THE PLACE OF DEPARTED SPIRITS
Every man carries his skull under his face, but
God alone knows the marks on it.
_Indian Proverb._
For a man moved, silent and furtive, in the tunnel between me and the
stope!
At the knowledge something flared up in me that had been pretty well
burnt out: and that was Hope. That any one was in the place showed
Macartney had either put a guard on me--which meant Thompson's abandoned
stope was not sealed so mighty securely as I thought--or else it was he
himself facing me in the dark, and I might get even with him yet. I let
out a string of curses at him on the chance. There was not one single
thing he had done--to me, Paulette, or any one else--that I did not put
a name to. And I trusted Macartney, or any man he had left in the
ink-dark stope, would be fool enough to jump at me for what I said.
But no one jumped. And out of the graveyard blackness in front of me
came a muffled chuckle!
It rooted me stone still, and I dare swear it would have you. For the
chuckle was Dunn's: Dunn's,--who was dead and buried, and Collins with
him! But suddenly I was blazing angry, for the chuckle came again,
and--dead man's or not--it was mocking! I jumped to it and caught a live
throat, hard. But before I could choke the breath out of it a voice that
was not Dunn's shouted at me: "Hold your horses, for any sake, Stretton!
It's us."
A match rasped, flared in my eyes, and I saw Dunn and Collins! Saw
Dunn's stubbly fair hair, clipped close till it stood on end, as it had
on the skull I'd said a prayer over and buried; saw Collins standing on
the long shank bones I knew I had buried in the bush!
I stared, dazed, facing the two boys I could have sworn were dead and
buried. And instead Dunn gasped wheezingly from the rock where I had let
him drop, and Collins drawled as if we had met yesterday:
"We heard we were dead! But it wasn't us you buried, or any of Hutton's
men either, for he'd have missed 'em. I expect you'd better put your
funeral down to two stray prospectors, and let it go at that!" He looked
curiously into my face. "You don't seem to have got much yourself by
playing the giddy goat with Hutton!"
In the dying flicker of his match I saw his young, sneering eyes, as he
called Macartney "Hutton," and realized furiously that Paulette had been
right, not only that Dunn and Collins were alive, but that they were on
Macartney's side. I blazed out at the two of them:
"So you've been in with Hutton all along, you young swine! I've been a
blank fool; I ought to have guessed Hutton had bought you!"
Dunn let out a sharp oath, but Collins only threw down the glowing end
of his match. "I wouldn't say we were on Hutton's pay roll exactly,
since you seem to have found out Macartney's real name at last," he
retorted scornfully. "We've been on our own, ever since we saw fit to
disappear and bunk in here. Though by luck Hutton hasn't guessed it, or
we wouldn't be here now!"
"I don't know that it's any too clear why you are here," I flung out
hotly. "D'ye mean to say you've been living here, _hiding_, ever since
you cleared out, and I thought the wolves ate you? That you knew all
along who Macartney was--and never told me?"
"Not exactly here, if you mean Thompson's old stope you're corked up in;
but of course we knew Macartney was Hutton," Collins returned
categorically. "As for telling you about him--well, we weren't any too
sure you weren't Hutton's man yourself--till to-night!"
"_What?_" said I.
But Collins apologized calmly. "We were asses, of course; but we
couldn't tell we'd made a mistake. We didn't have as much fun as a bag
of monkeys while we were making it, either, especially when there was
that--trouble--in the assay office. We came in on the tail-end of that,
only we'd no guns, and it was too late to help our poor chaps, anyway.
Besides, we thought you----" but he checked abruptly. "It's too long to
explain in this freezing hole. Let's get out! You're not corked up here
so dead tight as Hutton-Macartney thinks," and in the dark I knew he
grinned. "Only I imagine we'd better decide what we're going to do
before he discovers that!"
"Do? I've got to get Paulette!" But I lurched as I turned back to the
blocked tunnel entrance, and Collins caught me by the shoulder.
"You can't get her," said he succinctly, "unless we help you! Going to
trust us?"
It didn't seem to me that I had any choice; so I said yes. Then I gaped
like a fool. Dunn and Collins had me by the arms and were marching me
through the dark, not toward the tunnel where I'd been slung in, but
back through Thompson's black, abandoned stope, as if it had been
Broadway, till the side wall of it brought us up. "Over you go," said
Collins gruffly. He gave me a boost against the smooth wall of the
stope, and my clawing fingers caught on the edge of a sharp shelf of
stone. I swung myself up on it, mechanically, and felt my feet go
through the solid stope wall, into space. There was an opening in the
living rock, and as Collins lit another match where he stood below me, I
saw it: a practicable manhole, slanting down behind my shelf so sharply
that it must have been invisible from Thompson's stope, even in
candlelight. Collins and Dunn swarmed up beside me, and the next second
we all three slid through the black slit behind our ledge, and
out--somewhere else. Collins lit a candle-end, and I saw we were in a
second tunnel, a remarkably amateur, unsafe tunnel, too, if I'd been
worrying about trifles, but not Thompson's!
The thing made me start, and Collins grinned. "More convenient exit than
old Thompson's, only we don't live here! If you'll come on you'll see."
He and his candle disappeared round a loose looking boulder into a dark
hole in the tunnel side, and his voice continued blandly as I stumbled
after. "Natural cave, this tunnel was, when we found it; this second
cave leading out of it; and a passage from here to--outside!" He waved
his hand around as I stood dumb. "Our little country home!"
What I saw was a small round cave, the glow of a fire under a shaft that
led all betraying smoke heaven knew where into the side of the hill, and
two spruce beds with blankets. The permanent look of the place was the
last straw on my own blind idiocy of never suspecting Macartney, and I
burst out, "Why the deuce, with all you knew, couldn't you have brought
Paulette here and hidden her?"
"Charliet said we should have." Collins nodded when I stared. "Oh, yes,
there's more to that French Canadian than just cook! He's been in the
know about us here all this time, or we'd have been in a nice hole for
grub. Mind, I don't say he's brave----"
"He was under his bed when I wanted him to-night," I agreed with some
bitterness.
"Was he?" Collins exclaimed electrically. "He was here, giving us the
office about you! He tore down and told us you'd got Hutton, and we'd
better light out and help you: but when we turned out it looked more as
if Hutton had got _you_! When you and Miss Paulette rushed out of the
kitchen door you must have run straight into an ambush of his men, and
I guess one of them landed you a swipe on the head. Anyhow, Dunn and I
met a procession with you frog-marched in the middle of it, that was
more than we could manage without guns. So we kind of retired and let
the men cork you into Thompson's stope to die. And you bet they did it.
Not six of us could have got you out, ever, if we hadn't known a private
way."
I cursed him. "My God, stop _talking_! It's not me I want to hear about.
Where was Paulette? D'ye mean you followed me and left her--left a
girl--to Macartney? I--I've got to go for her!"
But Collins caught me as I turned. "Macartney hadn't got her--she wasn't
there! We hoofed Charliet off to find her, first thing; he'll bring her
here, as soon as it's safe to make a get-away. We'd have brought her
ourselves, only the show would have been spoiled if Hutton had spotted
us. And we had to hustle, too, to get back here and waltz you out of
Thompson's mausoleum. It'll be time enough for you to go for Miss
Paulette when she doesn't turn up. You're not fit now, anyway." I felt
him staring into my face. "Had anything to eat all day, except a hard
ride and a fight?" he demanded irrelevantly, in a voice that sounded
oddly far off.
I shook my head; and the smell of coffee smote my famished nostrils as
he took a tin pot off the fire. I knew how nearly I had been done when
the scalding stuff picked me up like brandy. But--"You're sure about
Paulette?" I gasped. "Remember, Macartney was bound to get her!"
"Well, he didn't," Collins returned composedly. "I bet he's looking for
her right now, and I'm dead sure he won't find her. Charliet wasn't born
yesterday: he'll bring her here all right."
"I'll wait ten minutes," I gave in abruptly, and because I knew I
couldn't do anything else till I had filled my empty stomach. But there
was something I wanted to know. "What did you mean, just now, about not
being sure of me--with Hutton?"
Dunn spoke up for the first time. "It was Miss Paulette; we thought it
was you we heard her talking to, two nights in the dark. So when she
drove off to Caraquet with you and the gold, after we'd heard her say
she couldn't trust you--at least, the man we thought was you--we didn't
know whether you were in with Hutton or not, or what kind of a game you
were playing."
"Me?" I swore blankly. "I suppose it never struck you that _I_ believed
the man playing the game was Collins--till you both disappeared, and I
decided it must be some one who never was employed around this mine!"
"Well, I'm hanged," said Collins, and suddenly knocked the wits out of
me by muttering that at least we'd both had sense enough to know that
Miss Valenka was square.
"Valenka? D'ye mean you knew who she was, too?" I stuttered.
"Dunn did," Collins nodded. "I only knew Hutton. But I knew more than my
prayers about him, and Dunn told me about the girl. So we sort of kept
guard for her and watched you and Hutton--till the day we had the row
with him."
"In the mine! He told me." Only half of me heard him. The rest was
listening for the sound of footsteps. But the place was still.
"In Thompson's stope," Collins corrected drily. "You see, we thought you
and Macartney-Hutton were working together, and we didn't see our way to
tackling the two of you at once. So when you went off to Caraquet with
Miss Paulette, we thought we'd get Hutton cleared out of this before you
got back again. We kind of let him see us leave work in the mine and
sneak into the old stope. When he came after us, we dropped on him with
what we knew about him; and between us we knew a deal. We gave him his
choice about leaving the neighborhood that minute, or our going
straight to Wilbraham and telling who he was and what he was there
for--which was where we slipped up! He'd the gall to tell us to our
faces that we'd no pull over him, because we were doing private work in
Thompson's stope and stealing Wilbraham's gold out of it. And--that
rather gave us the check."
"But--why? There wasn't six cents' worth of gold there to steal!"
Collins smiled with shameless simplicity. "I know. But stealing gold was
exactly what we were doing, only it wasn't in Thompson's old stope. We'd
have been caught with the goods on us though, if any one had fussed
round there to investigate. We found our way in here," he jerked his
head toward his amateur tunnel, "by accident, in Thompson's time, one
day when the stope happened to be empty; and we burrowed on to what
looked like the anticlinal, before we heard the stope shift coming and
had to slide out. But we'd seen enough to keep us burrowing. We couldn't
do much, even after Hutton ran the other tunnel half a mile down the
cliff and caught gold there; but we kind of slipped in, evenings, when
you missed us out of the bunk house"--he grinned again--"and got the
bearings of that vein. And you bet we had to find a way to stay with it;
it was too good to leave! We weren't going to work in Wilbraham's mine
just for our health and days' wages, when we'd struck our own gold. So
we reckoned we'd just--disappear. But we didn't get out as sharp as we
did simply on account of our own private affairs. Macartney-Hutton drew
a gun the day we had the row he lied to you about, and I guess we just
legged it out of Thompson's stope--by the front way!--in time to make
the bush with our lives on us. Macartney thought he'd scared us, and
we'd lit for Caraquet; but we lit back again after dark. We crawled in
here by our back entrance you haven't seen yet, and here we've been ever
since! We didn't confide in you, because you seemed pretty thick with
Macartney, if you come to think of it; and it seemed a hefty kind of a
lie, too, when you told Charliet you'd buried us. I rather think that's
all, till to-night----" his indifferent drawl stopped as if it were cut
off with a knife. "My God, Stretton," he jerked, "I'd forgotten! Was it
true--what Charliet told us to-night--about Dudley Wilbraham?"
I was eating stuff the silent Dunn had supplied, but I put the meat
down. "Wilbraham's killed," I heard my own voice say; and then told the
rest of it. How Paulette had found Dudley's chewed, wolf-doped cap, and
Marcia had found Dudley, silent in the silent bush, where the last wolf
was sneaking away. I would not have known Collins's face as he asked
what I meant about wolf dope now and when I thought I was swearing at
Macartney in Thompson's stope.
I told him, with my ears straining for Charliet and a girl creeping to
us, through Collins's back way out. But all I heard was silence,--that
thick, underground silence that fills the ears like wool. I had said I
would wait ten minutes, and nine of them were gone. I don't think I
spoke. Dunn muttered suddenly, "They're not coming!"
Collins shook his head and coldly cursed himself and me for two fools
who had lain low, when out in the open together we could have stopped
Macartney from getting Dudley, if we couldn't have helped old Thompson.
He never mentioned Paulette, or his trusted cook. But he rose, lit a
second candle, and led the way out of his warm burrow by a dark hole
opposite the one we had entered by, and into a cramped alley where we
had to walk bent double. It felt as if it ran a mile before it turned in
a sharp right angle. Collins pinched out his light and turned on me.
"Just what--are you going to do?"
"Get Paulette," said I.
"M-m," said Collins. "Well, here's where we start. Get hold of my heels
when I lie down and don't crowd me." And that was every word that came
out of either of us as we dropped flat, and wormed head-first down a
slope of smooth stone till cold, fresh air abruptly smote my face. In
front of us was an opening, out of the bowels of the hill, into the
night and the snow. Rooted juniper hung down over it in an impervious
curtain, as it hung everywhere from the rocks at La Chance. Collins
pushed it aside, and the two of us were out--out of Thompson's stope,
where Macartney had meant me to lie till I died!