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“Oh,––likes drink once in a while, but drink doesn’t like him;––that’s all. It goes to his brain somehow. Do you think you could manage him if he took you unawares?”
“I could try,” answered Phil.
“That’s the way to talk. And you’ve got the frame to work on, too. Can you throw a rope?”
“I used to when I was a kid. I guess, with a little practice, I still could do it pretty well.”
“Well,––practise in your spare time. It is handy to be able to throw a rope in this Valley. And it doesn’t cost anything carrying the ability about with you. Can you use your fists?”
“Yes!––tolerably well.”
“Good for you! Now all you need is to be able to use your head and everything will be O. K.”
All that day, Royce Pederstone worked like the real village blacksmith he was; shoeing horses, repairing farm implements, bolting, riveting and welding; showing Phil all he could in the short time he had with him, telling him––because it was uppermost in his mind––just a little of his electioneering plans and what he intended doing for the Okanagan Valley in the way of irrigation, railroads and public buildings; instilling in his apprentice an enthusiasm for his new work and making for himself at the same time another friend and political booster; for Phil was quick to appreciate the kindliness of this sturdy, pioneering type of man and he felt drawn to him by that strange, attractive sub-conscious essence which flows from all who are born to lead, an hypnotic current which is one of the first essentials of all men who can ever hope successfully to carry out any good or big undertaking for, or with, their fellow men; the ability with the triple qualities––to interest, to attract, to hold,––making one feel that it is good to be within the dominant influence, if only for a time.
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And all day long, in the barn at the rear of the smithy, Wildman Hanson kept up his groaning, and moaning, and cursing; shouting at the top of his voice that he was being murdered, and threatening a separate strangling to half a dozen men whom he called by name, talking to them as if they were by his side.
Towards closing time, a brilliant burst of evening sunshine flooded the smithy, and with it came one whose radiating charm made the sun for a moment slide back to second place.
“Hullo, dad!” she cried. “I thought you weren’t going to work here any more?”
“Hullo, Eilie! I thought so, too, but–––Oh, Eileen, this is Phil.”
Eileen Pederstone looked in admonishing surprise at her father.
“I beg pardon! Mr. Ralston, our new man,––my daughter, Miss Eileen!”
The young lady bowed sedately to Phil, who was standing a mere dark silhouette against the glare of the furnace fire. But Eileen was in the full glow of the flames and, as Phil looked into her face, he gasped for breath and his heart commenced to thump under his open shirt.
It was the face of the good samaritan, the good fairy that had of late so often been pictured in his mind in the day-time, the face that smiled to him at night through his dreams.
In a flash, he saw himself again; bearded, unkempt, ragged, faint and hunted, groping for support against the wall of the little kitchen in the bungalow up on the hill; the sweet vision of the fearless maid whose heart had opened in practical sympathy to his broken appeal for succour, her ready response and–––
But he pushed his crowding thoughts away, for he was standing before her––pale, mute and almost foolish.
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He bowed, not daring to raise his eyes to hers lest she should recognise him. But he need not have feared on that score, for to her he was merely the clean-cut outline of a shadow;––but even had it not been so, the difference between the young, beardless man before her and the haggard, broken convict whom she had befriended that night was greater by far than Phil even could have imagined.
Fortunately for his peace of mind, a sudden cry from the stable burst in on the momentary quietness.
Eileen turned her head quickly, then she ran over to her father anxiously and held his arms.
“Dad,––what is that?”
“Hush, dearie!––it’s Hanson.”
“But––but where is he?” she asked.
“In the barn, tied up good and tight,––quite safe.”
“But it isn’t right, daddy, to tie a man up like that. He’s not a beast, and he’s a kind-hearted decent fellow when he is well.”
“When he is well, Eilie,––yes! But he isn’t well. Better for him that we tie him up for a day every once in a while, than confine him in a lunatic asylum for the term of his natural life. That is what would have to be otherwise.”
“Don’t you think he might be better now, daddie?” she pleaded.
“Yes!––I guess he is getting pretty nearly wised up now. He has stopped his swearing and yelling. That’s a good sign. That last cry of his was the first for half an hour. You run along home, girlie, and Phil and I will go in and see how he is.”
“You won’t keep him tied up there all night, dad?”
“Not unless I can’t help it, Eilie.”
She pouted and stamped her foot impatiently.
“I just won’t go home till you tell me for sure. I86couldn’t sleep if I thought a man was roped up all night like he is now.”
Her father smiled indulgently.
“Foolish little woman! You sleep other nights, yet every minute of the days and nights you live there are men all over the world who, both literally and metaphorically, are chained, and roped, and lashed, and dungeoned; men whose lives are a racking agony, to whom day and night are alike––all night––men who have no prospect of relief to-morrow, whose only release is death, and the release they long and pray for seems never to come. And many of them are men who have done no wrong, unless it be wrong to offend a potentate, to have an opinion of your own, to have the courage to express it; to object to laws and customs which should have been scrapped a thousand years ago.
“Hanson there knows his weakness. He has asked and begged us, in his sober moments, to be sure to do this very thing to him as a personal kindness. To-morrow his heart will be flooding with gratitude to know that he has got through with it without doing anyone any harm.”
“Yes, daddie, yes! But won’t you go to see if he cannot be released to-night?” she pleaded.
“Sure, girlie, if it will please you. Wait here!”
The sturdy smith took down the key from a nail in the wall and went out.
Eileen switched her attention to Phil.
“Have you been long in the Valley, Mr. Ralston?”
Phil was afraid of his voice, so he answered in a deeper intonation than was his usual.
“Just a few days, miss.”
“And you’re a blacksmith?”
“Not yet, Miss Pederstone!” Phil grinned to himself87and felt slightly more confident. “I hope to be, some day.”
Eileen seemed surprised.
“Haven’t you been blacksmithing before? Why, my father started to learn his trade when he was fourteen years old.”
“Do I seem so terribly old then?” asked Phil.
“Oh, no!––not that exactly, but old to be starting in to learn a trade. Sol Hanson isn’t so very much older than you can be, but he has been a journeyman smith ever since I have known him.” She stopped. “Oh, I don’t know–––You mustn’t mind what I say, Mr. Ralston. I guess I am a bit of a silly. I let my foolish tongue run away with me at times. I just say what I feel; just what comes to my mind.”
“If everyone did that,” remarked Phil, “we should have less dissension in the world.”
“And we would make lots of enemies,” she put in.
“We might offend those we think are our friends, and we might alarm each other by mirroring our tremendous deficiencies, but, in the finish, it would make for sincerity and truthfulness––two qualities of nature sadly in the background nowadays. Don’t you agree with me?”
“Of course you are right!” said Eileen, “but you talk so earnestly one would almost imagine that you had suffered at some time through the insincerity and untruthfulness of one you had trusted.”
This was getting too near home for Phil.
“None of us have to live very long to do that. I have often thought, though, that if, when we looked into the mirror, we could see our natures as well as our reflected features, our conceit would suffer a severe shock.”
“A woman, maybe!” said Eileen, “but nothing can ever cure mortal man of his conceit.”
“You think a man more conceited than a woman?”
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“Assuredly!”
Phil laughed, and the laugh rang in his own natural tone.
Eileen Pederstone stopped. Her brows wrinkled as if some little chord of memory had suddenly been struck.
Phil also dropped back into an awkward silence.
A noise outside roused both of them, and Royce Pederstone crossed the yard, followed by Hanson. The latter refused to come inside when he knew Miss Pederstone was there.
“Better run home, Eilie,––out the front way!”
“Is he all right, daddy?”
“Yes,––back to normal.”
“Oh, I’m so glad. You won’t be long?”
“Fifteen minutes!”
“Good night, Mr. Ralston!” she said, scrutinizing him in slight perplexity.
“Good night!” returned Phil, still keeping to the shadows.
89CHAPTER VIIILike Man, Like Horse
With the passing days, Phil found Sol Hanson a man of rugged simplicity, as full of fun and frolic as a child; a man strong as a lion, an excellent blacksmith and, what was more to Phil’s advantage, a kind and unselfish teacher who was willing to impart to his willing pupil––as John Royce Pederstone had been––all he knew of his ancient, noble and virile calling.
Phil, with a natural aptitude and a delight in at last doing work of a practical nature, was soon able to shoe a horse, temper and weld iron, bolt and rivet a gate and mend broken farm implements with considerable skill, much to the open-minded and childlike Hanson’s pleasure and astonishment.
Phil gloried in the knowledge of returning vigour and in the steadily increasing size and power of his biceps. His bones no longer showed an anxiety to burst through his skin. The tired ache, after a little exertion, was no longer with him. His chest broadened by inches and his body took on the buoyancy and elasticity that were his real birthright, but of which the close confinement of Ukalla had almost robbed him for good.
Jim Langford delighted in this physical change even more than did Phil himself. He insisted on sparring and wrestling with Phil in the evenings; and, when the latter began more and more to hold his own, Jim chuckled and chuckled to himself in anticipation of some amusing future event he knew was sure to come along sooner or90later. When these amusements palled, they threw their latent energies into the roping of a post in the long-suffering Mrs. Clunie’s orchard, and later the moving and more elusive objects on the ranges.
All this time, Phil saw little or nothing of Mayor Brenchfield, for his were busy days, and Brenchfield’s fields of operation were seldom within the confines of the blacksmith shop.
Only once had Eileen Pederstone visited the forge since her father had gone on his electioneering campaign, and that was one afternoon during Phil’s dinner hour when she had run in hurriedly to have her horse shod. She was just mounting to ride off as Phil returned, Hanson having attended to her needs. But her bright smile of remembrance and the wave of salutation with her riding crop left something pleasant with Phil that lingered near him till closing time.
The next day he heard casually that she had joined her father on his tour of the Valley. And he heard something else that disturbed him more; although, why it should do so, he could not really understand, for it was no affair of his. He heard that Mayor Brenchfield had been invited––and had accepted the invitation––to attach himself to the Royce Pederstone party in order to give the candidate the support of his fluent tongue and widespread influence.
Somehow Phil resented Brenchfield’s apparent friendliness with the Pederstones. To his mind, Eileen Pederstone was too trusting, too straight, and honest, and pure-minded to be even for a little time in the company of a man of the stamp of Brenchfield.
He often wondered at the tremendous wall of protection which Brenchfield seemed to have raised about himself, and he puzzled as to where the breach in that wall might be––for of a breach somewhere he was certain.91He wondered who would be first to find it, when it would be likely to be widened and carried. And after his wondering came the hope and the determination that he would be there to lend a hand at the storming of the stronghold.
But these were not consuming desires with Phil. He had a life of work ahead of him; he had lost time to make up; he had ambitions to fulfil; great things to do; there were fortunes to be won by determination, shrewdness and ability, and he was not going to be behind in the winning of one of them.
That was the day Sol Hanson was called out to repair some machinery belonging to The Evaporating Company, leaving Phil alone to run the smithy as best he could.
He had been only a few hours at work when Mayor Brenchfield flung himself from his gigantic thoroughbred and came forward into the shop, smiling amiably.
“Well, Phil!––so you’re learning to be a blacksmith. Pretty hard work––isn’t it, old man?”
Phil stopped and looked across at him.
When Brenchfield was most pleasant, he knew that was the time for him to be most on his guard.
“It is more honest than some work I could name.”
“Poof!––any fool can be a smith. Why don’t you get into something worth while?”
“This suits me!”
“You’re devilish snappy, Phil. What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway? Can’t you be civil to Royce Pederstone’s customers? Do you want to turn away business?”
“Stick to business and it will be all right. There is nothing outside of that that I want to talk to you about.”
Brenchfield threw out his bulky chest and smiled, as he walked toward the back door. Suddenly he wheeled92round, put his fingers into his vest pocket and pulled out a piece of blue paper.
“Phil,––aren’t you going to let bygones be bygones? I’ll make it well worth your while. There’s going to be big things doing here and I can put you wise.”
To show how little he thought of the suggestion, Phil commenced hammering on his anvil and so drowned Brenchfield’s voice.
The latter came over and laid his hand on Phil’s arm.
“If you can’t stop being foolish, you might at least be mannerly,” he commented.
“Yes?”
“Here,––take this!”
“What is it?” asked Phil.
“Look and see!”
Phil took the paper and opened it out. It was a cheque for fifteen hundred dollars.
“What’s this for?”
Brenchfield threw out his arm casually. “Just to let bygones be bygones!”
“No other tags on it, eh?” asked Phil dubiously.
“Not a damned tag!”
Phil held it in his hand as if weighing the matter over, while Brenchfield watched him narrowly.
“Here’s its twin brother, Phil!”
He handed another cheque over. It was for fifteen hundred dollars also.
“And this one? What’s it for?”
“That’s to get out of here on to-morrow’s train and to stay out.”
“Uhm!” answered Phil. “That makes three thousand dollars.”
Brenchfield’s face took on a little more confidence. He knew the temptation proffered money held for the93average man. Only, he forgot that he was not dealing in averages with Phil Ralston.
“I’ve one more––a sort of big brother!” he remarked, handing over cheque number three.
Phil opened it up and whistled.
“Pheugh! Seven––thousand––dollars! Coming up, eh? This must be the price of suicide or a murder, Graham.”
The Mayor frowned, but he held rein on his temper.
“That’s for a little piece of paper in cipher. It is more than you’ll save all your life.”
Phil put the three cheques neatly together, folded them up and went over to the furnace. He placed them between some glowing coals and pushed them home with a bar of iron.
He swung round just in time, for Brenchfield was almost on him.
The latter grinned viciously for a moment, then let his clenched hands drop to his sides.
“I can make or break you; and, by heavens! you’ve made your own choice. I’ll break you till you squeal,––then there will be no ten thousand dollars. It will be get out and be-damned to you.”
“Go to it,” replied Phil easily, “it’s your move.”
Brenchfield walked to the door.
“Come out and have a look at my horse!” he shouted over his shoulder. “She wants shoeing all round.”
Phil followed to where the sleek, black animal was securely tied to a hitching post. Phil had heard of this particular horse of Brenchfield’s. She was the fastest piece of horseflesh in the Valley. She was a beauty, but as vicious with her teeth as she was treacherous with her feet. She had the eye of a devil. No one had been found who could ride her save Brenchfield and no one could groom her but her owner. Several had tried; one94had been killed outright, one lamed permanently and others gave up before they were compelled to.
“So this is Beelzebub?” asked Phil.
“Yes!”
“Guess you had better bring her back to-morrow when Hanson is here.”
“Can’t you shoe a horse?”
“Some horses!”
Brenchfield laughed sarcastically.
“Tie her up in the frame then,” said Phil, “and I’ll do it. Hanson told me she always has to be shod in that way.”
Brenchfield laughed again.
“A bright blacksmith you are!” he grunted.
The young smith’s face flushed angrily.
“All right!” he retorted, “leave her where she is. There isn’t any horse or anything else belonging to you or connected with you,––and including you––that I can’t put shoes on.”
Phil went over to look more closely at the animal, as the Mayor went to her head and stroked her nose.
“Sure you’re not scared? She’s a heller!”
Phil walked round her without answering. He was at her rear, closer than he should have been, when Brenchfield suddenly reached and whispered a peculiar, grating, German-like, guttural sound in the mare’s ear.
Like lightning her ears went back, her eyes spurted fire, a thrill ran through her body and her two hind feet shot into the air. Brenchfield shouted warningly.
Phil, only half alert, sprang aside. The iron-ringed hoofs flashed past him, one biting along his cheek and ripping it an eighth of an inch deep. Phil staggered to the wall, as the horse continued to plunge and rear in a paroxysm of madness. Her owner tried to pacify her, but he made little headway with the job.
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“Good Lord, man! as a man working among horses don’t you know better than to hang around the flanks of one of her kind like that? If she had hit you, it would have been all day with you.”
Phil pulled himself together.
“Do you think so?” he remarked in a much more casual tone than he felt.
“It looked for a minute like a bad accident.”
“It looked to me like attempted murder,” retorted Phil.
Brenchfield frowned, but ignored the opening.
“She’s a vicious devil. She takes turns like that occasionally when a stranger is near her.”
“You meanyougive her turns like that occasionally?” put in Phil suggestively.
At that moment, Jim Langford sauntered round the smithy building into the yard.
“Hullo! A love-feast going on! What’s the argument, fellows? What have you been doing to your cheek, Phil?”
The Mayor growled.
“This blacksmith pal of yours thought he could shoe Beelzebub. She’s got a mad streak on and pretty nearly laid him out. Now he blames me for rousing her, as if she needs any rousing.”
“And so you did! I’m not blind or deaf. I saw you and heard you as well.”
Brenchfield laughed and tapped his forehead significantly to Langford. But Langford did not respond.
“You mean, Phil, that the Mayor knows what they call ‘the horse word’?”
“He seems to possessoneof them, at any rate,” replied Phil.
“So there are two of them?” laughed Jim.
“There ought to be, if there are any at all;––just as96there is hot and cold, day and night, right and wrong, good and bad, positive and negative.”
“That sounds reasonable enough, too,” answered Jim, who turned suddenly to Brenchfield as the latter was frantically endeavouring to quiet the plunging Beelzebub.
“Now then, for the land’s sake, Graham BrenchfieldLavengro, why don’t you use that other word? What’s the good of creating a devil if you can’t keep the curb on him?”
Brenchfield commenced to belabour the horse in his irritation, but the more he struck the more nervous and vicious she seemed to grow.
The sight set Phil’s thoughts awandering. A little door in his brain opened and he remembered the queer little wizened-faced horse rustler in for life at Ukalla Jail, whom he had befriended and who in return had given him a word which he said might be useful some day, as it was guaranteed to quiet the wildest horses. At the time, he had grinned at it in his incredulity, but now the thought came, “What if there might be something in it?”
He had not noted that little word, and now he had a difficulty in recalling it. But, as he reviewed the scene at Ukalla Jail in his mind once more, it came to him. He was not quite certain, but he fancied he had it. What if its strange power were true? It was a queer, soft, foreign-sounding word.
There could be no harm in giving it a trial and, if by lucky chance it proved successful, what a triumph he would have over the arrogant Mayor of Vernock, and over Jim Langford as well.
He smiled to himself now at his credulity, as he had done once at his incredulity over the same peculiar word. Then recurred to him that wonderful little saying of Will Shakespeare’s:––
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“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Encouraged by the quotation and angered by Brenchfield’s cruelty, he decided to take a chance. He sprang to the mare’s head.
“Let the horse alone, man,” he cried. “Can’t you see you are only making her worse?”
“What the devil do you know about horses? She’ll eat you alive, you fool of a tenderfoot.”
“I’m willing to take a chance. Stand back and see what I know.”
Brenchfield gazed at him in surprise, but, ever ready to be enlightened, he stepped back.
“Jim,––go to the other end of the yard; take him with you,––and watch.”
Langford, anxious at all times to be amused; Brenchfield grinning in derision; both went some thirty yards out of hearing, while the horse continued to kick and plunge.
Holding out his hand, Phil drew nearer to the mad animal.
Quietly he murmured the three-syllabled word which he had so dearly earned from his convict friend. The soft and soothing effect of its vowels surprised Phil himself. Time and again he repeated the word, going closer and closer.
Beelzebub stopped her plunging. She cocked forward her ears, straining and listening intently. Phil kept on––as a slow tremor passed over the horse. Slowly the wicked gleam died from her eyes. Phil’s hand reached out and touched her nose. He stroked it cautiously––gently. He reached and whispered the word close in her ear. She sighed almost like a woman. In a moment more Phil’s left hand was on her sleek neck and running98over her back. She whinnied, then her nozzle sought his arm and rubbed along it to his shoulder.
She became as quiet as the proverbial lamb.
Langford and Brenchfield came forward, blank amazement showing in their faces.
“By jiminy!––where the dickens did you learn that? Did I mention Lavengro. Lavengro’s ahas been, in fact, anever waseralongside that.”
He slapped Phil’s shoulder. “Good old Phil!”
Surly as an old dog, Brenchfield loosened the reins from the hitching post.
“I’ll give you five thousand dollars for that word,” he said, turning suddenly to Phil.
“You’re mighty free with your money to-day. You must have a lien on somebody’s fortune.”
“Five thousand dollars,” repeated the Mayor.
“Not on your life!” answered Phil. “It was given me strictly on the understanding that it was not to be sold.”
“Well then,––I’ll give you my ‘word’ in exchange for yours.”
“Your ‘word,’––yours? No, Mister Mayor, I haven’t any desire to know your ‘word.’ Keep it,––it fits you. The two words are just about the difference between you and me,––and, God knows, I’m no saint.”
Brenchfield laughed in his easy, devil-may-care way. He jumped on to the back of his horse without touching her with his hands.
“Aren’t you going to let me shoe her?” asked Phil in assumed disappointment.
For answer, the Mayor touched the horse’s side with his spur, trotted round the end of the building and away.
“Phil, old man, where did you learn to subdue horses?”
“I got the word from an old horsey-man whom I befriended once.”
“Did you ever use it before?”
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“No! I just rethought of it a moment or two before I tried it out.”
“Lordy! I shouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. You know, Beelzebub is positively the worst mare in the Valley. Sol Hanson will throw a fit of delight when he hears about this.
“I’ve heard some queer things about horses, Phil. I once knew an old horse dealer in the East of Scotland. He owned a famous Clydesdale stud stallion. He used to travel with it all over the country. Old Sommerville, they called the man, was a terrible booze artist. He was drunk day and night. But never so drunk that he couldn’t look after himself and his stallion. You know, just always half-full of whisky. Well,––there wasn’t a paddock that could hold that stallion. It had killed several men and had created tremendous havoc time and again in stables. If it had not been for its qualities as a perfect specimen of a horse, the Government would have ordered its destruction. A special friend of old Sommerville’s died, and, on the day of the funeral, Sommerville swore he wouldn’t taste liquor for twenty-four hours. He didn’t. That night he was taking the stallion from one village to another. He failed to turn up at the village he intended making for, and next morning the stallion was discovered miles away, while later in the day a farm-hand came upon a mass of bloody bones and flesh pounded to mince meat among the earth at the side of a road.”
“I quite believe it,” said Phil, “because I have heard before somewhere that a horse––no matter how vicious it may be––will never interfere with a man smelling of liquor.”
“Well,––I guess the horse had more sense than some of us have,” said Jim.
“Sound horse sense, I suppose,” laughed Phil.
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“But say!––you and Brenchfield don’t seem to love each other exactly. What is it, Phil?”
“Oh!––we don’t pull together, that’s all.”
“Anybody can see that. Did you ever meet him before coming here?”
“Yes!” answered Phil shortly.
“Well, old chum, it isn’t any of my business, but the Mayor’s an oily-tongued rotter and well worth the watching. I’m lying in wait for him myself. He doesn’t love me any more than he seems to love you, so if I can help you out any time, let me know.
“He’s got the nerve of the devil. He is setting up to little Eileen Pederstone too, the hound. I hope to God a fine woman like she is doesn’t have such putrid luck as to marry such a miserable son-of-a-gun. But it is generally that way though, and that coyote nearly always gets what he goes after. He seems to be making money hand over fist. His stock is the largest and best in the Valley. They say he owns half a dozen mines up north and more ranch land in the Okanagan than he can ever use.
“Eileen Pederstone has gone after her dad campaigning, and I heard up at the Court House this morning that Brenchfield is going off in a day or so, invited by the Party to join Royce Pederstone and help along his election with his influence and his glib tongue.
“If Pederstone gets in––as he is sure to do––the next thing we will be hearing will be the Mayor’s engagement with Eileen.
“Honest to goodness!––I think I would plug him full of bullet holes on a dark night if that happened.”
101CHAPTER IXThe Doings of Percival
When Hanson returned that afternoon, his round face was beaming. His big blue eyes stared right into Phil’s.
“Say,––by yiminy,––you some kid! You quiet Brenchfield’s she-devil!”
“And what about that?”
“What about it! That no good for Sol Hanson. I know all about him. Somebody tell me. By yiminy! you make damn good blacksmith. Some day we put up signboard, ‘Hanson and Ralston, General Blacksmiths.’ We get all the trade in this damn Valley.”
“Who told you about she-devil, Sol?” asked Phil curiously.
“Oh, somebody! He not speak very much but he say plenty when he be good and ready. He watch round corner. Brenchfield make she-devil wild. You speak to her and she get quiet.”
“It wasn’t Jim Langford who told you, Sol?”
“Langford,––no! Langford’s mouth all stitched up. He say nothing at all. You wait!”
Sol put his fingers in his mouth and whistled.
In a second, the half-witted, ragamuffin Smiler bobbed his grinning face round the door post. Hanson waved him in and when the youngster saw that only Sol Hanson and Phil were inside he raced round and round Phil in sheer delight, like a puppy-dog round its master. He rubbed his hand up and down Phil’s clothes, and he kept102pointing to himself and to Phil. Phil could not make out his meaning.
“He says you and him good pals,” interpreted Hanson.
“You bet we are, Smiler!” said Phil, patting the boy’s matted hair.
“Smiler and me make a deal. We going to live together after this,” said Sol. “Smiler he got nobody. Smiler hungry most all the time; dirty, no place to sleep; just a little mongrel-pup. I got lots of grub, nice shack, good beds. Smiler get lots of bath. Smiler and me we going to be pals. What you say, Smiler?”
The boy grinned again and gurgled in happy acquiescence.
“But the kid can’t talk?”
“Oh, he talk all right; you bet! He talk with his head, and his eyes, his feet and his hands; talk every old way only you don’t savvy his kind of talk.”
As soon as work was over, Phil hurried up the hill home. He had had a trying day of it one way and another and he was longing for a refreshing bath and a clean-up.
He popped his head into Langford’s room, but Langford either had not come or had been in early and had gone out again.
Whistling softly, he went into his own. His whistle ended abruptly, for his bedroom looked as if it had been struck by a cyclone. Everywhere, in wild confusion, lay shirts, collars and clothes; books, papers and personal belongings. The drawers of his bureau were pulled out and the contents scattered. Someone evidently had been in on a thieves’ hunt and had been neither leisurely nor nice about the job.
Phil could not, for the life of him, imagine why anyone would want specially to ransack his of all the choice of rooms at Mrs. Clunie’s. He had nothing worth stealing,103while many of his landlady’s boarders were fairly well endowed in the matter of worldly possessions.
He leaned over the bannister and called excitedly for Mrs. Clunie.
“Guid preserve us a’; what’s wrang?” she exclaimed, pulling her dress up in front and hurrying up the stairs.
Phil showed her into his room without a word. The moment she saw the state of it, she threw up her hands in amazement.
“Goodness sakes, Mr. Ralston! It looks as if there had been thievin’ bodies here.”
“Have any strangers been in the house?”
“Not a soul, Mr. Ralston, except the man you sent wi the note to let him ha’e your spurs that were in the bureau drawer.”
“But I didn’t send any man, and I didn’t write any note!” put in Phil.
“You didna? Oh, the slyness o’ him! As sure as my name’s Jean Clunie, he was the thief.”
“Well!” said Phil ruefully, “he has made a deuce of a jumble of my clothes. But he came to the wrong room if he came for valuables.”
“I was busy and I told him to run up and get them. Oh, the cunnin’ de’il. Is there nothing missing?”
“Nothing that I know of; certainly nothing valuable, for I don’t own any such!”
“Bide a minute till I get that note,” exclaimed the perspiring and excited landlady.
She returned in a minute with the paper.
Phil read it over. It was written in a rough hand, in pencil.
Mrs. Clunie,Please allow bearer into my room to get my spurs for me. He will know where to find them.Phil Ralston.
Mrs. Clunie,
Please allow bearer into my room to get my spurs for me. He will know where to find them.
Phil Ralston.
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Phil scratched his head.
“Well, that beats all!”
“And you never wrote it?”
“Not I!”
“But he took your spurs, for I saw them in his hand.”
Phil glanced about him.
“Yes!––I guess he has taken my spurs.”
“My, but I’m the foolish woman. I never heard tell o’ the like o’ it before. This place is gettin’ as bad as the ceety o’ Glesca.”
“What was the man like, Mrs. Clunie?”
“Oh, just a wee, short kind o’ a rough lookin’, dirty kind o’ a mannie, wi’ a horse.”
“What kind of a horse did he have?”
“To tell ye the truth, I didna pay muckle attention to the beastie, but I think it was brown coloured, wi’ a white patch on its e’e. Oh, ay! and it was lame, for when he went aff I could see it hobblin’ on its fore legs as it galloped doon the road.”
“All right!” said Phil. “If you send Betsy up to put the room in order, everything will be O.K.”
“I’m right sorry I wasna more parteecular, Mr. Ralston, but I didna think for a minute except that you would be anxious for your spurs. A letter like that would deceive the very Lord himsel’.”
“Don’t you worry now! I paid only a dollar and a half for the spurs, and I have had that much wear out of them, so they don’t owe me anything.”
At the same time, Phil himself worried considerably over the matter, for closer inspection betrayed the fact that his little box of private papers and letters had been burst open and examined; also that his leather letter-case––in fact everything likely to contain documents of any kind––had been scrutinised.
As he bathed and dressed himself, he still worried,105until it occured to him that this might be some of Brenchfield’s doings. He wondered, and then he laughed to himself at the chances the would-be thief had taken to get––nothing.
Once more Phil lost patience with himself, as he thought of his foolishness in getting rid of that confession of Brenchfield’s; and yet, in destroying it he had merely acted up to the feeling and good intentions he had had at the time.
He took a turn outside. At the top of the hill, at the corner, little Smiler, with a cleaner face than usual, ran out from the end of a house and stood up in front of Phil.
“Hullo kiddie! What’s the good word?”
Smiler just grinned.
“Smiler!” inquired Phil, “you see a little man to-day on a brown horse with a white eye?”
Smiler looked as serious as was possible for his permanently crooked face, then he nodded intelligently. He pointed to his leg and went a few steps limping.
“Yes, yes!” exclaimed Phil, “horse got a lame leg!”
Smiler nodded.
“Where did you see him?”
Smiler pointed in the direction of the hill.
“Up near my place?”
The boy nodded again.
“Where did he go?”
Smiler shook his head this time.
“Too bad!” exclaimed Phil.
“If you see him again, anywhere, Smiler, run in and tell me, will you? I’ll be at the Kenora for a bit.”
Smiler nodded, delighted that he was going to have a chance to be of service to the big man he had taken such a fancy to.
106
“Here!” Phil handed him twenty-five cents, and the boy ran off in the direction of the Chinese restaurant.
Phil continued down the street, knowing that if the little man on the lame brown horse with the white eye was still in town, it would not be long before Smiler would have him wise to it.
He strolled into the dining-room of the Kenora and ordered his lunch. And, as he waited, in came an old acquaintance in all his high-coloured and picturesque splendour––Percival DeRue Hannington.
Hannington spotted Phil at once and strutted over. He shook hands with vigour and set himself down opposite.
“By gad! old chap,––but this is quite refreshing. I’ve often thought about you and your good advice not to be in too big a hurry to buy a blooming rawnch.”
“Why?” inquired Phil. “I’m glad you took it and it did you good.”
“But I didn’t take it;––worse bally luck. Don’t you know, I thought you might be trying to put me off the chawnce of getting into something good. Everybody warned me when I came out here that I wasn’t to take everything I heard for gospel. The beastly trouble seems to be to distinguish between the gospel and the tommyrot.”
Phil laughed, and it made him forget his own troubles.
DeRue Hannington ordered dinner also, and, as he refreshed himself he became reminiscent.
“So you did buy a ranch?” started Phil.
“I paid for one,” said Hannington, “and, if that isn’t jolly-well buying one, you’ve got to search me, as the Johnnies out here say.
“You see, when you toddled off that day, I was in the saloon asking three fellows if they knew of anyone who had a rawnch for sale.