The She Boss | Page 5

A panther skin hung on the rough, unpainted wall above the black and
cheerless fireplace, three sets of antlers surrounding it. Near the
fireplace lay an unsightly pile of wood and chips. The doors of the
cracked and rusty stove were gaping wide. The remains of his breakfast
were on the clothless, homemade table. His rifle, the only thing well
kept, stood in a corner.
He passed through into the other room, separated from this by a thin
board partition. There, in oval walnut frames, hung the pictures of the
two who lay between the big bull pines on Wild-cat Hill. A slight sense
of depression seized him. The bed unmade, brought a sparkle of anger
to his eyes. He was disgusted with himself, but it did not last. The
thought of the adventures that lay beyond and beckoned came
uppermost once more. "The girl" beckoned, too.
Yes, there was a girl. Hiram had seen her only in his dreams. She was
not like Bear Valley girls. She was large and sturdy and strong, and her
hair was of such dark brown as to seem almost black, her eyes dark and
large and lustrous. She was a queen among women, this girl of his
dreams. About her hung some great mystery, and adventure followed in
her footsteps. Out there somewhere beyond Bear Valley she stood
beckoning him to come!
He went to bed early, to toss for hours and at last to drop into fretful,
torturing dreams. The scream of a panther awoke him once.
He was up before sunrise, cooking his bacon and coffee and frying
slices of cold biscuit in the bacon grease.

The east was pink when he left the cabin, carrying the rifle, which he
meant to give to Uncle Sebastian. Everything else he left behind. He
took a short cut over Wild-cat Hill. On its crest, between the two bull
pines, he stopped before two graces.
The red sun was peering through the saddle of Signal Hill. Cold mists
rose from the forest. In the air was the breath of the morning. Weirdly
the early wind moaned through the needles of the tall bull pines. Up
from the cañon came the roaring of Ripley Creek as it raced to the sea.
A lump came in Hiram's throat that he could not down. At his feet lay
those who had lived and starved for him through the countless denials
of this wilderness. Below him lay the cabin which he had known as
home for twenty-six long years. About him stretched the grandeur of
this untarnished land. Scalding tears burst from his eyes. Some
monstrous ogre had arisen to crush him. They were driving him from
his home, from the land of his birth, from the spots he loved! No
bitterer period ever came in Hiram's life than when he stood that misty
morning and watched the sun rise on the turning point of his career.
Blindly he stumbled down Wild-cat Hill and took up the long road to
Bixler's store. They were driving him, like Hagar, from all that he held
dear, and there was hatred in his heart.
CHAPTER III
SAN FRANCISCO
The train that carried Hiram Hooker to San Francisco was late. Thirty
miles from the bay it began making up for lost time. Through the
falling dusk it roared toward the metropolis. Slowly the landscape
faded. Vineyards and chicken ranches and orchards and rolling hills
studded with live oaks gave place to the electric-lighted tentacles of the
city. The lights blinked by at Hiram. They helped depress him, for they
were a part of the modernity that he feared. Suburbs grew to a
continuous stretch of lighted streets and houses. Always those lights
blinked on every side. There was witchery in all of it--in the smell of
the city close at hand, in the cold salt air from the bay, in the

chunk-a-lunk, chunk-a-lunk of the speeding locomotive.
Hiram sat forward on the seat, eager, shrinking, exultant, always
straining while he shrank. He tried to plan, but could not. Night closed
in, and all that he saw now were the blinking lights that raced astern.
Off in the black sky to the southward a rosy light suffused the
night--San Francisco.
"Saus-a-lito! Everybody change! Don't forget yer baggage!"
Hiram was swept out with the crowd, swept through the chute to the
ferryboat, swept aboard. He followed the crowd forward and stood in
the bow. Black as ink the Bay of San Francisco stretched before him.
Like fireflies the lights of vessels scurried through the blackness.
Beyond the black water blinked the countless eyes of San Francisco,
above these the rosy glow which had beckoned since the fall of dusk.
The boat had started before Hiram was aware. Smoothly it slipped
along toward the beacons on the