AT THE WEST GULCH
Talbot made his start back to the cabin later than he intended; he had
knocked at Winters' cabin before leaving the town, but all the occupants
were out, and there had been no response.
It was afternoon, and already the uncompromising cold of evening had
entered into the air; the sky was grey everywhere, and dark, almost
black, in front of him; it seemed to hang low, frowning and ominous,
over the desolate snowy waste that stretched before him: there was no
snow falling yet, only the threat of it written in the black and dreary
sky that faced him. His cheeks and chin felt stiff and frozen already,
as if a thin mask of ice were drawn over them, and his eyes were sore
and tired from the continuous glare of the snow. The little pony beside
him plodded along the path patiently, and his master at intervals drew a
hand from a comfortable pocket to lay it encouragingly on his neck, at
which familiar caress the pony would throw up his head and step out
faster for some paces. Talbot felt sorry for the little beast toiling
along under his heavy though carefully packed burden of stores, cans of
oil, loaves, and every sort of miscellaneous provisions, and would have
spoken cheeringly to it, but his lips felt too stiff and painful to form
the words, and so man and brute toiled along in silence over the trail
under the angry sky. As he walked, Talbot's thoughts went back
involuntarily to the picture of Stephen sitting smoking by the stove in
the snug interior of Bill Winters' cabin; he felt instinctively, as
surely as if he had seen it, that he would so sit through the
afternoon, and by evening he would be finding his way down to the
nearest saloon and pass the hours there with Katrine; and he compared
him vaguely with himself, tired with tramping through the town from
store to store, half frozen while he stood to pack the pony, and now
labouring up alone to his cabin in the gulch.
He wondered dimly whether it would turn out that he should ever realise
a reward for his toil, whether he should live to get out of this icy
corner of the world, or whether he should die and rot here, caught in
this great snow-trap, in this open grave, where the living were buried.
He wondered a little, but his mind was not one inclined to abstract
thought. He spent very little time in retrospection, reflection, and
contemplation, very little time in thinking of any sort, and on this
account possessed so great a stock of energy for acting. Each human
being has only a certain amount of energy supplied him with which to do
the work of his life. Thinking, speaking, and acting are all portions of
this work, and whatever of his energy he consumes in any one, so much
the less has he for the others. Thinking, the formation of ideas, is
hard work; speaking, the expression of ideas, is hard work; and acting,
the carrying out of ideas, is hard work. It is false to suppose that the
first two are natural, instinctive, involuntary movements of the brain,
and that only the last requires effort.
Talbot thought very little and spoke very little. His ideas came to him
in simple form; they were not elaborated in his mind nor in his speech,
they turned into actions immediately or died quietly without giving him
any trouble or wasting his time. A decision once made he carried out. He
never thought about it afterwards, or frittered away his strength in
hours of torturing doubt as to whether it was a good one to have made,
or whether some other might not have been better. Once made, he kept to
it, good or bad, leaving it to chance whether he died or succeeded in
his attempt to carry it out. And this conservation of energy in all
other mental processes resulted in a splendid strength for action and a
limitless endurance in the carrying out of his decisions.
And as he walked now he thought very little, except in a resigned way,
of the physical discomfort he was enduring, and of the time when he
should reach his cabin. Dusk had already fallen before he came to the
gulch, and he had to strain his eyes to find the narrow trail which
descended the side of the gorge. His log cabin, carefully and solidly
constructed, stood half-way down the northern slope of the gulch, on a
sort of natural platform formed by the vagaries of the now narrowed
stream in its younger and wilder days. Beneath the cabin stretched his
claims, 500 feet of dry soil on the slope of the hill, 100 feet this
side of the stream and fairly in the creek, and 100 feet on the farther
side, a stretch of 700 feet in all, and of a quality that made it at
that time the richest claim for fifty miles round. Shafts, reaching down
to bed rock, were sunk all over it, and great mounds of frozen gravel
beside them showed how untiringly they had been worked. In addition to
these, the man's native energy had prompted him to drive a tunnel
horizontally for some distance into the side of the hill that rose
steeply behind the cabin. The tunnel pierced the hill for 100 feet, and
at the end a shaft had been sunk to bed rock, and it was from here at
present that the highest grade ore was coming. Moved by an instinct to
protect what he intuitively felt would be his richest possession, Talbot
had built his tunnel in one solid block with the cabin, and closed its
outer end with a huge door, well provided with bars and bolts. So long
as this door was successfully held, no claim-jumper could penetrate into
the tunnel or reach the shaft at the end. By this means, too, a double
protection was afforded the living cabin, though of this he thought
comparatively little, for the face of the cabin presented nothing but
its one small window and this huge solid door. Upon opening this you
found yourself in the tunnel; if you kept straight on you reached the
shaft; if you entered the small door upon your left hand you found
yourself in the interior of the living cabin.
The gulch ran east and west, and at sunset at some times in the year a
red light from the dying sun would fall into it, like a tongue of flame,
and the whole gulch would seem on fire. At such moments Talbot would
cease his work and stand looking up the gorge, with the red light
falling on his face and banishing its careworn pallor. No one knew what
he was thinking of in those moments, whether he was recalling Italian
or Egyptian skies that had been as fair, or whether for a moment some
vanished face seemed to look at him from out those brilliant hues, or if
merely the great sheets of gold that spread above the gulch brought
visions of that wealth he was giving his best years to attain. No one
who met him knew much about him, except that he was an Englishman, had
travelled much and experienced many different forms of life, and finally
come to the Klondike,--but why this last? He was believed to have been
rich before he came: was it merely to increase his wealth, or was there
some other reason? Was there any one awaiting his return? There were
several portraits in his cabin of soft and lovely faces, but then the
number was confusing, and the most curious of the men who worked under
him could not come to any satisfying conclusion. All they knew was that
he worked harder than any common miner, that his reserve was unbroken,
and his life one continual self-denial. There were thirty men in all who
worked for him, and by them all he was respected and feared rather than
liked. There was a chilling reserve wrapped about him, an utter absence
of ingenuousness and frankness of character, that prevented any
affection growing up amongst the men for their master, and his attitude
towards them was summed up in the answer he gave to an acquaintance who
once asked him how he got on with his men, if he had any friends amongst
them. Talbot had raised his dark, marked eyebrows and merely said
coldly, "I don't make friends of miners."
Stephen Wood's cabin was a little higher up the gulch by several yards,
and the claims of the two men had been staked out side by side. A great
friendship had grown up between the two, such a friendship as common
danger, common privations, common aims, and Nature's awful loneliness
drives any two human beings in each other's proximity into. But besides
this friendship there was a quiet liking on Talbot's part for this weak,
impulsive, boyish character, so unlike his own, and on Stephen's side a
warm admiration for all Talbot's qualities that he could not and yet
wished to emulate. He, as others, was completely excluded from the elder
man's confidence, and knew nothing of his past or what was likely to be
his future; but then Stephen was one of those people always so deeply
absorbed in himself, his own aims and views, that he really never
noticed that his manifold confidences were never returned in the
smallest degree. He would come over to Talbot's cabin in the evening,
seat himself on the opposite side of the fire, and talk incessantly.
Talbot would allow him to do so until he felt too much bored, when he
would rise and quietly tell him to go. Stephen would hastily apologise
and retire, to return the following night quite unabashed, with more
views and aims to impart. In the first week of their acquaintance Talbot
had heard all about his home life--about the little English village, and
the red brick, ivy-covered school-house, where he had been master since
he was eighteen; of the village schoolmistress he had loved, because she
was so good, and had abandoned, presumably for the same reason; of his
doubts, fears, hopes, wishes, and intentions,--and after ten months he
knew no more of Talbot than he did the day of their first meeting.
The cabins of the men employed by both Stephen and Talbot were dotted
over the gulch, some higher and some lower than their own; while a
number of the men lived some distance off, a few of them even having
lodgings in the town.
When at last Talbot reached his cabin door this evening darkness had
completely fallen; there was no light from within to guide him, but
with his half-frozen fingers he managed to unlock the outer door, and he
and his tired beast went in together. The first thing he thought of when
he had closed the great door behind him and lighted up the passage, was
to unpack the animal and put him up in the stable which he had built
opposite his own cabin door; and it was fully an hour before, having
seen the beast comfortably installed, he turned into his own room and
struck a light. Here there was only one living thing to greet him, and
that was a shabby little black cat that leaped off the bed in the corner
and came purring to meet him. One morning he had found this cat lying on
his claim with a broken leg and carried it back to his cabin, where he
had set the leg and nursed the miserable little creature into recovery.
Denbigh, his foreman, who had seen Talbot sitting up for two whole
nights to watch the helpless animal, had carried away the impression
that the cold, quiet, hard and selfish man, as he appeared to the
miners, had another side to his character that they never saw. It was
this other side that the kitten was familiar with, and she came mewing
and purring with delight towards him. Talbot, who was ready to sink to
the floor with exhaustion, stooped and stroked the animal, which
followed his steps everywhere as he set about lighting up his stove. It
was very quiet, there was absolute silence all round him, and every step
of his heavy boots on the wooden floor, every crackle of the igniting
wood in the stove, seemed a loud and important sound in the stillness.
It was always very quiet at the gulch, Nature's own solemn quiet, except
in the summer time, when she filled it with the laughing voices of a
thousand streams and rills.
That evening, when his domestic arrangements were all put into working
order, his fire blazing, his coffee boiling on the hob, and his table
laid, he sank back in his chair with a weary sigh, his hand idly
stroking the cat, which had jumped purring on his knee. It seemed lonely
without Stephen, and he foresaw that probably many evenings would pass
now without his society.
The next morning, when it was yet barely light, and the gulch was
holding still all its damp black shadows of the night, Talbot was out
tramping over the claims, showing his men where to start new fires, and
carefully scanning the fresh gravel as it was thawed and dug out. All
his men had a pleasant salutation for him as he passed by, except one,
who merely leaned over his work and threw out his spadeful of gravel
savagely, as Talbot stopped by the fire. He took no notice apparently of
the man, and after a second's survey passed on to the next fire. The man
looked after him a moment sulkily and returned to his work. He was a
huge fellow, some six feet four, and with a massive frame and head to
suit his height. He had been working for many months with Talbot now,
and was a valuable labourer on account of his great strength and
capacity for work. At first he had been rather a favorite with Talbot,
and there hung now in his cabin a first-class six-shooter, the gift of
his master when he first came up to the gulch.
Dick Marley had had a devoted admiration for Talbot until the last few
months, when it had turned into a bitter, sullen resentment over a
matter with which in reality Talbot had absolutely nothing to do. Dick,
being a hard and constant worker, had managed to save out of his liberal
wages quite a considerable sum, and this he had entrusted to a man on
his way to Seattle to invest for him in securities. After a time the man
disappeared, and Dick discovered his securities had never been bought,
and that he was in fact robbed and cheated. In his first rage and
disappointment he cast about unconsciously in his mind for some one
besides himself to lay the blame upon, and finding no one he grew daily
more and more morose. Hour after hour, as he worked upon the claims, his
thoughts would revolve sullenly round his loss, and the offender being
beyond his reach, his anger burned against any and every man near him,
and apparently chiefly against his employer.
A week passed before Stephen reappeared at the gulch, then one evening
after dark, when Talbot was sitting back in his chair, dozing after the
cold and fatigue of the day's work, a loud banging came on his outer
door, and when he opened it, Stephen, looking very flushed and animated,
came into the quiet little room, laden with packages and with a general
air of city life about him.
"Well, old man, how are you? Hello, Kitty!" this as he stumbled over the
little black cat at his feet. "Well, I've had such a glorious time! I
wish you'd stayed down there too: that girl is just the finest creature
I've ever seen. Have you anything for a fellow to eat?--I'm perfectly
famished. Look here, I've brought you up some cans of things and a
bottle of rye, the very best. I say, you look dreadfully blue--what's
the matter?"
"Life in the west gulch in the winter isn't particularly exhilarating,"
answered Talbot, quietly, as he went about his preparations for
Stephen's supper.
"How have the men been--all right?" questioned Stephen, as he took off
his coat and settled himself in the best chair.
"They have been working pretty steadily, but I notice a difference in
them since that fellow Marley has been here. He has been stirring them
up, doing a lot of mischief, I think."
"You must assert your authority, I suppose," remarked Stephen
pompously, stretching his feet out comfortably in the cheerful blaze.
"Perhaps he doesn't know who's master here."
"He will very soon find out then," returned Talbot, so grimly that
Stephen looked at him sharply. "Well, what's all your news?" asked
Talbot, as if desirous to get away from the question of his men.
"I don't know that there is much, except I've been having a good time.
You've looked after my ground and seen to the workings, haven't you?
Thanks, I knew you would, and so I felt I could stay down town a little:
you're a better hand at managing men than I am, any way,--women too, for
that matter; do you know that you impressed Katrine awfully? She has
talked about you to me--you are so good-looking, so distinguished, she
wants to know whether you are a Count or a Prince in disguise, and all
sorts of things."
Talbot smiled. "It is extremely kind of her," he said quietly.
"Oh, I know she's not the kind of girl you admire," said Stephen, in
rather a nettled tone. "You wouldn't look at a saloon-keeper's daughter
simply because she _is_ a saloon-keeper's daughter; you like a girl in
your own rank, all grace and dignity and good manners, and awfully
clever and intellectual, and gifted and educated, and all that."
Talbot merely laughed and remained silent, a habit he had which
successfully baffled questions, innuendoes, and suppositions alike.
"And any way your passions are engaged somehow, somewhere."
"How do you know that?" asked Talbot, with a hardening of his mouth.
"Know it! why, otherwise you could not lead this dog's life as you do,
and you could not be indifferent to a beautiful girl like Katrine,--for
she is beautiful, she's not 'pretty' or 'nice,' but she's downright
beautiful," returned Stephen, emphasising his remarks by striking the
table.
Talbot said nothing, but put more wood in the stove in silence.
"Your supper is ready now; if you are famished, as you said, you'd
better have it, and discuss Miss Poniatovsky afterwards," he remarked.
Stephen turned to the table. "Won't you have something too?" he said.
Talbot shook his head. "No, thanks; I'm not hungry."
"You ascetic creature, you never are," replied Stephen, as he began to
carve into the cold bacon.
"Well, you know how I detest her surroundings," he began again after a
few minutes, "and drinking, and saloons, and almost everything she does,
but then I can't help liking her. She's so different from any girl I've
ever seen. She attracts me, she holds my thoughts so, and if I could get
her to give up all that, if I could alter her views--"
"You would be doing away with that difference from others that is the
basis of your attraction," put in Talbot, dryly.
"Well," returned Stephen after a minute, in a sulky tone, "we are all
like that,--a man falls in love with a girl, because she _is_ a girl,
and then immediately wants to turn her into a married woman."
Talbot laughed. "Good!" he said. "You are quite right."
"It's the altering process we like, and we want to do the alteration
ourselves. I showed her my pocket Greek testament yesterday," he
continued.
"And was she interested?" inquired Talbot, dryly.
"Not so much as she was in the shooting gallery," admitted Stephen. "I
told her how a bible at a man's heart had often saved his life, and she
said a pistol had done that too, and she'd rather trust the pistol."
Talbot laughed. "You say you like altering. I should think in Katrine
you've a splendid field. If you want to get her down to the
schoolmistress pattern, you've employment for a lifetime!"
Stephen flushed, as he always did at any allusion to the girl he had
loved as the type of all virtues, and yet had tired of. Good people are
always more or less interested in and attracted by the wicked, while the
wicked are not generally the least interested in nor attracted by the
good. Stephen was drawn towards this reckless daughter of the saloons
partly through the sense of her general badness, it formed unconsciously
a sort of charm for him, whereas his goodness did not act at all in the
same way upon her. To her eyes it was his one great drawback, an
overwhelming disadvantage.
He finished his supper in silence, and the two men drew in close to the
fire to smoke. That is to say, Stephen did the smoking, as he did the
talking. He consumed Talbot's tobacco, and filled Talbot's cabin with
its fumes. Talbot himself did not smoke.
Stephen's return to his own claim freed Talbot from the double share of
work he had been doing for the last week, and he remained on his own
claims all day, tramping from one end to the other, directing where a
new shaft should be made, overseeing closely all the work that went on,
and doing a good deal of it himself; and in those days he became more
clearly conscious than ever of the difference that was growing up in his
men's manner towards him. There was a veiled insolence in their replies
to his questions, a certain want of promptness in obeying his orders,
which caused a curious gleam to come into the quiet grey eyes as,
apparently without noticing it, he passed on.
He did not speak of it, not even to his foreman, Denbigh, the man whom
he liked and trusted most. He was accustomed to manage his own affairs,
and rarely took counsel with any one. He was one of those men who are
born with the gift of governing others. He was an organiser, an
administrator, by nature. Had he been born to a throne, his kingdom
would have been well ruled from end to end, and rarely if ever embroiled
with other nations; and the same spirit that would have ruled a kingdom
showed itself here in the ruling and management of his seven hundred
feet of ground.
He never bullied, never swore, no one had ever seen him in a passion. He
gave his orders in a pleasant friendly voice, his manner was quiet, even
to gentleness, but he had a way of getting those orders invariably
carried out that was hard to analyse. If he said a thing was to be done,
it was done, and no one knew of an instance where it was not. He never
countermanded an order, and never receded from a position once taken,
even if in his own heart he recognised later it was an unwise one. But
the forethought and caution, the deliberation in decision that were his
by nature, made the occasions on which he regretted an order very
seldom, and if such there were, no matter, the order stood. He himself
looked upon his word as irrevocable, whether given in promise or
command, and instinctively all who came in contact with him looked upon
it in the same light. The men, when they made engagements with him and
stipulated certain terms for certain work, and other details, never
asked for paper, and even refused it when offered. Whatever came from
those silent, resolute lips they knew unalterable, unanswerable, final,
and absolute; they all trusted his word completely, and it passed
amongst them as other men's bond.
Everything on the claims was well organised, all was kept in smooth
working order. The men had exact hours of work, exact time for changing
off, each his specified work and place on the ground, each his tools,
for which he was accountable as long as he worked there.
Talbot's forethought even went far enough to provide for the
happy-go-lucky and mostly ungrateful creatures who had no idea of
providing for themselves. He established a sick fund, and to this each
of the men who worked for him was obliged to subscribe a trifle out of
his weekly wages. Then in their not infrequent sickness there was
alleviation and comfort waiting for them. If the miners were not his
friends they were his dependents, and as such he cared for them and
looked after them. He was always friendly in manner to them, always
ready to help and assist them, to attend to their wants, to listen to
their complaints, and settle the frequent disputes amongst themselves,
which they invariably brought to him for decision. If he had not
instilled affection into them, they felt an unlimited faith and
confidence in his absolute justice.
"He's hard, real hard," they said amongst themselves, "but he'll never
go back on you;" and that was the received opinion amongst them.
Although he was conscious now of the feeling growing up amongst his men,
he appeared to ignore it entirely. As long as his instructions and
commands were carried out, he affected to be in ignorance whether it was
with a smiling or a scowling face. He felt certain that the disaffection
owed its origin to the man Marley, and he expected every day that some
matter would bring this man and himself into a personal conflict, in
which he meant to conquer, and he preferred to wait for this to happen
than to, in any way, take an initiative step in bringing the covert
hostility to light.
It was his method. On the same principle, when one of his debtors,
having completely lost his head in blind rage against a quiet order that
he should pay what was due, shook his fist in the other's face and
threatened to wipe the floor with him, Talbot did not knock the man
down, as some might have done. He simply remarked in his dryest tone,
"You'd better try it," and for some reason or other the man did not.
Shortly after the money was paid.
So now he simply stood his own ground, saw that his work was properly
done, and waited until the man courted his own punishment. In the
meantime, the men mistook his forbearance, his quietness, his smoothness
of tones and manner for weakness, and Marley, a bully by nature, and
quite incapable of understanding his employer, grew elated and
triumphant.
Stephen had been back at the gulch a fortnight or more, when Talbot
found late one afternoon some of his tools broken, and this, combined
with other work he had to do in town, decided him to go down that
afternoon and return the following day before daylight failed. He got
ready, locked up his house, and called upon Stephen to say he was going.
Stephen looked quite surprised, Talbot went to town so seldom, and then
began to chaff him upon his motives and intentions.
"As it happens, I'm going about some mending of spades," Talbot
returned.
"Are you sure it's not the breaking of hearts?" Stephen laughed back
from the fire by which he was sitting. "Well, you'll see Katrine any
way. Tell her--"
"My dear fellow," interrupted Talbot, impatiently, "I'm not going to see
her. I shall have as much as I can do to be back here before mid-day
to-morrow," and he went out before the amazed Stephen could say another
word.
"Going down town and not going to see Katrine! why, he must be mad,"
ejaculated Stephen mentally; "wonder what his own girl's like anyway."
Then he tossed himself back on the rug and looked at a little
postage-stamp photograph Katrine had given him of herself, which he had
stuck on the fly-leaf of his Greek testament.
The following morning, before it was fully light, found Talbot toiling
up to the west gulch on foot. He had made an early start, as he wanted
to be back before the men began work, and the air hung round one and
against one's cheek like a sodden blanket in the dusky dawn. It took him
over three hours to make the distance, and when he reached his cabin he
felt chilled through. All his muscles were stiff and numb from the long
climb. He felt a longing to sit down and rest and get a little warmth
kindled in his half-frozen limbs. The first thing that encountered him
at the main door, which led into the block composed of his own cabin and
the tunnel, was a sheet of smooth ice, only an inch deep perhaps, but
glazing over the ground from where he stood to his own door. He saw at
once what had happened: the waste water from the workings had been
diverted from its proper outlet, and had simply run freely at its own
will over the level ground. Talbot's face darkened as his eyes rested on
it. It was Marley's business to see that the egress for the water was
kept free and unblocked with ice, and only yesterday he had given him
orders to attend to it. It was the second or third time he had returned
to find the entrance to his own house almost impassable. Crossing over
with difficulty the frozen stream, he looked into his cabin. There was
about a foot of muddy water and ice covering the floor and floating his
slippers and some pairs of socks he had left by the hearth. The fire was
out, and the lower part of the stove filled with mud and water. The bed
was completely soddened, the blankets and quilt dabbling in the water.
He did not go beyond the threshold. After a minute's survey he turned
and walked down the tunnel leading to the shaft where he knew the men
were working.
"Marley!" he called down the shaft.
"What is it?" came up from below in a surly tone.
"You have allowed the waste to run into the tunnel again, and my cabin
is flooded."
"Well, clean it out then!"
"I think that is your business," answered the dry cutting tones from
above. "Come up at once, and see to it."
"I'm not going to swab out your blasted, dirty old cabin," shouted
Marley hoarsely from the bottom of the shaft. "Do it yourself."
A strange look came over Talbot's quiet face. It whitened and set in the
darkness. He knew his men were gathered about Marley, listening to what
passed, and this open defiance of his authority, this public insult
before them, angered him excessively. He made his answer very quietly,
however, only his voice was peculiarly hard, and the words seemed to
drop like ice on the men standing listening below.
"I allow no one to speak to me like that here," he said. "This is the
last day that you work on the claim."
"I'll work here as long as it suits me," retorted Marley, with an oath.
"You can't turn me out."
"We will see about that," returned Talbot, in the same even, frigid
tone, and he turned away from the pit and walked back to his flooded
cabin.
He found Denbigh had arrived there. It was close to the luncheon hour by
this time, and he was doing what he could to get rid of the water. He
looked up, and saw at once from the other's face there had been some
unusual incident.
"What's up?" he inquired, standing still, with his mop in his hand.
"That fellow Marley is making all the trouble he can," returned Talbot.
"I have just told him he has got to get out, that's all."
Denbigh's face fell. "I think it's a bad job," he remarked after a
minute. "You know what a desperate devil he is; he would kill you, I
believe, if he had to give up his work."
"Well, he has been trying to boss this business for some time now,"
returned Talbot, "and I am tired of it. To-day he finished with a gross
insult before a lot of the men, and it's time, I think, to show him and
them who is boss here."
"Couldn't you overlook it?" replied Denbigh, tentatively, with a scared
look on his thin face.
"I have no wish to," replied Talbot, coldly. "There is bound to be
trouble some time. It may just as well come now as later."
Denbigh opened his mouth to make a further protest, but Talbot stopped
him.
"Don't let us discuss it any further, please," he said curtly, and
Denbigh closed his mouth and dropped back on his knees to his
floor-mopping.
Talbot drew out his pistol, glanced over it, and buckled it round his
waist.
When the room was reduced to some appearance of dry comfort again, the
two men sat down to their luncheon in silence. Talbot was too excited to
swallow a mouthful of the food. Although so calm outwardly, and with
such absolute command over his passion, anger was with him, like a flame
at white heat, rushing through his veins.
As they sat they heard the miners tramping by the cabin door, and saw
their heads pass the window as they went out to get their mid-day food.
Denbigh himself, as soon as he had finished, made an excuse and
departed. He was eager to join his companions before they came back to
work and hear some more delectable details of the row than he could get
from Talbot. When all his men had filed out from the tunnel, Talbot went
into the passage and walked up to the heavy wooden door and shut it,
barring it with a steady hand. This was the main entrance to the shaft,
and at the present time the only one. The door was never, under ordinary
circumstances, closed, but stood open all day for the men to pass in and
out to their work. When he had fastened it he walked back, turned into
his own cabin, and took up his place at the window. From here he could
see the men as they came back. They began to return earlier than was
their wont, knowing that trouble was in the air, and each one was
anxious to be on the spot for the crisis. All through the lunch hour
Talbot's words and the possibility of Dick Marley being obliged to
"quit" was the sole topic of conversation.
Dick talked largely, and with a great many of the miners his oaths, and
the imputations of cowardice he heaped on his employer, carried the day.
Some of the others, quieter men with keener perceptions, merely listened
in silence, and shook their heads when appealed to for an opinion.
"I dunno. He's got grit," remarked one between mouthfuls of bread and
bacon, in response to a sanguinary burst of Dick's.
"He's a slip," answered Dick, contemptuously.
"But a dead sure shot."
"He'd funk it," said Dick, his face paling a little. "He'd never stand
up to me. He's got no fight in him. Why, he's managed that claim there
now for two years and he's never so much as fired a shot over it. Now
that fellow Robinson wot's got the claim a mile farther up the creek,
he's the boy for me. Why, he hadn't been there two days before there was
trouble, and at the end of the week we was reckoning up he had made five
corpses over it."
He looked round the circle, and there was a murmur of admiring assent.
The old miner nodded his head slowly as he munched his beans.
"Yes, that's Talbot's way; he's just as smooth as butter as long as you
know he's the boss and act accordin', but jest as soon as you begin to
try and boss him, you'll know you have your hands full."
Dick took another pull at the tin whisky bottle, and tightened his belt.
As the men returned to their work they were surprised to see their
employer leaning idly against his window, and still more surprised when
they passed round to the main entrance to find the great door shut.
Talbot came himself and let each man in, in turn as they came up,
shutting the door afterwards. Their curiosity at this unusual state of
things was great, but there was a look on the pale, stern face they
encountered on the threshold that froze all open question or comment,
and each man went by silently to his work. When they got down towards
the shaft and out of hearing, however, their tongues were loosened
again.
"'E's waiting for Dick to come back, that's what he is," volunteered one
of the miners; "and somehow or other I don't feel jest dying to be in
Dick's shoes when he do come."
There was no dissent openly offered to this guarded opinion. Most of the
men hung about in the tunnel, and seemed unwilling to quit the scene of
the coming contest.
At last, among the final batch of men, Marley came sauntering past the
window. Talbot's eyes flashed as the tiger's when the brush crackles.
He walked out to the great door and flung it wide open. Dick fell back a
step, and the little crowd of miners who accompanied him closed in round
the two, open mouthed and eyed, to see the battle.
"You can't come in," and the sentence had an accent of inflexibility
that made it seem like a drawn sword across the entrance.
"To hell I can't!" returned Dick, a dull red flush coming over his face.
"No, you can't," Talbot replied in the same calm, incisive way, that
contrasted strongly with the coarse, whisky-thickened tone of the other.
"Oh well, I guess I'm coming in any way," answered Marley, and he made a
step forward. A slight motion of Talbot's right hand to his belt was his
only answer.
Marley stopped, put his own hand, half involuntarily, to his hip,
remembered he had no revolver with him, and turned pale and red in
confusion.
By this time the loud voices and talking at the door had brought the
remainder of the men upon the scene. Those who had already passed into
the shaft left their work and came up behind Talbot in the tunnel; those
in front pressed a little nearer. Talbot stood now completely surrounded
by the crowd of rough working men. Marley's adherents were in full
force. He was quite alone. He did not glance round them. He did not
think of himself, nor of his own danger should two or three of them back
up their fellow and commence to hustle him. He felt nothing but a cool
though intensely savage determination to subdue this burly brute, to
defend his position and title, though it cost him his life.
"There can be only one boss here," he said coldly, as Marley hesitated
before him. "If you are not satisfied who it is, go to your cabin and
get your six-shooter, and we will settle it here on the dump."
There was a movement and a murmur of satisfaction amongst the men. Now
this was coming down to business and giving them something they could
understand. Here was a man willing to defend his rights in a good,
square stand-up fight on the spot, and they one and all agreed in their
own minds that he was the right sort. They glanced at Dick expectantly,
and some said to themselves he weakened. They were not going to take
sides with either party. One of the men was their friend and
fellow-worker, the other was their employer. The two had a difference,
and they could settle it between themselves. They had no business to
interfere. All they had to do was to stand round and see a square fight
and "with'old their judgment," as they said afterwards, talking it over
in the bar of the "Pistol Shot." They waited, and Dick hesitated. He
felt his opponent's eyes upon him; he glanced round the men, they were
watching him.
"Fetch your six-shooter," commanded Talbot again, with increasing
sternness, and Dick, feeling he must do something, nodded sullenly and
turned away towards his cabin. He strode up the incline in the direction
of the miners' dwellings, and Talbot, whose brain seemed to himself half
splitting with nervous, angry excitement, began to pace up and down a
short length before the door, waiting for him to come back. He did not
order his men away, and they stayed in their places.
The excitement was intense amongst them as they waited; not one of them
shifted his place on the log or bank where he had sat down; they hardly
seemed to draw their breath. All their eyes were fixed upon Talbot. He
walked up and down in front of the door, his arms folded, his revolver
still in its case on his hip. The men watched him curiously. His face
was very white and exceedingly determined.
The afternoon was placid and lovely. The temperature was not within many
degrees of zero, but the gold of the sunshine was bright, and the air
dazzlingly clear. It was absolutely still, not a leaf rustled, not a
breath stirred. Nature was in her calmest, gentlest mood; nowhere could
there have been a more tranquil arena to witness the passions of men.
There was perfect silence, except for the crack of the ice sometimes as
it split beneath the firm, resolute steps of the man pacing up and down.
His face was set as a stone mask, as immovable and as calm, but the
passion of anger increased within him as he waited; a mad impatience for
his adversary to return grew at each step that he walked to and fro,
with the insult of the morning echoing in his ears.
At last he stopped in his walk and fixed his gaze on the road which led
to the miners' cabins. All the men's eyes followed his, and they saw
the figure of their fellow-worker coming slowly down towards them. A
huge, hulking form, contrasting strongly with the slim one of the man
waiting for him. Some of the miners glanced up at Talbot, wondering
silently if he "funked it," but there was something in that attitude and
that iron countenance that reassured them and stirred a dull admiration
in their hearts. Talbot ceased to walk up and down. He planted himself
directly in front of the wide open door and waited there. Passion and
excitement had dilated his pupils until the usually calm light grey eyes
looked black; his nostrils quivered slightly as he watched his enemy
coming up. As Marley drew nearer, the miners noted with satisfaction his
enormous six-shooter swinging in his belt; the sunlight caught the steel
at every other step forward he made. Their hearts beat fast with keen
anticipation. There would soon be some fine shooting, and one dead man
perhaps, or two, for Marley meant business; and as for the other, he
looked like the devil himself as he stood there. And he was a fine shot,
there was no mistake about that. Denbigh stared hard at him with round
fixed eyes. He was thinking of the nights when he had watched Talbot
teaching Dick to shoot straight--teaching the very man he had sent off
now to get his pistol to shoot himself with! He remembered how Talbot
had stood with Marley at this very tunnel's mouth and showed him how to
snuff a candle at thirty yards! And Denbigh stared and glowed with
admiration. Marley drew nearer down the path, his heavy crunching steps
echoing through the serene and frosty air. A few minutes more and he was
close upon the eager, expectant, silent circle; the men watched him with
their breath suspended. On he came, sullenly, filled with a sort of
dogged, brutal animosity against the man he had wronged and insulted. He
stepped between the men, who made a short line, and then into the clear
open space, facing Talbot.
For the first time he looked him full in the face, with a fugitive,
fleeting glance, and his eyes shifted away. His pace slackened, but he
did not stop; his feet dragged loosely over the rough snow and gravel,
his huge form seemed to shrink together, to lessen; while to the
fascinated eyes of the men watching the two, that slight figure at the
doorway, motionless as a statue, seemed to dominate the scene. Marley
felt a peculiar, sick paralysis stealing over him, a curious tugging
back of his muscles when he tried to get his hand to his hip, a
strangling feeling in his throat: that glance seemed petrifying him. The
absolute fearlessness, the indomitable will that filled it, seemed to
overcome him.
The very fact, perhaps, that Talbot had not even yet drawn his pistol,
the extreme coolness that relied upon the swiftness of his wrist to
draw it at a second's notice, staggered and scared him. He remembered
the skill that had long been his admiration, and that he had at last
learned to imitate, the sureness of aim and eye, the dexterity and
quickness of that hand, and his tongue fairly cleaved to the roof of his
dry mouth. He struggled to draw his revolver, but his arm refused to
obey his will. Yet it was not wholly cowardice that swept over him in a
sickly tide. As he had met those scornful, indignant eyes, there had
rushed back to his mind a thousand small benefits conferred upon him by
this man, a thousand instances of friendliness, the memory of the first
days they had worked together, how he had slept under his roof, fed at
his table, how, more than all, he had been given by him and instructed
in the use of this very weapon that now would be turned to the giver's
own breast. A horror of killing this man, of wounding him, firing upon
him, combined with his terror of being killed, swept over him, and
between these he felt cowed and beaten, unable to stand up and face him,
unable to do anything but drag one trembling foot behind the other and
go by, keeping watch from the side of his eye that that deadly pistol
was not drawn upon him. But Talbot never moved, simply stood and watched
him too, with fixed eyes; and Marley, overwhelmed by some power he did
not understand, as if dragged forward against his will, without another
look at his opponent, passed by them all and went on slowly down the
road leading to the town. Not a word was spoken, not a breath was drawn,
no one moved. They watched his retreating figure, some half hoping, half
expecting, some half fearing, he would turn and shoot from a
distance,--all wondering greatly, and a little overawed. Then, as he
neither turned nor looked back, but kept steadily ahead, his large
figure well outlined against the stretches of white snow, his
six-shooter glistening in the sun, his head hanging down, till at last
by a turn in the road he was lost to view, there was a long-drawn breath
of surprise and wonder, a general turning of the eyes to Talbot. It was
a victory, though a bloodless one, and they felt it. Each one felt that
the conqueror was before them. Talbot said nothing. He simply stood
aside from the door, to let the miners who were outside enter. The men
took it as a signification that they were to recommence work, and
hastened to obey. They did not dare to speak to him, not even to
congratulate him. They were awed into submissive silence before him. Not
a sound was uttered. The men filed silently into the tunnel like cowed
sheep into their pen, leaving their master standing motionless in the
sunshine.