“She is no child, I say,” cried Juan, his knees fairly shaking with fright. “With your Honor’s permission, I will go out of the room. That child is too much for me.” When he opened the door to leave, Governor Lehumada called:
“Juan, I will not repeat what I have said to you, twice before within the last few minutes. The child is of flesh and blood as ourselves. There is nothing uncanny about her; so I command you to remain in this room until I dismiss you.”
Catalina looked up pathetically into the face of the Governor, and said: “Don’t scold him, papa; he does not remember.”
The Governor pressed her hand, and kissed her rosy cheek time and again. “You are right, sweet child. I should not be harsh with Juan. He does not remember,” he kindly replied.
“How much is written, papa dear?”
“To be sure, child; I have not read what is written on the paper. This is a strange handwriting also. It reads:
“‘The photograph was given to me by the father of the child, Honorable E. Willard Hinckley, in his own home in Kansas City, August, 1898. That very day I got more than one-half million dollars from him, and gave him as security a mortgage on fifty thousand cattle I never owned. In less than sixty days he was a bankrupt; in ninety days he was dead; his wife and child were penniless and homeless. Despite the long number of years which have passed, that photograph has been preserved in a way nothing short of a miracle. Five times have I put it on the burning coals; three times in black, muddy water. Out of each it came unsullied. Out of a superstitious fear I resolved to keep it, to preserve and guard it with the same care as one would an ancient heirloom of untold value. It has ever been a thorn in my side. In that life one hundred and fifty years ago—the time I made my memorable plunge in cattle, the thought that I could not get rid of the picture of little Helen, drove me wild with rage. It was in a fit of frenzy, brought on by not being able to destroy the picture, that made me take my life. I was then in South America. My wife had perished in an epidemic shortly before, and no one knew just what destiny befell me, “The Plunger from Kansas,” and no one but those whom I had wronged, cared. Before committing the deed that sent me out of the body to try to find relief, I sent a large package to a relative in Kansas. Amongst the things it contained was the picture. Thus it was preserved in the great iron safe in which various documents and family curios were put for safety. On my return to earth after an absence of half of a century this photograph fell to my part of the family keepsakes. And while in that life I never knew its history, it always filled me with fear and trembling when I saw it. At the age of thirty-five I passed again out of the physical body—and lay in a state of unconsciousness for fifty-six years. I was awakened by a voice which seemed to say: “Helen is here. Have you no desire to rectify the wrongs you did her in that life long since passed away?” I did not understand, yet I prayed to be allowed to live, that I might be better and wiser. And I was born again. Fortune favored me from my birth. I was born to wealth, and the faculty I have of acquiring it is a wonder to many. I am now twenty-eight years old, the same age I was when I performed the feat in cattle-plunging. I bring you this photograph with the strange feeling that to you it belongs, and when it is securely in your hands, the dreadful nightmare the sight of it gives me, will leave me. This town has a fascination for me, of which I cannot get rid. I feel nervous, as I did one hundred and fifty years ago, when I was here a refugee, whenever I see an armed officer of the law, or a strange face that gives me more than a passing glance. Retribution, you say, is going to overtake me. If the law can get me, handle me; but to use a slang phrase of the nineteenth century, I will close by saying: “Catch me if you can; but I think I am too swift for you in this life, as well as I was then.”
“‘I am, your obedient servant,
“‘The Plunger from Kansas.’”