Appletons’
Town and Country
Library
No. 291
A PRIVATE CHIVALRY
PRIVATE CHIVALRY
_A NOVEL_
BY
FRANCIS LYNDE
AUTHOR OF A ROMANCE IN TRANSIT,
THE HELPERS, ETC.
Acts more dangerous, but less famous
because they were but private chivalries.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--THE WOMAN ... WHOSE HANDS ARE AS BANDS 1
II.--THE VINTAGE OF ABI-EZER 13
III.--“THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS” 23
IV.--THE MIGRANTS 33
V.--THE SCALE ASCENDING 44
VI.--A MOLEHILL LEVELLED 49
VII.--AND A MOUNTAIN UPREARED 55
VIII.--A BLOW IN THE DARK 64
IX.--THE EYE TO THE STRING 72
X.--THE STRING TO THE SHAFT 78
XI.--AND THE SHAFT TO THE MARK 85
XII.--THE WAY OF A MAID WITH A MAN 88
XIII.--“THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY” 99
XIV.--THE ANCHOR COMES HOME 107
XV.--WHEN HATE AND FEAR STRIKE HANDS 118
XVI.--THE GOODLY COMPANY OF MISERY 125
XVII.--“AS APPLES OF GOLD IN PICTURES OF SILVER” 131
XVIII.--“LET THE RIGHTEOUS SMITE ME FRIENDLY” 139
XIX.--THE LEADING OF THE BLIND 149
XX.--THE DEMONIAC 159
XXI.--“A ROD FOR THE FOOL’S BACK” 166
XXII.--HOW THE SMOKING FLAX WAS QUENCHED 177
XXIII.--HOW DOROTHY BLEW THE EMBERS ALIVE 190
XXIV.--“WHOSO DIGGETH A PIT SHALL FALL THEREIN” 201
XXV.--“SILENCE IS AN ANSWER TO A WISE MAN” 213
XXVI.--IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 221
XXVII.--SHOWING HOW FAITH MAY OUT-BUFFET A FACT 234
XXVIII.--HOW THE JUDGE GAVE OF HIS BEST 243
XXIX.--IN WHICH A WILFUL MAN HAS HIS WAY 255
XXX.--HOW LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP THREW A MAIN 260
XXXI.--A FEAST OF MINGLED CUPS 266
XXXII.--SUCH FRIENDS ARE EXULTATION’S AGONY 276
XXXIII.--TE MORITURI SALUTAMUS 281
XXXIV.--THE WING-BEAT OF AZRAEL 290
XXXV.--THE WISDOM OF MANY AND THE WIT OF ONE 297
XXXVI.--IN WHICH A FOX DOUBLES ONCE TOO OFTEN 310
XXXVII.--THE LAW OF THE MEDES AND PERSIANS 321
XXXVIII.--IN WHICH DARTS ARE COUNTED AS STUBBLE 326
A PRIVATE CHIVALRY
CHAPTER I
THE WOMAN ... WHOSE HANDS ARE AS BANDS
THE lights of Silverette were beginning to prick the dusk in the
valley, and the clanging of a piano, diminished to a harmonious
tinkling, floated up the mountain on the still air of the evening.
At the Jessica workings, a thousand feet above the valley, even the
clangour of a tuneless piano had its compensations; and to one of the
two men sitting on the puncheon-floored porch of the assayer’s cabin
the minimized tinkling was remindful of care-free student ramblings in
the land of the zither. But the other had no such pleasant memories,
and he rose and relighted his cigar.
“That is my cue, Ned. I must go down and do that whereunto I have set
my hand.”
“‘Must,’ you say; that implies necessity. I don’t see it.”
“I couldn’t expect you to see or to understand the necessity; but it is
there, all the same.”
The objector was silent while one might count ten, but the silence was
not of convincement. It was rather a lack of strong words to add to
those which had gone before. And when he began again it was only to
clinch insistence with iteration.
“I say I don’t see it. There is no necessity greater than a man’s will;
and when you try to make me believe that the honour man of my class is
constrained to come down to dealing faro in a mining camp----”
“I know, Ned; but you don’t understand. You saw the fair beginning ten
years ago, and now you are getting a glimpse of the ending. To you, I
suppose, it seems like Lucifer’s fall--a drop from heaven to hell; and
so it is in effect. But, as a matter of fact, a man doesn’t fall; he
climbs down into the pit a step at a time--and there are more steps
behind me than I can ever retrace.”
“But you can’t go on indefinitely,” insisted the other.
The fallen one shook his head. “That is a true word. But there is only
one adequate ending to such a fiasco of a life as mine.”
“And that?”
“Is a forty-five calibre bullet, well aimed.”
“Bah! That is a coward’s alternative, and if you haven’t altogether
parted company with the George Brant I used to know, we needn’t
consider it. Why don’t you turn over a clean leaf and cut the whole
despicable business?”
Brant sat down on the porch step and clasped his hands over his knee.
Friendship has its key wherewith to unlock any door of confidence, but
from disuse the lock was rusted and it yielded reluctantly.
“I have half a mind to let the game wait while I tell you,” he said at
length. “It isn’t a pleasant tale, and if you are disgusted you can
call me down.”
“Never mind about that; go on.”
“I’ll have to go back a bit first--back to the old college days. Do you
remember the old woman who lived on the flat below the campus? the one
who used to smuggle liquor and other contraband into the dormitories
when she came to scrub?”
“Mother Harding? Yes.”
“Well, you don’t remember any good of her, I fancy--or of her daughter.
But let that pass. The year after you went to Heidelberg the girl
blossomed out into a woman between two days, and went wrong the day
after, as the daughter of such a mother was bound to. I got it into my
callow brain that I was responsible. I know better now; I ought to have
known better then; but--well, to shorten a long story, she has managed
to spoil my life for me, root and branch.”
The assayer got upon his feet and swore out of a full heart.
“Good God, Brant! You don’t mean to say that you married that
brazen----”
But Brant stopped him with a quick gesture. “Don’t call her hard names,
Ned; I shot a man once for doing that. No, I didn’t marry her; I did
a worse thing. Now you know why I can’t turn the clean leaf. Let the
blame lie where it will--and it is pretty evenly divided between us
now--I’m not cur enough to turn my back on her at this stage of the
game.”
Hobart tramped up and down the slab-floored porch, four strides and a
turn, for two full minutes before he could frame the final question.
“Where is she now, George?”
Brant’s laugh was of hardihood. “Do you hear that piano going down
there in Dick Gaynard’s dance hall? She is playing it.”
“Heavens and earth! Then she is here--in Silverette?”
“Certainly. Where else would she be?”
Hobart stopped short and flung the stump of his cigar far out down the
slope.
“Brant,” he said solemnly, “I thank God your mother is dead.”
“Amen,” said Brant softly.
There was another pause, and then Hobart spoke again. “There was a
brother, George; what became of him?”
“He went to the bad, too--the worst kind of bad. He laid hold of the
situation in the earliest stages, and bled me like a leech year in and
year out, until one day I got him at a disadvantage and choked him off.”
“How did you manage it?”
“It was easy enough. He is an outlaw of the camps, and he has killed
his man now and then when it seemed perfectly safe to do so. But the
last time he slipped a cog in the safety wheel, and I took the trouble
to get the evidence in shape to hang him. He knows I have it, and he’d
sell his soul, if he had one, to get his fingers on the documents. In
the meantime he lets me alone.”
“He will murder you some day for safety’s sake,” Hobart suggested.
“No, he won’t. I have made him believe that his life hangs on mine;
that when I die the dogs of the law will be let loose.”
“Oh!” The assayer made another turn or two and then came to sit on the
step beside his guest. “One more question, George, and then I’ll let up
on you,” he said. “Do you love the woman?”
Brant shook his head slowly. “No, Ned; I never did; at least, not in
the way you mean. And for years now it has been a matter of simple
justice. She was bad enough in the beginning, but she is worse now, and
that is my doing. I can’t leave her to go down into the hotter parts of
the pit alone.”
For a few other minutes neither of them spoke; then Brant rose and
girded himself for the tramp down the mountain.
“I must be going,” he said. “I’m glad to have had an hour with you; it
has given me a glimpse of the old life that is like the shadow of a
great rock in a thirsty land. And I want to see more of you, if you
will let me.”
“It will be your own fault if you don’t. Have you got to go now?”
“Yes. There is a tough crowd up from Carbonado, and Gaynard will have
his hands full to-night.”
“Wait a minute till I get my overcoat, and I’ll go with you.”
Brant waited, but when Hobart reappeared he made difficulties.
“You’d better stay where you are, Ned. It’s likely there will be
trouble and a free fight; and you are new to the place.”
“New to Silverette, but not to mining camps and rough crowds,” Hobart
amended.
Brant still hesitated. “I know, but there is always the risk--the
bystander’s risk, which is usually bigger than that of the fellow with
his gun out. Besides, you have a wife----”
Hobart pushed him into the downward path.
“You don’t know Kate,” he objected. “She would drive me to it if she
were here and knew the circumstances. She knows the camps better than
either of us.”
Fifteen minutes later they entered Dick Gaynard’s dance hall together,
and the assayer loitered in the barroom while Brant edged his way back
to the alcove in the rear, where stood the faro table. Presently Hobart
saw the dealer rise and give his chair to Brant; then the loiterer felt
free to look about him.
There was nothing new or redeeming in the scene. There was the typical
perspiring crowd of rough men and tawdry women surging to and fro,
pounding the dusty floor to the time beaten out of the discordant
piano; the same flaring oil lamps and murky atmosphere thick with
tobacco smoke and reeking with the fumes of alcohol; the same silent
groups ringing the roulette boards and the faro table. Hobart looked
on, and was conscious of a little shiver of disgust--a vicarious thrill
of shame for all concerned, but chiefly for his friend. And Brant had
come to this for his daily bread! Brant, the honour man, the athlete,
the well-beloved of all who knew him!
Hobart let himself drift with the ebb and flow of those who, like
himself, were as yet only onlookers, coming to anchor when he had
found a vantage point from which he could see and study the face of
the fallen one. For all the hardening years it was not yet an evil
face. The cheeks of the man were thinner and browner than those of the
boy, and the heavy mustache hid the mouth, the feature which changes
most with the changing years; but the resolute jaw was the same, and
the steady gray eyes, though these had caught the gambler’s trick of
looking out through half-closed lids when they saw most. On the whole
the promise of youth had been kept. The handsome boy had come to be
a man good to look upon; a man upon whom any woman might look once,
and turning, look again. The assayer was not given to profanity, but
he swore softly in an upflash of angry grief at the thought that the
passing years had marred Brant’s soul rather than his body.
None the less, it was shipwreck, hopeless and unrelieved, as Brant
had asserted; and from contemplating the effect of it in the man,
Hobart was moved to look upon the cause of it in the woman. Perhaps
there was that in her which might make the descent into the pit less
unaccountable. Hobart would see.
He worked his way slowly around two sides of the crowded room, and so
came to the piano. One glance at the performer was enough. It revealed
a woman who had once been beautiful, as the sons of God once found the
daughters of men; nay, the wreck of her was still beautiful, but it
was the soulless beauty whose appeal is to that which is least worthy
in any man. Hobart saw and understood. There be drunkards a-many who
look not upon the wine when it is red in the cup; and Brant was of
these--an inebriate of passion. The assayer turned his back upon the
woman that he might the better make excuses for his friend.
Gaynard’s bar did a thriving business that night, and the throng in
the gambling alcove thinned out early. The dance hall was the greater
attraction, and here the din and clamour grew apace until the raucous
voice of the caller shouting the figures of the dance could no longer
be heard above the clanging of the piano, the yells and catcalls, and
the shuffling and pounding of feet on the floor. Hilarity was as yet
the keynote of all the uproar, but Hobart knew that the ceaseless
activity of the bartenders must shortly change the pitch to the key
quarrelsome, and he began to wish himself well out of it.
Brant glanced up from time to time, always without pause in the
monotonous running of the cards, and when he finally succeeded in
catching Hobart’s eye he beckoned with a nod. The assayer made his way
around to the dealer’s chair, and Brant spoke without looking up:
“Get out of here, Ned, while you can. There will be the devil to pay
before midnight, and there is no earthly use in your being mixed up in
it.”
Hobart leaned over the table and placed a coin on one of the inlaid
cards to keep up appearances.
“I’m here with you, and I mean to stay,” he insisted. “You may need--
By Jove! it’s begun.”
The dance stopped and the clamour sank into a hush, which was sharply
rent by a blast of profanity, a jangling crash of the piano keys, and
a woman’s scream. Then the two fought their way into the thick of the
crowd around the piano. A drunken ruffian was grasping the woman’s arm
and brandishing a revolver over her head.
“You won’t play it, won’t ye? And ye’ll give Ike Gasset a piece of yer
lip? By God, I’ll show ye!”
Brant’s pistol was out before he spoke. “Drop it right where you are,
and get out of here before I kill you,” he said quietly.
The man’s reply was a snap shot in Brant’s face, and, though his aim
was bad, both Hobart and Brant felt the wind of the bullet passing
between them. The crack of the pistol was the signal for a scene a
description of which no man has ever yet been able to set down calmly
in black on white. Shouts, oaths, a mad rush for the open air foiled
by a fiercer closing in of the crowd around the piano; all this while
the ruffian levelled his weapon and fired again. At the death-speeding
instant the woman started to her feet, and the bullet intended for
Brant struck her fairly in the breast. Hobart heard the sharp snap of
the steel corset stay, and saw Brant, catching her as she reeled, fire
once, twice, thrice at the desperado. Then the assayer lifted up his
voice in a shout that dominated the tumult:
“Silverettes! Out with them--they’ve killed a woman!”
There was a fierce affray, a surging charge, and when the place was
cleared Hobart ran back. Brant was on his knees beside the woman. The
smoking oil lamps burned yellow in the powder reek, but there was light
enough to show that she was past help. None the less, Hobart offered to
go for a doctor.
Brant shook his head and rose stiffly.
“She doesn’t need one; she is dead.”
Hobart grasped the situation with far-seeing prescience.
“Then you have nothing to stay here for; let us get out while we can.”
The din of the street battle rang clamorous at the front, and he took
Brant’s arm to lead him to the door, which opened upon the alley in the
rear. “Come on,” he urged; “they will be back here presently, and you
have nothing to fight for now.”
“No.” Brant yielded as one in a trance, but at the door he broke away,
to dart back with the gray eyes aflame and fierce wrath crying for
vengeance. Unnoted of all, the wounded desperado had lain where Brant’s
fusillade had dropped him. But now he was on hands and knees, trying to
drag himself out of the room. Brant was quick, but the assayer pinioned
him before the ready weapon could flash from its holster.
“Good God, man, that would be murder!” he panted, wrestling with the
avenger of blood, and possessing himself of the pistol. “Come on out of
this!”
Again Brant yielded, and they made their way to the open air, and
through the alleyway to the mountain path, and so in silence up to the
Jessica and to the assayer’s cabin. Not until they were safe within
the four log walls did Hobart open his mouth. But when he had struck
a light and hung a blanket over the window which looked valleyward he
spoke tersely and to the point:
“A few hours ago, George, you told me why you couldn’t turn your back
on your shame, and I had nothing to say. But now the reason is removed,
and you have had an object lesson which ought to last you as long as
you live. What do you say?”
Brant spread his hands as one helpless. “What else am I good for?” he
asked.
“That question is unworthy of you, and you know it. You have your
profession; but without that you could still do as well as another.”
Brant was still afoot, and he fought his battle to a finish, pacing
slowly back and forth with his hands behind him and his head bowed.
For all his square jaw and steadfast eyes, rash impulse had been the
bane of his life thus far, and the knowledge of it made him slow to
decide even when the decision leaned toward the things which make for
righteousness. So he fought the battle to its conclusion, and when it
was ended was fain to sit down awearied with the stress of it.
“I am not in love with the degradation of it; I think you must know
that, Ned. All these years I’ve had a yearning for decency and clean
living and respectability that I could not strangle, do what I would.
So you will understand that I am not halting between two opinions. It
is simply this: Can a man turn over a new leaf and bury such a past as
mine without being beset by a constant fear of its resurrection? Won’t
it come up and slap him in the face about the time he thinks he has it
decently buried and covered up and out of sight?”
Hobart’s rejoinder was prompt and definitive. “No. The world is wide,
and a few years of one man’s life are no more than so many texts
written in the sand.”
“You’re wrong there, Ned. The world is fearfully small, and its memory
of evil deeds is as long as its charity is short.”
“Let be, then. You are not a woman. You are a man, and you can fight it
out and live it down.”
Brant acquiesced without more ado. “I was merely stating the case,” he
said, as if the matter were quite extraneous to him. “You have earned
the right to set the pace for me, Ned; and I’ll do whatever you say.”
“That is more like the George Brant I used to know. And this is what
I say: I know a trail across Jack Mountain that will take us to the
railroad in three hours. The night trains pass at Carbonado, and you
will be in good time to catch whichever one of them you elect to take,
east or west. There is no station on the other side of the mountain;
but there is a side track for the Hoopoee mine, and you can build a
fire to flag the train. Have you money?”
“Yes.”
“Enough?”
“Yes; enough to try whatever experiment you suggest.”
“I don’t know that I have anything to suggest more than your own
good judgment would anticipate. Find your allotted corner of the big
vineyard and go to work in it; that’s about all there is to it.”
“How deep shall I dive?”
“You will have to decide that for yourself. You are a Western man now,
and I suppose you don’t want to go back home. How about Denver?”
Brant shook his head slowly. “Denver is good enough--too good, in fact.
I wonder if you will understand it if I say that I’d much rather have
my forty days in the wilderness before I have to face my kind, even as
a stranger in a strange city?”
“I can understand it perfectly, and the decency of the thing does you
credit. And if that is your notion, I can help you. You used to be the
best man in the ‘Tech.’ at map making; have you forgotten how to do it?”
“No; a man doesn’t forget his trade.”
“Good. I met Davenport at Carbonado yesterday. He was on his way to the
Colorow district to do a lot of surveying and plotting, and was sick
because he couldn’t find an assistant before he left Denver. Shall I
give you a note to him?”
“It is exactly what I should crave if I had a shadow of the right to
pick and choose.”
Hobart found pen and paper and wrote the note.
“There you are,” he said. “Davenport is a good fellow, and you needn’t
tell him more than you want to. The job will last for two or three
months, and by that time you will know better what you want to do with
yourself. Now, if you are ready, we’ll get a move. It’s a stiffish
climb to the top of the pass.”
They forthfared together and presently set their feet in the trail
leading over the shoulder of the great mountain buttressing the slope
behind the Jessica. The sounds of strife had ceased in the town below,
and but for the twinkling lights the deep valley might have been as
Nature left it. Since the upward path was rough and difficult there
was scant breath for speech in the long climb; and for this Brant was
thankful. The scene in Gaynard’s was yet fresh in mind and heart, and
not even to the friend of his youth could he trust himself to speak
freely.
The moon was rising when they reached the summit of the pass, and
Hobart pointed down the farther slope to a dark mass hugging the steep
mountain side.
“That is the Hoopoee shaft house,” he said. “The railroad is just below
it. Got matches and cigars?”
“Yes, both.”
“Then I’ll go back from here. Good-bye, old fellow, and God bless you!
Tie your courage in a hard knot, and let me hear from you.”
Brant grasped his friend’s hand and wrung it in silence. He tried to
speak, but the words tripped each other.
“Never mind,” Hobart broke in. “I know what you want to say, and can’t.
It is nothing more than you would have done if the saddle had been on
the other horse. And about your--the woman: I’ll do whatever you could
do, if you stayed. Now, then, down you go, or you’ll miss your train.
Good-bye.”