In the Open
There came that night a crisis. Half expected it had always been, and
yet after the familiar fashion of supreme moments it burst upon them
with the suddenness of an explosion. Howard and Helen were sitting
silent upon the cabin doorstep, watching the first stars. In Sanchia's
near-by tent a candle was burning; they could now and then see her
shadow as she moved restlessly about. Longstreet had been out all day,
prospecting.
The first intimation the two star-gazers had of any eventful happening
was borne to them by Longstreet's voice, calling cheerily out of the
darkness below the cliffs. His words were simply 'Hello, everybody!'
but the whoop from afar was of a joy scarcely less than delirious.
Sanchia ran out of her tent, toppling over her candle; both Helen and
Howard sprang up.
'He has found it!' cried Helen. 'Look at that woman. She is like a
spider.'
Longstreet came on down the trail jauntily. Sanchia, first to reach
him, passed her arm through his and held resolutely to his side. As
they came close and into the lamp-light from the cabin door their two
faces hid nothing of their two emotions. Longstreet's was one of
whole-hearted triumph; Sanchia's of shrewdness and determination.
'Now,' cried Longstreet ringingly, 'who says that I didn't know what I
was talking about!' It was a challenge of the victor, not a mere
question.
Before any other reply came Sanchia's answer.
'Dear friend,' she told him hurriedly, 'I always had faith in you.
When others doubted, I was sure. And now I rejoice in your happiness
as----'
'Papa!' warned Helen. She ran forward to him. 'Remember and be
careful!'
Longstreet went into the cabin. The others followed him. Sanchia did
not release his arm, though she saw and understood what lay in Helen's
look and Howard's. The main issue had arrived and Sanchia meant to
make the most of it.
Longstreet put down his short-handled pick. Howard noted the act and
observed, though the impression at the time was relegated to the outer
fringes of his concentrated thought, that the rough head of the
instrument and even a portion of the handle looked rusty. Longstreet
removed from his shoulders his canvas specimen-bag. Plainly, it was
heavy; there were a number of samples in it, some as small as robins'
eggs, one the size of a man's two fists. He was lifting the bag to
dump its contents out upon the table when suddenly Howard pushed by
Sanchia and snatched the thing from Longstreet's hands. Longstreet
stared at him in astonishment; Sanchia caught at his coat.
'Just a minute,' said Howard hastily. Even Helen wondered as he turned
and bolted out through the door and sped up the trail toward the
spring. Longstreet looked from the departing figure to his daughter
and then to Sanchia, frankly bewildered. Then all went to the door.
In a moment, Howard returned, the bag hanging limp over his arm, his
two hands filled with the fragments of rock which glistened in the
lamp-light.
'I washed them off,' he said lightly. 'If there really is gold here we
can see it better with all the loose dirt off, can't we?' He put them
down on the table and stood back, watching Sanchia keenly.
The fine restraint which, in her many encounters with the unexpected,
Sanchia had been trained so long and so well to maintain, was gone now
in a flash. Her eyes shone; a rich colour flooded her face; she could
not stop her involuntary action until she had literally thrown herself
upon the bits of quartz, snatching them up. For they were streaked and
seamed and pitted with gold, such ore as she had never seen. The
avarice gleaming in her eyes for that one instant during which she was
thrown off her guard was akin to a light of madness.
But she had herself in hand immediately; she was as one who had slipped
slightly upon a polished floor but had caught herself gracefully from
falling. She thrust the rock into Longstreet's hands; she smiled upon
him; she made use of her old familiar gesture of laying her hand upon
his arm, as she hardly more than whispered:
'Dear friend--and wonderful man--I am glad for your sake, so
tremendously glad. For now you have vindicated yourself before the
world. Now you have shown them all'--and in her flashing glance
Sanchia managed to include both Alan and Helen sweepingly with an
invisible horde whose bitter tongues had been as so many dogs yelping
at the excellent Longstreet's heels--'now you have shown them all that
you are the man I have always contended you were.' She crowded her
smile fuller of what she sought to convey than even she had ever risked
before as she murmured at the end, her tones dropping away like dying
music: 'This is a happy hour in the life of Sanchia Murray!'
'There's truth there, if nowhere else,' cried Helen pointedly. 'Papa,
if you have stumbled on a real gold mine at last, aren't you wise
enough this time to keep still about it?'
'That word "stumbled," my dear,' Longstreet told her with great
dignity, 'is extremely offensive to me at a moment like this. It is a
word which you have employed in this same connexion before to-day, yet
it is one to which I have always objected. In that sure progress which
marks the path a scientific brain has followed, there are no chance
steps. Surely my own daughter, after the evidence I have already
given----'
'That isn't the point,' said Helen hurriedly. 'The only thing that
counts now is that you mustn't go shouting of it from the housetops.'
'Am I shouting, my dear? Am I seeking the housetops?' His dignity
swelled. Also, it was clearly read in his unusually mild eyes that
Helen, in her excitement with her ill-chosen words, had hurt him.
Sanchia Murray, for one, who was older and of wider worldly experience
than Longstreet's other companions of the moment, and who surely knew
as much of human nature, saw something else in his clouded look. It
was an incipient but fast-growing stubbornness. Therefore Sanchia
closed her lips and watched keenly for developments.
'There's a good old pops,' Helen cajoled. She slipped between him and
Sanchia, sending Howard a meaning look. She made use of certain of the
widow's own sort of weapon, putting her two round arms about her
father's neck. Before he quite understood what was happening to him,
she had managed to get him through the door which led to her room at
the rear, and to close the door after them and set her back to it.
Forthwith her cajolery was done with, and taking him by the two
shoulders Helen looked severely into his wondering eyes.
She began speaking to him swiftly, but her voice lowered. She had
marked how Sanchia had sought to follow, how Howard had put his hand on
her arm and Sanchia had shown her teeth. The woman was in fighting
mood, and Helen from the beginning was a little afraid of what she
might succeed in doing.
'Papa,' she said, 'anyone can see what that woman is after. She robbed
you once, and anyone can see that too. You are a dear old innocent
thing and she is artful and deceitful. You are not safe for a minute
in her hands; you must stay right in here until Mr. Howard and I can
send her away.'
She felt Longstreet's body stiffen under her hands.
'If you mean, my dear, that your father is a mere child; that he cannot
be trusted to know what is best; that you, a chit of a youngster, know
more of human nature than does he, a man of years and experience;
that----'
'Oh, dear!' cried Helen. 'You are wonderful, pops, in your way. You
are the best papa in the world. But, after all, you are just a baby in
the claws--or hands of a designing creature like that hideous Sanchia.
And----'
'And, my dear,' maintained Longstreet belligerently, the stubbornness
now rampant in his soul, 'you are mistaken, that is all. You and I
disagree upon one point; you condemn Mrs. Murray outright, because of
certain purely circumstantial evidence against her. That is the way of
hot-headed youth. I, being mature, even-minded and clear-eyed,
maintain that one accused must be given every opportunity to prove
himself innocent. When you say that Mrs. Murray is untrustworthy----'
'I could _pinch_ you!' cried Helen. 'If she robs you again I--I----'
She could think of no threat of punishment sufficient unto the crime.
Suddenly she pulled the door open. 'Come in here,' she called to Alan.
And as he obeyed, leaving the baffled Sanchia without, Helen said
swiftly: 'See if you can't talk reason into papa. I'll keep _her_ out
there.' And she in turn passed out, again closing the door.
'You little vixen!' Sanchia's cheeks were red with anger as, Helen's
manoeuvre complete, the girl stood regarding her with defiant eyes.
Sanchia's hands clenched and the resultant impression given forth by
her whole demeanour was that upon occasion the little widow might be
swept into such passionate rage that she was prone to resort to primal,
physical violence. Helen, though her own cheeks burned, smiled loftily
and made no answer.
From beyond the closed door came Alan's eager voice. Sanchia bent
forward, straining her ears to hear; Helen, the light of battle flaring
steadily higher in her eyes, began suddenly to sing, the same little
broken snatches of song which not so long ago had irritated her
impatient lover and which now confused the words spoken beyond the door
and which made Sanchia furious.
'Stand aside,' commanded Sanchia. 'I am going in.'
Helen stood firm. Then she saw that Sanchia meant what she said. And,
on the table near the discarded pick, she saw Longstreet's big
revolver. She made a quick step forward, snatched it up in both hands
and pointed it directly at Sanchia's heaving breast. Now the colour
went out of Helen's face and it grew very white, while her eyes
darkened.
'If you move a step toward that door,' she threatened, 'I am going to
shoot!'
Sanchia sneered. Then she paused. And finally she laughed
contemptuously.
'You little fool,' she whispered back, cautious that no syllable might
enter the adjoining room. 'I don't need to go rushing in there, after
all. And you know it. That stuff,' and she glanced briefly at the
rock on the table, 'got into my blood for a second. I'll take my time
now; and I'll get what I want.'
As they stood in silence, Helen making no answer, they heard what the
men were saying.
'--just this if nothing more,' came the end of Howard's entreaty.
'Don't tell Sanchia.'
Promptly came the angry answer:
'Mind your own business, young man! And, until you are asked for
advice, hold your tongue!' At the end of the command the door snapped
open and Longstreet popped into the room.
Sanchia, her cool poise regained, made no step toward him but contented
herself by a slow comprehensive and sympathetic smile. Howard came
quickly to Helen, stooped to her and whispered:
'I can't do a thing with him. But come outside with me a second; I
think I know what to do.'
She flung down the heavy gun and went with him. Ten paces from the
cabin they stopped together.
'Did you glimpse the specimens before I ran out to the spring with
them?' he asked sharply. She shook her head, her eyes round.
'Do you have any idea,' he hurried on, 'just where your father has been
prospecting lately?'
'Yes, I went with him for a walk two or three times during the last
week. He----'
But he interrupted.
'Has he shown any interest in a flat-topped hill about three miles
back? Where there is a lot of red dirt? They call it Red Dirt Hill.'
'Yes!' Her tone quickened. 'That is why----'
They had no time for complete sentences.
'I saw the red dirt on his pick first; then on the rock. That is why I
washed it off, hoping that she had not seen. It's more than a fair
gamble, Helen, that your father's claim is on Red Hill.'
Her hand was on his arm now; she did not know, but through all other
considerations to him this fact thrilled pleasurably. He put his own
hand over hers.
'If Sanchia saw, too?'
'I don't think that she did. Nor am I half sure that it would mean
anything to her. I know every foot of these hills; she doesn't. We'll
go in now and see what we can do. If your father does give it
away--well, then we'll play our hunch and try to beat her to it.'
But though they had been out so brief a time, already Sanchia met them
at the door. Her eyes were on fire; her slight body seemed to dilate
with a joy swelling in her heart; she looked the embodiment of all that
was triumphant. Behind her, rubbing his two hands together, and
looking like a wilful and victorious child, was Longstreet. Sanchia
ran by them. In her hands, tight-clutched, was the finest specimen.
'You haven't told her, papa! Oh, you haven't told her!'
'And what if I have?' he snapped. 'Am I not a man grown that I am not
to----'
Again no time for more than a broken sentence.
'Will you tell us?' demanded Howard.
'In due time,' came the cool rejoinder. 'When I am ready. I should
have told you to-night, had you trusted to me. Now I shall not tell
you a word about it until to-morrow.'
They knew that Sanchia was going for her horse. Here was no time for
one to allow his way to be cluttered up with trifles. Howard turned
and ran to his own horse. They lost sight of him in the dark; they
heard pounding hoofs as he raced after Sanchia and by her; they heard
her scream out angrily at him as she was the first to grasp his
purpose. And presently at the cabin door was Howard again, calling to
Helen. She ran out. He was mounted and led two horses, her own and
Sanchia's white mare.
'Hurry!' he called. 'We'll play my hunch and beat her to it yet.'
Helen understood and scrambled wildly into her own saddle. She heard
Sanchia calling; she could even hear the woman running back toward
them. Then her horse jumped under her, she clutched at the horn of her
saddle to save herself from falling, and she and Howard were racing up
trail, Sanchia's mare led after them, Sanchia's voice screaming behind
them.
They skirted the base of the cliffs for half a mile. Then Howard
turned Sanchia's horse loose, driving the animal down into a dark
ravine where there would be no finding it in the night-time.
'It's only a chance,' he said, 'but then that's better than just
sitting and sucking our thumbs. We take the up-trail here.'
They came out upon the tablelands above Bear Valley. There was better
light here; the trail was less narrow and steep; they could look down
and see the light in the cabin.
Later they were to know just what had been Sanchia Murray's quick reply
to their move. And then they were to know, too, where Jim Courtot's
hang-out had been during these last weeks in which he had seemed to
vanish. Sanchia, with a golden labour before her, had promptly turned
to her 'right hand.' On foot, since there was no other way, and
running until she was breathless and spent, she hurried across the
narrow valley, climbed the low hills at its eastern edge, and plunged
down into the ravine which was the head of Dry Gulch. Up the farther
side she clambered, again running, panting and sobbing with the
exertion she put upon herself, until she came to another broken
cliff-ridge. There she had stood calling. And, from a hidden hole in
the rocks, giving entrance to a cave, like a wolf from its lair, there
had come at her calling Jim Courtot.