"Oh, this is absurd!" cried the new-comer as soon as he had recovered
somewhat from his surprise. "I am George Harrington. What does it
mean--some subterfuge on your part, sir, to make me take fresh steps to
prove my identity? If so, pray speak out."
The lawyer made a deprecatory movement.
"I beg your pardon, ladies, for speaking out so abruptly, but it was a
natural feeling of indignation."
"It is quite excusable, sir, and this is no subterfuge."
"But in Heaven's name give me some explanation."
"My dear Gertrude, Mrs Hampton," said the lawyer with dignity, "perhaps
it would be better for you to leave us. This gentleman and I will
discuss the matter together."
Gertrude looked at him almost resentfully, and then there was quite an
air of sympathy in her manner, as she turned to their visitor, who said
gravely:
"Yes, Miss Bellwood, I quite agree with this gentleman, it would,
perhaps, be better that we should discuss the question alone. Indeed,
till I have proved that I am no impostor, I am no fit company for
ladies."
He crossed to the door, held it open, and bowed gravely, as without a
word they passed out, and then as soon as they were gone, he turned
fiercely upon the old man.
"Now, sir, if you please, I am waiting for an explanation," he said in a
low, angry voice.
"Yet," said Mr Hampton, throwing himself back in his chair, thrusting
up his glasses, and fixing his calm, cold eyes upon the visitor as he
continued, "I do not grant that you have any right, sir, to demand this
explanation. Your position should be that, if you consider you have a
just claim, you should instruct a solicitor, and he would place himself
in communication with me."
"Hang all solicitors, sir!" cried the young man angrily, and his eyes
seemed to flash with indignation.
The old man made a gesture.
"I beg your pardon, Mr Hampton. I believe you said you were a
solicitor," he added quickly.
"Go on, sir; I am not offended. On the contrary I rather like your
display of anger. It makes me feel that you may be honest instead of an
extremely clever pretender."
"Honest, sir! Good Heavens! Put yourself in my place. Now, between
man and man what does this mean?"
"Simply what I have told you; but sit down, sir. This is a question for
calm consideration, and you are walking up and down like--"
"A wild beast in a cage. Yes, I know it; but who can be calm at a time
like this? Pray excuse me and go on."
"I have very little to tell you, sir. Perhaps, as the solicitor of the
party in possession, I ought to make no admissions. I can merely tell
you that nearly four months ago Mr George Harrington came over from
America with indubitable proofs of his identity, and, as soon as the
proper legal forms could be gone though, took possession."
"Nearly four months ago? Here, stop a moment, sir. Was he a man about
my height?"
"Yes."
"Rather darker?"
The old lawyer bowed, and scrutinised the speaker carefully.
"He had a quick, sharp way of speaking, and a habit of looking behind
him as if in search of danger."
"Exactly. You are describing Mr George Harrington most carefully."
"The villain! The hound! And I thought it was for robbery only. Well,
one knows how to treat a man like that when we meet."
He showed his regular white teeth, as his brow puckered up, and there
was a look of fierce determination in his eyes as startling as his next
act, which was to slip his hand behind him, and draw a small
heavy-looking revolver from his pocket. This he examined quickly as he
tried the lock.
"Put that away, sir," cried Mr Hampton sternly. "You are not in the
Far West now but in civilised England. Give me that pistol instantly."
The young man handed the weapon without a moment's hesitation.
"I beg your pardon, Mr Hampton," he said. "Temper, got the better of
me."
He threw himself into a chair.
"Will you let me speak out quietly and calmly?"
"Go on, sir," said the lawyer.
There was a pause, during which the young man seemed to be collecting
himself, and then he said in a deep, clear voice:
"You are quite right, sir. This is a question for calm settlement, and
as I have right on my side I can afford to wait."
"That's talking like a reasonable man, sir."
"You must excuse me. Much of my life has been passed on ranches and
upon the mountains, among desperadoes and rough fellows, who do not
place much value upon a man's life. Then I have had long dealings with
Indians and bears, and altogether I am not much of a drawing-room man."
The lawyer bowed and glanced at the pistol on the table at his side.
"During my last year in the West, I picked up for companion a clever,
shrewd fellow, named Portway--Daniel Portway. He was in terribly low
water, and as it seemed to me undeservedly. He had been
gold-prospecting, he told me, and had made some good finds; but ill-luck
had dogged his steps. He was robbed by his companions twice over. He
was attacked by Indians three or four times, and when I came upon him in
Denver the poor wretch was down with fever. Well, to make the story
short, I did what one Englishman would do by another if he found him out
in a wild place dying. I couldn't get a woman to attend him for love or
money, so I had to do it myself, and a long and tedious job I had. I
don't know that I liked him, but I found he was a clever hunter, and
knew the way about the mountains well, so we became companions, and I
took him on my hunting expeditions. There, sir, honestly, I don't think
I could have behaved better to him if he had been a brother."
There was a pause, and then in a voice husky with emotion he exclaimed:
"Hang it all! how can a man be such a brute? Well, sir, I suppose in
chatting with him I let him know all my affairs, and at last read him my
letters. He knew that I was coming to England as soon as I had ended
that last expedition. There, I'm a frank sort of fellow, who would
trust any man till I found out that he was a rogue. I suppose I began
talking about my affairs, like a fool, to relieve the tedium of his
illness. Thus it went on till he must have known all I knew."
"This is a very plausible story, Mr Daniel Portway," said the lawyer
quietly; but he started, and laid his hand upon the revolver, so fierce
was the bound the young man made to his feet.
But he sat down again directly.
"No, no; you don't think that, sir. May I go on?"
"By all means."
"Shall I take the cartridges out of the revolver, sir?" said the young
man drily, "in case, I make a snatch at it."
"No, no, no. Go on, sir; go on."
There was a meaning smile on the young man's lips as he went on again,
and began telling of his last hunting-trip; but the smile soon died out,
and he looked stern and relentless as he spoke of the weary tramp they
had had, the midday sleep, and their journey afterwards till they were
beside the great canon, where he stepped forward to look about him.
"And then--I suppose it was a sudden temptation--the brute took a step
or two forward, came close behind me, and before I could turn, for I
felt paralysed with the horror of my position, he raised his rifle as
high as he could reach, and struck me a crashing blow upon the back of
the head."
"How do you know if you were looking in another direction?"
"Because the evening sun cast his shadow upon the side of the canon,
where it seemed to me in that momentary flash that one giant was smiting
down another. Then I fell headlong down, and for a few moments all was
darkness."
"Go on, sir," said the old lawyer, who was deeply interested, for his
_vis-a-vis_ was talking in a slow, laboured way, as if the recollection
of the terrible scene was more than he could bear and choked him with
emotion.
"Then I came to myself, to lie helpless as if in a dream. I could not
stir or make a sound; but I could hear distinctly, as I lay low down
where I had fallen, the sounds made by some one lowering himself down
the side of the canon. Now twigs were breaking, and now stones kept
falling; and after what seemed to be a long time, full of a dull sense
of pain and drowsiness, I was conscious of a heavy breathing as of a
wild beast."
"A bear," said the old lawyer involuntarily.
"No," said the young man with a bitter smile; "a worse kind of wild
beast than that: a man, sir--mine own familiar friend--Dan Portway."
"Ah!"
"He was searching my pockets, and taking everything about me; my
roughly-made, plain gold ring--pure gold from a pocket in the
mountains--what letters I had; everything. Of course I had not much
with me; nearly all I possessed was at my tent in the saddlebags miles
away."
"You felt all this?"
"And saw, though my eyes were nearly closed. And at last, as it seemed
to me, he was about to finish his work by casting me down headlong into
the profound depths of the great chasm, when a devilish thought entered
his mind and seemed to flash into mine as he held me."
There was another pause, and the young man's voice sounded very husky,
and he seemed to be suffering the bygone horror over again as he
recommenced:
"I tell you I could not stir, but I could think, and feel, and see that
devil's satisfied grin as he must have said to himself:--
"`Some day, perhaps, his body may be found, and then they will say he
was last seen in my company, and it might prove awkward. They shall
think he was killed by the Indians.'"
During the earlier part of this narrative the old lawyer had leaned back
in his chair; but as he grew interested he sat up, then leaned forward,
and now rested his hands upon the arms of his chair, and gazed full in
the speaker's face, so as not to lose a gesture, the slightest play of
his countenance, or a word.
"Yes," he continued; "go on."
"It was as I thought, and for a moment I tried to shut out the horror,
and to ask God to forgive all I had done wrong, and spare me the
horrible agony I was to feel before I died.
"But I could only think a few of the words I wished to say, and then, as
if every other sense grew more capable of taking in all that passed, I
saw him draw his keen hunting-knife from his belt. He seized my hair,
and the next moment the point was dividing the skin of my forehead, and
I felt the resistance offered by the bone, the sharp pain, and the blood
start and begin to trickle over my temples. Then there was a hideous
yell; he let me fall, and fled."
"Repentant?" said the old lawyer in an excited whisper.
"You shall hear, sir. As my head struck the rock there was a heavy
breathing, a rustling sound of undergrowth being thrust aside, and a
heavy foot was planted upon my chest, as a huge bear rushed over me in
full pursuit of my would-be murderer, and then I lay listening to the
crackling of twigs and the falling of stones. By degrees this died
away, and for a long time all was still, and I must have glided into a
state of insensibility from which I was roused by a low, snuffling
noise, and I felt hot breath upon my face, and the wet tongue of the
great bear licking my forehead. Then I felt him paw at me, and turn me
over on to my face.
"Then all was blank.
"When I could see again I was lying chest downward, perfectly helpless,
but with my head so turned that I could see, a dozen yards away, the
great grizzly bear busy feeding upon the fruit of one of the low shrubs
which grew on the side of the canon. Sometimes he crawled leisurely
down, sometimes up, as the fruit was most abundant; and this seemed to
satisfy him; for though during the next two days he came near me again
and again, he never so much as snuffed about me.
"But it all seems, after I awoke that morning, dreamlike and strange. I
told you it was two days, but I am not sure about that. I have a dim
recollection of the sun burning me, and seeming to scorch my brain, of
its being light and dark, and of a horrible sensation of thirst, and
then of all being blank. Rather a ghastly tale for ladies' ears, sir?"
"Yes, yes," said the old lawyer. "And afterwards?"
"Afterwards, sir? Yes; the next thing I remember is lying upon a
bison-skin in an Indian's skin lodge, and of the dark, dirty, wild face
of a squaw looking down into mine. Then of being held up while my head
was bandaged, and then for a long period all seemed misty and wild. I
was hunting and shooting in the Rockies. Then I was galloping after
bison with which the plain seemed to be black. Then I was prospecting
for gold, and finding rifts in the rocks full and waiting to be torn
out, but I could never get the gold, never succeed in hunting or
shooting. There was always something to interfere, till at last I found
that I was as weak as a child, and with almost the thought and action of
a helpless babe, living in the lodge of a roving party of Indians who
camped just where it seemed to be good in their own eyes. They are
savages, whom the white man has ousted from nearly all their own hunting
grounds; they are filthy and abominable in their ways, false and
treacherous, all that is bad some have learned, but they nursed me
through a long fever and delirium into a sort of imbecile childhood,
from which I slowly gained my manhood's reason and strength, and then
they gave me my rifle, and set me at liberty to join a party of
gold-seekers across whom we came."
"They found you there, lying half dead by the bear."
"I suppose so, sir. All I know I found out by thinking the matter over.
I recollect standing my rifle against a rock close to the track; and as
my companion fled, I suppose they must have seen it in passing, hunted
about for the owner and found me. I do not know for I could not
understand the Indians, and they could not understand me.
"I have nearly done, sir," said the young man speaking more briskly now.
"I made my way to my old camping-place, but there was nothing there,
and I was wondering whether Dan Portway had carried everything off, till
I remembered seeing the bear charge him, and I went to the place,
expecting, perhaps, to find his bones. But I made no discovery; and
knowing what a hopeless task it would be to try and find the villain, I
determined to come on here in obedience to the letter I had received
before I went for my last trip, made my way to San Francisco, and there
I learned of my grandfather's death."
"You made no effort then to find your assailant?" said the lawyer.
"No, sir, and it has proved to be the correct thing to do, for in coming
here I have run him to earth."
They sat gazing at each other for some moments in silence. Then Mr
Hampton spoke.
"You have the scar, then, made by your enemy's knife?"
"Yes, sir, here," said the young man, slightly pressing back his hair,
and bending forward so that the light of the shaded lamp fell upon a red
line about half an inch from the roots.
"And the injury to your head?"
"Rather an ugly place still, sir. The skull was slightly fractured. Do
you wish for that proof of my identity?"
"I should like that proof of the truth of your story, sir. I am a
lawyer."
"Give me your hand, then."
He took the old man's index finger, bent lower, and pressed it upon the
back of his head.
The old man shuddered and drew back.
"And if you want any further proof that I am the man I say, I have one
here that I had forgotten. When I was a child, for some freak, my
father tattooed a heart and dart upon my breast. There they are."
He tore open the flannel shirt he wore, and displayed the blue marks
upon his clear white skin.
"There, sir; that is all I can tell you now. The next thing is to
confront Mr Dan Portway."
"You think, then, that your old companion--I mean you wish me to believe
that your old companion took everything he could to prove his identity,
and has come here, and traded upon the knowledge he won?"
"And come here and laid claim to the estate, sir. Yes, I could lay my
life that is the case."
At that moment there was a tap at the door.