The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe HighgraderThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The HighgraderAuthor: William MacLeod RaineIllustrator: D. C. HutchisonRelease date: September 12, 2007 [eBook #22583]Most recently updated: February 1, 2009Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HIGHGRADER ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The HighgraderAuthor: William MacLeod RaineIllustrator: D. C. HutchisonRelease date: September 12, 2007 [eBook #22583]Most recently updated: February 1, 2009Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: The Highgrader
Author: William MacLeod RaineIllustrator: D. C. Hutchison
Author: William MacLeod Raine
Illustrator: D. C. Hutchison
Release date: September 12, 2007 [eBook #22583]Most recently updated: February 1, 2009
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Roger Frank and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HIGHGRADER ***
KILMENY'S ALERT EYES SWEPT AGAIN AND AGAIN THE TRAIL LEADING UP THE GULCH. HE DID NOT INTEND TO BE CAUGHT NAPPING BY THE OFFICERS. Frontispiece, p. 67KILMENY'S ALERT EYES SWEPT AGAIN AND AGAIN THE TRAIL LEADING UP THE GULCH. HE DID NOT INTEND TO BE CAUGHT NAPPING BY THE OFFICERS.Frontispiece, p. 67
THE
HIGHGRADER
BY
WILLIAM MacLEOD RAINE
Author of "Wyoming," "Ridgway of Montana," "Bucky O'Connor,"
"A Texas Ranger," "Mavericks," "Brand Blotters,"
"Crooked Trails and Straight,"
"The Vision Splendid," "The Pirate of Panama,"
"A Daughter of the Dons," Etc.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
D. C. HUTCHISON
G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright, 1915, byG. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANYThe Highgrader
PRELUDE
A young idealist,ætatfour, was selling stars to put in the sky. She had cut them with her own scissors out of red tissue paper, so that she was able to give a guarantee.
"But you'll have to get the ladder out of our bedroom to put 'em up wiv," she told purchasers honestly.
The child was a wild dark creature, slim and elfish, with a queer little smile that flashed sudden as an April sun.
It was evening, on the promenade deck of an ocean liner. The sea was like glass and the swell hardly perceptible. Land was in sight, a vague uneven line rising mist-like on the horizon. Before morning theVictorianwould be running up the St. Lawrence. Even for the most squeamish the discomforts of the voyage lay behind. A pleasant good fellowship was in the air. In some it took the form of an idle contentment, a vague regret that ties newly formed must so soon be broken. In others it found an expression more buoyant. Merryvoices of shuffleboard players drifted forward. Young couples paced the deck and leaned over the rail to watch the phosphorescent glow. The open windows of the smoking-room gave forth the tinkle of glasses and the low rattle of chips. All sounds blended into a mellow harmony.
"What's your price on a whole constellation with a lovers' moon thrown in?" inquired a young man lounging in a deck chair.
The vendor of stars looked at him in her direct serious fashion. "I fink I tan't sell you all 'at, but I'll make you a moon to go wiv the stars—not a weally twuly one, jus' a make-believe moon," she added in a whisper.
An irritated voice made itself heard. "Steward, have you seen that child anywhere? The naughty little brat has run away again—and I left her only a minute."
The dealer in celestial supplies came to earth.
"I'm goin' to be smacked," she announced with grave conviction.
An unvoiced conspiracy formed itself instantly in her behalf. A lady in a steamer chair gathered the child under the shelter of her rug. An eight-year-old youngster knotted his fists valiantly. The young man who had priced a constellation considered the chances of a cutting-out expedition.
"She should have been in bed long ago. I just stepped out to speak to our room steward and whenI came back she was gone," the annoyed governess was explaining.
Discovery was imminent. The victim prepared herself for the worst.
"I don't care," she protested to her protector. "It's ever so nicer to stay up, an' if it wasn't runnin' away it would be somefing else."
At this bit of philosophy the lounger chuckled, rose swiftly, and intercepted the dragon.
"When do I get that walk you promised me, Miss Lupton? What's the matter with right now?"
The governess was surprised, since it was the first she had heard of any walk. Flattered she was, but still faithful to duty.
"I'm looking for Moya. She knows she must always go to her room after tea and stay there. The naughty child ran away."
"She's all right. I saw her snuggled under a rug with Mrs. Curtis not two minutes ago. Just a turn or two in this lovely night."
Drawn by the magnet of his manhood, Moya slipped into the chair beside the eight-year-old.
"I'd kick her darned shins if she spanked me," boasted he of the eight years.
Moya admired his courage tremendously. Her dark eyes followed the retreating figure of her governess. "I'm 'fraid."
"Hm! Bet I wouldn't be. Course, you're only a girl."
His companion pleaded guilty with a sigh and slipped her hand into his beneath the steamer rug.
"It's howwid to be a dirl," she confided.
"Bet I wouldn't be one."
"You talk so funny."
"Don't either. I'm a Namerican. Tha's how we all talk."
"I'm Irish. Mith Lupton says 'at's why I'm so naughty," the sinner confessed complacently.
Confidences were exchanged. Moya explained that she was a norphan and had nobody but a man called Guardy, and he was not her very own. She lived in Sussex and had a Shetland pony. Mith Lupton was horrid and was always smacking her. When she said her prayers she always said in soft to herself, "But pleathe, God, don't bless Mith Lupton." They were taking a sea voyage for Moya's health, and she had been seasick just the teentiest weentiest bit. Jack on his part could proudly affirm that he had not missed a meal. He lived in Colorado on a ranch with his father, who had just taken him to England and Ireland to visit his folks. He didn't like England one little bit, and he had told his cousin Ned so and they had had a fight. As he was proceeding to tell details Miss Lupton returned from her stroll.
She brought Moya to her feet with a jerk. "My goodness! Who will you pick up next? Now walk along to your room, missie."
"Yes, Mith Lupton."
"Haven't I told you not to talk to strangers?"
"He isn't stwanger. He's Jack," announced Moya stanchly.
"I'll teach you to run away as soon as my back is turned. You should have been in bed an hour ago."
"I tan't unbutton myself."
"A likely reason. Move along, now."
Having been remiss in her duty, Miss Lupton was salving her conscience by being extra severe now. She hurried her charge away.
Suddenly Moya stopped. "Pleathe, my han'erchif."
"Have you lost it? Where is it?"
"I had it in the chair."
"Then run back and get it."
Moya's thin white legs flashed along the deck. Like a small hurricane she descended upon the boy. Her arms went around his neck and for an instant he was smothered in her embrace, dark ringlets flying about his fair head.
"Dood-night, Jack."
A kiss fell helter-skelter on his cheek and she was gone, tugging a little handkerchief from her pocket as she ran.
The boy did not see her again. Before she was up he and his father left the boat at Quebec. Jack wondered whether she had been smacked, after all.Once or twice during the day he thought of her, but the excitement of new sights effaced from his mind the first romance his life had known.
But for nearly a week Moya added a codicil silently to her prayer. "And, God, pleathe bless Jack."
CHAPTER ITHE CAMPERS
Inside the cabin a man was baking biscuits and singing joyously, "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary." Outside, another whistled softly to himself while he arranged his fishing tackle. From his book he had selected three flies and was attaching them to the leader. Nearest the rod he put a royal coachman, next to it a blue quill, and at the end a ginger quill.
The cook, having put his biscuits in the oven, filled the doorway. He was a big, strong-set man, with a face of leather. Rolled-up sleeves showed knotted brown arms white to the wrists with flour. His eyes were hard and steady, but from the corners of them innumerable little wrinkles fell away and crinkled at times to mirth.
"First call to dinner in the dining-car," he boomed out in a heavy bass.
Two men lounging under a cottonwood beside the river showed signs of life. One of them was scarcely more than a boy, perhaps twenty, a pleasant amiable youth with a weak chin and eyes thatheld no steel. His companion was nearer forty than thirty, a hard-faced citizen who chewed tobacco and said little.
"Where you going to fish to-night, Crumbs?" the cook asked of the man busy with the tackle.
"Think I'll try up the river, Colter—start in above the Narrows and work down, mebbe. Where you going?"
"Me for the Meadows. I'm after the big fellows. Going to hang the Indian sign on them with a silver doctor and a Jock Scott. The kid here got his three-pounder on a Jock Scott."
The man who had been called Crumbs put his rod against the side of the house and washed his hands in a tin pan resting on a stump. He was a slender young fellow with lean, muscular shoulders and the bloom of many desert suns on his cheeks and neck.
"Going to try a Jock Scott myself after it gets dark."
The boy who had come up from the river's bank grinned. "Now I've shown you lads how to do it you'll all be catching whales."
"Once is a happenstance, twice makes a habit. Do it again, Curly, and we'll hail you king of the river," Colter promised, bringing to the table around which they were seating themselves a frying pan full of trout done to a crisp brown. "Get the coffee, Mosby. There's beer in the icebox, kid."
They ate in their shirtsleeves, camp fashion, on an oil cloth scarred with the marks left by many hot dishes. They brought to dinner the appetites of outdoors men who had whipped for hours a turbid stream under an August sun. Their talk was strong and crisp, after the fashion of the mining West. It could not be printed without editing, yet in that atmosphere it was without offense. There is a time for all things, even for the elemental talk of frontiersmen on a holiday.
Dinner finished, the fishermen lolled on the grass and smoked.
A man cantered out of the patch of woods above and drew up at the cabin, disposing himself for leisurely gossip.
"Evening, gentlemen. Heard the latest?" He drew a match across his chaps and lit the cigarette he had rolled.
"We'll know after you've told us what it is," Colter suggested.
"The Gunnison country ce'tainly is being honored, boys. A party of effete Britishers are staying at the Lodge. Got in last night. I seen them when they got off the train—me lud and me lady, three young ladies that grade up A1, a Johnnie boy with an eyeglass, and another lad who looks like one man from the ground up. Also, and moreover, there's a cook, a hawss wrangler, a hired girl to buttonthe ladies up the back, and a valley chap to say 'Yes, sir, coming, sir,' to the dude."
"You got it all down like a book, Steve," grinned Curly.
"Any names?" asked Colter.
"Names to burn," returned the native. "A whole herd of names, honest to God. Most any of 'em has five or six, the way the DenverPosttells it. Me, I can't keep mind of so many fancy brands. I'll give you the A B C of it. The old parties are Lord James and Lady Jim Farquhar, leastways I heard one of the young ladies call her Lady Jim. The dude has Verinder burnt on about eight trunks, s'elp me. Then there's a Miss Dwight and a Miss Joyce Seldon—and, oh, yes! a Captain Kilmeny, and an Honorable Miss Kilmeny, by ginger."
Colter flashed a quick look at Crumbs. A change had come over that young man's face. His blue eyes had grown hard and frosty.
"It's a plumb waste of money to take a newspaper when you're around, Steve," drawled Colter, in amiable derision. "Happen to notice the color of the ladies' eyes?"
The garrulous cowpuncher was on the spot once more. "Sure, I did, leastways one of them. I want to tell you lads that Miss Joyce Seldon is the prettiest skirt that ever hit this neck of the woods—and her eyes, say, they're like pansies, soft and deep and kinder velvety."
The fishermen shouted. Their mirth was hearty and uncontained.
"Go to it, Steve. Tell us some more," they demanded joyously.
Crumbs, generally the leader in all the camp fun, had not joined in the laughter. He had been drawing on his waders and buckling on his creel. Now he slipped the loop of the landing net over his head.
"We want a full bill of particulars, Steve. You go back and size up the eyes of the lady lord and the other female Britishers," ordered Curly gayly.
"Go yore own self, kid. I ain't roundin' up trouble for no babe just out of the cradle," retorted the grinning rider. "What's yore hurry, Crumbs?"
The young man addressed had started away but now turned. "No hurry, I reckon, but I'm going fishing."
Steve chuckled. "You're headed in a bee line for Old Man Trouble. The Johnnie boy up at the Lodge is plumb sore on this outfit. Seems that you lads raised ructions last night and broken his sweet slumbers. He's got the kick of a government mule coming. Why can't you wild Injuns behave proper?"
"We only gave Curly a chapping because he let the flapjacks burn," returned Crumbs with a smile. "You see, he's come of age most, Curly has. He'd ought to be responsible now, but he ain't. So we gave him what was coming to him."
"Well, you explain that to Mr. Verinder if he sees you. He's sure on his hind laigs about it."
"I expect he'll get over it in time," Crumbs said dryly. "Well, so-long, boys. Good fishing to-night."
"Same to you," they called after him.
"Some man, Crumbs," commented Steve.
"He'll stand the acid," agreed Colter briefly.
"What's his last name? I ain't heard you lads call him anything but Crumbs. I reckon that's a nickname."
Curly answered the question of the cowpuncher. "His name 's Kilmeny—Jack Kilmeny. His folks used to live across the water. Maybe this Honorable Miss Kilmeny and her brother are some kin of his."
"You don't say!"
"Course I don't know about that. His dad came over here when he was a wild young colt. Got into some trouble at home, the way I heard it. Bought a ranch out here and married. His family was high moguls in England—or, maybe, it was Ireland. Anyhow, they didn't like Mrs. Kilmeny from the Bar Double C ranch. Ain't that the way of it, Colter?"
The impassive gaze of the older man came back from the rushing river. "You know so much about it, Curly, I'll not butt in with any more misinformation," he answered with obvious sarcasm.
Curly flushed. "I'd ought to know. Jack's father and mine were friends, so's he and me."
"How come you to call him Crumbs?"
"That's a joke, Steve. Jack's no ordinary rip-roaring, hell-raisin' miner. He knows what's what. That's why we call him Crumbs—because he's fine bred. Pun, see. Fine bred—crumbs. Get it?"
"Sure I get it, kid. I ain't no Englishman. You don't need a two-by-four to pound a josh into my cocoanut," the rider remonstrated.
CHAPTER IIMR. VERINDER COMPLAINS
Jack Kilmeny followed the pathway which wound through the woods along the bank of the river. Occasionally he pushed through a thick growth of young willows or ducked beneath the top strand of a neglected wire fence.
Beyond the trees lay a clearing. At the back of this, facing the river, was a large fishing lodge built of logs and finished artistically in rustic style. It was a two-story building spread over a good deal of ground space. A wide porch ran round the front and both sides. Upon the porch were a man in an armchair and a girl seated on the top step with her head against the corner post.
A voice hailed Kilmeny. "I say, my man."
The fisherman turned, discovered that he was the party addressed, and waited.
"Come here, you!" The man in the armchair had taken the cigar from his mouth and was beckoning to him.
"Meaning me?" inquired Kilmeny.
"Of course I mean you. Who else could I mean?"
The fisherman drew near. In his eyes sparkled a light that belied his acquiescence.
"Do you belong to the party camped below?" inquired he of the rocking chair, one eyeglass fixed in the complacent face.
The guilty man confessed.
"Then I want to know what the deuce you meant by kicking up such an infernal row last night. I couldn't sleep a wink for hours—not for hours, dash it. It's an outrage—a beastly outrage. What!"
The man with the monocle was smug with the self-satisfaction of his tribe. His thin hair was parted in the middle and a faint straw-colored mustache decorated his upper lip. Altogether, he might measure five feet five in his boots. The miner looked at him gravely. No faintest hint of humor came into the sea-blue eyes. They took in the dapper Britisher as if he had been a natural history specimen.
"So kindly tell them not to do it again," Dobyans Verinder ordered in conclusion.
"If you please, sir," added the young woman quietly.
Kilmeny's steady gaze passed for the first time to her. He saw a slight dark girl with amazingly live eyes and a lift to the piquant chin that was arresting. His hat came off promptly.
"We didn't know anybody was at the Lodge," he explained.
"You wouldn't, of course," she nodded, and by way of explanation: "Lady Farquhar is rather nervous. Of course we don't want to interfere with your fun, but——"
"There will be no more fireworks at night. One of the boys had a birthday and we were ventilating our enthusiasm. If we had known——"
"Kindly make sure it doesn't happen again, my good fellow," cut in Verinder.
Kilmeny looked at him, then back at the girl. The dapper little man had been weighed and found wanting. Henceforth, Verinder was not on the map.
"Did you think we were wild Utes broke loose from the reservation? I reckon we were some noisy. When the boys get to going good they don't quite know when to stop."
The eyes of the young woman sparkled. The fisherman thought he had never seen a face more vivid. Such charm as it held was too irregular for beauty, but the spirit that broke through interested by reason of its hint of freedom. She might be a caged bird, but her wings beat for the open spaces.
"Were they going good last night?" she mocked prettily.
"Not real good, ma'am. You see, we had notown to shoot up, so we just punctured the scenery. If we had known you were here——"
"You would have come and shot us up," she charged gayly.
Kilmeny laughed. "You're a good one, neighbor. But you don't need to worry." He let his eyes admire her lazily. "Young ladies are too seldom in this neck of the woods for the boys to hurt any. Give them a chance and they would be real good to you, ma'am."
His audacity delighted Moya Dwight. "Do you think they would?"
"In our own barbaric way, of course."
"Do you ever scalp people?" she asked with innocent impudence.
"It's a young country," he explained genially.
"It has that reputation."
"You've been reading stories about us," he charged. "Now we'll be on our good behavior just to show you."
"Thank you—if it isn't too hard."
"They're good boys, though they do forget it sometimes."
"I'm glad they do. They wouldn't interest me if they were too good. What's the use of coming to Colorado if it is going to be as civilized as England?"
Verinder, properly scandalized at this free give and take with a haphazard savage of the wilds, interruptedin the interest of propriety. "I'll not detain you any longer, my man. You may get at your fishing."
The Westerner paid not the least attention to him. "My gracious, ma'am, we think we're a heap more civilized than England. We ain't got any militant suffragettes in this country—at least, I've never met up with any."
"They're a sign of civilization," the young woman laughed. "They prove we're still alive, even if we are asleep."
"We've got you beat there, then. All the women vote here. What's the matter with you staying and running for governor?"
"Could I—really?" she beamed.
"Really and truly. Trouble with us is that we're so civilized we bend over backward with it. You're going to find us mighty tame. The melodramatic romance of the West is mostly in storybooks. What there was of it has gone out with the cowpuncher."
"What's a cowpuncher?"
"He rides the range after cattle."
"Oh—a cowboy. But aren't there any cowboys?"
"They're getting seldom. The barb wire fence has put them out of business. Mostly they're working for the moving picture companies now," he smiled.
Mr. Verinder prefaced with a formal little cough a second attempt to drive away this very assured native. "As I was saying, Miss Dwight, I wouldn't mind going into Parliament, you know, if it weren't for the bally labor members. I'm rather strong on speaking—that sort of thing, you know. Used to be a dab at it. But I couldn't stand the bounders that get in nowadays. Really, I couldn't."
"And I had so counted on the cowboys. I'm going to be disappointed, I think," Miss Dwight said to the Westerner quietly.
Verinder had sense enough to know that he was being punished. He had tried to put the Westerner out of the picture and found himself eliminated instead. An angry flush rose to his cheeks.
"That's the mistake you all make," Kilmeny told her. "The true romance of the West isn't in its clothes and its trappings."
"Where is it?" she asked.
"In its spirit—in the hope and the courage born of the wide plains and the clean hills—in its big democracy and its freedom from convention. The West is a condition of mind."
Miss Dwight was surprised. She had not expected a philosophy of this nature from her chance barbarian. He had the hands of a working man, brown and sinewy but untorn; yet there was the mark of distinction in the lean head set so royally on splendid shoulders. His body, spare of fleshand narrow of flank, had the lithe grace of a panther. She had seen before that look of competence, of easy self-reliance. Some of the men of her class had it—Ned Kilmeny, for instance. But Ned was an officer in a fighting regiment which had seen much service. Where had this tanned fisherman won the manner that inheres only in a leader of men?
"And how long does it take to belong to your West?" asked the young woman, with the inflection of derision.
But her mockery was a fraud. In both voice and face was a vivid eagerness not to be missed.
"Time hasn't a thing to do with it. Men live all their lives here and are never Westerners. Others are of us in a day. I think you would qualify early."
She knew that she ought to snub his excursion into the personal, but she was by nature unconventional.
"How do you know?" she demanded quickly.
"That's just a guess of mine," he smiled.
A musical voice called from within the house. "Have you seen myGraphic, Moya?"
A young woman stood in the doorway, a golden-white beauty with soft smiling eyes that showed a little surprise at sight of the fisherman. A faint murmur of apology for the interruption escaped her lips.
Kilmeny could not keep his eyes from her. What a superb young creature she was, what perfection in the animal grace of the long lines of the soft rounded body! Her movements had a light buoyancy that was charming. And where under heaven could a man hope to see anything lovelier than this pale face with its crown of burnished hair so lustrous and abundant?
Miss Dwight turned to her friend. "I haven't seen theGraphic, Joyce, dear."
"Isn't it in the billiard room? Thought I saw it there. I'll look," Verinder volunteered.
"Good of you," Miss Joyce nodded, her eyes on the stranger who had turned to leave.
Kilmeny was going because he knew that he might easily outwear his welcome. He had punished Verinder, and that was enough. The miner had met too many like him not to know that the man belonged to the family of common or garden snob. No doubt he rolled in wealth made by his father. The fellow had studied carefully the shibboleths of the society with which he wished to be intimate and was probably letter-perfect. None the less, he was a bounder, a rank outsider tolerated only for his money. He might do for the husband of some penniless society girl, but he would never in the world be accepted by her as a friend or an equal. The thought of him stirred the gorge of the fisherman. Very likely the man might capturefor a wife the slim dark girl with the quick eyes, or even her friend, Joyce, choicest flower in a garden of maidens. Nowadays money would do anything socially.
"Cheekiest beggar I ever saw," fumed Verinder. "Don't see why you let the fellow stay, Miss Dwight."
The girl's scornful eyes came round to meet his. She had never before known how cordially she disliked him.
"Don't you?"
She rose and walked quickly into the house.
Verinder bit his mustache angrily. He had been cherishing a fiction that he was in love with Miss Dwight and more than once he had smarted beneath the lash of her contempt.
Joyce sank gracefully into the easiest chair and flashed a dazzling smile at him. "Has Moya beenveryunkind, Mr. Verinder?"
He had joined the party a few days before at Chicago and this was the first sign of interest Miss Seldon had shown in him. Verinder was grateful.
"Dashed if I understand Miss Dwight at all. She blows hot and cold," he confided in a burst of frankness.
"That's just her way. We all have our moods, don't we? I mean we poor women. Don't all the poets credit us with inconstancy?" The least rippleof amusement at her sex swelled in her throat and died away.
"Oh, by Jove, if that's all! I say, do you have moods too, Miss Joyce?"
Her long thick lashes fluttered down to the cheeks. Was she embarrassed at his question? He felt a sudden lift of the heart, an access of newborn confidence. Dobyans Verinder had never dared to lift his hopes as high as the famous beauty Joyce Seldon. Now for the first time his vanity stirred. Somehow—quite unexpectedly to him—the bars between them were down. Was it possible that she had taken a fancy to him? His imagination soared.
For a moment her deep pansy eyes rested in his. He felt a sudden intoxication of the senses. Almost with a swagger he drew up a chair and seated himself beside her. Already he was the conquering male in headlong pursuit. Nor was he disturbed by the least suspicion of having been filled with the sensations and the impulses that she had contrived.
Miss Seldon had that morning incidentally overheard Lady Farquhar tell her husband that Dobyans Verinder's fortune must be nearer two million pounds than one million. It was the first intimation she had been given that he was such a tremendous catch.
CHAPTER IIINIGHT FISHING
Jack Kilmeny crossed the river by the rope ferry and followed the trail that ran up. He took the water above the Narrows, about a mile and a half from camp. The mosquitoes were pretty bad near the willows along the shore, but as he got out farther they annoyed him less and with the coming of darkness they ceased to trouble.
The fish were feeding and he had a few strikes. Half a dozen eight and nine-inch trout went into his creel, but though he was fishing along the edge of the deep water, the big fellows would not be tempted. His watch showed a quarter to ten by the moon when at last he hooked one worth while.
He was now down by the riffles not far from the Lodge. A long cast brought him what fishermen along the Gunnison call a bump. Quietly he dropped his fly in exactly the same spot. There was a tug, a flash of white above the water, and, like an arrow, the trout was off. The reel whirred as the line unwound. Kilmeny knew by the pressure that he had hooked a good one and he playedit carefully, keeping the line taut but not allowing too much strain on it. After a short sharp fight he drew the fish close enough to net the struggler. Of the Lochleven variety, he judged the weight of the trout to be about two pounds.
He would have liked to try another cast, but it was ten o'clock, the limit set by law. He waded ashore, resolved to fish the riffles again to-morrow.
Next day brought Kilmeny the office of camp cook, which was taken in turn by each of the men. Only two meals a day were eaten in camp, so that he had several hours of leisure after the breakfast things were cleared away. In a desultory fashion he did an hour or two of fishing, though his mind was occupied with other things.
The arrival of the party at the Lodge brought back to him vividly some chapters of his life that had long been buried. His father, Archibald Kilmeny, had married the daughter of a small cattleman some years after he had come to Colorado. Though she had died while he was still a child, Jack still held warmly in his heart some vivid memories of the passionate uncurbed woman who had been his mother.
She had been a belle in the cow country, charming in her way, beautiful to the day of her death, but without education or restraint. Her husband had made the mistake of taking her back to Ireland on a visit to his people. The result had been unfortunate.She was unconquerably provincial, entirely democratic, as uncultured as her native columbine. Moreover, her temper was of the whirlwind variety. The staid life of the old country, with its well-ordered distinctions of class and rutted conventions, did not suit her at all. At traditions which she could not understand the young wife scoffed openly. Before she left, veiled dislike became almost open war. The visit had never been repeated, nor, indeed, had she ever been invited again. This she had bitterly resented and she had instilled into Jack the antagonism she herself felt. When he was eight years old Jack's father had insisted on taking him back to meet his relatives. Immediately upon his return the youngster's mother had set about undermining any fondness he might have felt for his British kindred. Three years later she had died.
She had been a doting mother, with fierce gusts of passionate adoration for her boy. Jack remembered these after he forgot her less amiable qualities. He had grown up with an unreasonable feeling of dislike toward those of his father's family who had failed to get along with her. Some instinct of loyalty which he could hardly define set him unconsciously in antagonism to his cousins at the Lodge. He had decided not to make himself known to them. In a few days their paths would diverge again for all time.
Dusk found him again in the river just above the riffles. He fished down the stream slowly, shortening his line as darkness settled over the hills. His luck was rather worse than usual. The trout were nosing the flies rather than striking with any appetite.
He was nearly opposite the Lodge when he noticed a fisherman in front of him. Working steadily forward, Kilmeny found himself gaining on the other. In order not to pass too near he struck out into the deeper water toward the center of the river. When almost opposite the other he heard a splash not twenty feet away, followed by the whirr of the reel as the trout made for the deep water. From the shadows where his unknown companion was obscured came the click of the line being wound up. There was a flash of silver in the moonlight, and again the rapid whirl of the reel.
"You've hooked a whale, neighbor," Kilmeny called across.
The voice that came back to him across the water was eager and glad. Jack would have known its throb of youthful zest among a thousand. "Must I let him have all the line he wants?"
Kilmeny waded toward her as he gave counsel. "Don't make it too easy for him, but don't jerk. Keep his nose up if you can."
The humming of the reel and the steady click-click-click of the winding alternated. The troutfought gamely and strongly, but the young woman stuck to her work and would not give him any rest. Jack watched her carefully. He saw that she was tiring, but he did not offer any help, for he knew that she was a sportsman. She would want to win alone or not at all.
Yet he moved closer. The water was up to her hips, and no river in the Rockies has a swifter current than the Gunnison. The bottom too is covered with smooth slippery stones and bowlders, so that a misstep might send her plunging down. Deprived of the use of her landing pole, she could make less resistance to the tug of the stream, and the four or five pounds of dynamic energy at the end of her line would give her all she could do to take care of for the next few minutes. Her pole was braced against her body, which made reeling difficult. The man beside her observed that except for a tendency to raise the pole too much she was playing her trout like a veteran.
The thing that he had anticipated happened. Her foot slipped from its insecure rock hold and she stumbled. His arm was round her waist in an instant.
"Steady! Take your time."
"Thanks. I'm all right now."
His right arm still girdled her slight figure. It met with his approval that she had not cried out or dropped her pole, but he would not take the chance of an accident.