She stopped, looking down. Jerry, holding the reins in his loosely

gloved hand, leaning toward her, and into her ear whispered:

“But you don’t love him.”

He turned back to the horse with his face alight with triumph. The

relief that she was still his, that love of him had made her refuse

such an offer, intoxicated him. He could have sung and shouted. He was

silent, however, his eyes on the horse, conscious in every fiber of the

proximity of the woman who, he now knew, had not the power to break

from his influence.

Neither spoke again, till the buggy, cresting the last rise, came

out on the shoulder of the mountain, whence the road loops downward

through the sage to Washoe Lake. Below them, at the base of the Sierra,

the lake lay, a sheet of pure blue, its banks shading from the gray

of the surroundings to a vivid green where the water moistened them.

There was something human in this evidence of the land’s readiness

to bloom and beautify itself when the means were given it. It was a

touch of coquetry in this austere, unsmiling landscape that seemed so

indifferent.

Silent, the man and woman looked down, neither thinking of what they

saw. The spirited horse was now willing to rest for a space, and stood,

an equine statue against the sky, eagerly sniffing the keen air, his

head motionless in a trance of alert attention, his ears pricking back

and forth. A gulf of silence encircled them, pin-points of life in an

elemental world.

June sat with relaxed muscles, her hands in her lap, her eyes on the

lake. The stormy, troubled joy, so far from happiness, that was hers

when with Jerry, held her. She had no desire to speak or move. The

consciousness of his presence was like a drug to her energies, her

reason, and her conscience. Sitting beside him, in this sun-steeped,

serene solitude, the sense of wrong in his companionship became less

and less acute, the wall of reserve between them seemed to evaporate.

Sin and virtue, honor and dishonor, seemed the feeble inventions of

timid man, oppressed and overwhelmed by this primordial nature which

only sympathized with a pagan return to itself.

From an absent contemplation of the landscape Jerry turned and looked

at his companion. He surveyed her with tender scrutiny, noting points

in her appearance he had loved--the slight point with which her upper

lip, just in the middle, drooped on her under one, the depression of

her dimple, the fineness of her skin.

“No one else in the world has got the same sort of face as you,” he

said at length.

“That’s not to be regretted,” she murmured foolishly.

“You’ve the dearest little mouth, the way your upper lip comes down in

a point on your lower one! I don’t believe there’s another woman in the

world with such a queer little fascinating mouth.”

He continued to gaze at her, half-smiling, but with intent eyes. Both

felt the desire to talk leaving them. The silence of the landscape

seemed to take possession of them, to make speech seem trivial and

unnecessary.

“Why did you refuse Rion Gracey?” he said suddenly in a lowered voice.

She did not reply and he repeated the question.

“I didn’t care for him,” she said so low he could hardly hear the words.

He laid his hand on hers, gathering up her small fingers in his large

grasp.

“Why?” he repeated, pressing them.

She turned away in evident distress and he whispered:

“Was it because you loved me?”

Her head drooped and he put his lips almost against her cheek as he

whispered again:

“It was. I know it.”

They were silent once more, neither looking at the other now. Both

trembled, guilt and fear strong in their hearts.

At this moment a rabbit sprang from a sage bush across the path, and

the horse, curling backward in a spasm of fear, rose to its hind legs

and then leaped forward along the road. It took Jerry a full five

minutes to control him and turn his head toward home.

“I’ll take you back now,” he said, throwing the words sidewise at her

as they flew onward. “I’ll stop at the mouth of Crazy Saunders’ Tunnel.

You can walk in from there. If I drove you into town some idiot would

see us and make talk. I never saw anything like this place. If Saint

Cecilia and Jephthah’s daughter settled here for a week they’d cook up

some gossip about them.”

There was no more speech between them till they saw the timbered

opening of Crazy Saunders’ Tunnel loom in sight. Beyond, the first

cottages of the town edged the road.

At the tunnel’s mouth Jerry drew up. June put her foot forward for the

step, and as she did so he leaned toward her and said:

“I’m coming to see you soon.”

She looked quickly at him, protest and alarm in her face.

“No, don’t do that,” she said almost sharply. “I don’t want you to. You

mustn’t.”

“Why not?” he answered in a tone of cool defiance. “Why shouldn’t I?

We’re old friends. I see no reason why I shouldn’t come up to see you

now and then.”

The fretting horse, capering and prancing with impatience, cut off

further conversation. June scrambled out, reiterating:

“No, don’t come. I don’t want you to.”

As the horse sprang forward Jerry called over his shoulder:

“_Hasta mañana_, Señorita. I’m not going to say good-by.”

June walked home with her eyes down-drooped, her head hanging. She

took no heed of the brilliant colors that were lending beauty to the

crumpled skyline of the mountains. She did not see the people who

passed her, some of whom knew her and wondered at her absorption. Her

thoughts went back to the days at Foleys when she and Rosamund had

made money with the garden and had been so full of work and healthy,

innocent happiness. Then she thought of the life in San Francisco, with

its growth of lower ambitions, its passion and its suffering. And now

this--so dark, so menacing, so full of sudden, unfamiliar dread!

A phrase she had heard in church the Sunday before rose to her

recollection: “Her feet go down to death.” As her thoughts roamed

somberly back over the three epochs of her life the phrase kept

recurring to her, welling continually to the surface of her mind, with

sinister persistence--

“Her feet go down to death.”

CHAPTER VI

THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE

Since his connection with the Graceys Jerry had been buying stock in

the numerous undeveloped and unpaying mines which had cropped up like

mushrooms round the edges of the town. In the end of July a new strike

in the two-thousand-foot level of the Cresta Plata sent the stock

of the mines in the vicinity suddenly up. As the vein was opened it

developed into a discovery of great importance. The shares Jerry held

doubled in value and continued to advance. August was not half over

when he realized that, on paper at least, he was again a rich man.

The realization brought with it a pulsing sense of exhilaration. It

meant not only the joys of independent wealth, which were to him

among the dearest on earth, but the liberty to do with his life what

he pleased. It was not only freedom from the Graceys, with whom his

work had become a detested servitude, but an escape from the bonds

his marriage had cast round him. Escape from it all--the scorn of his

employers, the drudgery of his position, the meaningless tie that held

him to an unloved wife and denied him the woman he craved.

The fever of the time and his own mounting fortunes was in his blood.

Actions that under normal conditions would have seemed to him base

he now contemplated with a sense of headstrong defiance. He was on

fire with the lust of money and the desire of woman. The two passions

carried him off his feet, swept away his judgment and reason. But the

instinctive deceptiveness of the lover of intrigue did not desert him.

While he was inwardly contemplating desperate steps, on the surface he

appeared to be merely full of boyish animation and high spirits.

To June alone he was different, a man of almost terrifying moods,

before whom at one moment she shrank and the next melted. He had

brushed aside her request not to see her, as he would later on brush

aside all her requests, her reticences and modesties, and be the master

of a broken and abject slave.

Despite his desire to be with her he saw her seldom. The mining town

offered few opportunities for meetings, which, however innocent they

might be, were more agreeable if they took place in the seclusion of

parks and quiet byways than on the crowded sidewalks of the populous

streets. There were no wooded lanes for man and maid to loiter in, no

plazas with benches in sheltered corners. In its hand-to-hand fight

against elemental forces the town had no time to make concessions to

the delicately debatable diversions of social life. It only recognized

a love that was honestly licit or frankly illicit.

A few hurried visits at the Murchison mansion in the late afternoon

when the Colonel was known to be busy at the office and Allen was

still down town, were the only times that Jerry had been able to have

speech with her. These interviews had at first been presided over by an

outward seeming of that coolly polite friendship of which Jerry liked

to talk. The conversation avoided all questions of sentiment as the man

and woman seemed to avoid the proximity one of the other, sitting drawn

apart with averted eyes, talking of impersonal matters.

But as his holdings advanced in value, as he saw himself day by day

loosening the bonds that bound him to his employers, his wife, a

society of which he was weary, his restraint was relaxed. His words

grew less fluent, his pose of friend changed to that of the man on

whose conversation moments of silence fall while he looks with ardent

eyes on a down-drooped face. June made a last desperate stand, tried

with despairing struggles to draw back from the fate closing around

her. Even now she did not realize how close she was to the edge of the

precipice. But Jerry did. He knew they were standing on its brink.

One evening, early in September, June and the Colonel were sitting

together at dinner in the dining-room of the Murchison mansion. Allen

had gone to San Francisco for a week, and the Colonel was to dine with

June every evening till his return. He spent as much of his time as

possible with the young girl in these lonely days. Even Mitty Sullivan

and the baby were away, having gone to Lake Tahoe for two months. Thus

the one house to which June could constantly go and be cheered by the

society of a woman friend was closed to her.

Since Rosamund’s wedding the Colonel had seen a distinct change in his

darling. He set it down to grief at her sister’s departure. She was

pale and listless. The joy of youth had gone completely from her. Of

late he had noticed that she was often absent-minded, not answering

him if he spoke to her. He worried over her with a man’s helplessness

in situations of complicated feminine tribulation. Allen, drunk half

of the time, absent the other half, was no guardian for her. Yet the

Colonel could not take her away from him. He was her father. Sometimes

when he let himself build air castles over his after-dinner cigar,

he thought that perhaps Allen might die or marry again and then June

would come to him and be his daughter. He would watch over her and lap

her round with love and tenderness, and far off, in a rosy future, he

would see her giving her hand to Rion, the man, he told himself, that

Providence had made for her.

Her appearance to-night shocked him. She was pallid, the delicate

blue blur of veins showing on her temples, her eyes heavy and darkly

shadowed. He noticed that she ate little, crumbling her bread with a

nervous hand, and only touching her lips to the rim of the wine glass.

She was unusually distraught, often not answering the remarks he made

to her, but sitting with her lids down, her eyes on her restlessly

moving fingers.

Toward the end of dinner a sense of apprehension began to pervade him.

If she continued to droop this way she might contract some ailment and

die. Her mother had died of consumption and consumption often descended

from parent to child. He knew now that her likeness to Alice went

deeper than mere outward form into the secret springs of thought and

action. It was one of those careful and perfect reproductions of type

to which Nature is now and then subject. June was her mother in looks,

in character, in temperament. It was so singularly close a resemblance

that it seemed but natural to dread for her the disease that had killed

the elder woman.

“You feel perfectly well, Junie?” he inquired, trying to speak easily

but with anxious eyes on her.

“Well?” she repeated. “Oh, quite well! I’ve never been better. What

makes you ask?”

“I thought you looked pale, paler than usual, and seemed out of

spirits. _Are_ you out of spirits, dearie?”

“I’ve not been very cheerful since--since--Rosamund left.”

She concluded the sentence with an effort. The half-truth stuck in her

throat. She had been in a state of confused misery for days, but the

pain of her deception pierced through it.

“I hate to leave you looking like this,” he continued. “I’m sure you’re

not well.”

“Leave me!” she exclaimed with a startled emphasis. “You’re not going

to _leave_ me?”

Her face, full of alarmed protest, astonished him.

“Of course I’m not going to _leave_ you. I’m going down to San

Francisco on Monday for two weeks, that’s all. Business of Black Dan’s.”

She sat upright, bracing her hands against the edge of the table and

said, almost with violence:

“Don’t go. I don’t want you to go. You _mustn’t_ go.”

“But, my dear little girl, it’s only for two weeks, perhaps less. I

expect to be back Friday evening. I know it’s lonely for you, but you

know we have to put up with a good deal on our way through this world.

You’ve found that out, honey. We’ve got to have our philosophy pretty

handy sometimes.”

“Oh, philosophy! I haven’t got any. I only seem to have feelings.”

She rose from her chair, the Colonel watching her with anxiously knit

brows. Her distress at the thought of his leaving her filled him with

uneasy surprise. It seemed so disproportioned to the cause. She passed

round the table and came to a halt beside him.

“Can’t you put it off?” she said, trying to speak in her old coaxing

way. “Put it off till I go to England to visit Rosamund.”

“Oh, June!” he exclaimed, hardly able to forbear laughing. “What a

thing for a girl who’s lived among mining men almost all her life to

suggest! You won’t go for over two months yet, and this is important.

It’s about the new pumps for the two-thousand-foot level. I leave on

Monday.”

“Monday!” she repeated with the same air of startled alarm. “_Next_

Monday?”

“Yes. If all goes well I won’t be gone two weeks. I’ll be back Friday

night. I’ll bring you up some new books, and anything else you can

think of. You know this is business, and there’s no fooling with Black

Dan. If you were sick in bed it would be a different matter. But as it

is I must go.”

Without more words she turned away and went slowly back to her seat.

The Colonel, worried and baffled, watched her apprehensively. He

thought to prick her pride into life and said rallyingly:

“I’m beginning to think you’re just a little bit spoiled. The old man’s

making a baby of you. You’re just as much of a child as ever.”

He looked at her with a twinkling eye, hoping to see her laugh. But she

was grave, leaning languidly against the back of the chair.

“I’m not as much of a child as you think,” was her answer.

On the following Monday, _en route_ to the depot, the Colonel paused

on the outskirts of the crowd round the stock bulletins pasted up in a

broker’s window. He did not see that Jerry was on the other side of the

crowd. But Jerry saw him, and through the openings between the swaying

heads, eyed him warily.

As the elder man turned away in the direction of the depot, Jerry

backed from the edges of the crowd to watch the retreating figure. His

handsome face only showed a still curiosity, but there was malevolence

in his eyes. He had quietly hated the Colonel since the night of the

Davenport ball and awaited his opportunity to return that blow.

“Old blackguard!” he thought to himself, “I’ll be even with you soon,

now!”

The month of September advanced with early darkening evenings and the

clear sharpening of outlines which marks the first breath of autumn.

It was easier for Jerry now to see June. In the late afternoons the

twilight came quickly and he could mount the long stairs to the

Murchison mansion without fear of detection. The Colonel was away.

Allen had returned but was much out, and when at home was closeted in a

small room of his own that he called his office. The way was clear for

Jerry, but he still advanced with slow and cautious steps.

The Colonel had been gone over a week when one evening June entered the

office to consult with her father about an unpaid household bill for

which a tradesman had been dunning her. The shortness of money from

which Allen had been suffering since Rosamund’s marriage, was beginning

to react upon June. Several times of late the holders of accounts

against her father had paid personal visits to the Murchison mansion.

She had not yet grasped the hopeless nature of their situation. Even in

the town Allen’s insolvency was not known. It was simply rumored that

he was “hard-up.”

As she opened the door in answer to his “Come in” she smelt the sharp

odor of burning paper, and saw that the grate was full of charred

fragments. Portions of a man’s wardrobe were scattered about on the

various pieces of furniture, and on a sofa against the wall two

half-packed valises stood open. Allen sat at his desk, amid a litter of

papers, some of which he had been tearing up, others burning. As his

eye fell on his daughter he laid his hand over an open letter before

him.

She came in, holding the bill out toward him, and timidly explaining

her entrance and its cause, for of late he had been fiercely irascible.

To-night, however, he greeted her with unusual gentleness, and taking

the paper from her hand looked at it and laid it aside.

“Thompson,” he said; “tell him his account will be settled in a few

days. And any of the others that send in bills like this, tell them the

same thing.”

“Are you going again?” she asked, looking at the valises.

“Yes, to-morrow. You can just casually let these fellows know that I’ve

gone down to San Francisco to sell some stock, and everything will be

satisfactorily settled up when I get back.”

“When will you get back?” she asked, not from desire for his presence,

but to know what to say to the uneasy tradesmen.

“You tell them next week,” he said, “that’ll quiet them. But I may

be longer. It may be two or even three weeks. I’ve lots of things to

arrange, so don’t you worry if I don’t show up next week or even later.”

He tore the letter he had been covering with his hand into small pieces

and, rising, threw them into the grate on the smoldering remnants of

the others.

“Uncle Jim’s down below now,” she said, “you’ll probably see him.”

“But he’ll be back in a few days, won’t he?” he queried, looking at her

with sudden, sharp inquiry. “If--if--I should be delayed, as I told you

I might be, he’ll be here and he’ll look after you. You see more of him

now than you do of me. He seems to be more your father than I.”

“He’s here oftener,” she said apologetically, “you’re away so much.”

“Maybe that’s it. I’m not kicking about it. He’s the Graceys’ right

hand man now. He’s on top of the heap. He’ll always look out for you,

and he’ll be able to do it.”

He turned to throw some more papers on the burning pile, missing her

look of surprise.

“Always look out for me!” she repeated. “There’s no need for him to do

that. You’ll be back soon.”

“You needn’t take me so literally. But you ought to know by this

time that the future’s a pretty uncertain thing. If anything should

happen to me, it’s just as I say, he’d be here on the spot ready and

willing to take care of you. You can’t look for much from me. If I died

to-morrow I wouldn’t leave you a cent. The Barranca’s petered.”

“But the stocks you’re going to San Francisco to sell? They must be

worth a good deal. Everybody’s stocks seem to be worth something now.

Mitty Sullivan’s cook says she’s thirty thousand ahead.”

“Oh, yes, they’ll bring something.” He spoke absently, took up

Thompson’s bill and thrust it on a spike with others of its kind.

“There they are, all the tradesmen. Don’t let them bother you. You’d

better run along now and let me finish up.”

“Can I help you pack?” she suggested with timid politeness.

He shook his head, his eye traveling down a new letter he had picked up

from the desk.

“Good night,” she said, moving toward the door.

He dropped the letter and, following her, put his arm around her and

kissed her. It was an unexpected caress. He and his daughter had grown

very far apart in this last year.

“Good-by,” he said gently, and turning from her went back to his papers.

“Run along,” he said without looking up. “I’ll be busy here for some

hours yet.”

When she came down to breakfast the next morning he had already gone.

The Chinaman told her he had left early, driving into Reno by private

conveyance in order to catch the first morning train to the coast.

That evening Jerry beat out the last spark of her resistance. He held

her close in his arms, his cheek against hers, and revealed to her his

plan of elopement. Trembling and sobbing she clung to him, under his

kisses the words of denial dying on her lips. He paid no heed to her

feeble pleadings, hushing her protests with caresses, whispering of

their happiness, murmuring the lovers’ sentences that, since Eve, have

been the undoing of impassioned women.

When he stole down the steps in the darkness of the early night,

triumph was in his heart. She was his when he chose to take her, her

will as water, her resistance only words. A new world of love, liberty

and riches lay before him. The bleak town and its bitter memories would

soon be far behind, and June and he in a strange country and a new life

would begin their dream of love.

CHAPTER VII

THE COLONEL COMES BACK

Jerry’s plans had been laid with the utmost secrecy and care. It

behooved him to be wary, for he knew that detection would mean death.

Neither the Colonel nor Black Dan would have hesitated to shoot him

like a dog if they had known what he contemplated, and working day by

day in an office with these men, in a town the smallness and isolation

of which rendered every human figure a segregated and important unit,

it required all the shrewdness of which he was master to mature his

design and arouse no suspicion.

The time had now come when everything was suddenly propitious. Had

the Prince of Darkness been giving Jerry’s affairs his particular

attention, circumstances could not have fallen together more

conveniently for the furthering of his purpose.

In the office of the Cresta Plata it was arranged that every two weeks

he should be given three or four days off to go to San Francisco and

visit his wife. These holidays, which were grudgingly doled out by

Black Dan, always included the Sunday, as the older man was determined

his son-in-law should have as little immunity from work as possible.

In the middle of the week Jerry was informed that he could leave for

San Francisco on the following Saturday morning to report again at the

office on Wednesday.

The granting of this five days’ leave of absence made the elopement

easy of accomplishment, robbing it of the danger of detection that

Jerry realized and shrank from. He and June could leave on Friday night

and take the overland train eastward. They would have five days’ start

before discovery was made, and in five days they would be so far on

their journey that it would be easy for them to conceal themselves

in some of the larger towns along the route. Mercedes, who was a bad

correspondent, could be trusted not to write to her father, and Allen,

according to June’s artless revelations, was gone for a much longer

time than he wanted known. Finally the last and most serious obstacle

was removed in the shape of the Colonel. Jerry being in the office knew

that his enemy would not be back before Tuesday or Wednesday, as the

work of inspecting the pumps had been slower than was anticipated.

Months of waiting and planning could not have arranged matters more

satisfactorily. Luck, once again, was on his side, as it had been so

often in the past.

Early on the Friday morning he went to the livery stable that he always

patronized, and where he knew the finest team of roadsters in Nevada

was for hire. Mining men of that day were particular about their

horses. There were animals in the Virginia stables whose superiors

could not be found west of New York. The especial pair that Jerry

wanted were only leased to certain patrons of the stable, but Jerry,

an expert on horseflesh, besides being Black Dan Gracey’s son-in-law,

had no difficulty in securing them for that evening.

He had had some idea of driving into Reno himself and letting June come

in on the train, but he had a fear that, left alone, she might weaken.

To be sure of her he must be with her. Moreover, there was little risk

in driving in together. They would not start until after dark and their

place of rendezvous would be a ruined cabin some distance beyond the

Utah hoisting works on the Geiger grade. The spot would be deserted

at that hour, and even if it were not, the spectacle of a buggy and

pair of horses was so common that it would be taken for that of some

overworked superintendent driving into Reno on a sudden business call.

From the stable he returned to the office and alone there wrote a hasty

letter to June. He had told her the outline of his plan, and that

Friday would be the day, but he had given her no details of what their

movements would be. Now he wrote telling her minutely of the time and

place of departure and impressing upon her not to be late. He would, of

course, be there before her, waiting in the buggy. There was a party

of Eastern visitors to be taken over the mine in the afternoon, and it

would be easy for him to get away from them, leaving them with Marsden,

the foreman, change his clothes, and be at the place indicated before

she was. He was still fearful that she might fail him. Now, as the hour

approached, he was so haunted by the thought that he asked her to send

at least a few words of answer by his messenger.

Half an hour later Black Dan entered the office and paused by his

son-in-law’s desk to give him some instructions as to the Eastern

visitors and the parts of the mine they were to be shown. They were

people of importance from New York, the men being heavy shareholders in

the Cresta Plata and the Con. Virginia. The ladies of the party were to

be relegated to the care of Jerry and Marsden the foreman, and not to

be taken below the thousand-foot level. Black Dan and Barney Sullivan

would take the men farther down. Jerry was to be ready in the hoisting

works at four o’clock.

As Black Dan was concluding his instructions Jerry’s messenger

reëntered the office and handed the young man a small, pale gray

envelope. It was obviously a feminine communication, and its recipient,

under the darkly scrutinizing eye of his father-in-law, flushed

slightly, but he gave no other sign of consciousness, and as Black Dan

passed on to the inner office, he sat down and opened the letter.

It was only a few lines in June’s delicate hand-writing:

“I will be there. I go to my ruin, Jerry, for you. Will there be

anything in our life together that will make me forget that? June.”

Jerry read it over several times. It certainly did not breathe an

exalted gladness. Away from him she always seemed in this condition of

fear and doubt. It was his presence, his hand upon her, that made her

tremulously, submissively his. He would not be sure of her till she was

beside him to-night in the buggy.

Would that hour ever come? He looked at the clock ticking on the wall.

With every passing moment his exaltation seemed to grow stronger. It

was difficult for him to be quiet, not to stop and talk to everybody

that he encountered with a feverish loquacity. The slowly gathering

pressure of the last month seemed to culminate on this day of mad

rebellion. Within the past two weeks his stocks had increased largely

in value. He was a rich man, and to-night with the woman he loved

beside him he would be free. He and she, free in the great outside

world, free to love and to live as they would. Would the day never pass

and the night never come?

In San Francisco the Colonel was completing the business of the pumps

as quickly as he could. He felt that he was getting to be a foolish old

man, but he could not shake off his worry about June. Her words and

appearance at their last interview kept recurring to him. Many times in

the past year he had seen her looking pitifully fragile and known her

to be unhappy, but he had never before felt the poignant anxiety about

her that he now experienced.

Despite his desire to get back with as much speed as possible,

unforeseen delays occurred, and instead of returning on Friday, as he

had hoped, he saw that he would not be back before Wednesday. He wrote

this to June in a letter full of the anxious solicitude he felt. To

this he received no answer, and, his worry increasing, he was about to

telegraph her when he received a piece of information that swept all

minor matters from his mind.

On Thursday at midday he was lunching with a friend at the club, when,

in the course of conversation, his companion asked him if he knew the

whereabouts of Beauregard Allen. The words were accompanied with a

searchingly significant look. The Colonel, answering that Allen was in

Virginia, paused in his meal and became quietly attentive. He knew more

than others of Allen’s situation. Of late he had scented catastrophe

ahead of his one-time comrade. The man’s face opposite him struck an

arrow of suspicion through his mind. He put down his wine glass and sat

listening, his expression one of frowning concentration.

His friend was a merchant with a large shipping business between San

Francisco and Australia. That morning he had been to the docks to see

a ship about to sail, which carried a cargo of his own. The ship took

few passengers, only two or three, he thought. While conversing with

the captain he had seen distinctly in the doorway of an open cabin

Beauregard Allen unpacking a valise. In answer to his question the

captain had said it was one of his passengers taken on that morning.

He had brought no trunks, only two valises, and given his name as John

Montgomery.

“It was Beauregard Allen,” the Colonel’s informant continued. “The

man’s no friend of mine, but I’ve seen him round here for years. He

looked up and saw me and drew back quick, as if he did not want to be

recognized.”

“He’d taken passage this morning, you say?” asked the Colonel.

“Yes, to Melbourne. There was only one other passenger, a drunken boy

being sent on a long sea voyage by his parents. They’ll make a nice,

interesting pair.”

The Colonel looked at his plate silently. He was sending his thoughts

back over the last year, trying to collect data that might throw some

light on what he had just heard.

“You’re certain it was Allen, not a chance likeness?” he said slowly.

“I’ll take my oath of it. Why, I’ve seen the man for the past four

years dangling around here. I know his face as well as I know yours,

and I had a good look at it before he saw me and jumped back. He’s got

in too deep and skipped. Everybody has been wondering how he kept on

his feet so long.”

“He’s in pretty deep, sure enough,” said the Colonel absently. “You

said Melbourne was the port? When do they sail?”

“Midday to-day. They’re off by now. They’ll be outside the heads

already with this breeze.”

The Colonel asked a few more questions and then rose and excused

himself. His business was pressing.

His first action was to send a telegram to Rion Gracey, asking him if

Allen had left Virginia and where June was. The answer was to be sent

to the club. Then he went forth. His intention was to inquire at the

hotels patronized by Allen on his frequent visits to the city. As he

went from place to place the conviction that the man seen by his friend

had been June’s father, and that he had fled, strengthened with every

moment.

A feverish anxiety about June took possession of him. If her father

had decamped leaving her alone, she would have to face his angry

creditors. He thought of her as he had last seen her, exposed to such

an experience, and his heart swelled with pity and rage. Possibly she

knew, had guessed what was coming and had begged him to stay with her

to protect and care for her in a position for which she was so little

fitted. And he had left her--left her to face it alone!

He returned to the club, having heard no word of Allen, and found

Rion’s answer to his telegram. It ran:

“Allen left for coast Wednesday morning. June here. What’s amiss?”

It seemed to the Colonel complete confirmation of his fears. Allen

leaving Wednesday morning would reach San Francisco some time that

night. Evidently his plans had been made beforehand, for the ship he

had taken was one of the fastest merchantmen on the Pacific and was

scheduled to leave at midday Thursday.

Nothing was suspected at Virginia yet, and June was there alone. At any

moment now, the information being in the hands of more than one person,

Allen’s flight might be made public, and she, his only representative,

would become the victim of the rage of the petty creditors who would

swarm about her. He was the one human being upon whom she could call.

No duty or business would hold him from her. A thrill of something like

joy passed through him when he realized that now, at last, he could

stand between her and all trouble--a lion with its cub behind it.

He took the evening train for Virginia, hoping to reach Reno the next

morning and catch the branch line into the mining town. But luck was

against him. A snow-shed was down near the summit. Though it was only

the latter half of September, a premature blizzard wrapped the mountain

heights in a white mist. For eight hours the train lay blocked on

an exposed ridge, and it was late afternoon when it finally set the

Colonel down at Reno.

The delays had only accelerated his desire to be with June. During the

long hours of waiting his imagination had been active, picturing her

in various distressing positions, besieged by importunate creditors.

He hired the fastest saddle horse in the Reno stables and rode the

twenty-one miles into Virginia in an hour. It was dark when he reached

there. The swift ride through the sharp autumnal air had braced his

nerves. He was as anxious as ever to see her, but he thought that

before he did so he would stop for a few moments at the Cresta Plata

and see Rion, explain his early return, and learn if anything was known

in Virginia of Allen’s flight.

The office was already lighted up and behind it the great bulk of

hoisting works loomed into the night, its walls cut with the squares

of illumined windows, its chimneys rising black and towering against

the stars. A man who came forward to take his horse told him that the

gentlemen were all in the mine with a party of visitors. The Colonel,

hearing this, turned his steps from the office to the door of the

hoisting works a few yards beyond.

The building, full of shadows despite the lanterns and gas jets ranged

along its walls, looked vacant and enormous in its lofty spaciousness.

The noise of machinery echoed through it, the vibration shaking it as

if it were a shell built about the intricacies of wheels, bands, and

sheaves that whirred and slid in complicated, humming swiftness against

the ceiling. The light struck gleams from the car tracks that radiated

from the black hole of the shaft mouth where it opened in the middle

of the floor. It was divided into four compartments, and from these a

thin column of steam arose and floated up to the roof. Here and there a

few men were moving about, and aloft behind their engines were the four

engineers. They were mute as statues, their eyes fixed on the dials in

front of them which registered the movements of the cages underground;

their ears on the alert to catch the notes of their bells, to them

intelligible as the words of a spoken language. Near the shaft mouth

sitting on an overturned box was Rion Gracey.

He saw the Colonel and rose to his feet with an exclamation of surprise

and pleasure. The elder man, drawing him aside, told him the reason

of his return and asked him news of June. Moving toward the door they

conversed together in lowered voices. The Colonel, now convinced that

no suspicion of the nature of Allen’s absence had yet reached Virginia,

felt his anxieties diminished. He said that he might attend the dinner

which Black Dan was giving that evening to the Easterners. Rion was

now waiting for them to come up. Barclay and the women ought to be up

at any moment; they had been underground nearly two hours, an unusual

length of time, for even on the thousand-foot level the heat was

intense.

His anxieties soothed, the Colonel left the building, his heart feeling

lighter than it had felt for two weeks.

With a step of youthful buoyancy he mounted the steep cross-streets

which connected by a series of stairs and terraces the few long

thoroughfares of the town. He was out of breath when he saw the dark

shape of the Murchison mansion standing high on its crest of ground

against a deep blue, star-dotted sky. His approach was from the side,

and that no lights appeared in any of the windows in that part of the

house did not strike him as unusual. But when he reached the foot of

the long stairway and looking up saw that there was not a gleam of

light to be seen on the entire façade, his joy suddenly died, and in

its place a dread, sharp and disturbing, seized him.

For a moment he stood motionless, staring up. The shrubs that grew

along the sloping banks of the garden rustled dryly in the autumn

night. There was something sinister in the high form of the house,

mounted aloft on its terrace, no friendly pane gleaming with welcoming

light, no sound near it but the low, occasional whispering of dying

vegetation. As he ran up the steps, his footfall sounded singularly

loud and seemed to be buffeted back from empty walls.

His first and second pull of the bell brought no response. Between them

he listened and his ear caught nothing but the stillness of desertion.

His third furious peal was answered by a distant footstep. He heard

it come shuffling along the hall, pause, and then a light broke out

through the glass fanlight above the portal. The door was opened a

crack, and through this aperture a section of the Chinaman’s visage was

revealed, lit by a warily inspecting eye.

The Colonel pushed the door violently in, sending the servant back with

it against the wall. Kicking it to behind him he demanded between his

panting breaths:

“Where’s Miss Allen?”

“She’s gone,” said the Chinaman, exceedingly startled by this violent

entry. “All gone.”

“All gone! All gone where?”

“I no savvy. The boss he gone two, thlee days. Gone San Francisco. Miss

Allen she go just now.”

“She’s only just gone? You mean she has just gone down town to buy

something or see some one?”

“No. She go ’way. She say, ‘Sing, I go ’way.’ She take a bag.”

“She’s gone with a bag. Where the devil has she gone to? Don’t be such

a damned fool! Where’d she go?”

“No savvy. She no tell me. She take bag and go just now. She give me

letter for you. I get him. He tell you.”

“You’ve got a letter for me? Why didn’t you say that before? Go get it,

and go quick.”

The Chinaman shuffled up the hall and turned into the dining-room. The

Colonel, having caught his breath, leaned against the wall under the

hall gas. He thought probably June had gone to Lake Tahoe to visit

Mitty Sullivan. Considering the situation it was the best thing she

could have done. As the servant reappeared with a letter in his hand he

said:

“When did she leave this?”

“Now,” answered the laconic Oriental. “She give him to me and say,

‘Give him Colonel Pallish. He come back Tuesday, Wednesday mebbe. You

give him letter sure; no forget.’ You come back before, I give him now.”

The Colonel had not listened to the last phrases. He moved closer to

the gas and tore open the letter. To his surprise he saw that it was

several pages in length, covered closely with June’s fine writing. His

eye fell on the first sentence, and he uttered a sudden suppressed

sound and his body stiffened. The words were:

“Dear, darling, Uncle Jim. I who love you more than anybody in the

world am going to hurt you so much. Oh, so terribly! Will you ever

forgive me? Will you ever again think of June without sorrow and pain?”

He stood motionless as a thing of stone, while his glance devoured the

page. He did not read every word, but from the closely written lines

sentences seemed to start out and strike his eyes. He turned the sheet

and saw farther down a paragraph that told him everything:

“The future is all dark and terrible, but I am going. I am going with

Jerry. I am going wherever he wants, I am what he wants to make me.

It’s only death that can break the spell. Good-by, dearest, darlingest

Uncle Jim. Oh, good-by! If I could only see you again for one minute!

Even when you read this and realize what I have done I know that you

will love me and make excuses for me, I who will be no longer worthy

your love or your pity.”

The Colonel’s hand with the letter crushed in it dropped to his side.

For a moment he stood rigid, his face gray in the gas light. It was too

unexpected a blow to be grasped in the first paralyzing second. Then he

turned furiously on the servant, shouting:

“Where did she go? Where did she go?”

The man cowered terrified against the wall, stammering in broken

phrases,

“I no savvy! How I savvy? She go with a bag. She say, ‘Give him the

letter’ and I give him. You read him. I no savvy any more.”

The Colonel’s hand on his chest forcing him back against the door-post

cut short his words:

“When did she go? How long ago? Answer honestly, or, by God, I’ll kill

you!”

His face added to the man’s terror, but it also steadied his shaking

nerves:

“She go not one hour; thlee-quarters. She come to me with bag and say,

‘Good-by, Sing, I go for long time.’ She give me the letter and say

give him to you Tuesday, Wednesday. Then she go.”

“Which way?”

“I don’t see. I don’t look. I go down stairs. I go sleep on my bed. I

hear bell and wake. That’s all.”

The Colonel released him and turned to the door. The man evidently knew

no more than he said. She had been gone less than an hour. That was

all there was to tell.

As he ran down the long stairs he had no definite idea in his mind. She

had left to run away with Jerry three-quarters of an hour earlier. That

was all he thought of for the moment. Then the frosty sharpness of the

night air began to act with tonic force upon him. His brain cleared and

he remembered Rion’s words. Half an hour ago Barclay was still in the

mine. There had evidently been some delay in his coming up. No trains

left the town as late as that. June had gone somewhere to meet him, to

some place of rendezvous whence they would probably drive into Reno. If

Barclay had not yet left the mine he could be caught, and then----

With wild speed he ran along the streets, leaping down the short

flights of steps that broke the ascending sidewalks. He thrust people

aside and rushed on, gray-faced and fiery-eyed. For the second time in

his life there was murder in his heart.

Through the darkness of his mind memories of her passed like slides

across a magic lantern. A sudden picture of her that day long ago

at the spring, when she had asked him to let her mother stay in his

cottage, rose up clear and detached on his mental vision. He heard

again the broken tones of her voice and saw her face with the tears on

it, childish and trustful, as it had been before the influence of Jerry

had blighted its youth and marred its innocence.

The fury that possessed him rose up in his throat. He could not have

spoken. He could only run on, tearing his way through the crowds on C

Street, across it to a smaller thoroughfare and down that to where the

dark mass of the Cresta Plata buildings stood out against the night.

He heard the distant hum of the machinery, and then, unexpected and

startling, the roar of men. It was like the noise when the day shift

came up and every ascending cage was packed solid with miners.

As he approached the door the men began to come out, streams of them,

some running, others gathering in knots. Hundreds of men poured into

the night, gesticulating, shouting, congesting in black groups, whence

a broken clamor of voices rose. He realized the strangeness of it, that

something was the matter, but it was all dim and of no importance to

him. His mind held only one thought. Rushing past them he cried:

“Barclay! Is Barclay up yet? Do you know where Barclay is?”

An Irishman, who stumbled against him in the dark, paused long enough

to shout to him:

“It’s Barclay that’s hurt. Hurry up, Colonel, they’ll be wanting you

inside. It’s a doctor I’m after. God knows if he is where they say he

is, there’s no life in him now.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE AROUSED LION

Black Dan, as he walked to the office that Friday morning, had been

giving serious thought to the situation of his son-in-law. Mercedes had

not spent the summer in Virginia as her father had hoped and expected.

When he saw her in San Francisco, as he did every few weeks, she talked

of her delicate throat and expressed a fear of the climate. It was

evident that she could not or would not live there.

That his daughter loved her husband Black Dan had no doubt. And as

he walked to the mine that morning he was pondering a scheme he had

lately been considering of sending Jerry to San Francisco, to be placed

in charge of his large property interests. Though he regarded his

son-in-law with contemptuous dislike, he could not deny that the young

man had worked hard and faithfully all summer. Moreover, the stealthy

watch kept upon him had revealed no irregularities in his conduct. In

a place and at a time when men led wild lives with wilder associates,

Jerry’s behavior had been exemplary. His life had been given to work

and business; women had no place in it.

With these thoughts in his mind Black Dan entered the office and

paused by his son-in-law’s desk. As he stood there a boy walked in and

handed the young man a small gray envelope that bore a superscription

in a delicate feminine hand. Black Dan also saw that Jerry, under his

unshakable _sang-froid_, was disconcerted. That the receipt of the

letter was disturbing to its recipient was as plain to the older man as

that the letter was from a woman.

He passed on to his own office with his mind in an entirely different

condition from what it had been when he entered the building. After

all their watchfulness, was Jerry playing at his old game? The thought

made Black Dan breathe curses into his beard. He saw Rion, himself

and the Colonel out-witted, and Jerry laughing at them in his sleeve.

And deeper than this went the enraging thought of Mercedes supplanted

by one of the women that flourish in mining camps, birds of prey that

batten on the passions of men.

He had work to do, however, and, for to-day, at least, would have to

put the matter out of his mind. Time enough when the Easterners were

gone. Black Dan, like many men of his day and kind, was particularly

anxious to impress the Easterners, and to make their three days’ stay

in the town a revel of barbaric luxury. The dinner he was to give them

that evening was to be a feast of unrivaled splendor, every course

ordered from San Francisco, the wine as choice as any to be bought in

the country, the china, glass, and silver imported at extravagant cost

from the greatest factories of Europe, the cigars of a costly rarity,

a brand especially sent from Havana for the bonanza king and his

associates.

Now from among the specimens of ore that stood along the top of his

desk he selected one of unusual form and value to give to the most

distinguished of the strangers. It was a small square of blackish

mineral on which a fine, wire-like formation of native silver had

coiled itself into a shape that resembled a rose. It had the appearance

of a cunning piece of the silversmith’s art, a flower of silver wire

delicately poised on a tiny fragment of quartz rock. Thrusting it into

his coat pocket, he left the office, on his way out passing Jerry, who

was bending studiously over his desk.

He walked rapidly up through the town, to the same livery stable to

which his son-in-law had already paid a visit. One of the diversions

to which the visitors were treated was the drive along the mountain

road to Washoe Lake. This, Black Dan had arranged, would be the

entertainment for the following morning. He with his own Kentucky

thoroughbreds, would drive the men, while the women of the party would

follow in a hired trap, drawn by the horses Jerry had ordered, and

driven by the expert whip of the stable, known as Spanish George. Such

a division of the party suited Black Dan admirably, for he disliked

women, shunning their society, and when forced into it, becoming more

somber and taciturn than ever.

His plan, however, received an unexpected check. He was told that the

horses were engaged by Mr. Barclay for that evening. Frowning and

annoyed, he demanded why that should prevent him from having them the

next morning, and received the information that Mr. Barclay was to

drive into Reno that night with them, sending them back in the morning,

when they would be too tired by the twenty-one miles over the grade, to

go out again immediately.

Black Dan stood in the doorway of the stable looking with attentive

eyes at his informant. As the man amplified his explanation with

excuses, the bonanza king said nothing. For the moment his own thoughts

were too engrossing to permit of words. A puppy that was playing near

by in the sunlight trotted toward him and bit playfully at his toe. He

turned it over with his foot, following its charmingly awkward gambols

with a pondering gaze.

“Then I suppose I can’t have Spanish George either?” he said. “Mr.

Barclay’ll take him in to drive the horses back, and he’ll take his

time about it.”

“Oh, you can have Spanish George all right,” said the stable-man,

relieved that he could give his powerful patron something he wanted.

“Mr. Barclay’s driving some one in with him. He’ll have one of the Reno

men bring the horses back.”

Black Dan looked up, his broad, dark eyes charged with almost fierce

attention.

“Who’s he driving in?” he asked.

“Don’t know, sir. He didn’t say. All he said was that he couldn’t take

a driver, as he had some one with him and he’d send the team back in

the morning with a man from Reno.”

The other looked down at the puppy, rolling it gently back and forth

with his large foot.

“When did you say he was going?” he asked.

“Six-thirty. His valises have come up already. They’re in the office

now.”

He pointed backward with his thumb toward the small, partitioned-off

box called the office. But Black Dan did not seem particularly

interested in the valises.

“Well,” he said, taking his foot off the puppy and pushing it carefully

aside, “send along the best you have with Spanish George to drive. Be

at the International at eleven sharp. I don’t want to start later than

that.”

He left the stable and walked slowly down the street toward the Cresta

Plata. His eyes were downcast, his face set in lines of absorbed

thought. Whom was Jerry driving into Reno that night?

As he walked he pieced together what he had just heard with what he

knew already. One hour before the dinner to the Easterners--at which

he was expected--Jerry had arranged to leave the town, driving into

Reno with some companion. The companion and the gray note instantly

connected themselves in Black Dan’s mind. He felt as certain as a man

could be without absolute confirmation that Jerry was driving in with

a woman. The daring insolence of it made the blood, which moved slowly

in the morose and powerful man, rise to his head. Could it be possible

that Jerry, on the way to see his wife, was going to stop over in Reno

with some woman of the Virginia streets?

Black Dan’s swarthy skin was slightly flushed when he reached the

office. He said nothing to Jerry as he passed his desk. In his own

private office he sat still, staring in front of him at the geological

map hanging on the wall. He was slow to wrath, but his wrath, like his

love, once roused was of a primitive intensity. As he sat staring at

the map his anger gathered and grew.

At four o’clock the eastern party and their guides were due to meet in

the hoisting works for their excursion down the mine. It was nearly a

half-hour later, however, when the two ladies, who made up the feminine

portion of the party, slunk out of the spacious dressing-rooms,

giggling and blushing in their male attire. Jerry, Marsden the foreman,

and one of the shift bosses, were lounging about the mouth of the shaft

waiting for them. There were greetings and laughter, the women hugging

themselves close in the long overcoats they wore against the chill of

the downward passage, and pulling over their hair the shapeless cloth

caps they had been given for head-gear.

Through the wide opening that led to the dumps the figure of Black Dan,

dark against the brilliance of the afternoon, could be seen walking

on the car tracks with the rest of the party. In the muddy overalls,

long boots and soft felt hat which was the regulation underground

dress of the men, he presented the appearance of some black-browed,

heavily bearded pirate in the garb of a tramp. As the cage slid up to

the shaft mouth, he entered the building, gave the embarrassed women

an encouraging nod, and selected a lantern from a collection of them

standing in a corner.

With little cries of apprehension the women stepped on the flat square

of flooring, their three escorts ranged closely round them, the signal

to descend, was given, and the cage dropped quickly out of sight into

the steaming depths. Black Dan, Barney Sullivan and the strangers were

to descend on the cage in the next compartment, and while they waited

for it to come up, stood talking of the formations of the mineral,

how it had been found and of the varying richness of the ore-bodies.

Suddenly Black Dan thought of his specimen, which had come from a part

of the mine they were to visit first, and turning went into the men’s

dressing-room, where he had left it in his coat pocket.

His clothes had been hung on the last of a line of pegs along the wall.

To this he went, and, ignorant of the fact that Jerry had undressed

after him, thrust his hand into the pocket of what he thought was

his own coat. Instead of the stone his fingers encountered a letter.

He drew it out and saw that it was the one he had seen handed to his

son-in-law a few hours before.

At once he drew the paper from the envelope. No qualm of conscience

deterred him; instead he experienced a sense of satisfaction that

his uncertainty should be thus simply brought to an end. His eye

traveled over the few lines, instantly grasping their meaning. He knew

the signature. Jerry was not intriguing with a common woman of the

town; he was deserting his wife with a girl, hitherto of unspotted

reputation, and for years beloved by Rion. It meant ruin and misery for

the two human beings nearest to the bonanza king’s heart.

For a moment he stood motionless, the letter in his hand, and before

his eyes he saw red. Then it cleared away. He put the paper back in

its envelope and thrust it in his pocket. When he came out into the

shaft house Barney Sullivan noticed that his face was reddened and that

the whites of his eyes were slightly bloodshot. One of the strangers

rallied him on his absence, which had been of some minutes’ duration,

and he made no answer, simply motioning them to get on the cage with an

imperious movement of his head.

The shaft of the Cresta Plata was over two thousand feet in depth, and

the heat of the lower levels was terrific. Here the miners, naked,

save for a cap, breechclout, and canvas shoes, worked twenty-minute

shifts, unable to stand the fiery atmosphere for longer. Cold air

was pumped down to them from the surface, the pipes that carried it

following the roofs of the long, dark tunnels, their mouths blowing

life-giving coolness into stopes where the men could not touch their

metal candlesticks, and the iron of the picks grew hot. There were

places where the drops that fell from the roof raised blisters on the

backs they touched. On most of these lower levels there was much water,

its temperature sometimes boiling. The miners of the Cresta Plata had

a saying that no man had ever fallen into water that reached to his

hips and lived. At the bottom of the shaft--the “sump” in mining

parlance--was a well of varying depths which perpetually exhaled a

scalding steam.

Black Dan took his guests to the fifteen-hundred-foot level, whence the

greatest riches of the mine had been taken. He was more than usually

silent as they walked from tunnel to tunnel and drift to drift. Barney

Sullivan was the cicerone of the party, explaining the formation,

talking learnedly of the dip of the vein, holding up his lantern to let

its gleam fall on the dark bluish “breast” into which the miners drove

their picks with a gasp of expelled breath. Nearly an hour had passed

when Black Dan, suddenly drawing him back, whispered to him that he

was going up to the eight-hundred-foot level to see Jerry, to whom he

wished to give some instructions about the dinner that evening. Barney,

nodding his comprehension, moved on with the guests, and Black Dan

walked back to the station.

As he went up in the cage he passed level after level, like the

floors of a great underground building. Yellow lights gleamed through

the darkness on the circular forms of west timbers, hollowed caves

trickling with moisture, car tracks running into blackness. Each floor

was peopled with wild, naked shapes, delving ferociously in this torrid

inferno. At the eight-hundred-foot level he got off, the bell rang, and

the empty cage went sliding up. The landing on to which he stepped was

deserted, and he walked up one of the tunnels that branched from it,

called to a pick-boy, whom he saw in the distance, that he wanted Mr.

Barclay found and sent to him at once. The figure of the boy scudded

away into the darkness, and Black Dan went back to the landing.

It was an open space, a small, subterranean room, the lanterns fastened

on its walls gilding with their luster the pools of water on the muddy

floor. There were boxes used for seats standing about, and on pegs

in the timbers the miners’ coats hung. Where the shaft passed down

there were several square openings--larger than ordinary doorways,

iron-framed and with plates of iron set into the moist ground--which

gave egress to the cages. Now there was only a black void there, the

long shaft stretching hundreds of feet upward and downward.

Black Dan sat on a box, waiting. Afar off from some unseen tunnel he

could hear the faint sound of voices. Near by, sharply clear in the

stifling quiet, came the drip of water from the roof. It was still very

hot, a moist, suffocating heat, regarded by the miners as cool after

the fiery depths below. He pushed back his hat and wiped the sweat from

his face. His eyes, as he waited, kept watch on the openings of the

three tunnels that diverged from this central point.

One of them was an inky arch in a frame of timbers. In the distance of

the others lights gleamed. Now and then a bare body, streaming with

perspiration, came into view pushing an ore car. With an increasing

rattle it was rolled to the shaft opening and on to a waiting cage

which slid up. The miner slouched back into the gloom, the noise of

the empty car he propelled before him gradually dying away. Black Dan

could hear again the voices and then, muffled by earth and timbers, the

thud of the picks. Sitting on an upturned box--the king of this world

of subterranean labor--he sat waiting, motionless, save for his moving

eyes.

Suddenly from the undefined noises, the beat of an advancing footfall

detached itself. He gave a low, inarticulate sound, and drew himself

upright, a hand falling on either knee, his dark face full of a grim

fixity of attention. Down one of the tunnels the figure of Jerry came

into view, walking rapidly.

He was smiling, for this summons made his escape from the mine easier

than it would otherwise have been. A word or two from Black Dan and

then up on the cage, and then--away into the night where love and a

woman were waiting. The culminating excitement of the day made his eye

brilliant and deepened the color of his face. Full of the joys and

juices of life, triumphantly handsome even in his rough clothes, he

was a man made for the seduction of women. Black Dan felt it and it

deepened his hate.

“Did you want me?” he called as he drew near. “One of the pick-boys

said you sent for me.”

“Yes, I want to see you for a moment. I want to ask you about

something.”

The elder man rose slowly from his box. His eyes were burning under the

shadow of his hat brim.

“Come over here near the light,” he said. “I’ve something I want to

show you.”

Near the entrance to the shaft there was a large lantern, backed by a

tin reflector. It cast a powerful light on the muddy ground and the

plates of iron that made a smooth flooring round the landing. Black

Dan walked to it and stood there waiting. As Jerry approached he drew

June’s letter from his pocket and handed it to him.

Jerry was taken completely off his guard, and for a moment was

speechless. He took the letter and turned it over.

“What’s this? Where--where’d you get it?” he faltered, his tongue

suddenly dry.

For answer a terrible burst of profanity broke from the older man.

He fell on Jerry like a lion. In the grip of his mighty muscles the

other was borne back toward the opening of the shaft, helpless and

struggling. He clutched at the iron supports, for a moment caught one

and clung, while the cry of his agony rang out shrill as a woman’s. In

the next his hands were torn away and the slippery iron plates slid

beneath his feet. For one instant of horror he reeled on the edge of

the abyss, then went backward and down. A cry rose that passed like a

note of death through the upper levels of the mine.

Black Dan ran back toward the nearest tunnel mouth. The thud of the

picks had stopped. The miners, men who work with death at their elbow,

came pouring down and out, scrambling from stopes, running from the

ends of drifts, swarming up ladders from places of remote, steaming

darkness. White-faced, wild-eyed, not knowing what horror of sudden

death awaited them, they came rushing toward the place where their

chief stood, a grim-visaged figure at the mouth of the tunnel.

He checked them with a raised hand, even at such a moment able to

assert his command over them.

“Keep cool, boys. You’re all right. There’s been an accident. It’s

Barclay. For God’s sake, tell Marsden to keep those women back.”

In the shaft house above, Rion, tired of waiting, was lounging up and

down when the bell of one of the compartments gave an imperious summons

for the cage to descend.

“They’re coming up at last,” said Rion, moving to the edge of the shaft

and stretching himself in yawning relief. “I never knew Easterners to

stand the heat so long.”

CHAPTER IX

HOME

On the Friday morning June rose with an oppression of death-like dread

weighing on her. Jerry had only told her to hold herself in readiness

for that day; she knew nothing further. But the morning was not half

spent when a letter came from him, naming the time and place of their

departure. As she read her dread deepened. The ardent words of love

with which the letter began and ended had no power to overcome her

sickened reluctance. She was moving onward toward an action which she

contemplated with despair and yet toward which she continued inevitably

to advance.

There are many women like June, who, without the force to resist the

importunities of conquering lovers, never lose their sense of sin.

In the arms of the man they have surrendered to it is heavy at their

hearts. The years do not lift it, and the men who have brought them

to ruin grow to feel its chill and despise the woman who has not been

strong enough to resist or completely give herself up.

During the rest of the morning she remained in her room trying to sort

her clothes and pack her bag. Her mind was in a state of stupefied

confusion. She could find nothing, could not remember where anything

had been placed. At times a sensation of nausea and feebleness swept

over her, and she was forced to stop in the work she was doing, and sit

down. When at midday the servant summoned her to lunch, the gathered

possessions and souvenirs of years were scattered over the furniture

and about the floor.

In the afternoon she wrote the letter to the Colonel. She wrote

rapidly, not letting herself pause to think, the pen flying over the

paper. When it was finished, she sealed it without reading it over.

The rest of the day passed with lightning swiftness. As she roamed from

room to room, or sat motionless with drawn brows and rigidly clasped

hands, the chiming of the hours from clocks in various parts of the

house struck loud on her listening ear. The clear, ringing notes of

three seemed hardly to have sounded when four chimed softly. The hours

were rushing by. With their headlong flight her misery increased. There

was now no sitting quiet, spellbound in waiting immobility. She moved

restlessly from window to window looking out on the desolation that

hemmed her in. It had no pity for her. Her little passion, a bubble on

the whirlpool of the mining town, was of that world of ephemera that

the desert passed over and forgot.

At sunset the landscape flushed into magical beauty and then

twilight came, and suddenly, on its heels, darkness. The night was a

crystalline, deep blue, the stars singularly large and lustrous. As

she put on her hat and jacket she felt that her mouth was dry, and if

called upon to speak she would have had difficulty in articulating.

Over her face she draped a thin, dark veil sufficient at this hour to

obscure her features entirely. On the way out she called the Chinaman

and gave him the letter for the Colonel, whom she did not expect back

before Wednesday.

She made her way to the end of the town through the upper residence

streets. They were quite dark at this hour and she slipped by, a slim

shadowy shape, touched now and then into momentary distinctness by the

gleam of a street lamp. Outside the clustering lights of the city,

she turned downward toward where the Geiger grade, looping over the

shoulder of the mountain, enters the town. Once on the road itself she

walked with breathless speed, the beating of her heart loud in her own

ears. She passed the last of the hoisting works, the sentinel of the

great line that was stirring the world, and saw the road stretch gray

and bare before her.

Her light footfall made no sound in the dust. Straining to penetrate

the darkness with a forward gaze she advanced, less rapidly. The

dim form of the deserted cabin loomed up, and then, just beyond it,

gradually taking shape out of the surrounding blackness, a buggy with a

muffled figure in the seat.

For a moment she stopped, feeling faint, her clearness of reason and

vision becoming blurred. But in an instant the weakness passed and she

walked on hesitatingly and softly, staring at the indistinct figure

and drawn irresistibly forward. As she approached, she saw that the

man sat motionless, his back toward her. She was close to the buggy

when the soft padding of her footsteps in the dust caught his ear. He

turned with a start, revealing by the faint starlight that section of

a coarse, strange face to be seen between the peak of a woolen cap and

the edge of an upturned coat collar.

“Pardon, lady,” he said in a hoarse voice, “Mr. Barclay hasn’t come

yet.”

June came to an abrupt halt by the side of the carriage. She stood

without movement or sound, paralyzed by the unexpectedness of the

unknown voice and face. For the first dazed moment following on the

shock there was a complete suspension of all her faculties.

There had been much surreptitious speculation in the livery stable as

to whom Jerry Barclay was driving into Reno. The man now in the buggy

had been sure it was a woman. Seeing his suspicions verified he tried

to distinguish her features through the darkness and the veil she wore.

He leaned forward, eying her keenly, but making out nothing beyond a

slender shape, the face concealed by a film of gauze.

“He’s probably been detained at the mine,” he said cheeringly. “They’ve

that gang of Easterners goin’ down this afternoon.”

The girl made no answer, but drew back a step or two from the carriage.

“If you’ll get in I’ll drive you up and down for a spell,” he said.

“It’s cold work standin’ round on a night like this.”

“No,” she answered in a muffled voice; “no.”

“Put your bag in, anyway,” he suggested, stretching a hand for it.

She drew back another step and moved the hand holding the bag behind

her.

“Just as you like,” he returned, the familiarity of his manner suddenly

chilled by annoyance. “It’s for you to say.”

She retreated still farther until stopped by a growth of sage at the

edge of the road. The man, seeing he could discover nothing from her,

gathered up his reins.

“Well,” he said, “I can’t run no risks with the finest team in the

state of Nevada. I’ll have to walk ’em up and down till Mr. Barclay

gets here. He said he’d be before time, and he’s nearly fifteen minutes

late now.”

He chirped to the horses, who immediately started on a gentle trot.

The dust muffled their hoof-beats, and noiselessly, with something of

stealth and mystery in the soft swiftness of their withdrawal, they

receded into the blackness of the night.

June stood for a moment looking after them, then turned to where the

town sparkled in descending tiers of streets. Its noise came to her

ears, the hum of human voices, and suddenly the misery that had held

her in a state of broken acquiescence all day, that had been growing

in her for weeks, rose into a climax of terrified revolt. The full

horror of her action burst upon her. In a flash of revelation she saw

it clearly, unblinded by passion. Her repulsion toward Jerry’s wooing

surged up in her in a frantic desire to escape, to get away from him.

She feared him, she longed to creep away and hide from him--the

terrible Jerry, her merciless master, before whom she cowered and

trembled.

She cast a fearful look into the darkness behind her and made out the

shape of the buggy just turning for the backward trip. It would be

beside her again in a few minutes. In front, stretching to the town,

the road lay dark and deserted. She gripped her bag and started out

toward the blinking lights, running at first, lightly and noiselessly

on the trodden vegetation that edged the path.

Her engrossing thought was that she might meet Jerry. In the condition

of nervous exhaustion to which the long strain of the past months had

reduced her, she had lost all confidence in her power to direct her own

actions, and resist the dominating man who had had her so completely

under his control. If she met him now it would be the end. He would not

cajole and kiss her. He would order her into the buggy and ride away

with her into the night.

Several times she met men, dark figures against the lights beyond.

At the first glance she could see by their build or gait that they

were not Jerry. One, of lighter mold and more elastic walk, caused

her to pause for a stricken moment and then shrink back in the shadow

of a cabin till she saw her fears were unfounded. As the lights grew

brighter and she entered the sparsely settled end of C Street, she

slackened her speed and gazed ahead, alertly wary. She did not see

but that he must come this way, unless he chose the longer and more

secluded route, among the miners’ lodging houses and cabins, climbing

up from there to the road above.

She had started to return without any fixed idea of her goal. As she

advanced she thought of this and immediately the Colonel arose to her

mind as a rock behind which there was shelter, his lodgings as the one

place where she would find protection. In the bewilderment of her mind

she forgot that he was not due to return yet, only remembering his

original statement that he would be back on Friday night. If she could

reach his rooms without meeting Jerry she would be safe. She felt like

a child who has run away to find adventures and is suddenly stricken

with the horror of strangeness and the wild and piercing longing for

the familiar things of home.

The evening turmoil of C Street had begun. Looking up its length,

roofed by its wooden arcade, was like looking into a lighted tunnel,

swaying with heads. The glare from the show-windows, the lights from

lamps, and the agitated flaring of lanterns on the street hawkers’

barrows, were concentrated within this echoing tunnel and played on

every variety of face, as the crowd came sweeping down on June. It

seemed to catch her in its eddies and whirl her forward, a dark shape,

furtive-eyed and stealthy-footed in the fierce, bubbling buoyancy of

the throng, silent amid its hubbub.

There seemed to her more noise to-night, more of a seething, whirling

froth of excitement than she had ever noticed before. She thought it a

reflection of her own fever and hurried on, her eyes gleaming through

her veil in peering looks sent ahead for Jerry. She was nearing the

short street which led down to the Cresta Plata, when from two miners,

almost running past her, she heard his name. Her heart leaped, and for

a second she flinched and shrank back into the doorway. As she stood

there a group of men brushed by in the opposite direction and from

these, as they paused for a second at her side, she heard a question

and answer:

“How did he come to fall? Did he slip?”

“Yes, on the iron plates. He stepped back and then slipped, and before

Black Dan could get him he was gone. It was all done in a minute.”

“Lord!” came the ejaculation in a tone of horror.

She started on and from a cluster of men standing in a saloon doorway

she again heard his name. The perspiration broke out on her face.

At the mouth of the lane that led to the Cresta Plata a crowd with

restless edges, that moved down toward the hoisting works and swayed

out into the roadway, made a black mass, expanding and decreasing as

its members dispersed or drew together. It was too early for the day

shift to be coming up, and she looked at it with sidelong alarm. It was

part of the unusualness of this weird and awful night. And again as she

threaded her way through the scattering of figures on its outskirts she

heard his name, twice in the moment of passing.

What was the matter? Why were they all talking of him? The sense

of horror that weighed on her seemed to increase until it became

threatening and tragic. She felt as if she were in a nightmare, with

the Colonel’s rooms and the Colonel the only place of safety and

means of escape. She forgot to be cautious and started to run, pushing

her way through the crowd, dodging round the edges of excited groups,

brushing by knots of women collected at the foot of stairways, and from

every group the name of Jerry followed her.

Suddenly, between the massed and moving figures she saw the glare of

the colored bottles in the window of Caswell’s drug store. It was

over this store that the Colonel lived. At one side, outside the

brilliant radiance of the bottled transparencies, a small, dark door

gave on the stairs that led to the floor above. From its central panel

a bell-handle protruded. She tried the knob first and found that it

yielded. Opening it softly she looked up the dim stairway and saw in

the hall above a light burning. She ran up, her steps subdued on the

worn carpet. A narrow corridor divided the floor, passing from a door

that opened on the front balcony back to an anterior region where the

landlady lived and let rooms to less illustrious lodgers. Of the two

suites in the front that on the left was occupied by Rion Gracey, the

other by the Colonel. June had often been in these rooms. She opened

the door and looked in.

The door gave into the sitting-room, empty of occupants and unlit. But

the Colonel’s landlady had not been advised of his change of plans,

and in expectation of his return a fire burned in the grate and cast

a warm, cheering light over the simple furnishings and the arm-chair

drawn up in front of it. June crept in and shut the door. She fell into

the arm-chair with her hands over her face and sat limp and motionless

in the firelight. The noise of the town came dulled to her ears. She

had escaped from Jerry and the pursuing echo of his name.

A half-hour later the Colonel found her there. After a hurried search

for her through the town he had been seized by the hope that she might

have sought shelter with him.

As the opening of the door fell on her ear she raised her head and

looked up. He saw her in the firelight, all dark in the half-lit room,

save for her white face and hands. An exclamation of passionate relief

broke from him, and as she rose and ran to him he held out his arms and

clasped her. They said nothing for a moment, clinging mutely together,

her face buried in his shoulders, his hand pressing her head against

his heart. Then she drew herself away from him and tried to tell him

the story in a series of broken sentences, but he silenced her and put

her back in the chair.

“Wait till to-morrow,” he said, kneeling down beside her to stir up the

fire into a redder blaze. “You can tell it all to-morrow. And, anyway,

there’s no necessity to tell it. I know it now.”

“Do you know what I was going to do--nearly did?”

“Yes, all about it. I got your letter.”

“Do you despise me?” she said faintly.

“No,” he answered.

The fire began to burn brightly. They sat for a moment looking into it;

then leaning toward him over the arm of the chair, she said, almost in

a whisper,

“Where’s Jerry?”

“Jerry?” he answered with a sudden slowness of utterance. “Jerry?

Jerry’s somewhere.”

“As I came along everybody seemed to be talking of him. I heard his

name all along the street. It seemed as if it was following me. I’m

afraid of Jerry.”

“You needn’t be any more. You won’t see him again. There’s--he’s--I’ll

tell you about that to-morrow, too.”

“Will you let me stay with you?” she continued. “Will you let me live

here, somewhere near you? Will you take care of me?”

He took her hand and pressed it, then held it out, cold and trembling,

to the blaze, nodding his answer without looking at her.

“I have nowhere else to go. I don’t know where my father is. Uncle Jim,

I can’t live up in the Murchison mansion alone. It’s full of ghosts and

memories. I’m afraid of it. I’m afraid of Jerry. I’m afraid of myself.”

“You needn’t be afraid any more. I’m going to take care of you now.

We’ll get some rooms for you back here with the landlady, and by and by

we’ll get something better. You’re never going back to the Murchison

mansion.”

“I was so close to dreadful things there,” she murmured. “It was so--”

A man’s step sounded on the stairs, mounted quickly and then struck a

resonant response from the wooden flooring of the hall.

“Who’s that?” she whispered, with hurried alarm, her figure drawn

alertly upright as if to rise and fly. “Is that some one coming in?

Don’t let them. I don’t want to see any one now.”

The Colonel, after a listening moment, reassured her.

“That’s only Rion,” he said. “You needn’t bother about him. He lives

just across the hall.”

She murmured an “Oh!” of relieved comprehension and fell back in the

chair.

They were silent for a space, both looking into the heart of the fire,

its red light playing on their faces, the woman leaning back languidly,

sunk in an apathy of exhausted relief; the man possessed by a sense of

contentment more rich and absolute than he had hoped ever again to feel.

THE END

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

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Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.