Gabriel Conroy

"Say what?" asked Gabriel, simply.

"Anything! Lie if you want to; only talk!"

"I'd like to put a question to ye, Mr. Hamlin," said Gabriel, with great gentleness, – "allowin' in course, ye'll answer or no jest ez as is agree'ble to ye – reckonin' it's no business o' mine nor pryin' into secrets, ony jess to pass away the time ontil sundown. When you was tuk bad a spell ago, unloosin' yer shirt thar, I got to see a pictur that ye hev around yer neck. I ain't askin' who nor which it is – but ony this – ez thet – thet – thet young woman dark complected ez that picter allows her to be?"

Jack's face had recovered its colour by the time that Gabriel had finished, and he answered promptly, "A d – d sight more so! Why, that picture's fair alongside of her!"

Gabriel looked a little disappointed, Hamlin was instantly up in arms. "Yes, sir – and when I say that," he returned, "I mean, by thunder, that the whitest faced woman in the world don't begin to be as handsome. Thar ain't an angel that she couldn't give points to and beat! That's her style! It don't," continued Mr. Hamlin, taking the picture from his breast, and wiping its face with his handkerchief – "it don't begin to do her justice. What," he asked suddenly and aggressively, "have you got to say about it, anyway?"

"I reckoned it kinder favoured my sister Grace," said Gabriel, submissively. "Ye didn't know her, Mr. Hamlin? She was lost sence '49 – thet's all!"

Mr. Hamlin measured Gabriel with a contempt that was delicious in its sublime audacity and unconsciousness. "Your sister?" he repeated, "that's a healthy lookin' sister of such a man as you – ain't it? Why, look at it," roared Jack, thrusting the picture under Gabriel's nose. "Why, it's – it's a lady!"

"Ye musn't jedge Gracey by me, nor even Olly," interposed Gabriel, gently, evading Mr. Hamlin's contempt.

But Jack was not to be appeased, "Does your sister sing like an angel, and talk Spanish like Governor Alvarado: is she connected with one of the oldest Spanish families in the state; does she run a rancho and thirty square leagues of land, and is Dolores Salvatierra her nickname? Is her complexion like the young bark of the madroño – the most beautiful thing ever seen – did every other woman look chalky beside her, eh?"

"No!" said Gabriel, with a sigh – "it was just my foolishness, Mr. Hamlin. But seein' that picter, kinder" —

"I stole it," interrupted Jack, with the same frankness. "I saw it in her parlour, on the table, and I froze to it when no one was looking. Lord, she wouldn't have given it to me. I reckon those relatives of hers would have made it very lively for me if they'd suspected it. Hoss stealing ain't a circumstance to this, Gabriel," said Jack, with a reckless laugh. Then with equal frankness, and a picturesque freedom of description, he related his first and only interview with Donna Dolores. I am glad to say that this scamp exaggerated, if anything, the hopelessness of his case, dwelt but slightly on his own services, and concealed the fact that Donna Dolores had even thanked him. "You can reckon from this the extent of my affection for that Johnny Ramirez, and why I just froze to you when I heard you'd dropped him. But come now, it's your deal; tell us all about it. The boys put it up that he was hangin' round your wife, – and you went for him for all he was worth. Go on – I'm waiting – and," added Jack, as a spasm of pain passed across his face, "and aching to that degree that I'll yell if you don't take my mind off it."

But Gabriel's face was grave and his lips silent as he bent over Mr. Hamlin to adjust the bandages. "Go on," said Jack, darkly, "or I'll tear off these rags and bleed to death before your eyes. What are you afraid of? I know all about your wife – you can't tell me anything about her. Didn't I spot her in Sacramento – before she married you – when she had this same Chilino, Ramirez, on a string. Why, she's fooled him as she has you. You ain't such a blasted fool as to be stuck after her still, are you?" and Jack raised himself on his elbow the more intently to regard this possible transcendent idiot.

"You was speakin' o' this Mexican, Ramirez," said Gabriel, after a pause, fixing his now clear and untroubled eyes on his interlocutor.

"Of course," roared out Jack, impatiently, "did you think I was talking of – ?" Here Mr. Hamlin offered a name that suggested the most complete and perfect antithesis known to modern reason.

"I didn't kill him!" said Gabriel, quietly.

"Of course not," said Jack, promptly. "He sorter stumbled and fell over on your bowie-knife as you were pickin' your teeth with it. But go on – how did you do it? Where did you spot him? Did he make any fight? Has he got any sand in him?"

"I tell ye I didn't kill him!"

"Who did, then?" screamed Jack, furious with pain and impatience.

"I don't know – I reckon – that is – " and Gabriel stopped short with a wistful perplexed look at his companion.

"Perhaps, Mr. Gabriel Conroy," said Jack, with sudden coolness and deliberation of speech, and a baleful light in his dark eyes, "perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me what this means – what is your little game? Perhaps you'll kindly inform me what I'm lying here crippled for? What you were doing up in the Court House, when you were driving those people crazy with excitement? What you're hiding here in this blank family vault for? And maybe, if you've got time, you'll tell me what was the reason I made that pleasant little trip to Sacramento? I know I required the exercise, and then there was the honour of being introduced to your little sister – but perhaps you'll tell me WHAT IT WAS FOR!"

"Jack," said Gabriel, leaning forward, with a sudden return of his old trouble and perplexity, "I thought she did it! and thinkin' that – when they asked me – I took it upon myself! I didn't know to ring you into this, Jack! I thought – I thought – thet – it 'ud all be one – thet they'd hang me up afore this – I did, Jack, honest!"

"And you didn't kill Ramirez?"

"No."

"And you reckoned your wife did?"

"Yes."

"And you took the thing on yourself?"

"I did."

"You did!"

"I did!"

"You DID?"

"I did!"

Mr. Hamlin rolled over on his back, and began to whistle "When the spring time comes, gentle Annie!" as the only way of expressing his inordinate contempt for the whole proceeding.

Gabriel slowly slid his hand under Mr. Hamlin's helpless back, and under pretext of arranging his bandages, lifted him in his arms like a truculent babe. "Jack," he said, softly, "ef thet picter of yours – that coloured woman" —

"Which?" said Jack, fiercely.

"I mean – thet purty creature – ef she and you hed been married, and you'd found out accidental like that she'd fooled ye – more belike, Jack," he added, hastily, "o' your own foolishness – than her little game – and" —

"That woman was a lady," interrupted Jack, savagely, "and your wife's a" – But he paused, looking into Gabriel's face, and then added, "Oh git! will you! Leave me alone! 'I want to be an angel and with the angels stand.'"

"And thet woman hez a secret," continued Gabriel, unmindful of the interruption, "and bein' hounded by the man az knows it, up and kills him, ye wouldn't let thet woman – that poor pooty creeture – suffer for it! No, Jack! Ye would rather pint your own toes up to the sky than do it. It ain't in ye, Jack, and it ain't in me, so help me, God!"

"This is all very touching, Mr. Conroy, and does credit, sir, to your head and heart, and I kin feel it drawing Hall's ball out of my leg while you're talkin'," said Jack, with his black eyes evading Gabriel's and wandering to the entrance of the tunnel. "What time is it, you d – d old fool, ain't it dark enough yet to git outer this hole?" He groaned, and after a pause added fiercely, "How do you know your wife did it?"

Gabriel swiftly, and for him even concisely, related the events of the day from his meeting with Ramirez in the morning, to the time that he had stumbled upon the body of Victor Ramirez on his return to keep the appointment at his wife's written request.

Jack only interrupted him once to inquire why, after discovering the murder, he had not gone on to keep his appointment.

"I thought it wa'n't of no use," said Gabriel, simply; "I didn't want to let her see I knowed it."

Hamlin groaned, "If you had you would have found her in the company of the man who did do it, you daddering old idiot!"

"What man?" asked Gabriel.

"The first man you saw your wife with that morning; the man I ought to be helping now, instead of lyin' here."

"You don't mean to allow, Jack, ez you reckon she didn't do it?" asked Gabriel, in alarm.

"I do," said Hamlin, coolly.

"Then what did she reckon to let on by that note?" said Gabriel, with a sudden look of cunning.

"Don't know," returned Jack, "like as not, being a d – d fool, you didn't read it right! hand it over and let me see it."

Gabriel (hesitatingly): "I can't."

Hamlin: "You can't?"

Gabriel (apologetically): "I tore it up!"

Hamlin (with frightful deliberation): "you DID?"'

"I did."

Jack (after a long crushing silence): "Were you ever under medical treatment for these spells?"

Gabriel (with great simplicity and submission): "They allers used to allow I waz queer."

Hamlin (after another pause): "Has Pete Dumphy got anything agin you?"

Gabriel (surprisedly): "No."

Hamlin (languidly): "It was his right hand man, his agent at Wingdam that started up the Vigilantes! I heard him, and saw him in the crowd hounding 'em on."

Gabriel (simply): "I reckon you're out thar, Jack, Dumphy's my friend. It was him that first gin me the money to open this yer mine. And I'm his superintendent!"

Jack: "Oh!" (after another pause). "Is there any first-class Lunatic Asylum in this county where they would take in two men, one an incurable, and the other sufferin' from a gunshot wound brought on by playin' with firearms?"

Gabriel (with a deep sigh): "Ye mus'n't talk, Jack, ye must be quiet till dark."

Jack, dragged down by pain, and exhausted in the intervals of each paroxysm was quiescent.

Gradually, the faint light that had filtered through the brush and débris before the tunnel faded quite away, and a damp charnel-house chill struck through the limbs of the two refugees, and made them shiver; the flow of water from the dripping walls seemed to have increased; Gabriel's experienced eye had already noted that the earthquake had apparently opened seams in the gully and closed up one of the leads. He carefully laid his burden down again, and crept to the opening. The distant hum of voices and occupation had ceased, the sun was setting; in a few moments, calculating on the brief twilight of the Mountain region, it would be dark, and they might with safety leave their hiding-place. As he was returning, he noticed a slant beam of light, hitherto unobserved, crossing the tunnel from an old drift. Examining it more closely, Gabriel was amazed to find that during the earthquake a "cave" had taken place in the drift, possibly precipitated by the shock, disclosing the more surprising fact that there had been a previous slight but positive excavation on the hill side, above the tunnel, that antedated any record of One Horse Gulch known to Gabriel. He was perfectly familiar with every foot of the hill side, and the existence of this ancient prospecting "hole" had never been even suspected by him. While he was still gazing at the opening, his foot struck against some glittering metallic substance. He stooped and picked up a small tin can, not larger than a sardine box, hermetically sealed and soldered, in which some inscription had been traced, but which the darkness of the tunnel prevented his deciphering. In the faint hope that it might contain something of benefit to his companion, Gabriel returned to the opening, and even ventured to step beyond its shadow. But all attempts to read the inscription were in vain. He opened the box with a sharp stone; it contained, to his great disappointment, only a memorandum book and some papers. He swept them into the pocket of his blouse, and re-entered the tunnel. He had not been absent altogether more than five minutes, but when he reached the place where he had left Jack, he was gone!

CHAPTER IX.

IN WHICH HECTOR ARISES FROM THE DITCH

He stood for a moment breathless and paralysed with surprise; then he began slowly and deliberately to examine the tunnel step by step. When he had proceeded a hundred feet from the spot, to his great relief he came upon Jack Hamlin, sitting upright in a side drift. His manner was feverish and excited, and his declaration that he had not moved from the place where Gabriel had left him at once was accepted by the latter as the aberration of incipient inflammation and fever. When Gabriel stated that it was time to go, he replied, "Yes," and added with such significance that his business with the murderer of Victor Ramirez was now over, and that he was ready to enter the Lunatic Asylum at once, that Gabriel with great precipitation lifted him in his arms and carried him without delay from the tunnel. Once more in the open air the energies of both men seemed to rally; Jack became as a mere feather in Gabriel's powerful arms, and even forgot his querulous opposition to being treated as a helpless child, while Gabriel trod the familiar banks of the ditch, climbed the long ascent and threaded the aisles of the pillared pines of Reservoir Hill with the free experienced feet of the mountaineer. Here Gabriel knew he was safe until daybreak, and gathered together some withered pine boughs and its fragrant tassels for a couch for his helpless companion. And here, as he feared, fever set in; the respiration of the wounded man grew quick and hurried; he began to talk rapidly and incoherently, of Olly, of Ramirez, of the beautiful girl whose picture hung upon his breast, of Gabriel himself, and finally of a stranger who was, as it seemed to him, his sole auditor, the gratuitous coinage of his excited fancy. Once or twice he raised his voice to a shout, and then to Gabriel's great alarm suddenly he began to sing, and before Gabriel could place his hand upon his mouth he had trolled out the verse of a popular ballad. The rushing river below them gurgled, beat its bars, and sang an accompaniment, the swaying pine sighed and creaked in unison, the patient stars above them stared and bent breathlessly, and then to Gabriel's exalted consciousness an echo of the wounded man's song arose from the gulch below! For a moment he held his breath with an awful mingling of joy and fear. Was he going mad too? or was it really the voice of little Olly? The delirious man beside him answered his query with another verse; the antiphonal response rose again from the valley. Gabriel hesitated no longer, but with feverish hands gathered a few dried twigs and pine cones into a pile, and touched a match to them. At the next moment they flashed a beacon to the sky, in another there was a crackling of the underbrush and the hurried onset of two figures, and before the slow Gabriel could recover from his astonishment, Olly flew, panting, to his arms, while her companion, the faithful Pete, sank breathlessly beside his wounded and insensible master.

Olly was first to find her speech. That speech, after the unfailing instincts of her sex in moments of excitement, was the instant arraignment of somebody else as the cause of that excitement, and at once put the whole universe on the defensive.

"Why didn't you send word where you was?" she said, impatiently, "and wot did you have it so dark for, and up a steep hill, and leavin' me alone at Wingdam, and why didn't you call without singin'?"

And then Gabriel, after the fashion of his sex, ignored all but the present, and holding Olly in his arms, said —

"It's my little girl, ain't it? Come to her own brother Gabe! bless her!"

Whereat Mr. Hamlin, after the fashion of lunatics of any sex, must needs be consistent, and break out again into song.

"He's looney, Olly, what with fever along o' bein' shot in the leg a' savin' me, ez izn't worth savin'," explained Gabriel, apologetically. "It was him ez did the singin'."

Then Olly, still following the feminine instinct, at once deserted conscious rectitude for indefensible error, and flew to Mr. Hamlin's side.

"Oh, where is he hurt, Pete? is he going to die?"

And Pete, suspicious of any medication but his own, replied doubtfully, "He looks bad, Miss Olly, dat's a fac – but now bein' in my han's, bress de Lord A'mighty, and we able to minister to him, we hopes fur de bess. Your brudder meant well, is a fair meanin' man, miss – a toll'able nuss, but he ain't got the peerfeshn'l knowledge dat Mars Jack in de habit o' gettin'." Here Pete unslung from his shoulders a wallet, and proceeded to extract therefrom a small medicine case, with the resigned air of the family physician, who has been called full late to remedy the practice of rustic empiricism.

"How did ye come yer?" asked Gabriel of Olly, when he had submissively transferred his wounded charge to Pete. "What made ye allow I was hidin' yer? How did ye reckon to find me? but ye was allus peart and onhanded, Olly," he suggested, gazing admiringly at his sister.

"When I woke up at Wingdam, after Jack went away, who should I find, Gabe, but Lawyer Maxwell standin' thar, and askin' me a heap o' questions. I supposed you'd been makin' a fool o' yourself agin, Gabe, and afore I let on thet I knowed a word, I jist made him tell me everythin' about you, Gabe, and it was orful! and you bein' arrested fur murder, ez wouldn't harm a fly, let alone that Mexican ez I never liked, Gabe, and all this comes of tendin' his legs instead o' lookin' arter me. And all them questions waz about July, and whether she wasn't your enemy, and if they ever waz a woman, Gabe, ez waz sweet on you, you know it was July! And all thet kind o' foolishness! And then when he couldn't get ennythin' out o' me agin July, he allowed to Pete that he must take me right to you, fur he said ther was talk o' the Vigilantes gettin' hold o' ye afore the trial, and he was goin' to get an order to take you outer the county, and he reckoned they wouldn't dare to tech ye if I waz with ye, Gabe – and I'd like to see 'em try it! and he allowed to Pete that he must take me right to you! And Pete – and thar ain't a whiter nigger livin' than that ole man – said he would – reckonin' you know to find Jack, as he allowed to me they'd hev to kill afore they got you – and he came down yer with me. And when we got yer – you was off – and the sheriff gone – and the Vigilantes – what with bein' killed, the biggest o' them, by the earthquake – what was orful, Gabe, but we bein' on the road didn't get to feel! – jest scared outer their butes! And then a Chinyman gins us your note" —

"My note?" interrupted Gabriel, "I didn't send ye any note."

"Then his note," said Olly, impatiently, pointing to Hamlin, "sayin' 'You'll find your friends on Conroy's Hill!' – don't you see, Gabe?" continued Olly, stamping her foot in fury at her brother's slowness of comprehension, "and so we came and heard Jack singin', and a mighty foolish thing it was to do, and yer we are!"

"But he didn't send any note, Olly," persisted Gabriel.

"Well, you awful old Gabe, what difference does it make who sent it?" continued the practical Olly; "here we are, along o' thet note, and," she added, feeling in her pocket, "there's the note!"

She handed Gabriel a small slip of paper with the pencilled words, "You'll find your friends waiting for you to-night on Conroy's Hill."

The handwriting was unfamiliar, but even if it were Jack's, how did he manage to send it without his knowledge? He had not lost sight of Jack except during the few moments he had reconnoitred the mouth of the tunnel, since they had escaped from the Court House. Gabriel was perplexed; in the presence of this anonymous note he was confused and speechless, and could only pass his hand helplessly across his forehead. "But it's all right now, Gabe," continued Olly, reassuringly, "the Vigilantes hev run away – what was left of them; the sheriff ain't to be found nowhar! This yer earthquake hez frightened everybody outer the idea of huntin' ye – nobody talks of ennything but the earthquake; they even say, Gabe – I forgot to tell ye – that our claim on Conroy Hill has busted, too, and the mine ain't worth shucks now! But there's no one to interfere with us now, Gabe! And we're goin' to get into a waggin that Pete hez bespoke for us at the head of Reservoir Gulch to-morrow mornin' at sun-up! And then Pete sez we kin git down to Stockton and 'Frisco and out to a place called San Antonio, that the devil himself wouldn't think o' goin' to, and thar we kin stay, me and you and Jack, until this whole thing has blown over and Jack gits well agin and July comes back."

Gabriel, still holding the hand of his sister, dared not tell her of the suspicions of Lawyer Maxwell, regarding her sister-in-law's complicity in this murder, nor Jack's conviction of her infidelity, and he hesitated. But after a pause, he suggested with a consciousness of great discretion and artfulness, "Suppose thet July doesn't come back?"

"Look yer, Gabe," said Olly, suddenly, "ef yer goin' to be thet foolish and ridiklus agin, I'll jess quit. Ez if thet woman would ever leave ye." (Gabriel groaned inwardly.) "Why, when she hears o' this, wild hosses couldn't keep her from ye. Don't be a mule, Gabe, don't!" And Gabriel was dumb.

Meantime, under the influence of some anodyne which Pete had found in his medicine chest, Mr. Hamlin became quiet and pretermitted his vocal obligato. Gabriel, whose superb physical adjustment no mental excitement could possibly overthrow, and whose regular habits were never broken by anxiety, nodded, even while holding Olly's hand, and in due time slept, and I regret to say – writing of a hero – snored. After a while Olly herself succumbed to the drowsy coolness of the night, and wrapped in Mr. Hamlin's shawl, pillowed her head upon her brother's broad breast and slept too. Only Pete remained to keep the watch, he being comparatively fresh and strong, and declaring that the condition of Mr. Hamlin required his constant attention.

It was after midnight that Olly dreamed a troubled dream. She thought that she was riding with Mr. Hamlin to seek her brother, when she suddenly came upon a crowd of excited men who were bearing Gabriel to the gallows. She thought that she turned to Mr. Hamlin frantically for assistance, when she saw to her horror that his face had changed – that it was no longer he who sat beside her, but a strange, wild-looking, haggard man – a man whose face was old and pinched, but whose grey hair was discoloured by a faded dye that had worn away, leaving the original colour in patches, and the antique foppery of whose dress was deranged by violent exertion, and grimy with the dust of travel – a dandy whose strapped trousers of a bygone fashion were ridiculously loosened in one leg, whose high stock was unbuckled and awry! She awoke with a start. Even then her dream was so vivid that it seemed to her this face was actually bending over her with such a pathetic earnestness and inquiry that she called aloud. It was some minutes before Pete came to her, but as he averred, albeit somewhat incoherently and rubbing his eyes to show that he had not closed them, that he had never slept a wink, and that it was impossible for any stranger to have come upon them without his knowledge, Olly was obliged to accept it all as a dream! But she did not sleep again. She watched the moon slowly sink behind the serrated pines of Conroy's Hill; she listened to the crackling tread of strange animals in the underbrush, to the far-off rattle of wheels on the Wingdam turnpike, until the dark outline of the tree trunks returned, and with the cold fires of the mountain sunrise the chilly tree-tops awoke to winged life, and the twitter of birds, while the faint mists of the river lingered with the paling moon like tired sentinels for the relief of the coming day. And then Olly awoke her companions. They struggled back into consciousness with characteristic expression. Gabriel slowly and apologetically, as of one who had overslept himself; Jack Hamlin violently and aggressively, as if some unfair advantage had been taken of his human weakness that it was necessary to combat at once. I am sorry to say that his recognition of Pete was accompanied by a degree of profanity and irreverence that was dangerous to his own physical weakness. "And you had to trapse down yer, sniffin' about my tracks, you black and tan idiot," continued Mr. Hamlin, raising himself on his arm, "and after I'd left everything all straight at Wingdam – and jest as I was beginning to reform and lead a new life! How do, Olly? You'll excuse my not rising. Come and kiss me! If that nigger of mine has let you want for anything, jest tell me and I'll discharge him. Well! hang it all! what are you waitin' for? Here it's daybreak and we've got to get down to the head of Reservoir Gulch. Come, little children, the picnic is over!"