A GOLD-DIGGING RECLUSE.
On a knoll, not far from a running stream, was pitched a rough canvas tent. It was of the "wall" sort, and was pegged to the ground with strong fastenings. Inside were a hammock, a coarse table, two or three stools, and some boxes and barrels. There were likewise a gridiron, a "spider," an iron kettle, some tin dishes and cups, and a pair of candlesticks of the same material. Outside there was a trench dug, by way of drainage, so that the floor within was kept hard and dry; but the floor was of earth merely. There was not a flower, or a picture, or the least attempt at ornament whatever within the tent. Hence the interior looked bare, sordid, and forbidding. And yet, grim as it was, the tent had been the solitary abode of its occupant for many months. In the midst of gold, in quantity outstripping the wildest dreams of his boyhood, this man had chosen to be a miser. In the midst of a society whose reckless joviality and wild profusion were perhaps without precedent, he had chosen to be a recluse. For this self indulgence he had to pay a price. But he consoled himself, remembering that a price has to be paid for everything.
Chester Harding came to Bullion Flat about a year before. He had no friends and no money. The former he could do without, he thought, but the latter was indispensable. So he got work on the Flat, turning a spade and plying a rocker for five dollars a day. Such work was then better paid as a rule, but Harding, though diligent and strong, was not used to toil, and hence was awkward and comparatively inefficient. He improved with practice and strove doggedly on, never losing a day, saving every penny, spending nothing for drink or good fellowship, courting no man's smile, and indifferent to all men's frowns. He was savagely bent on achieving independence, and in no long time, after a fashion, he got it. Independence, in this sense, consisted in a share of a paying claim, and in the whole of a "wall" tent. In the former he dug and washed, morosely enough, with five or six partners; but he made up for this enforced and distasteful social attrition by living in his tent alone.
Harding was a man getting toward middle life, strongly built, but not tall, with a grave, handsome face and speech studiously reserved and cold. He seemed to fear lest he might be thought educated, and, as if to disarm such a suspicion, his few words were apt to be abrupt and homely. When he first came to the Flat he had two leathern trunks, and these in due time were bestowed in the tent on the knoll. One Sunday Harding opened them. The first contained some respectable garments, such as might belong to the ordinary wardrobe of a gentleman. There were white shirts among the rest, and some pairs of kid gloves. Of all these articles Harding made a pile in the rear of his tent and then deliberately set them on fire. "I couldn't afford it before," he muttered. "They might have bought a meal or two if need were; but now——" To be rich enough to gratify a caprice was clearly very agreeable to the man; for presently he brought out a number of books—old favorites obviously—and treated them in the same incendiary manner. The Shakespeare and the Milton, the Macaulay and the Buckle spluttered and crackled reproachfully in the flames; yet their destroyer never winced, but added to the holocaust heaps of letters, and at last two or three miniatures saved for the fire as a final tid-bit, and gazed with grim joy as the whole crumbled in the end to powdery ashes. Chester Harding reserved nothing but one little volume, bound in velvet with gilt clasps, and one faded old daguerreotype, which he replaced in his trunk side by side, and then covered quickly so that they should be out of sight. It seemed to be his wish to hide and to forget every trace of his past life.
That life had been a hard and bitter one. From his earliest childhood Harding had been a victim of the weakness and cruelty of others. A miserable home, made a hell by drink and contention, was at last broken up in ruin, and the young man went forth into the world to meet coldness and injustice at every turn. Suspicion and selfishness are among the almost certain fruits of an experience like this, and the world is naturally more ready to condemn such fruits than to find excuses for them. When Harding found himself unpopular and distrusted he as naturally shaped his conduct so as to justify its condemnation. Surrounded from the beginning of his life by bad influences, and by these almost exclusively, he found little to soften his harsh judgment of men or to mitigate his resentment for their ill treatment. In time he fell in with one who with greater strength and higher wisdom might perhaps have led him up to nobler views and a loftier destiny. For he loved her deeply and without reservation. But her charms of person found no counterparts in her mind or heart, and Harding was cheated and betrayed. To escape old thoughts and associations, and to mend if possible broken fortunes, he sought the Land of Gold. He had heard that men were more generous there than elsewhere, less cunning, tricky, and censorious. Perhaps even he might find average acceptance among new scenes and among a new people.
But on the day he landed at San Francisco Harding was robbed by a fellow traveller, whom he had befriended, of the last penny he had in the world. The man had shared his stateroom on board the steamer, and knew that he had a draft on the agent of the Rothschilds. When Harding cashed his draft he took the proceeds, in gold coin, to his hotel. That night he was visited by his shipmate, who contrived to steal the belt containing this little fortune, and to escape with it to the mines. Next morning Harding sought a near relative, an older man of known wealth, his sole acquaintance on the Pacific coast.
"I've come to you," he said, after receiving a somewhat icy greeting, "to ask you to help me. A serious misfortune has overtaken me, and——"
"If it's money you want," interrupted the other brusquely, "I've got none!"
This was not the usual fashion of the pioneers. Happily most of them were made of sweeter and kindlier stuff. But the fates had woven out poor Harding's earlier fortune, and it was all destined to be of the same harsh, pitiless web. He bowed his head when these words were said to him, and with the kind of smile angels must most hate to see on the faces of those so near and so little below them, he went forth in silence. Next morning he pawned his watch and made his way up into the mines.
* * * * *
"He's cracked; that's what he is," decided Jack Storm. Since the great find of gold at Bullion Flat there had been a great rush thither from the immediate neighborhood, and among the rest quite a deputation arrived from Boone's Bar. Jack was as great a dandy as ever, and still wore his gaudy Mexican jacket, with its silver bell buttons, his flapping trousers to match, and his gigantic and carefully nourished moustache.
"Cracked!" repeated Mr. Copperas suavely. "Not he. He takes too good care of his money for that. No, boys, that ain't the trouble. He's been 'chasing the eagle' in times past; the bird has been too many for him, and now he's playing to get even."
"Stuff!" gurgled Judge Carboy, unwilling to part by expectoration with even the smallest product of his favorite quid. "He's done sutthin' he's ashamed of. No trifle like that, Cop. He's proberly committed a murder out East. Bime by we'll hear all about it."
Jack Storm shook his head. "He's worked side by side with me for nigh a year, and he wouldn't hurt a fly. Besides, it is his turn next week to go to 'Frisco for stores."
"What's that to do with it?" queried Mr. Copperas.
"A durned sight," returned the other. "Ain't they after these cusses with a sharp stick who've got in hot water at home? And ain't goin' to 'Frisco for such chaps jes' like walkin' into the lion's mouth? Why, there's honest miners—and them as ain't honest miners, Cop—who'd a leetle rather not go down to the Bay jes' now, even among the quiet folks over at Boone's Bar."
Mr. Copperas coughed uneasily. "So Harding's going down, is he?" he inquired. "Right off?"
"Sartain. You'd better take a trip and keep him company."
There was a murmur of amusement at this. Everybody at the "Bella Union" knew that something had been in the air touching chirographic exploits of Mr. Copperas a few years back at New Orleans, and before he kept the faro bank at Boone's Bar.
"For my part," put in Jim Blair, who liked to hear injustice done to no man, "I s'pose there's reasons why a chap might want to live alone, and yet mightn't a knifed anybody nor robbed 'em either."
"That's so, Jim," affirmed Judge Carboy oracularly. "No doubt on't. But when it's so we usually hear what them reasons is. Now, who knows air a word on 'em in the case afore us? Anyhow, I hope he's good—good as gold—only we've had our sheer of troubles in the county, and it's well to look sharp."
"When I was a little chap," proceeded Jim Blair with retrospective deliberation, "I lived in a village on the further side o' the Ohio. Most folks did their business on t'other bank, and went over generally by the eight o'clock ferry in the mornin.' Now, there was two or three that didn't; men whose work lay nigher home, or who went later. But the crowd went over reg'lar at eight. Arter awhile they got awful sot agin them who didn't go over at the same time. There weren't no hell's delights you could think of them fellers didn't lay to the men who didn't travel by the eight boat; and at last, damn me if they didn't want to lynch 'em!"
"Lynch 'em for not goin' in the eight boat!" cried the Judge, whose respect for the majesty of the law always asserted itself, as was meet, on hearing any tale of its infringement.
Jim Blair nodded. "Not so much, I reckon, for not goin' in the eight boat as for not doin' what other folks did. However, them who ever try to trouble Ches Harding'll have a rough time, I guess."
"You think he's sech a game fighter?" inquired Jack Storm with lively interest.
"That may be too. But what I meant was, there's them on the Flat who believe in Ches for all his lonesome ways, and won't see him put upon. For my part I reckon he's more sinned against than sinnin'."
"I guess you're half right, Jim," admitted Judge Carboy with diplomatic concession; "more'n half right. But mark my words"—and the Judge's voice rose to the orotund swell which denoted his purpose to be more than commonly impressive—"thar'll be the devil's own time on the Flat some day, and that air duck'll be king pin and starter of it. I never know'd no such silent, sulky cuss as that moonin' round but that he kicked up pettikiler h— in the long run."
It will be seen from this that there were differences of opinion respecting Chester Harding at Bullion Flat, and it cannot be denied that there was some reason for it.