“‘WHY DID YOU BRING ME HERE?’ HE ASKED.”—Page 85.
A Whirl Asunder
By GERTRUDE ATHERTON
AUTHOR OF “THE DOOMSWOMAN” AND “BEFORE
THE GRINGO CAME.”
WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
E. FREDERICK
New York and London
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1895, by
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY.
All rights reserved.
A WHIRL ASUNDER.
CHAPTER I.
As the train stopped for the sixthtime, Clive descended abruptly.
“I think I’ll walk the rest of theway,” he said to the conductor.“Just look after my portmanteau,will you? and see that it is left atYorba with my boxes.”
“O. K.”, said the man. “Butyou must like walking.”
Clive had spent seven days on theocean, three in the furious energyof New York, and six on a transcontinentaltrain, whose discomfortsmade him wonder if he had a moral[4]right to enter the embarrassingstate of matrimony with a temperhopelessly soured. As he had cometo California to marry, and as hisbetrothed was at a hotel in thenorthern redwoods, he did notpause for rest in San Francisco;he left, two hours after his arrival,on a narrow guage train, whichdashed down precipitous mountainslopes, shot, rocking from side toside, about curves on a road so narrowthat the brush scraped the windows,or the eye looked down intothe blackness of a cañon, five hundredfeet below; raced shriekingacross trestles which seemed to swingmidway between heaven and earth;only to slacken, with protestingsnort and jerk, when climbing tosome dizzier height. Clive hadstood for an hour on the platform,fascinated by the danger and thebleak solemnity of the forests,[5]whose rigid trunks and short stifflypointed arms looked as if they hadnot quivered since time began. Buthe felt that he had had enough,moreover that he had not drawn anuncompanioned breath since heleft England. If he was not possessedby the graceful impatience ofthe lover, he reminded himself thathe was tired and nervous, and hadbeen obliged to go dirty for six days,enough to knock the romance outof any man; the ubiquitous humananimal had talked incessantly forsixteen days, and his legs ached forwant of stretching.
A twisted old man with a sharpeye, a rusty beard depending aimlesslyfrom a thin tobacco-stainedmouth, limped across the platform,rolling a flag. Clive asked him ifhe could get to the Yorba hotel onfoot.
The man stared. “Well, you be[6]an Englishman, I guess,” he remarked.
“Yes, I am an Englishman,” saidClive haughtily.
“Oh, no offence, but th