第20章 THE ACT OF SQUATTING(3)

Night began early in our cleft.Before us, over the margin of the dump, we could see the sun still striking aslant into the wooded nick below, and on the battlemented, pine-bescattered ridges on the farther side.

There was no stove, of course, and no hearth in our lodging, so we betook ourselves to the blacksmith's forge across the platform.If the platform be taken as a stage, and the out-curving margin of the dump to represent the line of the foot-lights, then our house would be the first wing on the actor's left, and this blacksmith's forge, although no match for it in size, the foremost on the right.It was a low, brown cottage, planted close against the hill, and overhung by the foliage and peeling boughs of a madrona thicket.Within it was full of dead leaves and mountain dust, and rubbish from the mine.But we soon had a good fire brightly blazing, and sat close about it on impromptu seats.Chuchu, the slave of sofa-cushions, whimpered for a softer bed; but the rest of us were greatly revived and comforted by that good creature-fire, which gives us warmth and light and companionable sounds, and colours up the emptiest building with better than frescoes.For a while it was even pleasant in the forge, with the blaze in the midst, and a look over our shoulders on the woods and mountains where the day was dying like a dolphin.

It was between seven and eight before Hanson arrived, with a waggonful of our effects and two of his wife's relatives to lend him a hand.The elder showed surprising strength.He would pick up a huge packing-case, full of books of all things, swing it on his shoulder, and away up the two crazy ladders and the breakneck spout of rolling mineral, familiarly termed a path, that led from the cart-track to our house.Even for a man unburthened, the ascent was toilsome and precarious; but Irvine sealed it with a light foot, carrying box after box, as the hero whisks the stage child up the practicable footway beside the waterfall of the fifth act.With so strong a helper, the business was speedily transacted.Soon the assayer's office was thronged with our belongings, piled higgledy-piggledy, and upside down, about the floor.There were our boxes, indeed, but my wife had left her keys in Calistoga.There was the stove, but, alas!

our carriers had forgot the chimney, and lost one of the plates along the road.The Silverado problem was scarce solved.

Rufe himself was grave and good-natured over his share of blame; he even, if I remember right, expressed regret.But his crew, to my astonishment and anger, grinned from ear to ear, and laughed aloud at our distress.They thought it "real funny" about the stove-pipe they had forgotten; "real funny" that they should have lost a plate.As for hay, the whole party refused to bring us any till they should have supped.See how late they were! Never had there been such a job as coming up that grade! Nor often, I suspect, such a game of poker as that before they started.But about nine, as a particular favour, we should have some hay.

So they took their departure, leaving me still staring, and we resigned ourselves to wait for their return.The fire in the forge had been suffered to go out, and we were one and all too weary to kindle another.We dined, or, not to take that word in vain, we ate after a fashion, in the nightmare disorder of the assayer's office, perched among boxes.Asingle candle lighted us.It could scarce be called a housewarming; for there was, of course, no fire, and with the two open doors and the open window gaping on the night, like breaches in a fortress, it began to grow rapidly chill.Talk ceased; nobody moved but the unhappy Chuchu, still in quest of sofa-cushions, who tumbled complainingly among the trunks.

It required a certain happiness of disposition to look forward hopefully, from so dismal a beginning, across the brief hours of night, to the warm shining of to-morrow's sun.

But the hay arrived at last, and we turned, with our last spark of courage, to the bedroom.We had improved the entrance, but it was still a kind of rope-walking; and it would have been droll to see us mounting, one after another, by candle-light, under the open stars.

The western door - that which looked up the canyon, and through which we entered by our bridge of flying plank - was still entire, a handsome, panelled door, the most finished piece of carpentry in Silverado.And the two lowest bunks next to this we roughly filled with hay for that night's use.

Through the opposite, or eastern-looking gable, with its open door and window, a faint, disused starshine came into the room like mist; and when we were once in bed, we lay, awaiting sleep, in a haunted, incomplete obscurity.At first the silence of the night was utter.Then a high wind began in the distance among the tree-tops, and for hours continued to grow higher.It seemed to me much such a wind as we had found on our visit; yet here in our open chamber we were fanned only by gentle and refreshing draughts, so deep was the canyon, so close our house was planted under the overhanging rock.