Mrs. Skagg's Husbands and Other Stories

It was still early morning, but the sun, with California extravagance, had already begun to beat hotly on the little chip hat and blue ribbons, and Miss Jo was obliged to seek the shade of a bypath. Here she received the timid advances of a vagabond yellow dog graciously, until, emboldened by his success, he insisted upon accompanying her, and, becoming slobberingly demonstrative, threatened her spotless skirt with his dusty paws, when she drove him from her with some slight acerbity, and a stone which haply fell within fifty feet of its destined mark. Having thus proved her ability to defend herself, with characteristic inconsistency she took a small panic, and, gathering her white skirts in one hand, and holding the brim of her hat over her eyes with the other, she ran swiftly at least a hundred yards before she stopped. Then she began picking some ferns and a few wild-flowers still spared to the withered fields, and then a sudden distrust of her small ankles seized her, and she inspected them narrowly for those burrs and bugs and snakes which are supposed to lie in wait for helpless womanhood. Then she plucked some golden heads of wild oats, and with a sudden inspiration placed them in her black hair, and then came quite unconsciously upon the trail leading to Madrono Hollow.

Here she hesitated. Before her ran the little trail, vanishing at last into the bosky depths below. The sun was very hot. She must be very far from home. Why should she not rest awhile under the shade of a madrono?

She answered these questions by going there at once. After thoroughly exploring the grove, and satisfying herself that it contained no other living human creature, she sat down under one of the largest trees, with a satisfactory little sigh. Miss Jo loved the madrono. It was a cleanly tree; no dust ever lay upon its varnished leaves; its immaculate shade never was known to harbor grub or insect.

She looked up at the rosy arms interlocked and arched above her head. She looked down at the delicate ferns and cryptogams at her feet. Something glittered at the root of the tree. She picked it up; it was a bracelet. She examined it carefully for cipher or inscription; there was none. She could not resist a natural desire to clasp it on her arm, and to survey it from that advantageous view-point. This absorbed her attention for some moments; and when she looked up again she beheld at a little distance Culpepper Starbottle.

He was standing where he had halted, with instinctive delicacy, on first discovering her. Indeed, he had even deliberated whether he ought not to go away without disturbing her. But some fascination held him to the spot. Wonderful power of humanity! Far beyond jutted an outlying spur of the Sierra, vast, compact, and silent. Scarcely a hundred yards away, a league-long chasm dropped its sheer walls of granite a thousand feet. On every side rose up the serried ranks of pine-trees, in whose close-set files centuries of storm and change had wrought no breach. Yet all this seemed to Culpepper to have been planned by an all-wise Providence as the natural background to the figure of a pretty girl in a yellow dress.

Although Miss Jo had confidently expected to meet Culpepper somewhere in her ramble, now that he came upon her suddenly, she felt disappointed and embarrassed. His manner, too, was more than usually grave and serious; and more than ever seemed to jar upon that audacious levity which was this giddy girl’s power and security in a society where all feeling was dangerous. As he approached her she rose to her feet, but almost before she knew it he had taken her hand and drawn her to a seat beside him. This was not what Miss Jo had expected, but nothing is so difficult to predicate as the exact preliminaries of a declaration of love.

What did Culpepper say? Nothing, I fear, that will add anything to the wisdom of the reader; nothing, I fear, that Miss Jo had not heard substantially from other lips before. But there was a certain conviction, fire-speed, and fury in the manner that was deliciously novel to the young lady. It was certainly something to be courted in the nineteenth century with all the passion and extravagance of the sixteenth; it was something to hear, amid the slang of a frontier society, the language of knight-errantry poured into her ear by this lantern-jawed, dark-browed descendant of the Cavaliers.

I do not know that there was anything more in it. The facts, however, go to show that at a certain point Miss Jo dropped her glove, and that in recovering it Culpepper possessed himself first of her hand and then her lips. When they stood up to go Culpepper had his arm around her waist, and her black hair, with its sheaf of golden oats, rested against the breast pocket of his coat. But even then I do not think her fancy was entirely captive. She took a certain satisfaction in this demonstration of Culpepper’s splendid height, and mentally compared it with a former flame, one lieutenant McMirk, an active, but under-sized Hector, who subsequently fell a victim to the incautiously composed and monotonous beverages of a frontier garrison. Nor was she so much preoccupied but that her quick eyes, even while absorbing Culpepper’s glances, were yet able to detect, at a distance, the figure of a man approaching. In an instant she slipped out of Culpepper’s arm, and, whipping her hands behind her, said, “There’s that horrid man!”

Culpepper looked up and beheld his respected uncle panting and blowing over the hill. His brow contracted as he turned to Miss Jo: “You don’t like my uncle!”

“I hate him!” Miss Jo was recovering her ready tongue.

Culpepper blushed. He would have liked to enter upon some details of the Colonel’s pedigree and exploits, but there was not time. He only smiled sadly. The smile melted Miss Jo. She held out her hand quickly, and said with even more than her usual effrontery, “Don’t let that man get you into any trouble. Take care of yourself, dear, and don’t let anything happen to you.”

Miss Jo intended this speech to be pathetic; the tenure of life among her lovers had hitherto been very uncertain. Culpepper turned toward her, but she had already vanished in the thicket.

The Colonel came up panting. “I’ve looked all over town for you, and be dashed to you, sir. Who was that with you?”

“A lady.” (Culpepper never lied, but he was discreet.)

“D—m ‘em all! Look yar, Culp, I’ve spotted the man who gave the order to put me off the floor” (“flo” was what the Colonel said) “the other night!”

“Who was it?” asked Culpepper, listlessly.

“Jack Folinsbee.”

“Who?”

“Why, the son of that dashed nigger-worshipping psalm-singing Puritan Yankee. What’s the matter, now? Look yar, Culp, you ain’t goin’ back on your blood, ar’ ye? You ain’t goin’ back on your word? Ye ain’t going down at the feet of this trash, like a whipped hound?”

Culpepper was silent. He was very white. Presently he looked up and said quietly. “No.”

Culpepper Starbottle had challenged Jack Folinsbee, and the challenge was accepted. The cause alleged was the expelling of Culpepper’s uncle from the floor of the Assembly Ball by the order of Folinsbee. This much Madrono Hollow knew and could swear to; but there were other strange rumors afloat, of which the blacksmith was an able expounder. “You see, gentlemen,” he said to the crowd gathered around his anvil, “I ain’t got no theory of this affair, I only give a few facts as have come to my knowledge. Culpepper and Jack meets quite accidental like in Bob’s saloon. Jack goes up to Culpepper and says, ‘A word with you.’ Culpepper bows and steps aside in this way, Jack standing about HERE.” (The blacksmith demonstrates the position of the parties with two old horseshoes on the anvil.) “Jack pulls a bracelet from his pocket and says, ‘Do you know that bracelet?’ Culpepper says, ‘I do not,’ quite cool-like and easy. Jack says, ‘You gave it to my sister.’ Culpepper says, still cool as you please, ‘I did not.’ Jack says, ‘You lie, G-d d-mn you,’ and draws his derringer. Culpepper jumps forward about here” (reference is made to the diagram) “and Jack fires. Nobody hit. It’s a mighty cur’o’s thing, gentlemen,” continued the blacksmith, dropping suddenly into the abstract, and leaning meditatively on his anvil,—“it’s a mighty cur’o’s thing that nobody gets hit so often. You and me empties our revolvers sociably at each other over a little game, and the room full and nobody gets hit! That’s what gets me.”

“Never mind, Thompson,” chimed in Bill Masters, “there’s another and a better world where we shall know all that and—become better shots. Go on with your story.”

“Well, some grabs Culpepper and some grabs Jack, and so separates them. Then Jack tells ‘em as how he had seen his sister wear a bracelet which he knew was one that had been given to Dolores by Colonel Starbottle. That Miss Jo wouldn’t say where she got it, but owned up to having seen Culpepper that day. Then the most cur’o’s thing of it yet, what does Culpepper do but rise up and takes all back that he said, and allows that he DID give her the bracelet. Now my opinion, gentlemen, is that he lied; it ain’t like that man to give a gal that he respects anything off of that piece, Dolores. But it’s all the same now, and there’s but one thing to be done.”

The way this one thing was done belongs to the record of Madrono Hollow. The morning was bright and clear; the air was slightly chill, but that was from the mist which arose along the banks of the river. As early as six o’clock the designated ground—a little opening in the madrono grove—was occupied by Culpepper Starbottle, Colonel Starbottle, his second, and the surgeon. The Colonel was exalted and excited, albeit in a rather imposing, dignified way, and pointed out to the surgeon the excellence of the ground, which at that hour was wholly shaded from the sun, whose steady stare is more or less discomposing to your duellist. The surgeon threw himself on the grass and smoked his cigar. Culpepper, quiet and thoughtful, leaned against a tree and gazed up the river. There was a strange suggestion of a picnic about the group, which was heightened when the Colonel drew a bottle from his coat-tails, and, taking a preliminary draught, offered it to the others. “Cocktails, sir,” he explained with dignified precision. “A gentleman, sir, should never go out without ‘em. Keeps off the morning chill. I remember going out in ‘53 with Hank Boompirater. Good ged, sir, the man had to put on his overcoat, and was shot in it. Fact.”

But the noise of wheels drowned the Colonel’s reminiscences, and a rapidly driven buggy, containing Jack Folinsbee, Calhoun Bungstarter, his second, and Bill Masters, drew up on the ground. Jack Folinsbee leaped out gayly. “I had the jolliest work to get away without the governor’s hearing,” he began, addressing the group before him with the greatest volubility. Calhoun Bungstarter touched his arm, and the young man blushed. It was his first duel.

“If you are ready, gentlemen,” said Mr. Bungstarter, “we had better proceed to business. I believe it is understood that no apology will be offered or accepted. We may as well settle preliminaries at once, or I fear we shall be interrupted. There is a rumor in town that the Vigilance Committee are seeking our friends the Starbottles, and I believe, as their fellow-countryman, I have the honor to be included in their warrant.”

At this probability of interruption, that gravity which had hitherto been wanting fell upon the group. The preliminaries were soon arranged and the principals placed in position. Then there was a silence.

To a spectator from the hill, impressed with the picnic suggestion, what might have been the popping of two champagne corks broke the stillness.

Culpepper had fired in the air. Colonel Starbottle uttered a low curse. Jack Folinsbee sulkily demanded another shot.

Again the parties stood opposed to each other. Again the word was given, and what seemed to be the simultaneous report of both pistols rose upon the air. But after an interval of a few seconds all were surprised to see Culpepper slowly raise his unexploded weapon and fire it harmlessly above his head. Then, throwing the pistol upon the ground, he walked to a tree and leaned silently against it.

Jack Folinsbee flew into a paroxysm of fury. Colonel Starbottle raved and swore. Mr. Bungstarter was properly shocked at their conduct. “Really, gentlemen, if Mr. Culpepper Starbottle declines another shot, I do not see how we can proceed.”

But the Colonel’s blood was up, and Jack Folinsbee was equally implacable. A hurried consultation ensued, which ended by Colonel Starbottle taking his nephew’s place as principal, Bill Masters acting as second, vice Mr. Bungstarter, who declined all further connection with the affair.

Two distinct reports rang through the Hollow. Jack Folinsbee dropped his smoking pistol, took a step forward, and then dropped heavily upon his face.

In a moment the surgeon was at his side. The confusion was heightened by the trampling of hoofs, and the voice of the blacksmith bidding them flee for their lives before the coming storm. A moment more and the ground was cleared, and the surgeon, looking up, beheld only the white face of Culpepper bending over him.

“Can you save him?”

“I cannot say. Hold up his head a moment, while I run to the buggy.”

Culpepper passed his arm tenderly around the neck of the insensible man. Presently the surgeon returned with some stimulants.

“There, that will do, Mr. Starbottle, thank you. Now my advice is to get away from here while you can. I’ll look after Folinsbee. Do you hear?”

Culpepper’s arm was still round the neck of his late foe, but his head had drooped and fallen on the wounded man’s shoulder. The surgeon looked down, and, catching sight of his face, stooped and lifted him gently in his arms. He opened his coat and waistcoat. There was blood upon his shirt, and a bullet-hole in his breast. He had been shot unto death at the first fire.

THE POET OF SIERRA FLAT

As the enterprising editor of the “Sierra Flat Record” stood at his case setting type for his next week’s paper, he could not help hearing the woodpeckers who were busy on the roof above his head. It occurred to him that possibly the birds had not yet learned to recognize in the rude structure any improvement on nature, and this idea pleased him so much that he incorporated it in the editorial article which he was then doubly composing. For the editor was also printer of the “Record”; and although that remarkable journal was reputed to exert a power felt through all Calaveras and a greater part of Tuolumne County, strict economy was one of the conditions of its beneficent existence.

Thus preoccupied, he was startled by the sudden irruption of a small roll of manuscript, which was thrown through the open door and fell at his feet. He walked quickly to the threshold and looked down the tangled trail which led to the high-road. But there was nothing to suggest the presence of his mysterious contributor. A hare limped slowly away, a green-and-gold lizard paused upon a pine stump, the woodpeckers ceased their work. So complete had been his sylvan seclusion, that he found it difficult to connect any human agency with the act; rather the hare seemed to have an inexpressibly guilty look, the woodpeckers to maintain a significant silence, and the lizard to be conscience-stricken into stone.

An examination of the manuscript, however, corrected this injustice to defenceless nature. It was evidently of human origin,—being verse, and of exceeding bad quality. The editor laid it aside. As he did so he thought he saw a face at the window. Sallying out in some indignation, he penetrated the surrounding thicket in every direction, but his search was as fruitless as before. The poet, if it were he, was gone.

A few days after this the editorial seclusion was invaded by voices of alternate expostulation and entreaty. Stepping to the door, the editor was amazed at beholding Mr. Morgan McCorkle, a well-known citizen of Angelo, and a subscriber to the “Record,” in the act of urging, partly by force and partly by argument, an awkward young man toward the building. When he had finally effected his object, and, as it were, safely landed his prize in a chair, Mr. McCorkle took off his hat, carefully wiped the narrow isthmus of forehead which divided his black brows from his stubby hair, and with an explanatory wave of his hand toward his reluctant companion, said, “A borned poet, and the cussedest fool you ever seed!”

Accepting the editor’s smile as a recognition of the introduction, Mr. McCorkle panted and went on: “Didn’t want to come! ‘Mister Editor don’t went to see me, Morg,’ sez he. ‘Milt,’ sez I, ‘he do; a borned poet like you and a gifted genius like he oughter come together sociable!’ And I fetched him. Ah, will yer?” The born poet had, after exhibiting signs of great distress, started to run. But Mr. McCorkle was down upon him instantly, seizing him by his long linen coat, and settled him back in his chair. “Tain’t no use stampeding. Yer ye are and yer ye stays. For yer a borned poet,—ef ye are as shy as a jackass rabbit. Look at ‘im now!”

He certainly was not an attractive picture. There was hardly a notable feature in his weak face, except his eyes, which were moist and shy and not unlike the animal to which Mr. McCorkle had compared him. It was the face that the editor had seen at the window.

“Knowed him for fower year,—since he war a boy,” continued Mr. McCorkle in a loud whisper. “Allers the same, bless you! Can jerk a rhyme as easy as turnin’ jack. Never had any eddication; lived out in Missooray all his life. But he’s chock full o’ poetry. On’y this mornin’ sez I to him,—he camps along o’ me,—‘Milt!’ sez I, ‘are breakfast ready?’ and he up and answers back quite peert and chipper, ‘The breakfast it is ready, and the birds is singing free, and it’s risin’ in the dawnin’ light is happiness to me!’ When a man,” said Mr. McCorkle, dropping his voice with deep solemnity, “gets off things like them, without any call to do it, and handlin’ flapjacks over a cookstove at the same time,—that man’s a borned poet.”

There was an awkward pause. Mr. McCorkle beamed patronizingly on his protege. The born poet looked as if he were meditating another flight,—not a metaphorical one. The editor asked if he could do anything for them.

“In course you can,” responded Mr. McCorkle, “that’s jest it. Milt, where’s that poetry!”

The editor’s countenance fell as the poet produced from his pocket a roll of manuscript. He, however, took it mechanically and glanced over it. It was evidently a duplicate of the former mysterious contribution.

The editor then spoke briefly but earnestly. I regret that I cannot recall his exact words, but it appeared that never before, in the history of the “Record,” had the pressure been so great upon its columns. Matters of paramount importance, deeply affecting the material progress of Sierra, questions touching the absolute integrity of Calaveras and Tuolumne as social communities, were even now waiting expression. Weeks, nay, months, must elapse before that pressure would be removed, and the “Record” could grapple with any but the sternest of topics. Again, the editor had noticed with pain the absolute decline of poetry in the foot-hills of the Sierras. Even the works of Byron and Moore attracted no attention in Dutch Flat, and a prejudice seemed to exist against Tennyson in Grass Valley. But the editor was not without hope for the future. In the course of four or five years, when the country was settled,—

“What would be the cost to print this yer?” interrupted Mr. McCorkle, quietly.

“About fifty dollars, as an advertisement,” responded the editor with cheerful alacrity.

Mr. McCorkle placed the sum in the editor’s hand. “Yer see thet’s what I sez to Milt, ‘Milt,’ sez I, ‘pay as you go, for you are a borned poet. Hevin no call to write, but doin’ it free and spontaneous like, in course you pays. Thet’s why Mr. Editor never printed your poetry.’”

“What name shall I put to it?” asked the editor.

“Milton.”

It was the first word that the born poet had spoken during the interview, and his voice was so very sweet and musical that the editor looked at him curiously, and wondered if he had a sister.

“Milton; is that all?”

“Thet’s his furst name,” exclaimed Mr. McCorkle.

The editor here suggested that as there had been another poet of that name—

“Milt might be took for him! Thet’s bad,” reflected Mr. McCorkle with simple gravity. “Well, put down his hull name,—Milton Chubbuck.”

The editor made a note of the fact. “I’ll set it up now,” he said. This was also a hint that the interview was ended. The poet and patron, arm in arm, drew towards the door. “In next week’s paper,” said the editor, smilingly, in answer to the childlike look of inquiry in the eyes of the poet, and in another moment they were gone.

The editor was as good as his word. He straight-way betook himself to his case, and, unrolling the manuscript, began his task. The woodpeckers on the roof recommenced theirs, and in a few moments the former sylvan seclusion was restored. There was no sound in the barren, barn-like room but the birds above, and below the click of the composing-rule as the editor marshalled the types into lines in his stick, and arrayed them in solid column on the galley. Whatever might have been his opinion of the copy before him, there was no indication of it in his face, which wore the stolid indifference of his craft. Perhaps this was unfortunate, for as the day wore on and the level rays of the sun began to pierce the adjacent thicket, they sought out and discovered an anxious ambushed figure drawn up beside the editor’s window,—a figure that had sat there motionless for hours. Within, the editor worked on as steadily and impassively as Fate. And without, the born poet of Sierra Flat sat and watched him as waiting its decree.

The effect of the poem on Sierra Flat was remarkable and unprecedented. The absolute vileness of its doggerel, the gratuitous imbecility of its thought, and above all the crowning audacity of the fact that it was the work of a citizen and published in the county paper, brought it instantly into popularity. For many months Calaveras had languished for a sensation; since the last vigilance committee nothing had transpired to dispel the listless ennui begotten of stagnant business and growing civilization. In more prosperous moments the office of the “Record” would have been simply gutted and the editor deported; at present the paper was in such demand that the edition was speedily exhausted. In brief, the poem of Mr. Milton Chubbuck came like a special providence to Sierra Flat. It was read by camp-fires, in lonely cabins, in flaring bar-rooms and noisy saloons, and declaimed from the boxes of stagecoaches. It was sung in Poker Flat with the addition of a local chorus, and danced as an unhallowed rhythmic dance by the Pyrrhic phalanx of One Horse Gulch, known as “The Festive Stags of Calaveras.” Some unhappy ambiguities of expression gave rise to many new readings, notes, and commentaries, which, I regret to state, were more often marked by ingenuity than delicacy of thought or expression.

Never before did poet acquire such sudden local reputation. From the seclusion of McCorkle’s cabin and the obscurity of culinary labors, he was haled forth into the glowing sunshine of Fame. The name of Chubbuck was written in letters of chalk on unpainted walls, and carved with a pick on the sides of tunnels. A drink known variously as “The Chubbuck Tranquillizer,” or “The Chubbuck Exalter,” was dispensed at the bars. For some weeks a rude design for a Chubbuck statue, made up of illustrations from circus and melodeon posters, representing the genius of Calaveras in brief skirts on a flying steed in the act of crowning the poet Chubbuck, was visible at Keeler’s Ferry. The poet himself was overborne with invitations to drink and extravagant congratulations. The meeting between Colonel Starbottle of Siskyion and Chubbuck, as previously arranged by our “Boston,” late of Roaring Camp, is said to have been indescribably affecting. The Colonel embraced him unsteadily. “I could not return to my constituents at Siskyion, sir, if this hand, which has grasped that of the gifted Prentice and the lamented Poe, should not have been honored by the touch of the godlike Chubbuck. Gentlemen, American literature is looking up. Thank you, I will take sugar in mine.” It was “Boston” who indited letters of congratulations from H. W. Longfellow, Tennyson, and Browning, to Mr. Chubbuck, deposited them in the Sierra Flat post-office, and obligingly consented to dictate the replies.