lids that scarcely veiled his ominous eyes.
The men, with the exception of the sentinels stationed on the rocky
ledge and the one who was guarding the unfortunate Collinson, were
drinking and gambling away their perspective gains around a small pile
of portmanteaus and saddle-bags, heaped in the centre of the room.
They contained the results of their last successes, but one pair of
saddle-bags bore the mildewed appearance of having been cached, or
buried, some time before. Most of their treasure was in packages of
gold dust; and from the conversation that ensued, it appeared that,
owing to the difficulties of disposing of it in the mountain towns, the
plan was to convey it by ordinary pack mule to the unfrequented valley,
and thence by an emigrant wagon, on the old emigrant trail, to the
southern counties, where it could be no longer traced. Since the
recent robberies, the local express companies and bankers had refused
to receive it, except the owners were known and identified. There had
been but one box of coin, which had already been speedily divided up
among the band. Drafts, bills, bonds, and valuable papers had been
usually intrusted to one "Charley," who acted as a flying messenger to
a corrupt broker in Sacramento, who played the role of the band's
"fence." It had been the duty of Chivers to control this delicate
business, even as it had been his peculiar function to open all the
letters and documents. This he had always lightened by characteristic
levity and sarcastic comments on the private revelations of the
contents. The rough, ill-spelt letter of the miner to his wife,
inclosing a draft, or the more sentimental effusion of an emigrant
swain to his sweetheart, with the gift of a "specimen," had always
received due attention at the hands of this elegant humorist. But the
operation was conducted to-night with business severity and silence.
The two leaders sat opposite to each other, in what might have appeared
to the rest of the band a scarcely veiled surveillance of each other's
actions. When the examination was concluded, and, the more valuable
inclosures put aside, the despoiled letters were carried to the fire
and heaped upon the coals. Presently the chimney added its roar to the
moaning of the distant hillside, a few sparks leaped up and died out in
the midnight air, as if the pathos and sentiment of the unconscious
correspondents had exhaled with them.
"That's a d--d foolish thing to do," growled French Pete over his cards.
"Why?" demanded Chivers sharply.
"Why?--why, it makes a flare in the sky that any scout can see, and a
scent for him to follow."
"We're four miles from any traveled road," returned Chivers
contemptuously, "and the man who could see that glare and smell that
smoke would be on his way here already."
"That reminds me that that chap you've tied up--that Collinson--allows
he wants to see you," continued French Pete.
"To see ME!" repeated Chivers. "You mean the Captain?"
"I reckon he means YOU," returned French Pete; "he said the man who
talked so purty."
The men looked at each other with a smile of anticipation, and put down
their cards. Chivers walked towards the door; one or two rose to their
feet as if to follow, but Riggs stopped them peremptorily. "Sit down,"
he said roughly; then, as Chivers passed him, he added to him in a
lower tone, "Remember."
Slightly squaring his shoulders and opening his coat, to permit a
rhetorical freedom, which did not, however, prevent him from keeping
touch with the butt of his revolver, Chivers stepped into the open air.
Collinson had been moved to the shelter of an overhang of the roof,
probably more for the comfort of the guard, who sat cross-legged on the
ground near him, than for his own. Dismissing the man with a gesture,
Chivers straightened himself before his captive.
"We deeply regret that your unfortunate determination, my dear sir, has
been the means of depriving US of the pleasure of your company, and YOU
of your absolute freedom; but may we cherish the hope that your desire
to see me may indicate some change in your opinion?"
By the light of the sentry's lantern left upon the ground, Chivers
could see that Collinson's face wore a slightly troubled and even
apologetic expression.
"I've bin thinkin'," said Collinson, raising his eyes to his captor
with a singularly new and shy admiration in them, "mebbee not so much
of WOT you said, ez HOW you said it, and it's kinder bothered me,
sittin' here, that I ain't bin actin' to you boys quite on the square.
I've said to myself, 'Collinson, thar ain't another house betwixt Bald
Top and Skinner's whar them fellows kin get a bite or a drink to help
themselves, and you ain't offered 'em neither. It ain't no matter who
they are or how they came: whether they came crawling along the road
from the valley, or dropped down upon you like them rocks from the
grade; yere they are, and it's your duty, ez long ez you keep this yer
house for your wife in trust, so to speak, for wanderers.' And I ain't
forgettin' yer ginerel soft style and easy gait with me when you kem
here. It ain't every man as could walk into another man's house arter
the owner of it had grabbed a gun, ez soft-speakin', ez overlookin',
and ez perlite ez you. I've acted mighty rough and low-down, and I
know it. And I sent for you to say that you and your folks kin use
this house and all that's in it ez long ez you're in trouble. I've
told you why I couldn't sell the house to ye, and why I couldn't leave
it. But ye kin use it, and while ye're here, and when you go,
Collinson don't tell nobody. I don't know what ye mean by 'binding
myself' to keep your secret; when Collinson says a thing he sticks to
it, and when he passes his word with a man, or a man passes his word
with him, it don't need no bit of paper."
There was no doubt of its truth. In the grave, upraised eyes of his
prisoner, Chivers saw the certainty that he could trust him, even far
more than he could trust any one within the house he had just quitted.
But this very certainty, for all its assurance of safety to himself,
filled him, not with remorse, which might have been an evanescent
emotion, but with a sudden alarming and terrible consciousness of being
in the presence of a hitherto unknown and immeasurable power! He had
no pity for man who trusted him; he had no sense of shame in taking
advantage of it; he even felt an intellectual superiority in this want
of sagacity in his dupe; but he still felt in some way defeated,
insulted, shocked, and frightened. At first, like all scoundrels, he
had measured the man by himself; was suspicious and prepared for
rivalry; but the grave truthfulness of Collinson's eyes left him
helpless. He was terrified by this unknown factor. The right that
contends and fights often stimulates its adversary; the right that
yields leaves the victor vanquished. Chivers could even have killed
Collinson in his vague discomfiture, but he had a terrible
consciousness that there was something behind him that he could not
make way with. That was why this accomplished rascal felt his flaccid
cheeks grow purple and his glib tongue trip before his captive.
But Collinson, more occupied with his own shortcomings, took no note of
this, and Chivers quickly recovered his wits, if not his former
artificiality. "All right," he said quickly, with a hurried glance at
the door behind him. "Now that you think better of it, I'll be frank
with you, and tell you I'm your friend. You understand,--your friend.
Don't talk much to those men--don't give yourself away to them;" he
laughed this time in absolute natural embarrassment. "Don't talk about
your wife, and this house, but just say you've made the thing up with
me,--with ME, you know, and I'll see you through." An idea, as yet
vague, that he could turn Collinson's unexpected docility to his own
purposes, possessed him even in his embarrassment, and he was still
more strangely conscious of his inordinate vanity gathering a fearful
joy from Collinson's evident admiration. It was heightened by his
captive's next words.
"Ef I wasn't tied I'd shake hands with ye on that. You're the kind o'
man, Mr. Chivers, that I cottoned to from the first. Ef this house
wasn't HERS, I'd a' bin tempted to cotton to yer offer, too, and mebbee
made yer one myself, for it seems to me your style and mine would
sorter jibe together. But I see you sabe what's in my mind, and make
allowance. WE don't want no bit o' paper to shake hands on that. Your
secret and your folk's secret is mine, and I don't blab that any more
than I'd blab to them wot you've just told me."
Under a sudden impulse, Chivers leaned forward, and, albeit with
somewhat unsteady hands and an embarrassed will, untied the cords that
held Collinson in his chair. As the freed man stretched himself to his
full height, he looked gravely down into the bleared eyes of his
captor, and held out his strong right hand. Chivers took it. Whether
there was some occult power in Collinson's honest grasp, I know not;
but there sprang up in Chivers's agile mind the idea that a good way to
get rid of Mrs. Collinson was to put her in the way of her husband's
finding her, and for an instant, in the contemplation of that idea,
this supreme rascal absolutely felt an embarrassing glow of virtue.
CHAPTER VI.
The astonishment of Preble Key on recognizing the gateway into which
the mysterious lady had vanished was so great that he was at first
inclined to believe her entry THERE a mere trick of his fancy. That
the confederate of a gang of robbers should be admitted to the austere
recesses of the convent, with a celerity that bespoke familiarity, was
incredible. He again glanced up and down the length of the shadowed
but still visible wall. There was no one there. The wall itself
contained no break or recess in which one could hide, and this was the
only gateway. The opposite side of the street in the full moonlight
stared emptily. No! Unless she were an illusion herself and his whole
chase a dream, she MUST have entered here.
But the chase was not hopeless. He had at least tracked her to a place
where she could be identified. It was not a hotel, which she could
leave at any moment unobserved. Though he could not follow her and
penetrate its seclusion now, he could later--thanks to his old
associations with the padres of the contiguous college--gain an
introduction to the Lady Superior on some pretext. She was safe there
that night. He turned away with a feeling of relief. The incongruity
of her retreat assumed a more favorable aspect to his hopes. He looked
at the hallowed walls and the slumbering peacefulness of the gnarled
old trees that hid the convent, and a gentle reminiscence of his youth
stole over him. It was not the first time that he had gazed wistfully
upon that chaste refuge where, perhaps, the bright eyes that he had
followed in the quaint school procession under the leafy Alameda in the
afternoon, were at last closed in gentle slumber. There was the very
grille through which the wicked Conchita--or, was it Dolores?--had shot
her Parthian glance at the lingering student. And the man of
thirty-five, prematurely gray and settled in fortune, smiled as he
turned away, and forgot the adventuress of thirty who had brought him
there.
The next morning he was up betimes and at the college of San Jose.
Father Cipriano, a trifle more snuffy and aged, remembered with delight
his old pupil. Ah! it was true, then, that he had become a mining
president, and that was why his hair was gray; but he trusted that Don
Preble had not forgot that this was not all of life, and that fortune
brought great responsibilities and cares. But what was this, then? He
HAD thought of bringing out some of his relations from the States, and
placing a niece in the convent. That was good and wise. Ah, yes. For
education in this new country, one must turn to the church. And he
would see the Lady Superior? Ah! that was but the twist of one's
finger and the lifting of a latch to a grave superintendent and a gray
head like that. Of course, he had not forgotten the convent and the
young senoritas, nor the discipline and the suspended holidays. Ah! it
was a special grace of our Lady that he, Father Cipriano, had not been
worried into his grave by those foolish muchachos. Yet, when he had
extinguished a snuffy chuckle in his red bandana handkerchief, Key knew
that he would accompany him to the convent that noon.
It was with a slight stirring of shame over his elaborate pretext that
he passed the gate of the Sacred Heart with the good father. But it is
to be feared that he speedily forgot that in the unexpected information
that it elicited. The Lady Superior was gracious, and even
enthusiastic. Ah, yes, it was a growing custom of the American
caballeros--who had no homes, nor yet time to create any--to bring
their sisters, wards, and nieces here, and--with a dove-like
side-glance towards Key--even the young senoritas they wished to fit
for their Christian brides! Unlike the caballero, there were many
business men so immersed in their affairs that they could not find time
for a personal examination of the convent,--which was to be
regretted,--but who, trusting to the reputation of the Sacred Heart and
its good friends, simply sent the young lady there by some trusted
female companion. Notably this was the case of the Senor Rivers,--did
Don Preble ever know him?--a great capitalist in the Sierras, whose
sweet young sister, a naive, ingenuous creature, was the pride of the
