The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, February 28, 1904, Page 5

ee she an- lothe i t was me the & wring her at? I'd no I felt old. Oh, God!” she said, sud- is and looking f s € rkly reminiscent o . now? Ye we B 3 he asked B she sald, return- er tone of gayety “I ain’t ke this before. Not sense married, anyway. marriage made e the subject had nding, lean- to her hovel, he said here soon, u well winter ve got ¥ g we winter soon,” ng ve round; “does f it's a hard get out be- Can’'t Got to ent shel- nyhow v n the ne, her eyes faint 1 drawp be- What sort o' place his eyves from her face point of his en't enough Fletcher put that spoke in But I'll take you and the Hangtown.” own?" she repeated faintly. t's quite a ways off. T'll have myself and get a horse first, and then I'll take you both in on that. { thought I'd go to Mrs. Wingate. Her to and tim rrado Hotel nd told me last e'd give a fancy I was there s could get a housekeeper. How'd to try that? It would be a s home for you and the baby.” ad bent her face over the wet ight here idina ably; “I just being strong enough to r ke t he continued, “you t hotel. I can make sily. Then in the ms are to full, I'll Do 1 dr and before a rel, M ipturned box, staring at reau on he man broke the silence by he ws ing to take his Hangtown the next yver night and re- orning with fresh sup- teling her t dust d a burre he her, said, drawing his- box I want to talk to you of looked up, saw that the moment had been dreading had come, and the winter's coming. The be here now at any moment. thought of What we're to snow majy Have you She shook her head and began to tremble. His words called up the specter of separation—what she feared most in the world. “You know we can’t live on this way. Will you, if T go into Hangtown and bring back a mule, ride there with me to-morrow and marry 2 There are two or three preachers there who will do it.” day after She looked at him with surprised eves. “I'm married already to Jake,” s sald. “How kin I get married again? “I know it, and it's no good trying to break that marriage. But in your eyes and mine that was none. You and your baby are mine to take care of and support and love for the rest of our lives. Though you can't be my lawful wife, T can protect you from scandal and i It by making you what all the world will think my lawful wife. Only you, and I and Jake and his sec- ond wife will know that there has been a previous marriage and not one of that four will ever tell.” Shé put her rough hand out and felt is his great fist close over it, like a sym- bol of the protection he was offering her. “We can be married in Hangtown by your maiden n If any one asks I can say I am & a young widow whose husband died on the Sierra. Your husband did die there when he sold you to me for a pair of horses.” She nodded, not quite understanding his meaning. “Kin Jake ever come and claim me?” she asked in a frightened voice. “How could he? How could he dare tell the world how he’left you and his child sick, almost dying, in tne hut of er In the foothills? here men don’t for- hen said: “Yes, let’s go to Hangtown and be married.” Was your first marriage perfect legal? Have yc )t the marriage cer- tificate She rose, dragged out the bundle she had brought with her, and from it drew a long dirty envelope which she handed to him. He opened it and found the certifi- cate. It was accurate in every detall. His ran over the ages and names of the contracting Lucy Fraser, 15, to Jacob Shackleton, 24, at St. Louis, Twisting the paper in his hands he sat moodily eying the fire. The second marriage was the only way he could think of by which he could lend a sem- blance of right to the impossible posi- tion in which his generous action had placed him. Divorce, in that remote locality and at that early day of laws, half administered and chaotic, was im- possible, and even had it been easily obtained he shrank from dragging into publicity the piteous story of how the woman he loved had been sold to him. That a marriage with Jake Shackle- ton’s wife was a legal offense he knew, but with one of those strange whimsies of character which mark mankind, he felt that the reading of the marriage service over Lucy and himself would in some way sanctify what could never be a lawful tie. In a spasm of rage and disgust he held out the paper to the flames, when Lucy, with a smothered cry sprang for- ward and seized it. It was the first violent action into which he had ever seen her betrayed. He looked in sur- prise into her flushed and alarmed face. “Why not? Why not destroy every- thing that could connect you with such a past?” he said, almost angrily. She hesitated, smoothing out the paper with trembling hands. Then she said falteringly: “I don't know—but—but—he was her father,” indicating the sleeping baby. “I was married to him all right.” He understood the instinct that made her wish to keep the paper as a record of her child’s legitimacy, and made no further comment. b . parties The next morning at dawn he started for his long,walk into Hangtown, tak- ing with him all the dust he had accu- mulated since Fletcher’s departure. He was absent till the afternoon of the following day, when he reappeared leading a small pack mule, laden with supplies, among which were several ar ticles of dress for Lucy and the bab: so that they might make a fitting ap- pearance when they rode into camp for the wedding. Lucy was overjoyed at her finery, and arrayed in it looked so pretty and so girlish that Moreau, for the first time since the scene by the creek, took her in his arms and kissed her. It was the kiss of the bridegroom and the master. The next morning when she woke the cabin was curiously dark. Going to the door to open {t, she found it resisted, and went to the window. The world was wrapped in a blinding fall of snow. When Moreau came in for breakfast, he reported a blizzard outside. The cold was intense, the wind high, and the snow so fine and so torn by the gale that it was like a mist of whiteness en- veloping the cabin. Already it was piled high about the walls and had to be shoveled from the door to permit of its opening. Fortunately they had col- lected a large amount of fire wood which was piled in the brush shed in which the man lived. During the morn- ing Moreau took the animalg from their shelter and stabled them in his. There was fodder for them and a bed of leaves, and the heat of the chimney warmed the fragile hut. All day the storm raged, and in the evening, as he and Lucy sat before the fire, they could hear the turmoil of the tempest outside, moaning through the ranks of the sentinel pines. They were silent, listening to this shouting of the unloosed elements, and feeling an in- describably sweet sense of home and shelter in their rugged cabin and each other’s society. The storm was one of those unex- pected blizzards which sometimes visit the Sierras in the early winter. With brief intervals of sunshine, the snow fell off and on for nearly a month. Moreau had to exercise almost super- human effort to keep the cabin from be- ing burjed, and, as it was, the drifts nearly covered the window. It was im- ¥ Twisting the Papers in * His Hands, He Sat Moodily Eyeing the Fire. possible to travel any distance, as the snow was ¢f a fine, feathery texture which did not pack tight, and into which the wanderer sank to the arm pits. Fortunately the last trip into Hangtown had stocked the cabin well with provisions. No cares menaced its inmates, who, warm and happy in the vast snow-buried solitudes of the mountains, led an enchanted existence, forgetting and forgotten by the world. When the storm ended the miner at- tempted to get into the settlements with the mule. But the beast, ex- hausted by the insufficient food, as the best part of the fodder had to be given to the cow, fell by the way, dying in one of the drifts. This seemed to sever their last link with the world. Nature had drawn an unbroken circle of lone- liness around them. Under its spell they were drawn closer together till their lives merged—the primitive man and woman living for and by love in the primitive wilderness. So the enchanted winter passed. The man, at intervals, making his way into the settlements for food and the few articles of clothing that they needed. Tt was a terrible winter, nearly as fierce as that of '46, but between the storms Moreau fitfully worked the stream, ob- taining enough dust to pay for their provisions. The outside world seemed to fade from their lives, which were bounded by the walls of the cabin. Here, in the long fire-lit evenings, Mo- reau read to Lucy, taught her from his few books, strove to develop the mind that misfortune had almost crushed. She responded to his teachings with the quickness of love. Without much men- tal ability she improved because she lived only for what he desired. She smoothed the roughness of her speech and studied to correct her grammati- cal errors. She made him set her little tasks such as a child studies, and in the evenings he watched her with surrepti- tious amusement, as she conred over her spelling, or traced letters in her copy-book. She was passionately desir- ous of being worthy of him, and of leaving her old chrysalis behind her when she issued from the cabin. This was not to be until the early spring. It was nearly six months from the time the emigrant wagon had stopped at his door, that Moreau, hav- ing accumulated enough dust to buy another mule and another outfit—took Lucy and the child into Hangtown for the marriage. This ceremony, about which in the beginning she had been somewhat apathetic, she now earnestly for the first time, saw the m f Californian wild flow posa lily, ands called her baby As time went ‘on and no other ch Mariposa as w His af n tor h T passt It was de self and Lucy that know the secret of h be called by his na: 1g s his chi As th t on grew in th b nan and woma L n had A 1ld bea e was purg t urbing time passed. In the the next few years Moreau mov n th aller a into Sac ability, he was always able. in nak tag 1 for th ss Laicy Movesn's soon a marked figu State But his rise to sen ) gan with the ning da rizon a wrigl- nal exploite yne of thos an astonished A quarter when he had cros neither memory, v vast nor picturesque record. The par raph stated that “the p and daughter att ) hours, which were tran a free from pain is under t B deceased | but little g t two or thre ars been incapacitated for rk by enfee- bled health.” Hast thou fo Four Moreau posa at tage on Pin singing. H pe lodiou engaged in v was Mariposa's tinetion I With it she dreamed fame and br and herself. She was so goals that she speculate on th possible glo voice were as unk was sat 10 of hes t her m tar cisco as she been a short and exciting ep for lack of t only given g pian feverishly exalted whe fore, he: mented b fifty cents a r week—$16 a month. make $16 a month after four * Mariposa had said acquisition of this n one year I ought brought in $4 a desired. It w complished without b b b = publicity or iculty, Lucy assuming N ien (il Thh her maiden name of Fraser, and pges- 2 - bt $ ng as a young widow. In the after- P i noon they started back for the cabim, * 20Vice a1 on fcot, with his wife and baby _ = - They had decided to stay D25%¢ : s had develocped Into ome of these during the spring and . when the stieams were 10rdly women, stately of carriage, wide g G i of shoulder a that the spring passed and the sum- During this season Lucy. ~am Good Morning! 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