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"I discovered it by accident," continued the voice of Brace when all was again quiet; "it was hidden as only a squirrel or an Injin can hide when they improve upon nature. When I was satisfied that the girl had been in the woods, I was determined to find out where she vanished, and went there again. Prospecting around, I picked up at the foot of one of the biggest trees this yer old memorandum-book, with grasses and herbs stuck in it. I remembered that I'd heard old Wynn say that Low, like the d–d Digger that he was, collected these herbs; only he pretended it was for science. I reckoned the book was his and that he mightn't be far away. I lay low and waited. Bimeby I saw a lizard running down the root. When he got sight of me he stopped."
"D–n the lizard! What's that got to do with where she is now?"
"Everything. That lizard had a piece of sugar in his mouth. Where did it come from? I made him drop it, and calculated he'd go back for more. He did. He scooted up that tree and slipped in under some hanging strips of bark. I shoved 'em aside, and found an opening to the hollow where they do their housekeeping."
"But you didn't see her there—and how do you know she is there now?"
"I determined to make it sure. When she left to-day, I started an hour ahead of her, and hid myself at the edge of the woods. An hour after the coach arrived at Indian Spring, she came there in a brown duster and was joined by him. I'd have followed them, but the d–d hound has the ears of a squirrel, and though I was five hundred yards from him he was on his guard."
"Guard be blessed! Wasn't you armed? Why didn't you go for him?" said Dunn, furiously.
"I reckoned I'd leave that for you," said Brace coolly. "If he'd killed me, and if he'd even covered me with his rifle, he'd be sure to let daylight through me at double the distance. I shouldn't have been any better off, nor you either. If I'd killed him, it would have been your duty as sheriff to put me in jail; and I reckon it wouldn't have broken your heart, Jim Dunn, to have got rid of two rivals instead of one. Hullo! Where are you going?"
"Going?" said Dunn hoarsely. "Going to the Carquinez Woods, by God! to kill him before her. I'll risk it, if you daren't. Let me succeed, and you can hang me and take the girl yourself."
"Sit down, sit down. Don't be a fool, Jim Dunn! You wouldn't keep the saddle a hundred yards. Did I say I wouldn't help you? No. If you're willing, we'll run the risk together, but it must be in my way. Hear me. I'll drive you down there in a buggy before daylight, and we'll surprise them in the cabin or as they leave the wood. But you must come as if to arrest him for some offense—say, as an escaped Digger from the Reservation, a dangerous tramp, a destroyer of public property in the forests, a suspected road agent, or anything to give you the right to hunt him. The exposure of him and Nellie, don't you see, must be accidental. If he resists, kill him on the spot, and nobody'll blame you; if he goes peaceably with you, and you once get him in Excelsior jail, when the story gets out that he's taken the belle of Excelsior for his squaw, if you'd the angels for your posse you couldn't keep the boys from hanging him to the first tree. What's that?"
He walked to the window, and looked out cautiously.
"If it was the old man coming back and listening," he said, after a pause, "it can't be helped. He'll hear it soon enough, if he don't suspect something already."
"Look yer, Brace," broke in Dunn hoarsely. "D–d if I understand you or you me. That dog Low has got to answer to me, not to the law! I'll take my risk of killing him, on sight and on the square. I don't reckon to handicap myself with a warrant, and I am not going to draw him out with a lie. You hear me? That's me all the time!"
"Then you calkilate to go down thar," said Brace contemptuously, "yell out for him and Nellie, and let him line you on a rest from the first tree as if you were a grizzly."
There was a pause. "What's that you were saying just now about a bearskin he sold?" asked Dunn slowly, as if reflecting.
"He exchanged a bearskin," replied Brace, "with a single hole right over the heart. He's a dead shot, I tell you."
"D–n his shooting," said Dunn. "I'm not thinking of that. How long ago did he bring in that bearskin?"
"About two weeks, I reckon. Why?"
"Nothing! Look yer, Brace, you mean well—thar's my hand. I'll go down with you there, but not as the sheriff. I'm going there as Jim Dunn, and you can come along as a white man, to see things fixed on the square. Come!"
Brace hesitated. "You'll think better of my plan before you get there; but I've said I'd stand by you, and I will Come, then. There's no time to lose."
They passed out into the darkness together.
"What are you waiting for?" said Dunn impatiently, as Brace, who was supporting him by the arm, suddenly halted at the corner of the house.
"Some one was listening—did you not see him? Was it the old man?" asked Brace hurriedly.
"Blast the old man! It was only one of them Mexican packers chock-full of whiskey, and trying to hold up the house. What are you thinking of? We shall be late."
In spite of his weakness, the wounded man hurriedly urged Brace forward, until they reached the latter's lodgings. To his surprise, the horse and buggy were already before the door.
"Then you reckoned to go, any way?" said Dunn, with a searching look at his companion.
"I calkilated somebody would go," returned Brace, evasively, patting the impatient Buckskin; "but come in and take a drink before we leave."
Dunn started out of a momentary abstraction, put his hand on his hip, and mechanically entered the house. They had scarcely raised the glasses to their lips when a sudden rattle of wheels was heard in the street. Brace set down his glass and ran to the window.
"It's the mare bolted," he said, with an oath. "We've kept her too long standing. Follow me;" and he dashed down the staircase into the street. Dunn followed with difficulty; when he reached the door he was confronted by his breathless companion. "She's gone off on a run, and I'll swear there was a man in the buggy!" He stopped and examined the halter-strap, still fastened to the fence. "Cut! by God!"
Dunn turned pale with passion. "Who's got another horse and buggy?" he demanded.
"The new blacksmith in Main Street; but we won't get it by borrowing," said Brace.
"How, then?" asked Dunn savagely.
"Seize it, as the sheriff of Yuba and his deputy, pursuing a confederate of the Injin Low—THE HORSE THIEF!"
CHAPTER VIII
The brief hour of darkness that preceded the dawn was that night intensified by a dense smoke, which, after blotting out horizon and sky, dropped a thick veil on the highroad and the silent streets of Indian Spring. As the buggy containing Sheriff Dunn and Brace dashed through the obscurity, Brace suddenly turned to his companion.
"Some one ahead!"
The two men bent forward over the dashboard. Above the steady plunging of their own horse-hoofs they could hear the quicker irregular beat of other hoofs in the darkness before them.
"It's that horse thief!" said Dunn, in a savage whisper. "Bear to the right, and hand me the whip."
A dozen cuts of the cruel lash, and their maddened horse, bounding at each stroke, broke into a wild canter. The frail vehicle swayed from side to side at each spring of the elastic shafts. Steadying himself by one hand on the low rail, Dunn drew his revolver with the other. "Sing out to him to pull up, or we'll fire. My voice is clean gone," he added, in a husky whisper.
They were so near that they could distinguish the bulk of a vehicle careering from side to side in the blackness ahead. Dunn deliberately raised his weapon. "Sing out!" he repeated impatiently. But Brace, who was still keeping in the shadow, suddenly grasped his companion's arm.
"Hush! It's not Buckskin," he whispered hurriedly.
"Are you sure?"
"Don't you see we're gaining on him?" replied the other contemptuously. Dunn grasped his companion's hand and pressed it silently. Even in that supreme moment this horseman's tribute to the fugitive Buckskin forestalled all baser considerations of pursuit and capture!
In twenty seconds they were abreast of the stranger, crowding his horse and buggy nearly into the ditch; Brace keenly watchful, Dunn suppressed and pale. In half a minute they were leading him a length; and when their horse again settled down to his steady work, the stranger was already lost in the circling dust that followed them. But the victors seemed disappointed. The obscurity had completely hidden all but the vague outlines of the mysterious driver.
"He's not our game, any way," whispered Dunn. "Drive on."
"But if it was some friend of his," suggested Brace uneasily, "what would you do?"
"What I said I'd do," responded Dunn savagely. "I don't want five minutes to do it in, either; we'll be half an hour ahead of that d–d fool, whoever he is. Look here; all you've got to do is to put me in the trail to that cabin. Stand back of me, out of gun-shot, alone, if you like, as my deputy, or with any number you can pick up as my posse. If he gets by me as Nellie's lover, you may shoot him or take him as a horse thief, if you like."
"Then you won't shoot him on sight?"
"Not till I've had a word with him."
"But"—
"I've chirped," said the sheriff gravely. "Drive on."
For a few moments only the plunging hoofs and rattling wheels were heard. A dull, lurid glow began to define the horizon. They were silent until an abatement of the smoke, the vanishing of the gloomy horizon line, and a certain impenetrability in the darkness ahead showed them they were nearing the Carquinez Woods. But they were surprised on entering them to find the dim aisles alight with a faint mystic Aurora. The tops of the towering spires above them had caught the gleam of the distant forest fires, and reflected it as from a gilded dome.
"It would be hot work if the Carquinez Woods should conclude to take a hand in this yer little game that's going on over on the Divide yonder," said Brace, securing his horse and glancing at the spires overhead. "I reckon I'd rather take a back seat at Injin Spring when the show commences."
Dunn did not reply, but, buttoning his coat, placed one hand on his companion's shoulder, and sullenly bade him "lead the way." Advancing slowly and with difficulty, the desperate man might have been taken for a peaceful invalid returning from an early morning stroll. His right hand was buried thoughtfully in the side-pocket of his coat. Only Brace knew that it rested on the handle of his pistol.
From time to time the latter stopped and consulted the faint trail with a minuteness that showed recent careful study. Suddenly he paused. "I made a blaze hereabouts to show where to leave the trail. There it is," he added, pointing to a slight notch cut in the trunk of an adjoining tree.
"But we've just passed one," said Dunn, "if that's what you are looking after, a hundred yards back."
Brace uttered an oath, and ran back in the direction signified by his companion. Presently he returned with a smile of triumph.
"They've suspected something. It's a clever trick, but it won't hold water. That blaze which was done to muddle you was cut with an axe; this which I made was done with a bowie-knife. It's the real one. We're not far off now. Come on."
They proceeded cautiously, at right angles with the "blazed" tree, for ten minutes more. The heat was oppressive; drops of perspiration rolled from the forehead of the sheriff, and at times, when he attempted to steady his uncertain limbs, his hands shrank from the heated, blistering bark he touched with ungloved palms.
"Here we are," said Brace, pausing at last. "Do you see that biggest tree, with the root stretching out half-way across to the opposite one?"
"No; it's further to the right and abreast of the dead brush," interrupted Dunn quickly, with a sudden revelation that this was the spot where he had found the dead bear in the night Teresa escaped.
"That's so," responded Brace, in astonishment.
"And the opening is on the other side, opposite the dead brush," said Dunn.
"Then you know it?" said Brace suspiciously.
"I reckon!" responded Dunn, grimly. "That's enough! Fall back!"
To the surprise of his companion, he lifted his head erect, and with a strong, firm step walked directly to the tree. Reaching it, he planted himself squarely before the opening.
"Halloo!" he said.
There was no reply. A squirrel scampered away close to his feet. Brace, far in the distance, after an ineffectual attempt to distinguish his companion through the intervening trunks, took off his coat, leaned against a tree, and lit a cigar.
"Come out of that cabin!" continued Dunn, in a clear, resonant voice.
"Come out before I drag you out!"
"All right, 'Captain Scott.' Don't shoot, and I'll come down," said a voice as clear and as high as his own. The hanging strips of bark were dashed aside, and a woman leaped lightly to the ground.
Dunn staggered back. "Teresa! by the Eternal!"
It was Teresa! the old Teresa! Teresa, a hundred times more vicious, reckless, hysterical, extravagant, and outrageous than before,—Teresa, staring with tooth and eye, sunburnt and embrowned, her hair hanging down her shoulders, and her shawl drawn tightly around her neck.
"Teresa it is! the same old gal! Here we are again! Return of the favorite in her original character! For two weeks only! Houp là! Tshk!" and, catching her yellow skirt with her fingers, she pirouetted before the astounded man, and ended in a pose. Recovering himself with an effort, Dunn dashed forward and seized her by the wrist.
"Answer me, woman! Is that Low's cabin?"
"It is."
"Who occupies it besides?"
"I do."
"And who else?"
"Well," drawled Teresa slowly, with an extravagant affectation of modesty, "nobody else but us, I reckon. Two's company, you know, and three's none."
"Stop! Will you swear that there isn't a young girl, his—his sweetheart—concealed there with you?"
The fire in Teresa's eye was genuine as she answered steadily, "Well, it ain't my style to put up with that sort of thing; at least, it wasn't over at Yolo, and you know it, Jim Dunn, or I wouldn't be here."
"Yes, yes," said Dunn hurriedly. "But I'm a d–d fool, or worse, the fool of a fool. Tell me, Teresa, is this man Low your lover?"
Teresa lowered her eyes as if in maidenly confusion.
"Well, if I'd known that you had any feeling of your own about it—if you'd spoken sooner"—
"Answer me, you devil!"
"He is."
"And he has been with you here—yesterday—tonight?"
"He has."
"Enough." He laughed a weak, foolish laugh, and turning pale, suddenly lapsed against a tree. He would have fallen, but with a quick instinct Teresa sprang to his side, and supported him gently to a root. The action over they both looked astounded.
"I reckon that wasn't much like either you or me," said Dunn slowly, "was it? But if you'd let me drop then you'd have stretched out the biggest fool in the Sierras." He paused, and looked at her curiously. "What's come over you; blessed if I seem to know you now."
She was very pale again, and quiet; that was all.
"Teresa! d–n it, look here! When I was laid up yonder in Excelsior I said I wanted to get well for only two things. One was to hunt you down, the other to marry Nellie Wynn. When I came here I thought that last thing could never be. I came here expecting to find her here with Low, and kill him—perhaps kill her too. I never even thought of you; not once. You might have risen up before me—between me and him—and I'd have passed you by. And now that I find it's all a mistake, and it was you, not her, I was looking for, why"—
"Why," she interrupted bitterly, "you'll just take me, of course, to save your time and earn your salary. I'm ready."
"But I'm not, just yet," he said faintly. "Help me up." She mechanically assisted him to his feet.
"Now stand where you are," he added, "and don't move beyond this tree till I return."
He straightened himself with an effort, clenched his fists until the nails were nearly buried in his palms, and strode with a firm, steady step in the direction he had come. In a few moments he returned and stood before her.
"I've sent away my deputy—the man who brought me here, the fool who thought you were Nellie. He knows now he made a mistake. But who it was he mistook for Nellie he does not know, nor shall ever know, nor shall any living being know, other than myself. And when I leave the wood to-day I shall know it no longer. You are safe here as far as I am concerned, but I cannot screen you from others prying. Let Low take you away from here as soon as he can."
"Let him take me away? Ah, yes. For what?"
"To save you," said Dunn. "Look here, Teresa! Without knowing it, you lifted me out of hell just now; and because of the wrong I might have done her—for her sake, I spare you and shirk my duty."
"For her sake!" gasped the woman—"for her sake! Oh, yes! Go on."
"Well," said Dunn gloomily, "I reckon perhaps you'd as lieve left me in hell, for all the love you bear me. And maybe you've grudge enough agin me still to wish I'd found her and him together."
"You think so?" she said, turning her head away.
"There, d–n it! I didn't mean to make you cry. Maybe you wouldn't, then. Only tell that fellow to take you out of this, and not run away the next time he sees a man coming."
"He didn't run," said Teresa, with flashing eyes. "I—I—I sent him away," she stammered. Then, suddenly turning with fury upon him, she broke out, "Run! Run from you! Ha, ha! You said just now I'd a grudge against you. Well, listen, Jim Dunn. I'd only to bring you in range of that young man's rifle, and you'd have dropped in your tracks like"—
"Like that bar, the other night," said Dunn, with a short laugh. "So that was your little game?" He checked his laugh suddenly—a cloud passed over his face. "Look here, Teresa," he said, with an assumption of carelessness that was as transparent as it was utterly incompatible with his frank, open selfishness. "What became of that bar? The skin—eh? That was worth something?"
"Yes," said Teresa quietly. "Low exchanged it and got a ring for me from that trader Isaacs. It was worth more, you bet. And the ring didn't fit either"—
"Yes," interrupted Dunn, with an almost childish eagerness.
"And I made him take it back, and get the value in money. I hear that Isaacs sold it again and made another profit; but that's like those traders." The disingenuous candor of Teresa's manner was in exquisite contrast to Dunn. He rose and grasped her hand so heartily she was forced to turn her eyes away.
"Good-by!" he said.
"You look tired," she murmured, with a sudden gentleness that surprised him; "let me go with you a part of the way."
"It isn't safe for you just now," he said, thinking of the possible consequences of the alarm Brace had raised.
"Not the way you came," she replied; "but one known only to myself."
He hesitated only a moment. "All right, then," he said finally; "let us go at once. It's suffocating here, and I seem to feel this dead bark crinkle under my feet."
She cast a rapid glance around her, and then seemed to sound with her eyes the far-off depths of the aisles, beginning to grow pale with the advancing day, but still holding a strange quiver of heat in the air. When she had finished her half abstracted scrutiny of the distance, she cast one backward glance at her own cabin and stopped.
"Will you wait a moment for me?" she asked gently.
"Yes—but—no tricks, Teresa! It isn't worth the time."
She looked him squarely in the eyes without a word.
"Enough," he said; "go!"
She was absent for some moments. He was beginning to become uneasy, when she made her appearance again, clad in her old faded black dress. Her face was very pale, and her eyes were swollen, but she placed his hand on her shoulder, and bidding him not to fear to lean upon her, for she was quite strong, led the way.
"You look more like yourself now, and yet—blast it all!—you don't either," said Dunn, looking down upon her. "You've changed in some way. What is it? Is it on account of that Injin? Couldn't you have found a white man in his place?"
"I reckon he's neither worse nor better for that," she replied bitterly; "and perhaps he wasn't as particular in his taste as a white man might have been. But," she added, with a sudden spasm of her old rage, "it's a lie; he's not an Indian, no more than I am. Not unless being born of a mother who scarcely knew him, of a father who never even saw him, and being brought up among white men and wild beasts less cruel than they were, could make him one!"
Dunn looked at her in surprise not unmixed with admiration. "If Nellie," he thought, "could but love me like that!" But he only said:
"For all that, he's an Injin. Why, look at his name. It ain't Low. It's L'Eau Dormante, Sleeping Water, an Injin name."
"And what does that prove?" returned Teresa. "Only that Indians clap a nickname on any stranger, white or red, who may camp with them. Why, even his own father, a white man, the wretch who begot him and abandoned him,—he had an Indian name—Loup Noir."
"What name did you say?"
"Le Loup Noir, the Black Wolf. I suppose you'd call him an Indian, too? Eh? What's the matter? We're walking too fast. Stop a moment and rest. There—there, lean on me!"
She was none too soon; for, after holding him upright a moment, his limbs failed, and stooping gently she was obliged to support him half reclining against a tree.
"It's the heat!" he said. "Give me some whiskey from my flask. Never mind the water," he added faintly, with a forced laugh, after he had taken a draught at the strong spirit. "Tell me more about the other water—the Sleeping Water, you know. How do you know all this about him and his—father?"
"Partly from him and partly from Curson, who wrote to me about him," she answered, with some hesitation.
But Dunn did not seem to notice this incongruity of correspondence with a former lover. "And he told you?"
"Yes; and I saw the name on an old memorandum-book he has, which he says belonged to his father. It's full of old accounts of some trading post on the frontier. It's been missing for a day or two, but it will turn up. But I can swear I saw it."
Dunn attempted to rise to his feet. "Put your hand in my pocket," he said in a hurried whisper. "No, there!—bring out a book. There, I haven't looked at it yet. Is that it?" he added, handing her the book Brace had given him a few hours before.
"Yes," said Teresa, in surprise. "Where did you find it?"
"Never mind! Now let me see it, quick. Open it, for my sight is failing. There—thank you—that's all!"
"Take more whiskey," said Teresa, with a strange anxiety creeping over her. "You are faint again."
"Wait! Listen, Teresa—lower—put your ear lower. Listen! I came near killing that chap Low to-day. Wouldn't it have been ridiculous?"
He tried to smile, but his head fell back. He had fainted.
CHAPTER IX
For the first time in her life Teresa lost her presence of mind in an emergency. She could only sit staring at the helpless man, scarcely conscious of his condition, her mind filled with a sudden prophetic intuition of the significance of his last words. In the light of that new revelation she looked into his pale, haggard face for some resemblance to Low, but in vain. Yet her swift feminine instinct met the objection. "It's the mother's blood that would show," she murmured, "not this man's."
Recovering herself, she began to chafe his hands and temples, and moistened his lips with the spirit. When his respiration returned with a faint color to his cheeks, she pressed his hand eagerly and leaned over him.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Of what?" he whispered faintly.
"That Low is really your son?"
"Who said so?" he asked, opening his round eyes upon her.
"You did yourself, a moment ago," she said quickly. "Don't you remember?"
"Did I?"
"You did. Is it so?"