“My dear, dear child” (Sam could almost hear his mother say these precious words), “I am writing to you to-night, though our Heavenly Father only can tell whether you will ever know from this how my heart aches for you. I have just got your letter with its dreadful news, but I feel more for the poor girls and for you than I do for myself. I am used to trouble. I don’t mean to murmur, but it seems to me as if I’d had hardly any thing else since my father and mother died. God forgive me! when my children have been such a comfort to me, you especially, Sam.
“I know it’s all right; but if I could only have been with your poor father and taken care of him, if he was only buried here among his own people, where I could go and see his grave sometimes, it seems as if I could submit. But I know you did every thing, Sam. I knew you would when I let you go. God will reward you for being a good, dutiful boy. I know it; I feel it; and that’s all that keeps me up when I think about your being alone, so far off, without a friend to look to. O if you could only get home to us! I only ask to see you again, and I could die in peace.
“Poor Abby has cried herself to sleep these two nights, and hasn’t eaten a meal. You know she was always his favorite—and Hannah doesn’t seem well this cold weather; she never was very strong. All the neighbors are very kind, especially Squire Merrill and Mrs. Chase—she sends Ben over almost every day, to see if he can do any thing, and I don’t know how we should get along sometimes, if they did not send in something every little while. Squire Merrill was in here this afternoon, and says I had better send this to San Francisco, for you might get enough to come home with, and think to ask at the post-office there before you do. He thinks you will come right home as soon as you can. It seems to me as if it would be best, but I don’t know. My only comfort is, God knows what is best for all of us; if we didn’t need trouble he wouldn’t send it; I say that to myself over and over again, and I pray for you, morning, noon, and night. HE has been my guide from my youth up, only make Him yours, my son, and He will take care of you. Whether I ever see you again in this world or not, I hope to see you in another, for absence or death can make no difference in my love for you.
“It has been very hard to say ‘forgive us our trespasses,’ when I think of Colcord, but I try to, and I’m glad you did not tell. Sam, there isn’t one boy in a hundred would have done what you’ve done. No, nor in a thousand neither!”
Sam’s hot tears fell faster and faster on these words. He felt rewarded for all he had suffered, and all that was before him. He was not ashamed to lay his head down on the table and “cry it out.”
“Well, now, if you’re through, suppose we have some breakfast,” Hadley said, as he came back with the waiter, bearing a tray covered with good things. “I haven’t had any letters from home, and I’m hungry. Yes—two oyster stews, boy—any thing that’s good—hurry up there.”
It was such a meal as Sam had not seen for many a day, and served on a table with some pretensions to comfort and elegance. At first he tried to eat to please his generous friend, and because he felt that he needed food; but by the time the savory oyster stew arrived, he was doing almost as well as his companion, in the way of clearing the other dishes.
“I was just thinking it’s a great pity you’re not a girl,” Hadley leisurely remarked, in the interval of breaking a cracker into his plate, and giving a little stir with his spoon.
Sam looked up, wondering why his sex was a matter of regret; it never had been to him. Who ever did see a boy that was not proud of being one, and had not in the bottom of his heart a great feeling of superiority towards all “girls?”
“Why, you see, I’m looking up a cook, that’s my errand down here. You did not know I had turned ranchero, country gentleman, with a villa under the elegant title of Hadley’s Ranch.—Well, I have, and find it rather too much to see to ploughing and sowing, making fences, taking care of the chickens, stable boy and cook into the bargain. Women folks are scarce up in our valley, and unless I sacrifice myself and marry one of those Pike County whole-team individuals, I don’t see what’s going to become of me.”
“I did not know you were a farmer, sir,” Sam said, while his mother’s counsel of working at whatever offered itself, came into his mind.
“Nor I either—till I tried it, just by way of a change when I came down from the mines. What do you suppose my sisters would say to such a fist as that? I used to wear Stewart’s ladies’ gloves to their parties before I came away, and think it was hard work to wait on them to the opera. I don’t suppose they would own any part of me but my moustache now.”
Hadley’s dress was certainly suggestive of any thing sooner than a New-York dandy, and so were his face and figure, hardy and sunburnt; but his manners had the courtesy and self-possession of a gentleman, as well as the free and easy style of the new country. It was quite true before he came to California he had managed to spend a large property, left to him by his father, and his sisters were among the most fashionable women in New-York. His riches had taken the wings of extravagance and self-indulgence, to flee away; but as he often said, it was the best thing they ever did for him.
“I should think sisters would be glad to own a person any way,” Sam said, thinking his sisters would, if he came home a beggar.
“Very likely, if they’d lived together when they were children, and had a mother to look after them. My sisters always lived at boarding-school, and so did I until I was old enough to take the reins into my own hands. I drove a little too fast, and got upset, you see. Won’t you have something else?”
But Sam’s very good appetite was quite satisfied, and that brought him back to business matters. “I don’t believe but I could cook, sir.”
“You! what do you know about it?”
“A great deal; more than most boys I mean. My mother is a first rate cook, and I used to like to be around baking days, and in the galley, on the ship. You know I always cooked on the bar.”
“So you did—did not I teach you how to make slap-jacks one day? I consider that an accomplishment worth having;” and Hadley shut one eye and looked up in the air, as if to catch a smoking, brown, batter-cake, after a scientific toss.
“Well, suppose you try it, till something else turns up.”
Sam was only too glad to accept the proposal. The prospect of immediate employment, at any thing but mining, and with a person he liked very much, seemed almost too good news to be true. He had very little idea of a ranch, except that it was something like a farm, and he should live a kind of free and easy life. A very pleasant prospect, since he could not get home, after the great fatigue and monotony of a miner’s life.
“I don’t promise very high wages”—was about all the agreement they made, and they were on the sloop that was to take them across San Pablo Bay, before Hadley mentioned the matter at all. They were very glad to get away from the discomforts of San Francisco, as soon as the business which had brought him down, was finished. The air was full of ashes and cinders, and every second person they met was a sufferer in some way by the fire. The little sloop had a load of lumber for Hadley’s ranch on board, and an assorted cargo of flour, rice, molasses, sugar, and groceries of all kinds for the same place. These were to be given to Sam’s charge forthwith.
The sail was perfectly delightful. The air was so fresh and exhilarating, as the little vessel bounded across the broad bay, the spray and mist dashing up before her, and the white sails filled with a favorable wind. The hills, usually so bare and desolate, were covered with a vivid mantle of green to the very summits, by the heavy rains, and the few days of warm sunshine. Hadley seemed to enjoy Sam’s delight, but told him to keep his ecstasies for the ranch, for there was no place in California, nor the whole world to compare with it! A very small world, probably, Sam thought.
But he did not wonder much, when he came in sight of it; in his world, he certainly had never seen any thing that could compare with that first glimpse of Sonoma valley. It was as different from any thing he had seen in California, as if he had been in another country. The desolate plains of Sacramento, the barren ranges of the hills in the mining country, make the rich valleys all the more beautiful by contrast.
It was an hour before sundown, when the sloop came to, at the Embarcadero, or landing, on a little creek, emptying into the bay, after winding through the fertile valley lands. A real wagon, and two spirited horses were waiting them, in charge of Maloney, the head man, whose universal knowledge, and blunders and brogue, Hadley had been amusing Sam with that afternoon. His employer took “the reins into his own hands,” as he had said, and now he could not drive too fast for Sam’s good pleasure, or his own impatience. The ranch was a perfect passion with him. Sam believed he was right when he said he should not care any more for a wife if he had one. The horses, Bill and Dick, knew very well who was driving them, and flew along a road as level as an English turn-pike; bordered by fields instead of fences, prairie-like meadows of wild oats, and countless flowers, so thick, and with such brilliant colors that the whole valley seemed like a bright carpet unrolled before them. Clumps of oaks, and red-wood trees stood like islands in this sea of verdure, with a bright emerald foliage of early spring, and waved and rustled their branches from the hills on each side. There was not a bare or barren spot for miles, and fording the creek now grown narrower, but not less clear and musical, they came suddenly on the new house, standing in the very midst of this luxuriance.
There were fences and out-houses, oxen lowing, and hens cackling, the deep growl of the watch-dog, and the snapping of two most ill-natured looking terriers, to make up the picture. The house itself was really a house, and not a log cabin, or shanty, as Sam had supposed. The frame had been shipped from the States, and sent up by Hadley, to replace the shanty of the first settler, when he came into possession of the ranch. It was two stories high, with real windows and doors, and painted white. Sam had not expected to find any thing so comfortable on the premises; and was astonished, much to Hadley’s gratification, when he caught the first glimpse of it through the trees.
Its furniture was not very elegant or abundant, and the largest room was filled with a varied collection of farming and carpenters’ tools, boards, seeds, chests and boxes of all kinds,—a general lumber room. In the absence of a barn, which was to be built as soon as the ranchero could afford it, or time would permit, the fowls had been let out of the very large chicken house, and the long legs of a Shanghai were walking comfortably over the kitchen table, while three more surveyed the new arrivals curiously from the door-step. There was a bedroom on the ground-floor, with a four-post bedstead, minus mattress, sheets or pillows,—sacking, and a pair of blue blankets supplied their places. Overhead were two unfurnished rooms, occupied by Maloney, and his brother work-fellows, in harvest time; their blankets doing duty on the floor.
The housekeeping, to which Sam was speedily introduced, was quite as miscellaneous.—Some obliging neighbor had sent over a gallon of buttermilk, and the bread was as light and well baked as Mrs. Gilman’s. The fried, fresh beef, and boiled beans, were eaten with silver forks, a trace of Hadley’s early propensities, and the only set that had so far entered the valley; and he washed the dishes himself, by the light of spermaceti candles inserted into empty claret bottles. Perhaps Abby would not have been satisfied with the general use the towels were put to, and might have thought they would have lasted longer if they had been hemmed. But Abby was not there, and her brother saw nothing to grumble at.
Matters looked a little straighter about the house, however, after his ministrations commenced. He shared in his mother’s love of order and neatness, and many of her practical lessons to Abby and Hannah came back to him. He found that when the chairs were set up, and the chickens dislodged, the stove cleaned, and the floor swept, “the decks were considerably clearer to work in.” Instead of thinking his employment degrading or unbecoming, he took the greatest pride and pleasure in it, since it was his work, and kept in mind one of Mrs. Gilman’s favorite maxims, “Whatever is worth doing is worth doing well.”
He obeyed a still higher precept, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do with all thy might;” and thus it was, that “faithful in a few things,” he fitted himself to “be ruler over many” when the time should come.
Life on the ranch was never dull or monotonous. Housekeeping was a very small part of what he did. There were the fowls to feed and water, the eggs to look after, and the young brood to watch. Hadley’s fowls received as much attention as any part of the family. They were a China breed, rare and costly, and he was as fond of them as of the ranch, or the house, or Sam; for when Sam came to be known in the valley, he was as great a favorite as he had been on ship-board. People came miles to see the fowls. Hadley knew them all apart, and had named most of them, curious entries being made in the farm journal, kept daily, of the eggs and families of “Pert,” “Topknot,” “Old Maid,” “Sauce Box,” “Dinah,” and many other occupants of the chicken house. There was an excuse for a vegetable garden laid out when Sam came, but no one had found time to attend to it. By June it was as flourishing as garden could be, with rows of lettuce and early peas, and such beets and melons, in prospect, as would have astonished the farmers at Merrill’s Corner. Hay-making, from the tall, wild oats, was the farm work for the first few weeks, and Sam was as much help as any of the extra hands. Hadley mowed with the men all day, drinking molasses and water from the same big pitcher, and beating them by half an acre, when he became a little accustomed to the swing of the scythe. He was very much respected all through the valley, his pride taking the form of a sturdy independence, and his liberal, generous disposition finding its proper place in the hospitalities of a new country.
When the day’s work was done, Sam was his chosen companion, while he smoked his cigar—another trace of old habits—on a tour of inspection to the stable, the garden, or the chicken-house, or galloped over to Sonoma for letters, or small stores. He had never passed a week in the country before he came to California, except at a watering-place, and listened to Sam’s practical suggestions with a great deal of respect.
“I’ll tell you what, Sam,” he would say, knocking the ashes from his cigar on the top rail of the fence—“there’s no other life like it. I’ve seen a good deal of the world, and spent a good deal of money. There was my father slaved himself to death, to leave his children rich. What comfort did he take with all his money, pinned down to a desk all day? Well, I spent as fast as he made, when I came along. I went to Europe before I was twenty-one, and I bought every thing I took a fancy to, and saw every thing that was to be seen. When all that was gone, I came with the rest of the world to California for more, and got to the mines just in the thick of the gold crop. Handling the gold is all well enough, but what’s the use of it up there? It don’t bring a home, nor a house to put your head in,—you spend about as much as you can make, and have nothing to show for it.”
Sam always agreed with him, and thought if he was only earning a little more, for his mother and sisters, or could be near them, he would not change his life on the ranch for any thing he could think of. He worked as many hours as when he was at the mines, but he lived for something else besides eating and sleeping. His boyhood came back, surrounded by this beautiful country, and enjoying its freedom. He had explored it for miles in every direction, mounted on one of Hadley’s excellent horses, which he was as free to use as if they had been his own. Jerry and Buck, the oxen, had a fancy for being neighborly, when their day’s work was ended, and straying off to try the oats on the adjoining farms, or see how the barley crops came on. Hunting after them was one of Sam’s favorite sports; though they often led him a weary chase, and were captured one at a time.
Then there was Sunday, that blessed day of rest both to man and beast, when the house had a more orderly air than usual, and Sam always “went to meeting”—as he called putting on clean clothes and reading his mother’s Bible.
The ranch abounded in books and newspapers, in which its owner never stinted himself, being supplied regularly by arrivals from the States; and through these, Sam was getting a good, practical education, mind and body both developing, through natural, healthy exercise.