Treasure and Trouble Therewith

Treasure and Trouble Therewith

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Title: Treasure and Trouble Therewith A Tale of California
Author: Geraldine Bonner
Release Date: January, 2006 [EBook #9775] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 15, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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TREASURE and TROUBLE THEREWITH
A TALE OF CALIFORNIA BY GERALDINE BONNER
1917

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER
JOHN BONNER
WHO, HIMSELF A WRITER, TRAINED ME IN THE WORK HE LOVED. WHAT MERIT THE READER MAY FIND IN THESE PAGES IS THE RESULT OF THAT TRAINING, UNDERTAKEN WITH A FATHER'S PRIDE, CARRIED ON WITH A FATHER'S BELIEF AND ENCOURAGEMENT.
GERALDINE BONNER

CONTENTS
I. HANDS UP
II. THE TULES
III. MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE
IV. THE DERELICT
V. THE MARKED PARAGRAPH
VI. PANCHA
VII. THE PICAROON
VIII. THOSE GIRLS OF GEORGE'S
IX. GREEK MEETS GREEK
X. MICHAELS THE MINER
XI. THE SOLID GOLD NUGGET
XII. A KISS
XIII. FOOLS IN THEIR FOLLY
XIV. THE NIGHT RIDER
XV. THE LAST DINNER
XVI. THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
XVII. THE WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING
XVIII. OUTLAWED
XIX. HALF TRUTHS AND INFERENCES
XX. MARK PAYS A CALL
XXI. A WOMAN SCORNED
XXII. THEREBY HANGS A TALE
XXIII. THE CHINESE CHAIN
XXIV. LOVERS AND LADIES
XXV. WHAT JIM SAW
XXVI. PANCHA WRITES A LETTER
XXVII. BAD NEWS
XXVIII. CHRYSTIE SEES THE DAWN
XXIX. LORRY SEES THE DAWN
XXX. MARK SEES THE DAWN
XXXI. REVELATION
XXXII. THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT
XXXIII. THE MORNING THAT CAME
XXXIV. LOST
XXXV. THE UNKNOWN WOMAN
XXXVI. THE SEARCH
XXXVII. HAIL AND FAREWELL

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
He ... heard the feller at the wheel say, "Hands up!" Frontispiece "Oh, silly, unbelieving child!" came his voice
As it came it sent up a hoarse cry for food
The ghost of a smile touched her lips

TREASURE and TROUBLE THEREWITH

CHAPTER I
HANDS UP
The time was late August some eleven years ago. The place that part of central California where, on one side, the plain unrolls in golden levels, and on the other swells upward toward the rounded undulations of the foothills.
It was very hot; the sky a fathomless blue vault, the land dreaming in the afternoon glare, its brightness blurred here and there by shimmering heat veils. Checkered by green and yellow patches, dotted with the black domes of oaks, it brooded sleepily, showing few signs of life. At long intervals ranch houses rose above embowering foliage, a green core in the midst of fields where the brown earth was striped with lines of fruit trees or hidden under carpets of alfalfa. To the west the foothills rose in indolent curves, tan-colored, as if clothed with a leathern hide. Their hollows were filled with the darkness of trees huddled about hidden streams, ribbons of verdure that wound from the mountains to the plain. Farther still, vision faint, remote and immaculate, the white peaks of the Sierra hung, a painting on the drop curtain of the sky.
Across the landscape a parent stem of road wound, branches breaking from it and meandering thread-small to ranch and village. It was white-dusted here, but later would turn red and crawl upward under the resinous dimness of pine woods to where the mining camps clung on the lower wall of the Sierra. Already it had left behind the region of farms in neighborly proximity and the little towns that were threaded along it like beads upon a string. Watching its eastward course, one would have noticed that after it crested the first rise it ran free of habitation for miles.
Along its empty length a dust cloud moved, a tarnishing spot on the afternoon's hard brightness. This spot was the one point of energy in the universal torpor. From it came the rhythmic beat of flying hoofs and the jingle of harness. It was the Rocky Bar stage, up from Shilo through Plymouth, across the Mother Lode and then in a steep, straining grade on to Antelope and Rocky Bar, camps nestling in the mountain gorges. It was making time now against the slow climb later, the four horses racing, the reins loose on their backs.
There was only