The Turtles of Tasman | Page 4

to spin around for a look at the city? There's plenty
of time."
As they sped along the broad, well-paved streets, Tom persisted in his
Rip Van Winkle pose. The waterfront perplexed him. Where he had
once anchored his sloop in a dozen feet of water, he found solid land
and railroad yards, with wharves and shipping still farther out.
"Hold on! Stop!" he cried, a few blocks on, looking up at a solid
business block. "Where is this, Fred?"
"Fourth and Travers--don't you remember?"
Tom stood up and gazed around, trying to discern the anciently familiar
configuration of the land under its clutter of buildings.
"I ... I think...." he began hesitantly. "No; by George, I'm sure of it. We
used to hunt cottontails over that ground, and shoot blackbirds in the
brush. And there, where the bank building is, was a pond." He turned to
Polly. "I built my first raft there, and got my first taste of the sea."
"Heaven knows how many gallons of it," Frederick laughed, nodding to
the chauffeur. "They rolled you on a barrel, I remember."
"Oh! More!" Polly cried, clapping her hands.
"There's the park," Frederick pointed out a little later, indicating a mass
of virgin redwoods on the first dip of the bigger hills.
"Father shot three grizzlies there one afternoon," was Tom's remark.
"I presented forty acres of it to the city," Frederick went on. "Father
bought the quarter section for a dollar an acre from Leroy."
Tom nodded, and the sparkle and flash in his eyes, like that of his
daughter, were unlike anything that ever appeared in his brother's eyes.
"Yes," he affirmed, "Leroy, the negro squawman. I remember the time

he carried you and me on his back to Alliance, the night the Indians
burned the ranch. Father stayed behind and fought."
"But he couldn't save the grist mill. It was a serious setback to him."
"Just the same he nailed four Indians."
In Polly's eyes now appeared the flash and sparkle.
"An Indian-fighter!" she cried. "Tell me about him."
"Tell her about Travers Ferry," Tom said.
"That's a ferry on the Klamath River on the way to Orleans Bar and
Siskiyou. There was great packing into the diggings in those days, and,
among other things, father had made a location there. There was rich
bench farming land, too. He built a suspension bridge--wove the cables
on the spot with sailors and materials freighted in from the coast. It cost
him twenty thousand dollars. The first day it was open, eight hundred
mules crossed at a dollar a head, to say nothing of the toll for foot and
horse. That night the river rose. The bridge was one hundred and forty
feet above low water mark. Yet the freshet rose higher than that, and
swept the bridge away. He'd have made a fortune there otherwise."
"That wasn't it at all," Tom blurted out impatiently. "It was at Travers
Ferry that father and old Jacob Vance were caught by a war party of
Mad River Indians. Old Jacob was killed right outside the door of the
log cabin. Father dragged the body inside and stood the Indians off for
a week. Father was some shot. He buried Jacob under the cabin floor."
"I still run the ferry," Frederick went on, "though there isn't so much
travel as in the old days. I freight by wagon-road to the Reservation,
and then mule-back on up the Klamath and clear in to the forks of Little
Salmon. I have twelve stores on that chain now, a stage-line to the
Reservation, and a hotel there. Quite a tourist trade is beginning to pick
up."
And the girl, with curious brooding eyes, looked from brother to

brother as they so differently voiced themselves and life.
"Ay, he was some man, father was," Tom murmured.
There was a drowsy note in his speech that drew a quick glance of
anxiety from her. The machine had turned into the cemetery, and now
halted before a substantial vault on the crest of the hill.
"I thought you'd like to see it," Frederick was saying. "I built that
mausoleum myself, most of it with my own hands. Mother wanted it.
The estate was dreadfully encumbered. The best bid I could get out of
the contractors was eleven thousand. I did it myself for a little over
eight."
"Must have worked nights," Tom murmured admiringly and more
sleepily than before.
"I did, Tom, I did. Many a night by lantern-light. I was so busy. I was
reconstructing the water works then--the artesian wells had failed--and
mother's eyes were troubling her. You remember--cataract--I wrote you.
She was too weak to travel, and I brought the specialists up from San
Francisco. Oh, my hands were full. I was just winding up the