THE OTHER MAN
Dr. Slavens stood at the door of the parlor to meet her as she came
toward him, a little tremor of weakness in her limbs, a subconscious
confession of mastery which the active feminine mind might have denied
with blushing show of indignation.
The clothiers of Meander had fitted Slavens out with a very good serge
suit. Tan oxfords replaced his old battered shoes. A physician had
dressed the cut on his forehead, where adhesive plaster, neatly holding
gauze over the cut, took away the aspect of grimness and gravity which
the bloody bandage of the morning had imparted. For all his hard fight,
he was quite a freshened-up man; but there was a questioning hesitation
in his manner as he offered his hand.
Her greeting removed whatever doubt that William Bentley's assurance of
her fidelity might have left. She took his hand between both her own and
held it so a little while, looking into his eyes without the reservation
of suspicion or distrust.
"We believed you'd come in time all along," said she.
"You believed it," he replied softly, not the faintest light of a smile
on his serious face; "and I cannot weigh my gratitude in words. There is
an explanation to be made, and I have saved it for you. I'm a beast to
think of food just now, perhaps, but I haven't eaten anything since
yesterday evening."
"You can tell me afterward, if you wish," she said.
Through the meal they talked of the others, of who had come to Meander,
who had gone home; of June and her mother and the miller's wife. Nothing
was said of the cause of his absence nor of his spectacular arrival just
in the second remaining to him to save his chance.
"I noticed a road running up toward the mountain," said he when they had
finished. "Shall we walk up that way?"
Out past the little cultivated gardens, where stunted corn was growing
in the futile hope that it might come to ear, they followed the road
which led into the mountain gorge. A rod-wide stream came plunging down
beside the way, bursting its current upon a thousand stones here and
there, falling into green pools in which the trout that breasted its
roaring torrent might find a place to pant.
Here, in an acre of valley, some remnant of glacier had melted after its
slow-plowing progress of ten million years. The smooth, round stones
which it had dropped when it vanished in the sun lay there as thickly
strewn as seeds from a gigantic poppy-boll. And then, as the gorge-wedge
narrowed, there were great, polished boulders, like up-peeping skulls,
and riven ledges against which Indian hunters had made their fires in
the old days. And on the tipping land of the mountainside, and the
little strips where soil lodged between the rocks, the quaking-asp grew
thick and tall.
There in a little nook among the trees, where trampling tourists
had eaten their luncheon upon a flat stone and left the bags and
pickle-bottles behind them, they sat down. At that altitude the
sunshine of an afternoon in late August was welcome. A man whipping
the stream for trout caught his tackle in some low branches not ten
feet from where they sat, and swore as he disentangled it. He passed
on without seeing them.
"That goes to illustrate how near a man may be to something, and not
know it," said the doctor, a smile quickening his grave face for a
moment. "This time yesterday I was kicking over the rubbish where a
gambling-tent had stood in Comanche, in the hope of finding a dime."
He stopped, looked away down the soft-tinted gorge as if wrapped in
reminiscent thought. She caught her breath quickly, turning to him with
a little start and gazing at his set face, upon which a new, strange
somberness had fallen in those unaccounted days.
"Did you find it?" she asked.
"No, I didn't," he answered, coming out of his dream. "At that hour I
knew nothing about having drawn the first number, and I didn't know that
I was the lucky man until past midnight. I had just a running jump at
the chance then, and I took it."
"And you won!" she cried, admiration in her eyes.
"I hope so," said he, gazing earnestly into her face.
Her eyes would not stand; they retreated, and a rush of blood spread
over her cheeks like the reserve of an army covering its withdrawal from
the field.
"I feel like I had just begun to live," he declared.
"I didn't see you arrive this morning," she told him, "for I turned and
went away from the land-office when they opened the window. I couldn't
stand it to see that man Peterson take what belonged to you."
He looked at her curiously.
"But you don't ask me where I was those two days," said he.
"You'll tell me--if you want me to know," she smiled.
"When I returned to the Hotel Metropole, even more ragged and
discreditable-appearing than I was when you saw me this morning," he
resumed, "the proprietor's wife asked me where I'd been. I told her I
had been on a trip to hell, and the farther that experience is behind me
the stronger my conviction that I defined it right.
"When I left you that night after we came back from the river, I went
out to look for young Walker, all blazing up, in my old-time way of
grabbing at things like a bullfrog at a piece of flannel, over what you
had said about a man not always having the sense and the courage to take
hold of his chances when they presented.
"Walker had talked to me about going in with him on his sheep-ranch,
under the impression, I suppose, that I had money to invest. Well, I
hadn't any, as you know, but I got the notion that Walker might set me
up with a flock of sheep, like they do in this country, to take care of
on shares. I had recovered entirely from my disappointment in failing to
draw a claim, as I thought, knowing nothing about the mistake in
telephoning the names over.
"I used to be quick to get over things that were based on hope that
way," he smiled, turning to her for a second and scarcely noting how she
leaned forward to listen. "Just then I was all sheep. I had it planned
out ten years ahead in that twenty minutes. When a man never has had
anything to speculate in but dreams he's terribly extravagant of them,
you know. I was recklessly so.
"Well, I was going along with my head in the clouds, and I made a short
cut to go in the back way of the biggest gambling-tent, where I thought
Walker might be watching the games. Right there the machinery of my
recollection jumps a space. Something hit me, and a volcano burst before
my eyes."
"Oh, I knew it! I knew it!" she cried, poignant anguish in her wailing
voice. "I told that chief of police that; I told him that very thing!"
"Did you go to that brute?" he asked, clutching her almost roughly by
the wrist.
"William Bentley and I," she nodded. "The chief wouldn't help. He told
us that you were in no danger in Comanche."
"What else?" he asked.
"Go on with the story," said she.
"Yes. I came back to semiconsciousness with that floating sensation
which men had described to me, but which I never experienced before, and
heard voices, and felt light on my closed eyes, which I hadn't the power
to open. But the first thing that I was conscious of, even before the
voices and the light, was the smell of whisky-barrels.
"Nothing smells like a whisky-barrel. It's neither whisky nor barrel,
but whisky-barrel. Once you have smelled it you never forget. I used to
pass a distillery warehouse on my way to school twice a day, and the
smell of whisky-barrels was part of my early education; so I knew.
"From the noise of voices and the smell of the barrels I judged that I
must be behind the stage of the variety-theater tent, where they kept
the stock of whisky for the bar. In a little while I was able to pick up
the identity of one of the voices. The other one--there were two of them
near me--belonged to a man I didn't know. You have heard us speak, when
we were back in camp, of Hun Shanklin, the gambler?"
She nodded, her face white, her lips parted, her breath hanging between
them as by a thread.
"It was his voice that I heard; I was coming stronger every second. I
made out that they were talking of my undesirable presence in that
community. Shanklin owed me a grudge on account of a push that I gave
his table one night when he was robbing a young fool with more money
than brains by his downright crooked game. That shove laid the old
rascal's scheme bare and kept him out of several thousand dollars that
night.
"I supposed until last night that his sole object in assaulting me in
the dark was to pay off this score; but there was another and more
important side to it than that. Shanklin and the fellow with him,
whoever it was, knew that I was the winner of Number One, and they
wanted me out of the way.
"I'm not clear yet in my mind just why; but they must have had some
inside information ahead of others in Comanche that I, and not Peterson,
was the lucky man, as reported first. For that extra wasn't out then."
"It was all a swindle, the extra," she hastened to explain. "That editor
knew all the time who Number One was. He held your name back just so he
might sell a lot more papers. We found out about it after we came
here."
"Of course Shanklin was in with him some way. They're all crooks," the
doctor commented.
"Perhaps the other man was that wicked chief of police," said she. "I
wouldn't consider him above it."
"Nor I," Slavens admitted. "But I don't know; I never heard him speak. I
thought I heard that other voice this morning here in Meander, but I'm
not sure. I'll be listening. I must get on with my yarn, and I warn you
now that I'm going to tax your credulity and try your confidence before
I'm through.
"I lay there gathering strength while they talked about putting me away,
like a man who had been choked. I couldn't see them when I opened my
eyes, for they were back of me somewhere, moving the barrels and boxes
around. There was a lantern standing on the ground near my head, and the
thought came to me that if I could knock it over and put it out I might
make a stagger for the outside and get clear of them. So I upset it.
"The thing didn't go out. It lay on its side, burning away the same as
ever, but the move I had made tipped it off to them that I wasn't all
in. I heard Shanklin swearing as he came toward me, and I picked up what
strength I had, intending to make a fight for it. I wasn't as brisk as I
believed myself to be, unluckily, and I had only made it to my knees
when they piled on to me from behind. I suppose one of them hit me with
a board or something. There's a welt back there on my head, but it don't
amount to anything."
"The cowards!" she breathed, panting in indignation.
"I wish we could find a name in some language that would describe them,"
said he; "I've not been able to satisfy myself with anything that
English offers. No matter. The next thing that I knew I was being
drenched with icy water. It was splashing over my head and running down
my face, and the restorative qualities of it has not been overrated by
young ladies who write stories about fainting beauties for the
magazines, I can hereby testify. It brought me around speedily, although
I was almost deaf on account of a roaring, which I attributed to the
return circulation in my battered head, and sickened by an undulating,
swirling motion by which I seemed to be carried along.
"I felt myself cramped, knees against my chin, and struggled to adjust
my position more comfortably. I couldn't move anything but my hands, and
exploration with them quickly showed me that I was in a box, rather
tight on sides and bottom--one of those tongue-and-groove cases such as
they ship dry goods in--with the top rather open, as if it had been
nailed up with scraps. The water was splashing through it and drenching
me, and I knew in a flash, as well as if they had told me what they were
going to do, what they had done. They had carted me to the river and
thrown me in."
"The cañon! The cañon!" said she, shuddering and covering her face with
her hands. "Oh, that terrible water--that awful place!"
"But I am here, sitting beside you, with the sun, which I never hoped
to see again, shining on my face," he smiled, stroking her hair
comfortingly, as one might assuage the terror of a child.
Agnes lifted her head in wondering admiration.
"You can speak of it calmly!" she wondered, "and you went through it,
while it gives me a chill of fear even to think about it! Did you--come
to shore before you entered the cañon?"
"No; I went through it from end to end. I don't know how far the river
carried me in that box. It seemed miles. But the cañon is only two miles
long, they say. The box floated upright mainly, being pretty well
balanced by my weight in the bottom, but at times it was submerged and
caught against rocks, where the current held it and the water poured in
until I thought I should be drowned that way.
"I was working to break the boards off the top, and did get one off,
when the whole thing went to pieces against a rock. I was rolled and
beaten and smashed about a good bit just then. Arms were useless. The
current was so powerful that I couldn't make a swimming-stroke. My chief
recollection of those few troubled moments is of my arms being stretched
out above my head, as if they were roped there with the weight of my
body swinging on them. I supposed that was my finish."
"But you went through!" she whispered, touching him softly on the arm as
if to recall him from the memory of that despairing time.
"I came up against a rock like a dead fish," said he, "my head above
water, luckily. The current pinned me there and held me from slipping
down. That saved me, for I hadn't strength to catch hold. The pressure
almost finished me, but a few gasps cleared my lungs of water, and that
helped some.
"There is no need for me to pretend that I know how I got on that rock,
for I don't know. A man loses the conscious relation with life in such a
poignant crisis. He does heroic things, and overcomes tremendous odds,
fighting to save what the Almighty has lent him for a little while. But
I got on that rock. I lay there with just as little life in me as could
kindle and warm under the ashes again. I might have perished of the
chill of that place if it hadn't been that the rock was a big one, big
enough for me to tramp up and down a few feet and warm myself when I was
able.
"I don't know how far along the cañon I was, or how long it was after
day broke over the world outside before the gray light sifted down to
me. It revealed to me the fact that my rock of refuge was about midway
of the stream, which was peculiarly free of obstructions just there. It
seemed to me that the hand of Providence must have dashed me against it,
and from that gleam I gathered the conviction that it was not ordained
for me to perish there. I could not see daylight out of either end of
the cañon, for its walls are winding, and of course I had nothing but a
guess as to how far I had come.
"There was no foothold in the cliffs on either hand that I could see,
and the pounding of that heavy volume of water down the fall of the
cañon seemed to make the cliffs tremble. I had to get ashore against the
cliff-side, somehow, if I ever intended to get out, and I intended to
get out, no two ways about it. I might drown if I plunged in, but I
might not. And I was certain to starve if I stuck to the rock. So I took
off my coat, which the river had spared me, and let myself down from the
lower end of the rock. I had that rolling and thrashing experience all
over again, still not quite so bad, for there was daylight to cheer me
every time my head got clear of the water.
"There's no use pulling the story out. I made it. I landed, and I found
that I could work my way along the side of the cliff and over the fallen
masses by the waterside. It wasn't so bad after that.
"My hope was that I might find a place where a breach in the cliff would
offer me escape that way, but there was none. The strip of sky that I
could see looked no wider than my hand. I saw the light at the mouth of
the cañon when it was beginning to fall dusk in there. I suppose it was
along the middle of the afternoon."
"We were over there about then," said she, "thinking you might have gone
in to try for that reward. If we only had known!"
"You could have come over to the other end with a blanket," said he,
touching her hand in a little communicative expression of thankfulness
for her interest. "There is a little gravelly strand bordering the river
at that end. After its wild plunge it comes out quite docile, and not
half so noisy as it goes in. I reached that strip of easy going just as
it was growing too dark for safe groping over the rocks, and when I got
there my legs bent like hot candles.
"I crawled the rest of the way; when I got out I must have been a sight
to see. I know that I almost frightened out of his remaining wits a
sheep-herder who was watering his flock. He didn't believe that I came
through the cañon; he didn't believe anything I said, not even when I
told him that I was cold and hungry."
"The unfeeling beast!"
"Oh, no; he was just about an average man. He had a camp close by, and
let me warm and dry myself by his fire; gave me some coffee and food
when he saw that I wasn't going to hurt him, but I don't believe he shut
an eye that entire night. He was so anxious to get rid of me in the
morning that he gave me an old hat and coat, and that was the rig I wore
when I returned to Comanche."
"The hotel-keeper gave you the message that we left?" she asked.
"He was surly and ungracious, said he didn't know where you were. I was
of the opinion that you had turned my baggage over to him, and that he
found it convenient to forget all about it."
"We brought it here--it's in my room now; and we told him when we left
where we were going, Mr. Bentley and I."
"Well, what little money I had was in my instrument-case," said he. "So
I was up against it right. I knew there was no use in lodging a
complaint against Shanklin, for I had no proof against him, and never
could convince a jury that I was in my right mind if I should tell my
story in court. So I let that pass."
"It was a miraculous deliverance from death!" Agnes exclaimed, taking
her breath freely again. Tears mounted to her eyes as she measured Dr.
Slavens' rugged frame as if with a new interest in beholding a common
pattern which had withstood so much.
He told her of meeting Mackenzie, and of finding the lost die; of the
raid they had made by means of it on Shanklin's money; of his discovery
of the midnight extra in the pockets of the gambler's coat.
"So there you have it all," said he, smiling in embarrassment as if the
relation of so much about himself seemed inexcusable. "Anyway, all of
the first part of the story. The rest is all on dry land, and not
interesting at all."
"But you hadn't had time to look over the land; you didn't know the good
locations from the worthless," said she. "How did you pick out the claim
you filed on?"
"Well, there's a little more of the story, it seems, after all. There
was a plot between Shanklin and another to file Peterson on a certain
tract and then buy him out, I suppose."
He told her of the telegram signed "Jerry," and of Shanklin's reply.
"So I concluded," he said, "that if the land described by their numbers
was valuable to them it would be valuable to me. That my guess was good,
I had proof when I filed. The chap who was piloting Peterson up to the
window, and who I suspect was the 'Jerry' of the message, wanted to know
where I got the figures. He wasn't a bit nice about it, either."
A swift pallor overspread Agnes Horton's face; a look of fright stood in
her eyes.
"Was he a tall man, dark, with heavy eyebrows?" she inquired, waiting
his answer with parted lips.
"That fits him," said he. "Do you know him?"
"It's Jerry Boyle, the Governor's son. He is Walker's friend; Walker
brought him to camp the day after you disappeared. He had an invitation
for Mrs. Reed and her party from his mother--you know they had been
expecting it. And he said--he said----"
"He said----"
"That is, he told Walker that he saw you--_drunk_ at two o'clock that
morning."
"Hum-m," rumbled the doctor, running his hands through his hair. "Hum-m!
I thought I knew that voice!"
He got to his feet in his agitation. Agnes rose quickly, placing her
hand on his arm.
"Was he the other man?" she asked.
"Well, it's a serious charge to lay against the Governor's son," he
replied, "but I'm afraid he was the other man."
There was such a look of consternation in her face that he sought to
calm her.
"He's not likely to go any further with it, though," Slavens added.
"Oh, you don't know him. You don't know him!" Agnes protested
earnestly.
He searched her face with a quick glance.
"Do you?" he asked, calmly.
"There is something bad in his face--something hiding, it seems to me,"
she said, without show of conscious evasion.
"I'll call him, no matter what move he makes," Slavens declared, looking
speculatively across the gorge. "Look how high the sun is up the wall
over yonder. I think we'd better be going back."
"Oh, I've kept you too long," she cried in self-reproach. "And to think
you were in the saddle all night."
"Yes; I lost the trail and rode a good many miles out of the way," said
he. "But for that I'd have been on hand an hour sooner."
"Well, you were in time, anyway."
"And I've drawn blindly," he laughed. "I've got a piece of land marked
'Grazing,' on the chart. It may be worth a fortune, and it may be worth
twenty cents an acre. But I'm going to see it through. When are you
going to file?"
"My number comes on the fifth day, but lapses may bring me in line
tomorrow," she answered. "Smith, the stage-driver, knows of a piece
adjoining the one he has selected for himself, if nobody 'beats him to
it,' as he says. He has given me the numbers, and I'm going to take his
word for it. About half of it can be irrigated, and it fronts on the
river. The rest is on the hills."
"I hope you may get it. Smith ought to know what's good in this country
and what isn't. When you have it you'll lead on the water and plant the
rose?"
"And plant the rose," she repeated softly.
"Don't you think," he asked, taking her hand tenderly as she walked by
his side, "that you'd better let me do the rough work for you now?"
"You are too generous, and too trusting in one unknown," she faltered.
The beat of hoofs around the sharp turn in the road where it led out
into the valley in which Meander lay, fell sharp and sudden on their
ears. There the way was close-hemmed with great boulders, among which it
turned and wound, and they scarcely had time to find a standing-place
between two riven shoulders of stone when the horseman swept around the
turn at a gallop.
He rode crouching in his saddle as if to reach forward and seize some
fleeing object of pursuit, holding his animal in such slack control that
he surely must have ridden them down if they had not given him the
entire way. His hat was blown back from his dark face, which bore a
scowl, and his lips were moving as if he muttered as he rode. Abreast of
the pair he saw them where they stood, and touched his hat in salute.
In the dust that he left behind they resumed their way. Dr. Slavens had
drawn Agnes Horton's hand through his arm; he felt that it was cold and
trembling. He looked at her, perplexity in his kind eyes.
"That's the man who stood with Peterson at the head of the line," he
said.
"Yes; Jerry Boyle," she whispered, looking behind her fearfully.
"Let's hurry on! I'm afraid," she added with the ineffectiveness of
dissimulation, "that I've kept you from your sleep too long. Together
with your awful experience and that long ride, you must be shattered for
the want of rest."
"Yet I could stand up under a good deal more," he rejoined, his thoughts
trailing Jerry Boyle up the shadowy gorge. "But I was asking you, before
that fellow broke in----"
She raised her hand appealingly.
"Don't, please. Please--not now!"