Openings in the Old Trail Part 18

She ran halfway up the ridge, and met the farm hand returning. It was only a bit of washing after all, and he was glad he hadn't fired his gun. On the other hand, Lanty confessed she had got "so skeert" being alone, that she came to seek him. She had the shivers; wasn't her hand cold? It was, but thrilling even in its coldness to the bashfully admiring man. And she was that weak and dizzy, he must let her lean on his arm going down; and they must go SLOW. She was sure he was cold, too, and if he would wait at the back door she would give him a drink of whiskey. Thus Lanty, with her brain afire, her eyes and ears straining into the darkness, and the vague outline of the barn beyond. Another moment was protracted over the drink of whiskey, and then Lanty, with a faint archness, made him promise not to tell her mother of her escapade, and she promised on her part not to say anything about his "stalking a petticoat on the clothesline," and then shyly closed the door and regained her room. HE must have got away by this time, or have been discovered; she believed they would not open the barn door until the return of the posse.

She was right. It was near daybreak when they returned, and, again crouching low beside her window, she heard, with a fierce joy, the sudden outcry, the oaths, the wrangling voices, the summoning of her father to the front door, and then the tumultuous sweeping away again of the whole posse, and a blessed silence falling over the rancho. And then Lanty went quietly to bed, and slept like a three-year child!

Perhaps that was the reason why she was able at breakfast to listen with lazy and even rosy indifference to the startling events of the night; to the sneers of the farm hands at the posse who had overlooked the knife when they searched their prisoner, as well as the stupidity of the corral guard who had never heard him make a hole "the size of a house"

in the barn side! Once she glanced demurely at Silas Briggs--the farm hand and the poor fellow felt consoled in his shame at the remembrance of their confidences.

But Lanty's tranquillity was not destined to last long. There was again the irruption of exciting news from the highroad; the Mexican leader had been recaptured, and was now safely lodged in Brownsville jail! Those who were previously loud in their praises of the successful horse-thief who had baffled the vigilance of his pursuers were now equally keen in their admiration of the new San Francisco deputy who, in turn, had outwitted the whole gang. It was HE who was fertile in expedients; HE who had studied the whole country, and even risked his life among the gang, and HE who had again closed the meshes of the net around the escaped outlaw. He was already returning by way of the rancho, and might stop there a moment,--so that they could all see the hero. Such was the power of success on the country-side! Outwardly indifferent, inwardly bitter, Lanty turned away. She should not grace his triumph, if she kept in her room all day! And when there was a clatter of hoofs on the road again, Lanty slipped upstairs.

But in a few moments she was summoned. Captain Lance Wetherby, a.s.sistant Chief of Police of San Francisco, Deputy Sheriff and ex-U. S. scout, had requested to see Miss Foster a few moments alone. Lanty knew what it meant,--her secret had been discovered; but she was not the girl to shirk the responsibility! She lifted her little brown head proudly, and with the same resolute step with which she had left the house the night before, descended the stairs and entered the sitting-room. At first she saw nothing. Then a remembered voice struck her ear; she started, looked up, and gasping, fell back against the door. It was the stranger who had given her the dagger, the stranger she had met in the run!--the horse-thief himself! No! no! she saw it all now--she had cut loose the wrong man!

He looked at her with a smile of sadness--as he drew from his breast-pocket that dreadful dagger, the very sight of which Lanty now loathed! "This is the SECOND time, Miss Foster," he said gently, "that I have taken this knife from Murietta, the Mexican bandit: once when I disarmed him three weeks ago, and he escaped, and last night, when he had again escaped and I recaptured him. After I lost it that night I understood from you that you had found it and were keeping it for me."

He paused a moment and went on: "I don't ask you what happened last night. I don't condemn you for it; I can believe what a girl of your courage and sympathy might rightly do if her pity were excited; I only ask--why did you give HIM back that knife I trusted you with?"

"Why? Why did I?" burst out Lanty in a daring gush of truth, scorn, and temper. "BECAUSE I THOUGHT YOU WERE THAT HORSE-THIEF. There!"

He drew back astonished, and then suddenly came that laugh that Lanty remembered and now hailed with joy. "I believe you, by Jove!" he gasped.

"That first night I wore the disguise in which I have tracked him and mingled with his gang. Yes! I see it all now--and more. I see that to YOU I owe his recapture!"

"To me!" echoed the bewildered girl; "how?"

"Why, instead of making for his cave he lingered here in the confines of the ranch! He thought you were in love with him, because you freed him and gave him his knife, and stayed to see you!"

But Lanty had her ap.r.o.n to her eyes, whose first tears were filling their velvet depths. And her voice was broken as she said,--

"Then he--cared--a--good deal more for me--than some people!"

But there is every reason to believe that Lanty was wrong! At least later events that are part of the history of Foster's Rancho and the Foster family pointed distinctly to the contrary.

AN ALI BABA OF THE SIERRAS

Johnny Starleigh found himself again late for school. It was always happening. It seemed to be inevitable with the process of going to school at all. And it was no fault "o' his." Something was always occurring,--some eccentricity of Nature or circ.u.mstance was invariably starting up in his daily path to the schoolroom. He may not have been "thinkin' of squirrels," and yet the rarest and most evasive of that species were always crossing his trail; he may not have been "huntin'

honey," and yet a wild bees' nest in the hollow of an oak absolutely obtruded itself before him; he wasn't "bird-catchin'," and yet there was a yellow-hammer always within stone's throw. He had heard how grown men hunters always saw the most wonderful animals when they "hadn't got a gun with 'em," and it seemed to be his lot to meet them in his restricted possibilities on the way to school. If Nature was thus capricious with his elders, why should folk think it strange if she was as mischievous with a small boy?

On this particular morning Johnny had been beguiled by the unmistakable footprints--so like his own!--of a bear's cub. What chances he had of ever coming up with them, or what he would have done if he had, he did not know. He only knew that at the end of an hour and a half he found himself two miles from the schoolhouse, and, from the position of the sun, at least an hour too late for school. He knew that n.o.body would believe him. The punishment for complete truancy was little worse than for being late. He resolved to accept it, and by way of irrevocability at once burnt his ships behind him--in devouring part of his dinner.

Thus fortified in his outlawry, he began to look about him. He was on a thickly wooded terrace with a blank wall of "outcrop" on one side nearly as high as the pines which pressed close against it. He had never seen it before; it was two or three miles from the highroad and seemed to be a virgin wilderness. But on close examination he could see, with the eye of a boy bred in a mining district, that the wall of outcrop had not escaped the attention of the mining prospector. There were marks of his pick in some attractive quartz seams of the wall, and farther on, a more ambitious attempt, evidently by a party of miners, to begin a tunnel, shown in an abandoned excavation and the heap of debris before it. It had evidently been abandoned for some time, as ferns already forced their green fronds through the stones and gravel, and the yerba buena vine was beginning to mat the surface of the heap. But the boy's fancy was quickly taken by the traces of a singular accident, and one which had perhaps arrested the progress of the excavators. The roots of a large pine-tree growing close to the wall had been evidently loosened by the excavators, and the tree had fallen, with one of its largest roots still in the opening the miners had made, and apparently blocking the entrance. The large tree lay, as it fell--midway across another but much smaller outcrop of rock which stood sharply about fifteen feet above the level of the terrace--with its gaunt, dead limbs in the air at a low angle. To Johnny's boyish fancy it seemed so easily balanced on the rock that but for its imprisoned root it would have made a capital see-saw.

This he felt must be looked to hereafter. But here his attention was arrested by something more alarming. His quick ear, attuned like an animal's to all woodland sounds, detected the crackling of underwood in the distance. His equally sharp eye saw the figures of two men approaching. But as he recognized the features of one of them he drew back with a beating heart, a hushed breath, and hurriedly hid himself in the shadow. For he had seen that figure once before--flying before the sheriff and an armed posse--and had never forgotten it! It was the figure of Spanish Pete, a notorious desperado and sluice robber!

Finding he had been un.o.bserved, the boy took courage, and his small faculties became actively alive. The two men came on together cautiously, and at a little distance the second man, whom Johnny did not know, parted from his companion and began to loiter up and down, looking around as if acting as a sentinel for the desperado, who advanced directly to the fallen tree. Suddenly the sentinel uttered an exclamation, and Spanish Pete paused. The sentinel was examining the ground near the heap of debris.

"What's up?" growled the desperado.

"Foot tracks! Weren't here before. And fresh ones, too."

Johnny's heart sank. It was where he had just pa.s.sed.

Spanish Pete hurriedly joined his companion.

"Foot tracks be ----!" he said scornfully. "What fool would be crawlin'

round here barefooted? It's a young b'ar!"

Johnny knew the footprints were his own. Yet he recognized the truth of the resemblance; it was uncomplimentary, but he felt relieved. The desperado came forward, and to the boy's surprise began to climb the small ridge of outcrop until he reached the fallen tree. Johnny saw that he was carrying a heavy stone. "What's the blamed fool goin' to do?" he said to himself; the man's evident ignorance regarding footprints had lessened the boy's awe of him. But the stranger's next essay took Johnny's breath away. Standing on the fallen tree trunk at its axis on the outcrop, he began to rock it gently. To Johnny's surprise it began to move. The upper end descended slowly, lifting the root in the excavation at the lower end, and with it a ma.s.s of rock, and revealing a cavern behind large enough to admit a man. Johnny gasped. The desperado coolly deposited the heavy stone on the tree beyond its axis on the rock, so that it would keep the tree in position, leaped from the tree to the rock, and quickly descended, at which he was joined by the other man, who was carrying two heavy chamois-leather bags. They both proceeded to the opening thus miraculously disclosed, and disappeared in it.

Johnny sat breathless, wondering, expectant, but not daring to move. The men might come out at any moment; he had seen enough to know that their enterprise as well as their cave was a secret, and that the desperado would subject any witness to it, however innocent or unwilling, to horrible penalties. The time crept slowly by,--he heard every rap of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r in a distant tree; a blue jay dipped and lighted on a branch within his reach, but he dared not extend his hand; his legs were infested by ants; he even fancied he heard the dry, hollow rattle of a rattlesnake not a yard from him. And then the entrance of the cave was darkened, and the two men reappeared. Johnny stared. He would have rubbed his eyes if he had dared. They were not the same men! Did the cave contain others who had been all the while shut up in its dark recesses? Was there a band? Would they all swarm out upon him? Should he run for his life?

But the illusion was only momentary. A longer look at them convinced him that they were the same men in new clothes and disguised, and as one remounted the outcrop Johnny's keen eyes recognized him as Spanish Pete.

He merely kicked away the stone; the root again descended gently over the opening, and the tree recovered its former angle. The two hurried away, but Johnny noticed that they were empty-handed. The bags had been left behind.

The boy waited patiently, listening with his ear to the ground, like an Indian, for the last rustle of fern and crackle of underbrush, and then emerged, stiff and cramped from his concealment. But he no longer thought of flight; curiosity and ambition burned in his small veins. He quickly climbed up the outcrop, picked up the fallen stone, and in spite of its weight lifted it to the prostrate tree. Here he paused, and from his coign of vantage looked and listened. The solitude was profound.

Then mounting the tree and standing over its axis he tried to rock it as the others had. Alas! Johnny's heart was stout, his courage unlimited, his perception all-embracing, his ambition boundless; but his actual avoirdupois was only that of a boy of ten. The tree did not move. But Johnny had played see-saw before, and quietly moved towards its highest part. It slowly descended under the changed centre of gravity, and the root arose, disclosing the opening as before. Yet here the little hero paused. He waited with his eyes fixed on the opening, ready to fly on the sallying out of any one who had remained concealed. He then placed the stone where he had stood, leaped down, and ran to the opening.

The change from the dazzling sunlight to the darkness confused him at first, and he could see nothing. On entering he stumbled over something which proved to be a bottle in which a candle was fitted, and a box of matches evidently used by the two men. Lighting the candle he could now discern that the cavern was only a few yards long, the beginning of a tunnel which the accident to the tree had stopped. In one corner lay the clothes that the men had left, and which for a moment seemed all that the cavern contained, but on removing them Johnny saw that they were thrown over a rifle, a revolver, and the two chamois-leather bags that the men had brought there. They were so heavy that the boy could scarcely lift them. His face flushed; his hands trembled with excitement. To a boy whose truant wanderings had given him a fair knowledge of mining, he knew that weight could have but one meaning!

Gold! He hurriedly untied the nearest bag. But it was not the gold of the locality, of the tunnel, of the "bed rock"! It was "flake gold,"

the gold of the river! It had been taken from the miners' sluices in the distant streams. The bags before him were the spoils of the sluice robber,--spoils that could not be sold or even shown in the district without danger, spoils kept until they could be taken to Marysville or Sacramento for disposal. All this might have occurred to the mind of any boy of the locality who had heard the common gossip of his elders, but to Johnny's fancy an idea was kindled peculiarly his own! Here was a cavern like that of the "Forty Thieves" in the story book, and he was the "Ali Baba" who knew its secret! He was not obliged to say "Open Sesame," but he could say it if he liked, if he was showing it off to anybody!

Yet alas he also knew it was a secret he must keep to himself. He had n.o.body to trust it to. His father was a charcoal-burner of small means; a widower with two children, Johnny and his elder brother Sam. The latter, a flagrant incorrigible of twenty-two, with a tendency to dissipation and low company, had lately abandoned his father's roof, only to reappear at intervals of hilarious or maudlin intoxication.

He had always been held up to Johnny as a warning, or with the gloomy prognosis that he, Johnny, was already following in his tortuous footsteps. Even if he were here he was not to be thought of as a confidant. Still less could he trust his father, who would be sure to bungle the secret with sheriffs and constables, and end by bringing down the vengeance of the gang upon the family. As for himself, he could not dispose of the gold if he were to take it. The exhibition of a single flake of it to the adult public would arouse suspicion, and as it was Johnny's hard fate to be always doubted, he might be connected with the gang. As a truant he knew he had no moral standing, but he also had the superst.i.tion--quite characteristic of childhood--that being in possession of a secret he was a partic.i.p.ant in its criminality--and bound, as it were, by terrible oaths! And then a new idea seized him.

He carefully put back everything as he had found it, extinguished the candle, left the cave, remounted the tree, and closed the opening again as he had seen the others do it, with the addition of murmuring "Shut Sesame" to himself, and then ran away as fast as his short legs could carry him.

Well clear of the dangerous vicinity, he proceeded more leisurely for about a mile, until he came to a low whitewashed fence, inclosing a small cultivated patch and a neat farmhouse beyond. Here he paused, and, cowering behind the fence, with extraordinary facial contortions produced a cry not unlike the scream of a blue jay. Repeating it at intervals, he was presently relieved by observing the approach of a nankeen sunbonnet within the inclosure above the line of fence. Stopping before him, the sun-bonnet revealed a rosy little face, more than usually plump on one side, and a neck enormously wrapped in a scarf. It was "Meely" (Amelia) Stryker, a schoolmate, detained at home by "mumps,"

as Johnny was previously aware. For, with the famous indiscretion of some other great heroes, he was about to intrust his secret and his destiny to one of the weaker s.e.x. And what were the minor possibilities of contagion to this?

"Playin' hookey ag'in?" said the young lady, with a cordial and even expansive smile, exclusively confined to one side of her face.

"Um! So'd you be ef you'd bin whar I hev," he said with harrowing mystery.

"No!--say!" said Meely eagerly.

At which Johnny, clutching at the top of the fence, with hurried breath told his story. But not all. With the instinct of a true artist he withheld the manner in which the opening of the cave was revealed, said nothing about the tree, and, I grieve to say, added the words "Open Sesame" as the important factor to the operation. Neither did he mention the name of Spanish Pete. For all of which he was afterwards duly grateful.

"Meet me at the burnt pine down the crossroads at four o'clock," he said in conclusion, "and I'll show ye."

"Why not now?" said Meely impatiently.

"Couldn't. Much as my life is worth! Must keep watching out! You come at four."

And with an a.s.suring nod he released the fence and trotted off. He returned cautiously in the direction of the cave; he was by no means sure that the robbers might not return that day, and his mysterious rendezvous with Meely veiled a certain prudence. And it was well! For as he stealthily crept around the face of the outcrop, hidden in the ferns, he saw from the altered angle of the tree that the cavern was opened.

He remained motionless, with bated breath. Then he heard the sound of subdued voices from the cavern, and a figure emerged from the opening.

Johnny grasped the ferns rigidly to check the dreadful cry that rose to his lips at its sight. For that figure was his own brother!

There was no mistaking that weak, wicked face, even then flushed with liquor! Johnny had seen it too often thus. But never before as a thief's face! He gave a little gasp, and fell back upon that strange reserve of apathy and reticence in which children are apt to hide their emotions from us at such a moment. He watched impa.s.sively the two other men who followed his brother out to give him a small bag and some instructions, and then returned within their cave, while his brother walked quickly away. He watched him disappear; he did not move, for even if he had followed him he could not bear to face him in his shame. And then out of his sullen despair came a boyish idea of revenge. It was those two men who had made his brother a thief!

He was very near the tree. He crept stealthily on his hands and knees through the bracken, and as stealthily climbed the wedge of outcrop, and then leaped like a wild cat on the tree. With incredible activity he lifted the balancing stone, and as the tree began to move, in a flash of perception transferred it to the other side of its axis, and felt the roots and debris, under that additional weight, descend quickly with something like a crash over the opening. Then he took to his heels. He ran so swiftly that all unknowingly he overtook a figure, who, turning, glanced at him, and then disappeared in the wood. It was his second and last view of his brother, as he never saw him again!