The Mynns' Mystery Part 40

He threw himself into a chair.

"Will you let me speak out quietly and calmly?"

"Go on, sir," said the lawyer.

There was a pause, during which the young man seemed to be collecting himself, and then he said in a deep, clear voice:

"You are quite right, sir. This is a question for calm settlement, and as I have right on my side I can afford to wait."

"That's talking like a reasonable man, sir."

"You must excuse me. Much of my life has been pa.s.sed on ranches and upon the mountains, among desperadoes and rough fellows, who do not place much value upon a man's life. Then I have had long dealings with Indians and bears, and altogether I am not much of a drawing-room man."

The lawyer bowed and glanced at the pistol on the table at his side.

"During my last year in the West, I picked up for companion a clever, shrewd fellow, named Portway--Daniel Portway. He was in terribly low water, and as it seemed to me undeservedly. He had been gold-prospecting, he told me, and had made some good finds; but ill-luck had dogged his steps. He was robbed by his companions twice over. He was attacked by Indians three or four times, and when I came upon him in Denver the poor wretch was down with fever. Well, to make the story short, I did what one Englishman would do by another if he found him out in a wild place dying. I couldn't get a woman to attend him for love or money, so I had to do it myself, and a long and tedious job I had. I don't know that I liked him, but I found he was a clever hunter, and knew the way about the mountains well, so we became companions, and I took him on my hunting expeditions. There, sir, honestly, I don't think I could have behaved better to him if he had been a brother."

There was a pause, and then in a voice husky with emotion he exclaimed:

"Hang it all! how can a man be such a brute? Well, sir, I suppose in chatting with him I let him know all my affairs, and at last read him my letters. He knew that I was coming to England as soon as I had ended that last expedition. There, I'm a frank sort of fellow, who would trust any man till I found out that he was a rogue. I suppose I began talking about my affairs, like a fool, to relieve the tedium of his illness. Thus it went on till he must have known all I knew."

"This is a very plausible story, Mr Daniel Portway," said the lawyer quietly; but he started, and laid his hand upon the revolver, so fierce was the bound the young man made to his feet.

But he sat down again directly.

"No, no; you don't think that, sir. May I go on?"

"By all means."

"Shall I take the cartridges out of the revolver, sir?" said the young man drily, "in case, I make a s.n.a.t.c.h at it."

"No, no, no. Go on, sir; go on."

There was a meaning smile on the young man's lips as he went on again, and began telling of his last hunting-trip; but the smile soon died out, and he looked stern and relentless as he spoke of the weary tramp they had had, the midday sleep, and their journey afterwards till they were beside the great canon, where he stepped forward to look about him.

"And then--I suppose it was a sudden temptation--the brute took a step or two forward, came close behind me, and before I could turn, for I felt paralysed with the horror of my position, he raised his rifle as high as he could reach, and struck me a crashing blow upon the back of the head."

"How do you know if you were looking in another direction?"

"Because the evening sun cast his shadow upon the side of the canon, where it seemed to me in that momentary flash that one giant was smiting down another. Then I fell headlong down, and for a few moments all was darkness."

"Go on, sir," said the old lawyer, who was deeply interested, for his _vis-a-vis_ was talking in a slow, laboured way, as if the recollection of the terrible scene was more than he could bear and choked him with emotion.

"Then I came to myself, to lie helpless as if in a dream. I could not stir or make a sound; but I could hear distinctly, as I lay low down where I had fallen, the sounds made by some one lowering himself down the side of the canon. Now twigs were breaking, and now stones kept falling; and after what seemed to be a long time, full of a dull sense of pain and drowsiness, I was conscious of a heavy breathing as of a wild beast."

"A bear," said the old lawyer involuntarily.

"No," said the young man with a bitter smile; "a worse kind of wild beast than that: a man, sir--mine own familiar friend--Dan Portway."

"Ah!"

"He was searching my pockets, and taking everything about me; my roughly-made, plain gold ring--pure gold from a pocket in the mountains--what letters I had; everything. Of course I had not much with me; nearly all I possessed was at my tent in the saddlebags miles away."

"You felt all this?"

"And saw, though my eyes were nearly closed. And at last, as it seemed to me, he was about to finish his work by casting me down headlong into the profound depths of the great chasm, when a devilish thought entered his mind and seemed to flash into mine as he held me."

There was another pause, and the young man's voice sounded very husky, and he seemed to be suffering the bygone horror over again as he recommenced:

"I tell you I could not stir, but I could think, and feel, and see that devil's satisfied grin as he must have said to himself:--

"'Some day, perhaps, his body may be found, and then they will say he was last seen in my company, and it might prove awkward. They shall think he was killed by the Indians.'"

During the earlier part of this narrative the old lawyer had leaned back in his chair; but as he grew interested he sat up, then leaned forward, and now rested his hands upon the arms of his chair, and gazed full in the speaker's face, so as not to lose a gesture, the slightest play of his countenance, or a word.

"Yes," he continued; "go on."

"It was as I thought, and for a moment I tried to shut out the horror, and to ask G.o.d to forgive all I had done wrong, and spare me the horrible agony I was to feel before I died.

"But I could only think a few of the words I wished to say, and then, as if every other sense grew more capable of taking in all that pa.s.sed, I saw him draw his keen hunting-knife from his belt. He seized my hair, and the next moment the point was dividing the skin of my forehead, and I felt the resistance offered by the bone, the sharp pain, and the blood start and begin to trickle over my temples. Then there was a hideous yell; he let me fall, and fled."

"Repentant?" said the old lawyer in an excited whisper.

"You shall hear, sir. As my head struck the rock there was a heavy breathing, a rustling sound of undergrowth being thrust aside, and a heavy foot was planted upon my chest, as a huge bear rushed over me in full pursuit of my would-be murderer, and then I lay listening to the crackling of twigs and the falling of stones. By degrees this died away, and for a long time all was still, and I must have glided into a state of insensibility from which I was roused by a low, snuffling noise, and I felt hot breath upon my face, and the wet tongue of the great bear licking my forehead. Then I felt him paw at me, and turn me over on to my face.

"Then all was blank.

"When I could see again I was lying chest downward, perfectly helpless, but with my head so turned that I could see, a dozen yards away, the great grizzly bear busy feeding upon the fruit of one of the low shrubs which grew on the side of the canon. Sometimes he crawled leisurely down, sometimes up, as the fruit was most abundant; and this seemed to satisfy him; for though during the next two days he came near me again and again, he never so much as snuffed about me.

"But it all seems, after I awoke that morning, dreamlike and strange. I told you it was two days, but I am not sure about that. I have a dim recollection of the sun burning me, and seeming to scorch my brain, of its being light and dark, and of a horrible sensation of thirst, and then of all being blank. Rather a ghastly tale for ladies' ears, sir?"

"Yes, yes," said the old lawyer. "And afterwards?"

"Afterwards, sir? Yes; the next thing I remember is lying upon a bison-skin in an Indian's skin lodge, and of the dark, dirty, wild face of a squaw looking down into mine. Then of being held up while my head was bandaged, and then for a long period all seemed misty and wild. I was hunting and shooting in the Rockies. Then I was galloping after bison with which the plain seemed to be black. Then I was prospecting for gold, and finding rifts in the rocks full and waiting to be torn out, but I could never get the gold, never succeed in hunting or shooting. There was always something to interfere, till at last I found that I was as weak as a child, and with almost the thought and action of a helpless babe, living in the lodge of a roving party of Indians who camped just where it seemed to be good in their own eyes. They are savages, whom the white man has ousted from nearly all their own hunting grounds; they are filthy and abominable in their ways, false and treacherous, all that is bad some have learned, but they nursed me through a long fever and delirium into a sort of imbecile childhood, from which I slowly gained my manhood's reason and strength, and then they gave me my rifle, and set me at liberty to join a party of gold-seekers across whom we came."

"They found you there, lying half dead by the bear."

"I suppose so, sir. All I know I found out by thinking the matter over.

I recollect standing my rifle against a rock close to the track; and as my companion fled, I suppose they must have seen it in pa.s.sing, hunted about for the owner and found me. I do not know for I could not understand the Indians, and they could not understand me.

"I have nearly done, sir," said the young man speaking more briskly now.

"I made my way to my old camping-place, but there was nothing there, and I was wondering whether Dan Portway had carried everything off, till I remembered seeing the bear charge him, and I went to the place, expecting, perhaps, to find his bones. But I made no discovery; and knowing what a hopeless task it would be to try and find the villain, I determined to come on here in obedience to the letter I had received before I went for my last trip, made my way to San Francisco, and there I learned of my grandfather's death."

"You made no effort then to find your a.s.sailant?" said the lawyer.

"No, sir, and it has proved to be the correct thing to do, for in coming here I have run him to earth."

They sat gazing at each other for some moments in silence. Then Mr Hampton spoke.