The Plunderer Part 21

"No!" he blurted. "There is a Dorothy Presby, and a----"

"Dorothy Presby!" She doubled over in a gust of mirth. "The daughter of the lumberman over on the other side. Oh, this is too good to keep!

I must tell her the next time I see her. After all these months, you still thought----"

Again her laughter overwhelmed her; but it was not shared by d.i.c.k, who stood above her on the slope, frowning in perplexity, thinking of the strange blunder into which he had been led by the words of poor old Bells, his acceptance of her ident.i.ty, his ignorance that Bully Presby had kith or kin, and of the mine owner's sarcastic references and veiled antagonism throughout all those troubled months preceding.

If she were Bully Presby's daughter, he might never gain her father's consent, though the Croix d'Or were in the list of producers. He thought of that harsh encounter on the trail, and his a.s.sertion that he was capable of attending to his own business and asked neither friends.h.i.+p nor favor from any man under the skies; of Bully Presby's gruff reply, and of their pa.s.sing each other a second time, in the streets of Goldpan, without recognition. The girl in front of him, so unlike her father save for the firm chin and capable brow, did not appear to sense his perturbation.

"Well," she said, "it doesn't matter. I am not jeal---- I'm not any different--just the same. Come back here and sit down, please, while I go ahead with what I wish to say."

The interlude appeared to have rendered her more self-possessed.

"So, on that day I met you, I became quite rich. That money has rested in a bank, doing neither me nor any one else any benefit. I think I have drawn one check, for twenty-five dollars, just to convince myself that it was all reality. And I am, in some ways, the daughter of my father. I want my money to work. I'm quite a greedy young person, you see. I want to lend you as much of that money as you need."

"Impossible!"

"Not at all. I have as much faith in you, perhaps more, than this Mister Sloan, of whom I'm a trifle jealous. I want to have a share in your success. I want to make you feel that, even if I'm not the daughter of a lumberman, I am, and shall have a right to be, interested in--in--the Croix d'Or."

"Impossible!"

"It isn't any such thing. I mean it!"

"Then it's because I haven't made it plain to you--haven't made you understand that even now I am thinking, to preserve my honor, of telling Mr. Sloan that it is too much of a venture. If I should decline to venture his money, why should I----?"

"Refuse mine? That's just it. His money you could decline. He isn't on the ground. He doesn't know mines, mining, or miners. I know them all.

I am here. I know the history of the Cross from the day it made its first mill run. I went five hundred feet under ground in a California mine when I was a month old. I've run from the lowest level to the top of the hoist, and from the grizzlies to the tables, for at least ten years of my life. I've absorbed it. I've lived in it. Had I the strength, there isn't a place in this, or any mine, that I couldn't fill. I'm backing my judgment. The Croix d'Or will prove good with depth. It may never pay until you get it. The blowing of your dam, the loss of your green lead, and all of those troubles, don't amount to that."

She snapped a thumb and forefinger derisively, and went on before he could interject a word, so intent was she on a.s.sisting him and encouraging him, and proving to him that her judgment, through knowledge, was better than his.

"Borrow my money, d.i.c.k, and sink."

The name came so easily to her lips! It was the first time he had ever heard her utter it. It swept away his flying restraint even as the flame of powder snaps through a fuse to explosion; and he made a sudden, swinging step toward her, and caught her in his arms savagely, greedily, tenderly fierce. All his love was bursting, molten, to speech; but she lifted both hands and thrust herself away from him.

"Oh, not that!" she said. "Not that! I wish you had not. It robs me of my wish. I wanted you to take my money as a comrade, not as my---- Oh, d.i.c.k! d.i.c.k! Don't say anything to me now, or do anything now! Please let me have my way. You will win. I know it! The Cross must pay. It shall pay! And when it does, then--then----"

She stood, trembling, and abashed by her own words, before him. Slowly the delicacy of her mind, the romanticism of her dreams, the great, unselfish love within her, fluttering yet valiant, overwhelmed him with a sense of infinite unworthiness and weakness. He took his hat from his head, leaned over, and caught one of the palpitant hands in both his own, and raised it reverently to his lips. It was as if he were paying homage to heaven devoutly.

"I understand," he said softly, still clinging to the fingers, every throb of which struck appealingly on his heartstrings. "Forgive me, and--yet--don't. Joan, little Joan, I can't take your money. It would make me a weakling. But I can make the Cross win. If it never had a chance before, it will have now. It must! G.o.d wouldn't let it be otherwise!"

"Help me to my horse," she said faintly. "We mustn't talk any more.

Let us keep our hopes as they are."

He lifted her lightly to the saddle, and the big black, with comprehending eyes, seemed to stand as a statue after she was in her seat. The purple shadows of the mountain twilight were, with a soft and tender haze, tinting the splendid peak above them. Everything was still and hushed, as if attuned to their parting. She leaned low over her saddle to where, as before something sacred, he stood with parted lips, and upturned face, bareheaded, in adoration. Quite slowly she bent down and kissed him full on the lips, and whispered: "G.o.d bless you, dear, and keep you--for me!"

The abrupt cras.h.i.+ng of a horse's hoofs awoke the echoes and the world again. She was gone; and, for a full minute after the gray old rocks and the shadows had encompa.s.sed her, there stood in the purple twilight a man too overcome with happiness to move, to think, to comprehend, to breathe!

CHAPTER XV

"MR. SLOAN SPEAKS"

"Wow! Somethin' seems to have kind of livened up the gloom of this dump, seems to me," exclaimed Bill on the following morning, when returning from his regular trip underground, he stamped into the office, threw himself into a chair, and hauled off one of his rubber boots preparatory to donning those of leather.

d.i.c.k had been bent over the high desk, with plans unrolled before him, and a sheet of paper on which he made calculations, whistling as he did so.

"First time I've heard you whistle since we left the Coeur d'Alenes,"

Bill went on, grinning slyly, as if secretly pleased. "What're you up to?"

"Finding out if by sinking we couldn't cut that green lead about two hundred feet farther down."

"Bully boy! I'm with you!" encouraged the older miner, throwing the c.u.mbersome boots into the corner, and coming over behind d.i.c.k, where he could inspect the plans across the angle of the other's broad shoulder. "How does she dope out?"

"We cut the green lead on the six-hundred-foot, at a hundred and ten feet from the shaft, didn't we? Well, the men before us cut on the five-hundred at a hundred and seventy from the shaft, and at two-twenty from the shaft on the four-hundred-foot level, where they stoped out a lot of it before concluding it wouldn't pay to work. It was a strong but almost barren ledge when they first came into it on the two-hundred-foot level. The Bonanza chute made gold because they happened to hit it at a crossing on the four-hundred-foot level. At the six-hundred, as we know, it was almost like a chimney of ore that is playing out as we drift west. If the mill had not been put out of business, we were going to stope it out, though, and prove whether it was the permanent ledge, weren't we?"

"Right you are, pardner."

"Well, then, at the same angle, we would have to drift less than seventy feet on the seven-hundred-foot level to cut it again, and at the eight-hundred-foot we'd just about have it at the foot of the shaft. Well, I'm sinking, regardless of expense."

"It might be right, boy, it might be right," Bill said, thoughtfully scowling at the plans, and going over the figures of the dip. "But you're the boss. What you say goes."

"But don't you think I'm right?"

"Yes," hesitatingly, "or, anyway, it's worth takin' a chance on. Bells used to say the mines around here all had to get depth, and that most of the ledges came in stronger as they went down. The Cross ain't shown it so far, but eight hundred feet ought to show whether that's the right line of work."

"How is the sump hole under the shaft?" d.i.c.k asked.

"Must be somewhere about seventy or eighty feet of water in it; but we can pump that out in no time. She isn't makin' much water. Almost a dry mine now, for some reason I don't quite get. Looks as if it leaked away a good deal, somewhere, through the formation. There wouldn't be no trouble in sinkin' the shaft."

"And thirty feet, about, would bring us to the seven-hundred-foot mark?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll tell you what I want to do: I want you to s.h.i.+ft the crew so that there is a day and a night s.h.i.+ft. The rebuilding of the dam can be put off for a while, except for such work as the millmen are agreeable to take on. I want to sink! I don't want to waste any time about it. I want to go down just as fast as it can be done, and when we get to the seven-hundred-foot, one gang must start to drift for the green lead, and the others must keep going down."

He was almost knocked over the desk by a rousing, enthusiastic slap on the back.

"Now you're my old pardner again!" Bill shouted. "You're the lad again that was fresh from the schools, knew what he wanted, and went after it. d.i.c.k, I've been kind of worried about you since we came here," the veteran went on, in a softer tone of voice. "You ain't been like the old d.i.c.k. You ain't had the zip! It's as if you were afraid all the time of losing Sloan's money, and it worried you. And sometimes--now, I don't want you to get sore and cuss me--it seemed to me as if your mind wa'n't altogether on the job! As if the Cross didn't mean everything."

He waited expectantly for a moment, as if inviting a confidence; then, observing that the younger man was flushed, and not looking at him, grinned knowingly, and trudged out of the office, calling back as he went: "There'll be sump water in the creek in half an hour."

As if imbued with new energy, he ordered one of the idle millmen to act as stoker, if he cared to do so, which was cheerfully done, had the extra pump attached, saw the fire roaring from another boiler, and by noon the shaft rang with the steady throb of the pistons pounding and pulling the waste water upward. The last of the unwatering of the Cross was going forward in haste. By six o'clock in the evening he reported that soundings showed that the map had not been checked up, and that the shaft was seven hundred and ten feet deep, and that they would commence a drift on the seven-hundred-foot mark the next day.

d.i.c.k was awakened at an early hour, and found Bill missing. He went over to the hoist house, where a sleepy night man, new to the hours, grinned at him with a pleasant: "Looks like we're busy, just--the--same, Mr. Townsend! The old man"--the superintendent of a mine is always "the old man," be he but twenty--"left orders last night that when the water was clear at seven hundred feet he was to be called. He kicked up two of the drill men at four this mornin', and they're down there puttin' the steel into the rock ever since.

Hear 'em? He's makin' things hump!"