Treasure and Trouble Therewith by Geraldine Bonner

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In the kitchen he found signs of this period of habitation. On a shelf in
a cupboard, hidden by a debris of paper and empty boxes, he came upon two
cans evidently overlooked. He took them to the window, threw back the
shutter, and saw they contained tomatoes and cherries. This heartened him
to new efforts and he began a search through the dirty desolation of the
room. He was rewarded by finding a half-filled match box, a few sticks of
split wood and in the bottom of a coal bunker in the passage enough coal
to make at least one good fire.

Before he started it he closed the shutter tight, then, groping in the
dusk, filled the big range with paper and wood and set a match to it. It
flickered, caught, snapped cheerily, light flickering along the walls,
shining between the bars. He poured on the coal, opened all the draughts,
saw the iron grow slowly red and felt the grateful warmth. With his knife
he cut open the tomato can, heated its contents in a leaky saucepan, and,
taking it to the sink, spooned it up with a piece of wood. The cherries
were his dessert.

After that he peeled off his outer clothes and lay on the floor in front
of the range. It threw out a violent heat, but not too much for him; he
luxuriated, basked in it, delighting in the rosy patches that grew on the
stove's rusty surface, the bright droppings from its grate. Holding his
stiff feet out to it, he cooked himself, stretching and turning like a
cat. Finally, he lay quiet, his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes
touching points that the red light played upon, and listened to the rain.
The building shook to its buffets; it swept like feeling fingers across
the windows, drummed on the low roofs of the outhouses, ran in a
spattering rush along the balcony. The sound of it soothed him like a
lullaby, and with the banging of the unfastened shutter loud in his ears
he slept the sleep of the just.

The next morning, with the daylight to help him, he extended his
search and found a few spoonfuls of tea in a glass preserve jar, a
handful of moldy potatoes in a gunny-sack and in a shed back of the
kitchen a pile of cut wood. He breakfasted royally, finishing the
remains of the cherries, built the fire up high and hot, and started
to explore the house.

It was as empty as a shell, room opening out of room, half lighted, bare
and dismal. There was nothing to be got out of it and he was back on his
way to the warmth of the kitchen when he thought of the broken-legged
table in the pantry. Propping this up against the window ledge, a drawer
fell from it, scattering sheets of paper and envelopes on the floor. He
stood staring at them, lying round his feet, fallen there as if from
heaven to supply his last and now greatest need. With an upturned box for
a seat, the stub of pencil he always carried sharpened to a pin point by
his knife, he steadied the table on the windowsill, and sat down to write
to Pancha. He wrote the word "Farleys" at the top of the sheet, as he
knew she would see the Farleys postmark, but the date he omitted:

"MY DEARY PANCHITA:

"_Farleys_

"Here's the old man writing to you from Farleys. Sort of small dead
place, but there's business moving round it, so I got washed up here for
a few days. I ain't had anything that's good yet, but there's a feller
that looks like he might nibble, and take it from me my hooks are out.
Anyways if he does I'll let you know. Plenty lot of rain, but I've been
comfortable right along. Got a good room here and swell grub. And don't
you worry about my roomatiz. All you want to know is I ain't got it. I
can't give you no address, as I'm moving on soon, Wednesday maybe. But
I'll drop you a line from somewheres as soon as I got anything to say.
You want to remember I'm all right and as happy as I ever am when I ain't
with my best girl. This leaves me in good health, which I hope it finds
you.

"YOUR BEST BEAU."

The rain lasted that day, but on the next the sun rose on a world washed
clean, woodland-scented, fresh and beautiful. The time had come for him
to dare. At nightfall he started, a young moon to guide him, followed a
road ankle high in ruts and mud, and at dawn crept into an alder thicket
for rest and sleep. It was nine, the day well started, when he walked
into Farleys.

The little town was up and about its business, windows open, housewives
sweeping front steps. The air was redolent of pine balsam, the sun
licking up the water in hollows on the sidewalks, the distances colored a
transparent blue. Outside the saloon the barkeeper was patting his dog,
women in sunbonnets with string bags on their arms were on their way to
the general store, men were bringing out chairs and placing them with
pondering calculation the right distance from the hitching bar.

He bought his stamp and posted his letter, the man inside the window
offering comments on the weather. Then he had to face the length of the
street; he had been there before and knew the hardware store was at its
other end. As he traversed it the heads of the men--already settled in
their chairs for the day--turned hopefully at the sound of his masculine
tread. It might be someone who would stand a drink, and even if it
wasn't, staring at a passerby was something to do. To run such a gauntlet
required all his fortitude, and as he walked under the battery of eyes
the sweat gathered on his face and his heart thumped in his throat.

The clerk at the hardware store was reading a paper. When he went for the
cartridges he left it on the counter and the fugitive saw the heading of
a column, "Garland still eludes justice." As he waited he read it,
turning from it to take his package and then back to it as the clerk made
change. They were hunting in the Feather country. A blacksmith beyond
Auburn swore he knew the outlaw and had seen him, mounted on a bay horse,
ride past his shop a week before at sunset. The clerk held out the
change, and Garland, reading, nodded toward the counter. He was afraid to
extend his hand, knowing that it shook, and presently, dropping the
paper, scooped up the money with a curved palm.

"Looks like Garland was goin' to give 'em the slip after all," said
the clerk.

"Um--looks that way, but I wouldn't bank on it. If he's lyin' low in one
of them camps up the Feather he's liable to be seen. There's folks there
that knows him it says here and you can't always trust your friends. Fine
weather we're havin' after the rain. So long."

When he came out into the street he was nerved for a last, desperate
venture. He went to the general store and bought a stock of provisions:
bread, sugar, bacon, coffee and tobacco. The salesman was inclined to be
friendly and asked him questions, and he explained himself as a
prospector in the hills, cut off by the recent rains. He got away from
there as quickly as he could, dropped down a side path and made for the
woods and "home."

That evening he went out and lay under the giant trees, and smoked his
first pipe for weeks. The sunset gleamed through the foliage in fiery
spots, here and there piercing it with a long ray of light which slanted
across the red trunks. From the forest recesses twilight spread in
stealthy advance, and looking up he could see bits of the sky,
scatterings of pink through the darkening green. It was intensely quiet,
not a stir of wind, not a bird note, or leaf rustle. The place was held
in that mysterious silence which broods over the Californian country and
suggests a hushed and ominous attention. It is as if nature were aware of
some impending event, imminent and portentous, and waited in tranced
expectancy. The outlaw felt it, and moved, disquieted, setting his
oppression down to loneliness.

One afternoon a week later, while standing at the kitchen window, he saw
a figure dart across an opening between the trees. It went so swiftly
that he was aware of it only as a dash of darkness, the passage of a
shadow, but It left a moving wake in the ferns and grasses. With his
heart high and smothering, he felt for his revolver and crept through the
rooms to the broken window on the veranda. If he was caught he would die
game, fight from this citadel till his last cartridge was gone. His eyes
to a crack in the shutter he looked out--no one was there. The vista of
the forest stretched back as free of human presence as in the days before
man had roamed its solemn corridors.

Then he saw it again; the tightness of his muscles relaxed, and the hand
holding the revolver dropped to his side. It was a child, a boy; there
were two of them. He watched them move, foot balanced before foot, wary
eyes on the house, emerge from behind a trunk and flee to the shelter of
the next one. They were little fellows, eight or perhaps ten, in overalls
and ragged hats, scared and yet adventurous, creeping cautiously nearer.

It was easy to guess what they were and what had brought them: ranch
children who had seen the smoke of his fire, and, knowing the hotel to be
empty, had come to discover who was there. The game was up--they might
have been round the place for hours, for days. He suddenly threw open the
shutters and roared at them, an unexpected and fearful challenge. A
moment of paralyzed terror was followed by a wild rush, the bracken
breaking under their flying feet. After they had passed from his sight he
could hear the swish and crashing of their frantic flight. Two boys, so
frightened, would not take long to reach home and gasp out their story.

He left on their heels, window and door flapping behind him, the fire red
in the range.

Two days later he found cover in a deserted tunnel back in the hills. Its
timbers sagged with the weight of the years, the yellow mound of its dump
was hidden under a mantle of green. Even its mouth, once a black hole in
the hillside verdure, was curtained by a veil of creepers. There was game
and there was water and there he stayed. At first he rested, then idle
and inert lay among the ferns on the top of the dump, staring at the
distance, squinting up at the sky, deadened with the weight of the
interminable, empty days.

CHAPTER XIX

HALF TRUTHS AND INFERENCES

Chrystie had developed a liking for long walks. As she was a person of a
lazy habit Lorry inquired about it and received the answer that walking
was the easiest way to keep down your weight. This was a satisfactory
explanation, for Chrystie was of the ebullient, early-spreading
Californian type, and an extending acquaintance among girls of her age
might readily awake a dormant vanity. So the walks passed unchallenged.

But, beside an unwonted attention to her looks, Lorry noticed that her
sister was changing. Quite suddenly she seemed to have emerged from
childhood, blossomed into a grown-up phase. She was losing her irrelevant
high spirits, bubbled much less frequently, sometimes sat in silence for
half an hour at a time. Then there were moments when her glance was fixed
and pondering, as if her thoughts ranged afar. The new interest in her
appearance extended from her figure to her clothes. She spent so much
money on them that Lorry spoke to her about it and was answered with
mutinous irritation. Why shouldn't she have pretty things like the other
girls? What was the sense of hoarding up their money like misers? Lorry
could do it if she liked; she was going to get some good out of hers.

Lorry saw the change as the result of a widening social experience--she
had tried to find amusement, the proper surroundings of her age and
station, for Chrystie and she had succeeded. Gayeties had grown out of
that first, agitating dinner till they now moved through quite a little
round of parties. Under this new excitement Chrystie was acquiring poise,
also fluctuations of spirit and temper. Lorry supposed it was
natural--you couldn't stay up late when you weren't used to it and be as
easy-going and good-humored as when you went to bed every night at ten.

Lorry might have seen deeper, but her attention was diverted. For the
first time in her life she was thinking a good deal about her own
affairs. What she felt was kept very secret, but even if it hadn't been
there was no one to notice, certainly not Chrystie, nor Aunt Ellen. The
only other person near enough to notice was Fong, and it wasn't Fong's
place to help--at least to help in an open way.

One morning in the kitchen, when he and "Miss Lolly" were making the menu
for a new dinner, he had said,

"Mist Bullage come this time?"

"Miss Lolly," with a faint access of color and an eye sliding from Fong's
to the back porch, had answered,

"No, I'm not asking Mr. Burrage to this one, Fong."

"Why not ask Mist Bullage?" Fong had persisted, slightly reproving.

"Because I've asked him several times and he hasn't come."

That was in the old Bonanza manner. One answered a Chinaman like Fong
truthfully and frankly as man to man.

"He come this time. You lite him nice letter."

"No, I don't want to, I've enough without him. It's all made up."

"I no see why--plenty big loom, plenty good dinner. Velly nice boy, good
boy, best boy ever come to my boss's house."

"Now, Fong, don't get side-tracked. I didn't come to talk to you about
the people, I came to talk about the food."

Fong looked at her, gently inquiring, "You no like Mist Bullage,
Miss Lolly?"

"Of course I like him. Won't you please attend to what I'm saying?"

"Then you ask him and I make awful swell dinner--same like I make for
your Pa when General Grant eat here."

When Fong had a fixed idea that way there was no use arguing with him;
one rose with a resigned air and left the kitchen. As Lorry passed
through the pantry door he called after her, amiable but determined,

"All samey Mist Bullage no come I won't make bird nest ice cleam with
pink eggs."

No one but Fong bothered about Mr. Burrage's absence. After the evening
at the Albion Chrystie set him down as "hopeless," and when he refused
two dinner invitations, said they ought to have asked him to wait on the
table and then he would have accepted. To this gibe Lorry made no answer,
but that night before the mirror in her own room, she addressed her
reflection with bitterness:

"Why should any man like me? I'm not pretty, I'm not clever, I'm as slow
as a snail." She saw tears rise in her eyes and finished ruthlessly, "I'm
such a fool that I cry about a man who's done everything but say straight
out, 'I don't care for you, you bore me, do leave me alone.'"

So Lorry, nursing her hidden wound, was forgetful of her stewardship.

It was a pity, for there were times when Chrystie, caught in a contrite
mood and questioned, would have told. Such times generally came when she
was preparing for one of her walks. At these moments her adventure had a
way of suddenly losing its glamour and appearing as a shabby and
underhand performance. Before she saw Mayer she often hesitated, a prey
to a chill distaste, sometimes even questioning her love for him. After
she saw him things were different. She came away filled with a bridling
vanity, feeling herself a siren, a queen of men. Helen of Troy, seeing
brave blood spilled for her possession, was not more satisfied of her
worth than Chrystie after an hour's talk with Boye Mayer.

It was the certainty of Lorry's disapproval that made secrecy necessary.
He soon realized that Lorry was the governing force, the loved and feared
dictator. But he was a cunning wooer. He put no ban upon confession--if
Chrystie wanted to tell he was the last person to stop it. And having
placed the responsibility in her hands, he wove closer round the little
fly the parti-colored web of illusion. He made her feel the thrill of the
clandestine, the romance of stolen meetings, see herself not as a green,
affrighted girl, but a woman queening it over her own destiny, fit mate
for him in eagle flight above the hum-drum multitude.

But the moments when her conscience pricked still recurred. She was
particularly oppressed one afternoon as she sat in her room waiting for
the clock to strike three. At half past she was to meet Mayer in the
plaza, opposite the Greek Church. She had no time for a long walk that
day--an engagement for tea claimed her at five--so he had suggested the
plaza. No one they knew ever went there, and a visit to the Greek Church
would be interesting.

Her hat and furs lay ready on the bed and she sat in the long wicker
chair by the window, one hand supporting her chin, while her eyes rested
somberly on the fig tree in the garden. She was reluctant to go; she did
not know why, except that just then, waiting for the clock to strike, she
had had an eerie sort of fear of Mayer. She told herself it was because
he was so clever, so superior to any man she had ever known. But she
wished she could tell Lorry, say boldly, "Lorry, Mr. Mayer is in love
with me"--she wished she could dare.

At that moment Lorry appeared in the doorway between the two rooms.

"Hello," she said. "How serious you look."

"I'm thinking," said Chrystie, studying the fig tree.

"Are you going out?" The things on the bed had caught her eye.

"Um--presently."

"So soon? You're not asked to the Forsythe's till five and it's not
three yet."

"I _could_ be going somewhere else first."

"Oh--where?"

"Somewhere out of this house--that's the main thing. Since the furnace
was put in it's like a Turkish bath."

"You're going for a walk?" Lorry went to the bed and picked up the
hat. It was a new one with a French maker's name in the crown. "You
oughtn't to hack this hat about, Chrystie. I wouldn't wear it when I
went for a walk."

"Do you think it would be better to wear it in the house? Having bought
it I must wear it somewhere."

Lorry, laughing, put on the hat and looked at herself in the glass. There
was a moment's pause, then the chair creaked under a movement of
Chrystie's, and her voice came very quiet.

"Lorry, do you like Boye Mayer?"

Lorry, studying the effect of the hat, did not answer with any special
interest. The Perfect Nugget had lost all novelty for her. He came to the
house now and then, was a help in their entertainments, and was always
considerate and polite--that was all.

"No, not much," she murmured.

"Why not?"

"It's hard to say exactly--just something." She placed her hand over a
rakish green paradise plume to see if its elimination would be an
improvement.

"But if you don't like a person you ought to have a reason."

"You don't always. It's just a feeling, an instinct like dogs have. I've
an instinct against Mr. Mayer--he's not the real thing."

Chrystie sat forward in the chair.

"That's exactly what I'd say he was, and everybody else says so, too."

"On the outside--yes, I didn't mean that. I meant deep down. I don't
think he's real straight through--it's all varnish and glitter. Of course
I don't mind his coming here the way he does; we don't see him often and
he's amusing and pleasant. But I wouldn't like him to be on a friendly
footing. In fact he never could be--I wouldn't let him."

It was the voice of authority. Chrystie felt its finality, and guided by
her own inner distress and the hopelessness of revolt, said sharply:

"And yet you wouldn't mind Mark Burrage being on a friendly footing."

"Mark Burrage!" There was something ludicrous in Lorry's face, full
of surprise under the overpowering hat. "What has Mark Burrage to
do with it?"

Chrystie climbed somewhat lumberingly out of the chair. Her movements
were dignified, her tone sarcastic.

"Oh, nothing, nothing. Only if Mr. Mayer is so far below your standard
I'm wondering where Mr. Burrage comes in." She stretched a long arm and
snatched the hat. "Excuse me," she said with brusque politeness, setting
it on her own head and turning to the glass, "but I really must be going.
Only a salamander could live comfortably in this house."

Lorry was startled. Her sister's face, deeply flushed, showed an intense
irritation.

"I don't understand you. You can't make a comparison between those two
men. They're as different as black and white."

"They certainly are," said Chrystie, driving a long pin through the hat.
"Or chalk and cheese, or brass and gold, or whatever else stands for the
real thing and the imitation."

"What's the matter with you, Chrystie? Are you angry?"

"Me?" She gave a glance from under her lifted arm. "Why should I
be angry?"

"I don't know but--" An alarming thought seized Lorry, and she
moved nearer. It was preposterous, but after all girls took strange
fancies, and Chrystie was no longer a child. "You don't _care_ for
Boye Mayer, do you?"

It was the propitious moment, but Chrystie was now as far from telling as
if she had taken an oath of silence. What Lorry had already said was
enough, and the tone in which she asked the question was the finishing
touch. If she thought her sister had fallen in love with Fong, she
couldn't have appeared more shocked and incredulous.

"Care for him?" said Chrystie, pulling out the bureau drawer and clawing
about in it for her gloves. "Well, I care for him in some ways, and then
I don't care for him in other ways."

"I don't mean that, I mean _really_ care."

"Do you mean, am I _in love_ with him?"

Her eye on Lorry was steady and questioning, also slightly scornful.
Lorry was abashed by it; she felt that she ought not to have asked, and
in confusion stammered, "Yes."

Chrystie moved to the bed and threw on her furs. Her ill-humor was gone,
though she was still a little scornful and rather grandly forbearing. Her
manner suggested that she could condone this in Lorry owing to her
relationship and the honesty of her intention.

"Dearest Lorry, you talk like an old maid in a musical comedy. In love
with him? How I wish I could be! At my age every self-respecting girl
ought to be in love--they always are in books. But try as I will, I
can't seem to manage it. I guess I've got a heart of stone or perhaps
it's been left out of me entirely. Good-by, the heartless wonder's going
for her walk."

She ended on a laugh, a little strident, and crossed the room, perfume
shaken from her brilliant clothes. Outside the door she broke into a song
that rose above her scudding flight down the stairs.

Lorry's momentary uneasiness died. Chrystie, as a woman of ruses and
deceptions, was a thing she could not at this stage accept.

They met in the plaza and saw the Greek Church and then sat on a bench
under a tree and talked. They were so secure in the little park's
isolation that they gave their surroundings no attention. That was why a
woman crossing it was able to draw near, stand for a watching moment,
skirt the back of their bench, and pass on unnoticed. She was the same
woman who had seen them at that earlier meeting in Union Square.

During that month the new operetta at the Albion had been put on and had
fallen flat. There was a good deal of speculation as to the cause of the
failure, and it was rumored that the management set it down to Miss
Lopez. She had slighted her work of late, been careless and indifferent.
Nobody knew what was the matter with her. She scorned the idea of ill
health, but she looked worn out and several times had given vent to
savage and unreasonable bursts of temper. She was too valuable a woman to
quarrel with, and when the head of the enterprise suggested a rest--a
week or two in the country--she rejected the idea with an angry
repudiation of illness or fatigue.

Crowder was there on the first night and went away disturbed. He had
never seen her give so poor a performance; all her fire was gone, she was
mechanical, almost listless. Her public was loyal though puzzled, and the
papers stood by her, but "What's happened to Pancha Lopez? How she _has_
gone off!" was a current phrase where men and women gathered. Behind the
scenes her mates whispered, some jealously observant, others more kindly,
concerned and wondering. Gossip of a love affair was bandied about, but
died for lack of confirmation. She had been seen with no one, the
methodical routine of her days remained unchanged.

For her the month had been the most wretched of her life. Never in the
hard past had she passed through anything as devastating. Those trials
she had known how to meet; this was all new, finding her without defense,
naked to unexpected attack. Belief and dread had alternated in her,
ravaged and laid her waste. After the manner of impassioned women she
would not see, clung to hope, had days, after a letter or a message from
Mayer, when she had almost ascended to the top of the golden moment
again. Then there was silence, a note of hers unanswered, and she fell,
sinking into darkling depths. Once or twice, waking in the night or
waiting for his knock, she had sudden flashes of clear sight. These left
her in a frozen stillness, staring with wide eyes, frightened of herself.

The process of enlightenment had been gradual. Mayer wanted no scenes, no
annoying explanations; there was to be no violent moment of severance. To
accomplish his withdrawal gracefully, he put himself to some trouble.
After that first letter he waylaid her at the stage door one night, and
walked part of the way home with her. He had been kind, friendly,
brotherly--a completely changed Mayer. She felt it and refused to
understand, walking at his side, trying to be the old, merry Pancha.

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