LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1584, 18 March 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A TERRIBLE SECRET. ‘ Halt !’ I started and almost fell from my horse, so astonished was I as this conmand. * A Spaniard?’ 1 said, as die man rode oat of the bashes at my left. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘bat torn on American soil. And who are you ?’ ‘ A Texan born and bred Do you know what a Texan does when a stranger baits him alone on the prairie ?’ ‘No.’ ‘ He gives him this.’ ‘ I covered the man wilh my revolver in an instant, but he neither started nor looked surprised; he only laughel, and said ; * I am not at all frighteted j I never knew fear in my life; and tken you wouldn’t shoot at an unarmed man, would ye ? Don’t you believe it ? Look and see. There is not a weapon of any kind cn my person—not even a penknife. So, put up your shooter, boy, and tell me who yon are.’ ‘I have told you already,’ I replied. * I am a Texan.’ * And where are you going, pray ?’ * Up the Brazos a hundred miles ; I have business there.’ The stranger stared, and his black eyes seemed to look me through and through. *Do you know anybody up that way ?’ he asked. ‘ Only two persons,’ I replied ; *an old woman and a young girl,’ * Heavens.’ The dark face grew darker still, and the fingers of his right hand worked convulsively. * You are agitated,’ I said. 'I hope you are not in great trouble.’ ‘ Trouble !’ he repeated, scornfully. * Can you keep a secret ?’ ‘Do not doubt me,’ I replied, eagerly. ‘ What is it ? Pray go on.’ We were both mounted and sitting side by side, he facing one way and I the other. •I do not know you,’ he said, ‘but I have something startling to tell you. Look at me with all the kenness of your nature, scan me closely. Have I the face of a murderer?’ My look was a stare; all that was in me of fear, wonder and suprise came into my face. I could hardly believe my own senses. Was the man crazy ? ‘ If you can keep a secret, I will tell you,” he went on. “To begin with, there is murder in my heart—not for you, not for anyone I hate, but for myself—and the woman 1 Listen.’ He bent his bead, and was silent for several seconds. Then he said : “ Someone is coming, 1 hear the clattering cf horses’ hoofs. What dogs they are to hunt a fellow-creature down ! Now, heaven help me!’ The stranger was right. The clattering of horses’ hoofs, rising and falling, up hill and down, almost as regular as clock-work, was born distinctly in our ears. ‘ Driven to the wall at last,’ whispered the stranger. ‘I am forsaken of all men Better is it that I die at once. Will you do me a favour, sir ?’ ‘With all my heart,” I said. “Tell me quick what it is.’ He took from his breast-pocket an envelope, and said, as I received it into my hand:

* It contains two photographs—one of myself, the other of the little girl that lives on the Brazos. Give them to her, and tell her of my fate. And here is something for yon ; it is a letter that is of more importance than even your own life. You must not read it now —not for the world; wait until you have seen the girl and told her all; then read. Do you nnderttand ? Disobey me in one particular, dare to do different from what I say, and I’ll haunt you all the days of your life I’ It would have been better for me had I turned and ran, had I cut loose from this strange man at once; but I did not do it; I simply stared at him in speechless amazement. ‘ Why do you look so astonished ?’ said the man. * Are you frightened ? You need not be. What am I but a poor coward, afraid of my own shadow! But you will take care of the letters—l know you will —for I have cursed them, and you dare not —’ Around a bend in the bushes, half a mile away, came a troop of flying horseman. ‘ Rangers!’ exclaimed the man at my side ; ‘ and they are after me. Do you think they will take me alive? Wait and see. Come a little closer; I wish to speak to you in a whisper.’ I leaned forward, and the man bent his body as if to whisper something in my ear, but instead he slipped my pistol from my belt, placed tbe muzzle to his head, and fired. Sou need not ask the result; you must know without my telling you that he was killed instantly. ‘ Jist a little pistol practice, I reckon, ’ said the leader of the rangers, as the troops thundered up. ‘ Who are you, anyhow ? And I may ask, who is the target ?’ * Look for yourself,’ I said, still staring at the man on the ground. The rangers knew the man at once, and the profame leader of the troop declared : ‘ A bigger desperado never lived. Why, he has killed more men than ye’ve got fingers and toes. But he’s dead now, very dead; and it was you that fetched him.’ I hastened to explain that he had taken his own life. ‘Very queer,” muttered the ranger; ‘I didn’t think that of him. Why, if he’d jist waited a minute longer— What a darn fool he was, anyhow !’ I said nothing about the letters 5 I preferred to keep that to myself. 1 only asked his name and a few more questions. ‘ He lugged sround some big Spanish name for a while,’ replied the trooper ; ‘ but he got tired of it, an’ took the name of Martin—Jack Martin, I b’lieve he called himself. But it don't mutter; he’s dead

now—dead as a stone. I kind o’ grieved over it, though he killed hisself when so many of us thar is what are light and free with the revolver.’ ‘lt wasn’t exactly on the square, I ventured to say j ’ there wasn t much style about him, after all.’ ‘Style I* repeated the ranger, ‘I should say not. When a feller gets so low as to kill hisself, he’s jist too mean to die. See!’ The philosophy of the man of pistols was not of the clearest kind, but I accepted it without argument, and asked : ‘ What are the latest exploits of this man Martin ?’ The ranger began at once to give me a thorough history of the deceased, and that which ! most wished to know he finally told. * For the last three months the rascal has been keepin’ k ind o’ quiet, ’ went on the ranger; * he’s lived up on the Brazos, and pretended to worlc some, an’, with the ’ception of a man killed now an’ then, he’s behaved quite decently. But it got hot for him arter a while, it did, an’ I’ll tell ye why. ‘ Did ye ever know that when two fellows love the same girl there s apt to be trouble ? It’s a fact, an’ that’s what settled Martin’s bash. He and Stumpy Allen loved the same damsel, but Martin had the lead by a long distance. Maybe ye knew the woman, seein’ as how you’re acquainted up on the Brazos ? Don’t, eh? Wal, her name is Mary Vane—- “ Blue-eyed Mary,” they call her—for she carries the handsomest eyes ever set in a woman’s head. «Wal, Martin jist worshipped this girl, and she (too darn bad) jist loved him to distraction. Why, they war goin’ to be married, had the day sea, an’ all things ready, even a jug of whiskey to sooth the feelings of the company, an’ then the old ’oman, Mary’s mother, jumped in an’ routed the enemy. I say she busted things; she whacked it to Martin right an’ left, an’ he skipped. * “If she marries anyone,” declared the old lady, “ it shall be Stumpy Allen, a man j not Jack Martin, a murderer!” ‘The next morniu’ the old ’oman was found dead in her bed. There was not a mark on her, not a single scratch to tell how or why she had passed in her checks. Even the doctors shook their heads an’ said it was all a mystery. As for Jack Martin well, Jack was gone ! ‘Do I think Jack had a hand in it ? Wal, stranger, I don’t know ; it looks that way mightily; but I haven’t science enough in me to tell how he did it. If he had lived a little longer, maybe it 'ud have come out somehow. But he’s dead now, and livin’ ’ith the angels, I reckon so, I’ll pass the deal’ I thought of the strange letter the man had given me, of the terrible secret he had started to tell me, and somehow, the cold chils crept over me as I wondered what the next turn of the wheel would bring. ‘lf you’re in a hurry, don’t wait for ns,’ said the ranger cheerfully; ‘ we’ll see that the chap is properly buried. What’s this in his pocket ? A deck of kurds, as I’m a sinner. Come, boys, tie yer bosses, and le’s have a leetle game right over his body. Pass on, stranger,’ I gave my horse the rein, and was soon out of sight and hearing of the ambitions body-carvers who had hunted this subject down, and were now playing euchre over his remains. That night I slept on the prairie, and the next day on I went, all the while trying to be cheerful, trying to forget what had happened, even trying to make myself believe that the secret in the letter, which I must not read until after I had seen the girl and told her the fate of her lover, wasamere trifle. Once I took the letter from my pocket with the full determination to read it, let the result ba ever so dreadful; but the dingy envelope looked at me as though it were alive, the black scrawl that marked the address shook and shivered my eyes, and not until I had returned it to concealment did the strange feeling pass away. ‘ What horrible secret is it ? I said to myself, as I rode on. And then I began to wonder if it would not in some way entangle me, and finally leave me the victim of some g/eat disaster. Then something within me whispered to go no farther on my way np to Brazos ; to turn and go anywhere but there; to leave blueeyed Mary in ignorance of what had happened, even to destroy the letter, the horrible letter, accursed as it was with a terrible secret, and try to bury this part of my life out of mind for ever. 'I am not a slave,’ I cried, ‘and I’ll not be thus held in chains. 1 am free, free!’ ITo be Continued.)