“Hush!” she whispers again; “they are astir outside; I hear them talking. Ah! some one is coming.”
“Mrs. Krutzer.”
It is the voice of Walter Parks, and this time the woman parts the tent flap and looks out.
“Is that you, Mr. Parks? I thought I heard voices out there. Is the storm doing any damage?”
“Not at present. Is Krutzer awake?”
She glances toward the form upon the pallet; it is shivering as with an ague. Then she says, unhesitatingly:
“Krutzer has been in such misery since this storm came up, that I’ve just given him morphine. He ain’t exactly asleep, but he’s stupid and flighty; get into the wagon, Mr. Parks, and see how he is for yourself. Poor man; this is the fifth day of his rheumatism, and he has not stood on his feet once in that time.”
The visitor hesitates for a moment, then drawing nearer and lowering his tone somewhat, he says:
“If Krutzer is in a bad state now, he had better not know what I have come to tell. Can he hear me as I speak?”
“No; not if you don’t raise your voice.”
“Pearson is dead, Mrs. Krutzer.”
She starts, gasps, and then, with her head protruding from the canvas, asks, huskily:
“How? when? who? – ”
“We found him up by the rocks, lying on his blanket – ”
“Killed?”
“Killed; yes.”
“How – how?” she almost gasps.
“There is a burn upon his head. Menard says it was a stroke of lightning.”
“Oh,” she sighs, and sinks back in the wagon, turning her head to look at the form upon the pallet.
“Mrs. Krutzer.”
She leans toward him again and listens mutely.
“We – Menard, Joe Blakesly, and myself – will watch to-night with the body. We know very little about Pearson, and the little one; what can you tell us?”
“Not much;” clasping and unclasping her hands nervously. “It was like this: Pearson joined our train just before we crossed Bear Creek – beyond the reserve, you know. That was three weeks before we left the others, to join your train. The child was ailing at the time, and so Pearson put it in my charge, most of the other women having more children than I to take care of. I liked the little thing, and it did not seem a trouble to me; so after a while Pearson offered to pay me, if I would look after it until we struck God’s country. But I would not let him pay me, for the baby seems like my own.”
“And now, Mrs. Krutzer?”
“I am coming to that. Pearson told us, at the first, that the little girl was not his; that its father was a miner back among the mountains. Its mother was dead, and the father, who was an old friend of Pearson’s, had put it in his care, to be taken to New York, where its relatives live. Pearson was obliged to quit mining, you know, on account of his health.”
“Yes; do you know the address of the child’s friends?”
“Yes; it’s an aunt, her father’s sister. About two weeks ago – I think Pearson must have had a presentiment or something of the kind – he came to me, and gave me a letter and a package, saying that if anything happened to him during the trip, he wanted me to see the little girl safely in the hands of her relatives. The letter was from the baby’s father, and the packet contained the address of the New York people, and enough money to pay my expenses after I leave the wagon train. I promised Pearson that I would take care of the child and put her safe in her aunt’s hands, and so I will – but, Oh, dear! I never expected to be obliged to do it.”
A hollow groan breaks upon her speech; the man upon the pallet is writhing as if in intensest agony. The woman makes a signal of dismissal, and drops the canvas curtain.
Walter Parks hesitates a moment, and then, as a second groan greets his ear, turns and strides away.
III
The clouds hang overhead like a murky canopy. The wind is sighing itself to sleep. The rain has ceased, but large drops drip dismally from the great branches that lately sheltered Arthur Pearson’s death-bed.
Beside the rocks, three men are standing. It is three o’clock in the morning. Two of the three men bend down to examine something which the third, lighted by a lantern, has just taken from the wet ground at his feet.
It is a small thing to excite so much earnest scrutiny; only the half burned fragment of a lucifer match.
“Boys,” says Walter Parks, solemnly, swinging the lantern upon his arm and carefully wrapping the bit of match in a paper as he speaks, “poor Pearson was never killed by lightning. That sear upon his forehead was made by the simple application of a burning match. I’ve seen men killed by lightning.”
“But you said – ”
“No matter what I said then, Joe; what I now say to you and Menard is the truth. You have promised to keep what I am about to tell you a secret, and to act according to my advice. Menard, Blakesly, Arthur Pearson has been foully murdered!”
“No!”
“Parks, you are mad!”
“You will believe the evidence of your own senses, boys. I am going to prove what I assert.”
“But who? how? – ”
“Who? – ah, that’s the question! There are ten men of us; if the guilty party belongs to our train, we will ferret him out if possible. If we were to gather all our party here, and show them how poor Pearson met his death, the assassin, if he is among us, would be warned, and perhaps escape.”
“True.”
“Boys, I believe that the assassin is among us; but I have not the faintest suspicion as to his identity. We are ten men brought together by circumstances. We three have known each other back there in the mining camps. The others are acquaintances of the road; good fellows so far as we know them: but nine of us ten are innocent men; one is a murderer! Come, now, and let me prove what I am saying.”
As men who feel themselves dreaming; silently, slowly, with anxious faces, they follow their leader to the wagon where the dead man lies alone.
“Get into the wagon, boys; here, at this end, and move softly.”
It is done and the three men crouch close together about the body of the dead.
“Hold the lantern, Joe. There, Menard lift his head.”
Silently, wonderingly, they obey him.
Then Walter Parks removes the cap from the lifeless head, and shudderingly parts away the thick hair from about the crown.
“Hold the lantern closer, Joe. Look, both of you; do you see that?”
They bend closer; the lantern’s ray strikes upon something tiny and bright.
“My God!” cries Joe Blakesly, letting the lantern fall and turning away his face.
“Parks, what —what is it?”
“A nail! Touch it, boys; see the hellish cleverness of the crime; think what the criminal must be, to drive that nail home with one blow while poor Pearson lay sleeping, and then to rearrange the thick hair so skillfully. That was before the storm, I feel sure. If we had found him sooner, there might have been no mark upon his forehead. Then we, in our ignorance, would have called it heart disease, and poor Pearson would have had no avenger. After the storm, the cunning villain crept back, struck a match, and applied it to his victim’s temple. And but for an accident, we would all have agreed that he was killed by a lightning-stroke.”
Menard