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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.

"