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Watches Casual Dress Sports. Eyewear Aviators Wayfarer Pilot Square. Underwear Boxers Briefs Undershirts Swimwear. Sponsored products for you. Yet she prudently asked: Then Gabriel, the cunning, sought Mrs. Dumphy, the mentally alienated. A change will do it good; Fetch it to Olly and let her help you tend it until-untilto-morrow. Dumphy and her effigy were installed in Grace's place and Olly was made happy. A finer nature or a more active imagination than Gabriel's would have revolted at this.
So alternately they took care of the effigy, the child simulating the cares of the Future and losing the Present in them, the mother living in the memories of the Past. Perhaps it might have been pathetic to have seen Olly and Mrs. Dumphy both saving the infinitesimal remnants of their provisions for the doll, but the only spectator was one of the actors, Gabriel, who lent himself to the deception; and pathos to be effective must be viewed from the outside.
At noon that day the hysterical young man, Gabriel's cousin, died. Gabriel went over to the other hut and endeavored to cheer the survivors. He succeeded in infecting them so far with his hopefulness as to loosen the tongue and imagination of the story-teller, but at four o'clock the body had not yet been buried. It was evening and the three were sitting over the embers when a singular change came over Mrs. The effigy suddenly slipped from her hands and, looking up, Gabriel perceived that her arms had dropped to her side, and that her eyes were fixed on vacancy.
He spoke to her but she made no sign nor response of any kind. He touched her and found her limbs rigid and motionless. Oily began to cry. The sound seemed to agitate Mrs. Without moving a limb, she said in a changed, unnatural voice, "Hark! They're jest setting out. I see'em-a dozen men with pack horses and provisions. The leader is an American-the others are strangers. They're coming-but far, O so far away! After a death-like pause, she went on. He was willing to recognize something abnormal and perhaps even prophetic in this insane woman, but a coincident exaltation in a stranger who was not suffering from the illusions produced by starvation was beyond his credulity.
Nevertheless the instincts of good humor and hopefulness were stronger and he presently asked: Then they will cross a mountain until they come to another beautiful valley with steep sides and a rushing river that runs so near us that I can almost hear it now. Don't you see it? It is just beyond the snow peak there. A green valley with the rain falling upon it. She is coming for us. She will find me here.
For it was only a little past midnight that her baby came to her-came to her with a sudden light, that might have been invisible to Gabriel, but that it was reflected in her own lack-lustre eyes-came to this poor half-witted creature. Gabriel placed the effigy in her arms and folded them over it.
Then he ran swiftly to the other hut. For some unexplained reason he did not get further than the door. What he saw there he has never told, but when he groped his fainting way back to his own hut again, his face was white and bloodless, and his eyes wild and staring. Only one impulse remained-to fly forever from the cursed spot. He stopped only long enough to snatch up the sobbing and frightened Oily and then with a loud cry to God to help him -to help them-he dashed out and was lost in the darkness. Up its gaunt, white flank, two figures had been slowly crawling since noon, until at sunset, they at last stood upon its outer verge, outlined against the skyPhilip and Grace.
For all the fatigues of the journey, the want of nourishing food, and the haunting shadow of the suffering she had left, the face of Grace flushed with the dying sun, was very pretty. The boy's dress she had borrowed was ill-fitting and made her exquisite little figure still more diminutive, but it could not entirely hide its graceful curves.
Here in this rosy light the swooning fringes of her dark eyes were no longer hidden; the perfect oval of her face, even the few freckles on her short upper lip were visible to Philip. Partly as a physical support, partly to reassure her, he put his arm tenderly around her waist. Then he kissed her. It is possible that this last act was purely gratuitous. Howbeit Grace first asked with the characteristic, prudence of her sex, the question she had already asked many times before that day, "Do you love me, Philip?
It was the fourth day since they had left the hut. On the second day they had found some pine cones with the nuts still intact and fresh beneath the snow, and later a squirrel's hoard. On the third day Philip had killed the The same evening Philip had espied a duck winging his way up the cafion. Philip strong in the belief that some inland lake was the immediate object of its flight had first marked its course, and then brought it down with a long shot. Then having altered their course in accordance with its suggestion, they ate their guide next morning for breakfast.
Philip was also disappointed. The summit of the spur so laboriously attained, only showed him the same endless succession of white snow billows stretching rigidly to the horizon's edge. There was no break-no glimpse of water course nor lake. There was nothing to indicate whence the bird had come or the probable point it was endeavoring to reach. He was beginning to consider the feasibility of again changing their course when an unlooked for accident took that volition from his hands.
Grace had ventured out to the extreme limit of the rocky cliff and with straining eyes was trying to peer beyond the snow fields when the treacherous ledge on which she was standing began to give away. In an instant Philip was at her side and had caught her hand, but at the same moment a large rock of the ledge dropped from beneath her feet and left her with no support but his grasp.
The sudden shock loosened also the insecure, granite on which Philip stood. Before he could gain securer foothold it also trembled, tottered, slipped, and then fell carrying Philip and Grace with it. Luckily this immense mass of stone and ice got fairly away before them, and ploughed down the steep flank of the cliff, breaking off the projecting rocks and proturberances and cutting a clean though almost perpendicular path down the mountain side.
Even in falling, Philip had presence of mind enough to forbear clutching at the crumbling ledge and so precipitating the rock that might crush them. Before he lost his senses he remembered tightening his grip of Grace's arm and drawing her face and head forward to his breast, and even in his unconsciousness it seemed that he instinctively guided her into the smooth passage or " shoot "made by the plunging rock. And even then he was half-conscious of dashing into sudden material darkness and out again into light, and of the crashing and crackling of branches around him, and even the brushing of the stiff pine needles against his face and limbs.
Then he felt himself stopped, and then, and then only, everything whirled confusedly by him, and his brain seemed to partake of the motion, and then-the relief of utter blankness and oblivion. When he regained his senses, it was with a burning heat in his throat and the sensation of strangling. When he opened his eyes he saw Grace bending over him, pale and anxious, and chafing his hands and temples with snow. There was a spot of blood upon her round cheek. But Philip did not see her. His eyes were rapidly taking in his strange surroundings. He was lying among the broken fragments of pine branches and the debris of the cliff above.
In his ears was the sound of hurrying water and before him, scarce a hundred feet, a rushing river! He looked up; the red glow of sunset was streaming through the broken limbs and shattered branches of the snow-thatched roof that he had broken through in his descent. Here and there along the river the same light was penetrating the interstices and openings of this strange vault that arched above this sunless stream.
He knew now whence the duck had flown! He knew now why he had not seen the water course before! He knew now where the birds and beasts had betaken themselves-why the woods and cafions were trackless! Here was at last the open road! He staggered to his feet with a cry of delight. As we descend the stream it will open into a broader valley. Philip looked at her inquiringly.
I saw it from there. Philip started to his feet and ran to her side. Then he felt for the precious flask that he had preserved so sacredly through all their hardships, but it was gone. He glanced around him; it was lying on the snow, empty! For the first time in their weary pilgrimage Philip uttered a groan. At the sound Grace opened her sweet eyes. She saw her lover with the empty flask in his hand, and smiled faintly.
But she uttered a weak little cry and fell back again' Philip did not hear her. He was already climbing the ledge she had spoken of. When he returned his face was joyous. It is still light and we shall camp there to-night. Her ankle was severely sprained and she could not stand. Philip tore up his shirt, and with bandages dipped in snow water, wrapped up the swollen limb. Then he knocked over a quail in the bushes and another duck, and clearing away the brush for a camping spot, built a fire, and tempted the young girl with a hot supper.
The peril of starvation passed, their greatest danger was over-a few days longer of enforced rest and inactivity was the worst to be feared. The air had grown singularly milder with the last few hours. At midnight a damp breeze stirred the pine needles above their heads and an ominous muffled beating was heard upon the snow packed vault. But Grace was in no mood for poetry-even a lover's. She let her head drop upon his shoulder and then said, "You must go on, dear, and leave me here.
I can live until you come back. I fear no danger now. I am so much better off than-they are! Perhaps it was his conscience; perhaps there was something in the girl's tone, perhaps because she had once before spoken in the same way, but it jarred upon a certain quality in his nature which he was pleased to call his "common sense. For a moment he did not speak. He thought how, at the risk of his own safety, he had snatched this girl from a terrible death; he thought how he had guarded her through their perilous journey, taking all the burdens upon himself; he thought how happy he had made her, how she had even admitted her happiness to him; he thought of her present helplessness, and how willing he was to delay the journey on her account; he dwelt even upon a certain mysterious, ill-defined but blissful future with him to which he was taking her, and yet here, at the moment of their possible deliverance, she was fretting about two dying people, who without miraculous interference, would be dead before she could reach them.
It was part of Philip's equitable self-examination-a fact of which he was very proud-that he always put himself in the position of the person with whom he differed,and imagined how he would act under the like circumstances. Perhaps it is hardly necessary to say that Philip always found that his conduct under those conditions would be totally different.
In the present instance, putting himself in Grace's position he felt that he would have abandoned all and everything for a love and future like hers. That she did not, was evidence of a moral deficiency or a blood taint. Logic of this kind is easy and irrefutable. It has been known to obtain even beyond the Sierras and with people who were not physically exhausted.
After a pause he said to Grace in a changed voice: It is five days since we left the hut; were we even certain of finding our wandering way back again, we could not reach there before another five days had elapsed. By that time all will be over. They have either been saved or are beyond the reach of help. This sounds harsh, Grace, but it is no harsher than the fact. Had we stayed, we would, without helping them, have only shared their fate. I might have been in your brother's place, you in your sister's. It is our fortune not our fault that we are not dying with them.
It has been willed that. It might have been willed that we should have perished in our attempts to succor them, and that relief which came to them would have never reached us. But the masculine reader will I trust at once detect the irrelevance of the feminine suggestion, and observe that it did not refute Philip's argument.
She looked at him with a half frightened air. Perhaps it was the tears that dimmed her eyes, but his few words seemed to have removed him to a great distance, and for the first time a strange sense of loneliness came over her. She longed to reach her yearning arms to him again, but with this feeling came a sense of shame that she had not felt before. Philip noticed her hesitation and half interpreted it. He let her passive head fall. Go to sleep, now," he said more kindly " and in the morning we will see what can be done.
She had been looking for this opportunity of speaking about herself-about their future. This was to have been the beginning of her confidence about Dr. Devarges' secret; she would have told him frankly all the Doctor had said, even his suspicions of Philip himself. And then Philip would have been sure to have told her his plans, and they would have gone back with help and Philip would have been a hero whom Gabriel would have instantly recognized as the proper husband for Grace, and they would have all been very happy.
And now they were all dead, and had died perhaps cursing her and-Philip-Philip had not kissed her good night and was sitting gloomily under a tree. The dim light of a leaden morning broke through the snow vault above their heads. It was raining heavily, the river had risen and was still rising. It was filled with drif and. Occasionally a large uprooted tree with a gaunt forked root like a mast sailed by. Suddenly Philip who had been sitting with his chin upon his hands rose with a shout.
Grace looked up languidly. He pointed to a tree, that floating by, had struck the bank where they sat and then drifted broadside against it where for a moment it lay motionless. If we are to be saved it is by her methods. She brought us here to the water's edge, and now she sends a boat to take us off again. Then he placed beside her his rifle and provisions, and leaping himself on the bow of this strange craft, shoved it off with a broken branch that he had found. For a moment it still clung to the bank, and then suddenly catching the impulse of the current, darted away like a living creature.
The river was very narrow and rapid where they had embarked, and for a few moments it took all of Philip's energy and undivided attention to keep the tree in the centre of the current. Grace sat silent, admiring her lover, alert, forceful and glowing with excitement. Presently Philip called to her.
We are near a settlement. A ray of hope shot through Grace's sad fancies; if they were so near help, might not it have already reached the: But she forbore to speak to Philip again upon that subject, and in his new occupation he seemed to have forgotten her. It was with a little thrill of joy that at last she saw him: When he reached her side he sat down and taking her hand in his for the first time. Without noticing her embarrassment he went on. Strangers certainly-not the relatives you have known and who know you-not the people with whom we have been familiar for so many weeks and days — but people who know nothing of us, or our sufferings.
Your beauty, dear Grace, offers an explanation of our companionship that the world will accept more readily than any other, and the truth to many would seem scarcely as natural. For this reason it must not be told. I will go back alone with relief and leave you here in some safe hands until I return. But I leave you here not as Grace Conroy-you shall. Philip waited patiently for her reply. When she lifted her face again, it was quiet and calm.
And beyond, from a cluster of willows scarcely a mile away, the smoke of a cabin chimney curled in the still air. FOR two weeks an unclouded sun rose and set on the rigid outlines of Monument Point. For two weeks there had been no apparent change in the ghastly whiteness of the snow-flanked rocks; in the white billows that rose rank on rank beyond, in the death-like stillness that reigned above and below.
It was the first day of April; there was the mildness of early Spring in the air that blew over this gaunt waste and yet awoke no sound or motion. And yet a nearer approach showed that a slow insidious change had been taking place. The white flanks of the mountain were more hollow; the snow had shrunk visibly away in places, leaving the gray rocks naked and protuberant; the rigid outlines were there, but less full and rounded; the skeleton was beginning to show through the wasting flesh; there were great patches of snow that had sloughed away, leaving the gleaming granite bare below.
It was the last change of the Hippocratic face that Nature turned toward the spectator. And yet this change had been noiseless-the solitude unbroken. And then one day there suddenly drifted across the deathlike valley the chime of jingling spurs and the sound of human voices. Down the long defile a cavalcade of mounted men and pack mules made their way, plunging through drifts and clattering over rocks. The unwonted sound awoke the long slumbering echoes of the mountain, brought down small avalanches from cliff and tiee, and at last brought from some cavern of the rocks to the surface of the snow, a figure so wild, haggard, disheveled and monstrous that it was scarcely It crawled upon the snow, dodging behind rocks with the timidity of a frightened animal, and at last squatting behind a tree awaited in ambush the approach of the party.
Two men rode ahead. One, grave, preoccupied and reticent. The other alert, active and voluble. At last the reticent man spoke, but slowly, and as if recalling a memory rather than recording a present impression. It was in some such spot that I first saw them. The place is familiar. If there is not a cairn of stones somewhere about this spot, I shall believe my dream false, and confess myself an old fool. Columbus held his course and kept up his crew on a fragment of sea weed.
But what are the men looking at? There is something moving by yonder rock! The leader was first to recover himself. He advanced from the rest and met Dumphy half-way. Dumphy cast a suspicious glance at him and said, "Who? You are not alone? I'm here and starving. Gimme suthin to eat and drink. There was a murmur of sympathy from the men. Don't you see he can't stand-much less talk. Dumphy gasped, and then staggered to his feet. Gimme suthin to eat! He'll know what to do," said the surgeon to one of the men.
But something tells me we have only begun. This one makes everything else possible. What have you there? Me no sabe," said the ex vaquero. Blunt handed him the paper. The man examined it. It was a muffled monotonous tramp of about an hour. At the end of that time they reached a spur of the mountain around which the cafion turned abruptly.
Blunt uttered a cry. Before them was a ruin-a rude heap of stones originally symmetrical and elevated but now thrown down and dismantled. The snow and earth were torn up around and beneath it. On the snow lay some scattered papers, a portfolio of drawings of birds and flowers; a glass case of insects broken and demolished, and the scattered feathers of a few stuffed birds.
At a little distance lay what seemed to be a heap of ragged clothing. At the sight of it the nearest horseman uttered a shout and leaped to the ground. SHE had been dead about a week. The features and clothing were scarcely recognizable; the limbs were drawn up convulsively. The young surgeon bent over her attentively. The surgeon did not reply but rose and examined the scattered specimens. One of them he picked up and placed first to his nose and then to his lips. After a pause, he replied quietly. They have been covered with a strong solution of arsenic to preserve them from the ravages of insects, and this starving woman has been first to fall a victim to the collector's caution.
It was an inauspicious moment for Doctor Devarges to have introduced himself in person. I think I have heard the name before — Devarges'-replied the surgeon looking over some papers that he had picked up. Humanity first, science afterwards," he added lightly, and they rode on. And so the papers and collections preserved with such care, the evidence of many months of patient study, privation, and hardship, the records of triumph and discovery were left lying upon the snow.
The wind came down the flanks of the mountain and tossed them hither and thither as if in scorn, and the sun, already fervid, heating the metallic surfaces of the box and portfolio sank them deeper in the snow as if to bury them from the sight forever. By skirting the edge of the valley where the snow had fallen away from the mountain side, they reached in a few hours the blazed tree at the entrance of the fateful cation. The placard was still there, but the wooden hand that once pointed in the direction of the buried huts had, through some mischance of wind or weather, dropped slightly and was omniously pointing to the snow below.
This was still so deep in drifts that the party were obliged to leave their horses and enter the cation a-foot. Almost unconsciously, this was done in perfect silence, walking in single file, occasionally climbing up the sides of the caion where the rocks offered a better foothold than the damp snow, until they reached a wooden chimney and part of a roof that now reared itself above the snow. Here they paused and looked at each other. The leader approached the chimney and leaning over it called within.
There was no response. Presently, however, the canion took up the shout and repeated it, and then there was a silence broken only by the falling of an icicle from a rock, or a snow slide from the hill above. Then all was quiet again, until Blunt after a moment's hesitation walked around to the opening and descended into the hut. He had scarcely disappeared,.
After a little the rest of the party, one after another went down. They staid sometime, and then came slowly to the surface bearing three dead bodies. They returned again quickly and then brought up the dissevered members of a fourth. This done, they looked at each other in silence. There was no preliminary "halloo," or hesitation now.
The worst was known. They all passed rapidly to the opening and disappeared within. When they returned to the surface they huddled together a whispering but excited group. They were so much preoccupied that they did not see that their party was suddenly increased by the presence of a stranger. IT was Philip Ashley! Philip Ashley-faded, travel-worn, hollow-eyed, but nervously energetic and eager.
Philipwho four days before had left Grace the guest of a hospitable trapper's half-breed family, in the California valley. Philip-gloomy, discontented, hateful of the quest he had undertaken, but still fulfilling his promise to Grace, and the savage dictates of his own conscience.
It was Philip Ashley, who now standing beside the hut turned half-cynically, halfindifferently toward the party. The surgeon was first to discover him. He darted forward with a cry of recognition, "Poinsett! He glanced rapidly around the group and then in some embarrassment replied with awkward literalness. It was unnoticed by the surgeon who was whispering to Blunt. Presently he came forward. He is here, like ourselves, on an errand of mercy. It is like him!
With that recognition, something of his singular embarrassment dropped away. Of course with no survivor present, we are unable to identify them. The hut occupied by Dr. Devarges, whose body buried in the snow we have identified by his clothing, and the young girl Grace Conroy and her child-sister are all we are positive about. Devarges in his papers gives the names of the occupants of the hut.
We have accounted for all but her brother and a fellow by the name of Ashley. What can you expect from that class of people? Didn't they always pass the Fort where we were stationed? Didn't they beg what they could, and steal what they otherwise couldn't get, and then report to Was;hingto i'he incompetency of the military?. Weren't they always getting up rows with the IndJans and then sneaking away to let us settle the bill?
Don't you remember them-the men gaunt, sickly, vulgar, low toned-the women dirty, snuffy, prematurely old and prematurely prolific? He looked at the Doctor and said " Yes. What could you expect? People who could be strong only in proportion to their physical strength, and losing everything with the loss of that? There has been selfishness, cruelty-God knows-perhaps-murder done here! But you, Arthur, how chanced you to be here in this vicinity? Are you stationed here?
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You will help me make out my report. This, you know, is an official inquiry based upon the alleged clairvoyant quality of our friend Blunt. I must say we have established that fact if we have been able to do nothing more. Two or three of the party who had been engaged in laying out the unburied bodies, and talking in whispers, hearing these fine gentlemen make light of the calamity in well-chosen rpithetp were somewhat ashamed of their own awe, and less elegantly and I fear less grammatically began to be jocose, too.
Whereat the fastidious Fhilip frowned, the surgeon laughed, and the two friends returned to the entrance of the cafon, and thence rode out of the valley together. Philip's reticence regarding his own immediate past, was too characteristic to excite any suspicion or surprise in the mind. In truth the Doctor was too well pleased with his presence, and the undoubted support which he should have in Philip's sympathetic tastes and congenial habits to think of much else. He was proud of his friend-proud of the impression he had made among the rude unlettered men with whom he was forced by the conditions of frontier democracy to associate on terms of equality.
And Philip, though young, was accustomed to have his friends proud of him. Indeed he always felt some complacency with himself that he seldom took advantage of this fact. Satisfied that he might have confided to the Doctor the truth of his connexion with the ill-fated party, and his flight with Grace, and that the Doctor would probably have regarded him as a hero, he felt less compunctions at his suppression of the fact.
Their way lay by Monument Point and the dismantled cairn. Philip had already passed it on his way to the canion, and had felt a thankfulness for the unexpected tragedy that had, as he believed, conscientiously relieved him of a duty to the departed naturalist, yet he could not forego a question. The Doctor who had not for many months had an opportunity to air his general skepticism, was nothing if not derogatory. Devarges, they might minister to his vanity, and please the poor fellow. I see nothing in them that should make them worthy to survive him.
Devarges' own manner as Philip remembered it, that he smiled grimly and felt relieved. When they reached the spot Nature seemed to have already taken the same cynical view; the metallic case was already deeply sunken in the snow, the wind had scattered the papers far and wide and even the cairn itself had tumbled into a shapeless, meaningless ruin. A FERVID May sun had been baking the adobe walls of the Presidio of San Ramon, firing the red tiles, scorching the black courtyard, and driving the mules and vaqueros of a train that had just arrived, into the shade of the long galleries of the quadrangle, when the Comandante, who was taking his noon-day siesta in a low studded chamber beside the guard room, was gently awakened by his secretary.
For thirty years the noon-day slumbers of the Commander had never been broken; his first thought was the Heathen! But as it so happened, the cook had borrowed it that morning to rake tortillas from the Presidio oven, and Don Juan Salvatierra contented himself with sternly demanding the reason for this unwonted intrusion. Before he could assume a more formal attitude, the door was timidly opened, and a young girl entered. For all the disfigurement of scant, coarse, ill-fitting clothing, or the hollowness of her sweet eyes, and even the tears that dimmed their long lashes, for all the sorrow that had pinched her young cheek and straightened the corners of her child-like mouth, she was still so fair, so frank, so youthful, so innocent and helpless that the Comandante stood erect and then bent forward in a salutation that almost swept the floor.
Apparently the prepossession was mutual. The young girl took a quick survey of the gaunt but gentlemanlike figure before her, cast a rapid glance at the serious but kindly eyes that shone above the Commander's iron gray mustachios, dropped her hesitating, timid manner, and with an impulsive gesture and a little cry, ran forward and fell upon her knees at his feet. The Commander would have raised her gently, but she restrained his hand. I am only a, poor, poor girl, without friends or home. A month ago I left my family starving in the mountains, and came away to get them help.
God was good to us, Senior, and after a weary tramp of many days we found a trapper's hut and food and shelter. Philip-my brother-went back alone to succor them. He has not returned. It is three weeks ago since he left me-three weeks! It is a long time to be alone-Sefior-a stranger in a strange land. The trapper was kind and sent me here to you for assistance. You will help me? I know you will. You will find them-my friends-my little sister, my brother! Then he turned to his secretary, who with a few hurried words in Spanish answered the mute inquiry of the Commander's eyes.
The young girl felt a thrill of disappointment as she saw that her personal appeal had been lost and unintelligible; it was with a slight touch of defiance that was new to her nature that she turned to the secretary, who advanced as interpreter. Jane Dumphy," she said at last. The secretary opened a desk, took out a printed document, unfolded it, and glanced over its contents. Presently he handed it to the Commander with the comment "Bueno. The secretary glanced at the paper again, and then said, looking at Grace intently, "There is no name of Mees Graziashly.
She raised her eyes imploringly to the Commander. If she could have reached him directly she would have thrown herself at his feet and confessed her innocent deceit, but she shrank from a confidence that first filtered through the consciousness of the Secretary. So she began to fence feebly with the issue. In her greater anxiety now, all lesser fears were forgotten.
She turned and threw herself before the Commander. Philip is not my brother-but a friend, so kind, so good. He asked me to take his name-poor boy, God knows if he will ever claim it again-and I did. My name is not Ashley. I know not what is in that paper, but it must tell of my brother Gabriel, my sister, of all! Answer me you must for-I am-I am Grace Conroy!
He opened it again, glanced over it, fixed his eyes upon Grace, and pointing to a paragraph handed it to the Commander. The two men exchanged glances, the Commander coughed, rose and averted his face from the beseeching eyes of Grace. A sudden deathlike chill ran through her limbs as, at a word from the Commander, the secretary rose and placed the paper in her hands.
Grace took it with trembling fingers. It seemed to be a proclamation-in Spanish. The Commander with his face averted looked through the open window. The light, streaming through its deep, tunnel-like embrasure, fell upon the central figure of Grace, with her shapely head slightly bent forward, her lips apart and her eager passionate eyes fixed upon the Commander.
The secretary cleared his throat in a perfunctory manner, and, with the conscious pride of an irreproachable: A written rccord preserved by these miserable and most infelicitous ones gives the names and history of their organization, known as'Captain Conroy's Party,' a copy of which is annexed below. Nor can too much praise be given to the voluntary efforts of one Don Arthur Poinsett, late Lieutenant of the Army of the United States of America, who thoughthimself a voyager and stranger, assisted our commander in the efforts of humanity. It is to be regretted that among the victims was the famous Doctor Paul Devarges, a Natural, and collector of the stuffed Bird and Beast, a name most illustrious in science.
The secretary paused, his voice dropped its pretentious pitch, he lifted his eyes from the paper, and fixing them on Grace, repeated deliberately: You are trying to frighten me-a poor, helpless, friendless girl! You are punishing me, gentlemen, because you know I have done wrong, because you think I have lied!
O have pity, gentlemen-my God-save me-Philip! The Commander stooped over the prostrate girl. Manuela here," he said quickly waving aside the proffered aid of the Secretary, with an impatient gesture quite unlike his usual gravity, as he lifted the unconscious Grace in his arms. An Indian waiting woman hurriedly appeared, and assisted the Commander to lay the fainting girl upon a couch. IT was a season of unexampled prosperity in One Horse Gulch. Even the despondent original locator who, in a fit of depressed alcoholism had given it that deprecatory title, would have admitted its injustice but that he fell a victim to the " craftily qualified" cups of San Francisco long before the Gulch had become prosperous.
But Jim did not; after taking a thousand dollars from his claim he had flown to San Francisco where, gorgeously arrayed, he had flitted from Champagne to Cognac and from Gin to Lager Beer, until he brought his gilded and ephemeral existence to a close in the County Hospital. Howbeit, One Horse Gulch survived not only its godfather but the baleful promise of its unhallowed christening. It had its Hotel and its Temperance House, its Express office, its saloons, its two squares of low wooden buildings in the main street, its clustering nests of cabins on the hillsides, its freshly hewn stumps and its lately cleared lots.
Young in years it still had its memories, experiences and antiquities. The first tent pitched by Jim White was still standing, the bullet holes were yet to be seen in the shutters of the Cachucha saloon where the great fight took place between Boston Joe, Harry Worth and Thompson of Angel's; from the upper loft of Watson's "Emporium " a beam still projected from which a year ago a noted citizen had been suspended, after an informal inquiry into the ownership of some mules that he was found possessed Near it was a small unpretentious square shed, where the famous caucus had met that had selected the delegates who chose the celebrated and Honorable Blank to represent California in the councils of the nation.
Not in the usual direct, honest, perpendicular fashion of that mountain region, but only suggestively and in a vague uncertain sort of way as if it might at any time prove to be fog or mist, and any money wagered upon it would be hazardous. It was raining as much from below as above, and the lower limbs of the loungers who gathered around the square box stove that stood in Briggs' warehouse, exhaled a cloud of steam.
The loungers in Briggs' were those who from deficiency of taste or the requisite capital avoided the gambling and drinking saloons and quietly appropriated crackers from the convenient barrel of the generous Briggs or filled their pipes from his open tobacco canisters with the general suggestion in their manner that their company fully compensated for any loss of actual material. They had been smoking silently-a silence only broken by the occasional hiss of expectoration against the hot stove, when the door of a back room opened softly, and Gabriel Conroy entered.
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I'd come back in an hour but I've got to drop in and see how Steve's gettin' on, and its a matter of two miles from home. That's what Stimson sed when he was took worse, but he got over that and I never got to see him except in time to lay him out. Gabriel was walking to the door when another voice from the stove stopped him.
Well, the baby up and died last night. Couldn't you kinder drop in in passing and look after things? A little keer and a little sabe on my part, and there's that family in the gulch made comfortable with Gabe around'em. So conscientiously did he fulfill his various obligations that it was nearly one o'clock before he reached his rude hut on the hillside-a rough cabin of pine logs, so unpretentious and wild in exterior as to be but a slight improvement on Nature. The vines clambered unrestrainedly over the bark-thatched roof, the birds occupied the crevices of the walls, the squirrel ate his acorns on the ridge-pole without -fear and without reproach.
Softly drawing the wooden peg that served as a bolt, Gabriel entered with that noiselessness and caution that was habitual to him. Lighting a candle by the embers of a dying fire, he carefully looked around him. The cabin was divided into two compartments by the aid of a canvas stretched between the walls, with a flap for the door-way. On a pine table lay several garments apparently belonging to a girl of seven or eight-a frock grievously rent and torn, a frayed petticoat of white flannel already patched with material taken from a red shirt, and a pair of stockings so excessively and sincerely darned, as to have lost nearly all of their original fabric in.
Gabriel looked at these articles ruefully and slowly picking them up, examined each with the greatest gravity and concern. Then he took off his coat and boots and having in this way settled himself into an easy deshabille, he took a box from the shelf and proceeded to lay out thread and needles, when he: Yes, Gabe-they're so awfully old! Lettin' on a little wear and tear, they're as good as they ever were. That petticoat is stronger," said Gabriel, holding up the garment and eyeing the patches with a slight glow of artistic pride-" stronger, Oily, than the first day you put it on.
You'll just ruin me in clothes. Finding, however, no response from the grim worker, presently there appeared a curly head at the flap and then a slim little girl in the scantiest of nightgowns, ran and began to nestle at his side, and to endeavor to enwrap herself in his waistcoat. What do you care? Here I might slave myself to death to dress you in silks and satins and you'd dip into the first ditch or waltz through the first underbrush that you kum across. It aint ten days ago as I iron-bound and copper-fastened that dress, so to speak, and look at it now!
Olly,-look at it now," and he held it up indignantly before the maiden. Oily-placed the top of her head against the breast of her brother as a point d ap2pui and began to revolve around him, as if she wished to bore a way into his inmost feelings. Jest remind me, to-morrow, to look through mother's things for suthin' for that poor woman. Markle says of you? She says you're just throwing yourself away on other folks.
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She says I ought to have a woman to look after me. When at last we ker here to this camp, and I built this yer house, I don't think any woman could hev done better. If they could, I'm wrong and Mrs. Then the quick instincts of her sex came to her relief, and she archly assumed the aggressive.
Markle likes you, Gabe. But Oily wanted to sit up, so she changed the subject. I call him a Mexican. He talks too straight, anyway," said Gabriel, indifferently. He was reg'larly took with poor Graceyasked a heap o' questions about her, how she acted-and seemed to feel as bad as we did about never hearing anything from her. I never met a man, Oily, afore, as seemed to take such an interest in other folks' sorrers as he did. You'd have tho't he'd been one of the party. And he made me tell him all about Dr.
Gabriel, dear," she continued, with a slight quivering of the upper lip, " Sometimes I think the people round yer look upon us sorter queer.
That little boy that came here with the emigrant family wouldn't play with me, and Mrs. Markle's little girl said that we did dreadful things up there in the snow! He said I was a cannon-ball! He said that you and I "" Hush," interrupted Gabriel, sternly, as an angry flush came into his sunburned cheek, "I'll jest bust that boy if I see him round yer agin. But the thread became entangled and was often snappishly broken and Gabriel sewed imaginary vindictive stitches in the imaginary calves of an imaginary youthful emigrant until Olly's voice again broke the silence.
As he did so the door softly opened and a man stepped into the cabin. The new comer cast a rapid glance around the dimly lighted room and then remained motionless in the doorway. From behind the screen came the sound of voices. The stranger hesitated and then uttered a slight cough. In an instant Gabriel reappeared..
The look of angry concern at the intrusion turned to one of absolute stupefaction as he examined the stranger more attentively. The newcomer smiled faintly yet politely and then with a slight halt in his step moved toward a chair, into which he dropped with a deprecating gesture. Five, six hour ago you leave me very sick on a bedwhere you are so kind-so good.
You see me here now, and you say crazy! Comes to me an hour ago a message most important. Most necessary it is I go to-night-now, to Marysville. I rise and dress myself. I have great strength for the effort. But I say to myself,' Victor, you shall first pay your respects to the good Pike who have been so kind-so good. You shall press the hand of the noble grand miner who have recover you.
Gabriel, lost in bewilderment, could only gasp: You can't walk yet. Waits me, outside, the horse of the livery stable man. How many miles you think to the stage town? Two hour comes the stage and I am there. He rose and with a slight halting step and an expression of pain, limped across the room to the shelf, and took up the daguerreotype. She was fourteen then," said Gabriel taking the case in his hand and brushing the glass fondly with his palm.
But they were apparently complimentary for when Gabriel looked up at him with an inquiring glance, he was. Gabriel's face with the picture. In the square, honest, face of the brother there was not the faintest suggestion of the delicate, girlish, poetical oval before him. Thets how it allus-puzzled me thet they knew who she was, when they came across the poor child dead.
When I did, the snow was gone, and there wasn't no track or trace of anybody. Then I heer'd the story I told ye-thet a relief party had found'em all- dead-and thet among the dead was Grace. How that poor child ever got back thar alone, for thar wasn't no trace or mention of the man she went away with is what gets me. And that there's my trouble, Mr. To think of thet pooty darlin' climbing back to the old nest and findin' no one thar! To think of her comin' back, as she allowed, to Oily and me-and findin' all her own blood goneis suthin thet, attimes, drives me almost mad.
She didn't die of starvation, she didn't die of cold. Her heart was broke! After a moment's pause he -lifted his bowed head from his hands, wiped his eyes with Olly's flannel petticoat, and went on "For more-than a year I tried to get- sight- o'. Then I tried to find the Mission or the P'residio that th'e relief party started from, and maybe see some of that party.
But then kem the gold excitement and the Americans took. Then, I put a notiss in the San Francisco paper for Philip Ashley,-that was the man as helped her away-to communicate with me. But thar werent no answer. You're sure you feel better now? Look, I am so strong! In another moment he was in the saddle and speeding so swiftly that in spite of mud and darkness, in two hours he had reached the mining town where the Wingdam and Sacramento stage-coach changed horses. The next morning while Olly and Gabriel were eating breakfast, Mr. Victor Ramirez stepped briskly from the stage that drew up at the Marysville Hotel and entered the hotel office.
As the clerk looked up inquiringly Mr. Ramirez handed him a card: Here the porter indicated that he should wait until he returned, and then disappeared down the darkened vista of another passage. Ramirez had ample time to observe the freshness of the boarded partitions and scant details of the interior of the International Hotel; he even had time to attempt to grapple the foreign mystery of the notice conspicuously posted on the wall, "Gentlemen are requested not to sleep on the stairs," before his companion reappeared. Ramirez with an air of surly suspicion, the porter led him along the darkened passage until he paused before a door at its further extremity and knocked gently.
Slight as was the knock it had the mysterious effect of causing all the other doors along the passage to open, and a masculine head to appear at each opening. Ramirez's brow darkened quickly. He was sufficiently conversant with the conditions of that early civilization to know that as a visitor to a lady, he was the object of every other man's curious envy and aggressive suspicion. There was the sound of light footsteps within and the door opened. The porter lingered long enough to be able to decide upon the character and propriety of the greeting, and then sullenly retired.
The door closed and Mr. Ramirez found himself face to face with the occupant of the room. She was a small, slight blonde, who, when the smile that had lit her mouth and eyes as she opened the door, faded suddenly as she closed it, might have passed for a plain, indistinctive' But for a certain dangerous submissiveness of manner -which I here humbly submit is always to be feared in an allpowerful sex-and an address that was rather more deprecatory than occasion called for, she would hardlyhave awakened the admiration of our sex or the fears of her own. As Ramirez advanced with both hands impulsively extended, she drew back shyly and pointing to the ceiling and walls, said quietly: There was a long pause.
Suddenly the lady lightened the shadow that seemed to have fallen upon their interview, with both her teeth and eyes, and pointing to a chair, said, "Sit down, Victor, and tell me why you have returned so soon. The lady looked all deprecation and submissiveness, but said nothing. Ramirez would in his sullenness have imitated her, but his natural impulsiveness was too strong, and he broke out: From the book of the hotel it is better you should erase the name of Grace Conroy and put down your own!
I have seen him! You shall hear if it is well. I followed the desezo —the description of the spot and all its surroundings-which was in the paper that-I-I —found.
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It is the same-all as described here. Devarges and pointed to the map. I follow the range of foot-hills, for I know every foot, every step, and I came one day, last week to' One Horse Gulch. I am a stranger, a foreigner; the miners have suspicion of all such, and to me they do not talk easily. But I hear of one Gabriel Conroy, a good man, very kind with the sick. I have sickness-very sudden, very strong! My rheumatism takes me here! I have to be taken care of at the house of Mr. Comes to me here Gabriel Conroy, sits by me, talks to me, tells me everything. He brings to me his little: I go to his cabin on the hill.
I see the picture of his sister. It is all over! She asks why, this woman," said Victor, appealing to the ceiling. The house of Gabriel Conroy is upon the land, the very land, you understand? He is-this Gabriel, look! Does he know of the mine? It is accident-what you call Fate! The face that looked out was so old, sb haggard, so hard and set in its outlines, that one of the loungers on the sidewalk, glancing at the window, to catch a glimpse of the pretty English stranger, did not recognize her.
Possibly the incident recalled her to herself, for she 6. He looked straight before him, shrugged his shoulders and said, "It is Fate! It is a year ago that I received a letter in Berlin, signed by a Mr. Peter Dumphy, of San Francisco, saying that he was in possession of important papers regarding property of my late husband, Dr. Paul Devarges, and asking me to communicate with him. I did not answer his letter, I came.
It is not my way to deliberate or hesitate-perhaps a wise man would. I am only a poor, weak woman, so I came.
Bret Harte
I know it was all wrong-you sharp, bold, cautious men would have written first. Victor winced slightly, but did not speak. Dumphy in San Francisco. He showed me some papers that he said he had found in a place of deposit, which Dr. Devarges had evidently wished preserved.