"If the man is alive--and we think he is--you are the only person that can
save him. I have telegraphed the Government. They do not promise, but they
will reprieve, and save your life if you find the man."
"Alive or dead?"
"Alive or dead, for the act would be the same. I have an order to take you
to the Gulch, if you will go; and I am sure that you will have your life
if you do it. I will promise--ah, yes, Grassette, but it shall be so!
Public opinion will demand it. You will do it?"
"To go free--_altogether_?"
"Well, but if your life is saved, Grassette?"
The dark face flushed, then grew almost repulsive again in its
sullenness.
"Life--and this, in prison, shut in year after year! To do always what
some one else wills, to be a slave to a warder! To have men like that over
me that have been a boss of men--wasn't it that drove me to kill?--to be
treated like dirt! And to go on with this, while outside there is free
life, and to go where you will at your own price--no! What do I care for
life? What is it to me! To live like this--ah, I would break my head
against these stone walls, I would choke myself with my own hands! If I
stayed here, I would kill again--I would kill--kill!"
"Then to go free altogether--that would be the wish of all the world, if
you save this man's life, if it can be saved. Will you not take the
chance? We all have to die some time or other, Grassette, some sooner,
some later; and when you go, will you not want to take to God in your
hands a life saved for a life taken? Have you forgotten God, Grassette? We
used to remember Him in the Church of St. Francis down there at home."
There was a moment's silence, in which Grassette's head was thrust
forward, his eyes staring into space. The old Seigneur had touched a
vulnerable corner in his nature.
Presently he said in a low voice: "To be free altogether!... What is his
name? Who is he?"
"His name is Bignold," the Governor answered. He turned to the Sheriff
inquiringly. "That is it, is it not?" he asked, in English, again.
"James Tarran Bignold," answered the Sheriff.
The effect of these words upon Grassette was remarkable. His body appeared
to stiffen, his face became rigid, he stared at the Governor blankly,
appalled; the color left his face, and his mouth opened with a curious and
revolting grimace. The others drew back, startled, and watched him.
"_Sang de Dieu_!" he murmured at last, with a sudden gesture of misery and
rage.
Then the Governor understood: he remembered that the name just given by
the Sheriff and himself was the name of the Englishman who had carried off
Grassette's wife years ago. He stepped forward and was about to speak, but
changed his mind. He would leave it all to Grassette; he would not let the
Sheriff know the truth, unless Grassette himself disclosed the situation.
He looked at Grassette with a look of poignant pity and interest combined.
In his own placid life he had never had any tragic happening, his blood
had run coolly, his days had been blessed by an urbane fate; such scenes
as this were but a spectacle to him; there was no answering chord of human
suffering in his own breast to make him realize what Grassette was
undergoing now; but he had read widely, he had been an acute observer of
the world and its happenings, and he had a natural human sympathy which
had made many a man and woman eternally grateful to him.
What would Grassette do? It was a problem which had no precedent, and the
solution would be a revelation of the human mind and heart. What would the
man do?
"Well, what is all this, Grassette?" asked the Sheriff, brusquely. His
official and officious intervention, behind which was the tyranny of the
little man, given a power which he was incapable of wielding wisely, would
have roused Grassette to a savage reply a half-hour before, but now it was
met by a contemptuous wave of the hand, and Grassette kept his eyes fixed
on the Governor.
"James Tarran Bignold!" Grassette said, harshly, with eyes that searched
the Governor's face; but they found no answering look there. The Governor,
then, did not remember that tragedy of his home and hearth, and the man
who had made of him an Ishmael. Still, Bignold had been almost a stranger
in the parish, and it was not curious if the Governor had forgotten.
"Bignold!" he repeated, but the Governor gave no response.
"Yes, Bignold is his name, Grassette," said the Sheriff. "You took a life,
and now, if you save one, that'll balance things. As the Governor says,
there'll be a reprieve anyhow. It's pretty near _the day_, and this isn't
a bad world to kick in, so long as you kick with one leg on the ground,
and--"
The Governor hastily intervened upon the Sheriff's brutal remarks. "There
is no time to be lost, Grassette. He has been ten days in the mine."
Grassette's was not a slow brain. For a man of such physical and bodily
bulk, he had more talents than are generally given. If his brain had been
slower, his hand also would have been slower to strike. But his
intelligence had been surcharged with hate these many years, and since the
day he had been deserted it had ceased to control his actions--a
passionate and reckless wilfulness had governed it. But now, after the
first shock and stupefaction, it seemed to go back to where it was before
Marcile went from him, gather up the force and intelligence it had then,
and come forward again to this supreme moment, with all that life's harsh
experiences had done for it, with the education that misery and misdoing
give. Revolutions are often the work of instants, not years, and the
crucial test and problem by which Grassette was now faced had lifted him
into a new atmosphere, with a new capacity alive in him. A moment ago his
eyes had been bloodshot and swimming with hatred and passion; now they
grew, almost suddenly, hard and lurking and quiet, with a strange,
penetrating force and inquiry in them.
"Bignold--where does he come from?--What is he?" he asked the Sheriff.
"He is an Englishman; he's only been out here a few months. He's been
shooting and prospecting; but he's a better shooter than a prospector.
He's a stranger; that's why all the folks out here want to save him if
it's possible. It's pretty hard dying in a strange land far away from all
that's yours. Maybe he's got a wife waiting for him over there."
"_Nom de Dieu_!" said Grassette, with suppressed malice, under his
breath.
"Maybe there's a wife waiting for him, and there's her to think of. The
West's hospitable, and this thing has taken hold of it; the West wants to
save this stranger, and it's waiting for you, Grassette, to do its work
for it, you being the only man that can do it, the only one that knows the
other secret way into Keeley's Gulch. Speak right out, Grassette. It's
your chance for life. Speak out quick."
The last three words were uttered in the old slave-driving tone, though
the earlier part of the speech had been delivered oracularly, and had
brought again to Grassette's eyes the reddish, sullen look which had made
them, a little while before, like those of some wounded, angered animal at
bay; but it vanished slowly, and there was silence for a moment. The
Sheriff's words had left no vestige of doubt in Grassette's mind. This
Bignold was the man who had taken Marcile away, first to the English
province, then into the States, where he had lost track of them, then over
to England. Marcile--where was Marcile now?
In Keeley's Gulch was the man who could tell him, the man who had ruined
his home and his life. Dead or alive, he was in Keeley's Gulch, the man
who knew where Marcile was; and if he knew where Marcile was, and if she
was alive, and he was outside these prison walls, what would he do to her?
And if he was outside these prison walls, and in the Gulch, and the man
was there alive before him, what would he do?
Outside these prison walls--to be out there in the sun, where life would
be easier to give up, if it had to be given up! An hour ago he had been
drifting on a sea of apathy, and had had his fill of life. An hour ago he
had had but one desire, and that was to die fighting, and he had even
pictured to himself a struggle in this narrow cell where he would compel
them to kill him, and so in any case let him escape the rope. Now he was
suddenly brought face to face with the great central issue of his life,
and the end, whatever that end might be, could not be the same in meaning,
though it might be the same concretely. If he elected to let things be,
then Bignold would die out there in the Gulch, starved, anguished, and
alone. If he went, he could save his own life by saving Bignold, if
Bignold was alive; or he could go--and not save Bignold's life or his own!
What would he do?
The Governor watched him with a face controlled to quietness, but with an
anxiety which made him pale in spite of himself.
"What will you do, Grassette?" he said, at last, in a low voice and with a
step forward to him. "Will you not help to clear your conscience by doing
this thing? You don't want to try and spite the world by not doing it. You
can make a lot of your life yet, if you are set free. Give yourself and
give the world a chance. You haven't used it right. Try again."
Grassette imagined that the Governor did not remember who Bignold was, and
that this was an appeal against his despair, and against revenging himself
on the community which had applauded his sentence. If he went to the
Gulch, no one would know or could suspect the true situation, every one
would be unprepared for that moment when Bignold and he would face each
other--and all that would happen then.
Where was Marcile? Only Bignold knew. Alive or dead? Only Bignold knew.
"_Bien_, I will do it, m'sieu'," he said to the Governor. "I am to go
alone--eh?"
The Sheriff shook his head. "No; two warders will go with you--and
myself."
A strange look passed over Grassette's face. He seemed to hesitate for a
moment, then he said again: "_Bon_, I will go."
"Then there is, of course, the doctor," said the Sheriff.
"_Bon_!" said Grassette. "What time is it?"
"Twelve o'clock," answered the Sheriff, and made a motion to the warder to
open the door of the cell.
"By sundown!" Grassette said, and he turned with a determined gesture to
leave the cell.
At the gate of the prison a fresh, sweet air caught his face.
Involuntarily he drew in a great draught of it, and his eyes seemed to
gaze out, almost wonderingly, over the grass and the trees to the
boundless horizon. Then he became aware of the shouts of the crowd--shouts
of welcome. This same crowd had greeted him with shouts of execration when
he had left the court-house after his sentence. He stood still for a
moment and looked at them, as it were only half comprehending that they
were cheering him now, and that voices were saying, "Bravo, Grassette!
Save him, and we'll save you."
Cheer upon cheer, but he took no notice. He walked like one in a dream--a
long, strong step. He turned neither to left nor right, not even when the
friendly voice of one who had worked with him bade him "Cheer up and do
the trick." He was busy working out a problem which no one but himself
could solve. He was only half conscious of his surroundings; he was moving
in a kind of detached world of his own, where the warders and the Sheriff
and those who followed were almost abstract and unreal figures. He was
living with a past which had been everlastingly distant, and had now
become a vivid and buffeting present. He returned no answers to the
questions addressed to him, and would not talk, save when for a little
while they dismounted from their horses and sat under the shade of a great
ash-tree for a few moments and snatched a mouthful of luncheon. Then he
spoke a little and asked some questions, but lapsed into a moody silence
afterward. His life and nature were being passed through a fiery crucible.
In all the years that had gone he had had an ungovernable desire to kill
both Bignold and Marcile if he ever met them--a primitive, savage desire
to blot them out of life and being. His fingers had ached for Marcile's
neck, that neck in which he had lain his face so often in the transient,
unforgettable days of their happiness. If she was alive now!--if she was
still alive!
Her story was hidden there in Keeley's Gulch with Bignold, and he was
galloping hard to reach his foe. As he went, by some strange alchemy of
human experience, by that new birth of his brain, the world seemed
different from what it had ever been before, at least since the day when
he had found an empty home and a shamed hearthstone. He got a new feeling
toward it, and life appealed to him as a thing that might have been so
well worth living! But since that was not to be, then he would see what he
could do to get compensation for all that he had lost, to take toll for
the thing that had spoiled him, and given him a savage nature and a raging
temper, which had driven him at last to kill a man who, in no real sense,
had injured him.
Mile after mile they journeyed, a troop of interested people coming after;
the sun and the clear, sweet air, the waving grass, the occasional
clearings where settlers had driven in the tent-pegs of home; the forest
now and then swallowing them, the mountains rising above them like a blank
wall, and then suddenly opening out before them; and the rustle and
scamper of squirrels and coyotes; and over their heads the whistle of
birds, the slow beat of wings of great wild-fowl. The tender sap of youth
was in this glowing and alert new world, and, by sudden contrast with the
prison walls which he had just left behind, the earth seemed recreated,
unfamiliar, compelling, and companionable. Strange that in all the years
that had been since he had gone back to his abandoned home to find Marcile
gone, the world had had no beauty, no lure for him. In the splendor of it
all he had only raged and stormed, hating his fellow-man, waiting, however
hopelessly, for the day when he should see Marcile and the man who had
taken her from him. And yet now, under the degradation of his crime and
its penalty, and the unmanning influence of being the helpless victim of
the iron power of the law, rigid, ugly, and demoralizing--now with the
solution of his life's great problem here before him in the hills, with
the man for whom he had waited so long caverned in the earth but a
hand-reach away, as it were, his wrongs had taken a new manifestation in
him, and the thing that kept crying out in him every moment was, Where is
Marcile?
It was four o'clock when they reached the pass which only Grassette knew,
the secret way into the Gulch. There was two hours' walking through the
thick, primeval woods, where few had ever been, except the ancient tribes
which had once lorded it here; then came a sudden drop into the earth, a
short travel through a dim cave, and afterward a sheer wall of stone
enclosing a ravine where the rocks on either side nearly met overhead.
Here Grassette gave the signal to shout aloud, and the voice of the
Sheriff called out: "Hello, Bignold! Hello! Hello, Bignold! Are you
there?--Hello!" His voice rang out clear and piercing, and then came a
silence--a long, anxious silence. Again the voice rang out: "Hello!
Hello-o-o! Bignold! Bigno-o-ld!"
They strained their ears. Grassette was flat on the ground, his ear to the
earth. Suddenly he got to his feet, his face set, his eyes glittering.
"He is there beyon'--I hear him," he said, pointing farther down the
Gulch. "Water--he is near it."
"We heard nothing," said the Sheriff--"not a sound."
"I hear ver' good. He is alive. I hear him--so," responded Grassette; and
his face had a strange, fixed look which the others interpreted to be
agitation at the thought that he had saved his own life by finding
Bignold--and alive; which would put his own salvation beyond doubt.
He broke away from them and hurried down the Gulch. The others followed
hard after, the Sheriff and the warders close behind; but he outstripped
them.
Suddenly he stopped and stood still, looking at something on the ground.
They saw him lean forward and his hands stretched out with a fierce
gesture. It was the attitude of a wild animal ready to spring.
They were beside him in an instant, and saw at his feet Bignold worn to a
skeleton, with eyes starting from his head and fixed on Grassette in agony
and stark fear.
The Sheriff stooped to lift Bignold up, but Grassette waved them back with
a fierce gesture, standing over the dying man.
"He spoil my home. He break me--I have my bill to settle here," he said,
in a voice hoarse and harsh. "It is so? It is so--eh? Spik!" he said to
Bignold.
"Yes," came feebly from the shrivelled lips. "Water! Water!" the wretched
man gasped. "I'm dying!"
A sudden change came over Grassette. "Water--queeck!" he said.
The Sheriff stooped and held a hatful of water to Bignold's lips, while
another poured brandy from a flask into the water.
Grassette watched them eagerly. When the dying man had swallowed a little
of the spirit and water, Grassette leaned over him again, and the others
drew away. They realized that these two men had an account to settle, and
there was no need for Grassette to take revenge, for Bignold was going
fast.
"You stan' far back," said Grassette, and they fell away.
Then he stooped down to the sunken, ashen face, over which death was fast
drawing its veil.
"Marcile--where is Marcile?" he asked.
The dying man's lips opened. "God forgive me--God save my soul!" he
whispered. He was not concerned for Grassette now.
"Queeck--queeck, where is Marcile?" Grassette said, sharply. "Come back,
Bignold. Listen--where is Marcile?"
He strained to hear the answer. Bignold was going, but his eyes opened
again, however, for this call seemed to pierce to his soul as it struggled
to be free.
"Ten years--since--I saw her," he whispered. "Good girl--Marcile. She
loves you, but she--is afraid." He tried to say something more, but his
tongue refused its office.
"Where is she?--spik!" commanded Grassette, in a tone of pleading and
agony now.
Once more the flying spirit came back. A hand made a motion toward his
pocket, then lay still.
Grassette felt hastily in the dead man's pocket, drew forth a letter, and
with half-blinded eyes read the few lines it contained. It was dated from
a hospital in New York, and was signed, "Nurse Marcile."
With a groan of relief Grassette stood staring at the dead man. When the
others came to him again, his lips were moving, but they did not hear what
he was saying. They took up the body and moved away with it up the
ravine.
"It's all right, Grassette. You'll be a free man," said the Sheriff.
Grassette did not answer. He was thinking how long it would take him to
get to Marcile, when he was free.
He had a true vision of beginning life again with Marcile.