Drennen's entrance into the game, informal as it had been, elicited no comment from the other players. He had made his little stack of silver in front of him, coins of the States. There was other American money staked, jingling fraternally against pieces struck in the Canadian mint. Even a fewpesoshad found their way from Garcia's pockets and were accepted without challenge.
For fifteen minutes the game was quiet and slow enough. Then at a smiling suggestion from the Mexican the original bet was doubled. It was poker dice now, having begun as razzle dazzle. There were no horses since horses delayed matters. Beside Drennen and Garcia there were five other men playing. The Mexican when he suggested doubled stakes was losing. Then his fortunes began to mend. The man across the table from him, cleaned out of his few dollars, got up and went to watch the game of solo. Quite steadily for a little Garcia won. He sang his fragments of love songs and between throws made eyes at Ernestine Dumont. Drennen frowned at him, both for his singing and for his love making. Garcia continued to win and to sing.
Drennen lost as steadily as Garcia won. "No-luck" his nickname was—"No-luck" the goddess at his elbow to-night. Without speaking, when the dice cup came around to him, he doubled the already doubled stakes. One other man, shaking his head, silently drew out of the game. The others accepted the challenge as it had been given, in silence. Garcia, with every air of confidence, turned out the high throw and fingered his winnings smilingly. Drennen's hand sought his pocket.
"Double again?" he asked bluntly, his hard grey eyes upon the Mexican.
Ramon Garcia laughed.
"As you will, señor," he said lightly. And under his breath, musically, his eyes going to the nook by the fireplace, "Dios! It is sweet to be young and to love!"
Drennen's hand brought from his pocket a canvas bag heavy with gold. There was a goodly pile of money in front of the Mexican. The stakes were doubling fast, the two evidently meant business, and when the dice rolled again they were playing alone and a little knot of men was watching.
"You shall see," chuckled the dried-up little man from Moosejaw.
Ernestine Dumont was whispering in Kootanie George's ear. From the mesh bag at her wrist she took something, offering it to him eagerly. George stared at her and then shook his head.
"Keep it," he muttered. "I don't need it."
He didn't look at the hand which was being dealt him but left his table and went across the room to where Drennen and Ramon Garcia were sitting, carrying with him the money he had had before him. As he went he thrust his big hand down into his pocket and as he slumped heavily into a chair opposite Drennen he brought out another canvas bag. It too struck heavily against the table top. Drennen did not look at him. Garcia smiled and nodded brightly, and in turn, dropped to the table his purse, heavy like the others and giving forth the musical metallic chink.
"Ah! But this is pretty!" murmured Père Marquette, glad at once to see peace and a game which would interest his guests. "Jules, bring more wine, plenty. Make the fires up, big."
"How big are you bettin' 'em?" Kootanie George demanded as he emptied his canvas bag and piled several hundred dollars in neat yellow stacks.
Garcia lifted his shoulders, showed his fine white teeth pleasantly and looked to Drennen.
"As big as you like," retorted Drennen crisply. And then, lifting his voice a little, "Marquette!"
"Oui, m'sieu." Marquette came quickly to the table.
"I want some money … for this."
Then Drennen spilled the contents of his bag upon the table and for a moment every man who saw sat or stood riveted to his place, absolutely without motion. Then a gasp went up, a gasp of wonder, while here and there a quick spurt of blood in the face or a brilliant gleam of the eye told of quickened heart beats and the grip of that excitement which man never lived who could fight down altogether. Drennen had turned out upon the table top a veritable cascade of nuggets.
"Gold!"
The word sped about the room, whispered, booming loudly, creating a sudden tense eagerness. Men shoved at one another, craning necks, to peer at the thing which Drennen so coolly had disclosed. Gold! Nuggets that were, in the parlance of the camp, "rotten" with gold. Drennen two weeks ago had left the Settlement with his last cent gone in a meagre grub stake; now he was back and he had made a strike. A strike such as no man here had ever dropped his pick into in all of the ragged years of adventuresome search; a strike which could not be a week's walk from MacLeod's, a strike which might mean millions to the first few who would stake out claims.
Père Marquette stared and muttered strange, awestruck French oaths and made no move to unclasp his hands, lifted before him in an attitude incongruously like that of prayer. Kootanie George, whom men called rich and who owned a claim for which two companies were contending, stared and a little pallor crept into his cheeks. Ramon Garcia broke off in the midst of his little song softly whispering, "Jesus Maria." No-luck Drennen had found gold!
"Well?" demanded Drennen savagely, swinging about upon Marquette, who was bending tremulously over him. "Didn't you hear me?"
"Mais oui, m'sieu," Marquette said hastily, his tongue running back and forth between his lips. "But, m'sieu, I have not so much money in the house."
The men who had surged about the table dropped back silently and began speaking in half whispers, each man after a moment seeking for his "pardner." One of them upon such a quest carried the word across the street to the warehouse and the dance came to an end in noisy confusion.… To-night the Settlement was filled to overflowing; to-morrow it would be deserted.
"Give me what you've got," Drennen commanded, his hand lying very still by the heap of dull-gleaming rock. "Bring the scales here."
The scales were brought, and after a mixture of guessing and weighing, Drennen pushed two of the nuggets across the table to Marquette and accepted minted gold amounting to six hundred dollars.
"The rest, m'sieu?" offered Marquette. "Shall I put it in the safe for you?"
"No, thanks," said Drennen drily, as he put the remainder into his pocket. "I prefer to bank for myself." The brief words, the insult of the glance which went with them, whipped a flush into the old man's cheeks. He offered no remark, however, and went back with his scales to the counter where he was surrounded by men who wanted the "feel" of the nuggets in their palms.
No longer was Ernestine the only woman in the rooms. Flush-cheeked and sparkling eyed, old women and young, alike impressed with the story which in its many forms was already going its rounds, came trooping back from the dance. Many hands at once reached out for the two nuggets, tongues clacked incessantly, while old prospectors and young girls alike ventured their surmises concerning the location of the strike. It was to be noted that no one had asked the only man who knew.
No-luck Drennen's luck had come to him. That was the word which again ran through the babel of conjectures. And when a man has had the luck which had been Drennen's for the years which the North had known him, and that luck changed, the change would be sweeping. Men might follow in his wake to a path of gold.
Meanwhile Dave Drennen played his game of dice in sombre silence. Over and over, losing almost steadily, he named a larger wager and Garcia and Kootanie George met his offer. He bet fifty dollars and lost, a hundred and lost, two hundred on a single cast and lost. In three throws over half of his money was gone. Three hundred and fifty dollars; he had two hundred and fifty left to him. Twice had the Mexican won; once George, taking in the two-hundred dollar bet. George's face was flushed; he had won four hundred dollars at one throw since the Mexican's two hundred had come to him with Drennen's. George had never played dice like this and the madness of it got into his slow blood and stood glaring out of his eyes.
"Two hundred fifty," offered Drennen briefly. He shoved the last of his pile out on the table. George covered it quickly, his big, square fingers shaking.
Garcia smiled at them both, then transferred his smile to his own money. In two throws he had won three hundred dollars, in one he had lost two hundred. He seemed to hesitate a moment; then he saw Ernestine Dumont standing upon a deserted card table, her cheeks rosy with excitement, and the sight of her decided him. He sighed, raked his money from the table to his pocket and got to his feet, moving gracefully through the crowd with many, "Dispensame, señor," and went to Ernestine's side. Kootanie George did not mark his going. For it was Kootanie George's throw and two hundred and fifty dollars were to be won … or lost.
George turned out the cubes and a ripping oath followed them. He had thrown a pair of deuces. His big fist came down upon the table with a crash. Drennen stared at him a brief moment while the cup was raised in his hand, contempt unveiled in his eyes. Then he rolled out the dice. Something akin to a sob burst from Kootanie George's lips. Drennen had turned out a "stiff," no pair at all.
"It's mine!" cried George, his great body half thrown across the table as he tossed out both arms to sweep in his winnings. "Mine, by God!"
Ernestine was clapping her hands, her eyes dancing with joy even while they were shot through with malice. Drennen's glance went to her, came back to Kootanie George to rest upon him sneeringly. Then he laughed, that ugly laugh which few men had heard and those few had remembered.
"Gold!" jeered Drennen. "It's a little pinch of gold, and you go crazy over it! You are a fool."
"It's mine!" cried George again. He had won only a little over six hundred dollars and he could have afforded to have lost as much. But he was in the grip of the passion of the game.
"You've got about a thousand dollars there," said Drennen eyeing the jumble of coins in front of the big Canadian. He jerked the old canvas bag out of his pocket and let it fall heavily to the table. "One throw for the whole thing, mine against yours."
Kootanie George knew gold when he saw it and now he knew that there was nearer two thousand than one in that bag. He gripped the dice box, glared at Drennen angrily, hesitated, then with a sudden gesture turned out the dice.
He had cursed before when he had made his throw; now he just slumped forward a little in his chair, his jaw dropping, the color dribbling out of his cheeks, finding all words inadequate. He had thrown two deuces again. Again Drennen looked at him contemptuously. Again George heard his ugly laugh. Drennen threw his dice carelessly. And upon the table, between the canvas bag and the glitter of minted gold, there stared up into George's face five fives.
"Damn you," cried the Canadian hoarsely, his fingers hooked and standing apart like claws as he half rose from his chair. "Damn you!"
His nerves were strung high and tense and the words came from him involuntarily. They were the clean words of rage at which no man in the world could take offence unless he sought a quarrel. And yet Drennen, as he moved forward a little to draw his winnings toward him, thrust his face close up to Kootanie George's and said crisply:
"Say that again and I'll slap your face!"
"Damn you!" shouted George.
And with the words came the blow, Drennen's open palm hard against George's cheek.
"And now George will kill him!" cried Ernestine through her set teeth.
"Oh, mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!" half sobbed old Marquette. "They will kill one the other! Another time it matters not. But to-night, here!… Stop; I forbid it!"
One blow had been struck and already the compact circle about the two men had squared as those who watched drew back along the walls leaving the centre of the room clear. They had jerked tables and chairs away with them. One table, the one at which Drennen and George had sat a moment ago, with its load of virgin gold and minted coins, was now against the further counter, young Frank Marquette guarding it, that the gold upon it might go to Drennen when the fight was over.…
"If he is alive then," he muttered, his eyes narrowing as they took note of the black rage distorting the big Canadian's face. "If George does not kill him it is a miracle of Satan."
"You are come to-night for trouble." Slowly Kootanie George slipped his heavy coat from his shoulders. His deep, hairy chest, swelling to the breath which fairly whistled through his distended nostrils, popped a button back through a frayed button hole and stood out like an inflated bellows. "I just say, 'Damn you.' That is nothin' for a man to fight. You look for trouble, an' by God, I am ready!"
He flung the coat from him and lifted his big hands. Drennen was standing waiting for him, his own hands at his sides, his steely eyes filled with an evil light. He made no answer beyond the silent one of a slight lifting of his lip, like a soundless wolfish snarl.
"I forbid!" screamed Père Marquette again. "Another time it is nothing. To-night it is to insult Mamma Jeanne. Stop it,chiens!"
But Mamma Jeanne had her own word to say. Her plump arms were about her indignant spouse, dragging him back.
"Let them be," she commanded. "Is not George a guest and has he not the right to put his heel upon an evil serpent? It is just," she cried, her eyes all fire. "It will be but a little minute and,pouf! it is all over. Let them be!"
She had great faith in the prowess of her man, had Mère Marquette. Had there been a thunder storm outside, had Père Marquette wished it to stop while Mère Marquette wanted it to continue, she would have put her arms about him and pleaded, "Let it be."
"There shall be fon,mes enfants," whispered the old prophet from Moosejaw.
Slowly, but light footed enough, lifting his great hands still a little higher, Kootanie George came forward. Drennen waited, his lip raised in the bitter snarl which seemed frozen upon his dark face, his grey eyes malevolent. He had fought with many men, he was not afraid to fight; all men there knew that. But they wondered, looking at him and then at the other, if he understood the thing standing unhidden in Kootanie George's eyes.
Yes, he understood. For, just the wee fraction of a second before the Canadian struck, Drennen jerked up his own hands, ready for him. And the two struck at the same instant. There was to be no finesse of boxing; these men had no knowledge of fistic trickery. All that they knew was to fight, to strike hard and straight from the shoulder, opposing strength with strength, swiftness with swiftness, merciless hatred with a hatred as merciless. And so it happened that both blows landed, two little coughing grunts following close upon the impact telling how mightily, and both men reeled back. There was blood upon Drennen's lower lip. The upper was still lifted snarlingly from the red-stained teeth.
Ramon Garcia, watching with an interested smile, nodded his head as though in approval and glanced at Ernestine Dumont upon the table above him. Much of the colour had gone out of her cheeks, leaving them drawn and pallid. Her parted lips too showed the whiteness of her hard set teeth.
"I," meditated Ramon Garcia as his eyes returned to the two men, "I should be less frightened of George than of her. Her eyes are like a devil."
A bare fisted, relentless, give and take fight such as this promised to be is common enough wherever hard men foregather, dirt-common in a country where the fag end of a long winter of enforced idleness leaves restless nerves raw. The uncommon thing about the brief battle or in any way connected with it lay in the attitude of the onlookers. Rarely is a crowd so unanimous both in expectation and desire. George would kill Drennen or would nearly kill him, and it would be a good thing. A man of no friends, Drennen had no sympathiser. No man who watched with narrowed eyes, no woman on table or chair or hiding her face in her hands, but asked and looked for the same ending.
Though from the first it was apparent that George was the bigger man, the heavier, the stronger, it was silently conceded that these qualities though they mean much do not count for everything. It became clear almost as they met for the first blows that the slenderer was quicker and that if Kootanie George was confident Drennen was no less so. And, when they both reeled backward, a many-voiced murmur of surprise was like a reluctant admission: Drennen had done two things which no other man had ever done before him; he had kept his feet against the smashing drive of that big fist in his face and he had made George stagger. For the moment it looked as though the two would fall.
Once more George came forward slowly while Drennen waited for him, again they met, Drennen leaping forward just as the Canadian's sledge of a clenched hand was lifted. Each man threw up a guarding left arm only to have his brawny guard beaten through as again the two resounding blows landed almost like one; this time there was a trickle of red from the Canadian's mouth, a panting, wheezing cough from the American as he received the other's blow full in the chest. For a dizzy moment they stood separated by the very fury of their onslaught, each balancing.
"They are men!" murmured Garcia in delight. And Ernestine, leaning far out from her table, cried breathlessly:
"George! If you love me …"
George glanced at her, a slow smile upon his battered lips. He ran the back of his hand across his mouth and again moved forward, slowly. And again Drennen snarling, awaited him.
This time George crouched a little as he made his attack, and as he drew closer he moved more swiftly, bunching his big muscles, fairly hurling his great body as he leaped and struck, reckless of what blows might find him, determined by his superior weight alone to carry the other back and down. And as though Drennen had read the purpose in the smouldering eyes he too leaped forward so that the two big bodies met in mid air. Like one blow came the sounds of the two blows given and taken as the impact of the two bodies gave out its soft thud. And as one man the two went down together, fighting, beating brutally at each other, all rules of the game forgotten save that one alone which says, "He wins who wins!"
For a little they clenched and rolled upon the floor like two great, grim cats. Through the sound of scuffling came the noise of short-armed jabs, the deep throated curses of Kootanie George and once … his first vocal utterance … one of Dave Drennen's laughs. It was when he had again driven his fist against George's mouth, drawing blood from both lips and hand cut by breaking teeth.
Kootanie George's left arm was flung about the neck of the man at whose body his white knuckled fist was driving like a piston; the American had craned his neck and in order to protect his face held it pressed close to George's breast. Drennen's right arm was about George's body, caught against the floor as they fell, Drennen's left hand with thumb sunken deep was already at the Canadian's throat. The snarl upon Drennen's face was the more marked now, more filled with menace and hate as his body experienced the torture of the other's regular blows.
For a little they were strangely silent, Kootanie having given over his ripping oaths, strangely quiet as they lay with no movement apparent beyond the ceaseless rhythmic striking of George's arm. Even those blows ceased in a moment as George's hand went hurriedly to the wrist at his breast. The thumb at his throat had sunk until the place where it crooked at the joint was lost; George's face from red had gone to white, then to a hectic purple. Now they strove for the mastery of the hand at the throat, George dragging at it mightily, Drennen's fingers crooked like talons with the tendons standing out so that they seemed white cords in the lamplight. George's breath came in short, shorter gasps, he tugged with swelling muscles, his own hand a terrible wrenching vice at Drennen's wrist. And when the purple face grew more hideously purple, when the short gasps were little dry sounds, speaking piteously of agony and suffocation, when still the relentless grip at his throat was unshaken, men began for the first time to guage the strength which lay in the great, gaunt frame of Dave Drennen.
And George too had begun to understand. Suddenly his hand came away from the iron wrist and sought Drennen's throat for which his wide bulging eyes quested frantically. His hand found what it sought at last, but Drennen had twisted his head still a little further to the side, brought his face still lower and closer against the Canadian's chest, and George could not get the grip where he wanted it, full upon the front of the throat. He tore at the rigid muscles below the jaw a moment and the bloody, broken skin of Drennen's neck told with what fury George had striven.
But George must hasten now and he knew it. Again his right hand sought Drennen's left, fought at the deadly grip at his own throat. In his reach a quick cunning came to him and his groping fingers passed along Drennen's wrist and did not tarry there. Up and up they went, the great questing fingers of the Canadian, until at last they found the fingers of the other man. Here they settled. And then those who watched saw the middle finger of Drennen's hand drawn back from the flesh of George's neck, saw it bent back and back, still further back until it was a pure wonder that Drennen held on, back and back.… And then there was a little snap of a bone broken and Drennen's hand fell away and Kootanie George, drawing a long, sobbing breath, rolled clear of him and slowly rose to his feet.
Drennen too rose but not so slowly. His left hand was at his side, the one broken finger standing oddly apart from its fellows, as he ran the three steps to meet Kootanie George. George threw up his arm, but the savagery of the blow beating upon him struck the guard aside and Kootanie George, caught fairly upon the chin flung out his arms and went down. He brushed against the wall behind him in falling and so came only to his knees on the floor, his hands out before him. Drennen stood over him, breathing deeply, gathering his strength for a last effort. George staggered perceptibly as he got to his feet, a queer look in his eyes. Drennen struck swiftly, his fist grinding into the pit of Kootanie's stomach and, as the big man crumpled, finding his chin again. And as George staggered a second time Drennen was upon him, Drennen's laugh like the snarl of a wolf, Drennen's hand, the right this time, at George's throat.…
A thin scream from Ernestine Dumont quivering with a strange blend of emotions, a spit of flame, a puff of smoke hanging idly in the still air of the room, the sharp bark of a small calibre revolver, and Drennen's hand dropped from Kootanie's throat. He swayed unsteadily a moment, stepped toward her, his eyes flecked with red and brimming with rage, his hand going to the wound in his side.
"Cat," said Drennen deliberately.
As he fell back, a sudden weakness upon him, settling unsteadily into a chair, Ramon Garcia struck up the barrel of the smoking gun in Ernestine's hand and the second bullet ripped into the papered ceiling. Then Kootanie George turned slowly, his eyes full upon Ernestine's, and said as Drennen had said it,
"Cat!"
"You are one big brute!" cried Mère Jeanne angrily. "You, to call her that when she shoot because she love you! I should do like that for Marquette here."
"She has put me to shame, made me a man for men to laugh at," said George heavily. "What, am I no man but a little baby that a woman must fight my fight? I am done with her."
Drennen's face had gone white; the fingers gripping his torn side were sticky and wet and red. He rose half way from his chair only to drop back, the rigid muscles along his jaw showing how the teeth were hard set. He had seemed to forget Ernestine, George, all of them, his gaze seeking and finding the table where his gold lay, then lifting to Frank Marquette's face suspiciously. Then it was that he noted and that others marked for the first time how again the outer door had opened that night to admit tardy guests. A little flicker of surprise came into his eyes, and small wonder.
Three persons had entered before Ernestine had cried out and fired the first shot, two men and a girl. The men would come in for their share of attention later; the girl demanded hers now, like a right and a tribute. She stood a little in front of her companions. Her eyes widened, growing a little hard as they watched the end of the fight, passed from Drennen and Kootanie George to Ernestine Dumont, came slowly back to George, rested finally upon Drennen as though their chief interest lay with him. She did not show fear as a woman of her appearance might be looked upon to show it; there were interest and curiosity in her look and, finally, when after a long time she looked again from Drennen to Ernestine, a high contempt.
In spite of the heavy white sweater whose collar was drawn high about her throat, in spite of the white hood concealing all but one stray wisp of brown hair, her loveliness was unhidden, looking out in all of the splendid glory of youthful health and vigour. Her eyes were as grey as Drennen's own, but with little golden flecks seeming to float upon sea-grey, unsounded depths. She might have been seventeen, she could not have been more than twenty, and yet her air was one of confidence and in it was an indefinable something which was neither arrogance nor yet hauteur, and which in its subtle way hinted that the blood pulsing through her perfect body was the blood of those who had known how to command since babyhood and who had never learned to obey. When later men learned that that blood was drawn in riotous, converging currents from unconquerable fighting Scotch highlanders and from a long line of French nobility there came no surprise in the discovery. Men and women together, Kootanie George and Ernestine, Garcia and Drennen, Père Marquette and Mère Marquette, felt the difference between her and themselves.
"We seem to interrupt," she said coolly, her voice deeply musical, as she turned to Père Marquette. He, looking a little dazed and stupid from all that had taken place, but never forgetful of his duties as host, had come toward her hesitantly, his lips seeking to form a new phrase of greeting. "We are tired and need food. Everything seemed closed but your place. So we came in."
"You are welcome, mam'selle," he said hurriedly. "Mos' welcome. It is unfortunate …"
"Captain Sefton," went on the girl quite calmly, "will you see what you can do for that man? He is losing a great deal of blood."
Captain Sefton, a thin, hawk-eyed man with a coppery Vandyke beard, shrugged his shoulders distastefully but passed her, drawing near Dave Drennen. The girl turned toward the second of her companions, a younger man by half a dozen years, who brought the stamp of the cities in his fashionable clothes, the relentless marks of a city's dissipation about his small mouth and light eyes and, in air and features, a suggestion of the French.
"Marc," she said, drawing at her gauntlets, her back upon Sefton and Drennen, "if you can arrange for a room for me I shall go to it immediately."
Marc obeyed her as Captain Sefton had done, turning to Marquette with an inquiry. Drennen's eyes were only for a fleeting moment upon Sefton whose quick fingers were busy at the wound. Then they returned to the table at which he had diced. Frank Marquette, seeing the look, poured the gold all into the canvas bag and brought it to him.
The eyes of one man alone did not waver once while the girl was in the room, black eyes as tender as a woman's, eloquent now with admiration, their glance like a caress. Ramon Garcia spoke softly, under his breath. Ernestine Dumont looked down at him curiously. She had nor understood the words for they were Spanish. They had meant,
"Now am I resigned to my exile!"
For a week Dave Drennen lay upon the bunk in the one room dugout which had been home for him during the winter. Stubborn and sullen and silent at first, snarling his anger as sufficient strength came back into him, he refused the aid which the Settlement, now keenly solicitous, offered. He knew why the men who had not spoken to him two weeks ago sought to befriend him now. He knew that the swift change of attitude was due to nothing in the world but to a fear that he might die without disclosing his golden secret.
"And I am of half a mind to die," he told the last man to trouble him; "just to shame Kootanie George, to hang Ernestine Dumont and to drive a hundred gold seekers mad."
During the week a boy from Joe's Lunch Counter brought him his meals and gave him the scant attention he demanded. The boy went away with money in his pockets and with tales to tell of a man like a wounded bull moose. Always there were eager hands to detain him, eager tongues to ask if Drennen had let anything drop. Always the same answer, a shake of the head; he had learned nothing.
The day after the affair at Père Marquette's had seen MacLeod's Settlement empty of men. Each one following his own hope and fancy they had gone into the mountains, heading toward the north as Drennen had headed two weeks before, some following the main trail for a matter of many miles, others breaking off to right or to left at tempting cross-trails, hastening feverishly, dreaming dreams and finding rude awakenings. The snows were melting everywhere upon the slopes, the dirty waters running down the trails making an ooze at midday which sucked up and destroyed the tracks of the men who travelled over it in the crisp early mornings.
There was no sign to tell whether Drennen had gone straight on during the seven days he might have been pushing away from the camp and had made his strike at the end of them, or whether he had turned off somewhere hardly out of sight of the handful of shacks marking MacLeod's Settlement. No sign to tell that the golden vein or pocket lay within shouting distance from the Settlement or fifty, seventy-five miles removed. And Drennen, lying on his back upon his hard bunk, stared up at the blackened beams across his ceiling and smiled his hard, bitter smile as he pictured the frantic, fruitless quest.
Sefton, the man with the coppery Vandyke beard, thin-jawed and with restless eyes, had given him certain rude help at Marquette's and had been among the first the following day to offer aid. Drennen dismissed him briefly, offering to pay for what he had already done but saying he had no further need of clumsy fingers fooling with his hurt. Sefton favoured him with a keen scrutiny from the door, hesitated, shrugged his thin shoulders and went away. Drennen wondered if the girl, who seemed in the habit of ordering people around, had sent him.
At the end of the week Drennen was about again. He had kept his wound clean with the antiseptic solutions to be obtained from the store and under its bandages it was healing. He found that he was weaker than he had supposed but with a grunt drove his lax muscles to stiffen and obey his will. From the door he came back, found a broken bit of mirror and looked curiously at the face reflected in it. No beautiful sight, he told himself grimly. It was haggard, drawn and wan. A beard three weeks old, the black of it shot through here and there with white hairs, made the stern face uncouth.
"I look a savage," he told himself disgustedly, tossing the glass to the cluttered table. Then, with a grim tightening of the lips, "And why not?"
He made his way slowly, his side paining him no little, to Joe's Lunch Counter. It was late afternoon and the street was deserted. A gleam of satisfaction showed fleetingly in his eyes; he knew why the street was deserted and the knowledge pleased him.
None of the Settlement was in Joe's restaurant, but the presence of the two strangers who had come with the girl saved it from utter desertion. They were finishing a light meal as Drennen entered and looked up at him curiously. Drennen saw a quick glance interchanged. He knew the meaning of this, too, knew that the story of his strike had gone its way to them, that because of those nuggets which even now weighted his pocket he was a marked man, a man to be reckoned with, to be watched, to be followed, to be fawned upon if possible. He frowned at Sefton's nod and took his place at the lunch counter.
Presently the younger of the two, Captain Sefton's companion, got up and came to Drennen's side, offering his hand.
"I am glad to see you around again," he said, pleasantly.
Drennen did not look toward him.
"Some more coffee, Joe," he said shortly.
The young fellow stared at him a moment, a quick retort upon his lips. It was checked however by Sefton saying quickly:
"Come on, Lemarc. It's none of your funeral if a man wants to be left alone. Let's go find Ygerne."
Ygerne. So that was her name, Drennen thought as he stirred two heaping spoons of sugar into his coffee and out of the corner of his eye watched the two men go out. Well, what was the difference? One name would do as well as another and she was an adventuress like the rest of them in this land of hard trails. Else why should she be here at all, and with men like Lemarc and Sefton? Had he not distrusted all men by sweeping rule these two at least he would have distrusted for the craft in their eyes.
He drank his second cup of coffee, stuffed his old pipe full of coarse tobacco and went outside. Sefton and Lemarc had passed out of sight. Drennen hesitated just a second, pausing at the door. He was pitifully weak. He supposed that the thing for him to do was to crawl back to his bunk for the remainder of the day and the long night to follow. He clamped his pipe stem hard between his teeth. He'd do nothing of the kind. Did strength, any more than anything else in the world, come to a man who lay on his back and waited for it? He needed exercise.
So he strolled down through the quiet Settlement, turned into the trail which leads upward along old Ironhead's flank, driving his body mercilessly to the labour of the climb. There was a spot he knew where he could sit and look down across the valley and from which far out somewhere to north or south he might see fools seeking for the gold he had found. It was a little cup set in the side of the mountain, a tiny valley at once beautiful and aloof, and he had not been here since last fall. In it he could rest unmolested, unwatched.
During the day there had been showers; now the sun was out warmly while here and there the sky was hidden by clouds and in places he could see the little mists shaken downward through the bright air. Warm rains would mean a quickened thaw, open trails and swifter travel. In a way a propitious season was making it up to him for the time he was losing in idleness with a hole in his side.
An odd incident occurred that afternoon. Drennen, hard man as he was, Inured to the heavy shocks of a life full of them, felt this little thing strangely. He was resting, sitting upon a great boulder under a pine tree. The cup-like valley, or depressed plateau, lay at his left, himself upon an extreme rim of it. As he brooded he noted idly how the sunshine was busied with the vapour filled air, building of it a triumphant arch, gloriously coloured. His mood was not for brightness and yet, albeit with but half consciousness, he watched. Did a man who has followed the beck of hope of gold ever see a rainbow without wondering what treasure lay at the far end of the radiant promise? So, idly, Dave Drennen now.
At first just broken bits of colour. Then slowly the bits merged into one and the arc completed, the far end seeming to rest upon the further rim of the level open space. It seemed a tangible thing, not a visioned nothing born of nothingness and to perish utterly in a twinkling.
"A promise that is a lie," he said to himself bitterly. "Like the promises of men."
And then … to his startled fancies she had come into being like the rainbow, from nothingness … where the foot of the arch had appeared to rest stood the girl, Ygerne. A quarter of a mile between Drennen sitting here and her standing there, a stretch of boulder strewn mountain side separating them, God's covenant joining them. Drennen stiffened, started to his feet as though he had looked upon magic. At the foot of the rainbow not just gold … gold he had in plenty now … but a woman …
He laughed his old ugly laugh and settled back upon his rock, his eyes jerked away from her, sent back down the slope of the mountain to the green fringe of the Little MacLeod. He knew that his senses had tricked him as one's senses are so prone to do; that she had merely stepped into sight from behind a shoulder of blackened cliff; that the most brilliantly coloured rainbow is just so much sunlight and water. And he knew, too, that she would have to pass close to him on her way back to the Settlement unless she went to considerable effort to avoid him.
He saw her shadow upon a patch of snow in the trail where the rock protected it. He did not turn his head. He heard her step, knew when it had stopped and her shadow had grown motionless. She was not ten paces from him.
Stubbornly he ignored the silent challenge of her pausing. With slope shoulders he sat motionless upon his rock, his face turned toward the Little MacLeod, his freshly relighted pipe going calmly. Yet he was aware, both from the faint sound of her tread upon the soft ground and from her shadow, cast athwart the path, that she had come on another couple of steps, that she had stopped again, that her gaze was now no doubt concerned with his profile. He did not seek to make it the less harsh, to soften the expression of bitterness and uncouth hardness which his bit of a mirror had shown him in the dugout. He found that without turning to see he could remember just what her eyes looked like. And he had seen them only once and that when his chief concern was a bullet hole in his side.
While Drennen drew five or six slow puffs at his pipe neither he nor the girl moved. Then again she drew a pace nearer, again stopped. He sent his eyes stubbornly up and down the willow fringed banks of the Little MacLeod. His thought, used to obeying that thing apart, his will, concerned itself with the question of just where the gold seekers were driving their fools' search for his gold.
Stubbornness in the man had met a stubbornness no less in the girl. Though his attitude might not be misread she refused to heed it. He had half expected her to go on, and was idly looking for a shrug of the shadow's shoulders and then a straightening of them as she went past; he half expected her to address him with some commonplace remark. He had not thought to have her stand there and laugh at him.
But laugh she did, softly, unaffectedly and with plainly unsimulated amusement. She laughed as she might have done had he been a little child indulging in a fit of pouting, she the child's mother. Her laughter irritated him but did not affect a muscle of his rigid aloofness. Then she moved again, drawing no nearer but making a little half circle so that she stood just in front of him breaking his view of the river. The hard grey of his eyes met the soft greyness of hers.
"Why are the interesting men always rude?" she asked him out of a short silence.
He stared at her coolly a moment, of half a mind to reply to the foolishness of her question with the answer which it deserved, mere silence.
"I don't know," he retorted bluntly.
"Yes, they are," she told him with deep gravity of tone, just as though he had done the logical thing, been communicative and said, "Are they?" The gravity in her voice, however, was notably in contrast with the crinkling merriment about the corners of her eyes. "Perhaps," she went on, "that is one of the very reasons why theyareinteresting."
He made no answer. His regard, sweeping her critically, went its way back down the mountain side. Not, however, until the glorious lines of her young figure had registered themselves in his mind.
"Perhaps," she ran on, her head a little to one side as she studied him frankly, "you didn't realise just how interesting a type you are? In feminine eyes, of course."
"I know about things feminine just as much as I care to know," he said with all of the rudeness with which she had credited him. "Namely, nothing whatever."
Without looking to see how she had taken his words he felt that he knew. She was still laughing at him, silently now, but none the less genuinely.
"You are not afraid of me, are you?" she queried quite innocently.
"I think not," he told her shortly. "Since your sex does not come into the sphere of my existence, Miss Ygerne, there is no reason why I should be afraid of it."
"Oh!" was her rejoinder. "So you know my name, Mr. Drennen?"
"I learned it quite accidentally, young lady. Please don't think that the knowledge came from a premeditated prying into your affairs."
She ignored the sneer as utterly negligible and said,
"And you used to be a gentleman, once upon a time, like the prince in the fairy tale before the witches got him.Cherchez la femme. Was it a woman who literally drove you wild, Mr. Drennen?"
"No," he told her in his harshly emphatic way.
"You are very sure?"
He didn't answer.
"You are thinking that I am rather forward than maidenly?"
"I am thinking that a good warm rain will help to clear the trails."
"You wish that I would go away?"
"Since you ask it … yes."
"That is one reason why I am staying here," she laughed at him. "By the way, Mr. Newly-made Croesus, does this mountain belong to you, too? Together with the rest of the universe?"
He knocked out the ashes of his pipe, refilled the bowl, stuffing the black Settlement tobacco down with a calloused, soil-grimed forefinger. And that was her answer. She saw a little glint of anger in his eyes even while she could not fully understand its cause. A maid of moods, her mood to-day had been merely to pique him, to tease a little and the hint of anger told her that she had succeeded. But she was not entirely satisfied. With truly feminine wisdom she guessed that something of which she was not aware lay under the emotion which had for a second lifted its head to the surface. She could not know that she awoke memories of another world which he had turned his back upon and did not care to be reminded of; she did not know that the very way she had caught her hair up, the way her clothes fitted her, brought back like an unpleasant fragrance in his nostrils memories of that other world when he had been a "gentleman."
"Your wound is healing nicely?" she offered. And, knowing instinctively that again his answer would be silence, she went on, "It was very picturesque, your little fight the other night. The woman who did the shooting, I wondered whether she really loved Kootanie George most … or you?"
"Look here, Miss Ygerne …"
"Ygerne Bellaire," she said with an affected demureness which dimpled at him. "So you may say: 'Miss Bellaire.'"
"I say what I damned please!" he snapped hotly, and through the crisp words she heard the click of his teeth against his pipe stem. "If the flattery is not too much for a modest maiden to stand you may let me assure you that the one thing about you which I like is your name, Ygerne. Speaking of fairy tales, it sounds like the name of the Princess before the witches changed her into an adventuress, and sent her to pack with wolves. When it becomes necessary for me to call you anything whatever I'll call you Ygerne."
It was enough to drive her in head-erect, defiant, orderly retreat down the mountainside. But she seemed not to have heard anything after the first curt sentence.
"So you do 'what you damned please'? That sounds interesting. But is it the truth?"
Her perseverance began, in spite of him, to puzzle him. What in all the world of worlds did she want of him? Also, and again in spite of him, he began to wonder what sort of female being this was.
"And so my name is really the only thing commendable about me?" she went on. "My nose isn't really pug, Mr. Drennen."
She crinkled it up for his inspection, turning sideways so that he might study her profile, then challenging his eyes gaily with her own.
"It is said to be my worst feature," she continued gravely. "And after all, don't you think one's nose is like one's gown in that it's true effect lies in the way one wears it?"
"How old are you?" he said curiously, the ice of him giving the first evidence of thaw.
"Less than three score and ten in actual years," she told him. "Vastly more than that in wisdom. Who's getting impertinent now?"
He hadn't said half a dozen sentences to a woman in half a dozen years. But then he hadn't seen a woman of her class and type in nearly twice that length of time. Besides, a week of enforced idleness in his dugout, of blank inactivity, had brought a new sort of loneliness. A bit surprised at what he was doing, a bit amused, not without a feeling of contempt for himself, he let the bars down. He leaned back a little upon his rock, caught up a knee in his clasped hands, thus easing the ache in his side, and set his eyes to meet hers searchingly.
"This is an odd place for a girl like you, Ygerne," he said meditatively.
"Is it? And why?"
"Because," he answered slowly, "so far as I know, only two kinds of people ever come this way. Some are human hogs come to get their feet into a trough of gold; some are here because there is such a thing as the law outside and it has driven them here."
"But surely some come just through a sense of curiosity?"
"Curiosity is too colourless a motive to beckon or drive folks out here."
"Why are you asking me a question like this? You have succeeded in making it rather plain that you feel no interest whatever in me."
"I am allowing myself, for the novelty of the thing, to talk nonsense," he told her drily. "You seemed insistent upon it."
"So that's it? Well, I at least can answer a question. Two motives are to thank or to blame for my being here. One," she said coolly, her eyes steady upon his, "has beckoned, as you put it; the other has driven. One is the desire to get my feet into the golden trough, the other to get my body out of the way of the law. Your hypothesis seems, in my case as in the others, to be correct, Mr. Drennen."
In spite of him he stared at her a little wonderingly. For himself he gauged her years at nineteen. He was rather inclined to the suspicion that she was lying to him in both particulars. But something of the coolness of her regard, its vague insolence, something in the way she carried her head and shoulders, her whole sureness of poise, the intangible thing called personality in her tempered like fine steel, made his suspicion waver. She was young and good to look upon; there was the gloriously fresh bloom of youth upon her; and yet, were it not for the mere matter of sex, he might have looked upon her as a gay and utterly unscrupulous young adventurer of the old type, the kind to bow gallantly to a lady while wiping the stain of wet blood from a knife blade.
"You are after gold … and the law wants you back there in the States?" he demanded with quiet curiosity.
"I am after gold and the law has sought me back there in the States," she repeated after him coolly.
"The law has long arms, Ygerne."
"It has no arms at all, Mr. Drennen. It has a long tail with a poisonous sting in it."
"What does it want you for?" He was making light of her now, his question accompanied by a hard, cynical look which told her that she could say as much or as little as she chose and he'd suit himself in the extent of his credulity. "Were you the lovely cashier in an ice cream store? And did you abscond with a dollar and ninety cents?"
"Don't you know of Paul Bellaire?" she flung at him angrily.
"I have never met the gentleman," he laughed at her, pleased with the flush which was in her cheeks.
"He died long before you were born," she said sharply. "If you talked with men you would know. He was my grandfather. We of the blood of Paul Bellaire are not shop girls, Mr. Drennen."
"Oho," sneered Drennen. "We are in the presence of gentry, then?"
"You are in the presence of your superior by birth if not in all other matters," she told him hotly.
"We, out here, don't believe much in the efficacy of blue blood," he said contemptuously.
"The toad has little conception of wings!" she gave him back, in the coin of his own contempt. "Queer, isn't it?"
He laughed at her, more amused than he had been heretofore and more interested.
"You haven't told me definitely about your terrible crime."
"You have been equally noncommittal."
Drennen shrugged. "I am not greatly given to overtalkativeness," he said shortly. "I have no desire to usurp woman's prerogative."
"But are quite willing to let me babble on?"
"I'm going to put in time for a couple of hours. You are less maddening than the walls of my dugout."
She looked at him keenly, silent and thoughtful for a little. Then she said abruptly:
"Have you told any one yet of your discovery?"
So that was it. His eyes grew hard again with the sneer in them.
"No," he informed her with a bluntness full of finality.
"You spoke of the hogs with their feet in the trough. You are going to let no one in with you?"
"I am not in the habit of giving away what I want for myself."
"But you can't keep it secret always. You'll have to file your claim, and you can't file on all of Canada.… I want to ask you something about it."
"No doubt," with his old bitter smile. "For a fortune you'd repay me with a smile, would you? You'd find easier game in the gilded youth on Broadway."
Her lips grew a little cruel as she answered him.
"You may tell me as much or as little as you like. You may lie to me and tell me that your gold is twenty miles westward of here while it may be twice or half that distance eastward. Or you may leave that part out altogether. But it would be another matter to answer the one question I will ask." Her eyes were upon him, very alert, watchful for a sign as she asked her question: "Were the nuggets free and piled up somewhere where some man before you had placed them?"
If she sought to read his mind against his will she had come to the wrong man. It was as though Drennen had not heard her.
"Are you married to either of the hang dogs with whom you are travelling?" he asked.
"No," she answered indifferently.
"They're both in love with you, no doubt?"
"I fancy that neither is," she retorted equably. "Both want to marry me, that's all."
Drennen gazed thoughtfully down into the valley, pursing his lips about his pipe stem.
"I'll make a bargain with you," he said finally from the silence in which the girl had stood watching him. "You have dinner with me; we'll have the best the Settlement knows how to serve us, and I'll let you try to pump me."
She looked at him curiously.
"You have the name of a trouble seeker, Mr. Drennen. Do you fancy that you can anger Marc and Captain Sefton this way?"
"That, too, we can talk about at dinner, if you like."
For a moment she looked at him, gravely thoughtful, her brows puckered into a thoughtful frown. Then she put back her head with a gesture indefinably suggestive of recklessness, and laughed as she had laughed when she had first come upon him.
"The novel invitation is accepted," she said lightly. "I must hurry down to dress for the grand occasion, Mr. Drennen."
Before she could flash about and turn from him David Drennen did a thing he had done for no woman in many years. He rose to his feet, making her a sweeping bow as he lifted his hat with the old grace which the years had not taken from him. And as she went down the mountain side he dropped back to his rock, his teeth again hard, clamped upon his pipe stem, his eyes steely and bitter and filled with cynical irony.