G. A. Henty

“ I have an immense liking for the young fellow. I was fond of him as a boy and he has grown up just as I thought he would—a man one can rely upon in every emergency—clear-headed, sensible, without a shadow of nonsense about him, and as true as steel. There, I can eat no more breakfast,' and he pushed his plate from him and rising hastily left the room. Dorothy went about the house with a pale face all day. Her father rode off directly after breakfast to carry the news to Singleton who was greatly distressed thereat.
'Did you tell Dorothy that it was at New Orleans?' he asked presently. ”

“ Numbers of men were carrying parcels and bales to the neighbouring warehouses. Waggons piled up with goods for the different centres, from which they were distributed by pack animals to distant mining camps, strove in vain to make their way out of the crush. Stores and saloons were alike crowded, the one with anxious emigrants purchasing their outfit for the gold-fields, and the others with miners, rough sunburnt men in red shirts, breeches, and high boots, who had come down to spend their hard-earned gold in a week's spree. ”

“ On the way down Captain Armstrong related the incidents of their adventure.
'It was touch and go,' he said. 'Another quarter of an hour on that glacier would, I believe, have finished us all. It was not fatigue so much as it was the loss of heart that one felt. The wind seemed to go right through one, and to take all one's pluck out. I wonder the ladies are alive.'
'I can quite understand that,' Lord Halliburn said. 'I had no idea what it would be like until we got into it, and then, though the porters had brought up warm wraps for us, it was terrible. ”

“ You are not like most of the others; you call me miss, and you try to speak roughly, but I know that it is not natural to you, and that you have been a gentleman.'
'There are a good many in the camp who have been gentlemen,' he said; 'but it makes no matter what we have been, each man has to work for himself here and to keep on the common level, and the master is he who can work hardest and steadiest, or, on the other hand, he who can draw his pistol the quickest.'
'They are calling me,' the girl exclaimed, as she heard her name shouted within. ”

“ Mr. Fortescue was next aroused, and then he and Mr. Hawtrey woke the girls. They, however, were unable to rise to their feet, their limbs being completely stiffened by cold and fatigue. A basin of hot soup with bread broken into it restored them wonderfully.
'How are we to get down, father?' Dorothy asked.
'You will be carried, dear; the men have brought up stretchers and plenty of blankets and wraps, and there are mules for Fortescue and myself half a mile lower. We can manage to get as far as that, though I feel as if I had been beaten almost into a jelly. ”

“ The women, sitting for the most part in the waggons, knitted or worked with but an occasional remark to each other. The men, walking with the oxen, kept on their way as doggedly as the animals they drove, and save for the occasional crack of a whip or a shout from one of the men to his beasts, and the occasional creaking of a wheel, the procession might have seemed to an onlooker a mere phantasmagoria of silent shapes. ”

“ He knew exactly where he should find the others, as they almost always took their seat in a nook sheltered completely from the wind and exposed to the full rays of the sun.
'I suppose I had better look at the letter,' he said to himself. 'I would rather Danvers did not write so often. Dorothy looks up inquiringly whenever the post comes in, and I would rather say "No letter to-day," than to have to say, "There is a letter from Danvers, Dorothy, but he sends no news whatever." ”

“ Mr. Hawtrey, then, expected no news of any importance from Danvers as to his affairs, but it was possible the letter might contain some later intelligence from New Orleans. It was nearly a month since they had heard, and in a case like this no news is very far from being good news; he opened it, therefore, with great reluctance, the more so that the letter was lying at the top of the others, and he saw by the anxiety with which Dorothy was watching him that she had at once recognised the handwriting. As his eye fell upon the contents he uttered an exclamation of thankfulness. ”

“ Sally herself is fond, as is natural enough in a girl as good-looking as she is, of handsome clothes, and that visit to the shop where she laid in a stock of fine clothes was, she admits, her own suggestion. She has kept her room since Truscott's death. She did not say a word as he was telling her his story, but she went as white as death, and got up with a sort of sob when he finished and went out of the tent without saying a word, and has not come out of her room since. ”

“ That evening Sinclair and Jack Armitstead came across to Ned's fire.
'We have got ten men, Ned, who are ready to join us in clearing the camp, and we are ready to do it in any way you may tell us.'
'I should give them fair warning,' Ned said; 'there are six of them, including Mason, the gambler, who are at the bottom of all the trouble here. I will write six notices, warning them that unless they leave the camp in twelve hours it will be worse for them. ”

“ When they had gone a short distance away from the girls, he placed the copies of the letters and depositions in Mr. Singleton's hands.
'Hampton!' the latter exclaimed, as soon as he glanced over the first line or two; 'I am glad indeed. Let us sit down on that rock over there; the news is too pleasant to be lost by not being able to read it distinctly.'
'Well, Hawtrey, I congratulate you,' he said, when he had finished. 'Those letters are sufficient to prove to any unprejudiced person that Dorothy has been perfectly innocent throughout the whole business. ”

“ We have got to stick together here, and if we does that we can clear this camp out.'
'I don't care a continental what Bluff Harry or any other man thinks,' Ben Hatcher said, sulkily. 'I does as I like, without asking leave from no man; still, I don't want to quarrel, and as some of you seems to want to make a muss, I will just leave you to yourselves and turn in.' As he turned to leave the bar, Jack Armitstead slipped out through the door and ran round the corner. ”

“ This crowd are all concerned only in getting on as hard as they can. There ain't one of them but thinks that the delay of a week might lose him a fortune; and though they would fight if the Redskins were to attack them, they have not got any fight in them except for their lives, and even if they were willing to go they would not be no manner of use on an expedition like that you talk about.'
Captain Hampton hardly regretted the failure of his attempt to get up an expedition at Salt Lake City. ”

“ The next evening the saloon was emptier than usual; there were but two or three men at the bar when Ned Hampton, who had finished his supper early, went over to it. The girl herself, contrary to her custom, came across to take his order.
'Good evening, miss,' he said; 'I hear you nearly had trouble here again last night.'
'Very nearly. I cannot think why men here will always pull out pistols; why don't they stand up and fight as they do at home? It is horrible. There have been four men killed in the saloon while we have been here. ”

“ The hut was down, but that was not the worst of it; there was bodies lying all about; men and women, scalped in course; there was what had been five waggons just burnt up, piles of flour and meat and other things all about, and it was clear that, after taking all they could carry, the Redskins had emptied the barrels, chucked them into the waggons and set them alight. ”

“ Hawtrey went out to meet his friend, who was delighted to hear of Ned Hampton's recovery, but fumed and grumbled terribly when he heard of his plans.
'Upon my word, Hawtrey, I hardly know which is the most perverse, Dorothy or Ned Hampton; they are enough to tire the patience of a saint. ”

“ The attack alone might have been accounted for. It is a lawless sort of place, and seating myself as I did on the deserted wharf, any ruffian who noticed me might have considered me a likely victim, just as he might have in any city of Europe; but the fact of these people leaving so suddenly rather alters the case, and I cannot help thinking that Truscott must have been among the crowd on the wharf when the steamer went in, and that he recognised me. ”

“ In the afternoon Captain Armstrong was admitted to see the invalids. He at once laughed down Dorothy's attempt to thank him for having saved her life.
'I only did for you, Miss Hawtrey, exactly what the guides did for Miss Fortescue and her sister; there is nothing very terrible in carrying a weight when you get it comfortably fixed. Why, the porters in the Andes think nothing of carrying people right over the mountains; it is only a matter of getting weight properly balanced. ”

“ There has been a good deal of grumbling lately; there have been ten men killed here since the camp began, and it is generally allowed as that is too big an average. It is allus so with these new rushes. Chaps as begins to feel as they have made other places too hot for them, in general joins in a new rush. We must be careful who we speak to, for if the fellows got scent of it some of us would be wiped out afore many hours had passed, for if it came to shooting, none of us would have a look in with men like Ben Hatcher or Wyoming Bill.'
'There is no occasion to be in a hurry,' Ned Hampton said ”

“ We have been lucky so far, for though we know that we have been watched, and have seen several parties of Redskins, none of them have been strong enough to venture to attack us. But now that every express rider we have met has warned us that there is trouble here, that strong caravans have been overpowered and the emigrants massacred, there will be no more wandering away far from the camp. You will have to travel the same pace as the rest of us, Ned,' he added, to the bearded figure next to him. ”

“ I have been hoping for a letter for some little time. Jacob has called at the post office at Sacramento the last three times he has been down there. I am very anxious to hear, and yet you will understand I am half afraid of the news the letter will bring me.'
'I don't think you can have bad news in that way, Ned,' she said. 'I may call you Ned again now, mayn't I? If Dorothy's face does not belie her she can't be likely to get engaged to another man so soon after breaking off her engagement with that lord. ”

“ No, it won't do, Ned. We ought to have at least a hundred good men for such a job as that, and there ain't a chance of your getting them. It ain't like as when a border village is attacked and women carried off; then their friends are ready to go out to pay back the Redskins and rescue the women, and men from other villages are ready to join, because what has happened to one to-day may happen to another to-morrow, and so all are concerned in giving the Indians a lesson. ”

“ I am in no way acting for myself, but solely for her. My leave is nearly up, and I shall probably return direct to India, in which case I shall not be back in England for another eight or ten years, and she may be married before as many months are passed—may indeed be married now for aught I know. It is for my girl friend that I have been working, not for the woman that I love. ”

“ It is monstrous that two or three hundred men who only want to work peaceably should be terrorised by half-a-dozen ruffians.'
'It ain't right, mate, I allow as it ain't right, but it is hard to see what is to be done. There is Wyoming Bill, for example, who came into the camp last night, cursing and swearing and threatening that he would put a bullet in any man who refused to drink with him. I expect it were after you turned in, mate, but he cleared the saloon of the best part as was there in five minutes. ”

“ At dinner time he received a cheque on the bank of Sacramento, in which his partners had deposited their earnings. Jacob was away and he took a long walk down the valley thinking over the girl's proposal. He acknowledged to himself there was much truth in what she said. It would be a heavy blow to Mr. Hawtrey to find that his daughter was alive and had been so brought up. He would blame himself for having accepted the fact of her death, when by setting on foot inquiries he might possibly have discovered the fraud and have rescued her from the fate that had befallen her. ”

“ He rose to his feet just as the figures of the guides, with three or four men, emerged from the mist.
'Thank God we have found you, Armstrong!' Lord Halliburn said, grasping his hand. 'We have had a terrible fright about you all. It was somewhere about eleven when one of the guides ran up to the hotel saying that there was a storm raging amongst the hills, that the clouds had swept across the Mer de Glace, and he was certain the party that had gone up this morning must have been overtaken by it. You may imagine that we lost no time. ”

“ I doubt if he will get round; he takes a lot of liquor every night, and always has done, and that tells against a man's chances when he is hurt. You know well enough that you could do nothing against the girl here. If a sheriff came to arrest her the boys would pretty well tear him to pieces, but the chap that could travel as you have done, from England to the States, and then across to California, would certainly be ready to wait and bide his time, and sooner or later you would catch her.'
'I have no wish to catch her,' Ned Hampton said. ”

“ It is a matter that must be kept secret, for you must remember that though we might clear out the camp of these fellows without difficulty, we should all be marked men wherever we went if it were known which of us were concerned in the matter.'
'That is true enough,' Sinclair said. 'It would be as much as any of our lives were worth to go into any of the other camps where one or two of these fellows happened to be, if we were known to have been among Judge Lynch's party.'
Ned Hampton went back to breakfast at the cart, as he always did when Jacob was there. ”