CHAPTER X
THE ALIBI
“And all love’s clanging trumpets shocked and blew.”
“The executioner’s argument was, that you couldn’t cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from; that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn’t going to begin at his time of life.”
– Alice in Wonderland.
The justice of the peace, when the county court was not in session, held hearings in the courtroom proper, which occupied the entire second story of the county courthouse. The room was crowded. It was a new courthouse; there are people impatient to try even a new hearse; and this bade fair to be Arcadia’s first cause célèbre.
Jeff sat in the prisoner’s stall, a target for boring eyes. He was conscious of an undesirable situation; exactly how tight a place it was he had no means of knowing until he should have heard the evidence. The room was plainly hostile; black looks were cast upon him. Deputy Phillips, as he entered arm in arm with the sometime devil, gave the prisoner an intent but non-committal look, which Jeff rightly interpreted as assurance of a friend in ambush; he felt unaccountably sure of the devil’s fraternal aid; Monte, lolling within the rail of the witness-box, smiled across at him. Still, he would have felt better for another friendly face or two, he thought – say, John Wesley Pringle’s.
Jeff looked from the open window. Cottonwoods, well watered, give swiftest growth of any trees and are therefore the dominant feature of new communities in dry lands. The courthouse yard was crowded with them: Jeff, from the window, could see nothing but their green plumes; and his thoughts ran naturally upon gardens – or, to be more accurate, upon a garden.
Would she lose faith in him? Had she heard yet? Would he be able to clear himself? No mere acquittal would do. Because of Ellinor, there must be no question, no verdict of Not Proven. She would go East to-morrow. Perhaps she would not hear of his arrest at all. He hoped not. The bank robbery, the murder – yes, she would hear of them, perhaps; but why need she hear his name? Hers was a world so different! He fell into a muse at this.
Deputy Phillips passed and stood close to him, looking down from the window. His back was to Jeff; but, under cover of the confused hum of many voices, he spake low from the corner of his mouth:
“Play your hand close to your bosom, old-timer! Wait for the draw and watch the dealer!” He strolled over to the other side of the judicial bench whence he came.
This vulgar speech betrayed Jimmy as one given to evil courses; but to Jeff that muttered warning was welcome as thunder of Blücher’s squadrons to British squares at Waterloo.
Down the aisle came a procession consciously important – the prosecuting attorney; the bank’s lawyer, who was to assist, “for the people”; and Lake himself. As they passed the gate Jeff smiled his sweetest.
“Hello, Wally!” Lake’s name was Stephen Walter.
Wally made no verbal response; but his undershot jaw did the steel-trap act and there was a triumphant glitter in his eye. He turned his broad back pointedly – and Jeff smiled again.
The justice took his seat on the raised dais intervening between Jeff and the sheriff’s desk. Court was opened. The usual tedious preliminaries followed. Jeff waived a jury trial, refused a lawyer and announced that he would call no witnesses at present.
In an impressive stillness the prosecutor rose for his opening statement. Condensed, it recounted the history of the crime, so far as known; fixed the time by the watchman’s statement – to be confirmed, he said, by another witness, the telephone girl on duty at that hour, who had heard the explosion and the ensuing gunshot; touched upon that watchman’s faithful service and his present desperate condition. He told of the late finding of the injured man, the meeting in the bank, the sum taken by the robber, and the discovery in the bank of the rubber nosepiece, which he submitted as Exhibit A. He cited the witnesses by whom he would prove each statement, and laid special stress upon the fact that the witness Clarke would testify that the nosepiece had been found upon the shattered fragments of the safe door – conclusive proof that it had been dropped after the crime. And he then held forth at some length upon the hand of Providence, as manifested in the unconscious self-betrayal which had frustrated and brought to naught the prisoner’s fiendish designs. On the whole, he spoke well of Providence.
Now Jeff had not once thought of the discarded noseguard since he first found it in his way; he began to see how tightly the net was drawn round him. “There was a serpent in the garden,” he reflected. A word from Miss Hoffman would set him free. If she gave that word at once, it would be unpleasant for her: but if she gave it later, as a last resort, it would be more than unpleasant. And in that same hurried moment, Jeff knew that he would not call upon her for that word. All his crowded life, he had kept the happy knack of falling on his feet: the stars, that fought in their courses against Sisera, had ever fought for reckless Bransford. He decided, with lovable folly, to trust to chance, to his wits and to his friends.
“And now, Your Honor, we come to the unbreakable chain of evidence which fatally links the prisoner at the bar to this crime. We will prove that the prisoner was not invited to the masquerade ball given last night by Mr. Lake. We will prove – ”
There was a stir in the courtroom; the prosecutor paused, disconcerted. Eyes were turned to the double door at the back of the courtroom. In the entryway at the head of the stairs huddled a group of shrinking girls. Before them, one foot upon the threshold, stood Ellinor Hoffman. She shook off a detaining hand and stepped into the room, head erect, proud, pale. Across the sea of curious faces her eyes met the prisoner’s. Of all the courtroom, Billy and Deputy Phillips alone turned then to watch Jeff’s face. They saw an almost imperceptible shake of his head, a finger on lip, a reassuring gesture – saw, too, the quick pulsebeat at his throat.
The color flooded back to Ellinor’s face. Men nearest the door were swift to bring chairs. The prosecutor resumed his interrupted speech – his voice was deep, hard, vibrant.
“Your Honor, the counts against this man are fairly damning! We will prove that he was shaved in a barber shop in Arcadia at ten o’clock last night; that he then rode a roan horse; that the horse was then sweating profusely; that this horse was afterward found at the house of – but we will take that up later. We will prove by many witnesses that among the masqueraders was a man wearing a football suit, wearing a nosepiece similar – entirely similar – to the one found in the bank, which now lies before you. We will prove that this football player was not seen in the ballroom after the hour of eleven P.M. We will prove that when he was next seen, without the ballroom, it was not until sufficient time had elapsed for him to have committed this awful crime.”
Ellinor half rose from her seat; again Jeff flashed a warning at her.
“We will prove this, Your Honor, by a most unwilling witness – Rosalio Marquez” – Monte smiled across at Jeff – “a friend of the prisoner, who, in his behalf, has not scrupled to defy the majesty of the law! We can prove by this witness, this reluctant witness, that when he returned to his home, shortly after midnight, he found there the prisoner’s horse, which had not been there when Mr. Marquez left the house some four hours previously: and that, at some time subsequent to twelve o’clock, the witness Marquez was wakened by the entrance of the prisoner at the bar, clad in a football suit, but wearing no nosepiece with it! And we have the evidence of the sheriff’s posse that they found in the home of the witness, Rosalio Marquez, the football suit – which we offer as Exhibit B. Nay, more! The prisoner did not deny, and indeed admitted, that this uniform was his; but – mark this! – the searching party found no nosepiece there!
“It is true, Your Honor, that the stolen money was not found upon the prisoner; it is true that the prisoner made no use of the opportunity to escape offered him by his lawless and disreputable friend, Rosalio Marquez – a common gambler! Doubtless, Your Honor, his cunning had devised some diabolical plan upon which he relied to absolve himself from suspicion; and now, trembling, he has for the first time learned of the fatal flaw in his concocted defense, which he had so fondly deemed invincible!”
All eyes, including the orator’s, here turned upon the prisoner – to find him, so far from trembling, quite otherwise engaged. The prisoner’s elbow was upon the rail, his chin in his hand; he regarded Mr. Lake attentively, with cheerful amusement and a quizzical smile which in some way subtly carried an expression of mockery and malicious triumph. To this fixed and disconcerting regard Mr. Lake opposed an iron front, but the effort required was apparent to all.
There was an uneasy rustling through the court. The prisoner’s bearing was convincing, natural; this was no mere brazen assuming. The banker’s forced composure was not natural! He should have been an angry banker. Of the two men, Lake was the less at ease. The prisoner’s face turned at last toward the door. Blank unrecognition was in his eyes as they swept past Ellinor, but he shook his head once more, very slightly.
There was a sense of mystery in the air – a buzz and burr of whispers; a rustle of moving feet. The audience noticeably relaxed its implacable attitude toward the accused, eyed him with a different interest, seemed to feel for the first time that, after all, he was accused merely, and that his defense had not yet been heard. The prosecutor felt this subtle change; it lamed his periods.
“It is true, Your Honor, that no eye save God’s saw this guilty man do this deed; but the web of circumstantial evidence is so closely drawn, so far-reaching, so unanswerable, so damning, that no defense can avail him except the improbable, the impossible establishment of an alibi so complete, so convincing, as to satisfy even his bitterest enemy! We will ask you, Your Honor, when you have seen how fully the evidence bears out our every contention, to commit the prisoner, without bail, to answer the charge of robbery and attempted murder!”
Then, by the door, Jeff saw the girl start up. She swept down the aisle, radiant, brave, unfearing, resolute, all half-gods gone; she shone at him – proud, glowing, triumphant!
A hush fell upon the thrilled room. Jeff was on his feet, his hand held out to stay her; his eyes spoke to hers. She stopped as at a command. Scarcely slower, Billy was at her side. “Wait! Wait!” he whispered. “See what he has to say. There will be always time for that.” Jeff’s eyes held hers; she sank into an offered chair.
Cheated, disappointed, the court took breath again. Their dramatic moment had been nothing but their own nerves; their own excited imaginings had attached a pulse-fluttering significance to the flushed cheeks of a prying girl, seeking a better place to see and hear, to gratify her morbid curiosity.
Jeff turned to the bench.
“Your Honor, I have a perfectly good line of defense; and I trust no friend of mine will undertake to change it. I will keep you but a minute,” he said colloquially. “I will not waste your time combating the ingenious theory which the prosecution has built up, or in cross-examination of their witnesses, who, I feel sure” – here he bowed to the cloud of witnesses – “will testify only to the truth. I quite agree with my learned friend” – another graceful bow – “that the case he has so ably presented is so strong that it can successfully be rebutted only by an alibi so clear and so incontestable, as my learned friend has so aptly phrased it, as to convince if not satisfy … my bitterest enemy!” The bow, the subtle, icy intonation, edged the words. The courtroom thrilled again at the unspoken thought: “An enemy hath done this thing!” If, in the stillness, the prisoner had quoted the words aloud in fierce denunciation, the effect could not have been different or more startling. “And that, Your Honor, is precisely what I propose to do!”
His Honor was puzzled. He was a good judge of men; and the prisoner’s face was not a bad face.
“But,” he objected, “you have refused to call any witnesses for the defense. Your unsupported word will count for nothing. You cannot prove an alibi alone.”
“Can’t I?” said Jeff. “Watch me!”
With a single motion he was through the open window. Bending branches of the nearest cottonwood broke his fall – the other trees hid his flight.
Behind him rose uproar, tumult and hullabaloo, a mass of struggling men at cross purposes. Gun in hand, the sheriff, stumbling over some one’s foot – Monte’s – ran to the window; but the faithful deputy was before him, blocking the way, firing with loving care – at one particular tree-trunk. He was a good shot, Jimmy. He afterward showed with pride where each ball had struck in a scant six-inch space. Vainly the sheriff tried to force his way through. There was but one stairway, and it was jammed. Before the foremost pursuer had reached the open Jeff had borrowed one of the saddled horses hitched at the rack and was away to the hills.
As Billy struggled through the press, searching for Ellinor, he found himself at Jimmy’s elbow.
“A dead game sport – any turn in the road!” agreed Billy.
The deputy nodded curtly; but his answer was inconsequent:
“Rather in the brunette line – that bit of tangible evidence!”
CHAPTER XI
THE NETTLE, DANGER
“Bushel o’ wheat, bushel o’ rye —
All ’at ain’t ready, holler ‘I’!”
– Hide and Seek.
Double Mountain lies lost in the desert, dwarfed by the greatness all about. Its form is that of a crater split from north to south into irregular halves. Through that narrow cleft ran a straight road, once the well-traveled thoroughfare from Rainbow to El Paso. For there was precious water within those upheaved walls; it was but three miles from portal to portal; the slight climb to the divide had not been grudged. Time was when campfires were nightly merry to light the narrow cliffs of Double Mountain; when songs were gay to echo from them; when this had been the only watering place to break the long span across the desert. The railroad had changed all this, and the silent leagues of that old road lay untrodden in the sun.
Not untrodden on this the day after Jeff had established his alibi. A traveler followed that lonely road to Double Mountain; and behind, half-way to Rainbow Range, was a streak of dust; which gained on him. The traveler’s sorrel horse was weary, for it was the very horse Jeff Bransford had borrowed from the hitching-rail of the courthouse square; the traveler was that able negotiator himself; and the pursuing dust, to the best of Jeff’s knowledge and belief, meant him no good tidings.
“Now, I got safe away from the foothills before day,” soliloquized Jeff. “Some gentleman has overtaken me with a spyglass, I reckon. Civilization’s getting this country plumb ruined! And their horses are fresh. Peg along, Alibi! Maybe I can pick up a stray horse at Double Mountain. If I can’t there’s no sort of use trying to get away on you! I’ll play hide-and-go-seek-’em. That’ll let you out, anyway, so cheer up! You done fine, old man! If I ever get out of this I’ll buy you and make it all right with you. Pension you off if you think you’ll like it. Get along now!”
Twenty miles to Jeff’s right the railroad paralleled the wagonroad in an unbroken tangent of ninety miles’ stretch. A southbound passenger train crawled along the west like a resolute centipede plodding to a date: behind the fugitive, abreast, now far ahead, creeping along the shining straightaway. Forty miles the hour was her schedule; yet against this vast horizon she could hardly be said to change place until, sighting beyond her puny length, a new angle of the far western wall completed the trinomial line.
Escondido was hidden in a dip of plain – whence the name, Hidden, when done into Saxon speech. The train was lost to sight when she stopped there, but Jeff saw the tiny steam plume of her whistling rise in the clear and taintless air; long after, the faint sound of it hummed drowsily by, like passing, far-blown horns of faerie in a dream. And, at no great interval thereafter, a low-lying dust appeared suddenly on the hither rim of Escondido’s sunken valley.
Jeff knew the land as you know your hallway. That line of dust marked the trail from Escondido Valley to the farther gate of Double Mountain. Even if he should be lucky enough to get a change of mounts at the spring in Double Mountain Basin he would be intercepted. Escape by flight was impossible. To fight his way out was impossible. He had no gun; and, even if he had a gun, he could not see his way to fight, under the circumstances. The men who hunted him down were only doing the right thing as they saw it. Had Jeff been guilty, it would have been a different affair. Being innocent, he could make no fight for it. He was cornered.
“Said the little Eohippus:
‘I’m going to be a horse!’”
So chanted Jeff, perceiving the hopelessness of his plight.
The best gift to man – or, if not the best, then at least the rarest – is the power to meet the emergency: to do your best and a little better than your best when nothing less will serve: to be a pinch hitter. It is to be thought that certain stages of affection, and more particularly the presence of its object, affect unfavorably the workings of pure intellect. Certain it is that capable Bransford, who had cut so sorry a figure in Eden garden, now, in these distressing but Eveless circumstances, rose to the occasion. Collected, resourceful, he grasped every possible angle of the situation and, with the rope virtually about his neck, cheerfully planned the impossible – the essence of his elastic plan being to climb that very rope, hand over hand, to safety.
“Going round the mountain is no good on a give-out horse. They’ll follow my tracks,” said Jeff to Jeff. Men who are much alone so shape their thoughts by voicing them, just as you practice conversation rather to make your own thought clear to yourself than to enlighten your victim – beg pardon – your neighbor. Just a slip of the tongue. Vecino is the Spanish for neighbor, you know. Not so much to enlighten your neighbor as to find out for yourself precisely what it is you think. “Hiding in the Basin is no good. Can’t get out. Would I were a bird! Only one way. Got to go straight up – disappear – vanish in the air. ‘Up a chimney, up – ’ Naw, that’s backward! ‘Up a chimney, down, or down a chimney, down; but not up a chimney, up, nor down a chimney, up!’ So that’s settled! Now let me see, says the little man. Mighty few Arcadians know me well enough not to be fooled – mebbe so. Lake? Lake won’t come. He’ll be busy. There’s Jimmy; but Jimmy’s got a shocking bad memory for faces sometimes, just now, my face. I think, maybe, I could manage Jimmy. The sheriff? That would be real awkward, I reckon. I’ll just play the sheriff isn’t in the bunch and build my little bluff according to that pleasing fancy; for if he comes along it is all off with little Jeff!
“Now lemme see! If Gwin’s working that little old mine of his – why, he’ll lie himself black in the face just for the principle of it. Mighty interestin’ talker, Gwin is. And if no one’s there, I’ll be there. Not Jeff Bransford; he got away. I’ll be Long – Tobe Long – working for Gwin. Tobe Long. I apprenticed my son to a miner, and the first thing he took was a new name!”
Far away on the side of Double Mountain he could even now see the white triangle of the tent at Gwin’s mine – the Ophir – and the gray dump spilling down the hillside. There was no smoke to be seen. Jeff made up his mind there was no one at the mine – which was what he devoutly hoped – and further developed his gleeful hypothesis.
“Let’s see now, Tobe. Got to study this all out. They most always leave all their kegs full of water when they go away, so they won’t have to pack ’em up the first thing when they come back. If they did, I’m all right. If they didn’t, I’m in a hell of a fix! They’ll leave ’em full, though. Of course they did – else the kegs would all dry up and fall down.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Them fellows are ten or twelve miles back, I reckon. They’ll slow up so soon as they see I’m headed off. I’ll have time to fix things up – if only there’s water in the kegs at the mine!” He patted Alibi’s head: “Now, old man, do your damnedest! It’s pretty tough on you, but your part will soon be over.”
Alibi had made a poor night of it, what with doubling and twisting in the foothills, the bitter water of a gyp spring, and the scanty grass of a cedar thicket; but he did his plucky best. On the legal other hand, as Jeff had prophesied, the dustmakers behind had slackened their gait when they perceived, by the dust of Escondido trail, that their allies must cut the quarry off. So Alibi held his own with the pursuit.
He came to the rising ground leading to the sheer base of Double Mountain; then to the narrow Gap where the mountain had fallen asunder in some age-old cataclysm. To the left, the dump of Ophir Mine hung on the hillside above the pass; and on the broad trail zigzagging up to it were burro-tracks, but no fresh tracks of men. The flaps of the white tent on the dump were tightly closed. There was no one at the mine. Jeff passed within the walls, through frowning gates of porphyry and gneiss, and urged Alibi up the cañon. It was half a mile to the spring. On the way he found three shaggy burros grazing beside the road. He drove them into the small pen by the spring and tossed his rope on the largest one. Then he unsaddled Alibi, tied him to the fence by the bridle rein, and searched his pockets for an old letter. This found, he penciled a note and tied it to the saddle. It was brief:
En Route, Four p.m.
Please water my horse when he cools off.
Your little friend,Jeff Bransford.
P. S. Excuse haste.
He made a plain trail of high-heeled boot-tracks to the spring, where he drank deep; thence beyond, through the sandy soil, to the nearest rocky ridge. Then, careful that every step fell on a bare rock, he came circuitously back to the corral, climbed the fence, made his way to the tied burro, improvised a bridle of cunning half-hitches, slipped from the fence to the burro’s back – a burro, by the way, is a donkey – named the burro anew as Balaam, and went back down the cañon at the best pace of which the belabored and astonished Balaam was capable. As Jeff had hoped, the two other burros – or the other two burros, to be precise – followed sociably, braying remonstrance.
Without the mouth of the cañon Jeff rode up the steep trail to the mine, also to the great disgust of his mount; but he must not walk – it would leave boot-tracks. For the same reason, after freeing Balaam, his first action was to pull off the telltale boots and replace them with the smallest pair of hobnailed miner’s shoes in the tent. With these he carefully obliterated the few boot-tracks at the tent door.
The water-kegs were full; Jeff swore his joyful gratitude and turned his eye to the plain. The pursuing dust was still far away – seven miles, he estimated, or possibly eight. The three burros nibbled on the bushes below the dump; plainly intending to stay round camp with an eye for possible tips. Jeff gave his whole-hearted attention to the mise-en-scène.
Never did stage manager toil so hard, so faithfully, so effectively as this one – or with so great a need. He took stock of the available stage properties, beginning with a careful inventory of the grub-chest. To betray ignorance of its possibilities or deficiencies would be fatal. Following a narrow trail round a little shoulder of hill, he found the powder magazine. Taking three sticks of dynamite, with fuse and caps, he searched the tent for the candle-box, lit a candle and went into the tunnel with a brisk trot. “If this was a case of fight, now, I’d have some pretty fair weapons here for close quarters,” said Jeff; “but the way I’m fixed I can’t. No fighting goes – unless Lake comes.”
In the tunnel his luck held good. He found a number of good-sized chunks of rock stacked along the wall near the breast – evidently reserved for the ore pile at a more convenient season. Beneath three of the largest of these rocks he carefully adjusted the three sticks of giant powder, properly capped and fused, lit the fuses and retreated to the safety of the dump. Three muffled detonations followed at short intervals. Having thus announced the presence of mining operations, he built a fire on the kitchen side of the dump to further advertise a mind conscious of its own rectitude. The pleasant shadow of the hills was cool about him; the flame rose clear and bright in the windless air, to be seen from far away.
He looked at the location papers in the monument by the ore stack; simultaneously, by way of economizing time, emptying a can of salmon. This was partly for the added verisimilitude of the empty tin, partly because he was ravenously hungry. You may guess how he emptied the tin.
The mine had changed owners since Jeff’s knowledge of it. It was no longer Gwin’s sole property. The notice bore the signatures of J. Gwin, C. W. Sanders and Walter Fleck. Jeff grinned and his eye brightened. He knew Fleck only slightly; but Fleck’s reputation among the cowmen was good – that is to say, as you would see it, very bad.
Pappy Sanders, postmaster and storekeeper of Escondido, was an old and sorely tried friend of Jeff’s. If Pappy had grub-staked the outfit – A far-away plan began to shape vaguely in his fertile brain. He took the little turquoise horse from his pocket and laid it in the till of the violated trunk. Were you told about the violated trunk? Never mind – he had done any amount of other things of which you have not been told; for it was his task, in the brief time allotted to him, to master all the innumerable details needful for an intelligent reading of his part. He must make no blunders.
He toiled like two men, each swifter and more savagely efficient than himself; he upset the prim, old he-maidenish order of that carefully packed, spick-and-span camp; he rumpled the beds; strewed old clothes, books, candles, specimens, pipes and cigarette papers with lavish hand; made untidy, sprawling heaps of tin plates; knives, forks and spoons; spilled candle-grease and tobacco on the scoured table; and generally gave things a cozy and habitable appearance.
He gave a hundred deft touches here and there. He spread an open book face downward on the table. (It was “Alice in Wonderland,” and he opened it at the Mock-Turtle.) Meanwhile an unoccupied eye snatched titles from a shelf of books against possible question; he penned a short note to himself – Mr. Tobe Long – in Gwin’s handwriting, folded the note to creases, twisted it to a spill, lit it, burned a corner of it, pinched it out and threw it under the table; and, while doing these and other things, he somehow managed to shed every article of Jeff Bransford’s clothing and to put on the work-stained garments of a miner.
The perspiration on his face was no stage make-up, but good, honest sweat. He rubbed stone-dust and sand on his sweaty arms and into his sweaty hair; he rubbed most of it from his hair and into the two-days’ stubble on his face, simultaneously fishing razor and mug from the trunk, leaving them in evidence on the table. He worked stone-dust into his ears, behind his ears; he grimed it on forehead and neck; he even dropped a little into his shoes, which all this while had been performing independent miracles to make the camp look comfortable. He threw on a dingy cap, thrust in the cap a miner’s candlestick, with a lighted candle, that it might properly drip upon him while he arranged further details – and so faced the world as Tobe Long, a stooped and overworked man!
Mr. Tobe Long, working with feverish haste, dug a small cave half-way down the steep side of the dump farthest from the road and buried therein a tightly rolled bundle containing every article appertaining to the defunct Bransford, with the single exception of the little eohippus; a pocketknife, which a miner must have to cut powder and fuse, having been found in the trunk – what time also the little turquoise horse was transferred to Mr. Long’s pocket to bring him luck in his new career – a poor thing compared with the cowman’s keen blade, but better for Mr. Long’s purposes, as smelling strongly of dynamite. Then Mr. Long – Tobe – hid the grave by sliding and shoveling broken rock down the dump upon it.
Next he threw into a wheelbarrow drills, spoon, tamping stick, gads, drill-hammer, rock-hammer, canteen, shovel and pick – taking care, even in his haste, to select a properly matched set of drills – and trundled the barrow up the drift at a pace which would give a Miners’ Union the rabies. At the breast, he unshipped his cargo in right miner’s fashion, the drills in a graduated stepladder row along the wall; loaded the barrow with broken ore, a bit of charred fuse showing at the top, and wheeled it out at the same unprofessional gait, leaving it on the dump just above the spot where his late sepulchral rites had freshened the appearance of the sunbeaten dump.
He next performed his ablutions in an amateurish and perfunctory fashion, scrupulously observing a well-defined waterline.
“There!” said Mr. Long. “I near made a break that time!” He went back to the barrow and trundled it assiduously to the tunnel’s mouth and back several times, carefully never in quite the same place – finally leaving it not above the sepulchered spoil, but near the ore stack, as befitted its valuable contents. “I got to think of everything. One wrong break’ll fix me good!” said Mr. Long. He felt his neck delicately, as if he detected some foreign presence there. “In the tunnel, now, there’s only the one place where the wheel can go; so it don’t matter so much in there.”