CHAPTER V.
The long, parched summer had drawn to its dusty close. Much of it wasalready blown abroad and dissipated on trail and turnpike, or crackledin harsh, unelastic fibres on hillside and meadow. Some of it haddisappeared in the palpable smoke by day and fiery crests by night ofburning forests. The besieging fogs on the Coast Range daily thinnedtheir hosts, and at last vanished. The wind changed from northwest tosouthwest. The salt breath of the sea was on the summit. And thenone day the staring, unchanged sky was faintly touched with remotemysterious clouds, and grew tremulous in expression. The next morningdawned upon a newer face in the heavens, on changed woods, on alteredoutlines, on vanished crests, on forgotten distances. It was raining!
Four weeks of this change, with broken spaces of sunlight and intenseblue aerial islands, and then a storm set in. All day the summit pinesand redwoods rocked in the blast. At times the onset of the rain seemedto be held back by the fury of the gale, or was visibly seen in sharpwaves on the hillside. Unknown and concealed watercourses suddenlyoverflowed the trails, pools became lakes and brooks rivers. Hidden fromthe storm, the sylvan silence of sheltered valleys was broken by theimpetuous rush of waters; even the tiny streamlet that traversed Flip'sretreat in the Gin and Ginger Woods became a cascade.
The storm drove Fairley from his couch early. The falling of a largetree across the trail, and the sudden overflow of a small stream besideit, hastened his steps. But he was doomed to encounter what was to him amore disagreeable object--a human figure. By the bedraggled drapery thatflapped and fluttered in the wind, by the long, unkempt hair that hidthe face and eyes, and by the grotesquely misplaced bonnet, the old manrecognized one of his old trespassers,--an Indian squaw.
"Clear out 'er that! Come, make tracks, will ye?" the old man screamed;but here the wind stopped his voice, and drove him against a hazel bush.
"Me heap sick," answered the squaw, shivering through her muddy shawl.
"I'll make ye a heap sicker if ye don't vamose the ranch," continuedFairley, advancing.
"Me wantee Wangee girl. Wangee girl give me heap grub," said the squaw,without moving.
"You bet your life," groaned the old man to himself. Neverthelessan idea struck him. "Ye ain't brought no presents, hev ye?" he askedcautiously. "Ye ain't got no pooty things for poor Wangee girl?" hecontinued, insinuatingly.
"Me got heap cache nuts and berries," said the squaw.
"Oh, in course! in course! That's just it," screamed Fairley; "you'vegot 'em cached only two mile from yer, and you'll go and get 'em for ahalf dollar, cash down."
"Me bring Wangee girl to cache," replied the Indian, pointing to thewood. "Honest Injin."
Another bright idea struck Mr. Fairley. But it required someelaboration. Hurrying the squaw with him through the pelting rain, hereached the shelter of the corral. Vainly the shivering aborigine drewher tightly bandaged papoose closer to her square, flat breast, andlooked longingly toward the cabin; the old man backed her against thepalisade. Here he cautiously imparted his dark intentions to employ herto keep watch and ward over the ranch, and especially over its youngmistress--"clear out all the tramps 'ceptin' yourself, and I'll keepye in grub and rum." Many and deliberate repetitions of this offer invarious forms at last seemed to affect the squaw; she nodded violently,and echoed the last word "rum." "Now," she added. The old man hesitated;she was in possession of his secret; he groaned, and, promising animmediate installment of liquor, led her to the cabin.
The door was so securely fastened against the impact of the storm thatsome moments elapsed before the bar was drawn, and the old man hadbecome impatient and profane. When it was partly opened by Flip hehastily slipped in, dragging the squaw after him, and cast onesingle suspicious glance around the rude apartment which served as asitting-room. Flip had apparently been writing. A small inkstand wasstill on the board table, but her paper had evidently been concealedbefore she allowed them to enter. The squaw instantly squatted beforethe adobe hearth, warmed her bundled baby, and left the ceremonyof introduction to her companion. Flip regarded the two with calmpreoccupation and indifference. The only thing that touched her interestwas the old squaw's draggled skirt and limp neckerchief. They wereFlip's own, long since abandoned and cast off in the Gin and GingerWoods. "Secrets again," whined Fairley, still eying Flip furtively."Secrets again, in course--in course--jiss so. Secrets that must be kepfrom the ole man. Dark doin's by one's own flesh and blood. Go on! goon! Don't mind me." Flip did not reply. She had even lost the interestin her old dress. Perhaps it had only touched some note in unison withher revery.
"Can't ye get the poor critter some whiskey?" he queried, fretfully. "Yeused to be peart enuff before." As Flip turned to the corner to liftthe demijohn, Fairley took occasion to kick the squaw with his foot, andindicate by extravagant pantomime that the bargain was not to be alludedto before the girl. Flip poured out some whiskey in a tin cup, and,approaching the squaw, handed it to her. "It's like ez not," continuedFairley to his daughter, but looking at the squaw, "that she'll behuntin' the woods off and on, and kinder looking after the last pit nearthe Madronos; ye'll give her grub and licker ez she likes. Well, d'yehear, Flip? Are ye moonin' agin with yer secrets? What's gone with ye?"
If the child were dreaming, it was a delicious dream. Her magnetic eyeswere suffused by a strange light, as though the eye itself had blushed;her full pulse showed itself more in the rounding outline of her cheekthan in any deepening of color; indeed, if there was any heightening oftint, it was in her freckles, which fairly glistened like tiny spangles.Her eyes were downcast, her shoulders slightly bent, but her voice waslow and clear and thoughtful as ever.
"One o' the big pines above the Madrono pit has blown over into therun," she said. "It's choked up the water, and it's risin' fast. Like eznot it's pourin' over into the pit by this time."
The old man rose with a fretful cry. "And why in blames didn't you sayso first?" he screamed, catching up his axe and rushing to the door.
"Ye didn't give me a chance," said Flip, raising her eyes for the firsttime. With an impatient imprecation, Fairley darted by her and rushedinto the wood. In an instant she had shut the door and bolted it. Inthe same instant the squaw arose, dashed the long hair not only from hereyes, but from her head, tore away her shawl and blanket, and revealedthe square shoulders of Lance Harriott! Flip remained leaning againstthe door; but the young man in rising dropped the bandaged papoose,which rolled from his lap into the fire. Flip, with a cry, sprang towardit; but Lance caught her by the waist with one arm, as with the other hedragged the bundle from the flames.
"Don't be alarmed," he said, gayly, "it's only--"
"What?" said Flip, trying to disengage herself.
"My coat and trousers."
Flip laughed, which encouraged Lance to another attempt to kiss her. Sheevaded it by diving her head into his waistcoat, and saying, "There'sfather."
"But he's gone to clear away that tree?" suggested Lance.
One of Flip's significant silences followed.
"Oh, I see," he laughed. "That was a plan to get him away! Ah!" She hadreleased herself.
"Why did you come like that?" she said, pointing to his wig and blanket.
"To see if you'd know me," he responded.
"No," said Flip, dropping her eyes. "It's to keep other people fromknowing you. You're hidin' agin."
"I am," returned Lance; "but," he interrupted, "it's only the same oldthing."
"But you wrote from Monterey that it was all over," she persisted.
"So it would have been," he said gloomily, "but for some dog down herewho is hunting up an old scent. I'll spot him yet, and--" He stoppedsuddenly, with such utter abstraction of hatred in his fixed andglittering eyes that she almost feared him. She laid her hand quiteunconsciously on his arm. He grasped it; his face changed.
"I couldn't wait any longer to see you, Flip, so I came here anyway,"he went on. "I thought to hang round and get a chance to speak to youfirst, when I fell afoul of the old man. He di
dn't know me, and tumbledright in my little game. Why, do you believe he wants to hire me for mygrub and liquor, to act as a sort of sentry over you and the ranch?"And here he related with great gusto the substance of his interview. "Ireckon as he's that suspicious," he concluded, "I'd better play it outnow as I've begun, only it's mighty hard I can't see you here before thefire in your fancy toggery, Flip, but must dodge in and out of the wetunderbrush in these yer duds of yours that I picked up in the old placein the Gin and Ginger Woods."
"Then you came here just to see me?" asked Flip.
"I did."
"For only that?"
"Only that."
Flip dropped her eyes. Lance had got his other arm around her waist, buther resisting little hand was still potent.
"Listen," she said at last without looking up, but apparently talking tothe intruding arm, "when Dad comes I'll get him to send you to watch thediamond pit. It isn't far; it's warm, and"--
"What?"
"I'll come, after a bit, and see you. Quit foolin' now. If you'd onlyhave come here like yourself--like--like--a white man."
"The old man," interrupted Lance, "would have just passed me on to thesummit. I couldn't have played the lost fisherman on him at this time ofyear."
"Ye could have been stopped at the Crossing by high water, you silly,"said the girl. "It was." This grammatical obscurity referred to thestage coach.
"Yes, but I might have been tracked to this cabin. And look here, Flip,"he said, suddenly straightening himself, and lifting the girl's face toa level with his own, "I don't want you to lie any more for me. It ain'tright."
"All right. Ye needn't go to the pit, then, and I won't come."
"Flip!"
"And here's Dad coming. Quick!"
Lance chose to put his own interpretation on this last adjuration. Theresisting little hand was now lying quite limp on his shoulder, He drewher brown, bright face near his own, felt her spiced breath on his lips,his cheeks, his hot eyelids, his swimming eyes, kissed her, hurriedlyreplaced his wig and blanket, and dropped beside the fire with thetremulous laugh of youth and innocent first passion. Flip had withdrawnto the window, and was looking out upon the rocking pines.
"He don't seem to be coming," said Lance, with a half-shy laugh.
"No," responded Flip demurely, pressing her hot oval cheek against thewet panes; "I reckon I was mistaken. You're sure," she added, lookingresolutely another way, but still trembling like a magnetic needletoward Lance, as he moved slightly before the fire, "you're SURE you'dlike me to come to you?"
"Sure, Flip?"
"Hush!" said Flip, as this reassuring query of reproachful astonishmentappeared about to be emphasized by a forward amatory dash of Lance's;"hush! he's coming this time, sure."
It was, indeed, Fairley, exceedingly wet, exceedingly bedraggled,exceedingly sponged out as to color, and exceedingly profane. Itappeared that there was, indeed, a tree that had fallen in the"run," but that, far from diverting the overflow into the pit, it hadestablished "back water," which had forced another outlet. All thismight have been detected at once by any human intellect not distractedby correspondence with strangers, and enfeebled by habitually scorningthe intellect of its own progenitor. This reckless selfishness hadfurther only resulted in giving "rheumatics" to that progenitor, who nowrequired the external administration of opodeldoc to his limbs, and theinternal administration of whiskey. Having thus spoken, Mr. Fairley,with great promptitude and infantine simplicity, at once bared two legsof entirely different colors and mutely waited for his daughter torub them. If Flip did this all unconsciously, and with the mechanicaldexterity of previous habit, it was because she did not quite understandthe savage eyes and impatient gestures of Lance in his encompassing wigand blanket, and because it helped her to voice her thought.
"Ye'll never be able to take yer watch at the diamond pit to-night,Dad," she said; "and I've been reck'nin' you might set the squaw thereinstead. I can show her what to do."
But to Flip's momentary discomfiture, her father promptly objected."Mebbee I've got suthin' else for her to do. Mebbee I may have mysecrets, too--eh?" he said, with dark significance, at the same timeadministering a significant nudge to Lance, which kept up the youngman's exasperation. "No, she'll rest yer a bit just now. I'll set her towatchin' suthin' else, like as not, when I want her." Flip fell into oneof her suggestive silences. Lance watched her earnestly, mollified by asingle furtive glance from her significant eyes; the rain dashed againstthe windows, and occasionally spattered and hissed in the hearth of thebroad chimney, and Mr. David Fairley, somewhat assuaged by theinternal administration of whiskey, grew more loquacious. The genius ofincongruity and inconsistency which generally ruled his conduct cameout with freshened vigor under the gentle stimulation of spirit. "On anevening like this," he began, comfortably settling himself on the floorbeside the chimney, "ye might rig yerself out in them new duds and fancyfixin's that that Sacramento shrimp sent ye, and let your own flesh andblood see ye. If that's too much to do for your old dad, ye might do itto please that digger squaw as a Christian act." Whether in the hiddendepths of the old man's consciousness there was a feeling of paternalvanity in showing this wretched aborigine the value and importanceof the treasure she was about to guard, I cannot say. Flip darted aninterrogatory look at Lance, who nodded a quiet assent, and she flewinto the inner room. She did not linger on the details of her toilet,but reappeared almost the next moment in her new finery; buttoning theneck of her gown as she entered the room, and chastely stopping at thewindow to characteristically pull up her stocking. The peculiarity ofher situation increased her usual shyness; she played with the black andgold beads of a handsome necklace,--Lance's last gift,--as the merestchild might; her unbuckled shoe gave the squaw a natural opportunity ofshowing her admiration and devotion by insisting upon buckling it, andgave Lance, under that disguise, an opportunity of covertly kissingthe little foot and ankle in the shadow of the chimney; an event whichprovoked slight hysterical symptoms in Flip, and caused her to sitsuddenly down in spite of the remonstrances of her parent. "Ef you can'tquit gigglin' and squirmin' like an Injin baby yourself, ye'd better gitrid o' them duds," he ejaculated with peevish scorn.
Yet, under this perfunctory rebuke, his weak vanity could not be hidden,and he enjoyed the evident admiration of a creature whom he believed tobe half-witted and degraded all the more keenly because it did not makehim jealous. She could not take Flip from him. Rendered garrulous byliquor, he went to voice his contempt for those who might attemptit. Taking advantage of his daughter's absence to resume her homelygarments, he whispered confidentially to Lance,--
"Ye see these yer fine dresses, ye might think is presents. Pr'apsFlip lets on they are? Pr'aps she don't know any better. But they ain'tpresents. They're only samples o' dressmaking and jewelry that a vain,conceited shrimp of a feller up in Sacramento sends down here to getcustomers for. In course I'm to pay for 'em. In course he reckons I'mto do it. In course I calkilate to do it; but he needn't try to play 'emoff as presents. He talks suthin' o' coming down here, sportin' hisselfoff on Flip as a fancy buck! Not ez long ez the old man's here, youbet." Thoroughly carried away by his fancied wrongs, it was perhapsfortunate that he did not observe the flashing eyes of Lance behind hislank and lustreless wig; but seeing only the figure of Lance, as he hadconjured him, he went on: "That's why I want you to hang around her.Hang around her ontil my boy,--him that's comin' home on a visit,--getshere, and I reckon he'll clear out that yar Sacramento counter-jumper.Only let me get a sight o' him afore Flip does, eh? D'ye hear? Dog myskin if I don't believe the d----d Injin's drunk." It was fortunate thatat that moment Flip reappeared, and, dropping on the hearth between herfather and the infuriated Lance, let her hand slip in his with a warningpressure. The light touch momentarily recalled him to himself and her,but not until the quick-witted girl had had revealed to her in onestartled wave of consciousness the full extent of Lance's infirmityof temper. With the instinct of awakened tenderness came a sense ofresponsibi
lity, and a vague premonition of danger. The coy blossomof her heart was scarce unfolded before it was chilled by approachingshadows. Fearful of, she knew not what, she hesitated. Every moment ofLance's stay was imperiled by a single word that might spring fromhis suppressed white lips; beyond and above the suspicions his suddenwithdrawal might awaken in her father's breast, she was dimly consciousof some mysterious terror without that awaited him. She listened to thefurious onslaught of the wind upon the sycamores beside their cabin, andthought she heard it there; she listened to the sharp fusillade of rainupon roof and pane, and the turbulent roar and rush of leaping mountaintorrents at their very feet, and fancied it was there. She suddenlysprang to the window, and, pressing her eyes to the pane, sawthrough the misty turmoil of tossing boughs and swaying branches thescintillating intermittent flames of torches moving on the trail above,and KNEW it was there!
In an instant she was collected and calm. "Dad," she said, in herordinary indifferent tone, "there's torches movin' up toward the diamondpit. Likely it's tramps. I'll take the squaw and see." And before theold man could stagger to his feet she had dragged Lance with her intothe road.
CHAPTER VI.
The wind charged down upon them, slamming the door at their backs,extinguishing the broad shaft of light that had momentarily shot outinto the darkness, and swept them a dozen yards away. Gaining the lee ofa madrono tree, Lance opened his blanketed arms, enfolded the girl, andfelt her for one brief moment tremble and nestle in his bosom like somefrightened animal. "Well," he said, gayly, "what next?" Flip recoveredherself. "You're safe now anywhere outside the house. But did you expectthem tonight?" Lance shrugged his shoulders. "Why not?" "Hush!" returnedthe girl; "they're coming this way."
The four flickering, scattered lights presently dropped into line. Thetrail had been found; they were coming nearer. Flip breathed quickly;the spiced aroma of her presence filled the blanket as he drew hertightly beside him. He had forgotten the storm that raged around them,the mysterious foe that was approaching, until Flip caught his sleevewith a slight laugh. "Why, it's Kennedy and Bijah?"
"Who's Kennedy and Bijah?" asked Lance, curtly.
"Kennedy's the Postmaster and Bijah's the Butcher."
"What do they want?" continued Lance.
"Me," said Flip, coyly.
"You?"
"Yes; let's run away."
Half leading, half dragging her friend, Flip made her way with unerringwoodcraft down the ravine. The sound of voices and even the tumult ofthe storm became fainter, an acrid smell of burning green wood smartedLance's lips and eyes; in the midst of the darkness beneath himgradually a faint, gigantic nimbus like a lurid eye glowed and sank,quivered and faded with the spent breath of the gale as it penetratedtheir retreat. "The pit," whispered Flip; "it's safe on the other side,"she added, cautiously skirting the orbit of the great eye, and leadinghim to a sheltered nest of bark and sawdust. It was warm and odorous.Nevertheless, they both deemed it necessary to enwrap themselves in thesingle blanket. The eye beamed fitfully upon them, occasionally a waveof lambent tremulousness passed across it; its weirdness was an excusefor their drawing nearer each other in playful terror.
"Flip."
"Well?"
"What did the other two want? To see you, TOO?"
"Likely," said Flip, without the least trace of coquetry. "There's beena lot of strangers yer, off and on."
"Perhaps you'd like to go back and see them?"
"Do you want me to?"
Lance's reply was a kiss. Nevertheless he was vaguely uneasy. "Looks alittle as if I were running away, don't it?" he suggested.
"No," said Flip; "they think you're only a squaw; it's me they'reafter." Lance smarted a little at this infelicitous speech. A strangeand irritating sensation had been creeping over him--it was his firstexperience of shame and remorse. "I reckon I'll go back and see," hesaid, rising abruptly.
Flip was silent. She was thinking. Believing that the men were seekingher only, she knew that their attention would be directed from hercompanion when it was found out he was no longer with her, and shedreaded to meet them in his irritable presence.
"Go," she said, "tell Dad something's gone wrong in the diamond pit, andsay I'm watching it for him here."
"And you?"
"I'll go there and wait for him. If he can't get rid of them, and theyfollow him there, I'll come back here and meet you. Anyhow, I'll manageto have Dad wait there a spell."
She took his hand and led him back by a different path to the trail. Hewas surprised to find that the cabin, its window glowing from the fire,was only a hundred yards away. "Go in the back way, by the shed. Don'tgo in the room, nor near the light, if you can. Don't talk inside,but call or beckon to Dad. Remember," she said, with a laugh, "you'rekeeping watch of me for him. Pull your hair down on your eyes so." Thisoperation, like most feminine embellishments of the masculine toilet wasattended by a kiss, and Flip, stepping back into the shadow, vanished inthe storm.
Lance's first movements were inconsistent with his assumed sex. Hepicked up his draggled skirt, and drew a bowie knife from his boot. Fromhis bosom he took a revolver, turning the chambers noiselessly as hefelt the caps. He then crept toward the cabin softly and gained theshed. It was quite dark but for a pencil of light piercing a crack ofthe rude, ill-fitting door that opened on the sitting-room. A singlevoice not unfamiliar to him, raised in half-brutal triumph, greeted hisears.
A name was mentioned--his own! His angry hand was on the latch. Onemoment more and he would have burst the door, but in that instantanother name was uttered--a name that dropped his hand from the latchand the blood from his cheeks. He staggered backward, passed his handswiftly across his forehead, recovered himself with a gesture of mingledrage and despair, and, sinking on his knees beside the door, pressed hishot temples against the crack.
"Do I know Lance Harriott?" said the voice. "Do I know the d----druffian? Didn't I hunt him a year ago into the brush three miles fromthe Crossing? Didn't we lose sight of him the very day he turned up yerat this ranch, and got smuggled over into Monterey? Ain't it the sameman as killed Arkansaw Bob--Bob Ridley--the name he went by in Sonora?And who was Bob Ridley, eh? Who? Why, you d----d old fool, it was BobFairley--YOUR SON!"
The old man's voice rose querulous and indistinct.
"What are ye talkin' about?" interrupted the first speaker. "I tell youI KNOW. Look at these pictures. I found 'em on his body. Look at 'em.Pictures of you and your girl. Pr'aps you'll deny them. Pr'aps you'lltell me I lie when I tell you HE told me he was your son; told me how heran away from you; how you were livin' somewhere in the mountainsmakin' gold, or suthin' else, outer charcoal. He told me who he was asa secret. He never let on he told it to any one else. And when I foundthat the man who killed him, Lance Harriott, had been hidin' here, hadbeen sendin' spies all around to find out all about your son, had beenfoolin' you and tryin' to ruin your gal as he had killed your boy, Iknew that HE knew it, too."
"LIAR!"
The door fell in with a crash. There was the sudden apparition of ademoniac face, still half hidden by the long trailing black locks ofhair that curled like Medusa's around it. A cry of terror filled theroom. Three of the men dashed from the door and fled precipitately. Theman who had spoken sprang toward his rifle in the chimney corner.But the movement was his last; a blinding flash and shattering reportinterposed between him and his weapon.
The impulse carried him forward headlong into the fire, that hissed andspluttered with his blood, and Lance Harriott with his smoking pistol,strode past him to the door. Already far down the trail there werehurried voices, the crack and crackling of impending branches growingfainter and fainter in the distance. Lance turned back to the solitaryliving figure--the old man.
Yet he might have been dead, too, he sat so rigid and motionless, hisfixed eyes staring vacantly at the body on the hearth. Before him on thetable lay the cheap photographs, one evidently of himself, taken in someremote epoch of complexion, one of a child which Lance recognized asF
lip.
"Tell me," said Lance hoarsely, laying his quivering hand on the table,"was Bob Ridley your son?"
"My son," echoed the old man in a strange, far-off voice, withoutturning his eyes from the corpse--"My son--is--is--is there!" pointingto the dead man. "Hush! Didn't he tell you so? Didn't you hear him sayit? Dead--dead--shot--shot!"
"Silence! are you crazy, man?" repeated Lance, tremblingly; "that is notBob Ridley, but a dog, a coward, a liar gone to his reckoning. Hearme! If your son WAS Bob Ridley, I swear to God I never knew it, nowor--or--THEN. Do you hear me? Tell me! Do you believe me? Speak! Youshall speak."
He laid his hand almost menacingly on the old man's shoulder. Fairleyslowly raised his head. Lance fell back with a groan of horror. The weaklips were wreathed with a feeble imploring smile, but the eyes whereinthe fretful, peevish, suspicious spirit had dwelt were blank andtenantless; the flickering intellect that had lit them was blown out andvanished.
Lance walked toward the door and remained motionless for a moment,gazing into the night. When he turned back again toward the fire hisface was as colorless as the dead man's on the hearth; the fire ofpassion was gone from his beaten eyes; his step was hesitating and slow.He went up to the table.
"I say, old man," he said, with a strange smile and an odd, prematuresuggestion of the infinite weariness of death in his voice, "youwouldn't mind giving me this, would you?" and he took up the picture ofFlip. The old man nodded repeatedly. "Thank you," said Lance. He wentto the door, paused a moment, and returned. "Good-by, old man," hesaid, holding out his hand. Fairley took it with a childish smile. "He'sdead," said the old man softly, holding Lance's hand, but pointing tothe hearth. "Yes," said Lance, with the faintest of smiles on the palestof faces. "You feel sorry for any one that's dead, don't you?" Fairleynodded again. Lance looked at him with eyes as remote as his own, shookhis head, and turned away. When he reached the door he laid his revolvercarefully, and, indeed, somewhat ostentatiously, upon a chair. But whenhe stepped from the threshold he stopped a moment in the light of theopen door to examine the lock of a small derringer which he drew fromhis pocket. He then shut the door carefully, and with the same slow,hesitating step, felt his way into the night.
He had but one idea in his mind, to find some lonely spot; some spotwhere the footsteps of man would never penetrate, some spot that wouldyield him rest, sleep, obliteration, forgetfulness, and, above all,where HE would be forgotten. He had seen such places; surely there weremany,--where bones were picked up of dead men who had faded from theearth and had left no other record. If he could only keep his senses nowhe might find such a spot, but he must be careful, for her little feetwent everywhere, and she must never see him again alive or dead. And inthe midst of his thoughts, and the darkness, and the storm, he heard avoice at his side, "Lance, how long you have been!"
*****
Left to himself, the old man again fell into a vacant contemplationof the dead body before him, until a stronger blast swept down like anavalanche upon the cabin, burst through the ill-fastened door and brokenchimney, and, dashing the ashes and living embers over the floor, filledthe room with blinding smoke and flame. Fairley rose with a feeble cry,and then, as if acted upon by some dominant memory, groped under thebed until he found his buckskin bag and his precious crystal, andfled precipitately from the room. Lifted by this second shock from hisapathy, he returned to the fixed idea of his life,--the discovery andcreation of the diamond,--and forgot all else. The feeble grasp that hisshaken intellect kept of the events of the night relaxed, the disguisedLance, the story of his son, the murder, slipped into nothingness; thereremained only the one idea, his nightly watch by the diamond pit. Theinstinct of long habit was stronger than the darkness or the onset ofthe storm, and he kept his tottering way over stream and fallen timberuntil he reached the spot. A sudden tremor seemed to shake the lambentflame that had lured him on. He thought he heard the sound of voices;there were signs of recent disturbance,--footprints in the sawdust! Witha cry of rage and suspicion, Fairley slipped into the pit and sprangtoward the nearest opening. To his frenzied fancy it had been tamperedwith, his secret discovered, the fruit of his long labors stolen fromhim that very night. With superhuman strength he began to open the pit,scattering the half-charred logs right and left, and giving vent to thesuffocating gases that rose from the now incandescent charcoal. At timesthe fury of the gale would drive it back and hold it against the sidesof the pit, leaving the opening free; at times, following the blindinstinct of habit, the demented man would fall upon his face and buryhis nose and mouth in the wet bark and sawdust. At last, the paroxysmpast, he sank back again in his old apathetic attitude of watching,the attitude he had so often kept beside his sylvan crucible. In thisattitude and in silence he waited for the dawn.
It came with a hush in the storm; it came with blue openings in thebroken up and tumbled heavens; it came with stars that glistened first,and then paled, and at last sank drowning in those deep cerulean lakes;it came with those cerulean lakes broadening into vaster seas, whoseshores expanded at last into one illimitable ocean, cerulean no more,but flecked with crimson and opal dyes; it came with the lightly liftedmisty curtain of the day, torn and rent on crag and pine top, but alwayslifting, lifting. It came with the sparkle of emerald in the grasses,and the flash of diamonds in every spray, with a whisper in theawakening woods, and voices in the traveled roads and trails.
The sound of these voices stopped before the pit, and seemed tointerrogate the old man. He came, and, putting his finger on his lips,made a sign of caution. When three or four men had descended he badethem follow him, saying, weakly and disjointedly, but persistently: "Myboy--my son Robert--came home--came home at last--here with Flip--bothof them--come and see!"
He had reached a little niche or nest in the hillside, and stopped andsuddenly drew aside a blanket. Beneath it, side by side, lay Flip andLance, dead, with their cold hands clasped in each other's.
"Suffocated!" said two or three, turning with horror toward the brokenup and still smouldering pit.
"Asleep!" said the old man. "Asleep! I've seen 'em lying that way whenthey were babies together. Don't tell me! Don't say I don't know myown flesh and blood! So! so! So, my pretty ones!" He stooped and kissedthem. Then, drawing the blanket over them gently, he rose and saidsoftly, "Good night!"
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