The day following the Kellow incident being Sunday, the three of us
snatched an hour or so in the early forenoon for a breathing space.
Sitting around the plank table in the bunk shack we took account of
stock, as a shopkeeper would say. It was apparent to all of us that
the blazoning abroad of our secret could not now be long delayed. A
new gold strike yielding ore worth anywhere from one to twenty-five
dollars a pound was startling enough to make a stir even in the one and
only Cripple Creek, and it seemed nothing short of a miracle that we
had not already been traced and our location identified.
It was Barrett's gift to take the long look ahead. At his suggestion,
Gifford, who was something of a rough-and-ready draftsman, sketched a
plan for the necessary shaft-house and out-buildings, fitting the
structures to our limited space. When the fight to retain possession
should begin we meant to strike fast and hard; Barrett had already gone
the length of bargaining, through a friend in town, for building
material and machinery, which were to be rushed out to us in a hurry at
the firing of the first gun in what we all knew would be a battle for
existence.
During this Sunday morning talk I was little more than an abstracted
listener. I could think of nothing but the raw hazard of the previous
night and of the frightful moral abyss into which it had precipitated
me. In addition there were ominous forebodings for the future. So
long as Kellow remained in Cripple Creek, danger would lurk for me in
every shadow. Since the calamity which was threatening me would also
involve my partners, at least to the extent of handicapping them by the
loss of a third of our fighting force, it seemed no less than a duty to
warn them. But I doubt if I should have had the courage if Barrett had
not opened the way.
"You're not saying much, Jimmie. Did the trip to town last night knock
you out?" he asked.
It was my opportunity, and I mustered sufficient resolution to seize it.
"No; it didn't knock me out, but it showed me where I've been making a
mistake. I never ought to have gone into this thing with you two
fellows; but now that I am in, I ought to get out."
"What's that!" Gifford exploded; but Barrett merely caught my eye and
said, very gently, "On your own account, or on ours, Jimmie?"
"On yours. There is no need of going into the particulars; it's a long
story and a pretty dismal one; but when I tell you that last night I
was on the point of killing a man in cold blood--that it's altogether
probable that I shall yet have to kill him--you can see what I'm
letting you in for if I stay with you."
Gifford leaned back against the shack wall and laughed. "Oh, if
_that's_ all," he said. But again it was Barrett who took the soberer
view.
"You are one of us, Jimmie," he declared. "If you've got a blood
quarrel with somebody, it's our quarrel, too: we're partners. Isn't
that right, Gifford?"
"Right it is," nodded the carpenter.
"We are not partners to that extent," I objected. "If I should tell
you all the circumstances, you might both agree with me that I may be
obliged to kill this man; but on the other hand, you--or a jury--would
call it first-degree murder; as it will be."
Barrett looked horrified, as he had a perfect right to.
"You couldn't do a thing like that!" he protested.
"Yesterday I should have been just as certain as you are that it was
beyond the possibilities; but now, since last night, it's different.
And that is why I say you ought to fire me. You can't afford to carry
any handicaps; you need assets, not liabilities."
Gifford got up and went to sit on the doorstep, where he occupied
himself in whittling thin shavings of tobacco from a bit of black plug
and cramming them into his pipe. Barrett accepted this tacit
implication that he was to speak for both.
"If you pull out, Jimmie, it will be because you want to; not because
anything you have said cuts any figure with us. And whether you go or
stay, there will be two of us here who will back you to the limit.
That's about all there is to say, I guess; only, if I were you, I
shouldn't be too sudden. Take a day to think it over. To-morrow
morning, if you still think it's the wise thing to do--the only thing
to do--we'll write you a check, Gifford and I, for your share in the
bank account; and after we get going we'll make such a settlement with
you for your third as will be fair and just all around."
This put an entirely new face upon the matter. I hadn't dreamed of
such a thing as standing upon my rights in the partnership.
"Like the mischief, you will!" I retorted. "Do you think I'm that kind
of a quitter?--that I'd take a single dollar out of the Little
Clean-up's war chest? Why, man alive! my only object in getting out
would be to relieve you two of a possible burden!"
Barrett's smile was altogether brotherly. "It's the only way you can
escape us," he averred; and with that the dissolution proposal was
suffered to go by default.
There were half a dozen stragglers to come lounging over the spur or up
the gulch that Sunday afternoon, sharp-set, eager-eyed prospectors,
every man of them, and each one, we guessed, searching meticulously for
the mysterious bonanza about which everybody in town was gossiping. It
was only the fact that the hills were fairly dotted with embryotic
mines like our own--this and the other fact that our dump showed no
signs of ore--that saved us.
Two of these prying visitors hung around for an hour or more, and one
of the pair wanted to go down in the shaft, which was now deep enough
to be quite safe from prying eyes at the surface. I was acting as
windlass-man at the time, and I bluffed him, telling him that with two
men working in the hole there wasn't room for a third--which was true
enough. But beyond this fact there were by this time the best of
reasons for keeping strangers out of our shaft. To name the biggest of
them, our marvelous Golconda vein had widened steadily with the
increasing depth until now we were sinking in solid ore.
It was Gifford's turn to guard the ore load that night, and after the
team got away I persuaded Barrett to go to bed. He was showing the
effects of the terrible toil worse than either the carpenter or myself,
and I was afraid he might break when the fighting strain came. I had
yet to learn what magnificent reserves there were in this clean-cut,
high-strung young fellow who, when we began, looked as if he had never
done a day's real labor in his life.
Since we had never yet left the shaft unguarded for a single hour of
the day or night, I took my place at the pit mouth as soon as Barrett's
candle went out. It was a fine night, warm for the altitude and
brightly starlit, though there was no moon. In the stillness the
subdued clamor of the Lawrenceburg's hoists floated up over the spur
shoulder; and by listening intently I fancied I could hear the distant
rumble of our ore wagon making its way down the mountain.
In the isolation and loneliness of the night watch it was inevitable
that my thoughts should hark back to the near-meeting with Kellow, and
to the moral lapse which it had provoked. Doubtless every man
rediscovers himself many times in the course of a lifetime. In prison
I had been sustained by a vindictive determination to win out and
square accounts with Abel Geddis and Abner Withers. After my release
another motive had displaced the vengeful prompting: the losing fight
for reinstatement in the good opinion of the world seemed to be the
only thing worth living for.
But now I was finding that there was a well-spring of action deeper
than either of these, and the name of it was a degrading fear of
consequences--of punishment. With a most hearty loathing for the lower
depths of baseness uncovered by craven fear, one may be none the less a
helpless victim of a certain ruthless and malign ferocity to which it
is likely to give birth. Sitting with my back propped against the
windlass and the newly purchased rifle across my knees, I found that
cowardice, like other base passions, may suddenly develop an infection.
With nerves twittering and muscles tensely set, I was ready to become a
homicidal maniac at the snapping of a twig or the rolling of a pebble
down the hillside.
In such crises the twig is predestined to snap, or the pebble to roll.
Some slight movement on my part set a little cataract of broken stone
tumbling into the shaft. Before I could recover from the prickling
shock of alarm, I heard footsteps and a shadowy figure appeared in the
path leading over the spur from the Lawrenceburg. Automatically the
rifle flew to my shoulder, and a crooking forefinger was actually
pressing the trigger when reason returned and I saw that the
approaching intruder was a woman.
I was deeply grateful that it was too dark for Mary Everton to see with
what teeth-chatterings and reactionary tremblings I was letting down
the hammer of the rifle when she came up. For that matter, I think she
did not see me at all until I laid the gun aside and stood up to speak
to her. She had stopped as if irresolute; was evidently disconcerted
at finding the claim shack dark and apparently deserted.
"Oh!" she gasped, with a little backward start, as I rose from the
empty dynamite box upon which I had been sitting. Then she recognized
me and explained. "I--I thought you would be working--you have been
working nights, haven't you?--and I came over to--to speak to Mr.
Barrett."
Under other conditions I might have been conventionally critical. My
traditions were still somewhat hidebound. In Glendale a young woman
would scarcely go alone at night in search of a man, even though the
man might be her lover.
"Barrett has gone to bed: I'll call him," I said, limiting the
rejoinder to the bare necessities.
"No; please don't do that," she interposed. "I am sure he must be
needing his rest. I can come again--at some other time."
I was beginning to get a little better hold upon my nerves by this time
and I laughed.
"Bob is needing the rest, all right, but he will murder me when he
finds out that you've been here and I didn't call him. If you want to
save my life, you'd better reconsider."
"No; don't call him," she insisted. "It isn't at all necessary,
and--and perhaps you can tell me what I want to know--what I ought to
know before I----" the sentence trailed off into nothing and she began
again rather breathlessly: "Mr. Bertrand, can you--can you satisfy me
in any way that you and your two friends have a legal right to this
claim you are working? It's a perfect--impertinence in me, to ask, I
know, but----"
"It is a fair question," I hastened to assure her; "one that any one
might ask. With the proper means at hand--maps and records--I could
very easily answer it."
"But--but there may have been mistakes made," she suggested.
"Doubtless there were; but we haven't made them. The Lawrenceburg
Company owns the ground on two sides of us, and for some considerable
distance beyond us toward the head of the gulch; but I can assure you
that our title to the Little Clean-Up is perfectly good and legal in
every way."
"It is going to be disputed," she broke in hurriedly. "Mr. Blackwell
has talked about it--before me, just as if I didn't count. Telegrams
have been passing back and forth, and the Lawrenceburg owners in the
East have given Mr. Blackwell full authority to take such steps as he
may think best. I--that is, Daddy and I--have known Mr. Barrett for a
long time, and I couldn't let this thing happen without giving him just
a little warning. Some kind of legal proceedings have already been
begun, and you are to be driven off--to-morrow."
"Oh, I guess not; not so suddenly as all that," I ventured to say.
There were many questions to come crowding in, but I could scarcely
expect the assayer's daughter to answer them. Her father had plainly
declared his belief that we were stealing Lawrenceburg ore and planning
a blackmailing scheme: had he told Blackwell? The query practically
answered itself. If Blackwell had been told that we were salting our
claim with ore stolen from the Lawrenceburg sheds, the "legal
proceedings" would have been a simple arrest-warrant and a search for
stolen property. Had Everton told his daughter? This was blankly
incredible. If he had told her that we were thieves, she would never
have gone so far aside from her childhood hatred of duplicity and
wrong-doing as to come and warn us.
"I was afraid you might not believe me," she said, with a little catch
in her voice; and then: "I can't blame you; after what you have
suf--after all that has happened."
If I hadn't been completely lost in admiration for her keen sense of
justice, and more or less bewildered by her beauty and her nearness, I
might have caught the significance of what she was trying to say. But
I didn't.
"No; I didn't mean that," I denied warmly. "I do believe every word
you have said. No one who knows you could disbelieve you for a moment."
"But you don't know me," she put in quickly.
I saw how near I had come to self-betrayal and tried to fend my little
life-raft off the rocks.
"You will say that we have met only once before to-night, and then only
casually. Will you permit a comparative stranger to say that that was
enough? Your soul looks out through your eyes, Miss Everton, and it is
an exceedingly honest soul. I know you must have strong reasons for
coming to tell us what Blackwell is doing; and if I didn't quite
understand the motive at first--with you your father's daughter, you
know, and your father in the service of the----"
"I know," she interrupted. "But you lose sight of the larger things.
If you have been telling me the truth about your ownership of this
claim, a great wrong is going to be done. I couldn't stand aside and
let it be done, could I?"
Something in her manner of saying this recalled most vividly the little
girl of the long ago, hot-hearted in her indignation against injustice
of every sort.
"No, I am sure you couldn't: I don't believe you know how to compromise
with wrong of any kind. But you ought not to take my unsupported word
about the matter of ownership. Let me call Barrett."
"It isn't necessary. If you say that you three have an honest right to
be here, I believe you implicitly. And what I have done is nothing.
My father would have done it if he hadn't--if he didn't----"
"You needn't say it," I helped out. "Your father thinks we are trying
to hold the Lawrenceburg people up, and I don't blame him. When he was
up here the other day--the day you were both here--he thought he caught
us red-handed. It wasn't so; he was quite mistaken; but for reasons
which I can't explain just now I couldn't very well take the only
course which would have undeceived him."
"I--I think I understand," she returned, guardedly. "You--you haven't
been stealing ore from the Lawrenceburg sheds?"
I laughed and said a thing that I wouldn't have said to any other
living human being on earth at that stage of the game.
"If we can manage to hold our own for just a little while longer,
Robert Barrett will be a very rich man, Miss Everton. May I venture to
hand you a lot of good wishes before the fact? I know this is only a
very old friend's privilege, but----"
Her embarrassment was very charming, and, as I saw it, most natural.
"I--indeed, I wasn't thinking any more of Mr. Barrett than I was of--of
you and--and Mr. Gifford," she faltered. "I simply couldn't bear to
think of this terrible thing dropping upon you out of a clear sky
if--if you hadn't been doing anything to deserve it. Can you defend
yourselves in any way?"
"We can try mighty hard," I asserted. "That is what I meant when I
said that we were not going to be driven off to-morrow. Possession is
nine points of the law. We have our little foothold here, and we shall
try to keep it. I'll tell Barrett when he wakes, and we'll be ready
for them when they come. Now you must let me take you back home. You
really oughtn't to be here alone, you know."
She made no objection to the bit of elder-brother-ism, but half-way up
to the summit of the spur she had her small fling at the conventions.
"I don't admit that I ought not to have come alone; neither that, nor
your right to question it," she said definitively. "You protest
because you are conventional: so am I conventional--but only so far as
the conventions subserve some good end. There are situations in which
the phrase, 'it isn't done,' becomes a mere impertinence. This is life
in the making, up here in these desolate hills, and we who are taking
part in the process are just plain men and women."
"That is true enough," I rejoined; and other than this there was little
said, or little chance for saying it, since the distance over the spur
was short and she would not let me show myself under the Lawrenceburg
masthead electrics.
I did not know, at the time, of any reason why I should have returned
to resume my lonesome watch at the shaft's mouth like a man walking
upon air, but so it was. There are women who keep the fair promise of
their childhood, and we admire them; there are others who prodigiously
and richly exceed that promise, and they own us, body and soul, from
the moment of re-discovery.
Throughout the long night hours following Mary Everton's visit I was
far enough, I hope, from envying Barrett; far enough, too, from the
thought that I might ever venture to ask any good and innocent young
woman to step down with me into the abyss of unearned infamy into which
I had been flung, largely through the efforts of another woman who was
neither good nor innocent. None the less, the delight which was half
intoxication remained and the night was full of waking dreams.
The dark shaft beside me sent up its dank breath of stale powder fumes,
and the acrid odor was as the fragrance of a fertile field ripe for the
sickle. In this reeking pit at my elbow, gold, the subtle, the potent,
the arbiter of all destinies, stood ready to fight for me. The liberty
which I had stolen, but which had first been stolen from me, would
shortly find a defender too strong to be overthrown by all the
prejudice and injustice which are so ready to fly at the throat of
helplessness. The reinstatement, which I had been unable to win as a
mendicant ex-convict, I could buy with gold in the open market; and
when it should be bought and paid for, all the world would clap and
cry, Well done!
Barrett had gone to bed exacting a promise that I should call him at
two o'clock. But I let the hour go by, and another, and yet another,
until the stars were paling in the east when I got up, stiff in every
joint, to meet Gifford as he came up the gulch. He was haggard and
weary, trembling like an overworked draft horse, and he had to lick his
lips before he could frame the words which were to be our alarm signal.
"It's all over," he croaked hoarsely. "The wagon's broke down a couple
of miles below, right out on the open mountain-side. We've been
working like hell all night trying to drag the load down to some place
where we could hide it, but it was no good. Dixon's gone on to town to
get another wagon, but the mischief is done. Come daylight, everybody
on this side of Bull Mountain will know what's in that wagon, and where
it comes from."
The carpenter was practically dead on his feet from the night of fierce
toil, and in addition to his weariness was half-famished. He had come
in while it was yet dark to get something to eat, and was planning to
go back at once. I aroused Barrett promptly, and together we tramped
out to the crest of the spur overlooking the Lawrenceburg workings and
the mountain-side below. In the breaking dawn, with the help of
Barrett's field-glass, we could make out the shape of the disabled
wagon on the bare slope hundreds of feet below. Early as it was, there
was already a number of moving figures encircling it; a group which
presently strung itself out in Indian file on a diagonal course up to
our gulch. The early-morning investigators were taking the plainly
marked wagon trail in reverse, and Barrett turned to me with a brittle
laugh.
"That settles it, Jimmie. The secret is out, and in another half hour
we'll be fighting like the devil to keep those fellows from relocating
every foot of ground we've got. Let's go back and get ready for them."