Page:The Californian volume 1 issue 1.djvu/29

 work he ever accomplished—the exploit par excellence of official duty performed under the most adverse circumstances: how, at precisely a quarter to five o’clock, on the morning of a certain day, of a certain month, in a certain year, he was awakened by a breathless messen- ger from the camp of Montezuma, announcing that the lawless citizens of that locality were about to lynch a horse-thief ; how, without wait- ing to inquire the particulars, and only long enough to gather from the saloons, still open at that time of the morning, a sufficiently resolute posse, and to mount them on the first animals that came to hand, he dashed away at a break- neck pace over the mountain road connecting the county seat with the law defying camp of Montezuma; how he arrived upon the scene just as the struggling wretch was being lifted from the ground toward the branch of a pine tree, his elevation being materially assisted by a hundred pairs of muscular arms; how at the head of three or four men he charged the mob, cut the rope, threw the insensible form of the half hanged man across the pommel of his sad- dle, and, pistol in hand, fought his way out of the yelling mob and brought his prisoner to the county jail. This was the Sheriff’s story, and, making allowance for a few pardonable exaggerations, was in the main correct.

The trial of Sam Randolph was not une cause célébre by any means. It was simply a plain case of grand larceny; and the sentence of five years in the State Prison, which he received with the same stoical indifference that charac- terized him when the court of the people con- demned him to death, excited no interest what- ever in the mind of the community. Nothing less than a conviction for stage robbery ever did affect the Californians of that day to any great extent. On his way to his cell after sen- tence had been passed upon him, Randolph chanced to meet Peterson, his accuser, stand- ing listlessly in the doorway, and bestowed upon him a vindictively malevolent scowl of the deadliest hatred. The passing frown of the man who had attempted to despoil him pro- duced no other effect upon Peterson, however, than to cause him to turn slowly, and, with a vacant stare from his dull eyes in the direction of the heavily ironed prisoner, to remark in an undertone, to himself:

“Maybe my luck’ll turn now. I’ve made the riffle on one deal anyhow.”

Peterson’s return to his home under the rim of Table Mountain was far from being tri- umphal in its character, for he was met at the threshold of the cabin by his wife, whc heaped an avalanche of reproaches and complaints upon him. She pointed to the depleted clothesline, and in choice vituperation, directed at mankind generally, informed her shrinking hus- band that fifty more miners had shaken the dust of Montezuma from their feet and turned their eager faces to the northward—another company recruited for the grand army already on the march to the gold fields of Frazer River.

“S’pose I pack up an’ go, too,” he muttered, a slight raising of the corners of his mouth in- dicating the inward spark of joy that had be- gun to glow in the dead ashes of his heart at the thought of gaining relief from the intoler- able clangor of a virago’s bitter tongue.

“Ye'd go, would ye? An’ leave me to tug, an’ pull, an’ haul, to support yer three brats. You're a fine husband an’ father, ain’t ye? You ought to be ashamed o’ yerself. But what’s the use? Ye never was any account anyhow, an’ I’ve hed to wear myself out gettin’ bread an’ meat enough to stuff down yer mis’able throat, an’ thet’s all the thanks I git.”

“T reckon that'll keep you till I git back, won't it?” As Peterson said this, he threw a heavy buckskin purse on the table.

“Where'd ye git thet?” inquired his wife, eye- ing first her husband, and then the purse.

“Borrered it.”

“Who from?”

“A friend o’ mine.”

“What fur?”

“T thought maybe you’d need it while I was gone.”

“Gone! An’ so ye’d settled on goin’ afore ye’d quit doin’ nothin, eh.”

“They say there’s better diggin’s up north— they can’t be worse’n they are here. Maybe my luck’s turned.”

“Yer luck!” the woman sneered. “Yer luck! Yer a born ijit, Roger Peterson. Talk about luck—a man talk about luck. How much is ther in that sack?” she suddenly asked, picking up the purse.

“Two hundred—about.”

“All right. I'll make it go ez fur ez I ken. I'll work my finger-ends off to keep yer young uns till ye git back. An’ mind ye, Roger Peter- son, don’t you come loafin’ round here, till ye ken support those yer bound to support ef ye’d only do half yer duty. Now, vamose—git!”

The woman extended her arm, and with her index finger pointed to the door. The man obeyed the command, only pausing an instant on the threshold, to direct one of his dull, cowed glances at the wife who thus imperatively ban- ished him from his own house—such a glance as “dumb, driven cattle” turn toward their taskmasters.

And so Roger Peterson, the chosen favorite of misfortune, joined the “rush” fer Frazer