last seat, with many people standing in the aisles and about the doors.
Harley, glancing again at the rows and rows of faces, saw the three
witnesses almost together, and just to the right of the main entrance,
where they leaned against the wall, facing the stage. Hobart fluttered
about them, holding them in occasional talk, and Harley was just about
to look again, and with increasing attention, but at that instant the
great audience, with a common impulse and a kind of rushing sound, like
the slide of an avalanche, rose to its feet. The candidate, coming from
the wings, had just appeared upon the stage, and the welcome was
spontaneous and overwhelming. Jimmy Grayson was always a serious man,
but Harley noticed that evening, when he first appeared before the
footlights, that his face looked tense and eager, as if he felt that a
great task which he must assume lay just before him.
He wasted no time, but went at once to the heart of his subject, the
crime of a great party, the wicked ways by which it had attained its
wicked ends, and from the opening sentence he had his big audience with
him, heart and soul.
The indictment was terrible: in a masterly way he summed up the charges
and the proof, as a general marshals his forces for battle, and the
crowd, so clear were his words and so strong his statements, could see
them all marching in unison, like the battalions and brigades, towards
the common point, the exposed centre of the enemy. The faces of Sylvia
and Mrs. Grayson, in the box, glowed with pride.
Again and again, at the pauses between sentences, the cheers of the
audience rose and echoed, and then Harley would glance once more towards
the door; there, always, he saw Hobart with the three witnesses,
gathered under his wing, as it were, all looking raptly and intently at
Jimmy Grayson.
The candidate, by-and-by, seemed to concentrate his attention upon the
four men at the door, and spoke directly to them. Harley saw one of the
group move as if about to leave, but the hand of Hobart fell upon his
arm and he stayed. Harley, too, was conscious presently of an unusual
effect having the quality of weirdness. The lights seemed to go down in
the whole opera-house, except near the door. Jimmy Grayson and the
correspondents were in a semi-darkness, but Hobart and his three new
friends beside the door stood in a light that was almost dazzling
through contrast. The three witnesses now seemed to be fixed in that
spot, and their eyes never wandered from Jimmy Grayson's face.
Familiar as he was with the candidate's oratorical powers, Harley was
surprised at his strength of invective that evening. He had proved the
guilt, the overwhelming guilt, of the opposition party, and he was
describing the punishment, a punishment sure to come, although many
might deem it impossible:
"But there would be a day of judgment; justice might sleep for a while,
but she must awake at last, and, the longer vengeance was delayed, the
more terrible it became. Then woe to the guilty."
The audience was deeply impressed by the eloquence of Jimmy Grayson,
coinciding so well with their own views. Harley saw a look of awe appear
upon the faces of many--Sylvia's face was pale--and the house, save for
the voice of Jimmy Grayson, was as still as death. Harley felt the
effect himself, and the weird, unreal quality that he observed before
increased. Once, when he went over to make some notes, he noticed that
the words written a half-hour before were scarcely visible, but, when
he glanced at the opposite end of the theatre, there stood Hobart and
the three witnesses, gathered about him, in the very heart of a dazzling
light that showed every changing look on the faces of the four. Harley's
gaze lingered upon them, and again he tried to find something peculiar,
something distinctive in at least one of the three witnesses, but, as
before, he failed; they were to him just ordinary Westerners following
with rapt attention every word and gesture of Jimmy Grayson.
The candidate went on with his story of the consequences; the crime had
been committed; the profits had been reaped and enjoyed, but slumbering
justice, awake at last, was at hand; it was time for the wicked to
tremble, the price must be repaid, doubly, trebly, fivefold. Now he
personified the guilty party, the opposition, which he treated as an
individual; he compared it to a man who had committed a deed of horror,
but who long had hidden his crime from the world; others might be
suspected of it, others might be punished for it, but he could never
forget that he himself was guilty; though he walked before the world
innocent, the sense of it would always be there, it would not leave him
night or day; every moment, even, before the full exposure it would be
inflicting its punishment upon him; it would be useless to seek escape
or to think of it, because the longer the guilty victim struggled the
more crushing his punishment would be. The correspondents forgot to
write, and, like the audience, hung upon every word and gesture of Jimmy
Grayson, as he made his great denunciatory speech; they felt that he was
stirred by something unusual, that some great and extraordinary motive
was impelling him, and they followed eagerly where he led them.
Harley saw the look of awe on the faces of the audience grow and deepen.
With their overwhelming admiration of Jimmy Grayson, they seemed to have
conceived, too, a sudden fear of him. His long, accusing finger was
shaken in their faces, he was not alone denouncing a guilty man, but he
was seeking out their own hidden sins, and presently he would point at
them his revealing finger.
Hobart stood with the three witnesses beside the door, still in the
dazzling light. Harley was sure that not one of the four had moved in
the last half-hour, and Jimmy Grayson still held them all with his gaze.
Harley suddenly saw something like a flash of light, a signal glance, as
it were, pass between him and Hobart, and the next instant the voice of
the candidate swelled into greater and more accusing volume.
"Now you behold the guilty man!" said Jimmy Grayson. "I have shown him
to you. He seems to the world full of pride and power, but he knows that
justice is pursuing him, and that it will overtake him; he trembles, he
cowers, he flees, but the avenging footsteps are behind him, and the
sound of them rings in his frightened ears like a death-knell to his
soul. A wall rises across his way. He can flee no farther; he turns back
from the wall, raises his terror-stricken eyes, and there before him the
hand of fate is raised; its finger points at him, and a terrible voice
proclaims, 'Thou art the guilty man!"
The form of Jimmy Grayson swelled and towered, his hand was raised, the
long forefinger pointed directly at the four who stood in the dazzling
light, and the hall resounded with the tremendous echoes of his cry,
"Thou art the guilty man!"
As if lifted by a common impulse, the great audience rose with an
indescribable sound and faced about, following Jimmy Grayson's long,
accusing finger.
The man Williams threw his arm before his face, as if to protect
himself, and, with a terrible cry, "Yes, I did it!" fell in a faint on
the floor.
They were all on the train the next day, and Harley was reading from a
copy of the Grayville _Argus_ an account of Boyd's release and the
ovation that the people had given him.
"How did you trace the crime to Williams, Hobart?" asked Harley.
"I didn't trace it; it was Jimmy Grayson who brought it out by giving
him 'the third degree,'" replied Hobart, though there was a quiet tone
of satisfied pride in his voice. "You know that in New York, when they
expose a man at Police Headquarters to some such supreme test, they call
it giving him 'the third degree,' and that's what we did here. It seems
that Williams was in the saloon when Boyd and his partner quarrelled,
and he knew they had a lot of gold from the claim in their cabin. His
object was robbery. When he saw Wofford go on ahead, he followed him
quickly to the cabin, and killed him with the knife which lay on a
table. He expected to have time to get the gold before Boyd came, but
Boyd arrived so soon that he was barely able to slip out. Then Williams,
cunning and bold enough, came back as if he were a chance passer-by, and
had been called by Metzger and Thorpe. The other two were as innocent as
you or I.
"I could not make up my mind which of the three was guilty, and I
induced Jimmy Grayson to help me. It was right in line with his
speech--no harm done even if the test had failed--and then the man who
managed the lights at the opera-house, a friend of Boyd's, helped me
with the stage effects. Jimmy Grayson, of course, knew nothing about
that. I borrowed the idea. I have read somewhere that Aaron Burr by just
such a device once convicted a guilty man who was present in court as a
witness when another was being tried for the crime."
"Well, you have saved his life to an innocent man," said Harley.
"And I have cost a guilty one his." And then, after a moment's pause,
Hobart added, with a little shiver:
"But I wouldn't go through such an ordeal again at any price. When Jimmy
Grayson thundered out, 'Thou art the guilty man,' it was all I could do
to keep from crying, 'Yes, I am, I am!'"
XIV
THE DEAD CITY
As they left the hall, Churchill overtook Harley and tapped him on the
shoulder. Harley turned and saw an expression of supreme disgust on the
face of the _Monitor's_ correspondent, but Harley himself only felt
amusement. He knew that Churchill meant attack.
"I never saw anything more theatrical and ill-timed," said Churchill.
"Of course, it was all prearranged in some manner. But the idea of a
Presidential nominee taking such a risk!"
"He has saved an innocent man's life, and I call that no small
achievement."
"Because the trick was successful; but it was a trick, all the same, and
it was beneath the dignity of a Presidential nominee."
"There was but little risk of any kind," said Harley, shortly, "and even
had it been larger, it would have been right to take it, when the stake
was a man's life. Churchill, you are hunting for faults, you know you
are, or you would not be so quick to see them."
Churchill made no audible reply, but Harley could see that he was
unconvinced, and, in fact, he sent his newspaper a lurid despatch about
it, taking events out of their proper proportion, and hence giving to
them a wholly unjustifiable conclusion. But Sylvia Morgan was devotedly
loyal to her uncle. There were few deeds of his of which she approved
more warmly than this of saving Boyd's life, and Hobart, the master
spirit in it, she thanked in a way that made him turn red with pleasure.
But the discussion of the whole affair was brief, because fast upon its
heels trod another event which stirred them yet more deeply.
When the special train was at Blue Earth, in Montana, among the high
mountains, there came to Jimmy Grayson an appeal, compounded of pathos
and despair, that he could not resist. It was from the citizens of
Crow's Wing, forty miles deeper into the yet higher and steeper
mountains, and they recounted, in mournful words, how no candidate ever
came to see them; all passed them by as either too few or too difficult,
and they had never yet listened to the spell of oratory; of course, they
did not expect the nominee of a great party for the Presidency of the
United States to make the hard trip and speak to them, when even the
little fellows ignored their existence; nevertheless, they wished to
inform him in writing that they were alive, and on the map, at least,
they made as big a dot as either Helena or Butte.
The candidate smiled when he read the letter. The tone of it moved him.
Moreover, he was not deficient in policy--no man who rises is--and while
Crow's Wing had but few votes, Montana was close, and a single state
might decide the Union.
"Those people at Crow's Wing do not expect me, but I shall go to them,"
he said to his train.
"Why, it's a full day's journey and more, over the roughest and rockiest
road in America," said Mr. Curtis, the state senator from Wyoming, who
was still with them.
"I shall go," said Jimmy Grayson, decisively. "There is a break here in
our schedule, and this trip will fit in very nicely."
The others were against it, but they said nothing more in opposition,
knowing that it would be of no avail. Obliging, generous, and
soft-hearted, the candidate, nevertheless, had a temper of steel when
his mind was made up, and the others had learned not to oppose it. But
all shunned the journey with him to Crow's Wing except Harley, Mr.
Plummer, Mr. Herbert Heathcote--because there is no zeal like that of
the converted--and one other.
That "other" was Sylvia, and she insisted upon going, refusing to listen
to all the good arguments that were brought against it. "I know that I
am only a woman--a girl," she said, "but I know, too, that I've lived
all my life in the mountains, and I understand them. Why, I've been on
harder journeys than this with daddy before I was twelve years old.
Haven't I, daddy?" As she had predicted, she forgot his request not to
call him "daddy."
Thus appealed to, Mr. Plummer was fain to confess the truth, though with
reluctance. However, he said, rather weakly:
"But you don't know what kind of weather we'll have, Sylvia."
Then she turned upon him in a manner that terrified him.
"Now, daddy, if I couldn't get up a better argument than that I'd quit,"
she said. "Weather! weather! weather! to an Idaho girl! Suppose it
should rain, I'm made of neither sugar nor salt, and I won't melt. I've
been rained on a thousand times. Aunt Anna says I may go if Uncle James
is willing, and he's willing--he has to be; besides, he's my chaperon.
If you don't say 'yes,' Uncle James, I shall take the train and go
straight home."
They were forced to consent, and Harley was glad that she insisted,
because he liked to know that she was near, and he thought that she
looked wonderfully well on horseback.
The going of Harley with the candidate was taken as a matter of course
by everybody. Silent, tactful, and strong, he had grown almost
imperceptibly into a confidential relationship with the nominee, and Mr.
Grayson did not realize how much he relied upon the quiet man who could
not make a speech but who was so ready of resource. As for Mr.
Heathcote, being an Easterner, he wished to see the West in all its
aspects.
They started at daybreak, guided by a taciturn mountaineer, Jim Jones,
called simply Jim for the sake of brevity, and, the hour being so early,
few were present to see them ride up the hanging slope and into the
mighty wilderness.
But it was a glorious dawn. The young sun was gilding the sea of crags
and crests with burnished gold and the air had the sparkle of youth. Mr.
Heathcote threw back his slightly narrow chest, and, drawing three deep
breaths of just the same length, he said, "I would not miss this trip
for a thousand dollars!"
"And I wouldn't for two thousand!" exclaimed Sylvia, joyously.
Harley said nothing, but he, too, looked out upon the morning world with
a kindling eye. Far below them was a narrow valley, a faint green line
down the centre showing where the little river ran, with the irrigated
farms on either side, like beads on a string. Above them towered the
peaks, white with everlasting snow.
"A fine day for our ride," said the candidate to Jim.
"Looks like it now, though I never gamble on mountain weather," replied
the taciturn man.
But the promise held good for a long time, the sun still shining and the
winds coming fresh and brisk along the crests and ridges. The trail
wound about the slopes and steadily ascended. Vegetation ceased, and
before them stretched the bare rocks. Harley knew very well now that
only the sunshine saved them from grimness and desolation. The
loneliness became oppressive. Even Sylvia was silent. It was the
wilderness in reality as well as seeming; nowhere did they see a miner's
hut or a hunter's cabin, only nature in her most savage form.
The little group of horsemen forgot to talk. The candidate's head was
bowed and his brow bent. Clearly he was immersed in thought. Mr.
Heathcote, unused to such arduous journeys, leaned forward in his saddle
in a state of semi-exhaustion. But Sylvia, although a girl, was
accustomed to the mountains, and she showed few signs of fatigue. Harley
said at last to the guide, "A wild country, one of the wildest, I think,
that I ever saw."
"Yes, a wild country, and a bad 'un, too," responded Jim. "See off there
to the left?"
He pointed to a maze of bare and rocky ridges, and when he saw that
Harley's gaze was following his long forefinger, he continued:
"I say it's a bad 'un, because over there Red Perkins and his gang of
horse-thieves, outlaws, and cut-throats used to have their hiding-place.
It's a tangled-up stretch o' mountain, so wild, so rocky, so full of
caves that they could have hid there till jedgment-day from all
Montana. Yes, that's where they used to hang out."
"Used to?"
"Yes, 'cause I 'ain't heard much uv them fur some time. They came down
in the valley and tried to stampede them new blooded horses from
Kentucky on Sifton's ranch, but Sifton and his men was waitin', and when
the smoke cleared off most uv the gang was wiped out. Red and two or
three uv his fellers got away, but I 'ain't heard uv 'em since. Guess
they've scattered."
"Wisest thing they could do," said Harley.
The guide made no answer, and they plodded on in silence until about two
o'clock in the afternoon, when they stopped in a little cove to eat
luncheon and refresh their horses.
It was the first grateful spot they had seen in hours. A brook fed by
the snows above formed a pool in the hollow, and then, overflowing it,
dropped down the mountain-wall. But in this sheltered nook and around
the life-giving water green grass was growing, and there was a rim of
goodly trees. The horses, when their riders dismounted, grazed eagerly,
and the riders themselves lay upon the grass and ate with deep content.
Sylvia talked little. She seemed thoughtful, and, when neither of them
was looking, she glanced now and then at Harley and "King" Plummer. Had
they noticed they would have seen a shade of sadness on her face. Mr.
Plummer did not speak, and it was because there was a growing anxiety in
his mind. He was sorry now that they had let Sylvia come, and he
silently called himself a weak fool.
"Shall we reach Crow's Wing by dark?" asked the candidate of the guide.
Jim had risen, and, standing at the edge of the cove, was gazing out
over the rolling sea of mountains. Harley noticed a troubled look on his
face.
"If things go right we kin," he replied, "but I ain't shore that things
will go right."
"What do you mean?"
"Do you see that brown spot down there in the southwest, just a-top the
hills? Waal, it's a cloud, an' it's comin' this way. Clouds, you know,
always hev somethin' in 'em."
"That is to say we shall have rain," said the candidate. "Let it come.
We have been rained on too often to mind such a little thing--eh,
Sylvia? You see, I take you at your word."
The girl nodded.
"I don't think it'll be rain," said the guide. "We are so high up here
that more 'n likely it'll be snow. An' when there's a snow-storm in the
mountains you can't go climbin' along the side o' cliffs."
The others, too, looked grave now. Perhaps, with the exception of "King"
Plummer, they had not foreseen such a difficulty, but the guide came to
their relief with more cheering words--after all, the cloud might not
continue to grow, "an' it ain't worth while to holler afore we're hit."
This seemed sound philosophy to the others, and, dismissing their cares,
they started again, much refreshed by their stop in the little cove. The
road now grew rougher, the guide leading and the rest following in
single-file, Sylvia just ahead of Harley. By-and-by their cares
returned. Harley glanced towards the southwest and saw there the same
cloud, but now much bigger, blacker, and more threatening. The sunshine
was gone, and the wrinkled surface of the mountains was gray and sombre.
The air had grown cold, and down among the clefts there was a weird,
moaning wind. Harley glanced at the guide, and noticed that his face was
now decidedly anxious. But the correspondent said nothing. Part of his
strength lay in his ability to wait, and he knew that the guide would
speak in good time.
"Don't any of you be discouraged because of me," said Sylvia; "I'm not
afraid of storms--even snowstorms. Am I not a good mountaineer, daddy?"
The "King" nodded his head. He knew that she was a better mountaineer
than any in the party except the guide and himself, and he felt less
alarm for her than was in the mind of Grayson or Harley.
But Harley was thrilled by her courage. Here, amid these wild mountains,
with the threat of darkness and the storm, she was unafraid and still
feminine. "This is a woman to be won," was his unuttered thought.
Another hour passed, and the air grew darker and colder. Then Jim
stopped.
"Gentlemen," he said, "there's a snow-storm comin' soon. I didn't expect
one so early, even on the mountains, but it's comin', anyhow, an' if we
keep on for Crow's Wing they'll have to dig our bones out o' the meltin'
drifts next summer. We've got to make for Queen City."
"Queen City!" exclaimed Mr. Heathcote. "I didn't know there was another
town anywhere near here."
"She's a-standin' all the same," replied the guide, brusquely, "an' I
wouldn't never hev started on the trip to Crow's Wing if there hadn't
been such a stoppin'-place betwixt an' between, in case o' trouble with
the weather. An' let me whisper to you, Queen City's quite a sizable
place. We'll pass the night there. It's got a fine hotel, the finest
an' biggest in the mountains."
He looked grimly at Mr. Heathcote, as much as to say, "Ask me as much
more as you please, but I'll answer you nothing." Then he added,
glancing at Sylvia:
"It's a wild night for a gal."
"But you said that the biggest and finest hotel in the mountains was
waiting for me," replied Sylvia, with spirit.
The guide bowed his head admiringly, and said no more.
Something cold and damp touched Harley's cheek. He looked up, and
another flake of snow, descending softly, settled upon his face. The
clouds rolled over them, heavy and dark, and shut out all the mountains
save a little island where they stood. The snow, following the first few
flakes, fell softly but rapidly.
"It's Queen City or moulderin' in the drifts till next summer!" cried
Jim, and he turned his horse into a side-path. The others followed
without a word, willing to accept his guidance through the greatest
peril they had yet faced in an arduous campaign. Despite the danger,
which he knew to be heavy and pressing, and his anxiety for Sylvia,
Harley's curiosity was aroused, and he wished to ask more of Queen City,
but the saturnine face of the guide was not inviting. Nevertheless, he
risked one question.
"How far is this place, Queen City?" he asked.
"Bout two miles," replied Jim, with what seemed to Harley a derisive
grin, "an' it's tarnal lucky for us that it's so near."
Harley said no more, but he was satisfied with nothing in the guide's
reply save the fact that the town was only two miles away; any shelter
would be welcome, because he saw now that a snow-storm on the wild
mountains was a terrible thing.
The guide led on; Jimmy Grayson, with bent head, followed; Mr.
Heathcote, shrunk in his saddle, came next; then "King" Plummer; and
after him Sylvia and Harley, who were as nearly side by side as the
narrow path would permit.
"It won't be far, Miss Morgan," said Harley; the others could not hear.
She felt rather than heard the note of apprehension in his voice, and
she knew it was for her. A thrill of singular sweetness passed over her.
It was pleasant for some one, _the_ one, to be afraid for her sake. She
looked out at the driving snow and the dim peaks, but she had no fear
for herself. She was glad, too, that she had come.
"I know the way of the mountains," she replied. "The guide will take us
in safety to this city of his, of which he speaks so highly."
Harley saw her smile through the snow. The others rode on before, heads
bowed, and did not look back. He and she felt a powerful sense of
comradeship, and once, when he leaned over to detach her bridle rein
from the horse's mane, he touched her hand, which was so soft and warm.
Again the electric thrill passed through them both, and they looked into
each other's eyes.
Now and then the vast veil of snow parted before the wind, as if cleft
down the centre by a sword-blade, and Harley and Sylvia beheld a grand
and awful sight. Before them were all the peaks and ridges, rising in
white cones and pillars against the cloudy sky, and the effect was of
distance and sublimity. From the clefts and ravines came a desolate
moaning. Harley felt that he was much nearer to the eternal here than he
could ever be in the plains. Then the rent veil would close again, and
he saw only his comrades and the rocks twenty feet away.