Rancho Del Muerto and Other Stories of Adventure from «Outing» by Various Authors

“The cache!” Tom shouted, comprehending instantly the meaning of this. “The bear was tearing it to pieces!”

It was true. His strong feet had displaced the loosely-heaped stones, and a half-devoured side of bacon lay close by where the animal had been disturbed.

Evidently the marauder had just begun his work. There remained in the cache two more pouches of gold – perhaps a quart of the metal pieces in all, more or less pure, for all of it had been dug out of a vein with hammer and knife point, none of the fragments showing the water-worn roundness characteristic of placer gold. Then there were a small quantity of provisions, some ammunition and a small rosewood box with an ornamental brass lock having a remarkably small and irregular keyhole.

From an inner pocket of his purse Tom drew the odd little key the dead prospector had given him. It fitted into the hole and easily turned the lock. The cover sprang open, revealing a package of letters. He lifted them out, but did not pause to read them.

Then came an envelope containing a patent to ranch lands in Arizona, certificates of stock in Mexican and other mines that Burke had never heard of, and a commission as lieutenant of artillery in the Confederate army. All these documents were made out to “Arthur F. Pierson,” establishing the fact that the lost hat was really that worn by the old man, as his dog had recognized.

At the bottom of the box, however, Tom found what interested him most – a formal “claim” and description of the lode whence the gold had been taken, and how to reach it from this cache. It was written in pencil, in a very shaky hand, on two or three soiled leaves torn from a memorandum book and eked out with one of the covers.

Then Tom took up the letters. Most of them were recent and of business importance, but several were old and worn with much handling. One of these latter was from a lawyer in San Francisco, acknowledging funds “sent for the support of your infant daughter,” describing her health and growth, and the care taken of her “at the convent” – all in curt business phrase, but precious to the father’s heart. Then there were two or three small letters, printed and scratched in a childish hand, to “dear, dear papa,” and signed “Your little Polly.” One of these spoke of Sister Agatha and Sister Theresa, showing that it was written while the child was still in the convent; but the others, a little later, prattled about a new home with “my new papa and mamma,” but gave no clew to name or place.

“This baby girl – she must be a young woman now, if she lives,” Tom mused – “is evidently the person the poor old chap wanted me to divide with. It ought not to be difficult to trace her from San Francisco, I suppose the convent Sisters knew where she went to when they gave her up. But, hello! here’s a picture.”

It was an old-fashioned daguerrotype of a handsome woman of perhaps four-and-twenty, in bridal finery, whose face seemed to him to have something familiar in its expression. But no name or date was to be found, and with the natural conclusion that this was probably Pierson’s wife he puzzled a moment more over the pretty face, and then put it away.

After a few days, when Burke was able to travel, the prospector’s memorandum and their mountain craft together led them almost directly to the coveted gold vein, which ran across a shoulder of the mountain at the head of the gulch, like an obscure trail, finally disappearing under a great talus at the foot of a line of snowcapped crags.

Tracing it along, they presently came upon the old man’s claim marks. The stakes were lettered pathetically with the name of the old man’s choosing – “Polly’s Hope.”

Adjoining the “Hope” Tom staked out one claim for himself and another for his sweetheart, intending to do the proper assessment work on it himself if Corbitt couldn’t or wouldn’t; and Cooper used up most of what remained of the visible outcrop in a claim for himself.

Returning to town their claims were registered in the Crimson Mineral District, and their report sent a flight of gold hunters in hot haste to the scene.

Tom Burke, after selling everything he could send to market to turn into ready money, departed to Denver, carrying with him documents and specimens of the gold quartz to support his assertions.

Keen men fêted and flattered him, buttonholing him at every corner with whispered advice, and many proffered schemes. But he was indifferent to it all, and anxious as yet only to hear what Marion should say.

Not a word had he heard from her directly during all the weeks of her absence, but indirectly he knew she had been a star in the local society. He had even to hunt out where she lived, finding it in a cottage near where the stately court house now stands.

He went there, after tea, with a fastbeating heart. Had she forgotten, or withdrawn or been turned away by hardhearted parents and friends? He suspected everything and everybody, yet could give no reasons. And how absurd these fears looked to him – how foolish!– when, sitting in the little parlor, hand in hand, they talked over the past, and she confided that the same doubts had worried her now and then – “most of all, Tom, dear, when I hear of this wonderful success of yours.”

“Bless me! I had forgotten it. By your side all else – ”

Here the door opened – not too abruptly – and Mr. Corbitt came in, grimly hospitable and glad, no doubt for his own sake, to see this young fellow who was still true to his daughter; while Mrs. Corbitt was more openly cordial, as became her.

“An’ what’s this we’re hearin’ aboot your new mines? They’re sayin’ down town that you’ve struck a regular bonanza, an’ll soon be worth your meellions. But I told ‘em ‘Hoot! I’d heard the like o’ that before!’”

So Tom recounted briefly the story of the prospector’s death and his will; still more briefly his adventure with the grizzly, and how it led to the curious disclosure of the cache. Then, with no little dramatic force, seeing how interested was his audience, he described the hunt for the vein and the finding it, produced his specimens and handed to Miss Marion a mass of almost solid gold embedded in its matrix.

“I can’t promise you,” he said, as she tried to thank him with her eyes and a timid touch of her fingers, “that the whole ledge will equal that, but it is a genuine sample from near the surface.”

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” the old Scotchman ejaculated, with gleaming eyes, as Tom went on to show how regular and secure was the title to this possession. “But did ye no find out the name of the poor vagabone?”

“Oh, yes. Didn’t I mention it? His name was Arthur Pierson.”

Corbitt and his wife both started from their seats.

“Man, did I hear ye aright? —Arthur F. Pierson?”

“That was the name exactly. I can show it to you on the letters.”

“An’ he charged ye to give the half of all ye found to his daughter Polly?”

“Yes, and I mean to try to find her.”

“There she sits!” cried Mother Corbitt excitedly, before her cautious husband, could say “Hush!” – pointing at Marion, who gazed from one to the other, too much amazed to feel grieved yet at this stunning announcement. “We took the lassie when she was a wee bairn, and she would never ha’ known she wasn’t ours really till maybe we were dead and gone. Her feyther was a cankert, fashious body, but her mother was guid and bonnie (I knew her well in the auld country) and she died when Mary – that’s you, my dearie – was born.”

“Is this her picture?” Tom asked, showing the daguerrotype.

“Aye, that it is. Puir Jennie!”

The rest is soon told. A company of capitalists was formed to work the four consolidated claims on the new vein, under the name of the Hope Mining Company.

All the next season was spent by Tom Burke in developing the property and erecting machinery. Corbitt was there too, much thawed by the sun of prosperity, but his wife and daughter remained in Denver. In the autumn, however, the ladies went East, and as the holidays approached Tom and Corbitt followed them to New York, where, on Christmas eve, my hero and heroine were married quietly in a little church up town; and his gift to her was the brooch which had attracted my attention and whose significance was now plain.

MISS GWYNNE’S BURGLAR, By Violet Etynge Mitchell

IN the heart of Wales, nestling between two dark frowning mountains, and lulled to drowsy indifference of the big outside world by the murmurs of the not far distant sea, stands the little village of Cod-y-glyn.

Just outside the village, on the main road stands – or did stand ten years ago – an old stone house, in the middle of a large garden, which was surrounded on all sides by a high wall, also of stone. It was the pride of the owner, Miss Gwynne.

One night, in the early spring of the year, there was to be a wedding at Cod-y-Glyn – a wedding in humble life, but anticipated with great glee by the invited guests, among whom were Miss Gwynne’s servants, the coachman and his wife (who was also cook) and Ylva, their daughter, employed as a maid-of-all-work.

Knowing the disappointment it would be to them if they were denied the pleasure of attending the wedding, she had declined the coachman’s offer to remain with her, allowing his wife and daughter to go, and laughingly assured him that with her father’s gun for company she feared nothing.

Miss Gwynne retired at an early hour, having locked up the house.

She lay for some time gazing through the window at the twinkling stars, lost in quiet retrospection.

I will let Miss Gwynne tell the rest of the story in her own way, repeating as well as I can from memory the words as I heard them from her lips ten years ago.

I cannot tell if I dozed or not, but I was conscious of the moon shining dimly through the clouds, and I wondered how long I had lain there. Reaching out for my watch, which lay on the table, I was horrified to feel my wrist grasped and held by a firm hand.

To say I was frightened would be less correct than to say I was astounded, for I have always been a woman of steady nerve, and the present occasion called for its use.

The moon had retired behind a heavy curtain of clouds, and the room was in complete darkness, but from the drapery at my bedside issued a voice, and at the same time the python-like grasp on my wrist relaxed.

“I beg to apologize, madam,” said this voice; “I have chosen a bungling manner of awakening you – foreign to my custom. Pardon me, and do not be alarmed. I merely wish to relieve you of any superfluous silver, jewelry or bank notes you do not absolutely need. But as the vandalism of breaking locks is out of my line, I will request you to arise and show me where such things are kept.”

By the time he had finished this speech I was myself again.

“Very well,” I said, “I’ll get up and show you; but, as it is embarrassing to dress in your presence, will you step out into the hall and close the door while I put on my clothing?”

There was a soft rustling of the curtains at the bedside, and the sound of footsteps on the carpet, and immediately afterward the door closed.

“Five minutes, madam, is all I can give you,” remarked the burglar, as he disappeared.

It took me (after lighting the candle) two minutes to slip on a warm skirt, and a blue flannel wrapper over it; then, sticking my feet into a pair of down slippers, I had still time to snatch a roll of bills amounting to one hundred pounds, and pin them deftly to the lining of the canopy above my four-post bed.

Then throwing open the door I stood on the sill facing my visitor, and threw the glare of the lighted candle full upon him, as he lolled in a careless, easy attitude against the bannisters.

I had been prepared for a burglar – but I had looked for one attired according to the traditions of my ancestors. But here was a gentlemanly, mild-featured individual, such as I should have expected to find filling the position of a professor of Latin – perhaps of theology – in Oxford University.

There was no appearance of a jimmy, or tools of any kind. Evidently here was a type of criminal with which history was unacquainted.

“Madam!” he exclaimed, bowing with the grace of a French courtier, “you are punctuality itself. And how charming! – no hysterics – no distressing scenes. Allow me.” He took the candle from my hand, and holding it aloft preceded me down the great oaken stairs, talking fluently all the while, but pausing at every other step to glance over his shoulder at me with coquettish politeness.

“I wish to assure you,” he remarked, “that I am no ordinary house-breaker. Burglary is with me a profession, though not the one (I confess) chosen for me by my parents. I saw, at an early age, that I must either descend to the level of the burglar, or raise him to the level of an artist. Behold, my dear lady, the result.”

He stood at the foot of the stairs and looked up at me.

“Shall we proceed to the diningroom?” he asked airily; “and, as I wish to give you no unnecessary trouble, let me say that I do not dabble in plated spoons; nothing but solid silver.”

I opened the old mahogany sideboard, in which Griffiths had, for years, placed the family heirlooms at night, and beheld my gentlemanly burglar stow them, one after another, in a capacious felt sack, which he carried in his hand.

“Charming!” he cried. “I am a connoisseur, I assure you, and I know silver from plate. These articles are really worth the risk of the enterprise.”

You ask me if I was not alarmed. No, I was not. Personal violence was not in his professional line, unless opposed. I summoned all my energies to outwit him. I thought much and said little, for I had no intention of allowing him to carry off my mother’s silver.

After having rifled all the rooms of the most valuable articles, he returned to the dining-room.

On the table the remains of supper still stood, consisting of a fowl, hardly touched, some delicately cut bread and butter, cake, and a glass jar containing some fancy crackers.

“I will make myself entirely at home,” he remarked, sitting down to the table, and helping himself to a wing of the chicken.

“Really,” he proceeded, “I have thoroughly enjoyed this evening. Not only have I met a most charming lady, but I have been able to prove to her that the terms gentleman and burglar may be synonomous.”

He now began on the cake. I pushed the cracker jar toward him. “Try them,” I observed.

Still smiling indulgently, and talking, he took out one of the crackers and began to nibble on it. It was very dry.

I rose, and in an absent-minded manner placed on the table the remains of a bottle of rare old Burgundy, which had been opened the day before.

“Now, really,” he prattled, “I’m a very harmless man five months out of six – I never steal unless other means fail, or a tailor’s bill comes due. I’m a respectable citizen and – a church member in good standing when I’m not on one of my professional tours. I took up burglary more as a resource than from necessity. Candidly speaking, now, am I a ruffian?”

“No!” I replied, looking directly at him. “On the contrary, you are a very fine-looking man.”

A glow of vanity spread over his face. I poured out a glass of the Burgundy and pushed it toward him.

“England to Wales!” he cried with gallantry. “I don’t generally drink,” he added, “but these crackers make me thirsty.”

“If I could only find a wife suited to my tastes,” he mused, “such a woman as you are, by George! I’d give up aesthetic burglary and settle down to quiet domestic bliss.” He looked questioningly at me. “If” – he hesitated – “you could be sure I would abandon my profession – would you – do you think you could – condone my past and – marry me?”

“That is a matter for consideration,” I replied.

He helped himself to another cracker.

“Your proposal is so startlingly unique,” I continued, “to marry one’s burglar! Really it is quite a joke.”

“Isn’t it?” he chuckled, evidently enjoying the idea of the oddity. “We are kindred spirits!” he exclaimed, convivially, but was interrupted by a violent fit of coughing.

Seizing the bottle of Burgundy, he drained the only drop or two left.

“I think, maybe, there’s another bottle down in the cellar,” I cried, artlessly. “I’ll go down and see – I feel thirsty myself.”

“We will descend together,” exclaimed my burglar, gallantly taking the candle from my hand and following me to the door leading to the cellar steps.

We descended the steps chatting pleasantly – he discoursing on matrimony, I answering rather vaguely, but measuring the distance to the wine bins by my eye. They were at the far end of the cellar, and were five in number, each large enough to hold a quarter of a ton of coal. Before the furthest one I paused.

“Here,” I said, “is the brand we are looking for.” I raised the heavy lid and looked in. “I will hold the candle,” I observed; “will you get the bottle? I can hardly reach it.”

He handed me the candle and bent low over the bin. Ha! ha! Quicker than a flash of lightning I tipped up his heels (he was easily overbalanced), and into the bin he fell headlong. Down came the heavy lid. But there was no padlock on it. I must hurry! Blowing out the candle, I ran, for I knew the way, straight to the cellar steps and up them – like a cat. Then with a locked door between myself and my burglar, I could breathe.

I heard the man kicking about down below, for of course he got out of the bin at once. But our cellar is a labyrinth. Seizing father’s old gun from its resting-place in the hall, I sat down near the door at the head of the stairs, waiting for the worst.

The door was fairly strong – that I knew; but he was a powerful man. So I dragged a heavy table from the sitting-room and placed it against it.

Suddenly I became conscious that he had found his way to the stairs and was rapidly approaching the door, which was all that lay between me and his revengeful fury.

Bracing myself against the opposite wall, I raised the old gun, and, deliberately aiming it, waited.

He began by pounding with both fists on the door, but, not receiving any answer, he tried threats. An instinct seemed to tell him I would remain on guard.

His language, I must confess, while threatening, was not abusive. It was, in fact, incredibly elegant for a burglar, and strictly grammatical.

All at once there came a crash, followed by the creaking of heavy timber, and the door fell. Down he came on top of it, sprawling at my feet on the floor. I raised my gun and fired.

“Hit him?” I interrupted.

“No,” replied Miss Gwynne; “here in the wall of the dining-room the bullet lodged, and is still there.”

The next thing I was conscious of was Mrs. Griffiths bending over me, and her husband’s voice exclaiming:

“He’d never have escaped if we had not left that door open when we came in. You see we got home just in time to hear you fire the gun, and as we ran in he ran out. Drat him!”

I raised myself on my elbow and looked eagerly about.

“He had no time to carry off a thing,” said Mrs. Griffiths.

“I would like to set my eyes on him,” I remarked, when Miss Gwynne had concluded her story. “You are a distinguished woman and are – I believe – the very first one who ever received an offer of marriage from a burglar.”

The lady smiled. “Do you not remember reading about the capture of a notorious bank robber, several years ago? The case created quite a sensation, owing partly to the difficulty in tracing the thief, who was clever enough to puzzle the most expert detectives and evade the police, and also to the respectability of his position. No one could believe him guilty.”

“Indeed I do remember it,” I answered. “Not only that, but I saw the man after he was in prison. I happened to be going through Chester Jail at the time and J – was pointed out to me. He was quite distinguished looking. In fact, I did not believe him guilty.”

“Nor would I,” said Miss Gwynne, “if I had not known.”

“You mean,” I said, “that he —

“I mean that you saw my burglar.”

THE LADY IN ROUGE, By W. E. P. French

“Pretty woman! That’s just like a man. Pretty chromo, you mean, Tom.”

“Well,” in a hearty, pleasant voice, “maybe you are the better judge; but I don’t believe she’s ‘made up,’ and if I wasn’t the most henpecked man on earth I’d say she was the loveliest creature I ever saw. As for her hair, it’s – ”

“Blondined! And so utterly impossible in color that it couldn’t for a moment fool anybody but a man,” interrupted the first speaker, with deliciously spiteful emphasis on the very common noun man.

“Eyebrows stencilled, eyelashes darkened; lips, ears and finger tips tinged with carmine – don’t you know? Complexion enamel, vinegar rouge and brunette powder – pshaw! The way the men go on about her makes me positively ill. If you fall in love with her, Harry, you are no brother of mine. I don’t care to be sister-in-law to a lithograph in fast colors.”

“You make me curious to see her, Nell, dear. By Jove, she must be either a monster or a paragon! Have the spirit of a man, Tom, and tell me which.”

“Don’t try to extract any more information from me, old man; my teeth are positively chattering with terror. You can decide for yourself this evening, if your ferocious sister will allow you to leave your room. By the way,” with an amused laugh, “what do you suppose Nell and the rest of her charitable sex up here have dubbed the poor girl? ‘The lady in rouge!’”

“Yes, and she ought to have a sign, ‘Paint, don’t touch.’ I believe she is a divorcée or a widow, and I know she’s thirty in spite of her sickening affectation of youth.”

“Oh, come, Nell, you are absolutely vicious. She is not a day over twenty, and she has the prettiest name I ever heard, Violante Solander; accent on the second syllable, Harry, not on the first, to rhyme with Hollander, as the bride of my bosom insists on pronouncing it.”

“Sounds like a combination of Spanish and Scandinavian,” the younger man answers.

“It is,” returns his brother-in-law. “I have met her father several times at the Cosmos Club in Washington. He is a Norwegian, a wonderfully handsome man, of the purest blonde type, with charming old-time manners and a voice as deep and sonorous as a fine bell. Jack Kendricks, who knows him quite well, told me something of his history. As a young man he traveled pretty much all over the world, and in South America met and married Miss Viola’s mother. She was an Ecuadorean of Spanish descent, and so beautiful that she was called, in reference to her name, which was the same as her daughter’s, ‘The Violet of Quito.’ It is really a case of the Arctic zone wedding the Equator.”

“Or of a walrus committing matrimony with a llama. No wonder she is neither fish, flesh nor fowl,” added madame, with a malicious emphasis that made both men laugh.

This conversation floated up to me as I sat smoking my cigar on the forward edge of the hurricane deck of the little steamer that carried passengers from the railroad station at the foot of a beautiful and well-known lake in the Adirondacks to the village at the head of it, whither we were all bound.

The party of three had crossed from the other side of the boat and Were leaning against the guards immediately under me. Later on I came to know them all well. The lady was a delightful little bundle of inconsistencies, sharp of tongue, quick of temper and jealous of all that belonged to her, but as generous as an Arab, very warm hearted, perfectly fearless and honest and a loyal friend when won. She was born Miss Eleanor Van Zandt, a family with a tree and traditions, pride, possessions and position; but the fact that she belonged in the top layer of the Four Hundred did not prevent her, some ten years before, refusing a scion of the English nobility (a very wealthy one, too, if you’ll believe me), to her mother’s Infinite disgust, and giving her dimpled little hand, where she had already given her heart, to big, kindly, genial Thomas Northrup, who was every inch a man and a gentleman, but who was third in direct descent (and gloried in it, too) from old John Northrup, saddle and harness maker, of whom I have heard it told by one that saw it that he died on his sixtieth birthday in the battle of Gettysburg, from some twenty bullet wounds received while carrying the colors of his regiment, and that his last words were: “Don’t let the Johnnies get the flag!”