Devils Ford | Page 7

part of Mattingly's speech, Christie comprehended enough to
make her lift her clear eyes to the speaker, as she replied freezingly that
she feared she would not trouble them long with her company.
"Oh, you'll get over that," responded Mattingly, with an exasperating
confidence that drove her nearly frantic, from the manifest kindliness of
intent that made it impossible for her to resent it. "I felt that way myself
at first. Things will look strange and unsociable for a while, until you
get the hang of them. You'll naturally stamp round and cuss a little--"
He stopped in conscious consternation.
With ready tact, and before Christie could reply, Maryland Joe had put
down the trunk and changed hands with his brother.
"You mustn't mind Dick, or he'll go off and kill himself with shame,"
he whispered laughingly in her ear. "He means all right, but he's picked
up so much slang here that he's about forgotten how to talk English,
and it's nigh on to four years since he's met a young lady."
Christie did not reply. Yet the laughter of her sister in advance with the
Kearney brothers seemed to make the reserve with which she tried to
crush further familiarity only ridiculous.
"Do you know many operas, Miss Carr?"
She looked at the boyish, interested, sunburnt face so near to her own,
and hesitated. After all, why should she add to her other real
disappointments by taking this absurd creature seriously?
"In what way?" she returned, with a half smile.
"To play. On the piano, of course. There isn't one nearer here than

Sacramento; but I reckon we could get a small one by Thursday. You
couldn't do anything on a banjo?" he added doubtfully; "Kearney's got
one."
"I imagine it would be very difficult to carry a piano over those
mountains," said Christie laughingly, to avoid the collateral of the
banjo.
"We got a billiard-table over from Stockton," half bashfully interrupted
Dick Mattingly, struggling from his end of the trunk to recover his
composure, "and it had to be brought over in sections on the back of a
mule, so I don't see why--" He stopped short again in confusion, at a
sign from his brother, and then added, "I mean, of course, that a piano
is a heap more delicate, and valuable, and all that sort of thing, but it's
worth trying for."
"Fairfax was always saying he'd get one for himself, so I reckon it's
possible," said Joe.
"Does he play?" asked Christie.
"You bet," said Joe, quite forgetting himself in his enthusiasm. "He can
snatch Mozart and Beethoven bald-headed."
In the embarrassing silence that followed this speech the fringe of pine
wood nearest the flat was reached. Here there was a rude "clearing,"
and beneath an enormous pine stood the two recently joined tenements.
There was no attempt to conceal the point of junction between
Kearney's cabin and the newly-transported saloon from the flat--no
architectural illusion of the palpable collusion of the two buildings,
which seemed to be telescoped into each other. The front room or
living room occupied the whole of Kearney's cabin. It contained, in
addition to the necessary articles for housekeeping, a "bunk" or berth
for Mr. Carr, so as to leave the second building entirely to the
occupation of his daughters as bedroom and boudoir.
There was a half-humorous, half-apologetic exhibition of the rude
utensils of the living room, and then the young men turned away as the

two girls entered the open door of the second room. Neither Christie
nor Jessie could for a moment understand the delicacy which kept these
young men from accompanying them into the room they had but a few
moments before decorated and arranged with their own hands, and it
was not until they turned to thank their strange entertainers that they
found that they were gone.
The arrangement of the second room was rude and bizarre, but not
without a singular originality and even tastefulness of conception. What
had been the counter or "bar" of the saloon, gorgeous in white and gold,
now sawn in two and divided, was set up on opposite sides of the room
as separate dressing-tables, decorated with huge bunches of azaleas,
that hid the rough earthenware bowls, and gave each table the
appearance of a vestal altar.
The huge gilt plate-glass mirror which had hung behind the bar still
occupied one side of the room, but its length was artfully divided by an
enormous rosette of red, white, and blue muslin--one of the surviving
Fourth of July decorations of Thompson's saloon. On either side of the
door two pathetic-looking, convent-like cots, covered with spotless
sheeting, and heaped up in the middle, like a snow-covered grave, had
attracted their attention. They were still staring at them when Mr. Carr
anticipated their