"'Because, I killed him.'

"'You?'

"'Yes; I ran an engine over him, couldn't make him hear or see me. He was the first man I ever killed; strange he should be _this_ particular man.'

"'It's fate,' said the woman, rocking slowly back and forth, 'it's fate, but it seems as though I like you better now that you were my avenger.

That accident drove revenge out of my heart, caused me to let _him_ be forgotten, and to live for my child. I have lived for her. I live to-day for her and I will continue to live for her.'

"'My disgrace killed my mother and ruined my father. I swore I would be an honest woman, and I sought employment to earn a living for my babe and myself, but every avenue was closed to me. I washed and scrubbed while I was able to teach music splendidly, but I could get no pupils. I made shirts for a pittance and daily refused, to me, fortunes for dishonor. I have gone hungry and almost naked to pay for my baby's board, but I was hunted down at last.

"'One day, after many rebuffs in seeking employment, I went to the home of a sister of my child's father, and took the baby, told her who I was and asked her to help me to a chance to work. The good woman scarcely looked at me or the child; she said that had it not been for such as I, poor Charles would have been alive; his blood was on my head; I ought to ask G.o.d to wash my blood-stained hands.

"'I went away from that house with my mind made up what to do. I would put my child in honest hands, and chain myself to the stake to suffer everlasting d.a.m.nation for her sweet sake.

"'She is in the Mission San Antonio now, between three and four, a perfect little princess, she looks like me, and grows, oh, so lovely! If you could see her, you'd love her.

"'I can't go to see her any more; she is old enough to remember. The last time I was there, she demanded a papa!

"'I am making a great deal of money. Many of the rich men, whose Puritan wives and daughters refused me honest work, are squandering lots of their wealth in my houses. I am saving money, too; and propose, as soon as I can get a neat fortune together to go away to the ends of the earth, and have my little girl with me. I will raise her to know herself and to know mankind.'

"'And what do you want me to do, madam?'

"'I want you to be that child's guardian; the honest man through whom she will reach the outside of San Antonio and the world. Who will go between her and me until a happier time.'

"'I am only a rough engineer; the child will be raised to consider herself well off, perhaps rich.'

"'Adopt her. I will stay in the background; make her expenditures and her education what you like. I will trust you.'

"'I can't do that.'

"'You are single; your life is hard; I have money enough for us all. Let us go to the Sandwich islands, anywhere, and commence life anew. The little one will know no other father, and all inquiry will be stopped.'

"'I couldn't think of it, my dear madam; it's too easy; it's like pulling jerkwater pa.s.senger--I like through freight.'

"Well, John, to make a long story short, the interview ended about here, and several more got to about the same place. There were a thousand things I could not help but admire in that woman, and I liked her better the more I knew her. But it wan't love; it was a sort of an admiration for her love of the child, and the nerve she displayed in its behalf.

But I shrank from becoming her husband or companion, although I think she loved me, in the end, better than she ever did anybody.

"However, I finally agreed to look after the little one, in case anything happened to the mother, and commenced then to send the money for her board and tuition, and the mother dropped out of all connection with the child or those having her in charge.

"The mother made her pile and got out of the business, and at my suggestion went down near Los Angeles and bought a nice country place, to start respectable before she took the little one home. She left money in Carson, subject to my check, for the little girl, and things slid along for a year or so all smooth enough.

"I was out on a snow-bucking expedition one time the next winter, sleeping in cars, shanties or on the engine, and I soon found myself all bunged up with the worst dose of rheumatiz' you ever see. I had to get down to a lower alt.i.tude, and made for Sacramento in the spring. I paid the Mission a year in advance, and with less than a hundred dollars of my own, struck out, hoping to dodge the twists that were in my bones.

"A hundred blind gaskets don't go far when you're sick, and the first thing I knew I was dead broke; couldn't pay my board, couldn't buy medicine, couldn't walk--nothing but think and suffer. I finally had to go to a hospital. Not one of the old gang ever came to see me. Old Gun was a dandy, when he was making--and spending--a couple hundred a month; the rest of the time he was supposed to be dead.

"I might have died in the hospital, if fate hadn't decreed to send me relief. It suddenly dawned upon me that I was getting far better treatment than usual, had a special nurse, the best of food, flowers, etc., all labeled 'From the Boys.'"

"I found out, after I was well enough to take a sun bath on the porch, that a woman had sent all my luxuries, and that her purse had been opened for my relief. I knew who it was at once, and was anxious to get well and at work, so as not to live on one who was only too glad to do everything for me.

"A six months' wrastle with the twisters leaves a fellow stiff-jointed and oldish, and lying in bed takes the strength out of him. I took the notion to get out and go to work, one day, and walked down to the shops--I was carried back, chuck full of 'em again.

"The doctor said I must go to Ojo Caliente, away down south, if I was to get well. John, if the Santa Fe road had 'a been for sale for a cent then, I couldn't 'a bought a spike.

"At about the height of my ill-luck, I got a letter from Mabel Verne--she had another name, but that don't matter--and she asked me again to come to her; to have a home, and care and devotion. It wasn't a love-sick letter, but it was one of them strong, tender, _fetching_ letters. It was unselfish, it asked very little of me, and offered a good deal.

"I thought over it all night, and decided at last to go. What better was I than this woman? Surely she was better educated, better bred. She had made one mistake, I had made many. She had no friends on earth; I didn't seem to have any, either. I hadn't had a letter from either of my married sisters for six or eight years, then. We could trust one another, and have an object in life in the education of the child. I'd be no worse off than I was, anyway.

"The next morning I felt better. I got ready to leave, bid all my fellow flat-wheels good-by; and had a gig ordered to take me to the train--the doctor had given me two-hundred dollars a short time before--'from a lady friend.'

"As I sat waiting for the hack, they brought me a letter from home--a big one, with a picture in it. It was from my youngest sister, and the picture was of her ten-year boy, named for me--such a happy, sunny little Swede face you never see. 'He always talks of Uncle Oscar as a great and good man,' wrote Carrie, 'and says every day that he's going to do just like you. He will do nothing that we tell him Uncle Oscar would not like, and anything that he would. If you are as good as he thinks you are, you are sure of heaven.'

"And I was even then going off to live with a woman who made a fortune out of Virginia City dance-houses. I had a sort of a remorseful chill, and before I really knew just where I was, I had got to Arizona, and from there to the Santa Fe where you knew me.

"I wrote my benefactress an honest letter, and told her why I had not come, and in a short time sent her the money she had put up for me; but it was returned again, and I sent it to the mission for my little girl.

"Well, while I was with you there, I got a fare-thee-well letter, saying that when I got that Mabel Verne would be no more--same as dead--and that she had deposited forty thousand dollars in the Phoenix Bank for _your_ little girl--_yours_, mind ye--and asked me to adopt her legally and tell her that her mother was dead.

"John, I ain't heard of that woman from then until now. I thought she had got tired of waiting on me and got married, but I believe she is dead.

"I went to California and adopted the baby--a daisy too--and I've honestly tried to be a father to her.

"I got to making money in outside speculations, and had plenty; so I let her money acc.u.mulate at the Phoenix and paid her way myself.

"About four years ago, I left the road for good; bought me a nice place just outside of Oakland, and settled down to take a little comfort.

"Mabel, my daughter Mabel, for she called me papa, went to Germany, nearly three years ago, in charge of her music teacher, Sister Florence, to finish herself off. Ah, John, you ort to see her claw ivory! Before she went, she called me into the mission parlor, one day, and almost got me into a snap; she wanted me to tell her all about her parents right then, and asked me if there wasn't some mystery about her birth, and the way she happened to be left in the mission all her life, her mother disappearing, and my adoption of her."

"What did you tell her, Gun?" I asked.

"Why, lied to her, of course, as any honorable man would have done. I told her that her father was an engineer and a friend of mine, and that he was killed in an accident before she was born--that was all plausible enough.

"Then I told her that her mother was in poor health, and had died just before I had adopted her, and had left a will, giving her to me, and besides had left forty thousand dollars in the bank for her, when she married or became of age.

"Well, John, cutting down short, she met a fellow over there, a New Yorker, that just seemed to think she was made a-purpose for him, and about a year ago he wrote and asked me for my daughter--just think of it! His pet.i.tion was seconded by the baby herself, and recommended by Sister Florence.

"They came home six months ago, and the baby got ready for dress-parade; and I went down to New York and seen 'em off; but here's where old Fate gets in his work again. That rascal of an O. B. Sanderson--I didn't notice the name before--was my own nephew, the very young cuss whose picture kept me from marryin' the baby's mother! I never tumbled till I ran across his mother, she was my sister Carrie.

"John, I don't care a continental cuss how good he was, the baby was good enough for him--too good--I just said nothing--and watched the signals. You ort to a seen me a-givin' the bride away! Then, when it was all over, and I was childless, I give my little girl a check for forty-seven thousand and a fraction; kissed her, and lit out for home--and here I am.

"But I ain't satisfied now, and just as quick as I get back, I'm a-going running again; then, when I've got so old I can't see more'n a car length, I'm going to ask for a steam-pump to run. I'm a-going to die railroading."

"Have you ever made any inquiries about the mother, Gun?" I asked.

"No; not much; it's so long now, it ain't no use; I guess that her light's gone out."

"What would you do, if she was to turn up?"

"Well, I don't know; I guess I'd keep still and see what she done."