In the Carquinez Woods

“Then you won’t shoot him on sight?”

“Not till I’ve had a word with him.”

“But—”

“I’ve chirped,” said the sheriff gravely. “Drive on.”

For a few moments only the plunging hoofs and rattling wheels were heard. A dull, lurid glow began to define the horizon. They were silent until an abatement of the smoke, the vanishing of the gloomy horizon line, and a certain impenetrability in the darkness ahead showed them they were nearing the Carquinez Woods. But they were surprised on entering them to find the dim aisles alight with a faint mystic Aurora. The tops of the towering spires above them had caught the gleam of the distant forest fires, and reflected it as from a gilded dome.

“It would be hot work if the Carquinez Woods should conclude to take a hand in this yer little game that’s going on over on the Divide yonder,” said Brace, securing his horse and glancing at the spires overhead. “I reckon I’d rather take a back seat at Injin Spring when the show commences.”

Dunn did not reply, but, buttoning his coat, placed one hand on his companion’s shoulder, and sullenly bade him “lead the way.” Advancing slowly and with difficulty the desperate man might have been taken for a peaceful invalid returning from an early morning stroll. His right hand was buried thoughtfully in the side pocket of his coat. Only Brace knew that it rested on the handle of his pistol.

From time to time the latter stopped and consulted the faint trail with a minuteness that showed recent careful study. Suddenly he paused. “I made a blaze hereabouts to show where to leave the trail. There it is,” he added, pointing to a slight notch cut in the trunk of an adjoining tree.

“But we’ve just passed one,” said Dunn, “if that’s what you are looking after, a hundred yards back.”

Brace uttered an oath, and ran back in the direction signified by his companion. Presently he returned with a smile of triumph.

“They’ve suspected something. It’s a clever trick, but it won’t hold water. That blaze which was done to muddle you was cut with an axe; this which I made was done with a bowie-knife. It’s the real one. We’re not far off now. Come on.”

They proceeded cautiously, at right angles with the “blazed” tree, for ten minutes more. The heat was oppressive; drops of perspiration rolled from the forehead of the sheriff, and at times, when he attempted to steady his uncertain limbs, his hands shrank from the heated, blistering bark he touched with ungloved palms.

“Here we are,” said Brace, pausing at last. “Do you see that biggest tree, with the root stretching out halfway across to the opposite one?”

“No, it’s further to the right and abreast of the dead brush,” interrupted Dunn quickly, with a sudden revelation that this was the spot where he had found the dead bear in the night Teresa escaped.

“That’s so,” responded Brace, in astonishment.

“And the opening is on the other side, opposite the dead brush,” said Dunn.

“Then you know it?” said Brace suspiciously.

“I reckon!” responded Dunn, grimly. “That’s enough! Fall back!”

To the surprise of his companion, he lifted his head erect, and with a strong, firm step walked directly to the tree. Reaching it, he planted himself squarely before the opening.

“Halloo!” he said.

There was no reply. A squirrel scampered away close to his feet. Brace, far in the distance, after an ineffectual attempt to distinguish his companion through the intervening trunks, took off his coat, leaned against a tree, and lit a cigar.

“Come out of that cabin!” continued Dunn, in a clear, resonant voice. “Come out before I drag you out!”

“All right, ‘Captain Scott.’ Don’t shoot, and I’ll come down,” said a voice as clear and as high as his own. The hanging strips of bark were dashed aside, and a woman leaped lightly to the ground.

Dunn staggered back. “Teresa! by the Eternal!”

It was Teresa! the old Teresa! Teresa, a hundred times more vicious, reckless, hysterical, extravagant, and outrageous than before. Teresa, staring with tooth and eye, sunburnt and embrowned, her hair hanging down her shoulders, and her shawl drawn tightly around her neck.

“Teresa it is! the same old gal! Here we are again! Return of the favorite in her original character! For two weeks only! Houp la! Tshk!” and, catching her yellow skirt with her fingers, she pirouetted before the astounded man, and ended in a pose. Recovering himself with an effort, Dunn dashed forward and seized her by the wrist.

“Answer me, woman! Is that Low’s cabin?”

“It is.”

“Who occupies it besides?”

“I do.”

“And who else?”

“Well,” drawled Teresa slowly, with an extravagant affectation of modesty, “nobody else but us, I reckon. Two’s company, you know, and three’s none.”

“Stop! Will you swear that there isn’t a young girl, his—his sweetheart—concealed there with you?”

The fire in Teresa’s eye was genuine as she answered steadily, “Well, it ain’t my style to put up with that sort of thing; at least, it wasn’t over at Yolo, and you know it, Jim Dunn, or I wouldn’t be here.”

“Yes, yes,” said Dunn hurriedly. “But I’m a d—d fool, or worse, the fool of a fool. Tell me, Teresa, is this man Low your lover?”

Teresa lowered her eyes as if in maidenly confusion. “Well, if I’d known that YOU had any feeling of your own about it—if you’d spoken sooner—”

“Answer me, you devil!”

“He is.”

“And he has been with you here—yesterday—to-night?”

“He has.”

“Enough.” He laughed a weak, foolish laugh, and, turning pale, suddenly lapsed against a tree. He would have fallen, but with a quick instinct Teresa sprang to his side, and supported him gently to a root. The action over, they both looked astounded.

“I reckon that wasn’t much like either you or me,” said Dunn slowly, “was it? But if you’d let me drop then you’d have stretched out the biggest fool in the Sierras.” He paused, and looked at her curiously. “What’s come over you; blessed if I seem to know you now.”

She was very pale again, and quiet; that was all.

“Teresa! d—n it, look here! When I was laid up yonder in Excelsior I said I wanted to get well for only two things. One was to hunt you down, the other to marry Nellie Wynn. When I came here I thought that last thing could never be. I came here expecting to find her here with Low, and kill him—perhaps kill her too. I never once thought of you; not once. You might have risen up before me—between me and him—and I’d have passed you by. And now that I find it’s all a mistake, and it was you, not her, I was looking for, why—”

“Why,” she interrupted bitterly, “you’ll just take me, of course, to save your time and earn your salary. I’m ready.”

“But I’M not, just yet,” he said faintly. “Help me up.”

She mechanically assisted him to his feet.

“Now stand where you are,” he added, “and don’t move beyond this tree till I return.”

He straightened himself with an effort, clenched his fists until the nails were nearly buried in his palms, and strode with a firm, steady step in the direction he had come. In a few moments he returned and stood before her.

“I’ve sent away my deputy—the man who brought me here, the fool who thought you were Nellie. He knows now he made a mistake. But who it was he mistook for Nellie he does not know, nor shall ever know, nor shall any living being know, other than myself. And when I leave the wood to-day I shall know it no longer. You are safe here as far as I am concerned, but I cannot screen you from others prying. Let Low take you away from here as soon as he can.”

“Let him take me away? Ah, yes. For what?”

“To save you,” said Dunn. “Look here, Teresa! Without knowing it, you lifted me out of hell just now, and because of the wrong I might have done her—for HER sake, I spare you and shirk my duty.”

“For her sake!” gasped the woman—“for her sake! Oh, yes! Go on.”

“Well,” said Dunn gloomily, “I reckon perhaps you’d as lieve left me in hell, for all the love you bear me. And may be you’ve grudge enough agin me still to wish I’d found her and him together.”

“You think so?” she said, turning her head away.

“There, d—n it! I didn’t mean to make you cry. May be you wouldn’t, then. Only tell that fellow to take you out of this, and not run away the next time he sees a man coming.”

“He didn’t run,” said Teresa, with flashing eyes. “I—I—I sent him away,” she stammered. Then, suddenly turning with fury upon him, she broke out, “Run! Run from you! Ha, ha! You said just now I’d a grudge against you. Well, listen, Jim Dunn. I’d only to bring you in range of that young man’s rifle, and you’d have dropped in your tracks like—”

“Like that bar, the other night,” said Dunn, with a short laugh. “So THAT was your little game?” He checked his laugh suddenly—a cloud passed over his face. “Look here, Teresa,” he said, with an assumption of carelessness that was as transparent as it was utterly incompatible with his frank, open selfishness. “What became of that bar? The skin—eh? That was worth something?”

“Yes,” said Teresa quietly. “Low exchanged it and got a ring for me from that trader Isaacs. It was worth more, you bet. And the ring didn’t fit either—”

“Yes,” interrupted Dunn, with an almost childish eagerness.

“And I made him take it back, and get the value in money. I hear that Isaacs sold it again and made another profit; but that’s like those traders.” The disingenuous candor of Teresa’s manner was in exquisite contrast to Dunn. He rose and grasped her hand so heartily she was forced to turn her eyes away.

“Good-by!” he said.

“You look tired,” she murmured, with a sudden gentleness that surprised him; “let me go with you a part of the way.”

“It isn’t safe for you just now,” he said, thinking of the possible consequences of the alarm Brace had raised.

“Not the way YOU came,” she replied; “but one known only to myself.”

He hesitated only a moment. “All right, then,” he said finally, “let us go at once. It’s suffocating here, and I seem to feel this dead bark crinkle under my feet.”

She cast a rapid glance around her, and then seemed to sound with her eyes the far-off depths of the aisles, beginning to grow pale with the advancing day, but still holding a strange quiver of heat in the air. When she had finished her half-abstracted scrutiny of the distance, she cast one backward glance at her own cabin and stopped.

“Will you wait a moment for me?” she asked gently.

“Yes—but—no tricks, Teresa! It isn’t worth the time.”

She looked him squarely in the eyes without a word.

“Enough,” he said; “go!”

She was absent for some moments. He was beginning to become uneasy, when she made her appearance again, clad in her old faded black dress. Her face was very pale, and her eyes were swollen, but she placed his hand on her shoulder, and bidding him not to fear to lean upon her, for she was quite strong, led the way.

“You look more like yourself now, and yet—blast it all!—you don’t either,” said Dunn, looking down upon her. “You’ve changed in some way. What is it? Is it on account of that Injin? Couldn’t you have found a white man in his place?”

“I reckon he’s neither worse nor better for that,” she replied bitterly; “and perhaps he wasn’t as particular in his taste as a white man might have been. But,” she added, with a sudden spasm of her old rage, “it’s a lie; he’s NOT an Indian, no more than I am. Not unless being born of a mother who scarcely knew him, of a father who never even saw him, and being brought up among white men and wild beasts—less cruel than they were—could make him one!”

Dunn looked at her in surprise not unmixed with admiration. “If Nellie,” he thought, “could but love ME like that!” But he only said:

“For all that, he’s an Injin. Why, look at his name. It ain’t Low. It’s L’Eau Dormante, Sleeping Water, an Injin name.”

“And what does that prove?” returned Teresa. “Only that Indians clap a nick-name on any stranger, white or red, who may camp with them. Why, even his own father, a white man, the wretch who begot him and abandoned him,—HE had an Indian name—Loup Noir.”

“What name did you say?”

“Le Loup Noir, the Black Wolf. I suppose you’d call him an Indian, too? Eh! What’s the matter? We’re walking too fast. Stop a moment and rest. There—there, lean on me!”

She was none too soon; for, after holding him upright a moment, his limbs failed, and stooping gently she was obliged to support him half reclining against a tree.

“Its the heat!” he said. “Give me some whisky from my flask. Never mind the water,” he added faintly, with a forced laugh, after he had taken a draught at the strong spirit. “Tell me more about the other water—the Sleeping Water—you know. How do you know all this about him and his—father?”

“Partly from him and partly from Curson, who wrote to me about him,” she answered with some hesitation.

But Dunn did not seem to notice this incongruity of correspondence with a former lover. “And HE told you?”

“Yes; and I saw the name on an old memorandum book he has, which he says belonged to his father. It’s full of old accounts of some trading post on the frontier. It’s been missing for a day or two, but it will turn up. But I can swear I saw it.”

Dunn attempted to rise to his feet. “Put your hand in my pocket,” he said in a hurried whisper. “No, there!—bring out a book. There, I haven’t looked at it yet. Is that it?” he added, handing her the book Brace had given him a few hours before.

“Yes,” said Teresa, in surprise. “Where did you find it?”

“Never mind! Now let me see it, quick. Open it, for my sight is failing. There—thank you—that’s all!”

“Take more whisky,” said Teresa, with a strange anxiety creeping over her. “You are faint again.”

“Wait! Listen, Teresa—lower—put your ear lower. Listen! I came near killing that chap Low to-day. Wouldn’t it have been ridiculous?”

He tried to smile, but his head fell back. He had fainted.

CHAPTER IX

For the first time in her life Teresa lost her presence of mind in an emergency. She could only sit staring at the helpless man, scarcely conscious of his condition, her mind filled with a sudden prophetic intuition of the significance of his last words. In the light of that new revelation she looked into his pale, haggard face for some resemblance to Low, but in vain. Yet her swift feminine instinct met the objection. “It’s the mother’s blood that would show,” she murmured, “not this man’s.”

Recovering herself, she began to chafe his hands and temples, and moistened his lips with the spirit. When his respiration returned with a faint color to his cheeks, she pressed his hands eagerly and leaned over him.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Of what?” he whispered faintly.

“That Low is really your son?”

“Who said so?” he asked, opening his round eyes upon her.

“You did yourself, a moment ago,” she said quickly. “Don’t you remember?”

“Did I?”

“You did. Is it not so?”

He smiled faintly. “I reckon.”

She held her breath in expectation. But only the ludicrousness of the discovery seemed paramount to his weakened faculties. “Isn’t it just about the ridiculousest thing all round?” he said, with a feeble chuckle. “First YOU nearly kill me before you know I am Low’s father; then I’m just spoilin’ to kill him before I know he’s my son; then that god-forsaken fool Jack Brace mistakes you for Nellie and Nellie for you. Ain’t it just the biggest thing for the boys to get hold of? But we must keep it dark until after I marry Nellie, don’t you see? Then we’ll have a good time all round, and I’ll stand the drinks. Think of it, Teresha! You don’ no me, I do’ no you, nobody knowsh anybody elsh. I try kill Lo’. Lo’ wants kill Nellie. No thath no ri—‘” but the potent liquor, overtaking his exhausted senses, thickened, impeded, and at last stopped his speech. His head slipped to her shoulder, and he became once more unconscious.

Teresa breathed again. In that brief moment she had abandoned herself to a wild inspiration of hope which she could scarcely define. Not that it was entirely a wild inspiration; she tried to reason calmly. What if she revealed the truth to him? What if she told the wretched man before her that she had deceived him; that she had overheard his conversation with Brace; that she had stolen Brace’s horse to bring Low warning; that, failing to find Low in his accustomed haunts, or at the campfire, she had left a note for him pinned to the herbarium, imploring him to fly with his companion from the danger that was coming; and that, remaining on watch, she had seen them both—Brace and Dunn—approaching, and had prepared to meet them at the cabin? Would this miserable and maddened man understand her self-abnegation? Would he forgive Low and Nellie?—she did not ask for herself. Or would the revelation turn his brain, if it did not kill him outright? She looked at the sunken orbits of his eyes and hectic on his cheek, and shuddered.

Why was this added to the agony she already suffered? She had been willing to stand between them with her life, her liberty, and even—the hot blood dyed her cheek at the thought—with the added shame of being thought the cast-off mistress of that man’s son. Yet all this she had taken upon herself in expiation of something—she knew not clearly what; no, for nothing—only for HIM. And yet this very situation offered her that gleam of hope which had thrilled her; a hope so wild in its improbability, so degrading in its possibility, that at first she knew not whether despair was not preferable to its shame. And yet was it unreasonable? She was no longer passionate; she would be calm and think it out fairly.

She would go to Low at once. She would find him somewhere—and even if with that girl, what mattered?—and she would tell him all. When he knew that the life and death of his father lay in the scale, would he let his brief, foolish passion for Nellie stand in the way? Even if he were not influenced by filial affection or mere compassion, would his pride let him stoop to a rivalry with the man who had deserted his youth? Could he take Dunn’s promised bride, who must have coquetted with him to have brought him to this miserable plight? Was this like the calm, proud young god she knew? Yet she had an uneasy instinct that calm, proud young gods and goddesses did things like this, and felt the weakness of her reasoning flush her own conscious cheek.

“Teresa!”

She started. Dunn was awake, and was gazing at her curiously.

“I was reckoning it was the only square thing for Low to stop this promiscuous picnicking here and marry you out and out.”

“Marry me!” said Teresa in a voice that, with all her efforts, she could not make cynical.

“Yes,” he repeated, “after I’ve married Nellie; tote you down to San Angeles, and there take my name like a man, and give it to you. Nobody’ll ask after TERESA, sure—you bet your life. And if they do, and he can’t stop their jaw, just you call on the old man. It’s mighty queer, ain’t it, Teresa, to think of your being my daughter-in-law?”

It seemed here as if he was about to lapse again into unconsciousness over the purely ludicrous aspect of the subject, but he haply recovered his seriousness. “He’ll have as much money from me as he wants to go into business with. What’s his line of business, Teresa?” asked this prospective father-in-law, in a large, liberal way.

“He is a botanist!” said Teresa, with a sudden childish animation that seemed to keep up the grim humor of the paternal suggestion; “and oh, he is too poor to buy books! I sent for one or two for him myself, the other day—” she hesitated—“it was all the money I had, but it wasn’t enough for him to go on with his studies.”

Dunn looked at her sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks, and became thoughtful. “Curson must have been a d—d fool,” he said finally.

Teresa remained silent. She was beginning to be impatient and uneasy, fearing some mischance that might delay her dreaded, yet longed-for meeting with Low. Yet she could not leave this sick and exhausted man, HIS FATHER, now bound to her by more than mere humanity.

“Couldn’t you manage,” she said gently, “to lean on me a few steps further, until I could bring you to a cooler spot and nearer assistance?”

He nodded. She lifted him almost like a child to his feet. A spasm of pain passed over his face. “How far is it?” he asked.

“Not more than ten minutes,” she replied.

“I can make a spurt for that time,” he said coolly, and began to walk slowly but steadily on. Only his face, which was white and set, and the convulsive grip of his hand on her arm betrayed the effort. At the end of ten minutes she stopped. They stood before the splintered, lightning-scarred shaft in the opening of the woods, where Low had built her first camp-fire. She carefully picked up the herbarium, but her quick eye had already detected in the distance, before she had allowed Dunn to enter the opening with her, that her note was gone. Low had been there before them; he had been warned, as his absence from the cabin showed; he would not return there. They were free from interruption—but where had he gone?

The sick man drew a long breath of relief as she seated him in the clover-grown hollow where she had slept the second night of her stay. “It’s cooler than those cursed woods,” he said. “I suppose it’s because it’s a little like a grave. What are you going to do now?” he added, as she brought a cup of water and placed it at his side.

“I am going to leave you here for a little while,” she said cheerfully, but with a pale face and nervous hands. “I’m going to leave you while I seek Low.”

The sick man raised his head. “I’m good for a spurt, Teresa, like that I’ve just got through, but I don’t think I’m up to a family party. Couldn’t you issue cards later on?”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’m going to get Low to send some one of your friends to you here. I don’t think he’ll begrudge leaving HER a moment for that,” she added to herself bitterly.

“What’s that you’re saying?” he queried, with the nervous quickness of an invalid.

“Nothing—but that I’m going now.” She turned her face aside to hide her moistened eyes. “Wish me good luck, won’t you?” she asked, half sadly, half pettishly.

“Come here!”

She came and bent over him. He suddenly raised his hands, and, drawing her face down to his own, kissed her forehead.

“Give that to HIM,” he whispered, “from ME.”

She turned and fled, happily for her sentiment, not hearing the feeble laugh that followed, as Dunn, in sheer imbecility, again referred to the extravagant ludicrousness of the situation. “It is about the biggest thing in the way of a sell all round,” he repeated, lying on his back, confidentially to the speck of smoke-obscured sky above him. He pictured himself repeating it, not to Nellie—her severe propriety might at last overlook the fact, but would not tolerate the joke—but to her father! It would be one of those characteristic Californian jokes Father Wynn would admire.

To his exhaustion fever presently succeeded, and he began to grow restless. The heat too seemed to invade his retreat, and from time to time the little patch of blue sky was totally obscured by clouds of smoke. He amused himself with watching a lizard who was investigating a folded piece of paper, whose elasticity gave the little creature lively apprehensions of its vitality. At last he could stand the stillness of his retreat and his supine position no longer, and rolled himself out of the bed of leaves that Teresa had so carefully prepared for him. He rose to his feet stiff and sore, and, supporting himself by the nearest tree, moved a few steps from the dead ashes of the camp-fire. The movement frightened the lizard, who abandoned the paper and fled. With a satirical recollection of Brace and his “ridiculous” discovery through the medium of this animal, he stooped and picked up the paper. “Like as not,” he said to himself, with grim irony, “these yer lizards are in the discovery business. P’r’aps this may lead to another mystery,” and he began to unfold the paper with a smile. But the smile ceased as his eye suddenly caught his own name.

A dozen lines were written in pencil on what seemed to be a blank leaf originally torn from some book. He trembled so that he was obliged to sit down to read these words:—

“When you get this keep away from the woods. Dunn and another man are in deadly pursuit of you and your companion. I overheard their plan to surprise you in our cabin. DON’T GO THERE, and I will delay them and put them off the scent. Don’t mind me. God bless you, and if you never see me again think sometimes of