CHAPTER XVI
BENEFITS RETURNED
Dick waited impatiently at the rendezvous, saw Joan coming, hurried to meet her, and was restrained from displaying his joy by her upheld hand, as she smiled and cautioned: “Now, steady, Dick! You know we were not to–to–be anything but comrades for a while yet.”
He was compelled to respect her wishes, but his eyes spoke all that his tongue might have uttered. In the joy of meeting her, he had forgotten the part played by her father in his surreptitious attempt to gain possession of the Croix d’Or: but her first words reminded him of it:
“It has been terribly lonesome since you left. I have felt as if the whole world had deserted me. Dad is not a cheery sort of companion, because he is so absorbed by the Rattler that he lives with it, eats with it, sleeps with it. And, to make him worse, something appears to have upset him in the last week or ten days until a bear would be a highly lovable companion by comparison.”
She failed to notice the gravity of his face, for he surmised how Sloan’s answer must have affected the owner of the Rattler, who strode mercilessly over all obstacles and men, but now had come to one which he could not surmount. He wondered how obdurate Bully Presby would prove if the time ever came when he dared ask for Joan, and whether, if the father refused, Joan’s will would override this opposition.
Studying the lines of her face, and the firm contour of her chin as it rounded into the grace of her throat, he had a joyful sense of confidence that she would not prove wanting, and dismissed Bully Presby from his thoughts. With a great embarrassment, he fumbled in the pocket of his shirt, and brought out a little box which he opened, to display a glittering gem. He held it toward her, in the palm of his hand; but she pulled her gloves over her fingers, and blushed and laughed.
“It seems to me,” she declared, “that you have plenty of assurance.”
“Why?” he insisted.
“Because I haven’t made my mind up–that far, yet, and because if I had I shouldn’t say so until the Croix d’Or had been proven one way or the other.”
She stopped, awkwardly embarrassed, as if her objection had conveyed a suggestion that his financial standing had a bearing on her acceptance, and hastened to rectify it:
“Not that its success or the money it would bring has anything to do with it.”
“But if it failed?” he interrogated, striving to force her to an admission.
“I should accept you as quickly as if it were a success; perhaps more quickly, for I have money enough. But that isn’t it. Don’t you see, can’t you understand, that I want you to make good just to show that you can?”
“Yes,” he answered gloomily. “But if I didn’t feel quite confident, I shouldn’t offer you the ring. And if I failed, I shouldn’t ask you.”
“Then you musn’t fail,” she retorted. “And, do you know,” she hastened, as if eager to change the subject, and get away from such a trying pass, “that I’ve never seen the Croix since you took possession of it?”
“Come now,” he said, with boyish eagerness. “I’ve wanted you to see what we are doing for weeks–yes, months. Will you? We can lead your horse down over the trail easily.”
He walked by her side, the black patiently following them, and told her of what had been accomplished in his absence, and of their plans. She listened gravely, offering such sage advice now and then that his admiration of her knowledge constantly increased. There were but few men in sight as they crossed the head of the cañon, and came slowly down past the blacksmith shop.
“Why, if there isn’t Mr. Clark!” she exclaimed, and the smith looked up, grinned, dropped his tongs, and came toward them, wiping his hand on his smudgy apron.
“Hello, Joan!” he called out. “You’re a bit bigger’n you used to be, when I made iron rings for you.”
“Oh, Smuts,” she laughed happily, stepping to meet him, “do you know I still have one, and that it’s in my jewel case, among my most precious possessions?”
She held out her white, clean hand, and he almost seized it in his grimy, fist, then drew her back.
“’Most forgot!” he declared. “I reckon I’d muss that up some if I took it in my fist.”
“Then muss it,” she laughed. “You weren’t always so particular.” And he grabbed, held, and patted the hand that he had known in its childhood.
“Why, little Joan,” he growled, with a suspicious softness in his voice, “you ain’t changed none since you used to sit on the end of that old-fashioned forge, dirty up your pinafores, and cry when Bully led you off. Him and me ain’t friends no more, so’s you could notice. Seven years now since I hit him for cussin’ me for somethin’ that wa’n’t my fault! But, by gee whiz, old Bully Presby could go some! We tipped an anvil over that day, and wrecked a bellows before they pulled us off each other. I’ve always wondered, since then which of us is the better man!”
He spoke with such an air of regret that Joan and Dick laughed outright, and in the midst of it a shadow came across their own, and they turned to meet the amused, complacent stare of Bill. In acknowledging the introduction, Joan felt that his piercing eyes were studying her, probing her soul, as appraisingly as if seeking to lay her appearance and character bare. His harsh, determined face suddenly broke into a wondrous warmth of smile, and he impulsively seized her hand again.
“Say,” he said, “you’ll do! You’re all right!”
And she knew intuitively that this giant of the hills and lonely places had read her, with all her emotions and love, as he would read print, and that, with the quick decision of such men, he was prepared to give her loyal friendship and affection.
They walked slowly around the plant, Dick pointing out their technical progress as they went, and she still further gained Bill’s admiration in the assay-house when she declared that she had a preference for another kind of furnace than they were using.
“Why, say, Miss Presby, can you assay?” he burst out.
“Assay!” she said. “Why, I lived in the assay-house at two or three times, and then studied it afterward.”
“Hey, up there!” a shout came from the roadway below.
They turned and went out to the little cindered, littered level in front of the door, and looked down to where, on the roadway a hundred feet below, a man stood at the head of a string of panting burros, and they recognized in him a packer from Goldpan.
“I’ve got somethin’ here for you.” He waved his hand back toward the string of burros.
“What is it?” asked Bill, turning to Dick.
“I don’t know what it can be. I have ordered nothing as heavy as that outfit appears to be.”
Perplexed, they excused themselves and descended the slope, leaving Joan standing there in front of the assay office, and enjoying the picture of the cañon, with its border of working buildings on one side, and its scattered cabins, mess- and bunk-houses on the other, the huge waste dump towering away from the hoist, and filling the head of the cañon, and the sparkle of the stream below.
“It’s for you, all right,” the packer insisted. “The Wells Fargo agent turned it over to me down in Goldpan, and said the money had been sent to pay me for bringin’ it up here. I don’t know what it is. It’s stones of some kind.”
Still more perplexed, the partners ordered him to take his pack train around to the storage house, and Bill led the way while his partner climbed back up the hill, and rejoined Joan. He was showing her some of the assay slips from the green lead when they heard a loud call from the yard. It was Bill, beckoning. They went across to meet him. One of the hitches had been thrown, and the other burros stood expectantly waiting to be relieved of their burdens.
“It’s a tombstone,” Bill said gravely. “It’s for Bell’s grave. The express receipt shows that it was sent by–” he hesitated for a moment, as if studying whether to use one name, or another, and then concluded–“The Lily.”
He pointed to a section of granite at their feet, and on its polished surface they read:
Under this granite sleeps Bells Park, an engineer. Murdered in defense of his employers. Faithful when living, and faithful when dead, to the Croix d’Or and all those principles which make a worthy man.
A sudden, overwhelming sadness seemed to descend upon them. Bill turned abruptly, and stepped across toward the boiler-house. The whistle sent out a long-drawn, booming call–the alarm signal for the mine. In all the stress of the Croix d’Or it was the first time that note had ever been used save in drill. The bells of the hoist arose into a jangling clamor. They heard the wheels of the cage whirl as it shot downward, the excited exclamations of men ascending, some of them with tools in hand, the running of a man’s feet, emerging from the blacksmith’s tunnel, the shout of the smith to his helper, and the labored running of the cook and waiter across the cinders of the yard. Bill slowly returned toward them.
“We’ll have to get you to land it up there,” he said, waving his arm toward the cross high above. “Give us a hand here, will you? and we’ll throw this hitch again.”
The entire force of the mine had gathered around them before he had finished speaking, and, seeing the stone, understood. Joan caught her riding skirts deftly into her hand, and, with Bill leading the way up the steep and rock-strewn ascent, they climbed the peak. The burros halted now and then to rest, straining under the heaviness of their task. The men of the Croix d’Or sometimes assisted them with willing shoulders pushing behind, and there by the mound, on which flowers were already beginning to show green and vivid, they laid out the sections of granite. Only the cook’s helper was absent. Willing hands caught the sections, which had been grooved to join, and, tier on tier, they found their places until there stood, high and austere, the granite shaft that told of one man’s loyalty.
Dick gave some final instructions as to the rearranging of the grave and the little plot that had been created around it, and they descended in a strange silence, saddened by all that had been recalled. No one spoke, save Bill, who gave orders to the men to return to their tasks, and then said, as if to himself: “I’d like mighty well to know where Lily Meredith is. We cain’t even thank her. Once I wondered what she was. Now I know more than ever. She was all woman!”
And to this, Joan, putting out her hand to bid them good-by, assented.
The night shots had been fired at five o’clock–the time usually selected by mines working two shifts–supper had been eaten, and the partners were sitting in front of their quarters when Bill again referred to Mrs. Meredith. High up on the hill, where the new landmark had been, erected, at the foot of the cross, the day shift of the Croix d’Or was busied here and there in clearing away the ground around the grave of the engineer, some of the men on hands and knees casting aside small bowlders, others trimming a clearing in the surrounding brush, and still others painfully building a low wall of rock.
“The hard work of findin’ out where The Lily is,” said Bill softly, “is because she covered her trail. Nobody knows where she went. The stage driver saw her on the train, but the railway agent told him she didn’t buy no ticket. The conductor wrote me that he put her off at the junction, and that she took the train toward Spokane. That’s all! It ends there as if she’d got on the train, and then it had never stopped. We cain’t even thank her.”
Dick, absorbed in thoughts of Joan, heard but little of what he said, and so agreed with a short: “No, that’s right.” And Bill subsided into silence. A man came trudging up the path leading from the roadway lower down, and in his hand held a bundle of letters.
“Got the mail,” he said. “The stage may run every other day after this, instead of twice a week, the postmaster over at the camp told me. Not much to-night. Here it is.”
He handed Dick a bundle of letters, and then, sighting the others on the side of the peak above, started to join them, and take his share in that labor of respect and affection. In the approaching twilight Dick ran through the packet, selected one letter addressed to his partner, and gave it to him, then tore open the first one at hand. It was addressed in an unfamiliar and painful chirography, with the postmark of Portland, Ore., stamped smudgily in its corner. He began casually to read, then went white as the laborious lines flowed and swam before his eyes:
Dear Mister Townsend, owner of the cross mine, I write you because I am afraid I aint got your pardners name right and because Ive got something on my mind that I cant keep any more. Im the girl that got burned at the High Light. Your pardner saved my life and you were awful kind to me. Everybody’s been very kind to me too. I spose you know I'll not be able to work in dance halls no more because Im quite ugly now with them scars all over my face. But that dont make no difference. Mrs. Meredith has been here to see me and told me who it was saved my life. Mrs. Meredith dont want nobody to know where shes gone. Shes not coming back any more. Shes quit the business and is running a sort of millinery store in–
Here a name had been painstakingly obliterated, as if by afterthought, the very paper being gouged through with ink.
Shes paid all my hospital bills and when I get strong enough shes going to let me go to work for her. But that aint what Im writing about and this letter is the biggest I ever wrote. The nurse says Im making a book. I wasn’t a very bad girl or a very good girl when I was in the camps. Maybe you know that but I done my best and was as decent as I could be. There was a man was my sweetheart and sometimes when he drank too much he talked too much. Men always say a whole lot when theyre full of rotgut, unless they get nasty. My man never got nasty. Hes gone away and I dont know where. Maybe he dont want nothing more to do with me since I got my face burned. Ive kept my mouth shut until I found out it was you two men who saved me and Im writing this to pay you back the only way I can. Bully Presby is stealing all his best pay ore from the Croix d’Or. Hes worked clean under you and got the richest ledge in the district. They aint nobody but confidential men ever get into that drift. Hes been stealing that ore for going on two years andll give you a lot of trouble if you dont mind your Ps and Qs. I hope you beat him out, and I pray for both of you.
Your ever grateful,Pearl Walker.
CHAPTER XVII
WHEN REASON SWINGS
Dick suddenly crumpled the sheet of paper, and put it in his pocket. He lifted himself, as a man distracted, from the chair in which he had been sitting, gripping the arms with hands that were tensely responding to an agony of spirit. He almost lurched forward as he stepped to the little steps leading down from the porch, and into the worn trail, hesitated at the forks leading to mess-house or assay office, and then mechanically turned in the latter direction, it being where the greater number of his working hours were passed.
“Where you goin’?” the voice of his partner called, as he plunged forward.
He had to make a determined attempt to speak, then his voice broke, harsh and strained, through dry lips:
“Assay office.”
He did not look back, but went forward, with limp hands and tottering knees, turning neither to right nor left. The whole world was a haze. The steadfast mountain above him was a cynical monster, and dimly, in the shadow of the high landmark, he discerned a change, sinister, gloating, and leering on him and his misery. The soft voices of the men of the day shift returning from their voluntary task, the staccato exhaust of the hoisting engine bringing up a load of ore from the refound lead, the clash of a car dumping its load of waste, and the roar of the Rattler’s stamps, softened by distance, blended into discordance.
He entered the assay-house like a whipped dog seeking the refuge of its kennel, threw himself on a stool before the bench, leaned his head into his hollowed arms, and groaned as would a stricken warrior of olden days when surrendering to his wounds.
This, then, explained it all–that sequence of events, frustrating, harrying, baffling him, since the first hour he had come to the mine of the Croix d’Or. The rough suggestion of Bully Presby on the first day, discouraging him; the harsh attitude; the persistent attempts to dishearten him and buy him out; the endeavor to buy half the property from, and remove the backing, of Sloan, without which he could not go on; the words of the watchman, who doubtless had discovered Bully Presby’s secret theft, blackmailed him as much as he could, and, dying, cursed him; but, hating the men of the mine more, had withheld the vital meaning of his accusation. Perhaps Presby had been instrumental in Thompson’s strike. But no, that could scarcely be, although, in the light of other events in that iniquitous chain, it might be possible. That he had any part in the dynamiting of the dam or power-house, Dick cast aside as unworthy of such a man. The strong, hard, masterful, and domineering face of Bully Presby arose before him as from the darkening shadows of the room, and it seemed triumphant.
He lifted his head suddenly, thinking, in his superacute state of mind, that he had heard a noise. He must have air! The assay office, with its smell of nitric acid, its burned fumes, its clutter of broken cupels and slag, was unbearable. He arose from the stool so suddenly that it went toppling over to fall against the stacked crucibles beneath the bench which lent their clatter to the upset. He stepped out into the night. It was dark, only the stars above him dimly betraying the familiar shapes of mountains, forests, and buildings around. Up in the bunk-house some man was wailing a verse of “Ella Re,” accompanied by a guitar, and the doleful drone of the hackneyed chorus was caught up by the other men “off shift.” But, nauseating as it was to him, this piebald ballad of the hills, it contained one shrieking sentence: “Lost forevermore!” That was it! Joan was lost!
He looked up at the superintendent’s quarters, which had been his home, and saw that its lights were out. Bill, he conjectured, always hard working and early rising, had tumbled into his bed, unconscious of this tragedy. He struck off across the gulch, and took the trail he had so frequently trodden with a beating heart, and high and tender hope. It led him to the black barrier of the pipe line, the place where first he had met her, the sacred clump of bushes that had held and surrendered to him the handkerchief enshrined in his pocket, the slope where she had leaned down from her horse and kissed him in the only caress he had ever received from her lips, and told him that he should be with her in her prayers.
Reverently he caressed with his hands the spot where she had so often sat on a gray old bowlder, flat-topped. His heart cried for one more sight of her, one more caress, one more opportunity to listen to her voice before he dealt her the irrevocable wound that would end it all.
Not for an instant did he waver. The tempter, whispering in his ear, told him that he could conceal his knowledge, advise Sloan to sell, take his chance with Joan, and let the sleeping dog lie, forever undiscovered. It told him that Sloan was admittedly rich beyond his needs, and that with him the Croix d’Or was merely a matter of sentiment, and an opportunity of bestowing on the son of his old-time friend a chance to get ahead in the world.
But back of it all came the inexorable voice of truth, telling Dick that there was but one course open, and that was reparation; that to his benefactor he owed faith and loyalty; that Presby must pay, though his–Richard Townsend’s–castles crumbled to dust in the wreckage of exposure. He must break the heart and faith of the girl who loved him, and whom, with every fiber of his being, he loved in return.
She would stand in the world as the daughter of a colossal thief! Not a thief of the marts, where crookedness was confused with shrewdness far removed from the theft of the hands; but a thief who had burrowed beneath another man’s property, and carried away, to coinage, his gold. Between Bully Presby and the man who tunneled under a bank to loot the safe, there was no moral difference save in the romance of that mystic underground world where men bored like microbes for their spoil.
“Joan! Joan! Joan!” he muttered aloud, as if she were there to hear his hurt appeal.
It was for her that he felt the wound, and not for Bully Presby, her father. For the latter he spared scant sympathy; but it was Joan who would be stricken by any action he might take, and the action must be taken, and would necessarily be taken publicly.
Under criminal procedure men had served long terms behind bars for less offenses than Presby’s. Others had made reparation through payment of money, and slunk away into the shadows of disgrace to avoid handcuffs. And the fall of Presby of the Rattler, as a plunderer, was one that would echo widely in the mining world where he had moved, a stalwart, unbending king. Not until then had Dick realized how high that figure towered. Presby, the irresistible, a thief, and fighting to keep out of the penitentiary, while Joan, the brave, the loving, the true, cowered in her room, dreading to look the world in the face.
And he, the man who loved her, almost accepted as her betrothed, with the ring even then burning in his pocket, was the one who must deal her this blow!
He got up and staggered through the darkness along the length of the line, almost envying the miserable dynamiter, who had died above the remnant of wall, for the quiet into which he had been thrust. If the train bringing him homeward had been wrecked, and his life extinguished, he could have saved her this. The Cross would have been sold. She might have grieved for him, for a time, but wounds will heal, unless too deep. He stood above the abyss where daylight showed ruins, and knew that the destruction of the dam, heavy a blow as it had seemed when inflicted, was nothing as compared to this ruin of dreams, of love, and hope.
“Dick! Dick! What is it, boy?” came a soft voice from the night, scarcely above a whisper. “Can’t you tell me, old man? Ain’t we still pardners? Just as we uster be?”
He peered through the darkness, roused from his misery in the stillness of the hour, and the night, by the appeal. Dimly he discerned, seated above him on the abutment, a shape outlined against the stars. It threw itself down with hard-striking feet, and came toward him, and he knew it was not a phantom of misery. It came closer to where he stood on the brink of the blackness, and laid a hand on his shoulder, put it farther across and held him, as tenderly as father might have held, in this hour of distress.
“I’ve been follerin’ you, boy,” the kindly voice went on. “I saw that somethin’ had got you. That you were hard hit! I’ve been near you for the last two or three hours. I don’t know as I’d have bothered you now, if I hadn’t been afraid you’d fall over. Let’s go back, Dick–back to the mine.”
It seemed as if there had come to him in the night a strong support. Numbed and despairing, but with a strange relief, he permitted Bill to lead him back over the trail, and at last, when they were standing above the dim buildings below, found speech.
“It’s her,” he said. “It’s for her sake that I hate to do it. It’s Joan!”
“Sit down here by me,” the big voice, commiserating, said. “Here on this timber. I’ve kept it to myself, boy, but I know all about her. I stood on the bank, where I’d just gone to hunt you, on that day she reached down from the saddle. I knew the rest, and slipped away. You love her. She’s done somethin’ to you.”
“No!” the denial was emphatic. “She hasn’t! She’s as true as the hills. It’s her father. Look here!”
He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out the crumpled sheet, and struck a match. Bill took the letter in his hands and read, while the night itself seemed pausing to shield the flickering flame. With hurried fingers he struck another match, and the light flared up, exposing his frowning eyebrows, the lights in his keen eyes, the tight pressure of his firm lips.
He handed the letter back, and for a long time sat silently staring before him, his big, square shoulders bent forward, and his hat outlined against the light of the night, which was steadily increasing.
“I see how it is,” he said at last. “And it’s hard on you, isn’t it, boy? A man can stand anything himself, but it’s hell to hurt those we care for.”
The sympathy of his voice cut like a knife, with its merciful hurt. Dick broke into words, telling of his misery, but stammering as strong men stammer, when laying bare emotions which, without pressure, they always conceal. His partner listened, motionless, absorbing it all, and his face was concealed by the darkness, otherwise a great sympathy would have flared from his eyes.
“We’ve got to find a way out of this, Dick,” he said at last, with a sigh. And the word “we” betrayed more fully than long sentences his compassion. “We must go slow. Somehow, I reckon, I’m cooler than you in this kind of a try-out. Maybe because it don’t hit me so close to home. Let’s go back, boy, back to the cabin, and try to rest. The daylight is like the Lord’s own drink. It clears the head, and makes us see things better than we can in the night–when all is dark. Let’s try to find a way out, and try to forget it for a while. Did you ever think how good it all is to us? Just the night, coming along every once in a while, to make us appreciate how good the sun is, and how bright the mornings are. It ain’t an easy old world, no matter how hard we try to make it that; because it takes the black times to make our eyes glad to watch the sunrise. Let me help you, old pardner. We’ve been through some pretty tight places together, and somehow, when He got good and ready, the Lord always showed us a way out.”
He arose on his feet, stretched his long muscular arms, and started down the hill, and Dick followed. There was not another word exchanged, other than the sympathetic “good-night” in which they had not failed for more than seven years, and outside the stars waned slowly, the stamp mill of the Rattler roared on, and the Croix d’Or was unmoved.
The daylight came, and with it the boom of the night shift setting off its morning blasts, and clearing the way for the day shift that would follow in sinking the hole that must inevitably betray the dishonesty of the stern mine master at the foot of the hill. Dick had not slept, and turned to see a shadow in the door.
“Don’t you get up, Dick,” Bill said. “Just try to rest. I heard you tumblin’ around all the night. You don’t get anywhere by doin’ that. A man has to take himself in hand more than ever when there’s big things at stake. Then’s when he needs his head. You just try to get some rest. I’ll keep things goin’ ahead all right, and there ain’t no call to do nothin’ for a week or ten days–till we get our feet on the ground. After that we’ll find a trail. Don’t worry.”
Through the kindly tones there ran confidence, and, entirely exhausted, Dick turned over and tried to sleep. It came to him at last, heavy and dreamless, the sleep that comes beneficently to those who suffer. The sun, creeping westward, threw a beam across his face, and he turned restlessly, like a fever-stricken convalescent, and rolled farther over in the bed.
The beam pursued him, until at last there was no further refuge, and he sat up, dazed and bewildered, and hoping that all had been a nightmare, and that he should hear the cheery note of the whistle telling him that it was day again, and calling the men of the Croix d’Or to work.
It was monstrous, impossible, that all should have changed. It was but yesterday that he had returned to the mine with finances assured, confidence restored, and the certainty that Joan Presby loved him, and could come to his side when his work was accomplished.
He looked at his watch and the bar of sunlight. It was four o’clock, and the day was gone. Everything was real. Everything was horrible. He crawled stiffly from his bed, thrust his head into the cold water of the basin, and, unshaven, stepped out to the porch and down the trail.
The plumes of smoke still wreathed upward from two stacks. Bill was still driving downward unceasingly. The mellow clang of the smith’s hammer, sharpening drills, smote his ears, and the rumble of the cars. The cook, in a high, thin tenor, sang the songs with which he habitually whiled away his work. Everything was the same, save him! And his air castles had been blown away as by the wind.
In a fever of uncertainty, he stood on the hillside and thought of what he should do. He believed that it was his duty to be the one to break the harsh news to Joan, and wondered whether or not she might be found at the tryst. He remembered that, once before when he had not appeared, she had ridden over there in the afternoon. Perhaps, expecting him, and being disappointed, she might be there again.
He hurried down the slope, and back up across the divide and along the trail, his hopes and uncertainties alone rendering him certain that she must be there, and paused when the long, black line shone dully outlined in its course around the swelling boss of the hill. He experienced a thrill of disappointment when he saw that she was not waiting, and, again consulting his watch feverishly, tramped backward and forward along the confines of the hallowed place.
At last, certain from the fresh hoof marks on the yielding slope, that she had come and gone, he turned, and went slowly back to the mine. He had a longing to see his partner, and learn whether or not Mathews, with that strange, resourceful logic of his, had evolved some way out of the predicament. But Bill was nowhere in sight. He was not in the office, and the mill door was locked. The cook had not seen him; and the blacksmith, busy, stopped only long enough to say that he thought he had seen the superintendent going toward the hoisting-house.