And as an extraordinary, a marvelous resolution simmered and finally crystallized, he chortled.
“What’ll the boys say? What’ll the parson think? What’ll I think? What would that good old mother of mine think, if she was alive? But she died afore she knowed what a good for nothin’ man her boy turned out to be. God rest her soul!” he added softly, “she must have prayed over me a good many hundred times; if she’s kept track of me all these years, this is an answer to her prayers.”
Budge Isham was the partner of Wade, and shared his cabin with him. He slept across the room, and noticed how his friend tossed and muttered in his sleep.
“Great Gee!” he exclaimed, “but Wade’s got it pretty bad; I wonder if it’s the jim jams that is getting hold of him; I’ll sleep with one eye open, for he will need looking after. What a blessed thing it is that he has only one more day. Then he can celebrate and be happy. I have no doubt that by the end of another week, he will have brought things up to their old average.”
And with this conclusion, the man who a few years before took the first honors at Yale, shifted his position, so as to keep an eye on his comrade, and straightway proceeded to drop into a sound slumber, which was not broken until the sun rose on the following morning.
The sympathy for Wade was general. Had he not insisted upon carrying out in spirit and letter the full punishment pronounced upon him, there would have been a unanimous agreement to commute his term by one or two days at least; but all knew the grit or “sand” of the fellow too well to propose it.
His actions on the seventh day caused considerable disquietude. He had labored in the mines, in a desultory fashion up to that time, but he did not do a stroke of work during the concluding hours of his ordeal. It was observed by his partner, Budge Isham, that his appetite was unusually good and he seemed to be in high spirits. His friends attributed this to the closeness of his reward for his abstention, but he took several walks up the mountain side and was gone for a good while. He wore a smiling face and Vose Adams declared that he overheard him communing with himself, when he thought he was too far off for the act to be noticed.
“No use of talkin’,” whispered Vose; “Wade ain’t quite himself; he’s a little off and won’t be exactly right till after two or three days.”
“He has my sympathy,” remarked the parson, “but it will serve as a lesson which he will always remember.”
“And won’t we remember it?” said Ike Hoe, with a shudder. “When we’re disposed to say one of them unproper words, the picture of that miserable scamp going a full week without a touch of Mountain Dew, will freeze up our lips closer than a clam.”
That night the usual group was gathered at the Heavenly Bower. There were the same merry jests, the reminiscences, the conjectures how certain diggings would pan out, the small talk and the general good feeling. Common hardship and suffering had brought these rough men close to one another. They were indulgent and charitable and each one would have eagerly risked his life for the sake of the rest. Quick to anger, they were equally quick to forgive, mutually rejoicing in good fortune, and mutually sympathetic in sorrow.
There was more than one furtive glance at Ruggles, who was among the first arrivals. Whispers had passed around of his strange actions, and the surprise would not have been great had it been found that he had gone clean daft; but nothing in his manner indicated anything of that nature. He was as full of quip and jest as ever, and none was in higher or more buoyant spirits than he.
He suddenly called:
“Dawson, what time is it?”
The latest comer among them carried a watch which he drew out and examined.
“It is exactly half-past nine.”
“When did my punishment begin?”
“A week ago to-night, precisely at this hour; I began to fear that you had forgotten it.”
“No danger of my ever forgetting it,” grimly responded Ruggles; “what I want to know is whether I have served out my full term.”
“You have unquestionably.”
“Is there anyone here disposed to dispute this statement?” asked Wade, standing very erect and looking around in the faces of his friends.
No one interposed an objection. He had not only the sympathy but the respect of every one.
“You sarved your time like a man,” remarked Ike Hoe; “the week is up and you’ve give good measure.”
“Which the same being the case, I invite all to come forward and liquidate.”
Never was an invitation responded to with more enthusiasm. The grinning Ortigies set out a couple of bottles, intending as a matter of course to join in the celebration. He feelingly remarked:
“Wade, my heart bled for you and thar ain’t a pard here that wouldn’t have been willing to take your place–that is for a limited time,” the landlord hastened to add.
Each tumbler was half-filled with the fiery stuff and all looked in smiling expectancy at their host to give the cue. He poured a small quantity into his glass, and elevating it almost to a level with his lips, looked over the top.
“Are you ready, pards? here goes.”
Up went every glass and down went the stuff. But there was one exception. While the glass was at his lips, and while the familiar odor was in his nostrils, Wade Ruggles deliberately inverted the tumbler and emptied the contents on the floor.
It was the strangest incident that had ever occurred in New Constantinople.
CHAPTER VI
TEACHER AND PUPIL
The group looked at Wade Ruggles in breathless amazement. He had invited them to the bar to join in celebrating his release from thralldom; all had filled their glasses and he had raised his own to his lips, though several noticed that there was only a small amount of liquid in the tumbler. Then, when every glass was upraised and there was a general gurgling, he had turned his glass upside down and spilled every drop on the floor.
Before anyone could think of suitable terms in which to express his emotions, Wade said, with a smile that rather added than detracted from his seriousness:
“Pards, never again does a drop of that stuff go down my throat! I’ve suffered hell, but I’ve come out of the flames, and the one that fetched me through is the little gal which lays asleep in the next room.”
He did not attempt to deliver a temperance lecture to his friends, nor did they trifle with him. They questioned him closely as to how he had reached this extraordinary decision, and he gave a vivid and truthful account of his experience. It made several of the men thoughtful, but most of them felt dubious about his persistence in the new path he had laid out for himself.
“You know, boys, whether I’ve got a will of my own,” he quietly replied; “just wait and see how this thing comes out.”
It was noticed that Parson Brush was the most interested inquirer, and, though he had comparatively little to say, he left the Bower unusually early. He had begun his system of instruction with Nellie Dawson, and reported that she was making remarkably good progress. Had the contrary been the fact, it may be doubted whether it would have been safe for him to proclaim it.
And now the scene changes. It is the close of a radiant summer day in the Sierras. Far down in the cañon-like chasm between the mountainous spurs, nestled the little mining settlement, which had been christened but a short time before, New Constantinople. Here and there tiny wounds had been gouged into the ribs of the mountain walls, and the miners were pecking away with pick and shovel, deepening the hurts in their quest for the yellow atoms or dark ore which had been the means of bringing every man thousands of miles to the spot.
Far up toward the clouds were the towering, craggy peaks, with many a rent and yawn and table-land and lesser elevation,