determined him. As the luggage was being removed from the top of the
coach, he overheard the agent tell the expressman to check the "lady's"
trunk to San Luis. Key was seized with an idea which seemed to solve
the difficulty, although it involved a risk of losing the clue
entirely. There were two routes to San Luis, one was by stage, and
direct, though slower; the other by steamboat and rail, via San
Francisco. If he took the boat, there was less danger of her
discovering him, even if she chose the same conveyance; if she took the
direct stage,--and he trusted to a woman's avoidance of the hurry of
change and transshipment for that choice,--he would still arrive at San
Luis, via San Francisco, an hour before her. He resolved to take the
boat; a careful scrutiny from a stateroom window of the arriving
passengers on the gangplank satisfied him that she had preferred the
stage. There was still the chance that in losing sight of her she
might escape him, but the risk seemed small. And a trifling
circumstance had almost unconsciously influenced him--after his
romantic and superstitious fashion--as to this final step.
He had been singularly moved when he heard that San Luis was the lady's
probable destination. It did not seem to bear any relation to the
mountain wilderness and the wild life she had just quitted; it was
apparently the most antipathic, incongruous, and inconsistent refuge
she could have taken. It offered no opportunity for the disposal of
booty, or for communication with the gang. It was less secure than a
crowded town. An old Spanish mission and monastery college in a sleepy
pastoral plain,--it had even retained its old-world flavor amidst
American improvements and social revolution. He knew it well. From
the quaint college cloisters, where the only reposeful years of his
adventurous youth had been spent, to the long Alameda, or double
avenues of ancient trees, which connected it with the convent of Santa
Luisa, and some of his youthful "devotions,"--it had been the nursery
of his romance. He was amused at what seemed to be the irony of fate,
in now linking it with this folly of his maturer manhood; and yet he
was uneasily conscious of being more seriously affected by it. And it
was with a greater anxiety than this adventure had ever yet cost him
that he at last arrived at the San Jose hotel, and from a balcony
corner awaited the coming of the coach. His heart beat rapidly as it
approached. She was there! But at her side, as she descended from the
coach, was the mysterious horseman of the Sierra road. Key could not
mistake the well-built figure, whatever doubt there had been about the
features, which had been so carefully concealed. With the astonishment
of this rediscovery, there flashed across him again the fatefulness of
the inspiration which had decided him not to go in the coach. His
presence there would have no doubt warned the stranger, and so estopped
this convincing denouement. It was quite possible that her companion,
by relays of horses and the advantage of bridle cut-offs, could have
easily followed the Three Pine coach and joined her at Stockton. But
for what purpose? The lady's trunk, which had not been disturbed
during the first part of the journey, and had been forwarded at
Stockton untouched before Key's eyes, could not have contained booty to
be disposed of in this forgotten old town.
The register of the hotel bore simply the name of "Mrs. Barker," of
Stockton, but no record of her companion, who seemed to have
disappeared as mysteriously as he came. That she occupied a
sitting-room on the same floor as his own--in which she was apparently
secluded during the rest of the day--was all he knew. Nobody else
seemed to know her. Key felt an odd hesitation, that might have been
the result of some vague fear of implicating her prematurely, in making
any marked inquiry, or imperiling his secret by the bribed espionage of
servants. Once when he was passing her door he heard the sounds of
laughter,--albeit innocent and heart-free,--which seemed so
inconsistent with the gravity of the situation and his own thoughts
that he was strangely shocked. But he was still more disturbed by a
later occurrence. In his watchfulness of the movements of his neighbor
he had been equally careful of his own, and had not only refrained from
registering his name, but had enjoined secrecy upon the landlord, whom
he knew. Yet the next morning after his arrival, the porter not
answering his bell promptly enough, he so far forgot himself as to walk
to the staircase, which was near the lady's room, and call to the
employee over the balustrade. As he was still leaning over the
railing, the faint creak of a door, and a singular magnetic
consciousness of being overlooked, caused him to turn slowly, but only
in time to hear the rustle of a withdrawing skirt as the door was
quickly closed. In an instant he felt the full force of his foolish
heedlessness, but it was too late. Had the mysterious fugitive
recognized him? Perhaps not; their eyes had not met, and his face had
been turned away.
He varied his espionage by subterfuges, which his knowledge of the old
town made easy. He watched the door of the hotel, himself unseen, from
the windows of a billiard saloon opposite, which he had frequented in
former days. Yet he was surprised the same afternoon to see her, from
his coigne of vantage, reentering the hotel, where he was sure he had
left her a few moments ago. Had she gone out by some other exit,--or
had she been disguised? But on entering his room that evening he was
confounded by an incident that seemed to him as convincing of her
identity as it was audacious. Lying on his pillow were a few dead
leaves of an odorous mountain fern, known only to the Sierras. They
were tied together by a narrow blue ribbon, and had evidently been
intended to attract his attention. As he took them in his hand, the
distinguishing subtle aroma of the little sylvan hollow in the hills
came to him like a memory and a revelation! He summoned the
chambermaid; she knew nothing of them, or indeed of any one who had
entered his room. He walked cautiously into the hall; the lady's
sitting-room door was open, the room was empty. "The occupant," said
the chambermaid, "had left that afternoon." He held the proof of her
identity in his hand, but she herself had vanished! That she had
recognized him there was now no doubt: had she divined the real object
of his quest, or had she accepted it as a mere sentimental gallantry at
the moment when she knew it was hopeless, and she herself was perfectly
safe from pursuit? In either event he had been duped. He did not know
whether to be piqued, angry,--or relieved of his irresolute quest.
Nevertheless, he spent the rest of the twilight and the early evening
in fruitlessly wandering through the one long thoroughfare of the town,
until it merged into the bosky Alameda, or spacious grove, that
connected it with Santa Luisa. By degrees his chagrin and
disappointment were forgotten in the memories of the past, evoked by
the familiar pathway. The moon was slowly riding overhead, and
silvering the carriage-way between the straight ebony lines of trees,
while the footpaths were diapered with black and white checkers. The
faint tinkling of a tram-car bell in the distance apprised him of one
of the few innovations of the past. The car was approaching him,
overtook him, and was passing, with its faintly illuminated windows,
when, glancing carelessly up, he beheld at one of them the profile of
the face which he had just thought he had lost forever!
He stopped for an instant, not in indecision this time, but in a grim
resolution to let no chance escape him now. The car was going slowly;
it was easy to board it now, but again the tinkle of the bell indicated
that it was stopping at the corner of a road beyond. He checked his
pace,--a lady alighted,--it was she! She turned into the cross-street,
darkened with the shadows of some low suburban tenement houses, and he
boldly followed. He was fully determined to find out her secret, and
even, if necessary, to accost her for that purpose. He was perfectly
aware what he was doing, and all its risks and penalties; he knew the
audacity of such an introduction, but he felt in his left-hand pocket
for the sprig of fern which was an excuse for it; he knew the danger of
following a possible confidante of desperadoes, but he felt in his
right-hand pocket for the derringer that was equal to it. They were
both there; he was ready.
He was nearing the convent and the oldest and most ruinous part of the
town. He did not disguise from himself the gloomy significance of
this; even in the old days the crumbling adobe buildings that abutted
on the old garden wall of the convent were the haunts of lawless
Mexicans and vagabond peons. As the roadway began to be rough and
uneven, and the gaunt outlines of the sagging roofs of tiles stood out
against the sky above the lurking shadows of ruined doorways, he was
prepared for the worst. As the crumbling but still massive walls of
the convent garden loomed ahead, the tall, graceful, black-gowned
figure he was following presently turned into the shadow of the wall
itself. He quickened his pace, lest it should again escape him.
Suddenly it stopped, and remained motionless. He stopped, too. At the
same moment it vanished!
He ran quickly forward to where it had stood, and found himself before
a large iron gate, with a smaller one in the centre, that had just
clanged to on its rusty hinges. He rubbed his eyes!--the place, the
gate, the wall, were all strangely familiar! Then he stepped back into
the roadway, and looked at it again. He was not mistaken.
He was standing before the porter's lodge of the Convent of the Sacred
Heart.
CHAPTER V.
The day following the great stagecoach robbery found the patient
proprietor of Collinson's Mill calm and untroubled in his usual
seclusion. The news that had thrilled the length and breadth of
Galloper's Ridge had not touched the leafy banks of the dried-up river;
the hue and cry had followed the stage-road, and no courier had deemed
it worth his while to diverge as far as the rocky ridge which formed
the only pathway to the mill. That day Collinson's solitude had been
unbroken even by the haggard emigrant from the valley, with his old
monotonous story of hardship and privation. The birds had flown nearer
to the old mill, as if emboldened by the unwonted quiet. That morning
there had been the half human imprint of a bear's foot in the ooze
beside the mill-wheel; and coming home with his scant stock from the
woodland pasture, he had found a golden squirrel--a beautiful, airy
embodiment of the brown woods itself--calmly seated on his bar-counter,
with a biscuit between its baby hands. He was full of his
characteristic reveries and abstractions that afternoon; falling into
them even at his wood-pile, leaning on his axe--so still that an
emerald-throated lizard, who had slid upon the log, went to sleep under
the forgotten stroke.
But at nightfall the wind arose,--at first as a distant murmur along
the hillside, that died away before it reached the rocky ledge; then it
rocked the tops of the tall redwoods behind the mill, but left the mill
and the dried leaves that lay in the river-bed undisturbed. Then the
murmur was prolonged, until it became the continuous trouble of some
far-off sea, and at last the wind possessed the ledge itself; driving
the smoke down the stumpy chimney of the mill, rattling the sun-warped
shingles on the roof, stirring the inside rafters with cool breaths,
and singing over the rough projections of the outside eaves. At nine
o'clock he rolled himself up in his blankets before the fire, as was
his wont, and fell asleep.
It was past midnight when he was awakened by the familiar clatter of
boulders down the grade, the usual simulation of a wild rush from
without that encompassed the whole mill, even to that heavy impact
against the door, which he had heard once before. In this he
recognized merely the ordinary phenomena of his experience, and only
turned over to sleep again. But this time the door rudely fell in upon
him, and a figure strode over his prostrate body, with a gun leveled at
his head.
He sprang sideways for his own weapon, which stood by the hearth. In
another second that action would have been his last, and the solitude
of Seth Collinson might have remained henceforward unbroken by any
mortal. But the gun of the first figure was knocked sharply upward by
a second man, and the one and only shot fired that night sped
harmlessly to the roof. With the report he felt his arms gripped
tightly behind him; through the smoke he saw dimly that the room was
filled with masked and armed men, and in another moment he was pinioned
and thrust into his empty armchair. At a signal three of the men left
the room, and he could hear them exploring the other rooms and
outhouses. Then the two men who had been standing beside him fell back
with a certain disciplined precision, as a smooth-chinned man advanced
from the open door. Going to the bar, he poured out a glass of whiskey,
tossed it off deliberately, and, standing in front of Collinson, with
his shoulder against the chimney and his hand resting lightly on his
hip, cleared his throat. Had Collinson been an observant man, he would
have noticed that the two men dropped their eyes and moved their feet
with a half impatient, perfunctory air of waiting. Had he witnessed
the stage-robbery, he would have recognized in the smooth-faced man the
presence of "the orator." But he only gazed at him with his dull,
imperturbable patience.
"We regret exceedingly to have to use force to a gentleman in his own
house," began the orator blandly; "but we feel it our duty to prevent a
repetition of the unhappy incident which occurred as we entered. We
desire that you should answer a few questions, and are deeply grateful
