In the wilderness which is the Sasnokee-keewan a man seeking to escape a
pursuer need not have the slightest difficulty. This fact Sheldon was
forced to admit immediately.
There were trackless forests where a fugitive could laugh at a score of
hunters, rocky slopes over which he could run, leaving no sign of his
passing, thickets in which he might lie in safety while a man who was
looking for him went by so close that one might easily toss a stone to
the other.
But for an hour Sheldon sought for Paula and her father, hoping that
through some fortunate chance he might stumble upon them. He returned to
the forking of the trails where the girl had directed him to the right.
Now he took the other path, leading toward the northeast. But in a
little while it branched and branched again, and there were no tracks in
the grassy soil to help him.
He followed one trail after another, always coming back when there had
been nothing to persuade him that he was not perhaps setting his back
toward those he sought. And in the end he gave over his quest as
hopeless and retraced his steps to Johnny’s Luck.
The back door was wide open as he had left it. He stepped inside, moving
cautiously, realizing that one or both of them might have returned here
before him. But there was no sign that either had done so. The other
door was shut, the bar across it. The cabin’s interior had been in no
way disturbed since he had been there last.
It seemed that there was nothing that he could do now. To be sure he
might rifle their few belongings in an endeavor to learn who they were,
so that if he was forced to go back alone to the “world outside,” he
could see to give word of them to any relatives they might have. But he
disliked the job; certainly he would resort to no such action until it
had become evident that it was the only thing to do. He went out, closed
the door after him, and turned his back upon Johnny’s Luck. For, while
he had the opportunity, it would be well to look to Buck and to his
pack.
His horse he found browsing leisurely in the grove where he had left
him. The pack in the gulch had not been disturbed. Sheldon went to it
for a fresh tin of tobacco; made into a little bundle enough food for a
couple of meals, and with a thoughtful smile he slipped his one slab of
chocolate into his pocket. Then, having moved Buck a little deeper into
the grove, he turned again toward Johnny’s Luck. Soon or late the madman
or the girl would come back to their cabin. While his patience lasted
Sheldon would wait there for them.
This time, when he came again into the cabin, where still there was no
sign that its owners had been there since he had left it, he closed the
back door and flung the front one wide open. For if the madman and the
girl came back, Sheldon preferred to have them come this way, so that he
could see them in the clearing that had once been a street of Johnny’s
Luck. Then, with nothing else to do, he strode back and forth in the
rough room and smoked his pipe and stared about him.
So it was that at last one of the pictures upon the wall caught and held
his attention. It was an old line-cut from a newspaper, held in place by
little pegs through the corners. The man pictured might have been fifty
or he might have been thirty; the artist had achieved a sketch of which
neither he nor his subject need be proud. The thing which interested
Sheldon was the printed legend under the drawing:
Charles Francis Hamilton, Professor of Entomology in Brownell
University, Author of “The Lepidoptera of the Canadian Rocky Mountains,”
“A Monogram upon the Basilarchia Arthemis,” etc.
In ten lines was an article “of interest to the scientific world,”
announcing that Professor Hamilton, representing the interests of the
newly endowed College of Entomology, an institution whose aims “are the
pervestigation into the rarer varieties of the lepidoptera flying in the
North American altitudes over 7,000 feet,” was preparing for an
expedition into the less known regions of the Canadian northwest.
Here was matter of interest to John Sheldon. That such a clipping should
be found upon the wall of a log cabin in the Sasnokee-keewan in itself
set him musing. But as he stood looking at it other thoughts, more
closely connected with the matter in his mind, suggested themselves.
Perhaps the madman had also been a scientist, an entomologist, hence a
man of education. That would explain how it came about that Paula spoke
an English which was not that of a rough miner.
But another chance discovery brought Sheldon closer to the truth. The
cupboard door was open. In plain sight upon a low shelf was a thick
volume. Sheldon took it up. It was an abstrusely technical treatise upon
butterflies by Charles Francis Hamilton, Ph.D., and was dedicated:
TO MY DEAR WIFE PAULA
“Good Lord!” muttered Sheldon.
To be sure there might have been no end of explanations beside the one
which presented itself to him first. But here was a tenable theory, one
to which he clung rather more eagerly than he as yet understood.
The madman was no other than Charles Francis Hamilton, entomologist of
note about 1860. Not only had the man not always been mad, but at one
time had a brilliant mind. He had come into the unknown parts of the
great Northwest, so much of which is still unknown to-day, even though
men have made roads through it. And there he had lost his sanity.
One could conceive of some terrible illness which had broken the man and
twisted his brain hideously, or of an accident from which merely the
physical part of him had recuperated, or of some terrible experience
such as is no stranger in the wilderness, hardship on top of hardship,
starvation, perhaps, when a man is lost and bewildered, some shock which
would unseat the reason.
Somewhere he had found Paula. It might be as she herself said, that he
was her father; that he had brought her, a little girl, into the mining
country. Or it was quite as conceivable that he had “acquired” some
little motherless, fatherless waif, no blood kin to him, and had reared
her as his own daughter, naming her “Paula.” In any case, it was made
clear why she did not use the speech of the illiterate.
And it was equally obvious that the girl might be sane.
“Of course she is!” said Sheldon, disgusted with himself for his
perfectly natural suspicions. “What girl raised in a place like this all
her life by a madman wouldn’t be a trifle—different?”
And with renewed interest and impatience he awaited their return.
Meanwhile he turned the pages of the book slowly. Here and there he came
upon a slip of paper, yellow with the years, upon which were notes set
down neatly and in a small, legible hand. For the most part these notes
consisted of Latin names and abbreviations which meant nothing to John
Sheldon. Against each annotation there stood a date. These dates went
back as far as 1868; some were as recent as 1913.
“Get an alienist and an entomologist together over this thing,” thought
Sheldon, “and they could figure to the day when Hamilton went mad!”
For distinctly the more recent notes were in the same hand but not
inspired by the same brain as the earlier ones. In the latter there was
the cold precision of the scientist; in the others the burning
enthusiasm of a madman.
A note in the body of the text awoke in Sheldon this train of thought.
Under the heading _Papilioninae_ (The Swallow Tail Butterflies) there
was written in lead pencil:
To-day I have discovered IT! Immortal itself, it shall make me immortal!
Alt. 10,000 ft. Aug. 11, ’95.
Sheldon turned a couple of pages. Here were further notes under a new
heading, Sub-family _Parnassiinae._ The words were:
I was misled by the osmateria in the larva. IT is a Parnassian. And the
fools think there are only four upon the continent! I have found the
Fifth. But I was right about its immortality. Measurement: about nine
feet from tip to tip. It is found xxxxx. Its food is xxxxx. Ho! This is
my secret! Alt., xxxxx. Date, xxxxx.
F. C. H.
Sheldon shook his head and sighed. To him the penciled words were
strangely pathetic. So plainly was there to be seen the working of the
scientific brain which sought to tabulate important facts in connection
with the new Parnassian, so evident the insane cunning which compromised
by putting down a string of crosses to baffle him who might come upon
these notes.
“There is but the one in the world and I have found it!” was a footnote.
And then, scattered through the volume were such penciled jottings as:
I have named it. It is _Parnassius Aureus Giganticus_. The wings are of
gold!
_Giganticus_ flies at sunrise and at sunset.
I have set my trap at Alt. xxxxx. This time I shall get him!
Only one in the world! But it will oviposit in nineteen days! I shall
raise another one. There is but one egg.
A new peak for my trap. The Alt. is wrong.
The only Parnassius in the world whose wings are not white, but of gold;
whose hind-wing tail prolongations are like Papilio. This is the Golden
Emperor of Space, the Monarch of the Infinite, Master of Eternity and
Immortality! For its diet is that elixir, rising mistlike from xxxxx!
Oh! I must not write it down! Not even little Paula must guess this.
Flight of incredible speed. I have estimated to-day that my Golden Giant
travels at the rate of 1 mi. in 12 sec. _id est_, 300 mi. per hour! He
might sail around the world and other eyes than mine never see him. This
is why he has remained throughout the centuries for me to discover. —F.
C. H.
Another fool from the world outside has tried to steal my secret from
me. I killed him.
I am Midas, King of Gold; he is Parnassius Aureus Giganticus, Great
Golden Monarch of Space. We are Immortals.
Sheldon stared out through the open door, his gaze going over the dead,
forgotten town, and to the little lake lying languid in the sunshine.
For the instant he forgot Charles Francis Hamilton and his thoughts were
all for Paula.
A girl reared in the solitude, taught the weird, wild fancies of a
madman, accepting insanity for infallible wisdom! How should a man deal
with such as she must be? If Midas died—then what?
“Would she go with me back to the world?” he wondered. “Or is the rest
of her life to be that of a wild, hunted thing? Even if I can find her,
which is extremely doubtful, can I convince her that the strongest
beliefs of her whole life are wrong?”
In truth he found that his perplexities were but growing. But with his
jaw set he vowed to himself that if he did find her he’d take her out
with him if he had to bind her with a rope, like the wild thing she was.
Suddenly there came to him through the stillness a long-drawn cry of
pure terror. It came from far off, back of the cabin toward the
mountainside.
Rifle in hand Sheldon ran out of the house and plunged into the forest.