TROUBLE STALKS ABROAD
August had come, with its broiling heat at midday and its chill at
night, when the snow, perpetual on the peaks, sent its cold breezes
downward to the gulches below. Here and there the grass was dying. The
lines on Dick's brows had become visible; and even Mathews' resolute
sanguinity was being tested to the utmost. The green lead was barely
paying expenses. There had come no justification for a night shift,
and use of all the batteries of the mill, for the ledge of ore was
gradually, but certainly, narrowing to a point where it must
eventually pinch out.
Five times, in as many weeks, Dick had crossed the hill and waited for
Miss Presby. Twice he had been bitterly disappointed, and three times
she had cantered around to meet him. Their first meeting had been
constrained. He felt that it was due to his own bald discovery that
he wanted her more than anything in life, and was debarred from
telling her so. In the second meeting she had been the good comrade,
and interested, palpably, in the developments at the Croix d'Or.
"You should sink, I believe," she had said hesitatingly, as if with a
delicate fear that she was usurping his position. "I know this
district very well, indeed; and there isn't a mine along this range
that has paid until it had gone the depth. Do I talk like a miner?"
She laughed, in cheerful carelessness as if his worries meant but
little to her.
"You see, I've heard so much of mines and mining, although my father
seldom talks of them to me, that I know the geological formation and
history of this district like a real miner. I played with nothing but
miners' children from the time I was so high, pigtails and pinafores,
until I was this high, short skirts and frocks."
She indicated the progressive stages of her growth with her riding
crop, as if seeing herself in those younger years.
"Then my father sent me to an aunt, in New York, with instructions
that I was to be taught something, and to be a lady. I believe I used
to eat with my knife when I first went to her home."
She leaned back and laughed until the tears welled into her eyes.
"She was a Spartan lady. She cured me of it by rapping my knuckles
with the handle of a silver-plated knife. My, how it hurt! I feel
it yet! I wonder that they were not enlarged by her repeated
admonitions."
Dick looked at them as she held them reminiscently before her, and
had an almost irresistible desire to seize and crush the long,
slender, white fingers in his own. But the end of the meeting had
been commonplace, and they had parted again without treading on
embarrassing ground.
Dick had heard no more from the owner of the Rattler, save indirectly,
nor met him since the strained passage of the bridge; but mess-house
gossip, creeping through old Bells, who recognized no superiors, and
calmly clumped into the owner's quarters whenever he felt inclined,
said that the neighboring mine was prodigiously prosperous.
"I heard down in Goldpan," he squeaked one night, "that Wells Fargo
takes out five or six bars of bullion for him every mill clean-up. And
you can bet none of it ever gets away from that old stiff."
"But how does this news leak out?" Dick asked, wondering at such a
tale, when millmen and miners were distinguished for keeping inviolate
the secrets of the property on which they worked.
"Wells Fargo," the engineer answered. "None of the boys would say
anything. He pays top wages and hires good men. Got to hand that to
him. He brags there ain't no man so high-priced that he can't make
money off'n him--Bully Presby does. And they ain't no better miner
than him on earth. He can smell pay ore a mile underground--Bully
Presby can."
The old man suddenly looked at the superintendent, and said: "Say,
Bill. You been down to the camp a few times, ain't you?"
"Yes, we've been down there several times. Why?"
"Well, I suppose you know they's a lot of talk goin' around that the
Cross is workin' in good pay now?"
"Oh, I've heard it; but don't pay any attention when it's not so."
Bells Park leaned farther over, and lowered his shrill, garrulous
voice to a thin murmur.
"Well, I cain't tell you what it is, but I want to give you the right
lead. When that gets to goin' on about newcomers in the Blue
Mountains--fellers like you be--look out for storms."
"Go on! You're full of stuff again!" Bill gibed, with his hearty
laugh. "If we'd listened to all the mysterious warnin's you've handed
us since we came up here, Bells, we'd been like a dog chasin' his tail
around when it happened to be bit off down to the rump and no place to
get hold of. Better look out! Humph!"
The old engineer got up in one of his tantrums, fairly screamed with
rage, threatened to leave as soon as he could get another job, and
then tramped down the hill to the cabin he occupied with the other
engineer. But that was not new, either, for he had made the same
threat at least a half-dozen times, and yet the men from the Coeur
d'Alenes knew that nothing could drive him away but dismissal.
It was but two or three days later that the partners, coming from the
assay-house to the mess late, discovered a stranger talking to the men
outside under the shade of a great clump of tamaracks that nestled at
the foot of a slope. They passed in and sat down at their table,
wondering who the visitor could be. The cook's helper, a mute, served
them, and they were alone when they were attracted by a shrill, soft
hiss from the window. They looked, and saw Bells Park. Nothing but
his head, cap-crowned, was visible as he stood on tiptoe to reach the
opening.
"I told you to look out," he said warningly. "Old Mister Trouble's
come. Don't give anything. Stand pat. A walkin' delegate from Denver's
here. God knows why. Look out."
His head disappeared as if it were a jack-in-the-box, shut down; and
the partners paused with anxious eyes and waited for him to reappear.
Dick jumped to his feet and walked across to the window. No one was in
sight. He went to the farther end of the mess-house and peered through
a corner of the nearest pane. Out under the tamaracks the stranger was
orating, and punctuating his remarks with a finger tapping in a palm.
His words were not audible; but Dick saw that he was at least
receiving attention. He returned to the table, and told Bill what he
had seen. The latter was perturbed.
"It looks as if we were goin' to have an argument, don't it?" he
asked, voicing his perplexity.
"But about what?" Dick insisted. "We pay the union scale, and, while I
don't know, I believe there isn't a man on the Cross that hasn't a
card."
"Well," replied his partner, "we'll soon see. Finished?"
As they walked to the office, men began to hurry across the gulch
toward the hoist, others toward the mill, and by the time they were in
their cabin the whistle blew. It was but a minute later that they
heard someone striding over the porch, and the man they assumed to be
the walking delegate entered. He was not of the usual stamp, but
appeared intent on his errand. Save for a certain air of craftiness,
he was representative and intelligent. He was quietly dressed, and
gave the distinct impression that he had come up from the mines, and
had known a hammer and drill--a typical "hard-rock man."
"Gentlemen," he said, "I am representing the Consolidated Miners'
Association."
He drew a neat card from a leather case in his pocket, and presented
it, and was asked to seat himself.
"What can we do for you?" Dick asked, wasting no time on words.
"I suppose this mine is fair?"
"Yes. It is straight, as far as I know."
"It has no agreement."
"But we are ready to sign one whenever it is presented."
The delegate drew a worn wallet from his pocket, extracted a paper,
and tendered it.
"I anticipated no trouble," he said, but without smiling or giving any
sign of satisfaction. "Would you mind looking that over, and seeing if
it meets with your approval?"
Dick stepped to the high desk at the side of the room which he had
been utilizing as a drawing board, laid the sheet out, and began
reading it, while Bill stood up and scanned it across his shoulders.
Bill suddenly put a stubby finger on a clause, and mumbled: "That's
not right."
Dick slowly read it; and, before he had completed the involved
wording, the finger again clapped down at another section. "Nor that.
Don't stand for it!"
"What do you want, anyhow?" Bill demanded, swinging round and facing
the delegate.
The latter looked at him coolly and exasperatingly for a moment, then
said: "What position do you occupy here, my man?"
Dick whirled as if he had been struck from behind.
"What position does he occupy? He is my superintendent, and my friend.
Anything he objects to, or sanctions, I object to, or agree with.
Anything he says, I'll back up. Now I'll let him do the talking."
The delegate calmly flicked the ash from a cigar he had lighted,
puffed at it, blew the smoke from under his mustache toward the
ceiling, and looked at the thin cloud before answering. It was as if
he had come intent on creating a disturbance through studied
insolence.
"Well," he said, without noticing the hot, antagonistic attitude of
the mine owner, "what do you think of the proffered agreement?"
"I think it's no good!" answered Mathews, facing him. "It's drawn up
on a number-one scale. This mine ain't in that class."
"Oh! So you've signed 'em before."
"I have. A dozen times. This mine has but one shift--the regular day
shift. It has but one engineer and a helper. It has but one mill
boss."
"Working eight batteries?"
"No. You know we couldn't work eight batteries with one small shift."
"Well, you've got to have an assistant millman at the union scale, you
know," insisted the delegate.
"What to do? To loaf around, I suppose," Bill retorted.
"And you've got to have a turn up in the engine-house. You need
another hoisting engineer," continued the delegate, as if all these
matters had been decided by him beforehand.
Dick thought that he might gain a more friendly footing by taking part
in the conversation himself.
"See here," he said. "The Croix d'Or isn't paying interest. Maybe we
aren't using the requisite number of men as demanded under this
rating; but they are all satisfied, and----"
"I don't know about that," interrupted the delegate, with an air of
insolent assurance.
"And if we can't go on under the present conditions, we may as well
shut down," Dick concluded.
"That's up to you," declared the delegate, with an air of disinterest.
"If a mine can't pay for the working, it ought to shut down."
The partners looked at each other. There was a mutual question as to
whether it would be policy to throw the delegate out of the door.
Plainly they were in a predicament, for the man was master, in his
way.
"Look here," Bill said, accepting the responsibility, "this ain't
right. You know it ain't. We're in another class altogether. You ought
to put us, at present, under----"
"It is right," belligerently asserted the delegate. "I've looked it
all over. You'll agree to it, or I'll declare the Croix d'Or unfair."
He had arisen to his feet as if arbitrarily to end the argument. For a
wonder, the veteran miner restrained himself, although there was a
hard, glowing light in his eyes.
"We won't stand for it," he said, restraining Dick with his elbow.
"When you're ready to talk on a square basis, come back, and we'll use
the ink. Until then we won't. We might as well shut down, first as
last, as to lose money when we're just breakin' even as it is. Think
it over a while, and see if we ain't right."
"Well, you'll hear from me," declared the delegate, as he put his hat
on his head and turned out of the door without any parting courtesy.
"Keep the card. My name's Thompson, you know."
For a full minute after he had gone, the partners stared at each other
with troubled faces.
"Oh, he's a bluff! That's all there is to it," asserted Mathews,
reaching into the corner for his rubber boots, preparatory to going
underground. "He knows it ain't right, just as well as I do. If he can
put this over, all right. If he can't he'll give us the other
rating."
He left Dick making up a time-roll, and turned down the hill; and they
did not discuss it again until they were alone that night.
It was seven o'clock the next evening when the partners observed an
unusual stir in the camp. They came into the mess-house to find that
the men had eaten in unusually short order; and from the bench
outside, usually filled at that hour with laughing loungers, there was
not a sound. A strange stillness had invaded the colony of the Croix
d'Or, almost ominous. Preoccupied, and each thinking over his
individual trials, the partners ate their food and arose from the
table. Out on the doorstep they paused to look down the canyon, now
shorn of ugliness and rendered beautiful by the purple twilight. The
faint haze of smoke from the banked fires, rising above the steel
chimney of the boiler-house, was the only stirring, living spectacle
visible; save one.
"What does that mean?" Bill drawled, as if speaking to himself.
Far below, just turning the bend of the road, Dick saw a procession of
men, grouped, or walking in pairs. They disappeared before he
answered.
"Looks like the boys," he said, using the term of the camps for all
men employed. "I wonder where they are bound for? If it were pay
night, I could understand. It would mean Goldpan, the dance halls, a
fight or two, and sore heads to-morrow; but to-night--I don't know."
Bill did not answer. He seemed to be in a silent, contemplative mood
when they sat in the rough easy-chairs on the porch in front of the
office and looked up at the first rays of light on the splendid,
rugged peak above. Dick's mind reverted to the lumberman's daughter,
as does the needle veer to the magnet; and for a long time they sat
there, until the fires of their cigars glowed like stars. The moon
came up, and the cross was outlined, dimly, above them, and against
the background of black, cast upon the somber, starlit blue of the
night.
From far below, as if steel had been struck upon stone, came a faint,
ringing sound. Living in that strange world of acuteness to which men
of the high hills are habituated, they listened, alert. Accustomed, as
are all those dwellers of the lonesome spots, to heeding anything out
of the ordinary, they strained their ears for a repetition. Clattering
up the roadway came the sound of a hard-ridden horse's hoofs, then his
labored breathing, and a soft voice steadying him to further effort.
Into the shadows was injected something moving, some unfamiliar,
living shape. It turned up the hill over the trail, and plunged
wearily toward them. They jumped to their feet and stepped down off
the porch, advancing to meet the belated visitor. The horse, with
lathering neck and distended nostrils, paused before them. The moon
cleared the top of the eastern ridges with a slow bound, lowering the
shadows until the sweat on the horse's neck glistened like a network
of diamond dust strewn on a velvet cloak. It also lighted to a pallid
gleam the still face of the night rider. It was Lily Meredith.
"I've come again," she said. "They're trying to make trouble for you,
down there in the camp. Bells Park came out and told me about it. The
miners' union stirred up by that man from Denver. Bells said the only
chance you had was to come down there at once. They've split on your
account--on account of the Croix d'Or. I've ridden two miles to warn
you, and to get you there before the meeting breaks up. Bells will try
and hold them until you can come and demand a hearing. If you don't
make it they will scab the mine. You must hurry. It's your only
chance. I know them, the best friends in peace, and devils when turned
the other way."
She stopped abruptly and looked off at the moon, and then around over
the dark and silent camp. Only one light was visible, that in the
cook's end of the mess-house, where that fat worthy lay upon his back
and read a yellow-backed, sentimental novel. Faint and rumbling came
the subdued roar of the mill at the Rattler, beating out the gold for
Bully Presby; and through some vague prescience Dick was aware of its
noise for the first time in weeks, and it conveyed a sense of menace.
Everything was at stake. Everything watched him. He looked up at the
white face of The Lily above him, and in the moonlight saw that her
eyes were fixed, glowing, not on him or the scenes of the night, but
on the aroused giant at his side.