BROMLEY’S efforts to trace Philip’s movements on the Monday night of
cataclysms were quite fruitless, as they were likely to be, lacking
help from the chapter of accidents; and they so continued until a
certain morning when he went to the Union Depot to see the Follansbees
and Stephen Drew off for a trip to Manitou. Walking back across the
platforms after the Rio Grande train had pulled out, he saw Jim Garth,
flannel-shirted, booted, and with a rifle under his arm and a blanket
roll over his shoulder, making for the waiting South Park day train.
“Hello, Jim!” he called, turning to overtake the big man. “What ho!
Does this”--touching the blanket roll--“mean that you’ve had enough of
the bright lights for a while?”
“You’re mighty whistlin’,” laughed the giant. “I been a no-account bum
on you two boys good-and-plenty long enough, I reckon. I’m hittin’ for
the big hills and the tall timber where I can’t get a drink o’ red-eye,
no matter how bad I’m a-hankerin’ for it--that’s me.”
“But see here, old-timer; how about your grub-stake?” queried Bromley,
catching step and walking with Garth to the waiting train. “You’re
not going to tell me that you saved enough for it out of the check I
slipped you a week ago?”
The big man grinned foolishly.
“You’re whistlin’ ag’in, Harry. That there fish-eyed faro-dealer in
Clem Bull’s place raked in the last dollar o’ that hand-out afore I’d
had time to say ‘Howdy’ to it. I’d ’a’ gone hungry a heap o’ times
since then if it hadn’t been for Phil.”
“Phil?” said Bromley, recalling Philip’s stubborn refusals to join in
any of the check-slippings.
“Yep, you heard me,” Garth nodded, putting a foot on the step of
the car to be ready to swing up when the starting signal should be
given; “li’l’ old Phil. Yuh recollect how he kind-a soured on me ’long
to-wards the last up at the ‘Jean,’ and after you and him come here
to Denver, he’d pass me in the street without ever seein’ me--head up
and eyes straight out in front, like this”--illustrating in solemn
burlesque. “But he’s a whole lot different now; wouldn’t know him for
the same Phil a-tall.”
“How, different?”
Garth pushed his wide-brimmed hat back and scratched his head with a
reflective finger.
“Why, I dunno, eggzackly; more like folks, I reckon you’d say. Met up
with him yiste’day in Tom and Jerry’s place, and he was leanin’ up
ag’inst the bar, a-pourin’ hisself a drink o’ red likker like a man.
Wouldn’t buy me a drink, though--no, sir-ree!--not on your sweet life!
What he done was to drag me off into a corner and ask me if I didn’t
want to go prospectin’; allowed he’d stake me good if I’d premise not
to blow it; said he knowed if I’d promise, I’d stick.”
“Well?” queried Bromley.
“I shuck hands on it. He done it, and done it right. After we’d been
to the bank, and down to Wolfe Londoner’s place to git Wolfe to ship
me a bunch o’ grub to Buena Vista, Phil, he kind-a hung on and says,
says he, ‘Damn it, Jim, I’m half a mind to go along with you. When I
git to thinkin’ about the clean old hills....’ ‘Come on,’ says I, ‘and
we’ll hunt us up another li’l’ bonanza.’ But he says, ‘No, I ain’t a
coward, Jim; and that’s what I’d be if I took to the hills now.’ What
you reckon he meant by that?”
“Perhaps Phil is the only one who knows the answer to that question,
Jim; and if he is, he won’t tell.”
“Speakin’ o’ Phil,” Garth went on, with a glance over his shoulder to
see if the train conductor was in sight and ready to give the starting
signal; “what-all d’yuh reckon he’s got to do with that frozen-eyed
faro-dealer in Clem Bull’s?”
“I don’t know; tell me,” said Bromley, suddenly anxious to have the
train starting further delayed.
“It was three-four weeks ago, one night after you’d staked me,” Garth
explained. “I’d gone into Bull’s place, aimin’ to buck the tiger one
more li’l’ whirl to see if I couldn’t git some o’ my good money back
ag’in, and I happen’ to look over my shoulder and see Phil a-follerin’
me. Reckoned he was aimin’ to knock me down and drag me out for a
cussed fool, so I dodged him in the crowd and watched to see what he’d
do. He was lookin’ for me, all right; I could see that; but when he
come to the faro layout, he stopped dead, like he’d been shot--jus’
stood there a-starin’ at that dealer with his eyes a-buggin’ out.”
“And then?” Bromley prompted, hurriedly, because the conductor was now
coming down the platform, clearance order in hand.
“Then he kind-a groped his way ’round the table and touched old
Fish-eye on the shoulder. Fish-eye, he looks up and says somethin’,
quiet-like, and then calls in his mate to take the deal box, and goes
off up-stairs with Phil. That’s all I seen, but it got me guessin’.”
The train conductor had shouted his “All aboard!” and the wheels were
beginning to roll. Garth swung up to the step, and there was time only
for a hasty, “So long! See you later!” and the big miner was gone.
Bromley walked up-town, soberly thoughtful; and that evening, after
dinner, drifted into the Bull “palace” and slipped into the ring of
onlookers at the faro game. One appraisive look at the hard-faced man
running the cards from the dealer’s box was all that was needed, and
the play-boy saw to whom Philip owed his cool gray eyes, thin-lipped
mouth, and even the curious brow cow-lick in his hair.
An hour later Bromley had sought and found a redheaded young fellow
whose job as a railroad passenger agent brought him in contact with
all sorts and conditions of men--and women--in the strenuous mother of
mining-camps.
“You are a walking directory of this wild town, Reddick,” the play-boy
began, when he had trailed the breezy young railroad man to his office
in the Union Depot. “Do you happen to know any of the regulars in Clem
Bull’s place?”
Reddick grinned. “All of ’em, I guess; it’s my business to know people.
Which one of Bull’s outfit are you gunning for?”
“A sober, wooden-faced man, clean shaven, middle-aged, with his hair
turning gray, and with eyes as cold as a fish’s. He is one of the faro
dealers.”
“‘Deadwood’ Kent,” said Reddick, without a moment’s hesitation. “Came
from the Black Hills and landed in Leadville with the first rush.”
“What sort?” Bromley queried.
“As tough as they make ’em. They say he had his own private graveyard
in the Hills, though that may be just talk. But he did get his man in
Leadville--which may be the reason why he’s down here and not up there.
Better go loaded for bear if you’ve got a quarrel with him.”
“Nothing like it; nothing but a bit of idle curiosity. I thought he
looked like a hard one, and I fancied you’d know.”
“I do, and he is. New England born, I should say, from his clipped way
of talking. He is living with a woman who is just about as tough as he
is. I’ve seen her working the boxes in the Corinthian.”
“Not married?”
“Oh, I suppose not. People of his and her kind don’t bother about the
little moral formalities. Going up-town? Wait a minute and I’ll walk
with you. I’m about through here.”
It was on the way up Seventeenth Street that Reddick said: “Don’t see
you and Phil Trask chasing around together so much as you used to”--and
stopped short with that.
“No,” Bromley admitted. “I have the social bug, more or less, and Phil
hasn’t.”
“Money doesn’t spoil some people,” remarked the railroad man
cryptically.
“But it does others? Chuck it out, Reddick. What do you know about
Phil?”
“Oh, I run across him here and there--in places that I didn’t think
he’d consent to be found dead in. You see, I knew him when he was with
the narrow-gauge a year ago, before he went prospecting. In those days
all he needed to make him a saint was a halo; but now he gambles a
little, takes a drink when he feels like it--does a lot of things you
couldn’t have hired him to do when he first came to Denver.”
“I know,” said the play-boy easily. “I take a drink now and then,
myself.”
“But I’ll bet a hen worth fifty dollars you don’t take it solo, and in
the places where I’ve seen Phil. However, let’s forget it. It’s none of
my business.”
At the corner of Curtis and Seventeenth, Bromley bade his walking
companion good-night and turned westward. In the West Denver cottage he
found that Jean was the only one sitting up; she was trimming a hat for
herself.
“I was in hopes I’d find you still up,” said Bromley, casting himself
into the easiest chair the living-room afforded; then, scanting all the
preliminaries: “I have found out what we wanted to know.”
It was not like her to demand details, and she did not do so.
“Is it bad?” she asked, without looking up from her work.
“Just about as bad as it can be. I got the clue from Jim Garth, and
then went to see for myself. Afterward, I talked with a man who knows.”
“It did happen that Monday night, then?”
“No doubt about it; though Garth couldn’t be sure of the date.”
“Mr. Garth was there?”
“Yes; he saw Phil and his father when they met, and saw them go off
together. Things being as they are, it isn’t much wonder that Phil went
to pieces. A whole worldful of misfortunes couldn’t have handed out a
blow that would more completely smash a man of Phil’s make-up.”
“But Philip isn’t to blame for what his father has done--or is!” she
protested.
“It isn’t the blame Philip is taking; it’s the shame.”
“Does the man--Philip’s father--call himself by his right name?”
Bromley’s smile was bleak. “No; he is known as ‘Deadwood’ Kent. It
seems that he had decency enough to take an _alias_--though it might
have been only for his own protection.”
“You think there is no doubt but that he took the bank’s money?”
The bleak smile came again. “The man I’ve been looking up this evening
has done a good many worse things than robbing a bank, if half of what
people say about him is true.”
“Poor Philip!” she sighed, and bent lower over her sewing. Then: “He
ought not to stay here in Denver, Harry. Can’t you persuade him to go
away?”
“Who? Philip, or the Kent person?”
“I meant Philip, of course.”
“I doubt if he’ll budge. Yesterday he outfitted Garth to go prospecting
again, and said he had half a mind to go along. But when Garth urged
him, he said no; that he’d be a coward if he took to the hills.”
She nodded. “I told you he would punish himself. It is pitiful, isn’t
it? Do you see much of him now?”
“Not as much as I should like to. He doesn’t dodge me particularly, but
he is keeping all sorts of hours, and it is only a chance if I find him
in his rooms when I go up.”
“But when you do see him?” she prompted.
“He is a wonderfully changed man, Jean. You wouldn’t know him at all
for the old Philip. I don’t know how to describe the change except
to say that it is somehow strangely softening--mollifying--if you
know what I mean. It is as if he’d been down into the lower depths
himself, and had learned to pity rather than to condemn. His changed
attitude toward Jim Garth shows the line he is taking. He has never had
anything but harsh contempt for Garth and people of his kind ... you
know--people with appetites and no self-control. But now he has done
what I have been trying all summer to do, and couldn’t: braced Garth
up and sent him into the mountains where he will be out of the way of
temptation.”
“I know,” came in low tones from the busy hat-trimmer. “That is the
real Philip. But it is terrible that he had to suffer so before he
could find himself.”
“He is still suffering; you can see that plainly enough.”
“Is he--is he still drinking?”
“I am afraid he is; though perhaps not so much to excess; at least,
I haven’t seen him the worse for liquor since he came back from
Leadville. As to that, this wide-open town is partly to blame. It is no
exaggeration to say that half of the business of Denver is transacted
in the bar-rooms. I get it every day. The minute I begin to talk
business with a man, he will say, ‘Well, let’s go and have a drink and
talk it over.’ It is in the air.”
A pause for a few moments, and then Jean looked up to say quietly:
“Philip was here to-night.”
“What?--here in this house?”
“No; he just walked past--twice. I saw him through the window.”
The play-boy got out of his chair and his voice shook a little when he
said:
“That is pathetic, Jean. It means that the sidewalk in front of the
house you live in is as near as he will permit himself to approach the
old relations. I’m going to bed. For heaven’s sake, don’t sit up and
work yourself blind over that hat after you’ve already put in a long
day at the shop! Good-night.”