already is. I will go hack to Denver and treat myself to a little season
of comfort, and edible food, and endurable beds, and bodily decency; then
I will fetch my things, and notify poor papa Wilson to move on.
DENVER, June 19
They miss him here. They all hope he is prospering in Mexico, and they
do not say it just with their mouths, but out of their hearts. You know
you can always tell. I am loitering here overlong, I confess it. But if
you were in my place you would have charity for me. Yes, I know what you
will say, and you are right: if I were in your place, and carried your
scalding memories in my heart–
I will take the night train back to-morrow.
DENVER, June 20
God forgive us, mother, me are hunting the wrong man! I have not slept
any all night. I am now awaiting, at dawn, for the morning train–and
how the minutes drag, how they drag!
This Jacob Fuller is a cousin of the guilty one. How stupid we have been
not to reflect that the guilty one would never again wear his own name
after that fiendish deed! The Denver Fuller is four years younger than
the other one; he came here a young widower in ’79, aged twenty-one–a
year before you were married; and the documents to prove it are
innumerable. Last night I talked with familiar friends of his who have
known him from the day of his arrival. I said nothing, but a few days
from now I will land him in this town again, with the loss upon his mine
made good; and there will be a banquet, and a torch-light procession, and
there will not be any expense on anybody but me. Do you call this
“gush”? I am only a boy, as you well know; it is my privilege. By and
by I shall not be a boy any more.
SILVER GULCH, July 3
Mother, he is gone! Gone, and left no trace. The scent was cold when I
came. To-day I am out of bed for the first time since. I wish I were
not a boy; then I could stand shocks better. They all think he went
west. I start to-night, in a wagon–two or three hours of that, then I
get a train. I don’t know where I’m going, but I must go; to try to keep
still would be torture.
Of course he has effaced himself with a new name and a disguise. This
means that I may have to search the whole globe to find him. Indeed it
is what I expect. Do you see, mother? It is I that am the Wandering
Jew. The irony of it! We arranged that for another.
Think of the difficulties! And there would be none if I only could
advertise for him. But if there is any way to do it that would not
frighten him, I have not been able to think it out, and I have tried till
my brains are addled. “If the gentleman who lately bought a mine in
Mexico and sold one in Denver will send his address to” (to whom,
mother!), “it will be explained to him that it was all a mistake; his
forgiveness will be asked, and full reparation made for a loss which he
sustained in a certain matter.” Do you see? He would think it a trap.
Well, any one would. If I should say, “It is now known that he was not
the man wanted, but another man–a man who once bore the same name, but
discarded it for good reasons”–would that answer? But the Denver people
would wake up then and say “Oho!” and they would remember about the
suspicious greenbacks, and say, “Why did he run away if he wasn’t the
right man?–it is too thin.” If I failed to find him he would be ruined
there–there where there is no taint upon him now. You have a better
head than mine. Help me.
I have one clue, and only one. I know his handwriting. If he puts his
new false name upon a hotel register and does not disguise it too much,