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     THE GULLY OF BLUEMANSDYKE,
     AND OTHER STORIES.


     A small Edition of this Book was published
     in 1889, under the Title of "Mysteries and
     Adventures."


     THE GULLY OF

     BLUEMANSDYKE,

     AND OTHER STORIES.


     By A. CONAN DOYLE,


     _Author of "Micah Clarke," "The White Company,"
     "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," &c._


     LONDON:
     WALTER SCOTT, LTD., 24 WARWICK LANE,
     PATERNOSTER ROW




CONTENTS.


                                          PAGE

     THE GULLY OF BLUEMANSDYKE               7

     THE PARSON OF JACKMAN'S GULCH          50

     MY FRIEND THE MURDERER                 79

     THE SILVER HATCHET                    114

     THE MAN FROM ARCHANGEL                144

     THAT LITTLE SQUARE BOX                188

     A NIGHT AMONG THE NIHILISTS           226




_THE GULLY OF BLUEMANSDYKE._

A TRUE COLONIAL STORY.


Broadhurst's store was closed, but the little back room looked very
comfortable that night. The fire cast a ruddy glow on ceiling and walls,
reflecting itself cheerily on the polished flasks and shot-guns which
adorned them. Yet a gloom rested on the two men who sat at either side
of the hearth, which neither the fire nor the black bottle upon the
table could alleviate.

"Twelve o'clock," said old Tom, the storeman glancing up at the wooden
timepiece which had come out with him in '42. "It's a queer thing,
George, they haven't come."

"It's a dirty night," said his companion, reaching out his arm for a
plug of tobacco. "The Wawirra's in flood, maybe; or maybe their horses
is broke down; or they've put it off, perhaps. Great Lord, how it
thunders! Pass us over a coal, Tom."

He spoke in a tone which was meant to appear easy, but with a painful
thrill in it which was not lost upon his mate. He glanced uneasily at
him from under his grizzled eyebrows.

"You think it's all right, George?" he said, after a pause.

"Think what's all right?"

"Why, that the lads are safe."

"Safe! Of course they're safe. What the devil is to harm them?"

"Oh, nothing; nothing, to be sure," said old Tom. "You see, George,
since the old woman died, Maurice has been all to me; and it makes me
kinder anxious. It's a week since they started from the mine, and you'd
ha' thought they'd be here now. But it's nothing unusual, I s'pose;
nothing at all. Just my darned folly."

"What's to harm them?" repeated George Hutton again, arguing to convince
himself rather than his comrade. "It's a straight road from the diggin's
to Rathurst, and then through the hills past Bluemansdyke, and over the
Wawirra by the ford, and so down to Trafalgar by the bush track.
There's nothin' deadly in all that, is there? My son Allan's as dear to
me as Maurice can be to you, mate," he continued; "but they know the
ford well, and there's no other bad place. They'll be here to-morrow
night, certain."

"Please God they may!" said Broadhurst; and the two men lapsed into
silence for some time, moodily staring into the glow of the fire, and
pulling at their short clays.

It was indeed, as Hutton had said, a dirty night. The wind was howling
down through the gorges of the western mountains, and whirling and
eddying among the streets of Trafalgar; whistling through the chinks in
the rough wood cabins, and tearing away the frail shingles which formed
the roofs. The streets were deserted, save for one or two stragglers
from the drinking shanties, who wrapped their cloaks around them and
staggered home through the wind and rain towards their own cabins.

The silence was broken by Broadhurst, who was evidently still ill at
ease.

"Say, George," he said, "what's become of Josiah Mapleton?"

"Went to the diggin's."

"Ay; but he sent word he was coming back."

"But he never came."

"An' what's become of Jos Humphrey?" he resumed, after a pause.

"He went diggin', too."

"Well, did he come back?"

"Drop it, Broadhurst; drop it, I say," said Hutton, springing to his
feet and pacing up and down the narrow room. "You're trying to make a
coward of me! You know the men must have gone up country prospectin' or
farmin', maybe. What is it to us where they went? You don't think I have
a register of every man in the colony, as Inspector Burton has of the
lags."

"Sit down, George, and listen," said old Tom. "There's something queer
about that road; something I don't understand, and don't like. Maybe you
remember how Maloney, the one-eyed scoundrel, made his money in the
early mining days. He'd a half-way drinking shanty on the main road up
on a kind of bluff, where the Lena comes down from the hills. You've
heard, George, how they found a sort of wooden slide from his little
back room down to the river; an' how it came out that man after man had
had his drink doctored, and been shot down that into eternity, like a
bale of goods. No one will ever know how many were done away with there.
_They_ were all supposed to be farmin' and prospectin', and the like,
till their bodies were picked out of the rapids. It's no use mincing
matters, George; we'll have the troopers along to the diggin's if those
lads don't turn up by to-morrow night."

"As you like, Tom," said Hutton.

"By the way, talking of Maloney--it's a strange thing," said Broadhurst,
"that Jack Haldane swears he saw a man as like Maloney with ten years
added to him as could be. It was in the bush on Monday morning. Chance,
I suppose; but you'd hardly think there could be two pair of shoulders
in the world carrying such villainous mugs on the top of them."

"Jack Haldane's a fool," growled Hutton, throwing open the door and
peering anxiously out into the darkness, while the wind played with his
long grizzled beard, and sent a train of glowing sparks from his pipe
down the street.

"A terrible night!" he said, as he turned back towards the fire.

Yes, a wild, tempestuous night; a night for birds of darkness and for
beasts of prey. A strange night for seven men to lie out in the gully at
Bluemansdyke, with revolvers in their hands, and the devil in their
hearts.

       *       *       *       *       *

The sun was rising after the storm. A thick, heavy steam reeked up from
the saturated ground, and hung like a pall over the flourishing little
town of Trafalgar. A bluish mist lay in wreaths over the wide track of
bushland around, out of which the western mountains loomed like great
islands in a sea of vapour.

Something was wrong in the town. The most casual glance would have
detected that. There was a shouting and a hurrying of feet. Doors were
slammed and rude windows thrown open. A trooper of police came
clattering down with his carbine unslung. It was past the time for Joe
Buchan's saw-mill to commence work, but the great wheel was motionless,
for the hands had not appeared.

There was a surging, pushing crowd in the main street before old Tom
Broadhurst's house, and a mighty clattering of tongues. "What was it?"
demanded the new-comers, panting and breathless. "Broadhurst has shot
his mate." "He has cut his own throat." "He has struck gold in the clay
floor of his kitchen." "No; it was his son Maurice who had come home
rich." "Who had not come back at all." "Whose horse had come back
without him." At last the truth had come out; and there was the old
sorrel horse in question whinnying and rubbing his neck against the
familiar door of the stable, as if entreating entrance; while two
haggard, grey-haired men held him by either bridle, and gazed blankly at
his reeking sides.

"God help me," said old Tom Broadhurst; "it is as I feared!"

"Cheer up, mate," said Hutton, drawing his rough straw hat down over his
brow. "There's hope yet."

A sympathetic and encouraging murmur ran through the crowd.

"Horse ran away, likely."

"Or been stolen."

"Or he's swum the Wawirra an' been washed off," suggested one Job's
comforter.

"He ain't got no marks of bruising," said another, more hopeful.

"Rider fallen off drunk, maybe," said a bluff old sheep-farmer. "I kin
remember," he continued, "coming into town 'bout this hour myself, with
my head in my holster, an' thinking I was a six-chambered
revolver--mighty drunk I was."

"Maurice had a good seat; he'd never be washed off."

"Not he."

"The horse has a weal on its off fore-quarter," remarked another, more
observant than the rest.

"A blow from a whip, maybe."

"It would be a darned hard one."

"Where's Chicago Bill?" said someone; "he'll know."

Thus invoked, a strange, gaunt figure stepped out in front of the crowd.
He was an extremely tall and powerful man, with the red shirt and high
boots of a miner. The shirt was thrown open, showing the sinewy throat
and massive chest. His face was seamed and scarred with many a conflict,
both with Nature and his brother man; yet beneath his ruffianly exterior
there lay something of the quiet dignity of the gentleman. This man was
a veteran gold-hunter; a real old Californian 'forty-niner, who had left
the fields in disgust when private enterprise began to dwindle before
the formation of huge incorporated companies with their ponderous
machinery. But the red clay with the little shining points had become to
him as the very breath of his nostrils, and he had come half-way round
the world to seek it once again.

"Here's Chicago Bill," he said; "what is it?"

Bill was naturally regarded as an oracle, in virtue of his prowess and
varied experience. Every eye was turned on him as Braxton, the young
Irish trooper of constabulary, said, "What do you make of the horse,
Bill?"

The Yankee was in no hurry to commit himself. He surveyed the animal for
some time with his shrewd little grey eye. He bent and examined the
girths; then he felt the mane carefully. He stooped once more and
examined the hoofs and then the quarters. His eye rested on the blue
wheal already mentioned. This seemed to put him on a scent, for he gave
a long, low whistle, and proceeded at once to examine the hair on either
side of the saddle. He saw something conclusive apparently, for, with a
sidelong glance under his shaggy eyebrows at the two old men beside him,
he turned and fell back among the crowd.

"Well, what d'ye think?" cried a dozen voices.

"A job for you," said Bill, looking up at the young Irish trooper.

"Why, what is it? What's become of young Broadhurst?"

"He's done what better men has done afore. He has sunk a shaft for gold
and panned out a coffin."

"Speak out, man! what have you seen?" cried a husky voice.

"I've seen the graze of a bushranger's bullet on the horse's quarter,
an' I've seen a drop of the rider's blood on the edge of the
saddle--Here, hold the old man up, boys; don't let him drop. Give him a
swig of brandy an' lead him inside. Say," he continued, in a whisper,
gripping the trooper by the wrist, "mind, I'm in it. You an' I play this
hand together. I'm dead on sich varmin. We'll do as they do in Nevada,
strike while the iron is hot. Get any men you can together. I s'pose
you're game to come yourself?"

"Yes, I'll come," said young Braxton, with a quiet smile.

The American looked at him approvingly. He had learned in his wanderings
that an Irishman who grows quieter when deeply stirred is a very
dangerous specimen of the genus _homo_.

"Good lad!" he muttered; and the two went down the street together
towards the station-house, followed by half-a-dozen of the more resolute
of the crowd.

       *       *       *       *       *

One word before we proceed with our story, or our chronicle rather, as
every word of it is based upon fact. The colonial trooper of fifteen or
twenty years ago was a very different man from his representative of
to-day. Not that I would imply any slur upon the courage of the latter;
but for reckless dare-devilry and knight-errantry