Redskin and Cow-Boy: A Tale of the Western Plains

"I am just as much obliged to you, señor, as if you had carried them out," Hugh said warmly, "and I thank you most deeply for having so kindly proposed to advance my fortunes. Had I remained here I would indeed have accepted gratefully one or other of your offers. As it is I shall want for nothing, and I can assure you I feel that the small share I took in the rescue of your daughters is more than repaid by the great kindness that you have shown me."

The next day Hugh explained to two of his friends the gift that Don Ramon had made them. Bill Royce, to whom he first spoke, was delighted. "Jehosaphat!" he exclaimed, "that is something like. I thought when the judge here paid us over our share of the reward for the capture of those brigands, that it was about the biggest bit of luck that I had ever heard of; but this beats all. That Don Ramon is a prince. Well, no more ranching for me. I shall go back east and buy a farm there. There was a girl promised to wait for me, but as that is eight years ago, I don't suppose she has done it; still when I get back with 25,000 dollars in my pocket, I reckon I sha'n't be long before I find someone ready to share it with me. And you say I can walk right into that bank and draw it in gold?"

"Yes, you can, Bill, but I shouldn't advise you to do it."

"How am I to take the money, then, Lightning?"

"The bank will give you an order on some bank in New York, and when you get there you can draw the money out as you like."

Sim Howlett received the news in silence. Then he said: "Waal, Hugh, I don't see why we shouldn't take it; as Don Ramon says it isn't much to him, and it is a big lump of money to us. I would have fought for the gals just as willing if they had been peóns; but seeing as their father's got more money than he knows what to do with, it is reasonable and natural as he should want to get rid of the obligation to us, and anyhow we saved him from having to pay 200,000 dollars as a beginning, and perhaps as much as that over and over again, afore he got them back. We had best say nothing to the doctor now his mind is set on one thing, and he is going to get well so as to carry it out; when that job is over it will be time enough to tell him about this. I am beginning to feel too stiff for work, and the doc. was never any good that way, and he is getting on now. I shall be able to persuade him when the time comes, and shall tell him that if he won't keep his money, I shall have to send back mine. But he is too sensible not to see, as I do, that it is reasonable on the part of the don, and if he don't want it hisself, he can give it to a hospital and share mine with me. I reckon we shall hang together as long as we both live; so you can tell the don it is settled, and that though we had no thought of money, we won't say no to his offer."

Now that the doctor had made up his mind to live, he recovered with wonderful rapidity, and in a fortnight was ready to travel.

Hugh took leave of Don Ramon and his family with great regret; they were all much affected at parting with him, and he was obliged to promise that if ever he crossed the Atlantic again he would come and pay them a visit. Prince went back to his old stable, for the party were going to travel down the Rio Grande by boat. At Matamoras, the port at its mouth, they went by a coasting steamer to Galveston, and thence by another steamer to New York. Here Royce left them, and the other three crossed by a Cunarder to Liverpool. The quiet and sea-voyage quite restored the doctor, who was by far the most impatient of them to get to the journey's end. They had obtained a compete rig-out of what Sim called store-clothes at New York, though Hugh had some difficulty in persuading him to adopt the white shirt of civilization.

On arriving Hugh wrote to Mr. Randolph saying that he had news of very great importance to communicate to him, but that he did not wish to appear at Carlisle until he had seen him, and therefore begged him to write and make an appointment to meet him at Kendal on the third day after he received the letter. The answer came in due time. It was short and characteristic: "My dear Hugh, I am delighted to hear that you are back in England again. You behaved like a fool in going away, and an even greater one in staying away so long. However I will give you my opinion more fully when I see you. I am very glad, for many reasons, that you have returned. I can't think what you want to say to me, but will arrive at Kendal by the train that gets in at 12 o'clock on Thursday next."

When Mr. Randolph got out of the train at Kendal, Hugh was awaiting him on the platform.

"Bless me! is this you?" he exclaimed, as the young fellow strode up to him. "You were a big lad when you left, but you are a big man now, and a Tunstall all over."

"Well, I have been gone nearly three years, you see, Mr. Randolph, and that makes a difference at my age. I am past nineteen."

"Yes, I suppose you are, now I think of it. Well, well, where are we to go?"

"I have got a private sitting-room at the hotel, and have two friends there whom I want to introduce you to; when I tell you that they have come all the way with me from Mexico to do me a service, they are, you will acknowledge, friends worth having."

"Well, that looks as if there were really something in what you have got to say to me, Hugh; men don't take such a journey as that unless for some strong reason. What are your friends? for as I have no idea what you have been doing these three years, I do not know whether you have been consorting with princes or peasants."

"With a little of both, Mr. Randolph; one of my friends is a Californian miner, and as good a specimen of one as you can meet with; the other is a doctor, or rather, as I should say, has been a doctor, for he has ceased for some years to practise, and has been exploring and mining."

"And they have both come over purely for the sake of doing you a service?" Mr. Randolph asked, elevating his eyebrows a little.

"Simply that, Mr. Randolph, strange as it may appear to your legal mind. However, as this is the hotel where we are putting up, you won't be kept much longer in a state of curiosity."

"Sim and Doctor, this is my oldest friend and trustee, Mr. Randolph. Mr. Randolph, these are my two very good friends, Doctor Hunter and Mr. Sim Howlett." In the States introductions are always performed ceremoniously, and the two men shook hands gravely with the lawyer. "I said, Mr. Randolph," Hugh went on, "that they were my good friends. I may add that they were also the good friends of my late uncle, William Tunstall."

"Of your late uncle, Hugh! What are you thinking about? Why, he is alive and well; and more's the pity," he muttered to himself.

"I know what I am saying, Mr. Randolph. They were the dear friends of my late uncle, William Tunstall, who was foully murdered in the town of Sacramento, in California, on his way to San Francisco, in reply to your summons to return to England."

Mr. Randolph looked in astonishment from one face to another as if to assure himself that he heard correctly, but their gravity showed him that he was not mistaken.

"Will Tunstall murdered in California!" he repeated; "then who is it that – "

"The man who murdered him, and who, having possessed himself of his letters and papers, came over here and took his place; a gambler of the name of Symonds. My friend obtained a warrant from the sheriff at Sacramento for his arrest on this charge of murder, and for upwards of a year Dr. Hunter travelled over California and Mexico in search of him. It never struck them that it was anything but a case of murder for the money he had on him. The idea of the step Symonds really took, of personating the man he had murdered, never occurred to them. We met in New Mexico, and were a considerable time together before they learned that my name was Tunstall, for out there men are known either by their Christian names or by some nickname. Then at once they said they had years before had a mate of the same name, and then gradually on comparing notes the truth came out."

"Well – well – well – well!" Mr. Randolph murmured, seating himself helplessly in a chair; "this is wonderful. You have taken away my breath; this is amazing indeed; I can hardly take it in yet, lad. You are sure of what you are saying? Quite sure that you are making no mistake?"

"Quite certain. However, the doctor will tell you the story for himself." This the doctor proceeded to do, narrating the events at Cedar Gulch; how the murder had been discovered, and the body identified; how a verdict of wilful murder against some person unknown had been returned by a coroner's jury; how he and Sim Howlett had gone down to Sacramento, and how they had traced the deed to the gambler Symonds.

"There can be no doubt," Mr. Randolph said when he concluded, "that it is as you say, and that this man is William Tunstall's murderer."

"And we shall be able to bring him to justice, shall we not?" Hugh asked. "That was why I wanted you to meet me here, so that we could arrange to arrest him before he had any suspicion of my return."

"Ah! that is a different thing altogether, Hugh. The evidence of your two friends and the confirmation that can doubtless be obtained from Sacramento as to the existence of the gravestone erected to William Tunstall, and of the finding of the coroner's court, will no doubt enable us to prove to the satisfaction of the courts here that this scoundrel is an impostor. But the murder case is different.

"In the first place you would have to bring forward the charge, and give your evidence in the United States, and obtain an application for his extradition. British law has no jurisdiction as to a murder committed in a foreign country. Having set the United States authorities in action, you would return here and aid in obtaining an order from a magistrate here for that extradition; the evidence of your friends would doubtless be sufficient to induce a magistrate to grant such an order, then he would be taken over to the States, and, I suppose, sent down to California to be tried there. Your friends here will be best able to judge whether any jury out there would convict a man for a murder committed eight or ten years ago, unless the very strongest evidence was forthcoming.

"It would be next to impossible to obtain the evidence of those people, the waiters and others, from whom your friends gleaned the facts that put them upon the trail of Symonds, and without that evidence there is no legal proof that would hang a man. Morally, of course, there would seem to be no doubt about it. He and you were in the mining camp together, he knew the object for which Will Tunstall was leaving for England, and that he was entitled to considerable property on arriving here. He followed him down to Sacramento, or at any rate he went down at that time. They were together drinking; there your uncle was found murdered; this man appeared here with the letters that your uncle carried, and obtained possession of the estate.

"It is a very strong chain of evidence, and were every link proved might suffice to hang him here; but at present you have no actual proof that Symonds ever was in Sacramento with him, or was the man he was drinking with; and even could you find the waiters and others, it is very unlikely that there would be any one to identify him after all this time. Symonds' counsel would argue that there was no proof whatever against his client, and he would, of course, claim that Symonds knew nothing about the murder, but that he afterwards obtained the papers from the man who really committed the murder, and that the idea of coming over to England and personating Tunstall then for the first time occurred to him. So I think you would find it extremely difficult to get a verdict out in California merely on the evidence of these two gentlemen, and of my own that he was possessed of a letter I wrote to Tunstall. But in any case, if you decide to have him arrested on the charge of murder, you will have to go back to California to set the law in motion there, to get the State authorities to apply to the supreme authorities of the United States to make an application to our government for his arrest and extradition. You must do all this before he has any idea that you have returned, or at any rate before he knows that you have any idea of his crime; otherwise he will, of course, fly, and we shall have no means of stopping him, and he might be in Fiji before the application for his arrest was received here."

Hugh and his companions looked helplessly at each other. This was an altogether unexpected blow. They had imagined they had but to give their evidence to ensure the arrest, trial, and execution of William Tunstall's murderer.

The doctor's fingers twitched, and the look that Sim Howlett knew so well came into his eyes. He was about to spring to his feet when Sim touched him.

"Wait, doctor," he said. "We will talk about that afterwards."

"Then what do you advise, Mr. Randolph?" Hugh asked after a long pause.

"I should say that for the present we should content ourselves with arresting him on the charge of impersonation, and of obtaining possession of your uncle's estate by fraud. I think the proof we now have, in the evidence of these two gentlemen, and in this copy of the finding of the coroner's jury, will be quite sufficient to ensure his conviction, in which case he will get, I should say, seven years' penal servitude – perhaps fourteen – for although he will not be charged with that offence, the conviction that he murdered your uncle in order to obtain possession of the estate cannot but be very strong in the mind of the judge. Yes, I should think he would give him fourteen years at least. We may, of course, want some other evidence that can be obtained from Sacramento, such as an official copy of the record of the proceedings at the coroner's inquest; but that would be a matter for counsel to decide. My own opinion is, that the evidence of these two gentlemen that the William Tunstall who corresponded with your father, received my letter informing him of the will, and left the mining camp on his way to England, and was murdered on his way to Sacramento, was the real William Tunstall, will be quite sufficient.

"It is a very lucky thing for you, by the way, Hugh, that there were provisions in your father's will, that if William Tunstall died without issue his half of the property came back to you, for that clause has effectually prevented him from selling his estate, which he would have done long ago had it been possible to do so. To my knowledge he has tried over and over again, and that clause has always prevented it. He has raised a little money on his life interest, but that will of course have no claim on the estate now. Now, what do you say? It is for you to decide. In the one case you will have an enormous amount of trouble, and you may finally fail in getting an American jury to find this man guilty of the murder; and in any case, if they do find him so, they will not execute him for a murder committed so long ago, and it is probable that he will get off with imprisonment for life, and may be acquitted altogether. On the other hand, if you have him arrested at once here, on the charge of impersonation and fraud, he is morally certain of getting a sentence which, at his age, will be pretty nearly equivalent to imprisonment for life."

"I certainly think that is the best plan," Hugh agreed. "Don't you think so?" he asked, turning to the others.

"I think so," Sim Howlett said at once; and even the doctor, though less readily, agreed.

Since his last illness he had changed a good deal. He had no longer fits of abstraction, and was brighter and more cheerful than Sim Howlett had ever seen him before. The loss of blood and the low fever that had brought him to death's door had apparently relieved his brain of a load that had for years oppressed it.

"Let it be so," he said reluctantly. "Had we met out in the West it would have been different; but as it is, perhaps it is best."

Late that evening the party proceeded to Carlisle, and early the next morning Mr. Randolph went with the others to one of the county magistrates, and, after laying all the facts before him, obtained a warrant for the arrest of John Symonds alias William Tunstall.

"I must congratulate you, Mr. Tunstall," the magistrate said to Hugh after he had signed the warrant, "upon your discovery. This scoundrel has been a disgrace to your name. He has been for years a consorter with betting men and blacklegs, and stands in the worst odour. It is said that he has mortgaged his life interest in the estates and completely ruined himself."

Mr. Randolph nodded. "Yes, I believe he is pretty well at the end of his tether, and at any moment he might be turned out of Byrneside."

"Well, there is an end to all that," the magistrate said, "and the men who have proved themselves even sharper rogues than he is, will be disappointed. I am sorry for the person who has passed as your aunt, for I know that she is spoken well of by the people in the neighbourhood, and I fancy she has had a very hard time of it with him; but of course she must have been his accomplice in this impersonation of your uncle."

"I am sorry for her, very sorry," Hugh said. "She was always most kind to me, and I have reason to believe that she did all in her power to protect me from him. You see at my death he would have inherited the whole property, and we now know that he was not a man to stick at anything. I am sure that she acted in fear of him."

"I have private reasons for believing so too," Mr. Randolph said; "for, unless I am greatly mistaken, she has deposited a document that, in case of her death, would have exposed the whole plot, in the hands of some legal friends of mine. However, we will not occupy your time any longer, but will start at once with a couple of constables to execute this warrant."

Returning to Carlisle Mr. Randolph secured the services of two constables, and hiring vehicles they started at once for Byrneside. On arriving there Mr. Randolph said to the servant, "Announce me to Mr. Tunstall. Do not say that I am not alone." Following him closely they went across the hall, and as he opened the door and announced Mr. Randolph the others entered. The man was standing on the hearth-rug. The woman looked flushed and excited. They were evidently in the midst of a quarrel. Symonds looked up in angry surprise when the party entered.

"Do your duty," Mr. Randolph said to one of the constables.