THE AGED ENGINEER
The sunlight was good to see again--good as only sunlight can be when
men have not expected ever again to be enlivened by its glory. They
were astonished at the shortness of the time of their imprisonment.
They had lived years in dread thought, and but a few hours in reality.
They had suffered for the spans of lives to find that the clock had
imperturbably registered brief intervals. They had played the gamut of
dread, terror, and anguish, to learn how trivial, after all, was the
completed score.
"I think that will do," said Dick, with a sigh of relief, as he
straightened up from bandaging Bill's leg. "The stitches probably hurt
some, but aside from a day's stiffness I don't think you will ever
know it happened."
"Won't eh?" rumbled the patient. "Sure, the leg's all right; but it
ain't bruised limbs a man remembers. They heal. You can see the scars
on a man's legs, but only the Lord Almighty can see those on his mind,
and they're the only ones that last. Dick, now that it's all over, I
ain't ashamed to tell you that there was quite a long spell down there
underground when I thought over a heap of things I might have done
different if I'd had a chance to do 'em over again. And, boy, I
thought quite a little bit about you! It didn't seem right that a
young fellow like you, with so much to live for, should be snuffed out
down there in that black place, where the whole mountain acted as if
it was chasin' us, step by step, to wipe us off the slate."
He stood on his feet and limped across the room to his coat in an
effort to recover himself, and Dick, more stirred than he cared to
admit by the affection in his voice, tramped out to the little porch
in front and pretended to whistle a tune, that proved tuneless. He
looked at the little valley around the shoulder of the mountain at the
head of the ravine, which they had so carelessly invaded that morning,
and shuddered. Inside he heard Bill moving around, and then after a
time his steps advancing stiffly, and turned to see him coming out.
"I think," he said smiling, "that we're entitled to a rest for to-day.
By to-morrow you'll be all right again, unless I'm mistaken. Let's
put in the day looking over these old records."
Bill grinned whimsically and assented. He could keep quiet when he had
to; but the day following found him again restlessly investigating
anything that seemed worth the trouble and the afternoon saw him
standing looking upward toward the same valley of dread.
"I've got over it a little," he said to the younger man, "and do you
know I'm right curious to go over there and see how big that rock was
that tumbled into the mouth of the old shaft. Want to come along?"
Dick had sustained that same curiosity, so together they made their
way to the beginning of the previous day's disaster. They chilled when
they saw how effectually they had been caught; for the bowlder
completely filled the entrance to the shaft and would have proved a
hopeless trap had they tried to escape by burrowing around its edge.
It rested, as they had discovered, on solid rock, and its course down
the hillside was clearly marked.
"What gets me," said the veteran miner, "is what could have started
it. I noticed it up there when we went in. It was sort of poised on
that little ledge you see, and it didn't have to roll more than thirty
feet."
He began to climb up the bowlder's well-defined path, and suddenly
called to his partner with a hoarse shout, needlessly loud.
"Come up here," he said. "That bowlder never started itself! Some one
helped it. What do you think of that?"
Dick hastily climbed up to his side and looked. The rock around was
bare of growth or covering, so that no footprints could be discerned;
but a rock rested there that had plainly been used as a fulcrum. The
surface beneath it was weather beaten and devoid of moisture, which
indicated that it had lain there but a short time, probably only from
the time of its mission on the preceding day. They found themselves
standing up and staring around at the surrounding hills as if seeking
sight of the man who had attempted to murder them.
"We'll find out about this!" Bill exclaimed. "Good thing we know
enough to look."
He limped to the edge of the barren spot and began to circle around
its edge, while Dick did likewise, following his example. They found a
footprint at last and took the trail. It did not lead them far before
they came to a path on top of the hill that was so well used that any
attempt to follow it was useless; but, intent on seeing where it led,
they walked along it as it led straight away toward the timber.
Scarcely inside the cool shadows of the tamaracks they paused and
looked at each other understandingly; for thrown carelessly into a
clump of laurel was a long, freshly cut sapling, that had been used as
a lever. They recovered it from its resting place and inspected it.
There was no doubt whatever that it had been the instrument of motion.
Its scarred end, its length, and all, told that the man who had used
it had carried it this far to discard it, believing his murderous work
done.
"I noticed that rock, as I said before," declared Bill. "You noticed
how round it was on one side? Well, a man could take this lever, and
by teetering on it until he got it in motion, finally upset it. The
chances were a hundred to one it would land in the mouth of the shaft.
And it's a cinch, it seems to me, he wouldn't do that for fun."
Dick shook his head gravely.
"But who could it be?" he insisted. "Who is there that could want us
out of the way badly enough to murder us? No one here knows or cares a
continental about us! It seems incredible. It must have been sheer
carelessness of some restless loafer who wanted to see the rock
roll."
Yet they knew that the theory was scarcely tenable. They walked
farther along the path and found that it was one used by workmen,
evidently, leading at last down the steep mountain side and across to
the Rattler. They surmised that it must be one made by the timber
cutters for the mine, and learned, in later months, that the surmise
was correct.
"It makes one thing certain," Bill declared that evening when,
candidly discouraged, they sat on the little porch in front of the
office they had made their home and discussed the day's findings. "And
that is that until we get a force to work here, if we ever do, it
ain't a right healthy place for us. Of course with a gang of men
around there wouldn't be a ghost of a chance for any enemy to get us;
but until then we'd better watch out all the time. I begin to believe
that about everything that's happened to us here has been the work of
somebody who ain't right fond of us. Wish we could catch him at it
once!"
There was a grim undercurrent in his wish that left nothing to words.
They remembered that in all the time since their arrival they had seen
no other human being, the Rattler men having left them as severely
alone as if they had been under quarantine.
In the stillness of twilight they heard the slow, soft padding of a
man's feet laboriously climbing the hill, and listened intently at the
unusual sound.
"Wonder who that is," speculated Bill, leaning forward and staring at
the dim trail. "Looks like a dwarf from here. Some old man of the
mountain coming up to drive us off!"
"Hello," hailed a shrill, quavering voice. "Be you the bosses?"
"We are," Dick shouted, in reply, "Come on up."
The visitor came halting up the slope, and they discerned that he was
lame and carrying a roll of blankets. He paused before them, panting,
and then dropped the roll from his back, and sat down on the edge of
the porch with his head turned to face them. He was white headed and
old, and seemed to have exhausted his surplus strength in his haste to
reach them before darkness.
"I'm Bells Park," he said. "Bells Park, the engineer. Maybe you've
heard of me? Eh? What? No? Well, I used to have the engines here at
the Cross eight or ten years ago, and I've come to take 'em again.
When do I go to work? They hates me around here. They drove me out
once. I said I'd come back. I'm here. I'm a union man, but I tell 'em
what I think of 'em, and it don't set well. When did you say I go to
work?"
"I'm afraid you don't go," Dick answered regretfully.
The Cross, so far as he could conjecture, would never again ring
with the sounds of throbbing engines. Already he was more than
half-convinced that he should write to Sloan and reject his kindly
offer of support. "We've been here but a week, but it doesn't look
promising to us."
"Well, then you're a pair of fools!" came the disrespectful and
irascible retort. "They told me down in Goldpan that some miners had
come to open the Cross up again. You're not miners. I've hoofed it all
the way up here for nothin'."
The partners looked at each other, and grinned at the old man's
tirade. He went on without noticing them, speaking of himself in the
third person:
"I can stay here to-night somewhere, can't I? Bells Park is askin' it.
Bells Park that used to be chief in the Con and Virginia, and once had
his own cabin here--cabin that was a home till his wife went away on
the long trip. She's asleep up there under the cross mark on the hill.
Bells Park as came back because he wanted to be near where she was put
away! She was the best woman that ever lived. I'm looking for my old
job back. I can sleep here, can't I?"
His querulous question was more of a challenge than a request, and
Dick hastened to assure him that he could unroll his blankets in a
bunk in the rambling old structure that loomed dim, silent, and
ghostly, on the hill beyond where they were seated. His pity and
hospitality led him farther.
"Had your supper?" he asked.
Bells Park shook his head in negation.
"Then you can share with us," Dick said, getting to his feet and
entering the cabin from which in a few moments came a rattle of fire
being replenished, a coffee-pot being refilled, and the crisp, frying
note of sizzling bacon and eggs.
"Who might that young feller be?" asked the engineer, glowering with
sudden curiosity, after his long silence, into the face of the
grizzled old prospector, who, in the interim, had sat quietly.
"Him? That's Dick Townsend, half-owner in the mine," Bill replied.
"Half owner? Cookin' for me? Why don't you do it? What right have you
got sittin' here on your long haunches and lettin' a boss do the work?
Hey? Who are you?"
"I'm his superintendent," grinned Bill, appreciating the joke of being
superintendent of a mine where no one worked.
"Oh!" said the engineer. And then, after a pause, as if readjusting
all these conditions to meet his approval: "Say, he's all right, ain't
he!"
"You bet your life!" came the emphatic response.
The applicant said no more until after he had gone into the cabin and
eaten his fill, after which he insisted on clearing away the dishes,
and then rejoined them in a less-tired mood. He squatted down on the
edge of the porch, where they sat staring at the shadows of the
glorious night, and appeared to be thoughtful for a time, while they
were silently amused.
"You're thinkin' it's no good, are you?" he suddenly asked,
brandishing his pipe at Dick. "Well, I said you were a fool. Take it
kindly, young feller. I'm an old man, but I know. You've been good to
me. I didn't come here to butt my nose in, but I know her better than
you do. Say!" He pivoted on his hips, and tapped an emphatic
forefinger on the warped planks beneath in punctuation. "There never
was a set of owners shell-gamed like them that had the Croix d'Or!
There never was a good property so badly handled. Two superintendents
are retired and livin' on the money they stole from her. One millman's
bought himself a hotel in Seattle with what he got away with. There
was enough ore packed off in dinner-pails from the Bonanza Chute to
heel half the men who tapped it. They were always lookin' for more of
'em. They passed through a lead of ore that would have paid expenses,
on the six-hundred-foot level, and lagged it rather than hoist it out.
I know! I've seen the cars come up out of the shaft with a man
standin' on the hundred foot to slush 'em over with muddy sump water
so the gold wouldn't show until the car men could swipe the stuff and
dump it out of the tram to be picked up at night. It ain't the rich
streaks that pays. It's the four-foot ledge that runs profit from two
bits to a couple of dollars a ton. That's what showed on the
six-hundred level. Get it?"
The partners by this time were leaning eagerly forward, half-inclined
to believe all that had been told them, yet willing to discount the
gabbling of the old man and find content. Until bedtime he went on,
and they listened to him the next morning, when the slow dawn crept
up, and decided to take the plunge. And so it was that Dick wrote a
long statement of the findings to his backer in New York and told him
that he was going to chance it and open the Croix d'Or again until he
was satisfied, either that it would not pay to work, or would merit
larger expenditure.
Once again the smoke belched from the hoisting house of the Cross, and
the throb of the pumps came, hollow and clanking, from the shaft
below. A stream of discolored water swirled into the creek from the
waste pipes, and the rainbow trout, affrighted and disgusted, forsook
its reaches and sought the pools of the river into which it emptied.
Slowly they gained on its depths, and each day the murk swam lower,
and the newly oiled cage waited for its freshly stretched cable,
one which had happened to be coiled in the store-house. The
compressor shivered and vibrated as the pistons drove clean, sweet
air through the long-disused pipes, and at last the partners knew
they could reach the anticipated six-hundred-foot level and form
their own conclusions.
"Well, here goes," said Bill, grinning from under his sou'wester as
they entered the cage with lamps in hand. "We'll see how she looks if
the air pipes aren't broken."
They saw the slimy black sides of the shaft slip past them as Bells
Park dropped them into the depths, and felt the cage slow down as he
saw his pointer above the drum indicate the approach of the
six-hundred-foot level. They stepped out cautiously, whiffed the air,
and knew that the pipes, which had been protected by the water, were
intact, and that they had no need to fear foul air. The rusted rails,
slime-covered, beneath their rubber boots, glowed a vivid red as they
inspected the timbering above, and saw that the sparse stulls, caps,
and columns were still holding their own, and that the heavy
porphyritic formation would scarcely have given had the timbers rotted
away. Dank, glistening walls and a tremulous waving blackness were
ahead of them as they cautiously invaded the long-deserted precincts,
scraping and striking here and there with their prospector's picks in
search of the lost lead.
"About two hundred feet from the shaft, Bells said," Dick commented.
"And this must be about the place where they cut through pay ore in
search of another lobe of the Bonanza Chute. What thieves they were!"
He suddenly became aware that his companion was not with him, and
whirled round. Back of him shone a tiny spark of flaring light,
striving to illumine the solid blackness. He paused expectantly, and a
voice came bellowing through the dark:
"Here it is. The old man's right, I think. This looks like ore to
me."
Dick hastened back, and assisted while they broke away the looser
pieces of green rock, glowing dully, and filled their sample sacks.
Three hours later they stood over the scales in the log assay-house
above, and congratulated each other.
"It'll pay!" Dick declared gleefully. "Not much, but enough to justify
going on with the work. I am glad I wrote Sloan that I should draw on
him, and now we'll go ahead and hire a small gang to set the mill and
the Cross in shape."
They were like boys when they crossed to the engine house and told the
news to the hard-worked engineer, who chuckeled softly and asserted
that he had "told them so."
"Now, the best way for you to get a gang around here," he said, "is
to go down to Goldpan and tell 'The Lily' you want her to pass the
word, or stick a sign up in her place saying what men, and how many,
you want."
"Sounds like a nice name," Mathews commented.
"The Lily?" questioned Dick, anxious as to who this camp character
could be.
"Sure," the engineer rasped, as if annoyed by their ignorance. "Ain't
you never heard of her? Well, her right name, so they tell, is Lily
Meredith. She owns the place called the High Light. Everybody knows
her. She's square, even if she does run a dance hall and rents a
gamblin' joint. She don't stand for nothin' crooked, Lily don't. She
pays her way, and asks no favors. Go down and tell her you want men.
They all go there, some time or another."
He stooped over to inspect the fire under the small boiler he was
working, and straightened up before he went on. Through the black
coating on his face, he appeared thoughtful.
"Best time to see The Lily and get action is at night. All the
day-shift men hang around the camp then, and, besides that, they've
got a new batch of placer ground about a mile and a half over the
other side, and lots of them fellers come over. Want to go to-day?"
The partners looked at each other, as if consulting, and then Dick
said: "Yes. I think the sooner the better."
Bells Park pulled the visor of his greasy little cap lower over his
eyes, and stepped to the door.
"Come out here onto the yard," he said, and they followed. "Go down to
the Rattler, then bear off to the right. The trail starts in back of
the last shanty on the right-hand side. You see that gap up yonder?
Not the big one, but the narrow one." He pointed with a grimy hand.
"Well, you go right through that and drop down, and you'll see the
camp below you. It's a stiff climb, but the trail's good, and it's
just about two miles over there. It's so plain you can make it home by
moonlight."
Without further ceremony or advice, he returned into the boiler-room,
and the partners, after but slight preparations, began their journey.
It was a stiff climb! The sun had set, and the long twilight was
giving way to darkness when they came down the trail into the upper
end of the camp. Some embryo artist was painfully overworking an
accordion, while a dog rendered melancholy by the unmusical noise,
occasionally accompanied him with prolonged howls. A belated ore
trailer, with the front wagon creaking under the whine of the brakes
and the chains of the six horses clanking, lurched down from a road on
the far side of the long, straggling street, and passed them, the
horses' heads hanging as if overwork had robbed them of all
stable-going spirit of eagerness.
The steady, booming "clumpety-clump! clumpety-clump!" of a stamp-mill
on a shoulder of a hill high above the camp, drowned the whir and
chirp of night insects, and from the second story of a house they
passed they heard the crude banging of a piano, and a woman's strident
voice wailing, "She may have seen better da-a-ys," with a mighty
effort to be pathetic.
"Seems right homelike! Don't it?" Bill grinned and chuckled. "That's
one right nice thing about minin'. You can go from Dawson to Chiapas,
and a camp's a camp! Always the same. I reckon if you went up the
street far enough you'd find a Miner's Home Saloon, maybe a Northern
Light or two, and you can bet on there bein' a First Class."
The High Light proved to be the most pretentious resort in Goldpan.
For one thing it had plate-glass windows and a gorgeous sign painted
thereon. Its double doors were wide, and at the front was a bar with a
brass rail that, by its very brightness, told only too plainly that
the evening's trade had not commenced. Two bartenders, one with a huge
crest of hair waved back, and the other with his parted in the middle,
plastered low and curled at the ends, betokened diverse taste in
barbering. A Chinese was giving the last polish to a huge pile of
glasses, thick and heavy.
On the other side of the room, behind a roulette wheel, a man who
looked more like a country parson than a gambler sat reading a thumbed
copy of Taine's "English Literature." Three faro layouts stretched
themselves in line as if watching for newcomers, and in the rear a man
was lighting the coal-oil lamps of the dance hall. It was separated
from the front part of the house by an iron rail, and had boxes
completely around an upper tier and supported by log pillars beneath,
and a tiny stage with a badly worn drop curtain.
"Is the boss here?" Bill asked, pausing in front of the man with a
wave.
"Who do you mean--Lily?" was the familiar reply.
"Yes."
"I think she's over helpin' nurse the Widder Flannery's sick kids this
afternoon. They've got chicken pox. Might go over there and see her if
you're in a rush."
"We didn't say we wanted to borrow money," Bill retorted to the
jocular latter part of the bartender's speech. "What time will she be
here?"
"About ten, I guess," was the more courteous reply.
The partners walked out and past the row of buildings until they came
to a general store, where they occupied themselves in making out an
order for supplies and arranging for their delivery on the following
day. The trader was a loquacious individual with the unmistakable
"Yankee" twang and nasal whine of the man from that important speck of
the United States called New England.
When they again turned into the street, the long twilight had been
replaced by night, and on the tops of the high peaks to the westward
the light of the full moon was beginning to paint the chill white with
a shining glow. The street was filled with men, most of them scorning
the narrow board walks and traversing the roadway. A pandemonium of
sound was robbing the night of peace through music, of assorted
character, which boiled forth from open doors in discordant business
rivalry, but underneath it all was the steady, dull monotone of the
stamp-mill, remorselessly beating the ore as if in eternal industry.
"Hardly know the place now, eh?" Bill said, as they entered the open
doors of the High Light. "It certainly keeps gettin' more homelike.
Camp must be makin' money, eh?"
Dick did not answer. He was staring at a woman who stood at the lower
end of the bar outside, and talking to a man with a medicine case in
his hand. He surmised that she must be The Lily, and was astonished.
He had expected the customary brazen appearance of other camp women he
had known in his years of wandering; the hard-faced, combatative type
produced by greed. Instead, he saw a woman of perhaps thirty years of
age, or in that vague boundary between thirty and thirty-five.
She was dressed in a short skirt, wore a spotless shirt waist over an
exceptionally graceful pair of shoulders, and her hair, neatly coiled
in heavy bronze folds, was surmounted by a white hat of the frontier
type, dented in regulation form with four hollows.
From the hat to the high tan boots, she was neat and womanly; yet it
was not this that attracted him so much as her profile. From the
straight brow, down over the high, fine nose and the firm lips to the
firmer chin, the face was perfect.
As if sensing his inspection, she turned toward him, and met his
wondering eyes. Her appraisement was calm, repressed, and cold.
Her face gave him the impression that she had forgotten how to
smile. Townsend advanced toward her, certain that she must be the
proprietress of the High Light.
"You are Miss Meredith?" he interrogated, as he halted in front of
her.
"Mrs. Meredith," she corrected, still unbending, and looking at him a
question as to his business.
A forgotten courtesy impelled him to remove his hat as he introduced
himself, but Mathews did not follow it when he was introduced, and
reached out and caught her competent hand with a hard grip. Dick
explained his errand, feeling, all the time under that steady look,
that he was being measured.
"Oh, yes, they'll be all right by to-morrow, Lily," the doctor
interrupted. "Excuse me for being so abrupt, but I must go now.
Good-night."
"Good-night," she answered, and then: "I'll be up there at three
o'clock to-morrow afternoon. Ah, you were saying you wanted----"
She had turned to the partners again with her unfinished question
leading them on to state their mission.
"Men. Here's a list," Dick answered, handing her a memorandum calling
for go many millmen, so many drill runners, swampers, car handlers,
and so forth; in all, a list of twenty odd.
"Who told you to come here?" She exploded the question as if it were
vital.
"Park. Bells Park."
She laughed mirthlessly between lips that did not smile and regular,
white teeth. But her laugh belied her lack of sympathy.
"Poor old Bells!" she said, with a touch of sadness in her voice.
"Poor old fool! I tried to keep him from gambling when he had money,
and he went broke, like all the other fools. But he loved his wife. He
made her happy. Some one in this world must be happy. So he came back,
did he? And is up there at the Cross? Well, he's a faithful man. I'm
not an employment agency, but maybe I can help you. I would do it for
Bells. I like him. Good men are scarce. The bums and loafers are
always easy to get. There isn't a mine around here that isn't looking
for good men, since they made that discovery over in the flat. Most of
them broke to the placer ground. Wages are nothing when there's a
chance for better."
She had not looked at Dick as she talked, but had her eyes fixed on
the paper, though not seeming to scan its contents. The room was
crowded with men and filled with a confused volume of sound as she
spoke, the click and whir of the wheel, the monotonous voice of the
student--turned gambler--calling "Single O and the house wins. All
down?" the sharp snap of the case-keeper's buttons before the faro
layouts, the screech of the orchestra in the dance hall, and the heavy
shuffling of feet; yet her words and intonations were distinct.
"We would like to get them as soon as we can," Dick answered. "We have
unwatered the main shaft and----"
From the dance hall in the rear there came a shrill, high shriek,
oaths, shouts, and the orchestra stopped playing. Men jumped to their
feet from the faro layouts, and then, mob-like, began to surge toward
the door, while in the lead, uttering scream on scream, ran one of
the dance-hall girls with her gaudy dress bursting into enveloping
flame. She had the terror of a panic-stricken animal flying into the
danger of the open air to die.
As if springing forward from live ground, Mathews leaped into her
path, and caught her in his arms. He jammed her forward ahead of him,
taking no pains to shield her body save with his bent arm, and seized
the cover of the roulette wheel, which lay neatly folded on the end of
the bar.
"Give me room!" he bellowed, in his heavy, thunderous voice. "Stop
'em, Dick! For God's sake, stop 'em!"
Dick leaped in among the crowd that was madly stampeding--women with
faces whose terror showed through masks of rouge, shrieking, men who
cursed, trampled, and elbowed their way to the outer air, and the
wild-eyed musicians seeking to escape from a fire-trap. Dick struck
right and left, and in the little space created Bill swathed the girl
in the cover, smothering the flames. And all the time he shouted:
"Don't run. What's the matter with you? Go back and put the fire out!
Don't be idiots!"
As suddenly as it had commenced the panic subsided, and the tide
turned the other way. Sobbing women hovered round the door, and men
began to form a bucket line. In a long age of five or ten minutes the
excitement was over, and the fire extinguished. The dance-hall floor
was littered with pieces of scorched wood torn bodily from the boxes,
and the remnants of the lamp which had exploded and caused the havoc
were being swept into the sodden, steaming heap in the center of the
room.
Through the press at the sides came The Lily, who, in the turmoil, had
sought refuge behind the bar. The partners, stooping over the
unconscious, swaddled figure on the floor, looked up at her, and Dick
saw that her face was as calm and unemotional as ever.
"Bring her to my room," she said; "I'll show you where it is. You,
Tim," she called to one of the bartenders, "go as quickly as you can
and get Doctor Mills."
The partners meekly followed her lead, pausing but once, when she
turned to hold up an authoritative hand and tell the curious ones who
formed a wake that they must go back, or at least not come ahead to
make the case more difficult. Mathews carried his senseless burden as
easily as if it were of no weight, and even as they turned up a
hallway leading to a flight of stairs ascending to The Lily's
apartments, the doctor and bartender came running to join them.
Not until they had swathed the girl in cooling bandages did any one
speak. Then, as they drew the sheet tenderly over her, they became
conscious of one another. As Bill looked up through blistered eyelids,
exposing a cruelly scorched face, his lips broke into a painful
smile.
"Doctor," The Lily said, "now you had better care for this patient."
She put her firm, white fingers out, brushed the miner's singed hair
back from his brow, and said: "I've forgotten your name, but--I want
to say--you're a man!"