the mother’s brain was busy with excited thinkings; with plans, projects, schemes, each and all of them uncanny, grim, and dark. Yet they lit up her face; lit it with a fell light of their own; lit it with vague fires of hell. She was in a fever of unrest; she could not sit, stand, read, sew; there was no relief for her but in movement. She tested her boy’s gift in twenty ways, and kept saying to herself all the time, with her mind in the past: “He broke my father’s heart, and night and day all these years I have tried, and all in vain, to think out a way to break his. I have found it now – I have found it now.”
When night fell, the demon of unrest still possessed her. She went on with her tests; with a candle she traversed the house from garret to cellar, hiding pins, needles, thimbles, spools, under pillows, under carpets, in cracks in the walls, under the coal in the bin; then sent the little fellow in the dark to find them; which he did, and was happy and proud when she praised him and smothered him with caresses.
From this time forward life took on a new complexion for her. She said, “The future is secure – I can wait, and enjoy the waiting.” The most of her lost interests revived. She took up music again, and languages, drawing, painting, and the other long-discarded delights of her maidenhood. She was happy once more, and felt again the zest of life. As the years drifted by she watched the development of her boy, and was contented with it. Not altogether, but nearly that. The soft side of his heart was larger than the other side of it. It was his only defect, in her eyes. But she considered that his love for her and worship of her made up for it. He was a good hater – that was well; but it was a question if the materials of his hatreds were of as tough and enduring a quality as those of his friendships – and that was not so well.
The years drifted on. Archy was become a handsome, shapely, athletic youth, courteous, dignified, companionable, pleasant in his ways, and looking perhaps a trifle older than he was, which was sixteen. One evening his mother said she had something of grave importance to say to him, adding that he was old enough to hear it now, and old enough and possessed of character enough and stability enough to carry out a stern plan which she had been for years contriving and maturing. Then she told him her bitter story, in all its naked atrociousness. For a while the boy was paralyzed; then he said,
“I understand. We are Southerners; and by our custom and nature there is but one atonement. I will search him out and kill him.”
“Kill him? No! Death is release, emancipation; death is a favor. Do I owe him favors? You must not hurt a hair of his head.”
The boy was lost in thought awhile; then he said,
“You are all the world to me, and your desire is my law and my pleasure. Tell me what to do and I will do it.”
The mother’s eyes beamed with satisfaction, and she said,
“You will go and find him. I have known his hiding-place for eleven years; it cost me five years and more of inquiry, and much money, to locate it. He is a quartz-miner in Colorado, and well-to-do. He lives in Denver. His name is Jacob Fuller. There – it is the first time I have spoken it since that unforgettable night. Think! That name could have been yours if I had not saved you that shame and furnished you a cleaner one. You will drive him from that place; you will hunt him down and drive him again; and yet again, and again, and again, persistently, relentlessly, poisoning his life, filling it with mysterious terrors, loading it with weariness and misery, making him wish for death, and that he had a suicide’s courage; you will make of him another Wandering Jew; he shall know no rest any more, no peace of mind, no placid sleep; you shall shadow him, cling to him, persecute him, till you break his heart, as he broke my father’s and mine.”
“I will obey, mother.”
“I believe it, my child. The preparations are all made; everything is ready. Here is a letter of credit; spend freely, there is no lack of money. At times you may need disguises. I have provided them; also some other conveniences.” She took from the drawer of the type-writer-table several squares of paper. They all bore these type-written words:
$10,000 Reward
It is believed that a certain man who is wanted in an Eastern state is sojourning here. In 1880, in the night, he tied his young wife to a tree by the public road, cut her across the face with a cowhide, and made his dogs tear her clothes from her, leaving her naked. He left her there, and fled the country. A blood-relative of hers has searched for him for seventeen years. Address………………., Post-office. The above reward will be paid in cash to the person who will furnish the seeker, in a personal interview, the criminal’s address.
“When you have found him and acquainted yourself with his scent, you will go in the night and placard one of these upon the building he occupies, and another one upon the post-office or in some other prominent place. It will be the talk of the region. At first you must give him several days in which to force a sale of his belongings at something approaching their value. We will ruin him by-and-by, but gradually; we must not impoverish him at once, for that could bring him to despair and injure his health, possibly kill him.”
She took three or four more typewritten forms from the drawer – duplicates – and read one:
…………………, 18… To Jacob Fuller:
You have…… days in which to settle your affairs. You will not be disturbed during that limit, which will expire at….. M., on the…… of……. You must then move on. If you are still in the place after the named hour, I will placard you on all the dead walls, detailing your crime once more, and adding the date, also the scene of it, with all names concerned, including your own. Have no fear of bodily injury – it will in no circumstances ever be inflicted upon you. You brought misery upon an old man, and ruined his life and broke his heart. What he suffered, you are to suffer.
“You will add no signature. He must receive this before he learns of the reward-placard – before he rises in the morning – lest he lose his head and fly the place penniless.”
“I shall not forget.”
“You will need to use these forms only in the beginning – once may be enough. Afterward, when you are ready for him to vanish out of a place, see that he gets a copy of this form, which merely says,
Move on. You have…… days.
“He will obey. That is sure.”
III
Extracts from letters to the mother:
Denver, April 3, 1897 I have now been living several days in the same hotel with Jacob Fuller. I have his scent; I could track him through ten divisions of infantry and find him. I have often been near him and heard him talk. He owns a good mine, and has a fair income from it; but he is not rich. He learned mining in a good way – by working at it for wages. He is a cheerful creature, and his forty-three years sit lightly upon him; he could pass for a younger man – say thirty-six or thirty-seven. He has never married again – passes himself off for a widower. He stands well, is liked, is popular, and has many friends. Even I feel a drawing toward him – the paternal blood in me making its claim. How blind and unreasoning and arbitrary are some of the laws of nature – the most of them, in fact! My task is become hard now – you realize it? you comprehend, and make allowances? – and the fire of it has cooled, more than I like to confess to myself. But I will carry it out. Even with the pleasure paled, the duty remains, and I will not spare him.
And for my help, a sharp resentment rises in me when I reflect that he who committed that odious crime is the only one who has not suffered by it. The lesson of it has manifestly reformed his character, and in the change he is happy. He, the guilty party, is absolved from all suffering; you,
