FullReads

Behind it knelt the “California Pet” beside the prostrate poet. “Bring me some water. Run for a doctor. Stop!! CLEAR OUT, ALL OF YOU!”

She had unloosed the gaudy cravat and opened the shirt-collar of the insensible figure before her. Then she burst into an hysterical laugh.

“Manuela!”

Her tiring-woman, a Mexican half-breed, came toward her.

“Help me with him to my dressing-room, quick; then stand outside and wait. If any one questions you, tell them he’s gone. Do you hear? HE’s gone.”

The old woman did as she was bade. In a few moments the audience had departed. Before morning so also had the “California Pet,” Manuela, and–the poet of Sierra Flat.

But, alas! with them also had departed the fair fame of the “California Pet.” Only a few, and these it is to be feared of not the best moral character themselves, still had faith in the stainless honor of their favorite actress. “It was a mighty foolish thing to do, but it’ll all come out right yet.” On the other hand, a majority gave her full credit and approbation for her undoubted pluck and gallantry, but deplored that she should have thrown it away upon a worthless object. To elect for a lover the despised and ridiculed vagrant of Sierra Flat, who had not even the manliness to stand up in his own defence, was not only evidence of inherent moral depravity, but was an insult to the community. Colonel Starbottle saw in it only another instance of the extreme frailty of the sex; he had known similar cases; and remembered distinctly, sir, how a well-known Philadelphia heiress, one of the finest women that ever rode in her kerridge, that, gad, sir! had thrown over a Southern member of Congress to consort with a d—-d nigger. The Colonel had also noticed a singular look in the dog’s eye which he did not entirely fancy. He would not say anything against the lady, sir, but he had noticed–And here haply the Colonel became so mysterious and darkly confidential as to be unintelligible and inaudible to the bystanders.

A few days after the disappearance of Mr. Chubbuck a singular report reached Sierra Flat, and it was noticed that “Boston,” who since the failure of his elaborate joke had been even more depressed in spirits than is habitual with great humorists, suddenly found that his presence was required in San Francisco. But as yet nothing but the vaguest surmises were afloat, and nothing definite was known.

It was a pleasant afternoon when the editor of the “Sierra Flat Record” looked up from his case and beheld the figure of Mr. Morgan McCorkle standing in the doorway. There was a distressed look on the face of that worthy gentleman that at once enlisted the editor’s sympathizing attention. He held an open letter in his hand, as he advanced toward the middle of the room.

“As a man as has allers borne a fair reputation,” began Mr. McCorkle slowly, “I should like, if so be as I could, Mister Editor, to make a correction in the columns of your valooable paper.”

Mr. Editor begged him to proceed.

“Ye may not disremember that about a month ago I fetched here what so be as we’ll call a young man whose name might be as it were Milton–Milton Chubbuck.”

Mr. Editor remembered perfectly.

“Thet same party I’d knowed better nor fower year, two on ’em campin’ out together. Not that I’d known him all the time, fur he war shy and strange at spells and had odd ways that I took war nat’ral to a borned poet. Ye may remember that I said he was a borned poet?”

The editor distinctly did.

“I picked this same party up in St. Jo., takin’ a fancy to his face, and kinder calklating he’d runn’d away from home,–for I’m a married man, Mr. Editor, and hev children of my own,–and thinkin’ belike he was a borned poet.”

“Well?” said the editor.

“And as I said before, I should like now to make a correction in the columns of your valooable paper.”

“What correction!” asked the editor.

“I said, ef you remember my words, as how he was a borned poet.”

“Yes.”

“From statements in this yer letter it seems as how I war wrong.”

“Well!”

“She war a woman.”