"Tell them," said Jack, quietly, "that I want some large potatoes: ask them what they mean by putting those little things on the table. Tell them to be quick. Is your rifle loaded?"
"Yes, sah," said Pete, promptly, without relaxing a muscle of his serious ebony face.
"Well – take it along with you."
But here the curiosity of Mr. Raynor, who had been just commenting on the really enormous size of the potatoes, got the best of his prudence. Failing to make his companion respond to his repeated elbowings, he leaned over the table toward the languid stranger. "Excuse me, sir," he said, politely, "but did I understand you to say that you thought these potatoes small– that there are really larger ones to be had?"
"It's the first time," returned Jack gravely, "that I ever was insulted by having a whole potato brought to me. I didn't know it was possible before. Perhaps in this part of the country the vegetables are poor. I'm a stranger to this section. I take it you are too. But because I am a stranger I don't see why I should be imposed upon."
"Ah, I see," said the mystified Raynor, "but if I might ask another question – you'll excuse me if I'm impertinent – I noticed that you just now advised your servant to take his gun into the kitchen with him; surely" —
"Pete," interrupted Mr. Hamlin, languidly, "is a good nigger. I shouldn't like to lose him! Perhaps you're right – maybe I am a little over-cautious. But when a man has lost two servants by gunshot wounds inside of three months, it makes him careful."
The perfect unconcern of the speaker, the reticence of his companion, and the dead silence of the room in which this extraordinary speech was uttered, filled the measure of Mr. Raynor's astonishment.
"Bless my soul! this is most extraordinary. I have seen nothing of this," he said, appealing in dumb show to his companion.
Mr. Hamlin followed the direction of his eyes. "Your friend is a Californian and knows what we think of any man who lies, and how most men resent such an imputation, and I reckon he'll endorse me!"
The editor muttered a hasty assent that seemed to cover Mr. Hamlin's various propositions, and then hurriedly withdrew, abandoning his charge to Mr. Hamlin. What advantage Jack took of this situation, what extravagant accounts he gravely offered of the vegetation in Lower California, of the resources of the country, of the reckless disregard of life and property, do not strictly belong to the record of this veracious chronicle. Notwithstanding all this, Mr. Raynor found Mr. Hamlin an exceedingly fascinating companion, and later, when the editor had rejoined them, and Mr. Hamlin proceeded to beg that gentleman to warn Mr. Raynor against gambling as the one seductive, besetting sin of California, alleging that it had been the ruin of both the editor and himself, the tourist was so struck with the frankness and high moral principle of his new acquaintance as to insist upon his making one of their party, an invitation that Mr. Hamlin might have accepted but for the intervention of a singular occurrence.
During the conversation he had been curiously impressed by the appearance of a stranger who had entered and modestly and diffidently taken a seat near the door. To Mr. Hamlin this modesty and diffidence appeared so curiously at variance with his superb physique, and the exceptional strength and power shown in every muscle of his body, that with his usual audacity he felt inclined to go forward and inquire "what was his little game?" That he was lying in wait to be "picked up" – the reader must really excuse me if I continue to borrow Mr. Hamlin's expressive vernacular – that his diffidence and shyness was a deceit and intended to entrap the unwary, he felt satisfied, and was proportionably thrilled with a sense of admiration for him. That a rational human being who held such a hand should be content with a small ante, without "raising the other players," – but I beg the fastidious reader's forgiveness.
He was dressed in the ordinary miner's garb of the Southern mines, perhaps a little more cleanly than the average miner by reason of his taste, certainly more picturesque by reason of his statuesque shapeliness. He wore a pair of white duck trousers, a jumper or loose blouse of the same material, with a low-folded sailor's collar and sailor-knotted neckerchief, which displayed, with an unconsciousness quite characteristic of the man, the full, muscular column of his sunburnt throat, except where it was hidden by a full, tawny beard. His long, sandy curls fell naturally and equally on either side of the centre of his low, broad forehead. His fair complexion, although greatly tanned by exposure, seemed to have faded lately as by sickness or great mental distress, a theory that had some confirmation in the fact that he ate but little. His eyes were downcast, or, when raised, were so shy as to avoid critical examination. Nevertheless his mere superficial exterior was so striking as to attract the admiration of others besides Mr. Hamlin; to excite the enthusiastic attention of Mr. Raynor, and to enable the editor to offer him as a fair type of the mining population. Embarrassed at last by a scrutiny that asserted itself even through his habitual unconsciousness and pre-occupation, the subject of this criticism arose and returned to the hotel verandah, where his pack and mining implements were lying. Mr. Hamlin, who for the last few days had been in a rather exceptional mood, for some occult reason which he could not explain, felt like respecting the stranger's reserve, and quietly lounged into the billiard-room to wait for the coming of the stage-coach. As soon as his back was turned the editor took occasion to offer Mr. Raynor his own estimate of Mr. Hamlin's character and reputation, to correct his misstatements regarding Californian resources and social habits, and to restore Mr. Raynor's possibly shaken faith in California as a country especially adapted to the secure investment of capital.
"As to the insecurity of life," said the editor, indignantly, "it is as safe here as in New York or Boston. We admit that in the early days the country was cursed by too many adventurers of the type of this very gambler Hamlin, but I will venture to say that you will require no better refutation of these calumnies than this very miner whom you admired. He, sir, is a type of our mining population; strong, manly, honest, unassuming, and perfectly gentle and retiring. We are proud, sir, we admit, of such men – eh? Oh, that's nothing – only the arrival of the up-stage!"
It certainly was something more. A momentarily increasing crowd of breathless men were gathered on the verandah before the window and were peering anxiously over each other's head toward a central group, among which towered the tall figure of the very miner of whom they had been speaking. More than that, there was a certain undefined, restless terror in the air, as when the intense conscious passion or suffering of one or two men communicates itself vaguely without speech, sometimes even without visible sign to others. And then Yuba Bill, the driver of the Wingdam coach, strode out from the crowd into the bar-room, drawing from his hands with an evident effort his immense buckskin gloves.
"What's the row, Bill?" said half-a-dozen voices.
"Nothin'," said Bill, gruffly; "only the Sheriff of Calaveras ez kem down with us hez nabbed his man jest in his very tracks."
"When, Bill?"
"Right yer – on this very verandy – furst man he seed!"
"What for?" "Who?" "What hed he bin doin'?" "Who is it?" "What's up?" persisted the chorus.
"Killed a man up at One Horse Gulch, last night," said Bill, grasping the decanter which the attentive bar-keeper had, without previous request, placed before him.
"Who did he kill, Bill?"
"A little Mexican from 'Frisco by the name o' Ramirez."
"What's the man's name that killed him – the man that you took?"
The voice was Jack Hamlin's.
Yuba Bill instantly turned, put down his glass, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and then deliberately held out his great hand with an exhaustive grin. "Dern my skin, ole man, if it ain't you! And how's things, eh? Yer lookin' a little white in the gills, but peart and sassy, ez usual. Heerd you was kinder off colour, down in Sacramento lass week. And it's you, ole fell, and jest in time! Bar-keep – hist that pizen over to Jack. Here to ye agin, ole man! But I'm glad to see ye!"
The crowd hung breathless over the two men – awestruck and respectful. It was a meeting of the gods – Jack Hamlin and Yuba Bill. None dare speak. Hamlin broke the silence at last, and put down his glass.
"What," he asked, lazily, yet with a slight colour on his cheek, "did you say was the name of the chap that fetched that little Mexican?"
"Gabriel Conroy," said Bill.
CHAPTER II.
MR. HAMLIN TAKES A HAND
The capture had been effected quietly. To the evident astonishment of his captor, Gabriel had offered no resistance, but had yielded himself up with a certain composed willingness, as if it were only the preliminary step to the quicker solution of a problem that was sure to be solved. It was observed, however, that he showed a degree of caution that was new to him – asking to see the warrant, the particulars of the discovery of the body, and utterly withholding that voluble explanation or apology which all who knew his character confidently expected him to give, whether guilty or innocent – a caution which, accepted by them as simply the low cunning of the criminal, told against him. He submitted quietly to a search that, however, disclosed no concealed weapon or anything of import. But when a pair of handcuffs were shown him, he changed colour, and those that were nearest to him saw that he breathed hurriedly, and hesitated in the first words of some protest that rose to his lips. The sheriff, a man of known intrepidity, who had the rapid and clear intuition that comes with courageous self-possession noticed it also, and quietly put the handcuffs back in his pocket.
"I reckon there's no use for 'em here; ef you're willin' to take the risks, I am."
The eyes of the two men met, and Gabriel thanked him. In that look he recognised and accepted the fact that on a motion to escape he would be instantly killed.
They were to return with the next stage, and in the interval Gabriel was placed in an upper room, and securely guarded. Here, falling into his old apologetic manner, he asked permission to smoke a pipe, which was at once granted by his good-humoured guard, and then threw himself at full length upon the bed. The rising wind rattled the windows noisily, and entering tossed the smoke-wreaths that rose from his pipe in fitful waves about the room. The guard, who was much more embarrassed than his charge, was relieved of an ineffectual attempt to carry on a conversation suitable to the occasion by Gabriel's simple directness —
"You needn't put yourself out to pass the time o' day with me," he said, gently, "that bein' extry to your reg'lar work. Ef you hev any friends ez you'd like to talk to in your own line, invite 'em in, and don't mind me."
But here the guard's embarrassment was further relieved by the entrance of Joe Hall, the sheriff.
"There's a gentleman here to speak with you," he said to Gabriel, "he can stay until we're ready to go." Turning to the guard, he added, "You can take a chair outside the door in the hall. It's all right, it's the prisoner's counsel."
At the word Gabriel looked up. Following the sheriff, Lawyer Maxwell entered the room. He approached Gabriel, and extended with grave cordiality a hand that had apparently wiped from his mouth the last trace of mirthfulness at the door.
"I did not expect to see you again so soon, Gabriel, but as quickly as the news reached me, and I heard that our friend Hall had a warrant for you, I started after him. I would have got here before him, but my horse gave out." He paused, and looked steadily at Gabriel. "Well!"
Gabriel looked at him in return, but did not speak.
"I supposed you would need professional aid," he went on, with a slight hesitation, "perhaps mine– knowing that I was aware of some of the circumstances that preceded this affair."
"Wot circumstances?" asked Gabriel, with the sudden look of cunning that had before prejudiced his captors.
"For Heaven's sake, Gabriel," said Maxwell, rising with a gesture of impatience, "don't let us repeat the blunder of our first interview. This is a serious matter; may be very serious to you. Think a moment. Yesterday you sought my professional aid to deed to your wife all your property, telling me that you were going away never to return to One Horse Gulch. I do not ask you now why you did it. I only want you to reflect that I am just now the only man who knows that circumstance – a circumstance that I can tell you as a lawyer is somewhat important in the light of the crime that you are now charged with."
Maxwell waited for Gabriel to speak, wiping away as he waited the usual smile that lingered around his lips. But Gabriel said nothing.
"Gabriel Conroy," said Lawyer Maxwell, suddenly dropping into the vernacular of One Horse Gulch, "are you a fool?"
"Thet's so," said Gabriel, with the simplicity of a man admitting a self-evident proposition, "Thet's so; I reckon I are."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Maxwell, again swiftly turning upon him, "if you were!" He stopped, as if ashamed of his abruptness, and said more quietly and persuasively, "Come, Gabriel, if you won't confess to me, I suppose that I must to you. Six months ago I thought you an impostor. Six months ago the woman who is now your wife charged you with being an impostor; with assuming a name and right that did not belong to you; in plain English, said that you had set yourself up as Gabriel Conroy, and that she, who was Grace Conroy, the sister of the real Gabriel, knew that you lied. She substantiated all this by proofs; hang it," continued Maxwell, appealing in dumb show to the walls, "there isn't a lawyer living as wouldn't have said it was a good case, and been ready to push it in any court. Under these circumstances I sought you, and you remember how. You know the result of that interview. I can tell you now that if there ever was a man who palpably confessed to guilt when he was innocent, you were that man. Well, after your conduct there was explained by Olly, without, however, damaging the original evidence against you, or prejudicing her rights, this woman came to me and said that she had discovered that you were the man who had saved her life at the risk of your own, and that for the present she could not, in delicacy, push her claim. When afterwards she told me that this gratitude had – well, ripened into something more serious, and that she had engaged herself to marry you, and so condone your offence, why, it was woman-like and natural, and I suspected nothing. I believed her story – believed she had a case. Yes, sir; the last six months I have looked upon you as the creature of that woman's foolish magnanimity. I could see that she was soft on you, and believed that you had fooled her. I did, hang me! There, if you confess to being a fool, I do to having been an infernal sight bigger one."
He stopped, erased the mirthful past with his hand, and went on —
"I began to suspect something when you came to me yesterday with this story of your going away, and this disposal of your property. When I heard of the murder of this stranger – one of your wife's witnesses to her claim – near your house, your own flight, and the sudden disappearance of your wife, my suspicions were strengthened. And when I read this note from your wife, delivered to you last night by one of her servants, and picked up early this morning near the body, my suspicions were confirmed."
As he finished he took from his pocket a folded paper and handed it to Gabriel. He received it mechanically, and opened it. It was his wife's note of the preceding night. He took out his knife, still holding the letter, and with its blade began stirring the bowl of his pipe. Then after a pause, he asked cautiously —
"And how did ye come by this yer?"
"It was found by Sal Clark, brought to Mrs. Markle, and given to me. Its existence is known only to three people, and they are your friends."
There was another pause, in which Gabriel deliberately stirred the contents of his pipe. Mr. Maxwell examined him curiously.
"Well," he said, at last, "what is your defence?"
Gabriel sat up on the bed and rapped the bowl of his pipe against the bedpost to loosen some refractory encrustation.
"Wot," he asked, gravely, "would be your idee of a good defence? Axin ye ez a lawyer having experin's in them things, and reck'nin' to pay ez high ez eny man fo' the same, wot would you call a good defence?" And he gravely laid himself down again in an attitude of respectful attention.
"We hope to prove," said Maxwell, really smiling, "that when you left your house and came to my office the murdered man was alive and at his hotel; that he went over to the hill long before you did; that you did not return until the evening —after the murder was committed, as the 'secret' mentioned in your wife's mysterious note evidently shows. That for some reason or other it was her design to place you in a suspicious attitude. That the note shows that she refers to some fact of which she was cognisant and not yourself."
"Suthin' that she knowed, and I didn't get to hear," translated Gabriel, quietly.
"Exactly! Now you see the importance of that note."
Gabriel did not immediately reply, but slowly lifted his huge frame from the bed, walked to the open window, still holding the paper in his hands, deliberately tore it into the minutest shreds before the lawyer could interfere, and then threw it from the window.
"Thet paper don't 'mount ter beans, no how!" he said, quietly but explanatively as he returned to the bed.
It was Lawyer Maxwell's turn to become dumb. In his astonished abstraction he forgot to wipe his mouth, and gazed at Gabriel with his nervous smile as if his client had just perpetrated a practical joke of the first magnitude.
"Ef it's the same to you, I'll just gin ye me idee of a de-fence," said Gabriel, apologetically, relighting his pipe, "allowin' o' course that you knows best, and askin' no deduckshun from your charges for advice. Well, you jess stands up afore the jedge, and you slings 'em a yarn suthin' like this: 'Yer's me, for instans,' you sez, sez you, 'ez gambols – gambols very deep – jess fights the tiger, wharever and whenever found, the same bein' onbeknownst ter folks gin'rally, and spechil te my wife, ez was July. Yer's me been gambolin' desprit with this yer man, Victyor Ramyirez, and gets lifted bad! and we hez, so to speak, a differculty about some pints in the game. I allows one thing, he allows another, and this yer man gives me the lie and I stabs him!' Stop – hole your hosses!" interjected Gabriel, suddenly, "thet looks bad, don't it? he bein' a small man, a little feller 'bout your size. No! Well, this yer's the way we puts it up: 'Seving men —seving– friends o' his, comes at me, permiskis like, one down, and nex' comes on, and we hez it mighty lively thar fur an hour, until me, bein' in a tight place, hez to use a knife and cuts this yer man bad!' Thar, that's 'bout the thing! Now ez to my runnin' away, you sez, sez you, ez how I disremembers owin' to the 'citement that I hez a 'pintent in Sacramento the very nex' day, and waltzes down yer to keep it, in a hurry. Ef they want to know whar July ez, you sez she gits wild on my not comin' home, and starts that very night arter me. Thar, thet's 'bout my idee – puttin' it o' course in your own shape, and slingin' in them bits o' po'try and garbage, and kinder sassin' the plaintiff's counsel, ez you know goes down afore a jedge and jury."
Maxwell rose hopelessly, – "Then, if I understand you, you intend to admit" —
"Thet I done it? In course!" replied Gabriel; "but," he added, with a cunning twinkle in his eye, "justifybly – justifyble homyside, ye mind! – bein' in fear o' my life from seving men. In course," he added, hurriedly, "I can't identify them seving strangers in the dark, so thar's no harm or suspicion goin' to be done enny o' the boys in the Gulch."
Maxwell walked gravely to the window, and stood looking out without speaking. Suddenly he turned upon Gabriel with a brighter face and more earnest manner. "Where's Olly?"
Gabriel's face fell. He hesitated a moment. "I was on my way to the school in Sacramento whar she iz."
"You must send for her – I must see her at once!"
Gabriel laid his powerful hand on the lawyer's shoulder. "She izn't – that chile – to knows anythin' o' this. You hear?" he said, in a voice that began in tones of deprecation, and ended in a note of stern warning.
"How are you to keep it from her?" said Maxwell, as determinedly. "In less than twenty-four hours every newspaper in the state will have it – with their own version and comments. No; you must see her. She must hear it first from your own lips."
"But – I – can't – see – her just now," said Gabriel, with a voice that for the first time during their interview faltered in its accents.
"Nor need you," responded the lawyer, quickly. "Trust that to me. I will see her, and you shall afterwards. You need not fear I will prejudice your case. Give me the address! Quick!" he added, as the sound of footsteps and voices approaching the room, came from the hall. Gabriel did as he requested. "Now one word," he continued hurriedly, as the footsteps halted at the door.
"Yes," said Gabriel.
"As you value your life and Olly's happiness, hold your tongue."
Gabriel nodded with cunning comprehension. The door opened to Mr. Jack Hamlin, diabolically mischievous, self-confident and audacious! With a familiar nod to Maxwell he stepped quickly before Gabriel and extended his hand. Simply, yet conscious of obeying some vague magnetic influence, Gabriel reached out his own hand and took Jack's white, nervous fingers in his own calm, massive grasp.
"Glad to see you, pard!" said that gentleman, showing his white teeth and reaching up to clap his disengaged hand on Gabriel's shoulder. "Glad to see you, old boy, – even if you have cut in and taken a job out of my hands that I was rather lyin' by to do myself. Sooner or later I'd have fetched that Mexican – if you hadn't dropped into my seat and taken up my hand. Oh, it's all right, Mack!" he said, intercepting the quick look of caution that Maxwell darted at his client, "don't do that. We're all friends here. If you want me to testify, I'll take my oath that there hasn't been a day this six months that that infernal hound, Ramirez, wasn't jest pantin' to be planted in his tracks! I can hardly believe I ain't done it myself." He stopped, partly to enjoy the palpable uneasiness of Maxwell, and perhaps in some admiration of Gabriel's physique.
Maxwell quickly seized this point of vantage. "You can do your friend here a very great service," he said to Jack, lowering his voice as he spoke.
Jack laughed. "No, Mack, it won't do! They wouldn't believe me! There ain't judge or jury you could play that on!"
"You don't understand me," said Maxwell, laughing a little awkwardly. "I didn't mean that, Jack. This man was going to Sacramento to see his little sister" —
"Go on," said Jack, with much gravity; "of course he was. I know that. 'Dear brother, dear brother, come home with me now!' Certainly. So'm I. Goin' to see an innocent little thing 'bout seventeen years old, blue eyes and curly hair! Always go there once a week. Says he must come! Says she'll" – he stopped in the full tide of his irony, for, looking up, he caught a glimpse of Gabriel's simple, troubled face and sadly reproachful eyes. "Look here," said Jack, turning savagely on Maxwell, "what are you talking about anyway?"
"I mean what I say," returned Maxwell, quickly. "He was going to see his sister – a mere child. Of course he can't go now. But he must see her – if she can be brought to him. Can you —will you do it?"
Jack cast another swift glance at Gabriel. "Count me in," he said, promptly; "when shall I go?"
"Now – at once."
"All right. Where shall I fetch her to?"
"One Horse Gulch."
"The game's made," said Jack, sententiously. "She'll be there by sundown to-morrow." He was off like a flash, but as swiftly returned, and called Maxwell to the door. "Look here," he said, in a whisper, "p'r'aps it would be as well if the sheriff didn't know I was his friend," he went on, indicating Gabriel with a toss of his head and a wink of his black eye, "because, you see, Joe Hall and I ain't friends. We had a little difficulty, and some shootin' and foolishness down at Marysville last year. Joe's a good, square man, but he ain't above prejudice, and it might go against our man."
