CHAPTER X.
A STORY OF A DOUBLE MURDER.
As we have already stated, Winkle, while fighting the crowd of phantoms and fancies that over-shadowed him, had felt inclination to confide in his newly-found comrade. Being thus addressed decided him.
"I don't know that I'm making mountains out of mole-hills. I think, though, that perhaps I have given way where I should have fought it out, and allowed myself to be over-powered by that which would only make a ripple in some men's lives. Sometimes I can think of that man Endicott coolly enough; there are times, too, when I want and intend to kill him. Yet I suppose that others have been injured as much—and forgiven. Men are not always responsible for their mad fancies—do you think they are?"
Blaze gave a curious look at the speaker. He appeared to ask the question in perfect good faith, so the trapper answered:
"Not fur the'r mad fancies allers. No."
"I don't want to make a long story, and I don't want to go into too many details. It will only raise the devil in me again and that I am trying to keep down. I want my head cool now, if ever. It seems to me it's cleared off wonderfully of late; perhaps it might so happen that I could forgive. All the forgiveness in the world, though, won't bring poor Ned back to life, or mend a mother's broken heart.
"I've never had much to do with him personally. I'm glad of it. Perhaps there would have been enough of the cursed fascinating power about him to have ruined me too. Ruin! No, that's not the word, either. He did that anyhow. Made me his slave, or his tool, or his victim.
"You see Ned went from college into business, and might have done well if he had never met Endicott. And I went from business into love, and might have prospered if Endicott had not lived. There are some crimes that law don't avenge and some that it does. Endicott has tried his hand at both sorts, and the law, being weak, only punished him, or attempted to, for the latter. Very lightly it laid it on him, too."
"Mebbe it hit him harder than you think fur," interpolated Blaze. "It's no fun gittin' inter them clutches. But go on."
"Perhaps it did. I don't believe I ever thought of that before. Ned and mother and I were wrapped up in each other. It's not often, I think, that you find a family like ours was. There had never been a difference of opinion or a single jar; but every thing went on smoothly. Ned was the pet. He was the youngest and the frailest, and when I was away at college he was left alone with mother. It never made me jealous a bit because, somehow, it seemed natural. When I came home I petted him too. We weren't rich exactly; but we had some money, and by a little care had managed to live almost as though we were. Perhaps if we had felt poverty we might have been happier. But, we had a taste of the luxurious, and I'm afraid it gave and fed a desire for means more ample. Ned, at least, got possessed with a yearning to be wealthy; and I was in haste myself to realize some of my dreams. I'm not going to trouble you with a complete family history, or tell how he and I, in our different spheres, toiled ahead, with fair prospects, for several years.
"One day I saw Edith Van Payne; and the picture she marked in my brain just then has never faded since. Some men speak of being able by shutting their eyes to bring up the scenes of long ago;—but, shut or open, it's always there, I see her just the same. I can't imagine why a woman should have such an influence. It's strange, it's even monstrous. After that day, as I looked for her, I saw her oftener. Eventually I came to know her. Then I found she was worth the studying. She was entirely different from any other woman I had ever met, for there were everlasting contradictions connected with her. She looked dashing and almost masculine, yet she really was intensely feminine; she seemed at first meeting to be beyond emotion, but, as I came to know her, she was extremely sensitive. She was one of those women externally stamped with all the marks of heartlessness, and yet have true, honest hearts all ready for the crushing. Perhaps I was slow with my wooing, yet I know I was wrapped up in it. I can not tell how much encouragement I, at first, received. As much, I guess, as I deserved. You see, she was almost alone in the world, and was making her own way as best she might. She had a younger brother, though I saw very little of him. After a bit Ned became acquainted with her. I introduced him myself. They soon became great friends, though their friendship never ripened into any thing like sentimentality. Their ages were too near for that. If any thing, she was a few months the older.
"How or when Ned first became mixed up with Endicott I do not know. In haste to become rich, he was open for speculation. I'm not certain that it was not through Miss Van Payne. She knew him, met him often, yet by some chance I never was introduced to him, never saw the three together. What do you suppose the result was? He murdered both! It all seemed to be done in an instant as it were. I was away from home for a fortnight, and when I came back it was over. Ned he killed; that I might have borne, but, until a few days ago, I thought he had killed the woman too.
"Mother had noticed a change in the boy. For two or three days she would not see him; then he would come home taciturn and upset. At that time she could only guess that his business affairs were going wrong. Afterward I found how far out he had been led by this Endicott, who, all the time feathering his own nest well, was dragging him to the quicksands of financial rottenness.
"What you have told me of the conversation you overheard throws some light on his course with Edith, though that I have not yet been able to fully comprehend. It seems he would have married her and dared not, even if he could. Preferring, then, the roundabout way of a schemer to the straightforwardness of an honest man, he attempted to establish an ownership in her. Curse him, he deliberately set about compromising her! She could take good care of herself, and he knew it, but he blackened her reputation simply and solely to give himself time, hoping to conceal his own part in the matter and eventually to smooth the affair over. Had he known the woman as I did, he never would have attempted it, since he succeeded too well.
"The crisis came during my absence. Carefully as he covered the traces of his agency, Ned detected his share in the work. At first, to be sure, there was only a faint suspicion; but, that soon ripened into a certainty. Knowing my hopes and wishes, brotherly love urged him to employ every means to learn the truth. Once engaged in this, he was led to suspect Endicott's business integrity, and the revelations brought about by an investigation in that direction were of themselves overpowering.
"Then he did either a foolish or an unfortunate thing. Just in the white heat he met Endicott. Remember, that he not only knew that this man had compromised, almost beyond redemption, the woman his brother loved; but that he himself was involved in a network of toils from which he could not hope to escape short of the loss of his means, and, worse still, with a damaged reputation. They met—and Endicott killed him.
"Of course the jury found extenuating circumstances. Legal chicanery, set in motion by money, saved his worthless neck—a neck that could I have once grasped I would have wrung with as little compunction as that of a chicken. I think I could have borne that horror; but, engrossed as I was by it, it was some weeks before I knew that Edith had disappeared.
"At this time I believed she had made away with herself. I never doubted it until the other night. Of all those who knew her, there are few that did not believe the same. Heaven knows that I was loth to believe it. I hunted high and low for her, since I never doubted her honor, though I had never received any assurance of her love for me. Her own brother was left in the dark as to what had become of her. He found an envelope addressed to him, containing a sum of money she had saved for a rainy day, and the simple words, written in pencil, 'Good-by.'
"My own business, suffering for a time from utter neglect, was disposed of; my heart was chilled toward my broken-hearted mother—God help me, she may be dead to-night—and I spent my time seeking for traces of Edith, and waiting to meet Endicott.
"While I was off on what I thought a slight trace, for I had not fully allowed myself to believe that she was dead, he emerged from a prison, and escaped me. I followed him East; he eluded me. I heard of him South; but he was gone when I reached New Orleans. Then I gave way and was sick for a long season. When I came to myself something prompted me to turn Westward. Strange how Fate, or some occult law of attraction, drew me here. Yet many months of wandering, through hardships and perils, brought me no surcease, and the tension on my nerves has been gradually tightening ever since I found myself west of the Mississippi. The rest you know. What may happen, neither you, nor I, nor any other living mortal may say."
Winkle told his story in a slow, quiet, yet intense way. Blaze listened to it with evident interest.
"A condemned hard case he was. I've knowed men shot fur less than them. That's the cuss o' civilization. If yer goin' to draw a bead upon this man ye'd better do it here than furder East. Bein' that you've found the girl alive, mebbe you'll weaken on that. A human critter's a curi's consarn that only goes under onc't. In course red-skins I don't take much account on; but, when it comes to drawin' it fine on a white, an' he not lookin' for it—'pears to me it 'u'd glimmer the fire-sight."
"I think at two hundred yards he would be a dead man?"
Winkle said this slowly and half inquiringly, as though a doubt had arisen in his mind; and then he continued, in a tone in curious contrast to the one he generally used in speaking of Endicott:
"You know I've followed after him so long and was so certain of it. It would be hard to let him go after all."
"Two hundred yard is some distance, an' a man's a mark o' moderate bigness. I've seen a deer missed at fifty. Buck ag'er an' fancy shootin' don't agree good. If you'll just keep cool an' not rush the funeral mebbe ye'll eventooally git straight enough to not care a cuss if school keeps er not. I've done ye more ner a hundred dollars' worth of good a'ready."
"True, I know that—yet if that man were here now, if he could appear suddenly—"
A remarkable change came over the man as he broke off the sentence and sprung to his feet. Blaze, who trusted completely his own senses, and was confident that Winkle could have discovered no signs of any danger, looked at him in doubt and amazement as he stood bending now to one side, again to another, eagerly listening, his rifle clutched with a nervous grip.
"D'ye hear him?" he whispered. "He's coming, he's coming! curse him, I tell you he's here now."
Then Blaze listened. It seemed, almost like a fancy, too, that he heard, away miles off, a voice. He knew not whether it was the voice of man or of nature. There are times when in Western solitudes the two sound so wondrously alike that one is startled and perplexed. The voices that one hears in the cottonwoods by the river-side, or the cedars in the cañons! A brooder or a dreamer alone with them might well be driven mad.
While the trapper listened, Winkle stole noiselessly away. The negro, who had, during the recital of Winkle's story, been lying wrapped in a blanket, unconsciously sleeping, suddenly awoke to consciousness, and answered Blaze's astonished exclamation of, "Where the thunder's the boy gone to?" with:
"Jist hold on hyar a bit. Dat's nuffin new. He done gone do dat ebery leetle while; I fotch him back. Dat's de on'y t'ing 'bout Mass'r Winkle dat's cur'us. He say he t'inks he hear hees man."
Pompey, without more ado, slid off in the direction in which Winkle had gone, leaving Blaze alone, to ruminate on the story he had just heard. The negro was brimful of western experience, and Blaze thought it needless to follow. This summary exit of the two from camp gave him fresh food for reflection, and his thoughts were somewhat mixed as would appear from his soliloquy:
"Some, now, would call him crazy. I dunno; guess both sides is ground down to one p'int, an' that, 'my man.' Everyways else I reckon he's more brains ner I hev—which's a fair allowance fur this individooal to make. Ef he could git 'my man' off his intellek he'd be purty square. Cuss me, though, ef I wouldn't like to know whether 'my man' is in the cañon, or hereabouts. That's the queer part of the thing—his followin' him by guess, er instink. I've see'd a herd o' deer scattered this way an' that an' the t'other, an' often wondered how it come they war all together ag'in by mornin'. Not so sing'lar as the way he's follered 'my man.' I wonder ef he'll ever find him? I b'lieve 'bout two month waitin' to see, alongside o' this Winkle, would tame me down amazin'. I'm gittin' steady es an otter-slide now. Waugh!”