CHAPTER I.

There was really a lovely row on at Dan MacGrath’s Eldorado Saloon in Three Star Camp.

The saloon, a long and narrow room, built of rough, feather-edged boards and decorated with scraps of turkey-red cotton and cheap calico lining, with occasional portraits of local celebrities rudely drawn in charcoal, was well filled with the crew of miners and camp followers which made up the population of Three Star Camp—Three Star, it is needless to explain, after the well-known legend on the brandy bottles.

At one end of the saloon was a drinking-bar, at the other a card-table; in the center a billiard-table, spotted with candle grease and stained with the rims and bottoms of wet glasses. Men were lounging at the bar or playing a noisy game at pool, or gathered round the faro-table, over which presided Mr. Varley Howard, the professional gambler of Three Star and other camps.

Whether the really lovely row commenced at the bar, began at the billiard-table or originated at the faro, it would be difficult to say; rows sprung up very quickly at Three Star Camp at all times, but especially at this season, when the weather was disgustingly hot and everybody feverish and overstrained.

Rows not only began with great facility, but spread with marvelous ease and rapidity. You had only to refuse a drink; to take up somebody’s glass; to push against a man accidentally; to observe that it was cooler than yesterday, when the man you addressed happened to be particularly hot; or to wear a tall hat—an article of attire held in special detestation by the whole of Three Star, and only permitted to Mr. Varley Howard as a special recognition of his peculiar qualities as a gambler, a man of fashion, and the promptest and deadliest shot in the district—to raise a shindy directly. On this night the row was generally welcomed, for everybody felt blasé and[6] bored and thirsting for any excitement to relieve the dull monotony of an existence in which bad luck and the perpetual heat fought for predominance.

So it was with cheerful alacrity that the men gathered round the two who were credited with starting the shindy, and pulled out revolvers and bowie-knives for the free fight which everybody knew would set in with the usual severity.

Varley Howard was the only man who did not rise. He leaned back in his chair and passed his white hand over his pale, unwrinkled brow and smoothed his black, gray-streaked hair with a gesture and manner of languid indifference. His revolver lay on the table beside a new pack of cards and ready to his hand if he should need it; but it would not amuse him to kill any one, and it was not very likely that any one of the desperadoes, however excited, would desire to kill him. As he leaned back and turned the diamond ring on his finger, he hummed an air from “Olivette” and looked on at the rowdy scene through half-closed eyes.

Shots were fired, knives gleamed in the light of the hanging paraffine-lamp, two or three men were carried out, several others leaned against the wall stanching more or less serious wounds; Dan MacGrath himself stood behind the bar, revolver in one hand, a bottle of his famous—some called it “infamous”—whisky in the other. Every now and then, as a stray bullet came his way, he ducked his head, but always clung to the revolver and the bottle, as if they were the emblems of defense and conciliation: if the fight continued he might want the one, if it continued, or ended, his customers would certainly want the other.

When the row was at its height, a man came in at the door—an oldish man, with a grizzled beard and a face scarred and seamed by weather and a long series of conflicts with man and beast. He held a bundle in his arms, and as he entered he put it under his coat and turned sideways, as if to protect it from the various missiles which were hurtling through the tobacco-laden air.

“Stop it, boys!” he shouted in a leather-lunged voice. “Stop it, or some of you will be plugging Her Majesty’s mail.”

He was the Three Star postman.

At the sound of his voice the row ceased as if by magic. Men stuck their revolvers and knives in their belts and turned toward him, as if there had never been any fight going on at all.

He strode up to the faro-table, and still with his bundle[7] under his arm, took a leather wallet from a side-pocket and flung it on the table.

The men flocked around with cries of “Got anything for me, Bill?” “Hand out that check I’ve been waiting for!” “Got a message for me, Willyum?” and so on; most of them in accents of simulated indifference or burlesque anxiety.

He dealt out the letters with a remark more or less facetious accompanying each; then, when the distribution was complete, placed the bundle gingerly on the table in front of Varley Howard.

“What have you got there, William?” asked that gentleman in the soft and low and musical voice which was one of his most dangerous fascinations.

The other men looked up from their letters and stared at the bundle, a soft something wrapped in an old mail-bag.

“Who have you been robbing now, Bill?” inquired one.

“It’s a new dress he lifted from the store at Dog’s Ear Camp for his missis,” suggested a humorist.

Bill twisted his huge mouth into a smile.

“Guess again,” he said, “though you wouldn’t hit it if you tried all night. Hands off!” he added, as one of them made for the bundle. “What do you say, Varley?”

Varley Howard shrugged his shoulders and took up a pack of cards.

“Take the child home to its mother,” he said.

Bill smacked the table noiselessly, and eyed Varley Howard with admiration.

“Right the first time, Mr. Howard!” he said. “There’s no getting a rise out of you.”

He opened the old mail-sack as he spoke, and disclosed to the gaze of the astonished crowd a little child. It was asleep, and as peacefully and soundly as if it were in a satin-lined cradle.

“Why, it is a kid!” exclaimed one, as the men pressed round closer and stared at the sleeping child.

Questions were hurled at Bill’s head from every direction.

“Where did you get it?” “Is it a boy or a girl?” “How old is it?” “Can it walk?” “Can it talk?” “What’s the color of its eyes?” “Just take it out of that darned old bag and let’s have a look at it!”

But though the questions were numerous and graphic, the tones in which they were uttered were subdued and hushed; for a child of tender years was a novelty at Three Star Camp, and produced a curious effect upon the rough men. Some of them had not seen a child for years; some of them had left[8] just such a baby in England; some of them had stood beside a grave about the size of this bundle. Their faces softened and grew serious as they looked down at it.

Bill the postman glanced round with an air of triumph and satisfaction.

“If any of yer had got a spark of human kindness inside yer hides, you’d offer a man a drink,” he remarked in a voice of suggestive huskiness.

A dozen men started for the bar, and one secured some whisky and thrust it into Bill’s hand.

“Drink it and start on your tale, you blank old fraud!” he said. “Where did you get the kid?”

Bill drank his whisky with aggravating slowness, and, stooping down, wiped his mouth on a corner of the mail-sack with still more exasperating elaboration.

“It’s this way,” he said at last. “I was about three mile from Dog’s Ear when I see something lying in the road. I was near lying in the road myself, for that darned mare of mine shied as if she had seen the ghost of a hay-stack. I got down, and ther’ was a woman lying full length, with her face turned up as if she was asleep. She was as dead as a herring. Underneath her shawl, and lyin’ as snug as could be, was this here young ’un.”

He paused and looked round to enjoy the effect of his story.

“How the woman come there, and what she’s died of, I’m blamed if I know; but there she was, and there she is now. I wrapped the kid in this yere old sack and brought it on. It’s true there ain’t no direction on it, and I suppose it’s my duty to return it to the Dead-Letter office, till it’s claimed by the rightful owner.”

He smiled at the feeble joke, and one or two of the men laughed, but in a subdued way. Even their rough natures were touched by the presence of the motherless child lying so placidly, so unconscious of its loss, on the stained and battered gambling-table.

One of the men cursed the Dead-Letter office.

“It’s yours, Bill,” he said; “leastways, till somebody up and claims it.”

“What’s the good of it to me?” demanded Bill. “I ain’t got no missis to look after it, and I’d look pretty carrying a live infant in front of me on the mare! I’d best take her back to Dog’s Ear, for I reckon that’s where her mother’d come from.”

“Oh, it’s a ‘her’?” said one.

[9]

“It are,” said Bill, sententiously.

“You’ve no evidence to prove that the woman came from Dog’s Ear,” remarked, with a judicial air, the lawyer of the camp. “Did you find any papers on her?”

“I didn’t find anything but this,” replied Bill, nodding at the child. “I didn’t look. I was late a’ready. There may be papers, or there mayn’t be.”

There was a pause, then Varley Howard said in his slow, languid voice:

“Let three or four of the men go and bring the woman here.”

His leadership was never disputed, and four men started to obey him, carrying for a bier the top of a table from which they had knocked off the rickety legs.

“Meanwhile,” said Dan MacGrath, “what’s to be done with the kid?”

The question, though addressed generally, was answered by Varley Howard.

“Send for one of the women,” he said.

The female sex were in a minority at Three Star; there were only three women in the camp. After a conference, conducted in eager but hushed tones, an old woman, who went by the name of Mother Melinda—though why “Mother” and why “Melinda” no one knew—was chosen and sent for.

She arrived, and at once took possession of the child, and by her gentle handling of it, and the tender smile with which she viewed it as she pressed it against her battered old heart, proved her right to the maternal title. When she had disappeared with the orphan, the saloon resumed its business; but the men drank and played in a half-hearted way and with an air of expectancy, and when the four men returned, the crowd collected round them with eager curiosity. They had taken the woman to Mother Melinda’s hut, and the spokesman of the four announced that not only were there no papers upon the body, but nothing of any kind—no mark upon the linen either of the mother or the child—by which to identify them.

“What’s to be done?” asked Bill, as the person chiefly responsible for the embarrassing situation.

“Bury the woman and keep the child here,” said a man. “We’ve as much right to her as that blamed Dog’s Ear. What do they want with an orphan? They can’t keep themselves, the blanked one-hoss place!”

“That’s all very well,” said Bill, shaking his head gravely; “but who’s to take the responsibility? She can’t belong to all of yer!”

[10]

“I’ll take her!” said one.

“Let me have her!” cried another.

A babel of voices arose. At first shamefacedly, and then openly, not to say defiantly, a score of men offered to adopt the nameless child.

Varley Howard alone remained silent. He leaned back in his chair, shuffling the cards with his white, womanish hand. At last, when the hubbub had somewhat subsided, he said in his most languid and indifferent manner:

“You can’t all have her. Some of you wouldn’t know what to do with her if you got her. Let six of you come round the table here; the man who gets the highest cards in the pack takes her.”

He looked round the group and selected six men by name.

No one had a better proposal to make; the thing looked fair and square. They were accustomed to follow his lead.

The six men advanced to the table. The others gathered round and gazed excitedly over their shoulders.

Varley Howard commenced to deal with his famous grace and facility. He dealt to himself at last.

“Oh, you stand in, Varley?” said MacGrath.

“I do,” said Varley Howard in his slow way. “Does any one object?”

No one objected, and he proceeded with the dealing until the pack was exhausted.

“Turn up your cards and count,” he said, and his quick eye checked each man’s hand.

Then he turned up his own cards and remarked, quietly:

“I have won by an ace. The child’s mine.”

No one questioned his decision; no one murmured. He collected the cards as listlessly as usual.

“Does any one play any more to-night?” he asked.

But no one wanted any more faro. Playing for a live child had exhausted even their capacity for excitement.

Varley Howard put on the tall silk hat which distinguished him, and sauntered out of the saloon. He paused outside to light a cigar and look up at the starlit sky, then he sauntered down to Mother Melinda’s hut.

Stretched upon the rude bed was the dead woman, covered decently and reverently by a blanket. Mother Melinda had undressed the child, and it was lying asleep in an empty biscuit box. Varley Howard uncovered its face and looked at it thoughtfully. It was a pretty child, with thick, reddish-brown hair, and the lashes that lay upon its cheek were dark and long.

[11]

“How old do you think it is?” he asked.

“About three, I reckon,” said Mother Melinda. “It’s a pretty little thing, ain’t it, Mr. Howard? I wonder who its mother was? Judging by the looks of her, I should say she was no common kind of woman; she looks delicate and fine like. I wonder who the child belongs to.”

“She belongs to me,” said Varley Howard.

“To you!” exclaimed Mother Melinda.

“Yes,” he said, impassively. “I have just won her.”

“What are you going to do with her?” she asked, after a pause of astonishment.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “Leave her in your charge for the present.”

He took some gold from his pocket and dropped it on the pile of baby’s clothes lying on the woman’s lap.

“You take care of her for me, will you? Some one may turn up and claim her. Until they do, she belongs to me.”

He went and looked at the child again and then went out.

They buried the nameless woman two days later. It was an imposing ceremony. The doctor read the service with so excellent an imitation of the clerical drawl that he was called the Parson ever afterward.

Every soul in the camp followed the corpse, and every man put on a clean shirt and brushed his hair as a mark of respect to the deceased. Mother Melinda walked next to the coffin with the child in her arms, and it sat up and crowed with delight at the long procession; and its laughter and childish unconsciousness were more pathetic than any tears could have been.

Mr. Varley Howard, in his tall hat and black suit of such unexceptionable fit as to fill Three Star Camp with honest pride, walked beside Mother Melinda, and occasionally took the child’s hand and touched its soft little cheek.

The funeral over, the men returned to the Eldorado saloon to assuage their thirst with Dan MacGrath’s infamous brand and to discuss the function. The child, dressed in a white frock, with a huge black sash constructed out of the remnants of an old black silk which had been purchased from Dog’s Ear at a fabulous cost, was brought in and exhibited very much as an extraordinary large nugget would have been.

Varley Howard took it from Mother Melinda. It went to him quite readily, as if it acknowledged his right of possession; and, crowing and chortling, played fearlessly with his diamond scarf-pin. The men gathered round, and looked on admiringly.

[12]

“Seems to know you already, Varley,” said one. “Plays his new character first-rate, doesn’t he?”

Varley Howard’s pallid face did not move a muscle, not even when the child caught hold of the carefully trained mustache, which, in conjunction with the dark eyes and soft, languid voice and graceful figure of the gambler, had worked so much havoc in the female hearts of many a rough camp and civilized town.

“By the way,” said the lawyer, “the child hasn’t got a name that we know of. What are you going to call her, Varley?”

Before he could speak, a torrent of suggestions was showered upon him.

“Call her Polly!” shouted one.

“Polly be blowed!” said another. “That ain’t half good enough; call her Mary Anne!”

A string of names was shouted. Varley looked from one to the other; the child laughed at the noise.

“Give her a name yourself, Varley,” said Dan MacGrath, “and don’t let it be a slouch of a one. Three Star can afford to run to three syllables, at any rate. None of your Pollies or Sallies; it ain’t good enough! You can’t tell who she may be. P’r’aps she’s the daughter of an earl, like you read of in them blamed story-books.”

“Call her Esmeralda,” said the doctor. “I seem to remember some swell with that name.”

The suggestion proved acceptable.

“It’s a good name,” said one. “A bit long, perhaps; but you can call her Esmie or Ralda, if you’re in a hurry.”

“Esmeralda Howard,” said another. “Of course, she takes Varley’s name.”

“‘Esmeralda Howard’ be it,” said Varley, as impassively as ever. “Fill up all round, boys.”

The men stood round, and lifted their glasses, and shouted:

“Esmeralda! Esmeralda! And luck to her!”

And Esmeralda the child was christened by general consent.