“IT’S ALL OFF!”
By this time even Ned, dense as he sometimes showed himself to be, was
aware of how things stood between the handsome stranger from the West
and his cousin Dorothy.
Ned’s heart was particularly warm at this juncture. He spent a good two
hours every forenoon writing a long letter to Jennie.
“What under the sun he finds to write about gets _me_,” declared Tavia.
“He must indite sonnets to her eyebrows or the like. I never did
believe that Ned White would fall so low as to be a poet.”
“Love plays funny tricks with us,” sighed Dorothy.
“Huh!” ejaculated Tavia, wide-eyed. “Do you feel like writing poetry
yourself, Doro Dale? I vum!”
However, to return to Ned, when his letter writing was done he was at
the beck and call of the girls or was off with Garry Knapp for the
rest of the day. Toward Garry he showed the same friendliness that
his mother displayed and the major showed. They all liked the young
man from Desert City; and they could not help admiring his character,
although they could not believe him either wise or just to Dorothy.
The situation was delicate in the extreme. As Dorothy and Garry had
never approached the subject of their secret attachment for each other,
and now, of course, did not speak of it to the others, not even Ned
could blunder into any opening wherein he might “out with his opinion”
to the Westerner.
Garry Knapp showed nothing but the most gentlemanly regard for Dorothy.
After that first evening on the ice, he did not often allow himself
to be left alone in her company. He knew very well wherein his own
weakness lay.
He talked frankly of his future intentions. It had been agreed between
him and Major Dale that the old Knapp ranch should be turned over to
the Hardin estate lawyers when Garry went back West at a price per acre
that was generous, as Garry said, but not so much above the market
value that he would be “ashamed to look the lawyers in the face when he
took the money.”
Just what Garry would do with these few thousands he did not know. His
education had been a classical one. He had taken up nothing special
save mineralogy, and that only because of Uncle Terry’s lifelong
interest in “prospects.”
“I boned like a good fellow,” he told Ned, “on that branch just to
please the old fellow. Of course, I’d tagged along with him on a burro
on many a prospecting trip when I was a kid, and had learned a lot of
prospector’s lore from the dear old codger.
“But what the old prospector knows about his business is a good deal
like what the old-fashioned farmer knows about growing things. He
does certain things because they bring results, but the old farmer
doesn’t know why. Just so with the old-time prospector. Uncle Terry’s
scientific knowledge of minerals wasn’t a spoonful. I showed him things
that made his eyes bug out—as we say in the West,” and Garry laughed
reminiscently.
“I shouldn’t have thought he’d ever have quarreled with you,” said Ned,
having heard this fact from the girls. “You must have been helpful to
him.”
“That’s the reef we were wrecked on,” said Garry, shaking his head
rather sadly.
“You don’t mean it! How?” queried Ned.
“Why, I’ll tell you. I don’t talk of it much. Of course, you understand
Uncle Terry is one of the old timers. He’s lived a rough life and
associated with rough men for most of it. And his slant on moral
questions is not—well—er—what yours and mine would be, White.”
“I see,” said Ned, nodding. “You collided on a matter of ethics?”
“As you might say,” admitted Garry. “There are abandoned diggings
all over the West, especially where gold was found in rich deposits
that can now be dug over and, by scientific methods, made to yield
comfortable fortunes.
“Why, in the early rush the metal, silver, was not thought of! The
miners cursed the black stuff which got in their way and later proved
to be almost pure silver ore. Other valuable metals were neglected,
too. The miners could see nothing but yellow. They were gold crazy.”
“I see,” Ned agreed. “It must have been great times out there in those
early days.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Garry. “For every ounce of gold mined in the old times
there was a man wasted. The early gold mining cost more in men than a
war, believe me! However, that isn’t the point, or what I was telling
you about.
“Some time after I left the university Uncle Terry wanted me to go off
on a prospecting trip with him and I went—just for the holiday, you
understand. These last few years he hasn’t made a strike. He has plenty
of money, anyway; but the wanderlust of the old prospector seizes him
and he just has to pack up and go.
“We struck Seeper’s Gulch. It was some strike in its day, about thirty
years ago. The gold hunters dug fortunes out of that gulch, and then
the Chinese came in and raked over and sifted the refuse. You’d think
there wasn’t ten cents worth of valuable metal left in that place,
wouldn’t you?”
Ned nodded, keenly interested in the story.
“Well, that’s what the old man thought. He made all kinds of jokes
over a squatter’s family that had picketed there and were digging and
toiling over the played out claims.
“It seemed that they held legal title to a big patch of the gulch.
Some sharper had sawed off the claim on them for good, hard-earned
money; and here they were, broke and desperate. Why! there hadn’t been
any gold mined there for years and years, and their title, although
perfectly legal, wasn’t worth a cent—or so it seemed.
“Uncle Terry tried to show them that. They were stubborn. They had to
be, you see,” said Garry, shaking his head. “Every hope they had in the
world was right in that God-forsaken gulch.
“Well,” he sighed, “I got to mooning around, impatient to be gone, and
I found something. It was so plain that I wonder I didn’t fall over it
and break my neck,” and Garry laughed.
“What was it? Not gold?”
“No. Copper. And a good, healthy lead of it. I traced the vein some
distance before I would believe it myself. And the bulk of it seemed
to lie right inside the boundaries of that supposedly worthless claim
those poor people had bought.
“I didn’t dare tell anybody at first. I had to figure out how she could
be mined (for copper mining isn’t like washing gold dust) and how the
ore could be taken to the crusher. The old roads were pretty good, I
found. It wouldn’t be much of a haul from Seeper’s Gulch to town.
“Then I told Uncle Terry—and showed him.”
Ned waited, looking at Garry curiously.
“That—that’s where he and I locked horns,” sighed Garry. “Uncle Terry
was for offering to buy the claim for a hundred dollars. He had that
much in his jeans and the squatters were desperate—meat and meal
all out and not enough gold in the bottom of the pans to color a
finger-ring.”
He was silent again for a moment, and then continued:
“I couldn’t see it. To take advantage of the ignorance of that poor
family wasn’t a square deal. Uncle Terry lost his head and then lost
his temper. To stop him from making any such deal I out with my story
and showed those folks just where they stood. A little money would
start ’em, and I lent them that——”
“But your Uncle Terry?” asked Ned, curiously.
“Oh, he went off mad. I saw the squatters started right and then made
for home. I was some time getting there——”
“You cleaned yourself out helping the owners of the claim?” put in Ned,
shrewdly.
“Why—yes, I did. But that was nothing. I’d been broke before. I got
a job here and there to carry me along. But when I reached home
Uncle Terry had hiked out for Alaska and left a letter with a lawyer
for me. I was the one bad egg in the family,” and Garry laughed
rather ruefully, “so he said. He’d rather give his money to build a
rattlesnake home than to me. So that’s where we stand to-day. And you
see, White, I did not exactly prepare myself for any profession or any
business, depending as I was on Uncle Terry’s bounty.”
“Tough luck,” announced Ned White.
“It was very foolish on my part. No man should look forward to
another’s shoes. If I had gone ahead with the understanding that I
had my own row to hoe when I got through school, believe me, I should
have picked my line long before I left the university and prepared
accordingly.
“I figure that I’m set back several years. With this little bunch of
money your uncle is going to pay me for my old ranch I have got to get
into something that will begin to turn me a penny at once. Not so easy
to do, Mr. White.”
“But what about the folks you steered into the copper mine?” asked Ned.
“Oh, they are making out fairly well. It was no great fortune, but a
good paying proposition and may keep going for years. Copper is away up
now, you know. They paid me back the loan long ago. But poor old Uncle
Terry—well, he is still sore, and I guess he will remain so for the
remainder of his natural. I’m sorry for him.”
“And not for yourself?” asked Ned, slyly.
“Why, I’d be glad if he’d back me in something. Developing my ranch
into wheat land, for instance. Money lies that way, I believe. But it
takes two or three years to get going and lots of money for machinery.
Can’t raise wheat out there in a small way. It means tractors, and
gangplows and all such things. Whew! no use thinking of that now,” and
Garry heaved a final sigh.
He had not asked Ned to keep the tale to himself; therefore, the family
knew the particulars of Garry Knapp’s trouble with his uncle in a short
time. It was the one thing needed to make Major Dale, at least, desire
to keep in touch with the young Westerner.
“I’m not surprised that he looks upon any understanding with Dorothy in
the way he does,” the major said to Aunt Winnie. “He is a high-minded
fellow—no doubt of it. And I believe he is no namby-pamby. He will go
far before he gets through. I’ll prophesy that.”
“But, my dear Major,” said his sister, with a rather tremulous smile,
“it may be years before such an honorable young man as Garry Knapp
will acquire a competence sufficient to encourage him to come after our
Dorothy.”
“Well—er——”
“And they need each other _now_,” went on Mrs. White, with assurance,
“while they are young and can get the good of youth and of life itself.
Not after their hearts are starved by long and impatient waiting.”
“Oh, the young idiot!” growled the major, shaking his head.
Aunt Winnie laughed, although there was still a tremor in her voice.
“You call him high-minded and an idiot——”
“He is both,” growled Major Dale. “Perhaps, to be cynical, one might
say that in this day and generation the two attributes go together! I—I
wish I knew the way out.”
“So do I,” sighed Mrs. White. “For Dorothy’s sake,” she added.
“For both their sakes,” said the major. “For, believe me, this young
man isn’t having a very good time, either.”
Tavia wished she might “cut the Gordian knot,” as she expressed it. Ned
would have gladly shown Garry a way out of the difficulty. And Dorothy
Dale could do nothing!
“What helpless folk we girls are, after all,” she confessed to Tavia.
“I thought I was being so bold, so brave, in getting Garry to come
East. I believed I had solved the problem through father’s aid. And
look at it now! No farther toward what I want than before.”
“Garry Knapp is a—a chump!” exclaimed Tavia, with some heat.
“But a very lovable chump,” added Dorothy, smiling patiently. “Oh,
dear! It must be his decision, not mine, after all. I tell you, even
the most modern of girls are helpless in the end. The man decides.”
Nat came back to North Birchland in haste. It needed only a word—even
from his brother—to bring him. Perhaps he would have met Tavia as
though no misunderstanding had arisen between them had she been willing
to ignore their difficulty.
But when he kissed Dorothy and his mother, and turned to Tavia, she put
out her hand and looked Nat sternly in the eye. He knew better than to
make a joke of his welcome home with her. She had raised the barrier
herself and she meant to keep it up.
“The next time you kiss me it must be in solemn earnest.”
She had said that to Nat and she proposed to abide by it. The old,
cordial, happy-go-lucky comradeship could never be renewed. Nat
realized that suddenly and dropped his head as he went indoors with his
bag.
He had returned almost too late to meet Garry Knapp after all. The
Westerner laughingly protested that he had loafed long enough. He had
to run down to New York for a day or so to attend to some business for
Bob Douglas and then must start West.
“Come back here before you really start for the ‘wild and woolly,’”
begged Ned. “We’ll get up a real house party——”
“Tempt me not!” cried Garry, with hand raised. “It is hard enough for
me to pull my freight now. If I came again I’d only have to—well! it
would be harder, that’s all,” and his usually hopeful face was overcast.
“Remember you leave friends here, my boy,” said the major, when he saw
the young man alone the evening before his departure. “You’ll find no
friends anywhere who will be more interested in your success than these
at The Cedars.”
“I believe you, Major. I wish I could show my appreciation of your
kindness in a greater degree by accepting your offer to help me. But I
can’t do it. It wouldn’t be right.”
“No. From your standpoint, I suppose it wouldn’t,” admitted the major,
with a sigh. “But at least you’ll correspond——”
“Ned and I are going to write each other frequently—we’ve got quite
chummy, you know,” and Garry laughed. “You shall all hear of me. And
thank you a thousand times for your interest Major Dale!”
“But my interest hasn’t accomplished what I wanted it to accomplish,”
muttered the old gentleman, as Garry turned away.
Dorothy showed a brave face when the time came for Garry’s departure.
She did not make an occasion for seeing him alone, as she might easily
have done. Somehow she felt bound in honor—in Garry’s honor—not to
try to break down his decision. She knew he understood her; and she
understood Garry. Why make the parting harder by any talk about it?
But Tavia’s observation as Garry was whirled away by Ned in the car for
the railway station, sounded like a knell in Dorothy Dale’s ears.
“It’s all off!” remarked Tavia.