"A man must have clean linen. In the town you are going to, a boiled
shirt is a credential. I should like to give you a letter to the
cashier of the bank. He is a Britisher, and a good fellow. You are not
strong enough for such work as we might offer you, but he will find
you a billet."
"You positively overwhelm me," said Johnson. "You must be lineally
descended from the Good Samaritan."
Ajax wrote the letter. A neighbour was driving in to town, as we knew,
and I had arranged early that morning for our guest's transportation.
"And what am I to do in return for these favours?" Johnson demanded.
"Let us hear from you," said my brother.
"You shall," he replied.
Within half an hour Johnson had vanished in a buckboard and a cloud of
fine white dust.
Upon the following afternoon I made an alarming discovery. Our
burglar-proof safe had been opened, and the roll of notes was missing.
I sought Ajax and told him. He allowed one word only to escape his
lips--
"Johnson!"
"What tenderfeet we are!" I groaned.
"Lineal descendants of the Good Samaritan. Well, he has had a long
start, but we must catch him."
"If it should not be--Johnson?"
"Conan would have nailed anybody else."
This was unanswerable, for Conan guarded our safe whenever there was
anything in it worth guarding. Ajax never is so happy as when he can
prove himself a prophet.
"I said he was an artist," he remarked. "The truth is, we tried an
experiment upon the wrong man."
A few minutes later we took the road. We had not gone very far,
however, before we met the neighbour who had driven Johnson to town.
He pulled up and greeted us.
"Boys," said he. "I've a note for ye from that Britisher."
We took the note, but we did not open it till our Californian friend
had disappeared. We had been butchered, but as yet the abominable fact
that a compatriot had skinned us was something we wished to keep to
ourselves.
"Great Minneapolis!" said Ajax. "Look at this!"
I saw a bank receipt for the exact sum which represented our bunch of
steers.
"Is that all?" I asked.
Ajax ought to have shouted for joy, but he answered with a groan.
"Yes; there isn't a line of explanation. He said we should hear from
him."
"And we have," I replied.
We returned to the ranch very soberly. When Ajax placed the bank
receipt in the safe, he kicked that solid piece of furniture.
"We'll drive in comfortably to-morrow, and find out what we can," he
observed.
"I don't think we shall find Johnson," I murmured.
Nor did we. The cashier testified to receiving the roll of notes, but
not the letter of introduction. We hunted high and low for Johnson;
but he was not.
"How did he get away without money?" he asked.
"He had money. I stuck a twenty-dollar bill into his coat pocket."
Before leaving town, we visited our gunmaker, with the intention of
ordering some cartridges. By the merest chance, he spoke of Johnson.
"A Britisher was in here yesterday: somethin' o' the cut o' you boys."
"In a grey suit with a brown sombrero?"
"Sure enough."
"Did he buy cartridges?"
"He bought a six-shooter and a few cartridges."
"Oh!" said Ajax.
We found ourselves walking towards a secluded lot at the back of the
Old Mission Church. Ajax asked me for an opinion which I was too dazed
to express.
"We've done a silly thing, and perhaps a wicked thing," said my
brother. "If that poor devil is lying dead in the brush-hills, I shall
never forgive myself. We've given a starving man too heavy a meal."
"Bosh!" said I, believing every word he uttered--the echo, indeed, of
my own thoughts. "I feel in my bones we are going to see Johnson
again."
Twenty-four hours later we heard of him. The Santa Barbara stage had
been held up by one man. It happened, however, that a remarkably bold
and fearless driver was on the box. The stage had been stopped upon
the top of a hill, but not exactly on the crest of it. The driver
testified that the would-be robber had leaped out of a clump of
manzanita, just as the heavy, lumbering coach was beginning to roll
down the steep hill in front of it. To pull up at such a moment was
difficult. The driver saw his chance and took it. He lashed the
leaders and charged straight at the highwayman, who jumped aside to
avoid being run over, and then, being a-foot, abandoned his
enterprise. He was wearing a mask fashioned out of a gunny-sack, new
overalls, and _brown_ shoes! That same night, at Los Olivos, a
man wearing brown shoes was arrested by a deputy sheriff because he
refused to give a proper account of himself; but, on being searched, a
letter to the cashier of the San Lorenzo bank, signed (so ran the
paragraph) by a well-known and responsible Englishman, was found in
the pocket of his coat. Whereupon he was allowed to go his ways, with
many apologies from the over-zealous official.
"Johnson!" said Ajax.
"Did he hold up the stage?" I asked.
"Of course he did" replied my brother contemptuously.
After this incident, Johnson, who for a brief time had loomed so large
in our imaginations, faded into a sort of wraith. Years passed,
bringing with them great changes for me. I left California and settled
in England. I wrote a book which excited a certain amount of interest,
and inspired some of my old school-fellows to renew acquaintance with
me. By this time I had forgotten Johnson. He was part of a distant
country, where the fine white dust settles thickly upon all things and
persons. In England, where the expected, so to speak, comes to five
o'clock tea, such surprising individuals as Johnson appear--if they
ever do appear--as creatures of a disordered fancy or digestive
apparatus. Once I told the story at the Scribblers' Club to a couple
of journalists. They winked at each other, and said politely that I
spun a good yarn, for an amateur! "I never tell a story," said the
elder of my critics, "till I've worked out a climax. You leave us at
the top of a confounded hill in California, bang up in the clouds."
And then the climax flitted into sight, masquerading as a barrel of
claret. The claret came from Bordeaux. It was Léoville Poyferré, 1899.
Not a line of explanation came with it, but all charges were prepaid.
I wrote to the shippers. A Monsieur had bought the wine and ordered it
to be consigned to me. Readers of this story will say that I ought to
have thought of Johnson. I didn't. I thanked effusively half a dozen
persons in turn, who had not sent the claret; then, hopelessly
befogged, I had the wine bottled.
However, Johnson sent the wine, for he told me so. I had been passing
a few days at Blois, and was staring at the Fragonard which hangs in
the gallery of the château, when a languid voice said, "This is the
best thing here."
"Hullo, Johnson!" I exclaimed.
"Hullo!" said he.
He had recognised me first, and addressed the remark about the picture
to me. Nobody else was near us. We shook hands solemnly, eyeing each
other, noting the changes. Johnson appeared to be prosperous, but
slightly Gallicised.
"How is--Ajax?" he murmured.
"Ajax has grown fat. Can't you dine with me?"
"It's my turn. We must order a bottle of Léoville at once."
"You sent that wine," I exclaimed. There was no note of interrogation
in my voice. I knew.
"Yes," he said indifferently; "it will be worth drinking in about ten
years' time."
We had an admirable dinner upon a terrace overhanging the Loire, but
the measure of my enjoyment was stinted by Johnson's exasperating
reticence concerning himself. He talked delightfully of the châteaux
in Touraine; he displayed an intimate knowledge of French history and
archaeology, but I was tingling with impatience to transport myself
and him to California. And he knew this--the rogue!
Finally, as the soft silvery twilight encompassed us, he told what I
wanted to know.
"My father was a manufacturer who married a Frenchwoman. My brothers
have trodden carefully and securely in my father's footsteps. They are
all fairly prosperous--smug, respectable fellows. I resemble my
mother. After Eton and Christ Church I was pitchforked into the family
business. For a time it absorbed my attention. I will tell you why
later. Then, having mastered the really interesting part of it, I grew
bored. I wanted to study art. After several scenes with my father, I
was allowed to go my own way--a pleasant way, too, but it led
downhill, you understand. I spent three winters in Venice. Then my
father died, and I came into a small fortune, which I squandered. My
mother helped me; then she died. My brothers cut me, condemning me as
a Bohemian and a vagabond. I confess that I did take a malicious
pleasure in rubbing their sleek fur the wrong way. Then I crossed the
Atlantic as the guest of an American millionaire. He took me on in his
own car to California. I started a studio in San Francisco--and a life
class. That undid me, I found myself bankrupt. Then I fell desperately
ill. Each day I felt the quicksands engulfing me."
"But your friends?" I interrupted.
"My friends? Yes, I had friends; but perhaps you will understand me,
having seen to what depths I fell, that I couldn't bring myself to
apply to my friends. Well, I was at my last gasp when I crawled up to
your barn. I mean morally, for my strength was returning. You and your
brother rode up. By God! I could have killed you!"
"Killed us?"
"You looked so fit, so prosperous, and I could read you both, could
see in flaming capitals your pity, your contempt,--aye, and your
disgust that a fellow-Englishman should be festering before your eyes.
I asked for leave to spend the night in your barn, and you said, 'All
right.' All right, when everything was so cruelly, so pitilessly the
other way! Then you came back, taking for granted that I must accept
whatever you offered. I wanted to refuse, but the words stuck in my
throat. I followed you to the bath-house. Was I grateful? Not a bit. I
decided that for your own amusement, and perhaps to staunch your
English pride, which I had offended, you meant to lift a poor devil
out of hell, so as to drop him again into deeper depths when the
comedy was over----"
"Good heavens! You thought that?"
"My dear fellow, you write now, don't you? I'm giving you a bit of
psychology--showing you the point of view of the worm writhing beneath
the boot of lordly Man. But, always, I meant to turn, if I got the
chance. I washed myself; I shaved; I slipped into your nice clean
clothes. I'll admit that the warm water removed some encrusted mud
from my mind, but it sharpened rather then obscured my resolution to
make the most of what looked like a last chance. But when you uncorked
that Léoville, shame spoiled it for me."
"You drank only two glasses, I remember."
"It brought everything back--everything! If I had had one more glass,
I should have laid myself at your feet, whining and whimpering. The
cigar that I smoked afterwards was poppy and mandragora. Through a
cloud of smoke I saw all the pleasant years that were gone. Again I
weakened. I had aroused your interest. I could have sponged upon you
indefinitely. At that moment I saw the safe. Your brother imprudently
mentioned that a large sum of money lay inside it. I made up my mind
instantly to take the money, and did so that night. The dog was
licking my hand as I robbed you. But next morning----"