CHAPTER VIII.
THE FOOTPRINTS GROW FAINTER.
It was Philip Ashley! Philip Ashley--faded, travel-worn, hollow-eyed,but nervously energetic and eager. Philip, who four days before had leftGrace the guest of a hospitable trapper's half-breed family in theCalifornia Valley. Philip--gloomy, discontented, hateful of the quest hehad undertaken, but still fulfilling his promise to Grace and the savagedictates of his own conscience. It was Philip Ashley, who now standingbeside the hut, turned half-cynically, half-indifferently toward theparty.
The surgeon was first to discover him. He darted forward with a cry ofrecognition, "Poinsett! Arthur!--what are you doing here?"
Ashley's face flushed crimson at the sight of the stranger. "Hush!" hesaid almost involuntarily. He glanced rapidly around the group, and thenin some embarrassment replied with awkward literalness, "I left my horsewith the others at the entrance of the ca[~n]on."
"I see," said the surgeon briskly, "you have come with relief likeourselves; but you are too late! too late!"
"Too late!" echoed Ashley.
"Yes, they are all dead or gone!"
A singular expression crossed Ashley's face. It was unnoticed by thesurgeon, who was whispering to Blunt. Presently he came forward.
"Captain Blunt, this is Lieutenant Poinsett of the Fifth Infantry, anold messmate mine, whom I have not met before for two years. He is here,like ourselves, on an errand of mercy. It is like him!"
The unmistakable air of high breeding and intelligence whichdistinguished Philip always, and the cordial endorsement of the youngsurgeon, prepossessed the party instantly in his favour. With thatrecognition, something of his singular embarrassment dropped away.
"Who are those people?" he ventured at last to say.
"Their names are on this paper, which we found nailed to a tree. Ofcourse, with no survivor present, we are unable to identify them all.The hut occupied by Dr. Devarges, whose body, buried in the snow, wehave identified by his clothing, and the young girl Grace Conroy and herchild-sister, are the only ones we are positive about."
Philip looked at the doctor.
"How have you identified the young girl?"
"By her clothing, which was marked."
Philip remembered that Grace had changed her clothes for the suit of ayounger brother who was dead.
"Only by that?" he asked.
"No. Dr. Devarges in his papers gives the names of the occupants of thehut. We have accounted for all but her brother, and a fellow by the nameof Ashley."
"How do you account for them?" asked Philip with a dark face.
"Ran away! What can you expect from that class of people?" said thesurgeon with a contemptuous shrug.
"What class?" asked Philip almost savagely.
"My dear boy," said the surgeon, "you know them as well as I. Didn'tthey always pass the Fort where we were stationed? Didn't they beg whatthey could, and steal what they otherwise couldn't get, and then reportto Washington the incompetency of the military? Weren't they alwaysgetting up rows with the Indians and then sneaking away to let us settlethe bill? Don't you remember them--the men gaunt, sickly, vulgar,low-toned; the women dirty, snuffy, prematurely old and prematurelyprolific?"
Philip tried to combat this picture with his recollection of Grace'syouthful features, but somehow failed. Within the last half-hour hisinstinctive fastidiousness had increased a hundredfold. He looked at thedoctor, and said "Yes."
"Of course," said the surgeon. "It was the old lot. What could youexpect? People who could be strong only in proportion to their physicalstrength, and losing everything with the loss of that? There have beenselfishness, cruelty--God knows--perhaps murder done here!"
"Yes, yes," said Philip, hastily; "but you were speaking of this girl,Grace Conroy; what do you know of her?"
"Nothing, except that she was found lying there dead with her name onher clothes and her sister's blanket in her arms, as if the wretches hadstolen the dying child from the dead girl's arms. But you, Arthur, howchanced you to be here in this vicinity? Are you stationed here?"
"No, I have resigned from the army."
"Good! and you are here"----
"Alone!"
"Come, we will talk this over as we return. You will help me make out myreport. This you know, is an official inquiry, based upon the allegedclairvoyant quality of our friend Blunt. I must say we have establishedthat fact, if we have been able to do nothing more."
The surgeon then lightly sketched an account of the expedition, from itsinception in a dream of Blunt (who was distinctly impressed with thefact that a number of emigrants were perishing from hunger in theSierras) to his meeting with Philip, with such deftness of cynicalhumour and playful satire--qualities that had lightened the weariness ofthe mess-table of Fort Bobadil--that the young men were both presentlylaughing. Two or three of the party who had been engaged in laying outthe unburied bodies, and talking in whispers, hearing these finegentlemen make light of the calamity in well-chosen epithets, weresomewhat ashamed of their own awe, and less elegantly, and I fear lessgrammatically, began to be jocose too. Whereat the fastidious Philipfrowned, the surgeon laughed, and the two friends returned to theentrance of the ca[~n]on, and thence rode out of the valley together.
Philip's reticence regarding his own immediate past was toocharacteristic to excite any suspicion or surprise in the mind of hisfriend. In truth, the doctor was too well pleased with his presence, andthe undoubted support which he should have in Philip's sympathetictastes and congenial habits, to think of much else. He was proud of hisfriend--proud of the impression he had made among the rude unletteredmen with whom he was forced by the conditions of frontier democracy toassociate on terms of equality. And Philip, though young, was accustomedto have his friends proud of him. Indeed, he always felt somecomplacency with himself that he seldom took advantage of this fact.Satisfied that he might have confided to the doctor the truth of hisconnection with the ill-fated party and his flight with Grace, and thatthe doctor would probably have regarded him as a hero, he felt lesscompunction at his suppression of the fact.
Their way lay by Monument Point and the dismantled cairn. Philip hadalready passed it on his way to the ca[~n]on, and had felt a thankfulnessfor the unexpected tragedy that had, as he believed, conscientiouslyrelieved him of a duty to the departed naturalist, yet he could notforego a question.
"Is there anything among these papers and collections worth ourpreserving?" he asked the surgeon.
The doctor, who had not for many months had an opportunity to air hisgeneral scepticism, was nothing if not derogatory.
"No," he answered, shortly. "If there were any way that we might restorethem to the living Dr. Devarges, they might minister to his vanity, andplease the poor fellow. I see nothing in them that should make themworthy to survive him."
The tone was so like Dr. Devarges' own manner, as Philip remembered it,that he smiled grimly and felt relieved. When they reached the spotNature seemed to have already taken the same cynical view; the metalliccase was already deeply sunken in the snow, the wind had scattered thepapers far and wide, and even the cairn itself had tumbled into ashapeless, meaningless ruin.