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                               THE

                        WORKS OF BRET HARTE.

                         Riverside Edition.

                 _COLLECTED AND REVISED BY THE AUTHOR._




                          GABRIEL CONROY

                                BY

                            BRET HARTE

                          [Illustration]



                              BOSTON

                   HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

                NEW YORK: 11 EAST SEVENTEENTH STREET

                    The Riverside Press, Cambridge

                               1882


                          Copyright, 1875,

                   BY AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPANY.

                         Copyright, 1882,

                   BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

                       _All rights reserved_


    CONTENTS.


    BOOK I.--ON THE THRESHOLD.


    CHAP.                                                  PAGE

       I. WITHOUT                                             1
      II. WITHIN                                              9
     III. GABRIEL                                            21
      IV. NATURE SHOWS THEM THE WAY                          26
       V. OUT OF THE WOODS--INTO THE SHADOW                  30
      VI. FOOTPRINTS                                         36
     VII. IN WHICH THE FOOTPRINTS BEGIN TO FADE              40
    VIII. THE FOOTPRINTS GROW FAINTER                        43
      IX. IN WHICH THE FOOTPRINTS ARE LOST FOR EVER          47


    BOOK II.--AFTER FIVE YEARS.

       I. ONE HORSE GULCH                                    54
      II. MADAME DEVARGES                                    65
     III. MRS. MARKLE                                        74
      IV. IN WHICH THE ARTFUL GABRIEL IS DISCOVERED          87
       V. SIMPLICITY _versus_ SAGACITY                       95


    BOOK III.--THE LEAD.

       I. AN OLD PIONEER OF '49                             108
      II. A CLOUD OF WITNESSES                              118
     III. THE CHARMING MRS. SEPULVIDA                       125
      IV. FATHER FELIPE                                     132
       V. IN WHICH THE DONNA MARIA MAKES AN IMPRESSION      140
      VI. THE LADY OF GRIEF                                 151
     VII. A LEAF OUT OF THE PAST                            165
    VIII. THE BULLS OF THE BLESSED TRINITY                  171


    BOOK IV.--DRIFTING.

       I. MR. AND MRS. CONROY AT HOME                       178
      II. IN WHICH THE TREASURE IS FOUND--AND LOST          191
     III. MR. DUMPHY MEETS AN OLD FRIEND                    205
      IV. MR. JACK HAMLIN TAKES A HOLIDAY                   212
       V. VICTOR MAKES A DISCOVERY                          222
      VI. AN EXPERT                                         231


    BOOK V.--THE VEIN.

       I. IN WHICH GABRIEL RECOGNISES THE PROPRIETIES       243
      II. TRANSIENT GUESTS AT THE GRAND CONROY              257
     III. IN WHICH MR. DUMPHY TAKES A HOLIDAY               266
      IV. MR. DUMPHY HAS NEWS OF A DOMESTIC CHARACTER       280
       V. MRS. CONROY HAS AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR             291
      VI. GABRIEL DISCARDS HIS HOME AND WEALTH              299
     VII. WHAT PASSED UNDER THE PINE AND WHAT REMAINED
             THERE                                          305


    BOOK VI.--A DIP.

       I. MR. HAMLIN'S RECREATION CONTINUED                 317
      II. MR. HAMLIN TAKES A HAND                           325
     III. MR DUMPHY TAKES POINSETT INTO CONFIDENCE          338
      IV. MR. HAMLIN IS OFF WITH AN OLD LOVE                349
       V. THE THREE VOICES                                  354
      VI. MR. DUMPHY IS PERPLEXED BY A MOVEMENT IN REAL
             ESTATE                                         363
     VII. IN WHICH BOTH JUSTICE AND THE HEAVENS FALL        376
    VIII. IN TENEBRIS SERVARE FIDEM                         387
      IX. IN WHICH HECTOR ARISES FROM THE DITCH             398


    BOOK VII.--THE BED ROCK.

       I. IN THE TRACK OF A STORM                           409
      II. THE YELLOW ENVELOPE                               423
     III. GABRIEL MEETS HIS LAWYER                          435
      IV. WHAT AH FE DOES NOT KNOW                          447
       V. THE PEOPLE _v._ JOHN DOE _alias_ GABRIEL CONROY,
              AND JANE ROE _alias_ JULIE CONROY             452
      VI. IN REBUTTAL                                       461
     VII. A FAMILY GREETING                                 471
    VIII. IN WHICH THE FOOTPRINTS RETURN                    477
      IX. IN WHICH MR. HAMLIN PASSES                        481
       X. IN THE OLD CABIN AGAIN                            491
      XI. THE RETURN OF A FOOTPRINT                         495
     XII. FRAGMENT OF A LETTER FROM OLYMPIA CONROY TO
             GRACE POINSETT                                 497




GABRIEL CONROY.

BOOK I.

_ON THE THRESHOLD._




CHAPTER I.

WITHOUT.


Snow. Everywhere. As far as the eye could reach--fifty miles, looking
southward from the highest white peak,--filling ravines and gulches, and
dropping from the walls of ca[~n]ons in white shroud-like drifts,
fashioning the dividing ridge into the likeness of a monstrous grave,
hiding the bases of giant pines, and completely covering young trees and
larches, rimming with porcelain the bowl-like edges of still, cold
lakes, and undulating in motionless white billows to the edge of the
distant horizon. Snow lying everywhere over the California Sierras on
the 15th day of March 1848, and still falling.

It had been snowing for ten days: snowing in finely granulated powder,
in damp, spongy flakes, in thin, feathery plumes, snowing from a leaden
sky steadily, snowing fiercely, shaken out of purple-black clouds in
white flocculent masses, or dropping in long level lines, like white
lances from the tumbled and broken heavens. But always silently! The
woods were so choked with it--the branches were so laden with it--it
had so permeated, filled and possessed earth and sky; it had so
cushioned and muffled the ringing rocks and echoing hills, that all
sound was deadened. The strongest gust, the fiercest blast, awoke no
sigh or complaint from the snow-packed, rigid files of forest. There was
no cracking of bough nor crackle of underbrush; the overladen branches
of pine and fir yielded and gave way without a sound. The silence was
vast, measureless, complete! Nor could it be said that any outward sign
of life or motion changed the fixed outlines of this stricken landscape.
Above, there was no play of light and shadow, only the occasional
deepening of storm or night. Below, no bird winged its flight across the
white expanse, no beast haunted the confines of the black woods;
whatever of brute nature might have once inhabited these solitudes had
long since flown to the lowlands.

There was no track or imprint; whatever foot might have left its mark
upon this waste, each succeeding snow-fall obliterated all trace or
record. Every morning the solitude was virgin and unbroken; a million
tiny feet had stepped into the track and filled it up. And yet, in the
centre of this desolation, in the very stronghold of this grim fortress,
there was the mark of human toil. A few trees had been felled at the
entrance of the ca[~n]on, and the freshly-cut chips were but lightly
covered with snow. They served, perhaps, to indicate another tree
"blazed" with an axe, and bearing a rudely-shaped wooden effigy of a
human hand, pointing to the ca[~n]on. Below the hand was a square strip of
canvas, securely nailed against the bark, and bearing the following
inscription--

                            "NOTICE.

    CAPTAIN CONROY'S party of emigrants are lost in the snow, and
    camped up in this ca[~n]on. Out of provisions and starving!

                     Left St. Jo, October 8th, 1847.
                     Left Salt Lake, January 1st, 1848.
                     Arrived here, March 1st, 1848.
                    Lost half our stock on the Platte.
                   Abandoned our waggons, February 20th.

                             _HELP!_

                          Our names are:

                JOEL MCCORMICK,        JANE BRACKETT,
                PETER DUMPHY,          GABRIEL CONROY,
                PAUL DEVARGES,         JOHN WALKER,
                GRACE CONROY,          HENRY MARCH,
                OLYMPIA CONROY,        PHILIP ASHLEY,
                            MARY DUMPHY.

               (Then in smaller letters, in pencil:)

               MAMIE died, November 8th, Sweetwater.
               MINNIE died, December 1st, Echo Ca[~n]on.
               JANE died, January 2nd, Salt Lake.
               JAMES BRACKETT, lost, February 3rd.

                             HELP!"

The language of suffering is not apt to be artistic or studied, but I
think that rhetoric could not improve this actual record. So I let it
stand, even as it stood this 15th day of March 1848, half-hidden by a
thin film of damp snow, the snow-whitened hand stiffened and pointing
rigidly to the fateful ca[~n]on like the finger of Death.

At noon there was a lull in the storm, and a slight brightening of the
sky toward the east. The grim outlines of the distant hills returned,
and the starved white flank of the mountain began to glisten. Across its
gaunt hollow some black object was moving--moving slowly and
laboriously; moving with such an uncertain mode of progression, that at
first it was difficult to detect whether it was brute or
human--sometimes on all fours, sometimes erect, again hurrying forward
like a drunken man, but always with a certain definiteness of purpose,
towards the ca[~n]on. As it approached nearer you saw that it was a man--a
haggard man, ragged and enveloped in a tattered buffalo robe, but still
a man, and a determined one. A young man despite his bent figure and
wasted limbs--a young man despite the premature furrows that care and
anxiety had set upon his brow and in the corners of his rigid mouth--a
young man notwithstanding the expression of savage misanthropy with
which suffering and famine had overlaid the frank impulsiveness of
youth. When he reached the tree at the entrance of the ca[~n]on, he brushed
the film of snow from the canvas placard, and then leaned for a few
moments exhaustedly against its trunk. There was something in the
abandonment of his attitude that indicated even more pathetically than
his face and figure his utter prostration--a prostration quite
inconsistent with any visible cause. When he had rested himself, he
again started forward with a nervous intensity, shambling, shuffling,
falling, stooping to replace the rudely extemporised snow-shoes of fir
bark that frequently slipped from his feet, but always starting on again
with the feverishness of one who doubted even the sustaining power of
his will.

A mile beyond the tree the ca[~n]on narrowed and turned gradually to the
south, and at this point a thin curling cloud of smoke was visible that
seemed to rise from some crevice in the snow. As he came nearer, the
impression of recent footprints began to show; there was some
displacement of the snow around a low mound from which the smoke now
plainly issued. Here he stopped, or rather lay down, before an opening
or cavern in the snow, and uttered a feeble shout. It was responded to
still more feebly. Presently a face appeared above the opening, and a
ragged figure like his own, then another, and then another, until eight
human creatures, men and women, surrounded him in the snow, squatting
like animals, and like animals lost to all sense of decency and shame.

They were so haggard, so faded, so forlorn, so wan,--so piteous in
their human aspect, or rather all that was left of a human aspect,--that
they might have been wept over as they sat there; they were so brutal,
so imbecile, unreasoning and grotesque in these newer animal attributes,
that they might have provoked a smile. They were originally country
people, mainly of that social class whose self-respect is apt to be
dependent rather on their circumstances, position and surroundings, than
upon any individual moral power or intellectual force. They had lost the
sense of shame in the sense of equality of suffering; there was nothing
within them to take the place of the material enjoyments they were
losing. They were childish without the ambition or emulation of
childhood; they were men and women without the dignity or simplicity of
man and womanhood. All that had raised them above the level of the brute
was lost in the snow. Even the characteristics of sex were gone; an old
woman of sixty quarrelled, fought, and swore with the harsh utterance
and ungainly gestures of a man; a young man of scorbutic temperament
wept, sighed, and fainted with the hysteria of a woman. So profound was
their degradation that the stranger who had thus evoked them from the
earth, even in his very rags and sadness, seemed of another race.

They were all intellectually weak and helpless, but one, a woman,
appeared to have completely lost her mind. She carried a small blanket
wrapped up to represent a child--the tangible memory of one that had
starved to death in her arms a few days before--and rocked it from side
to side as she sat, with a faith that was piteous. But even more piteous
was the fact that none of her companions took the least notice, either
by sympathy or complaint, of her aberration. When, a few moments later,
she called upon them to be quiet, for that "baby" was asleep, they
glared at her indifferently and went on. A red-haired man, who was
chewing a piece of buffalo hide, cast a single murderous glance at her,
but the next moment seemed to have forgotten her presence in his more
absorbing occupation.

The stranger paused a moment rather to regain his breath than to wait
for their more orderly and undivided attention. Then he uttered the
single word:

"Nothing!"

"Nothing!" They all echoed the word simultaneously, but with different
inflection and significance--one fiercely, another gloomily, another
stupidly, another mechanically. The woman with the blanket baby
explained to it, "he says 'nothing,'" and laughed.

"No--nothing," repeated the speaker. "Yesterday's snow blocked up the
old trail again. The beacon on the summit's burnt out. I left a notice
at the Divide. Do that again, Dumphy, and I'll knock the top of your
ugly head off."

Dumphy, the red-haired man, had rudely shoved and stricken the woman
with the baby--she was his wife, and this conjugal act may have been
partly habit--as she was crawling nearer the speaker. She did not seem
to notice the blow or its giver--the apathy with which these people
received blows or slights was more terrible than wrangling--but said
assuringly, when she had reached the side of the young man--

"To-morrow, then?"

The face of the young man softened as he made the same reply he had made
for the last eight days to the same question--

"To-morrow, surely!"

She crawled away, still holding the effigy of her dead baby very
carefully, and retreated down the opening.

"'Pears to me you don't do much anyway, out scouting! 'Pears to me you
ain't worth shucks!" said the harsh-voiced woman, glancing at the
speaker. "Why don't some on ye take his place? Why do you trust your
lives and the lives of women to that thar Ashley?" she continued, with
her voice raised to a strident bark.

The hysterical young man, Henry March, who sat next to her, turned a
wild scared face upon her, and then, as if fearful of being dragged into
the conversation, disappeared hastily after Mrs. Dumphy.

Ashley shrugged his shoulders, and, replying to the group, rather than
any individual speaker, said curtly--

"There's but one chance--equal for all--open to all. You know what it
is. To stay here is death; to go cannot be worse than that."

He rose and walked slowly away up the ca[~n]on a few rods to where another
mound was visible, and disappeared from their view. When he had gone, a
querulous chatter went around the squatting circle.

"Gone to see the old Doctor and the gal. We're no account."

"Thar's two too many in this yer party."

"Yes--the crazy Doctor and Ashley."

"They're both interlopers, any way."

"Jonahs."

"Said no good could come of it, ever since we picked him up."

"But the Cap'n invited the ol' Doctor, and took all his stock at
Sweetwater, and Ashley put in his provisions with the rest."

The speaker was McCormick. Somewhere in the feeble depths of his
consciousness there was still a lingering sense of justice. He was
hungry, but not unreasonable. Besides, he remembered with a tender
regret the excellent quality of provision that Ashley had furnished.

"What's that got to do with it?" screamed Mrs. Brackett. "He brought the
bad luck with him. Ain't my husband dead, and isn't that skunk--an
entire stranger--still livin'?"

The voice was masculine, but the logic was feminine. In cases of great
prostration with mental debility, in the hopeless vacuity