Tomorrow's tangle

by Geraldine Bonner

The next morning at dawn he started for his long walk into Hangtown, taking with him all the dust he had accumulated since Fletcher’s departure. He was absent till the afternoon of the following day, when he reappeared leading a small pack-mule, laden with supplies, among which were several articles of dress for Lucy and the baby, so that they might make a fitting appearance when they rode into camp for the wedding. Lucy was overjoyed at her finery, and arrayed in it looked so pretty and so girlish that Moreau, for the first time since the scene by the creek, took her in his arms and kissed her. It was the kiss of the bridegroom and the master.

The next morning when she woke the cabin was curiously dark. Going to the door to open it, she found it resisted, and went to the window. The world was wrapped in a blinding fall of snow. When Moreau came in for breakfast, he reported a blizzard outside. The cold was intense, the wind high, and the snow so fine and so torn by the gale that it was like a mist of whiteness enveloping the cabin. Already it was piled high about the walls and had to be shoveled from the door to permit of its opening. Fortunately they had collected a large amount of fire wood which was piled in the brush shed in which the man lived. During the morning Moreau took the animals from their shelter and stabled them in his. There was fodder for them and a bed of leaves, and the heat of the chimney warmed the fragile hut.

All day the storm raged, and in the evening, as he and Lucy sat before the fire, they could hear the turmoil of the tempest outside, moaning through the ranks of the sentinel pines. They were silent, listening to this shouting of the unloosed elements, and feeling an indescribably sweet sense of home and shelter in their rugged cabin and each other’s society.

The storm was one of those unexpected blizzards which sometimes visit the Sierras in the early winter. With brief intervals of sunshine, the snow fell off and on for nearly a month. Moreau had to exercise almost superhuman effort to keep the cabin from being buried, and, as it was, the drifts nearly covered the window. It was impossible to travel any distance, as the snow was of a fine, feathery texture which did not pack tight, and into which the wanderer sank to the arm-pits. Fortunately the last trip into Hangtown had stocked the cabin well with provisions. No cares menaced its inmates, who, warm and happy in the vast snow-buried solitudes of the mountains, led an enchanted existence, forgetting and forgotten by the world.

When the storm ended the miner attempted to get into the settlements with the mule. But the beast, exhausted by the insufficient food, as the best part of the fodder had to be given to the cow, fell by the way, dying in one of the drifts. This seemed to sever their last link with the world. Nature had drawn an unbroken circle of loneliness around them. Under its spell they were drawn closer together till their lives merged—the primitive man and woman living for and by love in the primitive wilderness.

So the enchanted winter passed. The man, at intervals, making his way into the settlements for food and the few articles of clothing that they needed. It was a terrible winter, nearly as fierce as that of ’46, but between the storms Moreau fitfully worked the stream, obtaining enough dust to pay for their provisions. The outside world seemed to fade from their lives, which were bounded by the walls of the cabin. Here, in the long fire-lit evenings, Moreau read to Lucy, taught her from his few books, strove to develop the mind that misfortune had almost crushed. She responded to his teachings with the quickness of love. Without much mental ability she improved because she lived only for what he desired. She smoothed the roughness of her speech and studied to correct her grammatical errors. She made him set her little tasks such as a child studies, and in the evenings he watched her with surreptitious amusement, as she conned over her spelling, or traced letters in her copy-book. She was passionately desirous of being worthy of him, and of leaving her old chrysalis behind her when she issued from the cabin.

This was not to be until the early spring. It was nearly six months from the time the emigrant wagon had stopped at his door, that Moreau, having accumulated enough dust to buy another mule and another outfit—took Lucy and the child into Hangtown for the marriage. This ceremony, about which in the beginning she had been somewhat apathetic, she now earnestly desired. It was accomplished without publicity or difficulty, Lucy assuming her maiden name of Fraser, and passing as a young widow. In the afternoon they started back for the cabin, Moreau on foot, with his wife and baby on the mule. They had decided to stay by their claim during the spring and early summer when the streams were high.

Thus the spring passed and the summer came. During this season Lucy, for the first time, saw that most lovely of Californian wild-flowers, the mariposa lily, and called her baby after it. As time went on and no other child was born, Moreau came to regard the little Mariposa as more and more his own. His affection for her became a paternal passion. It was decided between himself and Lucy that she should never know the secret of her parentage, but be called by his name and be brought up as his child. As the happiness of the union grew in depth and strength both the man and woman desired more ardently to forget beyond all recall the terrible past from which she had entered his life. It grew to be a subject to which Moreau could bear no allusion, and their life was purposely quiet and secluded, for fear of a chance encounter with some disturbing reminder.

So the time passed. In the course of the next few years Moreau moved from the smaller camps into Sacramento. Though a man of little commercial ability, he was always able, in those halcyon days, to make a good living for the woman and child to whom he had given his life. Years of prosperity made it possible to give to Mariposa every educational advantage the period and town offered. The child showed musical talent, and for the development of this he was keenly ambitious.

Across their tranquil life, now and then, came a lurid gleam from the career of the man who was Lucy Moreau’s lawful husband. Jake Shackleton was soon a marked figure in the new state. But his rise to sensational fortune began with the booming days of the Comstock. Then his star rose blazing above the horizon. He was one of the original exploiters of the great lode and was one of those who owned that solid cone of silver which has gone down to history as the Reydel Monte. Ten years from his entrance into the state he was a rich man. In twenty, he was one of that group of millionaires, whose names were sounded from end to end of an astonished country.