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Page 40
"Yes," continued the half-niece brightly. "I came from Sacramento
with some friends to Shootersville, and from thence I drove here;
and though I must return to-night, I could not forego the pleasure
of coming, if it was only for an hour or two, to answer the
invitation of the uncle I have not seen for years." She paused,
and, raising her glasses, turned a politely questioning eye towards
Mrs. Price. "One of our relations?" she said smilingly to Spindler.
"No," said Spindler, with some embarrassment, "a--a friend!"
The half-niece extended her hand. Mrs. Price took it.
But the fair stranger,--what she did and said were the only things
remembered in Rough and Ready on that festive occasion; no one
thought of the other relations; no one recalled them nor their
eccentricities; Spindler himself was forgotten. People only
recollected how Spindler's lovely niece lavished her smiles and
courtesies on every one, and brought to her feet particularly the
misogynist Starbuck and the sarcastic Cooledge, oblivious of his
previous speech; how she sat at the piano and sang like an angel,
hushing the most hilarious and excited into sentimental and even
maudlin silence; how, graceful as a nymph, she led with "Uncle
Dick" a Virginia reel until the whole assembly joined, eager for a
passing touch of her dainty hand in its changes; how, when two
hours had passed,--all too swiftly for the guests,--they stood with
bared heads and glistening eyes on the veranda to see the fairy
coach whirl the fairy princess away! How--but this incident was
never known to Rough and Ready.
It happened in the sacred dressing-room, where Mrs. Price was
cloaking with her own hands the departing half-niece of Mr.
Spindler. Taking that opportunity to seize the lovely relative by
the shoulders and shake her violently, she said: "Oh, yes, and it's
all very well for you, Kate, you limb! For you're going away, and
will never see Rough and Ready and poor Spindler again. But what
am I to do, miss? How am I to face it out? For you know I've got
to tell him at least that you're no half-niece of his!"
"Have you?" said the young lady.
"Have I?" repeated the widow impatiently. "Have I? Of course I
have! What are you thinking of?"
"I was thinking, aunty," said the girl audaciously, "that from what
I've seen and heard to-night, if I'm not his half-niece now, it's
only a question of time! So you'd better wait. Good-night, dear."
And, really,--it turned out that she was right!
WHEN THE WATERS WERE UP AT "JULES'"
When the waters were up at "Jules'" there was little else up on
that monotonous level. For the few inhabitants who calmly and
methodically moved to higher ground, camping out in tents until the
flood had subsided, left no distracting wreckage behind them. A
dozen half-submerged log cabins dotted the tranquil surface of the
waters, without ripple or disturbance, looking in the moonlight
more like the ruins of centuries than of a few days. There was no
current to sap their slight foundations or sweep them away; nothing
stirred that silent lake but the occasional shot-like indentations
of a passing raindrop, or, still more rarely, a raft, made of a
single log, propelled by some citizen on a tour of inspection of
his cabin roof-tree, where some of his goods were still stored.
There was no sense of terror in this bland obliteration of the
little settlement; the ruins of a single burnt-up cabin would have
been more impressive than this stupid and even grotesquely placid
effect of the rival destroying element. People took it naturally;
the water went as it had come,--slowly, impassively, noiselessly; a
few days of fervid Californian sunshine dried the cabins, and in a
week or two the red dust lay again as thickly before their doors as
the winter mud had lain. The waters of Rattlesnake Creek dropped
below its banks, the stage-coach from Marysville no longer made a
detour of the settlement. There was even a singular compensation
to this amicable invasion; the inhabitants sometimes found gold in
those breaches in the banks made by the overflow. To wait for the
"old Rattlesnake sluicing" was a vernal hope of the trusting miner.
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