Can Such Things Be? By Ambrose Bierce
THE NIGHT-DOINGS AT “DEADMAN’S”
A STORY THAT IS UNTRUE
It was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a
diamond. Clear nights have a trick of being keen. In darkness
you may be cold and not know it; when you see, you suffer. This
night was bright enough to bite like a serpent. The moon was
moving mysteriously along behind the giant pines crowning the
South Mountain, striking a cold sparkle from the crusted snow,
and bringing out against the black west the ghostly outlines of
the Coast Range, beyond which lay the invisible Pacific. The
snow had piled itself, in the open spaces along the bottom of the
gulch, into long ridges that seemed to heave, and into hills that
appeared to toss and scatter spray. The spray was sunlight,
twice reflected: dashed once from the moon, once from the
snow.
In this snow many of the shanties of the abandoned mining camp
were obliterated, (a sailor might have said they had gone down)
and at irregular intervals it had overtopped the tall trestles
which had once supported a river called a flume; for, of course,
“flume” is flumen. Among the advantages of
which the mountains cannot deprive the gold-hunter is the
privilege of speaking Latin. He says of his dead neighbor,
“He has gone up the flume.” This is not a bad way to
say, “His life has returned to the Fountain of
Life.”
While putting on its armor against the assaults of the wind, this
snow had neglected no coign of vantage. Snow pursued by the wind
is not wholly unlike a retreating army. In the open field it
ranges itself in ranks and battalions; where it can get a
foothold it makes a stand; where it can take cover it does so.
You may see whole platoons of snow cowering behind a bit of
broken wall. The devious old road, hewn out of the mountain
side, was full of it. Squadron upon squadron had struggled to
escape by this line, when suddenly pursuit had ceased. A more
desolate and dreary spot than Deadman’s Gulch in a winter
midnight it is impossible to imagine. Yet Mr. Hiram Beeson
elected to live there, the sole inhabitant.
Away up the side of the North Mountain his little pine-log shanty
projected from its single pane of glass a long, thin beam of
light, and looked not altogether unlike a black beetle fastened
to the hillside with a bright new pin. Within it sat Mr. Beeson
himself, before a roaring fire, staring into its hot heart as if
he had never before seen such a thing in all his life. He was
not a comely man. He was gray; he was ragged and slovenly in his
attire; his face was wan and haggard; his eyes were too bright.
As to his age, if one had attempted to guess it, one might have
said forty-seven, then corrected himself and said seventy-four.
He was really twenty-eight. Emaciated he was; as much, perhaps,
as he dared be, with a needy undertaker at Bentley’s Flat
and a new and enterprising coroner at Sonora. Poverty and zeal
are an upper and a nether millstone. It is dangerous to make a
third in that kind of sandwich.
As Mr. Beeson sat there, with his ragged elbows on his ragged
knees, his lean jaws buried in his lean hands, and with no
apparent intention of going to bed, he looked as if the slightest
movement would tumble him to pieces. Yet during the last hour he
had winked no fewer than three times.
There was a sharp rapping at the door. A rap at that time of
night and in that weather might have surprised an ordinary mortal
who had dwelt two years in the gulch without seeing a human face,
and could not fail to know that the country was impassable; but
Mr. Beeson did not so much as pull his eyes out of the coals.
And even when the door was pushed open he only shrugged a little
more closely into himself, as one does who is expecting something
that he would rather not see. You may observe this movement in
women when, in a mortuary chapel, the coffin is borne up the
aisle behind them.
But when a long old man in a blanket overcoat, his head tied up
in a handkerchief and nearly his entire face in a muffler,
wearing green goggles and with a complexion of glittering
whiteness where it could be seen, strode silently into the room,
laying a hard, gloved hand on Mr. Beeson’s shoulder, the
latter so far forgot himself as to look up with an appearance of
no small astonishment; whomever he may have been expecting, he
had evidently not counted on meeting anyone like this.
Nevertheless, the sight of this unexpected guest produced in Mr.
Beeson the following sequence: a feeling of astonishment; a sense
of gratification; a sentiment of profound good will. Rising from
his seat, he took the knotty hand from his shoulder, and shook it
up and down with a fervor quite unaccountable; for in the old
man’s aspect was nothing to attract, much to repel.
However, attraction is too general a property for repulsion to be
without it. The most attractive object in the world is the face
we instinctively cover with a cloth. When it becomes still more
attractive - fascinating - we put seven feet of earth above
it.
“Sir,” said Mr. Beeson, releasing the old man’s
hand, which fell passively against his thigh with a quiet clack,
“it is an extremely disagreeable night. Pray be seated; I
am very glad to see you.”
Mr. Beeson spoke with an easy good breeding that one would hardly
have expected, considering all things. Indeed, the contrast
between his appearance and his manner was sufficiently surprising
to be one of the commonest of social phenomena in the mines. The
old man advanced a step toward the fire, glowing cavernously in
the green goggles. Mr. Beeson resumed:
“You bet your life I am!”
Mr. Beeson’s elegance was not too refined; it had made
reasonable concessions to local taste. He paused a moment,
letting his eyes drop from the muffled head of his guest, down
along the row of moldy buttons confining the blanket overcoat, to
the greenish cowhide boots powdered with snow, which had begun to
melt and run along the floor in little rills. He took an
inventory of his guest, and appeared satisfied. Who would not
have been? Then he continued:
“The cheer I can offer you is, unfortunately, in keeping
with my surroundings; but I shall esteem myself highly favored if
it is your pleasure to partake of it, rather than seek better at
Bentley’s Flat.”
With a singular refinement of hospitable humility Mr. Beeson
spoke as if a sojourn in his warm cabin on such a night, as
compared with walking fourteen miles up to the throat in snow
with a cutting crust, would be an intolerable hardship. By way
of reply, his guest unbuttoned the blanket overcoat. The host
laid fresh fuel on the fire, swept the hearth with the tail of a
wolf, and added:
“But I think you’d better
skedaddle.”
The old man took a seat by the fire, spreading his broad soles to
the heat without removing his hat. In the mines the hat is
seldom removed except when the boots are. Without further remark
Mr. Beeson also seated himself in a chair which had been a
barrel, and which, retaining much of its original character,
seemed to have been designed with a view to preserving his dust
if it should please him to crumble. For a moment there was
silence; then, from somewhere among the pines, came the snarling
yelp of a coyote; and simultaneously the door rattled in its
frame. There was no other connection between the two incidents
than that the coyote has an aversion to storms, and the wind was
rising; yet there seemed somehow a kind of supernatural
conspiracy between the two, and Mr. Beeson shuddered with a vague
sense of terror. He recovered himself in a moment and again
addressed his guest.
“There are strange doings here. I will tell you
everything, and then if you decide to go I shall hope to
accompany you over the worst of the way; as far as where Baldy
Peterson shot Ben Hike - I dare say you know the
place.”
The old man nodded emphatically, as intimating not merely that he
did, but that he did indeed.
“Two years ago,” began Mr. Beeson, “I, with two
companions, occupied this house; but when the rush to the Flat
occurred we left, along with the rest. In ten hours the Gulch
was deserted. That evening, however, I discovered I had left
behind me a valuable pistol (that is it) and returned for it,
passing the night here alone, as I have passed every night
since. I must explain that a few days before we left, our
Chinese domestic had the misfortune to die while the ground was
frozen so hard that it was impossible to dig a grave in the usual
way. So, on the day of our hasty departure, we cut through the
floor there, and gave him such burial as we could. But before
putting him down I had the extremely bad taste to cut off his
pigtail and spike it to that beam above his grave, where you may
see it at this moment, or, preferably, when warmth has given you
leisure for observation.
“I stated, did I not, that the Chinaman came to his death
from natural causes? I had, of course, nothing to do with that,
and returned through no irresistible attraction, or morbid
fascination, but only because I had forgotten a pistol. This is
clear to you, is it not, sir?”
The visitor nodded gravely. He appeared to be a man of few
words, if any. Mr. Beeson continued:
“According to the Chinese faith, a man is like a kite: he
cannot go to heaven without a tail. Well, to shorten this
tedious story - which, however, I thought it my duty to relate -
on that night, while I was here alone and thinking of anything
but him, that Chinaman came back for his pigtail.
“He did not get it.”
At this point Mr. Beeson relapsed into blank silence. Perhaps he
was fatigued by the unwonted exercise of speaking; perhaps he had
conjured up a memory that demanded his undivided attention. The
wind was now fairly abroad, and the pines along the mountainside
sang with singular distinctness. The narrator continued:
“You say you do not see much in that, and I must confess I
do not myself.
“But he keeps coming!”
There was another long silence, during which both stared into the
fire without the movement of a limb. Then Mr. Beeson broke out,
almost fiercely, fixing his eyes on what he could see of the
impassive face of his auditor:
“Give it him? Sir, in this matter I have no intention of
troubling anyone for advice. You will pardon me, I am
sure” - here he became singularly persuasive - “but I
have ventured to nail that pigtail fast, and have assumed the
somewhat onerous obligation of guarding it. So it is quite
impossible to act on your considerate suggestion.
“Do you play me for a Modoc?”
Nothing could exceed the sudden ferocity with which he thrust
this indignant remonstrance into the ear of his guest. It was as
if he had struck him on the side of the head with a steel
gauntlet. It was a protest, but it was a challenge. To be
mistaken for a coward - to be played for a Modoc: these two
expressions are one. Sometimes it is a Chinaman. Do you play me
for a Chinaman? is a question frequently addressed to the ear of
the suddenly dead.
Mr. Beeson’s buffet produced no effect, and after a
moment’s pause, during which the wind thundered in the
chimney like the sound of clods upon a coffin, he resumed:
“But, as you say, it is wearing me out. I feel that the
life of the last two years has been a mistake - a mistake that
corrects itself; you see how. The grave! No; there is no one to
dig it. The ground is frozen, too. But you are very welcome.
You may say at Bentley’s - but that is not important. It
was very tough to cut: they braid silk into their pigtails.
Kwaagh.”
Mr. Beeson was speaking with his eyes shut, and he wandered. His
last word was a snore. A moment later he drew a long breath,
opened his eyes with an effort, made a single remark, and fell
into a deep sleep. What he said was this:
“They are swiping my dust!”
Then the aged stranger, who had not uttered one word since his
arrival, arose from his seat and deliberately laid off his outer
clothing, looking as angular in his flannels as the late
Signorina Festorazzi, an Irish woman, six feet in height, and
weighing fifty-six pounds, who used to exhibit herself in her
chemise to the people of San Francisco. He then crept into one
of the “bunks,” having first placed a revolver in
easy reach, according to the custom of the country. This
revolver he took from a shelf, and it was the one which Mr.
Beeson had mentioned as that for which he had returned to the
Gulch two years before.
In a few moments Mr. Beeson awoke, and seeing that his guest had
retired he did likewise. But before doing so he approached the
long, plaited wisp of pagan hair and gave it a powerful tug, to
assure himself that it was fast and firm. The two beds - mere
shelves covered with blankets not overclean - faced each other
from opposite sides of the room, the little square trapdoor that
had given access to the Chinaman’s grave being midway
between. This, by the way, was crossed by a double row of
spike-heads. In his resistance to the supernatural, Mr. Beeson
had not disdained the use of material precautions.
The fire was now low, the flames burning bluely and petulantly,
with occasional flashes, projecting spectral shadows on the walls
- shadows that moved mysteriously about, now dividing, now
uniting. The shadow of the pendent queue, however, kept moodily
apart, near the roof at the further end of the room, looking like
a note of admiration. The song of the pines outside had now
risen to the dignity of a triumphal hymn. In the pauses the
silence was dreadful.
It was during one of these intervals that the trap in the floor
began to lift. Slowly and steadily it rose, and slowly and
steadily rose the swaddled head of the old man in the bunk to
observe it. Then, with a clap that shook the house to its
foundation, it was thrown clean back, where it lay with its
unsightly spikes pointing threateningly upward. Mr. Beeson
awoke, and without rising, pressed his fingers into his eyes. He
shuddered; his teeth chattered. His guest was now reclining on
one elbow, watching the proceedings with the goggles that glowed
like lamps.
Suddenly a howling gust of wind swooped down the chimney,
scattering ashes and smoke in all directions, for a moment
obscuring everything. When the firelight again illuminated the
room there was seen, sitting gingerly on the edge of a stool by
the hearthside, a swarthy little man of prepossessing appearance
and dressed with faultless taste, nodding to the old man with a
friendly and engaging smile. “From San Francisco,
evidently,” thought Mr. Beeson, who having somewhat
recovered from his fright was groping his way to a solution of
the evening’s events.
But now another actor appeared upon the scene. Out of the square
black hole in the middle of the floor protruded the head of the
departed Chinaman, his glassy eyes turned upward in their angular
slits and fastened on the dangling queue above with a look of
yearning unspeakable. Mr. Beeson groaned, and again spread his
hands upon his face. A mild odor of opium pervaded the place.
The phantom, clad only in a short blue tunic quilted and silken
but covered with grave-mold, rose slowly, as if pushed by a weak
spiral spring. Its knees were at the level of the floor, when
with a quick upward impulse like the silent leaping of a flame it
grasped the queue with both hands, drew up its body and took the
tip in its horrible yellow teeth. To this it clung in a seeming
frenzy, grimacing ghastly, surging and plunging from side to side
in its efforts to disengage its property from the beam, but
uttering no sound. It was like a corpse artificially convulsed
by means of a galvanic battery. The contrast between its
superhuman activity and its silence was no less than
hideous!
Mr. Beeson cowered in his bed. The swarthy little gentleman
uncrossed his legs, beat an impatient tattoo with the toe of his
boot and consulted a heavy gold watch. The old man sat erect and
quietly laid hold of the revolver.
Bang!
Like a body cut from the gallows the Chinaman plumped into the
black hole below, carrying his tail in his teeth. The trapdoor
turned over, shutting down with a snap. The swarthy little
gentleman from San Francisco sprang nimbly from his perch, caught
something in the air with his hat, as a boy catches a butterfly,
and vanished into the chimney as if drawn up by suction.
From away somewhere in the outer darkness floated in through the
open door a faint, far cry - a long, sobbing wail, as of a child
death-strangled in the desert, or a lost soul borne away by the
Adversary. It may have been the coyote.
In the early days of the following spring a party of miners on
their way to new diggings passed along the Gulch, and straying
through the deserted shanties found in one of them the body of
Hiram Beeson, stretched upon a bunk, with a bullet hole through
the heart. The ball had evidently been fired from the opposite
side of the room, for in one of the oaken beams overhead was a
shallow blue dint, where it had struck a knot and been deflected
downward to the breast of its victim. Strongly attached to the
same beam was what appeared to be an end of a rope of braided
horsehair, which had been cut by the bullet in its passage to the
knot. Nothing else of interest was noted, excepting a suit of
moldy and incongruous clothing, several articles of which were
afterward identified by respectable witnesses as those in which
certain deceased citizens of Deadman’s had been buried
years before. But it is not easy to understand how that could
be, unless, indeed, the garments had been worn as a disguise by
Death himself - which is hardly credible.