With the closing of the little door behind them they seemed to have shut
out the turmoil and vibration of the storm. The reason became apparent
when, after a few paces, they descended half a dozen steps to a lower
landing. This disclosed the fact that the dwelling part of the Sidon
General Store was quite below the level of the shop and the road, and
on the slope of the solitary undulation of the Tasajara plain,--a little
ravine that fell away to a brawling stream below. The only arboreous
growth of Tasajara clothed its banks in the shape of willows and alders
that set compactly around the quaint, irregular dwelling which straggled
down the ravine and looked upon a slope of bracken and foliage on either
side. The transition from the black, treeless, storm-swept plain to this
sheltered declivity was striking and suggestive. From the opposite bank
one might fancy that the youthful and original dwelling had ambitiously
mounted the crest, but, appalled at the dreary prospect beyond, had
gone no further; while from the road it seemed as if the fastidious
proprietor had tried to draw a line between the vulgar trading-post,
with which he was obliged to face the coarser civilization of the place,
and the privacy of his domestic life. The real fact, however, was that
the ravine furnished wood and water; and as Nature also provided one
wall of the house,--as in the well-known example of aboriginal cave
dwellings,--its peculiar construction commended itself to Sidon on the
ground of involving little labor.
Howbeit, from the two open windows of the sitting-room which they had
entered only the faint pattering of dripping boughs and a slight murmur
from the swollen brook indicated the storm that shook the upper plain,
and the cool breath of laurel, syringa, and alder was wafted through
the neat apartment. Passing through that pleasant rural atmosphere
they entered the kitchen, a much larger room, which appeared to serve
occasionally as a dining-room, and where supper was already laid out.
A stout, comfortable-looking woman--who had, however, a singularly
permanent expression of pained sympathy upon her face--welcomed them in
tones of gentle commiseration.
“Ah, there you be, you two! Now sit ye right down, dears; DO. You
must be tired out; and you, Phemie, love, draw up by your poor father.
There--that's right. You'll be better soon.”
There was certainly no visible sign of suffering or exhaustion on the
part of either father or daughter, nor the slightest apparent earthly
reason why they should be expected to exhibit any. But, as already
intimated, it was part of Mrs. Harkutt's generous idiosyncrasy to look
upon all humanity as suffering and toiling; to be petted, humored,
condoled with, and fed. It had, in the course of years, imparted a
singularly caressing sadness to her voice, and given her the habit of
ending her sentences with a melancholy cooing and an unintelligible
murmur of agreement. It was undoubtedly sincere and sympathetic, but at
times inappropriate and distressing. It had lost her the friendship of
the one humorist of Tasajara, whose best jokes she had received with
such heartfelt commiseration and such pained appreciation of the evident
labor involved as to reduce him to silence.
Accustomed as Mr. Harkutt was to his wife's peculiarity, he was not
above assuming a certain slightly fatigued attitude befitting it. “Yes,”
he said, with a vague sigh, “where's Clemmie?”
“Lyin' down since dinner; she reckoned she wouldn't get up to supper,”
she returned soothingly. “Phemie's goin' to take her up some sass and
tea. The poor dear child wants a change.”
“She wants to go to 'Frisco, and so do I, pop,” said Phemie, leaning
her elbow half over her father's plate. “Come, pop, say do,--just for a
week.”
“Only for a week,” murmured the commiserating Mrs. Harkutt.
“Perhaps,” responded Harkutt, with gloomy sarcasm, “ye wouldn't mind
tellin' me how you're goin' to get there, and where the money's comin'
from to take you? There's no teamin' over Tasajara till the rain stops,
and no money comin' in till the ranchmen can move their stuff. There
ain't a hundred dollars in all Tasajara; at least there ain't been the
first red cent of it paid across my counter for a fortnit! Perhaps if
you do go you wouldn't mind takin' me and the store along with ye, and
leavin' us there.”
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Harkutt, with sympathetic but shameless
tergiversation. “Don't bother your poor father, Phemie, love; don't you
see he's just tired out? And you're not eatin' anything, dad.”
As Mr. Harkutt was uneasily conscious that he had been eating heartily
in spite of his financial difficulties, he turned the subject abruptly.
“Where's John Milton?”
Mrs. Harkutt shaded her eyes with her hand, and gazed meditatively on
the floor before the fire and in the chimney corner for her only son,
baptized under that historic title. “He was here a minit ago,” she said
doubtfully. “I really can't think where he's gone. But,” assuringly, “it
ain't far.”
“He's skipped with one o' those story-books he's borrowed,” said Phemie.
“He's always doin' it. Like as not he's reading with a candle in the
wood-shed. We'll all be burnt up some night.”
“But he's got through his chores,” interposed Mrs. Harkutt
deprecatingly.
“Yes,” continued Harkutt, aggrievedly, “but instead of goin' to bed, or
addin' up bills, or takin' count o' stock, or even doin' sums or suthin'
useful, he's ruinin' his eyes and wastin' his time over trash.” He rose
and walked slowly into the sitting-room, followed by his daughter and a
murmur of commiseration from his wife. But Mrs. Harkutt's ministration
for the present did not pass beyond her domain, the kitchen.
“I reckon ye ain't expectin' anybody tonight, Phemie?” said Mr. Harkutt,
sinking into a chair, and placing his slippered feet against the wall.
“No,” said Phemie, “unless something possesses that sappy little Parmlee
to make one of his visitations. John Milton says that out on the road
it blows so you can't stand up. It's just like that idiot Parmlee to be
blown in here, and not have strength of mind enough to get away again.”
Mr. Harkutt smiled. It was that arch yet approving, severe yet
satisfied smile with which the deceived male parent usually receives any
depreciation of the ordinary young man by his daughters. Euphemia was
no giddy thing to be carried away by young men's attentions,--not
she! Sitting back comfortably in his rocking-chair, he said, “Play
something.”
The young girl went to the closet and took from the top shelf an
excessively ornamented accordion,--the opulent gift of a reckless
admirer. It was so inordinately decorated, so gorgeous in the blaze of
papier mache, mother-of-pearl, and tortoise-shell on keys and keyboard,
and so ostentatiously radiant in the pink silk of its bellows that it
seemed to overawe the plainly furnished room with its splendors. “You
ought to keep it on the table in a glass vase, Phemie,” said her father
admiringly.
“And have HIM think I worshiped it! Not me, indeed! He's conceited
enough already,” she returned, saucily.
Mr. Harkutt again smiled his approbation, then deliberately closed his
eyes and threw his head back in comfortable anticipation of the coming
strains.
It is to be regretted that in brilliancy, finish, and even cheerfulness
of quality they were not up to the suggestions of the keys and keyboard.
The most discreet and cautious effort on the part of the young performer
seemed only to produce startlingly unexpected, but instantly suppressed
complaints from the instrument, accompanied by impatient interjections
of “No, no,” from the girl herself. Nevertheless, with her pretty
eyebrows knitted in some charming distress of memory, her little mouth
half open between an apologetic smile and the exertion of working the
bellows, with her white, rounded arms partly lifted up and waving
before her, she was pleasantly distracting to the eye. Gradually, as the
scattered strains were marshaled into something like an air, she began
to sing also, glossing over the instrumental weaknesses, filling
in certain dropped notes and omissions, and otherwise assisting the
ineffectual accordion with a youthful but not unmusical voice. The song
was a lugubrious religious chant; under its influence the house seemed
to sink into greater quiet, permitting in the intervals the murmur of
the swollen creek to appear more distinct, and even the far moaning of
the wind on the plain to become faintly audible. At last, having fairly
mastered the instrument, Phemie got into the full swing of the chant.
Unconstrained by any criticism, carried away by the sound of her own
voice, and perhaps a youthful love for mere uproar, or possibly desirous
to drown her father's voice, which had unexpectedly joined in with a
discomposing bass, the conjoined utterances seemed to threaten the frail
structure of their dwelling, even as the gale had distended the store
behind them. When they ceased at last it was in an accession of dripping
from the apparently stirred leaves outside. And then a voice, evidently
from the moist depths of the abyss below, called out,--
“Hullo, there!”
Phemie put down the accordion, said, “Who's that now?” went to the
window, lazily leaned her elbows on the sill, and peered into the
darkness. Nothing was to be seen; the open space of dimly outlined
landscape had that blank, uncommunicative impenetrability with which
Nature always confronts and surprises us at such moments. It seemed to
Phemie that she was the only human being present. Yet after the feeling
had passed she fancied she heard the wash of the current against some
object in the stream, half stationary and half resisting.
“Is any one down there? Is that you, Mr. Parmlee?” she called.
There was a pause. Some invisible auditor said to another, “It's a young
lady.” Then the first voice rose again in a more deferential tone: “Are
we anywhere near Sidon?”
“This is Sidon,” answered Harkutt, who had risen, and was now quite
obliterating his daughter's outline at the window.
“Thank you,” said the voice. “Can we land anywhere here, on this bank?”
“Run down, pop; they're strangers,” said the girl, with excited, almost
childish eagerness.
“Hold on,” called out Harkutt, “I'll be thar in a moment!” He hastily
thrust his feet into a pair of huge boots, clapped on an oilskin hat
and waterproof, and disappeared through a door that led to a lower
staircase. Phemie, still at the window, albeit with a newly added sense
of self-consciousness, hung out breathlessly. Presently a beam of light
from the lower depths of the house shot out into the darkness. It was
her father with a bull's-eye lantern. As he held it up and clambered
cautiously down the bank, its rays fell upon the turbid rushing stream,
and what appeared to be a rough raft of logs held with difficulty
against the bank by two men with long poles. In its centre was a roll
of blankets, a valise and saddle-bags, and the shining brasses of some
odd-looking instruments.
As Mr. Harkutt, supporting himself by a willow branch that overhung
the current, held up the lantern, the two men rapidly transferred their
freight from the raft to the bank, and leaped ashore. The action gave
an impulse to the raft, which, no longer held in position by the
poles, swung broadside to the current and was instantly swept into the
darkness.
Not a word had been spoken, but now the voices of the men rose freely
together. Phemie listened with intense expectation. The explanation
was simple. They were surveyors who had been caught by the overflow
on Tasajara plain, had abandoned their horses on the bank of Tasajara
Creek, and with a hastily constructed raft had intrusted themselves and
their instruments to the current. “But,” said Harkutt quickly, “there is
no connection between Tasajara Creek and this stream.”
The two men laughed. “There is NOW,” said one of them.
“But Tasajara Creek is a part of the bay,” said the astonished Harkutt,
“and this stream rises inland and only runs into the bay four miles
lower down. And I don't see how--
“You're almost twelve feet lower here than Tasajara Creek,” said the
first man, with a certain professional authority, “and that's WHY.
There's more water than Tasajara Creek can carry, and it's seeking the
bay this way. Look,” he continued, taking the lantern from Harkutt's
hand and casting its rays on the stream, “that's salt drift from the
upper bay, and part of Tasajara Creek's running by your house now! Don't
be alarmed,” he added reassuringly, glancing at the staring storekeeper.
“You're all right here; this is only the overflow and will find its
level soon.”
But Mr. Harkutt remained gazing abstractedly at the smiling speaker.
From the window above the impatient Phemie was wondering why he kept
the strangers waiting in the rain while he talked about things that were
perfectly plain. It was so like a man!
“Then there's a waterway straight to Tasajara Creek?” he said slowly.
“There is, as long as this flood lasts,” returned the first speaker
promptly; “and a cutting through the bank of two or three hundred yards
would make it permanent. Well, what's the matter with that?”
“Nothin',” said Harkutt hurriedly. “I am only considerin'! But come in,
dry yourselves, and take suthin'.”
The light over the rushing water was withdrawn, and the whole prospect
sank back into profound darkness. Mr. Harkutt had disappeared with
his guests. Then there was the familiar shuffle of his feet on
the staircase, followed by other more cautious footsteps that grew
delicately and even courteously deliberate as they approached. At which
the young girl, in some new sense of decorum, drew in her pretty head,
glanced around the room quickly, reset the tidy on her father's chair,
placed the resplendent accordion like an ornament in the exact centre of
the table, and then vanished into the hall as Mr. Harkutt entered with
the strangers.
They were both of the same age and appearance, but the principal speaker
was evidently the superior of his companion, and although their attitude
to each other was equal and familiar, it could be easily seen that
he was the leader. He had a smooth, beardless face, with a critical
expression of eye and mouth that might have been fastidious and
supercilious but for the kindly, humorous perception that tempered
it. His quick eye swept the apartment and then fixed itself upon the
accordion, but a smile lit up his face as he said quietly,--
“I hope we haven't frightened the musician away. It was bad enough to
have interrupted the young lady.”
“No, no,” said Mr. Harkutt, who seemed to have lost his abstraction in
the nervousness of hospitality. “I reckon she's only lookin' after her
sick sister. But come into the kitchen, both of you, straight off, and
while you're dryin' your clothes, mother'll fix you suthin' hot.”
“We only need to change our boots and stockings; we've some dry ones in
our pack downstairs,” said the first speaker hesitatingly.
“I'll fetch 'em up and you can change in the kitchen. The old woman
won't mind,” said Harkutt reassuringly. “Come along.” He led the way to
the kitchen; the two strangers exchanged a glance of humorous perplexity
and followed.
The quiet of the little room was once more unbroken. A far-off
commiserating murmur indicated that Mrs. Harkutt was receiving her
guests. The cool breath of the wet leaves without slightly stirred the
white dimity curtains, and somewhere from the darkened eaves there was
a still, somnolent drip. Presently a hurried whisper and a half-laugh
appeared to be suppressed in the outer passage or hall. There
was another moment of hesitation and the door opened suddenly and
ostentatiously, disclosing Phemie, with a taller and slighter young
woman, her elder sister, at her side. Perceiving that the room was
empty, they both said “Oh!” yet with a certain artificiality of manner
that was evidently a lingering trace of some previous formal attitude
they had assumed. Then without further speech they each selected a
chair and a position, having first shaken out their dresses, and gazed
silently at each other.
It may be said briefly that sitting thus--in spite of their unnatural
attitude, or perhaps rather because of its suggestion of a photographic
pose--they made a striking picture, and strongly accented their separate
peculiarities. They were both pretty, but the taller girl, apparently
the elder, had an ideal refinement and regularity of feature which was
not only unlike Phemie, but gratuitously unlike the rest of her family,
and as hopelessly and even wantonly inconsistent with her surroundings
as was the elaborately ornamented accordion on the centre-table. She was
one of those occasional creatures, episodical in the South and West,
who might have been stamped with some vague ante-natal impression of a
mother given to over-sentimental contemplation of books of beauty and
albums rather than the family features; offspring of typical men and
women, and yet themselves incongruous to any known local or even general
type. The long swan-like neck, tendriled hair, swimming eyes, and small
patrician head, had never lived or moved before in Tasajara or the
West, nor perhaps even existed except as a personified “Constancy,”
“Meditation,” or the “Baron's Bride,” in mezzotint or copperplate. Even
the girl's common pink print dress with its high sleeves and shoulders
could not conventionalize these original outlines; and the hand that
rested stiffly on the back of her chair, albeit neither over-white nor
well kept, looked as if it had never held anything but a lyre, a rose,
or a good book. Even the few sprays of wild jessamine which she had
placed in the coils of her waving hair, although a local fashion, became
her as a special ornament.
The two girls kept their constrained and artificially elaborated
attitude for a few moments, accompanied by the murmur of voices in the
kitchen, the monotonous drip of the eaves before the window, and the
far-off sough of the wind. Then Phemie suddenly broke into a constrained
giggle, which she however quickly smothered as she had the accordion,
and with the same look of mischievous distress.
“I'm astonished at you, Phemie,” said Clementina in a deep contralto
voice, which seemed even deeper from its restraint. “You don't seem to
have any sense. Anybody'd think you never had seen a stranger before.”
“Saw him before you did,” retorted Phemie pertly. But here a pushing
of chairs and shuffling of feet in the kitchen checked her. Clementina
fixed an abstracted gaze on the ceiling; Phemie regarded a leaf on
the window sill with photographic rigidity as the door opened to the
strangers and her father.
The look of undisguised satisfaction which lit the young men's faces
relieved Mr. Harkutt's awkward introduction of any embarrassment, and
almost before Phemie was fully aware of it, she found herself talking
rapidly and in a high key with Mr. Lawrence Grant, the surveyor, while
her sister was equally, although more sedately, occupied with Mr.
Stephen Rice, his assistant. But the enthusiasm of the strangers, and
the desire to please and be pleased was so genuine and contagious that
presently the accordion was brought into requisition, and Mr. Grant
exhibited a surprising faculty of accompaniment to Mr. Rice's tenor, in
which both the girls joined.
Then a game of cards with partners followed, into which the rival
parties introduced such delightful and shameless obviousness of
cheating, and displayed such fascinating and exaggerated partisanship
that the game resolved itself into a hilarious melee, to which peace was
restored only by an exhibition of tricks of legerdemain with the
cards by the young surveyor. All of which Mr. Harkutt supervised
patronizingly, with occasional fits of abstraction, from his
rocking-chair; and later Mrs. Harkutt from her kitchen threshold, wiping
her arms on her apron and commiseratingly observing that she “declared,
the young folks looked better already.”
But it was here a more dangerous element of mystery and suggestion was
added by Mr. Lawrence Grant in the telling of Miss Euphemia's fortune
from the cards before him, and that young lady, pink with excitement,
fluttered her little hands not unlike timid birds over the cards to be
drawn, taking them from him with an audible twitter of anxiety and
great doubts whether a certain “fair-haired gentleman” was in hearts or
diamonds.
“Here are two strangers,” said Mr. Grant, with extraordinary gravity
laying down the cards, “and here is a 'journey;' this is 'unexpected
news,' and this ten of diamonds means 'great wealth' to you, which you
see follows the advent of the two strangers and is some way connected
with them.”
“Oh, indeed,” said the young lady with great pertness and a toss of her
head. “I suppose they've got the money with them.”
“No, though it reaches you through them,” he answered with unflinching
solemnity. “Wait a bit, I have it! I see, I've made a mistake with this
card. It signifies a journey or a road. Queer! isn't it, Steve? It's THE
ROAD.”
“It is queer,” said Rice with equal gravity; “but it's so. The road,
sure!” Nevertheless he looked up into the large eyes of Clementina with
a certain confidential air of truthfulness.
“You see, ladies,” continued the surveyor, appealing to them with
unabashed rigidity of feature, “the cards don't lie! Luckily we are in
a position to corroborate them. The road in question is a secret known
only to us and some capitalists in San Francisco. In fact even THEY
don't know that it is feasible until WE report to them. But I don't mind
telling you now, as a slight return for your charming hospitality, that
the road is a RAILROAD from Oakland to Tasajara Creek of which we've
just made the preliminary survey. So you see what the cards mean is
this: You're not far from Tasajara Creek; in fact with a very little
expense your father could connect this stream with the creek, and have a
WATERWAY STRAIGHT TO THE RAILROAD TERMINUS. That's the wealth the cards
promise; and if your father knows how to take a hint he can make his
fortune!”
It was impossible to say which was the most dominant in the face of the
speaker, the expression of assumed gravity or the twinkling of humor in
his eyes. The two girls with superior feminine perception divined
that there was much truth in what he said, albeit they didn't
entirely understand it, and what they did understand--except the man's
good-humored motive--was not particularly interesting. In fact they
were slightly disappointed. What had promised to be an audaciously
flirtatious declaration, and even a mischievous suggestion of marriage,
had resolved itself into something absurdly practical and business-like.
Not so Mr. Harkutt. He quickly rose from his chair, and, leaning over
the table, with his eyes fixed on the card as if it really signified the
railroad, repeated quickly: “Railroad, eh! What's that? A railroad to
Tasajara Creek? Ye don't mean it!--That is--it ain't a SURE thing?”
“Perfectly sure. The money is ready in San Francisco now, and by this
time next year--”
“A railroad to Tasajara Creek!” continued Harkutt hurriedly. “What part
of it? Where?”
“At the embarcadero naturally,” responded Grant. “There isn't but the
one place for the terminus. There's an old shanty there now belongs to
somebody.”
“Why, pop!” said Phemie with sudden recollection, “ain't it 'Lige
Curtis's house? The land he offered”--
“Hush!” said her father.
“You know, the one written in that bit of paper,” continued the innocent
Phemie.
“Hush! will you? God A'mighty! are you goin' to mind me? Are you goin'
to keep up your jabber when I'm speakin' to the gentlemen? Is that your
manners? What next, I wonder!”
The sudden and unexpected passion of the speaker, the incomprehensible
change in his voice, and the utterly disproportionate exaggeration of
his attitude towards his daughters, enforced an instantaneous silence.
The rain began to drip audibly at the window, the rush of the river
sounded distinctly from without, even the shaking of the front part
of the dwelling by the distant gale became perceptible. An angry flash
sprang for an instant to the young assistant's eye, but it met the
cautious glance of his friend, and together both discreetly sought the
table. The two girls alone remained white and collected. “Will you go on
with my fortune, Mr. Grant?” said Phemie quietly.
A certain respect, perhaps not before observable, was suggested in the
surveyor's tone as he smilingly replied, “Certainly, I was only waiting
for you to show your confidence in me,” and took up the cards.
Mr. Harkutt coughed. “It looks as if that blamed wind had blown suthin'
loose in the store,” he said affectedly. “I reckon I'll go and see.” He
hesitated a moment and then disappeared in the passage. Yet even here he
stood irresolute, looking at the closed door behind him, and passing his
hand over his still flushed face. Presently he slowly and abstractedly
ascended the flight of steps, entered the smaller passage that led to
the back door of the shop and opened it.
He was at first a little startled at the halo of light from the
still glowing stove, which the greater obscurity of the long room had
heightened rather than diminished. Then he passed behind the counter,
but here the box of biscuits which occupied the centre and cast a shadow
over it compelled him to grope vaguely for what he sought. Then he
stopped suddenly, the paper he had just found dropping from his fingers,
and said sharply,--
“Who's there?”
“Me, pop.”
“John Milton?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What the devil are you doin' there, sir?”
“Readin'.”
It was true. The boy was half reclining in a most distorted posture on
two chairs, his figure in deep shadow, but his book was raised above his
head so as to catch the red glow of the stove on the printed page.
Even then his father's angry interruption scarcely diverted his
preoccupation; he raised himself in his chair mechanically, with his
eyes still fixed on his book. Seeing which his father quickly regained
the paper, but continued his objurgation.
“How dare you? Clear off to bed, will you! Do you hear me? Pretty
goin's on,” he added as if to justify his indignation. “Sneakin' in here
and--and lyin' 'round at this time o' night! Why, if I hadn't come in
here to”--
“What?” asked the boy mechanically, catching vaguely at the unfinished
sentence and staring automatically at the paper in his father's hand.
“Nothin', sir! Go to bed, I tell you! Will you? What are you standin'
gawpin' at?” continued Harkutt furiously.
The boy regained his feet slowly and passed his father, but not without
noticing with the same listless yet ineffaceable perception of childhood
that he was hurriedly concealing the paper in his pocket. With the same
youthful inconsequence, wondering at this more than at the interruption,
which was no novel event, he went slowly out of the room.
Harkutt listened to the retreating tread of his bare feet in the passage
and then carefully locked the door. Taking the paper from his pocket,
and borrowing the idea he had just objurgated in his son, he turned it
towards the dull glow of the stove and attempted to read it. But perhaps
lacking the patience as well as the keener sight of youth, he was forced
to relight the candle which he had left on the counter, and reperused
the paper. Yes! there was certainly no mistake! Here was the actual
description of the property which the surveyor had just indicated as
the future terminus of the new railroad, and here it was conveyed to
him--Daniel Harkutt! What was that? Somebody knocking? What did this
continual interruption mean? An odd superstitious fear now mingled with
his irritation.
The sound appeared to come from the front shutters. It suddenly
occurred to him that the light might be visible through the crevices. He
hurriedly extinguished it, and went to the door.
“Who's there?”
“Me,--Peters. Want to speak to you.”
Mr. Harkutt with evident reluctance drew the bolts. The wind, still
boisterous and besieging, did the rest, and precipitately propelled
Peters through the carefully guarded opening. But his surprise at
finding himself in the darkness seemed to forestall any explanation of
his visit.
“Well,” he said with an odd mingling of reproach and suspicion. “I
declare I saw a light here just this minit! That's queer.”
“Yes, I put it out just now. I was goin' away,” replied Harkutt, with
ill-disguised impatience.
“What! been here ever since?”
“No,” said Harkutt curtly.
“Well, I want to speak to ye about 'Lige. Seein' the candle shinin'
through the chinks I thought he might be still with ye. If he ain't, it
looks bad. Light up, can't ye! I want to show you something.”
There was a peremptoriness in his tone that struck Harkutt disagreeably,
but observing that he was carrying something in his hand, he somewhat
nervously re-lit the candle and faced him. Peters had a hat in his hand.
It was 'Lige's!
“'Bout an hour after we fellers left here,” said Peters, “I heard the
rattlin' of hoofs on the road, and then it seemed to stop just by my
house. I went out with a lantern, and, darn my skin! if there warn't
'Lige's hoss, the saddle empty, and 'Lige nowhere! I looked round and
called him--but nothing were to be seen. Thinkin' he might have slipped
off--tho' ez a general rule drunken men don't, and he is a good rider--I
followed down the road, lookin' for him. I kept on follerin' it down to
your run, half a mile below.”
“But,” began Harkutt, with a quick nervous laugh, “you don't reckon that
because of that he”--
“Hold on!” said Peters, grimly producing a revolver from his side-pocket
with the stock and barrel clogged and streaked with mud. “I found THAT
too,--and look! one barrel discharged! And,” he added hurriedly, as
approaching a climax, “look ye,--what I nat'rally took for wet from the
rain--inside that hat--was--blood!”
“Nonsense!” said Harkutt, putting the hat aside with a new
fastidiousness. “You don't think”--
“I think,” said Peters, lowering his voice, “I think, by God! HE'S BIN
AND DONE IT!”
“No!”
“Sure! Oh, it's all very well for Billings and the rest of that
conceited crowd to sneer and sling their ideas of 'Lige gen'rally as
they did jess now here,--but I'd like 'em to see THAT.” It was difficult
to tell if Mr. Peters' triumphant delight in confuting his late
companions' theories had not even usurped in his mind the importance of
the news he brought, as it had of any human sympathy with it.
“Look here,” returned Harkutt earnestly, yet with a singularly cleared
brow and a more natural manner. “You ought to take them things over to
Squire Kerby's, right off, and show 'em to him. You kin tell him how you
left 'Lige here, and say that I can prove by my daughter that he went
away about ten minutes after,--at least, not more than fifteen.” Like
all unprofessional humanity, Mr. Harkutt had an exaggerated conception
of the majesty of unimportant detail in the eye of the law. “I'd go with
you myself,” he added quickly, “but I've got company--strangers--here.”
“How did he look when he left,--kinder wild?” suggested Peters.
Harkutt had begun to feel the prudence of present reticence. “Well,” he
said, cautiously, “YOU saw how he looked.”
“You wasn't rough with him?--that might have sent him off, you know,”
said Peters.
“No,” said Harkutt, forgetting himself in a quick indignation, “no,
I not only treated him to another drink, but gave him”--he stopped
suddenly and awkwardly.
“Eh?” said Peters.
“Some good advice,--you know,” said Harkutt, hastily. “But come, you'd
better hurry over to the squire's. You know YOU'VE made the discovery;
YOUR evidence is important, and there's a law that obliges you to give
information at once.”
The excitement of discovery and the triumph over his disputants being
spent, Peters, after the Sidon fashion, evidently did not relish
activity as a duty. “You know,” he said dubiously, “he mightn't be dead,
after all.”
Harkutt became a trifle distant. “You know your own opinion of the
thing,” he replied after a pause. “You've circumstantial evidence
enough to see the squire, and set others to work on it; and,” he added
significantly, “you've done your share then, and can wipe your hands of
it, eh?”
“That's so,” said Peters, eagerly. “I'll just run over to the squire.”
“And on account of the women folks, you know, and the strangers here,
I'll say nothin' about it to-night,” added Harkutt.
Peters nodded his head, and taking up the hat of the unfortunate Elijah
with a certain hesitation, as if he feared it had already lost its
dramatic intensity as a witness, disappeared into the storm and darkness
again. A lurking gust of wind lying in ambush somewhere seemed to swoop
down on him as if to prevent further indecision and whirl him away in
the direction of the justice's house; and Mr. Harkutt shut the door,
bolted it, and walked aimlessly back to the counter.
From a slow, deliberate and cautious man, he seemed to have changed
within an hour to an irresolute and capricious one. He took the paper
from his pocket, and, unlocking the money drawer of his counter, folded
into a small compass that which now seemed to be the last testament of
Elijah Curtis, and placed it in a recess. Then he went to the back door
and paused, then returned, reopened the money drawer, took out the
paper and again buttoned it in his hip pocket, standing by the stove and
staring abstractedly at the dull glow of the fire. He even went through
the mechanical process of raking down the ashes,--solely to gain time
and as an excuse for delaying some other necessary action.
He was thinking what he should do. Had the question of his right to
retain and make use of that paper been squarely offered to him an hour
ago, he would without doubt have decided that he ought not to keep it.
Even now, looking at it as an abstract principle, he did not deceive
himself in the least. But Nature has the reprehensible habit of
not presenting these questions to us squarely and fairly, and it is
remarkable that in most of our offending the abstract principle is never
the direct issue. Mr. Harkutt was conscious of having been unwillingly
led step by step into a difficult, not to say dishonest, situation,
and against his own seeking. He had never asked Elijah to sell him the
property; he had distinctly declined it; it had even been forced upon
him as security for the pittance he so freely gave him. This proved (to
himself) that he himself was honest; it was only the circumstances that
were queer. Of course if Elijah had lived, he, Harkutt, might have tried
to drive some bargain with him before the news of the railroad survey
came out--for THAT was only business. But now that Elijah was dead, who
would be a penny the worse or better but himself if he chose to consider
the whole thing as a lucky speculation, and his gift of five dollars as
the price he paid for it? Nobody could think that he had calculated upon
'Lige's suicide, any more than that the property would become valuable.
In fact if it came to that, if 'Lige had really contemplated killing
himself as a hopeless bankrupt after taking Harkutt's money as a loan,
it was a swindle on his--Harkutt's--good-nature. He worked himself into
a rage, which he felt was innately virtuous, at this tyranny of cold
principle over his own warm-hearted instincts, but if it came to the
LAW, he'd stand by law and not sentiment. He'd just let them--by
which he vaguely meant the world, Tasajara, and possibly his own
conscience--see that he wasn't a sentimental fool, and he'd freeze on to
that paper and that property!
Only he ought to have spoken out before. He ought to have told the
surveyor at once that he owned the land. He ought to have said: “Why,
that's my land. I bought it of that drunken 'Lige Curtis for a song and
out of charity.” Yes, that was the only real trouble, and that came from
his own goodness, his own extravagant sense of justice and right,--his
own cursed good-nature. Yet, on second thoughts, he didn't know why he
was obliged to tell the surveyor. Time enough when the company wanted to
buy the land. As soon as it was settled that 'Lige was dead he'd openly
claim the property. But what if he wasn't dead? or they couldn't find
his body? or he had only disappeared? His plain, matter-of-fact face
contracted and darkened. Of course he couldn't ask the company to
wait for him to settle that point. He had the power to dispose of the
property under that paper, and--he should do it. If 'Lige turned up,
that was another matter, and he and 'Lige could arrange it between them.
He was quite firm here, and oddly enough quite relieved in getting rid
of what appeared only a simple question of detail. He never suspected
that he was contemplating the one irretrievable step, and summarily
dismissing the whole ethical question.
He turned away from the stove, opened the back door, and walked with a
more determined step through the passage to the sitting-room. But here
he halted again on the threshold with a quick return of his old habits
of caution. The door was slightly open; apparently his angry outbreak of
an hour ago had not affected the spirits of his daughters, for he could
hear their hilarious voices mingling with those of the strangers. They
were evidently still fortune-telling, but this time it was the prophetic
and divining accents of Mr. Rice addressed to Clementina which were now
plainly audible.
“I see heaps of money and a great many friends in the change that is
coming to you. Dear me! how many suitors! But I cannot promise you any
marriage as brilliant as my friend has just offered your sister. You may
be certain, however, that you'll have your own choice in this, as you
have in all things.”
“Thank you for nothing,” said Clementina's voice. “But what are those
horrid black cards beside them?--that's trouble, I'm sure.”
“Not for you, though near you. Perhaps some one you don't care much for
and don't understand will have a heap of trouble on your account,--yes,
on account of these very riches; see, he follows the ten of diamonds. It
may be a suitor; it may be some one now in the house, perhaps.”
“He means himself, Miss Clementina,” struck in Grant's voice laughingly.
“You're not listening, Miss Harkutt,” said Rice with half-serious
reproach. “Perhaps you know who it is?”
But Miss Clementina's reply was simply a hurried recognition of her
father's pale face that here suddenly confronted her with the opening
door.
“Why, it's father!”