A STORY OF A DOUBLE MURDER.
As we have already stated, Winkle, while fighting the crowd of phantoms
and fancies that over-shadowed him, had felt inclination to confide in
his newly-found comrade. Being thus addressed decided him.
"I don't know that I'm making mountains out of mole-hills. I think,
though, that perhaps I have given way where I should have fought it
out, and allowed myself to be over-powered by that which would only
make a ripple in some men's lives. Sometimes I can think of that man
Endicott coolly enough; there are times, too, when I want and intend
to kill him. Yet I suppose that others have been injured as much--and
forgiven. Men are not always responsible for their mad fancies--do you
think they are?"
Blaze gave a curious look at the speaker. He appeared to ask the
question in perfect good faith, so the trapper answered:
"Not fur the'r mad fancies allers. No."
"I don't want to make a long story, and I don't want to go into too
many details. It will only raise the devil in me again and that I am
trying to keep down. I want my head cool now, if ever. It seems to me
it's cleared off wonderfully of late; perhaps it might so happen that
I could forgive. All the forgiveness in the world, though, won't bring
poor Ned back to life, or mend a mother's broken heart.
"I've never had much to do with him personally. I'm glad of it. Perhaps
there would have been enough of the cursed fascinating power about him
to have ruined me too. Ruin! No, that's not the word, either. He did
that anyhow. Made me his slave, or his tool, or his victim.
"You see Ned went from college into business, and might have done well
if he had never met Endicott. And I went from business into love, and
might have prospered if Endicott had not lived. There are some crimes
that law don't avenge and some that it does. Endicott has tried his
hand at both sorts, and the law, being weak, only punished him, or
attempted to, for the latter. Very lightly it laid it on him, too."
"Mebbe it hit him harder than you think fur," interpolated Blaze. "It's
no fun gittin' inter them clutches. But go on."
"Perhaps it did. I don't believe I ever thought of that before. Ned and
mother and I were wrapped up in each other. It's not often, I think,
that you find a family like ours was. There had never been a difference
of opinion or a single jar; but every thing went on smoothly. Ned was
the pet. He was the youngest and the frailest, and when I was away
at college he was left alone with mother. It never made me jealous a
bit because, somehow, it seemed natural. When I came home I petted him
too. We weren't rich exactly; but we had some money, and by a little
care had managed to live almost as though we were. Perhaps if we had
felt poverty we might have been happier. But, we had a taste of the
luxurious, and I'm afraid it gave and fed a desire for means more
ample. Ned, at least, got possessed with a yearning to be wealthy; and
I was in haste myself to realize some of my dreams. I'm not going to
trouble you with a complete family history, or tell how he and I, in
our different spheres, toiled ahead, with fair prospects, for several
years.
"One day I saw Edith Van Payne; and the picture she marked in my brain
just then has never faded since. Some men speak of being able by
shutting their eyes to bring up the scenes of long ago;--but, shut or
open, it's always there, I see her just the same. I can't imagine why a
woman should have such an influence. It's strange, it's even monstrous.
After that day, as I looked for her, I saw her oftener. Eventually I
came to know her. Then I found she was worth the studying. She was
entirely different from any other woman I had ever met, for there were
everlasting contradictions connected with her. She looked dashing and
almost masculine, yet she really was intensely feminine; she seemed at
first meeting to be beyond emotion, but, as I came to know her, she
was extremely sensitive. She was one of those women externally stamped
with all the marks of heartlessness, and yet have true, honest hearts
all ready for the crushing. Perhaps I was slow with my wooing, yet I
know I was wrapped up in it. I can not tell how much encouragement
I, at first, received. As much, I guess, as I deserved. You see, she
was almost alone in the world, and was making her own way as best she
might. She had a younger brother, though I saw very little of him.
After a bit Ned became acquainted with her. I introduced him myself.
They soon became great friends, though their friendship never ripened
into any thing like sentimentality. Their ages were too near for that.
If any thing, she was a few months the older.
"How or when Ned first became mixed up with Endicott I do not know.
In haste to become rich, he was open for speculation. I'm not certain
that it was not through Miss Van Payne. She knew him, met him often,
yet by some chance I never was introduced to him, never saw the three
together. What do you suppose the result was? He murdered both! It all
seemed to be done in an instant as it were. I was away from home for
a fortnight, and when I came back it was over. Ned he killed; that I
_might_ have borne, but, until a few days ago, I thought he had killed
the woman too.
"Mother had noticed a change in the boy. For two or three days she
would not see him; then he would come home taciturn and upset. At that
time she could only guess that his business affairs were going wrong.
Afterward I found how far out he had been led by this Endicott, who,
all the time feathering his own nest well, was dragging him to the
quicksands of financial rottenness.
"What you have told me of the conversation you overheard throws some
light on his course with Edith, though that I have not yet been able
to fully comprehend. It seems he would have married her and dared
not, even if he could. Preferring, then, the roundabout way of a
schemer to the straightforwardness of an honest man, he attempted to
establish an ownership in her. Curse him, he deliberately set about
compromising her! She could take good care of herself, and he knew it,
but he blackened her reputation simply and solely to give himself time,
hoping to conceal his own part in the matter and eventually to smooth
the affair over. Had he known the woman as I did, he never would have
attempted it, since he succeeded _too_ well.
"The crisis came during my absence. Carefully as he covered the traces
of his agency, Ned detected his share in the work. At first, to be
sure, there was only a faint suspicion; but, that soon ripened into
a certainty. Knowing my hopes and wishes, brotherly love urged him
to employ every means to learn the truth. Once engaged in this, he
was led to suspect Endicott's business integrity, and the revelations
brought about by an investigation in that direction were of themselves
overpowering.
"Then he did either a foolish or an unfortunate thing. Just in the
white heat he met Endicott. Remember, that he not only knew that this
man had compromised, almost beyond redemption, the woman his brother
loved; but that he himself was involved in a network of toils from
which he could not hope to escape short of the loss of his means, and,
worse still, with a damaged reputation. They met--and Endicott killed
him.
"Of course the jury found extenuating circumstances. Legal chicanery,
set in motion by money, saved his worthless neck--a neck that could I
have once grasped I would have wrung with as little compunction as that
of a chicken. I think I could have borne that horror; but, engrossed as
I was by it, it was some weeks before I knew that Edith had disappeared.
"At this time I believed she had made away with herself. I never
doubted it until the other night. Of all those who knew her, there
are few that did not believe the same. Heaven knows that I was loth
to believe it. I hunted high and low for her, since I never doubted
her honor, though I had never received any assurance of her love for
me. Her own brother was left in the dark as to what had become of her.
He found an envelope addressed to him, containing a sum of money she
had saved for a rainy day, and the simple words, written in pencil,
'Good-by.'
"My own business, suffering for a time from utter neglect, was disposed
of; my heart was chilled toward my broken-hearted mother--God help me,
she may be dead to-night--and I spent my time seeking for traces of
Edith, and waiting to meet Endicott.
"While I was off on what I thought a slight trace, for I had not
fully allowed myself to believe that she was dead, he emerged from a
prison, and escaped me. I followed him East; he eluded me. I heard of
him South; but he was gone when I reached New Orleans. Then I gave
way and was sick for a long season. When I came to myself something
prompted me to turn Westward. Strange how Fate, or some occult law
of attraction, drew me here. Yet many months of wandering, through
hardships and perils, brought me no surcease, and the tension on my
nerves has been gradually tightening ever since I found myself west of
the Mississippi. The rest you know. What _may_ happen, neither you, nor
I, nor any other living mortal may say."
Winkle told his story in a slow, quiet, yet intense way. Blaze listened
to it with evident interest.
"A condemned hard case he was. I've knowed men shot fur less than them.
That's the cuss o' civilization. If yer goin' to draw a bead upon this
man ye'd better do it here than furder East. Bein' that you've found
the girl alive, mebbe you'll weaken on that. A human critter's a curi's
consarn that only goes under onc't. In course red-skins I don't take
much account on; but, when it comes to drawin' it fine on a white, an'
he not lookin' for it--'pears to me it 'u'd glimmer the fire-sight."
"I think at two hundred yards he would be a dead man?"
Winkle said this slowly and half inquiringly, as though a doubt had
arisen in his mind; and then he continued, in a tone in curious
contrast to the one he generally used in speaking of Endicott:
"You know I've followed after him so long and was so certain of it. It
would be hard to let him go after all."
"Two hundred yard is some distance, an' a man's a mark o' moderate
bigness. I've seen a deer missed at fifty. Buck ag'er an' fancy
shootin' don't agree good. If you'll just keep cool an' not rush the
funeral mebbe ye'll eventooally git straight enough to not care a cuss
if school keeps er not. I've done ye more ner a hundred dollars' worth
of good a'ready."
"True, I know that--yet if that man were here now, if he could appear
suddenly--"
A remarkable change came over the man as he broke off the sentence and
sprung to his feet. Blaze, who trusted completely his own senses, and
was confident that Winkle could have discovered no signs of any danger,
looked at him in doubt and amazement as he stood bending now to one
side, again to another, eagerly listening, his rifle clutched with a
nervous grip.
"D'ye hear him?" he whispered. "He's coming, he's coming! curse him, I
tell you he's here now."
Then Blaze listened. It seemed, almost like a fancy, too, that he
heard, away miles off, a voice. He knew not whether it was the voice
of man or of nature. There are times when in Western solitudes the
two sound so wondrously alike that one is startled and perplexed. The
voices that one hears in the cottonwoods by the river-side, or the
cedars in the cañons! A brooder or a dreamer alone with them might well
be driven mad.
While the trapper listened, Winkle stole noiselessly away. The negro,
who had, during the recital of Winkle's story, been lying wrapped in a
blanket, unconsciously sleeping, suddenly awoke to consciousness, and
answered Blaze's astonished exclamation of, "Where the thunder's the
boy gone to?" with:
"Jist hold on hyar a bit. Dat's nuffin new. He done gone do dat ebery
leetle while; I fotch him back. Dat's de on'y t'ing 'bout Mass'r Winkle
dat's cur'us. He say he t'inks he hear hees man."
Pompey, without more ado, slid off in the direction in which Winkle
had gone, leaving Blaze alone, to ruminate on the story he had just
heard. The negro was brimful of western experience, and Blaze thought
it needless to follow. This summary exit of the two from camp gave him
fresh food for reflection, and his thoughts were somewhat mixed as
would appear from his soliloquy:
"Some, now, would call him crazy. I dunno; guess both sides is ground
down to one p'int, an' that, 'my man.' Everyways else I reckon he's
more brains ner I hev--which's a fair allowance fur this individooal to
make. Ef he could git 'my man' off his intellek he'd be purty square.
Cuss me, though, ef I wouldn't like to know whether 'my man' _is_ in
the cañon, or hereabouts. That's the queer part of the thing--his
followin' him by guess, er instink. I've see'd a herd o' deer scattered
this way an' that an' the t'other, an' often wondered how it come they
war all together ag'in by mornin'. Not so sing'lar as the way he's
follered 'my man.' I wonder ef he'll ever find him? I b'lieve 'bout
two month waitin' to see, alongside o' this Winkle, would tame me down
amazin'. I'm gittin' steady es an otter-slide now. Waugh!"