That evening she sat up until it was late,thinking. She had begun to see life in the West rather differently since her first rose-colored impressions. She was beginning to realize the facts that her father had quoted to her. The shoddiness of that life had begun to make itself felt. She had believed in Loring with all the trust to which a reserved nature yields itself when it becomes impetuous, and his complete failure had been a deep shock to her. She had not forgotten him, however, though, had she analyzed her thoughts, she would have been puzzled to know why he had not passed from her memory. Now that he was to be brought into her life again, her thought of him grew deeper and more personal. She opened her trunk and drew out of it her journal of the past year. For an hour she sat reading over the pages, and there were certain pages which she reread. When she closed the book it was close to midnight. She sat staring out of the window, thinking, wondering. The light in her eyes was like the harbor lights veiled by night mist to the mariner homeward bound,—now flashing clear and lambent, now dim, brilliant with the seaward flash or soft in the afterglow.
At length she rose as one tired of thinking;but as she brushed out the long waves of her hair she hummed softly the old refrain:
“Young Frank is chief of ErringtonAnd lord o’ Langly Dale—His step is first in peaceful ha’His sword in battle keen—But aye she let the tears doon fa’For Jock o’ Hazeldean.”
“Young Frank is chief of ErringtonAnd lord o’ Langly Dale—His step is first in peaceful ha’His sword in battle keen—But aye she let the tears doon fa’For Jock o’ Hazeldean.”
“Young Frank is chief of Errington
And lord o’ Langly Dale—
His step is first in peaceful ha’
His sword in battle keen—
But aye she let the tears doon fa’
For Jock o’ Hazeldean.”
In the weeks which followed the settling of the trouble in the camp, Kay flourished and grew. Great trainloads of supplies were daily dumped on the platform of the railway station, to be checked off and sorted, before the final haul up to camp. The old rough road to the station had become hard and smooth by the continual pounding of the heavy, six-mule wagons. Under McKay’s master direction, the framework bridges on the route had been replaced by substantial structures. Wherever a cañon or gulch opened, sluice boxes had been buried beneath the road surface, so that a heavy rain no longer meant washouts and consequent stoppage of coke and supplies. The coke teams struggled back to the railroad almost as heavily laden with matt, as on the upward trip they had been with coke. Each day saw new framework houses built, and new families settling their possessions. Wagons were driven into camp laden with battered stoves, broken chairs, a stray dog ortwo, and in general the household belongings of new settlers; for the growth of the “lilies of the field” is as nothing compared with that of a prosperous mining camp. Each day the office was filled with men clamoring for lumber: “Only a little, Boss! Just to put in a flooring. We can get along with two boards on the sides. Anything just so as we can get settled.” And Loring sat behind his desk, speaking with kindly but evasive words, telling each that the Company longed to build him a perfect palace, but that under the present conditions he must wait.
For fast as lumber was hauled into camp, still faster came the need for it for mine timbering, for storehouses, and for a thousand and one necessities. The construction work had been rushed to completion. The huge new ore cribs were a triumph of McKay’s ingenuity, built by a clever system of bracing from the unseasoned lumber that had been at hand, and supporting with perfect safety the enormous strain to which they were subjected. The Company was rapidly becoming the controlling factor in the copper output of the district.
It was the time for the arrival of the eveningmail and the office was full of men and tobacco smoke. McKay had pre-empted the safe and sat on the top of it, clanking his heels against the sides. His sandy colored hair matched the color of the pine boards of the wall against which he was propped. The draughting tables carried their load of men, as did each of the well-worn chairs, and the three-legged stool. A babel of voices prevailed. Every now and then Reade opened the door from the back office, and poking his head into the room with a disgusted expression upon his face, called out: “Soft pedal there, soft pedal! How in hell can a man do any work with you fellows raising such a racket?”
Stephen, as usual sat at his roll-top desk in the corner, his feet up on the slide, both hands in his pockets, the while he rocked his pipe gently up and down in his teeth. One of the clerks was telling with becoming modesty of his social triumphs in Phœnix at the “Elks” ball. The audience listened with the listless attention of those whose curiosity hangs heavy on their hands.
“I was the candy kid, all right,” remarked the narrator.
His fervid discourse was interrupted by a drawl from some one in the background. “I reckon that some time you must have drunk copiouslike of the Hassayampeh River.”
A machinery drummer who was in the office cocked up his ears, thinking that perhaps behind the allusion lay a doubtful story.
“What’s that about the river?” he asked. “I never heard of that.”
“Why, they say,” answered the first speaker, “that whoever drinks of the Hassayampeh River can’t ever tell the truth again so long as he lives.”
“And also,” added McKay; “that no matter where he drifts to, he is sure to wander back again to the old territory; that he’ll die in Arizona.”
“How was that story ever started?” Loring asked.
“The valley of the Hassayampeh was one of the first trails into the ore country,” answered McKay, “and the lies that emanated from the camps along that river was of such a fearful, godless and prize package variety that they made the old river famous. There was a fellow in camp here only the other day was telling meabout prospectin’ down there in seventy-three. He said all they had to eat was fried Gila monster. I guess that was after he’d drunk the water though,” finished McKay reflectively.
“The territory sure has gone off since those days,” said a cattleman who had ridden into camp for his mail. “Only last year down near Roosevelt I shot two Mexicans, and say, it cost me a hundred dollars for negligence,” he went on indignantly, “and the sons of guns warn’t wurth more than twelve dollars and two bits apiece.”
“You are right about the way Arizona is going to hell,” said the mine foreman. “I don’t know as any of you fellows ever knowed ‘Teeth’ Barker. Anyhow, next to what his father must have been, he was the ugliest creature that ever lived on this earth. All of his teeth just naturally stuck out like the cowcatcher of an engine. Well, in spite of that, he always was a good friend of mine. Least he used to be.
“About six months ago I was up to Jerome, and they was telling about an accident there. A man no one knowed at all was killed, but a fellow said he had the ugliest tusks he ever seed. I knew at once that must beBarker. They said they’d planted him up on the knoll, and so,” continued the foreman sadly, “and so, although it was a powerful hot day, I struggled up to the knoll with a nice piece of pine board, and a jack-knife, and I sort of located ‘Teeth’ with a handsome monument and an exaggerated epitaph.
“I came down as hot as the devil, and steps into a saloon to get a drink, when who should walk up to me but ‘Teeth’ Barker himself!
“‘You’re dead,’ said I.
“‘Do I look like it?’ he asked. He got sort of hot under the collar about it, too.
“Well, the long and short of it all was that I had gone and taken all that trouble with a tombstone for a stranger.
“‘The least that you can do, “Teeth” Barker,’ said I, ‘is to come up and see that beautiful monument I erected over you. It took as much trouble to make as a year’s assessment work.’
“Well, he didn’t see it that way. Said he wouldn’t go up there if I was to pay him. And that was after I had taken all that trouble! Gratitude! There ain’t no such thing any more in Arizona,” concluded the foreman.
Story after story was put forth for the edificationof the crowd until the grating of wheels outside told of the arrival of the stage. A moment later heavy footsteps resounded on the porch, and the burly stage-driver, with two great mail-sacks slung over his shoulder, swung into the office.
“Evening, gents!” he called in answer to the general salutation. He stepped over to Stephen’s desk and threw down a little bunch of envelopes. “Four telegrams,” he said.
Loring rapidly slit open the envelopes, laying the telegrams on one side, and after running through the contents, began to sort the mail.
“Any passengers?” he asked the driver.
“Yes, six. Drummers mostly. They are over there eating now. There was two men and a lady; but they stopped to eat supper at the station. They will be up later.”
“It’s lucky Mrs. Brown built those new sleeping quarters to her place; she’ll be running a regular hotel here soon,” said the driver, as he swung on his heel and tramped out to unharness his horses.
Stephen sorted the mail rapidly, and deftly scaled the letters to the fortunate recipients.
“That is all,” he said, as he tossed the last.Every one left the office with the exception of McKay who, with a woebegone expression on his face, lingered behind.
“What is the matter?” asked Loring.
“Nothing,” answered McKay gruffly.
“Well, how is this?” said Stephen, taking from his pocket a letter which was addressed in large square characters to McKay. “You see she did not forget you, after all.”
McKay blushed to the roots of his hair, then opened the letter with seeming nonchalance.
“It seems to me that you have a pretty steady correspondent there,” said Stephen, while he straightened up his desk preparatory to the evening’s work. “I have handed you a letter like that every night this week.” McKay colored even more, then stretched out his hand. “Shake, Steve! I am going to get spliced. I have been meaning to tell you before this.”
Loring jumped up and pounded him on the back.
“You gay winner of hearts, who is she?”
“Do you remember Jane Stevens, back at Quentin? Well, it’s her.”
Loring’s eyes twinkled. “How did you ever get the nerve?” he asked.
At the thought of his audacity, the perspiration broke out on McKay’s forehead.
“Well she had me plumb locoed. I remember once a horse had me buffaloed the same way,” he explained. “I was scared, scared blue, Steve; but finally I got up my nerve and thought I’d go and break my affections to her gentle and polite like. So one day I rode over to their place,—you know where it is was, just south of the Dominion trail,—and I thought I’d go to see her brother Charlie and fix it up with him. When I reached their shack she came to the door looking as neat as a partridge and with a sort of smile hidden somewhere in her face, and—and I’ll be damned if I didn’t kiss her right then without any formalities.”
“That was the simplest solution of the problem, wasn’t it?” laughed Stephen. “When are you going to be married?”
“Oh, soon, I guess; but I wish it could be managed as simply as these Mexicans do. And how about you, Steve?” continued McKay. “You ain’t been took this way yourself, have you? Not that woman you was telling me about in Mexico.”
Loring shook his head. “Unfortunately she was a married woman.”
“I sort of thought,” went on McKay, “that you and Miss Cameron was—”
“Well, you thought wrongly,” interrupted Loring sharply. “I never expect to see Miss Cameron again.”
There came a ripple of laughter from the doorway, and looking up quickly he saw Jean and her father walk into the office. Behind them stood Baird Radlett.
“What a hospitable form of welcome!” exclaimed Miss Cameron, smiling at him frankly.
For a moment Loring swayed in his chair, then he rose stiffly, as a man in a trance. He stared at Jean with an absorption that was almost rude, as if there were nothing in the universe beyond her. There lay a hint of laughter in the gray depths of her eyes.
“What is the matter?” asked Radlett. “Are you surprised to see us? Didn’t you get my letter?”
“It is probably in to-night’s mail which haven’t opened yet,” answered Loring, still half dazed.
“Mr. Cameron has consented to come andmake a report on the property for me,” explained Baird.
Mr. Cameron came forward and held out his hand. “Mr. Loring, I have heard of the splendid work that you have done here. I want to congratulate you.” This little speech was a hard one for Mr. Cameron to make; but he was a man who, when he had once made up his mind to the right course, followed it to the end.
The expression of pride in Stephen’s face turned to one of appreciation, and he shook Mr. Cameron’s hand with a firm, grateful pressure. But all the while he was looking at Jean longingly, worshipingly, all unconscious of the intensity of his gaze, as a man who for days has been in the desert without water looks upon the sudden spring. In all the months that he had thought of her, dreamed of her, she had never seemed to have the beauty, the potential tenderness, which marked her now when she stood before him, her look telling him that she was proud of what her friend had been and done.
To Radlett, looking at them both, came a sudden suspicion, and a sudden despair.
Jean, at Loring’s request, seated herself at his desk, in the big revolving chair, and while playing absent-mindedly with the papers on the desk, kept up a laughing discussion with Baird.
Loring, at the other side of the room, was answering Mr. Cameron’s businesslike questions as to the grade of the ore, the force, the cost of production, accurately and fast, as though almost every faculty in his body and mind were not concentrated upon the girl who seemed to be having such an interesting talk with Radlett. Finishing his talk with Mr. Cameron, Loring left the office to arrange for sleeping quarters for the visitors. In a few minutes he returned with the announcement that all was ready, and led the way to the long, low building next the mess, whose many rooms, opening on a broad porch, served as accommodations for strangers in camp.
Loring walked beside Miss Cameron, doing his best to talk unconcernedly of every-day matters, but the hoarseness of his voice betrayed him.
“I am very sorry to have to offer you such rough quarters,” he said to Jean, as theyreached the house, “but they are the best that we have. In another month we hope to have something more comfortable to give to our guests.”
“In another month, Stephen, you will have an up-to-date city constructed here,” exclaimed Radlett, with an almost reluctant enthusiasm.
At the steps Stephen and Radlett said good-night to the others, and walked slowly back to Stephen’s quarters, which they were to share.
Loring sat on the edge of his cot, and smoked slowly while he watched Baird unpack his valise, and with the method of an orderly nature put everything away in the rough chest of drawers, or on the black iron hooks which protruded from the wall. Espying a tin of expensive tobacco neatly packed amidst a circle of collars, Stephen pounced upon it, and knocking out the contents of his pipe, proceeded to fill it with the new mixture. Radlett finished his unpacking, and recovering the tobacco can from Loring, filled his own pipe. Then he tipped a chair back against the wall, and sitting in it, regarded Loring for a moment in silence.
“Stephen,” he remarked after a few seconds,“you have done a good piece of work. I knew that you would.”
Loring’s irrelevant answer was to the effect that the tobacco which he had stolen was good. It was an odd characteristic of this man that though his nature contained many streaks of vanity, praise for work which he knew was good embarrassed him. At length he began to appreciate the ungraciousness of his response to Radlett’s advances, and leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees, he said: “You cannot guess what it means to me, Baird, to have you say things like that, to be patted on the back and made to feel as if I had done something, and that by a man who has succeeded in everything to which he has turned his hand, who has won all the big prizes of life.”
Radlett drew back into the shadow where the lamplight could not reveal the expression of his face.
“All the prizes in life?” he queried with scornful emphasis. “No, not all by a damn sight. You see, Stephen, I feel as if Fate had stood over me with a deuced ironical smile, and said: ‘You shall have your every wish in life—except the one thing that you wantmost of all—the one thing that would make you happy.’”
“Hm,” murmured Loring, shaking out the embers from his pipe and gazing into the empty bowl. “With any one else I should say that meant a woman; but with you it could not be.”
“Why not with me as well as with any other man?”
“Because there is no woman alive who would be fool enough to refuse you.”
“Bless your heart, Stephen! It is only your blind loyalty that makes you think me irresistible.”
“Do you mean that there really is a woman so benighted? What is she thinking of?”
“I imagine,” answered Radlett slowly, “that you might change that ‘what’ towhom.”
“You would have me believe that knowing you, she prefers some one else?” asked Loring incredulously. “Why, Baird, it is impossible.”
“By no means. I think I know the man.”
Loring’s blood boiled. “Who is the brute?” he cried out. “Tell me and I will kill him, break his neck, shoot him.”
Baird smiled wryly, blew a cloud of smoketoward the roof, and observed: “If I were you, Stephen, I would do nothing rash. But come, we have talked long enough of me and my affairs. Let us talk now about you and yours! Suppose, for instance, you tell me why you turned the color of a meerschaum pipe when Miss Cameron appeared in the doorway to-night.”
Loring started and looked quickly at Radlett. “You noticed that, did you? Well, you have quick eye and a gift for drawing conclusions, but they may not always be right.”
“Not always, no; but this time they are, aren’t they? Be honest, Stephen, are you or are you not in love with Jean Cameron?”
“Excuse me, but that can not interest you to know.”
“Perhaps not, and perhaps it is a damned impertinence to inquire, but after all an old friendship gives some privileges.”
“Of course it does!” exclaimed Stephen, tilting down his chair. He walked across the room to Radlett’s seat and stood behind him. “See here, Baird. I did not want to speak of this thing because I was afraid of breaking down and making an ass of myself generally.You don’t know what it is to be placed as I am. When you asked a girl to marry you, you had something to offer her, whether she had the sense to take it or not. You offered her a clean life, a fortune honorably made, an untarnished name, while I,—why even if there were the remotest chance that Miss Cameron would look at me, I should be a brute to ask her. The more I cared for her, the less I could do it. So you see, for me it must be ‘the desire of the moth for the star.’ A man must abide by the consequences of his acts; he must take his medicine, and if mine is bitter, it may do me all the more good only—only I cannot talk about it. Good night!”
Radlett did not answer; but long after Stephen was asleep, or pretended to be, Baird lay staring at the rafters. “To lay down his life for his friend,” he said to himself. “That would not be the hardest thing. To lay down his love! I wonder if I am man enough to do it.”
During the week which the Camerons spent in camp at Kay, it was amusing to notice the change in the appearance of the men at the mess. Dilapidated flannel shirts and khaki trousers the worse for wear had been supplanted at supper time by self-conscious black suits and very white ties. The camp barber made enough money to tide him over many months.
Mr. Cameron had spent a very busy week, examining with Loring all the details of the work, and daily his respect had grown for the man whom he had so despised. The evening before the last which she was to spend in Kay, Jean announced her intention of visiting the “workings” with her father when he should go the next day. Loring said that it was not safe; her father protested; Radlett argued with her, and as the net result of all she appeared the following morning with her determination unchanged.
The porch of the mess a few minutes beforebreakfast time was always crowded. Men on their way back from the night shift made a practise of stopping to exchange a few words. It was a quieter gathering than in the evening, for ahead lay the prospect of a long day’s work. Yet an air of comfort always prevailed. The five minutes before breakfast made a precious interval in which to loaf, a delightful time when one could stretch himself against the wall and bask in the sunlight.
Jean and her father came up to the veranda with a friendly “good morning” to those who were gathered there. A few of the loiterers talked respectfully to Mr. Cameron, whose fame as a mining expert was a wide one, and Jean quickly became the center of a large group of men, eager to point out to her the different mountains, the Grahams in the distance or the long sharp ridges of the neighboring range. They called her attention to the mist hanging low in the valley, curling softly in the farthest recesses. The mine foreman, usually the most shiftlessly dressed man in camp, twitched his polka-dotted tie into place when he thought that Miss Cameron’s attention was absorbed by the landscape.
Stephen came across from his quarters among the last. He waited a moment before joining the group about Miss Cameron; and his eyes employed that moment in fixing a picture indelibly on his mind. As Jean leaned lightly against the wall, in her dress of white linen crash, she made a picture which no one who saw could forget. Her gray eyes were clear with the reflection of the morning light, and the sun searched for and illuminated the subtle tints of her hair. She had a pretty way of speaking as though everything she said were a simple answer to a clever question. Men liked that. They thought her appreciative.
She looked up to notice Loring’s glance upon her, and answered his “good morning” lightly. “You need not speak as though you were surprised, Mr. Loring,” she said, “I may have been late to breakfast five out of my six days, but that is no sign that it is a habit with me. Besides, you know that to-day I am to visit the mine.”
“So you are still determined?” he asked. “Really, Miss Cameron, it is not very safe. There might be an accident of some sort, and,” he went on, looking at her gown, “you will ruin your dress.”
“Do you fancy that I travel with only one?” Jean queried smiling. “It may be so, but not even my vanity shall deter me; I really must go.”
Just then Wah appeared on the veranda, and began to pound with his railroad spike on the iron triangle which, as at Quentin, served for a dinner gong.
“La, la, boom, boom! Breakfast!” he shouted, amidst the din which he was creating. “Me bludder, Steve, he almost late. La, la, boom, boom! Hot cakes, hot cakes; oh, lubbly hot cakes, oh, lubbly, lubbly—!”
In the midst of his song he caught sight of Jean, and stopping his pounding he beamed upon her.
“Goodee morning, missee, goodee morning! Missee on time this morning; how it happen?”
McKay angrily told him to shut up, but Miss Cameron stopped the rebuke, assuring Wah that his reproaches had been well deserved.
Several minutes after the others had begun their meal, Radlett appeared at breakfast, still struggling against sleepiness. Not even the clear early morning air had thoroughly aroused him. Breakfasts at half-past six were a distinctand not wholly appreciated novelty to Baird. He slipped into his place beside Jean, and endeavored to parry her banter upon his indolence. Stephen, at his side of the table, was occupied in dispensing the platter of “flap jacks,” which Wah, beaming with appreciation of their excellence, had set before him to serve.
“At what time do we visit the mine?” asked Jean across the table.
“As soon after breakfast as you and your father are ready,” answered Stephen. “The air is much better early in the day, before they have begun to shoot down there. But I wish that you would change your mind about going.”
Jean turned to the mine foreman for assistance.
“It is perfectly safe, isn’t it, Mr. Burns? I know that all my father and Mr. Loring think is that I shall be in the way.”
Burns laboriously protested against such an idea, and clumsily promised to look after her safety.
In the minutes that preceded the seven o’clock whistle, one by one the men straggled off to their work, nodding respectfully to Jean and her father as they left, and calling out partinggibes at Wah. By the time that the whistle blew, the line of ponies picketed to the fence before the mess had disappeared, and the community was at work.
As soon after breakfast as Mr. Cameron had smoked his morning cigar, he joined Radlett and Loring, and with Miss Cameron all walked up to the mouth of the nearest shaft. Burns met them at the shaft house, and selected from the pile of oilskins a “slicker” for Miss Cameron. She struggled helplessly with the stiff button-holes, and Loring was obliged to button the coat for her. His fingers, though stronger than hers, were not much more efficient, owing to their trembling.
“Where are the candles, Burns?” asked Loring.
Burns pointed to a box in one corner of the shaft house. Stephen took out a half dozen, and handed one to each of the visitors. He put a broken one into the spike candle holder which he carried, and slipped the others into his capacious pockets.
The “skip” shot up and was unloaded. “All ready!” called Burns, steadying the bucket by the level of the shaft mouth. Jean steppedforward and looked at the bucket just a bit askance. Loring showed her how to place her hands on the heavy iron links above the swivel, and how to stand on the edge of the bucket with her heels over the edge.
“Look out that your skirt does not hit against the side of the shaft!” was his final injunction.
“Can we go down now?” he asked Burns.
“One second,” answered the foreman. “There is a load of sharpened drills to go down with us.”
In a moment the little “nipper” appeared with his armful of drills, and with a ringing clatter dropped them into the bottom of the bucket.
“I think we had better take Mr. Cameron to the four hundred level right away,” said Stephen to Burns. “I want him to see that new stope. The air isn’t very bad there, is it?”
“No, it’s pretty fair.”
“All right. Lower away, four hundred!” called Loring to the hoist engineer, at the same time swinging himself onto the bucket beside the others.
The skip began to drop slowly down thetimbered shaft. For the first twenty-five or thirty feet it was fairly light, and Jean could see the joints in the rough-grained, greasy boards. Then all became dark. She clutched the cable tightly and half closed her eyes. The water began to drip down hard from above, spattering sharply on their oilskins. Loring, close beside her, whispered: “All right. Just hold on tightly, Miss Cameron! Great elevator, isn’t it?”
Even while Loring spoke, a chill struck to his heart. What if the hoist engineer failed in his duty! What if the bucket crashed into the black depths that lay below them, or shot wildly upward to be caught in the timbers at the top! What if Jean Cameron were to be snatched away asthose othershad been, through the wanton carelessness of the man in charge above! Would any punishment be black enough for him? Would eternity be long enough for him to make a decent repentance?
By the vigor of the answer which his heart made to the question, Loring sensed the pang of remorse which had gnawed at his conscience without ceasing ever since that awful night. “That was what you did.” The words saidthemselves over and over in his ear as the bucket slid downward.
The air began to turn from the pure clear atmosphere of the mountains to the heavy close humidity of the mine, murky even in its blackness.
“One hundred level,” explained Stephen, as the bucket dropped past a candle which flickered dully in a smoky hole in the side of the shaft, the entrance to the drift which was even blacker than the shaft itself.
As they reached the lower levels, the water poured down faster. The bucket swung and twisted and Jean leaned an imperceptible trifle closer to Loring. He steadied her with his arm, although it may not have been strictly necessary for safety.
The bucket suddenly stopped and hung lifelessly steady.
“Here we are, four hundred foot level,” called Loring. “Please stay just where you are, Miss Cameron, and we will help you off.” He swung himself onto the landing stage after the others, and taking both of Jean’s hands in his, guided her safely into the drift.
She stood for a moment completely confused,unable to make out anything. Loring leaned out into the shaft, and pulling the bell cord, signaled to have the bucket raised again. Then he took Jean’s candle, and biting off the wax from about the wick, lighted it and his own, holding them under a small protecting ledge of rock. To Jean’s unaccustomed eyes the little flickerings made small difference in the darkness. She stepped into a pool of water that lay in the middle of the drift, wetting her boots to the ankles.
“Careful!” said Loring, taking her by the arm. “Keep your eyes on Burns’s candle ahead there. I will see that you don’t fall.”
For a couple of hundred yards they walked on straight ahead down the drift. Jean’s eyes began to grow accustomed to the gray blackness, and now, when the roof of the tunnel grew suddenly lower, she stooped almost by instinct.
“Look out for the winze, Miss!” called back Burns.
“All right!” answered Loring. “This runs to the next level, a hundred feet down,” he explained, as he helped Jean to cross the plank which bridged a black chasm. She noticed the rails of a little track which ran beneath theirfeet, and almost as she was on the point of asking its purpose, from far ahead in the darkness came a shrill, weird whistle, and a heavy rumble.
Loring caught her and held her back against the side wall as a “mucker” ran past, wheeling a heavy ore car towards the shaft and whistling as warning to clear the track. She began to feel the effects of the powder fumes in the air, and it made her head heavy and drowsy. She felt that she had come into a new, supernatural universe, where all was noisy, dark, and strange.
At last the drift broadened out into a large, irregular-shaped chamber.
“Esperanza stope,” said Loring to Miss Cameron. “Here is where they have struck the contact vein, where the porphyry changes to limestone.” He held his candle close to the dark wall of rock, and she could see the green crusting betokening the copper.
“This will assay pretty close to ten per cent, won’t it, Burns?” asked Loring.
“It ran to twelve, yesterday,” answered the foreman.
They stood still for a moment. All aboutthem, as in the crypt of some vast cathedral, were specks of light, showing through the dense air, the candles of the miners. Now and then in the blur there appeared a distorted shape, as some one moved before a candle. Through all, loud, insistent, steady, rang the clink-clang, clink-clang, clink-clang of the drills and hammers, as a dozen miners drove home the holes into the breast of the stope, the tapping of the cleaning rods, as they spooned out the mud, and the rattle of shovels on rock, as the “muckers” loaded the ore cars. Mixed with these sounds was a sharp hissing, as the miners drew in their breath, swaying back for the driving blow on the heads of the drills. As she grew accustomed to the dim light, Jean could make out the miners who were nearest to her, as, in teams of two, stripped to the waist, their bodies shiny with sweat, they battered on the walls. Faintly the lines of grim archways began to grow out of the dark, where rough pillars had been left to support the roofing. Far off, up a cross-cut, she could see more candles swaying. Two men near her were toiling at a windlass, raising the water from a new winze. She leaned against the wall, and something rattled tinnily. It wasa pile of canteens, all warm with the heat of the air.
Jean gasped with the very wonder of the scene. To the others it was merely the commonplace of their work.
Burns called out to Loring: “We are going to take Mr. Cameron through to the new stope. It is pretty hard climbing getting through to there. I guess the lady had better wait here with you, Mr. Loring.”
The voices of the rest of the party sounded faint and far away. Jean watched the light of their candles sway and dip, as they walked off down a tunnel, then disappear as a supporting pillar hid them from view.
Loring led her to one side of the stope, and drove the spike of his candle stick into a niche in the soft rock wall. He pointed to a pile of loose ore.
“We can sit here until your father returns. They are not working this end of the stope now,” he said.
She nodded and seated herself with her back against the wall. Silent, with her chin propped firmly in her clenched hands, she strained her eyes to look at the dim lights and shadows atthe other end of the stope, and watched the shadows grow into things, as she stared. Far beneath her, in the solid rock, she heard faint indistinct taps. A trifle awed by the mystery she turned to Loring.
“What is that sound?” she asked.
“Those are ‘Tommy knockers,’” he answered gravely. “They are the ghosts of men who were killed in an explosion here, tapping steadily for help.”
“Really?” she asked, half laughing.
“It might be,” answered Loring, “but the fact of it is that those are men drilling on the next level. The sound now and then carries clear through the rock.”
The candle in the niche behind her cast a dim light over the soft curves of Jean’s cheeks, rising delicately above the rough yellow oilskin coat. Loring beside her, looked down at her intently. Turning, she inadvertently brushed against his sleeve, and he quivered as though it had been a blow. The silence was growing oppressive with significance. Suddenly Jean broke it, saying: “Mr. Loring, I may not have another opportunity of speaking with you alone while we are in Kay. I must use this chanceto tell you what pleasure it has given me to hear of your achievements here, of your courage in the riot and of—” Jean paused and seemed to choose her words carefully, “of your victory.”
“Oh,” answered Stephen, with an attempt at ease, while all the time his heart was beating like a trip-hammer, “I suppose Baird has been talking about me; but you must not take him too literally. There is no libel law against flattery, and so men speak their minds about their friends as freely as they would like to do about their enemies. Miss Cameron,” he said suddenly, “I have never thanked you for the note which you sent me when I left Quentin. But you must know how grateful I felt. I did not deserve your trust; but I cannot tell you how it helped me.”
She shook her head slowly, and when she spoke her voice was very soft. “I am glad if it helped you, but you would have won your fight without it, I think.” Her tone held a shadow of question.
“The whole struggle would not have seemed worth while without that, and without the truest friend in the world to help. Miss Cameron, Baird Radlett came to me when I hadfallen as low as a man could fall. He and your note saved me.”
“No,” answered Jean, “you saved yourself. I think you were saved from the time of that dreadful night at Quentin, only you did not know it.”
The roar of an ore car rushing by drowned her voice. A moment later Stephen spoke in a hard, dry tone. “I am not sure,” he said, “that I know exactly what salvation means. If it means that I am not likely to make a beast of myself any more, or murder any more men, I am glad to believe it is so; but after all what does it matter to me? I have lost my chance, thrown it away, and life cannot hold anything particularly cheerful for me after that.”
“No, no!” Jean exclaimed with a swift inexplicable pang at her heart. “You must not say that. There are chances ahead in life for every one.”
“Yes, chances; but notthechance.”
“Am Ithechance?” Jean asked, in a voice so low that it could scarcely be heard above the echoes.
Loring bowed his head, with such dejection in his bearing as struck to the heart of the girlbeside him. Jean had been thinking, thinking hard. The quick throbbing in her temples attested to the intensity of her mood. She knew in that instant that she cared for the man at her side; but how much? Enough to run the risk?
“Mr. Loring,” she said at length slowly, as if weighing her words, “I know that you care for me; but, and it is hard to say”—she laid her hand on his arm and tried to meet his eyes—“but I don’t quite trust you.” She felt his arm stiffen and quiver, but she went on, although her voice broke: “I know that you are brave. I owe my life to that.” She paid no attention to the gesture with which he waved aside all obligation. “I respect you more than I can say for the fight that you have made against habit, only—”
“Only?” echoed Stephen slowly.
“Only—oh, can’t you see that if I were to marry you and all the time there were in my heart a doubt, even though the merest shadow, that neither of us could be happy?”
Loring crushed between his fingers a piece of the soft ore and let the fragments trickle to the ground before he spoke. “It is more thanyear now, Jean. Must the shadow last forever? Is what I have done to remain forever unpardoned?” He spoke with the slowness of an advocate who knows his case is lost, yet fights to the end.
“It is not that, Stephen. I could forgive almost anything that you have done. But there is one thing that you have done, that try as I would, I could never forget. Stephen, let me ask it of you. What is the most essential quality of all in a—a—friend?”
“Honesty,” answered Loring, without a moment’s hesitation.
“And suppose you knew that a friend had utterly fallen from honesty?”
“I should then feel that the word “friend” no longer applied.”
Loring was dazed. He did not know of her cousin’s story of his dishonesty in his relations with his guardian. He thought only of the promise he had made to her on their ride in Quentin and the manner in which he had broken it. “Yes,” he went on slowly, “I suppose when a man breaks his solemn word he shatters forever the mold of his character.”
“I want you to understand that it is onlybecause I cannot forget that one thing, that my trust in you is not absolute.”
Loring straightened himself, and for a second turned his head away. “That,” said he, “is why I said I had lostthechance.”
A wave of pity swept over Jean. “And yet, Stephen,” she whispered, “I—”
“Oh, Steve! Where are you?” came from out of the darkness. “We are going up now. Mr. Cameron thinks we have a fine strike there.”
Stephen helped Jean to her feet. Then silently he led the way back to the shaft.
Inanimate things, the poets to the contrary, do not share human moods. When Loring returned to his desk in the office the typewriter, instead of showing the least sympathy, behaved abominably. Ordinarily the letter “J” on a well-constructed machine is on the side, and little used. But this afternoon it seemed to insist on beginning every word, and the effect on the business letters which should have been composed was not beneficial. But this is perhaps explained by the few terse words concluding the pamphlet of directions which accompanied the machine: “No machine ever made isfool proof.” So Loring had the extra task of carefully proofreading all his letters. Being in love always has one of two effects on a man’s work. He either does twice as much work half as well, or half as much work twice as well; but no man truly in love has been able to reverse these, and double both his zeal and efficiency. This kind of inspiration has a singulardisregard for detail, and when it does deign to notice the minute side of things, it magnifies them to such an extent that the ultimate aim is likely to be obscured. As proof of the above statement, between luncheon and supper time, Stephen accomplished twice his usual amount of work with a little less than half his customary efficiency.
His work done, Loring banged the cover onto the typewriter with a little more force than was necessary, for if inanimate things cannot share moods, they are still delightful objects on which to vent overwrought feelings. Stephen’s hat was on the table behind the swivel chair, and it was characteristic of him that he used great exertion to secure it without rising, twisting the chair into positions which defied all the laws of gravity. Having set the soft hat at its accustomed slightly tilted angle, he lit his pipe and frowned at the garish appearance of the yellow oak of his desk. Then he rose with the indecisive motion of one who, when on his feet, wonders why he has left his chair. Ordinarily Stephen was a trifle late at supper on account of staying to lock up the office, and to-night from an illogical dread of the thing which hehalf longed for, half wished to avoid, a talk with Jean, he did not reach the table until all the others had left.
Wah glided in from the kitchen with a fresh pot of coffee which he set before Stephen, together with the choicest selections from the supper which he had as usual saved for him. When Loring rose from the table, leaving the larger portion of his meal uneaten, Wah looked at him reproachfully from the inscrutable depths of his slanting eyes.
Baird Radlett, Jean, and a few others were still gathered on the porch when Stephen stepped outside. They were gazing intently down the valley to the westward at the glorious afterglow in the sky, where, but an instant before, the red rim of the sun had flashed before dipping behind the hills. All were silent with that quietness which is brought forth by moments of absolute beauty. Loring’s step and voice aroused them, and all save Jean turned quickly. Baird saw a color in Jean’s cheeks far richer and softer than the deep rose hue in the skies. He glanced quickly from her to the man standing above her, who was looking down at her with adoration in his gaze. Forone second his love for the girl battled with his friendship for the man, and Radlett realized the full bitterness of the sacrifice that he was making. Then friendship conquered, and he comprehended and sympathized with the sorrow which to-night made Loring’s face look singularly old.
Stephen stayed with them only a few minutes before returning to the office to play the old, old game of burying thought beneath routine.
Radlett and Jean were left alone on the steps. Baird watched Stephen until he was hidden by the angle of the office.
“Loring,” he said suddenly, turning to Jean, “has been working fifteen hours a day for the last six months. He cannot stand it. I am afraid for him.”
“Afraid for his—for his—” she hesitated moment, “for his health?”
“Yes, and only for his health,”, answered Radlett decisively. He rose to his feet as if to gain strength for what he was going to say. Then he seated himself again on the step beside her. Drawing a deep breath he began: “Jean, you are not looking well, either.”
Jean murmured something about the fatigue of the journey from the East.
“No,” said Radlett firmly, “it is not that. It is something deeper than that. You know it is, and I know it, too, so let there be no concealments between us!”
“What do you know? How do you know it?” Jean stammered.
“A man knows some things by instinct,” Radlett answered. “I think I should have found this out before long, anyhow; but your face, dear, is not good at concealments, and when I saw your eyes, which had been sad from the time we met in Tucson, suddenly light at the sight of Loring in the office here, when heard the little catch in your voice (Jean, I know every tone of your voice by heart) and when I saw and heard you, I knew!”
“Oh, Baird!”
“Never mind,” exclaimed Radlett, “we will not talk of that any more. I only wanted you to understand that we must be quite frank with each other, and that thus everything will come out right. Now tell me how things stand with you.”
“How can I, Baird? To you, of all people?”
“You can and you must, just because I am I and you are you, and your happiness concerns me more than anything in the world. You love Stephen Loring. You are miserable about him. Why?”
“I will tell you,” answered Jean slowly, looking intently out into the darkness. “I will tell you why I am afraid for him, because you are his friend as you are mine, and you will understand. I am afraid that it is only for my sake that he has made his reform, and I told him to-day that I did not quite trust him, and that—oh, Baird, you must understand!”
Radlett bowed his head in grave assent. “Yes, I understand.”
“But,” Jean went on, “if you think that this will cause him to fall again, I cannot bear it; for Baird, I do care for him, and if this is his last chance, I will give it to him.”
Radlett grasped her hand firmly in his own and bent over her. No crisis of his life had ever taxed his self-control like this.
“Jean,” he said slowly, “he does not need you. Do you suppose that if he did I should think him worthy the great gift of your love?” Baird’s voice broke, in spite of himself; but hecontrolled it and went on: “Stephen has fought his fight and won it as it must be won—alone. Do you know what he has been since he left your father? Do you know of the way he behaved in that fight in Mexico, of the way in which he has saved the mine here, of the strength, the powers, the self-discipline that he has shown. It must be something stronger than his love for a woman that will save such a man as Loring, when he has once started down hill. Stephen had that ‘something stronger.’ God help him, it cut to the bone! Since that accident, Loring has never been quite his old self. I am afraid he never will be, that he will always be under a cloud, but Jean, it saved him. He has won his fight without you, and for that reason he is worthy of you.” Baird felt the fingers in his own tighten in their grasp. “Jean,” he went on, “you know how I have cared for you ever since we were children, and how, although you did not care,” he cut short her protestation quickly, “and how although you did not care in that way, I love you now above anything on earth.”
The tears gathered hot in Jean’s eyes.
“You know that as I told you a moment agoyour happiness is the highest thing in the world to me, and I say to you: if you love Stephen, marry him. If you do not love him, then I am sorry for him, but I am not afraid for him. I am proud of him.”
“He must be a man, Baird, to have such a friend as you.”
A deep silence fell between them. Then Radlett rose suddenly, for he knew his endurance could stand no more. He bent over her hand and kissed it tenderly. Then with a heart-rendingly cheerful “good night,” he strode off into the darkness towards his quarters.
For an hour Jean sat on the steps, watching the lights of the camp, as one by one they were extinguished, until one light alone burned. It was in the window of the office. There she knew a man was working steadily and bravely, and her heart beat irregularly as the realization came, that it was the man whom with her whole heart she loved and trusted for all the future, whatever might have been the past. The hot blood came surging into her cheeks only to recede and leave them pale.
Rising, she walked slowly across to the office. She hesitated a moment, her hand on the door-knob,then throwing back her head proudly, she opened the door softly and entered. Her bearing was that of a soldier who surrenders without prejudice to his pride.
Loring was bending over his work and did not see her as she stood in the doorway. She watched his pen toiling over the paper before him. The drooping dejection in his whole attitude cried out to her of his need for her.
“Stephen!” she half whispered.
The man jumped to his feet, startled by the sound of the voice of which he had been thinking. He turned to her, his face white and tense with the strain of wonder and surprise. In three steps he crossed the room to her.
“Is anything wrong?” he exclaimed anxiously.
“Yes, something is wrong,” she answered, looking steadily into his eyes. “I was wrong. I told you that I did not trust you. I do.”
“Jean,” he gasped, half suffocated. “Do you mean that after I had broken my word to you at Quentin, you could possibly forgive?”
“I forgave that at the time.”
His face was drawn with the conflict between an impossible hope and a desperate fear.
“That was the only time in my life that I ever broke my word, Jean, but breaking it to you made it impossible for you to believe in me. You told me so this morning, and I realized it. You forgive me that now,” he cried, with a sudden flash of intuition, “because you are afraid that in losing you, I shall lose myself again. Jean, though you are all there is in life for me, I will not let you sacrifice yourself to your splendid sympathy. Dearest, can’t you see that, as you said; if there were a shadow of doubt on your mind you could never be happy with me?”
“It was not what you think which made me say I did not trust you. It was something, Stephen, which I know would be impossible in the man you are now. I could not put your dishonesty to your guardian out of my mind, until I realized that that was no more a part of the Stephen Loring I know now than the faults which I had forgiven.”
Loring looked at her in amazement. “My dishonesty towards my guardian?” he exclaimed. “Jean, dear, what do you mean?”
“I was told,” she said sadly, “that you had borrowed heavily from him, and never returnedthe loan; but we can pay it back together,” she went on bravely.
“Jean, every cent that I ever borrowed, I paid him when I came into my own money. I don’t know or care where you heard the story, but the only part of it that is true is that I did abuse his good nature and ask him to advance me out of his own fortune the amount that he held in trust for me.” The impossible hope conquered the fear in his face. He seized both of her hands in his and spoke breathlessly.
“Jean, dearest, was that why you did not trust me?”
She looked up at him with her eyes glowing with a new feeling. The love that had sprung from pity had grown into the love based on pride.
“Do not let us talk of that now,” she whispered, “but of the present—and—and the future!”
Stephen drew her to him with a passion which only those who have despaired can feel. He bowed his head and kissed her as for months he had dreamed of doing. He trembled violently as his lips met hers; trembled with wonder, with adoration, with perfect happiness.He held her tightly in his arms, as though afraid that all was not real, that he might yet lose her, as if he drew strength and life from the heart that beat against his own.
The present redeemed the past and glorified the future. Through sin and shame, through failure and humiliation, he had at last found his strength, and before him in golden promise stretched the up grade.