THE GET-AWAY
“If you need money—to pay the fine,” began Solange, doubtfully. He shook his head.
“I have a fancy to do this in my own way; the old-time way,” he said. “As for money, you will have need of all you possess. The cowboy, Sucatash, is a type I know. You may take a message to him for me, and I think he will not refuse to help.”
He gave her rapidly whispered instructions, her quick mind taking them in at once.
“And you,” he finished, “when you are ready to start, will gather your outfit at Wallace’s ranch near Willow Spring. From there is only one way that you can go to follow your father’s trail. He must have come out of the Esmeraldas through Shoestring Cañon, therefore you must go into them that way. I will be there when you come.”
Solange turned to the door and he bowed to her. She shook the grating and called for the turnkey. As she heard him coming she swung round and, with a smile, held out her hand to the soldier. His sallow face flushed as he took it. Her hand clung to his a moment and then the door swung open and she was gone. 141
De Launay took the bullet from his pocket and held it in his hand. He sat on his bunk and weighed the thing reflectively, balancing it on his palm. It was just such a bullet as might have been shot from any one of a hundred rifles, a bullet of which nothing of the original shape remained except about a quarter of an inch of the butt.
He wondered if, after nineteen years, there remained any one who had even been present when French Pete was found dying.
As for the mine, that was even more hopeless. No one had seriously attempted any prolonged search for the murderer, he assumed, knowing the region as it had been. Homicides were not regarded as seriously as in later days and a Basco sheep-herder’s murder would arouse little interest. The mine, however, was a different thing, as he knew by the fact that even recent arrivals had heard of it. It was certain that, throughout all these years there had been many to search for it and the treasure it was supposed to hold. Yet none had found it.
Solange’s premonition made him smile tolerantly. Still, he was pledged to the search, and he would go through with it. They would not find it, of course, but there might be some way in which he could make up the disappointment to her. He thought he could understand the urge that had led her on the ridiculous quest. A young, pretty, but portionless girl, with just enough money to support 142 life in France for a few years, hopeless of marriage in a country where the women outnumbered the men by at least a million, would have a bleak future before her. He could guess that her high, proud spirit would rebel, on the one hand, at the prospect of pinching poverty and ignoble work and, on the other, from the alternative existence of the demimondaine.