Essential Novelists - Bret Harte. Bret Harte

peg that served as a bolt, Gabriel entered with that noiselessness and caution that were habitual to him. Lighting a candle by the embers of a dying fire, he carefully looked around him. The cabin was divided into two compartments by the aid of a canvas stretched between the walls, with a flap for the doorway. On a pine table lay several garments apparently belonging to a girl of seven or eight—a frock grievously rent and torn, a frayed petticoat of white flannel already patched with material taken from a red shirt, and a pair of stockings so excessively and sincerely darned, as to have lost nearly all of their original fabric in repeated bits of relief that covered almost the entire structure. Gabriel looked at these articles ruefully, and, slowly picking them up, examined each with the greatest gravity and concern. Then he took off his coat and boots, and having in this way settled himself into an easy dishabille, he took a box from the shelf, and proceeded to lay out thread and needles, when he was interrupted by a child's voice from behind the canvas screen.

      "Is that you, Gabe?"—"Yes."

      "Oh, Gabe, I got tired and went to bed."

      "I see you did," said Gabriel drily, picking up a needle and thread that had apparently been abandoned after a slight excursion into the neighbourhood of a rent and left hopelessly sticking in the petticoat.

      "Yes, Gabe; they're so awfully old!"

      "Old!" repeated Gabe, reproachfully. "Old! Lettin' on a little wear and tear, they're as good as they ever were. That petticoat is stronger," said Gabriel, holding up the garment and eyeing the patches with a slight glow of artistic pride—"stronger, Olly, than the first day you put it on."

      "But that's five years ago, Gabe."

      "Well," said Gabriel, turning round and addressing himself impatiently to the screen, "wot if it is?"

      "And I've growed."

      "Growed!" said Gabriel, scornfully. "And haven't I let out the tucks, and didn't I put three fingers of the best sacking around the waist? You'll just ruin me in clothes."

      Olly laughed from behind the screen. Finding, however, no response from the grim worker, presently there appeared a curly head at the flap, and then a slim little girl, in the scantiest of nightgowns, ran, and began to nestle at his side, and to endeavour to enwrap herself in his waistcoat.

      "Oh, go 'way!" said Gabriel, with a severe voice and the most shameless signs of relenting in his face. "Go away! What do you care? Here I might slave myself to death to dress you in silks and satins, and you'd dip into the first ditch or waltz through the first underbrush that you kem across. You haven't got no sabe in dress, Olly. It ain't ten days ago as I iron-bound and copper-fastened that dress, so to speak, and look at it now! Olly, look at it now!" And he held it up indignantly before the maiden.

      Olly placed the top of her head against the breast of her brother as a point d'appui, and began to revolve around him as if she wished to bore a way into his inmost feelings.

      "Oh, you ain't mad, Gabe!" she said, leaping first over one knee and then over the other without lifting her head. "You ain't mad!"

      Gabriel did not deign to reply, but continued mending the frayed petticoat in dignified silence.

      "Who did you see down town?" said Olly, not at all rebuffed.

      "No one," said Gabriel, shortly.

      "You did! You smell of linnyments and peppermint," said Olly, with a positive shake of the head. "You've been to Briggs's and the new family up the gulch."

      "Yes," said Gabriel, "that Mexican's legs is better, but the baby's dead. Jest remind me, to-morrow, to look through mother's things for suthin' for that poor woman."

      "Gabe, do you know what Mrs. Markle says of you?" said Olly, suddenly raising her head.

      "No," replied Gabriel, with an affectation of indifference that, like all his affectations, was a perfect failure.

      "She says," said Olly, "that you want to be looked after yourself more'n all these people. She says you're just throwing yourself away on other folks. She says I ought to have a woman to look after me."

      Gabriel stopped his work, laid down the petticoat, and taking the curly head of Olly between his knees, with one hand beneath her chin and the other on the top of her head, turned her mischievous face towards his. "Olly," he said, seriously, "when I got you outer the snow at Starvation Camp; when I toted you on my back for miles till we got into the valley; when we lay by thar for two weeks, and me a felling trees and picking up provisions here and thar, in the wood or the river, wharever thar was bird or fish, I reckon you got along as well—I won't say better—ez if you had a woman to look arter you. When at last we kem here to this camp, and I built this yer house, I don't think any woman could hev done better. If they could, I'm wrong, and Mrs. Markle's right."

      Olly began to be uncomfortable. Then the quick instincts of her sex came to her relief, and she archly assumed the aggressive.

      "I think Mrs. Markle likes you, Gabe."

      Gabriel looked down at the little figure in alarm. There are some subjects whereof the youngest of womankind has an instinctive knowledge that makes the wisest of us tremble.

      "Go to bed, Olly," said the cowardly Gabriel.

      But Olly wanted to sit up, so she changed the subject.

      "The Mexican you're tendin' isn't a Mexican, he's a Chileno; Mrs. Markle says so."

      "Maybe; it's all the same. I call him a Mexican. He talks too straight, anyway," said Gabriel, indifferently.

      "Did he ask you any more questions about—about old times?" continued the girl.

      "Yes; he wanted to know everything that happened in Starvation Camp. He was rek'larly took with poor Gracie; asked a heap o' questions about her—how she acted, and seemed to feel as bad as we did about never hearing anything from her. I never met a man, Olly, afore, as seemed to take such an interest in other folks' sorrers as he did. You'd have tho't he'd been one of the party. And he made me tell him all about Dr. Devarges."

      "And Philip?" queried Olly.

      "No," said Gabriel, somewhat curtly.

      "Gabriel," said Olly, sullenly, "I wish you didn't talk so to people about those days."

      "Why?" asked Gabriel, wonderingly.

      "Because it ain't good to talk about. Gabriel dear," she continued, with a slight quivering of the upper lip, "sometimes I think the people round yer look upon us sorter queer. That little boy that came here with the emigrant family wouldn't play with me, and Mrs. Markle's little girl said that we did dreadful things up there in the snow. He said I was a cannon-ball."

      "A what?" asked Gabriel.

      "A cannon-ball! He said that you and I"——

      "Hush," interrupted Gabriel, sternly, as an angry flush came into his sunburnt cheek, "I'll jest bust that boy if I see him round yer agin."

      "But, Gabriel," persisted Olly, "nobody"——

      "Will you go to bed, Olly, and not catch your death yer on this cold floor asking ornery and perfectly ridickulus questions?" said Gabriel, briskly, lifting her to her feet. "Thet Markle girl ain't got no sense anyway—she's allers leading you round in ditches, ruinin' your best clothes, and keepin' me up half the night mendin' on 'em."

      Thus admonished, Olly retreated behind the canvas screen, and Gabriel resumed his needle and thread. But the thread became entangled, and was often snappishly broken, and Gabriel sewed imaginary, vindictive stitches in the imaginary calves of an imaginary youthful emigrant, until Olly's voice again broke the silence.

      "Oh, Gabe!"

      "Yes," said Gabriel, putting down his work despairingly.

      "Do you think—that Philip—ate Grace?"

      Gabriel rose swiftly, and disappeared behind the screen. As he did so, the door softly opened, and a man stepped into the cabin. The new-comer cast a