A First Family of Tasajara

“Me,—Peters. Want to speak to you.”

Mr. Harkutt with evident reluctance drew the bolts. The wind, still boisterous and besieging, did the rest, and precipitately propelled Peters through the carefully guarded opening. But his surprise at finding himself in the darkness seemed to forestall any explanation of his visit.

“Well,” he said with an odd mingling of reproach and suspicion. “I declare I saw a light here just this minit! That’s queer.”

“Yes, I put it out just now. I was goin’ away,” replied Harkutt, with ill-disguised impatience.

“What! been here ever since?”

“No,” said Harkutt curtly.

“Well, I want to speak to ye about ‘Lige. Seein’ the candle shinin’ through the chinks I thought he might be still with ye. If he ain’t, it looks bad. Light up, can’t ye! I want to show you something.”

There was a peremptoriness in his tone that struck Harkutt disagreeably, but observing that he was carrying something in his hand, he somewhat nervously re-lit the candle and faced him. Peters had a hat in his hand. It was ‘Lige’s!

“‘Bout an hour after we fellers left here,” said Peters, “I heard the rattlin’ of hoofs on the road, and then it seemed to stop just by my house. I went out with a lantern, and, darn my skin! if there warn’t ‘Lige’s hoss, the saddle empty, and ‘Lige nowhere! I looked round and called him—but nothing were to be seen. Thinkin’ he might have slipped off—tho’ ez a general rule drunken men don’t, and he is a good rider—I followed down the road, lookin’ for him. I kept on follerin’ it down to your run, half a mile below.”

“But,” began Harkutt, with a quick nervous laugh, “you don’t reckon that because of that he”—

“Hold on!” said Peters, grimly producing a revolver from his side-pocket with the stock and barrel clogged and streaked with mud. “I found THAT too,—and look! one barrel discharged! And,” he added hurriedly, as approaching a climax, “look ye,—what I nat’rally took for wet from the rain—inside that hat—was—blood!”

“Nonsense!” said Harkutt, putting the hat aside with a new fastidiousness. “You don’t think”—

“I think,” said Peters, lowering his voice, “I think, by God! HE’S BIN AND DONE IT!”

“No!”

“Sure! Oh, it’s all very well for Billings and the rest of that conceited crowd to sneer and sling their ideas of ‘Lige gen’rally as they did jess now here,—but I’d like ‘em to see THAT.” It was difficult to tell if Mr. Peters’ triumphant delight in confuting his late companions’ theories had not even usurped in his mind the importance of the news he brought, as it had of any human sympathy with it.

“Look here,” returned Harkutt earnestly, yet with a singularly cleared brow and a more natural manner. “You ought to take them things over to Squire Kerby’s, right off, and show ‘em to him. You kin tell him how you left ‘Lige here, and say that I can prove by my daughter that he went away about ten minutes after,—at least, not more than fifteen.” Like all unprofessional humanity, Mr. Harkutt had an exaggerated conception of the majesty of unimportant detail in the eye of the law. “I’d go with you myself,” he added quickly, “but I’ve got company—strangers—here.”

“How did he look when he left,—kinder wild?” suggested Peters.

Harkutt had begun to feel the prudence of present reticence. “Well,” he said, cautiously, “YOU saw how he looked.”

“You wasn’t rough with him?—that might have sent him off, you know,” said Peters.

“No,” said Harkutt, forgetting himself in a quick indignation, “no, I not only treated him to another drink, but gave him”—he stopped suddenly and awkwardly.

“Eh?” said Peters.

“Some good advice,—you know,” said Harkutt, hastily. “But come, you’d better hurry over to the squire’s. You know YOU’VE made the discovery; YOUR evidence is important, and there’s a law that obliges you to give information at once.”

The excitement of discovery and the triumph over his disputants being spent, Peters, after the Sidon fashion, evidently did not relish activity as a duty. “You know,” he said dubiously, “he mightn’t be dead, after all.”

Harkutt became a trifle distant. “You know your own opinion of the thing,” he replied after a pause. “You’ve circumstantial evidence enough to see the squire, and set others to work on it; and,” he added significantly, “you’ve done your share then, and can wipe your hands of it, eh?”

“That’s so,” said Peters, eagerly. “I’ll just run over to the squire.”

“And on account of the women folks, you know, and the strangers here, I’ll say nothin’ about it to-night,” added Harkutt.

Peters nodded his head, and taking up the hat of the unfortunate Elijah with a certain hesitation, as if he feared it had already lost its dramatic intensity as a witness, disappeared into the storm and darkness again. A lurking gust of wind lying in ambush somewhere seemed to swoop down on him as if to prevent further indecision and whirl him away in the direction of the justice’s house; and Mr. Harkutt shut the door, bolted it, and walked aimlessly back to the counter.

From a slow, deliberate and cautious man, he seemed to have changed within an hour to an irresolute and capricious one. He took the paper from his pocket, and, unlocking the money drawer of his counter, folded into a small compass that which now seemed to be the last testament of Elijah Curtis, and placed it in a recess. Then he went to the back door and paused, then returned, reopened the money drawer, took out the paper and again buttoned it in his hip pocket, standing by the stove and staring abstractedly at the dull glow of the fire. He even went through the mechanical process of raking down the ashes,—solely to gain time and as an excuse for delaying some other necessary action.

He was thinking what he should do. Had the question of his right to retain and make use of that paper been squarely offered to him an hour ago, he would without doubt have decided that he ought not to keep it. Even now, looking at it as an abstract principle, he did not deceive himself in the least. But Nature has the reprehensible habit of not presenting these questions to us squarely and fairly, and it is remarkable that in most of our offending the abstract principle is never the direct issue. Mr. Harkutt was conscious of having been unwillingly led step by step into a difficult, not to say dishonest, situation, and against his own seeking. He had never asked Elijah to sell him the property; he had distinctly declined it; it had even been forced upon him as security for the pittance he so freely gave him. This proved (to himself) that he himself was honest; it was only the circumstances that were queer. Of course if Elijah had lived, he, Harkutt, might have tried to drive some bargain with him before the news of the railroad survey came out—for THAT was only business. But now that Elijah was dead, who would be a penny the worse or better but himself if he chose to consider the whole thing as a lucky speculation, and his gift of five dollars as the price he paid for it? Nobody could think that he had calculated upon ‘Lige’s suicide, any more than that the property would become valuable. In fact if it came to that, if ‘Lige had really contemplated killing himself as a hopeless bankrupt after taking Harkutt’s money as a loan, it was a swindle on his—Harkutt’s—good-nature. He worked himself into a rage, which he felt was innately virtuous, at this tyranny of cold principle over his own warm-hearted instincts, but if it came to the LAW, he’d stand by law and not sentiment. He’d just let them—by which he vaguely meant the world, Tasajara, and possibly his own conscience—see that he wasn’t a sentimental fool, and he’d freeze on to that paper and that property!

Only he ought to have spoken out before. He ought to have told the surveyor at once that he owned the land. He ought to have said: “Why, that’s my land. I bought it of that drunken ‘Lige Curtis for a song and out of charity.” Yes, that was the only real trouble, and that came from his own goodness, his own extravagant sense of justice and right,—his own cursed good-nature. Yet, on second thoughts, he didn’t know why he was obliged to tell the surveyor. Time enough when the company wanted to buy the land. As soon as it was settled that ‘Lige was dead he’d openly claim the property. But what if he wasn’t dead? or they couldn’t find his body? or he had only disappeared? His plain, matter-of-fact face contracted and darkened. Of course he couldn’t ask the company to wait for him to settle that point. He had the power to dispose of the property under that paper, and—he should do it. If ‘Lige turned up, that was another matter, and he and ‘Lige could arrange it between them. He was quite firm here, and oddly enough quite relieved in getting rid of what appeared only a simple question of detail. He never suspected that he was contemplating the one irretrievable step, and summarily dismissing the whole ethical question.

He turned away from the stove, opened the back door, and walked with a more determined step through the passage to the sitting-room. But here he halted again on the threshold with a quick return of his old habits of caution. The door was slightly open; apparently his angry outbreak of an hour ago had not affected the spirits of his daughters, for he could hear their hilarious voices mingling with those of the strangers. They were evidently still fortune-telling, but this time it was the prophetic and divining accents of Mr. Rice addressed to Clementina which were now plainly audible.

“I see heaps of money and a great many friends in the change that is coming to you. Dear me! how many suitors! But I cannot promise you any marriage as brilliant as my friend has just offered your sister. You may be certain, however, that you’ll have your own choice in this, as you have in all things.”

“Thank you for nothing,” said Clementina’s voice. “But what are those horrid black cards beside them?—that’s trouble, I’m sure.”

“Not for you, though near you. Perhaps some one you don’t care much for and don’t understand will have a heap of trouble on your account,—yes, on account of these very riches; see, he follows the ten of diamonds. It may be a suitor; it may be some one now in the house, perhaps.”

“He means himself, Miss Clementina,” struck in Grant’s voice laughingly.

“You’re not listening, Miss Harkutt,” said Rice with half-serious reproach. “Perhaps you know who it is?”

But Miss Clementina’s reply was simply a hurried recognition of her father’s pale face that here suddenly confronted her with the opening door.

“Why, it’s father!”

CHAPER III

In his strange mental condition even the change from Harkutt’s feeble candle to the outer darkness for a moment blinded Elijah Curtis, yet it was part of that mental condition that he kept moving steadily forward as in a trance or dream, though at first purposelessly. Then it occurred to him that he was really looking for his horse, and that the animal was not there. This for a moment confused and frightened him, first with the supposition that he had not brought him at all, but that it was part of his delusion; secondly, with the conviction that without his horse he could neither proceed on the course suggested by Harkutt, nor take another more vague one that was dimly in his mind. Yet in his hopeless vacillation it seemed a relief that now neither was practicable, and that he need do nothing. Perhaps it was a mysterious providence!

The explanation, however, was much simpler. The horse had been taken by the luxurious and indolent Billings unknown to his companions. Overcome at the dreadful prospect of walking home in that weather, this perfect product of lethargic Sidon had artfully allowed Peters and Wingate to precede him, and, cautiously unloosing the tethered animal, had safely passed them in the darkness. When he gained his own inclosure he had lazily dismounted, and, with a sharp cut on the mustang’s haunches, sent him galloping back to rejoin his master, with what result has been already told by the unsuspecting Peters in the preceding chapter.

Yet no conception of this possibility entered ‘Lige Curtis’s alcoholized consciousness, part of whose morbid phantasy it was to distort or exaggerate all natural phenomena. He had a vague idea that he could not go back to Harkutt’s; already his visit seemed to have happened long, long ago, and could not be repeated. He would walk on, enwrapped in this uncompromising darkness which concealed everything, suggested everything, and was responsible for everything.

It was very dark, for the wind, having lulled, no longer thinned the veil of clouds above, nor dissipated a steaming mist that appeared to rise from the sodden plain. Yet he moved easily through the darkness, seeming to be upheld by it as something tangible, upon which he might lean. At times he thought he heard voices,—not a particular voice he was thinking of, but strange voices—of course unreal to his present fancy. And then he heard one of these voices, unlike any voice in Sidon, and very faint and far off, asking if it “was anywhere near Sidon?”—evidently some one lost like himself. He answered in a voice that seemed quite as unreal and as faint, and turned in the direction from which it came. There was a light moving like a will-o’-the-wisp far before him, yet below him as if coming out of the depths of the earth. It must be fancy, but he would see—ah!

He had fallen violently forward, and at the same moment felt his revolver leap from his breast pocket like a living thing, and an instant after explode upon the rock where it struck, blindingly illuminating the declivity down which he was plunging. The sulphurous sting of burning powder was in his eyes and nose, yet in that swift revealing flash he had time to clutch the stems of a trailing vine beside him, but not to save his head from sharp contact with the same rocky ledge that had caught his pistol. The pain and shock gave way to a sickening sense of warmth at the roots of his hair. Giddy and faint, his fingers relaxed, he felt himself sinking, with a languor that was half acquiescence, down, down,—until, with another shock, a wild gasping for air, and a swift reaction, he awoke in the cold, rushing water!

Clear and perfectly conscious now, though frantically fighting for existence with the current, he could dimly see a floating black object shooting by the shore, at times striking the projections of the bank, until in its recoil it swung half round and drifted broadside on towards him. He was near enough to catch the frayed ends of a trailing rope that fastened the structure, which seemed to be a few logs, together. With a convulsive effort he at last gained a footing upon it, and then fell fainting along its length. It was the raft which the surveyors from the embarcadero had just abandoned.

He did not know this, nor would he have thought it otherwise strange that a raft might be a part of the drift of the overflow, even had he been entirely conscious; but his senses were failing, though he was still able to keep a secure position on the raft, and to vaguely believe that it would carry him to some relief and succor. How long he lay unconscious he never knew; in his after-recollections of that night, it seemed to have been haunted by dreams of passing dim banks and strange places; of a face and voice that had been pleasant to him; of a terror coming upon him as he appeared to be nearing a place like that home that he had abandoned in the lonely tules. He was roused at last by a violent headache, as if his soft felt hat had been changed into a tightening crown of iron. Lifting his hand to his head to tear off its covering, he was surprised to find that he was wearing no hat, but that his matted hair, stiffened and dried with blood and ooze, was clinging like a cap to his skull in the hot morning sunlight. His eyelids and lashes were glued together and weighted down by the same sanguinary plaster. He crawled to the edge of his frail raft, not without difficulty, for it oscillated and rocked strangely, and dipped his hand in the current. When he had cleared his eyes he lifted them with a shock of amazement. Creeks, banks, and plain had disappeared; he was alone on a bend of the tossing bay of San Francisco!

His first and only sense—cleared by fasting and quickened by reaction—was one of infinite relief. He was not only free from the vague terrors of the preceding days and nights, but his whole past seemed to be lost and sunk forever in this illimitable expanse. The low plain of Tasajara, with its steadfast monotony of light and shadow, had sunk beneath another level, but one that glistened, sparkled, was instinct with varying life, and moved and even danced below him. The low palisades of regularly recurring tules that had fenced in, impeded, but never relieved the blankness of his horizon, were forever swallowed up behind him. All trail of past degradation, all record of pain and suffering, all footprints of his wandering and misguided feet were smoothly wiped out in that obliterating sea. He was physically helpless, and he felt it; he was in danger, and he knew it,—but he was free!

Happily there was but little wind and the sea was slight. The raft was still intact so far as he could judge, but even in his ignorance he knew it would scarcely stand the surges of the lower bay. Like most Californians who had passed the straits of Carquinez at night in a steamer, he did not recognize the locality, nor even the distant peak of Tamalpais. There were a few dotting sails that seemed as remote, as uncertain, and as unfriendly as sea birds. The raft was motionless, almost as motionless as he was in his cramped limbs and sun-dried, stiffened clothes. Too weak to keep an upright position, without mast, stick, or oar to lift a signal above that vast expanse, it seemed impossible for him to attract attention. Even his pistol was gone.

Suddenly, in an attempt to raise himself, he was struck by a flash so blinding that it seemed to pierce his aching eyes and brain and turned him sick. It appeared to come from a crevice between the logs at the further end of the raft. Creeping painfully towards it he saw that it was a triangular slip of highly polished metal that he had hitherto overlooked. He did not know that it was a “flashing” mirror used in topographical observation, which had slipped from the surveyors’ instruments when they abandoned the raft, but his excited faculties instinctively detected its value to him. He lifted it, and, facing the sun, raised it at different angles with his feeble arms. But the effort was too much for him; the raft presently seemed to be whirling with his movement, and he again fell.

“Ahoy there!”