CHAPTER VII
LILAC SPODUMENE
Once more Oliver Drew rode out of Clinker Creek Cañon to find Jessamy Selden, straight and strong and dependable looking, waiting for him in her saddle. On this occasion he joined her by appointment.
She looked especially fresh and contrasty today. Her black hair and eyes and her red lips and olive skin, with the red of perfect health so subtly blended into the tan, always made her beauty rather startling. This morning she had plaited her hair in two long, heavy braids that hung to the bottom of her saddle skirts on either side.
Oliver's gaze at her was one of frank admiration.
"How do you do it?" he laughed.
"Do what?"
"Make yourself so spectacular and – er – outstanding, without leaving any traces of art?"
"Am I spectacular?"
"Rather. Different, anyway – to use a badly overworked expression. But what puzzles me is what makes you look like that. You seem perfectly normal, and nothing could be plainer than the clothes you wear. You're not beautiful, and you're too big both physically and mentally to be pretty. But I'll bet my hat you're the most popular young woman in this section!"
She regarded him soberly. "Are you through?" she asked.
"I've exhausted my stock of descriptive words, anyway," he told her.
"Then we'd better be riding," she said.
He swung Poche to the side of White Ann, and they moved off along the road, knee and knee.
"You're not offended?" he asked.
She threw back her head and laughed till Oliver thought of meadow larks, and robins calling before a shower.
"Offended! You must think me some sort of freak. Who ever heard of a woman being offended when a man admires her? I like it immensely, Mr. Oliver Drew. And if you can beat that for square shooting, there's no truth in me. But if you'll analyse my 'difference' you'll find it's only because I'm big and strong and healthy, and try always to shoot straight from the shoulder and look folks straight in the eye. That's all. Let's let 'em out!"
They broke into a smart gallop, and continued it up and down pine-toothed hills till they clattered into Halfmoon Flat.
Curious eyes met them, old men stopped in their tracks and leaned on their canes to watch, and folks came to windows and doors as they loped through the village.
"'Whispering tongues can poison truth,'" Jessamy quoted as they turned a corner and cantered up a hill toward a grove of pines on the outskirts of the town. "It seems odd that Adam Selden has not mentioned you to me. Surely some one has seen us together who would tell some one else who would tell Old Man Selden all about it. But not a cheep from him as yet."
"Have you any bosom friends in the Clinker Creek district?" he asked, not altogether irrelevantly.
"No, none at all. But I'm friends with everybody, though I have nothing in common with any one. I don't consider myself superior to the natives here about, but, just the same, they don't interest me. I'm speaking of the women. I like most of the men. I guess I'm what they call a man's woman. I can't sit and talk about clothes and dances, and gossip, and what one did on one's vacation last summer. It all bores me stiff, so I don't pretend it doesn't. Men, now – they can talk about horses and saddles and cows and cutting wood and prizefights and poker games and election – "
"And women and Fords," he interrupted.
She laughed and led the way into a little trail that snaked on up the hill between lilacs and buckeye trees to a little cabin half-hidden in the foliage.
They dismounted at the door and loosed their horses. Jessamy tapped vigorously on the panels. Again and again – and then there was heard a shuffling, unsteady step inside, and a cane thumped hollowly. Presently the door opened, and Old Dad Sloan bleared out at them from behind his flaring, mattress-stuffing hair and whiskers.
"How do you do, Mr. Sloan!" cried Jessamy almost at the top of her voice.
A veined hand shook its way to form a cup behind the ancient's ear.
"Hey?" he squealed.
Jessamy filled her sturdy lungs with air and tried again.
"I say – How do you do!" The effort left her neck red but for a blue outstanding artery.
"Oh!" exclaimed Dad Sloan, with a look of relief. "Why, howdy?"
Jessamy ascended a step to the door, took him by both shoulders, and placed her satin lips close to the ear that he inclined her way.
"We've come to make you a call," she announced. "I want you to meet a friend of mine; and we want to ask you some questions."
The grey head nodded slowly up and down, more to indicate that its owner heard and understood than to signify acquiescence. But he tottered back and held the door wide open; and Jessamy and Oliver went into the cabin.
Dad Sloan managed to live all alone in this sequestered little nook by reason of the county's generosity. He was old and feeble, and at times irritatingly childish and petulant. Jessamy Selden often brought him cakes, fried chicken, and the like; and, provided he was in the right mood, he would be more likely to be confidential with her than with anybody else in the country.
But the girl's task was difficult. The old man shook hands listlessly with Oliver at her bidding, but seemed entirely to have forgotten their previous meeting. They sat in the uncomfortable straight-backed, thong-bottom chairs while Jessamy shrieked the conversation into the desired channel. The old eyes gathered a more intelligent look as she spoke of the lost mine of Bolivio.
Pieced together, the fragments that fell from the bearded lips of Old Dad Sloan made some such narrative as follows:
Bolivio had been a Portuguese or a Spaniard, or some "black furriner," who had been in the country in the memorable days of '49 and afterward. His knowledge of some tongue based on the Latin had made it easy for him to communicate with the Pauba Indians that inhabited the country, as some of them had learned Spanish from the Franciscan Fathers down at the coast. Bolivio mingled with the tribe, and finally became a squawman.
One day he appeared at the Clinker Creek bar and exhibited a beautiful stone. A gold miner who was present had once followed mining in South Africa, and knew something of diamonds. He examined Bolivio's stone, and gave it such simple tests as were at his command, then advised the owner to send it to New York to find out if it was possessed of value.
It required months in those days to communicate with the Atlantic seaboard. Bolivio's stone was started on its long journey around the Horn. He hinted that there were more of the stones where he had found this one, and created the impression that his Indian brethren had showed them to him.
More they could not get out of him. Nor did anybody try very hard to learn his secret, for no one imagined the find of much intrinsic value.
Bolivio was a saddler, and was skilled in the art of the silversmith. Gold dust was plentiful in the country in that day, and the foreigner found ready buyers for his masterpieces in leather and precious metals. The finest equestrian outfit that he made was finally acquired from the Indians by Dan Smeed, a miner who afterward turned highwayman, married an Indian girl, became an outlaw, and finally disappeared altogether. In the conchas with which the plaited bridle was adorned Bolivio had set two large stones from his secret store, which he himself had crudely polished.
One day, a month or more before word came from New York regarding the stone, Bolivio was found dead in the forest. A knife had been plunged into his heart. The secret of the brilliant stones had died with him.
Then came the answer. The stone was said to be spodumene, of a very high class, and had a a lilac tint theretofore unknown. It was the finest of its kind ever to have been reported as found in the United States. The finder was offered a thousand dollars for the sample sent; one hundred dollars a pound was offered for all stones that would grade up to the sample.
But Bolivio was dead, and no one knew from whence the stone had come.
Efforts were made, of course, to find the source of this wealth. The Indians were tried time and again, but not one word would they speak regarding the matter. The new quest was finally dropped; for those were the days of gold, gold, gold, and so frenzied were men and women to find it that other precious minerals were cast aside as worthless. None had time to seek for stones worth a hundred dollars a pound, with gold worth more than twice as much. So the lost mine of Bolivio became only a memory.
Years later this same stone was discovered six hundred miles farther south. It is now on the market as kunzite, and a cut stone of one karat in weight sells for fifty dollars and more. The San Diego County discovery was supposed to mark the introduction of the stone in the United States, for the lost mine of Bolivio was all but forgotten.
Old Dad Sloan thumped out at Jessamy's request and once again critically examined Oliver's saddle and bridle and the brilliants in the conchas.
"It's the same fine outfit Bolivio made, and that afterwards belonged to Dan Smeed, outlaw, highwayman, and squawman," he pronounced. "They never was another outfit like it in this country."
"Tell us more about Dan Smeed!" screamed the girl.
The patriarch shook his head. "Bad egg; bad egg!" he said sonorously. "He married a squaw, and that's how come it he got the grandest saddle and bridle Bolivio ever made. Bolivio's squaw kep' it after Bolivio was knifed. And by and by along come this Dan Smeed and his partner to this country. And when Dan Smeed married into the tribe he got the saddle and bridle and martingales somehow. That was later – years later. Bolivio's been dead over seventy year."
"Have you ever heard the name Peter Drew?" Oliver asked him.
But the old eyes remained blank, and the grey head shook slowly from side to side. "I recollect clear as day what happened sixty to seventy year ago, but I can't recollect what I did last week or where I went," Dad Sloan said pathetically. "If I'd ever heard o' Peter Drew in the days o' forty-nine to seventy, I'd recollect it."
"You mentioned Dan Smeed's partner," prompted Jessamy. "Can you recall his name?"
"Yes, Dan Smeed had a partner," mused Dad Sloan. "Bad egg, Dan Smeed. Squawman, highwayman, outlaw. Disappeared with his fine saddle and bridle and martingales and the stones from the lost mine o' Bolivio."
"But his partner's name?" the girl persisted.
The old mind seemed to be wandering once more. "Bad eggs – both of 'em. Bad eggs," was the only answer she could get.
"Well, we're progressing slowly," Jessamy observed as they rode away. "Our next step must be to visit the Indians. I know a number of them. Filipe Maquaquish, for instance, and Chupurosa are as old or older than Old Dad Sloan. Chupurosa's face is a pattern in crinkled leather. When we go to see Aunt Nancy Fleet we'll visit the Indian village. And that will be – when?"
"Tomorrow, if you say so," Oliver replied. "I meant to irrigate my garden tomorrow, but it can wait a day."
"By the way," she asked, "have you written that letter to Mr. Selden, telling him what we found out down at the county seat?"
"I have it in my pocket," he told her.
"Give it to me," she ordered. "I'll hand it in at the post office, get them to stamp the postmark on it, and take it home with me when I go."
"Will you dare do that? Won't the post-master scent a conspiracy against Old Man Selden?"
"Let him scent!" said Jessamy. "I'm dying to see Selden's face when he reads that letter."
They parted at the headwaters of Clinker Creek, with the understanding that she would meet him in the county road next morning for the ride to her aunt's and the Indian reservation.
CHAPTER VIII
POISON OAK RANCH
The trail that meandered down Clinker Creek Cañon extended at right angles to the one that led to the Selden ranch. The latter climbed a baldpate hill; then, winding its narrow way through dense locked chaparral higher than horse and rider, dipped down precipitously into the deep cañon of the American River.
Jessamy waved good-bye to her new friend at the parting of the ways and lifted White Ann into her long lope to the summit of the denuded hill. For a little, as they crossed the topmost part of it, the deep, rugged scar that marked the course of the river was visible. Ragged and rocky and covered with trees and chaparral, the cañonside slanted down dizzily for over fifteen hundred feet. At the bottom the deep green river rushed pell-mell to the lower levels. A moment and the view was lost to the girl, as White Ann entered the thick chaparral and started the swift descent.
At last they reached the bottom, forded the swirling stream, and began clambering up a trail as steep as the first on the other side. Soon the river was lost to view again, for once more the trail had been cut through a seemingly impenetrable chaparral of buckthorn, manzanita and scrub oak. Around and about tributary cañons they wound their way, and at last reached the end of the steep climb. For a quarter of a mile now the trail followed the backbone of a ridge, then entered a cañon that eventually spread out into a pine-bordered plateau on the mountainside. Just ahead lay Poison Oak Ranch. Beyond, the deep, dark forest extended in miles numbered by hundreds to the snow-mantled peaks of the Sierra Nevada range.
While it was possible to reach Poison Oak Ranch from this side of the river, the journey on Shank's mare would have taken on something of the nature of an exploring expedition into unmapped lands. Occasionally hunters wandered to or past the ranch on this side; but for the most part any one who fancied that he had business at Poison Oak Ranch came over the narrow trail that connected the spot with outside civilization. Few entertained such a fancy, however, for Poison Oak Ranch, secluded, hidden from sight, tucked away in the Hills of Nowhere, and difficult of access, was owned and controlled by a clannish family that had little in common with the world.
There was a large log house that Adam Selden's father had built in the days of '49, in which the Old Man Selden of today had first opened his eyes on life. There were several lesser cabins in the mountainside cup, two of which were occupied by Hurlock Selden and Winthrop Selden and their families. The remaining two boys, Moffat and Bolar, lived in the big house with Jessamy, her mother, and the wicked Old Man of the Hills.
There was an extensive garden, watered by a generous spring that gushed picturesquely from under a gigantic boulder set in the hillside. There were perhaps ten acres of pasture, and a small deciduous orchard. Little more in the way of agricultural land. The Seldens merely made this place their home and headquarters – their cattle ranged the hills outside, and most of their activities toward a livelihood were carried on away from home. Selden owned a thousand acres over in the Clinker Creek Country and a winter range a trifle larger fifty miles below the foothills. He moved his herds three times in a year – from the winter pastures to the Clinker Creek Country for the spring grass, keeping them there till August, when they were driven to government mountain ranges at an altitude of six thousand feet; and from thence, in October, to winter range once more. The Clinker Creek range, however, was comprised of several thousand acres beside the thousand owned by Selden. This represented lands long since deserted by their owners as useless for agricultural purposes, and upon which Selden kept up the taxes, or appropriated without negotiations, as conditions demanded. Oliver Drew's forty had been a part of this until Oliver's inopportune arrival.
Jessamy rode into the rail corral and unsaddled her mare. Then she hurried to the house to help her mother, a tired looking, once comely woman of fifty-eight.
Mrs. Selden had been an Ivison – a sister of Old Tabor Ivison, who had homesteaded Oliver's forty acres thirty years before. As a girl she had married Herman Lomax, a country youth with ambitions for the city. He had done fairly well in the mercantile business in San Francisco, and Jessamy, the only child, was born to them. The girl had been raised to young womanhood and attended the State University. Then her father had died, leaving his business in an involved condition; and in the end the widow and her daughter found there was little left for them.
They returned to the scene of Mrs. Lomax's girlhood, where they tried without success to farm the old home place, to which, in the interim, the widow had fallen heir. Then to the surprise of every one – Jessamy most of all – Mrs. Lomax consented to marry Old Adam Selden, the father of four strapping sons and "the meanest man in the country." At the time Jessamy had not known this last, but she knew it now.
However, such an independent young woman as Jessamy would not consent to suffer a great deal at the hands of a step-father. She stayed on with the family for her mother's sake, but she had her own neat living room and bedroom and went her own way entirely. It must end someday. Old Adam Selden, though hard and tough as a time-battered oak, could not live for ever. Her mother would not divorce him. So Jessamy stayed and waited, and rode over the hills alone, unafraid and independent.
She was helping her mother to get supper in the commodious kitchen, with its black log walls and immense stone fireplace, which room served as dining room and living room as well, when Adam Selden, Bolar, and Moffat rode in from the trail and corraled their horses. Supper was ready as the three clanked to the house in spurs and chaps, and washed noisily in basins under a gigantic liveoak at the cabin door. Then Jessamy took Oliver Drew's letter from her bosom and propped it against old Adam's coffee cup.
Selden's bushy brows came down as he scraped his chair to the table. Mail for any Selden was an unusual occurrence.
"What's this here?" Adam's thick fingers held the envelope before his eyes, and the beetling grey brows strained lower.
"Mail," indifferently answered Jessamy, setting a pan of steaming biscuits, covered with a spotless cloth, on the table.
"Fer me?"
"'Adam Selden, Esquire,'" she quoted.
"'Esquire,' eh? Who's she from?"
"It's generally customary to open a letter and read who it is from," said Jessamy lightly. "In this instance, however, you will find a notation on the flap of the envelope that reads: 'From Oliver Drew, Halfmoon Flat, California.'"
"Huh!" Selden raised his shaggy head and bent a condemnatory glance on the girl.
"D'he give it to ye?"
"It is postmarked Halfmoon Flat," said Jessamy, taking her seat beside Bolar, who, indifferent to his father's difficulties, had already consumed three fluffy biscuits spread with butter and wild honey.
"Ye got her out o' the office, then?" The cold blue eyes were challenging.
"Oh, certainly, certainly!" Jessamy chirruped impatiently. "One might imagine you'd never received a letter before."
Adam fingered it thoughtfully. "Yes," he said deliberatingly at last, reverting to his customary drawl, "I got letters before now. But I was just wonderin' if this Drew fella give thisun to you to give to me."
Jessamy's round left shoulder gave a little shrug of indifference. "Coffee, Moffat?" she asked.
"Sure Mike," said Moffat.
"Did he?" Selden's tones descended to the deep bass boom which marked certain moods.
"Oh, dear!" Jessamy complained good-naturedly. "What's the use? Can't you see the postmark and the cancelled stamp, Mr. Selden?"
Selden contemplated them. "Yes, I see 'em," he admitted; "I see 'em. But I thought, s' long's ye was with that young Drew fella today, he might 'a' saved his stamp and sent her to me by you."
"That being satisfactorily decided," chirped Jessamy, "let us now open the missive and learn what Mr. Drew has to communicate."
"Heaven's sake, Pap, open it and shut up!" growled Moffat, his mouth full of potato.
"I'll take a quirt to you if ye tell me to shut up ag'in!" thundered Selden.
Thereupon he tore the envelope and leaned out from his chair so that the light from a window flooded the single sheet which the envelope contained.
He read silently, slowly, craggy brows drawn down. His cold blue eyes widened, and the large nostrils of his pitted Bourbon nose spread angrily.
"Moffat, listen here!" he boomed at last. "You, too, Bolar."
"Yes, be sure to listen, Bolar," laughed Jessamy. "But if you don't wish to, go down into the cañon of the American."
"'Adam Selden, Esquire,'" Selden boomed on, unheeding the girl's bantering. "'Poison Oak Ranch, Halfmoon Flat, Californy:'
"'My dear Mr. Selden.' Get that, Moffat! 'My dear Mr. Selden!' Say, who's that Ike think he's writin' to? His gal? Huh! 'My dear Mr. Selden:'
"'I rode to the county seat on Wednesday, this week, and looked over the records in the office of the recorder of deeds. I found that you are entirely mistaken in the matter that you brought to my attention on Tuesday. The forty acres known as the Old Ivison Place are recorded in my name, the date of the recording being January fifth, this year. It appears that Nancy Fleet sold the place years ago to my father, but that the transfer was not placed on record until the date I have mentioned.'
"'With kindest regards,'
"'Yours sincerely, Oliver Drew.'"
Selden came to an ominous pause and glared about the table. "Writ with a typewriter, all but his name," he announced impressively. "And he's a liar by the clock!"
Jessamy threw back her head in that whole-souled laughter that made every one who heard her laugh.
"He's crazy," complacently mumbled Bolar, still at war on the biscuits.
"Jess'my" – Selden's eyes were fixed sternly on his step-daughter – "What're ye laughin' at?"
"At humanity's infinite variety," answered Jessamy.
"Does that mean me?"
"Me, too, Pete!" she rippled.
"Looky-here" – he leaned toward her – "there's some funny business goin' on 'round here. Two times ye been seen ridin' with that new fella down on the Old Ivison Place."
"Two times is right," she slangily agreed.
"And ye rode with 'im to the county seat when he went to see the records. Just so!"
"Your informer is accurate," taunted the girl.
"What for?"
"What for?" She levelled her disconcerting gaze at him. "Well, I like that, Mr. Selden! Because I wanted to, if you must pry into my affairs."
"Ye wanted to, eh? Ye wanted to! Did ye see the records?"
"I did."
"Is this here letter a lie?" He spanked the table with it.
"It is not."
He rose from his chair and bent over her. "D'ye mean to tell me yer maw's sister don't own that prop'ty?"
"Exactly. It belongs to Mr. Oliver Drew, according to the recorder's office. May I suggest that I am rather proud of my biscuits tonight, and that they're growing cold as lumps of clay?"
"It's a lie!" roared Selden.
"Now, just a moment," said Jessamy coolly. "Do I gather that you are calling me a liar, Mr. Selden? Because if you are, I'll get a cattle whip and do my utmost to make you swallow it. I'll probably get the worst of it, but – "
"Shut up!" bawled Selden. "Ye know what I mean, right enough! The whole dam' thing's a lie!"
"Tell it to the county recorder, then," Jessamy advised serenely. "Have another piece of steak, Mother."
"I'll ride right up to Nancy Fleet's tomorrow. I'll get to the bottom o' this business. And you keep yer young nose outa my affairs, Jess'my!"
"Oh, I'll do that – gladly. That's easy."
"Just so! Then keep her outa this fella Drew's, too!"
"That's another matter entirely," she told him. "And I may as well add right here, while we're on the subject, that I wish you to keep your nose out of my affairs. There, now – we've ruined our digestions by quarrelling at meal-time. Bolar hasn't, though – I'm glad somebody appreciates my biscuits."
Bolar grinned, and his face grew red. Bolar was deeply in love with his step-sister, four years his senior; but a day in the saddle, with a sharp spring wind in one's face, will scarce permit the tender passion to interfere with a lover's appetite.
Old Adam enveloped himself in his customary brooding silence. He was a holy terror when aroused, and would then spout torrents of words; but ordinarily he was morosely quiet, taciturn. He would not have hesitated to apply his quirt to his twenty-six-year-old son Moffat, as he had threatened to do, had not that young man possessed the wisdom born of experience to refrain from defying him. But with his step-daughter it was different. For some inexplicable reason he "took more sass" from her than from any other person living. Deep down in his scarred old heart, perhaps, there was hidden a deferential respect and fatherly admiration for this breezy, strong-minded girl with whom a strange fortune had placed him in daily contact.
"Please eat your supper, Mr. Selden," Jessamy at last sincerely pleaded, when the old man's frowning abstraction had continued for minutes.
Dutifully, without a word, he scraped his chair closer to the table and fell to noisily. But he did not join in the conversation, which now became general.
It was a custom in the House of Selden for each diner to leave the table when he had finished eating – a custom antedating Jessamy's advent in the family, which she never had been able to correct. Bolar had long since bolted the last morsel of food that his tough young stomach would permit, and had hurried to a half-completed rawhide lariat. Moffat soon followed him out. Then Jessamy's mother arose and left the room. This left together at the table the deliberate eater, Jessamy, and the old man, who had not yet caught up with the time he had given to the letter.
He too finished before the girl, having completed his supper in the same untalkative mood. Now, however, he spoke to her as he pushed back his chair and rose.
"Jess'my," he said in a moderate tone, "I want to tell ye one thing. Ye know that I shoot straight from the shoulder, or straight from the hip, whichever's handiest – and I don't shoot to scare."
He waited.
Jessamy nodded. "I'll have to admit that," she said. "I think it's the thing I like most about you."
He pondered over this, and again his brows came down above his pitted nose. "I didn't know they was anything ye liked about me," he at length said bluntly.
"Oh, yes," she remarked, levelling that straightforward look of hers at him. "I like your height and the breadth of your chest, and the way you sit in your saddle when your horse is on the dead run – and the other thing I mentioned before."
Again he grew thoughtful. "Well, that's somethin'," he finally chuckled. "Ye like my way o' sayin' what I think, then. Well, get this: I'm the boss o' this country, from Red Mountain to the Gap. I been the boss of her since my pap died and turned her over to me. So it's the boss o' the Poison Oak Country that's talkin'. And he says this: That new fella Drew that's made camp down on the Old Tabor Ivison Place can't make a livin' there, can't raise nothin', don't belong there. And if by some funny business, that I'm gonta look into right away, he's got a-holt o' that forty, he's got to hit the trail."
"Why, how ridiculous!" laughed the girl. "Where do you think you are, Mr. Selden? In Russia – Germany? King Selden Second, Czar of all the Poison Oak Provinces! Mr. Drew, owning that land in his own right, must hit the trail and leave it for you simply because you say so!"
"Ye heard what I said, Jess'my" – and he clanked out of the room.