A Double Barrelled Detective Story

“Him? Flint Buckner? Oh, Laura!”

This sarcastic rejoinder came in a spontaneous general outburst in one form of words or another from the crowd. After a brief silence, Pat Riley, miner, said,

“He’s the 15-puzzle, that cuss. And his boy’s another one. I can’t make them out.”

“Nor anybody else,” said Ham Sandwich; “and if they are 15-puzzles how are you going to rank up that other one? When it comes to A 1 right-down solid mysteriousness, he lays over both of them. Easy – don’t he?”

“You bet!”

Everybody said it. Every man but one. He was the new-comer – Peterson. He ordered the drinks all round, and asked who No. 3 might be. All answered at once, “Archy Stillman!”

“Is he a mystery?” asked Peterson.

“Is he a mystery? Is Archy Stillman a mystery?” said Wells-Fargo’s man, Ferguson. “Why, the fourth dimension’s foolishness to him.”

For Ferguson was learned.

Peterson wanted to hear all about him; everybody wanted to tell him; everybody began. But Billy Stevens, the barkeeper, called the house to order, and said one at a time was best. He distributed the drinks, and appointed Ferguson to lead. Ferguson said,

“Well, he’s a boy. And that is just about all we know about him. You can pump him till you are tired; it ain’t any use; you won’t get anything. At least about his intentions, or line of business, or where he’s from, and such things as that. And as for getting at the nature and get-up of his main big chief mystery, why, he’ll just change the subject, that’s all. You can guess till you’re black in the face – it’s your privilege – but suppose you do, where do you arrive at? Nowhere, as near as I can make out.”

“What is his big chief one?”

“Sight, maybe. Hearing, maybe. Instinct, maybe. Magic, maybe. Take your choice – grownups, twenty-five; children and servants, half price. Now I’ll tell you what he can do. You can start here, and just disappear; you can go and hide wherever you want to, I don’t care where it is, nor how far – and he’ll go straight and put his finger on you.”

“You don’t mean it!”

“I just do, though. Weather’s nothing to him – elemental conditions is nothing to him – he don’t even take notice of them.”

“Oh, come! Dark? Rain? Snow? Hey?”

“It’s all the same to him. He don’t give a damn.”

“Oh, say – including fog, per’aps?”

“Fog! he’s got an eye ’t can plunk through it like a bullet.”

“Now, boys, honor bright, what’s he giving me?”

“It’s a fact!” they all shouted. “Go on, Wells-Fargo.”

“Well, sir, you can leave him here, chatting with the boys, and you can slip out and go to any cabin in this camp and open a book – yes, sir, a dozen of them – and take the page in your memory, and he’ll start out and go straight to that cabin and open every one of them books at the right page, and call it off, and never make a mistake.”

“He must be the devil!”

“More than one has thought it. Now I’ll tell you a perfectly wonderful thing that he done. The other night he—”

There was a sudden great murmur of sounds outside, the door flew open, and an excited crowd burst in, with the camp’s one white woman in the lead and crying,

“My child! my child! she’s lost and gone! For the love of God help me to find Archy Stillman; we’ve hunted everywhere!”

Said the barkeeper:

“Sit down, sit down, Mrs. Hogan, and don’t worry. He asked for a bed three hours ago, tuckered out tramping the trails the way he’s always doing, and went upstairs. Ham Sandwich, run up and roust him out; he’s in No. 14.”

The youth was soon downstairs and ready. He asked Mrs. Hogan for particulars.

“Bless you, dear, there ain’t any; I wish there was. I put her to sleep at seven in the evening, and when I went in there an hour ago to go to bed myself, she was gone. I rushed for your cabin, dear, and you wasn’t there, and I’ve hunted for you ever since, at every cabin down the gulch, and now I’ve come up again, and I’m that distracted and scared and heart-broke; but, thanks to God, I’ve found you at last, dear heart, and you’ll find my child. Come on! come quick!”

“Move right along; I’m with you, madam. Go to your cabin first.”

The whole company streamed out to join the hunt. All the southern half of the village was up, a hundred men strong, and waiting outside, a vague dark mass sprinkled with twinkling lanterns. The mass fell into columns by threes and fours to accommodate itself to the narrow road, and strode briskly along southward in the wake of the leaders. In a few minutes the Hogan cabin was reached.

“There’s the bunk,” said Mrs. Hogan; “there’s where she was; it’s where I laid her at seven o’clock; but where she is now, God only knows.”

“Hand me a lantern,” said Archy. He set it on the hard earth floor and knelt by it, pretending to examine the ground closely. “Here’s her track,” he said, touching the ground here and there and yonder with his finger. “Do you see?”

Several of the company dropped upon their knees and did their best to see. One or two thought they discerned something like a track; the others shook their heads and confessed that the smooth hard surface had no marks upon it which their eyes were sharp enough to discover. One said, “Maybe a child’s foot could make a mark on it, but I don’t see how.”

Young Stillman stepped outside, held the light to the ground, turned leftward, and moved three steps, closely examining; then said, “I’ve got the direction – come along; take the lantern, somebody.”

He strode off swiftly southward, the files following, swaying and bending in and out with the deep curves of the gorge. Thus a mile, and the mouth of the gorge was reached; before them stretched the sagebrush plain, dim, vast, and vague. Stillman called a halt, saying, “We mustn’t start wrong, now; we must take the direction again.”

He took a lantern and examined the ground for a matter of twenty yards; then said, “Come on; it’s all right,” and gave up the lantern. In and out among the sage-bushes he marched, a quarter of a mile, bearing gradually to the right; then took a new direction and made another great semicircle; then changed again and moved due west nearly half a mile – and stopped.

“She gave it up, here, poor little chap. Hold the lantern. You can see where she sat.”

But this was in a slick alkali flat which was surfaced like steel, and no person in the party was quite hardy enough to claim an eyesight that could detect the track of a cushion on a veneer like that. The bereaved mother fell upon her knees and kissed the spot, lamenting.

“But where is she, then?” some one said. “She didn’t stay here. We can see that much, anyway.”

Stillman moved about in a circle around the place, with the lantern, pretending to hunt for tracks.

“Well!” he said presently, in an annoyed tone, “I don’t understand it.” He examined again. “No use. She was here – that’s certain; she never walked away from here – and that’s certain. It’s a puzzle; I can’t make it out.”

The mother lost heart then.

“Oh, my God! oh, blessed Virgin! some flying beast has got her. I’ll never see her again!”

“Ah, don’t give up,” said Archy. “We’ll find her – don’t give up.”

“God bless you for the words, Archy Stillman!” and she seized his hand and kissed it fervently.

Peterson, the new-comer, whispered satirically in Ferguson’s ear:

“Wonderful performance to find this place, wasn’t it? Hardly worth while to come so far, though; any other supposititious place would have answered just as well – hey?”

Ferguson was not pleased with the innuendo. He said, with some warmth,