The Bell-Ringer of Angels | Page 4

of a bell. It is
probable that this singular proficiency kept his investment of that gentle
seclusion unchallenged. At all events it was uninvaded. He shared it
only with the birds. Perhaps some suggestion of nest building may have
been in his mind, for one pleasant spring morning he brought hither a
wife. It was his OWN; and in this way he may be said to have
introduced that morality which is supposed to be the accompaniment
and reflection of pastoral life. Mrs. McGee's red petticoat was
sometimes seen through the trees--a cheerful bit of color. Mrs. McGee's
red cheeks, plump little figure, beribboned hat and brown, still-girlish
braids were often seen at sunset on the river bank, in company with her
husband, who seemed to be pleased with the discreet and distant
admiration that followed them. Strolling under the bland shadows of
the cotton-woods, by the fading gold of the river, he doubtless felt that
peace which the mere world cannot give, and which fades not away
before the clear, accurate eye of the perfect marksman.
Their nearest neighbors were the two brothers Wayne, who took up a
claim, and built themselves a cabin on the river bank near the
promontory. Quiet, simple men, suspected somewhat of psalm- singing,
and undue retirement on Sundays, they attracted but little attention. But
when, through some original conception or painstaking deliberation,
they turned the current of the river so as to restrict the overflow
between the promontory and the river bank, disclosing an auriferous
"bar" of inconceivable richness, and establishing their theory that it was
really the former channel of the river, choked and diverted though ages

of alluvial drift, they may be said to have changed, also, the fortunes of
the little settlement. Popular feeling and the new prosperity which
dawned upon the miners recognized the two brothers by giving the
name of Wayne's Bar to the infant settlement and its post-office. The
peaceful promontory, although made easier of access, still preserved its
calm seclusion, and pretty Mrs. McGee could contemplate through the
leaves of her bower the work going on at its base, herself unseen.
Nevertheless, this Arcadian retreat was being slowly and surely
invested; more than that, the character of its surroundings was altered,
and the complexion of the river had changed. The Wayne engines on
the point above had turned the drift and debris into the current that now
thickened and ran yellow around the wooded shore. The fringes of this
Eden were already tainted with the color of gold.
It is doubtful, however, if Mrs. McGee was much affected by this
sentimental reflection, and her husband, in a manner, lent himself to the
desecration of his exclusive domain by accepting a claim along the
shore--tendered by the conscientious Waynes in compensation for
restricting the approach to the promontory--and thus participated in the
fortunes of the Bar. Mrs. McGee amused herself by watching from her
eyrie, with a presumably childish interest, the operations of the
red-shirted brothers on the Bar; her husband, however, always
accompanying her when she crossed the Bar to the bank. Some two or
three other women--wives of miners-- had joined the camp, but it was
evident that McGee was as little inclined to intrust his wife to their
companionship as to that of their husbands. An opinion obtained that
McGee, being an old resident, with alleged high connections in Angel's,
was inclined to be aristocratic and exclusive.
Meantime, the two brothers who had founded the fortunes of the Bar
were accorded an equally high position, with an equal amount of
reserve. Their ways were decidedly not those of the other miners, and
were as efficacious in keeping them from familiar advances as the
reputation of Mr. McGee was in isolating his wife. Madison Wayne,
the elder, was tall, well-knit and spare, reticent in speech and slow in
deduction; his brother, Arthur, was of rounder outline, but smaller and
of a more delicate and perhaps a more impressible nature. It was

believed by some that it was within the range of possibility that Arthur
would yet be seen "taking his cocktail like a white man," or "dropping
his scads" at draw poker. At present, however, they seemed content to
spend their evenings in their own cabin, and their Sundays at a grim
Presbyterian tabernacle in the next town, to which they walked ten
miles, where, it was currently believed, "hell fire was ladled out free,"
and "infants damned for nothing." When they did not go to meeting it
was also believed that the minister came to them, until it was
ascertained that the sound of sacred recitation overheard in their cabin
was simply Madison Wayne reading the Bible to his younger brother.
McGee is said to have stopped on one of these
occasions--unaccompanied by his wife--before their