Little Guzzy, and other stories

by John Habberton

The judge, protected by his age and a pair of green spectacles, boldly entered, while his followers dispersed themselves sheepishly just outside the open door, past which they marched and re-marched as industriously as a lot of special sentries.

There was no doubt about it. Chestnut had installed a lady at the end of the bar, and as, between breakfast and dinner, there was but little business done at the saloon, the lady was amusing herself by weighing corks and pebbles in the tiny scales which were to weigh the metallic equivalent, for refreshments.

The judge contemplated the arrangements with considerable satisfaction, and immediately called up all thirsty souls present.

Those outside the door entered with the caution of veterans in an enemy’s country, and with a bashfulness that was painful to contemplate. They stood before the bar, they glanced cautiously to the right, and gently inclined their heads backward, until only a line of eyes and noses were visible from the cashier’s desk.

Then the judge raised his green glasses a moment, and smiled benignantly on the new cashier as he raised his liquor aloft; then he turned to his party, and they drank the toast as solemnly as if they were the soldiers of Miles Standish fortifying the inner man against fear of the Pequods. Then they separated into small groups, and conversed gravely on subjects in which they had not the slightest interest, while each one pretended not to look toward the cashier, and each one saw what the others were earnestly striving to do.

But when the judge settled the score, and chatted for several minutes with the receiver of treasure, and the lady—young, and rather pretty, and quite pleasant and modest and business-like—laughed merrily at something the judge said, an idea gradually dawned upon the bystanders, and within a few moments the boys feverishly awaited their chances to treat the crowd, for the sole purpose of having an excuse to speak to the new cashier, and to stand within three feet of her for about the space of a minute.

Great was the excitement on the Creek when the party returned, and testified to the entire accuracy of London George’s report.

Every one went to the saloon that night—there had been some games arranged to take place at certain huts, but they were postponed by mutual consent.

Even the Dominie—an ex-preacher, who had never yet set foot upon the profane floor of the saloon—appeared there that evening in search of some one so exceeding hard to find that the Dominie was compelled to make several tours of all the tables and benches in the room.

Chestnut himself, when questioned, said she had come by the way of the Isthmus with her father and mother, who had both died of the Chagres fever before reaching San Francisco—that some friends of her family and his had been trying to get her something to do in ’Frisco, and that he had engaged her at an ounce a day; and, furthermore, that he would be greatly obliged if the boys at Quicksilver wouldn’t marry her before she had worked out her passage-money from ’Frisco, which he had advanced. But the boys at Quicksilver were not so thoughtful of Chestnut’s interests as they might have been. They began to buy blacking and neckties and white shirts, and to patronize the barber.