Part 6 (1/2)

”YOU don't--who are YOU?”

”That's a queer question to ask of the man you are trying to personate--but I don't wonder! You're doing it d----d badly.”

”Personate--YOU?” said the stranger, with staring eyes.

”Yes, ME,” said Brooks quietly. ”I am the only man who escaped from the robbery that night at Heavy Tree Hill and who went home by the Overland Coach.”

The stranger stared, but recovered himself with a coa.r.s.e laugh. ”Oh, well! we're on the same lay, it appears! Both after the widow--afore we show up her husband.”

”Not exactly,” said Brooks, with his eyes fixed intently on the stranger. ”You are here to denounce a highwayman who is DEAD and escaped justice. I am here to denounce one who is LIVING!--Stop! drop your hand; it's no use. You thought you had to deal only with a woman to-night, and your revolver isn't quite handy enough. There! down!--down! So! That'll do.”

”You can't prove it,” said the man hoa.r.s.ely.

”Fool! In your story to that woman you have given yourself away. There were but two travelers attacked by the highwaymen. One was killed--I am the other. Where do YOU come in? What witness can you be--except as the highwayman that you are? Who is left to identify Wade but--his accomplice!”

The man's suddenly whitened face made his unshaven beard seem to bristle over his face like some wild animal's. ”Well, ef you kalkilate to blow me, you've got to blow Wade and his widder too. Jest you remember that,”

he said whiningly.

”I've thought of that,” said Brooks coolly, ”and I calculate that to prevent it is worth about that hundred dollars you got from that poor woman--and no more! Now, sit down at that table, and write as I dictate.”

The man looked at him in wonder, but obeyed.

”Write,” said Brooks, ”'I hereby certify that my accusations against the late Pulaski Wade of Heavy Tree Hill are erroneous and groundless, and the result of mistaken ident.i.ty, especially in regard to any complicity of his in the robbery of John Stubbs, deceased, and Henry Brooks, at Heavy Tree Hill, on the night of the 13th August, 1854.'”

The man looked up with a repulsive smile. ”Who's the fool now, Cap'n?

What's become of your hold on the widder, now?”

”Write!” said Brooks fiercely.

The sound of a pen hurriedly scratching paper followed this first outburst of the quiet Brooks.

”Sign it,” said Brooks.

The man signed it.

”Now go,” said Brooks, unlocking the door, ”but remember, if you should ever be inclined to revisit Santa Ana, you will find ME living here also.”

The man slunk out of the door and into the pa.s.sage like a wild animal returning to the night and darkness. Brooks took up the paper, rejoined Mrs. Wade in the parlor, and laid it before her.

”But,” said the widow, trembling even in her joy, ”do you--do you think he was REALLY mistaken?”

”Positive,” said Brooks coolly. ”It's true, it's a mistake that has cost you a hundred dollars, but there are some mistakes that are worth that to be kept quiet.”

They were married a year later; but there is no record that in after years of conjugal relations with a weak, charming, but sometimes trying woman, Henry Brooks was ever tempted to tell her the whole truth of the robbery of Heavy Tree Hill.

THE MERMAID OF LIGHTHOUSE POINT

Some forty years ago, on the northern coast of California, near the Golden Gate, stood a lighthouse. Of a primitive cla.s.s, since superseded by a building more in keeping with the growing magnitude of the adjacent port, it attracted little attention from the desolate sh.o.r.e, and, it was alleged, still less from the desolate sea beyond. A gray structure of timber, stone, and gla.s.s, it was buffeted and harried by the constant trade winds, baked by the unclouded six months' sun, lost for a few hours in the afternoon sea-fog, and laughed over by circling guillemots from the Farallones. It was kept by a recluse--a preoccupied man of scientific tastes, who, in shameless contrast to his fellow immigrants, had applied to the government for this scarcely lucrative position as a means of securing the seclusion he valued more than gold. Some believed that he was the victim of an early disappointment in love--a view charitably taken by those who also believed that the government would not have appointed ”a crank” to a position of responsibility. Howbeit, he fulfilled his duties, and, with the a.s.sistance of an Indian, even cultivated a small patch of ground beside the lighthouse. His isolation was complete! There was little to attract wanderers here: the nearest mines were fifty miles away; the virgin forest on the mountains inland were penetrated only by sawmills and woodmen from the Bay settlements, equally remote. Although by the sh.o.r.e-line the lights of the great port were sometimes plainly visible, yet the solitude around him was peopled only by Indians,--a branch of the great northern tribe of ”root-diggers,”--peaceful and simple in their habits, as yet undisturbed by the white man, nor stirred into antagonism by aggression.

Civilization only touched him at stated intervals, and then by the more expeditious sea from the government boat that brought him supplies. But for his contiguity to the perpetual turmoil of wind and sea, he might have pa.s.sed a restful Arcadian life in his surroundings; for even his solitude was sometimes haunted by this faint reminder of the great port hard by that pulsated with an equal unrest. Nevertheless, the sands before his door and the rocks behind him seemed to have been untrodden by any other white man's foot since their upheaval from the ocean. It was true that the little bay beside him was marked on the map as ”Sir Francis Drake's Bay,” tradition having located it as the spot where that ingenious pirate and empire-maker had once landed his vessels and sc.r.a.ped the barnacles from his adventurous keels. But of this Edgar Pomfrey--or ”Captain Pomfrey,” as he was called by virtue of his half-nautical office--had thought little.

For the first six months he had thoroughly enjoyed his seclusion. In the company of his books, of which he had brought such a fair store that their shelves lined his snug corners to the exclusion of more comfortable furniture, he found his princ.i.p.al recreation. Even his unwonted manual labor, the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of his lamp and cleaning of his reflectors, and his personal housekeeping, in which his Indian help at times a.s.sisted, he found a novel and interesting occupation. For outdoor exercise, a ramble on the sands, a climb to the rocky upland, or a pull in the lighthouse boat, amply sufficed him. ”Crank” as he was supposed to be, he was sane enough to guard against any of those early lapses into barbarism which marked the lives of some solitary gold-miners.