BENEFITS RETURNED
Dick waited impatiently at the rendezvous, saw Joan coming, hurried to
meet her, and was restrained from displaying his joy by her upheld
hand, as she smiled and cautioned: "Now, steady, Dick! You know we
were not to--to--be anything but comrades for a while yet."
He was compelled to respect her wishes, but his eyes spoke all that
his tongue might have uttered. In the joy of meeting her, he had
forgotten the part played by her father in his surreptitious attempt
to gain possession of the Croix d'Or: but her first words reminded him
of it:
"It has been terribly lonesome since you left. I have felt as if the
whole world had deserted me. Dad is not a cheery sort of companion,
because he is so absorbed by the Rattler that he lives with it, eats
with it, sleeps with it. And, to make him worse, something appears to
have upset him in the last week or ten days until a bear would be a
highly lovable companion by comparison."
She failed to notice the gravity of his face, for he surmised how
Sloan's answer must have affected the owner of the Rattler, who strode
mercilessly over all obstacles and men, but now had come to one which
he could not surmount. He wondered how obdurate Bully Presby would
prove if the time ever came when he dared ask for Joan, and whether,
if the father refused, Joan's will would override this opposition.
Studying the lines of her face, and the firm contour of her chin as it
rounded into the grace of her throat, he had a joyful sense of
confidence that she would not prove wanting, and dismissed Bully
Presby from his thoughts. With a great embarrassment, he fumbled in
the pocket of his shirt, and brought out a little box which he opened,
to display a glittering gem. He held it toward her, in the palm of his
hand; but she pulled her gloves over her fingers, and blushed and
laughed.
"It seems to me," she declared, "that you have plenty of assurance."
"Why?" he insisted.
"Because I haven't made my mind up--that far, yet, and because if I
had I shouldn't say so until the Croix d'Or had been proven one way
or the other."
She stopped, awkwardly embarrassed, as if her objection had conveyed a
suggestion that his financial standing had a bearing on her
acceptance, and hastened to rectify it:
"Not that its success or the money it would bring has anything to do
with it."
"But if it failed?" he interrogated, striving to force her to an
admission.
"I should accept you as quickly as if it were a success; perhaps more
quickly, for I have money enough. But that isn't it. Don't you see,
can't you understand, that I want you to make good just to show that
you can?"
"Yes," he answered gloomily. "But if I didn't feel quite confident, I
shouldn't offer you the ring. And if I failed, I shouldn't ask you."
"Then you musn't fail," she retorted. "And, do you know," she
hastened, as if eager to change the subject, and get away from such a
trying pass, "that I've never seen the Croix since you took possession
of it?"
"Come now," he said, with boyish eagerness. "I've wanted you to see
what we are doing for weeks--yes, months. Will you? We can lead your
horse down over the trail easily."
He walked by her side, the black patiently following them, and told
her of what had been accomplished in his absence, and of their plans.
She listened gravely, offering such sage advice now and then that his
admiration of her knowledge constantly increased. There were but few
men in sight as they crossed the head of the canyon, and came slowly
down past the blacksmith shop.
"Why, if there isn't Mr. Clark!" she exclaimed, and the smith looked
up, grinned, dropped his tongs, and came toward them, wiping his hand
on his smudgy apron.
"Hello, Joan!" he called out. "You're a bit bigger'n you used to be,
when I made iron rings for you."
"Oh, Smuts," she laughed happily, stepping to meet him, "do you know I
still have one, and that it's in my jewel case, among my most precious
possessions?"
She held out her white, clean hand, and he almost seized it in his
grimy, fist, then drew her back.
"'Most forgot!" he declared. "I reckon I'd muss that up some if I took
it in my fist."
"Then muss it," she laughed. "You weren't always so particular." And
he grabbed, held, and patted the hand that he had known in its
childhood.
"Why, little Joan," he growled, with a suspicious softness in his
voice, "you ain't changed none since you used to sit on the end of
that old-fashioned forge, dirty up your pinafores, and cry when Bully
led you off. Him and me ain't friends no more, so's you could notice.
Seven years now since I hit him for cussin' me for somethin' that
wa'n't my fault! But, by gee whiz, old Bully Presby could go some! We
tipped an anvil over that day, and wrecked a bellows before they
pulled us off each other. I've always wondered, since then which of us
is the better man!"
He spoke with such an air of regret that Joan and Dick laughed
outright, and in the midst of it a shadow came across their own, and
they turned to meet the amused, complacent stare of Bill. In
acknowledging the introduction, Joan felt that his piercing eyes were
studying her, probing her soul, as appraisingly as if seeking to lay
her appearance and character bare. His harsh, determined face suddenly
broke into a wondrous warmth of smile, and he impulsively seized her
hand again.
"Say," he said, "you'll do! You're all right!"
And she knew intuitively that this giant of the hills and lonely
places had read her, with all her emotions and love, as he would read
print, and that, with the quick decision of such men, he was prepared
to give her loyal friendship and affection.
They walked slowly around the plant, Dick pointing out their technical
progress as they went, and she still further gained Bill's admiration
in the assay-house when she declared that she had a preference for
another kind of furnace than they were using.
"Why, say, Miss Presby, can you assay?" he burst out.
"Assay!" she said. "Why, I lived in the assay-house at two or three
times, and then studied it afterward."
"Hey, up there!" a shout came from the roadway below.
They turned and went out to the little cindered, littered level in
front of the door, and looked down to where, on the roadway a hundred
feet below, a man stood at the head of a string of panting burros, and
they recognized in him a packer from Goldpan.
"I've got somethin' here for you." He waved his hand back toward the
string of burros.
"What is it?" asked Bill, turning to Dick.
"I don't know what it can be. I have ordered nothing as heavy as that
outfit appears to be."
Perplexed, they excused themselves and descended the slope, leaving
Joan standing there in front of the assay office, and enjoying the
picture of the canyon, with its border of working buildings on one
side, and its scattered cabins, mess- and bunk-houses on the other,
the huge waste dump towering away from the hoist, and filling the head
of the canyon, and the sparkle of the stream below.
"It's for you, all right," the packer insisted. "The Wells Fargo agent
turned it over to me down in Goldpan, and said the money had been sent
to pay me for bringin' it up here. I don't know what it is. It's
stones of some kind."
Still more perplexed, the partners ordered him to take his pack train
around to the storage house, and Bill led the way while his partner
climbed back up the hill, and rejoined Joan. He was showing her some
of the assay slips from the green lead when they heard a loud call
from the yard. It was Bill, beckoning. They went across to meet him.
One of the hitches had been thrown, and the other burros stood
expectantly waiting to be relieved of their burdens.
"It's a tombstone," Bill said gravely. "It's for Bell's grave. The
express receipt shows that it was sent by----" he hesitated for a
moment, as if studying whether to use one name, or another, and then
concluded--"The Lily."
He pointed to a section of granite at their feet, and on its polished
surface they read:
Under this granite sleeps Bells Park, an engineer. Murdered in
defense of his employers. Faithful when living, and faithful when
dead, to the Croix d'Or and all those principles which make a
worthy man.
A sudden, overwhelming sadness seemed to descend upon them. Bill
turned abruptly, and stepped across toward the boiler-house. The
whistle sent out a long-drawn, booming call--the alarm signal for the
mine. In all the stress of the Croix d'Or it was the first time that
note had ever been used save in drill. The bells of the hoist arose
into a jangling clamor. They heard the wheels of the cage whirl as it
shot downward, the excited exclamations of men ascending, some of them
with tools in hand, the running of a man's feet, emerging from the
blacksmith's tunnel, the shout of the smith to his helper, and the
labored running of the cook and waiter across the cinders of the yard.
Bill slowly returned toward them.
"We'll have to get you to land it up there," he said, waving his arm
toward the cross high above. "Give us a hand here, will you? and
we'll throw this hitch again."
The entire force of the mine had gathered around them before he had
finished speaking, and, seeing the stone, understood. Joan caught her
riding skirts deftly into her hand, and, with Bill leading the way up
the steep and rock-strewn ascent, they climbed the peak. The burros
halted now and then to rest, straining under the heaviness of their
task. The men of the Croix d'Or sometimes assisted them with willing
shoulders pushing behind, and there by the mound, on which flowers
were already beginning to show green and vivid, they laid out the
sections of granite. Only the cook's helper was absent. Willing hands
caught the sections, which had been grooved to join, and, tier on
tier, they found their places until there stood, high and austere, the
granite shaft that told of one man's loyalty.
Dick gave some final instructions as to the rearranging of the grave
and the little plot that had been created around it, and they
descended in a strange silence, saddened by all that had been
recalled. No one spoke, save Bill, who gave orders to the men to
return to their tasks, and then said, as if to himself: "I'd like
mighty well to know where Lily Meredith is. We cain't even thank her.
Once I wondered what she was. Now I know more than ever. She was all
woman!"
And to this, Joan, putting out her hand to bid them good-by,
assented.
The night shots had been fired at five o'clock--the time usually
selected by mines working two shifts--supper had been eaten, and the
partners were sitting in front of their quarters when Bill again
referred to Mrs. Meredith. High up on the hill, where the new landmark
had been, erected, at the foot of the cross, the day shift of the
Croix d'Or was busied here and there in clearing away the ground
around the grave of the engineer, some of the men on hands and knees
casting aside small bowlders, others trimming a clearing in the
surrounding brush, and still others painfully building a low wall of
rock.
"The hard work of findin' out where The Lily is," said Bill softly,
"is because she covered her trail. Nobody knows where she went. The
stage driver saw her on the train, but the railway agent told him she
didn't buy no ticket. The conductor wrote me that he put her off at
the junction, and that she took the train toward Spokane. That's all!
It ends there as if she'd got on the train, and then it had never
stopped. We cain't even thank her."
Dick, absorbed in thoughts of Joan, heard but little of what he said,
and so agreed with a short: "No, that's right." And Bill subsided into
silence. A man came trudging up the path leading from the roadway
lower down, and in his hand held a bundle of letters.
"Got the mail," he said. "The stage may run every other day after
this, instead of twice a week, the postmaster over at the camp told
me. Not much to-night. Here it is."
He handed Dick a bundle of letters, and then, sighting the others on
the side of the peak above, started to join them, and take his share
in that labor of respect and affection. In the approaching twilight
Dick ran through the packet, selected one letter addressed to his
partner, and gave it to him, then tore open the first one at hand. It
was addressed in an unfamiliar and painful chirography, with the
postmark of Portland, Ore., stamped smudgily in its corner. He began
casually to read, then went white as the laborious lines flowed and
swam before his eyes:
Dear Mister Townsend, owner of the cross mine, I write you because
I am afraid I aint got your pardners name right and because Ive
got something on my mind that I cant keep any more. Im the girl
that got burned at the High Light. Your pardner saved my life and
you were awful kind to me. Everybody's been very kind to me too. I
spose you know I'll not be able to work in dance halls no more
because Im quite ugly now with them scars all over my face. But
that dont make no difference. Mrs. Meredith has been here to see
me and told me who it was saved my life. Mrs. Meredith dont want
nobody to know where shes gone. Shes not coming back any more.
Shes quit the business and is running a sort of millinery store
in----
Here a name had been painstakingly obliterated, as if by afterthought,
the very paper being gouged through with ink.
Shes paid all my hospital bills and when I get strong enough shes
going to let me go to work for her. But that aint what Im writing
about and this letter is the biggest I ever wrote. The nurse says
Im making a book. I wasn't a very bad girl or a very good girl
when I was in the camps. Maybe you know that but I done my best
and was as decent as I could be. There was a man was my sweetheart
and sometimes when he drank too much he talked too much. Men
always say a whole lot when theyre full of rotgut, unless they get
nasty. My man never got nasty. Hes gone away and I dont know
where. Maybe he dont want nothing more to do with me since I got
my face burned. Ive kept my mouth shut until I found out it was
you two men who saved me and Im writing this to pay you back the
only way I can. Bully Presby is stealing all his best pay ore from
the Croix d'Or. Hes worked clean under you and got the richest
ledge in the district. They aint nobody but confidential men ever
get into that drift. Hes been stealing that ore for going on two
years andll give you a lot of trouble if you dont mind your Ps and
Qs. I hope you beat him out, and I pray for both of you.
Your ever grateful,
Pearl Walker.