The Novelist.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 311, 6 April 1878, Page 4

The Novelist.

THE GOLDEN BUTTERFLY. Prologue.—l. “ What do you think, chief ?” The speaker, who was leading by half a length, tui-ned infiiis saddle and looked at his companion. “Push on,” gi’owled the chief, who was a man of few words. “ If you were not so intolerably conceited about the value of your words—hang it, man, you are not the Poet Laureate !—you might give your reasons why we should not camp where we are. The sun will be down in two hours ; the way is long, the wind is cold, or will be soon. This pilgrim has tightened his belt to stave off the gnawing at his stomach ; here is running water, here is wood, here is everything calculated to cliai'm the poetic mind even of Captain Ladds ” “ Road !” intei'rupted his fellow-traveller, pointing along the track marked more by deep old wheel-ruts, grown over with grass, than by any evidences of engineei’ing skill. “ Roads lead to places ; places have beds; beds are warmer than grass —no rattlesnakes in beds ; miners, in hotels—amusing fellows, miners.” “ If ever I go out again after buffaloes, or bear, or mountain deei’, or any oth ;r game whatever, which this great continent offers, with a monosyllabic man, may I be condemned to another two months of buffalo steak without Worcester sauce, such as I have had ah’eady ; may I be poisoned with bad Bourbon whisky ; may I never again see the sweet shady side of Pall Mall, may I ” Here he stopped suddenly, for want of imagination to complete the curse. The first speaker was a young man of four and twenty —the age which is to my sex what eighteen is to the other, because at four and twenty youth and manhood meet. He of four and twenty is yet a youth, inasmuch as women are still angels ; evei-y dinner is a feast, every man of higher rank is a demigod, and every book is true. Pie is a man, inasmuch as he has the firm step of manhood he has passed through his calf-love, he knows what claret means, and his heart is set upon the things for which boys care nothing. He is a youth, because he can still play a game of football and rejoice amazingly in a boat-race ; he is a man because he knows that these things belong to the past, and that to concern one’s self seriously with athletics, when you can no longer be an athlete in the games, is to put yourself on tlie level of a rowing coach or the athletic critic of a sporting paper. Being only four and twenty, the speaker was in high spirits. He was also hungry. He was always both. What has life better to offer than a continual flow of animal spirits and a perpetual appetite ? He was a tall, slight, and perhaps rather a weedy youth, a little too long of leg, a little too narrow in the beam, a little spare about the shoulders ; but a youth of a ruddy and a cheerful countenance. To say that the lines of his face were never set to gravity would be too much, because I defy any man to laugh when he is sleeping, eating, or drinking. At all other times this young man was ready to laugh without stopping. Not a foolish cackle of idiotic vacuity such as may be heard in Eai-lswood Asylum or at a teaparty to meet the curate, but a cheerful bubble of mirth and good-humoi-, proof that the spixit within took every thing joyously, seeing in every misadventure its humorous side, and in evei-y privation its absurdity. The other who rode beside him was some yeai'S older at least. A man of thirty-five, or perhaps more ; a man with a hatchet-face—-nose and forehead in one straight line ; long chin and long upper lip in another ; face red with health as well as bronzed with the sun—a good honest face, supernaturally grave, grave beyond all understanding ; lips that were always tightly closed ; eyes which sometimes sparkled in response to some genial thought, or bubbled over at some joke of his companion, but which, as a rule, were like gimlets for steammers,sothat strangers, especially stronger servants —the nigger of J amaica, the guileless Hindoo of his Indian station, and other members of the inferior human brotherhood trembled exceedingly when they met those eyes. Captain Ladds was accordingly well served, .as cold, reserved men generally are. Mankind takes evei'ything unknown pro terribili, for something dreadful, and until we lsarn to know a man, and think we know him, he is to be treated with the respect due to a possible enemy. Ilostis means a stranger, and it is for strangers that we keep our brickbats. People who knew Ladds laughed at this reputation. They said the gallant captain was a humbug ; they pretended that he was as gentle as a turtle-dove ; beneath those keen eyes, they said, and behind that sharp hatchetface lurked the most amiable of dispositions. At any rate, Ladds was never known to thrash a native servant, or to swear more than is becoming and needful at a syce, while his hatchetface had been more than once detected in the very act of looking as soft and tender as a young mother’s over her firstborn. The name of this cavalier was short and simple. It was Thomas Ladds. His intimate friends called him Tommy. They were in California, and were not buffalo-hunting now, because there is not a buffalo within five hundred miles of Sacramento. Their buffalo-hunting was over, having been accompanied by such small hardships as

have been already alluded to. They rode along a track which was as much like a road as Richmond Park is like the Forest of Arden. They were mounted on a pair of small nervous mustangs ; their saddles were the Mexican saddles used in the counti-v, in front of which, was the never-failing horn. Round this was wound the horsehair lariette, which serves the Westei-n Nimrod for lassoing by day and for keeping off snakes at night, no snake having ever been known to cross this barrier of bristly hoi'sehair. You might as well expect a burgling coolie, smeai’ed with oil, and naked, to effect his escape by ei'awling through a hedge of prickly yeax*. Also, because they were in a foreign land, and wished to be in harmony with its institutions, steel spurs, inlaid with silver filigree, and furnished with “lobs” attached to them, which jangled and danced to make melody, just as if they foi’ined part of an illustration to a Christmas book. Boots, of course, they wore, and the artistic instinct which, a year before, had converted the younger man into a thing of beauty and a joy for the whole Park in the afternoou, now impelled him to assume a cummerbund of scarlet silk, with white tasselled fringes, the like of which, perhaps, had never befoi’e been seen on the back of Californian mustang. His companion was less oi’nate in his personal appearance. Both men carried gxxns, and if a search bad been made, a revolver would have been found, either hidden in the belt of each or carried perdu in the trousei’s pocket. In these days of Pacific Railways and scampering Globe Trotters, one does not want to parade the revolver ; but there are dark places on the earth, from the traveller’s as well as from the missionary’s point of view, where it would be well to have both bowie and Deri'inger ready to hand. On the Amei'ican continent the wandei’ing lamb sometimes has to lie down with the leopard, the harmless gazelle to journey side by side with the cheetah, and the asp may hex'e and there pi’etend to play innocently over the hole of the cockatrice. Belxind the leadei’s followed a little troop of three, consisting of one English servant and two “ greasers.” The latter were dressed in plain xxnpreteuding costume of flannel shirt, boots, and i-ough troxxsers. Bellind each hung his rifle. The English servant was dressed like his master, but “ more so ;” his spurs being heavier, tlie pattern of his check-shirt being larger, his saddle bigger ; only for the silk cummerbund he wore a leathern sti’ap, the last symbol of the honorable condition of dependence. He rode in advance of the greasers, whom he held in contempt, and some thirty yards behind the leaders. The Mexicans rode in silence, smoking cigarettes pei’petually. Sometimes they looked to their guns, or they told a story, or one would sing the snatch of a song in a low voice ; mostly they were grave and thoughtful, though what a greaser thinks about has never yet been ascertained. The country was so far in the Far West that the Sieri’a Nevada lay to the east. It was a rich and beautiful country ; thei'e were parklilce ti’acts—supposing the park to be of a pi-imitive and early-settlement kind— sti'etching out to the left. These were dotted with white oaks. To the light rose the sloping sides of a hill, which were covei’ed with the brushwood called the chapai'elle, in which grew the manzanita and the scrub-oak, with an occasional cedar-pine, not in the least like the cedars of Lebanon and Clapham Common. Hanging about in the jungle, or stretching its arms along the side of the dry watercourse which ran at the travellers’ feet beside the road, was the wild vine, loaded with its small and pretty grapes, now ripe. Nature in inventing the wild grape, has been as generous as in her gift of the sloe. It is a fruit of which an American once observed that it was calculated to develop the generosity of a man’s nature, “because,” he explained, “you would rather give it to your neighbor than eat it yourself.” The travellers were low down on the western slopes of the Sierra ; they were in the midst of dales and glades—canons and gulches, of perfect loveliness, shut in by mountains which l’ose over and behind them like friendly giants guarding a ti-oop of sleeping maidens. Pelion was piled on Ossa as peak after peak rose higher, all clad with pine and cedai’, receding farther and farther, till peaks became points and ridges became sharp edges. It was autumn, and thei’e were dry beds, which had iu the spring been rivulets flowing full and clear fi’om the snowy sides of the higher slopes ; yet among them lingered the flowers of April shrubs, and the colors of the fading leaves mingled with the hues of the autumn berries. A sudden turn in the winding road brought the foremost riders upon a change in the appearance of the country. Below them to the left stretched a broad open space, where the ground had been not only cleared of whatever jungle once grew upon it, but also turned over. They looked upon the site of one of the earliest surface-mining gi’ounds. The shingle and gravel stood about in heaps ; the gulleys and ditches formed by the miners ran up and down the face of the country like the wrinkles in the cheek of a baby monkey ; old pits not deep enough to kill, but warranted to maim and disable, lurked like man-traps in the open ; the old wooden aqueducts, run up by the miners in the year ’52, were still standing where they were abandoned by the “pioneers;” here and there lay about old washing-pans, rusty and broken, old cradles, and bits of rusty metal which had once belonged to shovels. These relics and signs, of bygone gatherings of men were sufficiently dreary in themselves, but at intervals there stood the ruins of a log-house or a heap which had once been a cottage built of mud. Palestine itself has no more striking picture of desolation axxd wreck than a deserted surfacemine. They drew rein and looked in silence. Presently they became aware of the presence of life. Right in the foreground, aboxxt two hundred yards before them, thex-e advanced a procession of two. The leader of the show, so to speak, was a man. He was running. He was running so hai’d, that anybody could see his primary object was speed. After him, with’ heavy stride, seeming to be in no kind of hurry,:

and yet covering the ground at a much greater rate than the man, there came a bear—a real old grisly. A bear who was “shadowing” the man and meant claws. A bear who had an insult to avenge, and was resolved to go on with the affair until lie had avenged it. A bear, too, who had his enemy in the open, where there was nothing to stop him, and no refuge for his victim but the planks of a ruined log-house, could he find one. Both men, without a word, got their rifles ready. The younger threw the reins or his horse to h's companion and dismounted. Then he stood still and watched. The most exhilarating thing in the whole world is allowed to be a hunt, 'No greater pleasure in life than that of the Shekarry, the sport was perhaps intensified to him who ran by the reflection that the customary position of things was reversed. No longer did he hunt the 'bear ; the bear hunted him. No longer did he warily follow the game ; the game boldly followed him. No joyous sound of horns cheered on the hunter ; no shout, such as those which inspirit the fox and put fresh vigor into the hare —not even the short eager baik of hounds, at the sound of which Key ward begius to think how many of bis hundred turns are left. It was a silent chase. The bear, who represented the wholefield —men in scarlet, ladies, master, pack, and everything—set to work in an unsympathetic way, infinitely more distressing to a nervous creature than the cheerful ringing of a whole field. To hunt in silence would be hard for any man ; to be hunted in silence is intolerable. Grisly held his head down and wagged it from side to side, while his great silent paws rapidly cleared the ground and lessened the distance. “ Tommy,” whiepered the young fellow, 1 ca.n cover him now.” “ Wait, Jack. Don’t miss. Give Grisly two minutes more. Gad ! how the fellow scuds ! ” Tommy, you see, obeyed the instinct of nature. He loved the hunt i if not to hunt actively, to witness a hunt. It is the same feeling which crowds the benches at a bullfight in Spain. It was the same feeling which lit up the faces in the Coliseum when Hermann, formerly of the Danube, prisoner, taken redhanded’ in revolt, and therefore morituras, performed with vigor, sympathy, and spirit the role of Actieon, ending, as we all know, in a splendid chase by bloodhounds ; after which the poor To uton, maddened by his long flight and exhausted by his desperate resistance, was torn to pieces, fighting to the end with a rage past all acting. It is our modern pleasure to read of pain and suffering. Those were the really pleasant days to the Roman ladies when they actually witnessed living agony. “ Give Grisly two minutes,” said Captain

Ladds. By this time the rest of the party had come up, and were -watching the movements of man and bear. In the plain stood the framework of a ruined wooden house. Man. made for log-house. Bear, without any apparent effort, but just to show that ho saw the dodge, and meant it should not succeed, put on a spurt, aud the distance between them lessened every moment. Fifty yards ; forty yards. Man looked round over his shoulder. The log-house was a good two hundred yards ahead. He hesitated ; seemed to stop for a moment. Bear diminished the space by a good dozen y ar( jg—and then man doubled. “ Getting pumped,” said Ladds the critical. Then he too dismounted, and stood beside the younger man, giving the reins of both liorse3 to the Mexicans. “ Musn’t let Grisly claw the poor devil,” he murmured. “Let me bring him down, Tommy.” “ Bring him down, young un.” The greasers looked on and laughed. _ It would have been to them a pleasant termination to the “ play” had Bruin clawed the man. Neither hunter nor quarry _ saw the party clustered together on tho rising ground on which the track ran. Man saw nothing but the "round over which he flew ; bear saw nothing but man before him. The doubling manoeuvre was, however, the one thing needed to bring Grisly within easy reach. Raster flew the man, hut it was the flight of despair ; had the others been near enough they would have caught his panting breath, they would have seen the cold drops of agony standing on liis forehead ; they would have caught his parrbing breath, they would have heard liis muttered pray er. “ Let him have it !” growled Laids. It was time. Grisly, swinging along with a leisurely step, rolling his great head from side to side in time with the cadence of liisfootfaP one roll to every half-dozen strides, like a fat German over a trois-temps waltz—suddenly lifted his face, and roared. Then the man shrieked ; then the bear stopped, and raised himself for a moment, pawing in the air; then he dropped again, and rushed with quickened step upon tbe roc , then hut then ping f one shot. It had struck Grizly in the shoulder ; he stops with a roar. “Good, young un !” said Ladds, bringing piece to shoulder. This time Grizly roars no more. He rolls over. He is shot to the heart, and is dead. The other participator in this chasse of two heard the crack of tbe rifles. His senses }vere growing dazed with fear ; he did not stop, he ran on still, but with trembling kuees and outstretched hands ; aud when he came to a heap of shingle and sand —one of those left over from the old surface mines—he fell headlong on the pile with a cry, and could not rise. The two who shot the bear ran across the ground—lie lay almost at their feet—to secure their prey. After them, at a leisurely pace, strode John the servant. The greasers stayed behind and laughed. “ Grisly’s dead,” said Tommy, pulling out his knife. “ Steak ?” “No ; skin,” cried the younger. “Let me take his skill. John, we will have the beast skinned. You c.an get some steaks cut. Where is the man ?”

They found him lying on his face, unable to move. “Now, old man,” said the young fellow

cheerfully, “might as well sit up, you know, if you can’t stand. Bruin’s gone to the happy hunting-grounds.” The man sat up, as desired, and tried to take a comprehensive view of the position. Jack handed him a flask, from which he took a long pull. Then he got up, and somewhat ostentatiously began to smooth down the legs of his trousers. He was a thin man, about five and forty years of ago ; lie wore an irregular and patchy kind of beard, which flourished exceedingly on certain square half-inches of clnn and cheek, and was as thin as grass at Aden on tue iuteivening spaces. He had no boots, but a soro of moccasins, the lightness of whicu enabled. him to show his heels to the bear for so'long a time. His trousers might have been of a rough tweed, or they might have been black cloth, because grease, many drenchings, the buffeting of years, and the holes into which they were worn, had long deprived them of their original color and brilliancy. Above the trousers he wore a tattered flannel shirt, the right arm of wiiich, nearly torn to pieces, revealed a tattered limb, which was strong although thin ; the buttons had long ago vanished from the front of the garment ; thorns picturesquely replaced them. ]l o wore a red-cotton handkerchief round liis neck, a round felt hat was on his head ; this, like the trousers, had lost its pristine color, and by diut of years and weather its stiffness too. To prevent the hat from flapping in his eyes, its possessor had pinned it up with thorns in the front. Necessity is the mother of invention : there is nothing morally wrong in the use of. thorns where other men use studs, diamond pins and such gauds ; and the effect is picturesque. The stranger, in fact, was a law unto himself. . He had no coat ; the rifle of Californian civilization was missing ; there was no sign of. knife or revolver ; and the only encumbrance, if that was anv, to the lig'htness of his flight was a small wooden box strapped round tightly, and hanging at his hack by means of a steel chain, grown °a little rusty where it did not rub against his neck and shoulders. He sat up aud winked involuntarily with both eyes. This was the effect of present bewilderment and late fear. Then he looked round him, after, as before explained, a few moments of assiduous legsmoothing', which, as stated above, looked ostentatious, but was really only nervous agitation. Then he rose, and saw Grisly lying in a heap a few yards off. He walked over with a grave face, and looked at him. When Henri Balafre, Due de Guise, saw Coligny lying dead at his feet, he is said only it is a wicked lie—to have kicked the body of his murdered father’s enemy. When Henri 111. of France, ten years later, saw Balafrfi dead at his feet, he did kick the lifeless body, with a wretched joke. That king was a cur. My American was not. He stood over Bruin with a look in his eyes which betokened respect for fallen greatness and sympathy with bad luck. Grisly would have been liis victor, but for the chance which brought him within reach of a friendly rifle. “ A near thing,” he said. “ Since I’ve been in this doggoned country I’ve had one or two near things, but this Avas the nearest.” The greasers stood round the body of the bear, and the English servants AA 7 a giving directions for skinning the beast. “ And which of you geutlemen,” he Avent on Avitli a nasal twang more pronounced than before—perhaps Avith more emphasis on the Avord “gentlemen” than AA r as altogether required — “ Avhich of you gentlemen Avas good enough to shoot the critter ?” “ The English servant, who Avas, like his master, a man of feAv Avords, pointed to the young man, Avho stood close by Avith the other leader of the expedition. The man snatched from the jaws of death took off his shaky thorn-beset felt, and solemnly held out his hand. “Sir,” he said, “I do not knoAv your name, and you do not know mine. If you did you Avould not be much happier, because it is not a striking' name. If you’ll oblige me, sir, by touching that”—he’meant his right hand—- “ Ave shall he brothers. All that’s mine shall be yours. Ido not ask you, sir, to reciprocate. All that’s mine, sir, Avhen I get anything, shall be yours. At present, sir, there is nothing ; but l’ve Luck behind me. Shake hands, sir. Once a mouse helped a lion, sir, It’s in a book. lam the mouse, sir, and you are the lion. Sir, my name is Gilead P. Beck.” The young man laughed aud shook hands with him. “ I only fired the first shot,” he explained. “ My friend here ” “No; first shot disabled—hunt finished then—Grisly out of the running. Glad you’re not clawed—unpleasant to be olaAved. Young un did it. No thanks. Tell us Avliere Ave are.” Mr. Gilead P. Beck, catching the spirit of the situation, told them A'/here they Avere, approximately. “ This,” he said, “is Patrick’s Camp ; at least, it was. The Pioneers of ’49 could tell you a good deal about Patrick’s Camp. It Avas here that Patrick kept his store. In those old days—they’re gone iioav —if a man Avanted to buy a blanket, that article, sir, Avas put into one scale, and Aveighed down Avith gold-dust in the other. Same with a pair of boots ; same Avith a pound of raisins. Patrick might have died rich, sir, but he didn’t —none of the pioneers did—so he died poor ; and died in his boots, too, like most of the lot.” “ Not much left of the camp.” “No, sir, not much. The mine gave out. Then they moA-ed up the hills, Avhere, I conclude, you geutlemen are on your way. Prospecting likely. The neAv toAvn, called Empire City, ought to be au hour or so up the track. I Avas trying to find my Avay there Avhen I met with old Grisly. Perhaps if I had let him alone he Avould have let me alone. But I blazed at him, and, sir, I missed him ; then he shadowed me. And the old rifle’s gone at last.” “ How long did the chase last ?” “ I should say, sir, forty days and forty nights, or near about. And you gentlemen air going to Empire City ?” “We are going any Avhere. Perhaps, for the present, you had better join us,”