Bonanza

Varied were the sounds that reached my ears when I woke in the green coulee, to find my limbs limp and my head dizzy. I heard, above the hissing of the canyon, the stroke of a pick, the scrape of a spade, the blow of axe and hammer, and the snarl of a saw. I was lying upon a blanket, with Akshelah kneeling on the moss beside me, fanning away the insects. She smiled delightedly when I looked round, and commanded me not to move.

The two troopers were cutting and shaping logs of spruce. MacCaskill was digging foundations. On the other side, the idle Leblanc and the incorrigible Morrison were playing poker.

“Three queens is good, Jimmy,” I heard the former saying. “That’s fourteen dollars you’ve lifted, durn ye! Ye can have it, soon as I wash out me first pay-dirt.”

“Gimme a voucher,” demanded Jim Morrison.

Then Inspector Hanafin came down from the rocks, carrying a great load of white grass for thatching, his fur-lined cloak, his gaudy coat and sword put aside, the rings stripped from his fingers, his sleeves rolled up, his handsome face marked with dirt.

“Good man!” he exclaimed, when he saw me lift myself, and down he set his bundle. “Over-strain, but nothing damaged,” he said cheerily. “You’ll be all right to-morrow.”

MacCaskill heard his voice, and came tramping across.

“You’re the stuff, Rupe!” he called, in splendid spirits. “I’m makin’ our shanty. See?”

“Did I open the hole?” I asked eagerly, and both the men laughed.

“You and that rock come down together,” said MacCaskill.

“You pulled yourself round just in time, and I was able to catch you as you fell,” went on Hanafin. “The hole’s open; but we didn’t venture inside, because the place was solid with mosquitos, and the tunnel was as black as tar. We started a smudge with dry grass and damp moss on the inside, and the pass may be fairly clear by morning. Ever seen a mining town start?”

Before I could reply, he saw the two sailors, and his anger came out.

“You idle hounds!” he exclaimed, and going up, deliberately kicked each man. “Put up those cards, and set down to work, or I’ll pass you out of this camp before morning.”

The worthless creatures cringed, and swore, and rose reluctantly.

“Norman!” called the inspector, “give these men some work, and if they don’t stay with it report ’em, and I’ll prescribe something for their health. We’re not going to have a bad crowd here our first week,” he added threateningly, and then turned back to me to add: “A mining town begins, continues, and ends in gambling.”

MacCaskill was chuckling as he made mighty strokes with his spade.

“Say, Rupe, you and me’ll be Bonanza kings in a year, maybe,” he said. “We’ll be havin’ our pictures stuck inter papers.”

He burst into laughter.

“You old fool,” said Hanafin; but the infection reached him. “My ambition is to get married, and there’s little chance of that on my pay.”

He passed on at once, with his load of dry grass, as though ashamed of the confession, and I understood what it was that inspired the Englishman. Somebody with bright eyes was waiting for him at home! The chance of his life had come, and he was not the one to miss it. I wondered if she would care for him as Akshelah liked to care for me.

Working hours were long, because there was no darkness to trouble us, and the soldiers made great progress with their building, while Akshelah did the cooking, and the two sailors the growling. The latter had come in with the idea of picking up gold, not of working for other people; but as they had no supplies, they had to make their choice between working or starving.

Our camp fire burnt redly in the defile during the time of the shadow, which began half an hour after midnight and lasted until sunrise, two hours later. When we had done eating, the troopers sang us songs of the plains and told us yarns of the prairie; and later on, Hanafin spoke to me of great London, and listened sympathetically to my story, and the tragedy connected with my father. By that time MacCaskill, Norman, and the two sailors were asleep; but Akshelah sat opposite, her fine eyes glowing in the firelight. Outside the light of the fire, Carey, the tall trooper, did patrol duty. My heart went out to Hanafin, as he talked to me as an equal, and treated me as such. Hanafin and Redpath were the two English gentlemen of my acquaintance, and my father was the only other I had known.

“I have an idea that I can name the man who killed the discoverer of this place,” said the inspector musingly, but he would say no more. “What do I think of Redpath? An old and slimy villain, who has reached bed-rock, and who will now stick at nothing, because he has no lower to fall. Don’t pity him, my boy. His smooth tongue and his oily manner are his two strongest weapons. I suppose he is sitting up in his cave now, rehearsing the details of some new plot with that infernal Icelander.” He paused, then added: “My duty is divided. I ought to arrest Redpath, and deliver him at Regina, and I must administer the law here, if our discovery is what we believe it to be.”

A figure loomed large into the firelight, and Carey saluted.

“A stranger coming up, sir. Maybe a native. Made no reply to my challenge.”

“Go out and bring him in.”

The disciplined trooper wheeled round and was gone.

Presently he accompanied a very old man, bent and wrapped in an aged blanket, presenting a weird sight in the glow of the fire. His face was like a piece of cracked leather, but his teeth, when he grinned in greeting, were white and sound.

“Ho!” he exclaimed, “white great boy!”

“Ho!” replied Hanafin. “You speak English, do you?”

It was difficult to extract any meaning out of the jargon of mangled words and distorted sentences which the ancient proceeded to deliver. He sought to tell us the history of himself, and of his fathers, of their long struggles with the extinct Iroquois; but when Hanafin questioned him concerning the adjacent country, the old man became mysterious. He knew nothing of the land of Bonanza, nor had he ever heard of Mosquito Pass. His innocence was wonderful; his lying palpable! He demanded “tobak” as a solace for his old age; and when this was given him he became bold, a wild longing crossed his aged face, and he prayed for “the water that burns a man inside.”

“Carey!” exclaimed Hanafin, fingering the fur on his cloak, “you are sure this is unexplored territory?”

“Yes, sir. It is so marked on all our maps.”

The inspector coughed.

“That civilising agent whisky has evidently preceded us.”

“He may have been inside, sir,” suggested the trooper.

Hanafin put the question in many different ways and dialects; but from the answers given, he was satisfied that the old native had never been inside—that is, to civilisation.

“I could almost swear that he came out of the canyon, sir,” said Carey.

I caught Hanafin’s arm, and said unguardedly:

“He comes from Redpath!”

The inspector never glanced at me, but said quietly:

“Thank you for an idea, Petrie.”

He leaned towards the ancient, and in his clear, strong voice pronounced the following names: “Petrie! Redpath! Leblanc! Joe Fagge! Olaffson!”

“You hit him every time, sir!” exclaimed Carey, forgetting himself in his admiration.

“So it was Redpath who gave you whisky years ago! I might have guessed it,” said Hanafin.

MacCaskill was snoring behind me, and beyond Norman slept quietly in his blanket. They had not been disturbed by the arrival of the native. Two dark shapes heaved close to the rocks, themselves like rocks. These shapes represented Leblanc and Morrison. I saw Hanafin’s eyes fixed that way.

He went on with his examination of the ancient. Did he know anything concerning the death of the old half-mad miner? Did he know who killed him? Had he been present at the time? What talk had he heard? The weird creature poured forth a flood of negatives, without waiting to listen to any particular question, and quite obviously without taking in any part of its meaning.

“I’ll use this old parrot as a test,” said Hanafin grimly. “Carey!”

The trooper stiffened at once.

“Take a light. Lead this old man up to the half-breed yonder. Make him kneel down and look at the sleeper.”

Hanafin, I fancy, shivered at his own plan, but the night was cold.

“Hold the light just above the old man’s head. We will see if the half-breed recognises him.”

A thrill passed through me. Over the great cliffs a faint aurora burnt blue. MacCaskill snored on; Norman never stirred; the two shapes remained like the rocks behind them. During the silence I heard the hoarse croak of the ravens I had seen that morning. They were returning to the defile.

The fire darted up hotly, and a red shower of sparks went aloft and vanished. Carey’s face looked like bronze as he drew a flaming brand from the fire. He gripped the ancient with his free hand, and pulled him along. Hanafin in his long black cloak went on the other side. Akshelah and I followed. It was like a funeral procession.

We reached the side of the sleepers. A magnetic storm breaking overhead would scarcely have aroused them. Carey forced the shivering Indian upon his knees, close to the left shoulder of Leblanc; standing behind, he held the flaring spruce so that the light fell full upon the pinched and withered face, weird in age and horrid with fear, while the holder of the light remained himself invisible. Hanafin passed round to the half-breed’s right shoulder, and stood between the sleepers.

The light moved this way and that, as the hand of him that held it shook, and my own breath began to quicken. Hanafin seized Leblanc and shook him violently. At the same time, his strong voice pealed out among the cliffs:

“Who was it killed Joe Fagge?”

A scream of awful terror met the startled echoes of that question.

Leblanc had opened his eyes to see a blaze of light, and below the wizened face and bloodshot eyes of the silent witness—the ghost-like witness of the deed done twenty years before. The thin lips before him never stirred while that question rang into his awakened ears. Leblanc was little better than a beast, and a beast goes mad easily.

Jim Morrison awoke shouting, in time to see his associate leaping away over the rocks like a huge monkey, making the country horrible with yells.

Carey dropped his hand, and the sparks again leapt aloft.

The other two sleepers awoke, and called out.

“Guilty,” said Hanafin, in answer to their question.

We saw the poor wretch disappear into the canyon.

Carey and Norman followed a little way, but they soon lost sight of what had lately been Leblanc, the murderer of half-mad Joe Fagge, and now, by the working of Justice, a madman himself. They did not go up to the hot insect-filled cemetery among the spruce.

The strong light began to break, making the cold patches of quartz like snow, and under the heaving clouds the gossamers lifted and flickered. The ravens were croaking in the direction of Eldorado. Mosquito Hole lay that way.

Hanafin turned the ancient Indian out of the camp, and Norman accompanied the unhappy creature some distance along the defile.

I thought the inspector severe upon that occasion; but he knew his duty, and I knew nothing. Akshelah declared that the departed was a bad man, and I expect she was right.

Though I had very little sleep, I felt my strength again when the sun became strong and hot.

We were a silent party at breakfast—Hanafin grave, MacCaskill subdued, and Morrison blenching.

After eating, we took up our tools and prepared to start for the unknown land of treasure.

“Anything to report, Norman?” asked the inspector, as he rolled a cigarette.

“Nothing, sir.”

But we found the half-breed at Mosquito Hole, or rather that which the insects had done with and left for a husk. He must have scrambled up to the hole, certain that his pursuers were upon him, and had slipped while descending, and fallen, bruising his head. There the enemy would have been upon him before he could recover—a relentless, poisonous enemy, in numbers only to be estimated by millions, trumpeting, stabbing, stifling. Its sightless eyes were filled; the host swarmed in and out of its mouth, its nose and ears; yet an unimportant fraction only of that mighty host of mosquitos which had overwhelmed this big, strong man, and had smothered him to his death.

My father was innocent.

Old man Fagge, the crazy miner, the discoverer of Bonanza, had been avenged at last by Justice and Inspector Hanafin.

“Bury it among the spruce,” ordered the representative, and his men averted their heads and carried it away.