The Plunderer

Men were carrying some large packing cases, or tumbling them end over end, with hollow, booming noises, to form a crude platform. The boxes clashed together. Two men holding the torches climbed up on them and they saw two others boosting the doctor upward. At sight of him there was a restraining hiss passed round through the gathering crowd, commanding silence. He waited for it to become complete.

“Men,” he said, “you have all heard the news. Thirty-three of our fellows died over across the divide, or are dying now. God knows which! God grant they went quickly!”

He stopped and although not a trained orator, the pause could have been no more effective. Dick looked around him. The faces of those nearest were grave and unmoved, as if carved from the mother rock of the country in which they delved; but he saw a light in their frowning eyes that told how deeply their sympathies were stirred.

“I didn’t get up here to talk to you so much about them, however,” the doctor went on, quietly, “as I did to remind you that out of thirty-three of these men there were twenty-six who left widows, or widows and children behind them. The boys over there did all they could. There were a hundred and fifty men who tried to save them. They are now working merely to get their bodies. We couldn’t be there to help in that; so we do what we can here. And that doing shall consist in helping out those women and children. There’s a box down here in front of me. I wish you’d put what you can on it.”

Bill, staring over the heads of those around him, saw a movement among those nearest the orator’s stand, and into the ring of light stepped The Lily. Apparently she was speaking to the doctor, who leaned down to listen. He straightened up and called for silence.

“Mrs. Meredith,” he said, “says that any man here who has no money with him can sign what he wants to give on a piece of paper, and that she will accept it as she would a pay-check and forward the cash. Then on pay-day the man can come and redeem his paper pledge.”

There was a low murmur of approval swept round over the crowd which began to move forward with slow regularity. The doctor dropped down from his rostrum as if his task were done. The torches lowered as their bearers followed him and planted them beside the box on which coins, big round silver dollars and yellow gold-pieces, were falling, with here and there a scrap of paper. No one stood guard over that collection. The crowd was thinning out. Dick turned toward his friend and looked up at him to meet eyes as troubled as his own. Each understood the other.

“I wish I had some money of my own,” the younger man exclaimed; “but I haven’t a dollar that actually belongs to me. I am going to borrow a little from Sloan.”

“I can’t do that much,” was the sorrowful reply. “And there ain’t nothin’ I’d rather do in the world than walk up there and drop a couple of hundred on that pile. I’m–I’m–”

His manner indicated that he was about to relapse into stronger terms. He suddenly whirled. A hand had been laid on his sleeve and a low, steady voice said, “Excuse me, I heard you talking and I understand. I know what you feel. I want you to permit me.”

It was Mrs. Meredith who had walked around behind them unobserved and now held out her hand. They fell back, embarrassed. She appeared to fathom their position.

“I know,” she said. “I wasn’t eavesdropping. I saw you here. I wanted to talk to you both and so, well, I overheard. Take this, won’t you? Please permit me.”

Bill suddenly reached his hand out and found in his palm a roll of bills, rare in that camp. He looked at them curiously.

“There is five hundred dollars in it,” she said. “That permits a reasonable gift from each of you. You can return it to me at your convenience.”

Neither of them had spoken to her in all this time. Now both voiced thanks. But a moment later Dick found himself talking alone and telling her that he would send her a check within a few days to cover the amount of the loan; but she was not looking at him. He saw that her eyes were fixed on the big man by his side, who stood there looking down into her face. For some reason she appeared embarrassed by that direct scrutiny, and her eyes fell, and wandered around on those standing nearest. Suddenly she frowned, and wondering they followed the direction of her look. Not ten feet from them, standing stockily on his feet with his high, heavy shoulders squared, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his firm face unmoved, his hat shading his eyes, stood Bully Presby. He made no movement toward the goal of the contributors, and seemed to have no intention of so doing. As if to escape an unpleasant situation The Lily suddenly walked toward him.

“Good-evening, Mister Presby,” she saluted, and he slowly turned his head and stared at her. He did not shift his attitude in the least, and appeared granite-like in his rigid pose.

“I suppose,” she said, “that you have put something into the contribution.”

“I have not,” he replied with his customary incisive, harsh voice. “Why should I? The contribution means nothing to me.”

The brutality, the inhumanity of his words made her recoil for an instant, and then she recovered her fearlessness and dignity.

“I might have known that,” she said, coolly. “I should have expected nothing more from you. The lives of these–all these–” and she gestured toward those around–“mean nothing to you. Nor the sufferings and poverties of those dependent on them.”

“Certainly not,” he answered with a trace of a harsh sneer outlined on his face. “If they get killed, I am sorry. If they live, they are useful. If they are lost, others take their places. They are merely a part of the general scheme. They are for me to use.”

His words were like a challenge. He watched her curiously as if awaiting her reply. Dick felt Bill starting forward, angrily, then checked him.

“Wait!” he whispered. “Let’s hear what he has to say.”

The Lily took a step forward to arraign him. Her face shone whiter than ever in the light of the torches.

“And that is all? That is your attitude?”

He did not answer, but stared at her curiously. It seemed to anger her more.

“I wonder,” she said, “if you would care for my estimate of you! I wonder if you would care for the estimate of those around you. It does not seem strange that you are called by the fitting sobriquet of ‘Bully Presby.’ You are that! You are one of those shriveled souls that fatten on the toil of others–that thrive on others’ misfortunes and miseries. My God! A usurer–a pawnbroker, is a prince compared to you. You are without compassion, pity, charity or grace. Your code is that of winning all, the code of greed! Listen to me. You doubtless look down on me as a camp woman, and with a certain amount of scorn! But knowing what I am, I should far rather be what I am, the owner of the High Light, a sordid den, than to be you, the owner of the Rattler, the man they call Bully Presby!”

To their astonishment he leaned his head back and laughed, deeply, from his chest, as if her anger, her scorn, her bitter denunciation, had all served to amuse him. It was as if she had flattered him by her characterizations. She was too angry to speak and stood regarding him coldly until he had finished. He turned and appeared for the first time to observe the men of the Croix d’Or scowling at him, and his laugh abruptly stopped. He scowled back at them, and, without so much as a good-night salutation turned and walked away and lost himself in the shadows of the street.

“Oh,” she said, facing them and clenching her hands, “sometimes I hate that man! He is unfathomable! There have been times when I wondered if he was human.”

She bit her lip as if to restrain her words, and then looked up at the partners.

“And there are times,” drawled the big miner, “when I wonder how long I’ll be able to keep my hands off of him. And one of those times has been in the last minute! If you think it would do any good, I’ll–”

She looked up at him and smiled, for the first time since they had met. She interrupted him.

“No, the only way you can do any good is to make your contribution. I’ll go with you.”

They walked together toward the box which was now deserted, save by the doctor and one other, who were scooping the money into a water pail they had secured somewhere. Bill threw his roll of bills into it and the doctor looked up and smiled.

“I knew you would come,” he said. “And that, with the two thousand that Mrs. Meredith has volunteered–”

She checked him.

“That was to be my secret. Please, none of you, speak of it again.”

“As you wish,” replied the doctor. “And I apologize. Now I would suggest that you take charge of this and take it to the High Light. I’ll send it over to-morrow by Jim. The boys have done well.”

That was all he said, and yet in his simple sentence was much. The camp had done well. He straightened up with an air of weariness.

“This pail is pretty heavy,” he said. “Won’t you take it, Mathews, and carry it over?”

The miner caught it up in his arms, fearing lest the bail break loose under its weight. The doctor bade them good night, and they started toward the High Light, leaving the torch man to extinguish his flares. She talked freely as she walked between them, expressing her relief that none of the destitute in that distant camp of mourning would suffer unduly after the receipt of Goldpan’s offering. As they entered the house of the lights and noise the bartender nearest hailed her, wiped his hands on his apron and reached out an envelope.

“Bully Presby was in here about an hour or two ago,” he said, “and left this. It was before you and Doc Mills was goin’ out to try and get the boys interested.”

She tore it open, then flushed, and passed it to the partners who together read it.

“I hear,” the letter read, “that some of the men who were killed over at the Blackbird used to work for me down in California. Also that there are some women and children over there who may have a hard time of it. Will you see to it that this goes to the right channels, and regard it as confidential? I don’t want to appear to be a philanthropist on even a small scale. Presby.”

Pinned to the letter was a check. It was for ten thousand dollars. Bill lifted it in his fingers, scanned each word, then handed it to Mrs. Meredith who stood frowning with her eyes fixed on the floor.

“I’ve known burros, and other contrary cusses, in my time,” he said, slowly, “but this feller Presby has ’em all lookin’ as simple, and plain, and understandable, as a cross-roads guide-post.”

And The Lily, contrite, agreed.

CHAPTER IX
WHERE A GIRL ADVISES

“There’s one thing about you, pardner, I don’t quite sabe,” drawled Bill to his employer as they sat in front of their cabin one night, after discussing the assays which Dick made his especial work. “You ain’t as talkative as you used to be. Somethin’s on your mind. It’s more’n two weeks now since I had time to think about anything but the green lead, and I’m beginnin’ to notice. Where the devil do you go every mornin’ between nine and eleven?”

Dick turned toward him impulsively, and then made no reply, other than to laugh softly. Then slowly he felt a wave of embarrassment.

“Not that it’s any of my business, bein’ as you’re you and I’m me; but we were pardners for some years before things changed and made you the boss and me the hired hand. And it may be I’m undue curious. Who’s that girl you go up on the pipe line to meet every mornin’?”

His question was so abrupt that, for an instant, the younger man had a hot, childish anger; but he controlled himself, and wondered why he should have been annoyed by the frank interrogation.

“Miss Presby, the lumberman’s daughter,” he said crisply. “But what interests me most is how you knew?”

The elder miner slapped his leg gleefully, as if pleased with a joke, and said: “Well, I went up there five or six days ago, tryin’ to find you, because I’d lost the combination to the safe, and wanted to look over them old drawings. I sneaked back, because I was a little jealous to see you sittin’ on the pipe talkin’ right friendly to such a good-looker. Three evenin’s later while you were workin’ on them mill samples, I thought I’d like to see the whole of the line. I took a walk. There’s been a real good horse trail worked into the ground up there, ain’t there? And it’s a new trail, too. Seems as if somebody must have been riding up and down that way every day for just about two weeks. And it’s serious, too, because you don’t say nothin’ to a man you was pardners with for more’n seven years. Hey, Dick! What ails you, anyway?”

The younger man was on his feet with one of his fists drawn back, in an attitude of extreme temper.

“Suppose after this you mind your own business?”

For a full half minute the elder man sat there in the dusk, and then said slowly: “All right, boy–I mean, Mister Townsend–I will hereafter.”

In the gloom his figure seemed suddenly bent forward more than usual, and his voice had a note of terrible hurt. It was as if all the ties of seven years of vicissitude had been arbitrarily cast off by his old partner; that they had become master and man. His words conveyed an indescribable sorrow, and loss.

“Bill!”

Dick’s arm had relaxed, and he had stepped closer. Mathews did not lift his head. A hand, pleading, fell on his shoulder, and rested there.

“Bill, I didn’t mean it! I’m–I’m–well, I’m upset. Something’s happened to me. I didn’t seem to realize it till just now. I’m–well, thank you, I’m making a fool of myself.”

The faithful gray head lifted itself, and the gray eyes glowed warmly as they peered in the dusk at the younger man’s face.

“Whe-e-w!” he whistled. “It’s as bad as that, is it, boy? Just forget it, won’t you? That is, forget I butted in.”

Dick sat down, hating himself for such an unusual outburst. He felt foolish, and extremely young again, as if his steadfast foundations of self-reliance and repression had been proven nothing more than sand.

“I know how them things go,” the slow voice, so soft as to be scarcely audible, continued. “I was young once, and it was good to be young. Not that I’m old now, because I’m not; but because when a feller is younger, there are hot hollows in his heart that he don’t want anybody to know about. Only don’t make me feel again that I ought to ‘mister’ you. I don’t believe I could do that. It’s pretty late to begin.”

Dick went to his bed with a critical admission of the truth, and from any angle it appeared foolish. How had it all happened? He was not prone to be easy of heart. He had known the light, fleeting loves of boyhood, and could laugh at them; but they had been different to this. And it had come on him at a time when everything was at stake, and when his undivided thoughts and attention should have been centered on the Croix d’Or. He reviewed his situation, and scarcely knew why he had drifted into it, unless it had been through a desire to talk to some one who knew, as he knew, all that old life from which he had been, and would forever be, parted.

Not that he regretted its easy scramble, and its plethora of civilized concomitants; for he loved the mountains, the streams, the open forests, and the physical struggles of the wild places; but–and he gave over reasoning, and knew that it was because of the charm of Miss Presby herself, and that he wanted her, and had hoped unconsciously. Sternly arraigning himself, he knew that he had no groundwork to hope, and nothing to offer, just then; that he must first win with the Croix d’Or, and that it was his first duty to win with that, and justify the confidence of the kindly old Sloan who backed him with hard dollars.

He had not appreciated how much the daily meeting of Miss Presby meant to him until, on the following morning, and acting on his hardly reached resolution of the night before, he went up for what might be the last time. It was difficult to realize that the short summer of the altitudes was there in its splendid growth, and that it had opened before his unobserving eyes, passed from the tender green of spring to the deep-shaded depths of maturity, and that the wild flowers that carpeted the open slopes had made way for roses. Even the cross on the peak was different, and it came to him that he had not observed it in the weeks he had been climbing to the slope, but had always waited eagerly for the light of a woman’s face.

She came cantering up the trail, and waved a gay hand at him as she rounded the bend of the crag. There was a frank expectancy in her face–the expectancy of a pleasant hour’s visit with a good comrade. He wondered, vaguely and with new scrutiny, if that were not all–just friendliness. They talked of nothing; but his usual bantering tone was gone, and, quick to observe, she divined that there had come to him a subtle change, not without perturbation.

“You don’t seem talkative to-day,” she accused as he stood up, preparatory to going. “Have you finished work on your pipe line?”

He flushed slightly under the bronze of his face at the question, it being thus brought home to him that he had used it as a pretext for continuing their meetings for more than two weeks after that task was completed and the pipemen scattered–perhaps working in some subway in New York by that time.

“Yes,” he said, “the work is finished. I shall not come up here again unless it is for the sole purpose of seeing you.”

There was something in his tone that caused her to glance up at him and there was that in his eyes, on his face, in his bearing of restraint, that caused her to look around again, as if to escape, and hastily begin donning her gloves. She pulled the fingers, though they fitted loosely, as if she had difficulty with them–even as though they were tight gloves of kid, and said: “Well, you might do that, sometimes–when you have time; but you mustn’t neglect your work. I come here because it is my favorite ride. You must not come merely to talk to me when there are other duties.”

“Yes,” he said, endeavoring to appear unconcerned. “The Croix d’Or is apt to be a most insistent tyrant.”

“And it should come first!” He was obtuse for the instant in his worriment, and did not catch the subtle shade of bitterness in which she spoke.

She tugged at the reins of her horse, and the animal reluctantly tore loose a last mouthful of the succulent grass growing under the moisture and shadow of the big steel pipe, and stood expectantly waiting for her to mount. She was in the saddle before Dick could come around to her side to assist her. He made a last desperate compromise, finding an excuse.

“When I feel that I must see you, because you are such a good little adviser, I shall come back here,” he said, “morning after morning, in the hope of seeing you and unburdening my disgruntlement.”

She laughed, as if it were a joke.

“I’m afraid I’m not a very good miner,” she said, “although I suppose I ought to be a yellow-legged expert, having been brought up somewhere within sound of the stamps all my life. Good luck to you. Good-by.”

His reply was almost a mumble, and the black horse started down the trail. He watched her, with a sinking, hungry heart. Just as the crag was almost abreast of her mount, she turned and called back: “Oh, I forgot to say that I shall probably come here almost every day.”

He did not understand, until long afterward, the effort that speech cost her; nor did he know ever that her face was suffused when her horse, startled, sprang out of sight at the touch of her spurs. He did not know, as he stood there, wishing that he had called her back, that she was riding recklessly down the road, hurt, and yet inclined to be strangely happy over that parting and all it had confessed. With a set face, as if a whole fabric of dreams had been wrenched from his life, the miner turned and walked slowly over the trail, worn by his own feet, which led him back to the Croix d’Or, and the struggle with the stubborn rock.

As he topped the hill he suddenly listened, and his steps quickened. From below a new sound had been added to the threnody of the hills; a new note, grumbling and roaring, insistent and strong. Its message was plain. The mill of the Cross was running again for the first time in years; and, even as he looked down on the red roof, the whistle in the engine-house gave a series of cheerful toots in salute of the fact.

Down on the flat in front of the long structure which held, in its batteries, almost two-score stamps, a tall figure came out, and looked around as if seeking him, and then, casting its eyes upward, beheld him, and lifted a battered hat and swung it overhead. It was Bill, rejoicing in his work.

A car of ore slid along the tramway, with the carboy dangling one leg over the back end while steadying himself by the controller, as if he had been thus occupied for years. Dick tore his hat off, threw it in the air, and shouted, and raced down the hill. From now on it must be work; unless they met with great success–then–he dared not stop to think of what then.

He hastened on down to the mill and entered the door. Everything about it, from the dumping of the cars sixty feet above, the wrench of the crushers breaking the ore into smaller fragments, the clash of the screens as it came on down to the stamps, and their terrific “jiggety-jig-jig,” roared, throbbed, and trembled. Every timber in the structure seemed to keep pace with that resistless shaking as the tables slid to and fro, dripping from the water percolating at their heads, to distribute the fine silt of crushed, muddy ore evenly over the plates in the steady downward slant. Already the bright plates of copper, coated with quicksilver, were catching, retaining, amalgamating the gold.

“The venners need a little more slant, don’t you think?” bellowed his partner, with his hands cupped and held close against Dick’s ear in the effort to make himself heard in that pandemonium where millmen worked the shift through without attempting to speak.

In the critical calculation of the professional miner, Dick forgot all other affairs, and leaned down to see the run of water. He nodded his head, beckoned to the mill boss, and by well-known signs indicated his wish. He scrambled above and studied the pulp, slipping it through his fingers and feeling its fineness, and speculating whether or not they would be troubled with any solution of lead that would render the milling difficult and slime the plates so that the gold would escape to go roistering down the creek with waste water. It did feel very slippery, and he was reassured. He was eager to get to the assay-house and make his first assay of “tailings,” refuse from the mill, to discover what percentage of gold they were saving, and, in parlance, “How she would run on mill test.”

Fascinated in his inspection and direction of certain minor changes, he was astonished when the noise suddenly dropped from fortissimo to a dull whine, as the mill slowed down to a stop for the noon hour. And the afternoon passed as quickly while he worked over the bucking board–a plate used to crush ore for assaying–in the assay-house, and watched the gasoline flare and fume in his furnaces to bring the little cupels, with their mass of powdered, weighed, and numbered samples, to a molten state. He took them out with his tongs, watched them cool, and weighed, on the scales that could tell the weight of a lead pencil mark on a sheet of paper, the residue of gold, thus making his computations. He was not pleased with the result. The green lead was not as rich as they had believed.

“It won’t pay more than fifty cents a ton with the best milling we can do,” he said to Bill, who came eagerly into the assay office.

“But you know the old idea–that she gets richer as we go down?” his partner asserted. “If it pays fifty cents a ton at the mill plates, we’ll open up the face of the ledge and put on a day and night shift. We can handle a heap of ore with this plant. It begins to look to me as if the Cross is all to the good. Come on. Let’s go down to the power-house and see how things look down there when we’re working.”

They had been contemplating a new timber road, and, after visiting the power plant and finding it trim, and throbbing with its new life, they cut across and debouched into the public road leading up the cañon, by the banks of the stream, to the Rattler. When almost at the fork, where their own road branched off and crossed the stream to begin its steep little climb up to the Croix d’Or, they saw a man standing on the apron of the bridge, and apparently listening to the roar of their mill. His back was toward them, and seemingly he was so absorbed in the sounds of industry from above that he did not hear them approach until their feet struck the first planks leading to the heavy log structure. He turned his head slowly toward them, and they recognized him as Bully Presby. It was the first time either of them had seen him since the evening in the camp.

“So you’re running, eh?” he asked Dick without any preliminary courtesy.

“Yes, we started the mill to-day.”

“On ore, or waste?” There was a sneer in his question which caused Dick to stiffen a trifle; and Bill frowned, as if the question carried an insult.

Still the younger man was inclined to avoid words.

“Naturally, we shouldn’t put waste through the mill,” he said coldly. “We have opened up an old vein which the other managers did not seem to think worth while.”

“And so, I suppose, showing superior knowledge, you will demonstrate that the men before you were a set of dubs? Humph! From babes and fools come wisdom!”

His voice was hard and cynical, and his grim lips curled with a slightly contemptuous twitch. The hot, impulsive streak in Dick leaped upward. His eyes were angry when he answered.

“If you apply the latter to me,” he retorted hotly, “you are going pretty far. I don’t know what business it is of yours. We have never asked you for any advice, and we don’t want any. I expect no favors from any one, and if I did, am certain, in view of your attitude, that I shouldn’t ask them from you.”

“Steady! Steady, boy!” admonished his partner’s drawling voice at his side. Dick did not utter other words that were surging to his tongue, and finished with an angry shrug of his shoulders.

Bill turned coolly to the owner of the Rattler, and appeared to probe him with his eyes; and his stare was returned with one as searching as his own.

“Who are you?” Presby asked, as if the big miner were some man he had not noticed before.

“Me? My name’s Mathews. I’m superintendent of the Croix d’Or,” Bill answered, as calmly as if the form of question had been ignored.

“And I suppose the young Mister Townsend relies on you for advice, and that he–”

“He don’t need to rely on any one for advice,” interrupted the soft, repressed voice. “I rely on him. He knows more than I do. And say,” he added, taking a step toward Bully Presby, and suddenly appearing to concentrate himself with all his muscles flexed as if for action, “I’ve mined for thirty-five years. And I’ve met some miners. And I’ve never met one who had as little decency for the men on the next claim, or such bullying ways as you’ve got.”

Presby’s face did not change in the least, nor did he shift his eyes. There was an instant’s pause, and he showed no inclination to speak.

“’Most every one around these diggings seems to be kind of buffaloed by you,” Bill added; “but I sort of reckon we ain’t like them. I’m handin’ it to you right straight, so you and me won’t have any trouble after this, because if we do–well, we’d have to find out which was the better man.”

Bully Presby’s eyes flashed a singular look. It seemed as if they carried something of approval, and at the same time a longing to test the question of physical superiority. And then, abruptly, he laughed. Astonished by this strange, complex character, Bill relaxed, and turned toward his partner. Dick, seeing that the interview was ended, as far as the necessity for saying anything was concerned, moved across the bridge, and Bill took a last hard stare at the mine owner. The latter laughed again, with his cold, cynical rumble.

“I think,” he said, “that when the Cross shuts down for good, I’d like to give you a job. When it does, come and see me.”

Without another look, word, or sign of interest, he turned his back on them, and marched up the hill toward the Rattler.