The girl had seen all that Lafond had seen and more. She knew now that Billy Knapp was easily the most important figure in the camp; that Cheyenne Harry was the most admired and feared; that Jack Graham was the most likely to be heard from in the future. The other men fell into the background behind these three figures. The situation was simplified by the fact. All she needed now for complete triumph was, to discover the vulnerable points of these three, attack them craftily, and the game was hers.
She thought she knew the way. She fell asleep dreaming of it. She awoke in the early morning with the day's plan clear and perfect in her mind, each move in the game she was to play clearly outlined before her. It had come to her in the night without conscious effort on her own part.
She dressed herself in the semi-obscurity of the wagon-body, and stepped out into the morning. The brook was not far away. She discovered it, and bathed her face and throat in its ice-cold waters. Then she returned to the wagon, where she made breakfast of a huge irregular chunk of bread and slices of cold bacon, sitting on the wagon tongue and swinging her feet carelessly back and forth while eating. Occasionally she threw a remnant to the few silent Canada jays that drifted here and there in the sleeping town, fluffed out like milkweed pollen in the summer, searching for scraps. They swooped to her offerings on swift motionless wing, and then retreated to a distance, whence they abused their benefactor with strident voice. The girl watched them idly.
How to impress her personality in the most agreeable way on the greatest number of men! The problem was many faceted. She must not show favoritism; therefore the method must be general. She must render herself and not merely her sex agreeable: therefore it would have to be personal. It must appeal to the men's sense of protection rather than to their mere admiration; therefore in it she must efface herself, and exalt them. This was all apparently contradictory. But no; she saw it clearly in a flash. She must let them do her a favor. Instinctively she realized, though she did not formulate the thought, that this is one of the sure ways of gaining a man's good will. She cast back over the necessities of the case, and saw that it would suffice. In doing something for her, they would at once stand well in their own eyes, because of a certain consciousness of unselfish effort; they would expand protectively toward her, because of her weakness, implied in the fact that they could do her a kindness. What was the favor to be? The wagon behind her answered the question. They should build her a house.
All this passed through her mind, as a drift setting in from upstream, gliding before her consciousness, and floating on down stream in unhasting progression. She did not realize that she was thinking out a problem; at least she made no effort to do so. It came to her as she needed it. To all appearance she was watching idly, with unruffled brow, the tenuous threads of smoke which indicated that the camp was awakening. The number of these smoke signals suggested a new problem. She could hardly enlist the entire population of a camp the size of Copper Creek in the task of building one little log cabin. The idea of the swarming multitude struck her as so funny that she laughed aloud. She must choose; and the choice must be judicious. The men selected must represent the influential element, the leaders of opinion; while those denied the privilege of serving her must be the sort who always follow with the majority. Here her intuition balked, and her scanty knowledge could not help it out. She was frankly puzzled.
As she sat there knitting her brows, a boy came up the street. He was bare-foot, straw-hatted, freckled. He had wide gray eyes, a snub nose, and an impudent mouth. His clothes were varied and inadequate. Over his arm he carried a little rifle. About him, at a wary distance, frisked Peter, escaped from the Little Nugget through some mysterious back exit.
The boy occasionally threw an impatient stick at Peter, whereupon Peter would suddenly place two paws in front of him and bend his back down, with every appearance of delight. Then the boy would issue commands to Peter anent returning home, to which Peter paid not the slightest attention. So absorbed was he in his effort to get rid of what he evidently considered an undesirable companion, that he did not notice the girl until he was within a few yards of her. He then gave his entire attention to her inspection. He stood on one spot and stared without winking, digging a big toe into the dust. His unabashed eyes took in every detail. He was without embarrassment, and evidently gave not a thought to the effect of this extended scrutiny on the object of it.
"Hello, kid!" called Molly.
The boy completed his leisurely inspection. Then, "Hello," he answered, with reserve.
"Won't you come over and see me?"
He weighed the point and drew nearer.
"Who are you?" he asked bluntly.
"My name's Molly; what's yours?"
"Dennis Moroney. They call me the Kid. What-chew doin' here?"
"I'm going to live here."
"Oh," said he, and looked her all over again. "This rifle's a flobert," he observed.
"Is it? Let's see. What do you shoot with it? Is there much game up here?"
"Don't snap it; it's bad for it. They's lots of game. I got a fox squirrel the other day. He was so long. He was up a big pine, and I hit him right through the head."
"You must be a good shot. Will you take me hunting with you some day?"
"I dunno," he replied doubtfully. "Girls ain't much good."
"Try me," urged Molly, smiling.
"I'll let you shoot her off anyway," he said magnanimously. "But you gotter help clean her. If you don't clean her, she gets rusty and won't shoot straight. Here's the catridges."
"What little bits of things! Will they kill anything?"
"Hoh!" replied the Kid with contempt.
"Is that your dog?" hastily inquired Molly, conscious of her error. Peter was busily engaged in acquiring an olfactory knowledge of the four wheels and two axles of the wagon.
"Him? Naw. He's the bigges' fool dog I ever see. He goes along unless you tie him up. And he keeps rummagin' around, and he scares all the game there is.Ican'tmakehim stay home."
A cabin door opened quickly, and a miner issued forth.
"There goes Dan Barker," said the Kid.
In twenty minutes Molly knew the history of everyone of any importance in town. She found the child's primitive instinct of hero worship an unerring touchstone by which to judge of each individual's influence in this little community. He reflected the camp's opinion, and this was exactly what she wanted to learn. She encouraged the boy to talk—not a difficult matter, for his attentions had hitherto been quite ignored, saving by Frosty and Peter. Frosty had proved valuable always in the matter of skinning game or extracting refractory shells, but he had never, even in his youngest days, been a boy. Between Peter and the Kid was waged a perpetual war on the subject of hunting methods. The Kid believed in stalking. Peter held the opinion that the chase was the only noble form of the sport. The child had been lonely, strange. Now he chatted to Molly with all the self-reliant confidence which pertains of right to healthy boyhood, but which heretofore he had been denied. He boasted with accustomed air. He spoke lightly of great deeds. Molly did not laugh at him. His heart warmed to her, and he fell in love with her on the spot. This was perhaps the most important conquest the girl was destined to make, for there is no devotion in the world like that of a boy of thirteen for a girl older than himself.
"WATCH ME HIT THAT SQUIRREL!""WATCH ME HIT THAT SQUIRREL!"
"WATCH ME HIT THAT SQUIRREL!""WATCH ME HIT THAT SQUIRREL!"
In a little time, Molly had gathered a number of men about her, and was holding them by sheer force of charm.
"How are you?" she called pleasantly to the first.
"Purty smart," grinned the man, slouching past awkwardly. "How's yourself?"
"Good. Come on over and see me and the Kid for awhile."
She talked to him lightly, while he lumbered along after with his slow wits. Other men came out, to all of whom she called a greeting, and some of whom she summoned to her. She held them easily. It became an audience, a court. They had a good time. There was much laughter. No one grudged the delay. Each man held his axe shouldered, expecting to go on to work in a moment or so, but still lingering—because she willed that he should.
After a time, the hotel began to give up its inmates. The gambler came forth into the sunshine and lit a cigarette. Graham joined him, casting an amused eye at the men about the wagon. Two or three others, including the proprietor, leaned against the hitching rail watching the animated group. Finally Cheyenne Harry sauntered carelessly forth. His broad hat—straight-brimmed in a lop-brimmed camp—was pushed to one side. He swaggered a little.
The girl saw him and jumped down from the wagon tongue, breaking off suddenly in a remark she was making.
"Hi, you!" she called.
He paid no attention.
"Hi, you!" she repeated, jumping up and down with a pretty impatient flutter of the hands. "Hi, you! Come here! You're wanted!"
He looked up surprised.
"Come here!" she repeated.
And he went.
"Now, boys," she said, when he had joined the group, "I'm going to live with you, and if I live with you, I must have a place to live in. So I want you to build me a shack. Will you do it?"
The men looked at one another.
"All right," went on Molly, taking their silence for consent, and assuming a small air of proprietorship which became her well. She specified site and size. "And you," she commanded Cheyenne Harry, "are to boss one gang and I'll take the other. You stay here and level up, and I'll go with some of the boys to cut the timber."
She knew Harry would not refuse because his pistol holster was empty and all the camp knew why. And yet levelling up is a most disagreeable job, for it is a question of pulverized rock and wood blocks, in soft ground; and of blasting with dynamite, in hard ground.
Molly issued her orders rapidly. Axes were found, log chains exhumed from the warehouse dust, horses harnessed. She waited long enough to see the gang under Cheyenne Harry well started in its work; and then, herself mounted on one of the horses, she and the other men took their way down the ravine in search of timber. She was satisfied with having been able to give Cheyenne Harry just the position of authority in the little undertaking which he now held, but she confessed to a feeling of disappointment that Billy Knapp had not been forthcoming, for he too should have had a place in her scheme. She had observed Jack Graham near the hotel, but she had other ideas in regard to the management of that refractory individual.
But it so happened that, in regard to Billy, chance helped her out. The route selected ran up the valley, and about the bend was situated the Great Snake lode, Billy Knapp's famous claim, before the shack of which its proprietor was at that very moment fuming savagely over the non-arrival of certain men he had hired to build more fitting quarters for the new company's inspection. Billy blew a big cloud from his pipe, and swore, when he finally caught sight of a group of axemen and horses headed in his direction.
The men saw him too. They began to laugh. "Good one on Billy Knapp," they agreed. "He must be pretty hot when his axe gang don't come any."
The girl overheard them.
"What's that about Billy Knapp?" she asked sharply.
"Didn't mean y' to hear, ma'am," replied the speaker. "Don' matter ez fur's we's concerned. But Billy, he aims to put up a shack to-day, gettin' ready for them tenderfeet that's comin' from Cheecawgo to look over th' property; an' he hires a lot of th' boys t' put it up fer him, an', you see, you runs off with 'most the hull outfit yere to build you a shack. So, natural, we thinks it makes Billy hot."
"I see," said Molly. She reflected a moment. "Where is it?" she asked.
"That's it, right to the lef'. And that's Billy walkin' 'round loose." They laughed again.
Without a word she turned the animal she was riding sharp to the left, and began to mount the little knoll. The men followed in consternation. Billy's patience was not noted for its evenness.
"Hullo, Billy!" she cried when she was near enough. "Good morning!"
Billy had not at first caught sight of her, and was now plainly a little nonplussed over his unexpected guest. Clearly he could not at this moment "cuss out" the delinquents as they deserved. He removed his broad black hat.
"Good mo'ning! Good mo'ning!" he replied to the girl's greeting. "Come up t' see th' wo'ks?"
"Whoa!" called Molly. The men stopped. "No," she said flatly, "I didn't. Not to-day, that is. I'm busy. I'm hunting for good timber."
Billy looked puzzled. "Timber?" he repeated.
"Yes, timber. I'm going to have a shack built, and these boys are going to put it up for me."
Thus she broke the news gently. Billy looked the men over one by one. He turned a slow red.
"Huh!" he observed at last. "I thought they was goin' to wo'k fo' me!"
"Did you?" asked Molly sweetly. "Well, they're not; at least, not now."
That was categorical. Billy's wits did not respond to this sort of emergency very quickly. He did not want to be rude; he did not care to lose his men. Molly looked down.
"Come here and tie my shoestring," she commanded, holding out her foot, and gripping the harness with both hands.
Billy did not remember that he had ever seen so small a foot. He looked, fascinated.
"Well!" she said impatiently.
He raised his head and gazed plump into the imperious depths of a pair of blue eyes. His anger melted. He approached and attempted to tie the shoe.
None but Molly ever knew how hard that horse was kicked by the other little shoe. Indeed, no one knew at all how it happened. Some of the eye-witnesses theorized concerning bumblebees. Others said horseflies. As to the main facts, there was no doubt—that he, the horse, gave a sudden startled plunge; that she, the girl, screamed slightly and started to fall; that he, Billy Knapp, caught her full in his arms, held her the fraction of a second, and set her lightly back on the again motionless animal.
Molly caught her breath and steadied herself on Billy's shoulder. Three men officiously held the horse's head.
"My!" she gasped. "I'd like to be as strong as that!"
Billy whirled on the axe gang with a great bluster.
"Yere, you fellers!" he shouted. "What 're y' standin' around yere for? Take them hosses up in th' brush behind my shack, an' cut th' lady some timber!"
"Go ahead, boys," said Molly. She slid down from the horse. "I'll be 'long in a minute. I'm a little scairt."
They clambered on up the hill, grinning. A clank of chains told when they had stopped. A moment later the ring of axes was heard. The Kid and the rifle had disappeared in the direction of Peter's rapid and scrambling exit. The boy and the dog hated each other apparently, and yet they could not bear to be long apart.
The girl sat down on the ground and made Billy talk about himself, which was the obvious thing to do. Billy was one of those expansive sanguine individuals without much ability in what we call practical affairs, and yet with a certain dexterity in gathering unto himself the means with which to be impractical. Because of this, he had a good opinion of himself, which at the same time he was much given to doubting. Molly induced him to flatter himself, and then deftly agreed with him.
After a time they went up through the pines to where the workmen were felling trees. Toward noon the whole party returned to town, dragging behind the horses a number of tree trunks chained together with steel chains. These were slid to the site of the house, and left in the road.
The men in camp had nearly finished their job of levelling up. Cheyenne Harry had worked hard with his own hands. In the shade of the Little Nugget, Black Mike and Graham sat, chair tilted, contemplatively watching the process. Through the open door could be perceived a gleam of white that indicated Frosty; otherwise the street of the town was empty. The prospectors were all out in the hills, preparing a suitable showing for the inspection of the boom which they felt sure must be close at hand.
The united forces rolled the foundation timbers in place, straining, sweating, grunting, for it was no easy work. The sun stood straight overhead. After a little, observing this, Molly called a halt for the noon hour. To each man she addressed a word of thanks, and a reminder that the job was but half over. The reminder however was unnecessary, for, under the stimulus of concerted effort, public sentiment had crystallized into the opinion that the housing of a "first woman" was a public duty.
In a few moments the street was deserted, save for Cheyenne Harry and the two men under the eaves of the Little Nugget. From the chimneys of some of the cabins the smoke of cooking arose.
Cheyenne Harry, volatile, changeable, fickle, stood still in the middle of the dusty road and cursed himself for a fool. He had blistered his hands, overheated himself most uncomfortably, and made his muscles ache with unwonted lifting. For what? For a girl who, the evening before, had boxed his ears and stolen his gun. Fascinated by a pair of pretty eyes and a petty display of courage, he had worked himself like a horse. He dropped his head in a brown study, moodily digging away at the ground with his heel, ruminating bitterly over his egregious folly.
"Thank you very much," said a soft little voice, breaking in on his irritation like a silver bell on a moody silence.
He raised his head, and beheld Molly standing before him, looking up at him with grave sweet eyes. There was a hint of weariness in her drooping eyelids that appealed subtly to his own weary spirit. She seemed, standing there in the deserted street, to typify for the moment the aloofness of his mood.
"You've been good to me this morning," she went on in a quiet monotone, "mighty good!"
She stepped nearer to him until her breast almost touched his.
"I want you to look up at that pine over there until I tell you you can quit," she said as gravely as a child about to bestow a sugar plum.
Harry turned his eyes to the hill.
She stooped swiftly and drew the band of a holster and belt around his hips. Unmindful of his promise, he looked down on her in surprise.
"Don't be mad," she pleaded. "I got Frosty to get it for me from your shack, so I could put your gun in it. And now you'll wear it for me, won't you? I said you couldn't have it till you told me you were sorry. Well, you have told me you were sorry, in the best way—by doing something. I know how it is. I've had to work. It's no fun to be laughed at; and you'll always be as good and brave as you were this morning, won't you?"
A rush as of something beautiful swept over him. His eyes filled and he tried to speak, but turned away.
"Now, run along," she exclaimed gayly, giving him a little pat on the shoulder, "and don't forget you've got a job for this afternoon!"
She stood for a moment in the middle of the road watching him.
Graham, sitting under the eaves of the Little Nugget, surveyed the little scene with cynical eyes. He watched the girl walk toward the saloon. She had taken off her sunbonnet and the noon sun was gilding her hair. She was pensive and thoughtful, and looked down. He told himself that she did this because it was a becoming pose. Graham was the sort of man whom pretence, craftiness, guile, always roused to arms. So long as he was antagonized, or thought he was, his bitterness and scorn were unappeasable; but once his ascendancy was freely acknowledged, he threw away its advantages with the utmost generosity. He thought he saw through this girl, and so he despised her and her tricks alike.
As she approached, Lafond arose and went inside the saloon, where he began to inquire of Frosty in regard to dinner. The girl sat down in the vacated chair. Beyond a curt little nod to Graham she did not notice his presence.
Over Tom Custer an eagle was wheeling slowly to and fro, barking with the mere delight of being on the wing. Molly fixed her eyes dreamily on the bird, but without apparent consciousness of more than the mere fact of its wide motion. Graham imperturbably whittled a pine stick, and whistled at the sky.
This state of affairs continued for some time.
"How do you keep the dirt from coming through the roof?" asked Molly suddenly, her mind, to all appearance, entirely on the work in hand.
Graham explained briefly.
"Thank you," said Molly.
After a few minutes more Graham shifted his knife into his left hand, and began idly to stab the bench with it. Several times he opened his mouth to speak.
"You've got him well trained," he observed finally, with a slight curl of the lip.
"Who? What do you mean?" she cried, genuinely surprised out of the indifference she had assumed.
"Him—Lafond. He knows when to go away. Why did you want to get rid of him?"
"I didn't want to get rid of him. It was so I could be alone."
"That's consistent! It was nothing of the kind. It was so you could be alone—with me."
She looked him over, flushing angrily. Then she deliberately turned her shoulder to him.
"You are very impudent," she remarked coldly. "You seem to forget that I don't even know you. I don't know why I sit here and listen, except that I am comfortable, and don't care to be driven away."
"You wanted to capture me some way or another," he went on musingly, catching a glimmer of the truth; "same as those poor fools out there in the sun. I'd just like to know how you meant to do it and what you'd have done to me. Would you have flattered me, or coaxed me, or what?"
The girl did not reply.
"How?" he urged, expecting an angry outburst, but profoundly indifferent to it.
"You are cruel," she answered softly, after a pause, "and very unjust." Her cheeks were glowing and there was a glint in her eye, but he could not see that. "They are only kind and good, not fools."
"Of course they're good, but they are good because you fool them into it," persisted Graham, spitefully pressing home his point. "You want to win 'em all, just like a woman, but you're too clumsy about it. Anybody can see through that sort of tommyrot, if he isn't a fool. So I call them fools, and I stick to it."
"With you it's different," she replied, hesitating almost before each word. "You ain't the same kind. I know it's foolish, but I can't help it, and I don't think I'm so much to blame. Perhaps Iamtrying to make them like me. Is there so much harm in that? Nobody has ever liked me before. I have no mother and no sisters—only Mike. I want to be liked, and—and—I'msorryif you don't think I ought to, but it can't be helped."
She looked out again at the eagle slowly circling over Tom Custer, with eyes vaguely troubled. Graham could examine her closely without the danger of detection. He did so.
There was something pathetically child-like about her after all, something delicate in the oval of her face and the sensitive modelling of her chin, which appealed to a man's protective instincts. Her eyes were so wide and blue and wistful, and again so pathetically young, like those of a little child gazing upon the shower-wet world from the safety of a window. Graham suddenly realized that this was no self-sufficient, capable woman whom he was so bluntly antagonizing, but only a pinafored innocent playing with forces of which she did not know the meaning. He began all at once to feel sorry for her. Against her probable future in this rough camp, how small the present looked, how little were her coquetries, her innocent wiles!
She sighed almost inaudibly. The eagle folded his wings and dropped like a plummet from the upper air, only to swoop upward on outspread pinions a moment later.
Graham began to be ashamed of himself. His thoughts took a new direction. He wondered what her previous history, her education, could have been. Her face was pure, her eyes clear. Could she have lived always with the half-breed? Both spoke English of an excellence beyond the common—in that country, at least. Then he began idly to watch the sunlight running nimbly up and down a single loose tress of her hair, as the wind lifted it and let it fall.
The girl turned and caught his eyes fairly.
"What is it?" she asked simply.
"I was wondering," he replied with equal simplicity, "whether you had always lived with him."
"No," she replied, without pretending not to understand the purport of his question. Then, in the same little voice, in which was a trace, just a trace, of an infinite dreariness: "I have lived all my life at an Indian agency. He came and took me away a little while ago. He is good to me," she said doubtfully, "and I am glad to be away. The agent was good to me, but there were only a few people, and I only read and read and read, or rode and rode and rode, and knew nothing at all of people. I got tired of it. Nobody cared for me there. Nobody cares for me anywhere, I reckon, except Mike, and his caring for people doesn't count so very much."
She turned upon him again that vaguely troubled gaze, which seemed to see him, and yet to look beyond him.
"Poor little girl," said Graham, on a sudden deeply moved.
"Poor little girl!" he repeated with infinite tenderness, and took her idle hand in both of his.
"Poor little girl!" he said for the third time. She put her other hand before her eyes; then, releasing herself gently, she rose and glided through the door without a word.
Once inside the portal her eyes cleared with a snap. She laughed.
In the course of this same morning, Lafond had discovered an old acquaintance.
He arose early, and spent some time after breakfast investigating and criticising the premises. Frosty's administration had, it must be confessed, been rather slack, and there were many loose ends. These Black Mike gathered into a cat o' nine tails with which to lash his subordinate. After he had done more for Frosty's character in sixty minutes than that young man, unaided, could have accomplished in as many months, he left the scene of his reorganizations behind, and strolled about in the one narrow street of the village.
He soon saw all there was to be seen there. With a vague idea of finding his way to the famous Great Snake Mine, he rambled out from the double row of log cabins, around the bend, and into the lower gulch. He had defined to himself two things very clearly—that Billy Knapp was now easily the most important figure in the community, and that a continuance of this importance depended entirely on his effecting a combination of his group of claims with Eastern capital. In the Black Hills nearly all of the promising leads are of quartz, requiring in their development more expensive machinery than any ordinary man is able to afford. Until the good angel arrives, they are so much crumbling red rock or white crystal; but with the erection of a stamp mill, within wagon distance, they become valuable. Mike had set himself to the task of depriving Billy Knapp at once of his property and of his prestige; but since he could not hold him up at the point of a pistol, as might have been done had it been the question of a watch or a scarf-pin, he did not at present see just how it was to be accomplished. Ruminating these matters, he found himself all at once in a cañon much grown with underbrush, full of birds, and possessing a general air of the gentler aspects of nature.
Immediately before him stood a double cabin, its two parts connected by a passage way. The foundations of its timbers were encircled by broad bands of red geraniums. Behind the buildings, chained to posts, he perceived three wild animals. One was a short, comical, and shaggy bear; the second, an equally furry but more eager-looking raccoon; the third, a bobcat with tasselled ears.
Mike paused and surveyed them with amusement. As he stood there the door of the cabin opened and the owner stepped out into the sunshine. The half-breed never forgot a face which a vital incident had impressed on his memory; and though this old, white-haired, mild-eyed man had passed in and out of his life in the space of one evening fifteen years ago, Lafond recognized without difficulty the stranger whose words had given him so powerful an impetus toward his new way of life. It was Durand, the butterfly hunter.
He was little changed. And again the coarser man felt, as fifteen years before, the air of gentle and quaint courtesy, which a keener observer would have associated with an old-fashioned society now quite passed away. It should have gone with ruffles and silken hose, with powdered hair and silver shoe buckles.
The naturalist caught sight of the newcomer and approached.
"They are quite gentle," he assured, explaining the beasts. He rubbed the heavy fur of the raccoon the wrong way. "Ah, Jacques," he said to the little animal, relapsing quaintly into a sort of old-time speech, "thy hair doth resemble in stiffness of texture the bristles of thine own curry brush."
The raccoon uttered his high, purring over-note, and seized the man's fingers with his little black hands, almost human. The bear waved his paws appealingly. The bobcat danced back and forth at the end of its leash. "Peace, my children," chided the old man, bestowing on each a pat. "It is not yet the hour of noon." He stooped to unsnap the raccoon's chain; and then, as though recalling the half-breed's presence, he turned with an air of apology.
"You are a stranger here?" he asked. "Yes? And you walk this morning for your pleasure? Yes? That happens not often in these parts." He went on, conversing shyly but easily, with the obvious desire of pleasing the half-breed rather than himself. Lafond had opportunity to observe the great solidity of the logs composing the cabin walls, and to recognize that the structure must belong to the earlier period of the primitive architecture of the Hills—for there are such periods.
"You have lived here long," he suggested, following out this inference.
"Yes," laughed the old man softly, "very long. The camp there came to me. I was an old timer when the first house was built."
After a little, they entered the cabin together, and Lafond found himself in a sheet-ceiled room, strewn with all sorts of literary and scientific junk. The imagination could discover much food for speculation in the curiosities literally heaped about the apartment, but most wonderful of all, seizing the eye, holding it from all else, were the scores of shallow glass-fronted boxes hanging everywhere on the wall. They were lined with white paper pasted over a layer of cork. In them, row after row, were impaled butterflies of many colors. Thousands of the pretty insects were there outspread, varying in size from the tiny blueLycaenato the greatTroilusor the gorgeous yellow and blackTurnus. They were exquisitely prepared, with just the right lift on the wings, just the proper balance of the long antennae, until it seemed that they must be on the point of flight, and one almost expected that in another moment the air would be filled with a fluttering, many-hued splendor.
The men seated themselves in two home-made chairs. The raccoon, evidently from old winter-time habit, waddled in a dignified fashion to the fireless stove, where he curled up like a door-mat with keen, bright eyes. Mike's gaze roamed about the apartment.
"You are a great scientist," he observed, intending the remark for a compliment.
"In a way, in a way," replied the old man humbly. "One must occupy the mind when one is alone, and what task more fitting to our highest faculties than that of investigating, with all due reverence, the workings of God's mechanism?"
He said it with a simple piety which could not provoke a smile. Michaïl Lafond caught himself wondering what he did there. Surely there was nothing to interest him in stuffed insects and a garrulous old man, especially as the conversation insisted on retaining its formal footing.
"You are not a miner?" the entomologist inquired, after a moment's pause.
"No," replied Mike.
"I am glad to hear it. I like not this eager scrambling for what does so little good. I too once—— But now I am content; yes, content. There is always good if one will but find it. I myself might with justice be accused of being a miner. I find my leads, I develop them, I assay my ores; but always in miniature—on a small scale."
Then, in a flash, Michaïl Lafond saw at least the outlines of his plan, and he knew why he had come in here to talk to the garrulous old man.
"You know the assay, then?" he inquired conversationally.
"In a modest way—a few simple tests."
"But that is much. Do you not know that it is at Rapid, in the School of Mines, that the nearest assayer is? You have a profession here at your lands."
A sudden scream broke through the apartment, a rush of wings, a growl. The old man ran nimbly to the stove, and rescued the little raccoon from the savage attacks of a magpie. The magpie sailed back to his perch on one of the butterfly cases, where he ruffled his feathers indignantly. The raccoon curled up in the old man's lap.
"You are French?" inquired the latter, with more interest than he had hitherto shown.
"I have some French blood," replied Lafond cautiously.
"I knew it," said Durand, immensely pleased. "I am rarely mistaken. It was a twist of your words that suggested it, an idiom.Et maintenant nous pouvons causer," he added in the purest Parisian accent.
"Oui, oui, oui," cried the half-breed, suddenly swept up by an uncontrollable excitement he could not himself understand. "La belle langue!"
He felt an unwonted expansion of the heart at thus hearing once more the language of his youth. The formality of the interview was gone. They conversed freely, swiftly, animatedly. Durand had been educated in Paris, and had a thousand reminiscences to impart. He told of many quaint customs, and Lafond, with growing emotion, recalled similar or analogous customs among his own expatriated branch of the race in the pine forests of Canada. His sullen, taciturn manner broke. He became the Gaul. He gesticulated, he overflowed, his eye lighted up, he said a thousand things.
After a time Durand opened a chest at the foot of the bed, from which he abstracted a bottle and two long-stemmed glasses. These he placed on the table with a quaint little air of ceremony.
"Sir," said he, "we must know each other better. We speak each the language we love. We talk of old days. Sir," he concluded, bowing with stately grace as he poured the red wine into the glasses, "I ask you to drink wine with me to our acquaintance. My name is Durand."
He inclined, his hand to his heart, and somehow there seemed to be nothing ridiculous in the act.
"I am Michaïl Lafond," replied the half-breed simply.
A silence fell. The realities came back to Lafond's mind.
"I would ask you a favor," he said abruptly.
"Name it; it is yours."
"I want you to teach me how to make an assay."
"It would be a pleasure. I will do it gladly."
"Is it difficult?"
"Not very."
"When shall we begin?"
"When you say."
Lafond reflected. "Well, I will bring some ore in a day or two." Then, after a pause, as though in deference to the attitude he knew the old man held in regard to such things, he added, "It must be very interesting, this making of gold from the rock."
"And more interesting still," supplemented Durand gently, "is the thrill of a shared thought."
The raccoon stood on his hind legs in his master's lap, and began deliberately to investigate the contents of his pockets, deftly inserting his little black hands, almost human, and watching the man's face with alert eyes. Durand took the animal's small head between both his palms, and smiled at him affectionately.
"Ah, Jacques,polisson! Thou art a rogue, and dost learn early what thy master's race doth teach. See, Lafond, how the little villain would even now rob the very one who doth give to him his daily bread and all that which he hath." He softly rubbed the small, black nose with the flat of his palm, much to its owner's disgust. Jacques backed off deliberately to the floor, where he sneezed violently, while Durand gazed at him with a kindly smile.
After leaving the cabin, Black Mike no longer slouched along unseeing. He burned with the inspiration of an idea. Just where the idea would lead him, or how it would work out in its final processes, he did not know; but he had long since grown accustomed to relying blindly on such exaltations of confidence as the present, sure that details would develop when needed. He believed in letting the pot boil.
Through the town he walked with brisk, business-like steps, out into the higher gulch. There he soon came upon signs of industry. Up a hill he could hear the ring of axes and the occasional rush of a falling tree, sounding like grouse drumming in the spring. He followed the sound. Half way up the knoll, he discovered a cabin and three shafts. A rude sign announced that this represented the surface property of the Great Snake Mining and Milling Company. Lafond halted abruptly when he saw the sign. For perhaps half an hour he looked over, with the eye of a connoisseur, the three piles of ore at the mouths of the three shafts, approving silently of the evidence of slate walls, crumbling between his strong fingers the oxygenated quartz, putting his tongue to the harder specimens to bring out their color by moisture, gazing with some curiosity at the darker hornblende. Finally he selected a number of the smaller specimens, with which he filled the ample pockets of his shooting-coat. After this he returned to town and the Little Nugget saloon, where he emptied his pockets on the bar.
"Get some of that packin' stuff out behind," he commanded Frosty, "and with it construct a shelf there by the mirror."
He stood over Frosty while the latter, frightened into clumsiness, hammered his fingers, the wall, the rude shelf, anything but the nail. Finally, Lafond thrust him aside with a curse, and finished the job himself. On the completed shelf he ranged about half of the specimens which he had picked up from the ore dumps. Beneath these he tacked a label, indicating that they were from the Great Snake Mine.
Then he joined Jack Graham outside, and settled down to watch the group of men engaged in laying the foundation timbers of a new log shack.
In spite of the fact that she had laughed at Graham's blindness in falling into her trap, Molly Lafond felt enough curiosity to induce her to enter into several conversations with him during the course of that afternoon. He sat by the door whistling. Out in the sun the men cut logs, notched ends, heaved and pushed. The girl alternated between personal encouragement of the workers, and a curious examination of the idler.
Graham interested her because he puzzled her. The young man no longer held to the quizzical and cynical attitude he had assumed in the morning, but neither did he at once manifest that personal interest which she had imagined inevitable. He caught at her statement that she had done nothing but "read, read, read." In the course of twenty minutes he had made her most keenly aware of her deficiencies, and that without the display of any other motive than a frank desire to discuss the extent of her knowledge. He opened to her fields whose existence she had never suspected; he showed her that she had but superficially examined those she had entered. Authors she had much admired he disposed of cavalierly, and in their stead substituted others of whom she had never heard.
"I like Bulwer," she remarked, secure in her classic because it had been the only one of Sweeney's collection to come in a set and bound in brown leather.
"Bulwer, yes," said Graham, pulling his little moustache, and speaking, as his habit sometimes was, more to himself than to his companion. "We all go through that stage, but we get over it after awhile. You see, he's superficial and awfully pedantic. There is much beauty in it, too. I remember in one of his novels—I forget which—there is a picture of a child tossing her ball skyward, with eyes turned upward to the skies, that is worth a good deal."
"It's inWhat Will He Do with It?" cried Molly, aglow at being able to interpolate correctly.
"Yes," assented Graham, indifferently. "It has something to do with youth, I think. Before our critical judgment grows up and finds him out, there is a peculiar elevation about Bulwer's themes and treatment. His world is blown; but it is big, and his figures have a certain scornful nobility about them. If I were to compete with the gentleman under discussion," he concluded, with a slight laugh, "I would say that he throws upon the true gold of youthful ideals, hopes, and dreams, the light of his own tinsel."
Molly was subdued, humbled. She was deprived at a stroke of all her weapons. For the first time she found herself looking up to a man, and wondering whether she could ever meet him on terms of equality. She caught herself covertly scrutinizing Graham to see if he too realized his advantage. He was genuinely interested; that was all. He seemed to take it for granted that she was already on his level. This encouraged her somewhat.
Whenever she again joined the group of sweating men at work on her house, she felt subtly that she was returning from a far country. She had brought back with her something new. The nature of the conversation had lifted her to the contemplation of fresh possibilities of human intercourse. With a defiant toss of the head she indulged herself to the extent of imagining several Bulwer-like conversations, in which she dealt out brilliant generalities to the universal applause. It was the first flight her wings had essayed; the first charm not merely physical that she had experienced with one of the other sex. She felt she was going to like this man Graham.
And yet that very elation was one of the reasons why, after dinner in the "hotel," she walked with Billy Knapp, although Graham was plainly waiting for her. It had been her first flight; her wings were tired. The reaction had come.
The dinner itself, and its manner, had much to do with bringing this to her consciousness. Entering at one end of the hotel dining-room, she first became aware of the cook stove at the other, and, behind it, tins. Down the centre extended the three bench-flanked board tables, polished smooth by the combined influences of spilled grease and much rubbing. At certain short intervals had been stationed tin plates, over each of which were stacked, pyramid fashion, an iron knife, fork and spoon. Tin cups spaced the plates. Down the centre of each table were distributed thick white china receptacles containing sugar, lumpy and brown with coffee; salt; and butter on the point of melting. At dinner-time the cook placed between these receptacles capacious tins, steaming respectively, with fried and boiled pork, boiled potatoes, cornmeal mush, and canned tomatoes; besides corn bread, soda biscuits, and a small quantity of milk for the coffee. Then, wiping his glistening face on the red-checked little towel that hung at his waist, he entered the "office" and, seizing a huge bell, clanged forth, now to the right, now to the left, that his meal was ready.
The men ate in their shirt sleeves, those farthest half obscured by the clouds of steam from the uncovered dishes. The cook stove, the dishes, and the men heated the low unventilated room almost to suffocation. They gobbled their food rapidly, taking noisy swigs of the coffee from the tin cups. As each finished, he wiped his plate clean with the soft inside of a soda biscuit, drew his knife across the bread once or twice, swallowed the gravy-laden biscuit at one mouthful, and departed without further ceremony into the outer air.
It was all thoroughly Western, thoroughly material, thoroughly restful to tired wings.
As the meal progressed, the exaltation faded slowly. Molly received the assiduous attentions of everybody. After dinner, as has been said, she and the wonderful Billy Knapp disappeared into the twilight, leaving the disconsolate miners to find their way to the Little Nugget when it pleased them to do so.
Billy talked. He poured out his confidences. He told how great was Billy, how bright were Billy's prospects, how important were Billy's responsibilities. He was glad to show this young girl the town; it was Billy's town. He was pleased to tell her the names of the hills hereabouts; these hills concealed within their depths the veins of Billy's lodes. He delighted in giving the history of the men they met; for these men looked up to Billy as the architect of their future forties. He spoke enthusiastically of the prospects.
"Thar is a lode," said he earnestly, "over on the J.G. fraction that's shore th' purtiest bit of quartz lead you ever see. The walls is all of slate, running jest's slick side by side, with a clear vein between 'em, and she'll run 'way up, free millin'. I tell you what, Miss Molly, thar's big money in it, thar shorely is! When I get those Easte'n capitalists interested, and ready to put a littlesaltin, and git up a few mills and necessary buildin's, you'll jest see things hummin' in this yar kentry."
Out of the darkness a silent little figure glided and fell in step with the girl.
"Hullo, bub," said Billy indifferently, and went on to tell what he was going to do. Billy had great plans.
Molly said nothing to the new member of their party, but she reached out her hand and patted the little cotton-covered shoulder. She looked about at the dark town and the hills, and drew a deep breath. This was real, tangible. She felt at home in it, and she was adequate to all that its conditions might bring forth. Above all, she was confident here. Graham and his ideas seemed to her at the moment quite nebulous and phantom-like.
"Let's go to the Little Nugget," she suggested suddenly.
They turned to retrace their steps. As they passed an open doorway, a big man darted out with unnatural agility and seized the Kid by the scruff of the neck.
"I beg your pardon, miss, whom I am overjoyed to meet. Standing as I doin loco parentis, the claims of the rising generation constrain me to postpone that more intimate acquaintance which your attractions demand of my desire. Come along here, you!" and he dragged the Kid, struggling and crying out, into the dark cabin.
"Ain't he great?" cried Billy, with real enthusiasm. "Ain't he just? They ain't a man in th' whole Northwest as can sling the langwidge that man can when he tries. You just ought to see him when he cuts loose, you just ought."
"Who is he?" asked Molly.
"Him? What, him? He's Moroney!"
His tone denied the need of further question. They entered the saloon.
The first half hour of Molly's evening in the Little Nugget was constrained. Up to this point she had met the men of the camp under extraordinary circumstances. Now she was called upon to face them in their time of relaxation and accustomed comfort. Such moments of leisure crystallize for us men everywhere our opinions of people. Anybody is welcome to sail with us, hunt with us, fish with us, ride with us, work with us, provided he is personally agreeable and understands the game. We are not so undiscriminating when it comes to a study fire and an easy chair. Translate the study fire and the easy chair to the Little Nugget and a quiet game, and you will see one reason for the constraint. No unkindness was intended. The situation was merely, but inevitably, awkward for everybody.
In such emergencies as this, where a creature of coarser fibre would fail, Molly's hereditary fineness of instinct stood her in good stead. She saw intuitively the attitude she should take. In the first place, she held herself in the background, left the lead to others, behaved as if she suspected herself of being an intruder; so that the men suddenly felt themselves very paternal and adoptive.
In the second place, she encouraged them to show off; which they did with the utmost heartiness. The first embarrassment wore away before long, and Molly took her place in the corner of the bar with the tacit approval of every man in the room.
The remainder of the evening was enjoyable. Some features of it would scarcely have impressed a refined Easterner favorably, for these were rough men, with crude tastes and passions. Once having accepted the girl as one of themselves, they lapsed to some extent, though not entirely, into their accustomed manner. It is a little difficult sometimes to interpret the West in terms of the East. An act which in the older country would be significant of too licensed freedom, on the frontier is a matter of course. Everything depends on the point of view and the attitude of mind.
Around Molly Lafond seethed a constantly changing group of men. They joked boisterously at one another and at her. The standard of wit was the saying of insulting things with a laugh that showed that the remark held in itself something of facetious sarcasm. Through thinner skins it would have bitten cruelly. Behind this lively group sat another, more silent, smoking the amused pipe of contemplation, all alert to the chances of conversational battle, ready to jump up and enter the lists whenever a bright idea suggested itself. In the corner just behind the bar, lurked Black Mike, keeping a sinister eye on Frosty's dispensations. The faro dealer called his cards imperturbably over his scantily patronized game. Occasionally someone, glowing with the good-natured excitement of jesting, would break away from the laughing group, and, standing the while, would stake a few red chips on a turn or so of the cards.
Peter, obsessed of some sudden and doggish affection, ceased his restless wanderings. He took up his position, resting on one hip, both hind legs to one side, directly beneath Molly's feet. There his shaggy head was of such a height that the girl could just reach it with the point of her shoe. From time to time, when the exigency demanded such a pose, she looked down prettily, and stirred the animal's button ears with her little foot. On such occasions Peter gravely rolled his eyes upward and wriggled his stump of a tail.
A young fellow by the name of Dave Kelly stood nearest her. He was a handsome young fellow, with a laughing boyish face. As time went on, he became more and more elated and sure of himself. Occasionally, when the press of men behind would push him forward, he would reach across the girl to regain his balance. Once he put his hand lightly on the point of her shoulder. He paused, with a strange delicious thrill at the feel of the round young arm under the loose stuff of the gown, which slipped beneath his grasp to emphasize the smoothness of the skin. Aware of the touch, she looked toward him for a minute, laughing. Somehow it gave him a strange feeling of intimacy with her, inexplicable, subtle. Without knowing why he did so, he felt his own shoulder underneath his loose flannel shirt. It gave the same impression, only rougher, coarser.
There suddenly sprang into his mind a sense of physical kinship between himself and her. He took frequent opportunities of repeating the contact, always lightly, always with the same delicious thrill. At each touch the girl turned to him for a vaguely smiling instant. She was absorbed in the men about her. The youth at her side had fallen silent, but her good nature extended to everybody.
Late in the evening somebody suggested that Frosty had been singularly unemployed. Glasses were filled. Molly's was handed to her.
"I don't want any," said she.
"It'll do y' good," "Try her," "Aw, come on!" urged a dozen voices.
She sipped a little. It tasted to her like liquid fire, with a strange gagging property as it reached the region of the epiglottis. She sputtered and choked.
"Ugh!" she shuddered. "Ugh! I couldn't get a glass of that stuff down if it killed me." She shut her eyes and shivered with a pretty disgust. "I simply can't," she repeated.
"Ain't ye got anything else, Frosty?" they cried reproachfully. "That stuff's purty rank fer a lady, that's right. Skirmish around thar, an' see what y' kin discover."
Frosty skirmished around, and finally bobbed up, red-faced, with a bottle of some light wine. Molly drank this slowly, with little more satisfaction. Some people never care for the taste of anything with alcohol in it, and the cheap wine had more than the suspicion of a wire edge. But she liked the warm glow that followed, and she found that in a moment or so she was much pleased with herself.
"Give me another of those," she smiled to Frosty, holding out the empty glass. The men chuckled. This was something like.
Molly drank the other glass. In a few minutes she felt sleepy. "I'm going to turn in," she said abruptly, and slid down on the unsuspecting Peter. They disentangled the trouble with merriment. Molly consoled Peter. The room was full of noise and light.
"May I take you over?" Kelly was asking in her ear. She nodded assent. The other men looked chagrined. It had not occurred to them.
Dave Kelly and Molly stepped gayly from the heated, garish saloon into the still night. The contrast made them feel yet gayer. They remarked on the stars and the moon, to do which it became necessary to look upward and slacken their steps. He was very close to her. He slipped his arm about her waist, his great hand resting firmly beneath her small bust, and they stumbled on together in breathless silence. He felt very bold and elated and happy.
Suddenly she looked down with an air of mock surprise. "What is this?" she cried, lifting one of Dave's fingers and letting it fall. "Why, it looks like your hand!"
"That's so!" grinned Dave.
"I wonder how that could have got there!"
Dave, finding himself unequal to persiflage, made no reply. She nestled up to him a little and sighed. She liked it. She had not the slightest idea that there was anything out of the way in it. Why should she? Morals, as we understand them, she had never been taught. They slowly approached the wagon, which during the day had been dragged to a less conspicuous but more distant locality.
Ah, Molly, Molly, those wings are very tired!
At the moment when Kelly first pressed the girl to him, he experienced a sudden lessening of her charm. It was not that she was less feminine, or that, in his eyes, she had lost any moral excellence by her easy surrender. Dave had probably as rudimentary ideas of the finer moralities as Molly herself. But one very definite element of her attraction had been given up—that of mystery, of remoteness, of difference between herself and him. She was no longer a creature of a wonderful and other sphere; she had become the female of his species.
All this was subtle and slight and quite unappreciated and unanalyzed by Dave himself. But the keen intuition of the girl discovered it. She felt the difference. Suddenly she became aware of the fact that whatever a woman gives to a man takes something from her attraction, and adds something to his. With the discovery, she resolutely put his hand away.
"That's enough of that," she said in the sensible voice which some women use so effectually.
Dave, unwilling to let the sensation go before he had drained it, attempted to seize her by force. She slipped away and ran like a deer to her wagon, gleaming white through the darkness. Dave sprang in pursuit. At the instant Peter, who had followed unperceived, leaped with a growl and fastened his teeth into Dave's cowhide boot. The miner paused a moment undecided, and then, his natural good nature coming to his rescue, he laughed. An answering laugh echoed from the direction of the wagon.
"That's a pretty trick," he called, trying to disengage Peter's jaws. Peter shook his head savagely and growled.
"You ought to learn to run," came the voice from the safety of the wagon.
"Run!" laughed Dave. "Run with a dawg hangin' to you? Call him and see if you can get him to leave go."
"Dog?" repeated the voice in puzzled tones.
"Yes, dog—this yere Peter. He seems to have took up with you-all. He's got me by th' laig!"
Molly reappeared cautiously. Then she saw Peter, and advanced boldly. The two young people looked at the eager and determined little dog, and laughed with great good nature. Their crisis had passed, fortunately without harm to either. Molly took Peter by the collar. Peter at once let go.
"Good night," said Molly decidedly to Dave.
"Good night," said Dave, and turned back.
Molly walked on to the wagon, closely followed by Peter. As she climbed in, she turned and caught sight of the little animal, eyeing her wistfully.
"Want to come in?" said she.
Peter jumped to the whiffletree, then upon the seat, then into the wagon. Molly followed.
"Peter," said she, "we won't do that any more. I don't believe it's a good scheme. What do you think, dog?"
Peter wagged his stump of a tail, but as it was quite dark, this expression of approval was lost. "I hope he won't say anything about it," she went on reflectively. "But if he does"—she tossed her head—"much good may it do any of them!" Then, after some time, "Peter, let's go to sleep."
Peter whined with content.