Key's attention was presently directed to something more important to
his present purpose. The keen wind which he had faced in mounting the
grade had changed, and was now blowing at his back. His experience of
forest fires had already taught him that this was too often only the
cold air rushing in to fill the vacuum made by the conflagration, and
it needed not his sensation of an acrid smarting in his eyes, and an
unaccountable dryness in the air which he was now facing, to convince
him that the fire was approaching him. It had evidently traveled
faster than he had expected, or had diverged from its course. He was
disappointed, not because it would oblige him to take another route to
Skinner's, as Collinson had suggested, but for a very different reason.
Ever since his vision of the preceding night, he had resolved to
revisit the hollow and discover the mystery. He had kept his purpose a
secret,--partly because he wished to avoid the jesting remarks of his
companions, but particularly because he wished to go alone, from a very
singular impression that although they had witnessed the incident he
had really seen more than they did. To this was also added the
haunting fear he had felt during the night that this mysterious
habitation and its occupants were in the track of the conflagration.
He had not dared to dwell upon it openly on account of Uncle Dick's
evident responsibility for the origin of the fire; he appeased his
conscience with the reflection that the inmates of the dwelling no
doubt had ample warning in time to escape. But still, he and his
companions ought to have stopped to help them, and then--but here he
paused, conscious of another reason he could scarcely voice then, or
even now. Preble Key had not passed the age of romance, but like other
romancists he thought he had evaded it by treating it practically.
Meantime he had reached the fork where the trail diverged to the right,
and he must take that direction if he wished to make a detour of the
burning woods to reach Skinner's. His momentary indecision
communicated itself to his horse, who halted. Recalled to himself, he
looked down mechanically, when his attention was attracted by an
unfamiliar object lying in the dust of the trail. It was a small
slipper--so small that at first he thought it must have belonged to
some child. He dismounted and picked it up. It was worn and shaped to
the foot. It could not have lain there long, for it was not filled nor
discolored by the wind-blown dust of the trail, as all other adjacent
objects were. If it had been dropped by a passing traveler, that
traveler must have passed Collinson's, going or coming, within the last
twelve hours. It was scarcely possible that the shoe could have
dropped from the foot without the wearer's knowing it, and it must have
been dropped in an urgent flight, or it would have been recovered.
Thus practically Key treated his romance. And having done so, he
instantly wheeled his horse and plunged into the road in the direction
of the fire.
But he was surprised after twenty minutes' riding to find that the
course of the fire had evidently changed. It was growing clearer
before him; the dry heat seemed to come more from the right, in the
direction of the detour he should have taken to Skinner's. This seemed
almost providential, and in keeping with his practical treatment of his
romance, as was also the fact that in all probability the fire had not
yet visited the little hollow which he intended to explore. He knew he
was nearing it now; the locality had been strongly impressed upon him
even in the darkness of the previous evening. He had passed the rocky
ledge; his horse's hoofs no longer rang out clearly; slowly and
perceptibly they grew deadened in the springy mosses, and were finally
lost in the netted grasses and tangled vines that indicated the
vicinity of the densely wooded hollow. Here were already some of the
wider spaced vanguards of that wood; but here, too, a peculiar
circumstance struck him. He was already descending the slight
declivity; but the distance, instead of deepening in leafy shadow, was
actually growing lighter. Here were the outskirting sentinels of the
wood--but the wood itself was gone! He spurred his horse through the
tall arch between the opened columns, and pulled up in amazement.
The wood, indeed, was gone, and the whole hollow filled with the
already black and dead stumps of the utterly consumed forest! More
than that, from the indications before him, the catastrophe must have
almost immediately followed his retreat from the hollow on the
preceding night. It was evident that the fire had leaped the
intervening shoulder of the spur in one of the unaccountable, but by no
means rare, phenomena of this kind of disaster. The circling heights
around were yet untouched; only the hollow, and the ledge of rock
against which they had blundered with their horses when they were
seeking the mysterious window in last evening's darkness, were calcined
and destroyed. He dismounted and climbed the ledge, still warm from
the spent fire. A large mass of grayish outcrop had evidently been the
focus of the furnace blast of heat which must have raged for hours in
this spot. He was skirting its crumbling debris when he started
suddenly at a discovery which made everything else fade into utter
insignificance. Before him, in a slight depression formed by a fault
or lapse in the upheaved strata, lay the charred and incinerated
remains of a dwelling-house leveled to the earth! Originally half
hidden by a natural abattis of growing myrtle and ceanothus which
covered this counter-scarp of rock towards the trail, it must have
stood within a hundred feet of them during their halt!
Even in its utter and complete obliteration by the furious furnace
blast that had swept across it, there was still to be seen an
unmistakable ground plan and outline of a four-roomed house. While
everything that was combustible had succumbed to that intense heat,
there was still enough half-fused and warped metal, fractured iron
plate, and twisted and broken bars to indicate the kitchen and tool
shed. Very little had, evidently, been taken away; the house and its
contents were consumed where they stood. With a feeling of horror and
desperation Key at last ventured to disturb two or three of the
blackened heaps that lay before him. But they were only vestiges of
clothing, bedding, and crockery--there was no human trace that he could
detect. Nor was there any suggestion of the original condition and
quality of the house, except its size: whether the ordinary unsightly
cabin of frontier "partners," or some sylvan cottage--there was nothing
left but the usual ignoble and unsavory ruins of burnt-out human
habitation.
And yet its very existence was a mystery. It had been unknown at
Collinson's, its nearest neighbor, and it was presumable that it was
equally unknown at Skinner's. Neither he nor his companions had
detected it in their first journey by day through the hollow, and only
the tell-tale window at night had been a hint of what was even then so
successfully concealed that they could not discover it when they had
blundered against its rock foundation. For concealed it certainly was,
and intentionally so. But for what purpose?
He gave his romance full play for a few minutes with this question.
Some recluse, preferring the absolute simplicity of nature, or perhaps
wearied with the artificialities of society, had secluded himself here
with the company of his only daughter. Proficient as a pathfinder, he
had easily discovered some other way of provisioning his house from the
settlements than by the ordinary trails past Collinson's or Skinner's,
which would have betrayed his vicinity. But recluses are not usually
accompanied by young daughters, whose relations with the world, not
being as antagonistic, would make them uncertain companions. Why not a
wife? His presumption of the extreme youth of the face he had seen at
the window was after all only based upon the slipper he had found. And
if a wife, whose absolute acceptance of such confined seclusion might
be equally uncertain, why not somebody else's wife? Here was a reason
for concealment, and the end of an episode, not unknown even in the
wilderness. And here was the work of the Nemesis who had overtaken
them in their guilty contentment! The story, even to its moral, was
complete. And yet it did not entirely satisfy him, so superior is the
absolutely unknown to the most elaborate theory.
His attention had been once or twice drawn towards the crumbling wall
of outcrop, which during the conflagration must have felt the full
force of the fiery blast that had swept through the hollow and spent
its fury upon it. It bore evidence of the intense heat in cracked
fissures and the crumbling debris that lay at its feet. Key picked up
some of the still warm fragments, and was not surprised that they
easily broke in a gritty, grayish powder in his hands. In spite of his
preoccupation with the human interest, the instinct of the prospector
was still strong upon him, and he almost mechanically put some of the
pieces in his pockets. Then after another careful survey of the
locality for any further record of its vanished tenants, he returned to
his horse. Here he took from his saddle-bags, half listlessly, a
precious phial encased in wood, and, opening it, poured into another
thick glass vessel part of a smoking fluid; he then crumbled some of
the calcined fragments into the glass, and watched the ebullition that
followed with mechanical gravity. When it had almost ceased he drained
off the contents into another glass, which he set down, and then
proceeded to pour some water from his drinking-flask into the ordinary
tin cup which formed part of his culinary traveling-kit. Into this he
put three or four pinches of salt from his provision store. Then
dipping his fingers into the salt and water, he allowed a drop to fall
into the glass. A white cloud instantly gathered in the colorless
fluid, and then fell in a fine film to the bottom of the glass. Key's
eyes concentrated suddenly, the listless look left his face. His
fingers trembled lightly as he again let the salt water fall into the
solution, with exactly the same result! Again and again he repeated
it, until the bottom of the glass was quite gray with the fallen
precipitate. And his own face grew as gray.
His hand trembled no longer as he carefully poured off the solution so
as not to disturb the precipitate at the bottom. Then he drew out his
knife, scooped a little of the gray sediment upon its point, and
emptying his tin cup, turned it upside down upon his knee, placed the
sediment upon it, and began to spread it over the dull surface of its
bottom with his knife. He had intended to rub it briskly with his
knife blade. But in the very action of spreading it, the first stroke
of his knife left upon the sediment and the cup the luminous streak of
burnished silver!
He stood up and drew a long breath to still the beatings of his heart.
Then he rapidly re-climbed the rock, and passed over the ruins again,
this time plunging hurriedly through, and kicking aside the charred
heaps without a thought of what they had contained. Key was not an
unfeeling man, he was not an unrefined one: he was a gentleman by
instinct, and had an intuitive sympathy for others; but in that instant
his whole mind was concentrated upon the calcined outcrop! And his
first impulse was to see if it bore any evidence of previous
examination, prospecting, or working by its suddenly evicted neighbors
and owners. There was none: they had evidently not known it. Nor was
there any reason to suppose that they would ever return to their hidden
home, now devastated and laid bare to the open sunlight and open trail.
They were already far away; their guilty personal secret would keep
them from revisiting it. An immense feeling of relief came over the
soul of this moral romancer; a momentary recognition of the Most High
in this perfect poetical retribution. He ran back quickly to his
saddle-bags, drew out one or two carefully written, formal notices of
preemption and claim, which he and his former companions had carried in
their brief partnership, erased their signatures and left only his own
name, with another grateful sense of Divine interference, as he thought
of them speeding far away in the distance, and returned to the ruins.
With unconscious irony, he selected a charred post from the embers,
stuck it in the ground a few feet from the debris of outcrop, and
finally affixed his "Notice." Then, with a conscientiousness born
possibly of his new religious convictions, he dislodged with his
pickaxe enough of the brittle outcrop to constitute that presumption of
"actual work" upon the claim which was legally required for its
maintenance, and returned to his horse. In replacing his things in his
saddle-bags he came upon the slipper, and for an instant so complete
was his preoccupation in his later discovery, that he was about to
throw it away as useless impedimenta, until it occurred to him, albeit
vaguely, that it might be of service to him in its connection with that
discovery, in the way of refuting possible false claimants. He was not
aware of any faithlessness to his momentary romance, any more than he
was conscious of any disloyalty to his old companions, in his
gratification that his good fortune had come to him alone. This
singular selection was a common experience of prospecting. And there
was something about the magnitude of his discovery that seemed to point
to an individual achievement. He had made a rough calculation of the
richness of the lode from the quantity of precipitate in his rude
experiment; he had estimated its length, breadth, and thickness from
his slight knowledge of geology and the theories then ripe; and the
yield would be colossal! Of course, he would require capital to work
it, he would have to "let in" others to his scheme and his prosperity;
but the control of it would always be HIS OWN.
Then he suddenly started as he had never in his life before started at
the foot of man! For there was a footfall in the charred brush; and
not twenty yards from him stood Collinson, who had just dismounted from
a mule. The blood rushed to Key's pale face.
"Prospectin' agin?" said the proprietor of the mill, with his weary
smile.
"No," said Key quickly, "only straightening my pack." The blood
deepened in his cheek at his instinctive lie. Had he carefully thought
it out before, he would have welcomed Collinson, and told him all. But
now a quick, uneasy suspicion flashed upon him. Perhaps his late host
had lied, and knew of the existence of the hidden house. Perhaps--he
had spoken of some "silvery rock" the night before--he even knew
something of the lode itself. He turned upon him with an aggressive
face. But Collinson's next words dissipated the thought.
"I'm glad I found ye, anyhow," he said. "Ye see, arter you left, I saw
ye turn off the trail and make for the burning woods instead o' goin'
round. I sez to myself, 'That fellow is making straight for Skinner's.
He's sorter worried about me and that empty pork bar'l,'--I hadn't
oughter spoke that away afore you boys, anyhow,--'and he's takin' risks
to help me.' So I reckoned I'd throw my leg over Jenny here, and look
arter ye--and go over to Skinner's myself--and vote."
"Certainly," said Key with cheerful alacrity, and the one thought of
getting Collinson away; "we'll go together, and we'll see that that
pork barrel is filled!" He glowed quite honestly with this sudden idea
of remembering Collinson through his good fortune. "Let's get on
quickly, for we may find the fire between us on the outer trail." He
hastily mounted his horse.
"Then you didn't take this as a short cut," said Collinson, with dull
perseverance in his idea. "Why not? It looks all clear ahead."
"Yes," said Key hurriedly, "but it's been only a leap of the fire, it's
still raging round the bend. We must go back to the cross-trail." His
face was still flushing with his very equivocating, and his anxiety to
get his companion away. Only a few steps further might bring Collinson
before the ruins and the "Notice," and that discovery must not be made
by him until Key's plans were perfected. A sudden aversion to the man
he had a moment before wished to reward began to take possession of
him. "Come on," he added almost roughly.
But to his surprise, Collinson yielded with his usual grim patience,
and even a slight look of sympathy with his friend's annoyance. "I
reckon you're right, and mebbee you're in a hurry to get to Skinner's
all along o' MY business, I oughtn't hev told you boys what I did." As
they rode rapidly away he took occasion to add, when Key had reined in
slightly, with a feeling of relief at being out of the hollow, "I was
thinkin', too, of what you'd asked about any one livin' here
unbeknownst to me."
"Well," said Key, with a new nervousness.
"Well; I only had an idea o' proposin' that you and me just took a look
around that holler whar you thought you saw suthin'!" said Collinson
tentatively.
"Nonsense," said Key hurriedly. "We really saw nothing--it was all a
fancy; and Uncle Dick was joking me because I said I thought I saw a
woman's face," he added with a forced laugh.
Collinson glanced at him, half sadly. "Oh! You were only funnin',
then. I oughter guessed that. I oughter have knowed it from Uncle
Dick's talk!" They rode for some moments in silence; Key preoccupied
and feverish, and eager only to reach Skinner's. Skinner was not only
postmaster but "registrar" of the district, and the new discoverer did
not feel entirely safe until he had put his formal notification and
claims "on record." This was no publication of his actual secret, nor
any indication of success, but was only a record that would in all
probability remain unnoticed and unchallenged amidst the many other
hopeful dreams of sanguine prospectors. But he was suddenly startled
from his preoccupation.
"Ye said ye war straightenin' up yer pack just now," said Collinson
slowly.
"Yes!" said Key almost angrily, "and I was."
"Ye didn't stop to straighten it up down at the forks of the trail, did
ye?"
"I may have," said Key nervously. "But why?"
"Ye won't mind my axin' ye another question, will ye? Ye ain't
carryin' round with ye no woman's shoe?"
Key felt the blood drop from his cheeks. "What do you mean?" he
stammered, scarcely daring to lift his conscious eyelids to his
companion's glance. But when he did so he was amazed to find that
Collinson's face was almost as much disturbed as his own.
"I know it ain't the square thing to ask ye, but this is how it is,"
said Collinson hesitatingly. "Ye see just down by the fork of the
trail where you came I picked up a woman's shoe. It sorter got me!
For I sez to myself, 'Thar ain't no one bin by my shanty, comin' or
goin', for weeks but you boys, and that shoe, from the looks of it,
ain't bin there as many hours.' I knew there wasn't any wimin
hereabouts. I reckoned it couldn't hev bin dropped by Uncle Dick or
that other man, for you would have seen it on the road. So I allowed
it might have bin YOU. And yer it is." He slowly drew from his
pocket--what Key was fully prepared to see--the mate of the slipper Key
had in his saddle-bags! The fair fugitive had evidently lost them both.
But Key was better prepared now (perhaps this kind of dissimulation is
progressive), and quickly alive to the necessity of throwing Collinson
off this unexpected scent. And his companion's own suggestion was
right to his hand, and, as it seemed, again quite providential! He
laughed, with a quick color, which, however, appeared to help his lie,
as he replied half hysterically, "You're right, old man, I own up, it's
mine! It's d--d silly, I know--but then, we're all fools where women
are concerned--and I wouldn't have lost that slipper for a mint of
money."
He held out his hand gayly, but Collinson retained the slipper while he
gravely examined it.
"You wouldn't mind telling me where you mought hev got that?" he said
meditatively.
"Of course I should mind," said Key with a well-affected mingling of
mirth and indignation. "What are you thinking of, you old rascal?
What do you take me for?"
But Collinson did not laugh. "You wouldn't mind givin' me the size and
shape and general heft of her as wore that shoe?"
"Most decidedly I should do nothing of the kind!" said Key half
impatiently. "Enough, that it was given to me by a very pretty girl.
There! that's all you will know."
"GIVEN to you?" said Collinson, lifting his eyes.
"Yes," returned Key sharply.
Collinson handed him the slipper gravely. "I only asked you," he said
slowly, but with a certain quiet dignity which Key had never before
seen in his face, "because thar was suthin' about the size, and shape,
and fillin' out o' that shoe that kinder reminded me of some 'un; but
that some 'un--her as mought hev stood up in that shoe--ain't o' that
kind as would ever stand in the shoes of her as YOU know at all." The
rebuke, if such were intended, lay quite as much in the utter ignoring
of Key's airy gallantry and levity as in any conscious slur upon the
fair fame of his invented Dulcinea. Yet Key oddly felt a strong
inclination to resent the aspersion as well as Collinson's gratuitous
morality; and with a mean recollection of Uncle Dick's last evening's
scandalous gossip, he said sarcastically, "And, of course, that some
one YOU were thinking of was your lawful wife."
"It war!" said Collinson gravely.
Perhaps it was something in Collinson's manner, or his own
preoccupation, but he did not pursue the subject, and the conversation
lagged. They were nearing, too, the outer edge of the present
conflagration, and the smoke, lying low in the unburnt woods, or
creeping like an actual exhalation of the soil, blinded them so that at
times they lost the trail completely. At other times, from the intense
heat, it seemed as if they were momentarily impinging upon the burning
area, or were being caught in a closing circle. It was remarkable that
with his sudden accession of fortune Key seemed to lose his usual frank
and careless fearlessness, and impatiently questioned his companion's
woodcraft. There were intervals when he regretted his haste to reach
Skinner's by this shorter cut, and began to bitterly attribute it to
his desire to serve Collinson. Ah, yes! it would be fine indeed, if
just as he were about to clutch the prize he should be sacrificed
through the ignorance and stupidity of this heavy-handed moralist at
his side! But it was not until, through that moralist's guidance, they
climbed a steep acclivity to a second ridge, and were comparatively
safe, that he began to feel ashamed of his surly silence or surlier
interruptions. And Collinson, either through his unconquerable
patience, or possibly in a fit of his usual uxorious abstraction,
appeared to take no notice of it.
A sloping table-land of weather-beaten boulders now effectually
separated them from the fire on the lower ridge. They presently began
to descend on the further side of the crest, and at last dropped upon a
wagon-road, and the first track of wheels that Key had seen for a
fortnight. Rude as it was, it seemed to him the highway to fortune,
for he knew that it passed Skinner's and then joined the great
stage-road to Marysville,--now his ultimate destination. A few rods
further on they came in view of Skinner's, lying like a dingy forgotten
winter snowdrift on the mountain shelf.
It contained a post-office, tavern, blacksmith's shop, "general store,"
and express-office, scarcely a dozen buildings in all, but all
differing from Collinson's Mill in some vague suggestion of vitality,
as if the daily regular pulse of civilization still beat, albeit
languidly, in that remote extremity. There was anticipation and
accomplishment twice a day; and as Key and Collinson rode up to the
express-office, the express-wagon was standing before the door ready to
start to meet the stagecoach at the cross-roads three miles away. This
again seemed a special providence to Key. He had a brief official
communication with Skinner as registrar, and duly recorded his claim;
he had a hasty and confidential aside with Skinner as general
storekeeper, and such was the unconscious magnetism developed by this
embryo millionaire that Skinner extended the necessary credit to
Collinson on Key's word alone. That done, he rejoined Collinson in high
spirits with the news, adding cheerfully, "And I dare say, if you want
any further advances Skinner will give them to you on Parker's draft."
"You mean that bit o' paper that chap left," said Collinson gravely.
"Yes."
"I tore it up."
"You tore it up?" ejaculated Key.
"You hear me? Yes!" said Collinson.
Key stared at him. Surely it was again providential that he had not
intrusted his secret to this utterly ignorant and prejudiced man! The
slight twinges of conscience that his lie about the slippers had caused
him disappeared at once. He could not have trusted him even in that;
it would have been like this stupid fanatic to have prevented Key's
preemption of that claim, until he, Collinson, had satisfied himself of
the whereabouts of the missing proprietor. Was he quite sure that
Collinson would not revisit the spot when he had gone? But he was
ready for the emergency.
He had intended to leave his horse with Skinner as security for
Collinson's provisions, but Skinner's liberality had made this
unnecessary, and he now offered it to Collinson to use and keep for him
until called for. This would enable his companion to "pack" his goods
on the mule, and oblige him to return to the mill by the wagon-road and
"outside trail," as more commodious for the two animals.
"Ye ain't afeared o' the road agents?" suggested a bystander; "they
just swarm on galloper's Ridge, and they 'held up' the down stage only
last week."
"They're not so lively since the deputy-sheriff's got a new idea about
them, and has been lying low in the brush near Bald Top," returned
Skinner. "Anyhow, they don't stop teams nor 'packs' unless there's a
chance of their getting some fancy horseflesh by it; and I reckon thar
ain't much to tempt them thar," he added, with a satirical side glance
at his customer's cattle. But Key was already standing in the
express-wagon, giving a farewell shake to his patient companion's hand,
and this ingenuous pleasantry passed unnoticed. Nevertheless, as the
express-wagon rolled away, his active fancy began to consider this new
danger that might threaten the hidden wealth of his claim. But he
reflected that for a time, at least, only the crude ore would be taken
out and shipped to Marysville in a shape that offered no profit to the
highwaymen. Had it been a gold mine!--but here again was the
interposition of Providence!
A week later Preble Key returned to Skinner's with a foreman and ten
men, and an unlimited credit to draw upon at Marysville! Expeditions of
this kind created no surprise at Skinner's. Parties had before this
entered the wilderness gayly, none knew where or what for; the sedate
and silent woods had kept their secret while there; they had
evaporated, none knew when or where--often, alas! with an unpaid
account at Skinner's. Consequently, there was nothing in Key's party
to challenge curiosity. In another week a rambling, one-storied shed
of pine logs occupied the site of the mysterious ruins, and contained
the party; in two weeks excavations had been made, and the whole face
of the outcrop was exposed; in three weeks every vestige of former
tenancy which the fire had not consumed was trampled out by the alien
feet of these toilers of the "Sylvan Silver Hollow Company." None of
Key's former companions would have recognized the hollow in its
blackened leveling and rocky foundation; even Collinson would not have
remembered this stripped and splintered rock, with its heaps of fresh
debris, as the place where he had overtaken Key. And Key himself had
forgotten, in his triumph, everything but the chance experiment that
had led to his success.
Perhaps it was well, therefore, that one night, when the darkness had
mercifully fallen upon this scene of sylvan desolation, and its still
more incongruous and unsavory human restoration, and the low murmur of
the pines occasionally swelled up from the unscathed mountain-side, a
loud shout and the trampling of horses' feet awoke the dwellers in the
shanty. Springing to their feet, they hurriedly seized their weapons
and rushed out, only to be confronted by a dark, motionless ring of
horsemen, two flaming torches of pine knots, and a low but distinct
voice of authority. In their excitement, half-awakened suspicion, and
confusion, they were affected by its note of calm preparation and
conscious power.
"Drop those guns--hold up your hands! We've got every man of you
covered."
Key was no coward; the men, though flustered, were not cravens: but
they obeyed. "Trot out your leader! Let him stand out there, clear,
beside that torch!"
One of the gleaming pine knots disengaged itself from the dark circle
and moved to the centre, as Preble Key, cool and confident, stepped
beside it.
"That will do," said the immutable voice. "Now, we want Jack Riggs,
Sydney Jack, French Pete, and One-eyed Charley."
A vivid reminiscence of the former night scene in the hollow--of his
own and his companions voices raised in the darkness--flashed across
Key. With an instinctive premonition that this invasion had something
to do with the former tenant, he said calmly:--
"Who wants them?"
"The State of California," said the voice.
"The State of California must look further," returned Key in his old
pleasant voice; "there are no such names among my party."
"Who are you?"
"The manager of the 'Sylvan Silver Hollow Company,' and these are my
workmen."
There was a hurried movement, and the sound of whispering in the
hitherto dark and silent circle, and then the voice rose again:
"You have the papers to prove that?"
"Yes, in the cabin. And you?"
"I've a warrant to the sheriff of Sierra."
There was a pause, and the voice went on less confidently:--
"How long have you been here?"
"Three weeks. I came here the day of the fire and took up this claim."
"There was no other house here?"
"There were ruins,--you can see them still. It may have been a
burnt-up cabin."
The voice disengaged itself from the vague background and came slowly
forwards:--
"It was a den of thieves. It was the hiding-place of Jack Riggs and
his gang of road agents. I've been hunting this spot for three weeks.
And now the whole thing's up!"
There was a laugh from Key's men, but it was checked as the owner of
the voice slowly ranged up beside the burning torch and they saw his
face. It was dark and set with the defeat of a brave man.
"Won't you come in and take something?" said Key kindly.
"No. It's enough fool work for me to have routed ye out already. But I
suppose it's all in my d--d day's work! Good-night! Forward there!
Get!"
The two torches danced forwards, with the trailing off of vague shadows
in dim procession; there was a clatter over the rocks and they were
gone. Then, as Preble Key gazed after them, he felt that with them had
passed the only shadow that lay upon his great fortune; and with the
last tenant of the hollow a proscribed outlaw and fugitive, he was
henceforth forever safe in his claim and his discovery. And yet, oddly
enough, at that moment, as he turned away, for the first time in three
weeks there passed before his fancy with a stirring of reproach a
vision of the face that he had seen at the window.