Days of '49/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX
1
Ferdinand rode into Diamond Gulch on a big mule and stopped before the El Dorado saloon where a few idlers squatted, whittling and spitting just outside the door.
"Whar yuh from, stranger?" said a bearded man lazily.
"From the citee Sakeramento, señor."
"Looks like somebody'd been stretchin' yore neck a bit, pardner," said another voice good-naturedly.
Ferdinand absently felt of his neck, answering,
"The good God made it so, señor. It is another of his blessings for I can see if evil men they come behind me without turning my head."
A few notes of indifferent laughter followed, and then:
"Whar yuh goin', stranger, eh?"
"Go, señor? I have come far to be here!"
"Wall then, that's all right, f'r the only way yuh can go from here is back the way yuh come." The miner lifted his arm and said, "Listen."
Ferdinand's head was still set a bit wryly on his neck, and he cocked his head slightly, listening to the prolonged organ roll of a mountain river, swollen by flood as it washed through the gloomy gulch.
"There ain't been nobody crost that there river f'r a week, an' nobody's goin' crost f'r some little time yet. Mr. Clifton he had some trouble gettin 'crost on his mule an' she shore rained since then."
"Who, señor? Who?"
"The gam'ler fellow we had here in camp. He 'lowed he'd mosey on down to Hick'ry Bar an"
"Cleefton? The name—what was the man like, señor? Tall an'"
"Jes' a reg'lar gam'ler. Pale as flour, with a crippled hand."
"With a little mark too here on his face, señor?"
"Never noticed."
"Yeah," added another loafer's voice, "he did have a little scar. Know him, did you?"
"An' he is gone, señors!"
"Over to Hick'ry Bar. 'Lowed he'd try his luck there awhile. 'Bout five mile down the river an' acrost. River's riz since then."
Ferdinand twisted about in his saddle, listening to the roar of the water as it washed over boulders and at the foot of rock walls.
"Wall, light down, stranger. We're pinin' f'r news, f'r news. Havin' any floods to Sacramento?"
"No, señor, I cannot stay. I but stopped to res'."
"Whar yuh goin'?"
"To Heekery Bar, señor."
"Like hell! Yuh can't get crost. No man c'd get crost!"
"I go, señor!"
"She's shore deep an' swift. Yuh're a fool," said another voice.
"For Mr. Cleefton I have a message. He will be at Heekery Bar?"
"Yeah. But a drowned man like you'll be can't deliver much of a message."
"I do not drown, señors. No. I mus' go, now."
"Yuh don't look an idjit, but yuh are. We'll all go down an' watch yuh get drown'."
Ferdinand dismounted and led his mule. The miners with stumbling tramp walked along near him, thinking that when he saw the river he would turn back.
The river with hurrying sustained roar swirled by. The waters were black, writhing with turbulence.
"Too much current. You can't never make it," they told him.
Ferdinand looked thoughtfully up and down the bank, then slowly climbed into the saddle and leaned forward, patting the neck of the mule. The mule, with ears stretched forward and head lowered, sniffed uneasily. Ferdinand spoke encouragingly and struck with his heels. The mule nervously advanced a slim foot, took another step, then drew back on its haunches.
"He won't go," said a miner.
"That thar jackass has got some sense. Most jackasses has if they ain't human."
Ferdinand bent over, stroking the mule's neck, talking gently; then, suddenly, he clucked, striking his heels hard against the flanks. The mule leaned forward doubtfully, and the soft footing gave way. The mule sank stubbornly to its haunches, but with forward glide slipped into the water and was instantly swirled out and under.
"He's a goner—like I said!" a miner shouted.
A few feet below and well out in the current the mule's head reappeared, with Ferdinand out of the saddle but clinging to the horn. The mule with laborious plunging tried to turn toward the bank it had just left, then sank. A twisting current wrenched Ferdinand's hands loose. Down stream he went with a tumbling swirling movement, like that of bulky driftwood. From the bank the miners could see his arms swing in the stroke of a blinded swimmer, but, fool that he was, he seemed trying to make for the far bank. He was jerked about, carried under, tossed downstream. The men on the bank, with a sort of fixed staring as they ran, followed down the river.
"He's gone!"
"Shore is!"
"There he is again!"
"Yeah, but the mule's gone!"
"He'll never make it—can't!"
"Ow look—look now!—Ow!"
Far down the river, where it gathered itself into a deep, narrow channel and with tumbling gyrating rush plunged like a tempest of waters, Ferdinand had been jammed into the branches of a fallen tree that lay downstream with its roots partly anchored yet in the earth of the bank on the side he struggled to reach.
He held on, gasping. The tree, shaken by the current, shivered like a tortured thing, and his hands could hardly hold. The water was like melted ice; it was, in fact, melting snow and the flood from icy ravines. The water pulled and wrenched at him with a sort of sentient sucking and jerk. The branches bent under his weight and pull of current.
The miners cheered. Their voices came dimly through the roaring of the water. As Death had learned, it was no easy thing to lay hold on Ferdinand; and he clawed himself up to the trunk, crawled along it, got to the bank, and tumbled weakly to a boulder, resting there.
The men were shouting, waving their hats. He could not understand what they said—did not care. He raised an arm, answering. The mule had drowned.
2
That evening the idlers in the Yellow Gleam saloon of Hickory Bar drank indifferently, played poker listlessly, smoked, spit, yawned, and absently passed from hand to hand a dead man's fiddle which, like a dull sick thing, would no more than scream and wail when one of them laid a bow upon it. These fellows, made idle by the winter rains and flood, and also practically imprisoned in their camp, wanted music. None of them could play.
Ferdinand entered. His jaws chattered as he leaned against the bar.
"Wheesky, señor. Lots of wheesky!"
"Say, whar you from?" asked the bartender, tossing a cup to the bar and clapping a bottle beside it.
"I come from the Diamon' Gulch today, señor."
"You what?"
"I come from the Diamon' Gulch, señor."
"You're a liar!" said the bartender, without taking the trouble to make his tone even friendly. "Hey, boys, this here feller says he come from Diamon'!"
Men gathered up. A drunken man in a far corner, heavily leaning on a table, shifted his chair to rise, but the exertion did not seem worth the advantage of drawing near, so he held his head up for a moment, peering vacantly, then let it fall.
"You didn't come from Diamon'. Not today you didn't," said a miner. "I was down 'bout an hour ago. Had a look at the river. Last man that come through from Diamon' was that gambler feller"
"Ah, you speak of Señor Cleefton?"
"Yeah. Know 'im?"
"By sight, señor, an' the leetle scar here on his face."
Some one had laid the violin near at hand on the bar. Ferdinand touched it with a lingering gentleness though his thoughts were far away.
"You play that thing? Most greasers do."
"A leetle, señors, at times. Ah, Mr. Cleefton, he is here?"
"Now listen, stranger. You didn't come from Diamon'. You come from Simpson's Bar—over the mountain. She's as near hard as crossin' the river,'cept it can be done. An' if you know that gambler by sight, like you say, you met him on the trail. He pulled out this mornin'. Some o' the boys bet even money he couldn't make it. Didn't you see nothin' of him?"
"He is gone, señors? You say he is gone!"
"What you tryin' to make us believe? That you come from Diamon'. You didn't!"
"But he is wet," said the bartender. "An' it ain't rained today."
"This trail, señors. This trail to the Simpson Bar—how do I fin' it?"
"She ain't no trail. She's jes' a way to get there since the river's up. Simpson she run out of grub an' a couple o' men come acrost to Hick'ry to tote back some flour. One of 'em he fell an' I guess he ain't hit bottom yet, bein' as that was only 'bout three days ago."
"But Cleefton, son of two devils, why did he go?"
"'Pears like you named his folks about right, pardner. He got hit purty hard at monte an' las' night he up an' pays part in gol' coin. Him havin' a cripple hand the boys 'lowed he couldn't cheat much, so they bucked him hard. An' he pays, but he pays part in gol'. Now whar'd he get it, hunh? They hung the wrong man over to Diamon' for havin' gol' coin some time back. Ever' coin was picked up an' put in a sack f'r emigrant relief, so whar'd this gambler get gold coin? They was some remarks passed las' night, an' this mornin' he lights out. If we'd talked as much afore he went as we've done since, we wouldn't a-let him go. An' I guess he figgered we might do some talkin', so he'd better light out sudden-like, an' he lit."
The talkative miner was told to dry up. Men wanted Ferdinand to play the fiddle. Ferdinand, dead tired and chilled, wanted rest, but instead of thinking about rest he demanded to be shown the trail that led to Simpson's Bar.
"What? Tonight? In the dark? Takes a good man to make day-time job of it!"
"I mus' go, señors. Night or day, it is the same to the good God."
"Yeah. But not to a fool man. You've gotta play. We'll give you that there fiddle if you play."
"An' when I have played, señors—the trail, some man of you will show me?"
"A man that come from Diamon' crost that river, now wants to go to Simpson's, night time on that trail—Gosh, stranger, you must be crazy!"
"Yees, señors," said Ferdinand enigmatically. "When He drives man mus' go!"
"Crazy as a bedbug," said the miners, one to another. But play that fiddle he must. They ached for music.
Ferdinand first called for the fiddle's case, took out a bit of rosin, felt in a pocket, found extra strings.
They made him stand on the bar.
"She's shaky pard, but a fiddler ort to stand on somethin'."
As Ferdinand touched the pegs, bringing each string into tune, he glanced about, eying the men who eyed him. He knew the short temper of miners when a whim was denied, and play he would, but not for long, whether or not they wished it.
Having made a few quick strokes of the bow over the rosin, he raised the violin and tucked it under his chin, letting the fingers of his left hand for a moment run noiselessly over the strings. He raised the bow, and with a soft caressing touch drew it slowly over the strings, and the men heard sound so faintly that they bent nearer, straining to catch the magic whispering of the tones that, even as they strained for them, grew stronger, dancing with subtle nuance, rising, dying, rising again, touched with fury until the rushing tones seemed the wings of eerie things in wayward flight.
The miners stared one at another, wonderingly; and, abruptly, the tone changed to a major melody and Ferdinand glanced searchingly about at the faces of those who listened, trying to guess how soon he would dare put an end to this.
With the slightest pause he raised his hand and in a whip-like stroke brought the bow crushing down upon the strings; chord after chord followed in whirling succession, and a brilliant ascending scale rose to the highest tones. Then he gave an almost imperceptible glance at his listeners, and the skilled hand of the player swerved slightly and the ferrule on the frog grazed the E string.
The snap of a broken string was heard. Ferdinand gave a glance of dismay, then thrust out the fiddle at arm's length for all to see the dangling frayed string.
"An', señors, I had jus' got myself warm to play!" he said, with a sound of disappointment in which, subtly, there was a weary note, very much as though he mocked them.
3
When the miners saw that Ferdinand was touched with the madness that would, in spite of advice and warnings, make him try the perilous trail in the night time they became, though a little contemptuously, sympathetic. They had no lantern, but broke the bottom out of a bottle and gave him candles. Also, because he asked for it, they gave him a piece of rubber blanket in which to wrap the fiddle case. Then two or three men went out to see him fairly started up the precipitous trail in the darkness.
Ferdinand went forward alone. He tempted himself with the thought that he might save time by waiting for dawn, but he did not dare wait. His was a tremendous strength and patience, the patience that had gnawed him out of many prisons, that with stroke of muffled file, a movement at a time, night and day, had eaten off galley irons. The trail seemed to run with abrupt twists at the edge of a narrow ledge. Often he peered over his candle, but on one side, precipitously, was darkness and when he tossed over a stone he sometimes could not hear it strike. There was one fortunate thing, anyhow. One could not be misled. There was only one way to go—unless one slipped.
A misty grayness sifted through the sky, and objects outlined in bulk, as solid, began to show details of form. Dawn was coming and he was still climbing.
In the dawn he paused and looked about. Well that he had been careful and wary. In places the very rocks over which he moved seemed loosened and ready to fall. A slight fear touched him that the gambler and his mule had slipped from the trail; and Ferdinand felt suddenly a sort of respect for this Dawes if with a mule he had come over these rocks.
Overhead the clouds hung low. The air was full of moisture, the surface of rocks damp. In the distance he could see that it was raining. It looked as if the garments of the clouds had been caught against the treetops of the mountain sides, and as the clouds drifted onward they left between themselves and the earth a moving misty column that was rain.
Simpson's Bar was smaller than Hickory Bar, almost insignificant. Diamond Gulch, because of its fabulous, if temporary wealth, had been different, with an unsubstantial air of permanence in the sawed lumber of many buildings. The wealth of the river had dwindled as it went downstream.
The only hotel in Simpson's Bar which, in its decadence supported now no other place for gambling or drinking, was a one-story structure, built of unhewn saplings, covered with canvas and floored with dirt. It consisted of one undivided room in which the tables, bunks and benches were all ar ranged. There men slept and ate and drank. Four tiers of bunks, one directly above the other, were built against the walls, by means of upright posts and cross-pieces, fastened with thongs of rawhide. The bedding was a small straw mattress, about two feet wide, a single blanket, and a pillow of straw. Men might go to bed in their boots, but it was regarded as bad taste to sleep in one's hat.
Ferdinand entered the hotel about nine o'clock. Breakfast was long over. There were seven or eight men about, a few growling lazily in idle talk, some hung at a table over the flip and shuffle of greasy cards. One, a whisky-sodden bummer, dozed fitfully with head down on his arm. This fellow, by some obscure abbreviation of his name, was called "Abs," as if his christening had been Absalom, which it may have been. He had that morning pawned his pick for a bottle, the last thing in the world that he owned. He, who had never been liked by the miners, was now held in contempt.
Ferdinand paused in the doorway and stared with eager searching, then:
"Señors, the gambler man an' mule mule—he is not here!"
"Ow, hello there, stranger! Whar you from? That gambler, he lit out firs' thing right after breakfas'. An' he he did sort o' look up yonder along the trail as though he expected somebody to be along after him."
Ferdinand swore. They did not understand his oaths, but they knew he spoke in oaths.
"I don't know where that gambler thinks he's goin', 'cause s' far as we know there ain't no more camp on this side the river, but he took some bacon an' truck an' lit out. We ain't much grub to spare here at Simpson's, but that fellow had a ten dollar gol' piece which shore took our eye. Here she is!"
Woods, the man who owned the hotel, showed the gold piece.
Ferdinand asked for food. They brought him cold black coffee, beans and pork. There was no bread or flour in camp; and as he ate wearily, with a far-off look in his eyes, they asked questions.
"What yuh packin' there?"
"A feedle, señor."
"Fiddle! Oh, gosh, I ain't heard music seems like since I was knee high to a duck. You've got to play."
"Another time, señor. I will be back soon. Is there a mule? I have gol'."
"Nary mule or hoss in camp. You're after that gambler feller, ain't yuh? What's he done?"
"Oh, señor!" said Ferdinand, mildly reproachful, and drawing out a well-filled pouch. "I owe to him a leetle debt. An' an hones' man he can not res' or sleep till his debt is paid!"
Silence followed this remark; then a miner spoke:
"Yo're right, pardner. It ain't none o' our business. Ever' man looks out for hisself in Californy. But I tell you this much. That there gambler acts like he was expectin' somebody along after him."
Ferdinand tossed his pouch to the table toward Woods, the proprietor; but the proprietor shook his head, saying:
"Nope. You play us a piece instead. That's what us boys want. We're hankerin' f'r music."
"I mus' go, señors!" said Ferdinand, again indicating the pouch.
"Yeah, but yuh've got to play a little something first," said one, and others with a kind of feverishness added their voices to the demand.
Ferdinand, realizing that the quickest way to obtain his departure was to do as requested, unwrapped the case, took out the fiddle, took a string from the case pocket and was busy when the half drunken Abs, roused by the interest the miners were showing in this fellow, came forward with lurching steps. He caught himself against the table, looked down at the well-filled pouch, cocked his head with drunken interest, then glanced at Ferdinand.
Abs peered steadily, with great and hazy mental effort, then lifted a wavering accusing hand and bawled:
"Thash him! Thash him, fell'rs! He robbed me lash summer—nigh S'nora! Thash him!"
Ferdinand, in the act of raising the fiddle to his shoulder, paused, rigidly alert, searching this fellow's bearded face with an intensity in which for a moment there was menace.
The miners with sullen doubt eyed Ferdinand, with now and then a glance at Abs.
"An' thish 'ere's mine!" cried Abs, snatching at the buckskin pouch, but a heavy-handed miner gripped his arm, shook loose the pouch, cast Abs' arm aside.
"Don't be in no such of a powerful rush!" said the miner, at the same time staring hard and unfriendly at Ferdinand.
"I do not know of why he plays the joke except it is he tries to steal my gol'," said Ferdinand with an air of innocence, and the next instant his bow touched the strings.
A moment later every man with hovering tenseness listened. The strings were almost articulate; the slowly drawn tones fell upon the listeners like a chorus of solemn voices. These lonely camp-imprisoned fellows, three thousand miles from their hearth-fires, bent forward with unconscious bowing to the strains of "Home, Sweet Home."
Ferdinand, in his wanderings through the camps, had seen how deeply, how always deeply, the rough sudden-tempered miners were moved by that simple melody, which he himself did not at all understand; but, as with almost everything he heard he could play it and, like a magician with a wand, evoke the ache of homesickness.
The last note floated off with a lingering faintness that left nothing perceptible between its dying and the coming of silence. Here and there a bearded face had turned aside and rough hands made furtive movements toward the eyes.
"Thish 'ere's mine!" cried the drunken Abs, breaking the music's spell.
A miner struck him aside. They had all heard Abs tell many times of how during the summer near Sonora he had been robbed by greasers; but Abs was something of a liar, and it was now too, too plain that what he was after was the gold.
"You jus' wait a minute 'r two," said the miner.
"Señors," said Ferdinand quietly, "if you wish to hang me so your freen' can have my gol', do it queek, pleese, because, as you know, I have the hurry to be gone."
"Friend! He ain't no friend of ourn!"
Woods, the proprietor, opened the pouch and sprinkled a little gold dust into his palm. Nearly all merchants, and many miners, could tell from what district gold came. It was roughly classified as scales, grain, flour, shot, wire, pea, bean and seed, and the dust from one district might not be worth as much as that from another, which when assayed, showed alloy of silver or copper.
"This ain't Sonora dust," said Woods indifferently, just as if he had known all along that it would not be Sonora dust.
"It ain't nothin' new for Abs to lie!"
"Tryin' to get a feller hung to get his pouch!"
"We ought to hang Abs! He can't stay in this here camp. Let's give him a good hidin'! You, Mr. Fiddler-feller, can lay on the whip!" Then, with a sort of afterthought, and a hard stare, "You didn't ever rob him, did you?"
"I, señor!" demanded Ferdinand with mild reproach, then without another word, as if half idly, the bow drifted across the strings.
Abs, afraid of these miners who did not like him anyhow, and half-drunken, mumbled apologetically, saying:
"I guesh he ain't the fell'r. I—I made mishtake—Greashers all look 'like—thash other fell'r played guitar—thish fell'r fiddler. Ain't shame fell'r. Skusch me, mister—I wouldn't toush thish gol' what ain't mine."
Ferdinand, setting out in the direction that the miners pointed, for a time could follow the tracks of the mule. This thrilled him. He hurried. But soon the low-lying mist congealed into falling drops. The rain fell quietly, as if without malice. The rain was noiseless, but the trees dripped water, and the river with tempestuous cadence gave off the organ roll of mountain flood.
The river lay impassably on one hand, the wilderness of the mountains deepened on the other. By following the river one would eventually come to shelter, where men were or had been. There was no trail. It was rough and hard climbing over boulders. He hurried anxiously, many times feeling that the mule and rider could not have passed this way, dreading lest they had turned off into the mountains. Lost there, they would perish; but the mere perishing of the gambler Dawes would give no satisfaction to Ferdinand. He felt no fatigue, forgot that he had not slept, had no thought of food. From time to time he fingered the handle of his knife and muttered words in the ancient tongue of his fathers.
Long before night, darkness began to lay itself in deepening purple mists in every depression and mountainside ravine. The rain continued. He began to think that night would force him to dig a hole under a rock for shelter, and knew that when he paused his body would be filled with the ache of weariness. Ferdinand swore, blaming the devil.
4
Abruptly he came to where an old trail crossed the river. Miners who spread out searchingly in every direction had passed this way. Beside the track was a part canvas cabin, now dilapidated.
In the gathering darkness he sniffed wood-fire. People lived here. Some miner-men. Good! He would sleep and eat and ask if a man and mule had passed. He approached near and listened. There was no sound within. The hurrying roar of the river drowned his own footfall. He peered through a slit of the canvas and saw vaguely a form within, near the fire place, and sniffed the odor of bacon. Ah, good! He brought a stomach with him.
He walked around to the cabin door and shouted heartily.
"Oh, ho, my freend, a lone traveler, an' los' in the mountains! I bring a hunger that would eat a wolf cub while it is the bitch looks on an' snarl!"
Within, vaguely blotted against the fire, was the crouching form of a man who held a strip of bacon over the smoky flame of the fireplace. Except for the small space illuminated by this smoky glow, it was dark within. The man had his face toward the doorway. Nothing of his features could be seen. There was a kind of fastidious awkwardness in his attitude, as if he was about dirty and unfamiliar work.
The stick dropped from his hand. The bacon fell with prolonged sizzling. The hand had moved.
"Who, sir, are you?" demanded a quiet, cold voice.
Ferdinand knew that the fellow spoke with hand on gun; but he came forward, stamping heavily, shaking the water from him, answering:
"A fiddler-man that goes from camp to camp. I have leetle to eat, señor. But candles—I have the candles!"
With an air of bustling good cheer, Ferdinand looked about for a place to put down his fiddle case. There just within the door lay something. His foot struck it—a saddle. He pulled a candle from his pocket and, with a flourish of carelessness—"all day I walk los' in the rain, señor"—drew near the fireplace and thrust the candle's tip against the fire. He had squatted too in lighting the candle and now the flame fell on a thin, pale face—suspicious, wary. Ferdinand felt that this man, with hand on the drawn gun at his side, was half-minded to shoot just as a matter of precaution.
Ferdinand pretended to notice nothing. Humming carelessly, he stood up, turned his back, and sheltering the candle with his palm went to a broken-down bunk at the side of the room, dabbed grease on a cross-piece and set the candle in it. Then he returned to the fireplace, squatting down beside the man, saying:
"The good meat it is burn—ah!"
The fellow, partly reassured by Ferdinand's ease, glanced at the fire; and instantly with a swift quiet movement, Ferdinand's hand closed on the gambler's wrist, twisting his arm. The gambler, with his other and crippled hand, snatched futilely at Ferdinand's fingers for a moment, then fell away.
Dawes did not cry out. He looked steadily at Ferdinand's odd grin, then coolly but blasphemously demanded what this meant.
"Up, stan' up, Dawez. I will tell you ever'thing, ah-ho, yees!"
"Dawes! I am not Dawes, sir!"
"Bah-bahbahbah!" said Ferdinand cheerfully, rising, and in the painful grip of his strong hand, Dawes arose too. They stood almost breast to breast, the gambler pale, slim, nerveless; Ferdinand, shaggy-headed, dark, twice as broad, perhaps ten times as strong.
Ferdinand took the derringer from the gambler's fingers and tossed it out of the opened door, far into the darkness; then, fumbling under Dawes' coat, drew the bowie knife from its sheath and flung it away. He released Dawes' hand and laughed oddly.
"What, sir, is the meaning of this?" demanded the gambler, looking hard at Ferdinand. "I never saw you before. I am not Dawes. I have been mistaken for that man before"
"Eh? Not Dawez?" said Ferdinand, mockingly.
"No."
"The leetle mark here, eh?" Ferdinand drew a forefinger along his own brow.
"Other men have scars. And the scar of this man Dawes is much plainer and on the other side of his forehead. Why do you look for him?"
"It is for you I have looked, señor."
"What have I done—or Dawes?"
"You keeled Mr. Tesla!"
"No," said Dawes quietly. "And who told you that?"
"God, señor."
Dawes parted his lips as if to speak, but closed them. He could not very well call God a liar. Imperturbably he stared and wondered; then:
"I have heard of this Dawes, but you have the wrong man."
"Eh?"
"That is the truth, sir."
"You are from Diamon' Gulch?"
"Yes. "
"Dawez was there?"
"No. He was not there. I was mistaken for him. My name is Clifton. Dawes did not have a hand like this?"
He extended the crippled hand which had brought upon him so much misfortune in that it had reduced his gambler's skill to mere luck, and bad luck it had been. "Dawes was never at Diamond Gulch."
"Ho-o-oh, señor. The leetle man that was hanged for gol' he did not steal, he wrote a letter—he tol' that you were there. That you were Dawes!"
"What, sir!"
"Eh, what? Ha! Now are you Dawes?"
"No. The fellow simply mistook me for Dawes. He was a thief and"
"What a tangle you make of ever'theeng with that tongue," said Ferdinand, being troubled by a little maggot of doubt. "He was no thief, that leetle man. An' you—at Heekory Bar they wonder why you have the gol' coins. You steal an' let heem be hanged? It is so? Bah, Dawez, this is why I follow you!"
Ferdinand drew his knife and put the point to the gambler's throat.
Dawes moved slightly but not enough to stir from his tracks. The light of the room was dim. The unfed smoky flames of the fireplace were dying. Ferdinand's eyes were piercingly watchful, but he could not detect the least guilty change of expression. A sound of fear, a confessional movement or word, and the life of Dawes would have ended. But the gambler played for his life. He stared fixedly. There was the glancing glint of candle light on his eyes, and his eyes were steady.
Firmly he spoke:
"I am not Dawes."
"You lie!" said Ferdinand in anger, but he lowered his hand, and loosely thrust the knife into the belt. He simply did not dare kill the wrong man. And the gambler knew that he had won enough doubt from this strange man to be safe for the time being.
"I will take you—day an' night I will take you to one who knows. She will say. Ho, then we shall see."
"Who?"
"Kredra the Wise."
"Who, sir?"
"Kredra, who knows hidden theengs!"
Dawes recalled the balcony of the Magnolia, the dark woman who had opened the door to his knock, the name Kredra spoken in a clear voice from across the room. Now he answered:
"I shall very willingly accompany you, sir."
"She tol' me Dawez keeled Mr. Tesla an'"
"I too have heard so, sir. But I am not Dawes."
"Kredra will know. I take you to her. An' if you have lied, I keel you twice!" said Ferdinand, looking from the corners of his eyes at the crippled hand.
He thoroughly believed that this was Dawes, but it would be terrible to kill the wrong man, not so much because one candle-like life was blown out, but because of the oath.
Dawes looked at him steadily for a time, then, quietly:
"Yes, sir. I shall accompany you, readily, wherever you wish. That man Dawes has caused me enough trouble. I shall be glad to have this matter cleared up. Now, sir, I may finish my supper?"
"Eat," Ferdinand ordered shortly, then backed to the bunk near the candle. He leaned against the bunk and thoughtfully watched the gambler, watching for the least little confessional movement of fear, or flight.
Dawes stooped down, picked up the charred stick on which he had been toasting his bacon. He looked at the point, laid down the stick.
"I have sardines and more bacon there in my saddle bags. You will be good enough to slice the bacon for me, since you have taken my knife."
"Get it," said Ferdinand indifferently.
Sullenly he watched Dawes, who unhurriedly crossed to the saddle. Dawes knelt, fumbling. He pulled a can of sardines out, carefully laid it on the ground. He used only his hand. He removed a small bundle, like a rolled up soiled shirt. On his knees with his back to Ferdinand, Dawes spoke:
"I have not much to eat, but such as it is I shall share with you."
He glanced over his shoulder at the dark figure, who sagged heavily with arms folded against the upright post of the bunk at the other side of the room. Ferdinand scowled sullenly, but did not answer.
Dawes then stood up, turned and leveled a large revolver. He did so with a smooth quickness, without the jerkiness of desperation or anger.
Ferdinand's arms dropped as he stiffened, straightening, poised in astonishment, tricked.
"You are Dawez!"
"Yes!"
Dawes answered like a passionless executioner; he straightened his arm, slightly, steadily, inexcitable as at a target.
There was a blur of movement at the side of Ferdinand, and, though Dawes shot at once, it was dark within the room before the bullet had left the gun. Ferdinand, with a backward sweep of hand, had knocked over the candle.
Dawes fired again at the vague, swift-moving form that seemed to pass between him and the dim glow of coals in the fireplace.
Then there was a slight throaty sound, like a restrained muffled exclamation of surprise, a slow shuffling movement, quickly ended, the soft fall of something that sank struggling, the faint creak of leather; then silence.
5
The rain fell with interminable dripping, and the measured plop-plop of the leaks in the roof continued. The dirge of the roaring river reverberated through the solitude as the froth fingered waters played tempestuously at the organ-walls of rock.
Within the cabin seconds became minutes, long drawn, and there was no movement.
"He is dead," said a voice quietly.
A form uprose warily, then footsteps moved. A figure stooped to the candle, white, visible on the ground. The candle was thrust into the coals, stirred with breath.
The wick lifted up a doubtful trembling flame. Then the man, guarding the candle with a sheltering hand against the draft of motion, crossed the room and held the flame low, near the ground. For a moment it was moved about searchingly, then its glow fell across a pale thin ascetic face, mask-like.
"God did it!" said Ferdinand humbly.
His knife, consecrated to the Oath and thrown in the dark, had taken the life of the man Dawes.