THE LAST PIKE AT JAGGER’S BEND.
WHERE they came from no one knew. Among the farmers near the Bend there was ample ability to conduct researches beset by far more difficulties than was that of the origin of the Pikes; but a charge of buckshot which a good-natured Yankee received one evening, soon after putting questions to a venerable Pike, exerted a depressing influence upon the spirit of investigation. They were not bloodthirsty, these Pikes, but they had good reason to suspect all inquirers of being at least deputy sheriffs, if not worse; and a Pike’s hatred of officers of the law is equaled in intensity only by his hatred for manual labor.
But while there was doubt as to the fatherland of the little colony of Pikes at Jagger’s Bend, their every neighbor would willingly make affidavit as to the cause of their locating and remaining at the Bend. When humanitarians and optimists argued that it was because the water was good and convenient, that the Bend itself caught enough drift-wood for fuel, and that the dirt would yield a little gold when manipulated by placer and pan, all farmers and stockowners would freely admit the validity of these reasons; but the admission was made with a countenance whose indignation and sorrow indicated that the greater causes were yet unnamed. With eyes speaking emotions which words could not express, they would point to sections of wheatfields minus the grain-bearing heads—to hides and hoofs of cattle unslaughtered by themselves—to mothers of promising calves, whose tender bleatings answered not the maternal call—to the places which had once known fine horses, but had been untenanted since certain Pikes had gone across the mountains for game. They would accuse no man wrongfully, but in a country where all farmers had wheat and cattle and horses, and where prowling Indians and Mexicans were not, how could these disappearances occur?
But to people owning no property in the neighborhood—to tourists and artists—the Pike settlement at the Bend was as interesting and ugly as a skye-terrier. The architecture of the village was of original style, and no duplicate existed. Of the half-dozen residences, one was composed exclusively of sod; another of bark; yet another of poles, roofed with a wagon-cover, and plastered on the outside with mud; the fourth was of slabs, nicely split from logs which had drifted into the Bend; the fifth was of hide stretched over a frame strictly gothic from foundation to ridgepole; while the sixth, burrowed into the hillside, displayed only the barrel which formed its chimney.
A more aristocratic community did not exist on the Pacific Coast. Visit the Pikes when you would, you could never see any one working. Of churches, school-houses, stores and other plebeian institutions, there were none; and no Pike demeaned himself by entering trade, or soiled his hands by agriculture.
Yet unto this peaceful, contented neighborhood there found his way a visitor who had been everywhere in the world without once being made welcome. He came to the house built of slabs, and threatened the wife of Sam Trotwine, owner of the house; and Sam, after sunning himself uneasily for a day or two, mounted a pony, and rode off for a doctor to drive the intruder away.
When he returned he found all the men in the camp seated on a log in front of his own door, and then he knew he must prepare for the worst—only one of the great influences of the world could force every Pike from his own door at exactly the same time. There they sat, yellow-faced, bearded, long-backed and bent, each looking like the other, and all like Sam; and, as he dismounted, they all looked at him.
“How is she?” said Sam, tying his horse and the doctor’s, while the latter went in.
“Well,” said the oldest man, with deliberation, “the wimmin’s all thar ef that’s any sign.”
Each man on the log inclined his head slightly but positively to the left, thus manifesting belief that Sam had been correctly and sufficiently answered. Sam himself seemed to regard his information in about the same manner.
Suddenly the raw hide which formed the door of Sam’s house was pushed aside, and a woman came out and called Sam, and he disappeared from his log.
As he entered his hut, all the women lifted sorrowful faces and retired; no one even lingered, for the Pike has not the common human interest in other people’s business; he lacks that, as well as certain similar virtues of civilization.
Sam dropped by the bedside, and was human; his heart was in the right place; and though heavily intrenched by years of laziness and whisky and tobacco, it could be brought to the front, and it came now.
The dying woman cast her eyes appealingly at the surgeon, and that worthy stepped outside the door. Then the yellow-faced woman said:
“Sam, doctor says I ain’t got much time left.”
“Mary,” said Sam, “I wish ter God I could die fur yer. The children——”
“It’s them I want to talk about, Sam,” replied his wife. “An’ I wish they could die with me, rather’n hev ’em liv ez I’ve hed to. Not that you ain’t been a kind husband to me, for you hev. Whenever I wanted meat yev got it, somehow; an’ when yev been ugly drunk, yev kep’ away from the house. But I’m dyin’, Sam, and it’s cos you’ve killed me.”
“Good God, Mary!” cried the astonished Sam, jumping up; “yure crazy—here, doctor!”
“Doctor can’t do no good, Sam; keep still, and listen, ef yer love me like yer once said yer did; for I hevn’t got much breath left,” gasped the woman.
“Mary,” said the aggrieved Sam, “I swow to God I dunno what yer drivin’ at.”
“It’s jest this, Sam,” replied the woman: “Yer tuk me, tellin’ me ye’d love me an’ honor me an’ pertect me. You mean to say, now, yev done it? I’m a-dyin’, Sam—I hain’t got no favors to ask of nobody, an’ I’m tellin’ the truth, not knowin’ what word’ll be my last.”
“Then tell a feller where the killin’ came in, Mary, for heaven’s sake,” said the unhappy Sam.
“It’s come in all along, Sam,” said the woman; “there is women in the States, so I’ve heerd, that marries fur a home, an’ bread an’ butter, but you promised more’n that, Sam. An’ I’ve waited. An’ it ain’t come. An’ there’s somethin’ in me that’s all starved and cut to pieces. An’ it’s your fault, Sam. I tuk yer fur better or fur wuss, an’ I’ve never grumbled.”
“I know yer hain’t, Mary,” whispered the conscience-stricken Pike. “An’ I know what yer mean. Ef God’ll only let yer be fur a few years, I’ll see ef the thing can’t be helped. Don’t cuss me, Mary—I’ve never knowed how I’ve been a-goin’. I wish there was somethin’ I could do ’fore you go, to pay yer all I owe yer. I’d go back on everything that makes life worth hevin’.”
“Pay it to the children, Sam,” said the sick woman, raising herself in her miserable bed. “I’ll forgive yer everything if you’ll do the right thing fur them. Do—do—everything!” said the woman, throwing up her arms and falling backward. Her husband’s arm caught her; his lips brought to her wan face a smile, which the grim visitor, who an instant later stole her breath, pityingly left in full possession of the rightful inheritance from which it had been so long excluded.
Sam knelt for a moment with his face beside his wife—what he said or did the Lord only knew, but the doctor, who was of a speculative mind, afterward said that when Sam appeared at the door he showed the first Pike face in which he had ever seen any signs of a soul.
Sam went to the sod house, where lived the oldest woman in the camp, and briefly announced the end of his wife. Then, after some consultation with the old woman, Sam rode to town on one of his horses, leading another. He came back with but one horse and a large bundle; and soon the women were making for Mrs. Trotwine her last earthly robe, and the first new one she had worn for years. The next day a wagon brought a coffin and a minister, and the whole camp silently and respectfully followed Mrs. Trotwine to a home with which she could find no fault.
For three days all the male Pikes in the camp sat on the log in front of Sam’s door, and expressed their sympathy as did the three friends of Job—that is, they held their peace. But on the fourth their tongues were unloosed. As a conversationalist the Pike is not a success, but Sam’s actions were so unusual and utterly unheard of, that it seemed as if even the stones must have wondered and communed among themselves.
“I never heard of such a thing,” said Brown Buck; “he’s gone an’ bought new clothes for each of the four young ’uns.”
“Yes,” said the patriarch of the camp, “an’ this mornin’, when I went down to the bank to soak my head, ’cos last night’s liquor didn’t agree with it, I seed Sam with all his young ’uns as they wuz a washin’ their face an’ hands with soap. They’ll ketch their death an’ be on the hill with their mother ’fore long, if he don’t look out; somebody ort to reason with him.”
“’Twon’t do no good,” sighed Limping Jim. “He’s lost his head, an’ reason just goes into one ear and out at t’other. When he was scrapin’ aroun’ the front door t’other day, an’ I asked him what he wuz a-layin’ the ground all bare an’ desolate for, he said he was done keepin’ pig-pen. Now everybody but him knows he never had a pig. His head’s gone, just mark my words.”
On the morning of the fourth day Sam’s friends had just secured a full attendance on the log, and were at work upon their first pipes, when they were startled by seeing Sam harness his horse in the wagon and put all his children into it.
“Whar yer bound fur, Sam?” asked the patriarch.
Sam blushed as near as a Pike could, but answered with only a little hesitation:
“Goin’ to take ’em to school to Maxfield—goin’ to do it ev’ry day.”
The incumbent of the log were too nearly paralyzed to remonstrate, but after a few moments of silence the patriarch remarked, in tones of feeling, yet decision:
“He’s hed a tough time of it, but he’s no bizness to ruin the settlement. I’m an old man myself, an’ I need peace of mind, so I’m goin’ to pack up my traps and mosey. When the folks at Maxfield knows what he’s doin’, they’ll make him a constable or a justice, an’ I’m too much of a man to live nigh any sich.”
And next day the patriarch wheeled his family and property to parts unknown.
A few days later Jim Merrick, a brisk farmer a few miles from the Bend, stood in front of his own house, and shaded his eyes in solemn wonder. It couldn’t be—he’d never heard of such a thing before—yet it was—there was no doubt of it—there was a Pike riding right toward him, in open daylight. He could swear that Pike had often visited him—that is, his wheatfield and corral—after dark, but a daylight visit from a Pike was as unusual as a social call of a Samaritan upon a Jew. And when Sam—for it was he—approached Merrick and made his business known, the farmer was more astonished and confused than he had ever been in his life before. Sam wanted to know for how much money Merrick would plow and plant a hundred and sixty acres of wheat for him, and whether he would take Sam’s horse—a fine animal, brought from the States, and for which Sam could show a bill of sale—as security for the amount until he could harvest and sell his crop. Merrick so well understood the Pike nature, that he made a very liberal offer, and afterward said he would have paid handsomely for the chance.
A few days later, and the remaining Pikes at the Bend experienced the greatest scare that had ever visited their souls. A brisk man came into the Bend with a tripod on his shoulder, and a wire chain, and some wire pins, and a queer machine under his arm, and before dark the Pikes understood that Sam had deliberately constituted himself a renegade by entering a quarter section of land. Next morning two more residences were empty, and the remaining fathers of the hamlet adorned not Sam’s log, but wandered about with faces vacant of all expression save the agony of the patriot who sees his home invaded by corrupting influences too powerful for him to resist.
Then Merrick sent up a gang-plow and eight horses, and the tender green of Sam’s quarter section was rapidly changed to a dull-brown color, which is odious unto the eye of the Pike. Day by day the brown spot grew larger, and one morning Sam arose to find all his neighbors departed, having wreaked their vengeance upon him by taking away his dogs. And in his delight at their disappearance, Sam freely forgave them all.
Regularly the children were carried to and from school, and even to Sunday-school—regularly every evening Sam visited the grave on the hillside, and came back to lie by the hour looking at the sleeping darlings—little by little farmers began to realize that their property was undisturbed—little by little Sam’s wheat grew and waxed golden; and then there came a day when a man from ’Frisco came and changed it into a heavier gold—more gold than Sam had ever seen before. And the farmers began to stop in to see Sam, and their children came to see his, and kind women were unusually kind to the orphans, and as day by day Sam took his solitary walk on the hillside, the load on his heart grew lighter, until he ceased to fear the day when he, too, should lie there.
