A Damaged Reputation Part 29

"We don't want to hurt you," said one of the a.s.sembly, "but we're going in."

There was a growl of approbation, and the men were closing in upon the door when a stranger pushed his way through the midst of them, and then swung round and stood facing them beside the constable. He held himself commandingly, and, though n.o.body appeared to recognize him, for darkness was closing down, the meaning of his att.i.tude was plain, and the crowd gave back a little.

"Go home, boys!" he said. "I'll most certainly have the law of any man who puts his foot inside this door."

There was a little ironical laughter, and the crowd once more closed in.

Half the men of the settlement were present there, and a good many of them had bought land from, or trusted their spare dollars to, Sloc.u.m.

"Who are you, anyway?" said one.

The stranger laughed. "The man who owns the building. My name's Devine."

It was a bold announcement, for those who heard him were not in the best of humors then, or disposed to concern themselves with the question how far the princ.i.p.al was acquainted with or responsible for the doings of his agent.

"The boss thief!" said somebody. "Get hold of him, and bring him along to the hotel. Then, if Thorkell can't lock him up, we'll consider what we'll do with him."

"No," said another man. "He'll keep for a little without going bad, and we're here to see if Sloc.u.m left anything behind him. Break that door in!"

It was a critical moment, for there was a hoa.r.s.e murmur of approbation, and the crowd surged closer about the pair. At any sign of weakness it would, perhaps, have gone hardly with them, but the elderly constable stood very still and quiet, with empty hands, while Devine fumbled inside his jacket. Then he swung one foot forward, and his right arm rose, until his hand, which was clenched on a dusky object, was level with his shoulder.

"Boys," he said, drily, "somebody's going to get hurt in another minute.

This is my office, and I can't do with any of you inside it to-night."

"Then, if you hand our dollars out, it would suit us most as well," said the spokesman.

Devine appeared to laugh softly. "I guess there are very few of them there. Anybody who can prove a claim on me will get satisfaction, but he'll have to wait. Neither the place nor I will run away, and you'll find me right here when you come along to-morrow."

"Are you going to give every man back the dollars Sloc.u.m got from him?"

It was evident that the question met with the approbation of the crowd, and a less resolute man might have temporized, but Devine laughed openly now.

"No," he said, drily. "That's just what I'm not going to do. A man takes his chances when he makes a deal in land, and can't expect to cry off his bargain when they go against him. Still, if any one will bring me proof that Sloc.u.m swindled him, I'll see what I can do, but I guess it will be very little if some of you destroy the books and papers he recorded the deals in. You'll have to wait until to-morrow, while I worry through them."

His resolution had its due effect, and the fact that no man could reach the threshold until he and the constable had been pulled down counted for a good deal, too. The men also wanted no more than they considered themselves ent.i.tled to, and shrank from what, if it was to prove successful, must evidently be a murderous a.s.sault upon two elderly men.

"I guess there's sense in that," said one of them. "It's going to be quite easy to make sure he don't get out of the settlement."

"I'm for letting him have until to-morrow, anyway," said another.

"Still, the papers aren't there. Where's John Collier? He picked up some books and truck Sloc.u.m slung away when he met him on the trail."

"I've got them right here," and another man stepped forward. "I was coming in from the ranch when I heard two horses pounding down the trail, and jumped clear into the fern. The man who went past me tried to sling a package into the gully, but I guess he got kind of rattled when I shouted, and dropped the thing. He didn't seem to want to stop, and, when he went on at a gallop, I groped round and picked the package up."

Devine lowered the pistol, and turned quietly to the crowd. "There are just two courses open to you, boys, and you're going to make mighty little but trouble for yourselves by taking one of them. This is my office, and so long as I can hold you off n.o.body's coming in until he's asked. I feel quite equal to stopping two or three. Now, if you'll let me have those books and go home quietly, I'll have straightened Sloc.u.m's affairs out by to-morrow, and be ready to see what can be done for you."

The men were evidently wavering, and there was a brief consultation, after which the leader turned to Devine.

"We've no use for making any trouble that can be helped, and we'll go home," he said. "You can have those books, and a committee will come round to see what you've fixed up after breakfast to-morrow."

Devine nodded tranquilly. "I guess you're wise," he said. "Good night, boys!"

They went away, and left him to go in with the constable, who came out in a few minutes with a contented grin, which suggested that Devine had signified his appreciation of his efforts liberally. The latter, however, sat down, dusty and worn with an arduous journey, to undertake a night's hard work. He had left the Canopus before sunrise, and spent most of the day in the saddle, but n.o.body would have suspected him of weariness as he sat, grim and intent of face, before a table littered with papers. He had just imposed his will upon an angry crowd, and the tension of the past few minutes would have shaken many a younger man, but he showed no sign of feeling it, and, as the hours slipped by, only rose at intervals to stretch his aching limbs and brush the cigar ash from his dust-smeared clothes. This was one of the hard men who, in building up their own fortunes, had also laid the foundations of the future prosperity of a great province, and a little fatigue did not count with him.

The settlement was very still, and the lamp-light paling as the chilly dawn crept in, when at last he opened a book that recorded Sloc.u.m's dealings several years back. There were several folded slips on which he had jotted down certain data inside it, and Devine smiled somewhat drily as he came upon one entry:--

"24th. 6,000 dollars from Harford Brooke, in purchase of 400 acres bush land, Quatomac Valley. Ref. 22, slip B."

Devine turned up 22 B, and read: "Mem. About 150 acres 200-foot pines, with gravel sub-soil, and very little mould on top of it. Rest of it rock. Oregon man bid 1,000 dollars on the 2nd, but asked for re-survey and cried off. 12th. Gave Custer four days' option at 950. 20th. Asked the British sucker 6,500, and clinched the deal at 6,000."

Devine closed the book, and sat thoughtfully still for a minute or two.

The epithet his agent had applied to Brooke carried with it the stigma of puerile folly in that country, and Devine had usually very little sympathy with the men it could be fittingly attached to. Still, he felt that n.o.body could very appropriately term his contractor a sucker now, and he had just discovered that he had been systematically plundered himself. Several points which had given him food for reflection also became suddenly plain, and he lighted another cigar before he fell to work again. He had, however, in the meanwhile decided what course to adopt with Brooke when he went back to the Canopus mine.

XX.

THE BRIDGING OF THE CAnON.

It was a week or two after he undertook the investigation of Sloc.u.m's affairs, and once more the light was failing, when Devine stood at the head of the gully above the canon. His wife and Barbara were with him, and they were about to descend, when a cl.u.s.ter of moving figures appeared among the pines on the opposite hillside. So far as Devine could make out, they were rolling down two or three small trunks of firs.

The river was veiled in white mist now, but the sound of its turmoil came up hoa.r.s.ely out of the growing obscurity, and there was sufficient light above to show the rope which spanned the awful chasm. It swept downwards in a flattened curve, slender and ethereal, at that distance, as a film of gossamer, and lost itself in the gloom of the rocks, across the canon. Barbara, however, fancied she realized what it had cost the flume-builder to place it there, and, as he glanced at it, a somewhat curious look crept into Devine's eyes. He knew that slender thread of steel had only been flung across the hollow at the risk of life and limb, and under a heavy nervous strain.

"If we are going down, hadn't we better start?" said Mrs. Devine. "If it gets quite dark before we come up, I shall certainly have to stay there until to-morrow. In fact, I'm quite willing to let you and Barbara go without me now."

Devine smiled. "I'm not sure we'll go at all. It seems to me Brooke means to give the thing a private trial before he asks me to come over and see it work, and that's why he waited until it was almost dark. Can you make him out, Barbara?"

Barbara had, as a matter of fact, already done so, but she realized that her sister's eyes were upon her, and for no very apparent reason preferred not to admit it.

"It is getting a little shadowy among the pines, and Katty used to tell me she had sharper eyes than mine," she said.

Mrs. Devine laughed. "Still," she said, reflectively, "I scarcely think I have seen Mr. Brooke quite so often as you have."

Devine glanced at them both a trifle sharply, but there was nothing in their faces that gave him a clue to their thoughts. "Well," he said, "I'm a good deal older than either of you, but I can make him out myself now. As usual, he seems to be doing most of the work."

n.o.body said anything further, and the moving figures stopped where the rope ran into the shadows of the rocks, while it was a few minutes later when a long, dusky object swung out on it. It slid somewhat slowly down the incline, and then stopped where the slight curve led upward, and remained dangling high above the hidden river. A shout came faintly through the roar of water in the gulf below, and the dark ma.s.s oscillated violently, but otherwise remained immovable.

"What are they doing? Shouldn't it have run all the way across?" asked Mrs. Devine.

Devine nodded. "I guess they're 'most pulling their arms off trying to haul the thing across," he said. "It should have come itself, but the sheave the trolley runs on must have jammed, or they haven't pulled all the kinks and snarls out of the rope. It's quite a big log they've loaded her with."

The suspended trunk still oscillated, and a faint clinking came up with a hoa.r.s.e murmur of voices from the hollow. Then there was silence, and Devine, who pointed to a fallen cedar, took out his cigar-case.

"We'll stay right here, and see the thing out," he said. "I guess the boys have quite enough to worry them just now."

Barbara surmised that most of the anxiety would fall on Brooke, and wondered why she should feel as eager as she did to see the fir trunk safely swung across. The economical handling of mining props was naturally not a subject she had any particular interest in, though she realized that the success of his venture was of some importance to the man who had stretched the rope across the canon. There was no ostensible reason why it should affect her, and yet she was sensible of a curious nervous impatience.

In the meanwhile, it was growing darker, and she could not quite see what the dim figures across the river were doing. They did not, in fact, appear to be doing anything in particular, beyond standing in a group, while the rope no longer oscillated. A thin, white mist commenced to drift out of the hollow in filmy wisps, and, in a curious fas.h.i.+on, suggested the vast depth of it. The silence the roar of the river broke through grew more intense as the chill of the distant snow descended, and the stately pines seemed to grow older and greater of girth. They dwarfed the tiny cl.u.s.tering figures into insignificance, and as iron columns and the raw gashes in the side of the gully faded into the gathering night, it seemed to Barbara that here in her primeval fastnesses Nature ignored man's puny handiwork.