I venture to quote this extract not so much for its suggestion of a still later theory in the last sentence, as for its poetical elegance, and as an offset to the ruder record of theOne Horse Gulch Banner, which, I grieve to say, was as follows:—
"Sal was no slouch of a witness. Rigged out in ten yards of Briggs' best black glazed muslin, and with a lot of black mosquito netting round her head, she pranced round the stand like a skittish hearse horse in fly-time. If Sal calculates to go into mourning for every man she has to sling hash to, we'd recommend her to buy up Briggs' stock and take one of Pat Hoolan's carriages for the season. There is a strong feeling among men whose heads are level, that this Minstrel Variety Performance is a bluff of theMessengerto keep from the public the real motives of the murderer, which it is pretty generally believed concerns some folks a little higher-toned than Sal. We mention no names but we would like to know what the Editor of theMessengerwas doing inthe counting-room of one of Pete Dumphy's emissaries at ten o'clock last evening. Looking up his bank account, eh? What's the size of the figures to-day? You hear us!"
"Sal was no slouch of a witness. Rigged out in ten yards of Briggs' best black glazed muslin, and with a lot of black mosquito netting round her head, she pranced round the stand like a skittish hearse horse in fly-time. If Sal calculates to go into mourning for every man she has to sling hash to, we'd recommend her to buy up Briggs' stock and take one of Pat Hoolan's carriages for the season. There is a strong feeling among men whose heads are level, that this Minstrel Variety Performance is a bluff of theMessengerto keep from the public the real motives of the murderer, which it is pretty generally believed concerns some folks a little higher-toned than Sal. We mention no names but we would like to know what the Editor of theMessengerwas doing inthe counting-room of one of Pete Dumphy's emissaries at ten o'clock last evening. Looking up his bank account, eh? What's the size of the figures to-day? You hear us!"
At one o'clock that morning the Editor of theMessengerfired at the Editor of theBannerand missed him. At half-past one two men were wounded by pistol shots in a difficulty at Briggs' warehouse—cause not stated. At nine o'clock half a dozen men lounged down the main street and ascended the upper loft of Briggs' warehouse. In ten or fifteen minutes a dozen more from different saloons in the town lounged as indifferently in the direction of Briggs', until at half-past nine the assemblage in the loft numbered fifty men. During this interval a smaller party had gathered, apparently as accidentally and indefinitely as to purpose, on the steps of the little two-story brick Court House in which the prisoner was confined. At ten o'clock a horse was furiously ridden into town, and dropped exhausted at the outskirts. A few moments later a man hurriedly crossed the plaza toward the Court House. It was Mr. Jack Hamlin. But the Three Voices had preceded him, and from the steps of the Court House were already uttering the popular mandate.
It was addressed to a single man. A man who, deserted by hisposse, and abandoned by his friends, had for the last twelve hours sat beside his charge, tireless, watchful, defiant, and resolute—Joe Hall, the Sheriff of Calaveras! He had been waiting for this summons, behind barricaded doors, with pistols in his belt, and no hope in his heart; a man of limited ideas and restricted resources, constant only to one intent—that of dying behind those bars, in defence of that legal trust, which his office and an extra fifty votes at the election only two months before had put into his hands. It had perplexed him for a moment that he heard the voices of some of these voters below him clamouring against him, but above their feebler pipe always rose another mandatorysentence, "We command you to take and safely keep the body of Gabriel Conroy," and being a simple man the recollection of the quaint phraseology strengthened him and cleared his mind. Ah me, I fear he had none of the external marks of a hero; as I remember him he was small, indistinctive, and fidgety, without the repose of strength; a man who at that extreme moment chewed tobacco and spat vigorously on the floor; who tweaked the ends of his scanty beard, paced the floor, and tried the locks of his pistols. Presently he stopped before Gabriel and said almost fiercely—
"You hear that—they are coming!"
Gabriel nodded. Two hours before, when the contemplated attack of the Vigilance Committee had been revealed to him, he had written a few lines to Lawyer Maxwell, which he entrusted to the sheriff. He had then relapsed into his usual tranquillity—serious, simple, and when he had occasion to speak, diffident and apologetic.
"Are you going to help me?" continued Hall.
"In course," said Gabriel, in quiet surprise, "efyousay so. But don't ye do nowt ez would be gettin' yourself into troubil along o' me. I ain't worth it. Maybe it 'ud be jest as square ef ye handed me over to them chaps out yer—allowin' I was a heep o' troubil to you—and reckonin' you'd about hedyour sheero' the keer o' me, and kinder passin' me round. But ef youdofeel obligated to take keer o' me, ez hevin' promised the jedges and jury" (it is almost impossible to convey the gentle deprecatoriness of Gabriel's voice and accent at this juncture), "why," he added, "I'm with ye. I'm thar! You understand me!"
He rose slowly, and with quiet but powerfully significant deliberation placed the chair he had been sitting on back against the wall. The tone and act satisfied the sheriff. The seventy-four gunship, Gabriel Conroy, was clearing the decks for action.
There was an ominous lull in the outcries below, and then the solitary lifting up of a single voice, the Potential Voice of the night before! The sheriff walked to a window in the hall and opened it. The besieger and besieged measured each other with a look. Then came the Homeric chaff:—
"Git out o' that, Joe Hall, and run home to your mother. She's getting oneasy about ye!"
"The h—ll you say!" responded Hall, promptly, "and the old woman in such a hurry she had to borry Al Barker's hat and breeches to come here! Run home, old gal, and don't parse yourself off for a man agin!"
"This ain't no bluff, Joe Hall! Why don't ye call? Yer's fifty men; the returns are agin ye, and two precincts yet to hear from." (This was a double thrust, at Hall's former career as a gambler, and the closeness of his late election vote.)
"All right! send 'em up by express—mark 'em C. O. D." (The previous speaker was the expressman.)
"Blank you! Git!"
"Blank you! Come on!"
Here there was a rush at the door, the accidental discharge of a pistol, and the window was slammed down. Words ceased, deeds began.
A few hours before, Hall had removed his prisoner from the uncertain tenure and accessible position of the cells below to the open court-room of the second floor, inaccessible by windows, and lit by a skylight in the roof, above the reach of the crowd, whose massive doors were barricaded by benches and desks. A smaller door at the side, easily secured, was left open for reconnoitring. The approach to the court-room was by a narrow stairway, halfway down whose length Gabriel had thrust the long court-room table as a barricade to the besiegers. The lower outer door, secured by the sheriff after the desertionof his underlings, soon began to show signs of weakening under the vigorous battery from without. From the landing the two men watched it eagerly. As it slowly yielded, the sheriff drew back toward the side door and beckoned Gabriel to follow; but with a hasty sign Gabriel suddenly sprang forward and dropped beneath the table as the door with a crash fell inward, beaten from its hinges. There was a rush of trampling feet to the stairway, a cry of baffled rage over the impeding table, a sudden scramble up and upon it, and then, as if on its own volition, the long table suddenly reared itself on end, and staggering a moment toppled backward with its clinging human burden on the heads of the thronging mass below. There was a cry, a sudden stampede of the Philistines to the street, and Samson, rising to his feet, slowly walked to the side door, and re-entered the court-room. But at the same instant an agile besieger who, unnoticed, had crossed the Rubicon, darted from his concealment, and dashed by Gabriel into the room. There was a shout from the sheriff, the door was closed hastily, a shot, and the intruder fell. But the next moment he staggered to his knees, with outstretched hands, "Hold up! I'm yer to help ye!"
It was Jack Hamlin! haggard, dusty, grimy; his gay feathers bedraggled, his tall hat battered, his spotless shirt torn open at the throat, his eyes and cheeks burning with fever, the blood dripping from the bullet wound in his leg, but still Jack Hamlin, strong and audacious. By a common instinct both men dropped their weapons, ran and lifted him in their arms.
"There—shove that chair under me! that'll do," said Hamlin, coolly, "We're even now, Joe Hall; that shot wiped out old scores, even if it has crippled me, and lost ye my valuable aid. Dry up! and listen to me, and then leave me here! there's but one way of escape. It's upthere!" (he pointed to the skylight) "the rear wall hangs over the Wingdam ditch and gully. Once on the roof you can drop over with this rope, which you must unwind from my body, for I'm d—d if I can do it myself. Can you reach the skylight?"
"There's a step-ladder from the gallery," said the sheriff, joyously, "but won't they see us, and be prepared?"
"Before they can reach the gully by going round, you'll be half a mile away in the woods. But what in blank are you waiting for? Go! You can hold on here for ten minutes more if they attack the same point; but if they think of the skylight, and fetch ladders, you're gone in! Go!"
There was another rush on the staircase without; the surging of an immense wave against the heavy folding doors, the blows of pick and crowbar, the gradual yielding of the barricade a few inches, and the splintering of benches by a few pistol shots fired through the springing crevices of the doors. And yet the sheriff hesitated. Suddenly Gabriel stooped down, lifted the wounded man to his shoulder as if he had been an infant, and beckoning to the sheriff started for the gallery. But he had not taken two steps before he staggered and lapsed heavily against Hall, who, in his turn, stopped and clutched the railing. At the same moment the thunder of the besiegers seemed to increase; not only the door, but the windows rattled, the heavy chandelier fell with a crash, carrying a part of the plaster and the elaborate cornice with it, a shower of bricks fell through the skylight, and a cry, quite distinct from anything heard before, rose from without. There was a pause in the hall, and then the sudden rush of feet down the staircase, and all was still again. The three men gazed in each other's whitened faces.
"An earthquake," said the sheriff.
"So much the better," said Jack. "It gives us time—forward!"
They reached the gallery and the little step-ladder that led to a door that opened upon the roof, Gabriel preceding with his burden. There was another rush up the staircase without the court room, but this time there was no yielding in the door; the earthquake that had shaken the foundations and settled the walls had sealed it firmly.
Gabriel was first to step out on the roof, carrying Jack Hamlin. But as he did so another thrill ran through the building and he dropped on his knees to save himself from falling, while the door closed smartly behind him. In another moment the shock had passed, and Gabriel, putting down his burden, turned to open the door for the sheriff. But to his alarm it did not yield to his pressure; the earthquake had sealed it as it had the door below, and Joe Hall was left a prisoner.
It was Gabriel's turn to hesitate and look at his companion. But Jack was gazing into the street below. Then he looked up and said, "We must go on now, Gabriel,—for—forthey've got a ladder!"
Gabriel rose again to his feet and lifted the wounded man. The curve of the domed roof was slight; in the centre, on a rough cupola or base, the figure of Justice, fifteen feet high, rudely carved in wood, towered above them with drawn sword and dangling scales. Gabriel reached the cupola and crouched behind it, as a shout rose from the street below that told he was discovered. A few shots were fired, one bullet imbedded itself in the naked blade of the Goddess, and another with cruel irony, shattered the equanimity of her balance. "Unwind the cord from me," said Hamlin. Gabriel did so. "Fasten one end to the chimney or the statue." But the chimneywas levelled by the earthquake, and even the statue was trembling on its pedestal. Gabriel secured the rope to an iron girder of the skylight, and crawling on the roof dropped it cautiously over the gable. But it was several feet too short—too far for a cripple to drop! Gabriel crawled back to Hamlin. "You must go first," he said, quietly, "I will hold the rope over the gable. You can trust me."
Without waiting for Hamlin's reply he fastened the rope under his arms and half-lifted, half-dragged him to the gable. Then pressing his hand silently, he laid himself down and lowered the wounded man safely to the ground. He had recovered the rope again, and crawling to the cupola, was about to fasten the line to the iron girder when something slowly rose above the level of the roof beyond him. The uprights of a ladder!
The Three Voices had got tired of waiting a reply to their oft-reiterated question, and had mounted the ladder by way of forcing an answer at the muzzles of their revolvers. They reached the level of the roof, one after another, and again propounded their inquiry. And then as it seemed to their awe-stricken fancy, the only figure there—the statue of Justice—awoke to their appeal. Awoke! leaned towards them; advanced its awful sword and shook its broken balance, and then toppling forward with one mighty impulse, came down upon them, swept them from the ladder, and silenced the Voices for ever! And from behind its pedestal Gabriel arose, panting, pale, but triumphant.
Although a large man, Gabriel was lithe and active, and dropped the intervening distance where the rope was scant, lightly, and without injury. Happily the falling of the statue was looked upon as the result of another earthquake shock, and its disastrous effect upon the storming party for awhile checked the attack. Gabriel lifted his half-fainting ally in his arms, and gaining the friendly shelter of the ditch, in ten minutes was beyond the confines of One Horse Gulch, and in the shadow of the pines of Conroy's Hill. There were several tunnel openings only known to him. Luckily the first was partly screened by a fall of rock loosened by the earthquake from the hill above, and satisfied that it would be unrecognised by any eye less keen than his own, Gabriel turned into it with his fainting burden. And it was high time. For the hæmorrhage from Jack Hamlin's wound was so great that that gentleman, after a faint attempt to wave his battered hat above his dishevelled curls, suddenly succumbed, and lay as cold and senseless and beautiful as a carven Apollo.
Then Gabriel stripped him, and found an ugly hole in his thigh that had narrowly escaped traversing the femoral artery, and set himself about that rude surgery which he had acquired by experience, and that more delicate nursing which was instinctive with him. He was shocked at the revelation of a degree of emaciation in the figure of this young fellow that he had not before suspected. Gabriel had nursed many sick men, and here was one who clearly ought to be under the doctor's hands, economising his vitality as a sedentary invalid, who had shown himself to him hitherto only as a man of superabundant activity andanimal spirits. Whence came the power that had animated this fragile shell? Gabriel was perplexed; he looked down upon his own huge frame with a new and sudden sense of apology and depreciation, as if it were an offence to this spare and bloodless Adonis.
And then with an infinite gentleness, as of a young mother over her newborn babe, he stanched the blood and bound up the wounds of his new friend, so skilfully that he never winced, and with a peculiar purring accompaniment that lulled him to repose. Once only, as he held him in his arms, did he change his expression, and that was when a shadow and a tread—perhaps of a passing hare or squirrel—crossed the mouth of his cave, when he suddenly caught the body to his breast with the fierceness of a lioness interrupted with her cubs. In his own rough experience he was much awed by the purple and fine linen of this fine gentleman's underclothing—not knowing the prevailing habits of his class—and when he had occasion to open his bosom to listen to the faint beatings of his heart, he put aside with great delicacy and instinctive honour a fine gold chain from which depended some few relics and keepsakes which this scamp wore. But one was a photograph, set in an open locket, that he could not fail to see, and that at once held him breathless above it. It was the exact outline and features of his sister Grace, but with a strange shadow over that complexion which he remembered well as beautiful, that struck him with superstitious awe. He scanned it again eagerly. "Maybe it was a dark day when she sot!" he murmured softly to himself; "maybe it's the light in this yer tunnel; maybe the heat o' this poor chap's buzzum hez kinder turned it. It ain't measles, fur she hed 'em along o' Olly." He paused and looked at the unconscious man before him, as if trying to connect him with the past. "No," he saidsimply, with a resigned sigh, "it's agin reason! She never knowed him! It's only my foolishness, and my thinkin' and thinkin' o' her so much! It's another gal, and none o' your business, Gabe, and you a' prying inter another man's secrets, and takin' advantage of him when he's down." He hurriedly replaced it in his companion's bosom, and closed the collar of his shirt, as Jack's lips moved. "Pete!" he called, feebly.
"It's his pardner, maybe, he's callin' on," said Gabriel to himself; then aloud, with the usual, comforting professional assent, "In course, Pete, surely! He's coming, right off—he'll be yer afore you know it."
"Pete," continued Jack, forcibly, "take the mare off my leg, she's breaking it! Don't you see? She's stumbled! D—n it, quick! I'll be late. They'll string him up before I get there!"
In a moment Gabriel's stout heart sank. If fever should set in—if he should become delirious, they would be lost. Providentially, however, Jack's aberration was only for a moment; he presently opened his black eyes and stared at Gabriel. Gabriel smiled assuringly. "Am I dead and buried," said Jack, gravely, looking around the dark vault, "or have I got 'em again?"
"Ye wuz took bad fur a minit—that's all," said Gabriel, reassuringly, much relieved himself, "yer all right now!"
Hamlin tried to rise but could not. "That's a lie," he said, cheerfully. "What's to be done?"
"Ef you'd let me hev my say, without gettin' riled," said Gabriel, apologetically, "I'd tell ye. Look yer," he continued, persuasively, "ye ought to hev a doctor afore thet wound gets inflamed; and ye ain't goin' to get one, bein' packed round by me. Now don't ye flare up, but harkin! Allowin' I goes out to them chaps ez is huntin' us, and sez, 'look yer, you kin take me, provided ye don't bear nomalice agin my friend, and you sends a doctor to fetch him outer the tunnel.' Don't yer see, they can't prove anythin' agin ye, anyway," continued Gabriel, with a look of the intensest cunning, "I'll swear I took you pris'ner, and Joe won't go back on his shot."
In spite of his pain and danger this proposition afforded Jack Hamlin apparently the largest enjoyment. "Thank ye," he said, with a smile, "but as there's a warrant, by this time, out against me for horse-stealing, I reckon I won't put myself in the way of their nursing. They might forgive you for killing a Mexican of no great market value, but they ain't goin' to extend the right hand of fellowship to me after running off with their ringleader's mustang! Particularly when that animal's foundered and knee-sprung. No, sir!"
Gabriel stared at his companion without speaking.
"I was late coming back with Olly to Wingdam. I had to swap the horse and buggy for the mare without having time to arrange particulars with the owner. I don't wonder you're shocked," continued Jack, mischievously, affecting to misunderstand Gabriel's silence, "but thet's me. Thet's the kind of company you've got into. Procrastination and want of punctuality has brought me to this. Never procrastinate, Gabriel. Always make it a point to make it a rule, never to be late at the Sabbath school!"
"Ef I hed owt to give ye," said Gabriel, ruefully, "a drop o' whisky, or suthin' to keep up your stren'th!"
"I never touch intoxicating liquors without the consent of my physician," said Jack, gravely, "they're too exciting! I must be kept free from all excitement. Something soothing, or sedentary like this," he added, striking his leg. But even through his mischievous smile his face paled, and a spasm of pain crossed it.
"I reckon we'll hev to stick yer ontil dark," said Gabriel, "and then strike acrost the gully to the woods on Conroy'sHill. Ye'll be easier thar, and we're safe ontil sun-up, when we kin hunt another tunnel. Thar ain't no choice," added Gabriel, apologetically.
Jack made a grimace, and cast a glance around the walls of the tunnel. The luxurious scamp missed his usual comfortable surroundings. "Well," he assented, with a sigh, "I suppose the game's made anyway! and we've got to stick here like snails on a rock for an hour yet. Well," he continued, impatiently, as Gabriel, after improvising a rude couch for him with some withered pine tassels gathered at the mouth of the tunnel, sat down beside him, "are you goin' to bore me to death, now that you've got me here—sittin' there like an owl? Why don't you say something?"
"Say what?" asked Gabriel, simply.
"Anything! Lie if you want to; only talk!"
"I'd like to put a question to ye, Mr. Hamlin," said Gabriel, with great gentleness,—"allowin' in course, ye'll answer or no jest ez as is agree'ble to ye—reckonin' it's no business o' mine nor pryin' into secrets, ony jess to pass away the time ontil sundown. When you was tuk bad a spell ago, unloosin' yer shirt thar, I got to see a pictur that ye hev around yer neck. I ain't askin' who nor which it is—but ony this—ez thet—thet—thet young woman dark complected ez that picter allows her to be?"
Jack's face had recovered its colour by the time that Gabriel had finished, and he answered promptly, "A d—d sight more so! Why, that picture's fair alongside of her!"
Gabriel looked a little disappointed, Hamlin was instantly up in arms. "Yes, sir—and when I say that," he returned, "I mean, by thunder, that the whitest faced woman in the world don't begin to be as handsome. Thar ain't an angel that she couldn't give points to and beat! That'sherstyle! It don't," continued Mr. Hamlin, taking the picture from his breast, and wiping its face with his handkerchief—"itdon't begin to do her justice. What," he asked suddenly and aggressively, "haveyougot to say about it, anyway?"
"I reckoned it kinder favoured my sister Grace," said Gabriel, submissively. "Ye didn't know her, Mr. Hamlin? She was lost sence '49—thet's all!"
Mr. Hamlin measured Gabriel with a contempt that was delicious in its sublime audacity and unconsciousness. "Your sister?" he repeated, "that's a healthy lookin'sisterof such a man as you—ain't it? Why, look at it," roared Jack, thrusting the picture under Gabriel's nose. "Why, it's—it's alady!"
"Ye musn't jedge Gracey by me, nor even Olly," interposed Gabriel, gently, evading Mr. Hamlin's contempt.
But Jack was not to be appeased, "Does your sister sing like an angel, and talk Spanish like Governor Alvarado: is she connected with one of the oldest Spanish families in the state; does she run a rancho and thirty square leagues of land, and is Dolores Salvatierra her nickname? Is her complexion like the young bark of the madroño—the most beautiful thing ever seen—did every other woman look chalky beside her, eh?"
"No!" said Gabriel, with a sigh—"it was just my foolishness, Mr. Hamlin. But seein' that picter, kinder"——
"I stole it," interrupted Jack, with the same frankness. "I saw it in her parlour, on the table, and I froze to it when no one was looking. Lord,shewouldn't have given it tome. I reckon those relatives of hers would have made it very lively for me if they'd suspected it. Hoss stealing ain't a circumstance to this, Gabriel," said Jack, with a reckless laugh. Then with equal frankness, and a picturesque freedom of description, he related his first and only interview with Donna Dolores. I am glad to say that this scamp exaggerated, if anything, the hopelessness of his case, dweltbut slightly on his own services, and concealed the fact that Donna Dolores had even thanked him. "You can reckon from this the extent of my affection for that Johnny Ramirez, and why I just froze to you when I heard you'd dropped him. But come now, it's your deal; tell us all about it. The boys put it up that he was hangin' round your wife,—and you went for him for all he was worth. Go on—I'm waiting—and," added Jack, as a spasm of pain passed across his face, "and aching to that degree that I'll yell if you don't take my mind off it."
But Gabriel's face was grave and his lips silent as he bent over Mr. Hamlin to adjust the bandages. "Go on," said Jack, darkly, "or I'll tear off these rags and bleed to death before your eyes. What are you afraid of? I know all about your wife—you can't tell me anything about her. Didn't I spot her in Sacramento—before she married you—when she had this same Chilino, Ramirez, on a string. Why, she's fooled him as she has you. You ain't such a blasted fool as to be stuck after her still, are you?" and Jack raised himself on his elbow the more intently to regard this possible transcendent idiot.
"You was speakin' o' this Mexican, Ramirez," said Gabriel, after a pause, fixing his now clear and untroubled eyes on his interlocutor.
"Of course," roared out Jack, impatiently, "did you think I was talking of——?" Here Mr. Hamlin offered a name that suggested the most complete and perfect antithesis known to modern reason.
"I didn't kill him!" said Gabriel, quietly.
"Of course not," said Jack, promptly. "He sorter stumbled and fell over on your bowie-knife as you were pickin' your teeth with it. But go on—how did you do it? Where did you spot him? Did he make any fight? Has he got any sand in him?"
"I tell ye I didn't kill him!"
"Who did, then?" screamed Jack, furious with pain and impatience.
"I don't know—I reckon—that is——" and Gabriel stopped short with a wistful perplexed look at his companion.
"Perhaps, Mr. Gabriel Conroy," said Jack, with sudden coolness and deliberation of speech, and a baleful light in his dark eyes, "perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me what this means—whatisyour little game? Perhaps you'll kindly inform me what I'm lying here crippled for? What you were doing up in the Court House, when you were driving those people crazy with excitement? What you're hiding here in this blank family vault for? And maybe, if you've got time, you'll tell me what was the reason I made that pleasant little trip to Sacramento? I know I required the exercise, and then there was the honour of being introduced to your little sister—but perhaps you'll tell me WHAT IT WAS FOR!"
"Jack," said Gabriel, leaning forward, with a sudden return of his old trouble and perplexity, "I thoughtshedid it! and thinkin' that—when they asked me—I took it uponmyself! I didn't know to ringyouinto this, Jack! I thought—I thought—thet—it 'ud all be one—thet they'd hang me up afore this—I did, Jack, honest!"
"And you didn't kill Ramirez?"
"No."
"And you reckoned your wife did?"
"Yes."
"And you took the thing on yourself?"
"I did."
"Youdid!"
"I did!"
"YouDID?"
"I did!"
Mr. Hamlin rolled over on his back, and began to whistle "When the spring time comes, gentle Annie!" as the only way of expressing his inordinate contempt for the whole proceeding.
Gabriel slowly slid his hand under Mr. Hamlin's helpless back, and under pretext of arranging his bandages, lifted him in his arms like a truculent babe. "Jack," he said, softly, "ef thet picter of yours—that coloured woman"——
"Which?" said Jack, fiercely.
"I mean—thet purty creature—ef she and you hed been married, and you'd found out accidental like that she'd fooled ye—more belike, Jack," he added, hastily, "o' your own foolishness—than her little game—and"——
"Thatwoman was a lady," interrupted Jack, savagely, "and your wife's a"——But he paused, looking into Gabriel's face, and then added, "Oh git! will you! Leave me alone! 'I want to be an angel and with the angels stand.'"
"And thet woman hez a secret," continued Gabriel, unmindful of the interruption, "and bein' hounded by the man az knows it, up and kills him, ye wouldn't let thet woman—that poor pooty creeture—suffer for it! No, Jack! Ye would rather pint your own toes up to the sky than do it. It ain't in ye, Jack, and it ain't in me, so help me, God!"
"This is all very touching, Mr. Conroy, and does credit, sir, to your head and heart, and I kin feel it drawing Hall's ball out of my leg while you're talkin'," said Jack, with his black eyes evading Gabriel's and wandering to the entrance of the tunnel. "What time is it, you d—d old fool, ain't it dark enough yet to git outer this hole?" He groaned, and after a pause added fiercely, "How do you know your wife did it?"
Gabriel swiftly, and for him even concisely, related theevents of the day from his meeting with Ramirez in the morning, to the time that he had stumbled upon the body of Victor Ramirez on his return to keep the appointment at his wife's written request.
Jack only interrupted him once to inquire why, after discovering the murder, he had not gone on to keep his appointment.
"I thought it wa'n't of no use," said Gabriel, simply; "I didn't want to let her see I knowed it."
Hamlin groaned, "If you had you would have found her in the company of the man whodiddo it, you daddering old idiot!"
"What man?" asked Gabriel.
"The first man you saw your wife with that morning; the man I ought to be helping now, instead of lyin' here."
"You don't mean to allow, Jack, ez you reckon shedidn'tdo it?" asked Gabriel, in alarm.
"I do," said Hamlin, coolly.
"Then what did she reckon to let on by that note?" said Gabriel, with a sudden look of cunning.
"Don't know," returned Jack, "like as not, being a d—d fool, you didn't read it right! hand it over and let me see it."
Gabriel (hesitatingly): "I can't."
Hamlin: "You can't?"
Gabriel (apologetically): "I tore it up!"
Hamlin (with frightful deliberation): "youDID?"'
"I did."
Jack (after a long crushing silence): "Were you ever under medical treatment for these spells?"
Gabriel (with great simplicity and submission): "They allers used to allow I waz queer."
Hamlin (after another pause): "Has Pete Dumphy got anything agin you?"
Gabriel (surprisedly): "No."
Hamlin (languidly): "It was his right hand man, his agent at Wingdam that started up the Vigilantes! I heard him, and saw him in the crowd hounding 'em on."
Gabriel (simply): "I reckon you're out thar, Jack, Dumphy's my friend. It was him that first gin me the money to open this yer mine. And I'm his superintendent!"
Jack: "Oh!" (after another pause). "Is there any first-class Lunatic Asylum in this county where they would take in two men, one an incurable, and the other sufferin' from a gunshot wound brought on by playin' with firearms?"
Gabriel (with a deep sigh): "Ye mus'n't talk, Jack, ye must be quiet till dark."
Jack, dragged down by pain, and exhausted in the intervals of each paroxysm was quiescent.
Gradually, the faint light that had filtered through the brush and débris before the tunnel faded quite away, and a damp charnel-house chill struck through the limbs of the two refugees, and made them shiver; the flow of water from the dripping walls seemed to have increased; Gabriel's experienced eye had already noted that the earthquake had apparently opened seams in the gully and closed up one of the leads. He carefully laid his burden down again, and crept to the opening. The distant hum of voices and occupation had ceased, the sun was setting; in a few moments, calculating on the brief twilight of the Mountain region, it would be dark, and they might with safety leave their hiding-place. As he was returning, he noticed a slant beam of light, hitherto unobserved, crossing the tunnel from an old drift. Examining it more closely, Gabriel was amazed to find that during the earthquake a "cave" had taken place in the drift, possibly precipitatedby the shock, disclosing the more surprising fact that there had been a previous slight but positive excavation on the hill side, above the tunnel, that antedated any record of One Horse Gulch known to Gabriel. He was perfectly familiar with every foot of the hill side, and the existence of this ancient prospecting "hole" had never been even suspected by him. While he was still gazing at the opening, his foot struck against some glittering metallic substance. He stooped and picked up a small tin can, not larger than a sardine box, hermetically sealed and soldered, in which some inscription had been traced, but which the darkness of the tunnel prevented his deciphering. In the faint hope that it might contain something of benefit to his companion, Gabriel returned to the opening, and even ventured to step beyond its shadow. But all attempts to read the inscription were in vain. He opened the box with a sharp stone; it contained, to his great disappointment, only a memorandum book and some papers. He swept them into the pocket of his blouse, and re-entered the tunnel. He had not been absent altogether more than five minutes, but when he reached the place where he had left Jack, he was gone!
He stood for a moment breathless and paralysed with surprise; then he began slowly and deliberately to examine the tunnel step by step. When he had proceeded a hundred feet from the spot, to his great relief he came upon Jack Hamlin, sitting upright in a side drift. His manner was feverish and excited, and his declaration that he had not moved from the place where Gabriel had lefthim at once was accepted by the latter as the aberration of incipient inflammation and fever. When Gabriel stated that it was time to go, he replied, "Yes," and added with such significance that his business with the murderer of Victor Ramirez was now over, and that he was ready to enter the Lunatic Asylum at once, that Gabriel with great precipitation lifted him in his arms and carried him without delay from the tunnel. Once more in the open air the energies of both men seemed to rally; Jack became as a mere feather in Gabriel's powerful arms, and even forgot his querulous opposition to being treated as a helpless child, while Gabriel trod the familiar banks of the ditch, climbed the long ascent and threaded the aisles of the pillared pines of Reservoir Hill with the free experienced feet of the mountaineer. Here Gabriel knew he was safe until daybreak, and gathered together some withered pine boughs and its fragrant tassels for a couch for his helpless companion. And here, as he feared, fever set in; the respiration of the wounded man grew quick and hurried; he began to talk rapidly and incoherently, of Olly, of Ramirez, of the beautiful girl whose picture hung upon his breast, of Gabriel himself, and finally of a stranger who was, as it seemed to him, his sole auditor, the gratuitous coinage of his excited fancy. Once or twice he raised his voice to a shout, and then to Gabriel's great alarm suddenly he began to sing, and before Gabriel could place his hand upon his mouth he had trolled out the verse of a popular ballad. The rushing river below them gurgled, beat its bars, and sang an accompaniment, the swaying pine sighed and creaked in unison, the patient stars above them stared and bent breathlessly, and then to Gabriel's exalted consciousness an echo of the wounded man's song arose from the gulch below! For a moment he held his breath with an awful mingling of joy and fear. Was he going mad too?or was it really the voice of little Olly? The delirious man beside him answered his query with another verse; the antiphonal response rose again from the valley. Gabriel hesitated no longer, but with feverish hands gathered a few dried twigs and pine cones into a pile, and touched a match to them. At the next moment they flashed a beacon to the sky, in another there was a crackling of the underbrush and the hurried onset of two figures, and before the slow Gabriel could recover from his astonishment, Olly flew, panting, to his arms, while her companion, the faithful Pete, sank breathlessly beside his wounded and insensible master.
Olly was first to find her speech. That speech, after the unfailing instincts of her sex in moments of excitement, was the instant arraignment of somebody else as the cause of that excitement, and at once put the whole universe on the defensive.
"Why didn't you send word where you was?" she said, impatiently, "and wot did you have it so dark for, and up a steep hill, and leavin' me alone at Wingdam, and why didn't you call without singin'?"
And then Gabriel, after the fashion ofhissex, ignored all but the present, and holding Olly in his arms, said—
"It's my little girl, ain't it? Come to her own brother Gabe! bless her!"
Whereat Mr. Hamlin, after the fashion of lunatics of any sex, must needs be consistent, and break out again into song.
"He's looney, Olly, what with fever along o' bein' shot in the leg a' savin' me, ez izn't worth savin'," explained Gabriel, apologetically. "It was him ez did the singin'."
Then Olly, still following the feminine instinct, at once deserted conscious rectitude for indefensible error, and flew to Mr. Hamlin's side.
"Oh, where is he hurt, Pete? is he going to die?"
And Pete, suspicious of any medication but his own, replied doubtfully, "He looks bad, Miss Olly, dat's a fac—but now bein' in my han's, bress de Lord A'mighty, and we able to minister to him, we hopes fur de bess. Your brudder meant well, is a fair meanin' man, miss—a toll'able nuss, but he ain't got the peerfeshn'l knowledge dat Mars Jack in de habit o' gettin'." Here Pete unslung from his shoulders a wallet, and proceeded to extract therefrom a small medicine case, with the resigned air of the family physician, who has been called full late to remedy the practice of rustic empiricism.
"How did ye come yer?" asked Gabriel of Olly, when he had submissively transferred his wounded charge to Pete. "What made ye allow I was hidin' yer? How did ye reckon to find me? but ye was allus peart and onhanded, Olly," he suggested, gazing admiringly at his sister.
"When I woke up at Wingdam, after Jack went away, who should I find, Gabe, but Lawyer Maxwell standin' thar, and askin' me a heap o' questions. I supposed you'd been makin' a fool o' yourself agin, Gabe, and afore I let on thet I knowed a word, I jist made him tell me everythin' about you, Gabe, and it was orful! and you bein' arrested fur murder, ez wouldn't harm a fly, let alone that Mexican ez I never liked, Gabe, and all this comes of tendin' his legs instead o' lookin' arter me. And all them questions waz about July, and whether she wasn't your enemy, and if they ever waz a woman, Gabe, ez waz sweet on you, you know it was July! And all thet kind o' foolishness! And then when he couldn't get ennythin' out o' me agin July, he allowed to Pete that he must take me right to you, fur he said ther was talk o' the Vigilantes gettin' hold o' ye afore the trial, and he was goin' to get anorder to take you outer the county, and he reckoned they wouldn't dare to tech ye if I waz with ye, Gabe—and I'd like to see 'em try it! and he allowed to Pete that he must take me right to you! And Pete—and thar ain't a whiter nigger livin' than that ole man—said he would—reckonin' you know to find Jack, as he allowed to me they'd hev to kill afore they got you—and he came down yer with me. And when we got yer—you was off—and the sheriff gone—and the Vigilantes—what with bein' killed, the biggest o' them, by the earthquake—what was orful, Gabe, but we bein' on the road didn't get to feel!—jest scared outer their butes! And then a Chinyman gins us your note"——
"My note?" interrupted Gabriel, "I didn't send ye any note."
"Thenhisnote," said Olly, impatiently, pointing to Hamlin, "sayin' 'You'll find your friends on Conroy's Hill!'—don't you see, Gabe?" continued Olly, stamping her foot in fury at her brother's slowness of comprehension, "and so we came and heard Jack singin', and a mighty foolish thing it was to do, and yer we are!"
"But he didn't send any note, Olly," persisted Gabriel.
"Well, you awful old Gabe, what difference does it makewhosent it?" continued the practical Olly; "here we are, along o' thet note, and," she added, feeling in her pocket, "there's the note!"
She handed Gabriel a small slip of paper with the pencilled words, "You'll find your friends waiting for you to-night on Conroy's Hill."
The handwriting was unfamiliar, but even if it were Jack's, how didhemanage to send it without his knowledge? He had not lost sight of Jack except during the few moments he had reconnoitred the mouth of the tunnel, since they had escaped from the Court House. Gabriel was perplexed; in the presence of this anonymous note hewas confused and speechless, and could only pass his hand helplessly across his forehead. "But it's all right now, Gabe," continued Olly, reassuringly, "the Vigilantes hev run away—what was left of them; the sheriff ain't to be found nowhar! This yer earthquake hez frightened everybody outer the idea of huntin' ye—nobody talks of ennything but the earthquake; they even say, Gabe—I forgot to tell ye—that our claim on Conroy Hill has busted, too, and the mine ain't worth shucks now! But there's no one to interfere with us now, Gabe! And we're goin' to get into a waggin that Pete hez bespoke for us at the head of Reservoir Gulch to-morrow mornin' at sun-up! And then Pete sez we kin git down to Stockton and 'Frisco and out to a place called San Antonio, that the devil himself wouldn't think o' goin' to, and thar we kin stay, me and you and Jack, until this whole thing has blown over and Jack gits well agin and July comes back."
Gabriel, still holding the hand of his sister, dared not tell her of the suspicions of Lawyer Maxwell, regarding her sister-in-law's complicity in this murder, nor Jack's conviction of her infidelity, and he hesitated. But after a pause, he suggested with a consciousness of great discretion and artfulness, "Suppose thet July doesn't come back?"
"Look yer, Gabe," said Olly, suddenly, "ef yer goin' to be thet foolish and ridiklus agin, I'll jess quit. Ez if thet woman would ever leave ye." (Gabriel groaned inwardly.) "Why, when she hears o' this, wild hosses couldn't keep her from ye. Don't be a mule, Gabe, don't!" And Gabriel was dumb.
Meantime, under the influence of some anodyne which Pete had found in his medicine chest, Mr. Hamlin became quiet and pretermitted his vocal obligato. Gabriel, whose superb physical adjustment no mental excitement could possibly overthrow, and whose regular habits were neverbroken by anxiety, nodded, even while holding Olly's hand, and in due time slept, and I regret to say—writing of a hero—snored. After a while Olly herself succumbed to the drowsy coolness of the night, and wrapped in Mr. Hamlin's shawl, pillowed her head upon her brother's broad breast and slept too. Only Pete remained to keep the watch, he being comparatively fresh and strong, and declaring that the condition of Mr. Hamlin required his constant attention.
It was after midnight that Olly dreamed a troubled dream. She thought that she was riding with Mr. Hamlin to seek her brother, when she suddenly came upon a crowd of excited men who were bearing Gabriel to the gallows. She thought that she turned to Mr. Hamlin frantically for assistance, when she saw to her horror that his face had changed—that it was no longer he who sat beside her, but a strange, wild-looking, haggard man—a man whose face was old and pinched, but whose grey hair was discoloured by a faded dye that had worn away, leaving the original colour in patches, and the antique foppery of whose dress was deranged by violent exertion, and grimy with the dust of travel—a dandy whose strapped trousers of a bygone fashion were ridiculously loosened in one leg, whose high stock was unbuckled and awry! She awoke with a start. Even then her dream was so vivid that it seemed to her this face was actually bending over her with such a pathetic earnestness and inquiry that she called aloud. It was some minutes before Pete came to her, but as he averred, albeit somewhat incoherently and rubbing his eyes to show that he had not closed them, that he had never slept a wink, and that it was impossible for any stranger to have come upon them without his knowledge, Olly was obliged to accept it all as a dream! But she did not sleep again. She watched the moon slowly sink behind the serratedpines of Conroy's Hill; she listened to the crackling tread of strange animals in the underbrush, to the far-off rattle of wheels on the Wingdam turnpike, until the dark outline of the tree trunks returned, and with the cold fires of the mountain sunrise the chilly tree-tops awoke to winged life, and the twitter of birds, while the faint mists of the river lingered with the paling moon like tired sentinels for the relief of the coming day. And then Olly awoke her companions. They struggled back into consciousness with characteristic expression. Gabriel slowly and apologetically, as of one who had overslept himself; Jack Hamlin violently and aggressively, as if some unfair advantage had been taken of his human weakness that it was necessary to combat at once. I am sorry to say that his recognition of Pete was accompanied by a degree of profanity and irreverence that was dangerous to his own physical weakness. "And you had to trapse down yer, sniffin' about my tracks, you black and tan idiot," continued Mr. Hamlin, raising himself on his arm, "and after I'd left everything all straight at Wingdam—and jest as I was beginning to reform and lead a new life! How do, Olly? You'll excuse my not rising. Come and kiss me! If that nigger of mine has let you want for anything, jest tell me and I'll discharge him. Well! hang it all! what are you waitin' for? Here it's daybreak and we've got to get down to the head of Reservoir Gulch. Come, little children, the picnic is over!"
Thus adjured, Gabriel rose, and lifting Mr. Hamlin in his arms with infinite care and tenderness, headed the quaint procession. Mr. Hamlin, perhaps recognising some absurdity in the situation, forbore exercising his querulous profanity on the man who held him helpless as an infant, and Olly and Pete followed slowly behind.
Their way led down Reservoir Cañon, beautiful, hopeful,and bracing in the early morning air. A few birds, awakened by the passing tread, started into song a moment, and then were still. With a cautious gentleness, habitual to the man, Gabriel forbore, as he strode along, to step upon the few woodland blossoms yet left to the dry summer woods. There was a strange fragrance in the air, the light odours liberated from a thousand nameless herbs, the faint melancholy spicing of dead leaves. There was, moreover, that sense of novelty which Nature always brings with the dawn in deep forests; a fancy that during the night the earth had been created anew, and was fresh from the Maker's hand, as yet untried by burden or tribulation, and guiltless of a Past. And so it seemed to the little caravan—albeit fleeing from danger and death—that yesterday and its fears were far away, or had, in some unaccountable way, shrunk behind them in the west with the swiftly dwindling night. Olly once or twice strayed from the trail to pick an opening flower or lingering berry; Pete hummed to himself the fragment of an old camp-meeting song.
And so they walked on, keeping the rosy dawn and its promise before them. From time to time the sound of far-off voices came to them faintly. Slowly the light quickened; morning stole down the hills upon them stealthily, and at last the entrance of the cañon became dimly outlined. Olly uttered a shout and pointed to a black object moving backward and forward before the opening. It was the waggon and team awaiting them. Olly's shout was answered by a whistle from the driver, and they quickened their pace joyfully; in another moment they would be beyond the reach of danger.
Suddenly a voice that seemed to start from the ground before them called on Gabriel to stop! He did so unconsciously, drawing Hamlin closer to him with one hand, and with the other making a broad protecting sweep towardOlly. And then a figure rose slowly from the ditch at the roadside and barred their passage.
It was only a single man! A small man bespattered with the slime of the ditch and torn with brambles; a man exhausted with fatigue and tremulous with nervous excitement, but still erect and threatening. A man whom Gabriel and Hamlin instantly recognised, even through his rags and exhaustion! It was Joe Hall—the sheriff of Calaveras! He held a pistol in his right hand, even while his left exhaustedly sought the support of a tree! By a common instinct both men saw that while the hand was feeble the muzzle of the weapon covered them.
"Gabriel Conroy, I want you," said the apparition.
"He's got us lined! Drop me," whispered Hamlin, hastily, "drop me! I'll spoil his aim."
But Gabriel, by a swift, dexterous movement that seemed incompatible with his usual deliberation, instantly transferred Hamlin to his other arm, and with his burden completely shielded, presented his own right shoulder squarely to the muzzle of Hall's revolver.
"Gabriel Conroy, you are my prisoner," repeated the voice.
Gabriel did not move. But over his shoulder as a rest, dropped the long shining barrel of Jack's own favourite duelling pistol, and over it glanced the bright eye of its crippled owner. The issue was joined!
There was a deathlike silence.
"Go on!" said Jack, quietly. "Keep cool, Joe. For ifyoumiss him, you're gone in; and hit or missI'vegotyousure!"
The barrel of Hall's pistol wavered a moment, from physical weakness but not from fear. The great heart behind it, though broken, was undaunted.
"It's all right," said the voice fatefully. "It's all right,Jack! Ye'll kill me, I know! But ye can't help sayin' arter all that I did my duty to Calaveras as the sheriff, and 'specially to them twenty-five men ez elected me over Boggs! I ain't goin' to let ye pass. I've been on this yer hunt, up and down this cañon all night. Hevin' no possy I reckon I've got to die yer in my tracks. All right! But ye'll git into thet waggon over my dead body, Jack—over my dead body, sure."
Even as he spoke these words he straightened himself to his full height—which was not much, I fear—and steadied himself by the tree, his weapon still advanced and pointing at Gabriel, but with such an evident and hopeless contrast between his determination and his evident inability to execute it, that his attitude impressed his audience less with its heroism than its half-pathetic absurdity.
Mr. Hamlin laughed. But even then he suddenly felt the grasp of Gabriel relax, found himself slipping to his companion's feet, and the next moment was deposited carefully but ignominiously on the ground by Gabriel, who strode quietly and composedly up to the muzzle of the sheriff's pistol.
"I am ready to go with ye, Mr. Hall," he said, gently, putting the pistol aside with a certain large indifferent wave of the hand, "ready to go with ye—now—at onct! But I've one little favour to ax ye. This yer pore young man, ez yur wounded, unbeknownst," he said, pointing to Hamlin, who was writhing and gritting his teeth in helpless rage and fury, "ez not to be tuk with me, nor for me! Thar ain't nothin' to be done to him. He hez been dragged inter this fight. But I'm ready to go with ye now, Mr. Hall, and am sorry you got into the troubil along o' me."
A quarter of an hour before the messenger of Peter Dumphy had reached Poinsett's office, Mr. Poinsett had received a more urgent message. A telegraph despatched from San Antonio had been put into his hands. Its few curt words, more significant to an imaginative man than rhetorical expression, ran as follows:—
"Mission Church destroyed. Father Felipe safe. Blessed Trinity in ruins and Dolores missing. My house spared. Come at once.—Maria Sepulvida."
"Mission Church destroyed. Father Felipe safe. Blessed Trinity in ruins and Dolores missing. My house spared. Come at once.—Maria Sepulvida."
The following afternoon at four o'clock Arthur Poinsett reached San Geronimo, within fifteen miles of his destination. Here the despatch was confirmed with some slight local exaggeration.
"Saints and devils! There is no longer a St. Anthony! Thetemblorhas swallowed him!" said the innkeeper, sententiously. "It is the end of all! Such is the world. Thou wilt find stones on stones instead of houses, Don Arturo. Wherefore another glass of the brandy of France, or the whisky of the American, as thou dost prefer. But of San Antonio—nothing!—Absolutely—perfectly—truly nothing!"
In spite of this cheering prophecy, Mr. Poinsett did not wait for the slow diligence, but mounting a fleet mustang dashed off in quest of the missing Mission. He was somewhat relieved at the end of an hour by the far-off flash of the sea, the rising of the dark green fringe of the Mission orchard andEncinal, and above it the white dome of one of the Mission towers. But at the next moment Arthur checked his horse and rubbed his eyes in wonder. Where was the other tower? He put spurs to his horse again and dashed off at another angle, and again stopped and gazed.There was but one tower remaining.The Mission Church must have been destroyed!
Perhaps it was this discovery, perhaps it was some instinct stronger than this; but when Arthur had satisfied himself of this fact he left the direct road, which would have brought him to the Mission, and diverged upon the open plain towards the Rancho of the Blessed Trinity. A fierce wind from the sea swept the broadllanoand seemed to oppose him, step by step—a wind so persistent and gratuitous that it appeared to Arthur to possess a moral quality, and as such was to be resisted and overcome by his superior will. Here, at least, all was unchanged; here was the dead, flat monotony of land and sky. Here was the brittle, harsh stubble of the summer fields, sun-baked and wind-dried; here were the long stretches of silence, from which even the harrying wind made no opposition nor complaint; here were the formless specks of slowly-moving cattle, even as he remembered them before. A momentary chill came over him as he recalled his own perilous experience on these plains, a momentary glow suffused his cheek as he thought of his rescue by the lovely but cold recluse. Again he heard the name of "Philip" softly whispered in his ears, again he felt the flood of old memories sweep over him as he rode, even as he had feltthem when he lay that day panting upon the earth. And yet Arthur had long since convinced his mind that he was mistaken in supposing that Donna Dolores had addressed him at that extreme moment as "Philip;" he had long since believed it was a trick of his disordered and exhausted brain; the conduct of Dolores towards himself, habitually restrained by grave courtesy, never justified him in directly asking the question, nor suggested any familiarity that might have made it probable. She had never alluded to it again—but had apparently forgotten it. Not so Arthur! He had often gone over that memorable scene, with a strange, tormenting pleasure that was almost a pain. It was the one incident of his life, for whose poetry he was not immediately responsible—the one genuine heart-thrill whose sincerity he had not afterwards stopped to question in his critical fashion, the one enjoyment that had not afterwards appeared mean and delusive. And now the heroine of this episode was missing, and he might never perhaps see her again! And yet when he first heard the news he was conscious of a strange sense of relief—rather let me say of an awakening from a dream, that though delicious, had become dangerous and might unfit him for the practical duties of his life. Donna Dolores had never affected him as a real personage—at least the interest he felt in her was, he had always considered, due to her relations to some romantic condition of his mind, and her final disappearance from the plane of his mental vision was only the exit of an actress from the mimic stage. It seemed only natural that she should disappear as mysteriously as she came. There was no shock even to the instincts of his ordinary humanity—it was no catastrophe involving loss of life or even suffering to the subject or spectator.
Such at least was Mr. Poinsett's analysis of his ownmental condition on the receipt of Donna Maria's telegram. It was the cool self-examination of a man who believed himself cold-blooded and selfish, superior to the weakness of ordinary humanity, and yet was conscious of neither pride nor disgrace in the belief. Yet when he diverged from his direct road to the Mission, and turned his horse's head toward the home of Donna Dolores, he was conscious of a new impulse and anxiety that was stronger than his reason. Unable as he was to resist it, he still took some satisfaction in believing that it was nearly akin to that feeling which years before had driven him back to Starvation Camp in quest of the survivors. Suddenly his horse recoiled with a bound that would have unseated a less skilful rider. Directly across his path stretched a chasm in the level plain—thirty feet broad and as many feet in depth, and at its bottom in undistinguishable confusion lay the wreck of the corral of the Blessed Trinity!
Except for the enormous size and depth of this fissure Arthur might have mistaken it for the characteristic cracks in the sunburnt plain, which the long dry summer had wrought upon its surface, some of which were so broad as to task the agility of his horse. But a second glance convinced him of the different character of the phenomenon. The earth had not cracked asunder nor separated, but had sunk. The width of the chasm below was nearly equal to the width above; the floor of this valley in miniature was carpeted by the same dry, brittle herbs and grasses which grew upon the plain around him.
In the pre-occupation of the last hour he had forgotten the distance he had traversed. He had evidently ridden faster than he had imagined. But if this was really the corral, the walls of the Rancho should now be in sight at the base of the mountain! He turned in that direction. Nothing was to be seen! Only the monotonous plainstretched before him, vast and unbroken. Between the chasm where he stood and thefaldaof the first low foot-hills neither roof nor wall nor ruin rose above the dull, dead level!
An ominous chill ran through his veins, and for an instant the reins slipped through his relaxed fingers. Good God! Could this have been what Donna Maria meant, or had there been a later convulsion of Nature? He looked around him. The vast, far-stretching plain, desolate and trackless as the shining ocean beyond, took upon itself an awful likeness to that element! Standing on the brink of the revealed treachery of that yawning chasm, Arthur Poinsett read the fate of the Rancho. In the storm that had stirred the depths of this motionless level, the Rancho and its miserable inmates hadfounderedand gone down!
Arthur's first impulse was to push on towards the scene of the disaster, in the vague hope of rendering some service. But the chasm before him was impassable, and seemed to continue to the sea beyond. Then he reflected that the catastrophe briefly told in Donna Maria's despatch had happened twenty-four hours before, and help was perhaps useless now. He cursed the insane impulse that had brought him here, aimlessly and without guidance, and left him powerless even to reach the object of his quest. If he had only gone first to the Mission, asked the advice and assistance of Father Felipe, or learned at least the full details of the disaster! He uttered an oath, rare to his usual calm expression, and wheeling his horse, galloped fiercely back towards the Mission.
Night had deepened over the plain. With the going down of the sun a fog that had been stealthily encompassing the coast-line stole with soft step across the shining beach, dulled its lustre, and then moved slowly and solemnly upon the plain, blotting out the Point of Pines, atfirst salient with its sparkling Lighthouse, but now undistinguishable from the grey sea above and below, until it reached the galloping horse and its rider, and then, as it seemed to Arthur, isolated them from the rest of the world—from even the pencilled outlines of the distant foot-hills, that it at last sponged from the blue-grey slate before him. At times the far-off tolling of a fog-bell came faintly to his ear, but all sound seemed to be blotted out by the fog; even the rapid fall of his horse's hoofs was muffled and indistinct. By degrees the impression that he was riding in a dream overcame him, and was accepted by him without questioning or deliberation.
It seemed to be a consistent part of the dream or vision when he rode—or rather as it seemed to him, was borne by the fog—into the outlying fields and lanes of the Mission. A few lights, with a nimbus of fog around them, made the narrow street of the town appear still more ghostly and unreal as he plunged through its obscurity towards the plaza and church. Even by the dim grey light he could see that one of the towers had fallen, and that the eastern wing and Refectory were a mass of shapeless ruin. And what would at another time have excited his surprise now only struck him as a natural part of his dream,—the church a blaze of light and filled with thronging worshippers! Still possessed by his strange fancy, Arthur Poinsett dismounted, led his horse beneath the shed beside the remaining tower, and entered the building. The body and nave of the church were intact; the outlandish paintings still hung from the walls; the waxen effigies of the Blessed Virgin and the saints still leaned from their niches, yellow and lank, and at the high altar Father Felipe was officiating. As he entered a dirge broke from the choir; he saw that the altar and its offerings were draped in black, and in the first words uttered by the priest Arthur recognised themass for the dead! The feverish impatience that had filled his breast and heightened the colour of his cheeks for the last hour was gone. He sunk upon a bench beside one of the worshippers and buried his face in his hands. The voice of the organ rose again faintly; the quaint-voiced choir awoke, the fumes of incense filled the church, and the monotonous accents of the priest fell soothingly upon his ear, and Arthur seemed to sleep. I say seemed to sleep, for ten minutes later he came to himself with a start as if awakening from a troubled dream, with the voice of Padre Felipe in his ear, and the soft, caressing touch of Padre Felipe on his shoulder. The worshippers had dispersed, the church was dark save a few candles still burning on the high altar, and for an instant he could not recall himself.
"I knew you would come, son," said Padre Felipe; "but where is she? Did you bring her with you?"
"Who?" asked Arthur, striving to recall his scattered senses.
"Who? Saints preserve us, Don Arturo! She who sent for you—Donna Maria! Did you not get her message?"
Arthur replied that he had only just arrived, and had at once hastened to the Mission. For some reason that he was ashamed to confess he did not say that he had tried to reach the Rancho of the Blessed Trinity, nor did he admit that he had forgotten for the last two hours even the existence of Donna Maria. "You were having a mass for the dead, Father Felipe?—you have then suffered here?"
He paused anxiously, for in his then confused state of mind he doubted how much of his late consciousness had been real or visionary.
"Mother of God," said Father Felipe, eyeing Arthur curiously. "You know not then for whom was this mass?You know not that a saint has gone—that Donna Dolores has at last met her reward?"
"I have heard—that is, Donna Maria's despatch said—that she was missing," stammered Arthur, feeling, with a new and unsupportable disbelief in himself, that his face was very pale and his voice uncertain.
"Missing!" echoed Father Felipe, with the least trace of impatience in his voice. "Missing! She will be found when the Rancho of the Blessed Trinity is restored—when the ruins of thecasa, sunk fifty feet below the surface, are brought again to the level of the plain. Missing, Don Arturo!—ah!—missing indeed!—for ever! always, entirely!"
Moved perhaps by something in Arthur's face, Padre Felipe sketched in a few graphic pictures the details of the catastrophe already forecast by Arthur. It was a repetition of the story of the sunken corral. The earthquake had not only levelled the walls of the Rancho of the Blessed Trinity, but had opened a grave-like chasm fifty feet below it, and none had escaped to tell the tale. The faithfulvaqueroshad rushed from the trembling and undulating plain to the Rancho, only to see it topple into a yawning abyss that opened to receive it. Don Juan, Donna Dolores, the faithful Manuela, and Alejandro, themajor domo, with a dozen peons and retainers, went down with the crumbling walls. No one had escaped. Was it not possible to dig in the ruins for the bodies? Mother of God! had not Don Arturo been told that the earth at the second shock had closed over the sunken ruins, burying beyond mortal resurrection all that the Rancho contained? They were digging, but hopelessly—a dozen men. They might—weeks hence—discover the bodies—but who knows?
The meek, fatalistic way that Father Felipe accepted the final doom of Donna Dolores exasperated Arthur beyondbounds. In San Francisco a hundred men would have been digging night and day in the mere chance of recovering the buried family. Here—but Arthur remembered the sluggish, helpless retainers of Salvatierra, the dreadful fatalism which affected them on the occurrence of this mysterious catastrophe, even as shown in the man before him, their accepted guide and leader—and shuddered. Could anything be done? Could he not, with Dumphy's assistance, procure a gang of men from San Francisco? And then came the instinct of caution, always powerful with a nature like Arthur's. If these people, most concerned in the loss of their friends, their relations, accepted it so hopelessly, what right had he—a mere stranger—to interfere?
"But come, my son," said Padre Felipe, laying his large soft hand, parentally, on Arthur's shoulder. "Come, come with me to my rooms. Thanks to the Blessed Virgin I have still shelter and a roof to offer you. Ah!" he added, stroking Arthur's riding-coat, and examining critically as if he had been a large child, "what have we—what is this, eh? You are wet with this heretic fog—eh? Your hands are cold, and your cheeks hot. You have fatigue! Possibly—most possibly, hunger! No! No! It is so. Come with me, come!" and drawing Arthur's passive arm through his own, he opened the vestry door, and led him across the little garden, choked with débris and plaster of the fallen tower, to a small adobe building that had been the Mission schoolroom. It was now hastily fitted up as Padre Felipe's own private apartment and meditative cell. A bright fire burned in the low, oven-like hearth. Around the walls hung various texts illustrating the achievement of youthful penmanship with profound religious instruction. At the extremity of the room there was a small organ. Midway and opposite the hearth was a deep embrasured window—the window at which two weeks before, Mr. Jack Hamlinhad beheld the Donna Dolores. "She spent much of her time here, dear child, in the instruction of the young," said Father Felipe, taking a huge pinch of snuff, and applying a large red bandana handkerchief to his eyes and nose. "It is her best monument! Thanks to her largess—and she was ever free-handed, Don Arturo, to the Church—the foundation of the Convent of our Lady of Sorrows, her own patron saint, thou seest here. Thou knowest, possibly—most possibly as her legal adviser—that long ago, by her will, the whole of the Salvatierra Estate is a benefaction to the Holy Church, eh?"