II.
Parker Lowe's government claim was a fractional section, triangular in shape, with its base on the grant line of Rancho la Laguna, and its apex high up on the mountain-side. Parker's cabin was perched upon the highest point, at the mouth of the cañon, in a patch of unconquerable boulders. Other government settlers were wont to remark the remoteness of his residence from the tillable part of his claim, but Parker remained loyal to his own fireside.
"It's a sightly place," he asserted, "and nigh to the water, and it ain't no furder goin' down to work than it would be comin' up fer a drink, besides bein' down-grade. I lay out to quit workin' some o' these days, but I don't never lay out to quit drinkin'."
This latter determination on Parker's part had come to be pretty well understood, and the former would have obtained ready credence except for the fact that one cannot very well quit what he has never begun. Without risking the injustice of the statement that Parker was lazy, it is perhaps safe to say that he belonged by nature to the leisure class, and doubtless felt the accident of his birth even more keenly than the man of unquenchable industry who finds himself born to wealth and idleness. "Holdin' down a claim" had proved an occupation as well adapted to his tastes as anything that had ever fallen to his lot, and his bachelor establishment among the boulders was managed with an economy of labor, and a resultant of physical comfort, hitherto unknown in the annals of housekeeping. The house itself was of unsurfaced redwood, battened with lath to keep out the winter rain. The furniture consisted of a wide shelf upon which he slept, two narrower ones which held the tin cans containing his pantry stores, a bench, a table which "let down" against the wall by means of leathern hinges when not in use, a rusty stove, and a much-mended wooden chair. From numerous nails in the wall smoky ends of bacon were suspended by their original hempen strings, and the size of the grease-spot below testified to the length of the "side" which Parker had carried in a barley sack from Barney Wilson's store at Elsmore, five miles away on the other side of the lake. Parker surveyed these mural decorations with deep, inward satisfaction not untinged with patriotism.
"There wa'n't many folks right here when I filed on to this claim," he had been known to remark, "an' I may have trouble provin' up. But if the Register of the General Land-Office wants to come an' take a look, he c'n figger up from them ends o' bacon just about how long I've lived here, an' satisfy himself that I've acted fair with the gover'ment, which I've aimed to do, besides makin' all these improvements."
The improvements referred to were hardly such as an artist would have so designated, but Parker surveyed them with taste and conscience void of offense. The redwood shanty; a dozen orange-trees, rapidly diminishing in size and number by reason of neglect and gophers; a clump of slender, smoky eucalypti; a patch of perennial tomato-vines; and a few acres of what Barney Wilson called "veteran barley,"—it having been sown once, and having "volunteered" ever since,—constituted those additions to the value of the land, if not to the landscape, upon which Parker based his homestead rights.
Since the Laguna Ranch had been subdivided, and settlers had increased, and especially since Eben Starkweather had bought the Slater place, and Ida Starkweather had invaded the foot-hills with her vigorous, self-reliant, breezy personality, Parker had been contemplating further improvements in his domicile—improvements which, in moments of flattered hope, assumed the dignity of a lean-to, a rocking-chair, and a box-spring mattress. The dreams which had led him to a consideration of this domestic expansion he had confided to no one but Mose Doolittle, who had a small stock-ranch high up on the mountain, and who found Parker's cabin a convenient resting-place on his journeys up and down the trail.
"I tell ye," he had said to Mose, "that girl is no slouch. Her pa is an infant in arms, a babe an' a suckling, beside her. Her ma is sickly; one o' your chronics. Idy runs the ranch. I set here of evenin's, an' watch 'em through this yer field-glass. She slams around that place like a house a-fire. It's inspirin' to see her. Give me a woman that makes things hum, ever-ee time!"
"Somebody said she had a hell of a temper," ventured Mose, willing to be the recipient of further confidences.
"Somebody lied. She's got spunk. When she catches anybody in a mean trick she don't quote poetry to 'im; she gives 'im the straight goods. Some folks call that temper. I call it sand. There'll be a picnic when she gets hold o' Barden!"
Parker raised the field-glass again, and leveled it on the Starkweather homestead.
"There's the infant now, grubbin' greasewood. He's a crank o' the first water; you'd ought to hear 'im talk. He went through the war, an' he's short one lung, an' he's got the asmy so bad he breathes like a squeaky windmill, an' he won't apply fer a pension because he says he was awful sickly when he enlisted, an' he thinks goin' South an' campin' out saved his life. That's what I call lettin' yer 'magination run away with ye."
"What does Idy think about it?" queried Mose innocently.
"Idy stands up fer her pa; that's what I like about 'er. I like a woman that'll back a man up, right er wrong; it's proper an' female. It's what made me take a shine to 'er."
"You wouldn't want her to back Barden up." Mose made the suggestion preoccupiedly, with his eyes discreetly wandering over the landscape, as if he had suddenly missed some accustomed feature of it.
Parker lowered the glass and glanced at him suspiciously. "No, sir-ee! If there's any backin' done there, Barden'll do it. She'll make 'im crawfish out o' sight when she ketches 'im. That's another thing I like about 'er; she'll stand up fer a feller; that is, fer any feller that b'longs to 'er—that is, I mean, fer a feller she b'longs to."
Mose got up and turned around, and brushed the burr-clover from his overalls.
"Well, I guess I must be movin'," he said, with a highly artificial yawn. "Come here, you Muggins!" he called to his burro, which had strayed into the alfilaria. "Give me an invite to the weddin', Parker. I'll send you a fresh cow if you do."
Parker held the glass between his knees, and looked down at it with gratified embarrassment.
"There's a good deal to be gone through with yet, Mose," he said dubiously. "I set up here with this yer field-glass, workin' myself up to it, an' then I go down there, an' she comes at me so brash I get all rattled, an' come home 'thout 'complishin' anythin'. But I'll make it yet," he added, with renewed cheerfulness. "She sewed a button on fer me t' other day. Now, between ourselves, Mose, don't ye think that's kind o' hopeful?"
Hopeful! Mose would say it was final. No girl had ever sewed a button on for him. When one did, he would propose to her on the spot. He wondered what Parker was thinking of not to seize such an opportunity.
"That's what I had ought to 'a' done," acknowledged Parker, shaking his head ruefully. "Yes, sir; that's what I'd ought to 'a' done. I had ought to 'a' seized that opportunity an' pressed my suit."
"That's the idea, Park," said his companion gravely, as he bestrode Muggins, and jerked the small dejected creature out into the trail. "You'd ought to 'a' pressed your suit; there's nothin' a woman likes better 'n pressin' your suit. Whoop-la, Muggins!"
Some time after Mose had disappeared up the cañon, Parker heard a loud echoing laugh. He turned his head to listen, and then raised the glass and leveled it on Starkweather's ranch.
"I thought at first that was Idy," he said to himself, "but it wa'n't. She 's got a cheerful disposition, but I don't believe she'd laugh that a-way when she's a-learnin' a bull calf to drink; that ain't what I call a laughin' job. Jeemineezer! don't she hold that cantankerous little buzzard's head down pretty. Whoa there, Calamity! don't you back into the chicken corral. That's right, Idy, jam his head into the bucket, an' set down on it—you're a daisy!"