Miss Dividends Part 32

"By Jove, Harry! What are you doing here?" cries this young gentleman, who has become very familiar with the man who has saved his life.

"Hunting for you," replies Lawrence, returning Ferdie's warm grip very cordially.

"Ah, you've come to tell us the news, I suppose," laughs Mr. Chauncey.

Then he amazes Lawrence with the query: "How is she?"

"Who?"

"Erma Travenion, of course--how is she getting along with her many step-mammas?"

"What do you mean?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es Harry, thinking Mr. Chauncey has gone daft.

"I mean what I say. Innocence won't do. Has old Tranyon given you his mine as well as his daughter? Ollie and his mother quarrel every day over his desertion of the heiress. The widow says that she and Louise won't be able to live on their income now, and Oliver has turned sullen, and says if they can't, Louise can go into a Protestant nunnery. So that young lady is in despair."

"What the d.i.c.kens do you mean?" gasps Harry. Then he says: "Are you crazy?" and looking into Ferdie's face, and seeing sanity there, suddenly seizes him, leads him apart, and commands: "Tell me what you're driving at!"

Then Mr. Chauncey, guessing from Lawrence's manner that he does not know what has happened, tells him what took place in Salt Lake the evening before their departure, to which Harry listens with staring eyes.

As Ferdie closes, he suddenly breaks out: "Now I understand!--Tranyon's deed to me--it was that angel's doing!" Then mutters: "My G.o.d! She'll think me a monster of ingrat.i.tude! A prig, like that scalliwag up-stairs;" he turns up his thumb towards where Mr. Livingston is supposed to be.

To this Mr. Chauncey says nothing, though his eyes have grown very large.

After a second's thought, Lawrence continues very earnestly: "You say I saved your life. May I ask you a favor in return?"

"Anything!" cries Ferdie.

"Very well! You can explain this matter to Erma Travenion, so that she will know that I followed her for love, all over California, and did not desert her for pride, because she was the daughter of a Mormon, in Utah.

Will you come with me, and make that explanation?"

"Yes--when?"

"Now! The train leaves in an hour."

"I will," cries Ferdie. "I only want fifteen minutes to pack my trunk and explain my sudden departure to the Livingstons."

Which he does, and the two make their exit from San Francisco on the afternoon train, and two days afterwards find themselves in Salt Lake City, where Ferdinand would like to lay over for a night, but Lawrence says, "No rest while she thinks me ungrateful!"

Despite some demur on the part of Mr. Chauncey, he puts him into a light wagon, and the two drive all night so as to make Eureka in the morning, which they do, some two hours after Mr. Kruger has left it.

At the hotel, seeing neither Tranyon nor his daughter, Lawrence drags Ferdie, who is very tired, with him up the trail to the office of Zion's Co-operative Mine, and says: "You go in, my young diplomat, and tell her; I'll wait down here out of the way."

Which he does; but a few minutes after Chauncey comes back and reports: "There's no one there!"

"n.o.body?"

"Not a living soul!"

Lawrence investigating this and finding it true, they return to the hotel again; but to Harry's anxious inquiries, no one can give him any information of the whereabouts this day of Bishop Tranyon or his daughter till, after two hours' search, some one suggests: "They may be up at the mine."

"They're not working that now?" says Harry.

"No, but I saw the bishop and his daughter go that way very early this morning."

This information is enough for the impetuous Lawrence, and he again drags Mr. Chauncey up the trail with him, past the office; and one hundred yards beyond they come to the dump of the Zion's Co-operative Mine, but the place seems deserted.

"I expect, with your usual luck," suggests Ferdie, "the bishop and his daughter have gone back to Salt Lake City, and we have missed them on the way. Miss Erma seems a pretty hard b.u.t.terfly for you to track."

But Lawrence suddenly interrupts him, whispering: "Listen! There's some one in the mine. Perhaps they're down below."

"What makes you think that?"

"I hear them."

"I don't."

"But I do! Right through this air-pipe," cries Harry, and he springs to it, and disconnecting the fan from it, puts his ear to it. A moment afterwards he exclaims: "There's somebody in trouble down there!" and the next moment, disregarding the danger of foul air, is well on his way down the incline.

Three minutes after, he re-appears, and says: "There's been an accident of some kind. Cars have broken loose and are smashed down there at the bottom, and boulders and loose rock are piled up, cutting off somebody.

He's alive yet! I heard him moaning."

Then he suddenly whispers, growing very pale: "My G.o.d--if it is she!"

Lovers are always fearful. Next he cries: "Run, Ferdie, up to the Mineral Hill--it's only three hundred feet from here--tell them to send down half a dozen miners like lightning!"

And Chauncey flying on his errand, a sudden idea coming into Lawrence's mind, he steps to the air-pipe, and using it as a speaking-tube, shouts down: "Halloo there! Who are you? Are you too much injured to speak?"

And listening, there comes up to him from the depths faintly, through the tube: "I'm uninjured, but am bound and helpless."

"Who are you?"

"R. H. Tranyon."

To this, Harry suddenly screams back: "Your daughter!--for G.o.d's sake, tell me where she is!"

"Why should I tell you that?"

"Because I'm Harry Lawrence!"

And through the tube comes faintly up to him: "Thank G.o.d! You are here to save her!"

"From what? My Heaven! From what?" shrieks Lawrence down the tube.

"From Lot Kruger, bishop in the Mormon Church, who has buried me here--who is now pursuing her!"

"Good G.o.d! For what?"

"To marry her!"

"Don't fear for that!" cries Harry. Then he grinds out between his clenched teeth: "The accursed polygamist'll be dead before that happens!" A second after he shouts down: "Give me the particulars," and gets them up the tube. Finally he says: "How long have you been there?"