Down the Mother Lode | Page 8

Rattlesnake, glad that their six months' struggle was nearly over: of horsemen on beautiful Spanish horses riding furiously, whither no one knew nor dared ask; of dark deeds in the old stone house below, that was so inscrutably quiet by day and so mysteriously alive by night; of ghastly doings by the Tom Bell gang which ranged all the way from the Oregon border to the southern lakes.
They will never tell all they know - these big old trees - of those who went in by the door and "came out by the cellar" of Tom Bell's stronghold. In the end the place fell, in the war between order and lawlessness and, as the pessimists love to assert, a woman, as usual, was the cause of it. The tale is told:
Rosa Phillips sat in the Mountaineer House strumming a Spanish guitar, and singing,
"There's a turned down page, as some writer says, in every human life, A hidden story of happier days, of peace amidst the strife. A folded down leaf which the world knows not. A love dream rudely crushed, The sight of a face that is not forgot. Although the voice be hushed."
She rose and stood at a window, holding the dusty curtain aside with one white hand and peering cautiously forth into the dusk. A horse was galloping up the Folsom road. The horseman was near - was under the trees in front - was past - and gone down the river road without slackening his animal's rapid gait.
"He does not stop at the Mountaineer House these days," said Tom Bell's sneering voice at her elbow. "There is a new actress at the opera house in Rattlesnake."
The woman's dark eyes flashed, but she answered evenly enough:
"He does not stop, the handsome Dick, so you, senor, have not the cause to be jealous. Is it not so?"
"Cause? Why, you Spanish jade, you've never been the same to me since Rattlesnake Dick came prowling back from Shasta county to his old haunts in Placer." Rosa's thin, red lips curled.
"Senor, I am what it pleases me to be."
"And Jack Phillips permits you to be!"
She shrugged her slender shoulders.
"He wearies me. Life - this place - wearies me."
"Yes, and I weary you, too - now. Plain as day, it is."
The Phillips woman smiled (she seldom laughed) and there was only cruelty in her smile - no kindliness, no womanly softness of any sort.
"My friend, soon there will be no 'you.' The night is coming and there will be no sunrise."
A man dismounted at the gate and led his horse past the window to the stables in the cellar. He walked with a curious, halting pace.
"There's Jim Driscoll back already. Must bring news," said Bell, leaving her hurriedly, and so neglecting to ask the meaning of her cryptic remark.
Rosa slipped in behind the bar, late that evening, beautifully gowned, and with her dark hair dressed high. Her vivid face glowed like a scarlet poppy and was bright with smiles. Three or four men in the crowded bar-room rose to their feet and drank to her bright eyes and strolled across to the bar.
"Soon now' "she whispered, "I shall sweep out the lights. Those two who have just entered - who are they?" She went across the room to the newcomers. "The senors may pay me for the drinks, if they desire," she said to them, meaningly.
"La Rosita shall take what pleases her," one of them laughed. Among the handful of coins and small nuggets he brought from his pocket was a bullet strung on a bit of dirty twine.
"Ah! a love token, senor?"
"Yes, from the throat of Betsy Jane" (a term often used for a rifle).
"In twenty minutes, my friends, there will be opened a chute into purgatory for all who are in this bar room. Your 'love token' names you Senor Bell's men. Before then you will seek the rear of the room - eh?"
She drifted away from them to pause at a small table where sat a young man alone.
"And you, pretty fellow, you are new in California?"
"Yes, I landed in San Francisco only ten days ago." He was new indeed, or he would have realized the danger of telling his business to the first person who asked.
"You go far, senor?"
"Not now. I have come far, but my journey is near to a very happy ending."
"So?"
"Yes. I have come to marry Miss Elena Ashley, at Auburn, to whom I have been long betrothed."
She tapped her white teeth with her fan.
"And yet you linger at Mountaineer House?"
"Horses are expensive, and I am not rich. I walked. I was tired. I saw you in your garden, and you are very beautiful."
Rosa's capricious vanity was touched. The whim seized her to save this exuberant young bridegroom from the fate before him.
"Do you see that