What was that noise? The house had been very quiet, so still that she had heard a woodpecker tapping on its roof. But now she heard distinctly the slow, heavy tread of a man in one of the upper chambers, which had been used as a lumber-room. Mrs. Conroy had none of the nervous apprehension of her sex in regard to probable ghosts or burglars—she had too much of a man's practical pre-occupation for that, yet she listened curiously. It came again. There was no mistaking it now. It was the tread of the man with whom her thoughts had been busy—her husband.
What was he doing here? In the few months of their married life he had never been home before at this hour. The lumber-room contained among other things thedisjecta membraof his old mining life and experience. He may have wanted something. There was an old bag which she remembered he said contained some of his mother's dresses. Yet it was so odd that he should go there now. Any other time but this. A terrible superstitious dread—a dread that any other time she would have laughed to scorn, began to creep over her. Hark! he was moving. She stopped breathing.
The tread recommenced. It passed into the upper hall, and came slowly down the stairs, each step recording itselfin her heart-beats. It reached the lower hall and seemed to hesitate; then it came slowly along toward her door, and again hesitated.
Another moment of suspense, and she felt she would have screamed. And then the door slowly opened, and Gabriel stood before her.
In one swift, intuitive, hopeless look she read her fate. He knew all! And yet his eyes, except that they bore less of the usual perplexity and embarrassment with which they had habitually met hers, though grave and sad, had neither indignation nor anger. He had changed his clothes to a rough miner's blouse and trousers, and carried in one hand a miner's pack, and in the other a pick and shovel. He laid them down slowly and deliberately, and seeing her eyes fixed upon them with a nervous intensity, began apologetically—
"They contains, ma'am, on'y a blanket and a few duds ez I allus used to carry with me. I'll open it ef you say so. But you know me, ma'am, well enough to allow that I'd take nothin' outer this yer house ez I didn't bring inter it."
"You are going away," she said, in a voice that was not audible to herself, but seemed to vaguely echo in her mental consciousness.
"I be. Ef ye don't know why, ma'am, I reckon ez you'll hear it from the same vyce ez I did. It's on'y the squar thing to say afore I go, ez it ain't my fault nor hiz'n. I was on the hill this mornin' in the ole cabin."
It seemed as if he had told her this before, so old and self-evident the fact appeared.
"I was sayin' I woz on the hill, when I heerd vyces, and lookin' out I seed you with a stranger. From wot ye know o' me and my ways, ma'am, it ain't like me to listen to thet wot ain't allowed for me to hear. And ye might hev stood thar ontel now ef I hadn't seed a chap dodgin' round behindthe trees, spyin' and list'nin'. When I seed thet man I knowed him to be a pore Mexican, whose legs I'd tended yer in the Gulch mor'n a year ago. I went up to him, and when he seed me he'd hev run. But I laid my hand onto him—and—he stayed!"
There was something so unconsciously large and fine in the slight gesture of this giant's hand as he emphasised his speech, that even through her swiftly rising pride Mrs. Conroy was awed and thrilled by it. But the next moment she found herself saying—whether aloud or not she could not tell—"If he had loved me, he would have killed him then and there."
"Wot thet man sed to me—bein' flustered and savage-like, along o' bein' choked hard to keep him from singin' out and breakin' in upon you and thet entire stranger—ain't fur me to say. Knowin' him longer than I do, I reckon you suspect 'bout wot it was. That it ez the truth I read it in your face now, ma'am, ez I reckon I might hev read it off and on in many ways and vari's styles sens we've been yer together, on'y I waz thet weak and ondecided yer."
He raised his hand to his forehead here, and with his broad palm appeared to wipe away the trouble and perplexity that had overshadowed it. He then drew a paper from his breast.
"I've drawed up a little paper yer ez I'll hand over to Lawyer Maxwell, makin' over back agin all ez I once hed o' you and all ez I ever expect to hev. For I don't agree with that Mexican thet wot was gi'n to Grace belongs to me. I allow ez she kin settle thet herself, ef she ever comes, and ef I know thet chile, ma'am, she ain't goin' tech it with a two-foot pole. We've allus bin simple folks, ma'am—though it ain't the squar thing to take me for a sample—and oneddicated and common, but thar ain't a Conroy ez lived ez was ever pinted for money, or ez evertook more outer the kompany's wages than his grub and his clothes."
It was the first time that he had ever asserted himself in her presence, and even then he did it half apologetically, yet with an unconscious dignity in his manner that became him well. He reached down as he spoke and took up his pick and his bundle, and turned to go.
"There is nothing then that you are leaving behind you?" she asked.
He raised his eyes squarely to hers.
"No," he said, simply, "nothing."
Oh, if she could have only spoken! Oh, had she but dared to tell him that he had left behind that which he could not take away, that which the mere instincts of his manhood would have stirred him to tenderness and mercy, that which would have appealed to him through its very helplessness and youth. But she dared not. That eloquence which an hour before had been ready enough to sway the feelings of the man to whom she had been faithless and did not love, failed her now. In the grasp of her first and only hopeless passion this arch-hypocrite had lost even the tact of the simplest of her sex. She did not even assume an indifference! She said nothing; when she raised her eyes again he was gone.
She was wrong. At the front door he stopped, hesitated a moment, and then returned slowly and diffidently to the room. Her heart beat rapidly, and then was still.
"Ye asked just now," he said, falteringly, "ef thar was anything ez I was leavin' behind. Thar is—ef ye'll overlook my sayin' it. When you and me allowed to leave fur furrin parts, I reckoned to leave thet housekeeper behind, and unbeknowed to ye I gin her some money and a charge. I told her thet if ever thet dear child—Sister Grace—came here, thet she should take her in and do by her ez I would, andlet me know. Et may be a heap to ask, but ef it 'tain't too much—I—I shouldn't—like—yer—to turn—thet innocent insuspectin' chile away from the house thet she might take to be mine. Ye needn't let on anythin' thet's gone—ye needn't tell her what a fool I've been, but jest take her in and send for me. Lawyer Maxwell will gin ye my address."
The sting recalled her benumbed life. She rose with a harsh dissonant laugh and said, "Your wishes shall be fulfilled—if"—she hesitated a moment—"Iam here."
But he did not hear the last sentence, and was gone.
Ramirez was not as happy in his revenge as he had anticipated. He had, in an instant of impulsive rage, fired his mine prematurely, and, as he feared, impotently. Gabriel had not visibly sickened, faded, nor fallen blighted under the exposure of his wife's deceit. It was even doubtful, as far as Ramirez could judge from his quiet reception of the revelation, whether he would even call that wife to account for it. Again, Ramirez was unpleasantly conscious that this exposure had lost some of its dignity and importance by being wrested from his as aconfessionmade under pressure or duress. Worse than all, he had lost the opportunity of previously threatening Mrs. Conroy with the disclosure, and the delicious spectacle of her discomfiture. In point of fact his revenge had been limited to the cautious cowardice of the anonymous letter-writer, who, stabbing in the dark, enjoys neither the contemplation of the agonies of his victim, nor the assertion of his own individual power.
To this torturing reflection a terrible suspicion of theSpanish translator, Perkins, was superadded. For Gabriel, Ramirez had only that contempt which every lawless lover has for the lawful husband of his mistress, while for Perkins he had that agonising doubt which every lawless lover has for every other man but the husband. In making this exposure had he not precipitated a catastrophe as fatal to himself as to the husband? Might they not both drive this woman into the arms of another man? Ramirez paced the little bedroom of the Grand Conroy Hotel, a prey to that bastard remorse of all natures like his own,—the overwhelming consciousness of opportunities for villany misspent.
Come what might he would see her again, and at once. He would let her know that he suspected her relations with this translator. He would tell her that he had written the letter—that he had forged the grant—that——
A tap at the door recalled him to himself. It opened presently to Sal, coy, bashful, and conscious. The evident agitation of this young foreigner had to Sal's matter-of-fact comprehension only one origin—a hopeless, consuming passion for herself.
"Dinner hez bin done gone an hour ago," said that arch virgin, "but I put suthin' by for ye. Ye was inquirin' last night about them Conroys. I thought I'd tell ye thet Gabril hez bin yer askin' arter Lawyer Maxwell—which he's off to Sacramento—altho' one o' Sue Markle's most intymit friends and steddeyist boarders!"
But Mr. Ramirez had no ear for Gabriel now.
"Tell to me, Mees Clark," he said, suddenly turning all his teeth on her, with gasping civility, "where is this Señor Perkins, eh?"
"Thet shiny chap—ez looks like a old turned alpacker gownd!" said Sal; "thet man ez I can't abear," she continued, with a delicately maidenly suggestion that Ramirez need fear no rivalry from that quarter. "I don't mind—anddon't keer to know. He hezn't bin yer since mornin'. I reckon he's up somewhar on Conroy's Hill. All I know ez thet he sent a message yer to git ready his volise to put aboard the Wingdam stage to-night. Are ye goin' with him?"
"No," said Ramirez, curtly.
"Axin' yer parding for the question, but seein' ez he'd got booked for two places, I tho't ez maybe ye'd got tired o' plain mounting folks and mounting ways, and waz goin' with him," and Sal threw an arch yet reproachful glance at Ramirez.
"Booked for two seats," gasped Victor; "ah! for a lady perhaps—eh, Mees Clark? for a lady?"
Sal bridled instantly at what might have seemed a suggestion of impropriety on her part. "A lady—like his imperance—indeed! I'd like to know who would demean theirselves by goin' with the like o' he! But you're not startin' out agin without your dinner, and it waitin' ye in the oven? No? La! Mr. Ramirez, ye must be in luv! I've heerd tell ez it do take away the appetite; not knowin' o' my own experense, though it's little hez passed my lips these two days, and only when tempted."
But before Sal could complete her diagnosis, Mr. Ramirez gasped a few words of hasty excuse, seized his hat and hurried from the room.
Leaving Sal a second time to mourn over the effect of her coquettish playfulness upon the sensitive Italian nature, Victor Ramirez, toiling through the heat and fiery dust shaken from the wheels of incoming teams, once more brushed his way up the long ascent of Conroy's Hill, and did not stop until he reached its summit. Here he paused to collect his scattered thoughts, to decide upon some plan of action, to control the pulse of his beating temples, quickened by excitement and the fatigue of the ascent, andto wipe the perspiration from his streaming face. He must see her at once; but how and where? To go boldly to her house would be to meet her in the presence of Gabriel, and that was no longer an object; besides, if she were with this stranger it would not probably be there. By haunting this nearest umbrage to the house he would probably intercept them on their way to the Gulch, or overhear any other conference. By lingering here he would avoid any interference from Gabriel's cabin on the right, and yet be able to detect the approach of any one from the road. The spot that he had chosen was, singularly enough, in earlier days, Gabriel's favourite haunt for the indulgence of his noontide contemplation and pipe. A great pine, the largest of its fellows, towered in a little opening to the right, as if it had drawn apart for seclusion, and obeying some mysterious attraction, Victor went toward it and seated himself on an abutting root at its base. Here a singular circumstance occurred, which at first filled him with superstitious fear. The handkerchief with which he had wiped his face—nay, his very shirt-front itself—suddenly appeared as if covered with blood. A moment later he saw that the ensanguined hue was only due to the dust through which he had plunged, blending with the perspiration that on the least exertion still started from every pore of his burning skin.
The sun was slowly sinking. The long shadow of Reservoir Ridge fell upon Conroy's Hill, and seemed to cut down the tall pine that a moment before had risen redly in the sunlight. The sounds of human labour slowly died out of the Gulch below, the far-off whistle of teamsters in the Wingdam road began to fail. One by one the red openings on the wooded hillside opposite went out, as if Nature were putting up the shutters for the day. With the gathering twilight Ramirez became more intensely alertand watchful. Treading stealthily around the lone pine tree, with shining eyes and gleaming teeth, he might have been mistaken for some hesitating animal waiting for that boldness which should come with the coming night. Suddenly he stopped, and leaning forward peered into the increasing shadow. Coming up the trail from the town was a woman. Even at that distance and by that uncertain light, Ramirez recognised the flapping hat and ungainly stride. It was Sal—perdition! Might the devil fly away with her! But she turned to the right with the trail that wound toward Gabriel's hut and the cottage beyond, and Victor breathed, or rather panted, more freely. And then a voice at his very side thrilled him to his smallest fibre, and he turned quickly. It was Mrs. Conroy, white, erect, and truculent.
"What are you doing here?" she said, with a sharp, quick utterance.
"Hush!" said Ramirez, trembling with the passion called up by the figure before him. "Hush! There is one who has just come up the trail."
"What do I care who hears me now? You have made caution unnecessary," she responded, sharply. "All the world knows us now! and so I ask you again, what areyoudoing here?"
He would have approached her nearer, but she drew back, twitching her long white skirt behind her with a single quick feminine motion of her hand, as if to save it from contamination.
Victor laughed uneasily. "You have come to keep your appointment; it is not my fault if I am late."
"I have come here because for the last half-hour I have watched you from my verandah, coursing in and out among the trees like a hound as you are! I have come to whip you off my land as I would a hound. But I havefirst a word or two to say to you as the man you have assumed to be."
Standing there with the sunset glow over her erect, graceful figure, in the pink flush of her cheek, in the cold fires of her eyes, in all the thousand nameless magnetisms of her presence, there was so much of her old power over this slave of passion, that the scorn of her words touched him only to inflame him, and he would have grovelled at her feet could he have touched the thin three fingers that she warningly waved at him.
"You wrong me, Julie, by the God of Heaven! I was wild, mad, this morning—you understand—for when I came to you I found you with another! I had reason, Mother of God! I had reason for my madness, reason enough; but I came in peace. Julie, I came in peace!"
"In peace," returned Mrs. Conroy, scornfully; "your note was a peaceful one, indeed!"
"Ah! but I knew not how else to make you hear me. I had news—news you understand, news that might save you, for I came from the woman who holds the grant. Ah! you will listen, will you not? For one moment only, Julie, hear me, and I am gone."
Mrs. Conroy, with abstracted gaze, leaned against the tree. "Go on," she said coldly.
"Ah! you will listen then!" said Victor, joyfully; "and when you have listened you shall understand! Well. First I have the fact that the lawyer for this woman is the man who deserted the Grace Conroy in the mountains—the man who was called Philip Ashley, but whose real name is Poinsett."
"Who did you say?" said Mrs. Conroy, suddenly stepping from the tree, and fining a pair of cruel eyes on Ramirez.
"Arthur Poinsett—an ex-soldier, an officer. Ah, you do not believe—I swear to God it is so!"
"What has this to do with me?" she said scornfully, resuming her position beside the pine. "Go on—or is this all?"
"No, but it is much. Look you! he is the affianced of a rich widow in the Southern Country, you understand? No one knows his past. Ah, you begin to comprehend. He does not dare to seek out the real Grace Conroy. He shall not dare to press the claim of his client. Consequently, he does nothing!"
"Is this all your news?"
"All!—ah, no. There is one more, but I dare not speak it here," he said, glancing craftily around through the slowly darkening wood.
"Then it must remain untold," returned Mrs. Conroy, coldly; "for this is our last and only interview."
"But, Julie!"
"Have you done?" she continued, in the same tone.
Whether her indifference was assumed or not, it was effective. Ramirez glanced again quickly around, and then said, sulkily, "Come nearer, and I will tell you. Ah, you doubt—you doubt? Be it so." But seeing that she did not move, he drew toward the tree, and whispered—"Bend here your head—I will whisper it."
Mrs. Conroy, evading his outstretched hand, bent her head. He whispered a few words in her ear that were inaudible a foot from the tree.
"Did you tell this to him—to Gabriel?" she asked, fixing her eyes upon him, yet without change in her frigid demeanour.
"No!—I swear to you, Julie, no! I would not have told him anything, but I was wild, crazy. And he was a brute, a great bear. He held me fast, here, so! I could not move. It was a forced confession. Yes—Mother of God—by force!"
Luckily for Victor the darkness hid the scorn that momentarily flashed in the woman's eyes at this corroboration of her husband's strength and the weakness of the man before her. "And is this all that you have to tell me?" she only said.
"All—I swear to you, Julie—all."
"Then listen, Victor Ramirez," she said, swiftly stepping from the tree into the path before him, and facing him with a white and rigid face. "Whatever was your purpose in coming here, it has been successful! You have done all that you intended, and more! The man whose mind you came to poison—the man you wished to turn against me—has gone!—has left me—left me never to return!—he never loved me! Your exposure of me was to him a godsend, for it gave him an excuse for the insults he has heaped upon me, for the treachery he has always hidden in his bosom!"
Even in the darkness she could see the self-complacent flash of Victor's teeth, could hear the quick, hurried sound of his breath as he bent his head toward her, and knew that he was eagerly reaching out his hand for hers. He would have caught her gesturing hand and covered it with kisses, but that, divining his intention, without flinching from her position, she whipped both her hands behind her.
"Well—you are satisfied! You have had your say and your way. Now I shall have mine. Do you suppose I came here to-night to congratulate you? No I came here to tell you that, insulted, outraged, and spurned as I have been by my husband, Gabriel Conroy—cast off and degraded as I stand here to-night—I love him!Love him as I never loved any man before; love him as I never shall love any man again; love him as I hate you! Love him so that I shall follow him wherever he goes, if I have to drag myself after him on my knees. His hatred is moreprecious to me than your love. Do you hear me, Victor Ramirez? That is whatIcame here to tell you. More than that—listen! The secret you have whispered to me just now, whether true or false, I shall take to him. I will help him to find his sister. I will make him love me yet if I sacrifice you, everybody, my own life, to do it! Do you hear that, Victor Ramirez, you dog!—you Spanish mongrel!—you half-breed. Oh, grit your teeth there in the darkness—I know you—grit your teeth as you did to-day when Gabriel held you squirming under his thumb! It was a fine sight, Victor—worthy of the manly Secretary who stole a dying girl's papers!—worthy of the valiant soldier who abandoned his garrison to a Yankee pedlar and his mule! Oh, I know you, sir, and have known you from the first day I made you my tool—my dupe! Go on, sir, go on—draw your knife, do! I am not afraid, coward! I shall not scream, I promise you! Come on!"
With an insane, articulate gasp of rage and shame, he sprang toward her with an uplifted knife. But at the same instant she saw a hand reach from the darkness and fall swiftly upon his shoulder, saw him turn and with an oath struggle furiously in the arms of Devarges, and without waiting to thank her deliverer, or learn the result of his interference, darted by the struggling pair and fled.
Possessed only by a single idea, she ran swiftly to her home. Here she pencilled a few hurried lines, and called one of her Chinese servants to her side.
"Take this, Ah Fe, and give it to Mr. Conroy. You will find him at Lawyer Maxwell's, or if not there he will tell you where he has gone. But you must find him. If he has left town already, you must follow him. Find him within an hour and I'll double that"—she placed a gold piece in his hand. "Go at once."
However limited might have been Ah Fe's knowledge of the English language, there was an eloquence in the woman's manner that needed no translation. He nodded his head intelligently, said, "Me shabbe you—muchee quick," caused the gold piece and the letter to instantly vanish up his sleeve, and started from the house in a brisk trot. Nor did he allow any incidental diversion to interfere with the business in hand. The noise of struggling in the underbrush on Conroy's Hill and a cry for help only extracted from Ah Fe the response, "You muchee go-to-hellee—no foolee me!" as he trotted unconcernedly by. In half an hour he had reached Lawyer Maxwell's office. But the news was not favourable. Gabriel had left an hour before, they knew not where. Ah Fe hesitated a moment, and then ran quickly down the hill to where a gang of his fellow-countrymen were working in a ditch at the roadside. Ah Fe paused, and uttered in a high recitative a series of the most extraordinary ejaculations, utterly unintelligible to the few Americans who chanced to be working near. But the effect was magical; in an instant pick and shovel were laid aside, and before the astonished miners could comprehend it the entire gang of Chinamen had dispersed, and in another instant were scattered over the several trails leading out of One Horse Gulch, except one.
That one was luckily taken by Ah Fe. In half an hour he came upon the object of his search, settled on a boulder by the wayside, smoking his evening pipe. His pick, shovel, and pack lay by his side. Ah Fe did not waste time in preliminary speech or introduction. He simply handed the missive to his master, and instantly turned his back upon him and departed. In another half hour every Chinaman was back in the ditch, working silently as if nothing had happened.
Gabriel laid aside his pipe and held the letter a moment hesitatingly between his finger and thumb. Then opening it, he at once recognised the small Italian hand with which his wife had kept his accounts and written from his dictation, and something like a faint feeling of regret overcame him as he gazed at it, without taking the meaning of the text. And then, with the hesitation, repetition, and audible utterance of an illiterate person, he slowly read the following:—
"I was wrong. You have left something behind you—a secret that as you value your happiness, you must take with you. If you come to Conroy's Hill within the next two hours you shall know it, for I shall not enter that house again, and leave there to-night for ever. I do not ask you to come for the sake of your wife, but for the sake of a woman she once personated. You will come because you love Grace, not because you care forJulie."
"I was wrong. You have left something behind you—a secret that as you value your happiness, you must take with you. If you come to Conroy's Hill within the next two hours you shall know it, for I shall not enter that house again, and leave there to-night for ever. I do not ask you to come for the sake of your wife, but for the sake of a woman she once personated. You will come because you love Grace, not because you care forJulie."
There was but one fact that Gabriel clearly grasped in this letter. That was, that it referred to some news of Grace. That was enough. He put away his pipe, rose, shouldered his pack and pick, and deliberately retraced his steps. When he reached the town, with the shame-facedness of a man who had just taken leave of it for ever, he avoided the main thoroughfare, but did this so clumsily and incautiously, after his simple fashion, that two or three of the tunnel-men noticed him ascending the hill by an inconvenient and seldom used by-path. He did not stay long, however, for in a short time—some said ten, others said fifteen minutes—he was seen again, descending rapidly and recklessly, and crossing the Gulch disappeared in the bushes, at the base of Bald Mountain.
With the going down of the sun that night, the temperature fell also, and the fierce, dry, desert heat that had filled the land for the past few days, fled away before a fierce wind which rose with the coldly rising moon, that, duringthe rest of the night, rode calmly over the twisting tops of writhing pines on Conroy's Hill, over the rattling windows of the town, and over the beaten dust of mountain roads. But even with the night the wind passed too, and the sun arose the next morning upon a hushed and silent landscape. It touched, according to its habit, first the tall top of the giant pine on Conroy's Hill, and then slid softly down its shaft until it reached the ground. And there it found Victor Ramirez, with a knife thrust through his heart, lying dead!
When Donna Dolores after the departure of Mrs. Sepulvida missed the figure of Mr. Jack Hamlin from the plain before her window, she presumed he had followed that lady and would have been surprised to have known that he was at that moment within her castle, drinkingaguardientewith no less a personage than the solemn Don Juan Salvatierra. In point of fact, with that easy audacity which distinguished him, Jack had penetrated the courtyard, gained the hospitality of Don Juan without even revealing his name and profession to that usually ceremonious gentleman, and after holding him in delicious fascination for two hours, had actually left him lamentably intoxicated, and utterly oblivious of the character of his guest. Why Jack did not follow up his advantage by seeking an interview with the mysteriousSeñorawho had touched him so deeply I cannot say, nor could he himself afterwards determine. A sudden bashfulness and timidity which he had never before experienced in his relations with the sex, tied his own tongue, while Don Juan with the garrulity which inebriety gave tohis, poured forth the gossip of the Mission and the household. It is possible also that a certain vague hopelessness, equally novel to Jack, sent him away in lower spirits than he came. It is not remarkable that Donna Dolores knew nothing of the visit of this guest, until three days afterwards, for during that time she was indisposed and did not leave her room, but itwasremarkable that on learning it she flew into a paroxysm of indignation and rage that alarmed Don Juan and frightened her attendants.
"And why wasInot told of the presence of this strangeAmericano? Am I a child, holy St. Anthony! that I am to be kept in ignorance of my duty as the hostess of the Blessed Trinity, or are you, Don Juan, my dueña? A bravecaballero, who, I surmise from your description, is the same that protected me from insult at Mass last Sunday, and he is not to 'kiss my hand?' Mother of God! And his name—you have forgotten?"
In vain Juan protested that the strangecaballerohad not requested an audience, and that a proper maidenly spirit would have prevented the Donna from appearing, unsought.
"Better that I should have been thought forward—and theseAmericanosare of different habitude, my uncle—than that the Blessed Trinity should have been misrepresented by the guzzling ofaguardiente!"
Howbeit, Mr. Hamlin had not found the climate of San Antonio conducive to that strict repose that his physician had recommended, and left it the next day with an accession of feverish energy that was new to him. He had idled away three days of excessive heat at Sacramento, and on the fourth had flown to the mountains and found himself on the morning of the first cool day at Wingdam.
"Anybody here I know?" he demanded of his faithful henchman, as Pete brought in his clothes, freshly brushed for the morning toilette.
"No, sah!"
"Nor want to, eh?" continued the cynical Jack, leisurely getting out of bed.
Pete reflected. "Dere is two o' dese yar Yeastern tourists—dem folks as is goin' round inspectin' de country—down in de parlour. Jess come over from de Big Trees. I reckon dey's some o' de same party—dem Frisco chaps—Mass Dumphy and de odders haz been unloadin' to. Dey's mighty green, and de boys along de road has been fillin' 'em up. It's jess so much water on de dried apples dat Pete Dumphy's been shovin' into 'em."
Jack smiled grimly. "I reckon you needn't bring up my breakfast, Pete, I'll go down."
The party thus obscurely referred to by Pete, were Mr. and Mrs. Raynor, who had been "doing" the Big Trees, under the intelligent guidance of a San Francisco editor who had been deputised by Mr. Dumphy to represent Californian hospitality. They were exceedingly surprised during breakfast by the entrance of a pale, handsome, languid gentleman, accurately dressed, whose infinite neatness shamed their own bedraggled appearance, and who, accompanied by his own servant, advanced and quietly took a seat opposite the tourists and their guide. Mrs. Raynor at once became conscious of some negligence in her toilette, and after a moment's embarrassment excused herself and withdrew. Mr. Raynor, impressed with the appearance of the stranger, telegraphed his curiosity by elbowing the editor, who, however, for some reason best known to himself, failed to respond. Possibly he recognised the presence of the notorious Mr. Jack Hamlin in the dark-eyed stranger, and may have had ample reasons for refraining from voicing the popular reputation of that gentleman before his face, or possibly he may have been inattentive. Howbeit, after Mr. Hamlin's entrance he pretermittedthe hymn of California praise and became reticent and absorbed in his morning paper. Mr. Hamlin waited for the lady to retire, and then, calmly ignoring the presence of any other individual, languidly drew from his pocket a revolver and bowie-knife, and placing them in an easy habitual manner on either side of his plate, glanced carelessly over the table, and then called Pete to his side.
"Tell them," said Jack, quietly, "that I want somelargepotatoes: ask them what they mean by putting those little things on the table. Tell them to be quick. Is your rifle loaded?"
"Yes, sah," said Pete, promptly, without relaxing a muscle of his serious ebony face.
"Well—take it along with you."
But here the curiosity of Mr. Raynor, who had been just commenting on the really enormous size of the potatoes, got the best of his prudence. Failing to make his companion respond to his repeated elbowings, he leaned over the table toward the languid stranger. "Excuse me, sir," he said, politely, "but did I understand you to say that you thought these potatoessmall—that there are really larger ones to be had?"
"It's the first time," returned Jack gravely, "that I ever was insulted by having awholepotato brought to me. I didn't know it was possible before. Perhaps in this part of the country the vegetables are poor. I'm a stranger to this section. I take it you are too. But because I am a stranger I don't see why I should be imposed upon."
"Ah, I see," said the mystified Raynor, "but if I might ask another question—you'll excuse me if I'm impertinent—I noticed that you just now advised your servant to take his gun into the kitchen with him; surely"——
"Pete," interrupted Mr. Hamlin, languidly, "is a good nigger. I shouldn't like to lose him! Perhaps you're right—maybeI am a little over-cautious. But when a man has lost two servants by gunshot wounds inside of three months, it makes him careful."
The perfect unconcern of the speaker, the reticence of his companion, and the dead silence of the room in which this extraordinary speech was uttered, filled the measure of Mr. Raynor's astonishment.
"Bless my soul! this is most extraordinary. I have seen nothing of this," he said, appealing in dumb show to his companion.
Mr. Hamlin followed the direction of his eyes. "Your friend is a Californian and knows what we think of any man who lies, and how most men resent such an imputation, and I reckon he'll endorse me!"
The editor muttered a hasty assent that seemed to cover Mr. Hamlin's various propositions, and then hurriedly withdrew, abandoning his charge to Mr. Hamlin. What advantage Jack took of this situation, what extravagant accounts he gravely offered of the vegetation in Lower California, of the resources of the country, of the reckless disregard of life and property, do not strictly belong to the record of this veracious chronicle. Notwithstanding all this, Mr. Raynor found Mr. Hamlin an exceedingly fascinating companion, and later, when the editor had rejoined them, and Mr. Hamlin proceeded to beg that gentleman to warn Mr. Raynor against gambling as the one seductive, besetting sin of California, alleging that it had been the ruin of both the editor and himself, the tourist was so struck with the frankness and high moral principle of his new acquaintance as to insist upon his making one of their party, an invitation that Mr. Hamlin might have accepted but for the intervention of a singular occurrence.
During the conversation he had been curiously impressed by the appearance of a stranger who had entered andmodestly and diffidently taken a seat near the door. To Mr. Hamlin this modesty and diffidence appeared so curiously at variance with his superb physique, and the exceptional strength and power shown in every muscle of his body, that with his usual audacity he felt inclined to go forward and inquire "what was his little game?" That he was lying in wait to be "picked up"—the reader must really excuse me if I continue to borrow Mr. Hamlin's expressive vernacular—that his diffidence and shyness was a deceit and intended to entrap the unwary, he felt satisfied, and was proportionably thrilled with a sense of admiration for him. That a rational human being who held such a hand should be content with a smallante, without "raising the other players,"—but I beg the fastidious reader's forgiveness.
He was dressed in the ordinary miner's garb of the Southern mines, perhaps a little more cleanly than the average miner by reason of his taste, certainly more picturesque by reason of his statuesque shapeliness. He wore a pair of white duck trousers, a jumper or loose blouse of the same material, with a low-folded sailor's collar and sailor-knotted neckerchief, which displayed, with an unconsciousness quite characteristic of the man, the full, muscular column of his sunburnt throat, except where it was hidden by a full, tawny beard. His long, sandy curls fell naturally and equally on either side of the centre of his low, broad forehead. His fair complexion, although greatly tanned by exposure, seemed to have faded lately as by sickness or great mental distress, a theory that had some confirmation in the fact that he ate but little. His eyes were downcast, or, when raised, were so shy as to avoid critical examination. Nevertheless his mere superficial exterior was so striking as to attract the admiration of others besides Mr. Hamlin; to excite the enthusiastic attention of Mr.Raynor, and to enable the editor to offer him as a fair type of the mining population. Embarrassed at last by a scrutiny that asserted itself even through his habitual unconsciousness and pre-occupation, the subject of this criticism arose and returned to the hotel verandah, where his pack and mining implements were lying. Mr. Hamlin, who for the last few days had been in a rather exceptional mood, for some occult reason which he could not explain, felt like respecting the stranger's reserve, and quietly lounged into the billiard-room to wait for the coming of the stage-coach. As soon as his back was turned the editor took occasion to offer Mr. Raynor his own estimate of Mr. Hamlin's character and reputation, to correct his misstatements regarding Californian resources and social habits, and to restore Mr. Raynor's possibly shaken faith in California as a country especially adapted to the secure investment of capital.
"As to the insecurity of life," said the editor, indignantly, "it is as safe here as in New York or Boston. We admit that in the early days the country was cursed by too many adventurers of the type of this very gambler Hamlin, but I will venture to say that you will require no better refutation of these calumnies than this very miner whom you admired. He, sir, is a type of our mining population; strong, manly, honest, unassuming, and perfectly gentle and retiring. We are proud, sir, we admit, of such men—eh? Oh, that's nothing—only the arrival of the up-stage!"
It certainly was something more. A momentarily increasing crowd of breathless men were gathered on the verandah before the window and were peering anxiously over each other's head toward a central group, among which towered the tall figure of the very miner of whom they had been speaking. More than that, there was a certain undefined, restless terror in the air, as when theintense conscious passion or suffering of one or two men communicates itself vaguely without speech, sometimes even without visible sign to others. And then Yuba Bill, the driver of the Wingdam coach, strode out from the crowd into the bar-room, drawing from his hands with an evident effort his immense buckskin gloves.
"What's the row, Bill?" said half-a-dozen voices.
"Nothin'," said Bill, gruffly; "only the Sheriff of Calaveras ez kem down with us hez nabbed his man jest in his very tracks."
"When, Bill?"
"Right yer—on this very verandy—furst man he seed!"
"What for?" "Who?" "What hed he bin doin'?" "Who is it?" "What's up?" persisted the chorus.
"Killed a man up at One Horse Gulch, last night," said Bill, grasping the decanter which the attentive bar-keeper had, without previous request, placed before him.
"Who did he kill, Bill?"
"A little Mexican from 'Frisco by the name o' Ramirez."
"What's the man's name that killed him—the man that you took?"
The voice was Jack Hamlin's.
Yuba Bill instantly turned, put down his glass, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and then deliberately held out his great hand with an exhaustive grin. "Dern my skin, ole man, if it ain't you! And how's things, eh? Yer lookin' a little white in the gills, but peart and sassy, ez usual. Heerd you was kinder off colour, down in Sacramento lass week. And it's you, ole fell, and jest in time! Bar-keep—hist that pizen over to Jack. Here to ye agin, ole man! But I'm glad to see ye!"
The crowd hung breathless over the two men—awestruck and respectful. It was a meeting of the gods—JackHamlin and Yuba Bill. None dare speak. Hamlin broke the silence at last, and put down his glass.
"What," he asked, lazily, yet with a slight colour on his cheek, "did you say was the name of the chap that fetched that little Mexican?"
"Gabriel Conroy," said Bill.
The capture had been effected quietly. To the evident astonishment of his captor, Gabriel had offered no resistance, but had yielded himself up with a certain composed willingness, as if it were only the preliminary step to the quicker solution of a problem that was sure to be solved. It was observed, however, that he showed a degree of caution that was new to him—asking to see the warrant, the particulars of the discovery of the body, and utterly withholding that voluble explanation or apology which all who knew his character confidently expected him to give, whether guilty or innocent—a caution which, accepted by them as simply the low cunning of the criminal, told against him. He submitted quietly to a search that, however, disclosed no concealed weapon or anything of import. But when a pair of handcuffs were shown him, he changed colour, and those that were nearest to him saw that he breathed hurriedly, and hesitated in the first words of some protest that rose to his lips. The sheriff, a man of known intrepidity, who had the rapid and clear intuition that comes with courageous self-possession noticed it also, and quietly put the handcuffs back in his pocket.
"I reckon there's no use for 'em here; efyou'rewillin' to take the risks,Iam."
The eyes of the two men met, and Gabriel thanked him. In that look he recognised and accepted the fact that on a motion to escape he would be instantly killed.
They were to return with the next stage, and in the interval Gabriel was placed in an upper room, and securely guarded. Here, falling into his old apologetic manner, he asked permission to smoke a pipe, which was at once granted by his good-humoured guard, and then threw himself at full length upon the bed. The rising wind rattled the windows noisily, and entering tossed the smoke-wreaths that rose from his pipe in fitful waves about the room. The guard, who was much more embarrassed than his charge, was relieved of an ineffectual attempt to carry on a conversation suitable to the occasion by Gabriel's simple directness—
"You needn't put yourself out to pass the time o' day with me," he said, gently, "that bein' extry to your reg'lar work. Ef you hev any friends ez you'd like to talk to in your own line, invite 'em in, and don't mind me."
But here the guard's embarrassment was further relieved by the entrance of Joe Hall, the sheriff.
"There's a gentleman here to speak with you," he said to Gabriel, "he can stay until we're ready to go." Turning to the guard, he added, "You can take a chair outside the door in the hall. It's all right, it's the prisoner's counsel."
At the word Gabriel looked up. Following the sheriff, Lawyer Maxwell entered the room. He approached Gabriel, and extended with grave cordiality a hand that had apparently wiped from his mouth the last trace of mirthfulness at the door.
"I did not expect to see you again so soon, Gabriel, but as quickly as the news reached me, and I heard that our friend Hall had a warrant for you, I started after him. Iwould have got here before him, but my horse gave out." He paused, and looked steadily at Gabriel. "Well!"
Gabriel looked at him in return, but did not speak.
"I supposed you would need professional aid," he went on, with a slight hesitation, "perhapsmine—knowing that I was aware of some of the circumstances that preceded this affair."
"Wot circumstances?" asked Gabriel, with the sudden look of cunning that had before prejudiced his captors.
"For Heaven's sake, Gabriel," said Maxwell, rising with a gesture of impatience, "don't let us repeat the blunder of our first interview.Thisis a serious matter;may bevery serious to you. Think a moment. Yesterday you sought my professional aid to deed to your wife all your property, telling me that you were going away never to return to One Horse Gulch. I do not ask you nowwhyyou did it. I only want you to reflect that I am just now the only man who knows that circumstance—a circumstance that I can tell you as a lawyer is somewhat important in the light of the crime that you are now charged with."
Maxwell waited for Gabriel to speak, wiping away as he waited the usual smile that lingered around his lips. But Gabriel said nothing.
"Gabriel Conroy," said Lawyer Maxwell, suddenly dropping into the vernacular of One Horse Gulch, "are you a fool?"
"Thet's so," said Gabriel, with the simplicity of a man admitting a self-evident proposition, "Thet's so; I reckon I are."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Maxwell, again swiftly turning upon him, "if you were!" He stopped, as if ashamed of his abruptness, and said more quietly and persuasively, "Come, Gabriel, if you won't confess tome, I suppose that I must toyou. Six months ago I thought you an impostor.Six months ago the woman who is now your wife charged you with being an impostor; with assuming a name and right that did not belong to you; in plain English, said that you had set yourself up as Gabriel Conroy, and that she, who was Grace Conroy, the sister of the real Gabriel, knew that you lied. She substantiated all this by proofs; hang it," continued Maxwell, appealing in dumb show to the walls, "there isn't a lawyer living as wouldn't have said it was a good case, and been ready to push it in any court. Under these circumstances I sought you, and you remember how. You know the result of that interview. I can tell you now that if there ever was a man who palpably confessed to guilt when he was innocent,youwere that man. Well, after your conduct there was explained by Olly, without, however, damaging the original evidence against you, or prejudicing her rights, this woman came to me and said that she had discovered that you were the man who had saved her life at the risk of your own, and that for the present she could not, in delicacy, push her claim. When afterwards she told me that this gratitude had—well, ripened into something more serious, and that she had engaged herself to marry you, and so condone your offence, why, it was woman-like and natural, and I suspected nothing. I believed her story—believed she had a case. Yes, sir; the last six months I have looked upon you as the creature of that woman's foolish magnanimity. I could see that she was soft on you, and believed that you had fooled her. I did, hang me! There, if you confess to being a fool, I do to having been an infernal sight bigger one."
He stopped, erased the mirthful past with his hand, and went on—
"I began to suspect something when you came to me yesterday with this story of your going away, and this disposalof your property. When I heard of the murder of this stranger—one of your wife's witnesses to her claim—near your house, your own flight, and the sudden disappearance of your wife, my suspicions were strengthened. And when I read this note from your wife, delivered to you last night by one of her servants, and picked up early this morning near the body, my suspicions were confirmed."
As he finished he took from his pocket a folded paper and handed it to Gabriel. He received it mechanically, and opened it. It was his wife's note of the preceding night. He took out his knife, still holding the letter, and with its blade began stirring the bowl of his pipe. Then after a pause, he asked cautiously—
"And how didyecome by this yer?"
"It was found by Sal Clark, brought to Mrs. Markle, and given to me. Its existence is known only to three people, and they are your friends."
There was another pause, in which Gabriel deliberately stirred the contents of his pipe. Mr. Maxwell examined him curiously.
"Well," he said, at last, "what is your defence?"
Gabriel sat up on the bed and rapped the bowl of his pipe against the bedpost to loosen some refractory encrustation.
"Wot," he asked, gravely, "would beyouridee of a good defence? Axin ye ez a lawyer having experin's in them things, and reck'nin' to pay ez high ez eny man fo' the same, wot wouldyoucall a good defence?" And he gravely laid himself down again in an attitude of respectful attention.
"We hope to prove," said Maxwell, really smiling, "that when you left your house and came to my office the murdered man was alive and at his hotel; that he went over to the hill long before you did; thatyoudid not return until the evening—afterthe murder was committed, as the 'secret'mentioned in your wife's mysterious note evidently shows. That for some reason or other it was her design to place you in a suspicious attitude. That the note shows that she refers to some fact of which she was cognisant and not yourself."
"Suthin' that she knowed, and I didn't get to hear," translated Gabriel, quietly.
"Exactly! Now you see the importance of that note."
Gabriel did not immediately reply, but slowly lifted his huge frame from the bed, walked to the open window, still holding the paper in his hands, deliberately tore it into the minutest shreds before the lawyer could interfere, and then threw it from the window.
"Thet paper don't 'mount ter beans, no how!" he said, quietly but explanatively as he returned to the bed.
It was Lawyer Maxwell's turn to become dumb. In his astonished abstraction he forgot to wipe his mouth, and gazed at Gabriel with his nervous smile as if his client had just perpetrated a practical joke of the first magnitude.
"Ef it's the same to you, I'll just gin ye me idee of a de-fence," said Gabriel, apologetically, relighting his pipe, "allowin' o' course that you knows best, and askin' no deduckshun from your charges for advice. Well, you jess stands up afore the jedge, and you slings 'em a yarn suthin' like this: 'Yer's me, for instans,' you sez, sez you, 'ez gambols—gambols very deep—jess fights the tiger, wharever and whenever found, the same bein' onbeknownst ter folks gin'rally, and spechil te my wife, ez was July. Yer's me been gambolin' desprit with this yer man, Victyor Ramyirez, and gets lifted bad! and we hez, so to speak, a differculty about some pints in the game. I allows one thing, he allows another, and this yer man gives me the lie and I stabs him!' Stop—hole your hosses!" interjected Gabriel, suddenly, "thet looks bad, don't it? he bein' a small man, a littlefeller 'bout your size. No! Well, this yer's the way we puts it up: 'Seving men—seving—friends o' his, comes at me, permiskis like, one down, and nex' comes on, and we hez it mighty lively thar fur an hour, until me, bein' in a tight place, hez to use a knife and cuts this yer man bad!' Thar, that's 'bout the thing! Now ez to my runnin' away, you sez, sez you, ez how I disremembers owin' to the 'citement that I hez a 'pintent in Sacramento the very nex' day, and waltzes down yer to keep it, in a hurry. Ef they want to know whar July ez, you sez she gits wild on my not comin' home, and starts that very night arter me. Thar, thet's 'bout my idee—puttin' it o' course in your own shape, and slingin' in them bits o' po'try and garbage, and kinder sassin' the plaintiff's counsel, ez you know goes down afore a jedge and jury."
Maxwell rose hopelessly,—"Then, if I understand you, you intend to admit"——
"Thet I done it? In course!" replied Gabriel; "but," he added, with a cunning twinkle in his eye, "justifybly—justifyble homyside, ye mind!—bein' in fear o' my life from seving men. In course," he added, hurriedly, "I can't identify them seving strangers in the dark, so thar's no harm or suspicion goin' to be done enny o' the boys in the Gulch."
Maxwell walked gravely to the window, and stood looking out without speaking. Suddenly he turned upon Gabriel with a brighter face and more earnest manner. "Where's Olly?"
Gabriel's face fell. He hesitated a moment. "I was on my way to the school in Sacramento whar she iz."
"You must send for her—I must see her at once!"
Gabriel laid his powerful hand on the lawyer's shoulder. "She izn't—that chile—to knows anythin' o' this. You hear?" he said, in a voice that began in tones of deprecation, and ended in a note of stern warning.
"How are you to keep it from her?" said Maxwell, as determinedly. "In less than twenty-four hours every newspaper in the state will have it—with their own version and comments. No; you must see her. She must hear it first from your own lips."
"But—I—can't—see—her just now," said Gabriel, with a voice that for the first time during their interview faltered in its accents.
"Nor need you," responded the lawyer, quickly. "Trust that to me.Iwill see her, and you shall afterwards. You need not fear I will prejudice your case. Give me the address! Quick!" he added, as the sound of footsteps and voices approaching the room, came from the hall. Gabriel did as he requested. "Now one word," he continued hurriedly, as the footsteps halted at the door.
"Yes," said Gabriel.
"As you value your life and Olly's happiness, hold your tongue."
Gabriel nodded with cunning comprehension. The door opened to Mr. Jack Hamlin, diabolically mischievous, self-confident and audacious! With a familiar nod to Maxwell he stepped quickly before Gabriel and extended his hand. Simply, yet conscious of obeying some vague magnetic influence, Gabriel reached out his own hand and took Jack's white, nervous fingers in his own calm, massive grasp.
"Glad to see you, pard!" said that gentleman, showing his white teeth and reaching up to clap his disengaged hand on Gabriel's shoulder. "Glad to see you, old boy,—even if you have cut in and taken a job out of my hands that I was rather lyin' by to do myself. Sooner or later I'd have fetched that Mexican—if you hadn't dropped into my seat and taken up my hand. Oh, it's all right, Mack!" he said, intercepting the quick look of caution that Maxwell darted at his client, "don't do that. We're all friends here.If you want me to testify, I'll take my oath that there hasn't been a day this six months that that infernal hound, Ramirez, wasn't jest pantin' to be planted in his tracks! I can hardly believe I ain't done it myself." He stopped, partly to enjoy the palpable uneasiness of Maxwell, and perhaps in some admiration of Gabriel's physique.
Maxwell quickly seized this point of vantage. "You can do your friend here a very great service," he said to Jack, lowering his voice as he spoke.
Jack laughed. "No, Mack, it won't do! They wouldn't believe me! There ain't judge or jury you could play that on!"
"You don't understand me," said Maxwell, laughing a little awkwardly. "I didn't mean that, Jack. This man was going to Sacramento to see his little sister"——
"Go on," said Jack, with much gravity; "of course he was. I know that. 'Dear brother, dear brother, come home with me now!' Certainly. So'm I. Goin' to see an innocent little thing 'bout seventeen years old, blue eyes and curly hair! Always go there once a week. Says he must come! Says she'll"——he stopped in the full tide of his irony, for, looking up, he caught a glimpse of Gabriel's simple, troubled face and sadly reproachful eyes. "Look here," said Jack, turning savagely on Maxwell, "what are you talking about anyway?"
"I mean what I say," returned Maxwell, quickly. "He was going to see his sister—a mere child. Of course he can't go now. But he must see her—if she can be brought to him. Can you—willyou do it?"
Jack cast another swift glance at Gabriel. "Count me in," he said, promptly; "when shall I go?"
"Now—at once."
"All right. Where shall I fetch her to?"
"One Horse Gulch."
"The game's made," said Jack, sententiously. "She'll be there by sundown to-morrow." He was off like a flash, but as swiftly returned, and called Maxwell to the door. "Look here," he said, in a whisper, "p'r'aps it would be as well if the sheriff didn't know I washisfriend," he went on, indicating Gabriel with a toss of his head and a wink of his black eye, "because, you see, Joe Hall and I ain't friends. We had a little difficulty, and some shootin' and foolishness down at Marysville last year. Joe's a good, square man, but he ain't above prejudice, and it might go against our man."
Maxwell nodded, and Jack once more darted off.
But his colour was so high, and his exaltation so excessive, that when he reached his room his faithful Pete looked at him in undisguised alarm. "Bress us—it tain't no whisky, Mars Jack, arter all de doctors tole you?" he said, clasping his hands in dismay.
The bare suggestion was enough for Jack in his present hilarious humour. He instantly hiccuped, lapsed wildly over against Pete with artfully simulated alcoholic weakness, tumbled him on the floor, and grasping his white, woolly head, waved over it a boot-jack, and frantically demanded "another bottle." Then he laughed; as suddenly got up with the greatest gravity and a complete change in his demeanour, and wanted to know, severely, what he, Pete, meant by lying there on the floor in a state of beastly intoxication?
"Bress me! Mars Jack, but yedidfrighten me. I jiss allowed dem tourists downstairs had been gettin' ye tight."
"You did—you degraded old ruffian! If you'd been reading Volney's 'Ruins,' or reflectin' on some of those moral maxims that I'm just wastin' my time and health unloading to you, instead of making me the subject of your inebriated reveries, you wouldn't get picked up sooften. Pack my valise, and chuck it into some horse and buggy—no matter whose. Be quick."
"Is we gwine to Sacramento, Mars Jack?"
"We?No, sir.I'mgoing—alone! What I'm doing now, sir, is only the result or calm reflection—of lying awake nights taking points and jest spottin' the whole situation. And I'm convinced, Peter, that I can stay with you no longer. You've been hackin' the keen edge of my finer feelin's; playin' it very low down on my moral and religious nature, generally ringin' in a cold deck on my spiritual condition for the last five years. You've jest cut up thet rough with my higher emotions thet there ain't enough left to chip in on a ten-cent ante. Five years ago," continued Jack, coolly, brushing his curls before the glass, "I fell into your hands a guileless, simple youth, in the first flush of manhood, knowin' no points, easily picked up on my sensibilities, and travellin', so to speak, on my shape! And where am I now? Echo answers 'where?' and passes for a euchre! No, Peter, I leave you to-night. Wretched misleader of youth, gummy old man with the strawberry eyebrows, farewell!"
Evidently this style of exordium was no novelty to Pete, for without apparently paying the least attention to it, he went on surlily packing his master's valise. When he had finished he looked up at Mr. Hamlin, who was humming, in a heart-broken way, "Yes, we must part," varied by occasional glances of exaggerated reproach at Pete, and said, as he shouldered the valise—
"Dis yer ain't no woman foolishness, Mars Jack, like down at dat yar Mission?"
"Your suggestion, Peter," returned Jack, with dignity, "emanates from a moral sentiment debased by Love Feasts and Camp Meetings, and an intellect weakened by Rum and Gum and the contact of Lager Beer Jerkers. Itis worthy of a short-card sharp and a keno flopper, which I have, I regret to say, long suspected you to be. Farewell! You will stay here until I come back. If I don't come back by the day after to-morrow, come to One Horse Gulch. Pay the bill, and don't knock down for yourself more than seventy-five per cent. Remember I am getting old and feeble. You are yet young, with a brilliant future before you. Git."
He tossed a handful of gold on the bed, adjusted his hat carefully over his curls, and strode from the room. In the lower hall he stopped long enough to take aside Mr. Raynor, and with an appearance of the greatest conscientiousness, to correct an error of two feet in the measurements he had given him that morning of an enormous pine tree in whose prostrate trunk he, Mr. Hamlin, had once found a peaceful, happy tribe of one hundred Indians living. Then lifting his hat with marked politeness to Mrs. Raynor, and totally ignoring the presence of Mr. Raynor's mentor and companion, he leaped lightly into the buggy and drove away.
"An entertaining fellow," said Mr. Raynor, glancing after the cloud of dust that flew from the untarrying wheels of Mr. Hamlin's chariot.
"And so gentlemanly," smiled Mrs. Raynor.
But the journalistic conservator of the public morals of California, in and for the city and county of San Francisco, looked grave, and deprecated even that feeble praise of the departed. "His class are a curse to the country. They hold the law in contempt; they retard by the example of their extravagance the virtues of economy and thrift; they are consumers and not producers; they bring the fair fame of this land into question by those who foolishly take them for a type of the people."
"But, dear me," said Mrs. Raynor, pouting, "whereyour gamblers and bad men are so fascinating, and your honest miners are so dreadfully murderous, and kill people, and then sit down to breakfast with you as if nothing had happened, what are you going to do?"
The journalist did not immediately reply. In the course of some eloquent remarks, as unexceptionable in morality as in diction, which I regret I have not space to reproduce here, he, however, intimated that there was still an Unfettered Press, which "scintillated" and "shone" and "lashed" and "stung" and "exposed" and "tore away the veil," and became at various times a Palladium and a Watchtower, and did and was a great many other remarkable things peculiar to an Unfettered Press in a pioneer community, when untrammelled by the enervating conditions of an effete civilisation.
"And what have they done with the murderer?" asked Mr. Raynor, repressing a slight yawn.
"Taken him back to One Horse Gulch half an hour ago. I reckon he'd as lief stayed here," said a bystander. "From the way things are pintin', it looks as if it might be putty lively for him up thar!"
"What do you mean?" asked Raynor, curiously.
"Well, two or three of them old Vigilantes from Angel's passed yer a minit ago with their rifles, goin' up that way," returned the man, lazily. "Mayn't be nothing in it, but it looks mighty like"——
"Like what?" asked Mr. Raynor, a little nervously.
"Lynchin'!" said the man.
The cool weather of the morning following Mr. Dumphy's momentous interview with Colonel Starbottle, contributed somewhat to restore the former gentleman's tranquillity, which had been considerably disturbed. He had, moreover, a vague recollection of having invited Colonel Starbottle to visit him socially, and a nervous dread of meeting this man, whose audacity was equal to his own, in the company of others. Braced, however, by the tonic of the clear exhilarating air, and sustained by the presence of his clerks and the respectful homage of his business associates, he despatched a note to Arthur Poinsett requesting an interview. Punctually at the hour named that gentleman presented himself, and was languidly surprised when Mr. Dumphy called his clerk and gave positive orders that their interview was not to be disturbed and to refuse admittance to all other visitors. And then Mr. Dumphy, in a peremptory, practical statement which his business habits and temperament had brought to a perfection that Arthur could not help admiring, presented the details of his interview with Colonel Starbottle. "Now, I want you to help me. I have sent to you for that business purpose. You understand, this is not a matter for the Bank's regular counsel. Now what do you propose?"
"First, let me ask you, do you believe your wife is living?"
"No," said Dumphy, promptly, "but of course I don't know."
"Then let me relieve your mind at once, and tell you that she is not."
"You know this to be a fact?" asked Dumphy.
"I do. The body supposed to be Grace Conroy's and so identified, was your wife's. I recognised it at once, knowing Grace Conroy to have been absent at the culmination of the tragedy."
"And why did you not correct the mistake?"
"That ismybusiness," said Arthur, haughtily, "and I believe I have been invited here to attend toyours. Your wife is dead."
"Then," said Mr. Dumphy, rising with a brisk business air, "if you are willing to testify to that fact, I reckon there is nothing more to be done."
Arthur did not rise, but sat watching Mr. Dumphy with an unmoved face. After a moment Mr. Dumphy sat down again, and looked aggressively but nervously at Arthur. "Well," he said, at last.
"Is that all?" asked Arthur, quietly; "are you willing to go on and establish the fact?"
"Don't know what you mean!" said Dumphy, with an attempted frankness which failed signally.
"One moment, Mr. Dumphy. You are a shrewd business man. Now do you suppose the person—whoever he or she may be, who has sent Colonel Starbottle to you, relies alone upon your inability to legally prove your wife's death? May they not calculate somewhat on yourindispositionto prove it legally; on the theory that you'd rather not open the case, for instance?"
Mr. Dumphy hesitated a moment and bit his lip. "Of course," he said, shortly, "there'd be some talk among my enemies about my deserting my wife"——
"And child," suggested Arthur.
"And child," repeated Dumphy, savagely, "and notcoming back again—there'd be suthin' in the papers about it, unless I paid 'em, but what's that!—deserting one's wife isn't such a new thing in California."
"That is so," said Arthur, with a sarcasm that was none the less sincere because he felt its applicability to himself.
"But we're not getting on," said Mr. Dumphy, impatiently. "What's to be done? That's what I've sent to you for."
"Now that we know it is not yourwife—we must find outwhoit is that stands back of Colonel Starbottle. It is evidently some one who knows, at least, as much as we do of the facts; we are lucky if they know no more. Can you think of any one? Who are the survivors? Let's see; you, myself, possibly Grace"——
"It couldn't be Grace Conroy, really alive!" interrupted Dumphy hastily.
"No," said Arthur, quietly, "you remembershewas not present at the time."
"Gabriel?"
"I hardly think so. Besides, he is a friend of yours."