AFTER toiling all night through black gorges and over unspeakable
mountain passes, the narrow-gauge train from Denver, headed by two
pygmy locomotives, came out into daylight, sunshine, and wider horizons
at Alta Vista. In the sleeping-car three sections had been transformed
by the drowsy porter into daytime smugness, and three persons--two of
them in deference to the enthusiasm of the third--were up and dressed.
"Isn't it all perfectly indescribable?" Myra was saying, when the
engineer of one of the pygmies sounded the whistle for the station. "Do
you know, I couldn't go to sleep for hours last night, late as it was.
I put up the window curtain and piled the pillows in the corner so I
could look out. The sky was like a great inverted bowl lined with black
velvet and spangled with diamonds, circling around us as we darted
around the curves. And in the open places there was always a solemn
procession of cliffs and peaks, marching with us sometimes, and then
turning to slip past again when the bowl whirled the other way. Oh, but
it was grand!"
"I'm glad it lays hold of you," said Connie, who was loyally jealous
for the scenic renown of her native Colorado. "Now you know why
I wouldn't let you go on any of those breathless little one-day
excursions from Denver. They just take you up in a balloon, give
you a glimpse while you gasp, and drop you without a parachute. The
tourist people all make them, you know,--it's in the itinerary, with
a coupon in the cute little morocco-bound book of tickets,--and they
come back wild-eyed and desperate, and go without their suppers to
scribble incoherent notes about the 'Cache la Platte' and 'Clear Poudre
Canyon,' and other ridiculous things. It would be funny if it wasn't so
exasperating."
Myra nodded. "I'm beginning to 'savez,' as Mr. Bartrow would say. By
the way, isn't this the place where he was to meet us?--Why, yes; there
he is now!" She waved her hand and struggled with the window-latch as
the train drew up to the platform.
He was with them in a moment, carrying a towel-covered basket, and a
tin coffee-pot which he waved gingerly by way of salutation.
"The top o' the morning to you all," he said, beaming genially. "I was
afraid you wouldn't be up, and then my hot coffee would be cold coffee,
and I'd get myself disliked." Then to the drowsy porter: "John, you
scoundrel, get us a table before I break you in two and throw you out
of the window."
The table was promptly forthcoming, and Myra made room in the narrow
seat for Bartrow.
"Excuse me," he begged, laughing, "I'd like to, but I can't. Somebody's
got to stand up and do the swing-rack act with this coffee-pot. Just
unload that basket, will you, Elliott, and I'll play head waiter while
you set the table."
The breakfast was good, and there was a most astonishing variety.
Moreover the coffee rose to a degree of excellence which more than
atoned for the admixture of condensed milk in lieu of cream, and
for the slight resinous taste imparted by the new tin cups. Bartrow
apologized for the cups.
"You see, I left the mine rather middling early this morning, and
packed things in a hurry. When I was making the coffee over Jim
Bryant's stove here at Alta Vista, it struck me all at once that I'd
forgotten the cups. The train was in sight, and Jim had only one, and
that hadn't been washed for a month of Sundays. Maybe you think I
wasn't stampeded for about a minute."
Connie laughed. "I suppose you went out and robbed somebody."
"That's what I did; made a break for the store, and found it locked up,
of course. I had to smash a window to get what I wanted."
"Why, you lawless man!" protested Myra, trying to make room on the
narrow table for the contents of the inexhaustible basket. "Where in
the world did you get such a variety of things?"
"Canned goods," Connie cut in maliciously; "all canned goods, put out
in dishes so you won't be reminded of the tinny taste. Everybody lives
on canned goods in the mountains."
"Connie, you make me tired," Bartrow retorted, bracing himself as the
train whisked around a sharp curve. "Just dig a little deeper and get
out that platter of trout; they've never seen the inside of a can."
"Never mind what Connie says; she isn't responsible," said Myra. "The
breakfast is just as good as it can be. Besides, you know you promised
us that we should live just as you do if we'd visit the Little Myriad.
I wish you'd put that coffee-pot on the floor and sit down with us."
Bartrow tried it, and found it possible; after which the talk became
general and cheerful over the resinous coffee cups and the lurching
dishes. In a lull Elliott asked how the Little Myriad was going on.
"Good enough for anybody," rejoined Bartrow, with enthusiasm alert.
"Lead opens out better every day, and we're in only about seventy-five
feet."
"No pay-dirt yet, of course," said the older man.
"Well, hardly; not yet. I'm figuring on a hundred and fifty feet of
development work at the very least before we begin to take out pay."
"Mr. Bartrow, don't you remember that another thing you promised was
that you wouldn't talk mineral-English before me without explaining
it?" Myra broke in. "I want to know"--An unexpected plunge of the car
made her grasp at the coffee cup, and Connie slipped deftly into the
break.
"And it shall know, bless its inquisitive little soul! It shall be
stuffed with information like a fat little pillow with feathers. But
not here, cuzzy dear. Wait till we're on the ground, and then I'll go
off out of hearing, and Dick may turn himself into a glossary, or an
intelligence office, or a personal conductor, or anything else you'd
like to have him."
Bartrow looked unspeakable things, and put down his knife and fork to
say, "Connie, you're a--a"--
"Brute, Dickie; say it right out, and don't spare me on Myra's account.
She rather enjoys it; she loves to hear people abuse me."
"Connie, you are perfectly incorrigible," said Myra severely. "With
your poor people you are an angel of light, but with your friends"--
"I'm an angel of darkness. That's right, cuzzy dear; pile it on, I'm
young and strong. Poppa, can't you think of something mean to say about
me? Do try, please."
Bartrow grinned; and Elliott, who knew his daughter's vagaries and
delighted in them, laughed outright. Constance made a face across the
table at her cousin, and said, "Now talk mines, if you can."
"I shall," asserted Myra calmly. "Mr. Bartrow, how did you ever come to
call your mine the 'Little Myriad'?"
If the bottom had suddenly dropped out of his coffee cup, Bartrow could
not have been more disconcerted. Constance, who was in his secret,
laughed gleefully, and clapped her hands.
"Tell her, Dick; tell her all about it. If you don't I shall."
Bartrow stammered and stumbled until Connie went into ecstasies of
mischievous delight. After two or three helpless beginnings, he said,
rather tamely, "I thought it was a pretty name."
"But it's so odd; a myriad is many, and a mine is only one."
"Oh, the meaning didn't have anything to do with it," rejoined Bartrow,
going straight to his own discomfiture with refreshing candor. "It was
the--the suggestion; the similarity; the--By Jove! we're there at last;
this is the mine switch."
The exclamation was a heartfelt thanksgiving, and in the confusion of
debarking the perilous topic was safely eluded. It was a sharp climb
of some distance from the railway track to the mine, and Elliott
developed unsuspected reserves of tact by leading the way with Miss
Van Vetter, leaving Bartrow to follow with Constance. When they had
lagged sufficiently behind the others, and were yet out of earshot of
the men who were following with the luggage, Bartrow went back to the
unexploded petard.
"Connie, you've just got to help me out now," he declared. "What shall
I tell her if she tackles me again?"
"Tell her the truth."
"I don't dare to."
"Then tell her a fib. But no--on second thought I shouldn't do that, if
I were you; you'd only make a mess of it. I'll tell you what to do:
just fight shy of it till I can get her to myself. I promise you she'll
never ask you about the Little Myriad's christening again as long as
she lives."
"Thank you," said Bartrow, with the air of a reprieved criminal; and
then dubiously: "See here, Connie, how are you going to do it? No
monkey business, you know."
"Not a single, solitary monkey," she answered so soberly that Bartrow
forgot his suspicions, and plunged into another subject which was also
near to his heart.
"About Jeffard; how did you come to think he had shot himself?"
"It was only one of those suppositions you think you have verified when
you've only been playing blind-man's bluff with it. The similarity of
names misled me at first."
"But afterward you merely wired that you were mistaken. Was that
another supposition?"
"Oh, no; I saw him and talked with him."
"The mischief you did! What did he have to say for himself?"
"Not much that will bear repeating. I'm too sorry for him to want to
talk about it, Dick."
Bartrow wondered, and kept his wonder to himself. What he said was in
the nature of worldly wisdom.
"Jeffard'll come out all right in the end. He's as obstinate as a pig,
but that's the only swinish thing about him. I'm afraid he'll have to
go through the stamp-mill and get himself pulverized; but when it
comes to the clean-up there'll be more good metal than tailings. Don't
you think so?"
"How should I know?" queried Constance.
"I didn't ask you what you know; I asked what you thought about it."
"You forget that we've met only two or three times."
"I don't forget anything. But I know you can size a man up while the
rest of us are trying to get acquainted with him. Don't you believe
that Jeffard will come out all right in the end?"
She was silent for a minute or two, and when she answered there was a
tremulous note in her voice which was new to Bartrow.
"I'm afraid he has made that and everything else impossible, Dick. I
told you I had seen him and talked with him; that was the day after I
telegraphed you about the suicide, nearly two months ago. From that day
to this he has not been seen or heard of in Denver, so far as Tommie
can find out."
"Pshaw! Then you think he has taken the short cut out of it, after all?"
"I don't know what to think," said Constance; and as they were at the
top of the steep trail, the subject was dropped.
On the whole, Connie's apprehensions that her cousin's urban upbringing
might make her a difficult guest for the young miner were apparently
groundless. Miss Van Vetter rhapsodized over the scenery; waded
cheerfully through the dripping tunnel of the Little Myriad to the
very heading, in order to see with her own eyes the vein of mineral;
thought Bartrow's three-room log cabin was good enough for any one; and
ate the dishes of Wun Ling's preparing as though a Chinese cook were a
necessary adjunct to every well regulated household. When the first day
of exhilarating sight-seeing came to an end, and the two young women
were together in their room, Connie bethought her of her promise to
Bartrow.
"By the way, Myra, did you find out how the Little Myriad came by its
name?" she asked.
"No; I forgot to ask Mr. Bartrow again."
"I can tell you, if you'd really like to know."
"Well?"
"He was going to call it the 'Myra,' and he asked me if I thought you'd
object. I told him you would,--most emphatically. Then he said he would
call it the 'Myriad,' because that was the only word he could think of
that was anything like Myra."
Miss Van Vetter was arranging her hair before the small mirror at the
other end of the room, and Constance waited long for her rejoinder.
When it came it was rather irrelevant.
"I've heard of people who could read your thoughts better than you
could think them," she said; and Connie was too sleepy to strike back.