The Eye of Dread

“His name was Richard–my boy’s. If he came alive from the army I do not know,–See? Here is where I found another vein, and I have followed it on there to the end of this other branch of the passage, and not exhausted it yet. Here’s maybe another twenty years’ work for some man. Now, wasn’t it a great work for one man alone, to tunnel through that rock to the fall? No one man needs all that wealth. I’ve often thought of Ireland and the poverty we left there. If I had my boy to hearten me, I could do something for them now. We’ll go back and sleep, for it’s the trail for me to-morrow, and to go and come quickly, before the snow falls. Come!”

They returned in silence to the shed. The torch had burned well down into the clay handle, and Larry Kildene extinguished the last sparks before they crept through the fodder to their room in the shed. The fire of logs was almost out, and the place growing cold.

“You’ll find the gold in a strong box made of hewn logs, buried in the ground underneath the wood in the addition to the cabin. There’s no need to go to it yet, not until you need money. I’ll show you how I prepare it for use, in the morning. I do it in the room I made there near the fall. It’s the most secret place a man ever had for such work.”

Larry stretched himself in his bunk and was soon sleeping soundly. Not so the younger man. He could not compose himself after the excitement of the evening. He tossed and turned until morning found him weary and worn, but with his troubled mind more at rest than it had been for many months. He had fought out his battle, at least for the time being, and was at peace.

Harry King rose and went out into the cold morning air and was refreshed. He brought in a large handful of pine cones and made a roaring fire in the chimney he had built, before Larry roused himself. Then he, too, went out and surveyed the sky with practiced eye.

“Clear and cool–that argues well for me. If it were warm, now, I’d hardly like to start. Sometimes the snow holds off for weeks in this weather.”

They stood in the pallid light of the early morning an hour before the sun, and the wind lifted Larry’s hair and flapped his shirt sleeves about his arms. It was a tingling, sharp breeze, and when they returned to the cave, where they went for Harry’s lesson in smelting, the old man’s cheeks were ruddy.

The sun had barely risen when the lesson was over, and they descended for breakfast. Amalia had all ready for them, and greeted Larry from the doorway.

“Good morning, Sir Kildene. You start soon. I have many good things to eat all prepare to put in your bag, and when you sit to your dinner on the long way, it is that you must think of Amalia and know that she says a prayer to the sweet Christ, that he send his good angels to watch over you all the way you go. A prayer to follow you all the way is good, is not?” Amalia’s frank and untrammeled way of referring to Divinity always precipitated a shyness on Larry,–a shyness that showed itself in smiles and stammering.

“Good–good–yes. Good, maybe so.” Harry had turned back to bring down Larry’s horse and pack mule. “Now, while we eat,–Harry will be down soon, we won’t wait for him,–while we eat, let me go over the things I’m to find for you down below. I must learn the list well by heart, or you may send me back for the things I’ve missed bringing.”

As they talked Amalia took from her wrist a heavy bracelet of gold, and from a small leather bag hidden in her clothing, a brooch of emeralds, quaintly set and very precious. Her mother sat in one of her trancelike moods, apparently seeing nothing around her, and Amalia took Larry to one side and spoke in low tones.

“Sir Kildene, I have thought much, and at last it seems to me right to part with these. It is little that we have–and no money, only these. What they are worth I have no knowledge. Mother may know, but to her I say nothing. They are a memory of the days when my father was noble and lived at the court. If you can sell them–it is that this brooch should bring much money–my father has told me. It was saved for my dowry, with a few other jewels of less worth. I have no need of dowry. It is that I never will marry. Until my mother is gone I can well care for her with the lace I make,–and then–”

“Lass, I can’t take these. I have no knowledge of their worth–or–” He knew he was saying what was not true, for he knew well the value of what she laid so trustingly in his palm, and his hand quivered under the shining jewels. He cleared his throat and began again. “I say, I can’t take jewels so valuable over the trail and run the risk of losing them. Never! Put them by as before.”

“But how can I ask of you the things I wish? I have no money to return for them, and none for all you have done for my mother and me. Please, Sir Kildene, take of this, then, only enough to buy for our need. It is little to take. Do not be hard with me.” She pleaded sweetly, placing one hand under his great one, and the other over the jewels, holding them pressed to his palm. “Will you go away and leave my heart heavy?”

“Look here, now–” Again he cleared his throat. “You put them by until I come back, and then–”

But she would not, and tying them in her handkerchief, she thrust them in the pocket of his flannel shirt.

“There! It is not safe in such a place. Be sure you take care, Sir Kildene. I have many thoughts in my mind. It is not all the money of these you will need now, and of the rest I may take my mother to a large city, where are people who understand the fine lace. There I may sell enough to keep us well. But of money will I need first a little to get us there. It is well for me, you take these–see? Is not?”

“No, it is not well.” He spoke gruffly in his effort to overcome his emotion. “Where under heaven can I sell these?”

“You go not to the great city?” she asked sadly. “How must we then so long intrude us upon you! It is very sad.” She clasped her hands and looked in his eyes, her own brimming with tears; then he turned away. Tears in a woman’s eyes! He could not stand it.

“See here. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If that railroad is through anywhere–so–so–I can reach San Francisco–” He thought he knew that to be an impossibility, and that she would be satisfied. “I say–if it’s where I can reach San Francisco, I’ll see what can be done.” He cleared his throat a great many times, and stood awkwardly, hardly daring to move with the precious jewels in his pocket. “See here. They’ll joggle out of here. Can’t you–”

She turned on him radiantly. “You may have my bag of leather. In that will they be safe.”

She removed the string from her neck and by it pulled the small embossed case from her bosom, shook out the few rings and unset stones left in it, and returned the larger jewels to it, and gave it into his hand, still warm from its soft resting place. At the same moment Harry arrived, leading the animals. He lifted his head courageously and his eyes shone as with an inspiration.

“Will you let me accompany you a bit of the way, sir? I’d like to go.” Larry accepted gladly. He knew then what he would do with Amalia’s dowry. “Then I’ll bring Goldbug. Thank you, Amalia, yes. I’ll drink my coffee now, and eat as I ride.” He ran back for his horse and soon returned, and then drank his coffee and snatched a bite, while Amalia and Larry slung the bags of food and the water on the mule and made all ready for the start. As he ate, he tried to arouse and encourage the mother, but she remained stolid until they were in the saddle, when she rose and followed them a few steps, and said in her deep voice: “Yes, I ask a thing. You will find Paul, my ’usband. Tell him to come to me–it is best–no more,–I cannot in English.” Then turning to her daughter she spoke volubly in her own tongue, and waved her hand imperiously toward the men.

“Yes, mamma. I tell all you say.” Amalia took a step away from the door, and her mother returned to her seat by the fire.

“It is so sad. My mother thinks my father is returned to our own country and that you go there. She thinks you are our friend Sir McBride in disguise, and that you go to help my father. She fears you will be taken and sent to Siberia, and says tell my father it is enough. He must no more try to save our fatherland: that our noblemen are full of ingratitude, and that he must return to her and live hereafter in peace.”

“Let be so. It’s a saving hallucination. Tell her if I find your father, I will surely deliver the message.” And the two men rode away up the trail, conversing earnestly.

Larry Kildene explained to Harry about the jewels, and turned them over to his keeping. “I had to take them, you see. You hide them in that chamber I showed you, along with the gold bars. Hang it around your neck, man, until you get back. It has rested on her bosom, and if I were a young man like you, that fact alone would make it sacred to me. It’s her dowry, she said. I’d sooner part with my right hand than take it from her.”

“So would I.” Harry took the case tenderly, and hid it as directed, and went on to ask the favor he had accompanied Larry to ask. It was that he might go down and bring the box from the wagon.

“Early this morning, before I woke you, I led the brown horse you brought the mother up the mountain on out toward the trail; we’ll find him over the ridge, all packed ready, and when I ran back for my horse, I left a letter written in charcoal on the hearth there in the shed–Amalia will be sure to go there and find it, if I don’t return now–telling her what I’m after and that I’ll only be gone a few days. She’s brave, and can get along without us.” Larry did not reply at once, and Harry continued.

“It will only take us a day and a half to reach it, and with your help, a sling can be made of the canvas top of the wagon, and the two animals can ‘tote it’ as the darkies down South say. I can walk back up the trail, or even ride one of the horses. We’ll take the tongue and the reach from the wagon and make a sort of affair to hang to the beasts, I know how it can be done. There may not be much of value in the box, but then–there may be. I see Amalia wishes it of all things, and that’s enough for–us.”

Thus it came that the two women were alone for five days. Madam Manovska did not seem to heed the absence of the two men at first, and waited in a contentment she had not shown before. It would seem that, as Larry had said, there was saving in her hallucination, but Amalia was troubled by it.

“Mother is so sure they will bring my father back,” she thought. She tried to forestall any such catastrophe as she feared by explaining that they might not find her father or he might not return, even if he got her message, not surely, for he had always done what he thought his duty before anything else, and he might think it his duty to stay where he could find something to do.

When Harry King did not return that night, Amalia did as he had laughingly suggested to her, when he left, “You’ll find a letter out in the shed,” was all he said. So she went up to the shed, and there she lighted a torch, and kneeling on the stones of the wide hearth, she read what he had written for her.

“To the Lady Amalia Manovska:

“Mr. Kildene will help me get your box. It will not be hard, for the two of us, and after it is drawn out and loaded I can get up with it myself and he can go on. I will soon be with you again, never fear. Do not be afraid of Indians. If there were any danger, I would not leave you. There is no way by which they would be likely to reach you except by the trail on which we go, and we will know if they are about before they can possibly get up the trail. I have seen you brave on the plains, and you will be as brave on the mountain top. Good-by for a few days.

    “Yours to serve you,
    “Harry King.”

The tears ran fast down her cheeks as she read. “Oh, why did I speak of it–why? He may be killed. He may die of this attempt.” She threw the torch from her into the fireplace, and clasping her hands began to pray, first in English her own words, then the prayers for those in peril which she had learned in the convent. Then, lying on her face, she prayed frantically in her own tongue for Harry’s safety. At last, comforted a little, she took up the torch and, flushed and tearful, walked down in the darkness to the cabin and crept into bed.

CHAPTER XX

ALONE ON THE MOUNTAIN

For the first two days of Harry King’s absence Madam Manovska relapsed into a more profound melancholy, and the care of her mother took up Amalia’s time and thoughts so completely as to give her little for indulging her own anxiety for Harry’s safety. Strangely, she felt no fear for themselves, although they were thus alone on the mountain top. She had a sense of security there which she had never felt in the years since she had been taken from the convent to share her parents’ wanderings. She made an earnest effort to divert and arouse her mother and succeeded until Madam Manovska talked much and volubly in Polish, and revealed more of the thoughts that possessed her in the long hours of brooding than she had ever told Amalia before. It seemed that she confidently expected the return of the men with her husband, and that the message she had sent by Larry Kildene would surely bring him. The thought excited her greatly, and Amalia found it necessary to keep continual watch lest she wander off down the trail in the direction they had taken, and be lost.

For a time Amalia tried to prevent Madam Manovska from dwelling on the past, until she became convinced that to do so was not well, since it only induced the fits of brooding. She then decided to encourage her mother to speak freely of her memories, rather than to keep them locked in her own mind. It was in one of these intervals of talkativeness that Amalia learned the cause of that strange cry that had so pierced her heart and startled her on the trail.

They had gone out for a walk, as the only means of inducing her mother to sleep was to let her walk in the clear air until so weary as to bring her to the point of exhaustion. This time they went farther than Amalia really intended, and had left the paths immediately about the cabin, and climbed higher up the mountain. Here there was no trail and the way was rough indeed, but Madam Manovska was in one of her most wayward moods and insisted on going higher and farther.

Her strength was remarkable, but it seemed to be strength of will rather than of body, for all at once she sank down, unable to go forward or to return. Amalia led her to the shade of a great gnarled tree, a species of fir, and made her lie down on a bed of stiff, coarse moss, and there she pillowed her mother’s head on her lap. Whether it was something in the situation in which she found herself or not, her mother began to tell her of a time about which she had hitherto kept silent. It was of the long march through heat and cold, over the wildest ways of the earth to Siberia, at her husband’s side.

She told how she had persisted in going with him, even at the cost of dressing in the garb of the exiles from the prisons and pretending to be one of the condemned. Only one of the officers knew her secret, who for reasons of humanity–or for some other feeling–kept silence. She carried her child in her arms, a boy, five months old, and was allowed to walk at her husband’s side instead of following on with the other women. She told how they carried a few things on their backs, and how one and another of the men would take the little one at intervals to help her, and how long the marches were when the summer was on the wane and they wished to make as much distance as possible before they were delayed by storms and snow.

Then she told how the storms came at last, and how her baby fell ill, and cried and cried–all the time–and how they walked in deep snow, until one and another fell by the way and never walked farther. She told how some of the weaker ones were finally left behind, because they could get on faster without them, but that the place where they were left was a terrible one under a cruel man, and that her child would surely have died there before the winter was over, and that when she persisted in keeping on with her husband, they beat her, but at last consented on condition that she would leave her baby boy. Then how she appealed to the officer who knew well who she was and that she was not one of the condemned, but had followed her husband for love, and to intercede for him when he would have been ill-treated; and that the man had allowed her to have her way, but later had demanded as his reward for yielding to her, that she no longer belong to her husband, but to him.

Looking off at the far ranges of mountains with steady gaze, she told of the mountains they had crossed, and the rushing, terrible rivers; and how, one day, the officer who had been kind only that he might be more cruel, had determined to force her to obedience, and how he grew very angry–so angry that when they had come to a trail that was well-nigh impassable, winding around the side of a mountain, where was a fearful rushing river far below them, and her baby cried in her arms for cold and hunger, how he had snatched the child from her and hurled it over the precipice into the swift water, and how she had shrieked and struck him and was crazed and remembered no more for days, except to call continually on God to send down curses on that officer’s head. She told how after that they were held at a certain station for a long time, but that she was allowed to stay by her husband only because the officer feared the terrible curses she had asked of God to descend on that man, that he dared no more touch her.

Then Amalia understood many things better than ever before, and grew if possible more tender of her mother. She thought how all during that awful time she had been safe and sheltered in the convent, and her life guarded; and moreover, she understood why her father had always treated her mother as if she were higher than the angels and with the courtesy and gentleness of a knight errant. He had bowed to her slightest wish, and no wonder her mother thought that when he received her request to return to her, and give up his hope, he would surely come to her.

More than ever Amalia feared the days to come if she could in no way convince her mother that it was not expedient for her father to return yet. To say again that he was dead she dared not, even if she could persuade Madam Manovska to believe it; for it seemed to her in that event that her mother would give up all interest in life, and die of a broken heart. But from the first she had not accepted the thought of her husband’s death, and held stubbornly to the belief that he had joined Harry King to find help. He had, indeed, wandered away from them a few hours after the young man’s departure and had been unable to find his way back, and, until Larry Kildene came to them, they had comforted themselves that the two men were together.

Much more Madam Manovska told her daughter that day, before she slept; and Amalia questioned her more closely than she had ever done concerning her father’s faith. Thereafter she sat for a long time on the bank of coarse moss and pondered, with her mother’s head pillowed on her lap. The sun reached the hour of noon, and still the mother slept and the daughter would not waken her.