I.
Whether or not to relate the history that I now commence has been to me a seriously debated question.
But after due reflection I decide that, being the only witness to the events that have lately been so startling to at least one community, it is my duty to state as clearly and exactly as possible, while yet fresh in my memory, the occurrences that came under my observation. I am satisfied in so doing that the contingencies which might arise from my silence would be much more serious in their effect upon my friends than their aversion to the publicity to which they may be subjected; but, of course, when completed, my statement will be subject to their wish in its disposal.
Regarding myself, it is only necessary to state that last winter—I think it was the last week of January—my health became so alarming as to induce me to accept my son’s urgent invitation to visit him in a far Western territory, hoping that the brighter sky and milder air would more than compensate for the long and lonely journey to one who is neither young nor adventurous.
And the effect of the change was almost magical. My son is a civil and mining engineer, and, being unmarried, boards at the largest of the three hotels in the busy mining town upon the Southern Pacific road, which I shall call Brownville.
I reached the place on the afternoon of a bright, balmy day—a May day it seemed to me—but being an unaccustomed traveller, the motion of the cars and the strangeness of the transition gave everything such a dreamlike unreality that I cannot recall the impressions of the first few days with as much distinctness as later ones. I was continually expecting my son to vanish, and myself to wake up in my room at home. This soon wore off, however. I think it was on the second day after my arrival, as we were starting down stairs to dinner, my son suddenly drew me back into my room as if to avoid some one who was passing.
“I was afraid you might be startled,” he exclaimed. “I was at first, and I am neither sick nor a lady. Mother, there is a young man here who will seem like one risen from the dead to you at first sight. He looks enough like Chester Mansfield to be his twin brother. I think I never saw so striking a resemblance before, but after you are acquainted with him the impression will wear away, because he is so different in every other way.” Then we went down stairs, and meeting the young man at the dining-room door, my son introduced him as “Mr. Reynolds;” and thus began my acquaintance with him. Of course, after my son’s cautionary remark, I noticed him closely, but I should have done so anyhow, I am sure, for the resemblance to the dead was so strong as to give me a very strange feeling, for Chester Mansfield had been only less dear to me than my own son. But as Howard had said, the resemblance seemed to wear away somewhat as I talked with him, and I began to wonder that I had felt it so much. This young man was older, stouter—and many shades darker in complexion than my friend. His manner, speech, and style of dress were wholly unlike those of the dead Chester, although his voice, while deeper, was very similar. He was attached to the hotel in some capacity, and went out with us to dinner after a moment’s talk, and I found him to be a pleasant talker, with a ready fund of the slang which seems to be the evolving language of the Far West, and a very witty use of it; but he did not seem to be well informed on any subject that I could mention, a strong contrast to the scholarship of the dead man whose face he bore.
Yet he had an unmistakable air of good breeding, and even of intelligence, although it was impossible to draw him into a connected conversation. He seemed to be very popular in the house.
Howard was closely engaged in his work, which sometimes kept him away for a week at a time, and I had neither the strength nor courage to go very far from the house alone, through that odd, rushing, foreign-looking town, so I had much time to myself. I was the only woman at the house except the proprietor’s wife and one Irish chambermaid. This, perhaps, would account for my interest in the young man, for I must confess that he occupied my thoughts a good deal during those first weeks. One Sabbath afternoon I saw him going away with a party of friends—stylishly dressed, hard-looking men, and I turned and spoke to Howard of the idea that I had formed of him.
“I have thought of the same thing myself, mother,” he replied. “That fellow is of Eastern origin, and he is well brought up, in spite of his efforts to conceal it. And you can’t get a word out of him about his past. I’ve tried a dozen times. I’m positive that he puts on ignorance a good many times, just as a blind. There’s a good deal of that here—men who have forgotten all about the East, you understand, and who have new names, and who don’t write home by every mail. Now, weren’t there other Mansfield boys besides Chester? His mother was a second wife, wasn’t she, and there was another family who lived with their grandmother?”
“Why, certainly there was!” I exclaimed, catching at the idea. “Three boys, and two of them went out to Denver, or somewhere in that region. Now I have it—that’s just who he is. I wonder what crime he has committed—robbery, or perhaps murder—who knows?”
“Oh, no! Take care, not quite so fast, mother. But I have a little clue that nobody else has had the interest to notice. It is more than mere coincidence. Of course Doctor Mansfield’s sons would be brought up in the deepest piety, and when this fellow gets drunk—you’ll hear him some night—he’s terribly pious; prays and sings half the night to himself—old church hymns that were never heard in this place. And the thing that I notice is this: he prays like one who was brought up to it; not like some reprobate who has been scared into piety. I’ve heard them a few times, too, and I know the difference.
“Now, that means a little, and when 184 you put it with the company he keeps, especially Crouch, his chum, that black-looking fellow who was shooting at the target out there this morning, don’t you see it grows quite interesting?”
“I should think it does. Why, it is perfectly certain that he is a desperate sort of person. I wonder what he has done? It couldn’t be the Cleveland fur robbery, I suppose,” I said.
Howard got up and shook himself and then laughed uproariously.
“No, but he might be the Rahway murderer. You’d better lock the door fast and tight at night.” (This was a stab at my well-known cowardice.)
“And, little mother, if you think you have got hold of a delightful, bloody mystery, for the love of heaven keep still about it. A little talk will set a cyclone going if you’re not particular.”
I resented this caution as quite unnecessary, but Howard laughed and shook his finger at me. I think he is at the age when a young man feels his physical and political superiority over his mother very fully. After he had gone out I sat thinking over his new idea. I had a faint suspicion that Howard was amusing himself at my interest in the matter, and was starting me in pursuit of something that he knew perfectly well beforehand; yet every word that he had said was fastened in my memory, and many little unnoticed things now came up to strengthen my suspicions.
In Crouch, the evil-looking fellow, I had no interest, for he was not mysterious. He was a rascal at the first glance, and could not be anything else. And he was the sort of rascal that one is content not to investigate, but observe at the greatest possible distance.
What, then, was young Reynolds’ interest in him? I intended to write home the next day to ask about the Mansfield brothers, but Howard carried me off to the mines to camp for a few days, and my thoughts were turned in a new direction.
The day after my return I went out for a walk through the town. I crossed the plaza and started down one of the diverging streets, when I suddenly found myself in a most unsavory neighborhood, and suspected that I must have crossed the “dead line,” beyond which I had been told no white woman ever ventured. I turned to beat a hasty retreat, when I heard my name, and looking up saw Charlie Reynolds, apparently very drunk, issuing from the door of a dance saloon. One or two of his friends were smoking in the doorway. “Good evening, Mish Spencer,” he said, with an aggravated bow. “Thish bad place for lady. See you home, Mish Spencer?”
“No,” I said, “you can’t see me home, but I will see you home. You walk on before me, and I will follow.”
To my surprise he obeyed, and across the plaza and down the street of adobe houses I steered my drunken companion, until I saw him safe within the doors of the Eldorado House, where I was assured that he would be put to bed.
That night my son was detained at the mines, and I sat at my window alone in the marvellous moonlight so clear, so brilliant in that rarefied atmosphere, that I could see the round blue lines of the mountains in Mexico, sixty miles away. Sounds from different parts of the town came up with startling distinctness. I could distinguish every word of sentences spoken two 185 squares away, and the barking of coyotes out in the mesquit brush that surrounded the town seemed to come from under my window. I seemed to be far from the rest of the earth, on some desolate peak that stood in vast solitude, for the stars were so large and bright, and the great glowing moon seemed to hang just overhead.
There were no trees on the great blue mountains, no grass in the stony valleys, and I realized in their absence how much we owe to the mission of the green and growing. There was no sense of companionship in the babel of sounds and languages that came up from the wicked little town. I am afraid that a few homesick tears came to my eyes.
Suddenly one of the grand old hymns of my church struck the intense air. A clear, strong, manly voice. How familiar it sounded, ringing out alone! I sat spellbound, for it was, as my son had said, not the effort of a tyro, but the cultivated voice of a cultivated man. Coming just at this moment in the grandly solemn night, its effect upon me was indescribable, and a new thought flashed into my mind, which I am ashamed to confess was not there before. Why cannot this young man, whatever he may have done, be saved through this early training? I could not sleep for this thought, and waited impatiently for the morning, resolved to undertake some missionary work in behalf of Charlie Reynolds.