He was also a Pioneer. A party who broke through the snows of the winter of ’51, and came upon the triangular little valley afterwards known as La Porte, found him the sole inhabitant. He had subsisted for three months on two biscuits a day and a few inches of bacon, in a hut made of bark and brushwood. Yet, when the explorers found him, he was quite alert, hopeful, and gentlemanly. But I cheerfully make way here for the terser narrative of Captain Henry Symes, commanding the prospecting party:—

“We kem upon him, gentlemen, suddent-like, jest abreast of a rock like this”—demonstrating the distance— “ez near ez you be. He sees us, and he dives into his cabin and comes out ag’in with a tall hat,—a stovepipe, gentlemen,—and, blank me! gloves! He was a tall, thin feller, holler in the cheek,—ez might be,—and off color in his face, ez was nat’ral, takin’ in account his starvation grub. But he lifts his hat to us, so, and sez he, ‘Happy to make your acquaintance, gentlemen! I’m afraid you experienced some difficulty in getting here. Take a cigyar.’ And he pulls out a fancy cigar-case with two real Havanas in it. ‘I wish there was more,’ sez he.

“ ‘Ye don’t smoke yourself?’ sez I.

“ ‘Seldom,’ sez he; which was a lie, for that very afternoon I seed him hangin’ ontu a short pipe like a suckin’ baby ontu a bottle. ‘I kept these cigyars for any gentleman that might drop in.’

“ ‘I reckon ye see a great deal o’ the best society yer,’ sez Bill Parker, starin’ at the hat and gloves and winkin’ at the boys.

“ ‘A few Ind-i-ans occasionally,’ sez he.

“ ‘Injins!’ sez we.

“ ‘Yes. Very quiet good fellows in their way. They have once or twice brought me game, which I refused, as the poor fellows have had a pretty hard time of it themselves.’

“Now, gentlemen, we was, ez you know, rather quiet men—rather peaceable men; but—hevin’ been shot at three times by these yar ‘good’ Injins, and Parker hisself havin’ a matter o’ three inches of his own skelp lying loose in their hands and he walkin’ round wearin’ green leaves on his head like a Roman statoo—it did kinder seem ez if this yer stranger was playin’ it rather low down on the boys. Bill Parker gets up and takes a survey o’ him, and sez he, peaceful-like—

“ ‘Ye say these yer Injins—these yer quiet Injins—offered yer game?’

“ ‘They did!’ sez he.

“ ‘And you refoosed?’

“ ‘I did,’ sez he.

“ ‘Must hev made ’em feel kinder bad—sorter tortered their sensitiv’ naters?’ sez Bill.

“ ‘They really seemed quite disappointed.’

“ ‘In course,’ sez Bill. ‘And now mout I ask who you be?’

“ ‘Excuse me,’ says the stranger; and, darn my skin! If he doesn’t hist out a keerd-case, and, handin’ it over to Bill, sez, ‘Here’s my kyard.’

“Bill took it and read out aloud, ‘J. Trott, Kentucky.’

“ ‘It’s a pooty keerd,’ sez Bill.

“ ‘I’m glad you like it,’ says the stranger.

“ ‘I reckon the other fifty-one of the deck ez as pooty—all of ’em Jacks and left bowers,’ sez Bill.

“The stranger sez nothin’, but kinder draws back from Bill; but Bill ups and sez—

“ ‘Wot is your little game, Mister J. Trott, of Kentucky?’

“ ‘I don’t think I quite understand you,’ sez the stranger, a holler fire comin’ intu his cheeks like ez if they was the bowl of a pipe.

“ ‘Wot’s this yer kid-glove business?—this yer tall hat paradin’?—this yer circus foolin’? Wot’s it all about? Who are ye, anyway?’

“The stranger stands up, and sez he, ‘Ez I don’t quarrel with guests on my own land,’ sez he, ‘I think you’ll allow I’m—a gentleman!’ sez he.

“With that he takes off his tall hat and makes a low bow, so, and turns away—like this; but Bill lites out of a suddent with his right foot and drives his No. 10 boot clean through the crown of that tall hat like one o’ them circus hoops.

“That’s about ez fur ez I remember. Gentlemen! thar wa’n’t but one man o’ that hull crowd ez could actooally swear what happened next, and that man never told. For a kind o’ whirlwind jest then took place in that valley. I disremember anythin’ but dust and bustlin’. Thar wasn’t no yellin’, thar wasn’t no shootin’. It was one o’ them suddent things that left even a six-shooter out in the cold. When I kem to in the chapparel—bein’ oncomfortable like from hevin’ only half a shirt on—I found nigh on three pounds o’ gravel and stones in my pockets and a stiffness in my ha’r. I looks up and sees Bill hangin’ in the forks of a hickory saplin’ twenty feet above me.

“ ‘Cap,’ sez he, in an inquirin’ way, ‘hez the tornado passed?’

“ ‘Which?’ sez I.

“ ‘This yer elemental disturbance—is it over?’

“ ‘I reckon,’ sez I.

“ ‘Because,’ sez he, ‘afore this yer electrical phenomenon took place I hed a slight misunderstanding with a stranger, and I’d like to apologize!’

“And with that he climbs down, peaceful-like, and goes into the shanty, and comes out, hand in hand with that stranger, smilin’ like an infant. And that’s the first time, I reckon, we know’d anythin’ about the gentleman of La Porte.”

It is by no means improbable that the above incidents are slightly exaggerated in narration, and the cautious reader will do well to accept with some reservation the particular phenomenon alluded to by the Captain. But the fact remains that the Gentleman of La Porte was allowed an eccentricity and enjoyed an immunity from contemporaneous criticism only to be attributed to his personal prowess. Indeed, this was once publicly expressed. “It ’pears to me,” said a meek newcomer,—who, on the strength of his having received news of the death of a distant relative in the “States,” had mounted an exceedingly large crape mourning-band on his white felt hat, and was consequently obliged to “treat” the crowd in the barroom of Parker’s Hotel,—“it ’pears to me, gentlemen, that this yer taxin’ the nat’ral expression of grief, and allowin’ such festive exhibitions as yaller kid gloves, on the gentleman on my right, is sorter inconsistent. I don’t mind treatin’ the crowd, gentlemen, but this yer platform and resolutions don’t seem to keep step.”

This appeal to the Demos of every American crowd, of course, precluded any reply from the Gentleman of La Porte, but left it to the palpable chairman—the barkeeper, Mr. William Parker.

“Young man,” he replied severely, “when ye can wear yaller kids like that man and make ’em hover in the air like summer lightnin’, and strike in four places to onct!—then ye kin talk! Then ye kin wear your shirt half-masted if ye like!” A sentiment to which the crowd assenting, the meek man paid for the drinks, and would have, in addition, taken off his mourning-band, but was courteously stopped by the Gentleman of La Porte.

And yet, I protest, there was little suggestive of this baleful prowess in his face and figure. He was loose- jointed and long-limbed, yet with a certain mechanical, slow rigidity of movement that seemed incompatible with alacrity and dexterity. His arms were unusually long, and his hands hung with their palms forward. In walking his feet “toed in,” suggesting an aboriginal ancestry. His face, as I remember it, was equally inoffensive. Thin and melancholy, the rare smile that lit it up was only a courteous reception of some attribute of humor in another which he was unable himself to appreciate. His straight black hair and high cheek-bones would have heightened his Indian resemblance; but these were offset by two most extraordinary eyes that were utterly at variance with this, or, indeed, any other, suggestion of his features. They were yellowish-blue, globular, and placidly staring. They expressed nothing that the Gentleman of La Porte thought—nothing that he did—nothing that he might reasonably be expected to do. They were at variance with his speech, his carriage, even his remarkable attire. More than one irreverent critic had suggested that he had probably lost his own eyes in some frontier difficulty, and had hurriedly replaced them with those of his antagonist.

Had this ingenious hypothesis reached the ears of the Gentleman, he would probably have contented himself with a simple denial of the fact, overlooking any humorous incongruity of statement. For, as has been already intimated, among his other privileges he enjoyed an absolute immunity from any embarrassing sense of the ludicrous. His deficient sense of humor and habitual gravity, in a community whose severest dramatic episodes were mitigated by some humorous detail, and whose customary relaxation was the playing of practical jokes, was marked with a certain frankness that was discomposing. “I think,” he remarked to a well-known citizen of La Porte, “that, in alluding to the argumentative character of Mr. William Peghammer, you said you had found him lying awake at night contradicting the ‘Katydids.’ This he himself assures me is not true, and I may add that I passed the night with him in the woods without any such thing occurring. You seem to have lied.” The severity of this reception checked further humorous exhibitions in his presence. Indeed, I am not certain but it invested him with a certain aristocratic isolation.

Thus identified with the earliest history of the Camp, Mr. Trott participated in its fortunes and shared its prosperity. As one of the original locators of the “Eagle Mine” he enjoyed a certain income which enabled him to live without labor and to freely indulge his few and inexpensive tastes. After his own personal adornment—which consisted chiefly in the daily wearing of spotless linen—he was fond of giving presents. These possessed, perhaps, a sentimental rather than intrinsic value. To an intimate friend he had once given a cane, the stick whereof was cut from a wild grapevine which grew above the spot where the famous “Eagle lead” was first discovered in La Porte; the head originally belonged to a cane presented to Mr. Trott’s father, and the ferrule was made of the last silver half-dollar which he had brought to California. “And yet, do you know,” said the indignant recipient of this touching gift, “I offered to put it down for a five-dollar ante last night over at Robinson’s, and the boys wouldn’t see it, and allowed I’d better leave the board. Thar’s no appreciation of sacred things in this yer Camp.”

It was in this lush growth and springtime of La Porte that the Gentleman was chosen Justice of the Peace by the unanimous voice of his fellow-citizens. That he should have exercised his functions with dignity was natural; that he should have shown a singular lenity in the levyings of fines and the infliction of penalties was, however, an unexpected and discomposing discovery to the settlement.

“The law requires me, sir,” he would say to some unmistakable culprit, “to give you the option of ten days’ imprisonment or the fine of ten dollars. If you have not the money with you, the clerk will doubtless advance it for you.” It is needless to add that the clerk invariably advanced the money, or that when the Court adjourned the Judge instantly reimbursed him. In one instance only did the sturdy culprit—either from “pure cussedness” or a weaker desire to spare the Judge the expense of his conviction—refuse to borrow the amount of the fine from the clerk. He was accordingly remanded to the County Jail. It is related—on tolerably good authority—that when the Court had adjourned the Court was seen, in spotless linen and yellow gloves, making in the direction of the County Jail—a small adobe building, which also served as a Hall of Records; that, after ostentatiously consulting certain records, the Court entered the Jail as if in casual official inspection; that, later in the evening, the Deputy Sheriff having charge of the prisoner was dispatched for a bottle of whiskey and a pack of cards. But as the story here alleges that the Deputy, that evening, lost the amount of his month’s stipend and the Court its entire yearly salary to the prisoner, in a friendly game of “cut-throat euchre,” to relieve the tedium of the prisoner’s confinement, the whole story has been denied, as incompatible with Judge Trott’s dignity, though not inconsistent with his kindliness of nature.

It is certain, however, that his lenity would have brought him into disfavor but for a redeeming exhibition of his unofficial strength. A young and talented lawyer from Sacramento had been detained in some civil case before Judge Trott, but, confident of his success on appeal from this primitive tribunal, he had scarcely concealed his contempt for it in his closing argument. Judge Trott, when he had finished, sat unmoved save for a slight coloring of his high cheek-bones. But here I must again borrow the graphic language of a spectator: “When the Judge had hung out them air red danger signals he sez, quite peaceful- like, to that yer Sacramento Shrimp, sez he, ‘Young gentleman,’ sez he, ‘do you know that I could fine ye fifty dollars for contempt o’ Court?’ ‘And if ye could,’ sez the shrimp, peart and sassy as a hossfly, ‘I reckon I could pay it.’ ‘But I ought to add,’ sez the Gentleman, sad-like, ‘that I don’t purpose to do it. I believe in freedom of speech and—action!’ He then rises up, onlimbers hisself, so to speak, stretches out that yer Hand o’ Providence o’ his, lites into that yer shrimp, lifts him up and scoots him through the window twenty feet into the ditch. ‘Call the next case,’ sez he, sittin’ down again, with them big white eyes o’ his looking peaceful-like ez if nothin’ partikler had happened.”

Happy would it have been for the Gentleman had these gentle eccentricities produced no greater result. But a fatal and hitherto unexpected weakness manifested itself in the very court in which he had triumphed, and for a time imperiled his popularity. A lady of dangerous antecedents and great freedom of manner, who was the presiding goddess of the “Wheel of Fortune” in the principal gambling-saloon of La Porte, brought an action against several of its able-bodied citizens for entering the saloon with “force and arms” and destroying the peculiar machinery of her game. She was ably supported by counsel, and warmly sympathized with by a gentleman who was not her husband. Yet in spite of this valuable coöperation she was not successful. The offense was clearly proved; but the jury gave a verdict in favor of the defendants, without leaving their seats.

Judge Trott turned his mild, inoffensive eyes upon them.

“Do I understand you to say that this is your final verdict?”

“You kin bet your boots, Your Honor,” responded the foreman with cheerful but well-meaning irreverence, “that that’s about the way the thing points.”

“Mr. Clerk,” said Judge Trott, “record the verdict, and then enter my resignation as Judge of this court.”

He rose and left the bench. In vain did various influential citizens follow him with expostulations; in vain did they point out the worthlessness of the plaintiff and the worthlessness of her cause—in which he had sacrificed himself. In vain did the jury intimate that his resignation was an insult to them. Judge Trott turned abruptly upon the foreman, with the old ominous glow in his high cheek-bones.

“I didn’t understand you,” said he.

“I was saying,” said the foreman hastily, “that it was useless to argue the case any longer.” And withdrew slightly in advance of the rest of the jury, as became his official position. But Judge Trott never again ascended the bench.

It was quite a month after his resignation, and the Gentleman was sitting in the twilight “under the shadow of his own vine and fig tree,” —a figure of speech locally interpreted as a “giant redwood” and a mossy creeper,—before the door of that cabin in which he was first introduced to the reader, when he was faintly conscious of the outlines of a female form and the tones of a female voice.

The Gentleman hesitated, and placed over his right eye a large gold eyeglass, which had been lately accepted by the Camp as his most recent fashionable folly. The form was unfamiliar, but the voice the Gentleman instantly recognized as belonging to the plaintiff in his late momentous judicial experience. It is proper to say here that it was the voice of Mademoiselle Clotilde Montmorency; it is only just to add that, speaking no French, and being of unmistakable Anglo-Saxon origin, her name was evidently derived from the game over which she had presided, which was, in the baleful estimation of the Camp, of foreign extraction.

“I wanted to know,” said Miss Clotilde, sitting down on a bench beside the Gentleman—“that is, me and Jake Woods thought we’d like to know —how much you consider yourself out of pocket by this yer resignation of yours?”

Scarcely hearing the speech, and more concerned with the apparition itself, Judge Trott stammered vaguely, “I have the pleasure of addressing Miss—”

“If you mean by that that you think you don’t know me, never saw me before, and don’t want to see me ag’in, why, I reckon that’s the polite way o’ putting it,” said Miss Montmorency, with enforced calmness, scraping some dead leaves together with the tip of her parasol as if she were covering up her emotions. “But I’m Miss Montmorency. I was saying that Jake and me thought that—seein’ as you stood by us when them hounds on the jury give in their hellish lying verdict—Jake and me thought it wasn’t the square thing for you to lose your situation just for me. ‘Find out from the Judge,’ sez he, ‘jist what he reckons he’s lost by this yer resignation—putting it at his own figgers.’ That’s what Jake said. Jake’s a square man —I kin say that of him, anyhow.”

“I don’t think I understand you,” said Judge Trott simply.

“That’s it! That’s just it!” continued Miss Clotilde, with only halfsuppressed bitterness. “That’s what I told Jake. I sez, ‘The Judge won’t understand you nor me. He’s that proud he won’t have anything to say to us. Didn’t he meet me square on the street last Tuesday and never let on that he saw me—never even nodded when I nodded to him?’ ”

“My dear madam,” said Judge Trott hurriedly, “I assure you you are mistaken. I did not see you. Pray believe me. The fact is—I am afraid to confess it even to myself—but I find that, day by day, my eyesight is growing weaker and weaker.” He stopped and sighed.

Miss Montmorency, glancing upward at his face, saw it was pale and agitated. With a woman’s swift intution, she believed this weakness explained the otherwise gratuitous effrontery of his incongruous eyes, and it was to her a sufficient apology. It is only the inexplicable in a man’s ugliness that a woman never pardons.

“Then ye really don’t recognize me?” said Miss Clotilde, a little softened, and yet a little uneasy.

“I—am—afraid—not,” said Trott, with an apologetic smile.

Miss Clotilde paused. “Do you mean to say you couldn’t see me when I was in court during the trial?”

Judge Trott blushed. “I am afraid I saw only—an—outline.”

“I had on,” continued Miss Clotilde rapidly, “a straw hat, with magenta silk lining, turned up so—magenta ribbons tied here”—indicating her round throat—“a reg’lar ’Frisco hat—don’t you remember?”

“I—that is—I am afraid—”

“And one of them figgered silk ‘Dollar Vardens,”’ continued Miss Clotilde anxiously.

Judge Trott smiled politely, but vaguely. Miss Clotilde saw that he evidently had not recognized this rare and becoming costume. She scattered the leaves again and dug her parasol into the ground.

“Then you never saw me at all?”

“Never distinctly.”

“Ef it’s a fair question betwixt you and me,” she said suddenly, “what made you resign?”

“I could not remain Judge of a court that was obliged to record a verdict so unjust as that given by the jury in your case,” replied Judge Trott warmly.

“Say that ag’in, old man,” said Miss Clotilde, with an admiration which half apologized for the irreverence of epithet.

Judge Trott urbanely repeated the substance of his remark in another form.

Miss Montmorency was silent a moment. “Then it wasn’t me?” she said finally.

“I don’t think I catch your meaning,” replied the Judge, a little awkwardly.

“Why—ME. It wasn’t on account of me you did it?”

“No,” said the Judge pleasantly.

There was another pause. Miss Montmorency balanced her parasol on the tip of her toe. “Well,” she said finally, “this isn’t getting much information for Jake.”

“For whom?”

“Jake.”

“Oh—your husband?”

Miss Montmorency clicked the snap of her bracelet smartly on her wrist and said sharply, “Who said he was ‘my husband?”’

“Oh, I beg your pardon.”

“I said Jake Woods. He’s a square man—I can say that for him. He sez to me, ‘You kin tell the Judge that whatever he chooses to take from us— it ain’t no bribery nor corruption, nor nothin’ o’ that kind. It’s all on the square. The trial’s over; he isn’t Judge any longer; he can’t do anything for us—he ain’t expected to do anything for us but one thing. And that is to give us the satisfaction of knowing that he hasn’t lost anything by us— that he hasn’t lost anything by being a square man and acting on the square.’ There! that’s what he said. I’ve said it! Of course I know what you’ll say. I know you’ll get wrathy. I know you’re mad now! I know you’re too proud to touch a dollar from the like of us—if you were starving. I know you’ll tell Jake to go to hell, and me with him! And who the hell cares?”

She had worked herself up to this passion so suddenly, so outrageously and inconsistently, that it was not strange that it ended in an hysterical burst of equally illogical tears. She sank down again on the bench she had gradually risen from, and applied the backs of her yellow-gloved hands to her eyes, still holding the parasol at a rigid angle with her face. To her infinite astonishment Judge Trott laid one hand gently upon her shoulder and with the other possessed himself of the awkward parasol, which he tactfully laid on the bench beside her.

“You are mistaken, my dear young lady,” he said, with a respectful gravity,—“deeply mistaken, if you think I feel anything but kindness and gratitude for your offer—an offer so kind and unusual that even you yourself feel that I could not accept it. No! Let me believe that in doing what I thought was only my duty as a Judge, I gained your good-will, and let me feel that in doing my duty now as a man, I shall still keep it.”

Miss Clotilde had lifted her face towards his, as if deeply and wonderingly following his earnest words. But she only said, “Can you see me in this light?—at this distance? Put up your glass and try.”

Her face was not far from his. I have forgotten whether I have said that she was a pretty woman. She had been once prettier. But she retained enough of her good looks to invest the “Wheel of Fortune,” over which she had presided, with a certain seductive and bewildering uncertainty, which increased the risk of the players. It was, in fact, this unhallowed combination of Beauty and Chance that excited the ire of La Porte—who deemed it unprofessional and not “on the square.”

She had fine eyes. Possibly Judge Trott had never before been so near eyes that were so fine and so—expressive. He lifted his head with some embarrassment and a blush on his high cheek-bones. Then, partly from instinctive courtesy, partly from a desire to bring in a third party to relieve his embarrassment, he said—

“I hope you will make your friend, Mr.——, understand that I appreciate his kindness, even if I can’t accept it.”

“Oh, you mean Jake,” said the lady. “Oh, he’s gone home to the States. I’ll make it all right with him!”

There was another embarrassing pause—possibly over the absence of Jake. At last it was broken by Miss Montmorency. “You must take care of your eyes, for I want you to know me the next time you see me.”

So they parted. The Judge did recognize her on several other occasions. And then La Porte was stirred to its depths in hillside and tunnel with a strange rumor. Judge Trott had married Miss Jane Thomson, alias Miss Clotilde Montmorency—in San Francisco! For a few hours a storm of indignation and rage swept over the town; it was believed to have been a deep-laid plan and conspiracy. It was perfectly well understood that Judge Trott’s resignation was the price of her hand—and of the small fortune she was known to be possessed of. Of his character nothing remained that was assailable. A factitious interest and pathos were imported into the character and condition of her last lover—Jake Woods—the victim of the double treachery of Judge Trott and Miss Clotilde. A committee was formed to write a letter of sympathy to this man, who, a few months before, had barely escaped lynching at their hands. The angry discussion was at last broken by the voice of the first speaker in this veracious narrative, Captain Henry Symes—

“Thar’s one feature in this yer case that ye don’t seem to know, and that oughter be considered. The day she married him in San Francisco she had just come from the doctor’s, who had told her that Trott was helplessly blind! Gentlemen, when a gal like that throws over her whole life, her whole perfession, and a square man like Jake Woods, to marry a blind man without a dollar—just because he once stood up for her—on principle, damn me ef I see any man good enough to go back on her for it! Ef the Judge is willing to kinder overlook little bygone eccentricities o’ hers for the sake o’ being cared for and looked arter by her, that’s his lookout! And you’ll excoose me if, arter my experience, I reckon it ain’t exactly a healthy business to interfere with the domestic concerns of the Gentleman of La Porte.”