by Bret Harte
him--an act which he resented with such afurious glare that they retreated hurriedly to their own veranda. Afresh though somewhat inconsistent grievance was added to their previousindictment of him: "If we ain't found dead in our bed with our throatscut by that woman's crazy husband" (they had settled by this time thatthere had been a clandestine marriage), "we'll be lucky," groaned Mrs.Forsyth.
Meantime, the mountain summer waxed to its fullness of fire andfruition. There were days when the crowded forest seemed choked andimpeded with its own foliage, and pungent and stifling with its ownrank maturity; when the long hillside ranks of wild oats, thickset andimpassable, filled the air with the heated dust of germination. In thisquickening irritation of life it would be strange if the unfortunateman's torpid intellect was not helped in its awakening, and he wasallowed to ramble at will over the ranch; but with the instinct of adomestic animal he always returned to the house, and sat in the porch,where Josephine usually found him awaiting her when she herself returnedfrom a visit to the mill. Coming thence one day she espied him on themountain-side leaning against a projecting ledge in an attitude so raptand immovable that she felt compelled to approach him. He appeared tobe dumbly absorbed in the prospect, which might have intoxicated a sanermind.
Half veiled by the heat that rose quiveringly from the fiery canyonbelow, the domain of Burnt Ridge stretched away before him, until,lifted in successive terraces hearsed and plumed with pines, it was atlast lost in the ghostly snow-peaks. But the practical Josephine seizedthe opportunity to try once more to awaken the slumbering memory of herpupil. Following his gaze with signs and questions, she sought to drawfrom him some indication of familiar recollection of certain points ofthe map thus unrolled behind him. But in vain. She even pointed out thefateful shadow of the overhanging ledge on the road where she had pickedhim up--there was no response in his abstracted eyes. She bit her lips;she was becoming irritated again. Then it occurred to her that, insteadof appealing to his hopeless memory, she had better trust to someunreflective automatic instinct independent of it, and she put thequestion a little forward: "When you leave us, where will you go fromhere?" He stirred slightly, and turned towards her. She repeated herquery slowly and patiently, with signs and gestures recognized betweenthem. A faint glow of intelligence struggled into his eyes: he liftedhis arm slowly, and pointed.
"Ah! those white peaks--the Sierras?" she asked, eagerly. No reply."Beyond them?"
"Yes."
"The States?" No reply. "Further still?"
He remained so patiently quiet and still pointing that she leanedforward, and, following with her eyes the direction of his hand, sawthat he was pointing to the sky!
Then a great quiet fell upon them. The whole mountain-side seemed to herto be hushed, as if to allow her to grasp and realize for the first timethe pathos of the ruined life at her side, which IT had known so long,but which she had never felt till now. The tears came to her eyes; inher swift revulsion of feeling she caught the thin uplifted hand betweenher own. It seemed to her that he was about to raise them to his lips,but she withdrew them hastily, and moved away. She had a strange fearthat if he had kissed them, it might seem as if some dumb animal hadtouched them--or--IT MIGHT NOT. The next day she felt a consciousnessof this in his presence, and a wish that he was well-cured and away. Shedetermined to consult Dr. Duchesne on the subject when he next called.
But the doctor, secure in the welfare of his patient, had not visitedhim lately, and she found herself presently absorbed in the business ofthe ranch, which at this season was particularly trying. There had alsobeen a quarrel between Dick Shipley, her mill foreman, and Miguel, herablest and most trusted vaquero, and in her strict sense of impartialjustice she was obliged to side on the merits of the case with Shipleyagainst her oldest retainer. This troubled her, as she knew that withthe Mexican nature, fidelity and loyalty were not unmixed with quick andunreasoning jealousy. For this reason she was somewhat watchful of thetwo men when work was over, and there was a chance of their beingthrown together. Once or twice she had remained up late to meet Miguelreturning from the posada at San Ramon, filled with aguardiente and arecollection of his wrongs, and to see him safely bestowed before sheherself retired. It was on one of those occasions, however, that shelearned that Dick Shipley, hearing that Miguel had disparaged him freelyat the posada, had broken the discipline of the ranch, and absentedhimself the same night that Miguel "had leave," with a view of facinghis antagonist on his own ground. To prevent this, the fearless girl atonce secretly set out alone to overtake and bring back the delinquent.
For two or three hours the house was thus left to the sole occupancy ofMr. and Mrs. Forsyth and the invalid--a fact only dimly suspected by thelatter, who had become vaguely conscious of Josephine's anxiety, and hadnoticed the absence of light and movement in her room. For this reason,therefore, having risen again and mechanically taken his seat in theporch to await her return, he was startled by hearing HER voice in theshadow of the lower porch, accompanied by a hurried tapping against thedoor of the old couple. The half-reasoning man arose, and would havemoved towards it, but suddenly he stopped rigidly, with white and partedlips and vacantly distended eyeballs.
Meantime the voice and muffled tapping had brought the tremulous fingersof old Forsyth to the door-latch. He opened the door partly; a slightfigure that had been lurking in the shadow of the porch pushed rapidlythrough the opening. There was a faint outcry quickly hushed, and thedoor closed again. The rays of a single candle showed the two old peoplehysterically clasping in their arms the figure that had entered--aslight but vicious-looking young fellow of five-and-twenty.
"There, d--n it!" he said impatiently, in a voice whose rich depth waslike Josephine's, but whose querulous action was that of the two oldpeople before him, "let me go, and quit that, I didn't come here to bestrangled! I want some money--money, you hear! Devilish quick, too, forI've got to be off again before daylight. So look sharp, will you?"
"But, Stevy dear, when you didn't come that time three months ago, butwrote from Los Angeles, you said you'd made a strike at last, and"--
"What are you talking about?" he interrupted violently. "That was justmy lyin' to keep you from worryin' me. Three months ago--three monthsago! Why, you must have been crazy to have swallowed it; I hadn't acent."
"Nor have we," said the old woman, shrilly. "That hellish sister ofyours still keeps us like beggars. Our only hope was you, our own boy.And now you only come to--to go again."
"But SHE has money; SHE'S doing well, and SHE shall give it to me,"he went on, angrily. "She can't bully me with her business airs andmorality. Who else has got a right to share, if it is not her ownbrother?"
Alas for the fatuousness of human malevolence! Had the unhappy couplerelated only the simple facts they knew about the new guest of BurntRidge Ranch, and the manner of his introduction, they might have sparedwhat followed.
But the old woman broke into a vindictive cry: "Who else, Steve--whoelse? Why, the slut has brought a MAN here--a sneaking, deceitful,underhanded, crazy lover!"
"Oh, has she?" said the young man, fiercely, yet secretly pleased atthis promising evidence of his sister's human weakness. "Where is she?I'll go to her. She's in her room, I suppose," and before they couldrestrain him, he had thrown off their impeding embraces and dartedacross the hall.
The two old people stared doubtfully at each other. For even thispowerful ally, whose strength, however, they were by no means sureof, might succumb before the determined Josephine! Prudence demanded amiddle course. "Ain't they brother and sister?" said the old man, withan air of virtuous toleration. "Let 'em fight it out."
The young man impatiently entered the room he remembered to have beenhis sister's. By the light of the moon that streamed upon the windowhe could see she was not there. He passed hurriedly to the door of herbedroom; it was open; the room was empty, the bed unturned. She was notin the house--she had gone to the mill. Ah! What was that they had said?An infamous thought passed through the scoundrel's mind. Then, in wha
the half believed was an access of virtuous fury, he began by the dimlight to rummage in the drawers of the desk for such loose coin orvaluables as, in the perfect security of the ranch, were often leftunguarded. Suddenly he heard a heavy footstep on the threshold, andturned.
An awful vision--a recollection, so unexpected, so ghostlike in thatweird light that he thought he was losing his senses--stood before him.It moved forwards with staring eyeballs and white and open lips fromwhich a horrible inarticulate sound issued that was the speech of noliving man! With a single desperate, almost superhuman effort StephenForsyth bounded aside, leaped from the window, and ran like a madmanfrom the house. Then the apparition trembled, collapsed, and sank in