WHERE A GIRL ADVISES
"There's one thing about you, pardner, I don't quite sabe," drawled
Bill to his employer as they sat in front of their cabin one night,
after discussing the assays which Dick made his especial work. "You
ain't as talkative as you used to be. Somethin's on your mind. It's
more'n two weeks now since I had time to think about anything but the
green lead, and I'm beginnin' to notice. Where the devil do you go
every mornin' between nine and eleven?"
Dick turned toward him impulsively, and then made no reply, other than
to laugh softly. Then slowly he felt a wave of embarrassment.
"Not that it's any of my business, bein' as you're you and I'm me; but
we were pardners for some years before things changed and made you the
boss and me the hired hand. And it may be I'm undue curious. Who's
that girl you go up on the pipe line to meet every mornin'?"
His question was so abrupt that, for an instant, the younger man had a
hot, childish anger; but he controlled himself, and wondered why he
should have been annoyed by the frank interrogation.
"Miss Presby, the lumberman's daughter," he said crisply. "But what
interests me most is how you knew?"
The elder miner slapped his leg gleefully, as if pleased with a joke,
and said: "Well, I went up there five or six days ago, tryin' to find
you, because I'd lost the combination to the safe, and wanted to look
over them old drawings. I sneaked back, because I was a little jealous
to see you sittin' on the pipe talkin' right friendly to such a
good-looker. Three evenin's later while you were workin' on them mill
samples, I thought I'd like to see the whole of the line. I took a
walk. There's been a real good horse trail worked into the ground up
there, ain't there? And it's a new trail, too. Seems as if somebody
must have been riding up and down that way every day for just about
two weeks. And it's serious, too, because you don't say nothin' to a
man you was pardners with for more'n seven years. Hey, Dick! What
ails you, anyway?"
The younger man was on his feet with one of his fists drawn back, in
an attitude of extreme temper.
"Suppose after this you mind your own business?"
For a full half minute the elder man sat there in the dusk, and then
said slowly: "All right, boy--I mean, Mister Townsend--I will
hereafter."
In the gloom his figure seemed suddenly bent forward more than usual,
and his voice had a note of terrible hurt. It was as if all the ties
of seven years of vicissitude had been arbitrarily cast off by his old
partner; that they had become master and man. His words conveyed an
indescribable sorrow, and loss.
"Bill!"
Dick's arm had relaxed, and he had stepped closer. Mathews did not
lift his head. A hand, pleading, fell on his shoulder, and rested
there.
"Bill, I didn't mean it! I'm--I'm--well, I'm upset. Something's
happened to me. I didn't seem to realize it till just now. I'm--well,
thank you, I'm making a fool of myself."
The faithful gray head lifted itself, and the gray eyes glowed warmly
as they peered in the dusk at the younger man's face.
"Whe-e-w!" he whistled. "It's as bad as that, is it, boy? Just forget
it, won't you? That is, forget I butted in."
Dick sat down, hating himself for such an unusual outburst. He felt
foolish, and extremely young again, as if his steadfast foundations of
self-reliance and repression had been proven nothing more than sand.
"I know how them things go," the slow voice, so soft as to be scarcely
audible, continued. "I was young once, and it was good to be young.
Not that I'm old now, because I'm not; but because when a feller is
younger, there are hot hollows in his heart that he don't want anybody
to know about. Only don't make me feel again that I ought to 'mister'
you. I don't believe I could do that. It's pretty late to begin."
Dick went to his bed with a critical admission of the truth, and from
any angle it appeared foolish. How had it all happened? He was not
prone to be easy of heart. He had known the light, fleeting loves of
boyhood, and could laugh at them; but they had been different to this.
And it had come on him at a time when everything was at stake, and
when his undivided thoughts and attention should have been centered on
the Croix d'Or. He reviewed his situation, and scarcely knew why he
had drifted into it, unless it had been through a desire to talk to
some one who knew, as he knew, all that old life from which he had
been, and would forever be, parted.
Not that he regretted its easy scramble, and its plethora of civilized
concomitants; for he loved the mountains, the streams, the open
forests, and the physical struggles of the wild places; but--and he
gave over reasoning, and knew that it was because of the charm of Miss
Presby herself, and that he wanted her, and had hoped unconsciously.
Sternly arraigning himself, he knew that he had no groundwork to hope,
and nothing to offer, just then; that he must first win with the Croix
d'Or, and that it was his first duty to win with that, and justify the
confidence of the kindly old Sloan who backed him with hard dollars.
He had not appreciated how much the daily meeting of Miss Presby meant
to him until, on the following morning, and acting on his hardly
reached resolution of the night before, he went up for what might be
the last time. It was difficult to realize that the short summer of
the altitudes was there in its splendid growth, and that it had
opened before his unobserving eyes, passed from the tender green of
spring to the deep-shaded depths of maturity, and that the wild
flowers that carpeted the open slopes had made way for roses. Even the
cross on the peak was different, and it came to him that he had not
observed it in the weeks he had been climbing to the slope, but had
always waited eagerly for the light of a woman's face.
She came cantering up the trail, and waved a gay hand at him as she
rounded the bend of the crag. There was a frank expectancy in her
face--the expectancy of a pleasant hour's visit with a good comrade.
He wondered, vaguely and with new scrutiny, if that were not all--just
friendliness. They talked of nothing; but his usual bantering tone was
gone, and, quick to observe, she divined that there had come to him a
subtle change, not without perturbation.
"You don't seem talkative to-day," she accused as he stood up,
preparatory to going. "Have you finished work on your pipe line?"
He flushed slightly under the bronze of his face at the question, it
being thus brought home to him that he had used it as a pretext for
continuing their meetings for more than two weeks after that task was
completed and the pipemen scattered--perhaps working in some subway
in New York by that time.
"Yes," he said, "the work is finished. I shall not come up here again
unless it is for the sole purpose of seeing you."
There was something in his tone that caused her to glance up at him
and there was that in his eyes, on his face, in his bearing of
restraint, that caused her to look around again, as if to escape, and
hastily begin donning her gloves. She pulled the fingers, though they
fitted loosely, as if she had difficulty with them--even as though
they were tight gloves of kid, and said: "Well, you might do that,
sometimes--when you have time; but you mustn't neglect your work. I
come here because it is my favorite ride. You must not come merely to
talk to me when there are other duties."
"Yes," he said, endeavoring to appear unconcerned. "The Croix d'Or is
apt to be a most insistent tyrant."
"And it should come first!" He was obtuse for the instant in his
worriment, and did not catch the subtle shade of bitterness in which
she spoke.
She tugged at the reins of her horse, and the animal reluctantly tore
loose a last mouthful of the succulent grass growing under the
moisture and shadow of the big steel pipe, and stood expectantly
waiting for her to mount. She was in the saddle before Dick could come
around to her side to assist her. He made a last desperate compromise,
finding an excuse.
"When I feel that I must see you, because you are such a good little
adviser, I shall come back here," he said, "morning after morning, in
the hope of seeing you and unburdening my disgruntlement."
She laughed, as if it were a joke.
"I'm afraid I'm not a very good miner," she said, "although I suppose
I ought to be a yellow-legged expert, having been brought up somewhere
within sound of the stamps all my life. Good luck to you. Good-by."
His reply was almost a mumble, and the black horse started down the
trail. He watched her, with a sinking, hungry heart. Just as the crag
was almost abreast of her mount, she turned and called back: "Oh, I
forgot to say that I shall probably come here almost every day."
He did not understand, until long afterward, the effort that speech
cost her; nor did he know ever that her face was suffused when her
horse, startled, sprang out of sight at the touch of her spurs. He
did not know, as he stood there, wishing that he had called her back,
that she was riding recklessly down the road, hurt, and yet inclined
to be strangely happy over that parting and all it had confessed. With
a set face, as if a whole fabric of dreams had been wrenched from his
life, the miner turned and walked slowly over the trail, worn by his
own feet, which led him back to the Croix d'Or, and the struggle with
the stubborn rock.
As he topped the hill he suddenly listened, and his steps quickened.
From below a new sound had been added to the threnody of the hills; a
new note, grumbling and roaring, insistent and strong. Its message was
plain. The mill of the Cross was running again for the first time in
years; and, even as he looked down on the red roof, the whistle in the
engine-house gave a series of cheerful toots in salute of the fact.
Down on the flat in front of the long structure which held, in its
batteries, almost two-score stamps, a tall figure came out, and looked
around as if seeking him, and then, casting its eyes upward, beheld
him, and lifted a battered hat and swung it overhead. It was Bill,
rejoicing in his work.
A car of ore slid along the tramway, with the carboy dangling one leg
over the back end while steadying himself by the controller, as if he
had been thus occupied for years. Dick tore his hat off, threw it in
the air, and shouted, and raced down the hill. From now on it must be
work; unless they met with great success--then--he dared not stop to
think of what then.
He hastened on down to the mill and entered the door. Everything
about it, from the dumping of the cars sixty feet above, the wrench
of the crushers breaking the ore into smaller fragments, the clash of
the screens as it came on down to the stamps, and their terrific
"jiggety-jig-jig," roared, throbbed, and trembled. Every timber in
the structure seemed to keep pace with that resistless shaking as the
tables slid to and fro, dripping from the water percolating at
their heads, to distribute the fine silt of crushed, muddy ore evenly
over the plates in the steady downward slant. Already the bright
plates of copper, coated with quicksilver, were catching, retaining,
amalgamating the gold.
"The venners need a little more slant, don't you think?" bellowed his
partner, with his hands cupped and held close against Dick's ear in
the effort to make himself heard in that pandemonium where millmen
worked the shift through without attempting to speak.
In the critical calculation of the professional miner, Dick forgot all
other affairs, and leaned down to see the run of water. He nodded his
head, beckoned to the mill boss, and by well-known signs indicated his
wish. He scrambled above and studied the pulp, slipping it through his
fingers and feeling its fineness, and speculating whether or not they
would be troubled with any solution of lead that would render the
milling difficult and slime the plates so that the gold would escape
to go roistering down the creek with waste water. It did feel very
slippery, and he was reassured. He was eager to get to the assay-house
and make his first assay of "tailings," refuse from the mill, to
discover what percentage of gold they were saving, and, in parlance,
"How she would run on mill test."
Fascinated in his inspection and direction of certain minor changes,
he was astonished when the noise suddenly dropped from fortissimo to a
dull whine, as the mill slowed down to a stop for the noon hour. And
the afternoon passed as quickly while he worked over the bucking
board--a plate used to crush ore for assaying--in the assay-house, and
watched the gasoline flare and fume in his furnaces to bring the
little cupels, with their mass of powdered, weighed, and numbered
samples, to a molten state. He took them out with his tongs, watched
them cool, and weighed, on the scales that could tell the weight of a
lead pencil mark on a sheet of paper, the residue of gold, thus making
his computations. He was not pleased with the result. The green lead
was not as rich as they had believed.
"It won't pay more than fifty cents a ton with the best milling we can
do," he said to Bill, who came eagerly into the assay office.
"But you know the old idea--that she gets richer as we go down?" his
partner asserted. "If it pays fifty cents a ton at the mill plates,
we'll open up the face of the ledge and put on a day and night shift.
We can handle a heap of ore with this plant. It begins to look to me
as if the Cross is all to the good. Come on. Let's go down to the
power-house and see how things look down there when we're working."
They had been contemplating a new timber road, and, after visiting the
power plant and finding it trim, and throbbing with its new life, they
cut across and debouched into the public road leading up the canyon, by
the banks of the stream, to the Rattler. When almost at the fork,
where their own road branched off and crossed the stream to begin its
steep little climb up to the Croix d'Or, they saw a man standing on
the apron of the bridge, and apparently listening to the roar of their
mill. His back was toward them, and seemingly he was so absorbed in
the sounds of industry from above that he did not hear them approach
until their feet struck the first planks leading to the heavy log
structure. He turned his head slowly toward them, and they recognized
him as Bully Presby. It was the first time either of them had seen him
since the evening in the camp.
"So you're running, eh?" he asked Dick without any preliminary
courtesy.
"Yes, we started the mill to-day."
"On ore, or waste?" There was a sneer in his question which caused
Dick to stiffen a trifle; and Bill frowned, as if the question carried
an insult.
Still the younger man was inclined to avoid words.
"Naturally, we shouldn't put waste through the mill," he said coldly.
"We have opened up an old vein which the other managers did not seem
to think worth while."
"And so, I suppose, showing superior knowledge, you will demonstrate
that the men before you were a set of dubs? Humph! From babes and
fools come wisdom!"
His voice was hard and cynical, and his grim lips curled with a
slightly contemptuous twitch. The hot, impulsive streak in Dick leaped
upward. His eyes were angry when he answered.
"If you apply the latter to me," he retorted hotly, "you are going
pretty far. I don't know what business it is of yours. We have never
asked you for any advice, and we don't want any. I expect no favors
from any one, and if I did, am certain, in view of your attitude, that
I shouldn't ask them from you."
"Steady! Steady, boy!" admonished his partner's drawling voice at his
side. Dick did not utter other words that were surging to his tongue,
and finished with an angry shrug of his shoulders.
Bill turned coolly to the owner of the Rattler, and appeared to probe
him with his eyes; and his stare was returned with one as searching as
his own.
"Who are you?" Presby asked, as if the big miner were some man he had
not noticed before.
"Me? My name's Mathews. I'm superintendent of the Croix d'Or," Bill
answered, as calmly as if the form of question had been ignored.
"And I suppose the young Mister Townsend relies on you for advice, and
that he----"
"He don't need to rely on any one for advice," interrupted the soft,
repressed voice. "I rely on him. He knows more than I do. And say," he
added, taking a step toward Bully Presby, and suddenly appearing to
concentrate himself with all his muscles flexed as if for action,
"I've mined for thirty-five years. And I've met some miners. And I've
never met one who had as little decency for the men on the next claim,
or such bullying ways as you've got."
Presby's face did not change in the least, nor did he shift his eyes.
There was an instant's pause, and he showed no inclination to speak.
"'Most every one around these diggings seems to be kind of buffaloed
by you," Bill added; "but I sort of reckon we ain't like them. I'm
handin' it to you right straight, so you and me won't have any trouble
after this, because if we do--well, we'd have to find out which was
the better man."
Bully Presby's eyes flashed a singular look. It seemed as if they
carried something of approval, and at the same time a longing to test
the question of physical superiority. And then, abruptly, he laughed.
Astonished by this strange, complex character, Bill relaxed, and
turned toward his partner. Dick, seeing that the interview was ended,
as far as the necessity for saying anything was concerned, moved
across the bridge, and Bill took a last hard stare at the mine owner.
The latter laughed again, with his cold, cynical rumble.
"I think," he said, "that when the Cross shuts down for good, I'd like
to give you a job. When it does, come and see me."
Without another look, word, or sign of interest, he turned his back on
them, and marched up the hill toward the Rattler.