CHAPTER XIX
Hugh’sadvertisement did not appear in theBannernext morning. The editor had killed it as soon as he learned that its purpose was to annoy Dutch. He knew several safer amusements than that. Young McClintock might enjoy flirting with death, but as the responsible head of a family the editor was in quite a different position.
To say that Hugh was enjoying himself is to stretch the truth. But experience had taught him that the bold course is sometimes the least hazardous. A line from a play he had seen at Piper’s Opera House not long since flashed to his mind. “Out of this nettle danger, we pluck this flower safety.” He would go through, if necessary, to a fighting finish. The chances were that his scorn of risk would lessen it.
Accompanied by his faithful coloured bill sticker, Hugh redecorated the town with posters.
Jim Budd came wheezing down Turkey Creek Avenue.
“You billin’ the town for a circus, Kid?” he asked, his fat paunch shaking. And when Hugh had stepped forward to him he added a warning in a lower voice: “Dutch is waitin’ for you in front of Dodsons’ store; least, it looks to me like he’s aimin’ to call yore hand.”
“Any one with him?”
“Hopkins and Bob Dodson. I kinda figured they were lookout men for him. Say, you don’t have to play a lone hand. I’d as lief sit in. Byers, too.”
“No, Jim. My hand’s stronger if I play it alone. Much obliged, just the same.”
Budd conceded this as a matter of principle, but he was reluctant to do so in practice. “Well, don’t you get careless, Kid. Dutch is sudden death with a gun. Sure is.”
Opposite Dodson & Dodson’s Emporium was the Mammoth Saloon.
“Tack one on the door, Uncle Ned,” said Hugh.
McClintock spoke without looking at the bill sticker. He was watching three men standing in front of the store opposite. One of these hastily retreated inside. The two who remained were Dutch and Hopkins.
The killer growled a warning. “Lay off on that bill stickin’. It don’t go here.”
Hugh stepped across the street. He moved evenly and without haste. “Well, well, if it ain’t Sam Dutch, chief of Virginia and Aurora, just as big as life and as handsome. Lemme see, you were takin’ the Candelabria stage last time I saw you.” Smilingly the young man began to hum, “Git out de way, ole Dan Tucker.” But the smile was of the lips only. His steely eyes held those of the big ruffian fast.
A snarling sound that might have been an oath fell from the ugly lips of the gun-fighter. His face reflected his slow thoughts. Should he strike now? He knew that a dozen men were waiting for the sound of a shot, that they expected him to kill McClintock on sight. Well, he would kill him all right—soon.
Without lifting his eyes for an instant from his enemy, Hugh gave the old Negro the order a second time: “Nail up the bill, Uncle. Mr. Dutch is joking. Youarejoking, aren’t you?”
Dutch glared at Hugh furiously. He moistened his dry lips with his tongue.
From the left boot leg McClintock drew a bowie knife. The horn handle was marked in a peculiar way. Hugh had shown it to a dozen men, and most of them had recognized it. One of the pleasant habits of Dutch was to play with it threateningly before a fascinated circle of reluctant admirers. Now the young man held it up in his left hand.
“I’m tryin’ to find an owner for this knife. Happen to know him, Mr. Dutch?” The straight, swift probe of the eyes was cold as iron, hard as hammered brass.
It was a call for a showdown. The men watching from the store windows, from the saloon opposite, from the blacksmith shop below, knew that a demand had been made on Dutch for a declaration of intentions. In the silence which followed, men suspended their breathing. The shadow of death hung low over the two tense figures standing out in relief.
Afterwards those present spoke of the contrast between the sullen sodden killer and the erect, soldierly athlete facing him. The guttural snarl, the great slouching apelike figure of the one suggested a throwback to prehistoric days. The clear expressive eyes, the unconscious grace and nobility of carriage, the quiet confidence of manner in the other were products of a new land flowering to manhood.
Men breathed again. Their hearts functioned normally once more. Dutch had chosen to dodge the challenge.
“I dunno as I know more about him than anybody else,” he had growled.
Hugh did not relax the thrust of his eyes. “No? Thought maybe you did. I found it at the storage warehouse, corner of the alley, up the avenue. Didn’t leave it there?”
Dutch did not answer at once. Inside, he surged with murderous impulse. He might beat this fellow McClintock to the draw. He had always boasted that he wanted no more than an even break with any man alive. Well, he had it here.
“Who says I left it there?” he demanded.
“I’m asking if you did.”
The killer’s right hand hung motionless. A weight paralyzed his will. These McClintocks had the Indian sign on him. Deep in him a voice whispered that if he accepted the challenge he was lost. Better wait and get this fellow right when he had no chance.
“No-o.” To Dutch it seemed that the husky monosyllable was dragged out of him by some external force.
Tauntingly the cold voice jeered him. “Not you, then, that bushwhacked me in the alley and tried to shoot me in the back? Wouldn’t do that, would you, Dutch? Got all yore fourteen on the level, of course.”
“I aim to—to give every man a show,” the gunman muttered.
“Good of you. Then it couldn’t have been you that threw this knife at me and tried to gun me. It was dark. I couldn’t make out his face, but I left the marks of my fist on it a-plenty.”
Now that it seemed there was to be no gun-play the watchers had come into the open. A battery of eyes focussed on the hammered face of Dutch. Cut lips, a black eye, purple weals on the forehead, and swollen cheeks told of recent punishment.
“I fell down a prospect hole,” the bad man mentioned.
A bark of laughter, quickly smothered, met this explanation. Dutch glared round angrily.
“That prospect hole must have landed on you hard,” Hugh told him grimly. “Take my advice.Don’t fall down any more.Next time the shaft might shoot a hole through you.”
“I ain’t scared of you none. You can’t run on me,” Dutch growled sulkily, to save his face. “One o’ these days I’m liable to get tired of you and feed you to the buzzards.”
“Yes, I know you’re chief here, same as you were at Virginia and Aurora. But just to show there’s no hard feelings you’ll help Uncle Ned tack up that poster, won’t you?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Again Dutch’s sullen eyes battled and were beaten. “I don’t have to,” he flung out rebelliously.
“Not at all,” Hugh mocked. “But out of good will you’ll do it.”
The ruffian shuffled across the road, snatched a bill from the old Negro, and with a hammer drove a tack through the middle of it.
Out of the Mammoth walked a big well-dressed man without a hat. He had black glossy hair and a small black moustache. In his manner and bearing was that dominance which comes to those who are successful. With a glance he took in the situation.
“Tear that bill down, Dutch,” he said crisply.
The bad man looked at him, then at McClintock.
Hugh laughed. “You hear yore master’s voice, Dutch.”
Dutch ripped the bill down and tore it into a dozen pieces. Released from the mastery that had held him, he broke into savage furious oaths. At a word from the black-eyed man he would have fought it out with his enemy.
But Ralph Dodson did not speak the word. His frowning attention was fixed on Hugh.
“Mr. McClintock, the Mammoth is owned by me and my brother. If we want bills on the walls we’ll put them there. Understand?” he demanded arrogantly.
Hugh bowed, almost as mockingly and as gracefully as Scot himself could have done it. “Quite. My fault, Mr. Dodson. I’ll explain. This knife was sheathed two nights ago in my arm. A scoundrel waited for me in a dark alley and tried to murder me.”
“Interesting, no doubt, but not my business,” retorted Dodson curtly.
“So I’m puttin’ up posters to find the owner of the knife.”
“Not here. You can’t put ’em up here.”
“Not necessary. Everybody here knows who owns the knife—or rather who did own it. It’s mine now, unless someone claims it. That all right with you, Dutch?”
The killer said nothing, but he said it with bloodshot, vindictive eyes—eyes in which hate and fear and cunning and the lust to kill struggled for victory.
Hugh turned on his heel and walked away, the sound of his footsteps sharp and ringing. Not once did he look back to see whether the murderer he had discredited would shoot him in the back.
Yet he was glad when he was out of range. Experiments in the psychology of a killer might easily be carried too far.
CHAPTER XX
Jim Buddhad a dozen reasons to offer why there must be gold in Bald Knob. Like many others, he was letting his hopes influence his judgment.
When he had finished his argument Hugh grinned. “May be here. May not. A fifty to one bet I’d call it, us on the short end. But that’s mining. No can tell. Might as well stick up our notice here as anywhere. What say, Dan?”
Byers said, “Suits me.”
“What about this fellow Singlefoot Bill who took up the claims originally—sure he’s outa the country and won’t make a kick?”
“Handed in his checks last year at Austin. Anyhow, he never did any assessment work here. You can see that. Just filed his location notice and let it go at that,” Budd explained.
“Didn’t he patent any of his claims?”
“I reckon. But not these. He couldn’t have. There’s not been enough work done on the ground. He jest scratched around.”
“If he patented there would be a record of it, of course.”
“I ain’t so sure of that, either. The house where they used to keep the county papers burned down in the big fire a coupla years ago more or less.”
“Well, the recorder would know.”
“Oh, he died a month since. But we’re in the clear. All you got to do is to use yore eyes to see this land couldn’t a-been patented.”
Hugh used his eyes and they corroborated his friend’s opinion.
The partner surveyed roughly the claims they decided on, drove in corner stakes, and put up their announcements of ownership. Four locations were taken in partnership. Each of them filed on several individual claims. Hugh took one in his brother’s name, the rest in his own. One of these last was to be held in trust for Vicky until she became of age. It was a custom of the country to take up mining prospects for friends.
Hugh wrote the notice for the partners. It read:
We, the undersigned, claim four claims of 300 feet each in this silver and gold bearing quartz lead, or lode, extending north and south from this notice, with all its dips, spurs, angles, and variations, together with 50 feet of ground on either side for working the same.
We, the undersigned, claim four claims of 300 feet each in this silver and gold bearing quartz lead, or lode, extending north and south from this notice, with all its dips, spurs, angles, and variations, together with 50 feet of ground on either side for working the same.
Each of the three signed the paper.
Similar location notices were posted on the individual claims.
Hugh took charge of operations. He hired men, bought tools and supplies, selected the spot for the shaft, and himself tossed out the first shovel of dirt. When operations were under way he turned the management over to his partners and returned to Virginia City.
The business of the firm called him. Incidentally, he wanted to see his week-old nephew, Alexander Hugh McClintock.
He went directly to his brother’s house on A Street. At his knock the door was opened by a young woman. She was dark and slender, and at sight of him her eyes flashed.
“You’re Mr. Hugh McClintock,” she cried.
“Yes. You’re the nurse, I suppose. How is Mollie?”
The face of the young woman held surprises. Mischief bubbled over it for a moment. “Yes, I’m the nurse. Would you like to see—Mrs. McClintock?”
“If I may.”
The nurse led the way into the house. Presently, after disappearing for a minute into Mollie’s room, she returned for Hugh. He trod softly, as men do in the presence of sickness or some mystery of life or death that awes them.
Mollie had never looked lovelier. A faint pink of apple blossoms fluttered into her cheeks. In the crook of her arm lay Alexander Hugh McClintock, a red and wrinkled little morsel of humanity. She smiled with such a radiance of motherhood that the man’s bachelor heart registered a pang of envy.
“Oh, Hugh, I’m so happy,” she whispered as he kissed her.
“That’s fine—fine,” he said gently.
“We named him after your father and you. Scot would have it, wouldn’t he, Vicky?”
The dark young woman nodded.
Hugh felt the flush dyeing his face. “Little Vicky!” he stammered. “Why, I thought——”
“Thank you for the dolls, kind sir,” she said, and curtsied.
He felt like a fool. How long was it since he had sent her a black doll baby?
“I thought you were still a little girl,” he blurted. “Nobody told me——”
“—that little girls grow up. They do.”
“You can’t be more than fourteen—or fifteen,” he charged, trying to escape from his mistake.
“I’m going on seventeen, sir,” she said demurely.
“Your letter——”
“—was from a little girl to whom you sent a nigger doll.”
“You said in it——”
“I said thank you for the doll. Wasn’t it a proper letter for a little girl to write to a kind gentleman?”
She asked it with a manner of naïve innocence, hardly a hint of mirth in the dark, long-lashed eyes meeting his so directly.
Mollie laughed. “She wrote and asked us not to tell you she had grown up, Hugh. We wondered when you would guess she wasn’t any longer a child.”
“I’ve been several kinds of an idiot in my time, but this—this takes the cake,” Hugh said ruefully.
Suddenly Victoria relented. She held out her hand impulsively. Her smile was warm and kind.
“You don’t mind my little joke, do you?”
“Not a bit. I brought it on myself.”
“If you want to know, I thought it was dear of you to remember the little girl away at school alone.” A faint shell pink beat into the clear satiny cheeks.
“I liked that little girl. She had a lot of git-up-an’-git.”
Vicky laughed. “She was a terror, if that’s what you mean. Always in mischief. Mollie will tell you that.”
“Yes, but she was a tender-hearted little cyclone,” smiled the older sister.
Scot came into the room. “ ’Lo, Hugh,” he said. “When’d you get back?” Without waiting for an answer he passed to the bed upon which were his wife and his firstborn. Lightly his hand caressed her soft hair. “Everything right, Mollie?”
Her eyes rested happily in his. “Everything in the world, Scot.”
“This nurse I got for you treating you proper?” With a motion of his head he indicated Victoria.
“She’s spoiling me.”
“A. H. McClintock behaving himself?”
“He’s an angel.”
He kissed her. “Must take after his father then.”
“I hope he does. He looks like you.”
Scot laughed, and with a touch of embarrassment turned to his brother. “You see what you’ll be letting yourself in for when you marry, Hugh. Got to walk a straight and narrow line to keep your wife fooled about you. And for a reward she’ll tell you that a red wrinkled little skeezicks looks like you.”
“He’s the dearest little baby I ever saw,” protested Vicky warmly.
Scot poked a forefinger at the midriff of his heir. “I kind of like the little grasshopper myself.”
“You know very well you’recrazyabout him,” Vicky answered triumphantly.
Mollie only smiled. It was not necessary for her any longer to reassure herself about Scot’s love. She knew him. The days of her doubts were past.
Presently Scot left the bedside and sat down on the arm of a big chair. “How’s Piodie, Hugh?”
“One live camp,” the younger brother answered. “Plenty of room for us there. We can put an outfit in and get all the teaming we want. One objection is that the Dodsons run the camp.”
“Run it how?”
“Own the biggest store, the stamp mills, a controlling interest in the best producing mines, the stage line, half the town site, and the sheriff.”
“Anything else?” asked Scot with a dry smile.
“A bunch of thugs and the courts. Our old friend Sam Dutch is their handy man.”
“Did you see Dutch?”
“We met,” Hugh answered briefly. “I bumped into Jim Budd and Dan Byers, too. They’re runnin’ a feed corral there. We located a bunch of prospects together. I wrote you about that.”
“Yes.”
“Took up one in yore name.”
“And one in trust for Vicky, you said in the letter.”
Hugh flushed to the roots of his hair. He turned to the girl. “A part of that fool mistake of mine. I kinda thought it might turn out a good prospect and if so you’d have it when you grew up. I didn’t aim to—to overstep.”
Victoria had been listening eagerly to every word they had said. She had her own reasons for being interested in Piodie.
“Of course you didn’t. It was for that wild little Vicky you used to know. I’ll thank you for her, but of course I can’t keep a claim you took up for me on a misunderstanding.”
“I wish you would. Not likely it’ll amount to anything. But we’ve got more than we can work now. You’re welcome as the sun in May.”
“Do you think that’sreallytrue—about his not wanting it?” Vicky asked Scot. “I’d like to take it if—if you folks can’t use it. But I’m not going to rob you and him.”
“I’d take it, Vicky,” Scot told her. “Chances are we’ll never do the assessment work on our own claims. We’re not miners—not by business. Hugh has all he can handle without yours.”
She turned to Hugh with a brisk little nod of the dark head. “Then I’ll take it—and thank you.”
“What will you do with it now you have it?” Mollie asked.
“Do the assessment work—have a shaft dug,” answered Vicky. “I have four hundred dollars left of the Virginia Dodson Fund, and, dear people, I’m going to begin earning more week after next.”
“How?” asked her sister, surprised.
“I’ve been asked to teach school at Piodie and I accepted to-day.”
Mollie protested, and knew that her protest was in vain. Her young sister was compact of energy. It expressed itself in the untamed joyous freedom of her rhythmic tread, in the vitality of the spirit emanating from the light erect figure of the bright-eyed vestal. If she had made up her mind to go to Piodie to teach, there would be no stopping her. All Mollie could do would be to see through Scot that the girl had a good boarding place where she would be properly looked after.
CHAPTER XXI
The McClintocksdecided after all not to put in a freight outfit to Piodie. The Dodsons beat them to it by putting in a large number of wagons as adjuncts to the stages they ran from Carson.
From Hugh’s partners word came at intervals of the progress made in sinking the shaft of the Ground Hog, which was the name they had given the mine. These messages reflected Budd’s enthusiasm. The postscript of each of them, whether it came in the form of a letter or a word-of-mouth greeting, was to the effect that he expected to strike the ledge now at any time.
He wrote in one note:
Bald Knob is sure looking up. Ralph Dodson has done made some locations above us, and two lads from American Flat of the name of Jenson have staked out a claim just below us down the hill. They’re running a tunnel in from the hillside. Well, Kid, look out for news of a big strike soon. We’re sure right close to the vein, looks like.
Bald Knob is sure looking up. Ralph Dodson has done made some locations above us, and two lads from American Flat of the name of Jenson have staked out a claim just below us down the hill. They’re running a tunnel in from the hillside. Well, Kid, look out for news of a big strike soon. We’re sure right close to the vein, looks like.
Hugh smiled when he read it. Budd had been on the verge of a discovery so many times that his non-resident partner discounted the prophecy. There was no use in building up hopes that would probably never be realized.
In another letter the fat man mentioned a second piece of news. “Our schoolmarm here, Miss Victoria Lowell, has begun scratching dirt right lively on that claim you staked out for her. She has got a Swede on the job, but she has been out ’most every Saturday to see how tricks are. I notice Ralph Dodson has been mighty attentive to her.You better drift over, Kid, and do your assessment work on that claim if you aim to get it patented in your name.Me, if I was a high-stepping colt like you, I’ll be doggoned if I’d let that smooth guy Dodson jump as rich a prospect as the Little Schoolmarm.”
This time Hugh did not smile. Budd, of course, was on the wrong track. He had leaped to the conclusion that Hugh was in love with the girl because he had staked a claim for her, and in his blunt blundering way he was giving his friend a tip. McClintock was troubled. He profoundly distrusted Ralph Dodson, had disliked him from the first moment when their eyes met. The fellow was a ravening wolf if he had ever seen one. But he was handsome, well-dressed, the kind of man who is like wildfire among women. He probably knew how to make love amazingly well.
And Vicky—impetuous, imperious little Vicky of the brave heart and generous instincts—was just the girl to yield to the glamour of his charm. He could see now her flashing face, finely cut like a rare brilliant, full of fire and high lights. She had better be dead than the wife of Ralph Dodson.
The thing worried him. It would not let him alone. At work and in his leisure hours he thought of the girl with keen-edged anxiety. His imagination began to play him tricks. At dusk, as he walked to his room, he would see her filmily in front of him, moving like sweet music toward the open arms of Dodson. Once she turned and gave Hugh her cryptic, tantalizing smile.
Someone ought to interfere to save the girl from an event so ruinous. He thought of telling Scot, but after all he had nothing better to go on than the gossip of old Jim Budd.
On swift impulse he decided to go to Piodie himself. It would not do any harm, anyhow, to have a look at the Ground Hog and see how it was developing. While he was there maybe he could drop a casual hint to Vicky. Perhaps he would discover that Budd’s warning was all moonshine.
Winter was white on the hills when Hugh started over the Geiger Grade to Reno by stage. At Reno he found traffic tied up. The snow in the valleys was deep and it drifted with the wind so fast that the cuts filled up and prevented the stage from getting through. Hugh learned that a pack train had broken trail the day before and had reached Stampede Notch in safety. From there it was working across the divide to Piodie.
He bought a pair of snowshoes and set out on the long trip. The day was warm and the snow soft. This made travel difficult, and McClintock made slow progress until he was out of the Truckee Meadows. By afternoon he was in the hills. The wind was whistling in gusts, sometimes wrathfully, again in a plaintive whine. It was colder now and the snow less slushy. In spite of fatigue he covered the miles faster than he had been able to do in the valley.
Many times he glanced at the sky uneasily. It was heavy with dun clouds, and unless he missed his guess snow would fall soon and in quantity.
Came dusk, and after dusk darkness. Hugh kept going. He was an old-timer and could tell his direction by the wind, the dip of the land, and the slope of the snow waves.
It was nearly midnight when he knocked at the door of a Mormon ranch house and asked shelter for the night. Healthily fatigued in every muscle, he slept like a schoolboy almost round the clock.
Before he took the road again it was noon. At intervals during the night snow had fallen, but just now the storm had died down.
“Better stay another night,” the rancher advised. “Gettin’ her back up for a blizzard, looks like.”
The taste of the air and the look of the sky backed his prophecy. There was going to be more snow and a lot of it. Very likely there would be snow and wind together. But Hugh did not want to be tied up for several days in the hills. He decided to make a dash for Piodie. The town was not more than twenty-five miles away. If his luck held he would be in by supper time.
He had covered half the distance before the storm hit him hard. It began with wind, heavy sweeping gusts of it driving over the hills and into the ravines. Presently snow came, a hard sleet that pelted his face like ground glass. The temperature was falling fast. Hugh set his teeth and ploughed forward, putting his head down into the blizzard as a football player does when he is bucking the line.
Young and warm-blooded though he was, the chill of the tempest bit to his bones and sapped his vitality. The wind and the fine sleet were like a wall that pressed closely and savagely on him. Now and again he raised his head and took the full fury of the leaping storm to make sure that he was still on the trail.
Far and near became relative words. The end of the world, as far as he could tell, was almost within reach of his outstretched hand. The whistle of the shrieking wind was so furious that it deadened all sounds, even itself. The sleety snow was a silent stinging foe that flogged him mile after mile as he wallowed on.
The afternoon had been dark, but an added murkiness told him that night was at hand. He was nearly exhausted, and in the darkness, with the raging blizzard all about him, he felt that directions would become confused. He must be close to town now, but if he should get lost, a quarter of a mile would be as far away as Carson.
And presently he knew that he was lost. He was staggering through the deep snow on a hillside. Somehow he had got off the trail and it was swallowed up in the bleak night. He had an extraordinary store of strength, vitality, and courage. But it was not in human endurance to stand up under the flailing of the wind and sleet that pelted him, to keep going through the heavy drifts that had been swept into every hollow and draw. The bitter cold penetrated closer to his heart. An overpowering desire to lie down and sleep tugged at his will.
Not for a moment did he give up. One of his snowshoes was lost in a snow bank. He kicked off the other. Now on his hands and knees, now on his feet, weaving forward like a drunken man, all sense of direction gone, he still plunged into the howling waste of desolation that hemmed him in.
He followed the path of least resistance. It took him down hill into a draw. His stumbling steps zigzagged toward a lower level and he followed the arroyo to its mouth. A slight dip in the ground swung him to the right.
His boots were clogged with snow. The muscles of his thighs were so weary that each time he dragged a leg out of the drifts it felt as though weighted with a cannon ball. There were times when he could make ground only by throwing his body forward and beating down the white bank that obstructed the way. Still he crawled on, an indomitable atom of fighting humanity in a great frozen desert of death.
A groping hand struck something solid. The stiff fingers of the hand searched the surface of the barrier. Hugh’s heart renewed hope. He had come up against a pile of corded wood. It was cut in short lengths to fit a stove. The chances were that somewhere within fifty feet of him was a house.
But where? In what direction? The fury of the storm filled the night, made it opaque as a wall. He could not see five feet in front of him. The landmark that he had found he dared not leave, for if he wandered from it the chances were that he would never find it again. It would be of no use to shout. The shrieking wind would drown a voice instantly. Yet he did call out, again and again.
The thing he did was born of the necessity of the situation. He dug aside the snow from the top of the pile and with a loose piece of wood hammered free others from the niche into which they were frozen. How he did this he could never afterwards tell, for his muscles were so paralyzed from cold that they would scarcely answer the call his will made on them.
Then, hard and straight, he flung a stick out into the storm. His reserves of strength were nearly gone, but he held himself to the job before him. One after another he threw the pieces of firewood, following a definite plan as to direction, in such a way as to make the place where he stood the centre of a circle. His hope was to strike the house. If he could do this, and if the door happened to be on the side of the house nearest him, then the light of the lamp would perhaps penetrate into the storm so that he could see it.
He knew it was a gamble with all the odds against him. He was backing a series of contingencies each one of which must turn in his favour if he was to win.
He collapsed on the woodpile at last from sheer physical exhaustion. For a few moments he lay there, helpless, drifting toward that sleep from which he would never awake in this world. But the will to live still struggled feebly. He was of that iron breed which has won the West for civilization against untold odds. It was not in him to give up as long as he could force his tortured body forward.
Even now he did not forget the craft of the frontiersman which reads signs and makes deductions from them. The corded wood was two lengths deep. Near one end there was a sag in it two or three feet deep. This depression was greater on the side next Hugh. He reasoned that it is human nature to choose the easiest way. The people who lived in the house would use first that part of the wood which was nearest. Therefore it followed that the house must be on the same side of the corded pine as he was, and it must be closest to the place from which the wood had been carried to the kitchen stove.
He struck out at a right angle from the pile. Before he had gone three steps he stumbled and fell. His prostration was so complete that he could not at once get to his feet again. He lay inert for a time, then crawled up again and lurched forward. A second time his knees buckled under him. As he fell, an outstretched hand hit the wall of the house.
Weakly he felt his way along the wall till he came to a door. His hand fumbled with the latch, but his frozen fingers could not work the catch. He beat on the door.
It opened unexpectedly, and he plunged forward to the floor of the cabin. He saw, as though a long way off, the faces of devils and of angels lit by high lights. His body lost weight, and he floated into space luxuriously. Pain and fatigue, devils and angels, all were blotted out.
CHAPTER XXII
Vickywas enjoying herself tremendously. All her young life she had been chaperoned and directed. Teachers had watched over and instructed her. She had better do this; it was not ladylike to do that. The right kind of a girl could not be too careful what she did and how she did it. The sweet demureness of watchful waiting was the only proper attitude of a nice young woman toward that important and vital business of getting married. So much she had learned at school.
It happened that Vicky did not want to get married—not yet, at any rate. She wanted to try her own wings. She wanted to flutter out into the world and see what it was like.
Already she had made experiments and discoveries. One of them was that if you smiled in the right way when you asked for it you could get anything you wanted from men. She had wanted a globe and some new seats for the schoolroom, and the directors had voted them cheerfully even though the district was short of funds. Jim Budd had spent two hours building some bookshelves she needed for her bedroom, just because she had said pretty please to him.
Now, Mrs. Budd was different. She liked Victoria and fed her well and saw that she wore her heavy coat when it was cold, but the young woman understood that smiles would not have the least effect on any of that plump mother’s decisions. In this Mrs. Budd was like the rest of her sex. They did not go out of their way to please you because you were a—well, a not exactly plain girl.
The experiments of the young school teacher were innocent enough. She was not by nature a coquette. But the world was her oyster, and she meant to have a perfectly delightful time prying it open. She found that there were a good many people, at least fifty per cent. of whom were of the masculine gender, ready to lend a hand at operating on the bivalve.
One of the most assiduous was Ralph Dodson.
Vicky discouraged his attentions. For one thing, he was the brother of a man she had detested all her life. She did not want to have anything whatever to do with a Dodson. After what had taken place it was not decent that the families should have any relationship at all.
But she found Ralph Dodson not easily disheartened. He did not lay himself open to a direct snub. A member of the board had properly introduced him to her. If he came out of a store as she was going down the street and walked a block beside her she could hardly rebuff him. Before she had been at Piodie a month, the clerk of the school district retired and Dodson was appointed in his place. This annoyed her, because she now had to see a good deal of him; but she could not very well accuse him of having brought about the change merely for that purpose.
Vicky found herself studying the man. She looked in him for the same traits that had made her as a child hate his brother. It irritated her that she did not find them. Ralph Dodson was strong, competent, energetic. She would have liked to discover him mean, but instead she uncovered in his view a largeness of vision in civic affairs that surprised her. He believed in good schools even though they cost money.
One flaw she found in him. He had kept out of the army during the war and made money while Scot and Hugh were fighting for the Union. But this was true of many men in the far West, which was a long way from the fighting line.
One day an accident took place that increased her unwilling admiration of him. Near the schoolhouse was an abandoned mine tunnel, poorly timbered, in which she had forbidden the children to play. Little Johnny Haxtun, playing hide and seek, ventured into it and in the darkness stumbled against a rotten post. At his weight the support crumbled. There was a cave-in, and Johnny lay crushed beneath a mass of rock and timber.
Among the first of the rescuers to arrive was Ralph Dodson. He told the young school teacher, who was standing there white and shaken, to get a doctor and have first-aid relief at hand in case Johnny should be alive when he was released.
Then, axe in hand, he led the men into the tunnel. It was dangerous work. The fallen timbering had to be cut and dug away. At any moment an avalanche of rock and dirt might pour down from above and kill them all. Dodson did not shirk. He stood up to his job deep in the tunnel, regardless of the little slides trickling down that might at any instant precipitate a hundred tons upon him. The worst of it was that the more dirt and jammed timbers were removed, the greater the peril of a second cave-in.
Johnny was still alive. A couple of crossed timbers had protected him from the weight of rock and dirt. Vicky heard his whimpering and came into the tunnel to comfort him. But Dodson would have none of that. He ordered the girl into the open instantly.
“This isn’t a woman’s job. Get out,” he told her curtly.
Perhaps she resented his manner at the moment, but when half an hour later he emerged from the tunnel carrying the maimed body of the little fellow she forgot her pique. The man’s hands were torn and bleeding, his face stained with sweat and streaks of dirt. The clothes of which he was usually so careful were daubed with yellow clay. She remembered only that he had risked his life to save Johnny.
Nor could she forget it when he called that evening at her boarding house, ostensibly to tell her that the doctor had set Johnny’s broken leg and found no other injury from the accident.
“It’s going to be hard on his mother. You know she’s a widow and takes in washing,” Vicky said. “I wonder if we couldn’t give a school entertainment for her benefit.”
“It won’t be necessary,” he said promptly. “It’s partly my fault the accident happened. As school clerk I should have had the mouth of the tunnel boarded up. I’m going to pay all the bills and see that Mrs. Haxtun doesn’t lose anything by it.”
Victoria felt a glow at her heart. It always did her good to find out that people were kinder and more generous than she had supposed. Her judgment of Ralph Dodson had been that he was hard and selfish. Now she was ashamed of herself for thinking so. She thought of the “Greater love than this” verse, and in her soul she humbled herself before him. What a little prig she had been to set herself up as arbiter of right and wrong.
Dodson made the most of the opportunity chance had given him. He used it as a wedge to open up a friendship with the girl. She was still reluctant, but this was based on some subconscious impulse. All the fine generosity in her was in arms to be fair to him regardless of his brother.
As soon as he learned that she had a claim on Bald Knob that she wanted to develop Dodson put his experience at her service. He helped her arrange with a man to do the actual assessment work and he went over the ground with her to choose the spot for the shaft. Afterwards he kept an eye on Oscar Sorenson to see that he did a fair day’s work for the pay he received.
On holidays Vicky usually walked or rode out to her claim to see how Sorenson was getting along. She was pretty apt to meet Dodson on the way to Bald Knob or else superintending operations there. Two or three times he came down to her prospect at noon and they strolled up a little gulch to pick wild flowers and eat their lunch together.
He knew so much more about the world than she did that she found his talk interesting. The glimpse she had had of San Francisco had whetted her appetite. Were other cities like the one by the Golden Gate, gay and full of life and fashion which young girls at a finishing school were not permitted to see? He told her of London and Paris and Vienna, and her innocent credulity accepted what he said at face value. He had the gift of talk, the manner of a man of the world. From the confident ease of his descriptions she could not guess that he had never been in Paris or Vienna and only once in London for a flying visit to float a mining scheme.
“You’ll not be going to the mine to-day, dearie,” Mrs. Budd said to Vicky one Saturday morning when the hills were white with a blanket of snow.
“Yes. I promised Oscar to bring his mail and some tobacco. Besides, I want to see how he’s been getting along.”
“If you take my advice you’ll stay comfy at home and not go traipsing all over the hills gettin’ your feet an’ your skirts wet.”
One of the things Vicky rarely did was to accept advice and follow it. A fault of her years and of her temperament was that she had to gain her wisdom through experience.
“I love to get out in the snow and tramp in it,” Vicky said cheerfully, helping herself to another hot biscuit. “And I’ll not get wet if I wear arctics and tuck up my skirts when I’m out of town.”
“Hmp! If you’re set on it you’ll go. I know that well enough. But you’ll come home early, won’t you? There’s a lot more snow up in the sky yet, and by night we’re likely to have some of it.”
Vicky promised. When she struck the trail to Bald Knob she discovered that the snow was deeper than she had supposed. But there was a well-beaten track as far as the shoulder of the ridge. Beyond that she had to break a path for herself.
It was heavy work. She grew tired long before she reached the mine. But she kept going rather than turn back. It was nearly two o’clock when Sorenson answered her hail.
Vicky did not stay long at the mine. She did not like the look of the sky. The wind was rising, too, and the temperature falling. Once she thought of asking Sorenson to go back to town with her, but she scouted the idea promptly and dismissed it. It did not agree with her view of the self-reliance she was cultivating. Incidentally, too, Sorenson was a lazy, sulky fellow who would resent taking any unnecessary trouble. She did not want to put herself under an obligation to him.
The wind had sifted a good deal of snow into the tracks she had made on the way down from the shoulder of the hill. It came now in great swirling gusts, filling the air with the light surface snow. By the time she had passed the Dodson properties the wind had risen to a gale, a biting wintry hurricane that almost lifted her from her feet. A stinging sleet swept into her face and blinded her. She found it difficult to make out the way.
Before she reached the foot of the slope below Bald Knob she was very tired. The wind drifts had filled the path, so that she had to break her own trail. The fury of the storm was constantly increasing.
In the comparative shelter of a little draw she stopped to decide what she had better do. It was still a mile and a half to town. She did not believe she could possibly make it even if she did not lose the way. Nor could she climb Bald Knob again to the Dodson camp. That would not be within her power. There was a little cabin in the next draw where Ralph slept when he did not care to go to town after spending the day on his Bald Knob property. It was usually stocked with supplies of food and fuel. No doubt it would be unoccupied now.
She put her head down into the white blizzard and trudged round the edge of the ridge that divided the two small gulches. Three minutes later she pushed open the door of the cabin and walked in.
A man sitting at a table jumped to his feet with a startled oath. “Goddamighty, who are you?” he demanded.
Vicky was as much taken aback as he. “I thought the cabin was empty,” she explained. “I’m Victoria Lowell, the school teacher at Piodie. I’ve been up to my claim.”
The man’s look was half a scowl and half a leer. He was a big round-shouldered ruffian with long hair and tangled, unkempt beard. There floated in her mind a vague and fugitive recollection of having seen him before somewhere.
“Better dry yorese’f,” he said ungraciously.
From the fireplace a big twisted piñon knot threw out a glow of heat. The girl took off her coat, shook the snow from the wet skirts, and moved forward to absorb the warmth.
Her host pushed a chair toward her with his foot.
She sank into it, worn out. Presently the moist skirts began to steam and the warmth of the fire made her drowsy. She aroused herself to conversation.
“Sorry I had to trouble you. I was ’fraid I couldn’t make it to town.”
“Hell’v a day,” he agreed.
On the table were a whisky bottle and a glass. He indicated them with a sweep of his hand. “Have a nip. Warm you up, miss.”
“No, thanks. I’m all right.”
Over her stole a delightful lassitude, the reaction from her fight with the storm. She looked sleepily into the live coals. The howling of the storm outside was deadened enough to make a sort of lullaby. Her head began to nod and her eyelids closed. With a start she brought herself awake again.
“Didn’t know I was so done up,” she murmured.
“ ’S all right. Sleep if you want to, miss,” the man told her.
Not for an hour or more did she open her eyes again. The table was set for a meal. A coffeepot was heating on some coals and a black kettle hung suspended from a crane above the fire.
“Come an’ get it, miss,” the man said gruffly when he saw that she was awake.
Vicky discovered that she was hungry. She drank the coffee he poured out and ate the stew he ladled from the kettle. He did not eat with her.
“If the storm would break I’d try to reach town,” she said presently.
“No chance. You stay here where you’re safe, miss.”
“My friends will worry.”
“Let ’em.”
“What was that?” the girl asked.
She had heard a sound of something striking the side of the house.
“Prob’ly a limb flung by the wind. Never saw such a night.”
Victoria shuddered. But for good fortune she might have now been perishing in the snow.
“How long do you think it will last?” she asked.
“Can’t tell. Maybe till mo’ning. Maybe two-three days.”
“Oh, it couldn’t last that long,” the girl cried, appalled.
“Hmp! Guess you don’t know a Nevada blizzard.” Again he looked at her, a leer on his heavy face. “You’re liable to have to put up with old Sam for quite a spell, missie.”
Vicky did not answer. Her eyes were meeting his and the blood crept into her cheeks. There was a furtive sinister menace between his narrowed lips that reminded her of a wolf creeping toward its kill. She looked away, her heart hammering fast. What sort of a creature was this man with whom she was locked up a million miles away from all the safeguards of society? In the glowing coals she found no answer to that question.
Presently she stole a sidelong look at him. He was pouring a drink from the whisky bottle.
“How?” he said, lifting the glass toward her. He tilted back his hairy throat and drained the tumbler.
A heavy pounding on the door startled the drinker. He listened.
Victoria was at the door instantly. She flung it open. A man lurched forward and crumpled up on the floor.