LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

producer of the footsteps appeared.

      "Told you he was an Englishman!" cried Mr. Beck.

      Indeed, there was no mistaking the nationality of the man, in spite of his dress, which was cosmopolitan. He wore boots, but not, as the quick ear of the American told him, the great boots of the miner; he had on a flannel shirt with a red silk belt; he wore a sort of blanket thrown back from his shoulders; and he had a broad felt hat. Of course he carried arms, but they were not visible.

      He was a man of middle height, with clear blue eyes; the perfect complexion of an Englishman of good stock and in complete health; a brown beard, long and rather curly, streaked with here and there a grey hair; square and clear-cut nostrils; and a mouth which, though not much of it was visible, looked as if it would easily smile, might readily become tender, and would certainly find it difficult to be stern. He might be any age, from five and thirty to five and forty.

      The greasers fell back and grouped about the door. The questions which might be raised had no interest for them. The two leaders stood together; and Mr. Gilead P. Beck, rolling an empty keg to their side, turned it up and sat down with the air of a judge, looking from one party to the other.

      "Englishmen, I see," said the stranger.

      "Ye-yes," said Ladds, not, as Mr. Beck expected, immediately holding out his hand for the stranger to grasp.

      "You have probably lost your way?"

      "Been hunting. Working round – San Francisco. Followed track; accident; got here. Your hotel, perhaps? Fine situation, but lonely."

      "Not a ghost, then," murmured the other, with a look of temporary disappointment.

      "If you will come upstairs to my quarters, I may be able to make you comfortable for the night. Your party will accommodate themselves without our help."

      He referred to the greasers, who had already begun their preparations for spending a happy night. When he led the way up the stairs, he was followed, not only by the two gentlemen he had invited, but also by the ragamuffin hunter, miner, or adventurer, and by the valet, who conceived it his duty to follow his master.

      He lived, this hermit, in one of the small bed-rooms of the hotel, which he had converted into a sitting-room. It contained a single rocking-chair and a table. There was also a shelf, which served for a sideboard, and a curtain under the shelf, which acted as a cupboard.

      "You see my den," he said. "I came here a year or so ago by accident, like yourselves. I found the place deserted. I liked the solitude, the scenery, whatever you like, and I stayed here. You are the only visitors I have had in a year."

      "Chinamen?" said Mr. Gilead P. Beck.

      "Well, Chinamen, of course. But only two of them. They take turns, at forty dollars a month, to cook my dinners. And there is a half-caste, who does not mind running down to Sacramento when I want anything. And so, you see, I make out pretty well."

      He opened the window, and blew a whistle.

      In two minutes a Chinaman came tumbling up the stairs. His inscrutable face expressed all the conflicting passions of humanity at once – ambition, vanity, self respect, humour, satire, avarice, resignation, patience, revenge, meekness, long-suffering, remembrance, and a thousand others. No Aryan comes within a hundred miles of it.

      "Dinner as soon as you can," said his master.

      "Ayah! can do," replied the Celestial. "What time you wantchee?

      "As soon as you can. Half an hour."

      "Can do. My no have got cully-powder. Have makee finish. Have got?"

      "Look for some; make Achow help."

      "How can? No, b'long his pidgin. He no helpee. B'long my pidgin makee cook chow-chow. Ayah! Achow have go makee cheat over Mexican man. Makee play cards all same euchre."

      In fact, on looking out of the window, the other Celestial was clearly visible, manipulating a pack of cards and apparently inviting the Mexicans to a friendly game, in which there could be no deception.

      Then Ladds' conscience smote him.

      "Beg pardon. Should have seen. Make remark about hotel. Apologise."

      "He means," said the other, "that he was a terrible great fool not to see that you are a gentleman."

      Ladds nodded.

      "Let me introduce our party," the speaker went on. "This is our esteemed friend Mr. Gilead P. Beck, whom we caught in a bear-hunt – "

      "Bar behind," said Mr. Beck.

      "This is Captain Ladds, of the 35th Dragoons."

      "Ladds," said Ladds. "Nibs, cocoa-nibs – pure aroma – best breakfast-digester – blessing to mothers – perfect fragrance."

      "His name is Ladds; and he wishes to communicate to you the fact that he is the son of the man who made an immense fortune – immense, Tommy?"

      Ladds nodded.

      "By a crafty compound known as 'Ladds' Patent Anti-Dyspeptic Cocoa.' This is Ladd's servant, John Boimer, the best servant who ever put his leg across pig-skin; and my name is Roland Dunquerque. People generally call me Jack; I don't know why, but they do."

      Their host bowed to each, including the servant, who coloured with pleasure at Jack's description of him; but he shook hands with Ladds.

      "One of ours," he said. "My name is Lawrence Colquhoun. I sold out before you joined. I came here as you see. And – now, gentlemen, I think I hear the first sounds of dinner. Boimer – you will allow me, Ladds? – you will find claret and champagne behind that curtain. Pardon a hermit's fare. I think they have laid out such a table as the wilderness can boast in the next room."

      The dinner was not altogether what a man might order at the Junior United, but it was good. There was venison, there was a curry, there was some mountain quail, there was claret, and there was champagne – both good, especially the claret. Then there was coffee.

      The Honourable Roland Dunquerque, whom we will call in future, what everybody always called him, Jack, ate and drank like Friar John. The keen mountain air multiplied his normal twist by ten. Mr. Gilead P. Beck, who sat down to dinner perfectly unabashed by his rags, was good as a trencherman, but many plates behind the young Englishman. Mr. Lawrence Colquhoun, their host, went on talking almost as if they were in London, only now and then he found himself behind the world. It was his ignorance of the last Derby, the allusion to an old and half-forgotten story, perhaps his use of little phrases – not slang phrases, but those delicately-shaded terms which imply knowledge of current things – which showed him to have been out of London and Paris for more than one season.

      "Four years," he said, "since I left England."

      "But you will come back to it again?"

      "I think not."

      "Better," said Jack, whose face was a little flushed with the wine. "Much better. Robinson Crusoe always wanted to get home again. So did Selkirk. So did Philip Quarles."

      Then the host produced cigars. Later on, brandy-and-water.

      The brandy and water made Mr. Gilead P. Beck, who found himself a good deal crowded out of the conversation, insist on having his share. He placed his square box on the table, and loosed the straps.

      "Let me tell you," he said, "the story of my Luck. I was in Sonora City," he began, patting his box affectionately, "after the worst three months I ever had; and I went around trying to borrow a few dollars. I got no dollars, but I got free drinks – so many free drinks, that at last I lay down in the street and went to sleep. Wal, gentlemen, I suppose I walked in that slumber of mine, for when I woke up I was lying a mile outside the town.

      "I also entertained angels unawares, for at my head there sat an Indian woman. She was as wrinkled an old squaw as ever shrieked at a buryin'. But she took an interest in me. She took that amount of interest in me that she told me she knew of gold. And then she led me by the hand, gentlemen, that aged and affectionate old squaw, to a place not far from the roadside; and there, lying between two rocks, and hidden in the chaparelle, glittering in the light, was this bauble." He tapped his box. "I did not want to

Скачать книгу