A half-mile north from Jo. Dunfer’s, on the road from Hutton’s to Mexican Hill, the highway dips into a sunless ravine, which opens out on either hand, in a half-confidential manner, as if it had a secret to impart at some more convenient season. I never used to ride through it without looking first to the one side and then to the other, to see if the time had arrived for the promised revelation. If I saw nothing—and I never did see any thing—there was no feeling of disappointment, for I knew the disclosure was merely withheld temporarily, for some good reason which I had no right to question. That I should one day be taken into full confidence, I no more doubted than I doubted the existence of Jo. Dunfer himself, through whose premises the cañon ran. It was said that Jo. had once undertaken to erect a cabin in some remote portion of it, but for some reason had abandoned the enterprise—almost any reason, I should think, would have been a valid one—and constructed the present hermaphrodite habitation, half residence and half groggery, upon an extreme corner of his estate; as far away as possible, as if on purpose to show how radically he had changed his mind.
This Jo. Dunfer—or, as he was familiarly known in the neighborhood, Whisky Jo.—was a very important personage in those parts. He was apparently about forty years of age, a long, shock-headed fellow, with a corded face, a gnarled arm, and a knotty hand like a bunch of prison-keys. He was a hairy man, with a stoop in his walk, like that of one who is about to spring upon something and rend it. Next to the peculiarity from which he had derived his local appellation, his most obvious characteristic was a deep-seated antipathy to the Chinese. I saw him once in a towering rage because one of his herdsmen had permitted a travel-heated Asian to slake his thirst at the horse-trough in front of the saloon end of Jo.’s establishment. I ventured to faintly remonstrate with Jo. for his unchristian spirit, but he merely replied that “ther wusn’t no mention of Chinamen in the Noo Test’ment”; and strode away to wreak his anger upon his little, White man-servant, whom, I suppose, the inspired scribes had likewise neglected to mention by name. Some days afterward, finding him sitting alone in his bar-room, I cautiously approached the subject, when, greatly to my relief, the ends of his long mouth drew round into a good-natured grin, and with an air of conscious condescension, he explained:
“You youngsters are too good to live in Californy: you’d better all of ye git back to New England, fur none of ye don’t understand our play. People who are born with autermatic gold spoons, nine hundred fine, a-shovelin’ choice viuns into ther mouths, can afford to hang out liberary ideas about Chinagration” (by which poor Jo. meant Chinese immigration, and in which he included every thing relating to that people); “but us that has to rustle round on the outside fur our hash, hain’t got no time for foolishness.”
And this long consumer, who had never struck a stroke of honest work in all his life, sprung the lid of a Chinese tobacco-box, and with his thumb and forefinger forked out a wad like a miniature hay-cock. Holding this reinforcement within supporting distance, he fired away with renewed confidence:
“I tell ye, youngster, ther a bad lot, and ther agoin’ fur every thing green in this country, except yourself” (here he encountered a stubborn chuckle, and pushed his reserve into the breach) “like a herd of ’Gyptian locusses! I had one of ’em to work fur me, five years ago, and I’ll tell ye all about it, so’t ye ken see the bearin’s of this whole question.
“I didn’t pan out well, them days: drank more’n wus good fur me, and hadn’t no nice discriminatin’ sense of my duty as a free W’ite citizen; so I got this pagan as a kind of cook, and turned off a Mexican woman—as nice a Greaser as ye ever seen. But when I got religi’n, over at the Hill, and they talked of runnin’ me fur the Legislater, my eyes wus opened. But what wus I to do? If I made him sling his kit and mosey, somebody else ’d take him, and mightn’t treat him well. What wus I to do? What ’d any Christian do, ’specially one new to the business?”
Jo. paused for a reply, with an expression of grave thoughtfulness, but an indescribable air of uneasiness; as of one who has arrived at a correct result in the solution of a problem, by some short-cut of his own, but is not quite satisfied with the method. He finally rose, and swallowed a tumblerful of bad whisky from a full bottle on the counter, and resumed his seat and his story:
“Besides, he wa’n’t of no account: didn’t know nothin’, and wus always takin’ on airs. They all do it. I stood it as long as a riata, but ’twa’n’t no kind of use. Still, I couldn’t quite make up my mind to discharge him, and I’m glad now I didn’t, fur the example of what follers would ’a been lost. I’m mighty glad!” And Jo.’s glee was solemnly celebrated at the decanter.
“Once—’twus nigh onto five years ago, come next October fifteenth—I started in to stick up a shanty. ’Twus ’fore this ’un wus built, and in another place; it don’t signify where, ’cause ’tain’t of no importance. I set Ah Wee and a little W’ite, named Gopher, to cuttin’ the timber. I didn’t expect Ah Wee to be of much account, ’cause he wus so little, with a face ’most as fair as yourn, and big, black eyes that somehow I seem to see ’em yet.”
While delivering this trenchant thrust at syntax and sense, Mr. Dunfer fixedly regarded a knot-hole in the thin board partition, as if that were one of the eyes whose size and color had incapacitated his servant for active usefulness.
“Now, you youngsters won’t believe any thing ag’in’ the infernal yeller devils,” he suddenly flamed out, with an appearance of rage which somehow failed to impress me; “but I tell ye that that Chinaman was the perversest scoundrel you ever dreamed of!”
I was about to explain that perverse scoundrels were not a staple article in my nightly visions, when Jo. rose excitedly, dashed in another brimming tumbler of whisky, and resumed, standing:
“That miser’ble, pig-tail Mongolianer went to hewin’ away at the saplin’s all round the stems, girdleways. I p’inted out his error as patiently as I could, an’ showed him how to cut ’em on two sides, so’s to make ’em fall right; but no sooner did I turn my back onto him, like this”—and he turned it upon me, amplifying the illustration by taking in some more liquor—“than he wus at it ag’in. It wus jest this way: while I looked at him, so”—regarding me rather unsteadily, and with evident complexity of vision—“he wus all right; but when I looked away, so”—taking a long swig at the decanter—“he wus all wrong. Then I’d gaze at him reproachful-like, so, an’ he’d reform.”
Probably Mr. Dunfer honestly intended the regard he turned upon me as a merely reproachful one, but it was singularly well calculated to arouse the gravest apprehension in the breast of any unarmed person so reproached, and as I had lost all interest in his interminable narrative, I rose to go. Before I had fairly risen, he had again turned to the counter, and with a barely audible “So,” had emptied the bottle at a gulp. Heavens! what a yell! It was like a Titan in his last, strong agony. Jo. staggered back after emitting it, as a cannon recoils from its own thunder, and then dropped into his chair, as if he had been stricken down like a beef—his eyes drawn sidewise toward the wall, with a stony stare that made my flesh creep on my bones. Looking in the same direction, I saw, with a quick chill of the scalp, that the knot-hole in the wall had indeed become a human eye—a full, black eye, that glared into my own with an entire lack of expression more awful than the most devilish glitter. I involuntarily covered my face with my hands, to shut out the horrible illusion, if such it was, and the little White man-servant, coming into the room at that moment, broke the spell, and I walked out of the room with a sort of dazed fear that delirium tremens was contagious. My horse was hitched at the watering-trough, and, untying him, I mounted and gave him his head, too much troubled in mind to note whither he took me.
I did not know what to think of all this, and, like every one who does not know what to think, I thought a great deal, and, naturally, to very little purpose. The only reflection that seemed at all satisfactory, and which, singularly enough, was uppermost in my mind, was one that was not at all connected with Jo. Dunfer and his pointless narrative; and this was, that on the morrow I should be some miles away, with a strong probability of never returning.
A sudden coolness brought me out of my abstraction, and, looking up, I found myself entering the deep shadows of the ravine. The day was stifling; and this transition from the silent, visible heat of the parched fields to the cool gloom, heavy with the pungency of cedars, and vocal with the melody of the birds that had been driven to its leafy asylum, was exquisitely refreshing. I looked for my mystery, as usual, but not finding the ravine in a communicative mood, dismounted, led my sweating animal into the undergrowth, tied him securely to a tree, and sat down upon a rock to meditate. I began bravely, by analyzing my pet superstition about the haunted valley. Having resolved it into its constituent elements, I arranged them in convenient troops and squadrons, and, collecting all the forces of my logic, bore down upon them from impregnable premises with the thunder of irresistible conclusions, and a great noise of chariots and general intellectual shouting. Then, when my big mental guns had overturned all opposition, and were growling almost inaudibly away on the horizon of pure speculation, the routed enemy straggled in upon their rear, massed silently into a solid phalanx, and captured me, bag and baggage. An indefinable dread came upon me, and I rose to shake it off, and began thridding the narrow dell by an old, grass-grown cow-path that seemed to flow along the bottom, as a kind of substitute for the brook that Nature had neglected to provide.
The trees among which the path straggled were very ordinary, well-behaved plants, a trifle perverted as to bole, and eccentric as to bough, but with nothing unearthly in their general aspect. A few loose bowlders, which had detached themselves from the sides of the depression to set up an independent existence at the bottom, had dammed up the pathway, here and there, but their stony repose had nothing in it of the stillness of death. There was a kind of death-chamber hush in the valley, it is true, and a mysterious whisper above: the wind was just fingering the tops of the trees—that was all.
It is strange that in all this time I had not once thought of connecting Mr. Dunfer’s drunken narrative with what I now sought; and it was only when I came upon a clear space and stumbled over the level trunks of some small trees, that the revelation came to me. This was the site of the abandoned “shanty,” and the fact was the more forcibly impressed upon me by quickly noting that some of the rotting stumps were hacked all round, in a most unwoodman-like manner, while others were cut square, and the butt-ends of the corresponding trunks were hewn to that blunt wedge form which is given by the axe of a master. The opening was not more than ten yards in diameter, and upon one side was a little knoll—a natural hillock—some ten feet across, bare of shrubbery, but covered with green grass. Upon this, standing up rigidly a foot or two above the grass, was a head-stone! I have put a note of admiration here, not to indicate any surprise of my own, but that of the reader. For myself, I felt none. I regarded that lonely tombstone with something of the same feeling that Columbus must have had when he saw the hills of San Salvador. Before approaching it, I completed leisurely my survey of the stumps, and examined critically the prostrate trunks. I was even guilty of the affectation of winding my watch, at an unusual hour and with uncommon care and deliberation. Then I lighted a cigar, and found a quiet satisfaction in the delay. All these unnecessary, but only possible, preliminaries being arranged, I approached my mystery.
The grave—a rather short one—was in somewhat better repair than seemed right, considering its age and surroundings; and I actually widened my eyes at a clump of unmistakable garden-violets, showing evidence of comparatively recent watering. The stone was a rude-enough affair, and had clearly done duty once as a door-step. In its front was carved, or rather dug, an inscription, the exaggerated eccentricity of which I can not hope to reproduce without aid from the engraver. It read thus:
AH WEE—CHINAMAN.
Aig unnone. Wirkt last fur Wisky Jo. This monment is ewreckted bi the saim to keep is memmerry grean an liquize a wornin to Slestials notter take on ayres like Wites. Dammum! She wus a good eg.
It would be difficult to adequately convey my amazement at this astonishing epitaph. The meagre, but conscientious, description of the deceased, the insolent frankness of confession, the grotesque and ambiguous anathema, and last, but not least, the ludicrous transition of gender and sentiment, marked this as the production of one who must have been at least as much demented as bereaved. I felt that any further discovery would be a pitiful anti-climax, and, with an unconscious regard for dramatic effect, I turned squarely about and walked away.
“Gee-up there, old Fuddy-duddy!” This unique adjuration came from the lips of a queer little man, perched atop of a light wagonful of fire-wood, behind a brace of fat oxen, who were hauling it easily along, with a simulation of herculean effort that had evidently not imposed upon their driver. As that gentleman happened at the moment to be staring me squarely in the face, and smiting his animals at random with a long pole, it was not quite clear whether he was addressing me or one of them; or whether his beasts were named Fuddy and Duddy, and were both subjects of the imperative verb “to gee-up.” Anyhow, the command produced no visible effect upon any of us, and the queer little man removed his eyes from my face long enough to spear Fuddy and Duddy alternately with his wand, remarking quietly, but with some feeling, “Dern your skin!”—as if they enjoyed that integument in common. So far, my request for a ride had elicited no further attention than I have indicated, and, finding myself falling slowly astern, I placed one foot upon the inner circumference of a hind wheel, and was slowly elevated by an aspiring spoke to a level with the hub, whence I boarded the concern, sans cérémonie, and scrambling forward, seated myself beside the driver—who took no notice of me until he had administered another indiscriminate castigation to his cattle, accompanied with the advice to “buckle down, you derned Incapable!” Then, while this dual incapable was, by courtesy, supposed to be reveling in the happiness of obedience to constituted authority, the master (or rather the former master, for I could not suppress a whimsical feeling that the entire establishment was my lawful prize) trained his big, black eyes upon me with an expression strangely, and somewhat unpleasantly, familiar, laid down his rod—which neither blossomed nor turned into a serpent, as I half expected—folded his arms, and gravely demanded, “W’at did you do to W’isky?”
My natural reply would have been that I drank it, but there was something about the query that suggested a hidden significance, and something about the man that did not encourage a shallow jest. And so, having no other answer ready, I merely held my tongue, but felt as if I were resting under an imputation of guilt, and that my silence was being construed into a confession. Just then a cold shadow fell upon my cheek, and caused me to look up. We were descending into my ravine! I can not describe the sensation that came upon me: I had not seen it since it unbosomed itself four years ago, and now I felt like one to whom a friend has made some sorrowing confession of crime long past, and who has basely deserted him in consequence. The old memories of Jo. Dunfer, his fragmentary revelation, and the unsatisfying explanatory note by the head-stone, came back with singular distinctness. I wondered what had become of Jo., and—I turned sharply round and asked my prisoner. He was intently watching his cattle, and, without withdrawing his eyes, replied:
“Gee-up, old Terrapin! He lies alongside uv Ah Wee, up the cañon. Like to see it? They al’ays comes back to the spot: I’ve been expectin’ you. H-woa!”
At the enunciation of the aspirate, Fuddy-duddy, the incapable terrapin, came to a dead halt, and, before the echo of the vowel had died away up the ravine, had folded up all his eight legs and lain down in the dusty road, regardless of the effect upon his derned skin. The queer little man slid off his seat to the ground, and started up the dell without deigning to look back to see if I was following. But I was.
It was about the same season of the year, and at near the same hour of the day of my last visit. The jays clamored loudly, and the trees whispered darkly, as before; and I somehow traced in the two a fanciful analogy to the open boastfulness of Mr. Jo. Dunfer’s mouth and the mysterious reticence of his manner, and to the mingled insolence and tenderness of his sole literary production—the Epitaph. All things in the valley seemed unchanged, excepting the cow-path, which was almost wholly upgrown with rank weeds. When we came out into the “clearing,” however, there was change enough. Among the stumps and trunks of the fallen saplings, those that had been hacked “China fashion” were no longer distinguishable from those that were cut “Melican way.” It was as if the Old World barbarism and the New World civilization had reconciled their differences by the arbitration of an impartial decay—as one day they must. The knoll was there, but the Hunnish brambles had overrun and all but obliterated its effete grasses; and the patrician garden-violet had capitulated to his plebeian brother—or perhaps had merely reverted to his original type. Another grave—a long and robust mound—had been made beside the former one, which seemed to shrink from the comparison; and in the shadow of a new head-stone, the old one lay prone upon the ground, with its marvelous inscription wholly illegible by reason of the dead leaves drifted over it. In point of literary merit the new epitaph was altogether inferior to the old, and was even repulsive in its terse and savage jocularity. It read:
“JO. DUNFER.—DONE FOR!”
By the air of silent pride with which my guide pointed it out, I was convinced that it was a conception of his own; but I turned from it with indifference, and tenderly brushing away the leaves from the tablet of the dead pagan, restored the mocking inscription of four years ago, which seemed now, fresh from its grave of leaf-mold, to possess a certain pathos. My guide, too, appeared altered, somehow, as he looked at it, and I fancied I detected beneath his whimsical exterior a real, earnest manhood. But while I regarded him, the old far-away look, so subtly forbidding and so tantalizingly familiar, crept back into his great eyes, and repelled while it attracted. I resolved, if possible, to end this scene, and clear up my mystery:
“My friend,” said I, pointing to the smaller grave, “did Jo. Dunfer murder this Chinaman?”
He was leaning against a tree, and looking across the little clearing into the top of another, or through it into the sky beyond, I don’t know which. He never moved a muscle of his body, nor trembled an eyelash, as he slowly replied:
“No, sir; ’e justifiably hommycided ’im.”
“Then he did really kill him?”
“Kill ’im? I think ’e did—rather. Don’t every body know that? Didn’t ’e stan’ up before the Corriner an’ confess it? An’ didn’t the joory render out a verdick uv ‘come to ’is death by a healthy Christian sent’ment workin’ in the Caucasian breast?’ An’ didn’t the church at the Hill cashier ’im fur it? An’ didn’t the indypendent voters ’lect ’im Jestice o’ the Peace, to git even on the gospelers? I don’t know w’er’ you wus brought up!”
“But did Jo. actually do this because the Chinaman could not, or would not, learn to cut down trees in the manner he prescribed?”
“Yes; it stan’s so on the reckerd. That wus the defense ’e made, an’ it got ’im clear. Stan’in’ on the reckerd, it is legle and troo. My knowin’ better don’t make no difference with legle trooth. It wa’n’t none o’ my fun’ral, an’ I wusn’t invited. But the real fact is (and I wouldn’t tell it to no other livin’ soul, nor at any other livin’ place—and you ought’o knowed it long ago) that Jo. wus jealous o’ me!” And the little wretch actually swelled out, and made a comical show of adjusting a merely hypothetical cravat, noting the effect in the palm of his hand, which he held up before him to represent a mirror.
“Jealous of you!” I repeated, with ill-mannered astonishment.
“Yes, jealous o’ me! W’y, ain’t I nice!”—assuming a mocking attitude of studied grace, and twitching the wrinkles out of his threadbare waistcoat. Then suddenly changing his expression to one of deep feeling, and dropping his voice to a low pitch of singular sweetness, he continued:
“Yes; Jo. thought dead loads o’ that Chinaman. Nobody but me ever knowed how ’e doted onto ’im. Couldn’t bear ’im out uv ’is sight—the derned fool! And w’en ’e come down to this clearin’, one day, an’ found me an’ Ah Wee neglectin’ our respective work—him to sleep an’ me to grapple a tarantula out uv ’is sleeve—W’isky laid hold o’ my axe and let us have it. I dodged jist then, fur the derned spider had bit me, but Ah Wee got it bad in the breast an’ stiffened out. W’isky wus jist a-weighin’ me out another one, w’en ’e seen the spider fastened onto my finger, an’ ’e knowed ’e’d made a derned jack uv ’isself. So ’e knelt down an’ made a dernder one. Fur Ah Wee give a little kick an’ opened up ’is eyes—’e had eyes like mine—an’ puttin’ up ’is hands, drew W’isky’s big head down, an’ held it there w’ile ’e stayed—w’ich wusn’t long, fur a tremblin’ run all through ’im, an’ ’e give a long moan an’ went off.”
During the progress of this story, the narrator had become transfigured. Gradually the comic—or, rather, sardonic—element had been eliminated, and, as with bowed head and streaming eyes he painted that strange death-scene, it was with difficulty that I repressed an audible sob. But this consummate actor had somehow so managed me that the sympathy due to his dramatis personœ was really bestowed upon himself. I don’t know how it was done, but when he had concluded, I was just upon the point of taking him in my arms, when suddenly a broad grin danced across his countenance, and with a light laugh he continued:
“W’en W’isky got ’is knob out o’ chanc’ry, ’e wus about the worst lookin’ cuss you ever seen. All ’is good close—’e used to dress flashy them times—wus sp’ilt. ’Is hair wus tusseled, and ’is face—w’at I could see uv it—wus so w’ite that chalk ’ud ’a made a black mark on it. ’E jist stared once at me, ’s if I wa’n’t no account, an’ then—I don’t know any more, fur ther wus shootin’ pains a-chasin’ each other from my bit finger to my head, an’ the sun went down behind that hill.
“So the inquest wus held without my assistance, an’ W’isky went before it an’ told ’is own story; an’ told it so well that the joory all laughed, an’ the Corriner said it wus a pleasure to hev a witness as hadn’t any nonsense about ’im. It took W’isky six weeks, workin’ at odd spells ’tween drinks, to gouge that epitaph”—with a diabolical grin: “I gouged his’n in one day.
“After this ’e tuk to drinkin’ harder an’ harder, an’ got rabider an’ rabider anti-coolie, but I mus’ say I don’t think ’e wus ever exackly glad ’e snuffed out Ah Wee; or that, ’f ’e’d had it to do over ag’in, ’e’d a even soop’rintended the job in person. He mayn’t ’a suffered as me an’ you would, but ’e didn’t use to brag so much about it w’en ’e wus alone, as w’en ’e could git some goose like you to listen to ’im.”
Here the historian twisted his face into an expression of deep secretiveness, as of one who might tell more if he chose, and executed a wink of profound significance.
“When did Jo. die?” I inquired, thoughtfully. The answer took away my breath:
“W’en I looked in at ’im through the knot-hole, and you’d put suthin’ in ’is drink—you derned Borgy!”
Recovering somewhat from my amazement at this astounding charge, I was half minded to throttle the audacious accuser, but was restrained by a sudden conviction that came upon me in the light of a revelation. Mastering my emotion—which he had not observed—I fixed a grave look upon him, and asked earnestly, and as calmly as I could:
“And when did you become insane?”
“Nine years ago!” he shrieked, springing forward and falling prone upon the smaller of the two graves; “nine years ago, w’en that great broote killed the woman who loved him better than she did me!—me who had disguised myself an’ follered ’er from ’Frisco, w’er’ he won ’er from me at poker!—me who had watched over ’er fur years, w’en the scoundrel she b’longed to wus ashamed to acknowledge ’er an’ treat ’er well!—me who, fur ’er sake, kep’ ’is cussed secret fur five years, till it eat ’im up!—me who, w’en you p’isened the broote, fulfilled ’is only livin’ request o’ me, to lay ’im alongside uv ’er an’ give ’im a stone to ’is head!—me who had never before seen ’er grave, ’cause I feared to meet ’im here, an’ hev never since till this day, ’cause his carcass defiles it!”
I picked up the struggling little maniac, and carried him fainting to his wagon. An hour later, in the chill twilight, I wrung Gopher’s hand and bade him farewell. As I stood there in the deepening gloom, watching the blank outlines of the receding wain, a sound was borne to me upon the evening wind—a sound as of a series of rapid thumps—and a voice cried out of the night:
“Gee-up there—you derned old Geranium!”