Erema | Page 8

the more
natural and maternal nutriment of money.
Therefore Sampson Gundry, though he would not dig for gold, wrought
out a plan which he had long thought of. Nature helped him with all her
powers of mountain, forest, and headlong stream. He set up a saw-mill,
and built it himself; and there was no other to be found for twelve
degrees of latitude and perhaps a score of longitude.

CHAPTER IV
THE "KING OF THE MOUNTAINS."
If I think, and try to write forever with the strongest words, I can not
express to any other mind a thousandth part of the gratitude which was
and is, and ought to be forever, in my own poor mind toward those who
were so good to me. From time to time it is said (whenever any man
with power of speech or fancy gets some little grievances) that all
mankind are simply selfish, miserly, and miserable. To contradict that
saying needs experience even larger, perhaps, than that which has
suggested it; and this I can not have, and therefore only know that I
have not found men or women behave at all according to that view of
them.

Whether Sampson Gundry owed any debt, either of gratitude or of
loyalty, to my father, I did not ask; and he seemed to be (like every one
else) reserved and silent as to my father's history. But he always treated
me as if I belonged to a rank of life quite different from and much
above his own. For instance, it was long before he would allow me to
have my meals at the table of the household.
But as soon as I began in earnest to recover from starvation, loss, and
loneliness, my heart was drawn to this grand old man, who had seen so
many troubles. He had been here and there in the world so much, and
dealt with so many people, that the natural frankness of his mind was
sharpened into caution. But any weak and helpless person still could
get the best of him; and his shrewdness certainly did not spring from
any form of bitterness. He was rough in his ways sometimes, and could
not bear to be contradicted when he was sure that he was right, which
generally happened to him. But above all things he had one very great
peculiarity, to my mind highly vexatious, because it seemed so
unaccountable. Sampson Gundry had a very low opinion of feminine
intellect. He never showed this contempt in any unpleasant way, and
indeed he never, perhaps, displayed it in any positive sayings. But as I
grew older and began to argue, sure I was that it was there; and it
always provoked me tenfold as much by seeming to need no assertion,
but to stand as some great axiom.
The other members of the household were his grandson Ephraim (or
"Firm" Gundry), the Indian woman Suan Isco, and a couple of helps, of
race or nation almost unknown to themselves. Suan Isco belonged to a
tribe of respectable Black Rock Indians, and had been the wife of a
chief among them, and the mother of several children. But Klamath
Indians, enemies of theirs (who carried off the lady of the cattle ranch,
and afterward shot Elijah), had Suan Isco in their possession, having
murdered her husband and children, and were using her as a mere beast
of burden, when Sampson Gundry fell on them. He, with his followers,
being enraged at the cold-blooded death of Elijah, fell on those
miscreants to such purpose that women and children alone were left to
hand down their bad propensities.

But the white men rescued and brought away the stolen wife of the
stockman, and also the widow of the Black Rock chief. She was in such
poor condition and so broken-hearted that none but the finest humanity
would have considered her worth a quarter of the trouble of her
carriage. But she proved to be worth it a thousandfold; and Sawyer
Gundry (as now he was called) knew by this time all the value of
uncultivated gratitude. And her virtues were so many that it took a long
time to find them out, for she never put them forward, not knowing
whether they were good or bad.
Until I knew these people, and the pure depth of their kindness, it was a
continual grief to me to be a burden upon them. But when I came to
understand them and their simple greatness, the only thing I was
ashamed of was my own mistrust of them. Not that I expected ever that
any harm would be done to me, only that I knew myself to have no
claim on any one.
One day, when I was fit for nothing but to dwell on