IN HELL'S CAÑON
Adventurous prospectors who have followed the perilous trails over the Cabinet Mountains have, as a matter of course, heard of the Lost Lead, but only he who is a total stranger to fear has penetrated the chaotic wilderness of Hell's Cañon, and thus come suddenly upon the Grave of Gold. Four rude granite posts, connected by heavy log chains, enclose the spot. On the face of the giant bowlder that stands guard over the few square feet of sacred earth is carved:
THE LOST LEAD.
LOUIS GILBERT.
1860-1891.
This inscription marks the loneliest, yet richest, grave in the world.
Late in the spring of 1889, Louis Gilbert left his home in Kentucky for a visit to his uncle's mine in the Northwest. He had lung trouble, and the doctor had ordered an outdoor life. While his health improved, he became infected with another ailment, perhaps the only one to be caught at that altitude—the gold fever. Miners were his only associates, the talk was all of lodes, leads and drifts, and the only communication with the outside world was by the train of pack mules that carried the heavy ore sacks down the winding trail. So it was not surprising that his walks took the character of prospecting tours, and carried him farther and farther from camp. Late in October, when his visit was nearly over, he started with three days' food for a last trip, into new territory. From a conical mountain top about ten miles west of the mine, he had looked over a lower range of summits to a great expanse of wild and broken country that he had never explored.
The weather was like summer when he started, but thirty-six hours later, on the evening of the second day, a fierce snowstorm set in. By midnight, the first blizzard of the season was raging through the mountains. On the third day the storm still howled furiously, but searching parties were sent out with a faint hope of finding the young prospector before the trails became entirely impassable. In the dim twilight of the afternoon they returned one by one, almost worn out, convinced that the body of the missing man would not be found till the warm winds of spring should melt away the drifts. Yet, as a humane precaution, lights were kept burning all night in cabin windows, and, guided by one of them, Louis Gilbert staggered into camp and fell like a dead man before the messroom door. He was taken from the snow, wrapped in blankets and laid before a blazing fire. When he showed signs of life he was given hot drinks and put to bed. His prospector's belt dropped to the floor like lead, and when opened was found to be stuffed with nuggets of virgin gold.
In the fever that followed, Gilbert talked deliriously of his long struggle through the blinding drifts, hungry, cold and aching for the sleep which would mean death, yet forcing himself onward with the blizzard at his back as his only guide. The amazing richness of his find had given him the strength that saved his life.
Finally he opened his eyes with the old look and told in detail the story of his wonderful discovery. On the east side of a stream, in a cañon so terribly wild and broken that it was almost impassable, he had found the gold on the very surface of a ledge.
Filling his belt, he had started to blaze his way back, when the storm came down with frightful violence. The rest of the journey was simply a horrible nightmare.
As nothing could be done while the snow lasted, Gilbert returned to Kentucky for the winter, yet could think of nothing but his discovery. He had found a fortune, had even put his hands upon it, and knew it was his whenever he could stake off his claim and take possession. He spent his time in making a chart of the stream he had followed on which he set down every detail he could recall of the eastern bank, along which he had travelled.
Early the following spring he was back at his uncle's mine, waiting impatiently for the snow to melt and be carried away by the swollen streams. Finally, after a tedious delay, he set out with a small party of miners all eager to have a hand in locating the rich prospect.
"Hell's Cañon!" exclaimed the foreman, as, skirting Cone Top Mountain, Gilbert pointed out the way. One of the men, a Mexican, declined to go any farther with the party, and the foreman explained to the wondering Gilbert:
"The Mexicans give Hell's Cañon a wide berth. They say that one of them found a big treasure there, and then lost it and his life in some uncanny way. They found his bones though, next summer. Knew 'em by his divining rod, that he clung to even in death."
On the second day Gilbert and his companions found the stream, which fought its way among the upturned rocks, cavernous gorges and fallen logs. At the sight of it Gilbert eagerly led the search along the east bank, and every spot was carefully searched. But the bowlder, the two dead trees—every other characteristic landmark on Gilbert's chart—could not be found. All search was vain. The map was not that of the locality they were in—as Gilbert himself was obliged to admit.
During that summer Gilbert led out four other searching parties, but never got any nearer the lost lead. Then he again went South for the winter. When he next returned it was with a flushed cheek that contrasted horribly with his pale, pinched look and steadily failing strength. In spite of all disappointments, he was still hopeful, and to humor him his uncle's miners occasionally made excursions into the maze of peaks and gulches.
One morning, late in the season, Gilbert asked for one more chance to solve the mystery of Hell's Cañon. He had had a dream, he said enthusiastically, that this time he would be successful. The miners did not put much faith in dreams, but, for his uncle's sake, and because it was recalled that this was the second anniversary of the great discovery, they made up a party and started out in the usual direction. Although they moved slowly, the young man's feebleness increased until it became necessary to carry him on a litter made of boughs. This delayed them even more, and it was late on the third day before they reached the stream. At the sight of the dashing water, Gilbert's strength appeared to rally, and, sitting up, he directed them to cross to the west bank. At this strange order the bearers exchanged significant glances and called the rest of the party. They all believed that with a brief return of physical strength the young man's mind had broken down. The one point on which he had always been most positive—that the vein was on the eastern bank of the stream—he had now abandoned. It was evident to them that the lost lead would never be found.
But it was time to camp for the night, and the west bank was much more sheltered. With much difficulty, bracing themselves against the stones, they carried the litter across the swift current. Selecting a site sheltered by a huge bowlder, the men sent in advance to pitch camp began with picks to clear a spot for the tent. With a ring that could not be mistaken the steel struck the rock. The men gave a great cheer. Gilbert raised himself on his litter when it was brought up, and gazed excitedly at the great bowlder and its surroundings, which had come to him so vividly in that prophetic death-dream—his last on earth.
"The Lost Lead!" he cried in a triumphant tone, and then adding in a weak voice, "Bury me here, boys," he sank back—dead.
Spring freshets had changed the torrent's course, and the east bank had become the west!
They buried Louis Gilbert with the treasure he had never possessed, and while the rich mine became known in financial circles as "The Lost Lead," yet old miners themselves speak of it only as "The Grave of Gold."
THE MYSTERY OF THE THIRTY MILLIONS[1]
At eight o'clock on the morning of March 14, the Anglo-American liner, the Oklahoma, left her dock in North River on her regular trip to Southampton.
The fact of her departure, ordinarily of merely local interest, was telegraphed all over the United States and Canada, and even to London itself; for there was a significance attached to this particular trip such as had never before marked the sailing of an ocean steamship from these shores.
It was not because the great vessel numbered among her crowd of passengers a well-known English duke and his young bride, the grand-niece of a world-famous New York railroad magnate, that her sailing was heralded by such a blowing of trumpets, nor because she also had upon her lists the names of the august British ambassador to the United States, returning home on a brief furlough, the noted French tragedian, fresh from his American triumphs, and a score of other illustrious personages whose names were household words in a dozen countries.
The presence of all these notables was merely incidental. What made this trip of the Oklahoma an event of international interest was the fact that at this, the apparent climax of the great gold exporting movement from the United States, now continued until it had almost drained the national treasury of its precious yellow hoard, and had precipitated a commercial crisis such as never before had been experienced, the Oklahoma was taking to the shores of insatiate John Bull the largest lump amount of gold ever shipped upon a single vessel within the memory of man.
Not even in the memorable gold exporting year of 1893 had any such sum as this been sent abroad at one time.
It was not the usual paltry half million or million dollars that she was carrying away in her great strong room of steel and teak wood, but thirty million dollars' worth of shining eagles and glinting bars, hastily called across the ocean because of the adverse "balance of trade" and the temporary mistrust of American securities by the fickle Europeans.
The mere insurance premium on this vast sum was in itself a comfortable fortune. Business men wondered why such a large amount was intrusted to one steamer. Suppose she should collide in the fog and sink, as one great ship had done only a few weeks before—what would become of the insurance companies then?
Suppose some daring Napoleon of crime should hatch a startling conspiracy to seize the steamer, intimidate the crew and passengers, and possess himself of the huge treasure? "It would be a stake well worth long risks," thought some of the police officials, as they read the headlines in the evening papers.
The Oklahoma was a fast sailer. Her five hundred feet of length and her twelve thousand tons of displacement were made light work of by the great clanking, triple-expansion engines when their combined force of fifteen thousand horse power was brought to bear upon her twin screws. Under ordinary conditions she ought to have made port on the other side in time to let her passengers eat late dinner on the sixth day out. Incoming steamers reported a brief spell of nasty weather in mid-ocean, however, and so her failure to reach Southampton on the sixth and even the seventh day was not particularly remarked.
The great American public had been busy with other weighty matters in the interim, including a threatened secession of the silver-producing States; and the departure of this modern argosy with her precious freight had almost passed into history. For history in that year was anything that had happened farther than a week back—a day, if it was not of overwhelming importance.
If the big ship's arrival had been cabled on the eighth day, or even early on the ninth, it would still have found the public in a comparatively calm state of mind, for the mid-Atlantic storm would naturally account for a multitude of lost hours; but when the ninth lapped over onto the tenth and the tenth onto the eleventh and twelfth, with no tidings of the tardy steamer, surprise grew into anxiety and anxiety into an international sensation.
Of course all sorts of plausible theories were advanced by the steamship agents, the newspapers, and other oracles, including that of the inevitable broken shaft; and these might have sufficed for a day or two longer had it not been for another and much more startling theory that suddenly came to the surface and threw two continents into a fever of trepidation and suspense.
It was the following announcement in a leading New York morning paper that roused excitement to fever heat: "A new and most astounding phase has come over the case of the mysteriously missing Oklahoma. It has just been given out from police headquarters that 'Gentleman Jim' Langwood, the noted cracksman and forger, whose ten years' sentence at Sing Sing expired only a few weeks ago, was in the city several days previous to the sailing of the Oklahoma and went with her as a passenger, under an assumed name. Even at that very time the central office detectives were looking for him, as a tip had been sent around that he was up to some new deviltry. One of those clever people whom nothing ever escapes had seen him go aboard almost at the last minute, and gave an accurate description of his personal appearance, which was evidently but slightly disguised.
"Langwood is probably the only criminal in the country who would ever conceive and try to execute such a stupendous undertaking, and it is something more than a suspicion on the part of the New York police that he has smuggled on board a couple of dozen well-armed desperadoes, who could easily hold the entire crew and passengers in check and make them do their bidding, for a time, at least. The idea is so replete with thrilling possibilities that the entire community stands aghast at it."
It is to be noted that the public always "stands aghast" in such a case as this; but it is more to the point just now to say that the article went on, through a column or more, to describe in minute detail the circumstances attendant upon the departure of "Gentleman Jim" even to the number and shape of the bundles he had in his arms. The famous robber was very boyish in appearance, and one of the last persons in the world whom a chance acquaintance would think of looking up in the rogues' gallery. Evidently he was "out for the stuff," in most approved stage villain style, with more millions in the stake than even Colonel Sellers, of nineteenth century fame, had ever dreamed of. Of course this theory, which was already accepted as a fact, especially in police and newspaper circles, was quickly cabled across, and created such a profound sensation on the other side that even the London papers had to give it that prominent position which is usually reserved for American cyclones, crop failures, and labor outbreaks.
Upon the phlegmatic British government it acted much like an electric shock and nearly threw the foreign office into a panic; for was not the British minister plenipotentiary himself a passenger on the ill-fated Oklahoma, and possibly at that very hour being butchered in cold blood by a lot of Yankee cut-throats?
The thought was too horrible for a moment's endurance, and forthwith the cablegrams began to flash thick and fast between the foreign office and the British legation at Washington.
The result was that, within a few hours after the appearance of the paragraph, one of the fastest and most powerful of her majesty's cruisers, quickly followed by a second and a third, hastily steamed from Portsmouth Roads, the three spreading out north, west, and south, like a great marine fan, as they hurried to the rescue of the Oklahoma and the British ambassador.
Meanwhile, at the Boston, Brooklyn, and League Island navy yards three or four of Uncle Sam's white war dogs were getting up steam for a similar errand, and a small fleet of ocean-going steamers, specially chartered by New York, Boston, and Chicago newspapers to go in search of the absent leviathan, were already threading their way through the Narrows.
Not for years had there been such world-wide interest in an ocean expedition. The newspapers commanded an unheard of sale, for everybody was on the tiptoe of expectation concerning the fate of the missing steamer, her six hundred passengers and her thirty millions of gold.
While the public was thus feverishly awaiting the news, certain discoveries were being made by the New York police, which only went to confirm their previous suspicions. Four or five other hardened graduates from state prison were found to be absent from their accustomed haunts in the East Side slums, although known to have been in the city just before the Oklahoma sailed, as was "Gentleman Jim," himself.
These discoveries had their natural effect upon the public mind, and the friends of those on board the steamer began to despair of hearing that even human life had been respected by the piratical band.
As to the British foreign office, this cumulative evidence threw it into a perfect frenzy, and it was only by a miracle that a declaration of war against the United States was averted.
Three days passed by after the departure of the big searching fleets, during which time all incoming steamers reported that they had not found a single trace of the Oklahoma either in the northern or southern route. Vessels from the Mediterranean, the West Indies, South America, all made the same ominous report.
The tension was terrible. Thousands could not even sleep on account of the mental strain, and the minds of some of the weaker actually gave way beneath it. The public by this time was convinced beyond a reasonable shadow of doubt that the robbers had successfully carried out their fiendish plan; but how? and when? and where?
When they opened their newspapers on the morning of the eighteenth day of suspense, they found the answer to the question, and the greatest marine mystery of centuries was solved.
In the small hours of the night there had flashed across the European continent, and under the dark waters of the Atlantic, this startling message from the representative of the Union Press Association:—
"Lisbon, April 1,—The missing Oklahoma is disabled at Fayal, Azores, where she was discovered by the Union Press special expedition. Many of the half-starved crew and passengers are on the verge of insanity. The officers tell a most astounding story of the steamer's exciting and almost fatal adventures. On the third night out, the Oklahoma suddenly came under some mysterious but irresistible influence by which she was carried rapidly out of her course towards the south. Every effort was made by the officers to bring the ship back to her course, but the big liner seemed drifting helplessly at the mercy of some powerful current. The compasses were useless, and the wheel no longer exercised the slightest control over the steamer's movements.
"Naturally the anxiety of the officers was in no way diminished when on the morning of the next day, which was then the fourth day out, another vessel,—a long low-setting craft of shining steel,—was discovered off the Oklahoma's starboard bow, about a mile ahead, but moving in the same direction. By careful observations it was discovered that the course of the two steamers was identical. Both were apparently under the same mysterious influence. Instead of sighting a rescuer, the Oklahoma had, so it seemed, only discovered another victim of the irresistible current!
"Time and again the Oklahoma attempted to signal the companion ship, but the latter made no reply. Close observation revealed that she was built on the whaleback principle, with nothing above decks save ventilators and signal mast,—but failed to discover any sign of human beings.
"By afternoon their continued failure to bring the liner back to her course had so wrought upon the minds of her officers that their anxiety infected the spirits of the passengers, who were now aroused to the real danger that menaced them.
"When the fifth day dawned, with the Oklahoma hundreds of miles out of the regular transatlantic course, the gravity of the situation could no longer be concealed. Distress signals were kept flying, and all possible steam was put on with the idea of overhauling the companion ship and giving or receiving aid. To the amazement of both officers and passengers, however, in spite of every effort, the Oklahoma failed to gain a single inch on the other vessel. Before they had time to attempt an explanation of this remarkable fact, amazement gave way to consternation. For just a moment a third vessel had appeared on the horizon like a messenger of hope; but no sooner had she been sighted than with the swiftness of lightning the mysterious companion craft turned half around and darted away to the southeast, with the Oklahoma following as helplessly as though she were in tow.
"In that moment the awful truth was revealed. The steel vessel was nothing more nor less than a floating loadstone, which by some mysterious power was dragging the great ocean monster hither and thither as easily as a magnet draws a toy ship from one side to the other of a mimic pond!
"Who was she, and what was her motive? Almost before those on board had asked the question, the answer flashed upon them. The thirty millions of gold! Beyond a doubt, it was their capture which she was planning to accomplish, either by luring the Oklahoma from the regular path of ocean travel, and looting her and her passengers at leisure, or by compelling her to run aground upon some remote rock or shoal.
"With this revelation a new horror unveiled itself. Equipped as they were only with the supplies for a short trip across the Atlantic, the overwrought minds of many saw starvation looming up before them. That night not a soul sought his berth. From time to time consultations were held between the chief officers, and many-colored rockets spit and blazed their signals of distress incessantly across the sky.
"At length, soon after dawn of the sixth day, orders were given to bank fires and hoist sail in the hope that the Oklahoma as a sailing vessel might free herself from the awful influence that chained her.
"But the effort was vain. Wind and sail proved as useless as wheel and compass against the fatal power of that mysterious craft which drew the Oklahoma after her as irresistibly as though the two vessels were united by an unseen hawser.
"The steamer had now become a scene of indescribable horror. Mealtime, bedtime,—all the customary routine was disorganized; and daily prayer meetings were conducted among the more emotional of the passengers.
"Finally, seven days after she had left New York, the officers of the big liner united in one last desperate effort to offset the magnetic influence of the mysterious 'pirate.' The fires were revived in the engine room, the steam pressure in all the boilers was run up to the 'blowing off' point; then, suddenly, the reversing mechanism was applied and a shudder ran through the great floating city as the twin screws began to back water.
"For a few minutes there ensued a titanic tug of war such as the beholders had never before witnessed. The water astern was lashed into a lather of foam, and for a brief moment the triumph of steam over magnetism seemed assured.
"Only for a moment, however, for the cheer that had ascended from the anxious scores on the deck of the Oklahoma when she slowly began to back had scarcely died away when with a mighty crash a vital section of the overtaxed engines gave way, followed by a hoarse yell of consternation from the excited engineers and stokers—and both screws were helpless and still.
"With this failure hope was well-nigh extinguished; and the Oklahoma, with her precious freight and her six hundred and forty-three human souls, abandoned all active effort to escape. With not a sail of any kind in sight, she passively rolled and plunged south-ward for seven days after her strange and terrible pilot, from which, to add to the horror of the situation, no human sign had yet been given. The supply of rockets was now exhausted, and food was doled out in minute portions as to members of a ship-wrecked crew in order to husband supplies.
"On the afternoon of the fourteenth day, when the exhausted passengers had reached the verge of distraction, a gleam of hope appeared on the horizon in the shape of a solitary steamer, bearing down from the southwest. A glance through the telescope proved her to be a fast and formidable British cruiser, evidently en route from South America to England.
"At this news a mighty shudder, half of hope, half of fear, seized the crowd assembled upon the deck. Would the British cruiser come to their assistance, and if so, would she, too, become a victim of the magnetic craft? For a moment their fate hung in the balance; then from three hundred throats rang out a hoarse cry of joy as the mysterious craft swerved, turned sharply and shot away over the surface of the Atlantic due north.
"The spell was broken. The big liner with her six hundred human souls and thirty millions in gold was freed from the power that had for so long held her captive. But crippled as she was by the accident to her machinery she was unable to proceed unaided, and was taken in tow by the British steamer, the Midlothian, and a day later was brought safely into port at Fayal.
"The Union Press steamer is the first to bring the thrilling news. The first officer of the Oklahoma and the saloon passengers, including Sir Gambrel Roufe, the British ambassador, accompanied your correspondent to Lisbon. A relief steamer is urgently needed, as the Oklahoma's engines are both disabled, and she will not be able to proceed for several weeks.
"The passenger thought to be 'Gentleman Jim' Langwood, proves to be the Duke of Medfordshire, now on his wedding trip with his young millionaire American bride."
Hardly had the excitement caused by this startling intelligence subsided, when it was once more aroused by a despatch from Providence, R. I., announcing the capture in the act of robbing a jewelry store of "Gentleman Jim" Langwood, and a gang of four other oldtimers, and by the following even more important cablegram from the Russian representative of the Union Press:—
"St. Petersburg, April 2.—The identity of the mysterious craft by which the Oklahoma was drawn from her course has been established beyond a doubt. The vessel is a Hypnotic Cruiser, recently completed by a Russian inventor, named Slobodenski, and possessed of an electric apparatus by which any vessel can be brought completely under its control.
"Whether the Hypnotic Cruiser's bedevilment of the Oklahoma was merely a trial of power, or whether plunder was intended, can only be surmised. But naval lawyers say that this marvelous new invention will revolutionize naval warfare and necessitate the passage of stringent laws to cover a crime for which at present no penalty exists."