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“On the day I met you first, up here by your pipe line, the day you almost ended my bright young career by starting a half-ton bowlder down the hill––don’t interrupt with repeated apologies, please––I had my birth anniversary. I was twenty-one, and––my own boss.”
“Congratulations, belated, but fervent.”
“Thank you; but you again interrupt. On that day when I went home, my father, in his customary gruff way, turned back just as he was going to the office where he lives at least eighteen hours out of every twenty-four, and threw in my lap a bank-book. ‘Joan,’ he said, ‘you’re of age now. That’s for you. It’s all yours, to do just what you dam’ please with. I have nothing to do with it. If you make a fool use of it, it’ll be your fault, not mine. I’m giving it to you so that if anything happened to me, or the Rattler, you’d not be helplessly busted.’”
He jumped to his feet with an exclamation.
“The Rattler! The Rattler! And––and your name is Joan and not Dorothy, and you are Bully Presby’s daughter?”
He was bewildered by surprise.
“Why, yes. Certainly! Didn’t you know that––all this time?”
234
“No!” he blurted. “There is a Dorothy Presby, and a–––”
“Dorothy Presby!” She doubled over in a gust of mirth. “The daughter of the lumberman over on the other side. Oh, this is too good to keep! I must tell her the next time I see her. After all these months, you still thought–––”
Again her laughter overwhelmed her; but it was not shared by Dick, who stood above her on the slope, frowning in perplexity, thinking of the strange blunder into which he had been led by the words of poor old Bells, his acceptance of her identity, his ignorance that Bully Presby had kith or kin, and of the mine owner’s sarcastic references and veiled antagonism throughout all those troubled months preceding.
If she were Bully Presby’s daughter, he might never gain her father’s consent, though the Croix d’Or were in the list of producers. He thought of that harsh encounter on the trail, and his assertion that he was capable of attending to his own business and asked neither friendship nor favor from any man under the skies; of Bully Presby’s gruff reply, and of their passing each other a second time, in the streets of Goldpan, without recognition. The girl in front of him, so unlike235her father save for the firm chin and capable brow, did not appear to sense his perturbation.
“Well,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. I am not jeal––– I’m not any different––just the same. Come back here and sit down, please, while I go ahead with what I wish to say.”
The interlude appeared to have rendered her more self-possessed.
“So, on that day I met you, I became quite rich. That money has rested in a bank, doing neither me nor any one else any benefit. I think I have drawn one check, for twenty-five dollars, just to convince myself that it was all reality. And I am, in some ways, the daughter of my father. I want my money to work. I’m quite a greedy young person, you see. I want to lend you as much of that money as you need.”
“Impossible!”
“Not at all. I have as much faith in you, perhaps more, than this Mister Sloan, of whom I’m a trifle jealous. I want to have a share in your success. I want to make you feel that, even if I’m not the daughter of a lumberman, I am, and shall have a right to be, interested in––in––the Croix d’Or.”
“Impossible!”
“It isn’t any such thing. I mean it!”
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“Then it’s because I haven’t made it plain to you––haven’t made you understand that even now I am thinking, to preserve my honor, of telling Mr. Sloan that it is too much of a venture. If I should decline to venture his money, why should I–––?”
“Refuse mine? That’s just it. His money you could decline. He isn’t on the ground. He doesn’t know mines, mining, or miners. I know them all. I am here. I know the history of the Cross from the day it made its first mill run. I went five hundred feet under ground in a California mine when I was a month old. I’ve run from the lowest level to the top of the hoist, and from the grizzlies to the tables, for at least ten years of my life. I’ve absorbed it. I’ve lived in it. Had I the strength, there isn’t a place in this, or any mine, that I couldn’t fill. I’m backing my judgment. The Croix d’Or will prove good with depth. It may never pay until you get it. The blowing of your dam, the loss of your green lead, and all of those troubles, don’t amount to that.”
She snapped a thumb and forefinger derisively, and went on before he could interject a word, so intent was she on assisting him and encouraging237him, and proving to him that her judgment, through knowledge, was better than his.
“Borrow my money, Dick, and sink.”
The name came so easily to her lips! It was the first time he had ever heard her utter it. It swept away his flying restraint even as the flame of powder snaps through a fuse to explosion; and he made a sudden, swinging step toward her, and caught her in his arms savagely, greedily, tenderly fierce. All his love was bursting, molten, to speech; but she lifted both hands and thrust herself away from him.
“Oh, not that!” she said. “Not that! I wish you had not. It robs me of my wish. I wanted you to take my money as a comrade, not as my––– Oh, Dick! Dick! Don’t say anything to me now, or do anything now! Please let me have my way. You will win. I know it! The Cross must pay. It shall pay! And when it does, then––then–––”
She stood, trembling, and abashed by her own words, before him. Slowly the delicacy of her mind, the romanticism of her dreams, the great, unselfish love within her, fluttering yet valiant, overwhelmed him with a sense of infinite unworthiness and weakness. He took his hat from his head, leaned over, and caught one of the palpitant238hands in both his own, and raised it reverently to his lips. It was as if he were paying homage to heaven devoutly.
“I understand,” he said softly, still clinging to the fingers, every throb of which struck appealingly on his heartstrings. “Forgive me, and––yet––don’t. Joan, little Joan, I can’t take your money. It would make me a weakling. But I can make the Cross win. If it never had a chance before, it will have now. It must! God wouldn’t let it be otherwise!”
“Help me to my horse,” she said faintly. “We mustn’t talk any more. Let us keep our hopes as they are.”
He lifted her lightly to the saddle, and the big black, with comprehending eyes, seemed to stand as a statue after she was in her seat. The purple shadows of the mountain twilight were, with a soft and tender haze, tinting the splendid peak above them. Everything was still and hushed, as if attuned to their parting. She leaned low over her saddle to where, as before something sacred, he stood with parted lips, and upturned face, bareheaded, in adoration. Quite slowly she bent down and kissed him full on the lips, and whispered: “God bless you, dear, and keep you––for me!”
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The abrupt crashing of a horse’s hoofs awoke the echoes and the world again. She was gone; and, for a full minute after the gray old rocks and the shadows had encompassed her, there stood in the purple twilight a man too overcome with happiness to move, to think, to comprehend, to breathe!
240CHAPTER XV“MR. SLOAN SPEAKS”
“Wow! Somethin’ seems to have kind of livened up the gloom of this dump, seems to me,” exclaimed Bill on the following morning, when returning from his regular trip underground, he stamped into the office, threw himself into a chair, and hauled off one of his rubber boots preparatory to donning those of leather.
Dick had been bent over the high desk, with plans unrolled before him, and a sheet of paper on which he made calculations, whistling as he did so.
“First time I’ve heard you whistle since we left the Cœur d’Alenes,” Bill went on, grinning slyly, as if secretly pleased. “What’re you up to?”
“Finding out if by sinking we couldn’t cut that green lead about two hundred feet farther down.”
“Bully boy! I’m with you!” encouraged the older miner, throwing the cumbersome boots into the corner, and coming over behind Dick, where241he could inspect the plans across the angle of the other’s broad shoulder. “How does she dope out?”
“We cut the green lead on the six-hundred-foot, at a hundred and ten feet from the shaft, didn’t we? Well, the men before us cut on the five-hundred at a hundred and seventy from the shaft, and at two-twenty from the shaft on the four-hundred-foot level, where they stoped out a lot of it before concluding it wouldn’t pay to work. It was a strong but almost barren ledge when they first came into it on the two-hundred-foot level. The Bonanza chute made gold because they happened to hit it at a crossing on the four-hundred-foot level. At the six-hundred, as we know, it was almost like a chimney of ore that is playing out as we drift west. If the mill had not been put out of business, we were going to stope it out, though, and prove whether it was the permanent ledge, weren’t we?”
“Right you are, pardner.”
“Well, then, at the same angle, we would have to drift less than seventy feet on the seven-hundred-foot level to cut it again, and at the eight-hundred-foot we’d just about have it at the foot of the shaft. Well, I’m sinking, regardless of expense.”
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“It might be right, boy, it might be right,” Bill said, thoughtfully scowling at the plans, and going over the figures of the dip. “But you’re the boss. What you say goes.”
“But don’t you think I’m right?”
“Yes,” hesitatingly, “or, anyway, it’s worth takin’ a chance on. Bells used to say the mines around here all had to get depth, and that most of the ledges came in stronger as they went down. The Cross ain’t shown it so far, but eight hundred feet ought to show whether that’s the right line of work.”
“How is the sump hole under the shaft?” Dick asked.
“Must be somewhere about seventy or eighty feet of water in it; but we can pump that out in no time. She isn’t makin’ much water. Almost a dry mine now, for some reason I don’t quite get. Looks as if it leaked away a good deal, somewhere, through the formation. There wouldn’t be no trouble in sinkin’ the shaft.”
“And thirty feet, about, would bring us to the seven-hundred-foot mark?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll tell you what I want to do: I want you to shift the crew so that there is a day and a night shift. The rebuilding of the dam can be243put off for a while, except for such work as the millmen are agreeable to take on. I want to sink! I don’t want to waste any time about it. I want to go down just as fast as it can be done, and when we get to the seven-hundred-foot, one gang must start to drift for the green lead, and the others must keep going down.”
He was almost knocked over the desk by a rousing, enthusiastic slap on the back.
“Now you’re my old pardner again!” Bill shouted. “You’re the lad again that was fresh from the schools, knew what he wanted, and went after it. Dick, I’ve been kind of worried about you since we came here,” the veteran went on, in a softer tone of voice. “You ain’t been like the old Dick. You ain’t had the zip! It’s as if you were afraid all the time of losing Sloan’s money, and it worried you. And sometimes––now, I don’t want you to get sore and cuss me––it seemed to me as if your mind wa’n’t altogether on the job! As if the Cross didn’t mean everything.”
He waited expectantly for a moment, as if inviting a confidence; then, observing that the younger man was flushed, and not looking at him, grinned knowingly, and trudged out of the office, calling back as he went: “There’ll be sump water in the creek in half an hour.”
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As if imbued with new energy, he ordered one of the idle millmen to act as stoker, if he cared to do so, which was cheerfully done, had the extra pump attached, saw the fire roaring from another boiler, and by noon the shaft rang with the steady throb of the pistons pounding and pulling the waste water upward. The last of the unwatering of the Cross was going forward in haste. By six o’clock in the evening he reported that soundings showed that the map had not been checked up, and that the shaft was seven hundred and ten feet deep, and that they would commence a drift on the seven-hundred-foot mark the next day.
Dick was awakened at an early hour, and found Bill missing. He went over to the hoist house, where a sleepy night man, new to the hours, grinned at him with a pleasant: “Looks like we’re busy, just––the––same, Mr. Townsend! The old man”––the superintendent of a mine is always “the old man,” be he but twenty––“left orders last night that when the water was clear at seven hundred feet he was to be called. He kicked up two of the drill men at four this mornin’, and they’re down there puttin’ the steel into the rock ever since. Hear ’em? He’s makin’ things hump!”
Dick leaned over the unused compartment of245the shaft, and heard the steady, savage chugging of the drills. Bill was “makin’ things hump!” with a vengeance.
A man who had been sent to the camp for the semi-weekly mail arrived while the partners were at breakfast, and the first letter laid before them was one with a New York postmark, which Dick read anxiously. It was from Sloan, who told him that he had been unexpectedly called to the Pacific coast on a hurried trip, and that, while he did not have time to visit the Croix d’Or, he very earnestly hoped that Dick would arrange, on receipt of the letter, to meet him in Seattle, and named a date.
“Whe-e-w! You got to move some, ain’t you? Let’s see, if you want to meet him you’ll have to be hittin’ the trail out of here in an hour,” said Bill, laying down his knife and fork. “What do you s’pose is up? Goin’ to tie the poke strings again?”
Dick feared something was amiss. And he continued to think of this after he had written a hasty note to Joan, telling her of his abrupt absence, and that he expected to return in a week. He pondered for a moment whether or not to add some note of affection, but decided that he was still246under her ban, and so contented himself with the closing line:
“I am following your advice. We are sinking!”
He had to run, bag in hand, to catch the stage from Goldpan, and as it jolted along over the rough passes and rugged inclines had a medley of thought. Sometimes he could not imagine why Sloan had been so anxious to talk with him, and in the other and happier intervals, he thought of Joan Presby, daughter of the man whom he had come to regard as antagonistic in many ways.
The confusion of mind dwelt with him persistently after he had boarded the rough “accommodation” that carried him to the main line, where he must wait for the thunderous arrival of the long express train that was to carry him across the broad and splendid State of Washington. Idaho and Oregon were left behind. The magnificent wheat belt spread from horizon to horizon, and harvesters paused to wave their hats at the travelers. The Western ranges of the Olympics, solid, dignified, and engraved against the sky with their outline of peak and forest, came into view, and yet his perturbation continued.
He saw the splendid panorama of Puget Sound open to his view, and the train, at last, after those247weary hours of jolting, rattled into the long sheds that at that time disgraced the young giant city of the North-west. It was the first time he had even entered its shadows, and as he turned its corner he looked curiously at the stump of a tree that had been hollowed into an ample office, and was assailed by the strident cries of cabmen.
“The Butler House,” he said, relinquishing his bag into the hands of the first driver who reached him, and settled back into the cushions with a sense of bewilderment, as if something long forgotten had been recalled. He knew what it was as he drove along in all that clamor of sound which issues from a great and hurrying city. It was New York, and he was in the young New York of the North-west, with great skeleton structures uprearing and the turmoil of building. Only here was a difference, for side by side on the streets walked men clad in the latest fashion, and men bound to or coming from the arctic fields of gold-bound Alaska. Electric cars tearing along at a reckless speed, freight wagons heavily laden, newsboys screaming the call of extras, and emerging from behind log wagons, and everything betokening that clash of the old and the intensely new.
At the Butler House the man behind the desk248twirled the register toward him, and assigned him a room.
“Sloan?” he replied to Dick’s inquiry. “Oh, yes. He’s the old chap from New York who said he was expecting someone, and to send him right up. I suppose you’re the man. Here, boy, show Mr. Townsend to five-fifty. Right that way, sir.”
And before his words were finished he had turned to a new arrival.
The clamor of the streets, busy as is no other city in the world busy when the season is on, was still in his ears, striking a familiar note in his memory, and the modernity of the elevator, the brass-buttoned boy, and the hotel itself brought back the last time he had seen Mr. Sloan, and the day he had parted from his father in that office on Wall Street. He found the Wall Street veteran grayer, much older, and more kindly, when he was ushered into the room to receive his greeting. He subsided into a chair, but his father’s old-time friend protested.
“Stand up!” he commanded, “and turn around, young fellow, so I can see whether you have filled out. Humph! You’ll do, I guess, physically. I don’t think I should want to have any trouble with you. You look as if you could249hold your own most anywhere. I’m glad. Now, sit down, and tell me all about the mine.”
He listened while Dick went into details of the work, sparing none of the misfortunes and disappointments, and telling of the new method employed. He was interrupted now and then by a shrewd question, an exclamation, or a word of assent, and, after he had finished the account, said: “Well, that is all there is to report. What do you think?”
“Who is Thomas W. Presby?” Sloan’s question was abrupt.
“The owner of the Rattler, the mine next to us.”
“He is?” the question was explosive. “Ah, ha! The moth in the closet, eh? So that accounts for it! I spent a hundred dollars, then, to good purpose, it seems to me!”
Dick looked an intent and wondering question.
“An agent here in Seattle wrote me that they had written you, making an offer of sixty thousand dollars for the property––yes––the same one you wrote me about. He said they had reason to believe I was the financial backer for the mine, and that they now wished to deal with me, inasmuch as you might be carried away by youthful enthusiasm to squandering my hard-earned cash. I250wrote back that your judgment satisfied me. Then, just before I left, I got a flat offer of a hundred thousand dollars for the property in full, or seventy-five thousand for my share alone. It set me to thinking, and wondering if some one wasn’t trying to cut your feet from under you. So, having business in Portland, I came on up here, and got after this agent.”
Dick had a chill of apprehension. He knew before the loyal old man had proceeded half-way what to expect.
“It cost me a hundred dollars in entertainment, and a lot of apparent readiness to talk business, to get him confidential with me. Then I got the name of the would-be purchaser, under injunctions of secrecy, because those were the agent’s positive instructions. The man who wants to buy is Presby!”
For one black, unworthy instant, Dick looked out of the window, wondering if it were possible that Joan had known of her father’s efforts, and had withheld the information. Then the memory of that gentle face, the candid eyes, her courageous advice, and––last of all––the kiss and prayer on her lips, made him mentally reproach himself for the thought. But he remembered that he still owed affection and deference to the251stanch old man who sat before him, who had been his benefactor in an hour of need, and backed faith with money.
“Well, sir,” he said, turning to meet the kindly eyes, “what do you think of it?”
“Think of it? Think of it?” Sloan replied, raising his voice. “I’ll tell you my answer. ‘You sit down,’ I said, ‘and write this man Presby that I knew no one in connection with the Croix d’Or but the son of the man who many times befriended me, in desperate situations when I needed it! That I was paying back to the son what I was unfortunately prevented from paying back to the father––a constant gratitude! That I’d see him or any other man in their graves before I’d sell Richard Townsend out in that way. That I’d back Dick Townsend on the Croix d’Or as long as he wanted me to, and that when he gave that up, I’d still back him on any other mine he said was good!’ That’s what I said!”
He had lost his calm, club poise, and was again the virulent business man of that Wall Street battle, waged daily, where men must have force or fail to survive. Dick saw in him the man who was, the man who at times had shaken the financial world with his desperate bravery and daring, back in the days when giants fought for the beginnings252of supremacy. He felt very inexperienced and young, as he looked at this veteran with scars, and impulsively rose to his feet and held out his hand. He was almost dumb with gratitude.
“I shouldn’t have asked you to say so much,” he said. “I am––well––I am sort of down and out with it all! I feel a little bit as I did when the Cornell eleven piled on top of me in the annual, when I played half-back.”
“Hey! And wasn’t that a game!” the old man suddenly enthused, with sparkling eyes. “And how your father and I did yell and howl and beat the heads of those in front! Gad! I remember the old man had a silk hat, and he banged it up and down on a bald head in front until there was nothing but a rim left, and then looked as sheepish as a boy caught stealing apples when he realized what he had done. Oh, but your Daddy was a man, even if he did have a temper, my boy!”
His eyes sparkled with a fervid love of the game of his college days, and he seemed to have dismissed the Croix d’Or from his mind, as if it were of no importance. Nor did he, during the course of that visit, refer to it again. He made exception, when he shook hands with Dick at the train.
“Don’t let anybody bluff you,” he said. “Remember253that a brave front alone often wins. If you fail with the Croix the world is still big, and––well––you’re one of my legatees. Good-by. Good luck!”
Again Dick endured the rumbling of trains through long hours, the change from one to another at small junctions, the day and night in a stage coach whose springs seemed to have lost resiliency, and the discourse of two drummers, Hebraic, the chill aloofness of a supercilious mining expert new to the district, and the heated discussions of two drill runners, veterans, off to a new field, and celebrating the journey with a demijohn. The latter were union men, and long after he was tired of their babel they broached a conversation which brought Dick to a point of eager listening.
“Yes, you see,” one of the men asserted; “they got the goods on him. Thompson had been a good delegate until he got the finger itch, then he had an idea he could use the miners’ union to scratch ’em. He held up one or two small mines before the big guns got wise. That got him to feelin’ his oats, and he went for bigger game.”
“But how did they get him?” the other runner insisted.
254
“They got him over here to where we’re goin––Goldpan. He held up some fellers that’s got a mine called the Craw Door, or somethin’ like that. Fetched three of his pals from Denver with him. They called ’emselves miners! God! Miners nothin’! They’d worked around Cripple Creek long enough to get union cards, but two of ’em was prize fighters, and the other used to be bouncer at the old Alcazar when she was the hottest place to lose money that ever turned a crooked card. I remember there one time when–––”
“Nobody asked you about that,” growled the other man. “What I’m interested in is about this big stiff, Thompson.”
“Him? Oh, yes. Where was I? Well, he fixed things for a hold-up. Was goin’ to get these fellers at the Craw Door to untie their pokes, but they don’t stand for it. He packs a meetin’ with a lot of swampers that don’t know nothin’ about the case, and before they gets done they votes a strike, and an old feller from this Craw Door gets his time. Gets kicked to death, the same as they uster in Park City when the Cousin Jacks from the Ontario cut loose on one another. The Denver council takes cawgnizance of this, and investigates. It snoops around till it gets the goods.255Then––wow! bing!goes this here Thompson. They sue him themselves, and now he’s up in Cañon City, a-lookin’ plaintive like through these things.”
He held his knotted, rough fingers open before his face, and jerked his head sideways, simulating a man peering through penitentiary bars. Then, with a roar, he started in to bellow, “The union forever––hooraw, boys hooraw!” in which his companion, forgetting all the story, joined until it was again time to tilt the wicker-covered jug.
And so that was the end of Thompson and presumably the strike, Dick thought, as he settled back into the corner he had claimed. And it was easy to see, with this damning evidence to be brought forward, that Bells Park’s murderers would pay, to the full, the penalty. For them, on trial, it meant nothing less than life. He was human enough to be glad.
The stage rattled into Goldpan, and, stiff and sore from his journey, he began his tramp toward the trail of the cut-off leading homeward: He stopped but once. It was in front of the High Light, where a small scrap of paper still clung to the plate glass. On it was written, in a hurried, but firm and womanly, handwriting:
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This place is closed for good. It is not for sale. It has held hell. Hereafter it shall hold nothing but cobwebs.Lily Meredith.
This place is closed for good. It is not for sale. It has held hell. Hereafter it shall hold nothing but cobwebs.
Lily Meredith.
The date was that of the tragic night, the night when Bells Park, fighting for those on whom he had bestowed a queer, distorted affection, had been kicked to death by the ruffians now cowering in a distant jail!
Verily the camp and the district had memories for him as he trudged away from its straggling shanties, and filled his lungs with the fresh, free air from the wide, rugged stretches beyond. When he came through the borders of the Rattler he looked eagerly, insistently, for a glimpse of his heart’s desire, and thought, with annoyance, that he did not so much as know the cabin which she called home. But he was not rewarded. It was still the same, with no enlivening touch of form or color, the same spider-web tramways debouching into the top of the mill, the same sullen roar and rumble of falling stamps, the same columns of smoke from tall chimney and humble log structure, alike, and the same careless clash of the breakers.
Bill came hurrying down the trail to meet him, waving his hat, and shouting a welcome. Up at257the yard the smith held a black hand and muscled arm up to shade his eyes from the last sunlight, and then shook a hammer aloft. From the door of the engine room the man who had been Bells’ assistant bawled a greeting, and the fat cook shook a ladle at him through the mess-house window. It all gave him an immense and satisfactory warmth of home-coming, and the Croix d’Or, with its steadfast, friendly little colony, was home in truth!
“We’re in sixty feet on the seven-hundred-foot,” Bill grinned, with the air of one giving a pleasant surprise, “and say, boy, we’ve hit the edge of ore. You were all right. The green lead is still there, only she looks better to me than she did before, and I know rock, some.”
There was nothing wanting in the pleasure of his return, and the last addition to that satisfactory day was a note he found, lying on the very top of other letters awaiting him. It was from Joan Presby, and Bill, starting to enter the office, saw his partner’s face in the light of the lamp, smiled affectionately, and then tiptoed away into the darkness, as if to avoid intrusion at such a time.
258CHAPTER XVIBENEFITS RETURNED
Dick waited impatiently at the rendezvous, saw Joan coming, hurried to meet her, and was restrained from displaying his joy by her upheld hand, as she smiled and cautioned: “Now, steady, Dick! You know we were not to––to––be anything but comrades for a while yet.”
He was compelled to respect her wishes, but his eyes spoke all that his tongue might have uttered. In the joy of meeting her, he had forgotten the part played by her father in his surreptitious attempt to gain possession of the Croix d’Or: but her first words reminded him of it:
“It has been terribly lonesome since you left. I have felt as if the whole world had deserted me. Dad is not a cheery sort of companion, because he is so absorbed by the Rattler that he lives with it, eats with it, sleeps with it. And, to make him259worse, something appears to have upset him in the last week or ten days until a bear would be a highly lovable companion by comparison.”
She failed to notice the gravity of his face, for he surmised how Sloan’s answer must have affected the owner of the Rattler, who strode mercilessly over all obstacles and men, but now had come to one which he could not surmount. He wondered how obdurate Bully Presby would prove if the time ever came when he dared ask for Joan, and whether, if the father refused, Joan’s will would override this opposition.
Studying the lines of her face, and the firm contour of her chin as it rounded into the grace of her throat, he had a joyful sense of confidence that she would not prove wanting, and dismissed Bully Presby from his thoughts. With a great embarrassment, he fumbled in the pocket of his shirt, and brought out a little box which he opened, to display a glittering gem. He held it toward her, in the palm of his hand; but she pulled her gloves over her fingers, and blushed and laughed.
“It seems to me,” she declared, “that you have plenty of assurance.”
“Why?” he insisted.
“Because I haven’t made my mind up––that far, yet, and because if I had I shouldn’t say so260until the Croix d’Or had been proven one way or the other.”
She stopped, awkwardly embarrassed, as if her objection had conveyed a suggestion that his financial standing had a bearing on her acceptance, and hastened to rectify it:
“Not that its success or the money it would bring has anything to do with it.”
“But if it failed?” he interrogated, striving to force her to an admission.
“I should accept you as quickly as if it were a success; perhaps more quickly, for I have money enough. But that isn’t it. Don’t you see, can’t you understand, that I want you to make good just to show that you can?”
“Yes,” he answered gloomily. “But if I didn’t feel quite confident, I shouldn’t offer you the ring. And if I failed, I shouldn’t ask you.”
“Then you musn’t fail,” she retorted. “And, do you know,” she hastened, as if eager to change the subject, and get away from such a trying pass, “that I’ve never seen the Croix since you took possession of it?”
“Come now,” he said, with boyish eagerness. “I’ve wanted you to see what we are doing for weeks––yes, months. Will you? We can lead your horse down over the trail easily.”
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He walked by her side, the black patiently following them, and told her of what had been accomplished in his absence, and of their plans. She listened gravely, offering such sage advice now and then that his admiration of her knowledge constantly increased. There were but few men in sight as they crossed the head of the cañon, and came slowly down past the blacksmith shop.
“Why, if there isn’t Mr. Clark!” she exclaimed, and the smith looked up, grinned, dropped his tongs, and came toward them, wiping his hand on his smudgy apron.
“Hello, Joan!” he called out. “You’re a bit bigger’n you used to be, when I made iron rings for you.”
“Oh, Smuts,” she laughed happily, stepping to meet him, “do you know I still have one, and that it’s in my jewel case, among my most precious possessions?”
She held out her white, clean hand, and he almost seized it in his grimy, fist, then drew her back.
“’Most forgot!” he declared. “I reckon I’d muss that up some if I took it in my fist.”
“Then muss it,” she laughed. “You weren’t always so particular.” And he grabbed, held,262and patted the hand that he had known in its childhood.
“Why, little Joan,” he growled, with a suspicious softness in his voice, “you ain’t changed none since you used to sit on the end of that old-fashioned forge, dirty up your pinafores, and cry when Bully led you off. Him and me ain’t friends no more, so’s you could notice. Seven years now since I hit him for cussin’ me for somethin’ that wa’n’t my fault! But, by gee whiz, old Bully Presby could go some! We tipped an anvil over that day, and wrecked a bellows before they pulled us off each other. I’ve always wondered, since then which of us is the better man!”
He spoke with such an air of regret that Joan and Dick laughed outright, and in the midst of it a shadow came across their own, and they turned to meet the amused, complacent stare of Bill. In acknowledging the introduction, Joan felt that his piercing eyes were studying her, probing her soul, as appraisingly as if seeking to lay her appearance and character bare. His harsh, determined face suddenly broke into a wondrous warmth of smile, and he impulsively seized her hand again.
“Say,” he said, “you’ll do! You’re all right!”
And she knew intuitively that this giant of the hills and lonely places had read her, with all her263emotions and love, as he would read print, and that, with the quick decision of such men, he was prepared to give her loyal friendship and affection.
They walked slowly around the plant, Dick pointing out their technical progress as they went, and she still further gained Bill’s admiration in the assay-house when she declared that she had a preference for another kind of furnace than they were using.
“Why, say, Miss Presby, can you assay?” he burst out.
“Assay!” she said. “Why, I lived in the assay-house at two or three times, and then studied it afterward.”
“Hey, up there!” a shout came from the roadway below.
They turned and went out to the little cindered, littered level in front of the door, and looked down to where, on the roadway a hundred feet below, a man stood at the head of a string of panting burros, and they recognized in him a packer from Goldpan.
“I’ve got somethin’ here for you.” He waved his hand back toward the string of burros.
“What is it?” asked Bill, turning to Dick.
“I don’t know what it can be. I have ordered nothing as heavy as that outfit appears to be.”
264
Perplexed, they excused themselves and descended the slope, leaving Joan standing there in front of the assay office, and enjoying the picture of the cañon, with its border of working buildings on one side, and its scattered cabins, mess- and bunk-houses on the other, the huge waste dump towering away from the hoist, and filling the head of the cañon, and the sparkle of the stream below.
“It’s for you, all right,” the packer insisted. “The Wells Fargo agent turned it over to me down in Goldpan, and said the money had been sent to pay me for bringin’ it up here. I don’t know what it is. It’s stones of some kind.”
Still more perplexed, the partners ordered him to take his pack train around to the storage house, and Bill led the way while his partner climbed back up the hill, and rejoined Joan. He was showing her some of the assay slips from the green lead when they heard a loud call from the yard. It was Bill, beckoning. They went across to meet him. One of the hitches had been thrown, and the other burros stood expectantly waiting to be relieved of their burdens.
“It’s a tombstone,” Bill said gravely. “It’s for Bell’s grave. The express receipt shows that it was sent by–––” he hesitated for a moment,265as if studying whether to use one name, or another, and then concluded––“The Lily.”
He pointed to a section of granite at their feet, and on its polished surface they read:
Under this granite sleeps Bells Park, an engineer. Murdered in defense of his employers. Faithful when living, and faithful when dead, to the Croix d’Or and all those principles which make a worthy man.
Under this granite sleeps Bells Park, an engineer. Murdered in defense of his employers. Faithful when living, and faithful when dead, to the Croix d’Or and all those principles which make a worthy man.
A sudden, overwhelming sadness seemed to descend upon them. Bill turned abruptly, and stepped across toward the boiler-house. The whistle sent out a long-drawn, booming call––the alarm signal for the mine. In all the stress of the Croix d’Or it was the first time that note had ever been used save in drill. The bells of the hoist arose into a jangling clamor. They heard the wheels of the cage whirl as it shot downward, the excited exclamations of men ascending, some of them with tools in hand, the running of a man’s feet, emerging from the blacksmith’s tunnel, the shout of the smith to his helper, and the labored running of the cook and waiter across the cinders of the yard. Bill slowly returned toward them.
“We’ll have to get you to land it up there,” he said, waving his arm toward the cross high266above. “Give us a hand here, will you? and we’ll throw this hitch again.”
The entire force of the mine had gathered around them before he had finished speaking, and, seeing the stone, understood. Joan caught her riding skirts deftly into her hand, and, with Bill leading the way up the steep and rock-strewn ascent, they climbed the peak. The burros halted now and then to rest, straining under the heaviness of their task. The men of the Croix d’Or sometimes assisted them with willing shoulders pushing behind, and there by the mound, on which flowers were already beginning to show green and vivid, they laid out the sections of granite. Only the cook’s helper was absent. Willing hands caught the sections, which had been grooved to join, and, tier on tier, they found their places until there stood, high and austere, the granite shaft that told of one man’s loyalty.
Dick gave some final instructions as to the rearranging of the grave and the little plot that had been created around it, and they descended in a strange silence, saddened by all that had been recalled. No one spoke, save Bill, who gave orders to the men to return to their tasks, and then said, as if to himself: “I’d like mighty well to know where Lily Meredith is. We cain’t even267thank her. Once I wondered what she was. Now I know more than ever. She was all woman!”
And to this, Joan, putting out her hand to bid them good-by, assented.
The night shots had been fired at five o’clock––the time usually selected by mines working two shifts––supper had been eaten, and the partners were sitting in front of their quarters when Bill again referred to Mrs. Meredith. High up on the hill, where the new landmark had been, erected, at the foot of the cross, the day shift of the Croix d’Or was busied here and there in clearing away the ground around the grave of the engineer, some of the men on hands and knees casting aside small bowlders, others trimming a clearing in the surrounding brush, and still others painfully building a low wall of rock.
“The hard work of findin’ out where The Lily is,” said Bill softly, “is because she covered her trail. Nobody knows where she went. The stage driver saw her on the train, but the railway agent told him she didn’t buy no ticket. The conductor wrote me that he put her off at the junction, and that she took the train toward Spokane. That’s all! It ends there as if she’d got on the train,268and then it had never stopped. We cain’t even thank her.”
Dick, absorbed in thoughts of Joan, heard but little of what he said, and so agreed with a short: “No, that’s right.” And Bill subsided into silence. A man came trudging up the path leading from the roadway lower down, and in his hand held a bundle of letters.
“Got the mail,” he said. “The stage may run every other day after this, instead of twice a week, the postmaster over at the camp told me. Not much to-night. Here it is.”
He handed Dick a bundle of letters, and then, sighting the others on the side of the peak above, started to join them, and take his share in that labor of respect and affection. In the approaching twilight Dick ran through the packet, selected one letter addressed to his partner, and gave it to him, then tore open the first one at hand. It was addressed in an unfamiliar and painful chirography, with the postmark of Portland, Ore., stamped smudgily in its corner. He began casually to read, then went white as the laborious lines flowed and swam before his eyes:
Dear Mister Townsend, owner of the cross mine, I write you because I am afraid I aint got your pardners name right and because Ive got269something on my mind that I cant keep any more. Im the girl that got burned at the High Light. Your pardner saved my life and you were awful kind to me. Everybody’s been very kind to me too. I spose you know I'll not be able to work in dance halls no more because Im quite ugly now with them scars all over my face. But that dont make no difference. Mrs. Meredith has been here to see me and told me who it was saved my life. Mrs. Meredith dont want nobody to know where shes gone. Shes not coming back any more. Shes quit the business and is running a sort of millinery store in–––
Dear Mister Townsend, owner of the cross mine, I write you because I am afraid I aint got your pardners name right and because Ive got269something on my mind that I cant keep any more. Im the girl that got burned at the High Light. Your pardner saved my life and you were awful kind to me. Everybody’s been very kind to me too. I spose you know I'll not be able to work in dance halls no more because Im quite ugly now with them scars all over my face. But that dont make no difference. Mrs. Meredith has been here to see me and told me who it was saved my life. Mrs. Meredith dont want nobody to know where shes gone. Shes not coming back any more. Shes quit the business and is running a sort of millinery store in–––
Here a name had been painstakingly obliterated, as if by afterthought, the very paper being gouged through with ink.
Shes paid all my hospital bills and when I get strong enough shes going to let me go to work for her. But that aint what Im writing about and this letter is the biggest I ever wrote. The nurse says Im making a book. I wasn’t a very bad girl or a very good girl when I was in the camps. Maybe you know that but I done my best and was as decent as I could be. There was a man was my sweetheart and sometimes when he drank too much he talked too much. Men always say a whole lot when theyre full of rotgut, unless they get nasty. My man never got nasty. Hes gone away and I dont know where. Maybe he dont want nothing more to do with me since I got my face burned. Ive kept my mouth shut until I found out it was you two men who saved me and270Im writing this to pay you back the only way I can. Bully Presby is stealing all his best pay ore from the Croix d’Or. Hes worked clean under you and got the richest ledge in the district. They aint nobody but confidential men ever get into that drift. Hes been stealing that ore for going on two years andll give you a lot of trouble if you dont mind your Ps and Qs. I hope you beat him out, and I pray for both of you.Your ever grateful,Pearl Walker.
Shes paid all my hospital bills and when I get strong enough shes going to let me go to work for her. But that aint what Im writing about and this letter is the biggest I ever wrote. The nurse says Im making a book. I wasn’t a very bad girl or a very good girl when I was in the camps. Maybe you know that but I done my best and was as decent as I could be. There was a man was my sweetheart and sometimes when he drank too much he talked too much. Men always say a whole lot when theyre full of rotgut, unless they get nasty. My man never got nasty. Hes gone away and I dont know where. Maybe he dont want nothing more to do with me since I got my face burned. Ive kept my mouth shut until I found out it was you two men who saved me and270Im writing this to pay you back the only way I can. Bully Presby is stealing all his best pay ore from the Croix d’Or. Hes worked clean under you and got the richest ledge in the district. They aint nobody but confidential men ever get into that drift. Hes been stealing that ore for going on two years andll give you a lot of trouble if you dont mind your Ps and Qs. I hope you beat him out, and I pray for both of you.
Your ever grateful,Pearl Walker.