Six long months had passed since the day when Dora had been stolen from
her home. The father had the murdered man buried at his own expense.
No one thought of accusing him; besides, little Loney had seen the
assassination.
The unfortunate Helen Pierson came back “clothed and in her right
mind,” as she had promised, and although it made a heavy drain upon
the shoemaker’s savings--added to the expenses of the funeral--she was
given money to take her back to the wide West, where she could begin
life over again.
The body of her brother lay in his coffin in the tiny room above, but,
with a delicacy rare to men, Morris Goldberg had wished to spare her
the sight of a dead stranger. They neither knew that the man lying so
calm and peaceful there was her brother who had come from the West to
seek her and to avenge her; so she started Westward and the stranger
was laid at rest.
Morris Goldberg had clung to Loney as the link between him and
despair. The child had loved Dora and he loved her. So there was some
one to whom the unhappy father could pour out his heart without fear of
wearying them.
Search was made everywhere for the man who had shot the stranger, and
for Dopey Mack, but they had disappeared from their old haunts. So,
at last, the shoemaker decided to go West himself, in the faint hope
that this man, who had doubtless come from some place in the West,
had returned there. His rather slow mind had pieced together “Cactus
Bill’s” declaration that he had come from Wyoming in search of the man
who had abandoned his sister, and that Helen Pierson might be that
sister. And, if she was, he owed it to her to look after the interest
in the claim, the title to which he now held. Poor Loney could not be
left behind, so Morris Goldberg sold out his little shop, which had
prospered in his industrious hands, and all his belongings save a few
cherished treasures which he left with his friend who owned a safe. But
he took the tiny shoe with him.
What Bennie had felt at this sudden bereavement, just when he was so
happy, words could not express. He, too, sought everywhere, and grew
old and worn in his anxiety. So, not long after the shoemaker had
gone, Bennie resigned his excellent position and took up his march
toward the wild and woolly West.
At the end of six months from the day of the murder and the stealing
of Dora, there was a little wave of excitement, which did not owe its
origin to a shooting scrape, in a hamlet in Wyoming. This small cluster
of shacks and shanties was known as Hellandgone, and a forsaken spot
it seemed, with scarcely any vegetation beyond the dusty sagebrush and
scrubby bushes sparsely scattered upon the hills beyond.
There was the usual “hotel,” a board house, of two stories. The lower
floor was taken up by the bar-room, which was the general sitting-room,
there being no other; the dining-room, with a lean-to kitchen beyond.
The dining-room had one long table made of planks, with a bench of the
same length on each side. The bar-room had the smaller tables, and
several wooden chairs, besides a few kegs which also served as seats on
occasion. Lumber was scarce, and all furniture had to be carried a long
distance in wagons, which made it not only an expensive luxury, but one
of difficult attainment.
The bar was at one side of the room, with the usual complement of
bottles, glasses and other paraphernalia devoted to such purposes.
The door leading to the street was a wide one and a high one to
accommodate the cowboys from the adjacent ranches and the miners from
up the mountains beyond.
Far up the trail could be seen mountains dark and sinister, more and
more rugged as they ascended. Along, on some of the slopes in the far
distance, could be seen the roofs and tall chimneys of quartz mills. On
the whole, the outlook was dreary and monotonous.
Over the bar was a mirror and below that the usual hint about the
unwisdom of trust, and another, in form of a placard, hung to the bar,
saying:
“Please don’t shoot the barkeeper!
He’s doing the best he can.”
There was the usual crowd of roughly-dressed men lounging about and
drinking, to kill the time until the stage should arrive. This was an
event every day, for by it came letters, papers and news from the outer
world.
Four of the men stood against the bar, singing. Their voices were
good and resonant, developed by singing to their herds in the long
night-watches, and after each verse of a song they took a sip of their
drink, and followed up that by giving the cowboy yell of “Ee--you! Zip!
Zip!” etc., until the very bottles trembled.
One of the men, whom the others called Shoshone Pete, said, airily:
“Set ’em up again, Snakes. I’ve been out on the range and this is the
first chance I’ve had in six weeks to oil up my machinery.”
“Zip! Zip! Hurry up, you spavined old cayuse! Kick up your heels and
come to life,” suggested Dead Shot Mike, threateningly, while he
hastily swallowed what was left in the bottom of his glass and wiped
his lips on his sleeve, ready for another drink.
“Ee--you! Zip! Zip! I’m my mother’s baby and I want my milk, I do,”
whimpered Shoshone Pete, while Snakes, the bartender, was struggling
with a refractory cork. He sneered:
“Ah! gimme a minute till I get this cork out. You’re like a pack o’
howlin’ coyotes hungry for meat.”
The cork popped out of the bottle just then and Snakes handed it to the
waiting men, who set up another song with its shrill chorus of “zips
and ee--yous.” By the time the song was ended another glass was called
for, and Shoshone Pete began his noisy harangue of:
“Ee--you! Zip! Zip! I’m the warbler of the range. I’m the wild
mocking-bird of the chaparral. I’m the silver-voiced son of a gun from
Cheyenne, Wy-o. I’m the game cock of Deadwood, and it’s my time to
crow!” then imitating a rooster. All the others laughed, and Snakes
said, benignly:
“This is one on me, boys. Come up to the trough.” Again handing out the
bottle.
“Watch him, boys, watch him! Whenever he treats, it’s ‘coffin
varnish,’” said Shoshone Pete, while the others attended strictly to
business.
“Is that so?” said Snakes, angrily. “Let me tell you, this stuff is
four years old and came from Denver.”
“Well,” said Mike, “it is the strongest four-year-old I ever saw.
Here’s how.”
“Four-year-old! Don’t believe him, boys,” said Dan. “I seen him out
in the gulch last night makin’ this. Half a bar’l of rain water, two
gallons of alcohol, a plug o’ tobacco and a section o’ barbed wire.”
This raised a noisy laugh at Snake’s expense, which he took
good-naturedly. Shoshone Pete turned and asked:
“Where’s the Angel?”
“Yes; where is she?” asked Dan.
“The Angel of Hellandgone. Where is she?” inquired Mike.
“She’s sure all right, eh?”
“She went down the gulch and over the range to Silver Bill’s shack. His
wife’s got a new baby, and the Angel went down to help her out,” said
Snakes, with conviction.
“She can have all mine--dust, sombrero, cayuse, saddle, bridle, lariat,
and all!” said Shoshone Pete, earnestly. “The Angel is IT. She is
certainly IT, and I can lick the first son of a gun that denies it!”
“No chance for a mix-up there, Shoshone. There is not a man from
Cheyenne to the Gulch who would not fight for the Angel,” returned Mike.
“She is IT, I say. She sure is IT. She is white and gold. That is what
she is. White outside and gold within. Set ’em up to the Angel, Snakes.”
“My treat,” declared Snakes.
“Naw, it’s mine,” declared Dan.
“In your mind it is. It’s mine,” said Mike, aggressively, as though he
was seeking for an opportunity to fight for the Angel’s honor.
“Here, here!” cried Shoshone. “Who spoke first. Are you a set of
highway robbers trying to hold me up? Set ’em up, Snakey, and here’s
your dust. Hats off, boys.”
“To the Angel,” said Mike.
“God bless her!” said Shoshone.
“It is a long trail to Silver Bill’s. Did she go alone?” asked
Shoshone, when the ceremony of toasting the absent Angel had been
performed.
“Yep,” replied Snakes, gathering the glasses and dipping them into some
mysterious liquid in a tub beneath the bar, and which was supposed to
be clean water.
“There’s mountain lions out that way,” said Dan, mournfully, “but she
had her rifle.”
“Then there’s nuttin’ to worry over. She can outshoot any galoot in the
county. Got a testament, Snakes?”
“Sure I have,” said Snakes, producing a sealed pack of cards.
“Who is going to sit in?” asked Shoshone Pete, when the four other men
instantly signified their willingness to join in a game of poker, and
all four gathered around one of the tables, while Shoshone shuffled the
cards, saying:
“Say, this table here makes me think of when I was telegraph
operator----”
“I never knowed that,” said Dan.
“Well, I used to click the keys at Cody’s Crossin’ and--er--one night,
in a blizzard, I tried to run one freight train through another on the
same track, killin’ about three hundred yearlin’s. Then I sent in my
resign. Let her flicker, pardner.”
Before a card was dealt, there was the sound of feet on the floor, and
all looked up to see John Pierson and Dopey Mack before them. Both
had grown full beards and were dressed in garments better adapted for
“roughing it” in the mountains than for social reunions. The players
turned diligently to their game, as etiquette on the range does not
allow of too much interest in one’s neighbor’s affairs. Pierson said to
Dopey, in a low voice:
“If my recollection serves me well, Dopey, I think this is the place
and about as nearly out of the world as a place ever gets to.”
“Well, dere’s one t’ing, Mister. I’m dead glad to find anyt’ing wid a
roof on it, for I’m dat sick and sore climbing over rocks dat I feels
like I been up ag’inst Bob Fitz in de twentieth round, and dat’s no
dream. It’s here in every bone, an’ it’s here, all right.”
“Better than to be hitting the pipe in New York and have the life
burned out of you. We were lucky to have gotten away as we did with the
girl, and out here we’re as safe as if we were locked up in a tomb.”
[Illustration: WESTERN PASTIME - “HITTING THE PIPE”]
“Lucky she went off her base!”
“Yes, that made it easy to tell that she is my poor, demented daughter,
out here by my physician’s orders.”
“An’ did you ever see anybody take such a likin’ to anyone as de
Empress has to de gal? I never did.”
“You mean Muriel? No; devil take the luck that she should have met us
that night. Curse her interference! Had it not been for her, I’d have
killed the other one long ago, but it will be different out here. I’ll
get rid of her, all right. She is no use to me now, since she went
daffy when she saw me kill that brute. Let me see if I am right. If I
am, I will bring Muriel and her here.”
Saying these words, Pierson went to the bar and asked Snake if he could
obtain accommodations for his wife and demented daughter, himself and a
friend.
After some conversation, to which all four players lent a listening
ear, all the keener because they had not heard the earlier talk between
the two men, Snakes offered two rooms on the floor above, one of them
over the bar-room and the other over the dining-room. Snakes made the
remark that the ladies might find the place noisy, especially for the
one who was demented, but John reassured him by saying that so long as
she saw no one she would be all right.
Then Pierson asked Snakes if he did not remember him, saying that he
was sure that he had known Duffy several years ago in Cheyenne. Duffy
had almost forgotten his own name, so long had he been called Snakes,
and so was not to blame if he did not recognize the name of Blakely.
“Yes,” continued Pierson, “it is a sad business that brings me here.
I was married then, but my wife was in the East, and I have this
daughter, my only child. She became insane from overstudy. The doctors
thought that the high altitude and mountain air would restore her. The
poor child needs a rest.”
At this, Shoshone Pete came over to where Pierson was standing and,
with the hearty good-fellowship of the men in that locality, said,
sympathetically:
“Too bad, pardner. Kin I do anything for you? You’ve only got to say
it.”
“Nothing, thank you. All we need is rest and quiet. As I was just
telling Duffy, we need nothing but quiet, as the sight of strangers
always excites my daughter.”
“Well, there’ll be no shooting-matches here that I can stop as long as
you stay. Say, Snakes, you just give the boys a tip, and tell ’em that
I’ll plug the first galoot that lets his gun go off by mistake.”
Pierson well knew the loyalty to womankind and the rough, but honest,
chivalry that made every miner and cowboy the knight errant of every
good woman in the wild country, and began to wish that he had remained
in New York, or some other big city, where it is so easy to hide. He
could have put both Muriel and Dora out of the way in a crowded city,
and before the police had even learned of the crime.
Snakes hurried the arrangement of the two rooms, so that they should
be fit to receive the ladies, and this consisted mostly in wiping the
accumulation of dust from the furniture, and putting the table cover
askew, as men always seem to do. A broom was brought into requisition
and all the dust was swept under the rickety bureau, just where a
woman’s eye would see it first, but where the men fondly believed it
hidden from view.
While this rapid-fire housecleaning was progressing, Pierson had
stepped outside and waved his handkerchief to the two women who were
stationed some distance away.
Snakes turned to Shoshone Pete, saying that that man, Blakely, claimed
to have known him in Cheyenne, but, to save his life, he could not
place the man’s face, though there was something familiar in his voice.
Then it was suggested by one of the men who had remained seated at the
table that they should continue their game.
“Whose play is it?” asked Snakes.
“Whose play nothin’. It’s your ante. Don’t try to sneak out of duty,
like that,” said Dan, with one eye on the door and one on the table.
The arrival of women was a rare occurrence in this place, and the
interest quite overshadowed the merits of the game.
John and Dopey walked along a little outside the hotel, so as to be out
of earshot, and Dopey asked anxiously if it was all right.
“Dead easy. I spun them a yarn about my poor, crazy daughter who needed
silence and quiet and plenty of it. They’re such idiots about women
out here that they will do any and every thing they can to make her
comfortable.”
“Youse’ll be a fool if you harms de young one. She’s been de trick dat
carries us thro’, see?”
“Yes, but she may recover her reason at any time and give us away. The
first time that I can get that cat Muriel off guard, I’ll put her out
of the way for good. Our very lives depend upon it!”
Dopey seemed to reflect. He had grown stronger, more active, and his
youth was making a brave fight against the enslavement of the deadly
drug, in this healthier life and away from the poisoned air of the
city, but nothing could ever make him look other than the vicious
output of low life on the Bowery. His brow was low, his eyes small and
shifty, his teeth yellow and irregular, and his mouth ugly and coarse.
Much of the face was now hidden in a thick beard.
It seemed a curious thing that a man like Pierson, so neat and careful
of his personal appearance, and so much above Dopey in intelligence,
should choose a creature like Dopey for a companion, but he looked upon
the degenerate as a tool in the commission of his crimes and, besides,
even criminals appear to have a need of some confidential agent to
whom to confide their plans. Dopey looked upon Pierson as a wonderful
being, since he was capable of any crime, and always seemed to look the
gentleman--even now, with the bushy beard that half hid his face. Dopey
would follow Pierson’s lead to any length, but he was not capable of
originating the plans that made Pierson seem so great to him.
Pierson stood restlessly awaiting the arrival of Muriel and Dora, with
his eyes fairly blazing with hatred of the woman who had given up
everything, that women hold dear, for him. She was an impediment now,
and a constant menace. He must get rid of her somehow.
Muriel looked pale and tired, and her costume showed the effects of
the long, dusty ride. But her every sense was alert to watch over and
protect Dora, whom she was leading tenderly. Dora had lost some of her
fresh young beauty, but there was something inexpressibly touching in
her vacant stare and timid manner.
As they neared the hotel, Dora began to sing as she fondled a delicate
wildflower in her hand.
“Tell me that you love me,
For that’s the sweetest story ever told”
sang the girl, and then she reverted to the song, after glancing
curiously about her:
“Tell me that you love me,
Tell me softly, sweetly, as of old,
Tell me that you love me,
For that’s the sweetest story ever told.”
As the two women approached the place where Dopey and John stood, Dora
handed the flower to Dopey, who looked at it curiously and then, with a
sneering scowl, drew back, while the poor girl said:
“Don’t you want the flower? I found it growing all alone out of a
crevice in the rocks. See how good is the dear God. He sends us flowers
even here.” Then she began to sing again the same refrain, then stopped
suddenly, saying, with a strident laugh:
“Here, here! There comes Bennie!” Then she began to call for Bennie
until even her poor, dazed mind comprehended that there was no answer.
Then, turning to Muriel, she said:
“What’s wrong, lady? I call and call, and no answer comes from Bennie.
He never comes.” Then she wept.
Muriel turned to John, who stood there with hatred gleaming in his
half-shut eyes, and whispered:
“Look! look at your work, with the eyes of a hungry wolf, but you shall
not harm her, for I will kill you myself first!”
“I know who will come. He never did fail when I called. Papa, papa!
No, he doesn’t come, either. Poor papa! he is all tired out and is
sleeping. Hush! don’t make a noise, or you’ll wake him up.”
“Take her into the house and give her a dose of that sleeping-potion,”
said Pierson to Muriel.
“I’ll take the poor child in, for she needs rest and food, but she has
had the last dose of that slow poison she shall ever take!”
“See here!” said John, brutally, “you are going too far, my lady. I
have just about tired of your interference in this matter!”
“Then,” replied Muriel, firmly, “you might as well sit down and take
a good long rest, for I’ve only just begun. Don’t you know that I
am perfectly well aware of the reason that caused you to take this
child, whose beauty and purity were so great that even God Almighty
interfered, to save her from you? I’m no saint, but let me tell you
here and now, that I’m going to stand by this child as if she were my
own, and that neither you nor anyone else shall harm one hair of her
head!”
“Well, then, come on,” said John, in a tone so quiet that anyone who
did not know him might have thought he was completely cowed; “and don’t
stand there brawling like a fishwife.”
Saying this, John led the way to the saloon door, the only entrance to
the hotel for guests. Dora looked up at the house and turned to Muriel,
asking:
“Is that home, lady? Shall we find papa and Bennie in there?”
“You shall see papa and Bennie soon, dearie. Come on, come on.”
“All right. I’ll go, for I’m so tired and hungry, too.”
John took the arm of Dora, while Muriel stood beside her, with Dopey in
the rear, and they entered the saloon.