Page 25 of Follow the Lonesome Trail
Forster set down his empty glass and took a worn leather wallet out of his coat pocket. “Well, I’m trying to trace someone, in a way. A man died last week down in Flat Rock, the mining camp, and when it came time to bury him they found that nobody knew his right name, or where he came from or anything about him. They called him English John. That was all anybody knew for certain, that he was an Englishman. Nothing in his gear with a name on it. The woman who nursed him the last few days said she came into his shack one night and found a lot of ashes on the fire, like he’d burned a bundle of letters or papers. Almost looked like he didn’t want anybody writing his folks.”
“Poor devil,” murmured Guy.
“He did keep one thing,” said Forster, “that looked like it was connected to England, and I know it’s a long shot, but I thought I’d bring it to you and see if you could tell what place he came from, so I could write and see if anyone there knew him.”
“I see. Well, I don’t know how much I can help, but I’ll—”
Guy broke off abruptly. In taking the wallet from Forster he had turned it over, and stamped into the flap was what looked like a crest or coat of arms, a little blurred with the rubbing of the leather but still legible enough to make out. Guy uttered an indistinct, incredulous exclamation, and then hurriedly unfolded the wallet and took out the two things inside. One was a cabinet-card photograph of a silver-haired woman in a filmy lace cap, dressed in the fashions of twenty years ago; the other a cheap lithograph thumbed and grimy at the edges, showing a modest-sized Elizabethan manor house identified as ‘Bramley Chase, Wilts.’”
“Jack Bertram,” he said, unbelieving.
“Youknewhim?”
Guy nodded slowly. “I can’t believe it...but it must be. ‘English John,’ you said they called him?” He was still staring at the picture. “Yes...the Bertram’s were old, old friends, neighbors, back in Wiltshire. Jack was the second son. I didn’t know him very well; he was six or seven years older than me, but heavens, yes, I remember him. He was always a little wild, not one to settle down to anything, and there wasn’t much chance for him at home. He went to America when I was still a schoolboy, and I don’t recall that they ever heard much from him after.”
He looked again from the portrait to the creased picture of the house, handling them with the instinctive sensitivity with which one touches the last relics of a forgotten life. “His mother,” he said quietly. “And the old house at Bramley Chase. I knew it almost as well as the family did. It was Jack, sure enough.” He looked at Forster. “What was he doing in Flat Rock?”
“The old story. Prospecting, gambling…drifted from one mining camp to another, worked a little, lost it again…couldn’t keep away from the bottle even when he was in the money. Doc Hatch said his liver gave out on him in the end.”
“I wish I’d known. I might have done something for him—but I suppose he wouldn’t have wanted my help.” Those burned papers…the Bertram pride. Yes, it was like Jack to leave them at home to wonder forever about his fate, rather than let them know he had died drink-ravaged and penniless in a Dakota mining camp.
Whit Forster let a short pause go by, then spoke again. “Since you knew his folks, I reckon it would be best if you wrote to them? I’ll leave the things here with you.”
“Yes...I’ll write. Do you know where he was buried? I’d like to put up a proper marker; it’s the least I can do.”
“The Boot Hill outside Flat Rock. The grave was marked; I’ll be back that way in a few days and I’ll have his right name put on it,and you can put up a stone later if you like. John Bertram, you said his name was?”
“Yes. I think he was born in 1843.”
Guy moved over to his desk and opened a drawer to lay the wallet away. He ran his thumb slowly over the fading Bertram coat-of-arms. He had not written to or heard from anyone at Bramley Chase since he came to America—had not expected to. Perhaps Robert was the Squire by now. It would be better to write to Robert even if the old Squire was still alive, he reflected; Robert could break it to his father better than Guy could do in a letter.
Slowly he closed the drawer.So long ago. He remembered the gardens at Bramley Chase, the laughter. It was hard to connect his few memories of Jack Bertram as a handsome, discontented young rascal with a broken-down man dead of drink in Flat Rock. Jack had gone to America years before his own exile from Bramley Chase—before he and Clara had quarreled; before he had set out with a burning heart and youthful head held high to make his own fortune across the sea. Of course Clara was married long ago—no one so lovely and vivacious would lack for suitors. He had long taught himself to think of her as well married and settled, with no more than a twinge at the thought.
But the fact that after fifteen years there was still a twinge might well have answered Whit Forster’s question about why there was no mistress of the Dunstable ranch.
As the freight wagon rolled into Flat Rock, Margot and Dominic looked down with wide eyes upon their first view of the camp from the high wagon seat. Theodore peered over their shouldersfrom his perch on the canvas-covered load behind them, for Mr. Butch Donnell occupied enough of the seat that even two small children squeezed in at his elbow were a snug fit. A muddy, rutted road zig-zagged its way up the gulch, with a straggling row of tents, shacks, and a few cabins along both sides among the scrubby pines. Men were passing to and fro, boots heavy with mud, pickaxes and mattocks on their shoulders, some leading pack mules—rough bearded men with calloused hands, careless men with loud laughter, silent men who fixed newcomers with wary eyes out of inscrutable, weather-beaten masks of faces.
The wagon jolted its slow way up the gulch, smoke from the chimneys of the shacks drifting across their way. Dominic turned his round face up toward his sister. “Are these the mines?”
“Yes,” said Margot. She seemed slightly daunted—fancy and reality had never been quite so close together in their travels before. But she picked up the thread of her story resolutely. “All these people are exiles, banished to Siberia for offending the Czar, or criminals sent to work in the mines for punishment.”
“Allof them?” said Dominic, looking with interest at a bearded prospector passing them.
“Almost all. Some are guards to keep them from escaping.” Margot kept her voice down so that under the rumble of the wagon wheels it would not reach the ear of Butch Donnell, who unwittingly aided her by shouting full-throated greetings to every friend who came in view. A sociable man, Butch Donnell, as generous as he was large, whose popularity in camp never failed because he fell for every hard-luck story and loaned or gave away any profits he ever made from his claims, and had to fall back on freighting until he could get another grubstake.
At a bend in the gulch, a trading-post and saloon faced each other across the road. Here Butch Donnell brought the wagon to a lumbering halt in front of the trading-post, wound the reinsaround the brake, and descended. Theodore scrambled down as Butch lifted Dominic and then Margot to the ground and hauled their old carpetbag out from under the seat.
“Flat Rock!” he announced, handing the carpetbag to the little girl. “Made good time, too.”
“Thank you very much for bringing us,” said Margot. “We didn’t know the stagecoach didn’t come all the way.”
“Good way to let our trail go cold,” said Theodore to her with a grin. Margot shushed him, turning pink. She was a sensitive little thing, who had never forgotten the teasing of some schoolmates over her make-believe play when she was smaller, nor the smiles of some doubtless well-meaning grown-ups who thought her fancies quaint and diverting. She had learned to keep them private by making secrecy a part of the game—voices must be kept low because of spies; even secret allies were feigning ignorance and must never be addressed as a Countess or a Duke.
But Butch Donnell was not listening; he was uncovering his load of goods and shouting greetings to an aproned man in the doorway of the trading-post. The children stood by the rear wheel and waited, looking up and down the gulch and watching each man who came along expectantly, but no one approached them, though a few curious glances were thrown their way. The minutes passed, and the boys began to look questioningly at Margot, whom they usually regarded as having all the answers.
A stocky, cheerful-looking man in a checked shirt and shapeless hat came swinging along with his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his trousers, and paused to exchange pleasantries with Butch—something about roads and weather, and a question about “diggings” that brought a laugh from the newcomer—and then came on his way chuckling. He saw the solemn little group standing by the wheel, and stopped.
“Hul-lo!” he said. “What’s this? Imported goods, or a mix-up with the first-class tickets?”
