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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Salomy Jane, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Salomy Jane
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: February 27, 2005 [EBook #15192]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SALOMY JANE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, William Flis, and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+SALOMY JANE
+
+BY
+
+BRET HARTE
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+
+HARRISON FISHER AND
+
+ARTHUR I. KELLER
+
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+
+THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE
+
+1910
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY BRET HARTE
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+_Published October 1910_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  I A KISS AND AN ESCAPE      1
+
+  II THE LADY'S REFLECTIONS      19
+
+  III THE KISS REPEATED      35
+
+  IV ANOTHER ESCAPE      59
+
+A KISS AND AN ESCAPE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Only one shot had been fired. It had gone wide of its mark,--the
+ringleader of the Vigilantes,--and had left Red Pete, who had fired
+it, covered by their rifles and at their mercy. For his hand had been
+cramped by hard riding, and his eye distracted by their sudden onset,
+and so the inevitable end had come. He submitted sullenly to his
+captors; his companion fugitive and horse-thief gave up the protracted
+struggle with a feeling not unlike relief. Even the hot and revengeful
+victors were content. They had taken their men alive. At any
+time during the long chase they could have brought them down by a
+rifle-shot, but it would have been unsportsmanlike, and have ended
+in a free fight, instead of an example. And, for the matter of that,
+their doom was already sealed. Their end, by a rope and a tree,
+although not sanctified by law, would have at least the deliberation
+of justice. It was the tribute paid by the Vigilantes to that order
+which they had themselves disregarded in the pursuit and capture. Yet
+this strange logic of the frontier sufficed them, and gave a certain
+dignity to the climax.
+
+"Ef you've got anything to say to your folks, say it _now_, and say it
+quick," said the ringleader.
+
+Red Pete glanced around him. He had been run to earth at his own cabin
+in the clearing, whence a few relations and friends, mostly women and
+children, non-combatants, had outflowed, gazing vacantly at the twenty
+Vigilantes who surrounded them. All were accustomed to scenes of
+violence, blood-feud, chase, and hardship; it was only the suddenness
+of the onset and its quick result that had surprised them. They looked
+on with dazed curiosity and some disappointment; there had been no
+fight to speak of--no spectacle! A boy, nephew of Red Pete, got upon
+the rain-barrel to view the proceedings more comfortably; a tall,
+handsome, lazy Kentucky girl, a visiting neighbor, leaned against the
+doorpost, chewing gum. Only a yellow hound was actively perplexed.
+He could not make out if a hunt were just over or beginning, and ran
+eagerly backwards and forwards, leaping alternately upon the captives
+and the captors.
+
+The ringleader repeated his challenge. Red Pete gave a reckless laugh
+and looked at his wife.
+
+At which Mrs. Red Pete came forward. It seemed that she had much to
+say, incoherently, furiously, vindictively, to the ringleader. His
+soul would roast in hell for that day's work! He called himself a man,
+skunkin' in the open and afraid to show himself except with a crowd
+of, other "Kiyi's" around a house of women and children. Heaping
+insult upon insult, inveighing against his low blood, his ancestors,
+his dubious origin, she at last flung out a wild taunt of his invalid
+wife, the insult of a woman to a woman, until his white face grew
+rigid, and only that Western-American fetich of the sanctity of
+sex kept his twitching fingers from the lock of his rifle. Even her
+husband noticed it, and with a half-authoritative "Let up on that,
+old gal," and a pat of his freed left hand on her back, took his last
+parting. The ringleader, still white under the lash of the woman's
+tongue, turned abruptly to the second captive. "And if _you_'ve got
+anybody to say 'good-by' to, now's your chance."
+
+The man looked up. Nobody stirred or spoke. He was a stranger there,
+being a chance confederate picked up by Red Pete, and known to no one.
+Still young, but an outlaw from his abandoned boyhood, of which father
+and mother were only a forgotten dream, he loved horses and
+stole them, fully accepting the frontier penalty of life for the
+interference with that animal on which a man's life so often depended.
+But he understood the good points of a horse, as was shown by the
+one he bestrode--until a few days before the property of Judge
+Boompointer. This was his sole distinction.
+
+The unexpected question stirred him for a moment out of the attitude
+of reckless indifference, for attitude it was, and a part of his
+profession. But it may have touched him that at that moment he was
+less than his companion and his virago wife. However, he only shook
+his head. As he did so his eye casually fell on the handsome girl by
+the doorpost, who was looking at him. The ringleader, too, may have
+been touched by his complete loneliness, for _he_ hesitated. At
+the same moment he saw that the girl was looking at his friendless
+captive.
+
+A grotesque idea struck him.
+
+"Salomy Jane, ye might do worse than come yere and say 'good-by' to a
+dying man, and him a stranger," he said.
+
+There seemed to be a subtle stroke of poetry and irony in this that
+equally struck the apathetic crowd. It was well known that Salomy
+Jane Clay thought no small potatoes of herself, and always held off
+the local swain with a lazy nymph-like scorn. Nevertheless, she
+slowly disengaged herself from the doorpost, and, to everybody's
+astonishment, lounged with languid grace and outstretched hand towards
+the prisoner. The color came into the gray reckless mask which the
+doomed man wore as her right hand grasped his left, just loosed by his
+captors. Then she paused; her shy, fawn-like eyes grew bold, and fixed
+themselves upon him. She took the chewing-gum from her mouth, wiped
+her red lips with the back of her hand, by a sudden lithe spring
+placed her foot on his stirrup, and, bounding to the saddle, threw her
+arms about his neck and pressed a kiss upon his lips.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+They remained thus for a hushed moment--the man on the threshold of
+death, the young woman in the fullness of youth and beauty--linked
+together. Then the crowd laughed; in the audacious effrontery of the
+girl's act the ultimate fate of the two men was forgotten. She slipped
+languidly to the ground; _she_ was the focus of all eyes,--she
+only! The ringleader saw it and his opportunity. He shouted: "Time's
+up--Forward!" urged his horse beside his captives, and the next moment
+the whole cavalcade was sweeping over the clearing into the darkening
+woods.
+
+Their destination was Sawyer's Crossing, the headquarters of the
+committee, where the council was still sitting, and where both
+culprits were to expiate the offense of which that council had already
+found them guilty. They rode in great and breathless haste,--a haste
+in which, strangely enough, even the captives seemed to join. That
+haste possibly prevented them from noticing the singular change which
+had taken place in the second captive since the episode of the kiss.
+His high color remained, as if it had burned through his mask of
+indifference; his eyes were quick, alert, and keen, his mouth half
+open as if the girl's kiss still lingered there. And that haste had
+made them careless, for the horse of the man who led him slipped in
+a gopher-hole, rolled over, unseated his rider, and even dragged the
+bound and helpless second captive from Judge Boompointer's favorite
+mare. In an instant they were all on their feet again, but in that
+supreme moment the second captive felt the cords which bound his arms
+had slipped to his wrists. By keeping his elbows to his sides, and
+obliging the others to help him mount, it escaped their notice. By
+riding close to his captors, and keeping in the crush of the throng,
+he further concealed the accident, slowly working his hands downwards
+out of his bonds. Their way lay through a sylvan wilderness, mid-leg
+deep in ferns, whose tall fronds brushed their horses' sides in their
+furious gallop and concealed the flapping of the captive's loosened
+cords. The peaceful vista, more suggestive of the offerings of nymph
+and shepherd than of human sacrifice, was in a strange contrast to
+this whirlwind rush of stern, armed men. The westering sun pierced
+the subdued light and the tremor of leaves with yellow lances; birds
+started into song on blue and dove-like wings, and on either side of
+the trail of this vengeful storm could be heard the murmur of hidden
+and tranquil waters. In a few moments they would be on the open ridge,
+whence sloped the common turnpike to "Sawyer's," a mile away. It
+was the custom of returning cavalcades to take this hill at headlong
+speed, with shouts and cries that heralded their coming. They withheld
+the latter that day, as inconsistent with their dignity; but, emerging
+from the wood, swept silently like an avalanche down the slope. They
+were well under way, looking only to their horses, when the second
+captive slipped his right arm from the bonds and succeeded in grasping
+the reins that lay trailing on the horse's neck. A sudden _vaquero_
+jerk, which the well-trained animal understood, threw him on his
+haunches with his forelegs firmly planted on the slope. The rest of
+the cavalcade swept on; the man who was leading the captive's horse
+by the _riata_, thinking only of another accident, dropped the line to
+save himself from being dragged backwards from his horse. The captive
+wheeled, and the next moment was galloping furiously up the slope.
+
+It was the work of a moment; a trained horse and an experienced hand.
+The cavalcade had covered nearly fifty yards before they could pull
+up; the freed captive had covered half that distance uphill. The road
+was so narrow that only two shots could be fired, and these broke dust
+two yards ahead of the fugitive. They had not dared to fire low; the
+horse was the more valuable animal. The fugitive knew this in his
+extremity also, and would have gladly taken a shot in his own leg to
+spare that of his horse. Five men were detached to recapture or kill
+him. The latter seemed inevitable. But he had calculated his chances;
+before they could reload he had reached the woods again; winding in
+and out between the pillared tree trunks, he offered no mark. They
+knew his horse was superior to their own; at the end of two hours they
+returned, for he had disappeared without track or trail. The end was
+briefly told in the "Sierra Record:"--
+
+"Red Pete, the notorious horse-thief, who had so long eluded justice,
+was captured and hung by the Sawyer's Crossing Vigilantes last week;
+his confederate, unfortunately, escaped on a valuable horse belonging
+to Judge Boompointer. The judge had refused one thousand dollars for
+the horse only a week before. As the thief, who is still at large,
+would find it difficult to dispose of so valuable an animal without
+detection, the chances are against either of them turning up again."
+
+
+
+
+THE LADY'S REFLECTIONS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Salomy Jane watched the cavalcade until it had disappeared. Then she
+became aware that her brief popularity had passed. Mrs. Red Pete,
+in stormy hysterics, had included her in a sweeping denunciation of
+the whole universe, possibly for simulating an emotion in which she
+herself was deficient. The other women hated her for her momentary
+exaltation above them; only the children still admired her as one who
+had undoubtedly "canoodled" with a man "a-going to be hung"--a daring
+flight beyond their wildest ambition. Salomy Jane accepted the change
+with charming unconcern. She put on her yellow nankeen sunbonnet,--a
+hideous affair that would have ruined any other woman, but which only
+enhanced the piquancy of her fresh brunette skin,--tied the strings,
+letting the blue-black braids escape below its frilled curtain behind,
+jumped on her mustang with a casual display of agile ankles in shapely
+white stockings, whistled to the hound, and waving her hand with a "So
+long, sonny!" to the lately bereft but admiring nephew, flapped and
+fluttered away in her short brown holland gown.
+
+Her father's house was four miles distant. Contrasted with the
+cabin she had just quitted, it was a superior dwelling, with a long
+"lean-to" at the rear, which brought the eaves almost to the ground
+and made it look like a low triangle. It had a long barn and cattle
+sheds, for Madison Clay was a "great" stockraiser and the owner of
+a "quarter section." It had a sitting-room and a parlor organ, whose
+transportation thither had been a marvel of "packing." These things
+were supposed to give Salomy Jane an undue importance, but the
+girl's reserve and inaccessibility to local advances were rather the
+result of a cool, lazy temperament and the preoccupation of a large,
+protecting admiration for her father, for some years a widower. For
+Mr. Madison Clay's life had been threatened in one or two feuds,--it
+was said, not without cause,--and it is possible that the pathetic
+spectacle of her father doing his visiting with a shotgun may
+have touched her closely and somewhat prejudiced her against the
+neighboring masculinity. The thought that cattle, horses, and "quarter
+section" would one day be hers did not disturb her calm. As for Mr.
+Clay, he accepted her as housewifely, though somewhat "interfering,"
+and, being one of "his own womankind," therefore not without some
+degree of merit.
+
+"Wot's this yer I'm hearin' of your doin's over at Red Pete's?
+Honey-foglin' with a horse-thief, eh?" said Mr. Clay two days later at
+breakfast.
+
+"I reckon you heard about the straight thing, then," said Salomy Jane
+unconcernedly, without looking round.
+
+"What do you kalkilate Rube will say to it? What are you goin' to tell
+_him_?" said Mr. Clay sarcastically.
+
+"Rube," or Reuben Waters, was a swain supposed to be favored
+particularly by Mr. Clay. Salomy Jane looked up.
+
+"I'll tell him that when _he's_ on his way to be hung, I'll kiss
+him,--not till then," said the young lady brightly.
+
+This delightful witticism suited the paternal humor, and Mr. Clay
+smiled; but, nevertheless, he frowned a moment afterwards.
+
+"But this yer hoss-thief got away arter all, and that's a hoss of a
+different color," he said grimly.
+
+Salomy Jane put down her knife and fork. This was certainly a new and
+different phase of the situation. She had never thought of it before,
+and, strangely enough, for the first time she became interested in the
+man. "Got away?" she repeated. "Did they let him off?"
+
+"Not much," said her father briefly. "Slipped his cords, and going
+down the grade pulled up short, just like a _vaquero_ agin a
+lassoed bull, almost draggin' the man leadin' him off his hoss, and
+then skyuted up the grade. For that matter, on that hoss o' Judge
+Boompointer's he mout have dragged the whole posse of 'em down on
+their knees ef he liked! Sarved 'em right, too. Instead of stringin'
+him up afore the door, or shootin' him on sight, they must allow to
+take him down afore the hull committee 'for an example.' 'Example' be
+blowed! Ther' 's example enough when some stranger comes unbeknownst
+slap onter a man hanged to a tree and plugged full of holes. _That's_
+an example, and _he_ knows what it means. Wot more do ye want? But
+then those Vigilantes is allus clingin' and hangin' onter some mere
+scrap o'the law they're pretendin' to despise. It makes me sick! Why,
+when Jake Myers shot your ole Aunt Viney's second husband, and I laid
+in wait for Jake afterwards in the Butternut Hollow, did _I_ tie him
+to his hoss and fetch him down to your Aunt Viney's cabin 'for an
+example' before I plugged him? No!" in deep disgust. "No! Why, I just
+meandered through the wood, careless-like, till he comes out, and I
+just rode up to him, and I said"--
+
+But Salomy Jane had heard her father's story before. Even one's
+dearest relatives are apt to become tiresome in narration. "I know,
+dad," she interrupted; "but this yer man,--this hoss-thief,--did _he_
+get clean away without gettin' hurt at all?"
+
+"He did, and unless he's fool enough to sell the hoss he kin keep
+away, too. So ye see, ye can't ladle out purp stuff about a 'dyin'
+stranger' to Rube. He won't swaller it."
+
+"All the same, dad," returned the girl cheerfully, "I reckon to say
+it, and say _more_; I'll tell him that ef _he_ manages to get away
+too, I'll marry him--there! But ye don't ketch Rube takin' any such
+risks in gettin' ketched, or in gettin' away arter!"
+
+Madison Clay smiled grimly, pushed back his chair, rose, dropped a
+perfunctory kiss on his daughter's hair, and, taking his shotgun from
+the corner, departed on a peaceful Samaritan mission to a cow who
+had dropped a calf in the far pasture. Inclined as he was to Reuben's
+wooing from his eligibility as to property, he was conscious that he
+was sadly deficient in certain qualities inherent in the Clay family.
+It certainly would be a kind of _mésalliance_.
+
+Left to herself, Salomy Jane stared a long while at the coffee-pot,
+and then called the two squaws who assisted her in her household
+duties, to clear away the things while she went up to her own room to
+make her bed. Here she was confronted with a possible prospect of that
+proverbial bed she might be making in her willfulness, and on which
+she must lie, in the photograph of a somewhat serious young man of
+refined features--Reuben Waters--stuck in her window-frame. Salomy
+Jane smiled over her last witticism regarding him and enjoyed it, like
+your true humorist, and then, catching sight of her own handsome face
+in the little mirror, smiled again. But wasn't it funny about that
+horse-thief getting off after all? Good Lordy! Fancy Reuben hearing he
+was alive and going round with that kiss of hers set on his lips! She
+laughed again, a little more abstractedly. And he had returned it like
+a man, holding her tight and almost breathless, and he going to be
+hung the next minute! Salomy Jane had been kissed at other times, by
+force, chance, or stratagem. In a certain ingenuous forfeit game of
+the locality known as "I'm a-pinin'," many had "pined" for a "sweet
+kiss" from Salomy Jane, which she had yielded in a sense of honor and
+fair play. She had never been kissed like this before--she would never
+again; and yet the man was alive! And behold, she could see in the
+mirror that she was blushing!
+
+She should hardly know him again. A young man with very bright eyes,
+a flushed and sunburnt cheek, a kind of fixed look in the face, and
+no beard; no, none that she could feel. Yet he was not at all like
+Reuben, not a bit. She took Reuben's picture from the window, and
+laid it on her work-box. And to think she did not even know this young
+man's name! That was queer. To be kissed by a man whom she might never
+know! Of course he knew hers. She wondered if he remembered it and
+her. But of course he was so glad to get off with his life that he
+never thought of anything else. Yet she did not give more than four or
+five minutes to these speculations, and, like a sensible girl, thought
+of something else. Once again, however, in opening the closet, she
+found the brown holland gown she had worn on the day before; thought
+it very unbecoming, and regretted that she had not worn her best gown
+on her visit to Red Pete's cottage. On such an occasion she really
+might have been more impressive.
+
+
+
+
+THE KISS REPEATED
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+When her father came home that night she asked him the news. No, they
+had _not_ captured the second horse-thief, who was still at large.
+Judge Boompointer talked of invoking the aid of the despised law. It
+remained, then, to see whether the horse-thief was fool enough to try
+to get rid of the animal. Red Pete's body had been delivered to his
+widow. Perhaps it would only be neighborly for Salomy Jane to ride
+over to the funeral. But Salomy Jane did not take to the suggestion
+kindly, nor yet did she explain to her father that, as the other man
+was still living, she did not care to undergo a second disciplining
+at the widow's hands. Nevertheless, she contrasted her situation with
+that of the widow with a new and singular satisfaction. It might have
+been Red Pete who had escaped. But he had not the grit of the nameless
+one. She had already settled his heroic quality.
+
+"Ye ain't harkenin' to me, Salomy."
+
+Salomy Jane started.
+
+"Here I'm askin' ye if ye've see that hound Phil Larrabee sneaking by
+yer to-day?"
+
+Salomy Jane had not. But she became interested and self-reproachful
+for she knew that Phil Larrabee was one of her father's enemies. "He
+wouldn't dare to go by here unless he knew you were out," she said
+quickly.
+
+"That's what gets me," he said, scratching his grizzled head. "I've
+been kind o' thinkin' o' him all day, and one of them Chinamen said he
+saw him at Sawyer's Crossing. He was a kind of friend o' Pete's wife.
+That's why I thought yer might find out ef he'd been there." Salomy
+Jane grew more self-reproachful at her father's self-interest in her
+"neighborliness." "But that ain't all," continued Mr. Clay. "Thar was
+tracks over the far pasture that warn't mine. I followed them, and
+they went round and round the house two or three times, ez ef they
+mout hev bin prowlin', and then I lost 'em in the woods again. It's
+just like that sneakin' hound Larrabee to hev bin lyin' in wait for me
+and afraid to meet a man fair and square in the open."
+
+"You just lie low, dad, for a day or two more, and let me do a little
+prowlin'," said the girl, with sympathetic indignation in her dark
+eyes. "Ef it's that skunk, I'll spot him soon enough and let you know
+whar he's hiding."
+
+"You'll just stay where ye are, Salomy," said her father decisively.
+"This ain't no woman's work--though I ain't sayin' you haven't got
+more head for it than some men I know." Nevertheless, that night,
+after her father had gone to bed, Salomy Jane sat by the open window
+of the sitting-room in an apparent attitude of languid contemplation,
+but alert and intent of eye and ear. It was a fine moonlit night. Two
+pines near the door, solitary pickets of the serried ranks of distant
+forest, cast long shadows like paths to the cottage, and sighed their
+spiced breath in the windows. For there was no frivolity of vine or
+flower round Salomy Jane's bower. The clearing was too recent, the
+life too practical for vanities like these. But the moon added a vague
+elusiveness to everything, softened the rigid outlines of the sheds,
+gave shadows to the lidless windows, and touched with merciful
+indirectness the hideous débris of refuse gravel and the gaunt scars
+of burnt vegetation before the door. Even Salomy Jane was affected by
+it, and exhaled something between a sigh and a yawn with the breath of
+the pines. Then she suddenly sat upright.
+
+Her quick ear had caught a faint "click, click," in the direction
+of the wood; her quicker instinct and rustic training enabled her to
+determine that it was the ring of a horse's shoe on flinty ground;
+her knowledge of the locality told her it came from the spot where
+the trail passed over an outcrop of flint scarcely a quarter of a mile
+from where she sat, and within the clearing. It was no errant "stock,"
+for the foot was _shod_ with iron; it was a mounted trespasser by
+night, and boded no good to a man like Clay.
+
+She rose, threw her shawl over her head, more for disguise than
+shelter, and passed out of the door. A sudden impulse made her seize
+her father's shotgun from the corner where it stood,--not that she
+feared any danger to herself, but that it was an excuse. She made
+directly for the wood, keeping in the shadow of the pines as long as
+she could. At the fringe she halted; whoever was there must pass her
+before reaching the house.
+
+Then there seemed to be a suspense of all nature. Everything was
+deadly still--even the moonbeams appeared no longer tremulous; soon
+there was a rustle as of some stealthy animal among the ferns,
+and then a dismounted man stepped into the moonlight. It was the
+horse-thief--the man she had kissed!
+
+For a wild moment a strange fancy seized her usually sane intellect
+and stirred her temperate blood. The news they had told her was _not_
+true; he had been hung, and this was his ghost! He looked as white and
+spirit-like in the moonlight, dressed in the same clothes, as when she
+saw him last. He had evidently seen her approaching, and moved quickly
+to meet her. But in his haste he stumbled slightly; she reflected
+suddenly that ghosts did not stumble, and a feeling of relief came
+over her. And it was no assassin of her father that had been prowling
+around--only this unhappy fugitive. A momentary color came into her
+cheek; her coolness and hardihood returned; it was with a tinge of
+sauciness in her voice that she said:--
+
+"I reckoned you were a ghost."
+
+"I mout have been," he said, looking at her fixedly; "but I reckon I'd
+have come back here all the same."
+
+"It's a little riskier comin' back alive," she said, with a levity
+that died on her lips, for a singular nervousness, half fear and half
+expectation, was beginning to take the place of her relief of a moment
+ago. "Then it was _you_ who was prowlin' round and makin' tracks in
+the far pasture?"
+
+"Yes; I came straight here when I got away."
+
+She felt his eyes were burning her, but did not dare to raise her own.
+"Why," she began, hesitated, and ended vaguely. "_How_ did you get
+here?"
+
+"You helped me!"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes. That kiss you gave me put life into me--gave me strength to get
+away. I swore to myself I'd come back and thank you, alive or dead."
+
+Every word he said she could have anticipated, so plain the situation
+seemed to her now. And every word he said she knew was the truth. Yet
+her cool common sense struggled against it.
+
+"What's the use of your escaping, ef you're comin' back here to be
+ketched again?" she said pertly.
+
+He drew a little nearer to her, but seemed to her the more awkward as
+she resumed her self-possession. His voice, too, was broken, as if by
+exhaustion, as he said, catching his breath at intervals:--
+
+"I'll tell you. You did more for me than you think. You made another
+man o' me. I never had a man, woman, or child do to me what you did.
+I never had a friend--only a pal like Red Pete, who picked me up 'on
+shares.' I want to quit this yer--what I'm doin'. I want to begin by
+doin' the square thing to you"--He stopped, breathed hard, and then
+said brokenly, "My hoss is over thar, staked out. I want to give him
+to you. Judge Boompointer will give you a thousand dollars for him. I
+ain't lyin'; it's God's truth! I saw it on the handbill agin a tree.
+Take him, and I'll get away afoot. Take him. It's the only thing I can
+do for you, and I know it don't half pay for what you did. Take it;
+your father can get a reward for you, if you can't."
+
+Such were the ethics of this strange locality that neither the man who
+made the offer nor the girl to whom it was made was struck by anything
+that seemed illogical or indelicate, or at all inconsistent with
+justice or the horse-thief's real conversion. Salomy Jane nevertheless
+dissented, from another and weaker reason.
+
+"I don't want your hoss, though I reckon dad might; but you're just
+starvin'. I'll get suthin'." She turned towards the house.
+
+"Say you'll take the hoss first," he said, grasping her hand. At
+the touch she felt herself coloring and struggled, expecting perhaps
+another kiss. But he dropped her hand. She turned again with a saucy
+gesture, said, "Hol' on; I'll come right back," and slipped away,
+the mere shadow of a coy and flying nymph in the moonlight, until she
+reached the house.
+
+Here she not only procured food and whiskey, but added a long
+dust-coat and hat of her father's to her burden. They would serve
+as a disguise for him and hide that heroic figure, which she
+thought everybody must now know as she did. Then she rejoined him
+breathlessly. But he put the food and whiskey aside.
+
+"Listen," he said; "I've turned the hoss into your corral. You'll find
+him there in the morning, and no one will know but that he got lost
+and joined the other hosses."
+
+Then she burst out. "But you--_you_--what will become of you? You'll
+be ketched!"
+
+"I'll manage to get away," he said in a low voice, "ef--ef"--
+
+"Ef what?" she said tremblingly.
+
+"Ef you'll put the heart in me again,--as you did!" he gasped.
+
+She tried to laugh--to move away. She could do neither. Suddenly he
+caught her in his arms, with a long kiss, which she returned again and
+again. Then they stood embraced as they had embraced two days before,
+but no longer the same. For the cool, lazy Salomy Jane had been
+transformed into another woman--a passionate, clinging savage. Perhaps
+something of her father's blood had surged within her at that supreme
+moment. The man stood erect and determined.
+
+"Wot's your name?" she whispered quickly. It was a woman's quickest
+way of defining her feelings.
+
+"Dart."
+
+"Yer first name?"
+
+"Jack."
+
+"Let me go now, Jack. Lie low in the woods till to-morrow sunup. I'll
+come again."
+
+He released her. Yet she lingered a moment. "Put on those things," she
+said, with a sudden happy flash of eyes and teeth, "and lie close till
+I come." And then she sped away home.
+
+But midway up the distance she felt her feet going slower, and
+something at her heartstrings seemed to be pulling her back. She
+stopped, turned, and glanced to where he had been standing. Had she
+seen him then, she might have returned. But he had disappeared. She
+gave her first sigh, and then ran quickly again. It must be nearly ten
+o'clock! It was not very long to morning!
+
+She was within a few steps of her own door, when the sleeping woods
+and silent air appeared to suddenly awake with a sharp "crack!"
+
+She stopped, paralyzed. Another "crack!" followed, that echoed over to
+the far corral. She recalled herself instantly and dashed off wildly
+to the woods again.
+
+As she ran she thought of one thing only. He had been "dogged" by one
+of his old pursuers and attacked. But there were two shots, and he was
+unarmed. Suddenly she remembered that she had left her father's gun
+standing against the tree where they were talking. Thank God! she may
+again have saved him. She ran to the tree; the gun was gone. She ran
+hither and thither, dreading at every step to fall upon his lifeless
+body. A new thought struck her; she ran to the corral. The horse was
+not there! He must have been able to regain it, and escaped, _after_
+the shots had been fired. She drew a long breath of relief, but it was
+caught up in an apprehension of alarm. Her father, awakened from his
+sleep by the shots, was hurriedly approaching her.
+
+"What's up now, Salomy Jane?" he demanded excitedly.
+
+"Nothin'," said the girl with an effort. "Nothin', at least, that _I_
+can find." She was usually truthful because fearless, and a lie stuck
+in her throat; but she was no longer fearless, thinking of _him_. "I
+wasn't abed; so I ran out as soon as I heard the shots fired," she
+answered in return to his curious gaze.
+
+"And you've hid my gun somewhere where it can't be found," he said
+reproachfully. "Ef it was that sneak Larrabee, and he fired them shots
+to lure me out, he might have potted me, without a show, a dozen times
+in the last five minutes."
+
+She had not thought since of her father's enemy! It might indeed
+have been he who had attacked Jack. But she made a quick point of the
+suggestion. "Run in, dad, run in and find the gun; you've got no show
+out here without it." She seized him by the shoulders from behind,
+shielding him from the woods, and hurried him, half expostulating,
+half struggling, to the house.
+
+But there no gun was to be found. It was strange; it must have been
+mislaid in some corner! Was he sure he had not left it in the barn?
+But no matter now. The danger was over; the Larrabee trick had failed;
+he must go to bed now, and in the morning they would make a search
+together. At the same time she had inwardly resolved to rise before
+him and make another search of the wood, and perhaps--fearful joy as
+she recalled her promise!--find Jack alive and well, awaiting her!
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER ESCAPE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Salomy Jane slept little that night, nor did her father. But towards
+morning he fell into a tired man's slumber until the sun was well up
+the horizon. Far different was it with his daughter: she lay with her
+face to the window, her head half lifted to catch every sound, from
+the creaking of the sun-warped shingles above her head to the far-off
+moan of the rising wind in the pine trees. Sometimes she fell into
+a breathless, half-ecstatic trance, living over every moment of the
+stolen interview; feeling the fugitive's arm still around her, his
+kisses on her lips; hearing his whispered voice in her ears--the birth
+of her new life! This was followed again by a period of agonizing
+dread--that he might even then be lying, his life ebbing away, in the
+woods, with her name on his lips, and she resting here inactive, until
+she half started from her bed to go to his succor. And this went on
+until a pale opal glow came into the sky, followed by a still paler
+pink on the summit of the white Sierras, when she rose and hurriedly
+began to dress. Still so sanguine was her hope of meeting him, that
+she lingered yet a moment to select the brown holland skirt and yellow
+sunbonnet she had worn when she first saw him. And she had only seen
+him twice! Only _twice_! It would be cruel, too cruel, not to see him
+again!
+
+She crept softly down the stairs, listening to the long-drawn
+breathing of her father in his bedroom, and then, by the light of a
+guttering candle, scrawled a note to him, begging him not to trust
+himself out of the house until she returned from her search, and
+leaving the note open on the table, swiftly ran out into the growing
+day.
+
+Three hours afterwards Mr. Madison Clay awoke to the sound of loud
+knocking. At first this forced itself upon his consciousness as his
+daughter's regular morning summons, and was responded to by a grunt of
+recognition and a nestling closer in the blankets. Then he awoke with
+a start and a muttered oath, remembering the events of last night, and
+his intention to get up early, and rolled out of bed. Becoming aware
+by this time that the knocking was at the outer door, and hearing the
+shout of a familiar voice, he hastily pulled on his boots, his jean
+trousers, and fastening a single suspender over his shoulder as he
+clattered downstairs, stood in the lower room. The door was open,
+and waiting upon the threshold was his kinsman, an old ally in many a
+blood-feud--Breckenridge Clay!
+
+"You _are_ a cool one, Mad!" said the latter in half-admiring
+indignation.
+
+"What's up?" said the bewildered Madison.
+
+"_You_ ought to be, and scootin' out o' this," said Breckenridge
+grimly. "It's all very well to 'know nothin';' but here Phil
+Larrabee's friends hev just picked him up, drilled through with slugs
+and deader nor a crow, and now they're lettin' loose Larrabee's two
+half-brothers on you. And you must go like a derned fool and leave
+these yer things behind you in the bresh," he went on querulously,
+lifting Madison Clay's dust-coat, hat, and shotgun from his horse,
+which stood saddled at the door. "Luckily I picked them up in the
+woods comin' here. Ye ain't got more than time to get over the state
+line and among your folks thar afore they'll be down on you. Hustle,
+old man! What are you gawkin' and starin' at?"
+
+Madison Clay had stared amazed and bewildered--horror-stricken.
+The incidents of the past night for the first time flashed upon him
+clearly--hopelessly! The shot; his finding Salomy Jane alone in
+the woods; her confusion and anxiety to rid herself of him; the
+disappearance of the shotgun; and now this new discovery of the taking
+of his hat and coat for a disguise! _She_ had killed Phil Larrabee
+in that disguise, after provoking his first harmless shot! She, his
+own child, Salomy Jane, had disgraced herself by a man's crime; had
+disgraced him by usurping his right, and taking a mean advantage, by
+deceit, of a foe!
+
+"Gimme that gun," he said hoarsely.
+
+Breckenridge handed him the gun in wonder and slowly gathering
+suspicion. Madison examined nipple and muzzle; one barrel had been
+discharged. It was true! The gun dropped from his hand.
+
+"Look here, old man," said Breckenridge, with a darkening face,
+"there's bin no foul play here. Thar's bin no hiring of men, no deputy
+to do this job. _You_ did it fair and square--yourself?"
+
+"Yes, by God!" burst out Madison Clay in a hoarse voice. "Who says I
+didn't?"
+
+Reassured, yet believing that Madison Clay had nerved himself for
+the act by an over-draught of whiskey, which had affected his memory,
+Breckenridge said curtly, "Then wake up and 'lite' out, ef ye want me
+to stand by you."
+
+"Go to the corral and pick me out a hoss," said Madison slowly, yet
+not without a certain dignity of manner. "I've suthin' to say to
+Salomy Jane afore I go." He was holding her scribbled note, which he
+had just discovered, in his shaking hand.
+
+Struck by his kinsman's manner, and knowing the dependent relations
+of father and daughter, Breckenridge nodded and hurried away. Left
+to himself, Madison Clay ran his fingers through his hair, and
+straightened out the paper on which Salomy Jane had scrawled her note,
+turned it over, and wrote on the back:--
+
+    You might have told me you did it, and not leave your ole
+    father to find it out how you disgraced yourself and him, too,
+    by a low-down, underhanded, woman's trick! I've said I done
+    it, and took the blame myself, and all the sneakiness of it
+    that folks suspect. If I get away alive--and I don't care much
+    which--you needn't foller. The house and stock are yours; but
+    you ain't any longer the daughter of your disgraced father,
+
+    MADISON CLAY.
+
+He had scarcely finished the note when, with a clatter of hoofs and a
+led horse, Breckenridge reappeared at the door elate and triumphant.
+"You're in nigger luck, Mad! I found that stole hoss of Judge
+Boompointer's had got away and strayed among your stock in the corral.
+Take him and you're safe; he can't be outrun this side of the state
+line."
+
+"I ain't no hoss-thief," said Madison grimly.
+
+"Nobody sez ye are, but you'd be wuss--a fool--ef you didn't take him.
+I'm testimony that you found him among your hosses; I'll tell Judge
+Boompointer you've got him, and ye kin send him back when you're safe.
+The judge will be mighty glad to get him back, and call it quits. So
+ef you've writ to Salomy Jane, come."
+
+Madison Clay no longer hesitated. Salomy Jane might return at any
+moment,--it would be part of her "fool womanishness,"--and he was
+in no mood to see her before a third party. He laid the note on
+the table, gave a hurried glance around the house, which he grimly
+believed he was leaving forever, and, striding to the door, leaped on
+the stolen horse, and swept away with his kinsman.
+
+But that note lay for a week undisturbed on the table in full view of
+the open door. The house was invaded by leaves, pine cones, birds,
+and squirrels during the hot, silent, empty days, and at night by shy,
+stealthy creatures, but never again, day or night, by any of the Clay
+family. It was known in the district that Clay had flown across the
+state line, his daughter was believed to have joined him the next day,
+and the house was supposed to be locked up. It lay off the main road,
+and few passed that way. The starving cattle in the corral at last
+broke bounds and spread over the woods. And one night a stronger blast
+than usual swept through the house, carried the note from the table
+to the floor, where, whirled into a crack in the flooring, it slowly
+rotted.
+
+But though the sting of her father's reproach was spared her, Salomy
+Jane had no need of the letter to know what had happened. For as she
+entered the woods in the dim light of that morning she saw the figure
+of Dart gliding from the shadow of a pine towards her. The unaffected
+cry of joy that rose from her lips died there as she caught sight of
+his face in the open light.
+
+"You are hurt," she said, clutching his arm passionately.
+
+"No," he said. "But I wouldn't mind that if"--
+
+"You're thinkin' I was afeard to come back last night when I heard the
+shootin', but I _did_ come," she went on feverishly. "I ran back here
+when I heard the two shots, but you were gone. I went to the corral,
+but your hoss wasn't there, and I thought you'd got away."
+
+"I _did_ get away," said Dart gloomily. "I killed the man, thinkin'
+he was huntin' _me_, and forgettin' I was disguised. He thought I was
+your father."
+
+"Yes," said the girl joyfully, "he was after dad, and _you_--you
+killed him." She again caught his hand admiringly.
+
+But he did not respond. Possibly there were points of honor which this
+horse-thief felt vaguely with her father. "Listen," he said grimly.
+"Others think it was your father killed him. When _I_ did it--for
+he fired at me first--I ran to the corral again and took my hoss,
+thinkin' I might be follered. I made a clear circuit of the house,
+and when I found he was the only one, and no one was follerin', I come
+back here and took off my disguise. Then I heard his friends find him
+in the wood, and I know they suspected your father. And then another
+man come through the woods while I was hidin' and found the clothes
+and took them away." He stopped and stared at her gloomily.
+
+But all this was unintelligible to the girl. "Dad would have got
+the better of him ef you hadn't," she said eagerly, "so what's the
+difference?"
+
+"All the same," he said gloomily, "I must take his place."
+
+She did not understand, but turned her head to her master. "Then
+you'll go back with me and tell him _all_?" she said obediently.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+She put her hand in his, and they crept out of the wood together. She
+foresaw a thousand difficulties, but, chiefest of all, that he did not
+love as she did. _She_ would not have taken these risks against their
+happiness.
+
+But alas for ethics and heroism. As they were issuing from the wood
+they heard the sound of galloping hoofs, and had barely time to
+hide themselves before Madison Clay, on the stolen horse of Judge
+Boompointer, swept past them with his kinsman.
+
+Salomy Jane turned to her lover.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And here I might, as a moral romancer, pause, leaving the guilty,
+passionate girl eloped with her disreputable lover, destined to
+lifelong shame and misery, misunderstood to the last by a criminal,
+fastidious parent. But I am confronted by certain facts, on which this
+romance is based. A month later a handbill was posted on one of the
+sentinel pines, announcing that the property would be sold by auction
+to the highest bidder by Mrs. John Dart, daughter of Madison Clay,
+Esq., and it was sold accordingly. Still later--by ten years--the
+chronicler of these pages visited a certain "stock" or "breeding
+farm," in the "Blue Grass Country," famous for the popular racers
+it has produced. He was told that the owner was the "best judge of
+horse-flesh in the country." "Small wonder," added his informant, "for
+they say as a young man out in California he was a horse-thief, and
+only saved himself by eloping with some rich farmer's daughter. But
+he's a straight-out and respectable man now, whose word about horses
+can't be bought; and as for his wife, _she_'s a beauty! To see her at
+the 'Springs,' rigged out in the latest fashion, you'd never think
+she had ever lived out of New York or wasn't the wife of one of its
+millionaires."
+
+
+The Riverside Press
+
+CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
+
+U.S.A
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Salomy Jane, by Bret Harte
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+    <title>Salomy Jane.</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Salomy Jane, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Salomy Jane
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: February 27, 2005 [EBook #15192]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SALOMY JANE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, William Flis, and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:100%;">
+        <a href="images/1.jpg"><img width="100%"
+             src="images/1.jpg"
+             alt="" /></a>
+    </div>
+
+    <h1>SALOMY JANE</h1>
+
+    <h3>BY</h3>
+
+    <h2>BRET HARTE</h2>
+
+    <h4>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY</h4>
+
+    <h3>HARRISON FISHER AND</h3>
+
+    <h3>ARTHUR I. KELLER</h3>
+
+    <h4>BOSTON AND NEW YORK</h4>
+
+    <h4>HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY</h4>
+
+    <h4>THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE</h4>
+
+    <h3>1910</h3>
+
+    <center>
+        COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY BRET HARTE
+    </center>
+
+    <center>
+        COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN &amp; CO.
+    </center>
+
+    <center>
+        COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+    </center>
+
+    <center>
+        ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+    </center>
+
+    <center>
+        <i>Published October 1910</i>
+    </center>
+
+    <h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+    <div class="poem">
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>I A KISS AND AN ESCAPE <a href="#page1">1</a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>II THE LADY'S REFLECTIONS
+            <a href="#page19">19</a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>III THE KISS REPEATED <a href="#page35">35</a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div class="stanza">
+            <p>IV ANOTHER ESCAPE <a href="#page59">59</a></p>
+        </div>
+    </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1"
+       id="page1"></a>[pg 1]</span>
+
+    <h2>A Kiss and an Escape</h2>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:65%;">
+        <a href="images/6.jpg"><img width="100%"
+             src="images/6.jpg"
+             alt="" /></a>
+    </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page3"
+       id="page3"></a>[pg 3]</span>
+
+    <h3>I</h3>
+
+    <p>Only one shot had been fired. It had gone wide of its
+    mark,&mdash;the ringleader of the Vigilantes,&mdash;and had
+    left Red Pete, who had fired it, covered by their rifles and at
+    their mercy. For his hand had been cramped by hard riding, and
+    his eye distracted by their sudden onset, and so the inevitable
+    end had come. He submitted sullenly to his captors; his
+    companion fugitive and horse-thief gave up the protracted
+    struggle with a feeling not unlike relief. Even the hot and
+    revengeful victors were content. They had taken their men
+    alive. At any time during the long
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page4"
+       id="page4"></a>[pg 4]</span> chase they could have brought
+       them down by a rifle-shot, but it would have been
+       unsportsmanlike, and have ended in a free fight, instead of
+       an example. And, for the matter of that, their doom was
+       already sealed. Their end, by a rope and a tree, although
+       not sanctified by law, would have at least the deliberation
+       of justice. It was the tribute paid by the Vigilantes to
+       that order which they had themselves disregarded in the
+       pursuit and capture. Yet this strange logic of the frontier
+       sufficed them, and gave a certain dignity to the climax.</p>
+
+    <p>"Ef you've got anything to say to your folks, say it
+    <i>now</i>, and say it quick," said the ringleader.</p>
+
+    <p>Red Pete glanced around him. He
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page5"
+       id="page5"></a>[pg 5]</span> had been run to earth at his
+       own cabin in the clearing, whence a few relations and
+       friends, mostly women and children, non-combatants, had
+       outflowed, gazing vacantly at the twenty Vigilantes who
+       surrounded them. All were accustomed to scenes of violence,
+       blood-feud, chase, and hardship; it was only the suddenness
+       of the onset and its quick result that had surprised them.
+       They looked on with dazed curiosity and some disappointment;
+       there had been no fight to speak of&mdash;no spectacle! A
+       boy, nephew of Red Pete, got upon the rain-barrel to view
+       the proceedings more comfortably; a tall, handsome, lazy
+       Kentucky girl, a visiting neighbor, leaned against the
+       doorpost, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page6"
+       id="page6"></a>[pg 6]</span> chewing gum. Only a yellow
+       hound was actively perplexed. He could not make out if a
+       hunt were just over or beginning, and ran eagerly backwards
+       and forwards, leaping alternately upon the captives and the
+       captors.</p>
+
+    <p>The ringleader repeated his challenge. Red Pete gave a
+    reckless laugh and looked at his wife.</p>
+
+    <p>At which Mrs. Red Pete came forward. It seemed that she had
+    much to say, incoherently, furiously, vindictively, to the
+    ringleader. His soul would roast in hell for that day's work!
+    He called himself a man, skunkin' in the open and afraid to
+    show himself except with a crowd of, other "Kiyi's"
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page7"
+       id="page7"></a>[pg 7]</span> around a house of women and
+       children. Heaping insult upon insult, inveighing against his
+       low blood, his ancestors, his dubious origin, she at last
+       flung out a wild taunt of his invalid wife, the insult of a
+       woman to a woman, until his white face grew rigid, and only
+       that Western-American fetich of the sanctity of sex kept his
+       twitching fingers from the lock of his rifle. Even her
+       husband noticed it, and with a half-authoritative "Let up on
+       that, old gal," and a pat of his freed left hand on her
+       back, took his last parting. The ringleader, still white
+       under the lash of the woman's tongue, turned abruptly to the
+       second captive. "And if <i>you</i>'ve got anybody to say
+       'good-by' to, now's your
+       chance."</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page8"
+       id="page8"></a>[pg 8]</span>
+
+    <p>The man looked up. Nobody stirred or spoke. He was a
+    stranger there, being a chance confederate picked up by Red
+    Pete, and known to no one. Still young, but an outlaw from his
+    abandoned boyhood, of which father and mother were only a
+    forgotten dream, he loved horses and stole them, fully
+    accepting the frontier penalty of life for the interference
+    with that animal on which a man's life so often depended. But
+    he understood the good points of a horse, as was shown by the
+    one he bestrode&mdash;until a few days before the property of
+    Judge Boompointer. This was his sole distinction.</p>
+
+    <p>The unexpected question stirred him for a moment out of the
+    attitude <span class="pagenum"><a name="page9"
+       id="page9"></a>[pg 9]</span> of reckless indifference, for
+       attitude it was, and a part of his profession. But it may
+       have touched him that at that moment he was less than his
+       companion and his virago wife. However, he only shook his
+       head. As he did so his eye casually fell on the handsome
+       girl by the doorpost, who was looking at him. The
+       ringleader, too, may have been touched by his complete
+       loneliness, for <i>he</i> hesitated. At the same moment he
+       saw that the girl was looking at his friendless captive.</p>
+
+    <p>A grotesque idea struck him.</p>
+
+    <p>"Salomy Jane, ye might do worse than come yere and say
+    'good-by' to a dying man, and him a stranger," he
+    said.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page10"
+       id="page10"></a>[pg 10]</span>
+
+    <p>There seemed to be a subtle stroke of poetry and irony in
+    this that equally struck the apathetic crowd. It was well known
+    that Salomy Jane Clay thought no small potatoes of herself, and
+    always held off the local swain with a lazy nymph-like scorn.
+    Nevertheless, she slowly disengaged herself from the doorpost,
+    and, to everybody's astonishment, lounged with languid grace
+    and outstretched hand towards the prisoner. The color came into
+    the gray reckless mask which the doomed man wore as her right
+    hand grasped his left, just loosed by his captors. Then she
+    paused; her shy, fawn-like eyes grew bold, and fixed themselves
+    upon him. She took the chewing-gum
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page11"
+       id="page11"></a>[pg 11]</span> from her mouth, wiped her red
+       lips with the back of her hand, by a sudden lithe spring
+       placed her foot on his stirrup, and, bounding to the saddle,
+       threw her arms about his neck and pressed a kiss upon his
+       lips.</p>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:65%;">
+        <a href="images/16.jpg"><img width="100%"
+             src="images/16.jpg"
+             alt="" /></a>
+    </div>
+
+    <p>They remained thus for a hushed moment&mdash;the man on the
+    threshold of death, the young woman in the fullness of youth
+    and beauty&mdash;linked together. Then the crowd laughed; in
+    the audacious effrontery of the girl's act the ultimate fate of
+    the two men was forgotten. She slipped languidly to the ground;
+    <i>she</i> was the focus of all eyes,&mdash;she only! The
+    ringleader saw it and his opportunity. He shouted: "Time's
+    up&mdash;Forward!" urged his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page12"
+       id="page12"></a>[pg 12]</span> horse beside his captives,
+       and the next moment the whole cavalcade was sweeping over
+       the clearing into the darkening woods.</p>
+
+    <p>Their destination was Sawyer's Crossing, the headquarters of
+    the committee, where the council was still sitting, and where
+    both culprits were to expiate the offense of which that council
+    had already found them guilty. They rode in great and
+    breathless haste,&mdash;a haste in which, strangely enough,
+    even the captives seemed to join. That haste possibly prevented
+    them from noticing the singular change which had taken place in
+    the second captive since the episode of the kiss. His high
+    color remained, as if it had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page13"
+       id="page13"></a>[pg 13]</span> burned through his mask of
+       indifference; his eyes were quick, alert, and keen, his
+       mouth half open as if the girl's kiss still lingered there.
+       And that haste had made them careless, for the horse of the
+       man who led him slipped in a gopher-hole, rolled over,
+       unseated his rider, and even dragged the bound and helpless
+       second captive from Judge Boompointer's favorite mare. In an
+       instant they were all on their feet again, but in that
+       supreme moment the second captive felt the cords which bound
+       his arms had slipped to his wrists. By keeping his elbows to
+       his sides, and obliging the others to help him mount, it
+       escaped their notice. By riding close to his captors, and
+       keeping <span class="pagenum"><a name="page14"
+       id="page14"></a>[pg 14]</span> in the crush of the throng,
+       he further concealed the accident, slowly working his hands
+       downwards out of his bonds. Their way lay through a sylvan
+       wilderness, mid-leg deep in ferns, whose tall fronds brushed
+       their horses' sides in their furious gallop and concealed
+       the flapping of the captive's loosened cords. The peaceful
+       vista, more suggestive of the offerings of nymph and
+       shepherd than of human sacrifice, was in a strange contrast
+       to this whirlwind rush of stern, armed men. The westering
+       sun pierced the subdued light and the tremor of leaves with
+       yellow lances; birds started into song on blue and dove-like
+       wings, and on either side of the trail of this vengeful
+       storm could be <span class="pagenum"><a name="page15"
+       id="page15"></a>[pg 15]</span> heard the murmur of hidden
+       and tranquil waters. In a few moments they would be on the
+       open ridge, whence sloped the common turnpike to "Sawyer's,"
+       a mile away. It was the custom of returning cavalcades to
+       take this hill at headlong speed, with shouts and cries that
+       heralded their coming. They withheld the latter that day, as
+       inconsistent with their dignity; but, emerging from the
+       wood, swept silently like an avalanche down the slope. They
+       were well under way, looking only to their horses, when the
+       second captive slipped his right arm from the bonds and
+       succeeded in grasping the reins that lay trailing on the
+       horse's neck. A sudden <i>vaquero</i> jerk, which the
+       well-trained <span class="pagenum"><a name="page16"
+       id="page16"></a>[pg 16]</span> animal understood, threw him
+       on his haunches with his forelegs firmly planted on the
+       slope. The rest of the cavalcade swept on; the man who was
+       leading the captive's horse by the <i>riata</i>, thinking
+       only of another accident, dropped the line to save himself
+       from being dragged backwards from his horse. The captive
+       wheeled, and the next moment was galloping furiously up the
+       slope.</p>
+
+    <p>It was the work of a moment; a trained horse and an
+    experienced hand. The cavalcade had covered nearly fifty yards
+    before they could pull up; the freed captive had covered half
+    that distance uphill. The road was so narrow that only two
+    shots could be fired, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page17"
+       id="page17"></a>[pg 17]</span> and these broke dust two
+       yards ahead of the fugitive. They had not dared to fire low;
+       the horse was the more valuable animal. The fugitive knew
+       this in his extremity also, and would have gladly taken a
+       shot in his own leg to spare that of his horse. Five men
+       were detached to recapture or kill him. The latter seemed
+       inevitable. But he had calculated his chances; before they
+       could reload he had reached the woods again; winding in and
+       out between the pillared tree trunks, he offered no mark.
+       They knew his horse was superior to their own; at the end of
+       two hours they returned, for he had disappeared without
+       track or trail. The end was briefly told in the "Sierra
+       Record:"&mdash;</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page18"
+       id="page18"></a>[pg 18]</span>
+
+    <p>"Red Pete, the notorious horse-thief, who had so long eluded
+    justice, was captured and hung by the Sawyer's Crossing
+    Vigilantes last week; his confederate, unfortunately, escaped
+    on a valuable horse belonging to Judge Boompointer. The judge
+    had refused one thousand dollars for the horse only a week
+    before. As the thief, who is still at large, would find it
+    difficult to dispose of so valuable an animal without
+    detection, the chances are against either of them turning up
+    again."</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page19"
+       id="page19"></a>[pg 19]</span>
+
+    <h2>The Lady's Reflections</h2>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:65%;">
+        <a href="images/26.jpg"><img width="100%"
+             src="images/26.jpg"
+             alt="" /></a>
+    </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page21"
+       id="page21"></a>[pg 21]</span>
+
+    <h3>II</h3>
+
+    <p>Salomy Jane watched the cavalcade until it had disappeared.
+    Then she became aware that her brief popularity had passed.
+    Mrs. Red Pete, in stormy hysterics, had included her in a
+    sweeping denunciation of the whole universe, possibly for
+    simulating an emotion in which she herself was deficient. The
+    other women hated her for her momentary exaltation above them;
+    only the children still admired her as one who had undoubtedly
+    "canoodled" with a man "a-going to be hung"&mdash;a daring
+    flight beyond their wildest ambition. Salomy Jane
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page22"
+       id="page22"></a>[pg 22]</span> accepted the change with
+       charming unconcern. She put on her yellow nankeen
+       sunbonnet,&mdash;a hideous affair that would have ruined any
+       other woman, but which only enhanced the piquancy of her
+       fresh brunette skin,&mdash;tied the strings, letting the
+       blue-black braids escape below its frilled curtain behind,
+       jumped on her mustang with a casual display of agile ankles
+       in shapely white stockings, whistled to the hound, and
+       waving her hand with a "So long, sonny!" to the lately
+       bereft but admiring nephew, flapped and fluttered away in
+       her short brown holland gown.</p>
+
+    <p>Her father's house was four miles distant. Contrasted with
+    the cabin she <span class="pagenum"><a name="page23"
+       id="page23"></a>[pg 23]</span> had just quitted, it was a
+       superior dwelling, with a long "lean-to" at the rear, which
+       brought the eaves almost to the ground and made it look like
+       a low triangle. It had a long barn and cattle sheds, for
+       Madison Clay was a "great" stockraiser and the owner of a
+       "quarter section." It had a sitting-room and a parlor organ,
+       whose transportation thither had been a marvel of "packing."
+       These things were supposed to give Salomy Jane an undue
+       importance, but the girl's reserve and inaccessibility to
+       local advances were rather the result of a cool, lazy
+       temperament and the preoccupation of a large, protecting
+       admiration for her father, for some years a widower. For
+       <span class="pagenum"><a name="page24"
+       id="page24"></a>[pg 24]</span> Mr. Madison Clay's life had
+       been threatened in one or two feuds,&mdash;it was said, not
+       without cause,&mdash;and it is possible that the pathetic
+       spectacle of her father doing his visiting with a shotgun
+       may have touched her closely and somewhat prejudiced her
+       against the neighboring masculinity. The thought that
+       cattle, horses, and "quarter section" would one day be hers
+       did not disturb her calm. As for Mr. Clay, he accepted her
+       as housewifely, though somewhat "interfering," and, being
+       one of "his own womankind," therefore not without some
+       degree of merit.</p>
+
+    <p>"Wot's this yer I'm hearin' of your doin's over at Red
+    Pete's? Honey-foglin' <span class="pagenum"><a name="page25"
+       id="page25"></a>[pg 25]</span> with a horse-thief, eh?" said
+       Mr. Clay two days later at breakfast.</p>
+
+    <p>"I reckon you heard about the straight thing, then," said
+    Salomy Jane unconcernedly, without looking round.</p>
+
+    <p>"What do you kalkilate Rube will say to it? What are you
+    goin' to tell <i>him</i>?" said Mr. Clay sarcastically.</p>
+
+    <p>"Rube," or Reuben Waters, was a swain supposed to be favored
+    particularly by Mr. Clay. Salomy Jane looked up.</p>
+
+    <p>"I'll tell him that when <i>he's</i> on his way to be hung,
+    I'll kiss him,&mdash;not till then," said the young lady
+    brightly.</p>
+
+    <p>This delightful witticism suited the paternal humor, and Mr.
+    Clay smiled; <span class="pagenum"><a name="page26"
+       id="page26"></a>[pg 26]</span> but, nevertheless, he frowned
+       a moment afterwards.</p>
+
+    <p>"But this yer hoss-thief got away arter all, and that's a
+    hoss of a different color," he said grimly.</p>
+
+    <p>Salomy Jane put down her knife and fork. This was certainly
+    a new and different phase of the situation. She had never
+    thought of it before, and, strangely enough, for the first time
+    she became interested in the man. "Got away?" she repeated.
+    "Did they let him off?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Not much," said her father briefly. "Slipped his cords, and
+    going down the grade pulled up short, just like a
+    <i>vaquero</i> agin a lassoed bull, almost draggin' the man
+    leadin' him off his <span class="pagenum"><a name="page27"
+       id="page27"></a>[pg 27]</span> hoss, and then skyuted up the
+       grade. For that matter, on that hoss o' Judge Boompointer's
+       he mout have dragged the whole posse of 'em down on their
+       knees ef he liked! Sarved 'em right, too. Instead of
+       stringin' him up afore the door, or shootin' him on sight,
+       they must allow to take him down afore the hull committee
+       'for an example.' 'Example' be blowed! Ther' 's example
+       enough when some stranger comes unbeknownst slap onter a man
+       hanged to a tree and plugged full of holes. <i>That's</i> an
+       example, and <i>he</i> knows what it means. Wot more do ye
+       want? But then those Vigilantes is allus clingin' and
+       hangin' onter some mere scrap o'the law they're pretendin'
+       <span class="pagenum"><a name="page28"
+       id="page28"></a>[pg 28]</span> to despise. It makes me sick!
+       Why, when Jake Myers shot your ole Aunt Viney's second
+       husband, and I laid in wait for Jake afterwards in the
+       Butternut Hollow, did <i>I</i> tie him to his hoss and fetch
+       him down to your Aunt Viney's cabin 'for an example' before
+       I plugged him? No!" in deep disgust. "No! Why, I just
+       meandered through the wood, careless-like, till he comes
+       out, and I just rode up to him, and I said"&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>But Salomy Jane had heard her father's story before. Even
+    one's dearest relatives are apt to become tiresome in
+    narration. "I know, dad," she interrupted; "but this yer
+    man,&mdash;this hoss-thief,&mdash;did <i>he</i> get clean away
+    without gettin' hurt at
+    all?"</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page29"
+       id="page29"></a>[pg 29]</span>
+
+    <p>"He did, and unless he's fool enough to sell the hoss he kin
+    keep away, too. So ye see, ye can't ladle out purp stuff about
+    a 'dyin' stranger' to Rube. He won't swaller it."</p>
+
+    <p>"All the same, dad," returned the girl cheerfully, "I reckon
+    to say it, and say <i>more</i>; I'll tell him that ef <i>he</i>
+    manages to get away too, I'll marry him&mdash;there! But ye
+    don't ketch Rube takin' any such risks in gettin' ketched, or
+    in gettin' away arter!"</p>
+
+    <p>Madison Clay smiled grimly, pushed back his chair, rose,
+    dropped a perfunctory kiss on his daughter's hair, and, taking
+    his shotgun from the corner, departed on a peaceful Samaritan
+    mission to a cow who had dropped
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page30"
+       id="page30"></a>[pg 30]</span> a calf in the far pasture.
+       Inclined as he was to Reuben's wooing from his eligibility
+       as to property, he was conscious that he was sadly deficient
+       in certain qualities inherent in the Clay family. It
+       certainly would be a kind of <i>mésalliance</i>.</p>
+
+    <p>Left to herself, Salomy Jane stared a long while at the
+    coffee-pot, and then called the two squaws who assisted her in
+    her household duties, to clear away the things while she went
+    up to her own room to make her bed. Here she was confronted
+    with a possible prospect of that proverbial bed she might be
+    making in her willfulness, and on which she must lie, in the
+    photograph of a somewhat serious young man
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page31"
+       id="page31"></a>[pg 31]</span> of refined
+       features&mdash;Reuben Waters&mdash;stuck in her
+       window-frame. Salomy Jane smiled over her last witticism
+       regarding him and enjoyed it, like your true humorist, and
+       then, catching sight of her own handsome face in the little
+       mirror, smiled again. But wasn't it funny about that
+       horse-thief getting off after all? Good Lordy! Fancy Reuben
+       hearing he was alive and going round with that kiss of hers
+       set on his lips! She laughed again, a little more
+       abstractedly. And he had returned it like a man, holding her
+       tight and almost breathless, and he going to be hung the
+       next minute! Salomy Jane had been kissed at other times, by
+       force, chance, or stratagem. In a certain ingenuous
+       <span class="pagenum"><a name="page32"
+       id="page32"></a>[pg 32]</span> forfeit game of the locality
+       known as "I'm a-pinin'," many had "pined" for a "sweet kiss"
+       from Salomy Jane, which she had yielded in a sense of honor
+       and fair play. She had never been kissed like this
+       before&mdash;she would never again; and yet the man was
+       alive! And behold, she could see in the mirror that she was
+       blushing!</p>
+
+    <p>She should hardly know him again. A young man with very
+    bright eyes, a flushed and sunburnt cheek, a kind of fixed look
+    in the face, and no beard; no, none that she could feel. Yet he
+    was not at all like Reuben, not a bit. She took Reuben's
+    picture from the window, and laid it on her work-box. And to
+    think she did not even know this
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page33"
+       id="page33"></a>[pg 33]</span> young man's name! That was
+       queer. To be kissed by a man whom she might never know! Of
+       course he knew hers. She wondered if he remembered it and
+       her. But of course he was so glad to get off with his life
+       that he never thought of anything else. Yet she did not give
+       more than four or five minutes to these speculations, and,
+       like a sensible girl, thought of something else. Once again,
+       however, in opening the closet, she found the brown holland
+       gown she had worn on the day before; thought it very
+       unbecoming, and regretted that she had not worn her best
+       gown on her visit to Red Pete's cottage. On such an occasion
+       she really might have been more
+       impressive.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page35"
+       id="page35"></a>[pg 35]</span>
+
+    <h2>The Kiss Repeated</h2>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:65%;">
+        <a href="images/42.jpg"><img width="100%"
+             src="images/42.jpg"
+             alt="" /></a>
+    </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page37"
+       id="page37"></a>[pg 37]</span>
+
+    <h3>III</h3>
+
+    <p>When her father came home that night she asked him the news.
+    No, they had <i>not</i> captured the second horse-thief, who
+    was still at large. Judge Boompointer talked of invoking the
+    aid of the despised law. It remained, then, to see whether the
+    horse-thief was fool enough to try to get rid of the animal.
+    Red Pete's body had been delivered to his widow. Perhaps it
+    would only be neighborly for Salomy Jane to ride over to the
+    funeral. But Salomy Jane did not take to the suggestion kindly,
+    nor yet did she explain to her father that, as the other man
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page38"
+       id="page38"></a>[pg 38]</span> was still living, she did not
+       care to undergo a second disciplining at the widow's hands.
+       Nevertheless, she contrasted her situation with that of the
+       widow with a new and singular satisfaction. It might have
+       been Red Pete who had escaped. But he had not the grit of
+       the nameless one. She had already settled his heroic
+       quality.</p>
+
+    <p>"Ye ain't harkenin' to me, Salomy."</p>
+
+    <p>Salomy Jane started.</p>
+
+    <p>"Here I'm askin' ye if ye've see that hound Phil Larrabee
+    sneaking by yer to-day?"</p>
+
+    <p>Salomy Jane had not. But she became interested and
+    self-reproachful for she knew that Phil Larrabee was one of her
+    father's enemies. "He <span class="pagenum"><a name="page39"
+       id="page39"></a>[pg 39]</span> wouldn't dare to go by here
+       unless he knew you were out," she said quickly.</p>
+
+    <p>"That's what gets me," he said, scratching his grizzled
+    head. "I've been kind o' thinkin' o' him all day, and one of
+    them Chinamen said he saw him at Sawyer's Crossing. He was a
+    kind of friend o' Pete's wife. That's why I thought yer might
+    find out ef he'd been there." Salomy Jane grew more
+    self-reproachful at her father's self-interest in her
+    "neighborliness." "But that ain't all," continued Mr. Clay.
+    "Thar was tracks over the far pasture that warn't mine. I
+    followed them, and they went round and round the house two or
+    three times, ez ef they mout hev bin prowlin', and then I lost
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page40"
+       id="page40"></a>[pg 40]</span> 'em in the woods again. It's
+       just like that sneakin' hound Larrabee to hev bin lyin' in
+       wait for me and afraid to meet a man fair and square in the
+       open."</p>
+
+    <p>"You just lie low, dad, for a day or two more, and let me do
+    a little prowlin'," said the girl, with sympathetic indignation
+    in her dark eyes. "Ef it's that skunk, I'll spot him soon
+    enough and let you know whar he's hiding."</p>
+
+    <p>"You'll just stay where ye are, Salomy," said her father
+    decisively. "This ain't no woman's work&mdash;though I ain't
+    sayin' you haven't got more head for it than some men I know."
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page41"
+       id="page41"></a>[pg 41]</span> Nevertheless, that night,
+       after her father had gone to bed, Salomy Jane sat by the
+       open window of the sitting-room in an apparent attitude of
+       languid contemplation, but alert and intent of eye and ear.
+       It was a fine moonlit night. Two pines near the door,
+       solitary pickets of the serried ranks of distant forest,
+       cast long shadows like paths to the cottage, and sighed
+       their spiced breath in the windows. For there was no
+       frivolity of vine or flower round Salomy Jane's bower. The
+       clearing was too recent, the life too practical for vanities
+       like these. But the moon added a vague elusiveness to
+       everything, softened the rigid outlines of the sheds, gave
+       shadows to the lidless
+       <span class="pagenum"><a name="page42"
+       id="page42"></a>[pg 42]</span> windows, and touched with
+       merciful indirectness the hideous débris of refuse gravel
+       and the gaunt scars of burnt vegetation before the door.
+       Even Salomy Jane was affected by it, and exhaled something
+       between a sigh and a yawn with the breath of the pines. Then
+       she suddenly sat upright.</p>
+
+    <p>Her quick ear had caught a faint "click, click," in the
+    direction of the wood; her quicker instinct and rustic training
+    enabled her to determine that it was the ring of a horse's shoe
+    on flinty ground; her knowledge of the locality told her it
+    came from the spot where the trail passed over an outcrop of
+    flint scarcely a quarter of a mile from where she sat, and
+    within the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page43"
+       id="page43"></a>[pg 43]</span> clearing. It was no errant
+       "stock," for the foot was <i>shod</i> with iron; it was a
+       mounted trespasser by night, and boded no good to a man like
+       Clay.</p>
+
+    <p>She rose, threw her shawl over her head, more for disguise
+    than shelter, and passed out of the door. A sudden impulse made
+    her seize her father's shotgun from the corner where it
+    stood,&mdash;not that she feared any danger to herself, but
+    that it was an excuse. She made directly for the wood, keeping
+    in the shadow of the pines as long as she could. At the fringe
+    she halted; whoever was there must pass her before reaching the
+    house.</p>
+
+    <p>Then there seemed to be a suspense of all nature. Everything
+    was deadly <span class="pagenum"><a name="page44"
+       id="page44"></a>[pg 44]</span> still&mdash;even the
+       moonbeams appeared no longer tremulous; soon there was a
+       rustle as of some stealthy animal among the ferns, and then
+       a dismounted man stepped into the moonlight. It was the
+       horse-thief&mdash;the man she had kissed!</p>
+
+    <p>For a wild moment a strange fancy seized her usually sane
+    intellect and stirred her temperate blood. The news they had
+    told her was <i>not</i> true; he had been hung, and this was
+    his ghost! He looked as white and spirit-like in the moonlight,
+    dressed in the same clothes, as when she saw him last. He had
+    evidently seen her approaching, and moved quickly to meet her.
+    But in his haste he stumbled
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page45"
+       id="page45"></a>[pg 45]</span> slightly; she reflected
+       suddenly that ghosts did not stumble, and a feeling of
+       relief came over her. And it was no assassin of her father
+       that had been prowling around&mdash;only this unhappy
+       fugitive. A momentary color came into her cheek; her
+       coolness and hardihood returned; it was with a tinge of
+       sauciness in her voice that she said:&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>"I reckoned you were a ghost."</p>
+
+    <p>"I mout have been," he said, looking at her fixedly; "but I
+    reckon I'd have come back here all the same."</p>
+
+    <p>"It's a little riskier comin' back alive," she said, with a
+    levity that died on her lips, for a singular nervousness, half
+    fear and half expectation, was beginning to take the place
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page46"
+       id="page46"></a>[pg 46]</span> of her relief of a moment
+       ago. "Then it was <i>you</i> who was prowlin' round and
+       makin' tracks in the far pasture?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes; I came straight here when I got away."</p>
+
+    <p>She felt his eyes were burning her, but did not dare to
+    raise her own. "Why," she began, hesitated, and ended vaguely.
+    "<i>How</i> did you get here?"</p>
+
+    <p>"You helped me!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes. That kiss you gave me put life into me&mdash;gave me
+    strength to get away. I swore to myself I'd come back and thank
+    you, alive or dead."</p>
+
+    <p>Every word he said she could have anticipated, so plain the
+    situation <span class="pagenum"><a name="page47"
+       id="page47"></a>[pg 47]</span> seemed to her now. And every
+       word he said she knew was the truth. Yet her cool common
+       sense struggled against it.</p>
+
+    <p>"What's the use of your escaping, ef you're comin' back here
+    to be ketched again?" she said pertly.</p>
+
+    <p>He drew a little nearer to her, but seemed to her the more
+    awkward as she resumed her self-possession. His voice, too, was
+    broken, as if by exhaustion, as he said, catching his breath at
+    intervals:&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>"I'll tell you. You did more for me than you think. You made
+    another man o' me. I never had a man, woman, or child do to me
+    what you did. I never had a friend&mdash;only a pal like
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page48"
+       id="page48"></a>[pg 48]</span> Red Pete, who picked me up
+       'on shares.' I want to quit this yer&mdash;what I'm doin'. I
+       want to begin by doin' the square thing to you"&mdash;He
+       stopped, breathed hard, and then said brokenly, "My hoss is
+       over thar, staked out. I want to give him to you. Judge
+       Boompointer will give you a thousand dollars for him. I
+       ain't lyin'; it's God's truth! I saw it on the handbill agin
+       a tree. Take him, and I'll get away afoot. Take him. It's
+       the only thing I can do for you, and I know it don't half
+       pay for what you did. Take it; your father can get a reward
+       for you, if you can't."</p>
+
+    <p>Such were the ethics of this strange locality that neither
+    the man who <span class="pagenum"><a name="page49"
+       id="page49"></a>[pg 49]</span> made the offer nor the girl
+       to whom it was made was struck by anything that seemed
+       illogical or indelicate, or at all inconsistent with justice
+       or the horse-thief's real conversion. Salomy Jane
+       nevertheless dissented, from another and weaker reason.</p>
+
+    <p>"I don't want your hoss, though I reckon dad might; but
+    you're just starvin'. I'll get suthin'." She turned towards the
+    house.</p>
+
+    <p>"Say you'll take the hoss first," he said, grasping her
+    hand. At the touch she felt herself coloring and struggled,
+    expecting perhaps another kiss. But he dropped her hand. She
+    turned again with a saucy gesture, said, "Hol' on; I'll come
+    right back," and slipped <span class="pagenum"><a name="page50"
+       id="page50"></a>[pg 50]</span> away, the mere shadow of a
+       coy and flying nymph in the moonlight, until she reached the
+       house.</p>
+
+    <p>Here she not only procured food and whiskey, but added a
+    long dust-coat and hat of her father's to her burden. They
+    would serve as a disguise for him and hide that heroic figure,
+    which she thought everybody must now know as she did. Then she
+    rejoined him breathlessly. But he put the food and whiskey
+    aside.</p>
+
+    <p>"Listen," he said; "I've turned the hoss into your corral.
+    You'll find him there in the morning, and no one will know but
+    that he got lost and joined the other hosses."</p>
+
+    <p>Then she burst out. "But
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page51"
+       id="page51"></a>[pg 51]</span>
+       you&mdash;<i>you</i>&mdash;what will become of you? You'll
+       be ketched!"</p>
+
+    <p>"I'll manage to get away," he said in a low voice,
+    "ef&mdash;ef"&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>"Ef what?" she said tremblingly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Ef you'll put the heart in me again,&mdash;as you did!" he
+    gasped.</p>
+
+    <p>She tried to laugh&mdash;to move away. She could do neither.
+    Suddenly he caught her in his arms, with a long kiss, which she
+    returned again and again. Then they stood embraced as they had
+    embraced two days before, but no longer the same. For the cool,
+    lazy Salomy Jane had been transformed into another
+    woman&mdash;a passionate, clinging savage. Perhaps something of
+    her father's blood had <span class="pagenum"><a name="page52"
+       id="page52"></a>[pg 52]</span> surged within her at that
+       supreme moment. The man stood erect and determined.</p>
+
+    <p>"Wot's your name?" she whispered quickly. It was a woman's
+    quickest way of defining her feelings.</p>
+
+    <p>"Dart."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yer first name?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Jack."</p>
+
+    <p>"Let me go now, Jack. Lie low in the woods till to-morrow
+    sunup. I'll come again."</p>
+
+    <p>He released her. Yet she lingered a moment. "Put on those
+    things," she said, with a sudden happy flash of eyes and teeth,
+    "and lie close till I come." And then she sped away home.</p>
+
+    <p>But midway up the distance she felt
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page53"
+       id="page53"></a>[pg 53]</span> her feet going slower, and
+       something at her heartstrings seemed to be pulling her back.
+       She stopped, turned, and glanced to where he had been
+       standing. Had she seen him then, she might have returned.
+       But he had disappeared. She gave her first sigh, and then
+       ran quickly again. It must be nearly ten o'clock! It was not
+       very long to morning!</p>
+
+    <p>She was within a few steps of her own door, when the
+    sleeping woods and silent air appeared to suddenly awake with a
+    sharp "crack!"</p>
+
+    <p>She stopped, paralyzed. Another "crack!" followed, that
+    echoed over to the far corral. She recalled herself instantly
+    and dashed off wildly to the woods
+    again.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page54"
+       id="page54"></a>[pg 54]</span>
+
+    <p>As she ran she thought of one thing only. He had been
+    "dogged" by one of his old pursuers and attacked. But there
+    were two shots, and he was unarmed. Suddenly she remembered
+    that she had left her father's gun standing against the tree
+    where they were talking. Thank God! she may again have saved
+    him. She ran to the tree; the gun was gone. She ran hither and
+    thither, dreading at every step to fall upon his lifeless body.
+    A new thought struck her; she ran to the corral. The horse was
+    not there! He must have been able to regain it, and escaped,
+    <i>after</i> the shots had been fired. She drew a long breath
+    of relief, but it was caught up in an apprehension of alarm.
+    Her <span class="pagenum"><a name="page55"
+       id="page55"></a>[pg 55]</span> father, awakened from his
+       sleep by the shots, was hurriedly approaching her.</p>
+
+    <p>"What's up now, Salomy Jane?" he demanded excitedly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Nothin'," said the girl with an effort. "Nothin', at least,
+    that <i>I</i> can find." She was usually truthful because
+    fearless, and a lie stuck in her throat; but she was no longer
+    fearless, thinking of <i>him</i>. "I wasn't abed; so I ran out
+    as soon as I heard the shots fired," she answered in return to
+    his curious gaze.</p>
+
+    <p>"And you've hid my gun somewhere where it can't be found,"
+    he said reproachfully. "Ef it was that sneak Larrabee, and he
+    fired them shots to lure me out, he might have
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page56"
+       id="page56"></a>[pg 56]</span> potted me, without a show, a
+       dozen times in the last five minutes."</p>
+
+    <p>She had not thought since of her father's enemy! It might
+    indeed have been he who had attacked Jack. But she made a quick
+    point of the suggestion. "Run in, dad, run in and find the gun;
+    you've got no show out here without it." She seized him by the
+    shoulders from behind, shielding him from the woods, and
+    hurried him, half expostulating, half struggling, to the
+    house.</p>
+
+    <p>But there no gun was to be found. It was strange; it must
+    have been mislaid in some corner! Was he sure he had not left
+    it in the barn? But no matter now. The danger was over;
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page57"
+       id="page57"></a>[pg 57]</span> the Larrabee trick had
+       failed; he must go to bed now, and in the morning they would
+       make a search together. At the same time she had inwardly
+       resolved to rise before him and make another search of the
+       wood, and perhaps&mdash;fearful joy as she recalled her
+       promise!&mdash;find Jack alive and well, awaiting
+       her!</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page59"
+       id="page59"></a>[pg 59]</span>
+
+    <h2>Another Escape</h2>
+
+    <div class="figcenter"
+         style="width:65%;">
+        <a href="images/66.jpg"><img width="100%"
+             src="images/66.jpg"
+             alt="" /></a>
+    </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="page61"
+       id="page61"></a>[pg 61]</span>
+
+    <h3>IV</h3>
+
+    <p>Salomy Jane slept little that night, nor did her father. But
+    towards morning he fell into a tired man's slumber until the
+    sun was well up the horizon. Far different was it with his
+    daughter: she lay with her face to the window, her head half
+    lifted to catch every sound, from the creaking of the
+    sun-warped shingles above her head to the far-off moan of the
+    rising wind in the pine trees. Sometimes she fell into a
+    breathless, half-ecstatic trance, living over every moment of
+    the stolen interview; feeling the fugitive's arm still around
+    her, his kisses on her lips; hearing his
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page62"
+       id="page62"></a>[pg 62]</span> whispered voice in her
+       ears&mdash;the birth of her new life! This was followed
+       again by a period of agonizing dread&mdash;that he might
+       even then be lying, his life ebbing away, in the woods, with
+       her name on his lips, and she resting here inactive, until
+       she half started from her bed to go to his succor. And this
+       went on until a pale opal glow came into the sky, followed
+       by a still paler pink on the summit of the white Sierras,
+       when she rose and hurriedly began to dress. Still so
+       sanguine was her hope of meeting him, that she lingered yet
+       a moment to select the brown holland skirt and yellow
+       sunbonnet she had worn when she first saw him. And she had
+       only seen him twice! Only
+       <span class="pagenum"><a name="page63"
+       id="page63"></a>[pg 63]</span> <i>twice</i>! It would be
+       cruel, too cruel, not to see him again!</p>
+
+    <p>She crept softly down the stairs, listening to the
+    long-drawn breathing of her father in his bedroom, and then, by
+    the light of a guttering candle, scrawled a note to him,
+    begging him not to trust himself out of the house until she
+    returned from her search, and leaving the note open on the
+    table, swiftly ran out into the growing day.</p>
+
+    <p>Three hours afterwards Mr. Madison Clay awoke to the sound
+    of loud knocking. At first this forced itself upon his
+    consciousness as his daughter's regular morning summons, and
+    was responded to by a grunt of recognition and a nestling
+    closer in the blankets. <span class="pagenum"><a name="page64"
+       id="page64"></a>[pg 64]</span> Then he awoke with a start
+       and a muttered oath, remembering the events of last night,
+       and his intention to get up early, and rolled out of bed.
+       Becoming aware by this time that the knocking was at the
+       outer door, and hearing the shout of a familiar voice, he
+       hastily pulled on his boots, his jean trousers, and
+       fastening a single suspender over his shoulder as he
+       clattered downstairs, stood in the lower room. The door was
+       open, and waiting upon the threshold was his kinsman, an old
+       ally in many a blood-feud&mdash;Breckenridge Clay!</p>
+
+    <p>"You <i>are</i> a cool one, Mad!" said the latter in
+    half-admiring
+    indignation.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page65"
+       id="page65"></a>[pg 65]</span>
+
+    <p>"What's up?" said the bewildered Madison.</p>
+
+    <p>"<i>You</i> ought to be, and scootin' out o' this," said
+    Breckenridge grimly. "It's all very well to 'know nothin';' but
+    here Phil Larrabee's friends hev just picked him up, drilled
+    through with slugs and deader nor a crow, and now they're
+    lettin' loose Larrabee's two half-brothers on you. And you must
+    go like a derned fool and leave these yer things behind you in
+    the bresh," he went on querulously, lifting Madison Clay's
+    dust-coat, hat, and shotgun from his horse, which stood saddled
+    at the door. "Luckily I picked them up in the woods comin'
+    here. Ye ain't got more than time to get over the
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page66"
+       id="page66"></a>[pg 66]</span> state line and among your
+       folks thar afore they'll be down on you. Hustle, old man!
+       What are you gawkin' and starin' at?"</p>
+
+    <p>Madison Clay had stared amazed and
+    bewildered&mdash;horror-stricken. The incidents of the past
+    night for the first time flashed upon him
+    clearly&mdash;hopelessly! The shot; his finding Salomy Jane
+    alone in the woods; her confusion and anxiety to rid herself of
+    him; the disappearance of the shotgun; and now this new
+    discovery of the taking of his hat and coat for a disguise!
+    <i>She</i> had killed Phil Larrabee in that disguise, after
+    provoking his first harmless shot! She, his own child, Salomy
+    Jane, had disgraced herself by a man's crime; had
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page67"
+       id="page67"></a>[pg 67]</span> disgraced him by usurping his
+       right, and taking a mean advantage, by deceit, of a foe!</p>
+
+    <p>"Gimme that gun," he said hoarsely.</p>
+
+    <p>Breckenridge handed him the gun in wonder and slowly
+    gathering suspicion. Madison examined nipple and muzzle; one
+    barrel had been discharged. It was true! The gun dropped from
+    his hand.</p>
+
+    <p>"Look here, old man," said Breckenridge, with a darkening
+    face, "there's bin no foul play here. Thar's bin no hiring of
+    men, no deputy to do this job. <i>You</i> did it fair and
+    square&mdash;yourself?"</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes, by God!" burst out Madison Clay in a hoarse voice.
+    "Who says I didn't?"</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page68"
+       id="page68"></a>[pg 68]</span>
+
+    <p>Reassured, yet believing that Madison Clay had nerved
+    himself for the act by an over-draught of whiskey, which had
+    affected his memory, Breckenridge said curtly, "Then wake up
+    and 'lite' out, ef ye want me to stand by you."</p>
+
+    <p>"Go to the corral and pick me out a hoss," said Madison
+    slowly, yet not without a certain dignity of manner. "I've
+    suthin' to say to Salomy Jane afore I go." He was holding her
+    scribbled note, which he had just discovered, in his shaking
+    hand.</p>
+
+    <p>Struck by his kinsman's manner, and knowing the dependent
+    relations of father and daughter, Breckenridge nodded and
+    hurried away. Left to himself, Madison Clay ran his fingers
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page69"
+       id="page69"></a>[pg 69]</span> through his hair, and
+       straightened out the paper on which Salomy Jane had scrawled
+       her note, turned it over, and wrote on the back:&mdash;</p>
+
+    <blockquote>
+        <p>You might have told me you did it, and not leave your
+        ole father to find it out how you disgraced yourself and
+        him, too, by a low-down, underhanded, woman's trick! I've
+        said I done it, and took the blame myself, and all the
+        sneakiness of it that folks suspect. If I get away
+        alive&mdash;and I don't care much which&mdash;you needn't
+        foller. The house and stock are yours; but you ain't any
+        longer the daughter of your disgraced father,</p>
+    </blockquote>
+
+    <p class="author">Madison
+    Clay.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page70"
+       id="page70"></a>[pg 70]</span>
+
+    <p>He had scarcely finished the note when, with a clatter of
+    hoofs and a led horse, Breckenridge reappeared at the door
+    elate and triumphant. "You're in nigger luck, Mad! I found that
+    stole hoss of Judge Boompointer's had got away and strayed
+    among your stock in the corral. Take him and you're safe; he
+    can't be outrun this side of the state line."</p>
+
+    <p>"I ain't no hoss-thief," said Madison grimly.</p>
+
+    <p>"Nobody sez ye are, but you'd be wuss&mdash;a fool&mdash;ef
+    you didn't take him. I'm testimony that you found him among
+    your hosses; I'll tell Judge Boompointer you've got him, and ye
+    kin send him back when you're safe.
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page71"
+       id="page71"></a>[pg 71]</span> The judge will be mighty glad
+       to get him back, and call it quits. So ef you've writ to
+       Salomy Jane, come."</p>
+
+    <p>Madison Clay no longer hesitated. Salomy Jane might return
+    at any moment,&mdash;it would be part of her "fool
+    womanishness,"&mdash;and he was in no mood to see her before a
+    third party. He laid the note on the table, gave a hurried
+    glance around the house, which he grimly believed he was
+    leaving forever, and, striding to the door, leaped on the
+    stolen horse, and swept away with his kinsman.</p>
+
+    <p>But that note lay for a week undisturbed on the table in
+    full view of the open door. The house was invaded by leaves,
+    pine cones, birds, and squirrels
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page72"
+       id="page72"></a>[pg 72]</span> during the hot, silent, empty
+       days, and at night by shy, stealthy creatures, but never
+       again, day or night, by any of the Clay family. It was known
+       in the district that Clay had flown across the state line,
+       his daughter was believed to have joined him the next day,
+       and the house was supposed to be locked up. It lay off the
+       main road, and few passed that way. The starving cattle in
+       the corral at last broke bounds and spread over the woods.
+       And one night a stronger blast than usual swept through the
+       house, carried the note from the table to the floor, where,
+       whirled into a crack in the flooring, it slowly rotted.</p>
+
+    <p>But though the sting of her father's
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="page73"
+       id="page73"></a>[pg 73]</span> reproach was spared her,
+       Salomy Jane had no need of the letter to know what had
+       happened. For as she entered the woods in the dim light of
+       that morning she saw the figure of Dart gliding from the
+       shadow of a pine towards her. The unaffected cry of joy that
+       rose from her lips died there as she caught sight of his
+       face in the open light.</p>
+
+    <p>"You are hurt," she said, clutching his arm
+    passionately.</p>
+
+    <p>"No," he said. "But I wouldn't mind that if"&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>"You're thinkin' I was afeard to come back last night when I
+    heard the shootin', but I <i>did</i> come," she went on
+    feverishly. "I ran back here when I heard the two shots, but
+    you were <span class="pagenum"><a name="page74"
+       id="page74"></a>[pg 74]</span> gone. I went to the corral,
+       but your hoss wasn't there, and I thought you'd got
+       away."</p>
+
+    <p>"I <i>did</i> get away," said Dart gloomily. "I killed the
+    man, thinkin' he was huntin' <i>me</i>, and forgettin' I was
+    disguised. He thought I was your father."</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," said the girl joyfully, "he was after dad, and
+    <i>you</i>&mdash;you killed him." She again caught his hand
+    admiringly.</p>
+
+    <p>But he did not respond. Possibly there were points of honor
+    which this horse-thief felt vaguely with her father. "Listen,"
+    he said grimly. "Others think it was your father killed him.
+    When <i>I</i> did it&mdash;for he fired at me first&mdash;I ran
+    to the corral again and <span class="pagenum"><a name="page75"
+       id="page75"></a>[pg 75]</span> took my hoss, thinkin' I
+       might be follered. I made a clear circuit of the house, and
+       when I found he was the only one, and no one was follerin',
+       I come back here and took off my disguise. Then I heard his
+       friends find him in the wood, and I know they suspected your
+       father. And then another man come through the woods while I
+       was hidin' and found the clothes and took them away." He
+       stopped and stared at her gloomily.</p>
+
+    <p>But all this was unintelligible to the girl. "Dad would have
+    got the better of him ef you hadn't," she said eagerly, "so
+    what's the difference?"</p>
+
+    <p>"All the same," he said gloomily, "I must take his
+    place."</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page76"
+       id="page76"></a>[pg 76]</span>
+
+    <p>She did not understand, but turned her head to her master.
+    "Then you'll go back with me and tell him <i>all</i>?" she said
+    obediently.</p>
+
+    <p>"Yes," he said.</p>
+
+    <p>She put her hand in his, and they crept out of the wood
+    together. She foresaw a thousand difficulties, but, chiefest of
+    all, that he did not love as she did. <i>She</i> would not have
+    taken these risks against their happiness.</p>
+
+    <p>But alas for ethics and heroism. As they were issuing from
+    the wood they heard the sound of galloping hoofs, and had
+    barely time to hide themselves before Madison Clay, on the
+    stolen horse of Judge Boompointer, swept past them with his
+    kinsman.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page77"
+       id="page77"></a>[pg 77]</span>
+
+    <p>Salomy Jane turned to her lover.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>And here I might, as a moral romancer, pause, leaving the
+    guilty, passionate girl eloped with her disreputable lover,
+    destined to lifelong shame and misery, misunderstood to the
+    last by a criminal, fastidious parent. But I am confronted by
+    certain facts, on which this romance is based. A month later a
+    handbill was posted on one of the sentinel pines, announcing
+    that the property would be sold by auction to the highest
+    bidder by Mrs. John Dart, daughter of Madison Clay, Esq., and
+    it was sold accordingly. Still later&mdash;by ten
+    years&mdash;the chronicler of these pages visited a certain
+    "stock" or <span class="pagenum"><a name="page78"
+       id="page78"></a>[pg 78]</span> "breeding farm," in the "Blue
+       Grass Country," famous for the popular racers it has
+       produced. He was told that the owner was the "best judge of
+       horse-flesh in the country." "Small wonder," added his
+       informant, "for they say as a young man out in California he
+       was a horse-thief, and only saved himself by eloping with
+       some rich farmer's daughter. But he's a straight-out and
+       respectable man now, whose word about horses can't be
+       bought; and as for his wife, <i>she</i>'s a beauty! To see
+       her at the 'Springs,' rigged out in the latest fashion,
+       you'd never think she had ever lived out of New York or
+       wasn't the wife of one of its millionaires."</p>
+
+    <center>
+        The Riverside Press
+    </center>
+
+    <center>
+        CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
+    </center>
+
+    <center>
+        U.S.A
+    </center>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Salomy Jane, by Bret Harte
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+</body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Salomy Jane, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Salomy Jane
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: February 27, 2005 [EBook #15192]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SALOMY JANE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, William Flis, and the PG Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+SALOMY JANE
+
+BY
+
+BRET HARTE
+
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+
+HARRISON FISHER AND
+
+ARTHUR I. KELLER
+
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+
+HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+
+THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE
+
+1910
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY BRET HARTE
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
+
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+_Published October 1910_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  I A KISS AND AN ESCAPE      1
+
+  II THE LADY'S REFLECTIONS      19
+
+  III THE KISS REPEATED      35
+
+  IV ANOTHER ESCAPE      59
+
+A KISS AND AN ESCAPE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Only one shot had been fired. It had gone wide of its mark,--the
+ringleader of the Vigilantes,--and had left Red Pete, who had fired
+it, covered by their rifles and at their mercy. For his hand had been
+cramped by hard riding, and his eye distracted by their sudden onset,
+and so the inevitable end had come. He submitted sullenly to his
+captors; his companion fugitive and horse-thief gave up the protracted
+struggle with a feeling not unlike relief. Even the hot and revengeful
+victors were content. They had taken their men alive. At any
+time during the long chase they could have brought them down by a
+rifle-shot, but it would have been unsportsmanlike, and have ended
+in a free fight, instead of an example. And, for the matter of that,
+their doom was already sealed. Their end, by a rope and a tree,
+although not sanctified by law, would have at least the deliberation
+of justice. It was the tribute paid by the Vigilantes to that order
+which they had themselves disregarded in the pursuit and capture. Yet
+this strange logic of the frontier sufficed them, and gave a certain
+dignity to the climax.
+
+"Ef you've got anything to say to your folks, say it _now_, and say it
+quick," said the ringleader.
+
+Red Pete glanced around him. He had been run to earth at his own cabin
+in the clearing, whence a few relations and friends, mostly women and
+children, non-combatants, had outflowed, gazing vacantly at the twenty
+Vigilantes who surrounded them. All were accustomed to scenes of
+violence, blood-feud, chase, and hardship; it was only the suddenness
+of the onset and its quick result that had surprised them. They looked
+on with dazed curiosity and some disappointment; there had been no
+fight to speak of--no spectacle! A boy, nephew of Red Pete, got upon
+the rain-barrel to view the proceedings more comfortably; a tall,
+handsome, lazy Kentucky girl, a visiting neighbor, leaned against the
+doorpost, chewing gum. Only a yellow hound was actively perplexed.
+He could not make out if a hunt were just over or beginning, and ran
+eagerly backwards and forwards, leaping alternately upon the captives
+and the captors.
+
+The ringleader repeated his challenge. Red Pete gave a reckless laugh
+and looked at his wife.
+
+At which Mrs. Red Pete came forward. It seemed that she had much to
+say, incoherently, furiously, vindictively, to the ringleader. His
+soul would roast in hell for that day's work! He called himself a man,
+skunkin' in the open and afraid to show himself except with a crowd
+of, other "Kiyi's" around a house of women and children. Heaping
+insult upon insult, inveighing against his low blood, his ancestors,
+his dubious origin, she at last flung out a wild taunt of his invalid
+wife, the insult of a woman to a woman, until his white face grew
+rigid, and only that Western-American fetich of the sanctity of
+sex kept his twitching fingers from the lock of his rifle. Even her
+husband noticed it, and with a half-authoritative "Let up on that,
+old gal," and a pat of his freed left hand on her back, took his last
+parting. The ringleader, still white under the lash of the woman's
+tongue, turned abruptly to the second captive. "And if _you_'ve got
+anybody to say 'good-by' to, now's your chance."
+
+The man looked up. Nobody stirred or spoke. He was a stranger there,
+being a chance confederate picked up by Red Pete, and known to no one.
+Still young, but an outlaw from his abandoned boyhood, of which father
+and mother were only a forgotten dream, he loved horses and
+stole them, fully accepting the frontier penalty of life for the
+interference with that animal on which a man's life so often depended.
+But he understood the good points of a horse, as was shown by the
+one he bestrode--until a few days before the property of Judge
+Boompointer. This was his sole distinction.
+
+The unexpected question stirred him for a moment out of the attitude
+of reckless indifference, for attitude it was, and a part of his
+profession. But it may have touched him that at that moment he was
+less than his companion and his virago wife. However, he only shook
+his head. As he did so his eye casually fell on the handsome girl by
+the doorpost, who was looking at him. The ringleader, too, may have
+been touched by his complete loneliness, for _he_ hesitated. At
+the same moment he saw that the girl was looking at his friendless
+captive.
+
+A grotesque idea struck him.
+
+"Salomy Jane, ye might do worse than come yere and say 'good-by' to a
+dying man, and him a stranger," he said.
+
+There seemed to be a subtle stroke of poetry and irony in this that
+equally struck the apathetic crowd. It was well known that Salomy
+Jane Clay thought no small potatoes of herself, and always held off
+the local swain with a lazy nymph-like scorn. Nevertheless, she
+slowly disengaged herself from the doorpost, and, to everybody's
+astonishment, lounged with languid grace and outstretched hand towards
+the prisoner. The color came into the gray reckless mask which the
+doomed man wore as her right hand grasped his left, just loosed by his
+captors. Then she paused; her shy, fawn-like eyes grew bold, and fixed
+themselves upon him. She took the chewing-gum from her mouth, wiped
+her red lips with the back of her hand, by a sudden lithe spring
+placed her foot on his stirrup, and, bounding to the saddle, threw her
+arms about his neck and pressed a kiss upon his lips.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+They remained thus for a hushed moment--the man on the threshold of
+death, the young woman in the fullness of youth and beauty--linked
+together. Then the crowd laughed; in the audacious effrontery of the
+girl's act the ultimate fate of the two men was forgotten. She slipped
+languidly to the ground; _she_ was the focus of all eyes,--she
+only! The ringleader saw it and his opportunity. He shouted: "Time's
+up--Forward!" urged his horse beside his captives, and the next moment
+the whole cavalcade was sweeping over the clearing into the darkening
+woods.
+
+Their destination was Sawyer's Crossing, the headquarters of the
+committee, where the council was still sitting, and where both
+culprits were to expiate the offense of which that council had already
+found them guilty. They rode in great and breathless haste,--a haste
+in which, strangely enough, even the captives seemed to join. That
+haste possibly prevented them from noticing the singular change which
+had taken place in the second captive since the episode of the kiss.
+His high color remained, as if it had burned through his mask of
+indifference; his eyes were quick, alert, and keen, his mouth half
+open as if the girl's kiss still lingered there. And that haste had
+made them careless, for the horse of the man who led him slipped in
+a gopher-hole, rolled over, unseated his rider, and even dragged the
+bound and helpless second captive from Judge Boompointer's favorite
+mare. In an instant they were all on their feet again, but in that
+supreme moment the second captive felt the cords which bound his arms
+had slipped to his wrists. By keeping his elbows to his sides, and
+obliging the others to help him mount, it escaped their notice. By
+riding close to his captors, and keeping in the crush of the throng,
+he further concealed the accident, slowly working his hands downwards
+out of his bonds. Their way lay through a sylvan wilderness, mid-leg
+deep in ferns, whose tall fronds brushed their horses' sides in their
+furious gallop and concealed the flapping of the captive's loosened
+cords. The peaceful vista, more suggestive of the offerings of nymph
+and shepherd than of human sacrifice, was in a strange contrast to
+this whirlwind rush of stern, armed men. The westering sun pierced
+the subdued light and the tremor of leaves with yellow lances; birds
+started into song on blue and dove-like wings, and on either side of
+the trail of this vengeful storm could be heard the murmur of hidden
+and tranquil waters. In a few moments they would be on the open ridge,
+whence sloped the common turnpike to "Sawyer's," a mile away. It
+was the custom of returning cavalcades to take this hill at headlong
+speed, with shouts and cries that heralded their coming. They withheld
+the latter that day, as inconsistent with their dignity; but, emerging
+from the wood, swept silently like an avalanche down the slope. They
+were well under way, looking only to their horses, when the second
+captive slipped his right arm from the bonds and succeeded in grasping
+the reins that lay trailing on the horse's neck. A sudden _vaquero_
+jerk, which the well-trained animal understood, threw him on his
+haunches with his forelegs firmly planted on the slope. The rest of
+the cavalcade swept on; the man who was leading the captive's horse
+by the _riata_, thinking only of another accident, dropped the line to
+save himself from being dragged backwards from his horse. The captive
+wheeled, and the next moment was galloping furiously up the slope.
+
+It was the work of a moment; a trained horse and an experienced hand.
+The cavalcade had covered nearly fifty yards before they could pull
+up; the freed captive had covered half that distance uphill. The road
+was so narrow that only two shots could be fired, and these broke dust
+two yards ahead of the fugitive. They had not dared to fire low; the
+horse was the more valuable animal. The fugitive knew this in his
+extremity also, and would have gladly taken a shot in his own leg to
+spare that of his horse. Five men were detached to recapture or kill
+him. The latter seemed inevitable. But he had calculated his chances;
+before they could reload he had reached the woods again; winding in
+and out between the pillared tree trunks, he offered no mark. They
+knew his horse was superior to their own; at the end of two hours they
+returned, for he had disappeared without track or trail. The end was
+briefly told in the "Sierra Record:"--
+
+"Red Pete, the notorious horse-thief, who had so long eluded justice,
+was captured and hung by the Sawyer's Crossing Vigilantes last week;
+his confederate, unfortunately, escaped on a valuable horse belonging
+to Judge Boompointer. The judge had refused one thousand dollars for
+the horse only a week before. As the thief, who is still at large,
+would find it difficult to dispose of so valuable an animal without
+detection, the chances are against either of them turning up again."
+
+
+
+
+THE LADY'S REFLECTIONS
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Salomy Jane watched the cavalcade until it had disappeared. Then she
+became aware that her brief popularity had passed. Mrs. Red Pete,
+in stormy hysterics, had included her in a sweeping denunciation of
+the whole universe, possibly for simulating an emotion in which she
+herself was deficient. The other women hated her for her momentary
+exaltation above them; only the children still admired her as one who
+had undoubtedly "canoodled" with a man "a-going to be hung"--a daring
+flight beyond their wildest ambition. Salomy Jane accepted the change
+with charming unconcern. She put on her yellow nankeen sunbonnet,--a
+hideous affair that would have ruined any other woman, but which only
+enhanced the piquancy of her fresh brunette skin,--tied the strings,
+letting the blue-black braids escape below its frilled curtain behind,
+jumped on her mustang with a casual display of agile ankles in shapely
+white stockings, whistled to the hound, and waving her hand with a "So
+long, sonny!" to the lately bereft but admiring nephew, flapped and
+fluttered away in her short brown holland gown.
+
+Her father's house was four miles distant. Contrasted with the
+cabin she had just quitted, it was a superior dwelling, with a long
+"lean-to" at the rear, which brought the eaves almost to the ground
+and made it look like a low triangle. It had a long barn and cattle
+sheds, for Madison Clay was a "great" stockraiser and the owner of
+a "quarter section." It had a sitting-room and a parlor organ, whose
+transportation thither had been a marvel of "packing." These things
+were supposed to give Salomy Jane an undue importance, but the
+girl's reserve and inaccessibility to local advances were rather the
+result of a cool, lazy temperament and the preoccupation of a large,
+protecting admiration for her father, for some years a widower. For
+Mr. Madison Clay's life had been threatened in one or two feuds,--it
+was said, not without cause,--and it is possible that the pathetic
+spectacle of her father doing his visiting with a shotgun may
+have touched her closely and somewhat prejudiced her against the
+neighboring masculinity. The thought that cattle, horses, and "quarter
+section" would one day be hers did not disturb her calm. As for Mr.
+Clay, he accepted her as housewifely, though somewhat "interfering,"
+and, being one of "his own womankind," therefore not without some
+degree of merit.
+
+"Wot's this yer I'm hearin' of your doin's over at Red Pete's?
+Honey-foglin' with a horse-thief, eh?" said Mr. Clay two days later at
+breakfast.
+
+"I reckon you heard about the straight thing, then," said Salomy Jane
+unconcernedly, without looking round.
+
+"What do you kalkilate Rube will say to it? What are you goin' to tell
+_him_?" said Mr. Clay sarcastically.
+
+"Rube," or Reuben Waters, was a swain supposed to be favored
+particularly by Mr. Clay. Salomy Jane looked up.
+
+"I'll tell him that when _he's_ on his way to be hung, I'll kiss
+him,--not till then," said the young lady brightly.
+
+This delightful witticism suited the paternal humor, and Mr. Clay
+smiled; but, nevertheless, he frowned a moment afterwards.
+
+"But this yer hoss-thief got away arter all, and that's a hoss of a
+different color," he said grimly.
+
+Salomy Jane put down her knife and fork. This was certainly a new and
+different phase of the situation. She had never thought of it before,
+and, strangely enough, for the first time she became interested in the
+man. "Got away?" she repeated. "Did they let him off?"
+
+"Not much," said her father briefly. "Slipped his cords, and going
+down the grade pulled up short, just like a _vaquero_ agin a
+lassoed bull, almost draggin' the man leadin' him off his hoss, and
+then skyuted up the grade. For that matter, on that hoss o' Judge
+Boompointer's he mout have dragged the whole posse of 'em down on
+their knees ef he liked! Sarved 'em right, too. Instead of stringin'
+him up afore the door, or shootin' him on sight, they must allow to
+take him down afore the hull committee 'for an example.' 'Example' be
+blowed! Ther' 's example enough when some stranger comes unbeknownst
+slap onter a man hanged to a tree and plugged full of holes. _That's_
+an example, and _he_ knows what it means. Wot more do ye want? But
+then those Vigilantes is allus clingin' and hangin' onter some mere
+scrap o'the law they're pretendin' to despise. It makes me sick! Why,
+when Jake Myers shot your ole Aunt Viney's second husband, and I laid
+in wait for Jake afterwards in the Butternut Hollow, did _I_ tie him
+to his hoss and fetch him down to your Aunt Viney's cabin 'for an
+example' before I plugged him? No!" in deep disgust. "No! Why, I just
+meandered through the wood, careless-like, till he comes out, and I
+just rode up to him, and I said"--
+
+But Salomy Jane had heard her father's story before. Even one's
+dearest relatives are apt to become tiresome in narration. "I know,
+dad," she interrupted; "but this yer man,--this hoss-thief,--did _he_
+get clean away without gettin' hurt at all?"
+
+"He did, and unless he's fool enough to sell the hoss he kin keep
+away, too. So ye see, ye can't ladle out purp stuff about a 'dyin'
+stranger' to Rube. He won't swaller it."
+
+"All the same, dad," returned the girl cheerfully, "I reckon to say
+it, and say _more_; I'll tell him that ef _he_ manages to get away
+too, I'll marry him--there! But ye don't ketch Rube takin' any such
+risks in gettin' ketched, or in gettin' away arter!"
+
+Madison Clay smiled grimly, pushed back his chair, rose, dropped a
+perfunctory kiss on his daughter's hair, and, taking his shotgun from
+the corner, departed on a peaceful Samaritan mission to a cow who
+had dropped a calf in the far pasture. Inclined as he was to Reuben's
+wooing from his eligibility as to property, he was conscious that he
+was sadly deficient in certain qualities inherent in the Clay family.
+It certainly would be a kind of _mesalliance_.
+
+Left to herself, Salomy Jane stared a long while at the coffee-pot,
+and then called the two squaws who assisted her in her household
+duties, to clear away the things while she went up to her own room to
+make her bed. Here she was confronted with a possible prospect of that
+proverbial bed she might be making in her willfulness, and on which
+she must lie, in the photograph of a somewhat serious young man of
+refined features--Reuben Waters--stuck in her window-frame. Salomy
+Jane smiled over her last witticism regarding him and enjoyed it, like
+your true humorist, and then, catching sight of her own handsome face
+in the little mirror, smiled again. But wasn't it funny about that
+horse-thief getting off after all? Good Lordy! Fancy Reuben hearing he
+was alive and going round with that kiss of hers set on his lips! She
+laughed again, a little more abstractedly. And he had returned it like
+a man, holding her tight and almost breathless, and he going to be
+hung the next minute! Salomy Jane had been kissed at other times, by
+force, chance, or stratagem. In a certain ingenuous forfeit game of
+the locality known as "I'm a-pinin'," many had "pined" for a "sweet
+kiss" from Salomy Jane, which she had yielded in a sense of honor and
+fair play. She had never been kissed like this before--she would never
+again; and yet the man was alive! And behold, she could see in the
+mirror that she was blushing!
+
+She should hardly know him again. A young man with very bright eyes,
+a flushed and sunburnt cheek, a kind of fixed look in the face, and
+no beard; no, none that she could feel. Yet he was not at all like
+Reuben, not a bit. She took Reuben's picture from the window, and
+laid it on her work-box. And to think she did not even know this young
+man's name! That was queer. To be kissed by a man whom she might never
+know! Of course he knew hers. She wondered if he remembered it and
+her. But of course he was so glad to get off with his life that he
+never thought of anything else. Yet she did not give more than four or
+five minutes to these speculations, and, like a sensible girl, thought
+of something else. Once again, however, in opening the closet, she
+found the brown holland gown she had worn on the day before; thought
+it very unbecoming, and regretted that she had not worn her best gown
+on her visit to Red Pete's cottage. On such an occasion she really
+might have been more impressive.
+
+
+
+
+THE KISS REPEATED
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+When her father came home that night she asked him the news. No, they
+had _not_ captured the second horse-thief, who was still at large.
+Judge Boompointer talked of invoking the aid of the despised law. It
+remained, then, to see whether the horse-thief was fool enough to try
+to get rid of the animal. Red Pete's body had been delivered to his
+widow. Perhaps it would only be neighborly for Salomy Jane to ride
+over to the funeral. But Salomy Jane did not take to the suggestion
+kindly, nor yet did she explain to her father that, as the other man
+was still living, she did not care to undergo a second disciplining
+at the widow's hands. Nevertheless, she contrasted her situation with
+that of the widow with a new and singular satisfaction. It might have
+been Red Pete who had escaped. But he had not the grit of the nameless
+one. She had already settled his heroic quality.
+
+"Ye ain't harkenin' to me, Salomy."
+
+Salomy Jane started.
+
+"Here I'm askin' ye if ye've see that hound Phil Larrabee sneaking by
+yer to-day?"
+
+Salomy Jane had not. But she became interested and self-reproachful
+for she knew that Phil Larrabee was one of her father's enemies. "He
+wouldn't dare to go by here unless he knew you were out," she said
+quickly.
+
+"That's what gets me," he said, scratching his grizzled head. "I've
+been kind o' thinkin' o' him all day, and one of them Chinamen said he
+saw him at Sawyer's Crossing. He was a kind of friend o' Pete's wife.
+That's why I thought yer might find out ef he'd been there." Salomy
+Jane grew more self-reproachful at her father's self-interest in her
+"neighborliness." "But that ain't all," continued Mr. Clay. "Thar was
+tracks over the far pasture that warn't mine. I followed them, and
+they went round and round the house two or three times, ez ef they
+mout hev bin prowlin', and then I lost 'em in the woods again. It's
+just like that sneakin' hound Larrabee to hev bin lyin' in wait for me
+and afraid to meet a man fair and square in the open."
+
+"You just lie low, dad, for a day or two more, and let me do a little
+prowlin'," said the girl, with sympathetic indignation in her dark
+eyes. "Ef it's that skunk, I'll spot him soon enough and let you know
+whar he's hiding."
+
+"You'll just stay where ye are, Salomy," said her father decisively.
+"This ain't no woman's work--though I ain't sayin' you haven't got
+more head for it than some men I know." Nevertheless, that night,
+after her father had gone to bed, Salomy Jane sat by the open window
+of the sitting-room in an apparent attitude of languid contemplation,
+but alert and intent of eye and ear. It was a fine moonlit night. Two
+pines near the door, solitary pickets of the serried ranks of distant
+forest, cast long shadows like paths to the cottage, and sighed their
+spiced breath in the windows. For there was no frivolity of vine or
+flower round Salomy Jane's bower. The clearing was too recent, the
+life too practical for vanities like these. But the moon added a vague
+elusiveness to everything, softened the rigid outlines of the sheds,
+gave shadows to the lidless windows, and touched with merciful
+indirectness the hideous debris of refuse gravel and the gaunt scars
+of burnt vegetation before the door. Even Salomy Jane was affected by
+it, and exhaled something between a sigh and a yawn with the breath of
+the pines. Then she suddenly sat upright.
+
+Her quick ear had caught a faint "click, click," in the direction
+of the wood; her quicker instinct and rustic training enabled her to
+determine that it was the ring of a horse's shoe on flinty ground;
+her knowledge of the locality told her it came from the spot where
+the trail passed over an outcrop of flint scarcely a quarter of a mile
+from where she sat, and within the clearing. It was no errant "stock,"
+for the foot was _shod_ with iron; it was a mounted trespasser by
+night, and boded no good to a man like Clay.
+
+She rose, threw her shawl over her head, more for disguise than
+shelter, and passed out of the door. A sudden impulse made her seize
+her father's shotgun from the corner where it stood,--not that she
+feared any danger to herself, but that it was an excuse. She made
+directly for the wood, keeping in the shadow of the pines as long as
+she could. At the fringe she halted; whoever was there must pass her
+before reaching the house.
+
+Then there seemed to be a suspense of all nature. Everything was
+deadly still--even the moonbeams appeared no longer tremulous; soon
+there was a rustle as of some stealthy animal among the ferns,
+and then a dismounted man stepped into the moonlight. It was the
+horse-thief--the man she had kissed!
+
+For a wild moment a strange fancy seized her usually sane intellect
+and stirred her temperate blood. The news they had told her was _not_
+true; he had been hung, and this was his ghost! He looked as white and
+spirit-like in the moonlight, dressed in the same clothes, as when she
+saw him last. He had evidently seen her approaching, and moved quickly
+to meet her. But in his haste he stumbled slightly; she reflected
+suddenly that ghosts did not stumble, and a feeling of relief came
+over her. And it was no assassin of her father that had been prowling
+around--only this unhappy fugitive. A momentary color came into her
+cheek; her coolness and hardihood returned; it was with a tinge of
+sauciness in her voice that she said:--
+
+"I reckoned you were a ghost."
+
+"I mout have been," he said, looking at her fixedly; "but I reckon I'd
+have come back here all the same."
+
+"It's a little riskier comin' back alive," she said, with a levity
+that died on her lips, for a singular nervousness, half fear and half
+expectation, was beginning to take the place of her relief of a moment
+ago. "Then it was _you_ who was prowlin' round and makin' tracks in
+the far pasture?"
+
+"Yes; I came straight here when I got away."
+
+She felt his eyes were burning her, but did not dare to raise her own.
+"Why," she began, hesitated, and ended vaguely. "_How_ did you get
+here?"
+
+"You helped me!"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes. That kiss you gave me put life into me--gave me strength to get
+away. I swore to myself I'd come back and thank you, alive or dead."
+
+Every word he said she could have anticipated, so plain the situation
+seemed to her now. And every word he said she knew was the truth. Yet
+her cool common sense struggled against it.
+
+"What's the use of your escaping, ef you're comin' back here to be
+ketched again?" she said pertly.
+
+He drew a little nearer to her, but seemed to her the more awkward as
+she resumed her self-possession. His voice, too, was broken, as if by
+exhaustion, as he said, catching his breath at intervals:--
+
+"I'll tell you. You did more for me than you think. You made another
+man o' me. I never had a man, woman, or child do to me what you did.
+I never had a friend--only a pal like Red Pete, who picked me up 'on
+shares.' I want to quit this yer--what I'm doin'. I want to begin by
+doin' the square thing to you"--He stopped, breathed hard, and then
+said brokenly, "My hoss is over thar, staked out. I want to give him
+to you. Judge Boompointer will give you a thousand dollars for him. I
+ain't lyin'; it's God's truth! I saw it on the handbill agin a tree.
+Take him, and I'll get away afoot. Take him. It's the only thing I can
+do for you, and I know it don't half pay for what you did. Take it;
+your father can get a reward for you, if you can't."
+
+Such were the ethics of this strange locality that neither the man who
+made the offer nor the girl to whom it was made was struck by anything
+that seemed illogical or indelicate, or at all inconsistent with
+justice or the horse-thief's real conversion. Salomy Jane nevertheless
+dissented, from another and weaker reason.
+
+"I don't want your hoss, though I reckon dad might; but you're just
+starvin'. I'll get suthin'." She turned towards the house.
+
+"Say you'll take the hoss first," he said, grasping her hand. At
+the touch she felt herself coloring and struggled, expecting perhaps
+another kiss. But he dropped her hand. She turned again with a saucy
+gesture, said, "Hol' on; I'll come right back," and slipped away,
+the mere shadow of a coy and flying nymph in the moonlight, until she
+reached the house.
+
+Here she not only procured food and whiskey, but added a long
+dust-coat and hat of her father's to her burden. They would serve
+as a disguise for him and hide that heroic figure, which she
+thought everybody must now know as she did. Then she rejoined him
+breathlessly. But he put the food and whiskey aside.
+
+"Listen," he said; "I've turned the hoss into your corral. You'll find
+him there in the morning, and no one will know but that he got lost
+and joined the other hosses."
+
+Then she burst out. "But you--_you_--what will become of you? You'll
+be ketched!"
+
+"I'll manage to get away," he said in a low voice, "ef--ef"--
+
+"Ef what?" she said tremblingly.
+
+"Ef you'll put the heart in me again,--as you did!" he gasped.
+
+She tried to laugh--to move away. She could do neither. Suddenly he
+caught her in his arms, with a long kiss, which she returned again and
+again. Then they stood embraced as they had embraced two days before,
+but no longer the same. For the cool, lazy Salomy Jane had been
+transformed into another woman--a passionate, clinging savage. Perhaps
+something of her father's blood had surged within her at that supreme
+moment. The man stood erect and determined.
+
+"Wot's your name?" she whispered quickly. It was a woman's quickest
+way of defining her feelings.
+
+"Dart."
+
+"Yer first name?"
+
+"Jack."
+
+"Let me go now, Jack. Lie low in the woods till to-morrow sunup. I'll
+come again."
+
+He released her. Yet she lingered a moment. "Put on those things," she
+said, with a sudden happy flash of eyes and teeth, "and lie close till
+I come." And then she sped away home.
+
+But midway up the distance she felt her feet going slower, and
+something at her heartstrings seemed to be pulling her back. She
+stopped, turned, and glanced to where he had been standing. Had she
+seen him then, she might have returned. But he had disappeared. She
+gave her first sigh, and then ran quickly again. It must be nearly ten
+o'clock! It was not very long to morning!
+
+She was within a few steps of her own door, when the sleeping woods
+and silent air appeared to suddenly awake with a sharp "crack!"
+
+She stopped, paralyzed. Another "crack!" followed, that echoed over to
+the far corral. She recalled herself instantly and dashed off wildly
+to the woods again.
+
+As she ran she thought of one thing only. He had been "dogged" by one
+of his old pursuers and attacked. But there were two shots, and he was
+unarmed. Suddenly she remembered that she had left her father's gun
+standing against the tree where they were talking. Thank God! she may
+again have saved him. She ran to the tree; the gun was gone. She ran
+hither and thither, dreading at every step to fall upon his lifeless
+body. A new thought struck her; she ran to the corral. The horse was
+not there! He must have been able to regain it, and escaped, _after_
+the shots had been fired. She drew a long breath of relief, but it was
+caught up in an apprehension of alarm. Her father, awakened from his
+sleep by the shots, was hurriedly approaching her.
+
+"What's up now, Salomy Jane?" he demanded excitedly.
+
+"Nothin'," said the girl with an effort. "Nothin', at least, that _I_
+can find." She was usually truthful because fearless, and a lie stuck
+in her throat; but she was no longer fearless, thinking of _him_. "I
+wasn't abed; so I ran out as soon as I heard the shots fired," she
+answered in return to his curious gaze.
+
+"And you've hid my gun somewhere where it can't be found," he said
+reproachfully. "Ef it was that sneak Larrabee, and he fired them shots
+to lure me out, he might have potted me, without a show, a dozen times
+in the last five minutes."
+
+She had not thought since of her father's enemy! It might indeed
+have been he who had attacked Jack. But she made a quick point of the
+suggestion. "Run in, dad, run in and find the gun; you've got no show
+out here without it." She seized him by the shoulders from behind,
+shielding him from the woods, and hurried him, half expostulating,
+half struggling, to the house.
+
+But there no gun was to be found. It was strange; it must have been
+mislaid in some corner! Was he sure he had not left it in the barn?
+But no matter now. The danger was over; the Larrabee trick had failed;
+he must go to bed now, and in the morning they would make a search
+together. At the same time she had inwardly resolved to rise before
+him and make another search of the wood, and perhaps--fearful joy as
+she recalled her promise!--find Jack alive and well, awaiting her!
+
+
+
+
+ANOTHER ESCAPE
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Salomy Jane slept little that night, nor did her father. But towards
+morning he fell into a tired man's slumber until the sun was well up
+the horizon. Far different was it with his daughter: she lay with her
+face to the window, her head half lifted to catch every sound, from
+the creaking of the sun-warped shingles above her head to the far-off
+moan of the rising wind in the pine trees. Sometimes she fell into
+a breathless, half-ecstatic trance, living over every moment of the
+stolen interview; feeling the fugitive's arm still around her, his
+kisses on her lips; hearing his whispered voice in her ears--the birth
+of her new life! This was followed again by a period of agonizing
+dread--that he might even then be lying, his life ebbing away, in the
+woods, with her name on his lips, and she resting here inactive, until
+she half started from her bed to go to his succor. And this went on
+until a pale opal glow came into the sky, followed by a still paler
+pink on the summit of the white Sierras, when she rose and hurriedly
+began to dress. Still so sanguine was her hope of meeting him, that
+she lingered yet a moment to select the brown holland skirt and yellow
+sunbonnet she had worn when she first saw him. And she had only seen
+him twice! Only _twice_! It would be cruel, too cruel, not to see him
+again!
+
+She crept softly down the stairs, listening to the long-drawn
+breathing of her father in his bedroom, and then, by the light of a
+guttering candle, scrawled a note to him, begging him not to trust
+himself out of the house until she returned from her search, and
+leaving the note open on the table, swiftly ran out into the growing
+day.
+
+Three hours afterwards Mr. Madison Clay awoke to the sound of loud
+knocking. At first this forced itself upon his consciousness as his
+daughter's regular morning summons, and was responded to by a grunt of
+recognition and a nestling closer in the blankets. Then he awoke with
+a start and a muttered oath, remembering the events of last night, and
+his intention to get up early, and rolled out of bed. Becoming aware
+by this time that the knocking was at the outer door, and hearing the
+shout of a familiar voice, he hastily pulled on his boots, his jean
+trousers, and fastening a single suspender over his shoulder as he
+clattered downstairs, stood in the lower room. The door was open,
+and waiting upon the threshold was his kinsman, an old ally in many a
+blood-feud--Breckenridge Clay!
+
+"You _are_ a cool one, Mad!" said the latter in half-admiring
+indignation.
+
+"What's up?" said the bewildered Madison.
+
+"_You_ ought to be, and scootin' out o' this," said Breckenridge
+grimly. "It's all very well to 'know nothin';' but here Phil
+Larrabee's friends hev just picked him up, drilled through with slugs
+and deader nor a crow, and now they're lettin' loose Larrabee's two
+half-brothers on you. And you must go like a derned fool and leave
+these yer things behind you in the bresh," he went on querulously,
+lifting Madison Clay's dust-coat, hat, and shotgun from his horse,
+which stood saddled at the door. "Luckily I picked them up in the
+woods comin' here. Ye ain't got more than time to get over the state
+line and among your folks thar afore they'll be down on you. Hustle,
+old man! What are you gawkin' and starin' at?"
+
+Madison Clay had stared amazed and bewildered--horror-stricken.
+The incidents of the past night for the first time flashed upon him
+clearly--hopelessly! The shot; his finding Salomy Jane alone in
+the woods; her confusion and anxiety to rid herself of him; the
+disappearance of the shotgun; and now this new discovery of the taking
+of his hat and coat for a disguise! _She_ had killed Phil Larrabee
+in that disguise, after provoking his first harmless shot! She, his
+own child, Salomy Jane, had disgraced herself by a man's crime; had
+disgraced him by usurping his right, and taking a mean advantage, by
+deceit, of a foe!
+
+"Gimme that gun," he said hoarsely.
+
+Breckenridge handed him the gun in wonder and slowly gathering
+suspicion. Madison examined nipple and muzzle; one barrel had been
+discharged. It was true! The gun dropped from his hand.
+
+"Look here, old man," said Breckenridge, with a darkening face,
+"there's bin no foul play here. Thar's bin no hiring of men, no deputy
+to do this job. _You_ did it fair and square--yourself?"
+
+"Yes, by God!" burst out Madison Clay in a hoarse voice. "Who says I
+didn't?"
+
+Reassured, yet believing that Madison Clay had nerved himself for
+the act by an over-draught of whiskey, which had affected his memory,
+Breckenridge said curtly, "Then wake up and 'lite' out, ef ye want me
+to stand by you."
+
+"Go to the corral and pick me out a hoss," said Madison slowly, yet
+not without a certain dignity of manner. "I've suthin' to say to
+Salomy Jane afore I go." He was holding her scribbled note, which he
+had just discovered, in his shaking hand.
+
+Struck by his kinsman's manner, and knowing the dependent relations
+of father and daughter, Breckenridge nodded and hurried away. Left
+to himself, Madison Clay ran his fingers through his hair, and
+straightened out the paper on which Salomy Jane had scrawled her note,
+turned it over, and wrote on the back:--
+
+    You might have told me you did it, and not leave your ole
+    father to find it out how you disgraced yourself and him, too,
+    by a low-down, underhanded, woman's trick! I've said I done
+    it, and took the blame myself, and all the sneakiness of it
+    that folks suspect. If I get away alive--and I don't care much
+    which--you needn't foller. The house and stock are yours; but
+    you ain't any longer the daughter of your disgraced father,
+
+    MADISON CLAY.
+
+He had scarcely finished the note when, with a clatter of hoofs and a
+led horse, Breckenridge reappeared at the door elate and triumphant.
+"You're in nigger luck, Mad! I found that stole hoss of Judge
+Boompointer's had got away and strayed among your stock in the corral.
+Take him and you're safe; he can't be outrun this side of the state
+line."
+
+"I ain't no hoss-thief," said Madison grimly.
+
+"Nobody sez ye are, but you'd be wuss--a fool--ef you didn't take him.
+I'm testimony that you found him among your hosses; I'll tell Judge
+Boompointer you've got him, and ye kin send him back when you're safe.
+The judge will be mighty glad to get him back, and call it quits. So
+ef you've writ to Salomy Jane, come."
+
+Madison Clay no longer hesitated. Salomy Jane might return at any
+moment,--it would be part of her "fool womanishness,"--and he was
+in no mood to see her before a third party. He laid the note on
+the table, gave a hurried glance around the house, which he grimly
+believed he was leaving forever, and, striding to the door, leaped on
+the stolen horse, and swept away with his kinsman.
+
+But that note lay for a week undisturbed on the table in full view of
+the open door. The house was invaded by leaves, pine cones, birds,
+and squirrels during the hot, silent, empty days, and at night by shy,
+stealthy creatures, but never again, day or night, by any of the Clay
+family. It was known in the district that Clay had flown across the
+state line, his daughter was believed to have joined him the next day,
+and the house was supposed to be locked up. It lay off the main road,
+and few passed that way. The starving cattle in the corral at last
+broke bounds and spread over the woods. And one night a stronger blast
+than usual swept through the house, carried the note from the table
+to the floor, where, whirled into a crack in the flooring, it slowly
+rotted.
+
+But though the sting of her father's reproach was spared her, Salomy
+Jane had no need of the letter to know what had happened. For as she
+entered the woods in the dim light of that morning she saw the figure
+of Dart gliding from the shadow of a pine towards her. The unaffected
+cry of joy that rose from her lips died there as she caught sight of
+his face in the open light.
+
+"You are hurt," she said, clutching his arm passionately.
+
+"No," he said. "But I wouldn't mind that if"--
+
+"You're thinkin' I was afeard to come back last night when I heard the
+shootin', but I _did_ come," she went on feverishly. "I ran back here
+when I heard the two shots, but you were gone. I went to the corral,
+but your hoss wasn't there, and I thought you'd got away."
+
+"I _did_ get away," said Dart gloomily. "I killed the man, thinkin'
+he was huntin' _me_, and forgettin' I was disguised. He thought I was
+your father."
+
+"Yes," said the girl joyfully, "he was after dad, and _you_--you
+killed him." She again caught his hand admiringly.
+
+But he did not respond. Possibly there were points of honor which this
+horse-thief felt vaguely with her father. "Listen," he said grimly.
+"Others think it was your father killed him. When _I_ did it--for
+he fired at me first--I ran to the corral again and took my hoss,
+thinkin' I might be follered. I made a clear circuit of the house,
+and when I found he was the only one, and no one was follerin', I come
+back here and took off my disguise. Then I heard his friends find him
+in the wood, and I know they suspected your father. And then another
+man come through the woods while I was hidin' and found the clothes
+and took them away." He stopped and stared at her gloomily.
+
+But all this was unintelligible to the girl. "Dad would have got
+the better of him ef you hadn't," she said eagerly, "so what's the
+difference?"
+
+"All the same," he said gloomily, "I must take his place."
+
+She did not understand, but turned her head to her master. "Then
+you'll go back with me and tell him _all_?" she said obediently.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+She put her hand in his, and they crept out of the wood together. She
+foresaw a thousand difficulties, but, chiefest of all, that he did not
+love as she did. _She_ would not have taken these risks against their
+happiness.
+
+But alas for ethics and heroism. As they were issuing from the wood
+they heard the sound of galloping hoofs, and had barely time to
+hide themselves before Madison Clay, on the stolen horse of Judge
+Boompointer, swept past them with his kinsman.
+
+Salomy Jane turned to her lover.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And here I might, as a moral romancer, pause, leaving the guilty,
+passionate girl eloped with her disreputable lover, destined to
+lifelong shame and misery, misunderstood to the last by a criminal,
+fastidious parent. But I am confronted by certain facts, on which this
+romance is based. A month later a handbill was posted on one of the
+sentinel pines, announcing that the property would be sold by auction
+to the highest bidder by Mrs. John Dart, daughter of Madison Clay,
+Esq., and it was sold accordingly. Still later--by ten years--the
+chronicler of these pages visited a certain "stock" or "breeding
+farm," in the "Blue Grass Country," famous for the popular racers
+it has produced. He was told that the owner was the "best judge of
+horse-flesh in the country." "Small wonder," added his informant, "for
+they say as a young man out in California he was a horse-thief, and
+only saved himself by eloping with some rich farmer's daughter. But
+he's a straight-out and respectable man now, whose word about horses
+can't be bought; and as for his wife, _she_'s a beauty! To see her at
+the 'Springs,' rigged out in the latest fashion, you'd never think
+she had ever lived out of New York or wasn't the wife of one of its
+millionaires."
+
+
+The Riverside Press
+
+CAMBRIDGE. MASSACHUSETTS
+
+U.S.A
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Salomy Jane, by Bret Harte
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