First Fam'lies of the Sierras

by Joaquin Miller

The woman who stood there, about to be made the head of the second family in the Forks, had nursed the Widow back to life and health, had seen all the time the line that lay between them, and had not taken a single step to cross it. When her task was finished she had gone back to her home. She carried with her the memory and the recollection of a duty well performed, and felt that it was enough. She had not seen the Widow any more.

The Judge stood there with the Declaration of Independence, the Statutes of California, and the marriage ceremony, all under his arm, and ready to do his office. The sun was pouring down in the open streets. Little Bunker Hill felt hardly, somehow, that she had a right to be married out in the open day, in the fresh, sweet air, and under the trees; and Limber Tim preferred to be married where his partner had been married, and so it was that they had met in the Howling Wilderness as before. All was silence now, all were waiting for the Judge to begin. Up in the loft the mice nibbled away at their endless rations of old boots, and a big red-headed woodpecker pounded away on the wall back by the chimney without.

There was a commotion at the door. Then there was a murmur of admiration and applause.

The men gave way, they pushed and pushed each other back as if they had been pushing cotton bales, they opened a line, and down that line a beautiful woman with her eyes to the ground and a baby in her arms moved on till she came and stood by the side of the little hunch-back, still silent, and looking with the old look of sad, sweet tranquility upon the ground.

It was really too much for the little man, who had opened his bosom, and who all the time had stood there with his books under his arm, perfectly cool, and perfect master of the situation. Now he was all of a heap. He had been acting with a sort of condescension toward the two half-children who had come before him that day, and had even prepared a sort of patronizing, half-missionary, half-reformatory sermon, but now, and all suddenly, he was utterly overthrown. He began to perspire and choke on the spot.

The silence was painful. The woodpecker pounded as if he would knock the house down, and the mice rasped at their old boots and rattled away like men sawing wood.

The Judge began to hear himself breathe. In this moment of crisis he caught a book from his side and proceeded to read. He read from "An Act to amend an Act entitled an Act for the improvement of the breed of sheep in the State of California." Back in the saloon there were men who began to giggle. These were some men not from Missouri. They were of the hatchet-faced order, men who spoke through their noses, "idecated men," the camp called them, and men that, above all others, had put the little Judge in terror.

When he heard the men laugh, then he knew he had opened his book at the wrong place, and his face grew red as fire. He could not see to read to the end, nor could he now be heard. He suddenly closed the book and said, "Then by virtue of the authority in me vested, and under the laws of the State of California in such cases made and provided, I pronounce you man and wife."

Then the little Judge came up, shook them both by the hand, and his voice was suddenly clear as a bell, and he felt that he could now go on and speak by the hour.

The Widow bowed down above her baby and kissed the new-made bride silently and tenderly as if she had been her sister, and then with the same sweet, half sad smile she turned to the door, her face still to the ground, and covering up the little sleeper in her arms and looking neither right nor left, went back alone to her cabin.