PAGE 8
In The Tules
by
Later he was seated in a corner of the hurricane deck, whence he could view the monotonous banks of the river; yet, perhaps by certain signs unobservable to others, he knew he was approaching his own locality. He knew that his cabin and clearing would be undiscernible behind the fringe of willows on the bank, but he already distinguished the points where a few cottonwoods struggled into a promontory of lighter foliage beyond them. Here voices fell upon his ear, and he was suddenly aware that two men had lazily crossed over from the other side of the boat, and were standing before him looking upon the bank.
“It was about here, I reckon,” said one, listlessly, as if continuing a previous lagging conversation, “that it must have happened. For it was after we were making for the bend we’ve just passed that the deputy, goin’ to the stateroom below us, found the door locked and the window open. But both men–Jack Despard and Seth Hall, the sheriff–weren’t to be found. Not a trace of ’em. The boat was searched, but all for nothing. The idea is that the sheriff, arter getting his prisoner comf’ble in the stateroom, took off Jack’s handcuffs and locked the door; that Jack, who was mighty desp’rate, bolted through the window into the river, and the sheriff, who was no slouch, arter him. Others allow–for the chairs and things was all tossed about in the stateroom–that the two men clinched THAR, and Jack choked Hall and chucked him out, and then slipped cl’ar into the water himself, for the stateroom window was just ahead of the paddle box, and the cap’n allows that no man or men could fall afore the paddles and live. Anyhow, that was all they ever knew of it.”
“And there wasn’t no trace of them found?” said the second man, after a long pause.
“No. Cap’n says them paddles would hev’ just snatched ’em and slung ’em round and round and buried ’em way down in the ooze of the river bed, with all the silt of the current atop of ’em, and they mightn’t come up for ages; or else the wheels might have waltzed ’em way up to Sacramento until there wasn’t enough left of ’em to float, and dropped ’em when the boat stopped.”
“It was a mighty fool risk for a man like Despard to take,” resumed the second speaker as he turned away with a slight yawn.
“Bet your life! but he was desp’rate, and the sheriff had got him sure! And they DO say that he was superstitious, like all them gamblers, and allowed that a man who was fixed to die by a rope or a pistol wasn’t to be washed out of life by water.”
The two figures drifted lazily away, but Morse sat rigid and motionless. Yet, strange to say, only one idea came to him clearly out of this awful revelation–the thought that his friend was still true to him–and that his strange absence and mysterious silence were fully accounted for and explained. And with it came the more thrilling fancy that this man was alive now to HIM alone.
HE was the sole custodian of his secret. The morality of the question, while it profoundly disturbed him, was rather in reference to its effect upon the chances of Captain Jack and the power it gave his enemies than his own conscience. He would rather that his friend should have proven the proscribed outlaw who retained an unselfish interest in him than the superior gentleman who was coldly wiping out his gratitude. He thought he understood now the reason of his visitor’s strange and varying moods–even his bitter superstitious warning in regard to the probable curse entailed upon one who should save a drowning man. Of this he recked little; enough that he fancied that Captain Jack’s concern in his illness was heightened by that fear, and this assurance of his protecting friendship thrilled him with pleasure.