IT was midnight and worse before the lately belted knight of fortune
had outworn the hilarious and entered upon the somnolent stage of the
little journey insensate, and when the thing could be done, Jeffard
put him to bed with a pæan of thanksgiving which was none the less
heartfelt for being unvocalized.
Having thus set his hand to Garvin's plough, there was no alternative
but to turn the furrow to the end; wherefore, to guard against
surprises, he hid the boots of the bottle-mad one, barricaded the door
with his own bed, and lay down to doze with eyelids ajar. At least that
was the alert determination; but the event proved that he was weary
enough to sleep soundly and late, and it was seven o'clock, and the
breakfast caller was hammering on the door, when he opened his eyes on
the new day. Naturally, his first thought was for his companion, and
the sight of the empty bed in the farther corner of the room brought
him broad awake and afoot at the same saltatory moment. The son of
fortune was gone, and an open door into the adjoining room accounted
for the manner of his going.
Five minutes later, picture an anxious brother-keeper making pointed
inquiries of the day-clerk below stairs. Instant question and answer
fly back and forth shuttle-wise, one may suppose, weaving suspicion
into a firm fabric of fact. Two men whose names, or whose latest
aliases, were Howard and Lantermann, had occupied the room next to
Jeffard's,--quite chancefully, the clerk thinks. They had left at an
early hour; their call was for--one moment, and he (the clerk) will
ascertain the exact time.
Whereupon one may fancy an exasperated bearwarden cursing exactnesses
and beating with impatient fist upon the counter for the major fact.
The fact, extorted at length, is simple and conclusive. The two men
had come down some time between five and six o'clock, with a third as
a middle link in a chain of locked arms. One of the two had paid the
bill, and they had all departed; by way of the bar-room and the side
entrance, as the clerk remembers.
Whereat Jeffard is moved to swear strange oaths; is swearing them, in
point of fact, when the omnibus from an early train shunts its cargo
of arrivals into the main entrance. Among the incomers is a big fellow
with a drooping mustache and square-set shoulders, who forthwith drops
his handbag and pounces upon Jeffard with greetings boisterous.
"Well, I'll be shot!--or words to that effect" (hand-wringings and
shoulder-clappings). "Now where on top of God's green earth did you
tumble from? Begin away back yonder and give an account of yourself;
or, hold on,--let me write my name in the book and then you can tell
me while we eat. By Jove, old man! I'm foolishly glad to see you!"
Jeffard cut in quickly between the large-hearted protest and the
signing of the register.
"Just a second, Bartrow; let the breakfast wait, and listen to me. I'm
in no end of a tangle, and you're the man of all others to help me out
if any one can. Do you happen to know a fellow named Garvin?"
"Don't I? 'Tennessee Jim, P. P.,'--that stands for perennial
prospector, you know. Sure. He's of the salt of the earth; rock salt,
but full flavored. I know him like a book, though I hadn't seen him for
a dog's-age until--but go on."
Jeffard did go on, making the occasion one of the few which seemed to
justify the setting aside of indirection.
"We were partners; we have been out together all summer. He has struck
it rich, and has gone clean daft in the lilt of it. I can't get him
sober long enough to do what may be necessary to secure the claim. The
sharks are after him hot foot, and if they can succeed in soaking the
data out of him, they will jump the claim before he can get it located
and recorded."
Bartrow laughed. "That's just like Jim: ordinarily, he doesn't drink
as much whiskey in a year as most men do in a week. But if that's your
only grief you can come to breakfast with me and take your time about
it. Later on, when we've smoked a few lines and brought up the arrears
of gossip, we'll hold a council of war and see what you're to do about
the potential bonanza."
"But I can't do anything; it's Garvin's, I tell you."
"Well, you are partners in it, aren't you?"
Jeffard had another fight with an ingrained reserve which was always
blocking the way to directness and prompting him to leave the major
fact unstated.
"We are not partners in this particular claim. It's an old discovery of
Garvin's. He drove the tunnel on it two years ago and then abandoned
it. He was looking for tellurides and opened a vein of free-gold quartz
without knowing what he had found."
"Then it's nobody's claim, as it stands; or rather I should say it's
anybody's. You--or rather Garvin--will have to begin at the beginning,
just as if it were a new deal; go back and post a notice on the ground
and then come out and record it. And if it's Garvin's claim, as you
say, he's got to do this in person. Nobody can do it for him. You can't
turn a wheel till you get hold of Jim, and that's what makes me say
what I 'does.' Let's go in and eat."
"But, Dick; you don't understand"--
"Yes, I do; and I happen to know a thing or two about this deal that
you don't. You've got the whole forenoon before you; you are as safe as
a house up to twelve o'clock. Come on."
"I say you don't understand. You called it a 'potential bonanza' just
now, meaning that it wouldn't make so very much difference if it were
never recorded. But it's a bonanza in fact. If Rittenberger knows what
he is talking about, it is the biggest strike of the year, by long
odds. I don't know much about such things, but it seems to me it ought
to be secured at once and at all hazards."
"Rittenberger, you say?--the little Dutchman? You can bank on what he
tells you, every time. I didn't know you'd been to an assayer. What is
the figure?"
"I don't know that. I left the sample with him last night, and was to
call this morning for the certificate. But the little man bubbled over
at the mere sight of it."
"Good for old Jim! So much the better. Nevertheless, as I say, you've
an easy half-hour in which to square yourself with me over the ham and
eggs and what-not, and plenty of time to do what there is to be done
afterward. You can't do anything but wait."
"Yes, I can; I can find Garvin and make sure of him. Don't you see"--
"I see that I'll have to tell you all I know--and that's something you
never do for anybody--before you'll be reasonable. Listen, then: I saw
your chump of a partner less than an hour ago. He was with two of his
old cronies, and all three of them were pretty well in the push, for
this early in the morning. They boarded the train I came up on, and
that is why I say you're safe till noon. There is no train from the
west till twelve-seven. I know Jim pretty well, and at his foolishest
he never quite loses his grip. He had it in mind that he ought to fight
shy of something or somebody, and he's given you the slip, dodged the
enemy, and gone off on a three-handed spree all in a bunch. There now,
does that clear up the mystery?"
Jeffard had caught at the counter-rail and was gradually petrifying.
Here was the worst that could have befallen, and Bartrow had suspected
nothing more than a drunken man's frolic.
"Gone?--with two men, you say? Can you describe them?"
"Roughly, yes; they were Jim's kind--miners or prospectors. One of them
was tall and thin and black, and the other was rather thick-set and
red. The red one was the drunkest of the three."
"Dressed like miners?" Jeffard had to fight for the "s's." His tongue
was thick and his lips dry.
"Sure."
"That settles it, Dick, definitely. Last night those two fellows were
dressed like men about town and wore diamonds. They've soaked their
information out of Garvin, and they are on their way to locate that
claim."
It was Bartrow's turn to gasp and stammer. "What?--locate the--Cæsar's
ghost, man, you're daft! They wouldn't take Garvin with them!"
"They would do just that. In the first place, with the most accurate
description of the locality that Garvin, drunk, could give them, there
would be the uncertainty of finding it without a guide. They know that
they have left a sane man behind them who can find the way back to the
claim; and their only chance was to take Garvin along, keeping him
drunk enough to be unsuspicious, and not too drunk to pilot them. Once
on the ground ahead of me, and with Garvin in their power, they can do
the worst."
Bartrow came alive to the probabilities in the catching of a breath.
"Which will be to kill Garvin safely out of the way, post the claim,
and snap their fingers at the world. Good Lord!--and I let 'em knock
him down and drag him out under my very eyes! I'd ought to be shot."
"It's not your fault, Dick; it's mine. I saw what was in the wind
last night, and stuck to Garvin till I got him to bed. I was
dog-tired,--we'd been tramping all day,--and I thought he was safe to
sleep the clock around. I hid his boots, dragged my bed across the
door, and went to sleep."
"You couldn't have done less--or more. What happened?"
"This. Those two fellows had the room next to us, and there was a door
between. They slipped him out this morning before I was awake."
"Of course; all cut out and shaped up beforehand. But, thank the Lord,
there's a ghost of a chance yet. Where is the claim?"
"It is three days' march a little to the south of west, on the
headwaters of a stream which flows into the Gunnison River."
"And the nearest railroad point?"
"Is Aspen. If I remember correctly, Garvin said it was about twenty
miles across the range."
"Good. That accounts for the beginning of the race; they'll go to Aspen
and take horses from there. But I don't understand why they took the
long line. There are two railroads to Aspen, and one of them is an
hour and twenty minutes longer than the other. That's your chance, and
the only one,--to beat 'em to the end of the railroad run. How are you
fixed?"
"For money, you mean? I have the wreck of a ten-dollar note and a hotel
bill to pay."
Bartrow spun around on his heel and shot a sudden question at the hotel
clerk, the answer to which was inaudible to Jeffard. But Bartrow's
rejoinder was explanatory.
"Rooms over the bank, you say? That's lucky." This to the clerk; and
then to Jeffard: "Come along with me; this is no time to stick at
trifles. You've got to have money, suddenly, and plenty of it."
But Jeffard hung back.
"What are you going to do, Dick?"
"Stake you and let you try for a special engine over the short line.
Those fellows took the long way around, as I say,--why, I don't know,
because both trains leave at the same time. The running time the way
they have gone is five hours and forty-five minutes. By the other line
it's only four hours and twenty-five minutes. Savez?"
"Yes, but"--
"Weed out the 'buts' and come along. We're due to rout a man out of bed
and make him open a bank vault. I can't put my hand into my pocket for
you, as I'd like to; but I know a banker, and my credit's good."
They found the cashier of the Carbonate City National in the midst of
his toilet. He was an Eastern man of conservative habit, but he was
sufficiently Occidentalized to grasp the main points in Bartrow's terse
narrative, and to rise to the inexorable demands of the occasion.
"You know the rule, Mr. Bartrow,--two good names; and I don't know your
friend. But this seems to be an eighteen-carat emergency. Take that key
and go down the back way into the bank. You'll find blank notes on the
public desk. Make out your paper for what Mr. Jeffard will need, and
I'll be with you in half a minute."
They found the way and the blank, which latter Bartrow hastily filled
out, indorsed, and handed to Jeffard for signature. It was for five
hundred dollars, and the proletary's hand shook when he dipped the pen.
"It's too much," he protested; "I can't stand it, Dick. It is like
putting a whetted sword into the hands of a madman."
That was his first reference to the past and its smirched record, and
Bartrow promptly toppled it into the abyss of generalities.
"Same old hair-splitter, aren't you? What's the matter with you now?"
"You know--better than any one. I am not to be trusted with any such
sum of money."
"Call it Garvin's, then. I don't know how you feel toward Jim, but I've
always found him a man to tie to."
A woman would have said that Jeffard turned aside to hide an upflash of
emotion, though a clot on the pen was the excuse. But it was the better
part of him that made answer.
"I owe him my life--twice, Dick. By all the known hypotheses of honor
and gratitude and common decency I ought to be true to him now, in this
his day of helplessness. But when one has eaten and drunk and slept
with infamy"--
The cashier's step was on the stair, and Bartrow cut in swiftly.
"Jeffard, you make me weary!--and, incidentally, you're killing
precious time. Can't you see that trust isn't a matter of much or
little? If you can't, why just name the amount for which you'd be
tempted to drop Garvin, and we'll cut under it so as to be on the safe
side."
"But I sha'n't need a fifth of this," Jeffard objected, wavering.
"You are liable to need more. You must remember that ten minutes hence
you'll be trying to subsidize a railroad company. Sign that note and
quit quibbling about it."
The thing was done, but when the money had changed hands, Jeffard
quibbled again.
"If the worst comes, you can't afford to pay that note, Bartrow; and
my probability hangs on a hundred hazards. What if I fail?"
The cashier had unlocked the street door for them, and Bartrow ran the
splitter of hairs out to the sidewalk.
"You're not going to fail if I can ever succeed in getting you in
motion. Good Lord, man! can't you wake up and get a grip of the
situation? It isn't the mere saving or losing of the bonanza; it's
sheer life or death to Jim Garvin--and you say you owe him. Here,--this
cab is as good as any. Midland office, my man; half time, double fare.
Don't spare the leather."
At eight-ten to the minute they were negotiating with the
superintendent's chief clerk for a special engine to Aspen. Whereupon,
as is foreordained in such crises, difficulties multiplied themselves,
while the office clock's decorous pendulum ticked off the precious
margin of time. Bartrow fought this battle, fought it single-handed and
won; but that was because his weapon was invincible. The preliminary
passage at arms vocalized itself thus:--
_The Clerk_, mindful of his superior's moods, and reflectively
dubitant: "I'm afraid I haven't the authority. You will have to wait
and see the superintendent. He'll be down at nine."
_Bartrow_: "Make it a dollar a mile."
_The Clerk_: "Can't be done; or, at least, I can't do it. We're short
of motive power. There isn't an engine fit for the run at this end of
the division."
_Bartrow_: "Say a hundred and fifty for the trip."
_The Clerk_: "I'm afraid we couldn't make it, anyhow. We'd have to send
a caller after a crew, and"--
_Bartrow_, sticking to his single text like a phonograph set to repeat:
"Call it a hundred and seventy-five."
_The Clerk_, in a desperate aside: "Heavens! I wish the old man
would come!"--and aloud--"Say, I don't believe we could better the
passenger schedule, even with a light engine. It's fast--four hours and
twenty-five"--
_Bartrow_: "Make it two hundred."
Jeffard counted out the money while the office operator was calling the
engine-dispatcher; and at eight-twenty they were pacing the station
platform, waiting for the ordered special. Bartrow looked at his watch.
"If you get away from here at eight-thirty, you'll have three hours and
thirty-five minutes for the run, which is just fifty minutes better
than the regular schedule. It'll be nip and tuck, but if your engineer
is any good he'll make it. Do you know what to do when you reach Aspen?"
"Why, yes; I'll meet Garvin when his train arrives, cut him out of the
tangle with the sharks, get him on a horse and ride for life across the
range."
"That's the scheme. But what if the other fellows object?"
Jeffard straightened himself unconsciously. "I'm not uncertain on that
side; I can fight for it, if that is what you mean."
Bartrow looked him up and down with a smile which was grimly
approbative. "Your summer's done you a whole lot of good, Jeffard. You
look like a grown man."
"As I didn't when you last saw me. But I'm afraid I am neither better
nor worse, Dick,--morally."
"Nonsense! You can't help being one or the other. And that reminds me:
you haven't accounted for yourself yet. Can you do it in the hollow of
a minute?"
"Just about. Garvin picked me out of the gutter and took me with him on
this prospecting trip. That's all."
"But you ought to have left word with somebody. It was rough on your
friends to drop out as if you'd dodged the undertaker."
"Who was there to care?"
"Well, I cared, for one; and then there is Lansdale, and--and"--
"I know," said Jeffard humbly. He was hungry for news, but he went
fasting on the thinnest paring of inquiry. "Does she remember me yet?"
Bartrow nodded. "She's not of the forgetting kind. I never go to
Denver that she doesn't ask me if I've heard of you. But that's Connie
Elliott, every day in the week. She's got a heartful of her own just
now, too, I take it, but that doesn't make any difference. She's
everybody's sister, just the same."
"A--a heartful of her own, you say? I don't quite understand." Jeffard
was staring intently down the empty railway yard, and the glistening
lines of steel were blurred for him.
It was a situation for a bit of merciful diplomacy, but Bartrow the
tactless blundered on remorselessly.
"Why, yes,--with Lansdale, you know. I don't know just how far it has
gone, but if I were going to put money on it, I'd say she would let her
life be shortened year for year if his could be spun out in proportion."
Jeffard brought himself up with a savage turn. Who was he that he
should be privileged as those who are slain in any honorable cause?
"Lansdale is no better, then?"
"I don't know. Sometimes he thinks he is. But I guess it's written
in the book; and I'm sorry--for his sake and hers. There comes your
automobile."
A big engine was clanking up through the yard, but Jeffard did not turn
to look at it. He was wringing Bartrow's hand, and trying vainly to
think of some message to send to the woman he loved. And at the end of
it, it went unsaid. One of the clerks was waiting with the train-order
when the engine steamed up; and Jeffard was fain to clamber to his
place in the cab, full to the lips with tender embassies, which would
by no means array themselves in words.
Bartrow waited till he could fling his God-speed up to the cab window.
It took the form of a parting injunction, and neither of them suspected
how much it would involve.
"If you need backing in Aspen, look up Mark Denby. He's a good friend
of mine; an all-around business man, and a guardian angel to fellows
with holes in the ground and no ready money. Hunt him up. I'll wire
your introduction and have it there ahead of you. Off you go--good luck
to you!"
And at the word the big engine lifted its voice with a shout and a
bell-clang, and shook itself free for the race.