From a letter to Mrs. Stillman, dated merely “Tuesday.”
Fetlock Jones was put under lock and key in an unoccupied log cabin,
and left there to await his trial. Constable Harris provided him with
a couple of days' rations, instructed him to keep a good guard over
himself, and promised to look in on him as soon as further supplies
should be due.
Next morning a score of us went with Hillyer, out of friendship, and
helped him bury his late relative, the unlamented Buckner, and I acted
as first assistant pall-bearer, Hillyer acting as chief. Just as we had
finished our labors a ragged and melancholy stranger, carrying an old
hand-bag, limped by with his head down, and I caught the scent I had
chased around the globe! It was the odor of Paradise to my perishing
hope!
In a moment I was at his side and had laid a gentle hand upon his
shoulder. He slumped to the ground as if a stroke of lightning had
withered him in his tracks; and as the boys came running he struggled to
his knees and put up his pleading hands to me, and out of his chattering
jaws he begged me to persecute him no more, and said,
“You have hunted me around the world, Sherlock Holmes, yet God is my
witness I have never done any man harm!”
A glance at his wild eyes showed us that he was insane. That was my
work, mother! The tidings of your death can some day repeat the misery
I felt in that moment, but nothing else can ever do it. The boys lifted
him up, and gathered about him, and were full of pity of him, and said
the gentlest and touchingest things to him, and said cheer up and don't
be troubled, he was among friends now, and they would take care of him,
and protect him, and hang any man that laid a hand on him. They are just
like so many mothers, the rough mining-camp boys are, when you wake up
the south side of their hearts; yes, and just like so many reckless and
unreasoning children when you wake up the opposite of that muscle. They
did everything they could think of to comfort him, but nothing succeeded
until Wells-Fargo Ferguson, who is a clever strategist, said,
“If it's only Sherlock Holmes that's troubling you, you needn't worry
any more.”
“Why?” asked the forlorn lunatic, eagerly.
“Because he's dead again.”
“Dead! Dead! Oh, don't trifle with a poor wreck like me. Is he dead? On
honor, now--is he telling me true, boys?”
“True as you're standing there!” said Ham Sandwich, and they all backed
up the statement in a body.
“They hung him in San Bernardino last week,” added Ferguson, clinching
the matter, “whilst he was searching around after you. Mistook him for
another man. They're sorry, but they can't help it now.”
“They're a-building him a monument,” said Ham Sandwich, with the air of
a person who had contributed to it, and knew.
“James Walker” drew a deep sigh--evidently a sigh of relief--and said
nothing; but his eyes lost something of their wildness, his countenance
cleared visibly, and its drawn look relaxed a little. We all went to our
cabin, and the boys cooked him the best dinner the camp could furnish
the materials for, and while they were about it Hillyer and I outfitted
him from hat to shoe-leather with new clothes of ours, and made a comely
and presentable old gentleman of him. “Old” is the right word, and a
pity, too; old by the droop of him, and the frost upon his hair, and the
marks which sorrow and distress have left upon his face; though he is
only in his prime in the matter of years. While he ate, we smoked and
chatted; and when he was finishing he found his voice at last, and of
his own accord broke out with his personal history. I cannot furnish his
exact words, but I will come as near it as I can.