Chapter 1

THE

STRAND MAGAZINE

_An Illustrated Monthly_

Vol. 5, Issue. 29.

May 1893

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SIERRAS

BY IZA DUFFUS HARDY.

Barbara Thorne sat leaning her head on her hand, looking at a photograph that lay on the table beneath her eyes. She had not intended to look for _that_ when she pulled out a dusty drawer full of old letters, papers, and account-books to arrange and set in order. But when in the course of her rummaging and tidying she found that picture in her hand, she paused in her task. The neglected drawer stood open, with its dusty packets and rolls of faded papers. Barbara had forgotten it and all else around her.

She sat there lost in memory, her eyes fixed upon the "counterfeit presentment" of the face that once had been all the world to her. She did not often think of Oliver Desmond now; to think of him meant only pain--pain of outraged pride and wounded love. She had outgrown the time when she could not tear her thoughts from him, when his face was in her "mind's eye" by night and day, and yet she shrank with a shuddering revolt of anguish from those pictures of the past which she could not banish. For the memory that was the locked-up skeleton of her life--that rattled its dead bones to-day as Oliver Desmond's pictured eyes smiled into hers--was a cruel memory indeed, of grief and wrong and bitter humiliation, of broken troth and shattered faith, insulted love, and crushed and martyred pride. The blow that had rankled like iron in her heart for years was base and cowardly as a stab in the back from the hand that should have shielded and cherished her.

How strange it seemed to her to-day to think she had outlived it all--the love, the anguish, the bitterness, which once had seemed undying! There was nothing to disturb her reverie; she was alone, had been alone all day, and yet not lonely, albeit this solitary Californian ranch, in a secluded valley amongst the foot-hills of the Sierras, was a lonesome-looking place enough. But Barbara had been too busy all day to sit down and realize the loneliness. She lived on the Saucel Ranch with her married brother and his wife, she and her sister-in-law doing all the housework between them--servants or "helps" being unattainable luxuries in those parts. Mr. and Mrs. Thorne had gone out for all the day and all the night; a nervous woman might well have shrunk from being thus left alone and unprotected in such a place; but if Barbara had ever been troubled with the nineteenth century malady of "nerves," she had lived it down since she had taken up her abode on the Saucel Ranch. Her hands were always full. Even now, her day's task done, she had set herself to "improve the shining hour" by "tidying-up" the bureau drawer, in which she had come across the photograph of Oliver Desmond.

It was rarely indeed that Barbara Thorne indulged in reverie by day; the night was her time for silence and thought; but now she was so lost in the train of memories aroused by the sight of his portrait--memories which had lost their sharpest sting, and only hurt her now with a dull ache--she had even forgotten that an hour ago she had been looking out for somebody--somebody who would never allow the long, lonely day to pass without coming to see her!

Through the open window a flood of sunlight poured in and turned Barbara's fair hair to gold. Far off, above and beyond the sombre masses of the evergreen pine forests, a jagged range of mountain peaks, like tossing billows frozen at their height, shone in snowy silhouette against a sky of deep and vivid, cloudless blue.

The scene was fair, but Barbara's eyes were not lifted to dwell on its beauty; they were brooding on the face of the man she had loved, and--had she ever hated him? Did she hate him now? She did not hear a sound or a step, till a shadow fell across the sunlight, and a man stood on the threshold of the long French window, which was open down to the ground.

Barbara turned with a start, and made a hasty, involuntary movement to push the photograph aside as she sprang up--a movement that, slight, swift, and momentary as it was, yet did not pass unnoticed by the visitor's eye. What, indeed, was ever known to escape the eagle eye of Rick Jeffreys--better known in the neighbourhood of Eden City (which was the flattering appellation bestowed by its builders on the nearest settlement) as "Colonel Jeff"?

He was a tall man, of massive and powerful build, with somewhat harsh features, black hair and beard just touched with grey, and a sallow complexion sunburnt as brown as a berry. According to the prevalent fashion in those latitudes, he wore truculent-looking boots up to his knees, and a big sombrero hat slouched over his brow. There was a stern, hard expression about his face, except when he smiled or looked at Barbara Thorne. He did not look stern now, as she came quickly to meet him, and welcomed him with a smile that was perhaps less bright, a blush that was certainly deeper than usual. He spoke no word of greeting at first, only looked at her as if her face were a magnet that drew and held his eyes, then put his arm gently round her waist and bent his dark head to her fair one, and kissed her with infinite tenderness.

Barbara yielded to his caress with the soft yielding of a woman who loves. She did not belong to the class of those who, deceived by one, distrust all thenceforth--who hate all men for one false one's sake. And the time had come which she had never thought to see, when she--even she, Barbara Thorne, the deserted, slighted, jilted, held up to the insult of the world's pity--yet trusted, _loved_ again. For this man's devotion had been balm to her bruised spirit--a healing balsam poured into the still smarting wounds of her once crushed and outraged pride.

"All alone, my little lady?" he said, softly.

"Yes; Tom and Hatty went off this morning."

"Been lonesome?"

"Oh, no; I've had plenty to keep me brisk and busy."

Colonel Jeff cast a glance at the table, at the photograph which lay there face upwards. "And who have you there?" he inquired, but not suspiciously. Barbara conquered a foolish impulse to put out her hand to intercept his as he went to pick up the portrait.

He glanced at it, first easily, then keenly, and his dark brows lowered ominously. Colonel Jeff did not look like a person to offend--if one had the choice.

"You are thinking of that blackguard still?" he said; and in his tone anger and pain struggled equally matched.

"I found that photograph by chance while I was looking over a drawer full of old papers," she replied, answering the spirit rather than, the letter of his words.

"And you were looking at it as if--as if--it was all the world to you!" he retorted.

"My looks belied me, then. It is a memory only--and a painful one," she said, with the slightest shade of a tremor in her sweet voice.

"Only a memory?" fixing the stern questioning of his piercing eyes upon her.

"If it were more, should I be what I am to you?" she replied, meeting his look frankly.

"What are you to me?" he demanded. The words might have sounded brutal had the tone been different, but though they were harshly spoken, they bore no suggestion of denial or rebuff, no faintest hint of insulting disclaimer. "You know," he continued, "we both know, that you're the one woman in the world to me--but what more? What beyond that? Are you the woman who _cares_ for me?"

"For you more than for all the world beside."

"More than for----?" He cast a frowning glance at the photograph.

"Immeasurably more," she answered steadily, and the unconquerable truth in her forced her to add the word, "to-day!"

"To-day?" he echoed, with mingled anger and reluctant admiration. "Barbara, you are too honest to deny----" He paused with a quick indrawing of the breath and setting of the teeth.

"To deny the past?" her soft voice interposed as he paused. "Yes! I could never deny it! You know, Rick, you always knew, that I could not give you my yesterdays!"

"Barbara, I am jealous of those yesterdays," he said, after a silence.

"Why begrudge the yesterdays," she pleaded, "when all the to-morrows are yours?"

His dark eyes kindled with a deep and tender glow.

"All? All? None to share with me, or rob me? All mine?" He framed her delicate fair face between his big brown hands, and held it thus gently upturned to his as he gazed intently into it. "Barbara," he added, "do you know it would be a bad thing for any man who came between me and you?"

"No one could," she assured him earnestly.

Colonel Jeff clasped her in his strong arms.

"Is that so, indeed, my darling? my Barbara! my own one love," he whispered, pressing her to his heart.

"You must not be jealous of the past, dear Rick," she murmured.

"Forgive me my blundering roughness," he entreated her. "I ought not to have spoken so to you. Forgive me if I have hurt you, Barbara!"

"It did hurt me a little," she admitted. "Let us leave the dead bones to rest in their grave."

"I will never dig them up again," he promised her. "But put that away," he added, pushing the portrait aside. "It's very like him, and I hate to see it near you!"

Colonel Jeff had known Oliver Desmond, at least by sight and passing acquaintance, and he knew--as who did not?--Barbara Thorne's story; who had not heard the story of the bride deserted at the very altar, waiting in her bridal dress amongst the assembled party of her own and his friends--waiting for the bridegroom who never came?

Sometimes even now, when the memory of that horrible day came over Barbara, she shivered and turned sick and cold at heart. Only since she had known Rick Jeffreys loved her she had thought of it less; the scar of the old wound had ceased to throb.

At first she had thought Oliver Desmond was dead; felt sure that nothing but death could have kept him from her at that hour! But afterwards she and all the world--their world--learnt that he had left her for another; the one palliation of the cruel wrong and insult he had inflicted on his innocent and trusting betrothed being that it was no new love, but the resurrection of an old, supposed-to-be-dead passion that had lured him from her. Then they heard now and again rumours of Oliver Desmond's career. It seemed to be a downward one. They heard of his drinking and gambling, sinking from bad to worse; of losses, of utter ruin. Now for years they had heard nothing of him at all; he had sunk out of knowledge, gone down under the storm of not unmerited misfortune; and his world knew him no more.

Their little differences made up, Rick Jeffreys spent a happy hour with Barbara, stayed until the golden haze of sunset was stealing soft and slow over the shadows of the sombre pine forest and the azure radiance of the sky; then he had an appointment to meet an old comrade in Eden City, and he tore himself reluctantly away from the Saucel Ranch--ready at the last moment to throw over his engagement and stay, if Barbara had urged him.

The shades of evening had closed when Barbara, having watched her stalwart lover out of sight, went into the kitchen, on domestic cares intent. It was very dark there, and she set the outer-door, which led into the court-yard, wide open to let in such light as there was, while she put a fresh log on the low wood fire, and prepared to light the lamp and make herself some tea. She was thus engaged when she heard a step outside the open door--not the quick, confident step of a friendly visitor, but a hurried yet hesitating tread--a tread that suggested skulking and hanging about.

It was a late hour for tramps, and Barbara, brave woman though she was, looked round a little anxiously, to see who the stranger might be. She had but just caught a glimpse of an evidently tired and travel-worn wayfarer--a haggard, dishevelled figure--when he spoke, raising his hat as he did so, with the courteous gesture of a gentleman. "Excuse me, madam, but can you give me a cup of water and a piece of bread, and shelter for an hour?"

As he spoke, Barbara glanced up with a start. That voice, it struck upon her ear like an echo from the past. And even in the deepening twilight there seemed to be something familiar in the outlines of face and form.

"Who--who are you?" she faltered.

It was his turn to start as he heard her voice, and gazed with sudden searching into her pale face in the gloaming. Then she knew him--knew, and yet could hardly believe her eyes, her ears, her instincts--could not realize that in this rough, disordered, unkempt figure, with the torn clothes and the dark stains on his ragged sleeve, she saw the handsome, graceful, debonair lover of her girlhood, the recreant bridegroom who had left her on the very threshold of the altar!

"Oliver!" she said, in a low and trembling tone.

And as the last faint glimmer of the dying day rested on her face he knew her too.

"Barbara!" he ejaculated, as if with a gasp, fairly staggered by the recognition. "Is it--can it be--Barbara?"

"Am I so changed?" she rejoined, with a touch of bitterness in her tone.

"I--I didn't know--in this light," he stammered. "If--if I had known----" He seemed for the moment more agitated than she. She stood stunned, silent, gazing at him as if in a dream. "I won't intrude on you, Barbara," he said, in a low, unsteady voice. "I didn't know you lived here. It isn't to _you_ that I should have come."

"Oliver!" she exclaimed suddenly, waking up as he made a movement to turn away. "Stay! Did you ask for food and shelter?"

"I ask nothing from you," he replied, painfully.

"Come in," she said, firmly, no longer faltering or tremulous, but with an almost imperious gesture motioning him to enter. "You are tired?" as she noticed his stiff and dragging step. "Sit down while I get a light." She struck a match and lit the lamp. In its yellowish glare she saw that the stains upon his sleeve were red. "What is the matter? You have had some accident," she said, with a scrutinizing but not ungentle glance.

"Only a scratch," he answered, in a mechanical way, as if thinking of something else. "But my coat was nearly torn off my back scrambling through the chaparral yonder." He had not taken the chair she pointed out to him, but stood--leaning with the heaviness of fatigue against the shelf that served as a table--looking at her in the lamp-light. She saw how pale and haggard and half-famished-looking he was, and turned promptly to set out the supper.

"Wait, Barbara," he said, abruptly, and evidently with an effort. "Don't be doing anything for me till you know what you're doing. Those d---- hounds of the Vigilance Committee are after me; they're on my track now. They'll string me up to the nearest tree if they catch me; it's my life that's in your hands at this minute. I know too well I don't deserve of you that you should save it. And on the whole, Barbara," he added, with a touch of the light and half-mocking coolness she remembered of old, yet with more of bitterness now, "I don't know that it's worth saving."

Barbara turned even paler than she had been as she listened to his words. "What is it you have done?" she asked.

"Oh, I've not killed anyone. Better for me if I had! One may shoot a man, but to take a horse is a hanging matter here."

"Tell me about it, Oliver," she said, preserving her self-possession, for she was no fragile flower to wilt and droop before the first breath of danger--no, nor the last.

"It's soon told," he answered. "I had bad luck--I was cleaned out, not a red cent in my pockets--and so I hired out to a farmer away in Pine Valley. We had words one day, and he refused to pay me my wages--so I took a horse out of his stables and rode off."

"It was madness, Oliver," she said; for she knew as well as he did that for the horse-stealer, in those parts and at that time, there was scant mercy and short shrift: it was danger to be accused, death to be detected.

"The horse was worth no more than my fair wages," he rejoined. "I was warned that they were after me, but I thought I'd got a good start of them. They were too sharp for me, though--they cut across by Devil's Ford, and were after me in full chase. They sent a hail of bullets after me; I sent all I had back--I winged one of them--I fancy he was the leader, and while they picked him up I got ahead; but, unluckily, before I was out of shot-range my horse was shot under me. I got clear of the saddle and bolted into the scrub. I gave them the slip for the time. I've been crawling like a dog through the chaparral--but you know as well as I do, those fellows are like blood-hounds on the scent. I was pretty nearly dead-beat when I caught sight of this place. I little thought it was _you_ that I should find here."

"What is to be done?" she said, not helplessly wondering, but actively thinking. "First of all, you must eat and drink. Then--we must see what is the safest thing for you."

She set bread and meat and milk on the table; and Desmond fell to the simple meal as if half famished.

"My brother's horse is in the stable," said Barbara, thoughtfully. "He's fast, is old Sultan, and might take you safe--if we only knew from which quarter they'd be coming; and I'd take the risk with Tom."

"You must risk nothing for me," he rejoined. "I see, Barbara, you are what you always were--the salt of the earth! I deserve of you that you should shut your door on me now--that when they come this way after me you should send them on my trail. But--you won't do it?"

"No," she replied, slowly. "I will not do it."

He leant forward, resting his arm on the table, and looked at her. The oil-lamp that stood between them shed a circle of light in which he saw her face, unshrinking, steadfast, wrought up to high resolve.

"You were always too good for me, Barbara," he said. "Are you such an angel as to have forgiven me?"

"What has that to do with it?" she rejoined, coldly. "Enough that if I can help you now, I will."

She was looking at him as intently as he at her. She saw how changed was the face of the idol of her girlhood--poor shattered idol with the feet of clay--base metal she had taken for pure gold! It was not only that he was older--he had aged more than she--but a subtler change had passed over him; he was hardened, embittered, coarsened, undefinably deteriorated. She saw the colour mount in his haggard cheek at her calm words.

"Coals of fire," he said, with a touch of bitter mockery that disguised pain. "Well, if it's a comfort to you to know it, Barbara, _they burn_."

"Which way are they most likely to come?" she asked, putting personal questions determinedly aside.

"They'd probably skirt the wood; but yet there's no knowing but what they might make their way down the gulch and round by the creek yonder."

"Whichever way you go," she said, in deep consideration, "you might run right into the jaws of danger. And if they found you with another horse, and that horse discovered not to be yours, it might be worse for you--if they refused to believe it had been freely lent to you."

"They'd not be likely to waste much time on inquiries," he observed, drily. "It's not their way to make allowance for priest or prayer. Perhaps I had better lie low for a time until the heat of the chase is over. Who is here with you, Barbara?"

"No one to-day. My brother and his wife are out until to-morrow."

"You are alone?" he said, with a softening of tender respect in his tone. "Forgive my intrusion. You must not risk the least trouble for me. I'll feel like a king after this rest and refreshment here, and be ready to go on my way."

They were still discussing the best course to be adopted when a faint sound in the distance struck on their ears--a sound so faint and far that, had it not been for the wonderful clearness and stillness of the dry, crisp, dewless air, it could not have reached them.

"Hark! What is that?" said Desmond, holding his breath.

"We can see the road better from the upstairs windows--come!" she exclaimed, springing to her feet. She hastily closed the outer door into the court-yard, which still stood open, and ran upstairs, followed by Desmond. From the highest window of the house--a sort of landing or look-out at the top of the stairs--they had a view of the windings of the white road between wood and hillside.

The night had fallen like a dark mantle over the land; but the sky was clear; the moon had risen; and in the dusk they could just distinguish the pale, dim line of the road between the shadows of the trees--could even discern upon it, though some distance off as yet, what looked at first like a dark, blurred, swift moving spot, then resolved itself into a group of mounted men riding straight for the Saucel Ranch.

"There they are," said Oliver Desmond in a low voice; but he was suddenly and strangely calm now the danger was at his door. "They're coming here. There's a handy tree I see over yonder, just outside your gates," he added, with the frequent tendency of men who are used to carry their lives in their hands to "jest upon the axe which kills them." Barbara clasped and wrung her hands.

"Too late to fly!" she said. "Before we could get Sultan out of the stable and saddle him they'll be here! There's no time for escape. You must _hide_!"

"If they've got dogs, I'm a dead man," he rejoined, staring at the fast nearing horsemen; "and I shall be dangling from that tree before an hour has passed!"

Barbara flew to the nearest door and opened it, then the next, and the next, glancing in wild and eager haste into each room to see in which any hiding-place might be found--although she knew too well the simple arrangements of the ranch offered no facilities for concealment. No secret chambers, no sliding panels, no dark recesses nor trap-doors in this plain wooden "frame" house. The outhouses? No, they would probably be the first places searched; the natural idea of the pursuers would be that he might have sought refuge there unknown to the inmates of the house. There were no cellars, no possible safe hiding-places on the lower floor; on the upper floor there were but three rooms--Mr. and Mrs. Thorne's room, Barbara's room, and the "guest-room." All were plainly furnished with bare necessaries: no "old oak chests," no tapestries nor hanging draperies, no curtained recesses, no place to hide a good-sized dog, much less a full-grown man. Barbara's was the only one of the bedrooms that could boast of a cupboard--a long, narrow cupboard which she used as a wardrobe, and kept her dresses there hung on pegs. This was the only place.

There was not a moment to lose in talk. Barbara had hardly time to go downstairs, look round the kitchen, and assure herself that there were no traces of Desmond's presence to be detected there, when the trampling of horses sounded close at hand. She heard some of the party ride to the front, some to the back, and she knew they were surrounding the house, before there was a sharp, imperative knock on the front door. Barbara opened it. She stood there--a candle she had just lighted in her hand--a graceful, composed figure, with a placid, inquiring look.

The men who were gathered on the threshold looked somewhat taken aback by the appearance of a lady then and there.

"Excuse our intrusion, madam," said the foremost; "but we have called to inquire if there is anyone in this house but the members of your own family?"

"No one," she replied; and the feeble flicker of the candle showed the look of innocent, yet naturally somewhat anxious and surprised, inquiry on her serene, fair face.

"Has any stranger been here?"

"No."