"GOD SAVE YOU KINDLY"
A nurse from the hospital had relieved Diane and Sheba at daybreak.
They slept until the middle of the afternoon, then under orders from the
doctor walked out to take the air. They were to divide the night watch
between them and he said that he wanted them fit for service. The fever
of the patient was subsiding. He slept a good deal, and in the intervals
between had been once or twice quite rational.
The thoughts of the cousins drew their steps toward the jail. Sheba
looked at Diane.
"Will they let us see him, do you think?"
"Perhaps. We can try."
Gopher Jones was not proof against the brisk confidence with which Mrs.
Paget demanded admittance. He stroked his unshaven chin while he chewed
his quid, then reluctantly got his keys.
The prisoner was sitting on the bed. His heart jumped with gladness when
he looked up.
Diane shook hands cheerfully. "How is the criminal?"
"Better for hearing your kind voice," he answered.
His eyes strayed to the ebon-haired girl in the background. They met a
troubled smile, grave and sweet.
"Awfully good of you to come to see me," he told Sheba gratefully. "How
is Macdonald?"
"Better, we hope. He knew Diane this afternoon."
Mrs. Paget did most of the talking, but Gordon contributed his share.
Sheba did not say much, but it seemed to the young man that there was
a new tenderness in her manner, the expression of a gentle kindness
that went out to him because he needed it. The walk had whipped the
color into her cheeks and she bloomed in that squalid cell like a desert
rose. There was in the fluent grace of the slender, young body a naïve,
virginal sweetness that took him by the throat. He knew that she
believed in him and the trouble rolled from his heart like a cold,
heavy wave.
"We haven't talked to Mr. Macdonald yet about the attack on him,"
Diane explained. "But he must have recognized the men. There are many
footprints at the ford, showing how they moved over the ground as they
fought. So he could not have been unconscious from the first blow."
"Unless they were masked he must have known them. It was light enough,"
agreed Elliot.
"Peter is still trying to get the officers to accept bail, but I don't
think he will succeed. There is a good deal of feeling in town against
you."
"Because I am supposed to be an enemy to an open Alaska, I judge."
"Mainly that. Wally Selfridge has been talking a good deal. He takes it
for granted that you are guilty. We'll have to wait in patience till Mr.
Macdonald speaks and clears you. The doctor won't let us mention the
subject to him until he comes to it of his own free will."
Gopher stuck his head in at the door. "You'll have to go, ladies. Time's
up."
When Sheba bade the prisoner good-bye it was with a phrase of the old
Irish vernacular. "God save you kindly."
He knew the peasant's answer to the wish and gave it. "And you too."
The girl left the prison with a mist in her eyes. Her cousin looked at
her with a queer, ironic little smile of affection. To be in trouble was
a sure passport to the sympathy of Sheba. Now both her lovers were in
a sad way. Diane wondered which of them would gain most from this new
twist of fate.
Sheba turned to Mrs. Paget with an impulsive little burst of feminine
ferocity. "Why do they put him in prison when they must know he didn't
do it--that he couldn't do such a thing?"
"They don't all know as well as you do how noble he is, my dear,"
answered Diane dryly.
"But it's just absurd to think that he would plan the murder of a man he
has broken bread with for a few hundred dollars."
Diane flashed another odd little glance in the direction of her cousin.
Probably Sheba was the one woman in Kusiak who did not know that
Macdonald had served an ultimatum on Elliot to get out or fight and that
their rivalry over her favor was at the bottom of the difficulty between
them.
"It will work out all right," promised the older cousin.
Returning from their walk, they met Wally Selfridge coming out of the
Paget house.
"Did you see Mr. Macdonald?" asked Diane.
"Yes. He's quite rational now." There was a jaunty little strut of
triumph in Wally's cock-sure manner.
Mrs. Paget knew he had made himself very busy securing evidence against
Gordon. He was probably trying to curry favor with his chief. The little
man always had been jealous of Peter. Perhaps he was attempting to rap
him over the shoulder of Elliot because the Government official was a
friend of Paget. Just now his insolent voice suggested a special cause
for exultation.
The reason Wally was so pleased with himself was that he had dropped a
hint into the ear of the wounded man not to clear Elliot of complicity
in the attack upon him. The news that the special investigator had been
arrested for robbery and attempted murder, flashed all over the United
States, would go far to neutralize any report he might make against
the validity of the Macdonald claims. If to this could be added later
reports of an indictment, a trial, and possibly a conviction, it would
not matter two straws what Elliot said in his official statement to the
Land Office.
Since the attack upon his chief, Selfridge had moved on the presumption
that Elliot had been in a conspiracy to get rid of him. He accepted the
guilt of the field agent because this theory jumped with the interest
of Wally and his friends. As a politician he intended to play this new
development for all it was worth.
He had been shocked at the sight of Macdonald. The terrible beating and
the loss of blood had sapped all the splendid, vital strength of the
Scotchman. His battered head was swathed in bandages, but the white face
was bruised and disfigured. The wounded man was weak as a kitten; only
the steady eyes told that he was still strong and unconquered.
"I want to talk business for a minute, Miss Sedgwick. Will you please
step out?" said Macdonald to his nurse.
She hesitated. "The doctor says--"
"Do as I say, please."
The nurse left them alone. Wally told the story of the evidence against
Elliot in four sentences. His chief caught the point at once.
After Selfridge had gone, the wounded man lay silent thinking out his
programme. Not for a moment did he doubt that he was going to live, and
his brain was already busy planning for the future. By some freak of
luck the cards had been stacked by destiny in his favor. He knew now
that in the violence of his anger against Elliot he had made a mistake.
To have killed his rival would have been fatal to the Kamatlah coal
claims, would have alienated his best friends, and would have prejudiced
hopelessly his chances with Sheba. Fate had been kind to him. He had
been in the wrong and it had put him in the right. By the same cut of
the cards young Elliot had been thrust down from an impregnable position
to one in which he was a discredited suspect. With all this evidence
to show that he had conspired against Macdonald, his report to the
Department would be labor lost.
Diane came into the sick-room stripping her gloves after the walk.
Macdonald smiled feebly at her and fired the first shot of his campaign
to defeat the enemy.
"Has Elliot been captured yet?" he asked weakly.
The keen eyes of his hostess fastened upon him. "Captured! What do you
mean? It was Gordon Elliot that brought you in and saved your life."
"Brought me from where?"
"From where he found you unconscious--at the ford."
"That's his story, is it?"
Macdonald shut his eyes wearily, but his incredulous voice had suggested
a world of innuendo.
The young woman stood with her gloves crushed tight in both hands. It
was her nature to be always a partisan. Without any reserve she was for
Gordon in this new fight upon him. What had Wally Selfridge been saying
to Macdonald? She longed mightily to ask the sick man some questions,
but the orders of the doctor were explicit. Did the mine-owner mean to
suggest that he had identified Elliot as one of his assailants? The
thing was preposterous.
And yet--that was plainly what he had meant to imply. If he told such a
story, things would go hard with Gordon. In court it would clinch the
case against him by supplying the one missing link in the chain of
circumstantial evidence.
Diane, in deep thought, frowned down upon the wounded man, who seemed
already to have fallen into a light sleep. She told herself that this
was some of Wally Selfridge's deviltry. Anyhow, she would talk it over
with Peter.