A Fortune Hunter Or The Old Stone Corral Part 22

"Oh, Mora, Mora, my lost love! how can I give you up? It seems as if I have loved you from eternity; and to lose you now is like the pangs of death!"

Rousing himself as the sound of retreating wheels was heard below the terrace, Clifford walked back to the hall-way, where he met several departing guests; and as he came into the hall, with a slow leaden step, he saw, with a start, that Miss Estill was standing alone by the stairs, where she had turned after bidding some of the guests good-night! When she saw his face, with its look of white, tense misery, she said quickly:--

"Oh, Mr. Warlow! I have missed you for an hour. You are ill, I fear."

"Yes, Miss Estill, I am--sick of the world; but it is a very slight matter--only a broken heart," young Warlow replied, in a low, husky tone, while his eyes flashed like purple amethysts.

She turned deadly white, and gave him a look wherein he read a proud pity, that sent a flash of hot indignation to his face; then he bowed and walked away without glancing back.

As he came into the glare of the lighted parlor, Maud met him, and, after giving him a glance of deep sympathy, she said with her accustomed tact:--

"Clifford, you are no better, I fear; so let's return home. Most of the guests are starting already, although it is only nine; but we have, like them, also a long drive before us to-night."

So, bidding their hostess good-night, the Warlow and Moreland party started toward the hall; but at the door Miss Estill met them, looking pale and _distrait_, though regretful at their early departure.

She tarried a moment at the door, talking to Maud and Grace regarding the details of the picnic; and as she stood under the full light of a large lamp, held by a marble statue of Mercury, the wonderful grace and beauty of her creole face came into dazzling relief, and Clifford paused with a look of hungry longing on his face, while the remainder of the group hurried on to where the carriage waited, leaving him alone with Mora.

"I will say farewell here, Miss Estill. We shall meet at the picnic, Friday, but there will be little chance to bid you adieu there. I start for South America the next morning to stay indefinitely; so good-bye--forever!"

Even now in this trying moment, while his heart turned cold with an agony that not even death could equal, Clifford was true to the instincts of a gentleman, and waited immovably for her to offer her hand; but she only stood and toyed with her dainty fan, saying with the same cold, proud look that she had given him once before that evening:--

"This is very sudden. Indeed you can not be in earnest; so I shall reserve my adieus until the very last. I will try at the picnic to persuade you to abandon such an unkind course, and remain with us."

"Very well, Miss Estill, but I had forgotten to tell you that I have a disclosure to make at the picnic--one of grave import to you--and beg for an hour of your time while there. I would prefer the morning, if you please."

"With pleasure, certainly," she replied; but their talk was interrupted by some guests preparing to depart; so young Warlow hurriedly said good-night, and joined Maud and the others in the carriage.

Soon they were rapidly whirling homeward up the level, winding road; but as no one seemed to be in a talking mood, the journey was rather a silent one, the monotony only relieved by a scurrying flock of wild-grouse or the dim and retreating form of a startled jack-rabbit, looming large and indistinct upon the level prairie. In places the tall blue-stem moved in the wind with a rolling, wave-like motion; then again giving place to vistas of open glades, carpeted by the buffalo-gra.s.s, that the rains and sun had bleached almost white.

A forecast of autumn was felt in the rising gales, which moaned through the tall cottonwoods along the stream; the water flashed cold and bright under the starlight, and the buffalo-birds--our Western whip-poor-will--swooped down with a bellowing roar close to the heads of our friends as they drove by, indicating that a rain was near at hand.

Chapter XIX.

A STRANGE THEORY.

"_OUR BODIES MAY BE TENANTED BY SOULS THAT HAVE LIVED BEFORE._"

A pouring rain from a vapor-laden sky, dull and gray, saluted Clifford the next morning with a chill welcome; but still the general gloom that pervaded all nature was in such perfect harmony with his mood that he felt a grim satisfaction, in a cold, lethargic way, at the sympathy of the elements.

"I am growing tired of this monotonous life," he said at breakfast, "and have decided to commute my homestead and knock around in the world awhile; so if Mr. Moreland, Ralph, and you, father, are willing to go to Abilene as my witnesses, we will start Sat.u.r.day morning. I can take the train from there, and save another trip;" then seeing Maud's and his mother's look of distress, he added: "I may not be gone long, so I'll leave every thing as it is untill my return."

"Why, Clifford, my boy, what has come over you? This is wholly unlike your nature. I had always felt so glad that you were not of a roving disposition, and now you fly off at a tangent, and when we were not looking for any thing of the kind either. It is very strange, indeed!"

Clifford made no reply, but rose from the table, followed by Rob, whose face was momentarily growing longer and more doleful in its expression, while Maud shot a warning look at her parents, and as the boy's retreating footsteps grew fainter, she answered their questioning looks by saying:--

"Poor Clifford! he is pa.s.sing through that course of true love which is said to never run smooth, and it is best not to interfere; but I hope at the picnic to see him on better terms with Mora, which may change his plans at once."

"Only a lovers' quarrel?" said Mrs. Warlow, with a troubled smile.

"No; I fear it is not so tangible as that," Maud replied. "Clifford seems to have caught the impression, some way, that Mora regards him as a mere fortune hunter, or looks down on him for his poverty; you know that she will be equal heir with Hugh in the immense Estill estate, which is said to be worth half a million, she being their only other child," she added, while narrowly watching her parents' faces; but to her wonder, her father and mother betrayed no surprise at this last remark, which caused a doubt to enter her mind that they were aware of the great discovery that Mora was the daughter of Bruce and Ivarene, which she had until this moment believed was a fact revealed to them when the Estills made their visit, more than a week before.

"Can it be that they are still ignorant of that fact?" Maud mentally asked herself; and then she began to wonder why the Estills had shown the locket, with its pictures of Bruce and his wife, and withheld from her parents the more important secret that Mora was also the daughter of those ill-fated friends; but her reflections were cut short by her father saying, with a weary sigh:--

"Ah! this is the sting of poverty indeed! Oh, why should I have been so ill-fated as to lose two fortunes in succession?"

"George, do not grieve over the past; that's beyond recall," Mrs. Warlow said gently; then she added: "It is better that my children should confine themselves to their own sphere; for you can see that if Miss Estill loved my boy, as well she might, for himself alone, she would never think of the difference in their wealth. It may save them a life-time of misery; for without mutual love, matrimony would be a state of abject servitude."

"Well, if Clifford sees fit to take a change of scene, it will serve to cure him of his--attachment; and if Mora, in the meantime, discovers her mistake in undervaluing Clifford--a fellow that any girl under the sun might be proud of--why, it may all come out right yet," said Maud as she rose from the table and began to polish and clean the great silver coffee-urn, another relic of old plantation glory, but which had never been considered too good for every-day service.

All day Clifford worked with a fever of energy to prepare for his journey, which he was compelled to do; for the picnic was set for the coming day, Friday, and he had to see the Morelands to secure their attendance with him at the land-office as witnesses to prove his actual residence and cultivation upon his homestead, which he had concluded to commute, or in other words, pay the sum of two hundred dollars to the government in lieu of five years of residence and cultivation thereon.

Having secured their testimony, or their willing promise to accompany him to Abilene and there testify to his good faith, etc., he made everything ready for his departure the next morning after the picnic.

When Maud and his mother questioned him regarding the destination and duration of his trip, he said he would go South awhile, but evaded telling them that he had determined to go to Buenos Ayres and remain until he had made a fortune that would cause Miss Estill to regard him as an equal.

He noticed the sadness, however, of the family, and when he met Rob's look of grief his fort.i.tude was sorely tried, and he regretted having formed such a hasty resolution. But it was too late now to retreat, he foolishly concluded; so, choking down a lump in his throat, he walked out to take a last view of his farm. As he sauntered along in a listless way, looking at the fields, every furrow of which he had turned over in the past with such a deep pride of owners.h.i.+p; at the trees and deep pools, that greeted him with the air of old friends.h.i.+p, he began to realize how dear the place had become, and he wondered, in a self-pitying way, how he could bear the existence that awaited him out on the sky-begirt level and lonely pampas of the Rio La Plata.

When he came to the gothic dwelling, the circle of roses and trellises of luxuriant vines, the sloping orchard and vineyard, they all seemed to be still imbued with the strange thought which had ever haunted him while he was busied there. "Here for the first time since eternity began, I found a true home. All this is mine, and on this spot I shall pa.s.s my life. What events will transpire here in the unknown future! I shall know joy and sorrow here, but who will share it all with me?" As these visions recurred, he thought bitterly that he never had counted upon an hour of trial like the present. Then, throwing himself down in the shade of the old wall, he cried aloud in anguish, as he buried his face in the soft, matted buffalo-gra.s.s: "Oh, it is hard to part from all this--and only for a woman who cares nothing for me!" But at length he became calmer, and as a feeling of resentment towards the proud heiress began to possess him, he arose and went into the house: then, after taking the usual precautions against surprise, he raised the trap-door and unlocked the treasure-chest.

On glancing at the heap of red gold mingled with the dazzling gems, he took from the compartment the paper which he had almost forgotten having never read; then breaking the seal, he found that it was the wills of both Bruce and his wife on separate sheets of vellum, executed at Santa Fe, devising all their estate each to the other, in case of either dying during the long journey on which they were about starting.

"I will bring her here to-morrow. She shall read the pathetic Journal of Ivarene and this will. I shall tell her of the long search after the treasure, and her right to all this wealth; then, after restoring both her name and fortune, there will be little left for me to do but to slink away, while some long-necked aristocrat will step to the foreground and carry off the prize," soliloquized our hero with bitter sarcasm, as he placed the papers in an inner pocket of his drab coat, and closed the chest with a vicious snap.

The rain had ceased long since, and a band of crimson and rose on the western horizon gave a promise of fair weather on the morrow; but Clifford lingered about the beloved place, feeling that this was his farewell to a spot that had grown dear as life to him in the last year.

He found it hard to tear himself away; so he seated himself upon a travel-worn ridge in the old trail, worn years ago by the wheels of the freight wagons, but now carpeted thickly with the buffalo-gra.s.s, which seems to delight in hiding just such an unsightly, trampled place with its pale-green tendrils. As the shadows darkened among the trees, and the gloom of a starless, fog-ladened night settled down with a palpable silence, young Warlow became lost in thought.

The scene which followed was always a mystery to him; for he never knew whether he had witnessed a supernatural sight or not. He often tried to persuade himself that he had lapsed into a fit of transient slumber, and the whole spectacle was only a vivid dream.

The time pa.s.sed by unheeded, and it was near the hour of ten when his fit of abstraction was broken by seeing a group of fire-flies flas.h.i.+ng about in an unnatural manner. He remembered, dimly, seeing great numbers of these luminous insects congregating around the long grave, not fifty paces away; and his blood grew cold as he saw, with a thrill of horror, that the flas.h.i.+ng, mazy clouds began to slowly resolve themselves into the semblance of human forms, that leaped and danced in fiendish glee; now bounding high into the murky air, or again brandis.h.i.+ng weapons, that resembled war-clubs and tomahawks, in a threatening and heart-sickening manner.

While these mysterious forms gyrated about in their unearthly war-dance, Clifford stood petrified with horror and astonishment, not unmixed with a strange curiosity to see how it would terminate; and when the luminous figures joined hands, and slowly paced about the grave, as though to the chant of some wild and savage death-song, a dim and glimmering circle of phantom warriors, Clifford could bear it no longer, but sprang to his feet with a cry of horror, that was echoed by a shriek which he instantly recognized as being the voice of Rob. As the skurrying hoofs went tearing away, he shouted quickly:--

"Rob! Rob! wait,--it is Cliff! Come back like a man, and let's investigate;" but he saw that at the first sound of their voices the figures had flashed asunder like thistle-down before a breath, and now were whirling and weaving in a bewildering maze of light that melted away as he gazed, and separated into the innocent flitting forms of fire-flies that were hieing off to the dark nooks along the stream.

As Rob came back, riding slowly and in an uncertain manner, Clifford emerged from the gloom of the trees into the less ebon darkness of the open ground; then Rob halted and said, in a shaky voice:--"I thought that I had run afoul of the old devil himself when you yelled so! What is the matter, anyway?"

Briefly as possible Clifford told of the strange sight which he had just witnessed--a scene which he then thought was more like a fevered dream than a reality.

"But how does it happen you were here?" he added.

"Why, we were uneasy about you, and I had come in search. I knew you would be up here, for I saw you walking this way. I had just got here, and was going to call you, when you yelled like a catamount down by the old grave. What does it mean, Cliff? It makes me cold yet!" he added, with chattering teeth.

"Well, it's something that can not be explained away," said Clifford, while walking back beside Rob, who, too well bred to ride while another walked, had dismounted, and was leading his horse. "There is only one view that I can take of it, and that is a supernatural one," he continued, as Rob linked his arm within his own, and they struck the road homeward. "There is a belief gaining ground, Rob, that the spirit--or the life principle, animation, or whatever it may be which we call soul--after it is disembodied by death, may yet linger about in some subtle, invisible form akin to electricity, and may become embodied again by entering into the being of a new-born child,--which, if true, may account for the strange resemblance we often see peering out of the eyes and face of an infant that recalls some long-dead friend or ancestor. It may be that the power which mind wields over matter would enable the strong, magnetic spirits of those savage warriors, who, no doubt, died terrible deaths of violence on this tragedy-haunted spot, to attract the fire-flies, and mold them into a semblance of their former bodies, or, at least, imprison them for a time within the spirit outline of their former selves. This, alone, would enable them to become visible to our eyes, proving what we already know, that without matter of a living nature the spirit--or magnetism, which we call soul--would be always as invisible as the air."

"Why, Cliff, you talk like a heathen!" replied Rob, vehemently, who, though addicted to the vice of swimming on the Sabbath, 'hooking'