Gabriel Conroy Part 9

"How have you identified the young girl?"

"By her clothing, which was marked."

Philip remembered that Grace had changed her clothes for the suit of a younger brother who was dead.

"Only by that?" he asked.

"No. Dr. Devarges in his papers gives the names of the occupants of the hut. We have accounted for all but her brother, and a fellow by the name of Ashley."

"How do you account for them?" asked Philip with a dark face.

"Ran away! What can you expect from that cla.s.s of people?" said the surgeon with a contemptuous shrug.

"What cla.s.s?" asked Philip almost savagely.

"My dear boy," said the surgeon, "you know them as well as I. Didn't they always pa.s.s the Fort where we were stationed? Didn't they beg what they could, and steal what they otherwise couldn't get, and then report to Was.h.i.+ngton the incompetency of the military? Weren't they always getting up rows with the Indians and then sneaking away to let us settle the bill? Don't you remember them--the men gaunt, sickly, vulgar, low-toned; the women dirty, snuffy, prematurely old and prematurely prolific?"

Philip tried to combat this picture with his recollection of Grace's youthful features, but somehow failed. Within the last half-hour his instinctive fastidiousness had increased a hundredfold. He looked at the doctor, and said "Yes."

"Of course," said the surgeon. "It was the old lot. What could you expect? People who could be strong only in proportion to their physical strength, and losing everything with the loss of that? There have been selfishness, cruelty--G.o.d knows--perhaps murder done here!"

"Yes, yes," said Philip, hastily; "but you were speaking of this girl, Grace Conroy; what do you know of her?"

"Nothing, except that she was found lying there dead with her name on her clothes and her sister's blanket in her arms, as if the wretches had stolen the dying child from the dead girl's arms. But you, Arthur, how chanced you to be here in this vicinity? Are you stationed here?"

"No, I have resigned from the army."

"Good! and you are here"----

"Alone!"

"Come, we will talk this over as we return. You will help me make out my report. This you know, is an official inquiry, based upon the alleged clairvoyant quality of our friend Blunt. I must say we have established that fact, if we have been able to do nothing more."

The surgeon then lightly sketched an account of the expedition, from its inception in a dream of Blunt (who was distinctly impressed with the fact that a number of emigrants were peris.h.i.+ng from hunger in the Sierras) to his meeting with Philip, with such deftness of cynical humour and playful satire--qualities that had lightened the weariness of the mess-table of Fort Bobadil--that the young men were both presently laughing. Two or three of the party who had been engaged in laying out the unburied bodies, and talking in whispers, hearing these fine gentlemen make light of the calamity in well-chosen epithets, were somewhat ashamed of their own awe, and less elegantly, and I fear less grammatically, began to be jocose too. Whereat the fastidious Philip frowned, the surgeon laughed, and the two friends returned to the entrance of the canon, and thence rode out of the valley together.

Philip's reticence regarding his own immediate past was too characteristic to excite any suspicion or surprise in the mind of his friend. In truth, the doctor was too well pleased with his presence, and the undoubted support which he should have in Philip's sympathetic tastes and congenial habits, to think of much else. He was proud of his friend--proud of the impression he had made among the rude unlettered men with whom he was forced by the conditions of frontier democracy to a.s.sociate on terms of equality. And Philip, though young, was accustomed to have his friends proud of him. Indeed, he always felt some complacency with himself that he seldom took advantage of this fact.

Satisfied that he might have confided to the doctor the truth of his connection with the ill-fated party and his flight with Grace, and that the doctor would probably have regarded him as a hero, he felt less compunction at his suppression of the fact.

Their way lay by Monument Point and the dismantled cairn. Philip had already pa.s.sed it on his way to the canon, and had felt a thankfulness for the unexpected tragedy that had, as he believed, conscientiously relieved him of a duty to the departed naturalist, yet he could not forego a question.

"Is there anything among these papers and collections worth our preserving?" he asked the surgeon.

The doctor, who had not for many months had an opportunity to air his general scepticism, was nothing if not derogatory.

"No," he answered, shortly. "If there were any way that we might restore them to the living Dr. Devarges, they might minister to his vanity, and please the poor fellow. I see nothing in them that should make them worthy to survive him."

The tone was so like Dr. Devarges' own manner, as Philip remembered it, that he smiled grimly and felt relieved. When they reached the spot Nature seemed to have already taken the same cynical view; the metallic case was already deeply sunken in the snow, the wind had scattered the papers far and wide, and even the cairn itself had tumbled into a shapeless, meaningless ruin.

CHAPTER IX.

IN WHICH THE FOOTPRINTS ARE LOST FOR EVER.

A fervid May sun had been baking the adobe walls of the Presidio of San Ramon, firing the red tiles, scorching the black courtyard, and driving the mules and vaqueros of a train that had just arrived into the shade of the long galleries of the quadrangle, when the _Comandante_, who was taking his noonday _siesta_ in a low, studded chamber beside the guard-room, was gently awakened by his secretary. For thirty years the noonday slumbers of the Commander had never been broken; his first thought was the heathen!--his first impulse to reach for his trusty Toledo. But, as it so happened, the cook had borrowed it that morning to rake _tortillas_ from the Presidio oven, and Don Juan Salvatierra contented himself with sternly demanding the reason for this unwonted intrusion.

"A senorita--an American--desires an immediate audience."

Don Juan removed the black silk handkerchief which he had tied round his grizzled brows, and sat up. Before he could a.s.sume a more formal att.i.tude, the door was timidly opened, and a young girl entered. For all the disfigurement of scant, coa.r.s.e, ill-fitting clothing, or the hollowness of her sweet eyes, and even the tears that dimmed their long lashes; for all the sorrow that had pinched her young cheek and straightened the corners of her childlike mouth, she was still so fair, so frank, so youthful, so innocent and helpless, that the _Comandante_ stood erect, and then bent forward in a salutation that almost swept the floor. Apparently the prepossession was mutual. The young girl took a quick survey of the gaunt but gentlemanlike figure before her, cast a rapid glance at the serious but kindly eyes that shone above the Commander's iron-grey mustachios, dropped her hesitating, timid manner, and, with an impulsive gesture and a little cry, ran forward and fell upon her knees at his feet. The Commander would have raised her gently, but she restrained his hand.

"No, no, listen! I am only a poor, poor girl, without friends or home. A month ago, I left my family starving in the mountains, and came away to get them help. My brother came with me. G.o.d was good to us, Senor, and after a weary tramp of many days we found a trapper's hut, and food and shelter. Philip, my brother, went back alone to succour them. He has not returned. Oh, sir, he may be dead; they all may be dead--G.o.d only knows!

It is three weeks ago since he left me; three weeks! It is a long time to be alone, Senor, a stranger in a strange land. The trapper was kind, and sent me here to you for a.s.sistance. You will help me? I know you will. You will find them, my friends, my little sister, my brother!"

The Commander waited until she had finished, and then gently lifted her to a seat by his side. Then he turned to his secretary, who, with a few hurried words in Spanish, answered the mute inquiry of the Commander's eyes. The young girl felt a thrill of disappointment as she saw that her personal appeal had been lost and unintelligible; it was with a slight touch of defiance that was new to her nature that she turned to the secretary who advanced as interpreter.

"You are an American?"

"Yes," said the girl, curtly, who had taken one of the strange, swift, instinctive dislikes of her s.e.x to the man.

"How many years?"

"Fifteen."

The Commander, almost unconsciously, laid his brown hand on her cl.u.s.tering curls.

"Name?"

She hesitated and looked at the Commander.

"Grace," she said.

Then she hesitated; and, with a defiant glance at the secretary, added--

"Grace Ashley!"

"Give to me the names of some of your company, Mees Graziashly."

Grace hesitated.

"Philip Ashley, Gabriel Conroy, Peter Dumphy, Mrs. Jane Dumphy," she said at last.

The secretary opened a desk, took out a printed doc.u.ment, unfolded it, and glanced over its contents. Presently he handed it to the Commander with the comment "_Bueno._" The Commander said "_Bueno_" also, and glanced kindly and rea.s.suringly at Grace.

"An expedition from the upper Presidio has found traces of a party of Americans in the Sierra," said the secretary monotonously. "There are names like these."

"It is the same--it is our party!" said Grace, joyously.