"When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be,When the devil got well, the devil a monk was he."
"When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be,When the devil got well, the devil a monk was he."
Pippin Larue chanted tipsily, as he strummed softly the strings of a muffled banjo. And Raoul Bethune, with the flush of liquor upon his pale cheeks, joined in the laugh that followed, and replenished his glass from the black bottle he had contrived to smuggle from the hospital stores when he had been returned to his room in the dormitory. And "Monk" Bethune he was solemnly rechristened by the half-dozen admiring satellites who had foregathered to celebrate his recovery from an illness. All this was long ago. Monk Bethune's dormitory life had terminated abruptly—for the good of the school, but the name had fastened itself upon him after the manner of names that fit. It followed him to far places, and certain red-coated policemen, who knew and respected his father, the Hudson Bay Company's old factor on Lake o'God's Wrath, hated him for what he had become. They knew him for an inveterate gambler who spent money freely and boasted openly of his winnings. He was soft of voice and mild of manner and aside from his passion for gambling, his conduct so far as was known was irreproachable. But, there were wise and knowing ones among the officers of the law, who deemed it worth their while to make careful and unobtrusive comparison between the man's winnings and his expenditures. These were the men who knew that certain Indians were being systematically supplied with whisky, and that there were certain horses in Canada whose brands, upon close inspection, showed signs of having been skillfully "doctored," and which bore unmistakable evidence of having come from the ranges to the southward of the international boundary.
But, try as they might, no slightest circumstance of evidence could they unearth against Bethune, who was wont to disappear from his usual haunts for days and weeks at a time, to reappear smiling and debonaire, as unexpectedly as he had gone. Knowing that the men of the Mounted suspected him, he laughed at them openly. Once, upon a street in Regina, Corporal Downey lost his temper.
"You'll make a mistake sometime, Monk, and then it will be our turn to laugh."
"Oh-ho! So until I make a mistake, I am safe, eh? That is good news, Downey—good news! Skill and luck—luck and skill—the tools of the gamblers' trade! But, granted that sometime I shall make a mistake—shall lose for the moment, my skill; I shall still have my luck—and your mistakes. You are a good boy, Downey, but you'll be a glum one if you wait to laugh at my mistakes. If I were a chicken thief instead of a—gambler, I should fear you greatly."
Downey recounted this jibe in the barracks, and the officers redoubled their vigilance, but the Indians still got their whisky, and new horses appeared from the southward.
When Monk Bethune refused Ma Watts's invitation to dinner, and rode off down the creek followed by Lord Clendenning, the refusal did not meet the Englishman's unqualified approval, a fact that he was not slow in imparting when, a short time later, they made noonday camp at a little spring in the shelter of the hills.
"I say, Monk, what's this bally important business we've got on hand?" he asked, as he adjusteda refractory hobble strap. "Seems to me you threw away an excellent opportunity."
Bethune grinned. "Anything that involves the loss of a square meal, is a lost opportunity. You're too beefy, Clen, a couple of weeks on pilot bread and tea always does you good."
"I was thinking more of the lady."
"La, la, the ladies! A gay dog in your day—but, you've had your day. Forget 'em, Clen, you're fifty, and fat."
"I'm forty-eight, and I weigh only fifteen stone as I stand," corrected the Englishman solemnly. "But layin' your bloody jokes aside, this particular lady ought to be worth our while."
Bethune nodded, as he scraped the burning ends of the little sticks closer about the teapot. "Yes, decidedly worth while, my dear Clen, and that's where the important business comes in. Those who live by their wits must use their wits or they will cease to live. I live by my wits, and you by your ability to follow out my directions. In the present instance, we had no plan. We could only have sat and talked, but talk is dangerous—when you have no plan. Even little mistakes are costly, and big ones are fatal. Let us go over the ground, now and check off our facts, and thenwe can lay our plans." As he talked, Bethune munched at his pilot bread, pausing at intervals for a swallow of scalding tea.
"In the first place, we know that Rod Sinclair made a strike. And we know that he didn't file any claim. Why? Because he knew that people would guess he had made a strike, and that the minute he placed his location on record, there would be a stampede to stake the adjoining claims—and he was saving those claims for his friends."
"His strike may be only a pocket," ventured Clendenning.
"It is no pocket! Rod Sinclair was a mining man—he knows rock. If he had struck a pocket he would have staked and filed at once—and taken no chances. I tell you he went back East to let his friends in. The fool!"
The Englishman finished his tea, rinsed out his tin cup in the spring, and filled his pipe. "And you think the girl has got the description?"
Bethune shook his head. "No. A map, perhaps, or some photographs. If she had the description she would not have come alone. The friends of her father would have been with her, and they would have filed the minute they hit thecountry. It's either a map, or nothing but his word."
"And in either case we've got a chance."
"Yes," answered Bethune, viciously. "And this time we are not going to throw away our chance!" He glanced meaningly at the Englishman, who puffed contentedly at his pipe.
"Sinclair was too shrewd to have carried anything of importance, and there would have been blood on our hands. As it is, we sleep good of nights."
Bethune gave a shrug of impatience. "And the gold is still in the hills, and we are no nearer to it than we were last fall."
"Yes, we are nearer. This girl will not be as shrewd as her father was in guarding the secret, if she has it. If she hasn't it our chance is as good as hers."
"And so is Vil Holland's! He believes Sinclair made a strike, and now that Sinclair is out of the way, you may be sure he will leave no stone unturned to horn in on it. The gold is in these hills and I'm going to get it. If I can't get it one way, I will get it another." The quarter-breed glanced about him and unconsciously lowered his voice. "However, one could wish the girl had delayed hervisit for a couple of weeks. A person slipped me the word he could handle about twenty head of horses."
The Englishman's face lighted. "I thought so when you began to dicker with Watts for his pasture. We'll get him his bally horses, then. This horse game I like, it's a sportin' game, and so is the whisky runnin'. But I couldn't lay in the hills and shoot a man, cold blooded."
"And you've never been a success," sneered Bethune. "You never had a dollar, except your remittance, until you threw in with me. And we'd have been rich now, if it hadn't been for you. I tell you I know Sinclair carried a map!"
"If he had, we'll get it. And we can sleep good of nights!"
"You're a fool, Clen, with your 'sleep good of nights!' I sleep good of nights, and I've—" he halted abruptly, and when he spoke again his words grated harsh. "I tell you this is a fang and claw existence—all life is fang and claw. The strong rip the flesh from the bones of the weak. And the rich rip their wealth from the clutch of a thousand poor. What a man has is his only so long as he can hold it. One man's gain is another man's loss, and that is life. And it makes no differencein the end whether it was got at the point of the pistol in defiance of law, or whether it was got within the law under the guise of business. And I don't need you to preach to me about what is wrong, either."
The Englishman laughed. "I'm not preaching, Monk. Anyone engaged in the business we're in has got no call to preach."
"We're no worse than most of the preachers. They peddle out, for money, what they don't believe."
"Heigh-ho! What a good old world you've painted it! I hope you're right, and I'm not as bad as I think I am."
Bethune interrupted, speaking rapidly in the outlining of a plan of procedure, and it was well toward the middle of the afternoon when the two saddled up and struck off into the hills in the direction of their camp.
Twilight had deepened to dusk as Patty Sinclair pulled her team to a standstill upon the rim of the bench and looked down upon the twinkling lights of the little town that straggled uncertainly along the sandy bank of the shallow river.
"Hain't it grand lookin'?" breathed MicrobyDandeline who sat decorously booted and stockinged upon the very edge of the board seat. "You wouldn't think they wus so many folks, less'n you seen 'em yers'f. Wisht I lived to town, an' I wisht they'd be a circust."
Patty guided the horses down the trail that slanted into the valley and crossed the half-mile of "flats" whose wire fences and long, clean-cut irrigation ditches marked the passing of the cattle country. A billion mosquitoes filled the air with an unceasing low-pitched drone, and settled upon the horses in a close-fitting blanket of gray. The girls tried to fight off the stinging pests that attacked their faces and necks in whirring clouds. But they fought in vain and in vain they endeavored to urge the horses to a quickening of their pace, for impervious alike to the sting of the insects and the blows of the whip, the animals plodded along in the unvarying walk they had maintained since early morning.
"This yere's the skeeter flats," imparted Microby, between slaps. "They hain't no skeeters in the mountains, mebbe it's too fer, an' mebbe they hain't 'nough folks fer 'em to bite out there, they's only us-uns an' a few more." As the girl talked the horses splashed into the shallow waterof the ford and despite all effort to urge them forward, halted in mid-stream, and sucked greedily of the crystal-clear water. It seemed an hour before they moved on and assayed a leisurely ascent of the opposite bank. The air became pungent with the smell of smoke. They were in town, now, and as the wagon wheels sank deeply into the soft sand of the principal street, Patty noted that in front of the doors of most of the houses, slow fires were burning—fires that threw off a heavy, stifling smudge of smoke that spread lazily upon the motionless air and hung thick and low to the ground.
"Skeeter smudges," explained Microby proud of being the purveyor of information, "towns has 'em, an' then the skeeters don't bite. Oh, look at the folks! Lest hurry up! They might be a fight! Las' time they wus a fight an' a breed cut a man Pap know'd an' the man got the breed down an' stomped on his face an' the marshal come an' sp'ilt hit, an' the man says if he'd of be'n let be he'd of et the breed up."
"My, what a shame! And now you may never see a man eat a breed, whatever a breed is."
"A breed's half a Injun." Microby was standing up on the seat at the imminent risk of her neck,peering over the heads of the crowd that thronged the sidewalk.
"Sit down!" commanded Patty, sharply, as she noted the amused glances with which those on the outskirts of the crowd viewed the ridiculous figure in the red dress and the pink sunbonnet. "They are waiting for the movie to open.
"Whut's a movie? Is hit like the circust? Kin I go?" The questions crowded each other, as the girl scrambled to her seat, her eyes were big with excitement.
"Yes, to-morrow."
"Looky, there's Buck!" Patty's eyes followed the pointing finger, and she frowned at sight of the rangy buckskin tied with half a dozen other horses to the hitching rail before the door of a saloon. It seemed as she glanced along the street that nearly every building in town was a saloon. Half a block farther on she drew to the sidewalk and stopped before the door of a two-story wooden building that flaunted across its front the words "Montana Hotel." As Patty climbed stiffly to the sidewalk each separate joint and muscle shrieked its aching protest at the fifteen-hour ride in the springless, jolting wagon. Microby placed her foot upon thesideboard and jumped, her cow-hide boots thudding loudly upon the wooden planking.
"Oughtn't you stay with the horses while I make the arrangements?"
Microby shook her head in vigorous protest. "They-all hain't a-goin' nowheres less'n they has to. An' I want to go 'long."
A thick-set man, collarless and coatless, who tilted back in his chair with his feet upon the window ledge, glanced up indifferently as they entered and crossed to the desk, and returned his gaze to the window, beyond which objects showed dimly in the gathering darkness. After a moment of awkward silence Patty addressed him. "Is the proprietor anywhere about?"
"I'm him," grunted the man, without looking around.
The girl's face flushed angrily. "I want a room and supper for two."
"Nawthin' doin'. Full up."
"Is there another hotel in this town?" she flashed angrily.
"No."
"Do you mean to say that there is no place where we can get accommodation for the night?"
"That's about the size of it."
"Can't we get anything to eat, either?" It was with difficulty Patty concealed her rage at the man's insolence. "If you knew how hungry we are—we've been driving since daylight with only a cold lunch for food." She did not add that the cold lunch had been so unappetizing she had not touched it.
"Supper's over a couple hours, an' the help's gone out."
"I'll pay you well if you can only manage to get us something—we're starved." The girl's rage increased as she noticed the gleam that lighted the heavy eyes. That, evidently was what he had been waiting for.
"Well," he began, but she cut him short.
"And a room, too."
"I'm full up, I told you. The only way might be to pay someone to double up. An' with these here cowpunchers that comes high. I might—" The opening of the screen door drew all eyes toward the man who entered and stood just within the room. As Patty glanced at the soft-brimmed hat, the brilliant scarf, and noticed that the yellow lamplight glinted upon the tip of polished buffalo horn, and the ivory butt of the revolver, her lips tightened. But the man was not looking at her—seemed hardly aware of her presence. The burly proprietor smiled.
"Hello, Vil. Somethin' I kin do fer you?"
"Yes," answered the man. He spoke quietly, but there was that in his voice that caused the other to glance at him sharply. "You can stand up."
The man complied without taking his eyes from the cowboy's face.
"I happened to be goin' by an' thought I'd stop an' see if I could take the team over to the livery barn for my—neighbors, yonder. The door bein' open, I couldn't help hearin' what you said." He paused, and the proprietor grinned.
"Business is business, an' a man's into it fer all he kin git."
"I suppose that's so. I suppose it's good business to lie an' cheat women, an'——"
"I hain't lied, an' I hain't cheated no one. An' what business is it of yourn if I did? All my rooms is full up, an' the help's all gone to the pitcher show."
"An' there's about a dozen or so cowmen stoppin' here to-night—the ones you talked of payin' to double up—an' there ain't one of 'em that wouldn't be glad to double up, or go out an'sleep on the street if he couldn't get nowhere else to sleep, if you even whispered that there was a lady needed his room. The boys is right touchy when it comes to bein' lied about."
The proprietor's face became suddenly serious. "Aw looky here, Vil, I didn't know these parties was friends of yourn. I'll see't they gits 'em a room, an' I expect I kin dig 'em out some cold meat an' trimmin's. I was only kiddin'. Can't you take a joke?"
"Yes, I can take a joke. I'm only kiddin', too—an' so'll the boys be, after I tell 'em——"
"They hain't no use rilin' the boys up. I——"
"An' about that supper," continued the cowboy, ignoring the protest, "I guess that cold meat'll keep over. What these ladies needs is a good hot supper. Plenty of hamand, hot Java, potatoes, an' whatever you got."
"But the help's——"
"Get it yourself, then. It ain't so long since you was runnin' a short order dump. You ain't forgot how to get up a quick feed, an' to give the devil his due, a pretty good one."
The other started surlily toward the rear. "I'll do it, if——"
"You won't do itifnothin'. You'll do it—that's all. An' you'll do it at the regular price, too."
"Say, who's runnin' this herehotel?"
"You're runnin' it, an' I'm tellin you how," answered the tall hillman, without taking his eyes from the other's face.
The man disappeared, muttering incoherently, and Vil Holland turned to the door.
"I want to thank you," ventured Patty. "Evidently your word carries weight with mine host."
"It better," replied the cowpuncher, dryly. "An' you're welcome. I'll take the team across to the livery barn." He spoke impersonally, with scarcely a glance in her direction, and as the screen door banged behind him the girl flushed, remembering her own rudeness upon the trail.
"Lawless he may be, and he certainly looks and acts the part," she murmured to herself as the wagon rattled away from the sidewalk, "but his propensity for turning up at the right time and the right place is rapidly becoming a matter of habit." A door beside the desk stood ajar, and above it, Patty read the words "Wash Room." Pushing it open she glanced into the interior which was dimly lighted by a murky oil lamp that occupied a sagging bracket beside a distorted mirror.Two tin wash basins occupied a sink-like contrivance above which a single iron faucet protruded from the wall. Beside the faucet was tacked a broad piece of wrapping paper upon which were printed in a laborious scrawl the following appeals:
NOtissPles DoNT LEEv THE WaTTer RUN ITS hANPumpt.PLes DONT Waist THE ToWL.Kome AN BREsh AN TOOTH BResH IS INtoTHR Rak BESIDS THE MiRRoW. PLeS PUTEM baCK.THes IS hoUSE RULes AN WANts TO be OBayDKINLY.F. RuMMEL, PROP.
NOtiss
F. RuMMEL, PROP.
Removing the trail dust from their faces and hands, the girls returned to the office and after an interminable wait the proprietor appeared, red-faced and surly. "Grub's on, an' yer room'll be ready agin you've et," he growled, and waddled to his place at the window.
A generous supply of ham and eggs, fried potatoes, bread and butter, and hot coffee awaited them in the dining-room, and it seemed to Patty that never before had food tasted so good. Twentyminutes later, when they returned to the office the landlord indicated the stairway with a jerk of his thumb. "First door to the right from the top of the stairs, lamp's lit, extry blankets in the closet, breakfast from five 'till half-past-seven." The words rattled from his lips in a single breath as he sat staring into the outer darkness.
"If Aunt Rebecca could see me, now," smiled Patty to herself, as she led the way up the uncarpeted stairs, with Microby Dandeline's cow-hide boots clattering noisily in her wake.
If Patty Sinclair had anticipated annoyance from the forced attention of her tall horseman of the hills, she was disappointed, for neither at meals, nor during the shopping tour that occupied the whole of the following day, nor yet upon the long homeward drive, did he appear. The return trip was slower and more monotonous even than the journey to town. The horses crawled along the interminable treeless trail with the heavily loaded wagon bumping and rattling in the choking cloud of its own dust.
The expedition had been a disappointing one to Microby. The "pitcher show" did not compare in interest with the never forgotten "circust." There had been no "fight" to break the monotony of purchasing supplies. And they had encountered no "nortymobiles."
Despite the fact that they had started from townat daylight, darkness overtook them at the canyon and it was with fear and misgiving that Patty contemplated the devious trail up Monte's Creek. The descent of this trail by daylight had taxed the girl's knowledge of horsemanship to the limit, and now to attempt its ascent with a heavily loaded wagon in the darkness—Microby Dandeline seemed to read her thoughts.
"We-all cain't git up the crick, I don't reckon," she hazarded, but even as she spoke there was a flicker of light flashed through the darkness and, lantern in hand, Watts rose from his comfortable seat in a niche of rock near the fork of the trail and greeted them with his kindly drawl. "I 'lowed yo' all ort to be 'long d'rec'ly. I'll take 'em now, Miss; the trail's kind of roughish like, but ef yo'll jist take the lantern an' foller 'long ahead I reckon we'll make hit all right. I've druv hit afore in the dark, an' no lantern, neither." Taking turns with the lantern, the girls led the way, and an hour and a half later halted before the door of the Watts cabin, where they became the center of an admiring group of young Wattses who munched their candy soberly as they gazed in reverent awe at the homing argonauts.
The three mile walk up the rough trail didwonders for Patty's stiffened muscles, and it was with a feeling of agreeable surprise that she rose from her shake-down the following morning with scarcely an ache or a pain in her body.
"Yer gittin' bruk in to hit," smiled Ma Watts, approvingly, as the girl sat down to her belated breakfast. But the surprise at her fit condition was nothing to the surprise of Ma Watts's next words. "Pa, he taken yer stuff on up to the sheep camp. He 'lowed yo'd want to git settled like. They taken yer pa's outfit along, too, an' when they git yo' onloaded they're a-goin' to work on the upper pasture fence. When Pa gits sot on a thing he goes right ahead an' does hit. Some thinks he's lazy, but hit hain't thet. He's easy goin'—all the Wattses wus—but when they git sot on a thing all kingdom come cain't stop 'em a-doin' hit. Trouble with Pa is he's got sot on settin'." Ma Watts talked on and on, and at the conclusion of the meal Patty drew a bill from her purse. But the woman would have none of it. "No siree, we-all hain't a-runnin' nohotel. Folks is welcome to come when they like an' stay as long as they want to, an' we're glad to hev 'em. Yer cayuse is a-waitin' out yender. The boys saddled him up fer yo'. Come down an' take pot luckwhenever yo're a mind. Microby Dandeline, she ketched up Gee Dot an' went a-taggin' 'long fer to help yo' git settled. Ef she gits in the way jist send her home. Foller up the crick," she called, as Patty mounted her horse. "Yo' cain't miss the sheep camp, hit's about a mild 'bove the upper pasture."
Watts and the boys were just finishing the unloading of her supplies when Patty slipped from her horse and surveyed the little cabin with its dark background of pines.
"Hit hain't so big as some," apologized the man, as he climbed into the wagon and gathered up the reins. "But the chinkin's tol'ble, an' the roof's middlin' tight 'cept a couple places wher' it leaks."
The girl's glance strayed from the little log building to the untidy litter of rusty tin cans and broken bottles that ornamented its dooryard, and the warped and broken panels of the abandoned corral that showed upon the weed-choked flat across the creek. Stepping to the door, she peered into the interior where Microby was industriously sweeping the musty hay from the bunk with the brand-new broom. Thumbed and torn magazines littered the floor, a few discarded garments hung dejectedly from nails driven into the wall, whilefrom the sagging door of the rough board cupboard bulged a miscellaneous collection of rubbish. A sense of depression obsessed her;thiswas to be her home! She sneezed and drew back hastily from the cloud of dust raised by Microby's broom. As she dabbed at her eyes and nose with a small and ridiculously inadequate handkerchief, she was conscious of an uncomfortable lump in her throat, and the moisture that dampened the handkerchief could not all be accredited to the sneeze tears. "What if I have trouble locating the mine and have to stay here all summer?" she was thinking, and instantly recalling the Watts ranch with its air of shiftless decay, the smelly Watts blankets in the overcrowded sleeping room, the soggy meals, the tapping of chickens' bills upon the floor, and the never ending voice of Ma Watts, she smiled. It was a weak, forced little smile, at first, but it gradually widened into a real smile as her eyes swept the little valley with its long vista of pine-clad hills that reached upward to the sky, their mighty sides and shoulders gored by innumerable rock-rimmed coulees and ravines. Somewhere amid the silence of those mighty slopes and high-flung peaks her father had found Eldorado—had wrested nature's secret from the guardianship ofthe everlasting hills. Her heart swelled with the pride of him. She was ashamed of that sudden welling of tears. The feeling of depression vanished and her heart throbbed to the lure of the land of gold. The two small Wattses had scrambled into the wagon-box.
"Yo' goin' to like hit," announced Watts, noticing the smile. "I 'lowed, fust-off yo'——"
"I'm going toloveit!" interrupted the girl vehemently. "My father loved these hills, and I shall love them. And, as for the cabin! When Microby and I get through with it, it's going to be the dearest little place imaginable."
"Hit wus a good sheep camp," admitted Watts, his fingers fumbling judiciously at his head. "An' they's a heap o' good feed goin' to waste in this yere valley. But ef the cattlemen wants to pay fer what they hain't gittin' hit hain't none o' my business, I reckon."
"Why did they drive the sheep out? Surely, there is room for all here in the hills."
"Vil Holland, he claimed they cain't no sheeps stay in the hill country. He claims sheeps is like small-poxt. Onct they git a-goin' they spread, an' like's not, the hull country's ruint fer cattle range."
"It seems that Vil Holland runs this little corner of Montana."
"He kind o' looks after things fer the cattlemen, but the prospectin's got into his blood, an' he won't stick to the cattle, only on the round-up, 'til he gits him a grub-stake. He's a good man—Vil is—ef it wusn't fer foolin' 'round with the prospectin'."
Instantly, the girl's eyes flashed. "If it wasn't for the prospecting!" she exclaimed, in sudden anger. "My father was a prospector—and there was never a better man lived than he! Why is it that everyone looks askance at a prospector? You talk like the people back home! But, I'll show you all. My father made a strike. He told me of it on his death-bed, and he gave me the map, and the photographs and his samples. Maybe when I locate this mine and begin taking out more gold every day than most of you ever saw, you won't talk of people 'fooling around' prospecting. I tell you prospectors are the finest men in the world! They must have imagination, and unending patience, and the heart to withstand a thousand disappointments—" She broke off suddenly as the soft rattle of bit-chains sounded from behind her, and whirled to face Vil Holland. The manregarded her gravely, unsmiling. A gauntleted hand raised the Stetson from his head. As her eyes took in every detail, from the inevitable leather jug, to the tip of polished buffalo horn, she flushed. How long had he stood there, listening?
The cowpuncher seemed to divine her thoughts. "I just happened along," he said regarding her with his steady blue eyes. "I couldn't help hearin' what you said about the prospectors. You're right in the main."
"I was speaking of my father. I am Rodney Sinclair's daughter."
The man nodded. "Yes, I know."
Watts rubbed his chin apologetically. "We-all thought a right smart o' yo' pa, didn't we, Vil? I didn't aim to rile yo'."
"I know you didn't!" the girl smiled. "And thank you so much for bringing my things up so early." She turned to the cowboy who sat regarding the outfit indifferently. "I hope you'll overlook my lack of hospitality, but really I must get to work and help Microby or she'll have the whole house cleaned before I get started."
"I saw the team here, an' thought I'd swing down to find out if Watts was movin' in another sheep outfit."
"I've heard about your driving away the sheep man," returned Patty, with more than a trace of sarcasm in her tone. "I am moving into this cabin—am taking up my father's work where he left off. I suppose I should ask your permission to prospect in the hill country."
"No," replied the man, gravely. "Just help yourself, only don't get lost, an' remember yer dad knew enough to play a lone hand. I must be goin', now. Good day." He turned his horse to see Microby standing in the doorway. "Hello, Microby Dandeline! House cleanin', eh? I s'pect you took in the picture show in town?"
"Yes, but circusts is better. I got some yallar ribbon fer my hat, an' a awful lot o' candies."
"My, that's fine! How's ma an' the baby?"
"They stayed hum. The baby'd squall. Pa an' the boys is goin' to mend fence, an' I'm a-goin' to stay yere an' he'p her clean up the sheep camp."
The cowpuncher turned to Watts. "What's the big hurry about the fences, Watts? You goin' to take over a bunch of stock?"
"Hosses," answered Watts with an important jerk at his scraggly beard. "I done rented the upper pasture to a man name o' Schultz over in Blackfoot country. Five dollars a month, I gitfer hit, an' five dollars fer every day er night they's hosses in hit. He done paid two months' rent a'ready."
Vil Holland's brows puckered slightly. "Schultz, you say? Over in the Blackfoot country?"
"Yas, he's aimin' to trail hosses from there over into Canady an' he wants some pastures handy."
"Did Schultz see you about it himself?" asked Vil, casually.
"No, Monk Bethune; he come by this way, an' he taken the pasture for Schultz."
Patty noted an almost imperceptible narrowing of the cowpuncher's eyes, an expression, slight as it was, that spoke disapproval. The man's attitude angered her. Here was poor Watts, about to undertake the first work he had done in years, judging by the condition of the ranch, under stimulus of the few dollars promised him by Bethune, and this cowboy disapproved. "Are horses under the ban, too?" she asked quickly. "Hasn't Mr. Watts the right to rent his land for a horse pasture?"
The man's answer seemed studiously rude in its direct brevity. "No, horses ain't under the ban. Yes, Watts can rent his land where he wants to. Good day." Before the girl could reply he reinedhis horse abruptly about, and disappeared in the timber upon the opposite side of the creek.
"Reckon I better be gittin' 'long, too," said Watts. "Microby's welcome to stay an' he'p yo'-all git moved in, but please mom, to see't she gits started fer hum 'fore dark. Hit takes thet ol' pinto 'bout a hour to make the trip."
Patty promised, and unsaddling, picketed her horse, and joined the girl in the dusty interior of the cabin. The musty hay, the discarded garments, and the two bushels or more of odds and ends with which the pack rats had filled the cupboard made a smudgy, smelly bonfire beside which Patty paused with an armful of discarded magazines. "Wouldn't you like to take these home?" she asked.
"Which?" inquired Microby, deftly picking a small stick from the ground with her bare toes and tossing it into the fire.
"These magazines. There are stories and pictures in them."
"No, I don't want none. We-alls cain't read, 'cept Ma, an' she's got a book—an' a bible, too," she added, with a touch of pride. "Davey, he kin mos' read, an' he kin drawer pitchers, too. Reckon he'll be a preacher when he's grow'd up, like Preacher Christie. He done read outen a bookwhen he babitized us-uns. I don't like to read. Ma, she aimed to learn me onct, but I'd ruther shuck beans."
"Maybe you didn't keep at it long enough," suggested Patty.
"Yes, we did! We kep' at hit every night fer two nights 'til hit come bedtime. I cain't learn them letters—they's too many diffe'nt ones, an' all mixed up."
Patty smiled, but she did not toss the magazines into the fire. Instead she laid them aside with the resolve that when opportunity afforded, she would carry on the interrupted education.
Microby's literary delinquency in no wise impaired her willingness to work. She had inherited none of her father's predilection toward eternal rest, and all day, side by side with Patty, she scraped, and scoured, and scrubbed, and washed, until the little cabin and its contents fairly radiated cleanliness. The moving in was great fun for the mountain girl. Especially the unpacking of the two trunks that resisted all efforts to lift them until their contents had been removed. But at last the work was finished even to the arrangement of dishes and utensils, the stowing of supplies, and the blowing up of the air mattress that replacedthe musty hay of the sheep herder. And as the long shadows of mountains crept slowly across the little valley and began to climb the opposite slope, Patty stood in the door of her cabin and watched Microby mount the superannuated Indian pony and proceed slowly down the creek, her bare feet swinging awkwardly in the loops of rope that served as stirrups of her dilapidated stock saddle.
When horse and rider disappeared into a grove of cottonwoods, Patty's gaze returned to her immediate surroundings—her saddle-horse contentedly snipping grass, the waters of the shallow creek burbling noisily over the stones, the untidy scattering of tin cans, and the leaning panels of the old sheep corral. She frowned at the panels. "I'll just use you for firewood," she muttered. "And that reminds me that I've got to wake up to my responsibility as head of the household—even if the household does only consist of one bay cayuse, named Dan, and a tiny one-room cabin, and two funny little squirrel-tailed pack rats, and me." She reached for her brand new ax, and picking her way from stone to stone, crossed the creek, and attacked a sagging panel.
Patty Sinclair was no hot-house flower, and the hand that gripped the ax was strong and brownand capable. Back home she had been known to the society reporters as "an out-door girl," by which it was understood that rather than afternoon auction at henfests, she affected tennis, golf, swimming, and cross-country riding. She could saddle her own horse, and paddle a canoe for hours on end. Even the ax was no stranger to her hand, for upon rare occasions when her father had returned during the summer months from his everlasting prospecting, he had taken her to camp in the mountains, and there from the quiet visionary whom she loved more than he ever knew, she learned the ax, and the compass, and a hundred tricks of camp lore that were to stand her well in hand. Partly inherited, partly acquired through association with her father upon those never-to-be-forgotten pilgrimages to the shrine of nature, her love of the vast solitudes shone from her uplifted eyes as she stood for a moment, ax in hand, and let her gaze travel slowly from the sun-gilded peaks of the mountains, down their darkening sides, to the dusk-enshrouded reaches of her valley. "He used to watch the sun go down, and he never wearied at the wonder of it," she breathed, softly. "And then, as the darkness deepened and the bull-bats came wheeling overhead, and the whip-poor-wills began calling from the thickets, he would light his pipe, and I would cuddle up close to him, and the firelight would grow redder and brighter and the soft warm dark would grow blacker. The pine trees would lose their shapes and blend into the formless night and mysterious shadow shapes would dance to the flicker of the little flames. It was then he would talk of the things he loved; of quartz, and drift, and the mother lode; of storms, and bears, and the scent of pines; of reeking craters, parched deserts, ice-locked barrens, and the wind-lashed waters of lakes. 'And some day, little daughter,' he would say, 'some day you are going with daddy and see all these things for yourself—things whose grandeur you have never dreamed. It won't be long, now—I'm on the right track at last—only till I've made my strike.' Always—'it won't be long now.' Always—'I'm on the right track, at last.' Always—'just ahead is the strike'—that lure, that mocking chimera that saps men's lives! And now, he is—gone, and I am chasing the chimera." Salt tears stung her eyes and blurred the timbered slopes. "They said he was a—a ne'er-do-well. He became almost a joke—" the words ended in a dry sob, as the bright blade of the ax crashed viciously into the rotting panel.A few moments later she picked up an armful of wood, and retracing her steps, piled it neatly behind the stove. She lighted the fire, fetched a pail of water from the spring, and moved the picketed cayuse to a spot beside the creek where the grass was green and lush. She had intended after supper to study her map and familiarize herself with the two small photographs that were pinned to it. But, when the meal was over and the dishes washed and put away she was too sleepy to do anything but drop the huge wooden bar that the sheep herder had contrived to insure himself against a possible night attack from his enemies into its place and crawl into her bunk. How good it felt, she thought, sleepily—the yielding air mattress, and the soft, clean blankets, after the straw tick on the floor, and the course sour blankets in the Wattses' stuffy room.
Somewhere, way off in the hills, a wolf howled and almost before the sound had died away the girl was asleep.
It was past noon when Patty sank into the chair beside her table and glanced about her with a sigh of satisfaction. Warm June sunlight streamed through the open door and lay in a bright oblique patch upon the scrubbed floor. The girl's glance strayed past the door and rested with approval upon the little flat across the creek where a neat pile of panels replaced the broken sheep corral. She had spent hours in untwisting the baling wire with which they had been fastened to the posts and dragging them to the pile, and other hours in chopping a supply of firewood, and picking up the cans and broken bottles and pitching them into the deep ravine of a side coulee. Also she had built a little reservoir of rocks about her spring, and had found time to add a few touches to the interior of the cabin. "It's just as homey and cozy as it can be," she murmured, as her eyesstrayed from the little window where the colored chintz curtain stirred lightly in the breeze, to the neatly arranged "dressing table" that she had contrived with the aid of four light packing boxes and a bit of figured cretonne. Another packing case, covered to match, served as a stool, and upon the wall above the table hung a small mirror. Four or five prints, looking oddly out of place, hung upon the dark log walls—pictures that had always hung in her room at Aunt Rebecca's, and which she had managed to crowd into one of the trunks. A fond imagination had pictured them adorning the walls of her "apartment" which was to be located in a spacious wing of the great Watts ranch house. "I don't care, I'm glad there wasn't any big ranch house," she muttered. "It's lots nicer this way, and I'm absolutely independent. We prospectors can't hope to be regular in our habits—and I've always wanted a house of my very own. Ten times better!" she exclaimed vehemently. "There won't be anybody to ask me every day or two if I've made my strike yet? And how much gold I brought back to-day? And all the other fool questions that seem so humorous to questioners and hearers, but which hurt and sting and rankle when you're sick at heart withdisappointment, and gritting your teeth to keep up your courage and your belief in yourself. Oh I know! Daddy didn't know I knew, but I did—how it hurt when the village wits would slyly wink at each other as they asked their cruel questions. Even when I was a little girl I knew, and I could havekilledthem!" Her glance rested upon the canvas covered pack that lay in the corner at the foot of the bunk. "There are his things—his outfit, they call it here. I'm going to examine it." The sack of stiff oiled canvas, with its contents, was heavy, but the girl dragged it to the middle of the floor and squatting beside it, stared in dismay at the stout padlock and the chain that threaded a set of grommets. She was about to search for the key among the contents of her father's pockets which she had placed in the tray of her trunk, when her eye fell upon a thin slit close along the edge of the hem that held the grommets—a slit that, pulled wide, disclosed an aperture through which the contents of the sack could be easily removed but withal so cunningly contrived as to escape casual inspection. With an angry exclamation the girl stared at the gaping hole. "Someone has cut it!" she cried. "He doesn't seem to have taken much, though. It's about as full as it can be."She began hurriedly to remove the contents, piling them about her upon the floor. "I wonder if—if he left any papers, or note books, or maps, or things that would enable anyone to locate the claim? If he did," she muttered, peering into the empty sack, "they're gone, now."
One by one, she returned the belongings, handling them tenderly, now, and examining them lovingly, and many an article was returned to the sack, wet with its splash of hot tears. "Here's his coffee pot, and his plate, and frying pan, and his old pipe—" the pipe she did not replace, but put it with the other things in her trunk. "And here—why, it's a revolver and a belt of cartridges—like Vil Holland's! And a hat like his, too! And I thought he was a desperado because he wore them!" She jumped to her feet and, hurrying to the mirror, tried on the hat, pinching the crown into a peak, tilting it this way and that, and arranging and rearranging the soft roll brim. "It fits!" she cried, delighted as a child, and then with eyes sparkling, picked up the belt with its row of yellow cartridges and its ivory handled six gun dangling in the holster. Buckling the belt about her waist, she laughed aloud as the buckle tongue came to rest a full six inches beyond the last hole."I'll look just as desperate as he does, now—except for his old jug. Daddy didn't have any jug, and I'm glad—that's where the difference is—it's the jug. But, I wish he had had one of those black horn effects for his scarf." She knotted the brilliant red scarf with its zigzag border of yellow, about her neck, and snatching a small pair of scissors from the dressing table, removed the heavy belt, and proceeded to bore a tongue hole at the point she had marked with her finger nail. So engrossed she became in the work, that she failed to hear the approach of horses' feet, and started violently at the sound of a voice from the doorway. "Permit me." The six shooter thudded to the floor, and sweeping the hat from his head, Monk Bethune crossed the room, and replaced it upon the table. He smiled as he noticed the scar left upon the thick leather by the scissor points; and repeated. "Permit me, please." He drew a penknife from his pocket, and picked up the belt. "A knife is so much better."
Ashamed of having been startled, Patty smiled. "Yes, please do. I had no idea it was so tough, or that scissors could be so dull."
Deftly twirling the penknife, Bethune bored a neat hole in the leather. "There should be severalholes," he smiled, "for there are occasions in the hill country when one fails to connect with the commissary, and then it is that the tightening of the belt answers the purpose of a meal." Drilling as he talked, he soon finished the task and held up the belt for inspection. "Rod Sinclair's gun," he commented, sorrowfully. "And Rod's scarf, and hat, too. Ah, there was a man, Miss Sinclair! I doubt if even you yourself knew him as I knew him. You must ride and work with a man, in fair weather and foul; you must share his hardships, and his disappointments, yes and his joys, too, to really know him." A look of genuine affection shone from the man's eyes as he stood drawing his fingers gently along the rims of the shiny cartridges. He seemed to be speaking more to himself than to the girl. His manner, the look in his eyes, the very tone of his voice, were so intrinsically honest in their expression of unbounded sympathy with his subject, and his mood fitted so thoroughly with her own, that the girl's heart suddenly warmed toward this man who spoke so feelingly of her father. She flushed slightly as she remembered that upon the occasion of their previous meeting, his words had engendered a feeling of distrust.
"You knew him—well?" she asked.
"Like a brother. For two years we have worked together in our search for the mother lode that both believed lay concealed deep within the bosom of these hills. A dozen times during those two years our hopes have risen, as only the hopes can rise, of those who seek gold. A dozen times it seemed certain that at last we had reached our goal. But, always it was the same—a false lead—shattered hopes—and a fresh start. Those were the times, Miss Sinclair, that your father showed the stuff that was in him. He was a better man than I. It was his Spartan acceptance of disappointment, his optimism, and his unshaken faith in ultimate success, that kept me going. I suppose it is my French ancestry that is responsible for my lack of just the qualities that made your father the man he was. I lacked his stability—his balance. I had imagination—vision, possibly greater than his. And under the stimulus of apparent success, my spirits would rise to heights his never knew. But I paid for it—no one knows how bitterly I paid. For when apparent success turned into failure, mine were depths of despair he never descended to. At first, before I learned that his disappointment was as bitter as my own,his smiling acceptance of failure, used to goad me to fury. There were times I could have killed him with pleasure—but that was only at first. Before we had been long together God knows how I came to depend on those smiles. Then, at last, we struck it—and poor Rod—" The man's voice which had dropped very low, broke suddenly. He cleared his throat and turning abruptly, stared out the door toward the green sweep of pines on the mountain slopes.
There was a long silence during which the words kept repeating themselves in the girl's brain. "Then, at last, we struck it." What did he mean? His back was toward her, and she saw that the muscles of his neck worked slowly, as though he were swallowing repeatedly.
When at last she spoke, her voice sounded strangely dull to her own ears. "Do you mean that you and my father were partners, and that you know the location of his mine?"
Bethune faced her, laying the belt gently upon the table. "Partners?" He repeated the word as though questioning himself. "Hardly partners, I should say. We were—it is hard to define the exact relationship that existed between Rod Sinclair and me. There was never any agreement ofpartnership, rather a sort of tacit understanding, that when we struck the lode, we should work it together. Your father knew vastly more about rock than I, although I had long suspected the existence of this lode. But extensive interests to the northward prevented me from making any continued search for it. However, I found time at intervals to spend a month or six weeks in these hills, and it was upon one of these occasions that we struck up the acquaintance that ripened into a sort of mutuality of interest. Neighbors are few and far between in the hill country, and those not exactly of the type that attract men of education. I think each found in the other a man of his own stripe, and thus a friendship sprang up between us that gradually led to a merging of interests. His were by far the most valuable activities in the field, while I, from time to time, advanced certain funds for the carrying on of the work.
"But let us not talk of business matters. Time enough for that." He stepped to the doorway and glanced down the creek. "Here comes Clen and we must be going. While he stopped at Watts's to reset a shoe I rode on to inquire if there is any way in which I may serve the daughter of my friend.
"Oh-ho! I see Clen is carrying something very gingerly. He has prevailed upon the good Mrs. Watts to sell him some eggs. A great gourmand—but a good fellow at heart. I think a great deal of Clen, even though it was he who——"
"But tell me, before you go," interrupted the girl. "Do you know the location of my father's mine?"
Bethune turned from the door, smiling. Patty noticed with surprise that the dark, handsome features looked almost boyish when he smiled. There had been no hint of boyishness before, in fact something of baffling inscrutability in the black eyes, gave the man an expression of extreme sophistication. "Do not call it a mine," he laughed. "At least, not yet. A mine is a going proposition. If your father actually succeeded in locating the lode, it is a strike. Had he filed, it would be a claim. Had he started operation it would be a proposition—but not until there is ore on the dump will it be a mine."
"If he actually succeeded!" cried Patty. "I thought you said——"
The man interrupted with a wave of the hand. "So I did, for I believe he did succeed. In fact, knowing Rod Sinclair as I did, I am certain of it."
"But the location of the—the strike," she persisted, "do you know it?"
Bethune shook his head sadly. "Had your father filed the claim, all would have been well. But, who am I to question Rod's judgment? For on the other hand, if he had filed, word of the strike would have spread broadcast, and the whole hill country would immediately have been overrun by stampeders—those vultures that can scent a gold strike for five thousand miles. No one knows where they come from, and no one knows where they go. It was to guard our secret from these that prompted your father not to file. We had planned to establish our friends on the adjoining claims, and thus build up a syndicate of our own choosing. So he did not file, but it was through no fault of his that I remain ignorant of the location, but rather it was the result of a combination of unforeseen circumstances. You shall judge for yourself.
"I was deep in the wilds of British Columbia, upon another matter, when Rod unearthed the lode, and, not knowing this, he hastened at once to my camp. He found Clen there and after expressing disappointment at my absence, sat down and hurriedly sketched a map, and taking from his pocket a photograph, he wrapped bothin a piece of oilskin, and handed them to Clen, with instructions to travel night and day until he had delivered the packet to me. He told him that he had located the lode and was hurrying East to procure the necessary capital and would return in the early spring for immediate operation." Bethune paused and, with his eyes upon the Englishman who was dismounting, continued:
"Poor Clen! He did his best, and I do not hold his failure against him, for his was a journey of hardship and peril such as few men could have survived. Upon receiving the packet he started within the hour. That night he camped at the line, and that night, too, came the first snow of the season. He labored on next day to the railway and took a train to Edmonton, and from there, to Fort George, where he succeeded in procuring an Indian guide for the dash into the wilderness beyond the railway. The early months of last winter were among the most terrible in the history of the North. Storm after storm hurtled out of the Arctic, and between storms the bitter winds from the barrens to the eastward roared with unabated fury. Yet Clen and his guide pushed on, fighting the cold and the snow. Up over the Height of Land, to the Hudson Bay Post at the head of the Parsnip,where I was making my headquarters, and where I had lain snowbound for ten days. It was during the descent of Crooked River, a quick water, treacherous stream, whose thin ice was covered with snow, that the accident happened that cost me the loss of the location, and nearly cost Clen his life. The Indian guide was mushing before, bent low with the weight of his pack, and head lowered to the sweep of the wind. Clen followed. At the head of a newly frozen rapid, the Englishman suddenly broke through and was plunged into the icy waters. Grasping the ice, he managed to draw himself up so that his elbows rested upon the edge, and in this position he called again and again to the guide. But the Indian was far ahead, his ears were muffled in his fur cap, and the wind roared through the scrub, drowning Clen's voice. The icy waters numbed him and sucked at his body seeking to drag him to his doom. The heavy pack was dragging him slowly backward, and his hold upon the ice was slipping. Then, and not until then, Clen did what any other man who possessed the strength, would have done. He worked the knife from his belt and cut the straps of his pack sack. In an instant it disappeared beneath the ice, and with it the location of yourfather's strike. Relieved of the weight upon his shoulders, Clen had a fighting chance for his life, but it is doubtful if he would have won had it not been that the Indian, missing him at last, returned in the nick of time, and with the aid of a loop ofbabiche, succeeded in drawing him from the water. The rest of the day was spent in drying Clen's clothing beside a miserable fire of brushwood, and the next day they made Fort McLeod, more dead than alive."
"Lord" Clendenning had dismounted, deposited his precious basket of eggs upon the ground, and stood in the doorway as Bethune concluded his narrative. When the man ceased speaking the Englishman shook his head sadly. "Yes, yes, it seemed to me then, as I clung to the edge of the bloomin' ice, freezin' from my feet up, that my only chance was in bein' rid of the pack. But, I've thought since that maybe if I'd held on just a few minutes longer, the bloody Injun would have got there in time to save both me an' the pack to boot."
"There you go again!" exclaimed Bethune, with a trace of impatience in his voice. "How many times have I told you to quit this self-accusation. A man who covered fifty miles on horseback, seven hundred on the train, and thennearly a hundred a-foot, under conditions such as you faced, has nothing to be ashamed of in the failure of his mission. It is your loss as well as mine, for you also were to have profited by the strike. It is possible, however, that all will be well—that Miss Sinclair has her father's original map, and a duplicate of the photograph, or better yet, the film from which the print was made."
Pausing he glanced at the girl significantly, but she was gazing past him—past Clendenning, her eyes upon the giant up-sweep of the hills. He hurried on, "So now you have the whole story. I had not meant to speak of it, to-day. Really, we must be going. If I can be of service to you in any way, Miss Sinclair, I am yours to command. We will drop in again, after you have had time to get used to your surroundings, and lay our plans for the rediscovery of the mother lode." Smiling he pointed to the canvas bag upon the floor. "Your father's pack sack," he said. "I should know it in a thousand. He devised it himself. It is a clever combination of the virtues of several of the standard packs, and an elimination of the evils of all." He stooped closer. "What's this? You should not have cut it! Couldn't you find the key? If not, it would have been a simple matter to file alink of the chain, and leave the sack undamaged." He laughed, shortly. "But, that, I suppose, is a woman's way."
"I did not cut it. It was cut before it came here. My father left it in Mr. Watts's care and he stored it in the barn. Look at the edges, it is an old cut."
"So it is!" exclaimed Bethune, as he and Lord Clendenning bent close to examine it. "So it is. I wonder who—" Suddenly he ceased speaking, and stood for a moment with puckered brows. "I wonder," he muttered. "I wonder if he would have dared? Yes, I think he would. He knew of Rod's strike, and he would stop at nothing to steal the secret."
"I don't believe Mr. Watts, nor any of the Wattses cut that pack," defended the girl.
"Neither do I. Watts has his faults, but dishonesty is not one of them. No. The man who cut that pack, was the man who carried it there——"
"Vil Holland!" exclaimed Lord Clendenning. "My word, d'ye think he'd dare? Yes, Watts told us that he brought in the pack because Sinclair was in a hurry. The bloody scamp! He should be jolly well trounced! I'll do it myself if I see him, so help me Bob, I will!"
Bethune turned to the girl. "You have examined his effects. Was there evidence of their having been tampered with?"
"I'm sure I don't know. If he left any papers or maps or things like that in there it most certainly has been tampered with, for they are not there now."
The man smiled. "I think we are safe in assuming that there were no maps or papers of value in the outfit. Your father was far too shrewd to have left anything of the sort to the tender mercies of Vil Holland. By cutting the pack Vil merely gave evidence of his unscrupulous methods without in any way profiting by it. And, as for the map and photographs in your possession, I should advise you to find some good hiding place for them and not trust to carrying them about upon your person." Swiftly Patty glanced at the speaker. That last injunction, somehow, did not ring quite true. But he had turned to the door, and a moment later when he faced her to bid her adieu, the boyish smile was again curling his lips, and he mounted and rode away.