GORDON FINDS HIMSELF UNPOPULAR
Macdonald kept his word to Sheba. He used his influence to get Elliot
released, and with a touch of cynicism quite characteristic went on the
bond of his rival. An information was filed against the field agent of
the Land Department for highway robbery and attempted murder, but Gordon
went about his business just as if he were not under a cloud.
None the less, he walked the streets a marked man. Women and children
looked at him curiously and whispered as he passed. The sullen, hostile
eyes of miners measured him silently. He was aware that feeling had
focused against him with surprising intensity of resentment, and he
suspected that the whispers of Wally Selfridge were largely responsible
for this.
For Wally saw to it that in the minds of the miners Elliot in his own
person stood for the enemies of the open-Alaska policy. He scattered
broadcast garbled extracts from the first preliminary report of the
field agent, and in the coal camps he spread the impression that the
whole mining activities of the Territory would be curtailed if Elliot
had his way.
In the States the fight between the coal claimants and their foes was
growing more bitter. The muckrakers were busy, and the sentiment outside
had settled so definitely against granting the patents that the National
Administration might at any time jettison Macdonald and his backers as a
sop to public opinion.
It was not hard for Gordon to guess how unpopular he was, but he did not
let this interfere with his activities. He moved to and fro among the
mining camps with absolute disregard of the growing hatred against him.
Paget came to him at last with a warning.
"What's this I hear about you being almost killed up on Bonanza?" Peter
wanted to know.
"Down in the None Such Mine, you mean? It did seem to be raining hammers
as I went down the shaft," admitted his friend.
"Were the hammers dropped on purpose?"
Gordon looked at him with a grim smile. "Your guess is just as good as
mine, Peter. What do you think?"
Peter answered seriously. "I think it isn't safe for you to take the
chances you do, Gordon. I find a wrong impression about you prevalent
among the men. They are blaming you for stirring up all this trouble on
the outside, and they are worried for fear the mines may close and they
will lose their jobs. I tell you that they are in a dangerous mood."
"Sorry, but I can't help that."
"You can stay around town and not go out alone nights, can't you?"
"I dare say I can, but I'm not going to."
"Some of these men are violent. They don't think straight about you--"
"Kindness of Mr. Selfridge," contributed Gordon.
"Perhaps. Anyhow, there's a lot of sullen hate brewing against you.
Don't invite an explosion. That would be just kid foolhardiness."
"You think I'd better buy another automatic gat," said Elliot with a
grin.
"I think you had better use a little sense, Gordon. I dare say I am
exaggerating the danger. But when you go around with that jaunty,
devil-may-care way of yours, the men think you are looking for
trouble--and you're likely to get it."
"Am I?"
"I know what I'm talking about. Nine out of ten of the men think you
tried to murder Macdonald after you had robbed him and that your nerve
weakened on the job. This seems to some of the most lawless to give
them a moral right to put you out of the way. Anyhow, it is a kind of
justification, according to their point of view. I'm not defending it,
of course. I'm telling you so that you can appreciate your danger."
"You have done your duty, then, Peter."
"But you don't intend to take my advice?"
"I'll tell you what I told you last time when you warned me. I'm going
through with the job I've been hired to do, just as you would stick it
out in my place. I don't think I'm in much danger. Men in general are
law-abiding. They growl, but they don't go as far as murder."
Peter gave him up. After all, the chances were that Gordon was right.
Alaska was not a lawless country. And it might be that the best way to
escape peril was to walk through it with a grin as if it did not exist.
The next issue of the Kusiak "Sun" contained a bitter editorial attack
upon Elliot. The occasion for it was a press dispatch from Washington to
the effect that the pressure of public opinion had become so strong that
Winton, Commissioner of the General Land Office, might be forced to
resign his place. This was a blow to the coal claimants, and the "Sun"
charged in vitriolic language that the reports of Elliot were to blame.
He was, the newspaper claimed, an enemy to all those who had come to
Alaska to earn an honest living there. Under indictment for attempted
murder and for highway robbery, this man was not satisfied with having
tried to kill from ambush the best friend Alaska had ever known. In
every report that he sent to Washington he was dealing underhanded blows
at the prosperity of Alaska. He was a snake in the grass, and as such
every decent man ought to hold him in scorn.
Elliot read this just as he was leaving for the Willow Creek Camp.
He thrust the paper impatiently into his coat pocket and swung to the
saddle. Why did they persecute him? He had told nothing but the truth,
nothing not required of him by the simplest, elemental honesty. Yet he
was treated as an outcast and a criminal. The injustice of it was
beginning to rankle.
He was temperamentally an optimist, but depression rode with him to the
gold camp and did not lift from his spirits till he started back next
day for Kusiak. The news had been flashed by wire all over the United
States that he was a crook. His friends and relatives could give no
adequate answer to the fact that an indictment hung over his head.
In Alaska he was already convicted by public opinion. Even the Pagets
were lined up as to their interests with Macdonald. Sheba liked him and
believed in him. Her loyal heart acquitted him of all blame. But it was
to the wooing of his enemy that she had listened rather than to his.
The big Scotchman had run against a barrier, but his rival expected
him to trample it down. He would wear away the scruples of Sheba by
the pressure of his masterful will.
In the late afternoon, while Gordon was still fifteen miles from Kusiak,
his horse fell lame. He led it limping to the cabin of some miners.
There were three of them, and they had been drinking heavily from a jug
of whiskey left earlier in the day by the stage-driver. Gordon was in
two minds whether to accept their surly permission to stay for the
night, but the lameness of his horse decided him.
Not caring to invite their hostility, he gave his name as Gordon instead
of Elliot. He was to learn within the hour that this was mistake number
two.
From a pocket of the coat he had thrown on a bed protruded the newspaper
Gordon had brought from Kusiak. One of the men, a big red-headed fellow,
pulled it out and began sulkily to read.
While he read the other two bickered and drank and snarled at each
other. All three of the men were in that stage of drunkenness when a
quarrel is likely to flare up at a moment's notice.
"Listen here," demanded the man with the newspaper. "Tell you what,
boys, I'm going to wring the neck of that pussyfooting spy Elliot if
I ever get a chanct."
He read aloud the editorial in the "Sun." After he had finished, the
others joined him in a chorus of curses.
"I always did hate a spy--and this one's a murderer too. Why don't some
one fill his hide with lead?" one of the men wanted to know.
Redhead was sitting at the table. He thumped a heavy fist down so hard
that the tin cups jumped. "Gimme a crack at him and I'll show you, by
God."
A shadow fell across the room. In the doorway stood a newcomer. Gordon
had a sensation as if a lump of ice had been drawn down his spine. For
the man who had just come in was Big Bill Macy, and he was looking at
the field agent with eyes in which amazement, anger, and triumph blazed.
"I'm glad to death to meet up with you again, Mr. Elliot," he jeered.
"Seems like old times on Wild-Goose."
"Whad you say his name is?" cut in the man with the newspaper.
"Hasn't he introduced himself, boys?" Macy answered with a cruel
grin. "Now, ain't that modest of him? You lads are entertaining that
well-known deteckative and spy Gordon Elliot, that renowned king of
hold-ups--"
The red-headed man interrupted with a howl of rage. "If you're telling
it straight, Bill Macy, I'll learn him to spy on me."
Elliot was sitting on one of the beds. He had not moved an inch since
Macy had appeared, but the brain behind his live eyes was taking stock
of the situation. Big Bill blocked the doorway. The table was in front
of the window. Unless he could fight his way out, there was no escape
for him. He was trapped.
Quietly Gordon looked from one to another. He read no hope in the eyes
of any.
"I'm not spying on you. My horse is lame. You can see that for yourself.
All I asked was a night's lodging."
"Under another name than your own, you damned sneak."
The field agent did not understand the fury of the man, because he
did not know that these miners were working the claim under a defective
title and that they had jumped to the conclusion that he had come to get
evidence against them. But he knew that never in his life had he been
in a tighter hole. In another minute they would attack him. Whether it
would run to murder he could not tell. At the best he would be hammered
helpless.
But no evidence of this knowledge appeared in his manner.
"I didn't give my last name because there is a prejudice against me in
this country," he explained in an even voice.
He wondered as he spoke if he had better try to fling himself through
the window sash. There might be a remote chance that he could make it.
The miner at the table killed this possibility by rising and standing
squarely in the road.
"Look out! He's got a gat," warned Macy.
Gordon fervently wished he had. But he was unarmed. While his eyes
quested for a weapon he played for time.
"You can't get away with this, you know. The United States Government
is back of me. It's known I left the Willow Creek Camp. I'll be traced
here."
Through Gordon's mind there flashed a word of advice once given him by
a professional prize-fighter: "If you get in a rough house, don't wait
for the other fellow to hit first."
They were crouching for the attack. In another moment they would be upon
him. Almost with one motion he stooped, snatched up by the leg a heavy
stool, and sprang to the bed upon which he had been sitting.
The four men closed with him in a rush. They came at him low, their
heads protected by uplifted arms. His memory brought to him a picture of
the whitewashed gridiron of a football field, and in it he saw a vision
of safety.
The stool crashed down upon Big Bill Macy's head. Gordon hurdled the
crumpling figure, plunged between hands outstretched to seize him, and
over the table went through the window, taking the flimsy sash with him.