Down the Mother Lode | Page 9

"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 peddler - old Rosenthal - close to the bar? He brought
in a large and rich pack tonight. It lies in the next room. Do you go
there at once. I will come soon, and together we will select a gift for

your bride. Go quickly!"
She passed again behind the bar. Jack Phillips was at one end, lame Jim
Driscoll at the other, Tom Bell in the middle. Rosa paused near a
branching candelabra which had once graced the altar of a Spanish
church.
"Is Jose below?" whispered Bell. She nodded. "Why did you save that
boy, just now? A new lover?" She directed upon him a level glance of
hate.
"I do what pleases me, senor." She raised her arm high, beginning the
first stamping measure of a Spanish dance. Instantly there was a
curious rumbling noise in the stable underneath. Rosa swept over the
candelabra. All the lights in the place were struck out. Phillips and
Driscoll slipped two great bolts, and the entire bar-room floor swung
downward on hinges.
The chute to purgatory was open!
There was bedlam in that dank pass to the region of shades, and no
quarter was shown to any man; only cries of "The String! The String!"
from members of the gang in order to distinguish the robbers from the
robbed, in the darkness. There were curses, the kicking and squealing
of horses in their stalls; a verse from the Talmud recited in Yiddish
(which suddenly stopped), and above it all the high and hysterical laugh
of a woman.
The boy turned from the peddler's pack as Rosa entered the room.
"What is that horrible noise?"
"A fight. Come, you had better go." She led him down a dark stair to
another section of the cellar. "Jose," she called. An evil looking
Mexican pushed open a rough door. "You shall take this man out
through the second tunnel."
"Si, senora."
"And, Jose, he shall reach the outer opening alive, and with all his
belongings. He has no money. Do you hear?" Jose grunted. "Go, now,
under, cover of the noise."
"But the gift for Elena!"
Rosa laughed mockingly. "What a child it is! My gift to Elena tonight,
is you - her lover. Ask her to thank me with a prayer from her pure
heart for my sins."
Jose led the young man through a long, damp, evil-odored passage

underground, and out through a trapdoor at the extreme end of the
garden. A shrub grew on top of the door, surrounded by a bed of
fragrant wild pansies. Jose kicked the staring youth away from the
entrance and vanished into the earth looking, in the lantern-light like a
malevolent fiend returning to the realm of everlasting fire.
* * * * *
The balls which were given at the Franklin House on the old Pioneer
road were the most pretentious of the year. Feminine loveliness in silks
and cameos gathered from every section. General Sutter and his
officers sometimes were there, and the Spanish grandees brought to
them the lovely, star-eyed beauties of their households.
On this night a brilliant assemblage stood about in the ballroom floor
ready for a quadrille. Elena Ashley and her betrothed were near the
wide entrance doors.
"There is "Sheriff Paul of Calaveras County," she told him. "He does
not dance. I wonder what brings him here?"
The doors opened and Rosa Phillips entered, magnificently jewelled
and dressed in a rich silk of pearl grey. Elena stared, clutching at her
partner's arm.
"Oh, look!"