was given out that she was goin' to marry him. Nobody believed it at first, but so it turned out. Jack came down one day and she up and told him she'd changed her mind ; she was goin' to take the other man.
" 'I know I promised, Jack,' she said, 'but you see I can't. He nasn't anyone in the world, and he can't take care of himself, and I've just got to do it.'
"They say Jack offered to furnish the dinero to send him to a sanitarium in town, but she said no, he couldn't live in town. I suppose she remembered Brown, and felt sorry for the chap.
" 'An' so you're goin' to marry him?' said Jack.
" 'Yes, I am, Jack,' she replied.
" 'Well,' said Jack, as he put spurs to that black horse till he nearly went over the hedge, Til be here to the weddin'.'
"That's why Harry swore in the four strangers as deputies. They'll keep around and watch for trouble. Everyone expects Jack will come loaded with die-stuff."
WIDOW BROWN'S WEDDING 65
To the uninformed in the language of the people between the Cuyamaca mountains and the sea, I suppose I should explain that "die stuff" is a highly necessary commodity in the filling of the chambers of a six-shooter when a gentleman starts out looking ior trouble.
The ride up the hills had been marked by the beauty of the great mountains in front of us, the odor of the sagebrush after the heavy sea-fog of the night, with a sky cloudless as June. A cotton-tail or two had scuttled ahead of us across the road, and under the flume ; not a breath of wind stirred the leaves of the trees, and this was the day a little woman who had "stayed white" was to marry the man of her choice — even though a number of her guests were officers of the law and keepers of the peace.
"You see," Barton continued after a short silence, "the shack is small and the weddin' is to take place out of doors, under the peppers. There'll be room enough there for everybody from Cajon, Lakeside, Lakeview and Jaimacha, and the widow will be glad to see 'em all.
"Strange thing, too, the man that marries 'em is an old acquaintance of Dare's. There's no minister here, now, and it costs too much to have one out from town, so the Justice ties the knot. Of course it won't be high church, exactly, but he's no new hand at it. They say his father was a minister in Nebraska, his grandfather was a minister in Massachusetts, and his great- grandfather was a bishop in some place across the water, who gave up his job to come over here and fight with us in the war of the Revolution. All the Judge's brothers were ministers but one, who's a lawyer, and one that went with a circus, and they say the Judge himself was educated for the ministry. For some reason or other he went to punchin' cattle, though. They say he helped Dare out of some trouble in Texas, and now he's goin' to help him out of this."
Another short silence and he resumed his story.
"The Judge has a place up here in the mountains he calls Calamity. He's a crank on trees — has got more different kind of trees on his ranch than you could count. Vines growing all over everything, and flowers till you can't see. He said the other night he would furnish the bride's bouquet, and put plenty of blanks ,-n his pocket for ante-mortem statements."
With this last cheerful bit of information we left the road and turned into the private way leading to the shack. Somehow, after Barton's story, I did not feel so much like an interloper in going to Widow Brown's wedding.
There was quite a gathering of women under the pepper trees. Children were playing on the ground and men were standing
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about in groups. A certain air of expectation made each new- comer an object of especial interest to those already gathered. Presently all talking ceased, for across the brown ground from the house came a figure in white, two little children clinging to her hands. It was the bride. What Barton had said was true. She was a woman who had "stayed white." Her cheeks were pink to-day, however, and her eyes of dark blue shone with the fearless light of one who looks danger in the face without a waver. She walked into the shade of the trees as if she had not seen the groups all along the way. She placed the two children on a rug and turned to the man who was waiting for her. He was tall, of delicate appearance, very thin, very pale — of the type one meets on every corner in this Land of the Sun.
Another figure had separated itself from a group and come forward. I knew from the dignity, the black coat of somewhat clerical cut, the comprehensive glance of a pair of magnificent dark eyes, and the indefinite smile of the lips, that this was the man who should have been a minister, but became a cowboy, and afterward a Judge — and found repose from work at a place he dared to call Calamity. I looked for some bulging of the pocket, where ante-mortem blanks might be concealed, but there was no evidence of them, and the bride did not carry a bouquet. The Judge carried a small, black, seal-covered book. He had just opened it and turned a leaf or two, when another tall figure moved into the shadow of the pepper trees. In a suit of newest khaki, buttoned up to a military collar, with a sombrero of softest gray and finest texture shading the dark, clean-cut face, came Jack Dare, Miner. He paused within five feet of the wedding party. As he approached, there was a hush as solemn and effec- tive, to the tense nerves, as that which falls upon a forest the moment before the mountain rain begins to beat down. But the bride's eyes never wavered — they were fixed straight ahead of her, on the Judge's face.
"Game !" said George Barton, at my elbow. "Dead game !"
The Judge turned another leaf in his little book, looked up, and was about to speak, when Jack Dare's hand went up and he removed his sombrero as a reverent one removes his hat at a church door. Long indrawn breaths marked the relaxing of the tense suspense that had held the guests, and the Judge began:
"We are gathered together " If he had used the regulation
"Dearly Beloved," we could not have felt the solemnity of it all more keenly.
Then came the usual "Who gives this woman?" and there was no one to reply. Without kith or kin— save the two little ones playing under the peppers— there seemed to be no one to give
SEALED ORDERS 67
away the bride, until, after an instant's pause, Jack Dare, Miner, stepped forward.
"I do," he said.
Probably everyone but the Judge was amazed. There seemed to be a mist before his eyes for an instant as he raised them to jack's, then continued the service with a waver and inflection of sweetness in his voice that the boys back in Texas would never have recognized as belonging to John Dodson of Dallas.
"Well," said George Barton, reflectively, a few moments later, as he turned his horse up the alpine grade, "I don't know who had a better right to give away the bride."
El Cajon, Cal.
SEALED ORDERS
By EUGENE MAN LOVE RHODES.
T. CLAIR crumpled the telegram in his hand, thrust it in his pocket, rose, and left the club. Several inti- mates remonstrated with him for leaving so early. "We're going to have a rubber of bridge, old man. Won't you make one?" But St. Clair shook his head, and, smiling, went out into the night. Not one who saw him go dreamed that the man who had quitted them so quietly had left their circle forever. He lit a cigar and sauntered down the street, thinking. He had cause for reflection. St. Clair had been born to the purple. An only son, reared by wealthy and indulgent parents, he had seldom known what it meant to have a wish ungratified. At college he had been one of the leaders of the "smart set," and his habits of luxury and extravagance, so far from calling forth any remonstrances at home, had been tacitly encour- aged.
His had been the useless life of the butterfly. He had been a globe-trotter, and had loitered away years in London, Paris and Rome. Rumor had coupled his name with one after another of the reigning beauties, but he remained unwed. Also he was reported — and truly — to have lost immense sums at play in certain fashionable coteries.
At last he had returned, blase, world-weary, cynical, cold and in- different. And — partly to recoup his fortunes, sadly impaired by years of princely extravagance, but more because milder excitements had ceased to tickle his jaded palate — he had taken to speculation.
To do him justice, his judgment, under ordinary circumstances, was good. But the stars that in their courses fought against Sisera, fought now against St. Clair. Disaster crowded disaster. He met
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them all with the same cold, impassive face, and no one knew how badly he was hurt. Then he saw his chance for a final coup that would more than make good all his losses. His information was sound, and he had every right to expect a victory. But the fatality which pursued him was not to be denied.
Wall Street bolted like a frightened horse. The hands that held the reins had lost control for a moment, and in that moment St. Clair had lost all. That was what the yellow slip had said.
He found himself unable by any effort of will or imagination to construct any tomorrow. What, he, the arbiter elegantium, the admired of all admirers, to continue to exist on a lower plane — to become a laborer, a clerk, a drudge ? Very calmly he thought it all out. Very calmly, and with scarce a regret, he decided that for him the end had come. He would die.
Yes — that was the only way. His parents were dead — there were no near kin to mourn his loss — no wife nor sweetheart to grieve for him. A few men would miss him a few days — that was all.
But how? Poison and rope had disagreeable features — a pistol might disable without killing. Also he would prefer that there should be the semblance of an accident. This consideration barred out drowning, otherwise the easiest way. Ah ! he had it. One could fall from a precipice.
He knew the very place in the Park. Disagreeable? — yes — one might find an easier death — but it did not suit his pride that men should know that he had met his death by his own hand.
He turned toward the park and hastened his steps. The sooner it was done, the better. He entered and climbed the zig-zag path to the hill top. Here was the place then — with a hundred feet sheer fall. Stop — we will make this an accident beyond a doubt ! He climbed down in the shadow a few feet and forcibly tore a limb from a stunted hemlock, which clung to a crevice in the rock, and threw it down the chasm.
"There !" he said, smiling grimly. "It is evident that I grasped that in an attempt to save myself."
The myriad lights that told of the sleeping city below him were faded, blurred and dim, for the night mists were rolling in from the sea. Nearer, the mighty river hastened on its journey to the Great Deep. One last look upward at the unheeding stars — and he loosed his" hold and started to step from the narrow projection where he stood.
A rock passed by his head and crashed into the abyss below. He looked up just in time to see a white figure leap from the brink above him.
Instinctively St. Clair's left hand clutched at the bushes which
SEALED ORDERS 69
grew in every cleft and crevice, and his right grasped at the falling figure as it passed him. His arm closed on the slight form of a girl. The shock threw him from the ledge — his left arm was almost torn from its socket. They swung violently around and crashed against the face of the rock, the girl inside. The bush bent — crackled — gave. They were slipping — falling —
Just in time his right hand, groping, found a stronger bush — and a second later the left closed on it as well. Again the sickening, shuddering terror as it bent — but this time it held. The echoes of the fallen boulder had not yet died away. When that boulder had started, St. Clair was bent on death. Ere it had reached the bot- tom, he was struggling in the dark, blindly, desperately, for his own life and another's.
The girl did not scream nor implore, but fought fiercely, silently, for the freedom which meant death. At first St. Clair could only crush her against the rock. But presently she ceased to struggle, and lay limp and exhausted in his arms.
Slowly, hardly, inch by inch, feeling with hands and feet for bush and limb and crevice and ledge, he fought his way back with the double weight. More than once his precarious foothold gave way and dislodged splinters of rock, to rattle down into the gloomy depths below. More than once the falling earth and pebbles on his face warned him that the bushes which held their weight were tearing out by the roots. His hands were torn, bleeding, bruised — his strength fast failing. He set his teeth for a final effort, and then he felt with one foot a firm, wide surface. He edged to it in the dark. It was a projecting boulder — and he sank down upon it gasping, breathless, exhausted. The brow of the cliff was just above them. They were saved. After the terrible path they had traveled, the rest would be child's play.
The girl lay passively in his arms, weeping softly. "Why did you not let me die?" she moaned. "It would have been all over now. O, I wanted to die ! Why did you save me ?"
"Are you sure you were not making a mistake?" asked St. Clair.
"A mistake! I tell you the moment I threw myself off was the happiest I have known today. And you — what were you doing in such a place at such a time?" she demanded.
He laughed. "I was going to jump off."
"Why?"
St. Clair hesitated. To put it into words his reasons did not seem so adequate now.
"I have just learned that I have lost everything in the world," he stammered. "I have been used to every luxury, and the life of a laborer has no attractions for me."
"Is that all?" she answered him scornfully. "For shame! You,
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a strong man, to give up for that! Why, as far as money goes, no doubt the prospect before you is far ahead of what I could ever have hoped for. If that is all, the world would have lost little by your death !"
"And you," said St. Clair. "Tell me your story."
The girl was silent a moment. "Why not?" she said, bitterly. "Listen then. My story is the story of thousands upon thousands. My father is dead — my mother has been an invalid and dependent upon me for everything. Two years ago I came to the city for work. Three times have I found a good place — and three times I have been subjected to unmanly persecutions by my employer. It has been my curse that men have found my face pleasing. 'You are too fair to work,' said the first. 'Let us make an easier bar- gain !'
"The cur !" said St. Clair.
"You are surprised? I assure you it is far from being an extreme case. Every day girls are offered the alternative of starvation or dishonor in this great wealthy, Christian city!"
Some realization of what he might have done with his wasted wealth came to St. Clair, and he groaned.
"I will say for the second one that he had always before been respectful and kind," she went on. "Never mind what he did — he had been drinking.
"The last one treated me at first with all respect and considera- tion. But my mother grew worse. A month since the doctor said she must have a trip to the South. I had sent her all my money, and even so had run behind on the doctor-bills. We had no pros- perous friends, no near relations to whom we could apply. I went to my employer and told him my situation with tears in my eyes. I implored him for an advance — I offered to work after hours — any- thing, if only I could get the money. He was wealthy, respected — a pillar of society. And he told me, 'Certainly, my dear, you can have the money on one condition. That is, that you will not refuse the first favor I ask of you.' "
St. Clair rose to his knees with a bitter curse. And he had wished to die — while such things were done !
"I dared not leave him then," she went on. "I had to keep on to procure actual necessaries for my mother. But I tried and tried to find another place.
"Then came word that a change was the only possible hope to save her life." Even in the deep shadow she covered her face with her hands. "I sent her the money yesterday. She died today."
She buried her face in her arms, and her form was shaken with sobs. St. Clair held her awhile in awed silence, while one tear after another trickled down his cheeks.
SEALED ORDERS 7«
His own self-sought trouble seemed far away, petty, unreal, trivial, beside this. He wondered, idly, why it had grieved him. He, a man, to die, when the world was full of wrongs like this to be righted — of griefs to be comforted. Youth, strength, talent, courage — He blushed with shame to think how little courage he had shown.
Yet it was courage which swelled his heart now and thrilled along his veins, though he knew it not — the tameless strain of righting blood inherited from some wild old French ancestor, dust and ashes centuries ago. Generation after generation it had slumbered un- awakened. Through a life-time of prosperity it had slept lightly in his veins — and now — this first contact with helplessness and weak- ness wronged had evoked it, as the genii in the Arabian tale rose at the rubbing of the lamp. Strong, unyielding, proud, masterful, it buTst from its grave clothes to rule, henceforth, this man whose whole life, so far, had been given to self alone.
Presently he reached up a hand and stroked the bowed head ten- derly. "Poor little girl !" he said. "Poor little sister!"
Slowly, slowly the moon rose, trembling through the mist. She looked down sadly and tenderly on these two, God's erring children. From distant lands, over strange roads their feet had traveled — his on a flower-strewn path, hers on a rough and thorny one, to meet at last in this place of fear. Her silver radiance fell softly, pityingly, alike on sinner and the sinned against — the bowed head that had fought so bravely in so many battles, and lost but one — the proud one which had lost so many, would lose no more.
"Promise me," said St. Clair, at last, "that you will not harm yourself just now. I want to think." "I promise," she said faintly.
He helped her up to the top and led her to a seat, and stood up before her.
"Dear," he said, gently, "it was no blind chance that put me there. If I saved you, just so surely you saved me. The God we did not need has need of us. He has given us back the lives we threw away. For myself, I have been a coward, selfish, unworthy, ignoble, weak. I am not fit to touch even the hem of your garment. I deserved my troubles, and brought them on myself — but you are in nowise to blame for yours — you brave little woman !"
He turned his face to the West. The world was a familiar book to him — but his mind in this hour involuntarily turned back to a long-forgotten country — a land of desert and of mighty hills.
A memory came to him of a summer, long ago — fresh and clear as if it were yesterday— of a camp in the welcome shadow of gaunt and rock-ribbed hills. The bubbling, gurgling spring, tinkling mer- rily down to sink in the gravel, the hobbled horses — the deer swing- ing from the juniper branches in the cool evening breeze — the
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cheerful blazing fire — the comrades, tried and proven — surely he could reach out his hand to touch them !
"Look !" he said, and pointed. The girl raised a white face, tear- stained yet beautiful, and gazed as if she saw with the eyes of the flesh the scene the sorceress Memory conjured up for him.
"Far away," he said, "far away yonder in the West, there is a lonely land. There are mountains in that land — gray and lofty and strong — mountains whose grandeur dwarfs the works and hopes and fears of man, shaming his littleness. And there is a valley there, walled round with mighty hills — a valley of granite and sand where the green grass springs first when the rains begin. There are strange fair flowers there then, and in the skies are brighter stars than our eyes know here. When the strong winds are high, their force is broken before they reach that valley. We will go there together, you and I, and begin life over again."
"Together?" She shrank from him, half in fear, half in scorn. "You are like the rest," she said. "Together!"
"Together — always," he said, gently. "Be my wife — my loved and honored wife. As for that base coward yonder — I will not even ask his name. Some day — on an evil day for him — he will be given into my hand." He drew her to him, and, sobbing," she hid her face in his breast. He kissed her hair. "Rest there, poor tired child," he said. "Rest there."
He took her hand in his and they turned their backs on the crowd- ed city and the old, hard, futile, hopeless life forever.
Apalachin, N. Y.
CARNATIONS
By EDWARD W. BARNARD.
I SOWED within my dooryard plot Seeds treasured from another year. Earth wooed, and presently the spot On either hand thrust up a spear of tender green. Good care, good cheer I brought to each ; feared, hoped anon, Till, when the summer's best were gone, Two spicy blossoms crowned the bed, Both fair as Heaven to look upon,
Though one gleamed white and one burned red.
So in the garden of my heart
Two tender things were nurtured long, Set carefully and reared apart
From every scathing breath of wrong.
I watched them grow stout-limbed and strong, Hoped prayerfully and feared anon; Till suddenly, their girlhood gone,
I saw two women perfected, Both fair as Heaven to look upon —
But O, to find one flower red!
Montclair, N. J.
73 THE GREAT PREMIER OF NEW ZEALAND
By MICHAEL FLURSCHEIM.
[The sudden death of Richard John Seddon has precipitated afresh the discussion of New Zealand ideas and institutions with which this magazine dealt at some length nearly five years ago. New Zealand, like California, is cursed with land monopoly, but, unlike California, New Zealand has adopted policies which are making for the solution of the problem. New Zea- land once had a labor problem, too, and was harassed by strikes and lockouts, but that problem has been absolutely solved by New Zealand statesmanship.
In view of what has already appeared in these pages, as well as the general interest in the subject, it seems well worth while to present a characterization and an estimate of the statesman who ruled the destinies of New Zealand during the most important epoch of its history, and whose career is suddenly ended by death, which overtook him in the very height of his popularity and power.
Many estimates of Seddon are appearing in the American press, nearly all written by those who knew the man only by reputation nad viewed his work not where it was done, but from the other side of the world. Out West is so fortunate as to obtain an article written by a highly intelligent man who knew the Premier, who lived in New Zealand under his rule, and who viewed his work from the standpoint of one even more advanced in economic thought than the great and successful leader of Social Democracy who has fallen at his post. These considerations give the article peculiar value to all students of politics. — Wm. E. Smythe.]
EW ZEALAND'S famous Premier succumbed to a stroke of apoplexy — the kind of death foreseen for a man of such Falstaffian proportions. Like that merry knight, he was fully conscious of the excess in fleshly endowment with which nature had provided him. Only a few weeks before his death, at a banquet given him at Rangiora, he said in the merry knight's happy humour, that he had enjoyed more hospitality than any of his predecessors, and had attended more banquets than any other man in New Zealand, and they would admit, if they looked him up and down, that he had something to show for it.
But his mental make-up was not disproportionate to the generous physical proportions with which he had been endowed. He was not a genius, or he never could have accomplished the work he did. Genius as a rule means lack of proportion — gigantic attainment com- pensated by a deficit in the common sense possessed by far inferior men. Seddon's greatness consisted in his great equability, in the fine tact with which he always knew how to keep in touch with the desires and wants of his people. He was the typical New Zealander, the Englishman of the Antipodes, that peculiar mixture of conserva- tism with progressiveness. A pioneer boldly forging ahead under totally new conditions, but never for one single moment losing con- tact with realities, never relaxing his touch with the people, he was quite as much leading as following in every step he took.
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His origin and career preserved him of the danger to which most statesmen succumb. Neither descent nor education had lifted him above that level where the highly educated man is so apt to lose all mental connection with the masses of the people. The Right Hon. Richard John Seddon, the man who guided his country's destinies for thirteen years, never quite ceased to be the miner and saloon- keeper of the West Coast, with whom the lowliest of his people felt at home, when he shook hands with his "old Dick" in the govern- ment buildings, or at one of the innumerable festive occasions at which the always ready popular address of the Premier won the hearts of his hearers.
Judging him from an American point of view, we may say he had become a statesman without ever having ceased being a "boss." Not that I want to insinuate that he ever practiced the low corruption of some party bosses known in this country ; but he never shrank from bribery of a certain kind with which his constituents could be bought. The peculiar concentration of the administration of his country which followed the abolition of the old Provincial councils entrusts to the central government certain tasks which in other communities are entirely left to local administration. If a bridge over a creek in the back country, or a road through the wilderness is needed, a petition is made to the Premier, and a judicious distri- bution of the loaves and fishes gives him an influence proportionately far superior to that of our President. But this is not all, for the facility with which the law-making machinery is put into motion in New Zealand enables the head of the governing party to favor cer- tain classes of voters. One of the most interesting evidences of this was the "rebate of rent bill" of 1901 — a bill which gave the govern- ment the power to give rebates of rents due by State tenants, if the circumstances warranted it. That the circumstances are more likely to warrant such favors in the case of an adherent of the government than in that of an opponent is founded in human nature — and there was a good deal of human nature about Seddon.
But the man would not have kept the reins for thirteen years if he had merely been a clever party boss, if he had not gradually de- veloped into a great statesman, into a leader who advanced his little nation to a height which makes its administration the envy of pro- gressive men the world over. In reality New Zealand's advance in liberal legislation is still behind that of the most progressive country — Switzerland. New Zealand has not the referendum and initiative, nor the proportional vote. It has not even the second ballot of Ger- many. Accordingly, minority parties cannot test their strength in a first ballot, leaving final decision to a second, because the first bal- lot is final, as it is in the United States, and the only way to prevent the victory of the greater evil is often to vote at once for the lesser
RICHARD JOHN SBDDON 75
one. It is this system which more than anything else secures the position of the party boss, of the politician, for only the most perfect organization has any chances; new parties find it almost impossible to secure domination. The wonderful progress of Social Democracy in Germany would have been impossible under such a system. The second ballot takes place where none of the parties obtained an abso- lute majority of all the votes polled at the first ballot. It thus per- mits the luxury of voting for the voter's real preference in the first ballot and only when he is not successful lets him decide in the second ballot which he prefers of the two candidates who obtained most votes at the first. In this way the voters can try to carry out their real will without running serious risk of thereby electing the man whom they least favor. In New Zealand, in a constituency, a conservative might poll approximately one-third of the votes, a radi- cal opponent of Seddon another third, a Seddonite the last third, and the latter would be elected, the other votes lost, if the Seddonite had only a single vote more than either of the others. In Germany in such a case there would be a second ballot between the Seddonite and the radical ; and the election would depend on the question which of the two the conservative voters would consider the lesser evil. In this way, Seddon has maintained himself during the whole period, though his real followers often constituted a minority.
In the darkness even feeble light makes an impression, and this accounts for much of the enthusiastic partisanship for New Zealand institutions shown by many radical Americans and Englishmen — Henry Demarest Lloyd, for instance. Compared with countries in which the railroads are private property, a country in which they belong to the state seems a prodigy of progress ; but in countries like Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, etc., which have long since seen that no nation can safely leave its arteries of commerce in the hands of a private monopoly, and whose experience of state ownership and administration has been a continued success, New Zealand's favorable results seem of less importance.
In a country in which the public domain has been thrown away within a single century, where a progressive system might have preserved free land to the settler for centuries to come, even the raw and unscientific New Zealand land system may appear as an ideal, though during the whole thirteen years of Seddon's govern- ment practically very little progress has been made in this direction. The much-vaunted separation of the land from the improvements certainly proves a superior taxing system to the one in use in this country, where both are taxed indiscriminately. But when we con- sider that according to the last figures given by Mr. Seddon only a few months ago, the land tax brought only £383,633 of a total revenue of £6,575,128, only one-seventeenth, the pretense of Single-
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Taxers that this system is responsible for the progress of the country seems rather ridiculous. If we add that in New Zealand 800 persons own 60 per cent of the land, and one-seventieth of the people own three-quarters of the land, we must agree that in the newest country of the world, in which a sort of common land ownership obtained two-thirds of a century ago, this does not sound quite so well. A homestead law which gave the freehold title to the settler, subject to the pre-emptive rights of the State at the price paid by the settler plus the value of the improvements made by him, the said pre- emptive right exercised as soon as the settler or his direct descend- ants ceased occupying the land — such a homestead law would have given quite different results, but is not even dreamed of in our day by the party in power, and what remains of the public domain, though not treated quite as wastefully as in this country, is very badly ad- ministered.
New Zealand is looked at not only as the paradise of Single-Taxers but also as that of Socialists. It is the one as little as the other. When Mr. Seddon began to work two coal mines for the community, the whole world spoke of state socialism. In Germany mines of all kinds in far greater number and extent have been worked by the government for centuries without calling out that phrase. When a fraction of the insurance business is undertaken by Mr. Seddon, all praise or blame it, whereas German State fire insurance, which in most parts of the country is even compulsory, is not mentioned. His old-age insurance has been anticipated in Germany by many years ; so has his accident insurance, while public insurance for sick- ness, which is a State institution in Germany and other countries, has never been introduced in New Zealand.
Leaving minor matters aside we may say that the only real prog- ress beyond other countries has been made in the matter of arbitration of differences between capital and labor. Compulsory arbitration has practically put an end to strikes in New Zealand. This is cer- tainly a great progress, but it remains far short of the dreams of the country's friends.
I want it to be clearly understood that I do not wish to minimize the work of the departed statesman, whose energy and wisdom I fully appreciated and whose loss I deeply mourn; but I want it understood that New Zealand's progress, great as it is when looked at from an American point of view, is very small when compared with what has been done elsewhere. If, in spite of this, the standard of living of the New Zealander is higher than that in other countries where the social laws are even more progressive, it is because in a new country, which contains only 900,000 inhabitants on an area as large as Great Britain plus half of Ireland, more elbow room is found than in countries with only a small fraction of land to each inhabitant. And if New Zealand is even ahead of a country with an immense area like ours, it is not the merit of the little island empire, but the shame of our own country.
Coronado, Oal.
77
THAT WHICH 15
WL WRITTEN
*#?
As careful and earnest student of economic, social and political conditions the world over, as powerful protestant against the evils of monopoly, and as eager and convincing advocate of progress, Henry Demarest Lloyd's position was assured long before his death, three years ago. Only with the recent posthumous publication of his Man, the Social Creator, does it appear how much more than any or all of these he really was. For this is one of the great books of a generation, and reveals its author as poet, philosopher and prophet. It throws a new light, too, on all his previous work, making it clear that an elaborated evolutionary philosophy and a pro- found religious conviction were the foundation and the inspiration of each of his searching investigations into one or the other phase of the questions which absorbed his attention. It seems to me, moreover, of peculiar sig- nificance that this noble, tolerant, broad-visioned and hopeful study and forecast should be the work of a pioneer in the field of "literature of exJ posure'' — a forerunner of the "man with the muck-rake," whose voice is lifted on every hand in these later days. His Wealth Versus Commonwealth, published a dozen years ago, remains to this day one of the most terrific and unanswerable indictments of corporate greed ever laid before the pub- lic— and this appeared long before laying bare the methods of the criminal rich had become the fashionable and profitable literary occupation it is today. I shall not attempt to sum up the argument of this inspiring book, nor even to say further words of praise concerning it. Instead, I shall let it speak for itself so far as that can be done by making a few quotations from it, taken almost at random. It will be understood that each of them los«s immeasurably by removal from the context.
Some of the people are becoming so hysterical that they hear the drop of the guillotine in every slamming door, and think every workingman is a revolutionist at heart. All this is unnecessary. Our civilization is not a failure ; it does not have to be turned back ; it needs only to be carried along its own path. We need no revolution, only the next step in evolution and historic development. We do not need to retrace, unlearn, destroy, but to go on, do more, study the same things, but harder. The strings in our hands by which we have felt our way along so far through our labyrinth are the leading-strings of progress, and we have but to follow the same strings further on. Our schools, our churches, our streets, our cor- porations, our families, the great achievements of the past that has died for us are right; not wrong, only not right enough. But they are starting points, not resting places.
We have understood for a long, long time that God was love. What we want now to know is how to get this God at work doing the chore of today — putting an end to the war, waste, anarchy, grief, of the business world.
Unless universal extinction is conceivable, we shall always have struggle, competition, war; never unity, rest, peace. Always move- ment forward, always one force or goal playing against another;
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always a strength to overcome to give us strength. But as man has become wiser and tenderer, competition has been changing before our eyes. •. . . A co-operative political economy will not banish competition, but make it progressively more a competition to create livelihood, property, opportunity for all in the best ways.
The new prophets will make men understand that the discords, poverties of our era do not call for the destruction of our institutions, but for their extension to new provinces of human contact— labour, business.
Man will preserve religion and patriotism, no matter how many churches and governments he has to destroy in the defense.
Our exhorters, in preaching to men that they are brothers, are telling them not what they are but what they are to be. "Life is sacred" means that life is growing sacred. Out of the pulsing, spending streams of human energy, rioting in the waste of over- loaded tendencies, pouring forth men and women by uncounted millions — like the spawn of the codfish — to secure the perpetuation of one ideal after another, rises a progressive incarnation of life moving on to ever better uses.
The reform which makes our wrongs here right in Heaven is the recourse of slaves afraid to do their duty on earth. Progress on earth, not perfection in Heaven, is the word of the future. . . . Humanity sees its goal to be not perfection, but progress ; the invitation of every tomorrow worth accepting, because of the never-broken promise of the past tomorrow.
A conception of perfect humanity or of a perfect flower is got from a cloud of witnesses not one of whom is perfect. Life is joy, and has always and everywhere been joy. The groans of men have been only aspirations for a higher joy than that presented to them. . . . Our moments of patriotism, brotherliness, good-will, are leaps up into the happiness which flows all through social space, and in it some day we shall live, and work, and bask, and ripen.
In the struggle for existence the Hebrew ideas of the fatherhood of God, and brotherhood of Hebrews, expanded by Jesus to brother- hood of all men, survived as fittest of all ancient syntheses. That restatement of the same old principles which can bring men as fellow labourers under the same law, and that can associate them as fellow worshippers, will be the religion of the coming era. The one must precede the other, men must learn that all are fellow beings, before they can advance to the conception that all fellow beings must be brothers on earth as well as i.n Heaven, brothers in all things as well as in one thing, brothers in the rewards of labour as well as in the labour. The religion of the immediate future is to be an Industrial Religion — one which will expand to the association of men in their common toils, the sacred law of brotherhood which they now obey only in the Church, and there brokenly, because, being infidel to it outside the Church, they are unfit and unable to live up to its fulness within the Church.
Love teaches that whatever social contrivance seeks to take without giving, to have without sharing, to do otherwise than it would be done by, seeks profit for itself out of loss for others, violates the law, and is therefore doomed. This love knows but one kind of peace — the peace of righteousness. No power in human affairs has ever been great enough to silence it; no heredity has been long- lived enough to outlast it. Love tells us never to rest as long as one human relation remains awry with hate, fear, force, or selfish- ness, or ignorance. ... To love the King, dethrone him. To love the slave-owner, free his slaves. To love the priest, make him one of a universal congregation of divine communion. To love the business man, cure him of his leprosy of greed, eating him with the terrors of panic and bankruptcy.
Soft-hearted men are as normal as hard-headed ones. History has no lesson for us if we do not read in it the demonstration that the hard heart implies a soft head — a head, that is, which does not and cannot understand its day, and cannot successfully manage its
THAT WHICH IS WRITTEN 79
own affairs. The one thing that always breaks down is the institu- tion of cruelty, no matter how hard its Alva's head may be.
We speak of the Golden Rule as if it were itself the disclosure of some fundamental principle of divine action. It is not so; it rather describes a method of action, a rule, as we call it, which has sprung out of a fundamental principle which underlies it. . . . A Declaration of Independence, an Emancipation Proclamation, is the mother brooding of the nest developed to its highest manifesta- tion— the conscious exercise of the creative love of all for all. All the politics, all the industry, all the science, all the religion of the future as of the past, have for their task to keep this force at work.
We cannot say too much for self help unless we exalt it above each-other help; the two make one truth. To use their resources to prevent adulterations, monopolies, to give every child education, to give every member the right of employment, is the self help and each-other help of men acting together.
Men need luxury, splendour, beauty and magnificence — palaces, parks, galleries, colour, music, refulgence. They will have them ; kings and aristocracies are not too high a price to pay for them in their primitive days, but civilized man must get with them the greatest luxury of all — democratic self-respect. Not to destroy luxury, but to democratise it, is the true policy.
When you see a cause against which all the powers of law, Church, culture and wealth are united, there is a cause worth looking into. If there was nothing in it, why should all these mighty institu- tions be so disturbed about it? And if you find all customs, creeds, logics, bazaars and currencies against it, look at it still more search- ingly. All these have always at the first been united against any new conscience, and have always conspired against it even to the death.
To give the poor, the ignorant, the hungry, overdriven, leisureless, the suffrage and tell them to protect themselves against the rich, the initiated, the worldly-wise, the well-fed, the leisured, with the vote which requires for its effective handling wealth, leisure, ex- perience, knowledge, and morals, is a mere freak of extermination. It is the freedom we give the rat when we loose him into the ring where the terrier waits for him.
Those who hate a system worse than they hate the devil will always overcome those who only love it as well as their dinner. Those to whom life is a worship are invincible before those to whom it is only a dicker.
Soldiers can build railroads as well as kill men. They could dig ditches to irrigate the American desert as well as to make fortifi- cations. An army mobilised to create wealth instead of destroying it could be certainly self-supporting under the economical and effi- cient methods of our American system. A call for volunteers among the unemployed for a peaceful war with such enemies of themselves and the race as starvation, disease, dirt and poverty would be answered by millions. The military power of conscription is available for dealing with the chronic tramp. Only by organising really and adequately the opportunity for work can society get a clear moral right to compel those to work who will not work voluntarily, and when society has created this opportunity for all it should put the relentless but merciful hand of compulsion upon all who would shirk.
An economic system which heaps up idle money in the banks and idle men in the streets is spiritually a sin, economically a waste, and we will make it legal outlawry.
There are phenomena in the field to indicate that the co-operator and democracy are not poorer but better business men ; that there is a better political economy than the political economy of individual self-interest, and that is the political economy and self-interest of all the individuals; that the business man, the capitalist, was good enough as a pioneer and as a scout for the people, but he cannot produce wealth fast enough nor well enough to be a permanent
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figure in any part of the business world where the co-operator or democracy can enter it.
The people are searching the Bible for material for constitutional amendments, and the Sermon on the Mount has become a campaign document — as it was meant to be.
We cannot pray best on our knees. To worship, we must keep by the side of our Christ, withstanding with him the temptation of the kingdom of this world, going about doing good, healing the sick as he healed them, having compassion on the multitude as he had, and finding bread to strengthen them to hear and do the truth, with him driving the thieves and money changers out of the temple, and with him ending the divine service only with life, if life ever ends.
No man can be truly religious who believes in the God of yesterday or rests in the God of today. There is no salvation save in the God of tomorrow.
If the foregoing extracts fail to stimulate any reader of these pages to get the book for himself, no recommendation of mine would be of any avail. Yet I will say that no thoughtful man can afford to remain ignorant of this — by far the greatest work of a man who was a devoted and intelligent lover of his fellow men. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. $2 net.
If a beautiful girl of seventeen will allow herself to drift out to sea alone on the night of her betrothal day, she ought not to be surprised at anything that happens to her. What happened to Hope Carmichael (as Mary Powell tells it, in The Prisoner of Ornith Farm) is to be picked up by the villain of the story, who is cruising conveniently near, and carried off to his country- place, there to be held until she agrees to marry him. An exceedingly fas- cinating villain he is, too, and one almost wonders that the heroine resists him to the last, escapes, and is rescued as she is at the brink of recapture. A clever mixture of drama, melodrama, mystery, and some humor. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, $1.50.
Three lectures delivered by J. G. Swinnerton in 1898, before Morning Star Lodge, F. & A. M., are now published under the title, The Origin of Masonry. And well they deserved publication. Mr. Swinnerton has done a really bril- liant bit of work — work which can only come from painstaking scholarship, illumined by genuine humor and warmed by hearty human interest. I com- mend the volume warmly not only to members of the Masonic Order, but to every man who likes good reading. The Whitaker & Ray Co., San Francisco, 75 cents net.
In the preface to her Bridge Abridged, Annie Blanche. Shelby states that it is "designed chiefly for such as would like as comprehensive knowledge as possible of Bridge play and the principles governing it, at a minimum expendi- ture of time and effort." As to which I am fain to remark that no comprehens- ive knowledge of anything was ever yet attained by any one who tried to get it at a minimum expenditure of time and effort. The Whitaker & Ray Co., San Francisco. $i, net.
California Mammals, by Frank Stephens, is the more valuable and important since no general work covering the mammals of this State had been published since 1857. It covers the field briefly, but thoroughly and satisfactorily. Mr. Stephens describes 256 species and subspecies of mammals which have been found within the State, or in sight of its shores, this number including the cetaceans and the bats. The volume is illustrated by W. J. Fenn, from studies in the field. It should be in every public and school library in the State, and in most private libraries that seriously deserve the title. West Coast Publishing Co., San Diego. $2.50 net.
That old stand-by, The Young Folks' Cyclopaedia of Common Things, by John Denison Chapman, now appears in a third edition thoroughly revised, enlarged and brought down to date. The first edition was published in 1879, and a comparison of that with this gives striking evidence of the enormous expansion of the field of "common knowledge" within this generation. Henry Holt & Co., New York, $2.50.
Charles Amadon Moody.
8i
TULARE COUNTY AND THE CITY OF
TULARE
By EDWARD A. DE BLOIS
M BRACED within the borders of the great State of California are several wonderful valleys, each a vast empire in itself, and each an important factor in the rapid development and marvelous progress of a State whose very name suggests sunshine and gold, and fruits and flowers. By far the largest and most important of all is the great San Joaquin Valley, a princely domain, 250 miles in length and from 40 to 80 miles in width, embracing eight counties. Upon one side it is flanked by the mighty Sierra Nevada, the highest range of mountains in the United States, and upon the other by the less lofty parallel Coast Range. From the western slope of the rugged Sierras there flows into the valley a series of splendid rivers, that fork into numerous branches, forming true delta lands like those of the Nile or Ganges. Ages ago these rivers and streams would overflow, inun- dating the whole country, and thus were deposited the rich layers of silt and sediment that today nourish vines and fruit trees, waving fields of grain, and great pastures of alfalfa.
In the heart of this mighty valley, midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, lies Tulare county, containing an area of 4,935 square miles, a territory about the size of the State of Connecticut. This portion of the valley is especially favored. It includes on its eastern border lit Whitney, the highest mountain in the United States, and wonderful mountain scenery rivaling in grandeur and beauty anything to be seen in the Yosemite Valley. Here also is to be found the Sequoia National Park, a reservation by the government of the largest forest of the Sequoia gigantea in existence. There are more than three thousand sequoias in this grove that measure over fifty feet in circumference and three hundred feet in height. The "General
A Sample Tree from one of TuUre'i Oak Porceti
Lw*1*
» -t
TULARE COUNTY AXD THE CITY OF TULARE
83
Sherman'* in this forest is said to be the largest tree in the world. Trout streams are abundant, and mineral springs, while lakes clear as crystal and fathomless are numbered by hundreds.
Draining into Tulare county are three great streams — Kings river, the Kaweah and the Tule. They furnish abundant water for irrigation and the development of power, while under the ground there is to be found a vast reservoir of water, forever replenished from the slopes of the Sierras, which. through the agency of pumping, furnish an auxiliary to the immense irrigation system now so firmly established throughout the county.
Lying adjacent to the foot-hills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and stretching from the northern to the southern limits of the county, is the
On the Tule River, Tulare County
famous citrus belt, where the orange and the lemon thrive to a degree unsurpassed, and where these fruits ripen earlier than in the southern part of the State, thus always finding the first and best market. Farther out on the plain deciduous fruits are grown in great abundance and highest perfection. Nowhere in the world can grapes of better quality be found than in this section, and nowhere has the vine a greater productive capacity. Sugar-beets, cereals, apricots, prunes, nectarines, figs, apples, olives, plums, almonds and walnuts all find their homes here, while Tulare peaches have taken premiums at all the great national fairs held in the United States, and at the Paris Exposition they were awarded first prize in competition with the whole world.
There is no country under the sun more thoroughly adapted to the dairying industry. Alfalfa grows to its fullest perfection, and stock requires DO winter
TULARE COUNTY AND THE CITY OF TULARE 85
protection. As a horse-producing section it is unsurpassed. The climatic conditions for speed development, early maturity, an abundance of feed of every kind and variety, with never- failing green pastures, reduce the cost of rearing a horse to a minimum.
Enthroned in the midst of this smiling garden of fertility is the city of
Tulare, containing a population of about 30CO. From a commercial point of
view it is well located, as two great trans-continental lines of railroad— the
em Pacific and the Santa Fe — pass through it. The business life ol
Tulare rests upon a permanent foundation — the agricultural resources of a wonderfully rich and growing country. Ets Stores are modern and up-to- date, while its merchants are energetic and progressive. Two creameries disburse among the dairymen over $250,000 a year, while cattle and hogs are raised in large numbers, and many thousand dozen of eggs and much
A Tulare Residence Street
p lu'.try are -hipped away each month. Two large packing-hou-es fur- nish employment for many men and women, and boys and girls during the fruit season, while but two miles from town is located the famous Paige orchard and vineyard, the largest in a single body to be found in the Slate. and one that also give- employment to several hundred people.
: year- the schools of Tulare have had a wide reputation, many pupils
r:g from a distance in order to avail themselves of the High School privi
It- many churcln the deeply religious sentiment existing among
the inhabitants, while two daily ami weekly newspapers, and a beautiful free
public library mark the community a- one of literary and reading tastes.
From ■ scenic standpoint Tulare pr< charming picture It- brick
bush • are among the handsomest in the valley. It- streets are wide
and clean and well graded, and are bordered everywhere with beautiful shade
while its many park- and lawn- and magnificent (lower gardens fascinate
TULARE COUNTY AND THE CITY OF TULARE 87
the eye and fill the air with perfume. The country about is especially rich in bird life and the sweet songs of the mocking bird and the meadow lark charm the ear with sounds of ravishing melody.
The healthfulness of this locality must not be overlooked, as of the two cities of the State having the lowest percentage of mortality, Tulare is one. No doubt this fact can be ascribed to the purity of its drinking water, the supply being furnished by artesian wells averaging