that the boundless wealth of which she supposed herself possessor was
not a popular subject among folk to whom daily bread came hardly, she
wisely decided to omit mention of it from her conversation. Also,
finding herself likely to be embarrassed for ready money, since credit
was denied her, she followed Scarlett's excellent advice to try roughing
it, with excellent results. Moreover, at the suggestion of the good
Graysons, whose neighborliness she soon learned to value, and loyally
backed by the "boys," she opened a real-estate office at Lost Shoe
Creek, with a branch at Perdu, showing herself an admirable business
woman. Amateur theatricals, concerts, and ice-carnivals had brightened
the dark season, when mining-camps in the North are as desert islands,
cut off from all communication with the outside; and for the first time
in her life Evelyn tasted the unalloyed pleasure that springs from
giving pleasure and helpfulness that money cannot buy. One sorrow only
dimmed her sky: the continued absence of her father. No one told her
that, far and wide, official search was being made for Matthew Durant,
nicknamed Lucky, who, on a fateful day of the previous summer had
disappeared as utterly as had the earth in which he worked opened to
engulf him; she still believed, uncontradicted, that his vast interests
were detaining him somewhere among the baffling distances of snow-capped
hills, and that any hour that suited him would bring him back to her.
[Illustration: THE UBIQUITOUS YOUNG SOLDIER, SERGEANT SCARLETT.]
It was the day when, by the most lovable of paradoxes, in that region,
two festivals--one of independence declared, one of allegiance
covenanted--are celebrated, with crossed flags: Dominion Day and the
Fourth of July, in one.
On this particular anniversary gala preparations of extra splendor were
afoot in honor of the return of Bully Nick, once more a free man, not
because in equity he was held worthy to be at large, so much as through
a technical slip by which but six jurors had been requisitioned to sit
on his case, whereas, as his backers claimed, he was territorially
entitled to be adjudged guilty by a full dozen good men and true.
"Well, I'm dazzled fer fair," announced the hero, as, amid cheers from
his friends and followers, he alighted from the stage. "This here
bloomin' Paradise ain't never Lost Shoe Creek."
"Sure, 'tis! Betcherboots! That's what!" he was assured.
Nick rubbed astonished eyes. "By gum, a Gospel-mill!"
"Aye, and filled to overflowing every Sabbath, Nicholas," proudly stated
good Maclane.
"Wa'al, y' see," Mops hastened to apologize to his leader for this hated
concession to religion, "the gals like piousness."
The neat jail next the church was described by Barney as "just an impty
forrum intoirely, owing to the ladies' distaste for the spacies of bird
such cages are controived for, begorra!"
The decorative touch to the personal appearance of his followers, in
honor of the holiday, naturally came in for the Bully's quizzical
attention: their shorn faces; the soap "with the tony smell" in vogue;
the paper collars with jeweled studs in which, all day, Ikey had been
doing a rushing trade, were noted by him categorically till Bill
silenced him by stating that "style was like for to fetch the girls."
Gumboot Annie, to whose hostelry he was conducted to drink his own
health, had been allowed to reopen, he was informed, under close
restriction and surveillance from "that blamed Scarlett." Nevertheless,
as she told Nick, spitting with deliberation, not being in business for
salubrious ends merely, she was making great profit out of "moderate
drinkin' and no drunks," through the girls' preference for sober
cavaliers. Or, as she phrased it, "the gals won't swaller the booze."
This was too much for the Bully's equanimity. "The gals, indeed!"
Slapping his knee, he chuckled. "The hell!"
"Eh, Nicholas?" the minister challenged him. "Did I understand you to
say 'the hell?'"
"The hell you did, Parson!" The Bully turned on him truculently. "And
what the hell hev you agin it?"
"If no better argument, Nicholas," smiled Maclane, "the girls won't
stand for hell."
"Parson," Nick acknowledged his defeat, "the drinks is on me." Later he
took occasion to state, "I ain't convarted. But, say, Parson, you're
jes' the squarest proposition Gawd ever grub-staked ter prospect fer
human souls, and, say--I won't oppose you none. And when I pass in my
checks jes' you stand by my grave, and put up a little prayer fer my
epitaffy, 'He done his level damnedest, angels cud no more. Amen.'"
Then he took from Gelly's arms the fine infant she had brought to show
him, described by its fond father as "a velly godam skukum Clistian
baby." Dandling it tenderly, "See here, son," he adjured it, "ef I find
indications of you takin' arter me--gamblin', cussin', drinkin',--why,
grandpop 'ull spankee, d'ye see?"
His mind thus freed, his future pacific course outlined, Nick inquired,
circumstantially for "the girls." Sarah, he learned, was the great lady
of the place, making a large income as a "lady-barber," her firm hand,
unshaken as her masculine competitors were apt to be by sprees, making
her a peculiarly safe artist to be trusted to operate with a razor in
the region of the jugular, and her husband's copper proposition still
remaining an undeveloped asset, she was forcing him to work for regular
wage as a teamster. In spite of which, on his occasional lapses Sandy
was wont to boast that at heart he was "a mon for a' that."
The orphans all had settled down; Mary, having discovered a new violet
at the foot of a glacier, had paired off with the young botanist who had
been sent out from Ottawa to report on the flora of the region. Ruth was
running postoffice and postmaster. Ethel and the town doctor had made a
match. Kate's lot was cast with Bill, now doing assessment work and
writing to his mother regularly. Effie had pre-empted the young editor
of the weekly _Claim_, helping both to write his editorials and set them
up in type. Gertrude had struck it rich with the bank manager. All would
be on hand at the ball to-night. No, Evelyn had not made a choice. Rumor
assigned her to Scarlett, yet how matters stood between them no man
could say with certainty.
At this the Bully's eye took on a fiery glow. "Ef thet thar uniformed
cuss is a-playin' fast an' loose with Lucky's gal, d'ye see, it's up ter
me to set it straight!" And, forthwith, he led the way to Evelyn's
bower.
Evelyn was found, outside her cabin, superintending the arrangements for
a grand display of fireworks in honor of the double holiday; the
crowning piece to show the two flags crossed beneath a wondrous rainbow.
By a coincidence that exactly suited the Bully's plans, Scarlett was, at
the minute, seen approaching. After greetings had been interchanged with
all heartiness, suddenly the young soldier found himself surrounded by
the men--Nick, in the center, pointing a gun at his heart. Evelyn
shrieked, and would have interposed, but was forced back by hands
roughly tender, tenderly peremptory.
"Well, boys," asked Scarlett, calmly, "is this some new kind of game?"
"Thet's as mebbe," answered Nick. "See here, Missy Durant, it ain't
human natur fer a gal ter stay single in a minin'-camp."
"That's what!" the boys interrupted him to say.
"And I reckon you've had your pick of every miner an' prospector in the
district--aye, and loafer, worthy of the name!"
"Sure! Betcherlife!" the boys confirmed him.
"Now," concluded the Bully, magnificently, "the question we're debatin'
is jes' this: Hev you give this here blamed Scarlett the mitten, or hev
you not?"
Evelyn laughed merrily. "To tell the truth, Nick, he hasn't given the
opportunity--as yet."
"And I wouldn't take it if she gave it me," added the soldier, referring
to the mitten.
The Bully looked from one to the other, and, in spite of their enigmatic
replies, reading in the glances they exchanged some happy understanding,
surrendered for good and all.
"Boys," he announced, "the drinks, as usual, is on us when we run up
agin the church, perlice, and gals--Here, Parson." He handed his weapon
to Maclane who, fearing trouble, had hurried to the spot. "Keep this
here shootin'-iron. I ain't fit ter be trusted with it, d'ye see? When I
want a shot at moose or ptarmigan I'll borrow the loan of it from you."
"That's what! Betcherlife!" applauded the boys.
When, at last, they found themselves left together, Evelyn held up a
mocking finger at her lover. "To think you had to be coerced! For
shame!"
"I wanted to give ye time," he explained, "to feel surer of yourself and
me."
"I knew it," she exclaimed. "You feared I might suspect you of
interested motives. But the surest proof of my love for you has been my
certainty that you care for me for myself alone, not for what I bring."
"That's the sweetest thing that ever has come from your lips," announced
the soldier. "Not another word till I taste a sweeter."
He was about to illustrate his meaning when Barney's voice was heard,
discreetly inquiring of the landscape for "himself."
Affecting, for the first time, to perceive his superior, "Och, are ye
there, sorr?" saluting, he inquired.
"Here or there, I'm beside myself with joy," remarked Scarlett _sotto
voce_. "Well, Barney, what's that you bring?"
"If appearances are not desayving, sorr, I'm thinking 'tis a letther.
Our rint-roll, I'm thinking." He stood by with an air of partnership
while Scarlett opened the envelope.
"Your rent-roll!" Puzzled, Evelyn looked at the address. "'Sir Gerald
Scarlett.' Is that some joke?"
"A hereditary wan, begorra," Barney hastened to assure her. "It runs in
our family."
"More roll than rent, though." Scarlett held out to her a long, legally
drawn-up document.
"Not to mintion the castle," remarked Barney.
"Just a ruin in a bit of a potato patch," Scarlett hastened to apologize
for his ancestral glories.
"And a cow to chaperon it--God bless her!" Barney saluted respectfully,
as he turned to go.
Sir Gerald looked down on his lady-love with laughing eyes.
"My offence is rank," he quoted.
"Oh, it's not an unpardonable sin," Evelyn assured him, also laughing,
but confused. "What a goose you must have thought me all this time--the
way I have condescended to you!"
"The greater my triumph in winning you on my own recognizances," he
replied.
Evelyn held him at arms' length, contemplatively. "What a difference,"
she remarked, "between the myself of to-day and of a year ago! Then I
should have suspected myself of being influenced by this--but now
nothing seems to matter so much as that we care for each other."
"Miss Durant! O Miss Durant!" The lovers broke apart as, by a cross-cut
through the bushes, the minister came hurrying toward them. "Here
is--some one who brings you news of your father."
He pointed to an elderly man who, with lagging footstep, followed him.
"Of daddy? Hurrah!" Evelyn clapped her hands. "That was the one thing
needed to complete my happiness! How is he? And where? Why hasn't he
come to me himself?" she demanded impatiently of the stranger.
"Our friend here has traveled far," Maclane gently reminded her. "He is
worn and spent."
"Oh, how thoughtless I am!" As Evelyn placed the newcomer in a
comfortable chair she noticed that his features, as she saw them between
his slouch hat and heavy beard, were pinched, and that his frame was
bowed beyond his years, as if from recent suffering. "How tired you
look! You have been ill?" she asked him considerately.
"He has undergone great hardships for the sake of a dearly loved
daughter," Maclane hastened to explain. "He has escaped with but little
besides his life. But for that let us give thanks. Let us make him feel
that, so long as he is spared, his daughter will not mind poverty."
"To be sure!" Evelyn tried not to show the impatience she felt at the
concerns of outsiders being placed before her own, with a touch of her
old patronizing manner adding, "And I dare say my father and I can
arrange matters so that this good man's daughter need not complain of
poverty."
The stranger opened his lips to speak, but unable to command himself,
turned his head aside with a slight groan.
With an inexplicable foreboding, Evelyn looked from him to Maclane, and
in the latter's kind eyes reading a deep pity, "What is wrong?" she
faltered. "Has anything happened to my father?"
"Nothing that sympathy and loving care cannot cure," replied the
minister. "Mr. Durant was on his way to you a year ago when he fell into
the power of ruffians, even as Travers, for his own evil purposes,
informed you. After serious ill-treatment at their hands he escaped, but
so broken in mind and body that for months he wandered about, unable to
fix his own identity or put himself in communication with his friends.
Now, thank God, he is almost cured."
"He shall be completely so, if, as you say, love can accomplish it."
Evelyn started up. "I'll go to him at once." She addressed the stranger.
"Where is he?"
"First----" Again Maclane hurriedly interposed. "There is something you
should know about your father's finances. He is not rich, as you think
him. By incessant toil from time to time he used to make vast sums, as
miners are apt to do--and as miners are apt to do, he spent as fast as
he made, his one extravagance being your pleasure. But the inexhaustible
supply, the purse of Fortunatus--that was a fable that somehow grew up
between your romanticism and his optimism. It does not exist. It never
has existed. To-day he is absolutely penniless."
The words rained on her like hailstones. Evelyn met them, standing
erect, very white and still.
At last, "I do not grasp your meaning," she replied. "Every one in the
district knows that my father is a very rich man."
"Not so." Maclane shook his head. "Every one knows the reverse; has
always known it. Believe me, my child, what I tell you is true."
"My father's wealth does not exist." Evelyn's mind seemed to take slow,
cautious steps backward over the minister's statements, with every
impact feeling surer of the truth. "To-day he is absolutely penniless.
Every one knows it; has always known it. Then why," she demanded with
sudden passion, "has it been kept from me?"
"Out of kindness," replied Maclane, simply.
"Kindness!" Evelyn laughed scornfully, hysterically; calmed herself,
then laughed again. "Kindness! When I recall how I used to brag of what
my wealth would do for the place--and all the time, poor fool that I am,
I have been the laughing-stock----"
"Again not so," emphatically said Maclane. "Think how quickly you fell
into our primitive ways, becoming the heart and spirit of the camp.
Believe me, Evelyn, you have endeared yourself, accomplished a thousand
times as much by this year's bread-winning toil and good-fellowship as
had you been the Lady Bountiful you started out to be. It isn't money
that builds up camps, closing dives and opening reading-rooms--it's
neighborliness--working and suffering with people, side by side. And in
all his grief, remorse for your bitter disappointment, your poor father
may take this comfort: that it has been the making of you as a woman,
just as you, the real woman, have been the making of the camp."
"Thank you." Evelyn spoke in a hard little dry voice. "Some day I may
bring myself to see it in that light." She took a few steps to and fro,
then came to a standstill opposite the minister. "Mr. Maclane, I want
you to give my love to the 'boys'--to all who, by their silence, have
shielded me as they thought, from the painful truth. Tell them that I
appreciate it. Also ask them to try not to show that they pity me. I'm
going to do something that's not easy for me. It would be easiest to go
away to a strange place, where I could hide my head--but I have my poor
father to think of. I have a good business here, which will support us
both decently, at least. I shall bring him here to care for him--and
mind! not one word of reproach, or mockery, is he ever to hear from any
one! Not one word!"
"Bravely spoken," cried Maclane. "Oh, there's happiness in store for
you, my child. You'll see."
"Together, sweetheart!" Scarlett, who had been standing by in mute
distress for her great trouble, now came to her and took her hand.
"We'll fight it out together--you and I."
"Oh, no." Evelyn wrenched her hand from him. "That is all over. Things
are changed with me. My eyes are open at last. I can forgive every one
but you, Sir Gerald Scarlett--you who let me condescend to you, lead you
on--and finally almost do the asking!"
"Faith, your eyes may be open, but they don't see as straight as they
did when closed," Scarlett indignantly contradicted her. "I've loved ye
all along, and sooner; since the moment I saw your picture smiling up to
me among the roses."
"We won't discuss it. I only know"--Evelyn's voice broke--"I never want
to see you again."
"But if only I could make people understand--believe in me----"
The stranger, who, all this time, had been sitting bowed forward,
his face buried in his hands, suddenly broke forth. "It's not a
fable! The Rainbow Mine--it's _true!_ I discovered it the day--but
where--where--where? My God, where?" He looked about wildly.
Evelyn turned sharply on the speaker. "Who are you?"
Matthew Durant, his passion spent, lifted streaming eyes to his
daughter's face. "Don't you know me, Evie?"
"Oh, no, no! You're not--oh, daddy!" Falling on her knees beside him,
she gathered the feeble form into her strong young arms.
Then Maclane led Scarlett quietly away.
XIV
CONCLUSION
Within the cabin her father was resting peacefully. While eating the
food she set before him, he told Evelyn the history of his wonderful
discovery, as it came back, fragmentarily, to his blurred memory, and
she, the better to bring him back, as she thought, to sanity, humored
his delusion by not betraying incredulity.
At the mission where he had been tended during the long illness that
followed his captivity, so he explained, he had purposely given a
fictitious name and account of himself, lest the truth should somehow
reach Blenksoe, thus furnishing the clue to the whereabouts of the
unstaked mine, which precaution also accounted for his having eluded the
diligent search that the Mounted Police had never ceased to prosecute
since his disappearance. From Blenksoe, however, he had no longer
anything to fear; that arch-conspirator having gone the way of his
leader, Dandy Raish, by the avenging bullet from some victim's hand.
And, now, please God, he concluded, restored health would bring back
recollection, enabling him to unearth the pot of gold to which the
heavenly sign had pointed him.
When, at last, her loving tendance had won him to sleep, Evelyn went out
into the cool air, to draw a long breath and readjust her reckonings
with life that the day's events had thus cruelly disturbed.
It was the sunset's glowing aftermath that, to the pilgrims of the
north, alone justifies a long journey from conditions that those
hide-bound with conventions are inclined to associate with creature
comfort, opening a new wonderland of beauty. In such regions where
nature is elemental, man becomes elementary, feeling himself in the
Almighty's workshop, in close communication with the powers of life,
dealt with, not by subtle processes that the artificial conditions of
city life have engendered, but swiftly, directly, summarily, as in the
days of burning bush and pillars of flame.
Gazing over the now prosperous township of Lost Shoe Creek, across the
lake, to the colossal mountains shutting it in from that "outside," to
which even miners so heavily under the mysterious spell of the North
that nothing ever could induce them to forsake it, still never ceases
fondly to speak of as "God's country," Evelyn seemed to herself to be
born again. Had she known it, it was then that she attained the noblest
moment of her being, resolving, even as she already had resolved to meet
it bravely, also to meet this uncompromising blow of providence without
bitterness; if possible with love.
Hearing Durant move within, she was about to go to him when her
attention was arrested by a tatterdemalion figure at her gate,
beseeching charity.
"Mademoiselle--peety ze poor!"
"Alphonse!" she exclaimed, recognizing the once jaunty person of her
former courier, alias Count St. Hilaire.
Alphonse, who had not thought of her from that day to this, in turn
recognizing her, hastened to attribute his present pitiful plight as the
deserved vengeance of an outraged Heaven for his baseness in despoiling
one of its own angels of kodak and motorcar. "But," he wept, "zese
fruits of sin did not long time 'dure. Ze automobile she bust, zen I
bust--and now--I have a such hunger."
In spite of the weight of sadness at her heart, Evelyn could not but
smile. It was one of the jests of the great powers--jests that are,
nevertheless, always tinged with irony, this confronting her with the
scarecrow of her whilom splendor at the supreme hour of her misery.
Grateful for food which he devoured eagerly, overwhelmed by the gift of
a small sum she bestowed on him to enable him to prosecute his journey,
Alphonse sought some expression of his feelings beyond his mere copious
Gallic thanks. He was selling photographs for a living, and he besought
mademoiselle, could she bring herself to overlook the regrettable fact
that they were the product of her own camera, to accept the choicest
example of his art--a veritable triumph, an arc-en-ciel--a rainbow!
Involuntarily, Evelyn shuddered at the word. Would the gods never cease
their mocking sport, she wondered, even while with becoming graciousness
she thanked Alphonse and sent him on his way, rejoicing. She still held
the picture in her hand, carelessly, occupied with her thoughts, when
she heard a cry from Durant, who had come out without her noticing him,
and was looking over her shoulder.
"My God! Evelyn! Look," he cried. "The mine--The Rainbow!"
"Father, dear," she sought to soothe him, "it is nothing--merely a
chance photograph."
"Nothing? It is my witness, my record," answered Durant. "No, Evie, I'm
not mad. This clears away the last cloud. Examine it carefully." Getting
out his prospector's glass, he polished the lens carefully and held it
over the photograph.
Evelyn looked, as she was bidden, at first merely to humor him, then
with awakening interest as, under the glass's magnifying power, she
studied the picture in detail. In his passion for the picturesque
Alphonse had, indeed, put her camera to good use. In this composition he
had caught a striking moment: Durant himself, in his rough miner's garb,
standing with arms flung up, as if in thankfulness to Heaven, while near
by, beside a half-uprooted willow-bush, knelt Walter Pierce with an
expression of wonder on his young face; while in the background, beyond
the creek, stood the imperturbable mountains, spanned by a faint,
elusive rainbow.
"This is the very spot!" Durant laughed like a happy boy. "Lost Shoe
Creek! Fancy forgetting even the name!--I had always believed in it,
though every other miner turned it down. It had shared the fate of
hundreds of other northern camps: a new strike; a stampede,
prospectors, traders, grafters, from all quarters rushing madly in;
then, disappointment, failure, starvation, desertion to new fields. It
became the most god-forsaken place on earth--an abandoned camp drained
of everything but the dregs of its population. I alone held on, having a
nose for gold, and scenting it right here, and now and then coming on
indications: Blenksoe, Raish, and all the other grafters meanwhile
dogging my steps to profit by any strike I might make, jump my claim,
and make away with me!--Oh, this brings it all back, this picture:
Walter Pierce; your coming; how Nick and the boys covered up my
humiliation; my trying to kill myself; and then--the gold!"
While he was speaking, he had hurried to the clearing at the back of the
cabin, comparing the lay of the land with the picture, Evelyn following
with keenest anxiety at this new phase of his delusion, yet not knowing
how to restrain him.
"Father, dear, don't," she remonstrated, seeing him uprooting a willow
with frenzied eagerness. "Why, that's the bush on which I spread out my
wash."
But Durant only laughed and went on spading up the soft earth with a bit
of wood. Wild as were his actions, his face and bearing had regained
all their old, light-hearted poise. He was as Evelyn always had known
him on his occasional visits to her, when they spent money like princes
and amused themselves like children.
Soon he threw his improvised tool aside. "Here we are! Look at this,
Evie!"