before you went,” he said, looking down, “but I’m so shy that I couldn’t do it in company. So I thought I’d get it off on you while you were alone.”
“We’ve seen you once or twice before, this morning,” said Demorest pleasantly, “and we were sorry you didn’t join us.”
“I reckon I might have,” said Jack gayly, “if my horse had only made up his mind whether he was a bird or a squirrel, and hadn’t been so various and promiscuous about whether he wanted to climb a tree or fly. He’s not a bad horse for a Mexican plug, only when he thinks there is any devilment around he wants to wade in and take a hand. However, I reckoned to see the last of you and your pile into Boomville. And I DID. When I meet three fellows like you that are clean white all through I sort of cotton to ‘em, even if I’M a little of a brunette myself. And I’ve got something to give you.”
He took from a fold of his scarlet sash a small parcel neatly folded in white paper as fresh and spotless as himself. Holding it in his fingers, he went on: “I happened to be at Heavy Tree Hill early this morning before sun-up. In the darkness I struck your cabin, and I reckon—I struck somebody else! At first I thought it was one of you chaps down on your knees praying at the rear of the cabin, but the way the fellow lit out when he smelt me coming made me think it wasn’t entirely fasting and prayer. However, I went to the rear of the cabin, and then I reckoned some kind friend had been bringing you kindlings and firewood for your early breakfast. But that didn’t satisfy me, so I knelt down as he had knelt, and then I saw—well, Mr. Demorest, I reckon I saw JUST WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN! But even then I wasn’t quite satisfied, for that man had been grubbing round as if searching for something. So I searched too—and I found IT. I’ve got it here. I’m going to give it to you, for it may some day come in handy, and you won’t find anything like it among the folks where you’re going. It’s something unique, as those fine-art-collecting sharps in ‘Frisco say—something quite matchless, unless you try to match it one day yourself! Don’t open the paper until I run on and say ‘So long’ to your partners. Good-by.”
He grasped Demorest’s hand and then dropped the little packet into his palm, and ambled away towards Stacy and Barker. Holding the packet in his hand with an amused yet puzzled smile, Demorest watched the gambler give Stacy’s hand a hearty farewell shake and a supplementary slap on the back to the delighted Barker, and then vanish in a flash of red sash and silver buttons. At which Demorest, walking slowly towards his partners, opened the packet, and stood suddenly still. It contained the dried and bloodless second finger of a human hand cut off at the first joint!
For an instant he held it at arm’s length, as if about to cast it away. Then he grimly replaced it in the paper, put it carefully in his pocket, and silently walked after his companions.
CHAPTER I
A strong southwester was beating against the windows and doors of Stacy’s Bank in San Francisco, and spreading a film of rain between the regular splendors of its mahogany counters and sprucely dressed clerks and the usual passing pedestrian. For Stacy’s new banking-house had long since received the epithet of “palatial” from an enthusiastic local press fresh from the “opening” luncheon in its richly decorated directors’ rooms, and it was said that once a homely would-be depositor from One Horse Gulch was so cowed by its magnificence that his heart failed him at the last moment, and mumbling an apology to the elegant receiving teller, fled with his greasy chamois pouch of gold-dust to deposit his treasure in the dingy Mint around the corner. Perhaps there was something of this feeling, mingled with a certain simple-minded fascination, in the hesitation of a stranger of a higher class who entered the bank that rainy morning and finally tendered his card to the important negro messenger.
The card preceded him through noiselessly swinging doors and across heavily carpeted passages until it reached the inner core of Mr. James Stacy’s private offices, and was respectfully laid before him. He was not alone. At his side, in an attitude of polite and studied expectancy, stood a correct-looking young man, for whom Mr. Stacy was evidently writing a memorandum. The stranger glanced furtively at the card with a curiosity hardly in keeping with his suggested good breeding; but Stacy did not look at it until he had finished his memorandum.
“There,” he said, with business decision, “you can tell your people that if we carry their new debentures over our limit we will expect a larger margin. Ditches are not what they were three years ago when miners were willing to waste their money over your rates. They don’t gamble THAT WAY any more, and your company ought to know it, and not gamble themselves over that prospect.” He handed the paper to the stranger, who bowed over it with studied politeness, and backed towards the door. Stacy took up the waiting card, read it, said to the messenger, “Show him in,” and in the same breath turned to his guest: “I say, Van Loo, it’s George Barker! You know him.”
“Yes,” said Van Loo, with a polite hesitation as he halted at the door. “He was—I think—er—in your employ at Heavy Tree Hill.”
“Nonsense! He was my partner. And you must have known him since at Boomville. Come! He got forty shares of Ditch stock—through you—at 110, which were worth about 80! SOMEBODY must have made money enough by it to remember him.”
“I was only speaking of him socially,” said Van Loo, with a deprecating smile. “You know he married a young woman—the hotel-keeper’s daughter, who used to wait at the table—and after my mother and sister came out to keep house for me at Boomville it was quite impossible for me to see much of him, for he seldom went out without his wife, you know.”
“Yes,” said Stacy dryly, “I think you didn’t like his marriage. But I’m glad your disinclination to see him isn’t on account of that deal in stocks.”
“Oh no,” said Van Loo. “Good-by.”
But, unfortunately, in the next passage he came upon Barker, who with a cry of unfeigned pleasure, none the less sincere that he was feeling a little alien in these impressive surroundings, recognized him. Nothing could exceed Van Loo’s protest of delight at the meeting; nothing his equal desolation at the fact that he was hastening to another engagement. “But your old partner,” he added, with a smile, “is waiting for you; he has just received your card, and I should be only keeping you from him. So glad to see you; you’re looking so well. Good-by! Good-by!”
Reassured, Barker no longer hesitated, but dashed with his old impetuousness into his former partner’s room. Stacy, already deeply absorbed in other business, was sitting with his back towards him, and Barker’s arms were actually encircling his neck before the astonished and half-angry man looked up. But when his eyes met the laughing gray ones of Barker above him he gently disengaged himself with a quick return of the caress, rose, shut the door of an inner office, and returning pushed Barker into an armchair in quite the old suppressive fashion of former days. Yes; it was the same Stacy that Barker looked at, albeit his brown beard was now closely cropped around his determined mouth and jaw in a kind of grave decorum, and his energetic limbs already attuned to the rigor of clothes of fashionable cut and still more rigorous sombreness of color.
“Barker boy,” he began, with the familiar twinkle in his keen eyes which the younger partner remembered, “I don’t encourage stag dancing among my young men during bank hours, and you’ll please to remember that we are not on Heavy Tree Hill”—
“Where,” broke in Barker enthusiastically, “we were only overlooked by the Black Spur Range and the Sierran snow-line; where the nearest voice that came to you was quarter of a mile away as the crow flies and nearly a mile by the trail.”
“And was generally an oath!” said Stacy. “But you’re in San Francisco NOW. Where are you stopping?” He took up a pencil and held it over a memorandum pad awaitingly.
“At the Brook House. It’s”—
“Hold
