Dully Houston turned back to the sheriff and to the goggle-eyed
Ba'tiste, trying to fathom it all. Weakly he motioned toward Thayer,
and his words, when they came, were hollow and expressionless:
"That's a lie, Sheriff. I'll admit that I have been accused of murder.
I was acquitted. You say that nothing counts but the court action--and
that's all I have to say in my behalf. The jury found me not guilty.
In regard--to this, I'll obey the court order until I can prove to the
judge's satisfaction that this whole thing is a fraud and a fake. In
the meanwhile--" he turned anxiously, almost piteously, "do you care to
go with me, Ba'tiste?"
Heavily, silently, the French-Canadian joined him, and together they
walked down the narrow road to the camp. Neither spoke for a long
time. Ba'tiste walked with his head deep between his shoulders, and
Houston knew that memories were heavy upon him, memories of his
Julienne and the day that he came home to find, instead of a waiting
wife, only a mound beneath the sighing pines and a stalwart cross above
it. As for Houston, his own life had gone gray with the sudden
recurrence of the past. He lived again the first days of it all, when
life had been one constant repetition of questions, then solitude,
questions and solitude, as the homicide squad brought him up from his
cell to inquire about some new angle that they had come upon, to
question him regarding his actions on the night of the death of Tom
Langdon, then to send him back to "think it over" in the hope that the
constant tangle of questions might cause him to change his story and
give them an opening wedge through which they could force him to a
confession. He lived again the black hours in the dingy courtroom,
with its shadows and soot spots brushing against the window, the twelve
blank-faced men in the jury box, and the witnesses, one after another,
who went to the box in an effort to swear his life away. He went again
through the agony of the new freedom--the freedom of a man imprisoned
by stronger things than mere bars and cells of steel--when first he had
gone into the world to strive to fight back to the position he had
occupied before the pall of accusation had descended upon him, and to
fight seemingly in vain. Friends had vanished, a father had gone to
his grave, believing almost to the last that it had been his money and
the astuteness of his lawyers that had obtained freedom for a guilty
son, certainly not a self-evidence of innocence that had caused the
twelve men to report back to the judge that they had been unable to
force their convictions "beyond the shadow of a doubt." A nightmare
had it been and a nightmare it was again, as drawn-featured,
stoop-shouldered, suddenly old and haggard, Barry Houston walked down
the logging road beside a man whose mind also had been recalled to
thoughts of murder. A sudden fear went over the younger man; he
wondered whether this great being who walked at his side had believed,
and at last in desperation, he faced him.
"Well, Ba'tiste," came in strained tones, "I might as well hear it now
as at any other time. They've about got me whipped, anyway, so you'll
only be leaving a sinking ship."
"What you mean?" The French-Canadian stopped.
"Just the plain facts. I'm about at the end of my rope; my mill's all
but gone, my flume is in the hands of some one else, my lake is leased,
and Thayer can make as many inroads on my timber as he cares to, as
long as he appeases the court by paying me the magnificent sum of a
dollar and a half a thousand for it. So, you see, there isn't much
left for me."
"What you do?"
"That depends entirely on you--and what effect that accusation made.
If you're with me, I fight. If not--well frankly--I don't know."
"'Member the mill, when he burn down?"
"Yes."
"You no believe Ba'teese did heem. _Oui_, yes? Well, now I no believe
either!"
"Honestly, Ba'tiste?" Houston had gripped the other man's arm. "You
don't believe it? You don't--"
"Ba'teese believe M'sieu Houston. You look like my Pierre. My Pierre,
he could do no wrong. Ba'teese satisfy."
It sent a new flow of blood through the veins of Barry Houston,--that
simple, quiet statement of the old trapper. He felt again a surge of
the fighting instinct, the desire to keep on and on, to struggle until
the end, and to accept nothing except the bitterest, most absolute
defeat. He quickened his pace, the French-Canadian falling in with
him. His voice bore a vibrant tone, almost of excitement:
"I'm going back to Boston to-night. I'm going to find out about this.
I can get a machine at Tabernacle to take me over the range; it may
save me time in catching a train at Denver. There's some fraud,
Ba'tiste. I know it.--and I'll prove it if I can get back to Boston.
We'll stop by the cottage down here and see Miss Jierdon; then I'm
gone!"
"She no there. She, what-you-say, smash up 'quaintance with Medaine.
She ask to go there and stay day or two."
"Then she'll straighten things out, Ba'tiste. I'm glad of it. She
knows the truth about this whole thing--every step of the way. Will
you tell her?"
"_Oui_. Ba'teese tell her--about the flume and M'sieu Thayer, what he
say. But Ba'teese--"
"What?"
The trapper was silent a moment. At last:
"You like her, eh?"
"Medaine?"
"No--the other."
"A great deal, Ba'teese. She has meant everything to me; she was my
one friend when I was in trouble. She even went on the stand and
testified for me. What were you going to say?"
"Nothing," came the enigmatical reply. "Ba'teese will wait here. You
go Boston to-night?"
"Yes."
And that night, in the moonlight, behind the rushing engine of a motor
car, Barry Houston once more rode the heights where Mount Taluchen
frowned down from its snowy pinnacles, where the road was narrow and
the turns sharp, and where the world beneath was built upon a scale of
miniature. But this time, the drifts had faded from beside the
highway; nodding flowers showed in the moonlight; the snow flurries
were gone. Soon the downward grade had come and after that the
straggling little town of Dominion. Early morning found Houston in
Denver, searching the train schedules. That night he was far from the
mountains, hurrying half across the continent in search of the thing
that would give him back his birthright.
Weazened, wrinkle-faced little Jenkins met him at the office, to stare
in apparent surprise, then to rush forward with well-simulated
enthusiasm.
"You're back, Mr. Houston! I'm so glad. I didn't know whether to send
the notice out to you in Colorado, or wire you. It just came
yesterday."
"The notice? Of what?"
"The M. P. & S. L. call for bids. You've heard about it."
But Houston shook his head. Jenkins stared.
"I thought you had. The Mountain, Plains and Salt Lake Railroad. I
thought you knew all about it."
"The one that's tunneling Carrow Peak? I've heard about the road, but
I didn't know they were ready for bids for the western side of the
mountain yet. Where's the notice?"
"Right on your desk, sir."
Abstractedly, Houston picked it up and glanced at the
specifications,--for railroad ties by the million, for lumber, lathes,
station-house material, bridge timbers, and the thousands of other
lumber items that go into the making of a road. Hastily he scanned the
printed lines, only at last to place it despondently in a pocket.
"Millions of dollars," he murmured. "Millions--for somebody!"
And Houston could not help feeling that it was for the one man he
hated, Fred Thayer. The specifications called for freight on board at
the spurs at Tabernacle, evidently soon to have competition in the way
of railroad lines. And Tabernacle meant just one thing, the output of
a mill which could afford to put that lumber at the given point cheaper
then any other. The nearest other camp was either a hundred miles
away, on the western side, or so far removed over the range in the
matter of altitude that the freight rates would be prohibitive to a
cheaper bid. Thayer, with his ill-gotten flume, with his lake, with
his right to denude Barry Houston's forests at an insignificant cost,
could out-bid the others. He would land the contract, unless--
"Jenkins!" Houston's voice was sharp, insistent. The weazened man
entered, rubbing his hands.
"Yes, sir. Right here, sir."
"What contracts have we in the files?"
"Several, sir. One for mining timber stulls, logs, and that sort of
thing, for the Machol Mine at Idaho Springs; one for the Tramway
company in Denver for two thousand ties to be delivered in June; one
for--"
"I don't mean that sort. Are there any stumpage contracts?"
"Only one, sir."
"One? What!"
"The one you signed, sir, to Thayer and Blackburn, just a week or so
before you started out West. Don't you remember, sir; you signed it,
together with a lease for the flume site and lake?"
"I signed nothing of the sort!"
"But you did, sir. I attested it. I'll show it to you in just a
moment, sir. I have the copy right here."
A minute later, Barry Houston was staring down at the printed lines of
a copy of the contract and lease which had been shown him, days before,
out in the mountains of Colorado. Blankly he looked toward the servile
Jenkins, awaiting the return of the documents, then toward the papers
again.
"And I signed these, did I?"
"You certainly did, sir. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon.
I remember it perfectly."
"You're lying!"
"I don't lie, sir. I attested the signature and saw you read both
contracts. Pardon, sir, but if any one's lying, sir--it's yourself!"