THE news of Lansdale's death came with the shock of the unexpected
to the dwellers in the metamorphosed cabin on the upslope of Topeka
Mountain, albeit no one of the three of them had ventured to hope for
anything more than a reprieve as the outcome of the jaunt afield. But
the manner of his death at the time when the reprieve seemed well
assured was responsible for the shock and its sorrowful aftermath; and
if Constance grieved more than Bartrow or her cousin, it was only for
the reason that the heart of compassion knows best the bitterness of
infruition.
"It's a miserably comfortless saying to offer you, Connie, dear, but we
must try to believe it is for the best," said Myra, finding Constance
re-reading Jeffard's telegram by the light of her bedroom lamp.
Constance put her arms about her cousin's neck, and the heart of
compassion overflowed. "'For unto every one that hath shall be given,
but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he
hath,'" she sobbed. "Of all the things he had set his heart upon life
was the least,--was only the means to an end: and even that was taken
from him."
"No, not taken, Connie; he gave it, and gave it freely. He did for
another what his friend was trying to do for him."
At the reference to Jeffard, Constance went to stand before the
crackling fire of fir-splinters on the hearth. After a time she said:
"Do you suppose Mr. Jeffard will come here to tell us about it?"
Myra's answer was a query.
"Does he know you are here?"
"No, I think not."
"Then he will be more likely to go to Denver."
Connie's gaze was in the fire, and she swerved aside from the straight
path of inference.
"He will write to Dick," she said. "I should like to read the letter
when it comes, if I may."
Myra promised, and so it rested; but when Jeffard's letter came, and
Bartrow had shared its astounding news with his wife, Myra was for
rescinding her promise.
"I don't know why she shouldn't read it," said Dick. "She has always
been more or less interested in him, and it will do her a whole lot of
good to know that we were all off wrong. Jeffard's little slap at me
hits her, too, but she won't mind that."
"No," said Myra; "I was thinking of something else,--something quite
different."
"Is it sayable?"
They were sitting on the steps of the extended porch. The night-shift
was at work in the Myriad below, and the rattle and clank of a dump-car
coming out postponed her answer. When the clangor subsided she glanced
over her shoulder.
"She can't hear," said Bartrow. "She's in the sitting-room reading to
Uncle Steve."
"I'm not sure that it is sayable, Dick. But for the last two days I've
been wondering if we weren't mistaken about something else, too,--about
Connie's feeling for Mr. Lansdale. She is sorry, but not quite in the
way I expected she would be."
"What has that got to do with Jeffard's letter?" demanded the downright
one. His transplantings of perspicacity were not yet sufficiently
acclimated to bloom out of season.
"Nothing, perhaps." She gave it up as unspeakable, and went to the
details of the business affair. "Shall you tell Garvin at once?"
"Sure."
"How fortunate it is that he and Uncle Stephen came in to-day."
"Yes. They were staked for another month, and I didn't look for them
until they were driven in for more grub. But Garvin says the old man is
about played out. He's too old. He can't stand the pick and shovel in
this altitude at his age. We'll have to talk him out of it and run him
back to Denver some way or other."
"Can't you make this trusteeship an excuse? If Garvin needed a guardian
at first, he will doubtless need one now."
Bartrow nodded thoughtfully. Another car was coming out, and he waited
until the crash of the falling ore had come and gone.
"Jeffard knew what he was about all the time; knew it when he wrote
this letter just as well as he did when he shouldered the curse of it
to keep a possible lynching party from hanging Garvin. That's why he
put it in trust. He knew Garvin had gone daft and thrown it away once,
and he was afraid he might do it again."
"Will he?" asked the wife.
"I guess not. I believe he has learned his lesson. More than that,
Jim's as soft as mush on the side next the old man. If I can make out
to tie Uncle Steve's welfare up in the deal, Garvin will come to the
front like a man."
"Where is Garvin now?"
"He is down at the bunk-house."
Myra rose. "I suppose you want to get it over with. Let me have the
letter, if you won't need it."
"What are you going to do?"
"Carry Connie off to her room and keep her busy with this while you
and Uncle Stephen fight it out with the new millionaire," she said. "I
don't envy you your part of it."
Bartrow laughed, and the transplantings put forth a late shoot.
"Come to think of it, I don't know as I envy you yours," he retorted.
"She's all broke up about Uncle Steve's health and Lansdale's death
now, and she'll have a fit when she finds out how she has been piling
it on to Jeffard when he didn't deserve it."
It was an hour later, and the day-men smoking on the porch of the
boarding-house had gone to bed, when the husband and wife met again
midway of the path leading up from the shaft-house of the Myriad to
the metamorphosed cabin. Bartrow had walked down to the boarding-house
with Garvin, and Myra's impatience had sent her down the path to meet
him. Dick gave her his arm up the steep ascent, and drew her to a seat
on the lowest of the porch steps.
"Where is Connie?" he inquired, anticipating an avalanche of questions,
out of which he would have to dig his way without fear of interruption.
"She is with her father. Begin at the beginning, and tell me all about
it. What did Garvin say? Is he going to be sensible?"
"There isn't so much to tell as there might be," Dick said, smothering
a mighty prompting to tell the major fact first. "Garvin took it very
sensibly, though a body could see that the lamplight was a good bit too
strong for his eyes. He had to try three or four times before he could
speak, and then all he could say was 'Thirds, Steve, thirds.'"
"'Thirds?' What did he mean by that?"
Bartrow hesitated for a moment, as a gunner who would make sure of the
priming before he jerks the lanyard.
"Did it ever occur to you that any one else besides Garvin and Jeffard
might be interested in the Midas?"
"Why, no!"
"It didn't to me. I don't know why, but I never thought of it, though I
knew well enough that Jim never in all his life went prospecting on a
grub-stake of his own providing. He didn't that summer three years ago
when he drove the tunnel on the Midas."
Myra's lips were dry, and she had to moisten them to say, "Who was it,
Dick?"
"Who should it be but our good old Uncle Steve? Of course, he'd
forgotten all about it, and there he stood, wringing Garvin's hand and
trying to congratulate him; and Jim hanging on to the back of his chair
and saying, 'Thirds, Steve, I say thirds.' Garvin made him understand
at last, and then the old man melted down into his chair and put his
face in his hands. When he took it out again it was to look up and say,
'You're right, Jim; of course it's thirds,' and then he asked me where
Jeffard was."
Myra's voice was unsteady, but she made shift to say what there was to
be said; and Bartrow went on.
"After a bit we got down to business and straightened things out.
A third interest in the Midas is to be set apart for Jeffard, to
be rammed down his throat when we find him, whether he will or no.
Uncle Steve will go back to Denver and set up housekeeping again; and
Garvin,--but that's the funny part of the whole shooting-match. Garvin
refuses to touch a dollar of the money as owner; insists on leaving it
in trust, just as it is now; and made me sit down there and then and
write his will."
An outcoming car of ore drowned Myra's exclamation of surprise.
"Fact," said Bartrow. "He reserves an income to be paid to him at Uncle
Steve's discretion and mine, and at his death his third goes,--to whom,
do you suppose?"
"Indeed, I can't imagine,--unless it is to Connie."
"Not much! It's to be held in trust for Margaret Gannon's children."
"For Margaret,--why, she hasn't any children! And besides, he doesn't
know her!"
"Don't you fool yourself. He knows she hasn't any children, but
he's living in hopes. I told you there was something between them
from the way Garvin turned in and nursed the old blacksmith before
Margaret came. You wouldn't believe it, because they both played the
total-stranger act; but that was one time when I got ahead of you,
wasn't it?"
"Yes; go on."
"Well, I made out the will, 'I, James Garvin, being of sound mind,' and
so on; and Uncle Steve and I witnessed it. But on the way down to the
bunk-shanty just now I pinned Garvin up against the wall and made him
tell me why. He knew Margaret when she was in the Bijou, and asked her
to marry him. She was honest enough even then to refuse him. It made me
want to weep when I remembered how she had been mixed up with Jeffard."
Myra was silent for a full minute, and when she spoke it was out of the
depths of a contrite heart.
"I made you believe that, Dick, against your will; and you were right,
after all. Mr. Jeffard was only trying to help Connie's poor people
through Margaret, though why he should do that when he was withholding
a fortune from Uncle Stephen is still a mystery."
"That is as simple as twice two," said the husband. "Didn't I tell you?
Garvin had no occasion to tell him who his grub-staker was in the first
place, and no chance to do it afterward. Jeffard didn't know,--doesn't
know yet."
Myra went silent again, this time for more than a minute.
"I have learned something, too, Dick; but I am not sure that I ought to
tell it," she said, after the interval.
"I can wait," said Bartrow cheerfully. "I've had a full meal of
double-back-action surprises as it is."
"This isn't a surprise; or it wouldn't be if we hadn't been taking too
much for granted. I tolled Connie off to her room with the letter, as I
said I would; and she--she had a fit, as you prophesied."
"Of course," says Dick. "It hurts her more than anything to make a
miscue on the charitable side."
"Yes, but"--
"But what?"
"I'll tell you sometime, Dick, but not now. It is too pitiful."
"I can wait," said Bartrow again; and his lack of curiosity drove her
into the thick of it.
"If you knew you'd want to do something,--as I do, only I don't know
how. Isn't it pretty clear that Mr. Jeffard cares a great deal for
Connie?"
"Oh, I don't know about that. What makes you think so?" says the
obvious one.
"A good many little things; some word or two that Margaret has let
slip, for one of them. How otherwise would you explain his eagerness to
help Connie?"
"On general principles, I guess. She's plenty good enough to warrant
it."
"Yes, but it wasn't 'general principles' in Mr. Jeffard's case. He is
in love with Connie, and"--
"And she doesn't care for him. Is that it?"
"No, it isn't it; she does care for him. I fairly shocked it out of her
with the letter, and that is why I oughtn't to tell it, even to you. It
is too pitiful!"
Bartrow shook his head in cheerful density. "Your philosophy's too deep
for me. If they are both of one mind, as you say, I don't see where the
pity comes in. Jeffard isn't half good enough for her, of course; he
made a bally idiot of himself a year ago. But if she can forget that,
I'm sure we ought to."
"I wasn't thinking of that. But don't you see how impossible this Midas
tangle makes it? He won't take his third, you may be very sure of that;
and when he finds out that Connie has a daughter's share in one of the
other thirds, it will seal his lips for all time. People would say that
he gave up his share only to marry hers."
Bartrow got upon his feet and helped her to rise. "You'll take cold
sitting out here in the ten-thousand-foot night," he said; and on the
top step of the porch-flight she had his refutation of her latest
assertion.
"You say people would talk. Doesn't it strike you that Jeffard is the
one man in a thousand who will mount and ride regardless?--who will
smile and snap his fingers at public opinion? That's just what he's
been doing all along, and he'll do it again if he feels like it. Let's
go in and congratulate the good old uncle while we wait."