[Laura L. White, A Story of Donner Lake Pass, The Overland Monthly, October 1884]

 

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A STORY OF DONNER LAKE PASS.

 

            " Boys," said Dan Baldwin, addressing several companions, "the old man has broken out in a new place. He's developing a pleasing versatility."

            " What is it like this time?"

            " Like?" echoed Dan, "more like humanity than anything I ever saw in the old rasper. He is quiet, steps soft, and threatens with his eyes to speak to me. Such condescension after our last row, warrants me in saying he has had a change of heart or suddenly taken leave of his senses. Just step

392                  A Story of Donner Lake Pass.                 [Oct.

this way and take a look at him. Is that the prime blasphemer of the camp? A sucking dove couldn't look more gentle."

            At this they all moved near the half-open door of a miner's cabin, where in the lamplight sat a man prematurely old. In one hand he held an open letter. He moved convulsively, and the boys knew at once that something had happened to the old man quite outside of reservoirs, flumes, and the reduction of wages. In his career in camp-life, Eben Harker had figured in the thoughts and speech of his companions only as a hard master to those in his employ, a petty tyrant to all concerned with him ; as a covetous man, and a bitter hater of the world at large. The revelation that he had left behind a life whose lines led up to the present, into which none there had seen, lent to him at once an interest, and conjecture threw somewhat even of romance about him.

            " It's a love affair," simpered the Lothario of the party.

            " Perhaps, after all, the old man loved his mother, and he has had news of her death," said the light haired young man ; and then they were silent.

            But they still looked ; for the living picture fascinated. And well it might. Each event in the man's history, each act of his life, had engraved its line, each thought of his brain had cast its shadow, and his face had become a record, which inspiration might have read. And this is the tale it would have told : born in ignorance, he thirsted for knowledge, which was denied him ; cradled in the midst of poverty, his young eyes saw visions of luxuries which never came to him; reaped in confusion and trial, he loathed them. From his detested surroundings he looked out upon the big world, which snubbed him, and he hated it. A well-bred, refined man was a personal offense; a happy woman with children but served to remind him of his poverty-stricken mother and his own dreadful childhood. He married ; a new influence came into his life ; his wife was dear to him —as dear as can be any object to a man with wrongs ; these are his true mistress, before whom in ecstacies of despair he weeps, and before whose shrine he pours the best energies of his being.

            Tranquilized somewhat by his wife's superior spirit, his blinded and beaten forces arranged themselves in order, and he began a fight against the world. Money was the power by which it should be subdued. He migrated early to California. Here he toiled that he might square his account with mankind. The memories of humiliations were as thongs to his energy. The dreadful heats, the biting colds, passed over his body and left their impress, but in eternal freshness lived the savage force that had already accumulated a fortune—but it was not enough. This man sat trembling, with a crumpled letter in his hand.

            " Ah, he suffers," said Dan Baldwin, his partner.

            " And there is one thing you can bet on," said one of his friends, " we shall never know what it is all about."

            " Not from him," said another; " he is a still man except as to other people's faults."

            " I'll go in," said Dan.

            The others went their ways. The young man moved about for a moment to give the older one notice of his presence, and then sat down nearly opposite. Harker's emotion was deep, yet not so deep but that he knew how at variance with his well known character was this exhibition of feeling, which he felt had been observed. He started as from a dream. The first object that intruded upon his eye and thought was Dan, lucky young Dan, the tuneful son of happy circumstances.

            " Curse your God of injustice!" said he.

            Accustomed to his fury, Dan made no reply.

            " Curse your God of injustice!" roared Harker again. Then he went out and remained till morning.

            He returned a somewhat changed man. Though more morose, more savage, than ever, he did not labor with that tremendous strength which had often carried him far into the night ; and he had the air of one weighing a matter of vast moment.

            While he was in this state, the stage coach deposited at his door one day, a young wo-

1884.]              A Story of Donner Lake Pass.    393

man clothed in mourning. She fell upon his neck and kissed him. " Father," she said, " my dying mother bade me come to you."

            He stood motionless in astonishment. He had left a little child at home. Was this slender young girl indeed she ? And in a moment he was transformed. " Ah ! it is, then, not too late," he muttered, and then resumed his old belligerent attitude toward the world.

            Esther was a small, pretty girl, of bright ways and gentle tastes. The old cabin was no longer a repository for tin cans and rubber boots. Out of the chaos came order, and grace was added thereto by the hand that could evoke beauty from things strange or ugly. Outcast cones from each seed-cup sent up tender threads of grass, and old fruit cans, resurrected from the debris of the back yard, rose to the dignity of flower-pots. Esther herself, all the boys agreed, was an ornament of exceeding loveliness ; and old man Harker, for her sake, was shown a deference far beyond the demand of his merits.

            Esther, at the moment of her arrival, was in an abnormal state. Still in the shadow of her mother's death, she fluttered between sorrow and the lighter feeling that new and attractive scenes usually arouse in the minds of the young. For a long afternoon she would sit, her eyes heavy with tears. The form of her dead mother arose before her again and again, and the grim figure of her father stalking to and from his work in the mine, gave something of a weird unreality to her life ; she almost fancied she dwelt in a land of dreams. Out of this mood, she would come back into her natural world of feminine brightness and activity. As time wore on she became accustomed to her circumstances; her mother became a holy memory, and the present laid hold of her with its fascinating detail for each hour.

            Although his feeling was centered upon himself, yet was Eben Harker observant of the outer world, and of the signs which foreshadow change. Man's genius for deceit had wrung many a bitter sneer from his passionate lips, and innocent movements to his distorted mind often assumed the appearance of evil. When Dan Baldwin first began to forego the enticements of " Seven Up" and "Freeze Out," for the quiet of a cabin partly his own, Harker was flattered : but later, when he saw that Esther was the object of Baldwin's devotion, he was furious, and arraigned Providence for dogging his footsteps with misfortune.

            Dan had not made the progress he was secretly accused of. He felt by no means sure of Esther's regard. She was a lovable being, who smiled upon any one if but kindly spoken to. In the world of fashion she would have been called a coquette, but she was not, for she was innocent of the wiles by which men are supposed to be entrapped. She had been kind to all who came ; and when young Baldwin, by general consent, remained master of the field, she was unchanged.

            The eyes of the old man followed them ever. A simple conversation, or a quiet walk together, and the stalwart frame moved in uneasy vigilance with something of evil alert in its aspect. He came at last to hate the man who essayed to step between him and a cherished purpose. " Shall my daughter marry, have a home with this man, and children, and by these be diverted from the business I have in hand ?" he questioned of the fate that waited upon him. " No, no; she shall not marry him," he answered himself.

            The relations between Harker and Baldwin, before Esther's advent, were those frequently seen to exist between business partners and others (husbands and wives not always excepted) who are forced to enjoy too much of each other's society. On the surface there was repulsion, fault finding, impatience, and bickering, while below there was a firm stratum of respect and good will. Now all this on the part of Harker was changed to a feeling keener than aversion. As Baldwin's interest in Esther increased, so also did Harker's antipathy toward Baldwin. To him, as a possible future husband for Esther, there would have been no objection, could Harker have brought himself to entertain the idea of her marrying under any circumstances in Cal-

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ifornia ; but this he could not do, for it would be to forego the realization of the hopes of a life-time — which were to return to his old home in the States, and there with his family to avenge the past ; to be rich where they had been poor; to be great where they had been little ; to be courted where they had been neglected ; to be respected where they had been despised. The most pleasing picture his fancy painted was of the sons of those who played the patrician while he was the plebeian, humbly suing for his daughter's hand. Could he forego the triumph of spurning them with bitter words, thus visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children ?

            Pondering these things, he determined that somehow the absence of Baldwin from the mining camp should be procured. To facilitate matters, he decided to buy the young man's interest in the partnership property. But here two obstacles presented themselves—the disinclination of Baldwin to sell, and the want of ready money for the purchase. The first was overcome by an exceedingly liberal offer, and the second by Baldwin's consenting to accept his notes for a large portion of the price. Had Baldwin been less in love, or an older man, the arrangement, perhaps, could not have been effected; but he was unwilling to come to an absolute quarrel by refusing to sell, and a star had at that moment risen in the east, the name of which was Washoe, and he desired to make a pilgrimage to its shrine.

            Now once more did Eben Harker apparently hold the disturbed elements of his life in his own hands, for he and Esther were alone. With the departure of Baldwin, however, the wonderful luck that had so long attended the partners failed. In the expressive parlance of the West, "the mine quit," giving the old man a new subject of anxiety, and a fresh cause for hating all the world, and especially the man who held his promissory notes, now rapidly approaching maturity, and to whom he now felt he had paid far too much for the half interest in the mine. Secure investments in plenty he had, but no ready money, and it became a question how the notes were to be met.

            He determined to visit Virginia City and have an interview with Baldwin. What he expected to accomplish thereby, possibly he did not himself know. It may be he hoped that on his representation of injustice Baldwin would cancel the notes in part, or, at any rate, would grant additional time for payment. Whether darker plans had matured in his brain no one will ever know. He found a suitable companion for Esther, assuring her his absence would be brief; and so, one morning, set off on his journey.

            Baldwin knew that Harker's object in buying him out was to remove him from the companionship of his daughter; and he recognized that in accepting the offer he had impliedly accepted all the attaching terms and conditions. Yet, he could not forget Esther; alike amidst the throngs of men and in the quiet of his tent, her face and form haunted him. He heard the tones of her voice, and felt the gentle presence of her hand on his arm as of old. While he did not feel quite sure of Esther's love, yet he accused himself of cowardice and weakness in thus leaving her a victim to the caprices and prejudices of her half savage father. That her father loved her, he did not question; but he had studied mankind enough to know that the love of a turbulent and tyrannical nature often works greater harm to its object than the indifference, or even hate, of softer and more cultivated spirits. " Esther is more to me," thought Dan, "than the whole Comstock lead. I will return, and, if need be, will beard the lion in his den."

            Washoe stage lines, afterward so famous, were not then organized institutions. Baldwin traveled on horseback, and his route was by the Donner Lake Pass. Not feeling sure of the wisdom of the step he was taking, and doubtful of the reception he should meet with, he was nervous and anxious at setting out. Companionship with forest, running streams, and mountains did something to restore him to his balance. It was the month of May ; the landscape was looking its best ; the beautiful Truckee sang a song that soothed his restless pulse of care. That dimple on the face of nature, fair Donner

1884.]              A Story of Donner Lake Pass.                 395

Lake, calm and placid where late Titanic forces were busy upheaving mountains and eroding deep valleys, taught him a lesson of faith and hope.

            The valley in which lies the lake extends some two miles from its westerly end, and is terminated by an abrupt hill, the summit of which is the highest point on the route. Immediately south of the west end of the valley is a high peak of the Sierra—one whose long, treeless slope is to the eye of the mountaineer fearfully suggestive of snow slides. The snow had all disappeared from the valley, but vast bodies of it still clung low down on the sides of the mountains, whose crests are draped in eternal white.

            Baldwin had passed the lake and was approaching the hill, when he was aroused from a reverie by the whiz of a bullet that passed so close to his head that its wind fanned his cheek, followed by the sharp report of a rifle. A puff of smoke at the foot of the peak told from whence came the missile.

            Before he had time to realize the danger be had escaped, or his possible peril from another shot, a crackling sound arrested his attention. Lifting his eyes, he saw the white mountain of ice and snow shake gently in its winter bed, a frozen ball or two roll down the declivity. An instant later the whole side of the mountain was in motion. Like the furious waters of the Niagara as they rush down the slope to take their leap over the Horseshoe Fall, moved this frozen cataract. It was as though the fleecy clouds that on a summer's day bank themselves against the sky, from the horizon nearly to the zenith, should in a moment topple to earth. There was a crashing, craunching sound, mingled with something like the roar of waters, as the white sheet rasped down the mountain's side ; and as each successive wave found lodgment, the ground trembled with the impact. With the first dash of snow on the sward at the foot of the cliff, already verdant with the early grasses of spring, up from behind a fallen log sprang a man, who darted away with the speed of a deer pursued by hounds, but followed by a fleeter foe than ever joined in chase of stag.

            In a moment it swept past—tripping, engulfing, enfolding, hustling, it bore him along in its forefront. Now an arm or a foot, anon a rifle to which he clung tenaciously, projected on the sight, until the increasing volume rushed over, submerging and burying him a hundred feet from human sight ; but not before his last terrible cry smote on the ears of Baldwin—a cry that even to him seemed to be not of fear, but a howl of rage, disappointment, defeat, and despair.

            The bullet had passed too near Baldwin to permit him to doubt whether or no it was intended ; but he could not divine the motive of the marksman. He knew not that he had an enemy, and could only conclude that the purpose of the would-be assassin was robbery.

            Baldwin had intended but a brief stay at the mining camp that for so long a time had been his home, but he found Esther burdened by a weight of woe. The unwonted absence of her father was torturing her, and she turned to Baldwin for comfort, as her only friend in a strange land. The days sped by, the father came not. One morning the itinerant Methodist preacher was called into the cabin, and Dan Baldwin and Esther were married.

            Two months after leaving Washoe, Baldwin returned there on a flying visit, to dispose of his interests and settle up his affairs. At the scene of his peril he found the avalanche's vast mound well nigh wasted. Riding along the base of what remained, he found, still half wrapped in his snowy winding sheet, the body of Eben Harker—unchanged. His features were life-like, harsh and unyielding, with the old defiant air. Esther planted flowers on her father's grave and watered them with her tears, all unconscious that he died with murder in his heart, and that he precipitated his own doom.

Laura L. White.