Colby Macdonald, in miner's boots and corduroy working suit, stood beside his horse with one arm thrown carelessly across its rump. He was about to start for Seven-Mile Creek Camp with twenty-seven hundred dollars in the saddlebags to pay the men there.
Diane was talking with him. "She's young and fine and spirited. Of course it was a great shock to her. She had been idealizing you. But I think she is beginning to understand things better. At any rate, she does not hate you any more. Give the girl time."
"You think she will—be reasonable?"
Mrs. Paget finished the pattern she was punching in the soft ground beside the board walk with the ferrule of her umbrella. Her eyes met his frankly.
"I don't know. But I'm sure of one thing. She'll not be reasonable, as you call it, unless you are reasonable."
"You mean—Elliot?"
"Yes. She likes him very much. Do you know that when the Indian woman came he urged Sheba not to listen to her story?"
"Sounds likely—after he had spent his good money bringing her here," sneered the mine-owner.
"He didn't. Gordon is a splendid fellow. He wouldn't lie," answered Diane hotly. "And one thing is sure—if you lay a finger on him for this, it will be fatal with Sheba. She will be through with you."
Macdonald had thought of this before. It had been coming to him from several different angles that he could not afford to gratify his desire to wipe this meddlesome young official from his path. He made a slow, sulky promise.
"All right. I'll let him alone. Peter can tell him."
Swinging to the saddle, he spurred his horse and cantered away. With a little smile Diane watched his flat, muscular back and the arrogant set of his strong shoulders. There was not his match in the territory, she thought, but sometimes a clever woman could manage him.
His mind was full of the problem that had come into his life. He rode abstractedly, so that he was at the lower ford of the creek almost before he knew it. A bilberry thicket straggled down to the opposite bank of the stream on both sides of the road.
The horse splashed through the ford and took the little rise beyond with a rush. Just beforereaching the brow of the hill, the animal stumbled and fell. As its rider went headlong, he caught a glimpse of a cord drawn taut across the path.
Macdonald, shaken by the fall, began slowly to rise. From the shadows of the bilberry bushes two stooping figures rushed at him. He threw up an arm to ward off the club aimed at his head, but succeeded only in breaking the force of the blow. As he staggered back, stunned, a bullet glanced along his forehead and ridged a furrow through the thick hair. A second stroke of the club jarred him to the heels.
Though his mind was not clear, his body answered automatically the instinct that told him to close with his assailants. He lurched forward and gripped one, wrestling with him for the revolver. Vaguely he knew by the sharp, jagged shoots of pain that the second man was beating his head with a club. The warm blood dripped through his hair and blinded his eyes. Dazed and shaken, he yet managed to get the revolver from the man who had it. But it was his last effort. He was too far gone to use it. A blow on the forehead brought him unconscious to the ground bleeding from a dozen wounds.
On his way back from Seven-Mile Creek Camp Gordon Elliot rode down to the ford. In thedusk he was almost upon them before the robbers heard him. For a moment the two men stood gazing at him and he at the tragedy before him. One of the men moved toward his horse.
"Stop there!" ordered Gordon sharply, and he reached for his revolver.
The man—it was the miner Northrup—jumped for Elliot and the field agent fired. Another moment, and he was being dragged from the saddle. What happened next was never clear to him. He knew that both of the bandits closed in on him and that he was fighting desperately against odds. The revolver had been knocked from his hand and he fought with bare fists just as they did. Twice he emptied his lungs in a cry for help.
They quartered over the ground, for Gordon would not let either of them get behind him. They were larger than he, heavy, muscle-bound giants of great strength, but he was far more active on his feet. He jabbed and sidestepped and retreated. More than once their heavy blows crashed home on his face. His eyes dared not wander from them for an instant, but he was working toward a definite plan. As he moved, his feet were searching for the automatic he had dropped.
One of his feet, dragging over the ground,came into contact with the steel. With a swift side kick Gordon flung the weapon a dozen feet to the left. Presently, watching his chance, he made a dive for it.
Trelawney, followed by Northrup, turned and ran. One of them caught Macdonald's horse by the bridle. He swung to the saddle and the other man clambered on behind. There was a clatter of hoofs and they were gone.
Elliot stooped over the battered body that lay huddled at the edge of the water. The man was either dead or unconscious, he was not sure which. So badly had the face been beaten and hammered that it was not until he had washed the blood from the wounds that Gordon recognized Macdonald.
Opening the coat of the insensible man, Gordon put his hand against the heart. He could not be sure whether he felt it beating or whether the throbbing came from the pulses in his finger tips. As well as he could he bound up the wounds with handkerchiefs and stanched the bleeding. With ice-cold water from the stream he drenched the bruised face. A faint sigh quivered through the slack, inert body.
Gordon hoisted Macdonald across the saddle and led the horse through the ford. He walked beside the animal to town, and never had two miles seemed to him so far. With one hand hesteadied the helpless body that lay like a sack of flour balanced in the trough of the saddle.
Kusiak at last lay below him, and when he descended the hill to the suburbs almost the first house was the one where the Pagets lived.
Elliot threw the body across his shoulder and walked up the walk to the porch. He kicked upon the door with his foot. Sheba answered the knock, and at sight of what he carried the color faded from her face.
"Macdonald has been hurt—badly," he explained quickly.
"This way," the girl cried, and led him to her own room, hurrying in advance to throw back the bedclothes.
"Get Diane—and a doctor," ordered Gordon after he had laid the unconscious man on the white sheet.
While he and Diane undressed the mine-owner Sheba got a doctor on the telephone. The wounded man opened his eyes after a long time, but there was in them the glaze of delirium. He recognized none of them. He did not know that he was in the house of Peter Paget, that Diane and Sheba and his rival were fighting with the help of the doctor to push back the death that was crowding close upon him. All night he raved, and his delirious talk went back to the wild scenes of his earlier life. Sometimes he swore savagely;again he made quiet deadly threats; but always his talk was crisp and clean and vigorous. Nothing foul or slimy came to the surface in those hours of unconscious babbling.
The doctor had shaken his head when he first saw the wounds. He would make no promises.
"He's a mighty sick man. The cuts are deep, and the hammering must have jarred his brain terribly. If it was anybody but Macdonald, I wouldn't give him a chance," he told Diane when he left in the morning to get breakfast. "But Macdonald has tremendous vitality. Of course if he lives it will be because Mr. Elliot brought him in so soon."
Gordon walked with the doctor as far as the hotel. A brown, thin, leathery man undraped himself from a chair in the lobby when Elliot opened the door. He was officially known as the chief of police of Kusiak. Incidentally he constituted the whole police force. Generally he was referred to as Gopher Jones on account of his habit of spasmodic prospecting.
"I got to put you under arrest, Mr. Elliot," he explained.
The loafers in the hotel drew closer.
"What for?" demanded Gordon, surprised.
"Doc thinks it will run to murder, I reckon."
The field agent was startled. "You mean—Macdonald?"
The brown man chewed his quid steadily. "You done guessed it."
"That's absurd, you know. What evidence have you got?"
"First off, you'd had trouble with him. It was common talk that when you and Mac met, guns were going to pop. You bought an automatic revolver at the Seattle & Kusiak Emporium two days ago. You was seen practising with it."
"He had threatened me."
"You want to be careful what you say, Mr. Elliot. It will be used against you." Gopher shot a squirt of tobacco unerringly at the open door of the stove. "You was seen talking with Trelawney and Northrup. Money passed from you to them."
"I gave them a loan of ten dollars each because they were broke. Is that criminal?" demanded Gordon angrily.
"That's your story. You'll git a chance to tell it to the jury, I shouldn't wonder. Mebbe they'll believe it. You never can tell."
"Believe it! Why, you muttonhead, I found him where he was bleeding to death and brought him in."
"That's what I heard say. Kinder queer, ain't it, you happened to be the man that found him?"
"Nothing queer about it. I was riding in fromSeven-Mile Creek Camp." Gordon was exasperated, but not at all alarmed.
"So you was. While you was out at the camp, you asked one of the boys how big the pay-roll would be."
"Does that prove I was planning a hold-up? Isn't that the last thing I would have asked if I had intended robbery?"
"Don't ask me. I ain't no psychologist. All I know is you took an interest in the bank-roll on the way."
"I'm here for the Government investigating Macdonald. I was getting information—earning my pay. Can you understand that?"
Gopher chewed his cud impassively. "Sure I can, and I been earning mine. By the way, howcome you to be beat up so bad, Mr. Elliot?"
"I had a fight with the robbers."
"Sure it wasn't with the robbed. That split lip of yours looks to me plumb like Mac's John Hancock."
Elliot flushed angrily. "Of course if you intend to believe me guilty—"
"Now, there ain't no manner o' use in gettin' het up, young fellow. Mebbe you did it; mebbe you didn't. Anyhow, you'll gimme that gat you been toting these last few days."
Gordon's hand moved toward his hip. Then he remembered.
"I haven't it. I left it—"
"You left it at the ford—with one shell empty. That's where you left it," interrupted the officer.
"Yes. I fired at Northrup as he rushed me."
"Um-hu," assented Jones, impudent unbelief in his eye. "At Northrup or at Macdonald."
"What do you think I did with the money, then? Did I eat it?"
"Not so you could notice it. Since you put it to me flat-foot, you gave it to your pardners. You didn't want it. They did. They have got the horse too—and they're hitting the high spots to make their get-away."
Elliot was locked up in the flimsy jail without breakfast. He was furious, but as he paced up and down the narrow beat beside the bed his anger gave way to anxiety. Surely the Pagets could not believe he had done such a thing. And Sheba—would she accept as true this weight of circumstantial evidence that was piling up against him?
It could all be explained so easily. And yet—the facts fitted like links of a chain to condemn him. He went over them one by one. The babbling tongue of Selfridge that had made common gossip of the impending tragedy in which he and Macdonald were the principals—his purchase of the automatic—his public meetingwith two known enemies of the Scotchman, during which he had been seen to give them money—his target practice with the new revolver—the unhappy chance that had taken him out to Seven-Mile Creek Camp the very day of the robbery—his casual questions of the miners—even the finding of the body by him. All of these dovetailed with the hypothesis that his partners in crime were to escape and bear the blame, while he was to bring the body back to town and assume innocence.
Paget was admitted to his cell later in the morning by Gopher Jones. He shook hands with the prisoner. Jones retired.
"Tough luck, Gordon," the engineer said.
"What does Sheba think?" asked the young man quickly.
"We haven't told her you have been arrested. I heard it only a little while ago."
"And Diane?"
"Yes, she knows."
"Well?" demanded Gordon brusquely.
Peter looked at him in questioning surprise. "Well, what?" He caught the meaning of his friend. "Try not to be an ass, Gordon. Of course she knows the charge is ridiculous."
The chip dropped from the young man's shoulder. "Good old Diane. I might have known," he said with a new cheerfulness.
"I think you might have," agreed Peter dryly. "By the way, have you had any breakfast?"
"No. I'm hungry, come to think of it."
"I'll have something sent in from the hotel."
"How's Macdonald?"
"He's alive—and while there's life there is hope."
"Any news of the murderers?" asked Gordon.
"Posses are combing the hills for them. They stole a packhorse from a truck gardener up the valley. It seems they bought an outfit for a month yesterday—said they were going prospecting."
They talked for a few minutes longer, mainly on the question of a lawyer and the chances of getting out on bond. Peter left the prisoner in very much better spirits than he had found him.
A nurse from the hospital had relieved Diane and Sheba at daybreak. They slept until the middle of the afternoon, then under orders from the doctor walked out to take the air. They were to divide the night watch between them and he said that he wanted them fit for service. The fever of the patient was subsiding. He slept a good deal, and in the intervals between had been once or twice quite rational.
The thoughts of the cousins drew their steps toward the jail. Sheba looked at Diane.
"Will they let us see him, do you think?"
"Perhaps. We can try."
Gopher Jones was not proof against the brisk confidence with which Mrs. Paget demanded admittance. He stroked his unshaven chin while he chewed his quid, then reluctantly got his keys.
The prisoner was sitting on the bed. His heart jumped with gladness when he looked up.
Diane shook hands cheerfully. "How is the criminal?"
"Better for hearing your kind voice," he answered.
His eyes strayed to the ebon-haired girl in thebackground. They met a troubled smile, grave and sweet.
"Awfully good of you to come to see me," he told Sheba gratefully. "How is Macdonald?"
"Better, we hope. He knew Diane this afternoon."
Mrs. Paget did most of the talking, but Gordon contributed his share. Sheba did not say much, but it seemed to the young man that there was a new tenderness in her manner, the expression of a gentle kindness that went out to him because he needed it. The walk had whipped the color into her cheeks and she bloomed in that squalid cell like a desert rose. There was in the fluent grace of the slender, young body a naïve, virginal sweetness that took him by the throat. He knew that she believed in him and the trouble rolled from his heart like a cold, heavy wave.
"We haven't talked to Mr. Macdonald yet about the attack on him," Diane explained. "But he must have recognized the men. There are many footprints at the ford, showing how they moved over the ground as they fought. So he could not have been unconscious from the first blow."
"Unless they were masked he must have known them. It was light enough," agreed Elliot.
"Peter is still trying to get the officers toaccept bail, but I don't think he will succeed. There is a good deal of feeling in town against you."
"Because I am supposed to be an enemy to an open Alaska, I judge."
"Mainly that. Wally Selfridge has been talking a good deal. He takes it for granted that you are guilty. We'll have to wait in patience till Mr. Macdonald speaks and clears you. The doctor won't let us mention the subject to him until he comes to it of his own free will."
Gopher stuck his head in at the door. "You'll have to go, ladies. Time's up."
When Sheba bade the prisoner good-bye it was with a phrase of the old Irish vernacular. "God save you kindly."
He knew the peasant's answer to the wish and gave it. "And you too."
The girl left the prison with a mist in her eyes. Her cousin looked at her with a queer, ironic little smile of affection. To be in trouble was a sure passport to the sympathy of Sheba. Now both her lovers were in a sad way. Diane wondered which of them would gain most from this new twist of fate.
Sheba turned to Mrs. Paget with an impulsive little burst of feminine ferocity. "Why do they put him in prison when they must know he didn't do it—that he couldn't do such a thing?"
"They don't all know as well as you do how noble he is, my dear," answered Diane dryly.
"But it's just absurd to think that he would plan the murder of a man he has broken bread with for a few hundred dollars."
Diane flashed another odd little glance in the direction of her cousin. Probably Sheba was the one woman in Kusiak who did not know that Macdonald had served an ultimatum on Elliot to get out or fight and that their rivalry over her favor was at the bottom of the difficulty between them.
"It will work out all right," promised the older cousin.
Returning from their walk, they met Wally Selfridge coming out of the Paget house.
"Did you see Mr. Macdonald?" asked Diane.
"Yes. He's quite rational now." There was a jaunty little strut of triumph in Wally's cock-sure manner.
Mrs. Paget knew he had made himself very busy securing evidence against Gordon. He was probably trying to curry favor with his chief. The little man always had been jealous of Peter. Perhaps he was attempting to rap him over the shoulder of Elliot because the Government official was a friend of Paget. Just now his insolent voice suggested a special cause for exultation.
The reason Wally was so pleased with himself was that he had dropped a hint into the ear of the wounded man not to clear Elliot of complicity in the attack upon him. The news that the special investigator had been arrested for robbery and attempted murder, flashed all over the United States, would go far to neutralize any report he might make against the validity of the Macdonald claims. If to this could be added later reports of an indictment, a trial, and possibly a conviction, it would not matter two straws what Elliot said in his official statement to the Land Office.
Since the attack upon his chief, Selfridge had moved on the presumption that Elliot had been in a conspiracy to get rid of him. He accepted the guilt of the field agent because this theory jumped with the interest of Wally and his friends. As a politician he intended to play this new development for all it was worth.
He had been shocked at the sight of Macdonald. The terrible beating and the loss of blood had sapped all the splendid, vital strength of the Scotchman. His battered head was swathed in bandages, but the white face was bruised and disfigured. The wounded man was weak as a kitten; only the steady eyes told that he was still strong and unconquered.
"I want to talk business for a minute, MissSedgwick. Will you please step out?" said Macdonald to his nurse.
She hesitated. "The doctor says—"
"Do as I say, please."
The nurse left them alone. Wally told the story of the evidence against Elliot in four sentences. His chief caught the point at once.
After Selfridge had gone, the wounded man lay silent thinking out his programme. Not for a moment did he doubt that he was going to live, and his brain was already busy planning for the future. By some freak of luck the cards had been stacked by destiny in his favor. He knew now that in the violence of his anger against Elliot he had made a mistake. To have killed his rival would have been fatal to the Kamatlah coal claims, would have alienated his best friends, and would have prejudiced hopelessly his chances with Sheba. Fate had been kind to him. He had been in the wrong and it had put him in the right. By the same cut of the cards young Elliot had been thrust down from an impregnable position to one in which he was a discredited suspect. With all this evidence to show that he had conspired against Macdonald, his report to the Department would be labor lost.
Diane came into the sick-room stripping her gloves after the walk. Macdonald smiled feeblyat her and fired the first shot of his campaign to defeat the enemy.
"Has Elliot been captured yet?" he asked weakly.
The keen eyes of his hostess fastened upon him. "Captured! What do you mean? It was Gordon Elliot that brought you in and saved your life."
"Brought me from where?"
"From where he found you unconscious—at the ford."
"That's his story, is it?"
Macdonald shut his eyes wearily, but his incredulous voice had suggested a world of innuendo.
The young woman stood with her gloves crushed tight in both hands. It was her nature to be always a partisan. Without any reserve she was for Gordon in this new fight upon him. What had Wally Selfridge been saying to Macdonald? She longed mightily to ask the sick man some questions, but the orders of the doctor were explicit. Did the mine-owner mean to suggest that he had identified Elliot as one of his assailants? The thing was preposterous.
And yet—that was plainly what he had meant to imply. If he told such a story, things would go hard with Gordon. In court it would clinch the case against him by supplying theone missing link in the chain of circumstantial evidence.
Diane, in deep thought, frowned down upon the wounded man, who seemed already to have fallen into a light sleep. She told herself that this was some of Wally Selfridge's deviltry. Anyhow, she would talk it over with Peter.
Paget smoked placidly, but the heart within him was troubled. It looked as if Selfridge had made up his mind to frame Gordon for a prison sentence. The worst of it was that he need not invent any evidence or take any chances. If Macdonald came through on the stand with an identification of Elliot as one of his assailants, the young man would go down the river to serve time. There was enough corroborative testimony to convict St. Peter himself.
It all rested with Macdonald—and the big Scotch-Canadian was a very uncertain quantity. His whole interests were at one in favor of getting Elliot out of the way. On the other hand—how far would he go to save the Kamatlah claims and to remove this good-looking rival from his path? Peter could not think he would stoop to perjury against an innocent man.
"I'm just telling you what he said," Diane explained. "And it worried me. His smile was cynical. I couldn't help thinking that if he wants to get even with Gordon—"
Mrs. Paget stopped. The maid had just brought into the room a visitor. Diane movedforward and shook hands with him. "How do you do, Mr. Strong? Take this big chair."
Hanford Strong accepted the chair and a cigar. Though a well-to-do mine-owner, he wore as always the rough clothes of a prospector. He came promptly to the object of his call.
"I don't know whether this is where I should have come or not. Are you folks for young Elliot or are you for Selfridge?" he demanded.
"If you put it that way, we're for Elliot," smiled Peter.
"All right. Let me put it another way. You work for Mac. Are you on his side or on Elliot's in this matter of the coal claims?"
Diane looked at Peter. He took his time to answer.
"We hope the coal claimants will win, but we've got sense enough to see that Gordon is in here to report the facts. That's what he is paid for. He'll tell the truth as he sees it. If his superior officers decide on those facts against Macdonald, I don't see that Elliot is to blame."
"That's how it looks to me," agreed Strong. "I'm for a wide-open Alaska, but that don't make it right to put this young fellow through for a crime he didn't do. Lots of folks think he did it. That's all right. I know he didn't. Fact is, I like him. He's square. So I've come to tell you something."
He smoked for a minute silently before he continued.
"I've got no evidence in his favor, but I bumped into something a little while ago that didn't look good to me. You know I room next him at the hotel. I heard a noise in his room, and I thought that was funny, seeing as he was locked up in jail. So I kinder listened and heard whispers and the sound of some one moving about. There's a door between his room and mine that is kept locked. I looked through the keyhole, and in Elliot's room there was Wally Selfridge and another man. They were looking through papers at the desk. Wally put a stack of them in his pocket and they went out locking the door behind them."
"They had no business doing that," burst out Diane. "Wally Selfridge isn't an officer of the law."
Strong nodded dryly to her. "Just what I thought. So I followed them. They went to Macdonald's offices. After awhile Wally came out and left the other man there. Then presently the lights went out. The man is camped there for the night. Will you tell me why?"
"Why?" repeated Diane with her sharp eyes on the miner.
"Because Wally has some papers there he don't want to get away from him."
"Some of Gordon's papers, of course."
"You've said it."
"All his notes and evidence in the case of the coal claims probably," contributed Peter.
"Maybe. Wally has stole them, but he hasn't nerve enough to burn them till he gets orders from Mac. So he's holding them safe at the office," guessed Strong.
"It's an outrage," Diane decided promptly.
"Surest thing you know. Wally has fixed it to frame him for prison and to play safe about his evidence on the coal claims."
"What are you going to do about it?" Diane asked her husband sharply.
Peter rose. "First I'm going to see Gordon and hear what he has to say. Come on, Strong. We may be gone quite a while, Diane. Don't wait up for me if you get through your stint of nursing."
Roused from sleep, Gopher Jones grumbled a good deal about letting the men see his prisoner. "You got all day, ain't you, without traipsing around here nights. Don't you figure I'm entitled to any rest?"
But he let them into the ramshackle building that served as a jail, and after three dollars had jingled in the palm of his hand he stepped outside and left the men alone with his prisoner. The three put their heads together and whispered.
"I'll meet you outside the house of Selfridgein half an hour, Strong," was the last thing that Gordon said before Jones came back to order out the visitors.
As soon as the place was dark again, Gordon set to work on the flimsy framework of his cell window. He knew already it was so decrepit that he could escape any time he desired, but until now there had been no reason why he should. Within a quarter of an hour he lifted the iron-grilled sash bodily from the frame and crawled through the window.
He found Paget and Strong waiting for him in the shadows of a pine outside the yard of Selfridge.
"To begin with, you walk straight home and go to bed, Peter," the young man announced. "You're not in this. You're not invited to our party. I don't have to tell you why, do I?"
The engineer understood the reason. He was an employee of Macdonald, a man thoroughly trusted by him. Even though Gordon intended only to right a wrong, it was better that Paget should not be a party to it. Reluctantly Peter went home.
Gordon turned to Strong. "I owe you a lot already. There's no need for you to run a risk of getting into trouble for me. If things break right, I can do what I have to do without help."
"And if they don't?" Strong waved an impatienthand. "Cut it out, Elliot. I've taken a fancy to go through with this. I never did like Selfridge anyhow, and I ain't got a wife and I don't work for Mac. Why the hell shouldn't I have some fun?"
Gordon shrugged his shoulders. "All right. Might as well play ball and get things moving, then."
The little miner knocked at the door. Wally himself opened. Elliot, from the shelter of the pine, saw the two men in talk. Selfridge shut the door and came to the edge of the porch. He gave a gasp and his hands went trembling into the air. The six-gun of the miner had been pressed hard against his fat paunch. Under curt orders he moved down the steps and out of the yard to the tree.
At sight of Gordon the eyes of Wally stood out in amazement. Little sweat beads burst out on his forehead, for he remembered how busy he had been collecting evidence against this man.
"W-w-what do you want?" he asked.
"Got your keys with you?"
"Y-yes."
"Come with us."
Wally breathed more freely. For a moment he had thought this man had come to take summary vengeance on him.
They led him by alleys and back streets to the office of the Macdonald Yukon Trading Company. Under orders he knocked on the door and called out who he was. Gordon crouched close to the log wall, Strong behind him.
"Let me in, Olson," ordered Selfridge again.
The door opened, and a man stood on the threshold. Elliot was on top of him like a panther. The man went down as though his knees were oiled hinges. Before he could gather his slow wits, the barrel of a revolver was shoved against his teeth.
"Take it easy, Olson," advised Gordon. "Get up—slowly. Now, step back into the office. Keep your hands up."
Strong closed and locked the door behind them.
"I want my papers, Selfridge. Dig up your keys and get them for me," Elliot commanded.
Wally did not need any keys. He knew the combination of the safe and opened it. From an inner drawer he drew a bunch of papers. Gordon looked them over carefully. Strong sat on a table and toyed with a revolver which he jammed playfully into the stomach of his fat prisoner.
"All here," announced the field agent.
The safe-robbers locked their prisoners in the office and disappeared into the night. Theystopped at the house of the collector of customs, a genial young fellow with whom Elliot had played tennis a good deal, and left the papers in his hands for safe-keeping. After which they returned to the hotel and reached the second floor by way of the back stairs used by the servants.
Here they parted, each going to his own room. Gordon slept like a schoolboy and woke only when the sun poured through the window upon his bed in a broad ribbon of warm gold.
He got up, bathed, dressed, and went down into the hotel dining-room. The waiters looked at him in amazement. Presently the cook peered in at him from the kitchen and the clerk made an excuse to drop into the room. Gordon ate as if nothing were the matter, apparently unaware of the excitement he was causing. He paid not the least attention to the nudging and the whispering. After he had finished breakfast, he lit a cigar, leaned back in his chair, and smoked placidly.
Presently an eruption of men poured into the room. At the head of them was Gopher Jones. Near the rear Wally Selfridge lingered modestly. He was not looking for hazardous adventure.
"Whad you doing here?" demanded Gopher, bristling up to Elliot.
The young man watched a smoke wreath floatceilingward before he turned his mild gaze on the chief of police.
"I'm smoking."
"Don't you know we just got in from hunting you—two posses of us been out all night?" Gopher glared savagely at the smoker.
Gordon looked distressed. "That's too bad. There's a telephone in my room, too. Why didn't you call up? I've been there all night."
"The deuce you have," exploded Jones. "And us combing the hills for you. Young man, you're mighty smart. But I want to tell you that you'll pay for this."
"Did you want me for anything in particular—or just to get up a poker game?" asked Elliot suavely.
The leader of the posse gave himself to a job of scientific profanity. He was spurred on to outdo himself because he had heard a titter or two behind him. When he had finished, he formed a procession. He, with Elliot hand-cuffed beside him, was at the head of it. It marched to the jail.
The fingers of Sheba were busy with the embroidery upon which she worked, but her thoughts were full of the man who lay asleep on the lounge. His strong body lay at ease, relaxed.
Already health was flowing back into his veins. Beneath the tan of the lean, muscular cheeks a warmer color was beginning to creep. Soon he would be about again, vigorous and forceful, striding over obstacles to the goal he had set himself.
Just now she was the chief goal of his desire. Sheba did not deceive herself into thinking that he had for a moment accepted her dismissal of him.
He still meant to marry her, and he had told her so in characteristic way the day after their break.
Sheba had sent him a check for the amount he had paid her and had refused to see him or anybody else.
Shamed and humiliated, she had kept to her room. The check had come back to her by mail.
Across the face of it he had written in his strong handwriting:—
I don't welsh on my bets. You can't give to me what is not mine.
Do not think for an instant that I shall not marry you.
Watching him now, she wondered what manner of man he was. There had been a day or two when she had thought she understood him. Then she had learned, from the story of Meteetse, how far his world of thought was from hers. That which to her had put a gulf between them was to him only an incident.
She moved to adjust a window blind and when she returned found that his steady eyes were fixed upon her.
"You're getting better fast," she said.
"Yes."
The girl had a favor to ask of him and lest her courage fail she plunged into it.
"Mr. Macdonald, if you say the word Mr. Elliot will be released on bail. I am thinking you will be so good as to say it."
His narrowed eyes held a cold glitter. "Why?"
"You must know he is innocent. You must—"
"I know only what the evidence shows," he cut in, warily on his guard. "He may or may not have been one of my attackers. From thefirst blow I was dazed. But everything points to it that he hired—"
"Oh, no!" interrupted the Irish girl, her dark eyes shining softly. "The way of it is that he saved your life, that he fought for you, and that he is in prison because of it."
"If that is true, why doesn't he bring some proof of it?"
"Proof!" she cried scornfully. "Between friends—"
"He's no friend of mine. The man is a meddler. I despise him."
The scarlet flooded her cheeks. "And I am liking him very, very much," she flung back stanchly.
Macdonald looked up at the vivid, flushed face and found it wholly charming. He liked her none the less because her fine eyes were hot and defiant in behalf of his rival.
"Very well," he smiled. "I'll get him out if you'll do me a good turn too."
"Thank you. It's a bargain."
"Then sing to me."
She moved to the piano. "What shall I sing?"
"Sing 'Divided.'"
The long lashes veiled her soft eyes while she considered. In a way he had tricked her into singing for him a love-song she did not want to sing. But she made no protest. Swiftly sheturned and slid along the bench. Her fingers touched the keys and she began.
He watched the beauty and warmth of her dainty youth with eyes that mirrored the hunger of his heart. How buoyantly she carried her dusky little head! With what a gallant spirit she did all things! He was usually a frank pagan, but when he was with her it seemed to him that God spoke through her personality all sorts of brave, fine promises.
Sheba paid her pledge in full. After the first two stanzas were finished she sang the last ones as well:—
"An' what about the wather when I'd have ould Paddy's boat,Is it me that would be feared to grip the oars an' go afloat?Oh, I could find him by the light of sun or moon or star:But there's caulder things than salt waves between us, so they are.Och anee!"Sure well I know he'll never have the heart to come to me,An' love is wild as any wave that wanders on the sea,'Tis the same if he is near me, 'tis the same if he is far:His thoughts are hard an' ever hard between us, so they are.Och anee!"
"An' what about the wather when I'd have ould Paddy's boat,Is it me that would be feared to grip the oars an' go afloat?Oh, I could find him by the light of sun or moon or star:But there's caulder things than salt waves between us, so they are.Och anee!
"An' what about the wather when I'd have ould Paddy's boat,
Is it me that would be feared to grip the oars an' go afloat?
Oh, I could find him by the light of sun or moon or star:
But there's caulder things than salt waves between us, so they are.
Och anee!
"Sure well I know he'll never have the heart to come to me,An' love is wild as any wave that wanders on the sea,'Tis the same if he is near me, 'tis the same if he is far:His thoughts are hard an' ever hard between us, so they are.Och anee!"
"Sure well I know he'll never have the heart to come to me,
An' love is wild as any wave that wanders on the sea,
'Tis the same if he is near me, 'tis the same if he is far:
His thoughts are hard an' ever hard between us, so they are.
Och anee!"
Her hands dropped from the keys and she turned slowly on the end of the seat. The dark lashes fell to her hot cheeks. He did not speak, but she felt the steady insistence of his gaze. In self-defense she looked at him.
The pallor of his face lent accent to the fire that smouldered in his eyes.
"I'm going to marry you, Sheba. Make up your mind to that, girl," he said harshly.
There was infinite pity in the look she gave him. "'There's caulder things than salt waves between us, so they are,'" she quoted.
"Not if I love you and you love me. By God, I trample down everything that comes between us."
He swung to a sitting position on the lounge. Through the steel-gray eyes in the brooding face his masterful spirit wrestled with hers. A lean-loined Samson, with broad, powerful shoulders and deep chest, he dominated his world ruthlessly. But this slim Irish girl with the young, lissom body held her own.
"Must we go through that again?" she asked gently.
"Again and again until you see reason."
She knew the tremendous driving power of the man and she was afraid in her heart that he would sweep her from the moorings to which she clung.
"There is something else I haven't told you." The embarrassed lashes lifted bravely from the flushed cheeks to meet steadily his look. "I don't think—that I—care for you. 'Tis I that am shamed at my—fickleness. But I don't—not with the full of my heart."
His bold, possessive eyes yielded no fraction of all they claimed. "Time enough for that, Sheba. Truth is that you're afraid to let yourself love me. You're worried because you can't measure me by the little two-by-four foot-rule you brought from Ireland with you."
Sheba nodded her dusky little head in naïve candor. "I think there will be some truth in that, Mr. Macdonald. You're lawless, you know."
"I'm a law to myself, if that's what you mean. It is my business to help hammer out an empire in this Northland. If I let my work be cluttered up by all the little rules made by little men for other little ones, my plans would come to a standstill. I am a practical man, but I keep sight of the vision. No need for me to brag. What I have done speaks for me as a guidepost to what I mean to do."
"I know," the girl admitted with the impetuous generosity of her race. "I hear it from everybody. You have built towns and railroads and developed mines and carried the twentieth century into new outposts. You have given workto thousands. But you go so fast I can't keep step with you. I am one of the little folks for whom laws were made."
"Then I'll make a new code for you," he said, smiling. "Just do as I say and everything will come out right."
Faintly her smile met his. "My grandmother might have agreed to that. But we live in a new world for women. They have to make their own decisions. I suppose that is a part of the penalty we pay for freedom."
Diane came into the room and Macdonald turned to her.
"I have just been telling Sheba that I am going to marry her—that there is no escape for her. She had better get used to the idea that I intend to make her happy."
The older cousin glanced at Sheba and laughed with a touch of embarrassment. "Whether she wants to be happy or not, O Cave Man?"
"I'm going to make her want to."
Sheba fled, but from the door she flung back her challenge. "I don't think so."