Old Misery/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
THE committee of five prospected the valley widely, taking care to keep away from Bill Williams' retreat under the overhanging ledge. For several days they ranged back and forth. Old Misery was annoyed by their presence, but bowing before the immutable law that gives gold the right of way. At last, in disgust, they went down the valley for the last time and dispersed in search of new prospects.
Shortly after they broke camp Old Misery, unaccompanied by the bear, wandered far up the valley and did not return until the next day.
To Gilbert he said:
“I'm going away for a bit pretty soon. While I'm gone you stick close here. Weymouth Mass will see that no one bothers you when he's round, and that streak of scarlet will lead you into hiding if it looks stormy while Weymouth's away. I'm going back in the hills higher up and make a new medicine.”
He took cooked food with him and was gone until night. He was in a bad humor when he returned and cursed much under his breath. Gilbert could not imagine what could be the trouble. The mountain man entered the cabin that night and rubbed his arms with something from a bottle.
Gilbert offered to rub his back and was surprised to be courteously encouraged:
“Go ahead.”
“Panther oil,” grunted Misery as the young man kneaded the shoulder muscles. “Powerful good for aches and lames.”
“You must have wrenched yourself in some way,” remarked Gilbert as he rippled his oiled fingers up and down each side of the backbone.
“That hurts like hell and feels powerful good!” groaned Misery. “If you mean I lamed myself, I done it in every way. There, younker! Reckon that'll do. Hau! Begin to feel wolfish again.”
He was gone the next day, not returning until night. There was more complaining and grumbling, but so obscurely expressed as to convey no meaning; and there was more rubbing with the oil. For four days this was kept up, much to the young man's mystification.
He ventured to inquire of the girl Maria, but she cut him short with—
“When Senor Comandante wants his beeznis told he will tell. Is it not?”
And to his chagrin she appeared to be avoiding him thereafter, and he saw her only in glimpses.
Her old grandfather seldom wandered from his cabin door, and then only to feel his way with a staff to the prohibited area of pines. Weymouth and the sailor must have been prospecting at some distance as they did not return. Left thus alone Gilbert was very lonely. He made great friends with Bill Williams and played much with the young bears. The panther kittens and wolf pups seemed to appreciate his attentions, and although the former spat at him yet they tolerated his fondling their heads.
Once Maria came up to the cage as he was petting the kittens and remarked:
“Like a woman, Senor Gilbert. Is it not? They do not show how they feel. They act ver' angry; they feel ver' please.”
And she darted him one of her enigmatical glances.
“They are deceitful little wretches,” he agreed.
“Mos' women are,” she admitted; but he had reference to the kittens.
At the end of the fourth day Old Misery returned with sprightly step and singing the Sioux song of an Elk Dreamer. His eyes were bright and lively.
“One more of them medicine rubs, younker, and I'll be fit to sing a Kiowy travel-song and be hoofing it.”
“We're going away?” eagerly asked Gilbert. “And I can begin to earn my keep?”
“You've earned it with them rubs, and by making friends with my friends. I'm carrying the pipe alone. Sorry, younker, but bimeby the trail will be wide 'nough for both to hoof it together. You have a medicine way with them cats. One of 'em tried to claw hell out of my hand. Let's see your paws.”
Only a few minor scratches showed.
“You have a wakan way with 'em for sartain,” admiringly declared the mountain man. “Them's only love digs. I'm for my blankets. Must start early. If I was back in Vermont I'd be three hours on my way afore waking up. Be back in a few days. Stick close to camp.”
Gilbert was asleep while the mountain man prepared for his journey. The girl Maria appeared, however, and cooked his breakfast in the open. Pausing only to pat Bill Williams' sleepy head, he started down the valley, his back to the new sun.
As he reached the fringe of timber choking the lower end of the valley Maria overtook him and softly cried:
“Senor Comandante goes away without the bear?”
“You knew that, Maria. You see me start off alone. Now what is it?” he quizzed.
“Who is commandante until Senor Comandante comes back?”
He grinned and suggested: “The young Americano.”
“No, no!” she sharply cried. “Not heem. He is what you call a greenhorn.”
“Well, then I'll name Bill Williams.”
“Nombre de Dios! Beel Williams " she gasped. Then coaxingly, “Let Senor Comandante say Maria is comandante until he comes back.”
“Not for a jug of the best Sonora brandy, you young streak of scarlet. And remember; no tricks on the Americano. He is in trouble along of your deviltry. See that the pups and kittens don't git loose. Feed Bill well and take him for a walk each day in the pines. Remember, don't go to giving any orders to the younker. He's in 'nough trouble without having a woman to boss him. Good-by. Be a good girl. I'm coming back in a few days.”
She ran back to her cabin and he resumed his journey. Besides his rifle and knife he carried a Colt's navy revolver, so called to commemorate Commodore E. W. Moore's work in organizing a navy for the State of Texas and in defeating the Mexican fleet in 1843.
Misery pursued a course a few miles to the east of Dutch Flat on Bear River and traveled southwest, making occasional detours to avoid a camp or isolated cabin. Soft-footed as a mountain lion he would glide through a stretch of timber within sound of men's voices without revealing his presence. At Iowa Hill he halted and bought a meal and a drink at a tent. Without Bill Williams for a companion he was not conspicuous, for other men in buckskin were frequently wandering down the west side of the Sierra to watch the moles at work. He decided to call it a day's work when near Kelly's Bar on the North Fork of the American. It was a beautiful rolling country and columned with enormous pines although the ever hungry sawmills were threatening soon to denude the land. Near by were three slab huts. Some distance beyond was a sawmill surrounded by huge stumps.
“Damn fools is worse 'n beavers,” he growled as he strode up to the nearest hut.
A tall, round-shouldered man in snuff-colored trousers and butternut shirt appeared in the doorway and fastened his melancholy gaze on Misery.
“This place oughter be Illinoistown,” commented the mountain man.
The man nodded wearily.
“What you got to eat?” asked Misery.
“Stewed squirrels. Not many.”
“Meaning I ain't welcome and me willing to pay?” demanded the mountain man.
“Meaning that a hellion asleep inside 'lows he's going to eat all of 'em, stranger,” replied the man in a low voice. “I'm thinking of going over and eating with the mill-men.”
Old Misery's spirits lifted. He had disliked making this particular journey. He rejoiced that his medicine had seen fit to provide him with diversion.
“The better man oughter eat stewed squirrels,” he reflected. “And I'm powerful fond of 'em. You're a Pike?”
“Crawly City, nigh Huntersville. 'Low I'll be mizzlin'. That hellion might wake up any minute. And his whisky's all gone. He's going to be master mad, stranger.”
Old Misery grinned contentedly, placed his rifle on the ground and spat on his hands, and advised:
“You trail along to the mill. I'll have a look at this varmint who's fond of the same kind of meat as I be.”
“He'll do you a 'tarnal hurt,” warned the Pike County man, hastily quitting the doorway.
“Mebbe. I've been chawed and clawed by 'bout every thing from the Upper Missouri to Sonora below the line. My medicine tells me you better be going. Innercent folks just looking on sometimes git killed.”
From the hut a ferocious voice roared:
“Hell and alkali! Who took that bottle?”
The Pike County man ran for the mill with the speed of a deer. Old Misery dropped his revolver and knife on the ground and stole to the doorway. He could hear the man moving about as he gave voice to bloodcurdling threats.
Then he came to the door, and instantly the mountain man leaped upon him, yelling:
“Damn you! You'll eat stewed squirrels, will you?”
With a howl of rage the other accepted combat, and in the semi-darkness of the hut they revolved and fought like wildcats.
“I'll eat your heart!” promised the stranger.
Old Misery gave him his knee, stamped on his foot and drove his elbow against the side of his head, and in return received a smash that for a second flattened him against the side of the hut. Almost instantly he was attacking and ducking low as the other loosed a terrific blow. The mountain man seized his opponent around the knees; then by the simple process of throwing himself on his back he shot the fellow over his head and through the doorway. The stranger was below medium height, but of powerful frame. He struck heavily, and before he could get to his feet Old Misery was on his back and hoarsely sounding a war-whoop.
The man ceased struggling and grunted: “You, Misery?”
The raised fist was lowered. Seizing the long hair, the mountain man jerked the man's head to one side and got his first look at the fellow's face.
“Damned if it ain't Tom Tobin! Now we've got to divvy them stewed squirrels.”
Tobin, Irish and hot-tempered, was a veteran mountain man and had found paths with Carson for other men to follow.
His homely, brick-red face twisted into a broad grin as he greeted:
“You'd never fetched me, Misery, if you hadn't been low-down 'nough to bite.”
“Never went for to bite you, Tom,” earnestly replied Old Misery as they clasped hands. “I was just going to let out my Crow yell when you butted me and my mouth slipped. You little runt! I ain't had so much fun since the Cheyennes had me cornered in the North River Mountains. Let's go in and finish them squirrels.”
Tobin cursed him fondly, and after the stew was finished they sat late into the night, telling their experiences. The Pike County man and the mill-men stole up and listened to the stirring recitals. Tobin had been fighting Comanches, Apaches and Kiowas while Old Misery was working at the bay for the Hudson's Bay Company. After Tobin finished an unusually blood-curdling bit of history his friend remained silent for nearly a minute then startled his audience by sounding a war-whoop.
And he confessed:
“I've been missing lots of fun, Tom. I'm homesick for the Rockies. No Injuns worth fighting out here. They eat cat'pillars. Snare rabbits. Make good ranch men if the whites don't kill 'em all off. I've wintered half a dozen lodges, or they'd 'a' starved. Some miners don't think nothing of shooting the poor devils. You've give me an itch to cross over the ridge.”
One of the mill-men spoke up, saying:
“Saw a feller over to Coloma week ago who's crazy to go back East. Seems homesick for it like you be, mister. He's been out here three seasons and has made a little strike.”
“Uh-uh,” grunted Misery, discouragingly. “I ain't hankering to go back East. I was thinking of the Rockies.”
“This feller wants to go 'way back. They call him 'Pretty Soon Jim.'”
“Jim Pipps!” exclaimed Misery, now interested. “Well, if that poor, long, lengthy devil has made a strike I'm glad to hear it. He's 'bout as much good out here as a powder-horn in hell.”
In the morning the friends parted. Tobin was bound for Marysville; he promised to look Misery up after the latter had explained that his camp was in “the foothills of the Sierra.”
The mountain man felt strangely lonesome as he walked to Kelly's Bar. His mind persisted in dwelling on the Rockies and the plains, where animal life was stalwart and dignified, and where there were many red men worthy to follow a great chief. He even gave a thought to Jim Pipps, the strange, eccentric character who was ever talking about “going home, pretty soon.”
Descending to the river, he did not halt at the rocky bar but climbed the opposite slope and hastened on until he sighted a ranch in a majestic grove of pines. The building looked very tiny, and he would have passed it if not for the canvas sign that announced:
THE GRIZZLY-BEAR HOUSE
The name appealed, and he decided to stop and eat. Had his business been less pressing he would have tarried and tried the hunting. The skin of a grizzly, covering the greater part of one side of the dining-room, touched his ambition. He felt the need of much action, as the meeting with Tobin had left him uneasy, restless and dissatisfied. He could see he had been losing precious years while he lived at Yerba Buena and watched it magically spring into San Francisco.
After dinner he went his way, but was tempted to sound his war-cry and run back and challenge all marksmen as the crack of rifles told him the ranch loungers were having a shooting-match.
Fifteen miles over a well-traveled trail were covered with the long, ceaseless stride of his kind, bringing him to Spanish Bar on the Middle Fork of the American. From the top of the high ridge he could trace the thread-like river far below as it wound in and out among the mountains. He worked down the steep slope with the ease of long training, and half-way down met a small band of prospectors toiling upward.
The leader cried: “For lord's sake! Where is the top?”
The bar, half a mile long and several hundred yards wide, had its single street of huts and tents jammed back against the base of the mountains. It would be two hours before the miners would leave their heaps of stone, hot with the reflected rays of the sun, and Old Misery did not care to wait. At a large tent announcing itself to be “The United States Hotel” he traded virgin gold for cooked beef, pickles and bread.
As Old Misery paid a man to take him across the river and was entering the dugout the hotel proprietor ran from his tent, loudly bawling:
“Hi! Old man! Come back here! This gold. Want to talk to you about it.”
“He wants you to come back,” said the ferryman, starting to back paddle.
“Go on, or I'll cut all your ha'r off,” threatened Misery, tapping his long knife.
As the dugout approached the southern bank red shirted miners came running from their diggings, eager to overtake the stranger who carried gold with sharp edges, such as was never laid down by tertiary rivers. Several commenced crossing in a second dugout as the mountain man leaped ashore. But there was none in Spanish Bar who could overtake him once he breasted the long slope and its network of paths. Two men made the endeavor but were fairly winded a third of the way up the ridge when he disappeared over the top.
Having shaken off the curious ones, Old Misery circled around Greenwood and entered the long, winding Greenwood (or Long's) Valley. Cutting into this were many small ravines which extended back into the low hills. When Old Misery last traveled this way men were frantically digging for gold. All those had passed on, and only the holes in the dry creek and the side ravines testified to their early efforts. There were cabins scattered along the twisting creek bed, but none was occupied, and only the chatter of squirrels and the scolding of blue-jays were to be heard.
“A man didn't oughter be crowded in here with so many lodges to choose from,” he mused aloud as he halted and proceeded to eat his supper. “Wish Tom Tobin was here. Said I bit him! The derned, lying little cuss! In a minute more he'd lost an ear.”
He had planned to camp there beside one of the empty cabins, but now that dusk was trailing around the rocky bends his memory quickened and the place lost its appeal. He recalled the tragic occurrence at Dry Diggings, nine miles from Coloma, back in January of 1849. Five men had tried to rob the gambler Lopez but were captured almost on the spot. Three of them were hanged—Garcia, Bissi and Manuel. And Dry Diggings promptly came to be known as “Hangtown” because of this first sample of rude justice bestowed on rogues in California. Hangtown the place would always be to Old Misery although now wearing the more euphonious name of Placerville.
What connected the early lynching with the valley, however, was the story of another of the five robbers, who was whipped and banished, and whose career was never finished in any printed annals. The story went that he was pursued and overtaken in this valley by a small band of men and hanged to a pine by the side of the cabin on Misery's left. Only the cabin had not stood there when the miserable victim of unglutted vengeance was executed. Old-timers in camp under moaning pines had told Misery of the dead robber's spirit wandering about the valley, wearing the white cloth the executioners from some whim had tied over his head. And Old Misery believed in ghosts as firmly as any of the Indian tribes he had lived with or had fought against.
“Comfort,” he told his rifle, “we can git along good with anything you can see to shoot, but if that dead cuss is still wandering round these parts we ain't carrying any pipe against him. We'll jog along a spell farther to where there ain't no bones to cover.”
He decided to push through to Coloma, only a few miles distant, although his preference was for a bed in the open. As it was he did not enter the town, but spread his blankets a short distance out.
Coloma revealed few symptoms of being a busy mining-center, although it was here that gold was first dis covered to light the fires of greed throughout the world. After the first rush in 1848 the diggings had not proved exceptionally good. The houses scattered along the foot of the mountain were neat and painted and suggested homes of an agricultural community; for it was an old town with five years of history behind it.
Old Misery went to a hotel and while eating breakfast heard much loud laughing from the adjoining barroom. Finishing his meal he stepped into the bar to learn the cause of the merriment. Half a dozen men appeared to be making sport of a tall, thin man whose long face was both melancholy and wistful. His garments looked as if he had picked them up from mining-camp dumps. He carried no weapons.
“Now, Pipps, you had your chance,” a man was saying as Old Misery stepped inside the door; “you had your chance. You found a three-thousand-dollar pocket, and instead of going back home you gambled it away. Here you are, wanting a drink and lacking the price.”
“But I spent a tolerable lot of the dust over this bar,” countered Pipps. “As for gambling, I never do, nor did. Last thing I remember is a feller saying, 'Derned if he ain't lost it all.' Then I woke up this morning dry and nothing in my pockets.”
A shout of amusement greeted this.
The spokesman continued:
“Your credit went with your money. If you'll solemnly promise to work for me in the store ten hours to-day I'll buy you a drink and pay you five dollars to-night.”
“I'd like to work for you, Mr. Stacy, if I could afford to; but I'm in a hustle to get back in the hills and find another pocket. Let me find it and I'll be going home pretty soon.”
This assertion, spoken with great earnestness, appealed to the idlers as being rich with humor, and they laughed much.
“He can't afford to work for Mr. Stacy,” chuckled the bartender. “Working in a store a whole day might poison him.”
More bantering followed, the victim fumbling at his thin beard and glancing wistfully from face to face.
The storekeeper continued:
“All I asked was for you to promise. If you can't do that much you can't drink. That right, boys?”
The group heartily approved.
Pipps sighed and turned to leave the room, apologizing:
“I don't want to 'pear perked up, but if I promised I'd have to bide by it.”
“And that's a hell of a lot more'n lots of folks in this burying-ground would do,” spoke up the raucous voice of the mountain man as he blocked Pipps' path.
Before an angry reply could be made from any of the onlookers Old Misery had led Pipps back to the bar and had laid down a small piece of gold and was ordering:
“A bottle of whisky if you've got time to spare from funning to wait on me.”
“Land sakes alive if it ain't Old Misery!” gasped Pipps.
“Who'n hell be you?” demanded the bartender, objecting to having trade interrupt the morning's sport.
A buckskin-clad arm shot across the bar, and a strong hand gripped the drink-server's well oiled topknot, and the mountain man was explaining:
“I'm the man who ain't took a sculp for so long that my knife needs limbering up.”
“Back up, Jack. You're new here or you'd know.”
Then to the mountain man:
“You're Old Misery from up Yuba River way?”
“I be,” complacently admitted the mountain man, releasing his prisoner.
The latter hastily pushed forward a bottle.
Old Misery filled his glass and told Pipps:
“Pretty Soon, have a snort or two. What's the talk 'bout your frittering away your dust gambling?”
“But I never gambled, Misery,” eagerly insisted Pretty Soon Jim Pipps as he gulped down a tall drink. “Some one said I'd lost it all, and it was gone.”
“Just low-down stealing,” growled Old Misery, casting an ugly glance at the citizens.
“Coloma's an orderly town. We have no stealings here,” insisted the storekeeper.
“Never knew a dead town to do much r'aring and prancing. If you didn't talk I'd think this place was asleep. But Pretty Soon Jim ain't no liar. I believe him. Some low-down skunk robbed him while he was fool-drunk.”
He glared belligerently around for a few moments, then asked Pipps:
“What'll you do next?”
Pipps took another drink, dubious as to the elasticity of the mountain man's hospitality, and explained:
“Got to find another pocket. I was all ready to go back home. Now I'll have to wait another season. It's cruel hard, too.”
Some one snickered.
Old Misery encouraged:
“Don't you mind 'em, Pretty Soon. If they'd lost a ounce of dust they'd be bleating so's one could hear it in Stockton. Best thing you can do is to work for day wages and go home next spring.”
Warmed by the liquor, Pretty Soon Jim straightened his long figure and loudly asserted his intention to remain a free man. He would return to prospecting and make another strike. Let him but uncover another pocket and Joaquin Murieta himself couldn't take it from him.
The bartender hoarsely broke in:
“Leave out threats against Murieta when you're in here. We don't want to be shot up, or burned out along of your fool talk.”
“Talk 'bout him all you want to,” said Old Misery. “You're a better man then he is, Pretty Soon. What you git you come by honest, and you keep your word.”
The bartender subsided.
Pretty Soon Jim, stiffened with artificial assurance, clutched the bottle tightly and boldly met the gaze of the citizens and loudly harangued: “Three's a lucky number. Yes, siree! And this is my third year in this forsaken place. When the season opened I felt it in my blood that pretty soon I was going home. Yes, sir! Then I struck that pocket. Some one robbed me. I don't gamble. It don't matter; I'll uncover another while my luck's high. I ain't no man's slave. I've fared lean at times, but I've worked only for myself since landing here.”
“He feels whisky in his veins,” spoke up one of the citizens.
“S'pose all of you feel some of it in yours and close your yap,” suggested Old Misery, and he tossed another nugget on the bar.
As the men advanced to accept the curt invitation Stacy with quickening gaze took the gold from the bartender's hand and examined it closely. Slowly his face became flushed. He attempted to pass back the gold before his companions could observe it, but they were too quick for him. Crowding about him each in turn stared at it, and then directed a wolfish glance at the mountain man.
“Ledge! Richer'n spatter!” one huskily whispered.
“Mr. Misery, where'd you get this?” gently asked the storekeeper.
The mountain man grinned at the change in their demeanor. The bartender set out a bottle before each customer and then examined the nugget and wished he possessed some knowledge of mining, and wondered how he could profit by the queer old man's discovery.
“Got it a long ways from here,” explained Misery. “No one knows the spot 'cept me and a certain old bald eagle. Now, Pretty Soon, no more drinks on a' empty stomach. You go in and eat a big lot of meat. I'll see you some time to-day.”
To the bartender he directed: “All he wants to eat but no more liquor till afternoon. I'm paying.”
Pretty Soon smiled amiably and made for the dining-room.
“Yes, sir.”
“He can come over to the store and eat dinner with me,” eagerly offered the storekeeper. “I'll sort of keep an eye on him so's he won't get blind drunk. Any friend of yours, Mr. Misery—”
“He ain't got guts 'nough to be a friend even to hisself,” broke in the mountain man, scowling at the complacent, weak face of the smiling Pipps. “But he's a harmless critter. Robbing him is as bad as robbing a baby. It's too bad that when a parcel of digger-and-root Injuns want to have fun with somebody they can't pick out a man that'll kick back.
“Now, me: I'd love to be playful. Just to show I like to be friendly and have some fun I'll bet a pound of this kind of gold chunks I'm carrying that the whole tribe of you can't put me out of this room. And we'll all heave our weepins into the corner afore starting the game.” And his gaze was warm and beaming as he made the offer.
Heads were shaken, and the half-circle grew wider. The storekeeper declared that Coloma prized his infrequent visits too highly to indulge in rough sport that might cause an injury.
“But I'd be gentle,” pleaded Misery, reaching for the bottle, then pushing it away.
The men retreated one by one through the doorway, not necessarily in fear but to make preparations for a hurried journey once the mountain man left the town. Each man planned to trail Old Misery, and each distrusted the others.
Stacy was the last to go; and, having Old Misery to himself, he frankly offered:
“Let me put up a lot of money to develop that ledge, Mr. Misery. I've got the ready cash at the store. Those other fellows have only their picks and shovels. We'll need a mill. I can pay for it. You'll want some one to manage it, dividing the profits equal. I'm a business man. I can satisfy you I'm honest.”
“I'll think it over,” Old Misery gravely told him. “While I'm doing that you just remember Pretty Soon Jim here is a friend of mine. If I take any one with me I probably will ask Jim to name the man, me not being so well acquainted round these parts as he is.”
“I am his friend and proud to be,” warmly cried the storekeeper. “This is no place for him to pass the day in.”
“What's the matter with this place?” fiercely demanded the bartender.
“He'd drink too much rum; that's the matter with it. He must come to my store. If you don't call for him this afternoon he must come to my home to-night.”
“That talk sounds all right. I'll find him at your store. Now I'll look round a bit and git the kinks out my legs,” said Old Misery.
His strolling took him to the outskirts of the town on the north side, where he paused and talked briefly with several citizens. When last seen he was making north from the town. Those who spied on him feared he had gone for good and roundly cursed their negligence in not being ready to trail him. But at dusk he returned, only now he was unobserved as the main street was singularly deserted. Before seeking Pretty Soon Jim at Stacy's store he decided he would refresh himself at the hotel bar. To his surprise the barroom was so crowded with citizens that he could not at first get beyond the doorway. Despite this unusual gathering there was no talking. The bartender leaned limply against the end of the bar, his eyes staring toward the end of the room. All eyes were turned in that direction.
Old Misery tugged a man's arm and asked: “What's the trouble?”
“Murder!” exclaimed the man without shifting his gaze from the lower end of the bar.
The mountain man now observed the crowd was intent on that end of the room, and he knew the victim was there on the floor.
Suddenly another head appeared in the little opening, and the man was facing the silent spectators and loudly saying:
“He's dead. Barely managed to whisper two words—”
“The name, doctor! The name!” cried a man.
Others caught up the cry, the lust for vengeance shattering the death-like quiet of the place.
The doctor lifted a hand for silence and explained:
“His two words were 'six bags.' He doubtless referred to what the murderer stole. He was knifed three times from behind. Probably while kneeling to put away his gold in the strong box. It's quite remarkable that he managed to walk over here.”
“Pipps done for him!" some one yelled. “He was at the store 'most all day. He's too drunk to git far!”
“We'll git him and hang him front the store!' cried another.
Then a babel of yells and imprecations made talk impossible. The doctor forced his way toward the door; the crowding, surging throng carried Old Misery close to the upper end of the bar, where the bartender, wild of eye, was leaning.
“Who's killed?” Old Misery demanded.
The bartender ran his tongue over his lips and managed to reply: “Stacy, the storekeeper.”
“Knifed and robbed and left for dead!” howled an excited citizen standing beside the mountain man. “Just at supper time. Not more'n half a hour ago at the most.”
“There's the trail of blood where he managed to walk over here to find some of us boys,” gasped another man, trembling and sick because of the fearful tragedy.
“That drunken Pretty Soon Jim Pipps done for him,” hoarsely added the bartender. “We'll catch him before morning and string him up.”
“Pretty Soon Jim ain't got guts 'nough to kill a rabbit,” cried Old Misery. “What's to show he done it?”
The doctor had now returned and was working his way to the bar.
“There's no doubt about his doing it, old man,” he sternly replied. “He had the chance and the motive. He hasn't sand enough to face a man and rob him. But he was crazy to go home. Ordinarily as harmless as a child, he was seized with a homicidal mania when he beheld Stacy kneeling, back to him, and in the act of locking up six bags of gold. He saw a knife. He grabbed it up and struck three times! I've no doubt he acted before he thought about the consequences. For the moment he was a mad man—”
“He'll stretch just the same!” roared one of the infuriated men.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders and quietly replied:
“That's for you folks to decide. We have no institutions here for caring for the criminally insane. But let's be orderly, even in arranging a hanging. The man is too well-known to escape. He's too drunk to get very far. Stacy's dead there in the corner. Let's spend a few minutes fitting the evidence together.”
“Pretty Soon was bu'sted. Lost three thousand in dust last night. That is, lost what he didn't blow in at this bar,” spoke up the bartender.
“Every one knows how crazy he's been for two seasons to go back home. That hankering got him his name,” eagerly supplied another.
“And Stacy took him there this morning. Kept him to dinner. Let him sleep on a pile of blankets this afternoon. I was in there about three o'clock and heard him snoring.”
“I told you not to sell him no more liquor,” Old Misery shot at the bartender.
“And I didn't. He went over to the store right after breakfast,” earnestly assured the bartender.
“You can take it for a fact Stacy didn't let him have any drinks,” continued Old Misery. “He was too keen to share in on a rich ledge of mine to do anything to fret me. So we have Pretty Soon staying there to dinner and sleeping off what rum he had afore breakfast. Who seen him after three o'clock in the afternoon?”
It transpired that none remembered seeing him; that none present was in the store after that hour.
But one man triumphantly reminded:
“Still he's cleared out, and Stacy's bled to death in this room. And the six bags of gold is missing.”
“It looks like Pretty Soon Jim, old man, and no one else,” calmly said the doctor.
“It looks!” scoffed the mountain man. “I've seen a burnt sugar-pine stump look so 'zactly like a grizzly that I emptied Solid Comfort into it. Here's one thing in Pretty Soon Jim's favor; he wouldn't lie. He wouldn't make a promise he didn't believe he'd keep. This morning he wouldn't say he'd do a day's work for a snort of whisky—and he did want that drink mortal bad. He promised to meet me at the store.”
“Granting all that,” quietly retorted the doctor, “the fact remains that when a man becomes unbalanced, if only for a minute, he does things he would never do when himself. It's doing the things you'd never ordinarily dream of doing, and couldn't be hired to do, that marks the crazy man. If no man ever did the undreamed of thing there would be no one mentally unbalanced.
“I honestly believe the fellow was simple and thoroughly harmless until his eagerness to go back East destroyed his balance long enough to permit him to do this horrible crime. I wouldn't be surprised if this moment he's near here; that he realizes what he's done, and is so overcome he hasn't a thought of trying to escape.”
“By God! He'll move faster'n lightning and to the Atlantic Ocean but what we git him!” came an explosive voice from the middle of the infuriated crowd.
And angry glances were cast at the mountain man.
The latter calmly insisted:
“All I want is to git at the truth. I'd planned to help the poor cuss. I had intended to take him away and fix it so's he could go back East where he belongs. But the storekeeper must 'a' said something to some one. He had strength 'nough to walk here. Didn't he see nobody while crossing the street to speak to? Didn't he say anything after he got here? Didn't he name Pretty Soon Jim?”
“The bartender was alone when he stumbled in. He says Stacy never said a word but just groaned and fell down. Jack didn't know what was the matter with him at first and tried to help him. Then he ran to the street and yelled for the boys. It was supper time and it happened every one was off the street. It was growing dark and no one, that we can find, saw him cross the street. That's the way of it, Jack?”
The bartender nodded, and in a shaky voice explained for Old Misery's benefit:
“Tried to brace him up with a drink. Didn't know what's the matter with him till I got my hands all bloody. Then I see he'd been cut. Then I ran out and hollered.”
Old Misery slowly conceded:
“If Pretty Soon Jim done this he oughter be strung up even if he's crazy. We have no places for caring for heyoka men out here. And if he'd kill once when crazy he might kill again. But I've seen him off 'n' on for more'n two seasons now, and he never showed as much spunk as a month-old cub bear. And none of you, who see him often, ever see him have any war-dreams while drunk. Liquor only made him feel grand and noble and richer'n all git-out. But if he done this thing he ain't no fit man to go back home.
“If he done this thing I must help hang him; for if it hadn't been for me he'd never gone to the store to wait all day. Too bad Stacy didn't talk any to you when you took him the drink.” This to the bartender. “Still, Pretty Soon won't lie. He'll tell us he did it if he did do it. It's mighty tough to have to help hang a man you started out to help.”
He reached out to take up a glass of liquor on the bar.
“Don't,” hurriedly restrained the man at his elbow. “That's the drink Jack tried to give poor Stacy.”
The mountain man snatched his hand back as if escaping a poisonous serpent; and he stared with dilated eyes at the glass as if fascinated.
“Tried to git him to swaller it, thinking he'd had a fit, or something,” hoarsely repeated the bartender. “He just lay there and groaned, and I set the glass down and tried to prop him up. That's when I got blood on my hands and knew something was wrong.”
Old Misery leaned against the bar, then quickly seized the man by his top-knot. Up shot the bartender's hands to break the grip, and instantly the mountain man had him by the wrists.
“What'n hell you up to now, old man?” cried the doctor.
“You wait a minute. I ain't doing any harm to nobody,” slowly warned Old Misery, without removing his gaze from the bartender's face. Then he leaned forward and whispered:
“Bullet or rope. Open winder behind you.”
Still gripping the terrified man's wrists, he told the excited, surging crowd:
“His hands are still red. Both of 'em. He's rubbed 'em on a towel, but he couldn't git it off.”
“We all know that, old man. Release him,” warned the doctor.
“I'm used to reading signs,” continued the mountain man. “He ain't washed his hands. He ain't emptied or washed the glass. But why did he bother to fetch the drink back to the bar when a man's dying, and how could he do it without color showing on the glass? It's clean as any glass in the bar. This feller lies when he says he tried to give Stacy a drink. Why did he lie? If he didn't use up any time trying to give the man a drink why wasn't he out on the street yelling for help? Yet his hands is bloody and he poured out this drink. He either poured it afore reddening his hands, or else there's a blood-marked bottle back of that bar now.”
The crowd was now as quiet as the dead man. All eyes were focused on the old mountain man and his terrified prisoner.
Looking straight at the bartender, Old Misery continued:
“In this room this morning Stacy told me he had ready money at his store, lots of it; and that he wanted to buy into a mine I'd found up north. No one else was here but this drink-slinger. He heard it. Pretty Soon Jim was in t'other room, eating his breakfast. How do you know this feller didn't slip across the street and do for Stacy while 'twas gitting dark and you was all to supper? And why couldn't this feller git back here with the dust in his apron without being seen? Stacy crossed the street without being seen. I don't say it's so, but my idee is to look behind that bar and search this lodge from top to bottom afore we go gunning for Pretty Soon Jim Pipps.
“We can always find Pretty Soon; he's simple's a child. Now if this feller knifed Stacy and took the gold he left Stacy for dead. He got back here and poured himself a stiff snort of whisky without touching the glass, and just then Stacy staggers in. The storekeeper comes to git his gold back, perhaps thinking he'd find men here to who he could name his murderer. But he 'n' the murderer are alone. It's a question of minutes afore he goes over the divide. It took most of his strength to git here.
“This feller, if he's guilty, wanted Stacy dead afore any one come in. He waited till he believed Stacy was breathing his last. He told 'bout the liquor to fill in the time afore sounding the alarm. If he could 'a' been sure no one saw Stacy cross the street he'd never said anything about trying to give Stacy a drink. Now let's take a peek behind the bar.”
And he released the man's wrists and vaulted over the bar and ducked below it. Almost at once his hand set a bottle, marked with dark finger-prints, on the bar. With a scream the bartender leaped through the window. A confusion of oaths and yells filled the room; and from behind the bar came a bag marked “Stacy,” and another and another, until six had been exhumed from the litter on the floor. With the appearance of the first bag the men were crowding and jamming at the doorway, trying to take up the pursuit. With the recovery of the last bag the mountain man wheeled to the window, and, still kneeling, rested the long navy revolver across the sill.
The white shirt of the bartender showed vaguely as the man ran for the river. The mob erupted through the congested door and into the street, yelling and whooping like mad men. And the mountain man fired once and slowly got to his feet and slowly proceeded to arrange the stolen bags on the bar alongside the blood-stained bottle and the spotless glass.
Only the doctor had remained in the room. He said nothing until after he had gone back of the bar and had found a towel. There were dark marks on it. He examined them critically, and similar marks on the bags and on the bottle.
Then he announced:
“Same finger prints on the bags and the bottle. Towel's blurred. They'll hang him even if his running away doesn't.”
“They'll never hang him, poor feller!” muttered Old Misery. “If it wa'n't for some nuggets I paid in here Stacy would 'a' never told 'bout his dust, and the drink-slinger never'd heard him and then give away to a sudden notion to steal and kill.”
“But they will hang him!” cried the doctor. “Hark! There! they've caught him now! They'll have him back here and strung up inside of ten minutes!”
The mountain man shook his head.
“No. They'll never hang him. I give him his choice of a rope or a bullet. He didn't want to choke to death.” And it was a dead man the men brought back with them.