THE GREY DAWN

BY

STEWART EDWARD WHITE

Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty

ILLUSTRATIONS

They moved away, leaving Mrs. Morrell alone, biting her lips and planning revenges

King listened to him in silence

"Look here, don't try to come that rot. I said, get out—and I mean it!"

"Call all you please," he sneered. "Nobody's going to pay any attention to your calls at Jake's Place!"

OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE CLAIM JUMPERS THE WESTERNERS THE BLAZED TRAIL ARIZONA NIGHTS BLAZED TRAIL STORIES THE CABIN CAMP AND TRAIL CONJUROR'S HOUSE THE FOREST THE SIGN AT SIX THE RULES OF THE GAME

THE RIVERMAN THE SILENT PLACES THE ADVENTURES OF BOBBY ORDE THE MOUNTAINS THE PASS THE MAGIC FOREST THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS AFRICAN CAMP FIRES THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY GOLD THE MYSTERY (With Samuel Hopkins Adams)

THE GRAY DAWN

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS IN TALE

MILTON KEITH: a young lawyer from Baltimore. NAN KEITH: his wife. JOHN SHERWOOD: a gambler. PATSY SHERWOOD: his wife. ARTHUR MORRELL: an English adventurer. MIMI MORRELL: his wife or mistress. BEN SANSOME: a lady-killer, destined to become an "old beau." W. T. COLEMAN, or "old Vigilante," a leader. DAVID TERRY: a leader on the other side. JAMES KING OF WILLIAM: a modern Crusader. THE SPIRIT OF SAN FRANCISCO AND OTHERS

I

On the veranda of the Bella Union Hotel, San Francisco, a man sat enjoying his morning pipe. The Bella Union overlooked the Plaza of that day, a dusty, unkempt, open space, later to be swept and graded and dignified into Portsmouth Square. The man was at the younger fringe of middle life. He was dressed neatly and carefully in the fashionable costume of the time, which was the year of grace 1852. As to countenance, he was square and solid; as to physique, he was the same; as to expression, he inclined toward the quietly humorous; in general he would strike the observer as deliberately, philosophically competent. A large pair of steelbound spectacles sat halfway down his nose. Sometimes he read his paper through their lenses; and sometimes, forgetting, he read over the tops of their bows. The newspaper he held was an extraordinary document. It consisted of four large pages. The outside page was filled solidly with short eight or ten line advertisements; the second page grudgingly vouchsafed a single column of news items; the third page warmed to a column of editorial and

another of news; all the rest of the space on these and the entire fourth page was again crowded close with the short advertisements. They told of the arrival of ships, the consignment of goods, the movements of real estate, the sales of stock, but mainly of auctions. The man paid little attention to the scanty news, and none at all to the editorials. His name was John Sherwood, and he was a powerful and respected public gambler.

The approach across the Plaza of a group of men caused him to lay aside his paper, and with it his spectacles. The doffing of the latter strangely changed his whole expression. The philosophical middle-aged quietude fell from him. He became younger, keener, more alert. It was as though he had removed a disguise.

The group approaching were all young men, and all dressed in the height of fashion. At that rather picturesque time this implied the flat-brimmed beaver hat; the long swallowtail, or skirted coat; the tight "pantaloons"; varicoloured, splendid, low-cut waistcoats of satin, of velvet, or of brocade; high wing collars; varnished boots; many sparkling, studs and cravat pins; rather longish hair; and whiskers cut close to the cheek or curling luxuriantly under the chin. They were prosperous, well-fed, arrogant-looking youths, carrying their crests high, the light of questing recklessness in their eyes, ready to laugh, drink, or fight with anybody. At sight of Sherwood they waved friendly hands, and canes, and veered in his direction.

"Yo're just the man we are looking for!" cried a tall, dark, graceful young fellow, "We are all 'specially needful of wisdom. The drinks are on some one, and we cain't decide who."

John Sherwood, his keen eyes twinkling, set his chair down on four legs.

"State your case, Cal," he said.

Cal waved a graceful hand at a stout, burly, red-faced man whose thick blunt fingers, square blue jowl, and tilted cigar gave the flavour of the professional politician. "John Webb, here-excuse me, Sheriff John Webb-presumin' on the fact that he has been to the mines, and that he came here in '49, arrogates to himself the exclusive lyin' privileges, of this assemblage."

"Pretty large order," commented Sherwood.

"_Pre_cisely," agreed Cal, "and that's why the drinks are on him!"

But Sheriff Webb, who had been chuckling cavernously inside his bulky frame, spoke up in a harsh and husky voice: "I told them an innocent experience of mine, and they try to hold me up for drinks. I don't object to giving them a reasonable amount of drinks—what I call reasonable," he added hastily, "but I object to being held up."

"He says he used to cook," put in a small, alert, nervous, rather flashily dressed individual named Rowlee, editor of the Bugle.

"I did!" stoutly asseverated Webb.

"And that he baked a loaf of bread so hard nobody could eat it."

"Sounds perfectly reasonable," said Sherwood.

"And that nobody could break it," Rowlee went on.

"I have no difficulty in believing that," said Sherwood judicially. "Your case is mighty weak yet, Cal."

"But he claims it was so hard that they used it for a grindstone."

"I did not!" disclaimed Webb indignantly.

An accusing groan met this statement.

"I tell you I didn't say anything of the kind," roared Webb, his bull voice overtopping them all.

"Well, what did you say, then?" challenged Calhoun Bennett.

"I said we tried to use her as a grindstone," said Webb, "but it didn't work."

"Weak case, boys; weak case," said Sherwood.

The little group, their eyes wide, their nostrils distended, waited accusingly for Webb to proceed. After an interval, the sheriff, staring critically at the lighted end of his cigar, went on in a drawling voice:

"Yes, we, couldn't get a hole through her to hang her axle on. We blunted all our drills. Every Sunday we'd try a new scheme. Finally we laid her flat under a tree and rigged a lightnin' rod down to the centre of her. No use. She tore that lightning all to pieces."

He looked up at them with a limpid, innocent eye, to catch John Sherwood gazing at him accusingly.

"John Webb," said he "you forget that I came out here in, '48. On your honour, do you expect me to believe that yarn?"

"Well," said Webb, gazing again at his cigar end, "no—really I don't. The fact is," he went on with a perfectly solemn air of confidence, "the fact is, I've lived out here so long and told so many damn lies that now without some help I don't know when to believe myself."

"Do we get that drink?" insisted Calhoun Bennett.

"Oh, Lord, yes, you always get a drink."

"Well, come on and get it then—you, too, of course, Mr. Sherwood."

The gambler arose, and began leisurely to fold his paper and to put away his spectacles.

"I see you got Mex Ryan off, Cal," he observed. "You either had extraordinary luck, or you're a mighty fine lawyer. Looked like a clear case to me. He just naturally went in and beat Rucker half to death in his own store. How did you do it?"

"I assure yo' it was no sinecure," laughed the tall, dark youth. "I earned my fee."

"Yes," grumbled Webb, "but he got six months—and I got to take care of him. Cluttering up my jail with dirty beasts like Mex Ryan! Could just as easy have turned him loose!"

"That would have been a little too much!" smiled Bennett. "It was takin' some risk to let him off as easy as we did. It isn't so long since the Vigilantes."

"Oh, hell, we can handle that sort of trash now," snorted Webb.

"Who was backing Mex, anyway?" asked Rowlee curiously.

"Better ask who had it in for Rucker," suggested the fourth member of the group, a man who had not heretofore spoken. This was Dick Blatchford, a round-faced, rather corpulent, rather silent though jovial-looking individual, with a calculating and humorous eye. He was magnificently apparelled, but rather untidy.

"Well, I do ask it," said Rowlee.

But to this he got no response.

"Come on, ain't you got that valuable paper folded up yet?" rumbled Webb to Sherwood.

They all turned down the high-pillared veranda, toward the bar, talking idly and facetiously of last night's wine and this morning's head. A door opened at their very elbow, and in it a woman appeared.

II

She was a slender woman, of medium height, with a small, well-poised head, on which the hair lay smooth and glossy. Her age was somewhere between thirty and thirty-five years. A stranger would have been first of all impressed by the imperious carriage of her head and shoulders, the repose of her attitude. Become a friend or a longer acquaintance, he would have noticed more particularly her wide low brow, her steady gray eyes and her grave but humorous lips. But inevitably he would have gone back at last to her more general impression. Ben Sansome, the only man in town who did nothing, made society and dress a profession and the judgment of women a religion, had long since summed her up: "She carries her head charmingly."

This poised, wise serenity of carriage was well set off by the costume of the early fifties—a low collar, above which her neck rose like a flower stem; flowing sleeves; full skirts with many silken petticoats that whispered and rustled; low sandalled shoes, their ties crossed and recrossed around white slender ankles. A cameo locket, hung on a heavy gold chain, rose and fell with her breast; a cameo brooch pinned together the folds of her bodice; massive and wide bracelets of gold clasped her wrists and vastly set off her rounded, slender forearms.

She stood quite motionless in the doorway, nodding with a little smile in response to the men's sweeping salutes.

"You will excuse me gentlemen, I am sure," said Sherwood formally, and instantly turned aside.

The woman in the doorway thereupon preceded him down a narrow, bare, unlighted hallway, opened another door, and entered a room. Sherwood followed, closing the door after him.

"Want something, Patsy?" he inquired.

The room was obviously one of the best of the Bella Union. That is to say, it was fairly large, the morning sun streamed in through its two windows, and it contained a small iron stove. In all other respects it differed quite from any other hotel room in the San Francisco of that time. A heavy carpet covered the floor, the upholstery was of leather or tapestry, wall paper adorned the walls, a large table supported a bronze lamp and numerous books and papers, a canary, in a brass cage, hung in the sunshine of one of the windows, flitted from perch to perch, occasionally uttering a few liquid notes under its breath.

"Just a little change, Jack, if you have some with you," said the woman. Her speaking voice was rich and low.

Sherwood thrust a forefinger into his waistcoat pocket, and produced one of the hexagonal slugs of gold current at that time.

"Oh, not so much!" she protested.

"All I've got. What are you up to to-day, Patsy?"

"I thought of going down to Yet Lee's—unless there is something better to do."

"Doesn't sound inspiring. Did you go to that fair or bazaar thing yesterday?"

She smiled with her lips, but her eyes darkened.

"Yes, I went. It was not altogether enjoyable. I doubt if I'll try that sort of thing again."

Sherwood's eye suddenly became cold and dangerous.

"If they didn't treat you right—"

She smiled, genuinely this time, at his sudden truculence.

"They didn't mob me," she rejoined equably, "and, anyway, I suppose it is to be expected."

"It's that cat of Morrell's," he surmised.

"Oh, she—and others. I ought not to have spoken of it, Jack. It's really beneath the contempt of sensible people."

"I'll get after Morrell, if he doesn't make that woman behave," said Sherwood, without attention to her last speech.

She smiled at him again, entirely calm and reasonable.

"And what good would it do to get after Morrell?" she asked. "Mrs. Morrell only stands for what most of them feel. I don't care, anyway. I get along splendidly without them." She sauntered over to the window, where she began idly to poke one finger at the canary.

"For the life of me, Patsy," confessed Sherwood, "I can't see that they're an inspiring lot, anyway. From what little I've seen of them, they haven't more than an idea apiece. They'd bore me to death in a week."

"I know that. They'd bore me, too. Don't talk about them. When do they expect the Panama—do you know?"

But with masculine persistence he refused to abandon the topic.

"I must confess I don't see the point," he insisted. "You've got more brains than the whole lot of them together, you've got more sense, you're a lot better looking"—he surveyed her, standing in the full light by the canary's cage, her little glossy head thrown back, her pink lips pouted teasingly at the charmed and agitated bird, her fine clear features profiled in the gold of the sunshine—"and you're a thoroughbred, egad, which most of them are not."

"Oh, thank you, kind sir." She threw him a humourous glance. "But of course that is not the point."

"Oh, isn't it? Well, perhaps you'll tell me the point."

She left the canary and came to face him.

"I'm not respectable," she said.

At the word he exploded.

"Respectable? What are you talking about? You talk as though—as though we weren't married, egad!"

"Well, Jack," she replied, a faint mocking smile curving the corners of her mouth, "when it comes to that, we did elope, you'll have to acknowledge. And we weren't married for quite a long time afterward."

"We got married as soon as we could, didn't we?" he cried indignantly. "Was it our fault that we didn't get married sooner? And what difference did it make, anyway?"

"Now don't get all worked up," she chided. "I'm just telling you why, in the eyes of some of these people, I'm not 'respectable.' You asked me, you know."

"Go on," he conceded to this last.

"Well, we ran away and weren't married. That's item one. Then perhaps you've forgotten that I sat on lookout for some of your games in the early days in the mining camps?"

"Forgotten?" said Sherwood, the light of reminiscence springing to his eyes.

The same light had come into hers.

"Will you ever forget," she murmured, "the camps by the summer streams, the log towns, the lights, the smoke, the freedom—the comradeship—"

"Homesick for the old rough days?" he teased.

"Kind of," she confessed. "But it wasn't 'respectable'—a—well, a fairly good-looking woman in a miner's saloon."

He flared again.

"Do you mean to tell me they dare say—"

"They dare say anything—behind our backs," she said, with cool contempt. "It's all drivelling nonsense. I care nothing about it. But you asked me. Don't bother your head about it. Have you anything to suggest doing this morning, instead of Yet Lee's?" She turned away from him toward the door leading into another room. "I'll get my hat," she said over her shoulder.

"Look here, Patsy," said Sherwood, rather grimly, "if you want to get in with that lot, you shall."

She stopped at this, and turned square around.

"If I do—when I do—I will," she replied. "But, John Sherwood, you mustn't interfere—never in the world! Promise!" She stood there, almost menacing in her insistence, evidently resolved to nip this particularly masculine resolution in the bud.

"Egad, Patsy," cried Sherwood, "you are certainly a raving beauty!"

He covered the ground between them in two strides, and crushed her in his arms. She threw her head back for his kiss.

A knock sounded, and almost immediately a very black, very bullet-headed young negro thrust his head in at the door.

"Sam," said Sherwood deliberately, "some day I'm going to kill you!"

"Yes, sah! yes, sah!" agreed Sam heartily.

"Well, what the devil do you want?"

"Th' Panama done been, signalled; yes, sah!" said the negro, but without following his head through the door.

"Well, what the devil do you suppose I care, you black limb?" roared Sherwood, "and what do you mean coming in here before you're told?"

"Yes, sah! yes, sah, dat's right," ducked Sam, "Shell I awdah the team, sah?"

"I suppose we might as well go see her docked. Would you like it?" he asked his wife.

"I'd love it."

"Then get the team. And some day I'm going to kill you."

III

Mrs. Sherwood prepared herself first of all by powdering her nose. This simple operation, could it have been seen by the "respectable" members of the community, would in itself have branded her as "fast," In those days cosmetics of any sort were by most considered inventions of the devil. It took extraordinary firmness of character even to protect one's self against sunburn by anything more artificial than the shadow of a hat or a parasol. Then she assumed a fascinating little round hat that fitted well down over her small head. This, innocent of pins, was held on by an elastic at the back. A ribbon, hanging down directly in front, could be utilized to steady it in a breeze.

"All ready," she announced, picking up a tiny parasol, about big enough for a modern doll. "You may carry my mantle."

Near the foot of the veranda steps waited Sam at the heads of a pair of beautiful, slim, satiny horses. Their bay coats had been groomed until they rippled and sparkled with every movement of the muscles beneath. Wide red-lined nostrils softly expanded and contracted with a restrained eagerness; and soft eyes rolled in the direction of the Sherwoods—keen, lithe, nervous, high-strung creatures, gently stamping little hoofs, impatiently tossing dainty heads, but nevertheless making no movement that would stir the vehicle that stood "cramped" at the steps. Their harness carried no blinders; their tails, undocked, swept the ground; but their heads were pulled into the air by the old stupid overhead check reins until their noses pointed almost straight ahead. It gave them rather a haughty air.

Sherwood stepped in first, took the reins in one hand, and offered his other hand to his wife. Sam instantly left the horses' heads to hold a wicker contrivance against the arc of the wheels. This was to protect skirts from dusty tires. Mrs. Sherwood settled as gracefully to her place as a butterfly on its flower. Sam snatched away the wicker guards. Sherwood spoke to the horses. With a purring little snort they moved smoothly away. The gossamerlike wheels threw the light from their swift spokes. Sam, half choked by the swirl of dust, gazed after them. Sherwood, leaning slightly forward against the first eagerness of the animals, showed a strong, competent, arresting figure, with his beaver hat, his keen grim face, his snow-white linen, and the blue of his brass-buttoned-coat. The beautiful horses were stepping as one, a delight to the eye, making nothing whatever of the frail vehicle at their heels. But Sam's eye lingered longest on the small stately figure of his mistress. She sat very straight, her head high, the little

parasol poised against the sun, the other hand clasping the hat ribbon.

"Dem's quality foh sure!" said Sam with conviction.