ers around the
little post-office first, but it dazed me so I wouldn't believe it till
I borrowed the paper and read the whole story, with the type dancing
and leaping before me. It took some hours for it to seep in, even after
that, and for years I recalled every word of the damned lie as if it
had been branded on me with hot irons. They called it a shocking crime,
the most brutal murder California had ever known, and in the head-lines
was my name in letters that struck me between the eyes like a hammer.
Mrs. Dan Bennett had been foully murdered by me, in a fit of sudden
jealousy, and I had disappeared with the baby! The husband had returned
unexpectedly to find her dying, so he said, but too far gone to call
for help, and with barely sufficient strength to tell him who did it
and how! Then the paper went on with the tale of my courting her, and
her turning me down for Bennett. It told how I had gone off alone up
into the hills, turning into a bear that nobody, man or child, could
approach. It said I had brooded there all this time till the mania got
uppermost, and so came down to wreak my vengeance. They never even did
me the credit of calling me crazy; I was a fiend incarnate, a beast
without soul, and a lot of things like that; and, remember, I had never
harmed a living thing in all my life. However, that wasn't what hurt.
What turned me into a dull, dead, suffering thing was the knowledge
that she was gone. For hours I couldn't get beyond that fact. Then came
the realization that Bennett had done it, for I reasoned that he had
dragged a hint of the truth from her by very force of the fear he held
her in--and slain her. God!--the awful rage that came over me! But
there was nothing to do; I had sworn to guard the little one, so I
couldn't take vengeance on him. I couldn't go back and prove my
innocence, for that would give the child to him. What a night I spent!
The next day I saw I had been indicted by the grand jury and was a
wanted man. From a distance I watched myself become an outlaw; watched
the county put a price upon my head, which Bennett doubled; watched
public opinion rise to such a heat that posses began to scour the
mountains. What I noted in particular was a statement in the paper that
'The sorrowing husband takes his bereavement with the quiet courage
which marks a brave man'! That roused me more than the knowledge that
he had made me a wolf and set my friends on my track, which I hadn't
covered very we