Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/203

Rh of the sex, and for once in his life, he felt doubtful of his own readiness, and feared lest in his excitement he might reveal the imminent danger of her brother. Perhaps he was never before so conscious of that danger; perhaps he was never before so interested in the life of any one. He began to see things with Olly's eyes—to look upon events with reference to her feelings rather than his own; if she had sobbed and cried this sympathetic rascal really believed that he would have cried too. Such was the unconscious and sincere flattery of admiration. He was relieved when, with the first streaks of dawn, his mare wearily clattered over the scattered river pebbles and "tailings" that paved the outskirts of Wingdam. He was still more relieved when the three Voices of the Night, now faintly visible as three armed horsemen, drew up before the veranda of the Wingdam Hotel, dismounted, and passed into the bar-room. And he was perfectly content, when a moment later he lifted the still sleeping Olly in his arms and bore her swiftly, yet cautiously, to his room. To awaken the sleeping Pete on the floor above, and drag him half-dressed and bewildered into the presence of the unconscious child, as she lay on Jack Hamlin's own bed, half buried in a heap of shawls and rugs, was only the work of another moment. "Why, Mars Jack! Bress de Lord!—it's a chile!" said Pete, recoiling in sacred awe and astonishment. "Hold your blasted jaw!" said Jack, in a fierce whisper, "you'll waken her! Listen to me, you chattering idiot. Don't waken her, if you want to keep the bones in your creaking old skeleton whole enough for the doctors to buy. Let her sleep as long as she can. If she wakes up and asks after me, tell her I'm gone for her brother. Do you hear? Give her anything she asks for—except—the Truth! What are you doing, you old fool?" Pete was carefully removing the mountain of shawls and blankets that Jack had piled upon Olly. "Fore God, Mars Jack, you's smuddering dat chile!" was his only response. Nevertheless, Jack was satisfied with a certain vague tenderness in his manipulation, and said curtly, "Get me a horse!" "It ain't to be did, Mars Jack; de stables is all gone cleaned! Dey's a rush over to One Horse Gulch, all day!" "There are three horses at the door," said Jack, with wicked significance. "For the love of God, Mars Jack, don't ye do dat!" ejaculated Pete, in unfeigned and tremulous alarm. "Dey don't take dem kind o' jokes yer worth a cent—dey'd be doin' somefin awful to ye, sah—shuah's yer born!" But Jack, with the child lying there peaceably in his own bed, and the Three Voices growing husky in the bar-room below, regained all his old audacity. "I haven't made up my mind," continued Jack, coolly, "which of the three I'll take, but you'll find out from the owner when I do! Tell him that Mr. Jack Hamlin left his compliments and a mare and buggy for him. You can say that if he keeps the mare from breaking and gives her her head down hill, she can do her mile inside of 2:45. Hush! Bye-bye!" He turned, lifted the shawl from the fresh cheek of the sleeping Olly, kissed her, and shaking his fist at Pete, vanished. For a few moments the negro listened breathlessly. And then there came the sharp, quick clatter of hoofs from the rocky road below, and he sank dejectedly at the foot of the bed. "He's gone done it! Lord save us! but it's a hangin' matter yer!" And even as he spoke Mr. Jack Hamlin, mounted on the fleet mustang that had been ridden by the Potential Voice, with his audacious face against the red sunrise, and his right shoulder squarely advanced, was butting away the morning mists that rolled slowly along the river road to One Horse Gulch. CHAPTER XLI. MR. DUMPHY IS PERPLEXED BY A MOVE- MENT IN REAL ESTATE. confidence in himself was so greatly restored, that several business enterprises of great pith and moment, whose currents for the past few days had been turned awry, and so "lost the name of action," were taken up by him with great vigor and corresponding joy to the humbler business associates who had asked him just to lend his name to that project, and make a "big thing of it." He had just given his royal sanction and a check to an association for the encouragement of immigration, by the distribution through the sister States of one million seductive pamphlets setting forth the various resources and advantages of California for the farmer, and proving that $150 spent for a passage thither was equal to the price of a farm; he had also assisted in sending the eloquent Mr. Blowhard and the persuasive Mr. Windygust to present these facts orally to the benighted dwellers of the East