And this--this--young girl? You say you have no trace of her? May she
not still be here? I should have some clue by which to seek her--I
mean that I could give to her brother."
"Alas! we fear she is already far away from here. If she went at once
to San Luis, she could have easily taken a train to San Francisco
before we discovered her flight. We believe that it was the poor
child's intent to join her brother, so as to intercede for her
friend--or, perhaps, alas! to seek her."
"And this friend left yesterday morning?" he said quickly, yet
concealing a feeling of relief. "Well, you may depend on me! And now,
as there is no time to be lost, I will make my arrangements to take the
next train." He held out his hand, paused, and said in almost boyish
embarrassment: "Bid me God speed, Sister Seraphina!"
"May the Holy Virgin aid you," she said gently. Yet, as she passed out
of the door, with a grateful smile, a characteristic reaction came over
Key. His romantic belief in the interposition of Providence was not
without a tendency to apply the ordinary rules of human evidence to
such phenomena. Sister Seraphina's application to him seemed little
short of miraculous interference; but what if it were only a trick to
get rid of him, while the girl, whose escapade had been discovered, was
either under restraint in the convent, or hiding in Santa Luisa? Yet
this did not prevent him from mechanically continuing his arrangements
for departure. When they were completed, and he had barely time to get
to the station at San Luis, he again lingered in vague expectation of
some determining event.
The appearance of a servant with a telegraphic message at this moment
seemed to be an answer to this instinctive feeling. He tore it open
hastily. But it was only a single line from his foreman at the mine,
which had been repeated to him from the company's office in San
Francisco. It read, "Come at once--important."
Disappointed as it left him, it determined his action; and as the train
steamed out of San Luis, it for a while diverted his attention from the
object of his pursuit. In any event, his destination would have been
Skinner's or the Hollow, as the point from which to begin his search.
He believed with Sister Seraphina that the young girl would make her
direct appeal to her brother; but even if she sought Mrs. Barker, it
would still be at some of the haunts of the gang. The letter to the
Lady Superior had been postmarked from "Bald Top," which Key knew to be
an obscure settlement less frequented than Skinner's. Even then it was
hardly possible that the chief of the road agents would present himself
at the post-office, and it had probably been left by some less known of
the gang. A vague idea, that was hardly a suspicion, that the girl
might have a secret address of her brother's, without understanding the
reasons for its secrecy, came into his mind. A still more vague hope,
that he might meet her before she found her brother, upheld him. It
would be an accidental meeting on her part, for he no longer dared to
hope that she would seek or trust him again. And it was with very
little of his old sanguine quality that, travel-worn and weary, he at
last alighted at Skinner's. But his half careless inquiry if any lady
passengers had lately arrived there, to his embarrassment produced a
broad smile on the face of Skinner.
"You're the second man that asked that question, Mr. Key," he said.
"The second man?" ejaculated Key nervously.
"Yes the first was the sheriff of Sierra. He wanted to find a tall,
good-looking woman, about thirty, with black eyes. I hope that ain't
the kind o' girl you're looking arter--is it? for I reckon she's gin
you both the slip."
Key protested with a forced laugh that it was not, yet suddenly
hesitated to describe Alice; for he instantly recognized the portrait
of her friend, the assumed Mrs. Barker. Skinner continued in lazy
confidence:--
"Ye see they say that the sheriff had sorter got the dead wood on that
gang o' road agents, and had hemmed 'em in somewhar betwixt Bald Top
and Collinson's. But that woman was one o' their spies, and spotted
his little game, and managed to give 'em the tip, so they got clean
away. Anyhow, they ain't bin heard from since. But the big shake has
made scoutin' along the ledges rather stiff work for the sheriff. They
say the valley near Long Canyon's chock full o' rock and slumgullion
that's slipped down."
"What do you mean by the big shake?" asked Key in surprise.
"Great Scott! you didn't hear of it? Didn't hear of the 'arthquake
that shook us up all along Galloper's the other night? Well," he added
disgustedly, "that's jist the conceit of them folks in the bay, that
can't allow that ANYTHIN' happens in the mountains!"
The urgent telegrams of his foreman now flashed across Key's
preoccupied mind. Possibly Skinner saw his concern, "I reckon your
mine is all right, Mr. Key. One of your men was over yere last night,
and didn't say nothin'."
But this did not satisfy Key; and in a few minutes he had mounted his
horse and was speeding towards the Hollow, with a remorseful
consciousness of having neglected his colleagues' interests. For
himself, in the utter prepossession of his passion for Alice, he cared
nothing. As he dashed down the slope to the Hollow, he thought only of
the two momentous days that she had passed there, and the fate that had
brought them so nearly together. There was nothing to recall its
sylvan beauty in the hideous works that now possessed it, or the
substantial dwelling-house that had taken the place of the old cabin.
A few hurried questions to the foreman satisfied him of the integrity
of the property. There had been some alarm in the shaft, but there was
no subsidence of the "seam," nor any difficulty in the working. "What
I telegraphed you for, Mr. Key, was about something that has cropped up
way back o' the earthquake. We were served here the other day with a
legal notice of a claim to the mine, on account of previous work done
on the ledge by the last occupant."
"But the cabin was built by a gang of thieves, who used it as a hoard
for their booty," returned Key hotly, "and every one of them are
outlaws, and have no standing before the law." He stopped with a pang
as he thought of Alice. And the blood rushed to his cheeks as the
foreman quietly continued:--
"But the claim ain't in any o' their names. It's allowed to be the
gift of their leader to his young sister, afore the outlawry, and it's
in HER name--Alice Riggs or something."
Of the half-dozen tumultuous thoughts that passed through Key's mind,
only one remained. It was purely an act of the brother's to secure
some possible future benefit for his sister. And of this she was
perfectly ignorant! He recovered himself quickly, and said with a
smile:--
"But I discovered the ledge and its auriferous character myself. There
was no trace or sign of previous discovery or mining occupation."
"So I jedged, and so I said, and thet puts ye all right. But I thought
I'd tell ye; for mining laws is mining laws, and it's the one thing ye
can't get over," he added, with the peculiar superstitious reverence of
the Californian miner for that vested authority.
But Key scarcely listened. All that he had heard seemed only to link
him more fatefully and indissolubly with the young girl. He was
already impatient of even this slight delay in his quest. In his
perplexity his thoughts had reverted to Collinson's: the mill was a
good point to begin his search from; its good-natured, stupid
proprietor might be his guide, his ally, and even his confidant.
When his horse was baited, he was again in the saddle. "If yer going
Collinson's way, yer might ask him if he's lost a horse," said the
foreman. "The morning after the shake, some of the boys picked up a
mustang, with a make-up lady's saddle on." Key started! While it was
impossible that it could have been ridden by Alice, it might have been
by the woman who had preceded her.
"Did you make any search?" he inquired eagerly; "there may have been an
accident."
"I reckon it wasn't no accident," returned the foreman coolly, "for the
riata was loose and trailing, as if it had been staked out, and broken
away."
Without another word, Key put spurs to his horse and galloped away,
leaving his companion staring after him. Here was a clue: the horse
could not have strayed far; the broken tether indicated a camp; the
gang had been gathered somewhere in the vicinity where Mrs. Barker had
warned them,--perhaps in the wood beyond Collinson's. He would
penetrate it alone. He knew his danger; but as a SINGLE unarmed man he
might be admitted to the presence of the leader, and the alleged claim
was a sufficient excuse. What he would say or do afterwards depended
upon chance. It was a wild scheme--but he was reckless. Yet he would
go to Collinson's first.
At the end of two hours he reached the thick-set wood that gave upon
the shelf at the top of the grade which descended to the mill. As he
emerged from the wood into the bursting sunlight of the valley below,
he sharply reined in his horse and stopped. Another bound would have
been his last. For the shelf, the rocky grade itself, the ledge below,
and the mill upon it, were all gone! The crumbling outer wall of the
rocky grade had slipped away into immeasurable depths below, leaving
only the sharp edge of a cliff, which incurved towards the woods that
had once stood behind the mill, but which now bristled on the very edge
of a precipice. A mist was hanging over its brink and rising from the
valley; it was a full-fed stream that was coursing through the former
dry bed of the river and falling down the face of the bluff. He rubbed
his eyes, dismounted, crept along the edge of the precipice, and looked
below: whatever had subsided and melted down into its thousand feet of
depth, there was no trace left upon its smooth face. Scarcely an angle
of drift or debris marred the perpendicular; the burial of all ruin was
deep and compact; the erasure had been swift and sure--the obliteration
complete. It might have been the precipitation of ages, and not of a
single night. At that remote distance it even seemed as if grass were
already growing ever this enormous sepulchre, but it was only the tops
of the buried pines. The absolute silence, the utter absence of any
mark of convulsive struggle, even the lulling whimper of falling
waters, gave the scene a pastoral repose.
So profound was the impression upon Key and his human passion that it
at first seemed an ironical and eternal ending of his quest. It was
with difficulty that he reasoned that the catastrophe occurred before
Alice's flight, and that even Collinson might have had time to escape.
He slowly skirted the edge of the chasm, and made his way back through
the empty woods behind the old mill-site towards the place where he had
dismounted. His horse seemed to have strayed into the shadows of this
covert; but as he approached him, he was amazed to see that it was not
his own, and that a woman's scarf was lying over its side saddle. A
wild idea seized him, and found expression in an impulsive cry:--
"Alice!"
The woods echoed it; there was an interval of silence, and then a faint
response. But it was HER voice. He ran eagerly forward in that
direction, and called again; the response was nearer this time, and
then the tall ferns parted, and her lithe, graceful figure came
running, stumbling, and limping towards him like a wounded fawn. Her
face was pale and agitated, the tendrils of her light hair were
straying over her shoulder, and one of the sleeves of her school-gown
was stained with blood and dust. He caught the white and trembling
hands that were thrust out to him eagerly.
"It is YOU!" she gasped. "I prayed for some one to come, but I did not
dream it would be YOU. And then I heard YOUR voice--and I thought it
could be only a dream until you called a second time."
"But you are hurt," he exclaimed passionately. "You have met with some
accident!"
"No, no!" she said eagerly. "Not I--but a poor, poor man I found lying
on the edge of the cliff. I could not help him much, I did not care to
leave him. No one WOULD come! I have been with him alone, all the
morning! Come quick, he may be dying."
He passed his arm around her waist unconsciously; she permitted it as
unconsciously, as he half supported her figure while they hurried
forward.
"He had been crushed by something, and was just hanging over the ledge,
and could not move nor speak," she went on quickly. "I dragged him
away to a tree, it took me hours to move him, he was so heavy,--and I
got him some water from the stream and bathed his face, and blooded all
my sleeve."
"But what were you doing here?" he asked quickly.
A faint blush crossed the pallor of her delicate cheek. She looked
away quickly. "I--was going to find my brother at Bald Top," she
replied at last hurriedly. "But don't ask me now--only come quick, do."
"Is the wounded man conscious? Did you speak with him? Does he know
who you are?" asked Key uneasily.
"No! he only moaned a little and opened his eyes when I dragged him. I
don't think he even knew what had happened."
They hurried on again. The wood lightened suddenly. "Here!" she said
in a half whisper, and stepped timidly into the open light. Only a few
feet from the fatal ledge, against the roots of a buckeye, with HER
