THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales(德德罗沼泽的旧习)

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THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales

THE HERITAGE OF

DEDLOW MARSH and

Other Tales

By Bret Harte

THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales

THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW

MARSH.

The sun was going down on the Dedlow Marshes. The tide was

following it fast as if to meet the reddening lines of sky and water in the

west, leaving the foreground to grow blacker and blacker every moment,

and to bring out in startling contrast the few half-filled and half-lit pools

left behind and forgotten. The strong breath of the Pacific fanning their

surfaces at times kindled them into a dull glow like dying embers. A

cloud of sand- pipers rose white from one of the nearer lagoons, swept in a

long eddying ring against the sunset, and became a black and dropping

rain to seaward. The long sinuous line of channel, fading with the light

and ebbing with the tide, began to give off here and there light puffs of

gray-winged birds like sudden exhalations. High in the darkening sky

the long arrow-headed lines of geese and 'brant' pointed towards the

upland. As the light grew more uncertain the air at times was filled with

the rush of viewless and melancholy wings, or became plaintive with far-

off cries and lamentations. As the Marshes grew blacker the far-scattered

tussocks and accretions on its level surface began to loom in exaggerated

outline, and two human figures, suddenly emerging erect on the bank of

the hidden channel, assumed the proportion of giants.

When they had moored their unseen boat, they still appeared for some

moments to be moving vaguely and aimlessly round the spot where they

had disembarked. But as the eye became familiar with the darkness it

was seen that they were really advancing inland, yet with a slowness of

progression and deviousness of course that appeared inexplicable to the

distant spectator. Presently it was evident that this seemingly even, vast,

black expanse was traversed and intersected by inky creeks and small

THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales

channels, which made human progression difficult and dangerous. As

they appeared nearer and their figures took more natural proportions, it

could be seen that each carried a gun; that one was a young girl, although

dressed so like her companion in shaggy pea-jacket and sou'wester as to

be scarcely distinguished from him above the short skirt that came

halfway down her high india-rubber fishing-boots. By the time they had

reached firmer ground, and turned to look back at the sunset, it could be

also seen that the likeness between their faces was remarkable. Both, had

crisp, black, tightly curling hair; both had dark eyes and heavy eyebrows;

both had quick vivid complexions, slightly heightened by the sea and wind.

But more striking than their similarity of coloring was the likeness of

expression and bearing. Both wore the same air of picturesque energy;

both bore themselves with a like graceful effrontery and self-possession.

The young man continued his way. The young girl lingered for a

moment looking seaward, with her small brown hand lifted to shade her

eyes,--a precaution which her heavy eyebrows and long lashes seemed to

render utterly gratuitous.

"Come along, Mag. What are ye waitin' for?" said the young man

impatiently.

"Nothin'. Lookin' at that boat from the Fort." Her clear eyes were

watching a small skiff, invisible to less keen-sighted observers, aground

upon a flat near the mouth of the channel. "Them chaps will have a high

ole time gunnin' thar, stuck in the mud, and the tide goin' out like sixty!"

"Never you mind the sodgers," returned her companion, aggressively,

"they kin take care o' their own precious skins, or Uncle Sam will do it for

'em, I reckon. Anyhow the people--that's you and me, Mag--is expected

to pay for their foolishness. That's what they're sent yer for. Ye oughter

to be satisfied with that," he added with deep sarcasm.

"I reckon they ain't expected to do much off o' dry land, and they can't

help bein' queer on the water," returned the young girl with a reflecting

sense of justice.

"Then they ain't no call to go gunnin', and wastin' Guv'nment powder

on ducks instead o' Injins."

"Thet's so," said the girl thoughtfully. "Wonder ef Guv'nment pays

THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales

for them frocks the Kernel's girls went cavortin' round Logport in last

Sunday--they looked like a cirkis."

"Like ez not the old Kernel gets it outer contracts--one way or another.

WE pay for it all the same," he added gloomily.

"Jest the same ez if they were MY clothes," said the girl, with a quick,

fiery, little laugh, "ain't it? Wonder how they'd like my sayin' that to 'em

when they was prancin' round, eh, Jim?"

But her companion was evidently unprepared for this sweeping

feminine deduction, and stopped it with masculine promptitude.

"Look yer--instead o' botherin' your head about what the Fort girls

wear, you'd better trot along a little more lively. It's late enough now."

"But these darned boots hurt like pizen," said the girl, limping. "They

swallowed a lot o' water over the tops while I was wadin' down there, and

my feet go swashin' around like in a churn every step."

"Lean on me, baby," he returned, passing his arm around her waist,

and dropping her head smartly on his shoulder. "Thar!" The act was

brotherly and slightly contemptuous, but it was sufficient to at once

establish their kinship.

They continued on thus for some moments in silence, the girl, I fear,

after the fashion of her sex, taking the fullest advantage of this slightly

sentimental and caressing attitude. They were moving now along the

edge of the Marsh, parallel with the line of rapidly fading horizon,

following some trail only known to their keen youthful eyes. It was

growing darker and darker. The cries of the sea-birds had ceased; even

the call of a belated plover had died away inland; the hush of death lay

over the black funereal pall of marsh at their side. The tide had run out

with the day. Even the sea-breeze had lulled in this dead slack-water of

all nature, as if waiting outside the bar with the ocean, the stars, and the

night.

Suddenly the girl stopped and halted her companion. The faint far

sound of a bugle broke the silence, if the idea of interruption could have

been conveyed by the two or three exquisite vibrations that seemed born

of that silence itself, and to fade and die in it without break or discord.

Yet it was only the 'retreat' call from the Fort two miles distant and

THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales

invisible.

The young girl's face had become irradiated, and her small mouth half

opened as she listened. "Do you know, Jim," she said with a confidential

sigh, "I allus put words to that when I hear it--it's so pow'ful pretty. It

allus goes to me like this: 'Goes the day, Far away, With the light, And the

night Comes along--Comes along-- Comes along--Like a-a so-o-ong.'"

She here lifted her voice, a sweet, fresh, boyish contralto, in such an

admirable imitation of the bugle that her brother, after the fashion of more

select auditors, was for a moment quite convinced that the words meant

something. Nevertheless, as a brother, it was his duty to crush this

weakness. "Yes; and it says:'shut your head, Go to bed,'" he returned

irascibly; "and YOU'D better come along, if we're goin' to hev any supper.

There's Yeller Bob hez got ahead of us over there with the game already."

The girl glanced towards a slouching burdened figure that now

appeared to be preceding them, straightened herself suddenly, and then

looked attentively towards the Marsh.

"Not the sodgers again?" said her brother impatiently.

"No," she said quickly; "but if that don't beat anythin'! I'd hev sworn,

Jim, that Yeller Bob was somewhere behind us. I saw him only jest now

when 'Taps' sounded, somewhere over thar." She pointed with a half-

uneasy expression in quite another direction from that in which the

slouching Yellow Bob had just loomed.

"Tell ye what, Mag, makin' poetry outer bugle calls hez kinder

muddled ye. THAT'S Yeller Bob ahead, and ye orter know Injins well

enuff by this time to remember that they allus crop up jest when ye don't

expect them. And there's the bresh jest afore us. Come!"

The 'bresh,' or low bushes, was really a line of stunted willows and

alders that seemed to have gradually sunk into the level of the plain, but

increased in size farther inland, until they grew to the height and density of

a wood. Seen from the channel it had the appearance of a green cape or

promontory thrust upon the Marsh. Passing through its tangled recesses,

with the aid of some unerring instinct, the two companions emerged upon

another and much larger level that seemed as illimitable as the bay. The

strong breath of the ocean lying just beyond the bar and estuary they were

THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales

now facing came to them salt and humid as another tide. The nearer

expanse of open water reflected the after-glow, and lightened the

landscape. And between the two wayfarers and the horizon rose, bleak

and startling, the strange outlines of their home.

At first it seemed a ruined colonnade of many pillars, whose base and

pediment were buried in the earth, supporting a long parallelogram of

entablature and cornices. But a second glance showed it to be a one-

storied building, upheld above the Marsh by numberless piles placed at

regular distances; some of them sunken or inclined from the perpendicular,

increasing the first illusion. Between these pillars, which permitted a free

circulation of air, and, at extraordinary tides, even the waters of the bay

itself, the level waste of marsh, the bay, the surges of the bar, and finally

the red horizon line, were distinctly visible. A railed gallery or platform,

supported also on piles, and reached by steps from the Marsh, ran around

the building, and gave access to the several rooms and offices.

But if the appearance of this lacustrine and amphibious dwelling was

striking, and not without a certain rude and massive grandeur, its grounds

and possessions, through which the brother and sister were still picking

their way, were even more grotesque and remarkable. Over a space of

half a dozen acres the flotsam and jetsam of years of tidal offerings were

collected, and even guarded with a certain care. The blackened hulks of

huge uprooted trees, scarcely distinguishable from the fragments of

genuine wrecks beside them, were securely fastened by chains to stakes

and piles driven in the marsh, while heaps of broken and disjointed

bamboo orange crates, held together by ropes of fibre, glistened like

ligamented bones heaped in the dead valley. Masts, spars, fragments of

shell-encrusted boats, binnacles, round-houses and galleys, and part of the

after-deck of a coasting schooner, had ceased their wanderings and found

rest in this vast cemetery of the sea. The legend on a wheel-house, the

lettering on a stern or bow, served for mortuary inscription. Wailed over

by the trade winds, mourned by lamenting sea-birds, once every year the

tide visited its lost dead and left them wet with its tears.

To such a spot and its surroundings the atmosphere of tradition and

mystery was not wanting. Six years ago Boone Culpepper had built the

THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales

house, and brought to it his wife--variously believed to be a gypsy, a

Mexican, a bright mulatto, a Digger Indian, a South Sea princess from

Tahiti, somebody else's wife--but in reality a little Creole woman from

New Orleans, with whom he had contracted a marriage, with other

gambling debts, during a winter's vacation from his home in Virginia. At

the end of two years she had died, succumbing, as differently stated, from

perpetual wet feet, or the misanthropic idiosyncrasies of her husband, and

leaving behind her a girl of twelve and a boy of sixteen to console him.

How futile was this bequest may be guessed from a brief summary of Mr.

Culpepper's peculiarities. They were the development of a singular form

of aggrandizement and misanthropy. On his arrival at Logport he had

bought a part of the apparently valueless Dedlow Marsh from the

Government at less than a dollar an acre, continuing his singular

investment year by year until he was the owner of three leagues of

amphibious domain. It was then discovered that this property carried

with it the WATER FRONT of divers valuable and convenient sites for

manufactures and the commercial ports of a noble bay, as well as the

natural embarcaderos of some 'lumbering' inland settlements. Boone

Culpepper would not sell. Boone Culpepper would not rent or lease.

Boone Culpepper held an invincible blockade of his neighbors, and the

progress and improvement he despised--granting only, after a royal

fashion, occasional license, revocable at pleasure, in the shape of tolls,

which amply supported him, with the game he shot in his kingfisher's

eyrie on the Marsh. Even the Government that had made him powerful

was obliged to 'condemn' a part of his property at an equitable price for the

purposes of Fort Redwood, in which the adjacent town of Logport shared.

And Boone Culpepper, unable to resist the act, refused to receive the

compensation or quit-claim the town. In his scant intercourse with his

neighbors he always alluded to it as his own, showed it to his children as

part of their strange inheritance, and exhibited the starry flag that floated

from the Fort as a flaunting insult to their youthful eyes. Hated, feared,

and superstitiously shunned by some, regarded as a madman by others,

familiarly known as 'The Kingfisher of Dedlow,' Boone Culpepper was

one day found floating dead in his skiff, with a charge of shot through his

THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales

head and shoulders. The shot-gun lying at his feet at the bottom of the

boat indicated the 'accident' as recorded in the verdict of the coroner's

jury--but not by the people. A thousand rumors of murder or suicide

prevailed, but always with the universal rider, 'Served him right.' So

invincible was this feeling that but few attended his last rites, which took

place at high water. The delay of the officiating clergyman lost the tide;

the homely catafalque--his own boat--was left aground on the Marsh, and

deserted by all mourners except the two children. Whatever he had

instilled into them by precept and example, whatever took place that night

in their lonely watch by his bier on the black marshes, it was certain that

those who confidently looked for any change in the administration of the

Dedlow Marsh were cruelly mistaken. The old Kingfisher was dead, but

he had left in the nest two young birds, more beautiful and graceful, it was

true, yet as fierce and tenacious of beak and talon.

II.

Arriving at the house, the young people ascended the outer flight of

wooden steps, which bore an odd likeness to the companion-way of a

vessel, and the gallery, or 'deck,' as it was called--where a number of nets,

floats, and buoys thrown over the railing completed the nautical

resemblance. This part of the building was evidently devoted to kitchen,

dining-room, and domestic offices; the principal room in the centre

serving as hall or living-room, and communicating on the other side with

two sleeping apartments. It was of considerable size, with heavy lateral

beams across the ceiling--built, like the rest of the house, with a certain

maritime strength--and looked not unlike a saloon cabin. An enormous

open Franklin stove between the windows, as large as a chimney, blazing

with drift-wood, gave light and heat to the apartment, and brought into

flickering relief the boarded walls hung with the spoils of sea and shore,

and glittering with gun-barrels. Fowling-pieces of all sizes, from the

long ducking-gun mounted on a swivel for boat use to the light single-

barrel or carbine, stood in racks against the walls; game-bags, revolvers in

their holsters, hunting and fishing knives in their sheaths, depended from

hooks above them. In one corner stood a harpoon; in another, two or three

THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales

Indian spears for salmon. The carpetless floor and rude chairs and settles

were covered with otter, mink, beaver, and a quantity of valuable seal-

skins, with a few larger pelts of the bear and elk. The only attempt at

decoration was the displayed wings and breasts of the wood and harlequin

duck, the muir, the cormorant, the gull, the gannet, and the femininely

delicate half-mourning of petrel and plover, nailed against the wall. The

influence of the sea was dominant above all, and asserted its saline odors

even through the spice of the curling drift-wood smoke that half veiled the

ceiling.

A berry-eyed old Indian woman with the complexion of dried salmon;

her daughter, also with berry eyes, and with a face that seemed wholly

made of a moist laugh; 'Yellow Bob,' a Digger 'buck,' so called from the

prevailing ochre markings of his cheek, and 'Washooh,' an ex-chief; a

nondescript in a blanket, looking like a cheap and dirty doll whose fibrous

hair was badly nailed on his carved wooden head, composed the

Culpepper household. While the two former were preparing supper in

the adjacent dining-room, Yellow Bob, relieved of his burden of game,

appeared on the gallery and beckoned mysteriously to his master through

the window. James Culpepper went out, returned quickly, and after a

minute's hesitation and an uneasy glance towards his sister, who had

meantime pushed back her sou'wester from her forehead, and without

taking off her jacket had dropped into a chair before the fire with her back

towards him, took his gun noiselessly from the rack, and saying carelessly

that he would be back in a moment, disappeared.

Left to herself, Maggie coolly pulled off her long boots and stockings,

and comfortably opposed to the fire two very pretty feet and ankles, whose

delicate purity was slightly blue-bleached by confinement in the tepid sea-

water. The contrast of their waxen whiteness with her blue woolen skirt,

and with even the skin of her sunburnt hands and wrists, apparently

amused her, and she sat for some moments with her elbows on her knees,

her skirts slightly raised, contemplating them, and curling her toes with

evident satisfaction. The firelight playing upon the rich coloring of her

face, the fringe of jet-black curls that almost met the thick sweep of

eyebrows, and left her only a white strip of forehead, her short upper lip

THE HERITAGE OF DEDLOW MARSH and Other Tales

and small chin, rounded but resolute, completed a piquant and striking

figure. The rich brown shadows on the smoke-stained walls and ceiling,

the occasional starting into relief of the scutcheons of brilliant plumage,

and the momentary glitter of the steel barrels, made a quaint background

to this charming picture. Sitting there, and following some lingering

memory of her tramp on the Marsh, she hummed to herself a few notes of

the bugle call that had impressed her--at first softly, and finally with the

full pitch of her voice.

Suddenly she stopped.

There was a faint and unmistakable rapping on the floor beneath her.

It was distinct, but cautiously given, as if intended to be audible to her

alone. For a moment she stood upright, her feet still bare and glistening,

on the otter skin that served as a rug. There were two doors to the room,

one from which her brother had disappeared, which led to the steps, the

other giving on the back gallery, looking inland. With a quick instinct

she caught up her gun and ran to that one, but not before a rapid scramble

near the railing was followed by a cautious opening of the door. She was

just in time to shut it on the extended arm and light blue sleeve of an army

overcoat that protruded through the opening, and for a moment threw her

whole weight against it.

"A dhrop of whiskey, Miss, for the love of God."

She retained her hold, cocked her weapon, and stepped back a pace

from the door. The blue sleeve was followed by the rest of the overcoat,

and a blue cap with the infantry blazoning, and the letter H on its peak.

They were for the moment more distinguishable than the man beneath

them--grimed and blackened with the slime of the Marsh. But what

could be seen of his mud- stained face was more grotesque than terrifying.

A combination of weakness and audacity, insinuation and timidity

struggled through the dirt for expression. His small blue eyes were not

ill-natured, and even the intruding arm trembled more from exhaustion

than passion.

"On'y a dhrop, Miss," he repeated piteously, "and av ye pleeze, quick!

afore I'm stharved with the cold entoirely."

She looked at him intently--without lowering her gun.

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