“Go on!”
Skein half closed his eyes and continued:
“If the man you call the Britisher camped up there expecting her, Jim camped opposite for the same reason. He was on the watch. But you know Jim’s little weakness. He would drink! He was half drunk all last night, and I wasn’t up to taking all he said in downright earnest. And so we lay there with the door wide open. I don’t know what time it was, but I was woke up in the night with a revolver shot which seemed to be almost in my ear. I jumped up quick as lightning. Jim was lying on his side groaning, and the bally place was all full of smoke, and just inside the door a woman was standing, with big dark eyes, and a smoking revolver in her hand. I went for her, and she hit me across the face with the revolver. I guess she hadn’t a shot left, or I should have had it. Then she turned, and skimmed away like a deer. I followed her blindly, and then seemed for a moment as though I were treading on air, and over that d—d chasm I went. She must have led me there on purpose. I lay there for an hour or two before I could move. Then I clambered up to the shanty and peeped in. Jim was lying there as dead as a door-nail, and I believe by the hang of his coat that his pocket had been cut out. I was just going in when I heard the door of the opposite shanty open and bang to. I don’t mind admitting, mates,” he wound up, glancing round, “that I bolted. I couldn’t have tackled the Englishman and the girl alone if they had set on to me, and I thought—well, I’ll hook it down and tell the chaps. They’ll know what to do about it. So, down I came.”
There was a short silence, and a general desire to get a good view of the man to whose story they had been listening. They crowded round him, and looked over one another’s shoulders. He sat there blinking up at them, a sufficiently miserable-looking object. He had been roughly treated, there was no doubt about that.
Dan Cooper, who was in the front rank, was the first to speak.
“This is an awkward story of yours, mate,” he said. “I guess you’re willing to take your davy on it?”
“I’ll swear to every word of it!” Skein declared, lifting up a skinny little hand. “It’s the bally truth!”
“All right. Now, boys,” continued Dan, turning round, “what I propose is this: that we draw lots, and say six of us goes up and looks into this. How’s that?”
There was a hoarse murmur of assent. A sheet of paper was produced by one of the men, and torn into slender strips. Six pieces were marked with a cross; the remainder were blank. Dan Cooper alone did not draw. By universal consent, he had been called upon to boss the thing.
“I’m waiting, mates!” he announced. “But just remember this. There aren’t got to be no whimpering and grumbling afterwards. They’ll be seven of us go. What four of us say and holds on to, is the gospel law of Blue River Valley! Is that so?”
There was a chorus of assents. Dan Cooper nodded, shook up the papers which he had been collecting, and distributed them. One by one the men who had drawn a cross stepped out silently from the others, and ranged themselves aside. When the drawing was done, their leader addressed them briefly.
“Now then, chaps,” he said, “you want first of all to look to your shooting irons. If we’ve got to get the girl, the Britisher may cut up rough, and he ain’t exactly an infant. I’ll allow I ain’t seen him shoot, but he’s as strong as they make ‘em, and if he feels like it, he’d fight if there were twenty of us. All prepared, are you? Well, git, then.”
The seven men filed slowly away up the gorge; seven hard, resolute-looking men, to whom the life of a human being was as light a thing as the leaves which fluttered down from the trees on to their heads. Up in the clear blue sky above them a lark had suddenly soared up, pouring out a glad little song to the sunlit air. And down below Skein sat still on his stone with his head between his hands, fighting with the hideous fear which seemed to be stamped upon his white, blanched face. Up in the sky, away in the bosom of the dark woods, further still on the slopes of the snow-capped Sierras, down on the sandy ground beneath his feet where a blue harebell waved to and fro in the breeze; wherever he looked he saw the same ghastly sight. A man lying on his side with his hand clasped to his breast, and the blood oozing through his fingers, and dripping on to the floor. Look at his face; lips parted in an awful curse, the eyes glaring white with the red fire of a consuming hatred. Oh, how had he dared to do it? How had he dared to do it? Ah, what was that? It was only the soft breeze playing amongst the tree-tops, the sweet music of a summer morning. Why had it sounded to him like a shriek of horror from blanched lips? Was he to be tormented with this for ever? Were the simplest sounds and the sweetest sights ever to wring his heart with these awful memories? Was this indeed the Judgment of God?
XIII. A JURY OF SEVEN
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The Englishman and the girl were alone in the shanty. The echoes of his horrified words had scarcely died away. Murdered! Shot! Bryan was dazed. He was not a man of particularly swift perceptions, and the shock of the thing was great.
He stooped down and felt the prostrate man’s heart. Then he glanced at the wound, and in doing so noticed the disarrangement of the coat.
“The man has been robbed!” he said, looking up quickly. “Who did it?”
She looked half fearfully around her.
“No one robbed him,” she answered. “I cut his coat open. We were alone afterwards. He told me to. He gave me something.”
“Who shot him?”
“The stranger—the little man with the squint who came on a mule yesterday morning. I told you about him.”
“And what on earth were you doing here?” he asked.
“I—I scarcely know,” she faltered. “I was excited by what you told me yesterday, by the thought that this man might be the man for whom you were searching. I could not sleep for thinking of it, so I put on my clothes and crept out. I wanted to get here and look in. If his coat had been lying where I could have got at it, I think I might have tried to steal that paper. It was for you, Bryan. You are not angry with me, dear?”
“Tell me what you saw,” he answered, keeping his eyes fixed upon her.
Somehow his look chilled her. She wondered at it, in a vague sort of way she resented it.
“It was very dark,” she began. “I was able to get quite close to the shanty. When I was a few yards away, I saw that there was still a light, and I heard voices. I stayed behind a bush, and it was a long time before I dared go any nearer. I just wanted to see who it was with him, and then I was coming away. At last I did see. It was the stranger. He and Jim were nearly drunk, most quite. I couldn’t hear much what they were saying, but I made out that they had gone pards in Jim’s claim. I was just coming away when I heard Jim begin to talk about some secret that was worth a a fortune to him. The moon was out now, and I could see the stranger’s face. He was listening to every word Jim said, with his eyes gleaming and the strangest expression on his face. He whispered something to Jim, and Jim looked real mad. Just then an idea flashed into my mind. This stranger knew all about the secret of Jim’s. He had come to try and steal the papers, or get some more information. I remembered how odd he had seemed in the morning. He knew nothing about mining. I wondered then what he had come for. I felt: kind of frightened at the thought, and took a step forward. They must have heard me. I saw Jim hand the stranger his revolver; Jim seemed to be too drunk to shoot, himself. The stranger came to the door, and then suddenly turned round. I heard Jim cry out, and then there was a shot. I rushed to the door. Jim was on his back, and the stranger was staggering away from him. Jim had hit him, I guess, and then he saw me, and called out. The stranger was scared to death. He looked at me as though I were a ghost, and then he rushed past me, and I believe he fell over the gorge.”
Bryan stepped backwards and walked to the edge of the chasm which fronted the shanty. He looked over the side, and clambered down a few yards. Then he came back again.
“There is no one there now,” he said briefly. “Go on.”
The girl’s voice d
ropped. She glanced towards the prostrate figure which lay prone upon the bare floor, the body slightly doubled up, and the arms stretched out. She shuddered. She had never seen any one dead. Was it really true that his ears were deaf for ever and his eyes blind? There was no need, then, for her to lower her voice. Yet she did so.
“I went in and stayed with him,” she continued. “He gave me this,” she held out a little oilskin case, “and he told me something about the papers it contained and how to get the others. He told me, too, that he had really married me in San Francisco. It didn’t make things any better; rather worse, I guess. But he told me, anyway. Won’t you take the case, Bryan? It’s yours, dear.”
He pushed it away from him.
“Not now,” he answered.
“You’re—you’re not angry with me?” she pleaded.
He looked very much like it. He had listened to her with a dark, heavy frown parting his forehead, and now he was silent. He had not the imagination to appreciate what she had done for him; that her stealthy journey into the night, her listening, even her presence with the dying man, all were for his sake. That oilskin case which she had offered to him so timidly, doubtless contained what he had come from England in search of—fortune, name, perhaps rank! Even to himself his silence appeared brutal. She had done all this for him, and he could not even bear to think of it:
He could think of nothing but of the man who lay there with his white face—never so human, so free from brutality before—lightly touched by a long ray of sunlight.
He had heard the girl’s story—every word—and weighed and measured it up ruthlessly, utterly ignoring its pathetic side, and the dark, pleading eyes filled now with tears. He thought only of the facts, and the facts were ugly. His own judgment he was reserving. What would be the judgment of others? It all depended upon the stranger—whether he had been seen with Jim, and whether he had fled. He himself had not set eyes upon him, had not heard of him. What if he were a myth; just an invention of Myra’s? The facts were more than ugly then. The man had been shot, and apparently robbed. The results of the robbery—Myra had called it a gift, was that likely?—were in her possession. Even accepting her own story as true, putting away that other vague, awful thought which had crept into his mind, even then a little craft on the part of the stranger might easily place her, and, through her, him in a terrible position.
The close air of the little shanty suddenly became stifling. He turned abruptly round and walked outside. Myra crept after him with a heavy heart. It seemed a little hard that he could not speak a single kind word to her. She sat down on a log a few yards away and cried quietly to herself.
The Englishman leaned against the wall of the shanty, and, with folded arms and heavily knit brows, gazed down the valley. The more he thought this affair over, the less he liked it. It was his duty to go down and tell the others what had happened. He must admit that this girl had been living with him, that he had broken their rude laws; he who in a sort of stubborn exclusiveness had held himself aloof from all of them, must answer their questions, perhaps come under their suspicion. But, to do him justice, it was less of himself he thought than of the man who lay within the shanty. It was an awful thing! Poor chap! It filled him with a sort of annoyance to see how cloudless and bright was the sky, and how gaily the larks were singing in the warm bright air. The whole world seemed gay and joyous, as though nothing out of the common had happened. And there, with’ his face bathed in the dancing sunshine, and his sightless eyes turned towards the dazzling sky, a man was fighting his gloomy way through the Valley of the Shadow of Death! What a past mistress in the art of mockery was Nature!
* * * * *
The Englishman was suddenly recalled from his abstraction. His eyes resting idly upon the landscape had been attracted by moving objects. There were men filing their way up the gorge. He counted them; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven of them. Dan Cooper leading, and close at hand now. They had heard of the murder, then. There could be no other explanation of their approach. From whom? It was strange that they should have heard of it.
He glanced round towards Myra. Should he warn her? Better not, perhaps. Her defence should not be robbed of a single feature of ingenuousness. She must tell her own story. Well for her—and for him—if they believed it!
The men were close at hand now. One by one they clambered up the side of the gorge. One by one they gravely saluted the Englishman, and then glanced curiously at the girl, who had scarcely looked up at their approach.
“Morning,” said Dan Cooper, addressing the Englishman. “Reckon this is a bad business.”
“Very bad. Are you going in to look at him?”
“Reckon so.”
They all trooped into the little shanty, completely filling it. Dan Cooper removed his cap as he entered, and the others immediately followed suit. He knelt down and made a brief examination.
“Seems to me he ain’t quite dead,” he remarked, turning to the Englishman, whose huge form filled the doorway.
“I don’t think he is,” Bryan answered. “He is bleeding internally, though, I’m afraid, and if so he can’t last long.”
“That’s so.”
He rose to his feet, and for a moment every one looked curiously around. Even Jim’s simplest domestic articles were objects of a certain interest now. One of the men picked up an open tobacco pouch, and filled his pipe. Silently it was passed round. Then they all trooped out again into the sunshine.
“Where’s the gal?” asked Dan Cooper.
She was sitting in the old place, and met all their wondering gazes with a half-contemptuous indifference. She was very pale, and had evidently been crying. Apart from that she exhibited no concern.
They formed a sort of semicircle around her. The Englishman remained outside it, leaning still against the wall of the shanty. His eyes were half closed, but he listened to every word with the keenest interest.
Dan Cooper was spokesman. His voice was gruff, but it sounded kindly. He was not so much in love with his position as when he started.
“Is there anything you’d like to tell us about this ‘ere business?” he said, jerking his head backward towards the shanty. “The chaps down yonder have sent me and my mates to sorter clear the matter up. If you’ve anything to say, we’re ready to hear it.”
She dried her eyes and looked up.
“I can tell you how it happened, if you like,” she said simply. “I guess you want to hear.”
“That’s so, indeed,” was the answer. “Eh, mates?”
There was a gruff chorus of assent. The men sat down on logs, dragging them up from a short distance away, and smoked their pipes in stolid silence. The girl in the middle lifted her face towards Dan ‘Cooper, and told her story. Just as she commenced, the lark shot up again from the gorge and sang over her head.
XIV. THE TOUCH OF FIRE
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She told her story in a few plain sentences, without much emotion, but with a direct simplicity which had its effect upon her hearers. It had not occurred to them to doubt Skein’s tale. They had expected without a doubt to listen to a confession, and a piteous plea for mercy. This was far more surprising. They stole glances at one another, and then exchanged whispers. The Englishman, although he still stood aloof, noticed all this, and began to suspect something of the truth. Myra, on the other hand, was utterly unconscious of it.
She finished her relation—as much as she thought it concerned these men to know—and then rose to her feet. She did not choose to remain where she was to be the cynosure of all these curious eyes. She would go back to her own shanty. She looked across at Bryan; perhaps he would come too. But lie made no sign. He did not even look towards her. He seemed to be listening to what that little group of men now gathered close together were saying.
She took a few steps down the gorge. The men looked up at her movement, and one of them hurried across towards her. He laid his coarse, heavy hand upon her shoulder.
“I reckon we ain’t exactly through yet, miss. You’ll have to wait a bit.”
She drew herself away from his touch, and looked round in surprise.
“What do you mean?” she exclaimed. “I don’t understand. Is there anything else you want to ask me? If so, be quick, please.”
She turned a proud, displeased face upon the little group, holding her skirts in one hand, and the bough of an alder-bush, by means of which she was steadying herself, in the other. It was a little scene by no means lacking in dramatic force. She was standing on the very verge of a precipice, and her thin, supple figure was outlined with wonderful vividness against the background of blue sky. Her head was thrown back, and her hair, all disarranged with bending over the wounded man, was streaming down in a picturesque confusion. Fronting her was the little platform of green turf, with its background of dark pine-woods, on which Mr. Hamilton had built his residence. The men, into whose stolid faces a gleam of admiration had crept, were grouped, some sitting, some standing, around a fallen pine-tree, with their eyes curiously fixed upon her. A few yards away leaned still against the shanty the Englishman with folded arms, awaiting events.
Dan Cooper stepped a little forward from the rest, and addressed her. There was an odd little smile at the corner of his lips, the mystery of which none save himself could have explained.
“I reckon you don’t quite understand how things hang,” he said. “Perhaps it’s only fair to tell you. Skein has been along this morning, down yonder,” he added, pointing with his pipe into the valley, “and he allows that this little job was your doing. That’s why we’re here. That’s why me and my mates is kinder taken aback with this story of yours.”
She looked at him bewildered. It was hard to realize in a moment.
“My doing? My doing? Do you mean to say that he allows that I shot Jim? Is that it?
“That’s so.”
Her bosom heaved, and her dark eyes became distended. She looked them all scornfully in the face.
The World's Great Snare Page 9