WHEN REASON SWINGS
Dick suddenly crumpled the sheet of paper, and put it in his pocket.
He lifted himself, as a man distracted, from the chair in which he had
been sitting, gripping the arms with hands that were tensely
responding to an agony of spirit. He almost lurched forward as he
stepped to the little steps leading down from the porch, and into the
worn trail, hesitated at the forks leading to mess-house or assay
office, and then mechanically turned in the latter direction, it being
where the greater number of his working hours were passed.
"Where you goin'?" the voice of his partner called, as he plunged
forward.
He had to make a determined attempt to speak, then his voice broke,
harsh and strained, through dry lips:
"Assay office."
He did not look back, but went forward, with limp hands and tottering
knees, turning neither to right nor left. The whole world was a haze.
The steadfast mountain above him was a cynical monster, and dimly, in
the shadow of the high landmark, he discerned a change, sinister,
gloating, and leering on him and his misery. The soft voices of the
men of the day shift returning from their voluntary task, the staccato
exhaust of the hoisting engine bringing up a load of ore from the
refound lead, the clash of a car dumping its load of waste, and the
roar of the Rattler's stamps, softened by distance, blended into
discordance.
He entered the assay-house like a whipped dog seeking the refuge of
its kennel, threw himself on a stool before the bench, leaned his head
into his hollowed arms, and groaned as would a stricken warrior of
olden days when surrendering to his wounds.
This, then, explained it all--that sequence of events, frustrating,
harrying, baffling him, since the first hour he had come to the mine
of the Croix d'Or. The rough suggestion of Bully Presby on the first
day, discouraging him; the harsh attitude; the persistent attempts to
dishearten him and buy him out; the endeavor to buy half the property
from, and remove the backing, of Sloan, without which he could not go
on; the words of the watchman, who doubtless had discovered Bully
Presby's secret theft, blackmailed him as much as he could, and,
dying, cursed him; but, hating the men of the mine more, had withheld
the vital meaning of his accusation. Perhaps Presby had been
instrumental in Thompson's strike. But no, that could scarcely be,
although, in the light of other events in that iniquitous chain, it
might be possible. That he had any part in the dynamiting of the dam
or power-house, Dick cast aside as unworthy of such a man. The strong,
hard, masterful, and domineering face of Bully Presby arose before him
as from the darkening shadows of the room, and it seemed triumphant.
He lifted his head suddenly, thinking, in his superacute state of
mind, that he had heard a noise. He must have air! The assay office,
with its smell of nitric acid, its burned fumes, its clutter of broken
cupels and slag, was unbearable. He arose from the stool so suddenly
that it went toppling over to fall against the stacked crucibles
beneath the bench which lent their clatter to the upset. He stepped
out into the night. It was dark, only the stars above him dimly
betraying the familiar shapes of mountains, forests, and buildings
around. Up in the bunk-house some man was wailing a verse of "Ella
Re," accompanied by a guitar, and the doleful drone of the hackneyed
chorus was caught up by the other men "off shift." But, nauseating as
it was to him, this piebald ballad of the hills, it contained one
shrieking sentence: "Lost forevermore!" That was it! Joan was lost!
He looked up at the superintendent's quarters, which had been his
home, and saw that its lights were out. Bill, he conjectured, always
hard working and early rising, had tumbled into his bed, unconscious
of this tragedy. He struck off across the gulch, and took the trail he
had so frequently trodden with a beating heart, and high and tender
hope. It led him to the black barrier of the pipe line, the place
where first he had met her, the sacred clump of bushes that had held
and surrendered to him the handkerchief enshrined in his pocket, the
slope where she had leaned down from her horse and kissed him in the
only caress he had ever received from her lips, and told him that he
should be with her in her prayers.
Reverently he caressed with his hands the spot where she had so often
sat on a gray old bowlder, flat-topped. His heart cried for one more
sight of her, one more caress, one more opportunity to listen to her
voice before he dealt her the irrevocable wound that would end it
all.
Not for an instant did he waver. The tempter, whispering in his ear,
told him that he could conceal his knowledge, advise Sloan to sell,
take his chance with Joan, and let the sleeping dog lie, forever
undiscovered. It told him that Sloan was admittedly rich beyond his
needs, and that with him the Croix d'Or was merely a matter of
sentiment, and an opportunity of bestowing on the son of his old-time
friend a chance to get ahead in the world.
But back of it all came the inexorable voice of truth, telling Dick
that there was but one course open, and that was reparation; that to
his benefactor he owed faith and loyalty; that Presby must pay, though
his--Richard Townsend's--castles crumbled to dust in the wreckage of
exposure. He must break the heart and faith of the girl who loved him,
and whom, with every fiber of his being, he loved in return.
She would stand in the world as the daughter of a colossal thief! Not
a thief of the marts, where crookedness was confused with shrewdness
far removed from the theft of the hands; but a thief who had burrowed
beneath another man's property, and carried away, to coinage, his
gold. Between Bully Presby and the man who tunneled under a bank to
loot the safe, there was no moral difference save in the romance of
that mystic underground world where men bored like microbes for their
spoil.
"Joan! Joan! Joan!" he muttered aloud, as if she were there to hear
his hurt appeal.
It was for her that he felt the wound, and not for Bully Presby, her
father. For the latter he spared scant sympathy; but it was Joan who
would be stricken by any action he might take, and the action must be
taken, and would necessarily be taken publicly.
Under criminal procedure men had served long terms behind bars for
less offenses than Presby's. Others had made reparation through
payment of money, and slunk away into the shadows of disgrace to avoid
handcuffs. And the fall of Presby of the Rattler, as a plunderer, was
one that would echo widely in the mining world where he had moved, a
stalwart, unbending king. Not until then had Dick realized how high
that figure towered. Presby, the irresistible, a thief, and fighting
to keep out of the penitentiary, while Joan, the brave, the loving,
the true, cowered in her room, dreading to look the world in the
face.
And he, the man who loved her, almost accepted as her betrothed, with
the ring even then burning in his pocket, was the one who must deal
her this blow!
He got up and staggered through the darkness along the length of the
line, almost envying the miserable dynamiter, who had died above
the remnant of wall, for the quiet into which he had been thrust.
If the train bringing him homeward had been wrecked, and his life
extinguished, he could have saved her this. The Cross would have
been sold. She might have grieved for him, for a time, but wounds
will heal, unless too deep. He stood above the abyss where daylight
showed ruins, and knew that the destruction of the dam, heavy a blow
as it had seemed when inflicted, was nothing as compared to this
ruin of dreams, of love, and hope.
"Dick! Dick! What is it, boy?" came a soft voice from the night,
scarcely above a whisper. "Can't you tell me, old man? Ain't we still
pardners? Just as we uster be?"
He peered through the darkness, roused from his misery in the
stillness of the hour, and the night, by the appeal. Dimly he
discerned, seated above him on the abutment, a shape outlined against
the stars. It threw itself down with hard-striking feet, and came
toward him, and he knew it was not a phantom of misery. It came
closer to where he stood on the brink of the blackness, and laid a
hand on his shoulder, put it farther across and held him, as tenderly
as father might have held, in this hour of distress.
"I've been follerin' you, boy," the kindly voice went on. "I saw that
somethin' had got you. That you were hard hit! I've been near you for
the last two or three hours. I don't know as I'd have bothered you
now, if I hadn't been afraid you'd fall over. Let's go back,
Dick--back to the mine."
It seemed as if there had come to him in the night a strong support.
Numbed and despairing, but with a strange relief, he permitted Bill to
lead him back over the trail, and at last, when they were standing
above the dim buildings below, found speech.
"It's her," he said. "It's for her sake that I hate to do it. It's
Joan!"
"Sit down here by me," the big voice, commiserating, said. "Here on
this timber. I've kept it to myself, boy, but I know all about her. I
stood on the bank, where I'd just gone to hunt you, on that day she
reached down from the saddle. I knew the rest, and slipped away. You
love her. She's done somethin' to you."
"No!" the denial was emphatic. "She hasn't! She's as true as the
hills. It's her father. Look here!"
He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out the crumpled sheet, and struck a
match. Bill took the letter in his hands and read, while the night
itself seemed pausing to shield the flickering flame. With hurried
fingers he struck another match, and the light flared up, exposing his
frowning eyebrows, the lights in his keen eyes, the tight pressure of
his firm lips.
He handed the letter back, and for a long time sat silently staring
before him, his big, square shoulders bent forward, and his hat
outlined against the light of the night, which was steadily
increasing.
"I see how it is," he said at last. "And it's hard on you, isn't it,
boy? A man can stand anything himself, but it's hell to hurt those we
care for."
The sympathy of his voice cut like a knife, with its merciful hurt.
Dick broke into words, telling of his misery, but stammering as strong
men stammer, when laying bare emotions which, without pressure, they
always conceal. His partner listened, motionless, absorbing it all,
and his face was concealed by the darkness, otherwise a great
sympathy would have flared from his eyes.
"We've got to find a way out of this, Dick," he said at last, with a
sigh. And the word "we" betrayed more fully than long sentences his
compassion. "We must go slow. Somehow, I reckon, I'm cooler than you
in this kind of a try-out. Maybe because it don't hit me so close to
home. Let's go back, boy, back to the cabin, and try to rest. The
daylight is like the Lord's own drink. It clears the head, and makes
us see things better than we can in the night--when all is dark. Let's
try to find a way out, and try to forget it for a while. Did you ever
think how good it all is to us? Just the night, coming along every
once in a while, to make us appreciate how good the sun is, and how
bright the mornings are. It ain't an easy old world, no matter how
hard we try to make it that; because it takes the black times to make
our eyes glad to watch the sunrise. Let me help you, old pardner.
We've been through some pretty tight places together, and somehow,
when He got good and ready, the Lord always showed us a way out."
He arose on his feet, stretched his long muscular arms, and started
down the hill, and Dick followed. There was not another word
exchanged, other than the sympathetic "good-night" in which they had
not failed for more than seven years, and outside the stars waned
slowly, the stamp mill of the Rattler roared on, and the Croix d'Or
was unmoved.
The daylight came, and with it the boom of the night shift setting off
its morning blasts, and clearing the way for the day shift that would
follow in sinking the hole that must inevitably betray the dishonesty
of the stern mine master at the foot of the hill. Dick had not slept,
and turned to see a shadow in the door.
"Don't you get up, Dick," Bill said. "Just try to rest. I heard you
tumblin' around all the night. You don't get anywhere by doin' that. A
man has to take himself in hand more than ever when there's big things
at stake. Then's when he needs his head. You just try to get some
rest. I'll keep things goin' ahead all right, and there ain't no call
to do nothin' for a week or ten days--till we get our feet on the
ground. After that we'll find a trail. Don't worry."
Through the kindly tones there ran confidence, and, entirely
exhausted, Dick turned over and tried to sleep. It came to him at
last, heavy and dreamless, the sleep that comes beneficently to those
who suffer. The sun, creeping westward, threw a beam across his face,
and he turned restlessly, like a fever-stricken convalescent, and
rolled farther over in the bed.
The beam pursued him, until at last there was no further refuge, and
he sat up, dazed and bewildered, and hoping that all had been a
nightmare, and that he should hear the cheery note of the whistle
telling him that it was day again, and calling the men of the Croix
d'Or to work.
It was monstrous, impossible, that all should have changed. It was but
yesterday that he had returned to the mine with finances assured,
confidence restored, and the certainty that Joan Presby loved him, and
could come to his side when his work was accomplished.
He looked at his watch and the bar of sunlight. It was four o'clock,
and the day was gone. Everything was real. Everything was horrible. He
crawled stiffly from his bed, thrust his head into the cold water of
the basin, and, unshaven, stepped out to the porch and down the
trail.
The plumes of smoke still wreathed upward from two stacks. Bill was
still driving downward unceasingly. The mellow clang of the smith's
hammer, sharpening drills, smote his ears, and the rumble of the cars.
The cook, in a high, thin tenor, sang the songs with which he
habitually whiled away his work. Everything was the same, save him!
And his air castles had been blown away as by the wind.
In a fever of uncertainty, he stood on the hillside and thought of
what he should do. He believed that it was his duty to be the one to
break the harsh news to Joan, and wondered whether or not she might be
found at the tryst. He remembered that, once before when he had not
appeared, she had ridden over there in the afternoon. Perhaps,
expecting him, and being disappointed, she might be there again.
He hurried down the slope, and back up across the divide and along the
trail, his hopes and uncertainties alone rendering him certain that
she must be there, and paused when the long, black line shone dully
outlined in its course around the swelling boss of the hill. He
experienced a thrill of disappointment when he saw that she was not
waiting, and, again consulting his watch feverishly, tramped backward
and forward along the confines of the hallowed place.
At last, certain from the fresh hoof marks on the yielding slope, that
she had come and gone, he turned, and went slowly back to the mine. He
had a longing to see his partner, and learn whether or not Mathews,
with that strange, resourceful logic of his, had evolved some way out
of the predicament. But Bill was nowhere in sight. He was not in the
office, and the mill door was locked. The cook had not seen him; and
the blacksmith, busy, stopped only long enough to say that he thought
he had seen the superintendent going toward the hoisting-house.
"Have you seen Bill?" Dick asked of the engineer, who stood at his
levers, and waited for a signal.
"He's below," the engineer answered, throwing over an arm, and
watching the cage ascend with a car of ore.
It trundled away, and Dick stepped into the cage. The man appeared
irresolute, and embarrassed.
"He'll be up pretty soon, I think," he ventured.
"Well, I'll not wait for him," Dick said. "Lower away."
The man still stood, irresolute.
"Let her go, I said," Dick called sharply, his usual patience of
temper having gone.
"But--but----" halted the engineer. "Bill said to me, when he went
down, says he: 'You don't let any one come below. Understand? I don't
care if it's Townsend himself. Nobody comes down. You hold the cage,
because I'll send the shift up, and 'tend to the firing myself.'"
For an instant Dick was enraged by this stubbornness, and turned with
a threat, and said: "Who's running this mine? I don't care what he
said. You haven't understood him. Lower away there, I say, and be
quick about it!"
The rails and engine room slid away from him. The cage slipped
downward on its oiled bearings, as if reluctant, and the light above
faded away to a small pin-point below, and then died in obscurity, as
if the world had been blotted out. Only the sense of falling told him
that he was going down, down, to the seven-hundred-foot level, and
then he remembered that he had no candle. The cage came to a halt, and
he fumbled for the guard bar, lifted it, and stepped out.
Straight ahead of him he saw a dim glow of light. With one hand on
the wall he started toward it, approached it, and then, in the
hollow of illumination saw something that struck him like a blow in
the face. The hard, resounding clash of his heels on the rock
underfoot stopped. His hands fell to his sides, as if fixed in an
attitude of astonishment. Standing in the light beyond him stood
Joan, with her hands raised, palms outward.
"Stop!" she commanded. "Stop! Stay where you are a moment!"
Amazed and bewildered, he obeyed mechanically, and comprehended rather
than saw that, crouched on the floor of the drift beyond, his partner
knelt with a watch in his hand, and in a listening attitude. Suddenly,
as if all had been waiting for this moment, a dull tremor ran through
the depths of the Croix d'Or. A muffled, beating, rending sound seemed
to tear its way, vibrant, through the solid ledge. He leaped forward,
understanding all at once, as if in a flash of illumination, what the
woman he loved and his partner had been waiting for. It was the sound
of the five-o'clock blasts from the Rattler, as it stole the ore from
beneath their feet. It was the audible proof of Bully Presby's theft.
"Joan! My Joan!" he said, leaping forward. "I should have spared you
this!"
But she did not answer. She was leaning back against the wall of the
tunnel, her hands outstretched in semblance of that cross whose name
was the name of the mine----as if crucified on its cross of gold. The
flaring lights of the candles in the sticks, thrust into the crevices
around, lighted her pale, haggard face, and her white hands that
clenched themselves in distress. She looked down at the giant who was
slowly lifting himself from his knees, with his clear-cut face
upturned; and the hollows, vibrant with silence, caught her whispered
words and multiplied the sound to a sibilant wail.
"It's true!" she said. "It's true! You didn't lie! You told the truth!
My father--my father is a thief, and may God help him and me!"