A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready | Page 7

the engineering work of the well. This
trifling incident marked an epoch in the social condition of the family.
Mrs. Mulrady at once assumed a conscious importance among her
neighbors. She spoke of her husband's "men"; she alluded to the well as
"the works"; she checked the easy frontier familiarity of her customers
with pretty Mary Mulrady, her seventeen-year-old daughter. Simple
Alvin Mulrady looked with astonishment at this sudden development of
the germ planted in all feminine nature to expand in the slightest
sunshine of prosperity. "Look yer, Malviny; ain't ye rather puttin' on
airs with the boys that want to be civil to Mamie? Like as not one of
'em may be makin' up to her already." "You don't mean to say, Alvin
Mulrady," responded Mrs. Mulrady, with sudden severity, "that you
ever thought of givin' your daughter to a common miner, or that I'm
goin' to allow her to marry out of our own set?" "Our own set!" echoed
Mulrady feebly, blinking at her in astonishment, and then glancing
hurriedly across at his freckle-faced son and the two Chinamen at work
in the cabbages. "Oh, you know what I mean," said Mrs. Mulrady
sharply; "the set that we move in. The Alvarados and their friends!
Doesn't the old Don come here every day, and ain't his son the right age
for Mamie? And ain't they the real first families here--all the same as if
they were noblemen? No, leave Mamie to me, and keep to your shaft;
there never was a man yet had the least sabe about these things, or
knew what was due to his family." Like most of his larger minded, but
feebler equipped sex, Mulrady was too glad to accept the truth of the
latter proposition, which left the meannesses of life to feminine
manipulation, and went off to his shaft on the hillside. But during that
afternoon he was perplexed and troubled. He was too loyal a husband
not to be pleased with this proof of an unexpected and superior
foresight in his wife, although he was, like all husbands, a little startled
by it. He tried to dismiss it from his mind. But looking down from the
hillside upon his little venture, where gradual increase and prosperity
had not been beyond his faculties to control and understand, he found
himself haunted by the more ambitious projects of his helpmate. From
his own knowledge of men, he doubted if Don Ramon, any more than
himself, had ever thought of the possibility of a matrimonial connection
between the families. He doubted if he would consent to it. And

unfortunately it was this very doubt that, touching his own pride as a
self-made man, made him first seriously consider his wife's proposition.
He was as good as Don Ramon, any day! With this subtle feminine
poison instilled in his veins, carried completely away by the logic of his
wife's illogical premises, he almost hated his old benefactor. He looked
down upon the little Garden of Eden, where his Eve had just tempted
him with the fatal fruit, and felt a curious consciousness that he was
losing its simple and innocent enjoyment forever.
Happily, about this time Don Ramon died. It is not probable that he
ever knew the amiable intentions of Mrs. Mulrady in regard to his son,
who now succeeded to the paternal estate, sadly partitioned by relatives
and lawsuits. The feminine Mulradys attended the funeral, in expensive
mourning from Sacramento; even the gentle Alvin was forced into
ready-made broadcloth, which accented his good-natured but
unmistakably common presence. Mrs. Mulrady spoke openly of her
"loss"; declared that the old families were dying out; and impressed the
wives of a few new arrivals at Red Dog with the belief that her own
family was contemporary with the Alvarados, and that her husband's
health was far from perfect. She extended a motherly sympathy to the
orphaned Don Caesar. Reserved, like his father, in natural disposition,
he was still more gravely ceremonious from his loss; and, perhaps from
the shyness of an evident partiality for Mamie Mulrady, he rarely
availed himself of her mother's sympathizing hospitality. But he carried
out the intentions of his father by consenting to sell to Mulrady, for a
small sum, the property he had leased. The idea of purchasing had
originated with Mrs. Mulrady.
"It'll be all in the family," had observed that astute lady, "and it's better
for the looks of the things that we shouldn't he his tenants."
It was only a few weeks later that she was startled by hearing her
husband's voice calling her from the hillside as he rapidly approached
the house. Mamie was in her room putting on a new pink cotton gown,
in honor of an expected visit from young Don Caesar, and Mrs.
Mulrady was