When Henry Jackman saw the wife of Joseph Ranger, whom he had known at the trading-post in Utah as Mr. Addicks, and understood the full significance of her arrival as a welcome visitor and relative of the Ranger family, he shrugged his shoulders and walked away, exclaiming: “I’m dummed!”
“No wonder Uncle Joe was captured by that fine creature,” said Jean to herself. “She must have been as handsome in her girlhood as Le-Le.” And for the first time in her life she fainted away.
When she awoke to consciousness, which was not till the next morning, she was on the big white bed in the spare chamber, whither she had been carried by loving friends and treated through all the watches of the night by the Little Doctor with the untiring faithfulness of a devoted friend.
“Take that Indian away! I cannot bear the sight of her,” cried Jean, as her copper-colored aunt approached her, proffering kindly offices.
“She must be humored in her whims till she has had time to recover, Mrs. Ranger,” said Mrs. McAlpin, aside. “There’s a love story and a disappointment behind all this. Her antipathy is not against you, but another Indian princess whom she thinks she has cause to remember.”
“I didn’t come here to make wounds, but to heal them,” faltered Mrs. Ranger, as, with an indistinct conception of the trouble, she left the room, followed by Sally O’Dowd.
“I want you to know that you have healed my wounds,” said Sally. “I was miserably and unreasonably jealous of—I didn’t know of whom—for a whole week before you came to us. I shall never be such a simpleton again.”
“My wise brother says you and he have concluded to marry each other, Mrs. O’Dowd.”
“We were engaged for a short time, but when I overheard him talking to himself about going to Portland ‘to see a woman,’ and he wouldn’t take me into his confidence about her, I got angry and jealous, and treated him shabbily.”
They found the Captain, of whom they went in quest, in his favorite seat on the front doorstep.
“I don’t see why you and Joseph cannot go together to visit your parents this winter,” said Mrs. Ranger, coming at once to the point. “Your partner can have ample time while you are away to get the foundations ready for the mill and other buildings. I will write to Joseph this very night and urge it if you say so.”
The Captain looked inquiringly at Mrs. O’Dowd.
“I quite agree with your brother’s wife,” she said, extending her hand. “I was an idiot to act toward you as I did.”
“With your permission, I will write at once to Joseph, explaining everything and urging him to come to the ranch at once. The courier goes out to-night, so there is no time to lose.”
“Yes,” said Sally, whose eyes were blazing with a new joy, “it is just as Wahnetta says. You can be spared better this winter than later. Will you go if Joseph consents to accompany you?”
“And leave you behind?”
“It would be very humiliating to your family and embarrassing to both of us for me to return as your wife to the old home of your Annie, John.”
“But you’ll marry me before I start?”
“No, John,” she said, the tears welling to her eyes; “we owe to your Annie’s people a tender regard for their feelings. If we were to be married before you visit them, they could never be reconciled to me.”
“I must consult my partner,” said the Captain. “He may not want me to leave at this time. The fellow is terribly unreasonable at times.”
“Is that ‘fellow,’ as you call him, your master?” asked Mary, who was passing, on her way to the milk-house. “He’s been hanging around the house ever since sun-up, waiting for a chance to see Jean. He’s depending on the three of us to keep the boarding-house, and he wants to marry Jean, to stop her wages.”
“Excuse me, ladies; I must see my partner at once,” said the Captain, as he hurried away.
It required much persuasive argument to secure the consent of Happy Jack to Mrs. Joseph’s proposition; but he yielded at length, as men are wont to do when women to whom they are not married combine to carry a point.
The outgoing courier was to leave Oregon City at sunset, and it was necessary to write many letters for the overland mail, destined for Salt Lake and the few intervening points along the route.
Among the missives was one from Jean to Ashton Ashleigh, containing only a few sentences:—
“I have loved you more than life, but I have awaited tidings from you till hope is dead. I wrote a letter for your mother, but it was not sent to her because I had not heard from you. You will understand. I am deeply wounded, but I shall not die. I shall do my duty and be honest with myself, no matter what others may do or be.
“A man who styles himself Happy Jack has come among us, who wants to make me his wife. He is forming a partnership with daddie in the sawmill business; and he insinuates that you have married Le-Le. Does this explain your silence?”
A fortnight passed, and Ashton Ashleigh read this letter by the flickering light of a smoking kerosene lamp. Siwash lay on a buffalo robe in a corner, reading; and near him sat Le-Le, making a cunningly wrought moccasin.
The wind outside was rising. The ice-laden chains and pulleys of the idle ferry-boat resounded to its attack like a thousand-stringed Æolian harp. Suddenly, under a louder and more furious blast than any that had preceded it, the ice-incrusted cables snapped asunder, and the frozen boat crashed through the ice blockade, her timbers breaking as if made of withes.
Ashleigh opened the door and peered out into the moonlight. White clouds rolled over and over one another, and the stark white landscape seemed alive with flurrying snow.
“Good-bye, Green River Ferry,” he said. “This is a fitting finale to my cherished hopes. Oh, Jean! my bonnie Jean! To think that the end should be like this!”
“The ferry-boat is gone, Le-Le,” he said the next morning. “Your ransom price has been paid, and you are, as you know, a slave no longer. I am going away. Take good care of Le-Le, Siwash, my boy; and take good care of yourself also.”
The girl’s English vocabulary was too meagre to admit of much expostulation in speech, but her wailing was blood-curdling as she knelt at his feet, alternately embracing his knees and tearing her hair.
“I have made a terrible mistake, poor girl,” he cried, tearing himself away, “but I meant only to be kind. It was my dream to set you free and take you with me to—to—her. But now I see that it will be impossible!”
Le-Le, still wailing, prepared his breakfast. Siwash brought his mules to the door, in stolid obedience to orders, his face as expressionless as flint.
“The white man’s heart is hard, like the hoof of the buffalo,” he said to Le-Le in her native tongue. “You mistook his kindness for love. But never mind. You’ll get over it.”
Two days of steady travel through the solitudes brought Ashleigh to the lodgings of the post-trader, Joseph Ranger, alias Addicks.
“Your wife,” John had written to his brother, “has come to visit us at the Ranch of the Whispering Firs, as my girls have named our donation claims, to hold which we have pooled our issues, and have filed upon them as individuals. My family are charmed with her. Do join us here at once. Take a donation claim near to one or more of ours. Forget bygones. And, best of all, go with me this winter, by the Isthmus route, to the dear old home. Do say yes, Joe, and we may all be happy yet.”
“Halloa!” cried Ashleigh, as he alighted at the post.
“Well,” cried Joseph Ranger, as he opened his canvas door; “it’s Ashleigh. Come right in! You’re the very man I wanted to see.”
A savory odor of hot biscuits and frying ham greeted the nostrils of the benumbed and hungry wayfarer.
“This supper smells good, Mr. Addicks.”
“Mr. Addicks no more, if you please, Mr. Ashleigh. My name is Ranger,—Joseph Ranger. I have found myself, and I shall be known by my real name hereafter. But help yourself to pot-luck. And please excuse me. I have just begun to read a letter from the coast. The courier hasn’t been gone five minutes.”
After Ashleigh had finished his meal his host thrust the letter in his face and said, “What do you think of that?”
“What do you propose to do?” asked Ashleigh, after carefully considering the missive.
“Why, go to Oregon, of course. What else could a fellow do? But I don’t know what in the dickens to do with my stuff.”
“You can leave me in charge, if you like. You can invoice at your lowest selling-price, and I’ll make what profit I can on the venture and close it out in the spring; that is, if you do not care to return next year.”
“The good Lord has taken pity on me at last,” cried the delighted host. “My luck has begun to turn.”