Kitabı oku: «Dorothy's Double. Volume 3 of 3», sayfa 6

'I want to speak to you,' she said. 'Those men were at the bar this afternoon. They were talking about the warning they had had, and one of them said he believed that Britisher had something to do with it. The others seemed to think so too. I don't think your life is safe. Pray do not come here at present, and keep away from them – but it would be safer still for you to go to some other place.'

'Thank you for the warning,' Ned said. 'I had not intended to come in for a day or two. They have no grounds for suspecting me more than any one else, but I don't want to get into a quarrel with any of them.'

'They are dangerous men,' she said, 'very dangerous. Pray be careful. It is shameful that things should be like this.'

'We are going to try and make things better,' Ned said, 'but we must wait till they are a little off their guard.'

'Oh, then you are in it. I thought you would be. Yes, it is dreadful. My friends were with them at first, but they see now that they drive people away from the saloon, and they would be glad if the place could be cleared of them. But pray do not run into any danger.'

'I think I can take care of myself pretty well, miss, and I am not alone. I think most of the men here are of the same opinion, and will be glad to see the camp freed of these ruffians.'

'Yes, but not to take a share in doing it. Well, pray be careful. Were anything to happen to you I should know it was because you had punished the man who spoke so insultingly about me. You are not like most of the others; you call me miss, and you try to speak roughly, but I know that it is not natural to you, and that you have been a gentleman.'

'There are a good many in the camp who have been gentlemen,' he said; 'but it makes no matter what we have been, each man has to work for himself here and to keep on the common level, and the master is he who can work hardest and steadiest, or, on the other hand, he who can draw his pistol the quickest.'

'They are calling me,' the girl exclaimed, as she heard her name shouted within. 'I must go now,' and she darted back to the door while Ned walked on carelessly.

'She is certainly marvellously like Dorothy,' he said to himself. 'Her expression was softer this evening than I have seen it before – that makes the likeness all the stronger.'

In the evening Ned heard pistol shots in the direction of the saloon, and a few minutes afterwards Jack Armitstead came up.

'More murder,' he said. 'Ben Hatcher has just shot down two new-comers. They only arrived this afternoon, and knew nothing of what was going on. They walked up to the bar and gave an order. Ben Hatcher was standing there and made some insulting remark to them. They resented it, and he drew and shot them down at once.'

'You had better bring up the other men,' Ned said. 'We will see if we cannot take this fellow as he leaves the saloon to-night. Don't bring them here; the gathering might be noticed; take them forty or fifty yards behind; then I will join you.'

Ten minutes later Ned took a coil of rope and sauntered off to the spot he had indicated, where he was presently joined by the ten men.

'It would be useless trying to take this fellow in his tent to-night,' he said; 'after what has happened they will be certain to keep a good lookout. We must watch as they leave the saloon. Will you, Armitstead, go in there now and seat yourself at a table and see what is going on, and when you see them coming out get out before them, and come and tell us; we shall be gathered just round the corner.'

'I don't expect they will be long,' Armitstead said. 'There won't be much play going on to-night after what has happened. Yes, I will go in.'

There were a few men still sitting at the tables when he entered; they were drinking silently, and watching with scowling faces the group standing at the bar. He took his seat at the table nearest to the door, and in the silence of the place could plainly hear what was being said at the other end.

'I tell you, you were wrong,' Bluff Harry was saying; 'there was no call to draw. The men were new-comers and meant no harm; it is enough to set the whole camp agin us. It ain't no use your scowling at me; I ain't afraid of you and you knows it.'

'Bluff Harry is right, Ben; however, it ain't no use having words atween friends. We have got to stick together here, and if we does that we can clear this camp out.'

'I don't care a continental what Bluff Harry or any other man thinks,' Ben Hatcher said, sulkily. 'I does as I like, without asking leave from no man; still, I don't want to quarrel, and as some of you seems to want to make a muss, I will just leave you to yourselves and turn in.' As he turned to leave the bar, Jack Armitstead slipped out through the door and ran round the corner.

'He is coming out by himself,' he said; 'you had best get away from here, for a shout would bring the whole gang upon us.'

Ned led the others down by the side of the saloon, and then out through the tents. They took their station behind one standing on the verge of the camp and waited. In two or three minutes a step was heard approaching. As the man came along, Ned Hampton sprang out and threw himself upon him; the others at once followed, and the man was thrown on to the ground, and in spite of his struggles bound and gagged. Then six of them lifted him on their shoulders, and carried him up into the wood.

The next morning, one of the miners going up to chop some firewood returned with the news that Ben Hatcher was hanging from a tree. Many others ran up to verify the statement. On the breast of the dead man was pinned a paper. 'This man has been tried and found guilty of murder, and has been hung by my orders – Judge Lynch.'

The feeling in camp was one of general satisfaction. The murders of the preceding evening had caused general indignation, and threats had been freely uttered.

Hatcher's companions were among the last to hear what had happened. None of them, on their return a few minutes after him, had thought of looking in his tent; the three whose turn it was had each kept three hours' watch, and had no reason for supposing that anything unusual had occurred. It was not until eight o'clock, that one looking into Ben Hatcher's tent discovered that it was untenanted; the others were soon roused at the news, and Bluff Harry went down into the camp to see if he had gone down on some errand.

'Have you seen Ben Hatcher?' he asked a miner who was cooking breakfast for his mates.

'Ay. I have seen him, and I guess pretty near every one in camp has.'

'Where is he?'

'You will find him up in that wood there, close to that big pine, and it ain't a pleasant sight to look at, I can tell you.'

'Is he dead?'

'I should say so; about as dead as he ever will be.'

Bluff Harry returned to his friends, and they went up in a party to the wood. Hardy as they were, their faces whitened as they looked at the swinging body and read the paper.

Not a word was spoken for a minute or two; then Mason, the gambler, said —

'We had best bury him at once, boys; we can talk it over afterwards.'

Two of the men went down and borrowed picks and shovels. In half-an-hour they returned to their tents, having finished their task. The meal was prepared in silence. When they sat down, Mason said —

'Well, boys, I don't know how you take it, but it seems to me that this is not a healthy place to stop in. We cannot always keep together and always be on our guard, and they may pick us up one after the other. I thought when you were talking yesterday about Judge Lynch that you were away from the mark. He has been to two or three camps where I have been, and it ain't no manner of good bucking against him. My opinion is, the sooner we git the better.'

'I am with you,' Bluff Harry agreed. 'If they came to open fighting I would take a hand to the last, but this secret business don't suit me. I reckon the game is played out here, and we had better vamoose the ranch before the worst comes of it.'

The others were of the same opinion. The little tents were pulled down and their belongings made up into bundles, and before noon each man shouldered his kit and moved quietly off.

CHAPTER XXII

The evening after the departure of the men who had terrorised the camp, a general meeting was held and the proceedings of Judge Lynch were endorsed by a unanimous vote. It was resolved that the camp should be kept free from professional gamblers and hard characters, and Judge Lynch was requested to give warning to any such men as might come, to clear off without delay. Except those absolutely concerned in the affair of the night before, none in camp knew who were the men who had carried it out. It was an understood thing in the mining camps that the identity of Judge Lynch and his band should not be inquired into or even guessed at. Had their identity been established, it would have been unsafe for any of them to have gone beyond the limits of their camp, and the risk would have been so great that it would have been difficult to get men to act, had they not known that the most absolute secrecy would be maintained.

Some of the miners who were in the habit of playing high grumbled somewhat at the expulsion of Mason, who had not himself been concerned in any of the shooting affrays. Two or three of them packed up their kits and left the camp on the day following the expulsion of the gambler and his associates, but the general result was that the saloon was better attended than ever. There was still a good deal of play going on, for cards formed one of the few amusements of the miners, but as long as they played against each other, the stakes were comparatively moderate, and men were pretty sure that if they lost they, at least, lost fairly.

The intimacy between Ned Hampton and the girl who went by the name of Linda increased. She had given him a bright nod the first time he went into the saloon after the revolution.

'You see there was nothing to be nervous about,' he said; 'the matter was very easily carried out.'

'It is a comfort to know that they are all gone. I hope we shall have peace and quiet now. I hope no one knows that you had anything to do with it.'

'No; it is known only to those who took part in it, and no one but yourself knows that I was one of them.'

'No, but some suspect it. My father and Murdoch both do. They were talking about it this morning. They don't know whether to be glad or sorry. Mason paid well for the use of that inner room, but of late custom has fallen off in other respects. During the last two days we have taken twice as much as we were doing before, so that I think things will be about even. They were asking me about you, and if I knew anything of your history; but, of course, I could tell them nothing, because I don't know anything myself.'

'I don't think any of us know much of each other's antecedents,' Ned said. 'For anything you know I may be either an escaped convict or a duke in disguise; for anything I know you may be the daughter of the man you call your father or you may not. You may be a lady of rank, who has, from a spirit of adventure, come out here. You may have been brought up in poverty and misery in some London slum. It is certainly not the rule here in the diggings to ask people who they are or where they come from.'

The girl had turned suddenly pale. She was silent for a moment when he ceased speaking, and then said —

'It is not very civil of you to suggest that I may have been brought up in a slum.'

'I was merely putting it generally,' he said. 'Just as I suggested that I might be an escaped convict for aught you knew.'

Truscott and Murdoch had indeed noticed with some uneasiness that the girl had seemed inclined to be much more friendly with Ned than she had been with any one else since they had come out. On the journey across the plains they had travelled so much faster than the majority that there was no opportunity for forming many intimacies. Since they had been in California they had seen with great satisfaction that she had strictly followed out the line they had impressed upon her, that while civil to all she had treated them with the most absolute impartiality, showing no preference of the slightest kind. The rough compliments paid to her were simply laughed away, and, if persevered in, those who uttered them found that they had no further opportunities of conversation, and that they were completely ignored the next time they came to the bar.

The interests of the two men were so strongly concerned in the matter that they watched her closely, and were not long in noticing that whenever Ned presented himself at the bar she would in a very short time come across from her place behind to speak to him, sometimes only exchanging a word or two, at others, if business happened to be at all slack, chatting with him for some minutes. That day, when as usual they sat down to dinner together, Truscott said:

'You seem to be taken with that young fellow who chucked Wyoming Bill out the other day. I should not encourage him, or it will be noticed by the others, and that will do us harm.'

The girl flushed angrily. 'You can keep your advice to yourself,' she said. 'He is the most decent man I have met out here, and I like to talk to him; he does not pay me compliments or talk nonsense, but just chats to me as he would to any one else. I don't interfere with you, and you had best not interfere with me.'

'Well, you need not be so hot about it,' the man said; 'there was no harm meant.'

And so the subject dropped for the time, but the two men talked it over seriously when they were alone.

Another fortnight passed. Ned worked steadily on the claim, which was turning out exceedingly well. Jacob went backwards and forwards for supplies. The camp increased in size, and most of the miners were doing fairly well. The saloon was crowded at meal times, and in the evening; the back room was still used for play, but no professional gambler had ventured into the camp. Truscott himself, however, frequently took the bank, although always making a protest before doing so, and putting it as a favour. He refused, however, to play for really high stakes, but the amounts staked were considerably above those played for by the miners at the other tables.

Jacob, who occasionally went to the saloon with Ned, was more and more convinced that the woman behind the bar was the girl he had known in Piper's Court; and the sudden change in her face when he had spoken to her as to what her past history might be, had still more brought Ned over to the belief that the lad might be right. He himself was feeling anxious and undecided. He seemed no nearer getting at the end he desired than he had been a month before, and he could not conceal from himself that this girl showed pleasure when she met him, that her manner softened, and that once or twice when he had come suddenly upon her, her cheek had flushed. An occasional rough joke from his mates showed that it was considered in camp a settled thing that he would carry off the woman whose presence was considered by the superstitious miners to have brought luck to them all.

Hitherto, except on the occasions when she came out to speak to him, he had only met her at the bar. She had more than once mentioned that she went out every morning and afternoon for a stroll through the camp while the diggers were all at work, but being unable to arrive at any conclusion as to his best course, he had not availed himself of what seemed to him a half invitation to meet her. At last, however, he determined to see what would come of it, and making some excuse to leave his work soon after breakfast, went up into the camp. From his tent he could see the saloon, and after watching for half-an-hour he saw the girl come out. Marking the way she went, he followed and overtook her just outside the camp. There was no mistaking the look of pleasure in her face.

'Not at work?' she said. 'Is anything the matter?'

'Nothing is the matter, except that I felt unusually lazy, and catching sight of you, I thought if you would let me I would join you. I thought it would be pleasant to have a talk without having that bar between us.'

'I should like a talk very much,' she said, 'but – ' and she looked round a little nervously.

'You mean people might talk if they saw us together. Well, there is nothing to talk about. A man and a woman can be good friends just as two men or two women may be – and we are good friends, are we not?'

'Certainly we are,' she said, frankly. Ned's manner had indeed puzzled her; he had always chatted to her as a friend: he had, as she had said, never once paid her a compliment or said a word that might not have been said had there been other men standing beside him at the bar.

'Do you know, when I first saw you,' he said, 'you reminded me so strongly of some one I knew in England that I could have taken you for her?'

'Indeed,' she said, coldly; 'was it some one you knew well?'

'Very well. I had known her from the time when she was a little child.'

'Did you care for her much?'

'Yes, I cared for her a great deal. She was engaged to be married to some one else.'

'Is she married to him now?' she asked.

'No. At least I believe not.'

'Did you come out here to tell me this?' she asked, suddenly facing round upon him.

'Partly,' he replied. 'We are friends, and I thought you ought to know. I am not fool enough, Linda, to suppose that you would be likely in any case to feel anything more than a liking for a rough miner like myself, but I thought that it would, at any rate, be only fair that you should know that much of my past history.'

'Then you still care,' she said, after a pause, 'for this woman who is so like me?'

'Yes, Linda. I shall always care for her.'

'And it was only because I was like her that you liked me?' she said, bitterly.

'No,' he said. 'I do not think the likeness had anything to do with it. I liked you because I saw how well you were playing your part in a most difficult position; how quietly you held your own among the rough spirits here; how much you were respected as well as liked by them. I thought how few young women in your position would have behaved so wisely and discreetly. Of course, you had your father.'

'He is not my father,' she broke in; 'he has brought me up, but he is not my father. We are partners, nothing more. I have a third share in the saloon, and could leave them whenever I chose. There, we have talked enough together: it is just as well that we should not be seen here. It would be thought that we had arranged to meet, and I do not want to be talked about, even if the talk is not true. Good-bye;' and turning she went back into the camp, while Ned Hampton making a wider detour returned to his tent.

That night there was again trouble at the saloon. 'Shooting again, Jacob,' Ned said, as a pistol shot was heard. 'Some quarrel over the cards again, I suppose. I only hope that it was what they call a fair fight, and that there will be no occasion for Judge Lynch to interfere again. However, we may as well go down and see what is the matter.' They went down together to the saloon; a number of men were standing outside talking excitedly.

'What is the matter?' Ned asked, as he arrived.

'Will Garrett, and a man they call Boots, caught the boss there, cheating at cards, and there was a row over it. White drew first, but Boots was too quick for him, and got first shot.'

'Has he killed him?' Ned asked, anxiously.

'They say not, but the boys don't think he will overget it. Those who were there don't blame Boots, for the last two or three evenings there has been a good deal of talk about the play; either the boss had the devil's own luck or he cheated, and several of the boys made up their minds to watch him close. They suspected him three or four times, but he was so quick that they could not swear to it till to-night Boots spotted it, and swore that he saw him cheat. Then there was a tremendous row. The saloon-keeper whipped out a pistol, but Boots had one in his coat pocket and shot from it without taking it out. No one blames him, for if the other had been a little quicker Boots would have been carried out instead of him.'

The men were pouring out from the place now, Murdoch having begged them to leave at once in order that the wounded man might have quiet. One of the miners, who had thrown up his profession as a doctor for the excitement of the gold-fields, had been in the room at the time and was now looking after him. A messenger was just starting on horseback to fetch another surgeon who was practising at Cedar Gulch, thirty miles away. The next day it was known that the surgeons had some hopes of saving the saloon keeper's life. A tent had been erected a short distance from the building, and to this he had been carried and the saloon was again opened. Linda, however, did not appear at the bar, and Murdoch was in sole charge of the arrangements. Ned had called early to ask if there was anything he could do. The girl came to the entrance to the tent. 'There is nothing to be done,' she said, 'the two doctors are both within. Mrs. Johnson is coming over from the store at six o'clock this evening to take my place by him for a few hours. The doctors say it may be a long business. I want to speak to you; if you will come to the back door at half-past six I will come out with you for a short time.'

There was something very constrained and cold about her manner, and Ned wondered what she could want to say to him just at the present time. She came out directly he sent in to say that he was there.

'I do not want to go far,' she said; 'we can walk up and down here and talk as well as anywhere else. Will you give me a plain answer to a question?'

'Certainly I will – to any question.'

'Are you the man who followed us from England, and who arrived at New Orleans the evening before we left it?'

'And was all but murdered that night. Yes, I am the man.'

'Then you are a police spy,' she said in a tone of utter scorn, 'and you have been pretending to be a friend only to entrap us.'

'Not at all,' Ned answered calmly; 'I have nothing to do with the police, nor have I had any desire to entrap you. My name is Hampton; I am a captain in the English army.'

'It is no matter to me who you are,' she said, angrily. 'What is your object in following us here?'

'I might reply by asking what was the object of the two men with you in setting a man on to murder me in New Orleans.'

Her face changed at once. 'I knew nothing of it,' she exclaimed; 'I know we hurried away from our hotel, and they told me afterwards that Warbles had recognised some one he knew on board a steamer that had just come in. But they never could have done that. Were you much hurt?'

'It was a miracle I was not killed,' he said; 'as it was I was laid up for three weeks.'

'I cannot believe that they had anything to do with it. Why do you accuse them?'

'Simply because they were the only persons who had an interest in my death, or, at any rate, in my detention for a period, which as they thought would throw me completely off their track, and enable Warbles, as you call him, to place himself beyond the reach of the law.'

'And you have followed us?'

'Yes, I followed you. I had undertaken the task, and when I once undertake a thing I always carry it through if I can.'

'What was your object?'

'I will tell you frankly. My object at first was to obtain the arrest and extradition of yourself and the man you call Warbles on the charge of being concerned in stealing two diamond tiaras, the property of Gilliat, a jeweller in Bond Street, and of obtaining under false pretences a thousand pounds from a gentleman named Singleton. Failing in doing this it was my intention, if possible, to obtain from you a written acknowledgment of your share in the business. I need hardly say that since I saw you I have altogether abandoned the first intention. I was convinced that you were but an instrument in the hands of others, and only hoped that the time would come when you would undo the harm that had been done by acknowledging that you personated Miss Hawtrey, upon whom the most unjust suspicions have naturally fallen and whose life has been to a great extent ruined by it.'

'Why should it have been?' the girl asked. 'Warbles told me that she could have no difficulty in proving where she was at the time.'

'She had a difficulty. She had been in Bond Street at the same hour, and she could not prove that she was not either in the jeweller's shop or at Mr. Singleton's chambers. Her position has been a terrible one. The man Warbles first prepared the ground by circulating rumours that she was being blackmailed for money, and this gave a reason for her obtaining the jewels. I heard before I left England that in consequence of this cruel suspicion she had broken off her engagement.'

The girl turned fiercely upon him.

'Ah! and you think to go home and clear her and then to receive your reward; and for this you have acted your part with me. Well, sir, I deny altogether any knowledge of what you have been talking about, and I defy you to do your worst.'

She was turning to leave him when he said – 'One moment longer. I am in no way acting for myself, but solely for her. My leave is nearly up, and I shall probably return direct to India, in which case I shall not be back in England for another eight or ten years, and she may be married before as many months are passed – may indeed be married now for aught I know. It is for my girl friend that I have been working, not for the woman that I love. You and I are friends now, and were you in difficulty or trouble you could count upon me to do my best for you as I have been doing for her.'

She waved her hand in scornful repudiation of any claim upon him, and went swiftly back to the tent.

'Anything wrong, Captain?' Jacob asked, as he returned to the fire.

'Not worse than might be expected, Jacob. I have spoken to her, told her who I am, and why I came here. Naturally enough, she is sore at present, and considers that I have been deceiving her, which is true enough. At first she denied nothing, but afterwards fired up, and for the present regards me as an enemy; but I believe it will all come right. She is angry now because it seems to her that I have been taking her in for my own purposes, but I think that when she thinks it over calmly she will do what I want.'

Just as Ned Hampton was thinking of turning in for the night a man came up to the fire. He recognised him at once as Murdoch, Truscott's partner in the saloon.

'I have come round to have a bit of a talk with you,' the man said, as he seated himself on a box near the fire. 'Linda has been telling me that you are the man I saw at New Orleans, and that you followed us here. She has also been telling me what you came for, and the girl is downright cut up about it. Up till now I have never known the rights of the job she and Warbles had done in England. She has not told me much about it now, only that she acted the part of another girl and got things in her name, and that the other girl has been suspected of it, and that you want to clear her. Now when I first saw her at New Orleans I took an oath I would do what I could for her, and would see that she was not wronged in any way. I have been watching her pretty close for some time. I could see she liked you. If you had pretended to be fond of her so as to wheedle her into doing what you wanted in this business, and had then chucked her over, I would have thought no more of shooting you than I would of putting my heel on a rattler's head; but I am bound to say that you haven't. I could see that whatever your game was, you were not trying to make her like you; and when I said something about it, when she was talking to me, she flared up and said that you had never been more than civil to her, and there was no thought of love between you.

'I don't think she quite spoke the truth on her side, but that was only natural. Anyhow, I don't feel any grudge against you, and it is only to make things best for her that I have come here. There is nothing hardly I would not do for her, and I want to make things as smooth as possible. You behaved like a man in that affair with Wyoming Bill, and I guess as you are at the head of Judge Lynch's band, and I look upon you as a straight man, and I am not afraid of talking straight to you. It was I who set that nigger on you at New Orleans. I knew nothing about you except that you would have spoilt our plans, and might even get her arrested. Your life was nothing to me one way or another; I had got to stop you and I did it. I told the nigger to hit you so that you would be laid up for a time, but not to kill you; but when I did so I tell you I didn't care the turn of a straw whether he killed you or not. I have been thinking over for the last hour what I had best do, and I concluded to come to you and put it to you straight.

'Warbles is pretty nigh rubbed out; I doubt if he will get round; he takes a lot of liquor every night, and always has done, and that tells against a man's chances when he is hurt. You know well enough that you could do nothing against the girl here. If a sheriff came to arrest her the boys would pretty well tear him to pieces, but the chap that could travel as you have done, from England to the States, and then across to California, would certainly be ready to wait and bide his time, and sooner or later you would catch her.'

'I have no wish to catch her,' Ned Hampton said. 'I have told her so. I believe that she has been deceived throughout by this man Warbles, who is, I know, a very bad lot. I have a strong admiration for her; in person she marvellously resembles a lady to whom I am much attached, and the manner in which she behaves here and remains untouched by the admiration she excites is admirable, and I am convinced that she acted in England solely under Warbles' influence and without any knowledge or thought of the harm she was doing. I am anxious – most anxious – to obtain a written confession from her that would clear the reputation of the lady she impersonated, but if she will not make that confession I shall certainly take no steps whatever against her or put the law in motion to bring about her arrest.'