IN circumstances in which it would have been easy enough to fail,
Philip found the family he was looking for almost at once; and it was
the young woman with the dark eyes and hair and the enticing Southland
voice and accent who slipped between the flaps of the lighted tent when
he made his presence known.
“Oh, Mr. Trask--is it you?” she exclaimed, as the dim lamplight
filtering through the canvas enabled her to recognize him. “This is
kind of you, I’m sure. We’ve been wondering if we should ever see you
again. I can’t imagine how you were ever able to find us.”
Philip, rejoicing in the softly smothered “r’s” of her speech,
explained soberly. It was not so difficult. He had gone first to the
hotel; and once in the tented square, a few inquiries had sufficed.
“I’m sorry I can’t ask you in,” she hastened to say. “You see, there
isn’t so awfully much room in a tent, and--and the children are just
going to bed. Would you mind sitting out here?”
There was a bench on the board platform that served as a dooryard for
the tent, and they sat together on that. For the first few minutes
Philip had an attack of self-consciousness that made him boil inwardly
with suppressed rage. His human contacts for the past few weeks--or
months, for that matter--had been strictly masculine, and he had never
been wholly at ease with women, save those of his own family. Stilted
inquiries as to how the sick Captain was getting along, and how they
all liked Denver and the West, and how they thought the climate and
the high altitude were going to agree with them, were as far as he got
before a low laugh, with enough mockery in it to prick him sharply,
interrupted him.
“Excuse me,” she murmured, “but it’s so deliciously funny to see you
make such hard work of it. Are there no girls in the part of Yankeeland
you come from?”
“Plenty of them,” he admitted; “but they are not like you.”
“Oh!” she laughed. “Is that a compliment, or the other thing?”
“It is just the plain truth. But the trouble isn’t with girls--it’s
with me. I guess I’m not much of a ladies’ man.”
“I’m glad you’re not; I can’t imagine anything more deadly. Are you
still working for the railroad?”
“Just at present, yes. But I’ll be quitting in a few days. I’m going to
try my luck in the mountains--prospecting.”
“But--I thought you said you wouldn’t!”
“I did; but I was younger then than I am now.”
She laughed again. “All of six weeks younger. But I’m glad you are
going. If the Captain could get well, and I were a man, I’d go, too.”
Philip was on the point of saying that he wished she were a man and
would go with him; but upon second thought he concluded he didn’t wish
it. Before he could straighten out the tangle of the first and second
thoughts she was asking him if he knew anything about minerals and
mining.
“Nothing at all. But others who don’t know any more than I do are
going, and some of them are finding what they hoped to find.”
“It’s in the air,” she said. “You hear nothing but ‘strikes’ and
‘leads’ and ‘mother veins’ and ‘bonanzas.’ Lots of the people in these
tents around us are here because some member of the family is sick, but
they all talk excitedly about the big fortunes that are being made, and
how Tom or Dick or Harry has just come in with a haversack full of ‘the
pure quill,’ whatever that may mean.”
“You haven’t been hearing any more of it than I have,” said Philip.
“Not as much, I think. The town is mad with the mining fever. I’m only
waiting until I can find a suitable partner.”
“That ought not to be very hard--with everybody wanting to go.”
Philip shook his head. “I guess I’m not built right for mixing with
people. I can’t seem to chum in with just anybody that comes along.”
“You oughtn’t to,” she returned decisively. Then, again with the
mocking note in her voice: “They say the prospectors often have to
fight to hold their claims after they have found them: you ought to
pick out some big, strong fighting man for a partner, don’t you think?”
Philip was glad the canvas-filtered lamplight was too dim to let her
see the flush her words evoked.
“You are thinking of that day on the train, and how I let the husky
miner take your part when I should have done it myself? I’m not such a
coward as that. I was trying to get out of my seat when the miner man
got ahead of me. I want you to believe that.”
“Of course I’ll believe it.” Then, quite penitently: “You must forgive
me for being rude again: I simply can’t help saying the meanest things,
sometimes. Still, you know, I can’t imagine you as a fighter, really.”
“Can’t you?” said Philip; and then he boasted: “I had a fight with
a hold-up on the way out here this evening--and got the best of
him, too.” Whereupon he described with dry humor Henry Wigglesworth
Bromley’s attempt to raise the price of a square meal; the brief battle
and its outcome.
“You haven’t told all of it,” she suggested, when he paused with his
refusal to accept Bromley’s offer to arrest himself on a charge of
attempted highway robbery.
“What part have I left out?”
“Just the last of it, I think. You gave the robber some money to buy
the square meal--I’m sure you did.”
“You are a witch!” Philip laughed. “That is exactly what I did do. I
don’t know why I did it, but I did.”
“_I_ know why,” was the prompt reply. “It was because you couldn’t help
it. The poor boy’s desperation appealed to you--it appeals to me just
in your telling of it. He isn’t bad; he is merely good stock gone to
seed. Couldn’t you see that?”
“Not as clearly as you seem to. But he did appear to be worth helping a
bit.”
“Ah; that is the chord I was trying to touch. You ought to help him
some more, Mr. Trask. Don’t you reckon so?”
“‘Mr. Trask’ wouldn’t, but perhaps ‘Philip’ would,” he suggested mildly.
“Well, ‘Philip,’ then. Don’t you see how brave he is?--to laugh at
himself and all his misfortunes, the hardships his wildness has brought
upon him? You say you are looking for a prospecting partner; why don’t
you take him?”
“Do you really mean that?”
“Certainly I mean it. It might result in two good things. If you could
get him off in the mountains by himself, and live with him, and make
him work hard, you might make a real man of him.”
“Yes?” said Philip. “That is one of the two good things. What is the
other?”
“The other is what it might do for you. Or am I wrong about that?”
“No,” he said, after a little pause. “I still think you are a witch.
You’ve found out that I live in a shell, and it’s so. I guess I was
born that way. You think the shell would crack if I should take hold of
a man like this Bromley and try to brother him?”
“I am sure it would,” she replied gravely. “It couldn’t help cracking.”
Then, as a low-toned call came from the inside of the tent: “Yes,
mummie, dear,--I’m coming.”
Philip got up and held out his hand.
“I am sorry I’m going away, because I’d like to be within call if you
should need me. If you should move into a house, or leave Denver, will
you let me know? A note addressed to me in care of the railroad office
will be either forwarded or held until I come back.”
“I’ll write,” she promised, and the quick veiling of the dark eyes told
him that she knew very well what he meant by her possible need.
“And about this young scapegrace who tried to hold me up: what you have
suggested never occurred to me until you spoke of it. But if you think
I ought to offer to take him along into the mountains, I don’t know but
I’ll do it. It wouldn’t be any crazier than the things a lot of other
people are doing in this mining-mad corner of the world just now.”
“Oh, you mustn’t take me too seriously. I have no right to tell you
what you should do. But I did have a glimpse of what it might mean. I’m
going to wish you good luck--the very best of luck. If you really want
to be rich, I hope you’ll find one of these beautiful ‘bonanzas’ people
are talking about; find it and live happily ever after. Good-by.”
“Good-by,” said Philip; and when she disappeared behind the tent flap,
he picked his way out of the campers’ square and turned his steps
townward.
It was after he had walked the five squares westward on Champa and the
six northward down Seventeenth, and was turning into Blake, with the
American House only a block distant, that a girlish figure slipped out
of a doorway shadow, caught step with him, and slid a caressing arm
under his with a murmured, “You look lonesome, baby, and I’m lonesome,
too. Take me around to Min’s and stake me to a bottle of wine. I’m so
thirsty I don’t know where I’m going to sleep to-night.”
Philip freed himself with a twist that had in it all the fierce virtue
of his Puritan ancestry. Being fresh from a very human contact with a
young woman of another sort, this appeal of the street-girl was like
a stumbling plunge into muddy water. Backing away from the temptation
which, he told himself hotly, was no temptation at all, he walked on
quickly, and had scarcely recovered his balance when he entered the
lobby of the hotel. Almost immediately he found Bromley, sprawled in
one of the lounging chairs, deep in the enjoyment of a cigar which he
waved airily as he caught sight of Philip.
“_Benedicite_, good wrestler! Pull up a chair and rest your face and
hands,” he invited. Then, with a cheerful smile: “Why the pallid
countenance? You look as though you’d just seen a ghost. Did some other
fellow try to hold you up?”
Philip’s answering smile was a twisted grimace. “No; it was a woman,
this time.”
“Worse and more of it. Lots of little devils in skirts chivvying around
this town. Too many men fools roaming the streets with money in their
pockets. ‘Wheresoever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered
together’--only they’re not exactly eagles; they are birds of another
feather. I know, because they clawed me a bit before my wallet went
dry.”
“You were one of the fools?” said Philip sourly.
“You’d know it without my telling you. But to the law and the
testimony. You see, the Wigglesworth family pride didn’t prevent me
from keeping your kindly hint in mind--and I’ve obeyed it. Where do we
begin?”
“Suppose we begin where we left off,” said Philip guardedly. “Is there
any decent ambition left in you?”
Bromley took time to consider, and when he replied he was shaking his
head doubtfully.
“To be perfectly frank about it, I’m not sure there has ever been
anything worthy the high sounding name of ambition. You see, there is
quite a lot of Bromley property scattered about in my home town--which
is Philadelphia, if you care to know--and the income from it has
heretofore proved fatal to anything like decent ambition on the part of
a play-boy.”
“Your property?” Philip queried.
“Oh, dear, no; the governor’s. But he hasn’t kept too tight a hand
on the purse strings; not tight enough, if we are to judge from the
effects--the present horrible example being the most disastrous of the
same. As I intimated on the scene of my latest fiasco, I stretched
the rubber band once too often and it snapped back at me with a
disinheriting thousand-dollar check attached. That, my dear benefactor,
is my poor tale, poorly told. You see before you what might have been a
man, but what probably--most probably--never will be a man.”
“Of course, if you are willing to let it go at that----” said Philip,
leaving the sentence unfinished.
“You mean that I ought to pitch in and do something useful? My dear Mr.
Good-wrestler----”
“My name is Trask,” Philip cut in shortly.
“Well, then, my dear Trask, I have never learned how to do useful
things. One has to learn, I believe, if it’s only washing dishes in
a cheap restaurant, or chopping wood. I should inevitably break the
dishes, or let the axe slip and chop my foot.”
Philip made a gesture of impatience.
“I had a proposal to make to you, but it seems that it’s no use. I am
about to strike out for the mountains, to try my luck prospecting. A
friend of yours, whom you have never seen or even heard of, suggested
that you might want to go along--as my partner.”
Bromley straightened himself in his chair and the mocking smile died
out of his boyish eyes.
“A friend of mine, you say? I had some friends while my thousand
lasted, but I haven’t any now.”
“Yes, you have at least one; though, as I have said, you have never
seen or heard of her.”
The play-boy sank back into the depths of his chair.
“Ah, I see; a woman, and you told her about me. Am I such an object of
pity as that, Trask?”
Philip forgot his New England insularity for a moment and put his hand
on the play-boy’s knee.
“It was angelic pity, Bromley. Surely that needn’t hurt your pride.”
“Angels,” was the half-musing reply. “They can rise so much, so
infinitely much, higher than a man when they hold on, and sink so much
lower when they let go. This angel you speak of--is she yours, Trask?”
“No; only an acquaintance. I have met her only twice. But you haven’t
said what you think of my proposal. It is made in good faith.”
“Don’t you see how impossible it is?”
“Why is it impossible?”
“A partnership presupposes mutual contributions. I have nothing to
contribute; not even skill with a miner’s pick.”
“You have yourself and your two hands--which are probably not more
unskilled than mine, for the kind of work we’d have to do.”
“But the outfit--the grub-stake?”
“I have money enough to carry the two of us through the summer. If we
strike something, you can pay me back out of your half of the stake.”
For quite a long time Bromley sat with his head thrown back, and with
the half-burned cigar, which had gone out and was cold and dead,
clamped between his teeth. And his answer, when he made it, was
strictly in character.
“What a hellish pity it is that I didn’t find you and try to hold
you up weeks ago, Trask--while I had some few ravellings of the
thousand left. Will you take a beggar with you on your quest of the
golden fleece? Because, if you will, the beggar is yours. We mustn’t
disappoint the angel.”