“Follow the trail and ask your way from time to time. All the goatherds know
where the Placide mine is.”
Such were his simple instructions as he headed my horse toward the canyon. But
as I drew off, he shouted out:
“If you get stuck, leave it to the horse. He knows more about it than you do.”
With a vague gesture toward the northwest, he turned away, leaving me in
contemplation of the grandest scenery I had yet come upon in all my travels.
Fifteen miles! but those miles lay through the very heart of the mountains,
ranging anywhere from six to seven thousand feet high. In ten minutes the city
and all signs of city life were out of sight. In five more I was seemingly as
far removed from all civilization as if I had gone a hundred miles into the
wilderness.
As my horse settled down to work, picking his way, now here and now there,
sometimes over the brown earth, hard and baked as in a thousand furnaces, and
sometimes over the stunted grass whose needle-like stalks seemed never to have
known moisture, I let my eyes roam to such peaks as were not cut off from view
by the nearer hillsides, and wondered whether the snow which capped them was
whiter than any other or the blue of the sky bluer, that the two together had
the effect upon me of cameo work on a huge and unapproachable scale.
Certainly the effect of these grand mountains, into which you leap without any
preparation from the streets and market-places of America’s oldest city, is
such as is not easily described.
We struck water now and then,—narrow water—courses which my horse
followed in mid stream, and, more interesting yet, goatherds with their flocks,
Mexicans all, who seemed to understand no English, but were picturesque enough
to look at and a welcome break in the extreme lonesomeness of the way.
I had been told that they would serve me as guides if I felt at all doubtful of
the trail, and in one or two instances they proved to be of decided help. They
could gesticulate, if they could not speak English, and when I tried them with
the one word Placide they would nod and point out which of the many side
canyons I was to follow. But they always looked up as they did so, up, up, till
I took to looking up, too, and when, after miles multiplied indefinitely by the
winding of the trail, I came out upon a ledge from which a full view of the
opposite range could be had, and saw fronting me, from the side of one of its
tremendous peaks, the gap of a vast hole not two hundred feet from the
snowline, I knew that, inaccessible as it looked, I was gazing up at the
opening of Abner Fairbrother’s new mine, the Placide.
The experience was a strange one. The two ranges approached so nearly that it
seemed as if a ball might be tossed from one to the other. But the chasm
between was stupendous. I grew dizzy as I looked downward and saw the endless
zigzags yet to be traversed step by step before the bottom of the canyon could
be reached, and then the equally interminable zigzags up the acclivity beyond,
all of which I must trace, still step by step, before I could hope to arrive at
the camp which, from where I stood, looked to be almost within hail of my
voice.
I have described the mine as a hole. That was all I saw at first—a great
black hole in the dark brown earth of the mountain-side, from which ran down a
still darker streak into the waste places far below it. But as I looked longer
I saw that it was faced by a ledge cut out of the friable soil, on which I was
now able to descry the pronounced white of two or three tent-tops and some
other signs of life, encouraging enough to the eye of one whose lot it was to
crawl like a fly up that tremendous mountain-side.
Truly I could understand why those three men, probably newspaper correspondents
like myself, had turned back to Santa Fe, after a glance from my present
outlook. But though I understood I did not mean to duplicate their retreat.
The sight of those tents, the thought of what one of them contained, inspired
me with new courage, and, releasing my grip upon the rein, I allowed my patient
horse to proceed. Shortly after this I passed the divide—that is where
the water sheds both ways—then the descent began. It was zigzag, just as
the climb had been, but I preferred the climb. I did not have the unfathomable
spaces so constantly before me, nor was my imagination so active. It was fixed
on heights to be attained rather than on valleys to roll into. However, I did
not roll.
The Mexican saddle held me securely at whatever angle I was poised, and once
the bottom was reached I found that I could face, with considerable equanimity,
the corresponding ascent. Only, as I saw how steep the climb bade fair to be, I
did not see how I was ever to come down again. Going up was possible, but the
descent—
However, as what goes up must in the course of nature come down, I put this
question aside and gave my horse his head, after encouraging him with a few
blades of grass, which he seemed to find edible enough, though they had the
look and something of the feel of spun glass.
How we got there you must ask this good animal, who took all the responsibility
and did all the work. I merely clung and balanced, and at times, when he
rounded the end of a zigzag, for instance, I even shut my eyes, though the
prospect was magnificent. At last even his patience seemed to give out, and he
stopped and trembled. But before I could open my eyes on the abyss beneath he
made another effort. I felt the brush of tree branches across my face, and,
looking up, saw before me the ledge or platform dotted with tents, at which I
had looked with such longing from the opposite hillsides.
Simultaneously I heard voices, and saw approaching a bronzed and bearded man
with strongly-marked Scotch features and a determined air.
“The doctor!” I involuntarily exclaimed, with a glance at the small and curious
tent before which he stood guard.
“Yes, the doctor,” he answered in unexpectedly good English. “And who are you?
Have you brought the mail and those medicines I sent for?”
“No,” I replied with as propitiatory a smile as I could muster up in face of
his brusk forbidding expression. “I came on my own errand. I am a
representative of the New York—and I hope you will not deny me a word
with Mr. Fairbrother.”
With a gesture I hardly knew how to interpret he took my horse by the rein and
led us on a few steps toward another large tent, where he motioned me to
descend. Then he laid his hand on my shoulder and, forcing me to meet his eye,
said:
“You have made this journey—I believe you said from New York—to see
Mr. Fairbrother. Why?”
“Because Mr. Fairbrother is at present the most sought-for man in America,” I
returned boldly. “His wife—you know about his wife—”
“No. How should I know about his wife? I know what his temperature is and what
his respiration is—but his wife? What about his wife? He don’t know
anything about her now himself; he is not allowed to read letters.”
“But you read the papers. You must have known, before you left Santa Fe, of
Mrs. Fairbrother’s foul and most mysterious murder in New York. It has been the
theme of two continents for the last ten days.”
He shrugged his shoulders, which might mean anything, and confined his reply to
a repetition of my own words.
“Mrs. Fairbrother murdered!” he exclaimed, but in a suppressed voice, to which
point was given by the cautious look he cast behind him at the tent which had
drawn my attention. “He must not know it, man. I could not answer for his life
if he received the least shock in his present critical condition. Murdered?
When?”
“Ten days ago, at a ball in New York. It was after Mr. Fairbrother left the
city. He was expected to return, after hearing the news, but he seems to have
kept straight on to his destination. He was not very fond of his
wife,—that is, they have not been living together for the last year. But
he could not help feeling the shock of her death which he must have heard of
somewhere along the route.”
“He has said nothing in his delirium to show that he knew it. It is possible,
just possible, that he didn’t read the papers. He could not have been well for
days before he reached Santa Fe.”
“When were you called in to attend him?”
“The very night after he reached this place. It was thought he wouldn’t live to
reach the camp. But he is a man of great pluck. He held up till his foot
touched this platform. Then he succumbed.”
“If he was as sick as that,” I muttered, “why did he leave Santa Fe? He must
have known what it would mean to be sick here.”
“I don’t think he did. This is his first visit to the mine. He evidently knew
nothing of the difficulties of the road. But he would not stop. He was
determined to reach the camp, even after he had been given a sight of it from
the opposite mountain. He told them that he had once crossed the Sierras in
midwinter. But he wasn’t a sick man then.”
“Doctor, they don’t know who killed his wife.”
“He didn’t.”
“I know, but under such circumstances every fact bearing on the event is of
immense importance. There is one which Mr. Fairbrother only can make clear. It
can be said in a word—”
The grim doctor’s eye flashed angrily and I stopped.
“Were you a detective from the district attorney’s office in New York, sent on
with special powers to examine him, I should still say what I am going to say
now. While Mr. Fairbrother’s temperature and pulse remain where they now are,
no one shall see him and no one shall talk to him save myself and his nurse.”
I turned with a sick look of disappointment toward the road up which I had so
lately come. “Have I panted, sweltered, trembled, for three mortal hours on the
worst trail a man ever traversed to go back with nothing for my journey? That
seems to me hard lines. Where is the manager of this mine?”
The doctor pointed toward a man bending over the edge of the great hole from
which, at that moment, a line of Mexicans was issuing, each with a sack on his
back which he flung down before what looked like a furnace built of clay.
“That’s he. Mr. Haines, of Philadelphia. What do you want of him?”
“Permission to stay the night. Mr. Fairbrother may be better to-morrow.”
“I won’t allow it and I am master here, so far as my patient is concerned. You
couldn’t stay here without talking, and talking makes excitement, and
excitement is just what he can not stand. A week from now I will see about
it—that is, if my patient continues to improve. I am not sure that he
will.”
“Let me spend that week here. I’ll not talk any more than the dead. Maybe the
manager will let me carry sacks.”
“Look here,” said the doctor, edging me farther and farther away from the tent
he hardly let out of his sight for a moment. “You’re a canny lad, and shall
have your bite and something to drink before you take your way back. But back
you go before sunset and with this message: No man from any paper north or
south will be received here till I hang out a blue flag. I say blue, for that
is the color of my bandana. When my patient is in a condition to discuss murder
I’ll hoist it from his tent-top. It can be seen from the divide, and if you
want to camp there on the lookout, well and good. As for the police, that’s
another matter. I will see them if they come, but they need not expect to talk
to my patient. You may say so down there. It will save scrambling up this trail
to no purpose.”
“You may count on me,” said I; “trust a New York correspondent to do the right
thing at the right time to head off the boys. But I doubt if they will believe
me.”
“In that case I shall have a barricade thrown up fifty feet down the
mountain-side,” said he.
“But the mail and your supplies?”
“Oh, the burros can make their way up. We shan’t suffer.”
“You are certainly master,” I remarked.
All this time I had been using my eyes. There was not much to see, but what
there was was romantically interesting. Aside from the furnace and what was
going on there, there was little else but a sleeping-tent, a cooking-tent, and
the small one I had come on first, which, without the least doubt, contained
the sick man. This last tent was of a peculiar construction and showed the
primitive nature of everything at this height. It consisted simply of a cloth
thrown over a thing like a trapeze. This cloth did not even come to the ground
on either side, but stopped short a foot or so from the flat mound of adobe
which serves as a base or floor for hut or tent in New Mexico. The rear of the
simple tent abutted on the mountain-side; the opening was toward the valley. I
felt an intense desire to look into this opening,—so intense that I
thought I would venture on an attempt to gratify it. Scrutinizing the resolute
face of the man before me and flattering myself that I detected signs of humor
underlying his professional bruskness, I asked, somewhat mournfully, if he
would let me go away without so much as a glance at the man I had come so far
to see. A glimpse would satisfy me I assured him, as the hint of a twinkle
flashed in his eye. “Surely there will be no harm in that. I’ll take it instead
of supper.”
He smiled, but not encouragingly, and I was feeling very despondent, indeed,
when the canvas on which our eyes were fixed suddenly shook and the calm figure
of a woman stepped out before us, clad in the simplest garb, but showing in
every line of face and form a character of mingled kindness and shrewdness. She
was evidently on the lookout for the doctor, for she made a sign as she saw him
and returned instantly into the tent.
“Mr. Fairbrother has just fallen asleep,” he explained. “It isn’t discipline
and I shall have to apologize to Miss Serra, but if you will promise not to
speak nor make the least disturbance I will let you take the one peep you
prefer to supper.”
“I promise,” said I.
Leading the way to the opening, he whispered a word to the nurse, then motioned
me to look in. The sight was a simple one, but to me very impressive. The owner
of palaces, a man to whom millions were as thousands to such poor devils as
myself, lay on an improvised bed of evergreens, wrapped in a horse blanket and
with nothing better than another of these rolled up under his head. At his side
sat his nurse on what looked like the uneven stump of a tree. Close to her hand
was a tolerably flat stone, on which I saw arranged a number of bottles and
such other comforts as were absolutely necessary to a proper care of the
sufferer.
That was all. In these few words I have told the whole story. To be sure, this
simple tent, perched seven thousand feet and more above sea-level, had one
advantage which even his great house in New York could not offer. This was the
out look. Lying as he did facing the valley, he had only to open his eyes to
catch a full view of the panorama of sky and mountain stretched out before him.
It was glorious; whether seen at morning, noon or night, glorious. But I doubt
if he would not gladly have exchanged it for a sight of his home walls.
As I started to go, a stir took place in the blanket wrapped about his chin,
and I caught a glimpse of the iron-gray head and hollow cheeks of the great
financier. He was a very sick man. Even I could see that. Had I obtained the
permission I sought and been allowed to ask him one of the many questions
burning on my tongue, I should have received only delirium for reply. There was
no reaching that clouded intelligence now, and I felt grateful to the doctor
for convincing me of it.
I told him so and thanked him quite warmly when we were well away from the
tent, and his answer was almost kindly, though he made no effort to hide his
impatience and anxiety to see me go. The looks he cast at the sun were
significant, and, having no wish to antagonize him and every wish to visit the
spot again, I moved toward my horse with the intention of untying him.
To my surprise the doctor held me back.
“You can’t go to-night,” said he, “your horse has hurt himself.”
It was true. There was something the matter with the animal’s left forefoot. As
the doctor lifted it, the manager came up. He agreed with the doctor. I could
not make the descent to Santa Fe on that horse that night. Did I feel elated?
Rather. I had no wish to descend. Yet I was far from foreseeing what the night
was to bring me.
I was turned over to the manager, but not without a final injunction from the
doctor. “Not a word to any one about your errand! Not a word about the New York
tragedy, as you value Mr. Fairbrother’s life.”
“Not a word,” said I.
Then he left me.
To see the sun go down and the moon come up from a ledge hung, as it were, in
mid air! The experience was novel—but I refrain. I have more important
matters to relate.
I was given a bunk at the extreme end of the long sleeping-tent, and turned in
with the rest. I expected to sleep, but on finding that I could catch a sight
of the sick tent from under the canvas, I experienced such fascination in
watching this forbidden spot that midnight came before I had closed my eyes.
Then all desire to sleep left me, for the patient began to moan and presently
to talk, and, the stillness of the solitary height being something abnormal, I
could sometimes catch the very words. Devoid as they were of all rational
meaning, they excited my curiosity to the burning point; for who could tell if
he might not say something bearing on the mystery?
But that fevered mind had recurred to early scenes and the babble which came to
my ears was all of mining camps in the Rockies and the dicker of horses.
Perhaps the uneasy movement of my horse pulling at the end of his tether had
disturbed him. Perhaps—
But at the inner utterance of the second “perhaps” I found myself up on my
elbow listening with all my ears, and staring with wide-stretched eyes at the
thicket of stunted trees where the road debouched on the platform. Something
was astir there besides my horse. I could catch sounds of an unmistakable
nature. A rider was coming up the trail.
Slipping back into my place, I turned toward the doctor, who lay some two or
three bunks nearer the opening. He had started up, too, and in a moment was out
of the tent. I do not think he had observed my action, for it was very dark
where I lay and his back had been turned toward me. As for the others, they
slept like the dead, only they made more noise.
Interested—everything is interesting at such a height—I brought my
eye to bear on the ledge, and soon saw by the limpid light of a full moon the
stiff, short branches of the trees, on which my gaze was fixed, give way to an
advancing horse and rider.
“Halloo!” saluted the doctor in a whisper, which was in itself a warning. “Easy
there! We have sickness in this camp and it’s a late hour for visitors.”
“I know?”
The answer was subdued, but earnest.
“I’m the magistrate of this district. I’ve a question to ask this sick man, on
behalf of the New York Chief of Police, who is a personal friend of mine. It is
connected with—”
“Hush!”
The doctor had seized him by the arm and turned his face away from the sick
tent. Then the two heads came together and an argument began.
I could not hear a word of it, but their motions were eloquent. My sympathy was
with the magistrate, of course, and I watched eagerly while he passed a letter
over to the doctor, who vainly strove to read it by the light of the moon.
Finding this impossible, he was about to return it, when the other struck a
match and lit a lantern hanging from the horn of his saddle. The two heads came
together again, but as quickly separated with every appearance of
irreconcilement, and I was settling back with sensations of great
disappointment, when a sound fell on the night so unexpected to all concerned
that with a common impulse each eye sought the sick tent.
“Water! will some one give me water?” a voice had cried, quietly and with none
of the delirium which had hitherto rendered it unnatural.
The doctor started for the tent. There was the quickness of surprise in his
movement and the gesture he made to the magistrate, as he passed in, reawakened
an expectation in my breast which made me doubly watchful.
Providence was intervening in our favor, and I was not surprised to see him
presently reissue with the nurse, whom he drew into the shadow of the trees,
where they had a short conference. If she returned alone into the tent after
this conference I should know that the matter was at an end and that the doctor
had decided to maintain his authority against that of the magistrate. But she
remained outside and the magistrate was invited to join their council; when
they again left the shadow of the trees it was to approach the tent.
The magistrate, who was in the rear, could not have more than passed the
opening, but I thought him far enough inside not to detect any movement on my
part, so I took advantage of the situation to worm myself out of my corner and
across the ledge to where the tent made a shadow in the moonlight.
Crouching close, and laying my ear against the canvas, I listened.
The nurse was speaking in a gently persuasive tone. I imagined her kneeling by
the head of the patient and breathing words into his ear. These were what I
heard:
“You love diamonds. I have often noticed that; you look so long at the ring on
your hand. That is why I have let it stay there, though at times I have feared
it would drop off and roll away over the adobe down the mountain-side. Was I
right?”
“Yes, yes.” The words came with difficulty, but they were clear enough. “It’s
of small value. I like it because—”
He appeared to be too weak to finish.
A pause, during which she seemed to edge nearer to him.
“We all have some pet keepsake,” said she. “But I should never have supposed
this stone of yours an inexpensive one. But I forget that you are the owner of
a very large and remarkable diamond, a diamond that is spoken of sometimes in
the papers. Of course, if you have a gem like that, this one must appear very
small and valueless to you.”
“Yes, this is nothing, nothing.” And he appeared to turn away his head.
“Mr. Fairbrother! Pardon me, but I want to tell you something about that big
diamond of yours. You have been in and have not been able to read your letters,
so do not know that your wife has had some trouble with that diamond. People
have said that it is not a real stone, but a well-executed imitation. May I
write to her that this is a mistake, that it is all you have ever claimed for
it—that is, an unusually large diamond of the first water?”
I listened in amazement. Surely, this was an insidious way to get at the
truth,—a woman’s way, but who would say it was not a wise one, the
wisest, perhaps, which could be taken under the circumstances? What would his
reply be? Would it show that he was as ignorant of his wife’s death as was
generally believed, both by those about him here and those who knew him well in
New York? Or would the question convey nothing further to him than the
doubt—in itself an insult of the genuineness of that great stone which
had been his pride?
A murmur—that was all it could be called—broke from his fever-dried
lips and died away in an inarticulate gasp. Then, suddenly, sharply, a cry
broke from him, an intelligible cry, and we heard him say:
“No imitation! no imitation! It was a sun! a glory! No other like it! It lit
the air! it blazed, it burned! I see it now! I see—”
There the passion succumbed, the strength failed; another murmur, another, and
the great void of night which stretched over—I might almost say under
us—was no more quiet or seemingly impenetrable than the silence of that
moon-enveloped tent.
Would he speak again? I did not think so. Would she even try to make him? I did
not think this, either. But I did not know the woman.
Softly her voice rose again. There was a dominating insistence in her tones,
gentle as they were; the insistence of a healthy mind which seeks to control a
weakened one.
“You do not know of any imitation, then? It was the real stone you gave her.
You are sure of it; you would be ready to swear to it if—say just yes or
no,” she finished in gentle urgency.
Evidently he was sinking again into unconsciousness, and she was just holding
him back long enough for the necessary word.
It came slowly and with a dragging intonation, but there was no mistaking the
ring of truth with which he spoke.
“Yes,” said he.
When I heard the doctor’s voice and felt a movement in the canvas against which
I leaned, I took the warning and stole back hurriedly to my quarters.
I was scarcely settled, when the same group of three I had before watched
silhouetted itself again against the moonlight. There was some talk, a mingling
and separating of shadows; then the nurse glided back to her duties and the two
men went toward the clump of trees where the horse had been tethered.
Ten minutes and the doctor was back in his bunk. Was it imagination, or did I
feel his hand on my shoulder before he finally lay down and composed himself to
sleep? I can not say; I only know that I gave no sign, and that soon all stir
ceased in his direction and I was left to enjoy my triumph and to listen with
anxious interest to the strange and unintelligible sounds which accompanied the
descent of the horseman down the face of the cliff, and finally to watch with a
fascination, which drew me to my knees, the passage of that sparkling star of
light hanging from his saddle. It crept to and fro across the side of the
opposite mountain as he threaded its endless zigzags and finally disappeared
over the brow into the invisible canyons beyond.
With the disappearance of this beacon came lassitude and sleep, through whose
hazy atmosphere floated wild sentences from the sick tent, which showed that
the patient was back again in Nevada, quarreling over the price of a horse
which was to carry him beyond the reach of some threatening avalanche.
When next morning I came to depart, the doctor took me by both hands and looked
me straight in the eyes.
“You heard,” he said.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I can tell a satisfied man when I see him,” he growled, throwing down my hands
with that same humorous twinkle in his eyes which had encouraged me from the
first.