THE RESURRECTION OF JULES.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12989, 17 December 1907, Page 10

THE RESURR ECTI ON OF JULES.

. , , . Bγ Frahk Lima Pollock. Jules Brulard sat upon a warm rock, coloured like a tiger lily, and watched the heat waves shimmer over the raw desert. He was very melancholy. He had walked out to the spot from Galena, walked a mile—a disgrace for a cow Eunoher because he no longer had any crse.

Ton days before, irresistible homesickness, such ac only French blood knows, had driven him back from the Bayou La Fontaine for a flying visit to the home ho knew in the green Louisiana swamps before he had drifted to the more strenuous life of New Mexico, and the price of the trip had swallowed up the proceeds from the sale of his pony. possessed him again as he stared at the glaring landscape that looked as if it had been made with an axe and a paint brush, bat it was neither home-6ickness nor hie pedestrian condition that had sunk him in abysses of despair. .He thought of the hot little "cow town" he had left, and he wished he could pack and trail for Mexico, Canada, anywhere, into a new life, and yet ho knew that the pew life would presently become the same hell as the old, for he carried hie curse with him. Pie knew well enough how he was regarded by his associates; the silent contempt and open insult that met him left no room for uncertainty.

Hβ had hoped for a job with the Bar Circle outfit, and immediately upon hie return Ih> had applied to the foreman. Tho cattleman had looked him over elowly. and turned on his heel with the remark, "You? What kin you do? Wβ ■want men on this ranger

The fact was, Jules was a coward, and he knew it. No man m the country could stay longer with a pitching bronco; no ono could juggle more dexterously with a six shooter at target practice, but there was a fatal shrinking that always unnerved him at the approach of danger. He had no eand, the cowboys said. He was afraid of getting hurt; he was afraid to die. He came of old French Acadian blood, weakened by intermarriages and by long living in tho hot. wet bayous, and though ho knew nothing of problems of heredity, ho was only conscious of the lack of fibre that mado him always recoil from an encounter.

Twico ho had flinched from a etampedo, and each time had boon promptly discharged. Ho had changed from place to place, but his ill reputation grow and followed him. Ho had the ono unpardonable vice of the south-weet, and as his shame bccamo publicly known, the-fault grow upon him. Ho wont about timorously; any one could bully him, and one man in particular took tho trouble to do it systematically. _ This was a local desperado, a gigantic Californian, usually called "Monte," in reference to a gamo at which he excelled. Ho was supposed to have a lurid past, several notches on hie pistol handle, and to be likely to die unlamentod with his boote on at any time. When full of nnimal and vegetable spirits he occasionally "shot up" tho town, but his eccentricities were regarded lightly by those with whom he did not greatly interfere.

Jules was not ono of these, and only last night Monte had iculminated a scries of persecutions by taking tho "Frenchy's" revolver away from him, bolt and all, while the boy was too cowed by {he bluster of his antagonist to resist.

to Jules wore no pistol now, only with the instinct of going armed ho carried a sheathed bowie knife in his hip pocket.

He loathed himself for his weakness, yet ho knew that he would repeat it. It was absurd; ho was strong, he could shoot and ride.

Ho pulled up his sleeve and looked at the brown forearm, not very large, but like so much wrought steel—and something just below tho elbow caught his eye. He stared at it in surprise for a moment before the sudden comprehension made the very sunlight turn to fog before his eyes.

It was nothing obviously appalling, only a dead looking white spot on the skit>. slightly swollen, -with a faint rorj» ifv«s as if the cuticle were peeling. Hut tho Acndian blood recognised it. Ho reicembered still the mysterious horror of his childhood when such spots Lad appeared upon one of his own cousins, and he had been taken by night, crying out. to tho leper settlement of Croque Mort. His house had been burned with all its contents, and Jules had often gone round a milo to avoid the spot where it had stood, shuddering in a ghastly panic.

As the reality of his fate burned into his biain ho rolled off the rock and lay face down in the dry earth.

Ii was too crushing and sudden a

blow to be felt all at once. When a Latin race has intermarried contiiiunlly, living among poisonous exhalations of the earth, leprosy breeds in the Hood, and is likely to burst out at the most unexpected seasons. Jules did not know this, but he knew that he was going to <lie, and that not quickly nor easily. He had once seen the living corpse* at Croque Mort, and ho had never forgotten. The sun blazed on his head unheeded aa he lay there hour after hour, Ihis eyoi* shut, but looking death in the face. Finally he sat up. and rose, blinking, to his feet, with greater composure than he would have imagined possible. Th«» Latin spirit is elastic; part of the bitterness of death was already past. But in that period of mental agony he seemed in some measure to have" detached himself from the earth. 'flic world looked grotesque and illusory ; "he felt that practically he was dead already, and as for the torments that had made his past life miserable, hv thought of them casually with something of the indifference, of a disembodied spirit. He walked slowly back to Galena and was late for dinner, and did not even think of it. But there was a burning thirst in his throat, the result of the heat, or of his emotions, or, perhaps, of the fever of his disease, and he went straight to the bar. Half a dozen men clustered round the pool table, and, noting Jules's altered bearing, they remarked that he looked as if he had struck a job.

The bar-tender shoved the bottles at

him without deigning a word, and Jules was raising the glass when it was unexpectedly dashed from his hand and a grip on his shoulder whirled him round.

Monte had come in behind him, wearing two revolvers, his own and the one captured from Jules the night before.

"You don't want none of that," growled the "bnd man," with a blast of profanity. "I won't hey no white livered curs drinkin' before mc!"

Jules had submitted to the same sort of thing before, but that was so long ago ho had almost forgotten it. He had seen death since, and he was entirely reckless. Monte laughed as his hand dropped to his empty belt. The next instant the knife wa.s out, and with a spring like a mountain lion, ho drove it clean home striking downwards in the desperado's neck, just above the collarbone.

A long spurt of blood splashed the counter. Monte staggered, and, with the instinct of a gun fighter, drew has six-shooter and discharged it blindly.

There was a crash of glass behind the bar, and another crash on the floor as the big man went down and lay twitching in the centre of a widening pool. The billiard-players were looking on, silent, tense, watchful. Jules stooped instantly and nnbuckled his revolver from the body of the fallen foe, and with the cooked weapon faced the group. There was a dead silence in the room; no one moved, and after a long quarter minute Jules went out, shutting the door behind him. The men examined the prostrate ruffian. He was quite dead. "Monte had two guns, and him only a knife," murmured some one. "Monte's been about ready for killing this long time, but I sure never reckoned Frenohy'd be the man to do him."

"Poor old Monte 1 He'd be madder than Hades if he knew," said a third. Meanwhile Jules, unconscious of the turn in popular sentiment, was hastily buying provisions, tobacco, and cartridges at the store. Ho had already decided upon his plan. Proba-bly the dead man's friends would be after him; in any case he would not stay in the settlements to spread contagion from his disease, and above all he would not go to the leper colony. Ho would go to the hills and live there like a wild beast till he met the death of one. The end would come more quickly that way, and while he lived ho would at least be free of the torments that had made his life unendurable among men.

The excitement of his recent encounter strengthened him in this desperate project. His frame was still tingling with the triumphant blood lust as he left the town, laden with supplies, and set out on foot for the mountains.

For the first time he realised that it was as easy to be daring as to he cowardly, and his deadly extremity brought him closer to the essential spirit of the West than anything else could have done.

That night he camped among the foothills, and as he eat under the blaze from the diamond skies he could see the dim lights in Galena fifteen miles away. Next noon ho reached a spot that seemed suitable for his purpose—a bit of gentle slope among a tangle of bare, rugged mountains, where a half dead creek descended in a little waterfall.

Stunted pines grew there thickly, a few deer haunted the place, and grouse drummed from the chaparral. And here Jules built himself a wickiup of boughs, and prepared to burn out his life.

Below him the slopes descended unbroken by trees, and in the lucid air he could see the Silver City trail, a great ribbon winding up from the south.

About noon every day the stage went past, the stage from Silver Oity to Galena and the North, and though it was nearly two miles away, he could even make out the driver and the express messenger on the top.

It was the only sign of human life in the whole vast range of landscape, his solitary link with humanity, and for hours he would sit watching the distant strip of grey dust.

There was a flat rock in ti« shadow of the pinons where he was accustomed to sit and look upon the world from which he was outcast. A few yards beyond the shadow a huge rattlesnake, fat and grey with age, sunned himself all day long among the stones, and Jules felt a morbid sense of affinity with the creature.

Like himself, the snake was an ontlaw, despised and hated; like himself, nature had charged ite blood with poison, and remembering the hideous masks in the leper colony he knew that a few years would make him even more repulsive to the eye than the loathsome reptile. But he hoped that he -would be dead long before that time should come.

Looking backward, he was quite unable to comprehend his singular pusillanimity, his dread of a violent death, which had now come to seem a thing to be welcomed.

If he had only hazarded h-is life freely like other men, if he had only known how little he had to lose, life would havo been good while it lasted, and ho might have gone out long ago under the. hoofs of the cattle, under a quicker shot than his own, and death would have been swift and pain'ess. It was on the third day of his retirement from the world that, as he sat under the trees, he saw four horsemen riding /.igz&gvvise down the mountainside.

They passed within fifty yards without noticing him, and he could obeerve them closely. Three were obviously Mexica.rvs, wearing the conical hats heavy with cold braid, the buttoned trousers and tho gaudy belts that the Greaser affects, while tho fourth wie apparently an American, in ordinary oowpuncbor garb.

Each was .Mined, not only with the ouetoiuxiry six shooter, but with a Winch-ester across tho saddle.

Jules rccoenieod ncno of iern ' ut evil and brutality was stamped on every- face, and ho folt certain that it wes"a perty of bandits or ' rustlers mekinfe for the Mexican border. Ho watched the.m as they went slowly downwards, tteir broncos takiag the declivity like goats. When they rxwdied the Silver City trail they stopped, gathered close- together for a moment, and dismounted. Ono of the men led the horses out of eieht behind a great jutting rocii, and then the whole party plunged euadenlv from tho road into the bordonng obuiparral and disappeared cc if into the earth. Jules comprehended the situation at once. It was an ambush; it wes a projected hold up for the Galena stage. He jumped up nervously md stood staring. What could he do?

He had no horse, and, in any case, the other faces <rf the mountain wore so rugged and split by canyons and arroyo that it -would be practically impossible 1o cross in time to intercept the stwe. But he wanted to do something, at

loast to be on the spot, and without

further reflection he started rapidly down the slope almost in the track of

tho road agents

Aβ he descended, a plan grew upon him of capturing or stampeding tho waiting horses, or, if necessary, of shooting the lot. Deprived of their means of escape, the scoundrels would certainly think of anything rather than of present brigand.'ge, and ns for his own risk in the perfonnaneo, he felt like a gambler ploying for counters ; he hid nothing to lose, and odds wero indifferent to him.

It did not take him long to descend the slopes, and as he approached the road ho drew his revolver, opened the breech and spun the cylinder round.

For the rest of the way he advanced on hands and knees, crawling as noiselessly as in Apache through the scant, dry bueh. The men wore invisible, but presently hecamc in sight of the trained cow ponies, standing motionless with their bridles thrown over their heads.

More cautiously than ever ho approached them. It occurred to him that he might mount one «nd run the gauntlet, and he had almost reached the spot when he sot his hand squarely upon a small but vicious cactus.

Aβ hie resulting sharp movement crackled the bush loudly, a grey sombrero suddenly rose into view not ten yards ewiy, and under it tho fierce countenance of tho Amer-loan outlaw.

The two pistol shots cracked at the some instant. Jules's left arm felt as if shattered by a terrific blow, end his sleeve was inetintly soaked with blood. But the other man dropped crashing out of eight into tho chaparral and made no further sign.

Dizzy with tho pain and shook of has wound, Jules tried to catoh one of the startled ponies that would not let him approach them. A fusillade wia opened tho next minute; tho remaining three bandits had sprung up from ambush and run out into the road.

Mexicans are never good shots, but one of tho ponies went down squeaking, and Jules'e hat was whipped from hie held. There was a red film before his eyes, but hie brain remained strangely cool, and he returned the fire with alacrity.

One of the Greasers dropped,, squatting, on the trail, pressing a crimsoned hand over his thigh. A violent shook on the shoulder whirled Jules half round, and for the rest of the fight he was scarcely conscious of what ho did. He was trying to empty has pistol; it seemed to him that the return shots were growing fewer —had ceased. Then a heavy bullet grazed his cheek, ripped his ear to shreds, and furrowed •the scalp co deeply that he tottered, discharged his last shot at random, and tumbled into darkness.

There was unconsciousness; then a borderland of whirling visions and nightmare, and then fiery liquid in his mouth forced him unwillingly back to semi-life. From a vast distance he seemed to hear voices.

"Wiped out the whole gang, by thunder 1"

"And knifed Monte last week. They'll make him deputy sheriff aiter this."

But Jules heard vaguely, and did not understand at all.'

With an effort he opened his eyes. He was in the familiar barroom at Galena, lying upon something soft on the bar itself, and surrounded by men. The door stood open in the range of his eye, and he saw the dusty stage outside.

"You're all right," said a man whom he recognised as the single resident physician of Galena. "Broken arm, bad. ear, punctured shoulder—nothing to count. We'll have you out again in a month."

As the whisky burned through his brain, Jules remembered everything with terrible clearness.

"Don't touch mc!" he whispered hoarsely. "I—l'm a leper." .

He had trouble in getting out the word, and there was a sudden widening of the circle.

The doctor looked incredulous, and Jules indicated his right arm. Instantly the 6leeve was ripped up, and the dead white spot on the sinewy brown forearm was laid bare.

After a close examination the doctor laughed. . "You're loco," he said. That isn't leprosy; what gave you that idea? If there were any swamps within a hundred miles I'd say that was poison from decaying animal matter or shell iish. Where nave you been lately?" "Bayou La Fontaine," murmured Jules, remembering the days he had spent in the swamps on his recent visit home.

Hβ realised that he was reprieved, and in the whirl of emotions ho began to sob weakly. '"Give him some more whisky," eaid the doctor. "The poor devil thought ho had leprosy." he added aside. "No wonder ho broke down."

There were half a dozen flasks ready, but it was the foreman of tho Bar Circlo outfit that tilted the liquor carefully into Juless lips. Then he whispered confidentially, with considerable embarrasemont of manner, "Say. Brulard, I reckon you kin have that job with our outfit, you know, juet about any old time you say."