“He comes from Redpath!”
The inspector never glanced at me, but said quietly:
“Thank you for an idea, Petrie.”
He leaned towards the ancient, and in his clear, strong voice
pronounced the following names: “Petrie! Redpath! Leblanc! Joe Fagge!
Olaffson!”
“You hit him every time, sir!” exclaimed Carey, forgetting himself in
his admiration.
“So it was Redpath who gave you whisky years ago! I might have guessed
it,” said Hanafin.
MacCaskill was snoring behind me, and beyond Norman slept quietly in
his blanket. They had not been disturbed by the arrival of the native.
Two dark shapes heaved close to the rocks, themselves like rocks.
These shapes represented Leblanc and Morrison. I saw Hanafin’s eyes
fixed that way.
He went on with his examination of the ancient. Did he know anything
concerning the death of the old half-mad miner? Did he know who killed
him? Had he been present at the time? What talk had he heard? The weird
creature poured forth a flood of negatives, without waiting to listen
to any particular question, and quite obviously without taking in any
part of its meaning.
“I’ll use this old parrot as a test,” said Hanafin grimly. “Carey!”
The trooper stiffened at once.
“Take a light. Lead this old man up to the half-breed yonder. Make him
kneel down and look at the sleeper.”
Hanafin, I fancy, shivered at his own plan, but the night was cold.
“Hold the light just above the old man’s head. We will see if the
half-breed recognises him.”
A thrill passed through me. Over the great cliffs a faint aurora burnt
blue. MacCaskill snored on; Norman never stirred; the two shapes
remained like the rocks behind them. During the silence I heard the
hoarse croak of the ravens I had seen that morning. They were returning
to the defile.
The fire darted up hotly, and a red shower of sparks went aloft and
vanished. Carey’s face looked like bronze as he drew a flaming brand
from the fire. He gripped the ancient with his free hand, and pulled
him along. Hanafin in his long black cloak went on the other side.
Akshelah and I followed. It was like a funeral procession.
We reached the side of the sleepers. A magnetic storm breaking overhead
would scarcely have aroused them. Carey forced the shivering Indian
upon his knees, close to the left shoulder of Leblanc; standing behind,
he held the flaring spruce so that the light fell full upon the pinched
and withered face, weird in age and horrid with fear, while the holder
of the light remained himself invisible. Hanafin passed round to the
half-breed’s right shoulder, and stood between the sleepers.
The light moved this way and that, as the hand of him that held it
shook, and my own breath began to quicken. Hanafin seized Leblanc and
shook him violently. At the same time, his strong voice pealed out
among the cliffs:
“Who was it killed Joe Fagge?”
A scream of awful terror met the startled echoes of that question.
Leblanc had opened his eyes to see a blaze of light, and below the
wizened face and bloodshot eyes of the silent witness--the ghost-like
witness of the deed done twenty years before. The thin lips before him
never stirred while that question rang into his awakened ears. Leblanc
was little better than a beast, and a beast goes mad easily.
Jim Morrison awoke shouting, in time to see his associate leaping away
over the rocks like a huge monkey, making the country horrible with
yells.
Carey dropped his hand, and the sparks again leapt aloft.
The other two sleepers awoke, and called out.
“Guilty,” said Hanafin, in answer to their question.
We saw the poor wretch disappear into the canyon.
Carey and Norman followed a little way, but they soon lost sight of
what had lately been Leblanc, the murderer of half-mad Joe Fagge, and
now, by the working of Justice, a madman himself. They did not go up to
the hot insect-filled cemetery among the spruce.
The strong light began to break, making the cold patches of quartz like
snow, and under the heaving clouds the gossamers lifted and flickered.
The ravens were croaking in the direction of Eldorado. Mosquito Hole
lay that way.
Hanafin turned the ancient Indian out of the camp, and Norman
accompanied the unhappy creature some distance along the defile.
I thought the inspector severe upon that occasion; but he knew his
duty, and I knew nothing. Akshelah declared that the departed was a bad
man, and I expect she was right.
Though I had very little sleep, I felt my strength again when the sun
became strong and hot.
We were a silent party at breakfast--Hanafin grave, MacCaskill subdued,
and Morrison blenching.
After eating, we took up our tools and prepared to start for the
unknown land of treasure.
“Anything to report, Norman?” asked the inspector, as he rolled a
cigarette.
“Nothing, sir.”
But we found the half-breed at Mosquito Hole, or rather that which the
insects had done with and left for a husk. He must have scrambled up
to the hole, certain that his pursuers were upon him, and had slipped
while descending, and fallen, bruising his head. There the enemy would
have been upon him before he could recover--a relentless, poisonous
enemy, in numbers only to be estimated by millions, trumpeting,
stabbing, stifling. Its sightless eyes were filled; the host swarmed in
and out of its mouth, its nose and ears; yet an unimportant fraction
only of that mighty host of mosquitos which had overwhelmed this big,
strong man, and had smothered him to his death.
My father was innocent.
Old man Fagge, the crazy miner, the discoverer of Bonanza, had been
avenged at last by Justice and Inspector Hanafin.
“Bury it among the spruce,” ordered the representative, and his men
averted their heads and carried it away.
V