HALLAM'S CONFEDERATE
It was about the middle of the afternoon of the day following Alton's
affray with the workman when the cook came limping into the verandah of
the Somasco ranch, where Deringham leaned, cigar in hand, against a
pillar talking to his daughter. She lay in a hide chair Alton had
found for her, listening more to the drowsy roar of the river than to
her father, but she lifted her head when the man appeared. He carried
a tray whereon were displayed a badly dinted metal teapot of
considerable size, two large, flat cakes of bread, a can of condensed
milk, and a saucer swimming with partially melted butter, which had
resolved itself into little lumps of whitish grease and a thin golden
fluid under the afternoon sun. He laid them on the table, and after
deftly picking out one or two dead flies from the butter turned to the
girl with a grin in which pride was evident, though it was apparently
meant to be deprecatory.
"I guess this is the kind of thing you were used to in the old country,
Miss," he said. "You have only got to tell me if you would fancy a
piece of cold pork or other fixings."
Alice Deringham dared not glance at her father, who seemed to be gazing
fixedly down the valley, but her lips quivered a little as she turned
towards the man.
"I do not think we shall want anything else," she said with a serenity
that cost her an effort, though it was excellently assumed.
The man limped away with the tray, though he stopped again at the foot
of the stairway. "If you take a notion of that pork after all, hammer
on the iron roofing sheet there, and I'll bring it right away," he said.
Alice Deringham waited until he was out of sight, and then lay back in
her chair and laughed when her father glanced at her with a little grim
smile.
"Savages, my dear!" he said. "Still, their intentions are evidently
kindly, which is unfortunate because it involves us in a difficulty."
"A difficulty?"
Deringham nodded. "I have a suspicion that our estimable kinsman, who
seems to consider that what is good enough for Somasco should content
anybody, might be offended if we slighted his hospitality, and that
teapot apparently contains at least three pints of strong green tea,"
he said. "I do not know whether you feel equal to consuming half of
it, but if it is the same as I had at breakfast I must be excused. One
could also fancy from their solidity that those cups had been intended
for breaking stones with."
"I can at least pour the tea over the balustrade," said the girl. "It
is the bread that presents the difficulty. It would crumble in your
pocket, and you will presumably have to eat a little to save
appearances."
Deringham made a gesture of resignation. "On condition that you do as
much. I am not going to be the only victim, though I fancy you could
not crumble that bread in a stamp battery. This meal, and what we have
otherwise seen at Somasco, confirms my theory that the folks who make
money in the Colonies could save as much, or more, in England if they
lived in a similar fashion."
"Would it be worth while?" asked the girl with a little smile.
"It is a question of temperament," said Deringham. "Personally, I do
not think it would. Indeed, one could fancy that a man of taste would
sooner be interred decently, which is why I will take a very little of
the tea. You see, our mode of life in England, unfortunately, depends
to some extent upon my retaining the good will of Mr. Alton of Somasco.
He will, however, have to excuse me from tasting his butter."
The girl poured a little of the tea into the cups, and then emptied the
pot over the balustrade, which was, as it happened, a blunder, because
while she endeavoured to crumble a small portion of the bread so as to
convey the impression that she had been eating it, Alton and Seaforth
came into the verandah.
The latter glanced at her, and, for he could not help it, a little
smile flickered in his eyes.
"It is a very long while since I had afternoon tea, and I am not sure
that Harry ever indulged in it in his life," he said. "I will bring
some more cups if you will give us some."
Deringham looked at his daughter reproachfully, though his eyes
twinkled, and for just a moment a flush crept into the girl's face, but
she laughed as she said, "Then I must trouble to ask the cook for more
water."
Alton hammered upon the suspended iron sheet, and in a minute or two
the cook appeared again with a large plateful of sliced pork which he
laid down before Miss Deringham.
"I was figuring you would change your mind, and if you want any more
you have only to ask for it," he said.
It cost the girl an effort to repress a shiver of disgust, but though
she succeeded Alton saw her face, and she noticed that the bronze grew
a trifle darker in his forehead. It seemed that he guessed her
thoughts, but the fact that he offered no explanation and made no
excuse for the uninviting fare pleased her. She fancied she understood
his reticence, and that it became him.
"Take that pork away, and bring more water!" he said, and there was a
faint ring in his voice, as he turned to the cook.
The man, who took up the teapot, shook it, and then, as though still
incredulous, lifted the lid and gazed inside it.
"More water?" he said.
"Yes," said Alton, a trifle harshly. "Get it right now!"
The man went away, and there was for almost a minute a somewhat
unpleasant silence. Even Seaforth did not seem to know what to say,
though he felt an absurd desire to laugh, and Alice Deringham was at
once relieved and somewhat astonished when Alton put an end to it by a
whimsical story of a raw Englishman's camp cookery. Seaforth followed
it with a better one, and the whole four were laughing when the cook
came back again. He smiled at them reassuringly as he put the teapot
down.
"I guess there's enough this time," he said. "It's that full I could
scarcely get the lid on."
The tea was strong, and acrid with the sting of the wood smoke, but
there was no avoiding another cupful, and Deringham drank determinedly,
while his daughter felt that she had made full atonement when she set
her cup down half empty. Then Alton, who explained that he had
something to attend to, went away, and Seaforth smiled at the girl when
Deringham went in for another cigar.
"I wonder if one might venture to congratulate you on your resolution?"
he said.
"If I knew exactly what you meant I could answer more readily," said
Alice Deringham.
"Well," said Seaforth reflectively, "I fancy you do, and, if it's any
comfort to you, I think Harry does too. He is considerably less of a
fool than folks who do not understand this country might suppose him to
be; but the point is, that if he can prevent it you will not suffer an
infliction of this kind again."
"I wonder why you thought it worth while to tell me," said Alice
Deringham. "Have I admitted that it was an affliction, or do you
suppose I am very frightened of a little indifferent tea?"
Seaforth laughed. "I can't fancy you so fond of it as the cook seems
to conclude, and I don't think indifferent was exactly the word. A
stronger one would have been appropriate. Still, though I am not sure
that you will understand me, I told you because I felt it was due to
Harry. You see, his attitude was really the correct one, and taking
him all round I am rather proud of him."
"Hasn't that an appearance of unnecessary patronage?" asked Miss
Deringham, who was slightly nettled.
Seaforth nodded. "It has," he said. "Only that the feeling is shared
by everybody in this district, it would be sheer presumption. Good
wine, you know, needs no bush."
He went away because he had a suspicion that Alton would be wanting
him, which was borne out when he found his comrade saddling a horse.
"Where are you going, Harry? We are not half way through with the
sawlogs," he said.
"No," said Alton dryly. "Still, if you work hard enough, you and Tom
should get them into the water before it's dark to-night. I'm going
right down to Horton's."
Seaforth laughed. "I thought you would. Horton has, however, as much
taste in china as the average mule. Don't leave it to him."
"How did you guess that?" and Alton stared at him.
"That," said Seaforth, "was delightfully simple. It is a little more
difficult to decide what Miss Deringham, who is a quick-witted young
woman, did with the tea. As you are quite aware, she did not drink it.
Still, that is not the question. I'll write you out a little list of
what is wanted--I used to know a little about china once, you see, and
you tell Horton to send it on to Vancouver. How much would you care to
spend, Harry?"
"Just whatever is necessary, but get the best," said Alton. "Write
another list of cakes and jellies and things of that kind, too. Put
down plenty."
Seaforth returned by the time the horse was saddled, with an envelope,
and Alton, who took it, rode out at a gallop, for it was a long way to
the settlement, and the evenings at the ranch had of late become very
pleasant to him. He did not wish to lose a minute of one of them. He
drew bridle, however, when he came up with two men standing in the
narrow trail, one of whom signed to him. He was a small rancher, but
it was not until the impatient horse plunged that Alton recognized the
other, who moved aside, as the man he had thrown into the river. The
rancher saw the glance that passed between them.
"Hallo!" he said. "Then you two had trouble when you split? Now,
Damer was telling me he'd got kind of tired of saw milling."
Alton laughed. "That's quite likely," he said. "He showed it by
breaking up my planer in a fit of temper, and I fired him."
Then he touched the horse with his heel, and Damer's gaze grew venomous
as he watched him ride away down the shadowy trail. The rancher
evidently noticed it.
"Now I begin to understand how you got your jacket tore up and that
lump on your forehead," he said. "I wasn't quite sure about your tale,
anyway, and if Harry fired you it was for something mean. You'll get
no horse from me."
The other man said nothing as he turned away, but his face was not
pleasant as he plodded down the trail, and those words of Alton's were
to cost him dear, for if Damer had obtained the horse he wanted to
carry him to the railroad he would in all probability have left the
country, which would have prevented a good deal of trouble. As it was,
however, he restrapped the roll of blankets on his back, and trudged on
with bitterness in his heart under the heat of the afternoon. He had
when he left the Somasco mill headed in the direction of the Tyee mine,
and passed the night in the woods; but with the morning reflection
came, and he had doubled on his trail and was then making for the
railroad, stiff with fatigue. Each time he stumbled into a rut and the
jolt shook him he remembered his last grievance against Alton, who had
sent him on foot, and his frame of mind was not an enviable one when he
limped into sight of the settlement as dusk was closing down.
He had made a long journey that day, and a good deal depended on the
fact that he was weary and his boots galled him, because it had been
his intention to push on to a ranch beyond the settlement before he
slept, and hire a horse there. Damer was not especially sensitive, but
he felt no great desire to encounter the badinage of the men generally
to be found about the store, who, he surmised, would have heard by this
time what had happened at the Somasco mill. Still, he was hungry and
weary, and stopped a moment when he caught a blink of light between the
trees. The bush behind him was very black and still, the dampness of
the dew was on his dusty garments, and he shivered a little in the
faint cold breeze that came down from the snow. Then more lights
twinkled into brightness, a cheerful murmur of voices and a burst of
laughter came out of the shadows, and the glow that broke out from the
windows of Horton's store seemed curiously inviting. Damer, however,
dallied still, and fumbled for his tobacco. He would sit down where he
was and smoke, he said, and then attempt that last toilsome league.
As it happened, he could not find the tobacco, and having a hazy
recollection of laying it on the ground the last time he filled his
pipe, he shook his aching shoulders and trudged on. The loss of the
tobacco decided him, and with a malediction on Alton he made for
Horton's. It was also a fateful decision with far-reaching results he
made just then. Supper had long been cleared away when he entered the
general room of the hotel, and then stopped a moment with his hand on
the door, for the one man who sat under the big lamp was the last
person he desired to meet. He had, however, some papers spread out in
front of him, and Damer decided to slip away quietly, but as he moved
the blankets on his shoulders struck the door, which rattled, and the
man looked up sharply. He had a fleshy face, and black beady eyes,
which he fixed on Damer, who stood still, with a little, unpleasant
smile.
"Come right in!" he said.
Damer smothered an anathema as he recognized the command in the tone.
"No," he said. "If you don't mind, Mr. Hallam, I'll be getting on
again."
"Come in!" said Hallam, a trifle more sharply, but for just a moment
Damer remained motionless. A few steps would take him down the
verandah stairway, and then the shadowy bush lay before him. Had he
had a horse, he would have obeyed the impulse which prompted him to
avoid the encounter; but, as it happened, owing to the fact that Alton
had met the rancher who would otherwise have lent him one, he had none.
So with evident unwillingness he came slowly forward, and dropping his
bundles on the floor flung himself into a chair.
"Well," he said, "I'm here."
Hallam, who had been watching him, nodded reflectively. "I guess you
didn't expect to find me, or you wouldn't have come," he said. "Where
were you going?"
"To the railroad," said Damer. "Out of the country!"
"Without telling me? That was kind of foolish of you. Still, you
haven't much sense, anyway. You had quite a well-paid job at Somasco."
"Well," said Damer dryly, "I haven't got it now."
Hallam laughed, though the glint in his eyes did not express good will.
"You have got a temper that will be the ruin of you, and don't know
when a man's too big for you, while, now I come to look at you, there's
a lump on your forehead that makes the thing quite plain. You have
been fooling with Alton, and he has 'most pounded the life out of you.
Still, what do you want to leave the country for, anyway?"
Damer set his lips, and drummed with his fingers on the table. Then he
made a little deprecatory gesture, and glanced at Hallam.
"You'll hear it all by and by, but there's one point where you're
wrong," he said. "Now, I'm not scared too easily, but I kind of feel
it in me I'll make nothing but trouble for myself by worrying Alton.
Still, it's not the man himself I'm afraid of. I've met tougher ones,
and come out ahead of them."
Hallam sat silent a moment, for he knew the prospectors and survey
packers who passed their lives amidst the desolate ranges and in the
shadowy bush and their superstitions.
"You have had trouble with him before?" he said.
"Yes," said Damer, "I have. He cut my partner down with an axe back
there in Washington. It was in the big rush in the Baker foothills,
and we had a hard crowd standing in with us; but I had to pull out, and
Alton and another man made most of five thousand dollars out of the
claim I left."
"The Bluebird?" said Hallam reflectively. "I remember that rush.
Alton did himself well. Wasn't there a man called Nailer mixed up in
the affair?"
"There was," said Damer, who seemed to shiver a little. "He was my
partner. We'd have had the claim, and Alton wouldn't have worried
anybody again, if Nailer had kept his nerve that night. Something went
wrong with the spring of his Winchester.--and Alton didn't give him
another chance."
The silence that followed was, somewhat impressive. Hallam was trying
to remember what he had read about the affray in question in a Tacoma
paper, while Damer once more saw in fancy a man spring half-dressed
through the wisp of smoke that drifted about a little tent. He
remembered with an unpleasant distinctness the crash of the rifle shot
that rang amidst the shadowy pines, and the grim face of the man who
whirled an axe that glinted in the moonlight about his head. He saw
the flash of its descent--and then brushing the memories from him
stretched out a hand that shook a little towards the whisky on the
table.
"Well," he said, "I owe Alton a good deal, and that's why I went up to
Somasco when you told me, but he has been too much for me again, and
now I feel it in me that if I'm wise I'll let that man alone."
He drank a little whisky, and sat still, staring vacantly before him
with a vague apprehension in his eyes, while the strained tenseness of
his expression and attitude was not without its effect on Hallam, and
it was unfortunate he did not yield to the impulse which prompted him
to let Damer go. He, however, shook off the fancy with a little,
impatient laugh.
"It's not going to suit me to have you slipping out of the country," he
said. "I want you right here, though it would be quite easy to find a
man with twice the grit you have in you. You let Alton whip you off
your claim in Washington, and--for I've a notion of what has
happened--'most pound the head off you yesterday. Now you want to
light out, leaving him to laugh at you?"
Damer flushed a little, and a look of vindictive malice crept into his
eyes as he rose.
"That's about enough!" he said. "You're quite a different man from
Alton. I'm going on."
"Sit down!" said Hallam sharply. "I'm quite as dangerous to you. Take
some more whisky, and listen to me, though I didn't think it would be
necessary to go into the thing again. I was with the men who found
Gordon at the bottom of his shaft on the Quatchigan."
Damer appeared irresolute, but he sat down. "Nobody knows how he got
there."
"No? Well, I have a notion, and I guess Tom Winstanley and one other
man could tell."
"Winstanley's dead."
Hallam laughed. "Still, the other man is on my pay-roll, but where you
can't get at him unless I want you to. Now, are you going to gain
anything by kicking against me?"
Damer was evidently astonished, and sat for almost a minute as though
lost in reflection. Then he made a little gesture as one who abandons
a struggle.
"I guess that takes me. What do you want?" he said.
"Nothing very much in the meanwhile. They'll start you rock-drilling
at the Tyee, but it's quite likely I'll send you up into the ranges
prospecting by and by. Still, I don't want any of the folks down here
to know you're with me, and you'll start out by the railroad trail
to-morrow, and wait at the lake until I come up with you. There's
somebody coming now!"
Damer moved abruptly, for there was a step on the stairway, and as he
reached the verandah a man brushed past him. He stopped, and for a
moment Damer and Alton stood face to face. The latter, however, passed
on, and swept his glance round the room, seeing only a man he did not
recognize sitting at the opposite end with his back to him. Then he
swung round again, and went down the stairway shouting, "Horton!" until
a man came out from a shed at the back of the store.
"Well," he said, "I'm here. You needn't raise the whole place, Harry."
Alton laughed. "I've been up to Grantly's, and he's going in to the
railroad to-morrow. You can send that order for the crockery along
with him. Dollars are no object so long as it's pretty. The tea is to
be the best they keep in Vancouver, too."
He swung himself into the saddle, and shook the bridle, while Damer
leaned on the verandah balustrade gazing up the dusky trail he had
taken until the last faint beat of horsehoofs sank into the silence of
the bush. It was now very black and solemn, but away beyond it the
snow still shone faintly cold and white against the sky, and once more
Damer shivered a little as he turned towards the lighted store. He had
meant to leave the country, but fate had been too strong for him, and
remembering what Hallam had told him about the prospecting he wondered
if he and Alton would meet again under that cold gleam of snow amidst
the great desolation of the ranges.