FOUND AT BLAZING STAR by Bret Harte
The rain had only ceased with the gray streaks of morning at Blazing Star, and the settlement awoke to a moral sense of cleanliness, and the finding of forgotten knives, tin cups, and smaller camp utensils, where the heavy showers had washed away the debris and dust heaps before the cabin doors. Indeed, it was recorded in Blazing Star that a fortunate early riser had once picked up on the highway a solid chunk of gold quartz which the rain had freed from its incumbering soil, and washed into immediate and glittering popularity. Possibly this may have been the reason why early risers in that locality, during the rainy season, adopted a thoughtful habit of body, and seldom lifted their eyes to the rifted or india-ink washed skies above them.
“Cass” Beard had risen early that morning, but not with a view to discovery. A leak in his cabin roof,—quite consistent with his careless, improvident habits,—had roused him at 4 A. M., with a flooded “bunk” and wet blankets. The chips from his wood pile refused to kindle a fire to dry his bed-clothes, and he had recourse to a more provident neighbor’s to supply the deficiency. This was nearly opposite. Mr. Cassius crossed the highway, and stopped suddenly. Something glittered in the nearest red pool before him. Gold, surely! But, wonderful to relate, not an irregular, shapeless fragment of crude ore, fresh from Nature’s crucible, but a bit of jeweler’s handicraft in the form of a plain gold ring. Looking at it more attentively, he saw that it bore the inscription, “May to Cass.”
Like most of his fellow gold-seekers, Cass was superstitious. “Cass!” His own name! He tried the ring. It fitted his little finger closely. It was evidently a woman’s ring. He looked up and down the highway. No one was yet stirring. Little pools of water in the red road were beginning to glitter and grow rosy from the far-flushing east, but there was no trace of the owner of the shining waif. He knew that there was no woman in camp, and among his few comrades in the settlement he remembered to have seen none wearing an ornament like that. Again, the coincidence of the inscription to his rather peculiar nickname would have been a perennial source of playful comment in a camp that made no allowance for sentimental memories. He slipped the glittering little hoop into his pocket, and thoughtfully returned to his cabin.
Two hours later, when the long, straggling procession, which every morning wended its way to Blazing Star Gulch,—the seat of mining operations in the settlement,—began to move, Cass saw fit to interrogate his fellows. “Ye didn’t none on ye happen to drop anything round yer last night?” he asked, cautiously.
“I dropped a pocketbook containing government bonds and some other securities, with between fifty and sixty thousand dollars,” responded Peter Drummond, carelessly; “but no matter, if any man will return a few autograph letters from foreign potentates that happened to be in it,—of no value to anybody but the owner,—he can keep the money. Thar’s nothin’ mean about me,” he concluded, languidly.
This statement, bearing every evidence of the grossest mendacity, was lightly passed over, and the men walked on with the deepest gravity.
“But hev you?” Cass presently asked of another.
“I lost my pile to Jack Hamlin at draw-poker, over at Wingdam last night,” returned the other, pensively, “but I don’t calkilate to find it lying round loose.”
Forced at last by this kind of irony into more detailed explanation, Cass confided to them his discovery, and produced his treasure. The result was a dozen vague surmises,—only one of which seemed to be popular, and to suit the dyspeptic despondency of the party,—a despondency born of hastily masticated fried pork and flapjacks. The ring was believed to have been dropped by some passing “road agent” laden with guilty spoil.
“Ef I was you,” said Drummond, gloomily, “I wouldn’t flourish that yer ring around much afore folks. I’ve seen better men nor you strung up a tree by Vigilantes for having even less than that in their possession.”
“And I wouldn’t say much about bein’ up so d——d early this morning,” added an even more pessimistic comrade; “it might look bad before a jury.”
With this the men sadly dispersed, leaving the innocent Cass with the ring in his hand, and a general impression on his mind that he was already an object of suspicion to his comrades,—an impression, it is hardly necessary to say, they fully intended should be left to rankle in his guileless bosom.
Notwithstanding Cass’s first hopeful superstition the ring did not seem to bring him nor the camp any luck. Daily the “clean up” brought the same scant rewards to their labors, and deepened the sardonic gravity of Blazing Star. But, if Cass found no material result from his treasure, it stimulated his lazy imagination, and, albeit a dangerous and seductive stimulant, at least lifted him out of the monotonous grooves of his half-careless, half-slovenly, but always self-contented camp life. Heeding the wise caution of his comrades, he took the habit of wearing the ring only at night. Wrapped in his blanket, he stealthily slipped the golden circlet over his little finger, and, as he averred, “slept all the better for it.” Whether it ever evoked any warmer dream or vision during those calm, cold, virgin-like spring nights, when even the moon and the greater planets retreated into the icy blue, steel-like firmament, I cannot say. Enough that this superstition began to be colored a little by fancy, and his fatalism somewhat mitigated by hope. Dreams of this kind did not tend to promote his efficiency in the communistic labors of the camp, and brought him a self-isolation that, however gratifying at first, soon debarred him the benefits of that hard practical wisdom which underlaid the grumbling of his fellow workers.
“I’m dog-goned,” said one commentator, “ef I don’t believe that Cass is looney over that yer ring he found. Wears it on a string under his shirt.”
Meantime, the seasons did not wait the discovery of the secret. The red pools in Blazing Star highway were soon dried up in the fervent June sun and riotous night wind of those altitudes. The ephemeral grasses that had quickly supplanted these pools and the chocolate-colored mud, were as quickly parched and withered. The footprints of spring became vague and indefinite, and were finally lost in the impalpable dust of the summer highway.
In one of his long, aimless excursions, Cass had penetrated a thick undergrowth of buckeye and hazel, and found himself quite unexpectedly upon the high road to Red Chief’s Crossing. Cass knew by the lurid cloud of dust that hid the distance, that the up coach had passed. He had already reached that stage of superstition when the most trivial occurrence seemed to point in some way to an elucidation of the mystery of his treasure. His eyes had mechanically fallen to the ground again, as if he half expected to find in some other waif a hint or corroboration of his imaginings. Thus abstracted, the figure of a young girl on horseback, in the road directly before the bushes he emerged from, appeared to have sprung directly from the ground.
“Oh, come here, please do; quick!”
Cass stared, and then moved hesitatingly toward her.
“I heard some one coming through the bushes, and I waited,” she went on. “Come quick. It’s something too awful for anything.”
In spite of this appalling introduction, Cass could not but notice that the voice, although hurried and excited, was by no means agitated or frightened; that the eyes which looked into his sparkled with a certain kind of pleased curiosity.
“It was just here,” she went on vivaciously, “just here that I went into the bush and cut a switch for my mare,—and,”—leading him along at a brisk trot by her side,—”just here, look, see! this is what I found.”
It was scarcely thirty feet from the road. The only object that met Cass’s eye was a man’s stiff, tall hat, lying emptily and vacantly in the grass. It was new, shiny, and of modish shape. But it was so incongruous, so perkily smart, and yet so feeble and helpless lying there, so ghastly ludicrous in its very appropriateness and incapacity to adjust itself to the surrounding landscape, that it affected him with something more than a sense of its grotesqueness, and he could only stare at it blankly.
“But you’re not looking the right way,” the girl went on sharply; “look there!”
Cass followed the direction of her whip. At last, what might have seemed a coat thrown carelessly on the ground met his eye, but presently he became aware of a white, rigid, aimlessly-clinched hand protruding from the flaccid sleeve; mingled with it in some absurd way and half hidden by the grass, lay what might have been a pair of cast-off trousers but for two rigid boots that pointed in opposite angles to the sky. It was a dead man. So palpably dead that life seemed to have taken flight from his very clothes. So impotent, feeble, and degraded by them that the naked subject of a dissecting table would have been less insulting to humanity. The head had fallen back, and was partly hidden in a gopher burrow, but the white, upturned face and closed eyes had less of helpless death in them than those wretched enwrappings. Indeed, one limp hand that lay across the swollen abdomen lent itself to the grotesquely hideous suggestion of a gentleman sleeping off the excesses of a hearty dinner.
“Ain’t he horrid?” continued the girl; “but what killed him?”
Struggling between a certain fascination at the girl’s cold-blooded curiosity and horror of the murdered man, Cass hesitatingly lifted the helpless head. A bluish hole above the right temple, and a few brown paint-like spots on the forehead, shirt cellar, and matted hair proved the only record.
“Turn him over again,” said the girl, impatiently, as Cass was about to relinquish his burden. “May be you’ll find another wound.”
But Cass was dimly remembering certain formalities that in older civilizations attend the discovery of dead bodies, and postponed a present inquest.
“Perhaps you’d better ride on, Miss, afore you get summoned as a witness. I’ll give warning at Red Chief’s Crossing, and send the coroner down here.”
“Let me go with you,” she said, earnestly, “it would be such fun. I don’t mind being a witness. Or,” she added, without heeding Cass’s look of astonishment, “I’ll wait here till you come back.”
“But you see, Miss, it wouldn’t seem right—” began Cass.
“But I found him first,” interrupted the girl, with a pout.
Staggered by this preemptive right, sacred to all miners, Cass stopped.
“Who is the coroner?” she asked.
“Joe Hornsby.”
“The tall, lame man, who was half eaten by a grizzly?”
“Yes.”
“Well, look now! I’ll ride on and bring him back in half an hour. There!”
“But, Miss—!”
“Oh, don’t mind ME. I never saw anything of this kind before, and I want to see it ALL.”
“Do you know Hornsby?” asked Cass, unconsciously a trifle irritated.
“No, but I’ll bring him.” She wheeled her horse into the road.
In the presence of this living energy Cass quite forgot the helpless dead. “Have you been long in these parts, Miss?” he asked.
“About two weeks,” she answered, shortly. “Good-by, just now. Look around for the pistol or anything else you can find, although I have been over the whole ground twice already.”
A little puff of dust as the horse sprang into the road, a muffled shuffle, struggle, then the regular beat of hoofs, and she was gone.
After five minutes had passed, Cass regretted that he had not accompanied her; waiting in such a spot was an irksome task. Not that there was anything in the scene itself to awaken gloomy imaginings; the bright, truthful Californian sunshine scoffed at any illusion of creeping shadows or waving branches. Once, in the rising wind, the empty hat rolled over—but only in a ludicrous, drunken way. A search for any further sign or token had proved futile, and Cass grew impatient. He began to hate himself for having stayed; he would have fled but for shame. Nor was his good humor restored when at the close of a weary half hour two galloping figures emerged from the dusty horizon—Hornsby and the young girl.
His vague annoyance increased as he fancied that both seemed to ignore him, the coroner barely acknowledging his presence with a nod. Assisted by the young girl, whose energy and enthusiasm evidently delighted him, Hornsby raised the body for a more careful examination. The dead man’s pockets were carefully searched. A few coins, a silver pencil, knife, and tobacco-box were all they found. It gave no clew to his identity. Suddenly the young girl, who had, with unabashed curiosity, knelt beside the exploring official hands of the Red Chief, uttered a cry of gratification.
“Here’s something! It dropped from the bosom of his shirt on the ground. Look!”
She was holding in the air, between her thumb and forefinger, a folded bit of well-worn newspaper. Her eyes sparkled.
“Shall I open it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“It’s a little ring” she said; “looks like an engagement ring. Something is written on it. Look! ‘May to Cass.'”
Cass darted forward. “It’s mine,” he stammered, “mine! I dropped it. It’s nothing—nothing,” he went on, after a pause, embarrassed and blushing, as the girl and her companion both stared at him—”a mere trifle. I’ll take it.”
But the coroner opposed his outstretched hand. “Not much,” he said, significantly.
“But it’s MINE,” continued Cass, indignation taking the place of shame at his discovered secret. “I found it six months ago in the road. I—picked it up.”
“With your name already written on it! How handy!” said the coroner, grimly.
“It’s an old story” said Cass, blushing again under the half-mischievous, half-searching eyes of the girl. “All Blazing Star knows I found it.”
“Then ye’ll have no difficulty in provin’ it,” said Hornsby, coolly. “Just now, however, WE’VE found it, and we propose to keep it for the inquest.”
Cass shrugged his shoulders. Further altercation would have only heightened his ludicrous situation in the girl’s eyes. He turned away, leaving his treasure in the coroner’s hands.
The inquest, a day or two later, was prompt and final. No clew to the dead man’s identity; no evidence sufficiently strong to prove murder or suicide; no trace of any kind, inculpating any party, known or unknown, were found. But much publicity and interest were given to the proceedings by the presence of the principal witness, a handsome girl. “To the pluck, persistency, and intellect of Miss Porter,” said the “Red Chief Recorder,” “Tuolumne County owes the recovery of the body.”
No one who was present at the inquest failed to be charmed with the appearance and conduct of this beautiful young lady.
“Miss Porter has but lately arrived in this district, in which, it is hoped, she will become an honored resident, and continue to set an example to all lackadaisical and sentimental members of the so-called ‘sterner sex.'” After this universally recognized allusion to Cass Beard, the “Recorder” returned to its record: “Some interest was excited by what appeared to be a clew to the mystery in the discovery of a small gold engagement ring on the body. Evidence was afterward offered to show it was the property of a Mr. Cass Beard of Blazing Star, who appeared upon the scene AFTER the discovery of the corpse by Miss Porter. He alleged he had dropped it in lifting the unfortunate remains of the deceased. Much amusement was created in court by the sentimental confusion of the claimant, and a certain partisan spirit shown by his fellow-miners of Blazing Star. It appearing, however, by the admission of this sighing Strephon of the Foot hills, that he had himself FOUND this pledge of affection lying in the highway six months previous, the coroner wisely placed it in the safe-keeping of the county court until the appearance of the rightful owner.”
Thus on the 13th of September, 186-, the treasure found at Blazing Star passed out of the hands of its finder.
Autumn brought an abrupt explanation of the mystery. Kanaka Joe had been arrested for horse stealing, but had with noble candor confessed to the finer offense of manslaughter. That swift and sure justice which overtook the horse stealer in these altitudes was stayed a moment and hesitated, for the victim was clearly the mysterious unknown. Curiosity got the better of an extempore judge and jury.
“It was a fair fight,” said the accused, not without some human vanity, feeling that the camp hung upon his words, “and was settled by the man az was peartest and liveliest with his weapon. We had a sort of unpleasantness over at Lagrange the night afore, along of our both hevin’ a monotony of four aces. We had a clinch and a stamp around, and when we was separated it was only a question of shootin’ on sight. He left Lagrange at sun up the next morning, and I struck across a bit o’ buckeye and underbrush and came upon him, accidental like, on the Red Chief Road. I drawed when I sighted him, and called out. He slipped from his mare and covered himself with her flanks, reaching for his holster, but she rared and backed down on him across the road and into the grass, where I got in another shot and fetched him.”
“And you stole his mare?” suggested the Judge.
“I got away,” said the gambler, simply.
Further questioning only elicited the fact that Joe did not know the name or condition of his victim. He was a stranger in Lagrange.
It was a breezy afternoon, with some turbulency in the camp, and much windy discussion over this unwonted delay of justice. The suggestion that Joe should be first hanged for horse stealing and then tried for murder was angrily discussed, but milder counsels were offered—that the fact of the killing should be admitted only as proof of the theft. A large party from Red Chief had come over to assist in judgment, among them the coroner.
Cass Beard had avoided these proceedings, which only recalled an unpleasant experience, and was wandering with pick, pan, and wallet far from the camp. These accoutrements, as I have before intimated, justified any form of aimless idleness under the equally aimless title of “prospecting.” He had at the end of three hours’ relaxation reached the highway to Red Chief, half hidden by blinding clouds of dust torn from the crumbling red road at every gust which swept down the mountain side. The spot had a familiar aspect to Cass, although some freshly-dug holes near the wayside, with scattered earth beside them, showed the presence of a recent prospector. He was struggling with his memory, when the dust was suddenly dispersed and he found himself again at the scene of the murder. He started: he had not put foot on the road since the inquest. There lacked only the helpless dead man and the contrasting figure of the alert young woman to restore the picture. The body was gone, it was true, but as he turned he beheld Miss Porter, at a few paces distant, sitting on her horse as energetic and observant as on the first morning they had met. A superstitious thrill passed over him and awoke his old antagonism.
She nodded to him slightly. “I came here to refresh my memory,” she said, “as Mr. Hornsby thought I might be asked to give my evidence again at Blazing Star.”
Cass carelessly struck an aimless blow with his pick against the sod and did not reply.
“And you?” she queried.
“I stumbled upon the place just now while prospecting, or I shouldn’t be here.”
“Then it was YOU made these holes?”
“No,” said Cass, with ill-concealed disgust. “Nobody but a stranger would go foolin’ round such a spot.”
He stopped, as the rude significance of his speech struck him, and added surlily, “I mean—no one would dig here.”
The girl laughed and showed a set of very white teeth in her square jaw. Cass averted his face.
“Do you mean to say that every miner doesn’t know that it’s lucky to dig wherever human blood has been spilt?”
Cass felt a return of his superstition, but he did not look up. “I never heard it before,” he said, severely.
“And you call yourself a California miner?”
“I do.”
It was impossible for Miss Porter to misunderstand his curt speech and unsocial manner. She stared at him and colored slightly. Lifting her reins lightly, she said: “You certainly do not seem like most of the miners I have met.”
“Nor you like any girl from the East I ever met,” he responded.
“What do you mean?” she asked, checking her horse.
“What I say,” he answered, doggedly. Reasonable as this reply was, it immediately struck him that it was scarcely dignified or manly. But before he could explain himself Miss Porter was gone.
He met her again that very evening. The trial had been summarily suspended by the appearance of the Sheriff of Calaveras and his posse, who took Joe from that self-constituted tribunal of Blazing Star and set his face southward and toward authoritative although more cautious justice. But not before the evidence of the previous inquest had been read, and the incident of the ring again delivered to the public.
It is said the prisoner burst into an incredulous laugh and asked to see this mysterious waif. It was handed to him. Standing in the very shadow of the gallows tree—which might have been one of the pines that sheltered the billiard room in which the Vigilance Committee held their conclave—the prisoner gave way to a burst of merriment, so genuine and honest that the judge and jury joined in automatic sympathy. When silence was restored an explanation was asked by the Judge. But there was no response from the prisoner except a subdued chuckle.
“Did this ring belong to you?” asked the Judge, severely, the jury and spectators craning their ears forward with an expectant smile already on their faces. But the prisoner’s eyes only sparkled maliciously as he looked around the court.
“Tell us, Joe,” said a sympathetic and laughter-loving juror, under his breath. “Let it out and we’ll make it easy for you.”
“Prisoner,” said the Judge, with a return of official dignity, “remember that your life is in peril. Do you refuse?”
Joe lazily laid his arm on the back of his chair with (to quote the words of an animated observer) “the air of having a Christian hope and a sequence flush in his hand,” and said: “Well, as I reckon I’m not up yer for stealin’ a ring that another man lets on to have found, and as fur as I kin see, hez nothin’ to do with the case, I do!” And as it was here that the Sheriff of Calaveras made a precipitate entry into the room, the mystery remained unsolved.
The effect of this freshly-important ridicule on the sensitive mind of Cass might have been foretold by Blazing Star had it ever taken that sensitiveness into consideration. He had lost the good humor and easy pliability which had tempted him to frankness, and he had gradually become bitter and hard. He had at first affected amusement over his own vanished day dream—hiding his virgin disappointment in his own breast; but when he began to turn upon his feelings he turned upon his comrades also. Cass was for a while unpopular. There is no ingratitude so revolting to the human mind as that of the butt who refuses to be one any longer. The man who rejects that immunity which laughter generally casts upon him and demands to be seriously considered deserves no mercy.
It was under these hard conditions that Cass Beard, convicted of overt sentimentalism, aggravated by inconsistency, stepped into the Red Chief coach that evening. It was his habit usually to ride with the driver, but the presence of Hornsby and Miss Porter on the box seat changed his intention. Yet he had the satisfaction of seeing that neither had noticed him, and as there was no other passenger inside, he stretched himself on the cushion of the back seat and gave way to moody reflections. He quite determined to leave Blazing Star, to settle himself seriously to the task of money getting, and to return to his comrades, some day, a sarcastic, cynical, successful man, and so overwhelm them with confusion. For poor Cass had not yet reached that superiority of knowing that success would depend upon his ability to forego his past. Indeed, part of his boyhood had been cast among these men, and he was not old enough to have learned that success was not to be gauged by their standard. The moon lit up the dark interior of the coach with a faint poetic light. The lazy swinging of the vehicle that was bearing him away—albeit only for a night and a day—the solitude, the glimpses from the window of great distances full of vague possibilities, made the abused ring potent as that of Gyges. He dreamed with his eyes open. From an Alnaschar vision he suddenly awoke. The coach had stopped. The voices of men, one in entreaty, one in expostulation, came from the box. Cass mechanically put his hand to his pistol pocket.
“Thank you, but I INSIST upon getting down.”
It was Miss Porter’s voice. This was followed by a rapid, half-restrained interchange of words between Hornsby and the driver. Then the latter said, gruffly,—
“If the lady wants to ride inside, let her.”
Miss Porter fluttered to the ground. She was followed by Hornsby. “Just a minit, Miss,” he expostulated, half shamedly, half brusquely, “ye don’t onderstand me. I only—”
But Miss Porter had jumped into the coach.
Hornsby placed his hand on the handle of the door. Miss Porter grasped it firmly from the inside. There was a slight struggle.
All of which was part of a dream to the boyish Cass. But he awoke from it—a man! “Do you,” he asked, in a voice he scarcely recognized himself,—”Do you want this man inside?”
“No!”
Cass caught at Hornsby’s wrist like a young tiger. But alas! what availed instinctive chivalry against main strength? He only succeeded in forcing the door open in spite of Miss Porter’s superior strategy, and—I fear I must add, muscle also—and threw himself passionately at Hornsby’s throat, where he hung on and calmly awaited dissolution. But he had, in the onset, driven Hornsby out into the road and the moonlight.
“Here! Somebody take my lines.” The voice was “Mountain Charley’s,” the driver. The figure that jumped from the box and separated the struggling men belonged to this singularly direct person.
“You’re riding inside?” said Charley, interrogatively, to Cass. Before he could reply Miss Porter’s voice came from the window.
“He is!”
Charley promptly bundled Cass into the coach.
“And YOU?” to Hornsby, “onless you’re kalkilatin’ to take a little ‘pasear’ you’re booked OUTSIDE. Get up.”
It is probable that Charley assisted Mr. Hornsby as promptly to his seat, for the next moment the coach was rolling on.
Meanwhile Cass, by reason of his forced entry, had been deposited in Miss Porter’s lap, whence, freeing himself, he had attempted to climb over the middle seat, but in the starting of the coach was again thrown heavily against her hat and shoulder; all of which was inconsistent with the attitude of dignified reserve he had intended to display. Miss Porter, meanwhile, recovered her good humor.
“What a brute he was, ugh!” she said, retying the ribbons of her bonnet under her square chin, and smoothing out her linen duster.
Cass tried to look as if he had forgotten the whole affair. “Who? Oh, yes I see!” he responded, absently.
“I suppose I ought to thank you,” she went on with a smile, “but you know, really, I could have kept him out if you hadn’t pulled his wrist from outside. I’ll show you. Look! Put your hand on the handle there! Now, I’ll hold the lock inside firmly. You see, you can’t turn the catch!”
She indeed held the lock fast. It was a firm hand, yet soft—their fingers had touched over the handle—and looked white in the moonlight. He made no reply, but sank back again in his seat with a singular sensation in the fingers that had touched hers. He was in the shadow, and, without being seen, could abandon his reserve and glance at her face. It struck him that he had never really seen her before. She was not so tall as she had appeared to be. Her eyes were not large, but her pupils were black, moist, velvety, and so convex as to seem embossed on the white. She had an indistinctive nose, a rather colorless face—whiter at the angles of the mouth and nose through the relief of tiny freckles like grains of pepper. Her mouth was straight, dark, red, but moist as her eyes. She had drawn herself into the corner of the back seat, her wrist put through and hanging over the swinging strap, the easy lines of her plump figure swaying from side to side with the motion of the coach. Finally, forgetful of any presence in the dark corner opposite, she threw her head a little farther back, slipped a trifle lower, and placing two well-booted feet upon the middle seat, completed a charming and wholesome picture.
Five minutes elapsed. She was looking straight at the moon. Cass Beard felt his dignified reserve becoming very much like awkwardness. He ought to be coldly polite.
“I hope you’re not flustered, Miss, by the—by the—” he began.
“I?” She straightened herself up in the seat, cast a curious glance into the dark corner, and then, letting herself down again, said: “Oh, dear, no!”
Another five minutes elapsed. She had evidently forgotten him. She might, at least, have been civil. He took refuge again in his reserve. But it was now mixed with a certain pique.
Yet how much softer her face looked in the moonlight! Even her square jaw had lost that hard, matter-of-fact, practical indication which was so distasteful to him, and always had suggested a harsh criticism of his weakness. How moist her eyes were—actually shining in the light! How that light seemed to concentrate in the corner of the lashes, and then slipped—a flash—away! Was she? Yes, she was crying.
Cass melted. He moved. Miss Porter put her head out of the window and drew it back in a moment, dry-eyed.
“One meets all sorts of folks traveling,” said Cass, with what he wished to make appear a cheerful philosophy.
“I dare say. I don’t know. I never before met any one who was rude to me. I have traveled all over the country alone, and with all kinds of people ever since I was so high. I have always gone my own way, without hindrance or trouble. I always do. I don’t see why I shouldn’t. Perhaps other people mayn’t like it. I do. I like excitement. I like to see all that there is to see. Because I’m a girl I don’t see why I cannot go out without a keeper, and why I cannot do what any man can do that isn’t wrong, do you? Perhaps you do—perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you like a girl to be always in the house dawdling or thumping a piano or reading novels. Perhaps you think I’m bold because I don’t like it, and won’t lie and say I do.”
She spoke sharply and aggressively, and so evidently in answer to Cass’s unspoken indictment against her, that he was not surprised when she became more direct.
“You know you were shocked when I went to fetch that Hornsby, the coroner, after we found the dead body.”
“Hornsby wasn’t shocked,” said Cass, a little viciously.
“What do you mean?” she said, abruptly.
“You were good friends enough until—”
“Until he insulted me just now, is that it?”
“Until he thought,” stammered Cass, “that because you were—you know—not so—so—so careful as other girls, he could be a little freer.”
“And so, because I preferred to ride a mile with him to see something real that had happened, and tried to be useful instead of looking in shop windows in Main Street or promenading before the hotel—”
“And being ornamental,” interrupted Cass. But this feeble and un-Cass-like attempt at playful gallantry met with a sudden check.
Miss Porter drew herself together, and looked out of the window. “Do you wish me to walk the rest of the way home?”
“No,” said Cass, hurriedly, with a crimson face and a sense of gratuitous rudeness.
“Then stop that kind of talk, right there!”
There was an awkward silence. “I wish I was a man,” she said, half bitterly, half earnestly. Cass Beard was not old and cynical enough to observe that this devout aspiration is usually uttered by those who have least reason to deplore their own femininity; and, but for the rebuff he had just received, would have made the usual emphatic dissent of our sex, when the wish is uttered by warm red lips and tender voices—a dissent, it may be remarked, generally withheld, however, when the masculine spinster dwells on the perfection of woman. I dare say Miss Porter was sincere, for a moment later she continued, poutingly:
“And yet I used to go to fires in Sacramento when I was only ten years old. I saw the theatre burnt down. Nobody found fault with me then.”
Something made Cass ask if her father and mother objected to her boyish tastes. The reply was characteristic if not satisfactory,—
“Object? I’d like to see them do it.”
The direction of the road had changed. The fickle moon now abandoned Miss Porter and sought out Cass on the front seat. It caressed the young fellow’s silky moustache and long eyelashes, and took some of the sunburn from his cheek.
“What’s the matter with your neck?” said the girl, suddenly.
Cass looked down, blushing to find that the collar of his smart “duck” sailor shirt was torn open. But something more than his white, soft, girlish skin was exposed; the shirt front was dyed quite red with blood from a slight cut on the shoulder. He remembered to have felt a scratch while struggling with Hornsby.
The girl’s soft eyes sparkled. “Let ME,” she said, vivaciously. “Do! I’m good at wounds. Come over here. No—stay there. I’ll come over to you.”
She did, bestriding the back of the middle seat and dropping at his side. The magnetic fingers again touched his; he felt her warm breath on his neck as she bent toward him.
“It’s nothing,” he said, hastily, more agitated by the treatment than the wound.
“Give me your flask,” she responded, without heeding. A stinging sensation as she bathed the edges of the cut with the spirit brought him back to common sense again. “There,” she said, skillfully extemporizing a bandage from her handkerchief and a compress from his cravat. “Now, button your coat over your chest, so, and don’t take cold.” She insisted upon buttoning it for him; greater even than the feminine delight in a man’s strength is the ministration to his weakness. Yet, when this was finished, she drew a little away from him in some embarrassment—an embarrassment she wondered at, as his skin was finer, his touch gentler, his clothes cleaner, and—not to put too fine a point upon it—he exhaled an atmosphere much sweeter than belonged to most of the men her boyish habits had brought her in contact with—not excepting her own father. Later she even exempted her mother from the possession of this divine effluence. After a moment she asked, suddenly, “What are you going to do with Hornsby?”
Cass had not thought of him. His short-lived rage was past with the occasion that provoked it. Without any fear of his adversary he would have been content and quite willing to meet him no more. He only said, “That will depend upon him.”
“Oh, you won’t hear from him again,” said she, confidently, “but you really ought to get up a little more muscle. You’ve no more than a girl.” She stopped, a little confused.
“What shall I do with your handkerchief?” asked the uneasy Cass, anxious to change the subject.
“Oh, keep it, if you want to, only don’t show it to everybody as you did that ring you found.” Seeing signs of distress in his face, she added: “Of course that was all nonsense. If you had cared so much for the ring you couldn’t have talked about it, or shown it. Could you?”
It relieved him to think that this might be true; he certainly had not looked at it in that light before.
“But did you really find it?” she asked, with sudden gravity. “Really, now?”
“Yes.”
“And there was no real May in the case?”
“Not that I know of,” laughed Cass, secretly pleased.
But Miss Porter, after eying him critically for a moment jumped up and climbed back again to her seat. “Perhaps you had better give me that handkerchief back.”
Cass began to unbutton his coat.
“No! no! Do you want to take your death of cold?” she screamed. And Cass, to avoid this direful possibility, rebuttoned his coat again over the handkerchief and a peculiarly pleasing sensation.
Very little now was said until the rattling, bounding descent of the coach denoted the approach to Red Chief. The straggling main street disclosed itself, light by light. In the flash of glittering windows and the sound of eager voices Miss Porter descended, without waiting for Cass’s proffered assistance, and anticipated Mountain Charley’s descent from the box. A few undistinguishable words passed between them.
“You kin freeze to me, Miss,” said Charley; and Miss Porter, turning her frank laugh and frankly opened palm to Cass, half returned the pressure of his hand and slipped away.
A few days after the stage coach incident, Mountain Charley drew up beside Cass on the Blazing Star turnpike, and handed him a small packet. “I was told to give ye that by Miss Porter. Hush—listen! It’s that rather old dog-goned ring o’ yours that’s bin in all the papers. She’s bamboozled that sap-headed county judge, Boompointer, into givin’ it to her. Take my advice and sling it away for some other feller to pick up and get looney over. That’s all!”
“Did she say anything?” asked Cass, anxiously, as he received his lost treasure somewhat coldly.
“Well, yes! I reckon. She asked me to stand betwixt Hornsby and you. So don’t YOU tackle him, and I’ll see HE don’t tackle you,” and with a portentous wink Mountain Charley whipped up his horses and was gone.
Cass opened the packet. It contained nothing but the ring. Unmitigated by any word of greeting, remembrance, or even raillery, it seemed almost an insult. Had she intended to flaunt his folly in his face, or had she believed he still mourned for it and deemed its recovery a sufficient reward for his slight service? For an instant he felt tempted to follow Charley’s advice, and cast this symbol of folly and contempt in the dust of the mountain road. And had she not made his humiliation complete by begging Charley’s interference between him and his enemy? He would go home and send her back the handkerchief she had given him. But here the unromantic reflection that although he had washed it that very afternoon in the solitude of his own cabin, he could not possibly iron it, but must send it “rough dried,” stayed his indignant feet.
Two or three days, a week, a fortnight even, of this hopeless resentment filled Cass’s breast. Then the news of Kanaka Joe’s acquittal in the State Court momentarily revived the story of the ring, and revamped a few stale jokes in the camp. But the interest soon flagged; the fortunes of the little community of Blazing Star had been for some months failing; and with early snows in the mountain and wasted capital in fruitless schemes on the river, there was little room for the indulgence of that lazy and original humor which belonged to their lost youth and prosperity. Blazing Star truly, in the grim figure of their slang, was “played out.” Not dug out, worked out, or washed out, but dissipated in a year of speculation and chance.
Against this tide of fortune Cass struggled manfully, and even evoked the slow praise of his companions. Better still, he won a certain praise for himself, in himself, in a consciousness of increased strength, health, power, and self-reliance. He began to turn his quick imagination and perception to some practical account, and made one or two discoveries which quite startled his more experienced but more conservative companions. Nevertheless, Cass’s discoveries and labors were not of a kind that produced immediate pecuniary realization, and Blazing Star, which consumed so many pounds of pork and flour daily, did not unfortunately produce the daily equivalent in gold. Blazing Star lost its credit. Blazing Star was hungry, dirty, and ragged. Blazing Star was beginning to set.
Participating in the general ill luck of the camp, Cass was not without his own individual mischances. He had resolutely determined to forget Miss Porter and all that tended to recall the unlucky ring, but, cruelly enough, she was the only thing that refused to be forgotten—whose undulating figure reclined opposite to him in the weird moonlight of his ruined cabin, whose voice mingled with the song of the river by whose banks he toiled, and whose eyes and touch thrilled him in his dreams. Partly for this reason, and partly because his clothes were beginning to be patched and torn, he avoided Red Chief and any place where he would be likely to meet her. In spite of this precaution he had once seen her driving in a pony carriage, but so smartly and fashionably dressed that he drew back in the cover of a wayside willow that she might pass without recognition. He looked down upon his red-splashed clothes and grimy, soil-streaked hands, and for a moment half hated her. His comrades seldom spoke of her—instinctively fearing some temptation that might beset his Spartan resolutions, but he heard from time to time that she had been seen at balls and parties, apparently enjoying those very frivolities of her sex she affected to condemn.
It was a Sabbath morning in early spring that he was returning from an ineffectual attempt to enlist a capitalist at the county town to redeem the fortunes of Blazing Star. He was pondering over the narrowness of that capitalist, who had evidently but illogically connected Cass’s present appearance with the future of that struggling camp, when he became so foot-sore that he was obliged to accept a “lift” from a wayfaring teamster. As the slowly lumbering vehicle passed the new church on the outskirts of the town, the congregation were sallying forth. It was too late to jump down and run away, and Cass dared not ask his new-found friend to whip up his cattle. Conscious of his unshorn beard and ragged garments, he kept his eyes fixed upon the road. A voice that thrilled him called his name. It was Miss Porter, a resplendent vision of silk, laces, and Easter flowers—yet actually running, with something of her old dash and freedom, beside the wagon. As the astonished teamster drew up before this elegant apparition, she panted:—
“Why did you make me run so far, and why didn’t you look up?”
Cass, trying to hide the patches on his knees beneath a newspaper, stammered that he had not seen her.
“And you did not hold down your head purposely?”
“No,” said Cass.
“Why have you not been to Red Chief? Why didn’t you answer my message about the ring?” she asked, swiftly.
“You sent nothing but the ring,” said Cass, coloring, as he glanced at the teamster.
“Why, THAT was a message, you born idiot.”
Cass stared. The teamster smiled. Miss Porter gazed anxiously at the wagon. “I think I’d like a ride in there; it looks awfully good.” She glanced mischievously around at the lingering and curious congregation.
“May I?”
But Cass deprecated that proceeding strongly. It was dirty; he was not sure it was even WHOLESOME; she would be SO uncomfortable; he, himself, was only going a few rods farther, and in that time she might ruin her dress—
“Oh, yes,” she said, a little bitterly, “certainly, my dress must be looked after. And—what else?”
“People might think it strange, and believe I had invited you,” continued Cass, hesitatingly.
“When I had only invited myself? Thank you. Good-by.”
She waved her hand and stepped back from the wagon. Cass would have given worlds to recall her, but he sat still, and the vehicle moved on in moody silence. At the first cross road he jumped down. “Thank you,” he said to the teamster. “You’re welcome,” returned that gentleman, regarding him curiously, “but the next time a gal like that asks to ride in this yer wagon, I reckon I won’t take the vote of any deadhead passenger. Adios, young fellow. Don’t stay out late; ye might be run off by some gal, and what would your mother say?” Of course the young man could only look unutterable things and walk away, but even in that dignified action he was conscious that its effect was somewhat mitigated by a large patch from a material originally used as a flour sack, which had repaired his trousers, but still bore the ironical legend, “Best Superfine.”
The summer brought warmth and promise and some blossom, if not absolute fruition, to Blazing Star. The long days drew Nature into closer communion with the men, and hopefulness followed the discontent of their winter seclusion. It was easier, too, for Capital to be wooed and won into making a picnic in these mountain solitudes than when high water stayed the fords and drifting snow the Sierran trails. At the close of one of these Arcadian days Cass was smoking before the door of his lonely cabin when he was astounded by the onset of a dozen of his companions. Peter Drummond, far in the van, was waving a newspaper like a victorious banner. “All’s right now, Cass, old man!” he panted as he stopped before Cass and shoved back his eager followers.
“What’s all right?” asked Cass, dubiously.
“YOU! You kin rake down the pile now. You’re hunky! You’re on velvet. Listen!”
He opened the newspaper and read, with annoying deliberation, as follows:—
“LOST.—If the finder of a plain gold ring, bearing the engraved inscription, ‘May to Cass,’ alleged to have been picked up on the high road near Blazing Star on the 4th March, 186-, will apply to Bookham & Sons, bankers, 1007 Y Street, Sacramento, he will be suitably rewarded either for the recovery of the ring, or for such facts as may identify it, or the locality where it was found.”
Cass rose and frowned savagely on his comrades. “No! no!” cried a dozen voices, assuringly. “It’s all right! Honest Injun! True as gospel! No joke, Cass!”
“Here’s the paper, Sacramento ‘Union’ of yesterday. Look for yourself,” said Drummond, handing him the well-worn journal. “And you see,” he added, “how darned lucky you are. It ain’t necessary for you to produce the ring, so if that old biled owl of a Boompointer don’t giv’ it back to ye, it’s all the same.”
“And they say nobody but the finder need apply,” interrupted another. “That shuts out Boompointer or Kanaka Joe, for the matter o’ that.”
“It’s clar that it MEANS you, Cass, ez much ez if they’d given your name,” added a third.
For Miss Porter’s sake and his own Cass had never told them of the restoration of the ring, and it was evident that Mountain Charley had also kept silent. Cass could not speak now without violating a secret, and he was pleased that the ring itself no longer played an important part in the mystery. But what was that mystery, and why was the ring secondary to himself? Why was so much stress laid upon his finding it?
“You see,” said Drummond, as if answering his unspoken thought, “that ‘ar gal—for it is a gal in course—hez read all about it in the papers, and hez sort o’ took a shine to ye. It don’t make a bit o’ difference who in thunder Cass IS or WAZ, for I reckon she’s kicked him over by this time—”
“Sarved him right, too, for losing the girl’s ring and then lying low and keeping dark about it,” interrupted a sympathizer.
“And she’s just weakened over the romantic, high-toned way you stuck to it,” continued Drummond, forgetting the sarcasms he had previously hurled at this romance. Indeed, the whole camp, by this time, had become convinced that it had fostered and developed a chivalrous devotion which was now on the point of pecuniary realization. It was generally accepted that “she” was the daughter of this banker, and also felt that in the circumstances the happy father could not do less than develop the resources of Blazing Star at once. Even if there were no relationship, what opportunity could be more fit for presenting to capital a locality that even produced engagement rings, and, as Jim Fauquier put it, “the men ez knew how to keep ’em.” It was this sympathetic Virginian who took Cass aside with the following generous suggestion: “If you find that you and the old gal couldn’t hitch hosses, owin’ to your not likin’ red hair or a game leg” (it may be here recorded that Blazing Star had, for no reason whatever, attributed these unprepossessing qualities to the mysterious advertiser), “you might let ME in. You might say ez how I used to jest worship that ring with you, and allers wanted to borrow it on Sundays. If anything comes of it—why—WE’RE PARDNERS!”
A serious question was the outfitting of Cass for what now was felt to be a diplomatic representation of the community. His garments, it hardly need be said, were inappropriate to any wooing except that of the “maiden all forlorn,” which the advertiser clearly was not. “He might,” suggested Fauquier, “drop in jest as he is—kinder as if he’d got keerless of the world, being lovesick.” But Cass objected strongly, and was borne out in his objection by his younger comrades. At last a pair of white duck trousers, a red shirt, a flowing black silk scarf, and a Panama hat were procured at Red Chief, on credit, after a judicious exhibition of the advertisement. A heavy wedding ring, the property of Drummond (who was not married), was also lent as a graceful suggestion, and at the last moment Fauquier affixed to Cass’s scarf an enormous specimen pin of gold and quartz. “It sorter indicates the auriferous wealth o’ this yer region, and the old man (the senior member of Bookham & Sons) needn’t know I won it at draw poker in Frisco,” said Fauquier.
“Ef you ‘pass’ on the gal, you kin hand it back to me and I’LL try it on.” Forty dollars for expenses was put into Cass’s hands, and the entire community accompanied him to the cross roads where he was to meet the Sacramento coach, which eventually carried him away, followed by a benediction of waving hats and exploding revolvers.
That Cass did not participate in the extravagant hopes of his comrades, and that he rejected utterly their matrimonial speculations in his behalf, need not be said. Outwardly, he kept his own counsel with good-humored assent. But there was something fascinating in the situation, and while he felt he had forever abandoned his romantic dream, he was not displeased to know that it might have proved a reality. Nor was it distasteful to him to think that Miss Porter would hear of it and regret her late inability to appreciate his sentiment. If he really were the object of some opulent maiden’s passion, he would show Miss Porter how he could sacrifice the most brilliant prospects for her sake. Alone, on the top of the coach, he projected one of those satisfying conversations in which imaginative people delight, but which unfortunately never come quite up to rehearsal. “Dear Miss Porter,” he would say, addressing the back of the driver, “if I could remain faithful to a dream of my youth, however illusive and unreal, can you believe that for the sake of lucre I could be false to the one real passion that alone supplanted it.” In the composition and delivery of this eloquent statement an hour was happily forgotten: the only drawback to its complete effect was that a misplace of epithets in rapid repetition did not seem to make the slightest difference, and Cass found himself saying “Dear Miss Porter, if I could be false to a dream of my youth, etc., etc., can you believe I could be FAITHFUL to the one real passion, etc., etc.,” with equal and perfect satisfaction. As Miss Porter was reputed to be well off, if the unknown were poor, that might be another drawback.
The banking house of Bookham & Sons did not present an illusive nor mysterious appearance. It was eminently practical and matter of fact; it was obtrusively open and glassy; nobody would have thought of leaving a secret there that would have been inevitably circulated over the counter. Cass felt an uncomfortable sense of incongruity in himself, in his story, in his treasure, to this temple of disenchanting realism. With the awkwardness of an embarrassed man he was holding prominently in his hand an envelope containing the ring and advertisement as a voucher for his intrusion, when the nearest clerk took the envelope from his hand, opened it, took out the ring, returned it, said briskly, “T’other shop, next door, young man,” and turned to another customer.
Cass stepped to the door, saw that “T’other shop” was a pawnbroker’s, and returned again with a flashing eye and heightened color. “It’s an advertisement I have come to answer,” he began again.
The clerk cast a glance at Cass’s scarf and pin. “Place taken yesterday—no room for any more,” he said, abruptly.
Cass grew quite white. But his old experience in Blazing Star repartee stood him in good stead. “If it’s YOUR place you mean,” he said coolly, “I reckon you might put a dozen men in the hole you’re rattlin’ round in—but it’s this advertisement I’m after. If Bookham isn’t in, maybe you’ll send me one of the grown-up sons.” The production of the advertisement and some laughter from the bystanders had its effect. The pert young clerk retired, and returned to lead the way to the bank parlor. Cass’s heart sank again as he was confronted by a dark, iron-gray man—in dress, features, speech, and action—uncompromisingly opposed to Cass—his ring and his romance. When the young man had told his story and produced his treasure he paused. The banker scarcely glanced at it, but said, impatiently,—
“Well, your papers?”
“My papers?”
“Yes. Proof of your identity. You say your name is Cass Beard. Good! What have you got to prove it? How can I tell who you are?”
To a sensitive man there is no form of suspicion that is as bewildering and demoralizing at the moment as the question of his identity. Cass felt the insult in the doubt of his word, and the palpable sense of his present inability to prove it. The banker watched him keenly but not unkindly.
“Come,” he said at length, “this is not my affair; if you can legally satisfy the lady for whom I am only agent, well and good. I believe you can; I only warn you that you must. And my present inquiry was to keep her from losing her time with impostors, a class I don’t think you belong to. There’s her card. Good day.”
“Miss Mortimer.” It was NOT the banker’s daughter. The first illusion of Blazing Star was rudely dispelled. But the care taken by the capitalist to shield her from imposture indicated a person of wealth. Of her youth and beauty Cass no longer thought.
The address given was not distant. With a beating heart he rung the bell of a respectable-looking house, and was ushered into a private drawing-room. Instinctively he felt that the room was only temporarily inhabited; an air peculiar to the best lodgings, and when the door opened upon a tall lady in deep mourning, he was still more convinced of an incongruity between the occupant and her surroundings. With a smile that vacillated between a habit of familiarity and ease, and a recent restraint, she motioned him to a chair.
“Miss Mortimer” was still young, still handsome, still fashionably dressed, and still attractive. From her first greeting to the end of the interview Cass felt that she knew all about him. This relieved him from the onus of proving his identity, but seemed to put him vaguely at a disadvantage. It increased his sense of inexperience and youthfulness.
“I hope you will believe,” she began, “that the few questions I have to ask you are to satisfy my own heart, and for no other purpose.” She smiled sadly as she went on. “Had it been otherwise, I should have instituted a legal inquiry, and left this interview to some one cooler, calmer, and less interested than myself. But I think, I KNOW I can trust you. Perhaps we women are weak and foolish to talk of an INSTINCT, and when you know my story you may have reason to believe that but little dependence can be placed on THAT; but I am not wrong in saying,—am I?” (with a sad smile) “that YOU are not above that weakness?” She paused, closed her lips tightly, and grasped her hands before her. “You say you found that ring in the road some three months before—the—the—you know what I mean—the body—was discovered?”
“Yes.”
“You thought it might have been dropped by some one in passing?”
“I thought so, yes—it belonged to no one in camp.”
“Before your cabin or on the highway?”
“Before my cabin.”
“You are SURE?” There was something so very sweet and sad in her smile that it oddly made Cass color.
“But my cabin is near the road,” he suggested.
“I see! And there was nothing else; no paper nor envelope?”
“Nothing.”
“And you kept it because of the odd resemblance one of the names bore to yours?”
“Yes.”
“For no other reason
“None.” Yet Cass felt he was blushing.
“You’ll forgive my repeating a question you have already answered, but I am so anxious. There was some attempt to prove at the inquest that the ring had been found on the body of—the unfortunate man. But you tell me it was not so?”
“I can swear it.”
“Good God—the traitor!” She took a hurried step forward, turned to the window, and then came back to Cass with a voice broken with emotion. “I have told you I could trust you. That ring was mine!”
She stopped, and then went on hurriedly. “Years ago I gave it to a man who deceived and wronged me; a man whose life since then has been a shame and disgrace to all who knew him. A man who, once, a gentleman, sank so low as to become the associate of thieves and ruffians; sank so low, that when he died, by violence—a traitor even to them—his own confederates shrunk from him, and left him to fill a nameless grave. That man’s body you found!”
Cass started. “And his name was—?”
“Part of your surname. Cass—Henry Cass.”
“You see why Providence seems to have brought that ring to you,” she went on. “But you ask me why, knowing this, I am so eager to know if the ring was found by you in the road, or if it were found on his body. Listen! It is part of my mortification that the story goes that this man once showed this ring, boasted of it, staked, and lost it at a gambling table to one of his vile comrades.”
“Kanaka Joe,” said Cass, overcome by a vivid recollection of Joe’s merriment at the trial.
“The same. Don’t you see,” she said, hurriedly, “if the ring had been found on him I could believe that somewhere in his heart he still kept respect for the woman he had wronged. I am a woman—a foolish woman, I know—but you have crushed that hope forever.”
“But why have you sent for me?” asked Cass, touched by her emotion.
“To know it for certain,” she said, almost fiercely. “Can you not understand that a woman like me must know a thing once and forever? But you CAN help me. I did not send for you only to pour my wrongs in your ears. You must take me with you to this place—to the spot where you found the ring—to the spot where you found the body—to the spot where—where HE lies. You must do it secretly, that none shall know me.”
Cass hesitated. He was thinking of his companions and the collapse of their painted bubble. How could he keep the secret from them?
“If it is money you need, let not that stop you. I have no right to your time without recompense. Do not misunderstand me. There has been a thousand dollars awaiting my order at Bookham’s when the ring should be delivered. It shall be doubled if you help me in this last moment.”
It was possible. He could convey her secretly there, invent some story of a reward delayed for want of proofs, and afterward share that reward with his friends. He answered promptly, “I will take you there.”
She took his hands in both of hers, raised them to her lips, and smiled. The shadow of grief and restraint seemed to have fallen from her face, and a half-mischievous, half-coquettish gleam in her dark eyes touched the susceptible Cass in so subtle a fashion that he regained the street in some confusion. He wondered what Miss Porter would have thought. But was he not returning to her, a fortunate man, with one thousand dollars in his pocket! Why should he remember he was handicapped, by a pretty woman and a pathetic episode? It did not make the proximity less pleasant as he helped her into the coach that evening, nor did the recollection of another ride with another woman obtrude itself upon those consolations which he felt it his duty, from time to time, to offer. It was arranged that he should leave her at the “Red Chief” Hotel, while he continued on to Blazing Star, returning at noon to bring her with him when he could do it without exposing her to recognition. The gray dawn came soon enough, and the coach drew up at “Red Chief” while the lights in the bar-room and dining-room of the hotel were still struggling with the far flushing east. Cass alighted, placed Miss Mortimer in the hands of the landlady, and returned to the vehicle. It was still musty, close, and frowzy, with half-awakened passengers. There was a vacated seat on the top, which Cass climbed up to, and abstractedly threw himself beside a figure muffled in shawls and rugs. There was a slight movement among the multitudinous enwrappings, and then the figure turned to him and said, dryly, “Good morning!” It was Miss Porter!
“Have you been long here?” he stammered.
“All night.”
He would have given worlds to leave her at that moment. He would have jumped from the starting coach to save himself any explanation of the embarrassment he was furiously conscious of showing, without, as he believed, any adequate cause. And yet, like all inexperienced, sensitive men, he dashed blindly into that explanation; worse, he even told his secret at once, then and there, and then sat abashed and conscience stricken, with an added sense of its utter futility.
“And this,” summed up the young girl, with a slight shrug of her pretty shoulders, “is YOUR MAY?”
Cass would have recommenced his story.
“No, don’t, pray! It isn’t interesting, nor original. Do YOU believe it?”
“I do,” said Cass, indignantly.
“How lucky! Then let me go to sleep.”
Cass, still furious, but uneasy, did not again address her. When the coach stopped at Blazing Star she asked him, indifferently: “When does this sentimental pilgrimage begin?”
“I return for her at one o’clock,” replied Cass, stiffly.
He kept his word. He appeased his eager companions with a promise of future fortune, and exhibited the present and tangible reward. By a circuitous route known only to himself, he led Miss Mortimer to the road before the cabin. There was a pink flush of excitement on her somewhat faded cheek.
“And it was here?” she asked, eagerly.
“I found it here.”
“And the body?”
“That was afterward. Over in that direction, beyond the clump of buckeyes, on the Red Chief turnpike.”
“And any one coming from the road we left just now and going to—to—that place, would have to cross just here? Tell me,” she said, with a strange laugh, laying her cold nervous hand on his, “wouldn’t they?”
“They would.”
“Let us go to that place.”
Cass stepped out briskly to avoid observation and gain the woods beyond the highway. “You have crossed here before,” she said. “There seems to be a trail.”
“I may have made it: it’s a short cut to the buckeyes.”
“You never found anything else on the trail?”
“You remember, I told you before, the ring was all I found.”
“Ah, true!” she smiled sweetly; “it was THAT which made it seem so odd to you. I forgot.”
In half an hour they reached the buckeyes. During the walk she had taken rapid recognizance of everything in her path. When they crossed the road and Cass had pointed out the scene of the murder, she looked anxiously around. “You are sure we are not seen?”
“Quite.”
“You will not think me foolish if I ask you to wait here while I go in there”—she pointed to the ominous thicket near them—”alone?”
She was quite white.
Cass’s heart, which had grown somewhat cold since his interview with Miss Porter, melted at once.
“Go; I will stay here.”
He waited five minutes. She did not return.
What if the poor creature had determined upon suicide on the spot where her faithless lover had fallen? He was reassured in another moment by the rustle of skirts in the undergrowth.
“I was becoming quite alarmed,” he said, aloud.
“You have reason to be,” returned a hurried voice. He started. It was Miss Porter, who stepped swiftly out of the cover. “Look,” she said, “look at that man down the road. He has been tracking you two ever since you left the cabin. Do you know who he is?”
“No!”
“Then listen. It is three-fingered Dick, one of the escaped road agents. I know him!”
“Let us go and warn her,” said Cass, eagerly.
Miss Porter laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“I don’t think she’ll thank you,” she said, dryly. “Perhaps you’d better see what she’s doing, first.”
Utterly bewildered, yet with a strong sense of the masterfulness of his companion, he followed her. She crept like a cat through the thicket. Suddenly she paused. “Look!” she whispered, viciously, “look at the tender vigils of your heart-broken May!”
Cass saw the woman who had left him a moment before on her knees on the grass, with long thin fingers digging like a ghoul in the earth. He had scarce time to notice her eager face and eyes, cast now and then back toward the spot where she had left him, before there was a crash in the bushes, and a man,—the stranger of the road,—leaped to her side. “Run,” he said; “run for it now. You’re watched!”
“Oh! that man, Beard!” she said, contemptuously.
“No, another in a wagon. Quick. Fool, you know the place now,—you can come later; run!” And half-dragging, half-lifting her, he bore her through the bushes. Scarcely had they closed behind the pair than Miss Porter ran to the spot vacated by the woman. “Look!” she cried, triumphantly, “look!”
Cass looked, and sank on his knees beside her.
“It WAS worth a thousand dollars, wasn’t it?” she repeated, maliciously, “wasn’t it? But you ought to return it! REALLY you ought.”
Cass could scarcely articulate. “But how did YOU know it?” he finally gasped.
“Oh, I suspected something; there was a woman, and you know you’re SUCH a fool!”
Cass rose, stiffly.
“Don’t be a greater fool now, but go and bring my horse and wagon from the hill, and don’t say anything to the driver.”
“Then you did not come alone?”
“No; it would have been bold and improper.”
“Please!”
“And to think it WAS the ring, after all, that pointed to this,” she said.
“The ring that YOU returned to me.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t, please, the wagon is coming.”
In the next morning’s edition of the “Red Chief Chronicle” appeared the following startling intelligence:—
EXTRAORDINARY DISCOVERY FINDING OF THE STOLEN TREASURE OF WELLS, FARGO & CO. OVER $800,000 RECOVERED
Our readers will remember the notorious robbery of Wells, Fargo & Co.’s treasure from the Sacramento and Red Chief Pioneer Coach on the night of September 1. Although most of the gang were arrested, it is known that two escaped, who, it was presumed, cached the treasure, amounting to nearly $500,000 in gold, drafts, and jewelry, as no trace of the property was found. Yesterday our esteemed fellow citizen, Mr. Cass Beard, long and favorably known in this county, succeeded in exhuming the treasure in a copse of hazel near the Red Chief turnpike,—adjacent to the spot where an unknown body was lately discovered. This body is now strongly suspected to be that of one Henry Cass, a disreputable character, who has since been ascertained to have been one of the road agents who escaped. The matter is now under legal investigation. The successful result of the search is due to a systematic plan evolved from the genius of Mr. Beard, who has devoted over a year to this labor. It was first suggested to him by the finding of a ring, now definitely identified as part of the treasure which was supposed to have been dropped from Wells, Fargo & Co’s boxes by the robbers in their midnight flight through Blazing Star.
In the same journal appeared the no less important intelligence, which explains, while it completes this veracious chronicle:—
“It is rumored that a marriage is shortly to take place between the hero of the late treasure discovery and a young lady of Red Chief, whose devoted aid and assistance to this important work is well known to this community.”