The Hon. Pratt C. Gashwiler, M.C., was of course unaware of the incident described in the last chapter. His secret, even if it had been discovered by Dobbs, was safe in that gentleman's innocent and honorable hands, and certainly was not of a quality that Mr. Wiles, at present, would have cared to expose. For, in spite of Mr. Wiles's discomfiture, he still had enough experience of character to know that the irate member from Fresno would be satisfied with his own peculiar manner of vindicating his own personal integrity, and would not make a public scandal of it. Again, Wiles was convinced that Dobbs was equally implicated with Gashwiler, and would be silent for his own sake. So that poor Dobbs, as is too often the fate of simple but weak natures, had full credit for duplicity by every rascal in the land.
From which it may be inferred that nothing occurred to disturb the security of Gashwiler. When the door closed upon Mr. Wiles, he indited a note which, with a costly but exceedingly distasteful bouquet,—rearranged by his own fat fingers, and discord and incongruity visible in every combination of color,—he sent off by a special messenger. Then he proceeded to make his toilet,—an operation rarely graceful or picturesque in our sex, and an insult to the spectator when obesity is superadded. When he had put on a clean shirt, of which there was grossly too much, and added a white waistcoat, that seemed to accent his rotundity, he completed his attire with a black frock coat of the latest style, and surveyed himself complacently before a mirror. It is to be recorded that, however satisfactory the result might have been to Mr. Gashwiler, it was not so to the disinterested spectator. There are some men on whom “that deformed thief, Fashion,” avenges himself by making their clothes appear perennially new. The gloss of the tailor's iron never disappears; the creases of the shelf perpetually rise in judgment against the wearer. Novelty was the general suggestion of Mr. Gashwiler's full-dress,—it was never his HABITUDE;—and “Our own Make,” “Nobby,” and the “Latest Style, only $15,” was as patent on the legislator's broad back as if it still retained the shop-man's ticket.
Thus arrayed, within an hour he complacently followed the note and his floral offering. The house he sought had been once the residence of a foreign Ambassador, who had loyally represented his government in a single unimportant treaty, now forgotten, and in various receptions and dinners, still actively remembered by occasional visits to its salon; now the average dreary American parlor. “Dear me,” the fascinating Mr. X would say, “but do you know, love, in this very room I remember meeting the distinguished Marquis of Monte Pio;” or perhaps the fashionable Jones of the State Department instantly crushed the decayed friend he was perfunctorily visiting by saying, “'Pon my soul, YOU here;—why, the last time I was in this room I gossiped for an hour with the Countess de Castenet in that very corner.” For, with the recall of the aforesaid Ambassador, the mansion had become a boarding-place, kept by the wife of a departmental clerk.
Perhaps there was nothing in the history of the house more quaint and philosophic than the story of its present occupant. Roger Fauquier had been a departmental clerk for forty years. It was at once his practical good luck and his misfortune to have been early appointed to a position which required a thorough and complete knowledge of the formulas and routine of a department that expended millions of the public funds. Fauquier, on a poor salary, diminishing instead of increasing with his service, had seen successive administrations bud and blossom and decay, but had kept his position through the fact that his knowledge was a necessity to the successive chiefs and employes. Once it was true that he had been summarily removed by a new Secretary, to make room for a camp follower, whose exhaustive and intellectual services in a political campaign had made him eminently fit for anything; but the alarming discovery that the new clerk's knowledge of grammar and etymology was even worse than that of the Secretary himself, and that, through ignorance of detail, the business of that department was retarded to a damage to the Government of over half a million of dollars, led to the reinstatement of Mr. Fauquier—AT A LOWER SALARY. For it was felt that something was wrong somewhere, and as it had always been the custom of Congress and the administration to cut down salaries as the first step to reform, they made of Mr. Fauquier a moral example. A gentleman born, of somewhat expensive tastes, having lived up to his former salary, this change brought another bread-winner into the field, Mrs. Fauquier, who tried, more or less unsuccessfully, to turn her old Southern habits of hospitality to remunerative account. But as poor Fauquier could never be prevailed upon to present a bill to a gentleman, sir, and as some of the scions of the best Southern families were still waiting for, or had been recently dismissed from, a position, the experiment was a pecuniary failure. Yet the house was of excellent repute and well patronized; indeed, it was worth something to see old Fauquier sitting at the head of his own table, in something of his ancestral style, relating anecdotes of great men now dead and gone, interrupted only by occasional visits from importunate tradesmen.
Prominent among what Mr. Fauquier called his “little family” was a black-eyed lady of great powers of fascination, and considerable local reputation as a flirt. Nevertheless, these social aberrations were amply condoned by a facile and complacent husband, who looked with a lenient and even admiring eye upon the little lady's amusement, and to a certain extent lent a tacit indorsement to her conduct. Nobody minded Hopkinson; in the blaze of Mrs. Hopkinson's fascinations he was completely lost sight of. A few married women with unduly sensitive husbands, and several single ladies of the best and longest standing, reflected severely on her conduct. The younger men of course admired her, but I think she got her chief support from old fogies like ourselves. For it is your quiet, self-conceited, complacent, philosophic, broad-waisted paterfamilias who, after all, is the one to whom the gay and giddy of the proverbially impulsive, unselfish sex owe their place in the social firmament. We are never inclined to be captious; we laugh at as a folly what our wives and daughters condemn as a fault; OUR “withers are unwrung,” yet we still confess to the fascinations of a pretty face. We know, bless us, from dear experience, the exact value of one woman's opinion of another; we want our brilliant little friend to shine; it is only the moths who will burn their two-penny immature wings in the flame! And why should they not? Nature has been pleased to supply more moths than candles! Go to!—give the pretty creature—be she maid, wife, or widow—a show! And so, my dear sir, while mater-familias bends her black brows in disgust, we smile our superior little smile, and extend to Mistress Anonyma our gracious indorsement. And if giddiness is grateful, or if folly is friendly,—well, of course, we can't help that. Indeed it rather proves our theory.
I had intended to say something about Hopkinson; but really there is very little to say. He was invariably good humored. A few ladies once tried to show him that he really ought to feel worse than he did about the conduct of his wife; and it is recorded that Hopkinson, in an excess of good humor and kindliness, promised to do so. Indeed the good fellow was so accessible that it is said that young DeLancy of the Tape Department confided to Hopkinson his jealousy of a rival; and revealed the awful secret that he (DeLancy) had reason to expect more loyalty from his (Hopkinson's) wife. The good fellow is reported to have been very sympathetic, and to have promised Delaney to lend whatever influence he had with Mrs. Hopkinson in his favor. “You see,” he said explanatorily to DeLancy, “she has a good deal to attend to lately, and I suppose has got rather careless,—that's women's ways. But if I can't bring her round I'll speak to Gashwiler,—I'll get him to use his influence with Mrs. Hop. So cheer up, my boy, HE'LL make it all right.”
The appearance of a bouquet on the table of Mrs. Hopkinson was no rare event; nevertheless, Mr. Gashwiler's was not there. Its hideous contrasts had offended her woman's eye,—it is observable that good taste survives the wreck of all the other feminine virtues,—and she had distributed it to make boutonnieres for other gentlemen. Yet, when he appeared, she said to him hastily, putting her little hand over the cardiac region:
“I'm so glad you came. But you gave me SUCH a fright an hour ago.”
Mr. Gashwiler was both pleased and astounded. “What have I done, my dear Mrs. Hopkinson?” he began.
“Oh, don't talk,” she said sadly. “What have you done, indeed! Why, you sent me that beautiful bouquet. I could not mistake your taste in the arrangement of the flowers;—but my husband was here. You know his jealousy. I was obliged to conceal it from him. Never—promise me now—NEVER do it again.”
Mr. Gashwiler gallantly protested.
“No! I am serious! I was so agitated: he must have seen me blush.”
Nothing but the gross flattery to this speech could have clouded its manifest absurdity to the Gashwiler consciousness. But Mr. Gashwiler had already succumbed to the girlish half-timidity with which it was uttered. Nevertheless, he could not help saying:
“But why should he be so jealous now? Only day before yesterday I saw Simpson of Duluth hand you a nosegay right before him!”
“Ah,” returned the lady, “he was outwardly calm THEN, but you know nothing of the scene that occurred between us after you left.”
“But,” gasped the practical Gashwiler, “Simpson had given your husband that contract,—a cool fifty thousand in his pocket!”
Mrs. Hopkinson looked as dignifiedly at Gashwiler as was consistent with five feet three (the extra three inches being a pyramidal structure of straw-colored hair), a frond of faint curls, a pair of laughing blue eyes, and a small belted waist. Then she said, with a casting down of her lids:
“You forget that my husband loves me.” And for once the minx appeared to look penitent. It was becoming; but as it had been originally practiced in a simple white dress, relieved only with pale-blue ribbons, it was not entirely in keeping with be-flounced lavender and rose-colored trimmings. Yet the woman who hesitates between her moral expression and the harmony of her dress is lost. And Mrs. Hopkinson was victrix by her very audacity.
Mr. Gashwiler was flattered. The most dissolute man likes the appearance of virtue. “But graces and accomplishments like yours, dear Mrs. Hopkinson,” he said oleaginously, “belong to the whole country.” Which, with something between a courtesy and a strut, he endeavored to represent. “And I shall want to avail myself of all,” he added, “in the matter of the Castro claim. A little supper at Welcker's, a glass or two of champagne, and a single flash of those bright eyes, and the thing is done.”
“But,” said Mrs. Hopkinson, “I've promised Josiah that I would give up all those frivolities, and although my conscience is clear, you know how people talk! Josiah hears it. Why, only last night, at a reception at the Patagonian Minister's, every woman in the room gossiped about me because I led the german with him. As if a married woman, whose husband was interested in the Government, could not be civil to the representative of a friendly power?”
Mr. Gashwiler did not see how Mr. Hopkinson's late contract for supplying salt pork and canned provisions to the army of the United States should make his wife susceptible to the advances of foreign princes; but he prudently kept that to himself. Still, not being himself a diplomat, he could not help saying:
“But I understood that Mr. Hopkinson did not object to your interesting yourself in this claim, and you know some of the stock—”
The lady started, and said:
“Stock! Dear Mr. Gashwiler, for Heaven's sake don't mention that hideous name to me. Stock, I am sick of it! Have you gentlemen no other topic for a lady?”
She punctuated her sentence with a mischievous look at her interlocutor. For a second time I regret to say that Mr. Gashwiler succumbed. The Roman constituency at Remus, it is to be hoped, were happily ignorant of this last defection of their great legislator. Mr. Gashwiler instantly forgot his theme,—began to ply the lady with a certain bovine-like gallantry, which it is to be said to her credit she parried with a playful, terrier-like dexterity, when the servant suddenly announced, “Mr. Wiles.”
Gashwiler started. Not so Mrs. Hopkinson, who, however, prudently and quietly removed her own chair several inches from Gashwiler's.
“Do you know Mr. Wiles?” she asked pleasantly.
“No! That is, I—ah—yes, I may say I have had some business relations with him,” responded Gashwiler rising.
“Won't you stay?” she added pleadingly. “Do!”
Mr. Gashwiler's prudence always got the better of his gallantry. “Not now,” he responded in some nervousness. “Perhaps I had better go now, in view of what you have just said about gossip. You need not mention my name to this-er—this—Mr. Wiles.” And with one eye on the door, and an awkward dash of his lips at the lady's fingers, he withdrew.
There was no introductory formula to Mr. Wiles's interview. He dashed at once in medias res. “Gashwiler knows a woman that, he says, can help us against that Spanish girl who is coming here with proofs, prettiness, fascination, and what not! You must find her out.”
“Why?” asked the lady laughingly.
“Because I don't trust that Gashwiler. A woman with a pretty face and an ounce of brains could sell him out; aye, and US with him.”
“Oh, say TWO ounces of brains. Mr. Wiles, Mr. Gashwiler is no fool.”
“Possibly, except when your sex is concerned, and it is very likely that the woman is his superior.”
“I should think so,” said Mrs. Hopkinson with a mischievous look.
“Ah, you know her, then?”
“Not so well as I know him,” said Mrs. H. quite seriously. “I wish I did.”
“Well, you'll find out if she's to be trusted! You are laughing,—it is a serious matter! This woman—”
Mrs. Hopkinson dropped him a charming courtesy and said,
“C'est moi!”
Royal Thatcher worked hard. That the boyish little painter who shared his hospitality at the “Blue Mass” mine should afterward have little part in his active life seemed not inconsistent with his habits. At present the mine was his only mistress, claiming his entire time, exasperating him with fickleness, but still requiring that supreme devotion of which his nature was capable. It is possible that Miss Carmen saw this too, and so set about with feminine tact, if not to supplement, at least to make her rival less pertinacious and absorbing. Apart from this object, she zealously labored in her profession, yet with small pecuniary result, I fear. Local art was at a discount in California. The scenery of the country had not yet become famous; rather it was reserved for a certain Eastern artist, already famous, to make it so; and people cared little for the reproduction, under their very noses, of that which they saw continually with their own eyes, and valued not. So that little Mistress Carmen was fain to divert her artist soul to support her plump little material body; and made divers excursions into the regions of ceramic art, painting on velvet, illuminating missals, decorating china, and the like. I have in my possession some wax flowers—a startling fuchsia and a bewildering dahlia—sold for a mere pittance by this little lady, whose pictures lately took the prize at a foreign exhibition, shortly after she had been half starved by a California public, and claimed by a California press as its fostered child of genius.
Of these struggles and triumphs Thatcher had no knowledge; yet he was perhaps more startled than he would own to himself when, one December day, he received this despatch: “Come to Washington at once.—Carmen de Haro.”
“Carmen de Haro!” I grieve to state that such was the preoccupation of this man, elected by fate to be the hero of the solitary amatory episode of his story, that for a moment he could not recall her. When the honest little figure that had so manfully stood up against him, and had proved her sex by afterwards running away from him, came back at last to his memory, he was at first mystified and then self-reproachful. He had been, he felt vaguely, untrue to himself. He had been remiss to the self-confessed daughter of his enemy. Yet why should she telegraph to him, and what was she doing in Washington? To all these speculations it is to be said to his credit that he looked for no sentimental or romantic answer. Royal Thatcher was naturally modest and self-depreciating in his relations to the other sex, as indeed most men who are apt to be successful with women generally are, despite a vast degree of superannuated bosh to the contrary. To the half dozen women who are startled by sheer audacity into submission there are scores who are piqued by a self-respectful patience; and where a women has to do half the wooing, she generally makes a pretty sure thing of it.
In his bewilderment Thatcher had overlooked a letter lying on his table. It was from his Washington lawyer. The concluding paragraph caught his eye,—“Perhaps it would be well if you came here yourself. Roscommon is here; and they say there is a niece of Garcia's, lately appeared, who is likely to get up a strong social sympathy for the old Mexican. I don't know that they expect to prove anything by her; but I'm told she is attractive and clever, and has enlisted the sympathies of the delegation.” Thatcher laid the letter down a little indignantly. Strong men are quite as liable as weak women are to sudden inconsistencies on any question they may have in common. What right had this poor little bud he had cherished,—he was quite satisfied now that he had cherished her, and really had suffered from her absence,—what right had she to suddenly blossom in the sunshine of power to be, perhaps, plucked and worn by one of his enemies? He did not agree with his lawyer that she was in any way connected with his enemies: he trusted to her masculine loyalty that far. But here was something vaguely dangerous to the feminine mind,—position, flattery, power. He was almost as firmly satisfied now that he had been wronged and neglected as he had been positive a few moments before that he had been remiss in his attention. The irritation, although momentary, was enough to decide this strong man. He telegraphed to San Francisco; and, having missed the steamer, secured an overland passage to Washington; thought better of it, and partly changed his mind an hour after the ticket was purchased; but, manlike, having once made a practical step in a wrong direction, he kept on rather than admit an inconsistency to himself. Yet he was not entirely satisfied that his journey was a business one. The impulsive, weak little Mistress Carmen had prudently scored one against the strong man.
Only a small part of the present great trans-continental railway at this time had been built, and was but piers at either end of a desolate and wild expanse as yet unbridged. When the overland traveller left the rail at Reno, he left, as it were, civilization with it; and, until he reached the Nebraska frontier, the rest of his road was only the old emigrant trail traversed by the coaches of the Overland Company. Excepting a part of “Devil's Canyon,” the way was unpicturesque and flat; and the passage of the Rocky Mountains, far from suggesting the alleged poetry of that region, was only a reminder of those sterile distances of a level New England landscape.
The journey was a dreary monotony that was scarcely enlivened by its discomforts, never amounting to actual accident or incident, but utterly destructive to all nervous tissue. Insanity often supervened. “On the third day out,” said Hank Monk, driver, speaking casually but charitably of a “fare,”—“on the third day out, after axing no end of questions and getting no answers, he took to chewing straws that he picked outer the cushion, and kussin' to hisself. From that very day I knew it was all over with him, and I handed him over to his friends at 'Shy Ann,' strapped to the back seat, and ravin' and cussin' at Ben Holliday, the gent'manly proprietor.” It is presumed that the unfortunate tourist's indignation was excited at the late Mr. Benjamin Holliday, then the proprietor of the line,—an evidence of his insanity that no one who knew that large-hearted, fastidious, and elegantly-cultured Californian, since allied to foreign nobility, will for a moment doubt.
Mr. Royal Thatcher was too old and experienced a mountaineer to do aught but accept patiently and cynically his brother Californian's method of increasing his profits. As it was generally understood that any one who came from California by that route had some dark design, the victim received little sympathy. Thatcher's equable temperament and indomitable will stood him in good stead, and helped him cheerfully in this emergency. He ate his scant meals, and otherwise took care of the functions of his weak human nature, when and where he could, without grumbling, and at times earned even the praise of his driver by his ability to “rough it.” Which “roughing it,” by the way, meant the ability of the passengers to accept the incompetency of the Company. It is true there were times when he regretted that he had not taken the steamer; but then he reflected that he was one of a Vigilance Committee, sworn to hang that admirable man, the late Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, for certain practices and cruelties done upon the bodies of certain steerage passengers by his line, and for divers irregularities in their transportation. I mention this fact merely to show how so practical and stout a voyager as Thatcher might have confounded the perplexities attending the administration of a great steamship company with selfish greed and brutality; and that he, with other Californians, may not have known the fact, since recorded by the Commodore's family clergyman, that the great millionaire was always true to the hymns of his childhood.
Nevertheless, Thatcher found time to be cheerful and helpful to his fellow passengers, and even to be so far interesting to “Yuba Bill,” the driver, as to have the box seat placed at his disposal. “But,” said Thatcher, in some concern, “the box seat was purchased by that other gentleman in Sacramento. He paid extra for it, and his name's on your way-bill!” “That,” said Yuba Bill, scornfully, “don't fetch me even ef he'd chartered the whole shebang. Look yar, do you reckon I'm goin' to spile my temper by setting next to a man with a game eye? And such an eye! Gewhillikins! Why, darn my skin, the other day when we war watering at Webster's, he got down and passed in front of the off-leader,—that yer pinto colt that's bin accustomed to injins, grizzlies, and buffalo, and I'm bless ef, when her eye tackled his, ef she didn't jist git up and rar round that I reckoned I'd hev to go down and take them blinders off from HER eyes and clap on HIS.” “But he paid the money, and is entitled to his seat,” persisted Thatcher. “Mebbe he is—in the office of the Kempeny,” growled Yuba Bill; “but it's time some folks knowed that out in the plains I run this yer team myself.”—A fact which was self-evident to most of the passengers. “I suppose his authority is as absolute on this dreary waste as a ship captain's in mid ocean,” exclaimed Thatcher to the baleful-eyed stranger. Mr. Wiles—whom the reader has recognized—assented with the public side of his face, but looked vengeance at Yuba Bill with the other, while Thatcher, innocent of the presence of one of his worst enemies, placated Bill so far as to restore Wiles to his rights. Wiles thanked him. “Shall I have the pleasure of your company far?” Wiles asked insinuatingly. “To Washington,” replied Thatcher frankly. “Washington is a gay city during the session,” again suggested the stranger. “I'm going on business,” said Thatcher bluntly.
A trifling incident occurred at Pine-Tree Crossing which did not heighten Yuba Bill's admiration of the stranger. As Bill opened the double-locked box in the “boot” of the coach—sacred to Wells, Fargo & Co.'s Express and the Overland Company's treasures—Mr. Wiles perceived a small, black morocco portemanteau among the parcels. “Ah, you carry baggage there too?” he said sweetly. “Not often,” responded Yuba Bill shortly. “Ah, this then contains valuables?” “It belongs to that man whose seat you've got,” said Yuba Bill, who, for insulting purposes of his own, preferred to establish the fiction that Wiles was an interloper; “and ef he reckons, in a sorter mixed kempeny like this, to lock up his portmantle, I don't know who's business it is. Who?” continued Bill, lashing himself into a simulated rage, “who, in blank, is running this yer team? Hey? Mebbe you think, sittin' up thar on the box seat, you are. Mebbe you think you kin see round corners with that thar eye, and kin pull up for teams round corners, on down grades, a mile ahead?” But here Thatcher, who, with something of Lancelot's concern for Modred, had a noble pity for all infirmities, interfered so sternly that Yuba Bill stopped.
On the fourth day they struck a blinding snow-storm, while ascending the dreary plateau that henceforward for six hundred miles was to be their roadbed. The horses, after floundering through the drift, gave out completely on reaching the next station, and the prospects ahead, to all but the experienced eye, looked doubtful. A few passengers advised taking to sledges, others a postponement of the journey until the weather changed. Yuba Bill alone was for pressing forward as they were. “Two miles more and we're on the high grade, whar the wind is strong enough to blow you through the windy, and jist peart enough to pack away over them cliffs every inch of snow that falls. I'll jist skirmish round in and out o' them drifts on these four wheels whar ye can't drag one o' them flat-bottomed dry-goods boxes through a drift.” Bill had a California whip's contempt for a sledge. But he was warmly seconded by Thatcher, who had the next best thing to experience, the instinct that taught him to read character, and take advantage of another man's experience. “Them that wants to stop kin do so,” said Bill authoritatively, cutting the Gordian knot; “them as wants to take a sledge can do so,—thar's one in the barn. Them as wants to go on with me and the relay will come on.” Mr. Wiles selected the sledge and a driver, a few remained for the next stage, and Thatcher, with two others, decided to accompany Yuba Bill. These changes took up some valuable time; and the storm continuing, the stage was run under the shed, the passengers gathering around the station fire; and not until after midnight did Yuba Bill put in the relays. “I wish you a good journey,” said Wiles, as he drove from the shed as Bill entered. Bill vouchsafed no reply, but, addressing himself to the driver, said curtly, as if giving an order for the delivery of goods, “Shove him out at Rawlings,” and passed contemptuously around to the tail board of the sled, and returned to the harnessing of his relay.
The moon came out and shone high as Yuba Bill once more took the reins in his hands. The wind, which instantly attacked them as they reached the level, seemed to make the driver's theory plausible, and for half a mile the roadbed was swept clean, and frozen hard. Further on a tongue of snow, extending from a boulder to the right, reached across their path to the height of two or three feet. But Yuba Bill dashed through a part of it, and by skillful maneuvering circumvented the rest. But even as the obstacle was passed, the coach dropped with an ominous lurch on one side, and the off fore wheel flew off in the darkness. Bill threw the horses back on their haunches; but, before their momentum could be checked, the near hind wheel slipped away, the vehicle rocked violently, plunged backwards and forwards, and stopped.
Yuba Bill was on the road in an instant with his lantern. Then followed an outbreak of profanity which I regret, for artistic purposes, exceeds that generous limit which a sympathizing public has already extended to me in the explication of character. Let me state, therefore, that in a very few moments he succeeded in disparaging the characters of his employers, their male and female relatives, the coach builder, the station keeper, the road on which he travelled, and the travellers themselves, with occasional broad expletives addressed to himself and his own relatives. For the spirit of this and a more cultivated poetry of expression, I beg to refer the temperate reader to the 3d chapter of Job.
The passengers knew Bill, and sat, conservative, patient, and expectant. As yet the cause of the catastrophe was not known. At last Thatcher's voice came from the box seat:
“What's up, Bill?”
“Not a blank lynch pin in the whole blank coach,” was the answer.
There was a dead silence. Yuba Bill executed a wild war dance of helpless rage.
“Blank the blank ENCHANTED thing to blank!”
(I beg here to refer the fastidious and cultivated reader to the only adjective I have dared transcribe of this actual oath which I once had the honor of hearing. He will I trust not fail to recognize the old classic daemon in this wild western objurgation.)
“Who did it?” asked Thatcher.
Yuba Bill did not reply, but dashed up again to the box, unlocked the “boot,” and screamed out:
“The man that stole your portmantle,—Wiles!”
Thatcher laughed:
“Don't worry about that, Bill. A 'biled' shirt, an extra collar, and a few papers. Nothing more.”
Yuba Bill slowly descended. When he reached the ground, he plucked Thatcher aside by his coat sleeve:
“Ye don't mean to say ye had nothing in that bag ye was trying to get away with?”
“No,” said the laughing Thatcher frankly.
“And that Wiles warn't one o' them detectives?”
“Not to my knowledge, certainly.”
Yuba Bill sighed sadly, and returned to assist in the replacing of the coach on its wheels again.
“Never mind, Bill,” said one of the passengers sympathizingly, “we'll catch that man Wiles at Rawlings sure;” and he looked around at the inchoate vigilance committee, already “rounding into form” about him.
“Ketch him!” returned Yuba Bill, derisively, “why we've got to go back to the station; and afore we're off agin he's pinted fur Clarmont on the relay we lose. Ketch him! H-ll's full of such ketches!”
There was clearly nothing to do but to go back to the station to await the repairing of the coach. While this was being done Yuba Bill again drew Thatcher aside:
“I allers suspected that chap's game eye, but I didn't somehow allow for anything like this. I reckoned it was only the square thing to look arter things gen'rally, and 'specially your traps. So, to purvent troubil, and keep things about ekal, ez he was goin' away, I sorter lifted this yer bag of hiz outer the tail board of his sleigh. I don't know as it is any exchange or compensation, but it may give ye a chance to spot him agin, or him you. It strikes me as bein' far-minded and squar';” and with these words he deposited at the feet of the astounded Thatcher the black travelling bag of Mr. Wiles.
“But, Bill,—see here! I can't take this!” interrupted Thatcher hastily. “You can't swear that he's taken my bag,—and—and,—blank it all,—this won't do, you know. I've no right to this man's things, even if—”
“Hold your hosses,” said Bill gravely; “I ondertook to take charge o' your traps. I didn't—at least that d——d wall-eyed—Thar's a portmantle! I don't know who's it is. Take it.”
Half amused, half embarrassed, yet still protesting, Thatcher took the bag in his hands.
“Ye might open it in my presence,” suggested Yuba Bill gravely.
Thatcher, half laughingly, did so. It was full of papers and semi-legal-looking documents. Thatcher's own name on one of them caught his eye; he opened the paper hastily and perused it. The smile faded from his lips.
“Well,” said Yuba Bill, “suppose we call it a fair exchange at present.”
Thatcher was still examining the papers. Suddenly this cautious, strong-minded man looked up into Yuba Bill's waiting face, and said quietly, in the despicable slang of the epoch and region:
“It's a go! Suppose we do.”
Yuba Bill was right in believing that Wiles would lose no time at Rawlings. He left there on a fleet horse before Bill had returned with the broken-down coach to the last station, and distanced the telegram sent to detain him two hours. Leaving the stage road and its dangerous telegraphic stations, he pushed southward to Denver over the army trail, in company with a half-breed packer, crossing the Missouri before Thatcher had reached Julesburg. When Thatcher was at Omaha, Wiles was already in St. Louis; and as the Pullman car containing the hero of the “Blue Mass” mine rolled into Chicago, Wiles was already walking the streets of the national capital. Nevertheless, he had time en route to sink in the waters of the North Platte, with many expressions of disgust, the little black portmanteau belonging to Thatcher, containing his dressing case, a few unimportant letters, and an extra shirt, to wonder why simple men did not travel with their important documents and valuables, and to set on foot some prudent and cautious inquiries regarding his own lost carpet bag and its important contents.
But for these trifles he had every reason to be satisfied with the progress of his plans. “It's all right,” said Mrs. Hopkinson merrily; “while you and Gashwiler have been working with your 'stock,' and treating the whole world as if it could be bribed, I've done more with that earnest, self-believing, self-deceiving, and perfectly pathetic Roscommon than all you fellows put together. Why, I've told his pitiful story, and drawn tears from the eyes of Senators and Cabinet Ministers. More than that, I've introduced him into society, put him in a dress coat,—such a figure!—and you know how the best folk worship everything that is outre as the sincere thing. I've made him a complete success. Why, only the other night, when Senator Misnancy and Judge Fitzdawdle were here, after making him tell his story,—which you know I think he really believes,—I sang 'There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin,' and my husband told me afterwards it was worth at least a dozen votes.”
“But about this rival of yours,—this niece of Garcia's?”
“Another of your blunders; you men know nothing of women. Firstly, she's a swarthy little brunette, with dots for eyes; and strides like a man, dresses like a dowdy, don't wear stays, and has no style. Then, she's a single woman, and alone; and, although she affects to be an artist, and has Bohemian ways, don't you see she can't go into society without a chaperon or somebody to go with her? Nonsense.”
“But,” persisted Wiles, “she must have some power; there's Judge Mason and Senator Peabody, who are constantly talking about her; and Dinwiddie of Virginia escorted her through the Capitol the other day.”
Mistress Hopkinson laughed. “Mason and Peabody aspire to be thought literary and artistic, and Dinwiddie wanted to pique ME!”
“But Thatcher is no fool—”
“Is Thatcher a lady's man?” queried the lady suddenly.
“Hardly, I should say,” responded Wiles. “He pretends to be absorbed in his swindle and devoted to his mine; and I don't think that even you—” he stopped with a slight sneer.
“There, you are misunderstanding me again, and, what is worse, you are misunderstanding your case. Thatcher is pleased with her because he has probably seen no one else. Wait till he comes to Washington and has an opportunity for comparison;” and she cast a frank glance at her mirror, where Wiles, with a sardonic bow, left her standing.
Mr. Gashwiler was quite as confident of his own success with Congress. “We are within a few days of the end of the session. We will manage to have it taken up and rushed through before that fellow Thatcher knows what he is about.”
“If it could be done before he gets here,” said Wiles, “it's a reasonably sure thing. He is delayed two days: he might have been delayed longer.” Here Mr. Wiles sighed. If the accident had happened on a mountain road, and the stage had been precipitated over the abyss, what valuable time would have been saved, and success become a surety. But Mr. Wiles's functions as an advocate did not include murder; at least, he was doubtful if it could be taxed as costs.
“We need have no fears, sir,” resumed Mr. Gashwiler; “The matter is now in the hands of the highest tribunal of appeal in the country. It will meet, sir, with inflexible justice. I have already prepared some remarks—”
“By the way,” interrupted Wiles infelicitously, “where's your young man,—your private secretary,—Dobbs?”
The Congressman for a moment looked confused. “He is not here. And I must correct your error in applying that term to him. I have never put my confidence in the hands of any one.”
“But you introduced him to me as your secretary?”
“A mere honorary title, sir. A brevet rank. I might, it is true, have thought to repose such a trust in him. But I was deceived, sir, as I fear I am too apt to be when I permit my feelings as a man to overcome my duty as an American legislator. Mr. Dobbs enjoyed my patronage and the opportunity it gave me to introduce him into public life only to abuse it. He became, I fear, deeply indebted. His extravagance was unlimited, his ambition unbounded, but without, sir, a cash basis. I advanced money to him from time to time upon the little property you so generously extended to him for his services. But it was quickly dissipated. Yet, sir, such is the ingratitude of man that his family lately appealed to me for assistance. I felt it was necessary to be stern, and I refused. I would not for the sake of his family say anything, but I have missed, sir, books from my library. On the day after he left, two volumes of Patent Office reports and a Blue Book of Congress, purchased that day by me at a store on Pennsylvania avenue, were MISSING,—missing! I had difficulty, sir, great difficulty in keeping it from the papers!”
As Mr. Wiles had heard the story already from Gashwiler's acquaintances, with more or less free comment on the gifted legislator's economy, he could not help thinking that the difficulty had been great indeed. But he only fixed his malevolent eye on Gashwiler and said:
“So he is gone, eh?”
“Yes.”
“And you've made an enemy of him? That's bad.”
Mr. Gashwiler tried to look dignifiedly unconcerned; but something in his visitor's manner made him uneasy.
“I say it is bad, if you have. Listen. Before I left here, I found at a boardinghouse where he had boarded, and still owed a bill, a trunk which the landlord retained. Opening it, I found some letters and papers to yours, with certain memoranda of his, which I thought ought to be in YOUR possession. As an alleged friend of his, I redeemed the trunk by paying the amount of his bill, and secured the more valuable papers.”
Gashwiler, whose face had grown apoplectically suffused as Wiles went on, at last gasped: “But you got the trunk, and have the papers?”
“Unfortunately, no; and that's why it's bad.”
“But, good God! what have you done with them?”
“I've lost them somewhere on the Overland Road.”
Mr. Gashwiler sat for a few moments speechless, vacillating between a purple rage and a pallid fear. Then he said hoarsely:
“They are all blank forgeries,—every one of them.”
“Oh, no!” said Wiles, smiling blandly on his dexter side, and enjoying the whole scene malevolently with his sinister eye. “YOUR papers are all genuine, and I won't say are not all right, but unfortunately I had in the same bag some memoranda of my own for the use of my client, that, you understand, might be put to some bad use if found by a clever man.”
The two rascals looked at each other. There is on the whole really very little “honor among thieves,”—at least great ones,—and the inferior rascal succumbed at the reflection of what HE might do if he were in the other rascal's place. “See here, Wiles,” he said, relaxing his dignity with the perspiration that oozed from every pore, and made the collar of his shirt a mere limp rag. “See here, WE”—this first use of the plural was equivalent to a confession—“we must get them papers.”
“Of course,” said Wiles coolly, “if we CAN, and if Thatcher doesn't get wind of them.”
“He cannot.”
“He was on the coach when I lost them, coming East.”
Mr. Gashwiler paled again. In the emergency he had recourse to the sideboard and a bottle, forgetting Wiles. Ten minutes before Wiles would have remained seated; but it is recorded that he rose, took the bottle from the gifted Gashwiler's fingers, helped himself FIRST, and then sat down.
“Yes, but, my boy,” said Gashwiler, now rapidly changing situations with the cooler Wiles; “yes, but, old fellow,” he added, poking Wiles with a fat forefinger, “don't you see the whole thing will be up before he gets here?”
“Yes,” said Wiles gloomily, “but those lazy, easy, honest men have a way of popping up just at the nick of time. They never need hurry; all things wait for them. Why, don't you remember that on the very day Mrs. Hopkinson and I and you got the President to sign that patent, that very day one of them d—n fellows turns up from San Francisco or Australia, having taken his own time to get here,—gets here about half an hour after the President had signed the patent and sent it over to the office, finds the right man to introduce him to the President, has a talk with him, makes him sign an order countermanding its issuance, and undoes all that has been done in six years in one hour.”
“Yes, but Congress is a tribunal that does not revoke its decrees,” said Gashwiler with a return of his old manner; “at least,” he added, observing an incredulous shrug in the shoulder of his companion, “at least DURING THE SESSION.”
“We shall see,” said Wiles, quietly taking his hat.
“We shall see, sir,” said the member from Remus with dignity.