Tales of Trail and Town | Page 6

kind of screech, and ran out into the brush. I reckoned, at
the time, that it was either 'drink' or feelin's, and could hev kicked
myself for being sassy to the old woman, but I know now that all this
time that air critter--that barrownet's daughter-in-law--was just laughin'
herself into fits in the brush! No, sir, she played this yer camp for all it
was worth, year in and out, and we just gave ourselves away like
speckled idiots! and now she's lyin' out thar in the bone yard, and keeps
on p'intin' the joke, and a-roarin' at us in marble."
Even the later citizens in Atherly felt an equal resentment against her,
but from different motives. That her drinking habits and her powerful
vocabulary were all the effect of her aristocratic alliance they never
doubted. And, although it brought the virtues of their own superior
republican sobriety into greater contrast, they felt a scandal at having
been tricked into attending this gilded funeral of dissipated rank. Peter
Atherly found himself unpopular in his own town. The sober who
drank from his free "Waterworks," and the giddy ones who imbibed at
his "Gin Mill," equally criticised him. He could not understand it; his
peculiar predilections had been accepted before, when they were mere

presumptions; why should they not NOW, when they were admitted
facts? He was conscious of no change in himself since the funeral! Yet
the criticism went on. Presently it took the milder but more contagious
form of ridicule. In his own hotel, built with his own money, and in his
own presence, he had heard a reckless frequenter of the bar-room
decline some proffered refreshment on the ground that "he only drank
with his titled relatives." A local humorist, amidst the applause of an
admiring crowd at the post-office window, had openly accused the
postmaster of withholding letters to him from his only surviving
brother, "the Dook of Doncherknow." "The ole dooky never onct
missed the mail to let me know wot's goin' on in me childhood's home,"
remarked the humorist plaintively; "and yer's this dod-blasted gov'ment
mule of a postmaster keepin' me letters back!" Letters with pretentious
and gilded coats of arms, taken from the decorated inner lining of
cigar-boxes, were posted to prominent citizens. The neighboring and
unregenerated settlement of Red Dog was more outrageous in its
contribution. The Red Dog "Sentinel," in commenting on the death of
"Haulbowline Tom," a drunken English man-o'-war's man, said: "It
may not be generally known that our regretted fellow citizen, while
serving on H. M. S. Boxer, was secretly married to Queen Kikalu of the
Friendly Group; but, unlike some of our prosperous neighbors, he never
boasted of his royal alliance, and resisted with steady British pluck any
invitation to share the throne. Indeed, any allusion to the subject
affected him deeply. There are those among us who will remember the
beautiful portrait of his royal bride tattooed upon his left arm with the
royal crest and the crossed flags of the two nations." Only Peter Atherly
and his sister understood the sting inflicted either by accident or design
in the latter sentence. Both he and his sister had some singular
hieroglyphic branded on their arms,--probably a reminiscence of their
life on the plains in their infant Indian captivity. But there was no
mistaking the general sentiment. The criticisms of a small town may
become inevasible. Atherly determined to take the first opportunity to
leave Rough and Ready. He was rich; his property was secure; there
was no reason why he should stay where his family pretensions were a
drawback. And a further circumstance determined his resolution.
He was awaiting his sister in his new house on a little crest above the

town. She had been at the time of her mother's death, and since, a
private boarder in the Sacred Heart Convent at Santa Clara, whence she
had been summoned to the funeral, but had returned the next day. Few
people had noticed in her brother's carriage the veiled figure which
might have belonged to one of the religious orders; still less did they
remember the dark, lank, heavy-browed girl who had sometimes been
seen about Rough and Ready. For she had her brother's melancholy,
and greater reticence, and had continued of her own free will, long after
her girlish pupilage at the convent, to live secluded under its maternal
roof without taking orders. A general suspicion that she was either a
religious "crank," or considered herself too good to live in a mountain
mining town, had not contributed to her brother's popularity. In her
abstraction from worldly ambitions she had, naturally, taken no part in
her brother's family pretensions. He had given her an independent
allowance, and she was supposed to be equally a sharer in his good