第7章 CHAPTER I(5)

"There's better nor him to be had for the asking now."They had walked on a few moments in aggrieved silence,and the Chinaman might have imagined some misfortune had just befallen them.But Mamie's teeth shone again between her parted lips."La,pa!it ain't that!He cares everything for me,and I do for him;and if ma hadn't got new ideas--"She stopped suddenly.

"What new ideas?"queried her father,anxiously.

"Oh,nothing!I wish,pa,you'd put on your other boots!

Everybody can see these are made for the farrows.And you ain't a market gardener any more.""What am I,then?"asked Mulrady,with a half-pleased,half-uneasy laugh.

"You're a capitalist,I say;but ma says a landed proprietor."Nevertheless,the landed proprietor,when he reached the boulder on the Red Dog highway,sat down in somewhat moody contemplation,with his head bowed over the broad cowhide brogues,that seemed to have already gathered enough of the soil to indicate his right to that title.Mamie,who had recovered her spirits,but had not lost her preoccupation,wandered off by herself in the meadow,or ascended the hillside,as her occasional impatience at the delay of the coach,or the following of some ambitious fancy,alternately prompted her.She was so far away at one time that the stage-coach,which finally drew up before Mulrady,was obliged to wait for her.

When she was deposited safely inside,and Mulrady had climbed to the box beside the driver,the latter remarked,curtly,--"Ye gave me a right smart skeer,a minit ago,stranger.""Ez how?""Well,about three years ago,I was comin'down this yer grade,at just this time,and sittin'right on that stone,in just your attitude,was a man about your build and years.I pulled up to let him in,when,darn my skin!if he ever moved,but sorter looked at me without speakin'.I called to him,and he never answered,'cept with that idiotic stare.I then let him have my opinion of him,in mighty strong English,and drove off,leavin'him there.The next morning,when I came by on the up-trip,darn my skin!if he wasn't thar,but lyin'all of a heap on the boulder.Jim drops down and picks him up.Doctor Duchesne,ez was along,allowst it was a played-out prospector,with a big case of paralysis,and we expressed him through to the County Hospital,like so much dead freight.I've allus been kinder superstitious about passin'that rock,and when I saw you jist now,sittin'thar,dazed like,with your head down like the other chap,it rather threw me off my centre."In the inexplicable and half-superstitious uneasiness that this coincidence awakened in Mulrady's unimaginative mind,he was almost on the point of disclosing his good fortune to the driver,in order to prove how preposterous was the parallel,but checked himself in time.

"Did you find out who he was?"broke in a rash passenger."Did you ever get over it?"added another unfortunate.

With a pause of insulting scorn at the interruption,the driver resumed,pointedly,to Mulrady:"The pint of the whole thing was my cussin'a helpless man,ez could neither cuss back nor shoot;and then afterwards takin'you for his ghost layin'for me to get even."He paused again,and then added,carelessly,"They say he never kem to enuff to let on who he was or whar he kem from;and he was eventooally taken to a 'Sylum for Doddering Idjits and Gin'ral and Permiskus Imbeciles at Sacramento.I've heerd it's considered a first-class institooshun,not only for them ez is paralyzed and can't talk,as for them ez is the reverse and is too chipper.

Now,"he added,languidly turning for the first time to his miserable questioners,"how did YOU find it?"