"Then all of a sudden I gets my sand back. She wan't no longer a bit o' sarcastic, curled-lip petticoat to be got out home as fast as I could get her; but just a frightened little sister o' mine-a he'pless, friendless, little orphant in a new country.

"Miss Austin,' says I, if I've scar't you, I'll get out in front o' this outfit and let you run the consarn plumb over me.'

"That fetched her, Wynne. A queer little gurgle came in her throat, then her hands fell in her lap, and a sort of shaky smile peeped out at me through the tears.

"You're a funny boy,' was all she said, but she pirked up a heap after that and began to talk to me about the country to either side of us-and you bet I rolled it in.

"I'd got a-holt of my tongue again in good shape; and the way I talks o' round-ups and stampedes and night-camps and coyotes was a caution. Oh, yes, I pitched it kinder high; but who wouldn't, with a purty girl, as big eyed as a baby owl, a-sittin' by him and drinkin' it down like jersey cream?

"Well, we got home, and the old folks goes to huggin' and kissin' of her and I'm froze clear out with never as much as a smile. But my heart ain't down a little bit. Says I, as I takes the team to the barn : Jake, my son, you're a peach, and I'll back you for a hundred a side against any dude as slings collars and cuffs this side of the Rockies.'

"For a whole week I worked over my pony, Montana, a-gittin' the kinks out'n his mane and tail. I groomed him, Wynne, till he's as slick as butter; then I breaks him with a blanket a-flappin' him, till he'd have carried a baby in a basket. The old man has a grey cayuse himself what he means the girl to ride, but I goes right ahead, and when Montana's good and ready, I makes her a present of him.

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"No, no, I couldn't, I really couldn't,' she says; for she knows what store I sets on that pony. But I keeps at her, and sure enough byemby she gives in, and away she goes on Montana to see another girl across the flats.

"Wynne, you should just have seen her. Black skirt, white -waist, I think they call 'em, and a leather-banded hat of her uncle's. Ay, man, but I didn't know myself no more. Hash Knife Jake was loco!

"For quite a little while the old folks took no tumble to it, but you can't blind a woman all the time; poco pronto Ma steps right in and draws a dead line between me and Lucy. Then I takes to moonin', and a more mis'able feller there wan't in all Canada.

"I see Lucy gettin' gayer and gayer, and a ridin' out with a white-collared agent feller from the Creek, and my heart gets bad. I knowed him, y' see, and Luce and the old folk didn't.

"For a week I chews and chews over it. Then I takes action. He's got his choice, either to right Winnie Barnwell o' the restaurant and quit comin' after Luce, or settle with me.

"He's comin' out o' Fleming's as I ride in, a good-lookin', sporty feller, with a rattlesnake's conscience and the gall of a shyster lawyer; and I hands him some o' the straightest talk he's had since his mother slippered him for his first lie.

"But there always was fools, Wynne, and always will befools as don't know a snag when they foul one; so when the police come runnin', Mister Hamilton's some sick, with a window in his mangy pelt.

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It's the same big trooper as introduced me to Lucy, as arrests me. He speaks gentle now, a-lookin' down at what the boys are crowdin' 'round. 'You've killed him,' and somethin' more about his 'duty', and with that I give him my gun, and go along quite quiet.

"But Hamilton didn't die, and I got off with a year-there being some doubt about his attemptin' to draw on me before I plugged him. At the end of my time I came back to the range.

"But I'm reckless now, havin' lost Lucy, and for over a year more I just go to makin' my name unsanitary, till at last little Inspector Farquhar gets tired and warns me to get out.

"Cold as frozen steel he looks me in the eye and says it : Lewis,' says he, 'I've winked at your breaks long enough out'n sympathy for you-oh, yes, we of the force know all about itbut you've got to go. I give you twenty-four hours.

"I start to make a break south for Arizona, but a loco notion strikes me that I got to see Luce again before I quit the range. I strike the place at the northeast corner and follow the creek, hopin' to see her out about the chickens without bein' seen myself, when I run right against her in the open of the corral flats.

"I see her comin'-judge, jury and public opinion all boxed up in a cotton frock and a big sun-bonnet-and I hardens out till I sit like a statue. She sees me.

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Close up she comes, lookin' red and white an' trembly. 'Jake,' she cries, 'Oh, Jake, I knew you'd come! I always knew you'd come! Oh, Jake, Jake!' At that she got all choked up. 'Luce,' I whispers, 'Luce, dear, what is it?'

And her answer just naturally ear-marks, brands and registers me forever."

Patchin, Cal.

MY FIRST TRIP TO CALIFORNIA.

By RUTH EVERETT.

HE East and West are very near together now. In five days of luxurious travel from New York, San Francisco is reached. How different, oh, how very different was the first trip I ever made to California. It was in the fifties that my mother, with her four little children boarded an ocean steamer at New York to go to join her husband in the "Land of Gold." The eldest of the children-my brotherwas eight, and the youngest was an infant. I was six, but I will never forget that trip if I should live to be as old as Methuselah. We were to go by way of Panama, and that was before the railroad across the isthmus had been built.

First of all, cholera broke out among the regiment of soldiers on our steamship; and the captain transferred the families to another vessel in midocean. But before this opportunity offered, certain sanitary measures were inaugurated; and a diet which forbade tropical fruits was prescribed. I presume that I was the only one on board who managed to evade the captain's regulations.

As I think of it now, it seems to me that I must have been allowed an unusual amount of license for a maid but six years old; but I thought nothing of it then. My mother was traveling without a maid, and I presume that my baby sister, who was just toddling around, and consequently got into all manner of mischief, gave her enough to think of. This, coupled with the fact that my mother had a light touch of cholera, gave me the run of the boat-released me from all wholesome rules. I had made a firm and fast friend of the negro cook, to whom I communicated my convictions that the captain was a tyrant; that ripe oranges, pineapples and bananas were grown by God on purpose for little girls to eat.

The cook approved. He put me in a high chair in the corner of his kitchen and let me eat all the fruit I wanted, with the sole precaution of making me "cross my heart," when I promised if I should be taken with cholera, I would "never, never, never tell." "May God strike me dead if I do." Do you know that I think to this day that if anything had happened so much had that negro made me realize the importance of an oath-I would have kept that promise, and have been slid off a plank into my great watery grave, true to the man who gave me so many goodies to eat. After I had gorged my self with the forbidden

dainties, the old darkey carefully washed my face and hands, made me breathe in his face so he could see if my "breff smell ob dem orange peel," which I would insist upon nibbling at. In case there were an odor of oil of orange, I had to eat a slice of onion.

When we reached Panama, there was a fight between two of the native servants in the vicinity of the kitchen. One stabbed the other in the back. The wounded man-naked except for a breech-cloth-ran through our dining-room, leaving a trail of dark-red blood behind him, and dropping dead just as he reached the porch.

As before mentioned, the railroad across the isthmus was not built at that time. Consequently my mother arranged for transportation over those twenty-seven or more miles of mountainous paths. She on a mule, carrying in her arms our baby sister, and each one of the other children strapped in a little chair, which was fastened to a native's back. Although those of us thus crossing the isthmus made quite a long train, the pathway was so narrow and winding, that I was frequently out of sight of my mother. Not knowing any other way to remedy the matter, I set up a good, lusty bawl. At which my Indian promptly slipped my chair down to the ground and said— "Goo' bye! I no carry cry girls."

Then he slipped around a projection of rock out of my sight. I screamed with all my might.

Oh, don't leave me! I will be good! I will be good!"

I was picked up again, my carrier scowlingly assuring me that if I opened my lips again he would throw me-chair and all-over the precipice.

Of course I intended to make my complaint to my mother; but at the end of the journey, poor little mother looked so tired and pale that my brother (whose Indian had stolen all the beautiful glass marbles we had bought in Panama, the first we had ever seen) advised me to keep still about my troubles, as he should about his own.

Well, our father met us in San Francisco, and we went to a little town called Coloma-then the county seat of El Dorado County, and in the heart of the mining district-through Hang-townnow Placerville, which soon after that time supplanted Coloma as the county seat. Every inch of the journey was made in the coaches of the old Pioneer Stagecoach Company. My father was county judge. I was always his favorite child, and the first day he took me through the town, such a rarity was a little girl that every man-miner, gambler or what-not-had either to shake hands with, or kiss, "the judge's little girl," who soon

got dubbed "Your Honor." I came home to my mother with my little double hands full of gold coins.

It was that fall the bear was elected town clerk. But parenthetically I want to say that I must, at that time, have had a pronounced predilection for cooks, for I soon struck up an ardent friendship with the town baker, who was known as redheaded Davis." And I solemnly told my father that Mr. Davis kept a man in his oven, and that this man would tell Mr. Davis when the pies were done. The heat did not inconvenience the oven-dweller in the least. My mother was for giving me a good spanking for my lies, there and then. But my father, who was great on fair trials, evidence, hearing both sides, and all that, got a stay of proceedings, investigated the case, and learned that Mr. Davis was an extremely clever sleight-of-hand performer and ventriloquist; and it was with the latter accomplishment that he had imposed upon my childish credulity.

Goodness! I started to tell you about the bear, and I have taken you half over the world instead. Well, one of the miners that lived near Coloma was called "Bill." And Bill had a pet bear, scarcely more than a cub. I have heard my father say that this cub was the most playful little animal that ever lived. From all the neighborhood around, the men flocked to Bill's cabin to play with the bear. The word "mascot" was not in vogue in those days, but Bill's bear was preeminently the universal pet and favorite of the entire camp.

Somehow that fall an extremely unpopular man got the nomination for town clerk. People were whigs and democrats in those days, and our mining camp was overwhelmingly democratic, in more ways than one. When "Bad Ben" got the nomination for town clerk, every man Jack wished that he had done his duty in the "primary," and thus prevented such a disgrace to the camp. By a single response made by one of the miners, the spirit of indignation gave place to one of hilarity. Said this fellow-"Am I going to vote for Bad Ben? much! I'm going to vote for Bill's bear."

Not

And so it went, from mouth to mouth; and the entire democratic party of the camp was a unit to vote for Bill's bear.

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Those were the days when men voted early and often," and whiskey was four bits a drink, and you could vote between the drinks.

With such a vim and snap and bang had the friends of Bill's bear carried things, that when the votes were counted the bear was found to have been elected by an overwhelming majority. The miners good-naturedly consented to have the whig nominee do the actual work of the office and draw the salary. There was no stock-exchange out there in those pioneer days, but just the same that was a case where a bear put to flight a big party of men.

Whether or not it was the corrupting influence of politics, I cannot attempt to say; but in his old age Bill's bear got cross. He had to be chained, and a disgraceful sign which readBEWARE OF THE BEAR-was nailed to his tethering pole.

New York City.