Part 41

"His Honor has come to say something important to you," he remarked, oracularly.

"Hold you--does he need a Sheriff to tell him when to spik?" was Grassette's surly comment. Then he turned to the Governor. "Let us speak in French," he said, in patois. "This rope-twister will not understan'. He is no good--I spit at him!"

The Governor nodded, and, despite the Sheriff's protest, they spoke in French, Grassette with his eyes intently fixed on the other, eagerly listening.

"I have come," said the Governor, "to say to you, Grassette, that you still have a chance of life."

He paused, and Grassette's face took on a look of bewilderment and vague anxiety. A chance of life--what did it mean?

"Reprieve?" he asked, in a hoarse voice.

The Governor shook his head. "Not yet; but there is a chance. Something has happened. A man's life is in danger, or it may be he is dead; but more likely he is alive. You took a life; perhaps you can save one now. Keeley's Gulch, the mine there!"

"They have found it--gold?" asked Grassette, his eyes staring. He was forgetting for a moment where and what he was.

"He went to find it, the man whose life is in danger. He had heard from a trapper who had been a miner once. While he was there a landslip came, and the opening to the mine was closed up."

"There were two ways in. Which one did he take?" cried Grassette.

"The only one he could take, the only one he or any one else knew. You know the other way in--you only, they say."

"I found it--the easier, quick way in; a year ago I found it."

"Was it near the other entrance?"

Grassette shook his head. "A mile away."

"If the man is alive--and we think he is--you are the only person that can save him. I have telegraphed the Government. They do not promise, but they will reprieve, and save your life if you find the man."

"Alive or dead?"

"Alive or dead, for the act would be the same. I have an order to take you to the Gulch, if you will go; and I am sure that you will have your life if you do it. I will promise--ah, yes, Grassette, but it shall be so! Public opinion will demand it. You will do it?"

"To go free--altogether?"

"Well, but if your life is saved, Grassette?"

The dark face flushed, then grew almost repulsive again in its sullenness.

"Life--and this, in prison, shut in year after year! To do always what some one else wills, to be a slave to a warder! To have men like that over me that have been a boss of men--wasn't it that drove me to kill?--to be treated like dirt! And to go on with this, while outside there is free life, and to go where you will at your own price--no! What do I care for life? What is it to me! To live like this--ah, I would break my head against these stone walls, I would choke myself with my own hands! If I stayed here, I would kill again--I would kill--kill!"

"Then to go free altogether--that would be the wish of all the world, if you save this man's life, if it can be saved. Will you not take the chance? We all have to die some time or other, Grassette, some sooner, some later; and when you go, will you not want to take to God in your hands a life saved for a life taken? Have you forgotten God, Grassette? We used to remember Him in the Church of St. Francis down there at home."

There was a moment's silence, in which Grassette's head was thrust forward, his eyes staring into space. The old Seigneur had touched a vulnerable corner in his nature.

Presently he said in a low voice: "To be free altogether!... What is his name? Who is he?"

"His name is Bignold," the Governor answered. He turned to the Sheriff inquiringly. "That is it, is it not?" he asked, in English, again.

"James Tarran Bignold," answered the Sheriff.

The effect of these words upon Grassette was remarkable. His body appeared to stiffen, his face became rigid, he stared at the Governor blankly, appalled; the color left his face, and his mouth opened with a curious and revolting grimace. The others drew back, startled, and watched him.

"Sang de Dieu!" he murmured at last, with a sudden gesture of misery and rage.