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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Found At Blazing Star, 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: Found At Blazing Star
+
+Author: Bret Harte
+
+Release Date: May 27, 2006 [EBook #2794]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUND AT BLAZING STAR ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+FOUND AT BLAZING STAR
+
+
+By Bret Harte
+
+
+
+The rain had only ceased with the gray streaks of morning at Blazing
+Star, and the settlement awoke to a moral sense of cleanliness, and the
+finding of forgotten knives, tin cups, and smaller camp utensils, where
+the heavy showers had washed away the debris and dust heaps before the
+cabin doors. Indeed, it was recorded in Blazing Star that a fortunate
+early riser had once picked up on the highway a solid chunk of gold
+quartz which the rain had freed from its incumbering soil, and washed
+into immediate and glittering popularity. Possibly this may have been
+the reason why early risers in that locality, during the rainy season,
+adopted a thoughtful habit of body, and seldom lifted their eyes to the
+rifted or india-ink washed skies above them.
+
+"Cass" Beard had risen early that morning, but not with a view to
+discovery. A leak in his cabin roof,--quite consistent with his
+careless, improvident habits,--had roused him at 4 A. M., with a flooded
+"bunk" and wet blankets. The chips from his wood pile refused to kindle
+a fire to dry his bed-clothes, and he had recourse to a more provident
+neighbor's to supply the deficiency. This was nearly opposite. Mr.
+Cassius crossed the highway, and stopped suddenly. Something glittered
+in the nearest red pool before him. Gold, surely! But, wonderful to
+relate, not an irregular, shapeless fragment of crude ore, fresh from
+Nature's crucible, but a bit of jeweler's handicraft in the form of a
+plain gold ring. Looking at it more attentively, he saw that it bore the
+inscription, "May to Cass."
+
+Like most of his fellow gold-seekers, Cass was superstitious. "Cass!"
+His own name! He tried the ring. It fitted his little finger closely. It
+was evidently a woman's ring. He looked up and down the highway. No one
+was yet stirring. Little pools of water in the red road were beginning
+to glitter and grow rosy from the far-flushing east, but there was no
+trace of the owner of the shining waif. He knew that there was no woman
+in camp, and among his few comrades in the settlement he remembered to
+have seen none wearing an ornament like that. Again, the coincidence
+of the inscription to his rather peculiar nickname would have been a
+perennial source of playful comment in a camp that made no allowance
+for sentimental memories. He slipped the glittering little hoop into his
+pocket, and thoughtfully returned to his cabin.
+
+Two hours later, when the long, straggling procession, which every
+morning wended its way to Blazing Star Gulch,--the seat of mining
+operations in the settlement,--began to move, Cass saw fit to
+interrogate his fellows. "Ye didn't none on ye happen to drop anything
+round yer last night?" he asked, cautiously.
+
+"I dropped a pocketbook containing government bonds and some other
+securities, with between fifty and sixty thousand dollars," responded
+Peter Drummond, carelessly; "but no matter, if any man will return a few
+autograph letters from foreign potentates that happened to be in it,--of
+no value to anybody but the owner,--he can keep the money. Thar's
+nothin' mean about me," he concluded, languidly.
+
+This statement, bearing every evidence of the grossest mendacity, was
+lightly passed over, and the men walked on with the deepest gravity.
+
+"But hev you?" Cass presently asked of another.
+
+"I lost my pile to Jack Hamlin at draw-poker, over at Wingdam last
+night," returned the other, pensively, "but I don't calkilate to find it
+lying round loose."
+
+Forced at last by this kind of irony into more detailed explanation,
+Cass confided to them his discovery, and produced his treasure. The
+result was a dozen vague surmises,--only one of which seemed to
+be popular, and to suit the dyspeptic despondency of the party,--a
+despondency born of hastily masticated fried pork and flapjacks. The
+ring was believed to have been dropped by some passing "road agent"
+laden with guilty spoil.
+
+"Ef I was you," said Drummond, gloomily, "I wouldn't flourish that yer
+ring around much afore folks. I've seen better men nor you strung up a
+tree by Vigilantes for having even less than that in their possession."
+
+"And I wouldn't say much about bein' up so d----d early this morning,"
+added an even more pessimistic comrade; "it might look bad before a
+jury."
+
+With this the men sadly dispersed, leaving the innocent Cass with the
+ring in his hand, and a general impression on his mind that he was
+already an object of suspicion to his comrades,--an impression, it is
+hardly necessary to say, they fully intended should be left to rankle in
+his guileless bosom.
+
+Notwithstanding Cass's first hopeful superstition the ring did not seem
+to bring him nor the camp any luck. Daily the "clean up" brought the
+same scant rewards to their labors, and deepened the sardonic gravity of
+Blazing Star. But, if Cass found no material result from his treasure,
+it stimulated his lazy imagination, and, albeit a dangerous and
+seductive stimulant, at least lifted him out of the monotonous grooves
+of his half-careless, half-slovenly, but always self-contented camp
+life. Heeding the wise caution of his comrades, he took the habit of
+wearing the ring only at night. Wrapped in his blanket, he stealthily
+slipped the golden circlet over his little finger, and, as he averred,
+"slept all the better for it." Whether it ever evoked any warmer dream
+or vision during those calm, cold, virgin-like spring nights, when even
+the moon and the greater planets retreated into the icy blue, steel-like
+firmament, I cannot say. Enough that this superstition began to be
+colored a little by fancy, and his fatalism somewhat mitigated by
+hope. Dreams of this kind did not tend to promote his efficiency in the
+communistic labors of the camp, and brought him a self-isolation that,
+however gratifying at first, soon debarred him the benefits of that hard
+practical wisdom which underlaid the grumbling of his fellow workers.
+
+"I'm dog-goned," said one commentator, "ef I don't believe that Cass
+is looney over that yer ring he found. Wears it on a string under his
+shirt."
+
+Meantime, the seasons did not wait the discovery of the secret. The red
+pools in Blazing Star highway were soon dried up in the fervent June sun
+and riotous night wind of those altitudes. The ephemeral grasses that
+had quickly supplanted these pools and the chocolate-colored mud, were
+as quickly parched and withered. The footprints of spring became vague
+and indefinite, and were finally lost in the impalpable dust of the
+summer highway.
+
+In one of his long, aimless excursions, Cass had penetrated a thick
+undergrowth of buckeye and hazel, and found himself quite unexpectedly
+upon the high road to Red Chief's Crossing. Cass knew by the lurid cloud
+of dust that hid the distance, that the up coach had passed. He had
+already reached that stage of superstition when the most trivial
+occurrence seemed to point in some way to an elucidation of the mystery
+of his treasure. His eyes had mechanically fallen to the ground
+again, as if he half expected to find in some other waif a hint or
+corroboration of his imaginings. Thus abstracted, the figure of a young
+girl on horseback, in the road directly before the bushes he emerged
+from, appeared to have sprung directly from the ground.
+
+"Oh, come here, please do; quick!"
+
+Cass stared, and then moved hesitatingly toward her.
+
+"I heard some one coming through the bushes, and I waited," she went on.
+"Come quick. It's something too awful for anything."
+
+In spite of this appalling introduction, Cass could not but notice that
+the voice, although hurried and excited, was by no means agitated or
+frightened; that the eyes which looked into his sparkled with a certain
+kind of pleased curiosity.
+
+"It was just here," she went on vivaciously, "just here that I went into
+the bush and cut a switch for my mare,--and,"--leading him along at a
+brisk trot by her side,--"just here, look, see! this is what I found."
+
+It was scarcely thirty feet from the road. The only object that met
+Cass's eye was a man's stiff, tall hat, lying emptily and vacantly
+in the grass. It was new, shiny, and of modish shape. But it was so
+incongruous, so perkily smart, and yet so feeble and helpless lying
+there, so ghastly ludicrous in its very appropriateness and incapacity
+to adjust itself to the surrounding landscape, that it affected him
+with something more than a sense of its grotesqueness, and he could only
+stare at it blankly.
+
+"But you're not looking the right way," the girl went on sharply; "look
+there!"
+
+Cass followed the direction of her whip. At last, what might have seemed
+a coat thrown carelessly on the ground met his eye, but presently he
+became aware of a white, rigid, aimlessly-clinched hand protruding from
+the flaccid sleeve; mingled with it in some absurd way and half hidden
+by the grass, lay what might have been a pair of cast-off trousers but
+for two rigid boots that pointed in opposite angles to the sky. It was
+a dead man. So palpably dead that life seemed to have taken flight from
+his very clothes. So impotent, feeble, and degraded by them that the
+naked subject of a dissecting table would have been less insulting to
+humanity. The head had fallen back, and was partly hidden in a gopher
+burrow, but the white, upturned face and closed eyes had less of
+helpless death in them than those wretched enwrappings. Indeed, one limp
+hand that lay across the swollen abdomen lent itself to the grotesquely
+hideous suggestion of a gentleman sleeping off the excesses of a hearty
+dinner.
+
+"Ain't he horrid?" continued the girl; "but what killed him?"
+
+Struggling between a certain fascination at the girl's cold-blooded
+curiosity and horror of the murdered man, Cass hesitatingly lifted the
+helpless head. A bluish hole above the right temple, and a few brown
+paint-like spots on the forehead, shirt cellar, and matted hair proved
+the only record.
+
+"Turn him over again," said the girl, impatiently, as Cass was about to
+relinquish his burden. "May be you'll find another wound."
+
+But Cass was dimly remembering certain formalities that in older
+civilizations attend the discovery of dead bodies, and postponed a
+present inquest.
+
+"Perhaps you'd better ride on, Miss, afore you get summoned as a
+witness. I'll give warning at Red Chief's Crossing, and send the coroner
+down here."
+
+"Let me go with you," she said, earnestly, "it would be such fun. I
+don't mind being a witness. Or," she added, without heeding Cass's look
+of astonishment, "I'll wait here till you come back."
+
+"But you see, Miss, it wouldn't seem right--" began Cass.
+
+"But I found him first," interrupted the girl, with a pout.
+
+Staggered by this preemptive right, sacred to all miners, Cass stopped.
+
+"Who is the coroner?" she asked.
+
+"Joe Hornsby."
+
+"The tall, lame man, who was half eaten by a grizzly?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, look now! I'll ride on and bring him back in half an hour.
+There!"
+
+"But, Miss--!"
+
+"Oh, don't mind ME. I never saw anything of this kind before, and I want
+to see it ALL."
+
+"Do you know Hornsby?" asked Cass, unconsciously a trifle irritated.
+
+"No, but I'll bring him." She wheeled her horse into the road.
+
+In the presence of this living energy Cass quite forgot the helpless
+dead. "Have you been long in these parts, Miss?" he asked.
+
+"About two weeks," she answered, shortly. "Good-by, just now. Look
+around for the pistol or anything else you can find, although I have
+been over the whole ground twice already."
+
+A little puff of dust as the horse sprang into the road, a muffled
+shuffle, struggle, then the regular beat of hoofs, and she was gone.
+
+After five minutes had passed, Cass regretted that he had not
+accompanied her; waiting in such a spot was an irksome task. Not that
+there was anything in the scene itself to awaken gloomy imaginings;
+the bright, truthful Californian sunshine scoffed at any illusion of
+creeping shadows or waving branches. Once, in the rising wind, the empty
+hat rolled over--but only in a ludicrous, drunken way. A search for any
+further sign or token had proved futile, and Cass grew impatient. He
+began to hate himself for having stayed; he would have fled but for
+shame. Nor was his good humor restored when at the close of a weary half
+hour two galloping figures emerged from the dusty horizon--Hornsby and
+the young girl.
+
+His vague annoyance increased as he fancied that both seemed to ignore
+him, the coroner barely acknowledging his presence with a nod. Assisted
+by the young girl, whose energy and enthusiasm evidently delighted him,
+Hornsby raised the body for a more careful examination. The dead man's
+pockets were carefully searched. A few coins, a silver pencil, knife,
+and tobacco-box were all they found. It gave no clew to his identity.
+Suddenly the young girl, who had, with unabashed curiosity, knelt
+beside the exploring official hands of the Red Chief, uttered a cry of
+gratification.
+
+"Here's something! It dropped from the bosom of his shirt on the ground.
+Look!"
+
+She was holding in the air, between her thumb and forefinger, a folded
+bit of well-worn newspaper. Her eyes sparkled.
+
+"Shall I open it?" she asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It's a little ring" she said; "looks like an engagement ring. Something
+is written on it. Look! 'May to Cass.'"
+
+Cass darted forward. "It's mine," he stammered, "mine! I dropped it.
+It's nothing--nothing," he went on, after a pause, embarrassed and
+blushing, as the girl and her companion both stared at him--"a mere
+trifle. I'll take it."
+
+But the coroner opposed his outstretched hand. "Not much," he said,
+significantly.
+
+"But it's MINE," continued Cass, indignation taking the place of shame
+at his discovered secret. "I found it six months ago in the road.
+I--picked it up."
+
+"With your name already written on it! How handy!" said the coroner,
+grimly.
+
+"It's an old story" said Cass, blushing again under the
+half-mischievous, half-searching eyes of the girl. "All Blazing Star
+knows I found it."
+
+"Then ye'll have no difficulty in provin' it," said Hornsby, coolly.
+"Just now, however, WE'VE found it, and we propose to keep it for the
+inquest."
+
+Cass shrugged his shoulders. Further altercation would have only
+heightened his ludicrous situation in the girl's eyes. He turned away,
+leaving his treasure in the coroner's hands.
+
+The inquest, a day or two later, was prompt and final. No clew to the
+dead man's identity; no evidence sufficiently strong to prove murder or
+suicide; no trace of any kind, inculpating any party, known or
+unknown, were found. But much publicity and interest were given to the
+proceedings by the presence of the principal witness, a handsome girl.
+"To the pluck, persistency, and intellect of Miss Porter," said the "Red
+Chief Recorder," "Tuolumne County owes the recovery of the body."
+
+No one who was present at the inquest failed to be charmed with the
+appearance and conduct of this beautiful young lady.
+
+"Miss Porter has but lately arrived in this district, in which, it
+is hoped, she will become an honored resident, and continue to set an
+example to all lackadaisical and sentimental members of the so-called
+'sterner sex.'" After this universally recognized allusion to Cass
+Beard, the "Recorder" returned to its record: "Some interest was excited
+by what appeared to be a clew to the mystery in the discovery of a small
+gold engagement ring on the body. Evidence was afterward offered to show
+it was the property of a Mr. Cass Beard of Blazing Star, who appeared
+upon the scene AFTER the discovery of the corpse by Miss Porter. He
+alleged he had dropped it in lifting the unfortunate remains of the
+deceased. Much amusement was created in court by the sentimental
+confusion of the claimant, and a certain partisan spirit shown by his
+fellow-miners of Blazing Star. It appearing, however, by the admission
+of this sighing Strephon of the Foot hills, that he had himself FOUND
+this pledge of affection lying in the highway six months previous, the
+coroner wisely placed it in the safe-keeping of the county court until
+the appearance of the rightful owner."
+
+Thus on the 13th of September, 186-, the treasure found at Blazing Star
+passed out of the hands of its finder.
+
+*****
+
+Autumn brought an abrupt explanation of the mystery. Kanaka Joe had been
+arrested for horse stealing, but had with noble candor confessed to
+the finer offense of manslaughter. That swift and sure justice which
+overtook the horse stealer in these altitudes was stayed a moment and
+hesitated, for the victim was clearly the mysterious unknown. Curiosity
+got the better of an extempore judge and jury.
+
+"It was a fair fight," said the accused, not without some human vanity,
+feeling that the camp hung upon his words, "and was settled by the
+man az was peartest and liveliest with his weapon. We had a sort of
+unpleasantness over at Lagrange the night afore, along of our both
+hevin' a monotony of four aces. We had a clinch and a stamp around, and
+when we was separated it was only a question of shootin' on sight. He
+left Lagrange at sun up the next morning, and I struck across a bit o'
+buckeye and underbrush and came upon him, accidental like, on the Red
+Chief Road. I drawed when I sighted him, and called out. He slipped from
+his mare and covered himself with her flanks, reaching for his holster,
+but she rared and backed down on him across the road and into the grass,
+where I got in another shot and fetched him."
+
+"And you stole his mare?" suggested the Judge.
+
+"I got away," said the gambler, simply.
+
+Further questioning only elicited the fact that Joe did not know the
+name or condition of his victim. He was a stranger in Lagrange.
+
+It was a breezy afternoon, with some turbulency in the camp, and much
+windy discussion over this unwonted delay of justice. The suggestion
+that Joe should be first hanged for horse stealing and then tried for
+murder was angrily discussed, but milder counsels were offered--that
+the fact of the killing should be admitted only as proof of the theft.
+A large party from Red Chief had come over to assist in judgment, among
+them the coroner.
+
+Cass Beard had avoided these proceedings, which only recalled an
+unpleasant experience, and was wandering with pick, pan, and wallet
+far from the camp. These accoutrements, as I have before intimated,
+justified any form of aimless idleness under the equally aimless title
+of "prospecting." He had at the end of three hours' relaxation reached
+the highway to Red Chief, half hidden by blinding clouds of dust torn
+from the crumbling red road at every gust which swept down the mountain
+side. The spot had a familiar aspect to Cass, although some freshly-dug
+holes near the wayside, with scattered earth beside them, showed the
+presence of a recent prospector. He was struggling with his memory, when
+the dust was suddenly dispersed and he found himself again at the scene
+of the murder. He started: he had not put foot on the road since the
+inquest. There lacked only the helpless dead man and the contrasting
+figure of the alert young woman to restore the picture. The body was
+gone, it was true, but as he turned he beheld Miss Porter, at a few
+paces distant, sitting on her horse as energetic and observant as on the
+first morning they had met. A superstitious thrill passed over him and
+awoke his old antagonism.
+
+She nodded to him slightly. "I came here to refresh my memory," she
+said, "as Mr. Hornsby thought I might be asked to give my evidence again
+at Blazing Star."
+
+Cass carelessly struck an aimless blow with his pick against the sod and
+did not reply.
+
+"And you?" she queried.
+
+"I stumbled upon the place just now while prospecting, or I shouldn't be
+here."
+
+"Then it was YOU made these holes?"
+
+"No," said Cass, with ill-concealed disgust. "Nobody but a stranger
+would go foolin' round such a spot."
+
+He stopped, as the rude significance of his speech struck him, and added
+surlily, "I mean--no one would dig here."
+
+The girl laughed and showed a set of very white teeth in her square jaw.
+Cass averted his face.
+
+"Do you mean to say that every miner doesn't know that it's lucky to dig
+wherever human blood has been spilt?"
+
+Cass felt a return of his superstition, but he did not look up. "I never
+heard it before," he said, severely.
+
+"And you call yourself a California miner?"
+
+"I do."
+
+It was impossible for Miss Porter to misunderstand his curt speech and
+unsocial manner. She stared at him and colored slightly. Lifting her
+reins lightly, she said: "You certainly do not seem like most of the
+miners I have met."
+
+"Nor you like any girl from the East I ever met," he responded.
+
+"What do you mean?" she asked, checking her horse.
+
+"What I say," he answered, doggedly. Reasonable as this reply was, it
+immediately struck him that it was scarcely dignified or manly. But
+before he could explain himself Miss Porter was gone.
+
+He met her again that very evening. The trial had been summarily
+suspended by the appearance of the Sheriff of Calaveras and his posse,
+who took Joe from that self-constituted tribunal of Blazing Star and
+set his face southward and toward authoritative although more cautious
+justice. But not before the evidence of the previous inquest had been
+read, and the incident of the ring again delivered to the public.
+
+It is said the prisoner burst into an incredulous laugh and asked to see
+this mysterious waif. It was handed to him. Standing in the very
+shadow of the gallows tree--which might have been one of the pines that
+sheltered the billiard room in which the Vigilance Committee held their
+conclave--the prisoner gave way to a burst of merriment, so genuine
+and honest that the judge and jury joined in automatic sympathy. When
+silence was restored an explanation was asked by the Judge. But there
+was no response from the prisoner except a subdued chuckle.
+
+"Did this ring belong to you?" asked the Judge, severely, the jury and
+spectators craning their ears forward with an expectant smile already
+on their faces. But the prisoner's eyes only sparkled maliciously as he
+looked around the court.
+
+"Tell us, Joe," said a sympathetic and laughter-loving juror, under his
+breath. "Let it out and we'll make it easy for you."
+
+"Prisoner," said the Judge, with a return of official dignity, "remember
+that your life is in peril. Do you refuse?"
+
+Joe lazily laid his arm on the back of his chair with (to quote the
+words of an animated observer) "the air of having a Christian hope and a
+sequence flush in his hand," and said: "Well, as I reckon I'm not up yer
+for stealin' a ring that another man lets on to have found, and as fur
+as I kin see, hez nothin' to do with the case, I do!" And as it was here
+that the Sheriff of Calaveras made a precipitate entry into the room,
+the mystery remained unsolved.
+
+The effect of this freshly-important ridicule on the sensitive mind of
+Cass might have been foretold by Blazing Star had it ever taken that
+sensitiveness into consideration. He had lost the good humor and easy
+pliability which had tempted him to frankness, and he had gradually
+become bitter and hard. He had at first affected amusement over his own
+vanished day dream--hiding his virgin disappointment in his own breast;
+but when he began to turn upon his feelings he turned upon his comrades
+also. Cass was for a while unpopular. There is no ingratitude so
+revolting to the human mind as that of the butt who refuses to be one
+any longer. The man who rejects that immunity which laughter generally
+casts upon him and demands to be seriously considered deserves no mercy.
+
+It was under these hard conditions that Cass Beard, convicted of overt
+sentimentalism, aggravated by inconsistency, stepped into the Red Chief
+coach that evening. It was his habit usually to ride with the driver,
+but the presence of Hornsby and Miss Porter on the box seat changed
+his intention. Yet he had the satisfaction of seeing that neither had
+noticed him, and as there was no other passenger inside, he stretched
+himself on the cushion of the back seat and gave way to moody
+reflections. He quite determined to leave Blazing Star, to settle
+himself seriously to the task of money getting, and to return to
+his comrades, some day, a sarcastic, cynical, successful man, and so
+overwhelm them with confusion. For poor Cass had not yet reached that
+superiority of knowing that success would depend upon his ability to
+forego his past. Indeed, part of his boyhood had been cast among these
+men, and he was not old enough to have learned that success was not to
+be gauged by their standard. The moon lit up the dark interior of the
+coach with a faint poetic light. The lazy swinging of the vehicle that
+was bearing him away--albeit only for a night and a day--the solitude,
+the glimpses from the window of great distances full of vague
+possibilities, made the abused ring potent as that of Gyges. He dreamed
+with his eyes open. From an Alnaschar vision he suddenly awoke.
+The coach had stopped. The voices of men, one in entreaty, one in
+expostulation, came from the box. Cass mechanically put his hand to his
+pistol pocket.
+
+"Thank you, but I INSIST upon getting down."
+
+It was Miss Porter's voice. This was followed by a rapid,
+half-restrained interchange of words between Hornsby and the driver.
+Then the latter said, gruffly,--
+
+"If the lady wants to ride inside, let her."
+
+Miss Porter fluttered to the ground. She was followed by Hornsby. "Just
+a minit, Miss," he expostulated, half shamedly, half brusquely, "ye
+don't onderstand me. I only--"
+
+But Miss Porter had jumped into the coach.
+
+Hornsby placed his hand on the handle of the door. Miss Porter grasped
+it firmly from the inside. There was a slight struggle.
+
+All of which was part of a dream to the boyish Cass. But he awoke
+from it--a man! "Do you," he asked, in a voice he scarcely recognized
+himself,--"Do you want this man inside?"
+
+"No!"
+
+Cass caught at Hornsby's wrist like a young tiger. But alas! what
+availed instinctive chivalry against main strength? He only succeeded
+in forcing the door open in spite of Miss Porter's superior strategy,
+and--I fear I must add, muscle also--and threw himself passionately at
+Hornsby's throat, where he hung on and calmly awaited dissolution.
+But he had, in the onset, driven Hornsby out into the road and the
+moonlight.
+
+"Here! Somebody take my lines." The voice was "Mountain Charley's," the
+driver. The figure that jumped from the box and separated the struggling
+men belonged to this singularly direct person.
+
+"You're riding inside?" said Charley, interrogatively, to Cass. Before
+he could reply Miss Porter's voice came from the window.
+
+"He is!"
+
+Charley promptly bundled Cass into the coach.
+
+"And YOU?" to Hornsby, "onless you're kalkilatin' to take a little
+'pasear' you're booked OUTSIDE. Get up."
+
+It is probable that Charley assisted Mr. Hornsby as promptly to his
+seat, for the next moment the coach was rolling on.
+
+Meanwhile Cass, by reason of his forced entry, had been deposited in
+Miss Porter's lap, whence, freeing himself, he had attempted to climb
+over the middle seat, but in the starting of the coach was again thrown
+heavily against her hat and shoulder; all of which was inconsistent
+with the attitude of dignified reserve he had intended to display. Miss
+Porter, meanwhile, recovered her good humor.
+
+"What a brute he was, ugh!" she said, retying the ribbons of her bonnet
+under her square chin, and smoothing out her linen duster.
+
+Cass tried to look as if he had forgotten the whole affair. "Who? Oh,
+yes I see!" he responded, absently.
+
+"I suppose I ought to thank you," she went on with a smile, "but you
+know, really, I could have kept him out if you hadn't pulled his wrist
+from outside. I'll show you. Look! Put your hand on the handle there!
+Now, I'll hold the lock inside firmly. You see, you can't turn the
+catch!"
+
+She indeed held the lock fast. It was a firm hand, yet soft--their
+fingers had touched over the handle--and looked white in the moonlight.
+He made no reply, but sank back again in his seat with a singular
+sensation in the fingers that had touched hers. He was in the shadow,
+and, without being seen, could abandon his reserve and glance at her
+face. It struck him that he had never really seen her before. She was
+not so tall as she had appeared to be. Her eyes were not large, but her
+pupils were black, moist, velvety, and so convex as to seem embossed
+on the white. She had an indistinctive nose, a rather colorless
+face--whiter at the angles of the mouth and nose through the relief of
+tiny freckles like grains of pepper. Her mouth was straight, dark, red,
+but moist as her eyes. She had drawn herself into the corner of the back
+seat, her wrist put through and hanging over the swinging strap, the
+easy lines of her plump figure swaying from side to side with the motion
+of the coach. Finally, forgetful of any presence in the dark corner
+opposite, she threw her head a little farther back, slipped a trifle
+lower, and placing two well-booted feet upon the middle seat, completed
+a charming and wholesome picture.
+
+Five minutes elapsed. She was looking straight at the moon. Cass Beard
+felt his dignified reserve becoming very much like awkwardness. He ought
+to be coldly polite.
+
+"I hope you're not flustered, Miss, by the--by the--" he began.
+
+"I?" She straightened herself up in the seat, cast a curious glance into
+the dark corner, and then, letting herself down again, said: "Oh, dear,
+no!"
+
+Another five minutes elapsed. She had evidently forgotten him. She
+might, at least, have been civil. He took refuge again in his reserve.
+But it was now mixed with a certain pique.
+
+Yet how much softer her face looked in the moonlight! Even her square
+jaw had lost that hard, matter-of-fact, practical indication which was
+so distasteful to him, and always had suggested a harsh criticism of his
+weakness. How moist her eyes were--actually shining in the light! How
+that light seemed to concentrate in the corner of the lashes, and then
+slipped--a flash--away! Was she? Yes, she was crying.
+
+Cass melted. He moved. Miss Porter put her head out of the window and
+drew it back in a moment, dry-eyed.
+
+"One meets all sorts of folks traveling," said Cass, with what he wished
+to make appear a cheerful philosophy.
+
+"I dare say. I don't know. I never before met any one who was rude to
+me. I have traveled all over the country alone, and with all kinds of
+people ever since I was so high. I have always gone my own way, without
+hindrance or trouble. I always do. I don't see why I shouldn't. Perhaps
+other people mayn't like it. I do. I like excitement. I like to see all
+that there is to see. Because I'm a girl I don't see why I cannot go
+out without a keeper, and why I cannot do what any man can do that isn't
+wrong, do you? Perhaps you do--perhaps you don't. Perhaps you like a
+girl to be always in the house dawdling or thumping a piano or reading
+novels. Perhaps you think I'm bold because I don't like it, and won't
+lie and say I do."
+
+She spoke sharply and aggressively, and so evidently in answer to Cass's
+unspoken indictment against her, that he was not surprised when she
+became more direct.
+
+"You know you were shocked when I went to fetch that Hornsby, the
+coroner, after we found the dead body."
+
+"Hornsby wasn't shocked," said Cass, a little viciously.
+
+"What do you mean?" she said, abruptly.
+
+"You were good friends enough until--"
+
+"Until he insulted me just now, is that it?"
+
+"Until he thought," stammered Cass, "that because you were--you
+know--not so--so--so careful as other girls, he could be a little
+freer."
+
+"And so, because I preferred to ride a mile with him to see something
+real that had happened, and tried to be useful instead of looking in
+shop windows in Main Street or promenading before the hotel--"
+
+"And being ornamental," interrupted Cass. But this feeble and
+un-Cass-like attempt at playful gallantry met with a sudden check.
+
+Miss Porter drew herself together, and looked out of the window. "Do you
+wish me to walk the rest of the way home?"
+
+"No," said Cass, hurriedly, with a crimson face and a sense of
+gratuitous rudeness.
+
+"Then stop that kind of talk, right there!"
+
+There was an awkward silence. "I wish I was a man," she said, half
+bitterly, half earnestly. Cass Beard was not old and cynical enough to
+observe that this devout aspiration is usually uttered by those who have
+least reason to deplore their own femininity; and, but for the rebuff
+he had just received, would have made the usual emphatic dissent of
+our sex, when the wish is uttered by warm red lips and tender voices--a
+dissent, it may be remarked, generally withheld, however, when the
+masculine spinster dwells on the perfection of woman. I dare say Miss
+Porter was sincere, for a moment later she continued, poutingly:
+
+"And yet I used to go to fires in Sacramento when I was only ten years
+old. I saw the theatre burnt down. Nobody found fault with me then."
+
+Something made Cass ask if her father and mother objected to her boyish
+tastes. The reply was characteristic if not satisfactory,--
+
+"Object? I'd like to see them do it."
+
+The direction of the road had changed. The fickle moon now abandoned
+Miss Porter and sought out Cass on the front seat. It caressed the
+young fellow's silky moustache and long eyelashes, and took some of the
+sunburn from his cheek.
+
+"What's the matter with your neck?" said the girl, suddenly.
+
+Cass looked down, blushing to find that the collar of his smart "duck"
+sailor shirt was torn open. But something more than his white, soft,
+girlish skin was exposed; the shirt front was dyed quite red with blood
+from a slight cut on the shoulder. He remembered to have felt a scratch
+while struggling with Hornsby.
+
+The girl's soft eyes sparkled. "Let ME," she said, vivaciously. "Do! I'm
+good at wounds. Come over here. No--stay there. I'll come over to you."
+
+She did, bestriding the back of the middle seat and dropping at his
+side. The magnetic fingers again touched his; he felt her warm breath on
+his neck as she bent toward him.
+
+"It's nothing," he said, hastily, more agitated by the treatment than
+the wound.
+
+"Give me your flask," she responded, without heeding. A stinging
+sensation as she bathed the edges of the cut with the spirit brought him
+back to common sense again. "There," she said, skillfully extemporizing
+a bandage from her handkerchief and a compress from his cravat. "Now,
+button your coat over your chest, so, and don't take cold." She insisted
+upon buttoning it for him; greater even than the feminine delight in a
+man's strength is the ministration to his weakness. Yet, when this was
+finished, she drew a little away from him in some embarrassment--an
+embarrassment she wondered at, as his skin was finer, his touch gentler,
+his clothes cleaner, and--not to put too fine a point upon it--he
+exhaled an atmosphere much sweeter than belonged to most of the men her
+boyish habits had brought her in contact with--not excepting her own
+father. Later she even exempted her mother from the possession of this
+divine effluence. After a moment she asked, suddenly, "What are you
+going to do with Hornsby?"
+
+Cass had not thought of him. His short-lived rage was past with the
+occasion that provoked it. Without any fear of his adversary he would
+have been content and quite willing to meet him no more. He only said,
+"That will depend upon him."
+
+"Oh, you won't hear from him again," said she, confidently, "but you
+really ought to get up a little more muscle. You've no more than a
+girl." She stopped, a little confused.
+
+"What shall I do with your handkerchief?" asked the uneasy Cass, anxious
+to change the subject.
+
+"Oh, keep it, if you want to, only don't show it to everybody as you did
+that ring you found." Seeing signs of distress in his face, she added:
+"Of course that was all nonsense. If you had cared so much for the ring
+you couldn't have talked about it, or shown it. Could you?"
+
+It relieved him to think that this might be true; he certainly had not
+looked at it in that light before.
+
+"But did you really find it?" she asked, with sudden gravity. "Really,
+now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And there was no real May in the case?"
+
+"Not that I know of," laughed Cass, secretly pleased.
+
+But Miss Porter, after eying him critically for a moment jumped up and
+climbed back again to her seat. "Perhaps you had better give me that
+handkerchief back."
+
+Cass began to unbutton his coat.
+
+"No! no! Do you want to take your death of cold?" she screamed. And
+Cass, to avoid this direful possibility, rebuttoned his coat again over
+the handkerchief and a peculiarly pleasing sensation.
+
+Very little now was said until the rattling, bounding descent of the
+coach denoted the approach to Red Chief. The straggling main street
+disclosed itself, light by light. In the flash of glittering windows
+and the sound of eager voices Miss Porter descended, without waiting for
+Cass's proffered assistance, and anticipated Mountain Charley's descent
+from the box. A few undistinguishable words passed between them.
+
+"You kin freeze to me, Miss," said Charley; and Miss Porter, turning her
+frank laugh and frankly opened palm to Cass, half returned the pressure
+of his hand and slipped away.
+
+A few days after the stage coach incident, Mountain Charley drew up
+beside Cass on the Blazing Star turnpike, and handed him a small packet.
+"I was told to give ye that by Miss Porter. Hush--listen! It's that
+rather old dog-goned ring o' yours that's bin in all the papers. She's
+bamboozled that sap-headed county judge, Boompointer, into givin' it to
+her. Take my advice and sling it away for some other feller to pick up
+and get looney over. That's all!"
+
+"Did she say anything?" asked Cass, anxiously, as he received his lost
+treasure somewhat coldly.
+
+"Well, yes! I reckon. She asked me to stand betwixt Hornsby and you.
+So don't YOU tackle him, and I'll see HE don't tackle you," and with a
+portentous wink Mountain Charley whipped up his horses and was gone.
+
+Cass opened the packet. It contained nothing but the ring. Unmitigated
+by any word of greeting, remembrance, or even raillery, it seemed almost
+an insult. Had she intended to flaunt his folly in his face, or had she
+believed he still mourned for it and deemed its recovery a sufficient
+reward for his slight service? For an instant he felt tempted to follow
+Charley's advice, and cast this symbol of folly and contempt in the dust
+of the mountain road. And had she not made his humiliation complete by
+begging Charley's interference between him and his enemy? He would go
+home and send her back the handkerchief she had given him. But here the
+unromantic reflection that although he had washed it that very afternoon
+in the solitude of his own cabin, he could not possibly iron it, but
+must send it "rough dried," stayed his indignant feet.
+
+Two or three days, a week, a fortnight even, of this hopeless resentment
+filled Cass's breast. Then the news of Kanaka Joe's acquittal in the
+State Court momentarily revived the story of the ring, and revamped a
+few stale jokes in the camp. But the interest soon flagged; the fortunes
+of the little community of Blazing Star had been for some months
+failing; and with early snows in the mountain and wasted capital in
+fruitless schemes on the river, there was little room for the indulgence
+of that lazy and original humor which belonged to their lost youth and
+prosperity. Blazing Star truly, in the grim figure of their slang, was
+"played out." Not dug out, worked out, or washed out, but dissipated in
+a year of speculation and chance.
+
+Against this tide of fortune Cass struggled manfully, and even evoked
+the slow praise of his companions. Better still, he won a certain praise
+for himself, in himself, in a consciousness of increased strength,
+health, power, and self-reliance. He began to turn his quick imagination
+and perception to some practical account, and made one or two
+discoveries which quite startled his more experienced but more
+conservative companions. Nevertheless, Cass's discoveries and labors
+were not of a kind that produced immediate pecuniary realization, and
+Blazing Star, which consumed so many pounds of pork and flour daily,
+did not unfortunately produce the daily equivalent in gold. Blazing Star
+lost its credit. Blazing Star was hungry, dirty, and ragged. Blazing
+Star was beginning to set.
+
+Participating in the general ill luck of the camp, Cass was not without
+his own individual mischances. He had resolutely determined to forget
+Miss Porter and all that tended to recall the unlucky ring, but, cruelly
+enough, she was the only thing that refused to be forgotten--whose
+undulating figure reclined opposite to him in the weird moonlight of his
+ruined cabin, whose voice mingled with the song of the river by whose
+banks he toiled, and whose eyes and touch thrilled him in his dreams.
+Partly for this reason, and partly because his clothes were beginning to
+be patched and torn, he avoided Red Chief and any place where he would
+be likely to meet her. In spite of this precaution he had once seen her
+driving in a pony carriage, but so smartly and fashionably dressed
+that he drew back in the cover of a wayside willow that she might pass
+without recognition. He looked down upon his red-splashed clothes
+and grimy, soil-streaked hands, and for a moment half hated her. His
+comrades seldom spoke of her--instinctively fearing some temptation that
+might beset his Spartan resolutions, but he heard from time to time that
+she had been seen at balls and parties, apparently enjoying those very
+frivolities of her sex she affected to condemn.
+
+It was a Sabbath morning in early spring that he was returning from an
+ineffectual attempt to enlist a capitalist at the county town to redeem
+the fortunes of Blazing Star. He was pondering over the narrowness of
+that capitalist, who had evidently but illogically connected Cass's
+present appearance with the future of that struggling camp, when he
+became so foot-sore that he was obliged to accept a "lift" from a
+wayfaring teamster. As the slowly lumbering vehicle passed the new
+church on the outskirts of the town, the congregation were sallying
+forth. It was too late to jump down and run away, and Cass dared not
+ask his new-found friend to whip up his cattle. Conscious of his unshorn
+beard and ragged garments, he kept his eyes fixed upon the road. A voice
+that thrilled him called his name. It was Miss Porter, a resplendent
+vision of silk, laces, and Easter flowers--yet actually running,
+with something of her old dash and freedom, beside the wagon. As
+the astonished teamster drew up before this elegant apparition, she
+panted:--
+
+"Why did you make me run so far, and why didn't you look up?"
+
+Cass, trying to hide the patches on his knees beneath a newspaper,
+stammered that he had not seen her.
+
+"And you did not hold down your head purposely?"
+
+"No," said Cass.
+
+"Why have you not been to Red Chief? Why didn't you answer my message
+about the ring?" she asked, swiftly.
+
+"You sent nothing but the ring," said Cass, coloring, as he glanced at
+the teamster.
+
+"Why, THAT was a message, you born idiot."
+
+Cass stared. The teamster smiled. Miss Porter gazed anxiously at the
+wagon. "I think I'd like a ride in there; it looks awfully good." She
+glanced mischievously around at the lingering and curious congregation.
+
+"May I?"
+
+But Cass deprecated that proceeding strongly. It was dirty; he was not
+sure it was even WHOLESOME; she would be SO uncomfortable; he, himself,
+was only going a few rods farther, and in that time she might ruin her
+dress--
+
+"Oh, yes," she said, a little bitterly, "certainly, my dress must be
+looked after. And--what else?"
+
+"People might think it strange, and believe I had invited you,"
+continued Cass, hesitatingly.
+
+"When I had only invited myself? Thank you. Good-by."
+
+She waved her hand and stepped back from the wagon. Cass would have
+given worlds to recall her, but he sat still, and the vehicle moved on
+in moody silence. At the first cross road he jumped down. "Thank you,"
+he said to the teamster. "You're welcome," returned that gentleman,
+regarding him curiously, "but the next time a gal like that asks to
+ride in this yer wagon, I reckon I won't take the vote of any deadhead
+passenger. Adios, young fellow. Don't stay out late; ye might be run off
+by some gal, and what would your mother say?" Of course the young man
+could only look unutterable things and walk away, but even in that
+dignified action he was conscious that its effect was somewhat mitigated
+by a large patch from a material originally used as a flour sack, which
+had repaired his trousers, but still bore the ironical legend, "Best
+Superfine."
+
+The summer brought warmth and promise and some blossom, if not absolute
+fruition, to Blazing Star. The long days drew Nature into closer
+communion with the men, and hopefulness followed the discontent of their
+winter seclusion. It was easier, too, for Capital to be wooed and won
+into making a picnic in these mountain solitudes than when high water
+stayed the fords and drifting snow the Sierran trails. At the close
+of one of these Arcadian days Cass was smoking before the door of
+his lonely cabin when he was astounded by the onset of a dozen of his
+companions. Peter Drummond, far in the van, was waving a newspaper like
+a victorious banner. "All's right now, Cass, old man!" he panted as he
+stopped before Cass and shoved back his eager followers.
+
+"What's all right?" asked Cass, dubiously.
+
+"YOU! You kin rake down the pile now. You're hunky! You're on velvet.
+Listen!"
+
+He opened the newspaper and read, with annoying deliberation, as
+follows:--
+
+"LOST.--If the finder of a plain gold ring, bearing the engraved
+inscription, 'May to Cass,' alleged to have been picked up on the high
+road near Blazing Star on the 4th March, 186-, will apply to Bookham &
+Sons, bankers, 1007 Y Street, Sacramento, he will be suitably rewarded
+either for the recovery of the ring, or for such facts as may identify
+it, or the locality where it was found."
+
+Cass rose and frowned savagely on his comrades. "No! no!" cried a dozen
+voices, assuringly. "It's all right! Honest Injun! True as gospel! No
+joke, Cass!"
+
+"Here's the paper, Sacramento 'Union' of yesterday. Look for yourself,"
+said Drummond, handing him the well-worn journal. "And you see," he
+added, "how darned lucky you are. It ain't necessary for you to produce
+the ring, so if that old biled owl of a Boompointer don't giv' it back
+to ye, it's all the same."
+
+"And they say nobody but the finder need apply," interrupted another.
+"That shuts out Boompointer or Kanaka Joe, for the matter o' that."
+
+"It's clar that it MEANS you, Cass, ez much ez if they'd given your
+name," added a third.
+
+For Miss Porter's sake and his own Cass had never told them of the
+restoration of the ring, and it was evident that Mountain Charley had
+also kept silent. Cass could not speak now without violating a secret,
+and he was pleased that the ring itself no longer played an important
+part in the mystery. But what was that mystery, and why was the ring
+secondary to himself? Why was so much stress laid upon his finding it?
+
+"You see," said Drummond, as if answering his unspoken thought, "that
+'ar gal--for it is a gal in course--hez read all about it in the papers,
+and hez sort o' took a shine to ye. It don't make a bit o' difference
+who in thunder Cass IS or WAZ, for I reckon she's kicked him over by
+this time--"
+
+"Sarved him right, too, for losing the girl's ring and then lying low
+and keeping dark about it," interrupted a sympathizer.
+
+"And she's just weakened over the romantic, high-toned way you stuck
+to it," continued Drummond, forgetting the sarcasms he had previously
+hurled at this romance. Indeed, the whole camp, by this time, had become
+convinced that it had fostered and developed a chivalrous devotion which
+was now on the point of pecuniary realization. It was generally accepted
+that "she" was the daughter of this banker, and also felt that in
+the circumstances the happy father could not do less than develop the
+resources of Blazing Star at once. Even if there were no relationship,
+what opportunity could be more fit for presenting to capital a locality
+that even produced engagement rings, and, as Jim Fauquier put it, "the
+men ez knew how to keep 'em." It was this sympathetic Virginian who took
+Cass aside with the following generous suggestion: "If you find that you
+and the old gal couldn't hitch hosses, owin' to your not likin' red hair
+or a game leg" (it may be here recorded that Blazing Star had, for
+no reason whatever, attributed these unprepossessing qualities to the
+mysterious advertiser), "you might let ME in. You might say ez how I
+used to jest worship that ring with you, and allers wanted to borrow it
+on Sundays. If anything comes of it--why--WE'RE PARDNERS!"
+
+A serious question was the outfitting of Cass for what now was felt to
+be a diplomatic representation of the community. His garments, it
+hardly need be said, were inappropriate to any wooing except that of the
+"maiden all forlorn," which the advertiser clearly was not. "He might,"
+suggested Fauquier, "drop in jest as he is--kinder as if he'd got
+keerless of the world, being lovesick." But Cass objected strongly, and
+was borne out in his objection by his younger comrades. At last a pair
+of white duck trousers, a red shirt, a flowing black silk scarf, and
+a Panama hat were procured at Red Chief, on credit, after a judicious
+exhibition of the advertisement. A heavy wedding ring, the property of
+Drummond (who was not married), was also lent as a graceful suggestion,
+and at the last moment Fauquier affixed to Cass's scarf an enormous
+specimen pin of gold and quartz. "It sorter indicates the auriferous
+wealth o' this yer region, and the old man (the senior member of Bookham
+& Sons) needn't know I won it at draw poker in Frisco," said Fauquier.
+
+"Ef you 'pass' on the gal, you kin hand it back to me and I'LL try
+it on." Forty dollars for expenses was put into Cass's hands, and the
+entire community accompanied him to the cross roads where he was to meet
+the Sacramento coach, which eventually carried him away, followed by a
+benediction of waving hats and exploding revolvers.
+
+That Cass did not participate in the extravagant hopes of his comrades,
+and that he rejected utterly their matrimonial speculations in his
+behalf, need not be said. Outwardly, he kept his own counsel with
+good-humored assent. But there was something fascinating in the
+situation, and while he felt he had forever abandoned his romantic
+dream, he was not displeased to know that it might have proved a
+reality. Nor was it distasteful to him to think that Miss Porter would
+hear of it and regret her late inability to appreciate his sentiment.
+If he really were the object of some opulent maiden's passion, he would
+show Miss Porter how he could sacrifice the most brilliant prospects
+for her sake. Alone, on the top of the coach, he projected one of those
+satisfying conversations in which imaginative people delight, but which
+unfortunately never come quite up to rehearsal. "Dear Miss Porter,"
+he would say, addressing the back of the driver, "if I could remain
+faithful to a dream of my youth, however illusive and unreal, can you
+believe that for the sake of lucre I could be false to the one real
+passion that alone supplanted it." In the composition and delivery of
+this eloquent statement an hour was happily forgotten: the only
+drawback to its complete effect was that a misplace of epithets in rapid
+repetition did not seem to make the slightest difference, and Cass found
+himself saying "Dear Miss Porter, if I could be false to a dream of my
+youth, etc., etc., can you believe I could be FAITHFUL to the one real
+passion, etc., etc.," with equal and perfect satisfaction. As Miss
+Porter was reputed to be well off, if the unknown were poor, that might
+be another drawback.
+
+The banking house of Bookham & Sons did not present an illusive nor
+mysterious appearance. It was eminently practical and matter of fact; it
+was obtrusively open and glassy; nobody would have thought of leaving
+a secret there that would have been inevitably circulated over the
+counter. Cass felt an uncomfortable sense of incongruity in himself,
+in his story, in his treasure, to this temple of disenchanting realism.
+With the awkwardness of an embarrassed man he was holding prominently in
+his hand an envelope containing the ring and advertisement as a voucher
+for his intrusion, when the nearest clerk took the envelope from his
+hand, opened it, took out the ring, returned it, said briskly, "T'other
+shop, next door, young man," and turned to another customer.
+
+Cass stepped to the door, saw that "T'other shop" was a pawnbroker's,
+and returned again with a flashing eye and heightened color. "It's an
+advertisement I have come to answer," he began again.
+
+The clerk cast a glance at Cass's scarf and pin. "Place taken
+yesterday--no room for any more," he said, abruptly.
+
+Cass grew quite white. But his old experience in Blazing Star repartee
+stood him in good stead. "If it's YOUR place you mean," he said coolly,
+"I reckon you might put a dozen men in the hole you're rattlin' round
+in--but it's this advertisement I'm after. If Bookham isn't in,
+maybe you'll send me one of the grown-up sons." The production of the
+advertisement and some laughter from the bystanders had its effect.
+The pert young clerk retired, and returned to lead the way to the
+bank parlor. Cass's heart sank again as he was confronted by a dark,
+iron-gray man--in dress, features, speech, and action--uncompromisingly
+opposed to Cass--his ring and his romance. When the young man had told
+his story and produced his treasure he paused. The banker scarcely
+glanced at it, but said, impatiently,--
+
+"Well, your papers?"
+
+"My papers?"
+
+"Yes. Proof of your identity. You say your name is Cass Beard. Good!
+What have you got to prove it? How can I tell who you are?"
+
+To a sensitive man there is no form of suspicion that is as bewildering
+and demoralizing at the moment as the question of his identity. Cass
+felt the insult in the doubt of his word, and the palpable sense of his
+present inability to prove it. The banker watched him keenly but not
+unkindly.
+
+"Come," he said at length, "this is not my affair; if you can legally
+satisfy the lady for whom I am only agent, well and good. I believe you
+can; I only warn you that you must. And my present inquiry was to keep
+her from losing her time with impostors, a class I don't think you
+belong to. There's her card. Good day."
+
+"Miss Mortimer." It was NOT the banker's daughter. The first illusion of
+Blazing Star was rudely dispelled. But the care taken by the capitalist
+to shield her from imposture indicated a person of wealth. Of her youth
+and beauty Cass no longer thought.
+
+The address given was not distant. With a beating heart he rung the
+bell of a respectable-looking house, and was ushered into a private
+drawing-room. Instinctively he felt that the room was only temporarily
+inhabited; an air peculiar to the best lodgings, and when the door
+opened upon a tall lady in deep mourning, he was still more convinced of
+an incongruity between the occupant and her surroundings. With a smile
+that vacillated between a habit of familiarity and ease, and a recent
+restraint, she motioned him to a chair.
+
+"Miss Mortimer" was still young, still handsome, still fashionably
+dressed, and still attractive. From her first greeting to the end of the
+interview Cass felt that she knew all about him. This relieved him from
+the onus of proving his identity, but seemed to put him vaguely at a
+disadvantage. It increased his sense of inexperience and youthfulness.
+
+"I hope you will believe," she began, "that the few questions I have
+to ask you are to satisfy my own heart, and for no other purpose."
+She smiled sadly as she went on. "Had it been otherwise, I should have
+instituted a legal inquiry, and left this interview to some one cooler,
+calmer, and less interested than myself. But I think, I KNOW I can trust
+you. Perhaps we women are weak and foolish to talk of an INSTINCT, and
+when you know my story you may have reason to believe that but little
+dependence can be placed on THAT; but I am not wrong in saying,--am I?"
+(with a sad smile) "that YOU are not above that weakness?" She paused,
+closed her lips tightly, and grasped her hands before her. "You say you
+found that ring in the road some three months before--the--the--you know
+what I mean--the body--was discovered?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You thought it might have been dropped by some one in passing?"
+
+"I thought so, yes--it belonged to no one in camp."
+
+"Before your cabin or on the highway?"
+
+"Before my cabin."
+
+"You are SURE?" There was something so very sweet and sad in her smile
+that it oddly made Cass color.
+
+"But my cabin is near the road," he suggested.
+
+"I see! And there was nothing else; no paper nor envelope?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"And you kept it because of the odd resemblance one of the names bore to
+yours?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"For no other reason
+
+"None." Yet Cass felt he was blushing.
+
+"You'll forgive my repeating a question you have already answered, but
+I am so anxious. There was some attempt to prove at the inquest that the
+ring had been found on the body of--the unfortunate man. But you tell me
+it was not so?"
+
+"I can swear it."
+
+"Good God--the traitor!" She took a hurried step forward, turned to the
+window, and then came back to Cass with a voice broken with emotion. "I
+have told you I could trust you. That ring was mine!"
+
+She stopped, and then went on hurriedly. "Years ago I gave it to a man
+who deceived and wronged me; a man whose life since then has been a
+shame and disgrace to all who knew him. A man who, once, a gentleman,
+sank so low as to become the associate of thieves and ruffians; sank
+so low, that when he died, by violence--a traitor even to them--his own
+confederates shrunk from him, and left him to fill a nameless grave.
+That man's body you found!"
+
+Cass started. "And his name was--?"
+
+"Part of your surname. Cass--Henry Cass."
+
+"You see why Providence seems to have brought that ring to you," she
+went on. "But you ask me why, knowing this, I am so eager to know if
+the ring was found by you in the road, or if it were found on his body.
+Listen! It is part of my mortification that the story goes that this man
+once showed this ring, boasted of it, staked, and lost it at a gambling
+table to one of his vile comrades."
+
+"Kanaka Joe," said Cass, overcome by a vivid recollection of Joe's
+merriment at the trial.
+
+"The same. Don't you see," she said, hurriedly, "if the ring had been
+found on him I could believe that somewhere in his heart he still kept
+respect for the woman he had wronged. I am a woman--a foolish woman, I
+know--but you have crushed that hope forever."
+
+"But why have you sent for me?" asked Cass, touched by her emotion.
+
+"To know it for certain," she said, almost fiercely. "Can you not
+understand that a woman like me must know a thing once and forever? But
+you CAN help me. I did not send for you only to pour my wrongs in your
+ears. You must take me with you to this place--to the spot where you
+found the ring--to the spot where you found the body--to the spot
+where--where HE lies. You must do it secretly, that none shall know me."
+
+Cass hesitated. He was thinking of his companions and the collapse of
+their painted bubble. How could he keep the secret from them?
+
+"If it is money you need, let not that stop you. I have no right to
+your time without recompense. Do not misunderstand me. There has been a
+thousand dollars awaiting my order at Bookham's when the ring should be
+delivered. It shall be doubled if you help me in this last moment."
+
+It was possible. He could convey her secretly there, invent some story
+of a reward delayed for want of proofs, and afterward share that reward
+with his friends. He answered promptly, "I will take you there."
+
+She took his hands in both of hers, raised them to her lips, and smiled.
+The shadow of grief and restraint seemed to have fallen from her face,
+and a half-mischievous, half-coquettish gleam in her dark eyes touched
+the susceptible Cass in so subtle a fashion that he regained the street
+in some confusion. He wondered what Miss Porter would have thought. But
+was he not returning to her, a fortunate man, with one thousand dollars
+in his pocket! Why should he remember he was handicapped, by a pretty
+woman and a pathetic episode? It did not make the proximity less
+pleasant as he helped her into the coach that evening, nor did the
+recollection of another ride with another woman obtrude itself upon
+those consolations which he felt it his duty, from time to time, to
+offer. It was arranged that he should leave her at the "Red Chief"
+Hotel, while he continued on to Blazing Star, returning at noon to bring
+her with him when he could do it without exposing her to recognition.
+The gray dawn came soon enough, and the coach drew up at "Red Chief"
+while the lights in the bar-room and dining-room of the hotel were
+still struggling with the far flushing east. Cass alighted, placed Miss
+Mortimer in the hands of the landlady, and returned to the vehicle. It
+was still musty, close, and frowzy, with half-awakened passengers.
+There was a vacated seat on the top, which Cass climbed up to, and
+abstractedly threw himself beside a figure muffled in shawls and rugs.
+There was a slight movement among the multitudinous enwrappings, and
+then the figure turned to him and said, dryly, "Good morning!" It was
+Miss Porter!
+
+"Have you been long here?" he stammered.
+
+"All night."
+
+He would have given worlds to leave her at that moment. He would have
+jumped from the starting coach to save himself any explanation of the
+embarrassment he was furiously conscious of showing, without, as he
+believed, any adequate cause. And yet, like all inexperienced, sensitive
+men, he dashed blindly into that explanation; worse, he even told his
+secret at once, then and there, and then sat abashed and conscience
+stricken, with an added sense of its utter futility.
+
+"And this," summed up the young girl, with a slight shrug of her pretty
+shoulders, "is YOUR MAY?"
+
+Cass would have recommenced his story.
+
+"No, don't, pray! It isn't interesting, nor original. Do YOU believe
+it?"
+
+"I do," said Cass, indignantly.
+
+"How lucky! Then let me go to sleep."
+
+Cass, still furious, but uneasy, did not again address her. When the
+coach stopped at Blazing Star she asked him, indifferently: "When does
+this sentimental pilgrimage begin?"
+
+"I return for her at one o'clock," replied Cass, stiffly.
+
+He kept his word. He appeased his eager companions with a promise of
+future fortune, and exhibited the present and tangible reward. By a
+circuitous route known only to himself, he led Miss Mortimer to the road
+before the cabin. There was a pink flush of excitement on her somewhat
+faded cheek.
+
+"And it was here?" she asked, eagerly.
+
+"I found it here."
+
+"And the body?"
+
+"That was afterward. Over in that direction, beyond the clump of
+buckeyes, on the Red Chief turnpike."
+
+"And any one coming from the road we left just now and going
+to--to--that place, would have to cross just here? Tell me," she said,
+with a strange laugh, laying her cold nervous hand on his, "wouldn't
+they?"
+
+"They would."
+
+"Let us go to that place."
+
+Cass stepped out briskly to avoid observation and gain the woods beyond
+the highway. "You have crossed here before," she said. "There seems to
+be a trail."
+
+"I may have made it: it's a short cut to the buckeyes."
+
+"You never found anything else on the trail?"
+
+"You remember, I told you before, the ring was all I found."
+
+"Ah, true!" she smiled sweetly; "it was THAT which made it seem so odd
+to you. I forgot."
+
+In half an hour they reached the buckeyes. During the walk she had taken
+rapid recognizance of everything in her path. When they crossed the road
+and Cass had pointed out the scene of the murder, she looked anxiously
+around. "You are sure we are not seen?"
+
+"Quite."
+
+"You will not think me foolish if I ask you to wait here while I go in
+there"--she pointed to the ominous thicket near them--"alone?"
+
+She was quite white.
+
+Cass's heart, which had grown somewhat cold since his interview with
+Miss Porter, melted at once.
+
+"Go; I will stay here."
+
+He waited five minutes. She did not return.
+
+What if the poor creature had determined upon suicide on the spot where
+her faithless lover had fallen? He was reassured in another moment by
+the rustle of skirts in the undergrowth.
+
+"I was becoming quite alarmed," he said, aloud.
+
+"You have reason to be," returned a hurried voice. He started. It was
+Miss Porter, who stepped swiftly out of the cover. "Look," she said,
+"look at that man down the road. He has been tracking you two ever since
+you left the cabin. Do you know who he is?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Then listen. It is three-fingered Dick, one of the escaped road agents.
+I know him!"
+
+"Let us go and warn her," said Cass, eagerly.
+
+Miss Porter laid her hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"I don't think she'll thank you," she said, dryly. "Perhaps you'd better
+see what she's doing, first."
+
+Utterly bewildered, yet with a strong sense of the masterfulness of his
+companion, he followed her. She crept like a cat through the thicket.
+Suddenly she paused. "Look!" she whispered, viciously, "look at the
+tender vigils of your heart-broken May!"
+
+Cass saw the woman who had left him a moment before on her knees on the
+grass, with long thin fingers digging like a ghoul in the earth. He had
+scarce time to notice her eager face and eyes, cast now and then back
+toward the spot where she had left him, before there was a crash in
+the bushes, and a man,--the stranger of the road,--leaped to her side.
+"Run," he said; "run for it now. You're watched!"
+
+"Oh! that man, Beard!" she said, contemptuously.
+
+"No, another in a wagon. Quick. Fool, you know the place now,--you
+can come later; run!" And half-dragging, half-lifting her, he bore her
+through the bushes. Scarcely had they closed behind the pair than
+Miss Porter ran to the spot vacated by the woman. "Look!" she cried,
+triumphantly, "look!"
+
+Cass looked, and sank on his knees beside her.
+
+"It WAS worth a thousand dollars, wasn't it?" she repeated, maliciously,
+"wasn't it? But you ought to return it! REALLY you ought."
+
+Cass could scarcely articulate. "But how did YOU know it?" he finally
+gasped.
+
+"Oh, I suspected something; there was a woman, and you know you're SUCH
+a fool!"
+
+Cass rose, stiffly.
+
+"Don't be a greater fool now, but go and bring my horse and wagon from
+the hill, and don't say anything to the driver."
+
+"Then you did not come alone?"
+
+"No; it would have been bold and improper."
+
+"Please!"
+
+"And to think it WAS the ring, after all, that pointed to this," she
+said.
+
+"The ring that YOU returned to me."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Don't, please, the wagon is coming."
+
+*****
+
+In the next morning's edition of the "Red Chief Chronicle" appeared the
+following startling intelligence:--
+
+
+EXTRAORDINARY DISCOVERY
+
+FINDING OF THE STOLEN TREASURE OF WELLS, FARGO & CO.
+
+OVER $800,000 RECOVERED
+
+Our readers will remember the notorious robbery of Wells, Fargo & Co.'s
+treasure from the Sacramento and Red Chief Pioneer Coach on the night of
+September 1. Although most of the gang were arrested, it is known that
+two escaped, who, it was presumed, cached the treasure, amounting
+to nearly $500,000 in gold, drafts, and jewelry, as no trace of the
+property was found. Yesterday our esteemed fellow citizen, Mr. Cass
+Beard, long and favorably known in this county, succeeded in exhuming
+the treasure in a copse of hazel near the Red Chief turnpike,--adjacent
+to the spot where an unknown body was lately discovered. This body is
+now strongly suspected to be that of one Henry Cass, a disreputable
+character, who has since been ascertained to have been one of the road
+agents who escaped. The matter is now under legal investigation. The
+successful result of the search is due to a systematic plan evolved from
+the genius of Mr. Beard, who has devoted over a year to this labor.
+It was first suggested to him by the finding of a ring, now definitely
+identified as part of the treasure which was supposed to have been
+dropped from Wells, Fargo & Co's boxes by the robbers in their midnight
+flight through Blazing Star.
+
+
+In the same journal appeared the no less important intelligence, which
+explains, while it completes this veracious chronicle:--
+
+"It is rumored that a marriage is shortly to take place between the
+hero of the late treasure discovery and a young lady of Red Chief, whose
+devoted aid and assistance to this important work is well known to this
+community."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Found At Blazing Star, by Bret Harte
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