"Whew! That"s a cold-blooded proposition. Are you really in earnest?"
"It took nearly my last dollar to buy that insurance. I will execute a promissory note to you for twenty-five thousand dollars, payable one year from date. Borrowed money, understand? The executors will see that it is paid. Is that satisfactory?"
"But you say you can"t kill yourself and yet--Good Lord! How calmly we"re discussing this thing! What makes you think you"ll die of natural causes within the next three months?"
"I shall see that I do. Oh, I"ve thought it all out. I"ve studied poisons, but there is the danger of discovery when one uses them.
They"ll do to fall back upon if necessary, but there is a better way which is quite as certain, reasonably quick, and utterly above suspicion."
"What is it?" questioned DeVoe, interestedly.
"Pneumonia! I had a touch of it once, and I know. They nearly lost me.
It takes us big, robust fellows off with particular ease and expedition.
You and I will take a hunting trip; it is winter; I will suffer some unexpected exposure; you"ll do what you can to save me, but medical attention will come too late. It won"t take two weeks altogether."
"If you"re looking for pneumonia I know the place. When I left, ten days ago, men were dying like flies. You won"t need to go hunting it; it will come hunting you."
"Out West somewhere, eh?".
"The Nevada desert. That"s where I"m mining."
"Deserts are usually hot."
DeVoe shivered. "Not this one, at this season. It"s a h.e.l.l of a country, Butler; five thousand feet elevation, biting winds, blizzards, and all that. You just can"t keep warm. But the danger is in the Poganip."
"The what?"
"The Poganip; what they call "the Breath of Death" out there. It"s a sort of frozen fog peculiar to that locality."
"Then you accept my offer?"
Again DeVoe hesitated. "Are you really going to do it? Well then, yes.
If I don"t take your money, I suppose you"ll employ somebody else."
"Good! We"ll leave to-morrow."
"Can you get your affairs in shape by then?"
"I don"t want them in shape. Don"t you understand?"
"I see." After a moment the younger man continued, "It"s all very well for us to plan this way--but I"m not sure we"ll succeed in our enterprise."
"Why not, pray?"
"Well, I dare say I"m a good deal of a rotter--I must be to go into a thing like this--but I have a superst.i.tious streak in me. Possibly it"s reverence; at any rate I believe there is a Power outside of ourselves which appoints the hour of our coming and the hour of our going. I"m not so sure you can pull this off until that Power says so."
Murray laughed. "Nonsense! What is to prevent my shooting myself at this moment, if I want to?"
"Nothing, if you want to--but you don"t want to. Why don"t you want to?
Because that Power hasn"t named this as your time. I don"t make myself very clear."
"I think I see what you"re driving at, but you"re wrong. We are masters of our own destinies; we make our lives as full or as empty as we choose. I have emptied mine of all it contained, and I don"t consider that I am doing any one an injury in disposing of what belongs alone to me. Now we"ll complete the details."
The speaker drew a blank note from his desk and filled it in.
It was with a very natural feeling of interest that Butler Murray watched the desert unfold before his car window a few days later as his train made its way southward from the main line and into the Bad Lands of the Nevada gold-fields. There was snow everywhere; not enough for warmth, but enough to chill the landscape with a gray, forbidding aspect. It lay, loose-piled and shifting, behind naked rocks, or streamed over the knife-edge ridges, swirling and settling in the gullies like filmy winding-sheets. All the world up here was barren, burned out, and cold, like his own life; it was a fitting place in which to end an existence which had proven such a mockery and failure.
Goldfield was a conglomerate city in the hectic stage of its growth.
Rough, uncouth, primitive, it lay cradled in the lap of inhospitable hills upon the denuded slopes of which derricks towered like gallows.
The whole naked country spoke of death and desolation.
A bitter wind laden with driving particles of sleet met the travelers as they stepped off the train.
DeVoe"s headquarters consisted of a typical mining-camp shack in the heart of the town, containing a bare little office and two sleeping-rooms, the hindermost of which gave egress to a yard banked in snow and flanked by other frame buildings.
Murray selected the coldest apartment and unpacked his belongings, the most precious of which was a folding morocco case containing three photographs--one of Muriel and one each of the boy and the girl.
Then followed a week of careful preparation. Together the two men made frequent excursions to various mining properties. Murray mingled with the heterogeneous crowd of brokers, promoters, gamblers, and mine-owners; he took options on claims and made elaborate plans to develop them; he was interviewed by reporters from the local papers; articles were printed telling of his proposed activities. When he had laid a secure foundation, he announced to DeVoe that the time had come.
It appeared that the latter had by no means exaggerated the dangers of this climate, for men were really dying in such numbers as to create almost a panic, the hospitals were overcrowded, and Murray had been repeatedly warned to take the strictest care of himself if he wished to preserve his health. The alt.i.tude combined with the cold and wet and the lack of accommodations was to blame, it seemed, and accounted for the high mortality rate. Doctors a.s.sured him that once a man was stricken with pneumonia in this climate there was little chance of saving him.
That evening he let the fire die out of the stove in his room, then went next door to a little Turkish-bath establishment, and proceeded to sweat for an hour. Instead of drying himself off he flung a greatcoat over his streaming shoulders, slipped into boots and trousers, then stepped across the snow-packed yard to his own quarters, where he found DeVoe bundled up to the chin and waiting. His brief pa.s.sage across the open snow had chilled him, for the wind was cruel, but he blew out the light in his chamber, flung off his overcoat, then, standing in the open door, drank the frost-burdened air into his overheated lungs.
"G.o.d! You"re half naked!" chattered the onlooker. "You"ll freeze."
The moisture upon Murray"s body dried slowly. He began to shake in every muscle, but he continued his long, deep breaths--breaths that congealed his lungs. He became cramped and stiff. He suffered terribly. He felt constricting bands about his chest; darting, numbing pains ran through him. He could not tell how long he continued thus, but eventually the sheer agony of it drove him back. He closed the door and crept into bed, the clammy cotton sheets of which were warm against his flesh. Through rattling teeth he bade good night to his friend, saying:
"D-don"t mind--anything I do or--say during the night."
DeVoe lost no time in seeking his own warm room, where Murray heard him stamping and threshing his arms to revive his circulation.
There could be but one outcome to such a suicidal action, the frozen man reflected. Stronger fellows than he were dying daily from half such exposure. Why, already he could feel his lungs congesting. Although the agony was almost unendurable, he forced himself to lie still, then traced the course of his blood as it gradually crept through his veins.
Eventually he fell asleep, tortured, but satisfied.
Henry found him slumbering peacefully late the next morning, and when he arose he felt better and stronger than he had for years.
"Jove! I"m hungry," he said as he dressed himself.
"I expected to find you mighty sick," his friend exclaimed, wonderingly.
"I slept cold all night."
"It seems I didn"t catch it that time. I must be stronger than I thought."
He ate a hearty breakfast, and, although he tramped the hills all day in the snow and cold, watching himself carefully for signs of approaching illness, he was disappointed to discover none whatever. At bedtime he repeated his performance of the night before, but with the same result.
When he awoke on the second morning, however, he found the desert town wrapped in the dark folds of a fog that chilled his marrow and clung to his clothing in little beads. It was a strange phenomenon, for the air was bitterly cold and yet saturated with moisture; mountain and valley were hidden in an impalpable dust that was neither fog nor snow, but a freezing, uncomfortable combination of both.
DeVoe hugged the fire all day, saying to his guest: "You"ll have to do the trick alone, Butler; it"s too deucedly unpleasant sitting there in the cold every night. I"ll get sick."