Impatiently Fairchild awaited Mother Howard's return, and when at last
she came forth from the kitchen, he drew her into the old parlor,
shadowy now in the gathering dusk, and closed the doors.
"Mrs. Howard," he began, "I--"
"Mother Howard," she corrected. "I ain't used to being called much
else."
"Mother, then--although I 'm not very accustomed to using the title.
My own mother died--shortly after my father came back from out here."
She walked to his side then and put a hand on his shoulders. For a
moment it seemed that her lips were struggling to repress something
which strove to pass them, something locked behind them for years.
Then the old face, dim in the half light, calmed.
"What do you want to know, Son?"
"Everything!"
"But there is n't much I can tell."
He caught her hand.
"There is! I know there is. I--"
"Son--all I can do is to make matters worse. If I knew anything that
would help you--if I could give you any light on anything, Old Mother
Howard would do it! Lord, did n't I help out your father when he
needed it the worst way? Did n't I--"
"But tell me what you know!" There was pleading in Fairchild's voice.
"Can't you understand what it all means to me? Anything--I 'm at sea,
Mother Howard! I 'm lost--you 've hinted to me about enemies, my
father hinted to me about them--but that's all. Is n't it fair that I
should know as much as possible if they still exist, and I 'm to make
any kind of a fight against them?"
"You 're right, Son. But I 'm as much in the dark as you. In those
days, if you were a friend to a person, you didn't ask questions. All
that I ever knew was that your father came to this boarding house when
he was a young man, the very first day that he ever struck Ohadi. He
did n't have much money, but he was enthusiastic--and it was n't long
before he 'd told me about his wife and baby back in Indianapolis and
how he 'd like to win out for their sake. As for me--well, they always
called me Mother Howard, even when I was a young thing, sort of setting
my cap for every good-looking young man that came along. I guess
that's why I never caught one of 'em--I always insisted on darning
their socks and looking after all their troubles for 'em instead of
going out buggy-riding with some other fellow and making 'em jealous."
She sighed ever so slightly, then chuckled. "But that ain't getting to
the point, though, is it?"
"If you could tell me about my father--"
"I 'm going to--all I know. Things were a lot different out here then
from what they were later. Silver was wealth to anybody that could
find it; every month, the Secretary of the Treasury was required by law
to buy three or four million ounces for coining purposes, and it meant
a lot of money for us all. Everywhere around the hills and gulches you
could see prospectors, with their gads and little picks, fooling around
like life did n't mean anything in the world to 'em, except to grub
around in those rocks. That was the idea, you see, to fool around
until they 'd found a bit of ore or float, as they called it, and then
follow it up the gorge until they came to rock or indications that 'd
give 'em reason to think that the vein was around there somewhere.
Then they 'd start to make their tunnel--to drift in on the vein. I 'm
telling you all this, so you 'll understand."
Fairchild was listening eagerly. A moment's pause and the old
lodging-house keeper went on.
"Your father was one of these men. 'Squint' Rodaine was another--they
called him that because at some time in his life he 'd tried to shoot
faster than the other fellow--and did n't do it. The bullet hit right
between his eyes, but it must have had poor powder behind it--all it
did was to cut through the skin and go straight up his forehead. When
the wound healed, the scar drew his eyes close together, like a
Chinaman's. You never see Squint's eyes more than half open.
"And he's crooked, just like his eyes--" Mother Howard's voice bore a
touch of resentment. "I never liked him from the minute I first saw
him, and I liked him less afterward. Then I got next to his game.
"Your father had been prospecting just like everybody else. He 'd come
on float up Kentucky Gulch and was trying to follow it to the vein.
Squint saw him--and what's more, he saw that float. It looked good to
Squint--and late that night, I heard him and his two drinking partners,
Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill--they just reverse his name for the
sound of it--talking in Blindeye's room. I 'm a woman--" Mother
Howard chuckled--"so I just leaned my head against the door and
listened. Then I flew downstairs to wait for your father when he came
in from sitting up half the night to get an assay on that float. And
you bet I told him--folks can't do sneaking things around me and get
away with it, and it was n't more 'n five minutes after he 'd got home
that your father knew what was going on--how Squint and them two others
was figuring on jumping his claim before he could file on it and all
that.
"Well, there was a big Cornishman here that I was kind of sweet on--and
I guess I always will be. He 's been gone now though, ever since your
father left. I got him and asked him to help. And Harry was just the
kind of a fellow that would do it. Out in the dead of night they went
and staked out your father's claim--Harry was to get twenty-five per
cent--and early the next morning your dad was waiting to file on it,
while Harry was waiting for them three. And what a fight it must have
been--that Harry was a wildcat in those younger days." She laughed,
then her voice grew serious. "But all had its effect. Rodaine did n't
jump that claim, and a few of us around here filed dummy claims enough
in the vicinity to keep him off of getting too close--but there was one
way we couldn't stop him. He had power, and he 's always had it--and
he 's got it now. A lot of awful strange things happened to your
father after that--charges were filed against him for things he never
did. Men jumped on him in the dark, then went to the district
attorney's office and accused him of making the attack. And the funny
part was that the district attorney's office always believed them--and
not him. Once they had him just at the edge of the penitentiary, but
I--I happened to know a few things that--well, he did n't go." Again
Mother Howard chuckled, only to grow serious once more. "Those days
were a bit wild in Ohadi--everybody was crazy with the gold or silver
fever; out of their head most of the time. Men who went to work for
your father and Harry disappeared, or got hurt accidentally in the mine
or just quit through the bad name it was getting. Once Harry, coming
down from the tunnel at night, stepped on a little bridge that always
before had been as secure and safe as the hills themselves. It fell
with him--they went down together thirty feet, and there was nothing
but Nature to blame for it, in spite of what we three thought. Then,
at last, they got a fellow who was willing to work for them in spite of
what Rodaine's crowd--and it consisted of everybody in power--hinted
about your father's bad reputation back East and--"
"My father never harmed a soul in his life!" Fairchild's voice was
hot, resentful. Mother Howard went on:
"I know he did n't, Son. I 'm only telling the story. Miners are
superstitious as a general rule, and they 're childish at believing
things. It all worked in your father's case--with the exception of
Harry and 'Sissie' Larsen, a Swede with a high voice, just about like
mine. That's why they gave him the name. Your father offered him
wages and a ten per cent. bonus. He went to work. A few months later
they got into good ore. That paid fairly well, even if it was
irregular. It looked like the bad luck was over at last. Then--"
Mother Howard hesitated at the brink of the very nubbin of it all, to
Robert Fairchild. A long moment followed, in which he repressed a
desire to seize her and wrest it from her, and at last--
"It was about dusk one night," she went on. "Harry came in and took me
with him into this very room. He kissed me and told me that he must go
away. He asked me if I would go with him--without knowing why. And,
Son, I trusted him, I would have done anything for him--but I was n't
as old then as I am now. I refused--and to this day, I don't know why.
It--it was just woman, I guess. Then he asked me if I would help him.
I said I would.
"He did n't tell me much; except that he had been uptown spreading the
word that the ore had pinched out and that the hanging rock had caved
in and that he and 'Sissie' and your father were through, that they
were beaten and were going away that night. But--and Harry waited a
long time before he told me this--'Sissie' was not going with them.
"'I'm putting a lot in your hands,' he told me, 'but you 've got to
help us. "Sissie" won't be there--and I can't tell you why. The town
must think that he is. Your voice is just like "Sissie's." You 've
got to help us out of town.'
"And I promised. Late that night, the three of us drove up the main
street, your father on one side of the seat. Harry on the other, and
me, dressed in some of Sissie's clothes, half hidden between them. I
was singing; that was Sissie's habit,--to get roaring drunk and blow
off steam by yodelling song after song as he rolled along. Our voices
were about the same; nobody dreamed that I was any one else but the
Swede--my head was tipped forward, so they couldn't see my features.
And we went our way with the miners standing on the curb waving to us,
and not one of them knowing that the person who sat between your father
and Harry was any one except Larsen. We drove outside town and
stopped. Then we said good-by, and I put on an old dress that I had
brought with me and sneaked back home. Nobody knew the difference."
"But Larsen--?"
"You know as much as I do, Son."
"But did n't they tell you?"
"They told me nothing and I asked 'em nothing. They were my friends
and they needed help. I gave it to them--that's all I know and that's
all I 've wanted to know."
"You never saw Larsen again?"
"I never saw any of them. That was the end."
"But Rodaine--?"
"He 's still here. You 'll hear from him--plenty soon. I could see
that, the minute Blindeye Bozeman and Taylor Bill began taking your
measure. You noticed they left the table before the meal was over? It
was to tell Rodaine."
"Then he'll fight me too?"
Mother Howard laughed,--and her voice was harsh.
"Rodaine's a rattlesnake. His son 's a rattlesnake. His wife 's
crazy--Old Crazy Laura. He drove her that way. She lives by herself,
in an old house on the Georgeville road. And she 'd kill for him, even
if he does beat her when she goes to his house and begs him to take her
back. That's the kind of a crowd it is. You can figure it out for
yourself. She goes around at night, gathering herbs in graveyards; she
thinks she 's a witch. The old man mutters to himself and hates any
one who doesn't do everything he asks,--and just about everybody does
it, simply through fear. And just to put a good finish on it all, the
young 'un moves in the best society in town and spends most of his time
trying to argue the former district judge's daughter into marrying him.
So there you are. That's all Mother Howard knows, Son."
She reached for the door and then, turning, patted Fairchild on the
shoulder.
"Boy," came quietly, "you 've got a broad back and a good head.
Rodaine beat your father--don't let him beat you. And always remember
one thing: Old Mother Howard 's played the game before, and she 'll
play it with you--against anybody. Good night. Go to bed--dark
streets are n't exactly the place for you."
Robert Fairchild obeyed the instructions, a victim of many a
conjecture, many an attempt at reasoning as he sought sleep that was
far away. Again and again there rose before him the vision of two men
in an open buggy, with a singing, apparently maudlin person between
them whom Ohadi believed to be an effeminate-voiced Swede; in reality,
only a woman. And why had they adopted the expedient? Why had not
Larsen been with them in reality? Fairchild avoided the obvious
conclusion and turned to other thoughts, to Rodaine with his squint
eyes, to Crazy Laura, gathering herbs at midnight in the shadowy,
stone-sentineled stretches of graveyards, while the son, perhaps,
danced at some function of Ohadi's society and made love in the rest
periods. It was all grotesque; it was fantastic, almost
laughable,--had it not concerned him! For Rodaine had been his
father's enemy, and Mother Howard had told him enough to assure him
that Rodaine did not forget. The crazed woman of the graveyards was
Squint's lunatic wife, ready to kill, if necessary, for a husband who
beat her. And the young Rodaine was his son, blood of his blood; that
was enough. It was hours before Fairchild found sleep, and even then
it was a thing of troubled visions.
Streaming sun awakened him, and he hurried to the dining room to find
himself the last lodger at the tables. He ate a rather hasty meal,
made more so by an impatient waitress, then with the necessary papers
in his pocket, Fairchild started toward the courthouse and the legal
procedure which must be undergone before he made his first trip to the
mine.
A block or two, and then Fairchild suddenly halted. Crossing the
street at an angle just before him was a young woman whose features,
whose mannerisms he recognized. The whipcord riding habit had given
place now to a tailored suit which deprived her of the boyishness that
had been so apparent on their first meeting. The cap had disappeared
before a close-fitting, vari-colored turban. But the straying brown
hair still was there, the brown eyes, the piquant little nose and the
prettily formed lips. Fairchild's heart thumped,--nor did he stop to
consider why. A quickening of his pace, and he met her just as she
stepped to the curbing.
"I 'm so glad of this opportunity," he exclaimed happily. "I want to
return that money to you. I--I was so fussed yesterday I did n't
realize--"
"Aren't you mistaken?" She had looked at him with a slight smile.
Fairchild did not catch the inflection.
"Oh, no. I 'm the man, you know, who helped you change that tire on
the Denver road yesterday."
"Pardon me." This time one brown eye had wavered ever so slightly,
indicating some one behind Fairchild. "But I was n't on the Denver
road yesterday, and if you 'll excuse me for saying it, I don't
remember ever having seen you before."
There was a little light in her eyes which took away the sting of the
denial, a light which seemed to urge caution, and at the same time to
tell Fairchild that she trusted him to do his part as a gentleman in a
thing she wished forgotten. More fussed than ever, he drew back and
bent low in apology, while she passed on. Half a block away, a young
man rounded a corner and, seeing her, hastened to join her. She
extended her hand; they chatted a moment, then strolled up the street
together. Fairchild watched blankly, then turned at a chuckle just
behind him emanating from the bearded lips of an old miner, loafing on
the stone coping in front of a small store.
"Pick the wrong filly, pardner?" came the query. Fairchild managed to
smile.
"Guess so." Then he lied quickly. "I thought she was a girl from
Denver."
"Her?" The old miner stretched. "Nope. That's Anita Richmond, old
Judge Richmond's daughter. Guess she must have been expecting that
young fellow--or she would n't have cut you off so short. She ain't
usually that way."
"Her fiancé?" Fairchild asked the question with misgiving. The miner
finished his stretch and added a yawn to it. Then he looked
appraisingly up the street toward the retreating figures. "Well, some
say he is and some say he ain't. Guess it mostly depends on the girl,
and she ain't telling yet."
"And the man--who is he?"
"Him? Oh, he 's Maurice Rodaine. Son of a pretty famous character
around here, old Squint Rodaine. Owns the Silver Queen property up the
hill. Ever hear of him?"
The eyes of Robert Fairchild narrowed, and a desire to fight--a longing
to grapple with Squint Rodaine and all that belonged to him--surged
into his heart. But his voice, when he spoke, was slow and suppressed.
"Squint Rodaine? Yes, I think I have. The name sounds rather
familiar."
Then, deliberately, he started up the street, following at a distance
the man and the girl who walked before him.