THE HOLD-UP
Keith returned home that night. He now and then thought of Lancaster
with a little misgiving. It was apparent that Mrs. Yorke was his friend;
but, after all, Alice would never think of marrying a gray-haired man.
She could not do it.
His father's pleasure when he told him of the stand he had taken with
Mr. Wickersham reassured him.
"You did exactly right, sir; as a gentleman should have done," he said,
as his face lighted up with pride and affection. "Go back and make your
own way. Owe no man anything."
Gordon went back to his little office filled with a determination to
succeed. He had now a double motive: he would win Alice Yorke, and he
would show Mr. Wickersham who he was. A visit from Squire Rawson not
long after he returned gave him new hope. The old man chuckled as he
told him that he had had an indirect offer from Wickersham for his land,
much larger than he had expected. It had only confirmed him in his
determination to hold on.
"If it's worth that to him," he said, "it's worth that to me. We'll hold
on awhile, and let him open a track for us. You look up the lines and
keep your eye on 'em. Draw me some pictures of the lands. I reckon
Phrony will have a pretty good patrimony before I'm through." He gave
Keith a shrewd glance which, however, that young man did not see.
Not long afterwards Gordon received an invitation to Norman's wedding.
He was to marry Miss Caldwell.
When Gordon read the account of the wedding, with the church "banked
with flowers," and the bridal couple preceded by choristers, chanting,
he was as interested as if it had been his brother's marriage. He tried
to picture Alice Yorke in her bridesmaid's dress, "with the old lace
draped over it and the rosebuds festooned about her."
He glanced around his little room with grim amusement as he thought of
the difference it might make to him if he had what Mrs. Yorke had called
"an establishment." He would yet be Keith of Elphinstone.
One fact related disturbed him. Ferdy Wickersham was one of the ushers,
and it was stated that he and Miss Yorke made a handsome couple.
Norman had long ago forgotten Ferdy's unfriendly action at college, and
wishing to bury all animosities and start his new life at peace with the
whole world, he invited Ferdy to be one of his ushers, and Ferdy, for
his own reasons, accepted. Ferdy Wickersham was now one of the most
talked-of young men in New York. He had fulfilled the promise of his
youth at least in one way, for he was one of the handsomest men in the
State. Mrs. Wickersham, in whose heart defeat rankled, vowed that she
would never bow so low as to be an usher at that wedding. But her son
was of a deeper nature. He declared that he was "abundantly able to
manage his own affairs."
At the wedding he was one of the gayest of the guests, and he and Miss
Yorke were, as the newspapers stated, undoubtedly the handsomest couple
of all the attendants. No one congratulated Mrs. Wentworth with more
fervid words. To be sure, his eyes sought the bride's with a curious
expression in them; and when he spoke with her apart a little later,
there was an air of cynicism about him that remained in her memory. The
handsomest jewel she received outside of the Wentworth family was from
him. Its centre was a heart set with diamonds.
For a time Louise Wentworth was in the seventh heaven of ecstasy over
her good fortune. Her beautiful house, her carriages, her gowns, her
husband, and all the equipage of her new station filled her heart. She
almost immediately took a position that none other of the young brides
had. She became the fashion. In Norman's devotion she might have quite
forgotten Ferdy Wickersham, had Ferdy been willing that she should do
so. But Ferdy had no idea of allowing himself to be forgotten. For a
time he paid quite devoted attention to Alice Yorke; but Miss Alice
looked on his attentions rather as a joke. She said to him:
"Now, Ferdy, I am perfectly willing to have you send me all the flowers
in New York, and go with me to the theatre every other night, and offer
me all the flattery you have left over from Louise; but I am not going
to let it be thought that I am going to engage myself to you; for I am
not, and you don't want me."
"I suppose you reserve that for my fortunate rival, Mr. Lancaster?" said
the young man, insolently.
Alice's eyes flashed. "At least not for you."
So Ferdy gradually and insensibly drifted back to Mrs. Wentworth. For a
little while he was almost tragic; then he settled down into a state of
cold cynicism which was not without its effect. He never believed that
she cared for Norman Wentworth as much as she cared for him. He believed
that her mother had made the match, and deep in his heart he hated
Norman with the hate of wounded pride. Moreover, as soon as Mrs.
Wentworth was beyond him, he began to have a deeper feeling for her than
he had ever admitted before. He set before himself very definitely just
what he wanted to do, and he went to work about it with a patience
worthy of a better aim. He flattered her in many ways which, experience
had told him, were effective with the feminine heart.
Ferdy Wickersham estimated Mrs. Wentworth's vanity at its true value;
but he underestimated her uprightness and her pride. She was vain
enough to hazard wrecking her happiness; but her pride was as great as
her vanity.
Thus, though Ferdy Wickersham flattered her vanity by his delicate
attentions, his patient waiting, he found himself, after long service,
in danger of being balked by her pride. His apparent faithfulness had
enlisted her interest; but she held him at a distance with a resolution
which he would not have given her credit for.
Most men, under such circumstances, would have retired and confessed
defeat; but not so with Ferdy Wickersham. To admit defeat was gall and
wormwood to him. His love for Louise had given place to a feeling almost
akin to a desire for revenge. He would show her that he could conquer
her pride. He would show the world that he could humble Norman
Wentworth. His position appeared to him impregnable. At the head of a
great business, the leader of the gayest set in the city, and the
handsomest and coolest man in town--he was bound to win. So he bided his
time, and went on paying Mrs. Wentworth little attentions that he felt
must win her in the end. And soon he fancied that he began to see the
results of his patience. Old Mr. Wentworth's health had failed rapidly,
and Norman was so wholly engrossed in business, that he found himself
unable to keep up with the social life of their set. If, however, Norman
was too busy to attend all the entertainments, Ferdy was never too busy
to be on hand, a fact many persons were beginning to note.
Squire Rawson's refusal of the offer for his lands began to cause Mr.
Aaron Wickersham some uneasiness. He had never dreamed that the old
countryman would be so intractable. He refused even to set a price on
them. He "did not want to sell," he said.
Mr. Wickersham conferred with his son. "We have got to get control of
those lands, Ferdy. We ought to have got them before we started the
railway. If we wait till we get through, we shall have to pay double.
The best thing is for you to go down there and get them. You know the
chief owner and you know that young Keith. You ought to be able to work
them. We shall have to employ Keith if necessary. Sometimes a very small
lever will work a big one."
"Oh, I can work them easy enough," said the young man; "but I don't want
to go down there just now--the weather's cold, and I have a lot of
engagements and a matter on hand that requires my presence here now."
His father's brow clouded. Matters had not been going well of late. The
Wentworths had been growing cooler both in business and in social life.
In the former it had cost him a good deal of money to have the Wentworth
interest against him; in the latter it had cost Mrs. Wickersham a good
deal of heart-burning. And Aaron Wickersham attributed it to the fact,
of which rumors had come to him, that Ferdy was paying young Mrs.
Wentworth more attention than her husband and his family liked, and they
took this form of resenting it.
"I do not know what business engagement you can have more important than
a matter in which we have invested some millions which may be saved by
prompt attention or lost. What engagements have you?"
"That is my affair," said Ferdy, coolly.
"Your affair! Isn't your affair my affair?" burst out his father.
"Not necessarily. There are several kinds of affairs. I should be sorry
to think that all of my affairs you had an interest in."
He looked so insolent as he sat back with half-closed eyes and stroked
his silken, black moustache that his father lost his temper.
"I know nothing about your affairs of one kind," he burst out angrily,
"and I do not wish to know; but I want to tell you that I think you are
making an ass of yourself to be hanging around that Wentworth woman,
having every one talking about you and laughing at you."
The young man's dark face flushed angrily.
"What's that?" he said sharply.
"She is another man's wife. Why don't you let her alone?" pursued the
father.
"For that very reason," said Ferdy, recovering his composure and his
insolent air.
"---- it! Let the woman alone," said his father. "Your fooling around
her has already cost us the backing of Wentworth & Son--and,
incidentally, two or three hundred thousand."
The younger man looked at the other with a flash of rage. This quickly
gave way to a colder gleam.
"Really, sir, I could not lower myself to measure a matter of sentiment
by so vulgar a standard as your ---- money."
His air was so intolerable that the father's patience quite gave way.
"Well, by ----! you'd better lower yourself, or you'll have to stoop
lower than that. Creamer, Crustback & Company are out with us; the
Wentworths have pulled out; so have Kestrel and others. Your deals and
corners have cost me a fortune. I tell you that unless we pull through
that deal down yonder, and unless we get that railroad to earning
something, so as to get a basis for rebonding, you'll find yourself
wishing you had my 'damned money.'"
"Oh, I guess we'll pull it through," said the young man. He rose coolly
and walked out of the office.
The afternoon he spent with Mrs. Norman. He had to go South, he told
her, to look after some large interests they had there. He made the
prospects so dazzling that she laughingly suggested that he had better
put a little of her money in there for her. She had quite a snug sum
that the Wentworths had given her.
"Why do not you ask Norman to invest it?" he inquired, with a laugh.
"Oh, I don't know. He says bonds are the proper investment for women."
"He rather underestimates your sex, some of them," said Wickersham. And
as he watched the color come in her cheeks, he added: "I tell you what I
will do: I will put in fifty thousand for you on condition that you
never mention it to a soul."
"I promise," she said half gratefully, and they shook hands on it.
That evening he informed his father that he would go South. "I'll get
those lands easy enough," he said.
A few days later Ferdy Wickersham got off the train at Ridgely, now
quite a flourishing little health-resort, and in danger of becoming a
fashionable one, and that afternoon he drove over to Squire Rawson's.
A number of changes had taken place in the old white-pillared house
since Ferdy had been an inmate. New furniture of black walnut
supplanted, at least on the first floor, the old horsehair sofa and
split-bottomed chairs and pine tables; a new plush sofa and a new piano
glistened in the parlor; large mirrors with dazzling frames hung on the
low walls, and a Brussels carpet as shiny as a bed of tulips, and as
stiff as the stubble of a newly cut hay-field, was on the floor.
But great as were these changes, they were not as great as that which
had taken place in the young person for whom they had been made.
When Ferdy Wickersham drove up to the door, there was a cry and a scurry
within, as Phrony Tripper, after a glance out toward the gate, dashed up
the stairs.
When Miss Euphronia Tripper, after a half-hour or more of careful and
palpitating work before her mirror, descended the old straight stairway,
she was a very different person from the round-faced, plump school-girl
whom Ferdy, as a lad, had flirted with under the apple-trees three or
four years before. She was quite as different as was the new piano with
its deep tones from the rattling old instrument that jingled and clanged
out of tune, or as the cool, self-contained, handsome young man in
faultless attire was from the slim, uppish boy who used to strum on it.
It was a very pretty and blushing young country maiden who now entered
quite accidentally the parlor where sat Mr. Ferdy Wickersham in calm and
indifferent discourse with her grandfather on the crops, on cattle, and
on the effect of the new railroad on products and prices.
Several sessions at a boarding-school of some pretension, with ambition
which had been awakened years before under the apple-trees, had given
Miss Phrony the full number of accomplishments that are to be gained by
such means. The years had also changed the round, school-girl plumpness
into a slim yet strong figure; and as she entered the parlor,--quite
casually, be it repeated,--with a large basket of flowers held
carelessly in one hand and a great hat shading her face, the blushes
that sprang to her cheeks at the wholly unexpected discovery of a
visitor quite astonished Wickersham.
"By Jove! who would have believed it!" he said to himself.
Within two minutes after she had taken her seat on the sofa near
Wickersham, that young envoy had conceived a plan which had vaguely
suggested itself as a possibility during his journey South. Here was an
ally to his hand; he could not doubt it; and if he failed to win he
would deserve to lose.
The old squire had no sooner left the room than the visitor laid the
first lines for his attack.
Why was she surprised to see him? He had large interests in the
mountains, and could she doubt that if he was within a thousand miles he
would come by to see her?
The mantling cheeks and dancing eyes showed that this took effect.
"Oh, you came down on business? That was all! I know," she said.
Wickersham looked her in the eyes.
Business was only a convenient excuse. Old Halbrook could have attended
to the business; but he preferred to come himself. Possibly she could
guess the reason? He looked handsome and sincere enough as he leant
over and gazed in her face to have beguiled a wiser person than Phrony.
She, of course, had not the least idea.
Then he must tell her. To do this he found it necessary to sit on the
sofa close to her. What he told her made her blush very rosy again, and
stammer a little as she declared her disbelief in all he said, and was
sure there were the prettiest girls in the world in New York, and that
he had never thought of her a moment. And no, she would not listen to
him--she did not believe a word he said; and--yes, of course, she was
glad to see any old friend; and no, he should not go. He must stay with
them. They expected him to do so.
So Ferdy sent to Ridgely for his bags, and spent several days at Squire
Rawson's, and put in the best work he was capable of during that time.
He even had the satisfaction of seeing Phrony treat coldly and send away
one or two country bumpkins who rode up in all the bravery of long
broad-cloth coats and kid gloves.
But if at the end of this time the young man could congratulate himself
on success in one quarter, he knew that he was balked in the other.
Phrony Tripper was heels over head in love with him; but her
grandfather, though easy and pliable enough to all outward seeming, was
in a land-deal as dull as a ditcher. Wickersham spread out before him
maps and plats showing that he owned surveys which overlapped those
under which the old man claimed.
"Don't you see my patents are older than yours?"
"Looks so," said the old man, calmly. "But patents is somethin' like
folks: they may be too old."
The young man tried another line.
The land was of no special value, he told him; he only wanted to quiet
their titles, etc. But the squire not only refused to sell an acre at
the prices offered him, he would place no other price whatever on it.
In fact, he did not want to sell. He had bought the land for mountain
pasture, and he didn't know about these railroads and mines and such
like. Phrony would have it after his death, and she could do what she
wished with it after he was dead and gone.
"He is a fool!" thought Wickersham, and set Phrony to work on him; but
the old fellow was obdurate. He kissed Phrony for her wheedling, but
told her that women-folks didn't understand about business. So
Wickersham had to leave without getting the lands.
* * * * *
The influx of strangers was so great now at Gumbolt that there was a
stream of vehicles running between a point some miles beyond Eden, which
the railroad had reached, and Gumbolt. Wagons, ambulances, and other
vehicles of a nondescript character on good days crowded the road,
filling the mountain pass with the cries and oaths of their drivers and
the rumbling and rattling of their wheels, and filling Mr. Gilsey's soul
with disgust. But the vehicle of honor was still "Gilsey's stage." It
carried the mail and some of the express, had the best team in the
mountains, and was known as the "reg'lar." On bad nights the road was a
little less crowded. And it was a bad night that Ferdy Wickersham took
for his journey to Gumbolt.
Keith had been elected marshal, but had appointed Dave Dennison his
deputy, and on inclement nights Keith still occasionally relieved Tim
Gilsey, for in such weather the old man was sometimes too stiff to climb
up to his box.
"The way to know people," said the old driver to him, "is to travel on
the road with 'em. There is many a man decent enough to pass for a
church deacon; git him on the road, and you see he is a hog, and not of
no improved breed at that. He wants to gobble everything": an
observation that Keith had some opportunity to verify.
Terpsichore appeared suddenly to have a good deal of business over in
Eden, and had been on the stage several times of late when Keith was
driving it, and almost always took the box-seat. This had occurred often
enough for some of his acquaintances in Gumbolt to rally him about it.
"You will have to look out for Mr. Bluffy again," they said. "He's run
J. Quincy off the track, and he's still in the ring. He's layin' low;
but that's the time to watch a mountain cat. He's on your track."
Mr. Plume, who was always very friendly with Keith, declared that it was
not Bluffy, but Keith, who had run him off the track. "It's a case where
virtue has had its reward," he said to Keith. "You have overthrown more
than your enemy, Orlando. You have captured the prize we were all trying
for. Take the goods the gods provide, and while you live, live. The
epicurean is the only true philosopher. Come over and have a cocktail?
No? Do you happen to have a dollar about your old clothes? I have not
forgotten that I owe you a little account; but you are the only man of
soul in this--Gehenna except myself, and I'd rather owe you ten dollars
than any other man living."
Keith's manner more than his words shut up most of his teasers. Nothing
would shut up J. Quincy Plume.
Keith always treated Terpsichore with all the politeness he would have
shown to any lady. He knew that she was now his friend, and he had
conceived a sincere liking for her. She was shy and very quiet when a
passenger on his stage, ready to do anything he asked, obedient to any
suggestion he gave her.
It happened that, the night Wickersham chose for his trip to Gumbolt,
Keith had relieved old Gilsey, and he found her at the Eden end of the
route among his passengers. She had just arrived from Gumbolt by another
vehicle and was now going straight back. As Keith came around, the young
woman was evidently preparing to take the box-seat. He was conscious of
a feeling of embarrassment, which was not diminished by the fact that
Jake Dennison, his old pupil, was also going over. Jake as well as Dave
was now living at Gumbolt. Jake was in all the splendor of a black coat
and a gilded watch-chain, for he had been down to the Ridge to see Miss
Euphronia Tripper.
It had been a misty day, and toward evening the mist had changed into a
drizzle.
Keith said to Terpsichore, with some annoyance:
"You had better go inside. It's going to be a bad night."
A slight change came over her face, and she hesitated. But when he
insisted, she said quietly, "Very well."
As the passengers were about to take their seats in the coach, a young
man enveloped in a heavy ulster came hurriedly out of the hotel,
followed by a servant with several bags in his hands, and pushed hastily
into the group, who were preparing to enter the coach in a more
leisurely fashion. His hat partly concealed his face, but something
about him called up memories to Keith that were not wholly pleasant.
When he reached the coach door Jake Dennison and another man were just
on the point of helping in one of the women. The young man squeezed in
between them.
"I beg your pardon," he said.
The two men stood aside at the polite tone, and the other stepped into
the stage and took the back seat, where he proceeded to make himself
comfortable in a corner. This, perhaps, might have passed but for the
presence of the women. Woman at this mountain Eden was at a premium, as
she was in the first.
Jake Dennison and his friend both asserted promptly that there was no
trouble about three of the ladies getting back seats, and Jake, putting
his head in at the door, said briefly:
"Young man, there are several ladies out here. You will have to give up
that seat."
As there was no response to this, he put his head in again.
"Didn't you hear? I say there are some ladies out here. You will have to
take another seat."
To this the occupant of the stage replied that he had paid for his seat;
but there were plenty of other seats that they could have. This was
repeated on the outside, and thereupon one of the women said she
supposed they would have to take one of the other seats.
Women do not know the power of surrender. This surrender had no sooner
been made than every man outside was her champion.
"You will ride on that back seat to Gumbolt to-night, or I'll ride in
Jim Digger's hearse. I am layin' for him anyhow." The voice was Jake
Dennison's.
"And I'll ride with him. Stand aside, Jake, and let me git in there.
I'll yank him out," said his friend.
But Jake was not prepared to yield to any one the honor of "yanking."
Jake had just been down to Squire Rawson's, and this young man was none
other than Mr. Ferdy Wickersham. He had been there, too.
Jake had left with vengeance in his heart, and this was his opportunity.
He was just entering the stage head foremost, when the occupant of the
coveted seat decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and
announced that he would give up the seat, thereby saving Keith the
necessity of intervening, which he was about to do.
The ejected tenant was so disgruntled that he got out of the stage, and,
without taking any further notice of the occupants, called up to know if
there was a seat outside.
"Yes. Let me give you a hand," said Gordon, leaning down and helping him
up. "How are you?"
Wickersham looked at him quickly as he reached the boot.
"Hello! You here?" The rest of his sentence was a malediction on the
barbarians in the coach below and a general consignment of them all to a
much warmer place than the boot of the Gumbolt stage.
"What are you doing here?" Wickersham asked.
"I am driving the stage."
"Regularly?" There was something in the tone and look that made Keith
wish to say no, but he said doggedly:
"I have done it regularly, and was glad to get the opportunity."
He was conscious of a certain change in Wickersham's manner toward him.
As they drove along he asked Wickersham about Norman and his people, but
the other answered rather curtly.
Norman had married.
"Yes." Keith had heard that. "He married Miss Caldwell, didn't he? She
was a very pretty girl."
"What do you know about here?" Wickersham asked. His tone struck Keith.
"Oh, I met her once. I suppose they are very much in love with each
other?"
Wickersham gave a short laugh. "In love with Norman! Women don't fall in
love with a lump of ice."
"I do not think he is a lump of ice," said Keith, firmly.
Wickersham did not answer at first, then he said sharply:
"Well, she's worth a thousand of him. She married him for his money.
Certainly not for his brains."
"Norman has brains--as much as any one I know," defended Keith.
"You think so!"
Keith remembered a certain five minutes out behind the stables at
Elphinstone.
He wanted to ask Wickersham about another girl who was uppermost in his
thoughts, but something restrained him. He could not bear to hear her
name on his lips. By a curious coincidence, Wickersham suddenly said:
"You used to teach at old Rawson's. Did you ever meet a girl named
Yorke--Alice Yorke? She was down this way once."
Keith said that he had met "Miss Yorke." He had met her at Ridgely
Springs and also in New York. He was glad that it was dark, and that
Wickersham could not see his face. "A very pretty girl," he hazarded as
a leader, now that the subject was broached.
"Yes, rather. Going abroad--title-hunting."
"I don't expect Miss Yorke cares about a title," said Keith, stiffly.
"Mamma does. Failing that, she wants old Lancaster and perquisites."
"Who does? Why, Mr. Lancaster is old enough to be her father!"
"Pile's old, too," said Wickersham, dryly.
"She doesn't care about that either," said Keith, shortly.
"Oh, doesn't she! You know her mother?"
"No; I don't believe she does. Whatever her mother is, she is a fine,
high-minded girl."
Ferdy gave a laugh which might have meant anything. It made Keith hot
all over. Keith, fearing to trust himself further, changed the subject
and asked after the Rawsons, Wickersham having mentioned that he had
been staying with them.
"Phrony is back at home, I believes She has been off to school. I hear
she is very much improved?"
"I don't know; I didn't notice her particularly," said Wickersham,
indifferently.
"She is very pretty. Jake Dennison thinks so," laughed Keith.
"Jake Dennison? Who is he?"
"He's an old scholar of mine. He is inside now on the front seat; one of
your friends."
"Oh, that's the fellow! I thought I had seen him before. Well, he had
better try some other stock, I guess. He may find that cornered. She is
not going to take a clod like that."
Wickersham went off into a train of reflection.
"I say, Keith," he began unexpectedly, "maybe, you can help me about a
matter, and if so I will make it worth your while."
"About what matter?" asked Keith, wondering.
"Why, about that old dolt Rawson's land. You see, the governor has got
himself rather concerned. When he got this property up here in the
mountains and started to build the railroad, some of these people here
got wind of it. That fool, Rhodes, talked about it too much, and they
bought up the lands around the old man's property. They think the
governor has got to buy 'em out. Old Rawson is the head of 'em. The
governor sent Halbrook down to get it; but Halbrook is a fool, too. He
let him know he wanted to buy him out, and, of course, he raised. You
and he used to be very thick. He was talking of you the other night."
"He and I are great friends. I have a great regard for him, and a much
higher opinion of his sense than you appear to have. He is a very
shrewd man."
"Shrewd the deuce! He's an old blockhead. He has stumbled into the
possession of some property which I am ready to pay him a fair price
for. He took it for a cow-pasture. It isn't worth anything. It would
only be a convenience to us to have it and prevent a row in the future,
perhaps. That is the only reason I want it. Besides, his title to it
ain't worth a ----, anyhow. We have patents that antedate his. You can
tell him that the land is not worth anything. I will give you a good sum
if you get him to name a price at, say, fifty per cent. on what he gave
for it. I know what he gave for it. You can tell him it ain't worth
anything to him and that his title is faulty."
"No, I could not," said Keith, shortly.
"Why not?"
"Because I think it is very valuable and his title perfect. And he knows
it."
Wickersham glanced at him in the dusk.
"It isn't valuable at all," he said after a pause. "I will give you a
good fee if you will get through a deal for it at any price we may agree
on. Come!"
"No," said Keith; "not for all the money you own. My advice to you is to
go to Squire Rawson and either offer to take him in with you to the
value of his lands, or else make him a direct offer for what those lands
are really worth. He knows as much about the value of those lands as you
or Mr. Halbrook or any one else knows. Take my word for it."
"Rats!" ejaculated Wickersham, briefly. "I tell you what," he added
presently: "if he don't sell us that land he'll never get a cent out of
it. No one else will ever take it. We have him cornered. We've got the
land above him, and the water, too, and, what is more, his title is not
worth a damn!"
"Well, that is his lookout. I expect you will find him able to take care
of himself."
Wickersham gave a grunt, then he asked Keith suddenly:
"Do you know a man named Plume over there at Gumbolt?"
"Yes," said Keith; "he runs the paper there."
"Yes; that's he. What sort of a man is he?"
Keith gave a brief estimate of Mr. Plume: "You will see him and can
judge for yourself."
"I always do," said Wickersham, briefly. "Know anybody can work him? The
governor and he fell out some time ago, but I want to get hold of him."
Keith thought he knew one who might influence Mr. Plume; but he did not
mention the name or sex.
"Who is that woman inside?" demanded Wickersham. "I mean the young one,
with the eyes."
"They call her Terpsichore. She keeps the dance-hall."
"Friend of yours?"
"Yes." Keith spoke shortly.
The stage presently began to descend Hellstreak Hill, which Keith
mentioned as the scene of the robbery which old Tim Gilsey had told him
of. As it swung down the long descent, with the lights of the lamps
flashing on the big tree-tops, and with the roar of the rushing water
below them coming up as it boiled over the rocks, Wickersham conceived a
higher opinion of Keith than he had had before, and he mentally resolved
that the next time he came over that road he would make the trip in the
daytime. They had just crossed the little creek which dashed over the
rocks toward the river, and had begun to ascend another hill, when
Wickersham, who had been talking about his drag, was pleased to have
Keith offer him the reins. He took them with some pride, and Keith
dived down into the boot. When he sat up again he had a pistol in
his hand.
"It was just about here that that 'hold-up' occurred."
"Suppose they should try to hold you up now, what would you do?" asked
Wickersham.
"Oh, I don't think there is any danger now," said Keith. "I have driven
over here at all hours and in all weathers. We are getting too civilized
for that now, and most of the express comes over in a special wagon.
It's only the mail and small packages that come on this stage."
"But if they should?" demanded Wickersham.
"Well, I suppose I'd whip up my horses and cut for it," said Keith.
"I wouldn't," asserted Wickersham. "I'd like to see any man make me run
when I have a gun in my pocket."
Suddenly, as if in answer to his boast, there was a flash in the road,
and the report of a pistol under the very noses of the leaders, which
made them swerve aside with a rattling of the swingle-bars, and twist
the stage sharply over to the side of the road. At the same instant a
dark figure was seen in the dim light which the lamp threw on the road,
close beside one of the horses, and a voice was heard:
"I've got you now, ---- you!"
It was all so sudden that Wickersham had not time to think. It seemed to
him like a scene in a play rather than a reality. He instinctively
shortened the reins and pulled up the frightened horses. Keith seized
the reins with one band and snatched at the whip with the other; but it
was too late. Wickersham, hardly conscious of what he was doing, was
clutching the reins with all his might, trying to control the leaders,
whilst pandemonium broke out inside, cries from the women and oaths
from the men.
There was another volley of oaths and another flash, and Wickersham felt
a sharp little burn on the arm next Keith.
"Hold on!" he shouted. "For God's sake, don't shoot! Hold on! Stop the
horses!"
[Illustration: Sprang over the edge of the road into the thick bushes
below.]
At the same moment Keith disappeared over the wheel. He had fallen or
sprung from his seat.
"The ---- coward!" thought Wickersham. "He is running."
The next second there was a report of a pistol close beside the stage,
and the man in the road at the horses' heads fired again. Another
report, and Keith dashed forward into the light of the lantern and
charged straight at the robber, who fired once more, and then, when
Keith was within ten feet of him, turned and sprang over the edge of the
road into the thick bushes below. Keith sprang straight after him, and
the two went crashing through the underbrush, down the steep side of
the hill.
The inmates of the stage poured out into the road, all talking together,
and Wickersham, with the aid of Jake Dennison, succeeded in quieting the
horses. The noise of the flight and the pursuit had now grown more
distant, but once more several shots were heard, deep down in the woods,
and then even they ceased.
It had all happened so quickly that the passengers had seen nothing.
They demanded of Wickersham how many robbers there were. They were
divided in their opinion as to the probable outcome. The men declared
that Keith had probably got the robber if he had not been killed himself
at the last fire.
Terpsichore was in a passion of rage because the men had not jumped out
instantly to Keith's rescue, and one of them had held her in the stage
and prevented her from poking her head out to see the fight. In the
light of the lantern Wickersham observed that she was handsome. He
watched her with interest. There was something of the tiger in her lithe
movement. She declared that she was going down into the woods herself to
find Keith. She was sure he had been killed.
The men protested against this, and Jake Dennison and another man
started to the rescue, whilst a grizzled, weather-beaten fellow caught
and held her.
"Why, my darlint, I couldn't let you go down there. Why, you'd ruin your
new bonnet," he said.
The young woman snatched the bonnet from her head and slung it in his
face.
"You coward! Do you think I care for a bonnet when the best man in
Gumbolt may be dying down in them woods?"
With a cuff on the ear as the man burst out laughing and put his hand on
her to soothe her, she turned and darted over the bank into the woods.
Fortunately for the rest of her apparel, which must have suffered as
much as the dishevelled bonnet,--which the grizzled miner had picked up
and now held in his hand as carefully as if it were one of the birds
which ornamented it,--some one was heard climbing up through the bushes
toward the road a little distance ahead.
The men stepped forward and waited, each one with his hand in the
neighborhood of his belt, whilst the women instinctively fell to the
rear. The next moment Keith appeared over the edge of the road. As he
stepped into the light it was seen that his face was bleeding and that
his left arm hung limp at his side.
The men called to Terpy to come back: that Keith was there. A moment
later she emerged from the bushes and clambered up the bank.
"Did you get him?" was the first question she asked.
"No." Keith gave the girl a swift glance, and turning quietly, he asked
one of the men to help him off with his coat. In the light of the lamp
he had a curious expression on his white face.
"Terpy was that skeered about you, she swore she was goin' down there to
help you," said the miner who still held the hat.
A box on the ear from the young woman stopped whatever further
observation he was going to make.
"Shut up. Don't you see he's hurt?" She pushed away the man who was
helping Keith off with his coat, and took his place.
No one who had seen her as she relieved Keith of the coat and with
dexterous fingers, which might have been a trained nurse's, cut away the
bloody shirt-sleeve, would have dreamed that she was the virago who, a
few moments before, had been raging in the road, swearing like a
trooper, and cuffing men's ears.
When the sleeve was removed it was found that Keith's arm was broken
just above the elbow, and the blood was pouring from two small wounds.
Terpy levied imperiously on the other passengers for handkerchiefs;
then, not waiting for their contributions, suddenly lifting her skirt,
whipped off a white petticoat, and tore it into strips. She soon had the
arm bound up, showing real skill in her surgery. Once she whispered a
word in his ear--a single name. Keith remained silent, but she read his
answer, and went on with her work with a grim look on her face. Then
Keith mounted his box against the remonstrances of every one, and the
passengers having reëntered the stage, Wickersham drove on into Gumbolt.
His manner was more respectful to Keith than it had ever been before.
Within a half-hour after their arrival the sheriff and his party, with
Dave Dennison at the head of the posse, were on their horses, headed for
the scene of the "hold-up." Dave could have had half of Gumbolt for
posse had he desired it. They attempted to get some information from
Keith as to the appearance of the robber; but Keith failed to give any
description by which one man might have been distinguished from the rest
of the male sex.
"Could they expect a man to take particular notice of how another looked
under such circumstances? He looked like a pretty big man."
Wickersham was able to give a more explicit description.
The pursuers returned a little after sunrise next morning without having
found the robber.