DUDLEY'S MINE: AND DUDLEY'S GOLD
I have stared my eyes blind for her,
Bridled my body alive for her,
Starved my soul to the rind for her--
Do I lose all?
_The Lost Lover._
I could feel Marcia's satisfied, significant smile through the back of
my neck as I shook hands with Dudley, and was introduced in turn to Miss
Brown--the last name for her, even without the affected Paulette, though
I might not have thought of it but for Marcia--and to Macartney, the new
incumbent of Thompson's shoes. Dudley, little and fat, in the dirty
boots he had worn all day, and just a little loaded, told me to wait
till the morning or go to the devil, when I asked about the mine.
Charliet banged the food on the table for supper--Marcia despised
housekeeping, and if the living room had been reformed nothing else
had--and I sat down in silence and ate. At least I shovelled food into
my famished stomach. My attention was elsewhere.
Paulette Brown sat beside Dudley. She was just twice as pretty as I had
realized, even when the first sight of her struck me dumb. Her eyes were
as dark as indigo, in the lamplight, and a marvellous rose color flitted
in her cheeks as she spoke or was silent. She had wonderful hands, too,
slim and white, without a sign of a bone at the wrists; but I had a
curious feeling that they were the very strongest hands I had ever seen
on a girl. Remembering Dudley, it hurt me to look at her; and suddenly
something else hurt me worse, that I had been a fool not to have thought
of before. Macartney, the mine superintendent, was new there; I knew no
more of him than I did of Paulette Brown--not so much, perhaps, thanks
to Marcia--and it came over me that he might have been the man for whom
she had taken me to-night, and that it was he she had crept out into the
dark to speak to in secret. I looked at him over my coffee cup, and
there was something about him I did not like.
He was a tall man, very capable-looking, as I said; extremely fair and
rather handsome, with hard, grayish eyes that looked straight at you
when he spoke. He had a charming laugh--yet when he laughed I saw
suddenly what it was that I did not like about him; and it was nothing
more nor less than a certain set look about his eye muscles. Some
gamblers have it, and it did not strike my fancy in the new mine
superintendent at La Chance. But watch as I might, I saw no sign of an
understanding between him and my dream girl. It was impossible to be
sure, of course, but I was nearly sure. She spoke to him as she spoke to
Marcia and Dudley--she never addressed one word to me--just easily and
simply, as people do who live in the same house. Macartney himself
talked mostly to Marcia, which was no business of mine. Only I was
somehow curiously thankful that it had not been Macartney whom Paulette
had meant to meet in the dark. There was something about his eyes that
said he was no safe customer for any girl to speak to with
hatred,--especially a girl whom another girl was watching, as Marcia was
watching Paulette Brown. I decided it must have been either Dunn or
Collins--our two worthless Yale boys at the mine--whom she had wanted to
get rid of, and I felt better; for it would be easy enough to save her
trouble by doing that myself. They might just have come back to La
Chance like me, for all I knew, because Dudley had a trick of sending
the men heaven knew where to prospect.
It was rot, anyhow, to be taking a girl's affairs so seriously. I looked
at my dream girl's clear eyes, and thought that if she knew what Marcia
and I were thinking about her she might have good reason to be angry.
Also that Dudley probably knew all about her evening stroll and what she
was doing at La Chance, if Marcia did not. And Dudley's self-important
voice cut through my thoughts like a knife:
"Where on earth were you this evening, Paulette?" he was demanding
irritably. "I couldn't see a sign of you when Marcia and I went out, and
you weren't anywhere when we came in!"
"I don't know"--the girl began--and I saw the color go out of her face,
and it made me angry.
"I can tell you where Miss Brown was," I said deliberately, "if she's
ashamed to own it. She was good and settled by this fire."
Why I lied for her I could not say. But the glance she turned on me gave
me a flat sort of feeling, as if Marcia might be right and she was there
for reasons of her own that I had all but stumbled on by accident. I was
a fool to care; but then I had been a fool all day with my silly
thoughts of leaving La Chance to chase the world for an imaginary girl,
and more fool still to think I had found her there waiting for me. I
said something about being tired and went off to bed. I was tired, right
enough, but I was something else too. All that business about the girl I
meant to find and marry may sound like a child's silly game to you, but
it had been more than a game to me. It had been a solid prop to hold to
in ugly places where a man might slip if he had not clean love and a
girl in his head. And now, at seven-and-twenty, I wanted my child's game
to come true: just my own fire, and my own girl, and a life that held
more than mere slaving for money. And it had come true, as far as the
fire and the welcome home; only the girl was another man's.
I knew what I ought to do was to get out of La Chance, but I could not
screw myself up to the acceptance of the obvious fact that there were
other girls in the world than Paulette Brown. I told myself I was too
dead tired to care. I stumbled to my window to open it--Charliet's lamp
had burned out while I was at supper and the room was stifling--and a
sudden queer sense that some one or something was under my window made
me stand there without raising it. And there was some _thing_, anyway.
The windows in the shack were about a yard above the ground. There was a
glimpse of the moon through the wind-tortured clouds, now on the rough
clearing, now on the thick spruces round the edge of it,--for my window
looked on the bush, not toward the bunk house and the mine. And as the
moonlight flickered back on the clearing I saw my clothes I had worn at
Skunk's Misery and tossed out for Charliet to burn because they
smelled,--and something else that made me stare in pure surprise.
There was a wolf--gaunt, gray, fantastic in the moonlight--rolling on my
clothes; regardless of the human eyes on him and within ten feet of the
house. It was so crazy that I almost forgot the girl Marcia had said was
only "called" Paulette Brown. I jerked up the window and stood waiting
for the wolf to run. And it did not take the least notice of me. I could
have shot it ten times over, but the thing was so incredible that I only
stood staring; and suddenly my chance was gone. The beast picked up my
coat, as a dog does a bone, and disappeared with it like a streak into
the black bush.
"Scott, I never saw a wolf behave like that!" I thought. But one more
impossibility in an impossible day did not matter. I left the window
open and tumbled into bed.
I would have forgotten the thing in the morning, only that when I got up
_all_ my Skunk's Misery clothes had disappeared, and Charliet had not
taken them, because I asked him. I did not mention last night's wolf to
him, because I was in a hurry to catch Dudley and tell him I meant to
leave La Chance. But I did not tell him, for when I thought of leaving
my dream girl to him it would not come to my tongue. An obstinate,
matter-of-fact devil got up in my heart instead and prompted me to stay
just where I was. I looked at Dudley--little, fat, pompous, and so
self-opinionated that it fairly stuck out of him--and thought that if I
had a fair chance I could take my dream girl from him. I might be dark
as an Indian and without a cent to my name except the few dollars I had
sunk in the mine, but I did not drink or eat drugs; and I knew Dudley
did one and guessed he did the other. Interfering with him was out of
the question, of course; it was not a thing any man could do to his
friend, deliberately. I supposed he would be good to the girl, according
to his lights. But, all the same, I decided to stay at La Chance. I saw
Dudley was brimming over with something secret, and I hoped to heaven it
was not his engagement, and that I should not have to stand my own
thoughts of a girl translated into Dudley's. But he did not mention her.
He hooked his fat wrist into my elbow and trotted me down to the mine.
It was an amateur sort of mine, as you may have gathered. Dudley had no
use for expert assistance or for advice. And it was a simple looking
place. The shore of Lac Tremblant there ran back flat to a hill, a
quarter of a mile from the water, with a solid rock face like a cliff.
Along that cliff face came first Dudley's shack, then Thompson's tunnel,
then--a good way farther down--the bunk house, the mill, and a shanty
Dudley called the assay office. But I stared at a new hole in the cliff,
farther down even than the assay office.
"Why, you've driven a new tunnel," I exclaimed.
"Yes, my young son," said Dudley; and then he burst out with things.
Macartney had run that new tunnel as soon as he came and struck quartz
that was solid for heaven knew how far, and carrying thick, free gold
that assayed incredibly to the ton. The La Chance mine, whose name had
been more truth than poetry--for when I made fifty miles of road that
cost like the devil, to haul in machinery and a mill it was pitch and
toss if we should ever need it--had turned out a certainty while I was
away.
I stood silent. It meant plenty to me, who had only a trifle in the
thing, but I was the only soul in the world who knew what it meant to
Dudley. Stocks, carelessness, but chiefly bull-headed extravagance, had
run through every cent he had, and La Chance had saved him from having
to live on Marcia's charity,--if she had any. There was no fear, either,
of his being interfered with in the bonanza he had struck; for leaving
out my infinitesimal share, Dudley was sole owner,--and he had bought a
thousand acres mining concession from the Government for ten dollars an
acre, which is the law when a potential mining district in unsurveyed
territory is more than twenty miles by a wagon road from a railway. All
he had to do with would-be prospectors was to chuck them out. He had got
in ten stamps for his mill over the road I had built from Caraquet,
and--since Macartney arrived--was milling stuff whose net result made me
stare, after the miserable, two-dollar ore old Thompson had broken my
heart with.
"So you see, we're made," Dudley finished simply. "Macartney struck his
vein first go off, and we'll be able to work it all winter. You'd better
start in to-day and get some snowsheds built along the face of the
workings--they ought to have been started a week ago. Why in the
devil"--drink and drugs do not make a man easy to work with, and you
never knew when Dudley might turn on you with a face like a
fiend--"didn't you get back from Caraquet before? You'd nothing to keep
you away this last week!"
"I'd plenty," I returned drily. "And I may remind you that I didn't
propose to have to walk back!" It was the first time I had mentioned my
missing horse. I did not mention my stay in Skunk's Misery: it was a
side show of my own, to my mind, and unconnected with Dudley,--though I
ought to have known that nothing in life is ever a side show, even if
you can't see the door from the big tent.
"Oh, your horse," said Dudley more civilly. "I didn't think I'd
forgotten about it, but I suppose I must have. I was a good deal put out
getting Thompson off."
"What happened about him?" I had had no chance to ask before.
"Oh, I never could stand him," and I knew it was true. "Sitting all the
evening playing cards like a performing dog! And he wasn't fit for his
work, either. I told him so, and he said he'd go. He went out to
Caraquet nearly a month ago--I thought you knew. D'ye mean you didn't
see him going through?"
I shook my head. It was a wonder I had not, for I had spent most of last
month fussing over some bad places on the road, by the turn where I had
found my boy from Skunk's Misery, and I ought to have seen Thompson go
by. But the solution was simple. There was one Monday and Tuesday I had
my road gang off in the bush, on the opposite side from the Skunk's
Misery valley, getting stuff to finish a bit of corduroy. In those two
days I could have missed seeing Thompson, and I said so.
"You didn't miss much," Dudley returned carelessly. "This Macartney's a
long sight better man."
"Where'd you get him?" I was pretty sure it was not Macartney for whom
my dream girl had mistaken me in the dark, but there was no harm in
knowing all I could about him.
Dudley knocked the wind straight out of my half suspicion.
"Thompson sent him," he returned with a grin. "I told him to get
somebody. Oh, we parted friends all right, old Thompson and I! He saw,
just as I did, that he wasn't the man for the place. Macartney struck
that vein first go off, and that was recommendation enough for me. But
here's Thompson's, if you want to see it!" He extracted a folded letter
from a case.
It was written in Thompson's careful, back-number copperplate, perhaps
not so careful as usual, but his unmistakably. And once and for all I
dismissed all idea that it could have been Macartney who was tangled up
with Paulette Brown. Old Thompson's friends were not that sort, and he
vouched for knowing Macartney all his life. He was a well-known man,
according to Thompson, with a long string of letters after his name.
Thompson had come on him by accident, and sent him up at once, before he
was snapped up elsewhere.
"Thompson seems to have got a move on in sending up his successor,"
said I idly. "When did he write this?" For there was no envelope, and
only Montreal, with no date, on the letter.
"Dunno--first day he got to Montreal, it says," carelessly. "Come along
and have a look at the workings. I want you to get log shelters built as
quick as you can build them--we don't want to have to dig out the new
tunnel mouth every time it snows. After that you can go to Caraquet with
what gold we've got out and be gone as long as you please. Now, we may
have snow any day."
I nodded. The winter arrives for good at La Chance in November, and
besides the exposed tunnel mouth, there was no shelter over the ore
platform at the mill. This year the snow was late, but there was no
counting on that. And I blinked as I went out of the white November
sunshine into Macartney's new tunnel, and the candlelight of his humming
stope. One glance around told me Dudley was right, and the man knew his
business; and it was the same over at the mill. It seemed to me
superintendent was a mild name for Macartney, and general manager would
have fitted better. But I said nothing, for Dudley considered he was
general manager himself. Another thing that pleased me about the new man
was that he seemed to be doing nothing, till you saw how his men jumped
for him, while Thompson had never been able to keep his hands off the
men's work. There was none of that in Macartney; and if he had struck me
as capable the night before he looked ten times more so now, as he
placidly ran four jobs at once.
He was a good-looking figure of a man, too, in his brown duck working
clothes, and I did not wonder Marcia Wilbraham had taken a fancy to him.
Dudley would probably be blazing if he caught her philandering with his
superintendent, but it was no business of mine. And anyhow, Macartney
had my blessing since it could not be he to whom Paulette Brown had
meant to speak the night before. That ought to have been none of my
business either, and to get it out of my head I turned to Dudley,
fussing round and talking about tailings. And one omission in all he and
Macartney had shown me hopped up in my head. "Where's your gold?" I
demanded.
"That's one thing we don't keep loose on the doorsteps," Macartney
returned drily, and I rather liked him for it, since he knew nothing of
my share in the mine.
But Dudley snapped at him: "Why can't you say it's in the house--in my
office? Stretton's going to take it into Caraquet; there's no sense in
making a mystery to him. Come on, Stretton, and have a look at it now!"
He stuck his fat little arm through mine, and we went back to the house
by the back door and Charliet's untidy kitchen. It was the shortest way,
and it was not till afterwards that I remembered it was not commanded by
the window in his office, like the front way. I was not keen on going;
later I had a sickly feeling that it was because I had a presentiment of
seeing something I did not want to see. Then all I thought was that I
had a hundred other things to do, and though I went unwillingly, I went.
"The gold's in my safe, in boxes," Dudley said on the way, "and that I'm
not going to undo. But I've a lump or two in my desk I can show you."
"Lying round loose?" I shrugged my shoulders.
"No, it's locked up. But no one ever comes in here but me, and"--he gave
a shove at the office door that seemed to have stuck,--"and Miss Brown!"
But I was speechless where I stood behind him. There was the bare
office; Dudley's locked desk; Dudley's safe against the wall. And
turning away from the safe, in her blue sweater and blue skirt and
stockings and little buckled shoes, was my dream girl!
Something in my heart turned over as I looked at her. It was not that
she had started, for she had not. She just stood in front of us, poised
and serene, and some sort of a letter she had been writing lay half
finished on Dudley's desk. But something totally outside me told me she
had been writing no letter while we were out; that she knew the
combination of the safe; had opened it; had but just shut it; and--_that
she had been doing something to the boxes of gold inside it_.
There was nothing in her face to say so, though, and my thought never
struck Dudley. He gave her a nod and a patronizing: "Well, nice girl,"
without the least surprise at seeing her there. But I had seen a pin dot
of blue sealing wax on the glimpse of white blouse that showed through
the open front of her sweater, and something else. I stooped, while
Dudley was fussing with the lock of his desk, and picked up a curious
little gold seal that lay on the floor by the safe.
Whether I meant to speak of it or not I don't know; for quick as light,
the girl held out her hand for it. I said nothing as I gave it to her.
Dudley did not see me do it; and, of course, it might have been a seal
of his own. But, if it were, why did not Paulette Brown say so,--or say
something--instead of standing dead white and silent till I turned away?
I knew--as I said "Oh" over Dudley's gold, and my dream girl slipped out
of the room--that I had helped her to keep some kind of a secret for
the second time. And that if she had any mysterious business at La
Chance it was something fishy about Dudley's gold!