He raised his head mechanically to listen. He had never been a bad man; had never wished to hurt anybody in his life before that he could remember; but as he pondered upon it in his slow, sure brain, he knew that he was glad he had done this, and was going to do more. He was going to follow those tracks pretty soon, and finish the whole job with his own hand. They had fooled him, and had taken trouble to do it; gone out of their way, made game of him to the quick; and when he remembered, for the twentieth time this morning, that day he had carried the package of gold-dust—some of it very likely his own—to the smooth-faced messenger at Folsom, Drylyn’s stolid body trembled from head to foot, and he spoke blind, inarticulate words.
But down below there the screams were sounding. A brother miner came running by. Drylyn realized that he ought to be running too, of course, and so he ran. All the men were running from their various scattered claims, and Salvation Gap grew noisy and full of people at once. There was the sheriff also, come up last evening on the track of some stage-robbers, and quite opportune for this, he thought. He liked things to be done legally. The turmoil of execration and fierce curiosity thrashed about for the right man to pitch on for this crime. The murdered woman had been so good company, so hearty a wit, such a robust songstress, so tireless a dancer, so thoroughly everybody’s friend, that it was inconceivable to the mind of Salvation Gap that anybody there had done it. The women were crying and wringing their hands—the Gazelle had been good to them too; the men were talking and cursing, all but Drylyn there among them, serious and strange-looking; so silent that the sheriff eyed him once or twice, though he knew nothing of the miner’s infatuation. And then some woman shrieked out the name of Drylyn, and the crowd had him gripped in a second, to let him go the next, laughing at the preposterous idea. Saying nothing? Of course he didn’t feel like talking. To be sure he looked dazed. It was hard luck on him. They told the sheriff about him and the Gazelle. They explained that Drylyn was “sort of loony, anyway,” and the sheriff said, “Oh!” and began to wonder and surmise in this half-minute they had been now gathered, when suddenly the inevitable boot-prints behind the tent down the hill were found. The shout of discovery startled Drylyn as genuinely as if he had never known, and he joined the wild rush of people to the hill. Nor was this acting. The violence he had set going, and in which he swam like a straw, made him forget, or for the moment drift away from, his arranged thoughts, and the tracks on the hill had gone clean out of his head. He was become a mere blank spectator in the storm, incapable of calculation. His own handiwork had stunned him, for he had not foreseen that consequences were going to rise and burst like this. The next thing he knew he was in a pursuit, with pine-trees passing, and the hurrying sheriff remarking to the band that he proposed to maintain order. Drylyn heard his neighbor, a true Californian, whose words were lightest when his purpose was most serious, telling the sheriff that order was certainly Heaven’s first law, and an elegant thing anywhere. But the anxious officer made no retort in kind, and only said that irregularities were damaging to the county’s good name, and would keep settlers from moving in. So the neighbor turned to Drylyn and asked him when he was intending to wake up, as sleep-walking was considered to be unhealthy. Drylyn gave a queer, almost wistful, smile, and so they went along; the chatty neighbor spoke low to another man, and said he had never sized up the true state of Drylyn’s feeling for the Gazelle, and that the sheriff might persuade some people to keep regular, when they found the man they were hunting, but he doubted if the sheriff would be persuading enough for Drylyn. They came out on a road, and the sleep-walker recognized a rock and knew how far they had gone, and that this was the stage-road between Folsom and Surprise Springs. They followed the road, and round a bend came on the man. He had been taking it easily, being in no hurry. He had come to this point by the stage the night before, and now he was waiting for its return to take him back to Folsom. He had been lunching, and was seated on a stone by a small creek. He looked up and saw them, and their gait, and ominous compactness. What he did was not the thing for him to do. He leaped into cover and drew his revolver. This attempt at defence and escape was really for the sake of the gold-dust he had in his pocket. But when he recognized the sheriff’s voice, telling him it would go better with him if he did not try to kill any more people, he was greatly relieved that it was not highwaymen after him and his little gold, and he put up his pistol and waited for them, smiling, secure in his identity; and when they drew nearer he asked them how many people he had killed already. They came up and caught him and found the gold in a moment, ripping it from his pocket; and the yell they gave at that stopped his smiling entirely. When he found himself in irons and hurried along, he began to explain that there was some mistake, and was told by the chatty neighbor that maybe killing a woman was always a mistake, certainly one this time. As they walked him among them they gave small notice to his growing fright and bewilderment, but when he appealed to the sheriff on the score of old acquaintanceship, and pitifully begged to know what they supposed he had done, the miners laughed curiously. That brought his entreating back to them, and he assured them, looking in their faces, that he truly did need to be told why they wanted him. So they held up the gold and asked him whose that had been, and he made a wretched hesitation in answering. If anything was needed to clinch their certainty, that did. They could not know that the young successful lover had recognized Drylyn’s strange face, and did not want to tell the truth before him, and hence was telling an unskilful lie instead. A rattle of wheels sounded among the pines ahead, and the stage came up and stopped. Only the driver and a friend were on it, and both of them knew the shot-gun messenger and the sheriff, and they asked in some astonishment what the trouble was. It had been stage-robbers the sheriff had started after, the driver thought. And—as he commented in friendly tones—to turn up with Wells and Fargo’s messenger was the neatest practical joke that had occurred in the county for some time. The always serious and anxious sheriff told the driver the accusation, and it was a genuine cry of horror that the young lover gave at hearing the truth at last, and at feeling the ghastly chain of probability that had wound itself about him.
The sheriff wondered if there were a true ring in the man’s voice. It certainly sounded so. He was talking with rapid agony, and it was the whole true story that was coming out now. But the chatty neighbor nudged another neighbor at the new explanation about the gold-dust. That there was no great quantity of it, after all, weighed little against this double accounting for one simple fact; moreover, the new version did not do the messenger credit in the estimation of the miners, but gave them a still worse opinion of him. It is scarcely fair to disbelieve what a man says he did, and at the same time despise him for having done it. Miners, however, are rational rather than logical; while the listening sheriff grew more determined there should be a proper trial, the deputation from the Gap made up its mind more inexorably the other way. It had even been in the miners’ heads to finish the business here on the Folsom road, and get home for supper; pine-trees were handy, and there was rope in the stage. They were not much moved by the sheriff’s plea that something further might have turned up at the Gap; but at the driver’s more forcible suggestion that the Gap would feel disappointed at being left out, they consented to take the man back there. Drylyn never offered any opinion, or spoke at all. It was not necessary that he should, and they forgot about him. It was time to be getting along, they said. What was the good in standing in the road here? They nodded good-day to the stage-driver, and took themselves and the prisoner into the pines. Once the sheriff had looked at the driver and his friend perched on the halted stage, but he immediately saw too much risk in his half-formed notion of an alliance with them to gallop off with the prisoner; his part must come later, if at all.
THE SHOT-GUN MESSENGER
But the driver had perfectly understood the sheriff’s glance, and he was on the sheriff’s side, though he showed no sign. As he drove along he began thinking about the way the prisoner had cried out just now, and the inconsiderable value of the dust, and it became clear in his mind that this was a matter for a court and twelve quiet men. The friend beside him was also intent upon his own thoughts, and neither said a word to the other upon the lonely road. The horses soon knew that they were not being driven any more, and they slackened their pace, and finding no reproof came for this, they fell to a comfortable walk. Presently several had snatched a branch in passing, and it waved from their mouths as they nibbled. After that they gave up all pretence at being stage-horses, and the driver noticed them. From habit he whipped them up into shape and gait, and the next moment pulled them in short, at the thought that had come to him. The prisoner must be got away from the Gap. The sheriff was too single-handed among such a crowd as that, and the driver put a question to his friend. It could be managed by taking a slight liberty with other people’s horses; but Wells and Fargo would not find fault with this when the case was one of their own servants, hitherto so well thought of. The stage, being empty and light, could spare two horses and go on, while those two horses, handled with discretion and timeliness, might be very useful at the Gap. The driver had best not depart from rule so far as to leave his post and duty; one man would be enough. The friend thought well of this plan, and they climbed down into the road from opposite sides and took out the wheelers. To be sure these animals were heavy, and not of the best sort for escaping on, but better than walking; and timeliness and discretion can do a great deal. So in a little while the driver and his stage were gone on their way, the friend with the two horses had disappeared in the wood, and the road was altogether lonely.
The sheriff’s brain was hard at work, and he made no protest now as he walked along, passive in the company of the miners and their prisoner. The prisoner had said all that he had to say, and his man’s firmness, which the first shock and amazement had wrenched from him, had come to his help again, bringing a certain shame at having let his reserve and bearing fall to pieces, and at having made himself a show; so he spoke no more than his grim captors did, as they took him swiftly through the wood. The sheriff was glad it was some miles they had to go; for though they went very fast, the distance and the time, and even the becoming tired in body, might incline their minds to more deliberation. He could think yet of nothing new to urge. He had seen and heard only the same things that all had, and his present hopes lay upon the Gap and what more might have come to light there since his departure. He looked at Drylyn, but the miner’s serious and massive face gave him no suggestion; and the sheriff’s reason again destroyed the germ of suspicion that something plainly against reason had several times put in his thoughts. Yet it stuck with him that they had hold of the wrong man.
When they reached the Gap, and he found the people there as he had left them, and things the same way, with nothing new turned up to help his theory, the sheriff once more looked round; but Drylyn was not in the crowd. He had gone, they told him, to look at her; he had set a heap of store by her, they repeated.