“I began hunting for the latch on the door, Alan. I was goin’ to sneak out, drop in the mud, disappear before the lightnin’ come again. But it caught me. An’ there she was, undoing the box, and I heard her saying she had plenty of good stuff to eat. An’ she called me Stampede, like she’d known me all her life, and with that coach rolling an’ rocking and the thunder an’ lightning an’ rain piling up against each other like sin, she came over and sat down beside me and began to feed me. She did that, Alan—fed me. When the lightning fired up, I could see her eyes shining and her lips smilin’ as if all that hell about us made her happy, and I thought she was plumb crazy. Before I knew it she was telling me how you pointed me out to her in the smoking-room, and how happy she was that I was goin’ her way. Her way, mind you, Alan, not mine. And that’s just the way she’s kept me goin’ up to the minute you hove in sight back there in the cottonwoods!”
He lighted his pipe again. “Alan, how the devil did she know I was hitting the trail for your place?”
“She didn’t,” replied Alan.
“But she did. She said that meeting with me in the coach was the happiest moment of her life, because she was on her way up to your range, and I’d be such jolly good company for her. ‘Jolly good’—them were the words she used! When I asked her if you knew she was coming up, she said no, of course not, and that it was going to be a grand surprise. Said it was possible she’d buy your range, and she wanted to look it over before you arrived. An’ it seems queer I can’t remember anything more about the thunder and lightning between there and Chitina. When we took the train again, she began askin’ a million questions about you and the Range and Alaska. Soak me if you want to, Alan—but everything I knew she got out of me between Chitina and Fairbanks, and she got it in such a sure-fire nice way that I’d have eat soap out of her hand if she’d offered it to me. Then, sort of sly and soft-like, she began asking questions about John Graham—and I woke up.”
“John Graham!” Alan repeated the name.
“Yes, John Graham. And I had a lot to tell. After that I tried to get away from her. But she caught me just as I was sneakin’ aboard a down-river boat, and cool as you please—with her hand on my arm—she said she wasn’t quite ready to go yet, and would I please come and help her carry some stuff she was going to buy. Alan, it ain’t a lie what I’m going to tell you! She led me up the street, telling me what a wonderful idea she had for surprisin’ you. Said she knew you would return to the Range by the Fourth of July and we sure must have some fireworks. Said you was such a good American you’d be disappointed if you didn’t have ’em. So she took me in a store an’ bought it out. Asked the man what he’d take for everything in his joint that had powder in it. Five hundred dollars, that was what she paid. She pulled a silk something out of the front of her dress with a pad of hundred-dollar bills in it an inch think. Then she asked me to get them firecrackers ’n’ wheels ’n’ skyrockets ’n’ balloons ’n’ other stuff down to the boat, and she asked me just as if I was a sweet little boy who’d be tickled to death to do it!”
In the excitement of unburdening himself of a matter which he had borne in secret for many days, Stampede did not observe the effect of his words upon his companion. Incredulity shot into Alan’s eyes, and the humorous lines about his mouth vanished when he saw clearly that Stampede was not drawing upon his imagination. Yet what he had told him seemed impossible. Mary Standish had come aboard the Nome a fugitive. All her possessions she had brought with her in a small hand-bag, and these things she had left in her cabin when she leaped into the sea. How, then, could she logically have had such a sum of money at Fairbanks as Stampede described? Was it possible the Thlinkit Indian had also become her agent in transporting the money ashore on the night she played her desperate game by making the world believe she had died? And was this money—possibly the manner in which she had secured it in Seattle—the cause of her flight and the clever scheme she had put into execution a little later?
He had been thinking crime, and his face grew hot at the sin of it. It was like thinking it of another woman, who was dead, and whose name was cut under his father’s in the old cottonwood tree.
Stampede, having gained his wind, was saying: “You don’t seem interested, Alan. But I’m going on, or I’ll bust. I’ve got to tell you what happened, and then if you want to lead me out and shoot me, I won’t say a word. I say, curse a firecracker anyway!”
“Go on,” urged Alan. “I’m interested.”