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“It’s only an old family keepsake,” she added, with easy mendacity; and affecting to recognize in Mr. Brace’s curiosity a not unnatural excuse for toying with her charming fingers, she hid them in chaste and virginal seclusion in her lap, until she could recover the ring and resume her glove.
A week passed—a week of peculiar and desiccating heat for even those dry Sierra table-lands. The long days were filled with impalpable dust and acrid haze suspended in the motionless air; the nights were breathless and dewless; the cold wind which usually swept down from the snow line was laid to sleep over a dark monotonous level, whose horizon was pricked with the eating fires of burning forest crests. The lagging coach of Indian Spring drove up at Excelsior, and precipitated its passengers with an accompanying cloud of dust before the Excelsior Hotel. As they emerged from the coach, Mr. Brace, standing in the doorway, closely scanned their begrimed and almost unrecognizable faces. They were the usual type of travelers: a single professional man in dusty black, a few traders in tweeds and flannels, a sprinkling of miners in red and gray shirts, a Chinaman, a negro, and a Mexican packer or muleteer. This latter for a moment mingled with the crowd in the bar-room, and even penetrated the corridor and dining-room of the hotel, as if impelled by a certain semi-civilized curiosity, and then strolled with a lazy, dragging step—half impeded by the enormous leather leggings, chains, and spurs, peculiar to his class—down the main street. The darkness was gathering, but the muleteer indulged in the same childish scrutiny of the dimly lighted shops, magazines, and saloons, and even of the occasional groups of citizens at the street corners. Apparently young, as far as the outlines of his figure could be seen, he seemed to show even more than the usual concern of masculine Excelsior in the charms of womankind. The few female figures about at that hour, or visible at window or veranda, received his marked attention; he respectfully followed the two auburn-haired daughters of Deacon Johnson on their way to choir meeting to the door of the church. Not content with that act of discreet gallantry, after they had entered he managed to slip unperceived behind them.
The memorial of the Excelsior gamblers’ generosity was a modern building, large and pretentious, for even Mr. Wynn’s popularity, and had been good-humoredly known, in the characteristic language of the generous donors, as one of the “biggest religious bluffs” on record. Its groined rafters, which were so new and spicy that they still suggested their native forest aisles, seldom covered more than a hundred devotees, and in the rambling choir, with its bare space for the future organ, the few choristers, gathered round a small harmonium, were lost in the deepening shadow of that summer evening. The muleteer remained hidden in the obscurity of the vestibule. After a few moments’ desultory conversation, in which it appeared that the unexpected absence of Miss Nellie Wynn, their leader, would prevent their practicing, the choristers withdrew. The stranger, who had listened eagerly, drew back in the darkness as they passed out, and remained for a few moments a vague and motionless figure in the silent church. Then coming cautiously to the window, the flapping broad-brimmed hat was put aside, and the faint light of the dying day shone in the black eyes of Teresa! Despite her face, darkened with dye and disfigured with dust, the matted hair piled and twisted around her head, the strange dress and boyish figure, one swift glance from under her raised lashes betrayed her identity.
She turned aside mechanically into the first pew, picked up and opened a hymn-book. Her eyes became riveted on a name written on the title-page, “Nellie Wynn.” HER name, and HER book. The instinct that had guided her here was right; the slight gossip of her fellow-passengers was right; this was the clergyman’s daughter, whose praise filled all mouths. This was the unknown girl the stranger was seeking, but who in turn perhaps had been seeking Low—the girl who absorbed his fancy—the secret of his absences, his preoccupation, his coldness! This was the girl whom to see, perhaps in his arms, she was now periling her liberty and her life unknown to him! A slight odor, some faint perfume of its owner, came from the book; it was the same she had noticed in the dress Low had given her. She flung the volume to the ground, and, throwing her arms over the back of the pew before her, buried her face in her hands.
In that light and attitude she might have seemed some rapt acolyte abandoned to self-communion. But whatever yearning her soul might have had for higher sympathy or deeper consolation, I fear that the spiritual Tabernacle of Excelsior and the Reverend Mr. Wynn did not meet that requirement. She only felt the dry, oven-like heat of that vast shell, empty of sentiment and beauty, hollow in its pretense and dreary in its desolation. She only saw in it a chief altar for the glorification of this girl who had absorbed even the pure worship of her companion, and converted and degraded his sublime paganism to her petty creed. With a woman’s withering contempt for her own art displayed in another woman, she thought how she herself could have touched him with the peace that the majesty of their woodland aisles—so unlike this pillared sham—had taught her own passionate heart, had she but dared. Mingling with this imperfect theology, she felt she could have proved to him also that a brunette and a woman of her experience was better than an immature blonde. She began to loathe herself for coming hither, and dreaded to meet his face. Here a sudden thought struck her. What if he had not come here? What if she had been mistaken? What if her rash interpretation of his absence from the wood that night was simple madness? What if he should return—if he had already returned? She rose to her feet, whitening yet joyful with the thought. She could return at once; what was the girl to her now? Yet there was time to satisfy herself if he were at HER house. She had been told where it was; she could find it in the dark; an open door or window would betray some sign or sound of the occupants. She rose, replaced her hat over her eyes, knotted her flaunting scarf around her throat, groped her way to the door, and glided into the outer darkness.
CHAPTER VII
It was quite dark when Mr. Jack Brace stopped before Father Wynn’s open door. The windows were also invitingly open to the wayfarer, as were the pastoral counsels of Father Wynn, delivered to some favored guest within, in a tone of voice loud enough for a pulpit. Jack Brace paused. The visitor was the convalescent sheriff, Jim Dunn, who had publicly commemorated his recovery by making his first call upon the father of his inamorata. The Reverend Mr. Wynn had been expatiating upon the unremitting heat of a possible precursor of forest fires, and exhibiting some catholic knowledge of the designs of a Deity in that regard, and what should be the policy of the Legislature, when Mr. Brace concluded to enter. Mr. Wynn and the wounded man, who occupied an arm-chair by the window, were the only occupants of the room. But in spite of the former’s ostentatious greeting, Brace could see that his visit was inopportune and unwelcome. The sheriff nodded a quick, impatient recognition, which, had it not been accompanied by an anathema on the heat, might have been taken as a personal insult. Neither spoke of Miss Nellie, although it was patent to Brace that they were momentarily expecting her. All of which went far to strengthen a certain wavering purpose in his mind.
“Ah, ha! strong language, Mr. Dunn,” said Father Wynn, referring to the sheriff’s adjuration, “but ‘out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh.’ Job, sir, cursed, we are told, and even expressed himself in vigorous Hebrew regarding his birthday. Ha, ha! I’m not opposed to that. When I have often wrestled with the spirit I confess I have sometimes said, ‘D—n you.’ Yes, sir, ‘D—n you.’”
There was something so unutterably vile in the reverend gentleman’s utterance and emphasis of this oath that the two men, albeit both easy and facile blasphemers, felt shocked; as the purest of actresses is apt to overdo the rakishness of a gay Lothario, Father Wynn’s immaculate conception of an imprecation was something terrible. But he added, “The law ought to interfere with the reckless use of camp-fires in the woods in such weather by packers and prospectors.”
“It isn’t so much the work of white men,” broke in Brace, “as it is of Greasers, Chinamen, and Diggers, especially Diggers. There’s that blasted Low, ranges the whole Carquinez Woods as if they were his. I reckon he ain’t particular just where he throws his matches.”
“But he’s not a Digger; he’s a Cherokee, and only a half-breed at that,” interpolated Wynn. “Unless,” he added, with the artful suggestion of the betrayed trust of a too credulous Christian, “he deceived me in this as in other things.”
In what other things Low had deceived him he did not say; but, to the astonishment of both men, Dunn growled a dissent to Brace’s proposition. Either from some secret irritation with that possible rival, or impatience at the prolonged absence of Nellie, he had “had enough of that sort of hog-wash ladled out to him for genuine liquor.” As to the Carquinez Woods, he [Dunn] “didn’t know why Low hadn’t as much right there as if he’d grabbed it under a preemption law and didn’t live there.” With this hint at certain speculations of Father Wynn in public lands for a homestead, he added that “If they [Brace and Wynn] could bring him along any older American settler than an Indian, they might rake down his [Dunn’s] pile.” Unprepared for this turn in the conversation, Wynn hastened to explain that he did not refer to the pure aborigine, whose gradual extinction no one regretted more than himself, but to the mongrel, who inherited only the vices of civilization. “There should be a law, sir, against the mingling of races. There are men, sir, who violate the laws of the Most High by living with Indian women—squaw men, sir, as they are called.”
Dunn rose with a face livid with weakness and passion. “Who dares say that? They are a d—d sight better than sneaking Northern Abolitionists, who married their daughters to buck niggers like—” But a spasm of pain withheld this Parthian shot at the politics of his two companions, and he sank back helplessly in his chair.
An awkward silence ensued. The three men looked at each other in embarrassment and confusion. Dunn felt that he had given way to a gratuitous passion; Wynn had a vague presentiment that he had said something that imperiled his daughter’s prospects; and Brace was divided between an angry retort and the secret purpose already alluded to.
“It’s all the blasted heat,” said Dunn, with a forced smile, pushing away the whisky which Wynn had ostentatiously placed before him.
“Of course,” said Wynn hastily; “only it’s a pity Nellie ain’t here to give you her smelling-salts. She ought to be back now,” he added, no longer mindful of Brace’s presence; “the coach is over-due now, though I reckon the heat made Yuba Bill take it easy at the up grade.”
“If you mean the coach from Indian Spring,” said Brace quietly, “it’s in already; but Miss Nellie didn’t come on it.”
“May be she got out at the Crossing,” said Wynn cheerfully; “she sometimes does.”
“She didn’t take the coach at Indian Spring,” returned Brace, “because I saw it leave, and passed it on Buckskin ten minutes ago, coming up the hills.”
“She’s stopped over at Burnham’s,” said Wynn reflectively. Then, in response to the significant silence of his guests, he added, in a tone of chagrin which his forced heartiness could not disguise, “Well, boys, it’s a disappointment all round; but we must take the lesson as it comes. I’ll go over to the coach office and see if she’s sent any word. Make yourselves at home until I return.”
When the door had closed behind him, Brace arose and took his hat as if to go. With his hand on the lock, he turned to his rival, who, half hidden in the gathering darkness, still seemed unable to comprehend his ill-luck.
“If you’re waiting for that bald-headed fraud to come back with the truth about his daughter,” said Brace coolly, “you’d better send for your things and take up your lodgings here.”
“What do you mean?” said Dunn sternly.
“I mean that she’s not at the Burnhams’; I mean that he either does or does not know WHERE she is, and that in either case he is not likely to give you information. But I can.”
“You can?”
“Yes.”
“Then, where is she?”
“In the Carquinez Woods, in the arms of the man you were just defending—Low, the half-breed.”
The room had become so dark that from the road nothing could be distinguished. Only the momentary sound of struggling feet was heard.
“Sit down,” said Brace’s voice, “and don’t be a fool. You’re too weak, and it ain’t a fair fight. Let go your hold. I’m not lying—I wish to God I was!”
There was silence, and Brace resumed, “We’ve been rivals, I know. May be I thought my chance as good as yours. If what I say ain’t truth, we’ll stand as we stood before; and if you’re on the shoot, I’m your man when you like, where you like, or on sight if you choose. But I can’t bear to see another man played upon as I’ve been played upon—given dead away as I’ve been. It ain’t on the square.
“There,” he continued, after a pause, “that’s right, now steady. Listen. A week ago that girl went down just like this to Indian Spring. It was given out, like this, that she went to the Burnhams’. I don’t mind saying, Dunn, that I went down myself, all on the square, thinking I might get a show to talk to her, just as YOU might have done, you know, if you had my chance. I didn’t come across her anywhere. But two men that I met thought they recognized her in a disguise going into the woods. Not suspecting anything, I went after her; saw her at a distance in the middle of the woods in another dress that I can swear to, and was just coming up to her when she vanished—went like a squirrel up a tree, or down like a gopher in the ground, but vanished.”
“Is that all?” said Dunn’s voice. “And just because you were a d—d fool, or had taken a little too much whisky, you thought—”
“Steady. That’s just what I said to myself,” interrupted Brace coolly, “particularly when I saw her that same afternoon in another dress, saying ‘Good-by’ to the Burnhams, as fresh as a rose and as cold as those snow-peaks. Only one thing—she had a ring on her finger she never wore before, and didn’t expect me to see.”
“What if she did? She might have bought it. I reckon she hasn’t to consult you,” broke in Dunn’s voice sternly.
“She didn’t buy it,” continued Brace quietly. “Low gave that Jew trader a bearskin in exchange for it, and presented it to her. I found that out two days afterwards. I found out that out of the whole afternoon she spent less than an hour with the Burnhams. I found out that she bought a duster like the disguise the two men saw her in. I found the yellow dress she wore that day hanging up in Low’s cabin—the place where I saw her go—THE RENDEZVOUS WHERE SHE MEETS HIM. Oh, you’re listenin’, are you? Stop! SIT DOWN!
“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 been 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 he 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 whisky, 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 already 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 high road 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, anyway,” 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.”