Gabriel Conroy Part 56

"I did!"

Mr. Hamlin rolled over on his back, and began to whistle "When the spring time comes, gentle Annie!" as the only way of expressing his inordinate contempt for the whole proceeding.

Gabriel slowly slid his hand under Mr. Hamlin's helpless back, and under pretext of arranging his bandages, lifted him in his arms like a truculent babe. "Jack," he said, softly, "ef thet picter of yours--that coloured woman"----

"Which?" said Jack, fiercely.

"I mean--thet purty creature--ef she and you hed been married, and you'd found out accidental like that she'd fooled ye--more belike, Jack," he added, hastily, "o' your own foolishness--than her little game--and"----

"_That_ woman was a lady," interrupted Jack, savagely, "and your wife's a"----But he paused, looking into Gabriel's face, and then added, "Oh git! will you! Leave me alone! 'I want to be an angel and with the angels stand.'"

"And thet woman hez a secret," continued Gabriel, unmindful of the interruption, "and bein' hounded by the man az knows it, up and kills him, ye wouldn't let thet woman--that poor pooty creeture--suffer for it! No, Jack! Ye would rather pint your own toes up to the sky than do it. It ain't in ye, Jack, and it ain't in me, so help me, G.o.d!"

"This is all very touching, Mr. Conroy, and does credit, sir, to your head and heart, and I kin feel it drawing Hall's ball out of my leg while you're talkin'," said Jack, with his black eyes evading Gabriel's and wandering to the entrance of the tunnel. "What time is it, you d--d old fool, ain't it dark enough yet to git outer this hole?" He groaned, and after a pause added fiercely, "How do you know your wife did it?"

Gabriel swiftly, and for him even concisely, related the events of the day from his meeting with Ramirez in the morning, to the time that he had stumbled upon the body of Victor Ramirez on his return to keep the appointment at his wife's written request.

Jack only interrupted him once to inquire why, after discovering the murder, he had not gone on to keep his appointment.

"I thought it wa'n't of no use," said Gabriel, simply; "I didn't want to let her see I knowed it."

Hamlin groaned, "If you had you would have found her in the company of the man who _did_ do it, you daddering old idiot!"

"What man?" asked Gabriel.

"The first man you saw your wife with that morning; the man I ought to be helping now, instead of lyin' here."

"You don't mean to allow, Jack, ez you reckon she _didn't_ do it?" asked Gabriel, in alarm.

"I do," said Hamlin, coolly.

"Then what did she reckon to let on by that note?" said Gabriel, with a sudden look of cunning.

"Don't know," returned Jack, "like as not, being a d--d fool, you didn't read it right! hand it over and let me see it."

Gabriel (hesitatingly): "I can't."

Hamlin: "You can't?"

Gabriel (apologetically): "I tore it up!"

Hamlin (with frightful deliberation): "you DID?"'

"I did."

Jack (after a long crus.h.i.+ng silence): "Were you ever under medical treatment for these spells?"

Gabriel (with great simplicity and submission): "They allers used to allow I waz queer."

Hamlin (after another pause): "Has Pete Dumphy got anything agin you?"

Gabriel (surprisedly): "No."

Hamlin (languidly): "It was his right hand man, his agent at Wingdam that started up the Vigilantes! I heard him, and saw him in the crowd hounding 'em on."

Gabriel (simply): "I reckon you're out thar, Jack, Dumphy's my friend.

It was him that first gin me the money to open this yer mine. And I'm his superintendent!"

Jack: "Oh!" (after another pause). "Is there any first-cla.s.s Lunatic Asylum in this county where they would take in two men, one an incurable, and the other sufferin' from a gunshot wound brought on by playin' with firearms?"

Gabriel (with a deep sigh): "Ye mus'n't talk, Jack, ye must be quiet till dark."

Jack, dragged down by pain, and exhausted in the intervals of each paroxysm was quiescent.

Gradually, the faint light that had filtered through the brush and debris before the tunnel faded quite away, and a damp charnel-house chill struck through the limbs of the two refugees, and made them s.h.i.+ver; the flow of water from the dripping walls seemed to have increased; Gabriel's experienced eye had already noted that the earthquake had apparently opened seams in the gully and closed up one of the leads. He carefully laid his burden down again, and crept to the opening. The distant hum of voices and occupation had ceased, the sun was setting; in a few moments, calculating on the brief twilight of the Mountain region, it would be dark, and they might with safety leave their hiding-place. As he was returning, he noticed a slant beam of light, hitherto un.o.bserved, crossing the tunnel from an old drift.

Examining it more closely, Gabriel was amazed to find that during the earthquake a "cave" had taken place in the drift, possibly precipitated by the shock, disclosing the more surprising fact that there had been a previous slight but positive excavation on the hill side, above the tunnel, that antedated any record of One Horse Gulch known to Gabriel.

He was perfectly familiar with every foot of the hill side, and the existence of this ancient prospecting "hole" had never been even suspected by him. While he was still gazing at the opening, his foot struck against some glittering metallic substance. He stooped and picked up a small tin can, not larger than a sardine box, hermetically sealed and soldered, in which some inscription had been traced, but which the darkness of the tunnel prevented his deciphering. In the faint hope that it might contain something of benefit to his companion, Gabriel returned to the opening, and even ventured to step beyond its shadow. But all attempts to read the inscription were in vain. He opened the box with a sharp stone; it contained, to his great disappointment, only a memorandum book and some papers. He swept them into the pocket of his blouse, and re-entered the tunnel. He had not been absent altogether more than five minutes, but when he reached the place where he had left Jack, he was gone!

CHAPTER IX.

IN WHICH HECTOR ARISES FROM THE DITCH.

He stood for a moment breathless and paralysed with surprise; then he began slowly and deliberately to examine the tunnel step by step. When he had proceeded a hundred feet from the spot, to his great relief he came upon Jack Hamlin, sitting upright in a side drift. His manner was feverish and excited, and his declaration that he had not moved from the place where Gabriel had left him at once was accepted by the latter as the aberration of incipient inflammation and fever. When Gabriel stated that it was time to go, he replied, "Yes," and added with such significance that his business with the murderer of Victor Ramirez was now over, and that he was ready to enter the Lunatic Asylum at once, that Gabriel with great precipitation lifted him in his arms and carried him without delay from the tunnel. Once more in the open air the energies of both men seemed to rally; Jack became as a mere feather in Gabriel's powerful arms, and even forgot his querulous opposition to being treated as a helpless child, while Gabriel trod the familiar banks of the ditch, climbed the long ascent and threaded the aisles of the pillared pines of Reservoir Hill with the free experienced feet of the mountaineer. Here Gabriel knew he was safe until daybreak, and gathered together some withered pine boughs and its fragrant ta.s.sels for a couch for his helpless companion. And here, as he feared, fever set in; the respiration of the wounded man grew quick and hurried; he began to talk rapidly and incoherently, of Olly, of Ramirez, of the beautiful girl whose picture hung upon his breast, of Gabriel himself, and finally of a stranger who was, as it seemed to him, his sole auditor, the gratuitous coinage of his excited fancy. Once or twice he raised his voice to a shout, and then to Gabriel's great alarm suddenly he began to sing, and before Gabriel could place his hand upon his mouth he had trolled out the verse of a popular ballad. The rus.h.i.+ng river below them gurgled, beat its bars, and sang an accompaniment, the swaying pine sighed and creaked in unison, the patient stars above them stared and bent breathlessly, and then to Gabriel's exalted consciousness an echo of the wounded man's song arose from the gulch below! For a moment he held his breath with an awful mingling of joy and fear. Was he going mad too? or was it really the voice of little Olly? The delirious man beside him answered his query with another verse; the antiphonal response rose again from the valley. Gabriel hesitated no longer, but with feverish hands gathered a few dried twigs and pine cones into a pile, and touched a match to them. At the next moment they flashed a beacon to the sky, in another there was a crackling of the underbrush and the hurried onset of two figures, and before the slow Gabriel could recover from his astonishment, Olly flew, panting, to his arms, while her companion, the faithful Pete, sank breathlessly beside his wounded and insensible master.

Olly was first to find her speech. That speech, after the unfailing instincts of her s.e.x in moments of excitement, was the instant arraignment of somebody else as the cause of that excitement, and at once put the whole universe on the defensive.

"Why didn't you send word where you was?" she said, impatiently, "and wot did you have it so dark for, and up a steep hill, and leavin' me alone at Wingdam, and why didn't you call without singin'?"

And then Gabriel, after the fas.h.i.+on of _his_ s.e.x, ignored all but the present, and holding Olly in his arms, said--

"It's my little girl, ain't it? Come to her own brother Gabe! bless her!"

Whereat Mr. Hamlin, after the fas.h.i.+on of lunatics of any s.e.x, must needs be consistent, and break out again into song.

"He's looney, Olly, what with fever along o' bein' shot in the leg a'

savin' me, ez izn't worth savin'," explained Gabriel, apologetically.

"It was him ez did the singin'."

Then Olly, still following the feminine instinct, at once deserted conscious rect.i.tude for indefensible error, and flew to Mr. Hamlin's side.

"Oh, where is he hurt, Pete? is he going to die?"

And Pete, suspicious of any medication but his own, replied doubtfully, "He looks bad, Miss Olly, dat's a fac--but now bein' in my han's, bress de Lord A'mighty, and we able to minister to him, we hopes fur de bess.

Your brudder meant well, is a fair meanin' man, miss--a toll'able nuss, but he ain't got the peerfeshn'l knowledge dat Mars Jack in de habit o'

gettin'." Here Pete unslung from his shoulders a wallet, and proceeded to extract therefrom a small medicine case, with the resigned air of the family physician, who has been called full late to remedy the practice of rustic empiricism.