Produced by David Widger


A DOUBLE BARRELLED DETECTIVE

by Mark Twain


PART I

"We ought never to do wrong when people are looking."


I

The first scene is in the country, in Virginia; the time, 1880. There
has been a wedding, between a handsome young man of slender means and a
rich young girl - a case of love at first sight and a precipitate
marriage; a marriage bitterly opposed by the girl's widowed father.

Jacob Fuller, the bridegroom, is twenty-six years old, is of an old but
unconsidered family which had by compulsion emigrated from Sedgemoor, and
for King James's purse's profit, so everybody said - some maliciously the
rest merely because they believed it. The bride is nineteen and
beautiful. She is intense, high-strung, romantic, immeasurably proud of
her Cavalier blood, and passionate in her love for her young husband.
For its sake she braved her father's displeasure, endured his reproaches,
listened with loyalty unshaken to his warning predictions and went from
his house without his blessing, proud and happy in the proofs she was
thus giving of the quality of the affection which had made its home in
her heart.

The morning after the marriage there was a sad surprise for her. Her
husband put aside her proffered caresses, and said:

"Sit down. I have something to say to you. I loved you. That was
before I asked your father to give you to me. His refusal is not my
grievance - I could have endured that. But the things he said of me to
you - that is a different matter. There - you needn't speak; I know quite
well what they were; I got them from authentic sources. Among other
things he said that my character was written in my face; that I was
treacherous, a dissembler, a coward, and a brute without sense of pity or
compassion: the 'Sedgemoor trade-mark,' he called it - and 'white-sleeve
badge.' Any other man in my place would have gone to his house and shot
him down like a dog. I wanted to do it, and was minded to do it, but a
better thought came to me: to put him to shame; to break his heart; to
kill him by inches. How to do it? Through my treatment of you, his
idol! I would marry you; and then - Have patience. You will see."

From that moment onward, for three months, the young wife suffered all
the humiliations, all the insults, all the miseries that the diligent and
inventive mind of the husband could contrive, save physical injuries
only. Her strong pride stood by her, and she kept the secret of her
troubles. Now and then the husband said, "Why don't you go to your
father and tell him?" Then he invented new tortures, applied them, and
asked again. She always answered, "He shall never know by my mouth," and
taunted him with his origin; said she was the lawful slave of a scion of
slaves, and must obey, and would - up to that point, but no further; he
could kill her if he liked, but he could not break her; it was not in the
Sedgemoor breed to do it. At the end of the three months he said, with a
dark significance in his manner, "I have tried all things but one" - and
waited for her reply. "Try that," she said, and curled her lip in
mockery.

That night he rose at midnight and put on his clothes, then said to her:

"Get up and dress!"

She obeyed - as always, without a word. He led her half a mile from the
house, and proceeded to lash her to a tree by the side of the public
road; and succeeded, she screaming and struggling. He gagged her then,
struck her across the face with his cowhide, and set his bloodhounds on
her. They tore the clothes off her, and she was naked. He called the
dogs off, and said:

"You will be found - by the passing public. They will be dropping along
about three hours from now, and will spread the news - do you hear?
Good-by. You have seen the last of me."

He went away then. She moaned to herself:

"I shall bear a child - to him! God grant it may be a boy!"

The farmers released her by and by - and spread the news, which was
natural. They raised the country with lynching intentions, but the bird
had flown. The young wife shut herself up in her father's house; he shut
himself up with her, and thenceforth would see no one. His pride was
broken, and his heart; so he wasted away, day by day, and even his
daughter rejoiced when death relieved him.

Then she sold the estate and disappeared.


II

In 1886 a young woman was living in a modest house near a secluded New
England village, with no company but a little boy about five years old.
She did her own work, she discouraged acquaintanceships, and had none.
The butcher, the baker, and the others that served her could tell the
villagers nothing about her further than that her name was Stillman, and
that she called the child Archy. Whence she came they had not been able
to find out, but they said she talked like a Southerner. The child had
no playmates and no comrade, and no teacher but the mother. She taught
him diligently and intelligently, and was satisfied with the results
- even a little proud of them. One day Archy said:

"Mamma, am I different from other children?"

"Well, I suppose not. Why?"

"There was a child going along out there and asked me if the postman had
been by and I said yes, and she said how long since I saw him and I said
I hadn't seen him at all, and she said how did I know he'd been by, then,
and I said because I smelt his track on the sidewalk, and she said I was
a dum fool and made a mouth at me. What did she do that for?"

The young woman turned white, and said to herself, "It's a birth mark!
The gift of the bloodhound is in him." She snatched the boy to her
breast and hugged him passionately, saying, "God has appointed the way!"
Her eyes were burning with a fierce light, and her breath came short and
quick with excitement. She said to herself: "The puzzle is solved now;
many a time it has been a mystery to me, the impossible things the child
has done in the dark, but it is all clear to me now."

She set him in his small chair, and said:

"Wait a little till I come, dear; then we will talk about the matter."

She went up to her room and took from her dressing-table several small
articles and put them out of sight: a nail-file on the floor under the
bed; a pair of nail-scissors under the bureau; a small ivory paper-knife
under the wardrobe. Then she returned, and said:

"There! I have left some things which I ought to have brought down."
She named them, and said, "Run up and bring them, dear."

The child hurried away on his errand and was soon back again with the
things.

"Did you have any difficulty, dear?"

"No, mamma; I only went where you went."

During his absence she had stepped to the bookcase, taken several books
from the bottom shelf, opened each, passed her hand over a page, noting
its number in her memory, then restored them to their places. Now she
said:

"I have been doing something while you have been gone, Archy. Do you
think you can find out what it was?"

The boy went to the bookcase and got out the books that had been touched,
and opened them at the pages which had been stroked.

The mother took him in her lap, and said:

"I will answer your question now, dear. I have found out that in one way
you are quite different from other people. You can see in the dark, you
can smell what other people cannot, you have the talents of a bloodhound.
They are good and valuable things to have, but you must keep the matter a
secret. If people found it out, they would speak of you as an odd child,
a strange child, and children would be disagreeable to you, and give you
nicknames. In this world one must be like everybody else if he doesn't
want to provoke scorn or envy or jealousy. It is a great and fine
distinction which has been born to you, and I am glad; but you will keep
it a secret, for mamma's sake, won't you?"

The child promised, without understanding.

All the rest of the day the mother's brain was busy with excited
thinkings; with plans, projects, schemes, each and all of them uncanny,
grim, and dark. Yet they lit up her face; lit it with a fell light of
their own; lit it with vague fires of hell. She was in a fever of
unrest; she could not sit, stand, read, sew; there was no relief for her
but in movement. She tested her boy's gift in twenty ways, and kept
saying to herself all the time, with her mind in the past: "He broke my
father's heart, and night and day all these years I have tried, and all
in vain, to think out a way to break his. I have found it now - I have
found it now."

When night fell, the demon of unrest still possessed her. She went on
with her tests; with a candle she traversed the house from garret to
cellar, hiding pins, needles, thimbles, spools, under pillows, under
carpets, in cracks in the walls, under the coal in the bin; then sent the
little fellow in the dark to find them; which he did, and was happy and
proud when she praised him and smothered him with caresses.

From this time forward life took on a new complexion for her. She said,
"The future is secure - I can wait, and enjoy the waiting." The most of
her lost interests revived. She took up music again, and languages,
drawing, painting, and the other long-discarded delights of her
maidenhood. She was happy once more, and felt again the zest of life.
As the years drifted by she watched the development of her boy, and was
contented with it. Not altogether, but nearly that. The soft side of
his heart was larger than the other side of it. It was his only defect,
in her eyes. But she considered that his love for her and worship of her
made up for it. He was a good hater - that was well; but it was a
question if the materials of his hatreds were of as tough and enduring a
quality as those of his friendships - and that was not so well.


The years drifted on. Archy was become a handsome, shapely, athletic
youth, courteous, dignified, companionable, pleasant in his ways, and
looking perhaps a trifle older than he was, which was sixteen. One
evening his mother said she had something of grave importance to say to
him, adding that he was old enough to hear it now, and old enough and
possessed of character enough and stability enough to carry out a stern
plan which she had been for years contriving and maturing. Then she told
him her bitter story, in all its naked atrociousness. For a while the
boy was paralyzed; then he said:

"I understand. We are Southerners; and by our custom and nature there is
but one atonement. I will search him out and kill him."

"Kill him? No! Death is release, emancipation; death is a favor. Do I
owe him favors? You must not hurt a hair of his head."

The boy was lost in thought awhile; then he said:

"You are all the world to me, and your desire is my law and my pleasure.
Tell me what to do and I will do it."

The mother's eyes beamed with satisfaction, and she said:

"You will go and find him. I have known his hiding-place for eleven
years; it cost me five years and more of inquiry, and much money, to
locate it. He is a quartz-miner in Colorado, and well-to-do. He lives
in Denver. His name is Jacob Fuller. There - it is the first time I have
spoken it since that unforgettable night. Think! That name could have
been yours if I had not saved you that shame and furnished you a cleaner
one. You will drive him from that place; you will hunt him down and
drive him again; and yet again, and again, and again, persistently,
relentlessly, poisoning his life, filling it with mysterious terrors,
loading it with weariness and misery, making him wish for death, and that
he had a suicide's courage; you will make of him another Wandering Jew;
he shall know no rest any more, no peace of mind, no placid sleep; you
shall shadow him, cling to him, persecute him, till you break his heart,
as he broke my father's and mine."

"I will obey, mother."

"I believe it, my child. The preparations are all made; everything is
ready. Here is a letter of credit; spend freely, there is no lack of
money. At times you may need disguises. I have provided them; also some
other conveniences." She took from the drawer of the typewriter-table
several squares of paper. They all bore these typewritten words:

$10,000 REWARD

It is believed that a certain man who is wanted in an Eastern state
is sojourning here. In 1880, in the night, he tied his young wife
to a tree by the public road, cut her across the face with a
cowhide, and made his dogs tear her clothes from her, leaving her
naked. He left her there, and fled the country. A blood-relative
of hers has searched for him for seventeen years. Address . . .
. . . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . , Post-office.
The above reward will be paid in cash to the person who will furnish
the seeker, in a personal interview, the criminal's address.

"When you have found him and acquainted yourself with his scent, you will
go in the night and placard one of these upon the building he occupies,
and another one upon the post-office or in some other prominent place.
It will be the talk of the region. At first you must give him several
days in which to force a sale of his belongings at something approaching
their value. We will ruin him by and by, but gradually; we must not
impoverish him at once, for that could bring him to despair and injure
his health, possibly kill him."

She took three or four more typewritten forms from the drawer
- duplicates - and read one:

. . . . . . . . . . , . . . . . . . . . . , 18.
. . .
To Jacob Fuller:

You have . . . . . . days in which to settle your affairs.
You will not be disturbed during that limit, which will expire at .
. . . . . M., on the . . . . . . of . . . . . . .
You must then MOVE ON. If you are still in the place after the
named hour, I will placard you on all the dead walls, detailing your
crime once more, and adding the date, also the scene of it, with all
names concerned, including your own. Have no fear of bodily injury
- it will in no circumstances ever be inflicted upon you. You
brought misery upon an old man, and ruined his life and broke his
heart. What he suffered, you are to suffer.

"You will add no signature. He must receive this before he learns of the
reward placard - before he rises in the morning - lest he lose his head and
fly the place penniless."

"I shall not forget."

"You will need to use these forms only in the beginning - once may be
enough. Afterward, when you are ready for him to vanish out of a place,
see that he gets a copy of this form, which merely says:

"MOVE ON. You have . . . . . . days."

"He will obey. That is sure."


III

Extracts from letters to the mother:

DENVER, April 3, 1897
I have now been living several days in the same hotel with Jacob Fuller.
I have his scent; I could track him through ten divisions of infantry and
find him. I have often been near him and heard him talk. He owns a good
mine, and has a fair income from it; but he is not rich. He learned
mining in a good way - by working at it for wages. He is a cheerful
creature, and his forty-three years sit lightly upon him; he could pass
for a younger man - say thirty-six or thirty-seven. He has never married
again - passes himself off for a widower. He stands well, is liked, is
popular, and has many friends. Even I feel a drawing toward him - the
paternal blood in me making its claim. How blind and unreasoning and
arbitrary are some of the laws of nature - the most of them, in fact! My
task is become hard now - you realize it? you comprehend, and make
allowances? - and the fire of it has cooled, more than I like to confess
to myself, But I will carry it out. Even with the pleasure paled, the
duty remains, and I will not spare him.

And for my help, a sharp resentment rises in me when I reflect that he
who committed that odious crime is the only one who has not suffered by
it. The lesson of it has manifestly reformed his character, and in the
change he is happy. He, the guilty party, is absolved from all
suffering; you, the innocent, are borne down with it. But be comforted
- he shall harvest his share.


SILVER GULCH, May 19
I placarded Form No. 1 at midnight of April 3; an hour later I slipped
Form No. 2 under his chamber door, notifying him to leave Denver at or
before 11.50 the night of the 14th.

Some late bird of a reporter stole one of my placards, then hunted the
town over and found the other one, and stole that. In this manner he
accomplished what the profession call a "scoop" - that is, he got a
valuable item, and saw to it that no other paper got it. And so his
paper - the principal one in the town - had it in glaring type on the
editorial page in the morning, followed by a Vesuvian opinion of our
wretch a column long, which wound up by adding a thousand dollars to our
reward on the paper's account! The journals out here know how to do the
noble thing - when there's business in it.

At breakfast I occupied my usual seat - selected because it afforded a
view of papa Fuller's face, and was near enough for me to hear the talk
that went on at his table. Seventy-five or a hundred people were in the
room, and all discussing that item, and saying they hoped the seeker
would find that rascal and remove the pollution of his presence from the
town - with a rail, or a bullet, or something.

When Fuller came in he had the Notice to Leave - folded up - in one hand,
and the newspaper in the other; and it gave me more than half a pang to
see him. His cheerfulness was all gone, and he looked old and pinched
and ashy. And then - only think of the things he had to listen to!
Mamma, he heard his own unsuspecting friends describe him with epithets
and characterizations drawn from the very dictionaries and phrase-books
of Satan's own authorized editions down below. And more than that, he
had to agree with the verdicts and applaud them. His applause tasted
bitter in his mouth, though; he could not disguise that from me; and it
was observable that his appetite was gone; he only nibbled; he couldn't
eat. Finally a man said:

"It is quite likely that that relative is in the room and hearing what
this town thinks of that unspeakable scoundrel. I hope so."

Ah, dear, it was pitiful the way Fuller winced, and glanced around
scared! He couldn't endure any more, and got up and left.

During several days he gave out that he had bought a mine in Mexico, and
wanted to sell out and go down there as soon as he could, and give the
property his personal attention. He played his cards well; said he would
take $40,000 - a quarter in cash, the rest in safe notes; but that as he
greatly needed money on account of his new purchase, he would diminish
his terms for cash in full, He sold out for $30,000. And then, what do
you think he did? He asked for greenbacks, and took them, saying the man
in Mexico was a New-Englander, with a head full of crotchets, and
preferred greenbacks to gold or drafts. People thought it queer, since a
draft on New York could produce greenbacks quite conveniently. There was
talk of this odd thing, but only for a day; that is as long as any topic
lasts in Denver.

I was watching, all the time. As soon as the sale was completed and the
money paid - which was on the 11th - I began to stick to Fuller's track
without dropping it for a moment. That night - no, 12th, for it was a
little past midnight - I tracked him to his room, which was four doors
from mine in the same hall; then I went back and put on my muddy
day-laborer disguise, darkened my complexion, and sat down in my room in
the gloom, with a gripsack handy, with a change in it, and my door ajar.
For I suspected that the bird would take wing now. In half an hour an
old woman passed by, carrying a grip: I caught the familiar whiff, and
followed with my grip, for it was Fuller. He left the hotel by a side
entrance, and at the corner he turned up an unfrequented street and
walked three blocks in a light rain and a heavy darkness, and got into a
two-horse hack, which of course was waiting for him by appointment. I
took a seat (uninvited) on the trunk platform behind, and we drove
briskly off. We drove ten miles, and the hack stopped at a way-station
and was discharged. Fuller got out and took a seat on a barrow under the
awning, as far as he could get from the light; I went inside, and watched
the ticket-office. Fuller bought no ticket; I bought none. Presently
the train came along, and he boarded a car; I entered the same car at the
other end, and came down the aisle and took the seat behind him. When he
paid the conductor and named his objective point, I dropped back several
seats, while the conductor was changing a bill, and when he came to me I
paid to the same place - about a hundred miles westward.

From that time for a week on end he led me a dance. He traveled here and
there and yonder - always on a general westward trend - but he was not a
woman after the first day. He was a laborer, like myself, and wore bushy
false whiskers. His outfit was perfect, and he could do the character
without thinking about it, for he had served the trade for wages. His
nearest friend could not have recognized him. At last he located himself
here, the obscurest little mountain camp in Montana; he has a shanty, and
goes out prospecting daily; is gone all day, and avoids society. I am
living at a miner's boardinghouse, and it is an awful place: the bunks,
the food, the dirt - everything.

We have been here four weeks, and in that time I have seen him but once;
but every night I go over his track and post myself. As soon as he
engaged a shanty here I went to a town fifty miles away and telegraphed
that Denver hotel to keep my baggage till I should send for it. I need
nothing here but a change of army shirts, and I brought that with me.


SILVER GULCH, June 12
The Denver episode has never found its way here, I think. I know the
most of the men in camp, and they have never referred to it, at least in
my hearing. Fuller doubtless feels quite safe in these conditions. He
has located a claim, two miles away, in an out-of-the-way place in the
mountains; it promises very well, and he is working it diligently. Ah,
but the change in him! He never smiles, and he keeps quite to himself,
consorting with no one - he who was so fond of company and so cheery only
two months ago. I have seen him passing along several times recently
- drooping, forlorn, the spring gone from his step, a pathetic figure.
He calls himself David Wilson.

I can trust him to remain here until we disturb him. Since you insist, I
will banish him again, but I do not see how he can be unhappier than he
already is. I will go hack to Denver and treat myself to a little season
of comfort, and edible food, and endurable beds, and bodily decency; then
I will fetch my things, and notify poor papa Wilson to move on.


DENVER, June 19
They miss him here. They all hope he is prospering in Mexico, and they
do not say it just with their mouths, but out of their hearts. You know
you can always tell. I am loitering here overlong, I confess it. But if
you were in my place you would have charity for me. Yes, I know what you
will say, and you are right: if I were in your place, and carried your
scalding memories in my heart -

I will take the night train back to-morrow.


DENVER, June 20
God forgive us, mother, me are hunting the wrong man! I have not slept
any all night. I am now awaiting, at dawn, for the morning train - and
how the minutes drag, how they drag!

This Jacob Fuller is a cousin of the guilty one. How stupid we have been
not to reflect that the guilty one would never again wear his own name
after that fiendish deed! The Denver Fuller is four years younger than
the other one; he came here a young widower in '79, aged twenty-one - a
year before you were married; and the documents to prove it are
innumerable. Last night I talked with familiar friends of his who have
known him from the day of his arrival. I said nothing, but a few days
from now I will land him in this town again, with the loss upon his mine
made good; and there will be a banquet, and a torch-light procession, and
there will not be any expense on anybody but me. Do you call this
"gush"? I am only a boy, as you well know; it is my privilege. By and
by I shall not be a boy any more.


SILVER GULCH, July 3
Mother, he is gone! Gone, and left no trace. The scent was cold when I
came. To-day I am out of bed for the first time since. I wish I were
not a boy; then I could stand shocks better. They all think he went
west. I start to-night, in a wagon - two or three hours of that, then I
get a train. I don't know where I'm going, but I must go; to try to keep
still would be torture.

Of course he has effaced himself with a new name and a disguise. This
means that I may have to search the whole globe to find him. Indeed it
is what I expect. Do you see, mother? It is I that am the Wandering
Jew. The irony of it! We arranged that for another.

Think of the difficulties! And there would be none if I only could
advertise for him. But if there is any way to do it that would not
frighten him, I have not been able to think it out, and I have tried till
my brains are addled. "If the gentleman who lately bought a mine in
Mexico and sold one in Denver will send his address to" (to whom,
mother!), "it will be explained to him that it was all a mistake; his
forgiveness will be asked, and full reparation made for a loss which he
sustained in a certain matter." Do you see? He would think it a trap.
Well, any one would. If I should say, "It is now known that he was not
the man wanted, but another man - a man who once bore the same name, but
discarded it for good reasons" - would that answer? But the Denver people
would wake up then and say "Oho!" and they would remember about the
suspicious greenbacks, and say, "Why did he run away if he wasn't the
right man? - it is too thin." If I failed to find him he would be ruined
there - there where there is no taint upon him now. You have a better
head than mine. Help me.

I have one clue, and only one. I know his handwriting. If he puts his
new false name upon a hotel register and does not disguise it too much,
it will be valuable to me if I ever run across it.


SAN FRANCISCO, June 28, 1898
You already know how well I have searched the states from Colorado to the
Pacific, and how nearly I came to getting him once. Well, I have had
another close miss. It was here, yesterday. I struck his trail, hot, on
the street, and followed it on a run to a cheap hotel. That was a costly
mistake; a dog would have gone the other way. But I am only part dog,
and can get very humanly stupid when excited. He had been stopping in
that house ten days; I almost know, now, that he stops long nowhere, the
past six or eight months, but is restless and has to keep moving. I
understand that feeling! and I know what it is to feel it. He still
uses the name he had registered when I came so near catching him nine
months ago - "James Walker"; doubtless the same he adopted when he fled
from Silver Gulch. An unpretending man, and has small taste for fancy
names. I recognized the hand easily, through its slight disguise. A
square man, and not good at shams and pretenses.

They said he was just gone, on a journey; left no address; didn't say
where he was going; looked frightened when asked to leave his address;
had no baggage but a cheap valise; carried it off on foot - a "stingy old
person, and not much loss to the house." "Old!" I suppose he is, now I
hardly heard; I was there but a moment. I rushed along his trail, and it
led me to a wharf. Mother, the smoke of the steamer he had taken was
just fading out on the horizon! I should have saved half on hour if I
had gone in the right direction at first. I could have taken a fast tug,
and should have stood a chance of catching that vessel. She is bound for
Melbourne.


HOPE CANYON, CALIFORNIA, October 3, 1900
You have a right to complain. "A letter a year" is a paucity; I freely
acknowledge it; but how can one write when there is nothing to write
about but failures? No one can keep it up; it breaks the heart,

I told you - it seems ages ago, now - how I missed him at Melbourne, and
then chased him all over Australasia for months on end.

Well, then, after that I followed him to India; almost saw him in Bombay;
traced him all around - to Baroda, Rawal-Pindi, Lucknow, Lahore, Cawnpore,
Allahabad, Calcutta, Madras - oh, everywhere; week after week, month after
month, through the dust and swelter - always approximately on his track,
sometimes close upon him, get never catching him. And down to Ceylon,
and then to - Never mind; by and by I will write it all out.

I chased him home to California, and down to Mexico, and back again to
California. Since then I have been hunting him about the state from the
first of last January down to a month ago. I feel almost sure he is not
far from Hope Canyon; I traced him to a point thirty miles from here, but
there I lost the trail; some one gave him a lift in a wagon, I suppose.

I am taking a rest, now - modified by searchings for the lost trail. I
was tired to death, mother, and low-spirited, and sometimes coming
uncomfortably near to losing hope; but the miners in this little camp are
good fellows, and I am used to their sort this long time back; and their
breezy ways freshen a person up and make him forget his troubles. I have
been here a month. I am cabining with a young fellow named "Sammy"
Hillyer, about twenty-five, the only son of his mother - like me - and
loves her dearly, and writes to her every week - part of which is like me.
He is a timid body, and in the matter of intellect - well, he cannot be
depended upon to set a river on fire; but no matter, he is well liked; he
is good and fine, and it is meat and bread and rest and luxury to sit and
talk with him and have a comradeship again. I wish "James Walker" could
have it. He had friends; he liked company. That brings up that picture
of him, the time that I saw him last. The pathos of it! It comes before
me often and often. At that very time, poor thing, I was girding up my
conscience to make him move on again!

Hillyer's heart is better than mine, better than anybody's in the
community, I suppose, for he is the one friend of the black sheep of the
camp - Flint Buckner - and the only man Flint ever talks with or allows to
talk with him. He says he knows Flint's history, and that it is trouble
that has made him what he is, and so one ought to be as charitable toward
him as one can. Now none but a pretty large heart could find space to
accommodate a lodger like Flint Buckner, from all I hear about him
outside. I think that this one detail will give you a better idea of
Sammy's character than any labored-out description I could furnish you of
him. In one of our talks he said something about like this: "Flint is a
kinsman of mine, and he pours out all his troubles to me - empties his
breast from time to time, or I reckon it would burst. There couldn't be
any unhappier man, Archy Stillman; his life had been made up of misery of
mind - he isn't near as old as he looks. He has lost the feel of
reposefulness and peace - oh, years and years ago! He doesn't know what
good luck is - never has had any; often says he wishes he was in the other
hell, he is so tired of this one."


IV
"No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the
presence of ladies."

It was a crisp and spicy morning in early October. The lilacs and
laburnums, lit with the glory-fires of autumn, hung burning and flashing
in the upper air, a fairy bridge provided by kind Nature for the wingless
wild things that have their homes in the tree-tops and would visit
together; the larch and the pomegranate flung their purple and yellow
flames in brilliant broad splashes along the slanting sweep of the
woodland; the sensuous fragrance of innumerable deciduous flowers rose
upon the swooning atmosphere; far in he empty sky a solitary oesophagus
slept upon motionless wing; everywhere brooded stillness, serenity, and
the peace of God.

October is the time - 1900; Hope Canyon is the place, a silver-mining camp
away down in the Esmeralda region. It is a secluded spot, high and
remote; recent as to discovery; thought by its occupants to be rich in
metal - a year or two's prospecting will decide that matter one way or the
other. For inhabitants, the camp has about two hundred miners, one white
woman and child, several Chinese washermen, five squaws, and a dozen
vagrant buck Indians in rabbit-skin robes, battered plug hats, and
tin-can necklaces. There are no mills as yet; no church, no newspaper.
The camp has existed but two years; it has made no big strike; the world
is ignorant of its name and place.

On both sides of the canyon the mountains rise wall-like, three thousand
feet, and the long spiral of straggling huts down in its narrow bottom
gets a kiss from the sun only once a day, when he sails over at noon.
The village is a couple of miles long; the cabins stand well apart from
each other. The tavern is the only "frame" house - the only house, one
might say. It occupies a central position, and is the evening resort of
the population. They drink there, and play seven-up and dominoes; also
billiards, for there is a table, crossed all over with torn places
repaired with court-plaster; there are some cues, but no leathers; some
chipped balls which clatter when they run, and do not slow up gradually,
but stop suddenly and sit down; there is a part of a cube of chalk, with
a projecting jag of flint in it; and the man who can score six on a
single break can set up the drinks at the bar's expense.

Flint Buckner's cabin was the last one of the village, going south; his
silver-claim was at the other end of the village, northward, and a little
beyond the last hut in that direction. He was a sour creature,
unsociable, and had no companionships. People who had tried to get
acquainted with him had regretted it and dropped him. His history was
not known. Some believed that Sammy Hillyer knew it; others said no.
If asked, Hillyer said no, he was not acquainted with it. Flint had a
meek English youth of sixteen or seventeen with him, whom he treated
roughly, both in public and in private; and of course this lad was
applied to for information, but with no success. Fetlock Jones - name of
the youth - said that Flint picked him up on a prospecting tramp, and as
he had neither home nor friends in America, he had found it wise to stay
and take Buckner's hard usage for the sake of the salary, which was bacon
and beans. Further than this he could offer no testimony.

Fetlock had been in this slavery for a month now, and under his meek
exterior he was slowly consuming to a cinder with the insults and
humiliations which his master had put upon him. For the meek suffer
bitterly from these hurts; more bitterly, perhaps, than do the manlier
sort, who can burst out and get relief with words or blows when the limit
of endurance has been reached. Good-hearted people wanted to help
Fetlock out of his trouble, and tried to get him to leave Buckner; but
the boy showed fright at the thought, and said he "dasn't." Pat Riley
urged him, and said:

"You leave the damned hunks and come with me; don't you be afraid. I'll
take care of him."

The boy thanked him with tears in his eyes, but shuddered and said he
"dasn't risk it"; he said Flint would catch him alone, some time, in the
night, and then - "Oh, it makes me sick, Mr. Riley, to think of it."

Others said, "Run away from him; we'll stake you; skip out for the coast
some night." But all these suggestions failed; he said Flint would hunt
him down and fetch him back, just for meanness.

The people could not understand this. The boy's miseries went steadily
on, week after week. It is quite likely that the people would have
understood if they had known how he was employing his spare time. He
slept in an out-cabin near Flint's; and there, nights, he nursed his
bruises and his humiliations, and studied and studied over a single
problem - how he could murder Flint Buckner and not be found out. It was
the only joy he had in life; these hours were the only ones in the
twenty-four which he looked forward to with eagerness and spent in
happiness.

He thought of poison. No - that would not serve; the inquest would reveal
where it was procured and who had procured it. He thought of a shot in
the back in a lonely place when Flint would be homeward bound at
midnight - his unvarying hour for the trip. No - somebody might be near,
and catch him. He thought of stabbing him in his sleep. No - he might
strike an inefficient blow, and Flint would seize him. He examined a
hundred different ways - none of them would answer; for in even the very
obscurest and secretest of them there was always the fatal defect of a
risk, a chance, a possibility that he might be found out. He would have
none of that.

But he was patient, endlessly patient. There was no hurry, he said to
himself. He would never leave Flint till he left him a corpse; there was
no hurry - he would find the way. It was somewhere, and he would endure
shame and pain and misery until he found it. Yes, somewhere there was a
way which would leave not a trace, not even the faintest clue to the
murderer - there was no hurry - he would find that way, and then - oh, then,
it would just be good to be alive! Meantime he would diligently keep up
his reputation for meekness; and also, as always theretofore, he would
allow no one to hear him say a resentful or offensive thing about his
oppressor.

Two days before the before-mentioned October morning Flint had bought
some things, and he and Fetlock had brought them home to Flint's cabin: a
fresh box of candles, which they put in the corner; a tin can of
blasting-powder, which they placed upon the candle-box; a keg of
blasting-powder, which they placed under Flint's bunk; a huge coil of
fuse, which they hung on a peg. Fetlock reasoned that Flint's mining
operations had outgrown the pick, and that blasting was about to begin
now. He had seen blasting done, and he had a notion of the process, but
he had never helped in it. His conjecture was right - blasting-time had
come. In the morning the pair carried fuse, drills, and the powder-can
to the shaft; it was now eight feet deep, and to get into it and out of
it a short ladder was used. They descended, and by command Fetlock held
the drill - without any instructions as to the right way to hold it - and
Flint proceeded to strike. The sledge came down; the drill sprang out of
Fetlock's hand, almost as a matter of course.

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