Ten minutes and the doctor was back in his bunk. Was it imagination, or did I
feel his hand on my shoulder before he finally lay down and composed himself to
sleep? I can not say; I only know that I gave no sign, and that soon all stir
ceased in his direction and I was left to enjoy my triumph and to listen with
anxious interest to the strange and unintelligible sounds which accompanied the
descent of the horseman down the face of the cliff, and finally to watch with a
fascination, which drew me to my knees, the passage of that sparkling star of
light hanging from his saddle. It crept to and fro across the side of the
opposite mountain as he threaded its endless zigzags and finally disappeared
over the brow into the invisible canyons beyond.
With the disappearance of this beacon came lassitude and sleep, through whose
hazy atmosphere floated wild sentences from the sick tent, which showed that
the patient was back again in Nevada, quarreling over the price of a horse
which was to carry him beyond the reach of some threatening avalanche.
When next morning I came to depart, the doctor took me by both hands and looked
me straight in the eyes.
“You heard,” he said.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I can tell a satisfied man when I see him,” he growled, throwing down my hands
with that same humorous twinkle in his eyes which had encouraged me from the
first.
I made no answer, but I shall remember the lesson.
One detail more. When I stared on my own descent I found why the leggings, with
which I had been provided, were so indispensable. I was not allowed to ride;
indeed, riding down those steep declivities was impossible. No horse could
preserve his balance with a rider on his back. I slid, so did my horse, and
only in the valley beneath did we come together again.
VIII.
ARREST
The success of this interview provoked other attempts on the part of the
reporters who now flocked into the Southwest. Ere long particulars began to
pour in of Mr. Fairbrother’s painful journey south, after his illness set in.
The clerk of the hotel in El Moro, where the great mine-owner’s name was found
registered at the time of the murder, told a story which made very good reading
for those who were more interested in the sufferings and experiences of the
millionaire husband of the murdered lady than in those of the unhappy but
comparatively insignificant man upon whom public opinion had cast the odium of
her death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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