A MYSTERY IS UNRAVELLED
Lieutenant Burrell was considerably taken aback when, a quarter of an
hour after the young lover's ecstatic return to his quarters, Gale
knocked at his door, for the trader's visit, coupled with the late hour
and his sombre countenance, forecast new complications.
"He's here to object, but it won't go," thought the Lieutenant, as he
made his visitor welcome.
It was the trader's first glimpse of the officer's quarters, and he
cast a roving eye over the room, as if measuring the owner's character
by his surroundings.
"I've got to have a long talk with you, Burrell," he began, with an
effort. "It's liable to take me an hour or two."
"Then take this chair and be comfortable."
Meade swung his big reading-chair out beneath the hanging-lamp, and,
going to the sideboard, brought back a bottle, some glasses, and a
pouch of tobacco. Noting the old man's sigh of fatigue as he sat
himself down heavily, he remarked, sympathetically:
"Mr. Gale, you've made a long trip to-day, and you must be tired. If
this talk is to be as lengthy as you say, why not have a drink with me
now, and postpone it until to-morrow?"
"I've been tired for eighteen years," the other replied; "to-night I
hope to get rested." He lapsed into silence, watching his host pour out
two glasses of liquor, fill his pipe, and then stretch himself out
contentedly, his feet resting on another chair--a picture of youthful
strength, vitality, and determination. Beneath the Lieutenant's flannel
shirt the long, slim muscles showed free and full, and the firm set of
jaw and lip denoted a mind at rest and confident of itself. Gale found
himself for a moment jealously regarding the youth and his enviable
state of contentment and decision.
"Well, let's get at it," the younger man finally said.
"I suppose you'll want to interrupt and question me a heap, but I'll
ask you to let me tell this story the way it comes to me, till I get it
out, then we can go back and take up the queer stuff. It runs back
eighteen or twenty years, and, being as it's part of a hidden life, it
isn't easy to tell. You'll be the first one to hear it, and I reckon
you're enough like other men to disbelieve--you're not old enough, and
you haven't knocked around enough to learn that nothing is impossible,
that nothing is strange enough to be unreasonable. Likewise, you'll
want to know what, all this has to do with you and Necia--yes, she told
me about you and her, and that's why I'm here." He paused. "You really
think you love her, do you?"
Burrell removed his pipe and gazed at its coal impersonally.
"I love her so well, Mr. Gale, that nothing you can say will affect me.
I--I hesitated at first about asking her to be my wife, because--you'll
appreciate the unusual--well, her unusual history. You see, I come from
a country where mixed blood is about the only thing that can't be lived
down or overlooked, and I've been raised with notions of family honor
and pride of race and birth, and so forth, that might seem preposterous
and absurd to you. But a heap of conceits like that have been bred into
me from generations back; they run in the blood of every old family in
my country, and so, I'm ashamed to say, I hesitated and tried to reason
myself into giving her up, but I've had my eyes opened, and I see how
little those things amount to, after all. I'm going to marry Necia, Mr.
Gale. I'd like to do it the day after to-morrow, Sunday, but she isn't
of age yet, and if you object, we'll have to wait until November, when
she turns eighteen. We'd both like your consent, of course; I'd be
sorry to marry her without it; but if you refuse, we'll be forced to
displease you." He looked up and met the father's gaze steadily. "Now,
I'll be glad to listen as long as you care to talk, but I don't think
it will do any good."
The other man's lips framed a faint smile.
"We'll see. I wish to God I'd had your decision when I was your age,
this story would be different, and easier to tell." He waited a moment,
then settled to his self-appointed task. "I was mining at the time up
in the Mother Lode country of California, which was the frontier then,
pretty much as this is now, only we had better things to eat. I came
from the East, or my people did, but I was ranch-raised, and loved the
hills and woods and places where you don't talk much, so I went to
prospecting because it took me out where the sun was bright and I could
see the wild things at play. I was one of the first men into a camp
named Chandon--helped to build it, in fact, and got hold of some ground
that looked real good. It was hard mining, however, and, being poor, I
was still gripping my drill and hammer after the town had grown up.
"A woman came out from the East--Vermont, it was--and school-teaching
was her line of business, only she hadn't been raised to it, and this
was her first clatter at the game; but things had broke bad for her
people, and ended in her pulling stakes and coming West all alone. Her
folks died and left her up against it, I gathered from what little she
told me--sort of an old story, I guess, and usual too, only for her.
She was plumb unusual."
He seemed to ponder this a moment, and then resumed:
"It don't make any difference to you how I first saw her, and how I
began to forget that anything else in the world was worth having but
her. I'd lived in the woods all my life, as I said, and knew more about
birds and bugs and bees than I did about women; I hadn't been broke
proper, and didn't know how to act with them; but I laid out to get
this girl, and I did fairly well. There's something wild in every woman
that needs to be tamed, and it isn't like the wildness that runs in
wood critters; you can win that over by gentleness, but you have to
take it away from a woman. Every live thing that couldn't talk was my
friend; but I made the mistake of courting my own kind the same way,
not knowing that when two of any species mate the male must rule. I was
too gentle. Even so, I reckon I'd have won out only for another man.
Dan Bennett was his name--the kind that dumb animals hate, and--well,
that takes his measure. His range adjoined mine, and, though I'd never
seen him, I heard stories now and then--the sort of tales you can't
tell to a good woman; so it worried me when I heard of his attentions
to this girl. Still, I thought she'd surely find him out and recognize
the kind of fellow he was; but, Lord! a woman, can't tell a man from a
dog, and there wasn't any one to warn her. There were plenty of women
who knew him, but they were the ones who flew by night, while she lived
in the sunshine; and women of that kind don't make complaint, anyhow.
"This Bennett came from the town below, where he ran a saloon and a
brace game or two; but being as he rode into our camp and out again in
the night, and as I didn't drink nor listen to the music of the little
rolling ball, why, we never met, even after he began coming to Chandon.
Understand, I wasn't too good for those amusements; I just didn't
happen to hanker after them, for I was living with the image of the
little school-ma'am in my mind, and that destroyed what bad habits I'd
formed.
"It was along in the early spring that she began to see I had notions
about her, but my damned backwardness wouldn't let me speak, and, in
addition, I was getting closer to ore every shot at the mine, and was
holding off until I could lay both myself and my goldmine at her feet,
and ask her to take the two of us, so if one didn't pan out the other
might. But it seemed like I'd never get into pay. The closer I got the
harder I worked, and, of course, the less I saw of her, likewise the
oftener Bennett came. I reckon no man ever worked like I did--two
shifts a day, eighteen hours, with six to sleep. The skin came off of
my hands, and I staggered when I came out into the daylight, for the
rock was hard, and I had no money to hire a helper; but I was young and
strong, and the hope of her was like drink and food and sleep to me. At
last I struck it, and still I waited awhile longer till I could be
sure. Then I went down to my little shack and put on my other clothes.
I remember I'd gone so thin that they hung loose, and my palms were so
raw I had hard work handling the buttons, and got my shirt all bloody,
for I'd been in the drift forty hours, without sleep and breathing
powder smoke, till my knees buckled and wobbled under me. To this day
the smell of stale powder smoke makes a woman of me; but that morning I
sang, for I was going for my bride, and the world was brighter than it
has ever been for eighteen years. The little school-house was closed,
at which I remembered that the term was over. I'd been living
underground for weeks and lost track of the days, so that I had to
count them up on my fingers. It took me a long time, for I was pretty
tired in my head; but when I'd figured it out I went on to where she
was boarding.
"The woman of the place came to the door, a Scotch-woman. She had a
mole on her chin, I remember, a brownish-black mole with three hairs in
it. She wore an apron, too, that was kind of checkered, and three
buttons were open at the neck of her dress. I recall a lot more of
little things about her, though the rest of what happened is rather
dreamy.
"I asked for Merridy, and she told me she'd gone away--gone with
Bennett, the night before, while I was coughing blood from the powder
smoke; that they were married in the front room, and that the bride
looked beautiful. She had cried a bit on leaving Chandon,
and--and--that was about all. I counted the buttons on the
Scotchwoman's waist eight or ten times, and by-and-by she asked if I
was sick. But I wasn't. She was a kind-hearted woman, and I'd been to
her house a good deal, so she asked me to come in and rest. I wasn't
tired, so I went away, and climbed back up to the little shack and the
mine that I hated now."
The trader paused, and, reaching for the bottle, poured himself out a
glass of brandy, which he spilled into his throat raw, then continued:
"I turned into a kind of hermit after that, and I wasn't good to
associate with. Men got so they shunned me, and I knew they told
strange stories, because I heard them whisper when I went to the stores
for grub once a month. I changed all over, till even my squirrels and
partridges and other friends quit me; once in awhile I got out a ton or
two of rock and sold it, but I never worked the mine or opened it up--I
couldn't bear to go inside the drift. I tried it time and again, but
the smell of its darkness drove me out; every foot of its ragged walls
had left its mark on me, and my heart was torn and gouged and shivered
worse than its seams and ledges. I could have sold it, but there was no
place for me to go, and what did I want with money? I was shy of the
world, like a crippled child that dreads the daylight, and I shrank
from going out where people might see my scars; so I stayed there by
myself nursing the hurt that never got any better. You see, I'd been
raised among the hills and rocks, and I was like them in a way; I
couldn't grow and alter and heal up.
"From time to time I heard of her, but the news, instead of gladdening
me, as it would have gladdened some men, wrung out what bits of
suffering were left in me, and I fairly ached for her. Nobody comes to
see clearer than a woman deceived, so it didn't take her long to find
out the kind of man Bennett was. He wasn't like her at all, and the
reason he had courted her so hotly was just that he had had everything
that rightly belongs to a man like him, and had sickened of it, so he
wanted her because she was clean and pure and different; and realizing
that he couldn't get her any other way, he had married her. But she was
a treasure no bad man could appreciate, and so he tired quickly, even
before the little one came.
"When I heard that she had borne him a daughter I wrote her a letter,
which took me a month to compose, and which I tore up. One day a story
came to me that made me saddle my horse to ride down and kill him--and,
mind you, I was a man who made pets of little wild, trusting things.
But I knew she would surely send for me when her pain became too great,
so I uncinched my gear and hung it up, and waited and waited and
waited. Three long, endless years I waited, almost within sound of her
voice, without a word from her, without a glimpse of her, and every
hour of that time went by as slowly as if I had held my breath. Then
she called to me, and I went.
"I tell you, I was thankful that day for the fortune that had made me
take good care of my horse, for I rode like Death on a wind-storm. It
grew moonlight as I raced down the valley, and the foam from the
animal's muzzle lodged on my clothes, and made me laugh and swear that
the morning sun would show Dan Bennett's blood in its place. I rode
through the streets of Mesa, where they lived, and past the lights of
his big saloon, where I heard the sound of devil's revelry and a
shrill-voiced woman singing--a woman the like of which he had tried to
make my Merridy. I never skulked or sneaked in those days, and no man
ever made me take back roads, so I came up to his house from the front
and tied my horse to his gate-post. She heard me on the steps and
opened the door.
"'You sent for me,' said I. 'Where is he?' But he had gone away to a
neighboring camp, and wouldn't be back until morning, at which I felt
the way a thief must feel, for I'd hoped to meet him in his own house,
and I wasn't the kind to go calling when the husband was out. I
couldn't think very clearly, however, because of the change in her. She
was so thin and worn and sad, sadder than any woman I'd ever seen, and
she wasn't the girl I'd known three years before. I guess I'd changed a
heap myself; anyhow, that was the first thing she spoke about, and the
tears came into her eyes as she breathed:
"'Poor boy! poor boy! You took it very hard, didn't you?'"
"'You sent for me,' said I. 'Which road did he take?'"
"'There's nothing you can do to him,' she answered back. 'I sent for
you to make sure that you still love me."
"'Did you ever doubt it?' said I, at which she began to cry, sobbing
like a woman who has worn out all emotion.
"'Can you feel the same after what I've made you suffer?' she said, and
I reckon she must have read the answer in my eyes; for I never was much
good at talking, and the sight of her, so changed, had taken the speech
out of me, leaving nothing but aches and pains and ashes in its place.
When she saw what she wished to know, she told me the story, the whole
miserable story, that I'd heard enough of to suspect. Why she'd married
the other man she couldn't explain herself, except that it was a
woman's whim--I had stayed away and he had come the oftener--part pique
and part the man's dare-devil fascination, I reckon; but a month had
shown her how she really stood, and had shown him, too. Likewise, she
saw the sort of man he was and the kind of life he lived. At last he
got rough and cruel to her, trying every way to break her spirit; and
even the baby didn't stop him--it made him worse, if anything--till he
swore he'd make them both the kind he was, for her goodness seemed to
rile and goad him; and, having lived with the kind of woman you have to
beat, he tried it on her. Then she knew her fight was hopeless, and she
sent for me."
"'He's a fiend,' she told me. 'I've stood all I can. He'll make a bad
woman of me as sure as he will of the little one, if I stay on here, so
I have decided to go and take her with me.'"
"'Where?' said I."
"'Wherever you say,' she answered; and yet I did not understand, not
till I saw the look in her eyes. Then, as it dawned on me, she broke
down, for it was a terrible thing for a good woman to offer."
'"It's all for the little girl!' she cried. 'More than her life depends
upon it. We must get her away from him.'"
"She saw it was her only course, and went where her heart was calling."
The Lieutenant met the look of appeal in the trader's eyes, and nodded
to imply his complete understanding and approval.
"We love some women for their goodness, others we love for their
frailness, but there never was one who combined the two like her, and,
now that I knew she loved me, I began to believe again there was a God
somewhere. I'd never seen the youngster, so she led me in where it was
sleeping, and I remember my boots made such a devil of a thumping on
the floor that she laid her slim white finger on her lips and smiled at
me. All the fingers in the world began to choke at my throat, and all
the blood in me commenced to pound at my heart, when I looked on that
little sleeping kiddie. The tears began to roll out of my eyes, and,
because they had been dry for four years, they scalded like melted
metal. That was the only time I ever wept--the sight of her baby did it.
"'I love her already,' I whispered, 'and I'll spend my life making her
happy and making a lady of her,' which clinched what wavering doubt the
mother had, and she began to plan quickly, the fear coming on her of a
sudden that our scheme might fail. I was for riding away with both of
them that night, back through the streets of Mesa and up into the
hills, where I'd have held them single-handed against man or God or
devil, but she wouldn't hear of it.
"'We must go away,' she said, 'a long way from here, where the world
won't find us and the little one can grow to womanhood without knowing.
She must never learn who her father was or what her mother did. We will
start all over, you and I and the baby, and forget. Do you love me well
enough to do it?'
"I uttered a cry and took her in my arms, the arms that had ached for
her all those years. Then I kissed her for the first time."
The old man tried to light his pipe, which had gone out, but his
fingers shook so that he dropped the match; whereupon, without
speaking, Burrell struck another and held it for him. The trader drew a
noisy puff or two in silence and shot his host a grateful glance.
"Her plan was for me to take the youngster away that night, and for her
to join us later, because pursuit was certain, and three could be
traced where one might disappear; she would follow when the opportunity
offered. I saw that he had instilled a terror into her, and that she
feared him like death; but, as I thought it over, her scheme seemed
feasible, so I agreed. I was to ride west that hour with the sleeping
babe, and conceal myself at a place we selected, while she would say
that the little one had wandered away and been lost in the canon, or
anything else to throw Bennett off. After a time she would join us.
Well--the little girl never waked when I took her in my arms, nor when
the mother broke down again and talked to me like a crazy woman. Her
collapse showed the terrible strain she had been living under, and the
ragged edge where her reason stood. She had been brave enough to plan
coolly till the hour for giving up her baby, but when that came she was
seized with a thousand dreads, and made me swear by my love for her,
which was and is the holiest thing in all my life, that if anything
happened I would live for the other Merridy. I begged her again to come
with me, but her fears held her back. She vowed, however, that Bennett
should never touch her again, and I made her swear by her love for the
babe that she would die before he ever laid hands on her. It woke a
savage joy in me to think I had bested him, after all.
"I never thought of what I was giving up, of the clean name I was
soiling, of the mine back there that meant a fortune anytime I cared to
take it, for things like that don't count when a man's blood is hot, so
I rode away in the yellow moonlight with a sleeping baby on my breast,
where no child or woman had ever lain except for that minute before I
left. She stood out from beneath the porch shadow and smiled her
good-bye--the last I ever saw of her....
"I travelled hard that night and swapped horses at daylight; then,
leaving the wild country behind, I came into a region I didn't know,
and found a Mexican woman who tended the child for me, for I was close
by the place where Merridy was to come. Every night I went into the
village in hopes that some word had arrived, and I waited patiently for
a week. Then I got the blow. I heard it from the loafers around the
little post-office first, but it dazed me so I wouldn't believe it till
I borrowed the paper and read the whole story, with the type dancing
and leaping before me. It took some hours for it to seep in, even after
that, and for years I recalled every word of the damned lie as if it
had been branded on me with hot irons. They called it a shocking crime,
the most brutal murder California had ever known, and in the head-lines
was my name in letters that struck me between the eyes like a hammer.
Mrs. Dan Bennett had been foully murdered by me, in a fit of sudden
jealousy, and I had disappeared with the baby! The husband had returned
unexpectedly to find her dying, so he said, but too far gone to call
for help, and with barely sufficient strength to tell him who did it
and how! Then the paper went on with the tale of my courting her, and
her turning me down for Bennett. It told how I had gone off alone up
into the hills, turning into a bear that nobody, man or child, could
approach. It said I had brooded there all this time till the mania got
uppermost, and so came down to wreak my vengeance. They never even did
me the credit of calling me crazy; I was a fiend incarnate, a beast
without soul, and a lot of things like that; and, remember, I had never
harmed a living thing in all my life. However, that wasn't what hurt.
What turned me into a dull, dead, suffering thing was the knowledge
that she was gone. For hours I couldn't get beyond that fact. Then came
the realization that Bennett had done it, for I reasoned that he had
dragged a hint of the truth from her by very force of the fear he held
her in--and slain her. God!--the awful rage that came over me! But
there was nothing to do; I had sworn to guard the little one, so I
couldn't take vengeance on him. I couldn't go back and prove my
innocence, for that would give the child to him. What a night I spent!
The next day I saw I had been indicted by the grand jury and was a
wanted man. From a distance I watched myself become an outlaw; watched
the county put a price upon my head, which Bennett doubled; watched
public opinion rise to such a heat that posses began to scour the
mountains. What I noted in particular was a statement in the paper that
'The sorrowing husband takes his bereavement with the quiet courage
which marks a brave man'! That roused me more than the knowledge that
he had made me a wolf and set my friends on my track, which I hadn't
covered very well, having ridden boldly. It happened that the Mexican
woman couldn't read and talked little; still, I knew they'd find me
soon--it couldn't be otherwise--so I made another run for it, swearing
an oath, however, before I left that I'd come back and have that
gambler's heart.
"It was lucky I went, for they uncovered my sign the next day, and the
country where I'd hidden blazed like a field of dry grass. They were
close on my heels, and they closed in from every quarter, but, pshaw! I
knew the woods like an Indian, and the wild things were my friends
again, which would have made it play if I'd been alone, but a girl
child of three was harder to manage. So I cowered and skulked day after
day like a thief or the murderer they thought me, working always
farther into the hidden places, travelling by night with the little one
asleep on my bosom, by day playing with her in some leafy glen, with my
pursuers so close behind that for weeks I never slept; and my love for
the child increased daily till it became almost an insanity.
"She was the only woman thing I had ever possessed, and it seemed like
my love for the mother came back and settled on her. And she loved me,
too, and trusted me. Every little smile, every clasp of her tiny,
dimpled fingers showed it, and tied her to me with another knot till
the fear of losing her became greater than I could bear, till it kept
the chill of death in my bones and filled my veins with glacier water.
I became an animal, a cowardly, quailing coyote, all through the love
of a child.
"We had close squeezes many times, but I finally won, in spite of the
fact that they tracked us clear to the edge of the desert, for I had
hit for the state line, knowing that Nevada was a wilderness, and
feeling that I'd surely lose them there. And I did. But in doing it I
nearly lost Merridy. You see, the constant travel and hardship was too
much for a prattling baby, and she fell sick from the heat and the dust
and the thirst. I'd been going and going till I was a riding skeleton,
till my arms were crooked and dead from holding her, but this new thing
frightened me like those men and dogs had never done. Here was a thing
I couldn't hide from nor outride, so I doubled back and came boldly
into the watered country again, expecting they would take me, of
course, for a runaway man with a babe in his arms isn't hard to
identify, but I didn't care. I was bound for the nearest ranch or
mining-camp where a woman could be found; but, as luck would have it, I
went through without trying. I had gone farther from men and things,
however, than I thought, and this return pursuit was a million times
worse than the other, for I couldn't go fast enough to shake Death, who
ran with his hand on my cantle or rode on my horse's rump. It was then
I found Alluna. She was with a hunting-party of Pah-Utes, who knew
nothing of me nor of the white man's affairs, and cared less; and when
I saw the little squaw I rode my horse up beside her, laid the sick
child in her arms, then tumbled out of the saddle. They had a harder
job to pull me through than they did to save Merridy, for I'd given the
baby all the water and hadn't slept or rested for many years, so it
seemed.
"The little one was playing around several days before I got back my
reason. Meanwhile the party had moved North, taking us with them, and,
as it happened, just missing a posse who were returning from the desert.
"When I was able to get about I told Alluna that I must be going, but
as I told her I watched her face, and saw the sign I wanted--the white
girl had clutched at her like she had at me, and she couldn't give her
up, so I made a dicker with her old man. It took all the money I had to
buy that squaw, but I knew the kiddie must have a woman's care; and the
three of us started out soon after, alone, and broke, and aimless--and
we've been going ever since.
"That's the heart of the story, Lieutenant, and that's how I started to
drift. Since then we three have never rested. I left them once in Idaho
and went back to Mesa, riding all the way, mostly by night, but Bennett
was gone. He'd run down mighty fast after Merridy died, so I heard,
growing sullen and uglier day by day--and I reckon I was the only one
who knew why--till he had a killing in his place. It was unprovoked,
and instead of stopping to face it out the yellow in him rose to the
surface and he left before sunup, as I had left, making a clean
getaway, too, for there was no such hullabaloo raised about killing a
man as there was about--the other. So my trip was all for nothing.
"I was used to disappointment by now, so I took it quiet and went back
to Alluna and the little one, knowing that some day we two men would
meet. You see, I figured that God had framed a cold hand for me, but He
would surely give me a pair before the game closed. Of course, never
having seen Bennett, I was handicapped, and, added to that, he changed
his name, so the search was mighty slow and blind, but I knew the day
would come. And it would have come only for--this.
"There isn't much more to tell. I did what most men would have done, I
reckon, because I was just average in every way. I took Alluna, and
together we drifted North, along the frontier, until we landed here.
Every year the little girl got more beautiful and more like her mother,
and every year we two loved her more. We changed her name, of course,
for I've always had the dread of the law back of me, and then the other
two kiddies came along; but we were living pretty easy, the woman
contented and me waiting for Bennett, till you stepped in and Necia
fell in love. That's another thing I never counted on. It seems like
I've always overlooked the plainest kind of facts. I've held off
telling you the last few weeks, hoping you two wouldn't make it
necessary, for I reckon I'm sort of a coward; but she informed me
to-night that she couldn't marry you, being what she thinks she is, and
knowing the blood she has in her I knew she wouldn't. I figured it
wouldn't be right to either of you to let you go it blind, and so I
came in to tell you this whole thing and to give myself up."
Gale stopped, then poured himself another drink.
"To give yourself up?" echoed Burrell, vaguely. "How do you mean?" He
had sat like one in a trance during the long recital, only his eyes
alive.
"I'm under indictment for murder," said the trader. "I have been for
fifteen years, and there's no chance in the world for me to prove my
innocence."
"Have you told Necia?" the young man inquired.
"No, you'll have to do that--I never could--she might--disbelieve.
What's more, you mustn't tell her yet. Wait till I give the word. It
won't be long, perhaps a day. I want to go free a little while yet, for
I've got some work to do."
Burrell rose to his feet and stamped the cramps from his muscles. He
was deeply agitated, and his mind was groping darkly for light to lay
hold of this new thing that confronted him.
"Why, yes, yes--of course--don't come until you're ready," he muttered,
mechanically, as if unaware of the meaning of his words. "To be sure,
I'm a policeman, am I not? I had forgotten I was a jailer, and--and all
that." He said it sneeringly, and with a measure of contempt for his
office; then he turned suddenly to the trader, and his voice was rich
and deep-pitched with feeling.
"John Gale," he said, "you're the bravest man I ever knew, and the
best." He choked a bit. "You sacrificed all that life meant when this
girl was a baby, and now when she has come into womanhood you give up
your blood for her. By God! You are a man! I want your hand!"
In spite of himself he could not restrain the moisture that dimmed his
eyes as he gripped the toil-worn palm of this great, gray hulk of a
man, so aged and bent beneath the burden of his life-long, fadeless
love, who, in turn, was powerfully affected by the young man's
impulsive outburst of feeling and his unexpected words of praise. The
old man looked up a trifle shyly.
"Then you don't doubt no part of it?"
"Certainly not."
"Somehow, I always figured nobody would believe me if ever I told the
whole thing."
The soldier gazed unseeingly into the flame of his lamp, and said:
"I wonder if my love for the daughter is as great and as holy as your
love for the mother. I wonder if I could give what you have given, if I
had nothing but a memory to live with me." Then he inquired,
irrelevantly; "But what about Bennett, Mr. Gale? You say you never
found him?"
The trader answered, after a moment's hesitation, "He's still at
large." At which his companion exclaimed, "I'd love to meet him in your
stead!"
Gale seemed seized with a desire to speak, but, even while he
hesitated, out of the silent night there came the sound of quick
footsteps approaching briskly, as if the owner were in haste and knew
whither he was bound. Up the steps they came lightly; then the room and
the whole silence round about rang and echoed with a peremptory signal.
Evidently this man rapped on the board door to awaken and alarm, for
instead of his knuckles he used some hard and heavy thing like a
gun-butt.
"Lieutenant Burrell! Lieutenant Burrell!" a gruff voice cried.
"Who's there?" called the young man.
"Let me in! Quick! I've got work for you to do! Open up, I say! This is
Ben Stark!"