I was surprised to find my companion speaking as though hewere about to set out on a journey, since he had not said anythingto me about it. There was a small portmanteau in the room, andthis he pulled out and began to strap. He was busily engaged at itwhen the cabman entered the room.
“Just give me a help with this buckle, cabman,” he said, kneelingover his task, and never turning his head.
The fellow came forward with a somewhat sullen, defiant air,and put down his hands to assist. At that instant there was a sharpclick, the jangling of metal, and Sherlock Holmes sprang to hisfeet again.
“Gentlemen,” he cried, with flashing eyes, “let me introduce youto Mr. Jefferson Hope, the murderer of Enoch Drebber and ofJoseph Stangerson.”
The whole thing occurred in a moment—so quickly that I hadno time to realize it. I have a vivid recollection of that instant,of Holmes’ triumphant expression and the ring of his voice, ofthe cabman’s dazed, savage face, as he glared at the glitteringhandcuffs, which had appeared as if by magic upon his wrists.
For a second or two we might have been a group of statues. Thenwith an inarticulate roar of fury, the prisoner wrenched himselffree from Holmes’s grasp, and hurled himself through the window.
Woodwork and glass gave way before him; but before he got quitethrough, Gregson, Lestrade, and Holmes sprang upon him like somany staghounds. He was dragged back into the room, and thencommenced a terrific conflict. So powerful and so fierce was hethat the four of us were shaken off again and again. He appearedto have the convulsive strength of a man in an epileptic fit. Hisface and hands were terribly mangled by his passage through theglass, but loss of blood had no effect in diminishing his resistance.
It was not until Lestrade succeeded in getting his hand inside hisneckcloth and half-strangling him that we made him realize thathis struggles were of no avail; and even then we felt no securityuntil we had pinioned his feet as well as his hands. That done, werose to our feet breathless and panting.
“We have his cab,” said Sherlock Holmes. “It will serve to take himto Scotland Yard. And now, gentlemen,” he continued, with a pleasantsmile, “we have reached the end of our little mystery. You are verywelcome to put any questions that you like to me now, and there is nodanger that I will refuse to answer them.”
Part II.
On the Great Alkali Plain
IN the central portion of the great North American Continentthere lies an arid and repulsive desert, which for many a long yearserved as a barrier against the advance of civilisation. From theSierra Nevada to Nebraska, and from the Yellowstone River in thenorth to the Colorado upon the south, is a region of desolationand silence. Nor is Nature always in one mood throughout thisgrim district. It comprises snow-capped and lofty mountains, anddark and gloomy valleys. There are swift-flowing rivers which dashthrough jagged ca?ons; and there are enormous plains, which inwinter are white with snow, and in summer are gray with the salinealkali dust. They all preserve, however, the common characteristicsof barrenness, inhospitality, and misery.
There are no inhabitants of this land of despair. A band ofPawnees or of Blackfeet may occasionally traverse it in order toreach other hunting-grounds, but the hardiest of the braves areglad to lose sight of those awesome plains, and to find themselvesonce more upon their prairies. The coyote skulks among thescrub, the buzzard flaps heavily through the air, and the clumsygrizzly bear lumbers through the dark ravines, and picks up suchsustenance as it can amongst the rocks. These are the sole dwellersin the wilderness.
In the whole world there can be no more dreary view thanthat from the northern slope of the Sierra Blanco. As far as theeye can reach stretches the great flat plain-land, all dusted overwith patches of alkali, and intersected by clumps of the dwarfishchaparral bushes. On the extreme verge of the horizon lie a longchain of mountain peaks, with their rugged summits flecked withsnow. In this great stretch of country there is no sign of life, norof anything appertaining to life. There is no bird in the steel-blueheaven, no movement upon the dull, gray earth—above all, there isabsolute silence. Listen as one may, there is no shadow of a soundin all that mighty wilderness; nothing but silence—complete andheart-subduing silence.
It has been said there is nothing appertaining to life upon thebroad plain. That is hardly true. Looking down from the SierraBlanco, one sees a pathway traced out across the desert, whichwinds away and is lost in the extreme distance. It is rutted withwheels and trodden down by the feet of many adventurers. Hereand there there are scattered white objects which glisten in thesun, and stand out against the dull deposit of alkali. Approach,and examine them! They are bones: some large and coarse, otherssmaller and more delicate. The former have belonged to oxen, andthe latter to men. For fifteen hundred miles one may trace thisghastly caravan route by these scattered remains of those who hadfallen by the wayside.
Looking down on this very scene, there stood upon the fourthof May, eighteen hundred and forty-seven, a solitary traveller. Hisappearance was such that he might have been the very genius ordemon of the region. An observer would have found it difficultto say whether he was nearer to forty or to sixty. His face waslean and haggard, and the brown parchment-like skin was drawntightly over the projecting bones; his long, brown hair and beardwere all flecked and dashed with white; his eyes were sunken in hishead, and burned with an unnatural lustre; while the hand whichgrasped his rifle was hardly more fleshy than that of a skeleton.