“If I was a man, and a girl saved my life, I would ask her to marry me. I think it would be the least I could do!”
“Now, do ye really think so, miss? Wall, I do admire! Do tell, now, how ye’d set about it?”
Poor Dick had quite fallen into the trap through his very simplicity, and the honesty of his purpose in coming to the city. His tormentor, gathering courage from the winks and smiles of her male admirers round her, said:
“In the most open way I could! I’d ask her before all her friends, so that there might be no mistake. If I wanted to honour her by the offer of my hand and heart there should not be any slouch about it!”
“Shake!” said Dick, extending his mighty hand, and half a moment later his new friend, with a rueful smile, raised a crumpled hand, and looked at the blood, where her rings had cut into her crushed fingers, which was beginning to show through the rent in her glove.
“Oh, I say,” said one of her admirers, “has the clumsy brute hurt you?”
“Miss,” said Dick, “I humbly beg yer pardon! I never thought of how tender ye women critters is. I should have known better.”
Then he turned to the last speaker and said:
“Look here, Jedge, I wouldn’t be so free with them cuss words o’ yourn. Ef ye fling them about so promiscuous, some one is apt to be hurt. They’re worse’n chunks of rock, anyway!”
The man addressed ran his eye up him from his boots to his oily hair but said nothing.
At this moment Esse came forward, and Dick, seeing her, and with her a way out of the embarrassment due to his clumsy strength, stepped towards her, and delivered himself of a little speech which he had rehearsed to himself an innumerable number of times on his journey from Shasta. He had submitted it to his casual friends the bar-keeper and the barber at Sacramento, and armed with their approval, and fortified by the expression of Esse’s young lady friend, whom he took to typify fashionable society, and who had used almost his words, he had no hesitation now in speaking. Dick was in no wise a coward; he could face an awkward situation, and, like many another man, he had only to begin to find all his difficulty removed. Esse stood amazed when he began his speech, and for a moment looked helplessly round her; but then, catching Reginald’s eye as he stood on the outskirts of the little throng, braced herself to the situation, and smoothed her face to a grave smile by mere force of education and habit.
“Little Missy! An honest man’s love is all that he can give the proudest lady! I am only a simple man, but I have come from the snows of Shasta to do ye the only honour in my power. I am glad to do it before your honoured friends and your family circle. Will you honour me by becoming my wife and giving me your heart and hand?”
Having spoken, he looked calmly around him, as one does who has done a meritorious action, and done it well. Esse felt the blood rushing up to her head, and burning her cheeks and ears, as she heard the titter of laughter around her. Dick heard it too, and faced round with a quick flush.
It was just at this moment that Peter Blyth came into the room, standing just inside the doorway. He saw instantly that something was afoot, and said to the servant at the door:
“Who is that, Stephens? that gentleman with the shiny hair, with his back towards us?”
“That, sir? I think his name is Mr. Measly Shostoo, or words to that effek!”
“Mr. how much?”
“Measly Shostoo, sir. I didn’t hear him pernounce it hisself, for I was a-taking of the ‘ats in the ‘all, but only on the transgression.”
Just then, Dick turned, and Peter saw him, and instantly recognised the situation. He hurried in, but too late to be of any immediate service, and stood by, ready.
Esse did not know exactly what she should do, but instinctively she put her hand up, and said with a smile:
“Oh, Dick, Dick! not before all these people! They’ll think you are making game of me.”
One of the smart young men here said:
“Making game of her! He is a hunter! Good!”
Dick turned on him like lightning:
“Dry up there, mister! I don’t make game of no female of her sex; and I don’t allow no man to say I do, see? Look ye here, Little Missy, this is honest Injin, a right square game; and, durn me, but I mean it down to my boots. This ain’t no ten-cent ante, no bluff on a pair, but a dead sure thing — a straight flush, ace high!”
Instantly there was a chorus of ironical remarks from the men all round:
“I straddle the blind!”
“Raise him out of his boots, pard!”
“I go you two chips better!”
“Make it a Jack-pot!”
Dick looked around again scornfully, but as he did so he caught Esse’s eye, and seemed to recognise the story which it told; the ripple of laughter around, however, filled up the blanks, where there were any to fill. Dick felt that he was fooled. He was, as may have been seen already, a vain man, all the more vain because of the consciousness of its own strength. Hitherto in his life he had only been tested in ways that brought out his natural force and left it triumphant; and the habit of his life was behind him to resent an affront. He glared at the ring of faces around him, and this time his look meant mischief to all who knew danger signals in a man’s face. Controlling himself with an effort, he said to Esse:
“Little Missy, ye ain’t a-foolin’ me, air ye?”
“Oh, no, Dick; no, no!”
“Then I wish I had that laughin’ jackass that kem all the way up on Shasta to fool me — to fool me in face of all these —”
Here he looked around again, and, as he did so, whipped from the collar of his coat his great bowie knife and, pressing the spring, threw it open with a dexterous jerk. No woman screamed; it takes more than a generation of ignorance of such matters to make women fear cold steel. But there was more than one woman present who in earlier days had seen just such quiet anger flame out and end in murder, and with one accord they drew back and left the men in front. Dick, seeing only men’s faces, finished his scornful sentence:
“These — these swine! There he is, the laughin’ jackass hisself!” he said, seeing Peter Blyth’s face in the ring, where the withdrawal of the womenkind had left him in the front.
With a sudden spring he caught him by the throat with his powerful left hand, and held him as in a vice. Esse was paralyzed, and could make neither sound nor stir, and Peter Blyth found himself, for the first time in his life, face to face with sudden death. The rest of the men round feared to stir, not for themselves, for there was not one of them, being Californians, who would not cheerfully have made the battle his own;