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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The pioneer
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away
or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
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Title: The pioneer

A tale of two states

Author: Geraldine Bonner

Illustrator: Harrison Fisher

Release date: February 26, 2024 [eBook #73040]

Language: English

Original publication: Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company,

1905

Credits: D A Alexander, David E. Brown, and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE

PIONEER ***
THE PIONEER
June
 THE PIONEER
A TALE OF TWO STATES

By
GERALDINE BONNER
Author of Tomorrow’s Tangle

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
HARRISON FISHER

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
 Copyright 1905
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

March

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
 CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE COUNTRY
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Squatter 3
II The Gracey Boys 12
III The Name of Allen 27
IV O, Mine Enemy! 44
V The Summons 54
VI The Old Love 65
VII Uncle Jim 85
VIII Prizes of Accident 99
BOOK II
THE TOWN
I Down in the City 109
II Feminine Logic 126
III One of Eve’s Family 140
IV Danger Signals 153
V The Great God Pan 166
VI Readjustment 183
VII Business and Sentiment 192
VIII New Planets 201
IX The Choice of Maids 214
X The Quickening Current 225
XI Lupé’s Chains are Broken 230
XII A Man and His Price 241
XIII The Breaking Point 252
XIV Bed-Rock 265
 BOOK III
THE DESERT
I Nevada 281
II Old Friends with New Faces 286
III Smoldering Embers 304
IV A Woman’s “No” 316
V “Her Feet Go Down to Death” 329
VI The Edge of the Precipice 341
VII The Colonel Comes Back 352
VIII The Aroused Lion 368
IX Home 381
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
June Frontispiece
She Smiled Faintly at Him 40
“Here it is! Do You Wonder no one Ever
Found it?” 88
With the Tip of the Long Spear of Grass,
He Touched Her Lightly on the Cheek 176
Mercedes 244
Rosamund 306
THE PIONEER
 BOOK I
THE COUNTRY
 THE PIONEER
CHAPTER I
THE SQUATTER
It had been five o’clock in the clear, still freshness of a May morning
when the Colonel had started from Sacramento. Now, drawing rein
where the shadow of a live-oak lay like a black pool across the road,
he looked at his watch—almost five. The sun had nearly wheeled
from horizon to horizon.
During the burning noon hour he had rested at Murderer’s Bar.
Except for that he had been in the saddle all day, slackening speed
where the road passed over the burnt shoulder of the foot-hills,
descending into sheltered cañons by cool river-beds, pacing along
stretches of deserted highway where his mounted figure was the
only living thing in sight.
Stationary in the shade of the live-oak he looked about him. The rich
foot-hill country of California stretched away beneath his gaze in lazy
undulations, dotted with the forms of the oaks. The grass on
unprotected hilltops was already drying to an ocher yellow, the road
was deep in dust. Far away, hanging on the horizon like a faded
mirage, was the high Sierra, thin, snow-touched, a faint, aërial vision.
The sleepy sounds of midday had died down and the strange,
dream-like silence so peculiar to California held the scene. It was like
looking at a picture, the Colonel thought, as he turned in his saddle
and surveyed the misty line of hill after hill, bare and wooded,
dwindling down to where—a vast, sea-like expanse swimming in
opalescent tints—stretched one of the fruitful valleys of the world.
Kit Carson, the finest horse procurable in the Sacramento livery
stable the Colonel patronized, stamped and flicked off a fly with his
long tail. His rider muttered a word of endearment and bent to pat
the silky neck, while his eyes continued to move over the great
panorama. He had traversed it many times. The first time of all rose
in his mind, when in the flush of his splendid manhood, he had
sought fortune on the bars and river-beds in forty-nine. Forty-nine!
That was twenty-one years ago.
Something in the thought clouded his brow and called a sigh to his
lips. He made a gesture as though shaking off a painful memory and
gathered up the hanging rein.
“Come, Kit,” he said aloud, “we’ve got to be moving. There’s fifteen
miles yet between us and supper.”
The road before them mounted a spur at the top of which it
branched, one fork winding up and on to the mining towns hidden in
the mountain crevices. The other turned to the right, and rising and
falling over the buttresses that the foot-hills thrust into the plain,
wandered down “the mother lode,” the great mineral belt of
California.
As they rose to the summit of the spur, the brilliancy of the air was
tarnished by a cloud of dust, and the silence disrupted by sounds.
The crack of whips cut into the tranquillity of the evening hour; the
jangling of bells and voices of men mingled in strident dissonance.
Both Kit and the Colonel rose above the curve of the hilltop with the
pricked ears and alert eyes of curiosity.
The left-hand road was blocked as far as could be seen with a long
mule train, one of the trains that a few years before had crossed the
Sierra to Virginia City, and still plied a trade with the California
mountain towns. The dust rose from it and covered it as though to
shut out from Heaven the vision of the straining animals, and deaden
the blasphemies of the men. Looking along its struggling length, the
end of which was lost round a turn of the road, the Colonel could see
the pointed ears, the stretched necks, and the arched collars of the
mules, the canvas tops of the wagons and over all, darting back and
forth, the leaping flash of the whips.
A forward wagon was stuck, and, groaning and creaking from an
unsuccessful effort to start it, the train subsided into panting
relaxation. From the dust the near-by drivers emerged, caught sight
of the rider, and slouched toward him. They were powerful men—
great men in their day, the California mule drivers.
They passed the time of day, told him their destination and asked
his. Going on to Foleys, was he? Mining? Supposed not. Not much
mining done round Foleys now. Like Virginia, pretty well petered.
“Virginia!” said one of them, “you’d oughter see Virginia! I’ve taken
my sixteen-mule team over the Strawberry Creek route and made
my ten dollars a day in Virginia, but it’s as dead now as forty-nine.”
Then they slouched back to their work. Through the churned-up
dust, red with the brightness of the declining sun, men came
swinging down from the forward end of the train, driving mules to
attach to the stalled wagon. About it there was a concentrating of
movement and then an outburst of furious energy. A storm of
profanity arose, the dust ascended like a pillar of red smoke, and in it
the forms of men struggled, and the lashes of the whips came and
went like the writhing tentacles of an octopus. The watcher had a
glimpse of the mules almost sitting in the violence of their endeavor,
and with a howl of triumph the wagon lurched forward. The next
moment the entire train was in motion, seeming to advance with a
single movement, like a gigantic serpent, each wagon-top a section
of its vertebrate length, the whole undulating slowly to the rhythmic
jangling of the bells.
The Colonel took the turning to the right and was soon traversing a
road which looped in gradual descent along the wall of a ravine. The
air was chilled by a river that tumbled over stones below. Greenery
of tree and chaparral ran up the walls. A white root gripping a rock
like knotty fingers, a spattering of dogwood here and there amid the
foliage, caught his eye.
Yes, Virginia had unquestionably “petered.” It had had a short life for
its promise. Even in sixty-eight they still had had hopes of it. This
was May, the May of seventy, and their hopes had not been realized.
Fortunately he had invested little there. California the Colonel had
found a good enough field for his investments.
He rode on out of the ravine, once again into the dry rolling land, his
mind turning over that question of investments. He had not much
else to think of. He was a lonely man, unmarried, childless, and rich.
What else was there for a man, who had passed his fifty-fifth year,
who did not care for women or pleasure, to concern himself about? It
was not satisfying; it brought him no happiness, but he had had no
expectation of that.
Twenty-one years ago the Colonel had waked to the realization that
he had missed happiness. She had been his, in his very arms then,
and he had thought to keep her there for ever. Then suddenly she
had gone, without warning, tearing herself from his grasp, and he
had known that she would never return. So he had tried to fill the
blankness she had left, with business—a sorry substitute! He had
spent a good deal of time and thought over this matter of investing,
and had seen his fortune accumulating in a safe, gradual way. It
would have been much larger than it was if he could have cured
himself of a tendency to give portions of it away. But the Colonel was
a pioneer, and there were many pioneers who had succeeded better
than he in finding happiness, if not so well in gaining riches. As they
had been successful in the one way, he had tried to remedy a deficit
in the other, and his fortune remained at about the same comfortable
level, despite his preoccupation in investments.
This very trip was to see about a new one in which there were great
possibilities. He had a strip of land at Foleys, back of the town,
purchased fifteen years ago when people thought the little camp was
to be the mining center of the region. Now, after he had been
regularly paying his taxes, and hearing that the place annually grew
smaller and deader, a mineral spring had been discovered on his
land. It was a good thing that something had been discovered there.
The hopes of Foleys had vanished soon after he had come into
possession of the tract. His efforts to sell it had been unsuccessful.
Some years ago—the last time he was up there—you couldn’t get
people to take land near Foleys, short of giving it to them. But a
mineral spring was a very different matter.
As Kit Carson bore him swiftly onward he reviewed the idea of his
new investment with increasing enthusiasm. If the spring was all they
said it was, he would build a hotel near it, and transform the
beautiful, unknown locality into a summer resort. There was an ideal
situation for a hotel, where the land swept upward into a sort of
natural terrace crested with enormous pines. Here the house would
be built, and from its front piazza guests rocking in shaker chairs
could look over miles of hills and wooded cañons, and far away on
clear days could see the mother-of-pearl expanse of the Sacramento
Valley.
A few years ago the plan would have been impossible. But now, with
the railroad climbing over the Sierra, it would be quite feasible to run
a line of stages from Sacramento; or, possibly, Auburn would be
shorter. There was even a hope in the back of the Colonel’s mind
that the railway might be induced to fling forth a spur as far as
Placerville. The Colonel had friendships in high places. Things that
ordinary mortals who were not rich, unattached pioneers, could not
aspire to, were entirely possible for Colonel James Parrish.
But—here came in the “but” which upsets the best laid plans. At this
point the squatter had loomed up.
The Colonel had hardly believed in the squatter at first. His claims
were so preposterous. He had come shortly after Parrish’s last visit,
nearly four years ago, and had taken up his residence in the half-
ruined cottage which had been built on the land in those days when
people had thought Foleys was going to be a great mining center.
When Cusack, the drowsy lawyer who “attended to Colonel Parrish’s
business interests in Foleys,” as he expressed it, let his client know
there was a squatter—a married man with two children—on the land,
the Colonel’s reply had been “let him squat.” And so the matter had
rested.
Now, when the Colonel wanted to take possession of his own, build
his hotel and develop his mineral spring, he had received the
intelligence that the squatter refused to go—that in fact he claimed
the land on a three and a half years’ tenancy undisturbed by notice
to leave, and on various and sundry “improvements” he had made.
It took the Colonel’s breath away. That little clause in the lawyer’s
letter about the wife and children had induced him to give his