A First Family of Tasajara

by Bret Harte

  CHAPER XIII.

  The winter rains had come. But so plenteously and persistently, andwith such fateful preparation of circumstance, that the long looked forblessing presently became a wonder, an anxiety, and at last a slowlywidening terror. Before a month had passed every mountain, stream, andwatercourse, surcharged with the melted snows of the Sierras, had becomea great tributary; every tributary a great river, until, pouring theirgreat volume into the engorged channels of the American and Sacramentorivers, they overleaped their banks and became as one vast inland sea.Even to a country already familiar with broad and striking catastrophe,the flood was a phenomenal one. For days the sullen overflow lay in thevalley of the Sacramento, enormous, silent, currentless--except wherethe surplus waters rolled through Carquinez Straits, San Francisco Bay,and the Golden Gate, and reappeared as the vanished Sacramento River, inan outflowing stream of fresh and turbid water fifty miles at sea.

  Across the vast inland expanse, brooded over by a leaden sky, leadenrain fell, dimpling like shot the sluggish pools of the flood; acloudy chaos of fallen trees, drifting barns and outhouses, wagons andagricultural implements moved over the surface of the waters, or circledslowly around the outskirts of forests that stood ankle deep in ooze andthe current, which in serried phalanx they resisted still. As night fellthese forms became still more vague and chaotic, and were interspersedwith the scattered lanterns and flaming torches of relief-boats, oroccasionally the high terraced gleaming windows of the great steamboats,feeling their way along the lost channel. At times the opening of afurnace-door shot broad bars of light across the sluggish stream andinto the branches of dripping and drift-encumbered trees; at timesthe looming smoke-stacks sent out a pent-up breath of sparks thatilluminated the inky chaos for a moment, and then fell as black anddripping rain. Or perhaps a hoarse shout from some faintly outlined hulkon either side brought a quick response from the relief-boats, and thedetaching of a canoe with a blazing pine-knot in its bow into the outerdarkness.

  It was late in the afternoon when Lawrence Grant, from the deck of oneof the larger tugs, sighted what had been once the estuary of SidonCreek. The leader of a party of scientific observation and relief, hehad kept a tireless watch of eighteen hours, keenly noticing the work ofdevastation, the changes in the channel, the prospects of abatement, andthe danger that still threatened. He had passed down the length of thesubmerged Sacramento valley, through the Straits of Carquinez, and wasnow steaming along the shores of the upper reaches of San Francisco Bay.Everywhere the same scene of desolation,--vast stretches of tule land,once broken up by cultivation and dotted with dwellings, now clearlyerased on that watery chart; long lines of symmetrical perspective,breaking the monotonous level, showing orchards buried in the flood;Indian mounds and natural eminences covered with cattle or hastilyerected camps; half submerged houses, whose solitary chimneys, however,still gave signs of an undaunted life within; isolated groups of trees,with their lower branches heavy with the unwholesome fruit of theflood, in wisps of hay and straw, rakes and pitchforks, or patheticallysheltering some shivering and forgotten household pet. But everywherethe same dull, expressionless, placid tranquillity of destruction,--ahorrible leveling of all things in one bland smiling equality ofsurface, beneath which agony, despair, and ruin were deeply buried andforgotten; a catastrophe without convulsion,--a devastation voiceless,passionless, and supine.

  The boat had slowed up before what seemed to be a collection ofdisarranged houses with the current flowing between lines that indicatedthe existence of thoroughfares and streets. Many of the lighter woodenbuildings were huddled together on the street corners with their gablesto the flow; some appeared as if they had fallen on their knees, andothers lay complacently on their sides, like the houses of a child'stoy village. An elevator still lifted itself above the other warehouses;from the centre of an enormous square pond, once the plaza, still arosea "Liberty pole," or flagstaff, which now supported a swinging lantern,and in the distance appeared the glittering dome of some publicbuilding. Grant recognized the scene at once. It was all that was leftof the invincible youth of Tasajara!

  As this was an objective point of the scheme of survey and relief forthe district, the boat was made fast to the second story of one of thewarehouses. It was now used as a general store and depot, and bore asingular resemblance in its interior to Harcourt's grocery at Sidon.This suggestion was the more fatefully indicated by the fact that halfa dozen men were seated around a stove in the centre, more or lessgiven up to a kind of philosophical and lazy enjoyment of their enforcedidleness. And when to this was added the more surprising coincidencethat the party consisted of Billings, Peters, and Wingate,--formerresidents of Sidon and first citizens of Tasajara,--the resemblance wascomplete.

  They were ruined,--but they accepted their common fate with a certainIndian stoicism and Western sense of humor that for the time liftedthem above the vulgar complacency of their former fortunes. There was adeep-seated, if coarse and irreverent resignation in their philosophy.At the beginning of the calamity it had been roughly formulated byBillings in the statement that "it wasn't anybody's fault; there wasnobody to kill, and what couldn't be reached by a Vigilance Committeethere was no use resolootin' over." When the Reverend Doctor Pilsburyhad suggested an appeal to a Higher Power, Peters had replied, goodhumoredly, that "a Creator who could fool around with them in that stylewas above being interfered with by prayer." At first the calamity hadbeen a thing to fight against; then it became a practical joke, thesting of which was lost in the victims' power of endurance and assumedignorance of its purport. There was something almost pathetic in theirattempts to understand its peculiar humor.

  "How about that Europ-e-an trip o' yours, Peters?" said Billings,meditatively, from the depths of his chair. "Looks as if thoseCrowned Heads over there would have to wait till the water goes downconsiderable afore you kin trot out your wife and darters before 'em!"

  "Yes," said Peters, "it rather pints that way; and ez far ez I kin see,Mame Billings ain't goin' to no Saratoga, neither, this year."

  "Reckon the boys won't hang about old Harcourt's Free Library to seethe girls home from lectures and singing-class much this year," saidWingate. "Wonder if Harcourt ever thought o' this the day he opened it,and made that rattlin' speech o' his about the new property? Clarksays everything built on that made ground has got to go after the waterfalls. Rough on Harcourt after all his other losses, eh? He oughterhave closed up with that scientific chap, Grant, and married him toClementina while the big boom was on"--

  "Hush!" said Peters, indicating Grant, who had just entered quietly.

  "Don't mind me, gentlemen," said Grant, stepping towards the groupwith a grave but perfectly collected face; "on the contrary, I am veryanxious to hear all the news of Harcourt's family. I left for New Yorkbefore the rainy season, and have only just got back."

  His speech and manner appeared to be so much in keeping with theprevailing grim philosophy that Billings, after a glance at the others,went on. "Ef you left afore the first rains," said he, "you must haveleft only the steamer ahead of Fletcher, when he run off with ClementinaHarcourt, and you might have come across them on their wedding trip inNew York."

  Not a muscle of Grant's face changed under their eager and cruelscrutiny. "No, I didn't," he returned quietly. "But why did she runaway? Did the father object to Fletcher? If I remember rightly he wasrich and a good match."

  "Yes, but I reckon the old man hadn't quite got over the 'Clarion'abuse, for all its eating humble-pie and taking back its yarns of him.And may be he might have thought the engagement rather sudden. They saythat she'd only met Fletcher the day afore the engagement."

  "That be d----d," said Peters, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, andstartling the lazy resignation of his neighbors by taking his feet fromthe stove and sitting upright. "I tell ye, gentlemen, I'm sick o' thissort o' hog-wash that's been ladled round to us. That gal ClementinaHarcourt and that feller Fletcher had met not only once, but MANY timesafore--yes! they were old f
riends if it comes to that, a matter of sixyears ago."

  Grant's eyes were fixed eagerly on the speaker, although the othersscarcely turned their heads.

  "You know, gentlemen," said Peters, "I never took stock in this yerstory of the drownin' of 'Lige Curtis. Why? Well, if you wanter know--inmy opinion--there never was any 'Lige Curtis!"

  Billings lifted his head with difficulty; Wingate turned his face to thespeaker.

  "There never was a scrap o' paper ever found in his cabin with thename o' 'Lige Curtis on it; there never was any inquiry made for 'LigeCurtis; there never was any sorrowin' friends comin' after 'Lige Curtis.For why?--There never was any 'Lige Curtis. The man who passed himselfoff in Sidon under that name--was that man Fletcher. That's how he knewall about Harcourt's title; that's how he got his best holt on Harcourt.And he did it all to get Clementina Harcourt, whom the old man hadrefused to him in Sidon."

  A grunt of incredulity passed around the circle. Such is the fate ofhistorical innovation! Only Grant listened attentively.

  "Ye ought to tell that yarn to John Milton," said Wingate ironically;"it's about in the style o' them stories he slings in the 'Clarion.'"

  "He's made a good thing outer that job. Wonder what he gets for them?"said Peters.

  It was Billings's time to rise, and, under the influence of some strongcynical emotion, to even rise to his feet. "Gets for 'em!--GETS for 'em!I'll tell you WHAT he gets for 'em! It beats this story o' Peters's,--itbeats the flood. It beats me! Ye know that boy, gentlemen; ye know howhe uster lie round his father's store, reading flapdoodle stories andsich! Ye remember how I uster try to give him good examples and knocksome sense into him? Ye remember how, after his father's good luck,he spiled all his own chances, and ran off with his father's waitergal--all on account o' them flapdoodle books he read? Ye remember howhe sashayed round newspaper offices in 'Frisco until he could write aflapdoodle story himself? Ye wanter know what he gets for 'em. I'll tellyou. He got an interduction to one of them high-toned, highfalutin','don't-touch-me' rich widders from Philadelfy,--that's what he gets for'em! He got her dead set on him and his stories, that's what he gets for'em! He got her to put him up with Fletcher in the 'Clarion,'--that'swhat he gets for 'em. And darn my skin!--ef what they say is true, whilewe hard-working men are sittin' here like drowned rats--that air JohnMilton, ez never did a stitch o' live work like me yere; ez neverdid anythin' but spin yarns about US ez did WORK, is now 'gittin' for'em'--what? Guess! Why, he's gittin' THE RICH WIDDER HERSELF and HALF AMILLION DOLLARS WITH HER! Gentlemen! lib'ty is a good thing--but thar'ssome things ye gets too much lib'ty of in this country--and that's thisyer LIB'TY OF THE PRESS!"