The day had come, and Dick Farley was firm and calm in his
determination. But the thing which the day was to bring need not come
yet. There was no call for haste, while there was an urge deep down in
his soul to spend this day alone. He turned his back upon the cabin and
went, walking rapidly, down to the quiet shore of the lake.
Until now he had scarcely more than glanced at Johnny Watson’s map. The
Cup of Gold had seemed the small thing which gold is always when come
the great, vital issues of life. But now it was different; now he could
see a reason in going on over Johnny’s trail, in finding the hillside
that was “rotten with gold.” This was something which must be done
before he looked into Dalton’s eyes again—for the last time.
A long, curving line along one side of the brown cigarette paper was
marked in painfully small letters, “East Shore.” A dotted line marked
“Trail” ran along this. “High Cliffs” indicated the spot where Farley
had attempted to climb up to the plateau, where he had fallen. The
dotted line ran on by this, close to the lake shore, and was marked “2
mile.” Then there was a little triangle with the words “Big White Rock.”
Here the dotted line swerved at right angles—to the east—“200 paces.”
Here was the word, “Cañon.” That was all upon one side of the paper.
Upon the other, written lightly was:
“Enter mouth cañon. Go straight about five hundred yards. Climb dead
pine-tree leaning against east bank. Straight up to top of ridge. Follow
ledge to cliff. Look along bottom of cliff.” And that was all.
Farley put the paper again in his pocket and turned north along the lake
shore. He had perhaps two miles and a half, maybe three miles, to go,
and he was growing anxious to see this mine which his partner had
discovered.
It was a simple matter to follow the trail, a natural path at the lake’s
edge, kept open by the deer and other woodland animals that came down to
drink or browse upon the long grass here. And before he had covered more
than half of the two miles he saw the “big white rock” which Johnny had
marked for him, close to the water, rising straight up from the level
floor of the valley.
Here, with a glance at his map to make sure that he was right, he turned
eastward, counting his steps. He had stepped off one hundred and
twenty-five when he stopped, frowning. For nowhere were the mountains
far from the lake, and already he had entered a cañon. And Johnny’s map
had said two hundred paces.
“Johnny wouldn’t make a mistake like that,” he told himself.
And, again counting, he moved on and into the cañon until he had counted
another seventy-five paces. Then he understood.
Here, cut into the wall of this cañon, was a second, a narrower,
steeper-walled ravine, evidently the one Johnny had had in mind when he
said, “Enter mouth of cañon.” The general trend of this one was north
and south. He pushed on into it, estimating roughly the five hundred
yards.
And then, with a little quickening of the pulses, he saw the dead
pine-tree. It had fallen, and now, with its roots half torn out of the
rocky soil, lay sprawled against the eastern bank of the cañon at an
angle of about forty-five degrees. The banks here were so steep, rising
fifty feet above him, that a man would have had a hard time climbing
them. But the fallen tree was at once a pointer to the Cup of Gold and a
ladder to reach it.
Up on the top of the bank he found the ridge, and working his way slowly
along that he came to the long line of cliffs which standing above made
the side of the mountain look like a giant’s stairway. And now, his
heart beating with the exertion of the struggle upward and with the
eagerness of quickened anticipation which comes to the miner at a time
like this, no matter what face the day wears, he stopped and let his
eyes rove along the bottom of the cliff.
And in a moment he saw what he looked for, and hurried forward. There
were the marks of a pick in the crumbling bank, and there——
“Poor Johnny!” he muttered. “Poor old Johnny! To feel his pick sink into
this, to have it in his hands—and never to really work the greatest mine
this country ever saw!”
For here, showing so that a novice must have seen and known and
understood the glittering promise of it, was a great vein of gold laid
bare against the bottom of the cliff-side, where last year’s snows had
set the rocks free above; where the side of the cliff had fallen outward
disclosing the thing which the mountains had hidden so well and so long.
It was as rich as any pocket the miner had ever seen—richer. And it was
not a pocket at all, but a wide, deep vein which ran back into the
mountainside; which would make not one man, but hundreds of men, rich,
would give them riotous days and wild nights, would bring to the
realization of dreams long dreamed. And Johnny Watson, the man who had
found this, who had turned back with but a handful of the precious stuff
that he might bring his partner with him, was dead and would never take
out a nugget.
“All in the cards, Johnny,” he mused bitterly. “And the cards are
running wrong for you and me.”
He sat upon a boulder, his eyes brooding over the yellow promise, his
heart heavy with the love for a lost partner and the newer love for a
woman who was to be lost as soon as he had found her. The shadows drew
back from him, the sun found him out; and still he sat staring at the
thing which promised and mocked.
At last, with the short laugh of a tired man, he got to his feet, stood
for a little looking at the smooth cuts a pick had made in the rocky
bank, and then, with no further spoken word, with no look behind him,
moved slowly away and went back along the ridge, down the pine-tree and
to the lakeside.
There he sat down upon the big white rock, and with the stub of a
lead-pencil wrote a letter upon the bit of oiled paper in which his pipe
tobacco was wrapped.
Virginia, dear, if I am never to see you again—and who knows how a day
like this is going to end?—this is to say good-by for me. I think that
you knew how much I love you before I told you last night. So I do not
need to tell you again. I didn’t think that love came this way, so
swiftly. I am glad, more glad than you can ever understand, that it has
come. You will go back to the world. I want you to be very happy. I am
enclosing a little present, a farewell gift. I want it to help make you
happy, dear. Good-by.
Dick Farley
* * * * *
And folding the paper, he put into it Johnny Watson’s map. Then he went
back along the lakeside and to the cliffs below the cabin, to wait for
James Dalton.
He thought that it must be about ten o’clock when at last Dalton came,
walking swiftly from the cabin. Farley got to his feet and waited.
Neither man spoke until Dalton came within a dozen paces of him and
stopped. Then Farley said quietly—
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
The man’s face showed no emotion, there was none in his steady voice.
“Your revolver is of a smaller caliber than mine,” Farley went on in a
slow, matter-of-fact tone. “You can have one of my forty-fives, if you
want it.”
Dalton looked at him curiously.
“Thanks. I don’t want it.” And then after a short silence in which the
two men eyed each other steadily: “There is no other way?”
“No. There can be no other way. I kill you or—you kill me.”
“Then,” Dalton answered, as if he had expected this, “if I don’t come
through it you will find a couple of letters in my pocket. Give them to
Virginia.”
“I have written a note, too,” Farley said by way of reply. “It is for
her.”
With slow, steady fingers he drew a revolver from his holster. For the
instant he lost sight of the man in front of him as his eyes went upward
along the cliffs and his thoughts ran ahead of them to the cabin and the
girl there. The world was unnaturally silent, the pines about them like
carvings in jade, without a tremor, the sunlight falling softly about
them. The moment was strangely lacking the thrill of excited nerves he
had anticipated.
That he and this man were standing so close together, that each held a
revolver in his hand, that death was very near, and the world and life
and love drawing very far away, did not impress him as he would have
said that such a thing would impress him. The whole thing was too big,
meant too much, for him to grasp it.
“Virginia may come,” Dalton’s deep-toned voice startled him. “We had
better—hurry.”
“Yes,” he answered. “We had better hurry.”
So they stood facing each other, a gun in each right hand, the muzzles
downward. There was not twenty feet between them.
“We shoot together?” Dalton was asking him.
“Yes. And the signal?”
“Count three. That will do as well as any way. Will you count?”
Farley nodded. And his voice, quiet, low, steady, with regular pauses
between the words, said:
“One—two—three!”
The two shots rang out together, like one. And the two men, their faces
gone white and tense drawn, stood looking at each other through the
slowly lifting smoke. For as he fired, Farley had thrown the muzzle of
his gun downward so that the ball plowed through the sand at the feet of
Virginia Dalton’s father, and Dalton’s bullet had winged its way high
overhead, seeking the far shore of the lake.
“—— you!” cried Farley shrilly, a red flood of blood in his face as he
understood. “Why did you do that? Do you want to be killed, man?”
The man who could have killed him had spared him, the man who had
murdered Johnny Watson had stood up courting death and had made no
attempt to save himself. And the knowledge only maddened the man who had
chosen to die himself at the hand of the man he could not kill—no, not
even to “square things” for a dead partner.
“I have killed two men in fair fight in my life,” Dalton told him
sternly, his own face flushed hotly. “I am not going to kill a third.
And I do not choose to be made to look like a fool French dude in a
polite duel! Are you going to kill me?”
Farley laughed evilly.
“In fair fight!” he mocked. “To cut the throat out of a man before he
had seen you, to sneak up on him in the dark—and you call that fair
fight!”
“I gave him his chance! And he took it—not being a fool!”
“A chance!” scoffed Farley, the rising anger within him making him for
the second forget that this was her father, his gun raised. “To drive
your —— knife through a man’s throat—to come at him in the dark——”
“I used no knife, and I came upon him in broad daylight. And I shot the
throat out of him, after I got this!”
He threw back his shirt collar and showed a raw wound at the base of his
neck. And Dick Farley, suddenly seeing the light of a great hope,
dropped his revolver into the sand as he clutched Dalton’s arm.
“Don’t lie to me,” he said in a harsh whisper. For he had remembered
those other tracks he had found, and his whole body was shaking with
what it might mean to him. “Where did you find him?”
Dalton looked at him curiously, as if upon a madman.
“Over yonder.” His arm swung about until his outstretched forefinger
pointed toward the west—not the south. “Where he had left two horses in
a little hollow. I followed him back——”
“Was he a little man, and stocky?” Farley was crying hoarsely.
“Blue-eyed, a little blond mustache——?”
“He was a man six feet in his stockings,” Dalton retorted, staring.
“Black-haired and blacker-hearted. If he was your pardner——”
“He wasn’t my pardner. Don’t you see, man?” It came with sudden
conviction, with a great gasp of relieved nerves. “You—you came upon the
man who killed Johnny! You killed Johnny Watson’s murderer!”
And as Dalton stared after him, like a man stunned, Dick Farley was
running across the sandy beach and toward the cliffs. For he had seen
the slender figure of a girl coming slowly through the trees, and he had
a wonderful message of life and hope and love for her.
THE END
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the October, 1915 issue of
the _All-Story Weekly_ magazine published by the Frank T. Munsey Company.]