Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/208

202 in the corner of the room from which a few inches of plastering had fallen. There were hopeful men who believed that the danger was over, and, having passed, would, by some mysterious law, never recur; there were others who shook their heads and said that the next shock would be fatal. There were crowds around the dust that arose from fallen chimneys and cornices, around run-a-way horses that had dashed as madly as their drivers against lamp-posts, around telegraph and newspaper offices, eager to know the extent of the disaster. Along the remoter avenues and cross streets dwellings were deserted, people sat upon their doorsteps or in chairs upon the side-walks, fearful of the houses they had built with their own hands, and doubtful even of this blue arch above them that smiled so deceitfully;of those far-reaching fields beyond, which they had cut into lots and bartered and sold, and which now seemed to suddenly rise against them, or slip and wither away from their very feet. It seemed so outrageous that this dull, patient earth, whose homeliness they had adorned and improved, and which, whatever their other fortune or vicissitudes, at least had been their sure inheritance, should have become so faithless. Small wonder that the owner of a little house, which had sunk on the reclaimed water-front, stooped in the speechless and solemn absurdity of his wrath to shake his clenched fist in the face of the Great Mother.

The real damage to life and property had been so slight, and in such pronounced contrast to the prevailing terror, that half an hour later only a sense of the ludicrous remained with the greater masses of the people. Mr. Dumphy, like all practical, unimaginative men, was among the first to recover his presence of mind with the passing of the immediate danger. People took confidence when this great man, who had so much to lose, after sharply remanding his clerks and everybody else back to business, re-entered his office. He strode at once to his desk. But the envelope was gone! He looked hurriedly among his papers, on the floor, by the broken window, but in vain.

Mr. Dumphy instantly rang his bell. The clerk appeared.

"Was that draft paid?"

"No, sir, we were counting the money when—" "Stop it!—return the draft to me."

The young man was confiding to his confrères his suspicions of a probable "run" on the bank, as indicated by Mr. Dumphy's caution, when he was again summoned by Mr. Dumphy.

"Go to Mr. Poinsett's office and ask him to come here at once."

In a few moments the clerk returned out of breath. "Mr. Poinsett left quarter of an hour ago, sir, for San Antonio."

"San Antonio!"

"Yes, sir; they say there's bad news from the Mission." CHAPTER XLII. IN WHICH BOTH JUSTICE AND THE HEAVENS FALL. day following the discovery of the murder of Victor Ramirez was one of the intensest excitement in One Horse Gulch. It was not that killing was rare in that pastoral community—foul murder had been done there upon the bodies of various citizens of more or less respectability, and the victim, in the present instance, was a stranger, and a man who awakened no personal sympathy ; but the suspicion that swiftly and instantly attached to two such important people as Mr. and Mrs. Conroy already objects of severe criticism was sufficient to exalt this particular crime above all others in thrilling interest. For two days business was practically suspended.

The discovery of the murder was made by Sal, who stumbled upon the body of the unfortunate Victor early the next morning during a walk on Conroy's Hill, manifestly in search of the missing man, who had not returned to the hotel that night. A few flippant souls, misunderstanding Miss Clark's interest in the stranger, asserted that he had committed suicide to escape her attentions; but all jocular hypotheses had ceased when it became known that Gabriel and his wife had fled. Then came the report that Gabriel had been seen by a passing miner early in the day "shoving" the stranger along the trail with his hand on his collar, and exchanging severe words. Then the willing testimony of Miss Clark that she had seen Mrs. Conroy in secret converse with Victor before the murder; then the unwilling evidence of the Chinaman who had overtaken Gabriel with the letter, but who heard the sounds of quarreling and cries for help in the bushes after his departure; but this evidence was excluded from the inquest, by virtue of the famous Californian law that a Pagan was of necessity a liar, and that truth