A GOLD-MINER'S LOVE STORY.—IN FIVE CHAPTERS.
CHAPTER I.
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!"