I. ANNETTA. THE wind had been carousing all night, and was yet as fresh in the morning as morning itself. Not a winter wind, blind and sodden with rain, but a summer wind, full of hilarious fancies. As early as dawn the dust of a long drought could be seen swirling in broken, distorted wreaths, or seething in thick, reddish-gray clouds, or whirling aloft in irregular columns, only to be sifted downward as if from the very zenith. The grim hopelessness of an unlighted, unwarmed ocean had passed into the fog pouring with noiseless swiftness over the Twin Peaks. Ridge after ridge possessed, Pioche's Quarry, standing out a red ragged scar against the farther hill-slopes, was stealthily fallen upon and turned into a looming mystery. The valley, so called as an approach to a specific designation, with its poor, unpainted houses, its fiercely harried, unpainted windmills, its dreary roads ending abruptly, as if tired of leading no whither, became yet more chill and cheerless. For in the valley, as in a caldron, those dim, voluminous vapors, worried by opposing gusts, seemed to boil with soundless fury, tossing wild, steamy tatters sky ward. At six o'clock, the only life stirring with any vigor ran bleating on four cloven hoofs, being bearded and horned for predatory raids. True, that with the first blink of reluctant day, human figures began to detach themselves from low doorways, and to move about with what distinctness the dusty and foggy atmosphere allowed: but life in these forms could not be said to express itself vigorously. Soon horses in dangling harness were led forth from a long blackened stable. Carts tilted on end, their shafts stretched stiffly heavenward in dumb, inanimate appeal, and heavier dump-wagons, their tongues forlornly aground, added an occasional creak and clank to the rattle of harness and stamping of sober hoofs. At half-past six precisely, a gaunt yet feminine shape appeared in a darkened doorway fronting the stable, with the mechanical suddenness of a figure moved by clock-work. Uttering a single word, she flashed back out of sight. Brief as the briefest military order, and quite as unintelligible, the effect of this word was instantaneous. A human thread was spun hurriedly from the tangle of men and horses and carts, stretching past the barn, and seeming to break off when the last man disappeared through the same doorway whence all had been summoned. The tramp of rough boots, the scraping of benches, merged immediately in a clatter and clash of table utensils. This and the guttural hurry of many voices announced the eager discussion of a work-a-day breakfast at Tom Bartmore's. The "boss" -to use the colloquialism under which Tom Bartmore was freely and familiarly spoken of-breakfasted later, at irregular hours. The square white house on the corner, quite a block distant from stables and "camp," was his house. The garden, sheltered by a tall board fence and taller eucalyptus trees on the north and west, was Annetta's garden. "For without my working and planning," she was wont to ask, her air at once saucy and conclusive, "who would ever have thought of it?" True, Tom Bartmore now and again asserted himself in a horticultural suggestion, having all the force of a command; true, old Refugio fairly bristled with notions of his own which Annetta oftener humored than combated; yet nobody openly disputed Annetta's supreme ownership. There, then, in the long garden, quite as early as dawn, something other than tossing petisporum or nodding Jacqueminot roses was stirring feebly. A banging shutter, a creaking windmill, had invaded old Refugio's slumbers with presage of disaster. Would his young locusts withstand those fierce flaws? A very little later than dawn, the front door of the silent house opened. A girl stepped forth as lightly and as gayly as a bird. She stood a moment, her clear eyes flashing here and there across the flower beds, then uttering a sharp exclamation, ran forward. "O, Refugio!" upon this humble and senile adoration, she moved slowly away. From the garden gate where she presently took her dreamy stand she could gaze across a wide sweep of country. Pioche's Quarry asserted its bold, jagged side through the parting fog; but mists still boiled in the valley. The dust still rose, blurring now a hill, now a hollow, now blearing the very sky; and through this dust, the carts began to pass. At the first familiar creak, Annetta's dream dissolved. Her languid posture was quickened into pleased expectancy. Slanting her broad hat toward the wind, and keeping a hand upon its brim, she had a smile and nod for every poor fellow looking Her ancient henchman looked, and came her way. hobbling. "That horrid frame!" scolded the girl. "It has blown down, dragging my darling fuchsia with it. Alone, the bush would have grown stout enough to weather any storm. Why have you trained it to lean?" Was there an earnestness, almost passionate, in the query? Refugio thought of nothing but the accompanying gesture. Annetta had flung aside the espalier. The line of carts, often broken, seemed interminable; but Annetta's interest in it ended suddenly enough. A figure, uncouth as the rest to a casual eye, appeared standing up boldly to guide a span of large black horses. Annetta beckoned impulsively. One team coming to an unexpected standstill, the way was effectually blocked for a long succession of carts yet invisible. Patient equine noses were thrust inquiringly "No, no!" croaked the willful septuage- over tailboards just ahead. Impatient voices narian. Annette rose to her feet, possessed by strange, confused longings. She saw and did not see the warped back bowed before her. She saw and did not see the corrugated neck, brown as an adobe, showing between two parted locks of long scant hair. She saw and did not see the dark, knotted fingers digging eagerly into the scarce darker earth. Old Refugio was having his way, setting up the stupid green ladder again; and, having his way, he was as happy as a child. "Bonita, bonita!" he grunted. "Will it live?" asked Annetta, absently. Refugio lifted his wrinkled, sapless face toward hers. A meaning sparkle lighted his purblind eyes. More eagerly still he grunted: "Bonita, Señorita." objurgated the unknown cause of the delay. The man whom Annetta had beckoned had leaped from his wagon and was standing, hat doffed, at the gate. "I want your help to-day, Dan," said Annetta. Nothing was answered in words. Dan resumed his wagon and his reins; but only to drive hurriedly aside. The rude procession now moving on, Annetta might have continued to nod and smile in gracious morning salutation; but between the grinding wheels, from under the very hoofs of the stolid horses, somebody was puffed, as it were, to the bars of the high gate. A small man, fearfully and wonderfully made, yet instinct with the liveliest gallantry. He greeted Annetta cheerily: "To me a good morning," he said; "but alas!"-with an exaggerated sigh-"to my Annetta understood now. Smiling faintly poor little one bad, bad, bad." Annetta looked rather than spoke a sympathy so beaming that the twisted little creature volubly continued: "And the moulin-à-vent—to my 'ouse, all night it run, run like a race-'orse. Why did I not to fasten it? Look at dese so unhappy legs"-indicating some members terminating in splay-feet. "Could I climb wiz zem? Alas! I'ave not ozare. Behold, zis morning ze moulin-à-vent is broken. You will speak to Monsieur, your husband?" up those black, hideous barns with gunpowder. Nothing less than a grand explosion could express my relief at getting rid of them. New buildings should appear magically in their stead. The men's quarters should be as fresh as well-seasoned lumber and paint could make them. Iron cots should take the place of those miserable wooden bunks. That dreadful pond should be drained, and the hollow filled in. Then, Dan, the cruel fever would disappear Annetta laughed, "My brother, sir!" with forever." genuine amusement. "Aha?" cried the tiny Frenchman, "an angel honly could pardon a meestake so unpardonable!" Having fairly kissed out these words at the tips of his long yellow fingers, he offered them to Annetta, as upon an improvised salver. "You will intercede for me wiz Monsieur, your brozare?" Dan rose up slowly from the border he was weeding, not so much to straighten his back as to relieve his surcharged breast by a long, quivering sigh. “But thim as the faver's took, Miss Bairtmore," he said, "cud niver be brought here agin." "Ah, Dan, if it might be!" murmured the girl, her gray eyes quick with compassion. She promised cordially to do so the in- "Forgive me. I did not mean to touch stant he awoke. In a very little while after this supplication was ended, and the withered supplicant had writhed himself away, a figure altogether different from his and from old Refugio's stood awaiting Annetta's orders. A figure that would have been kingly in fine attire, but now, poorly clad, reared itself aloft, calmly unconscious of strength or beauty. "We must begin with that central plat, Dan," Annetta declared, "and never rest until it is finished." Dan at once devoted himself to this appointed task. Annetta, too, worked on, chatting cheerily. "Let me have my way, Dan," she cried presently, in her gay voice, "and you'd be astonished at the wholesale changes I'd bring about." The girl's energy of utterance brought her naturally to her feet. She forgot the pinks she was tying into decorous clumps of bloom. Using not her fingers for these were incased in garden-gloves the worse for contact with the moist soil-but the back of her hand she pushed her broad hat off her flushed and happy face: "I'd just blow upon upon anything to remind you-of-" She hesitated to be the first to speak the name so lately expunged from the lists of the living. Her sympathy fell upon that parching heart as dew falls on flowers whence the thirsty sun has drunk the sap. But how could Dan answer her soft "Forgive me"? Meeting her lifted gaze, his lip trembled, as if feeling after a language fitly to embody his thoughts. His blue, dark eyes filled slowly. "The world wud be a place for the howly angels to live in, Miss, if you cud have your say." "What sort of angels, Dan?" laughed Annetta, eager to help the talk into a livelier channel. And she shook her gloved finger with an engaging air of reproach. "Arrah, miss, whin will I ever be afther gittin' the right twisht to me tongue?" queried Dan, in deep perplexity. "Soon, very soon!" retorted Annetta. "I promise you that. So try again. Now!" He tried again, gaining her enthusiastic approval. "I shall be proud of my pupil some day," said she. “Indade, an' I hope so"-dubiously. "But you must be more certain of yourself”—showing a little impatience. "Think of the long way you've come by sea and land to reach this fair country you'd set your heart on. Were there no dangers? They could not stop you. How bravely you pushed forward! Push on bravely now, Dan, in this new journey toward an honorable place among men. There's nothing can stop you, if only you have a glowing wish and an indomitable will to rise." poor, pretty forget-me-nots. I'll be back by the time you have finished here." Casting her more serious fancies behind her, Annetta walked briskly toward the house, entering by a rear door. A stout-armed, broad-shouldered girl of twenty or so was getting breakfast in a kitchen full of odors promising generous morning fare. "What, Maggy!" cried the young mistress. "You're surely not putting in the biscuit already? I don't expect to see any signs of Dan weeded steadily for a while after Tom this hour." Annetta's buoyant tones were still. "I was determined to come here mesel', miss," he began, at last, "and determined to bring Johnny. We'd heard mighty parables of Californy. I cudn't tell yez the half o' the high hopes we had together. An' where are they all to-day?--wid Johnny in the ground. Why, miss, I sometimes thinks as the stir and the demur”. putting a coarse hand against his breast"inside us is all wrong - all wrong. Betther to shtay where yez are put, be it in high place or low." "Don't talk so, Dan! You shall not." She did not hide from him the pain his words gave her. "Don't disappoint me. I can't bear disappointment. I should stagnate--I should die❞— looking the very picture of healthful loveliness, despite that transient trouble in her wide gray eyes-"without things to help me; without interests outside myself: not mild, general interests, but those both keen and absorbing." Whether or no Dan recognized the truth that the girl's thoughts had traveled away from him, he presumed not to answer. So Annetta stood whirling her broad hat in one hand, her uplifted brow grown dreamy. When she came to herself and her surroundings, she said in a matter-of-fact voice, "I haven't had a bite of breakfast yet." "If you're goin' in, Miss," exclaimed Dan, "shall I be afther hoein' the cinter when I've weeded this bordher?" "No!" with a little shriek, "I haven't forgotten how you once hoed up all my "Howsomever," returned the other, with a good-natured quickness, "you'll be afther seein' himsel' if you'll shtep intil the office. For the matther o' that, he's been askin' for yez.” "Tom asking for me?" repeated Annetta, her countenance not altogether guiltless of anxiety. That room in the Bartmore house which was called the "office" had been recently added to the main building; an ugly excresence Annetta had in vain protested against. It could be entered directly from the yard. To enter it from within one must needs cross Bartmore's sleeping-chamber. Maggy's information had prepared Annetta for an empty bed, and use had accustomed her to the disorder always consequent upon her brother's toilet-making. Without pausing now to answer the silent appeal of a general disarray, she stepped airily into the adjoining apartment. What if she could not understand just why Tom should be up so early, nor why he had been asking for her? No purely speculative anxiety ever sat heavily on Annetta. There are always pleasant ways of accounting for the unexpected. The girl had thought to find her brother alone and absorbed in his morning paper. He was not alone. The morning paper lay in a compact, undisturbed roll upon his desk. A person whose bearing was extremely dispirited occupied the merest edge of a chair near the outer door of the office. Bartmore, apparently answering some remonstrance or appeal, was delivering himself of his ideas in loud, overbearing tones. "Well, see here, Patsey, if you can keep from making a beast of yourself you may pick up your living about the 'camp' for the next day or two. You know what that means. I don't grudge a bone to a hungry dog. If a 'boy' should knock off, and you're fit to step into his shoes, why, d -n it, I'll give you one more chance." At the word "beast," the dispirited figure had put forth his hand, palm outward, in a deprecatory gesture. A hard palm, grimed and calloused, one would think, to the very bone. At Bartmore's admission in regard to prospective work, heavily conditioned as it was, the shock-head lifted itself eagerly, showing a pair of bleared and humid eyes. "May the saints reward your ginerosity, Misther Bairtmore," was huskily uttered as soon as the other had ceased speaking. "Faith, I've see where dhrink'll fetch me, an' I've done with it, Misther Bairtmore. Curse whusky, sir, but it's-" He got no farther. "Come, come, man!" interjected Bartmore, his fine nostrils dilating with moral indignation, "that will do. Don't you see the lady, sir?" The first acknowledgment, this, Bartmore had chosen to yield of his sister's presence. Plunged afresh into the deeps of humility, Patsey was elaborating a rambling apology, addressed by turns to the arm of Bartmore's chair and to the floor beneath Annetta's feet, when he was again interrupted. A knock came at the outer door. "See who's there," commanded Bartmore, impersonally. mind-"you see, I've too many big contracts on my hands to make sure of remembering odd jobs. However-here, Patsey." This direct summons found Patsey lapsed into a dumb restlessness of brow and eyes, which, taken in connection with a protruding jaw, fringed from ear to ear, was fairly simian in its suggestions. "Yis, Misther Bairtmore"-springing forward as eagerly as before. "Run to the barn and tell Jerry to keep back three picks and two shovels at noon. They'll be needed to dig a foundation for Mr.” "Clay," said the stranger. "To be sure-for Mr. Clay; do you hear?" "Yis, Misther Bairtmore." And Patsey instantly shambled off on his errand. The stranger merely lingered to touch his hat to Annetta, and nodding carelessly to Bartmore, went his way. A sudden draught of air, bursting through the house, flared the open fire, billowed the curtains, and banged to the office doors. Brother and sister were now shut in together. How sad that ever between those nearest each other in all the world a tête-à-tête should be the last thing desired! Sensitive to delicate shades of expression, both facial and vocal, where her brother was concerned, Annetta had already had her misgivings. Seeing into what lines Bartmore's countenance hastily fell, she was not re-assured. "There is something wrong," she thought, quite as if she had been all along gayly combating any such idea. "What can it be?" Struggling heroically against a conviction that Tom was not only angry, but angry with her, Annetta grasped at every subject Patsey sprung with clumsy eagerness to likely to be wrath-averting, and hurriedly do this bidding. presented each. A man was there, whose business Bartmore seemed to know better than he knew the man himself. "Ay, ay, Cap.," he exclaimed, before the other could do more than touch his hat. "I'll try to have that ground broken for you this afternoon." Then laughingly-for so Bartmore chose sometimes to speak his full "I told Maggie that you wouldn't be up for an hour yet"-an artificial cheeriness in voice and manner. "But breakfast is nearly ready, and we have opened that new case of tea, and Maggie has steeped some for you." Bartmore paid not the slightest heed. "Where have you been?" he asked dryly. "I? Why, at the front gate"-her heart |