CHAPTER X

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The faithful gray head lifted itself, and the gray eyes glowed warmly as they peered in the dusk at the younger man’s face.

“Whe-e-w!” he whistled. “It’s as bad as that, is it, boy? Just forget it, won’t you? That is, forget I butted in.”

Dick sat down, hating himself for such an unusual outburst. He felt foolish, and extremely young again, as if his steadfast foundations of self-reliance and repression had been proven nothing more than sand.

“I know how them things go,” the slow voice, so soft as to be scarcely audible, continued. “I was young once, and it was good to be young. Not that I’m old now, because I’m not; but because when a feller is younger, there are hot hollows in his heart that he don’t want anybody to know about. Only don’t make me feel again that I ought to ‘mister’ you. I don’t believe I could do that. It’s pretty late to begin.”

Dick went to his bed with a critical admission of the truth, and from any angle it appeared foolish. How had it all happened? He was not prone to be easy of heart. He had known the light, fleeting loves of boyhood, and could laugh at them; but they had been different to this. And it had come on him at a time when155everything was at stake, and when his undivided thoughts and attention should have been centered on the Croix d’Or. He reviewed his situation, and scarcely knew why he had drifted into it, unless it had been through a desire to talk to some one who knew, as he knew, all that old life from which he had been, and would forever be, parted.

Not that he regretted its easy scramble, and its plethora of civilized concomitants; for he loved the mountains, the streams, the open forests, and the physical struggles of the wild places; but––and he gave over reasoning, and knew that it was because of the charm of Miss Presby herself, and that he wanted her, and had hoped unconsciously. Sternly arraigning himself, he knew that he had no groundwork to hope, and nothing to offer, just then; that he must first win with the Croix d’Or, and that it was his first duty to win with that, and justify the confidence of the kindly old Sloan who backed him with hard dollars.

He had not appreciated how much the daily meeting of Miss Presby meant to him until, on the following morning, and acting on his hardly reached resolution of the night before, he went up for what might be the last time. It was difficult to realize that the short summer of the altitudes was there in its splendid growth, and that156it had opened before his unobserving eyes, passed from the tender green of spring to the deep-shaded depths of maturity, and that the wild flowers that carpeted the open slopes had made way for roses. Even the cross on the peak was different, and it came to him that he had not observed it in the weeks he had been climbing to the slope, but had always waited eagerly for the light of a woman’s face.

She came cantering up the trail, and waved a gay hand at him as she rounded the bend of the crag. There was a frank expectancy in her face––the expectancy of a pleasant hour’s visit with a good comrade. He wondered, vaguely and with new scrutiny, if that were not all––just friendliness. They talked of nothing; but his usual bantering tone was gone, and, quick to observe, she divined that there had come to him a subtle change, not without perturbation.

“You don’t seem talkative to-day,” she accused as he stood up, preparatory to going. “Have you finished work on your pipe line?”

He flushed slightly under the bronze of his face at the question, it being thus brought home to him that he had used it as a pretext for continuing their meetings for more than two weeks after that task was completed and the pipemen157scattered––perhaps working in some subway in New York by that time.

“Yes,” he said, “the work is finished. I shall not come up here again unless it is for the sole purpose of seeing you.”

There was something in his tone that caused her to glance up at him and there was that in his eyes, on his face, in his bearing of restraint, that caused her to look around again, as if to escape, and hastily begin donning her gloves. She pulled the fingers, though they fitted loosely, as if she had difficulty with them––even as though they were tight gloves of kid, and said: “Well, you might do that, sometimes––when you have time; but you mustn’t neglect your work. I come here because it is my favorite ride. You must not come merely to talk to me when there are other duties.”

“Yes,” he said, endeavoring to appear unconcerned. “The Croix d’Or is apt to be a most insistent tyrant.”

“And it should come first!” He was obtuse for the instant in his worriment, and did not catch the subtle shade of bitterness in which she spoke.

She tugged at the reins of her horse, and the animal reluctantly tore loose a last mouthful of158the succulent grass growing under the moisture and shadow of the big steel pipe, and stood expectantly waiting for her to mount. She was in the saddle before Dick could come around to her side to assist her. He made a last desperate compromise, finding an excuse.

“When I feel that I must see you, because you are such a good little adviser, I shall come back here,” he said, “morning after morning, in the hope of seeing you and unburdening my disgruntlement.”

She laughed, as if it were a joke.

“I’m afraid I’m not a very good miner,” she said, “although I suppose I ought to be a yellow-legged expert, having been brought up somewhere within sound of the stamps all my life. Good luck to you. Good-by.”

His reply was almost a mumble, and the black horse started down the trail. He watched her, with a sinking, hungry heart. Just as the crag was almost abreast of her mount, she turned and called back: “Oh, I forgot to say that I shall probably come here almost every day.”

He did not understand, until long afterward, the effort that speech cost her; nor did he know ever that her face was suffused when her horse, startled, sprang out of sight at the touch of her159spurs. He did not know, as he stood there, wishing that he had called her back, that she was riding recklessly down the road, hurt, and yet inclined to be strangely happy over that parting and all it had confessed. With a set face, as if a whole fabric of dreams had been wrenched from his life, the miner turned and walked slowly over the trail, worn by his own feet, which led him back to the Croix d’Or, and the struggle with the stubborn rock.

As he topped the hill he suddenly listened, and his steps quickened. From below a new sound had been added to the threnody of the hills; a new note, grumbling and roaring, insistent and strong. Its message was plain. The mill of the Cross was running again for the first time in years; and, even as he looked down on the red roof, the whistle in the engine-house gave a series of cheerful toots in salute of the fact.

Down on the flat in front of the long structure which held, in its batteries, almost two-score stamps, a tall figure came out, and looked around as if seeking him, and then, casting its eyes upward, beheld him, and lifted a battered hat and swung it overhead. It was Bill, rejoicing in his work.

A car of ore slid along the tramway, with the160carboy dangling one leg over the back end while steadying himself by the controller, as if he had been thus occupied for years. Dick tore his hat off, threw it in the air, and shouted, and raced down the hill. From now on it must be work; unless they met with great success––then––he dared not stop to think of what then.

He hastened on down to the mill and entered the door. Everything about it, from the dumping of the cars sixty feet above, the wrench of the crushers breaking the ore into smaller fragments, the clash of the screens as it came on down to the stamps, and their terrific “jiggety-jig-jig,” roared, throbbed, and trembled. Every timber in the structure seemed to keep pace with that resistless shaking as the tables slid to and fro, dripping from the water percolating at their heads, to distribute the fine silt of crushed, muddy ore evenly over the plates in the steady downward slant. Already the bright plates of copper, coated with quicksilver, were catching, retaining, amalgamating the gold.

“The venners need a little more slant, don’t you think?” bellowed his partner, with his hands cupped and held close against Dick’s ear in the effort to make himself heard in that pandemonium161where millmen worked the shift through without attempting to speak.

In the critical calculation of the professional miner, Dick forgot all other affairs, and leaned down to see the run of water. He nodded his head, beckoned to the mill boss, and by well-known signs indicated his wish. He scrambled above and studied the pulp, slipping it through his fingers and feeling its fineness, and speculating whether or not they would be troubled with any solution of lead that would render the milling difficult and slime the plates so that the gold would escape to go roistering down the creek with waste water. It did feel very slippery, and he was reassured. He was eager to get to the assay-house and make his first assay of “tailings,” refuse from the mill, to discover what percentage of gold they were saving, and, in parlance, “How she would run on mill test.”

Fascinated in his inspection and direction of certain minor changes, he was astonished when the noise suddenly dropped from fortissimo to a dull whine, as the mill slowed down to a stop for the noon hour. And the afternoon passed as quickly while he worked over the bucking board––a plate used to crush ore for assaying––in the assay-house, and watched the gasoline162flare and fume in his furnaces to bring the little cupels, with their mass of powdered, weighed, and numbered samples, to a molten state. He took them out with his tongs, watched them cool, and weighed, on the scales that could tell the weight of a lead pencil mark on a sheet of paper, the residue of gold, thus making his computations. He was not pleased with the result. The green lead was not as rich as they had believed.

“It won’t pay more than fifty cents a ton with the best milling we can do,” he said to Bill, who came eagerly into the assay office.

“But you know the old idea––that she gets richer as we go down?” his partner asserted. “If it pays fifty cents a ton at the mill plates, we’ll open up the face of the ledge and put on a day and night shift. We can handle a heap of ore with this plant. It begins to look to me as if the Cross is all to the good. Come on. Let’s go down to the power-house and see how things look down there when we’re working.”

They had been contemplating a new timber road, and, after visiting the power plant and finding it trim, and throbbing with its new life, they cut across and debouched into the public road leading up the cañon, by the banks of the stream, to the Rattler. When almost at the fork,163where their own road branched off and crossed the stream to begin its steep little climb up to the Croix d’Or, they saw a man standing on the apron of the bridge, and apparently listening to the roar of their mill. His back was toward them, and seemingly he was so absorbed in the sounds of industry from above that he did not hear them approach until their feet struck the first planks leading to the heavy log structure. He turned his head slowly toward them, and they recognized him as Bully Presby. It was the first time either of them had seen him since the evening in the camp.

“So you’re running, eh?” he asked Dick without any preliminary courtesy.

“Yes, we started the mill to-day.”

“On ore, or waste?” There was a sneer in his question which caused Dick to stiffen a trifle; and Bill frowned, as if the question carried an insult.

Still the younger man was inclined to avoid words.

“Naturally, we shouldn’t put waste through the mill,” he said coldly. “We have opened up an old vein which the other managers did not seem to think worth while.”

“And so, I suppose, showing superior164knowledge, you will demonstrate that the men before you were a set of dubs? Humph! From babes and fools come wisdom!”

His voice was hard and cynical, and his grim lips curled with a slightly contemptuous twitch. The hot, impulsive streak in Dick leaped upward. His eyes were angry when he answered.

“If you apply the latter to me,” he retorted hotly, “you are going pretty far. I don’t know what business it is of yours. We have never asked you for any advice, and we don’t want any. I expect no favors from any one, and if I did, am certain, in view of your attitude, that I shouldn’t ask them from you.”

“Steady! Steady, boy!” admonished his partner’s drawling voice at his side. Dick did not utter other words that were surging to his tongue, and finished with an angry shrug of his shoulders.

Bill turned coolly to the owner of the Rattler, and appeared to probe him with his eyes; and his stare was returned with one as searching as his own.

“Who are you?” Presby asked, as if the big miner were some man he had not noticed before.

“Me? My name’s Mathews. I’m superintendent of the Croix d’Or,” Bill answered, as165calmly as if the form of question had been ignored.

“And I suppose the young Mister Townsend relies on you for advice, and that he–––”

“He don’t need to rely on any one for advice,” interrupted the soft, repressed voice. “I rely on him. He knows more than I do. And say,” he added, taking a step toward Bully Presby, and suddenly appearing to concentrate himself with all his muscles flexed as if for action, “I’ve mined for thirty-five years. And I’ve met some miners. And I’ve never met one who had as little decency for the men on the next claim, or such bullying ways as you’ve got.”

Presby’s face did not change in the least, nor did he shift his eyes. There was an instant’s pause, and he showed no inclination to speak.

“’Most every one around these diggings seems to be kind of buffaloed by you,” Bill added; “but I sort of reckon we ain’t like them. I’m handin’ it to you right straight, so you and me won’t have any trouble after this, because if we do––well, we’d have to find out which was the better man.”

Bully Presby’s eyes flashed a singular look. It seemed as if they carried something of approval, and at the same time a longing to test166the question of physical superiority. And then, abruptly, he laughed. Astonished by this strange, complex character, Bill relaxed, and turned toward his partner. Dick, seeing that the interview was ended, as far as the necessity for saying anything was concerned, moved across the bridge, and Bill took a last hard stare at the mine owner. The latter laughed again, with his cold, cynical rumble.

“I think,” he said, “that when the Cross shuts down for good, I’d like to give you a job. When it does, come and see me.”

Without another look, word, or sign of interest, he turned his back on them, and marched up the hill toward the Rattler.

167CHAPTER XTROUBLE STALKS ABROAD

August had come, with its broiling heat at midday and its chill at night, when the snow, perpetual on the peaks, sent its cold breezes downward to the gulches below. Here and there the grass was dying. The lines on Dick’s brows had become visible; and even Mathews’ resolute sanguinity was being tested to the utmost. The green lead was barely paying expenses. There had come no justification for a night shift, and use of all the batteries of the mill, for the ledge of ore was gradually, but certainly, narrowing to a point where it must eventually pinch out.

Five times, in as many weeks, Dick had crossed the hill and waited for Miss Presby. Twice he had been bitterly disappointed, and three times she had cantered around to meet him. Their first meeting had been constrained. He felt that it was due to his own bald discovery168that he wanted her more than anything in life, and was debarred from telling her so. In the second meeting she had been the good comrade, and interested, palpably, in the developments at the Croix d’Or.

“You should sink, I believe,” she had said hesitatingly, as if with a delicate fear that she was usurping his position. “I know this district very well, indeed; and there isn’t a mine along this range that has paid until it had gone the depth. Do I talk like a miner?”

She laughed, in cheerful carelessness as if his worries meant but little to her.

“You see, I’ve heard so much of mines and mining, although my father seldom talks of them to me, that I know the geological formation and history of this district like a real miner. I played with nothing but miners’ children from the time I was so high, pigtails and pinafores, until I was this high, short skirts and frocks.”

She indicated the progressive stages of her growth with her riding crop, as if seeing herself in those younger years.

“Then my father sent me to an aunt, in New York, with instructions that I was to be taught something, and to be a lady. I believe I used to eat with my knife when I first went to her home.”

169

She leaned back and laughed until the tears welled into her eyes.

“She was a Spartan lady. She cured me of it by rapping my knuckles with the handle of a silver-plated knife. My, how it hurt! I feel it yet! I wonder that they were not enlarged by her repeated admonitions.”

Dick looked at them as she held them reminiscently before her, and had an almost irresistible desire to seize and crush the long, slender, white fingers in his own. But the end of the meeting had been commonplace, and they had parted again without treading on embarrassing ground.

Dick had heard no more from the owner of the Rattler, save indirectly, nor met him since the strained passage of the bridge; but mess-house gossip, creeping through old Bells, who recognized no superiors, and calmly clumped into the owner’s quarters whenever he felt inclined, said that the neighboring mine was prodigiously prosperous.

“I heard down in Goldpan,” he squeaked one night, “that Wells Fargo takes out five or six bars of bullion for him every mill clean-up. And you can bet none of it ever gets away from that old stiff.”

“But how does this news leak out?” Dick170asked, wondering at such a tale, when millmen and miners were distinguished for keeping inviolate the secrets of the property on which they worked.

“Wells Fargo,” the engineer answered. “None of the boys would say anything. He pays top wages and hires good men. Got to hand that to him. He brags there ain’t no man so high-priced that he can’t make money off’n him––Bully Presby does. And they ain’t no better miner than him on earth. He can smell pay ore a mile underground––Bully Presby can.”

The old man suddenly looked at the superintendent, and said: “Say, Bill. You been down to the camp a few times, ain’t you?”

“Yes, we’ve been down there several times. Why?”

“Well, I suppose you know they’s a lot of talk goin’ around that the Cross is workin’ in good pay now?”

“Oh, I’ve heard it; but don’t pay any attention when it’s not so.”

Bells Park leaned farther over, and lowered his shrill, garrulous voice to a thin murmur.

“Well, I cain’t tell you what it is, but I want to give you the right lead. When that gets to171goin’ on about newcomers in the Blue Mountains––fellers like you be––look out for storms.”

“Go on! You’re full of stuff again!” Bill gibed, with his hearty laugh. “If we’d listened to all the mysterious warnin’s you’ve handed us since we came up here, Bells, we’d been like a dog chasin’ his tail around when it happened to be bit off down to the rump and no place to get hold of. Better look out! Humph!”

The old engineer got up in one of his tantrums, fairly screamed with rage, threatened to leave as soon as he could get another job, and then tramped down the hill to the cabin he occupied with the other engineer. But that was not new, either, for he had made the same threat at least a half-dozen times, and yet the men from the Cœur d’Alenes knew that nothing could drive him away but dismissal.

It was but two or three days later that the partners, coming from the assay-house to the mess late, discovered a stranger talking to the men outside under the shade of a great clump of tamaracks that nestled at the foot of a slope. They passed in and sat down at their table, wondering who the visitor could be. The cook’s helper, a mute, served them, and they were alone when they were attracted by a shrill, soft hiss172from the window. They looked, and saw Bells Park. Nothing but his head, cap-crowned, was visible as he stood on tiptoe to reach the opening.

“I told you to look out,” he said warningly. “Old Mister Trouble’s come. Don’t give anything. Stand pat. A walkin’ delegate from Denver’s here. God knows why. Look out.”

His head disappeared as if it were a jack-in-the-box, shut down; and the partners paused with anxious eyes and waited for him to reappear. Dick jumped to his feet and walked across to the window. No one was in sight. He went to the farther end of the mess-house and peered through a corner of the nearest pane. Out under the tamaracks the stranger was orating, and punctuating his remarks with a finger tapping in a palm. His words were not audible; but Dick saw that he was at least receiving attention. He returned to the table, and told Bill what he had seen. The latter was perturbed.

“It looks as if we were goin’ to have an argument, don’t it?” he asked, voicing his perplexity.

“But about what?” Dick insisted. “We pay the union scale, and, while I don’t know, I believe there isn’t a man on the Cross that hasn’t a card.”

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“Well,” replied his partner, “we’ll soon see. Finished?”

As they walked to the office, men began to hurry across the gulch toward the hoist, others toward the mill, and by the time they were in their cabin the whistle blew. It was but a minute later that they heard someone striding over the porch, and the man they assumed to be the walking delegate entered. He was not of the usual stamp, but appeared intent on his errand. Save for a certain air of craftiness, he was representative and intelligent. He was quietly dressed, and gave the distinct impression that he had come up from the mines, and had known a hammer and drill––a typical “hard-rock man.”

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I am representing the Consolidated Miners’ Association.”

He drew a neat card from a leather case in his pocket, and presented it, and was asked to seat himself.

“What can we do for you?” Dick asked, wasting no time on words.

“I suppose this mine is fair?”

“Yes. It is straight, as far as I know.”

“It has no agreement.”

“But we are ready to sign one whenever it is presented.”

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The delegate drew a worn wallet from his pocket, extracted a paper, and tendered it.

“I anticipated no trouble,” he said, but without smiling or giving any sign of satisfaction. “Would you mind looking that over, and seeing if it meets with your approval?”

Dick stepped to the high desk at the side of the room which he had been utilizing as a drawing board, laid the sheet out, and began reading it, while Bill stood up and scanned it across his shoulders. Bill suddenly put a stubby finger on a clause, and mumbled: “That’s not right.”

Dick slowly read it; and, before he had completed the involved wording, the finger again clapped down at another section. “Nor that. Don’t stand for it!”

“What do you want, anyhow?” Bill demanded, swinging round and facing the delegate.

The latter looked at him coolly and exasperatingly for a moment, then said: “What position do you occupy here, my man?”

Dick whirled as if he had been struck from behind.

“What position does he occupy? He is my superintendent, and my friend. Anything he objects to, or sanctions, I object to, or agree with.175Anything he says, I’ll back up. Now I’ll let him do the talking.”

The delegate calmly flicked the ash from a cigar he had lighted, puffed at it, blew the smoke from under his mustache toward the ceiling, and looked at the thin cloud before answering. It was as if he had come intent on creating a disturbance through studied insolence.

“Well,” he said, without noticing the hot, antagonistic attitude of the mine owner, “what do you think of the proffered agreement?”

“I think it’s no good!” answered Mathews, facing him. “It’s drawn up on a number-one scale. This mine ain’t in that class.”

“Oh! So you’ve signed ’em before.”

“I have. A dozen times. This mine has but one shift––the regular day shift. It has but one engineer and a helper. It has but one mill boss.”

“Working eight batteries?”

“No. You know we couldn’t work eight batteries with one small shift.”

“Well, you’ve got to have an assistant millman at the union scale, you know,” insisted the delegate.

“What to do? To loaf around, I suppose,” Bill retorted.

“And you’ve got to have a turn up in the176engine-house. You need another hoisting engineer,” continued the delegate, as if all these matters had been decided by him beforehand.

Dick thought that he might gain a more friendly footing by taking part in the conversation himself.

“See here,” he said. “The Croix d’Or isn’t paying interest. Maybe we aren’t using the requisite number of men as demanded under this rating; but they are all satisfied, and–––”

“I don’t know about that,” interrupted the delegate, with an air of insolent assurance.

“And if we can’t go on under the present conditions, we may as well shut down,” Dick concluded.

“That’s up to you,” declared the delegate, with an air of disinterest. “If a mine can’t pay for the working, it ought to shut down.”

The partners looked at each other. There was a mutual question as to whether it would be policy to throw the delegate out of the door. Plainly they were in a predicament, for the man was master, in his way.

“Look here,” Bill said, accepting the responsibility, “this ain’t right. You know it ain’t. We’re in another class altogether. You ought to put us, at present, under–––”

177

“It is right,” belligerently asserted the delegate. “I’ve looked it all over. You’ll agree to it, or I’ll declare the Croix d’Or unfair.”

He had arisen to his feet as if arbitrarily to end the argument. For a wonder, the veteran miner restrained himself, although there was a hard, glowing light in his eyes.

“We won’t stand for it,” he said, restraining Dick with his elbow. “When you’re ready to talk on a square basis, come back, and we’ll use the ink. Until then we won’t. We might as well shut down, first as last, as to lose money when we’re just breakin’ even as it is. Think it over a while, and see if we ain’t right.”

“Well, you’ll hear from me,” declared the delegate, as he put his hat on his head and turned out of the door without any parting courtesy. “Keep the card. My name’s Thompson, you know.”

For a full minute after he had gone, the partners stared at each other with troubled faces.

“Oh, he’s a bluff! That’s all there is to it,” asserted Mathews, reaching into the corner for his rubber boots, preparatory to going underground. “He knows it ain’t right, just as well as I do. If he can put this over, all right. If he can’t he’ll give us the other rating.”

178

He left Dick making up a time-roll, and turned down the hill; and they did not discuss it again until they were alone that night.

It was seven o’clock the next evening when the partners observed an unusual stir in the camp. They came into the mess-house to find that the men had eaten in unusually short order; and from the bench outside, usually filled at that hour with laughing loungers, there was not a sound. A strange stillness had invaded the colony of the Croix d’Or, almost ominous. Preoccupied, and each thinking over his individual trials, the partners ate their food and arose from the table. Out on the doorstep they paused to look down the cañon, now shorn of ugliness and rendered beautiful by the purple twilight. The faint haze of smoke from the banked fires, rising above the steel chimney of the boiler-house, was the only stirring, living spectacle visible; save one.

“What does that mean?” Bill drawled, as if speaking to himself.

Far below, just turning the bend of the road, Dick saw a procession of men, grouped, or walking in pairs. They disappeared before he answered.

“Looks like the boys,” he said, using the term179of the camps for all men employed. “I wonder where they are bound for? If it were pay night, I could understand. It would mean Goldpan, the dance halls, a fight or two, and sore heads to-morrow; but to-night––I don’t know.”

Bill did not answer. He seemed to be in a silent, contemplative mood when they sat in the rough easy-chairs on the porch in front of the office and looked up at the first rays of light on the splendid, rugged peak above. Dick’s mind reverted to the lumberman’s daughter, as does the needle veer to the magnet; and for a long time they sat there, until the fires of their cigars glowed like stars. The moon came up, and the cross was outlined, dimly, above them, and against the background of black, cast upon the somber, starlit blue of the night.

From far below, as if steel had been struck upon stone, came a faint, ringing sound. Living in that strange world of acuteness to which men of the high hills are habituated, they listened, alert. Accustomed, as are all those dwellers of the lonesome spots, to heeding anything out of the ordinary, they strained their ears for a repetition. Clattering up the roadway came the sound of a hard-ridden horse’s hoofs, then his labored breathing, and a soft voice steadying him180to further effort. Into the shadows was injected something moving, some unfamiliar, living shape. It turned up the hill over the trail, and plunged wearily toward them. They jumped to their feet and stepped down off the porch, advancing to meet the belated visitor. The horse, with lathering neck and distended nostrils, paused before them. The moon cleared the top of the eastern ridges with a slow bound, lowering the shadows until the sweat on the horse’s neck glistened like a network of diamond dust strewn on a velvet cloak. It also lighted to a pallid gleam the still face of the night rider. It was Lily Meredith.

“I’ve come again,” she said. “They’re trying to make trouble for you, down there in the camp. Bells Park came out and told me about it. The miners’ union stirred up by that man from Denver. Bells said the only chance you had was to come down there at once. They’ve split on your account––on account of the Croix d’Or. I’ve ridden two miles to warn you, and to get you there before the meeting breaks up. Bells will try and hold them until you can come and demand a hearing. If you don’t make it they will scab the mine. You must hurry. It’s your only chance. I know them, the best friends in peace, and devils when turned the other way.”

181

She stopped abruptly and looked off at the moon, and then around over the dark and silent camp. Only one light was visible, that in the cook’s end of the mess-house, where that fat worthy lay upon his back and read a yellow-backed, sentimental novel. Faint and rumbling came the subdued roar of the mill at the Rattler, beating out the gold for Bully Presby; and through some vague prescience Dick was aware of its noise for the first time in weeks, and it conveyed a sense of menace. Everything was at stake. Everything watched him. He looked up at the white face of The Lily above him, and in the moonlight saw that her eyes were fixed, glowing, not on him or the scenes of the night, but on the aroused giant at his side.

182CHAPTER XIBELLS’ VALIANT FIGHT

“We’ll get there as soon as we can,” Dick said. “It may not do any good; but we’ll demand a word and give them an argument. I haven’t time to thank you now, Mrs. Meredith, but some day–––”

“You owe me no thanks,” was her rejoinder. “It is I who owe you. Turn about, you know.”

The big man said nothing, but took a step nearer to her horse, and looked up into her face with his penetrating eyes. He reached up and closed his hand over both of hers, and held them for an instant, and then whirled back into the cabin to get his hat. The horse pivoted and started away.

“If I see Bells before you do,” a voice floated up from the shadows below, where the moon had not yet penetrated, “I’ll tell him you’re coming. So long.”

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As the partners dog-trotted down the trail, she was already a long way in advance. Now and then, as they panted up the steep path leading away behind the Rattler, whose lights glowed dimly, they heard faint sounds telling them that she was hastening back to Goldpan. The winding of the trail took them away from the immediate roar of the stamp mill behind, and they were still in the gloom, when they saw the horse and rider outlined for a moment high above them on the crest of the divide and they thought she stopped for a moment and looked back. Then the silhouette seemed to float down out of sight, and was gone.

At the top, wordless, and sweating with effort, they filled their lungs, hitched their belts tighter, and plunged into the shadows leading toward the straggling rows of lights far below. They ran now, doggedly, hoping to arrive in the camp before the meeting came to an end.

“All we want,” Bill said jerkily, as his feet pounded on the last decline, “is a chance to argue it out with the men themselves before this Denver feller gets his work in. I’m entitled to talk to ’em. I’ve got my own card, and am as good a union man as any of ’em. The boys’ll be reasonable if they stop to think.”

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They hastened up the roadway of the street, which was, as at any hour of the night, filled with moving men and clamorous with sound. They knew that the miners’ hall was at its farthest end over the Golden Age Saloon, and so lost no time in directing their steps toward it. A group in the roadway compelled them to turn out; and they were hurrying past, when a high, angry voice arrested them.

“And that’s what they did to me––me, old Bells Park, who is sixty-four!”

Dick turned into the crowd, followed by his partner, and began forcing his way through. Bells was screaming and sobbing now in anger, and venting a tirade of oaths. “If I’d been younger they couldn’t have done it so easily. If I’d ’a’ had my gun, I’d ’a’ killed some of ’em, I would!”

As the partners gained the little opening around him, the light from a window disclosed the white-headed, little man. Two men were half-holding him up. His face was a mass of blood, which one of his supporters was endeavoring to wipe away with a handkerchief, and from all sides came indignant, sympathetic mutterings.

“Who did that?” roared the heavy, infuriated185voice of Bill as he turned to those around him.

Bells, whose eyes were swollen shut, recognized the voice, and lurched forward.

“Some fellers backin’ up that Denver thug,” he wailed. “I was tryin’ to hold ’em till you come. He had the meetin’ packed with a lot of bums I never saw before, and, when I told ’em what I thought of ’em and him, he ordered me thrown out. I tore my card to pieces and chucked ’em in his fat face, and then one of the fellers that came with him hit me. They threw me down the stairs, and might ’a’ killed me if there hadn’t been one or two of my friends there. They call ’emselves union miners! The dirty loafers!” And his voice screamed away again into a line of objurgations and anathemas until Bill quieted him.

“Here, Dick,” he said, “give us a hand. We’ll take him over to Lily’s rooms and have her get Doc Mills.”

His voice was unusually calm and contained. Dick had heard him use that tone but once before, when he made a proposition to a man in an Arizona camp that the road was wide, the day fine, and each well armed. He had helped bury the186other man after that meeting, so now read the danger note.

“I’ll go get The Lily to come up and open the door,” one of Bells’ supporters said; “and won’t you go for Doc?” He addressed the man on the other side of the engineer.

“Sure!” replied the other.

Within five minutes they were in Mrs. Meredith’s rooms again; and it seemed to Dick, as he looked around its dainty fittings, that it was forever to be a place of tragedy; for the memory of that terribly burned victim of the fire was still there, and he seemed to see her lying, scorched and unconscious, on the white counterpane.

“His nose is busted, I think,” his partner said to The Lily, whose only comment was an abrupt exclamation: “What a shame! The cowards!”

He turned to the woman with his set face, and, still speaking in that calm, deadly voice, said: “Do you happen to have your gun up here?”

Her eyes opened wider, and Dick was about to interpose, when she answered understandingly: “Yes; but I’ll not give it to you, Bill Mathews.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, as quietly as if his request or her refusal had been mere desultory187conversation. “I might need one in a pinch; but if you can’t spare it, I reckon the boy and me can do what we have to do without one.”

He turned and walked from the room and Dick followed, hoping to argue him from that dangerous mood.

“Say, Bill,” he said, “isn’t it about bad enough without any more trouble?”

“What? You don’t mean to say you’re not with me?” exclaimed the miner, suddenly turning on him and stopping abruptly in the street. “Are you for lettin’ ’em get away with it? Of course you ain’t! You always stick. Come on.”

They saw that the lights in the miners’ hall were out, and began a steady tour of the saloons in the vicinity. One of their own men was in one of them––Smuts, the blacksmith, cursing loudly and volubly as they entered.

“Them boys has always treated us white clean through,” he bawled, banging his fist on the bar, “and a lot of you pikers that don’t know nothin’ about the case sit around like a lot of yaps and let this Denver bunch pack the meetin’ and declare a strike. Then you let the same Denver bunch jump on poor old Bells, and hammer him to a pulp after they’ve hustled him out of the door, instead of follerin’ out to see that188he don’t get the worst of it. Bah! I’m dead sick of you.”

The partners had paused while listening to him, and he now saw them.

“Come out here, Smuts,” Dick said, turning toward the door, and the smith followed them.

“So they’ve ordered a strike on us, have they?” Dick asked.

“Yes,” was the blacksmith’s heated response; “but it don’t go for me! I stick.”

“Then if you’re with us, where is that Denver bunch?” Bill asked; and Dick knew that any effort to deter his partner from his purpose would prove useless.

“They all went down to the High Light,” the smith answered. “Have you seen Bells?”

“Yes, and taken care of him. Now I’m goin’ to take care of the man that done it.”

The blacksmith banged a heavy hand on the superintendent’s shoulder.

“Bully for you! I’m with you. We’ll go together!” he exclaimed, and at once led the way toward the flaming lights of the High Light but a few doors below.

Dick nerved himself for the inevitable, and grimly walked with them as they entered the doors. As they stood there, with the big miner189in front, a sudden hush invaded the babel of noise, and men began to look in their direction. The grim, determined man in the lead, glaring here and there with cold, terrible eyes, was too noticeable a figure to escape observation. The set face of his partner, scarcely less determined, and the smith, with brawny, clenched hands, and bushy, black brows drawn into a fierce scowl, completed the picture of a desperate trio come to avenge.

“You’re the man I’m after,” suddenly declared Bill, pointing a finger at Thompson, of Denver, who had been the center of an admiring group. “You’re the one that’s responsible for old Bells. Let’s see if you or any of your bunch are as brave with a younger man. Come outside, won’t you?”

When first he began to speak, in that silky, soft rumble, Thompson, who was nearly as large as Mathews, assumed an air of amused disdain; but before the speech was ended his face went a little white.

“Oh, go on away, you drunken loafers!” he said, half-turning, as if to resume his conversation.

Instantly Bill sprang at him; and it seemed that he launched his sinewy bulk with a tiger’s190directness and deadliness straight through the ten feet intervening. He drove his fist into the face of the Denver man, and the latter swept back against those behind him. Again he lifted the merciless fist, and now began striking with both with incredible rapidity. The battered Thompson was driven back, to fall against a faro layout. The miner bent him backward over the table until he was resting on the wildly scattered gold and silver coins, and struck again, and this time the blood spurted in a stream, to run across the green cloth, the staring card symbols, and the case rack.

“Don’t kill him, Bill, don’t kill him!” Dick’s shout arose above the shouts of men and the screams of dance-hall women. He had barely time to observe, in a flash, that Bill had picked the limp form of Thompson up, and heavy as it was, lifted it high above his head and thrown it violently into a vacant corner back of the table in a crumpled heap, when he was almost felled to the floor by a blow from behind, and turned to fight his own battle with one of the Denver bullies.

His old gymnasium training stood him in good stead; for, half-dazed by the blow, he could only reel back and block the heavy fists that were smashing toward him, when there came a sudden191pause, and he saw that the smith had forced his way forward and lunged, with his heavy, slow arm, a deadly punch that landed under his assailant’s ear, and sent him limp and dazed to the floor. The smith jumped forward and lifted his heavy boot to kick the weaving face; but Dick caught him by the arm, and whirled him back in time to prevent needless brutality.

“There’s another of ’em that hit Bells,” the smith yelled, pointing to a man who began desperately edging toward the door.

All the rage of the primitive was aroused in Dick by this time, the battle lust that dwells, placidly through life, perhaps, in every man, but which breaks loose in a torrent when once unleashed. He leaped after the retreating man, seized him by the collar, and gave a wrench that tore coat, collar, and tie from the man’s throat. He drove a blow into the frightened face, and yelled: “That for old Bells Park! And that!”

The room had become a pandemonium. Men seemed striking everywhere. Fists were flying, the bartenders and gamblers shouting for order; and Dick looked back to where Smuts and Bill were clearing a wide circle as they went after individual members of Thompson’s supporters who were edging in. Suddenly he saw a man192leap on the bar, and recognized in him the man who had been watchman at the Croix d’Or. Even in that tempestuous instant Dick wondered at his temerity in entering the place.

Something glistened in the light, and he saw that the watchman held a drawn revolver, and was leveling it at Bill. The motion of the fight was all that prevented the shot, as Mathews leaped to and fro. A dozen men were between Dick and the watchman; but almost under his hand, at the edge of the bar, stood a whisky bottle. He dove for it, brought it up, and threw. The watchman, struck fairly on the side of the head, dropped off backward, and fell to the floor behind the bar, and his pistol exploded harmlessly upward.

Instantly there came a change. From terrific uproar the room became as still as a solitude. Brutal and deadly as had been that fierce minute or two of battle in which all men fought, or strove to protect themselves from the maddened ones nearest, the sound of the shot brought them to their senses. A fight was one thing, a shooting another. Gunmen as many of them were, they dreaded the results if firearms were resorted to in that dense mass of excited men, and each one stood still, panting, listening, calmed.

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