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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Three Partners, by Bret Harte
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Three Partners
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 18, 2006 [EBook #2560]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE THREE PARTNERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE PARTNERS
+
+By Bret Harte
+
+
+
+
+PROLOGUE.
+
+
+The sun was going down on the Black Spur Range. The red light it had
+kindled there was still eating its way along the serried crest, showing
+through gaps in the ranks of pines, etching out the interstices of
+broken boughs, fading away and then flashing suddenly out again like
+sparks in burnt-up paper. Then the night wind swept down the whole
+mountain side, and began its usual struggle with the shadows upclimbing
+from the valley, only to lose itself in the end and be absorbed in the
+all-conquering darkness. Yet for some time the pines on the long slope
+of Heavy Tree Hill murmured and protested with swaying arms; but as the
+shadows stole upwards, and cabin after cabin and tunnel after tunnel
+were swallowed up, a complete silence followed. Only the sky remained
+visible--a vast concave mirror of dull steel, in which the stars did not
+seem to be set, but only reflected.
+
+A single cabin door on the crest of Heavy Tree Hill had remained open to
+the wind and darkness. Then it was slowly shut by an invisible figure,
+afterwards revealed by the embers of the fire it was stirring. At first
+only this figure brooding over the hearth was shown, but as the flames
+leaped up, two other figures could be seen sitting motionless before it.
+When the door was shut, they acknowledged that interruption by slightly
+changing their position; the one who had risen to shut the door sank
+back into an invisible seat, but the attitude of each man was one of
+profound reflection or reserve, and apparently upon some common subject
+which made them respect each other's silence. However, this was at last
+broken by a laugh. It was a boyish laugh, and came from the youngest of
+the party. The two others turned their profiles and glanced inquiringly
+towards him, but did not speak.
+
+"I was thinking," he began in apologetic explanation, "how mighty queer
+it was that while we were working like niggers on grub wages, without
+the ghost of a chance of making a strike, how we used to sit here, night
+after night, and flapdoodle and speculate about what we'd do if we ever
+DID make one; and now, Great Scott! that we HAVE made it, and are just
+wallowing in gold, here we are sitting as glum and silent as if we'd
+had a washout! Why, Lord! I remember one night--not so long ago,
+either--that you two quarreled over the swell hotel you were going to
+stop at in 'Frisco, and whether you wouldn't strike straight out for
+London and Rome and Paris, or go away to Japan and China and round by
+India and the Red Sea."
+
+"No, we didn't QUARREL over it," said one of the figures gently; "there
+was only a little discussion."
+
+"Yes, but you did, though," returned the young fellow mischievously,
+"and you told Stacy, there, that we'd better learn something of the
+world before we tried to buy it or even hire it, and that it was just
+as well to get the hayseed out of our hair and the slumgullion off our
+boots before we mixed in polite society."
+
+"Well, I don't see what's the matter with that sentiment now," returned
+the second speaker good-humoredly; "only," he added gravely, "we didn't
+quarrel--God forbid!"
+
+There was something in the speaker's tone which seemed to touch a common
+chord in their natures, and this was voiced by Barker with sudden and
+almost pathetic earnestness. "I tell you what, boys, we ought to swear
+here to-night to always stand by each other--in luck and out of it! We
+ought to hold ourselves always at each other's call. We ought to have
+a kind of password or signal, you know, by which we could summon each
+other at any time from any quarter of the globe!"
+
+"Come off the roof, Barker," murmured Stacy, without lifting his eyes
+from the fire. But Demorest smiled and glanced tolerantly at the younger
+man.
+
+"Yes, but look here, Stacy," continued Barker, "comrades like us, in
+the old days, used to do that in times of trouble and adventures. Why
+shouldn't we do it in our luck?"
+
+"There's a good deal in that, Barker boy," said Demorest, "though, as
+a general thing, passwords butter no parsnips, and the ordinary,
+every-day, single yelp from a wolf brings the whole pack together for
+business about as quick as a password. But you cling to that sentiment,
+and put it away with your gold-dust in your belt."
+
+"What I like about Barker is his commodiousness," said Stacy. "Here he
+is, the only man among us that has his future fixed and his preemption
+lines laid out and registered. He's already got a girl that he's going
+to marry and settle down with on the strength of his luck. And I'd like
+to know what Kitty Carter, when she's Mrs. Barker, would say to her
+husband being signaled for from Asia or Africa. I don't seem to see her
+tumbling to any password. And when he and she go into a new partnership,
+I reckon she'll let the old one slide."
+
+"That's just where you're wrong!" said Barker, with quickly rising
+color. "She's the sweetest girl in the world, and she'd be sure to
+understand our feelings. Why, she thinks everything of you two; she was
+just eager for you to get this claim, which has put us where we are,
+when I held back, and if it hadn't been for her, by Jove! we wouldn't
+have had it."
+
+"That was only because she cared for YOU," returned Stacy, with a
+half-yawn; "and now that you've got YOUR share she isn't going to take
+a breathless interest in US. And, by the way, I'd rather YOU'D remind us
+that we owe our luck to her than that SHE should ever remind YOU of it."
+
+"What do you mean?" said Barker quickly. But Demorest here rose lazily,
+and, throwing a gigantic shadow on the wall, stood between the two with
+his back to the fire. "He means," he said slowly, "that you're talking
+rot, and so is he. However, as yours comes from the heart and his from
+the head, I prefer yours. But you're both making me tired. Let's have a
+fresh deal."
+
+Nobody ever dreamed of contradicting Demorest. Nevertheless, Barker
+persisted eagerly: "But isn't it better for us to look at this
+cheerfully and happily all round? There's nothing criminal in our having
+made a strike! It seems to me, boys, that of all ways of making money
+it's the squarest and most level; nobody is the poorer for it; our luck
+brings no misfortune to others. The gold was put there ages ago for
+anybody to find; we found it. It hasn't been tarnished by man's touch
+before. I don't know how it strikes you, boys, but it seems to me
+that of all gifts that are going it is the straightest. For whether we
+deserve it or not, it comes to us first-hand--from God!"
+
+The two men glanced quickly at the speaker, whose face flushed and then
+smiled embarrassedly as if ashamed of the enthusiasm into which he had
+been betrayed. But Demorest did not smile, and Stacy's eyes shone in the
+firelight as he said languidly, "I never heard that prospecting was a
+religious occupation before. But I shouldn't wonder if you're right,
+Barker boy. So let's liquor up."
+
+Nevertheless he did not move, nor did the others. The fire leaped
+higher, bringing out the rude rafters and sternly economic details of
+the rough cabin, and making the occupants in their seats before the fire
+look gigantic by contrast.
+
+"Who shut the door?" said Demorest after a pause.
+
+"I did," said Barker. "I reckoned it was getting cold."
+
+"Better open it again, now that the fire's blazing. It will light the
+way if any of the men from below want to drop in this evening."
+
+Stacy stared at his companion. "I thought that it was understood that
+we were giving them that dinner at Boomville tomorrow night, so that we
+might have the last evening here by ourselves in peace and quietness?"
+
+"Yes, but if any one DID want to come it would seem churlish to shut him
+out," said Demorest.
+
+"I reckon you're feeling very much as I am," said Stacy, "that this good
+fortune is rather crowding to us three alone. For myself, I know," he
+continued, with a backward glance towards a blanketed, covered pile
+in the corner of the cabin, "that I feel rather oppressed by--by its
+specific gravity, I calculate--and sort of crampy and twitchy in the
+legs, as if I ought to 'lite' out and do something, and yet it holds
+me here. All the same, I doubt if anybody will come up--except from
+curiosity. Our luck has made them rather sore down the hill, for all
+they're coming to the dinner to-morrow."
+
+"That's only human nature," said Demorest.
+
+"But," said Barker eagerly, "what does it mean? Why, only this
+afternoon, when I was passing the 'Old Kentuck' tunnel, where those
+Marshalls have been grubbing along for four years without making a
+single strike, I felt ashamed to look at them, and as they barely nodded
+to me I slinked by as if I had done them an injury. I don't understand
+it."
+
+"It somehow does not seem to square with this 'gift of God' idea of
+yours, does it?" said Stacy. "But we'll open the door and give them a
+show."
+
+As he did so it seemed as if the night were their only guest, and had
+been waiting on the threshold to now enter bodily and pervade all things
+with its presence. With that cool, fragrant inflow of air they breathed
+freely. The red edge had gone from Black Spur, but it was even more
+clearly defined against the sky in its towering blackness. The
+sky itself had grown lighter, although the stars still seemed mere
+reflections of the solitary pin-points of light scattered along the
+concave valley below. Mingling with the cooler, restful air of the
+summit, yet penetratingly distinct from it, arose the stimulating breath
+of the pines below, still hot and panting from the day-long sun. The
+silence was intense. The far-off barking of a dog on the invisible
+river-bar nearly a mile beneath them came to them like a sound in a
+dream. They had risen, and, standing in the doorway, by common consent
+turned their faces to the east. It was the frequent attitude of the
+home-remembering miner, and it gave him the crowning glory of the view.
+For, beyond the pine-hearsed summits, rarely seen except against the
+evening sky, lay a thin, white cloud like a dropped portion of the Milky
+Way. Faint with an indescribable pallor, remote yet distinct enough to
+assert itself above and beyond all surrounding objects, it was always
+there. It was the snow-line of the Sierras.
+
+They turned away and silently reseated themselves, the same thought
+in the minds of each. Here was something they could not take away,
+something to be left forever and irretrievably behind,--left with the
+healthy life they had been leading, the cheerful endeavor, the undying
+hopefulness which it had fostered and blessed. Was what they WERE taking
+away worth it? And oddly enough, frank and outspoken as they had always
+been to each other, that common thought remained unuttered. Even Barker
+was silent; perhaps he was also thinking of Kitty.
+
+Suddenly two figures appeared in the very doorway of the cabin. The
+effect was startling upon the partners, who had only just reseated
+themselves, and for a moment they had forgotten that the narrow band
+of light which shot forth from the open door rendered the darkness on
+either side of it more impenetrable, and that out of this darkness,
+although themselves guided by the light, the figures had just emerged.
+Yet one was familiar enough. It was the Hill drunkard, Dick Hall, or,
+as he was called, "Whiskey Dick," or, indicated still more succinctly by
+the Hill humorists, "Alky Hall."
+
+Everybody had seen that sodden, puffy, but good-humored face; everybody
+had felt the fiery exhalations of that enormous red beard, which always
+seemed to be kept in a state of moist, unkempt luxuriance by liquor;
+everybody knew the absurd dignity of manner and attempted precision of
+statement with which he was wont to disguise his frequent excesses.
+Very few, however, knew, or cared to know, the pathetic weariness and
+chilling horror that sometimes looked out of those bloodshot eyes.
+
+He was evidently equally unprepared for the three silent seated figures
+before the door, and for a moment looked at them blankly with the doubts
+of a frequently deceived perception. Was he sure that they were quite
+real? He had not dared to look at his companion for verification, but
+smiled vaguely.
+
+"Good-evening," said Demorest pleasantly.
+
+Whiskey Dick's face brightened. "Good-evenin', good-evenin' yourselves,
+boys--and see how you like it! Lemme interdrush my ole frien' William
+J. Steptoe, of Red Gulch. Stepsho--Steptoe--is shtay--ish stay--"
+He stopped, hiccupped, waved his hand gravely, and with an air of
+reproachful dignity concluded, "sojourning for the present on the Bar.
+We wish to offer our congrashulashen and felish--felish--" He paused
+again, and, leaning against the door-post, added severely, "--itations."
+
+His companion, however, laughed coarsely, and, pushing past Dick,
+entered the cabin. He was a short, powerful man, with a closely cropped
+crust of beard and hair that seemed to adhere to his round head like
+moss or lichen. He cast a glance--furtive rather than curious around
+the cabin, and said, with a familiarity that had not even good humor
+to excuse it, "So you're the gay galoots who've made the big strike?
+Thought I'd meander up the Hill with this old bloat Alky, and drop in
+to see the show. And here you are, feeling your oats, eh? and not caring
+any particular G-d d--n if school keeps or not."
+
+"Show Mr. Steptoe--the whiskey," said Demorest to Stacy. Then quietly
+addressing Dick, but ignoring Steptoe as completely as Steptoe had
+ignored his unfortunate companion, he said, "You quite startled us at
+first. We did not see you come up the trail."
+
+"No. We came up the back trail to please Steptoe, who wanted to see
+round the cabin," said Dick, glancing nervously yet with a forced
+indifference towards the whiskey which Stacy was offering to the
+stranger.
+
+"What yer gettin' off there?" said Steptoe, facing Dick almost brutally.
+"YOU know your tangled legs wouldn't take you straight up the trail,
+and you had to make a circumbendibus. Gosh! if you hadn't scented this
+licker at the top you'd have never found it."
+
+"No matter! I'm glad you DID find it, Dick," said Demorest, "and I hope
+you'll find the liquor good enough to pay you for the trouble."
+
+Barker stared at Demorest. This extraordinary tolerance of the drunkard
+was something new in his partner. But at a glance from Demorest he led
+Dick to the demijohn and tin cup which stood on a table in the corner.
+And in another moment Dick had forgotten his companion's rudeness.
+
+Demorest remained by the door, looking out into the darkness.
+
+"Well," said Steptoe, putting down his emptied cup, "trot out your
+strike. I reckon our eyes are strong enough to bear it now." Stacy drew
+the blanket from the vague pile that stood in the corner, and discovered
+a deep tin prospecting-pan. It was heaped with several large fragments
+of quartz. At first the marble whiteness of the quartz and the
+glittering crystals of mica in its veins were the most noticeable, but
+as they drew closer they could see the dull yellow of gold filling the
+decomposed and honeycombed portion of the rock as if still liquid and
+molten. The eyes of the party sparkled like the mica--even those of
+Barker and Stacy, who were already familiar with the treasure.
+
+"Which is the richest chunk?" asked Steptoe in a thickening voice.
+
+Stacy pointed it out.
+
+"Why, it's smaller than the others."
+
+"Heft it in your hand," said Barker, with boyish enthusiasm.
+
+The short, thick fingers of Steptoe grasped it with a certain aquiline
+suggestion; his whole arm strained over it until his face grew purple,
+but he could not lift it.
+
+"Thar useter be a little game in the 'Frisco Mint," said Dick, restored
+to fluency by his liquor, "when thar war ladies visiting it, and that
+was to offer to give 'em any of those little boxes of gold coin, that
+contained five thousand dollars, ef they would kindly lift it from the
+counter and take it away! It wasn't no bigger than one of these chunks;
+but Jiminy! you oughter have seed them gals grip and heave on it, and
+then hev to give it up! You see they didn't know anything about the
+paci--(hic) the speshif--" He stopped with great dignity, and added with
+painful precision, "the specific gravity of gold."
+
+"Dry up!" said Steptoe roughly. Then turning to Stacy he said abruptly,
+"But where's the rest of it? You've got more than that."
+
+"We sent it to Boomville this morning. You see we've sold out our claim
+to a company who take it up to-morrow, and put up a mill and stamps.
+In fact, it's under their charge now. They've got a gang of men on the
+claim already."
+
+"And what mout ye hev got for it, if it's a fair question?" said
+Steptoe, with a forced smile.
+
+Stacy smiled also. "I don't know that it's a business question," he
+said.
+
+"Five hundred thousand dollars," said Demorest abruptly from the
+doorway, "and a treble interest."
+
+The eyes of the two men met. There was no mistaking the dull fire of
+envy in Steptoe's glance, but Demorest received it with a certain cold
+curiosity, and turned away as the sound of arriving voices came from
+without.
+
+"Five hundred thousand's a big figger," said Steptoe, with a coarse
+laugh, "and I don't wonder it makes you feel so d----d sassy. But it WAS
+a fair question."
+
+Unfortunately it here occurred to the whiskey-stimulated brain of Dick
+that the friend he had introduced was being treated with scant courtesy,
+and he forgot his own treatment by Steptoe. Leaning against the wall he
+waved a dignified rebuke. "I'm sashified my ole frien' is akshuated by
+only businesh principles." He paused, recollected himself, and added
+with great precision: "When I say he himself has a valuable claim in
+Red Gulch, and to my shertain knowledge has received offers--I have said
+enough."
+
+The laugh that broke from Stacy and Barker, to whom the infelicitous
+reputation of Red Gulch was notorious, did not allay Steptoe's
+irritation. He darted a vindictive glance at the unfortunate Dick, but
+joined in the laugh. "And what was ye goin' to do with that?" he said,
+pointing to the treasure.
+
+"Oh, we're taking that with us. There's a chunk for each of us as a
+memento. We cast lots for the choice, and Demorest won,--that one which
+you couldn't lift with one hand, you know," said Stacy.
+
+"Oh, couldn't I? I reckon you ain't goin' to give me the same chance
+that they did at the Mint, eh?"
+
+Although the remark was accompanied with his usual coarse, familiar
+laugh, there was a look in his eye so inconsequent in its significance
+that Stacy would have made some reply, but at this moment Demorest
+re-entered the cabin, ushering in a half dozen miners from the Bar
+below. They were, although youngish men, some of the older locators in
+the vicinity, yet, through years of seclusion and uneventful labors,
+they had acquired a certain childish simplicity of thought and manner
+that was alternately amusing and pathetic. They had never intruded upon
+the reserve of the three partners of Heavy Tree Hill before; nothing but
+an infantine curiosity, a shy recognition of the partners' courtesy in
+inviting them with the whole population of Heavy Tree to the dinner the
+next day, and the never-to-be-resisted temptation of an evening of "free
+liquor" and forgetfulness of the past had brought them there now.
+Among them, and yet not of them, was a young man who, although speaking
+English without accent, was distinctly of a different nationality and
+race. This, with a certain neatness of dress and artificial suavity
+of address, had gained him the nickname of "the Count" and "Frenchy,"
+although he was really of Flemish extraction. He was the Union Ditch
+Company's agent on the Bar, by virtue of his knowledge of languages.
+
+Barker uttered an exclamation of pleasure when he saw him. Himself the
+incarnation of naturalness, he had always secretly admired this young
+foreigner, with his lacquered smoothness, although a vague consciousness
+that neither Stacy nor Demorest shared his feelings had restricted their
+acquaintance. Nevertheless, he was proud now to see the bow with which
+Paul Van Loo entered the cabin as if it were a drawing-room, and perhaps
+did not reflect upon that want of real feeling in an act which made the
+others uncomfortable.
+
+The slight awkwardness their entrance produced, however, was quickly
+forgotten when the blanket was again lifted from the pan of treasure.
+Singularly enough, too, the same feverish light came into the eyes of
+each as they all gathered around this yellow shrine. Even the polite
+Paul rudely elbowed his way between the others, though his artificial
+"Pardon" seemed to Barker to condone this act of brutal instinct. But it
+was more instructive to observe the manner in which the older locators
+received this confirmation of the fickle Fortune that had overlooked
+their weary labors and years of waiting to lavish her favors on the new
+and inexperienced amateurs. Yet as they turned their dazzled eyes upon
+the three partners there was no envy or malice in their depths, no
+reproach on their lips, no insincerity in their wondering satisfaction.
+Rather there was a touching, almost childlike resumption of hope as they
+gazed at this conclusive evidence of Nature's bounty. The gold had been
+there--THEY had only missed it! And if there, more could be found! Was
+it not a proof of the richness of Heavy Tree Hill? So strongly was this
+reflected on their faces that a casual observer, contrasting them with
+the thoughtful countenances of the real owners, would have thought them
+the lucky ones. It touched Barker's quick sympathies, it puzzled Stacy,
+it made Demorest more serious, it aroused Steptoe's active contempt.
+Whiskey Dick alone remained stolid and impassive in a desperate attempt
+to pull himself once more together. Eventually he succeeded, even to the
+ambitious achievement of mounting a chair and lifting his tin cup with a
+dangerously unsteady hand, which did not, however, affect his precision
+of utterance, and said:--
+
+"Order, gentlemen! We'll drink success to--to"--
+
+"The next strike!" said Barker, leaping impetuously on another chair
+and beaming upon the old locators--"and may it come to those who have so
+long deserved it!"
+
+His sincere and generous enthusiasm seemed to break the spell of silence
+that had fallen upon them. Other toasts quickly followed. In the general
+good feeling Barker attached himself to Van Loo with his usual boyish
+effusion, and in a burst of confidence imparted the secret of his
+engagement to Kitty Carter. Van Loo listened with polite attention,
+formal congratulations, but inscrutable eyes, that occasionally wandered
+to Stacy and again to the treasure. A slight chill of disappointment
+came over Barker's quick sensitiveness. Perhaps his enthusiasm had bored
+this superior man of the world. Perhaps his confidences were in bad
+taste! With a new sense of his inexperience he turned sadly away. Van
+Loo took that opportunity to approach Stacy.
+
+"What's all this I hear of Barker being engaged to Miss Carter?" he
+said, with a faintly superior smile. "Is it really true?"
+
+"Yes. Why shouldn't it be?" returned Stacy bluntly.
+
+Van Loo was instantly deprecating and smiling. "Why not, of course? But
+isn't it sudden?"
+
+"They have known each other ever since he's been on Heavy Tree Hill,"
+responded Stacy.
+
+"Ah, yes! True," said Van Loo. "But now"--
+
+"Well--he's got money enough to marry, and he's going to marry."
+
+"Rather young, isn't he?" said Van Loo, still deprecatingly. "And
+she's got nothing. Used to wait on the table at her father's hotel in
+Boomville, didn't she?"
+
+"Yes. What of that? We all know it."
+
+"Of course. It's an excellent thing for her--and her father. He'll have
+a rich son-in-law. About two hundred thousand is his share, isn't it? I
+suppose old Carter is delighted?"
+
+Stacy had thought this before, but did not care to have it corroborated
+by this superfine young foreigner. "And I don't reckon that Barker is
+offended if he is," he said curtly as he turned away. Nevertheless, he
+felt irritated that one of the three superior partners of Heavy Tree
+Hill should be thought a dupe.
+
+Suddenly the conversation dropped, the laughter ceased. Every one turned
+round, and, by a common instinct, looked towards the door. From
+the obscurity of the hill slope below came a wonderful tenor voice,
+modulated by distance and spiritualized by the darkness:--
+
+     "When at some future day
+     I shall be far away,
+     Thou wilt be weeping,
+     Thy lone watch keeping."
+
+The men looked at one another. "That's Jack Hamlin," they said. "What's
+he doing here?"
+
+"The wolves are gathering around fresh meat," said Steptoe, with his
+coarse laugh and a glance at the treasure. "Didn't ye know he came over
+from Red Dog yesterday?"
+
+"Well, give Jack a fair show and his own game," said one of the old
+locators, "and he'd clean out that pile afore sunrise."
+
+"And lose it next day," added another.
+
+"But never turn a hair or change a muscle in either case," said a third.
+"Lord! I've heard him sing away just like that when he's been leaving
+the board with five thousand dollars in his pocket, or going away
+stripped of his last red cent."
+
+Van Loo, who had been listening with a peculiar smile, here said in his
+most deprecating manner, "Yes, but did you never consider the influence
+that such a man has on the hard-working tunnelmen, who are ready to
+gamble their whole week's earnings to him? Perhaps not. But I know the
+difficulties of getting the Ditch rates from these men when he has been
+in camp."
+
+He glanced around him with some importance, but only a laugh followed
+his speech. "Come, Frenchy," said an old locator, "you only say that
+because your little brother wanted to play with Jack like a grown
+man, and when Jack ordered him off the board and he became sassy, Jack
+scooted him outer the saloon."
+
+Van Loo's face reddened with an anger that had the apparent effect of
+removing every trace of his former polished repose, and leaving only a
+hard outline beneath. At which Demorest interfered:--
+
+"I can't say that I see much difference in gambling by putting money
+into a hole in the ground and expecting to take more from it than by
+putting it on a card for the same purpose."
+
+Here the ravishing tenor voice, which had been approaching, ceased, and
+was succeeded by a heart-breaking and equally melodious whistling to
+finish the bar of the singer's song. And the next moment Jack Hamlin
+appeared in the doorway.
+
+Whatever was his present financial condition, in perfect self-possession
+and charming sang-froid he fully bore out his previous description. He
+was as clean and refreshing looking as a madrono-tree in the dust-blown
+forest. An odor of scented soap and freshly ironed linen was wafted from
+him; there was scarcely a crease in his white waistcoat, nor a speck
+upon his varnished shoes. He might have been an auditor of the previous
+conversation, so quickly and completely did he seem to take in the
+whole situation at a glance. Perhaps there was an extra tilt to his
+black-ribboned Panama hat, and a certain dancing devilry in his brown
+eyes--which might also have been an answer to adverse criticism.
+
+"When I, his truth to prove, would trifle with my love," he warbled
+in general continuance from the doorway. Then dropping cheerfully into
+speech, he added, "Well, boys, I am here to welcome the little stranger,
+and to trust that the family are doing as well as can be expected. Ah!
+there it is! Bless it!" he went on, walking leisurely to the treasure.
+"Triplets, too!--and plump at that. Have you had 'em weighed?"
+
+Frankness was an essential quality of Heavy Tree Hill. "We were just
+saying, Jack," said an old locator, "that, giving you a fair show
+and your own game, you could manage to get away with that pile before
+daybreak."
+
+"And I'm just thinking," said Jack cheerfully, "that there were some of
+you here that could do that without any such useless preliminary." His
+brown eyes rested for a moment on Steptoe, but turning quite abruptly
+to Van Loo, he held out his hand. Startled and embarrassed before the
+others, the young man at last advanced his, when Jack coolly put his
+own, as if forgetfully, in his pocket. "I thought you might like to know
+what that little brother of yours is doing," he said to Van Loo, yet
+looking at Steptoe. "I found him wandering about the Hill here quite
+drunk."
+
+"I have repeatedly warned him"--began Van Loo, reddening.
+
+"Against bad company--I know," suggested Jack gayly; "yet in spite of
+all that, I think he owes some of his liquor to Steptoe yonder."
+
+"I never supposed the fool would get drunk over a glass of whiskey
+offered in fun," said Steptoe harshly, yet evidently quite as much
+disconcerted as angry.
+
+"The trouble with Steptoe," said Hamlin, thoughtfully spanning his slim
+waist with both hands as he looked down at his polished shoes, "is that
+he has such a soft-hearted liking for all weaknesses. Always wanting
+to protect chaps that can't look after themselves, whether it's Whiskey
+Dick there when he has a pull on, or some nigger when he's made a little
+strike, or that straying lamb of Van Loo's when he's puppy drunk. But
+you're wrong about me, boys. You can't draw me in any game to-night.
+This is one of my nights off, which I devote exclusively to
+contemplation and song. But," he added, suddenly turning to his three
+hosts with a bewildering and fascinating change of expression, "I
+couldn't resist coming up here to see you and your pile, even if I never
+saw the one or the other before, and am not likely to see either again.
+I believe in luck! And it comes a mighty sight oftener than a fellow
+thinks it does. But it doesn't come to stay. So I'd advise you to keep
+your eyes skinned, and hang on to it while it's with you, like grim
+death. So long!"
+
+Resisting all attempts of his hosts--who had apparently fallen as
+suddenly and unaccountably under the magic of his manner--to detain him
+longer, he stepped lightly away, his voice presently rising again in
+melody as he descended the hill. Nor was it at all remarkable that the
+others, apparently drawn by the same inevitable magnetism, were impelled
+to follow him, naturally joining their voices with his, leaving Steptoe
+and Van Loo so markedly behind them alone that they were compelled at
+last in sheer embarrassment to close up the rear of the procession. In
+another moment the cabin and the three partners again relapsed into the
+peace and quiet of the night. With the dying away of the last voices on
+the hillside the old solitude reasserted itself.
+
+But since the irruption of the strangers they had lost their former
+sluggish contemplation, and now busied themselves in preparation for
+their early departure from the cabin the next morning. They had arranged
+to spend the following day and night at Boomville and Carter's Hotel,
+where they were to give their farewell dinner to Heavy Tree Hill.
+They talked but little together: since the rebuff his enthusiastic
+confidences had received from Van Loo, Barker had been grave and
+thoughtful, and Stacy, with the irritating recollection of Van Loo's
+criticisms in his mind, had refrained from his usual rallying of Barker.
+Oddly enough, they spoke chiefly of Jack Hamlin,--till then personally
+a stranger to them, on account of his infelix reputation,--and even the
+critical Demorest expressed a wish they had known him before. "But you
+never know the real value of anything until you're quitting it or it's
+quitting you," he added sententiously.
+
+Barker and Stacy both stared at their companion. It was unlike Demorest
+to regret anything--particularly a mere social diversion.
+
+"They say," remarked Stacy, "that if you had known Jack Hamlin earlier
+and professionally, a great deal of real value would have quitted you
+before he did."
+
+"Don't repeat that rot flung out by men who have played Jack's game and
+lost," returned Demorest derisively. "I'd rather trust him than"--He
+stopped, glanced at the meditative Barker, and then concluded abruptly,
+"the whole caboodle of his critics."
+
+They were silent for a few moments, and then seemed to have fallen into
+their former dreamy mood as they relapsed into their old seats again.
+At last Stacy drew a long breath. "I wish we had sent those nuggets off
+with the others this morning."
+
+"Why?" said Demorest suddenly.
+
+"Why? Well, d--n it all! they kind of oppress me, don't you see. I seem
+to feel 'em here, on my chest--all the three," returned Stacy only half
+jocularly. "It's their d----d specific gravity, I suppose. I don't like
+the idea of sleeping in the same room with 'em. They're altogether too
+much for us three men to be left alone with."
+
+"You don't mean that you think that anybody would attempt"--said
+Demorest.
+
+Stacy curled a fighting lip rather superciliously. "No; I don't think
+THAT--I rather wish I did. It's the blessed chunks of solid gold that
+seem to have got US fast, don't you know, and are going to stick to us
+for good or ill. A sort of Frankenstein monster that we've picked out of
+a hole from below."
+
+"I know just what Stacy means," said Barker breathlessly, rounding
+his gray eyes. "I've felt it, too. Couldn't we make a sort of cache of
+it--bury it just outside the cabin for to-night? It would be sort of
+putting it back into its old place, you know, for the time being. IT
+might like it."
+
+The other two laughed. "Rather rough on Providence, Barker boy," said
+Stacy, "handing back the Heaven-sent gift so soon! Besides, what's to
+keep any prospector from coming along and making a strike of it? You
+know that's mining law--if you haven't preempted the spot as a claim."
+
+But Barker was too staggered by this material statement to make any
+reply, and Demorest arose. "And I feel that you'd both better be turning
+in, as we've got to get up early." He went to the corner of the cabin,
+and threw the blanket back over the pan and its treasure. "There
+that'll keep the chunks from getting up to ride astride of you like a
+nightmare." He shut the door and gave a momentary glance at its cheap
+hinges and the absence of bolt or bar. Stacy caught his eye. "We'll miss
+this security in San Francisco--perhaps even in Boomville," he sighed.
+
+It was scarcely ten o'clock, but Stacy and Barker had begun to undress
+themselves with intervals of yawning and desultory talk, Barker
+continuing an amusing story, with one stocking off and his trousers
+hanging on his arm, until at last both men were snugly curled up in
+their respective bunks. Presently Stacy's voice came from under the
+blankets:--
+
+"Hallo! aren't you going to turn in too?"
+
+"Not yet," said Demorest from his chair before the fire. "You see it's
+the last night in the old shanty, and I reckon I'll see the rest of it
+out."
+
+"That's so," said the impulsive Barker, struggling violently with his
+blankets. "I tell you what, boys: we just ought to make a watch-night of
+it--a regular vigil, you know--until twelve at least. Hold on! I'll get
+up, too!" But here Demorest arose, caught his youthful partner's bare
+foot which went searching painfully for the ground in one hand, tucked
+it back under the blankets, and heaping them on the top of him, patted
+the bulk with an authoritative, paternal air.
+
+"You'll just say your prayers and go to sleep, sonny. You'll want to be
+fresh as a daisy to appear before Miss Kitty to-morrow early, and you
+can keep your vigils for to-morrow night, after dinner, in the back
+drawing-room. I said 'Good-night,' and I mean it!"
+
+Protesting feebly, Barker finally yielded in a nestling shiver and a
+sudden silence. Demorest walked back to his chair. A prolonged snore
+came from Stacy's bunk; then everything was quiet. Demorest stirred up
+the fire, cast a huge root upon it, and, leaning back in his chair, sat
+with half-closed eyes and dreamed.
+
+It was an old dream that for the past three years had come to him
+daily, sometimes even overtaking him under the shade of a buckeye in his
+noontide rest on his claim,--a dream that had never yet failed to wait
+for him at night by the fireside when his partners were at rest; a dream
+of the past, but so real that it always made the present seem the dream
+through which he was moving towards some sure awakening.
+
+It was not strange that it should come to him to-night, as it had often
+come before, slowly shaping itself out of the obscurity as the vision of
+a fair young girl seated in one of the empty chairs before him. Always
+the same pretty, childlike face, fraught with a half-frightened,
+half-wondering trouble; always the same slender, graceful figure,
+but always glimmering in diamonds and satin, or spiritual in lace and
+pearls, against his own rude and sordid surroundings; always silent with
+parted lips, until the night wind smote some chord of recollection,
+and then mingled a remembered voice with his own. For at those times
+he seemed to speak also, albeit with closed lips, and an utterance
+inaudible to all but her.
+
+"Well?" he said sadly.
+
+"Well?" the voice repeated, like a gentle echo blending with his own.
+
+"You know it all now," he went on. "You know that it has come at
+last,--all that I had worked for, prayed for; all that would have made
+us happy here; all that would have saved you to me has come at last, and
+all too late!"
+
+"Too late!" echoed the voice with his.
+
+"You remember," he went on, "the last day we were together. You remember
+your friends and family would have you give me up--a penniless man. You
+remember when they reproached you with my poverty, and told you that it
+was only your wealth that I was seeking, that I then determined to
+go away and never to return to claim you until that reproach could be
+removed. You remember, dearest, how you clung to me and bade me stay
+with you, even fly with you, but not to leave you alone with them. You
+wore the same dress that day, darling; your eyes had the same wondering
+childlike fear and trouble in them; your jewels glittered on you as
+you trembled, and I refused. In my pride, or rather in my weakness and
+cowardice, I refused. I came away and broke my heart among these rocks
+and ledges, yet grew strong; and you, my love, YOU, sheltered and
+guarded by those you loved, YOU"--He stopped and buried his face in his
+hands. The night wind breathed down the chimney, and from the stirred
+ashes on the hearth came the soft whisper, "I died."
+
+"And then," he went on, "I cared for nothing. Sometimes my heart awoke
+for this young partner of mine in his innocent, trustful love for a girl
+that even in her humble station was far beyond his hopes, and I pitied
+myself in him. Home, fortune, friends, I no longer cared for--all were
+forgotten. And now they are returning to me--only that I may see the
+hollowness and vanity of them, and taste the bitterness for which I
+have sacrificed you. And here, on this last night of my exile, I
+am confronted with only the jealousy, the doubt, the meanness and
+selfishness that is to come. Too late! Too late!"
+
+The wondering, troubled eyes that had looked into his here appeared to
+clear and brighten with a sweet prescience. Was it the wind moaning in
+the chimney that seemed to whisper to him: "Too late, beloved, for ME,
+but not for you. I died, but Love still lives. Be happy, Philip. And in
+your happiness I too may live again"?
+
+He started. In the flickering firelight the chair was empty. The wind
+that had swept down the chimney had stirred the ashes with a sound like
+the passage of a rustling skirt. There was a chill in the air and a
+smell like that of opened earth. A nervous shiver passed over him. Then
+he sat upright. There was no mistake; it was no superstitious fancy,
+but a faint, damp current of air was actually flowing across his feet
+towards the fireplace. He was about to rise when he stopped suddenly and
+became motionless.
+
+He was actively conscious now of a strange sound which had affected him
+even in the preoccupation of his vision. It was a gentle brushing of
+some yielding substance like that made by a soft broom on sand, or the
+sweep of a gown. But to his mountain ears, attuned to every woodland
+sound, it was not like the gnawing of gopher or squirrel, the scratching
+of wildcat, nor the hairy rubbing of bear. Nor was it human; the long,
+deep respirations of his sleeping companions were distinct from that
+monotonous sound. He could not even tell if it were IN the cabin or
+without. Suddenly his eye fell upon the pile in the corner. The blanket
+that covered the treasure was actually moving!
+
+He rose quickly, but silently, alert, self-contained, and menacing. For
+this dreamer, this bereaved man, this scornful philosopher of riches had
+disappeared with that midnight trespass upon the sacred treasure. The
+movement of the blanket ceased; the soft, swishing sound recommenced. He
+drew a glittering bowie-knife from his boot-leg, and in three noiseless
+strides was beside the pile. There he saw what he fully expected to
+see,--a narrow, horizontal gap between the log walls of the cabin and
+the adobe floor, slowly widening and deepening by the burrowing of
+unseen hands from without. The cold outer air which he had felt before
+was now plainly flowing into the heated cabin through the opening. The
+swishing sound recommenced, and stopped. Then the four fingers of a
+hand, palm downwards, were cautiously introduced between the bottom
+log and the denuded floor. Upon that intruding hand the bowie-knife of
+Demorest descended like a flash of lightning. There was no outcry.
+Even in that supreme moment Demorest felt a pang of admiration for
+the stoicism of the unseen trespasser. But the maimed hand was quickly
+withdrawn, and as quickly Demorest rushed to the door and dashed into
+the outer darkness.
+
+For an instant he was dazed and bewildered by the sudden change. But the
+next moment he saw a dodging, doubling figure running before him, and
+threw himself upon it. In the shock both men fell, but even in that
+contact Demorest felt the tangled beard and alcoholic fumes of Whiskey
+Dick, and felt also that the hands which were thrown up against his
+breast, the palms turned outward with the instinctive movement of a
+timid, defenseless man, were unstained with soil or blood. With an oath
+he threw the drunkard from him and dashed to the rear of the cabin.
+But too late! There, indeed, was the scattered earth, there the widened
+burrow as it had been excavated apparently by that mutilated hand--but
+nothing else!
+
+He turned back to Whiskey Dick. But the miserable man, although still
+retaining a look of dazed terror in his eyes, had recovered his feet
+in a kind of angry confidence and a forced sense of injury. What did
+Demorest mean by attacking "innoshent" gentlemen on the trail outside
+his cabin? Yes! OUTSIDE his cabin, he would swear it!
+
+"What were you doing here at midnight?" demanded Demorest.
+
+What was he doing? What was any gentleman doing? He wasn't any
+molly-coddle to go to bed at ten o'clock! What was he doing? Well--he'd
+been with men who didn't shut their doors and turn the boys out just
+in the shank of the evening. He wasn't any Barker to be wet-nursed by
+Demorest.
+
+"Some one else was here!" said Demorest sternly, with his eyes fixed on
+Whiskey Dick. The dull glaze which seemed to veil the outer world from
+the drunkard's pupils shifted suddenly with such a look of direct horror
+that Demorest was fain to turn away his own. But the veil mercifully
+returned, and with it Dick's worked-up sense of injury. Nobody was
+there--not "a shole." Did Demorest think if there had been any of
+his friends there they would have stood by like "dogsh" and seen him
+insulted?
+
+Demorest turned away and re-entered the cabin as Dick lurched heavily
+forward, still muttering, down the trail. The excitement over, a
+sickening repugnance to the whole incident took the place of Demorest's
+resentment and indignation. There had been a cowardly attempt to rob
+them of their miserable treasure. He had met it and frustrated it in
+almost as brutal a fashion: the gold was already tarnished with blood.
+To his surprise, yet relief, he found his partners unconscious of the
+outrage, still sleeping with the physical immobility of over-excited
+and tired men. Should he awaken them? No! He should have to awaken
+also their suspicions and desire for revenge. There was no danger of
+a further attack; there was no fear that the culprit would disclose
+himself, and to-morrow they would be far away. Let oblivion rest upon
+that night's stain on the honor of Heavy Tree Hill.
+
+He rolled a small barrel before the opening, smoothed the dislodged
+earth, replaced the pan with its treasure, and trusted that in the
+bustle of the early morning departure his partners might not notice any
+change. Stopping before the bunk of Stacy he glanced at the sleeping
+man. He was lying on his back, but breathing heavily, and his hands were
+moving towards his chest as if, indeed, his strange fancy of the golden
+incubus were being realized. Demorest would have wakened him, but
+presently, with a sigh of relief, the sleeper turned over on his side.
+It was pleasanter to look at Barker, whose damp curls were matted over
+his smooth, boyish forehead, and whose lips were parted in a smile under
+the silken wings of his brown mustache. He, too, seemed to be trying to
+speak, and remembering some previous revelations which had amused them,
+Demorest leaned over him fraternally with an answering smile, waiting
+for the beloved one's name to pass the young man's lips. But he only
+murmured, "Three--hundred--thousand dollars!" The elder man turned away
+with a grave face. The influence of the treasure was paramount.
+
+When he had placed one of the chairs against the unprotected door at
+an angle which would prevent any easy or noiseless intrusion, Demorest
+threw himself on his bunk without undressing, and turned his face
+towards the single window of the cabin that looked towards the east. He
+did not apprehend another covert attempt against the gold. He did not
+fear a robbery with force and arms, although he was satisfied that there
+was more than one concerned in it, but this he attributed only to the
+encumbering weight of their expected booty. He simply waited for the
+dawn. It was some time before his eyes were greeted with the vague
+opaline brightness of the firmament which meant the vanishing of the
+pallid snow-line before the coming day. A bird twittered on the roof.
+The air was chill; he drew his blanket around him. Then he closed his
+eyes, he fancied only for a moment, but when he opened them the door
+was standing open in the strong daylight. He sprang to his feet, but
+the next moment he saw it was only Stacy who had passed out, and was
+returning fully dressed, bringing water from the spring to fill the
+kettle. But Stacy's face was so grave that, recalling his disturbed
+sleep, Demorest laughingly inquired if he had been haunted by the
+treasure. But to his surprise Stacy put down the kettle, and, with a
+hurried glance at the still sleeping Barker, said in a low voice:--
+
+"I want you to do something for me without asking why. Later I will tell
+you."
+
+Demorest looked at him fixedly. "What is it?" he said.
+
+"The pack-mules will be here in a few moments. Don't wait to close up or
+put away anything here, but clap that gold in the saddle-bags, and take
+Barker with you and 'lite' out for Boomville AT ONCE. I will overtake
+you later."
+
+"Is there no time to discuss this?" asked Demorest.
+
+"No," said Stacy bluntly. "Call me a crank, say I'm in a blue funk"--his
+compressed lips and sharp black eyes did not lend themselves much to
+that hypothesis--"only get out of this with that stuff, and take Barker
+with you! I'm not responsible for myself while it's here."
+
+Demorest knew Stacy to be combative, but practical. If he had not been
+assured of his partner's last night slumbers he might have thought he
+knew of the attempt. Or if he had discovered the turned-up ground in
+the rear of the cabin his curiosity would have demanded an explanation.
+Demorest paused only for a moment, and said, "Very well, I will go."
+
+"Good! I'll rouse out Barker, but not a word to him--except that he must
+go."
+
+The rousing out of Barker consisted of Stacy's lifting that young
+gentleman bodily from his bunk and standing him upright in the open
+doorway. But Barker was accustomed to this Spartan process, and after a
+moment's balancing with closed lids like an unwrapped mummy, he sat
+down in the doorway and began to dress. He at first demurred to their
+departure except all together--it was so unfraternal; but eventually
+he allowed himself to be persuaded out of it and into his clothes. For
+Barker had also had HIS visions in the night, one of which was that they
+should build a beautiful villa on the site of the old cabin and solemnly
+agree to come every year and pass a week in it together. "I thought at
+first," he said, sliding along the floor in search of different articles
+of his dress, or stopping gravely to catch them as they were thrown to
+him by his partners, "that we'd have it at Boomville, as being handier
+to get there; but I've concluded we'd better have it here, a little
+higher up the hill, where it could be seen over the whole Black Spur
+Range. When we weren't here we could use it as a Hut of Refuge for
+broken-down or washed-out miners or weary travelers, like those hospices
+in the Alps, you know, and have somebody to keep it for us. You see I've
+thought even of THAT, and Van Loo is the very man to take charge of it
+for us. You see he's got such good manners and speaks two languages.
+Lord! if a German or Frenchman came along, poor and distressed, Van Loo
+would just chip in his own language. See? You've got to think of all
+these details, you see, boys. And we might call it 'The Rest of the
+Three Partners,' or 'Three Partners' Rest.'"
+
+"And you might begin by giving us one," said Stacy. "Dry up and drink
+your coffee."
+
+"I'll draw out the plans. I've got it all in my head," continued the
+enthusiastic Barker, unheeding the interruption. "I'll just run out and
+take a look at the site, it's only right back of the cabin." But here
+Stacy caught him by his dangling belt as he was flying out of the door
+with one boot on, and thrust him down in a chair with a tin cup of
+coffee in his hand.
+
+"Keep the plans in your head, Barker boy," said Demorest, "for here
+are the pack mules and packer." This was quite enough to divert the
+impressionable young man, who speedily finished his dressing, as a mule
+bearing a large pack-saddle and two enormous saddle-bags or pouches
+drove up before the door, led by a muleteer on a small horse. The
+transfer of the treasure to the saddle-bags was quickly made by their
+united efforts, as the first rays of the sun were beginning to paint
+the hillside. Shading his keen eyes with his hand, Stacy stood in the
+doorway and handed Demorest the two rifles. Demorest hesitated. "Hadn't
+YOU better keep one?" he said, looking in his partner's eyes with his
+first challenge of curiosity. The sun seemed to put a humorous twinkle
+into Stacy's glance as he returned, "Not much! And you'd better take
+my revolver with you, too. I'm feeling a little better now," he said,
+looking at the saddlebags, "but I'm not fit to be trusted yet with
+carnal weapons. When the other mule comes and is packed I'll overtake
+you on the horse."
+
+A little more satisfied, although still wondering and perplexed,
+Demorest shouldered one rifle, and with Barker, who was carrying the
+other, followed the muleteer and his equipage down the trail. For a
+while he was a little ashamed of his part in this unusual spectacle of
+two armed men convoying a laden mule in broad daylight, but, luckily,
+it was too early for the Bar miners to be going to work, and as the
+tunnelmen were now at breakfast the trail was free of wayfarers. At the
+point where it crossed the main road Demorest, however, saw Steptoe
+and Whiskey Dick emerge from the thicket, apparently in earnest
+conversation. Demorest felt his repugnance and half-restrained
+suspicions suddenly return. Yet he did not wish to betray them before
+Barker, nor was he willing, in case of an emergency, to allow the young
+man to be entirely unprepared. Calling him to follow, he ran quickly
+ahead of the laden mule, and was relieved to find that, looking
+back, his companion had brought his rifle to a "ready," through some
+instinctive feeling of defense. As Steptoe and Whiskey Dick, a moment
+later discovering them, were evidently surprised, there seemed, however,
+to be no reason for fearing an outbreak. Suddenly, at a whisper from
+Steptoe, he and Whiskey Dick both threw up their hands, and stood
+still on the trail a few yards from them in a burlesque of the usual
+recognized attitude of helplessness, while a hoarse laugh broke from
+Steptoe.
+
+"D----d if we didn't think you were road-agents! But we see you're only
+guarding your treasure. Rather fancy style for Heavy Tree Hill, ain't
+it? Things must be gettin' rough up thar to hev to take out your guns
+like that!"
+
+Demorest had looked keenly at the four hands thus exhibited, and was
+more concerned that they bore no trace of wounds or mutilation than at
+the insult of the speech, particularly as he had a distinct impression
+that the action was intended to show him the futility of his suspicions.
+
+"I am glad to see that if you haven't any arms in your hands you're not
+incapable of handling them," said Demorest coolly, as he passed by them
+and again fell into the rear of the muleteer.
+
+But Barker had thought the incident very funny, and laughed effusively
+at Whiskey Dick. "I didn't know that Steptoe was up to that kind of
+fun," he said, "and I suppose we DID look rather rough with these guns
+as we ran on ahead of the mule. But then you know that when you called
+to me I really thought you were in for a shindy. All the same, Whiskey
+Dick did that 'hands up' to perfection: how he managed it I don't know,
+but his knees seemed to knock together as if he was in a real funk."
+
+Demorest had thought so too, but he made no reply. How far that
+miserable drunkard was a forced or willing accomplice of the events
+of last night was part of a question that had become more and more
+repugnant to him as he was leaving the scene of it forever. It had
+come upon him, desecrating the dream he had dreamt that last night and
+turning its hopeful climax to bitterness. Small wonder that Barker,
+walking by his side, had his quick sympathies aroused, and as he saw
+that shadow, which they were all familiar with, but had never sought to
+penetrate, fall upon his companion's handsome face, even his youthful
+spirits yielded to it. They were both relieved when the clatter of
+hoofs behind them, as they reached the valley, announced the approach of
+Stacy. "I started with the second mule and the last load soon after you
+left," he explained, "and have just passed them. I thought it better
+to join you and let the other load follow. Nobody will interfere with
+THAT."
+
+"Then you are satisfied?" said Demorest, regarding him steadfastly.
+
+"You bet! Look!"
+
+He turned in his saddle and pointed to the crest of the hill they had
+just descended. Above the pines circling the lower slope above the bare
+ledges of rock and outcrop, a column of thick black smoke was rising
+straight as a spire in the windless air.
+
+"That's the old shanty passing away," said Stacy complacently. "I reckon
+there won't be much left of it before we get to Boomville."
+
+Demorest and Barker stared. "You fired it?" said Barker, trembling with
+excitement.
+
+"Yes," said Stacy. "I couldn't bear to leave the old rookery for coyotes
+and wild-cats to gather in, so I touched her off before I left."
+
+"But"--said Barker.
+
+"But," repeated Stacy composedly. "Hallo! what's the matter with that
+new plan of 'The Rest' that you're going to build, eh? You don't want
+them BOTH."
+
+"And you did this rather than leave the dear old cabin to strangers?"
+said Barker, with kindling eyes. "Stacy, I didn't think you had that
+poetry in you!"
+
+"There's heaps in me, Barker boy, that you don't know, and I don't
+exactly sabe myself."
+
+"Only," continued the young fellow eagerly, "we ought to have ALL been
+there! We ought to have made a solemn rite of it, you know,--a kind of
+sacrifice. We ought to have poured a kind of libation on the ground!"
+
+"I did sprinkle a little kerosene over it, I think," returned Stacy,
+"just to help things along. But if you want to see her flaming, Barker,
+you just run back to that last corner on the road beyond the big red
+wood. That's the spot for a view."
+
+As Barker--always devoted to a spectacle--swiftly disappeared the two
+men faced each other. "Well, what does it all mean?" said Demorest
+gravely.
+
+"It means, old man," said Stacy suddenly, "that if we hadn't had nigger
+luck, the same blind luck that sent us that strike, you and I and that
+Barker over there would have been swirling in that smoke up to the
+sky about two hours ago!" He stopped and added in a lower, but earnest
+voice, "Look here, Phil! When I went out to fetch water this morning I
+smelt something queer. I went round to the back of the cabin and found
+a hole dug under the floor, and piled against the corner wall a lot of
+brush-wood and a can of kerosene. Some of the kerosene had been already
+poured on the brush. Everything was ready to light, and only my coming
+out an hour earlier had frightened the devils away. The idea was to set
+the place on fire, suffocate us in the smoke of the kerosene poured into
+the hole, and then to rush in and grab the treasure. It was a systematic
+plan!"
+
+"No!" said Demorest quietly.
+
+"No?" repeated Stacy. "I told you I saw the whole thing and took away
+the kerosene, which I hid, and after you had gone used it to fire the
+cabin with, to see if the ones I suspected would gather to watch their
+work."
+
+"It was no part of their FIRST plan"' said Demorest, "which was only
+robbery. Listen!" He hurriedly recounted his experience of the preceding
+night to the astonished Stacy. "No, the fire was an afterthought and
+revenge," he added sternly.
+
+"But you say you cut the robber in the hand; there would be no
+difficulty in identifying him by that."
+
+"I wounded only a HAND," said Demorest. "But there was a HEAD in that
+attempt that I never saw." He then revealed his own half-suspicions, but
+how they were apparently refuted by the bravado of Steptoe and Whiskey
+Dick.
+
+"Then that was the reason THEY didn't gather at the fire," said Stacy
+quickly.
+
+"Ah!" said Demorest, "then YOU too suspected them?"
+
+Stacy hesitated, and then said abruptly, "Yes."
+
+Demorest was silent for a moment.
+
+"Why didn't you tell me this this morning?" he said gently.
+
+Stacy pointed to the distant Barker. "I didn't want you to tell him. I
+thought it better for one partner to keep a secret from two than for the
+two to keep it from one. Why didn't you tell me of your experience last
+night?"
+
+"I am afraid it was for the same reason," said Demorest, with a faint
+smile. "And it sometimes seems to me, Jim, that we ought to imitate
+Barker's frankness. In our dread of tainting him with our own knowledge
+of evil we are sending him out into the world very poorly equipped, for
+all his three hundred thousand dollars."
+
+"I reckon you're right," said Stacy briefly, extending his hand. "Shake
+on that!"
+
+The two men grasped each other's hands.
+
+"And he's no fool, either," continued Demorest. "When we met Steptoe on
+the road, without a word from me, he closed up alongside, with his hand
+on the lock of his rifle. And I hadn't the heart to praise him or laugh
+it off."
+
+Nevertheless they were both silent as the object of their criticism
+bounded down the trail towards them. He had seen the funeral pyre. It
+was awfully sad, it was awfully lovely, but there was something grand
+in it! Who could have thought Stacy could be so poetic? But he wanted to
+tell them something else that was mighty pretty.
+
+"What was it?" said Demorest.
+
+"Well," said Barker, "don't laugh! But you know that Jack Hamlin? Well,
+boys, he's been hovering around us on his mustang, keeping us and that
+pack-mule in sight ever since we left. Sometimes he's on a side trail
+off to the right, sometimes off to the left, but always at the same
+distance. I didn't like to tell you, boys, for I thought you'd laugh
+at me; but I think, you know, he's taken a sort of shine to us since he
+dropped in last night. And I fancy, you see, he's sort of hanging round
+to see that we get along all right. I'd have pointed him out before
+only I reckoned you and Stacy would say he was making up to us for our
+money."
+
+"And we'd have been wrong, Barker boy," said Stacy, with a heartiness
+that surprised Demorest, "for I reckon your instinct's the right one."
+
+"There he is now," said the gratified Barker, "just abreast of us on the
+cut-off. He started just after we did, and he's got a horse that could
+have brought him into Boomville hours ago. It's just his kindness."
+
+He pointed to a distant fringe of buckeye from which Jack Hamlin had
+just emerged. Although evidently holding in a powerful mustang, nothing
+could be more unconscious and utterly indifferent than his attitude. He
+did not seem to know of the proximity of any other traveler, and to care
+less. His handsome head was slightly thrown back, as if he was caroling
+after his usual fashion, but the distance was too great to make his
+melody audible to them, or to allow Barker's shout of invitation to
+reach him. Suddenly he lowered his tightened rein, the mustang sprang
+forward, and with a flash of silver spurs and bridle fripperies he had
+disappeared. But as the trail he was pursuing crossed theirs a mile
+beyond, it seemed quite possible that they should again meet him.
+
+They were now fairly into the Boomville valley, and were entering a
+narrow arroyo bordered with dusky willows which effectually excluded the
+view on either side. It was the bed of a mountain torrent that in winter
+descended the hillside over the trail by which they had just come, but
+was now sunk into the thirsty plain between banks that varied from
+two to five feet in height. The muleteer had advanced into the narrow
+channel when he suddenly cast a hurried glance behind him, uttered a
+"Madre de Dios!" and backed his mule and his precious freight against
+the bank. The sound of hoofs on the trail in their rear had caught his
+quicker ear, and as the three partners turned they beheld three horsemen
+thundering down the hill towards them. They were apparently Mexican
+vaqueros of the usual common swarthy type, their faces made still darker
+by the black silk handkerchief tied round their heads under their stiff
+sombreros. Either they were unable or unwilling to restrain their horses
+in their headlong speed, and a collision in that narrow passage was
+imminent, but suddenly, before reaching its entrance, they diverged
+with a volley of oaths, and dashing along the left bank of the arroyo,
+disappeared in the intervening willows. Divided between relief at their
+escape and indignation at what seemed to be a drunken, feast-day freak
+of these roystering vaqueros, the little party re-formed, when a cry
+from Barker arrested them. He had just perceived a horseman motionless
+in the arroyo who, although unnoticed by them, had evidently been seen
+by the Mexicans. He had apparently leaped into it from the bank, and had
+halted as if to witness this singular incident. As the clatter of
+the vaqueros' hoofs died away he lightly leaped the bank again and
+disappeared. But in that single glimpse of him they recognized Jack
+Hamlin. When they reached the spot where he had halted, they could see
+that he must have approached it from the trail where they had previously
+seen him, but which they now found crossed it at right angles. Barker
+was right. He had really kept them at easy distance the whole length of
+the journey.
+
+But they were now reaching its end. When they issued at last from
+the arroyo they came upon the outskirts of Boomville and the great
+stage-road. Indeed, the six horses of the Pioneer coach were just
+panting along the last half mile of the steep upgrade as they
+approached. They halted mechanically as the heavy vehicle swayed
+and creaked by them. In their ordinary working dress, sunburnt with
+exposure, covered with dust, and carrying their rifles still in their
+hands, they, perhaps, presented a sufficiently characteristic appearance
+to draw a few faces--some of them pretty and intelligent--to the windows
+of the coach as it passed. The sensitive Barker was quickest to feel
+that resentment with which the Pioneer usually met the wide-eyed
+criticism of the Eastern tourist or "greenhorn," and reddened under the
+bold scrutiny of a pair of black inquisitive eyes behind an eyeglass.
+That annoyance was communicated, though in a lesser degree, even to the
+bearded Demorest and Stacy. It was an unexpected contact with that great
+world in which they were so soon to enter. They felt ashamed of
+their appearance, and yet ashamed of that feeling. They felt a secret
+satisfaction when Barker said, "They'd open their eyes wider if they
+knew what was in that pack-saddle," and yet they corrected him for what
+they were pleased to call his "snobbishness." They hurried a little
+faster as the road became more frequented, as if eager to shorten their
+distance to clean clothes and civilization.
+
+Only Demorest began to linger in the rear. This contact with the
+stagecoach had again brought him face to face with his buried past. He
+felt his old dream revive, and occasionally turned to look back upon
+the dark outlines of Black Spur, under whose shadow it had returned so
+often, and wondered if he had left it there forever, and it were now
+slowly exhaling with the thinned and dying smoke of their burning cabin.
+
+His companions, knowing his silent moods, had preceded him at some
+distance, when he heard the soft sound of ambling hoofs on the thick
+dust, and suddenly the light touch of Jack Hamlin's gauntlet on his
+shoulder. The mustang Jack bestrode was reeking with grime and sweat,
+but Jack himself was as immaculate and fresh as ever. With a delightful
+affectation of embarrassment and timidity he began flicking the side
+buttons of his velvet vaquero trousers with the thong of his riata.
+"I reckoned to sling a word along with you before you went," he said,
+looking down, "but I'm so shy that I couldn't do it in company. So I
+thought I'd get it off on you while you were alone."
+
+"We've seen you once or twice before, this morning," said Demorest
+pleasantly, "and we were sorry you didn't join us."
+
+"I reckon I might have," said Jack gayly, "if my horse had only made up
+his mind whether he was a bird or a squirrel, and hadn't been so various
+and promiscuous about whether he wanted to climb a tree or fly. He's
+not a bad horse for a Mexican plug, only when he thinks there is
+any devilment around he wants to wade in and take a hand. However, I
+reckoned to see the last of you and your pile into Boomville. And I DID.
+When I meet three fellows like you that are clean white all through I
+sort of cotton to 'em, even if I'M a little of a brunette myself. And
+I've got something to give you."
+
+He took from a fold of his scarlet sash a small parcel neatly folded in
+white paper as fresh and spotless as himself. Holding it in his fingers,
+he went on: "I happened to be at Heavy Tree Hill early this morning
+before sun-up. In the darkness I struck your cabin, and I reckon--I
+struck somebody else! At first I thought it was one of you chaps down on
+your knees praying at the rear of the cabin, but the way the fellow lit
+out when he smelt me coming made me think it wasn't entirely fasting and
+prayer. However, I went to the rear of the cabin, and then I reckoned
+some kind friend had been bringing you kindlings and firewood for your
+early breakfast. But that didn't satisfy me, so I knelt down as he had
+knelt, and then I saw--well, Mr. Demorest, I reckon I saw JUST WHAT YOU
+HAVE SEEN! But even then I wasn't quite satisfied, for that man had been
+grubbing round as if searching for something. So I searched too--and I
+found IT. I've got it here. I'm going to give it to you, for it may some
+day come in handy, and you won't find anything like it among the folks
+where you're going. It's something unique, as those fine-art-collecting
+sharps in 'Frisco say--something quite matchless, unless you try to
+match it one day yourself! Don't open the paper until I run on and say
+'So long' to your partners. Good-by."
+
+He grasped Demorest's hand and then dropped the little packet into his
+palm, and ambled away towards Stacy and Barker. Holding the packet in
+his hand with an amused yet puzzled smile, Demorest watched the gambler
+give Stacy's hand a hearty farewell shake and a supplementary slap on
+the back to the delighted Barker, and then vanish in a flash of red
+sash and silver buttons. At which Demorest, walking slowly towards his
+partners, opened the packet, and stood suddenly still. It contained the
+dried and bloodless second finger of a human hand cut off at the first
+joint!
+
+For an instant he held it at arm's length, as if about to cast it away.
+Then he grimly replaced it in the paper, put it carefully in his pocket,
+and silently walked after his companions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+A strong southwester was beating against the windows and doors of
+Stacy's Bank in San Francisco, and spreading a film of rain between the
+regular splendors of its mahogany counters and sprucely dressed clerks
+and the usual passing pedestrian. For Stacy's new banking-house had
+long since received the epithet of "palatial" from an enthusiastic
+local press fresh from the "opening" luncheon in its richly decorated
+directors' rooms, and it was said that once a homely would-be depositor
+from One Horse Gulch was so cowed by its magnificence that his heart
+failed him at the last moment, and mumbling an apology to the elegant
+receiving teller, fled with his greasy chamois pouch of gold-dust to
+deposit his treasure in the dingy Mint around the corner. Perhaps there
+was something of this feeling, mingled with a certain simple-minded
+fascination, in the hesitation of a stranger of a higher class who
+entered the bank that rainy morning and finally tendered his card to the
+important negro messenger.
+
+The card preceded him through noiselessly swinging doors and across
+heavily carpeted passages until it reached the inner core of Mr. James
+Stacy's private offices, and was respectfully laid before him. He was
+not alone. At his side, in an attitude of polite and studied expectancy,
+stood a correct-looking young man, for whom Mr. Stacy was evidently
+writing a memorandum. The stranger glanced furtively at the card with a
+curiosity hardly in keeping with his suggested good breeding; but Stacy
+did not look at it until he had finished his memorandum.
+
+"There," he said, with business decision, "you can tell your people that
+if we carry their new debentures over our limit we will expect a larger
+margin. Ditches are not what they were three years ago when miners were
+willing to waste their money over your rates. They don't gamble THAT WAY
+any more, and your company ought to know it, and not gamble themselves
+over that prospect." He handed the paper to the stranger, who bowed over
+it with studied politeness, and backed towards the door. Stacy took up
+the waiting card, read it, said to the messenger, "Show him in," and
+in the same breath turned to his guest: "I say, Van Loo, it's George
+Barker! You know him."
+
+"Yes," said Van Loo, with a polite hesitation as he halted at the door.
+"He was--I think--er--in your employ at Heavy Tree Hill."
+
+"Nonsense! He was my partner. And you must have known him since at
+Boomville. Come! He got forty shares of Ditch stock--through you--at
+110, which were worth about 80! SOMEBODY must have made money enough by
+it to remember him."
+
+"I was only speaking of him socially," said Van Loo, with a deprecating
+smile. "You know he married a young woman--the hotel-keeper's daughter,
+who used to wait at the table--and after my mother and sister came out
+to keep house for me at Boomville it was quite impossible for me to see
+much of him, for he seldom went out without his wife, you know."
+
+"Yes," said Stacy dryly, "I think you didn't like his marriage. But I'm
+glad your disinclination to see him isn't on account of that deal in
+stocks."
+
+"Oh no," said Van Loo. "Good-by."
+
+But, unfortunately, in the next passage he came upon Barker, who with a
+cry of unfeigned pleasure, none the less sincere that he was feeling a
+little alien in these impressive surroundings, recognized him. Nothing
+could exceed Van Loo's protest of delight at the meeting; nothing
+his equal desolation at the fact that he was hastening to another
+engagement. "But your old partner," he added, with a smile, "is waiting
+for you; he has just received your card, and I should be only keeping
+you from him. So glad to see you; you're looking so well. Good-by!
+Good-by!"
+
+Reassured, Barker no longer hesitated, but dashed with his old
+impetuousness into his former partner's room. Stacy, already deeply
+absorbed in other business, was sitting with his back towards him, and
+Barker's arms were actually encircling his neck before the astonished
+and half-angry man looked up. But when his eyes met the laughing gray
+ones of Barker above him he gently disengaged himself with a quick
+return of the caress, rose, shut the door of an inner office, and
+returning pushed Barker into an armchair in quite the old suppressive
+fashion of former days. Yes; it was the same Stacy that Barker looked
+at, albeit his brown beard was now closely cropped around his determined
+mouth and jaw in a kind of grave decorum, and his energetic limbs
+already attuned to the rigor of clothes of fashionable cut and still
+more rigorous sombreness of color.
+
+"Barker boy," he began, with the familiar twinkle in his keen eyes which
+the younger partner remembered, "I don't encourage stag dancing among my
+young men during bank hours, and you'll please to remember that we are
+not on Heavy Tree Hill"--
+
+"Where," broke in Barker enthusiastically, "we were only overlooked by
+the Black Spur Range and the Sierran snow-line; where the nearest voice
+that came to you was quarter of a mile away as the crow flies and nearly
+a mile by the trail."
+
+"And was generally an oath!" said Stacy. "But you're in San Francisco
+NOW. Where are you stopping?" He took up a pencil and held it over a
+memorandum pad awaitingly.
+
+"At the Brook House. It's"--
+
+"Hold on! 'Brook House,'" Stacy repeated as he jotted it down. "And for
+how long?"
+
+"Oh, a day or two. You see, Kitty"--
+
+Stacy checked him with a movement of his pencil in the air, and then
+wrote down, "'Day or two.' Wife with you?"
+
+"Yes; and oh, Stacy, our boy! Ah!" he went on, with a laugh, knocking
+aside the remonstrating pencil, "you must listen! He's just the
+sweetest, knowingest little chap living. Do you know what we're going to
+christen him? Well, he'll be Stacy Demorest Barker. Good names, aren't
+they? And then it perpetuates the dear old friendship."
+
+Stacy picked up the pencil again, wrote "Wife and child S. D. B.," and
+leaned back in his chair. "Now, Barker," he said briefly, "I'm coming
+to dine with you tonight at 7.30 sharp. THEN we'll talk Heavy Tree Hill,
+wife, baby, and S. D. B. But here I'm all for business. Have you any
+with me?"
+
+Barker, who was easily amused, had extracted a certain entertainment out
+of Stacy's memorandum, but he straightened himself with a look of eager
+confidence and said, "Certainly; that's just what it is--business. Lord!
+Stacy, I'm ALL business now. I'm in everything. And I bank with you,
+though perhaps you don't know it; it's in your Branch at Marysville. I
+didn't want to say anything about it to you before. But Lord! you
+don't suppose that I'd bank anywhere else while you are in the
+business--checks, dividends, and all that; but in this matter I felt you
+knew, old chap. I didn't want to talk to a banker nor to a bank, but to
+Jim Stacy, my old partner."
+
+"Barker," said Stacy curtly, "how much money are you short of?"
+
+At this direct question Barker's always quick color rose, but, with an
+equally quick smile, he said, "I don't know yet that I'm short at all."
+
+"But I do!"
+
+"Look here, Jim: why, I'm just overloaded with shares and stocks," said
+Barker, smiling.
+
+"Not one of which you could realize on without sacrifice. Barker, three
+years ago you had three hundred thousand dollars put to your account at
+San Francisco."
+
+"Yes," said Barker, with a quiet reminiscent laugh. "I remember I wanted
+to draw it out in one check to see how it would look."
+
+"And you've drawn out all in three years, and it looks d----d bad."
+
+"How did you know it?" asked Barker, his face beaming only with
+admiration of his companion's omniscience.
+
+"How did I know it?" retorted Stacy. "I know YOU, and I know the kind of
+people who have unloaded to you."
+
+"Come, Stacy," said Barker, "I've only invested in shares and stocks
+like everybody else, and then only on the best advice I could get:
+like Van Loo's, for instance,--that man who was here just now, the
+new manager of the Empire Ditch Company; and Carter's, my own Kitty's
+father. And when I was offered fifty thousand Wide West Extensions,
+and was hesitating over it, he told me YOU were in it too--and that was
+enough for me to buy it."
+
+"Yes, but we didn't go into it at his figures."
+
+"No," said Barker, with an eager smile, "but you SOLD at his figures,
+for I knew that when I found that YOU, my old partner, was in it; don't
+you see, I preferred to buy it through your bank, and did at 110. Of
+course, you wouldn't have sold it at that figure if it wasn't worth it
+then, and neither I nor you are to blame if it dropped the next week to
+60, don't you see?"
+
+Stacy's eyes hardened for a moment as he looked keenly into his former
+partner's bright gray ones, but there was no trace of irony in Barker's.
+On the contrary, a slight shade of sadness came over them. "No," he said
+reflectively, "I don't think I've ever been foolish or followed out my
+OWN ideas, except once, and that was extravagant, I admit. That was
+my idea of building a kind of refuge, you know, on the site of our old
+cabin, where poor miners and played-out prospectors waiting for a strike
+could stay without paying anything. Well, I sunk twenty thousand
+dollars in that, and might have lost more, only Carter--Kitty's
+father--persuaded me--he's an awful clever old fellow--into turning it
+into a kind of branch hotel of Boomville, while using it as a hotel to
+take poor chaps who couldn't pay, at half prices, or quarter prices,
+PRIVATELY, don't you see, so as to spare their pride,--awfully pretty,
+wasn't it?--and make the hotel profit by it."
+
+"Well?" said Stacy as Barker paused.
+
+"They didn't come," said Barker.
+
+"But," he added eagerly, "it shows that things were better than I had
+imagined. Only the others did not come, either."
+
+"And you lost your twenty thousand dollars," said Stacy curtly.
+
+"FIFTY thousand," said Barker, "for of course it had to be a larger
+hotel than the other. And I think that Carter wouldn't have gone into it
+except to save me from losing money."
+
+"And yet made you lose fifty thousand instead of twenty. For I don't
+suppose HE advanced anything."
+
+"He gave his time and experience," said Barker simply.
+
+"I don't think it worth thirty thousand dollars," said Stacy dryly. "But
+all this doesn't tell me what your business is with me to-day."
+
+"No," said Barker, brightening up, "but it is business, you know.
+Something in the old style--as between partner and partner--and that's
+why I came to YOU, and not to the 'banker.' And it all comes out of
+something that Demorest once told us; so you see it's all us three
+again! Well, you know, of course, that the Excelsior Ditch Company have
+abandoned the Bar and Heavy Tree Hill. It didn't pay."
+
+"Yes; nor does the company pay any dividends now. You ought to know,
+with fifty thousand of their stock on your hands."
+
+Barker laughed. "But listen. I found that I could buy up their whole
+plant and all the ditching along the Black Spur Range for ten thousand
+dollars."
+
+"And Great Scott! you don't think of taking up their business?" said
+Stacy, aghast.
+
+Barker laughed more heartily. "No. Not their business. But I remember
+that once Demorest told us, in the dear old days, that it cost nearly
+as much to make a water ditch as a railroad, in the way of surveying and
+engineering and levels, you know. And here's the plant for a railroad.
+Don't you see?"
+
+"But a railroad from Black Spur to Heavy Tree Hill--what's the good of
+that?"
+
+"Why, Black Spur will be in the line of the new Divide Railroad they're
+trying to get a bill for in the legislature."
+
+"An infamous piece of wildcat jobbing that will never pass," said Stacy
+decisively.
+
+"They said BECAUSE it was that, it would pass," said Barker simply.
+"They say that Watson's Bank is in it, and is bound to get it through.
+And as that is a rival bank of yours, don't you see, I thought that if
+WE could get something real good or valuable out of it,--something that
+would do the Black Spur good,--it would be all right."
+
+"And was your business to consult me about it?" said Stacy bluntly.
+
+"No," said Barker, "it's too late to consult you now, though I wish I
+had. I've given my word to take it, and I can't back out. But I haven't
+the ten thousand dollars, and I came to you."
+
+Stacy slowly settled himself back in his chair, and put both hands in
+his pockets. "Not a cent, Barker, not a cent."
+
+"I'm not asking it of the BANK," said Barker, with a smile, "for I could
+have gone to the bank for it. But as this was something between us, I am
+asking you, Stacy, as my old partner."
+
+"And I am answering you, Barker, as your old partner, but also as the
+partner of a hundred other men, who have even a greater right to ask me.
+And my answer is, not a cent!"
+
+Barker looked at him with a pale, astonished face and slightly parted
+lips. Stacy rose, thrust his hands deeper in his pockets, and standing
+before him went on:--
+
+"Now look here! It's time you should understand me and yourself. Three
+years ago, when our partnership was dissolved by accident, or mutual
+consent, we will say, we started afresh, each on our own hook. Through
+foolishness and bad advice you have in those three years hopelessly
+involved yourself as you never would have done had we been partners, and
+yet in your difficulty you ask me and my new partners to help you out of
+a difficulty in which they have no concern."
+
+"Your NEW partners?" stammered Barker.
+
+"Yes, my new partners; for every man who has a share, or a deposit, or
+an interest, or a dollar in this bank is my PARTNER--even you, with your
+securities at the Branch, are one; and you may say that in THIS I am
+protecting you against yourself."
+
+"But you have money--you have private means."
+
+"None to speculate with as you wish me to--on account of my position;
+none to give away foolishly as you expect me to--on account of precedent
+and example. I am a soulless machine taking care of capital intrusted to
+me and my brains, but decidedly NOT to my heart nor my sentiment. So my
+answer is, not a cent!"
+
+Barker's face had changed; his color had come back, but with an older
+expression. Presently, however, his beaming smile returned, with the
+additional suggestion of an affectionate toleration which puzzled Stacy.
+
+"I believe you're right, old chap," he said, extending his hand to the
+banker, "and I wish I had talked to you before. But it's too late now,
+and I've given my word."
+
+"Your WORD!" said Stacy. "Have you no written agreement?"
+
+"No. My word was accepted." He blushed slightly as if conscious of a
+great weakness.
+
+"But that isn't legal nor business. And you couldn't even hold the Ditch
+Company to it if THEY chose to back out."
+
+"But I don't think they will," said Barker simply. "And you see my word
+wasn't given entirely to THEM. I bought the thing through my wife's
+cousin, Henry Spring, a broker, and he makes something by it, from the
+company, on commission. And I can't go back on HIM. What did you say?"
+
+Stacy had only groaned through his set teeth. "Nothing," he said
+briefly, "except that I'm coming, as I said before, to dine with you
+to-night; but no more BUSINESS. I've enough of that with others, and
+there are some waiting for me in the outer office now."
+
+Barker rose at once, but with the same affectionate smile and tender
+gravity of countenance, and laid his hand caressingly on Stacy's
+shoulder. "It's like you to give up so much of your time to me and my
+foolishness and be so frank with me. And I know it's mighty rough on
+you to have to be a mere machine instead of Jim Stacy. Don't you bother
+about me. I'll sell some of my Wide West Extension and pull the thing
+through myself. It's all right, but I'm sorry for you, old chap." He
+glanced around the room at the walls and rich paneling, and added, "I
+suppose that's what you have to pay for all this sort of thing?"
+
+Before Stacy could reply, a waiting visitor was announced for the second
+time, and Barker, with another hand-shake and a reassuring smile to his
+old partner, passed into the hall, as if the onus of any infelicity in
+the interview was upon himself alone. But Stacy did not seem to be in a
+particularly accessible mood to the new caller, who in his turn appeared
+to be slightly irritated by having been kept waiting over some irksome
+business. "You don't seem to follow me," he said to Stacy after reciting
+his business perplexity. "Can't you suggest something?"
+
+"Well, why don't you get hold of one of your board of directors?"
+said Stacy abstractedly. "There's Captain Drummond; you and he are old
+friends. You were comrades in the Mexican War, weren't you?"
+
+"That be d----d!" said his visitor bitterly. "All his interests are
+the other way, and in a trade of this kind, you know, Stacy, that a man
+would sacrifice his own brother. Do you suppose that he'd let up on a
+sure thing that he's got just because he and I fought side by side at
+Cerro Gordo? Come! what are you giving us? You're the last man I ever
+expected to hear that kind of flapdoodle from. If it's because your bank
+has got some other interest and you can't advise me, why don't you say
+so?" Nevertheless, in spite of Stacy's abrupt disclaimer, he left a few
+minutes later, half convinced that Stacy's lukewarmness was due to some
+adverse influence. Other callers were almost as quickly disposed of, and
+at the end of an hour Stacy found himself again alone.
+
+But not apparently in a very satisfied mood. After a few moments of
+purely mechanical memoranda-making, he rose abruptly and opened a small
+drawer in a cabinet, from which he took a letter still in its envelope.
+It bore a foreign postmark. Glancing over it hastily, his eyes at
+last became fixed on a concluding paragraph. "I hope," wrote his
+correspondent, "that even in the rush of your big business you will
+sometimes look after Barker. Not that I think the dear old chap will
+ever go wrong--indeed, I often wish I was as certain of myself as of
+him and his insight; but I am afraid we were more inclined to be merely
+amused and tolerant of his wonderful trust and simplicity than to really
+understand it for his own good and ours. I know you did not like his
+marriage, and were inclined to believe he was the victim of a rather
+unscrupulous father and a foolish, unequal girl; but are you satisfied
+that he would have been the happier without it, or lived his perfect
+life under other and what you may think wiser conditions? If he WROTE
+the poetry that he LIVES everybody would think him wonderful; for being
+what he is we never give him sufficient credit." Stacy smiled grimly,
+and penciled on his memorandum, "He wants it to the amount of ten
+thousand dollars." "Anyhow," continued the writer, "look after him, Jim,
+for his sake, your sake, and the sake of--PHIL DEMOREST."
+
+Stacy put the letter back in its envelope, and tossing it grimly aside
+went on with his calculations. Presently he stopped, restored the letter
+to his cabinet, and rang a bell on his table. "Send Mr. North here,"
+he said to the negro messenger. In a few moments his chief book-keeper
+appeared in the doorway.
+
+"Turn to the Branch ledger and bring me a statement of Mr. George
+Barker's account."
+
+"He was here a moment ago," said North, essaying a confidential look
+towards his chief.
+
+"I know it," said Stacy coolly, without looking up.
+
+"He's been running a good deal on wildcat lately," suggested North.
+
+"I asked for his account, and not your opinion of it," said Stacy
+shortly.
+
+The subordinate withdrew somewhat abashed but still curious, and
+returned presently with a ledger which he laid before his chief. Stacy
+ran his eyes over the list of Barker's securities; it seemed to him that
+all the wildest schemes of the past year stared him in the face. His
+finger, however, stopped on the Wide West Extension. "Mr. Barker will be
+wanting to sell some of this stock. What is it quoted at now?"
+
+"Sixty."
+
+"But I would prefer that Mr. Barker should not offer in the open market
+at present. Give him seventy for it--private sale; that will be ten
+thousand dollars paid to his credit. Advise the Branch of this at once,
+and to keep the transaction quiet."
+
+"Yes, sir," responded the clerk as he moved towards the door. But he
+hesitated, and with another essay at confidence said insinuatingly, "I
+always thought, sir, that Wide West would recover."
+
+Stacy, perhaps not displeased to find what had evidently passed in his
+subordinate's mind, looked at him and said dryly, "Then I would advise
+you also to keep that opinion to yourself." But, clever as he was, he
+had not anticipated the result. Mr. North, though a trusted employee,
+was human. On arriving in the outer office he beckoned to one of the
+lounging brokers, and in a low voice said, "I'll take two shares of Wide
+West, if you can get it cheap."
+
+The broker's face became alert and eager. "Yes, but I say, is anything
+up?"
+
+"I'm not here to give the business of the bank away," retorted North
+severely; "take the order or leave it."
+
+The man hurried away. Having thus vindicated his humanity by also
+passing the snub he had received from Stacy to an inferior, he turned
+away to carry out his master's instructions, yet secure in the belief
+that he had profited by his superior discernment of the real reason
+of that master's singular conduct. But when he returned to the private
+room, in hopes of further revelations, Mr. Stacy was closeted with
+another financial magnate, and had apparently divested his mind of the
+whole affair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+When George Barker returned to the outer ward of the financial
+stronghold he had penetrated, with its curving sweep of counters, brass
+railings, and wirework screens defended by the spruce clerks behind
+them, he was again impressed with the position of the man he had just
+quitted, and for a moment hesitated, with an inclination to go back.
+It was with no idea of making a further appeal to his old comrade,
+but--what would have been odd in any other nature but his--he was
+affected by a sense that HE might have been unfair and selfish in his
+manner to the man panoplied by these defenses, and who was in a measure
+forced to be a part of them. He would like to have returned and condoled
+with him. The clerks, who were heartlessly familiar with the anxious
+bearing of the men who sought interviews with their chief, both before
+and after, smiled with the whispered conviction that the fresh and
+ingenuous young stranger had been "chucked" like others until they
+met his kindly, tolerant, and even superior eyes, and were puzzled.
+Meanwhile Barker, who had that sublime, natural quality of abstraction
+over small impertinences which is more exasperating than studied
+indifference, after his brief hesitation passed out unconcernedly
+through the swinging mahogany doors into the blowy street. Here the wind
+and rain revived him; the bank and its curt refusal were forgotten; he
+walked onward with only a smiling memory of his partner as in the old
+days. He remembered how Stacy had burned down their old cabin rather
+than have it fall into sordid or unworthy hands--this Stacy who was now
+condemned to sink his impulses and become a mere machine. He had never
+known Stacy's real motive for that act,--both Demorest and Stacy
+had kept their knowledge of the attempted robbery from their younger
+partner,--it always seemed to him to be a precious revelation of Stacy's
+inner nature. Facing the wind and rain, he recalled how Stacy, though
+never so enthusiastic about his marriage as Demorest, had taken up Van
+Loo sharply for some foolish sneer about his own youthfulness. He was
+affectionately tolerant of even Stacy's dislike to his wife's relations,
+for Stacy did not know them as he did. Indeed, Barker, whose own father
+and mother had died in his infancy, had accepted his wife's relations
+with a loving trust and confidence that was supreme, from the fact that
+he had never known any other.
+
+At last he reached his hotel. It was a new one, the latest creation of a
+feverish progress in hotel-building which had covered five years and as
+many squares with large showy erections, utterly beyond the needs of the
+community, yet each superior in size and adornment to its predecessor.
+It struck him as being the one evidence of an abiding faith in the
+future of the metropolis that he had seen in nothing else. As he entered
+its frescoed hall that afternoon he was suddenly reminded, by its
+challenging opulency, of the bank he had just quitted, without knowing
+that the bank had really furnished its capital and its original design.
+The gilded bar-rooms, flashing with mirrors and cut glass; the saloons,
+with their desert expanse of Turkey carpet and oasis of clustered divans
+and gilded tables; the great dining-room, with porphyry columns, and
+walls and ceilings shining with allegory--all these things which had
+attracted his youthful wonder without distracting his correct simplicity
+of taste he now began to comprehend. It was the bank's money "at work."
+In the clatter of dishes in the dining-room he even seemed to hear again
+the chinking of coin.
+
+It was a short cut to his apartments to pass through a smaller public
+sitting-room popularly known as "Flirtation Camp," where eight or ten
+couples generally found refuge on chairs and settees by the windows,
+half concealed by heavy curtains. But the occupants were by no means
+youthful spinsters or bachelors; they were generally married women,
+guests of the hotel, receiving other people's husbands whose wives were
+"in the States," or responsible middle-aged leaders of the town. In
+the elaborate toilettes of the women, as compared with the less formal
+business suits of the men, there was an odd mingling of the social
+attitude with perhaps more mysterious confidences. The idle gossip about
+them had never affected Barker; rather he had that innate respect for
+the secrets of others which is as inseparable from simplicity as it is
+from high breeding, and he scarcely glanced at the different couples in
+his progress through the room. He did not even notice a rather striking
+and handsome woman, who, surrounded by two or three admirers, yet looked
+up at Barker as he passed with self-conscious lids as if seeking a
+return of her glance. But he moved on abstractedly, and only stopped
+when he suddenly saw the familiar skirt of his wife at a further window,
+and halted before it.
+
+"Oh, it's YOU," said Mrs. Barker, with a half-nervous, half-impatient
+laugh. "Why, I thought you'd certainly stay half the afternoon with your
+old partner, considering that you haven't met for three years."
+
+There was no doubt she HAD thought so; there was equally no doubt that
+the conversation she was carrying on with her companion--a good-looking,
+portly business man--was effectually interrupted. But Barker did not
+notice it. "Captain Heath, my husband," she went on, carelessly rising
+and smoothing her skirts. The captain, who had risen too, bowed vaguely
+at the introduction, but Barker extended his hand frankly. "I found
+Stacy busy," he said in answer to his wife, "but he is coming to dine
+with us to-night."
+
+"If you mean Jim Stacy, the banker," said Captain Heath, brightening
+into greater ease, "he's the busiest man in California. I've seen
+men standing in a queue outside his door as in the old days at the
+post-office. And he only gives you five minutes and no extension. So
+you and he were partners once?" he said, looking curiously at the still
+youthful Barker.
+
+But it was Mrs. Barker who answered, "Oh yes! and always such good
+friends. I was awfully jealous of him." Nevertheless, she did not
+respond to the affectionate protest in Barker's eyes nor to the laugh of
+Captain Heath, but glanced indifferently around the room as if to
+leave further conversation to the two men. It was possible that she was
+beginning to feel that Captain Heath was as de trop now as her husband
+had been a moment before. Standing there, however, between them both,
+idly tracing a pattern on the carpet with the toe of her slipper, she
+looked prettier than she had ever looked as Kitty Carter. Her slight
+figure was more fully developed. That artificial severity covering
+a natural virgin coyness with which she used to wait at table in her
+father's hotel at Boomville had gone, and was replaced by a satisfied
+consciousness of her power to please. Her glance was freer, but not
+as frank as in those days. Her dress was undoubtedly richer and more
+stylish; yet Barker's loyal heart often reverted fondly to the chintz
+gown, coquettishly frilled apron, and spotless cuffs and collar in which
+she had handed him his coffee with a faint color that left his own face
+crimson.
+
+Captain Heath's tact being equal to her indifference, he had excused
+himself, although he was becoming interested in this youthful husband.
+But Mrs. Barker, after having asserted her husband's distinction as
+the equal friend of the millionaire, was by no means willing that the
+captain should be further interested in Barker for himself alone, and
+did not urge him to stay. As he departed she turned to her husband, and,
+indicating the group he had passed the moment before, said:--
+
+"That horrid woman has been staring at us all the time. I don't see what
+you see in her to admire."
+
+Poor Barker's admiration had been limited to a few words of civility in
+the enforced contact of that huge caravansary and in his quiet, youthful
+recognition of her striking personality. But he was just then too
+preoccupied with his interview with Stacy to reply, and perhaps he did
+not quite understand his wife. It was odd how many things he did not
+quite understand now about Kitty, but that he knew must be HIS fault.
+But Mrs. Barker apparently did not require, after the fashion of her
+sex, a reply. For the next moment, as they moved towards their rooms,
+she said impatiently, "Well, you don't tell what Stacy said. Did you get
+the money?"
+
+I grieve to say that this soul of truth and frankness lied--only to his
+wife. Perhaps he considered it only lying to HIMSELF, a thing of which
+he was at times miserably conscious. "It wasn't necessary, dear," he
+said; "he advised me to sell my securities in the bank; and if you only
+knew how dreadfully busy he is."
+
+Mrs. Barker curled her pretty lip. "It doesn't take very long to lend
+ten thousand dollars!" she said. "But that's what I always tell you.
+You have about made me sick by singing the praises of those wonderful
+partners of yours, and here you ask a favor of one of them and he tells
+you to sell your securities! And you know, and he knows, they're worth
+next to nothing."
+
+"You don't understand, dear"--began Barker.
+
+"I understand that you've given your word to poor Harry," said
+Mrs. Barker in pretty indignation, "who's responsible for the Ditch
+purchase."
+
+"And I shall keep it. I always do," said Barker very quietly, but with
+that same singular expression of face that had puzzled Stacy. But
+Mrs. Barker, who, perhaps, knew her husband better, said in an altered
+voice:--
+
+"But HOW can you, dear?"
+
+"If I'm short a thousand or two I'll ask your father."
+
+Mrs. Barker was silent. "Father's so very much harried now, George. Why
+don't you simply throw the whole thing up?"
+
+"But I've given my word to your cousin Henry."
+
+"Yes, but only your WORD. There was no written agreement. And you
+couldn't even hold him to it."
+
+Barker opened his frank eyes in astonishment. Her own cousin, too! And
+they were Stacy's very words!
+
+"Besides," added Mrs. Barker audaciously, "he could get rid of it
+elsewhere. He had another offer, but he thought yours the best. So don't
+be silly."
+
+By this time they had reached their rooms. Barker, apparently dismissing
+the subject from his mind with characteristic buoyancy, turned into the
+bedroom and walked smilingly towards a small crib which stood in the
+corner. "Why, he's gone!" he said in some dismay.
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Barker a little impatiently, "you didn't expect me to
+take him into the public parlor, where I was seeing visitors, did you?
+I sent him out with the nurse into the lower hall to play with the other
+children."
+
+A shade momentarily passed over Barker's face. He always looked forward
+to meeting the child when he came back. He had a belief, based on no
+grounds whatever, that the little creature understood him. And he had a
+father's doubt of the wholesomeness of other people's children who
+were born into the world indiscriminately and not under the exceptional
+conditions of his own. "I'll go and fetch him," he said.
+
+"You haven't told me anything about your interview; what you did and
+what your good friend Stacy said," said Mrs. Barker, dropping languidly
+into a chair. "And really if you are simply running away again after
+that child, I might just as well have asked Captain Heath to stay
+longer."
+
+"Oh, as to Stacy," said Barker, dropping beside her and taking her hand;
+"well, dear, he was awfully busy, you know, and shut up in the innermost
+office like the agate in one of the Japanese nests of boxes. But," he
+continued, brightening up, "just the same dear old Jim Stacy of Heavy
+Tree Hill, when I first knew you. Lord! dear, how it all came back to
+me! That day I proposed to you in the belief that I was unexpectedly
+rich and even bought a claim for the boys on the strength of it, and how
+I came back to them to find that they had made a big strike on the very
+claim. Lord! I remember how I was so afraid to tell them about you--and
+how they guessed it--that dear old Stacy one of the first."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Barker, "and I hope your friend Stacy remembered that
+but for ME, when you found out that you were not rich, you'd have given
+up the claim, but that I really deceived my own father to make you keep
+it. I've often worried over that, George," she said pensively, turning
+a diamond bracelet around her pretty wrist, "although I never said
+anything about it."
+
+"But, Kitty darling," said Barker, grasping his wife's hand, "I gave my
+note for it; you know you said that was bargain enough, and I had better
+wait until the note was due, and until I found I couldn't pay, before I
+gave up the claim. It was very clever of you, and the boys all said so,
+too. But you never deceived your father, dear," he said, looking at her
+gravely, "for I should have told him everything."
+
+"Of course, if you look at it in that way," said his wife languidly,
+"it's nothing; only I think it ought to be remembered when people go
+about saying papa ruined you with his hotel schemes."
+
+"Who dares say that?" said Barker indignantly.
+
+"Well, if they don't SAY it they look it," said Mrs. Barker, with a
+toss of her pretty head, "and I believe that's at the bottom of Stacy's
+refusal."
+
+"But he never said a word, Kitty," said Barker, flushing.
+
+"There, don't excite yourself, George," said Mrs. Barker resignedly,
+"but go for the baby. I know you're dying to go, and I suppose it's time
+Norah brought it upstairs."
+
+At any other time Barker would have lingered with explanations, but just
+then a deeper sense than usual of some misunderstanding made him anxious
+to shorten this domestic colloquy. He rose, pressed his wife's hand, and
+went out. But yet he was not entirely satisfied with himself for leaving
+her. "I suppose it isn't right my going off as soon as I come in," he
+murmured reproachfully to himself, "but I think she wants the baby back
+as much as I; only, womanlike, she didn't care to let me know it."
+
+He reached the lower hall, which he knew was a favorite promenade for
+the nurses who were gathered at the farther end, where a large window
+looked upon Montgomery Street. But Norah, the Irish nurse, was not among
+them; he passed through several corridors in his search, but in vain.
+At last, worried and a little anxious, he turned to regain his rooms
+through the long saloon where he had found his wife previously. It
+was deserted now; the last caller had left--even frivolity had its
+prescribed limits. He was consequently startled by a gentle murmur
+from one of the heavily curtained window recesses. It was a woman's
+voice--low, sweet, caressing, and filled with an almost pathetic
+tenderness. And it was followed by a distinct gurgling satisfied crow.
+
+Barker turned instantly in that direction. A step brought him to the
+curtain, where a singular spectacle presented itself.
+
+Seated on a lounge, completely absorbed and possessed by her treasure,
+was the "horrid woman" whom his wife had indicated only a little while
+ago, holding a baby--Kitty's sacred baby--in her wanton lap! The child
+was feebly grasping the end of the slender jeweled necklace which the
+woman held temptingly dangling from a thin white jeweled finger above
+it. But its eyes were beaming with an intense delight, as if trying to
+respond to the deep, concentrated love in the handsome face that was
+bent above it.
+
+At the sudden intrusion of Barker she looked up. There was a faint rise
+in her color, but no loss of sell-possession.
+
+"Please don't scold the nurse," she said, "nor say anything to Mrs.
+Barker. It is all my fault. I thought that both the nurse and child
+looked dreadfully bored with each other, and I borrowed the little
+fellow for a while to try and amuse him. At least I haven't made
+him cry, have I, dear?" The last epithet, it is needless to say,
+was addressed to the little creature in her lap, but in its tender
+modulation it touched the father's quick sympathies as if he had shared
+it with the child. "You see," she said softly, disengaging the baby
+fingers from her necklace, "that OUR sex is not the only one tempted by
+jewelry and glitter."
+
+Barker hesitated; the Madonna-like devotion of a moment ago was gone;
+it was only the woman of the world who laughingly looked up at him.
+Nevertheless he was touched. "Have you--ever--had a child, Mrs.
+Horncastle?" he asked gently and hesitatingly. He had a vague
+recollection that she passed for a widow, and in his simple eyes all
+women were virgins or married saints.
+
+"No," she said abruptly. Then she added with a laugh, "Or perhaps
+I should not admire them so much. I suppose it's the same feeling
+bachelors have for other people's wives. But I know you're dying to
+take that boy from me. Take him, then, and don't be ashamed to carry him
+yourself just because I'm here; you know you would delight to do it if I
+weren't."
+
+Barker bent over the silken lap in which the child was comfortably
+nestling, and in that attitude had a faint consciousness that Mrs.
+Horncastle was mischievously breathing into his curls a silent laugh.
+Barker lifted his firstborn with proud skillfulness, but that sagacious
+infant evidently knew when he was comfortable, and in a paroxysm of
+objection caught his father's curls with one fist, while with the other
+he grasped Mrs. Horncastle's brown braids and brought their heads into
+contact. Upon which humorous situation Norah, the nurse, entered.
+
+"It's all right, Norah," said Mrs. Horncastle, laughing, as she
+disengaged herself from the linking child. "Mr. Barker has claimed
+the baby, and has agreed to forgive you and me and say nothing to Mrs.
+Barker." Norah, with the inscrutable criticism of her sex on her sex,
+thought it extremely probable, and halted with exasperating discretion.
+"There," continued Mrs. Horncastle, playfully evading the child's
+further advances, "go with papa, that's a dear. Mr. Barker prefers to
+carry him back, Norah."
+
+"But," said the ingenuous and persistent Barker, still lingering
+in hopes of recalling the woman's previous expression, "you DO love
+children, and you think him a bright little chap for his age?"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Horncastle, putting back her loosened braid, "so round
+and fat and soft. And such a discriminating eye for jewelry. Really you
+ought to get a necklace like mine for Mrs. Barker--it would please both,
+you know." She moved slowly away, the united efforts of Norah and Barker
+scarcely sufficing to restrain the struggling child from leaping after
+her as she turned at the door and blew him a kiss.
+
+When Barker regained his room he found that Mrs. Barker had dismissed
+Stacy from her mind except so far as to invoke Norah's aid in laying
+out her smartest gown for dinner. "But why take all this trouble, dear?"
+said her simple-minded husband; "we are going to dine in a private room
+so that we can talk over old times all by ourselves, and any dress would
+suit him. And, Lord, dear!" he added, with a quick brightening at the
+fancy, "if you could only just rig yourself up in that pretty lilac gown
+you used to wear at Boomville--it would be too killing, and just like
+old times. I put it away myself in one of our trunks--I couldn't bear
+to leave it behind; I know just where it is. I'll"--But Mrs. Barker's
+restraining scorn withheld him.
+
+"George Barker, if you think I am going to let you throw away and
+utterly WASTE Mr. Stacy on us, alone, in a private room with closed
+doors--and I dare say you'd like to sit in your dressing-gown and
+slippers--you are entirely mistaken. I know what is due, not to your old
+partner, but to the great Mr. Stacy, the financier, and I know what is
+due FROM HIM TO US! No! We dine in the great dining-room, publicly, and,
+if possible, at the very next table to those stuck-up Peterburys and
+their Eastern friends, including that horrid woman, which, I'm sure,
+ought to satisfy you. Then you can talk as much as you like, and as
+loud as you like, about old times,--and the louder and the more the
+better,--but I don't think HE'LL like it."
+
+"But the baby!" expostulated Barker. "Stacy's just wild to see him--and
+we can't bring him down to the table--though we MIGHT," he added,
+momentarily brightening.
+
+"After dinner," said Mrs. Barker severely, "we will walk through the big
+drawing-rooms, and THEN Mr. Stacy may come upstairs and see him in his
+crib; but not before. And now, George, I do wish that to-night, FOR
+ONCE, you would not wear a turn-down collar, and that you would go to
+the barber's and have him cut your hair and smooth out the curls. And,
+for Heaven's sake! let him put some wax or gum or SOMETHING on your
+mustache and twist it up on your cheek like Captain Heath's, for it
+positively droops over your mouth like a girl's ringlet. It's quite
+enough for me to hear people talk of your inexperience, but really I
+don't want you to look as if I had run away with a pretty schoolboy.
+And, considering the size of that child, it's positively disgraceful.
+And, one thing more, George. When I'm talking to anybody, please don't
+sit opposite to me, beaming with delight, and your mouth open. And don't
+roar if by chance I say something funny. And--whatever you do--don't
+make eyes at me in company whenever I happen to allude to you, as I did
+before Captain Heath. It is positively too ridiculous."
+
+Nothing could exceed the laughing good humor with which her husband
+received these cautions, nor the evident sincerity with which he
+promised amendment. Equally sincere was he, though a little more
+thoughtful, in his severe self-examination of his deficiencies, when,
+later, he seated himself at the window with one hand softly encompassing
+his child's chubby fist in the crib beside him, and, in the instinctive
+fashion of all loneliness, looked out of the window. The southern
+trades were whipping the waves of the distant bay and harbor into yeasty
+crests. Sheets of rain swept the sidewalks with the regularity of a
+fusillade, against which a few pedestrians struggled with flapping
+waterproofs and slanting umbrellas. He could look along the deserted
+length of Montgomery Street to the heights of Telegraph Hill and its
+long-disused semaphore. It seemed lonelier to him than the mile-long
+sweep of Heavy Tree Hill, writhing against the mountain wind and
+its aeolian song. He had never felt so lonely THERE. In his rigid
+self-examination he thought Kitty right in protesting against the
+effect of his youthfulness and optimism. Yet he was also right in being
+himself. There is an egoism in the highest simplicity; and Barker, while
+willing to believe in others' methods, never abandoned his own aims.
+He was right in loving Kitty as he did; he knew that she was better and
+more lovable than she could believe herself to be; but he was willing to
+believe it pained and discomposed her if he showed it before company.
+He would not have her change even this peculiarity--it was part of
+herself--no more than he would have changed himself. And behind what he
+had conceived was her clear, practical common sense, all this time had
+been her belief that she had deceived her father! Poor dear, dear Kitty!
+And she had suffered because stupid people had conceived that her father
+had led him away in selfish speculations. As if he--Barker--would
+not have first discovered it, and as if anybody--even dear Kitty
+herself--was responsible for HIS convictions and actions but himself.
+Nevertheless, this gentle egotist was unusually serious, and when the
+child awoke at last, and with a fretful start and vacant eyes pushed his
+caressing hand away, he felt lonelier than before. It was with a slight
+sense of humiliation, too, that he saw it stretch its hands to the mere
+hireling, Norah, who had never given it the love that he had seen even
+in the frivolous Mrs. Horncastle's eyes. Later, when his wife came in,
+looking very pretty in her elaborate dinner toilette, he had the same
+conflicting emotions. He knew that they had already passed that phase
+of their married life when she no longer dressed to please him, and
+that the dictates of fashion or the rivalry of another woman she held
+superior to his tastes; yet he did not blame her. But he was a little
+surprised to see that her dress was copied from one of Mrs. Horncastle's
+most striking ones, and that it did not suit her. That which adorned
+the maturer woman did not agree with the demure and slightly austere
+prettiness of the young wife.
+
+But Barker forgot all this when Stacy--reserved and somewhat
+severe-looking in evening dress--arrived with business punctuality. He
+fancied that his old partner received the announcement that they would
+dine in the public room with something of surprise, and he saw him
+glance keenly at Kitty in her fine array, as if he had suspected it was
+her choice, and understood her motives. Indeed, the young husband had
+found himself somewhat nervous in regard to Stacy's estimate of Kitty;
+he was conscious that she was not looking and acting like the old Kitty
+that Stacy had known; it did not enter his honest heart that Stacy had,
+perhaps, not appreciated her then, and that her present quality might
+accord more with his worldly tastes and experience. It was, therefore,
+with a kind of timid delight that he saw Stacy apparently enter into her
+mood, and with a still more timorous amusement to notice that he
+seemed to sympathize not only with her, but with her half-rallying,
+half-serious attitude towards his (Barker's) inexperience and
+simplicity. He was glad that she had made a friend of Stacy, even in
+this way. Stacy would understand, as he did, her pretty willfulness at
+last; she would understand what a true friend Stacy was to him. It was
+with unfeigned satisfaction that he followed them in to dinner as she
+leaned upon his guest's arm, chatting confidentially. He was only uneasy
+because her manner had a slight ostentation.
+
+The entrance of the little party produced a quick sensation throughout
+the dining-room. Whispers passed from table to table; all heads were
+turned towards the great financier as towards a magnet; a few guests
+even shamelessly faced round in their chairs as he passed. Mrs. Barker
+was pink, pretty, and voluble with excitement; Stacy had a slight mask
+of reserve; Barker was the only one natural and unconscious.
+
+As the dinner progressed Barker found that there was little chance for
+him to invoke his old partner's memories of the past. He found, however,
+that Stacy had received a letter from Demorest, and that he was coming
+home from Europe. His letters were still sad; they both agreed upon
+that. And then for the first time that day Stacy looked intently at
+Barker with the look that he had often worn on Heavy Tree Hill.
+
+"Then you think it is the same old trouble that worries him?" said
+Barker in an awed and sympathetic voice.
+
+"I believe it is," said Stacy, with an equal feeling. Mrs. Barker
+pricked up her pretty ears; her husband's ready sympathy was familiar
+enough; but that this cold, practical Stacy should be moved at anything
+piqued her curiosity.
+
+"And you believe that he has never got over it?" continued Barker.
+
+"He had one chance, but he threw it away," said Stacy energetically.
+"If, instead of going off to Europe by himself to brood over it, he had
+joined me in business, he'd have been another man."
+
+"But not Demorest," said Barker quickly.
+
+"What dreadful secret is this about Demorest?" said Mrs. Barker
+petulantly. "Is he ill?"
+
+Both men were silent by their old common instinct. But it was Stacy
+who said "No" in a way that put any further questioning at an end, and
+Barker was grateful and for the moment disloyal to his Kitty.
+
+It was with delight that Mrs. Barker had seen that the attention of
+the next table was directed to them, and that even Mrs. Horncastle had
+glanced from time to time at Stacy. But she was not prepared for the
+evident equal effect that Mrs. Horncastle had created upon Stacy. His
+cold face warmed, his critical eye softened; he asked her name. Mrs.
+Barker was voluble, prejudiced, and, it seemed, misinformed.
+
+"I know it all," said Stacy, with didactic emphasis. "Her husband was as
+bad as they make them. When her life had become intolerable WITH HIM, he
+tried to make it shameful WITHOUT HIM by abandoning her. She could get a
+divorce a dozen times over, but she won't."
+
+"I suppose that's what makes her so very attractive to gentlemen," said
+Mrs. Barker ironically.
+
+"I have never seen her before," continued Stacy, with business
+precision, "although I and two other men are guardians of her property,
+and have saved it from the clutches of her husband. They told me she was
+handsome--and so she is."
+
+Pleased with the sudden human weakness of Stacy, Barker glanced at his
+wife for sympathy. But she was looking studiously another way, and the
+young husband's eyes, still full of his gratification, fell upon
+Mrs. Horncastle's. She looked away with a bright color. Whereupon
+the sanguine Barker--perfectly convinced that she returned Stacy's
+admiration--was seized with one of his old boyish dreams of the future,
+and saw Stacy happily united to her, and was only recalled to the dinner
+before him by its end. Then Stacy duly promenaded the great saloon with
+Mrs. Barker on his arm, visited the baby in her apartments, and took an
+easy leave. But he grasped Barker's hand before parting in quite his old
+fashion, and said, "Come to lunch with me at the bank any day, and we'll
+talk of Phil Demorest," and left Barker as happy as if the appointment
+were to confer the favor he had that morning refused. But Mrs. Barker,
+who had overheard, was more dubious.
+
+"You don't suppose he asks you to talk with you about Demorest and his
+stupid secret, do you?" she said scornfully.
+
+"Perhaps not only about that," said Barker, glad that she had not
+demanded the secret.
+
+"Well," returned Mrs. Barker as she turned away, "he might just as well
+lunch here and talk about HER--and see her, too."
+
+Meantime Stacy had dropped into his club, only a few squares distant.
+His appearance created the same interest that it had produced at the
+hotel, but with less reserve among his fellow members.
+
+"Have you heard the news?" said a dozen voices. Stacy had not; he had
+been dining out.
+
+"That infernal swindle of a Divide Railroad has passed the legislature."
+
+Stacy instantly remembered Barker's absurd belief in it and his reasons.
+He smiled and said carelessly, "Are you quite sure it's a swindle?"
+
+There was a dead silence at the coolness of the man who had been most
+outspoken against it.
+
+"But," said a voice hesitatingly, "you know it goes nowhere and to no
+purpose."
+
+"But that does not prevent it, now that it's a fact, from going anywhere
+and to some purpose," said Stacy, turning away. He passed into the
+reading-room quietly, but in an instant turned and quickly descended
+by another staircase into the hall, hurriedly put on his overcoat, and
+slipping out was a moment later re-entering the hotel. Here he hastily
+summoned Barker, who came down, flushed and excited. Laying his hand on
+Barker's arm in his old dominant way, he said:--
+
+"Don't delay a single hour, but get a written agreement for that Ditch
+property."
+
+Barker smiled. "But I have. Got it this afternoon."
+
+"Then you know?" ejaculated Stacy in surprise.
+
+"I only know," said Barker, coloring, "that you said I could back out of
+it if it wasn't signed, and that's what Kitty said, too. And I thought
+it looked awfully mean for me to hold a man to that kind of a bargain.
+And so--you won't be mad, old fellow, will you?--I thought I'd put
+it beyond any question of my own good faith by having it in black
+and white." He stopped, laughing and blushing, but still earnest and
+sincere. "You don't think me a fool, do you?" he said pathetically.
+
+Stacy smiled grimly. "I think, Barker boy, that if you go to the Branch
+you'll have no difficulty in paying for the Ditch property. Good-night."
+
+In a few moments he was back at the club again before any one knew he
+had even left the building. As he again re-entered the smoking-room he
+found the members still in eager discussion about the new railroad. One
+was saying, "If they could get an extension, and carry the road through
+Heavy Tree Hill to Boomville they'd be all right."
+
+"I quite agree with you," said Stacy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+The swaying, creaking, Boomville coach had at last reached the level
+ridge, and sank forward upon its springs with a sigh of relief and the
+slow precipitation of the red dust which had hung in clouds around
+it. The whole coach, inside and out, was covered with this impalpable
+powder; it had poured into the windows that gaped widely in the
+insufferable heat; it lay thick upon the novel read by the passenger who
+had for the third or fourth time during the ascent made a gutter of
+the half-opened book and blown the dust away in a single puff, like the
+smoke from a pistol. It lay in folds and creases over the yellow silk
+duster of the handsome woman on the back seat, and when she endeavored
+to shake it off enveloped her in a reddish nimbus. It grimed the
+handkerchiefs of others, and left sanguinary streaks on their mopped
+foreheads. But as the coach had slowly climbed the summit the sun
+was also sinking behind the Black Spur Range, and with its ultimate
+disappearance a delicious coolness spread itself like a wave across the
+ridge. The passengers drew a long breath, the reader closed his book,
+the lady lifted the edge of her veil and delicately wiped her
+forehead, over which a few damp tendrils of hair were clinging. Even a
+distinguished-looking man who had sat as impenetrable and remote as a
+statue in one of the front seats moved and turned his abstracted face to
+the window. His deeply tanned cheek and clearly cut features harmonized
+with the red dust that lay in the curves of his brown linen dust-cloak,
+and completed his resemblance to a bronze figure. Yet it was Demorest,
+changed only in coloring. Now, as five years ago, his abstraction had a
+certain quality which the most familiar stranger shrank from disturbing.
+But in the general relaxation of relief the novel-reader addressed him.
+
+"Well, we ain't far from Boomville now, and it's all down-grade the rest
+of the way. I reckon you'll be as glad to get a 'wash up' and a 'shake'
+as the rest of us."
+
+"I am afraid I won't have so early an opportunity," said Demorest, with
+a faint, grave smile, "for I get off at the cross-road to Heavy Tree
+Hill."
+
+"Heavy Tree Hill!" repeated the other in surprise. "You ain't goin' to
+Heavy Tree Hill? Why, you might have gone there direct by railroad,
+and have been there four hours ago. You know there's a branch from the
+Divide Railroad goes there straight to the hotel at Hymettus."
+
+"Where?" said Demorest, with a puzzled smile.
+
+"Hymettus. That's the fancy name they've given to the watering-place on
+the slope. But I reckon you're a stranger here?"
+
+"For five years," said Demorest. "I fancy I've heard of the railroad,
+although I prefer to go to Heavy Tree this way. But I never heard of a
+watering-place there before."
+
+"Why, it's the biggest boom of the year. Folks that are tired of the
+fogs of 'Frisco and the heat of Sacramento all go there. It's four
+thousand feet up, with a hotel like Saratoga, dancing, and a band plays
+every night. And it all sprang out of the Divide Railroad and a crank
+named George Barker, who bought up some old Ditch property and ran a
+branch line along its levels, and made a junction with the Divide. You
+can come all the way from 'Frisco or Sacramento by rail. It's a mighty
+big thing!"
+
+"Yet," said Demorest, with some animation, "you call the man who
+originated this success a crank. I should say he was a genius."
+
+The other passenger shook his head. "All sheer nigger luck. He bought
+the Ditch plant afore there was a ghost of a chance for the Divide
+Railroad, just out o' pure d----d foolishness. He expected so little
+from it that he hadn't even got the agreement done in writin', and
+hadn't paid for it, when the Divide Railroad passed the legislature, as
+it never oughter done! For, you see, the blamedest cur'ous thing about
+the whole affair was that this 'straw' road of a Divide, all pure
+wildcat, was only gotten up to frighten the Pacific Railroad sharps into
+buying it up. And the road that nobody ever calculated would ever have a
+rail of it laid was pushed on as soon as folks knew that the Ditch plant
+had been bought up, for they thought there was a big thing behind it.
+Even the hotel was, at first, simply a kind of genteel alms-house that
+this yer Barker had built for broken-down miners!"
+
+"Nevertheless," continued Demorest, smiling, "you admit that it is a
+great success?"
+
+"Yes," said the other, a little irritated by some complacency in
+Demorest's smile, "but the success isn't HIS'N. Fools has ideas, and
+wise men profit by them, for that hotel now has Jim Stacy's bank behind
+it, and is even a kind of country branch of the Brook House in 'Frisco.
+Barker's out of it, I reckon. Anyhow, HE couldn't run a hotel, for all
+that his wife--she that's one of the big 'Frisco swells now--used to
+help serve in her father's. No, sir, it's just a fool's luck, gettin'
+the first taste and leavin' the rest to others."
+
+"I'm not sure that it's the worst kind of luck," returned Demorest,
+with persistent gravity; "and I suppose he's satisfied with it." But so
+heterodox an opinion only irritated his antagonist the more, especially
+as he noticed that the handsome woman in the back seat appeared to be
+interested in the conversation, and even sympathetic with Demorest. The
+man was in the main a good-natured fellow and loyal to his friends; but
+this did not preclude any virulent criticism of others, and for a moment
+he hated this bronze-faced stranger, and even saw blemishes in the
+handsome woman's beauty. "That may be YOUR idea of an Eastern man,"
+he said bluntly, "but I kin tell ye that Californy ain't run on those
+lines. No, sir." Nevertheless, his curiosity got the better of his ill
+humor, and as the coach at last pulled up at the cross-road for Demorest
+to descend he smiled affably at his departing companion.
+
+"You allowed just now that you'd bin five years away. Whar mout ye have
+bin?"
+
+"In Europe," said Demorest pleasantly.
+
+"I reckoned ez much," returned his interrogator, smiling significantly
+at the other passengers. "But in what place?"
+
+"Oh, many," said Demorest, smiling also.
+
+"But what place war ye last livin' at?"
+
+"Well," said Demorest, descending the steps, but lingering for a moment
+with his hand on the door of the coach, "oddly enough, now you remind me
+of it--at Hymettus!"
+
+He closed the door, and the coach rolled on. The passenger reddened,
+glanced indignantly after the departing figure of Demorest and
+suspiciously at the others. The lady was looking from the window with a
+faint smile on her face.
+
+"He might hev given me a civil answer," muttered the passenger, and
+resumed his novel.
+
+When the coach drew up before Carter's Hotel the lady got down, and the
+curiosity of her susceptible companions was gratified to the extent of
+learning from the register that her name was Horncastle.
+
+She was shown to a private sitting-room, which chanced to be the one
+which had belonged to Mrs. Barker in the days of her maidenhood, and
+was the sacred, impenetrable bower to which she retired when her daily
+duties of waiting upon her father's guests were over. But the breath of
+custom had passed through it since then, and but little remained of its
+former maiden glories, except a few schoolgirl crayon drawings on
+the wall and an unrecognizable portrait of herself in oil, done by a
+wandering artist and still preserved as a receipt for his unpaid
+bill. Of these facts Mrs. Horncastle knew nothing; she was evidently
+preoccupied, and after she had removed her outer duster and entered the
+room, she glanced at the clock on the mantel-shelf and threw herself
+with an air of resigned abstraction in an armchair in the corner. Her
+traveling-dress, although unostentatious, was tasteful and well-fitting;
+a slight pallor from her fatiguing journey, and, perhaps, from some
+absorbing thought, made her beauty still more striking. She gave even an
+air of elegance to the faded, worn adornments of the room, which it is
+to be feared it never possessed in Miss Kitty's occupancy. Again she
+glanced at the clock. There was a tap at the door.
+
+"Come in."
+
+The door opened to a Chinese servant bearing a piece of torn paper with
+a name written on it in lieu of a card.
+
+Mrs. Horncastle took it, glanced at the name, and handed the paper back.
+
+"There must be some mistake," she said, "it do not know Mr. Steptoe."
+
+"No, but you know ME all the same," said a voice from the doorway as a
+man entered, coolly took the Chinese servant by the elbows and thrust
+him into the passage, closing the door upon him. "Steptoe and Horncastle
+are the same man, only I prefer to call myself Steptoe HERE. And I see
+YOU'RE down on the register as 'Horncastle.' Well, it's plucky of you,
+and it's not a bad name to keep; you might be thankful that I have
+always left it to you. And if I call myself Steptoe here it's a good
+blind against any of your swell friends knowing you met your HUSBAND
+here."
+
+In the half-scornful, half-resigned look she had given him when he
+entered there was no doubt that she recognized him as the man she had
+come to see. He had changed little in the five years that had elapsed
+since he entered the three partners' cabin at Heavy Tree Hill. His short
+hair and beard still clung to his head like curled moss or the crisp
+flocculence of Astrakhan. He was dressed more pretentiously, but still
+gave the same idea of vulgar strength. She listened to him without
+emotion, but said, with even a deepening of scorn in her manner:--
+
+"What new shame is this?"
+
+"Nothing NEW," he replied. "Only five years ago I was livin' over on the
+Bar at Heavy Tree Hill under the name of Steptoe, and folks here might
+recognize me. I was here when your particular friend, Jim Stacy,
+who only knew me as Steptoe, and doesn't know me as Horncastle, your
+HUSBAND,--for all he's bound up my property for you,--made his big
+strike with his two partners. I was in his cabin that very night, and
+drank his whiskey. Oh, I'm all right there! I left everything all right
+behind me--only it's just as well he doesn't know I'm Horncastle. And
+as the boy happened to be there with me"--He stopped, and looked at her
+significantly.
+
+The expression of her face changed. Eagerness, anxiety, and even fear
+came into it in turn, but always mingling with some scorn that dominated
+her. "The boy!" she said in a voice that had changed too; "well, what
+about him? You promised to tell me all,--all!"
+
+"Where's the money?" he said. "Husband and wife are ONE, I know,"
+he went on with a coarse laugh, "but I don't trust MYSELF in these
+matters."
+
+She took from a traveling-reticule that lay beside her a roll of notes
+and a chamois leather bag of coin, and laid them on the table before
+him. He examined both carefully.
+
+"All right," he said. "I see you've got the checks made out 'to bearer.'
+Your head's level, Conny. Pity you and me can't agree."
+
+"I went to the bank across the way as soon as I arrived," she said, with
+contemptuous directness. "I told them I was going over to Hymettus and
+might want money."
+
+He dropped into a chair before her with his broad heavy hands upon his
+knees, and looked at her with an equal, though baser, contempt: for his
+was mingled with a certain pride of mastery and possession.
+
+"And, of course, you'll go to Hymettus and cut a splurge as you always
+do. The beautiful Mrs. Horncastle! The helpless victim of a wretched,
+dissipated, disgraced, gambling husband. So dreadfully sad, you know,
+and so interesting! Could get a divorce from the brute if she wanted,
+but won't, on account of her religious scruples. And so while the brute
+is gambling, swindling, disgracing himself, and dodging a shot here
+and a lynch committee there, two or three hundred miles away, you're
+splurging round in first-class hotels and watering-places, doing the
+injured and abused, and run after by a lot of men who are ready to take
+my place, and, maybe, some of my reputation along with it."
+
+"Stop!" she said suddenly, in a voice that made the glass chandelier
+ring. He had risen too, with a quick, uneasy glance towards the door.
+But her outbreak passed as suddenly, and sinking back into her chair,
+she said, with her previous scornful resignation, "Never mind. Go on.
+You KNOW you're lying!"
+
+He sat down again and looked at her critically. "Yes, as far as you're
+concerned I WAS lying! I know your style. But as you know, too, that
+I'd kill you and the first man I suspected, and there ain't a judge or
+a jury in all Californy that wouldn't let me go free for it, and even
+consider, too, that it had wiped off the whole slate agin me--it's to my
+credit!"
+
+"I know what you men call chivalry," she said coldly, "but I did not
+come here to buy a knowledge of that. So now about the child?" she ended
+abruptly, leaning forward again with the same look of eager solicitude
+in her eyes.
+
+"Well, about the child--our child--though, perhaps, I prefer to say MY
+child," he began, with a certain brutal frankness. "I'll tell you. But
+first, I don't want you to talk about BUYING your information of me.
+If I haven't told you anything before, it's because I didn't think you
+oughter know. If I didn't trust the child to YOU, it's because I didn't
+think you could go shashaying about with a child that was three years
+old when I"--he stopped and wiped his mouth with the back of his
+hand--"made an honest woman of you--I think that's what they call it."
+
+"But," she said eagerly, ignoring the insult, "I could have hidden it
+where no one but myself would have known it. I could have sent it to
+school and visited it as a relation."
+
+"Yes," he said curtly, "like all women, and then blurted it out some day
+and made it worse."
+
+"But," she said desperately, "even THEN, suppose I had been willing to
+take the shame of it! I have taken more!"
+
+"But I didn't intend that you should," he said roughly.
+
+"You are very careful of my reputation," she returned scornfully.
+
+"Not by a d----d sight," he burst out; "but I care for HIS! I'm not
+goin' to let any man call him a bastard!"
+
+Callous as she had become even under this last cruel blow, she could not
+but see something in his coarse eyes she had never seen before; could
+not but hear something in his brutal voice she had never heard before!
+Was it possible that somewhere in the depths of his sordid nature he had
+his own contemptible sense of honor? A hysterical feeling came over her
+hitherto passive disgust and scorn, but it disappeared with his next
+sentence in a haze of anxiety. "No!" he said hoarsely, "he had enough
+wrong done him already."
+
+"What do you mean?" she said imploringly. "Or are you again lying? You
+said, four years ago, that he had 'got into trouble;' that was your
+excuse for keeping him from me. Or was that a lie, too?"
+
+His manner changed and softened, but not for any pity for his companion,
+but rather from some change in his own feelings. "Oh, that," he said,
+with a rough laugh, "that was only a kind o' trouble any sassy kid like
+him was likely to get into. You ain't got no call to hear that, for," he
+added, with a momentary return to his previous manner, "the wrong that
+was done him is MY lookout! You want to know what I did with him, how
+he's been looked arter, and where he is? You want the worth of your
+money. That's square enough. But first I want you to know, though you
+mayn't believe it, that every red cent you've given me to-night goes to
+HIM. And don't you forget it."
+
+For all his vulgar frankness she knew he had lied to her many times
+before,--maliciously, wantonly, complacently, but never evasively; yet
+there was again that something in his manner which told her he was now
+telling the truth.
+
+"Well," he began, settling himself back in his chair, "I told you I
+brought him to Heavy Tree Hill. After I left you I wasn't going to trust
+him to no school; he knew enough for me; but when I left those parts
+where nobody knew you, and got a little nearer 'Frisco, where people
+might have known us both, I thought it better not to travel round with a
+kid o' that size as his FATHER. So I got a young fellow here to pass him
+off as HIS little brother, and look after him and board him; and I paid
+him a big price for it, too, you bet! You wouldn't think it was a man
+who's now swelling around here, the top o' the pile, that ever took
+money from a brute like me, and for such schoolmaster work, too; but he
+did, and his name was Van Loo, a clerk of the Ditch Company."
+
+"Van Loo!" said the woman, with a movement of disgust; "THAT man!"
+
+"What's the matter with Van Loo?" he said, with a coarse laugh, enjoying
+his wife's discomfiture. "He speaks French and Spanish, and you oughter
+hear the kid roll off the lingo he's got from him. He's got style, and
+knows how to dress, and you ought to see the kid bow and scrape, and how
+he carries himself. Now, Van Loo wasn't exactly my style, and I reckon I
+don't hanker after him much, but he served my purpose."
+
+"And this man knows"--she said, with a shudder.
+
+"He knows Steptoe and the boy, but he don't know Horncastle nor YOU.
+Don't you be skeert. He's the last man in the world who would hanker to
+see me or the kid again, or would dare to say that he ever had! Lord!
+I'd like to see his fastidious mug if me and Eddy walked in upon him and
+his high-toned mother and sister some arternoon." He threw himself back
+and laughed a derisive, spasmodic, choking laugh, which was so far from
+being genial that it even seemed to indicate a lively appreciation of
+pain in others rather than of pleasure in himself. He had often laughed
+at her in the same way.
+
+"And where is he now?" she said, with a compressed lip.
+
+"At school. Where, I don't tell you. You know why. But he's looked after
+by me, and d----d well looked after, too."
+
+She hesitated, composed her face with an effort, parted her lips, and
+looked out of the window into the gathering darkness. Then after a
+moment she said slowly, yet with a certain precision:--
+
+"And his mother? Do you ever talk to him of HER? Does--does he ever
+speak of ME?"
+
+"What do you think?" he said comfortably, changing his position in the
+chair, and trying to read her face in the shadow. "Come, now. You don't
+know, eh? Well--no! NO! You understand. No! He's MY friend--MINE! He's
+stood by me through thick and thin. Run at my heels when everybody else
+fled me. Dodged vigilance committees with me, laid out in the brush with
+me with his hand in mine when the sheriff's deputies were huntin' me;
+shut his jaw close when, if he squealed, he'd have been called another
+victim of the brute Horncastle, and been as petted and canoodled as
+you."
+
+It would have been difficult for any one but the woman who knew the man
+before her to have separated his brutish delight in paining her from
+another feeling she had never dreamt him capable of,--an intense
+and fierce pride in his affection for his child. And it was the more
+hopeless to her that it was not the mere sentiment of reciprocation,
+but the material instinct of paternity in its most animal form. And it
+seemed horrible to her that the only outcome of what had been her own
+wild, youthful passion for this brute was this love for the flesh of her
+flesh, for she was more and more conscious as he spoke that her
+yearning for the boy was the yearning of an equally dumb and unreasoning
+maternity. They had met again as animals--in fear, contempt, and anger
+of each other; but the animal had triumphed in both.
+
+When she spoke again it was as the woman of the world,--the woman who
+had laughed two years ago at the irrepressible Barker. "It's a new
+thing," she said, languidly turning her rings on her fingers, "to see
+you in the role of a doting father. And may I ask how long you have had
+this amiable weakness, and how long it is to last?"
+
+To her surprise and the keen retaliating delight of her sex, a conscious
+flush covered his face to the crisp edges of his black and matted beard.
+For a moment she hoped that he had lied. But, to her greater surprise,
+he stammered in equal frankness: "It's growed upon me for the last five
+years--ever since I was alone with him." He stopped, cleared his throat,
+and then, standing up before her, said in his former voice, but with a
+more settled and intense deliberation: "You wanter know how long it
+will last, do ye? Well, you know your special friend, Jim Stacy--the big
+millionaire--the great Jim of the Stock Exchange--the man that pinches
+the money market of Californy between his finger and thumb and makes it
+squeal in New York--the man who shakes the stock market when he sneezes?
+Well, it will go on until that man is a beggar; until he has to borrow
+a dime for his breakfast, and slump out of his lunch with a cent's
+worth of rat poison or a bullet in his head! It'll go on until his old
+partner--that softy George Barker--comes to the bottom of his d----d
+fool luck and is a penny-a-liner for the papers and a hanger-round at
+free lunches, and his scatter-brained wife runs away with another man!
+It'll go on until the high-toned Demorest, the last of those three
+little tin gods of Heavy Tree Hill, will have to climb down, and will
+know what I feel and what he's made me feel, and will wish himself in
+hell before he ever made the big strike on Heavy Tree! That's me! You
+hear me! I'm shoutin'! It'll last till then! It may be next week, next
+month, next year. But it'll come. And when it does come you'll see me
+and Eddy just waltzin' in and takin' the chief seats in the synagogue!
+And you'll have a free pass to the show!"
+
+Either he was too intoxicated with his vengeful vision, or the shadows
+of the room had deepened, but he did not see the quick flush that
+had risen to his wife's face with this allusion to Barker, nor the
+after-settling of her handsome features into a dogged determination
+equal to his own. His blind fury against the three partners did not
+touch her curiosity; she was only struck with the evident depth of his
+emotion. He had never been a braggart; his hostility had always been
+lazy and cynical. Remembering this, she had a faint stirring of respect
+for the undoubted courage and consciousness of strength shown in
+this wild but single-handed crusade against wealth and power; rather,
+perhaps, it seemed to her to condone her own weakness in her youthful
+and inexplicable passion for him. No wonder she had submitted.
+
+"Then you have nothing more to tell me?" she said after a pause, rising
+and going towards the mantel.
+
+"You needn't light up for me," he returned, rising also. "I am going.
+Unless," he added, with his coarse laugh, "you think it wouldn't look
+well for Mrs. Horncastle to have been sitting in the dark with--a
+stranger!" He paused as she contemptuously put down the candlestick and
+threw the unlit match into the grate. "No, I've nothing more to tell.
+He's a fancy-looking pup. You'd take him for twenty-one, though he's
+only sixteen--clean-limbed and perfect--but for one thing"--He stopped.
+He met her quick look of interrogation, however, with a lowering silence
+that, nevertheless, changed again as he surveyed her erect figure by
+the faint light of the window with a sardonic smile. "He favors you, I
+think, and in all but one thing, too."
+
+"And that?" she queried coldly, as he seemed to hesitate.
+
+"He ain't ashamed of ME," he returned, with a laugh.
+
+The door closed behind him; she heard his heavy step descend the
+creaking stairs; he was gone. She went to the window and threw it
+open, as if to get rid of the atmosphere charged with his presence,--a
+presence still so potent that she now knew that for the last five
+minutes she had been, to her horror, struggling against its magnetism.
+She even recoiled now at the thought of her child, as if, in these new
+confidences over it, it had revived the old intimacy in this link
+of their common flesh. She looked down from her window on the square
+shoulders, thick throat, and crisp matted hair of her husband as he
+vanished in the darkness, and drew a breath of freedom,--a freedom not
+so much from him as from her own weakness that he was bearing away with
+him into the exonerating night.
+
+She shut the window and sank down in her chair again, but in the
+encompassing and compassionate obscurity of the room. And this was the
+man she had loved and for whom she had wrecked her young life! Or WAS
+it love? and, if NOT, how was she better than he? Worse; for he was
+more loyal to that passion that had brought them together and its
+responsibilities than she was. She had suffered the perils and pangs of
+maternity, and yet had only the mere animal yearning for her offspring,
+while he had taken over the toil and duty, and even the devotion, of
+parentage himself. But then she remembered also how he had fascinated
+her--a simple schoolgirl--by his sheer domineering strength, and how the
+objections of her parents to this coarse and common man had forced her
+into a clandestine intimacy that ended in her complete subjection to
+him. She remembered the birth of an infant whose concealment from her
+parents and friends was compassed by his low cunning; she remembered the
+late atonement of marriage preferred by the man she had already begun
+to loathe and fear, and who she now believed was eager only for her
+inheritance. She remembered her abject compliance through the greater
+fear of the world, the stormy scenes that followed their ill-omened
+union, her final abandonment of her husband, and the efforts of her
+friends and family who had rescued the last of her property from him.
+She was glad she remembered it; she dwelt upon it, upon his cruelty, his
+coarseness and vulgarity, until she saw, as she honestly believed, the
+hidden springs of his affection for their child. It was HIS child in
+nature, however it might have favored her in looks; it was HIS own
+brutal SELF he was worshiping in his brutal progeny. How else could it
+have ignored HER--its own mother? She never doubted the truth of what
+he had told her--she had seen it in his own triumphant eyes. And yet she
+would have made a kind mother; she remembered with a smile and a slight
+rising of color the affection of Barker's baby for her; she remembered
+with a deepening of that color the thrill of satisfaction she had felt
+in her husband's fulmination against Mrs. Barker, and, more than all,
+she felt in his blind and foolish hatred of Barker himself a delicious
+condonation of the strange feeling that had sprung up in her heart for
+Barker's simple, straightforward nature. How could HE understand,
+how could THEY understand (by the plural she meant Mrs. Barker and
+Horncastle), a character so innately noble. In her strange attraction
+towards him she had felt a charming sense of what she believed was a
+superior and even matronly protection; in the utter isolation of her
+life now--and with her husband's foolish abuse of him ringing in her
+ears--it seemed a sacred duty. She had lost a son. Providence had sent
+her an ideal friend to replace him. And this was quite consistent, too,
+with a faint smile that began to play about her mouth as she recalled
+some instances of Barker's delightful and irresistible youthfulness.
+
+There was a clatter of hoofs and the sound of many voices from the
+street. Mrs. Horncastle knew it was the down coach changing horses; it
+would be off again in a few moments, and, no doubt, bearing her husband
+away with it. A new feeling of relief came over her as she at last heard
+the warning "All aboard!" and the great vehicle clattered and rolled
+into the darkness, trailing its burning lights across her walls and
+ceiling. But now she heard steps on the staircase, a pause before her
+room, a whisper of voices, the opening of the door, the rustle of a
+skirt, and a little feminine cry of protest as a man apparently tried to
+follow the figure into the room. "No, no! I tell you NO!" remonstrated
+the woman's voice in a hurried whisper. "It won't do. Everybody knows
+me here. You must not come in now. You must wait to be announced by the
+servant. Hush! Go!"
+
+There was a slight struggle, the sound of a kiss, and the woman
+succeeded in finally shutting the door. Then she walked slowly, but with
+a certain familiarity towards the mantel, struck a match and lit the
+candle. The light shone upon the bright eyes and slightly flushed face
+of Mrs. Barker. But the motionless woman in the chair had recognized her
+voice and the voice of her companion at once. And then their eyes met.
+
+Mrs. Barker drew back, but did not utter a cry. Mrs. Horncastle, with
+eyes even brighter than her companion's, smiled. The red deepened in
+Mrs. Barker's cheek.
+
+"This is my room!" she said indignantly, with a sweeping gesture around
+the walls.
+
+"I should judge so," said Mrs. Horncastle, following the gesture; "but,"
+she added quietly, "they put ME into it. It appears, however, they did
+not expect you."
+
+Mrs. Barker saw her mistake. "No, no," she said apologetically, "of
+course not." Then she added, with nervous volubility, sitting down and
+tugging at her gloves, "You see, I just ran down from Marysville to take
+a look at my father's old house on my way to Hymettus. I hope I haven't
+disturbed you. Perhaps," she said, with sudden eagerness, "you were
+asleep when I came in!"
+
+"No," said Mrs. Horncastle, "I was not sleeping nor dreaming. I heard
+you come in."
+
+"Some of these men are such idiots," said Mrs. Barker, with a
+half-hysterical laugh. "They seem to think if a woman accepts the least
+courtesy from them they've a right to be familiar. But I fancy that
+fellow was a little astonished when I shut the door in his face."
+
+"I fancy he WAS," returned Mrs. Horncastle dryly. "But I shouldn't call
+Mr. Van Loo an idiot. He has the reputation of being a cautious business
+man."
+
+Mrs. Barker bit her lip. Her companion had been recognized. She rose
+with a slight flirt of her skirt. "I suppose I must go and get a room;
+there was nobody in the office when I came. Everything is badly managed
+here since my father took away the best servants to Hymettus." She
+moved with affected carelessness towards the door, when Mrs. Horncastle,
+without rising from her seat, said:--
+
+"Why not stay here?"
+
+Mrs. Barker brightened for a moment. "Oh," she said, with polite
+deprecation, "I couldn't think of turning you out."
+
+"I don't intend you shall," said Mrs. Horncastle. "We will stay here
+together until you go with me to Hymettus, or until Mr. Van Loo leaves
+the hotel. He will hardly attempt to come in here again if I remain."
+
+Mrs. Barker, with a half-laugh, sat down irresolutely. Mrs. Horncastle
+gazed at her curiously; she was evidently a novice in this sort of
+thing. But, strange to say,--and I leave the ethics of this for the sex
+to settle,--the fact did not soften Mrs. Horncastle's heart, nor in the
+least qualify her attitude towards the younger woman. After an
+awkward pause Mrs. Barker rose again. "Well, it's very good of you,
+and--and---I'll just run out and wash my hands and get the dust off me,
+and come back."
+
+"No, Mrs. Barker," said Mrs. Horncastle, rising and approaching her,
+"you will first wash your hands of this Mr. Van Loo, and get some of the
+dust of the rendezvous off you before you do anything else. You CAN do
+it by simply telling him, SHOULD YOU MEET HIM IN THE HALL, that I was
+sitting here when he came in, and heard EVERYTHING! Depend upon it, he
+won't trouble you again."
+
+But Mrs. Barker, though inexperienced in love, was a good fighter.
+The best of the sex are. She dropped into the rocking-chair, and began
+rocking backwards and forwards while still tugging at her gloves, and
+said, in a gradually warming voice, "I certainly shall not magnify Mr.
+Van Loo's silliness to that importance. And I have yet to learn what you
+mean by talking about a rendezvous! And I want to know," she continued,
+suddenly stopping her rocking and tilting the rockers impertinently
+behind her, as, with her elbows squared on the chair arms, she tilted
+her own face defiantly up into Mrs. Horncastle's, "how a woman in your
+position--who doesn't live with her husband--dares to talk to ME!"
+
+There was a lull before the storm. Mrs. Horncastle approached nearer,
+and, laying her hand on the back of the chair, leaned over her, and,
+with a white face and a metallic ring in her voice, said: "It is just
+because I am a woman IN MY POSITION that I do! It is because I don't
+live with my husband that I can tell you what it will be when you no
+longer live with yours--which will be the inevitable result of what you
+are now doing. It is because I WAS in this position that the very man
+who is pursuing you, because he thinks you are discontented with YOUR
+husband, once thought he could pursue me because I had left MINE. You
+are here with him alone, without the knowledge of your husband; call it
+folly, caprice, vanity, or what you like, it can have but one end--to
+put you in my place at last, to be considered the fair game afterwards
+for any man who may succeed him. You can test him and the truth of what
+I say by telling him now that I heard all."
+
+"Suppose he doesn't care what you have heard," said Mrs. Barker sharply.
+"Suppose he says nobody would believe you, if 'telling' is your game.
+Suppose he is a friend of my husband and he thinks him a much better
+guardian of my reputation than a woman like you. Suppose he should be
+the first one to tell my husband of the foul slander invented by you!"
+
+For an instant Mrs. Horncastle was taken aback by the audacity of the
+woman before her. She knew the simple confidence and boyish trust of
+Barker in his wife in spite of their sometimes strained relations, and
+she knew how difficult it would be to shake it. And she had no idea of
+betraying Mrs. Barker's secret to him, though she had made this scene
+in his interest. She had wished to save Mrs. Barker from a compromising
+situation, even if there was a certain vindictiveness in her exposing
+her to herself. Yet she knew it was quite possible now, if Mrs. Barker
+had immediate access to her husband, that she would convince him of her
+perfect innocence. Nevertheless, she had still great confidence in Van
+Loo's fear of scandal and his utter unmanliness. She knew he was not
+in love with Mrs. Barker, and this puzzled her when she considered the
+evident risk he was running now. Her face, however, betrayed nothing.
+She drew back from Mrs. Barker, and, with an indifferent and graceful
+gesture towards the door, said, as she leaned against the mantel, "Go,
+then, and see this much-abused gentleman, and then go together with him
+and make peace with your husband--even on those terms. If I have saved
+you from the consequences of your folly I shall be willing to bear even
+HIS blame."
+
+"Whatever I do," said Mrs. Barker, rising hotly, "I shall not stay here
+any longer to be insulted." She flounced out of the room and swept down
+the staircase into the office. Here she found an overworked clerk, and
+with crimson cheeks and flashing eyes wanted to know why in her own
+father's hotel she had found her own sitting-room engaged, and had been
+obliged to wait half an hour before she could be shown into a decent
+apartment to remove her hat and cloak in; and how it was that even
+the gentleman who had kindly escorted her had evidently been unable
+to procure her any assistance. She said this in a somewhat high voice,
+which might have reached the ears of that gentleman had he been in the
+vicinity. But he was not, and she was forced to meet the somewhat dazed
+apologies of the clerk alone, and to accompany the chambermaid to a room
+only a few paces distant from the one she had quitted. Here she hastily
+removed her outer duster and hat, washed her hands, and consulted her
+excited face in the mirror, with the door ajar and an ear sensitively
+attuned to any step in the corridor. But all this was effected so
+rapidly that she was at last obliged to sit down in a chair near the
+half-opened door, and wait. She waited five minutes--ten--but still no
+footstep. Then she went out into the corridor and listened, and then,
+smoothing her face, she slipped downstairs, past the door of that
+hateful room, and reappeared before the clerk with a smiling but
+somewhat pale and languid face. She had found the room very comfortable,
+but it was doubtful whether she would stay over night or go on to
+Hymettus. Had anybody been inquiring for her? She expected to meet
+friends. No! And her escort--the gentleman who came with her--was
+possibly in the billiard-room or the bar?
+
+"Oh no! He was gone," said the clerk.
+
+"Gone!" echoed Mrs. Barker. "Impossible! He was--he was here only a
+moment ago."
+
+The clerk rang a bell sharply. The stableman appeared.
+
+"That tall, smooth-faced man, in a high hat, who came with the lady,"
+said the clerk severely and concisely,--"didn't you tell me he was
+gone?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the stableman.
+
+"Are you sure?" interrupted Mrs. Barker, with a dazzling smile that,
+however, masked a sudden tightening round her heart.
+
+"Quite sure, miss," said the stableman, "for he was in the yard when
+Steptoe came, after missing the coach. He wanted a buggy to take him
+over to the Divide. We hadn't one, so he went over to the other stables,
+and he didn't come back, so I reckon he's gone. I remember it, because
+Steptoe came by a minute after he'd gone, in another buggy, and as he
+was going to the Divide, too, I wondered why the gentleman hadn't gone
+with him."
+
+"And he left no message for me? He said nothing?" asked Mrs. Barker,
+quite breathless, but still smiling.
+
+"He said nothin' to me but 'Isn't that Steptoe over there?' when Steptoe
+came in. And I remember he said it kinder suddent--as if he was reminded
+o' suthin' he'd forgot; and then he asked for a buggy. Ye see,
+miss," added the man, with a certain rough consideration for her
+disappointment, "that's mebbe why he clean forgot to leave a message."
+
+Mrs. Barker turned away, and ascended the stairs. Selfishness is quick
+to recognize selfishness, and she saw in a flash the reason of Van Loo's
+abandonment of her. Some fear of discovery had alarmed him; perhaps
+Steptoe knew her husband; perhaps he had heard of Mrs. Horncastle's
+possession of the sitting-room; perhaps--for she had not seen him since
+their playful struggle at the door--he had recognized the woman who was
+there, and the selfish coward had run away. Yes; Mrs. Horncastle was
+right: she had been only a miserable dupe.
+
+Her cheeks blazed as she entered the room she had just quitted,
+and threw herself in a chair by the window. She bit her lip as she
+remembered how for the last three months she had been slowly yielding
+to Van Loo's cautious but insinuating solicitation, from a flirtation in
+the San Francisco hotel to a clandestine meeting in the street; from a
+ride in the suburbs to a supper in a fast restaurant after the theatre.
+Other women did it who were fashionable and rich, as Van Loo had pointed
+out to her. Other fashionable women also gambled in stocks, and had
+their private broker in a "Charley" or a "Jack." Why should not Mrs.
+Barker have business with a "Paul" Van Loo, particularly as this fast
+craze permitted secret meetings?--for business of this kind could not be
+conducted in public, and permitted the fair gambler to call at private
+offices without fear and without reproach. Mrs. Barker's vanity, Mrs.
+Barker's love of ceremony and form, Mrs. Barker's snobbishness, were
+flattered by the attentions of this polished gentleman with a foreign
+name, which even had the flavor of nobility, who never picked up her fan
+and handed it to her without bowing, and always rose when she entered
+the room. Mrs. Barker's scant schoolgirl knowledge was touched by this
+gentleman, who spoke French fluently, and delicately explained to her
+the libretto of a risky opera bouffe. And now she had finally yielded
+to a meeting out of San Francisco--and an ostensible visit--still as a
+speculator--to one or two mining districts--with HER BROKER. This
+was the boldest of her steps--an original idea of the fashionable Van
+Loo--which, no doubt, in time would become a craze, too. But it was a
+long step--and there was a streak of rustic decorum in Mrs. Barker's
+nature--the instinct that made Kitty Carter keep a perfectly secluded
+and distinct sitting-room in the days when she served her father's
+guests--that now had impelled her to make it a proviso that the first
+step of her journey should be from her old home in her father's hotel.
+It was this instinct of the proprieties that had revived in her suddenly
+at the door of the old sitting-room.
+
+Then a new phase of the situation flashed upon her. It was hard for her
+vanity to accept Van Loo's desertion as voluntary and final. What if
+that hateful woman had lured him away by some trick or artfully designed
+message? She was capable of such meanness to insure the fulfillment of
+her prophecy. Or, more dreadful thought, what if she had some hold on
+his affections--she had said that he had pursued her; or, more infamous
+still, there were some secret understanding between them, and that
+she--Mrs. Barker--was the dupe of them both! What was she doing in the
+hotel at such a moment? What was her story of going to Hymettus but a
+lie as transparent as her own? The tortures of jealousy, which is as
+often the incentive as it is the result of passion, began to rack her.
+She had probably yet known no real passion for this man; but with the
+thought of his abandoning her, and the conception of his faithlessness,
+came the wish to hold and keep him that was dangerously near it. What
+if he were even then in that room, the room where she had said she would
+not stay to be insulted, and they, thus secured against her intrusion,
+were laughing at her now? She half rose at the thought, but a sound of
+a horse's hoofs in the stable-yard arrested her. She ran to the window
+which gave upon it, and, crouching down beside it, listened eagerly. The
+clatter of hoofs ceased; the stableman was talking to some one;
+suddenly she heard the stableman say, "Mrs. Barker is here." Her heart
+leaped,--Van Loo had returned.
+
+But here the voice of the other man which she had not yet heard arose
+for the first time clear and distinct. "Are you quite sure? I didn't
+know she left San Francisco."
+
+The room reeled around her. The voice was George Barker's, her husband!
+"Very well," he continued. "You needn't put up my horse for the night. I
+may take her back a little later in the buggy."
+
+In another moment she had swept down the passage, and burst into the
+other room. Mrs. Horncastle was sitting by the table with a book in her
+hand. She started as the half-maddened woman closed the door, locked it
+behind her, and cast herself on her knees at her feet.
+
+"My husband is here," she gasped. "What shall I do? In heaven's name
+help me!"
+
+"Is Van Loo still here?" said Mrs. Horncastle quickly.
+
+"No; gone. He went when I came."
+
+Mrs. Horncastle caught her hand and looked intently into her frightened
+face. "Then what have you to fear from your husband?" she said abruptly.
+
+"You don't understand. He didn't know I was here. He thought me in San
+Francisco."
+
+"Does he know it now?"
+
+"Yes. I heard the stableman tell him. Couldn't you say I came here with
+you; that we were here together; that it was just a little freak of
+ours? Oh, do!"
+
+Mrs. Horncastle thought a moment. "Yes," she said, "we'll see him here
+together."
+
+"Oh no! no!" said Mrs. Barker suddenly, clinging to her dress and
+looking fearfully towards the door. "I couldn't, COULDN'T see him now.
+Say I'm sick, tired out, gone to my room."
+
+"But you'll have to see him later," said Mrs. Horncastle wonderingly.
+
+"Yes, but he may go first. I heard him tell them not to put up his
+horse."
+
+"Good!" said Mrs. Horncastle suddenly. "Go to your room and lock the
+door, and I'll come to you later. Stop! Would Mr. Barker be likely to
+disturb you if I told him you would like to be alone?"
+
+"No, he never does. I often tell him that."
+
+Mrs. Horncastle smiled faintly. "Come, quick, then," she said, "for he
+may come HERE first."
+
+Opening the door she passed into the half-dark and empty hall. "Now
+run!" She heard the quick rustle of Mrs. Barker's skirt die away in the
+distance, the opening and shutting of a door--silence--and then turned
+back into her own room.
+
+She was none too soon. Presently she heard Barker's voice saying, "Thank
+you, I can find the way," his still buoyant step on the staircase, and
+then saw his brown curls rising above the railing. The light streaming
+through the open door of the sitting room into the half-lit hall had
+partially dazzled him, and, already bewildered, he was still more
+dazzled at the unexpected apparition of the smiling face and bright eyes
+of Mrs. Horncastle standing in the doorway.
+
+"You have fairly caught us," she said, with charming composure; "but I
+had half a mind to let you wander round the hotel a little longer. Come
+in." Barker followed her in mechanically, and she closed the door. "Now,
+sit down," she said gayly, "and tell me how you knew we were here, and
+what you mean by surprising us at this hour."
+
+Barker's ready color always rose on meeting Mrs. Horncastle, for whom
+he entertained a respectful admiration, not without some fear of her
+worldly superiority. He flushed, bowed, and stared somewhat blankly
+around the room, at the familiar walls, at the chair from which Mrs.
+Horncastle had just risen, and finally at his wife's glove, which Mrs.
+Horncastle had a moment before ostentatiously thrown on the table.
+Seeing which she pounced upon it with assumed archness, and pretended to
+conceal it.
+
+"I had no idea my wife was here," he said at last, "and I was quite
+surprised when the man told me, for she had not written to me about it."
+As his face was brightening, she for the first time noticed that his
+frank gray eyes had an abstracted look, and there was a faint line of
+contraction on his youthful forehead. "Still less," he added, "did I
+look for the pleasure of meeting you. For I only came here to inquire
+about my old partner, Demorest, who arrived from Europe a few days ago,
+and who should have reached Hymettus early this afternoon. But now I
+hear he came all the way by coach instead of by rail, and got off at the
+cross-road, and we must have passed each other on the different trails.
+So my journey would have gone for nothing, only that I now shall have
+the pleasure of going back with you and Kitty. It will be a lovely drive
+by moonlight."
+
+Relieved by this revelation, it was easy work for Mrs. Horncastle to
+launch out into a playful, tantalizing, witty--but, I grieve to say,
+entirely imaginative--account of her escapade with Mrs. Barker. How,
+left alone at the San Francisco hotel while their gentlemen friends
+were enjoying themselves at Hymettus, they resolved upon a little trip,
+partly for the purpose of looking into some small investments of their
+own, and partly for the fun of the thing. What funny experiences they
+had! How, in particular, one horrid inquisitive, vulgar wretch had been
+boring a European fellow passenger who was going to Hymettus, finally
+asking him where he had come from last, and when he answered "Hymettus,"
+thought the man was insulting him--
+
+"But," interrupted the laughing Barker, "that passenger may have been
+Demorest, who has just come from Greece, and surely Kitty would have
+recognized him."
+
+Mrs. Horncastle instantly saw her blunder, and not only retrieved it,
+but turned it to account. Ah, yes! but by that time poor Kitty, unused
+to long journeys and the heat, was utterly fagged out, was asleep, and
+perfectly unrecognizable in veils and dusters on the back seat of the
+coach. And this brought her to the point--which was, that she was sorry
+to say, on arriving, the poor child was nearly wild with a headache from
+fatigue and had gone to bed, and she had promised not to disturb her.
+
+The undisguised amusement, mingled with relief, that had overspread
+Barker's face during this lively recital might have pricked the
+conscience of Mrs. Horncastle, but for some reason I fear it did not.
+But it emboldened her to go on. "I said I promised her that I would see
+she wasn't disturbed; but, of course, now that YOU, her HUSBAND, have
+come, if"--
+
+"Not for worlds," interrupted Barker earnestly. "I know poor Kitty's
+headaches, and I never disturb her, poor child, except when I'm
+thoughtless." And here one of the most thoughtful men in the world in
+his sensitive consideration of others beamed at her with such frank
+and wonderful eyes that the arch hypocrite before him with difficulty
+suppressed a hysterical desire to laugh, and felt the conscious blood
+flush her to the root of her hair. "You know," he went on, with a sigh,
+half of relief and half of reminiscence, "that I often think I'm a great
+bother to a clear-headed, sensible girl like Kitty. She knows people so
+much better than I do. She's wonderfully equipped for the world, and,
+you see, I'm only 'lucky,' as everybody says, and I dare say part of
+my luck was to have got her. I'm very glad she's a friend of yours, you
+know, for somehow I fancied always that you were not interested in her,
+or that you didn't understand each other until now. It's odd that nice
+women don't always like nice women, isn't it? I'm glad she was with you;
+I was quite startled to learn she was here, and couldn't make it out. I
+thought at first she might have got anxious about our little Sta, who
+is with me and the nurse at Hymettus. But I'm glad it was only a lark. I
+shouldn't wonder," he added, with a laugh, "although she always declares
+she isn't one of those 'doting, idiotic mothers,' that she found it a
+little dull without the boy, for all she thought it was better for ME to
+take him somewhere for a change of air."
+
+The situation was becoming more difficult for Mrs. Horncastle than she
+had conceived. There had been a certain excitement in its first direct
+appeal to her tact and courage, and even, she believed, an unselfish
+desire to save the relations between husband and wife if she could. But
+she had not calculated upon his unconscious revelations, nor upon their
+effect upon herself. She had concluded to believe that Kitty had, in a
+moment of folly, lent herself to this hare-brained escapade, but it now
+might be possible that it had been deliberately planned. Kitty had sent
+her husband and child away three weeks before. Had she told the whole
+truth? How long had this been going on? And if the soulless Van Loo
+had deserted her now, was it not, perhaps, the miserable ending of an
+intrigue rather than its beginning? Had she been as great a dupe of this
+woman as the husband before her? A new and double consciousness came
+over her that for a moment prevented her from meeting his honest eyes.
+She felt the shame of being an accomplice mingled with a fierce joy at
+the idea of a climax that might separate him from his wife forever.
+
+Luckily he did not notice it, but with a continued sense of relief threw
+himself back in his chair, and glancing familiarly round the walls broke
+into his youthful laugh. "Lord! how I remember this room in the old
+days. It was Kitty's own private sitting-room, you know, and I used to
+think it looked just as fresh and pretty as she. I used to think her
+crayon drawing wonderful, and still more wonderful that she should have
+that unnecessary talent when it was quite enough for her to be just
+'Kitty.' You know, don't you, how you feel at those times when you're
+quite happy in being inferior"--He stopped a moment with a sudden
+recollection that Mrs. Horncastle's marriage had been notoriously
+unhappy. "I mean," he went on with a shy little laugh and an innocent
+attempt at gallantry which the very directness of his simple nature made
+atrociously obvious,--"I mean what you've made lots of young fellows
+feel. There used to be a picture of Colonel Brigg on the mantelpiece, in
+full uniform, and signed by himself 'for Kitty;' and Lord! how jealous I
+was of it, for Kitty never took presents from gentlemen, and nobody even
+was allowed in here, though she helped her father all over the
+hotel. She was awfully strict in those days," he interpolated, with
+a thoughtful look and a half-sigh; "but then she wasn't married. I
+proposed to her in this very room! Lord! I remember how frightened I
+was." He stopped for an instant, and then said with a certain timidity,
+"Do you mind my telling you something about it?"
+
+Mrs. Horncastle was hardly prepared to hear these ingenuous domestic
+details, but she smiled vaguely, although she could not suppress a
+somewhat impatient movement with her hands. Even Barker noticed it, but
+to her surprise moved a little nearer to her, and in a half-entreating
+way said, "I hope I don't bore you, but it's something confidential. Do
+you know that she first REFUSED me?"
+
+Mrs. Horncastle smiled, but could not resist a slight toss of her head.
+"I believe they all do when they are sure of a man."
+
+"No!" said Barker eagerly, "you don't understand. I proposed to her
+because I thought I was rich. In a foolish moment I thought I had
+discovered that some old stocks I had had acquired a fabulous value. She
+believed it, too, but because she thought I was now a rich man and she
+only a poor girl--a mere servant to her father's guests--she refused me.
+Refused me because she thought I might regret it in the future, because
+she would not have it said that she had taken advantage of my proposal
+only when I was rich enough to make it."
+
+"Well?" said Mrs. Horncastle incredulously, gazing straight before her;
+"and then?"
+
+"In about an hour I discovered my error, that my stocks were worthless,
+that I was still a poor man. I thought it only honest to return to her
+and tell her, even though I had no hope. And then she pitied me, and
+cried, and accepted me. I tell it to you as her friend." He drew a
+little nearer and quite fraternally laid his hand upon her own. "I know
+you won't betray me, though you may think it wrong for me to have told
+it; but I wanted you to know how good she was and true."
+
+For a moment Mrs. Horncastle was amazed and discomfited, although she
+saw, with the inscrutable instinct of her sex, no inconsistency between
+the Kitty of those days and the Kitty now shamefully hiding from her
+husband in the same hotel. No doubt Kitty had some good reason for her
+chivalrous act. But she could see the unmistakable effect of that act
+upon the more logically reasoning husband, and that it might lead him to
+be more merciful to the later wrong. And there was a keener irony that
+his first movement of unconscious kindliness towards her was the outcome
+of his affection for his undeserving wife.
+
+"You said just now she was more practical than you," she said dryly.
+"Apart from this evidence of it, what other reasons have you for
+thinking so? Do you refer to her independence or her dealings in the
+stock market?" she added, with a laugh.
+
+"No," said Barker seriously, "for I do not think her quite practical
+there; indeed, I'm afraid she is about as bad as I am. But I'm glad you
+have spoken, for I can now talk confidentially with you, and as you
+and she are both in the same ventures, perhaps she will feel less
+compunction in hearing from you--as your own opinion--what I have
+to tell you than if I spoke to her myself. I am afraid she trusts
+implicitly to Van Loo's judgment as her broker. I believe he is strictly
+honorable, but the general opinion of his business insight is not high.
+They--perhaps I ought to say HE--have been at least so unlucky that
+they might have learned prudence. The loss of twenty thousand dollars in
+three months"--
+
+"Twenty thousand!" echoed Mrs. Horncastle.
+
+"Yes. Why, you knew that; it was in the mine you and she visited; or,
+perhaps," he added hastily, as he flushed at his indiscretion, "she
+didn't tell you that."
+
+But Mrs. Horncastle as hastily said, "Yes--yes--of course, only I had
+forgotten the amount;" and he continued:--
+
+"That loss would have frightened any man; but you women are more daring.
+Only Van Loo ought to have withdrawn. Don't you think so? Of course I
+couldn't say anything to him without seeming to condemn my own wife; I
+couldn't say anything to HER because it's her own money."
+
+"I didn't know that Mrs. Barker had any money of her own," said Mrs.
+Horncastle.
+
+"Well, I gave it to her," said Barker, with sublime simplicity, "and
+that would make it all the worse for me to speak about it."
+
+Mrs. Horncastle was silent. A new theory flashed upon her which seemed
+to reconcile all the previous inconsistencies of the situation. Van
+Loo, under the guise of a lover, was really possessing himself of Mrs.
+Barker's money. This accounted for the risks he was running in this
+escapade, which were so incongruous to the rascal's nature. He was
+calculating that the scandal of an intrigue would relieve him of
+the perils of criminal defalcation. It was compatible with Kitty's
+innocence, though it did not relieve her vanity of the part it played in
+this despicable comedy of passion. All that Mrs. Horncastle thought of
+now was the effect of its eventful revelation upon the man before
+her. Of course, he would overlook his wife's trustfulness and business
+ignorance--it would seem so like his own unselfish faith! That was the
+fault of all unselfish goodness; it even took the color of adjacent
+evil, without altering the nature of either. Mrs. Horncastle set her
+teeth tightly together, but her beautiful mouth smiled upon Barker,
+though her eyes were bent upon the tablecloth before her.
+
+"I shall do all I can to impress your views upon her," she said at last,
+"though I fear they will have little weight if given as my own. And you
+overrate my general influence with her."
+
+Her handsome head drooped in such a thoughtful humility that Barker
+instinctively drew nearer to her. Besides, she had not lifted her dark
+lashes for some moments, and he had the still youthful habit of looking
+frankly into the eyes of those he addressed.
+
+"No," he said eagerly; "how could I? She could not help but love you
+and do as you would wish. I can't tell you how glad and relieved I am
+to find that you and she have become such friends. You know I always
+thought you beautiful, I always thought you so clever--I was even a
+little frightened of you; but I never until now knew you were so GOOD.
+No, stop! Yes, I DID know it. Do you remember once in San Francisco,
+when I found you with Sta in your lap in the drawing-room? I knew it
+then. You tried to make me think it was a whim--the fancy of a bored
+and worried woman. But I knew better. And I knew what you were thinking
+then. Shall I tell you?"
+
+As her eyes were still cast down, although her mouth was still smiling,
+in his endeavors to look into them his face was quite near hers. He
+fancied that it bore the look she had worn once before.
+
+"You were thinking," he said in a voice which had grown suddenly quite
+hesitating and tremulous,--he did not know why,--"that the poor little
+baby was quite friendless and alone. You were pitying it--you know you
+were--because there was no one to give it the loving care that was its
+due, and because it was intrusted to that hired nurse in that great
+hotel. You were thinking how you would love it if it were yours, and how
+cruel it was that Love was sent without an object to waste itself upon.
+You were: I saw it in your face."
+
+She suddenly lifted her eyes and looked full into his with a look that
+held and possessed him. For a moment his whole soul seemed to tremble
+on the verge of their lustrous depths, and he drew back dizzy and
+frightened. What he saw there he never clearly knew; but, whatever it
+was, it seemed to suddenly change his relations to her, to the room, to
+his wife, to the world without. It was a glimpse of a world of which
+he knew nothing. He had looked frankly and admiringly into the eyes of
+other pretty women; he had even gazed into her own before, but never
+with this feeling. A sudden sense that what he had seen there he had
+himself evoked, that it was an answer to some question he had scarcely
+yet formulated, and that they were both now linked by an understanding
+and consciousness that was irretrievable, came over him. He rose
+awkwardly and went to the window. She rose also, but more leisurely and
+easily, moved one of the books on the table, smoothed out her skirts,
+and changed her seat to a little sofa. It is the woman who always comes
+out of these crucial moments unruffled.
+
+"I suppose you will be glad to see your friend Mr. Demorest when you
+go back," she said pleasantly; "for of course he will be at Hymettus
+awaiting you."
+
+He turned eagerly, as he always did at the name. But even then he felt
+that Demorest was no longer of such importance to him. He felt, too,
+that he was not yet quite sure of his voice or even what to say. As he
+hesitated she went on half playfully: "It seems hard that you had to
+come all the way here on such a bootless errand. You haven't even seen
+your wife yet."
+
+The mention of his wife recalled him to himself, oddly enough, when
+Demorest's name had failed. But very differently. Out of his whirling
+consciousness came the instinctive feeling that he could not see her
+now. He turned, crossed the room, sat down on the sofa beside Mrs.
+Horncastle, and without, however, looking at her, said, with his eyes on
+the floor, "No; and I've been thinking that it's hardly worth while to
+disturb her so early to-morrow as I should have to go. So I think it's
+a good deal better to let her have a good night's rest, remain here
+quietly with you to-morrow until the stage leaves, and that both of you
+come over together. My horse is still saddled, and I will be back at
+Hymettus before Demorest has gone to bed."
+
+He was obliged to look up at her as he rose. Mrs. Horncastle was sitting
+erect, beautiful and dazzling as even he had never seen her before.
+For his resolution had suddenly lifted a great weight from her
+shoulders,--the dangerous meeting of husband and wife the next morning,
+and its results, whatever they might be, had been quietly averted. She
+felt, too, a half-frightened joy even in the constrained manner in which
+he had imparted his determination. That frankness which even she had
+sometimes found so crushing was gone.
+
+"I really think you are quite right," she said, rising also, "and,
+besides, you see, it will give me a chance to talk to her as you
+wished."
+
+"To talk to her as I wished?" echoed Barker abstractedly.
+
+"Yes, about Van Loo, you know," said Mrs. Horncastle, smiling.
+
+"Oh, certainly--about Van Loo, of course," he returned hurriedly.
+
+"And then," said Mrs. Horncastle brightly, "I'll tell her. Stay!" she
+interrupted herself hurriedly. "Why need I say anything about your
+having been here AT ALL? It might only annoy her, as you yourself
+suggest." She stopped breathlessly with parted lips.
+
+"Why, indeed?" said Barker vaguely. Yet all this was so unlike his usual
+truthfulness that he slightly hesitated.
+
+"Besides," continued Mrs. Horncastle, noticing it, "you know you can
+always tell her later, if necessary." And she added with a charming
+mischievousness, "As she didn't tell you she was coming, I really don't
+see why you are bound to tell her that you were here."
+
+The sophistry pleased Barker, even though it put him into a certain
+retaliating attitude towards his wife which he was not aware of feeling.
+But, as Mrs. Horncastle put it, it was only a playful attitude.
+
+"Certainly," he said. "Don't say anything about it."
+
+He moved to the door with his soft, broad-brimmed hat swinging between
+his fingers. She noticed for the first time that he looked taller in his
+long black serape and riding-boots, and, oddly enough, much more like
+the hero of an amorous tryst than Van Loo. "I know," she said brightly,
+"you are eager to get back to your old friend, and it would be selfish
+for me to try to keep you longer. You have had a stupid evening, but you
+have made it pleasant to me by telling me what you thought of me. And
+before you go I want you to believe that I shall try to keep that good
+opinion." She spoke frankly in contrast to the slight worldly constraint
+of Barker's manner; it seemed as if they had changed characters. And
+then she extended her hand.
+
+With a low bow, and without looking up, he took it. Again their
+pulses seemed to leap together with one accord and the same mysterious
+understanding. He could not tell if he had unconsciously pressed her
+hand or if she had returned the pressure. But when their hands unclasped
+it seemed as if it were the division of one flesh and spirit.
+
+She remained standing by the open door until his footsteps passed down
+the staircase. Then she suddenly closed and locked the door with an
+instinct that Mrs. Barker might at once return now that he was gone, and
+she wished to be a moment alone to recover herself. But she presently
+opened it again and listened. There was a noise in the courtyard, but it
+sounded like the rattle of wheels more than the clatter of a horseman.
+Then she was overcome--a sudden sense of pity for the unfortunate
+woman still hiding from her husband--and felt a momentary chivalrous
+exaltation of spirit. Certainly she had done "good" to that wretched
+"Kitty;" perhaps she had earned the epithet that Barker had applied to
+her. Perhaps that was the meaning of all this happiness to her, and the
+result was to be only the happiness and reconciliation of the wife and
+husband. This was to be her reward. I grieve to say that the tears had
+come into her beautiful eyes at this satisfactory conclusion, but she
+dashed them away and ran out into the hall. It was quite dark, but there
+was a faint glimmer on the opposite wall as if the door of Mrs. Barker's
+bedroom were ajar to an eager listener. She flew towards the glimmer,
+and pushed the door open: the room was empty. Empty of Mrs. Barker,
+empty of her dressing-box, her reticule and shawl. She was gone.
+
+Still, Mrs. Horncastle lingered; the woman might have got frightened and
+retreated to some further room at the opening of the door and the coming
+out of her husband. She walked along the passage, calling her name
+softly. She even penetrated the dreary, half-lit public parlor,
+expecting to find her crouching there. Then a sudden wild idea took
+possession of her: the miserable wife had repented of her act and of
+her concealment, and had crept downstairs to await her husband in the
+office. She had told him some new lie, had begged him to take her with
+him, and Barker, of course, had assented. Yes, she now knew why she
+had heard the rattling wheels instead of the clattering hoofs she had
+listened for. They had gone together, as he first proposed, in the
+buggy.
+
+She ran swiftly down the stairs and entered the office. The overworked
+clerk was busy and querulously curt. These women were always asking such
+idiotic questions. Yes, Mr. Barker had just gone.
+
+"With Mrs. Barker in the buggy?" asked Mrs. Horncastle.
+
+"No, as he came--on horseback. Mrs. Barker left HALF AN HOUR AGO."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+This was apparently too much for the long-suffering clerk. He lifted
+his eyes to the ceiling, and then, with painful precision, and accenting
+every word with his pencil on the desk before him, said deliberately,
+"Mrs. George Barker--left--here--with her--escort--the--man
+she--was--always--asking--for--in--the--buggy--at exactly--9.35." And he
+plunged into his work again.
+
+Mrs. Horncastle turned, ran up the staircase, re-entered the
+sitting-room, and slamming the door behind her, halted in the centre of
+the room, panting, erect, beautiful, and menacing. And she was alone in
+this empty room--this deserted hotel. From this very room her husband
+had left her with a brutality on his lips. From this room the fool
+and liar she had tried to warn had gone to her ruin with a swindling
+hypocrite. And from this room the only man in the world she ever cared
+for had gone forth bewildered, wronged, and abused, and she knew now she
+could have kept and comforted him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+When Philip Demorest left the stagecoach at the cross-roads he turned
+into the only wayside house, the blacksmith's shop, and, declaring his
+intention of walking over to Hymettus, asked permission to leave his
+hand-bag and wraps until they could be sent after him. The blacksmith
+was surprised that this "likely mannered," distinguished-looking "city
+man" should WALK eight miles when he could ride, and tried to dissuade
+him, offering his own buggy. But he was still more surprised when
+Demorest, laying aside his duster, took off his coat, and, slinging it
+on his arm, prepared to set forth with the good-humored assurance that
+he would do the distance in a couple of hours and get in in time for
+supper. "I wouldn't be too sure of that," said the blacksmith grimly,
+"or even of getting a room. They're a stuck-up lot over there, and they
+ain't goin' to hump themselves over a chap who comes traipsin' along
+the road like any tramp, with nary baggage." But Demorest laughingly
+accepted the risk, and taking his stout stick in one hand, pressed a
+gold coin into the blacksmith's palm, which was, however, declined
+with such reddening promptness that Demorest as promptly reddened and
+apologized. The habits of European travel had been still strong on him,
+and he felt a slight patriotic thrill as he said, with a grave smile,
+"Thank you, then; and thank you still more for reminding me that I am
+among my own 'people,'" and stepped lightly out into the road.
+
+The air was still deliciously cool, but warmer currents from the heated
+pines began to alternate with the wind from the summit. He found himself
+sometimes walking through a stratum of hot air which seemed to exhale
+from the wood itself, while his head and breast were swept by the
+mountain breeze. He felt the old intoxication of the balmy-scented
+air again, and the five years of care and hopelessness laid upon his
+shoulders since he had last breathed its fragrance slipped from them
+like a burden. There had been but little change here; perhaps the road
+was wider and the dust lay thicker, but the great pines still mounted
+in serried ranks on the slopes as before, with no gaps in their unending
+files. Here was the spot where the stagecoach had passed them that
+eventful morning when they were coming out of their camp-life into the
+world of civilization; a little further back, the spot where Jack Hamlin
+had forced upon him that grim memento of the attempted robbery of
+their cabin, which he had kept ever since. He half smiled again at the
+superstitious interest that had made him keep it, with the intention of
+some day returning to bury it, with all recollections of the deed, under
+the site of the old cabin. As he went on in the vivifying influence of
+the air and scene, new life seemed to course through his veins; his step
+seemed to grow as elastic as in the old days of their bitter but hopeful
+struggle for fortune, when he had gayly returned from his weekly tramp
+to Boomville laden with the scant provision procured by their scant
+earnings and dying credit. Those were the days when HER living image
+still inspired his heart with faith and hope; when everything was yet
+possible to youth and love, and before the irony of fate had given
+him fortune with one hand only to withdraw HER with the other. It
+was strange and cruel that coming back from his quest of rest and
+forgetfulness he should find only these youthful and sanguine dreams
+revive with his reviving vigor. He walked on more hurriedly as if to
+escape them, and was glad to be diverted by one or two carryalls and
+char-a-bancs filled with gayly dressed pleasure parties--evidently
+visitors to Hymettus--which passed him on the road. Here were the first
+signs of change. He recalled the train of pack-mules of the old days,
+the file of pole-and-basket carrying Chinese, the squaw with the papoose
+strapped to her shoulder, or the wandering and foot-sore prospector, who
+were the only wayfarers he used to meet. He contrasted their halts and
+friendly greetings with the insolent curiosity or undisguised contempt
+of the carriage folk, and smiled as he thought of the warning of the
+blacksmith. But this did not long divert him; he found himself again
+returning to his previous thought. Indeed, the face of a young girl in
+one of the carriages had quite startled him with its resemblance to an
+old memory of his lost love as he saw her,--her frail, pale elegance
+encompassed in laces as she leaned back in her drive through Fifth
+Avenue, with eyes that lit up and became transfigured only as he
+passed. He tried to think of his useless quest in search of her last
+resting-place abroad; how he had been baffled by the opposition of her
+surviving relations, already incensed by the thought that her decline
+had been the effect of her hopeless passion. He tried to recall the few
+frigid lines that reconveyed to him the last letter he had sent her,
+with the announcement of her death and the hope that "his persecutions"
+would now cease. A wild idea had sometimes come to him out of the very
+insufficiency of his knowledge of this climax, but he had always put
+it aside as a precursor of that madness which might end his ceaseless
+thought. And now it was returning to him, here, thousands of miles away
+from where she was peacefully sleeping, and even filling him with the
+vigor of youthful hope.
+
+The brief mountain twilight was giving way now to the radiance of the
+rising moon. He endeavored to fix his thoughts upon his partners who
+were to meet him at Hymettus after these long years of separation.
+
+Hymettus! He recalled now the odd coincidence that he had mischievously
+used as a gag to his questioning fellow traveler; but now he had really
+come from a villa near Athens to find his old house thus classically
+rechristened after it, and thought of it with a gravity he had not felt
+before. He wondered who had named it. There was no suggestion of the
+soft, sensuous elegance of the land he had left in those great heroics
+of nature before him. Those enormous trees were no woods for fauns or
+dryads; they had their own godlike majesty of bulk and height, and as he
+at last climbed the summit and saw the dark-helmeted head of Black Spur
+before him, and beyond it the pallid, spiritual cloud of the Sierras, he
+did not think of Olympus. Yet for a moment he was startled, as he turned
+to the right, by the Doric-columned facade of a temple painted by the
+moonbeams and framed in an opening of the dark woods before him. It
+was not until he had reached it that he saw that it was the new wooden
+post-office of Heavy Tree Hill.
+
+And now the buildings of the new settlement began to faintly appear. But
+the obscurity of the shadow and the equally disturbing unreality of the
+moonlight confused him in his attempts to recognize the old landmarks.
+A broad and well-kept winding road had taken the place of the old
+steep, but direct trail to his cabin. He had walked for some moments in
+uncertainty, when a sudden sweep of the road brought the full crest
+of the hill above and before him, crowned with a tiara of lights,
+overtopping a long base of flashing windows. That was all that was left
+of Heavy Tree Hill. The old foreground of buckeye and odorous ceanothus
+was gone. Even the great grove of pines behind it had vanished.
+
+There was already a stir of life in the road, and he could see figures
+moving slowly along a kind of sterile, formal terrace spread with a few
+dreary marble vases and plaster statues which had replaced the natural
+slope and the great quartz buttresses of outcrop that supported it.
+Presently he entered a gate, and soon found himself in the carriage
+drive leading to the hotel veranda. A number of fair promenaders were
+facing the keen mountain night wind in wraps and furs. Demorest had
+replaced his coat, but his boots were red with dust, and as he ascended
+the steps he could see that he was eyed with some superciliousness by
+the guests and with considerable suspicion by the servants. One of the
+latter was approaching him with an insolent smile when a figure darted
+from the vestibule, and, brushing the waiter aside, seized Demorest's
+two hands in his and held him at arm's length.
+
+"Demorest, old man!"
+
+"Stacy, old chap!"
+
+"But where's your team? I've had all the spare hostlers and hall-boys
+listening for you at the gate. And where's Barker? When he found you'd
+given the dead-cut to the railroad--HIS railroad, you know--he loped
+over to Boomville after you."
+
+Demorest briefly explained that he had walked by the old road and
+probably missed him. But by this time the waiters, crushed by the
+spectacle of this travel-worn stranger's affectionate reception by
+the great financial magnate, were wildly applying their brushes and
+handkerchiefs to his trousers and boots until Stacy again swept them
+away.
+
+"Get off, all of you! Now, Phil, you come with me. The house is full,
+but I've made the manager give you a lady's drawing-room suite. When you
+telegraphed you'd meet us HERE there was no chance to get anything else.
+It's really Mrs. Van Loo's family suite; but they were sent for to go to
+Marysville yesterday, and so we'll run you in for the night."
+
+"But"--protested Demorest.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Stacy, dragging him away. "We'll pay for it; and I
+reckon the old lady won't object to taking her share of the damage
+either, or she isn't Van Loo's mother. Come."
+
+Demorest felt himself hurried forward by the energetic Stacy, preceded
+by the obsequious manager, through a corridor to a handsomely furnished
+suite, into whose bathroom Stacy incontinently thrust him.
+
+"There! Wash up; and by the time you're ready Barker ought to be back,
+and we'll have supper. It's waiting for us in the other room."
+
+"But how about Barker, the dear boy?" persisted Demorest, holding open
+the door. "Tell me, is he well and happy?"
+
+"About as well as we all are," said Stacy quickly, yet with a certain
+dry significance. "Never mind now; wait until you see him."
+
+The door closed. When Demorest had finished washing, and wiped away the
+last red stain of the mountain road, he found Stacy seated by the window
+of the larger sitting-room. In the centre a table was spread for supper.
+A bright fire of hickory logs burnt on a marble hearth between two
+large windows that gave upon the distant outline of Black Spur. As Stacy
+turned towards him, by the light of the shaded lamp and flickering fire,
+Demorest had a good look at the face of his old friend and partner. It
+was as keen and energetic as ever, with perhaps an even more hawk-like
+activity visible in the eye and nostril; but it was more thoughtful and
+reticent in the lines of the mouth under the closely clipped beard and
+mustache, and when he looked up, at first there were two deep lines or
+furrows across his low broad forehead. Demorest fancied, too, that
+there was a little of the old fighting look in his eye, but it softened
+quickly as his friend approached, and he burst out with his curt but
+honest single-syllabled laugh. "Ha! You look a little less like a roving
+Apache than you did when you came. I really thought the waiters were
+going to chuck you. And you ARE tanned! Darned if you don't look like
+the profile stamped on a Continental penny! But here's luck and a
+welcome back, old man!"
+
+Demorest passed his arm around the neck of his seated partner, and
+grasping his upraised hand said, looking down with a smile, "And now
+about Barker."
+
+"Oh, Parker, d--n him! He's the same unshakable, unchangeable,
+ungrow-upable Barker! With the devil's own luck, too! Waltzing into
+risks and waltzing out of 'em. With fads enough to put him in the insane
+asylum if people did not prefer to keep him out of it to help
+'em. Always believing in everybody, until they actually believe in
+themselves, and shake him! And he's got a wife that's making a fool of
+herself, and I shouldn't wonder in time--of him!"
+
+Demorest pressed his hand over his partner's mouth. "Come, Jim! You know
+you never really liked that marriage, simply because you thought that
+old man Carter made a good thing of it. And you never seem to have taken
+into consideration the happiness Barker got out of it, for he DID love
+the girl. And he still is happy, is he not?" he added quickly, as Stacy
+uttered a grunt.
+
+"As happy as a man can be who has his child here with a nurse while his
+wife is gallivanting in San Francisco, and throwing her money--and
+Lord knows what else--away at the bidding of a smooth-tongued, shady
+operator."
+
+"Does HE complain of it?" asked Demorest.
+
+"Not he; the fool trusts her!" said Stacy curtly.
+
+Demorest laughed. "That is happiness! Come, Jim! don't let us begrudge
+him that. But I've heard that his affairs have again prospered."
+
+"He built this railroad and this hotel. The bank owns both now. He
+didn't care to keep money in them after they were a success; said he
+wasn't an engineer nor a hotel-keeper, and drew it out to find something
+new. But here he comes," he added, as a horseman dashed into the drive
+before the hotel. "Question him yourself. You know you and he always get
+along best without me."
+
+In another moment Barker had burst into the room, and in his first
+tempestuous greeting of Demorest the latter saw little change in his
+younger partner as he held him at arm's length to look at him. "Why,
+Barker boy, you haven't got a bit older since the day when--you
+remember--you went over to Boomville to cash your bonds, and then came
+back and burst upon us like this to tell us you were a beggar."
+
+"Yes," laughed Barker, "and all the while you fellows were holding four
+aces up your sleeve in the shape of the big strike."
+
+"And you, Georgy, old boy," returned Demorest, swinging Barker's two
+hands backwards and forwards, "were holding a royal flush up yours in
+the shape of your engagement to Kitty."
+
+The fresh color died out of Barker's cheek even while the frank laugh
+was still on his mouth. He turned his face for a moment towards the
+window, and a swift and almost involuntary glance passed between the
+others. But he almost as quickly turned his glistening eyes back to
+Demorest again, and said eagerly, "Yes, dear Kitty! You shall see her
+and the baby to-morrow."
+
+Then they fell upon the supper with the appetites of the Past, and for
+some moments they all talked eagerly and even noisily together, all at
+the same time, with even the spirits of the Past. They recalled every
+detail of their old life; eagerly and impetuously recounted the old
+struggles, hopes, and disappointments, gave the strange importance of
+schoolboys to unimportant events, and a mystic meaning to a shibboleth
+of their own; roared over old jokes with a delight they had never since
+given to new; reawakened idiotic nicknames and bywords with intense
+enjoyment; grew grave, anxious, and agonized over forgotten names,
+trifling dates, useless distances, ineffective records, and feeble
+chronicles of their domestic economy. It was the thoughtful and
+melancholy Demorest who remembered the exact color and price paid for
+a certain shirt bought from a Greaser peddler amidst the envy of his
+companions; it was the financial magnate, Stacy, who could inform them
+what were the exact days they had saleratus bread and when flapjacks;
+it was the thoughtless and mercurial Barker who recalled with unheard-of
+accuracy, amidst the applause of the others, the full name of the
+Indian squaw who assisted at their washing. Even then they were almost
+feverishly loath to leave the subject, as if the Past, at least, was
+secure to them still, and they were even doubtful of their own free and
+full accord in the Present. Then they slipped rather reluctantly
+into their later experiences, but with scarcely the same freedom or
+spontaneity; and it was noticeable that these records were elicited from
+Barker by Stacy or from Stacy by Barker for the information of Demorest,
+often with chaffing and only under good-humored protest. "Tell Demorest
+how you broke the 'Copper Ring,'" from the admiring Barker, or, "Tell
+Demorest how your d----d foolishness in buying up the right and plant of
+the Ditch Company got you control of the railroad," from the mischievous
+Stacy, were challenges in point. Presently they left the table, and, to
+the astonishment of the waiters who removed the cloth, common brier-wood
+pipes, thoughtfully provided by Barker in commemoration of the Past,
+were lit, and they ranged themselves in armchairs before the fire quite
+unconsciously in their old attitudes. The two windows on either side of
+the hearth gave them the same view that the open door of the old cabin
+had made familiar to them, the league-long valley below the shadowy bulk
+of the Black Spur rising in the distance, and, still more remote, the
+pallid snow-line that soared even beyond its crest.
+
+As in the old time, they were for many moments silent; and then, as in
+the old time, it was the irrepressible Barker who broke the silence.
+"But Stacy does not tell you anything about his friend, the beautiful
+Mrs. Horncastle. You know he's the guardian of one of the finest women
+in California--a woman as noble and generous as she is handsome. And
+think of it! He's protecting her from her brute of a husband, and
+looking after her property. Isn't it good and chivalrous of him?"
+
+The irrepressible laughter of the two men brought only wonder and
+reproachful indignation into the widely opened eyes of Barker. HE was
+perfectly sincere. He had been thinking of Stacy's admiration for
+Mrs. Horncastle in his ride from Boomville, and, strange to say, yet
+characteristic of his nature, it was equally the natural outcome of his
+interview with her and the singular effect she had upon him. That he
+(Barker) thoroughly sympathized with her only convinced him that Stacy
+must feel the same for her, and that, no doubt, she must respond to him
+equally. And how noble it was in his old partner, with his advantages of
+position in the world and his protecting relations to her, not to avail
+himself of this influence upon her generous nature. If he himself--a
+married man and the husband of Kitty--was so conscious of her charm, how
+much greater it must be to the free and INEXPERIENCED Stacy.
+
+The italics were in Barker's thought; for in those matters he felt
+that Stacy and even Demorest, occupied in other things, had not his
+knowledge. There was no idea or consciousness of heroically sacrificing
+himself or Mrs. Horncastle in this. I am afraid there was not even an
+idea of a superior morality in himself in giving up the possibility
+of loving her. Ever since Stacy had first seen her he had fancied that
+Stacy liked her,--indeed, Kitty fancied it, too,--and it seemed almost
+providential now that he should know how to assist his old partner to
+happiness. For it was inconceivable that Stacy should not be able
+to rescue this woman from her shameful bonds, or that she should not
+consent to it through his (Barker's) arguments and entreaties. To a
+"champion of dames" this seemed only right and proper. In his unfailing
+optimism he translated Stacy's laugh as embarrassment and Demorest's as
+only ignorance of the real question. But Demorest had noticed, if he had
+not, that Stacy's laugh was a little nervously prolonged for a man of
+his temperament, and that he had cast a very keen glance at Barker. A
+messenger arriving with a telegram brought from Boomville called Stacy
+momentarily away, and Barker was not slow to take advantage of his
+absence.
+
+"I wish, Phil," he said, hitching his chair closer to Demorest,
+"that you would think seriously of this matter, and try to persuade
+Stacy--who, I believe, is more interested in Mrs. Horncastle than he
+cares to show--to put a little of that determination in love that he has
+shown in business. She's an awfully fine woman, and in every way suited
+to him, and he is letting an absurd sense of pride and honor keep him
+from influencing her to get rid of her impossible husband. There's no
+reason," continued Barker in a burst of enthusiastic simplicity, "that
+BECAUSE she has found some one she likes better, and who would treat
+her better, that she should continue to stick to that beast whom all
+California would gladly see her divorced from. I never could understand
+that kind of argument, could you?"
+
+Demorest looked at his companion's glowing cheek and kindling eye with
+a smile. "A good deal depends upon the side from which you argue. But,
+frankly, Barker boy, though I think I know you in all your phases, I am
+not prepared yet to accept you as a match-maker! However, I'll think it
+over, and find out something more of this from your goddess, who seems
+to have bewitched you both. But what does Mistress Kitty say to your
+admiration?"
+
+Barker's face clouded, but instantly brightened. "Oh, they're the best
+of friends; they're quite like us, you know, even to larks they have
+together." He stopped and colored at his slip. But Demorest, who had
+noticed his change of expression, was more concerned at the look of half
+incredulity and half suspicion with which Stacy, who had re-entered
+the room in time to hear Barker's speech, was regarding his unconscious
+younger partner.
+
+"I didn't know that Mrs. Horncastle and Mrs. Barker were such friends,"
+he said dryly as he sat down again. But his face presently became so
+abstracted that Demorest said gayly:--
+
+"Well, Jim, I'm glad I'm not a Napoleon of Finance! I couldn't stand
+it to have my privacy or my relaxation broken in upon at any moment, as
+yours was just now. What confounded somersault in stocks has put that
+face on you?"
+
+Stacy looked up quickly with his brief laugh. "I'm afraid you'd be none
+the wiser if I told you. That was a pony express messenger from New
+York. You remember how Barker, that night of the strike, when we were
+sitting together here, or very near here, proposed that we ought to have
+a password or a symbol to call us together in case of emergency, for
+each other's help? Well, let us say I have two partners, one in Europe
+and one in New York. That was my password."
+
+"And, I hope, no more serious than ours," added Demorest.
+
+Stacy laughed his short laugh. Nevertheless, the conversation dragged
+again. The feverish gayety of the early part of the evening was gone,
+and they seemed to be suffering from the reaction. They fell into their
+old attitudes, looking from the firelight to the distant bulk of Black
+Spur without a word. The occasional sound of the voices of promenaders
+on the veranda at last ceased; there was the noise of the shutting of
+heavy doors below, and Barker rose.
+
+"You'll excuse me, boys; but I must go and say good-night to little
+Sta, and see that he's all right. I haven't seen him since I got back.
+But"--to Demorest--"you'll see him to-morrow, when Kitty comes. It is as
+much as my life is worth to show him before she certifies him as being
+presentable." He paused, and then added: "Don't wait up, you fellows,
+for me; sometimes the little chap won't let me go. It's as if he
+thought, now Kitty's away, I was all he had. But I'll be up early in the
+morning and see you. I dare say you and Stacy have a heap to say to each
+other on business, and you won't miss me. So I'll say good-night." He
+laughed lightly, pressed the hands of his partners in his usual hearty
+fashion, and went out of the room, leaving the gloom a little deeper
+than before. It was so unusual for Barker to be the first to leave
+anybody or anything in trouble that they both noticed it. "But for
+that," said Demorest, turning to Stacy as the door closed, "I should say
+the dear fellow was absolutely unchanged. But he seemed a little anxious
+to-night."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder. He's got two women on his mind,--as if one was not
+enough."
+
+"I don't understand. You say his wife is foolish, and this other"--
+
+"Never mind that now," interrupted Stacy, getting up and putting down
+his pipe. "Let's talk a little business. That other stuff will keep."
+
+"By all means," said Demorest, with a smile, settling down into his
+chair a little wearily, however. "I forgot business. And I forgot, my
+dear Jim, to congratulate you. I've heard all about you, even in New
+York. You're the man who, according to everybody, now holds the
+finances of the Pacific Slope in his hands. And," he added, leaning
+affectionately towards his old partner, "I don't know any one better
+equipped in honesty, straightforwardness, and courage for such a
+responsibility than you."
+
+"I only wish," said Stacy, looking thoughtfully at Demorest, "that I
+didn't hold nearly a million of your money included in the finances of
+the Pacific Slope."
+
+"Why," said the smiling Demorest, "as long as I am satisfied?"
+
+"Because I am not. If you're satisfied, I'm a wretched idiot and not
+fit for my position. Now, look here, Phil. When you wrote me to sell
+out your shares in the Wheat Trust I was a little staggered. I knew your
+gait, my boy, and I knew, too, that, while you didn't know enough to
+trust your own opinions or feeling, you knew too much to trust any one's
+opinion that wasn't first-class. So I reckoned you had the straight tip;
+but I didn't see it. Now, I ought not to have been staggered if I was
+fit for your confidence, or, if I was staggered, I ought to have had
+enough confidence in myself not to mind you. See?"
+
+"I admit your logic, old man," said Demorest, with an amused face, "but
+I don't see your premises. WHEN did I tell you to sell out?"
+
+"Two days ago. You wrote just after you arrived."
+
+"I have never written to you since I arrived. I only telegraphed to you
+to know where we should meet, and received your message to come here."
+
+"You never wrote me from San Francisco?"
+
+"Never."
+
+Stacy looked concernedly at his friend. Was he in his right mind? He had
+heard of cases where melancholy brooding on a fixed idea had affected
+the memory. He took from his pocket a letter-case, and selecting a
+letter handed it to Demorest without speaking.
+
+Demorest glanced at it, turned it over, read its contents, and in
+a grave voice said, "There is something wrong here. It is like my
+handwriting, but I never wrote the letter, nor has it been in my hand
+before."
+
+Stacy sprang to his side. "Then it's a forgery!"
+
+"Wait a moment." Demorest, who, although very grave, was the more
+collected of the two, went to a writing-desk, selected a sheet of paper,
+and took up a pen. "Now," he said, "dictate that letter to me."
+
+Stacy began, Demorest's pen rapidly following him:--
+
+"DEAR JIM,--On receipt of this get rid of my Wheat Trust shares at
+whatever figure you can. From the way things pointed in New York"--
+
+"Stop!" interrupted Demorest.
+
+"Well?" said Stacy impatiently.
+
+"Now, my dear Jim," said Demorest plaintively, "when did you ever know
+me to write such a sentence as 'the way things pointed'?"
+
+"Let me finish reading," said Stacy. This literary sensitiveness at such
+a moment seemed little short of puerility to the man of business.
+
+"From the way things pointed in New York," continued Stacy, "and from
+private advices received, this seems to be the only prudent course
+before the feathers begin to fly. Longing to see you again and the dear
+old stamping-ground at Heavy Tree. Love to Barker. Has the dear old boy
+been at any fresh crank lately?
+
+"Yours, PHIL DEMOREST."
+
+The dictation and copy finished together. Demorest laid the freshly
+written sheet beside the letter Stacy had produced. They were very much
+alike and yet quite distinct from each other. Only the signature seemed
+identical.
+
+"That's the invariable mistake with the forger," said Demorest; "he
+always forgets that signatures ought to be identical with the text
+rather than with each other."
+
+But Stacy did not seem to hear this or require further proof. His face
+was quite gray and his lips compressed until lost in his closely set
+beard as he gazed fixedly out of the window. For the first time, really
+concerned and touched, Demorest laid his hand gently on his shoulder.
+
+"Tell me, Jim, how much does this mean to you apart from me? Don't think
+of me."
+
+"I don't know yet," said Stacy slowly. "That's the trouble. And I won't
+know until I know who's at the bottom of it. Does anybody know of your
+affairs with me?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"No confidential friend, eh?"
+
+"None."
+
+"No one who has access to your secrets? No--no--woman? Excuse me, Phil,"
+he said, as a peculiar look passed over Demorest's face, "but this is
+business."
+
+"No," he returned, with that gentleness that used to frighten them
+in the old days, "it's ignorance. You fellows always say 'Cherchez la
+femme' when you can't say anything else. Come now," he went on more
+brightly, "look at the letter. Here's a man, commercially educated,
+for he has used the usual business formulas, 'on receipt of this,' and
+'advices received,' which I won't merely say I don't use, but which
+few but commercial men use. Next, here's a man who uses slang, not only
+ineptly, but artificially, to give the letter the easy, familiar turn
+it hasn't from beginning to end. I need only say, my dear Stacy, that
+I don't write slang to you, but that nobody who understands slang ever
+writes it in that way. And then the knowledge of my opinion of Barker is
+such as might be gained from the reading of my letters by a person who
+couldn't comprehend my feelings. Now, let me play inquisitor for a few
+moments. Has anybody access to my letters to YOU?"
+
+"No one. I keep them locked up in a cabinet. I only make memorandums of
+your instructions, which I give to my clerks, but never your letters."
+
+"But your clerks sometimes see you make memorandums from them?"
+
+"Yes, but none of them have the ability to do this sort of thing, nor
+the opportunity of profiting by it."
+
+"Has any woman--now this is not retaliation, my dear Jim, for I fancy I
+detect a woman's cleverness and a woman's stupidity in this forgery--any
+access to your secrets or my letters? A woman's villainy is always
+effective for the moment, but always defective when probed."
+
+The look of scorn which passed over Stacy's face was quite as distinct
+as Demorest's previous protest, as he said contemptuously, "I'm not such
+a fool as to mix up petticoats with my business, whatever I do."
+
+"Well, one thing more. I have told you that in my opinion the forger has
+a commercial education or style, that he doesn't know me nor Barker, and
+don't understand slang. Now, I have to add what must have occurred
+to you, Jim, that the forger is either a coward, or his object is not
+altogether mercenary: for the same ability displayed in this letter
+would on the signature alone--had it been on a check or draft--have
+drawn from your bank twenty times the amount concerned. Now, what is the
+actual loss by this forgery?"
+
+"Very little; for you've got a good price for your stocks, considering
+the depreciation in realizing suddenly on so large an amount. I told my
+broker to sell slowly and in small quantities to avoid a panic. But the
+real loss is the control of the stock."
+
+"But the amount I had was not enough to affect that," said Demorest.
+
+"No, but I was carrying a large amount myself, and together we
+controlled the market, and now I have unloaded, too."
+
+"You sold out! and with your doubts?" said Demorest.
+
+"That's just it," said Stacy, looking steadily at his companion's face,
+"because I HAD doubts, and it won't do for me to have them. I ought
+either to have disobeyed your letter and kept your stock and my own, or
+have done just what I did. I might have hedged on my own stock, but
+I don't believe in hedging. There is no middle course to a man in my
+business if he wants to keep at the top. No great success, no great
+power, was ever created by it."
+
+Demorest smiled. "Yet you accept the alternative also, which is ruin?"
+
+"Precisely," said Stacy. "When you returned the other day you were bound
+to find me what I was or a beggar. But nothing between. However," he
+added, "this has nothing to do with the forgery, or," he smiled grimly,
+"everything to do with it. Hush! Barker is coming."
+
+There was a quick step along the corridor approaching the room. The
+next moment the door flew open to the bounding step and laughing face
+of Barker. Whatever of thoughtfulness or despondency he had carried from
+the room with him was completely gone. With his amazing buoyancy and
+power of reaction he was there again in his usual frank, cheerful
+simplicity.
+
+"I thought I'd come in and say goodnight," he began, with a laugh.
+"I got Sta asleep after some high jinks we had together, and then I
+reckoned it wasn't the square thing to leave just you two together, the
+first night you came. And I remembered I had some business to talk over,
+too, so I thought I'd chip in again and take a hand. It's only the shank
+of the evening yet," he continued gayly, "and we ought to sit up at
+least long enough to see the old snow-line vanish, as we did in old
+times. But I say," he added suddenly, as he glanced from the one to the
+other, "you've been having it pretty strong already. Why, you both look
+as you did that night the backwater of the South Fork came into our
+cabin. What's up?"
+
+"Nothing," said Demorest hastily, as he caught a glance of Stacy's
+impatient face. "Only all business is serious, Barker boy, though you
+don't seem to feel it so."
+
+"I reckon you're right there," said Barker, with a chuckle. "People
+always laugh, of course, when I talk business, so it might make it a
+little livelier for you and more of a change if I chipped in now. Only I
+don't know which you'll do. Hand me a pipe. Well," he continued, filling
+the pipe Demorest shoved towards him, "you see, I was in Sacramento
+yesterday, and I went into Van Loo's branch office, as I heard he was
+there, and I wanted to find out something about Kitty's investments,
+which I don't think he's managing exactly right. He wasn't there,
+however, but as I was waiting I heard his clerks talk about a drop in
+the Wheat Trust, and that there was a lot of it put upon the market.
+They seemed to think that something had happened, and it was going down
+still further. Now I knew it was your pet scheme, and that Phil had a
+lot of shares in it, too, so I just slipped out and went to a broker's
+and told him to buy all he could of it. And, by Jove! I was a little
+taken aback when I found what I was in for, for everybody seemed to have
+unloaded, and I found I hadn't money enough to pay margins, but I knew
+that Demorest was here, and I reckoned on his seeing me through." He
+stopped and colored, but added hopefully, "I reckon I'm safe, anyway,
+for just as the thing was over those same clerks of Van Loo's came
+bounding into the office to buy up everything. And offered to take it
+off my hands and pay the margins."
+
+"And you?" said both men eagerly, and in a breath.
+
+Barker stared at them, and reddened and paled by turns. "I held on," he
+stammered. "You see, boys"--
+
+Both men had caught him by the arms. "How much have you got?" they said,
+shaking him as if to precipitate the answer.
+
+"It's a heap!" said Barker. "It's a ghastly lot now I think of it. I'm
+afraid I'm in for fifty thousand, if a cent."
+
+To his infinite astonishment and delight he was alternately hugged and
+tossed backwards and forwards between the two men quite in the fashion
+of the old days. Breathless but laughing, he at length gasped out, "What
+does it all mean?"
+
+"Tell him everything, Jim,--EVERYTHING," said Demorest quickly.
+
+Stacy briefly related the story of the forgery, and then laid the letter
+and its copy before him. But Barker only read the forgery.
+
+"How could YOU, Stacy--one of the three partners of Heavy Tree--be
+deceived! Don't you see it's Phil's handwriting--but it isn't PHIL!"
+
+"But have you any idea WHO it is?" said Stacy.
+
+"Not me," said Barker, with widely opened eyes. "You see it must be
+somebody whom we are familiar with. I can't imagine such a scoundrel."
+
+"How did YOU know that Demorest had stock?" asked Stacy.
+
+"He told me in one of his letters and advised me to go into it. But just
+then Kitty wanted money, I think, and I didn't go in."
+
+"I remember it," struck in Demorest. "But surely it was no secret. My
+name would be on the transfer books for any one to see."
+
+"Not so," said Stacy quickly. "You were one of the original
+shareholders; there was no transfer, and the books as well as the shares
+of the company were in my hands."
+
+"And your clerks?" added Demorest.
+
+Stacy was silent. After a pause he asked, "Did anybody ever see that
+letter, Barker?"
+
+"No one but myself and Kitty."
+
+"And would she be likely to talk of it?" continued Stacy.
+
+"Of course not. Why should she? Whom could she talk to?" Yet he stopped
+suddenly, and then with his characteristic reaction added, with a laugh,
+"Why no, certainly not."
+
+"Of course, everybody knew that you had bought the shares at
+Sacramento?"
+
+"Yes. Why, you know I told you the Van Loo clerks came to me and wanted
+to take it off my hands."
+
+"Yes, I remember; the Van Loo clerks; they knew it, of course," said
+Stacy with a grim smile. "Well, boys," he said, with sudden alacrity,
+"I'm going to turn in, for by sun-up to-morrow I must be on my way to
+catch the first train at the Divide for 'Frisco. We'll hunt this thing
+down together, for I reckon we're all concerned in it," he added,
+looking at the others, "and once more we're partners as in the old
+times. Let us even say that I've given Barker's signal or password," he
+added, with a laugh, "and we'll stick together. Barker boy," he went on,
+grasping his younger partner's hand, "your instinct has saved us this
+time; d----d if I don't sometimes think it better than any other man's
+sabe; only," he dropped his voice slightly, "I wish you had it in other
+things than FINANCE. Phil, I've a word to say to you alone before I go.
+I may want you to follow me."
+
+"But what can I do?" said Barker eagerly. "You're not going to leave me
+out."
+
+"You've done quite enough for us, old man," said Stacy, laying his hand
+on Barker's shoulder. "And it may be for US to do something for YOU.
+Trot off to bed now, like a good boy. I'll keep you posted when the time
+comes."
+
+Shoving the protesting and leave-taking Barker with paternal familiarity
+from the room, he closed the door and faced Demorest.
+
+"He's the best fellow in the world," said Stacy quietly, "and has saved
+the situation; but we mustn't trust too much to him for the present--not
+even seem to."
+
+"Nonsense, man!" said Demorest impatiently. "You're letting your
+prejudices go too far. Do you mean to say that you suspect his wife."
+
+"D--n his wife!" said Stacy almost savagely. "Leave her out of this.
+It's Van Loo that I suspect. It was Van Loo who I knew was behind it,
+who expected to profit by it, and now we have lost him."
+
+"But how?" said Demorest, astonished.
+
+"How?" repeated Stacy impatiently. "You know what Barker said? Van Loo,
+either through stupidity, fright, or the wish to get the lowest prices,
+was too late to buy up the market. If he had, we might have openly
+declared the forgery, and if it was known that he or his friends had
+profited by it, even if we could not have proven his actual complicity,
+we could at least have made it too hot for him in California. But," said
+Stacy, looking intently at his friend, "do you know how the case stands
+now?"
+
+"Well," said Demorest, a little uneasily under his friend's keen eyes,
+"we've lost that chance, but we've kept control of the stock."
+
+"You think so? Well, let me tell you how the case stands and the price
+we pay for it," said Stacy deliberately, as he folded his arms and gazed
+at Demorest. "You and I, well known as old friends and former partners,
+for no apparent reason--for we cannot prove the forgery now--have thrown
+upon the market all our stock, with the usual effect of depreciating it.
+Another old friend and former partner has bought it in and sent up the
+price. A common trick, a vulgar trick, but not a trick worthy of James
+Stacy or Stacy's Bank!"
+
+"But why not simply declare the forgery without making any specific
+charge against Van Loo?"
+
+"Do you imagine, Phil, that any man would believe it, and the story of a
+providentially appointed friend like Barker who saved us from loss?
+Why, all California, from Cape Mendocino to Los Angeles, would roar
+with laughter over it! No! We must swallow it and the reputation of
+'jockeying' with the Wheat Trust, too. That Trust's as good as done for,
+for the present! Now you know why I didn't want poor Barker to know it,
+nor have much to do with our search for the forger."
+
+"It would break the dear fellow's heart if he knew it," said Demorest.
+
+"Well, it's to save him from having his heart broken further that I
+intend to find out this forger," said Stacy grimly. "Good-night, Phil!
+I'll telegraph to you when I want you, and then COME!"
+
+With another grip of the hand he left Demorest to his thoughts. In the
+first excitement of meeting his old partners, and in the later discovery
+of the forgery, Demorest had been diverted from his old sorrow, and for
+the time had forgotten it in sympathetic interest with the present.
+But, to his horror, when alone again, he found that interest growing as
+remote and vapid as the stories they had laughed over at the table, and
+even the excitement of the forged letter and its consequences began to
+be as unreal, as impotent, as shadowy, as the memory of the attempted
+robbery in the old cabin on that very spot. He was ashamed of that
+selfishness which still made him cling to this past, so much his own,
+that he knew it debarred him from the human sympathy of his comrades.
+And even Barker, in whose courtship and marriage he had tried to
+resuscitate his youthful emotions and condone his selfish errors--even
+the suggestion of his unhappiness only touched him vaguely. He would no
+longer be a slave to the Past, or the memory that had deluded him a few
+hours ago. He walked to the window; alas, there was the same prospect
+that had looked upon his dreams, had lent itself to his old visions.
+There was the eternal outline of the hills; there rose the steadfast
+pines; there was no change in THEM. It was this surrounding constancy
+of nature that had affected him. He turned away and entered the bedroom.
+Here he suddenly remembered that the mother of this vague enemy, Van
+Loo,--for his feeling towards him was still vague, as few men really
+hate the personality they don't know,--had only momentarily vacated
+it, and to his distaste of his own intrusion was now added the profound
+irony of his sleeping in the same bed lately occupied by the mother of
+the man who was suspected of having forged his name. He smiled faintly
+and looked around the apartment. It was handsomely furnished, and
+although it still had much of the characterlessness of the hotel room,
+it was distinctly flavored by its last occupant, and still brightened
+by that mysterious instinct of the sex which is inevitable. Where a man
+would have simply left his forgotten slippers or collars there was
+a glass of still unfaded flowers; the cold marble top of the
+dressing-table was littered with a few linen and silk toilet covers; and
+on the mantel-shelf was a sheaf of photographs. He walked towards them
+mechanically, glanced at them abstractedly, and then stopped suddenly
+with a beating heart. Before him was the picture of his past, the
+photograph of the one woman who had filled his life!
+
+He cast a hurried glance around the room as if he half expected to see
+the original start up before him, and then eagerly seized it and hurried
+with it to the light. Yes! yes! It was SHE,--she as she had lived in his
+actual memory; she as she had lived in his dream. He saw her sweet eyes,
+but the frightened, innocent trouble had passed from them; there was
+the sensitive elegance of her graceful figure in evening dress; but the
+figure was fuller and maturer. Could he be mistaken by some wonderful
+resemblance acting upon his too willing brain? He turned the photograph
+over. No; there on the other side, written in her own childlike hand,
+endeared and familiar to his recollection, was her own name, and the
+date! It was surely she!
+
+How did it come there? Did the Van Loos know her? It was taken in
+Venice; there was the address of the photographers. The Van Loos were
+foreigners, he remembered; they had traveled; perhaps had met her there
+in 1858: that was the date in her handwriting; that was the date on the
+photographer's address--1858. Suddenly he laid the photograph down, took
+with trembling fingers a letter-case from his pocket, opened it, and
+laid his last letter to her, indorsed with the cruel announcement of her
+death, before him on the table. He passed his hand across his forehead
+and opened the letter. It was dated 1856! The photograph must have been
+taken two years AFTER her alleged death!
+
+He examined it again eagerly, fixedly, tremblingly. A wild impulse to
+summon Barker or Stacy on the spot was restrained with difficulty and
+only when he remembered that they could not help him. Then he began to
+oscillate between a joy and a new fear, which now, for the first time,
+began to dawn upon him. If the news of her death had been a fiendish
+trick of her relations, why had SHE never sought him? It was not ill
+health, restraint, nor fear; there was nothing but happiness and
+the strength of youth and beauty in that face and figure. HE had not
+disappeared from the world; he was known of men; more, his memorable
+good fortune must have reached her ears. Had he wasted all these
+miserable years to find himself abandoned, forgotten, perhaps even
+a dupe? For the first time the sting of jealousy entered his soul.
+Perhaps, unconsciously to himself, his strange and varying feelings that
+afternoon had been the gathering climax of his mental condition; at all
+events, in the sudden revulsion there was a shaking off of his apathetic
+thought; there was activity, even if it was the activity of pain. Here
+was a mystery to be solved, a secret to be discovered, a past wrong to
+be exposed, an enemy or, perhaps, even a faithless love to be punished.
+Perhaps he had even saved his reason at the expense of his love. He
+quickly replaced the photograph on the mantel-shelf, returned the letter
+carefully to his pocket-book,--no longer a souvenir of the past, but a
+proof of treachery,--and began to mechanically undress himself. He was
+quite calm now, and went to bed with a strange sense of relief, and
+slept as he had not slept since he was a boy.
+
+The whole hotel had sunk to rest by this time, and then began the usual
+slow, nightly invasion and investment of it by nature. For all its broad
+verandas and glaring terraces, its long ranges of windows and glittering
+crest of cupola and tower, it gradually succumbed to the more potent
+influences around it, and became their sport and playground. The
+mountain breezes from the distant summit swept down upon its flimsy
+structure, shook the great glass windows as with a strong hand, and sent
+the balm of bay and spruce through every chink and cranny. In the great
+hall and corridors the carpets billowed with the intruding blast along
+the floors; there was the murmur of the pines in the passages, and the
+damp odor of leaves in the dining-room. There was the cry of night birds
+in the creaking cupola, and the swift rush of dark wings past bedroom
+windows. Lissome shapes crept along the terraces between the stolid
+wooden statues, or, bolder, scampered the whole length of the great
+veranda. In the lulling of the wind the breath of the woods was
+everywhere; even the aroma of swelling sap--as if the ghastly stumps
+on the deforested slope behind the hotel were bleeding afresh in the
+dewless night--stung the eyes and nostrils of the sleepers.
+
+It was, perhaps, from such cause as this that Barker was awakened
+suddenly by the voice of the boy from the crib beside him, crying,
+"Mamma! mamma!" Taking the child in his arms, he comforted him, saying
+she would come that morning, and showed him the faint dawn already
+veiling with color the ghostly pallor of the Sierras. As they looked at
+it a great star shot forth from its brethren and fell. It did not fall
+perpendicularly, but seemed for some seconds to slip along the slopes
+of Black Spur, gleaming through the trees like a chariot of fire. It
+pleased the child to say that it was the light of mamma's buggy that
+was fetching her home, and it pleased the father to encourage the boy's
+fancy. And talking thus in confidential whispers they fell asleep once
+more, the father--himself a child in so many things--holding the smaller
+and frailer hand in his.
+
+They did not know that on the other side of the Divide the wife and
+mother, scared, doubting, and desperate, by the side of her scared,
+doubting, and desperate accomplice, was flying down the slope on her
+night-long road to ruin. Still less did they know that, with the early
+singing birds, a careless horseman, emerging from the trail as the
+dust-stained buggy dashed past him, glanced at it with a puzzled air,
+uttered a quiet whistle of surprise, and then, wheeling his horse, gayly
+cantered after it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+In the exercise of his arduous profession, Jack Hamlin had sat up all
+night in the magnolia saloon of the Divide, and as it was rather early
+to go to bed, he had, after his usual habit, shaken off the sedentary
+attitude and prepared himself for sleep by a fierce preliminary
+gallop in the woods. Besides, he had been a large winner, and on those
+occasions he generally isolated himself from his companions to avoid
+foolish altercations with inexperienced players. Even in fighting
+Jack was fastidious, and did not like to have his stomach for a real
+difficulty distended and vitiated by small preliminary indulgences.
+
+He was just emerging from the wood into the highroad when a buggy dashed
+past him, containing a man and a woman. The woman wore a thick veil; the
+man was almost undistinguishable from dust. The glimpse was momentary,
+but dislike has a keen eye, and in that glimpse Mr. Hamlin recognized
+Van Loo. The situation was equally clear. The bent heads and averted
+faces, the dust collected in the heedlessness of haste, the early
+hour,--indicating a night-long flight,--all made it plain to him that
+Van Loo was running away with some woman. Mr. Hamlin had no moral
+scruples, but he had the ethics of a sportsman, which he knew Mr. Van
+Loo was not. Whether the woman was an innocent schoolgirl or an actress,
+he was satisfied that Van Loo was doing a mean thing meanly. Mr. Hamlin
+also had a taste for mischief, and whether the woman was or was not
+fair game, he knew that for HIS purposes Van Loo was. With the greatest
+cheerfulness in the world he wheeled his horse and cantered after them.
+
+They were evidently making for the Divide and a fresh horse, or to
+take the coach due an hour later. It was Mr. Hamlin's present object
+to circumvent this, and, therefore, it was quite in his way to return.
+Incidentally, however, the superior speed of his horse gave him the
+opportunity of frequently lunging towards them at a furious pace, which
+had the effect of frantically increasing their own speed, when he would
+pull up with a silent laugh before he was fairly discovered, and allow
+the sound of his rapid horse's hoofs to die out. In this way he amused
+himself until the straggling town of the Divide came in sight, when,
+putting his spurs to his horse again, he managed, under pretense of
+the animal becoming ungovernable, to twice "cross the bows" of the
+fugitives, compelling them to slacken speed. At the second of these
+passages Van Loo apparently lost prudence, and slashing out with his
+whip, the lash caught slightly on the counter of Hamlin's horse. Mr.
+Hamlin instantly acknowledged it by lifting his hat gravely, and speeded
+on to the hotel, arriving at the steps and throwing himself from the
+saddle exactly as the buggy drove up. With characteristic audacity, he
+actually assisted the frightened and eager woman to alight and run into
+the hotel. But in this action her veil was accidentally lifted. Mr.
+Hamlin instantly recognized the pretty woman who had been pointed out
+to him in San Francisco as Mrs. Barker, the wife of one of the partners
+whose fortunes had interested him five years ago. It struck him that
+this was an additional reason for his interference on Barker's account,
+although personally he could not conceive why a man should ever try
+to prevent a woman from running away from him. But then Mr. Hamlin's
+personal experiences had been quite the other way.
+
+It was enough, however, to cause him to lay his hand lightly on Van
+Loo's arm as the latter, leaping down, was about to follow Mrs. Barker
+into the hotel. "You'll have time enough now," said Hamlin.
+
+"Time for what?" said Van Loo savagely.
+
+"Time to apologize for having cut my horse with your whip," said Jack
+sweetly. "We don't want to quarrel before a woman."
+
+"I've no time for fooling!" said Van Loo, endeavoring to pass.
+
+But Jack's hand had slipped to Van Loo's wrist, although he still
+smiled cheerfully. "Ah! Then you DID mean it, and you propose to give me
+satisfaction?"
+
+Van Loo paled slightly; he knew Jack's reputation as a duelist. But
+he was desperate. "You see my position," he said hurriedly. "I'm in a
+hurry; I have a lady with me. No man of honor"--
+
+"You do me wrong," interrupted Jack, with a pained expression,--"you do,
+indeed. You are in a hurry--well, I have plenty of time. If you cannot
+attend to me now, why I will be glad to accompany you and the lady
+to the next station. Of course," he added, with a smile, "at a proper
+distance, and without interfering with the lady, whom I am pleased
+to recognize as the wife of an old friend. It would be more sociable,
+perhaps, if we had some general conversation on the road; it would
+prevent her being alarmed. I might even be of some use to YOU. If we are
+overtaken by her husband on the road, for instance, I should certainly
+claim the right to have the first shot at you. Boy!" he called to the
+hostler, "just sponge out Pancho's mouth, will you, to be ready when the
+buggy goes?" And, loosening his grip of Van Loo's wrist, he turned away
+as the other quickly entered the hotel.
+
+But Mr. Van Loo did not immediately seek Mrs. Barker. He had already
+some experience of that lady's nerves and irascibility on the drive, and
+had begun to see his error in taking so dangerous an impediment to
+his flight from the country. And another idea had come to him. He
+had already effected his purpose of compromising her with him in that
+flight, but it was still known only to few. If he left her behind for
+the foolish, doting husband, would not that devoted man take her back
+to avoid a scandal, and even forbear to pursue HIM for his financial
+irregularities? What were twenty thousand dollars of Mrs. Barker's money
+to the scandal of Mrs. Barker's elopement? Again, the failure to realize
+the forgery had left him safe, and Barker was sufficiently potent with
+the bank and Demorest to hush up that also. Hamlin was now the only
+obstacle to his flight; but even he would scarcely pursue HIM if Mrs.
+Barker were left behind. And it would be easier to elude him if he did.
+
+In his preoccupation Van Loo did not see that he had entered the
+bar-room, but, finding himself there, he moved towards the bar; a glass
+of spirits would revive him. As he drank it he saw that the room was
+full of rough men, apparently miners or packers--some of them Mexican,
+with here and there a Kanaka or Australian. Two men more ostentatiously
+clad, though apparently on equal terms with the others, were standing in
+the corner with their backs towards him. From the general silence as he
+entered he imagined that he had been the subject of conversation, and
+that his altercation with Hamlin had been overheard. Suddenly one of the
+two men turned and approached him. To his consternation he recognized
+Steptoe,--Steptoe, whom he had not seen for five years until last night,
+when he had avoided him in the courtyard of the Boomville Hotel. His
+first instinct was to retreat, but it was too late. And the spirits had
+warmed him into temporary recklessness.
+
+"You ain't goin' to be backed down by a short-card gambler, are yer?"
+said Steptoe, with coarse familiarity.
+
+"I have a lady with me, and am pressed for time," said Van Loo quickly.
+"He knows it, otherwise he would not have dared"--
+
+"Well, look here," said Steptoe roughly. "I ain't particularly sweet on
+you, as you know; but I and these gentlemen," he added, glancing around
+the room, "ain't particularly sweet on Mr. Jack Hamlin neither, and we
+kalkilate to stand by you if you say so. Now, I reckon you want to
+get away with the woman, and the quicker the better, as you're afraid
+there'll be somebody after you afore long. That's the way it pans out,
+don't it? Well, when you're ready to go, and you just tip us the wink,
+we'll get in a circle round Jack and cover him, and if he starts after
+you we'll send him on a little longer journey!--eh, boys?"
+
+The men muttered their approval, and one or two drew their revolvers
+from their belts. Van Loo's heart, which had leaped at first at this
+proposal of help, sank at this failure of his little plan of abandoning
+Mrs. Barker. He hesitated, and then stammered, "Thank you! Haste is
+everything with us now; but I shouldn't mind leaving the lady among
+CHIVALROUS GENTLEMEN like yourselves for a few hours only, until I
+could communicate with my friends and return to properly chastise this
+scoundrel."
+
+Steptoe drew in his breath with a slight whistle, and gazed at Van Loo.
+He instantly understood him. But the plea did not suit Steptoe, who,
+for purposes of his own, wished to put Mrs. Barker beyond her husband's
+possible reach. He smiled grimly. "I think you'd better take the woman
+with you," he said. "I don't think," he added in a lower voice, "that
+the boys would like your leaving her. They're very high-toned, they
+are!" he concluded ironically.
+
+"Then," said Van Loo, with another desperate idea, "could you not let us
+have saddle-horses instead of the buggy? We could travel faster, and in
+the event of pursuit and anything happening to ME," he added loftily,
+"SHE at least could escape her pursuer's vengeance."
+
+This suited Steptoe equally well, as long as the guilty couple fled
+TOGETHER, and in the presence of witnesses. But he was not deceived by
+Van Loo's heroic suggestion of self-sacrifice. "Quite right," he said
+sarcastically, "it shall be done, and I've no doubt ONE of you will
+escape. I'll send the horses round to the back door and keep the buggy
+in front. That will keep Jack there, TOO,--with the boys handy."
+
+But Mr. Hamlin had quite as accurate an idea of Mr. Van Loo's methods
+and of his OWN standing with Steptoe's gang of roughs as Mr. Steptoe
+himself. More than that, he also had a hold on a smaller but more
+devoted and loyal following than Steptoe's. The employees and hostlers
+of the hotel worshiped him. A single word of inquiry revealed to him
+the fact that the buggy was NOT going on, but that Mr. Van Loo and
+Mrs. Barker WERE--on two horses, a temporary side-saddle having been
+constructed out of a mule's pack-tree. At which Mr. Hamlin, with his
+usual audacity, walked into the bar-room, and going to the bar leaned
+carelessly against it. Then turning to the lowering faces around him, he
+said, with a flash of his white teeth, "Well, boys, I'm calculating to
+leave the Divide in a few minutes to follow some friends in the buggy,
+and it seems to me only the square thing to stand the liquor for the
+crowd, without prejudice to any feeling or roughness there may be
+against me. Everybody who knows me knows that I'm generally there when
+the band plays, and I'm pretty sure to turn up for THAT sort of thing.
+So you'll just consider that I've had a good game on the Divide, and
+I'm reckoning it's only fair to leave a little of it behind me here,
+to 'sweeten the pot' until I call again. I only ask you, gentlemen, to
+drink success to my friends in the buggy as early and as often as you
+can." He flung two gold pieces on the counter and paused, smiling.
+
+He was right in his conjecture. Even the men who would have willingly
+"held him up" a moment after, at the bidding of Steptoe, saw no reason
+for declining a free drink "without prejudice." And it was a part of
+the irony of the situation that Steptoe and Van Loo were also obliged
+to participate to keep in with their partisans. It was, however, an
+opportune diversion to Van Loo, who managed to get nearer the door
+leading to the back entrance of the hotel, and to Mr. Jack Hamlin, who
+was watching him, as the men closed up to the bar.
+
+The toast was drunk with acclamation, followed by another and yet
+another. Steptoe and Van Loo, who had kept their heads cool, were both
+wondering if Hamlin's intention were to intoxicate and incapacitate the
+crowd at the crucial moment, and Steptoe smiled grimly over his superior
+knowledge of their alcoholic capacity. But suddenly there was the
+greater diversion of a shout from the road, the on-coming of a cloud of
+red dust, and the halt of another vehicle before the door. This time it
+was no jaded single horse and dust-stained buggy, but a double team
+of four spirited trotters, whose coats were scarcely turned with foam,
+before a light station wagon containing a single man. But that man
+was instantly recognized by every one of the outside loungers and
+stable-boys as well as the staring crowd within the saloon. It was James
+Stacy, the millionaire and banker. No one but himself knew that he had
+covered half the distance of a night-long ride from Boomville in two
+hours. But before they could voice their astonishment Stacy had thrown
+a letter to the obsequious landlord, and then gathering up the reins had
+sped away to the railroad station half a mile distant.
+
+"Looks as if the Boss of Creation was in a hurry," said one of the eager
+gazers in the doorway. "Somebody goin' to get smashed, sure."
+
+"More like as if he was just humpin' himself to keep from getting
+smashed," said Steptoe. "The bank hasn't got over the effect of their
+smart deal in the Wheat Trust. Everything they had in their hands
+tumbled yesterday in Sacramento. Men like me and you ain't goin' to
+trust their money to be 'jockeyed' with in that style. Nobody but a man
+with a swelled head like Stacy would have even dared to try it on. And
+now, by G-d! he's got to pay for it."
+
+The harsh, exultant tone of the speaker showed that he had quite
+forgotten Van Loo and Hamlin in his superior hatred of the millionaire,
+and both men noticed it. Van Loo edged still nearer to the door, as
+Steptoe continued, "Ever since he made that big strike on Heavy Tree
+five years ago, the country hasn't been big enough to hold him. But mark
+my words, gentlemen, the time ain't far off when he'll find a two-foot
+ditch again and a pick and grub wages room enough and to spare for him
+and his kind of cattle."
+
+"You're not drinking," said Jack Hamlin cheerfully.
+
+Steptoe turned towards the bar, and then started. "Where's Van Loo?" he
+demanded of Jack sharply.
+
+Jack jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Gone to hurry up his girl, I
+reckon. I calculate he ain't got much time to fool away here."
+
+Steptoe glanced suspiciously at Jack. But at the same moment they
+were all startled--even Jack himself--at the apparition of Mrs. Barker
+passing hurriedly along the veranda before the windows in the direction
+of the still waiting buggy. "D--n it!" said Steptoe in a fierce whisper
+to the man next him. "Tell her not THERE--at the back door!" But before
+the messenger reached the door there was a sudden rattle of wheels, and
+with one accord all except Hamlin rushed to the veranda, only to see
+Mrs. Barker driving rapidly away alone. Steptoe turned back into the
+room, but Jack also had disappeared.
+
+For in the confusion created at the sight of Mrs. Barker, he had slipped
+to the back door and found, as he suspected, only one horse, and that
+with a side-saddle on. His intuitions were right. Van Loo, when he
+disappeared from the saloon, had instantly fled, taking the other horse
+and abandoning the woman to her fate. Jack as instantly leaped upon the
+remaining saddle and dashed after him. Presently he caught a glimpse of
+the fugitive in the distance, heard the half-angry, half-ironical shouts
+of the crowd at the back door, and as he reached the hilltop saw, with a
+mingling of satisfaction and perplexity, Mrs. Barker on the other road,
+still driving frantically in the direction of the railroad station. At
+which Mr. Hamlin halted, threw away his encumbering saddle, and,
+good rider that he was, remounted the horse, barebacked but for his
+blanket-pad, and thrusting his knees in the loose girths, again dashed
+forwards,--with such good results that, as Van Loo galloped up to the
+stagecoach office, at the next station, and was about to enter the
+waiting coach for Marysville, the soft hand of Mr. Hamlin was laid on
+his shoulder.
+
+"I told you," said Jack blandly, "that I had plenty of time. I would
+have been here BEFORE and even overtaken you, only you had the better
+horse and the only saddle."
+
+Van Loo recoiled. But he was now desperate and reckless. Beckoning Jack
+out of earshot of the other passengers, he said with tightened lips,
+"Why do you follow me? What is your purpose in coming here?"
+
+"I thought," said Hamlin dryly, "that I was to have the pleasure of
+getting satisfaction from you for the insult you gave me."
+
+"Well, and if I apologize for it, what then?" he said quickly.
+
+Hamlin looked at him quietly. "Well, I think I also said something about
+the lady being the wife of a friend of mine."
+
+"And I have left her BEHIND. Her husband can take her back without
+disgrace, for no one knows of her flight but you and me. Do you think
+your shooting me will save her? It will spread the scandal far and wide.
+For I warn you, that as I have apologized for what you choose to call my
+personal insult, unless you murder me in cold blood without witness, I
+shall let them know the REASON of your quarrel. And I can tell you more:
+if you only succeed in STOPPING me here, and make me lose my chance of
+getting away, the scandal to your friend will be greater still."
+
+Mr. Hamlin looked at Van Loo curiously. There was a certain amount
+of conviction in what he said. He had never met this kind of creature
+before. He had surpassed even Hamlin's first intuition of his character.
+He amused and interested him. But Mr. Hamlin was also a man of the
+world, and knew that Van Loo's reasoning might be good. He put his hands
+in his pockets, and said gravely, "What IS your little game?"
+
+Van Loo had been seized with another inspiration of desperation. Steptoe
+had been partly responsible for this situation. Van Loo knew that Jack
+and Steptoe were not friends. He had certain secrets of Steptoe's that
+might be of importance to Jack. Why should he not try to make friends
+with this powerful free-lance and half-outlaw?
+
+"It's a game," he said significantly, "that might be of interest to your
+friends to hear."
+
+Hamlin took his hands out of his pockets, turned on his heel, and said,
+"Come with me."
+
+"But I must go by that coach now," said Van Loo desperately, "or--I've
+told you what would happen."
+
+"Come with me," said Jack coolly. "If I'm satisfied with what you tell
+me, I'll put you down at the next station an hour before that coach gets
+there."
+
+"You swear it?" said Van Loo hesitatingly.
+
+"I've SAID it," returned Jack. "Come!" and Van Loo followed Mr. Hamlin
+into the station hotel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The abrupt disappearance of Jack Hamlin and the strange lady and
+gentleman visitor was scarcely noticed by the other guests of the Divide
+House, and beyond the circle of Steptoe and his friends, who were a
+distinct party and strangers to the town, there was no excitement.
+Indeed, the hotel proprietor might have confounded them together, and,
+perhaps, Van Loo was not far wrong in his belief that their identity had
+not been suspected. Nor were Steptoe's followers very much concerned in
+an episode in which they had taken part only at the suggestion of their
+leader, and which had terminated so tamely. That they would have liked
+a "row," in which Jack Hamlin would have been incidentally forced to
+disgorge his winnings, there was no doubt, but that their interference
+was asked solely to gratify some personal spite of Steptoe's against Van
+Loo was equally plain to them. There was some grumbling and outspoken
+criticism of his methods.
+
+This was later made more obvious by the arrival of another guest for
+whom Steptoe and his party were evidently waiting. He was a short, stout
+man, whose heavy red beard was trimmed a little more carefully than when
+he was first known to Steptoe as Alky Hall, the drunkard of Heavy Tree
+Hill. His dress, too, exhibited a marked improvement in quality and
+style, although still characterized in the waist and chest by the
+unbuttoned freedom of portly and slovenly middle age. Civilization had
+restricted his potations or limited them to certain festivals known as
+"sprees," and his face was less puffy and sodden. But with the accession
+of sobriety he had lost his good humor, and had the irritability and
+intolerance of virtuous restraint.
+
+"Ye needn't ladle out any of your forty-rod whiskey to me," he said
+querulously to Steptoe, as he filed out with the rest of the party
+through the bar-room into the adjacent apartment. "I want to keep my
+head level till our business is over, and I reckon it wouldn't hurt you
+and your gang to do the same. They're less likely to blab; and there are
+few doors that whiskey won't unlock," he added, as Steptoe turned the
+key in the door after the party had entered.
+
+The room had evidently been used for meetings of directors or political
+caucuses, and was roughly furnished with notched and whittled armchairs
+and a single long deal table, on which were ink and pens. The men sat
+down around it with a half-embarrassed, half-contemptuous attitude of
+formality, their bent brows and isolated looks showing little community
+of sentiment and scarcely an attempt to veil that individual selfishness
+that was prominent. Still less was there any essay of companionship or
+sympathy in the manner of Steptoe as he suddenly rapped on the table
+with his knuckles.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, with a certain deliberation of utterance, as if
+he enjoyed his own coarse directness, "I reckon you all have a sort of
+general idea what you were picked up for, or you wouldn't be here.
+But you may or may not know that for the present you are honest,
+hard-working miners,--the backbone of the State of Californy,--and that
+you have formed yourselves into a company called the 'Blue Jay,'
+and you've settled yourselves on the Bar below Heavy Tree Hill, on a
+deserted claim of the Marshall Brothers, not half a mile from where
+the big strike was made five years ago. That's what you ARE, gentlemen;
+that's what you'll continue TO BE until the job's finished; and," he
+added, with a sudden dominance that they all felt, "the man who forgets
+it will have to reckon with me. Now," he continued, resuming his
+former ironical manner, "now, what are the cold facts of the case? The
+Marshalls worked this claim ever since '49, and never got anything out
+of it; then they dropped off or died out, leaving only one brother, Tom
+Marshall, to work what was left of it. Well, a few days ago HE found
+indications of a big lead in the rock, and instead of rushin' out and
+yellin' like an honest man, and callin' in the boys to drink, he sneaks
+off to 'Frisco, and goes to the bank to get 'em to take a hand in it.
+Well, you know, when Jim Stacy takes a hand in anything, IT'S BOTH
+HANDS, and the bank wouldn't see it until he promised to guarantee
+possession of the whole abandoned claim,--'dips, spurs, and
+angles,'--and let them work the whole thing, which the d----d fool DID,
+and the bank agreed to send an expert down there to-morrow to report.
+But while he was away some one on our side, who was an expert also, got
+wind of it, and made an examination all by himself, and found it was a
+vein sure enough and a big thing, and some one else on our side found
+out, too, all that Marshall had promised the bank and what the bank
+had promised him. Now, gentlemen, when the bank sends down that expert
+to-morrow I expect that he will find YOU IN POSSESSION of every part of
+the deserted claim except the spot where Tom is still working."
+
+"And what good is that to us?" asked one of the men contemptuously.
+
+"Good?" repeated Steptoe harshly. "Well, if you're not as d----d a fool
+as Marshall, you'll see that if he has struck a lead or vein it's bound
+to run across OUR CLAIMS, and what's to keep us from sinking for it as
+long as Marshall hasn't worked the other claims for years nor pre-empted
+them for this lead?"
+
+"What'll keep him from preempting now?"
+
+"Our possession."
+
+"But if he can prove that the brothers left their claims to him to keep,
+he'll just send the sheriff and his posse down upon us," persisted the
+first speaker.
+
+"It will take him three months to do that by law, and the sheriff and
+his posse can't do it before as long as we're in peaceable possession of
+it. And by the time that expert and Marshall return they'll find us in
+peaceful possession, unless we're such blasted fools as to stay talking
+about it here!"
+
+"But what's to prevent Marshall from getting a gang of his own to drive
+us off?"
+
+"Now your talkin' and not yelpin'," said Steptoe, with slow insolence.
+"D----d if I didn't begin to think you kalkilated I was goin' to employ
+you as lawyers! Nothing is to prevent him from gettin' up HIS gang,
+and we hope he'll do it, for you see it puts us both on the same level
+before the law, for we're both BREAKIN' IT. And we kalkilate that we're
+as good as any roughs they can pick up at Heavy Tree."
+
+"I reckon!" "Ye can count us in!" said half a dozen voices eagerly.
+
+"But what's the job goin' to pay us?" persisted a Sydney man. "An' arter
+we've beat off this other gang, are we going to scrub along on grub
+wages until we're yanked out by process-sarvers three months later? If
+that's the ticket I'm not in it. I aren't no b--y quartz miner."
+
+"We ain't going to do no more MINING there than the bank," said Steptoe
+fiercely. "And the bank ain't going to wait no three months for the end
+of the lawsuit. They'll float the stock of that mine for a couple of
+millions, and get out of it with a million before a month. And they'll
+have to buy us off to do that. What they'll pay will depend upon the
+lead; but we don't move off those claims for less than five thousand
+dollars, which will be two hundred and fifty dollars to each man. But,"
+said Steptoe in a lower but perfectly distinct voice, "if there should
+be a row,--and they BEGIN it,--and in the scuffle Tom Marshall, their
+only witness, should happen to get in the way of a revolver or have his
+head caved in, there might be some difficulty in their holdin' ANY OF
+THE MINE against honest, hardworking miners in possession. You hear me?"
+
+There was a breathless silence for the moment, and a slight movement
+of the men in their chairs, but never in fear or protest. Every one had
+heard the speaker distinctly, and every man distinctly understood him.
+Some of them were criminals, one or two had already the stain of blood
+on their hands; but even the most timid, who at other times might have
+shrunk from suggested assassination, saw in the speaker's words only the
+fair removal of a natural enemy.
+
+"All right, boys. I'm ready to wade in at once. Why ain't we on the road
+now? We might have been but for foolin' our time away on that man Van
+Loo."
+
+"Van Loo!" repeated Hall eagerly,--"Van Loo! Was he here?"
+
+"Yes," said Steptoe shortly, administering a kick under the table to
+Hall, as he had no wish to revive the previous irritability of his
+comrades. "He's gone, but," turning to the others, "you'd have had to
+wait for Mr. Hall's arrival, anyhow. And now you've got your order you
+can start. Go in two parties by different roads, and meet on the other
+side of the hotel at Hymettus. I'll be there before you. Pick up some
+shovels and drills as you go; remember you're honest miners, but don't
+forget your shootin'-irons for all that. Now scatter."
+
+It was well that they did, vacating the room more cheerfully and
+sympathetically than they had entered it, or Hall's manifest disturbance
+over Van Loo's visit would have been noticed. When the last man had
+disappeared Hall turned quickly to Steptoe. "Well, what did he say?
+Where has he gone?"
+
+"Don't know," said Steptoe, with uneasy curtness. "He was running away
+with a woman--well, Mrs. Barker, if you want to know," he added, with
+rising anger, "the wife of one of those cursed partners. Jack Hamlin was
+here, and was jockeying to stop him, and interfered. But what the devil
+has that job to do with our job?" He was losing his temper; everything
+seemed to turn upon this infernal Van Loo!
+
+"He wasn't running away with Mrs. Barker," gasped Hall,--"it was with
+her MONEY! and the fear of being connected with the Wheat Trust swindle
+which he organized, and with our money which I lent him for the same
+purpose. And he knows all about that job, for I wanted to get him to go
+into it with us. Your name and mine ain't any too sweet-smelling for
+the bank, and we ought to have a middleman who knows business to arrange
+with them. The bank daren't object to him, for they've employed him in
+even shadier transactions than this when THEY didn't wish to appear. I
+knew he was in difficulties along with Mrs. Barker's speculations, but
+I never thought him up to this. And," he added, with sudden desperation,
+"YOU trusted him, too."
+
+In an instant Steptoe caught the frightened man by the shoulders and was
+bearing him down on the table. "Are you a traitor, a liar, or a besotted
+fool?" he said hoarsely. "Speak. WHEN and WHERE did I trust him?"
+
+"You said in your note--I was--to--help him," gasped Hall.
+
+"My note," repeated Steptoe, releasing Hall with astonished eyes.
+
+"Yes," said Hall, tremblingly searching in his vest pocket. "I brought
+it with me. It isn't much of a note, but there's your signature plain
+enough."
+
+He handed Steptoe a torn piece of paper folded in a three-cornered
+shape. Steptoe opened it. He instantly recognized the paper on which
+he had written his name and sent up to his wife at the Boomville Hotel.
+But, added to it, in apparently the same hand, in smaller characters,
+were the words, "Help Van Loo all you can."
+
+The blood rushed into his face. But he quickly collected himself, and
+said hurriedly, "All right, I had forgotten it. Let the d----d sneak go.
+We've got what's a thousand times better in this claim at Marshall's,
+and it's well that he isn't in it to scoop the lion's share. Only we
+must not waste time getting there now. You go there first, and at once,
+and set those rascals to work. I'll follow you before Marshall comes up.
+Get; I'll settle up here."
+
+His face darkened once more as Hall hurried away, leaving him alone. He
+drew out the piece of paper from his pocket and stared at it again. Yes;
+it was the one he had sent to his wife. How did Van Loo get hold of
+it? Was he at the hotel that night? Had he picked it up in the hall or
+passage when the servant dropped it? When Hall handed him the paper and
+he first recognized it a fiendish thought, followed by a spasm of more
+fiendish rage, had sent the blood to his face. But his crude common
+sense quickly dismissed that suggestion of his wife's complicity with
+Van Loo. But had she seen him passing through the hotel that night, and
+had sought to draw from him some knowledge of his early intercourse with
+the child, and confessed everything, and even produced the paper with
+his signature as a proof of identity? Women had been known to do such
+desperate things. Perhaps she disbelieved her son's aversion to her, and
+was trying to sound Van Loo. As for the forged words by Van Loo, and the
+use he had put them to, he cared little. He believed the man was capable
+of forgery; indeed, he suddenly remembered that in the old days his
+son had spoken innocently, but admiringly, of Van Loo's wonderful
+chirographical powers and his faculty of imitating the writings of
+others, and how he had even offered to teach him. A new and exasperating
+thought came into his feverish consciousness. What if Van Loo, in
+teaching the boy, had even made use of him as an innocent accomplice to
+cover up his own tricks! The suggestion was no question of moral ethics
+to Steptoe, nor of his son's possible contamination, although since the
+night of the big strike he had held different views; it was simply a
+fierce, selfish jealousy that ANOTHER might have profited by the lad's
+helplessness and inexperience. He had been tormented by this jealousy
+before in his son's liking for Van Loo. He had at first encouraged his
+admiration and imitative regard for this smooth swindler's graces and
+accomplishments, which, though he scorned them himself, he was, after
+the common parental infatuation, willing that the boy should profit by.
+Incapable, through his own consciousness, of distinguishing between Van
+Loo's superficial polish and the true breeding of a gentleman, he
+had only looked upon it as an equipment for his son which might be
+serviceable to himself. He had told his wife the truth when he informed
+her of Van Loo's fears of being reminded of their former intimacy; but
+he had not told her how its discontinuance after they had left Heavy
+Tree Hill had affected her son, and how he still cherished his old
+admiration for that specious rascal. Nor had he told her how this had
+stung him, through his own selfish greed of the boy's affection. Yet now
+that it was possible that she had met Van Loo that evening, she might
+have become aware of Van Loo's power over her child. How she would
+exult, for all her pretended hatred of Van Loo! How, perhaps, they had
+plotted together! How Van Loo might have become aware of the place where
+his son was kept, and have been bribed by the mother to tell her! He
+stopped in a whirl of giddy fancies. His strong common sense in all
+other things had been hitherto proof against such idle dreams or
+suggestions; but the very strength of his parental love and jealousy had
+awakened in him at last the terrors of imagination.
+
+His first impulse had been to seek his wife, regardless of discovery or
+consequences, at Hymettus, where she had said she was going. It was on
+his way to the rendezvous at Marshall's claim. But this he as instantly
+set aside, it was his SON he must find; SHE might not confess, or might
+deceive him--the boy would not; and if his fears were correct, she could
+be arraigned afterwards. It was possible for him to reach the little
+Mission church and school, secluded in a remote valley by the old
+Franciscan fathers, where he had placed the boy for the last few years
+unknown to his wife. It would be a long ride, but he could still reach
+Heavy Tree Hill afterwards before Marshall and the expert arrived. And
+he had a feeling he had never felt before on the eve of a desperate
+adventure,--that he must see the boy first. He remembered how the child
+had often accompanied him in his flight, and how he had gained strength,
+and, it seemed to him, a kind of luck, from the touch of that small hand
+in his. Surely it was necessary now that at least his mind should be at
+rest regarding HIM on the eve of an affair of this moment. Perhaps he
+might never see him again. At any other time, and under the influence of
+any other emotion, he would have scorned such a sentimentalism--he who
+had never troubled himself either with preparation for the future or
+consideration for the past. But at that moment he felt both. He drew
+a long breath. He could catch the next train to the Three Boulders and
+ride thence to San Felipe. He hurriedly left the room, settled with the
+landlord, and galloped to the station. By the irony of circumstances the
+only horse available for that purpose was Mr. Hamlin's own.
+
+By two o'clock he was at the Three Boulders, where he got a fast horse
+and galloped into San Felipe by four. As he descended the last slope
+through the fastnesses of pines towards the little valley overlooked
+in its remoteness and purely pastoral simplicity by the gold-seeking
+immigrants,--its seclusion as one of the furthest northern Californian
+missions still preserved through its insignificance and the efforts of
+the remaining Brotherhood, who used it as an infirmary and a school for
+the few remaining Spanish families,--he remembered how he once blundered
+upon it with the boy while hotly pursued by a hue and cry from one of
+the larger towns, and how he found sanctuary there. He remembered how,
+when the pursuit was over, he had placed the boy there under the padre's
+charge. He had lied to his wife regarding the whereabouts of her son,
+but he had spoken truly regarding his free expenditure for the boy's
+maintenance, and the good fathers had accepted, equally for the child's
+sake as for the Church's sake, the generous "restitution" which this
+coarse, powerful, ruffianly looking father was apparently seeking to
+make. He was quite aware of it at the time, and had equally accepted it
+with grim cynicism; but it now came back to him with a new and smarting
+significance. Might THEY, too, not succeed in weaning the boy's
+affection from him, or if the mother had interfered, would they not side
+with her in claiming an equal right? He had sometimes laughed to himself
+over the security of this hiding-place, so unknown and so unlikely to be
+discovered by her, yet within easy reach of her friends and his enemies;
+he now ground his teeth over the mistake which his doting desire to keep
+his son accessible to him had caused him to make. He put spurs to his
+horse, dashed down the little, narrow, ill-paved street, through
+the deserted plaza, and pulled up in a cloud of dust before the only
+remaining tower, with its cracked belfry, of the half-ruined Mission
+church. A new dormitory and school-building had been extended from its
+walls, but in a subdued, harmonious, modest way, quite unlike the usual
+glaring white-pine glories of provincial towns. Steptoe laughed to
+himself bitterly. Some of his money had gone in it.
+
+He seized the horsehair rope dangling from a bell by the wall and rang
+it sharply. A soft-footed priest appeared,--Father Dominico. "Eddy
+Horncastle? Ah! yes. Eddy, dear child, is gone."
+
+"Gone!" shouted Steptoe in a voice that startled the padre. "Where?
+When? With whom?"
+
+"Pardon, senor, but for a time--only a pasear to the next village. It is
+his saint's day--he has half-holiday. He is a good boy. It is a little
+pleasure for him and for us."
+
+"Oh!" said Steptoe, softened into a rough apology. "I forgot. All right.
+Has he had any visitors lately--lady, for instance?"
+
+Father Dominico cast a look half of fright, half of reproval upon his
+guest.
+
+"A lady HERE!"
+
+In his relief Steptoe burst into a coarse laugh. "Of course; you see
+I forgot that, too. I was thinking of one of his woman folks, you
+know--relatives--aunts. Was there any other visitor?"
+
+"Only one. Ah! we know the senor's rules regarding his son."
+
+"One?" repeated Steptoe. "Who was it?"
+
+"Oh, quite an hidalgo--an old friend of the child's--most polite,
+most accomplished, fluent in Spanish, perfect in deportment. The Senor
+Horncastle surely could find nothing to object to. Father Pedro was
+charmed with him. A man of affairs, and yet a good Catholic, too. It
+was a Senor Van Loo--Don Paul the boy called him, and they talked of the
+boy's studies in the old days as if--indeed, but for the stranger being
+a caballero and man of the world--as if he had been his teacher."
+
+It was a proof of the intensity of the father's feelings that they had
+passed beyond the power of his usual coarse, brutal expression, and he
+only stared at the priest with a dull red face in which the blood seemed
+to have stagnated. Presently he said thickly, "When did he come?"
+
+"A few days ago."
+
+"Which way did Eddy go?"
+
+"To Brown's Mills, scarcely a league away. He will be here--even now--on
+the instant. But the senor will come into the refectory and take some
+of the old Mission wine from the Catalan grape, planted one hundred and
+fifty years ago, until the dear child returns. He will be so happy."
+
+"No! I'm in a hurry. I will go on and meet him." He took off his hat,
+mopped his crisp, wet hair with his handkerchief, and in a thick, slow,
+impeded voice, more suggestive than the outburst he restrained, said,
+"And as long as my son remains here that man, Van Loo, must not pass
+this gate, speak to him, or even see him. You hear me? See to it, you
+and all the others. See to it, I say, or"--He stopped abruptly, clapped
+his hat on the swollen veins of his forehead, turned quickly, passed out
+without another word through the archway into the road, and before the
+good priest could cross himself or recover from his astonishment the
+thud of his horse's hoofs came from the dusty road.
+
+It was ten minutes before his face resumed its usual color. But in that
+ten minutes, as if some of the struggle of his rider had passed into
+him, his horse was sweating with exhaustion and fear. For in that ten
+minutes, in this new imagination with which he was cursed, he had killed
+both Van Loo and his son, and burned the refectory over the heads of the
+treacherous priests. Then, quite himself again, a voice came to him from
+the rocky trail above the road with the hail of "Father!" He started
+quickly as a lad of fifteen or sixteen came bounding down the hillside,
+and ran towards him.
+
+"You passed me and I called to you, but you did not seem to hear,"
+said the boy breathlessly. "Then I ran after you. Have you been to the
+Mission?"
+
+Steptoe looked at him quite as breathlessly, but from a deeper emotion.
+He was, even at first sight, a handsome lad, glowing with youth and the
+excitement of his run, and, as the father looked at him, he could
+see the likeness to his mother in his clear-cut features, and even a
+resemblance to himself in his square, compact chest and shoulders and
+crisp, black curls. A thrill of purely animal paternity passed over him,
+the fierce joy of his flesh over his own flesh! His own son, by God!
+They could not take THAT from him; they might plot, swindle, fawn,
+cheat, lie, and steal away his affections, but there he was, plain to
+all eyes, his own son, his very son!
+
+"Come here," he said in a singular, half-weary and half-protesting
+voice, which the boy instantly recognized as his father's accents of
+affection.
+
+The boy hesitated as he stood on the edge of the road and pointed with
+mingled mischief and fastidiousness to the depths of impalpable red
+dust that lay between him and the horseman. Steptoe saw that he was very
+smartly attired in holiday guise, with white duck trousers and patent
+leather shoes, and, after the Spanish fashion, wore black kid gloves. He
+certainly was a bit of a dandy, as he had said. The father's whole face
+changed as he wheeled and came before the lad, who lifted up his arms
+expectantly. They had often ridden together on the same horse.
+
+"No rides to-day in that toggery, Eddy," he said in the same voice. "But
+I'll get down and we'll go and sit somewhere under a tree and have some
+talk. I've got a bit of a job that's hurrying me, and I can't waste
+time."
+
+"Not one of your old jobs, father? I thought you had quite given that
+up?"
+
+The boy spoke more carelessly than reproachfully, or even wonderingly;
+yet, as he dismounted and tethered his horse, Steptoe answered
+evasively, "It's a big thing, sonny; maybe we'll make our eternal
+fortune, and then we'll light out from this hole and have a gay time
+elsewhere. Come along."
+
+He took the boy's gloved right hand in his own powerful grasp, and
+together they clambered up the steep hillside to a rocky ledge on which
+a fallen pine from above had crashed, snapped itself in twain, and then
+left its withered crown to hang half down the slope, while the other
+half rested on the ledge. On this they sat, looking down upon the road
+and the tethered horse. A gentle breeze moved the treetops above their
+heads, and the westering sun played hide-and-seek with the shifting
+shadows. The boy's face was quick and alert with all that moved round
+him, but without thought the father's face was heavy, except for the
+eyes that were fixed upon his son.
+
+"Van Loo came to the Mission," he said suddenly.
+
+The boy's eyes glittered quickly, like a steel that pierced the father's
+heart. "Oh," he said simply, "then it was the padre told you?"
+
+"How did he know you were here?" asked Steptoe.
+
+"I don't know," said the boy quietly. "I think he said something, but
+I've forgotten it. But it was mighty good of him to come, for I thought,
+you know, that he did not care to see me after Heavy Tree, and that he'd
+gone back on us."
+
+"What did he tell you?" continued Steptoe. "Did he talk of me or of your
+mother?"
+
+"No," said the boy, but without any show of interest or sympathy; "we
+talked mostly about old times."
+
+"Tell ME about those old times, Eddy. You never told me anything about
+them."
+
+The boy, momentarily arrested more by something in the tone of his
+father's voice--a weakness he had never noticed before--than by any
+suggestion of his words, said with a laugh, "Oh, only about what we
+used to do when I was very little and used to call myself his 'little
+brother,'--don't you remember, long before the big strike on Heavy Tree?
+They were gay times we had then."
+
+"And how he used to teach you to imitate other people's handwriting?"
+said Steptoe.
+
+"What made you think of that, pop?" said the boy, with a slight wonder
+in his eyes. "Why, that's the very thing we DID talk about."
+
+"But you didn't do it again; you ain't done it since," said Steptoe
+quickly.
+
+"Lord! no," said the boy contemptuously. "There ain't no chance now, and
+there wouldn't be any fun in it. It isn't like the old times when him
+and me were all alone, and we used to write letters as coming from other
+people to all the boys round Heavy Tree and the Bar, and sometimes as
+far as Boomville, to get them to do things, and they'd think the letters
+were real, and they'd do 'em. And there'd be the biggest kind of a row,
+and nobody ever knew who did it."
+
+Steptoe stared at this flesh of his own flesh half in relief, half in
+frightened admiration. Sitting astride the log, his elbows on his knees
+and his gloved hands supporting his round cheeks, the boy's handsome
+face became illuminated with an impish devilry which the father had
+never seen before. With dancing eyes he went on. "It was one of those
+very games we played so long ago that he wanted to see me about and
+wanted me to keep mum about, for some of the folks that he played it on
+were around here now. It was a game we got off on one of the big strike
+partners long before the strike. I'll tell YOU, dad, for you know
+what happened afterwards, and you'll be glad. Well, that
+partner--Demorest--was a kind of silly, you remember--a sort of Miss
+Nancyish fellow--always gloomy and lovesick after his girl in the
+States. Well, we'd written lots of letters to girls from their chaps
+before, and got lots of fun out of it; but we had even a better show
+for a game here, for it happened that Van Loo knew all about the
+girl--things that even the man's own partners didn't, for Van Loo's
+mother was a sort of a friend of the girl's family, and traveled about
+with her, and knew that the girl was spoony over this Demorest, and that
+they corresponded. So, knowing that Van Loo was employed at Heavy Tree,
+she wrote to him to find out all about Demorest and how to stop their
+foolish nonsense, for the girl's parents didn't want her to marry a
+broken-down miner like him. So we thought we'd do it our own way, and
+write a letter to her as if it was from him, don't you see? I wanted to
+make him call her awful names, and say that he hated her, that he was a
+murderer and a horse-thief, and that he had killed a policeman, and that
+he was thinking of becoming a Digger Injin, and having a Digger squaw
+for a wife, which he liked better than her. Lord! dad, you ought to have
+seen what stuff I made up." The boy burst into a shrill, half-feminine
+laugh, and Steptoe, catching the infection, laughed loudly in his own
+coarse, brutal fashion.
+
+For some moments they sat there looking in each other's faces, shaking
+with sympathetic emotion, the father forgetting the purpose of his
+coming there, his rage over Van Loo's visit, and even the rendezvous
+to which his horse in the road below was waiting to bring him; the son
+forgetting their retreat from Heavy Tree Hill and his shameful vagabond
+wanderings with that father in the years that followed. The sinking sun
+stared blankly in their faces; the protecting pines above them moved by
+a stronger gust shook a few cones upon them; an enormous crow mockingly
+repeated the father's coarse laugh, and a squirrel scampered away from
+the strangely assorted pair as Steptoe, wiping his eyes and forehead
+with his pocket-handkerchief, said:--
+
+"And did you send it?"
+
+"Oh! Van Loo thought it too strong. Said that those sort of love-sick
+fools made more fuss over little things than they did over big things,
+and he sort of toned it down, and fixed it up himself. But it told. For
+there were never any more letters in the post-office in her handwriting,
+and there wasn't any posted to her in his."
+
+They both laughed again, and then Steptoe rose. "I must be getting
+along," he said, looking curiously at the boy. "I've got to catch a
+train at Three Boulders Station."
+
+"Three Boulders!" repeated the boy. "I'm going there, too, on Friday, to
+meet Father Cipriano."
+
+"I reckon my work will be all done by Friday," said Steptoe musingly.
+Standing thus, holding his boy's hand, he was thinking that the real
+fight at Marshall's would not take place at once, for it might take a
+day or two for Marshall to gather forces. But he only pressed his son's
+hand gently.
+
+"I wish you would sometimes take me with you as you used to," said the
+boy curiously. "I'm bigger now, and wouldn't be in your way."
+
+Steptoe looked at the boy with a choking sense of satisfaction and
+pride. But he said, "No;" and then suddenly with simulated humor, "Don't
+you be taken in by any letters from ME, such as you and Van Loo used to
+write. You hear?"
+
+The boy laughed.
+
+"And," continued Steptoe, "if anybody says I sent for you, don't you
+believe them."
+
+"No," said the boy, smiling.
+
+"And don't you even believe I'm dead till you see me so. You understand.
+By the way, Father Pedro has some money of mine kept for you. Now hurry
+back to school and say you met me, but that I was in a great hurry. I
+reckon I may have been rather rough to the priests."
+
+They had reached the lower road again, and Steptoe silently unhitched
+his horse. "Good-by," he said, as he laid his hand on the boy's arm.
+
+"Good-by, dad."
+
+He mounted his horse slowly. "Well," he said smilingly, looking down the
+road, "you ain't got anything more to say to me, have you?"
+
+"No, dad."
+
+"Nothin' you want?"
+
+"Nothin', dad."
+
+"All right. Good-by."
+
+He put spurs to his horse and cantered down the road without looking
+back. The boy watched him with idle curiosity until he disappeared from
+sight, and then went on his way, whistling and striking off the heads of
+the wayside weeds with his walking-stick.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+The sun arose so brightly over Hymettus on the morning after the
+meeting of the three partners that it was small wonder that Barker's
+impressionable nature quickly responded to it, and, without awakening
+the still sleeping child, he dressed hurriedly, and was the first
+to greet it in the keen air of the slope behind the hotel. To his
+pantheistic spirit it had always seemed as natural for him to early
+welcome his returning brothers of the woods and hills as to say
+good-morning to his fellow mortals. And, in the joy of seeing Black Spur
+rising again to his level in the distance before him, he doffed his hat
+to it with a return of his old boyish habit, laid his arm caressingly
+around the great girth of the nearest pine, clapped his hands to the
+scampering squirrels in his path, and whistled to the dipping jays.
+In this way he quite forgot the more serious affairs of the preceding
+night, or, rather, saw them only in the gilding of the morning, until,
+looking up, he perceived the tall figure of Demorest approaching him;
+and then it struck him with his first glance at his old partner's face
+that his usual suave, gentle melancholy had been succeeded by a critical
+cynicism of look and a restrained bitterness of accent. Barker's loyal
+heart smote him for his own selfishness; Demorest had been hard hit
+by the discovery of the forgery and Stacy's concern in it, and had
+doubtless passed a restless night, while he (Barker) had forgotten all
+about it. "I thought of knocking at your door, as I passed," he said,
+with sympathetic apology, "but I was afraid I might disturb you. Isn't
+it glorious here? Quite like the old hill. Look at that lizard; he
+hasn't moved since he first saw me. Do you remember the one who used to
+steal our sugar, and then stiffen himself into stone on the edge of the
+bowl until he looked like an ornamental handle to it?" he continued,
+rebounding again into spirits.
+
+"Barker," said Demorest abruptly, "what sort of woman is this Mrs. Van
+Loo, whose rooms I occupy?"
+
+"Oh," said Barker, with optimistic innocence, "a most proper woman, old
+chap. White-haired, well-dressed, with a little foreign accent and a
+still more foreign courtesy. Why, you don't suppose we'd"--
+
+"But what is she like?" said Demorest impatiently.
+
+"Well," said Barker thoughtfully, "she's the kind of woman who might be
+Van Loo's mother, I suppose."
+
+"You mean the mother of a forger and a swindler?" asked Demorest
+sharply.
+
+"There are no mothers of swindlers and forgers," said Barker gravely,
+"in the way you mean. It's only those poor devils," he said, pointing,
+nevertheless, with a certain admiration to a circling sparrow-hawk above
+him, "who have inherited instincts. What I mean is that she might be Van
+Loo's mother, because he didn't SELECT her."
+
+"Where did she come from? and how long has she been here?" asked
+Demorest.
+
+"She came from abroad, I believe. And she came here just after you left.
+Van Loo, after he became secretary of the Ditch Company, sent for her
+and her daughter to keep house for him. But you'll see her to-day or
+to-morrow probably, when she returns. I'll introduce you; she'll be
+rather glad to meet some one from abroad, and all the more if he happens
+to be rich and distinguished, and eligible for her daughter." He stopped
+suddenly in his smile, remembering Demorest's lifelong secret. But to
+his surprise his companion's face, instead of darkening as it was
+wont to do at any such allusion, brightened suddenly with a singular
+excitement as he answered dryly, "Ah well, if the girl is pretty, who
+knows!"
+
+Indeed, his spirits seemed to have returned with strange vivacity
+as they walked back to the hotel, and he asked many other questions
+regarding Mrs. Van Loo and her daughter, and particularly if the
+daughter had also been abroad. When they reached the veranda they found
+a few early risers eagerly reading the Sacramento papers, which had just
+arrived, or, in little knots, discussing the news. Indeed, they would
+probably have stopped Barker and his companion had not Barker, anxious
+to relieve his friend's curiosity, hurried with him at once to the
+manager's office.
+
+"Can you tell me exactly when you expect Mrs. Van Loo to return?" asked
+Barker quickly.
+
+The manager with difficulty detached himself from the newspaper which
+he, too, was anxiously perusing, and said, with a peculiar smile, "Well
+no! she WAS to return to-day, but if you're wanting to keep her rooms,
+I should say there wouldn't be any trouble about it, as she'll hardly be
+coming back here NOW. She's rather high and mighty in style, I know, and
+a determined sort of critter, but I reckon she and her daughter wouldn't
+care much to be waltzing round in public after what has happened."
+
+"I don't understand you," said Demorest impatiently. "WHAT has
+happened?"
+
+"Haven't you heard the news?" said the manager in surprise. "It's in
+all the Sacramento papers. Van Loo is a defaulter--has hypothecated
+everything he had and skedaddled."
+
+Barker started. He was not thinking of the loss of his wife's
+money--only of HER disappointment and mortification over it. Poor girl!
+Perhaps she was also worrying over his resentment,--as if she did not
+know him! He would go to her at once at Boomville. Then he remembered
+that she was coming with Mrs. Horncastle, and might be already on
+her way here by rail or coach, and he would miss her. Demorest in the
+meantime had seized a paper, and was intently reading it.
+
+"There's bad news, too, for your friend, your old partner," said the
+manager half sympathetically, half interrogatively. "There has been a
+drop out in everything the bank is carrying, and everybody is unloading.
+Two firms failed in 'Frisco yesterday that were carrying things for the
+bank, and have thrown everything back on it. There was an awful panic
+last night, and they say none of the big speculators know where they
+stand. Three of our best customers in the hotel rushed off to the bay
+this morning, but Stacy himself started before daylight, and got the
+through night express to stop for him on the Divide on signal. Shall I
+send any telegrams that may come to your room?"
+
+Demorest knew that the manager suspected him of being interested in the
+bank, and understood the purport of the question. He answered, with calm
+surprise, that he was expecting no telegrams, and added, "But if Mrs.
+Van Loo returns I beg you to at once let me know," and taking Barker's
+arm he went in to breakfast. Seated by themselves, Demorest looked at
+his companion. "I'm afraid, Barker boy, that this thing is more serious
+to Jim than we expected last night, or than he cared to tell us. And
+you, old man, I fear are hurt a little by Van Loo's flight. He had some
+money of your wife's, hadn't he?"
+
+Barker, who knew that the bulk of Demorest's fortune was in Stacy's
+hands, was touched at this proof of his unselfish thought, and answered
+with equal unselfishness that he was concerned only by the fear of Mrs.
+Barker's disappointment. "Why, Lord! Phil, whether she's lost or saved
+her money it's nothing to me. I gave it to her to do what she liked with
+it, but I'm afraid she'll be worrying over what I think of it,--as if
+she did not know me! And I'm half a mind, if it were not for missing
+her, to go over to Boomville, where she's stopping."
+
+"I thought you said she was in San Francisco?" said Demorest
+abstractedly.
+
+Barker colored. "Yes," he answered quickly. "But I've heard since that
+she stopped at Boomville on the way."
+
+"Then don't let ME keep you here," returned Demorest. "For if Jim
+telegraphs to me I shall start for San Francisco at once, and I rather
+think he will. I did not like to say so before those panic-mongers
+outside who are stampeding everything; so run along, Barker boy, and
+ease your mind about the wife. We may have other things to think about
+soon."
+
+Thus adjured, Barker rose from his half-finished breakfast and slipped
+away. Yet he was not quite certain what to do. His wife must have heard
+the news at Boomville as quickly as he had, and, if so, would be on her
+way with Mrs. Horncastle; or she might be waiting for him--knowing, too,
+that he had heard the news--in fear and trembling. For it was Barker's
+custom to endow all those he cared for with his own sensitiveness, and
+it was not like him to reflect that the woman who had so recklessly
+speculated against his opinion would scarcely fear his reproaches in her
+defeat. In the fullness of his heart he telegraphed to her in case she
+had not yet left Boomville: "All right. Have heard news. Understand
+perfectly. Don't worry. Come to me." Then he left the hotel by the
+stable entrance in order to evade the guests who had congregated on
+the veranda, and made his way to a little wooded crest which he knew
+commanded a view of the two roads from Boomville. Here he determined to
+wait and intercept her before she reached the hotel. He knew that many
+of the guests were aware of his wife's speculations with Van Loo, and
+that he was her broker. He wished to spare her running the gauntlet
+of their curious stares and comments as she drove up alone. As he was
+climbing the slope the coach from Sacramento dashed past him on the
+road below, but he knew that it had changed horses at Boomville at four
+o'clock, and that his tired wife would not have availed herself of it at
+that hour, particularly as she could not have yet received the fateful
+news. He threw himself under a large pine, and watched the stagecoach
+disappear as it swept round into the courtyard of the hotel.
+
+He sat there for some moments with his eyes bent upon the two forks
+of the red road that diverged below him, but which appeared to become
+whiter and more dazzling as he searched their distance. There was
+nothing to be seen except an occasional puff of dust which eventually
+revealed a horseman or a long trailing cloud out of which a solitary
+mule, one of a pack-train of six or eight, would momentarily emerge and
+be lost again. Then he suddenly heard his name called, and, looking up,
+saw Mrs. Horncastle, who had halted a few paces from him between two
+columns of the long-drawn aisle of pines.
+
+In that mysterious half-light she seemed such a beautiful and
+goddess-like figure that his consciousness at first was unable to grasp
+anything else. She was always wonderfully well dressed, but the warmth
+and seclusion of this mountain morning had enabled her to wear a light
+gown of some delicate fabric which set off the grace of her figure,
+and even pardoned the rural coquetry of a silken sash around her still
+slender waist. An open white parasol thrown over her shoulder made
+a nimbus for her charming head and the thick coils of hair under her
+lace-edged hat. He had never seen her look so beautiful before. And that
+thought was so plainly in his frank face and eyes as he sprang to his
+feet that it brought a slight rise of color to her own cheek.
+
+"I saw you climbing up here as I passed in the coach a few minutes ago,"
+she said, with a smile, "and as soon as I had shaken the dust off I
+followed you."
+
+"Where's Kitty?" he stammered.
+
+The color faded from her face as it had come, and a shade of something
+like reproach crept into her dark eyes. And whatever it had been her
+purpose to say, or however carefully she might have prepared herself for
+this interview, she was evidently taken aback by the sudden directness
+of the inquiry. Barker saw this as quickly, and as quickly referred it
+to his own rudeness. His whole soul rushed in apology to his face as he
+said, "Oh, forgive me! I was anxious about Kitty; indeed, I had thought
+of coming again to Boomville, for you've heard the news, of course? Van
+Loo is a defaulter, and has run away with the poor child's money."
+
+Mrs. Horncastle had heard the news at the hotel. She paused a moment to
+collect herself, and then said slowly and tentatively, with a watchful
+intensity in her eyes, "Mrs. Barker went, I think, to the Divide"--
+
+But she was instantly interrupted by the eager Barker. "I see. I thought
+of that at once. She went directly to the company's offices to see if
+she could save anything from the wreck before she saw me. It was like
+her, poor girl! And you--you," he went on eagerly, his whole face
+beaming with gratitude,--"you, out of your goodness, came here to tell
+me." He held out both hands and took hers in his.
+
+For a moment Mrs. Horncastle was speechless and vacillating. She had
+often noticed before that it was part of the irony of the creation of
+such a simple nature as Barker's that he was not only open to deceit,
+but absolutely seemed to invite it. Instead of making others franker,
+people were inclined to rebuke his credulity by restraint and
+equivocation on their own part. But the evasion thus offered to her,
+although only temporary, was a temptation she could not resist. And it
+prolonged an interview that a ruthless revelation of the truth might
+have shortened.
+
+"She did not tell me she was going there," she replied still evasively;
+"and, indeed," she added, with a burst of candor still more dangerous,
+"I only learned it from the hotel clerk after she was gone. But I want
+to talk to you about her relations to Van Loo," she said, with a return
+of her former intensity of gaze, "and I thought we would be less subject
+to interruption here than at the hotel. Only I suppose everybody knows
+this place, and any of those flirting couples are likely to come here.
+Besides," she added, with a little half-hysterical laugh and a slight
+shiver, as she looked up at the high interlacing boughs above her head,
+"it's as public as the aisles of a church, and really one feels as if
+one were 'speaking out' in meeting. Isn't there some other spot a little
+more secluded, where we could sit down," she went on, as she poked her
+parasol into the usual black gunpowdery deposit of earth which mingled
+with the carpet of pine-needles beneath her feet, "and not get all
+sticky and dirty?"
+
+Barker's eyes sparkled. "I know every foot of this hill, Mrs.
+Horncastle," he said, "and if you will follow me I'll take you to one of
+the loveliest nooks you ever dreamed of. It's an old Indian spring now
+forgotten, and I think known only to me and the birds. It's not more
+than ten minutes from here; only"--he hesitated as he caught sight
+of the smart French bronze buckled shoe and silken ankle which
+Mrs. Horncastle's gathering up of her dainty skirts around her had
+disclosed--"it may be a little rough and dusty going to your feet."
+
+But Mrs. Horncastle pointed out that she had already irretrievably
+ruined her shoes and stockings in climbing up to him,--although Barker
+could really distinguish no diminution of their freshness,--and that
+she might as well go on. Whereat they both passed down the long aisle of
+slope to a little hollow of manzanita, which again opened to a view of
+Black Spur, but left the hotel hidden.
+
+"What time did Kitty go?" began Barker eagerly, when they were half down
+the slope.
+
+But here Mrs. Horncastle's foot slipped upon the glassy pine-needles,
+and not only stopped an answer, but obliged Barker to give all his
+attention to keep his companion from falling again until they reached
+the open. Then came the plunge through the manzanita thicket, then a
+cool wade through waist-deep ferns, and then they emerged, holding each
+other's hand, breathless and panting before the spring.
+
+It did not belie his enthusiastic description. A triangular hollow,
+niched in a shelf of the mountain-side, narrowed to a point from which
+the overflow of the spring percolated through a fringe of alder, to
+fall in what seemed from the valley to be a green furrow down the whole
+length of the mountain-side. Overhung by pines above, which met and
+mingled with the willows that everywhere fringed it, it made the one
+cooling shade in the whole basking expanse of the mountain, and yet was
+penetrated throughout by the intoxicating spice of the heated pines.
+Flowering reeds and long lush grasses drew a magic circle round an open
+bowl-like pool in the centre, that was always replenished to the slow
+murmur of an unseen rivulet that trickled from a white-quartz cavern
+in the mountain-side like a vein opened in its flank. Shadows of timid
+wings crossed it, quick rustlings disturbed the reeds, but nothing more.
+It was silent, but breathing; it was hidden to everything but the sky
+and the illimitable distance.
+
+They threaded their way around it on the spongy carpet, covered by
+delicate lace-like vines that seemed to caress rather than trammel their
+moving feet, until they reached an open space before the pool. It was
+cushioned and matted with disintegrated pine bark, and here they sat
+down. Mrs. Horncastle furled her parasol and laid it aside; raised
+both hands to the back of her head and took two hat-pins out, which she
+placed in her smiling mouth; removed her hat, stuck the hat-pins in it,
+and handed it to Barker, who gently placed it on the top of a tall reed,
+where during the rest of that momentous meeting it swung and drooped
+like a flower; removed her gloves slowly; drank still smilingly and
+gratefully nearly a wineglassful of the water which Barker brought
+her in the green twisted chalice of a lily leaf; looked the picture of
+happiness, and then burst into tears.
+
+Barker was astounded, dismayed, even terror-stricken. Mrs. Horncastle
+crying! Mrs. Horncastle, the imperious, the collected, the coldly
+critical, the cynical, smiling woman of the world, actually crying!
+Other women might cry--Kitty had cried often--but Mrs. Horncastle!
+Yet, there she was, sobbing; actually sobbing like a schoolgirl,
+her beautiful shoulders rising and falling with her grief; crying
+unmistakably through her long white fingers, through a lace
+pocket-handkerchief which she had hurriedly produced and shaken from
+behind her like a conjurer's trick; her beautiful eyes a thousand times
+more lustrous for the sparkling beads that brimmed her lashes and welled
+over like the pool before her.
+
+"Don't mind me," she murmured behind her handkerchief. "It's very
+foolish, I know. I was nervous--worried, I suppose; I'll be better in a
+moment. Don't notice me, please."
+
+But Barker had drawn beside her and was trying, after the fashion of his
+sex, to take her handkerchief away in apparently the firm belief that
+this action would stop her tears. "But tell me what it is. Do Mrs.
+Horncastle, please," he pleaded in his boyish fashion. "Is it anything I
+can do? Only say the word; only tell me SOMETHING!"
+
+But he had succeeded in partially removing the handkerchief, and so
+caught a glimpse of her wet eyes, in which a faint smile struggled out
+like sunshine through rain. But they clouded again, although she didn't
+cry, and her breath came and went with the action of a sob, and her
+hands still remained against her flushed face.
+
+"I was only going to talk to you of Kitty" (sob)--"but I suppose I'm
+weak" (sob)--"and such a fool" (sob) "and I got to thinking of myself
+and my own sorrows when I ought to be thinking only of you and Kitty."
+
+"Never mind Kitty," said Barker impulsively. "Tell me about
+yourself--your own sorrows. I am a brute to have bothered you about her
+at such a moment; and now until you have told me what is paining you so
+I shall not let you speak of her." He was perfectly sincere. What
+were Kitty's possible and easy tears over the loss of her money to the
+unknown agony that could wrench a sob from a woman like this? "Dear Mrs.
+Horncastle," he went on as breathlessly, "think of me now not as Kitty's
+husband, but as your true friend. Yes, as your BEST and TRUEST friend,
+and speak to me as you would speak to him."
+
+"You will be my friend?" she said suddenly and passionately,
+grasping his hand, "my best and truest friend? and if I tell you
+all,--everything, you will not cast me from you and hate me?"
+
+Barker felt the same thrill from her warm hand slowly possess his whole
+being as it had the evening before, but this time he was prepared and
+answered the grasp and her eyes together as he said breathlessly, "I
+will be--I AM your friend."
+
+She withdrew her hand and passed it over her eyes. After a moment she
+caught his hand again, and, holding it tightly as if she feared he might
+fly from her, bit her lip, and then slowly, without looking at him,
+said, "I lied to you about myself and Kitty that night; I did not come
+with her. I came alone and secretly to Boomville to see--to see the man
+who is my husband."
+
+"Your husband!" said Barker in surprise. He had believed, with the rest
+of the world, that there had been no communication between them for
+years. Yet so intense was his interest in her that he did not notice
+that this revelation was leaving now no excuse for his wife's presence
+at Boomville.
+
+Mrs. Horncastle went on with dogged bitterness, "Yes, my husband. I went
+to him to beg and bribe him to let me see my child. Yes, MY child," she
+said frantically, tightening her hold upon his hand, "for I lied to you
+when I once told you I had none. I had a child, and, more than that, a
+child who at his birth I did not dare to openly claim."
+
+She stopped breathlessly, stared at his face with her former intensity
+as if she would pluck the thought that followed from his brain. But
+he only moved closer to her, passed his arm over her shoulders with a
+movement so natural and protecting that it had a certain dignity in it,
+and, looking down upon her bent head with eyes brimming with sympathy,
+whispered, "Poor, poor child!"
+
+Whereat Mrs. Horncastle again burst into tears. And then, with her head
+half drawn towards his shoulder, she told him all,--all that had passed
+between her and her husband,--even all that they had then but hinted at.
+It was as if she felt she could now, for the first time, voice all these
+terrible memories of the past which had come back to her last night when
+her husband had left her. She concealed nothing, she veiled nothing;
+there were intervals when her tears no longer flowed, and a cruel
+hardness and return of her old imperiousness of voice and manner took
+their place, as if she was doing a rigid penance and took a bitter
+satisfaction in laying bare her whole soul to him. "I never had a
+friend," she whispered; "there were women who persecuted me with their
+jealous sneers; there were men who persecuted me with their selfish
+affections. When I first saw YOU, you seemed something so apart and
+different from all other men that, although I scarcely knew you, I
+wanted to tell you, even then, all that I have told you now. I wanted
+you to be my friend; something told me that you could,--that you could
+separate me from my past; that you could tell me what to do; that you
+could make me think as you thought, see life as YOU saw it, and trust
+always to some goodness in people as YOU did. And in this faith I
+thought that you would understand me now, and even forgive me all."
+
+She made a slight movement as if to disengage his arm, and, possibly,
+to look into his eyes, which she knew instinctively were bent upon her
+downcast head. But he only held her the more tightly until her cheek
+was close against his breast. "What could I do?" she murmured. "A man
+in sorrow and trouble may go to a woman for sympathy and support and the
+world will not gainsay or misunderstand him. But a woman--weaker, more
+helpless, credulous, ignorant, and craving for light--must not in her
+agony go to a man for succor and sympathy."
+
+"Why should she not?" burst out Barker passionately, releasing her in
+his attempt to gaze into her face. "What man dare refuse her?"
+
+"Not THAT," she said slowly, but with still averted eyes, "but because
+the world would say she LOVED him."
+
+"And what should she care for the opinion of a world that stands aside
+and lets her suffer? Why should she heed its wretched babble?" he went
+on in flashing indignation.
+
+"Because," she said faintly, lifting her moist eyes and moist and parted
+lips towards him,--"because it would be TRUE!"
+
+There was a silence so profound that even the spring seemed to withhold
+its song as their eyes and lips met. When the spring recommenced its
+murmur, and they could hear the droning of a bee above them and the
+rustling of the reed, she was murmuring, too, with her face against his
+breast: "You did not think it strange that I should follow you--that I
+should risk everything to tell you what I have told you before I told
+you anything else? You will never hate me for it, George?"
+
+There was another silence still more prolonged, and when he looked again
+into the flushed face and glistening eyes he was saying, "I have ALWAYS
+loved you. I know now I loved you from the first, from the day when I
+leaned over you to take little Sta from your lap and saw your tenderness
+for him in your eyes. I could have kissed you THEN, dearest, as I do
+now."
+
+"And," she said, when she had gained her smiling breath again, "you
+will always remember, George, that you told me this BEFORE I told you
+anything of her."
+
+"HER? Of whom, dearest?" he asked, leaning over her tenderly.
+
+"Of Kitty--of your wife," she said impatiently, as she drew back shyly
+with her former intense gaze.
+
+He did not seem to grasp her meaning, but said gravely, "Let us not
+talk of her NOW. Later we shall have MUCH to say of her. For," he added
+quietly, "you know I must tell her all."
+
+The color faded from her cheek. "Tell her all!" she repeated vacantly;
+then suddenly she turned upon him eagerly, and said, "But what if she is
+gone?"
+
+"Gone?" he repeated.
+
+"Yes; gone. What if she has run away with Van Loo? What if she has
+disgraced you and her child?"
+
+"What do you mean?" he said, seizing both her hands and gazing at her
+fixedly.
+
+"I mean," she said, with a half-frightened eagerness, "that she has
+already gone with Van Loo. George! George!" she burst out suddenly and
+passionately, falling upon her knees before him, "do you think that I
+would have followed you here and told you what I did if I thought that
+she had now the slightest claim upon your love or honor? Don't you
+understand me? I came to tell you of her flight to Boomville with that
+man; how I accidentally intercepted them there; how I tried to save her
+from him, and even lied to you to try to save her from your indignation;
+but how she deceived me as she has you, and even escaped and joined her
+lover while you were with me. I came to tell you that and nothing more,
+George, I swear it. But when you were kind to me and pitied me, I was
+mad--wild! I wanted to win you first out of your own love. I wanted you
+to respond to MINE before you knew your wife was faithless. Yet I would
+have saved her if I could. Listen, George! A moment more before you
+speak!"
+
+Then she hurriedly told him all; the whole story of his wife's dishonor,
+from her entrance into the sitting-room with Van Loo, her later appeal
+for concealment from her husband's unexpected presence, to the use she
+made of that concealment to fly with her lover. She spared no detail,
+and even repeated the insult Mrs. Barker had cast upon her with the
+triumphant reproach that her husband would not believe her. "Perhaps,"
+she added bitterly, "you may not believe me now. I could even stand that
+from you, George, if it could make you happier; but you would still have
+to believe it from others. The people at the Boomville Hotel saw them
+leave it together."
+
+"I do believe you," he said slowly, but with downcast eyes, "and if I
+did not love you before you told me this I could love you now for the
+part you have taken; but"--He stopped.
+
+"You love her still," she burst out, "and I might have known it.
+Perhaps," she went on distractedly, "you love her the more that you have
+lost her. It is the way of men--and women."
+
+"If I had loved her truly," said Barker, lifting his frank eyes to hers,
+"I could not have touched YOUR lips. I could not even have wished to--as
+I did three years ago--as I did last night. Then I feared it was my
+weakness, now I know it was my love. I have thought of it ever since,
+even while waiting my wife's return here, knowing that I did not and
+never could have loved her. But for that very reason I must try to save
+her for her own sake, if I cannot save her for mine; and if I fail,
+dearest, it shall not be said that we climbed to happiness over her
+back bent with the burden of her shame. If I loved you and told you so,
+thinking her still guiltless and innocent, how could I profit now by her
+fault?"
+
+Mrs. Horncastle saw too late her mistake. "Then you would take her
+back?" she said frenziedly.
+
+"To my home--which is hers--yes. To my heart--no. She never was there."
+
+"And I," said Mrs. Horncastle, with a quivering lip,--"where do I
+go when you have settled this? Back to my past again? Back to my
+husbandless, childless life?"
+
+She was turning away, but Barker caught her in his arms again. "No!"
+he said, his whole face suddenly radiating with hope and youthful
+enthusiasm. "No! Kitty will help us; we will tell her all. You do not
+know her, dearest, as I do--how good and kind she is, in spite of all.
+We will appeal to her; she will devise some means by which, without the
+scandal of a divorce, she and I may be separated. She will take dear
+little Sta with her--it is only right, poor girl; but she will let me
+come and see him. She will be a sister to us, dearest. Courage! All will
+come right yet. Trust to me."
+
+An hysterical laugh came to Mrs. Horncastle's lips and then stopped.
+For as she looked up at him in his supreme hopefulness, his divine
+confidence in himself and others--at his handsome face beaming with
+love and happiness, and his clear gray eyes glittering with an almost
+spiritual prescience--she, woman of the world and bitter experience,
+and perfectly cognizant of her own and Kitty's possibilities, was,
+nevertheless, completely carried away by her lover's optimism. For of
+all optimism that of love is the most convincing. Dear boy!--for he was
+but a boy in experience--only his love for her could work this magic. So
+she gave him kiss for kiss, largely believing, largely hoping, that Mrs.
+Barker was in love with Van Loo and would NOT return. And in this hope
+an invincible belief in the folly of her own sex soothed and sustained
+her.
+
+"We must go now, dearest," said Barker, pointing to the sun already near
+the meridian. Three hours had fled, they knew not how. "I will bring
+you back to the hill again, but there we had better separate, you taking
+your way alone to the hotel as you came, and I will go a little way on
+the road to the Divide and return later. Keep your own counsel about
+Kitty for her sake and ours; perhaps no one else may know the truth
+yet." With a farewell kiss they plunged again hand in hand through the
+cool bracken and again through the hot manzanita bushes, and so parted
+on the hilltop, as they had never parted before, leaving their whole
+world behind them.
+
+Barker walked slowly along the road under the flickering shade of
+wayside sycamore, his sensitive face also alternating with his thought
+in lights and shadows. Presently there crept towards him out of the
+distance a halting, vacillating, deviating buggy, trailing a cloud of
+dust after it like a broken wing. As it came nearer he could see that
+the horse was spent and exhausted, and that the buggy's sole occupant--a
+woman--was equally exhausted in her monotonous attempt to urge it
+forward with whip and reins that rose and fell at intervals with feeble
+reiteration. Then he stepped out of the shadow and stood in the middle
+of the sunlit road to await it. For he recognized his wife.
+
+The buggy came nearer. And then the most exquisite pang he had ever felt
+before at his wife's hands shot through him. For as she recognized
+him she made a wild but impotent attempt to dash past him, and then as
+suddenly pulled up in the ditch.
+
+He went up to her. She was dirty, she was disheveled, she was haggard,
+she was plain. There were rings of dust round her tear-swept eyes and
+smudges of dust-dried perspiration over her fair cheek. He thought of
+the beauty, freshness, and elegance of the woman he had just left, and
+an infinite pity swept the soul of this weak-minded gentleman. He ran
+towards her, and tenderly lifting her in her shame-stained garments from
+the buggy, said hurriedly, "I know it all, poor Kitty! You heard the
+news of Van Loo's flight, and you ran over to the Divide to try and save
+some of your money. Why didn't you wait? Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+There was no mistaking the reality of his words, the genuine pity and
+tenderness of his action; but the woman saw before her only the familiar
+dupe of her life, and felt an infinite relief mingled with a certain
+contempt for his weakness and anger at her previous fears of him.
+
+"You might have driven over, then, yourself," she said in a high,
+querulous voice, "if you knew it so well, and have spared ME this
+horrid, dirty, filthy, hopeless expedition, for I have not saved
+anything--there! And I have had all this disgusting bother!"
+
+For an instant he was sorely tempted to lift his eyes to her face, but
+he checked himself; then he gently took her dust-coat from her shoulders
+and shook it out, wiped the dust from her face and eyes with his own
+handkerchief, held her hat and blew the dust from it with a vivid memory
+of performing the same service for Mrs. Horncastle only an hour before,
+while she arranged her hair; and then, lifting her again into the buggy,
+said quietly, as he took his seat beside her and grasped the reins:--
+
+"I will drive you to the hotel by way of the stables, and you can go
+at once to your room and change your clothes. You are tired, you are
+nervous and worried, and want rest. Don't tell me anything now until you
+feel quite yourself again."
+
+He whipped up the horse, who, recognizing another hand at the reins,
+lunged forward in a final effort, and in a few minutes they were at the
+hotel.
+
+As Mrs. Horncastle sat at luncheon in the great dining-room, a little
+pale and abstracted, she saw Mrs. Barker sweep confidently into the
+room, fresh, rosy, and in a new and ravishing toilette. With a swift
+glance of conscious power towards the other guests she walked towards
+Mrs. Horncastle. "Ah, here you are, dear," she said in a voice that
+could easily reach all ears, "and you've arrived only a little before
+me, after all. And I've had such an AWFUL drive to the Divide! And only
+think! poor George telegraphed to me at Boomville not to worry, and his
+dispatch has only just come back here."
+
+And with a glance of complacency she laid Barker's gentle and forgiving
+dispatch before the astonished Mrs. Horncastle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+As the day advanced the excitement over the financial crisis increased
+at Hymettus, until, in spite of its remote and peaceful isolation,
+it seemed to throb through all its verandas and corridors with some
+pulsation from the outer world. Besides the letters and dispatches
+brought by hurried messengers and by coach from the Divide, there was
+a crowd of guests and servants around the branch telegraph at the new
+Heavy Tree post-office which was constantly augmenting. Added to the
+natural anxiety of the deeply interested was the stimulated fever of the
+few who wished to be "in the fashion." It was early rumored that a heavy
+operator, a guest of the hotel, who was also a director in the telegraph
+company, had bought up the wires for his sole use, that the dispatches
+were doctored in his interests as a "bear," and there was wild talk
+of lynching by the indignant mob. Passengers from Sacramento, San
+Francisco, and Marysville brought incredible news and the wildest
+sensations. Firm after firm had failed in the great cities. Old
+established houses that dated back to the "spring of '49," and had
+weathered the fires and inundations of their perilous Californian
+infancy, collapsed before this mysterious, invisible, impalpable
+breath of panic. Companies rooted in respectability and sneered at for
+old-fashioned ways were discovered to have shamelessly speculated with
+trusts! An eminent deacon and pillar of the church was found dead in
+his room with a bullet in his heart and a damning confession on the desk
+before him! Foreign bankers were sending their gold out of the country;
+government would be appealed to to open the vaults of the Mint; there
+would be an embargo on all bullion shipment! Nothing was too wild or
+preposterous to be repeated or credited.
+
+And with this fever of sordid passion the summer temperature had
+increased. For the last two weeks the thermometer had stood abnormally
+high during the day-long sunshine; and the metallic dust in the roads
+over mineral ranges pricked the skin like red-hot needles. In the
+deepest woods the aromatic sap stood in beads on felled logs and
+splintered tree-shafts; even the mountain night breeze failed to cool
+these baked and heated fastnesses. There were ominous clouds of smoke by
+day that were pillars of fire by night along the distant valleys. Some
+of the nearer crests were etched against the midnight sky by dull red
+creeping lines like a dying firework. The great hotel itself creaked
+and crackled and warped though all its painted, blistered, and veneered
+expanse, and was filled with the stifling breath of desiccation. The
+stucco cracked and crumbled away from the cornices; there were yawning
+gaps in the boarded floors beneath the Turkey carpets. Plate-glass
+windows became hopelessly fixed in their warped and twisted sashes,
+and added to the heat; there was a warm incense of pine sap in the
+dining-room that flavored all the cuisine. And yet the babble of stocks
+and shares went on, and people pricked their ears over their soup to
+catch the gossip of the last arrival.
+
+Demorest, loathing it all in his new-found bitterness, was nevertheless
+impatient in his inaction, and was eagerly awaiting a telegram from
+Stacy; Barker had disappeared since luncheon. Suddenly there was
+a commotion on the veranda as a carriage drove up with a handsome,
+gray-haired woman. In the buzzing of voices around him Demorest heard
+the name of Mrs. Van Loo. In further comments, made in more smothered
+accents, he heard that Van Loo had been stopped at Canyon Station, but
+that no warrant had yet been issued against him; that it was generally
+believed that the bank dared not hold him; that others openly averred
+that he had been used as a scapegoat to avert suspicion from higher
+guilt. And certainly Mrs. Van Loo's calm, confident air seemed to
+corroborate these assertions.
+
+He was still wondering if the strange coincidence which had brought both
+mother and son into his own life was not merely a fancy, as far as SHE
+was concerned, when a waiter brought a message from Mrs. Van Loo that
+she would be glad to see him for a few moments in her room. Last
+night he could scarcely have restrained his eagerness to meet her and
+elucidate the mystery of the photograph; now he was conscious of an
+equally strong revulsion of feeling, and a dull premonition of evil.
+However, it was no doubt possible that the man had told her of his
+previous inquiries, and she had merely acknowledged them by that
+message.
+
+Demorest found Mrs. Van Loo in the private sitting-room where he and his
+old partners had supped on the preceding night. She received him with
+unmistakable courtesy and even a certain dignity that might or might
+not have been assumed. He had no difficulty in recognizing the son's
+mechanical politeness in the first, but he was puzzled at the second.
+
+"The manager of this hotel," she began, with a foreigner's precision of
+English, "has just told me that you were at present occupying my rooms
+at his invitation, but that you wished to see me at once on my return,
+and I believe that I was not wrong in apprehending that you preferred
+to hear my wishes from my own lips rather than from an innkeeper. I had
+intended to keep these rooms for some weeks, but, unfortunately for me,
+though fortunately for you, the present terrible financial crisis, which
+has most unjustly brought my son into such scandalous prominence, will
+oblige me to return to San Francisco until his reputation is fully
+cleared of these foul aspersions. I shall only ask you to allow me the
+undisturbed possession of these rooms for a couple of hours until I can
+pack my trunks and gather up a few souvenirs that I almost always keep
+with me."
+
+"Pray, consider that your wishes are my own in respect to that, my
+dear madam," returned Demorest gravely, "and that, indeed, I protested
+against even this temporary intrusion upon your apartments; but I
+confess that now that you have spoken of your souvenirs I have the
+greatest curiosity about one of them, and that even my object in seeking
+this interview was to gratify it. It is in regard to a photograph which
+I saw on the chimney-piece in your bedroom, which I think I recognized
+as that of some one whom I formerly knew."
+
+There was a sudden look of sharp suspicion and even hard aggressiveness
+that quite changed the lady's face as he mentioned the word "souvenir,"
+but it quickly changed to a smile as she put up her fan with a gesture
+of arch deprecation, and said:
+
+"Ah! I see. Of course, a lady's photograph."
+
+The reply irritated Demorest. More than that, he felt a sudden sense of
+the absolute sentimentality of his request, and the consciousness
+that he was about to invite the familiar confidence of this strange
+woman--whose son had forged his name--in regard to HER!
+
+"It was a Venetian picture," he began, and stopped, a singular disgust
+keeping him from voicing the name.
+
+But Mrs. Van Loo was less reticent. "Oh, you mean my dearest friend--a
+lovely picture, and you know her? Why, yes, surely. You are THE Mr.
+Demorest who--Of course, that old love-affair. Well, you are a marvel!
+Five years ago, at least, and you have not forgotten! I really must
+write and tell her."
+
+"Write and tell her!" Then it was all a lie about her death! He felt
+not only his faith, his hope, his future leaving him, but even his
+self-control. With an effort he said.--
+
+"I think you have already satisfied my curiosity. I was told five years
+ago that she was dead. It was because of the date of the photograph--two
+years later--that I ventured to intrude upon you. I was anxious only to
+know the truth."
+
+"She certainly was very much living and of the world when I saw her
+last, two years ago," said Mrs. Van Loo, with an easy smile. "I dare say
+that was a ruse of her relatives--a very stupid one--to break off the
+affair, for I think they had other plans. But, dear me! now I remember,
+was there not some little quarrel between you before? Some letter from
+you that was not very kind? My impression is that there was something
+of the sort, and that the young lady was indignant. But only for a time,
+you know. She very soon forgot it. I dare say if you wrote something
+very charming to her it might not be too late. We women are very
+forgiving, Mr. Demorest, and although she is very much sought after, as
+are all young American girls whose fathers can give them a comfortable
+'dot', her parents might be persuaded to throw over a poor prince for
+a rich countryman in the end. Of course, you know, to you Republicans
+there is always something fascinating in titles and blood, and our dear
+friend is like other girls. Still, it is worth the risk. And five years
+of waiting and devotion really ought to tell. It's quite a romance!
+Shall I write to her and tell her I have seen you, looking well and
+prosperous? Nothing more. Do let me! I should be delighted."
+
+"I think it hardly worth while for you to give yourself that trouble,"
+said Demorest quietly, looking in Mrs. Van Loo's smiling eyes, "now that
+I know the story of the young lady's death was a forgery. And I will not
+intrude further on your time. Pray give yourself no needless hurry over
+your packing. I may go to San Francisco this afternoon, and not even
+require the rooms to-night."
+
+"At least, let me make you a present of the souvenir as an
+acknowledgment of your courtesy," said Mrs. Van Loo, passing into her
+bedroom and returning with the photograph. "I feel that with your five
+years of constancy it is more yours than mine." As a gentleman Demorest
+knew he could not refuse, and taking the photograph from her with a low
+bow, with another final salutation he withdrew.
+
+Alone by himself in a corner of the veranda he was surprised that
+the interview had made so little impression on him, and had so little
+altered his conviction. His discovery that the announcement of his
+betrothed's death was a fiction did not affect the fact that though
+living she was yet dead to him, and apparently by her own consent.
+The contrast between her life and his during those five years had been
+covertly accented by Mrs. Van Loo, whether intentionally or not, and
+he saw again as last night the full extent of his sentimental folly. He
+could not even condole with himself that he was the victim of miserable
+falsehoods that others had invented. SHE had accepted them, and had even
+excused her desertion of him by that last deceit of the letter.
+
+He drew out her photograph and again examined it, but not as a
+lover. Had she really grown stouter and more self-complacent? Was the
+spirituality and delicacy he had worshiped in her purely his own idiotic
+fancy? Had she always been like this? Yes. There was the girl who could
+weakly strive, weakly revenge herself, and weakly forget. There was the
+figure that he had expected to find carved upon the tomb which he had
+long sought that he might weep over. He laughed aloud.
+
+It was very hot, and he was stifling with inaction. What was Barker
+doing, and why had not Stacy telegraphed to him? And what were those
+people in the courtyard doing? Were they discussing news of further
+disaster and ruin? Perhaps he was even now a beggar. Well, his fortune
+might go with his faith.
+
+But the crowd was simply looking at the roof of the hotel, and he
+now saw that a black smoke was drifting across the courtyard, and was
+conscious of a smell of soot and burning. He stepped down from the
+veranda among the mingled guests and servants, and saw that the smoke
+was only pouring from a chimney. He heard, too, that the chimney had
+been on fire, and that it was Mrs. Van Loo's bedroom chimney, and that
+when the startled servants had knocked at the locked door she had told
+them that she was only burning some old letters and newspapers, the
+refuse of her trunks. There was naturally some indignation that the
+hotel had been so foolishly endangered, in such scorching weather, and
+the manager had had a scene with her which resulted in her leaving the
+hotel indignantly with her half-packed boxes. But even after the smoke
+had died away and the fire been extinguished in the chimney and hearth,
+there was an acrid smell of smouldering pine penetrating the upper
+floors of the hotel all that afternoon.
+
+When Mrs. Van Loo drove away, the manager returned with Demorest to the
+rooms. The marble hearth was smoked and discolored and still littered
+with charred ashes of burnt paper. "My belief is," said the manager
+darkly, "that the old hag came here just to burn up a lot of
+incriminating papers that her son had intrusted to her keeping. It looks
+mighty suspicious. You see she got up an awful lot of side when I told
+her I didn't reckon to run a smelting furnace in a wooden hotel with the
+thermometer at one hundred in the office, and I reckon it was just an
+excuse for getting off in a hurry."
+
+But the continued delay in Stacy's promised telegram had begun to
+work upon Demorest's usual equanimity, and he scarcely listened in his
+anxiety for his old partner. He knew that Stacy should have arrived in
+San Francisco by noon. He had almost determined to take the next train
+from the Divide when two horsemen dashed into the courtyard. There
+was the usual stir on the veranda and rush for news, but the two new
+arrivals turned out to be Barker, on a horse covered with foam, and a
+dashing, elegantly dressed stranger on a mustang as carefully groomed
+and as spotless as himself. Demorest instantly recognized Jack Hamlin.
+
+He had not seen Hamlin since that day, five years before, when the
+latter had accompanied the three partners with their treasure to
+Boomville, and had handed him the mysterious packet. As the two men
+dismounted hurriedly and moved towards him, he felt a premonition of
+something as fateful and important as then. In obedience to a sign from
+Barker he led them to a more secluded angle of the veranda. He could not
+help noticing that his younger partner's face was mobile as ever, but
+more thoughtful and older; yet his voice rang with the old freemasonry
+of the camp, as he said, with a laugh, "The signal has been given, and
+it's boot and saddle and away."
+
+"But I have had no dispatch from Stacy," said Demorest in surprise. "He
+was to telegraph to me from San Francisco in any emergency."
+
+"He never got there at all," said Barker. "Jack ran slap into Van Loo at
+the Divide, and sent a dispatch to Jim, which stopped him halfway until
+Jack could reach him, which he nearly broke his neck to do; and then
+Jack finished up by bringing a message from Stacy to us that we should
+all meet together on the slope of Heavy Tree, near the Bar. I met Jack
+just as I was riding into the Divide, and came back with him. He will
+tell you the rest, and you can swear by what Jack says, for he's white
+all through," he added, laying his hand affectionately on Hamlin's
+shoulder.
+
+Hamlin winced slightly. For he had NOT told Barker that his wife was
+with Van Loo, nor his first reason for interfering. But he related how
+he had finally overtaken Van Loo at Canyon Station, and how the fugitive
+had disclosed the conspiracy of Steptoe and Hall against the bank and
+Marshall as the price of his own release. On this news, remembering that
+Stacy had passed the Divide on his way to the station, he had first sent
+a dispatch to him, and then met him at the first station on the road.
+"I reckon, gentlemen," said Hamlin, with an unusual earnestness in his
+voice, "that he'd not only got my telegram, but ALL THE NEWS that had
+been flying around this morning, for he looked like a man to whom it
+was just a 'toss-up' whether he took his own life then and there or was
+willing to have somebody else take it for him, for he said, 'I'll go
+myself,' and telegraphed to have the surveyor stopped from coming. Then
+he told me to tell you fellows, and ask you to come too." Jack paused,
+and added half mischievously, "He sort of asked ME what I would take
+to stand by him in the row, if there was one, and I told him I'd
+take--whiskey! You see, boys, it's a kind of off-night with me, and
+I wouldn't mind for the sake of old times to finish the game with old
+Steptoe that I began a matter of five years ago."
+
+"All right," said Demorest, with a kindling eye; "I suppose we'd better
+start at once. One moment," he added. "Barker boy, will you excuse me if
+I speak a word to Hamlin?" As Barker nodded and walked to the rails of
+the veranda, Demorest took Hamlin aside, "You and I," he said hurriedly,
+"are SINGLE men; Barker has a wife and child. This is likely to be no
+child's play."
+
+But Jack Hamlin was no fool, and from certain leading questions which
+Barker had already put, but which he had skillfully evaded, he surmised
+that Barker knew something of his wife's escapade. He answered a little
+more seriously than his wont, "I don't think as regards HIS WIFE that
+would make much difference to him or her how stiff the work was."
+
+Demorest turned away with his last pang of bitterness. It needed only
+this confirmation of all that Stacy had hinted, of what he himself had
+seen in his brief interview with Mrs. Barker since his return, to shake
+his last remaining faith. "We'll all go together, then," he said, with
+a laugh, "as in the old times, and perhaps it's as well that we have no
+woman in our confidence."
+
+An hour later the three men passed quietly out of the hotel, scarcely
+noticed by the other guests, who were also oblivious of their absence
+during the evening. For Mrs. Barker, quite recovered from her fatiguing
+ride, was in high spirits and the most beautiful and spotless of summer
+gowns, and was considered quite a heroine by the other ladies as she
+dwelt upon the terrible heat of her return journey. "Only I knew Mr.
+Barker would be worried--and the poor man actually walked a mile down
+the Divide road to meet me--I believe I should have stayed there all
+day." She glanced round the other groups for Mrs. Horncastle, but that
+lady had retired early. Possibly she alone had noticed the absence of
+the two partners.
+
+The guests sat up until quite late, for the heat seemed to grow still
+more oppressive, and the strange smell of burning wood revived the
+gossip about Mrs. Van Loo and her stupidity in setting fire to her
+chimney. Some averred that it would be days before the smell could be
+got out of the house; others referred it to the fires in the woods,
+which were now dangerously near. One spoke of the isolated position
+of the hotel as affording the greatest security, but was met by the
+assertion of a famous mountaineer that the forest fires were wont to
+leap from crest to crest mysteriously, without any apparent continuous
+contact. This led to more or less light-hearted conjecture of present
+danger and some amusing stories of hotel fires and their ludicrous
+revelations. There were also some entertaining speculations as to what
+they would do and what they would try to save in such an emergency.
+
+"For myself," said Mrs. Barker audaciously, "I should certainly let Mr.
+Barker look after Sta and confine myself entirely to getting away with
+my diamonds. I know the wretch would never think of them."
+
+It was still later when, exhausted by the heat and some reaction from
+the excitement of the day, they at last deserted the veranda for their
+rooms, and for a while the shadowy bulk of the whole building was picked
+out with regularly spaced lights from its open windows, until now these
+finally faded and went out one by one. An hour later the whole building
+had sunk to rest. It was said that it was only four in the morning when
+a yawning porter, having put out the light in a dark, upper corridor,
+was amazed by a dull glow from the top of the wall, and awoke to the
+fact that a red fire, as yet smokeless and flameless, was creeping along
+the cornice. He ran to the office and gave the alarm; but on returning
+with assistance was stopped in the corridor by an impenetrable wall of
+smoke veined with murky flashes. The alarm was given in all the lower
+floors, and the occupants rushed from their beds half dressed to the
+courtyard, only to see, as they afterwards averred, the flames burst
+like cannon discharges from the upper windows and unite above the
+crackling roof. So sudden and complete was the catastrophe, although
+slowly prepared by a leak in the overheated chimney between the floors,
+that even the excitement of fear and exertion was spared the survivors.
+There was bewilderment and stupor, but neither uproar nor confusion.
+People found themselves wandering in the woods, half awake and half
+dressed, having descended from the balconies and leaped from the
+windows,--they knew not how. Others on the upper floor neither awoke nor
+moved from their beds, but were suffocated without a cry. From the first
+an instinctive idea of the hopelessness of combating the conflagration
+possessed them all; to a blind, automatic feeling to flee the building
+was added the slow mechanism of the somnambulist; delicate women walked
+speechlessly, but securely, along ledges and roofs from which they
+would have fallen by the mere light of reason and of day. There was no
+crowding or impeding haste in their dumb exodus. It was only when Mrs.
+Barker awoke disheveled in the courtyard, and with an hysterical outcry
+rushed back into the hotel, that there was any sign of panic.
+
+Mrs. Horncastle, who was standing near, fully dressed as from some
+night-long vigil, quickly followed her. The half-frantic woman was
+making directly for her own apartments, whose windows those in
+the courtyard could see were already belching smoke. Suddenly Mrs.
+Horncastle stopped with a bitter cry and clasped her forehead. It had
+just flashed upon her that Mrs. Barker had told her only a few hours
+before that Sta had been removed with the nurse to the UPPER FLOOR! It
+was not the forgotten child that Mrs. Barker was returning for, but her
+diamonds! Mrs. Horncastle called her; she did not reply. The smoke was
+already pouring down the staircase. Mrs. Horncastle hesitated for a
+moment only, and then, drawing a long breath, dashed up the stairs. On
+the first landing she stumbled over something--the prostrate figure of
+the nurse. But this saved her, for she found that near the floor she
+could breathe more freely. Before her appeared to be an open door. She
+crept along towards it on her hands and knees. The frightened cry of
+a child, awakened from its sleep in the dark, gave her nerve to rise,
+enter the room, and dash open the window. By the flashing light she
+could see a little figure rising from a bed. It was Sta. There was not
+a moment to be lost, for the open window was beginning to draw the smoke
+from the passage. Luckily, the boy, by some childish instinct, threw
+his arms round her neck and left her hands free. Whispering him to
+hold tight, she clambered out of the window. A narrow ledge of cornice
+scarcely wide enough for her feet ran along the house to a distant
+balcony. With her back to the house she zigzagged her feet along the
+cornice to get away from the smoke, which now poured directly from the
+window. Then she grew dizzy; the weight of the child on her bosom seemed
+to be toppling her forward towards the abyss below. She closed her eyes,
+frantically grasping the child with crossed arms on her breast as she
+stood on the ledge, until, as seen from below through the twisting
+smoke, they might have seemed a figure of the Madonna and Child niched
+in the wall. Then a voice from above called to her, "Courage!" and she
+felt the flap of a twisted sheet lowered from an upper window against
+her face. She grasped it eagerly; it held firmly. Then she heard a cry
+from below, saw them carrying a ladder, and at last was lifted with her
+burden from the ledge by powerful hands. Then only did she raise her
+eyes to the upper window whence had come her help. Smoke and flame were
+pouring from it. The unknown hero who had sacrificed his only chance of
+escape to her remained forever unknown.
+
+*****
+
+Only four miles away that night a group of men were waiting for the dawn
+in the shadow of a pine near Heavy Tree Bar. As the sky glowed redly
+over the crest between them and Hymettus, Hamlin said:--
+
+"Another one of those forest fires. It's this side of Black Spur, and a
+big one, I reckon."
+
+"Do you know," said Barker thoughtfully, "I was thinking of the time
+the old cabin burnt up on Heavy Tree. It looks to be about in the same
+place."
+
+"Hush!" said Stacy sharply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+An abandoned tunnel--an irregular orifice in the mountain flank which
+looked like a dried-up sewer that had disgorged through its opening the
+refuse of the mountain in red slime, gravel, and a peculiar clay known
+as "cement," in a foul streak down its side; a narrow ledge on either
+side, broken up by heaps of quartz, tailings, and rock, and half
+hidden in scrub, oak, and myrtle; a decaying cabin of logs, bark, and
+cobblestones--these made up the exterior of the Marshall claim. To this
+defacement of the mountain, the rude clearing of thicket and underbrush
+by fire or blasting, the lopping of tree-boughs and the decapitation
+of saplings, might be added the debris and ruins of half-civilized
+occupancy. The ground before the cabin was covered with broken boxes,
+tin cans, the staves and broken hoops of casks, and the cast-off rags
+of blankets and clothing. The whole claim in its unsavory, unpicturesque
+details, and its vulgar story of sordid, reckless, and selfish occupancy
+and abandonment, was a foul blot on the landscape, which the first rosy
+dawn only made the more offending. Surely the last spot in the world
+that men should quarrel and fight for!
+
+So thought George Barker, as with his companions they moved in single
+file slowly towards it. The little party consisted only of himself,
+Demorest, and Stacy; Marshall and Hamlin--according to a prearranged
+plan--were still in ambush to join them at the first appearance of
+Steptoe and his gang. The claim was yet unoccupied; they had secured
+their first success. Steptoe's followers, unaware that his design had
+been discovered, and confident that they could easily reach the claim
+before Marshall and the surveyor, had lingered. Some of them had held
+a drunken carouse at their rendezvous at Heavy Tree. Others were still
+engaged in procuring shovels and picks and pans for their mock equipment
+as miners, and this, again, gave Marshall's adherents the advantage.
+THEY knew that their opponents would probably first approach the
+empty claim encumbered only with their peaceful implements, while they
+themselves had brought their rifles with them.
+
+Stacy, who by tacit consent led the party, on reaching the claim at
+once posted Demorest and Barker each behind a separate heap of quartz
+tailings on the ledge, which afforded them a capital breastwork, and
+stationed himself at the mouth of the tunnel which was nearest the
+trail. It had already been arranged what each man was to do. They were
+in possession. For the rest they must wait. What they thought at
+that moment no one knew. Their characteristic appearance had slightly
+changed. The melancholy and philosophic Demorest was alert and bitter.
+Barker's changeful face had become fixed and steadfast. Stacy alone wore
+his "fighting look," which the others had remembered.
+
+They had not long to wait. The sounds of rude laughter, coarse
+skylarking, and voices more or less still confused with half-spent
+liquor came from the rocky trail. And then Steptoe appeared with part
+of his straggling followers, who were celebrating their easy invasion
+by clattering their picks and shovels and beating loudly upon their tins
+and prospecting-pans. The three partners quickly recognized the stamp
+of the strangers, in spite of their peaceful implements. They were
+the waifs and strays of San Francisco wharves, of Sacramento dens, of
+dissolute mountain towns; and there was not, probably, a single actual
+miner among them. A raging scorn and contempt took possession of Barker
+and Demorest, but Stacy knew their exact value. As Steptoe passed before
+the opening of the tunnel he heard the cry of "Halt!"
+
+He looked up. He saw Stacy not thirty yards before him with his rifle
+at half-cock. He saw Barker and Demorest, fully armed, rise from behind
+their breastworks of rock along the ledge and thus fully occupy the
+claim. But he saw more. He saw that his plot was known. Outlaw and
+desperado as he was, he saw that he had lost his moral power in this
+actual possession, and that from that moment he must be the aggressor.
+He saw he was fighting no irresponsible hirelings like his own, but men
+of position and importance, whose loss would make a stir. Against their
+rifles the few revolvers that his men chanced to have slung to them
+were of little avail. But he was not cowed, although his few followers
+stumbled together at this momentary check, half angrily, half timorously
+like wolves without a leader. "Bring up the other men and their guns,"
+he whispered fiercely to the nearest. Then he faced Stacy.
+
+"Who are YOU to stop peaceful miners going to work on their own claim?"
+he said coarsely. "I'll tell you WHO, boys," he added, suddenly turning
+to his men with a hoarse laugh. "It ain't even the bank! It's only Jim
+Stacy, that the bank kicked out yesterday to save itself,--Jim Stacy
+and his broken-down pals. And what's the thief doing here--in Marshall's
+tunnel--the only spot that Marshall can claim? We ain't no particular
+friends o' Marshall's, though we're neighbors on the same claim; but we
+ain't going to see Marshall ousted by tramps. Are we, boys?"
+
+"No, by G-d!" said his followers, dropping the pans and seizing their
+picks and revolvers. They understood the appeal to arms if not to their
+reason. For an instant the fight seemed imminent. Then a voice from
+behind them said:--
+
+"You needn't trouble yourselves about that! I'M Marshall! I sent these
+gentlemen to occupy the claim until I came here with the surveyor," and
+two men stepped from a thicket of myrtle in the rear of Steptoe and
+his followers. The speaker, Marshall, was a thin, slight, overworked,
+over-aged man; his companion, the surveyor, was equally slight,
+but red-bearded, spectacled, and professional-looking, with a long
+traveling-duster that made him appear even clerical. They were scarcely
+a physical addition to Stacy's party, whatever might have been their
+moral and legal support.
+
+But it was just this support that Steptoe strangely clung to in his
+designs for the future, and a wild idea seized him. The surveyor was
+really the only disinterested witness between the two parties. If
+Steptoe could confuse his mind before the actual fighting--from which he
+would, of course, escape as a non-combatant--it would go far afterwards
+to rehabilitate Steptoe's party. "Very well, then," he said to Marshall,
+"I shall call this gentleman to witness that we have been attacked
+here in peaceable possession of our part of the claim by these armed
+strangers, and whether they are acting on your order or not, their blood
+will be on your head."
+
+"Then I reckon," said the surveyor, as he tore away his beard, wig,
+spectacles, and mustache, and revealed the figure of Jack Hamlin, "that
+I'm about the last witness that Mr. Steptoe-Horncastle ought to call,
+and about the last witness that he ever WILL call!"
+
+But he had not calculated upon the desperation of Steptoe over the
+failure of this last hope. For there sprang up in the outlaw's brain the
+same hideous idea that he voiced to his companions at the Divide. With
+a hoarse cry to his followers, he crashed his pickaxe into the brain of
+Marshall, who stood near him, and sprang forward. Three or four shots
+were exchanged. Two of his men fell, a bullet from Stacy's rifle pierced
+Steptoe's leg, and he dropped forward on one knee. He heard the steps
+of his reinforcements with their weapons coming close behind him, and
+rolled aside on the sloping ledge to let them pass. But he rolled too
+far. He felt himself slipping down the mountain-side in the slimy shoot
+of the tunnel. He made a desperate attempt to recover himself, but the
+treacherous drift of the loose debris rolled with him, as if he were
+part of its refuse, and, carrying him down, left him unconscious, but
+otherwise uninjured, in the bushes of the second ledge five hundred feet
+below.
+
+When he recovered his senses the shouts and outcries above him had
+ceased. He knew he was safe. The ledge could only be reached by a
+circuitous route three miles away. He knew, too, that if he could only
+reach a point of outcrop a hundred yards away he could easily descend to
+the stage road, down the gentle slope of the mountain hidden in a growth
+of hazel-brush. He bound up his wounded leg, and dragged himself on his
+hands and knees laboriously to the outcrop. He did not look up; since
+his pick had crashed into Marshall's brain he had but one blind thought
+before him--to escape at once! That his revenge and compensation would
+come later he never doubted. He limped and crept, rolled and fell, from
+bush to bush through the sloping thickets, until he saw the red road a
+few feet below him.
+
+If he only had a horse he could put miles between him and any present
+pursuit! Why should he not have one? The road was frequented by solitary
+horsemen--miners and Mexicans. He had his revolver with him; what
+mattered the life of another man if he escaped from the consequences of
+the one he had just taken? He heard the clatter of hoofs; two priests on
+mules rode slowly by; he ground his teeth with disappointment. But they
+had scarcely passed before another and more rapid clatter came from
+their rear. It was a lad on horseback. He started. It was his own son!
+
+He remembered in a flash how the boy had said he was coming to meet the
+padre at the station on that day. His first impulse was to hide himself,
+his wound, and his defeat from the lad, but the blind idea of escape
+was still paramount. He leaned over the bank and called to him. The
+astonished lad cantered eagerly to his side.
+
+"Give me your horse, Eddy," said the father; "I'm in bad luck, and must
+get."
+
+The boy glanced at his father's face, at his tattered garments and
+bandaged leg, and read the whole story. It was a familiar page to him.
+He paled first and then flushed, and then, with an odd glitter in his
+eyes, said, "Take me with you, father. Do! You always did before. I'll
+bring you luck."
+
+Desperation is superstitious. Why not take him? They had been lucky
+before, and the two together might confound any description of their
+identity to the pursuers. "Help me up, Eddy, and then get up before me."
+
+"BEHIND, you mean," said the boy, with a laugh, as he helped his father
+into the saddle.
+
+"No," said Steptoe harshly. "BEFORE me,--do you hear? And if anything
+happens BEHIND you, don't look! If I drop off, don't stop! Don't get
+down, but go on and leave me. Do you understand?" he repeated almost
+savagely.
+
+"Yes," said the boy tremulously.
+
+"All right," said the father, with a softer voice, as he passed his one
+arm round the boy's body and lifted the reins. "Hold tight when we come
+to the cross-roads, for we'll take the first turn, for old luck's sake,
+to the Mission."
+
+They were the last words exchanged between them, for as they wheeled
+rapidly to the left at the cross-roads, Jack Hamlin and Demorest swung
+as quickly out of another road to the right immediately behind them.
+Jack's challenge to "Halt!" was only answered by Steptoe's horse
+springing forward under the sharp lash of the riata.
+
+"Hold up!" said Jack suddenly, laying his hand upon the rifle which
+Demorest had lifted to his shoulder. "He's carrying some one,--a wounded
+comrade, I reckon. We don't want HIM. Swing out and go for the horse;
+well forward, in the neck or shoulder."
+
+Demorest swung far out to the right of the road and raised his rifle. As
+it cracked Steptoe's horse seemed to have suddenly struck some obstacle
+ahead of him rather than to have been hit himself, for his head went
+down with his fore feet under him, and he turned a half-somersault on
+the road, flinging his two riders a dozen feet away.
+
+Steptoe scrambled to his knees, revolver in hand, but the other figure
+never moved. "Hands up!" said Jack, sighting his own weapon. The reports
+seemed simultaneous, but Jack's bullet had pierced Steptoe's brain even
+before the outlaw's pistol exploded harmlessly in the air.
+
+The two men dismounted, but by a common instinct they both ran to the
+prostrate figure that had never moved.
+
+"By God! it's a boy!" said Jack, leaning over the body and lifting the
+shoulders from which the head hung loosely. "Neck broken and dead as
+his pal." Suddenly he started, and, to Demorest's astonishment, began
+hurriedly pulling off the glove from the boy's limp right hand.
+
+"What are you doing?" demanded Demorest in creeping horror.
+
+"Look!" said Jack, as he laid bare the small white hand. The first two
+fingers were merely unsightly stumps that had been hidden in the padded
+glove.
+
+"Good God! Van Loo's brother!" said Demorest, recoiling.
+
+"No!" said Jack, with a grim face, "it's what I have long
+suspected,--it's Steptoe's son!"
+
+"His son?" repeated Demorest.
+
+"Yes," said Jack; and he added, after looking at the two bodies with
+a long-drawn whistle of concern, "and I wouldn't, if I were you, say
+anything of this to Barker."
+
+"Why?" said Demorest.
+
+"Well," returned Jack, "when our scrimmage was over down there, and they
+brought the news to Barker that his wife and her diamonds were burnt up
+at the hotel, you remember that they said that Mrs. Horncastle had saved
+his boy."
+
+"Yes," said Demorest; "but what has that to do with it?"
+
+"Nothing, I reckon," said Jack, with a slight shrug of his shoulders,
+"only Mrs. Horncastle was the mother of the boy that's lying there."
+
+*****
+
+Two years later as Demorest and Stacy sat before the fire in the old
+cabin on Marshall's claim--now legally their own--they looked from the
+door beyond the great bulk of Black Spur to the pallid snow-line of the
+Sierras, still as remote and unchanged to them as when they had
+gazed upon it from Heavy Tree Hill. And, for the matter of that, they
+themselves seemed to have been left so unchanged that even now, as
+in the old days, it was Barker's voice as he greeted them from the
+darkening trail that alone broke their reverie.
+
+"Well," said Demorest cheerfully, "your usual luck, Barker boy!" for
+they already saw in his face the happy light they had once seen there on
+an eventful night seven years ago.
+
+"I'm to be married to Mrs. Horncastle next month," he said breathlessly,
+"and little Sta loves her already as if she was his own mother. Wish me
+joy."
+
+A slight shadow passed over Stacy's face; but his hand was the first to
+grasp Barker's, and his voice the first to say "Amen!"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Three Partners, by Bret Harte
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