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 4tover hrou
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Python

on 3.7
in a Nutshell
A Desktop Quick Reference

Alex Martelli,
Anna Martelli Ravenscroft,
Steve Holden & Paul McGuire
Python in a Nutshell
Python was recently ranked as today’s most
popular programming language on the TIOBE “Python in depth,
index, thanks, especially, to its broad applicability up-to-date,
to design, prototyping, testing, deployment, and accessible, and
maintenance. With this updated fourth edition,
useful. An excellent
you’ll learn how to get the most out of Python,
whether you’re a professional programmer or
modern reference
someone who needs this language to solve with plenty of insight
problems in a particular field. and advice that will
Carefully curated by recognized experts in Python, satisfy everyone from
this new edition focuses on version 3.10, bringing early intermediates
this seminal work on the Python language fully up to experts.”
to date on five version releases, including coverage —Mark Summerfield
of recently released Python 3.11. Director of Qtrac Ltd.

This handy guide will help you:

The authors are four PSF Fellows,
• Learn how Python represents data and
three of whom are Frank Willison
program as objects Award recipients, recognized
• Understand the value and uses of type for numerous contributions to
annotations Python and its community. Their
collective experience covers
• Examine which language features appeared environments and platforms
in which recent versions ranging from academic to startup
to corporate to government.
• Discover how to use modern Python
idiomatically Together they have compiled an
authoritative reference for Python
• Learn ways to structure Python projects language syntax and features,
appropriately the Python standard library, and
selected third-party packages.
• Understand how to test, debug, and
optimize Python code

PROGR AMMING Twitter: @oreillymedia

linkedin.com/company/oreilly-media
youtube.com/oreillymedia
US $89.99 CAN $112.99
ISBN: 978-1-098-11355-1
PYTHON IN A
NUTSHELL
A Desktop Quick Reference
Fourth Edition

Alex Martelli, Anna Martelli Ravenscroft,

Steve Holden, and Paul McGuire
Python in a Nutshell
by Alex Martelli, Anna Martelli Ravenscroft, Steve Holden, and Paul McGuire
Copyright © 2023 Alex Martelli, Anna Martelli Ravenscroft, Steve Holden, and Paul McGuire.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472.
O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online
editions are also available for most titles (http://oreilly.com). For more information, contact
our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com.

Acquisitions Editor: Brian Guerin Indexer: Judith McConville

Development Editor: Angela Rufino Interior Designer: David Futato
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Copyeditor: Rachel Head Illustrator: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Proofreader: Sonia Saruba

March 2003: First Edition

July 2006: Second Edition
April 2017: Third Edition
January 2023: Fourth Edition

Revision History for the Fourth Edition

2023-01-09: First Release

See https://www.oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=0636920602804 for release details.

The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Python in a Nutshell, the
cover image, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc.
While the publisher and the authors have used good faith efforts to ensure that the informa‐
tion and instructions contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the authors
disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions, including without limitation responsibility
for damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this work. Use of the information and
instructions contained in this work is at your own risk. If any code samples or other tech‐
nology this work contains or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual
property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies
with such licenses and/or rights.

978-1-098-11355-1
[LSI]
 Table of Contents

Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

1. Introduction to Python. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Python Language 1
The Python Standard Library and Extension Modules 2
Python Implementations 3
Python Development and Versions 10
Python Resources 11
Installation 14
Installing Python from Binaries 15
Installing Python from Source Code 16

2. The Python Interpreter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

The python Program 21
Python Development Environments 27
Running Python Programs 29
Running Python in the Browser 30

3. The Python Language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Lexical Structure 33
Data Types 40
Variables and Other References 52
Expressions and Operators 57
Numeric Operations 60
Sequence Operations 62

iii
 Set Operations 69
Dictionary Operations 71
Control Flow Statements 73
Functions 93

4. Object-Oriented Python. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Classes and Instances 115
Special Methods 141
Decorators 157
Metaclasses 158

5. Type Annotations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

History 171
Type-Checking Utilities 173
Type Annotation Syntax 174
The typing Module 176
Using Type Annotations at Runtime 191
How to Add Type Annotations to Your Code 192
Summary 194

6. Exceptions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
The try Statement 195
The raise Statement 200
The with Statement and Context Managers 201
Generators and Exceptions 203
Exception Propagation 204
Exception Objects 205
Custom Exception Classes 210
ExceptionGroup and except* 212
Error-Checking Strategies 214
The assert Statement 219

7. Modules and Packages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Module Objects 222
Module Loading 227
Packages 233
Distribution Utilities (distutils) and setuptools 235
Python Environments 237

iv | Table of Contents
 8. Core Built-ins and Standard Library Modules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Built-in Types 247
Built-in Functions 251
The sys Module 259
The copy Module 263
The collections Module 264
The functools Module 269
The heapq Module 271
The argparse Module 274
The itertools Module 275

9. Strings and Things. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

Methods of String Objects 281
The string Module 286
String Formatting 287
Text Wrapping and Filling 300
The pprint Module 300
The reprlib Module 301
Unicode 301

10. Regular Expressions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305

Regular Expressions and the re Module 305
Optional Flags 311
Match Versus Search 313
Anchoring at String Start and End 313
Regular Expression Objects 314
Match Objects 317
Functions of the re Module 318
REs and the := Operator 319
The Third-Party regex Module 320

11. File and Text Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

The io Module 322
The tempfile Module 328
Auxiliary Modules for File I/O 330
In-Memory Files: io.StringIO and io.BytesIO 334
Archived and Compressed Files 335
The os Module 343

v | Table of Contents
 The errno Module 357
The pathlib Module 357
The stat Module 362
The filecmp Module 363
The fnmatch Module 365
The glob Module 366
The shutil Module 366
Text Input and Output 368
Richer-Text I/O 371
Internationalization 374

12. Persistence and Databases. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383

Serialization 384
DBM Modules 396
The Python Database API (DBAPI) 399

13. Time Operations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411

The time Module 411
The datetime Module 415
The zoneinfo Module 422
The dateutil Module 424
The sched Module 425
The calendar Module 426

14. Customizing Execution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429

Per-Site Customization 429
Termination Functions 430
Dynamic Execution and exec 430
Internal Types 434
Garbage Collection 435

15. Concurrency: Threads and Processes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443

Threads in Python 445
The threading Module 446
The queue Module 456
The multiprocessing Module 459
The concurrent.futures Module 468
Threaded Program Architecture 471
Process Environment 475

vi | Table of Contents
 Running Other Programs 476
The mmap Module 481

16. Numeric Processing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

Floating-Point Values 485
The math and cmath Modules 488
The statistics Module 493
The operator Module 493
Random and Pseudorandom Numbers 496
The fractions Module 498
The decimal Module 500
Array Processing 502

17. Testing, Debugging, and Optimizing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513

Testing 514
Debugging 528
The warnings Module 538
Optimization 541

18. Networking Basics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 563

The Berkeley Socket Interface 564
Transport Layer Security 579
SSLContext 580

19. Client-Side Network Protocol Modules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583

Email Protocols 584
HTTP and URL Clients 587
Other Network Protocols 595

20. Serving HTTP. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597

http.server 598
WSGI 598
Python Web Frameworks 600

21. Email, MIME, and Other Network Encodings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 611

MIME and Email Format Handling 611
Encoding Binary Data as ASCII Text 619

22. Structured Text: HTML. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 623

The html.entities Module 624

vii | Table of Contents

 The BeautifulSoup Third-Party Package 624
Generating HTML 635

23. Structured Text: XML. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 643

ElementTree 644
Parsing XML with ElementTree.parse 650
Building an ElementTree from Scratch 652
Parsing XML Iteratively 652

24. Packaging Programs and Extensions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 655

What We Don’t Cover in This Chapter 656
A Brief History of Python Packaging 657
Online Material 658

25. Extending and Embedding Classic Python. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659

Online Material 660

26. v3.7 to v3.n Migration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 661

Significant Changes in Python Through 3.11 662
Planning a Python Version Upgrade 664
Summary 668

Appendix. New Features and Changes in Python 3.7 Through 3.11. . . . . . . . . 669

Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 687

viii | Table of Contents

 Preface

The Python programming language reconciles many apparent contradictions: ele‐

gant yet pragmatic, simple yet powerful, it’s very high-level yet doesn’t get in your
way when you need to fiddle with bits and bytes, and it’s suitable for novice
programmers and great for experts, too.
This book is intended for programmers with some previous exposure to Python, as
well as experienced programmers coming to Python for the first time from other
languages. It provides a quick reference to Python itself, the most commonly used
parts of its vast standard library, and a few of the most popular and useful third-
party modules and packages. The Python ecosystem has grown so much in richness,
scope, and complexity that a single volume can no longer reasonably hope to be
encyclopedic. Still, the book covers a wide range of application areas, including web
and network programming, XML handling, database interactions, and high-speed
numeric computing. It also explores Python’s cross-platform capabilities and the
basics of extending Python and embedding it in other applications.

How To Use This Book

While you can read this volume linearly from the beginning, we also aim for it to be
a useful reference for the working programmer. You may choose to use the index to
locate items of interest, or to read specific chapters for coverage of their particular
topics. However you use it, we sincerely hope you enjoy reading what represents the
fruit of the best part of a year’s work for the team.
The book has five parts, as follows.

ix
Part I, Getting Started with Python
Chapter 1, “Introduction to Python”
Covers the general characteristics of the Python language, its implementations,
where to get help and information, how to participate in the Python commu‐
nity, and how to obtain and install Python on your computer(s) or run it in
your browser.
Chapter 2, “The Python Interpreter”
Covers the Python interpreter program, its command-line options, and how
to use it to run Python programs and in interactive sessions. The chapter
mentions text editors for editing Python programs and auxiliary programs
for checking your Python sources, along with some full-fledged integrated
development environments, including IDLE, which comes free with standard
Python. The chapter also covers running Python programs from the command
line.

Part II, Core Python Language and Built-ins

Chapter 3, “The Python Language”
Covers Python syntax, built-in data types, expressions, statements, control flow,
and how to write and call functions.
Chapter 4, “Object-Oriented Python”
Covers object-oriented programming in Python.
Chapter 5, “Type Annotations”
Covers how to add type information to your Python code, to gain type hinting
and autocomplete help from modern code editors and support static type
checking from type checkers and linters.
Chapter 6, “Exceptions”
Covers how to use exceptions for errors and special situations, logging, and
how to write code to automatically clean up when exceptions occur.
Chapter 7, “Modules and Packages”
Covers how Python lets you group code into modules and packages, how to
define and import modules, and how to install third-party Python packages.
This chapter also covers working with virtual environments to isolate project
dependencies.
Chapter 8, “Core Built-ins and Standard Library Modules”
Covers built-in data types and functions, and some of the most fundamental
modules in the Python standard library (roughly speaking, the set of modules
supplying functionality that, in some other languages, is built into the language
itself).
Chapter 9, “Strings and Things”
Covers Python’s facilities for processing strings, including Unicode strings,
bytestrings, and string literals.

x | Preface
Chapter 10, “Regular Expressions”
Covers Python’s support for regular expressions.

Part III, Python Library and Extension Modules

Chapter 11, “File and Text Operations”
Covers dealing with files and text with many modules from Python’s standard
library and platform-specific extensions for rich text I/O. This chapter also
covers issues regarding internationalization and localization.
Chapter 12, “Persistence and Databases”
Covers Python’s serialization and persistence mechanisms and its interfaces to
DBM databases and relational (SQL-based) databases, particularly the handy
SQLite that comes with Python’s standard library.
Chapter 13, “Time Operations”
Covers dealing with times and dates in Python, with the standard library and
third-party extensions.
Chapter 14, “Customizing Execution”
Covers ways to achieve advanced execution control in Python, including exe‐
cution of dynamically generated code and control of garbage collection. This
chapter also covers some Python internal types, and the specific issue of regis‐
tering “cleanup” functions to execute at program termination time.
Chapter 15, “Concurrency: Threads and Processes”
Covers Python’s functionality for concurrent execution, both via multiple
threads running within one process and via multiple processes running on
a single machine.1 This chapter also covers how to access the process’s environ‐
ment, and how to access files via memory-mapping mechanisms.
Chapter 16, “Numeric Processing”
Covers Python’s features for numeric computations, both in standard library
modules and in third-party extension packages; in particular, how to use deci‐
mal numbers or fractions instead of the default binary floating-point numbers.
This chapter also covers how to get and use pseudorandom and truly random
numbers, and how to speedily process whole arrays (and matrices) of numbers.
Chapter 17, “Testing, Debugging, and Optimizing”
Covers Python tools and approaches that help you make sure that your pro‐
grams are correct (i.e., that they do what they’re meant to do), find and fix
errors in your programs, and check and enhance your programs’ performance.
This chapter also covers the concept of warnings and the Python library mod‐
ule that deals with them.

1 The separate chapter on asynchronous programming in the third edition has been dropped in
this edition, deferring to more thorough coverage of this growing topic in references found in
Chapter 15.

xi | Preface
Part IV, Network and Web Programming
Chapter 18, “Networking Basics”
Covers the basics of networking with Python.
Chapter 19, “Client-Side Network Protocol Modules”
Covers modules in Python’s standard library to write network client programs,
particularly for dealing with various network protocols from the client side,
sending and receiving emails, and handling URLs.
Chapter 20, “Serving HTTP”
Covers how to serve HTTP for web applications in Python, using popular
third-party lightweight Python frameworks leveraging Python’s WSGI standard
interface to web servers.
Chapter 21, “Email, MIME, and Other Network Encodings”
Covers how to process email messages and other network-structured and enco‐
ded documents in Python.
Chapter 22, “Structured Text: HTML”
Covers popular third-party Python extension modules to process, modify, and
generate HTML documents.
Chapter 23, “Structured Text: XML”
Covers Python library modules and popular extensions to process, modify, and
generate XML documents.

Part V, Extending, Distributing, and Version Upgrade and Migration

Chapters 24 and 25 are included in summary form in the print edition of this book.
You will find the full content of these chapters in the supporting online repository,
described in “How to Contact Us” on page xv.
Chapter 24, “Packaging Programs and Extensions”
Covers tools and modules to package and share Python modules and applica‐
tions.
Chapter 25, “Extending and Embedding Classic Python”
Covers how to code Python extension modules using Python’s C API, Cython,
and other tools.
Chapter 26, “v3.7 to v3.n Migration”
Covers topics and best practices for planning and deploying version upgrades
for Python users ranging from individuals to library maintainers to enterprise-
wide deployment and support staff.
Appendix, “New Features and Changes in Python 3.7 Through 3.11”
Provides a detailed list of features and changes in Python language syntax and
the standard library, by version.

xii | Preface
Conventions Used in This Book
The following conventions are used throughout this book.

Reference Conventions
In the function/method reference entries, when feasible, each optional parameter is
shown with a default value using the Python syntax name=value. Built-in functions
need not accept named parameters, so parameter names may not be significant.
Some optional parameters are best explained in terms of their presence or absence,
rather than through default values. In such cases, we indicate that a parameter
is optional by enclosing it in brackets ([]). When more than one argument is
optional, brackets can be nested.

Version Conventions
This book covers changes and features in Python versions 3.7 through 3.11.
Python 3.7 serves as the base version for all tables and code examples, unless
otherwise noted.2 You will see these notations to indicate changes or features added
and removed across the range of covered versions:

• 3.x+ marks a feature introduced in version 3.x, not available in prior versions.
• -3.x marks a feature removed in version 3.x, available only in prior versions.

Typographic Conventions
Please note that, for display reasons, our code snippets and samples may sometimes
depart from PEP 8. We do not recommend taking such liberties in your code.
Instead, use a utility like black to adopt a canonical layout style.
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
Italic
Used for file and directory names, program names, URLs, and to introduce
new terms.
Constant width
Used for command-line output and code examples, as well as for code elements
that appear in the text, including methods, functions, classes, and modules.
Constant width italic
Used to show text to be replaced with user-supplied values in code examples
and commands.

2 For example, to accommodate the widespread changes in Python 3.9 and 3.10 in type annota‐
tions, most of Chapter 5 uses Python 3.10 as the base version for features and examples.

xiii | Preface
Random documents with unrelated
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noble allies that struggled on with us, without one token of
resistance.
Fulano suffered least. He turned his brave eye back, and
beckoned me with his ear to listen, while he seemed to say: “See,
this is my Endurance! I hold my Power ready still to show.”
And he curved his proud neck, shook his mane like a banner, and
galloped the grandest of all.
We came to a broad strip of sand, the dry bed of a mountain-
torrent. The trail followed up this disappointing path. Heavy
ploughing for the tired horses! How would they bear the rough work
down the ravine yet to come?
Suddenly our leader pulled up and sprang from the saddle.
“Look!” he cried, “how those fellows spent their time, and saved
ours. Thank Heaven for this! We shall save her, surely, now.”
It was water! No need to go back to Pindar to know that it was
“the Best.”
They had dug a pit deep in the thirsty sand, and found a lurking
river buried there. Nature never questioned what manner of men
they were that sought. Murderers flying from vengeance and
planning now another villain outrage,—still impartial Nature did not
change her laws for them. Sunshine, air, water, life,—these boons of
hers,—she gave them freely. That higher boon of death, if they were
to receive, it must be from some other power, greater than the
undiscriminating force of Nature.
Good luck and good omen, this well of water in the sand! It
proved that our chase had suffered as we, and had been delayed as
we. Before they had dared to pause and waste priceless moments
here, their horses must have been drooping terribly. The pit was
nearly five feet deep. A good hour’s work, and no less, had dug it
with such tools as they could bring. I almost laughed to think of the
two, slowly bailing out the sliding sand with a tin plate, perhaps, and
a frying-pan, while a score of miles away upon the desert we three
were riding hard upon their tracks to follow them the fleeter for this
refreshment they had left. “Sic vos non vobis!” I was ready to say
triumphantly; but then I remembered the third figure in their group,
—a woman, like a Sibyl, growing calmer as her peril grew, and
succor seemed to withdraw. And the pang of this picture crushed
back into my heart any thoughts but a mad anxiety and a frenzy to
be driving on.
We drank thankfully of this well by the wayside. No gentle beauty
hereabouts to enchant us to delay. No grand old tree, the shelter
and the landmark of the fountain, proclaiming an oasis near. Nothing
but bare, hot sand. But the water was pure, cool, and bright. It had
come underground from the Sierra, and still remembered its parent
snows. We drank and were grateful, almost to the point of pity. Had
we been but avengers, like Armstrong, my friend and I could
wellnigh have felt mercy here, and turned back pardoning. But
rescue was more imperative than vengeance. Our business tortured
us, as with the fanged scourge of Tisiphone, while we dallied. We
grudged these moments of refreshment. Before night fell down the
west, and night was soon to be climbing up the east, we must
overtake,—and then?
I wiped the dust and spume away from Fulano’s nostrils and
breathed him a moment. Then I let him drain deep, delicious
draughts from the stirrup-cup. He whinnied thanks and undying
fealty,—my noble comrade! He drank like a reveller. When I mounted
again, he gave a jubilant curvet and bound. My weight was a feather
to him. All those leagues of our hard, hot gallop were nothing.
The brown Sierra here was close at hand. Its glittering, icy
summits, above the dark and sheeny walls, far above the black
phalanxes of clambering pines, stooped forward and hung over us as
we rode. We were now at the foot of the range, where it dipped
suddenly down upon the plain. The gap, our goal all day, opened
before us, grand and terrible. Some giant force had clutched the
mountains, and riven them narrowly apart. The wild defile gaped,
and then wound away and closed, lost between its mighty walls, a
thousand feet high, and bearing two brother pyramids of purple cliffs
aloft far above the snow line. A fearful portal into a scene of the
throes and agonies of earth! and my excited eyes seemed to read,
gilded over its entrance, in the dead gold of that hazy October
sunshine, words from Dante’s inscription,—
“Per me si va tra la perduta gente;
Lasciate ogni speranza voi, ch’ entrate!”
“Here we are,” said Brent, speaking hardly above his breath. “This
is Luggernel Alley at last, thank God! In an hour, if the horses hold
out, we shall be at the Springs; that is, if we can go through this
breakneck gorge at the same pace. My horse began to flinch a little
before the water. Perhaps that will set him up. How are yours?”
“Fulano asserts that he has not begun to show himself yet. I may
have to carry you en croupe, before we are done.”
Armstrong said nothing, but pointed impatiently down the defile.
The gaunt white horse moved on quicker at this gesture. He seemed
a tireless machine, not flesh and blood,—a being like his master,
living and acting by the force of a purpose alone.
Our chief led the way into the cañon.
 CHAPTER XX.

A HORSE.
Yes, John Brent, you were right when you called Luggernel Alley a
wonder of our continent.
I remember it now,—I only saw it then;—for those strong scenes
of nature assault the soul whether it will or no, fight in against
affirmative or negative resistance, and bide their time to be admitted
as dominant over the imagination. It seemed to me then that I was
not noticing how grand the precipices, how stupendous the
cleavages, how rich and gleaming the rock faces in Luggernel Alley.
My business was not to stare about, but to look sharp and ride hard;
and I did it.
Yet now I can remember, distinct as if I beheld it, every stride of
that pass; and everywhere, as I recall foot after foot of that fierce
chasm, I see three men with set faces,—one deathly pale and
wearing a bloody turban,—all galloping steadily on, on an errand to
save and to slay.
Terrible riding it was! A pavement of slippery, sheeny rock; great
beds of loose stones; barricades of mighty boulders, where a cliff
had fallen an æon ago, before the days of the road-maker race;
crevices where an unwary foot might catch; wide rifts where a shaky
horse might fall, or a timid horseman drag him down. Terrible riding!
A pass where a calm traveller would go quietly picking his steps,
thankful if each hour counted him a safe mile.
Terrible riding! Madness to go as we went! Horse and man, any
moment either might shatter every limb. But man and horse neither
can know what he can do, until he has dared and done. On we
went, with the old frenzy growing tenser. Heart almost broken with
eagerness.
No whipping or spurring. Our horses were a part of ourselves.
While we could go, they would go. Since the water, they were full of
leap again. Down in the shady Alley, too, evening had come before
its time. Noon’s packing of hot air had been dislodged by a mountain
breeze drawing through. Horses and men were braced and cheered
to their work; and in such riding as that, the man and the horse
must think together and move together,—eye and hand of the rider
must choose and command, as bravely as the horse executes. The
blue sky was overhead, the red sun upon the castellated walls a
thousand feet above us, the purpling chasm opened before. It was
late, these were the last moments. But we should save the lady yet.
“Yes,” our hearts shouted to us, “we shall save her yet.”
An arroyo, the channel of a dry torrent, followed the pass. It had
made its way as water does, not straightway, but by that potent
feminine method of passing under the frowning front of an obstacle,
and leaving the dull rock staring there, while the wild creature it
would have held is gliding away down the valley. This zigzag channel
baffled us; we must leap it without check wherever it crossed our
path. Every second now was worth a century. Here was the sign of
horses, passed but now. We could not choose ground. We must take
our leaps on that cruel rock wherever they offered.
Poor Pumps!
He had carried his master so nobly! There were so few miles to
do! He had chased so well; he merited to be in at the death.
Brent lifted him at a leap across the arroyo.
Poor Pumps!
His hind feet slipped on the time-smoothed rock. He fell short. He
plunged down a dozen feet among the rough boulders of the
torrent-bed. Brent was out of the saddle almost before he struck,
raising him.
No, he would never rise again. Both his fore-legs were broken at
the knee. He rested there, kneeling on the rocks where he fell.
Brent groaned. The horse screamed horribly, horribly,—there is no
more agonized sound,—and the scream went echoing high up the
cliffs where the red sunlight rested.
It costs a loving master much to butcher his brave and trusty
horse, the half of his knightly self; but it costs him more to hear him
shriek in such misery. Brent drew his pistol to put poor Pumps out of
pain.
Armstrong sprang down and caught his hand.
“Stop!” he said in his hoarse whisper.
He had hardly spoken, since we started. My nerves were so
strained, that this mere ghost of a sound rang through me like a
death yell, a grisly cry of merciless and exultant vengeance. I
seemed to hear its echoes, rising up and swelling in a flood of thick
uproar, until they burst over the summit of the pass and were
wasted in the crannies of the towering mountain-flanks above.
“Stop!” whispered Armstrong. “No shooting! They’ll hear. The
knife!”
He held out his knife to my friend.
Brent hesitated one heart-beat. Could he stain his hand with his
faithful servant’s blood?
Pumps screamed again.
Armstrong snatched the knife and drew it across the throat of the
crippled horse.
Poor Pumps! He sank and died without a moan. Noble martyr in
the old, heroic cause.
 I caught the knife from Armstrong. I cut the thong of my girth.
The heavy California saddle, with its macheers and roll of blankets,
fell to the ground. I cut off my spurs. They had never yet touched
Fulano’s flanks. He stood beside me quiet, but trembling to be off.
“Now Brent! up behind me!” I whispered,—for the awe of death
was upon us.
I mounted. Brent sprang up behind. I ride light for a tall man.
Brent is the slightest body of an athlete I ever saw.
Fulano stood steady till we were firm in our seats.
Then he tore down the defile.
Here was that vast reserve of power; here the tireless spirit; here
the hoof striking true as a thunderbolt, where the brave eye saw
footing; here that writhing agony of speed; here the great promise
fulfilled, the great heart thrilling to mine, the grand body living to
the beating heart. Noble Fulano!
I rode with a snaffle. I left it hanging loose. I did not check or
guide him. He saw all. He knew all. All was his doing.
We sat firm, clinging as we could, as we must. Fulano dashed
along the resounding pass.
Armstrong pressed after,—the gaunt white horse struggled to
emulate his leader. Presently we lost them behind the curves of the
Alley. No other horse that ever lived could have held with the black
in that headlong gallop to save.
Over the slippery rocks, over the sheeny pavement, plunging
through the loose stones, staggering over the barricades, leaping the
arroyo, down, up, on, always on,—on went the horse, we clinging as
we might.
It seemed one beat of time, it seemed an eternity, when between
the ring of the hoofs I heard Brent whisper in my ear.
“We are there.”
 The crags flung apart, right and left. I saw a sylvan glade. I saw
the gleam of gushing water.
Fulano dashed on, uncontrollable!
There they were,—the Murderers.
Arrived but one moment!
The lady still bound to that pack-mule branded A. & A.
Murker just beginning to unsaddle.
Larrap not dismounted, in chase of the other animals as they
strayed to graze.
The men heard the tramp and saw us, as we sprang into the
glade.
Both my hands were at the bridle.
Brent, grasping my waist with one arm, was awkward with his
pistol.
Murker saw us first. He snatched his six-shooter and fired.
Brent shook with a spasm. His pistol arm dropped.
Before the murderer could cock again, Fulano was upon him!
He was ridden down. He was beaten, trampled down upon the
grass,—crushed, abolished.
We disentangled ourselves from the mêlée.
Where was the other?
The coward, without firing a shot, was spurring Armstrong’s
Flathead horse blindly up the cañon, whence we had issued.
We turned to Murker.
Fulano was up again, and stood there shuddering. But the man?
A hoof had battered in the top of his skull; blood was gushing
from his mouth; his ribs were broken; all his body was a trodden,
massacred carcass.
He breathed once, as we lifted him.
Then a tranquil, childlike look stole over his face,—that well-
known look of the weary body, thankful that the turbulent soul has
gone. Murker was dead.
Fulano, and not we, had been executioner. His was the stain of
blood.
 CHAPTER XXI.

LUGGERNEL SPRINGS.
“I am shot,” gasped Brent, and sank down fainting.
Which first? the lady, or my friend, slain perhaps for her sake?
“Her! see to her!” he moaned.
I unbound her from the saddle. I could not utter a word for pity.
She essayed to speak; but her lips only moved. She could not
change her look. So many hours hardening herself to repel, she
could not soften yet, even to accept my offices with a smile of
gratitude. She was cruelly cramped by her lashings to the rough
pack-saddle, rudely cushioned with blankets. But the horror had not
maddened her; the torture had not broken her; the dread of worse
had not slain her. She was still unblenching and indomitable. And still
she seemed to rule her fate with quiet, steady eyes,—gray eyes with
violet lights.
I carried her a few steps to the side of a jubilant fountain lifting
beneath a rock, and left her there to Nature, kindliest leech.
Then I took a cup of that brilliant water to my friend, my brother.
“I can die now,” he said feebly.
“There is no death in you. You have won the right to live. Keep a
brave heart. Drink!”
And in that exquisite spot, that fair glade of the sparkling
fountains, I gave the noble fellow long draughts of sweet
refreshment. The rescued lady trailed herself across the grass and
knelt beside us. My horse, still heaving with his honorable gallop,
drooped his head over the group. A picture to be remembered!
Who says that knighthood is no more? Who says the days of
chivalry are past? Who says it, is a losel.
Brent was roughly, but not dangerously, shot along the arm. The
bullet had ploughed an ugly path along the muscles of the fore-arm
and upper-arm, and was lodged in the shoulder. A bad wound; but
no bones broken. If he could but have rest and peace and surgery!
But if not, after the fever of our day, after the wearing anguish of
our doubtful gallop; if not?—
Ellen Clitheroe revived in a moment, when she saw another
needed her care. Woman’s gentle duty of nurse found her ready for
its offices. My blundering good-will gave place willingly to her fine-
fingered skilfulness. She forgot her own weariness, while she was
magnetizing away the pangs of the wounded man by her delicate
touch.
He looked at me, and smiled with total content.
“My father?” asked the lady, faintly, as if she dreaded the answer.
“Safe!” said I. “Free from the Mormons. He is waiting for you with
a friend.”
Her tears began to flow. She was busy bandaging the wound. All
was silent about us, except the pleasant gurgle of the fountains,
when we heard a shot up the defile.
The sharp sound of a pistol-shot came leaping down the narrow
chasm, flying before the pursuit of its own thundering echoes. Those
grand old walls of the Alley, facing each other there for the shade
and sunshine of long, peaceful æons, gilded by the glow of
countless summers, splashed with the gray of antique lichens on
their purple fronts, draped for unnumbered Octobers with the scarlet
wreaths of frost-ripened trailers,—those solemn walls standing there
in old silence, unbroken save by the uproar of winter floods, or by
the humming flight of summer winds, or the louder march of
tempests crowding on,—those silent walls, written close with the
record of God’s handiwork in the long cycles of creation, lifted up
their indignant voices when the shot within proclaimed to them the
undying warfare of man with man, and, roaring after, they hurled
that murderous noise forth from their presence. The quick report
sprang out from the chasm into the quiet glade, where the lady
knelt, busy with offices of mercy, and there it lost its vengeful tone,
and was blended with the rumble of the mingled rivulets of the
springs. The thundering echoes paused within, slowly proclaiming
quiet up from crag to crag, until one after another they whispered
themselves to silence. No sound remained, save the rumble of the
stream, as it flowed away down the opening valley into the haze,
violet under gold, of that warm October sunset.
I sprang up when I heard the shot, and stood on the alert. There
were two up the Alley; which, after the shot, was living, and which
dead?
Not many moments had passed, when I heard hoofs coming, and
Armstrong rode into view. The gaunt white horse galloped with the
long, careless fling I had noticed all day. He moved machine-like, as
if without choice or volition of his own, a horse commissioned to
carry a Fate. Larrap’s stolen horse trotted along by his old master.
Armstrong glanced at Murker’s body lying there, a battered mass.
“Both!” he whispered. “The other was sent right into my hands to
be put to death. I knew all the time it would be sent to me to do
killing. He was spurring up the Alley on my own horse. He snapped
at me. My pistol did not know how to snap. See here!”
And he showed me, hanging from his saddle horn, that loathliest
of all objects a man’s eyes ever lighted upon, a fresh scalp. It
sickened me.
“Shame!” said I. “Do you call yourself a man, to bring such a
thing into a lady’s presence?”
“It was rather mean to take the fellow’s hair,” says Armstrong. “I
don’t believe brother Bill would have did it. But I felt orful ugly, when
I saw that fat, low-lived devil, and thought of my brother, a big, hul-
hearted man as never gave a bad word to nobody, and never held
on to a dollar or a slug when ayry man wanted it more ’n him.
Come, I’ll throw the nasty thing away, if you say so.”
“Help me drag off this corpse, and we’ll bury man and scalp
together,” I said.
We buried him at the gate of the Alley, under a great cairn of
stones.
“God forgive them both,” said I, as I flung the last stone, “that
they were brutes, and not men.”
“Brutes they was, stranger,” says Armstrong, “but these things is
ordered somehow. I allow your pardener and you is glad to get that
gal out of a Mormon camp, ef it did cost him a horse and both on
you an all day’s tremble. Men don’t ride so hard, and look so wolfish,
as you two men have did, onless their heart is into it.”
“It is, indeed, strange,” said I, rather thinking aloud than
addressing my companion, “that this brute force should have
achieved for us by outrage what love failed in. Fate seems to have
played Brute against Brute, that Love might step between and claim
the victory. The lady is safe; but the lover may have won her life and
lost his own.”
“Look here, stranger,” says Armstrong, “part of this is yourn,”
pointing to the money-belt, which, with the dead man’s knife and
pistol, he had taken from the corpse. “Halves of this and the other
fellow’s plunder belongs to your party.”
I suppose I looked disgusted; yet I have seen gentle ladies
wearing boastfully brooches that their favorite heroes had taken
from Christian men dead on the field at Inkermann, and shawls of
the loot of Delhi cover many shoulders that would shudder over a
dead worm.
“I’m not squimmidge,” said Armstrong. “It’s my own and my
brother’s money in them belts. I’ll count that out, and then, ef you
wont take your part, I’ll pass it over to the gal’s father. I allowed
from signs ther was, that that thar boss Mormon had about tuk the
old man’s pile. Most likely these shiners they won last night is some
of the very sufferins Sizzum got from him. It’s right he should hev
’em back.”
I acknowledged the justice of this restitution.
“Now,” said Armstrong again, “you want to stay by your friend
and the gal, so I’ll take one of the pack mules and fetch your two
saddles along before dark lights down. It was too bad to lose that
iron gray; but there’s more ’n two horses into the hide of that black
of yourn. He was the best man of the lot for the goin’, the savin’, and
the killin’. Stranger, I’ve ben byin’ and sellin’ and breedin’ kettrypids
ever since I was raised myself; but I allow I never seed a horse till I
seed him lunge off with you two on his back.”
Armstrong rode up the Alley again. Another man he was since his
commission of vengeance had been accomplished. In those lawless
wilds, vendetta takes the place of justice, becomes justice indeed.
Armstrong, now that his stern duty was done, was again the kindly,
simple fellow nature made him, the type of a class between pioneer
and settler, and a strong, brave, effective class it is. It was the
education, in youth, in the sturdy habits of this class, that made our
Washington the manly chief he was.
I returned to my friends by the Springs.
Emerging from the austere grandeur of the Alley, dim with the
shadows of twilight, the scene without was doubly sweet and almost
domestic. The springs, four or five in number, and one carrying with
it a thread of hot steam, sprang vigorously out along the bold edges
of the cliffs. All the ground was verdure,—green, tender, and
brilliant, a feast to the eyes after long staring over sere deserts. The
wild creatures that came there every day for refreshment, and
perhaps for intoxication in the aerated tipple of the Champagne
Spring, kept the grass grazed short as the turf of a park. Two great
spruce-trees, each with one foot under the rocks, and one edging
fountainward, stood, pillar under pyramid. Some wreaths of drooping
creepers, floating from the crags, had caught and clung, and so
gone winding among the dark foliage of the twin trees; and now
their leaves, ripened by autumn, shook amid the dusky green like an
alighting of orioles. Except for the spruces posted against the cliffs,
the grassy area of an acre about the springs was clear of other
growth than grass. Below, the rivulet disappeared in a green thicket,
and farther down were large cottonwoods, and one tall stranger
tree, the feminine presence of a drooping elm, as much unlooked-for
here as the sweet, delicate woman whom strange chances had
brought to dignify and grace the spot. This stranger elm filled my
heart with infinite tender memories of home, and of those early
boyish days when Brent and I lay under the Berkeley College elms,
or strayed beneath the elm-built arches up and down the avenues of
that fair city clustered round the College. In those bright days,
before sorrow came to him, or to me my harsh necessity, we two in
brotherhood had trained each other to high thoughts of courtesy and
love,—a dreamed-of love for large heroic souls of women, when our
time of full-completed worthiness should come. And his time had
come. And yet it might be that the wounded knight would never
know his lady, as much loving as beloved; it might be that he would
never find a sweeter soothing in her touch, than the mere touch of
gratitude and common charity; it might be that he would fever away
his beautiful life with the fever of his wound, and never feel the holy
quiet of a lover’s joy when the full bliss of love returned is his.
I gave a few moments to the horses and mules. They were still to
be unsaddled. Healthy Fulano had found his own way to water, and
now was feasting on the crisp, short grass along the outlet of the
Champagne Spring, tickling his nose with the bubbles of gas as they
sped by. Sup, Fulano! This spot was worth the gallop to see Sup,
Fulano, the brave, and may no stain of this day’s righteous death-
doing rest upon your guiltless life!
Brent was lying under the spruces, drowsing with fatigue,
reaction, and loss of blood. Miss Clitheroe sat by watching him.
These fine beings have an exquisitely tenacious vitality. The
happiness of release had suddenly kindled all her life again. As she
rose to meet me, there was light in her eyes and color in her cheeks.
Her whole soul leaped up and spoke its large gratitude in a smile.
“My dear friend,” she said; and then, with sudden tearfulness,
“God be thanked for your heroism!”
“God be thanked!” I repeated. “We have been strangely selected
and sent,—you from England, my friend and I, and my horse, the
hero of the day, from the Pacific,—to interfere here in each other’s
lives.”
“It would seem romance, but for the sharp terror of this day,
coming after the long agony of my journey with my poor, errant
father.”
“A sharp terror, indeed!”
“But only terror!” and a glow of maidenly thankfulness passed
over her face. “Except one moment of rough usage, when I slipped
away my gag and screamed as they carried me off, those men were
considerate to me. They never halted except to dig a well in the
sand of a riverbed. I learned from their talk that they had made an
attempt to steal your horses in the night, and, failing, dreaded lest
you, and especially Mr. Brent, would follow them close. So they rode
hard. They supposed that, when I was found missing, whoever went
in pursuit, and you they always feared, would lose time along the
emigrant road, searching eastward.”
“We might have done so; but we had ourselves ridden off that
way in despair of aiding you,”—and I gave her a sketch of the events
of the morning.
“It was the hope of succor from you that sustained me. After
what your friend said to me last evening, I knew he could not
abandon me, if he had power to act.” And she looked very tenderly
at the sleeper,—a look to repay him for a thousand wounds.
“Did you find my glove?” she asked.
 “He has it. That token assured us. Ah! you should have seen that
dear wounded boy, our leader, when he knew we were not astray.”
I continued my story of our pursuit,—the lulling beat of the
stream undertoning my words in the still twilight. When I came to
that last wild burst of Fulano, and told how his heroic charge had
fulfilled his faithful ardor of the day, she sprang up, thrilled out of all
weariness, and ran to the noble fellow, where he was taking his
dainty banquet by the brookside.
She flung her arms around his neck and rested her head upon his
shoulder. Locks of her black hair, escaping into curls, mingled with
his mane.
Presently Miss Clitheroe seemed to feel a maidenly consciousness
that her caresses of the horse might remind the horse’s master that
he was not unworthy of a like reward. She returned to my friend. He
was stirring a little in pain. She busied herself about him tenderly,
and yet with a certain distance of manner, building a wall of delicate
decorum between him and herself. Indeed, from the beginning of
our acquaintance yesterday, and now in this meeting of to-day, she
had drawn apart from Brent, and frankly approached me. Her fine
instinct knew the brother from the lover.
Armstrong presently rode out again.
When he saw his brother’s sorrel horse feeding with the others,
he wept like a child.
We two, the lady and I, were greatly touched.
“I’ve got a daughter myself, to home to the Umpqua,” said
Armstrong, turning to Miss Clitheroe; “jest about your settin’ up, and
jest about as many corn shuckins old. Ellen is her name.”
“Ellen is my name.”
“That’s pretty” (pooty he pronounced it). “Well, I’ll stand father to
you, just as ef you was my own gal. I know what a gal in trouble
wants more ’n young fellows can.”
 Ellen Clitheroe gave her hand to Armstrong in frank acceptance of
his offer. He became the paternal element in our party,—he
protecting her and she humanizing him.
We lighted our camp-fire and supped heartily. Except for Brent’s
uneasy stir and unwilling moans, we might have forgotten the
deadly business of that day.
We made the wounded man comfortable as might be with
blankets, under the sheltering spruces. After all, if he must be hurt,
he could not have fallen upon a better hospital than the pure open
air of this beautiful shelter; and surely nowhere was a gentler nurse
than his.
Armstrong and I built the lady a bower, a little lodge of bushes
from the thicket.
Then he and I kept watch and watch beneath the starlight.
Sleeping or waking, our souls and our bodies thanked God for this
peace of a peaceful night, after the terror and tramp and battle of
that trembling day.
 CHAPTER XXII.

CHAMPAGNE.
How soundly I slept, in my sleeping hours, after our great victory,
—Courage over Space, Hope over Time, Love over Brutality, the
Heavenly Powers over the Demon Forces!
I sprang up, after my last morning slumber, with vitality enough
for my wounded friend and myself. I felt that I could carry double
responsibility, as Fulano had carried double weight. God has given
me the blessing of a great, vigorous life. My body has always been a
perfect machine for my mind’s work, such as that may be; and never
a better machine, with every valve, crank, joint, and journal in good
order, than on that dawn at Luggernel Springs.
If I had not awaked alive from top to toe, from tip to tip, from
end to end, alive in muscle, nerve, and brain, the Luggernel
Champagne Spring would have put life into me.
Champagne of Rheims and Epernay! Bah!
Avaunt, Veuve Clicquot, thou elderly Hebe! Avaunt, with thy
besugared, begassed, bedevilled, becorked, bewired, poptious
manufacture! Some day, at a dull dinner-party, I will think of thee
and poison myself with thy poison, that I may become deaf to the
voice of the vulgar woman to whom some fatal hostess may consign
me. But now let no thought of Champagne, even of that which the
Veuve may keep for her moment most lacrymose of “veuvage,”
interfere with my remembrance of the Luggernel Spring.
 Champagne to that! More justly a Satyr to Hyperion; a stage-
moon to Luna herself; an Old-World peach to a peach of New
Jersey; a Democratic Platform to the Declaration of Independence; a
pinching, varnished boot to a winged sandal of Mercury; Faustina to
Charlotte Corday; a senatorial speech to a speech of Wendell
Phillips; anything crude, base, and sham to anything fine, fresh, and
true.
Ah, poor Kissingen! Alas, unfragrant Sharon! Alack, stale
Saratoga! Ichabod! Adieu to you all when the world knows the
virtues of Luggernel!
But never when the O-fartunatus-nimium world has come into
this new portion of its heritage,—never when Luggernel is renowned
and fashion blooms about its brim,—never when gentlemen of the
creamiest cream in the next half-century offer to ladies as creamy
beakers bubbling full of that hypernectareous tipple,—never will any
finer body or fairer soul of a woman be seen there about than her
whom I served that morning. And, indeed, among the heroic
gentlemen of the riper time to come, I cannot dream that any will
surpass in all the virtues and courtesies of the cavalier my friend
John Brent, now dismounted and lying there wounded and patient.
Oranges before breakfast are good. There be who on awakening
gasp for the cocktail. And others, who, fuddled last night, are limp in
their lazy beds, till soda-water lends them its fizzle. Eye-openers
these of moderate calibre. But, with all the vigorous vitality I have
claimed, perhaps I might still have remembered yesterday with its
Gallop of Three, its suspense, its eager dash and its certainty, and
remembered them with new anxieties for to-day, except for my
morning draught of exhilaration from the unbottled, unmixed
sources of Luggernel. Thanks La Grenouille, rover of the wilderness,
for thy froggish instinct and this blissful discovery!
I stooped and lapped. Long ago Gideon Barakson recognized the
thorough-going braves because they took their water by the
throatful, not by the palmful. And when I had lapped enough, and
let the great bubbles of laughing gas burst in my face, I took a
beaker,—to be sure it was battered tin, and had hung at the belt of a
dastard,—a beaker of that “cordial julep” to my friend. He was
awake and looking about him, seeking for some one.
“Come to your gruel, old fellow!” said I.
He drank the airy water and sat up revived.
“It is like swallowing the first sunbeam on the crown of a snow-
peak,” he said.
Miss Clitheroe dawned upon us with this. She came forth from her
lodge, fresh and full of cheer.
Brent stopped looking about for some one. The One had entered
upon the scene.
I dipped for her also that poetry in a tin pot.
“This,” said she, “is finer balm than the enchanted cup of Comus;
never did lips touch a draught
‘To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst.’
To-day my life is worthy of this nepenthe. My dear friend, this is the
first night of peaceful, hopeful rest I have had, since my poor father
was betrayed into his delusion. Thank you and God for it!”
And again her eyes filled with happy tears, and she knelt by her
patient. While she was tenderly and deftly renewing the bandages,
Armstrong stood by, and inspected the wound in silence. Presently
he walked off and called me to help him with our camp-fire.
“Pretty well ploughed up, that arm of his’n,” said he.
“I have seen amputation performed for less.”
“Then I’m dum glad there’s no sawbones about. I don’t believe
Nater means a man’s leg or arm to go, until she breaks the solid
bone, so that it ain’t to be sot nohow. But what do you allow to do?
Lamm ahead or squat here?”
 “You are the oldest; you have most experience; I will take your
advice.”
“October is sweet as the smile of a gal when she hears that her
man has made fifteen hundred dollars off the purceeds of a half-acre
of onions, to the mines; but these yer fall storms is reg’lar Injuns;
they light down ’thout sendin’ on handbills. We ought to be p’intin’
for home if we can.”
“But Brent’s wound! Can he travel?”
“Now, about that wound, there’s two ways of lookin’ at it. We ken
stop here, or we ken poot for Laramie. I allow that it oughter take
that arm of his’n a month to make itself right. Now in a month ther’ll
be p’r’aps three feet of snow whar we stand.”
“We must go on.”
“Besides, lookerhere! Accordin’ to me the feelin’s mean suthin’,
when a man’s got any. He’ll be all the time worryin’ about the gal till
he gets her to her father. It’s my judgment she’d better never see
the old man agin; but I wouldn’t want my Ellen to quit me, of I was
an unhealthy gonoph like him. Daughters ought to stick closer ’n
twitch-grass to their fathers, and sons to their mothers, and she ain’t
one to knock off lovin’ anybody she’s guv herself to love. No, she’s
one of the stiddy kind,—stiddy as the stars. He knows that, that
there pardener of yourn knows it, and his feelin’s won’t give his arm
no rest until she’s got the old man to take care of and follow off on
his next streak. So we must poot for Laramie, live or die. Thar’ll be a
doctor there. Ef we ken find the way, it shouldn’t take us more ’n ten
days. I’ll poot him on Bill’s sorrel, jest as gentle a horse as Bill was
that rode him, and we’ll see ef we hain’t worked out the bad luck
out of all of us, for one while.”
Armstrong’s opinion was only my own, expressed Oregonly. We
went on preparing breakfast.
“That there A. & A. mule,” says Armstrong, “was Bill’s and mine,
and this stuff in the packs was ours. I don’t know what the fellers
did with the two mean mustangs they was ridin’ when they found us
fust on Bear River,—used ’em up, I reckon.”
Here Brent hailed us cheerily.
“Look alive there, you two cooks! We idlers here want to be
travelling.”
“I told you so,” said Armstrong. “He understands this business
jest as well as we do. He’ll go till he draps. Thar’s grit into him, ef I
know grit.”
Yes; but when I saw him sit still with his back against the spruce-
tree, and remembered his exuberant life of other days, I desponded.
He soon took occasion to speak to me apart.
“Dick,” said he, “you see how it is. I am not good for much. If we
were alone, you and I might settle here for a month or so, and write
‘Bubbles from the Brünnen.’ But there is a lady in the case. It is plain
where she belongs. I know every inch of the way to Laramie. I can
take you through in a week”—he paused and quavered a little, as he
continued—“if I live. But don’t look so anxious. I shall.”
“It would be stupid for you to die now, John Brent the Lover, with
the obstacles cut away and an heroic basis of operations.”
“A wounded man, perhaps a dying man, has no business with
love. I will never present her my services and ask pay. But, Dick, if I
should wear out, you will know what to say to her for me.”
At this she joined us, her face so illumined with resolution and
hope that we both kindled. All doubt skulked away from her
presence. Brent was nerved to rise and walk a few steps to the
camp-fire, supported by her arm and mine.
Armstrong had breakfast ready, such as it was. And really, the
brace of wood grouse he had shot that morning, not a hundred
yards from camp, were not unworthy of a lady’s table, though they
had never made journey in a crowded box, over a slow railroad,
from Chicago to New York, in a January thaw, and then been bought
at half price of a street pedler, a few hours before they dropped to
pieces.
We grouped to depart.
“I shall remember all this for scores of sketches,” said Miss
Clitheroe.
And indeed there was material. The rocks behind threading away
and narrowing into the dim gorge of the Alley; the rushing fountains,
one with its cloud of steam; the two great spruces; the greensward;
the thickets; and above them a far-away glimpse of a world, all run
to top and flinging itself up into heaven, a tumult of crag and
pinnacle. So much for the scenery. And for personages, there was
Armstrong, with his head turbaned, saddling the white machine; the
two mules, packed and taking their last nibbles of verdure; Miss
Clitheroe, in her round hat and with a green blanket rigged as riding-
skirt, mounted upon the sturdy roan; Brent resting on my shoulder,
and stepping on my knee, as he climbed painfully to his seat on the
tall sorrel; Don Fulano waiting, proud and eager. And just as we
were starting, a stone fell from overhead into the water; and looking
up, we saw a bighorn studying us from the crags, wishing, no doubt,
that his monster horns were ears to comprehend our dialect.
I gave the party their stirrup-cup from the Champagne Spring.
The waters gurgled adieu. Rich sunrise was upon the purple gates of
the pass. We struck a trail through the thicket.
Good bye to the Luggernel Springs and Luggernel Alley! to that
scene of tragedy and tragedy escaped!
 CHAPTER XXIII.

AN IDYL OF THE ROCKYS.

I shall make short work of our journey to Laramie.
We bent northeastwardly by ways known to our leader,—alas!
leader no more. He could guide, but no more gallop in front and
beckon on the cavalcade.
It was a grand journey. A wild one, and rough for a lady. But this
lady was made of other stuff than the mistresses of lapdogs.
We crossed the backbone of the continent, climbing up the clefts
between the ragged vertebræ, and over the top of that meandering
spine, fleshed with great grassy mounds; then plunging down again
among the rifts and glens.
A brilliant quartette ours would have been, but for my friend’s
wound. Four people, all with fresh souls and large and peculiar
experience.
Except for my friend’s wound!
My friend, closer than a brother, how I felt for him every mile of
that stern journey! He never complained. Only once he said to me,
“Bodily agony has something to teach, I find, as well as mental.”
Never one word of his suffering, except that. He wore slowly
away. Every day he grew a little weaker in body; but every day the
strong spirit lifted the body to its work. He must live to be our guide,
that he felt. He must be cheerful, gay even, lest the lady he had
saved should too bitterly feel that her safety was daily paid for by his
increasing agony. Every day that ichor of love baptized him with new
life. He breathed love and was strong. But it was love confined to his
own consciousness. Wounded, and dying perhaps, unless his life
could beat time by a day or an hour, he would not throw any share
of his suffering on another, on her, by calling for the sympathy which
a woman gives to her lover.
Did she love him? Ah! that is the ancient riddle. Only the Sphinx
herself can answer. Those fair faces of women, with their tender
smiles, their quick blushes, their starting tears, still wear a mask
until the moment comes for unmasking. If she did not love him,—
this man of all men most lovable, this feminine soul in the body of a
hero, this man who had spilled his blood for her, whose whole
history had trained him for those crowning hours of a chivalric life
when the lover led our Gallop of Three; if she did not love him, she
must be, I thought, some bloodless creature of a type other than
human, an angel and no woman, a creature not yet truly embodied
into the body of love we seemed to behold.
She was sweetly tender to him; but that the wound, received for
her sake, merited; that was hardly more than the gracious
thankfulness she lavished upon us all. What an exquisite woman!
How calmly she took her place, lofty and serene, above all the
cloudy atmosphere of such a bewildering life as hers had been! How
large and deep and mature the charity she had drawn, even so
young, from the strange contrasts of her history! How her keen
observation of a woman of genius had grasped and stored away the
diamond, or the dust of diamond, in every drift across her life!
She grew more beautiful daily. Those weary days when, mile after
dreary mile, the listless march of the Mormon caravan bore her
farther and farther away into hopeless exile, were gone forever. She
breathed ruddy hope now. Before, she had filtered hope from every
breath and only taken the thin diet of pale endurance. All future
possibility of trial, after her great escape, seemed nothing. She was
confident of Brent’s instant recovery, with repose, and a surgeon
more skilful than she, at Fort Laramie. She was sure that now her
father’s wandering life was over, and that he would let her find him a
home and win him a living in some quiet region of America, where
all his sickly fancies would pass away, and his old age would glide
serenely.
It would be long, too long, for the movement of this history,
should I attempt to detail the talks and minor adventures of that trip
by which the character of all my companions became better known
to me.
For the wounded man’s sake we made lengthened rests at
noonday, and camped with the earliest coming of twilight. Those
were the moonlight nights of brilliant October. How strange and
solemn and shadowy the mountains rose about our bivouacs! It was
the poetry of camp life, and to every scene by a fountain, by a
torrent, in a wild dell, on a mountain meadow with a vision of a
snow-peak watching us all the starry night and passing through
rosiness into splendor at sunrise,—to every scene, stern or fair, our
comrade gave the poetry of a woman’s presence and a woman’s fine
perception of the minuter charm of nature.
And then—think of it!—she had a genius for cookery. I have
known this same power in other fine poetic and artistic beings. She
had a genius for imaginative cookery,—a rich inheritance from her
father’s days of poverty and coal-mining. She insisted upon her
share of camp-duty; and her great gray eyes were often to be seen
gravely fixed upon a frying-pan, or watching a roasting bird, as it
twirled slowly before the fire, with a strip of pork featly disposed
overhead to baste that succulent revolver; while Brent, poor fellow,
lay upon the grass, wrapped in blankets, slowly accumulating force
for the next day’s journey, and watched her with wonderment and
delight that she could condescend to be a household goddess.
“Ther ain’t her ikwill to be scared up,” would Armstrong say on
these occasions. “I’m gittin’ idees to make my Ellen the head woman
on all the Umpqua. I wish I had her along; for she’s a doughcyle gal,
and takes nat’ral to pooty notions in thinkin’ and behavior and fixin’
up things ginerally.”
 Armstrong became more and more the paternal element in our
party. Memory of the Ellen on the Umpqua made him fatherly
thoughtful for the Ellen here, a wanderer across the Rocky
Mountains. And she returned more than he gave, in the sweet
civilizing despotism of a lady. That grizzly turban presently
disappeared from his head. Decorous bandages replaced it. With
that token went from him the sternness. He was a frank, honest,
kindly fellow, shrewd and unflinching, but one who would never
have lifted his hand against a human being except for that great,
solemn duty of an exterminating vengeance. That done, he was his
genial self again. We never tired of his tales of plains and Oregon
life, told in his own vivid dialect. He was the patriarchal pioneer, a
man with the personal freedom of a nomad, and the unschooled
wisdom of a founder of states in the wilderness. A mighty hunter,
too, was Armstrong. No day passed that we did not bag an antelope,
a deer, or a big-horn. It was the very land of Cocaigne for game. The
creatures were so hospitable that it hardly seemed proper gratitude
to kill them; even that great brown she-bear, who one night “popped
her head into the shop,” and, muttering something which in the
Bruin lingo may have been, “What! no soap!” smote Armstrong with
a paw which years of sucking had not made tender.
Except for Brent’s wound, we four might have had a joyous
journey, full of the true savor of brave travel. But that ghastly,
murderous hurt of his needed most skilful surgery, and needed most
of all repose with a mind at peace. He did not mend; but all the
while
“The breath
Of her sweet tendance hovering over him
Filled all the genial courses of his blood
With deeper and with ever deeper love.”
But he did not mend. He wasted daily. His sleeps became deathly
trances. We could not wear him out with haste. Brave heart! he bore
up like a brave.
 And at last one noon we drew out of the Black Hills, and saw
before us, across the spurs of Laramie Peak, the broad plain of Fort
Laramie.
Brent revived. We rode steadily. Just before sunset, we pulled up
at our goal.
 CHAPTER XXIV.

DRAPETOMANIA.
For the last hour I had ridden close to Brent. I saw that it was
almost up with him. He swayed in his saddle. His eye was glazed
and dull. But he kept his look fixed on the little group of Laramie
Barracks, and let his horse carry him.
I lifted up my heart in prayer that this noble life might not be
quenched. He must not die now that he was enlarged and sanctified
by truest love.
At last we struck open country. Bill Armstrong’s sorrel took a
cradling lope; we rode through a camp of Sioux “tepees,” like so
many great white foolscaps; we turned the angle of a great white
wooden building, and halted. I sprang from Fulano, Brent quietly
drooped down into my arms.
“Just in time,” said a cheerful, manly voice at my ear.
“I hope so,” said I. “Is it Captain Ruby?”
“Yes. We’ll take him into my bed. Dr. Pathie, here’s a patient for
you.”
We carried Brent in. As we crossed the veranda, I saw Miss
Clitheroe’s meeting with her father. He received her almost peevishly.
We laid the wounded man in Ruby’s hospital bed. Evidently a fine
fellow, Ruby; and, what was to the point, fond of John Brent.
Dr. Pathie shook his head.