IF what I have just written sounds as if I wanted to pose as a hero of
melodrama, I have produced a wrong impression. I was playing a big game
and I was using all the hard, cold and calculating wit I possessed. As I
have said, I proposed to operate on human nature. After all, I was in
no position to demand anything from those men, in spite of the bluff we
were making in regard to the treasure we had recovered and concealed.
I had a healthy fear of what the courts might do to us in a case where
stolen property had been hidden. It was up to me to cultivate a spirit
of generosity in them--and that was why I went down again, though every
nerve and fiber in my racked body made protest. But I went down under
better conditions.
The tug had powerful pumps and a considerable quantity of good hose. She
was manageable in shoal water, and by means of her hawsers and well-set
kedges we were able to swing her in, for the day’s work, fairly close to
the wreck.
There is no need of further dwelling on details--and it would be
necessary to supply the details by somebody’s word of mouth--somebody
who watched me, for I don’t remember much of what happened. I was a
lunatic, I suppose; my human machinery was operated by a single mania.
As I look back I am unable to separate the nightmare from the reality
with any amount of clarity. Therefore, we’ll allow all that to hang in
limbo, seeing that this is a plain yam and not a study of psychology.
However, I can remember flashes through the dark curtain, and of a few
of these I will make mention, for they have a bearing on the tale.
There was a period when I was in the mood for babbling. I could feel my
dry tongue clacking away inside my jaws like a clapper in a wooden box
and wholly beyond my control. That tongue was telling all my story about
my love and longing and ambition in my boyhood days--telling the story
to somebody who patted my cheek and crooned sympathy--somebody who
did not annoy me by dispute when I said that I would never live to see
Levant again--somebody who promised to carry there the three rings and
tell my story and fulfil my requests. It was a dream full of agony for
me--rather it may be called a dreaming reality. I wanted to stop that
clacking tongue. I wasn’t operating it. It was telling a lot of truth
which I did not want published. It was putting me in wrong, I felt,
just as if some enemy were tattling about me. It was mine and I hated
it furiously for what seemed to be betrayal of me. I wasn’t standing for
what the tongue said.
Then there was a period when I forgave the tongue many of its past
offenses, because, at last, it did good service for me in man-talk to
men. It was steady and convincing and I was conscious that it had helped
me to win in some big matter. Then, later, there was a time when there
were shots and shoutings and dismal trouble of some sort. And, last
of all, in the blurred imaginings, mixed with the real, came the
long-drawn-out, misty, groping, wondering consciousness that I was
out of strife and trouble and agony. But I could not come out of the
shadow--I knew that many days and nights came and went while I was
trying to grasp something which I could know was reality.
I was dreaming that I was back in my old room in Dodovah Vose’s tavern,
and that dream seemed to last for days. Then all at once I woke up and I
was truly in that room.
By the open window sat Capt. Rask Holstrom and he was junking up a Red
Astrachan apple with his jackknife. He poised a cube of the fruit on
the tip of the blade; looked me square in the eyes, and asked, in a
matter-of-fact way, if I was feeling more like myself that day.
There was no doubt about my being in Dodovah Vose’s tavern! I made sure
before I opened my mouth. There was the old quaint smell of the place,
and I could always trust my nose. For my ears there was the whining
squeak of the windmill pump in the stable-yard. I touched the irregular
seams of the silk crazy-quilt, and, to delight my eyes, the brass
handles of the ancient high-boy in the corner blinked back the radiance
of the afternoon sunlight. All my senses were satisfied, for I could
almost taste, as the breeze flicked my lips, the savor of fried chicken
which came floating in through the window. And after my senses told
me what they did, I felt at ease and dismissed all the shadows and
imaginings. Never did a man come back to his right balance of mind in
more commonplace fashion.
I decided to be just as matter-of-fact as Captain Rask. I told him I
felt pretty fair. Parts of my hands were bandaged and I was aware that
my feet were tied up.
“Have another apple?”
So I had been eating apples from Dodovah Vose’s orchard! I used to steal
from his trees--especially the early-autumn fruit. I must have been
giving the impression that I was pretty nigh all right, even though
the kink in my brain had kept me on the side-track so far as I was
concerned, personally.
The captain junked an apple into quarters, pared them, and gave me the
fruit. I think Eve tempted Adam with a Red Astrachan!
The captain sat and rocked and munched. Confound his old pelt, why
didn’t he start in and tell me what had happened?
He clacked his knife shut after a time and yawned.
“So, as I was telling you before you had your nap, Kama and I may as
well move on. There isn’t much more that’s sensible we can do for you.”
I wondered just what they _had_ done!
“Where is Kama?” I called her “Kama” quite naturally; it seemed to me
that my clattering tongue had been that familiar for a long time.
“Oh, I guess she’s just resting up a little in her room. She is bound
to be nursing you most of the time, though you don’t need so much
attention, so far as I can see. Do you know, Ross, in spite of what
you and I were saying to each other yesterday, that girl o’ mine still
insists that your mind isn’t right, and that you’re off the hooks. She
says there’s something that hasn’t come back to you!”
God bless that girl’s intuition! I felt the tears coming into my eyes.
“Women folks are always seeing something a man can’t see--because it
isn’t there for him to see!” declared the captain. “I have made her keep
her mouth shut best I could! Nice thing it would be to have it go out
in business circles that you’re a lunatic. That old hippohampus uncle of
yours would try to get himself appointed your guardian. He makes believe
to be a great friend of yours, I know, when he calls, but I reckon he’s
only hiding that old grudge that Vose has told me about. _There’s_
your friend, Ross--Vose! He’s the old boy to tie to!” I was getting
considerable information from Capt. Rask Hol-strom without weakening his
confidence in my sanity.
“And then, outside of Vose, it has really been a good thing for you to
get back here near your girl,” pursued the captain. “Now you take Kama
on that point! I say women folks have too much imagination. When you
told me you wanted the Kingsley girl to stay away from you till you was
fit to look at, why, then you was showing hard, ordinary common sense.
In spite of all that Kama or anybody else said about her coming in here,
I done just what you asked me to do--for I believe in men standing by
each other. But, as I have told you, Kama was bound to have it that a
screw was loose because you didn’t want your girl first thing! And Kama
has been bound and determined to hang on here till she is sure you’re
all right with your girl. But I can’t see that your girl is in any great
pucker about you! She hasn’t showed up!” The sweat started out on me.
Into what sort of a tangle had my affairs been drawn?
“But I’ve got a good girl, even if she is flighty in her thoughts--as I
suppose girls’ nature is about this lovey-dove business. I used to sit
and hear you talk to her on the _Zizania_ about those three rings and
that girl back in Levant--all mush, mush right in the middle of that
wind-up job--and, I swear, if I didn’t think you were crazy then, though
she wouldn’t have it that way! Said you were all right. Kama and I never
did seem to agree very well on much of anything. After the settlement
with the underwriters, when you were right as a trivet and wanted to
stay on the Coast, then she insisted that you were out of your head--as
I don’t mind telling you noe when we’re going--and she fairly picked
you up and lugged you back here. You were too sick to help yourself, you
know! Made me help her do it! For you and your girl, said she! I ain’t
sure but what you _was_ a little delirious there at times. But being
here with Vose has done you good. However, I like West the best. So as
I say, I reckon Kama and I will pack up and start back. Furthermore,
you know, I’m summonsed for that trial.” I merely stared at the old
gossiper.
“I don’t want to be too hard on those critters,” he said, musingly.
“There was a big temptation and Marcena Keedy knew how to stir ’em up.
When he lolloped that word ‘gold’ around in his mouth he always made me
drool.”
Didn’t I remember, also? Only too well!
“No, I’m going to use some discretion in my testimony,”
Captain Rask chatted on. “I have been running over in my mind what
happened. Now, if you’re a mind to, let me kind of rehearse it over to
you so that you can check up my memory. I’ll hate to have any law-sharks
tangle me on the stand. If I make a slip catch me up on it.”
I assured him that I would, and I settled back in bed with great joy in
my heart.
He gave me the most wonderful story I ever read or ever listened
to--wonderful because it concerned myself, my friends, my hopes, and my
fortune; wonderful, because I was in it, acted in it, and now for the
first time was hearing what I had done. He droned out the hair-raising
narrative without showing special interest in it, confident that I knew
the happenings as well as he; at the most interesting point, in order
to collect his thoughts in regard to Marcena Keedy, he stopped and pared
and munched an apple; I was saving my own face in the matter and I did
not dare to prod him.
I am not minded to make much account of the details of that story. In
this yarn I have been telling what I do know--not what I have heard from
another man’s lips. Let this much suffice: I recovered the rest of
the _Golden Gate_ treasure, so far as human knowledge of it went, the
jettisoned gold was dragged for and raised, and then mutiny, which had
been secretly organized by Keedy and the Finn, developed into a bloody
battle which had been won against numbers by the rifles of the lawful
guards. Keedy would not fight--he had prodded the other poor devils to
do that--and the San Francisco men took the law into their hands when
the _Zizania_ was on the high seas and hung Keedy from the derrick boom.
So, there’s enough in a nutshell to make quite a book by itself!
And then while Captain Rask meditatively wagged his jaws on another
apple I lay and gnawed my nervous lips and wondered how much money I
had in the world! I did not dare to ask questions. I felt as bitterly
fearful as a straitened merchant who has lost all run of his bank
credits and is afraid to ask his bank how he stands; the fear of giving
one’s self away becomes terror pretty vital!
“However, I’m going to pass the rest of my days without worrying about
their troubles,” declared the captain, again clacking shut his knife
blade. “They brought it on themselves, though I shall swear on the
stand that Keedy toled them into the scrape. You and I did right by the
faithful ones--especially _you_, for you could give out a better line of
talk--when we pulled that hundred thousand out of the underwriters and
added it to the hundred thousand of our own. They’re satisfied, even the
Snohomish Glutton in his new restaurant, and Ingot Ike, who has gone to
board with him. Clear consciences--that’s what we’ve got, Ross!”
But how much clear profit? The fact that we had handed out one hundred
thousand dollars was a consoling bit of information. There naturally
must be plenty more where that came from!
“Do all the folks here--do the people in Levant know how well we’re
fixed?” I faltered.
“Sure! I ain’t ashamed of it. Are you? I haven’t let the yarn lose
anything by the way I have told it. It has been a good way of killing
time.”
So everybody else in Levant, except myself, knew how rich I was!
And then that infernal old tiddlywhoop yawned, got up, and stamped out
of the room, saying that he was going to stretch his legs. I didn’t have
spirit enough to stop him and ask the great question.
I don’t know just how wild I looked while I sat there, but I know I felt
wild. Then Kama Holstrom came into the room.
I was conscious that my features were not obeying my volition. I had not
been able to make that clacking tongue of mine behave; now my face was
just as disobedient. I wanted with all my heart to beam gratitude and
joy on her, but I seemed to be trying to manage a stiff mask. If she had
turned and escaped in sheer fright I would not have blamed her.
I entirely mistook the expression on her face when she stood there and
stared at me. Her eyes were wide with what appeared to be terror. Her
lips parted and her cheeks grew pale. Then she ran to the side of the
bed, plumped down on her knees, set both her little hands about one of
mine and cried, “Thank the good God! You have come back--you have come
back!”
And that’s how a woman knows.
The balm of her tears bathed my hand when she put her forehead down and
hid her face. It was not white any longer--the warm color flooded it and
I ought to have been content for a time with what I could bring in the
compass of my gaze. But I wanted to have a blessing from her eyes, and
when I struggled to lift her face she suddenly released my hand and
hurried to the window and sat down.
“I didn’t mean to make a fool of myself that way,” she panted. “But when
I saw your eyes I knew you had come back--and it has been so long--and
the others haven’t understood!”
“When I came to myself, just now, Kama, your father was here and I
didn’t confess to him. What I know now and what you have known all along
we must keep to ourselves.”
“Yes! Nobody has believed what I was so sure of!”
We sat there in silence for a long time.
“Do you remember?” she asked, almost whispering the question.
“Only flashes. Not much. But your father has just been chatting on, and
now I have the story without his realizing what news he was telling me.”