A few steps further on brought them to the buckeye thicket, which extended to the river bank and mouth of the canyon. The girl lingered for a moment ostentatiously before it, and then, saying "Come," suddenly turned at right angles into the thicket. Brice followed, and the next moment they were hidden by its friendly screen from the valley. On the other side rose the mountain wall, leaving a narrow trail before them. It was composed of the rocky debris and fallen trees of the cliff, from which buckeyes and larches were now springing. It was uneven, irregular, and slowly ascending; but the young girl led the way with the free footstep of a mountaineer, and yet a grace that was akin to delicacy. Nor could he fail to notice that, after the Western girl's fashion, she was shod more elegantly and lightly than was consistent with the rude and rustic surroundings. It was the same slim shoe-print which had guided him that morning. Presently she stopped, and seemed to be gazing curiously at the cliff side. Brice followed the direction of her eyes. On a protruding bush at the edge of one of the wooded clefts of the mountain flank something was hanging, and in the freshening southerly wind was flapping heavily, like a raven's wing, or as if still saturated with the last night's rain.
"That's mighty queer!" said Flo, gazing intently at the unsightly and incongruous attachment to the shrub, which had a vague, weird suggestion. "It wasn't there yesterday.""It looks like a man's coat," remarked Brice uneasily.
"Whew!" said the girl. "Then somebody has come down who won't go up again! There's a lot of fresh rocks and brush here, too.
What's that?" She was pointing to a spot some yards before them where there had been a recent precipitation of debris and uprooted shrubs. But mingled with it lay a mass of rags strangely akin to the tattered remnant that flagged from the bush a hundred feet above them. The girl suddenly uttered a sharp feminine cry of mingled horror and disgust,--the first weakness of sex she had shown,--and, recoiling, grasped Brice's arm. "Don't go there!
Come away!"
But Brice had already seen that which, while it shocked him, was urging him forward with an invincible fascination. Gently releasing himself, and bidding the girl stand back, he moved toward the unsightly heap. Gradually it disclosed a grotesque caricature of a human figure, but so maimed and doubled up that it seemed a stuffed and fallen scarecrow. As is common in men stricken suddenly down by accident in the fullness of life, the clothes asserted themselves before all else with a hideous ludicrousness, obliterating even the majesty of death in their helpless yet ironical incongruity. The garments seemed to have never fitted the wearer, but to have been assumed in ghastly jocularity,--a boot half off the swollen foot, a ripped waistcoat thrown over the shoulder, were like the properties of some low comedian. At first the body appeared to be headless; but as Brice cleared away the debris and lifted it, he saw with horror that the head was twisted under the shoulder, and swung helplessly from the dislocated neck.
But that horror gave way to a more intense and thrilling emotion as he saw the face--although strangely free from laceration or disfigurement, and impurpled and distended into the simulation of a self-complacent smile--was a face he recognized! It was the face of the cynical traveler in the coach--the man who he was now satisfied had robbed it.
A strange and selfish resentment took possession of him. Here was the man through whom he had suffered shame and peril, and who even now seemed complacently victorious in death. He examined him closely; his coat and waistcoat had been partly torn away in his fall; his shirt still clung to him, but through its torn front could be seen a heavy treasure belt encircling his waist.
Forgetting his disgust, Brice tore away the shirt and unloosed the belt. It was saturated with water like the rest of the clothing, but its pocket seemed heavy and distended. In another instant he had opened it, and discovered the envelope containing the packet of greenbacks, its seal still inviolate and unbroken. It was the stolen treasure!
A faint sigh recalled him to himself. The girl was standing a few feet from him, regarding him curiously.
"It's the thief himself!" he said, in a breathless explanation.
"In trying to escape he must have fallen from the road above. But here are the greenbacks safe! We must go back to your uncle at once," he said excitedly. "Come!""Are you mad?" she cried, in astonishment.
"No," returned Brice, in equal astonishment, "but you know I agreed with him that we should work together to recover the money, and Imust show him our good luck."
"He told you that if you met the thief and could get the money from him, you were welcome to it," said the girl gravely, "and you HAVEgot it."
"But not in the way he meant," returned Brice hurriedly. "This man's death is the result of his attempting to escape from your uncle's guards along the road; the merit of it belongs to them and your uncle. It would be cowardly and mean of me to take advantage of it."The girl looked at him with an expression of mingled admiration and pity. "But the guards were placed there before he ever saw you,"said she impatiently. "And whatever uncle Harry may want to do, he must do what the gang says. And with the money once in their possession, or even in yours, if they knew it, I wouldn't give much for its chances--or YOURS either--for gettin' out o' this hollow again.""But if THEY are treacherous, that is no reason why I should be so," protested Brice stoutly.
