The Everlasting Whisper Part 7

"I couldn't leave here, an' you know it. I--I got things here," he said with a look of great cunning, "I wouldn't go away from. Not if horses was pullin' me."

"You can bring those things along----"

Honeycutt cried out sharply at that.

"You know I wouldn't durst! With the world full of robbers that would be after me like hounds runnin' down a rabbit. I won't go; you cain't make me. No man cain't."

King's patience deserted him.

"I am not going to make you do anything. Further, I am not going to put in any more time on you. I have offered to pay you three thousand dollars for what you know--and there is the very strong likelihood that you don't know a bit more than I do----"

"Don't know!" shrieked Honeycutt. "Wasn't I a boy grown when the dyin', delerious man stumbled in on the camp? Didn't I hear him talk an' didn't I see what he had in his fist? Wasn't I settin' right side by side with Gus Ingle when that happened? Wouldn't I of been one to go, if it hadn't of been that I had a big knife-cut in my side you could of shoved a cat in--give to me by a slant-eyed cuss name of Baldy Winch. Didn't I watch 'em go, the whole seven of 'em, Baldy Winch, rot him, jeerin' at me an'

me swearin' I'd get him yet, him an' Gus Ingle an' Preacher Ellson an'

the first Brodie an' Jimmy Kelp an' Manny Howard an' the Italian? Wasn't I there?" He was almost incoherent.

"Were you?" said King. "And Baldy Winch, the one who knifed you----?"

The sucking old mouth emitted a dry chuckle.

"An' didn't I keep my promise? That very winter after Baldy was the only man to git back. With my side just healin' didn't I make my way through the snow out to where he was----"

"His cabin on Lookout?"

"With an axe I got there! An' him havin' a gun an' pistol an' knife.

Phoo! What good did it do him? An' didn't I square with him by takin'

what I wanted?"

"Gold?"

The old dry cackle answered the question; the bleary eyes were bright with cunning.

"If I don't know nothin'," jibed Honeycutt, "what're you askin' me for?"

King had learned little that he did not already know. He came back to the table and began gathering up the money.

"Wait a minute, Mark," pleaded the old man, restless as he understood that the glittering coins were to be taken away. "Let's talk a while.

You an' me ain't had a good chat like this for a year."

"I'm going," retorted King. "But I'll make you one last proposition." He thrust into his pocket everything excepting five twenty-dollar gold pieces. These he left standing in a little pile. "I'll give you just exactly one hundred dollars for a look at what is in that box of yours."

In sudden alarm the old man shambled back to his bunk, his hands on the bedding over the box.

"You'd grab it an' run," he clacked. "You'd rob me. You're worse than Brodie----"

"You know better than that," King told him sternly. "If I wanted to rob you I'd do it without all this monkey business."

In his suspicious old heart Honeycutt knew that. He battled with himself, his toothless old mouth tight clamped.

"I'll go you!" he said abruptly. "Stand back. An' give me the money first."

King gave him the money and drew back some three or four paces.

Honeycutt drew out the box, held it lingeringly, fought his battle all over again, and again went down before the hundred dollars. He opened the box upon a hinged lid; he made a smooth place in the covers; he poured out the contents.

What King saw, three articles only, were these: an old leather pouch, bulging, probably with coins; a parcel; and a burnished gold nugget. The nugget, he estimated roughly, would be worth five hundred dollars were it all that it looked from a dozen feet away. The parcel, since it was enwrapped in a piece of cloth, might have been anything. It was shaped like a flat box, the size of an octavo volume.

Honeycutt leered.

"If Swen Brodie had of knowed what he had right in his hands," he gloated, "he'd never of let go! Not even for a shotgun at his head!"

"Brodie hasn't gone far. He'll come back. You have your last chance to talk business with me, Honeycutt. Brodie will get it next time."

"Ho! Will he? Not where I'm goin' to hide it, Mark King. I got another place; a better place; a place the old h.e.l.l-sarpint himself couldn't find."

King left him gloating and placing his treasures back in his box. In his heart he knew that Brodie would come again. Soon. It began to look as though Brodie had the bulge on the situation. For that which Mark King could not come at by fair means Brodie meant to have by foul. For he had little faith in the new "hidin'-place."

But on a near-by knoll, where she sat with her back to a tree, was Gloria. He turned toward her; she waved. He saw that Brodie and two men with him were looking out of a window of the old Honeycutt barn; he heard one of them laughing. They were looking at Gloria----

King quickened his step to come to her, his blood ruffled by a new anger which he did not stop to reason over. He could imagine the look in Swen Brodie's evil little eyes.

_Chapter VII_

Gloria was genuinely glad to see King returning to her. She came to meet him, smiling her glad welcome.

"It seemed that you were gone _hours_," she explained. "I never saw such a dreary, lonesome place as this sleepy little town. It gives me the fidgets," she concluded laughingly.

"These old mining camps have atmospheres all their own," he admitted understandingly. "Once they were the busiest, most frantic spots of the whole West; thousands of men hurrying up and down, all full of great, big, golden hopes. They're gone, but I sometimes half believe their ghosts hang on; the air is full of that sort of thing. A dead town turned into a ghost town. It gets on your nerves."

She nodded soberly.

"That's what I felt, though I didn't reason it all out." Her quick smile came back as she looked up into his face and confessed: "My, it's good to have you back."

"Come," he said. "We'll go and have lunch. You've no idea how much gayer things will look then."

"We're not going to eat _here_," she announced, already gay. "I stopped in at a little funny store and ordered some things. Let's start back, take them with us, and picnic in the first pretty spot out of sight of old houses."

As side by side they went along through the suns.h.i.+ne King noted how Brodie and a couple of men came out to look after them. He heard the low, sullen ba.s.s of the unforgettable voice; saw that Brodie had left his companions and was going straight to old Honeycutt's shanty. King frowned and for an instant hung on his heel, drawing Gloria's curious look.

"You don't like that big man with the big voice," said Gloria.

"No," he said tersely.

"It is Swen Brodie?"