Blood-money

Chapter I. A Mysterious Letter

■ OUR or five years ago there lived in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, California, a j'oung man about twenty-five years of age. His only companion was his grandmother— an aged and feeble woman, in whose palsied hands and trembling voice there were traces of other wearing agencies than the accumulation of years and natural infirmities. Grief, which is more wasting than time, had set its mark upon her face. Nevertheless, in the last years of her life a great comfort had come to her, in the shape of her grandson, whom she loved and clung to and idolized with all a mother's love. Her feeble life was bound up in him. She took a great interest in everything that concerned him; and although the time had long ago passed when his strong young nature asserted undisputed supremacy over hers, and although she no longer directed and controlled the affairs that were common to them, yet she assisted and encouraged him all in her power, and rendered him material aid.

Consequently she was as deeply concerned as he, when he returned one day from the village with a letter directed to him. He had never received a letter before, and the sensation was novel. So little did he know of the great world that lay beyond the horizon of the level plains, and so bewildered was he at holding in his hand a letter addressed to his own name, that he hurried with it unopened to his grandmother. The old lady, curious as he, and wondering at the arrival of a letter, opened it, and they read it together. It was written in red ink. The writing was in a scrawling, irregular hand. There was no signature of any kind, no date, and no introduction. The orthography was as bad as the handwriting. Shorn of these defects, the letter read as follows:

"There is a tree in Tulare County called Lone Tree. Everybody knows where it is. It is a large, old oak, and stands six or seven miles north of Tulare Lake. You will have no trouble in finding it, as all the people in that part of the country know where it is. Hence it is unnecessary for me to describe it. Eighteen years ago a cross was cut into the side of the tree facing the east, and exactly five feet from the ground. When you have found the tree, measure five feet from the base eastward by the compass, then four feet northward. Then dig. You will find an iron pot, and inside the pot twenty-two thousand dollars in gold coin. Take the money, and use it as you please, for it is yours. Above all things, as you value your life, say nothing to anybody about it. If you obey this injunction, you will never be disturbed."

The astonishment of the two who read this letter, deciphering it with much trouble, cannot be described. They stared at each other in amazement, unable for some time to say anything. Twenty-two thousand dollars ! What did it mean?

A MYSTERIOUS LETTER. ^

"Grandmother," said the young man at last, tearing the dream painfully from his heart, "this is certainly a foohsh joke."

She did not seem to hear him, nor even to see him; for although she looked at him, it could be plainly seen that her mind was far away with the dim memories of the past. An old look of pain, which the young man had often seen, came into her face, and settled itself there firmly.

"John," she finally said, "I don't beheve it's a joke. It says twenty-two thousand dollars, doesn't it?"

"Yes, grandmother."

"That money is yours, John. You ought to have had it long ago."

The young man gazed at her, dumb with astonishment.

"It has been yours by right, John, for eighteen years — ever since that day, eighteen years ago, when they brought my son to me — your father, John — dead — murdered for his money."

"I remember it," the young man softly replied, while his mind was busy with the problem that the old woman had already solved.

"Your father was a rich man then, John, and that was the cause of his death. Eighteen years ago he bought a great stock-range, covering nearly all the eastern part of this county, and intended to raise cattle on a large scale. He had thousands of cattle; and besides, he had ten thousand dollars to his credit in San Francisco. He sold all his stock and his old range, and was on his way home from San Francisco with the money when he was murdered. The lo BLOOD-MONEY.

money was a good load, but he had a strong horse. He wasn't afraid of anything living, John. You are just the image of him, and when you are older you will be as brave as he was. I don't say that you ain't brave now; but your father wasn't timid and bashful, although he was when he was a young man."

In the excitement natural to her under the circumstances, she lost the sequence of her thoughts, and then checked her rambling remarks. After a moment of silence the idea she had in her mind recurred to her, and looking straight at her grandson, she asked :

" Do you know how much money he had with him when he was murdered, John ? "

" I don't remember, grandmother."

"Well, that letter tells you."

"Twenty-two thousand dollars?"

"Yes."

"AVell, grandmother," said John, half divining the old woman's meaning, but afraid of committing an error, " what has the twenty-two thousand dollars buried under Lone Tree to do with my father's money?"

" It's the same money, John."

The young man held his breath, as he realized the strong probability that the money under Lone Tree was consciencemoney; and that the murderer, after eighteen years, had thus voluntarily surrendered to the rightful owner the money that came by blood. , He gasped for breath at the prospect of a wonderful fortune so suddenly brought within his grasp — a fortune greater than that ever pictured in his day-dreams,

A MYSTERIOUS LETTER. U

dazzling in its splendor, overpowering in its magnificence, and lifting him far above the surroundings of his humble lot. It is not surprising that his heart throbbed wildly, and that visions of enchantment appeared to his excited imagination. Nor is it a matter of surprise that the sudden and dangerous ecstasy into which he was thrown by the prospect of these splendid riches gave Uttle opportunity for a quickening of sorrow, as the terrible tragedy that rendered him an orphan was thus almost re-enacted before his eyes. The old woman sat and brooded in silence over what was still fresh in her failing memory ; but a glance at the flushed face and sparkling eyes of her grandson brought her back to the present, and she was joyous for his sake.

"It will make you a great, rich man, John; and I know you will always be a good man."

In order to have a clear conception of the extraordinary vicissitudes through which John Graham passed after the receipt of the mysterious letter, it will be necessary to have some knowledge of his character and personal appearance. He was of the average size of men, and had a fair complexion and blue eyes. Hard work in the pure open air of the plains had toughened his muscles, and there was no young man of his acquaintance who was his rival in feats of strength. By nature he was ambitious; but so unselfish and patient was he that no one knew of his dreams. He never complained, and his energy never abated. Although bashful and apparently timid, he was by nature utterly dauntless. A woman could frighten him, but a man could not. Underlying all other traits, and as yet unknown even

. to him, was a stern stubbornness, that was capable of desperate urgings in an extremity, and that would strangle and murder if driven to the wall. This hidden ferocity of nature was at present subservient to a natural goodness that trying circumstances had not yet chilled; and in any event, he possessed that natural caution which necessarily comes with wholesome courage.

He had a fair education: his grandmother, who herself had had tender rearing, taking great pride in his quick susceptibility of knowledge under her careful but not thoroughly efficient training.

He was not a man given up to a ready acceptance of every plausible thing that presented itself; but the magnitude of the import of the anonymous letter overcame his cooler judgment, and suffused his imagination with the wildest dreams.

Chapter II. The Lone Tree Treasure

i^^ITHOUT delay John Graham set out to discover the treasure buried at the foot of Lone Tree. It may be here remarked, that there seems to be in CaUfornia a fashion of naming every isolated tree " Lone Tree." The writer of the anonymous letter was perhaps not fully aware of that fact. He should have reflected, especially, that the broad stretch of oak timber that surrounds the quaint old town of Visalia is a great rarity on the plains, this being the only oak belt in the San Joaquin Valley; and that the scattering outposts of this army of oaks surrounding Visalia, and repelling the furious assaults of sand-storms sweeping down from Merced, are objects of considerable attention. Besides, other trees stand at intervals about the borders of the lake. The willows that abound in. Mussel Slough — a section of magnificent country lying north of the lake, and which takes its name from a slough that makes out from the lake— the willows that there abound attract far less attention than do the occasional solitary oaks that still remain as relics of a forest that passed away centuries ago. Now, the writer of the mysterious let-

BLOOD-MONEY.

ter would have known, had he been better acquainted with the country thereabout, that there are now several stately old forest kings there, each bearing the name of Lone Tree. As the inhabitants of a country settle the decrees of fate, so far as geographical nomenclature is concerned, it would hardly be fair to find fault with the condition of things as they now exist; and it has come to be so that, in the minds of local geographers, there is much doubt as to which Lone Tree is the only original Lone Tree of early local history. As the new order of things has come about under the natural operation of the laws of progress and civilization, it would be hardly just to attach blame to anybody, or to assume that the unknown . writer of the letter might have kept himself informed in contemporaneous history, so that the identity of the only original Lone Tree should not be swallowed up by the tendencies of advancement toward multiplication. Certain it is, that the existence of more than one Lone Tree proved a serious stumbling-block to John Graham. That the writer of the letter did not know that Lone Tree had been multiplied indefinitely was evidence of the fact that he had not visited that section of country for many years.

Indeed, as Graham was comparatively a stranger in that particular section of country, he had to learn, by hard experience, that Lone Tree, for all he knew, might exist at intervals indefinitely all over the world.

He arrived in the Mussel Slough country the day following the receipt of the letter, and inquired for Lone Tree. He had ridden his horse, and had brought with him some food, a pick, a shovel, and his grandmother's blessing. He

THE LONE TREE TREASURE. 15

did not search far before he found a man who told him where Lone Tree was.

After a short hunt the young man found it. His heart beat high as he secured his horse to a neighboring willow and approached Lone Tree. Would he find the treasure? or would his bright dreams be routed and scattered to the winds? To his excited vision the lonely tree had an awful look. The branches waived ominously, as though shaken by a horde of ghosts suddenly put to flight ; and the gnarled and twisted and deformed branches appeared to be, one a man helplessly struggling for his life, the other a murderer wielding a cruel bludgeon, and dashing out the brains of the victim. The silence of the midday, w;hen not even a bird twittered in the willows, was appalling.

But the young man was sturdy and stout of heart, and he thrust these unwholesome visions aside, and pushed on to the task — a simple one — that lay before him.

He searched that side of the trunk turned to the east for a cross, but found none. He was not discouraged by this, for the reason that the cross might have been obliterated by time. Certainly, however, he could not find any trace of a cross.

Nothing daunted, he carefully measured off the ground, under the explicit directions of the letter, and commenced to dig, having first assured himself that no one was watching him. While hardly permitting himself to believe it, he could not, if he would, have abandoned the hope that twenty-two thousand dollars in bright gold lay just under his feet, and almost within his grasp.

He rapidly penetrated the yielding, sandy soil found almost exclusively in that section. His shovel piled the dirt on either side. He was digging a hole about four feet square, to allow for inaccuracies of measurement. Time flew swiftly, and the hole deepened visibly under the steady, almost furious, work of his strong arms.

Presently a gloomy idea, that had been silently taking possession of his mind without his knowledge, gained sudden mastery over him, and paralyzed his arm. The surface of the ground was level with his shoulders, and yet he had discovered no trace of a pot. A realization of the futility of further digging burst upon him with irresistible force. The bitterness of that blow entered his heart like iron, and hurt like a knife in the flesh. His first impulse was despair, and the next furious anger.

"It was all a lie!" he muttered, with terrible anger. "It was a cruel lie, to make a fool of me. If I knew who the scoundrel is, I'd — "

There is no doubt about it. He would then and there have carried out any threat, expressed or thought, stopping at nothing short of murder.

"If I had only myself to think of," he muttered, somewhat in a philosophical vein, "I wouldn't care so much; but I was thinking of Nellie, and of how fond she is of fine things, and of how handsome she would look, and of how we could travel after we marry, and all that. I say it's a downright shame — a damnable shame ! "

That was the first expression of such a nature that had ever passed his lips.

THE LONE TREE TREASURE. I7

After the first licat of anger had cooled, he discovered that he was very tired. The afternoon was wearing away, and in two hours the sun would set. The young man calmed himself sufficiently to reflect on the plausibility of the theory advanced by his grandmother, and on the possibility of error in the directions given by the letter, or on his own part, in various ways. He was too much exhausted to work more that day; and mounting his horse, he rode away to find shelter for the night, his own home being many miles distant. As he moved away he again looked for the mysterious rustling of the leaves, and the hideously grotesque shapes that the branches of Lone Tree took at first ; but, strange to say, he saw only a very ugly, ill-shaped treeverily a lone tree in point of an ugliness .so intense as to be almost picturesque.

That night at the house of his host he brought up the subject of Lone Tree, and learned, to his astonishment, that there were several trees of that name in that part of the country. It discouraged him in the sense that possibly he might have to dig for the treasure under every Lone Tree in the country ; but it encouraged him to think that his failure to succeed with the first was not evidence that he w^ould experience similar ill fortune with all the others.

The task that now confronted him w^as to ascertain, if possible, the tree that was called Lone Tree eighteen years ago ; there evidently having been but one such tree at that time, as otherwise the letter w^ould have mentioned it, and left no room for doubt.

It is a safe assertion that John Graham slept little that night; and that when he did sleep, unpleasant dreams, wherein blood and gold were mingled — as nearly always they are — came to disturb his rest. It is unnecessary to follow him in his energetic but guarded efforts to find the Lone Tree under which the treasure was possibly buried. After a search of three days he did find the tree, and on that side of it facing the rising sun v/as a dimly outlined Swiss cross, all awry with age, and distinguishable only by one who was earnestly looking for it.

The young man's heart bounded with a furious delight as he traced the cross in the bark. So eager and excited was he, that he failed to notice a man standing a few rods away and eyeing him curiously.

Graham, with an accuracy that may be called, with some men, an intuition, measured the ground with his eye. Weeds and grass grew tall and rank in the immediate vicinity of Lone Tree, and the surrounding ground was under cultivation. The man who was watching Graham with so much interest was the owner of the field in which Lone Tree stood. It cannot be said that this man had a pleasant face; but that might be because he was ugly almost to a sinful extent. He had a pointed chin, a small mouth, a thin hooked nose, pale blue eyes, that were very piercing, a low forehead, and his face was covered with a thin set of sandy whiskers. This man did not inspire confidence with certain other men. He also, as well as Graham, is a person of some use to this simple story.

When Graham had located, with perfect accuracy, the spot indicated in the letter, he saw a thing that made his heart

THE LONE TREE TREASURE. It,

Stand still. It was evident that within the last few months the dirt there had been disturbed. This revelation, bringing with it the idea that possibly the treasure had already been taken away, caused Graham to stagger backward. As he did so, his foot caught in the rim of an iron pot; and Graham, tripped by the pot and stunned by the revelation, fell heavily to the ground.

He immediately roused himself and glared about him. None who have never felt it can realize the weight of the shock that comes when the fondest hope in life is suddenly and violently strangled.

While Graham was thus sitting, a thin, wiry, nasal voice, entering the ear like a corkscrew, and burrowing in the brain like an earwig, called:

"Hey!"

This hail was insulting in fact and impudent in essence. Graham possessed natural dignity of character, and intuitively resented any unwarranted familiarity. He rose to his feet, and glared around to discover the source of the voice, and found it. He regarded the intruder with silent scorn; but at the same time he felt himself in an undignified position, and his cheeks flushed with shame that he should be discovered.

"What are yer doin' ther?" asked the intruder, who for some reason of his own did not advance nearer the treasure hunter. Graham maintained a stolid and combative silence.

"I was a-goin' to say," continued the older man, "that if ye're a-lookin' fer that treasure, some other feller's got ahead o' yer."

"What do you mean?" asked Graham, considerably interested, but none the less on his guard.

"Wall, yer'U have to git up soon to git ahead of a priest."

"A priest!"

"Yes; a priest. He got the treasure. Say, how 'd yer know ther was any treasure ther? I've been here two year, an' I never knowed it."

Graham vouchsafed no reply.

" Might I ask wher yer live?"

Graham said nothing. The older man, desiring for his own gratification to learn more of Graham's connection with the mystery surrounding the affair, said:

" My little boy Frank seen him dig the treasure up and take it awa)\ I'll call Frank, an' he kin tell yer more about it. Hey! Frankie! Frankie ! Come here !"

A dirty little urchin came running to the spot, from a slough where he had been amusing himself by trying to train his mother's chickens to swim in the pool.

"Frankie, tell this man all about the priest; an' how he dug up the treasure an' took it away."

The boy, not at all abashed by the presence of a stranger, told the following story, in a voice and manner that would have rendered unnecessary any uneasiness on his father'.s part as to the boy's paternal origin:

"Waal, me 'n Jim — that's my little brother, you know — was a-throvvin' rocks at some birds in them willers there, an' putty soon Jim, he says, 'What's that?' an' I says, 'What's what?' an' he says, "Tain't what; it's a buggy'; an' then I looks, an' I see a buggy, an' it was a-turnin' out'n that road over there, an' was a-coming right after us, an' I says to Jim, 'Le's hide,' an' we got down on our bellies under the

THE LONE TREE TREASURE. 21

willers, an' we could see all the time. Then the buggy it driv up to Lone Tree an' stopped, an' a man got out, all dressed in black, an' no whiskers, an' measured on the groun', an' then commenced — "

"That was a priest," interrupted his father.

"Yes, a pries', all buttoned up to the chin, an' he worked and digged like fury, an' then putty soon he fetched up a iron pot, an' knocked off the lid, an' poured a great big pile o' money in a sack, an' then he put it in the buggy an' driv off."

Frank was entirely out of breath when he had finished this minute and satisfactory recital, and his father plied Graham with judicious questions, but received no satisfaction. The young man thanked him for his trouble; and mounting his horse, rode away, weary in body, crushed, broken, and humiliated in spirit, and nursing unconsciously in his heart the germs of a deep, desperate, and bitter deter mination. This, although he had not yet met it face to face, was that he would clear up the mystery of the stolen treasure, and avenge the murder of his father. Perhaps if he could have known in time that this determination was insidiously establishing itself in his heart, he would have thrust it aside, forgotten the dream of wealth, returned to the old shadowy memory of his father's murder, and settled down to the life to which he had been accustomed since his birth. But the poison had been drunk too deeply. It mastered him. He would in turn master all that it led him to. Such was his nature; and one would say that he was not quick-witted enough for the task that confronted him, though he lacked not courage and perseverance.

Chapter III. The Terror Of Despair

^^T was with a heavy heart, almost bursting with the weight of its disappointment and humiHation, that John Graham approached the small house that had been his home for a few years past. The entire face of nature and the whole expression of home were changed to him now. A great load had fastened itself upon him, clinging to him like the Old Man of the Sea, and beating him and urging hmi onward to the goal that lay before him. It might not have been so had his nature been different. He possessed a depth of character, a strength of will, a pertinacity of purpose, a stubbornness of adamantine resistance at the appearance of opposition, that he had not yet even dreamed of, and that he did not realize, and that would in good time change the bashful, quiet, country boy into a man, with a will to follow a terrible purpose to its accomplishment ; though it may lead him through fire, and though it may bring him to a footing up of that final account which strikes the balance of life. He was slow of purpose and tardy of execution; but once in motion, the momentum would carry him through without faltering, without a regret.

THE TERROR OF DESPAIR.

He cared no longer for the bright sprhig flowers that covered the plains, a gorgeous carpet from the Maker's own hand. He heeded not the squirrels that, frightened at his approach, darted into their holes in the ground. The grand Sierra, looming up before him as he slowly rode along, and which in his fancy he had often imagined to be gigantic mcnarchs, hoary with time, standing guard over the boundless plains and the people thereof, inspired neither awe nor reverence now. His youthful spirit was quenched, and in a single day he had become a man. The old dreams that long had brightened his youth passed out, and were scattered by the winds that bore silent tidings from Yosemite to Tejon; and grim shadows that crawled out from the canons in the mountains, and homeless ghosts that shivered in the breeze that swept over the lake, took up their abiding place in the deserted home of the dreams. •

The old home, with its bright green poplars, and its little patch of geraniums and verbenas in front, gave rise, as it came upon his view, to no sense of inviting rest. It seemed poor and drear and comfortless. And when he saw the aged grandmother standing in the door, and with her palsied hand shading her eyes from the glaring light that suffused the earth, his heart sank to its lowest depths, and for the first time in his life he wished he were dead. When the failing eyes of the old woman recognized the boy she loved more than her life, she waved her handkerchief, as she had often done before ; but the accustomed greeting in return did not come. She boded evil, and her withered hand dropped listless to her side.

John looked to neither right nor left, but rode straight to the barn, removed the saddle and bridle with his accustomed care, pitched the hungry animal its modicum of hay, and with a heavy step turned toward the house. The old woman had left the front door and gone to the rear, and there she awaited her grandson. It had been her custom always to follow him to the barn, but on this day a dread kept her back. She had always been a weak and timid woman, but never until this day had she feared her grandson.

"John!" she said in a timid, quailing voice of welcome, as the young man approached the door wherein she stood.

"Grandmother!" he replied; but not with the tenderness and light-hearted freedom of old. A harsher and deeper and sterner voice spoke to her now, and frightened her. He mounted the single step that led up to the threshold, and she instinctively stood aside to let him pass. It was then that the great change in her manner impressed itself upon him, and he looked at her a moment in surprise.

"Grandmother," he said, "aren't you glad to see me? I failed, but don't blame me for that." There was a faint tinge of reproach in his tone, and it cut her to the quick.

"I don't blame you, my darling boy," and the tears trickled rapidly down her wrinkled cheeks. She would have given the world to throw her arms around his neck, and kiss his hot face and his burning lips.

"Then, grandmother, why do you act so strangely? You used to be glad to see me when I came, and now you stand back and look at me as if I were a wild animal."

The poor old woman did not know his nature, and was

THE TERROR OF DESPAIR.

ignorant of the change that had taken place within him. She could not know that the grandson she loved had died, and was buried in the shadow of Lone Tree ; and that, masquerading as her boy, there came to her house that day a man whom well she might fear, and whose manner invited no caresses. She could say nothing, and could only stand and weep before him.

" Have you, too, grandmother," he said, the light brightening in his eyes, the color deepening in his cheeks, and the hardness of his voice increasing — "have you, too, turned your back upon me? Must I bear this blow, in addition to the murder of my father and the theft of his money?"

All the hidden ferocity of his nature came to the surface, and the poison boiled in his blood and made a madman of him.

"If so," he said, "let it be. And will Nellie, too, learn to hate me? Do you think, grandmother, that I will submit and cringe like a coward to all these things? No, grandmother! I'll take up the fight against this man who murdered my father, stole his money, and destroyed the happiness of my home. I'll hunt him to death. Do you hear that, grandmother? I'll hunt him to his hole, and cut out his heart with my own hands; and I'll send his cowardly soul to hell, and pray God to damn him forever, and to curse his children with disease and insanity. Do you hear that, grandmother?"