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Page 54
"When I tell you I've come three thousand miles from Kansas straight
here without stopping, ye kin reckon it's so," she replied firmly.
"Three thousand miles!" echoed the editor wonderingly.
"Yes. Three thousand miles from my own folks' home in Kansas,
where six years ago I married Mr. Dimmidge,--a British furriner as
could scarcely make himself understood in any Christian language!
Well, he got round me and dad, allowin' he was a reg'lar out-and-
out profeshnal miner,--had lived in mines ever since he was a boy;
and so, not knowin' what kind o' mines, and dad just bilin' over
with the gold fever, we were married and kem across the plains to
Californy. He was a good enough man to look at, but it warn't
three months before I discovered that he allowed a wife was no
better nor a nigger slave, and he the master. That made me open my
eyes; but then, as he didn't drink, and didn't gamble, and didn't
swear, and was a good provider and laid by money, why I shifted
along with him as best I could. We drifted down the first year to
Sonora, at Red Dog, where there wasn't another woman. Well, I did
the nigger slave business,--never stirring out o' the settlement,
never seein' a town or a crowd o' decent people,--and he did the
lord and master! We played that game for two years, and I got
tired. But when at last he allowed he'd go up to Elktown Hill,
where there was a passel o' his countrymen at work, with never a
sign o' any other folks, and leave me alone at Red Dog until he
fixed up a place for me at Elktown Hill,--I kicked! I gave him
fair warning! I did as other nigger slaves did,--I ran away!"
A recollection of the wretched woodcut which Mr. Dimmidge had
selected to personify his wife flashed upon the editor with a new
meaning. Yet perhaps she had not seen it, and had only read a copy
of the advertisement. What could she want? The "Calaveras
Clarion," although a "Palladium" and a "Sentinel upon the Heights
of Freedom" in reference to wagon roads, was not a redresser of
domestic wrongs,--except through its advertising columns! Her next
words intensified that suggestion.
"I've come here to put an advertisement in your paper."
The editor heaved a sigh of relief, as once before. "Certainly,"
he said briskly. "But that's another department of the paper, and
the printers have gone home. Come to-morrow morning early."
"To-morrow morning I shall be miles away," she said decisively,
"and what I want done has got to be done NOW! I don't want to see
no printers; I don't want ANYBODY to know I've been here but you.
That's why I kem here at night, and rode all the way from Sawyer's
Station, and wouldn't take the stage-coach. And when we've settled
about the advertisement, I'm going to mount my horse, out thar in
the bushes, and scoot outer the settlement."
"Very good," said the editor resignedly. "Of course I can deliver
your instructions to the foreman. And now--let me see--I suppose
you wish to intimate in a personal notice to your husband that
you've returned."
"Nothin' o' the kind!" said Mrs. Dimmidge coolly. "I want to
placard him as he did me. I've got it all written out here.
Sabe?"
She took from her pocket a folded paper, and spreading it out on
the editor's desk, with a certain pride of authorship read as
follows:--
"Whereas my husband, Micah J. Dimmidge, having given out that I
have left his bed and board,--the same being a bunk in a log cabin
and pork and molasses three times a day,--and having advertised
that he'd pay no debts of MY contractin',--which, as thar ain't
any, might be easier collected than debts of his own contractin',--
this is to certify that unless he returns from Elktown Hill to his
only home in Sonora in one week from date, payin' the cost of this
advertisement, I'll know the reason why.--Eliza Jane Dimmidge."
"Thar," she added, drawing a long breath, "put that in a column of
the 'Clarion,' same size as the last, and let it work, and that's
all I want of you."
"A column?" repeated the editor. "Do you know the cost is very
expensive, and I COULD put it in a single paragraph?"
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