THE ANCHOR COMES HOME
BRANT awoke on the morning following his excommunication with one idea
dominant, and that pointed to flight. Whatever he might be able to do
with his life elsewhere, it was evident that the Denver experiment was
a pitiful failure. This he said, cursing the fatuous assurance which
had kept him from flying to the antipodes at the outset. The city of
the plain was merely a clearing house for the mining camps, and sooner
or later his story would have found him out, lacking help from Harding
or any other personal enemy.
“Anybody but a crazy fool would have known that without having to wait
for an object lesson; but, of course, I had to have it hammered into
me with blows,” was the way he put it to himself on the walk downtown.
“Well, I have had the lesson, and I’ll profit by it and move on--like
little Joey. If they would give me the chance I’d rather be a sheep
dog than a wolf; but it seems that the world at large hasn’t much use
for the wolf who turns collie--damn the world at large! If I hadn’t
given my word to Hobart I’d be tempted to go back and join the fighting
minority. As it is, I’ll run for it.”
So he said, and so he meant to do; but a small thing prevented. Colonel
Bowran was away, and he could not well desert in his chief’s absence.
But this need no more than delay the flight. The chief engineer’s
absences were usually short, and a day or two more or less would
neither make nor mar the future.
So ran the prefigurings, but the event was altogether different from
the forecasting, as prefigured events are prone to be. For three days
Brant made shift to sink his trouble in a sea of hard work, but on the
fourth he had a note from the front, saying that the chief engineer’s
absence would be extended yet other days. At the same time, lacking
the data contained in the field notes carried off by the colonel, he
ran out of work. After that the days were empty miseries. In the first
idle hour he began to brood over the peculiar hardness of his lot, as
a better man might, and with the entrance of the remorseless devil of
regret such poor forgetfulness as he had been able to wring out of hard
work spread its wings and fled away.
At the end of twenty-four hours he was fairly desperate, and on the
second day of enforced idleness he wrote a long letter to Hobart:
“The devil has another job for me,” he began, “and if it wasn’t for
my promise to you I should take it. Things have turned out precisely
as I knew they would, and you are to blame; first, for dragging me
out of the pit when I wasn’t worth saving, and next, for telling me
that I might come to Denver when I should have gone to the ends of the
earth. By which you will understand that my sins have found me out. I
don’t know that you care to hear the story, but I do know that I shall
presently go mad if I don’t tell it to somebody. If it bores you, just
remember what I say--that you are to blame.
“Before I begin I may as well tell you that it is about a woman, so you
can swear yourself peaceful before you come at the details. I met her
on the train the day I came down from the Colorow district--the day of
my return to civilization. Nothing came of that first meeting, save
that I got a glimpse of the gulf that separates a good woman from a bad
man; but later, after I had begun to look ahead a little to the things
that might be, we met again--this time in her own home, and I with an
introductory godfather.
“That was two months ago. Up to last Wednesday everything went as
merry as a marriage bell. The father liked me, the mother tolerated
me, and the young woman--but let that pass. I was welcome enough, and
sufficient unto the day was the good thereof. As a matter of course,
I was living in a fool’s paradise, walking daily over a mine that any
chance spark might explode. I knew all that, and yet I was happy till
last Wednesday. That was when the mine was fired.
“It came about in the most natural way, but the story is too long to
write out, and I don’t mean to weary you needlessly. It is enough to
say that the mother found me out. You can guess what happened. I went
to the house, knowing nothing of what was in store for me. There was a
little scene in which I played the heavy villain to the mother’s part
of outraged virtue--and the end of it is that I am once more a pariah.
“I didn’t see the young woman; that wasn’t permitted, of course. But I
suppose she knows all about it, and the thought makes me want to run
amuck. In the whole dreary business there is only this single grain of
comfort: I know who gave me away. And when I meet that man, God do so
to me and more if I don’t send him where he belongs, and that without
benefit of clergy. And you won’t say me nay when I tell you that his
name is Harding.
“I suppose you will want to know what I am going to do next. I don’t
know, and that is God’s truth. The day after the thing happened I meant
to vanish; but the chief was away and I couldn’t very well shut up the
office and walk out. Since then the mill has been grinding until I
don’t know what I want to do. Sometimes I am tempted to throw the whole
thing overboard and go back to the hog wallow. It is about all I am fit
for; and nobody cares--unless you do.
“For pity’s sake write me a letter and brace me up if you can; I never
needed it worse. The chief is still away; I can’t do another stroke
of work till he comes back with the field books, and there isn’t a
soul here that I can talk to. Consequently I’m going mad by inches.
I suppose you have taken it for granted that I love the young woman,
though I believe I haven’t said so in so many words. I do, and that is
what racks me. If I go away, I give her up for good and all. If I stay
I can’t get her. If I go to the devil again--but we won’t discuss that
phase of it now. Write, and hold me to my word, if you love me.”
This letter was mailed on the train Wednesday evening, and in the
ordinary course of events it should have brought an answer by the
Saturday. This Brant knew, and he set himself to wear out the interval
with what constancy there was in him, doing nothing more irrational
than the devoting of two of the evenings to aimless trampings in the
Highlands, presumably in the unacknowledged hope that he might chance
to see Dorothy at a distance. He did not see her, did not venture near
enough to Altamont Terrace to stand any chance of seeing her, and
when the Saturday passed without bringing a letter from Hobart, hope
deferred gave birth to heaviness.
“He is disgusted, I suppose, and I can’t blame him,” was his summing up
of it when the postman had made his final round. “God in heaven, I wish
the colonel would come back and give me my quittance! If I have to sit
here and grill through many more days I shall be ripe for any devil’s
sickle of them all!”
By which it will appear that despairing impulse was already straining
at the bit. None the less, when six o’clock came he went home, ate
his supper, read till midnight, and then went to bed, though not to
sleep. On the morrow, which was the Sunday, he set on foot a little
emprise the planning of which had eased him through the wakeful hours
of the night. It was this: Dorothy had a class in a mission school,
and this he knew, and the place, but not the hour. For the latter
ignorance he was thankful, since it gave him an excuse for haunting the
neighbourhood of the mission chapel during the better part of the day.
Late in the afternoon he was rewarded by catching a glimpse of her as
she went in, and, heartened by this, he did sentry duty on the opposite
side of the street until the school was dismissed.
She came out among the last with a group of children around her, and
Brant’s heart went warm at the sight. “God bless her!” he said under
his breath; and then he crossed the street to put his fate to the
touch. If she knew--if her mother had told her--her greeting would show
it forth, and he would know then that the worst had befallen.
They met at the corner, and Dorothy looked up as she was bidding her
children good-bye. He made sure she saw him, though there was no sign
of recognition in her eyes. Then she bent over one of the little ones
as if to avoid him, and he went on quickly with rage and shame in his
heart, and the devil’s sickle gathering in the harvest which had been
ripening through the days of bitterness.
That night he went to his room as usual after supper, but not to stay.
At eight o’clock he flung down the book he had been trying to read,
slipped the weapon which had once been James Harding’s into the pocket
of his overcoat, and left the house. Half an hour later he was standing
at the bar in the Draconian kennel, and Tom Deverney was welcoming him
with gruff heartiness.
“Well, say! I thought you’d got lost in the shuffle, sure. Where have
you been--over the range again?”
“No, I haven’t been out of town.”
“You took blame’ good care not to show up here, then,” retorted
Deverney. “First you know you’ll have to be packing a card case; that’s
about what you’ll have to do.”
“I have been busy,” said Brant. Then the smell of the liquor got into
his nostrils and he cut himself adrift with a word. “Shall we have a
drink together, and call it square, Tom?”
Deverney spun a glass across the polished mahogany and reached for a
conical bottle in the cooler. “I don’t know as I ought to drink with
you--you wouldn’t drink with me the last time you showed up. What shall
it be--a little of the same?”
“Always,” said Brant. “I don’t mix.” He helped himself sparingly and
touched glasses with the bartender.
“Here’s how.”
“Looking at you.”
Brant paid, and the bartender dipped the glasses. “Going to try your
luck a while this evening?” he asked.
The backslider glanced at the tables and shook his head. “No, I guess
not. I’m a little off to-night, and I’d be pretty sure to go in the
hole.”
Deverney laughed. “That’s what they all say when they are broke. I’ll
stake you.”
“No--thanks; I didn’t mean that. I have money enough.”
He strolled down the long room toward the faro table, turning the
matter over in his mind. He had left Mrs. Seeley’s with madness in
his heart, and with a fell determination to go and do something
desperate--something that would make Dorothy’s heart ache if she could
know of it. But now that he was on the brink of the pool of ill-doing
the stench of it sickened him. Calling the plunge revenge, it seemed
very mean and despicable.
Halfway down the room he faced about, and but for the drink he
had taken would have gone home. But the liquor tipped the scale.
It was adulterated poison, as it was bound to be in such a place,
and Brant--at his worst the most temperate of men on the side of
appetite--had neither touched nor tasted since turning the new leaf. So
the decent prompting passed, and he wheeled and went back to watch the
game.
After that the descent was easy. A dollar ventured became two, the
two four, and the four eight; Presently one of the sitters rose, and
Brant dropped into the vacant chair, lighted a fresh cigar, and ordered
another drink. It was what he used to do in the old days when his
conscience stirred uneasily, and now, as then, the intoxicant had the
desired effect. It slew the man in him without unstringing the steady
nerve of the gamester.
Since he cared not whether he lost or won, luck was with him from the
first and throughout. Play as he might, he could not lose; and when
he rose at midnight, Draco, who acted as his own banker, had to stop
the game and go to his safe for more money before he could declare the
dividend.
“There are your ducats,” he said, tossing a thick roll of bills across
the table. “It’s an open game, and I haven’t anything to say; all the
same, I’m willing to see you pull out. This outfit isn’t any blooming
gold mine.”
Brant unrolled the money, twisted it into a spill, and handed it back.
“Keep it, if you like; I haven’t any use for it.” Draco laughed. “Yes,
I will!--and have you charging back here with a gun when you’re
sob--when you’ve had time to think about it? Not much! I haven’t got
any time to open up a shooting gallery and play bow-and-arrow with you,
George.”
Brant stuffed the money into his pocket and went his way. As he was
going out, Deverney beckoned him.
“Say, I heard two fellows talking about the way you were winning,” he
said, leaning across the bar and lowering his voice. “I didn’t know
either one of them, but they’re a hard-looking lot--the kind that waits
for you at the mouth of a dark alley. Are you fixed?”
Brant nodded. “You say you don’t know them?”
“Only by sight. They’ve both been here before; though not together till
to-night.”
“Talk as if they knew me?”
“Yes. They do know you by name. One of them said something about
‘spotting’ you to-night.”
Now, when one has scattered the seed of enmity impartially in all
soils a goodly crop of ill-wishers may be looked for in any harvest
field however well inclosed. Since he had never turned aside to avoid
a quarrel in any one of the ill-starred years, Brant had enemies
a-plenty; but holding his own life lightly he had never let the fact
trouble him. None the less, he was curious enough to ask Deverney if he
could describe the two men. The bartender could and did.
“One of them is tall and rather thin, about the size and shape of the
Professor, only he has a beard like a billy goat, and a shock of red
hair that looks as if it hadn’t been cut for a month of Sundays. The
other is--well, I should say he looks like a chunky man gone thin, if
you can savez that; smooth face, with a sort of bilious look, and the
wickedest eye you ever saw in a man’s head.”
Brant shook his head slowly. “I don’t recall either of them,” he said.
Then the Berserker in him came to the surface, and he took the pistol
from his pocket and twirled the chambers to see that they were all
filled. “If they know me, they know what to expect, and I’ll try and
see that they are not disappointed. Much obliged for the hint. Good
night, Tom.”
He went out with his head up and his hands in his pockets, bearing
himself as if he would as soon end the bad day with a battle to the
death as otherwise. At the corner above he saw the two men standing in
a doorway on the opposite side of the street, recognised them at once
from Deverney’s description, and, giving place to a sudden impulse of
recklessness, went straight across to them. They paid no attention to
him, not even when he stopped and looked them over with a cool glance
of appraisal that was little less than a challenge. But when he went on
they followed leisurely and at a safe distance. Brant knew they were
dogging him, but he neither loitered nor hastened. If they chose to
overtake and waylay him he would know what to do. If they did not, the
morning newspapers would lack a stirring item, and two footpads would
have a longer lease of life.
In the challenging glance he had passed the taller man by as a
stranger, but the face of the other haunted him. There was something
exasperatingly familiar about it, and yet no single feature by which
it could be identified. Analyzed in detail, the puzzle arranged itself
above and below a line drawn across the upper lip of the half-familiar
face. The broad flat nose, high cheek bones, and sunken eyes were like
those of some one he had seen before. But the hard mouth with the lines
of cruelty at the corners, and the projecting lower jaw, seemed not to
belong to the other features.
“It’s a freak, and nothing more or less,” he told himself, when he
had reasoned out so much of the puzzle. “The fellow has the top of
somebody else’s head--somebody I have known. I wonder how he got it?”
There was an easy answer to the query, and if Brant had guessed it he
would have been careful to choose the well-lighted streets on the way
up town. If he had chanced to remember that a thick curling beard,
unkempt and grizzled, would mask the cruel mouth and ugly jaw, he
would have recognised the face though it chanced that he had seen it
but once, and then in a moment of fierce excitement. And if he had
reflected further that a beard may be donned as well as doffed, and
that the wig-maker’s art still flourishes, he would have realized that
out of a very considerable collection of enemies made in the day of
wrath none were more vindictive or desperate than the two who kept him
in sight as he made his way back to Mrs. Seeley’s.
They closed upon him, or made as if they would, when he reached the
gate, and he fingered his pistol and waited. The few hours which
overlaid his late meeting with Dorothy had gone far toward undoing the
good work of the preceding months of right living. While he waited,
the man-quelling fiend came and sat in the seat of reason, and it
was Plucky George of the mining camps rather than Colonel Bowran’s
draughtsman who stood at Mrs. Seeley’s gate and fingered the lock of
the ready weapon.
As if they had some premonition of what was lying in wait for them, the
two men veered suddenly and crossed the street. Had Brant known who
they were and why they had followed him, it is conceivable that their
shadows would never have darkened the opposite sidewalk. As it was, he
opened the gate and went in with a sneer at their lack of courage in
the last resort.
“Two to one, and follow a man a mile at midnight without coming to the
scratch,” he scoffed. “I have a good mind to go over and call their
bluff alone. It would serve them right to turn the tables on them, and
I’d do it if I thought they had anything worth the trouble of holding
them up.”