The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 6, 1896, Page 18

18 - TWO VIEWS Bsron von Schroeder’s deeds of bravery and daring on lnn.d = and sea have been prettv well exploited lately, but there is one incident in his life since he anchored in California which has not been accorded that worthy place in the records of thrilling events that 1t certainly deserves. 3 The Baron, let it be said right here, killed the last grizzly bear known to have been slain in San Luis Obispo County, and some old-timers there assert that the Baron's act in dispatch- ing that mighty, savage beast rid the Santa Lucia Moun- tains forever of its mammoth ancient denizens of the type in question. The story, as related by A. Benton, superintendent of the famous Eaele ranch of San Luis Obispo County, can be 'relie;d upon, as Benton’s name is a very synonym for veracity in his community, and it is characteristic of him to insist upon furnishing proof whenever a word of his narrative is thought to be clouded with a shadow of doubt. “The Baron had his eye primed for a picturesque moun- tain summer resort for his family, when he chanced torun across the Eagle ranch, and that struck his fancy.” said Benton. ‘It was very hilly, had some rather extensive for- ests, and there was enchanting scenery around it. But the excellent hunting was a particularly strong card with the Baron. +*How about the shooting here?’ he inquired. “ ‘Number one,” I replied. *All the way from partridges to biggest wild fowl, and from squirrels to grizzlies.” izzlies!’ cried the Baron, astonished. zlies,’ 1 repeated, with a nod of assurance. “+Itis part of my ambition asa sportsman to become the slayer of a gennine grizzly,’ confessed the nobleman. “Then I informed him that grizzly tracks had been dis- covered in the neighboring hills only a short while back, and that doubtless the monster bruin was even, as we spoke, lying low in an adjacent forest, preparing for a midnight raid. Whether the bear busmness acted as a clincher to the bar- guin or not, cuts no figure in the story, anyhow. *‘Nevertheless the Baron bought the ranch immediately, and on leaving for his San Francisco home gave strict orders to his foreman to keep a sharp outlook for grizzly tracks. 1f any tresh ones were found the foreman was to drive posthaste 10 the nearest telegraph station and wire the Baron, who would then lose no time in speeding to his San Luis Obispo County ranch. “‘Don’t permit anybody to disturb the bear till you see nie,” was the Baron’s injunction. A few wecks afterward the ranch was suddenly alarmed by the report that a huge grizzly was in the hills bard by. In- spired by that word a telegram winged its way to San Francisco, and the Baron sped southward without delay. A Mexican guide, duly armed with a rifle, was provided, and the Baron followed mim from the ranch-house to the tree-clad heights. ‘*‘Trac vresently said the Mexican, pointing to some broad impressions on the ground. Then a crackling of the dry underbrush was heard in the distance, and the guide hurri- edly added, ‘De bear he comes! THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1896. OF BARON VON SCHROEDER'S BEAR STORY S, 2 “There was no mistake about it. For some thirty yards before the hunters a trail lay straight and open, and into this trail, at the jurther end of the thirty-yard stretch, the grizzly tore his way, He saw the enemy and, as if he hungered for a mesl of juicy human flesh, made for the couple without delay, “The moment was full of excitement. The guide had not to be told that grizzlies were tough beasts to deal with. He under. stood that even with two rifles emptying bullets into his thick hide the bear was liable to do mortal damage unless much prudence was exercised. “¢Climb tree!’ shouted the Mexican. ‘Climb—then shoot| And suiting the action to his first exclamation, the guide scaled a tree in short order. “Not so the Baron. He eyed that traveling fellow with scorn, and continued to stand his ground in the middle of the trail, like one of those fearless, confident Greeks of old that Homer sings about. ‘ “You stay up there, you coward, till I finish this bear, commanded the Baron, ‘and don’t dare to fire a shot from the tree or I'll bring you down as I would a chipmunk.’ *‘Meantime the ponderous animal moved along the trail. He came within a dozen yards of the Baron, who stood cool and calm, his eye on thesight of his trusty gun, waiting for a chance to send a leaden messenger to a fatal spot in the big beast's bulk. The Mexican implored the Baron to climb out of death’s road; butin vain. The monster was almost upon the Baron when the report of his rifle rang through the forest. A thunder- ous mixture of groan and how! went up and the grizzly tumbled over in the trail, dead as a stone. A few months after this occurred, the Mexican, while in his cups, atempted to throw discredit on the Baron’s record for nerve and heroism. *‘De Baron he’s fine man,’ the intoxicated fellow said, ‘but he’s no much good for shoot bear, He's very quick for climb tree, you bet. De grizzle-bear I myself kill. Baron he'’s scared like devil. By’mby he say not say I am scared— caramba! Inocare! He's pay me good money for not talk! Everybody come up—take drink—I pay for all.’ “It is strange how the vacant boasts and idle talk of even such utterly unreliable persons as this wretch of a Mexican will grow and expand with the assistance of people who can find in their souls no appreciation for stont-hearted deeds. Just about a month after the bronze-faced descendant of the Aztecs turned his tongue loose in the saloon a rancher repeated nearly the same story to a country picnic gathering and, amid great hilar- ity, asserted that he had arrived on the scene a moment after the Mexican’s gun rang the grizzly’s death-knell, and that he had been alarmed and attracted thither by the Baron’s cries for help—cries that seemea to rise from lips that had touched the cup of despair. That rancher unblushingly declared that he had found the Baron as limp as a dishraz, wound around the branch of the tree, and that he had aided the Mexican to bring to solid ground the fainting nobleman, whose brow dripped a cold perspiration. The rancher, too, had promised to say nothing; but the Mexican’s breach of faith had opened the door for him, so he brazenly exclaimed.” LAST CHAPTER OF THAT WEIRD AND DEBATABLE TALE OF DEATH VALLEY CHAPTER II—CONCLUDED FROM LAST WEEK. The sword of Aymoyo was upheld and ready to fall, but the diversion caused by the startling tbunder peal suspended it in air, and for a brief in- terval it was held. Glance a moment, in imagination, at that strange scene. It was night. The temple, roofless and open to the sky, was partly iilu- minated with the glow of lanterns, Strange sources of light were these, for the lanterns were human skulls—all that visibly remained of great vriests and chiefs. Into these uncanny receptacles oil had been poured on this great occasion. The lanterns were held to the stone columns by thongs, and as the leathern strings were burned through the skulls crashed upon the pavement. Surrounded by fiercely blazing oil the last fragments of bone crumbled and disappeared amid the hungry flames. In a weird and vrophetic chorus, filled with woe and tinged with pride, the deep and melodious voices of the priests solemnly enumerated the skulls and called aloud the names and recounted the deeds of their great priests and chiefs whose sacred relics were finally incinerated. The priests were fascinated as the full moon rose above the mountains and scaled the blue dome of the sky which hung over a perfect tropic night in which zall the stars were large and vitreous. So fascinated were they that they gazed in ecstacy, half forgetting the sacrificial work of vengeance for which they had gathered. The thin blue light of the moon giinted along the curved scimetar, which was as sharp as a scalpel. Huge moving shadows of the stone columns of the roofless temple were traced on the basaltic floor. A lizht breeze whispered amid the foliage of the trees and brouzht the odors of a flower-enameled landscape to their sus- ceptible and keenly active senses. Tall and erect stood Oonemalche, proudly conscious that she was superior to the fear of death—even such a death. Over her regal form, as she stepped forth from her chamber of stone, was cast a robe of purest white. Her arms and neck were bare, gleaming like polished marble in the perfect moonlight. Her large eyes. dark and lustrous, glowed with steady radiance like those perfect stars which shine eternally, self-luminous in the heavenly midnight hosts. Her ripe lips, full and exquisitely carved, did not tremble. In her delicate and slender ears glittered golden ornaments, emblematic of the wership of the.Sun God. No tears wet her silken lashes. Her hair, rich and black as deepest midnight, flowed over her shoulders. ‘“*Aye,” said one of the priests in his own language, “let her speak and pid adieu to her god.” This much they granted her. Aymoyo alone could know the true mean- ing of her speech. Her hands were fastened behind her with a golden chain. She could not embrace Aymoyo. She could only speak. As she gave voice to her inmost sacred thoughtsin tones that were mellow and indescribably sad, she retained her regal pose. Her race would go out nobly with her, she thought, and pernaps her sacrifice and courage and love might so appease the Sun God that Avmoyo might come to her arms beyond the grave. Her voice was like music. “The heroes of our race call to me,”” she said, “and I bid you farewell, oh, my love, my Aymoyo. You must follow me, beloved. I see now the Sun God as he riues beside the river of endless life in his chariot drawn by the four winds of the skies. “The Sun God beckons to three seats by the side of the blissful river, which are saved for us, Do not falter, oh, my beloved, nor seek to go hence-until the Sun God wills it, for I see that he must be appeased or in that future, to which I go, we shall be separated by a measureless abyss, and there reaching out unavailing and ineffectual hands which can never meet and uttering words of love and longing which neither shall bear, we shall grieve to be pale phantoms in eternal woe.” A song bird was awakened in a near-by tree and began to flute softly. Then for the first time tears welled from the eyelids of the beautiful Oonemalche and for an instant her tall form swayed as a poplar which bends before the incoming gale which blowing all its leaves aslant seems to suddenly garb it in white. 5 “A linnet, Aymoyo! Do you hearit? It isthelinnet of our home and it sings the same dear lone song. Has it wandered like us? Ah, Aymoyo, why did you wander? No, I cannot blame you—but life might have been sosweet! In the brief. moments of life that remain it seems as if, with the familiar song of this little bird, home—our childhooi’s bome, Aymoyo—has come to us who shall no more see its silvery lakes and riv- ers, its snowy Cordillera and its world-wide meads of green—nor shall see each other again ! “And must death come from your hands, beloved? Strike gquickly— but, ah! not yet. 1 must see you once more, for itis hard to part. But be thou as brave as I am and weep not. See, no tree that dares the gale is more erect than I If you strike not or refuse, death will be yours, and it will be I who would have prought upon you that bitterness. Death surely awaits me speedily at some hand, for the Sun God hath willed 1t c0.” The mooniight glittered on the deadly blade of the scimetar and on the farewell tear that rolled down her marble-like cheek and neck. Once more the linnet sang. High above the crest of the volcano leaped up a column of flame which brought into view the horrid tarns and chasmal depths of the vol- cano’s awful congeners. A vivid and world-wide flash of light ran athwart the mountains. With a sudden jar and inconceivable crash, toppling from their lofty and sky-seeking pinnacles of stone, elemental rocks rushed down all the mountain sides as if they would destroy the foun- dation of the world in one swift charge. The impatient priests pointed to the sky which the angered volcano had made all like blood, reddening even the moon with reflections from suddenly arisen clouds. Around Oonemalche the priests pressed eagerly, holding silver vessels in which to catch her blood, that it might be thrown to the insatiable fountain which splashed impatiently. “Strike!" The order was obeyed. The sparkling sciemetar fell—but not upon the shapely neck of Qonemalche. The head of the High Priest feil upon the fioor and rolled into the rock chamber among the scattered jewels of the deity. The other priests, chanting a deata song, rained blows with sharp swords upon Aymoyo, who fell at the feet of Oonemalche, his blood dyeing ber snowy raiment, Ske bent over and kissed him and moved away. “The Sun God will not be appeased so,”” she said, “‘and I must gointo the wilderness.”” Sacrifice had been made and the priests permitted her to pass. Her hands were held fast by the golden chain behind. A wolf howled as she again turned hopelessly into the wilderness and her race was lost forever. [rBE END.] . IN THE QUAINT OLD LARD Mynheer Van der Linden is an aristocrat. Rotterdam and to Dordrecht. Once, forty-five years ago next Michaelmas, he made a journey to Antwerp. He exhibits with great pride an oaken chest with V. d. L. in brass nails on the carved lid. He tells us, with a momentary flush on his hard, brown face, that is line a wood carving, that sometimes people offer to buy his chest, of which he is so proud. His bouse is quite large, as houses go in Rijsoord, with a gabled roof, not of green thatch to delight an artist’s eyes, but of red and black tiles and with white lines painted around the small, shining windows. Mynheer is very hospitable. He drops his wooden shoes outside the door and enters in his wtocking feet, out of respect to the immaculate scrubbed flags, on which there isa foot or two of home-made carpet. He waves the visitor into his front room with suppressed pride. And well may be be proud.! He has two melodeons, a picture representing Daniel in the lions’ den, a tall, polished bureau with elaborate brass knobs and corners and the oaken chest with his name on the lid. Rijsoord, an hour's distance from Rotterdam, is a characteristic Dutch village, all the houses in long rows on either bank of the river; the river is the Waal and is a silent, swift stream, running noiselessly under the low bridges, hardly stirring the bulrushes, bardly lifting the brown weeds or the flat water-lily leaves, or that curious little green scum that someti mes covers Half its dark surface. Processions of trees, tall and straight-stemmed, willows and poplars and elms and shivering aspens, He hasmade many trips to O THE BANKS OF THE wap o march acros: the fields and along the roads in solemn avenues, and everywhere the country is cut and crossed by the tiny canals—the sloots that shine like pale ribbons of satin. The silence during the day is profound, almost mournful. In the fields, where the flax lies drying in the rare sunlight, the women bend over their work all day long. Their white caps and faded blue aprons are picturesque in the extreme, and determined art students are elways stealthily catching an effect or ap impression as though they were rare animals. The peasants seem to regard the painters with a stolid, rather tolerant amusement, as harmless lunatics, who pay them for idleness. They pose with the animation and freedom of movement of cigar-store Indians. Ploinky (spelled Ploontje), whose real name is Apolionia, is a great favorite. Ploinky is the mother of five children—four meisje (girls) and one jonge (boy). She leans over her washtub in the morning, her big arms bare, her straight fair hair pressed under her black cap. She hasa long day’s work before her. A shadow crosses the doorway; it is Miss White from the hotel. Ploinky looks about in despair, but there is no es. cape. Miss White bas a serious countenance that has been flattened out by long contact with the world. She wears spectacles, an old hat cocked over one eve; her hair, that is tinged with gray, straggles over her forehead ; she wears an overcoat like a man’s and wipes her brushes on her skirt, She hopes to exhibit in the salon at some not too distant date. “Ploinky”” will receive 15 Datch cents an hour for posing—that is a little more than 5 American cents. She has five children. She cannot afford to refuse. She wipes her arms, scolds the children, places little Sygje, Who is pronounced Psyche, at the washtub, and trudges after Miss White to a distant field, where she is told to lean againsta tree and turn her head back over her shoulder till her neck is aimost dislocated. Her wooden shoes are very much in the foreground. She poses as though she bad a steel ramrod in place of a spine. Her pale eyes fix themselves on a point in the landscape; her worn and wintry face that shows tbe skull underneath with pathetic distinctness is absolutely expressionless. Ploinky looks to be 40 years of age, but, in truth, ste has seen the joys and sorrows of but twenty-five summers, At noon her jonge comes with a hunk of bread. She may rest for a few moments to eat it. She throws herself full length upon the gray, green grass, and plays with her youngest as a cat plays with a kitten— mauling him, teasing him, roiling him over and under, pressing her face into his little neck, their laughter inaudible and controlied. They are almost beautiful, this hideous littie Dutchman and the young mother with the old face. Her movements are quick and natural; her young, strong figure has lost its rigidity. There is a wild avandan, an uncouth grace about both of them, if such an apparent paradox is permissible. Miss White, however, with her lower lip turned forward and ber eyes half closed, is struggling with the values of a piowed field and a black and white cow she wishes to introduce into her picture. She has no time for side shows. Rijsoord has almost as many art students as aborigines. They swarm in the streets, in the fields, on the canals, on the river. The jargon of the studio is heard more than Dutch. They hunt “motives” near and far, vaint “impressions, studies and evening effects,” and are always discov- ering an “awfully good interior.”” It might be mteresting to gather a little collection of “impressions’ of the unfortunate inhabitants of these interiors when a disheveled art student bursts in upon them and paints them at their homely employments, paring potatoes or apples with an ‘‘effect’’ of top light or side light, or no light at all, having emotions at the side of an empty bed in which an imaginary corpse is represented by a pillow placed under the counterpane. Perhaps the pictures are sufficient apology for the complete oblivious- ness of the average art student—setting up her easel on the family hearth and leaving twenty cents and some paint pots as recollections of her descent, There are exceptions, naturally, Sometimes the art student feminine is considerate as well as talented, and her reception in the vil- OF DURES AND DITCHES lage after the absence of a half-year in Paris is a march of triumph. The women rush out to greet her, the men nod, the children follow her, shout- ing “'Goo’-by, goo'-by,” which is the one word of the Enrglish language common to alt of them, and to be used in greeting, as a term of vitupera- tion and scorn, or as a fareweil. Just now the odor of flax is everywhere; it has been sunk in the river to rot; in some places it still lies there. In the fields it is spread out to dry, little warm brown nills of it. The barns are being filled, and the air reeks with the ache of it—the dull, unholy, heavy smell, like the essence de dumpcart wafted over the seawall in San Francisco on a summer night. The evenings are quiet. The women come up from the distant farms, swinging alonz in the hali-darkness, singing a weird sea song full of sad- ness; the tramp of their wooden shoes, the sound of their strong, young voices, shrill but not unpleasant, can be heard long after their white caps ()] SVIVOA) FINERY LN Y Ay and blue aprons have disappeared behind the trees. The children congre«~ gate on the roadside, dancing in circles, shouting and calling, or filling their wooden shoes with water and sending them to sea on the little sloots under the willows. Lights spring up here and there; the women knit at the doorways, the men smoke; the irogs croak in the bulrushes; other- wise there is no sound but the wind rushing through the treetops. Suanday in Holland is a day to be most scrupulously observed; there is a lezend that one adventurous art student, overcome by the beauty of the day, made an attempt to sketch and was promptly stoned by a stern and indignant gathering, The women perch littie bonnets with feathers and flowers on the top of their starched, elaborate caps,and the effect is comical in the extreme. They remove these sinful frivolities during the - sermon, concealing them under their aprons. The service lasts four hours the doors are locked at the beginning that no unworthy wretch may escape; the music is contributed by the entire congregation, and is de- livered with great severity in the loudest possible voice. The result may be better imagined than described. And yet Rijsoord, by contrast with other villages, is sophisticated; the art students have introduced extravagant tastes, a faint comprehension of English words and a dim suggestion that there is a world outside of the circle to which even the little dogcarts may not penetrate. There is Heerjausdam, a little village twenty minutes removed. You may go down by the river ina big square rowboat, shaped like a mud- scow; the old boatman believes in the dignity of restrained movements; nothing can hurry him, nothing can in any way break in upon his calm. The little low houses lift their thatched roofs, beautiful with age, over the green gardens that slope down to the water. The women kneel on the edge of the stream and dip their linen, and rinse and clean their jars and pots of brown and green earthenware. The great round fishnets that are to induce the unwary little fish into théir brown depths rise and bob and turn in the quiet water. Heerjausdam is primeval in its simplicity: here we see no trace of a tourist. Curious faces peer from the tiny pol- ished windows down the one stone street that curves boldly around a pre- cipitous hill: the children come after us in crowds, their wooden shoes plunkingin unison. + The men siop work in the fields and stare; the women bending over the flax in the warm darkness of the barns stand upright, their biawny arms hanging at their sides, their tanned blonde faces peering out at us from under their white caps. The village peddler divides with us the general interest. His face is covered with dust and seamed with a thousand fine wrinkles, and above JS°°RD. % Avg 90 mit s CAY AND PLvms- PEN his bard, dry, red brow his white hair sticks out in wisps. He might have posed for Holbein. A child trudges at his side and pokes occasionaliy at the combs and boxes in the great basket the man carries. She is more like a gypsy than a Dutch peasant, with more than a suggestion of the Spanish strain—her copper-colored hair blows about her face and the eyes that look up from under it are large and liguid and very dark. Both of them shout at the top of their lungs a strange prolonged cry. The entire village is interested in our desire for a glass of milk and our directions are shouted st us from a hundred mouths. They nearly . come to biows over it. The oid gray houses are picturesque in the ex- treme. The dates of their erection are almost obliterated under the over- hanging eaves. On one of the most imposing—a long, low structure, with deep windows—the date is 1700. The gray church, very old and very clean, occupies the sqnare, and under the shadow of astately avenue of aspens and willows stretches the quiet graveyard. The bulrushes protect it, but the water laps under- neath them, convenient for the ghosts to come out at midnight to wash their feet oyer the low wall. As for the river itself, at this point and on this day it is silver and green and pure gray. The flax floats on it &and the long, brown hair of the seaweed and the leaves of the water lilies starred with blossoms. The windmills hardly move their gigantic arms, There is not a sound of life, not a movement over all the shining uurlace. inall the soft, vast sky, but two storks. who sail majestically over our hends: To spend a day in Rotterdam after several weeks in slumbering Rije soord is an intoxicating form of diversion. and the city seems as large, a noisy, as full of life and busy movement as London itself. s Vax DyxE Brown,