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As the two men, Jaralson leading, pushed their way through the growth of young trees, that enterprising man suddenly stopped and brought up his shotgun to the height of his breast, uttered a low note of warning, and stood motionless, his eyes fixed upon something ahead.
All this the two men observed without speaking almost at a glance. Then Holker said: "Poor devil! he had a rough deal." Jaralson was making a vigilant circumspection of the forest, his shotgun held in both hands and at full cock, his finger upon the trigger. "The work of a maniac," he said, without withdrawing his eyes from the inclosing wood. "It was done by Branscom Pardee."
Holker was so profoundly affected by that possible failure of justice that he involuntarily stopped in the middle of the road, then resumed his walk with abated zeal. "Well, he looks it," assented Jaralson. "I'm bound to admit that a more unshaven, unshorn, unkempt, and uneverything wretch I never saw outside the ancient and honorable order of tramps.
With scarcely a glance at this uninteresting structure Jaralson moved on into the dripping undergrowth beyond. "I will show you where he held me up," he said. "This is the graveyard." Here and there among the bushes were small inclosures containing graves, sometimes no more than one.
"But not knowing the right name, by what happy inspiration did you find the right grave? The man who told me what the name was said it had been cut on the headboard." "I don't know the right grave." Jaralson was apparently a trifle reluctant to admit his ignorance of so important a point of his plan. "I have been watching about the place generally.
"I cried aloud! the spell, unbroken still, Rested upon my spirit and my will. Unsouled, unhearted, hopeless and forlorn, I strove with monstrous presages of ill! "At last the viewless " Holker ceased reading; there was no more to read. The manuscript broke off in the middle of a line. "That sounds like Bayne," said Jaralson, who was something of a scholar in his way.
"You remember Branscom?" said Jaralson, treating his companion's wit with the inattention that it deserved. "The chap who cut his wife's throat? I ought; I wasted a week's work on him and had my expenses for my trouble. There is a reward of five hundred dollars, but none of us ever got a sight of him. You don't mean to say " "Yes, I do. He has been under the noses of you fellows all the time.
"It is cold," said Holker; "let us leave here; we must have up the coroner from Napa." Jaralson said nothing, but made a movement in compliance. Passing the end of the slight elevation of earth upon which the dead man's head and shoulders lay, his foot struck some hard substance under the rotting forest leaves, and he took the trouble to kick it into view.
Helena at the first glimmer of dawn, and walked along the road northward up the valley toward Calistoga. They carried guns on their shoulders, yet no one having knowledge of such matters could have mistaken them for hunters of bird or beast. They were a deputy sheriff from Napa and a detective from San Francisco Holker and Jaralson, respectively. Their business was man-hunting.
It was a fallen headboard, and painted on it were the hardly decipherable words, "Catharine Larue." "Larue, Larue!" exclaimed Holker, with sudden animation. "Why, that is the real name of Branscom not Pardee. And bless my soul! how it all comes to me the murdered woman's name had been Frayser!" "There is some rascally mystery here," said Detective Jaralson. "I hate anything of that kind."
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