The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales Read online

  THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales

  by

  Bret Harte

  CONTENTS.

  THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE FOOT-HILLS A SECRET OF TELEGRAPH HILL CAPTAIN JIM'S FRIEND

  THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH.

  I.

  The sun was going down on the Dedlow Marshes. The tide was followingit fast as if to meet the reddening lines of sky and water in the west,leaving the foreground to grow blacker and blacker every moment, and tobring out in startling contrast the few half-filled and half-lit poolsleft behind and forgotten. The strong breath of the Pacific fanningtheir surfaces at times kindled them into a dull glow like dyingembers. A cloud of sand-pipers rose white from one of the nearerlagoons, swept in a long eddying ring against the sunset, and became ablack and dropping rain to seaward. The long sinuous line of channel,fading with the light and ebbing with the tide, began to give off hereand there light puffs of gray-winged birds like sudden exhalations.High in the darkening sky the long arrow-headed lines of geese and'brant' pointed towards the upland. As the light grew more uncertainthe air at times was filled with the rush of viewless and melancholywings, or became plaintive with far-off cries and lamentations. As theMarshes grew blacker the far-scattered tussocks and accretions on itslevel surface began to loom in exaggerated outline, and two humanfigures, suddenly emerging erect on the bank of the hidden channel,assumed the proportion of giants.

  When they had moored their unseen boat, they still appeared for somemoments to be moving vaguely and aimlessly round the spot where theyhad disembarked. But as the eye became familiar with the darkness itwas seen that they were really advancing inland, yet with a slowness ofprogression and deviousness of course that appeared inexplicable to thedistant spectator. Presently it was evident that this seemingly even,vast, black expanse was traversed and intersected by inky creeks andsmall channels, which made human progression difficult and dangerous.As they appeared nearer and their figures took more naturalproportions, it could be seen that each carried a gun; that one was ayoung girl, although dressed so like her companion in shaggy pea-jacketand sou'wester as to be scarcely distinguished from him above the shortskirt that came halfway down her high india-rubber fishing-boots. Bythe time they had reached firmer ground, and turned to look back at thesunset, it could be also seen that the likeness between their faces wasremarkable. Both, had crisp, black, tightly curling hair; both haddark eyes and heavy eyebrows; both had quick vivid complexions,slightly heightened by the sea and wind. But more striking than theirsimilarity of coloring was the likeness of expression and bearing.Both wore the same air of picturesque energy; both bore themselves witha like graceful effrontery and self-possession.

  The young man continued his way. The young girl lingered for a momentlooking seaward, with her small brown hand lifted to shade her eyes,--aprecaution which her heavy eyebrows and long lashes seemed to renderutterly gratuitous.

  "Come along, Mag. What are ye waitin' for?" said the young manimpatiently.

  "Nothin'. Lookin' at that boat from the Fort." Her clear eyes werewatching a small skiff, invisible to less keen-sighted observers,aground upon a flat near the mouth of the channel. "Them chaps willhave a high ole time gunnin' thar, stuck in the mud, and the tide goin'out like sixty!"

  "Never you mind the sodgers," returned her companion, aggressively,"they kin take care o' their own precious skins, or Uncle Sam will doit for 'em, I reckon. Anyhow the people--that's you and me, Mag--isexpected to pay for their foolishness. That's what they're sent yerfor. Ye oughter to be satisfied with that," he added with deep sarcasm.

  "I reckon they ain't expected to do much off o' dry land, and theycan't help bein' queer on the water," returned the young girl with areflecting sense of justice.

  "Then they ain't no call to go gunnin', and wastin' Guv'nment powder onducks instead o' Injins."

  "Thet's so," said the girl thoughtfully. "Wonder ef Guv'nment pays forthem frocks the Kernel's girls went cavortin' round Logport in lastSunday--they looked like a cirkis."

  "Like ez not the old Kernel gets it outer contracts--one way oranother. WE pay for it all the same," he added gloomily.

  "Jest the same ez if they were MY clothes," said the girl, with aquick, fiery, little laugh, "ain't it? Wonder how they'd like mysayin' that to 'em when they was prancin' round, eh, Jim?"

  But her companion was evidently unprepared for this sweeping femininededuction, and stopped it with masculine promptitude.

  "Look yer--instead o' botherin' your head about what the Fort girlswear, you'd better trot along a little more lively. It's late enoughnow."

  "But these darned boots hurt like pizen," said the girl, limping. "Theyswallowed a lot o' water over the tops while I was wadin' down there,and my feet go swashin' around like in a churn every step."

  "Lean on me, baby," he returned, passing his arm around her waist, anddropping her head smartly on his shoulder. "Thar!" The act wasbrotherly and slightly contemptuous, but it was sufficient to at onceestablish their kinship.

  They continued on thus for some moments in silence, the girl, I fear,after the fashion of her sex, taking the fullest advantage of thisslightly sentimental and caressing attitude. They were moving nowalong the edge of the Marsh, parallel with the line of rapidly fadinghorizon, following some trail only known to their keen youthful eyes.It was growing darker and darker. The cries of the sea-birds hadceased; even the call of a belated plover had died away inland; thehush of death lay over the black funereal pall of marsh at their side.The tide had run out with the day. Even the sea-breeze had lulled inthis dead slack-water of all nature, as if waiting outside the bar withthe ocean, the stars, and the night.

  Suddenly the girl stopped and halted her companion. The faint farsound of a bugle broke the silence, if the idea of interruption couldhave been conveyed by the two or three exquisite vibrations that seemedborn of that silence itself, and to fade and die in it without break ordiscord. Yet it was only the 'retreat' call from the Fort two milesdistant and invisible.

  The young girl's face had become irradiated, and her small mouth halfopened as she listened. "Do you know, Jim," she said with aconfidential sigh, "I allus put words to that when I hear it--it's sopow'ful pretty. It allus goes to me like this: 'Goes the day, Faraway, With the light, And the night Comes along--Comes along--Comesalong--Like a-a so-o-ong.'" She here lifted her voice, a sweet, fresh,boyish contralto, in such an admirable imitation of the bugle that herbrother, after the fashion of more select auditors, was for a momentquite convinced that the words meant something. Nevertheless, as abrother, it was his duty to crush this weakness. "Yes; and itsays:'shut your head, Go to bed,'" he returned irascibly; "and YOU'Dbetter come along, if we're goin' to hev any supper. There's YellerBob hez got ahead of us over there with the game already."

  The girl glanced towards a slouching burdened figure that now appearedto be preceding them, straightened herself suddenly, and then lookedattentively towards the Marsh.

  "Not the sodgers again?" said her brother impatiently.

  "No," she said quickly; "but if that don't beat anythin'! I'd hevsworn, Jim, that Yeller Bob was somewhere behind us. I saw him onlyjest now when 'Taps' sounded, somewhere over thar." She pointed with ahalf-uneasy expression in quite another direction from that in whichthe slouching Yellow Bob had just loomed.

  "Tell ye what, Mag, makin' poetry outer bugle calls hez kinder muddledye. THAT'S Yeller Bob ahead, and ye orter know Injins well enuff bythis time to remember that they allus crop up jest when ye don't expectthem. And there's the bresh jest afore us. Come!"

  The 'bresh,' or low bushes
, was really a line of stunted willows andalders that seemed to have gradually sunk into the level of the plain,but increased in size farther inland, until they grew to the height anddensity of a wood. Seen from the channel it had the appearance of agreen cape or promontory thrust upon the Marsh. Passing through itstangled recesses, with the aid of some unerring instinct, the twocompanions emerged upon another and much larger level that seemed asillimitable as the bay. The strong breath of the ocean lying justbeyond the bar and estuary they were now facing came to them salt andhumid as another tide. The nearer