the exact days they had saleratus bread and when flapjacks; it was the thoughtless and mercurial Barker who recalled with unheard-of accuracy, amidst the applause of the others, the full name of the Indian squaw who assisted at their washing. Even then they were almost feverishly loath to leave the subject, as if the Past, at least, was secure to them still, and they were even doubtful of their own free and full accord in the Present. Then they slipped rather reluctantly into their later experiences, but with scarcely the same freedom or spontaneity; and it was noticeable that these records were elicited from Barker by Stacy or from Stacy by Barker for the information of Demorest, often with chaffing and only under good-humored protest. “Tell Demorest how you broke the ‘Copper Ring,'” from the admiring Barker, or, “Tell Demorest how your d—-d foolishness in buying up the right and plant of the Ditch Company got you control of the railroad,” from the mischievous Stacy, were challenges in point. Presently they left the table, and, to the astonishment of the waiters who removed the cloth, common brier- wood pipes, thoughtfully provided by Barker in commemoration of the Past, were lit, and they ranged themselves in armchairs before the fire quite unconsciously in their old attitudes. The two windows on either side of the hearth gave them the same view that the open door of the old cabin had made familiar to them, the league-long valley below the shadowy bulk of the Black Spur rising in the distance, and, still more remote, the pallid snow-line that soared even beyond its crest.
As in the old time, they were for many moments silent; and then, as in the old time, it was the irrepressible Barker who broke the silence. “But Stacy does not tell you anything about his friend, the beautiful Mrs. Horncastle. You know he’s the guardian of one of the finest women in California–a woman as noble and generous as she is handsome. And think of it! He’s protecting her from her brute of a husband, and looking after her property. Isn’t it good and chivalrous of him?”
The irrepressible laughter of the two men brought only wonder and reproachful indignation into the widely opened eyes of Barker. HE was perfectly sincere. He had been thinking of Stacy’s admiration for Mrs. Horncastle in his ride from Boomville, and, strange to say, yet characteristic of his nature, it was equally the natural outcome of his interview with her and the singular effect she had upon him. That he (Barker) thoroughly sympathized with her only convinced him that Stacy must feel the same for her, and that, no doubt, she must respond to him equally. And how noble it was in his old partner, with his advantages of position in the world and his protecting relations to her, not to avail himself of this influence upon her generous nature. If he himself–a married man and the husband of Kitty–was so conscious of her charm, how much greater it must be to the free and INEXPERIENCED Stacy.
The italics were in Barker’s thought; for in those matters he felt that Stacy and even Demorest, occupied in other things, had not his knowledge. There was no idea or consciousness of heroically sacrificing himself or Mrs. Horncastle in this. I am afraid there was not even an idea of a superior morality in himself in giving up the possibility of loving her. Ever since Stacy had first seen her he had fancied that Stacy liked her,–indeed, Kitty fancied it, too,–and it seemed almost providential now that he should know how to assist his old partner to happiness. For it was inconceivable that Stacy should not be able to rescue this woman from her shameful bonds, or that she should not consent to it through his (Barker’s) arguments and entreaties. To a “champion of dames” this seemed only right and proper. In his unfailing optimism he translated Stacy’s laugh as embarrassment and Demorest’s as only ignorance of the real question. But Demorest had noticed, if he had not, that Stacy’s laugh was a little nervously prolonged for a man of his temperament, and that he had cast a very keen glance at Barker. A messenger arriving with a telegram brought from Boomville called Stacy momentarily away, and Barker was not slow to take advantage of his absence.
“I wish, Phil,” he said, hitching his chair closer to Demorest, “that you would think seriously of this matter, and try to persuade Stacy–who, I believe, is more interested in Mrs. Horncastle than he cares to show–to put a little of that determination in love that he has shown in business. She’s an awfully fine woman, and in every way suited to him, and he is letting an absurd sense of pride and honor keep him from influencing her to get rid of her impossible husband. There’s no reason,” continued Barker in a burst of enthusiastic simplicity, “that BECAUSE she has found some one she likes better, and who would treat her better, that she should continue to stick to that beast whom all California would gladly see her divorced from. I never could understand that kind of argument, could you?”
Demorest looked at his companion’s glowing cheek and kindling eye with a smile. “A good deal depends upon the side from which you argue. But, frankly, Barker boy, though I think I know you in all your phases, I am not prepared yet to accept you as a match-maker! However, I’ll think it over, and find out something more of this from your goddess, who seems to have bewitched you both. But what does Mistress Kitty say to your admiration?”
Barker’s face clouded, but instantly brightened. “Oh, they’re the best of friends; they’re quite like us, you know, even to larks they have together.” He stopped and colored at his slip. But Demorest, who had noticed his change of expression, was more concerned at the look of half incredulity and half suspicion with which Stacy, who had re-entered the room in time to hear Barker’s speech, was regarding his unconscious younger partner.
“I didn’t know that Mrs. Horncastle and Mrs. Barker were such friends,” he said dryly as he sat down again. But his face presently became so abstracted that Demorest said gayly:–
“Well, Jim, I’m glad I’m not a Napoleon of Finance! I couldn’t stand it to have my privacy or my relaxation broken in upon at any moment, as yours was just now. What confounded somersault in stocks has put that face on you?”
Stacy looked up quickly with his brief laugh. “I’m afraid you’d be none the wiser if I told you. That was a pony express messenger from New York. You remember how Barker, that night of the strike, when we were sitting together here, or very near here, proposed that we ought to have a password or a symbol to call us together in case of emergency, for each other’s help? Well, let us say I have two partners, one in Europe and one in New York. That was my password.”
“And, I hope, no more serious than ours,” added Demorest.
Stacy laughed his short laugh. Nevertheless, the conversation dragged again. The feverish gayety of the early part of the evening was gone, and they seemed to be suffering from the reaction. They fell into their old attitudes, looking from the firelight to the distant bulk of Black Spur without a word. The occasional sound of the voices of promenaders on the veranda at last ceased; there was the noise of the shutting of heavy doors below, and Barker rose.
“You’ll excuse me, boys; but I must go and say good-night to little Sta, and see that he’s all right. I haven’t seen him since I got back. But”–to Demorest–“you’ll see him to-morrow, when Kitty comes. It is as much as my life is worth to show him before she certifies him as being presentable.” He paused, and then added: “Don’t wait up, you fellows, for me; sometimes the little chap won’t let me go. It’s as if he thought, now Kitty’s away, I was all he had. But I’ll be up early in the morning and see you. I dare say you and Stacy have a heap to say to each other on business, and you won’t miss me. So I’ll say good-night.” He laughed lightly, pressed the hands of his partners in his usual hearty fashion, and went out of the room, leaving the gloom a little deeper than before. It was so unusual for Barker to be the first to leave anybody or anything in trouble that they both noticed it. “But for that,” said Demorest, turning to Stacy as the door closed, “I should say the dear fellow was absolutely unchanged. But he seemed a little anxious to-night.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. He’s got two women on his mind,–as if one was not enough.”
“I don’t understand. You say his wife is foolish, and this other”–
“Never mind that now,” interrupted Stacy, getting up and putting down his pipe. “Let’s talk a little business. That other stuff will keep.”
“By all means,” said Demorest, with a smile, settling down into his chair a little wearily, however. “I forgot business. And I forgot, my dear Jim, to congratulate you. I’ve heard all about you, even in New York. You’re the man who, according to everybody, now holds the finances of the Pacific Slope in his hands. And,” he added, leaning affectionately towards his old partner, “I don’t know any one better equipped in honesty, straightforwardness, and courage for such a responsibility than you.”
“I only wish,” said Stacy, looking thoughtfully at Demorest, “that I didn’t hold nearly a million of your money included in the finances of the Pacific Slope.”
“Why,” said the smiling Demorest, “as long as I am satisfied?”
“Because I am not. If you’re satisfied, I’m a wretched idiot and not fit for my position. Now, look here, Phil. When you wrote me to sell out your shares in the Wheat Trust I was a little staggered. I knew your gait, my boy, and I knew, too, that, while you didn’t know enough to trust your own opinions or feeling, you knew too much to trust any one’s opinion that wasn’t first-class. So I reckoned you had the straight tip; but I didn’t see it. Now, I ought not to have been staggered if I was fit for your confidence, or, if I was staggered, I ought to have had enough confidence in myself not to mind you. See?”
“I admit your logic, old man,” said Demorest, with an amused face, “but I don’t see your premises. WHEN did I tell you to sell out?”
“Two days ago. You wrote just after you arrived.”
“I have never written to you since I arrived. I only telegraphed to you to know where we should meet, and received your message to come here.”
“You never wrote me from San Francisco?”
“Never.”
Stacy looked concernedly at his friend. Was he in his right mind? He had heard of cases where melancholy brooding on a fixed idea had affected the memory. He took from his pocket a letter-case, and selecting a letter handed it to Demorest without speaking.
Demorest glanced at it, turned it over, read its contents, and in a grave voice said, “There is something wrong here. It is like my handwriting, but I never wrote the letter, nor has it been in my hand before.”
Stacy sprang to his side. “Then it’s a forgery!”
“Wait a moment.” Demorest, who, although very grave, was the more collected of the two, went to a writing-desk, selected a sheet of paper, and took up a pen. “Now,” he said, “dictate that letter to me.”
Stacy began, Demorest’s pen rapidly following him:–
“DEAR JIM,–On receipt of this get rid of my Wheat Trust shares at whatever figure you can. From the way things pointed in New York”–
“Stop!” interrupted Demorest.
“Well?” said Stacy impatiently.
“Now, my dear Jim,” said Demorest plaintively, “when did you ever know me to write such a sentence as ‘the way things pointed’?”
“Let me finish reading,” said Stacy. This literary sensitiveness at such a moment seemed little short of puerility to the man of business.
“From the way things pointed in New York,” continued Stacy, “and from private advices received, this seems to be the only prudent course before the feathers begin to fly. Longing to see you again and the dear old stamping-ground at Heavy Tree. Love to Barker. Has the dear old boy been at any fresh crank lately?
“Yours, PHIL DEMOREST.”
The dictation and copy finished together. Demorest laid the freshly written sheet beside the letter Stacy had produced. They were very much alike and yet quite distinct from each other. Only the signature seemed identical.
“That’s the invariable mistake with the forger,” said Demorest; “he always forgets that signatures ought to be identical with the text rather than with each other.”
But Stacy did not seem to hear this or require further proof. His face was quite gray and his lips compressed until lost in his closely set beard as he gazed fixedly out of the window. For the first time, really concerned and touched, Demorest laid his hand gently on his shoulder.
“Tell me, Jim, how much does this mean to you apart from me? Don’t think of me.”
“I don’t know yet,” said Stacy slowly. “That’s the trouble. And I won’t know until I know who’s at the bottom of it. Does anybody know of your affairs with me?”
“No one.”
“No confidential friend, eh?”
“None.”
“No one who has access to your secrets? No–no–woman? Excuse me, Phil,” he said, as a peculiar look passed over Demorest’s face, “but this is business.”
“No,” he returned, with that gentleness that used to frighten them in the old days, “it’s ignorance. You fellows always say ‘Cherchez la femme’ when you can’t say anything else. Come now,” he went on more brightly, “look at the letter. Here’s a man, commercially educated, for he has used the usual business formulas, ‘on receipt of this,’ and ‘advices received,’ which I won’t merely say I don’t use, but which few but commercial men use. Next, here’s a man who uses slang, not only ineptly, but artificially, to give the letter the easy, familiar turn it hasn’t from beginning to end. I need only say, my dear Stacy, that I don’t write slang to you, but that nobody who understands slang ever writes it in that way. And then the knowledge of my opinion of Barker is such as might be gained from the reading of my letters by a person who couldn’t comprehend my feelings. Now, let me play inquisitor for a few moments. Has anybody access to my letters to YOU?”
“No one. I keep them locked up in a cabinet. I only make memorandums of your instructions, which I give to my clerks, but never your letters.”
“But your clerks sometimes see you make memorandums from them?”
“Yes, but none of them have the ability to do this sort of thing, nor the opportunity of profiting by it.”
“Has any woman–now this is not retaliation, my dear Jim, for I fancy I detect a woman’s cleverness and a woman’s stupidity in this forgery–any access to your secrets or my letters? A woman’s villainy is always effective for the moment, but always defective when probed.”
The look of scorn which passed over Stacy’s face was quite as distinct as Demorest’s previous protest, as he said contemptuously, “I’m not such a fool as to mix up petticoats with my business, whatever I do.”
“Well, one thing more. I have told you that in my opinion the forger has a commercial education or style, that he doesn’t know me nor Barker, and don’t understand slang. Now, I have to add what must have occurred to you, Jim, that the forger is either a coward, or his object is not altogether mercenary: for the same ability displayed in this letter would on the signature alone–had it been on a check or draft–have drawn from your bank twenty times the amount concerned. Now, what is the actual loss by this forgery?”
“Very little; for you’ve got a good price for your stocks, considering the depreciation in realizing suddenly on so large an amount. I told my broker to sell slowly and in small quantities to avoid a panic. But the real loss is the control of the stock.”
“But the amount I had was not enough to affect that,” said Demorest.
“No, but I was carrying a large amount myself, and together we controlled the market, and now I have unloaded, too.”
“You sold out! and with your doubts?” said Demorest.
“That’s just it,” said Stacy, looking steadily at his companion’s face, “because I HAD doubts, and it won’t do for me to have them. I ought either to have disobeyed your letter and kept your stock and my own, or have done just what I did. I might have hedged on my own stock, but I don’t believe in hedging. There is no middle course to a man in my business if he wants to keep at the top. No great success, no great power, was ever created by it.”
Demorest smiled. “Yet you accept the alternative also, which is ruin?”
“Precisely,” said Stacy. “When you returned the other day you were bound to find me what I was or a beggar. But nothing between. However,” he added, “this has nothing to do with the forgery, or,” he smiled grimly, “everything to do with it. Hush! Barker is coming.”
There was a quick step along the corridor approaching the room. The next moment the door flew open to the bounding step and laughing face of Barker. Whatever of thoughtfulness or despondency he had carried from the room with him was completely gone. With his amazing buoyancy and power of reaction he was there again in his usual frank, cheerful simplicity.
“I thought I’d come in and say goodnight,” he began, with a laugh. “I got Sta asleep after some high jinks we had together, and then I reckoned it wasn’t the square thing to leave just you two together, the first night you came. And I remembered I had some business to talk over, too, so I thought I’d chip in again and take a hand. It’s only the shank of the evening yet,” he continued gayly, “and we ought to sit up at least long enough to see the old snow-line vanish, as we did in old times. But I say,” he added suddenly, as he glanced from the one to the other, “you’ve been having it pretty strong already. Why, you both look as you did that night the backwater of the South Fork came into our cabin. What’s up?”
“Nothing,” said Demorest hastily, as he caught a glance of Stacy’s impatient face. “Only all business is serious, Barker boy, though you don’t seem to feel it so.”
“I reckon you’re right there,” said Barker, with a chuckle. “People always laugh, of course, when I talk business, so it might make it a little livelier for you and more of a change if I chipped in now. Only I don’t know which you’ll do. Hand me a pipe. Well,” he continued, filling the pipe Demorest shoved towards him, “you see, I was in Sacramento yesterday, and I went into Van Loo’s branch office, as I heard he was there, and I wanted to find out something about Kitty’s investments, which I don’t think he’s managing exactly right. He wasn’t there, however, but as I was waiting I heard his clerks talk about a drop in the Wheat Trust, and that there was a lot of it put upon the market. They seemed to think that something had happened, and it was going down still further. Now I knew it was your pet scheme, and that Phil had a lot of shares in it, too, so I just slipped out and went to a broker’s and told him to buy all he could of it. And, by Jove! I was a little taken aback when I found what I was in for, for everybody seemed to have unloaded, and I found I hadn’t money enough to pay margins, but I knew that Demorest was here, and I reckoned on his seeing me through.” He stopped and colored, but added hopefully, “I reckon I’m safe, anyway, for just as the thing was over those same clerks of Van Loo’s came bounding into the office to buy up everything. And offered to take it off my hands and pay the margins.”
“And you?” said both men eagerly, and in a breath.
Barker stared at them, and reddened and paled by turns. “I held on,” he stammered. “You see, boys”–
Both men had caught him by the arms. “How much have you got?” they said, shaking him as if to precipitate the answer.
“It’s a heap!” said Barker. “It’s a ghastly lot now I think of it. I’m afraid I’m in for fifty thousand, if a cent.”
To his infinite astonishment and delight he was alternately hugged and tossed backwards and forwards between the two men quite in the fashion of the old days. Breathless but laughing, he at length gasped out, “What does it all mean?”
“Tell him everything, Jim,–EVERYTHING,” said Demorest quickly.
Stacy briefly related the story of the forgery, and then laid the letter and its copy before him. But Barker only read the forgery.
“How could YOU, Stacy–one of the three partners of Heavy Tree–be deceived! Don’t you see it’s Phil’s handwriting–but it isn’t PHIL!”
“But have you any idea WHO it is?” said Stacy.
“Not me,” said Barker, with widely opened eyes. “You see it must be somebody whom we are familiar with. I can’t imagine such a scoundrel.”
“How did YOU know that Demorest had stock?” asked Stacy.
“He told me in one of his letters and advised me to go into it. But just then Kitty wanted money, I think, and I didn’t go in.”
“I remember it,” struck in Demorest. “But surely it was no secret. My name would be on the transfer books for any one to see.”
“Not so,” said Stacy quickly. “You were one of the original shareholders; there was no transfer, and the books as well as the shares of the company were in my hands.”
“And your clerks?” added Demorest.
Stacy was silent. After a pause he asked, “Did anybody ever see that letter, Barker?”
“No one but myself and Kitty.”
“And would she be likely to talk of it?” continued Stacy.
“Of course not. Why should she? Whom could she talk to?” Yet he stopped suddenly, and then with his characteristic reaction added, with a laugh, “Why no, certainly not.”
“Of course, everybody knew that you had bought the shares at Sacramento?”
“Yes. Why, you know I told you the Van Loo clerks came to me and wanted to take it off my hands.”
“Yes, I remember; the Van Loo clerks; they knew it, of course,” said Stacy with a grim smile. “Well, boys,” he said, with sudden alacrity, “I’m going to turn in, for by sun-up to-morrow I must be on my way to catch the first train at the Divide for ‘Frisco. We’ll hunt this thing down together, for I reckon we’re all concerned in it,” he added, looking at the others, “and once more we’re partners as in the old times. Let us even say that I’ve given Barker’s signal or password,” he added, with a laugh, “and we’ll stick together. Barker boy,” he went on, grasping his younger partner’s hand, “your instinct has saved us this time; d—-d if I don’t sometimes think it better than any other man’s sabe; only,” he dropped his voice slightly, “I wish you had it in other things than FINANCE. Phil, I’ve a word to say to you alone before I go. I may want you to follow me.”
“But what can I do?” said Barker eagerly. “You’re not going to leave me out.”
“You’ve done quite enough for us, old man,” said Stacy, laying his hand on Barker’s shoulder. “And it may be for US to do something for YOU. Trot off to bed now, like a good boy. I’ll keep you posted when the time comes.”
Shoving the protesting and leave-taking Barker with paternal familiarity from the room, he closed the door and faced Demorest.
“He’s the best fellow in the world,” said Stacy quietly, “and has saved the situation; but we mustn’t trust too much to him for the present–not even seem to.”
“Nonsense, man!” said Demorest impatiently. “You’re letting your prejudices go too far. Do you mean to say that you suspect his wife.”
“D–n his wife!” said Stacy almost savagely. “Leave her out of this. It’s Van Loo that I suspect. It was Van Loo who I knew was behind it, who expected to profit by it, and now we have lost him.”
“But how?” said Demorest, astonished.
“How?” repeated Stacy impatiently. “You know what Barker said? Van Loo, either through stupidity, fright, or the wish to get the lowest prices, was too late to buy up the market. If he had, we might have openly declared the forgery, and if it was known that he or his friends had profited by it, even if we could not have proven his actual complicity, we could at least have made it too hot for him in California. But,” said Stacy, looking intently at his friend, “do you know how the case stands now?”
“Well,” said Demorest, a little uneasily under his friend’s keen eyes, “we’ve lost that chance, but we’ve kept control of the stock.”
“You think so? Well, let me tell you how the case stands and the price we pay for it,” said Stacy deliberately, as he folded his arms and gazed at Demorest. “You and I, well known as old friends and former partners, for no apparent reason–for we cannot prove the forgery now–have thrown upon the market all our stock, with the usual effect of depreciating it. Another old friend and former partner has bought it in and sent up the price. A common trick, a vulgar trick, but not a trick worthy of James Stacy or Stacy’s Bank!”
“But why not simply declare the forgery without making any specific charge against Van Loo?”
“Do you imagine, Phil, that any man would believe it, and the story of a providentially appointed friend like Barker who saved us from loss? Why, all California, from Cape Mendocino to Los Angeles, would roar with laughter over it! No! We must swallow it and the reputation of ‘jockeying’ with the Wheat Trust, too. That Trust’s as good as done for, for the present! Now you know why I didn’t want poor Barker to know it, nor have much to do with our search for the forger.”
“It would break the dear fellow’s heart if he knew it,” said Demorest.
“Well, it’s to save him from having his heart broken further that I intend to find out this forger,” said Stacy grimly. “Good-night, Phil! I’ll telegraph to you when I want you, and then COME!”
With another grip of the hand he left Demorest to his thoughts. In the first excitement of meeting his old partners, and in the later discovery of the forgery, Demorest had been diverted from his old sorrow, and for the time had forgotten it in sympathetic interest with the present. But, to his horror, when alone again, he found that interest growing as remote and vapid as the stories they had laughed over at the table, and even the excitement of the forged letter and its consequences began to be as unreal, as impotent, as shadowy, as the memory of the attempted robbery in the old cabin on that very spot. He was ashamed of that selfishness which still made him cling to this past, so much his own, that he knew it debarred him from the human sympathy of his comrades. And even Barker, in whose courtship and marriage he had tried to resuscitate his youthful emotions and condone his selfish errors–even the suggestion of his unhappiness only touched him vaguely. He would no longer be a slave to the Past, or the memory that had deluded him a few hours ago. He walked to the window; alas, there was the same prospect that had looked upon his dreams, had lent itself to his old visions. There was the eternal outline of the hills; there rose the steadfast pines; there was no change in THEM. It was this surrounding constancy of nature that had affected him. He turned away and entered the bedroom. Here he suddenly remembered that the mother of this vague enemy, Van Loo,–for his feeling towards him was still vague, as few men really hate the personality they don’t know,–had only momentarily vacated it, and to his distaste of his own intrusion was now added the profound irony of his sleeping in the same bed lately occupied by the mother of the man who was suspected of having forged his name. He smiled faintly and looked around the apartment. It was handsomely furnished, and although it still had much of the characterlessness of the hotel room, it was distinctly flavored by its last occupant, and still brightened by that mysterious instinct of the sex which is inevitable. Where a man would have simply left his forgotten slippers or collars there was a glass of still unfaded flowers; the cold marble top of the dressing-table was littered with a few linen and silk toilet covers; and on the mantel-shelf was a sheaf of photographs. He walked towards them mechanically, glanced at them abstractedly, and then stopped suddenly with a beating heart. Before him was the picture of his past, the photograph of the one woman who had filled his life!
He cast a hurried glance around the room as if he half expected to see the original start up before him, and then eagerly seized it and hurried with it to the light. Yes! yes! It was SHE,–she as she had lived in his actual memory; she as she had lived in his dream. He saw her sweet eyes, but the frightened, innocent trouble had passed from them; there was the sensitive elegance of her graceful figure in evening dress; but the figure was fuller and maturer. Could he be mistaken by some wonderful resemblance acting upon his too willing brain? He turned the photograph over. No; there on the other side, written in her own childlike hand, endeared and familiar to his recollection, was her own name, and the date! It was surely she!
How did it come there? Did the Van Loos know her? It was taken in Venice; there was the address of the photographers. The Van Loos were foreigners, he remembered; they had traveled; perhaps had met her there in 1858: that was the date in her handwriting; that was the date on the photographer’s address–1858. Suddenly he laid the photograph down, took with trembling fingers a letter-case from his pocket, opened it, and laid his last letter to her, indorsed with the cruel announcement of her death, before him on the table. He passed his hand across his forehead and opened the letter. It was dated 1856! The photograph must have been taken two years AFTER her alleged death!
He examined it again eagerly, fixedly, tremblingly. A wild impulse to summon Barker or Stacy on the spot was restrained with difficulty and only when he remembered that they could not help him. Then he began to oscillate between a joy and a new fear, which now, for the first time, began to dawn upon him. If the news of her death had been a fiendish trick of her relations, why had SHE never sought him? It was not ill health, restraint, nor fear; there was nothing but happiness and the strength of youth and beauty in that face and figure. HE had not disappeared from the world; he was known of men; more, his memorable good fortune must have reached her ears. Had he wasted all these miserable years to find himself abandoned, forgotten, perhaps even a dupe? For the first time the sting of jealousy entered his soul. Perhaps, unconsciously to himself, his strange and varying feelings that afternoon had been the gathering climax of his mental condition; at all events, in the sudden revulsion there was a shaking off of his apathetic thought; there was activity, even if it was the activity of pain. Here was a mystery to be solved, a secret to be discovered, a past wrong to be exposed, an enemy or, perhaps, even a faithless love to be punished. Perhaps he had even saved his reason at the expense of his love. He quickly replaced the photograph on the mantel-shelf, returned the letter carefully to his pocket-book,–no longer a souvenir of the past, but a proof of treachery,–and began to mechanically undress himself. He was quite calm now, and went to bed with a strange sense of relief, and slept as he had not slept since he was a boy.
The whole hotel had sunk to rest by this time, and then began the usual slow, nightly invasion and investment of it by nature. For all its broad verandas and glaring terraces, its long ranges of windows and glittering crest of cupola and tower, it gradually succumbed to the more potent influences around it, and became their sport and playground. The mountain breezes from the distant summit swept down upon its flimsy structure, shook the great glass windows as with a strong hand, and sent the balm of bay and spruce through every chink and cranny. In the great hall and corridors the carpets billowed with the intruding blast along the floors; there was the murmur of the pines in the passages, and the damp odor of leaves in the dining-room. There was the cry of night birds in the creaking cupola, and the swift rush of dark wings past bedroom windows. Lissome shapes crept along the terraces between the stolid wooden statues, or, bolder, scampered the whole length of the great veranda. In the lulling of the wind the breath of the woods was everywhere; even the aroma of swelling sap–as if the ghastly stumps on the deforested slope behind the hotel were bleeding afresh in the dewless night–stung the eyes and nostrils of the sleepers.
It was, perhaps, from such cause as this that Barker was awakened suddenly by the voice of the boy from the crib beside him, crying, “Mamma! mamma!” Taking the child in his arms, he comforted him, saying she would come that morning, and showed him the faint dawn already veiling with color the ghostly pallor of the Sierras. As they looked at it a great star shot forth from its brethren and fell. It did not fall perpendicularly, but seemed for some seconds to slip along the slopes of Black Spur, gleaming through the trees like a chariot of fire. It pleased the child to say that it was the light of mamma’s buggy that was fetching her home, and it pleased the father to encourage the boy’s fancy. And talking thus in confidential whispers they fell asleep once more, the father– himself a child in so many things–holding the smaller and frailer hand in his.
They did not know that on the other side of the Divide the wife and mother, scared, doubting, and desperate, by the side of her scared, doubting, and desperate accomplice, was flying down the slope on her night-long road to ruin. Still less did they know that, with the early singing birds, a careless horseman, emerging from the trail as the dust-stained buggy dashed past him, glanced at it with a puzzled air, uttered a quiet whistle of surprise, and then, wheeling his horse, gayly cantered after it.
CHAPTER V.
In the exercise of his arduous profession, Jack Hamlin had sat up all night in the magnolia saloon of the Divide, and as it was rather early to go to bed, he had, after his usual habit, shaken off the sedentary attitude and prepared himself for sleep by a fierce preliminary gallop in the woods. Besides, he had been a large winner, and on those occasions he generally isolated himself from his companions to avoid foolish altercations with inexperienced players. Even in fighting Jack was fastidious, and did not like to have his stomach for a real difficulty distended and vitiated by small preliminary indulgences.
He was just emerging from the wood into the highroad when a buggy dashed past him, containing a man and a woman. The woman wore a thick veil; the man was almost undistinguishable from dust. The glimpse was momentary, but dislike has a keen eye, and in that glimpse Mr. Hamlin recognized Van Loo. The situation was equally clear. The bent heads and averted faces, the dust collected in the heedlessness of haste, the early hour,–indicating a night-long flight,–all made it plain to him that Van Loo was running away with some woman. Mr. Hamlin had no moral scruples, but he had the ethics of a sportsman, which he knew Mr. Van Loo was not. Whether the woman was an innocent schoolgirl or an actress, he was satisfied that Van Loo was doing a mean thing meanly. Mr. Hamlin also had a taste for mischief, and whether the woman was or was not fair game, he knew that for HIS purposes Van Loo was. With the greatest cheerfulness in the world he wheeled his horse and cantered after them.
They were evidently making for the Divide and a fresh horse, or to take the coach due an hour later. It was Mr. Hamlin’s present object to circumvent this, and, therefore, it was quite in his way to return. Incidentally, however, the superior speed of his horse gave him the opportunity of frequently lunging towards them at a furious pace, which had the effect of frantically increasing their own speed, when he would pull up with a silent laugh before he was fairly discovered, and allow the sound of his rapid horse’s hoofs to die out. In this way he amused himself until the straggling town of the Divide came in sight, when, putting his spurs to his horse again, he managed, under pretense of the animal becoming ungovernable, to twice “cross the bows” of the fugitives, compelling them to slacken speed. At the second of these passages Van Loo apparently lost prudence, and slashing out with his whip, the lash caught slightly on the counter of Hamlin’s horse. Mr. Hamlin instantly acknowledged it by lifting his hat gravely, and speeded on to the hotel, arriving at the steps and throwing himself from the saddle exactly as the buggy drove up. With characteristic audacity, he actually assisted the frightened and eager woman to alight and run into the hotel. But in this action her veil was accidentally lifted. Mr. Hamlin instantly recognized the pretty woman who had been pointed out to him in San Francisco as Mrs. Barker, the wife of one of the partners whose fortunes had interested him five years ago. It struck him that this was an additional reason for his interference on Barker’s account, although personally he could not conceive why a man should ever try to prevent a woman from running away from him. But then Mr. Hamlin’s personal experiences had been quite the other way.
It was enough, however, to cause him to lay his hand lightly on Van Loo’s arm as the latter, leaping down, was about to follow Mrs. Barker into the hotel. “You’ll have time enough now,” said Hamlin.
“Time for what?” said Van Loo savagely.
“Time to apologize for having cut my horse with your whip,” said Jack sweetly. “We don’t want to quarrel before a woman.”
“I’ve no time for fooling!” said Van Loo, endeavoring to pass.
But Jack’s hand had slipped to Van Loo’s wrist, although he still smiled cheerfully. “Ah! Then you DID mean it, and you propose to give me satisfaction?”
Van Loo paled slightly; he knew Jack’s reputation as a duelist. But he was desperate. “You see my position,” he said hurriedly. “I’m in a hurry; I have a lady with me. No man of honor”–
“You do me wrong,” interrupted Jack, with a pained expression,– “you do, indeed. You are in a hurry–well, I have plenty of time. If you cannot attend to me now, why I will be glad to accompany you and the lady to the next station. Of course,” he added, with a smile, “at a proper distance, and without interfering with the lady, whom I am pleased to recognize as the wife of an old friend. It would be more sociable, perhaps, if we had some general conversation on the road; it would prevent her being alarmed. I might even be of some use to YOU. If we are overtaken by her husband on the road, for instance, I should certainly claim the right to have the first shot at you. Boy!” he called to the hostler, “just sponge out Pancho’s mouth, will you, to be ready when the buggy goes?” And, loosening his grip of Van Loo’s wrist, he turned away as the other quickly entered the hotel.
But Mr. Van Loo did not immediately seek Mrs. Barker. He had already some experience of that lady’s nerves and irascibility on the drive, and had begun to see his error in taking so dangerous an impediment to his flight from the country. And another idea had come to him. He had already effected his purpose of compromising her with him in that flight, but it was still known only to few. If he left her behind for the foolish, doting husband, would not that devoted man take her back to avoid a scandal, and even forbear to pursue HIM for his financial irregularities? What were twenty thousand dollars of Mrs. Barker’s money to the scandal of Mrs. Barker’s elopement? Again, the failure to realize the forgery had left him safe, and Barker was sufficiently potent with the bank and Demorest to hush up that also. Hamlin was now the only obstacle to his flight; but even he would scarcely pursue HIM if Mrs. Barker were left behind. And it would be easier to elude him if he did.
In his preoccupation Van Loo did not see that he had entered the bar-room, but, finding himself there, he moved towards the bar; a glass of spirits would revive him. As he drank it he saw that the room was full of rough men, apparently miners or packers–some of them Mexican, with here and there a Kanaka or Australian. Two men more ostentatiously clad, though apparently on equal terms with the others, were standing in the corner with their backs towards him. From the general silence as he entered he imagined that he had been the subject of conversation, and that his altercation with Hamlin had been overheard. Suddenly one of the two men turned and approached him. To his consternation he recognized Steptoe,– Steptoe, whom he had not seen for five years until last night, when he had avoided him in the courtyard of the Boomville Hotel. His first instinct was to retreat, but it was too late. And the spirits had warmed him into temporary recklessness.
“You ain’t goin’ to be backed down by a short-card gambler, are yer?” said Steptoe, with coarse familiarity.
“I have a lady with me, and am pressed for time,” said Van Loo quickly. “He knows it, otherwise he would not have dared”–
“Well, look here,” said Steptoe roughly. “I ain’t particularly sweet on you, as you know; but I and these gentlemen,” he added, glancing around the room, “ain’t particularly sweet on Mr. Jack Hamlin neither, and we kalkilate to stand by you if you say so. Now, I reckon you want to get away with the woman, and the quicker the better, as you’re afraid there’ll be somebody after you afore long. That’s the way it pans out, don’t it? Well, when you’re ready to go, and you just tip us the wink, we’ll get in a circle round Jack and cover him, and if he starts after you we’ll send him on a little longer journey!–eh, boys?”
The men muttered their approval, and one or two drew their revolvers from their belts. Van Loo’s heart, which had leaped at first at this proposal of help, sank at this failure of his little plan of abandoning Mrs. Barker. He hesitated, and then stammered, “Thank you! Haste is everything with us now; but I shouldn’t mind leaving the lady among CHIVALROUS GENTLEMEN like yourselves for a few hours only, until I could communicate with my friends and return to properly chastise this scoundrel.”
Steptoe drew in his breath with a slight whistle, and gazed at Van Loo. He instantly understood him. But the plea did not suit Steptoe, who, for purposes of his own, wished to put Mrs. Barker beyond her husband’s possible reach. He smiled grimly. “I think you’d better take the woman with you,” he said. “I don’t think,” he added in a lower voice, “that the boys would like your leaving her. They’re very high-toned, they are!” he concluded ironically.
“Then,” said Van Loo, with another desperate idea, “could you not let us have saddle-horses instead of the buggy? We could travel faster, and in the event of pursuit and anything happening to ME,” he added loftily, “SHE at least could escape her pursuer’s vengeance.”
This suited Steptoe equally well, as long as the guilty couple fled TOGETHER, and in the presence of witnesses. But he was not deceived by Van Loo’s heroic suggestion of self-sacrifice. “Quite right,” he said sarcastically, “it shall be done, and I’ve no doubt ONE of you will escape. I’ll send the horses round to the back door and keep the buggy in front. That will keep Jack there, TOO,– with the boys handy.”
But Mr. Hamlin had quite as accurate an idea of Mr. Van Loo’s methods and of his OWN standing with Steptoe’s gang of roughs as Mr. Steptoe himself. More than that, he also had a hold on a smaller but more devoted and loyal following than Steptoe’s. The employees and hostlers of the hotel worshiped him. A single word of inquiry revealed to him the fact that the buggy was NOT going on, but that Mr. Van Loo and Mrs. Barker WERE–on two horses, a temporary side-saddle having been constructed out of a mule’s pack- tree. At which Mr. Hamlin, with his usual audacity, walked into the bar-room, and going to the bar leaned carelessly against it. Then turning to the lowering faces around him, he said, with a flash of his white teeth, “Well, boys, I’m calculating to leave the Divide in a few minutes to follow some friends in the buggy, and it seems to me only the square thing to stand the liquor for the crowd, without prejudice to any feeling or roughness there may be against me. Everybody who knows me knows that I’m generally there when the band plays, and I’m pretty sure to turn up for THAT sort of thing. So you’ll just consider that I’ve had a good game on the Divide, and I’m reckoning it’s only fair to leave a little of it behind me here, to ‘sweeten the pot’ until I call again. I only ask you, gentlemen, to drink success to my friends in the buggy as early and as often as you can.” He flung two gold pieces on the counter and paused, smiling.
He was right in his conjecture. Even the men who would have willingly “held him up” a moment after, at the bidding of Steptoe, saw no reason for declining a free drink “without prejudice.” And it was a part of the irony of the situation that Steptoe and Van Loo were also obliged to participate to keep in with their partisans. It was, however, an opportune diversion to Van Loo, who managed to get nearer the door leading to the back entrance of the hotel, and to Mr. Jack Hamlin, who was watching him, as the men closed up to the bar.
The toast was drunk with acclamation, followed by another and yet another. Steptoe and Van Loo, who had kept their heads cool, were both wondering if Hamlin’s intention were to intoxicate and incapacitate the crowd at the crucial moment, and Steptoe smiled grimly over his superior knowledge of their alcoholic capacity. But suddenly there was the greater diversion of a shout from the road, the on-coming of a cloud of red dust, and the halt of another vehicle before the door. This time it was no jaded single horse and dust-stained buggy, but a double team of four spirited trotters, whose coats were scarcely turned with foam, before a light station wagon containing a single man. But that man was instantly recognized by every one of the outside loungers and stable-boys as well as the staring crowd within the saloon. It was James Stacy, the millionaire and banker. No one but himself knew that he had covered half the distance of a night-long ride from Boomville in two hours. But before they could voice their astonishment Stacy had thrown a letter to the obsequious landlord, and then gathering up the reins had sped away to the railroad station half a mile distant.
“Looks as if the Boss of Creation was in a hurry,” said one of the eager gazers in the doorway. “Somebody goin’ to get smashed, sure.”
“More like as if he was just humpin’ himself to keep from getting smashed,” said Steptoe. “The bank hasn’t got over the effect of their smart deal in the Wheat Trust. Everything they had in their hands tumbled yesterday in Sacramento. Men like me and you ain’t goin’ to trust their money to be ‘jockeyed’ with in that style. Nobody but a man with a swelled head like Stacy would have even dared to try it on. And now, by G-d! he’s got to pay for it.”
The harsh, exultant tone of the speaker showed that he had quite forgotten Van Loo and Hamlin in his superior hatred of the millionaire, and both men noticed it. Van Loo edged still nearer to the door, as Steptoe continued, “Ever since he made that big strike on Heavy Tree five years ago, the country hasn’t been big enough to hold him. But mark my words, gentlemen, the time ain’t far off when he’ll find a two-foot ditch again and a pick and grub wages room enough and to spare for him and his kind of cattle.”
“You’re not drinking,” said Jack Hamlin cheerfully.
Steptoe turned towards the bar, and then started. “Where’s Van Loo?” he demanded of Jack sharply.
Jack jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Gone to hurry up his girl, I reckon. I calculate he ain’t got much time to fool away here.”
Steptoe glanced suspiciously at Jack. But at the same moment they were all startled–even Jack himself–at the apparition of Mrs. Barker passing hurriedly along the veranda before the windows in the direction of the still waiting buggy. “D–n it!” said Steptoe in a fierce whisper to the man next him. “Tell her not THERE–at the back door!” But before the messenger reached the door there was a sudden rattle of wheels, and with one accord all except Hamlin rushed to the veranda, only to see Mrs. Barker driving rapidly away alone. Steptoe turned back into the room, but Jack also had disappeared.
For in the confusion created at the sight of Mrs. Barker, he had slipped to the back door and found, as he suspected, only one horse, and that with a side-saddle on. His intuitions were right. Van Loo, when he disappeared from the saloon, had instantly fled, taking the other horse and abandoning the woman to her fate. Jack as instantly leaped upon the remaining saddle and dashed after him. Presently he caught a glimpse of the fugitive in the distance, heard the half-angry, half-ironical shouts of the crowd at the back door, and as he reached the hilltop saw, with a mingling of satisfaction and perplexity, Mrs. Barker on the other road, still driving frantically in the direction of the railroad station. At which Mr. Hamlin halted, threw away his encumbering saddle, and, good rider that he was, remounted the horse, barebacked but for his blanket-pad, and thrusting his knees in the loose girths, again dashed forwards,–with such good results that, as Van Loo galloped up to the stagecoach office, at the next station, and was about to enter the waiting coach for Marysville, the soft hand of Mr. Hamlin was laid on his shoulder.
“I told you,” said Jack blandly, “that I had plenty of time. I would have been here BEFORE and even overtaken you, only you had the better horse and the only saddle.”
Van Loo recoiled. But he was now desperate and reckless. Beckoning Jack out of earshot of the other passengers, he said with tightened lips, “Why do you follow me? What is your purpose in coming here?”
“I thought,” said Hamlin dryly, “that I was to have the pleasure of getting satisfaction from you for the insult you gave me.”
“Well, and if I apologize for it, what then?” he said quickly.
Hamlin looked at him quietly. “Well, I think I also said something about the lady being the wife of a friend of mine.”
“And I have left her BEHIND. Her husband can take her back without disgrace, for no one knows of her flight but you and me. Do you think your shooting me will save her? It will spread the scandal far and wide. For I warn you, that as I have apologized for what you choose to call my personal insult, unless you murder me in cold blood without witness, I shall let them know the REASON of your quarrel. And I can tell you more: if you only succeed in STOPPING me here, and make me lose my chance of getting away, the scandal to your friend will be greater still.”
Mr. Hamlin looked at Van Loo curiously. There was a certain amount of conviction in what he said. He had never met this kind of creature before. He had surpassed even Hamlin’s first intuition of his character. He amused and interested him. But Mr. Hamlin was also a man of the world, and knew that Van Loo’s reasoning might be good. He put his hands in his pockets, and said gravely, “What IS your little game?”
Van Loo had been seized with another inspiration of desperation. Steptoe had been partly responsible for this situation. Van Loo knew that Jack and Steptoe were not friends. He had certain secrets of Steptoe’s that might be of importance to Jack. Why should he not try to make friends with this powerful free-lance and half-outlaw?
“It’s a game,” he said significantly, “that might be of interest to your friends to hear.”
Hamlin took his hands out of his pockets, turned on his heel, and said, “Come with me.”
“But I must go by that coach now,” said Van Loo desperately, “or– I’ve told you what would happen.”
“Come with me,” said Jack coolly. “If I’m satisfied with what you tell me, I’ll put you down at the next station an hour before that coach gets there.”
“You swear it?” said Van Loo hesitatingly.
“I’ve SAID it,” returned Jack. “Come!” and Van Loo followed Mr. Hamlin into the station hotel.
CHAPTER VI.
The abrupt disappearance of Jack Hamlin and the strange lady and gentleman visitor was scarcely noticed by the other guests of the Divide House, and beyond the circle of Steptoe and his friends, who were a distinct party and strangers to the town, there was no excitement. Indeed, the hotel proprietor might have confounded them together, and, perhaps, Van Loo was not far wrong in his belief that their identity had not been suspected. Nor were Steptoe’s followers very much concerned in an episode in which they had taken part only at the suggestion of their leader, and which had terminated so tamely. That they would have liked a “row,” in which Jack Hamlin would have been incidentally forced to disgorge his winnings, there was no doubt, but that their interference was asked solely to gratify some personal spite of Steptoe’s against Van Loo was equally plain to them. There was some grumbling and outspoken criticism of his methods.
This was later made more obvious by the arrival of another guest for whom Steptoe and his party were evidently waiting. He was a short, stout man, whose heavy red beard was trimmed a little more carefully than when he was first known to Steptoe as Alky Hall, the drunkard of Heavy Tree Hill. His dress, too, exhibited a marked improvement in quality and style, although still characterized in the waist and chest by the unbuttoned freedom of portly and slovenly middle age. Civilization had restricted his potations or limited them to certain festivals known as “sprees,” and his face was less puffy and sodden. But with the accession of sobriety he had lost his good humor, and had the irritability and intolerance of virtuous restraint.
“Ye needn’t ladle out any of your forty-rod whiskey to me,” he said querulously to Steptoe, as he filed out with the rest of the party through the bar-room into the adjacent apartment. “I want to keep my head level till our business is over, and I reckon it wouldn’t hurt you and your gang to do the same. They’re less likely to blab; and there are few doors that whiskey won’t unlock,” he added, as Steptoe turned the key in the door after the party had entered.
The room had evidently been used for meetings of directors or political caucuses, and was roughly furnished with notched and whittled armchairs and a single long deal table, on which were ink and pens. The men sat down around it with a half-embarrassed, half-contemptuous attitude of formality, their bent brows and isolated looks showing little community of sentiment and scarcely an attempt to veil that individual selfishness that was prominent. Still less was there any essay of companionship or sympathy in the manner of Steptoe as he suddenly rapped on the table with his knuckles.
“Gentlemen,” he said, with a certain deliberation of utterance, as if he enjoyed his own coarse directness, “I reckon you all have a sort of general idea what you were picked up for, or you wouldn’t be here. But you may or may not know that for the present you are honest, hard-working miners,–the backbone of the State of Californy,–and that you have formed yourselves into a company called the ‘Blue Jay,’ and you’ve settled yourselves on the Bar below Heavy Tree Hill, on a deserted claim of the Marshall Brothers, not half a mile from where the big strike was made five years ago. That’s what you ARE, gentlemen; that’s what you’ll continue TO BE until the job’s finished; and,” he added, with a sudden dominance that they all felt, “the man who forgets it will have to reckon with me. Now,” he continued, resuming his former ironical manner, “now, what are the cold facts of the case? The Marshalls worked this claim ever since ’49, and never got anything out of it; then they dropped off or died out, leaving only one brother, Tom Marshall, to work what was left of it. Well, a few days ago HE found indications of a big lead in the rock, and instead of rushin’ out and yellin’ like an honest man, and callin’ in the boys to drink, he sneaks off to ‘Frisco, and goes to the bank to get ’em to take a hand in it. Well, you know, when Jim Stacy takes a hand in anything, IT’S BOTH HANDS, and the bank wouldn’t see it until he promised to guarantee possession of the whole abandoned claim,–‘dips, spurs, and angles,’–and let them work the whole thing, which the d—-d fool DID, and the bank agreed to send an expert down there to-morrow to report. But while he was away some one on our side, who was an expert also, got wind of it, and made an examination all by himself, and found it was a vein sure enough and a big thing, and some one else on our side found out, too, all that Marshall had promised the bank and what the bank had promised him. Now, gentlemen, when the bank sends down that expert to-morrow I expect that he will find YOU IN POSSESSION of every part of the deserted claim except the spot where Tom is still working.”
“And what good is that to us?” asked one of the men contemptuously.
“Good?” repeated Steptoe harshly. “Well, if you’re not as d—-d a fool as Marshall, you’ll see that if he has struck a lead or vein it’s bound to run across OUR CLAIMS, and what’s to keep us from sinking for it as long as Marshall hasn’t worked the other claims for years nor pre-empted them for this lead?”
“What’ll keep him from pre-empting now?”
“Our possession.”
“But if he can prove that the brothers left their claims to him to keep, he’ll just send the sheriff and his posse down upon us,” persisted the first speaker.
“It will take him three months to do that by law, and the sheriff and his posse can’t do it before as long as we’re in peaceable possession of it. And by the time that expert and Marshall return they’ll find us in peaceful possession, unless we’re such blasted fools as to stay talking about it here!”
“But what’s to prevent Marshall from getting a gang of his own to drive us off?”
“Now your talkin’ and not yelpin’,” said Steptoe, with slow insolence. “D—-d if I didn’t begin to think you kalkilated I was goin’ to employ you as lawyers! Nothing is to prevent him from gettin’ up HIS gang, and we hope he’ll do it, for you see it puts us both on the same level before the law, for we’re both BREAKIN’ IT. And we kalkilate that we’re as good as any roughs they can pick up at Heavy Tree.”
“I reckon!” “Ye can count us in!” said half a dozen voices eagerly.
“But what’s the job goin’ to pay us?” persisted a Sydney man. “An’ arter we’ve beat off this other gang, are we going to scrub along on grub wages until we’re yanked out by process-sarvers three months later? If that’s the ticket I’m not in it. I aren’t no b–y quartz miner.”
“We ain’t going to do no more MINING there than the bank,” said Steptoe fiercely. “And the bank ain’t going to wait no three months for the end of the lawsuit. They’ll float the stock of that mine for a couple of millions, and get out of it with a million before a month. And they’ll have to buy us off to do that. What they’ll pay will depend upon the lead; but we don’t move off those claims for less than five thousand dollars, which will be two hundred and fifty dollars to each man. But,” said Steptoe in a lower but perfectly distinct voice, “if there should be a row,–and they BEGIN it,–and in the scuffle Tom Marshall, their only witness, should happen to get in the way of a revolver or have his head caved in, there might be some difficulty in their holdin’ ANY OF THE MINE against honest, hardworking miners in possession. You hear me?”
There was a breathless silence for the moment, and a slight movement of the men in their chairs, but never in fear or protest. Every one had heard the speaker distinctly, and every man distinctly understood him. Some of them were criminals, one or two had already the stain of blood on their hands; but even the most timid, who at other times might have shrunk from suggested assassination, saw in the speaker’s words only the fair removal of a natural enemy.
“All right, boys. I’m ready to wade in at once. Why ain’t we on the road now? We might have been but for foolin’ our time away on that man Van Loo.”
“Van Loo!” repeated Hall eagerly,–“Van Loo! Was he here?”
“Yes,” said Steptoe shortly, administering a kick under the table to Hall, as he had no wish to revive the previous irritability of his comrades. “He’s gone, but,” turning to the others, “you’d have had to wait for Mr. Hall’s arrival, anyhow. And now you’ve got your order you can start. Go in two parties by different roads, and meet on the other side of the hotel at Hymettus. I’ll be there before you. Pick up some shovels and drills as you go; remember you’re honest miners, but don’t forget your shootin’-irons for all that. Now scatter.”
It was well that they did, vacating the room more cheerfully and sympathetically than they had entered it, or Hall’s manifest disturbance over Van Loo’s visit would have been noticed. When the last man had disappeared Hall turned quickly to Steptoe. “Well, what did he say? Where has he gone?”
“Don’t know,” said Steptoe, with uneasy curtness. “He was running away with a woman–well, Mrs. Barker, if you want to know,” he added, with rising anger, “the wife of one of those cursed partners. Jack Hamlin was here, and was jockeying to stop him, and interfered. But what the devil has that job to do with our job?” He was losing his temper; everything seemed to turn upon this infernal Van Loo!
“He wasn’t running away with Mrs. Barker,” gasped Hall,–“it was with her MONEY! and the fear of being connected with the Wheat Trust swindle which he organized, and with our money which I lent him for the same purpose. And he knows all about that job, for I wanted to get him to go into it with us. Your name and mine ain’t any too sweet-smelling for the bank, and we ought to have a middleman who knows business to arrange with them. The bank daren’t object to him, for they’ve employed him in even shadier transactions than this when THEY didn’t wish to appear. I knew he was in difficulties along with Mrs. Barker’s speculations, but I never thought him up to this. And,” he added, with sudden desperation, “YOU trusted him, too.”
In an instant Steptoe caught the frightened man by the shoulders and was bearing him down on the table. “Are you a traitor, a liar, or a besotted fool?” he said hoarsely. “Speak. WHEN and WHERE did I trust him?”
“You said in your note–I was–to–help him,” gasped Hall.
“My note,” repeated Steptoe, releasing Hall with astonished eyes.
“Yes,” said Hall, tremblingly searching in his vest pocket. “I brought it with me. It isn’t much of a note, but there’s your signature plain enough.”
He handed Steptoe a torn piece of paper folded in a three-cornered shape. Steptoe opened it. He instantly recognized the paper on which he had written his name and sent up to his wife at the Boomville Hotel. But, added to it, in apparently the same hand, in smaller characters, were the words, “Help Van Loo all you can.”
The blood rushed into his face. But he quickly collected himself, and said hurriedly, “All right, I had forgotten it. Let the d—-d sneak go. We’ve got what’s a thousand times better in this claim at Marshall’s, and it’s well that he isn’t in it to scoop the lion’s share. Only we must not waste time getting there now. You go there first, and at once, and set those rascals to work. I’ll follow you before Marshall comes up. Get; I’ll settle up here.”
His face darkened once more as Hall hurried away, leaving him alone. He drew out the piece of paper from his pocket and stared at it again. Yes; it was the one he had sent to his wife. How did Van Loo get hold of it? Was he at the hotel that night? Had he picked it up in the hall or passage when the servant dropped it? When Hall handed him the paper and he first recognized it a fiendish thought, followed by a spasm of more fiendish rage, had sent the blood to his face. But his crude common sense quickly dismissed that suggestion of his wife’s complicity with Van Loo. But had she seen him passing through the hotel that night, and had sought to draw from him some knowledge of his early intercourse with the child, and confessed everything, and even produced the paper with his signature as a proof of identity? Women had been known to do such desperate things. Perhaps she disbelieved her son’s aversion to her, and was trying to sound Van Loo. As for the forged words by Van Loo, and the use he had put them to, he cared little. He believed the man was capable of forgery; indeed, he suddenly remembered that in the old days his son had spoken innocently, but admiringly, of Van Loo’s wonderful chirographical powers and his faculty of imitating the writings of others, and how he had even offered to teach him. A new and exasperating thought came into his feverish consciousness. What if Van Loo, in teaching the boy, had even made use of him as an innocent accomplice to cover up his own tricks! The suggestion was no question of moral ethics to Steptoe, nor of his son’s possible contamination, although since the night of the big strike he had held different views; it was simply a fierce, selfish jealousy that ANOTHER might have profited by the lad’s helplessness and inexperience. He had been tormented by this jealousy before in his son’s liking for Van Loo. He had at first encouraged his admiration and imitative regard for this smooth swindler’s graces and accomplishments, which, though he scorned them himself, he was, after the common parental infatuation, willing that the boy should profit by. Incapable, through his own consciousness, of distinguishing between Van Loo’s superficial polish and the true breeding of a gentleman, he had only looked upon it as an equipment for his son which might be serviceable to himself. He had told his wife the truth when he informed her of Van Loo’s fears of being reminded of their former intimacy; but he had not told her how its discontinuance after they had left Heavy Tree Hill had affected her son, and how he still cherished his old admiration for that specious rascal. Nor had he told her how this had stung him, through his own selfish greed of the boy’s affection. Yet now that it was possible that she had met Van Loo that evening, she might have become aware of Van Loo’s power over her child. How she would exult, for all her pretended hatred of Van Loo! How, perhaps, they had plotted together! How Van Loo might have become aware of the place where his son was kept, and have been bribed by the mother to tell her! He stopped in a whirl of giddy fancies. His strong common sense in all other things had been hitherto proof against such idle dreams or suggestions; but the very strength of his parental love and jealousy had awakened in him at last the terrors of imagination.
His first impulse had been to seek his wife, regardless of discovery or consequences, at Hymettus, where she had said she was going. It was on his way to the rendezvous at Marshall’s claim. But this he as instantly set aside, it was his SON he must find; SHE might not confess, or might deceive him–the boy would not; and if his fears were correct, she could be arraigned afterwards. It was possible for him to reach the little Mission church and school, secluded in a remote valley by the old Franciscan fathers, where he had placed the boy for the last few years unknown to his wife. It would be a long ride, but he could still reach Heavy Tree Hill afterwards before Marshall and the expert arrived. And he had a feeling he had never felt before on the eve of a desperate adventure,–that he must see the boy first. He remembered how the child had often accompanied him in his flight, and how he had gained strength, and, it seemed to him, a kind of luck, from the touch of that small hand in his. Surely it was necessary now that at least his mind should be at rest regarding HIM on the eve of an affair of this moment. Perhaps he might never see him again. At any other time, and under the influence of any other emotion, he would have scorned such a sentimentalism–he who had never troubled himself either with preparation for the future or consideration for the past. But at that moment he felt both. He drew a long breath. He could catch the next train to the Three Boulders and ride thence to San Felipe. He hurriedly left the room, settled with the landlord, and galloped to the station. By the irony of circumstances the only horse available for that purpose was Mr. Hamlin’s own.
By two o’clock he was at the Three Boulders, where he got a fast horse and galloped into San Felipe by four. As he descended the last slope through the fastnesses of pines towards the little valley overlooked in its remoteness and purely pastoral simplicity by the gold-seeking immigrants,–its seclusion as one of the furthest northern Californian missions still preserved through its insignificance and the efforts of the remaining Brotherhood, who used it as an infirmary and a school for the few remaining Spanish families,–he remembered how he once blundered upon it with the boy while hotly pursued by a hue and cry from one of the larger towns, and how he found sanctuary there. He remembered how, when the pursuit was over, he had placed the boy there under the padre’s charge. He had lied to his wife regarding the whereabouts of her son, but he had spoken truly regarding his free expenditure for the boy’s maintenance, and the good fathers had accepted, equally for the child’s sake as for the Church’s sake, the generous “restitution” which this coarse, powerful, ruffianly looking father was apparently seeking to make. He was quite aware of it at the time, and had equally accepted it with grim cynicism; but it now came back to him with a new and smarting significance. Might THEY, too, not succeed in weaning the boy’s affection from him, or if the mother had interfered, would they not side with her in claiming an equal right? He had sometimes laughed to himself over the security of this hiding-place, so unknown and so unlikely to be discovered by her, yet within easy reach of her friends and his enemies; he now ground his teeth over the mistake which his doting desire to keep his son accessible to him had caused him to make. He put spurs to his horse, dashed down the little, narrow, ill-paved street, through the deserted plaza, and pulled up in a cloud of dust before the only remaining tower, with its cracked belfry, of the half-ruined Mission church. A new dormitory and school- building had been extended from its walls, but in a subdued, harmonious, modest way, quite unlike the usual glaring white-pine glories of provincial towns. Steptoe laughed to himself bitterly. Some of his money had gone in it.
He seized the horsehair rope dangling from a bell by the wall and rang it sharply. A soft-footed priest appeared,–Father Dominico. “Eddy Horncastle? Ah! yes. Eddy, dear child, is gone.”
“Gone!” shouted Steptoe in a voice that startled the padre. “Where? When? With whom?”
“Pardon, senor, but for a time–only a pasear to the next village. It is his saint’s day–he has half-holiday. He is a good boy. It is a little pleasure for him and for us.”
“Oh!” said Steptoe, softened into a rough apology. “I forgot. All right. Has he had any visitors lately–lady, for instance?”
Father Dominico cast a look half of fright, half of reproval upon his guest.
“A lady HERE!”
In his relief Steptoe burst into a coarse laugh. “Of course; you see I forgot that, too. I was thinking of one of his woman folks, you know–relatives–aunts. Was there any other visitor?”
“Only one. Ah! we know the senor’s rules regarding his son.”
“One?” repeated Steptoe. “Who was it?”
“Oh, quite an hidalgo–an old friend of the child’s–most polite, most accomplished, fluent in Spanish, perfect in deportment. The Senor Horncastle surely could find nothing to object to. Father Pedro was charmed with him. A man of affairs, and yet a good Catholic, too. It was a Senor Van Loo–Don Paul the boy called him, and they talked of the boy’s studies in the old days as if– indeed, but for the stranger being a caballero and man of the world–as if he had been his teacher.”
It was a proof of the intensity of the father’s feelings that they had passed beyond the power of his usual coarse, brutal expression, and he only stared at the priest with a dull red face in which the blood seemed to have stagnated. Presently he said thickly, “When did he come?”
“A few days ago.”
“Which way did Eddy go?”
“To Brown’s Mills, scarcely a league away. He will be here–even now–on the instant. But the senor will come into the refectory and take some of the old Mission wine from the Catalan grape, planted one hundred and fifty years ago, until the dear child returns. He will be so happy.”
“No! I’m in a hurry. I will go on and meet him.” He took off his hat, mopped his crisp, wet hair with his handkerchief, and in a thick, slow, impeded voice, more suggestive than the outburst he restrained, said, “And as long as my son remains here that man, Van Loo, must not pass this gate, speak to him, or even see him. You hear me? See to it, you and all the others. See to it, I say, or”– He stopped abruptly, clapped his hat on the swollen veins of his forehead, turned quickly, passed out without another word through the archway into the road, and before the good priest could cross himself or recover from his astonishment the thud of his horse’s hoofs came from the dusty road.
It was ten minutes before his face resumed its usual color. But in that ten minutes, as if some of the struggle of his rider had passed into him, his horse was sweating with exhaustion and fear. For in that ten minutes, in this new imagination with which he was cursed, he had killed both Van Loo and his son, and burned the refectory over the heads of the treacherous priests. Then, quite himself again, a voice came to him from the rocky trail above the road with the hail of “Father!” He started quickly as a lad of fifteen or sixteen came bounding down the hillside, and ran towards him.
“You passed me and I called to you, but you did not seem to hear,” said the boy breathlessly. “Then I ran after you. Have you been to the Mission?”
Steptoe looked at him quite as breathlessly, but from a deeper emotion. He was, even at first sight, a handsome lad, glowing with youth and the excitement of his run, and, as the father looked at him, he could see the likeness to his mother in his clear-cut features, and even a resemblance to himself in his square, compact chest and shoulders and crisp, black curls. A thrill of purely animal paternity passed over him, the fierce joy of his flesh over his own flesh! His own son, by God! They could not take THAT from him; they might plot, swindle, fawn, cheat, lie, and steal away his affections, but there he was, plain to all eyes, his own son, his very son!
“Come here,” he said in a singular, half-weary and half-protesting voice, which the boy instantly recognized as his father’s accents of affection.
The boy hesitated as he stood on the edge of the road and pointed with mingled mischief and fastidiousness to the depths of impalpable red dust that lay between him and the horseman. Steptoe saw that he was very smartly attired in holiday guise, with white duck trousers and patent leather shoes, and, after the Spanish fashion, wore black kid gloves. He certainly was a bit of a dandy, as he had said. The father’s whole face changed as he wheeled and came before the lad, who lifted up his arms expectantly. They had often ridden together on the same horse.
“No rides to-day in that toggery, Eddy,” he said in the same voice. “But I’ll get down and we’ll go and sit somewhere under a tree and have some talk. I’ve got a bit of a job that’s hurrying me, and I can’t waste time.”
“Not one of your old jobs, father? I thought you had quite given that up?”
The boy spoke more carelessly than reproachfully, or even wonderingly; yet, as he dismounted and tethered his horse, Steptoe answered evasively, “It’s a big thing, sonny; maybe we’ll make our eternal fortune, and then we’ll light out from this hole and have a gay time elsewhere. Come along.”
He took the boy’s gloved right hand in his own powerful grasp, and together they clambered up the steep hillside to a rocky ledge on which a fallen pine from above had crashed, snapped itself in twain, and then left its withered crown to hang half down the slope, while the other half rested on the ledge. On this they sat, looking down upon the road and the tethered horse. A gentle breeze moved the treetops above their heads, and the westering sun played hide-and-seek with the shifting shadows. The boy’s face was quick and alert with all that moved round him, but without thought the father’s face was heavy, except for the eyes that were fixed upon his son.
“Van Loo came to the Mission,” he said suddenly.
The boy’s eyes glittered quickly, like a steel that pierced the father’s heart. “Oh,” he said simply, “then it was the padre told you?”
“How did he know you were here?” asked Steptoe.
“I don’t know,” said the boy quietly. “I think he said something, but I’ve forgotten it. But it was mighty good of him to come, for I thought, you know, that he did not care to see me after Heavy Tree, and that he’d gone back on us.”
“What did he tell you?” continued Steptoe. “Did he talk of me or of your mother?”
“No,” said the boy, but without any show of interest or sympathy; “we talked mostly about old times.”
“Tell ME about those old times, Eddy. You never told me anything about them.”
The boy, momentarily arrested more by something in the tone of his father’s voice–a weakness he had never noticed before–than by any suggestion of his words, said with a laugh, “Oh, only about what we used to do when I was very little and used to call myself his ‘little brother,’–don’t you remember, long before the big strike on Heavy Tree? They were gay times we had then.”
“And how he used to teach you to imitate other people’s handwriting?” said Steptoe.
“What made you think of that, pop?” said the boy, with a slight wonder in his eyes. “Why, that’s the very thing we DID talk about.”
“But you didn’t do it again; you ain’t done it since,” said Steptoe quickly.
“Lord! no,” said the boy contemptuously. “There ain’t no chance now, and there wouldn’t be any fun in it. It isn’t like the old times when him and me were all alone, and we used to write letters as coming from other people to all the boys round Heavy Tree and the Bar, and sometimes as far as Boomville, to get them to do things, and they’d think the letters were real, and they’d do ’em. And there’d be the biggest kind of a row, and nobody ever knew who did it.”
Steptoe stared at this flesh of his own flesh half in relief, half in frightened admiration. Sitting astride the log, his elbows on his knees and his gloved hands supporting his round cheeks, the boy’s handsome face became illuminated with an impish devilry which the father had never seen before. With dancing eyes he went on. “It was one of those very games we played so long ago that he wanted to see me about and wanted me to keep mum about, for some of the folks that he played it on were around here now. It was a game we got off on one of the big strike partners long before the strike. I’ll tell YOU, dad, for you know what happened afterwards, and you’ll be glad. Well, that partner–Demorest–was a kind of silly, you remember–a sort of Miss Nancyish fellow–always gloomy and lovesick after his girl in the States. Well, we’d written lots of letters to girls from their chaps before, and got lots of fun out of it; but we had even a better show for a game here, for it happened that Van Loo knew all about the girl–things that even the man’s own partners didn’t, for Van Loo’s mother was a sort of a friend of the girl’s family, and traveled about with her, and knew that the girl was spoony over this Demorest, and that they corresponded. So, knowing that Van Loo was employed at Heavy Tree, she wrote to him to find out all about Demorest and how to stop their foolish nonsense, for the girl’s parents didn’t want her to marry a broken-down miner like him. So we thought we’d do it our own way, and write a letter to her as if it was from him, don’t you see? I wanted to make him call her awful names, and say that he hated her, that he was a murderer and a horse-thief, and that he had killed a policeman, and that he was thinking of becoming a Digger Injin, and having a Digger squaw for a wife, which he liked better than her. Lord! dad, you ought to have seen what stuff I made up.” The boy burst into a shrill, half-feminine laugh, and Steptoe, catching the infection, laughed loudly in his own coarse, brutal fashion.
For some moments they sat there looking in each other’s faces, shaking with sympathetic emotion, the father forgetting the purpose of his coming there, his rage over Van Loo’s visit, and even the rendezvous to which his horse in the road below was waiting to bring him; the son forgetting their retreat from Heavy Tree Hill and his shameful vagabond wanderings with that father in the years that followed. The sinking sun stared blankly in their faces; the protecting pines above them moved by a stronger gust shook a few cones upon them; an enormous crow mockingly repeated the father’s coarse laugh, and a squirrel scampered away from the strangely assorted pair as Steptoe, wiping his eyes and forehead with his pocket-handkerchief, said:–
“And did you send it?”
“Oh! Van Loo thought it too strong. Said that those sort of love- sick fools made more fuss over little things than they did over big things, and he sort of toned it down, and fixed it up himself. But it told. For there were never any more letters in the post-office in her handwriting, and there wasn’t any posted to her in his.”
They both laughed again, and then Steptoe rose. “I must be getting along,” he said, looking curiously at the boy. “I’ve got to catch a train at Three Boulders Station.”
“Three Boulders!” repeated the boy. “I’m going there, too, on Friday, to meet Father Cipriano.”
“I reckon my work will be all done by Friday,” said Steptoe musingly. Standing thus, holding his boy’s hand, he was thinking that the real fight at Marshall’s would not take place at once, for it might take a day or two for Marshall to gather forces. But he only pressed his son’s hand gently.
“I wish you would sometimes take me with you as you used to,” said the boy curiously. “I’m bigger now, and wouldn’t be in your way.
Steptoe looked at the boy with a choking sense of satisfaction and pride. But he said, “No;” and then suddenly with simulated humor, “Don’t you be taken in by any letters from ME, such as you and Van Loo used to write. You hear?”
The boy laughed.
“And,” continued Steptoe, “if anybody says I sent for you, don’t you believe them.”
“No,” said the boy, smiling.
“And don’t you even believe I’m dead till you see me so. You understand. By the way, Father Pedro has some money of mine kept for you. Now hurry back to school and say you met me, but that I was in a great hurry. I reckon I may have been rather rough to the priests.”
They had reached the lower road again, and Steptoe silently unhitched his horse. “Good-by,” he said, as he laid his hand on the boy’s arm.
“Good-by, dad.”
He mounted his horse slowly. “Well,” he said smilingly, looking down the road, “you ain’t got anything more to say to me, have you?”
“No, dad.”
“Nothin’ you want?”
“Nothin’, dad.”
“All right. Good-by.”
He put spurs to his horse and cantered down the road without looking back. The boy watched him with idle curiosity until he disappeared from sight, and then went on his way, whistling and striking off the heads of the wayside weeds with his walking-stick.
CHAPTER VII.
The sun arose so brightly over Hymettus on the morning after the meeting of the three partners that it was small wonder that Barker’s impressionable nature quickly responded to it, and, without awakening the still sleeping child, he dressed hurriedly, and was the first to greet it in the keen air of the slope behind the hotel. To his pantheistic spirit it had always seemed as natural for him to early welcome his returning brothers of the woods and hills as to say good-morning to his fellow mortals. And, in the joy of seeing Black Spur rising again to his level in the distance before him, he doffed his hat to it with a return of his old boyish habit, laid his arm caressingly around the great girth of the nearest pine, clapped his hands to the scampering squirrels in his path, and whistled to the dipping jays. In this way he quite forgot the more serious affairs of the preceding night, or, rather, saw them only in the gilding of the morning, until, looking up, he perceived the tall figure of Demorest approaching him; and then it struck him with his first glance at his old partner’s face that his usual suave, gentle melancholy had been succeeded by a critical cynicism of look and a restrained bitterness of accent. Barker’s loyal heart smote him for his own selfishness; Demorest had been hard hit by the discovery of the forgery and Stacy’s concern in it, and had doubtless passed a restless night, while he (Barker) had forgotten all about it. “I thought of knocking at your door, as I passed,” he said, with sympathetic apology, “but I was afraid I might disturb you. Isn’t it glorious here? Quite like the old hill. Look at that lizard; he hasn’t moved since he first saw me. Do you remember the one who used to steal our sugar, and then stiffen himself into stone on the edge of the bowl until he looked like an ornamental handle to it?” he continued, rebounding again into spirits.
“Barker,” said Demorest abruptly, “what sort of woman is this Mrs. Van Loo, whose rooms I occupy?”
“Oh,” said Barker, with optimistic innocence, “a most proper woman, old chap. White-haired, well-dressed, with a little foreign accent and a still more foreign courtesy. Why, you don’t suppose we’d”–
“But what is she like?” said Demorest impatiently.
“Well,” said Barker thoughtfully, “she’s the kind of woman who might be Van Loo’s mother, I suppose.”
“You mean the mother of a forger and a swindler?” asked Demorest sharply.
“There are no mothers of swindlers and forgers,” said Barker gravely, “in the way you mean. It’s only those poor devils,” he said, pointing, nevertheless, with a certain admiration to a circling sparrow-hawk above him, “who have inherited instincts. What I mean is that she might be Van Loo’s mother, because he didn’t SELECT her.”
“Where did she come from? and how long has she been here?” asked Demorest.
“She came from abroad, I believe. And she came here just after you left. Van Loo, after he became secretary of the Ditch Company, sent for her and her daughter to keep house for him. But you’ll see her to-day or to-morrow probably, when she returns. I’ll introduce you; she’ll be rather glad to meet some one from abroad, and all the more if he happens to be rich and distinguished, and eligible for her daughter.” He stopped suddenly in his smile, remembering Demorest’s lifelong secret. But to his surprise his companion’s face, instead of darkening as it was wont to do at any such allusion, brightened suddenly with a singular excitement as he answered dryly, “Ah well, if the girl is pretty, who knows!”
Indeed, his spirits seemed to have returned with strange vivacity as they walked back to the hotel, and he asked many other questions regarding Mrs. Van Loo and her daughter, and particularly if the daughter had also been abroad. When they reached the veranda they found a few early risers eagerly reading the Sacramento papers, which had just arrived, or, in little knots, discussing the news. Indeed, they would probably have stopped Barker and his companion had not Barker, anxious to relieve his friend’s curiosity, hurried with him at once to the manager’s office.
“Can you tell me exactly when you expect Mrs. Van Loo to return?” asked Barker quickly.
The manager with difficulty detached himself from the newspaper which he, too, was anxiously perusing, and said, with a peculiar smile, “Well no! she WAS to return to-day, but if you’re wanting to keep her rooms, I should say there wouldn’t be any trouble about it, as she’ll hardly be coming back here NOW. She’s rather high and mighty in style, I know, and a determined sort of critter, but I reckon she and her daughter wouldn’t care much to be waltzing round in public after what has happened.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Demorest impatiently. “WHAT has happened?”
“Haven’t you heard the news?” said the manager in surprise. “It’s in all the Sacramento papers. Van Loo is a defaulter–has hypothecated everything he had and skedaddled.”
Barker started. He was not thinking of the loss of his wife’s money–only of HER disappointment and mortification over it. Poor girl! Perhaps she was also worrying over his resentment,–as if she did not know him! He would go to her at once at Boomville. Then he remembered that she was coming with Mrs. Horncastle, and might be already on her way here by rail or coach, and he would miss her. Demorest in the meantime had seized a paper, and was intently reading it.
“There’s bad news, too, for your friend, your old partner,” said the manager half sympathetically, half interrogatively. “There has been a drop out in everything the bank is carrying, and everybody is unloading. Two firms failed in ‘Frisco yesterday that were carrying things for the bank, and have thrown everything back on it. There was an awful panic last night, and they say none of the big speculators know where they stand. Three of our best customers in the hotel rushed off to the bay this morning, but Stacy himself started before daylight, and got the through night express to stop for him on the Divide on signal. Shall I send any telegrams that may come to your room?”
Demorest knew that the manager suspected him of being interested in the bank, and understood the purport of the question. He answered, with calm surprise, that he was expecting no telegrams, and added, “But if Mrs. Van Loo returns I beg you to at once let me know,” and taking Barker’s arm he went in to breakfast. Seated by themselves, Demorest looked at his companion. “I’m afraid, Barker boy, that this thing is more serious to Jim than we expected last night, or than he cared to tell us. And you, old man, I fear are hurt a little by Van Loo’s flight. He had some money of your wife’s, hadn’t he?”
Barker, who knew that the bulk of Demorest’s fortune was in Stacy’s hands, was touched at this proof of his unselfish thought, and answered with equal unselfishness that he was concerned only by the fear of Mrs. Barker’s disappointment. “Why, Lord! Phil, whether she’s lost or saved her money it’s nothing to me. I gave it to her to do what she liked with it, but I’m afraid she’ll be worrying over what I think of it,–as if she did not know me! And I’m half a mind, if it were not for missing her, to go over to Boomville, where she’s stopping.”
“I thought you said she was in San Francisco?” said Demorest abstractedly.
Barker colored. “Yes,” he answered quickly. “But I’ve heard since that she stopped at Boomville on the way.”
“Then don’t let ME keep you here,” returned Demorest. “For if Jim telegraphs to me I shall start for San Francisco at once, and I rather think he will. I did not like to say so before those panic- mongers outside who are stampeding everything; so run along, Barker boy, and ease your mind about the wife. We may have other things to think about soon.”
Thus adjured, Barker rose from his half-finished breakfast and slipped away. Yet he was not quite certain what to do. His wife must have heard the news at Boomville as quickly as he had, and, if so, would be on her way with Mrs. Horncastle; or she might be waiting for him–knowing, too, that he had heard the news–in fear and trembling. For it was Barker’s custom to endow all those he cared for with his own sensitiveness, and it was not like him to reflect that the woman who had so recklessly speculated against his opinion would scarcely fear his reproaches in her defeat. In the fullness of his heart he telegraphed to her in case she had not yet left Boomville: “All right. Have heard news. Understand perfectly. Don’t worry. Come to me.” Then he left the hotel by the stable entrance in order to evade the guests who had congregated on the veranda, and made his way to a little wooded crest which he knew commanded a view of the two roads from Boomville. Here he determined to wait and intercept her before she reached the hotel. He knew that many of the guests were aware of his wife’s speculations with Van Loo, and that he was her broker. He wished to spare her running the gauntlet of their curious stares and comments as she drove up alone. As he was climbing the slope the coach from Sacramento dashed past him on the road below, but he knew that it had changed horses at Boomville at four o’clock, and that his tired wife would not have availed herself of it at that hour, particularly as she could not have yet received the fateful news. He threw himself under a large pine, and watched the stagecoach disappear as it swept round into the courtyard of the hotel.
He sat there for some moments with his eyes bent upon the two forks of the red road that diverged below him, but which appeared to become whiter and more dazzling as he searched their distance. There was nothing to be seen except an occasional puff of dust which eventually revealed a horseman or a long trailing cloud out of which a solitary mule, one of a pack-train of six or eight, would momentarily emerge and be lost again. Then he suddenly heard his name called, and, looking up, saw Mrs. Horncastle, who had halted a few paces from him between two columns of the long-drawn aisle of pines.
In that mysterious half-light she seemed such a beautiful and goddess-like figure that his consciousness at first was unable to grasp anything else. She was always wonderfully well dressed, but the warmth and seclusion of this mountain morning had enabled her to wear a light gown of some delicate fabric which set off the grace of her figure, and even pardoned the rural coquetry of a silken sash around her still slender waist. An open white parasol thrown over her shoulder made a nimbus for her charming head and the thick coils of hair under her lace-edged hat. He had never seen her look so beautiful before. And that thought was so plainly in his frank face and eyes as he sprang to his feet that it brought a slight rise of color to her own cheek.
“I saw you climbing up here as I passed in the coach a few minutes ago,” she said, with a smile, “and as soon as I had shaken the dust off I followed you.”
“Where’s Kitty?” he stammered.
The color faded from her face as it had come, and a shade of something like reproach crept into her dark eyes. And whatever it had been her purpose to say, or however carefully she might have prepared herself for this interview, she was evidently taken aback by the sudden directness of the inquiry. Barker saw this as quickly, and as quickly referred it to his own rudeness. His whole soul rushed in apology to his face as he said, “Oh, forgive me! I was anxious about Kitty; indeed, I had thought of coming again to Boomville, for you’ve heard the news, of course? Van Loo is a defaulter, and has run away with the poor child’s money.”
Mrs. Horncastle had heard the news at the hotel. She paused a moment to collect herself, and then said slowly and tentatively, with a watchful intensity in her eyes, “Mrs. Barker went, I think, to the Divide”–
But she was instantly interrupted by the eager Barker. “I see. I thought of that at once. She went directly to the company’s offices to see if she could save anything from the wreck before she saw me. It was like her, poor girl! And you–you,” he went on eagerly, his whole face beaming with gratitude,–“you, out of your goodness, came here to tell me.” He held out both hands and took hers in his.
For a moment Mrs. Horncastle was speechless and vacillating. She had often noticed before that it was part of the irony of the creation of such a simple nature as Barker’s that he was not only open to deceit, but absolutely seemed to invite it. Instead of making others franker, people were inclined to rebuke his credulity by restraint and equivocation on their own part. But the evasion thus offered to her, although only temporary, was a temptation she could not resist. And it prolonged an interview that a ruthless revelation of the truth might have shortened.
“She did not tell me she was going there,” she replied still evasively; “and, indeed,” she added, with a burst of candor still more dangerous, “I only learned it from the hotel clerk after she was gone. But I want to talk to you about her relations to Van Loo,” she said, with a return of her former intensity of gaze, “and I thought we would be less subject to interruption here than at the hotel. Only I suppose everybody knows this place, and any of those flirting couples are likely to come here. Besides,” she added, with a little half-hysterical laugh and a slight shiver, as she looked up at the high interlacing boughs above her head, “it’s as public as the aisles of a church, and really one feels as if one were ‘speaking out’ in meeting. Isn’t there some other spot a little more secluded, where we could sit down,” she went on, as she poked her parasol into the usual black gunpowdery deposit of earth which mingled with the carpet of pine-needles beneath her feet, “and not get all sticky and dirty?”
Barker’s eyes sparkled. “I know every foot of this hill, Mrs. Horncastle,” he said, “and if you will follow me I’ll take you to one of the loveliest nooks you ever dreamed of. It’s an old Indian spring now forgotten, and I think known only to me and the birds. It’s not more than ten minutes from here; only”–he hesitated as he caught sight of the smart French bronze buckled shoe and silken ankle which Mrs. Horncastle’s gathering up of her dainty skirts around her had disclosed–“it may be a little rough and dusty going to your feet.”
But Mrs. Horncastle pointed out that she had already irretrievably ruined her shoes and stockings in climbing up to him,–although Barker could really distinguish no diminution of their freshness,– and that she might as well go on. Whereat they both passed down the long aisle of slope to a little hollow of manzanita, which again opened to a view of Black Spur, but left the hotel hidden.
“What time did Kitty go?” began Barker eagerly, when they were half down the slope.
But here Mrs. Horncastle’s foot slipped upon the glassy pine- needles, and not only stopped an answer, but obliged Barker to give all his attention to keep his companion from falling again until they reached the open. Then came the plunge through the manzanita thicket, then a cool wade through waist-deep ferns, and then they emerged, holding each other’s hand, breathless and panting before the spring.
It did not belie his enthusiastic description. A triangular hollow, niched in a shelf of the mountain-side, narrowed to a point from which the overflow of the spring percolated through a fringe of alder, to fall in what seemed from the valley to be a green furrow down the whole length of the mountain-side. Overhung by pines above, which met and mingled with the willows that everywhere fringed it, it made the one cooling shade in the whole basking expanse of the mountain, and yet was penetrated throughout by the intoxicating spice of the heated pines. Flowering reeds and long lush grasses drew a magic circle round an open bowl-like pool in the centre, that was always replenished to the slow murmur of an unseen rivulet that trickled from a white-quartz cavern in the mountain-side like a vein opened in its flank. Shadows of timid wings crossed it, quick rustlings disturbed the reeds, but nothing more. It was silent, but breathing; it was hidden to everything but the sky and the illimitable distance.
They threaded their way around it on the spongy carpet, covered by delicate lace-like vines that seemed to caress rather than trammel their moving feet, until they reached an open space before the pool. It was cushioned and matted with disintegrated pine bark, and here they sat down. Mrs. Horncastle furled her parasol and laid it aside; raised both hands to the back of her head and took two hat-pins out, which she placed in her smiling mouth; removed her hat, stuck the hat-pins in it, and handed it to Barker, who gently placed it on the top of a tall reed, where during the rest of that momentous meeting it swung and drooped like a flower; removed her gloves slowly; drank still smilingly and gratefully nearly a wineglassful of the water which Barker brought her in the green twisted chalice of a lily leaf; looked the picture of happiness, and then burst into tears.
Barker was astounded, dismayed, even terror-stricken. Mrs. Horncastle crying! Mrs. Horncastle, the imperious, the collected, the coldly critical, the cynical, smiling woman of the world, actually crying! Other women might cry–Kitty had cried often–but Mrs. Horncastle! Yet, there she was, sobbing; actually sobbing like a schoolgirl, her beautiful shoulders rising and falling with her grief; crying unmistakably through her long white fingers, through a lace pocket-handkerchief which she had hurriedly produced and shaken from behind her like a conjurer’s trick; her beautiful eyes a thousand times more lustrous for the sparkling beads that brimmed her lashes and welled over like the pool before her.
“Don’t mind me,” she murmured behind her handkerchief. “It’s very foolish, I know. I was nervous–worried, I suppose; I’ll be better in a moment. Don’t notice me, please.”
But Barker had drawn beside her and was trying, after the fashion of his sex, to take her handkerchief away in apparently the firm belief that this action would stop her tears. “But tell me what it is. Do Mrs. Horncastle, please,” he pleaded in his boyish fashion. “Is it anything I can do? Only say the word; only tell me SOMETHING!”
But he had succeeded in partially removing the handkerchief, and so caught a glimpse of her wet eyes, in which a faint smile struggled out like sunshine through rain. But they clouded again, although