“No real gentleman will tell the naked truth
in the presence of ladies.”
It was a crisp and spicy morning in early October. The lilacs and
laburnums, lit with the glory-fires of autumn, hung burning and flashing
in the upper air, a fairy bridge provided by kind Nature for the
wingless wild things that have their homes in the tree-tops and would
visit together; the larch and the pomegranate flung their purple and
yellow flames in brilliant broad splashes along the slanting sweep of
the woodland; the sensuous fragrance of innumerable deciduous flowers
rose upon the swooning atmosphere; far in the empty sky a solitary
oesophagus slept upon motionless wing; everywhere brooded stillness,
serenity, and the peace of God.
October is the time--1900; Hope Canyon is the place, a silver-mining
camp away down in the Esmeralda region. It is a secluded spot, high and
remote; recent as to discovery; thought by its occupants to be rich in
metal--a year or two's prospecting will decide that matter one way or
the other. For inhabitants, the camp has about two hundred miners, one
white woman and child, several Chinese washermen, five squaws, and a
dozen vagrant buck Indians in rabbit-skin robes, battered plug hats, and
tin-can necklaces. There are no mills as yet; there is no church, no
newspaper. The camp has existed but two years; it has made no big
strike; the world is ignorant of its name and place.
On both sides of the canyon the mountains rise wall-like, three thousand
feet, and the long spiral of straggling huts down in its narrow bottom
gets a kiss from the sun only once a day, when he sails over at noon.
The village is a couple of miles long; the cabins stand well apart from
each other. The tavern is the only “frame” house--the only house, one
might say. It occupies a central position, and is the evening resort of
the population. They drink there, and play seven-up and dominoes; also
billiards, for there is a table, crossed all over with torn places
repaired with court-plaster; there are some cues, but no leathers; some
chipped balls which clatter when they run, and do not slow up gradually,
but stop suddenly and sit down; there is part of a cube of chalk,
with a projecting jag of flint in it; and the man who can score six on a
single break can set up the drinks at the bar's expense.
Flint Buckner's cabin was the last one of the village, going south;
his silver-claim was at the other end of the village, northward, and a
little beyond the last hut in that direction. He was a sour creature,
unsociable, and had no companionships. People who had tried to get
acquainted with him had regretted it and dropped him. His history was
not known. Some believed that Sammy Hillyer knew it; others said no. If
asked, Hillyer said no, he was not acquainted with it. Flint had a meek
English youth of sixteen or seventeen with him, whom he treated roughly,
both in public and in private, and of course this lad was applied to for
information, but with no success. Fetlock Jones--the name of the
youth--said that Flint picked him up on a prospecting tramp, and as he
had neither home nor friends in America, he had found it wise to stay
and take Buckner's hard usage for the sake of the salary, which was
bacon and beans. Further than this he could offer no testimony.
Fetlock had been in this slavery for a month now, and under his meek
exterior he was slowly consuming to a cinder with the insults and
humiliations which his master had put upon him. For the meek suffer
bitterly from these hurts; more bitterly, perhaps, than do the manlier
sort, who can burst out and get relief with words or blows when the
limit of endurance has been reached. Good-hearted people wanted to help
Fetlock out of his trouble, and tried to get him to leave Buckner; but
the boy showed fright at the thought, and said he “dasn't.” Pat Riley
urged him, and said,
“You leave the damned hunks and come with me; don't you be afraid. I'll
take care of him.”
The boy thanked him with tears in his eyes, but shuddered and said he
“dasn't risk it”; he said Flint would catch him alone, some time, in the
night, and then--“Oh, it makes me sick, Mr. Riley, to think of it.”
Others said, “Run away from him; we'll stake you; skip out for the coast
some night.” But all these suggestions failed; he said Flint would hunt
him down and fetch him back, just for meanness.
The people could not understand this. The boy's miseries went steadily
on, week after week. It is quite likely that the people would have
understood if they had known how he was employing his spare time. He
slept in an out-cabin near Flint's; and there, nights, he nursed his
bruises and his humiliations, and studied and studied over a single
problem--how he could murder Flint Buckner and not be found out. It
was the only joy he had in life; these hours were the only ones in
the twenty-four which he looked forward to with eagerness and spent in
happiness.
He thought of poison. No--that would not serve; the inquest would reveal
where it was procured and who had procured it. He thought of a shot
in the back in a lonely place when Flint would be homeward-bound at
midnight--his unvarying hour for the trip. No--somebody might be near,
and catch him. He thought of stabbing him in his sleep. No--he might
strike an inefficient blow, and Flint would seize him. He examined a
hundred different ways--none of them would answer; for in even the very
obscurest and secretest of them there was always the fatal defect of a
risk, a chance, a possibility that he might be found out. He would have
none of that.
But he was patient, endlessly patient. There was no hurry, he said to
himself. He would never leave Flint till he left him a corpse; there was
no hurry--he would find the way. It was somewhere, and he would endure
shame and pain and misery until he found it. Yes, somewhere there was
a way which would leave not a trace, not even the faintest clue to the
murderer--there was no hurry--he would find that way, and then--oh,
then, it would just be good to be alive! Meantime he would diligently
keep up his reputation for meekness; and also, as always theretofore, he
would allow no one to hear him say a resentful or offensive thing about
his oppressor.
Two days before the before-mentioned October morning Flint had bought
some things, and he and Fetlock had brought them home to Flint's cabin:
a fresh box of candles, which they put in the corner; a tin can of
blasting-powder, which they placed upon the candle-box; a keg of
blasting-powder, which they placed under Flint's bunk; a huge coil of
fuse, which they hung on a peg. Fetlock reasoned that Flint's mining
operations had outgrown the pick, and that blasting was about to begin
now. He had seen blasting done, and he had a notion of the process, but
he had never helped in it. His conjecture was right--blasting-time had
come. In the morning the pair carried fuse, drills, and the powder-can
to the shaft; it was now eight feet deep, and to get into it and out of
it a short ladder was used. They descended, and by command Fetlock held
the drill--without any instructions as to the right way to hold it--and
Flint proceeded to strike. The sledge came down; the drill sprang out of
Fetlock's hand, almost as a matter of course.
“You mangy son of a nigger, is that any way to hold a drill? Pick it up!
Stand it up! There--hold fast. D--you! I'll teach you!”
At the end of an hour the drilling was finished.
“Now, then, charge it.”
The boy started to pour in the powder.
“Idiot!”
A heavy bat on the jaw laid the lad out.
“Get up! You can't lie snivelling there. Now, then, stick in the fuse
first. Now put in the powder. Hold on, hold on! Are you going to fill
the hole all up? Of all the sap-headed milksops I--Put in some dirt! Put
in some gravel! Tamp it down! Hold on, hold on! Oh, great Scott! get
out of the way!” He snatched the iron and tamped the charge himself,
meantime cursing and blaspheming like a fiend. Then he fired the fuse,
climbed out of the shaft, and ran fifty yards away, Fetlock following.
They stood waiting a few minutes, then a great volume of smoke and rocks
burst high into the air with a thunderous explosion; after a little
there was a shower of descending stones; then all was serene again.
“I wish to God you'd been in it!” remarked the master.
They went down the shaft, cleaned it out, drilled another hole, and put
in another charge.
“Look here! How much fuse are you proposing to waste? Don't you know how
to time a fuse?”
“No, sir.”
“You don't! Well, if you don't beat anything I ever saw!”
He climbed out of the shaft and spoke down,
“Well, idiot, are you going to be all day? Cut the fuse and light it!”
The trembling creature began,
“If you please, sir, I--”
“You talk back to me? Cut it and light it!”
The boy cut and lit.
“Ger-reat Scott! a one-minute fuse! I wish you were in--”
In his rage he snatched the ladder out of the shaft and ran. The boy was
aghast.
“Oh, my God! Help. Help! Oh, save me!” he implored. “Oh, what can I do!
What can I do!”
He backed against the wall as tightly as he could; the sputtering fuse
frightened the voice out of him; his breath stood still; he stood gazing
and impotent; in two seconds, three seconds, four he would be flying
toward the sky torn to fragments. Then he had an inspiration. He sprang
at the fuse, severed the inch of it that was left above ground, and was
saved.
He sank down limp and half lifeless with fright, his strength all gone;
but he muttered with a deep joy,
“He has learnt me! I knew there was a way, if I would wait.”
After a matter of five minutes Buckner stole to the shaft, looking
worried and uneasy, and peered down into it. He took in the situation;
he saw what had happened. He lowered the ladder, and the boy dragged
himself weakly up it. He was very white. His appearance added something
to Buckner's uncomfortable state, and he said, with a show of regret and
sympathy which sat upon him awkwardly from lack of practice:
“It was an accident, you know. Don't say anything about it to anybody;
I was excited, and didn't notice what I was doing. You're not looking
well; you've worked enough for to-day; go down to my cabin and eat what
you want, and rest. It's just an accident, you know, on account of my
being excited.”
“It scared me,” said the lad, as he started away; “but I learnt
something, so I don't mind it.”
“Damned easy to please!” muttered Buckner, following him with his eye.
“I wonder if he'll tell? Mightn't he?... I wish it had killed him.”
The boy took no advantage of his holiday in the matter of resting; he
employed it in work, eager and feverish and happy work. A thick growth
of chaparral extended down the mountainside clear to Flint's cabin;
the most of Fetlock's labor was done in the dark intricacies of that
stubborn growth; the rest of it was done in his own shanty. At last all
was complete, and he said,
“If he's got any suspicions that I'm going to tell on him, he won't keep
them long, to-morrow. He will see that I am the same milksop as I always
was--all day and the next. And the day after to-morrow night there 'll
be an end of him; nobody will ever guess who finished him up nor how it
was done. He dropped me the idea his own self, and that's odd.”
V
The next day came and went.
It is now almost midnight, and in five minutes the new morning will
begin. The scene is in the tavern billiard-room. Rough men in rough
clothing, slouch-hats, breeches stuffed into boot-tops, some with vests,
none with coats, are grouped about the boiler-iron stove, which has
ruddy cheeks and is distributing a grateful warmth; the billiard-balls
are clacking; there is no other sound--that is, within; the wind is
fitfully moaning without. The men look bored; also expectant. A hulking
broad-shouldered miner, of middle age, with grizzled whiskers, and an
unfriendly eye set in an unsociable face, rises, slips a coil of fuse
upon his arm, gathers up some other personal properties, and departs
without word or greeting to anybody. It is Flint Buckner. As the door
closes behind him a buzz of talk breaks out.
“The regularest man that ever was,” said Jake Parker, the blacksmith;
“you can tell when it's twelve just by him leaving, without looking at
your Waterbury.”
“And it's the only virtue he's got, as fur as I know,” said Peter Hawes,
miner.
“He's just a blight on this society,” said Wells-Fargo's man, Ferguson.
“If I was running this shop I'd make him say something, some time
or other, or vamos the ranch.” This with a suggestive glance at the
barkeeper, who did not choose to see it, since the man under discussion
was a good customer, and went home pretty well set up, every night, with
refreshments furnished from the bar.
“Say,” said Ham Sandwich, miner, “does any of you boys ever recollect of
him asking you to take a drink?”
“Him? Flint Buckner? Oh, Laura!”
This sarcastic rejoinder came in a spontaneous general outburst in one
form of words or another from the crowd. After a brief silence, Pat
Riley, miner, said,
“He's the 15-puzzle, that cuss. And his boy's another one. I can't make
them out.”
“Nor anybody else,” said Ham Sandwich; “and if they are 15-puzzles how
are you going to rank up that other one? When it comes to A 1 right-down
solid mysteriousness, he lays over both of them. Easy--don't he?”
“You bet!”
Everybody said it. Every man but one. He was the new-comer--Peterson. He
ordered the drinks all round, and asked who No. 3 might be. All answered
at once, “Archy Stillman!”
“Is he a mystery?” asked Peterson.
“Is he a mystery? Is Archy Stillman a mystery?” said Wells-Fargo's man,
Ferguson. “Why, the fourth dimension's foolishness to him.”
For Ferguson was learned.
Peterson wanted to hear all about him; everybody wanted to tell him;
everybody began. But Billy Stevens, the barkeeper, called the house to
order, and said one at a time was best. He distributed the drinks, and
appointed Ferguson to lead. Ferguson said,
“Well, he's a boy. And that is just about all we know about him. You can
pump him till you are tired; it ain't any use; you won't get anything.
At least about his intentions, or line of business, or where he's from,
and such things as that. And as for getting at the nature and get-up of
his main big chief mystery, why, he'll just change the subject,
that's all. You can guess till you're black in the face--it's your
privilege--but suppose you do, where do you arrive at? Nowhere, as near
as I can make out.”
“What is his big chief one?”
“Sight, maybe. Hearing, maybe. Instinct, maybe. Magic, maybe. Take your
choice--grownups, twenty-five; children and servants, half price. Now
I'll tell you what he can do. You can start here, and just disappear;
you can go and hide wherever you want to, I don't care where it is, nor
how far--and he'll go straight and put his finger on you.”
“You don't mean it!”
“I just do, though. Weather's nothing to him--elemental conditions is
nothing to him--he don't even take notice of them.”
“Oh, come! Dark? Rain? Snow? Hey?”
“It's all the same to him. He don't give a damn.”
“Oh, say--including fog, per'aps?”
“Fog! he's got an eye 't can plunk through it like a bullet.”
“Now, boys, honor bright, what's he giving me?”
“It's a fact!” they all shouted. “Go on, Wells-Fargo.”
“Well, sir, you can leave him here, chatting with the boys, and you can
slip out and go to any cabin in this camp and open a book--yes, sir, a
dozen of them--and take the page in your memory, and he'll start out and
go straight to that cabin and open every one of them books at the right
page, and call it off, and never make a mistake.”
“He must be the devil!”
“More than one has thought it. Now I'll tell you a perfectly wonderful
thing that he done. The other night he--”
There was a sudden great murmur of sounds outside, the door flew open,
and an excited crowd burst in, with the camp's one white woman in the
lead and crying,
“My child! my child! she's lost and gone! For the love of God help me to
find Archy Stillman; we've hunted everywhere!”
Said the barkeeper:
“Sit down, sit down, Mrs. Hogan, and don't worry. He asked for a bed
three hours ago, tuckered out tramping the trails the way he's always
doing, and went upstairs. Ham Sandwich, run up and roust him out; he's
in No. 14.”
The youth was soon downstairs and ready. He asked Mrs. Hogan for
particulars.
“Bless you, dear, there ain't any; I wish there was. I put her to sleep
at seven in the evening, and when I went in there an hour ago to go to
bed myself, she was gone. I rushed for your cabin, dear, and you wasn't
there, and I've hunted for you ever since, at every cabin down the
gulch, and now I've come up again, and I'm that distracted and scared
and heart-broke; but, thanks to God, I've found you at last, dear heart,
and you'll find my child. Come on! come quick!”
“Move right along; I'm with you, madam. Go to your cabin first.”
The whole company streamed out to join the hunt. All the southern half
of the village was up, a hundred men strong, and waiting outside, a
vague dark mass sprinkled with twinkling lanterns. The mass fell into
columns by threes and fours to accommodate itself to the narrow road,
and strode briskly along southward in the wake of the leaders. In a few
minutes the Hogan cabin was reached.
“There's the bunk,” said Mrs. Hogan; “there's where she was; it's where
I laid her at seven o'clock; but where she is now, God only knows.”
“Hand me a lantern,” said Archy. He set it on the hard earth floor
and knelt by it, pretending to examine the ground closely. “Here's her
track,” he said, touching the ground here and there and yonder with his
finger. “Do you see?”
Several of the company dropped upon their knees and did their best
to see. One or two thought they discerned something like a track; the
others shook their heads and confessed that the smooth hard surface had
no marks upon it which their eyes were sharp enough to discover. One
said, “Maybe a child's foot could make a mark on it, but I don't see
how.”
Young Stillman stepped outside, held the light to the ground, turned
leftward, and moved three steps, closely examining; then said, “I've got
the direction--come along; take the lantern, somebody.”
He strode off swiftly southward, the files following, swaying and
bending in and out with the deep curves of the gorge. Thus a mile, and
the mouth of the gorge was reached; before them stretched the sagebrush
plain, dim, vast, and vague. Stillman called a halt, saying, “We mustn't
start wrong, now; we must take the direction again.”
He took a lantern and examined the ground for a matter of twenty yards;
then said, “Come on; it's all right,” and gave up the lantern. In and
out among the sage-bushes he marched, a quarter of a mile, bearing
gradually to the right; then took a new direction and made another
great semicircle; then changed again and moved due west nearly half a
mile--and stopped.
“She gave it up, here, poor little chap. Hold the lantern. You can see
where she sat.”
But this was in a slick alkali flat which was surfaced like steel, and
no person in the party was quite hardy enough to claim an eyesight that
could detect the track of a cushion on a veneer like that. The bereaved
mother fell upon her knees and kissed the spot, lamenting.
“But where is she, then?” some one said. “She didn't stay here. We can
see that much, anyway.”
Stillman moved about in a circle around the place, with the lantern,
pretending to hunt for tracks.
“Well!” he said presently, in an annoyed tone, “I don't understand it.”
He examined again. “No use. She was here--that's certain; she never
walked away from here--and that's certain. It's a puzzle; I can't make
it out.”
The mother lost heart then.
“Oh, my God! oh, blessed Virgin! some flying beast has got her. I'll
never see her again!”
“Ah, don't give up,” said Archy. “We'll find her--don't give up.”
“God bless you for the words, Archy Stillman!” and she seized his hand
and kissed it fervently.
Peterson, the new-comer, whispered satirically in Ferguson's ear:
“Wonderful performance to find this place, wasn't it? Hardly worth
while to come so far, though; any other supposititious place would have
answered just as well--hey?”
Ferguson was not pleased with the innuendo. He said, with some warmth,
“Do you mean to insinuate that the child hasn't been here? I tell you
the child has been here! Now if you want to get yourself into as tidy a
little fuss as--”
“All right!” sang out Stillman. “Come, everybody, and look at this! It
was right under our noses all the time, and we didn't see it.”
There was a general plunge for the ground at the place where the child
was alleged to have rested, and many eyes tried hard and hopefully to
see the thing that Archy's finger was resting upon. There was a pause,
then a several-barrelled sigh of disappointment. Pat Riley and Ham
Sandwich said, in the one breath,
“What is it, Archy? There's nothing here.”
“Nothing? Do you call that nothing?” and he swiftly traced upon the
ground a form with his finger. “There--don't you recognize it now? It's
Injun Billy's track. He's got the child.”
“God be praised!” from the mother.
“Take away the lantern. I've got the direction. Follow!”
He started on a run, racing in and out among the sage-bushes a matter
of three hundred yards, and disappeared over a sand-wave; the others
struggled after him, caught him up, and found him waiting. Ten steps
away was a little wickieup, a dim and formless shelter of rags and old
horse-blankets, a dull light showing through its chinks.
“You lead, Mrs. Hogan,” said the lad. “It's your privilege to be first.”
All followed the sprint she made for the wickieup, and saw, with her, the
picture its interior afforded. Injun Billy was sitting on the ground;
the child was asleep beside him. The mother hugged it with a wild
embrace, which included Archy Stillman, the grateful tears running
down her face, and in a choked and broken voice she poured out a golden
stream of that wealth of worshiping endearments which has its home in
full richness nowhere but in the Irish heart.
“I find her bymeby it is ten o'clock,” Billy explained. “She 'sleep out
yonder, ve'y tired--face wet, been cryin', 'spose; fetch her home, feed
her, she heap much hungry--go 'sleep 'gin.”
In her limitless gratitude the happy mother waived rank and hugged him
too, calling him “the angel of God in disguise.” And he probably was
in disguise if he was that kind of an official. He was dressed for the
character.
At half past one in the morning the procession burst into the village
singing, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” waving its lanterns, and
swallowing the drinks that were brought out all along its course. It
concentrated at the tavern, and made a night of what was left of the
morning.