Bunch Grass Part 20

"Let us hear from you," said my brother.

"You shall," he replied.

Within half an hour Johnson had vanished in a buckboard and a cloud of fine white dust.

Upon the following afternoon I made an alarming discovery. Our burglar-proof safe had been opened, and the roll of notes was missing.

I sought Ajax and told him. He allowed one word only to escape his lips--

"Johnson!"

"What tenderfeet we are!" I groaned.

"Lineal descendants of the Good Samaritan. Well, he has had a long start, but we must catch him."

"If it should not be--Johnson?"

"Conan would have nailed anybody else."

This was unanswerable, for Conan guarded our safe whenever there was anything in it worth guarding. Ajax never is so happy as when he can prove himself a prophet.

"I said he was an artist," he remarked. "The truth is, we tried an experiment upon the wrong man."

A few minutes later we took the road. We had not gone very far, however, before we met the neighbour who had driven Johnson to town.

He pulled up and greeted us.

"Boys," said he. "I've a note for ye from that Britisher."

We took the note, but we did not open it till our Californian friend had disappeared. We had been butchered, but as yet the abominable fact that a compatriot had skinned us was something we wished to keep to ourselves.

"Great Minneapolis!" said Ajax. "Look at this!"

I saw a bank receipt for the exact sum which represented our bunch of steers.

"Is that all?" I asked.

Ajax ought to have shouted for joy, but he answered with a groan.

"Yes; there isn't a line of explanation. He said we should hear from him."

"And we have," I replied.

We returned to the ranch very soberly. When Ajax placed the bank receipt in the safe, he kicked that solid piece of furniture.

"We'll drive in comfortably to-morrow, and find out what we can," he observed.

"I don't think we shall find Johnson," I murmured.

Nor did we. The cas.h.i.+er testified to receiving the roll of notes, but not the letter of introduction. We hunted high and low for Johnson; but he was not.

"How did he get away without money?" he asked.

"He had money. I stuck a twenty-dollar bill into his coat pocket."

Before leaving town, we visited our gunmaker, with the intention of ordering some cartridges. By the merest chance, he spoke of Johnson.

"A Britisher was in here yesterday: somethin' o' the cut o' you boys."

"In a grey suit with a brown sombrero?"

"Sure enough."

"Did he buy cartridges?"

"He bought a six-shooter and a few cartridges."

"Oh!" said Ajax.

We found ourselves walking towards a secluded lot at the back of the Old Mission Church. Ajax asked me for an opinion which I was too dazed to express.

"We've done a silly thing, and perhaps a wicked thing," said my brother. "If that poor devil is lying dead in the brush-hills, I shall never forgive myself. We've given a starving man too heavy a meal."

"Bos.h.!.+" said I, believing every word he uttered--the echo, indeed, of my own thoughts. "I feel in my bones we are going to see Johnson again."

Twenty-four hours later we heard of him. The Santa Barbara stage had been held up by one man. It happened, however, that a remarkably bold and fearless driver was on the box. The stage had been stopped upon the top of a hill, but not exactly on the crest of it. The driver testified that the would-be robber had leaped out of a clump of manzanita, just as the heavy, lumbering coach was beginning to roll down the steep hill in front of it. To pull up at such a moment was difficult. The driver saw his chance and took it. He lashed the leaders and charged straight at the highwayman, who jumped aside to avoid being run over, and then, being a-foot, abandoned his enterprise. He was wearing a mask fas.h.i.+oned out of a gunny-sack, new overalls, and _brown_ shoes! That same night, at Los Olivos, a man wearing brown shoes was arrested by a deputy sheriff because he refused to give a proper account of himself; but, on being searched, a letter to the cas.h.i.+er of the San Lorenzo bank, signed (so ran the paragraph) by a well-known and responsible Englishman, was found in the pocket of his coat. Whereupon he was allowed to go his ways, with many apologies from the over-zealous official.

"Johnson!" said Ajax.

"Did he hold up the stage?" I asked.

"Of course he did" replied my brother contemptuously.

After this incident, Johnson, who for a brief time had loomed so large in our imaginations, faded into a sort of wraith. Years pa.s.sed, bringing with them great changes for me. I left California and settled in England. I wrote a book which excited a certain amount of interest, and inspired some of my old school-fellows to renew acquaintance with me. By this time I had forgotten Johnson. He was part of a distant country, where the fine white dust settles thickly upon all things and persons. In England, where the expected, so to speak, comes to five o'clock tea, such surprising individuals as Johnson appear--if they ever do appear--as creatures of a disordered fancy or digestive apparatus. Once I told the story at the Scribblers' Club to a couple of journalists. They winked at each other, and said politely that I spun a good yarn, for an amateur! "I never tell a story," said the elder of my critics, "till I've worked out a climax. You leave us at the top of a confounded hill in California, bang up in the clouds."

And then the climax flitted into sight, masquerading as a barrel of claret. The claret came from Bordeaux. It was Leoville Poyferre, 1899.

Not a line of explanation came with it, but all charges were prepaid.

I wrote to the s.h.i.+ppers. A Monsieur had bought the wine and ordered it to be consigned to me. Readers of this story will say that I ought to have thought of Johnson. I didn't. I thanked effusively half a dozen persons in turn, who had not sent the claret; then, hopelessly befogged, I had the wine bottled.

However, Johnson sent the wine, for he told me so. I had been pa.s.sing a few days at Blois, and was staring at the Fragonard which hangs in the gallery of the chateau, when a languid voice said, "This is the best thing here."

"Hullo, Johnson!" I exclaimed.

"Hullo!" said he.

He had recognised me first, and addressed the remark about the picture to me. n.o.body else was near us. We shook hands solemnly, eyeing each other, noting the changes. Johnson appeared to be prosperous, but slightly Gallicised.

"How is--Ajax?" he murmured.

"Ajax has grown fat. Can't you dine with me?"