DR. BILL DISPENSES AID AND ARGUMENT
The fire spluttered just beyond the door of the tent. Its cheerful
light supported the efforts of the kerosene lamp within. Peigan
Charley squatted over its friendly warmth, his lean hands outheld to
its flickering blaze in truly Indian fashion. His position had been
taken up with a view to observing his wounded chief, whose condition
concerned him more than anything else in the world, except it was,
perhaps, his delight in driving the men of his own color under him, and
his absolute contempt for his own race.
John Kars was lying on his blankets, yielding to the skilful attention
of Dr. Bill. His final journey from the gorge to the camp, ten miles
distant, had been perhaps the greatest effort of the night. But with
Charley's help, with the dogged resolve of a spirit that did not
understand defeat, it had been finally achieved.
His wound was by no means serious. He knew that. Charley believed, in
his simple mind, that his boss was practically a dead man. Hence his
watchful regard now. Kars' trouble was little more than loss of blood,
and though his tremendous physique had helped him, his weakness during
the last two miles of the journey had demanded all his resources to
overcome.
The dressing was complete. The last stitches had been put in the
bandages about the wound. Bill closed his instrument case, and
returned the bottles of antiseptic drugs to the miniature chest he
carried. He sat down on the blankets which were spread out for his own
use, and smiled genially down at his patient.
"That's that," he said cheerfully. "But it was a lucky get out for
you, John. Say, a shade to the left, and that Breed would have handed
you a jugular in two parts. Just take it easy. You'll travel
to-morrow, after a night's sleep. Guess you'll be all whole against we
make Fort Mowbray. You best talk now, an' get rid of it all. Maybe
you'll sleep a deal easier after."
"Thanks, Bill."
Kars' regard of his friend said far more than his simple words. But
then the friendship between these two was of a quality which required
little enough of verbal expression. It was the friendship of two men
who have shared infinite perils together, of two men whose lives are
bound up in loyalty to each other.
For some moments the wounded man made no response to the invitation. A
pleasant lassitude was at work upon him. It seemed a pity to disturb
it by the effort of talk. But it was necessary to talk, and he knew
that this was so. There were thoughts and questions in his mind that
must have the well-balanced consideration of his friend's calm mind.
At last he broke the silence with an expletive which expressed
something of the enthusiasm he really felt.
"Gee, what a strike!" he said, in a voice much weaker than his usual
tone. Then he added as an afterthought, "The gorge is chock full of
color. Just git a holt on that handkerchief in my pea-jacket and open
it. Say, handle it easy."
He watched the other search the pockets of the coat lying at the foot
of his blankets. A great light shone in his gray eyes as Bill produced
the handkerchief and began to unfold it. Then, with a raging
impatience, he waited while the deposit he had collected from the
riffles of the sluice-box was examined under the lamplight.
At last Bill raised his eyes, and Kars read there all he wanted to know.
"It's mostly color. There's biggish stuff amongst it."
"That's how I figgered." Kars' tone was full of contentment.
"Well?"
Bill carefully refolded the handkerchief, and laid it beside his
medicine chest.
Kars emitted a sound like a chuckle,
"Oh, it was a bully play," he said. Then, after a moment: "Listen,
I'll tell it from the start."
Kars talked, with occasional pauses, for nearly half an hour. He
detailed the events of the night in the barest outline, and only dealt
closely with the fact of the gold workings. These he explained with
the technicalities necessary between experts. He dwelt upon his
estimate of the quality of the auriferous deposits as he had been able
to make it in the darkness, and from his sense of touch. The final
story of his encounter with Louis Creal only seemed to afford him
amusement in the telling.
"You see, Bill," he added, "that feller must have been sick to death.
I mean finding himself with just the squaws and the fossils left around
when we come along. His play was clear as daylight. He tried to scare
us like a brace of rabbits to be quit of us. It was our bull-headed
luck to hit the place right when we did. I mean finding the neches out
on a trail of murder instead of lying around their teepees."
"Yes. But we're going to get them on our trail anyway."
"Sure we are--when he's rounded 'em up."
Bill produced his timepiece and studied it reflectively.
"It's an hour past midnight," he said. "We'll need to be on the move
with daylight. We best hand them all the mileage we can make. We've
got to act bright."
He sat lost in thought for some minutes, his watch still held in the
palm of his hand. He was thinking of the immediate rather than of the
significance of his friend's discovery. His cheerful face was grave.
He was calculating chances with all the care of a clear-thinking,
experienced brain.
John Kars was thinking too. But the direction which absorbed him was
quite different. He was regarding his discovery in connection with
Fort Mowbray.
At last he stirred restlessly.
"I can't get it right!" he exclaimed. "I just can't."
"How's that?"
Bill's plans were complete. For a day or so he knew that his would be
the responsibility. Kars would have to take things easy.
"What can't you get right?" he added.
"Why, the whole darn play of it. That strike has been worked years,
I'd say. We've trailed this country with eyes and ears mighty wide.
Guess we haven't run into a thing about Bell River but what's darn
unpleasant. Years that's been waiting. Shrieking for us to get around
and help ourselves. Gee, I want to kick something."
Bill regarded his friend with serious eyes.
"You're going to butt in? You're going to play a hand in that--game?"
Kars' eyes widened in surprise.
"Sure." Then he added, "So are you." He smiled.
Bill shook his head.
"Not willingly--me," he said.
"Why not?"
Bill stretched himself out on his blankets. He was fully dressed. He
intended to pass the night that way. He clasped his hands behind his
neck, and his gaze was on the firelight beyond the door.
"First, because it's taking a useless chance. You don't need it," he
said deliberately. "Second, because that was Allan Mowbray's strike.
It was his big secret that he'd worked most of his days for, and, in
the end, gave his life for. If we butt in there'll come a rush, and
you'll rob a widow and a young girl who've never done you injury. It
don't sound to me your way."
"You think Mrs. Mowbray and Jessie know of it?"
Bill glanced round quickly.
"Mrs. Mowbray--sure."
"Ah--not Jessie?"
"Can't say. Maybe not. More than likely--not."
"Alec?"
Bill shook his head decidedly.
"Not that boy."
"Murray McTavish?"
"He knows."
Kars nodded agreement.
"He knew when he was lying to me he didn't understand Allan visiting
Bell River," he said.
Kars' eyes had become coldly contemplative. And in the brief silence
that followed, for all his intimate understanding of his friend, Bill
Brudenell was unable even to guess at the thoughts passing behind the
icy reserve which seemed to have settled upon him.
But his questions found an answer much sooner than he expected. The
silence was broken by a short, hard laugh of something like
self-contempt.
"You an' me, Bill. We're going up there with an outfit that knows all
about scrapping, and something about gold. We're going up there, and
d'you know why? Oh, not to rob a widow and orphan." He laughed again
in the same fashion. "Not a soul's got to know, or be wise to our
play," he went on. "The strike they've worked won't be touched by us.
We'll make our own. But for once gold isn't all we need. There's
something else. I tell you I can't rest till we find it. There's a
gal, Bill, on the Snake River, with eyes made to smile most all the
time. They did--till Allan Mowbray got done up. Well, I got a notion
they'll smile again some day, but it won't be till I've located just
how her father came by his end, after years of working with the Bell
River neches. I want to see those eyes smile, Bill. I want to see 'em
smile bad. Maybe you think me some fool man. I allow I'm wiser than
you guess. Maybe, even, I'm wiser than you, who've never yearned to
see a gal's eyes smiling into yours in all your forty-three years.
That's why we're going to butt in on that strike, and you're coming
right along with me if I have to yank you there by your mighty badly
fledged scalp."
Bill had turned over on his side. His shrewd eyes were smiling.
"Sounds like fever," he said, in his pleasant way. "I'll need to take
the patient's temperature. Say, John, you won't have to haul on my
scalp for any play like that. I'm in it--right up to my neck. That
I've lived to see the day John Kars talks of marrying makes me feel
I've not lived----"
"He's not talking of marriage," came the swift retort with flushed
cheeks.
"No. But he's thinking it. Which, in a man like John Kars, comes
pretty near meaning the same thing. Did you ask her, boy?"
Just for a moment resentment lit the other's eyes. It was on his
tongue to make a sharp retort. But, under the deep, new emotion
stirring him, an emotion that made him rather crave for a sympathy
which, in all his strong life, he had never felt the necessity before,
the desire melted away. In place of it he yielded to a rush of
enthusiasm which surprised himself almost as much as it did his old
friend.
"No, Bill." He laughed. "I--hadn't the nerve to. I don't know as
I'll ever have the nerve to. But I want that little gal bad. I want
her so bad I feel I could get right out an' trail around these
darnation hills, an' skitter holes, hollering 'help' like some mangy
coyote chasing up her young. Oh, I'm going to ask her. I'll have to
ask her, if I have to get you to hand me the dope to fix my nerve
right. And, say, if she hands me the G. B. for that bladder of
taller-fat, Murray, why I'll just pack my traps, and hit the trail for
Bell River, and I'll sit around and kill off every darned neche so she
can keep right on handing herself all the gold she needs till she's
sitting atop of a mountain of it, which is just about where I'd like to
set her with these two dirty hands."
His eyes smiled as he held out his hands. But he went on at once.
"Now you've got it all. And I guess we'll let it go at that. You and
me, we're going to set right out on this new play. There isn't going
to be a word handed to a soul at the Fort, or anywhere else. Not a
word. There's things behind Allan Mowbray's death we don't know. But
that dirty half-breed knows 'em, if we don't. And the gold on the
river has a big stake in the game. That being so, the folk Allan left
behind him are to be robbed. Follow it? It kind of seems to me the
folk at the Fort are helpless. But--but we aren't. So it's up to me,
seeing how I feel about that little gal."
Kars had propped himself up under the effect of his rising excitement.
Now, as he finished speaking, he dropped back on his blankets with some
display of weariness.
Bill's eyes were watching him closely. He was wondering how much of
this he would have heard had Kars been his usual, robust self. He did
not think he would have heard so much.
He rose from his blankets.
"I'm all in, boy, on this enterprise," he said, in his amiable way.
"Meanwhile I'm dousing this light. You'll sleep then."
He blew out the lamp before the other could protest.
"I'll just get a peek at the boys on watch. I need to fix things with
Charley for the start up to-morrow."
He passed out of the tent crawling on his hands and knees. Nor did he
return till he felt sure that his patient was well asleep.
Even then he did not seek his own blankets. For a moment he studied
his friend's breathing with all his professional skill alert. Then,
once more, he withdrew, and took his place at the camp-fire beside
Peigan Charley.
The first sign of dawn saw the camp astir. Kars was accommodated with
one of the Alaskan ponies under pressure from Bill, as the doctor. The
whole outfit was on the move before daylight had matured. Neither the
scout, nor the two white men were deceived. Each knew that they were
not likely to make the headwaters of Snake River without molestation.
How right they were was abundantly proved on the afternoon of the
second day.
They were passing through a wide defile, with the hills on either side
of them rising to several hundreds of feet of dense forest. It was a
shorter route towards their objective, but more dangerous by reason of
the wide stretching tundra it was necessary to skirt.
Half-way through this defile came the first sign. It came with the
distant crack of a rifle. Then the whistle of a speeding bullet, and
the final "spat" of it as it embedded itself in an adjacent tree-trunk.
Everybody understood. But it took Peigan Charley to sum up the
situation, and the feeling of, at least, the leaders of the outfit.
"Fool neche!" he exclaimed, with a world of contemptuous regard flung
in the direction whence came the sound. "Shoot lak devil. Much shoot.
Plenty. Oh, yes."