The Three Partners

A little more satisfied, although still wondering and perplexed, Demorest shouldered one rifle, and with Barker, who was carrying the other, followed the muleteer and his equipage down the trail. For a while he was a little ashamed of his part in this unusual spectacle of two armed men convoying a laden mule in broad daylight, but, luckily, it was too early for the Bar miners to be going to work, and as the tunnelmen were now at breakfast the trail was free of wayfarers. At the point where it crossed the main road Demorest, however, saw Steptoe and Whiskey Dick emerge from the thicket, apparently in earnest conversation. Demorest felt his repugnance and half-restrained suspicions suddenly return. Yet he did not wish to betray them before Barker, nor was he willing, in case of an emergency, to allow the young man to be entirely unprepared. Calling him to follow, he ran quickly ahead of the laden mule, and was relieved to find that, looking back, his companion had brought his rifle to a “ready,” through some instinctive feeling of defense. As Steptoe and Whiskey Dick, a moment later discovering them, were evidently surprised, there seemed, however, to be no reason for fearing an outbreak. Suddenly, at a whisper from Steptoe, he and Whiskey Dick both threw up their hands, and stood still on the trail a few yards from them in a burlesque of the usual recognized attitude of helplessness, while a hoarse laugh broke from Steptoe.

“D–d if we didn’t think you were road-agents! But we see you’re only guarding your treasure. Rather fancy style for Heavy Tree Hill, ain’t it? Things must be gettin’ rough up thar to hev to take out your guns like that!”

Demorest had looked keenly at the four hands thus exhibited, and was more concerned that they bore no trace of wounds or mutilation than at the insult of the speech, particularly as he had a distinct impression that the action was intended to show him the futility of his suspicions.

“I am glad to see that if you haven’t any arms in your hands you’re not incapable of handling them,” said Demorest coolly, as he passed by them and again fell into the rear of the muleteer.

But Barker had thought the incident very funny, and laughed effusively at Whiskey Dick. “I didn’t know that Steptoe was up to that kind of fun,” he said, “and I suppose we DID look rather rough with these guns as we ran on ahead of the mule. But then you know that when you called to me I really thought you were in for a shindy. All the same, Whiskey Dick did that ‘hands up’ to perfection: how he managed it I don’t know, but his knees seemed to knock together as if he was in a real funk.”

Demorest had thought so too, but he made no reply. How far that miserable drunkard was a forced or willing accomplice of the events of last night was part of a question that had become more and more repugnant to him as he was leaving the scene of it forever. It had come upon him, desecrating the dream he had dreamt that last night and turning its hopeful climax to bitterness. Small wonder that Barker, walking by his side, had his quick sympathies aroused, and as he saw that shadow, which they were all familiar with, but had never sought to penetrate, fall upon his companion’s handsome face, even his youthful spirits yielded to it. They were both relieved when the clatter of hoofs behind them, as they reached the valley, announced the approach of Stacy. “I started with the second mule and the last load soon after you left,” he explained, “and have just passed them. I thought it better to join you and let the other load follow. Nobody will interfere with THAT.”

“Then you are satisfied?” said Demorest, regarding him steadfastly.

“You bet! Look!”

He turned in his saddle and pointed to the crest of the hill they had just descended. Above the pines circling the lower slope above the bare ledges of rock and outcrop, a column of thick black smoke was rising straight as a spire in the windless air.

“That’s the old shanty passing away,” said Stacy complacently. “I reckon there won’t be much left of it before we get to Boomville.”

Demorest and Barker stared. “You fired it?” said Barker, trembling with excitement.

“Yes,” said Stacy. “I couldn’t bear to leave the old rookery for coyotes and wild-cats to gather in, so I touched her off before I left.”

“But”—said Barker.

“But,” repeated Stacy composedly. “Hallo! what’s the matter with that new plan of ‘The Rest’ that you’re going to build, eh? You don’t want them BOTH.”

“And you did this rather than leave the dear old cabin to strangers?” said Barker, with kindling eyes. “Stacy, I didn’t think you had that poetry in you!”

“There’s heaps in me, Barker boy, that you don’t know, and I don’t exactly sabe myself.”

“Only,” continued the young fellow eagerly, “we ought to have ALL been there! We ought to have made a solemn rite of it, you know,—a kind of sacrifice. We ought to have poured a kind of libation on the ground!”

“I did sprinkle a little kerosene over it, I think,” returned Stacy, “just to help things along. But if you want to see her flaming, Barker, you just run back to that last corner on the road beyond the big red wood. That’s the spot for a view.”

As Barker—always devoted to a spectacle—swiftly disappeared the two men faced each other. “Well, what does it all mean?” said Demorest gravely.

“It means, old man,” said Stacy suddenly, “that if we hadn’t had nigger luck, the same blind luck that sent us that strike, you and I and that Barker over there would have been swirling in that smoke up to the sky about two hours ago!” He stopped and added in a lower, but earnest voice, “Look here, Phil! When I went out to fetch water this morning I smelt something queer. I went round to the back of the cabin and found a hole dug under the floor, and piled against the corner wall a lot of brush-wood and a can of kerosene. Some of the kerosene had been already poured on the brush. Everything was ready to light, and only my coming out an hour earlier had frightened the devils away. The idea was to set the place on fire, suffocate us in the smoke of the kerosene poured into the hole, and then to rush in and grab the treasure. It was a systematic plan!”

“No!” said Demorest quietly.

“No?” repeated Stacy. “I told you I saw the whole thing and took away the kerosene, which I hid, and after you had gone used it to fire the cabin with, to see if the ones I suspected would gather to watch their work.”

“It was no part of their FIRST plan”’ said Demorest, “which was only robbery. Listen!” He hurriedly recounted his experience of the preceding night to the astonished Stacy. “No, the fire was an afterthought and revenge,” he added sternly.

“But you say you cut the robber in the hand; there would be no difficulty in identifying him by that.”

“I wounded only a HAND,” said Demorest. “But there was a HEAD in that attempt that I never saw.” He then revealed his own half-suspicions, but how they were apparently refuted by the bravado of Steptoe and Whiskey Dick.

“Then that was the reason THEY didn’t gather at the fire,” said Stacy quickly.

“Ah!” said Demorest, “then YOU too suspected them?”

Stacy hesitated, and then said abruptly, “Yes.”

Demorest was silent for a moment.

“Why didn’t you tell me this this morning?” he said gently.

Stacy pointed to the distant Barker. “I didn’t want you to tell him. I thought it better for one partner to keep a secret from two than for the two to keep it from one. Why didn’t you tell me of your experience last night?”

“I am afraid it was for the same reason,” said Demorest, with a faint smile. “And it sometimes seems to me, Jim, that we ought to imitate Barker’s frankness. In our dread of tainting him with our own knowledge of evil we are sending him out into the world very poorly equipped, for all his three hundred thousand dollars.”

“I reckon you’re right,” said Stacy briefly, extending his hand. “Shake on that!”

The two men grasped each other’s hands.

“And he’s no fool, either,” continued Demorest. “When we met Steptoe on the road, without a word from me, he closed up alongside, with his hand on the lock of his rifle. And I hadn’t the heart to praise him or laugh it off.”

Nevertheless they were both silent as the object of their criticism bounded down the trail towards them. He had seen the funeral pyre. It was awfully sad, it was awfully lovely, but there was something grand in it! Who could have thought Stacy could be so poetic? But he wanted to tell them something else that was mighty pretty.

“What was it?” said Demorest.

“Well,” said Barker, “don’t laugh! But you know that Jack Hamlin? Well, boys, he’s been hovering around us on his mustang, keeping us and that pack-mule in sight ever since we left. Sometimes he’s on a side trail off to the right, sometimes off to the left, but always at the same distance. I didn’t like to tell you, boys, for I thought you’d laugh at me; but I think, you know, he’s taken a sort of shine to us since he dropped in last night. And I fancy, you see, he’s sort of hanging round to see that we get along all right. I’d have pointed him out before only I reckoned you and Stacy would say he was making up to us for our money.”

“And we’d have been wrong, Barker boy,” said Stacy, with a heartiness that surprised Demorest, “for I reckon your instinct’s the right one.”

“There he is now,” said the gratified Barker, “just abreast of us on the cut-off. He started just after we did, and he’s got a horse that could have brought him into Boomville hours ago. It’s just his kindness.”

He pointed to a distant fringe of buckeye from which Jack Hamlin had just emerged. Although evidently holding in a powerful mustang, nothing could be more unconscious and utterly indifferent than his attitude. He did not seem to know of the proximity of any other traveler, and to care less. His handsome head was slightly thrown back, as if he was caroling after his usual fashion, but the distance was too great to make his melody audible to them, or to allow Barker’s shout of invitation to reach him. Suddenly he lowered his tightened rein, the mustang sprang forward, and with a flash of silver spurs and bridle fripperies he had disappeared. But as the trail he was pursuing crossed theirs a mile beyond, it seemed quite possible that they should again meet him.

They were now fairly into the Boomville valley, and were entering a narrow arroyo bordered with dusky willows which effectually excluded the view on either side. It was the bed of a mountain torrent that in winter descended the hillside over the trail by which they had just come, but was now sunk into the thirsty plain between banks that varied from two to five feet in height. The muleteer had advanced into the narrow channel when he suddenly cast a hurried glance behind him, uttered a “Madre de Dios!” and backed his mule and his precious freight against the bank. The sound of hoofs on the trail in their rear had caught his quicker ear, and as the three partners turned they beheld three horsemen thundering down the hill towards them. They were apparently Mexican vaqueros of the usual common swarthy type, their faces made still darker by the black silk handkerchief tied round their heads under their stiff sombreros. Either they were unable or unwilling to restrain their horses in their headlong speed, and a collision in that narrow passage was imminent, but suddenly, before reaching its entrance, they diverged with a volley of oaths, and dashing along the left bank of the arroyo, disappeared in the intervening willows. Divided between relief at their escape and indignation at what seemed to be a drunken, feast-day freak of these roystering vaqueros, the little party re-formed, when a cry from Barker arrested them. He had just perceived a horseman motionless in the arroyo who, although unnoticed by them, had evidently been seen by the Mexicans. He had apparently leaped into it from the bank, and had halted as if to witness this singular incident. As the clatter of the vaqueros’ hoofs died away he lightly leaped the bank again and disappeared. But in that single glimpse of him they recognized Jack Hamlin. When they reached the spot where he had halted, they could see that he must have approached it from the trail where they had previously seen him, but which they now found crossed it at right angles. Barker was right. He had really kept them at easy distance the whole length of the journey.

But they were now reaching its end. When they issued at last from the arroyo they came upon the outskirts of Boomville and the great stage-road. Indeed, the six horses of the Pioneer coach were just panting along the last half mile of the steep upgrade as they approached. They halted mechanically as the heavy vehicle swayed and creaked by them. In their ordinary working dress, sunburnt with exposure, covered with dust, and carrying their rifles still in their hands, they, perhaps, presented a sufficiently characteristic appearance to draw a few faces—some of them pretty and intelligent—to the windows of the coach as it passed. The sensitive Barker was quickest to feel that resentment with which the Pioneer usually met the wide-eyed criticism of the Eastern tourist or “greenhorn,” and reddened under the bold scrutiny of a pair of black inquisitive eyes behind an eyeglass. That annoyance was communicated, though in a lesser degree, even to the bearded Demorest and Stacy. It was an unexpected contact with that great world in which they were so soon to enter. They felt ashamed of their appearance, and yet ashamed of that feeling. They felt a secret satisfaction when Barker said, “They’d open their eyes wider if they knew what was in that pack-saddle,” and yet they corrected him for what they were pleased to call his “snobbishness.” They hurried a little faster as the road became more frequented, as if eager to shorten their distance to clean clothes and civilization.

Only Demorest began to linger in the rear. This contact with the stagecoach had again brought him face to face with his buried past. He felt his old dream revive, and occasionally turned to look back upon the dark outlines of Black Spur, under whose shadow it had returned so often, and wondered if he had left it there forever, and it were now slowly exhaling with the thinned and dying smoke of their burning cabin.

His companions, knowing his silent moods, had preceded him at some distance, when he heard the soft sound of ambling hoofs on the thick dust, and suddenly the light touch of Jack Hamlin’s gauntlet on his shoulder. The mustang Jack bestrode was reeking with grime and sweat, but Jack himself was as immaculate and fresh as ever. With a delightful affectation of embarrassment and timidity he began flicking the side buttons of his velvet vaquero trousers with the thong of his riata. “I reckoned to sling a word along with you before you went,” he said, looking down, “but I’m so shy that I couldn’t do it in company. So I thought I’d get it off on you while you were alone.”

“We’ve seen you once or twice before, this morning,” said Demorest pleasantly, “and we were sorry you didn’t join us.”

“I reckon I might have,” said Jack gayly, “if my horse had only made up his mind whether he was a bird or a squirrel, and hadn’t been so various and promiscuous about whether he wanted to climb a tree or fly. He’s not a bad horse for a Mexican plug, only when he thinks there is any devilment around he wants to wade in and take a hand. However, I reckoned to see the last of you and your pile into Boomville. And I DID. When I meet three fellows like you that are clean white all through I sort of cotton to ‘em, even if I’M a little of a brunette myself. And I’ve got something to give you.”

He took from a fold of his scarlet sash a small parcel neatly folded in white paper as fresh and spotless as himself. Holding it in his fingers, he went on: “I happened to be at Heavy Tree Hill early this morning before sun-up. In the darkness I struck your cabin, and I reckon—I struck somebody else! At first I thought it was one of you chaps down on your knees praying at the rear of the cabin, but the way the fellow lit out when he smelt me coming made me think it wasn’t entirely fasting and prayer. However, I went to the rear of the cabin, and then I reckoned some kind friend had been bringing you kindlings and firewood for your early breakfast. But that didn’t satisfy me, so I knelt down as he had knelt, and then I saw—well, Mr. Demorest, I reckon I saw JUST WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN! But even then I wasn’t quite satisfied, for that man had been grubbing round as if searching for something. So I searched too—and I found IT. I’ve got it here. I’m going to give it to you, for it may some day come in handy, and you won’t find anything like it among the folks where you’re going. It’s something unique, as those fine-art-collecting sharps in ‘Frisco say—something quite matchless, unless you try to match it one day yourself! Don’t open the paper until I run on and say ‘So long’ to your partners. Good-by.”

He grasped Demorest’s hand and then dropped the little packet into his palm, and ambled away towards Stacy and Barker. Holding the packet in his hand with an amused yet puzzled smile, Demorest watched the gambler give Stacy’s hand a hearty farewell shake and a supplementary slap on the back to the delighted Barker, and then vanish in a flash of red sash and silver buttons. At which Demorest, walking slowly towards his partners, opened the packet, and stood suddenly still. It contained the dried and bloodless second finger of a human hand cut off at the first joint!

For an instant he held it at arm’s length, as if about to cast it away. Then he grimly replaced it in the paper, put it carefully in his pocket, and silently walked after his companions.