“What!  Why didn’t you tell me before?  Listen!  Phillips is in trouble!  Go help him!  Call the boys!  Hurry!” As Jim Driscoll, with a halt in his walk, left him, Tom Bell stole quietly to one of the tunnels and ran to the trap-door which opened into an outhouse.

He found the corral full of saddle-horses and the Mountaineer House completely surrounded by Sheriff Paul’s, posse.

“Come on, boys,” said a voice.

“Did he get in?”

“Ye-ah — put his hand in with the bullet on a string, got his foot in the door, gave the password and heaved the door wide open.  Come on, now, and there’s orders not to take the woman, remember.”

Bell stole a rawboned roan from the corral and was far from the frightful battle at Mountaineer House before he dared burst forth into the vituperation which he heaped upon the name of Rosa Phillips.

* * * * *

Rosa sat strumming her guitar idly, and musing upon the events of the past few months.  Jack Phillips was serving a term in prison.  Driscoll had also been sent to the penitentiary.  One day a rumor reached her that he was threatening to turn state’s evidence, and to divulge the truth in regard to Rosenthal.

Three days later an iron bar was accidentally(?) dropped on his head; through some mysterious agent he was given poison, and died.  At the memory of it Rosa smiled her enigmatic and implacable smile.  Tom Bell was at large somewhere far to the north and she — she was rich now and she would go back to Monterey, perhaps.  She drew her guitar closer and sang: 

“The far distant sound of a harp’s soft strings — an echo on the air, The hidden page may be full of sweet things, of things that once were fair.  There’s a turned down page in each life, and mine — a story might unfold, But the end was sad of the dream divine.  It better rests untold.”

It was time for Harlan to arrive.  Charlie Harlan, the man whom she hoped to cajole into buying Mountaineer House.  She strolled out into the garden as Harlan rode up and tied his horse under one of the trees.

A happy pair passed.  A delicate girl mounted upon a little mule and a sturdy youth walking in the dust, his hand upon the beast’s shoulder.  With their serene and joy-illumined faces they somehow suggested the holy family, symbolical of all that was divine in a sordid world.

The girl smiled and waved to Rosa, but the young man doffed his hat coldly and hastened by.

“The sweet little Elena,” said Rosa to herself, “and her lover-husband.  I wear the silken wedding gown which no lover sees, but she travels the way in calico with the man she loves.  May the Blessed Virgin grant that she shall have no turned down pages in her life,” and forcing her proud and bitter mouth into a provocative smile, she went forward to welcome Harlan.

The Hanging of Charlie Price

III