With the return of fine weather the work of railroad construction on the
extension of the G. T. & C. line began to be pressed forward with eager
alacrity. Indeed, it had languished only when the ground was deeply
covered with snow or locked so fast in the immobile freeze that steel and
iron could not penetrate it. The work had been persistently pushed at
practicable intervals, whenever the labor could be constrained to it.
Possibly this urgency had no ill results except in one or two individual
cases. The sons of toil are indurated to hardship, and most of the gang
were brawny Irish ditchers. Jubal Clenk, already outworn with age and ill
nourished throughout a meagre life, unaccustomed, too, to exposure to the
elements (for the industry of moonshining is a sheltered and well-warmed
business), was the only notable collapse. He began by querulously
demanding of anyone who would listen to him what he himself could mean by
having an "out-dacious pain" under his shoulder-blade. "I feel like I hev
been knifed, that's whut!" he would declare. This symptom was presently
succeeded by a "misery in his breast-bone," and a racking cough seemed
likely to shake to pieces his old skeleton, growing daily more
perceptible under his dry, shrivelled skin. A fever shortly set in, but
it proved of scanty interest to the local physician, when called by the
boss of the construction gang to look in upon him, in one of the rickety
shacks which housed the force of laborers, and which was his temporary
home.
"There's no show for him," the doctor laconically remarked. "Lungs,
heart, throat, all have got into the game. You had better get rid of
him--he will never be of any use again."
"Throw him over the bluff, eh?" the jolly, portly boss asked with a
twinkling eye. "We ain't much on transportation yet."
"Well, it's no great matter. He'll provide his own transportation before
long;" and the physician stepped into his buggy with an air of finality.
The old man had, however, unsuspected reserves of vitality. He crept out
into the sunshine again, basking in the vernal warmth with a sense of
luxury, and entering into the gossip of the ditchers with an unwonted
mental activity and garrulity.
One day--one signal day--as he sat clumped up on a pile of timber
destined for railroad ties, his arms hugging his knees, his eyes
feverishly bright and hollow, a personal interest in his condition was
developed in the minds of his old pals and fellow-laborers, Drann and
Holvey, albeit of no humane tendency. It was the nooning hour, and the
men at their limited leisure lay in the sun on the piles of lumber, like
lizards.
"Gee!" exclaimed one burly fellow, rising on his elbow. "How I'd like ter
git my paw on that reward--five thousand dollars for any information!"
"I'm in fur money ez sure ez ye air born! All signs favor," exclaimed old
Clenk eagerly. "I dream about money mighty nigh every night. Paid in ter
me--chink--chink--I allus takes it in gold. Goin' ter bed is the same ter
me that goin' ter the bank is ter most folks."
His interpolations into the conversation usually failed to secure even a
contemptuous rebuff; they passed as if unheard. But such is the coercive
power of gold, albeit in the abstract, that this tenuous vision of wealth
had its fascination. The brawny workman held the newspaper aside to look
curiously over at the piteous wreck, as the old ragamuffin grinned and
giggled in joyous retrospect, then began to read again the advertisement:
"Twenty-five thousand dollars in cash if the information leads to the
recovery of the child."
"Do they head them advertisements '_Suckers, Attention_'?" asked one of
the men who labored under the disadvantage of illiteracy. The scraps read
aloud from the papers were his only source of information as to their
contents. "They _oughter_ say 'Suckers, Attention,' for they don't even
tell whut the kid looks like. I wouldn't know him from Adam ef I wuz ter
pass him in the road."
"But they _do_ tell what he looks like!" exclaimed the reader. "Here it
all is: blue eyes, golden hair, fair skin, rosy cheeks----"
"Cutest leetle trick!" exclaimed old Clenk, with a reminiscent smile at
the image thus conjured up.
The words passed unnoticed save by Drann and Holvey. They exchanged one
glance of consternation, and the fancied security in which they had
dwelt, as fragile as a crystal sphere, was shattered in an instant. The
old man was broken by his illness, his recent hardships. He was verging
on his dotage. His senile folly might well cost them their lives or
liberty.
Indeed, as the description progressed, detailing the child's attire even
to his red shoes, the old fellow's fingers were toying fatuously with one
of them in his deep coat pocket among the loose tobacco that fed his
pipe. "That don't half ekal _him_," he broke out suddenly. "Never war
sech another delightsome leetle creeter."
A moment of stunned amazement supervened among the group.
"Why, say, old Noah, did you ever see that kid?" at length demanded the
reader, with a keen look of suspicion.
It was the inimical expression, rather than a definite consciousness of
self-betrayal, that sent the old man's drifting mind back to its
moorings. "Jes' listenin' ter that beautiful readin'," he grinned, his
long yellow tobacco-stained teeth all bare in a facial contortion that
essayed a smile, his distended lips almost failing of articulation. "Them
was fine clothes sure on that lovely child."
The flamboyant advertisements had often before been read aloud in the
construction camp, and the matter might have passed as the half-fevered
babblings of a sick old man, but for that look of stultified comment, of
anguished foreboding, that was interchanged between the two accomplices.
Only one man, however, had the keen observation to catch that fleeting
signal, and the enterprise to seek to interpret it.
The next day, when Clenk did not reappear, this man quietly slipped to
the shack where the three lived together. There was a padlock knocking in
the wind on the flimsy door. This said as plain as speech that there was
no one within. Ordinarily this would have precluded all question, all
entrance. But the intruder was seeking a pot of gold, and informed by a
strong suspicion. With one effort of his brawny hands, he pulled loose
from the top first the strap of one of the broad upright boards that
formed the walls, then the board itself. He turned sideways and slipped
his bulk through the aperture, the board swinging elastically back into
place.
There was a stove in the squalid little apartment, instead of the open
fires common to the region. It was masked in a dusky twilight, but as his
eyes became accustomed to the obscurity and the disorder, his suspicion
exhaled, and a heavy sense of disappointment clogged his activities like
a ball and chain.
There in his bunk lay Clenk, his eyes shining with the light of fever,
his illness affording an obvious explanation of the precaution of his
comrades in locking the door while they were away at work, at the limits
of the construction line, to protect him from molestation by man or
beast.
Nevertheless, the intruder made an effort to hold his theory together. He
approached the bunk, and with an insidious craft sought to draw the old
man out. But Clenk was now on his guard. His comrades had bitterly
upbraided him with his self-betrayal, that indeed threatened the safety
of all. In fact, their courage was so reduced by the untoward episode
that he more than suspected they intended to flee the region, and he was
disposed to give the fact that he was left cooped up here under lock and
key no such humane interpretation as the intruder had placed upon it.
They had left him to starve, if not discovered, while they sought to
compass a safe distance. At all events, he was so broken in mind and body
that his story was more than likely to be discredited, unless their own
clumsy denials and guilty faces were in evidence to confirm its truth.
Now his garrulity had vanished; he licked his thin lips ever and anon,
and looked up over the folds of the red blanket drawn to the chin with a
bright, inscrutable eye and said nothing. His weakness was so great that
the policy of lying silent and supine, rather than exert his failing
powers, was commended by his inclination as well as his prudence.
Though it was in vain that the spy plied him with question and
suggestion, one phrase was like a galvanic current to this inert atrophy
of muscle and mind. "Look here, old man," the intruder said at length,
baffled and in despair, "you mark my words!" The brawny form had come
close in the shadow and towered over the recumbent and helpless creature,
speaking impressively through his set teeth. "You mark my words: your
pals are going to do you."
A quiver of patent apprehension ran over the dimly descried face, and
under the blanket the limbs writhed feebly; but Clenk's resolution held
firm, and with a curse, balked and lowering, the man stepped out at the
place where he had effected his entrance at the moment when his scheme
might have borne fruit.
For old Clenk had struggled up in bed. This threat was true. He had
vaguely suspected the fact, but in the words of another his fear had an
added urgency. He had betrayed his accomplices, he had betrayed himself.
Doubtless it was a race between them as to who could soonest seize the
opportunity to turn State's evidence.
And why should he fear the law more than another? As matters stood, he
would be left to bear the brunt of its vengeance, while the active
perpetrator of the deed escaped, and the accessories sought shelter
beneath the ægis of the law itself.
He was not long in reasoning it out. The strength of his resolution
imparted a fictitious vigor to his muscles. While unaided he could never
have stirred the heavy board, his efforts made it give, loosened as it
had already been, so that his thin, wiry body could slip between its edge
and the rest of the wall. He had one moment of intense terror lest it
slip elastically back and hold him pinioned there, but a convulsive
struggle sufficed, and he stepped out, exhausted and trembling, into the
gathering dusk, a lowering assemblage of darkling mountains, and at a
little distance the shacks of the construction gang. The doors were
aflare with flickering lights from within, and the unctuous smell of
frying pork was on the air. It was well for his enterprise that at the
critical moment the camp was discussing its well-earned supper and had
scant attention to bestow on other interests.
An hour later the men on a hand-car, whizzing down the portion of the
track that was sufficiently complete for this mode of progression, gave
little heed that a workman from the camp was stealing a ride, sitting in
a huddled clump, his feet dangling. Whether discharged or in the
execution of some commission for the construction boss, they did not even
canvass. Far too early it was for the question of rates or passes to vex
the matter of transportation. They did not even mark when he dropped off,
for the hand-car ran into the yards at the terminus, carrying only its
own crew.
Clenk was equally fortunate in creeping into an empty freight here
unobserved, and when it was uncoupled and the engine swept into the
round-house in the city of Glaston, it was verging again toward sunset,
and he was hundreds of miles from his starting-point.
Some monitions of craft were vaguely astir in his dull old brain. He had
resolved to throw himself on the mercy of the mother, ere he trusted
himself to the clutches of the law. He winced from the mere thought of
those sharp claws of justice, but he promised himself that he would be
swift. He could not say how Holvey and Drann might secure precedence of
him. They had gotten the start, and they might hold it. But if he should
tell the mother where they had left the child, he would surely have a
friend at court. When he was in the street he walked without hesitation
up to the first responsible-looking man he met, and, showing him the
advertisement in the newspaper, boldly asked to be directed to the house
of that lady.
So dull he was, so unaccustomed to blocks and turnings and city squares,
that after an interval of futile explanation the stranger turned out of
his way and walked a short distance with him. All the world had heard of
the tragedy and the mysterious disappearance of the child, and, although
suspecting a fake, even a casual stranger would not disregard a chance of
aid.
It was well that the distance was not great, for even his excitement was
hardly adequate to sustain Clenk's failing physique. When the old
mountaineer paused on the concrete sidewalk to which the spacious grounds
of the suburban residence sloped, he looked about with disfavor. "Can't
see the house fur the trees," he muttered, for the great oaks, accounted
so magnificent an appurtenance in Glaston, were to him the commonest
incident of entourage, and a bare door-yard, peeled of grass, a far more
significant token of sophistication. As he approached, however, the
stately mansion presently appeared, situated on a considerable eminence,
and with long flights of stone steps from a portico, enriched with
Corinthian columns, and from two successive terraces at some little
distance in front. Here were tall stone vases on either hand, and beside
one of these at the lower terrace two ladies had paused, waiting,
descrying his approach. One was gowned in deep black, sad of aspect,
though serene, and very beautiful. The other wore a dress all of sheer
white embroideries, with knots of brocaded lilac ribbon, festival of
intimation, but her face was thin, wan, worn, tortured out of all
semblance of calm or cheer. He came falteringly toward them, and stood
for a moment uncertain. Then--for the scope of his cultivation did not
include the civility of lifting his hat--he said, "Which of ye two wimin
hev los' a child?" His voice was quavering, even sympathetic, and very
gentle as he looked at them.
"I have lost my little son!" cried Lillian in a keen, strained tone,
agonized anew by the mere mention of the catastrophe. "Have you any
information about him? I am ready to pay for it." She had been warned a
hundred times that eagerness in proffering money, in making the reward so
obviously sure, was not conducive to accelerating the disclosure,
bringing into play the innate perversity of human nature, and a desire to
trade on the situation and increase the gains; yet try as she might, she
could not refrain from invoking always the cogent aid of gold.
"I ain't so particular 'bout the money, lady. I got su'thin' on my mind.
I be bent on makin' it square with the law. An' then, too, that leetle
Archie air a mighty gamesome leetle trick." He laughed slightly as with a
pleasant fleeting reminiscence. "Come mighty nigh dyin', though--skeered
me, fur a fack. Powerful tight squeak he had!"
All at once his eyes, glancing over his shoulder, lighted on Bayne, who
had just come to call on the ladies and now stood at the bottom of the
flight of the terrace steps. Clenk drew back with an obvious shock. "Why,
look-a-hyar, _you_ ain't Mr. Briscoe!" he exclaimed insistently, as with
a desire to reassure himself. His eyes large, light, distended, were
starting out of his head. His jaw quivered violently. The grimy,
claw-like hand he extended shook as with a palsy.
When together, Briscoe and Bayne had scant facial resemblance; but apart,
that stamp of consanguinity might easily recall for each the face of the
other. Bayne, with his wonted subtlety of divination, replied at once,
"No, but Mr. Briscoe was my cousin."
"Oh, ho--oh, ho--I see," the old man said, tractable and easily
convinced. "I know--Lawd! I got reason ter know that Briscoe's dead. I
war afeared o' seein' su'thin' oncommon--his harnt, or some sech. The
idee shuk me powerful. I hev had a fever lately. Lemme sit
down--I--I--can't stand up. I been hevin' a misery lately in my
breast-bone--oh!"--he waved his hand in the air with a pathetic, grasping
gesture--"me breath is gone--me breath, me breath----"
He sank down on an iron bench at one side on the velvety turf and feebly
gasped.
"I'll get some brandy," Gladys said in a low tone to Lillian, and sped
swiftly up the steps toward the house.
Suddenly Clenk partially lifted himself and dived into one of the pockets
of his loose coat. He brought up a little red shoe, all tarnished and
tobacco-stained, and held it out to Lillian with a faint and flickering
smile of bestowal, certain of gratitude as well as recognition. "Does
you-uns know that leetle foot?"
Lillian swayed for a moment as if she might fall. Then, with a piercing
shriek, she darted forward and seized it from his shaking grasp. She held
it up to the light, and as Gladys returned, herself bearing the tray with
the glass and decanter, Lillian convulsively clutched her arm and,
speechless and trembling, pointed to the name in tarnished gilt on the
inside of the sole--her own shoemaker, who had constructed the delicate
little hand-sewed slipper!
"Where is he now--where is this child?" Bayne demanded precipitately, his
own breath short, his pulses beating in his temples till the veins seemed
near bursting.
"I can't rightly say _now_," the old man drawled; "but--but I kin tell
you where we-uns lef' him. 'T war a awful bis'ness, that crackin' off
Briscoe--that warn't in the plan at all. We-uns war after the revenuer.
What right had he ter bust our still an' break up our wu'm and pour our
mash an' singlings out on the ground? Ain't it our'n? Ain't the corn an'
apples an' peaches our'n? Didn't we grow 'em?--an' what right hev the
gover'ment ter say we kin eat 'em, but can't bile 'em--eh? They b'long
ter we-uns--an' gosh! the gover'ment can't hender! But we never meant no
harm ter Briscoe. Lawd! Lawd! that warn't in the plan at all. But the
child viewed it, an', by gosh! I b'lieve that leetle creetur could hev
told the whole tale ez straight as a string--same ez ef he war
twenty-five year old. That deedie of a baby-child talked
sense--horse-sense--he _did_, fur a fack!"
"Where--where----" Lillian was using every power of her being to restrain
the screams of wild excitement, to sustain the suspense.
"Where did you last see him?" asked Bayne. He had grown deadly white, and
the old man, lifting his face, gazed vaguely from one to the other. Their
intense but controlled excitement seemed subtly imparted to his nerves.
The details of the tragedy had become hackneyed in his own consciousness,
but their significance, their surfeit of horror, revived on witnessing
their effect on others.
"Look-a-hyar, you two an' this woman will stan' up fur me when I gin
myself up fur State's evidence, ef I put ye on the track fur findin'
Bubby? He's thar all right yit, I'll be bound--well an' thrivin, I
reckon. He hev got backbone, tough ez a pine knot."
"Yes, yes, indeed; we pledge ourselves to sustain you," cried Lillian.
Bayne was putting the glass of brandy into the grimy, shaking paw,
mindful of the old man's shattered composure.
"It be a mighty risk I be a-runnin'"--the old, seamed face was of a
deadly pallor and was beginning to glister with a cold sweat. "I reckon I
oughtn't ter tell nuthin' exceptin' ter the officers, but--but--I 'lowed
leetle Archie's mother would help me some again them bloodhounds o' the
law."
"I'll move heaven and earth to aid you!" cried Lillian.
"See here, I can _promise_ that you shall be held harmless, for I am the
prosecutor," Gladys struck suddenly into the conversation, pale but calm,
every fibre held to a rigorous self-control. "I am Mr. Briscoe's wife,
his widow. Now tell me, _where_ did you last see that child?"
"Wh--wh--wh--whut? You the widder?" Clenk's eyes were starting from their
sockets as he gazed up at her from his crouching posture on the bench,
his head sunk between his shoulders, his hand with the untasted glass in
it trembling violently.
"An' ye say that ye too will stand by me? Then lemme tell it--lemme tell
it now. 'T was--what d'ye call that place?--I ain't familiar with them
parts. _Wait_"--as Bayne exclaimed inarticulately--"lemme think a minit."
He dropped his head on one of his hands, his arm, supported by the back
of the bench, upholding it. His slouched hat had fallen off on the stone
pavement, and his shock of gray hair moved in the soft breeze.
The moment's interval in the anguish of suspense seemed interminable to
the group. "Drink a little brandy," Bayne counselled, hoping to stimulate
his powers.
He evidently heard, and sought to obey. The hand holding the untasted
liquor quivered, the glass swayed, fell from his nerveless grasp, and
shivered to fragments on the stone pavement.
Bayne sprang to his side and lifted his head. Ah, a drear and ghastly
face it was, turned up to the gorgeous sunset, the gentle ambient air,
the happy, fleeting shadows of the homing birds.
"Has he fainted?" asked Lillian.
"The man is dead!" Bayne cried with a poignant intonation. "He is dead!
He is dead!"
For while they had waited for the word that had eluded him he had gone
out into the great wordless unknown. His failing strength had thwarted
his will. His spirit had given him the slip.