The Homesteaders Part 29

"Make him take them off," said Beulah.

"As the young lady insists," said the coroner, turning to Gardiner, "I suggest that you comply with her request."

"I should be glad to," said Gardiner, "but the fact is I have a sore hand. When I was giving the horse medicine the night Travers left me alone the brute nipped me a little, and I have been keeping it covered up since."

"Make him take them off," said Beulah.

"Why should you be so insistent?" said the coroner. "Surely it makes no difference--"

"Only this difference. You have heard my father's evidence of the fight in the old house. The man with whom he fought will have tooth-marks in his hand. Make him take them off. Or if you won't--look at these hands." She seized Jim's hands in hers and held them up before the coroner and the jury. "Any tooth-marks there? Now make this other man show his."

For a moment all eyes were on Travers' hands. In that moment Gardiner rushed for the open window, and in another instant would have been through it, had not the quick arm of the policeman intercepted.

"Not so fast, my man," said Grey. "Now we will see this horse-bite of yours." Gardiner made no further resistance, and he drew the glove from his hand. There was a fresh scar on the right thumb.

The coroner examined it carefully. When he spoke it was in the voice of a judge delivering sentence. "That is not a horse-bite," he said.

"Those are the marks of human teeth!"

Gardiner smiled a faint smile. "Well, what are you going to do about it?" he said.

"We are going to put you in Travers' place and tender him our apologies," said the coroner.

"Very good," said Gardiner. "And do I marry the girl?"

"This is no time for levity," said the coroner, sternly. "You have escaped a murder charge only by grace of this young man's excellent const.i.tution."

But Travers had crowded into the centre of the circle. "Gardiner," he said, "if you weren't under arrest I'd thrash you here and now. But you can at least do something to square yourself. Where is that money?"

"That's right, Jim. Everyone thinks of what is nearest his heart."

"You scoundrel! You know why it is near my heart. You have robbed Mr.

Harris of all that he had spent his whole life for. You will have no chance to use that money yourself. You are sure of your living for the next twenty years. Why not show that you are not all bad--that you have some human sentiments in you? It seems as little as you can do."

"There may be something in what you say," said Gardiner. "I have a slip of paper here with the key to the secret."

He reached with his finger and thumb in his vest pocket and drew out a small folded paper.

This he unfolded very slowly and deliberately before the eyes of the onlookers. It contained a small quant.i.ty of white powder. Before any hand could reach him he had thrown his head back and swallowed it.

"Too late!" he cried, as Grey s.n.a.t.c.hed the empty paper from his fingers. "Too late! Well, I guess I beat you all out, eh? And, as I said before, what are you going to do about it? Twenty years, eh, Jim? You'll be scrawny and rheumatic by that time, and the beautiful Beulah will be fat and figureless. Twenty years for you, Jim, but twenty minutes for me--and I wouldn't trade with you, d.a.m.n you! I beg the pardon of the ladies present. One should never forget to be a gentleman, even when--when--"

But Gardiner's breath was beginning to come fast, and he raised his hands to his throat. A choking spell seized him, and he would have fallen had not the policeman and the coroner held him on his feet.

"Let me lie down," he said, when he got his breath. "Let me lie down, can't you? Have I got to die on end, like a murderer?"

They led him to the adjoining room, where he fell upon the bed. The muscles of his great arms and neck were working in contortions, and his tongue seemed to fill his mouth.

"Most extraordinary," said the coroner. "Strychnine, doubtless. We can't do much for him, I'm afraid. We might try some mustard and hot water, Mrs. Arthurs."

"Take your time, Lil," whispered Arthurs. "You may save your country a long board bill." But Lilian Arthurs' abhorrence of Gardiner's perfidy had been overwhelmed in a wave of sympathy for a suffering fellow-being. She hurried to the kitchen, while the men of the party filed down the stairs and out into the yard. John Harris was the last to leave the house, and he walked slowly, with bare, bowed head, into the group who were excitedly discussing the amazing turn events had taken. He took no part in their conversation, but stood a little apart, plunged deep in his own inward struggle.

At last he turned and called his wife in the kitchen door. "Bring Beulah," he said.

The two women joined him. At first Harris stood with face averted, but in a moment he spoke in a clear, quiet voice.

"I haven't played the game fair with you two," he said, "and I want to say so now. Perhaps it would be truer to say that I played the wrong game. Twenty-five years have proved it was the wrong game. Now, without a penny, I can start just where I started twenty-five years ago. The only difference is that I am an old man instead of a young one. I'm going to take another homestead and start again, at the right game, if Mary will start with me."

She put her hand in his, and her eyes were bright again with the fire of youth. "You know there is only one answer, John," she whispered.

Harris called Travers over from the group of men.

"There's one thing more," he continued. "When I started I had only a wife to keep, and I don't intend to take any bigger responsibility now. Allan will be having a homestead of his own. Jim Travers, I am speaking to you! I owe you an apology for some things and an explanation for some things, but I'm going to square the debt with the only gift I have left."

The light breeze tossed the hair of Beulah's uncovered head, and the light of love and health glowed in her face and thrilled through the fine symmetry of her figure.

"Take her, Jim," he said.

"She is a G.o.dly gift," said the young man reverently.

"You think so now," said her father. "You know nothing about it. In twenty-five years you will know just how great a gift she is--or she will not be worthy of her mother."

Harris and his wife were gazing with unseeing eyes into the mountains when Arthurs handed them a letter. "It came in the mail which the boys brought out this morning," he said, "and I forgot all about it until this minute."

It was from Bradshaw. Harris opened it indifferently, but the first few lines aroused his interest, and he read it eagerly to the end.

"My dear Harris," it ran, "on receipt of your telegram I immediately opened negotiations through my connections looking to a sale of your farm with its crop and equipment, complete as a going concern. I succeeded in getting an offer of the $40,000 you set on it, and had all the papers drawn up, when I discovered that among us we had made a serious omission. You will remember that, a good many years ago, when you were taking on some fresh obligations, you transferred the homestead into your wife's name. I a.s.sured the purchaser that there would be no difficulty about getting t.i.tle from your wife, but as all the buildings are on the homestead quarter he would agree to nothing better than paying $20,000 for the rest of your land, leaving the homestead quarter, with the buildings, stock, and implements, out of the transaction. As his price seemed a fair one for the balance of the property, and as I a.s.sumed your need of the money was urgent, I closed a deal on that basis, cashed the agreement, and remitted the proceeds to you at once by wire. I trust my actions in the matter meet with your approval,

"Yours sincerely,

"GEORGE BRADSHAW."

Harris placed the letter in the hands of his wife. She tried to read it, but a great happiness enveloped her as a flood and the typewritten characters seemed to swim before her. "What does it mean, John?" she asked, noting his restrained excitement. "What does it mean?"

"It means that the homestead quarter was not sold--after all--that it is still yours, with the buildings, and machinery, and stock, and this year's crop just ready for cutting."

She raised her eyes to his. "Still ours, John, you mean. Still ours."

In the rapid succession of events everyone seemed to have forgotten, or disregarded, Gardiner. But at this moment the doctor came rushing out of the house.

"Gardiner's gone!" he exclaimed, as he came up to the men.

Some of the party removed their hats.

"Oh, not that way--not that way!" exclaimed the doctor. "I mean he's gone--skipped--beat it, if you understand. Most extraordinary! I was taking his pulse. It was about normal, and he seemed resting easier, so I slipped downstairs for the antidote. When I went back--I was only gone a moment--there wasn't sight or sound of him."

The men stared at each other for a moment; then followed the doctor in a race for Gardiner's room. They found it as he said. There was neither sight nor sound of Gardiner.

Sergeant Grey conducted a swift examination, not of Gardiner's room, but of the one in which Allan was lying. He was rewarded by finding the little slip of paper, with a few crystals of powder still clinging to it. The coroner examined the crystals through his magnifying-gla.s.s; then, somewhat dubiously, raised them on a moistened finger to his tongue, and after a moment's hesitation swallowed in an impressive, scholarly fashion.