you."
"Why did you come, m'sieu'?"
"Call him 'your Honour,"' said the Sheriff sharply. Grassette's face
hardened, and his look turned upon the Sheriff was savage and forbidding.
"I will speak as it please me. Who are you? What do I care? To hang
me--that is your business; but, for the rest, you spik to me differen'.
Who are you? Your father kep' a tavern for thieves, vous savez bien!"
It was true that the Sheriff's father had had no savoury reputation in
the West.
The Governor turned his head away in pain and trouble, for the man's rage
was not a thing to see--and they both came from the little parish of St.
Francis, and had passed many an hour together.
"Never mind, Grassette," he said gently. "Call me what you will. You've
got no feeling against me; and I can say with truth that I don't want
your life for the life you took."
Grassette's breast heaved. "He put me out of my work, the man I kill.
He pass the word against me, he hunt me out of the mountains, he call--
tete de diable! he call me a name so bad. Everything swim in my head,
and I kill him."
The Governor made a protesting gesture. "I understand. I am glad his
mother was dead. But do you not think how sudden it was? Now here, in
the thick of life, then, out there, beyond this world in the darkin
purgatory."
The brave old man had accomplished what everyone else, priest, lawyer,
Sheriff and watcher, had failed to do: he had shaken Grassette out of his
blank isolation and obdurate unrepentance, had touched some chord of
recognisable humanity.
"It is done--well, I pay for it," responded Grassette, setting his jaw.
"It is two deaths for me. Waiting and remembering, and then with the
Sheriff there the other--so quick, and all."
The Governor looked at him for some moments without speaking. The
Sheriff intervened again officiously.
"His Honour has come to say something important to you," he remarked
oracularly.
"Hold you--does he need a Sheriff to tell him when to spik?" was
Grassette's surly comment. Then he turned to the Governor. "Let us
speak in French," he said in patois. "This rope-twister will not
understan'. He is no good--I spit at him."
The Governor nodded, and, despite the Sheriff's protest, they spoke in
French, Grassette with his eyes intently fixed on the other, eagerly
listening.
"I have come," said the Governor, "to say to you, Grassette, that you
have still a chance of life."
He paused, and Grassette's face took on a look of bewilderment and vague
anxiety. A chance of life--what did it mean?
"Reprieve?" he asked in a hoarse voice.
The Governor shook his head. "Not yet; but there is a chance. Something
has happened. A man's life is in danger, or it may be he is dead; but
more likely he is alive. You took a life; perhaps you can save one now.
Keeley's Gulch--the mine there."
"They have found it--gold?" asked Grassette, his eyes staring. He was
forgetting for a moment where and what he was.
"He went to find it, the man whose life is in danger. He had heard from
a trapper who had been a miner once. While he was there, a landslip
came, and the opening to the mine was closed up--"
"There were two ways in. Which one did he take?" cried Grassette.
"The only one he could take, the only one he or anyone else knew. You
know the other way in--you only, they say."
"I found it--the easier, quick way in; a year ago I found it."
"Was it near the other entrance?" Grassette shook his head. "A mile
away."
"If the man is alive--and we think he is--you are the only person that
can save him. I have telegraphed the Government. They do not promise,
but they will reprieve, and save your life, if you find the man."
"Alive or dead?"
"Alive or dead, for the act would be the same. I have an order to take
you to the Gulch, if you will go; and I am sure that you will have your
life, if you do it. I will promise--ah yes, Grassette, but it shall be
so! Public opinion will demand it. You will do it?"
"To go free--altogether?"
"Well, but if your life is saved, Grassette?"
The dark face flushed, then grew almost repulsive again in its
sullenness.
"Life--and this, in prison, shut in year after year. To do always what
some one else wills, to be a slave to a warder. To have men like that
over me that have been a boss of men--wasn't it that drove me to kill?--
to be treated like dirt. And to go on with this, while outside there is
free life, and to go where you will at your own price-no! What do I care
for life! What is it to me! To live like this--ah, I would break my
head against these stone walls, I would choke myself with my own hands!
If I stayed here, I would kill again, I would kill--kill."
"Then to go free altogether--that would be the wish of all the world,
if you save this man's life, if it can be saved. Will you not take the
chance? We all have to die some time or other, Grassette, some sooner,
some later; and when you go, will you not want to take to God in your
hands a life saved for a life taken? Have you forgotten God, Grassette?
We used to remember Him in the Church of St. Francis down there at home."
There was a moment's silence, in which Grassette's head was thrust
forwards, his eyes staring into space. The old Seigneur had touched a
vulnerable corner in his nature.
Presently he said in a low voice: "To be free altogether. . . . What
is his name? Who is he?"
"His name is Bignold," the Governor answered. He turned to the Sheriff
inquiringly. "That is it, is it not?" he asked in English again.
"James Tarran Bignold," answered the Sheriff.
The effect of these words upon Grassette was remarkable. His body
appeared to stiffen, his face became rigid, he stared at the Governor
blankly, appalled, the colour left his face, and his mouth opened with a
curious and revolting grimace. The others drew back, startled, and
watched him.
"Sang de Dieu!" he murmured at last, with a sudden gesture of misery and
rage.
Then the Governor understood: he remembered that the name just given by
the Sheriff and himself was the name of the Englishman who had carried
off Grassette's wife years ago. He stepped forwards and was about to
speak, but changed his mind. He would leave it all to Grassette; he
would not let the Sheriff know the truth, unless Grassette himself
disclosed the situation. He looked at Grassette with a look of poignant
pity and interest combined. In his own placid life he had never had any
tragic happening, his blood had run coolly, his days had been blessed by
an urbane fate; such scenes as this were but a spectacle to him; there
was no answering chord of human suffering in his own breast, to make him
realise what Grassette was undergoing now; but he had read widely, he had
been an acute observer of the world and its happenings, and he had a
natural human sympathy which had made many a man and woman eternally
grateful to him.
What would Grassette do? It was a problem which had no precedent, and
the solution would be a revelation of the human mind and heart. What
would the man do?
"Well, what is all this, Grassette?" asked the Sheriff brusquely. His
official and officious intervention, behind which was the tyranny of the
little man, given a power which he was incapable of wielding wisely,
would have roused Grassette to a savage reply a half-hour before, but now
it was met by a contemptuous wave of the hand, and Grassette kept his
eyes fixed on the Governor.
"James Tarran Bignold!" Grassette said harshly, with eyes that searched
the Governor's face; but they found no answering look there. The
Governor, then, did not remember that tragedy of his home and hearth, and
the man who had made of him an Ishmael. Still, Bignold had been almost a
stranger in the parish, and it was not curious if the Governor had
forgotten.
"Bignold!" he repeated, but the Governor gave no response.
"Yes, Bignold is his name, Grassette," said the Sheriff. "You took a
life, and now, if you save one, that'll balance things. As the Governor
says, there'll be a reprieve anyhow. It's pretty near the day, and this
isn't a bad world to kick in, so long as you kick with one leg on the
ground, and--"
The Governor hastily intervened upon the Sheriff's brutal remarks.
"There is no time to be lost, Grassette. He has been ten days in the
mine."
Grassette's was not a slow brain. For a man of such physical and bodily
bulk, he had more talents than are generally given. If his brain had
been slower, his hand also would have been slower to strike. But his
intelligence had been surcharged with hate these many years, and since
the day he had been deserted, it had ceased to control his actions--a
passionate and reckless wilfulness had governed it. But now, after the
first shock and stupefaction, it seemed to go back to where it was before
Marcile went from him, gather up the force and intelligence it had then,
and come forwards again to this supreme moment, with all that life's
harsh experiences had done for it, with the education that misery and
misdoing give. Revolutions are often the work of instants, not years,
and the crucial test and problem by which Grassette was now faced had
lifted him into a new atmosphere, with a new capacity alive in him.
A moment ago his eyes had been bloodshot and swimming with hatred and
passion; now they grew, almost suddenly, hard and lurking and quiet,
with a strange, penetrating force and inquiry in them.
"Bignold--where does he come from? What is he?" he asked the Sheriff.
"He is an Englishman; he's only been out here a few months. He's been
shooting and prospecting; but he's a better shooter than prospector.
He's a stranger; that's why all the folks out here want to save him if
it's possible. It's pretty hard dying in a strange land far away from
all that's yours. Maybe he's got a wife waiting for him over there."
"Nom de Dieu!" said Grassette with suppressed malice, under his breath.
"Maybe there's a wife waiting for him, and there's her to think of. The
West's hospitable, and this thing has taken hold of it; the West wants to
save this stranger, and it's waiting for you, Grassette, to do its work
for it, you being the only man that can do it, the only one that knows
the other secret way into Keeley's Gulch. Speak right out, Grassette.
It's your chance for life. Speak out quick."
The last three words were uttered in the old slave-driving tone, though
the earlier part of the speech had been delivered oracularly, and had
brought again to Grassette's eyes the reddish, sullen look which had made
them, a little while before, like those of some wounded, angered animal
at bay; but it vanished slowly, and there was silence for a moment. The
Sheriff's words had left no vestige of doubt in Grassette's mind. This
Bignold was the man who had taken Marcile away, first to the English
province, then into the States, where he had lost track of them, then
over to England. Marcile--where was Marcile now?
In Keeley's Gulch was the man who could tell him, the man who had ruined
his home and his life. Dead or alive, he was in Keeley's Gulch, the man
who knew where Marcile was; and if he knew where Marcile was, and if she
was alive, and he was outside these prison walls, what would he do to
her? And if he was outside these prison walls, and in the Gulch,
and the man was there alive before him, what would he do?
Outside these prison walls-to be out there in the sun, where life would
be easier to give up, if it had to be given up! An hour ago he had been
drifting on a sea of apathy, and had had his fill of life. An hour ago
he had had but one desire, and that was to die fighting, and he had even
pictured to himself a struggle in this narrow cell where he would compel
them to kill him, and so in any case let him escape the rope. Now he
was suddenly brought face to face with the great central issue of his
life, and the end, whatever that end might be, could not be the same in
meaning, though it might be the same concretely. If he elected to let
things be, then Bignold would die out there in the Gulch, starved,
anguished, and alone. If he went, he could save his own life by saving
Bignold, if Bignold was alive; or he could go--and not save Bignold's
life or his own! What would he do?
The Governor watched him with a face controlled to quietness, but with
an anxiety which made him pale in spite of himself.
"What will you do, Grassette?" he said at last in a low voice, and with
a step forwards to him. "Will you not help to clear your conscience by
doing this thing? You don't want to try and spite the world by not doing
it. You can make a lot of your life yet, if you are set free. Give
yourself, and give the world a chance. You haven't used it right. Try
again."
Grassette imagined that the Governor did not remember who Bignold was,
and that this was an appeal against his despair, and against revenging
himself on the community which had applauded his sentence. If he went
to the Gulch, no one would know or could suspect the true situation,
everyone would be unprepared for that moment when Bignold and he would
face each other--and all that would happen then.
Where was Marcile? Only Bignold knew. Alive or dead? Only Bignold
knew.
"Bien, I will do it, m'sieu'," he said to the Governor. "I am to go
alone--eh?"
The Sheriff shook his head. "No, two warders will go with you--and
myself."
A strange look passed over Grassette's face. He seemed to hesitate for
a moment, then he said again: "Bon, I will go."
"Then there is, of course, the doctor," said the Sheriff.
"Bon," said Grassette. "What time is it?" "Twelve o'clock," answered
the Sheriff, and made a motion to the warder to open the door of the
cell.
"By sundown!" Grassette said, and he turned with a determined gesture to
leave the cell.
At the gate of the prison, a fresh, sweet air caught his face.
Involuntarily he drew in a great draught of it, and his eyes seemed
to gaze out, almost wonderingly, over the grass and the trees to the
boundless horizon. Then he became aware of the shouts of the crowd--
shouts of welcome. This same crowd had greeted him with shouts of
execration when he had left the Court House after his sentence. He stood
still for a moment and looked at them, as it were only half comprehending
that they were cheering him now, and that voices were saying, "Bravo,
Grassette! Save him, and we'll save you."
Cheer upon cheer, but he took no notice. He walked like one in a dream,
a long, strong step. He turned neither to left nor right, not even when
the friendly voice of one who had worked with him bade him: "Cheer up,
and do the trick." He was busy working out a problem which no one but
himself could solve. He was only half conscious of his surroundings; he
was moving in a kind of detached world of his own, where the warders and
the Sheriff and those who followed were almost abstract and unreal
figures. He was living with a past which had been everlasting distant,
and had now become a vivid and buffeting present. He returned no answers
to the questions addressed to him, and would not talk, save when for a
little while they dismounted from their horses, and sat under the shade
of a great ash-tree for a few moments, and snatched a mouthful of
luncheon. Then he spoke a little and asked some questions, but lapsed
into a moody silence afterwards. His life and nature were being passed
through a fiery crucible. In all the years that had gone, he had had an
ungovernable desire to kill both Bignold and Marcile if he ever met them,
a primitive, savage desire to blot them out of life and being. His
fingers had ached for Marcile's neck, that neck in which he had lain his
face so often in the transient, unforgettable days of their happiness.
If she was alive now--if she was still alive! Her story was hidden there
in Keeley's Gulch with Bignold, and he was galloping hard to reach his
foe. As he went, by some strange alchemy of human experience, by that
new birth of his brain, the world seemed different from what it had ever
been before, at least since the day when he had found an empty home and a
shamed hearthstone. He got a new feeling toward it, and life appealed to
him as a thing that might have been so well worth living. But since that
was not to be, then he would see what he could do to get compensation for
all that he had lost, to take toll for the thing that had spoiled him,
and given him a savage nature and a raging temper, which had driven him
at last to kill a man who, in no real sense, had injured him.
Mile after mile they journeyed, a troop of interested people coming
after, the sun and the clear sweet air, the waving grass, the occasional
clearings where settlers had driven in the tent-pegs of home, the forest
now and then swallowing them, the mountains rising above them like a
blank wall, and then suddenly opening out before them; and the rustle and
scamper of squirrels and coyotes; and over their heads the whistle of
birds, the slow beat of wings of great wild-fowl. The tender sap of
youth was in this glowing and alert new world, and, by sudden contrast
with the prison walls which he had just left behind, the earth seemed
recreated, unfamiliar, compelling and companionable. Strange that in all
the years that had been since he had gone back to his abandoned home to
find Marcile gone, the world had had no beauty, no lure for him. In the
splendour of it all, he had only raged and stormed, hating his fellowman,
waiting, however hopelessly, for the day when he should see Marcile and
the man who had taken her from him. And yet now, under the degradation
of his crime and its penalty, and the unmanning influence of being the
helpless victim of the iron power of the law, rigid, ugly and
demoralising--now with the solution of his life's great problem here
before him in the hills, with the man for whom he had waited so long
caverned in the earth, but a hand-reach away, as it were, his wrongs had
taken a new manifestation in him, and the thing that kept crying out in
him every moment was, Where is Marcile?
It was four o'clock when they reached the pass which only Grassette knew,
the secret way into the Gulch. There was two hours' walking through the
thick, primeval woods, where few had ever been, except the ancient tribes
which had once lorded it here; then came a sudden drop into the earth,
a short travel through a dim cave, and afterward a sheer wall of stone
enclosing a ravine where the rocks on either side nearly met overhead.
Here Grassette gave the signal to shout aloud, and the voice of the
Sheriff called out: "Hello, Bignold!
"Hello! Hello, Bignold! Are you there?--Hello!" His voice rang out
clear and piercing, and then came a silence-a long, anxious silence.
Again the voice rang out: "Hello! Hello-o-o! Bignold! Bigno-o-ld!"
They strained their ears. Grassette was flat on the ground, his ear to
the earth. Suddenly he got to his feet, his face set, his eyes
glittering.
"He is there beyon'--I hear him," he said, pointing farther down the
Gulch. "Water--he is near it."
"We heard nothing," said the Sheriff, "not a sound." "I hear ver' good.
He is alive. I hear him--so," responded Grassette; and his face had a
strange, fixed look which the others interpreted to be agitation at the
thought that he had saved his own life by finding Bignold--and alive;
which would put his own salvation beyond doubt.
He broke away from them and hurried down the Gulch. The others followed
hard after, the Sheriff and the warders close behind; but he outstripped
them.
Suddenly he stopped and stood still, looking at something on the ground.
They saw him lean forwards and his hands stretch out with a fierce
gesture. It was the attitude of a wild animal ready to spring.
They were beside him in an instant, and saw at his feet Bignold worn to a
skeleton, with eyes starting from his head, and fixed on Grassette in
agony and stark fear.
The Sheriff stooped to lift Bignold up, but Grassette waved them back
with a fierce gesture, standing over the dying man.
"He spoil my home. He break me--I have my bill to settle here," he said
in a voice hoarse and harsh. "It is so? It is so--eh? Spik!" he said
to Bignold.
"Yes," came feebly from the shrivelled lips. "Water! Water!" the
wretched man gasped. "I'm dying!"
A sudden change came over Grassette. "Water--queeck!" he said.
The Sheriff stooped and held a hatful of water to Bignold's lips, while
another poured brandy from a flask into the water.
Grassette watched them eagerly. When the dying man had swallowed a
little of the spirit and water, Grassette leaned over him again, and the
others drew away. They realised that these two men had an account to
settle, and there was no need for Grassette to take revenge, for Bignold
was going fast.
"You stan' far back," said Grassette, and they fell away.
Then he stooped down to the sunken, ashen face, over which death was fast
drawing its veil. "Marcile--where is Marcile?" he asked.
The dying man's lips opened. "God forgive me--God save my soul!" he
whispered. He was not concerned for Grassette now.
"Queeck-queeck, where is Marcile?" Grassette said sharply. "Come back,
Bignold. Listen--where is Marcile?"
He strained to hear the answer. Bignold was going, but his eyes opened
again, however, for this call seemed to pierce to his soul as it
struggled to be free.
"Ten years--since--I saw her," he whispered. "Good girl--Marcile. She
loves you, but she--is afraid." He tried to say something more, but his
tongue refused its office.
"Where is she-spik!" commanded Grassette in a tone of pleading and agony
now.
Once more the flying spirit came back. A hand made a motion towards his
pocket, then lay still.
Grassette felt hastily in the dead man's pocket, drew forth a letter,
and with half-blinded eyes read the few lines it contained. It was dated
from a hospital in New York, and was signed: "Nurse Marcile."
With a moan of relief Grassette stood staring at the dead man. When the
others came to him again, his lips were moving, but they did not hear
what he was saying. They took up the body and moved away with it up the
ravine.
"It's all right, Grassette. You'll be a freeman," said the Sheriff.
Grassette did not answer. He was thinking how long it would take him to
get to Marcile, when he was free.
He had a true vision of beginning life again with Marcile.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Being a man of very few ideas, he cherished those he had
Self-will, self-pride, and self-righteousness were big in him
Tyranny of the little man, given a power