"For the Right! as God has givenMan to see the Maiden Right!"For the Right, through thickest night,Till the man-brute Wrong be drivenFrom high places; till the RightShall lift like some grand beacon light.
"For the Right! as God has givenMan to see the Maiden Right!"For the Right, through thickest night,Till the man-brute Wrong be drivenFrom high places; till the RightShall lift like some grand beacon light.
For the Right! Love, Right and duty;Lift the world up, though you fallHeaped with dead before the wall;God can find a soul of beautyWhere it falls, as gems of worthAre found by miners dark in earth.
For the Right! Love, Right and duty;Lift the world up, though you fallHeaped with dead before the wall;God can find a soul of beautyWhere it falls, as gems of worthAre found by miners dark in earth.
Old Forty-nine had not cast his life and lot with John Logan at all. Yet this singular and contradictory old man stood ready to lay down his seemingly worthless life at a moment's notice for this boy whom he had almost brought up from childhood. But he was not living with him in the mountains. He haddone all he could to protect him, to shelter and feed him, all the time. But now the pursuit was so hot and desperate that the old man, in his sober moments—rare enough, I admit—began to doubt if it would be possible to save this young man much longer from the clutches of the Agents. Indeed, it was only by the sweet persuasion of Carrie that he had this time been induced to go with her and Johnny up on the spur of the mountain, and there meet John Logan with some provisions. From there he was persuaded to go with him to his hiding-place, high up the mountain, where we left him in the last chapter.
But the poor old man's head was soon under water again, as we have seen. That keg of California wine and the few bits of bread and meat, which so suddenly disappeared in the hands of Dosson and Emens, were all he happened to have in the cabin when the two children came in at dusk. But these he had snatched up at once and ran with them to Logan.
But the next morning, when his head was once more above water, and he had been told all that had happened, he pulled his longwhite beard to the right and to left, and at last rose up and took the two children and led them back down the steep and stupendous mountain to his cabin. He knew that John Logan was now a doomed man. Had he been alone, had there been no one but himself and this hunted man, he would have stayed by his side. As it was, it made the old man a year older to decide. And it was like tearing his heart out by the roots, when he rose up, choking with agony, grasped Logan's hand, bade him farewell, and led the children hurriedly away. Once, twice, the old man stopped and turned suddenly about, and looked sharply and almost savagely up the mountains, as if to return. And then, each time he sighed, shook his head, and hurried on down the hill. He held tightly on to the little brown hands of the children, as if he feared that they, too, like himself, might let their better natures master them, and so turn back and join the desolate and hunted man.
That evening, after the old man had returned from his tunnel, and while he prepared a meager meal from a few potatoes and a heel of bacon found back in the corner of a shelf, and so hard that even the wood-rats had refused to eat it, a passing fellow-miner put his heavy head and shoulders in at the half open cabin and shouted out that a barn had been burned in the valley, a house fired into, and the tomahawk of John Logan found hard by. The children glanced at each other by the low fire-light. But old Forty-nine only went on with his work as the head withdrew and passed on, but he said never a word. He was very thoughtful all the evening. He was now perfectly certain that his course had been the wise one, the only prudent one in fact. Logan he knew was now beyond help. He must use all his art and address to keep the children from further peril. He made them promise to remain in his cabin, to never attempt to reach Logan. He told them that their presence with him would only greatly embarrass him in his flight; that they might be followed if they attempted to reach him, and that he and they would then be taken and sent to the Reservation together. But he told them further—and their black eyes flashed like fire as he spoke in a voice tremulous with emotion and earnestness—that if ever Logan came to that cabin hungry, or for help of any kind, theyshould help him with every means in their power.
And so the old man went back to work in his tunnel; and as the autumn wore away and winter drew on, the children kept close about the little old cabin, waiting, waiting, waiting; looking up toward the now white, cold mountain, yet obeying Forty-nine to the letter.
Meantime the man-hunt went on; although the children knew nothing for a long time of the deadly energy with which it was conducted.
What a strange place for two bright, budding children was this old, old cabin, with its old, old man, and its dark and miserable interior! How people shunned the lonely old place, and how it sank down into the earth and among the weeds and willows, and long strong yellow tangled grass, as if it wanted to be shunned!
On a dirty old shelf near the fire-place lay a torn and tattered book. It was thumbed and thrumbed all to pieces from long and patient use. When the wind blew through the chinks of the cabin, this old book seemed to have life. It fluttered there like a woundedbird. Its leaves literally whispered. This old book was a Bible.
More houses had been burned in the little valley, and the crime laid to John Logan. He had now been proclaimed an outlaw in effect by every settler. Those two men had made him so odious that many settlers had vowed to shoot him on sight. Dosson at last went before a magistrate and swore that John Logan had shot at him while in the performance of his duty as a sub-agent of the Reservation. By this means he procured a warrant for his arrest by the civil authorities, to be placed in the hands of the newly elected sheriff of the newly organized and sparsely settled country. Things looked desperate indeed. To add to the agony of the crisis, a sharp and bitter winter now wrapped the whole world in snow and ice. It was no longer possible for any one to subsist in the mountains, or survive at all without fire and fire-arms. These the hunted man did not dare use. They were witnesses that would betray his presence, and must not be thought of.
All this time the old man and the childrencould do nothing. The children hovered over the fire in the wretched old cabin. And what a cold, cheerless place it was!
But if the interior of this old cabin was gloomy, that of the old tunnel was simply terrible. Yet in this dark and dreadful place the old man had spent nearly a quarter of a century.
I wonder if the glad, gay world knows where it gets its gold? Does that fair woman, or well-clad, well-fed man, know anything about the life of the gold-hunter? When the gold is brought to the light and given to the commerce of the world, we see it shining in the sun. It is now a part of the wealth of the nation. But do not forget that every piece of gold you touch or see, or stand credited with at your bank, cost some brave man blood, life!
This old Forty-nine, years before, when the camp was young, had found a piece of gold-bearing quartz in a ledge on the top of a high, sharp ridge, that pointed down into the canyon. This was before quartz mining had been thought of. But the shrewd, thoughtful man saw that from this source came all the gold in the placer. He could see that it was from thisvein that all the fine gold in the camp had been fed. He resolved to strike at the fountain head. It was by accident he had made his discovery. The high, sharp and narrow ridge was densely timbered, and now that the miners had settled in the canyon below, the annual fires would not be allowed to sweep over the country, and the woods would soon be almost impenetrable. So argued Forty-nine. For all his mind was bent on keeping his secret till he could pierce the mountains from the canyon-level below, and strike the ledge in the heart of the great high-backed ridge, where he felt certain the gold must lay in great heaps and flakes and wedges. And so it was with a full heart and a strong arm that he had begun his low, dark tunnel—all alone at the bottom of the ridge.
He had begun his tunnel in a secluded place, under a tuft of dense wood, on the steep hillside. He made the mouth of the tunnel very low and narrow. At first he wheeled out the dirt in his wheelbarrow only when the water in the canyon was high enough to carry off the earth which he excavated. He worked very hard and kept very sober for a long time.Day after day he expected to strike the ledge.
But day after day, week after week, month after month, stole away between his fingers, and still no sign of the ledge. A year went by. Then he struck a hard wall of granite. This required drills, fuse-powder, and all the appliance of the quarry. He had to stop work now and then and wash in the fast failing placers, to get money enough to continue his tunnel. Besides, he now could make only a few inches headway each week. Sometimes he would be a whole month making the length of his pick-handle.
All this was discouraging. The man began to grow heart-sick. Who was there at home waiting and waiting all this time? No one in the camp could say. In fact, no one in the camp knew any thing at all about this silent man, who seemed so superior to them all; and as the camp knew nothing at all of the man, either his past or his present, as is usually the case, it made a history of its own for him. And you may be certain it was not at all complimentary to this exclusive and silent man of the tunnel.
Two, three, four, five years passed. Thecamp had declined; miners had either gone back to the States, gone to new mines, or gone up on the little hill out of the canyon to rest together; and yet this man held on to his tunnel. He was a little bit bent now from long stooping, waiting, toiling, and there were ugly crows-feet about his eyes—eyes that had grown dim and blood-shot from the five years glare of the single candle in that tunnel.
And the man was not so exclusive now. The tunnel was now no secret. It was spoken of now with derision, only to be laughed at.
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten years! The man has grown old. He is bent and gray. But his faith, which the few remaining miners call a madness, is still unbroken. Yet it is not in human nature to endure all this agony of suspense, all this hope deferred from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, and still be human. The man has, in some sense, become a brute. He now is seen to reel and totter to his cabin, late at night oftentimes. He has at last fallen into the habit of the camp. He can drink, gamble, carouse, as late as the latest.
Now and then, it is true, he has his soberspells, and all the good of his great nature is to the surface. Now he takes up a map and diagram which is hidden under the broad stone of the hearth, and examines it, measures and makes calculations by the hour at night, when all the camp is, or ought to be, asleep.
Maybe it is the placing and displacing of this great stone that has given rise to the story in the camp that the old man is not so poor as he pretends. Maybe some of the rough men who hang about the camp have watched him through the chink-holes in the wretched cabin some night, and decided that it is gold which he keeps concealed under the great hearthstone.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years! The man's hair is long and hangs in strings. It is growing gray, almost white. Some men have been trying to get into the bent old man's cabin at night to find the buried treasure. The old man's double-barreled shot-gun has barked in their faces; and there has been a thinly attended funeral. The camp is low, miserable. The tide is out. Wrecks of rockers, toms, sluices, flumes, derricks, battered pans, tom-irons, cradles, old cabin, strew the sandy strand.
This last act has left the old man utterly alone; yet he is seen even more frequently than before at the "Deadfall." Is he trying to forget that man had died at his hand?
Now and then you see him leading a tawny boy about, and talking in a low, tender way of better things than his life and appearance would indicate. The man is still on the down grade. And yet how long he has been on this decline! One would say he should be at the bottom by this time.
When we reflect how very far a man can fall, we can estimate something of the height in which he stands when fresh from his Maker's hand.
Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one years! The iron-gray hair is white as the snow on the mountain-tops that environ him. The tall man is bent as a tree is bent when the winter snow lies heavily on its branches. The tawny boy is grown a man now. This is John Logan, the fugitive. The two homeless children have long since taken his place.
And still the pick clangs on in that dark, damp tunnel that is always dripping, dripping, dripping, where it looks out at the glaring day, as if in eternal tears for the wasted life within. Yet now there is hope.
New life has been infused into this old camp of late years. The tide is flowing in. The placer mines have perished and passed into history. But there is a new industry discovered. It is quartz mining—the very thing that this old man has given his life to establish. And it is this that has kept the old man up, alive, for the past few years. He is now certain that he will strike it yet.
Is there some one waiting still, far away? We do not know. He does not know now. Years and years ago, utterly discouraged, yet mechanically keeping on, he ceased to write.
But now these two new lives here have ran into his. If he could only strike it now! If he could only strike it for them!
It is mid-winter. The three are almost starving. Old Forty-nine has been prudent, cautious, careful of the two helpless waifs thrown into his hands. Could he, old, broken, destitute, friendless, stand up boldly betweenthe man-hunters and these children? Impossible. And so it is that Dosson and Emens are not strangers at the old man's cabin now, hateful as is their presence there to all. They are allowed to come and go. And Dosson pays court to Carrie. They ply the old man with drink. The poor, broken, brave old miner, still dreams and hopes that he will strike it yet—and then! Sometimes he starts up in his sleep and strikes out with his bony hands—as if to expel them from his cabin and keep Carrie safe, sacred, pure. Then he sinks back with a groan, and Carrie bends over him and her great eyes fill with tears.
O, the mockery of pity!Weep with fragrant handkerchief,In pompous luxury of grief,Selfish, hollow-hearted city?O these money-getting times!What's a heart for? What's a hand,But to seize and shake the land,Till it tremble for its crimes?
O, the mockery of pity!Weep with fragrant handkerchief,In pompous luxury of grief,Selfish, hollow-hearted city?
O these money-getting times!What's a heart for? What's a hand,But to seize and shake the land,Till it tremble for its crimes?
Midnight, and the mighty trees knock their naked arms together, and creak and cry wildly in the wind. In Forty-nine's cabin, by a flickering log-fire, Carrie sits alone. The wind howls horribly, the door creaks, and the fire snaps wickedly; the wind roars—now the roar of a far-off sea, and now it smites the cabin in shocks, and sifts and shakes the snow through the shingle. The girl draws her tattered blanket tighter about her, and sits a little closer to the fire. Now there is a sudden, savage gustof wind, wilder, fiercer than before, and a sheet of snow sifts in through a crack in the door, and dances over the floor.
"What a storm!" exclaims the girl, as she rises up, looks about, and then takes the blanket from her shoulders and stuffs it in the crack by the door.
She listens, looks about again, and then, going up to the little glass tacked beside the fire-place, carefully arranges her splendid hair that droops down over her shoulders in the careless, perfect fashion of Evangeline.
"Heaven help any one who is out in this storm to-night!"
Then she takes another stick from the corner and places it on the fire.
"Forty-nine will be here soon, and Johnny; Johnny with news about him—about poor John Logan."
She shakes her head and clasps her hands.
"It is nearly half a year since that night. They can't take him—they dare not take him. They are hunting him—hunting him in this storm—hunting him as if he were a wild beast. He hides with the cattle in the sheds, with the very hogs in their pens. They comeupon him there; he starts from his sleep and dashes away, while they follow, and track him by the blood of his feet in the snow. Oh, how terrible it is! I must not think of it; I will go mad."
She turns to the door and listens. She draws back the ragged curtains from the window and tries to look out into the storm. She can hear and see nothing, and she walks back again to the fire. "I must set them their supper." As she says this, she goes to a little cupboard and takes a piece of bread, puts it on a plate and sets it on the table. Then she places two plates and two cups of water. "They will be here soon, and they must have their suppers. Oh, that grocery!" She shudders as she says this. "And Johnny will bring me news of him—of John Logan. What's that?"
She springs to the door, lifts the latch, and Stumps steals in, brushing the snow from his neck and shoulders. He has a club in his hand, and looks back and about him as he shuts the door.
"Oh, sister, its awful! I tell you its too awful!"
"Brother—brother! What has happened?What is awful? What is it, Johnny? And he, John Logan?"
"He's been there!" The boy shivers and points in a half-frightened manner toward the little hill. "Yes, he has; he's been up on the hill by his mother's grave; and he's been to 'Squire Field's house—yes, he has; and he couldn't get in, for they had a big dog tied to the gate, and now they have got another dog tied to the gate. Yes, and they tracked him all around by the blood in the snow!"
"Oh brother! don't, don't!"
"Don't be afraid, sister; he has gone away now. Oh, if he would only go away and stay away—far away, and they couldn't catch him, I'd be just as glad as I could be! Yes, I would; so help me, I would."
"And he has been up there, and in this storm!"
She speaks this to herself, as she goes to the window and attempts to look out.
"Poor, poor John Logan!" sighs the boy. "I wish his mother was alive; I do, so help me. She was a good woman, she was; she didn't sick Bose on me, she didn't."
As the boy says this he stands his club in the corner, and looks with his sister for a moment sadly into the fire, and then suddenly says:
"I'm hungry. Sister, ain't you got something to eat. Forty-nine, he's down to the grocery, and Phin Emens he's down to the grocery, too, and he swears awfully about John Logan, and he says it's the Injun that's in him that makes him so bad. Do you think it's the Injun that's in him, sister?"
As the boy says this, the girl turns silently to the little table and pushes it toward him.
"There, Johnny, that's all there is. You must leave some for Forty-nine."
"Poor, poor John Logan!"
He eats greedily for a moment, then stops suddenly and looks into the fire.
Carrie, also looking into the fire, murmurs:
"And Sylvia Fields let them tie a dog there to keep him away! I would have killed that dog first. If John Logan should come here, I would open that door—I would open that door to him!"—There is a dark and terrified face at the window—"And I would give himbread to eat, and let him sit by this fire and get warm!"
"And I would, too—so help me, I would!" The boy pushes back his bread, and rises and goes up to his sister. "Yes, I would. I don't care what Phin Emens, or anybody says; for his mother didn't sick 'Bose' at me, she didn't!"
The pale and pitiful face at the window begins to brighten. There is snow in the long matted black locks that fall to his shoulders. For nearly half a year this man has fled from his fellow-man, a hunted grizzly, a hunted tiger of the jungle.
What wonder that his step is stealthy as he lifts the latch and enters? What wonder that his eyes have an uncommon glare as he looks around, looks back over his shoulder as he shuts the door noiselessly behind him? What wonder that his clothes hang in shreds about him, and his feet and legs are bound in thongs; that his arms are almost bare; that his bloodless face is half hidden in black and shaggy beard?
"Carrie, I have come to you. Yours is the only door that will open to me now."
"John Logan!" She starts; the boy, too, utters a low, stifled cry. Then they draw near the miserable man. For they are bred of the woods, and have nerves of iron, and they know the need and the power of silence, too.
"Youhere, John Logan?" Carrie whispers, with a shudder.
"Ay, I am here—starving, dying!"
The boy takes up the bread he had dropped, and places it on the table before Logan. The hunted outcast sits down wearily and begins to eat with the greediness of a starved beast. The girl timidly brushes the snow from his hair, and takes a pin from her breast and begins to pin up a great rent in his shirt that shows his naked shoulder.
The boy is glad and full of heart, and of indescribable delight that he has given his bread to the starving man. He stands up, brightly, with his back to the fire for a moment, and then goes back and brushes off the snow from the man's matted hair, then back to the fire.
"I'm awful glad to see you eat, Mr. John Logan," says Stumps; "I wish there was more, I do," and he rocks on his foot andwags his head from shoulder to shoulder gleefully. "It ain't much—it ain't much, Mr. John Logan; but it is all there is."
"All there is, and they were eating it." The man says this aside to himself, and he hides his face for a moment, as if he would conceal a tear. Then, after a time he seems to recover himself, and he lays the bread down on the table, tenderly, silently, carefully indeed, as if it were the most delicate and precious thing on earth. Then, lifting his face, looks at them with an effort to be cheerful, and says:
"I—I forgot; I—I am not hungry. I have had my dinner. I—I, oh yes; I have been eating a great deal. Oh, no, no, no; I'm not hungry—not hungry!"
As the man says this he rises and stands between the others at the fire. He puts his hands over their heads, and looks alternately in their uplifted faces. There is a long silence. "Carrie, they have tied a dog to that door, over yonder."
"There is no dog tied to this door, John Logan."
Low and tender with love, yet very firm and earnest is her voice. And her eyes are lifted to his. He looks down into her soul, and there is an understanding between them. There is a conversation of the eyes too refined for words; too subtle, too sweet, too swift for words.
They stand together but a moment there, soul flowing into soul and tiding forth, and to and fro; but it was as if they had talked together for hours. He leans his head, kisses her lifted and unresisting lips, and says, "God bless you," and that is all.
It is her first kiss, the imprint, the mint-mark on this virgin gold. This maiden of a moment since, is a woman now.
"Do you know that they are after you?" The girl says this in a sort of wild whisper, as she looks toward the door.
"Do I know that they are after me? Father in Heaven, who should know it better than I?" The man throws up his arms, and totters back and falls into a seat from very weakness. "Do I know that they are after me? For more than half a year I have fled; night and day, and day and night I have fled, hidden away;starting up at midnight from down among the cattle, where I had crept to keep warm; and then on, on and on, out into the snow, the storm, over the frozen ground, to the deep canyon and dark woods, where, naked and bleeding, I disputed with the bear for his bed in the hollow tree."
The boy springs to the door. Is it the storm that is tugging and rattling at the latch?
But the girl seems to see, to heed, to hear only John Logan. She clutches his hand in both her own and covers it with kisses and with tears.
"John Logan, I pity you! I—I—" she had almost said, "I love you."
"Thank Heaven! Thank Heaven for one true heart, and one true hand when all the world is against me! Carrie, I could die now content. The bitterness of my heart passes away, and the wild, mad nature that made me an Ishmaelite, with every man's hand against me, and my hand against all, is gone. I am another being. I could die now content;" and he bows his head.
"But you must not, you shall not die! Youmust go—go far away; why hover about this place?"
"I do not know. But yonder lies the only being who ever befriended me; and somehow I get lonesome when I get far away from her grave. And I go round and round, like the sun around the world, and come back to where I started from."
"But you must go—go far away—go now."
"Do you know what you are saying? I was never outside of this. All would be strange. I would be lost, lost there. And then, do you not imagine they are waiting for me there—everywhere? Look at my face! This tinge of Indian blood, that all men abhor and fear, and call treacherous and bloody. Across my brow at my birth was drawn a brand that marks me forever—a brand—a brand as if it were the brand of Cain."
The man bows his head, and turns away.
Slowly and timidly Carrie approaches him, and she lays her hand on his arm and looks in his face. The boy still watches by the door.
"But you will fly from here?"
His arm drops over her hair, down to hershoulder, and he draws her to his breast, as she looks up tenderly in his face, and pleads:
"You will go now—at once? For you will die here."
"Ah, I will die here." He says this with a calm and dogged determination. "Carrie, I have one wish, one request—only one. I know you are weak and helpless yourself, and can't do much, and I ought not to ask you to do anything."
Stumps has left the door as he hears the man mention that there is something to be done, and stands by their side.
"Whatever it is you ask, John Logan, we will do it—we will do it."
The girl says this with a firmness that convinces him that it will be done.
"We will do it! we will do it! so help me, we will do it!" blubbers Stumps.
"What is it, John Logan, we can do?"
"I will not fly from here." He looks down tenderly into their faces. Then he lifts his face. It is dark and terrible, and his lips are set with resolution. "I will die here. It may be to-night, it may be to-morrow. It may be as I turn to go out at that door they will sendtheir bullets through my heart; it may be while I kneel in the snow at my mother's grave. But, sooner or later, it will come—it will come!"
"But please, John Logan, what is it we can do?"
Her voice is tremulous, and her eyes stream with tears.
"Carrie, I am a man—a strong man—and ought not to ask anything of a helpless girl. But I have no other friend. I have had no friends. All the days of my life have been dark and lonely. And now I am about to die, Carrie, I want you to see that I am buried by my mother yonder. I am so weary, and I could rest there. And then she, poor broken-hearted mother, she might not be so lonesome then. Do you promise?"
"I do promise!" and the boy echoes this scarcely audible but determined answer.
"Thank you—thank you! And now good night. I must be going, lest I draw suspicion on you. Good night, good night; God bless you, Carrie!"
He presses her to his heart, hastily embraces her, and tearing himself away, stoops and kissesthe boy as he passes to the door. Drawing his tattered shirt closer about his shoulders, and turning his face as if to conceal his emotion, he lays his hand upon the latch to suddenly dart forth.
Two dark figures pass the window, and in a moment more the latch-string is clutched by a rough, unsteady hand from without.
"Here, here!" cries the girl, as she springs back to the dingy curtain that divides off a portion of the cabin into a bed-room. "Here! in here! Quick! quick!" as she draws the curtain aside, and lets it fall over the retreating fugitive. Forty-nine and Gar Dosson enter. The former is drunk, and therefore dignified and silent. His companion is drunk, and therefore garrulous and familiar. Wine floats a man's real nature nearly to the surface.
Forty-nine lifts his hat, bows politely and respectfully to the children, brushes his hat with his elbow as he meanders across the floor to the peg in the wall, but cannot quite trust himself to speak.
"Hullo, Carats!" cries Gar Dosson, as he chucks her under the chin. "Knowed I was coming, didn't you? Got yourself fixed up.Pretty, ain't she?" and he winks a blood-shot eye toward Stumps. "And when is it going to be my Carats? Pretty soon, now, eh?" and he walks, or rather totters, aside.
"Umph! I have got 'em again, Carrie. Fly around and get us something to eat. Fly around, Carrie, fly around! Oh, I've got the shakes again!" groans Forty-nine.
"Poor old boy!" and she brushes the snow from his beard and his tattered coat. "Why, Forty-nine, you're shaking like a leaf."
"He's drunk—that's what's the matter with him." Gar Dosson growls this out between his teeth as he sets his gun in the corner.
"He's not drunk! Its the ager!" retorts Stumps fiercely.
Gar Dosson, glaring at the boy, steadies himself on his right leg, and diving deep in his left hand pocket, draws forth a large bill or poster. With both hands he manages to spread this out, and swaggering up to the wall near the window he hangs it on two pegs that are there to receive coats or hats.
"Look at that!" and he crookedly points with his crooked fingers at the large letters, and reads: "One thousand dollars (hic) dollars reward for the capture of John Logan! What do you say to that, Carats? That's a fine fellow to have for a lover, now, ain't it?—a waluable lover, now, ain't it? Worth a thousand dollars! Oh, don't I wish he was a-hanging around here now! Wouldn't I sell him, and get a thousand dollars, eh? Yes, I would. I just want that thousand dollars. And I'm the man that's going to get it, too! Eh, old Blossom-nose?" Forty-nine jerks back his dignified head as the bully gesticulates violently.
"You will, will you? Well, may-be you will (hic), but if you get a cent of that money (hic) for catching that man you don't enter that door again; no, you don't lift that latch-string again as long as old Forty-nine has a fist to lift!" and he thrusts his doubled hand hard into the boaster's face.
"Good for you!" cries Carrie. "Dear, good, brave old Forty-nine; I like you—I love you!" and the girl embraces him, while the boy flourishes his club at the back of the bully.
"No, don't you hit a man when he's down, sah," continues Forty-nine. "That's the truedoctrine of a gentleman—the true doctrine of a gentleman, sah." He flourishes his hand, totters forward, totters back, and hesitates—"The true doctrine of a gentleman, sah. The little horse in the horse-race, sah—the bottom dog in the dog-fight, sah. The—"
And the poor old man totters back and falls helplessly in the great, home-made chair near the corner, where stands the gun. His head is under water.
"The true doctrines of a gentleman," snaps Dosson; and he throws out a big hand toward the drooping head. "Old Blossom-nose!" Then turning to Carrie. "The sheriff's a coming; he gave me that 'ere bill—yes, he did. He's down to the grocery, now. He's going around to all the cabins, and a-swearing 'em in a book, that they don't know nothing about John Logan. The sheriff, he's a comin' here, Carats, right off."
There is a rift in the curtain, and the pitiful face of the fugitive peers forth.
"The sheriff coming here!" He turns, feels the wall, and tries the logs with his hands. Not a door, not a window. Solid as the solid earth.
"Coming here? But what is he coming here for?" demands Carrie.
"Coming here to find out what you know about John Logan. Oh, he's close after him."
"Close after me!" gasps Logan. The man feels for something to lay hand upon by which to defend himself. "I will not be taken alive; I will die here!" He clutches at last, above the bed, a gun. "Saved, saved!" He holds it tenderly, as if a child, or something dearly loved. He takes it to the light and looks at the lock; he blows in the barrel; he mournfully shakes his head. "It is not loaded! Well, no matter; I can but die," and he clubs the gun and prepares for mortal battle.
"Oh, come, Carats," cries Gar Dosson, "let's have a little frolic before the sheriff comes—a kiss, eh? Come, my beauty!"
The rough man has all this time been stealing up, as nearly as he could to the girl, and now throws his arm about her neck.
"Shall I brain him—be a murderer, indeed?"
All the Indian is again aroused, and John Logan seems more terrible, and more determined to save her than to defend his own life.
"Stand back!" shouts the Girl to Dosson. She attempts to throw him off, but his powerful arm is about her neck. "Forty-nine! Help!" but the old man is unconscious. John Logan is about to start from his corner.
"Take that, you brute! and that!" and Stumps whirls his club and thunders against the ribs of the ruffian.
"You devil! you brat! what do you mean?"
Mad with disappointment and pain, he throws the girl from him, and turns upon the boy. He clutches him by the back of the neck as he starts to escape, and bears him to the ground.
"Look 'ere, do you know what I'm going to do with you? I'm going to break your back across my knee! yes, I am!" and he glares about terribly.
Carrie shrinks back to the side of Forty-nine.
"Oh! Help! He will murder him! He will kill him!"
"No, I won't murder you, you brat, but I'll chuck you out in that snow and let you cool off, while I have your sister all to myself. Come here; give me your ear!" and thegreat, strong ruffian seizes his ear and fairly carries him along by it toward the door. "Give me your ear!"
"Oh, sister, sister! He will kill me!" howls Stumps.
"Forty-nine! save us! We will be murdered!"
"Come, I say, give me your ear!" thunders the brute, as he fairly draws the boy still toward the door.
"Stop that, or die!"
The frenzied girl, failing to arouse Forty-nine, has caught up the gun from the corner, and brought the muzzle to the ruffian's breast. He totters back, and throws up his arms.
"Go back there and sit down, or I will kill you!"
"Give me your ear! Come!" roars Stumps. It is now his turn. "Give me your ear!" He reaches up and takes that red organ in his hand, and nearly wrenches it from the brute's head, as he leads him back, with many twists and gyrations, slowly to a low seat at the other side of the cabin.
Still holding the gun in level, and in dangerous proximity to the man's breast, Carrie cries:
"Now if you attempt to move you are a dead man!" "Give me your ear!" and Stumps wrenches it again, as he sits the man firmly on his low stool, with his red face making mad distortions from the pain. "John Logan, come!" calls the girl. "No, don't you start, Gar Dosson. Don't you lift a finger; if you do, you die!"
The curtains are parted, and John Logan starts forth. "Go, go! There's not a moment to lose. The sheriff will be here; they are coming! Quick! Go at once! I hear—I hear them coming!"
The man springs to the door; the latch is lifted; a moment more and he will be free—safe, at least for the night. Out into the friendly darkness, where man and beast, where pursuer and pursued, are equal, and equally helpless.
There is a crushing of snow, a stamping of feet, and one, two, three, four, five—five forms hurriedly pass the window. The latch is lifted, and as John Logan again darts back under cover, the party, brushing the snow from their coats and grizzled beards, hastily enter the cabin.
"Fly around, Carrie, fly around! fix yourself up!" The fresh gust of wind and storm from the door just opened, fans the glimmering spark of consciousness into sudden flame, and Forty-nine springs up, perfectly erect, perfectly dignified. "Fly around, Carrie, fly around; fix yourself up. The sheriff is coming—fly around!"
The girl drops the gun in the corner where she had found it, and stands before Forty-nine, smoothing down her apron, and letting her eyes fall on the floor timidly and in a childlike way, as if these little hands of hers had never known a harder task than their present employment of smoothing down her apron.
Dosson springs up before the sheriff. He rubs his eyes, and he looks about as if he had just been startled from some bad, ugly dream. He wonders, indeed, if he has seen John Logan at all. Again he rubs his eyes, and then, looking at his knuckle, says, in a deep, guttural fashion, to himself, "Jim-jams, by gol! I thought I'd seed John Logan!"
"Ah, Forty-nine," says the sheriff, "sorry to disturb you, and your Miss; and good evening to you, sir; and good evening to you;"and the honest sheriff bows to each, and brushes the snow from his fur cap as he speaks.
Gar Dosson advances to his partner, Phin Emens, who has just entered, with that stealthy old tiger-step so familiar to them both, and laying his hand on his shoulder, they move aside.
"Then it's not the jim-jams," mutters he. "I've not got 'em, then."
He stops, pinches himself, looks at his hands, and mutters to himself. Then he lifts his hand to his ear.
"Look at it again!" Phin Emens looks at the ear. "It's red, ain't it? Oh, it feels red; it feels like fire. Then I've not got 'em, and he is here. Hist! Come here! We want that thousand dollars all to ourselves."
He plucks his companion further to one side. They talk and gesticulate together, while now and then a big red rough hand is thrust out savagely toward the curtain.
"Sorry indeed to disturb you, Miss," observes the sheriff; "but you see, I've been searching and swearing of 'em all, and its only fair to serve all alike."
"He is not here. Upon the honor of agentleman, he is not here," says Forty-nine, emphatically.
"He is here!" howls Dosson; and the tremendous man, with the tremendous voice and tremendous manner, bolts up before the sheriff. "He is here; and I, as an honest man am going to earn a thousand dollars, for the sake of justice. I have found him—found him all by myself; and these fellers can't have no hand in my find." And he holds up John Logan's cap, which had been knocked from his head in his hasty retreat to cover, and he rolls his red eyes toward the bed, takes a step in that direction, reaches a hand, lays hold of the curtain, and is about to dash it aside.
"John Logan is there!" shouts Dosson, and again the curtain is clutched.
Does he dream of what is beyond? If he could only see the panting, breathless wretch that leans there eagerly, with lifted gun, ready to brain him—waiting, waiting for him to come, even wishing that he only would come—he would start back with terror to the other side.
"He is here! I have found him! Come!"
Carrie, springing forward from her posture of anxiety and terror, grasps a powder horn from over the mantel piece, jerks out the stopple with her teeth, and holding it over the fire, cries, with desperation:
"Do it, if you dare! This horn is full of powder, and if any man here dares to move that curtain, I'll blow you all into burning hell!" The man loosens his hold on the curtain, and totters back. He is sober enough to know how terrible is the situation, and he knows her well enough to believe she will do precisely what she says she will do. "Yes, I will! We will all go to the next world together; and now let us see who is best ready to die!"
"Bravo!" shouts Forty-nine.
The sheriff and his men have been moving back slowly from the inspired girl, standing there by the door of death.
Gar Dosson at last steals around by the sheriff. "But he is here, Mr. Sheriff," he says. "I tell you he is here in this house. There! For here is his cap. I found it. I foundhim, and I want him and I want that thousand dollars. Search!"
"And I tell you he is not here!" cries the girl, "and you shall not search, 'less—"
And the horn is lifted menacingly over the fire. "Won't you take my word?"
"You shall takemyword!" shouts Dosson.
"I will take your single word, Miss, against a thousand such men."
And the sheriff puts on his cap, turns, and is about to go.
"But he is here! The thousand dollars, Mr. Sheriff!" cries Dosson.
"Miss, officers sometimes have duties that are more unpleasant to them than to the parties most concerned. You say he is not here?"
"He is not here, Mr. Sheriff—he is not here!" cries Carrie.
The sheriff twists his cap on his head. "And you will be sworn, as the others were?" says the sheriff. "So much the better; and that will be quite satisfactory. Ah, here is the Bible at hand."
And he takes from the little shelf the tattered book. The girl stands still as stone,with the engine of death in her hand. The officer bows, smiles, reaches the book with his left hand, lays his cap on the table, and lifts his right hand in the air. Her little fingers reach out firmly, fearlessly, and rest on the book. Her eyes are looking straight into his.
"It may be my duty, Miss, to search the house, after what that 'un has said, and, Miss, I expect it is my duty. But, Miss, I is not the man to expose you before a man as might like to see you exposed. And then that poor devil that come back here, Miss, on bleeding feet—crawling back here on his hands and knees, to die by his mother's grave."
The voice is tremulous; the hand that is raised in the air comes down. Then lifting it again he says resolutely, "Swear, Miss!"
All are looking—leaning—with the profoundest interest. There is a dark strange face peering through a rift in the half-opened curtain. "God bless her! God bless her! She can, and she will!" mutters Forty-nine.
"She can't!" cries Dosson. "She believes the book and, by gol, she can't!" The man says this over his shoulder, and in a husky whisper as the girl seems to pause.
"Hold your hand on the book, and swear as I shall tell you," says the sheriff.
She only holds more firmly to the book; her eyes are fixed more steadily on his.
"Say it as I say it. I do solemnly swear—"
"I do solemnly swear—"
"That John Logan—"
"That John Logan—"
"Is not here."
"Is—"
"Ishere!" The curtain is thrown back, and the fugitive dashes into their midst. The book falls from the sheriff's hand, and there is a murmur of amazement.
"God bless you, my girl!" And there is the stillness of a Sabbath morning over all. "God bless you; and God will reward you for this, for I cannot. You have made me another being, Carrie. I have lost my life, but you have saved my soul!" and turning cheerfully to the sheriff he reaches his hands. "Now, sir, I am ready."