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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Deal in Wheat, by Frank Norris
+
+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: A Deal in Wheat
+       And Other Stories of the New and Old West
+
+Author: Frank Norris
+
+Posting Date: November 15, 2011 [EBook #9905]
+Release Date: February, 2006
+First Posted: October 29, 2003
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DEAL IN WHEAT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, Elaine Nash and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A DEAL IN WHEAT
+
+
+And Other Stories Of The New And Old West
+
+
+By FRANK NORRIS
+
+
+
+_Illustrated by Remington, Leyendecker, Hitchcock and Hooper_
+
+
+
+1903
+
+
+[Illustration: "'Sell A Thousand May At One-Fifty,' Vociferated The Bear
+Broker"]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+A Deal in Wheat
+
+The Wife of Chino
+
+A Bargain with Peg-Leg
+
+The Passing of Cock-Eye Blacklock
+
+A Memorandum of Sudden Death
+
+Two Hearts That Beat as One
+
+The Dual Personality of Slick Dick Nickerson
+
+The Ship That Saw a Ghost
+
+The Ghost in the Crosstrees
+
+The Riding of Felipe
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"'Sell a Thousand May at One-Fifty,' Vociferated the Bear Broker"
+
+Caught in the Circle. The last stand of three troopers and a scout
+overtaken by a band of hostile Indians.
+
+"'Ere's 'Ell to Pay!"
+
+"'My Curse Is on Her Who Next Kisses You'"
+
+
+
+
+A DEAL IN WHEAT
+
+
+I. THE BEAR--WHEAT AT SIXTY-TWO
+
+As Sam Lewiston backed the horse into the shafts of his backboard and
+began hitching the tugs to the whiffletree, his wife came out from the
+kitchen door of the house and drew near, and stood for some time at the
+horse's head, her arms folded and her apron rolled around them. For a
+long moment neither spoke. They had talked over the situation so long
+and so comprehensively the night before that there seemed to be nothing
+more to say.
+
+The time was late in the summer, the place a ranch in southwestern
+Kansas, and Lewiston and his wife were two of a vast population of
+farmers, wheat growers, who at that moment were passing through a
+crisis--a crisis that at any moment might culminate in tragedy. Wheat
+was down to sixty-six.
+
+At length Emma Lewiston spoke.
+
+"Well," she hazarded, looking vaguely out across the ranch toward the
+horizon, leagues distant; "well, Sam, there's always that offer of
+brother Joe's. We can quit--and go to Chicago--if the worst comes."
+
+"And give up!" exclaimed Lewiston, running the lines through the torets.
+"Leave the ranch! Give up! After all these years!"
+
+His wife made no reply for the moment. Lewiston climbed into the
+buckboard and gathered up the lines. "Well, here goes for the last try,
+Emmie," he said. "Good-by, girl. Maybe things will look better in town
+to-day."
+
+"Maybe," she said gravely. She kissed her husband good-by and stood for
+some time looking after the buckboard traveling toward the town in a
+moving pillar of dust.
+
+"I don't know," she murmured at length; "I don't know just how we're
+going to make out."
+
+When he reached town, Lewiston tied the horse to the iron railing in
+front of the Odd Fellows' Hall, the ground floor of which was occupied
+by the post-office, and went across the street and up the stairway of a
+building of brick and granite--quite the most pretentious structure of
+the town--and knocked at a door upon the first landing. The door was
+furnished with a pane of frosted glass, on which, in gold letters, was
+inscribed, "Bridges & Co., Grain Dealers."
+
+Bridges himself, a middle-aged man who wore a velvet skull-cap and who
+was smoking a Pittsburg stogie, met the farmer at the counter and the
+two exchanged perfunctory greetings.
+
+"Well," said Lewiston, tentatively, after awhile.
+
+"Well, Lewiston," said the other, "I can't take that wheat of yours at
+any better than sixty-two."
+
+"Sixty-_two_."
+
+"It's the Chicago price that does it, Lewiston. Truslow is bearing the
+stuff for all he's worth. It's Truslow and the bear clique that stick
+the knife into us. The price broke again this morning. We've just got a
+wire."
+
+"Good heavens," murmured Lewiston, looking vaguely from side to side.
+"That--that ruins me. I _can't_ carry my grain any longer--what with
+storage charges and--and--Bridges, I don't see just how I'm going to
+make out. Sixty-two cents a bushel! Why, man, what with this and with
+that it's cost me nearly a dollar a bushel to raise that wheat, and now
+Truslow--"
+
+He turned away abruptly with a quick gesture of infinite discouragement.
+
+He went down the stairs, and making his way to where his buckboard was
+hitched, got in, and, with eyes vacant, the reins slipping and sliding
+in his limp, half-open hands, drove slowly back to the ranch. His wife
+had seen him coming, and met him as he drew up before the barn.
+
+"Well?" she demanded.
+
+"Emmie," he said as he got out of the buckboard, laying his arm across
+her shoulder, "Emmie, I guess we'll take up with Joe's offer. We'll go
+to Chicago. We're cleaned out!"
+
+
+II. THE BULL--WHEAT AT A DOLLAR-TEN
+
+...----_and said Party of the Second Part further covenants and agrees to
+merchandise such wheat in foreign ports, it being understood and agreed
+between the Party of the First Part and the Party of the Second Part
+that the wheat hereinbefore mentioned is released and sold to the Party
+of the Second Part for export purposes only, and not for consumption or
+distribution within the boundaries of the United States of America or of
+Canada_.
+
+"Now, Mr. Gates, if you will sign for Mr. Truslow I guess that'll be
+all," remarked Hornung when he had finished reading.
+
+Hornung affixed his signature to the two documents and passed them over
+to Gates, who signed for his principal and client, Truslow--or, as he
+had been called ever since he had gone into the fight against Hornung's
+corner--the Great Bear. Hornung's secretary was called in and witnessed
+the signatures, and Gates thrust the contract into his Gladstone bag and
+stood up, smoothing his hat.
+
+"You will deliver the warehouse receipts for the grain," began Gates.
+
+"I'll send a messenger to Truslow's office before noon," interrupted
+Hornung. "You can pay by certified check through the Illinois Trust
+people."
+
+When the other had taken himself off, Hornung sat for some moments
+gazing abstractedly toward his office windows, thinking over the whole
+matter. He had just agreed to release to Truslow, at the rate of one
+dollar and ten cents per bushel, one hundred thousand out of the two
+million and odd bushels of wheat that he, Hornung, controlled, or
+actually owned. And for the moment he was wondering if, after all, he
+had done wisely in not goring the Great Bear to actual financial death.
+He had made him pay one hundred thousand dollars. Truslow was good for
+this amount. Would it not have been better to have put a prohibitive
+figure on the grain and forced the Bear into bankruptcy? True, Hornung
+would then be without his enemy's money, but Truslow would have been
+eliminated from the situation, and that--so Hornung told himself--was
+always a consummation most devoutly, strenuously and diligently to be
+striven for. Truslow once dead was dead, but the Bear was never more
+dangerous than when desperate.
+
+"But so long as he can't get _wheat_," muttered Hornung at the end of
+his reflections, "he can't hurt me. And he can't get it. That I _know_."
+
+For Hornung controlled the situation. So far back as the February of
+that year an "unknown bull" had been making his presence felt on the
+floor of the Board of Trade. By the middle of March the commercial
+reports of the daily press had begun to speak of "the powerful bull
+clique"; a few weeks later that legendary condition of affairs implied
+and epitomized in the magic words "Dollar Wheat" had been attained, and
+by the first of April, when the price had been boosted to one dollar and
+ten cents a bushel, Hornung had disclosed his hand, and in place of mere
+rumours, the definite and authoritative news that May wheat had been
+cornered in the Chicago pit went flashing around the world from
+Liverpool to Odessa and from Duluth to Buenos Ayres.
+
+It was--so the veteran operators were persuaded--Truslow himself who had
+made Hornung's corner possible. The Great Bear had for once over-reached
+himself, and, believing himself all-powerful, had hammered the price
+just the fatal fraction too far down. Wheat had gone to sixty-two--for
+the time, and under the circumstances, an abnormal price.
+
+When the reaction came it was tremendous. Hornung saw his chance, seized
+it, and in a few months had turned the tables, had cornered the product,
+and virtually driven the bear clique out of the pit.
+
+On the same day that the delivery of the hundred thousand bushels was
+made to Truslow, Hornung met his broker at his lunch club.
+
+"Well," said the latter, "I see you let go that line of stuff to
+Truslow."
+
+Hornung nodded; but the broker added:
+
+"Remember, I was against it from the very beginning. I know we've
+cleared up over a hundred thou'. I would have fifty times preferred to
+have lost twice that and _smashed Truslow dead_. Bet you what you like
+he makes us pay for it somehow."
+
+"Huh!" grunted his principal. "How about insurance, and warehouse
+charges, and carrying expenses on that lot? Guess we'd have had to pay
+those, too, if we'd held on."
+
+But the other put up his chin, unwilling to be persuaded. "I won't sleep
+easy," he declared, "till Truslow is busted."
+
+
+III. THE PIT
+
+Just as Going mounted the steps on the edge of the pit the great gong
+struck, a roar of a hundred voices developed with the swiftness of
+successive explosions, the rush of a hundred men surging downward to the
+centre of the pit filled the air with the stamp and grind of feet, a
+hundred hands in eager strenuous gestures tossed upward from out the
+brown of the crowd, the official reporter in his cage on the margin of
+the pit leaned far forward with straining ear to catch the opening bid,
+and another day of battle was begun.
+
+Since the sale of the hundred thousand bushels of wheat to Truslow the
+"Hornung crowd" had steadily shouldered the price higher until on this
+particular morning it stood at one dollar and a half. That was Hornung's
+price. No one else had any grain to sell.
+
+But not ten minutes after the opening, Going was surprised out of all
+countenance to hear shouted from the other side of the pit these words:
+
+"Sell May at one-fifty."
+
+Going was for the moment touching elbows with Kimbark on one side and
+with Merriam on the other, all three belonging to the "Hornung crowd."
+Their answering challenge of "_Sold_" was as the voice of one man. They
+did not pause to reflect upon the strangeness of the circumstance. (That
+was for afterward.) Their response to the offer was as unconscious, as
+reflex action and almost as rapid, and before the pit was well aware of
+what had happened the transaction of one thousand bushels was down upon
+Going's trading-card and fifteen hundred dollars had changed hands. But
+here was a marvel--the whole available supply of wheat cornered, Hornung
+master of the situation, invincible, unassailable; yet behold a man
+willing to sell, a Bear bold enough to raise his head.
+
+"That was Kennedy, wasn't it, who made that offer?" asked Kimbark, as
+Going noted down the trade--"Kennedy, that new man?"
+
+"Yes; who do you suppose he's selling for; who's willing to go short at
+this stage of the game?"
+
+"Maybe he ain't short."
+
+"Short! Great heavens, man; where'd he get the stuff?"
+
+"Blamed if I know. We can account for every handful of May. Steady! Oh,
+there he goes again."
+
+"Sell a thousand May at one-fifty," vociferated the bear-broker,
+throwing out his hand, one finger raised to indicate the number of
+"contracts" offered. This time it was evident that he was attacking the
+Hornung crowd deliberately, for, ignoring the jam of traders that swept
+toward him, he looked across the pit to where Going and Kimbark were
+shouting _"Sold! Sold!"_ and nodded his head.
+
+A second time Going made memoranda of the trade, and either the Hornung
+holdings were increased by two thousand bushels of May wheat or the
+Hornung bank account swelled by at least three thousand dollars of some
+unknown short's money.
+
+Of late--so sure was the bull crowd of its position--no one had even
+thought of glancing at the inspection sheet on the bulletin board. But
+now one of Going's messengers hurried up to him with the announcement
+that this sheet showed receipts at Chicago for that morning of
+twenty-five thousand bushels, and not credited to Hornung. Some one had
+got hold of a line of wheat overlooked by the "clique" and was dumping
+it upon them.
+
+"Wire the Chief," said Going over his shoulder to Merriam. This one
+struggled out of the crowd, and on a telegraph blank scribbled:
+
+"Strong bear movement--New man--Kennedy--Selling in lots of five
+contracts--Chicago receipts twenty-five thousand."
+
+The message was despatched, and in a few moments the answer came back,
+laconic, of military terseness:
+
+"Support the market."
+
+And Going obeyed, Merriam and Kimbark following, the new broker fairly
+throwing the wheat at them in thousand-bushel lots.
+
+"Sell May at 'fifty; sell May; sell May." A moment's indecision, an
+instant's hesitation, the first faint suggestion of weakness, and the
+market would have broken under them. But for the better part of four
+hours they stood their ground, taking all that was offered, in constant
+communication with the Chief, and from time to time stimulated and
+steadied by his brief, unvarying command:
+
+"Support the market."
+
+At the close of the session they had bought in the twenty-five thousand
+bushels of May. Hornung's position was as stable as a rock, and the
+price closed even with the opening figure--one dollar and a half.
+
+But the morning's work was the talk of all La Salle Street. Who was back
+of the raid?
+
+What was the meaning of this unexpected selling? For weeks the pit
+trading had been merely nominal. Truslow, the Great Bear, from whom the
+most serious attack might have been expected, had gone to his country
+seat at Geneva Lake, in Wisconsin, declaring himself to be out of the
+market entirely. He went bass-fishing every day.
+
+
+IV. THE BELT LINE
+
+On a certain day toward the middle of the month, at a time when the
+mysterious Bear had unloaded some eighty thousand bushels upon Hornung,
+a conference was held in the library of Hornung's home. His broker
+attended it, and also a clean-faced, bright-eyed individual whose name
+of Cyrus Ryder might have been found upon the pay-roll of a rather
+well-known detective agency. For upward of half an hour after the
+conference began the detective spoke, the other two listening
+attentively, gravely.
+
+"Then, last of all," concluded Ryder, "I made out I was a hobo, and
+began stealing rides on the Belt Line Railroad. Know the road? It just
+circles Chicago. Truslow owns it. Yes? Well, then I began to catch on. I
+noticed that cars of certain numbers--thirty-one nought thirty-four,
+thirty-two one ninety--well, the numbers don't matter, but anyhow, these
+cars were always switched onto the sidings by Mr. Truslow's main
+elevator D soon as they came in. The wheat was shunted in, and they were
+pulled out again. Well, I spotted one car and stole a ride on her. Say,
+look here, _that car went right around the city on the Belt, and came
+back to D again, and the same wheat in her all the time_. The grain was
+reinspected--it was raw, I tell you--and the warehouse receipts made out
+just as though the stuff had come in from Kansas or Iowa."
+
+"The same wheat all the time!" interrupted Hornung.
+
+"The same wheat--your wheat, that you sold to Truslow."
+
+"Great snakes!" ejaculated Hornung's broker. "Truslow never took it
+abroad at all."
+
+"Took it abroad! Say, he's just been running it around Chicago, like the
+supers in 'Shenandoah,' round an' round, so you'd think it was a new
+lot, an' selling it back to you again."
+
+"No wonder we couldn't account for so much wheat."
+
+"Bought it from us at one-ten, and made us buy it back--our own
+wheat--at one-fifty."
+
+Hornung and his broker looked at each other in silence for a moment.
+Then all at once Hornung struck the arm of his chair with his fist and
+exploded in a roar of laughter. The broker stared for one bewildered
+moment, then followed his example.
+
+"Sold! Sold!" shouted Hornung almost gleefully. "Upon my soul it's as
+good as a Gilbert and Sullivan show. And we--Oh, Lord! Billy, shake on
+it, and hats off to my distinguished friend, Truslow. He'll be President
+some day. Hey! What? Prosecute him? Not I."
+
+"He's done us out of a neat hatful of dollars for all that," observed
+the broker, suddenly grave.
+
+"Billy, it's worth the price."
+
+"We've got to make it up somehow."
+
+"Well, tell you what. We were going to boost the price to one
+seventy-five next week, and make that our settlement figure."
+
+"Can't do it now. Can't afford it."
+
+"No. Here; we'll let out a big link; we'll put wheat at two dollars, and
+let it go at that."
+
+"Two it is, then," said the broker.
+
+
+V. THE BREAD LINE
+
+The street was very dark and absolutely deserted. It was a district on
+the "South Side," not far from the Chicago River, given up largely to
+wholesale stores, and after nightfall was empty of all life. The echoes
+slept but lightly hereabouts, and the slightest footfall, the faintest
+noise, woke them upon the instant and sent them clamouring up and down
+the length of the pavement between the iron shuttered fronts. The only
+light visible came from the side door of a certain "Vienna" bakery,
+where at one o'clock in the morning loaves of bread were given away to
+any who should ask. Every evening about nine o'clock the outcasts began
+to gather about the side door. The stragglers came in rapidly, and the
+line--the "bread line," as it was called--began to form. By midnight it
+was usually some hundred yards in length, stretching almost the entire
+length of the block.
+
+Toward ten in the evening, his coat collar turned up against the fine
+drizzle that pervaded the air, his hands in his pockets, his elbows
+gripping his sides, Sam Lewiston came up and silently took his place at
+the end of the line.
+
+Unable to conduct his farm upon a paying basis at the time when Truslow,
+the "Great Bear," had sent the price of grain down to sixty-two cents a
+bushel, Lewiston had turned over his entire property to his creditors,
+and, leaving Kansas for good, had abandoned farming, and had left his
+wife at her sister's boarding-house in Topeka with the understanding
+that she was to join him in Chicago so soon as he had found a steady
+job. Then he had come to Chicago and had turned workman. His brother Joe
+conducted a small hat factory on Archer Avenue, and for a time he found
+there a meager employment. But difficulties had occurred, times were
+bad, the hat factory was involved in debts, the repealing of a certain
+import duty on manufactured felt overcrowded the home market with cheap
+Belgian and French products, and in the end his brother had assigned and
+gone to Milwaukee.
+
+Thrown out of work, Lewiston drifted aimlessly about Chicago, from
+pillar to post, working a little, earning here a dollar, there a dime,
+but always sinking, sinking, till at last the ooze of the lowest bottom
+dragged at his feet and the rush of the great ebb went over him and
+engulfed him and shut him out from the light, and a park bench became
+his home and the "bread line" his chief makeshift of subsistence.
+
+He stood now in the enfolding drizzle, sodden, stupefied with fatigue.
+Before and behind stretched the line. There was no talking. There was no
+sound. The street was empty. It was so still that the passing of a
+cable-car in the adjoining thoroughfare grated like prolonged rolling
+explosions, beginning and ending at immeasurable distances. The drizzle
+descended incessantly. After a long time midnight struck.
+
+There was something ominous and gravely impressive in this interminable
+line of dark figures, close-pressed, soundless; a crowd, yet absolutely
+still; a close-packed, silent file, waiting, waiting in the vast
+deserted night-ridden street; waiting without a word, without a
+movement, there under the night and under the slow-moving mists of rain.
+
+Few in the crowd were professional beggars. Most of them were workmen,
+long since out of work, forced into idleness by long-continued "hard
+times," by ill luck, by sickness. To them the "bread line" was a
+godsend. At least they could not starve. Between jobs here in the end
+was something to hold them up--a small platform, as it were, above the
+sweep of black water, where for a moment they might pause and take
+breath before the plunge.
+
+The period of waiting on this night of rain seemed endless to those
+silent, hungry men; but at length there was a stir. The line moved. The
+side door opened. Ah, at last! They were going to hand out the bread.
+
+But instead of the usual white-aproned under-cook with his crowded
+hampers there now appeared in the doorway a new man--a young fellow who
+looked like a bookkeeper's assistant. He bore in his hand a placard,
+which he tacked to the outside of the door. Then he disappeared within
+the bakery, locking the door after him.
+
+A shudder of poignant despair, an unformed, inarticulate sense of
+calamity, seemed to run from end to end of the line. What had happened?
+Those in the rear, unable to read the placard, surged forward, a sense
+of bitter disappointment clutching at their hearts.
+
+The line broke up, disintegrated into a shapeless throng--a throng that
+crowded forward and collected in front of the shut door whereon the
+placard was affixed. Lewiston, with the others, pushed forward. On the
+placard he read these words:
+
+"Owing to the fact that the price of grain has been increased to two
+dollars a bushel, there will be no distribution of bread from this
+bakery until further notice."
+
+Lewiston turned away, dumb, bewildered. Till morning he walked the
+streets, going on without purpose, without direction. But now at last
+his luck had turned. Overnight the wheel of his fortunes had creaked and
+swung upon its axis, and before noon he had found a job in the
+street-cleaning brigade. In the course of time he rose to be first
+shift-boss, then deputy inspector, then inspector, promoted to the
+dignity of driving in a red wagon with rubber tires and drawing a salary
+instead of mere wages. The wife was sent for and a new start made.
+
+But Lewiston never forgot. Dimly he began to see the significance of
+things. Caught once in the cogs and wheels of a great and terrible
+engine, he had seen--none better--its workings. Of all the men who had
+vainly stood in the "bread line" on that rainy night in early summer,
+he, perhaps, had been the only one who had struggled up to the surface
+again. How many others had gone down in the great ebb? Grim question; he
+dared not think how many.
+
+He had seen the two ends of a great wheat operation--a battle between
+Bear and Bull. The stories (subsequently published in the city's press)
+of Truslow's countermove in selling Hornung his own wheat, supplied the
+unseen section. The farmer--he who raised the wheat--was ruined upon one
+hand; the working-man--he who consumed it--was ruined upon the other.
+But between the two, the great operators, who never saw the wheat they
+traded in, bought and sold the world's food, gambled in the nourishment
+of entire nations, practised their tricks, their chicanery and oblique
+shifty "deals," were reconciled in their differences, and went on
+through their appointed way, jovial, contented, enthroned, and
+unassailable.
+
+
+
+
+THE WIFE OF CHINO
+
+
+I. CHINO'S WIFE
+
+On the back porch of the "office," young Lockwood--his boots, stained
+with the mud of the mines and with candle-drippings, on the rail--sat
+smoking his pipe and looking off down the canyon.
+
+It was early in the evening. Lockwood, because he had heard the laughter
+and horseplay of the men of the night shift as they went down the canyon
+from the bunk-house to the tunnel-mouth, knew that it was a little after
+seven. It would not be necessary to go indoors and begin work on the
+columns of figures of his pay-roll for another hour yet. He knocked the
+ashes out of his pipe, refilled and lighted it--stoppering with his
+match-box--and shot a wavering blue wreath out over the porch railing.
+Then he resettled himself in his tilted chair, hooked his thumbs into
+his belt, and fetched a long breath.
+
+For the last few moments he had been considering, in that comfortable
+spirit of relaxed attention that comes with the after-dinner tobacco,
+two subjects: first, the beauty of the evening; second, the temperament,
+character, and appearance of Felice Zavalla.
+
+As for the evening, there could be no two opinions about that. It was
+charming. The Hand-over-fist Gravel Mine, though not in the higher
+Sierras, was sufficiently above the level of the mere foot-hills to be
+in the sphere of influence of the greater mountains. Also, it was
+remote, difficult of access. Iowa Hill, the nearest post-office, was a
+good eight miles distant, by trail, across the Indian River. It was
+sixteen miles by stage from Iowa Hill to Colfax, on the line of the
+Overland Railroad, and all of a hundred miles from Colfax to San
+Francisco.
+
+To Lockwood's mind this isolation was in itself an attraction. Tucked
+away in this fold of the Sierras, forgotten, remote, the little
+community of a hundred souls that comprised the _personnel_ of the
+Hand-over-fist lived out its life with the completeness of an
+independent State, having its own government, its own institutions and
+customs. Besides all this, it had its own dramas as well--little
+complications that developed with the swiftness of whirlpools, and that
+trended toward culmination with true Western directness. Lockwood,
+college-bred--he was a graduate of the Columbia School of Mines--found
+the life interesting.
+
+On this particular evening he sat over his pipe rather longer than
+usual, seduced by the beauty of the scene and the moment. It was very
+quiet. The prolonged rumble of the mine's stamp-mill came to his ears in
+a ceaseless diapason, but the sound was so much a matter of course that
+Lockwood no longer heard it. The millions of pines and redwoods that
+covered the flanks of the mountains were absolutely still. No wind was
+stirring in their needles. But the chorus of tree-toads, dry, staccato,
+was as incessant as the pounding of the mill. Far-off--thousands of
+miles, it seemed--an owl was hooting, three velvet-soft notes at exact
+intervals. A cow in the stable near at hand lay down with a long breath,
+while from the back veranda of Chino Zavalla's cabin came the clear
+voice of Felice singing "The Spanish Cavalier" while she washed the
+dishes.
+
+The twilight was fading; the glory that had blazed in cloudless
+vermilion and gold over the divide was dying down like receding music.
+The mountains were purple-black. From the canyon rose the night mist,
+pale blue, while above it stood the smoke from the mill, a motionless
+plume of sable, shot through by the last ruddiness of the afterglow.
+
+The air was full of pleasant odours--the smell of wood fires from the
+cabins of the married men and from the ovens of the cookhouse, the
+ammoniacal whiffs from the stables, the smell of ripening apples from
+"Boston's" orchard--while over all and through all came the perfume of
+the witch-hazel and tar-weed from the forests and mountain sides, as
+pungent as myrrh, as aromatic as aloes.
+
+  "And if I should fall,
+  In vain I would call,"
+
+sang Felice.
+
+Lockwood took his pipe from his teeth and put back his head to listen.
+Felice had as good a voice as so pretty a young woman should have had.
+She was twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, and was incontestably
+the beauty of the camp. She was Mexican-Spanish, tall and very slender,
+black-haired, as lithe as a cat, with a cat's green eyes and with all of
+a cat's purring, ingratiating insinuation.
+
+Lockwood could not have told exactly just how the first familiarity
+between him and Felice had arisen. It had grown by almost imperceptible
+degrees up to a certain point; now it was a chance meeting on the trail
+between the office and the mill, now a fragment of conversation apropos
+of a letter to be mailed, now a question as to some regulation of the
+camp, now a detail of repairs done to the cabin wherein Felice lived. As
+said above, up to a certain point the process of "getting acquainted"
+had been gradual, and on Lockwood's part unconscious; but beyond that
+point affairs had progressed rapidly.
+
+At first Felice had been, for Lockwood, a pretty woman, neither more nor
+less; but by degrees she emerged from this vague classification: she
+became a very pretty woman. Then she became a personality; she occupied
+a place within the circle which Lockwood called his world, his life. For
+the past months this place had, perforce, to be enlarged. Lockwood
+allowed it to expand. To make room for Felice, he thrust aside, or
+allowed the idea of Felice to thrust aside, other objects which long had
+sat secure. The invasion of the woman into the sphere of his existence
+developed at the end into a thing veritably headlong. Deep-seated
+convictions, old-established beliefs and ideals, even the two landmarks
+right and wrong, were hustled and shouldered about as the invasion
+widened and penetrated. This state of affairs was further complicated by
+the fact that Felice was the wife of Chino Zavalla, shift-boss of No. 4
+gang in the new workings.
+
+
+II. MADNESS
+
+It was quite possible that, though Lockwood could not have told when and
+how the acquaintance between him and Felice began and progressed, the
+young woman herself could. But this is guesswork. Felice being a woman,
+and part Spanish at that, was vastly more self-conscious, more
+disingenuous, than the man, the Anglo-Saxon. Also she had that
+fearlessness that very pretty women have. In her more refined and
+city-bred sisters this fearlessness would be called poise, or, at the
+most, "cheek."
+
+And she was quite capable of making young Lockwood, the superintendent,
+her employer, and nominally the ruler of her little world, fall in love
+with her. It is only fair to Felice to say that she would not do this
+deliberately. She would be more conscious of the business than the man,
+than Lockwood; but in affairs such as this, involving women like Felice,
+there is a distinction between deliberately doing a thing and
+consciously doing it.
+
+Admittedly this is complicated, but it must be understood that Felice
+herself was complex, and she could no more help attracting men to her
+than the magnet the steel filings. It made no difference whether the man
+was the "breed" boy who split logging down by the engine-house or the
+young superintendent with his college education, his white hands and
+dominating position; over each and all who came within range of her
+influence Felice, with her black hair and green eyes, her slim figure
+and her certain indefinite "cheek"--which must not by any manner of
+means be considered as "boldness"--cast the weird of her kind.
+
+If one understood her kind, knew how to make allowances, knew just how
+seriously to take her eyes and her "cheek," no great harm was done.
+Otherwise, consequences were very apt to follow.
+
+Hicks was one of those who from the very first had understood. Hicks was
+the manager of the mine, and Lockwood's chief--in a word, _the boss_. He
+was younger even than Lockwood, a boy virtually, but a wonderful boy--a
+boy such as only America, western America at that, could produce,
+masterful, self-controlled, incredibly capable, as taciturn as a sphinx,
+strong of mind and of muscle, and possessed of a cold gray eye that was
+as penetrating as chilled steel.
+
+To this person, impersonal as force itself, Felice had once, by some
+mysterious feminine art, addressed, in all innocence, her little
+maneuver of fascination. One lift of the steady eyelid, one quiet glint
+of that terrible cold gray eye, that poniarded her every tissue of
+complexity, inconsistency, and coquetry, had been enough. Felice had
+fled the field from this young fellow, so much her junior, and then
+afterward, in a tremor of discomfiture and distress, had kept her
+distance.
+
+Hicks understood Felice. Also the great majority of the
+miners--shift-bosses, chuck-tenders, bed-rock cleaners, and the
+like--understood. Lockwood did not.
+
+It may appear difficult of belief that the men, the crude, simple
+workmen, knew how to take Felice Zavalla, while Lockwood, with all his
+education and superior intelligence, failed in his estimate of her. The
+explanation lies no doubt in the fact that in these man-and-woman
+affairs instinct is a surer guide than education and intelligence,
+unless, indeed, the intelligence is preternaturally keen. Lockwood's
+student life had benumbed the elemental instinct, which in the miners,
+the "men," yet remained vigorous and unblunted, and by means of which
+they assessed Felice and her harmless blandishments at their true worth.
+For all Lockwood's culture, his own chuck-tenders, unlettered fellows,
+cumbersome, slow-witted, "knew women"--at least, women of their own
+world, like Felice--better than he. On the other hand, his intelligence
+was no such perfected instrument as Hicks's, as exact as logarithms, as
+penetrating as a scalpel, as uncoloured by emotions as a steel trap.
+
+Lockwood's life had been a narrow one. He had studied too hard at
+Columbia to see much of the outside world, and he had come straight from
+his graduation to take his first position. Since then his life had been
+spent virtually in the wilderness, now in Utah, now in Arizona, now in
+British Columbia, and now, at last, in Placer County, California. His
+lot was the common lot of young mining engineers. It might lead one day
+to great wealth, but meanwhile it was terribly isolated.
+
+Living thus apart from the world, Lockwood very easily allowed his
+judgment to get, as it were, out of perspective. Class distinctions lost
+their sharpness, and one woman--as, for instance, Felice--was very like
+another--as, for instance, the girls his sisters knew "back home" in New
+York.
+
+As a last result, the passions were strong.
+
+Things were done "for all they were worth" in Placer County, California.
+When a man worked, he worked hard; when he slept, he slept soundly; when
+he hated, he hated with primeval intensity; and when he loved he grew
+reckless.
+
+It was all one that Felice was Chino's wife. Lockwood swore between his
+teeth that she should be _his_ wife. He had arrived at this conclusion
+on the night that he sat on the back porch of his office and watched the
+moon coming up over the Hog Back. He stood up at length and thrust his
+pipe into his pocket, and putting an arm across the porch pillar, leaned
+his forehead against it and looked out far in the purple shadows.
+
+"It's madness," he muttered; "yet, I know it--sheer madness; but, by the
+Lord! I _am_ mad--and I don't care."
+
+
+III. CHINO GOES TO TOWN
+
+As time went on the matter became more involved. Hicks was away. Chino
+Zavalla, stolid, easy-going, came and went about his work on the night
+shift, always touching his cap to Lockwood when the two crossed each
+other's paths, always good-natured, always respectful, seeing nothing
+but his work.
+
+Every evening, when not otherwise engaged, Lockwood threw a saddle over
+one of the horses and rode in to Iowa Hill for the mail, returning to
+the mine between ten and eleven. On one of these occasions, as he drew
+near to Chino's cabin, a slim figure came toward him down the road and
+paused at his horse's head. Then he was surprised to hear Felice's voice
+asking, "'Ave you a letter for me, then, Meester Lockwude?"
+
+Felice made an excuse of asking thus for her mail each night that
+Lockwood came from town, and for a month they kept up appearances; but
+after that they dropped even that pretense, and as often as he met her
+Lockwood dismounted and walked by her side till the light in the cabin
+came into view through the chaparral.
+
+At length Lockwood made a mighty effort. He knew how very far he had
+gone beyond the point where between the two landmarks called right and
+wrong a line is drawn. He contrived to keep away from Felice. He sent
+one of the men into town for the mail, and he found reasons to be in the
+mine itself whole half-days at a time. Whenever a moment's leisure
+impended, he took his shotgun and tramped the mine ditch for leagues,
+looking for quail and gray squirrels. For three weeks he so managed that
+he never once caught sight of Felice's black hair and green eyes, never
+once heard the sound of her singing.
+
+But the madness was upon him none the less, and it rode and roweled him
+like a hag from dawn to dark and from dark to dawn again, till in his
+complete loneliness, in the isolation of that simple, primitive life,
+where no congenial mind relieved the monotony by so much as a word,
+morbid, hounded, tortured, the man grew desperate--was ready for
+anything that would solve the situation.
+
+Once every two weeks Lockwood "cleaned up and amalgamated"--that is to
+say, the mill was stopped and the "ripples" where the gold was caught
+were scraped clean. Then the ore was sifted out, melted down, and poured
+into the mould, whence it emerged as the "brick," a dun-coloured
+rectangle, rough-edged, immensely heavy, which represented anywhere from
+two to six thousand dollars. This was sent down by express to the
+smelting-house.
+
+But it was necessary to take the brick from the mine to the express
+office at Iowa Hill.
+
+This duty devolved upon Lockwood and Chino Zavalla. Hicks had from the
+very first ordered that the Spaniard should accompany the superintendent
+upon this mission. Zavalla was absolutely trustworthy, as honest as the
+daylight, strong physically, cool-headed, discreet, and--to Hicks's mind
+a crowning recommendation--close-mouthed. For about the mine it was
+never known when the brick went to town or who took it. Hicks had
+impressed this fact upon Zavalla. He was to tell nobody that he was
+delegated to this duty. "Not even"--Hicks had leveled a forefinger at
+Chino, and the cold eyes drove home the injunction as the steam-hammer
+drives the rivet--"not even your wife." And Zavalla had promised. He
+would have trifled with dynamite sooner than with one of Hicks's orders.
+
+So the fortnightly trips to town in company with Lockwood were explained
+in various fashions to Felice. She never knew that the mail-bag strapped
+to her husband's shoulders on those occasions carried some five thousand
+dollars' worth of bullion.
+
+On a certain Friday in early June Lockwood had amalgamated, and the
+brick, duly stamped, lay in the safe in the office. The following night
+he and Chino, who was relieved from mine duty on these occasions, were
+to take it in to Iowa Hill.
+
+Late Saturday afternoon, however, the engineer's boy brought word to
+Chino that the superintendent wanted him at once. Chino found Lockwood
+lying upon the old lounge in the middle room of the office, his foot in
+bandages.
+
+"Here's luck, Chino," he exclaimed, as the Mexican paused on the
+threshold. "Come in and--shut the door," he added in a lower voice.
+
+"_Dios!_" murmured Chino. "An accident?"
+
+"Rather," growled Lockwood. "That fool boy, Davis's kid--the car-boy,
+you know--ran me down in the mine. I yelled at him. Somehow he couldn't
+stop. Two wheels went over my foot--and the car loaded, too."
+
+Chino shuddered politely.
+
+"Now here's the point," continued Lockwood. "Um--there's nobody round
+outside there? Take a look, Chino, by the window there. All clear, eh?
+Well, here's the point. That brick ought to go in to-night just the
+same, hey?"
+
+"Oh--of a surety, of a surety." Chino spoke in Spanish.
+
+"Now I don't want to let any one else take my place--you never can
+tell--the beggars will talk. Not all like you, Chino."
+
+"_Gracias, signor_. It is an honour."
+
+"Do you think you can manage alone? I guess you can, hey? No reason why
+you couldn't."
+
+Chino shut his eyes tight and put up a palm. "Rest assured of that,
+Signor Lockwude. Rest assured of that."
+
+"Well, get around here about nine."
+
+"It is understood, signor."
+
+Lockwood, who had a passable knowledge of telegraphy, had wired to the
+Hill for the doctor. About suppertime one appeared, and Lockwood bore
+the pain of the setting with such fortitude as he could command. He had
+his supper served in the office. The doctor shared it with him and kept
+him company.
+
+During the early hours of the evening Lockwood lay on the sofa trying to
+forget the pain. There was no easier way of doing this than by thinking
+of Felice. Inevitably his thoughts reverted to her. Now that he was
+helpless, he could secure no diversion by plunging into the tunnel,
+giving up his mind to his work. He could not now take down his gun and
+tramp the ditch. Now he was supine, and the longing to break through the
+mesh, wrestle free from the complication, gripped him and racked him
+with all its old-time force.
+
+Promptly at nine o'clock the faithful Chino presented himself at the
+office. He had one of the two horses that were used by Lockwood as
+saddle animals, and as he entered he opened his coat and tapped the hilt
+of a pistol showing from his trousers pocket, with a wink and a grin.
+Lockwood took the brick from the safe, strapped it into the mail-bag,
+and Chino, swinging it across his shoulders, was gone, leaving Lockwood
+to hop back to the sofa, there to throw himself down and face once more
+his trouble.
+
+
+IV. A DESPATCH FROM THE EXPRESS MESSENGER
+
+What made it harder for Lockwood just now was that even on that very
+day, in spite of all precaution, in spite of all good resolutions, he
+had at last seen Felice. Doubtless the young woman herself had contrived
+it; but, be that as it may, Lockwood, returning from a tour of
+inspection along the ditch, came upon her not far from camp, but in a
+remote corner, and she had of course demanded why he kept away from her.
+What Lockwood said in response he could not now remember; nor, for that
+matter, was any part of the conversation very clear to his memory. The
+reason for this was that, just as he was leaving her, something of more
+importance than conversation had happened. Felice had looked at him.
+
+And she had so timed her look, had so insinuated it into the little,
+brief, significant silences between their words, that its meaning had
+been very clear. Lockwood had left her with his brain dizzy, his teeth
+set, his feet stumbling and fumbling down the trail, for now he knew
+that Felice wanted him to know that she regretted the circumstance of
+her marriage to Chino Zavalla; he knew that she wanted him to know that
+the situation was as intolerable for her as for him.
+
+All the rest of the day, even at this moment, in fact, this new phase of
+the affair intruded its pregnant suggestions upon his mind, to the
+exclusion of everything else. He felt the drift strong around him; he
+knew that in the end he would resign himself to it. At the same time he
+sensed the abyss, felt the nearness of some dreadful, nameless
+cataclysm, a thing of black shadow, bottomless, terrifying.
+
+"Lord!" he murmured, as he drew his hand across his forehead, "Lord! I
+wonder where this thing is going to fetch up."
+
+As he spoke, the telegraph key on his desk, near at hand, began all at
+once to click off his call. Groaning and grumbling, Lockwood heaved
+himself up, and, with his right leg bent, hobbled from chair-back to
+chair-back over to the desk. He rested his right knee on his desk chair,
+reached for his key, opened the circuit, and answered. There was an
+instant's pause, then the instrument began to click again. The message
+was from the express messenger at Iowa Hill.
+
+Word by word Lockwood took it off as follows:
+
+  "Reno--Kid--will--attempt--hold-up--of--
+  brick--on--trail-to-night--do--not--send--
+  till--advised--at--this--end."_
+
+Lockwood let go the key and jumped back from the desk, lips compressed,
+eyes alight, his fists clenched till the knuckles grew white. The whole
+figure of him stiffened as tense as drawn wire, braced rigid like a
+finely bred hound "making game."
+
+Chino was already half an hour gone by the trail, and the Reno Kid was a
+desperado of the deadliest breed known to the West. How he came to turn
+up here there was no time to inquire. He was on hand, that was the
+point; and Reno Kid always "shot to kill." This would be no mere
+hold-up; it would be murder.
+
+Just then, as Lockwood snatched open a certain drawer of his desk where
+he kept his revolver, he heard from down the road, in the direction of
+Chino's cabin, Felice's voice singing:
+
+  "To the war I must go,
+  To fight for my country and you, dear."
+
+Lockwood stopped short, his arm at full stretch, still gripping tight
+the revolver that he had half pulled from the drawer--stopped short and
+listened.
+
+The solution of everything had come.
+
+He saw it in a flash. The knife hung poised over the knot--even at that
+moment was falling. Nothing was asked of him--nothing but inertia.
+
+For an instant, alone there in that isolated mining-camp, high above the
+world, lost and forgotten in the gloom of the canyons and redwoods,
+Lockwood heard the crisis of his life come crashing through the air upon
+him like the onslaught of a whirlwind. For an instant, and no more, he
+considered. Then he cried aloud:
+
+"No, no; I can't, I _can't_--not this way!" And with the words he threw
+the belt of the revolver about his hips and limped and scampered from
+the room, drawing the buckle close.
+
+How he gained the stable he never knew, nor how he backed the horse from
+the building, nor how, hopping on one leg, he got the headstall on and
+drew the cinches tight.
+
+But the wrench of pain in his foot as, swinging up at last, he tried to
+catch his off stirrup was reality enough to clear any confusion of
+spirit. Hanging on as best he might with his knees and one foot,
+Lockwood, threshing the horse's flanks with the stinging quirt that
+tapered from the reins of the bridle, shot from the camp in a swirl of
+clattering hoofs, flying pebbles and blinding clouds of dust.
+
+
+V. THE TRAIL
+
+The night was black dark under the redwoods, so impenetrable that he
+could not see his horse's head, and braced even as he was for greater
+perils it required all his courage to ride top-speed at this vast slab
+of black that like a wall he seemed to charge head down with every leap
+of his bronco's hoofs.
+
+For the first half-hour the trail mounted steadily, then, by the old
+gravel-pits, it topped the divide and swung down over more open slopes,
+covered only with chaparral and second growths. Here it was lighter, and
+Lockwood uttered a fervent "Thank God!" when, a few moments later, the
+moon shouldered over the mountain crests ahead of him and melted the
+black shadows to silver-gray. Beyond the gravel-pits the trail turned
+and followed the flank of the slope, level here for nearly a mile.
+Lockwood set his teeth against the agony of his foot and gave the bronco
+the quirt with all his strength.
+
+In another half-hour he had passed Cold Canyon, and twenty minutes after
+that had begun the descent into Indian River. He forded the river at a
+gallop, and, with the water dripping from his very hat-brim, drove
+labouring under the farther slope.
+
+Then he drew rein with a cry of bewilderment and apprehension. The
+lights of Iowa Hill were not two hundred yards distant. He had covered
+the whole distance from the mine, and where was Chino?
+
+There was but one answer: back there along the trail somewhere, at some
+point by which Lockwood had galloped headlong and unheeding, lying up
+there in the chaparral with Reno's bullets in his body.
+
+There was no time now to go on to the Hill. Chino, if he was not past
+help, needed it without an instant's loss of time. Lockwood spun the
+horse about. Once more the ford, once more the canyon slopes, once more
+the sharp turn by Cold Canyon, once more the thick darkness under the
+redwoods. Steadily he galloped on, searching the roadside.
+
+Then all at once he reined in sharply, bringing the horse to a
+standstill, one ear turned down the wind. The night's silence was broken
+by a multitude of sounds--the laboured breathing of the spent bronco,
+the saddle creaking as the dripping flanks rose and fell, the touch of
+wind in the tree-tops and the chorusing of the myriad tree-toads. But
+through all these, distinct, as precise as a clock-tick, Lockwood had
+heard, and yet distinguished, the click of a horse's hoof drawing near,
+and the horse was at a gallop: Reno at last.
+
+Lockwood drew his pistol. He stood in thick shadow. Only some twenty
+yards in front of him was there any faintest break in the darkness; but
+at that point the blurred moonlight made a grayness across the trail,
+just a tone less deep than the redwoods' shadows.
+
+With his revolver cocked and trained upon this patch of grayness,
+Lockwood waited, holding his breath.
+
+The gallop came blundering on, sounding in the night's silence as loud
+as the passage of an express train; and the echo of it, flung back from
+the canyon side, confused it and distorted it till, to Lockwood's morbid
+alertness, it seemed fraught with all the madness of flight, all the
+hurry of desperation.
+
+Then the hoof-beats rose to a roar, and a shadow just darker than the
+darkness heaved against the grayness that Lockwood held covered with his
+pistol. Instantly he shouted aloud:
+
+"Halt! Throw up your hands!"
+
+His answer was a pistol shot.
+
+He dug his heels to his horse, firing as the animal leaped forward. The
+horses crashed together, rearing, plunging, and Lockwood, as he felt the
+body of a man crush by him on the trail, clutched into the clothes of
+him, and, with the pistol pressed against the very flesh, fired again,
+crying out as he did so:
+
+"Drop your gun, Reno! I know you. I'll kill you if you move again!"
+
+And then it was that a wail rose into the night, a wail of agony and
+mortal apprehension:
+
+"Signor Lockwude, Signor Lockwude, for the love of God, don't shoot!
+'Tis I--Chino Zavalla."
+
+
+VI. THE DISCOVERY OF FELICE
+
+An hour later, Felice, roused from her sleep by loud knocking upon her
+door, threw a blanket about her slim body, serape fashion, and opened
+the cabin to two gaunt scarecrows, who, the one, half supported by the
+other, himself far spent and all but swooning, lurched by her across the
+threshold and brought up wavering and bloody in the midst of the cabin
+floor.
+
+"_Por Dios! Por Dios!_" cried Felice. "Ah, love of God! what misfortune
+has befallen Chino!" Then in English, and with a swift leap of surprise
+and dismay: "Ah, Meester Lockwude, air you hurt? Eh, tell me-a! Ah, it
+is too draidful!"
+
+"No, no," gasped Lockwood, as he dragged Chino's unconscious body to the
+bed Felice had just left. "No; I--I've shot him. We met--there on the
+trail." Then the nerves that had stood strain already surprisingly long
+snapped and crisped back upon themselves like broken harp-strings.
+
+"_I've shot him! I've shot him!_" he cried. "Shot him, do you
+understand? Killed him, it may be. Get the doctor, quick! He's at the
+office. I passed Chino on the trail over to the Hill. He'd hid in the
+bushes as he heard me coming from behind, then when I came back I took
+him. Oh, I'll explain later. Get the doctor, quick."
+
+Felice threw on such clothes as came to her hand and ran over to the
+office, returning with the doctor, half dressed and blinking in the
+lantern-light. He went in to the wounded man at once, and Lockwood, at
+the end of all strength, dropped into the hammock on the porch,
+stretching out his leg to ease the anguish of his broken foot. He leaned
+back and closed his eyes wearily, aware only of a hideous swirl of pain,
+of intolerable anxiety as to Chino's wound, and, most of all, of a mere
+blur of confusion wherein the sights and sounds of the last few hours
+tore through his brain with the plunge of a wild galloping such as
+seemed to have been in his ears for years and years.
+
+But as he lay thus he heard a step at his side. Then came the touch of
+Felice's long brown hand upon his face. He sat up, opening his eyes.
+
+"You aisk me-a," she said, "eef I do onderstaind, eh? Yais, I
+onderstaind. You--" her voice was a whisper--"you shoot Chino, eh? I
+know. You do those thing' for me-a. I am note angri, no-a. You ver'
+sharp man, eh? All for love oaf Felice, eh? Now we be happi, maybe; now
+we git married soam day byne-by, eh? Ah, you one brave man, Signor
+Lockwude!"
+
+She would have taken his hand, but Lockwood, the pain all forgot, the
+confusion all vanishing, was on his feet. It was as though a curtain
+that for months had hung between him and the blessed light of clear
+understanding had suddenly been rent in twain by her words. The woman
+stood revealed. All the baseness of her tribe, all the degraded savagery
+of a degenerate race, all the capabilities for wrong, for sordid
+treachery, that lay dormant in her, leaped to life at this unguarded
+moment, and in that new light, that now at last she had herself let in,
+stood pitilessly revealed, a loathsome thing, hateful as malevolence
+itself.
+
+"What," shouted Lockwood, "you think--think that I--that I
+_could_--oh-h, it's monstrous--_you_----" He could find no words to
+voice his loathing. Swiftly he turned away from her, the last spark of
+an evil love dying down forever in his breast.
+
+It was a transformation, a thing as sudden as a miracle, as conclusive
+as a miracle, and with all a miracle's sense of uplift and power. In a
+second of time the scales seemed to fall from the man's eyes, fetters
+from his limbs; he saw, and he was free.
+
+At the door Lockwood met the doctor:
+
+"Well?"
+
+"He's all right; only a superficial wound. He'll recover. But you--how
+about you? All right? Well, that is a good hearing. You've had a lucky
+escape, my boy."
+
+"I _have_ had a lucky escape," shouted Lockwood. "You don't know just
+how lucky it was."
+
+
+
+
+A BARGAIN WITH PEG-LEG
+
+
+"Hey, youse!" shouted the car-boy. He brought his trundling, jolting,
+loose-jointed car to a halt by the face of the drift. "Hey, youse!" he
+shouted again.
+
+Bunt shut off the Burly air-drill and nodded.
+
+"Chaw," he remarked to me.
+
+We clambered into the car, and, as the boy released the brake, rolled
+out into the main tunnel of the Big Dipple, and banged and bumped down
+the long incline that led to the mouth.
+
+"Chaw" was dinner. It was one o'clock in the morning, and the men on the
+night shift were taking their midnight spell off. Bunt was back at his
+old occupation of miner, and I--the one loafer of all that little world
+of workers--had brought him a bottle of beer to go with the "chaw"; for
+Bunt and I were ancient friends.
+
+As we emerged from the cool, cave-like dampness of the mine and ran out
+into the wonderful night air of the Sierra foothills, warm, dry,
+redolent of witch-hazel, the carboy began to cough, and, after we had
+climbed out of the car and had sat down on the embankment to eat and
+drink, Bunt observed:
+
+"D'ye hear that bark? That kid's a one-lunger for fair. Which ain't no
+salubrious graft for him--this hiking cars about in the bowels of the
+earth, Some day he'll sure up an' quit. Ought to go down to Yuma a
+spell."
+
+The engineer in the mill was starting the stamps. They got under way
+with broken, hiccoughing dislocations, bumping and stumbling like the
+hoofs of a group of horses on the cattle-deck in a gale. Then they
+jumped to a trot, then to a canter, and at last settled down to the
+prolonged roaring gallop that reverberated far off over the entire
+canyon.
+
+"I knew a one-lunger once," Bunt continued, as he uncorked the bottle,
+"and the acquaintance was some distressful by reason of its bringing me
+into strained relations with a cow-rustlin', hair-liftin',
+only-one-born-in-captivity, man-eatin' brute of a one-legged Greaser
+which he was named Peg-leg Smith. He was shy a leg because of a shotgun
+that the other man thought wasn't loaded. And this here happens, lemme
+tell you, 'way down in the Panamint country, where they wasn't no doctor
+within twenty miles, and Peg-leg outs with his bowie and amputates that
+leg hisself, then later makes a wood stump outa a ole halter and a
+table-leg. I guess the whole jing-bang of it turned his head, for he
+goes bad and loco thereafter, and begins shootin' and r'arin' up an'
+down the hull Southwest, a-roarin' and a-bellerin' and a-takin' on
+amazin'. We dasn't say boo to a yaller pup while he's round. I never see
+such mean blood. Jus' let the boys know that Peg-leg was anyways
+adjacent an' you can gamble they walked chalk.
+
+"Y'see, this Peg-leg lay it out as how he couldn't abide no cussin' an'
+swearin'. He said if there was any tall talkin' done he wanted to do it.
+And he sure could. I've seed him hold on for six minutes by the watch
+an' never repeat hisself once. An' shoot! Say, lemme tell you he did for
+two Greasers once in a barroom at La Paz, one in front o' him, t'other
+straight behind, _him_ standing between with a gun in each hand, and
+shootin' both guns _at the same time_. Well, he was just a terror,"
+declared Bunt, solemnly, "and when he was in real good form there wa'n't
+a man south o' Leadville dared to call his hand.
+
+"Now, the way I met up with this skunkin' little dewdrop was this-like
+It was at Yuma, at a time when I was a kid of about nineteen. It was a
+Sunday mornin'; Peg-leg was in town. He was asleep on a lounge in the
+back room o' Bud Overick's Grand Transcontinental Hotel. (I used to
+guess Bud called it that by reason that it wa'n't grand, nor
+transcontinental, nor yet a hotel--it was a bar.) This was twenty year
+ago, and in those days I knowed a one-lunger in Yuma named Clarence. (He
+couldn't help that--he was a good kid--but his name _was_ Clarence.) We
+got along first-rate. Yuma was a great consumptive place at that time.
+They used to come in on every train; yes, and go out, too--by freight.
+
+"Well, findin' that they couldn't do much else than jes' sit around an'
+bark and keep their shawls tight, these 'ere chaps kinda drew together,
+and lay it out to meet every Sunday morning at Bud's to sorta talk it
+over and have a quiet game. One game they had that they played steady,
+an' when I drifted into Bud's that morning they was about a dozen of 'em
+at it--Clarence, too. When I came in, there they be, all sittin' in a
+circle round a table with a cigar box on it. They'd each put four bits
+into the box. That was the pot.
+
+"A stranger wouldn't 'a' made nothin' very excitin' out of that game,
+nor yet would 'a' caught on to what it were. For them pore yaps jes' sat
+there, each with his little glass thermometer in his mouth, a-waitin'
+and a-waitin' and never sayin' a word. Then bime-by Bud, who's a-holdin'
+of the watch on 'em, sings out 'Time!' an' they all takes their
+thermometers out an' looks at 'em careful-like to see where they stand.
+
+"'Mine's ninety-nine,' says one.
+
+"An' another says:
+
+"'Mine's a hundred.'
+
+"An' Clarence pipes up--coughin' all the time:
+
+"'Mine's a hundred 'n one 'n 'alf.'
+
+"An', no one havin' a higher tempriture than that, Clarence captures the
+pot. It was a queer kind o' game.
+
+"Well, on that particular Sunday morning they's some unpleasantness
+along o' one o' the other one-lungers layin' it out as how Clarence had
+done some monkey-business to make his tempriture so high. It was said as
+how Clarence had took and drunk some hot tea afore comin' into the game
+at Bud's. They all began to discuss that same p'int.
+
+"Naturally, they don't go at it polite, and to make their remarks
+p'inted they says a cuss-word occasional, and Clarence, bein' a
+high-steppin' gent as takes nobody's dust, slings it back some forceful.
+
+"Then all at once they hears Peg-leg beller from where's he layin' on
+the lounge (they ain't figured on his bein' so contiguous), and he gives
+it to be understood, does Peg-leg, as how the next one-lunger that
+indulges in whatsoever profanity will lose his voice abrupt.
+
+"They all drops out at that, bar the chap who had the next highest
+tempriture to Clarence. Him having missed the pot by only a degree or so
+is considerable sore.
+
+"'Why,' says he, 'I've had a reg'lar _fever_ since yesterday afternoon,
+an' only just dodged a hem'rage by a squeak. I'm all legitimate, I am;
+an' if you-alls misdoubts as how my tempriture ain't normal you kin jes'
+ask the doctor. I don't take it easy that a strappin', healthy gesabe
+whose case ain't nowheres near the hopeless p'int yet steps in here with
+a scalded mouth and plays it low.'
+
+"Clarence he r'ars right up at that an' forgits about Peg-leg an'
+expresses doubts, not to say convictions, about the one-lunger's chances
+of salvation. He puts it all into about three words, an' just as quick
+as look at it we hears ol' Peg-leg's wooden stump a-comin'. We stampedes
+considerable prompt, but Clarence falls over a chair, an' before he kin
+get up Peg-leg has him by the windpipe.
+
+"Now I ain't billin' myself as a all-round star hero an' general
+grand-stand man. But I was sure took with Clarence, an' I'd 'a' been
+real disappointed if Peg-leg 'ud a-killed him that morning--which he
+sure was tryin' to do when I came in for a few chips.
+
+"I don' draw on Peg-leg, him being down on his knees over Clarence, an'
+his back turned, but without sensin' very much _what_ I'm a-doin' of I
+grabs holt o' the first part o' Peg-leg that comes handy, which, so help
+me, Bob, is his old wooden leg. I starts to pull him off o' Clarence,
+but instead o' that I pulls off the wooden leg an' goes a-staggerin'
+back agin the wall with the thing in my fist.
+
+"Y'know how it is now with a fightin' pup if you pull his tail while
+he's a-chawin' up the other pup. Ye can bat him over the head till
+you're tired, or kick him till you w'ars your boot out, an' he'll go
+right on chawin' the harder. But monkey with his tail an' he's that
+sensitive an' techy about it that he'll take a interest right off.
+
+"Well, it were just so with Peg-leg--though I never knew it. Just by
+accident I'd laid holt of him where he was tender; an' when he felt that
+leg go--say, lemme tell you, he was some excited. He forgits all about
+Clarence, and he lines out for me, a-clawin' the air. Lucky he'd left
+his gun in the other room.
+
+"Well, sir, y'ought to have seen him, a-hoppin' on one foot, and banging
+agin the furniture, jes' naturally black in the face with rage, an'
+doin' his darnedest to lay his hands on me, roarin' all the whiles like
+a steer with a kinked tail.
+
+"Well, I'm skeered, and I remarks that same without shame. I'm skeered.
+I don't want to come to no grapples with Peg-leg in his wrath, an' I
+knows that so long as he can't git his leg he can't take after me very
+fast. Bud's saloon backs right up agin the bluff over the river. So what
+do I do but heave that same wooden leg through one o' the back windows,
+an' down she goes (as I _thought_) mebbe seventy feet into the canyon o'
+the Colorado? And then, mister man, _I skins out--fast_.
+
+"I takes me headlong flight by way o' the back room and _on-root_
+pitches Peg-leg's gun over into the canyon, too, an' then whips around
+the corner of the saloon an' fetches out ag'in by the street in front.
+With his gun gone an' his leg gone, Peg-leg--so long's y'ain't within
+arm's reach--is as harmless as a horned toad. So I kinda hangs 'round
+the neighbourhood jes' to see what-all mout turn up.
+
+"Peg-leg, after hoppin' back to find that his gun was gone, to look for
+his leg, comes out by the front door, hoppin' from one chair to another,
+an' seein' me standin' there across the street makes remarks; an' he
+informs me that because of this same little turn-up this mornin' I ain't
+never goin' to live to grow hair on my face. His observations are that
+vigorous an' p'inted that I sure begin to see it that way, too, and I
+says to myself:
+
+"'Now you, Bunt McBride, you've cut it out for yourself good and hard,
+an' the rest o' your life ain't goin' to be free from nervousness.
+Either y'ought to 'a' let this here hell-roarin' maverick alone or else
+you should 'a' put him clean out o' business when you had holt o' his
+shootin'-iron. An' I ain't a bit happy.' And then jes' at this stage o'
+the proceedings occurs what youse 'ud call a diversion.
+
+"It seemed that that wood stump didn't go clean to the river as I first
+figured, but stuck three-fourths the way down. An' a-course there's a
+fool half-breed kid who's got to chase after it, thinkin' to do Peg-leg
+a good turn.
+
+"I don't know nothin' about this, but jes' stand there talkin' back to
+Peg-leg, an' pre-tendin' I ain't got no misgivings, when I sees this kid
+comin' a-cavoortin' an' a-cayoodlin' down the street with the leg in his
+hands, hollerin' out:
+
+"'Here's your leg, Mister Peg-leg! I went an' got it for you, Mister
+Peg-leg!'
+
+"It ain't so likely that Peg-leg could 'a' caught me even if he'd had
+his leg, but I wa'n't takin' no chances. An' as Peg-leg starts for the
+kid I start, too--with my heart knockin' agin my front teeth, you can
+bet.
+
+"I never knew how fast a man could hop till that mornin', an', lookin'
+at Peg-leg with the tail o' my eye as I ran, it seemed to me as how he
+was a-goin' over the ground like a ole he-kangaroo. But somehow he gets
+off his balance and comes down all of a smash like a rickety table, an'
+I reaches the kid first an' takes the leg away from him.
+
+"I guess Peg-leg must 'a' begun to lay it out by then that I held a
+straight flush to his ace high, for he sits down on the edge of the
+sidewalk an', being some winded, too, he just glares. Then byme-by he
+says:
+
+"'You think you are some smart now, sonny, but I'm a-studyin' of your
+face so's I'll know who to look for when I git a new leg; an' believe
+me, I'll know it, m'son--yours and your friend's too' (he meant
+Clarence)--'an' I guess you'll both be kind o' sick afore I'm done with
+you. _You!_' he goes on, tremendous disgustful. 'You! an' them
+one-lungers a-swearin' an' a-cussin' an' bedamnin' an' bedevilin' one
+a-other. Ain't ye just ashamed o' yourselves ?' (he thought I was a
+one-lunger, too); 'ain't ye ashamed--befoulin' your mouths, and
+disturbin' the peace along of a quiet Sunday mornin', an' you-alls waist
+over in your graves? I'm fair sick o' my job,' he remarks, goin' kind o'
+thoughtful. 'Ten years now I've been range-ridin' all this yere ranch,
+a-doin' o' my little feeble, or'nary best to clean out the mouths o' you
+men an' purify the atmosphere o' God's own country, but I ain't made
+_one_ convert. I've pounded 'em an' booted 'em, an' busted 'em an' shot
+'em up, an' they go on cussin' each other out harder'n ever. I don't
+know w'at all to do an' I sometimes gets plumb discouraged-like.'
+
+"Now, hearin' of him talk that-a-way, an' a-knowin' of his weakness, I
+gits a idea. It's a chanst and mebbee it don't pan out, but I puts it up
+as a bluff. I don't want, you see, to spend the rest o' my appointed
+time in this yere vale o' tears a-dodgin' o' Peg-leg Smith, an' in the
+end, after all, to git between the wind and a forty-eight caliber
+do-good, sure not. So I puts up a deal. Says I: 'Peg-leg, I'll make a
+bargint along o' you. You lays it out as how you ain't never converted
+nobody out o' his swearin' habits. Now if you wants, 'ere's a chanst.
+You gimmee your word as a gent and a good-man-an'-true, as how you won't
+never make no play to shoot me up, in nowise whatsoever, so long as we
+both do live, an' promise never to bust me, or otherwise, and promise
+never to rustle me or interfere with my life, liberty and pursuit o'
+happiness, an' thereunto you set your seal an' may Lord 'a' mercy on
+your soul--you promise that, an' I will agree an' covenant with the
+party o' the first part to abstain an' abjure, early or late, dry or
+drinkin', in liquor or out, out o' luck or in, rangin' or roundin', from
+all part an' parcel o' profanity, cuss-words, little or big, several and
+separate, bar none; this yere agreement to be considered as bindin' an'
+obligatory till the day o' your demise, decease or death. _There!_' says
+I, 'there's a fair bargint put up between man an' man, an' I puts it to
+you fair. You comes in with a strong ante an' you gets a genuine,
+guaranteed an' high-grade convert--the real article. You stays out, an'
+not only you loses a good chanst to cut off and dam up as vigorous a
+stream o' profanity as is found between here and Laredo, but you loses a
+handmade, copper-bound, steel-riveted, artificial limb--which in five
+minutes o' time,' says I, windin' up, 'will sure feed the fire. There's
+the bargint.'
+
+"Well, the ol' man takes out time for about as long as a thirsty
+horse-rustler could put away half a dozen drinks an' he studies the
+proposition sideways and endways an' down side up. Then at last he ups
+and speaks out decided-like:
+
+"'Son,' he says, 'son, it's a bargint. Gimmee my leg.'
+
+"Somehow neither o' us misdoubts as how the other man won't keep his
+word; an' I gives him his stump, an' he straps her on joyful-like, just
+as if he'd got back a ole friend. Then later on he hikes out for Mojave
+and I don' see him no more for mebbee three years."
+
+"And then?" I prompted.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you," continued Bunt, between mouthfuls of pie, "I'll
+tell you. This yere prejudice agin profanity is the only thing about
+this yere Peg-leg that ain't pizen bad, an' _that_ prejudice, you got to
+know, was just along o' his being loco on that one subjeck. 'Twa'n't as
+if he had any real principles or convictions about the thing. It was
+just a loco prejudice. Just as some gesabes has feelin's agin cats an'
+snakes, or agin seein' a speckled nigger. It was just on-reasonable. So
+what I'm aimin' to have you understand is the fact that it was extremely
+appropriate that Peg-leg should die, that it was a blame good thing, and
+somethin' to be celebrated by free drinks all round.
+
+"You can say he treated me white, an' took my unsupported word. Well, so
+he did; but that was in spite o' what he really was hisself, 'way on the
+inside o' him. Inside o' him he was black-bad, an' it wa'n't a week
+after we had made our bargint that he did for a little Mojave kid in a
+way I don't like to think of.
+
+"So when he took an' died like as how I'm a-going to tell you of, I was
+plumb joyful, not only because I could feel at liberty to relieve my
+mind when necessary in a manner as is approved of and rightful among
+gents--not only because o' that, but because they was one less bad egg
+in the cow-country.
+
+"Now the manner o' Peg-leg's dying was sure hilarious-like. I didn't git
+over laughin' about it for a month o' Sundays--an' I ain't done yet. It
+was sure a joke on Peg-leg. The cutest joke that ever was played off on
+him.
+
+"It was in Sonora--Sonora, Arizona, I mean. They'd a-been a kind o' gold
+excitement there, and all the boys had rounded up. The town was
+full--chock-a-block. Peg-leg he was there too, drunk all the time an'
+bullyin' everybody, an' slambangin' around in his same old way. That
+very day he'd used a friend o' his--his best friend--cruel hard: just
+mean and nasty, you know.
+
+"Well, I'm sitting into a little game o' faro about twelve o'clock at
+night, me an' about a dozen o' the boys. We're good an' interested, and
+pretty much to the good o' the game, an' somebody's passin' drinks when
+all at once there's a sure big rumpus out in the street, an' a gent
+sticks his head thro' the door an' yells out:
+
+"'Hi, there, they's a fire! The Golden West Hotel is on fire!'
+
+"We draws the game as soon as convenient and hikes out, an', my word,
+you'd 'a' thought from the looks o' things as how the whole town was
+going. But it was only the hotel--the Golden West, where Peg-leg was
+stayin'; an' when we got up we could hear the ol' murderer bellerin' an'
+ragin', an' him drunk--of course.
+
+"Well, I'm some excited. Lord love you, I'd as soon 'a' seen Peg-leg
+shot as I would eat, an' when I remembers the little Mojave kid I'm glad
+as how his time is at hand. Saved us the trouble o' lynchin' that sooner
+or later had to come.
+
+"Peg-leg's room was in the front o' the house on the fourth floor, but
+the fire was all below, and what with the smoke comin' out the
+third-story winders he couldn't see down into the street, no more'n the
+boys could see him--only they just heard him bellerin'.
+
+"Then some one of 'em sings out:
+
+"'Hey, Peg-leg, jump! We got a blanket here.'
+
+"An' sure enough he does jump!"
+
+Here Bunt chuckled grimly, muttering, "Yes, sir, sure enough he did
+jump."
+
+"I don't quite see," I observed, "where the laugh comes in. What was the
+joke of it?"
+
+"The joke of it was," finished Bunt, "that they hadn't any blanket."
+
+
+
+
+THE PASSING OF COCK-EYE BLACKLOCK
+
+
+"Well, m'son," observed Bunt about half an hour after supper, "if your
+provender has shook down comfortable by now, we might as well jar loose
+and be moving along out yonder."
+
+We left the fire and moved toward the hobbled ponies, Bunt complaining
+of the quality of the outfit's meals. "Down in the Panamint country," he
+growled, "we had a Chink that was a sure frying-pan expert; but _this_
+Dago--my word! That ain't victuals, that supper. That's just a'
+ingenious device for removing superfluous appetite. Next time I
+assimilate nutriment in this camp I'm sure going to take chloroform
+beforehand. Careful to draw your cinch tight on that pinto bronc' of
+yours. She always swells up same as a horned toad soon as you begin to
+saddle up."
+
+We rode from the circle of the camp-fire's light and out upon the
+desert. It was Bunt's turn to ride the herd that night, and I had
+volunteered to bear him company.
+
+Bunt was one of a fast-disappearing type. He knew his West as the
+cockney knows his Piccadilly. He had mined with and for Ralston, had
+soldiered with Crook, had turned cards in a faro game at Laredo, and had
+known the Apache Kid. He had fifteen separate and different times driven
+the herds from Texas to Dodge City, in the good old, rare old, wild old
+days when Dodge was the headquarters for the cattle trade, and as near
+to heaven as the cowboy cared to get. He had seen the end of gold and
+the end of the buffalo, the beginning of cattle, the beginning of wheat,
+and the spreading of the barbed-wire fence, that, in the end, will take
+from him his occupation and his revolver, his chaparejos and his
+usefulness, his lariat and his reason for being. He had seen the rise of
+a new period, the successive stages of which, singularly enough, tally
+exactly with the progress of our own world-civilization: first the nomad
+and hunter, then the herder, next and last the husband-man. He had
+passed the mid-mark of his life. His mustache was gray. He had four
+friends--his horse, his pistol, a teamster in the Indian Territory
+Panhandle named Skinny, and me.
+
+The herd--I suppose all told there were some two thousand head--we found
+not far from the water-hole. We relieved the other watch and took up our
+night's vigil. It was about nine o'clock. The night was fine, calm.
+
+There was no cloud. Toward the middle watches one could expect a moon.
+But the stars, the stars! In Idaho, on those lonely reaches of desert
+and range, where the shadow of the sun by day and the courses of the
+constellations by night are the only things that move, these stars are a
+different matter from those bleared pin-points of the city after dark,
+seen through dust and smoke and the glare of electrics and the hot haze
+of fire-signs. On such a night as that when I rode the herd with Bunt
+_anything_ might have happened; one could have believed in fairies then,
+and in the buffalo-ghost, and in all the weirds of the craziest Apache
+"Messiah" that ever made medicine.
+
+One remembered astronomy and the "measureless distances" and the showy
+problems, including the rapid moving of a ray of light and the long
+years of its travel between star and star, and smiled incredulously.
+Why, the stars were just above our heads, were not much higher than the
+flat-topped hills that barred the horizons. Venus was a yellow lamp hung
+in a tree; Mars a red lantern in a clock-tower.
+
+One listened instinctively for the tramp of the constellations. Orion,
+Cassiopeia and Ursa Major marched to and fro on the vault like cohorts
+of legionaries, seemingly within call of our voices, and all without a
+sound.
+
+But beneath these quiet heavens the earth disengaged multitudinous
+sounds--small sounds, minimized as it were by the muffling of the night.
+Now it was the yap of a coyote leagues away; now the snapping of a twig
+in the sage-brush; now the mysterious, indefinable stir of the
+heat-ridden land cooling under the night. But more often it was the
+confused murmur of the herd itself--the click of a horn, the friction of
+heavy bodies, the stamp of a hoof, with now and then the low,
+complaining note of a cow with a calf, or the subdued noise of a steer
+as it lay down, first lurching to the knees, then rolling clumsily upon
+the haunch, with a long, stertorous breath of satisfaction.
+
+Slowly at Indian trot we encircle the herd. Earlier in the evening a
+prairie-wolf had pulled down a calf, and the beasts were still restless.
+
+Little eddies of nervousness at long intervals developed here and there
+in the mass--eddies that not impossibly might widen at any time with
+perilous quickness to the maelstrom of a stampede. So as he rode Bunt
+sang to these great brutes, literally to put them to sleep--sang an old
+grandmother's song, with all the quaint modulations of sixty, seventy, a
+hundred years ago:
+
+   "With her ogling winks
+    And bobbling blinks,
+    Her quizzing glass,
+    Her one eye idle,
+  Oh, she loved a bold dragoon,
+    With his broadsword, saddle, bridle.
+    _Whack_, fol-de-rol!"
+
+I remember that song. My grandmother--so they tell me--used to sing it
+in Carolina, in the thirties, accompanying herself on a harp, if you
+please:
+
+  "Oh, she loved a bold dragoon,
+  With his broadsword, saddle, bridle."
+
+It was in Charleston, I remembered, and the slave-ships used to
+discharge there in those days. My grandmother had sung it then to her
+beaux; officers they were; no wonder she chose it--"Oh, she loved a bold
+dragoon"--and now I heard it sung on an Idaho cattle-range to quiet two
+thousand restless steers.
+
+Our talk at first, after the cattle had quieted down, ran upon all
+manner of subjects. It is astonishing to note what strange things men
+will talk about at night and in a solitude. That night we covered
+religion, of course, astronomy, love affairs, horses, travel, history,
+poker, photography, basket-making, and the Darwinian theory. But at last
+inevitably we came back to cattle and the pleasures and dangers of
+riding the herd.
+
+"I rode herd once in Nevada," remarked Bunt, "and I was caught into a
+blizzard, and I was sure freezing to death. Got to where I couldn't keep
+my eyes open, I was that sleepy. Tell you what I did. Had some
+eating-tobacco along, and I'd chew it a spell, then rub the juice into
+my eyes. Kept it up all night. Blame near blinded me, but I come
+through. Me and another man named Blacklock--Cock-eye Blacklock we
+called him, by reason of his having one eye that was some out of line.
+Cock-eye sure ought to have got it that night, for he went bad
+afterward, and did a heap of killing before he _did_ get it. He was a
+bad man for sure, and the way he died is a story in itself."
+
+There was a long pause. The ponies jogged on. Rounding on the herd, we
+turned southward.
+
+"He did 'get it' finally, you say," I prompted.
+
+"He certainly did," said Bunt, "and the story of it is what a man with
+a' imaginary mind like you ought to make into one of your friction
+tales."
+
+"Is it about a treasure?" I asked with apprehension. For ever since I
+once made a tale (of friction) out of one of Bunt's stories of real
+life, he has been ambitious for me to write another, and is forever
+suggesting motifs which invariably--I say invariably--imply the
+discovery of great treasures. With him, fictitious literature must
+always turn upon the discovery of hidden wealth.
+
+"No," said he, "it ain't about no treasure, but just about the origin,
+hist'ry and development--and subsequent decease--of as mean a Greaser as
+ever stole stock, which his name was Cock-eye Blacklock.
+
+"You see, this same Blacklock went bad about two summers after our
+meet-up with the blizzard. He worked down Yuma way and over into New
+Mexico, where he picks up with a sure-thing gambler, and the two begin
+to devastate the population. They do say when he and his running mate
+got good and through with that part of the Land of the Brave, men used
+to go round trading guns for commissary, and clothes for ponies, and
+cigars for whisky and such. There just wasn't any money left _anywhere_.
+Those sharps had drawed the landscape clean. Some one found a dollar in
+a floor-crack in a saloon, and the barkeep' gave him a gallon of
+forty-rod for it, and used to keep it in a box for exhibition, and the
+crowd would get around it and paw it over and say: 'My! my! Whatever in
+the world is this extremely cu-roos coin?'
+
+"Then Blacklock cuts loose from his running mate, and plays a lone hand
+through Arizona and Nevada, up as far as Reno again, and there he stacks
+up against a kid--a little tenderfoot kid so new he ain't cracked the
+green paint off him--and _skins_ him. And the kid, being foolish and
+impulsive-like, pulls out a peashooter. It was a _twenty-two_," said
+Bunt, solemnly. "Yes, the kid was just that pore, pathetic kind to carry
+a dinky twenty-two, and with the tears runnin' down his cheeks begins to
+talk tall. Now what does that Cockeye do? Why, that pore kid that he had
+skinned couldn't 'a' hurt him with his pore little bric-a-brac. Does
+Cock-eye take his little parlour ornament away from him, and spank him,
+and tell him to go home? No, he never. The kid's little tin pop-shooter
+explodes right in his hand before he can crook his forefinger twice, and
+while he's a-wondering what-all has happened Cock-eye gets his two guns
+on him, slow and deliberate like, mind you, and throws forty-eights into
+him till he ain't worth shooting at no more. Murders him like the
+mud-eating, horse-thieving snake of a Greaser that he is; but being
+within the law, the kid drawing on him first, he don't stretch hemp the
+way he should.
+
+"Well, fin'ly this Blacklock blows into a mining-camp in Placer County,
+California, where I'm chuck-tending on the night-shift. This here camp
+is maybe four miles across the divide from Iowa Hill, and it sure is
+named a cu-roos name, which it is Why-not. They is a barn contiguous,
+where the mine horses are kep', and, blame me! if there ain't a
+weathercock on top of that same--a golden trotting-horse--_upside down_.
+When the stranger an' pilgrim comes in, says he first off: 'Why'n snakes
+they got that weathercock horse upside down--why?' says he. 'Why-not,'
+says you, and the drinks is on the pilgrim.
+
+"That all went very lovely till some gesabe opens up a placer drift on
+the far side the divide, starts a rival camp, an' names her Because. The
+Boss gets mad at that, and rights up the weathercock, and renames the
+camp Ophir, and you don't work no more pilgrims.
+
+"Well, as I was saying, Cock-eye drifts into Why-not and begins
+diffusing trouble. He skins some of the boys in the hotel over in town,
+and a big row comes of it, and one of the bed-rock cleaners cuts loose
+with both guns. Nobody hurt but a quarter-breed, who loses a' eye. But
+the marshal don't stand for no short-card men, an' closes Cock-eye up
+some prompt. Him being forced to give the boys back their money is
+busted an' can't get away from camp. To raise some wind he begins
+depredating.
+
+"He robs a pore half-breed of a cayuse, and shoots up a Chink who's
+panning tailings, and generally and variously becomes too pronounced,
+till he's run outen camp. He's sure stony-broke, not being able to turn
+a card because of the marshal. So he goes to live in a ole cabin up by
+the mine ditch, and sits there doing a heap o' thinking, and hatching
+trouble like a' ole he-hen.
+
+"Well, now, with that deporting of Cock-eye comes his turn of bad luck,
+and it sure winds his clock up with a loud report. I've narrated special
+of the scope and range of this 'ere Blacklock, so as you'll understand
+why it was expedient and desirable that he should up an' die. You see,
+he always managed, with all his killings and robbings and general and
+sundry flimflamming, to be just within the law. And if anybody took a
+notion to shoot him up, why, his luck saw him through, and the other
+man's shooting-iron missed fire, or exploded, or threw wild, or such
+like, till it seemed as if he sure did bear a charmed life; and so he
+did till a pore yeller tamale of a fool dog did for him what the law of
+the land couldn't do. Yes, sir, a fool dog, a pup, a blame yeller pup
+named Sloppy Weather, did for Cock-eye Blacklock, sporting character,
+three-card-monte man, sure-thing sharp, killer, and general bedeviler.
+
+"You see, it was this way. Over in American Canyon, some five miles maybe
+back of the mine, they was a creek called the American River, and it was
+sure chock-a-block full of trouts. The Boss used for to go over there
+with a dinky fish-pole like a buggy-whip about once a week, and scout
+that stream for fish and bring back a basketful. He was sure keen on it,
+and had bought some kind of privilege or other, so as he could keep
+other people off.
+
+"Well, I used to go along with him to pack the truck, and one Saturday,
+about a month after Cock-eye had been run outen camp, we hiked up over
+the divide, and went for to round up a bunch o' trouts. When we got to
+the river there was a mess for your life. Say, that river was full of
+dead trouts, floating atop the water; and they was some even on the
+bank. Not a scratch on 'em; just dead. The Boss had the papsy-lals. I
+never _did_ see a man so rip-r'aring, snorting mad. _I_ hadn't a guess
+about what we were up against, but he knew, and he showed down. He said
+somebody had been shooting the river for fish to sell down Sacramento
+way to the market. A mean trick; kill more fish in one shoot than you
+can possibly pack.
+
+"Well, we didn't do much fishing that day--couldn't get a bite, for that
+matter--and took on home about noon to talk it over. You see, the Boss,
+in buying the privileges or such for that creek, had made himself
+responsible to the Fish Commissioners of the State, and 'twasn't a week
+before they were after him, camping on his trail incessant, and wanting
+to know how about it. The Boss was some worried, because the fish were
+being killed right along, and the Commission was making him weary of
+living. Twicet afterward we prospected along that river and found the
+same lot of dead fish. We even put a guard there, but it didn't do no
+manner of good.
+
+"It's the Boss who first suspicions Cock-eye. But it don't take no
+seventh daughter of no seventh daughter to trace trouble where
+Black-lock's about. He sudden shows up in town with a bunch of
+simoleons, buying bacon and tin cows [Footnote: Condensed milk.] and
+such provender, and generally giving it away that he's come into money.
+The Boss, who's watching his movements sharp, says to me one day:
+
+"'Bunt, the storm-centre of this here low area is a man with a cock-eye,
+an' I'll back that play with a paint horse against a paper dime.'
+
+"'No takers,' says I. 'Dirty work and a cock-eyed man are two heels of
+the same mule.'
+
+"'Which it's a-kicking of me in the stummick frequent and painful,' he
+remarks, plenty wrathful.
+
+"'On general principles,' I said, 'it's a royal flush to a pair of
+deuces as how this Blacklock bird ought to stop a heap of lead, and I
+know the man to throw it. He's the only brother of my sister, and tends
+chuck in a placer mine. How about if I take a day off and drop round to
+his cabin and interview him on the fleetin' and unstable nature of human
+life?'
+
+"But the Boss wouldn't hear of that.
+
+"'No,' says he; 'that's not the bluff to back in this game. You an' me
+an' 'Mary-go-round'--that was what we called the marshal, him being so
+much all over the country--'you an' me an' Mary-go-round will have to
+stock a sure-thing deck against that maverick.'
+
+"So the three of us gets together an' has a talky-talk, an' we lays it
+out as how Cock-eye must be watched and caught red-handed.
+
+"Well, let me tell you, keeping case on that Greaser sure did lack a
+certain indefinable charm. We tried him at sun-up, an' again at sundown,
+an' nights, too, laying in the chaparral an' tarweed, an' scouting up
+an' down that blame river, till we were sore. We built surreptitious a
+lot of shooting-boxes up in trees on the far side of the canyon,
+overlooking certain an' sundry pools in the river where Cock-eye would
+be likely to pursue operations, an' we took turns watching. I'll be a
+Chink if that bad egg didn't put it on us same as previous, an' we'd
+find new-killed fish all the time. I tell you we were _fitchered_; and
+it got on the Boss's nerves. The Commission began to talk of withdrawing
+the privilege, an' it was up to him to make good or pass the deal. We
+_knew_ Blacklock was shooting the river, y' see, but we didn't have no
+evidence. Y' see, being shut off from card-sharping, he was up against
+it, and so took to pot-hunting to get along. It was as plain as red
+paint.
+
+"Well, things went along sort of catch-as-catch-can like this for maybe
+three weeks, the Greaser shooting fish regular, an' the Boss b'iling
+with rage, and laying plans to call his hand, and getting bluffed out
+every deal.
+
+"And right here I got to interrupt, to talk some about the pup dog,
+Sloppy Weather. If he hadn't got caught up into this Blacklock game, no
+one'd ever thought enough about him to so much as kick him. But after it
+was all over, we began to remember this same Sloppy an' to recall what
+he was; no big job. He was just a worthless fool pup, yeller at that,
+everybody's dog, that just hung round camp, grinning and giggling and
+playing the goat, as half-grown dogs will. He used to go along with the
+car-boys when they went swimmin' in the resevoy, an' dash along in an'
+yell an' splash round just to show off. He thought it was a keen stunt
+to get some gesabe to throw a stick in the resevoy so's he could paddle
+out after it. They'd trained him always to bring it back an' fetch it to
+whichever party throwed it. He'd give it up when he'd retrieved it, an'
+yell to have it throwed again. That was his idea of fun--just like a
+fool pup.
+
+"Well, one day this Sloppy Weather is off chasing jack-rabbits an' don't
+come home. Nobody thinks anything about that, nor even notices it. But
+we afterward finds out that he'd met up with Blacklock that day, an'
+stopped to visit with him--sorry day for Cockeye. Now it was the very
+next day after this that Mary-go-round an' the Boss plans another scout.
+I'm to go, too. It was a Wednesday, an' we lay it out that the Cockeye
+would prob'ly shoot that day so's to get his fish down to the railroad
+Thursday, so they'd reach Sacramento Friday--fish day, see. It wasn't
+much to go by, but it was the high card in our hand, an' we allowed to
+draw to it.
+
+"We left Why-not afore daybreak, an' worked over into the canyon about
+sun-up. They was one big pool we hadn't covered for some time, an' we
+made out we'd watch that. So we worked down to it, an' clumb up into our
+trees, an' set out to keep guard.
+
+"In about an hour we heard a shoot some mile or so up the creek. They's
+no mistaking dynamite, leastways not to miners, an' we knew that shoot
+was dynamite an' nothing else. The Cock-eye was at work, an' we shook
+hands all round. Then pretty soon a fish or so began to go by--big
+fellows, some of 'em, dead an' floatin', with their eyes popped 'way out
+same as knobs--sure sign they'd been shot.
+
+"The Boss took and grit his teeth when he see a three-pounder go by, an'
+made remarks about Blacklock.
+
+"''Sh!' says Mary-go-round, sudden-like. 'Listen!'
+
+"We turned ear down the wind, an' sure there was the sound of some one
+scrabbling along the boulders by the riverside. Then we heard a pup yap.
+
+"'That's our man,' whispers the Boss.
+
+"For a long time we thought Cock-eye had quit for the day an' had
+coppered us again, but byne-by we heard the manzanita crack on the far
+side the canyon, an' there at last we see Blacklock working down toward
+the pool, Sloppy Weather following an' yapping and cayoodling just as a
+fool dog will.
+
+"Blacklock comes down to the edge of the water quiet-like. He lays his
+big scoop-net an' his sack--we can see it half full already--down behind
+a boulder, and takes a good squinting look all round, and listens maybe
+twenty minutes, he's that cute, same's a coyote stealing sheep. We lies
+low an' says nothing, fear he might see the leaves move.
+
+"Then byne-by he takes his stick of dynamite out his hip pocket--he was
+just that reckless kind to carry it that way--an' ties it careful to a
+couple of stones he finds handy. Then he lights the fuse an' heaves her
+into the drink, an' just there's where Cock-eye makes the mistake of his
+life. He ain't tied the rocks tight enough, an' the loop slips off just
+as he swings back his arm, the stones drop straight down by his feet,
+and the stick of dynamite whirls out right enough into the pool.
+
+"Then the funny business begins.
+
+"Blacklock ain't made no note of Sloppy Weather, who's been sizing up
+the whole game an' watchin' for the stick. Soon as Cock-eye heaves the
+dynamite into the water, off goes the pup after it, just as he'd been
+taught to do by the car-boys.
+
+"'Hey, you fool dog!' yells Blacklock.
+
+"A lot that pup cares. He heads out for that stick of dynamite same as
+if for a veal cutlet, reaches it, grabs hold of it, an' starts back for
+shore, with the fuse sputterin' like hot grease. Blacklock heaves rocks
+at him like one possessed, capering an' dancing; but the pup comes right
+on. The Cock-eye can't stand it no longer, but lines out. But the pup's
+got to shore an' takes after him. Sure; why not? He think's it's all
+part of the game. Takes after Cock-eye, running to beat a' express,
+while we-all whoops and yells an' nearly falls out the trees for
+laffing. Hi! Cock-eye did scratch gravel for sure. But 'tain't no manner
+of use. He can't run through that rough ground like Sloppy Weather, an'
+that fool pup comes a-cavartin' along, jumpin' up against him, an' him
+a-kickin' him away, an' r'arin', an' dancin', an' shakin' his fists, an'
+the more he r'ars the more fun the pup thinks it is. But all at once
+something big happens, an' the whole bank of the canyon opens out like a
+big wave, and slops over into the pool, an' the air is full of trees an'
+rocks and cart-loads of dirt an' dogs and Blacklocks and rivers an'
+smoke an' fire generally. The Boss got a clod o' river-mud spang in the
+eye, an' went off his limb like's he was trying to bust a bucking bronc'
+an' couldn't; and ol' Mary-go-round was shooting off his gun on general
+principles, glarin' round wild-eyed an' like as if he saw a' Injun
+devil.
+
+"When the smoke had cleared away an' the trees and rocks quit falling,
+we clumb down from our places an' started in to look for Black-lock. We
+found a good deal of him, but they wasn't hide nor hair left of Sloppy
+Weather. We didn't have to dig no grave, either. They was a big enough
+hole in the ground to bury a horse an' wagon, let alone Cock-eye. So we
+planted him there, an' put up a board, an' wrote on it:
+
+  Here lies most
+  of
+  C. BLACKLOCK,
+  who died of a'
+  entangling alliance with
+  a
+  stick of dynamite.
+
+  Moral: A hook and line is good enough
+  fish-tackle for any honest man.
+
+"That there board lasted for two years, till the freshet of '82, when
+the American River--Hello, there's the sun!"
+
+All in a minute the night seemed to have closed up like a great book.
+The East flamed roseate. The air was cold, nimble. Some of the
+sage-brush bore a thin rim of frost. The herd, aroused, the dew
+glistening on flank and horn, were chewing the first cud of the day, and
+in twos and threes moving toward the water-hole for the morning's drink.
+Far off toward the camp the breakfast fire sent a shaft of blue smoke
+straight into the moveless air. A jack-rabbit, with erect ears, limped
+from the sage-brush just out of pistol-shot and regarded us a moment,
+his nose wrinkling and trembling. By the time that Bunt and I, putting
+our ponies to a canter, had pulled up by the camp of the Bar-circle-Z
+outfit, another day had begun in Idaho.
+
+
+
+
+A MEMORANDUM OF SUDDEN DEATH
+
+
+The manuscript of the account that follows belongs to a harness-maker in
+Albuquerque, Juan Tejada by name, and he is welcome to whatever of
+advertisement this notice may bring him. He is a good fellow, and his
+patented martingale for stage horses may be recommended. I understand he
+got the manuscript from a man named Bass, or possibly Bass left it with
+him for safe-keeping. I know that Tejada has some things of Bass's
+now--things that Bass left with him last November: a mess-kit, a lantern
+and a broken theodolite--a whole saddle-box full of contraptions. I
+forgot to ask Tejada how Bass got the manuscript, and I wish I had done
+so now, for the finding of it might be a story itself. The probabilities
+are that Bass simply picked it up page by page off the desert, blown
+about the spot where the fight occurred and at some little distance from
+the bodies. Bass, I am told, is a bone-gatherer by profession, and one
+can easily understand how he would come across the scene of the
+encounter in one of his tours into western Arizona. My interest in the
+affair is impersonal, but none the less keen. Though I did not know
+young Karslake, I knew his stuff--as everybody still does, when you come
+to that. For the matter of that, the mere mention of his pen-name,
+"Anson Qualtraugh," recalls at once to thousands of the readers of a
+certain world-famous monthly magazine of New York articles and stories
+he wrote for it while he was alive; as, for instance, his admirable
+descriptive work called "Traces of the Aztecs on the Mogolon Mesa," in
+the October number of 1890. Also, in the January issue of 1892 there are
+two specimens of his work, one signed Anson Qualtraugh and the other
+Justin Blisset. Why he should have used the Blisset signature I do not
+know. It occurs only this once in all his writings. In this case it is
+signed to a very indifferent New Year's story. The Qualtraugh "stuff" of
+the same number is, so the editor writes to me, a much shortened
+transcript of a monograph on "Primitive Methods of Moki Irrigation,"
+which are now in the archives of the Smithsonian. The admirable novel,
+"The Peculiar Treasure of Kings," is of course well known. Karslake
+wrote it in 1888-89, and the controversy that arose about the incident
+of the third chapter is still--sporadically and intermittently--continued.
+
+The manuscript that follows now appears, of course, for the first time
+in print, and I acknowledge herewith my obligations to Karslake's
+father, Mr. Patterson Karslake, for permission to publish.
+
+I have set the account down word for word, with all the hiatuses and
+breaks that by nature of the extraordinary circumstances under which it
+was written were bound to appear in it. I have allowed it to end
+precisely as Karslake was forced to end it, in the middle of a sentence.
+God knows the real end is plain enough and was not far off when the poor
+fellow began the last phrase that never was to be finished.
+
+The value of the thing is self-apparent. Besides the narrative of
+incidents it is a simple setting forth of a young man's emotions in the
+very face of violent death. You will remember the distinguished victim
+of the guillotine, a lady who on the scaffold begged that she might be
+permitted to write out the great thoughts that began to throng her mind.
+She was not allowed to do so, and the record is lost. Here is a case
+where the record is preserved. But Karslake, being a young man not very
+much given to introspection, his work is more a picture of things seen
+than a transcription of things thought. However, one may read between
+the lines; the very breaks are eloquent, while the break at the end
+speaks with a significance that no words could attain.
+
+The manuscript in itself is interesting. It is written partly in pencil,
+partly in ink (no doubt from a fountain pen), on sheets of manila paper
+torn from some sort of long and narrow account-book. In two or three
+places there are smudges where the powder-blackened finger and thumb
+held the sheets momentarily. I would give much to own it, but Tejada
+will not give it up without Bass's permission, and Bass has gone to the
+Klondike.
+
+As to Karslake himself. He was born in Raleigh, in North Carolina, in
+1868, studied law at the State University, and went to the Bahamas in
+1885 with the members of a government coast survey commission. Gave up
+the practice of law and "went in" for fiction and the study of the
+ethnology of North America about 1887. He was unmarried.
+
+The reasons for his enlisting have long been misunderstood. It was known
+that at the time of his death he was a member of B Troop of the Sixth
+Regiment of United States Cavalry, and it was assumed that because of
+this fact Karslake was in financial difficulties and not upon good terms
+with his family. All this, of course, is untrue, and I have every reason
+to believe that Karslake at this time was planning a novel of military
+life in the Southwest, and, wishing to get in closer touch with the
+_milieu_ of the story, actually enlisted in order to be able to write
+authoritatively. He saw no active service until the time when his
+narrative begins. The year of his death is uncertain. It was in the
+spring probably of 1896, in the twenty-eighth year of his age.
+
+There is no doubt he would have become in time a great writer. A young
+man of twenty-eight who had so lively a sense of the value of accurate
+observation, and so eager a desire to produce that in the very face of
+death he could faithfully set down a description of his surroundings,
+actually laying down the rifle to pick up the pen, certainly was
+possessed of extraordinary faculties.
+
+
+"They came in sight early this morning just after we had had breakfast
+and had broken camp. The four of us--'Bunt,' 'Idaho,' Estorijo and
+myself--were jogging on to the southward and had just come up out of the
+dry bed of some water-hole--the alkali was white as snow in the
+crevices--when Idaho pointed them out to us, three to the rear, two on
+one side, one on the other and--very far away--two ahead. Five minutes
+before, the desert was as empty as the flat of my hand. They seemed
+literally to have _grown_ out of the sage-brush. We took them in through
+my field-glasses and Bunt made sure they were an outlying band of
+Hunt-in-the-Morning's Bucks. I had thought, and so had all of us, that
+the rest of the boys had rounded up the whole of the old man's hostiles
+long since. We are at a loss to account for these fellows here. They
+seem to be well mounted.
+
+"We held a council of war from the saddle without halting, but there
+seemed very little to be done--but to go right along and wait for
+developments. At about eleven we found water--just a pocket in the bed
+of a dried stream--and stopped to water the ponies. I am writing this
+during the halt.
+
+"We have one hundred and sixteen rifle cartridges. Yesterday was Friday,
+and all day, as the newspapers say, 'the situation remained unchanged.'
+We expected surely that the night would see some rather radical change,
+but nothing happened, though we stood watch and watch till morning. Of
+yesterday's eight only six are in sight and we bring up reserves. We now
+have two to the front, one on each side, and two to the rear, all far
+out of rifle-range.
+
+[_The following paragraph is in an unsteady script and would appear to
+have been written in the saddle. The same peculiarity occurs from time
+to time in the narrative, and occasionally the writing is so broken as
+to be illegible_.]
+
+"On again after breakfast. It is about eight-fifteen. The other two have
+come back--without 'reserves,' thank God. Very possibly they did not go
+away at all, but were hidden by a dip in the ground. I cannot see that
+any of them are nearer. I have watched one to the left of us steadily
+for more than half an hour and I am sure that he has not shortened the
+distance between himself and us. What their plans are Hell only knows,
+but this silent, persistent escorting tells on the nerves. I do not
+think I am afraid--as yet. It does not seem possible but that we will
+ride into La Paz at the end of the fortnight exactly as we had planned,
+meet Greenock according to arrangements and take the stage on to the
+railroad. Then next month I shall be in San Antonio and report at
+headquarters. Of course, all this is to be, of course; and this business
+of to-day will make a good story to tell. It's an experience--good
+'material.' Very naturally I cannot now see how I am going to get out of
+this" [_the word "alive" has here been erased_], "but of course I
+_will_. Why 'of course'? I don't know. Maybe I am trying to deceive
+myself. Frankly, it looks like a situation insoluble; but the solution
+will surely come right enough in good time.
+
+"Eleven o'clock.--No change.
+
+"Two-thirty P. M.--We are halted to tighten girths and to take a single
+swallow of the canteens. One of them rode in a wide circle from the rear
+to the flank, about ten minutes ago, conferred a moment with his fellow,
+then fell back to his old position. He wears some sort of red cloth or
+blanket. We reach no more water till day after to-morrow. But we have
+sufficient. Estorijo has been telling funny stories en route.
+
+"Four o'clock P. M.--They have closed up perceptibly, and we have been
+debating about trying one of them with Idaho's Winchester. No use;
+better save the ammunition. It looks...." [_the next words are
+undecipherable, but from the context they would appear to be_ "_as if
+they would attack to-night_"]"...we have come to know certain of them
+now by nicknames. We speak of the Red One, or the Little One, or the One
+with the Feather, and Idaho has named a short thickset fellow on our
+right 'Little Willie.' By God, I wish something would turn up--relief or
+fight. I don't care which. How Estorijo can cackle on, reeling off his
+senseless, pointless funny stories, is beyond me. Bunt is almost as bad.
+They understand the fix we are in, I _know_, but how they can take it so
+easily is the staggering surprise. I feel that I am as courageous as
+either of them, but levity seems horribly inappropriate. I could kill
+Estorijo joyfully.
+
+"Sunday morning.--Still no developments. We were so sure of something
+turning up last night that none of us pretended to sleep. But nothing
+stirred. There is no sneaking out of the circle at night. The moon is
+full. A jack-rabbit could not have slipped by them unseen last night.
+
+"Nine o'clock (in the saddle).--We had coffee and bacon as usual at
+sunrise; then on again to the southeast just as before. For half an hour
+after starting the Red One and two others were well within rifle-shot,
+nearer than ever before. They had worked in from the flank. But before
+Idaho could get a chance at them they dipped into a shallow arroyo, and
+when they came out on the other side were too far away to think of
+shooting.
+
+"Ten o'clock.--All at once we find there are nine instead of eight;
+where and when this last one joined the band we cannot tell. He wears a
+sombrero and army trousers, but the upper part of his body is bare.
+Idaho calls him 'Half-and-half.' He is riding a---- They're coming.
+
+"Later.--For a moment we thought it was the long-expected rush. The Red
+One--he had been in the front--wheeled quick as a flash and came
+straight for us, and the others followed suit. Great Heavens, how they
+rode! We could hear them yelling on every side of us. We jumped off our
+ponies and stood behind them, the rifles across the saddles. But at four
+hundred yards they all pivoted about and cantered off again leisurely.
+Now they followed us as before--three in the front, two in the rear and
+two on either side. I do not think I am going to be frightened when the
+rush does come. I watched myself just now. I was excited, and I remember
+Bunt saying to me, 'Keep your shirt on, m'son'; but I was not afraid of
+being killed. Thank God for that! It is something I've long wished to
+find out, and now that I know it I am proud of it. Neither side fired a
+shot. I was not afraid. It's glorious. Estorijo is all right.
+
+"Sunday afternoon, one-thirty.--No change. It is unspeakably hot.
+
+"Three-fifteen.--The One with the Feather is walking, leading his pony.
+It seems to be lame." [_With this entry Karslake ended page five, and
+the next page of the manuscript is numbered seven. It is very probable,
+however, that he made a mistake in the numerical sequence of his pages,
+for the narrative is continuous, and, at this point at least, unbroken.
+There does not seem to be any sixth page_.]
+
+"Four o'clock.--Is it possible that we are to pass another night of
+suspense? They certainly show no signs of bringing on the crisis, and
+they surely would not attempt anything so late in the afternoon as this.
+It is a relief to feel that we have nothing to fear till morning, but
+the tension of watching all night long is fearful.
+
+"Later.--Idaho has just killed the Little One.
+
+"Later.--Still firing.
+
+"Later.--Still at it.
+
+"Later, about five.--A bullet struck within three feet of me.
+
+"Five-ten.--Still firing.
+
+"Seven-thirty P. M., in camp.--It happened so quickly that it was all
+over before I realized. We had our first interchange of shots with them
+late this afternoon. The Little One was riding from the front to the
+flank. Evidently he did not think he was in range--nor did any of us.
+All at once Idaho tossed up his rifle and let go without aiming--or so
+it seemed to me. The stock was not at his shoulder before the report
+came. About six seconds after the smoke had cleared away we could see
+the Little One begin to lean backward in the saddle, and Idaho said
+grimly, 'I guess I got _you_.' The Little One leaned farther and farther
+till suddenly his head dropped back between his shoulder-blades. He held
+to his pony's mane with both hands for a long time and then all at once
+went off feet first. His legs bent under him like putty as his feet
+touched the ground. The pony bolted.
+
+"Just as soon as Idaho fired the others closed right up and began riding
+around us at top speed, firing as they went. Their aim was bad as a
+rule, but one bullet came very close to me. At about half-past five they
+drew off out of range again and we made camp right where we stood.
+Estorijo and I are both sure that Idaho hit the Red One, but Idaho
+himself is doubtful, and Bunt did not see the shot. I could swear that
+the Red One all but went off his pony. However, he seems active enough
+now.
+
+"Monday morning.--Still another night without attack. I have not slept
+since Friday evening. The strain is terrific. At daybreak this morning,
+when one of our ponies snorted suddenly, I cried out at the top of my
+voice. I could no more have repressed it than I could have stopped my
+blood flowing; and for half an hour afterward I could feel my flesh
+crisping and pringling, and there was a sickening weakness at the pit of
+my stomach. At breakfast I had to force down my coffee. They are still
+in place, but now there are two on each side, two in the front, two in
+the rear. The killing of the Little One seems to have heartened us all
+wonderfully. I am sure we will get out--somehow. But oh! the suspense of
+it.
+
+"Monday morning, nine-thirty.--Under way for over two hours. There is no
+new development. But Idaho has just said that they seem to be edging in.
+We hope to reach water to-day. Our supply is low, and the ponies are
+beginning to hang their heads. It promises to be a blazing hot day.
+There is alkali all to the west of us, and we just commence to see the
+rise of ground miles to the southward that Idaho says is the San Jacinto
+Mountains. Plenty of water there. The desert hereabout is vast and
+lonesome beyond words; leagues of sparse sage-brush, leagues of
+leper-white alkali, leagues of baking gray sand, empty, heat-ridden, the
+abomination of desolation; and always--in whichever direction I turn my
+eyes--always, in the midst of this pale-yellow blur, a single figure in
+the distance, blanketed, watchful, solitary, standing out sharp and
+distinct against the background of sage and sand.
+
+"Monday, about eleven o'clock.--No change. The heat is appalling. There
+is just a----
+
+"Later.--I was on the point of saying that there was just a mouthful of
+water left for each of us in our canteens when Estorijo and Idaho both
+at the same time cried out that they were moving in. It is true. They
+are within rifle range, but do not fire. We, as well, have decided to
+reserve our fire until something more positive happens.
+
+"Noon.--The first shot--for to-day--from the Red One. We are halted. The
+shot struck low and to the left. We could see the sand spout up in a
+cloud just as though a bubble had burst on the surface of the ground.
+
+"They have separated from each other, and the whole eight of them are
+now in a circle around us. Idaho believes the Red One fired as a signal.
+Estorijo is getting ready to take a shot at the One with the Feather. We
+have the ponies in a circle around us. It looks as if now at last this
+was the beginning of the real business.
+
+Later, twelve-thirty-five.--Estorijo missed. Idaho will try with the
+Winchester as soon as the One with the Feather halts. He is galloping
+toward the Red One.
+
+"All at once, about two o'clock, the fighting began. This is the first
+let-up. It is now--God knows what time. They closed up suddenly and
+began galloping about us in a circle, firing all the time. They rode
+like madmen. I would not have believed that Indian ponies could run so
+quickly. What with their yelling and the incessant crack of their rifles
+and the thud of their ponies' feet our horses at first became very
+restless, and at last Idaho's mustang bolted clean away. We all stood to
+it as hard as we could. For about the first fifteen minutes it was hot
+work. The Spotted One is hit. We are certain of that much, though we do
+not know whose gun did the work. My poor old horse is bleeding
+dreadfully from the mouth. He has two bullets in the stomach, and I do
+not believe he can stand much longer. They have let up for the last few
+moments, but are still riding around us, their guns at 'ready.' Every
+now and then one of us fires, but the heat shimmer has come up over the
+ground since noon and the range is extraordinarily deceiving.
+
+"Three-ten.--Estorijo's horse is down, shot clean through the head. Mine
+has gone long since. We have made a rampart of the bodies.
+
+"Three-twenty.--They are at it again, tearing around us incredibly fast,
+every now and then narrowing the circle. The bullets are striking
+everywhere now. I have no rifle, do what I can with my revolver, and try
+to watch what is going on in front of me and warn the others when they
+press in too close on my side." [_Karslake nowhere accounts for the
+absence of his carbine. That a U. S. trooper should be without his gun
+while traversing a hostile country is a fact difficult to account for_.]
+
+"Three-thirty.--They have winged me--through the shoulder. Not bad, but
+it is bothersome. I sit up to fire, and Bunt gives me his knee on which
+to rest my right arm. When it hangs it is painful.
+
+"Quarter to four.--It is horrible. Bunt is dying. He cannot speak, the
+ball having gone through the lower part of his face, but back, near the
+neck. It happened through his trying to catch his horse. The animal was
+struck in the breast and tried to bolt. He reared up, backing away, and
+as we had to keep him close to us to serve as a bulwark Bunt followed
+him out from the little circle that we formed, his gun in one hand, his
+other gripping the bridle. I suppose every one of the eight fired at him
+simultaneously, and down he went. The pony dragged him a little ways
+still clutching the bridle, then fell itself, its whole weight rolling
+on Bunt's chest. We have managed to get him in and secure his rifle, but
+he will not live. None of us knows him very well. He only joined us
+about a week ago, but we all liked him from the start. He never spoke of
+himself, so we cannot tell much about him. Idaho says he has a wife in
+Torreon, but that he has not lived with her for two years; they did not
+get along well together, it seems. This is the first violent death I
+have ever seen, and it astonishes me to note how _unimportant_ it seems.
+How little anybody cares--after all. If I had been told of his
+death--the details of it, in a story or in the form of fiction--it is
+easily conceivable that it would have impressed me more with its
+importance than the actual scene has done. Possibly my mental vision is
+scaled to a larger field since Friday, and as the greater issues loom up
+one man more or less seems to be but a unit--more or less--in an eternal
+series. When he was hit he swung back against the horse, still holding
+by the rein. His feet slid from under him, and he cried out, 'My _God_!'
+just once. We divided his cartridges between us and Idaho passed me his
+carbine. The barrel was scorching hot.
+
+"They have drawn off a little and for fifteen minutes, though they still
+circle us slowly, there has been no firing. Forty cartridges left.
+Bunt's body (I think he is dead now) lies just back of me, and already
+the gnats--I can't speak of it."
+
+[_Karslake evidently made the next few entries at successive intervals
+of time, but neglected in his excitement to note the exact hour as
+above. We may gather that "They" made another attack and then repeated
+the assault so quickly that he had no chance to record it properly. I
+transcribe the entries in exactly the disjointed manner in which they
+occur in the original. The reference to the "fire" is unexplainable_.]
+
+"I shall do my best to set down exactly what happened and what I do and
+think, and what I see.
+
+"The heat-shimmer spoiled my aim, but I am quite sure that either
+
+"This last rush was the nearest. I had started to say that though the
+heat-shimmer was bad, either Estorijo or myself wounded one of their
+ponies. We saw him stumble.
+
+"Another rush----
+
+"Our ammunition
+
+"Only a few cartridges left.
+
+"The Red One like a whirlwind only fifty yards away.
+
+"We fire separately now as they sneak up under cover of our smoke.
+
+"We put the fire out. Estorijo--" [_It is possible that Karslake had
+begun here to chronicle the death of the Mexican_.]
+
+"I have killed the Spotted One. Just as he wheeled his horse I saw him
+in a line with the rifle-sights and let him have it squarely. It took
+him straight in the breast. I could _feel_ that shot strike. He went
+down like a sack of lead weights. By God, it was superb!
+
+"Later.--They have drawn off out of range again, and we are allowed a
+breathing-spell. Our ponies are either dead or dying, and we have
+dragged them around us to form a barricade. We lie on the ground behind
+the bodies and fire over them. There are twenty-seven cartridges left.
+
+"It is now mid-afternoon. Our plan is to stand them off if we can till
+night and then to try an escape between them. But to what purpose? They
+would trail us so soon as it was light.
+
+[Illustration: CAUGHT IN THE CIRCLE.
+
+The last stand of three troopers and a scout overtaken by a band of
+hostile Indians
+
+_Drawn by Frederic Remington. Courtesy of Collier's Weekly._]
+
+"We think now that they followed us without attacking for so long
+because they were waiting till the lay of the land suited them. They
+wanted--no doubt--an absolutely flat piece of country, with no
+depressions, no hills or stream-beds in which we could hide, but which
+should be high upon the edges, like an amphitheatre. They would get us
+in the centre and occupy the rim themselves. Roughly, this is the bit of
+desert which witnesses our 'last stand.' On three sides the ground
+swells a very little--the rise is not four feet. On the third side it is
+open, and so flat that even lying on the ground as we do we can see
+(leagues away) the San Jacinto hills--'from whence cometh no help.' It
+is all sand and sage, forever and forever. Even the sage is sparse--a
+bad place even for a coyote. The whole is flagellated with an
+intolerable heat and--now that the shooting is relaxed--oppressed with a
+benumbing, sodden silence--the silence of a primordial world. Such a
+silence as must have brooded over the Face of the Waters on the Eve of
+Creation--desolate, desolate, as though a colossal, invisible pillar--a
+pillar of the Infinitely Still, the pillar of Nirvana--rose forever into
+the empty blue, human life an atom of microscopic dust crushed under its
+basis, and at the summit God Himself. And I find time to ask myself why,
+at this of all moments of my tiny life-span, I am able to write as I do,
+registering impressions, keeping a finger upon the pulse of the spirit.
+But oh! if I had time now--time to write down the great thoughts that do
+throng the brain. They are there, I feel them, know them. No doubt the
+supreme exaltation of approaching death is the stimulus that one never
+experiences in the humdrum business of the day-to-day existence. Such
+mighty thoughts! Unintelligible, but if I had time I could spell them
+out, _and how I could write then_! I feel that the whole secret of Life
+is within my reach; I can almost grasp it; I seem to feel that in just
+another instant I can see it all plainly, as the archangels see it all
+the time, as the great minds of the world, the great philosophers, have
+seen it once or twice, vaguely--a glimpse here and there, after years of
+patient study. Seeing thus I should be the equal of the gods. But it is
+not meant to be. There is a sacrilege in it. I almost seem to understand
+why it is kept from us. But the very reason of this withholding is in
+itself a part of the secret. If I could only, only set it down!--for
+whose eyes? Those of a wandering hawk? God knows. But never mind. I
+should have spoken--once; should have said the great Word for which the
+World since the evening and the morning of the First Day has listened.
+God knows. God knows. What a whirl is this? Monstrous incongruity.
+Philosophy and fighting troopers. The Infinite and dead horses. There's
+humour for you. The Sublime takes off its hat to the Ridiculous. Send a
+cartridge clashing into the breech and speculate about the Absolute.
+Keep one eye on your sights and the other on Cosmos. Blow the reek of
+burned powder from before you so you may look over the edge of the abyss
+of the Great Primal Cause. Duck to the whistle of a bullet and commune
+with Schopenhauer. Perhaps I am a little mad. Perhaps I am supremely
+intelligent. But in either case I am not understandable to myself. How,
+then, be understandable to others? If these sheets of paper, this
+incoherence, is ever read, the others will understand it about as much
+as the investigating hawk. But none the less be it of record that I,
+Karslake, SAW. It reads like Revelations: 'I, John, saw.' It is just
+that. There is something apocalyptic in it all. I have seen a vision,
+but cannot--there is the pitch of anguish in the impotence--bear record.
+If time were allowed to order and arrange the words of description, this
+exaltation of spirit, in that very space of time, would relax, and the
+describer lapse back to the level of the average again before he could
+set down the things he saw, the things he thought. The machinery of the
+mind that could coin the great Word is automatic, and the very force
+that brings the die near the blank metal supplies the motor power of the
+reaction before the impression is made ... I stopped for an instant,
+looking up from the page, and at once the great vague panorama faded. I
+lost it all. Cosmos has dwindled again to an amphitheatre of sage and
+sand, a vista of distant purple hills, the shimmer of scorching alkali,
+and in the middle distance there, those figures, blanketed, beaded,
+feathered, rifle in hand.
+
+"But for a moment I stood on Patmos.
+
+"The Ridiculous jostles the elbow of the Sublime and shoulders it from
+place as Idaho announces that he has found two more cartridges in
+Estorijo's pockets.
+
+"They rushed again. Eight more cartridges gone. Twenty-one left. They
+rush in this manner--at first the circle, rapid beyond expression, one
+figure succeeding the other so swiftly that the dizzied vision loses
+count and instead of seven of them there appear to be seventy. Then
+suddenly, on some indistinguishable signal, they contract this circle,
+and through the jets of powder-smoke Idaho and I see them whirling past
+our rifle-sights not one hundred yards away. Then their fire suddenly
+slackens, the smoke drifts by, and we see them in the distance again,
+moving about us at a slow canter. Then the blessed breathing-spell,
+while we peer out to know if we have killed or not, and count our
+cartridges. We have laid the twenty-one loaded shells that remain in a
+row between us, and after our first glance outward to see if any of them
+are down, our next is inward at that ever-shrinking line of brass and
+lead. We do not talk much. This is the end. We know it now. All of a
+sudden the conviction that I am to die here has hardened within me. It
+is, all at once, absurd that I should ever have supposed that I was to
+reach La Paz, take the east-bound train and report at San Antonio. It
+seems to me that I _knew_, weeks ago, that our trip was to end thus. I
+knew it--somehow--in Sonora, while we were waiting orders, and I tell
+myself that if I had only stopped to really think of it I could have
+foreseen today's bloody business.
+
+"Later.--The Red One got off his horse and bound up the creature's leg.
+One of us hit him, evidently. A little higher, it would have reached the
+heart. Our aim is ridiculously bad--the heat-shimmer----
+
+"Later.--Idaho is wounded. This last time, for a moment, I was sure the
+end had come. They were within revolver range and we could feel the
+vibration of the ground under their ponies' hoofs. But suddenly they
+drew off. I have looked at my watch; it is four o'clock.
+
+"Four o'clock.--Idaho's wound is bad--a long, raking furrow in the right
+forearm. I bind it up for him, but he is losing a great deal of blood
+and is very weak.
+
+"They seem to know that we are only two by now, for with each rush they
+grow bolder. The slackening of our fire must tell them how scant is our
+ammunition.
+
+"Later.--This last was magnificent. The Red One and one other with lines
+of blue paint across his cheek galloped right at us. Idaho had been
+lying with his head and shoulders propped against the neck of his dead
+pony. His eyes were shut, and I thought he had fainted. But as he heard
+them coming he struggled up, first to his knees and then to his feet--to
+his full height--dragging his revolver from his hip with his left hand.
+The whole right arm swung useless. He was so weak that he could only
+lift the revolver half way--could not get the muzzle up. But though it
+sagged and dropped in his grip, he _would_ die fighting. When he fired
+the bullet threw up the sand not a yard from his feet, and then he fell
+on his face across the body of the horse. During the charge I fired as
+fast as I could, but evidently to no purpose. They must have thought
+that Idaho was dead, for as soon as they saw him getting to his feet
+they sheered their horses off and went by on either side of us. I have
+made Idaho comfortable. He is unconscious; have used the last of the
+water to give him a drink. He does not seem----
+
+"They continue to circle us. Their fire is incessant, but very wild. So
+long as I keep my head down I am comparatively safe.
+
+"Later.--I think Idaho is dying. It seems he was hit a second time when
+he stood up to fire. Estorijo is still breathing; I thought him dead
+long since.
+
+"Four-ten.--Idaho gone. Twelve cartridges left. Am all alone now.
+
+"Four-twenty-five.--I am very weak." [_Karslake was evidently wounded
+sometime between ten and twenty-five minutes after four. His notes make
+no mention of the fact_.] "Eight cartridges remain. I leave my library
+to my brother, Walter Patterson Karslake; all my personal effects to my
+parents, except the picture of myself taken in Baltimore in 1897, which
+I direct to be" [_the next lines are undecipherable_] "...at
+Washington, D. C., as soon as possible. I appoint as my literary--
+
+"Four forty-five.--Seven cartridges. Very weak and unable to move lower
+part of my body. Am in no pain. They rode in very close. The Red One
+is---- An intolerable thirst----
+
+"I appoint as my literary executor my brother, Patterson Karslake. The
+notes on 'Coronado in New Mexico' should be revised.
+
+"My death occurred in western Arizona, April 15th, at the hands of a
+roving band of Hunt-in-the-Morning's bucks. They have----
+
+"Five o'clock.--The last cartridge gone.
+
+"Estorijo still breathing. I cover his face with my hat. Their fire is
+incessant. Am much weaker. Convey news of death to Patterson Karslake,
+care of Corn Exchange Bank, New York City.
+
+"Five-fifteen--about.--They have ceased firing, and draw together in a
+bunch. I have four cartridges left" [_see conflicting note dated five
+o'clock_], "but am extremely weak. Idaho was the best friend I had in
+all the Southwest. I wish it to be known that he was a generous,
+open-hearted fellow, a kindly man, clean of speech, and absolutely
+unselfish. He may be known as follows: Sandy beard, long sandy hair,
+scar on forehead, about six feet one inch in height. His real name is
+James Monroe Herndon; his profession that of government scout. Notify
+Mrs. Herndon, Trinidad, New Mexico.
+
+"The writer is Arthur Staples Karslake, dark hair, height five feet
+eleven, body will be found near that of Herndon.
+
+"Luis Estorijo, Mexican----
+
+"Later.--Two more cartridges.
+
+"Five-thirty.--Estorijo dead.
+
+"It is half-past five in the afternoon of April fifteenth. They followed
+us from the eleventh--Friday--till to-day. It will
+
+[_The MS. ends here_.]
+
+
+
+
+TWO HEARTS THAT BEAT AS ONE
+
+
+"Which I puts it up as how you ain't never heard about that time that
+Hardenberg and Strokher--the Englisher--had a friendly go with bare
+knuckles--ten rounds it was--all along o' a feemale woman?"
+
+It is a small world and I had just found out that my friend, Bunt
+McBride--horse-wrangler, miner, faro-dealer and bone-gatherer--whose
+world was the plains and ranges of the Great Southwest, was known of the
+Three Black Crows, Hardenberg, Strokher and Ally Bazan, and had even
+foregathered with them on more than one of their ventures for Cyrus
+Ryder's Exploitation Agency--ventures that had nothing of the desert in
+them, but that involved the sea, and the schooner, and the taste of the
+great-lunged canorous trades.
+
+"Ye ain't never crossed the trail o' that mournful history?"
+
+I professed my ignorance and said:
+
+"They fought?"
+
+"Mister Man," returned Bunt soberly, as one broaching a subject not to
+be trifled with, "They sure did. Friendly-like, y'know--like as how two
+high-steppin', sassy gents figures out to settle any little strained
+relations--friendly-like but considerable keen."
+
+He took a pinch of tobacco from his pouch and a bit of paper and rolled
+a cigarette in the twinkling of an eye, using only one hand, in true
+Mexican style.
+
+"Now," he said, as he drew the first long puff to the very bottom of the
+leathern valves he calls his lungs. "Now, I'm a-goin' for to relate that
+same painful proceedin' to you, just so as you kin get a line on the
+consumin' and devourin' foolishness o' male humans when they's a woman
+in the wind. Woman," said Bunt, wagging his head thoughtfully at the
+water, "woman is a weather-breeder. Mister Dixon, they is three things
+I'm skeered of. The last two I don't just rightly call to mind at this
+moment, but the first is woman. When I meets up with a feemale woman on
+my trail, I sheers off some prompt, Mr. Dixon; I sheers off. An'
+Hardenberg," he added irrelevantly, "would a-took an' married this
+woman, so he would. Yes, an' Strokher would, too."
+
+"Was there another man?" I asked.
+
+"No," said Bunt. Then he began to chuckle behind his mustaches. "Yes,
+they was." He smote a thigh. "They sure was another man for fair. Well,
+now, Mr. Man, lemmee tell you the whole '_how_.'
+
+"It began with me bein' took into a wild-eyed scheme that that maverick,
+Cy Ryder, had cooked up for the Three Crows. They was a row down
+Gortamalar way. Same gesabe named Palachi--Barreto Palachi--findin'
+times dull an' the boys some off their feed, ups an' says to hisself,
+'Exercise is wot I needs. I will now take an' overthrow the blame
+Gover'ment.' Well, this same Palachi rounds up a bunch o' _insurrectos_
+an' begins pesterin' an' badgerin' an' hectorin' the Gover'ment; an'
+r'arin' round an' bellerin' an' makin' a procession of hisself, till he
+sure pervades the landscape; an' before you knows what, lo'n beholt,
+here's a reel live Revolution-Thing cayoodlin' in the scenery, an' the
+Gover'ment is plum bothered.
+
+"They rounds up the gesabe at last at a place on the coast, but he
+escapes as easy as how-do-you-do. He can't, howsomever, git back to his
+_insurrectos_; the blame Gover'ment being in possession of all the
+trails leadin' into the hinterland; so says he, 'What for a game would
+it be for me to hyke up to 'Frisco an' git in touch with my financial
+backers an' conspirate to smuggle down a load o' arms?' Which the same
+he does, and there's where the Three Black Crows an' me begin to take a
+hand.
+
+"Cy Ryder gives us the job o' taking the schooner down to a certain
+point on the Gortamalar coast and there delivering to the agent o' the
+gazabo three thousand stand o' forty-eight Winchesters.
+
+"When we gits this far into the game Ryder ups and says:
+
+"'Boys, here's where I cashes right in. You sets right to me for the
+schooner and the cargo. But you goes to Palachi's agent over 'crost the
+bay for instructions and directions.'
+
+"'But,' says the Englisher, Strokher, 'this bettin' a blind play don't
+suit our hand. Why not' says he, 'make right up to Mister Palachi
+hisself?'
+
+"'No,' says Ryder, 'No, boys. Ye can't. The Signor is lying as low as a
+toad in a wheeltrack these days, because o' the pryin' and meddlin'
+disposition o' the local authorities. No,' he says, 'ye must have your
+palaver with the agent which she is a woman,' an' thereon I groans low
+and despairin'.
+
+"So soon as he mentions 'feemale' I _knowed_ trouble was in the
+atmosphere. An' right there is where I sure looses my presence o' mind.
+What I should a-done was to say, 'Mister Ryder, Hardenberg and gents
+all: You're good boys an' you drinks and deals fair, an' I loves you all
+with a love that can never, never die for the terms o' your natural
+lives, an' may God have mercy on your souls; _but_ I ain't keepin' case
+on this 'ere game no longer. Woman and me is mules an' music. We ain't
+never made to ride in the same go-cart Good-by.' That-all is wot I
+should ha' said. But I didn't. I walked right plum into the sloo, like
+the mudhead that I was, an' got mired for fair--jes as I might a-knowed
+I would.
+
+"Well, Ryder gives us a address over across the bay an' we fair hykes
+over there all along o' as crool a rain as ever killed crops. We finds
+the place after awhile, a lodgin'-house all lorn and loony, set down all
+by itself in the middle o' some real estate extension like a tepee in a
+'barren'--a crazy 'modern' house all gimcrack and woodwork and frostin',
+with never another place in so far as you could hear a coyote yelp.
+
+"Well, we bucks right up an' asks o' the party at the door if the
+Signorita Esperanza Ulivarri--that was who Ryder had told us to ask
+for--might be concealed about the premises, an' we shows Cy Ryder's
+note. The party that opened the door was a Greaser, the worst looking I
+ever clapped eyes on--looked like the kind wot 'ud steal the coppers off
+his dead grandmother's eyes. Anyhow, he says to come in, gruff-like, an'
+to wait, _poco tiempo_.
+
+"Well, we waited _moucho tiempo--muy moucho_, all a-settin' on the edge
+of the sofy, with our hats on our knees, like philly-loo birds on a
+rail, and a-countin' of the patterns in the wall-paper to pass the time
+along. An' Hardenberg, who's got to do the talkin', gets the fidgets
+byne-by; and because he's only restin' the toes o' his feet on the
+floor, his knees begin jiggerin'; an' along o' watchin' him, _my_ knees
+begin to go, an' then Strokher's and then Ally Bazan's. An' there we sat
+all in a row and jiggered an' jiggered. Great snakes, it makes me sick
+to the stummick to think o' the idjeets we were.
+
+"Then after a long time we hears a rustle o' silk petticoats, an' we all
+grabs holt o' one another an' looks scared-like, out from under our
+eyebrows. An' then--then, Mister Man, they walks into that bunk-house
+parlour the loveliest-lookin' young feemale woman that ever wore hair.
+
+"She was lovelier than Mary Anderson; she was lovelier than Lotta. She
+was tall, an' black-haired, and had a eye ... well, I dunno; when she
+gave you the littlest flicker o' that same eye, you felt it was about
+time to take an' lie right down an' say, 'I would esteem it, ma'am, a
+sure smart favour if you was to take an' wipe your boots on my
+waistcoat, jus' so's you could hear my heart a-beatin'. That's the kind
+o' feemale woman _she_ was.
+
+"Well, when Hardenberg had caught his second wind, we begins to talk
+business.
+
+"'An' you're to take a passenger back with you,' says Esperanza after
+awhile.
+
+"'What for a passenger might it be?' says Hardenberg.
+
+"She fished out her calling-card at that and tore it in two an' gave
+Hardenberg one-half.
+
+"'It's the party,' she says, 'that'll come aboard off San Diego on your
+way down an' who will show up the other half o' the card--the half I
+have here an' which the same I'm goin' to mail to him. An' you be sure
+the halves fit before you let him come aboard. An' when that party comes
+aboard,' she says, 'he's to take over charge.'
+
+"'Very good,' says Hardenberg, mincing an' silly like a chessy cat
+lappin' cream. 'Very good, ma'am; your orders shall be obeyed.' He sure
+said it just like that, as if he spoke out o' a story-book. An' I kicked
+him under the table for it.
+
+"Then we palavers a whole lot an' settles the way the thing is to be
+run, an' fin'ly, when we'd got as far as could be that day, the
+Signorita stood up an' says:
+
+"'Now me good fellows.' 'Twas Spanish she spoke. 'Now, me good fellows,
+you must drink a drink with me.' She herds us all up into the
+dining-room and fetches out--not whisky, mind you--but a great, fat,
+green-and-gold bottle o' champagne, an' when Ally Bazan has fired it
+off, she fills our glasses--dinky little flat glasses that looked like
+flower vases. Then she stands up there before us, fine an' tall, all in
+black silk, an' puts her glass up high an' sings out----
+
+"'To the Revolution!'
+
+"An' we all solemn-like says, 'To the Revolution,' an' crooks our
+elbows. When we-all comes to, about half an hour later, we're in the
+street outside, havin' jus' said good-by to the Signorita. We-all are
+some quiet the first block or so, and then Hardenberg says--stoppin'
+dead in his tracks:
+
+"'I pauses to remark that when a certain young feemale party havin'
+black hair an' a killin' eye gets good an' ready to travel up the centre
+aisle of a church, I know the gent to show her the way, which he is six
+feet one in his stocking-feet, some freckled across the nose, an' shoots
+with both hands.'
+
+"'Which the same observations,' speaks up Strokher, twirlin' his yeller
+lady-killer, 'which the same observations,' he says, 'has my hearty
+indorsement an' cooperation savin' in the particular of the description
+o' the gent. The gent is five foot eleven high, three feet thick, is the
+only son of my mother, an' has yeller mustaches and a buck tooth.'
+
+"'He don't qualify,' puts in Hardenberg. 'First, because he's a
+Englisher, and second, because he's up again a American--and besides, he
+has a tooth that's bucked.'
+
+"'Buck or no buck,' flares out Strokher, 'wot might be the meanin' o'
+that remark consernin' being a Englisher?'
+
+"'The fact o' his bein' English,' says Hardenberg, 'is only half the
+hoe-handle. 'Tother half being the fact that the first-named gent is all
+American. No Yank ain't never took no dust from aft a Englisher, whether
+it were war, walkin'-matches, or women.'
+
+"'But they's a Englisher,' sings out Strokher, 'not forty miles from
+here as can nick the nose o' a freckled Yank if so be occasion require.'
+
+"Now ain't that plum foolish-like," observed Bunt, philosophically.
+"Ain't it plum foolish-like o' them two gesabes to go flyin' up in the
+air like two he-hens on a hot plate--for nothin' in the world but
+because a neat lookin' feemale woman has looked at 'em some soft?
+
+"Well, naturally, we others--Ally Bazan an' me--we others throws it into
+'em pretty strong about bein' more kinds of blame fools than a pup with
+a bug; an' they simmers down some, but along o' the way home I kin see
+as how they're a-glarin' at each other, an' a-drawin' theirselves up
+proud-like an' presumptchoous, an' I groans again, not loud but deep, as
+the Good Book says.
+
+"We has two or three more palavers with the Signorita Esperanza and
+stacks the deck to beat the harbor police and the Customs people an'
+all, an' to nip down the coast with our contraband. An' each time we
+chins with the Signorita there's them two locoes steppin' and sidle'n'
+around her, actin' that silly-like that me and Ally Bazan takes an'
+beats our heads agin' the walls so soon as we're alone just because
+we're that pizen mortified.
+
+"Fin'ly comes the last talky-talk an' we're to sail away next day an'
+mebbee snatch the little Joker through or be took an' hung by the _Costa
+Guardas_.
+
+"An' 'Good-by,' says Hardenberg to Esperanza, in a faintin', die-away
+voice like a kitten with a cold. 'An' ain't we goin' to meet no more?'
+
+"'I sure hopes as much,' puts in Strokher, smirkin' so's you'd think he
+was a he-milliner sellin' a bonnet. 'I hope,' says he, 'our delightful
+acquaintanceship ain't a-goin' for to end abrupt this-a-way.'
+
+"'Oh, you nice, big Mister Men,' pipes up the Signorita in English, 'we
+will meet down there in Gortamalar soon again, yes, because I go down by
+the vapour carriages to-morrow.'
+
+"'Unprotected, too,' says Hardenberg, waggin' his fool head. 'An' so
+young!'
+
+"Holy Geronimo! I don't know what more fool drivelin' they had, but they
+fin'ly comes away. Ally Bazan and me rounds 'em up and conducts 'em to
+the boat an' puts 'em to bed like as if they was little--or drunk, an'
+the next day--or next night, rather--about one o'clock, we slips the
+heel ropes and hobbles o' the schooner quiet as a mountain-lion stalking
+a buck, and catches the out-tide through the gate o' the bay. Lord, we
+was some keyed up, lemmee tell you, an' Ally Bazan and Hardenberg was at
+the fore end o' the boat with their guns ready in case o' bein' asked
+impert'nent questions by the patrol-boats.
+
+"Well, how-some-ever, we nips out with the little Jokers (they was writ
+in the manifest as minin' pumps) an' starts south. This 'ere _pasear_
+down to Gortamalar is the first time I goes a-gallying about on what the
+Three Crows calls 'blue water'; and when that schooner hit the bar I
+begins to remember that my stummick and inside arrangements ain't made
+o' no chilled steel, nor yet o' rawhide. First I gits plum sad, and
+shivery, and I feels as mean an' pore as a prairie-dog w'ich 'as eat a
+horned toad back'ards. I goes to Ally Bazan and gives it out as how I'm
+going for to die, an' I puts it up that I'm sure sad and depressed-like;
+an' don't care much about life nohow; an' that present surroundin's lack
+that certain undescribable charm. I tells him that I _knows_ the ship is
+goin' to sink afore we git over the bar. Waves!--they was higher'n the
+masts; and I've rode some fair lively sun-fishers in my time, but I
+ain't never struck anythin' like the r'arin' and buckin' and
+high-an'-lofty tumblin' that that same boat went through with those
+first few hours after we had come out.
+
+"But Ally Bazan tells me to go downstairs in the boat an' lie up quiet,
+an' byne-by I do feel better. By next day I kin sit up and take solid
+food again. An' then's when I takes special notice o' the everlastin'
+foolishness o' Strokner and Hardenberg.
+
+"You'd a thought each one o' them two mush-heads was tryin' to act the
+part of a ole cow which has had her calf took. They goes a-moonin' about
+the boat that mournful it 'ud make you yell jus' out o' sheer
+nervousness. First one 'ud up an' hold his head on his hand an' lean on
+the fence-rail that ran around the boat, and sigh till he'd raise his
+pants clean outa the top o' his boots. An' then the other 'ud go off in
+another part o' the boat an' _he'd_ sigh an' moon an' take on fit to
+sicken a coyote.
+
+"But byne-by--we're mebbee six days to the good o' 'Frisco--byne-by they
+two gits kind o' sassy along o' each t'other, an' they has a
+heart-to-heart talk and puts it up as how either one o' 'em 'ud stand to
+win so only the t'other was out o' the game.
+
+"'It's double or nothing,' says Hardenberg, who is somethin' o' a card
+sharp, 'for either you or me, Stroke; an' if you're agreeable I'll play
+you a round o' jacks for the chance at the Signorita--the loser to pull
+out o' the running for good an' all.'
+
+"No, Strokher don't come in on no such game, he says. He wins her, he
+says, as a man, and not as no poker player. No, nor he won't throw no
+dice for the chance o' winnin' Esperanza, nor he won't flip no coin, nor
+yet 'rastle. 'But,' says he all of a sudden, 'I'll tell you which I'll
+do. You're a big, thick, strappin' hulk o' a two-fisted dray-horse,
+Hardie, an' I ain't no effete an' digenerate one-lunger myself. Here's
+wot I propose--that we-all takes an' lays out a sixteen-foot ring on the
+quarterdeck, an' that the raw-boned Yank and the stodgy Englisher strips
+to the waist, an' all-friendly-like, settles the question by Queensbury
+rules an' may the best man win.'
+
+"Hardenberg looks him over.
+
+"'An' wot might be your weight?' says he. 'I don't figure on hurtin' of
+you, if so be you're below my class.'
+
+"'I fights at a hunder and seventy,' says Strokher.
+
+"'An' me,' says Hardenberg, 'at a hunder an' seventy-five. We're
+matched.'
+
+"'Is it a go?' inquires Strokher.
+
+"'You bet your great-gran'mammy's tortis-shell chessy cat it's a go,'
+says Hardenberg, prompt as a hop-frog catching flies.
+
+"We don't lose no time trying to reason with 'em, for they is sure keen
+on havin' the go. So we lays out a ring by the rear end o' the deck, an'
+runs the schooner in till we're in the lee o' the land, an' she ridin'
+steady on her pins.
+
+"Then along o' about four o'clock on a fine still day we lays the boat
+to, as they say, an' folds up the sail, an' havin' scattered resin in
+the ring (which it ain't no ring, but a square o' ropes on posts), we
+says all is ready.
+
+"Ally Bazan, he's referee, an' me, I'm the time-keeper which I has to
+ring the ship's bell every three minutes to let 'em know to quit an'
+that the round is over.
+
+"We gets 'em into the ring, each in his own corner, squattin' on a
+bucket, the time-keeper bein' second to Hardenberg an' the referee being
+second to Strokher. An' then, after they has shuk hands, I climbs up on'
+the chicken-coop an' hollers 'Time' an' they begins.
+
+"Mister Man, I've saw Tim Henan at his best, an' I've saw Sayres when he
+was a top-notcher, an' likewise several other irregler boxin' sharps
+that were sure tough tarriers. Also I've saw two short-horn bulls
+arguin' about a question o' leadership, but so help me Bob--the fight I
+saw that day made the others look like a young ladies' quadrille. Oh, I
+ain't goin' to tell o' that mill in detail, nor by rounds. Rounds! After
+the first five minutes they _wa'n't_ no rounds. I rung the blame bell
+till I rung her loose an' Ally Bazan yells 'break-away' an' 'time's up'
+till he's black in the face, but you could no more separate them two
+than you could put the brakes on a blame earthquake.
+
+"At about suppertime we pulled 'em apart. We could do it by then, they
+was both so gone; an' jammed each one o' 'em down in their corners. I
+rings my bell good an' plenty, an' Ally Bazan stands up on a bucket in
+the middle o' the ring an' says:
+
+"'I declare this 'ere glove contest a draw.'
+
+"An' draw it sure was. They fit for two hours stiddy an' never a one got
+no better o' the other. They give each other lick for lick as fast an'
+as steady as they could stand to it. 'Rastlin', borin' in, boxin'--all
+was alike. The one was just as good as t'other. An' both willin' to the
+very last.
+
+"When Ally Bazan calls it a draw, they gits up and wobbles toward each
+other an' shakes hands, and Hardenberg he says:
+
+"'Stroke, I thanks you a whole lot for as neat a go as ever I mixed in.'
+
+"An' Strokher answers up:
+
+"'Hardie, I loves you better'n ever. You'se the first man I've met up
+with which I couldn't do for--an' I've met up with some scraggy
+propositions in my time, too.'
+
+"Well, they two is a sorry-lookin' pair o' birds by the time we runs
+into San Diego harbour next night. They was fine lookin' objects for
+fair, all bruises and bumps. You remember now we was to take on a party
+at San Diego who was to show t'other half o' Esperanza's card, an'
+thereafterward to boss the job.
+
+"Well, we waits till nightfall an' then slides in an' lays to off a
+certain pile o' stone, an' shows two green lights and one white every
+three and a half minutes for half a hour--this being a signal.
+
+"They is a moon, an' we kin see pretty well. After we'd signaled about a
+hour, mebbee, we gits the answer--a one-minute green flare, and
+thereafterward we makes out a rowboat putting out and comin' towards us.
+They is two people in the boat. One is the gesabe at the oars an' the
+other a party sitting in the hinder end.
+
+"Ally Bazan an' me, an' Strokher an' Hardenberg, we's all leanin' over
+the fence a-watchin'; when all to once I ups an' groans some sad. The
+party in the hinder end o' the boat bein' feemale.
+
+"'Ain't we never goin' to git shut of 'em?' says I; but the words ain't
+no more'n off my teeth when Strokher pipes up:
+
+"'It's _she_,' says he, gaspin' as though shot hard.
+
+"'Wot!' cries Hardenberg, sort of mystified, 'Oh, I'm sure a-dreamin'!
+he says, just that silly-like.
+
+"'An' the mugs we've got!' says Strokher.
+
+"An' they both sets to swearin' and cussin' to beat all I ever heard.
+
+"'I can't let her see me so bunged up,' says Hardenberg, doleful-like,
+'Oh, whatever is to be done?'
+
+"'An' _I_ look like a real genuine blown-in-the-bottle pug,' whimpers
+Strokher. 'Never mind,' says he, 'we must face the music. We'll tell her
+these are sure honourable scars, got because we fit for her.'
+
+"Well, the boat comes up an' the feemale party jumps out and comes up
+the let-down stairway, onto the deck. Without sayin' a word she hands
+Hardenberg the half o' the card and he fishes out his half an' matches
+the two by the light o' a lantern.
+
+"By this time the rowboat has gone a little ways off, an' then at last
+Hardenberg says:
+
+"'Welkum aboard, Signorita.'
+
+"And Strokher cuts in with----
+
+"'We thought it was to be a man that 'ud join us here to take command,
+but _you_,' he says--an' oh, butter wouldn't a-melted in his mouth--'But
+_you_ he says, 'is always our mistress.
+
+"'Very right, _bueno_. Me good fellows,' says the Signorita, 'but don't
+you be afraid that they's no man is at the head o' this business.' An'
+with that the party chucks off hat an' skirts, _and I'll be Mexican if
+it wa'n't a man after all!_
+
+"'I'm the Signor Barreto Palachi, gentlemen,' says he. 'The gringo
+police who wanted for to arrest me made the disguise necessary.
+Gentlemen, I regret to have been obliged to deceive such gallant
+_compadres_; but war knows no law.'
+
+"Hardenberg and Strokher gives one look at the Signor and another at
+their own spiled faces, then:
+
+"'Come back here with the boat!' roars Hardenberg over the side, and
+with that--(upon me word you'd a-thought they two both were moved with
+the same spring)--over they goes into the water and strikes out hands
+over hands for the boat as hard as ever they kin lay to it. The boat
+meets 'em--Lord knows what the party at the oars thought--they climbs in
+an' the last I sees of 'em they was puttin' for shore--each havin' taken
+a oar from the boatman, an' they sure was makin' that boat _hum_.
+
+"Well, we sails away eventually without 'em; an' a year or more
+afterward I crosses their trail again in Cy Ryder's office in 'Frisco."
+
+"Did you ask them about it all?" said I.
+
+"Mister Man," observed Bunt. "I'm several kinds of a fool; I know it.
+But sometimes I'm wise. I wishes for to live as long as I can, an' die
+when I can't help it. I does _not_, neither there, nor thereafterward,
+ever make no joke, nor yet no alloosion about, or concerning the
+Signorita Esperanza Palachi in the hearin' o' Hardenberg an' Strokher.
+I've seen--(ye remember)--both those boys use their fists--an' likewise
+Hardenberg, as he says hisself, shoots with both hands."
+
+
+
+
+THE DUAL PERSONALITY OF SLICK DICK NICKERSON
+
+
+I.
+
+On a certain morning in the spring of the year, the three men who were
+known as the Three Black Crows called at the office of "The President of
+the Pacific and Oriental Flotation Company," situated in an obscure
+street near San Francisco's water-front. They were Strokher, the tall,
+blond, solemn, silent Englishman; Hardenberg, the American, dry of
+humour, shrewd, resourceful, who bargained like a Vermonter and sailed a
+schooner like a Gloucester cod-fisher; and in their company, as ever
+inseparable from the other two, came the little colonial, nicknamed, for
+occult reasons, "Ally Bazan," a small, wiry man, excitable, vociferous,
+who was without fear, without guile and without money.
+
+When Hardenberg, who was always spokesman for the Three Crows, had sent
+in their names, they were admitted at once to the inner office of the
+"President." The President was an old man, bearded like a prophet, with
+a watery blue eye and a forehead wrinkled like an orang's. He spoke to
+the Three Crows in the manner of one speaking to friends he has not seen
+in some time.
+
+"Well, Mr. Ryder," began Hardenberg. "We called around to see if you had
+anything fer us this morning. I don't mind telling you that we're at
+liberty jus' now. Anything doing?"
+
+Ryder fingered his beard distressfully. "Very little, Joe; very little."
+
+"Got any wrecks?"
+
+"Not a wreck."
+
+Hardenberg turned to a great map that hung on the wall by Ryder's desk.
+It was marked in places by red crosses, against which were written
+certain numbers and letters. Hardenberg put his finger on a small island
+south of the Marquesas group and demanded: "What might be H. 33, Mr.
+President?"
+
+"Pearl Island," answered the President. "Davidson is on that job."
+
+"Or H. 125?" Hardenberg indicated a point in the Gilbert group.
+
+"Guano deposits. That's promised."
+
+"Hallo! You're up in the Aleutians. I make out. 20 A.--what's that?"
+
+"Old government telegraph wire--line abandoned--finest drawn-copper
+wire. I've had three boys at that for months."
+
+"What's 301? This here, off the Mexican coast?"
+
+The President, unable to remember, turned to his one clerk: "Hyers,
+what's 301? Isn't that Peterson?"
+
+The clerk ran his finger down a column: "No, sir; 301 is the Whisky
+Ship."
+
+"Ah! So it is. I remember. _You_ remember, too, Joe. Little schooner,
+the _Tropic Bird_--sixty days out from Callao--five hundred cases of
+whisky aboard--sunk in squall. It was thirty years ago. Think of five
+hundred cases of thirty-year-old whisky! There's money in that if I can
+lay my hands on the schooner. Suppose you try that, you boys--on a
+twenty per cent. basis. Come now, what do you say?"
+
+"Not for _five_ per cent.," declared Hardenberg. "How'd we raise her?
+How'd we know how deep she lies? Not for Joe. What's the matter with
+landing arms down here in Central America for Bocas and his gang?"
+
+"I'm out o' that, Joe. Too much competition."
+
+"What's doing here in Tahiti--No. 88? It ain't lettered."
+
+Once more the President consulted his books.
+
+"Ah!--88. Here we are. Cache o' illicit pearls. I had it looked up.
+Nothing in it."
+
+"Say, Cap'n!"--Hardenberg's eye had traveled to the upper edge of the
+map--"whatever did you strike up here in Alaska? At Point Barrow, s'elp
+me Bob! It's 48 B."
+
+The President stirred uneasily in his place. "Well, I ain't quite worked
+that scheme out, Joe. But I smell the deal. There's a Russian post along
+there some'eres. Where they catch sea-otters. And the skins o'
+sea-otters are selling this very day for seventy dollars at any port in
+China."
+
+"I s'y," piped up Ally Bazan, "I knows a bit about that gyme. They's a
+bally kind o' Lum-tums among them Chinese as sports those syme skins on
+their bally clothes--as a mark o' rank, d'ye see."
+
+"Have you figured at all on the proposition, Cap'n?" inquired
+Hardenberg.
+
+"There's risk in it, Joe; big risk," declared the President nervously.
+"But I'd only ask fifteen per cent."
+
+"You _have_ worked out the scheme, then."
+
+"Well--ah--y'see, there's the risk, and--ah--" Suddenly Ryder leaned
+forward, his watery blue eyes glinting: "Boys, it's a _jewel_. It's just
+your kind. I'd a-sent for you, to try on this very scheme, if you hadn't
+shown up. You kin have the _Bertha Millner_--I've a year's charter o'
+her from Wilbur--and I'll only ask you fifteen per cent. of the _net_
+profits--_net_, mind you."
+
+"I ain't buyin' no dead horse, Cap'n," returned Hardenberg, "but I'll
+say this: we pay no fifteen per cent."
+
+"Banks and the Ruggles were daft to try it and give me twenty-five."
+
+"An' where would Banks land the scheme? I know him. You put him on that
+German cipher-code job down Honolulu way, an' it cost you about a
+thousand before you could pull out. We'll give you seven an' a half."
+
+"Ten," declared Ryder, "ten, Joe, at the very least. Why, how much do
+you suppose just the stores would cost me? And Point Barrow--why, Joe,
+that's right up in the Arctic. I got to run the risk o' you getting the
+_Bertha_ smashed in the ice."
+
+"What do _we_ risk?" retorted Hardenberg; and it was the monosyllabic
+Strokher who gave the answer:
+
+"Chokee, by Jove!"
+
+"Ten is fair. It's ten or nothing," answered Hardenberg.
+
+"Gross, then, Joe. Ten on the gross--or I give the job to the Ruggles
+and Banks."
+
+"Who's your bloomin' agent?" put in Ally Bazan.
+
+"Nickerson. I sent him with Peterson on that _Mary Archer_ wreck scheme.
+An' you know what Peterson says of him--didn't give him no trouble at
+all. One o' my best men, boys."
+
+"There have been," observed Strokher stolidly, "certain stories told
+about Nickerson. Not that _I_ wish to seem suspicious, but I put it to
+you as man to man."
+
+"Ay," exclaimed Ally Bazan. "He was fair nutty once, they tell me. Threw
+some kind o' bally fit an' come aout all skew-jee'd in his mind. Forgot
+his nyme an' all. I s'y, how abaout him, anyw'y?"
+
+"Boys," said Ryder, "I'll tell you. Nickerson--yes, I know the yarns
+about him. It was this way--y'see, I ain't keeping anything from you,
+boys. Two years ago he was a Methody preacher in Santa Clara. Well, he
+was what they call a revivalist, and he was holding forth one blazin'
+hot day out in the sun when all to once he goes down, _flat,_ an' don't
+come round for the better part o' two days. When he wakes up he's
+_another person;_ he'd forgot his name, forgot his job, forgot the whole
+blamed shooting-match. _And he ain't never remembered them since._ The
+doctors have names for that kind o' thing. It seems it does happen now
+and again. Well, he turned to an' began sailoring first off--soon as the
+hospitals and medicos were done with him--an' him not having any friends
+as you might say, he was let go his own gait. He got to be third mate of
+some kind o' dough-dish down Mexico way; and then I got hold o' him an'
+took him into the Comp'ny. He's been with me ever since. He ain't got
+the faintest kind o' recollection o' his Methody days, an' believes he's
+always been a sailorman. Well, that's _his_ business, ain't it? If he
+takes my orders an' walks chalk, what do I care about his Methody game?
+There, boys, is the origin, history and development of Slick Dick
+Nickerson. If you take up this sea-otter deal and go to Point Barrow,
+naturally Nick has got to go as owner's agent and representative of the
+Comp'ny. But I couldn't send a easier fellow to get along with. Honest,
+now, I couldn't. Boys, you think over the proposition between now and
+tomorrow an' then come around and let me know."
+
+And the upshot of the whole matter was that one month later the _Bertha
+Millner_, with Nickerson, Hardenberg, Strokher and Ally Bazan on board,
+cleared from San Francisco, bound--the papers were beautifully
+precise--for Seattle and Tacoma with a cargo of general merchandise.
+
+As a matter of fact, the bulk of her cargo consisted of some odd
+hundreds of very fine lumps of rock--which as ballast is cheap by the
+ton--and some odd dozen cases of conspicuously labeled champagne.
+
+The Pacific and Oriental Flotation Company made this champagne out of
+Rhine wine, effervescent salts, raisins, rock candy and alcohol. It was
+from the same stock of wine of which Ryder had sold some thousand cases
+to the Coreans the year before.
+
+
+II
+
+"Not that I care a curse," said Strokher, the Englishman. "But I put it
+to you squarely that this voyage lacks that certain indescribable
+charm."
+
+The _Bertha Millner_ was a fortnight out, and the four adventurers--or,
+rather, the three adventurers and Nickerson--were lame in every joint,
+red-eyed from lack of sleep, half-starved, wholly wet and unequivocally
+disgusted. They had had heavy weather from the day they bade farewell to
+the whistling buoy off San Francisco Bay until the moment when even
+patient, docile, taciturn Strokher had at last--in his own
+fashion--rebelled.
+
+"Ain't I a dam' fool? Ain't I a proper lot? Gard strike me if I don't
+chuck fer fair after this. Wot'd I come to sea fer--an' this 'ere go is
+the worst I _ever_ knew--a baoat no bigger'n a bally bath-tub, head
+seas, livin' gyles the clock 'round, wet food, wet clothes, wet bunks.
+Caold till, by cricky! I've lost the feel o' mee feet. An' wat for? For
+the bloomin' good chanst o' a slug in mee guts. That's wat for." At
+little intervals the little vociferous colonial, Ally Bazan--he was
+red-haired and speckled--capered with rage, shaking his fists.
+
+But Hardenberg only shifted his cigar to the other corner of his mouth.
+He knew Ally Bazan, and knew that the little fellow would have jeered at
+the offer of a first-cabin passage back to San Francisco in the
+swiftest, surest, steadiest passenger steamer that ever wore paint. So
+he remarked: "I ain't ever billed this promenade as a Coney Island
+picnic, I guess."
+
+Nickerson--Slick Dick, the supercargo--was all that Hardenberg, who
+captained the schooner, could expect. He never interfered, never
+questioned; never protested in the name or interests of the Company when
+Hardenberg "hung on" in the bleak, bitter squalls till the _Bertha_ was
+rail under and the sails hard as iron.
+
+If it was true that he had once been a Methody revivalist no one, to
+quote Alia Bazan, "could a' smelled it off'n him." He was a
+black-bearded, scrawling six-footer, with a voice like a steam siren and
+a fist like a sledge. He carried two revolvers, spoke of the Russians at
+Point Barrow as the "Boomskys," and boasted if it came to _that_ he'd
+engage to account for two of them, would shove their heads into their
+boot-legs and give them the running scrag, by God so he would!
+
+Slowly, laboriously, beset in blinding fogs, swept with, icy rains,
+buffeted and mauled and man-handled by the unending assaults of the sea,
+the _Bertha Millner_ worked her way northward up that iron coast--till
+suddenly she entered an elysium.
+
+Overnight she seemed to have run into it: it was a world of green,
+wooded islands, of smooth channels, of warm and steady winds, of
+cloudless skies. Coming on deck upon the morning of the _Bertha's_ first
+day in this new region, Ally Bazan gazed open-mouthed. Then: "I s'y!" he
+yelled. "Hey! By crickey! Look!" He slapped his thighs. "S'trewth! This
+is 'eavenly."
+
+Strokher was smoking his pipe on the hatch combings. "Rather," he
+observed. "An' I put it to you--we've deserved it."
+
+In the main, however, the northward flitting was uneventful. Every fifth
+day Nickerson got drunk--on the Company's Corean champagne. Now that the
+weather had sweetened, the Three Black Crows had less to do in the way
+of handling and nursing the schooner. Their plans when the "Boomskys"
+should be reached were rehearsed over and over again. Then came spells
+of card and checker playing, story-telling, or hours of silent inertia
+when, man fashion, they brooded over pipes in a patch of sun, somnolent,
+the mind empty of all thought.
+
+But at length the air took on a keener tang; there was a bite to the
+breeze, the sun lost his savour and the light of him lengthened till
+Hardenberg could read off logarithms at ten in the evening. Great-coats
+and sweaters were had from the chests, and it was no man's work to reef
+when the wind came down from out the north.
+
+Each day now the schooner was drawing nearer the Arctic Circle. At
+length snow fell, and two days later they saw their first iceberg.
+
+Hardenberg worked out their position on the chart and bore to the
+eastward till he made out the Alaskan coast--a smudge on the horizon.
+For another week he kept this in sight, the schooner dodging the bergs
+that by now drove by in squadrons, and even bumping and butling through
+drift and slush ice.
+
+Seals were plentiful, and Hardenberg and Strokher promptly revived the
+quarrel of their respective nations. Once even they slew a mammoth bull
+walrus--astray from some northern herd--and played poker for the tusks.
+Then suddenly they pulled themselves sharply together, and, as it were,
+stood "attention."
+
+For more than a week the schooner, following the trend of the
+far-distant coast, had headed eastward, and now at length, looming out
+of the snow and out of the mist, a somber bulwark, black, vast, ominous,
+rose the scarps and crags of that which they came so far to see--Point
+Barrow.
+
+Hardenberg rounded the point, ran in under the lee of the land and
+brought out the chart which Ryder had given him. Then he shortened sail
+and moved west again till Barrow was "hull down" behind him. To the
+north was the Arctic, treacherous, nursing hurricanes, ice-sheathed; but
+close aboard, not a quarter of a mile off his counter, stretched a gray
+and gloomy land, barren, bleak as a dead planet, inhospitable as the
+moon.
+
+For three days they crawled along the edge keeping their glasses trained
+upon every bay, every inlet. Then at length, early one morning, Ally
+Bazan, who had been posted at the bows, came scrambling aft to
+Hardenberg at the wheel. He was gasping for breath in his excitement.
+
+"Hi! There we are," he shouted. "O Lord! Oh, I s'y! Now we're in fer it.
+That's them! That's them! By the great jumpin' jimminy Christmas, that's
+them fer fair! Strike me blind for a bleedin' gutter-cat if it eyent. O
+Lord! S'y, I gotta to get drunk. S'y, what-all's the first jump in the
+bally game now?"
+
+"Well, the first thing, little man," observed Hardenberg, "is for your
+mother's son to hang the monkey onto the safety-valve. Keep y'r steam
+and watch y'r uncle."
+
+"Scrag the Boomskys," said Slick Dick encouragingly.
+
+Strokher pulled the left end of his viking mustache with the fingers of
+his right hand.
+
+"We must now talk," he said.
+
+A last conference was held in the cabin, and the various parts of the
+comedy rehearsed. Also the three looked to their revolvers.
+
+"Not that I expect a rupture of diplomatic relations," commented
+Strokher; "but if there's any shooting done, as between man and man, I
+choose to do it."
+
+"All understood, then?" asked Hardenberg, looking from face to face.
+"There won't be no chance to ask questions once we set foot ashore."
+
+The others nodded.
+
+It was not difficult to get in with the seven Russian sea-otter
+fishermen at the post. Certain of them spoke a macerated English, and
+through these Hardenberg, Ally Bazan and Nickerson--Strokher remained on
+board to look after the schooner--told to the "Boomskys" a lamentable
+tale of the reported wreck of a vessel, described by Hardenberg, with
+laborious precision, as a steam whaler from San Francisco--the _Tiber_
+by name, bark-rigged, seven hundred tons burden, Captain Henry Ward
+Beecher, mate Mr. James Boss Tweed. They, the visitors, were the
+officers of the relief-ship on the lookout for castaways and survivors.
+
+But in the course of these preliminaries it became necessary to restrain
+Nickerson--not yet wholly recovered from a recent incursion into the
+store of Corean champagne. It presented itself to his consideration as
+facetious to indulge (when speaking to the Russians) in strange and
+elaborate distortions of speech.
+
+"And she sunk-avitch in a hundred fathom o' water-owski."
+
+"--All on board-erewski."
+
+"--hell of dam' bad storm-onavna."
+
+And he persisted in the idiocy till Hardenberg found an excuse for
+taking him aside and cursing him into a realization of his position.
+
+In the end--inevitably--the schooner's company were invited to dine at
+the post.
+
+It was a strange affair--a strange scene. The coast, flat, gray, dreary
+beyond all power of expression, lonesome as the interstellar space, and
+quite as cold, and in all that limitless vastness of the World's Edge,
+two specks--the hut, its three windows streaming with light, and the
+tiny schooner rocking in the offing. Over all flared the pallid
+incandescence of the auroras.
+
+The Company drank steadily, and Strokher, listening from the schooner's
+quarterdeck, heard the shouting and the songs faintly above the wash and
+lapping under the counter. Two hours had passed since the moment he
+guessed that the feast had been laid. A third went by. He grew uneasy.
+There was no cessation of the noise of carousing. He even fancied he
+heard pistol shots. Then after a long time the noise by degrees wore
+down; a long silence followed. The hut seemed deserted; nothing stirred;
+another hour went by.
+
+Then at length Strokher saw a figure emerge from the door of the hut and
+come down to the shore. It was Hardenberg. Strokher saw him wave his arm
+slowly, now to the left, now to the right, and he took down the wig-wag
+as follows: "Stand--in--closer--we--have--the--skins."
+
+
+III
+
+During the course of the next few days Strokher heard the different
+versions of the affair in the hut over and over again till he knew its
+smallest details. He learned how the "Boomskys" fell upon Ryder's
+champagne like wolves upon a wounded buck, how they drank it from
+"enameled-ware" coffee-cups, from tin dippers, from the bottles
+themselves; how at last they even dispensed with the tedium of removing
+the corks and knocked off the heads against the table-ledge and drank
+from the splintered bottoms; how they quarreled over the lees and dregs,
+how ever and always fresh supplies were forthcoming, and how at last
+Hardenberg, Ally Bazan and Slick Dick stood up from the table in the
+midst of the seven inert bodies; how they ransacked the place for the
+priceless furs; how they failed to locate them; how the conviction grew
+that this was the wrong place after all, and how at length Hardenberg
+discovered the trap-door that admitted to the cellar, where in the dim
+light of the uplifted lanterns they saw, corded in tiny bales and
+packages, the costliest furs known to commerce.
+
+Ally Bazan had sobbed in his excitement over that vision and did not
+regain the power of articulate speech till the "loot" was safely stowed
+in the 'tween-decks and Hardenberg had given order to come about.
+
+"Now," he had observed dryly, "now, lads, it's Hongkong--or bust."
+
+The tackle had fouled aloft and the jib hung slatting over the sprit
+like a collapsed balloon.
+
+"Cast off up there, Nick!" called Hardenberg from the wheel.
+
+Nickerson swung himself into the rigging, crying out in a mincing voice
+as, holding to a rope's end, he swung around to face the receding hut:
+"By-bye-skevitch. We've had _such_ a charming evening. _Do_ hope-sky
+we'll be able to come again-off." And as he spoke the lurch of the
+_Bertha_ twitched his grip from the rope. He fell some thirty feet to
+the deck, and his head carromed against an iron cleat with a resounding
+crack.
+
+"Here's luck," observed Hardenberg, twelve hours later, when Slick Dick,
+sitting on the edge of his bunk, looked stolidly and with fishy eyes
+from face to face. "We wa'n't quite short-handed enough, it seems."
+
+"Dotty for fair. Dotty for fair," exclaimed Ally Bazan; "clean off 'is
+nut. I s'y, Dick-ol'-chap, wyke-up, naow. Buck up. Buck up. _'Ave_ a
+drink."
+
+But Nickerson could only nod his head and murmur: "A few
+more--consequently--and a good light----" Then his voice died down to
+unintelligible murmurs.
+
+"We'll have to call at Juneau," decided Hardenberg two days later. "I
+don't figure on navigating this 'ere bath-tub to no Hongkong whatsoever,
+with three hands. We gotta pick up a couple o' A.B.'s in Juneau, if so
+be we can."
+
+"How about the loot?" objected Strokher. "If one of those hands gets
+between decks he might smell--a sea-otter, now. I put it to you he
+might."
+
+"My son," said Hardenberg, "I've handled A.B.'s before;" and that
+settled the question.
+
+During the first part of the run down, Nickerson gloomed silently over
+the schooner, looking curiously about him, now at his comrades' faces,
+now at the tumbling gray-green seas, now--and this by the hour--at his
+own hands. He seemed perplexed, dazed, trying very hard to get his
+bearings. But by and by he appeared, little by little, to come to
+himself. One day he pointed to the rigging with an unsteady forefinger,
+then, laying the same finger doubtfully upon his lips, said to Strokher:
+"A ship?"
+
+"Quite so, quite so, me boy."
+
+"Yes," muttered Nickerson absently, "a ship--of course."
+
+Hardenberg expected to make Juneau on a Thursday. Wednesday afternoon
+Slick Dick came to him. He seemed never more master of himself. "How did
+I come aboard?" he asked.
+
+Hardenberg explained.
+
+"What have we been doing?"
+
+"Why, don't you remember?" continued Hardenberg. He outlined the voyage
+in detail. "Then you remember," he went on, "we got up there to Point
+Barrow and found where the Russian fellows had their post, where they
+caught sea-otters, and we went ashore and got 'em all full and lifted
+all the skins they had----"
+
+"'Lifted'? You mean _stole_ them."
+
+"Come here," said the other. Encouraged by Nickerson's apparent
+convalescence, Hardenberg decided that the concrete evidence of things
+done would prove effective. He led him down into the 'tween-decks. "See
+now," he said. "See this packing-case"--he pried up a board--"see these
+'ere skins. Take one in y'r hand. Remember how we found 'em all in the
+cellar and hyked 'em out while the beggars slept?"
+
+"_Stole_ them? You say we got--that is _you_ did--got somebody
+intoxicated and stole their property, and now you are on your way to
+dispose of it."
+
+"Oh, well, if you want to put it thataway. Sure we did."
+
+"I understand----Well----Let's go back on deck. I want to think this
+out."
+
+The _Bertha Millner_ crept into the harbour of Juneau in a fog, with
+ships' bells tolling on every side, let go her anchor at last in
+desperation and lay up to wait for the lifting. When this came the Three
+Crows looked at one another wide-eyed. They made out the drenched town
+and the dripping hills behind it. The quays, the custom house, the one
+hotel, and the few ships in the harbour. There were a couple of whalers
+from 'Frisco, a white, showily painted passenger boat from the same
+port, a Norwegian bark, and a freighter from Seattle grimy with
+coal-dust. These, however, the _Bertha's_ company ignored. Another boat
+claimed all their attention. In the fog they had let go not a
+pistol-shot from her anchorage. She lay practically beside them. She was
+the United States revenue cutter _Bear._
+
+"But so long as they can't _smell_ sea-otter skin," remarked Hardenberg,
+"I don't know that we're any the worse."
+
+"All the syme," observed Ally Bazan, "I don't want to lose no bloomin'
+tyme a-pecking up aour bloomin' A.B.'s."
+
+"I'll stay aboard and tend the baby," said Hardenberg with a wink. "You
+two move along ashore and get what you can--Scoovies for choice. Take
+Slick Dick with you. I reckon a change o' air might buck him up."
+
+When the three had gone, Hardenberg, after writing up the painfully
+doctored log, set to work to finish a task on which the adventurers had
+been engaged in their leisure moments since leaving Point Barrow. This
+was the counting and sorting of the skins. The packing-case had been
+broken open, and the scanty but precious contents littered an improvised
+table in the hold. Pen in hand, Hardenberg counted and ciphered and
+counted again. He could not forbear a chuckle when the net result was
+reached. The lot of the skins--the pelt of the sea-otter is ridiculously
+small in proportion to its value--was no heavy load for the average man.
+But Hardenberg knew that once the "loot" was safely landed at the
+Hongkong pierhead the Three Crows would share between them close upon
+ten thousand dollars. Even--if they had luck, and could dispose of the
+skins singly or in small lots--that figure might be doubled.
+
+"And I call it a neat turn," observed Hardenberg. He was aroused by the
+noise of hurried feet upon the deck, and there was that in their sound
+that brought him upright in a second, hand on hip. Then, after a second,
+he jumped out on deck to meet Ally Bazan and Strokher, who had just
+scrambled over the rail.
+
+"Bust. B-u-s-t!" remarked the Englishman.
+
+"'Ere's 'ell to pay," cried Ally Bazan in a hoarse whisper, glancing
+over at the revenue cutter.
+
+"Where's Nickerson?" demanded Hardenberg.
+
+"That's it," answered the colonial. "That's where it's 'ell. Listen
+naow. He goes ashore along o' us, quiet and peaceable like, never
+battin' a eye, we givin' him a bit o' jolly, y' know, to keep him
+chirked up as ye might s'y. But so soon as ever he sets foot on shore,
+abaout faice he gaoes, plumb into the Custom's orfice. I s'ys, 'Wot all
+naow, messmite? Come along aout o' that.' But he turns on me like a
+bloomin' babby an s'ys he: 'Hands orf, wretch!' Ay, them's just his
+words. Just like that, 'Hands orf, wretch!' And then he nips into the
+orfice an' marches fair up to the desk an' sy's like this--we heerd him,
+havin' followed on to the door--he s'ys, just like this:
+
+"'Orfficer, I am a min'ster o' the gospel, o' the Methodis'
+denomineye-tion, an' I'm deteyined agin my will along o' a pirate ship
+which has robbed certain parties o' val-able goods. Which syme I'm
+pre-pared to attest afore a no'try publick, an' lodge informeye-tion o'
+crime. An',' s'ys he, 'I demand the protection o' the authorities an'
+arsk to be directed to the American consul.'
+
+"S'y, we never wyted to hear no more, but hyked awye hot foot. S'y, wot
+all now. Oh, mee Gord! eyen't it a rum gao for fair? S'y, let's get
+aout o' here, Hardy, dear."
+
+"Look there," said Hardenberg, jerking his head toward the cutter, "how
+far'd we get before the customs would 'a' passed the tip to _her_ and
+she'd started to overhaul us? That's what they feed her for--to round up
+the likes o' us."
+
+"We got to do something rather soon," put in Strokher. "Here comes the
+custom house dinghy now."
+
+As a matter of fact, a boat was putting off from the dock. At her stern
+fluttered the custom house flag.
+
+"Bitched--bitched for fair!" cried Ally Bazan.
+
+[Illustration: "'ERE'S 'ELL TO PAY!"
+
+From a drawing by Lucius Hitchcock _Courtesy of Collier's Weekly_.]
+
+"Quick, now!" exclaimed Hardenberg. "On the jump! Overboard with that
+loot!--or no. Steady! That won't do. There's that dam' cutter. They'd
+see it go. Here!--into the galley. There's a fire in the stove. Get a
+move on!"
+
+"Wot!" wailed Ally Bazan. "Burn the little joker. Gord, I _can't,_
+Hardy, I _can't._ It's agin human nature."
+
+"You can do time in San Quentin, then, for felony," retorted Strokher as
+he and Hardenberg dashed by him, their arms full of the skins. "You can
+do time in San Quentin else. Make your choice. I put it to you as
+between man and man."
+
+With set teeth, and ever and again glancing over the rail at the
+oncoming boat, the two fed their fortune to the fire. The pelts,
+partially cured and still fatty, blazed like crude oil, the hair
+crisping, the hides melting into rivulets of grease. For a minute the
+schooner reeked of the smell and a stifling smoke poured from the galley
+stack. Then the embers of the fire guttered and a long whiff of sea wind
+blew away the reek. A single skin, fallen in the scramble, still
+remained on the floor of the galley. Hardenberg snatched it up, tossed
+it into the flames and clapped the door to. "Now, let him squeal," he
+declared. "You fellows, when that boat gets here, let _me_ talk; keep
+your mouths shut or, by God, we'll all wear stripes."
+
+The Three Crows watched the boat's approach in a silence broken only
+once by a long whimper from Ally Bazan. "An' it was a-workin' out as
+lovely as Billy-oh," he said, "till that syme underbred costermonger's
+swipe remembered he was Methody--an' him who, only a few d'ys back, went
+raound s'yin' 'scrag the "Boomskys"!' A couple o' thousand pounds gone
+as quick as look at it. Oh, I eyn't never goin' to git over this."
+
+The boat came up and the Three Crows were puzzled to note that no
+brass-buttoned personage sat in the stern-sheets, no harbour police
+glowered at them from the bow, no officer of the law fixed them with the
+eye of suspicion. The boat was manned only by a couple of
+freight-handlers in woolen Jerseys, upon the breasts of which were
+affixed the two letters "C.H."
+
+"Say," called one of the freight-handlers, "is this the _Bertha
+Millner?"_
+
+"Yes," answered Hardenberg, his voice at a growl. "An' what might you
+want with her, my friend?"
+
+"Well, look here," said the other, "one of your hands came ashore mad as
+a coot and broke into the house of the American Consul, and resisted
+arrest and raised hell generally. The inspector says you got to send a
+provost guard or something ashore to take him off. There's been several
+mix-ups among ships' crews lately and the town----"
+
+The tide drifted the boat out of hearing, and Hardenberg sat down on the
+capstan head, turning his back to his comrades. There was a long
+silence. Then he said:
+
+"Boys, let's go home. I--I want to have a talk with President Ryder."
+
+
+
+
+THE SHIP THAT SAW A GHOST
+
+
+Very much of this story must remain untold, for the reason that if it
+were definitely known what business I had aboard the tramp
+steam-freighter _Glarus_, three hundred miles off the South American
+coast on a certain summer's day, some few years ago, I would very likely
+be obliged to answer a great many personal and direct questions put by
+fussy and impertinent experts in maritime law--who are paid to be
+inquisitive. Also, I would get "Ally Bazan," Strokher and Hardenberg
+into trouble.
+
+Suppose on that certain summer's day, you had asked of Lloyds' agency
+where the _Glarus_ was, and what was her destination and cargo. You
+would have been told that she was twenty days out from Callao, bound
+north to San Francisco in ballast; that she had been spoken by the bark
+_Medea_ and the steamer _Benevento_; that she was reported to have blown
+out a cylinder head, but being manageable was proceeding on her way
+under sail.
+
+That is what Lloyds would have answered.
+
+If you know something of the ways of ships and what is expected of them,
+you will understand that the _Glarus_, to be some half a dozen hundred
+miles south of where Lloyds' would have her, and to be still going
+south, under full steam, was a scandal that would have made her brothers
+and sisters ostracize her finally and forever.
+
+And that is curious, too. Humans may indulge in vagaries innumerable,
+and may go far afield in the way of lying; but a ship may not so much as
+quibble without suspicion. The least lapse of "regularity," the least
+difficulty in squaring performance with intuition, and behold she is on
+the black list, and her captain, owners, officers, agents and
+consignors, and even supercargoes, are asked to explain.
+
+And the _Glarus_ was already on the black list. From the beginning her
+stars had been malign. As the _Breda_, she had first lost her
+reputation, seduced into a filibustering escapade down the South
+American coast, where in the end a plain-clothes United States
+detective--that is to say, a revenue cutter--arrested her off Buenos
+Ayres and brought her home, a prodigal daughter, besmirched and
+disgraced.
+
+After that she was in some dreadful black-birding business in a far
+quarter of the South Pacific; and after that--her name changed finally
+to the _Glarus_--poached seals for a syndicate of Dutchmen who lived in
+Tacoma, and who afterward built a club-house out of what she earned.
+
+And after that we got her.
+
+We got her, I say, through Ryder's South Pacific Exploitation Company.
+The "President" had picked out a lovely little deal for Hardenberg,
+Strokher and Ally Bazan (the Three Black Crows), which he swore would
+make them "independent rich" the rest of their respective lives. It is a
+promising deal (B. 300 it is on Ryder's map), and if you want to know
+more about it you may write to ask Ryder what B. 300 is. If he chooses
+to tell you, that is his affair.
+
+For B. 300--let us confess it--is, as Hardenberg puts it, as crooked as
+a dog's hind leg. It is as risky as barratry. If you pull it off you
+may--after paying Ryder his share--divide sixty-five, or possibly
+sixty-seven, thousand dollars between you and your associates. If you
+fail, and you are perilously like to fail, you will be sure to have a
+man or two of your companions shot, maybe yourself obliged to pistol
+certain people, and in the end fetch up at Tahiti, prisoner in a French
+patrol-boat.
+
+Observe that B. 300 is spoken of as still open. It is so, for the reason
+that the Three Black Crows did not pull it off. It still stands marked
+up in red ink on the map that hangs over Ryder's desk in the San
+Francisco office; and any one can have a chance at it who will meet
+Cyrus Ryder's terms. Only he can't get the _Glarus_ for the attempt.
+
+For the trip to the island after B. 300 was the last occasion on which
+the _Glarus_ will smell blue water or taste the trades. She will never
+clear again. She is lumber.
+
+And yet the _Glarus_ on this very blessed day of 1902 is riding to her
+buoys off Sausalito in San Francisco Bay, complete in every detail (bar
+a broken propeller shaft), not a rope missing, not a screw loose, not a
+plank started--a perfectly equipped steam-freighter.
+
+But you may go along the "Front" in San Francisco from Fisherman's Wharf
+to the China steamships' docks and shake your dollars under the seamen's
+noses, and if you so much as whisper _Glarus_ they will edge suddenly
+off and look at you with scared suspicion, and then, as like as not,
+walk away without another word. No pilot will take the _Glarus_ out; no
+captain will navigate her; no stoker will feed her fires; no sailor will
+walk her decks. The _Glarus_ is suspect. She has seen a ghost.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It happened on our voyage to the island after this same B. 300. We had
+stood well off from shore for day after day, and Hardenberg had shaped
+our course so far from the track of navigation that since the
+_Benevento_ had hulled down and vanished over the horizon no stitch of
+canvas nor smudge of smoke had we seen. We had passed the equator long
+since, and would fetch a long circuit to the southard, and bear up
+against the island by a circuitous route. This to avoid being spoken. It
+was tremendously essential that the _Glarus_ should not be spoken.
+
+I suppose, no doubt, that it was the knowledge of our isolation that
+impressed me with the dreadful remoteness of our position. Certainly the
+sea in itself looks no different at a thousand than at a hundred miles
+from shore. But as day after day I came out on deck at noon, after
+ascertaining our position on the chart (a mere pin-point in a reach of
+empty paper), the sight of the ocean weighed down upon me with an
+infinitely great awesomeness--and I was no new hand to the high seas
+even then.
+
+But at such times the _Glarus_ seemed to me to be threading a loneliness
+beyond all worlds and beyond all conception desolate. Even in more
+populous waters, when no sail notches the line of the horizon, the
+propinquity of one's kind is nevertheless a thing understood, and to an
+unappreciated degree comforting. Here, however, I knew we were out, far
+out in the desert. Never a keel for years upon years before us had
+parted these waters; never a sail had bellied to these winds.
+Perfunctorily, day in and day out we turned our eyes through long habit
+toward the horizon. But we knew, before the look, that the searching
+would be bootless. Forever and forever, under the pitiless sun and cold
+blue sky stretched the indigo of the ocean floor. The ether between the
+planets can be no less empty, no less void.
+
+I never, till that moment, could have so much as conceived the
+imagination of such loneliness, such utter stagnant abomination of
+desolation. In an open boat, bereft of comrades, I should have gone mad
+in thirty minutes.
+
+I remember to have approximated the impression of such empty immensity
+only once before, in my younger days, when I lay on my back on a
+treeless, bushless mountainside and stared up into the sky for the
+better part of an hour.
+
+You probably know the trick. If you do not, you must understand that if
+you look up at the blue long enough, the flatness of the thing begins
+little by little to expand, to give here and there; and the eye travels
+on and on and up and up, till at length (well for you that it lasts but
+the fraction of a second), you all at once see space. You generally stop
+there and cry out, and--your hands over your eyes--are only too glad to
+grovel close to the good old solid earth again. Just as I, so often on
+short voyage, was glad to wrench my eyes away from that horrid vacancy,
+to fasten them upon our sailless masts and stack, or to lay my grip upon
+the sooty smudged taffrail of the only thing that stood between me and
+the Outer Dark.
+
+For we had come at last to that region of the Great Seas where no ship
+goes, the silent sea of Coleridge and the Ancient One, the unplumbed,
+untracked, uncharted Dreadfulness, primordial, hushed, and we were as
+much alone as a grain of star-dust whirling in the empty space beyond
+Uranus and the ken of the greater telescopes.
+
+So the _Glarus_ plodded and churned her way onward. Every day and all
+day the same pale-blue sky and the unwinking sun bent over that moving
+speck. Every day and all day the same black-blue water-world, untouched
+by any known wind, smooth as a slab of syenite, colourful as an opal,
+stretched out and around and beyond and before and behind us, forever,
+illimitable, empty. Every day the smoke of our fires veiled the streaked
+whiteness of our wake. Every day Hardenberg (our skipper) at noon
+pricked a pin-hole in the chart that hung in the wheel-house, and that
+showed we were so much farther into the wilderness. Every day the world
+of men, of civilization, of newspapers, policemen and street-railways
+receded, and we steamed on alone, lost and forgotten in that silent sea.
+
+"Jolly lot o' room to turn raound in," observed Ally Bazan, the
+colonial, "withaout steppin' on y'r neighbour's toes."
+
+"We're clean, clean out o' the track o' navigation," Hardenberg told
+him. "An' a blessed good thing for us, too. Nobody ever comes down into
+these waters. Ye couldn't pick no course here. Everything leads to
+nowhere."
+
+"Might as well be in a bally balloon," said Strokher.
+
+I shall not tell of the nature of the venture on which the _Glarus_ was
+bound, further than to say it was not legitimate. It had to do with an
+ill thing done more than two centuries ago. There was money in the
+venture, but it was not to be gained by a violation of metes and bounds
+which are better left intact.
+
+The island toward which we were heading is associated in the minds of
+men with a Horror.
+
+A ship had called there once, two hundred years in advance of the
+_Glarus_--a ship not much unlike the crank high-prowed caravel of
+Hudson, and her company had landed, and having accomplished the evil
+they had set out to do, made shift to sail away. And then, just after
+the palms of the island had sunk from sight below the water's edge, the
+unspeakable had happened. The Death that was not Death had arisen from
+out the sea and stood before the ship, and over it, and the blight of
+the thing lay along the decks like mould, and the ship sweated in the
+terror of that which is yet without a name.
+
+Twenty men died in the first week, all but six in the second. These six,
+with the shadow of insanity upon them, made out to launch a boat,
+returned to the island and died there, after leaving a record of what
+had happened.
+
+The six left the ship exactly as she was, sails all set, lanterns all
+lit--left her in the shadow of the Death that was not Death.
+
+She stood there, becalmed, and watched them go. She was never heard of
+again.
+
+Or was she--well, that's as may be.
+
+But the main point of the whole affair, to my notion, has always been
+this. The ship was the last friend of those six poor wretches who made
+back for the island with their poor chests of plunder. She was their
+guardian, as it were, would have defended and befriended them to the
+last; and also we, the Three Black Crows and myself, had no right under
+heaven, nor before the law of men, to come prying and peeping into this
+business--into this affair of the dead and buried past. There was
+sacrilege in it. We were no better than body-snatchers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I heard the others complaining of the loneliness of our
+surroundings, I said nothing at first. I was no sailor man, and I was on
+board only by tolerance. But I looked again at the maddening sameness of
+the horizon--the same vacant, void horizon that we had seen now for
+sixteen days on end, and felt in my wits and in my nerves that same
+formless rebellion and protest such as comes when the same note is
+reiterated over and over again.
+
+It may seem a little thing that the mere fact of meeting with no other
+ship should have ground down the edge of the spirit. But let the
+incredulous--bound upon such a hazard as ours--sail straight into
+nothingness for sixteen days on end, seeing nothing but the sun, hearing
+nothing but the thresh of his own screw, and then put the question.
+
+And yet, of all things, we desired no company. Stealth was our one great
+aim. But I think there were moments--toward the last--when the Three
+Crows would have welcomed even a cruiser.
+
+Besides, there was more cause for depression, after all, than mere
+isolation.
+
+On the seventh day Hardenberg and I were forward by the cat-head,
+adjusting the grain with some half-formed intent of spearing the
+porpoises that of late had begun to appear under our bows, and
+Hardenberg had been computing the number of days we were yet to run.
+
+"We are some five hundred odd miles off that island by now," he said,
+"and she's doing her thirteen knots handsome. All's well so far--but do
+you know, I'd just as soon raise that point o' land as soon as
+convenient."
+
+"How so?" said I, bending on the line. "Expect some weather?"
+
+"Mr. Dixon," said he, giving me a curious glance, "the sea is a queer
+proposition, put it any ways. I've been a seafarin' man since I was big
+as a minute, and I know the sea, and what's more, the Feel o' the sea.
+Now, look out yonder. Nothin', hey? Nothin' but the same ol' skyline
+we've watched all the way out. The glass is as steady as a steeple, and
+this ol' hooker, I reckon, is as sound as the day she went off the ways.
+But just the same if I were to home now, a-foolin' about Gloucester way
+in my little dough-dish--d'ye know what? I'd put into port. I sure
+would. Because why? Because I got the Feel o' the Sea, Mr. Dixon. I got
+the Feel o' the Sea."
+
+I had heard old skippers say something of this before, and I cited to
+Hardenberg the experience of a skipper captain I once knew who had
+turned turtle in a calm sea off Trincomalee. I ask him what this Feel of
+the Sea was warning him against just now (for on the high sea any
+premonition is a premonition of evil, not of good). But he was not
+explicit.
+
+"I don't know," he answered moodily, and as if in great perplexity,
+coiling the rope as he spoke. "I don't know. There's some blame thing or
+other close to us, I'll bet a hat. I don't know the name of it, but
+there's a big Bird in the air, just out of sight som'eres, and," he
+suddenly exclaimed, smacking his knee and leaning forward,
+"I--don't--like--it--one--dam'--bit."
+
+The same thing came up in our talk in the cabin that night, after the
+dinner was taken off and we settled down to tobacco. Only, at this time,
+Hardenberg was on duty on the bridge. It was Ally Bazan who spoke
+instead.
+
+"Seems to me," he hazarded, "as haow they's somethin' or other a-goin'
+to bump up pretty blyme soon. I shouldn't be surprised, naow, y'know, if
+we piled her up on some bally uncharted reef along o' to-night and went
+strite daown afore we'd had a bloomin' charnce to s'y 'So long,
+gen'lemen all.'"
+
+He laughed as he spoke, but when, just at that moment, a pan clattered
+in the galley, he jumped suddenly with an oath, and looked hard about
+the cabin.
+
+Then Strokher confessed to a sense of distress also. He'd been having it
+since day before yesterday, it seemed.
+
+"And I put it to you the glass is lovely," he said, "so it's no blow. I
+guess," he continued, "we're all a bit seedy and ship-sore."
+
+And whether or not this talk worked upon my own nerves, or whether in
+very truth the Feel of the Sea had found me also, I do not know; but I
+do know that after dinner that night, just before going to bed, a queer
+sense of apprehension came upon me, and that when I had come to my
+stateroom, after my turn upon deck, I became furiously angry with nobody
+in particular, because I could not at once find the matches. But here
+was a difference. The other man had been merely vaguely uncomfortable.
+
+I could put a name to my uneasiness. I felt that we were being watched.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a strange ship's company we made after that. I speak only of the
+Crows and myself. We carried a scant crew of stokers, and there was also
+a chief engineer. But we saw so little of him that he did not count. The
+Crows and I gloomed on the quarterdeck from dawn to dark, silent,
+irritable, working upon each other's nerves till the creak of a block
+would make a man jump like cold steel laid to his flesh. We quarreled
+over absolute nothings, glowered at each other for half a word, and each
+one of us, at different times, was at some pains to declare that never
+in the course of his career had he been associated with such a
+disagreeable trio of brutes. Yet we were always together, and sought
+each other's company with painful insistence.
+
+Only once were we all agreed, and that was when the cook, a Chinaman,
+spoiled a certain batch of biscuits. Unanimously we fell foul of the
+creature with so much vociferation as fishwives till he fled the cabin
+in actual fear of mishandling, leaving us suddenly seized with noisy
+hilarity--for the first time in a week. Hardenberg proposed a round of
+drinks from our single remaining case of beer. We stood up and formed an
+Elk's chain and then drained our glasses to each other's health with
+profound seriousness.
+
+That same evening, I remember, we all sat on the quarterdeck till late
+and--oddly enough--related each one his life's history up to date; and
+then went down to the cabin for a game of euchre before turning in.
+
+We had left Strokher on the bridge--it was his watch--and had forgotten
+all about him in the interest of the game, when--I suppose it was about
+one in the morning--I heard him whistle long and shrill. I laid down my
+cards and said:
+
+"Hark!"
+
+In the silence that followed we heard at first only the muffled lope of
+our engines, the cadenced snorting of the exhaust, and the ticking of
+Hardenberg's big watch in his waistcoat that he had hung by the arm-hole
+to the back of his chair. Then from the bridge, above our deck,
+prolonged, intoned--a wailing cry in the night--came Strokher's voice:
+
+"Sail oh-h-h."
+
+And the cards fell from our hands, and, like men turned to stone, we sat
+looking at each other across the soiled red cloth for what seemed an
+immeasurably long minute.
+
+Then stumbling and swearing, in a hysteria of hurry, we gained the deck.
+
+There was a moon, very low and reddish, but no wind. The sea beyond the
+taffrail was as smooth as lava, and so still that the swells from the
+cutwater of the _Glarus_ did not break as they rolled away from the
+bows.
+
+I remember that I stood staring and blinking at the empty ocean--where
+the moonlight lay like a painted stripe reaching to the horizon--stupid
+and frowning, till Hardenberg, who had gone on ahead, cried:
+
+"Not here--on the bridge!"
+
+We joined Strokher, and as I came up the others were asking:
+
+"Where? Where?"
+
+And there, before he had pointed, I saw--we all of us saw--And I heard
+Hardenberg's teeth come together like a spring trap, while Ally Bazan
+ducked as though to a blow, muttering:
+
+"Gord 'a' mercy, what nyme do ye put to' a ship like that?"
+
+And after that no one spoke for a long minute, and we stood there,
+moveless black shadows, huddled together for the sake of the blessed
+elbow touch that means so incalculably much, looking off over our port
+quarter.
+
+For the ship that we saw there--oh, she was not a half-mile distant--was
+unlike any ship known to present day construction.
+
+She was short, and high-pooped, and her stern, which was turned a little
+toward us, we could see, was set with curious windows, not unlike a
+house. And on either side of this stern were two great iron cressets
+such as once were used to burn signal-fires in. She had three masts with
+mighty yards swung 'thwart ship, but bare of all sails save a few
+rotting streamers. Here and there about her a tangled mass of rigging
+drooped and sagged.
+
+And there she lay, in the red eye of the setting moon, in that solitary
+ocean, shadowy, antique, forlorn, a thing the most abandoned, the most
+sinister I ever remember to have seen.
+
+Then Strokher began to explain volubly and with many repetitions.
+
+"A derelict, of course. I was asleep; yes, I was asleep. Gross neglect
+of duty. I say I was asleep--on watch. And we worked up to her. When I
+woke, why--you see, when I woke, there she was," he gave a weak little
+laugh, "and--and now, why, there she is, you see. I turned around and
+saw her sudden like--when I woke up, that is."
+
+He laughed again, and as he laughed the engines far below our feet gave
+a sudden hiccough. Something crashed and struck the ship's sides till we
+lurched as we stood. There was a shriek of steam, a shout--and then
+silence.
+
+The noise of the machinery ceased; the _Glarus_ slid through the still
+water, moving only by her own decreasing momentum.
+
+Hardenberg sang, "Stand by!" and called down the tube to the
+engine-room.
+
+"What's up?"
+
+I was standing close enough to him to hear the answer in a small, faint
+voice:
+
+"Shaft gone, sir."
+
+"Broke?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Hardenberg faced about.
+
+"Come below. We must talk." I do not think any of us cast a glance at
+the Other Ship again. Certainly I kept my eyes away from her. But as we
+started down the companion-way I laid my hand on Strokher's shoulder.
+The rest were ahead. I looked him straight between the eyes as I asked:
+
+"Were you asleep? Is that why you saw her so suddenly?"
+
+It is now five years since I asked the question. I am still waiting for
+Strokher's answer.
+
+Well, our shaft was broken. That was flat. We went down into the
+engine-room and saw the jagged fracture that was the symbol of our
+broken hopes. And in the course of the next five minutes' conversation
+with the chief we found that, as we had not provided against such a
+contingency, there was to be no mending of it. We said nothing about the
+mishap coinciding with the appearance of the Other Ship. But I know we
+did not consider the break with any degree of surprise after a few
+moments.
+
+We came up from the engine-room and sat down to the cabin table.
+
+"Now what?" said Hardenberg, by way of beginning.
+
+Nobody answered at first.
+
+It was by now three in the morning. I recall it all perfectly. The ports
+opposite where I sat were open and I could see. The moon was all but
+full set. The dawn was coming up with a copper murkiness over the edge
+of the world. All the stars were yet out. The sea, for all the red moon
+and copper dawn, was gray, and there, less than half a mile away, still
+lay our consort. I could see her through the portholes with each slow
+careening of the _Glarus_.
+
+"I vote for the island," cried Ally Bazan, "shaft or no shaft. We rigs a
+bit o' syle, y'know----" and thereat the discussion began.
+
+For upward of two hours it raged, with loud words and shaken
+forefingers, and great noisy bangings of the table, and how it would
+have ended I do not know, but at last--it was then maybe five in the
+morning--the lookout passed word down to the cabin:
+
+"Will you come on deck, gentlemen?" It was the mate who spoke, and the
+man was shaken--I could see that--to the very vitals of him. We started
+and stared at one another, and I watched little Ally Bazan go slowly
+white to the lips. And even then no word of the ship, except as it might
+be this from Hardenberg:
+
+"What is it? Good God Almighty, I'm no coward, but this thing is getting
+one too many for me."
+
+Then without further speech he went on deck.
+
+The air was cool. The sun was not yet up. It was that strange, queer
+mid-period between dark and dawn, when the night is over and the day not
+yet come, just the gray that is neither light nor dark, the dim dead
+blink as of the refracted light from extinct worlds.
+
+We stood at the rail. We did not speak; we stood watching. It was so
+still that the drip of steam from some loosened pipe far below was
+plainly audible, and it sounded in that lifeless, silent grayness
+like--God knows what--a death tick.
+
+"You see," said the mate, speaking just above a whisper, "there's no
+mistake about it. She is moving--this way."
+
+"Oh, a current, of course," Strokher tried to say cheerfully, "sets her
+toward us."
+
+Would the morning never come?
+
+Ally Bazan--his parents were Catholic--began to mutter to himself.
+
+Then Hardenberg spoke aloud.
+
+"I particularly don't want--that--out--there--to cross our bows. I don't
+want it to come to that. We must get some sails on her."
+
+"And I put it to you as man to man," said Strokher, "where might be your
+wind."
+
+He was right. The _Glarus_ floated in absolute calm. On all that slab of
+ocean nothing moved but the Dead Ship.
+
+She came on slowly; her bows, the high, clumsy bows pointed toward us,
+the water turning from her forefoot. She came on; she was near at hand.
+We saw her plainly--saw the rotted planks, the crumbling rigging, the
+rust-corroded metal-work, the broken rail, the gaping deck, and I could
+imagine that the clean water broke away from her sides in refluent
+wavelets as though in recoil from a thing unclean. She made no sound. No
+single thing stirred aboard the hulk of her--but she moved.
+
+We were helpless. The _Glarus_ could stir no boat in any direction; we
+were chained to the spot. Nobody had thought to put out our lights, and
+they still burned on through the dawn, strangely out of place in their
+red-and-green garishness, like maskers surprised by daylight.
+
+And in the silence of that empty ocean, in that queer half-light between
+dawn and day, at six o'clock, silent as the settling of the dead to the
+bottomless bottom of the ocean, gray as fog, lonely, blind, soulless,
+voiceless, the Dead Ship crossed our bows.
+
+I do not know how long after this the Ship disappeared, or what was the
+time of day when we at last pulled ourselves together. But we came to
+some sort of decision at last. This was to go on--under sail. We were
+too close to the island now to turn back for--for a broken shaft.
+
+The afternoon was spent fitting on the sails to her, and when after
+nightfall the wind at length came up fresh and favourable, I believe we
+all felt heartened and a deal more hardy--until the last canvas went
+aloft, and Hardenberg took the wheel.
+
+We had drifted a good deal since the morning, and the bows of the
+_Glarus_ were pointed homeward, but as soon as the breeze blew strong
+enough to get steerageway Hardenberg put the wheel over and, as the
+booms swung across the deck, headed for the island again.
+
+We had not gone on this course half an hour--no, not twenty
+minutes--before the wind shifted a whole quarter of the compass and took
+the _Glarus_ square in the teeth, so that there was nothing for it but
+to tack. And then the strangest thing befell.
+
+I will make allowance for the fact that there was no centre-board nor
+keel to speak of to the _Glarus_. I will admit that the sails upon a
+nine-hundred-ton freighter are not calculated to speed her, nor steady
+her. I will even admit the possibility of a current that set from the
+island toward us. All this may be true, yet the _Glarus_ should have
+advanced. We should have made a wake.
+
+And instead of this, our stolid, steady, trusty old boat was--what shall
+I say?
+
+I will say that no man may thoroughly understand a ship--after all. I
+will say that new ships are cranky and unsteady; that old and seasoned
+ships have their little crochets, their little fussinesses that their
+skippers must learn and humour if they are to get anything out of them;
+that even the best ships may sulk at times, shirk their work, grow
+unstable, perverse, and refuse to answer helm and handling. And I will
+say that some ships that for years have sailed blue water as soberly and
+as docilely as a street-car horse has plodded the treadmill of the
+'tween-tracks, have been known to balk, as stubbornly and as
+conclusively as any old Bay Billy that ever wore a bell. I know this has
+happened, because I have seen it. I saw, for instance, the _Glarus_ do
+it.
+
+Quite literally and truly we could do nothing with her. We will say, if
+you like, that that great jar and wrench when the shaft gave way shook
+her and crippled her. It is true, however, that whatever the cause may
+have been, we could not force her toward the island. Of course, we all
+said "current"; but why didn't the log-line trail?
+
+For three days and three nights we tried it. And the _Glarus_ heaved and
+plunged and shook herself just as you have seen a horse plunge and rear
+when his rider tries to force him at the steam-roller.
+
+I tell you I could feel the fabric of her tremble and shudder from bow
+to stern-post, as though she were in a storm; I tell you she fell off
+from the wind, and broad-on drifted back from her course till the
+sensation of her shrinking was as plain as her own staring lights and a
+thing pitiful to see.
+
+We roweled her, and we crowded sail upon her, and we coaxed and bullied
+and humoured her, till the Three Crows, their fortune only a plain sail
+two days ahead, raved and swore like insensate brutes, or shall we say
+like mahouts trying to drive their stricken elephant upon the tiger--and
+all to no purpose. "Damn the damned current and the damned luck and the
+damned shaft and all," Hardenberg would exclaim, as from the wheel he
+would catch the _Glarus_ falling off. "Go on, you old hooker--you tub of
+junk! My God, you'd think she was scared!"
+
+Perhaps the _Glarus_ was scared, perhaps not; that point is debatable.
+But it was beyond doubt of debate that Hardenberg was scared.
+
+A ship that will not obey is only one degree less terrible than a
+mutinous crew. And we were in a fair way to have both. The stokers, whom
+we had impressed into duty as A.B.'s, were of course superstitious; and
+they knew how the _Glarus_ was acting, and it was only a question of
+time before they got out of hand.
+
+That was the end. We held a final conference in the cabin and decided
+that there was no help for it--we must turn back.
+
+And back we accordingly turned, and at once the wind followed us, and
+the "current" helped us, and the water churned under the forefoot of the
+_Glarus_, and the wake whitened under her stern, and the log-line ran
+out from the trail and strained back as the ship worked homeward.
+
+We had never a mishap from the time we finally swung her about; and,
+considering the circumstances, the voyage back to San Francisco was
+propitious.
+
+But an incident happened just after we had started back. We were perhaps
+some five miles on the homeward track. It was early evening and Strokher
+had the watch. At about seven o'clock he called me up on the bridge.
+
+"See her?" he said.
+
+And there, far behind us, in the shadow of the twilight, loomed the
+Other Ship again, desolate, lonely beyond words. We were leaving her
+rapidly astern. Strokher and I stood looking at her till she dwindled to
+a dot. Then Strokher said:
+
+"She's on post again."
+
+And when months afterward we limped into the Golden Gate and cast anchor
+off the "Front" our crew went ashore as soon as discharged, and in half
+a dozen hours the legend was in every sailors' boarding-house and in
+every seaman's dive, from Barbary Coast to Black Tom's.
+
+It is still there, and that is why no pilot will take the _Glarus_ out,
+no captain will navigate her, no stoker feed her fires, no sailor walk
+her decks. The _Glarus_ is suspect. She will never smell blue water
+again, nor taste the trades. She has seen a Ghost.
+
+
+
+
+THE GHOST IN THE CROSSTREES
+
+
+I
+
+Cyrus Ryder, the President of the South Pacific Exploitation Company,
+had at last got hold of a "proposition"--all Ryder's schemes were, in
+his vernacular, "propositions"--that was not only profitable beyond
+precedent or belief, but that also was, wonderful to say, more or less
+legitimate. He had got an "island." He had not discovered it. Ryder had
+not felt a deck under his shoes for twenty years other than the
+promenade deck of the ferry-boat _San Rafael_, that takes him home to
+Berkeley every evening after "business hours." He had not discovered it,
+but "Old Rosemary," captain of the barkentine _Scottish Chief_, of
+Blyth, had done that very thing, and, dying before he was able to
+perfect the title, had made over his interest in it to his best friend
+and old comrade, Cyrus Ryder.
+
+"Old Rosemary," I am told, first landed on the island--it is called
+Paa--in the later '60's.
+
+He established its location and took its latitude and longitude, but as
+minutes and degrees mean nothing to the lay reader, let it be said that
+the Island of Paa lies just below the equator, some 200 miles west of
+the Gilberts and 1,600 miles due east from Brisbane, in Australia. It is
+six miles long, three wide, and because of the prevailing winds and
+precipitous character of the coast can only be approached from the west
+during December and January.
+
+"Old Rosemary" landed on the island, raised the American flag, had the
+crew witness the document by virtue of which he made himself the
+possessor, and then, returning to San Francisco, forwarded to the
+Secretary of State, at Washington, application for title. This was
+withheld till it could be shown that no other nation had a prior claim.
+While "Old Rosemary" was working out the proof, he died, and the whole
+matter was left in abeyance till Cyrus Ryder took it up. By then there
+was a new Secretary in Washington and times were changed, so that the
+Government of Ryder's native land was not so averse toward acquiring
+Eastern possessions. The Secretary of State wrote to Ryder to say that
+the application would be granted upon furnishing a bond for $50,000; and
+you may believe that the bond was forthcoming.
+
+For in the first report upon Paa, "Old Rosemary" had used the magic word
+"guano."
+
+He averred, and his crew attested over their sworn statements, that Paa
+was covered to an average depth of six feet with the stuff, so that this
+last and biggest of "Cy" Ryder's propositions was a vast slab of an
+extremely marketable product six feet thick, three miles wide and six
+miles long.
+
+But no sooner had the title been granted when there came a dislocation
+in the proceedings that until then had been going forward so smoothly.
+Ryder called the Three Black Crows to him at this juncture, one certain
+afternoon in the month of April. They were his best agents. The plums
+that the "Company" had at its disposal generally went to the trio, and
+if any man could "put through" a dangerous and desperate piece of work,
+Strokher, Hardenberg and Ally Bazan were those men.
+
+Of late they had been unlucky, and the affair of the contraband arms,
+which had ended in failure of cataclysmic proportions, yet rankled in
+Ryder's memory, but he had no one else to whom he could intrust the
+present proposition and he still believed Hardenberg to be the best boss
+on his list.
+
+If Paa was to be fought for, Hardenberg, backed by Strokher and Ally
+Bazan, was the man of all men for the job, for it looked as though Ryder
+would not get the Island of Paa without a fight after all, and nitrate
+beds were worth fighting for.
+
+"You see, boys, it's this way," Ryder explained to the three as they sat
+around the spavined table in the grimy back room of Ryder's "office."
+"It's this way. There's a scoovy after Paa, I'm told; he says he was
+there before 'Rosemary,' which is a lie, and that his Gov'ment has given
+him title. He's got a kind of dough-dish up Portland way and starts for
+Paa as soon as ever he kin fit out. He's got no title, in course, but if
+he gits there afore we do and takes possession it'll take fifty years o'
+lawing an' injunctioning to git him off. So hustle is the word for you
+from the word 'go.' We got a good start o' the scoovy. He can't put to
+sea within a week, while over yonder in Oakland Basin there's the _Idaho
+Lass_, as good a schooner, boys, as ever wore paint, all ready but to
+fit her new sails on her. Ye kin do it in less than no time. The stores
+will be goin' into her while ye're workin', and within the week I expect
+to see the _Idaho Lass_ showing her heels to the Presidio. You see the
+point now, boys. If ye beat the scoovy--his name is Petersen, and his
+boat is called the _Elftruda_--we're to the wind'ard of a pretty pot o'
+money. If he gets away before you do--well, there's no telling; we
+prob'ly lose the island."
+
+
+II
+
+About ten days before the morning set for their departure I went over to
+the Oakland Basin to see how the Three Black Crows were getting on.
+
+Hardenberg welcomed me as my boat bumped alongside, and extending a
+great tarry paw, hauled me over the rail. The schooner was a wilderness
+of confusion, with the sails covering, apparently, nine-tenths of the
+decks, the remaining tenth encumbered by spars, cordage, tangled
+rigging, chains, cables and the like, all helter-skeltered together in
+such a haze of entanglements that my heart misgave me as I looked on it.
+Surely order would not issue from this chaos in four days' time with
+only three men to speed the work.
+
+But Hardenberg was reassuring, and little Ally Bazan, the colonial, told
+me they would "snatch her shipshape in the shorter end o' two days, if
+so be they must."
+
+I stayed with the Three Crows all that day and shared their dinner with
+them on the quarterdeck when, wearied to death with the strain of
+wrestling with the slatting canvas and ponderous boom, they at last
+threw themselves upon the hamper of "cold snack" I had brought off with
+me and pledged the success of the venture in tin dippers full of
+Pilsener.
+
+"And I'm thinking," said Ally Bazan, "as 'ow ye might as well turn in
+along o' us on board 'ere, instead o' hykin' back to town to-night.
+There's a fairish set o' currents up and daown 'ere about this time o'
+dye, and ye'd find it a stiff bit o' rowing."
+
+"We'll sling a hammick for you on the quarterdeck, m'son," urged
+Hardenberg.
+
+And so it happened that I passed my first night aboard the _Idaho Lass_.
+
+We turned in early. The Three Crows were very tired, and only Ally Bazan
+and I were left awake at the time when we saw the 8:30 ferryboat
+negotiating for her slip on the Oakland side. Then we also went to bed.
+
+And now it becomes necessary, for a better understanding of what is to
+follow, to mention with some degree of particularization the places and
+manners in which my three friends elected to take their sleep, as well
+as the condition and berth of the schooner _Idaho Lass_.
+
+Hardenberg slept upon the quarterdeck, rolled up in an army blanket and
+a tarpaulin. Strokher turned in below in the cabin upon the fixed lounge
+by the dining-table, while Ally Bazan stretched himself in one of the
+bunks in the fo'c's'le.
+
+As for the location of the schooner, she lay out in the stream, some
+three or four cables' length off the yards and docks of a ship-building
+concern. No other ship or boat of any description was anchored nearer
+than at least 300 yards. She was a fine, roomy vessel, three-masted,
+about 150 feet in length overall. She lay head up stream, and from where
+I lay by Hardenberg on the quarterdeck I could see her tops sharply
+outlined against the sky above the Golden Gate before I went to sleep.
+
+I suppose it was very early in the morning--nearer two than three--when
+I awoke. Some movement on the part of Hardenberg--as I afterward found
+out--had aroused me. But I lay inert for a long minute trying to find
+out why I was not in my own bed, in my own home, and to account for the
+rushing, rippling sound of the tide eddies sucking and chuckling around
+the _Lass's_ rudder-post.
+
+Then I became aware that Hardenberg was awake. I lay in my hammock,
+facing the stern of the schooner, and as Hardenberg had made up his bed
+between me and the wheel he was directly in my line of vision when I
+opened my eyes, and I could see him without any other movement than that
+of raising the eyelids. Just now, as I drifted more and more into
+wakefulness, I grew proportionately puzzled and perplexed to account for
+a singularly strange demeanour and conduct on the part of my friend.
+
+He was sitting up in his place, his knees drawn up under the blanket,
+one arm thrown around both, the hand of the other arm resting on the
+neck and supporting the weight of his body. He was broad awake. I could
+see the green shine of our riding lantern in his wide-open eyes, and
+from time to time I could hear him muttering to himself, "What is it?
+What is it? What the devil is it, anyhow?" But it was not his attitude,
+nor the fact of his being so broad awake at the unseasonable hour, nor
+yet his unaccountable words, that puzzled me the most. It was the man's
+eyes and the direction in which they looked that startled me.
+
+His gaze was directed not upon anything on the deck of the boat, nor
+upon the surface of the water near it, but upon something behind me and
+at a great height in the air. I was not long in getting myself broad
+awake.
+
+
+III
+
+I rolled out on the deck and crossed over to where Hardenberg sat
+huddled in his blankets.
+
+"What the devil--" I began.
+
+He jumped suddenly at the sound of my voice, then raised an arm and
+pointed toward the top of the foremast.
+
+"D'ye see it?" he muttered. "Say, huh? D'ye see it? I thought I saw it
+last night, but I wasn't sure. But there's no mistake now. D'ye see it,
+Mr. Dixon?"
+
+I looked where he pointed. The schooner was riding easily to anchor, the
+surface of the bay was calm, but overhead the high white sea-fog was
+rolling in. Against it the foremast stood out like the hand of an
+illuminated town clock, and not a detail of its rigging that was not as
+distinct as if etched against the sky.
+
+And yet I saw nothing.
+
+"Where?" I demanded, and again and again "where?"
+
+"In the crosstrees," whispered Hardenberg. "Ah, look there."
+
+He was right. Something was stirring there, something that I had
+mistaken for the furled tops'l. At first it was but a formless bundle,
+but as Hardenberg spoke it stretched itself, it grew upright, it assumed
+an erect attitude, it took the outlines of a human being. From head to
+heel a casing housed it in, a casing that might have been anything at
+that hour of the night and in that strange place--a shroud, if you like,
+a winding-sheet--anything; and it is without shame that I confess to a
+creep of the most disagreeable sensation I have ever known as I stood at
+Hardenberg's side on that still, foggy night and watched the stirring of
+that nameless, formless shape standing gaunt and tall and grisly and
+wrapped in its winding-sheet upon the crosstrees of the foremast of the
+_Idaho Lass_.
+
+We watched and waited breathless for an instant. Then the creature on
+the foremast laid a hand upon the lashings of the tops'l and undid them.
+Then it turned, slid to the deck by I know not what strange process,
+and, still hooded, still shrouded, still lapped about by its
+mummy-wrappings, seized a rope's end. In an instant the jib was set and
+stood on hard and billowing against the night wind. The tops'l followed.
+Then the figure moved forward and passed behind the companionway of the
+fo'c's'le.
+
+We looked for it to appear upon the other side, but looked in vain. We
+saw it no more that night.
+
+What Hardenberg and I told each other between the time of the
+disappearing and the hour of breakfast I am now ashamed to recall. But
+at last we agreed to say nothing to the others--for the time being. Just
+after breakfast, however, we two had a few words by the wheel on the
+quarterdeck. Ally Bazan and Strokher were forward.
+
+"The proper thing to do," said I--it was a glorious, exhilarating
+morning, and the sunlight was flooding every angle and corner of the
+schooner--"the proper thing to do is to sleep on deck by the foremast
+to-night with our pistols handy and interview the--party if it walks
+again."
+
+"Oh, yes," cried Hardenberg heartily. "Oh, yes; that's the proper thing.
+Of course it is. No manner o' doubt about that, Mr. Dixon. Watch for the
+party--yes, with pistols. Of course it's the proper thing. But I know
+one man that ain't going to do no such thing."
+
+"Well," I remember to have said reflectively, "well--I guess I know
+another."
+
+But for all our resolutions to say nothing to the others about the
+night's occurrences, we forgot that the tops'l and jib were both set and
+both drawing.
+
+"An' w'at might be the bloomin' notion o' setting the bloomin' kite and
+jib?" demanded Ally Bazan not half an hour after breakfast. Shamelessly
+Hardenberg, at a loss for an answer, feigned an interest in the grummets
+of the life-boat cover and left me to lie as best I might.
+
+But it is not easy to explain why one should raise the sails of an
+anchored ship during the night, and Ally Bazan grew very suspicious.
+Strokher, too, had something to say, and in the end the whole matter
+came out.
+
+Trust a sailor to give full value to anything savouring of the
+supernatural. Strokher promptly voted the ship a "queer old hooker
+anyhow, and about as seaworthy as a hen-coop." He held forth at great
+length upon the subject.
+
+"You mark my words, now," he said. "There's been some fishy doin's in
+this 'ere vessel, and it's like somebody done to death crool hard, an'
+'e wants to git away from the smell o' land, just like them as is killed
+on blue water. That's w'y 'e takes an' sets the sails between dark an'
+dawn."
+
+But Ally Bazan was thoroughly and wholly upset, so much so that at first
+he could not speak. He went pale and paler while we stood talking it
+over, and crossed himself--he was a Catholic--furtively behind the
+water-butt.
+
+"I ain't never 'a' been keen on ha'nts anyhow, Mr. Dixon," he told me
+aggrievedly at dinner that evening. "I got no use for 'em. I ain't never
+known any good to come o' anything with a ha'nt tagged to it, an' we're
+makin' a ill beginnin' o' this island business, Mr. Dixon--a blyme ill
+beginnin'. I mean to stye awyke to-night."
+
+But if he was awake the little colonial was keeping close to his bunk at
+the time when Strokher and Hardenberg woke me at about three in the
+morning.
+
+I rolled out and joined them on the quarterdeck and stood beside them
+watching. The same figure again towered, as before, gray and ominous in
+the crosstrees. As before, it set the tops'l; as before, it came down to
+the deck and raised the jib; as before, it passed out of sight amid the
+confusion of the forward deck.
+
+But this time we all ran toward where we last had seen it, stumbling
+over the encumbered decks, jostling and tripping, but keeping
+wonderfully close together. It was not twenty seconds from the time the
+creature had disappeared before we stood panting upon the exact spot we
+had last seen it. We searched every corner of the forward deck in vain.
+We looked over the side. The moon was up. This night there was no fog.
+We could see for miles each side of us, but never a trace of a boat was
+visible, and it was impossible that any swimmer could have escaped the
+merciless scrutiny to which we subjected the waters of the bay in every
+direction.
+
+Hardenberg and I dived down into the fo'c's'le. Ally Bazan was sound
+asleep in his bunk and woke stammering, blinking and bewildered by the
+lantern we carried.
+
+"I sye," he cried, all at once scrambling up and clawing at our arms,
+"D'd the bally ha'nt show up agyne?" And as we nodded he went on more
+aggrievedly than ever--"Oh, I sye, y' know, I daon't like this. I eyen't
+shipping in no bloomin' 'ooker wot carries a ha'nt for supercargo. They
+waon't no good come o' this cruise--no, they waon't. It's a sign, that's
+wot it is. I eyen't goin' to buck again no signs--it eyen't human
+nature, no it eyen't. You mark my words, 'Bud' Hardenberg, we clear this
+port with a ship wot has a ha'nt an' we waon't never come back agyne, my
+hearty."
+
+That night he berthed aft with us on the quarterdeck, but though we
+stood watch and watch till well into the dawn, nothing stirred about the
+foremast. So it was the next night, and so the night after that. When
+three successive days had passed without any manifestation the keen edge
+of the business became a little blunted and we declared that an end had
+been made.
+
+Ally Bazan returned to his bunk in the fo'c's'le on the fourth night,
+and the rest of us slept the hours through unconcernedly.
+
+But in the morning there were the jib and tops'l set and drawing as
+before.
+
+
+IV
+
+After this we began experimenting--on Ally Bazan. We bunked him forward
+and we bunked him aft, for some one had pointed out that the "ha'nt"
+walked only at the times when the colonial slept in the fo'c's'le. We
+found this to be true. Let the little fellow watch on the quarterdeck
+with us and the night passed without disturbance. As soon as he took up
+his quarters forward the haunting recommenced. Furthermore, it began to
+appear that the "ha'nt" carefully refrained from appearing to him. He of
+us all had never seen the thing. He of us all was spared the chills and
+the harrowings that laid hold upon the rest of us during these still
+gray hours after midnight when we huddled on the deck of the _Idaho
+Lass_ and watched the sheeted apparition in the rigging; for by now
+there was no more charging forward in attempts to run the ghost down. We
+had passed that stage long since.
+
+But so far from rejoicing in this immunity or drawing courage therefrom,
+Ally Bazan filled the air with his fears and expostulations. Just the
+fact that he was in some way differentiated from the others--that he was
+singled out, if only for exemption--worked upon him. And that he was
+unable to scale his terrors by actual sight of their object excited them
+all the more.
+
+And there issued from this a curious consequence. He, the very one who
+had never seen the haunting, was also the very one to unsettle what
+little common sense yet remained to Hardenberg and Strokher. He never
+allowed the subject to be ignored--never lost an opportunity of
+referring to the doom that o'erhung the vessel. By the hour he poured
+into the ears of his friends lugubrious tales of ships, warned as this
+one was, that had cleared from port, never to be seen again. He recalled
+to their minds parallel incidents that they themselves had heard; he
+foretold the fate of the _Idaho Lass_ when the land should lie behind
+and she should be alone in midocean with this horrid supercargo that
+took liberties with the rigging, and at last one particular morning, two
+days before that which was to witness the schooner's departure, he came
+out flatfooted to the effect that "Gaw-blyme him, he couldn't stand the
+gaff no longer, no he couldn't, so help him, that if the owners were
+wishful for to put to sea" (doomed to some unnamable destruction) "he
+for one wa'n't fit to die, an' was going to quit that blessed day." For
+the sake of appearances, Hardenberg and Strokher blustered and fumed,
+but I could hear the crack in Strokher's voice as plain as in a broken
+ship's bell. I was not surprised at what happened later in the day, when
+he told the others that he was a very sick man. A congenital stomach
+trouble, it seemed--or was it liver complaint--had found him out again.
+He had contracted it when a lad at Trincomalee, diving for pearls; it
+was acutely painful, it appeared. Why, gentlemen, even at that very
+moment, as he stood there talking--Hi, yi! O Lord !--talking, it was
+a-griping of him something uncommon, so it was. And no, it was no manner
+of use for him to think of going on this voyage; sorry he was, too, for
+he'd made up his mind, so he had, to find out just what was wrong with
+the foremast, etc.
+
+And thereupon Hardenberg swore a great oath and threw down the capstan
+bar he held in his hand.
+
+"Well, then," he cried wrathfully, "we might as well chuck up the whole
+business. No use going to sea with a sick man and a scared man."
+
+"An' there's the first word o' sense," cried Ally Bazan, "I've heard
+this long day. 'Scared,' he says; aye, right ye are, me bully."
+
+"It's Cy Rider's fault," the three declared after a two-hours' talk. "No
+business giving us a schooner with a ghost aboard. Scoovy or no scoovy,
+island or no island, guano or no guano, we don't go to sea in the
+haunted hooker called the _Idaho Lass_."
+
+No more they did. On board the schooner they had faced the supernatural
+with some kind of courage born of the occasion. Once on shore, and no
+money could hire, no power force them to go aboard a second time.
+
+The affair ended in a grand wrangle in Cy Rider's back office, and just
+twenty-four hours later the bark _Elftruda_, Captain Jens Petersen,
+cleared from Portland, bound for "a cruise to South Pacific ports--in
+ballast."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two years after this I took Ally Bazan with me on a duck-shooting
+excursion in the "Toolies" back of Sacramento, for he is a handy man
+about a camp and can row a boat as softly as a drifting cloud.
+
+We went about in a cabin cat of some thirty feet over all, the rowboat
+towing astern. Sometimes we did not go ashore to camp, but slept aboard.
+On the second night of this expedient I woke in my blankets on the floor
+of the cabin to see the square of gray light that stood for the cabin
+door darkened by--it gave me the same old start--a sheeted figure. It
+was going up the two steps to the deck. Beyond question it had been in
+the cabin. I started up and followed it. I was too frightened not to--if
+you can see what I mean. By the time I had got the blankets off and had
+thrust my head above the level of the cabin hatch the figure was already
+in the bows, and, as a matter of course, hoisting the jib.
+
+I thought of calling Ally Bazan, who slept by me on the cabin floor, but
+it seemed to me at the time that if I did not keep that figure in sight
+it would elude me again, and, besides, if I went back in the cabin I was
+afraid that I would bolt the door and remain under the bedclothes till
+morning. I was afraid to go on with the adventure, but I was much more
+afraid to go back.
+
+So I crept forward over the deck of the sloop. The "ha'nt" had its back
+toward me, fumbling with the ends of the jib halyards. I could hear the
+creak of new ropes as it undid the knot, and the sound was certainly
+substantial and commonplace. I was so close by now that I could see
+every outline of the shape. It was precisely as it had appeared on the
+crosstrees of the _Idaho_, only, seen without perspective, and brought
+down to the level of the eye, it lost its exaggerated height.
+
+It had been kneeling upon the deck. Now, at last, it rose and turned
+about, the end of the halyards in its hand. The light of the earliest
+dawn fell squarely on the face and form, and I saw, if you please, Ally
+Bazan himself. His eyes were half shut, and through his open lips came
+the sound of his deep and regular breathing.
+
+At breakfast the next morning I asked, "Ally Bazan, did you ever walk in
+your sleep."
+
+"Aye," he answered, "years ago, when I was by wye o' being a lad, I used
+allus to wrap the bloomin' sheets around me. An' crysy things I'd do the
+times. But the 'abit left me when I grew old enough to tyke me whisky
+strite and have hair on me fyce."
+
+I did not "explain away" the ghost in the crosstrees either to Ally
+Bazan or to the other two Black Crows. Furthermore, I do not now refer
+to the Island of Paa in the hearing of the trio. The claims and title of
+Norway to the island have long since been made good and conceded--even
+by the State Department at Washington--and I understand that Captain
+Petersen has made a very pretty fortune out of the affair.
+
+
+
+
+THE RIDING OF FELIPE
+
+
+I. FELIPE
+
+As young Felipe Arillaga guided his pony out of the last intricacies of
+Pacheco Pass, he was thinking of Rubia Ytuerate and of the scene he had
+had with her a few days before. He reconstructed it now very vividly.
+Rubia had been royally angry, and as she had stood before him, her arms
+folded and her teeth set, he was forced to admit that she was as
+handsome a woman as could be found through all California.
+
+There had been a time, three months past, when Felipe found no
+compulsion in the admission, for though betrothed to Buelna Martiarena
+he had abruptly conceived a violent infatuation for Rubia, and had
+remained a guest upon her rancho many weeks longer than he had intended.
+
+For three months he had forgotten Buelna entirely. At the end of that
+time he had remembered her--had awakened to the fact that his
+infatuation for Rubia _was_ infatuation, and had resolved to end the
+affair and go back to Buelna as soon as it was possible.
+
+But Rubia was quick to notice the cooling of his passion. First she
+fixed him with oblique suspicion from under her long lashes, then
+avoided him, then kept him at her side for days together. Then at
+last--his defection unmistakable--turned on him with furious demands for
+the truth.
+
+Felipe had snatched occasion with one hand and courage with the other.
+
+"Well," he had said, "well, it is not my fault. Yes, it is the truth. It
+is played out."
+
+He had not thought it necessary to speak of Buelna; but Rubia divined
+the other woman.
+
+"So you think you are to throw me aside like that. Ah, it is played out,
+is it, Felipe Arillaga? You listen to me. Do not fancy for one moment
+you are going back to an old love, or on to a new one. You listen to
+me," she had cried, her fist over her head. "I do not know who she is,
+but my curse is on her, Felipe Arillaga. My curse is on her who next
+kisses you. May that kiss be a blight to her. From that moment may evil
+cling to her, bad luck follow her; may she love and not be loved; may
+friends desert her, enemies beset her, her sisters shame her, her
+brothers disown her, and those whom she has loved abandon her. May her
+body waste as your love for me has wasted; may her heart be broken as
+your promises to me have been broken; may her joy be as fleeting as your
+vows, and her beauty grow as dim as your memory of me. I have said it."
+
+[Illustration: "'My Curse Is On Her Who Next Kisses You'"]
+
+"So be it!" Felipe had retorted with vast nonchalance, and had flung out
+from her presence to saddle his pony and start back to Buelna.
+
+But Felipe was superstitious. He half believed in curses, had seen
+two-headed calves born because of them, and sheep stampeded over cliffs
+for no other reason.
+
+Now, as he drew out of Pacheco Pass and came down into the valley the
+idea of Rubia and her curse troubled him. At first, when yet three days'
+journey from Buelna, it had been easy to resolve to brave it out. But
+now he was already on the Rancho Martiarena (had been traveling over it
+for the last ten hours, in fact), and in a short time would be at the
+_hacienda_ of Martiarena, uncle and guardian of Buelna. He would see
+Buelna, and she, believing always in his fidelity, would expect to kiss
+him.
+
+"Well, this is to be thought about," murmured Felipe uneasily. He
+touched up the pony with one of his enormous spurs.
+
+"Now I know what I will do," he thought. "I will go to San Juan Bautista
+and confess and be absolved, and will buy candles. Then afterward will
+go to Buelna."
+
+He found the road that led to the Mission and turned into it, pushing
+forward at a canter. Then suddenly at a sharp turning reined up just in
+time to avoid colliding with a little cavalcade.
+
+He uttered an exclamation under his breath.
+
+At the head of the cavalcade rode old Martiarena himself, and behind him
+came a _peon_ or two, then Manuela, the aged housekeeper and--after a
+fashion--duenna. Then at her side, on a saddle of red leather with
+silver bosses, which was cinched about the body of a very small white
+burro, Buelna herself.
+
+She was just turned sixteen, and being of the best blood of the mother
+kingdom (the strain dating back to the Ostrogothic invasion), was fair.
+Her hair was blond, her eyes blue-gray, her eyebrows and lashes dark
+brown, and as he caught sight of her Felipe wondered how he ever could
+have believed the swarthy Rubia beautiful.
+
+There was a jubilant meeting. Old Martiarena kissed both his cheeks,
+patting him on the back.
+
+"Oh, ho!" he cried. "Once more back. We have just returned from the
+feast of the Santa Cruz at the Mission, and Buelna prayed for your safe
+return. Go to her, boy. She has waited long for this hour."
+
+Felipe, his eyes upon those of his betrothed, advanced. She was looking
+at him and smiling. As he saw the unmistakable light in her blue eyes,
+the light he knew she had kept burning for him alone, Felipe could have
+abased himself to the very hoofs of her burro. Could it be possible he
+had ever forgotten her for such a one as Rubia--have been unfaithful to
+this dear girl for so much as the smallest fraction of a minute?
+
+"You are welcome, Felipe," she said. "Oh, very, very welcome." She gave
+him her hand and turned her face to his. But it was her hand and not her
+face the young man kissed. Old Martiarena, who looked on, shook with
+laughter.
+
+"Hoh! a timid lover this," he called. "We managed different when I was a
+lad. Her lips, Felipe. Must an old man teach a youngster gallantry?"
+
+Buelna blushed and laughed, but yet did not withdraw her hand nor turn
+her face away.
+
+There was a delicate expectancy in her manner that she nevertheless
+contrived to make compatible with her native modesty. Felipe had been
+her acknowledged lover ever since the two were children.
+
+"Well?" cried Martiarena as Felipe hesitated.
+
+Even then, if Felipe could have collected his wits, he might have saved
+the situation for himself. But no time had been allowed him to think.
+Confusion seized upon him. All that was clear in his mind were the last
+words of Rubia. It seemed to him that between his lips he carried a
+poison deadly to Buelna above all others. Stupidly, brutally he
+precipitated the catastrophe.
+
+"No," he exclaimed seriously, abruptly drawing his hand from Buelna's,
+"no. It may not be. I cannot."
+
+Martiarena stared. Then:
+
+"Is this a jest, senor?" he demanded. "An ill-timed one, then."
+
+"No," answered Felipe, "it is not a jest."
+
+"But, Felipe," murmured Buelna. "But--why--I do not understand."
+
+"I think I begin to," cried Martiarena. "Senor, you do not," protested
+Felipe. "It is not to be explained. I know what you believe. On my
+honour, I love Buelna."
+
+"Your actions give you the lie, then, young man. Bah! Nonsense. What
+fool's play is all this? Kiss him, Buelna, and have done with it."
+
+Felipe gnawed his nails.
+
+"Believe me, oh, believe me, Senor Martiarena, it must not be."
+
+"Then an explanation."
+
+For a moment Felipe hesitated. But how could he tell them the truth--the
+truth that involved Rubia and his disloyalty, temporary though that was.
+They could neither understand nor forgive. Here, indeed, was an
+_impasse_. One thing only was to be said, and he said it. "I can give
+you no explanation," he murmured.
+
+But Buelna suddenly interposed.
+
+"Oh, please," she said, pushing by Felipe, "uncle, we have talked too
+long. Please let us go. There is only one explanation. Is it not enough
+already?"
+
+"By God, it is not!" vociferated the old man, turning upon Felipe. "Tell
+me what it means. Tell me what this means."
+
+"I cannot."
+
+"Then I will tell _you_!" shouted the old fellow in Felipe's face. "It
+means that you are a liar and a rascal. That you have played with
+Buelna, and that you have deceived me, who have trusted you as a father
+would have trusted a son. I forbid you to answer me. For the sake of
+what you were I spare you now. But this I will do. Off of my rancho!" he
+cried. "Off my rancho, and in the future pray your God, or the devil, to
+whom you are sold, to keep you far from me."
+
+"You do not understand, you do not understand," pleaded Felipe, the
+tears starting to his eyes. "Oh, believe me, I speak the truth. I love
+your niece. _I love Buelna_. Oh, never so truly, never so devoutly as
+now. Let me speak to her; she will believe me."
+
+But Buelna, weeping, had ridden on.
+
+
+II. UNZAR
+
+A fortnight passed. Soon a month had gone by. Felipe gloomed about his
+rancho, solitary, taciturn, siding the sheep-walks and cattle-ranges for
+days and nights together, refusing all intercourse with his friends. It
+seemed as if he had lost Buelna for good and all. At times, as the
+certainty of this defined itself more clearly, Felipe would fling his
+hat upon the ground, beat his breast, and then, prone upon his face, his
+head buried in his folded arms, would lie for hours motionless, while
+his pony nibbled the sparse alfalfa, and the jack-rabbits limping from
+the sage peered at him, their noses wrinkling.
+
+But about a month after the meeting and parting with Buelna, word went
+through all the ranches that a hide-roger had cast anchor in Monterey
+Bay. At once an abrupt access of activity seized upon the rancheros.
+Rodeos were held, sheep slaughtered, and the great tallow-pits began to
+fill up.
+
+Felipe was not behind his neighbours, and, his tallow once in hand, sent
+it down to Monterey, and himself rode down to see about disposing of it.
+
+On his return he stopped at the wine shop of one Lopez Catala, on the
+road between Monterey and his rancho.
+
+It was late afternoon when he reached it, and the wine shop was
+deserted. Outside, the California August lay withering and suffocating
+over all the land. The far hills were burnt to dry, hay-like grass and
+brittle clods. The eucalyptus trees in front of the wine shop (the first
+trees Felipe had seen all that day) were coated with dust. The plains of
+sagebrush and the alkali flats shimmered and exhaled pallid mirages,
+glistening like inland seas. Over all blew the trade-wind; prolonged,
+insistent, harassing, swooping up the red dust of the road and the white
+powder of the alkali beds, and flinging it--white-and-red banners in a
+sky of burnt-out blue--here and there about the landscape.
+
+The wine shop, which was also an inn, was isolated, lonely, but it was
+comfortable, and Felipe decided to lay over there that night, then in
+the morning reach his rancho by an easy stage.
+
+He had his supper--an omelet, cheese, tortillas, and a glass of
+wine--and afterward sat outside on a bench smoking innumerable
+cigarettes and watching the sun set.
+
+While he sat so a young man of about his own age rode up from the
+eastward with a great flourish, and giving over his horse to the
+_muchacho_, entered the wine shop and ordered dinner and a room for the
+night. Afterward he came out and stood in front of the inn and watched
+the _muchacho_ cleaning his horse.
+
+Felipe, looking at him, saw that he was of his own age and about his own
+build--that is to say, twenty-eight or thirty, and tall and lean. But in
+other respects the difference was great. The stranger was flamboyantly
+dressed: skin-tight pantaloons, fastened all up and down the leg with
+round silver buttons; yellow boots with heels high as a girl's, set off
+with silver spurs; a very short coat faced with galloons of gold, and a
+very broad-brimmed and very high-crowned sombrero, on which the silver
+braid alone was worth the price of a good horse. Even for a Spanish
+Mexican his face was dark. Swart it was, the cheeks hollow; a tiny,
+tight mustache with ends truculently pointed and erect helped out the
+belligerency of the tight-shut lips. The eyes were black as bitumen, and
+flashed continually under heavy brows.
+
+"Perhaps," thought Felipe, "he is a _toreador_ from Mexico."
+
+The stranger followed his horse to the barn, but, returning in a few
+moments, stood before Felipe and said:
+
+"Senor, I have taken the liberty to put my horse in the stall occupied
+by yours. Your beast the _muchacho_ turned into the _corrale_. Mine is
+an animal of spirit, and in a _corrale_ would fight with the other
+horses. I rely upon the senor's indulgence."
+
+At ordinary times he would not have relied in vain. But Felipe's nerves
+were in a jangle these days, and his temper, since Buelna's dismissal of
+him, was bitter. His perception of offense was keen. He rose, his eyes
+upon the stranger's eyes.
+
+"My horse is mine," he observed. "Only my friends permit themselves
+liberties with what is mine."
+
+The other smiled scornfully and drew from his belt a little pouch of
+gold dust.
+
+"What I take I pay for," he remarked, and, still smiling, tendered
+Felipe a few grains of the gold.
+
+Felipe struck the outstretched palm.
+
+"Am I a _peon_?" he vociferated.
+
+"Probably," retorted the other.
+
+"I _will_ take pay for that word," cried Felipe, his face blazing, "but
+not in your money, senor."
+
+"In that case I may give you more than you ask."
+
+"No, by God, for I shall take all you have."
+
+But the other checked his retort. A sudden change came over him.
+
+"I ask the senor's pardon," he said, with grave earnestness, "for
+provoking him. You may not fight with me nor I with you. I speak the
+truth. I have made oath not to fight till I have killed one whom now I
+seek."
+
+"Very well; I, too, spoke without reflection. You seek an enemy, then,
+senor?"
+
+"My sister's, who is therefore mine. An enemy truly. Listen, you shall
+judge. I am absent from my home a year, and when I return what do I
+find? My sister betrayed, deceived, flouted by a fellow, a nobody, whom
+she received a guest in her house, a fit return for kindness, for
+hospitality! Well, he answers to me for the dishonour."
+
+"Wait. Stop!" interposed Felipe. "Your name, senor."
+
+"Unzar Ytuerate, and my enemy is called Arillaga. Him I seek and----"
+
+"Then you shall seek no farther!" shouted Felipe. "It is to Rubia
+Ytuerate, your sister, whom I owe all my unhappiness, all my suffering.
+She has hurt not me only, but one--but----Mother of God, we waste
+words!" he cried. "Knife to knife, Unzar Ytuerate. I am Felipe Arillaga,
+and may God be thanked for the chance that brings this quarrel to my
+hand."
+
+"You! You!" gasped Unzar. Fury choked him; his hands clutched and
+unclutched--now fists, now claws. His teeth grated sharply while a
+quivering sensation as of a chill crisped his flesh. "Then the sooner
+the better," he muttered between his set teeth, and the knives flashed
+in the hands of the two men so suddenly that the gleam of one seemed
+only the reflection of the other.
+
+Unzar held out his left wrist.
+
+"Are you willing?" he demanded, with a significant glance.
+
+"And ready," returned the other, baring his forearm.
+
+Catala, keeper of the inn, was called.
+
+"Love of the Virgin, not here, senors. My house--the _alcalde_--"
+
+"You have a strap there." Unzar pointed to a bridle hanging from a peg
+by the doorway. "No words; quick; do as you are told."
+
+The two men held out their left arms till wrist touched wrist, and
+Catala, trembling and protesting, lashed them together with a strap.
+
+"Tighter," commanded Felipe; "put all your strength to it."
+
+The strap was drawn up to another hole.
+
+"Now, Catala, stand back," commanded Unzar, "and count three slowly. At
+the word 'three,' Senor Arillaga, we begin. You understand."
+
+"I understand."
+
+"Ready.... Count."
+
+"One."
+
+Felipe and Unzar each put his right hand grasping the knife behind his
+back as etiquette demanded.
+
+"Two."
+
+They strained back from each other, the full length of their left arms,
+till the nails grew bloodless.
+
+"_Three!_" called Lopez Catala in a shaking voice.
+
+
+III. RUBIA
+
+When Felipe regained consciousness he found that he lay in an upper
+chamber of Catala's inn upon a bed. His shoulder, the right one, was
+bandaged, and so was his head. He felt no pain, only a little weak, but
+there was a comfortable sense of brandy at his lips, an arm supported
+his head, and the voice of Rubia Ytuerate spoke his name. He sat up on a
+sudden.
+
+"Rubia, _you_!" he cried. "What is it? What happened? Oh, I remember,
+Unzar--we fought. Oh, my God, how we fought! But you----What brought you
+here?"
+
+"Thank Heaven," she murmured, "you are better. You are not so badly
+wounded. As he fell he must have dragged you with him, and your head
+struck the threshold of the doorway."
+
+"Is he badly hurt? Will he recover?"
+
+"I hope so. But you are safe."
+
+"But what brought you here?"
+
+"Love," she cried; "my love for you. What I suffered after you had gone!
+Felipe, I have fought, too. Pride was strong at first, and it was pride
+that made me send Unzar after you. I told him what had happened. I
+hounded him to hunt you down. Then when he had gone my battle began. Ah,
+dearest, dearest, it all came back, our days together, the life we led,
+knowing no other word but love, thinking no thoughts that were not of
+each other. And love conquered. Unzar was not a week gone before I
+followed him--to call him back, to shield you, to save you from his
+fury. I came all but too late, and found you both half dead. My brother
+and my lover, your body across his, your blood mingling with his own.
+But not too late to love you back to life again. Your life is mine now,
+Felipe. I love you, I love you." She clasped her hands together and
+pressed them to her cheek. "Ah, if you knew," she cried; "if you could
+only look into my heart. Pride is nothing; good name is nothing; friends
+are nothing. Oh, it is a glory to give them all for love, to give up
+everything; to surrender, to submit, to cry to one's heart: 'Take me; I
+am as wax. Take me; conquer me; lead me wherever you will. All is well
+lost so only that love remains.' And I have heard all that has
+happened--this other one, the Senorita Buelna, how that she for bade you
+her lands. Let her go; she is not worthy of your love, cold,
+selfish----"
+
+"Stop!" cried Felipe, "you shall say no more evil of her. It is enough."
+
+"Felipe, you love her yet?"
+
+"And always, always will."
+
+"She who has cast you off; she who disdains you, who will not suffer you
+on her lands? And have you come to be so low, so base and mean as that?"
+
+"I have sunk no lower than a woman who could follow after a lover who
+had grown manifestly cold."
+
+"Ah," she answered sadly, "if I could so forget my pride as to follow
+you, do not think your reproaches can touch me now." Then suddenly she
+sank at the bedside and clasped his hand in both of hers. Her beautiful
+hair, unbound, tumbled about her shoulders; her eyes, swimming with
+tears, were turned up to his; her lips trembled with the intensity of
+her passion. In a voice low, husky, sweet as a dove's, she addressed
+him. "Oh, dearest, come back to me; come back to me. Let me love you
+again. Don't you see my heart is breaking? There is only you in all the
+world for me. I was a proud woman once. See now what I have brought
+myself to. Don't let it all be in vain. If you fail me now, think how it
+will be for me afterward--to know that I--I, Rubia Ytuerate, have begged
+the love of a man and begged in vain. Do you think I could live knowing
+that?" Abruptly she lost control of herself. She caught him about the
+neck with both her arms. Almost incoherently her words rushed from her
+tight-shut teeth.
+
+"Ah, I can _make_ you love me. I can make you love me," she cried. "You
+shall come back to me. You are mine, and you cannot help but come back."
+
+"_Por Dios_, Rubia," he ejaculated, "remember yourself. You are out of
+your head."
+
+"Come back to me; love me."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"Come back to me."
+
+"No."
+
+"You cannot push me from you," she cried, for, one hand upon her
+shoulder, he had sought to disengage himself. "No, I shall not let you
+go. You shall not push me from you! Thrust me off and I will embrace you
+all the closer. Yes, _strike_ me if you will, and I will kiss you."
+
+And with the words she suddenly pressed her lips to his.
+
+Abruptly Felipe freed himself. A new thought suddenly leaped to his
+brain.
+
+"Let your own curse return upon you," he cried. "You yourself have freed
+me; you yourself have broken the barrier you raised between me and my
+betrothed. You cursed her whose lips should next touch mine, and you are
+poisoned with your own venom."
+
+He sprang from off the bed, and catching up his _serape_, flung it about
+his shoulders.
+
+"Felipe," she cried, "Felipe, where are you going?"
+
+"Back to Buelna," he shouted, and with the words rushed from the room.
+Her strength seemed suddenly to leave her. She sank lower to the floor,
+burying her face deep upon the pillows that yet retained the impress of
+him she loved so deeply, so recklessly.
+
+Footsteps in the passage and a knocking at the door aroused her. A
+woman, one of the escort who had accompanied her, entered hurriedly.
+
+"Senorita," cried this one, "your brother, the Senor Unzar, he is
+dying."
+
+Rubia hurried to an adjoining room, where upon a mattress on the floor
+lay her brother.
+
+"Put that woman out," he gasped as his glance met hers. "I never sent
+for her," he went on. "You are no longer sister of mine. It was you who
+drove me to this quarrel, and when I have vindicated you what do you do?
+Your brother you leave to be tended by hirelings, while all your thought
+and care are lavished on your paramour. Go back to him. I know how to
+die alone, but as you go remember that in dying I hated and disowned
+you."
+
+He fell back upon the pillows, livid, dead.
+
+Rubia started forward with a cry.
+
+"It is you who have killed him," cried the woman who had summoned her.
+The rest of Rubia's escort, _vaqueros_, _peons_, and the old _alcalde_
+of her native village, stood about with bared heads.
+
+"That is true. That is true," they murmured. The old _alcalde_ stepped
+forward.
+
+"Who dishonours my friend dishonours me," he said. "From this day,
+Senorita Ytuerate, you and I are strangers." He went out, and one by
+one, with sullen looks and hostile demeanour, Rubia's escort followed.
+Their manner was unmistakable; they were deserting her.
+
+Rubia clasped her hands over her eyes.
+
+"Madre de Dios, Madre de Dios," she moaned over and over again. Then in
+a low voice she repeated her own words: "May it be a blight to her. From
+that moment may evil cling to her, bad luck follow her; may she love and
+not be loved; may friends desert her, her sisters shame her, her
+brothers disown her----"
+
+There was a clatter of horse's hoofs in the courtyard.
+
+"It is your lover," said her woman coldly from the doorway. "He is
+riding away from you."
+
+"----and those," added Rubia, "whom she has loved abandon her."
+
+
+IV. BELUNA
+
+Meanwhile Felipe, hatless, bloody, was galloping through the night, his
+pony's head turned toward the _hacienda_ of Martiarena. The Rancho
+Martiarena lay between his own rancho and the inn where he had met
+Rubia, so that this distance was not great. He reached it in about an
+hour of vigorous spurring.
+
+The place was dark though it was as yet early in the night, and an
+ominous gloom seemed to hang about the house. Felipe, his heart sinking,
+pounded at the door, and at last aroused the aged superintendent, who
+was also a sort of _major-domo_ in the household, and who in Felipe's
+boyhood had often ridden him on his knee.
+
+"Ah, it is you, Arillaga," he said very sadly, as the moonlight struck
+across Felipe's face. "I had hoped never to see you again."
+
+"Buelna," demanded Felipe. "I have something to say to her, and to the
+_padron_."
+
+"Too late, senor."
+
+"My God, dead?"
+
+"As good as dead."
+
+"Rafael, tell me all. I have come to set everything straight again. On
+my honour, I have been misjudged. Is Buelna well?"
+
+"Listen. You know your own heart best, senor. When you left her our
+little lady was as one half dead; her heart died within her. Ah, she
+loved you, Arillaga, far more than you deserved. She drooped swiftly,
+and one night all but passed away. Then it was that she made a vow that
+if God spared her life she would become the bride of the church--would
+forever renounce the world. Well, she recovered, became almost well
+again, but not the same as before. She never will be that. So soon as
+she was able to obtain Martiarena's consent she made all the
+preparations--signed away all her lands and possessions, and spent the
+days and nights in prayer and purifications. The Mother Superior of the
+Convent of Santa Teresa has been a guest at the _hacienda_ this
+fortnight past. Only to-day the party--that is to say, Martiarena, the
+Mother Superior and Buelna--left for Santa Teresa, and at midnight of
+this very night Buelna takes the veil. You know your own heart, Senor
+Felipe. Go your way."
+
+"But not _till_ midnight!" cried Felipe.
+
+"What? I do not understand."
+
+"She will not take the veil till midnight."
+
+"No, not till then."
+
+"Rafael," cried Felipe, "ask me no questions now. Only _believe_ me. I
+always have and always will love Buelna. I swear it. I can stop this
+yet; only once let me reach her in time. Trust me. Ah, for this once
+trust me, you who have known me since I was a lad."
+
+He held out his hand. The other for a moment hesitated, then impulsively
+clasped it in his own.
+
+"_Bueno_, I trust you then. Yet I warn you not to fool me twice."
+
+"Good," returned Felipe. "And now _adios_. Unless I bring her back with
+me you'll never see me again."
+
+"But, Felipe, lad, where away now?"
+
+"To Santa Teresa."
+
+"You are mad. Do you fancy you can reach it before midnight?" insisted
+the _major-domo_.
+
+"I _will_, Rafael; I _will_."
+
+"Then Heaven be with you."
+
+But the old fellow's words were lost in a wild clatter of hoofs, as
+Felipe swung his pony around and drove home the spurs. Through the night
+came back a cry already faint:
+
+"_Adios, adios_."
+
+"_Adios_, Felipe," murmured the old man as he stood bewildered in the
+doorway, "and your good angel speed you now."
+
+When Felipe began his ride it was already a little after nine. Could he
+reach Santa Teresa before midnight? The question loomed grim before him,
+but he answered only with the spur. Pepe was hardy, and, as Felipe well
+knew, of indomitable pluck. But what a task now lay before the little
+animal. He might do it, but oh! it was a chance!
+
+In a quarter of a mile Pepe had settled to his stride, the dogged, even
+gallop that Felipe knew so well, and at half-past ten swung through the
+main street of Piedras Blancas--silent, somnolent, dark.
+
+"Steady, little Pepe," said Felipe; "steady, little one. Soh, soh.
+There."
+
+The little horse flung back an ear, and Felipe could feel along the
+lines how he felt for the bit, trying to get a grip of it to ease the
+strain on his mouth.
+
+The _De Profundis_ bell was sounding from the church tower as Felipe
+galloped through San Anselmo, the next village, but by the time he
+raised the lights of Arcata it was black night in very earnest. He set
+his teeth. Terra Bella lay eight miles farther ahead, and here from the
+town-hall clock that looked down upon the plaza he would be able to know
+the time.
+
+"Hoopa, _Pepe; pronto_!" he shouted.
+
+The pony responded gallantly. His head was low; his ears in constant
+movement, twitched restlessly back and forth, now laid flat on his neck,
+now cocked to catch the rustle of the wind in the chaparral, the
+scurrying of a rabbit or ground-owl through the sage.
+
+It grew darker, colder, the trade-wind lapsed away. Low in the sky upon
+the right a pale, dim belt foretold the rising of the moon. The
+incessant galloping of the pony was the only sound.
+
+The convent toward which he rode was just outside the few scattered huts
+in the valley of the Rio Esparto that by charity had been invested with
+the name of Caliente. From Piedras Blancas to Caliente between twilight
+and midnight! What a riding! Could he do it? Would Pepe last under him?
+
+"Steady, little one. Steady, Pepe."
+
+Thus he spoke again and again, measuring the miles in his mind,
+husbanding the little fellow's strength.
+
+Lights! Cart lanterns? No, Terra Bella. A great dog charged out at him
+from a dobe, filling the night with outcry; a hayrick loomed by like a
+ship careening through fog; there was a smell of chickens and farmyards.
+Then a paved street, an open square, a solitary pedestrian dodging just
+in time from under Pepe's hoofs. All flashed by. The open country again,
+unbroken darkness again, and solitude of the fields again. Terra Bella
+past.
+
+But through the confusion Felipe retained one picture, that of the
+moon-faced clock with hands marking the hour of ten. On again with Pepe
+leaping from the touch of the spur. On again up the long, shallow slope
+that rose for miles to form the divide that overlooked the valley of the
+Esparto.
+
+"Hold, there! Madman to ride thus. Mad or drunk. Only desperadoes gallop
+at night. Halt and speak!"
+
+The pony had swerved barely in time, and behind him the Monterey stage
+lay all but ditched on the roadside, the driver fulminating oaths. But
+Felipe gave him but an instant's thought. Dobe huts once more abruptly
+ranged up on either side the roadway, staggering and dim under the
+night. Then a wine shop noisy with carousing _peons_ darted by.
+Pavements again. A shop-front or two. A pig snoring in the gutter, a dog
+howling in a yard, a cat lamenting on a rooftop. Then the smell of
+fields again. Then darkness again. Then the solitude of the open
+country. Cadenassa past.
+
+But now the country changed. The slope grew steeper; it was the last
+lift of land to the divide. The road was sown with stones and scored
+with ruts. Pepe began to blow; once he groaned. Perforce his speed
+diminished. The villages were no longer so thickly spread now. The crest
+of the divide was wild, desolate, forsaken. Felipe again and again
+searched the darkness for lights, but the night was black.
+
+Then abruptly the moon rose. By that Felipe could guess the time. His
+heart sank. He halted, recinched the saddle, washed the pony's mouth
+with brandy from his flask, then mounted and spurred on.
+
+Another half-hour went by. He could see that Pepe was in distress; his
+speed was by degrees slacking. Would he last! Would he last? Would the
+minutes that raced at his side win in that hard race?
+
+Houses again. Plastered fronts. All dark and gray. No soul stirring.
+Sightless windows stared out upon emptiness. The plaza bared its
+desolation to the pitiless moonlight. Only from an unseen window a
+guitar hummed and tinkled. All vanished. Open country again. The
+solitude of the fields again; the moonlight sleeping on the vast sweep
+of the ranchos. Calpella past.
+
+Felipe rose in his stirrups with a great shout.
+
+At Calpella he knew he had crossed the divide. The valley lay beneath
+him, and the moon was turning to silver the winding courses of the Rio
+Esparto, now in plain sight.
+
+It was between Calpella and Proberta that Pepe stumbled first. Felipe
+pulled him up and ceased to urge him to his topmost speed. But five
+hundred yards farther he stumbled again. The spume-flakes he tossed from
+the bit were bloody. His breath came in labouring gasps.
+
+But by now Felipe could feel the rising valley-mists; he could hear the
+piping of the frogs in the marshes. The ground for miles had sloped
+downward. He was not far from the river, not far from Caliente, not far
+from the Convent of Santa Teresa and Buelna.
+
+But the way to Caliente was roundabout, distant. If he should follow the
+road thither he would lose a long half-hour. By going directly across
+the country from where he now was, avoiding Proberta, he could save much
+distance and precious time. But in this case Pepe, exhausted, stumbling,
+weak, would have to swim the river. If he failed to do this Felipe would
+probably drown. If he succeeded, Caliente and the convent would be close
+at hand.
+
+For a moment Felipe hesitated, then suddenly made up his mind. He
+wheeled Pepe from the road, and calling upon his last remaining
+strength, struck off across the country.
+
+The sound of the river at last came to his ears.
+
+"Now, then, Pepe," he cried.
+
+For the last time the little horse leaped to the sound of his voice.
+Still at a gallop, Felipe cut the cinches of the heavy saddle, shook his
+feet clear of the stirrups, and let it fall to the ground; his coat,
+belt and boots followed. Bareback, with but the headstall and bridle
+left upon the pony, he rode at the river.
+
+Before he was ready for it Pepe's hoofs splashed on the banks. Then the
+water swirled about his fetlocks; then it wet Felipe's bare ankles. In
+another moment Felipe could tell by the pony's motion that his feet had
+left the ground and that he was swimming in the middle of the current.
+
+He was carried down the stream more than one hundred yards. Once Pepe's
+leg became entangled in a sunken root. Freed from that, his hoofs caught
+in grasses and thick weeds. Felipe's knee was cut against a rock; but at
+length the pony touched ground. He rose out of the river trembling,
+gasping and dripping. Felipe put him at the steep bank. He took it
+bravely, scrambled his way--almost on his knees--to the top, then
+stumbled badly and fell prone upon the ground. Felipe twisted from under
+him as he fell and regained his feet unhurt. He ran to the brave little
+fellow's head.
+
+"Up, up, my Pepe. Soh, soh."
+
+Suddenly he paused, listening. Across the level fields there came to his
+ears the sound of the bell of the convent of Santa Teresa tolling for
+midnight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Upon the first stroke of midnight the procession of nuns entered the
+nave of the church. There were some thirty in the procession. The first
+ranks swung censers; those in the rear carried lighted candles. The
+Mother Superior and Buelna, the latter wearing a white veil, walked
+together. The youngest nun followed these two, carrying upon her
+outspread palms the black veil.
+
+Arrived before the altar the procession divided into halves, fifteen
+upon the east side of the chancel, fifteen upon the west. The organ
+began to drone and murmur, the censers swung and smoked, the
+candle-flames flared and attracted the bats that lived among the rafters
+overhead. Buelna knelt before the Mother Superior. She was pale and a
+little thin from fasting and the seclusion of the cells. But, try as she
+would, she could not keep her thoughts upon the solemn office in which
+she was so important a figure. Other days came back to her. A little
+girl gay and free once more, she romped through the hallways and kitchen
+of the old _hacienda_ Martiarena with her playmate, the young Felipe; a
+young schoolgirl, she rode with him to the Mission to the instruction of
+the _padre_; a young woman, she danced with him at the _fete_ of All
+Saints at Monterey. Why had it not been possible that her romance should
+run its appointed course to a happy end? That last time she had seen him
+how strangely he had deported himself. Untrue to her! Felipe! Her
+Felipe; her more than brother! How vividly she recalled the day. They
+were returning from the Mission, where she had prayed for his safe and
+speedy return. Long before she had seen him she heard the gallop of a
+horse's hoofs around the turn of the road. Yes, she remembered that--the
+gallop of a horse. Ah! how he rode--how vivid it was in her fancy.
+Almost she heard the rhythmic beat of the hoofs. They came nearer,
+nearer. Fast, furiously fast hoof-beats. How swift he rode. Gallop,
+gallop--nearer, on they came. They were close by. They swept swiftly
+nearer, nearer. What--what was this? No fancy. Nearer, nearer. No fancy
+this. Nearer, nearer. These--ah, Mother of God--are real hoof-beats.
+They are coming; they are at hand; they are at the door of the church;
+they are _here_!
+
+She sprang up, facing around. The ceremony was interrupted. The
+frightened nuns were gathering about the Mother Superior. The organ
+ceased, and in the stillness that followed all could hear that furious
+gallop. On it came, up the hill, into the courtyard. Then a shout,
+hurried footsteps, the door swung in, and Felipe Arillaga, ragged,
+dripping, half fainting, hatless and stained with mud, sprang toward
+Buelna. Forgetting all else, she ran to meet him, and, clasped in each
+other's arms, they kissed one another upon the lips again and again.
+
+The bells of Santa Teresa that Felipe had heard that night on the blanks
+of the Esparto rang for a wedding the next day.
+
+Two days after they tolled as passing bells. A beautiful woman had been
+found drowned in a river not far from the house of Lopez Catala, on the
+high road to Monterey.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Deal in Wheat, by Frank Norris
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