"I guess we'll have to handle it our own way," I answered evasively; and
while he was sending my sack out to the testing room I fell sound asleep.
At the end of a week, after we had made two trips apiece, we had nearly
$7,000 in bank. Figured as a return for our labor, killing as that was,
it was magnificent. But as a war chest it was merely a drop in the
bucket. Given plenty of time, we might have won out eventually by the
sacked-sample route; but we knew we were not going to be given time.
Blackwell had been up twice; and the second time, Gifford, who was acting
as hammerman, had to sit in the bottom of the shaft, pretending to load
the half-drilled hole. Otherwise, the heavy-lidded eyes, peering down
over the barrel of the windlass would assuredly have seen the steadily
widening ore body.
On the sixth day Everton came across the spur. I think I should have
known him anywhere, but he did not recognize me, though I stood and
talked with him at the shaft mouth. His visit, as I took it, was not a
spying one. On the contrary it appeared to be merely neighborly. After
beating about the bush for a little time, he came down to particulars.
We must surely know, he said, that we were on Lawrenceburg ground, and it
was too bad we were throwing away our hard work. To this he added a
vague warning. Blackwell had been taking our amateur effort as a good
joke on Barrett, whom he had known only as a bank clerk. But the edge of
the joke was wearing off, and the superintendent, who, as it seemed, had
been watching us more closely than we had supposed, was beginning to
wonder why we kept at it so faithfully; and why our camp was always
guarded at night.
The following day was Sunday, and Everton came again, this time
accompanied by his daughter. Gifford was windlass winder at the moment,
and he let himself down into the shaft, swearing, when he saw them coming
over the shoulder of the spur.
I left our carpenter-man busily covering up the lode while I scrambled
out to meet and divert the visitors. My first sight of Mary Everton,
grown, made me gasp. There had been no promise of her womanly
winsomeness and pulse-quickening beauty in the plain-faced little girl
with large brown eyes--the little girl who used to thrust her hand into
mine on the way home from school and tell me about the unforgivable
meanness of the boy who "cribbed" for his examinations.
Everton introduced me as "Mr. Bertrand," and for a flitting instant I saw
something at the back of the brown eyes that made cold chills run up and
down my spine. And her first words increased rather than diminished the
burden of sudden misgiving.
"I knew a Bertrand once," she said, shaking hands frankly after the
manner of the West. "It was when I was a little girl in school. Only
Bertrand was his Christian name."
Without knowing that he was doing it, her father came to my rescue. "We
haven't any near neighbors, Mr. Bertrand, and Polly wanted to see your
mine," he said. And then: "Do you realize that it is Sunday?"
I led the glorified Polly Everton of my school days to the mouth of the
shallow shaft. "Our 'mine,' as your father is polite enough to call it,
isn't very extensive, as yet," I pointed out. "You can see it at a
glance."
She took my word for it and gave the windlass-straddled pit only a
glance. Barrett had had his nap out and was showing himself at the door
of the shack. My companion nodded brightly at him and he joined us at
once. "We are quite old friends, Mr. Barrett and I," she hastened to
say, when I would have introduced him; and this left me free to attach
myself to her father.
Phineas Everton had changed very little with the passing years. I
remembered him as a sort of cut-and-dried school-man, bookworm and
scientist, and, as I afterward learned, he was still all three of these.
Partly because I was telling myself that it was safer for me to keep my
distance from the girl who remembered the boy Bertrand, and partly
because I wished to draw the assayer away from our dump, I took Everton
over to the shack and we sat together on the door-step. For some little
time I couldn't make out what he was driving at in his talk, but finally
it came out, by inference, at least. Somebody--Blackwell, perhaps--had
started the story that we were planning a raid on the Lawrenceburg.
"How could that be?" I asked, remembering that, only the day before,
Everton had asserted that we were already trespassers on Lawrenceburg
property.
"It is an old trick," he commented, rather sorrowfully, I fancied. "In
all the older locations there have been bits of ground missed in the
criss-crossing of the claims. Some one of you three has been sharp
enough to find one of those bits just here."
"Well; supposing we have--what then?" I asked.
He was silent for a half-minute or so. Barrett had led Mary Everton to
the shoulder of the spur where the view of the distant town was
unobstructed, and Gifford was still in the shaft.
"I don't know you, Mr. Bertrand," my seatmate began slowly, "and I
shouldn't venture to set up any standard of right and wrong in your
behalf. But that young man out yonder with my daughter: I've known him a
long time, and I knew his people. It is a thousand pities to drag him
into your undertaking."
"There has been no especial 'dragging' that I am aware of; and I don't
know why you should be sorry for Barrett," I returned rather tartly.
"I am sorry because Robert Barrett has hitherto lived an upright and
honest life. He had excellent prospects in the bank, and it seems a
great pity that he has seen fit to throw them away."
By this time I was entirely at sea. "You will have to make it
plainer--much plainer," I told him.
"I have been hoping you wouldn't force me to call it by its ugly name,"
was the sober rejoinder. "It is blackmail, Mr. Bertrand; criminal
blackmail, as I think you must know."
"That is a pretty serious charge for you to make, isn't it?"
"Not more serious than the occasion warrants. You three have discovered
this little scrap of unclaimed ground in the middle of the Lawrenceburg
property. You are digging; and presently, when you are down far enough
so that your operations cannot be observed from the shaft mouth, you will
announce that you have struck the Lawrenceburg ore body. In that event,
as you have doubtless foreseen, our company will have no recourse but to
buy you off at your own figure."
"Well?" I challenged.
"Your announcement, when you make it, will be a lie," was the cold-voiced
reply. "You are 'salting' the crevices as you go down--and with
Lawrenceburg ore."
I sighed my relief. His guess was so far from the truth that I was more
than willing to help it along. If the Lawrenceburg people could only be
persuaded that our imaginary coup was to be postponed until the bottom of
our shaft should be out of sight from the surface, we were measurably
safe.
"We may ask you to prove your charge when the proper time comes, Mr.
Everton," I suggested.
He took a small fragment of bluish-gray ore from his pocket and showed it
to me, saying, quietly, "I can prove it now; this is Lawrenceburg ore: I
handle and test it every day, and I am perfectly familiar with it. I
picked this piece up a few minutes ago on your dump."
It is always the impact of the unexpected that sends a man scurrying into
the armory of his past in search of the readiest weapon for the
emergency. Recall, once again, if you will, the three years of
association with criminals, and the fact that I was at that moment under
the ban of the law as an escaped convict. I could think of nothing save
the gaining of time, precious time, at whatever cost.
I shall always be thankful that the temptation did not reach the length
of making me offer to buy Everton's silence. That, indeed, would have
been suicidal. Yet the prompting suggestion came to me, in company with
others still more ruthless. I was telling myself that the situation was
sufficiently alarming to warrant almost any expedient. Though he was not
yet aware of it, Everton had discovered our real secret; he knew we had
ore, which--as yet--he thought we were stealing from the Lawrenceburg
bins. If he should take one additional step. . . .
The thought-loom shuttled pretty rapidly for a few short-lived seconds.
If Everton should show the bit of ore to Blackwell the superintendent
might believe the charge that we were stealing the Lawrenceburg values
for the "salting" purpose; in which case he would doubtless swear out
warrants for us. Or he might see farther than Everton had seen and jump
to the conclusion that we had actually made a strike of our own in the
shallow pit. Either way there was sharp trouble ahead.
"You have us down pretty fine, haven't you?" I said, at the end of the
reflective pause. "May I ask what use you are going to make of your
discovery?"
"I purpose giving you three young men a chance to talk it over seriously
among yourselves before I take any further steps. I suppose I should
have gone direct to Barrett. I know him, and I know there is plenty of
good in him to appeal to. But candidly, Mr. Bertrand, I didn't have the
heart to--well, to let him know that I knew."
A bitter thought swept across me like a hot wind from the desert. Was
there never to be any let-up? Were people always going to take it for
granted that _I_ was the criminal? I have known physical hunger and
hunger intellectual, but they were as nothing compared with the moral
famine that gripped me just then. I would have pawned my soul for a bare
modicum of the commonplace, every-day respectability which is able to
look the world squarely in the face without fear or favor--without asking
any odds of it.
Everton was evidently waiting for his reply, and I gave it to him.
"Criminality is largely relative--like everything else in the world,
don't you think?" I said, letting him feel the raw edge of the bitterness
that was rasping at me. "In coming to me, as you have, you, yourself,
are compounding a felony."
He shrugged his thin shoulders and looked away at the two on the bluff's
edge.
"Properly speaking, Mr. Bertrand, I am only an interested onlooker; and I
am interested chiefly on Barrett's account. What I may feel it my duty
to do if you three remain obdurate will be purely without reference to
your rather sophistical definition of criminality. In any event,
Blackwell is the man you will have to reckon with. As I say, I am
concerned only so far as the outcome may involve Robert Barrett."
"I'll tell the others what you have said," I agreed; and with this the
matter rested.