"How far did that letter come?" she asked, with eager questioning eyes.
"Lettee me see him," said Ah Fe.
Cissy handed him the missive; he examined closely some half-a-dozen Chinese characters that were scrawled along the length of the outer fold, and which she had innocently supposed were a part of the markings of the rice paper on which the note was written.
"Heap Chinaman velly much walkee--longee way! S"pose you look." He pointed through the open front door to the prospect beyond. It was a familiar one to Cissy,--the long Canada, the crest on crest of serried pines, and beyond the dim snow-line. Ah Fe"s brown finger seemed to linger there.
"In the snow," she whispered, her cheek whitening like that dim line, but her eyes sparkling like the sunshine over it.
"Allee same, John," said Ah Fe plaintively.
"Ah Fe," whispered Cissy, "take ME with you to Hop Li."
"No good," said Ah Fe stolidly. "Hop Li, he givee this"--he indicated the envelope in his sleeve--"to next Chinaman. HE no go. S"pose you go with me, Hop Li--you no makee nothing--allee same, makee foolee!"
"I know; but you just take me there. DO!"
The young girl was irresistible. Ah Fe"s face relaxed. "Allee litee!" he said, with a resigned smile.
"You wait here a moment," said Cissy, brightening. She flew up the staircase. In a few minutes she was back again. She had exchanged her smart rose-sprigged chintz for a pathetic little blue-checked frock of her school-days; the fateful hat had given way to a brown straw "flat,"
bent like a frame around her charming face. All the girlishness, and indeed a certain honest boyishness of her nature, seemed to have come out in her glowing, freckled cheek, brilliant, audacious eyes, and the quick stride which brought her to Ah Fe"s side.
"Now let"s go," she said, "out the back way and down the side streets."
She paused, cast a glance through the drawing-room at the contemplative figure of the sheriff"s deputy on the veranda, and then pa.s.sed out of the house forever.
The excitement over the failure of Montagu Trixit"s bank did not burn itself out until midnight. By that time, however, it was pretty well known that the amount of the defalcations had been exaggerated; that it had been preceded by the suspension of the "Excelsior Bank" of San Francisco, of which Trixit was also a managing director, occasioned by the discovery of the withdrawal of securities for use in the branch bank at Canada City; that he had fled the State eastward across the Sierras; yet that, owing to the vigilance of the police on the frontier, he had failed to escape and was in hiding. But there were adverse reports of a more sinister nature. It was said that others were implicated; that they dared not bring him to justice; it was pointed out that there was more concern among many who were not openly connected with the bank than among its unfortunate depositors. Besides the inevitable downfall of those who had invested their fortunes in it, there was distrust or suspicion everywhere. Even Trixit"s enemies were forced to admit the saying that "Canada City was the bank, and the bank was Trixit."
Perhaps this had something to do with an excited meeting of the directors of the New Mill, to whose discussions d.i.c.k Masterton, the engineer, had been hurriedly summoned. When the president told him that he had been selected to undertake the difficult and delicate mission of discovering the whereabouts of Montagu Trixit, and, if possible, procuring an interview with him, he was amazed. What had the New Mill, which had always kept itself aloof from the bank and its methods, to do with the disgraced manager? He was still more astonished when the president added bluntly:--
"Trixit holds securities of ours for money advanced to the mill by himself privately. They do not appear on the books, but if he chooses to declare them as a.s.sets of the bank, it"s a bad thing for us. If he is bold enough to keep them, he may be willing to make some arrangement with us to carry them on. If he has got away or committed suicide, as some say, it"s for you to find the whereabouts of the securities and get them. He is said to have been last seen near the Summit. You understand our position?"
Masterton did, with suppressed disgust. But he was young, and there was the thrill of adventure in this. "I will go," he said quietly.
"We thought you would. You must take the up stage to-night. Come again and get your final instructions. By the way, you might get some information at Trixit"s house. You--er--er--are acquainted with his daughter, I think?"
"Which makes it quite impossible for me to seek her for such a purpose,"
said Masterton coldly.
A few hours later he was on the coach. As they cleared the outskirts of the town, they pa.s.sed two Chinamen plodding st.u.r.dily along in the dust of the highway.
Mr. Masterton started from a slight doze in the heavy, lumbering "mountain wagon" which had taken the place of the smart Concord coach that he had left at the last station. The scenery, too, had changed; the four horses threaded their way through rocky defiles of stunted larches and hardy "brush," with here and there open patches of shrunken snow.
Yet at the edge of declivities he could still see through the rolled-up leather curtains the valley below bathed in autumn, the glistening rivers half spent with the long summer drought, and the green slopes rolling upward into crest after crest of ascending pines. At times a drifting haze, always imperceptible from below, veiled the view; a chill wind blew through the vehicle, and made the steel sledge-runners that hung beneath the wagon, ready to be shipped under the useless wheels, an ominous provision. A few rude "stations," half blacksmith shops, half grocery, marked the deserted but wellworn road; along, narrow "packer"s"
wagon, or a tortuous file of Chinamen carrying mysterious bundles depending from bamboo poles, was their rare and only company. The rough sheepskin jackets which these men wore over their characteristic blue blouses and their heavy leggings were a new revelation to Masterton, accustomed to the thinly clad coolie of the mines. They seemed a distinct race.
"I never knew those chaps get so high up, but they seem to understand the cold," he remarked.
The driver looked up, and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed his disgust and his tobacco juice at the same moment.
"I reckon they"re everywhar in Californy whar you want "em and whar you don"t; you take my word for it, afore long Californy will hev to reckon that she ginerally DON"T want "em, ef a white man has to live here. With a race tied up together in a language ye can"t understand, ways that no feller knows,--from their prayin" to devils, swappin" their wives, and havin" their bones sent back to Chiny,--wot are ye goin" to do, and where are ye? Wot are ye goin" to make outer men that look so much alike ye can"t tell "em apart; that think alike and act alike, and never in ways that ye kin catch on to! Fellers knotted together in some underhand secret way o" communicatin" with each other, so that ef ye kick a Chinaman up here on the Summit, another Chinaman will squeal in the valley! And the way they do it just gets me! Look yer! I"ll tell ye somethin" that happened, that"s gospel truth! Some of the boys that reckoned to hev some fun with the Chinee gang over at Cedar Camp started out one afternoon to raid "em. They groped along through the woods whar n.o.body could see "em, kalkilatin" to come down with a rush on the camp, over two miles away. And n.o.body DID see "em, only ONE Chinaman wot they met a mile from the camp, burnin" punk to his joss or devil, and he scooted away just in the contrary direction. Well, sir, when they waltzed into that camp, darn my skin! ef there was a Chinaman there, or as much as a grain of rice to grab! Somebody had warned "em! Well! this sort o" got the boys, and they set about discoverin" how it was done.
One of "em noticed that there was some of them bits of tissue paper slips that they toss around at funerals lyin" along the road near the camp, and another remembered that the Chinaman they met on the hill tossed a lot of that paper in the air afore he scooted. Well, sir, the wind carried just enough of that paper straight down the hill into that camp ten minutes afore THEY could get there, to give them Chinamen warnin"--whatever it was! Fact! Why, I"ve seen "em stringin" along the road just like them fellers we pa.s.sed just now, and then stop all of a suddent like hounds off the scent, jabber among themselves, and start off in a different direction"--
"Just what they"re doing now! By thunder!" interrupted another pa.s.senger, who was looking through the rolled-up curtain at his side.
All the pa.s.sengers turned by one accord and looked out. The file of Chinamen under observation had indeed turned, and was even then moving rapidly away at right angles from the road.
"Got some signal, you bet!" said the driver; "some yeller paper or piece o" joss stick in the road. What?"
The remark was addressed to the pa.s.senger who had just placed his finger on his lip, and indicated a stolid-looking Chinaman, overlooked before, who was sitting in the back or "steerage" seat.
"Oh, he be darned!" said the driver impatiently. "HE is no account; he"s only the laundryman from Rocky Canyon. I"m talkin" of the coolie gang."
But here the conversation flagged, and the air growing keener, the flaps of the leather side curtains were battened down. Masterton gave himself up to conflicting reflections. The information that he had gathered was meagre and unsatisfactory, and he could only trust to luck and circ.u.mstance to fulfill his mission. The first glow of adventure having pa.s.sed, he was uneasily conscious that the mission was not to his taste.
The pretty, flushed but defiant face of Cissy that afternoon haunted him; he had not known the immediate cause of it, but made no doubt that she had already heard the news of her father"s disgrace when he met her. He regretted now that he hadn"t spoken to her, if only a few formal words of sympathy. He had always been half tenderly amused at her frank conceit and her "airs,"--the innocent, undisguised pride of the country belle, so different from the hard aplomb of the city girl! And now the foolish little moth, dancing in the sunshine of prosperity, had felt the chill of winter in its pretty wings. The contempt he had for the father had hitherto shown itself in tolerant pity for the daughter, so proud of her father"s position and what it brought her. In the revelation that his own directors had availed themselves of that father"s methods, and the ign.o.ble character of his present mission, he felt a stirring of self-reproach. What would become of her? Of course, frivolous as she was, she would not feel the keenness of this misfortune like another, nor yet rise superior to it. She would succ.u.mb for the present, to revive another season in a dimmer glory elsewhere. His critical, cynical observation of her had determined that any filial affection she might have would be merged and lost in the greater deprivation of her position.
A sudden darkening of the landscape below, and a singular opaque whitening of the air around them, aroused him from his thoughts. The driver drew up the collar of his overcoat and laid his whip smartly over the backs of his cattle. The air grew gradually darker, until suddenly it seemed to disintegrate into invisible gritty particles that swept through the wagon. Presently these particles became heavier, more perceptible, and polished like small shot, and a keen wind drove them stingingly into the faces of the pa.s.sengers, or insidiously into their pockets, collars, or the folds of their clothes. The snow forced itself through the smallest crevice.
"We"ll get over this when once we"ve pa.s.sed the bend; the road seems to dip beyond," said Masterton cheerfully from his seat beside the driver.
The driver gave him a single scornful look, and turned to the pa.s.senger who occupied the seat on the other side of him. "I don"t like the look o" things down there, but ef we are stuck, we"ll have to strike out for the next station."
"But," said Masterton, as the wind volleyed the sharp snow pellets in their faces and the leaders were scarcely distinguishable through the smoke-like discharges, "it can"t be worse than here."
The driver did not speak, but the other pa.s.senger craned over his back, and said explanatorily:--
"I reckon ye don"t know these storms; this kind o" dry snow don"t stick and don"t clog. Look!"
Indeed, between the volleys, Masterton could see that the road was perfectly bare and wind-swept, and except slight drifts and banks beside outlying bushes and shrubs,--which even then were again blown away before his eyes,--the level landscape was unclothed and unchanged. Where these mysterious snow pellets went to puzzled and confused him; they seemed to vanish, as they had appeared, into the air about them.
"I"d make a straight rush for the next station," said the other pa.s.senger confidently to the driver. "If we"re stuck, we"re that much on the way; if we turn back now, we"ll have to take the grade anyway when the storm"s over, and neither you nor I know when THAT"ll be. It may be only a squall just now, but it"s gettin" rather late in the season. Just pitch in and drive all ye know."
The driver laid his lash on the horses, and for a few moments the heavy vehicle dashed forward in violent conflict with the storm. At times the elastic hickory framework of its domed leather roof swayed and bent like the ribs of an umbrella; at times it seemed as if it would be lifted bodily off; at times the whole interior of the vehicle was filled with a thin smoke by drifts through every cranny. But presently, to Masterton"s great relief, the interminable level seemed to end, and between the whitened blasts he could see that the road was descending. Again the horses were urged forward, and at last he could feel that the vehicle began to add the momentum of its descent to its conflict with the storm.
The blasts grew less violent, or became only the natural resistance of the air to their dominant rush. With the cessation of the snow volleys and the clearing of the atmosphere, the road became more strongly defined as it plunged downward to a terrace on the mountain flank, several hundred feet below. Presently they came again upon a thicker growth of bushes, and here and there a solitary fir. The wind died away; the cold seemed to be less bitter. Masterton, in his relief, glanced smilingly at his companions on the box, but the driver"s mouth was compressed as he urged his team forward, and the other pa.s.senger looked hardly less anxious. They were now upon the level terrace, and the storm apparently spending its fury high up and behind them. But in spite of the clearing of the air, he could not but notice that it was singularly dark. What was more singular, the darkness seemed to have risen from below, and to flow in upon them as they descended. A curtain of profound obscurity, darker even than the mountain wall at their side, shut out the horizon and the valley below. But for the temperature, Masterton would have thought a thunderstorm was closing in upon them. An odd feeling of uneasiness crept over him.
A few fitful gusts now came from the obscurity; one of them was accompanied by what seemed a flight of small startled birds crossing the road ahead of them. A second larger and more sustained flight showed his astonished eyes that they were white, and each bird an enormous flake of SNOW! For an instant the air was filled with these disks, shreds, patches,--two or three clinging together,--like the downfall shaken from a tree, striking the leather roof and sides with a dull thud, spattering the road into which they descended with large rosettes that melted away only to be followed by hundreds more that stuck and STAYED. In five minutes the ground was white with it, the long road gleaming out ahead in the darkness; the roof and sides of the wagon were overlaid with it as with a coating of plaster of Paris; the harness of the horses, and even the reins, stood out over their steaming backs like white trappings. In five minutes more the steaming backs themselves were blanketed with it; the arms and legs of the outside pa.s.sengers pinioned to the seats with it, and the arms of the driver kept free only by incessant motion. It was no longer snowing; it was "s...o...b..lling;" it was an avalanche out of the slopes of the sky. The exhausted horses floundered in it; the clogging wheels dragged in it; the vehicle at last plunged into a billow of it--and stopped.
The bewildered and half blinded pa.s.sengers hurried out into the road to a.s.sist the driver to unship the wheels and fit the steel runners in their axles. But it was too late! By the time the heavy wagon was converted into a sledge, it was deeply imbedded in wet and clinging snow. The narrow, long-handled shovels borrowed from the prospectors"
kits were powerless before this heavy, half liquid impediment. At last the driver, with an oath, relinquished the attempt, and, unhitching his horses, collected the pa.s.sengers and led them forward by a narrower and more sheltered trail toward the next stations now scarce a mile away.
The led horses broke a path before them, the snow fell less heavily, but it was nearly an hour before the straggling procession reached the house, and the snow-coated and exhausted pa.s.sengers huddled and steamed round the red-hot stove in the bar-room. The driver had vanished with his team into the shed; Masterton"s fellow pa.s.senger on the box-seat, after a few whispered words to the landlord, also disappeared.
"I see you"ve got Jake Poole with you," said one of the bar-room loungers to Masterton, indicating the pa.s.senger who had just left. "I reckon he"s here on the same fool business."
Masterton looked his surprise and mystification.
"Jake Poole, the deputy sheriff," repeated the other. "I reckon he"s here pretendin" to hunt for Montagu Trixit like the San Francisco detectives that kem up yesterday."