The Plunderer Part 22

d.i.c.k leaned over the unused compartment of the shaft, and heard the steady, savage chugging of the drills. Bill was "makin' things hump!"

with a vengeance.

A man who had been sent to the camp for the semi-weekly mail arrived while the partners were at breakfast, and the first letter laid before them was one with a New York postmark, which d.i.c.k read anxiously. It was from Sloan, who told him that he had been unexpectedly called to the Pacific coast on a hurried trip, and that, while he did not have time to visit the Croix d'Or, he very earnestly hoped that d.i.c.k would arrange, on receipt of the letter, to meet him in Seattle, and named a date.

"Whe-e-w! You got to move some, ain't you? Let's see, if you want to meet him you'll have to be hittin' the trail out of here in an hour,"

said Bill, laying down his knife and fork. "What do you s'pose is up?

Goin' to tie the poke strings again?"

d.i.c.k feared something was amiss. And he continued to think of this after he had written a hasty note to Joan, telling her of his abrupt absence, and that he expected to return in a week. He pondered for a moment whether or not to add some note of affection, but decided that he was still under her ban, and so contented himself with the closing line:

"I am following your advice. We are sinking!"

He had to run, bag in hand, to catch the stage from Goldpan, and as it jolted along over the rough pa.s.ses and rugged inclines had a medley of thought. Sometimes he could not imagine why Sloan had been so anxious to talk with him, and in the other and happier intervals, he thought of Joan Presby, daughter of the man whom he had come to regard as antagonistic in many ways.

The confusion of mind dwelt with him persistently after he had boarded the rough "accommodation" that carried him to the main line, where he must wait for the thunderous arrival of the long express train that was to carry him across the broad and splendid State of Was.h.i.+ngton.

Idaho and Oregon were left behind. The magnificent wheat belt spread from horizon to horizon, and harvesters paused to wave their hats at the travelers. The Western ranges of the Olympics, solid, dignified, and engraved against the sky with their outline of peak and forest, came into view, and yet his perturbation continued.

He saw the splendid panorama of Puget Sound open to his view, and the train, at last, after those weary hours of jolting, rattled into the long sheds that at that time disgraced the young giant city of the North-west. It was the first time he had even entered its shadows, and as he turned its corner he looked curiously at the stump of a tree that had been hollowed into an ample office, and was a.s.sailed by the strident cries of cabmen.

"The Butler House," he said, relinquis.h.i.+ng his bag into the hands of the first driver who reached him, and settled back into the cus.h.i.+ons with a sense of bewilderment, as if something long forgotten had been recalled. He knew what it was as he drove along in all that clamor of sound which issues from a great and hurrying city. It was New York, and he was in the young New York of the North-west, with great skeleton structures uprearing and the turmoil of building. Only here was a difference, for side by side on the streets walked men clad in the latest fas.h.i.+on, and men bound to or coming from the arctic fields of gold-bound Alaska. Electric cars tearing along at a reckless speed, freight wagons heavily laden, newsboys screaming the call of extras, and emerging from behind log wagons, and everything betokening that clash of the old and the intensely new.

At the Butler House the man behind the desk twirled the register toward him, and a.s.signed him a room.

"Sloan?" he replied to d.i.c.k's inquiry. "Oh, yes. He's the old chap from New York who said he was expecting someone, and to send him right up. I suppose you're the man. Here, boy, show Mr. Townsend to five-fifty. Right that way, sir."

And before his words were finished he had turned to a new arrival.

The clamor of the streets, busy as is no other city in the world busy when the season is on, was still in his ears, striking a familiar note in his memory, and the modernity of the elevator, the bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned boy, and the hotel itself brought back the last time he had seen Mr.

Sloan, and the day he had parted from his father in that office on Wall Street. He found the Wall Street veteran grayer, much older, and more kindly, when he was ushered into the room to receive his greeting. He subsided into a chair, but his father's old-time friend protested.

"Stand up!" he commanded, "and turn around, young fellow, so I can see whether you have filled out. Humph! You'll do, I guess, physically. I don't think I should want to have any trouble with you. You look as if you could hold your own most anywhere. I'm glad. Now, sit down, and tell me all about the mine."

He listened while d.i.c.k went into details of the work, sparing none of the misfortunes and disappointments, and telling of the new method employed. He was interrupted now and then by a shrewd question, an exclamation, or a word of a.s.sent, and, after he had finished the account, said: "Well, that is all there is to report. What do you think?"

"Who is Thomas W. Presby?" Sloan's question was abrupt.

"The owner of the Rattler, the mine next to us."

"He is?" the question was explosive. "Ah, ha! The moth in the closet, eh? So that accounts for it! I spent a hundred dollars, then, to good purpose, it seems to me!"

d.i.c.k looked an intent and wondering question.

"An agent here in Seattle wrote me that they had written you, making an offer of sixty thousand dollars for the property--yes--the same one you wrote me about. He said they had reason to believe I was the financial backer for the mine, and that they now wished to deal with me, inasmuch as you might be carried away by youthful enthusiasm to squandering my hard-earned cash. I wrote back that your judgment satisfied me. Then, just before I left, I got a flat offer of a hundred thousand dollars for the property in full, or seventy-five thousand for my share alone. It set me to thinking, and wondering if some one wasn't trying to cut your feet from under you. So, having business in Portland, I came on up here, and got after this agent."

d.i.c.k had a chill of apprehension. He knew before the loyal old man had proceeded half-way what to expect.

"It cost me a hundred dollars in entertainment, and a lot of apparent readiness to talk business, to get him confidential with me. Then I got the name of the would-be purchaser, under injunctions of secrecy, because those were the agent's positive instructions. The man who wants to buy is Presby!"

For one black, unworthy instant, d.i.c.k looked out of the window, wondering if it were possible that Joan had known of her father's efforts, and had withheld the information. Then the memory of that gentle face, the candid eyes, her courageous advice, and--last of all--the kiss and prayer on her lips, made him mentally reproach himself for the thought. But he remembered that he still owed affection and deference to the stanch old man who sat before him, who had been his benefactor in an hour of need, and backed faith with money.

"Well, sir," he said, turning to meet the kindly eyes, "what do you think of it?"

"Think of it? Think of it?" Sloan replied, raising his voice. "I'll tell you my answer. 'You sit down,' I said, 'and write this man Presby that I knew no one in connection with the Croix d'Or but the son of the man who many times befriended me, in desperate situations when I needed it! That I was paying back to the son what I was unfortunately prevented from paying back to the father--a constant grat.i.tude! That I'd see him or any other man in their graves before I'd sell Richard Townsend out in that way. That I'd back d.i.c.k Townsend on the Croix d'Or as long as he wanted me to, and that when he gave that up, I'd still back him on any other mine he said was good!' That's what I said!"

He had lost his calm, club poise, and was again the virulent business man of that Wall Street battle, waged daily, where men must have force or fail to survive. d.i.c.k saw in him the man who was, the man who at times had shaken the financial world with his desperate bravery and daring, back in the days when giants fought for the beginnings of supremacy. He felt very inexperienced and young, as he looked at this veteran with scars, and impulsively rose to his feet and held out his hand. He was almost dumb with grat.i.tude.

"I shouldn't have asked you to say so much," he said. "I am--well--I am sort of down and out with it all! I feel a little bit as I did when the Cornell eleven piled on top of me in the annual, when I played half-back."

"Hey! And wasn't that a game!" the old man suddenly enthused, with sparkling eyes. "And how your father and I did yell and howl and beat the heads of those in front! Gad! I remember the old man had a silk hat, and he banged it up and down on a bald head in front until there was nothing but a rim left, and then looked as sheepish as a boy caught stealing apples when he realized what he had done. Oh, but your Daddy was a man, even if he did have a temper, my boy!"

His eyes sparkled with a fervid love of the game of his college days, and he seemed to have dismissed the Croix d'Or from his mind, as if it were of no importance. Nor did he, during the course of that visit, refer to it again. He made exception, when he shook hands with d.i.c.k at the train.

"Don't let anybody bluff you," he said. "Remember that a brave front alone often wins. If you fail with the Croix the world is still big, and--well--you're one of my legatees. Good-by. Good luck!"

Again d.i.c.k endured the rumbling of trains through long hours, the change from one to another at small junctions, the day and night in a stage coach whose springs seemed to have lost resiliency, and the discourse of two drummers, Hebraic, the chill aloofness of a supercilious mining expert new to the district, and the heated discussions of two drill runners, veterans, off to a new field, and celebrating the journey with a demijohn. The latter were union men, and long after lie was tired of their babel they broached a conversation which brought d.i.c.k to a point of eager listening.

"Yes, you see," one of the men a.s.serted; "they got the goods on him.

Thompson had been a good delegate until he got the finger itch, then he had an idea he could use the miners' union to scratch 'em. He held up one or two small mines before the big guns got wise. That got him to feelin' his oats, and he went for bigger game."

"But how did they get him?" the other runner insisted.

"They got him over here to where we're goin--Goldpan. He held up some fellers that's got a mine called the Craw Door, or somethin' like that. Fetched three of his pals from Denver with him. They called 'emselves miners! G.o.d! Miners nothin'! They'd worked around Cripple Creek long enough to get union cards, but two of 'em was prize fighters, and the other used to be bouncer at the old Alcazar when she was the hottest place to lose money that ever turned a crooked card. I remember there one time when----"

"n.o.body asked you about that," growled the other man. "What I'm interested in is about this big stiff, Thompson."

"Him? Oh, yes. Where was I? Well, he fixed things for a hold-up. Was goin' to get these fellers at the Craw Door to untie their pokes, but they don't stand for it. He packs a meetin' with a lot of swampers that don't know nothin' about the case, and before they gets done they votes a strike, and an old feller from this Craw Door gets his time.

Gets kicked to death, the same as they uster in Park City when the Cousin Jacks from the Ontario cut loose on one another. The Denver council takes cawgnizance of this, and investigates. It snoops around till it gets the goods. Then--_wow! bing!_ goes this here Thompson.

They sue him themselves, and now he's up in Canon City, a-lookin'

plaintive like through these things."

He held his knotted, rough fingers open before his face, and jerked his head sideways, simulating a man peering through penitentiary bars. Then, with a roar, he started in to bellow, "The union forever--hooraw, boys hooraw!" in which his companion, forgetting all the story, joined until it was again time to tilt the wicker-covered jug.

And so that was the end of Thompson and presumably the strike, d.i.c.k thought, as he settled back into the corner he had claimed. And it was easy to see, with this d.a.m.ning evidence to be brought forward, that Bells Park's murderers would pay, to the full, the penalty. For them, on trial, it meant nothing less than life. He was human enough to be glad.

The stage rattled into Goldpan, and, stiff and sore from his journey, he began his tramp toward the trail of the cut-off leading homeward: He stopped but once. It was in front of the High Light, where a small sc.r.a.p of paper still clung to the plate gla.s.s. On it was written, in a hurried, but firm and womanly, handwriting:

This place is closed for good. It is not for sale. It has held h.e.l.l. Hereafter it shall hold nothing but cobwebs.

LILY MEREDITH.

The date was that of the tragic night, the night when Bells Park, fighting for those on whom he had bestowed a queer, distorted affection, had been kicked to death by the ruffians now cowering in a distant jail!

Verily the camp and the district had memories for him as he trudged away from its straggling shanties, and filled his lungs with the fresh, free air from the wide, rugged stretches beyond. When he came through the borders of the Rattler he looked eagerly, insistently, for a glimpse of his heart's desire, and thought, with annoyance, that he did not so much as know the cabin which she called home. But he was not rewarded. It was still the same, with no enlivening touch of form or color, the same spider-web tramways debouching into the top of the mill, the same sullen roar and rumble of falling stamps, the same columns of smoke from tall chimney and humble log structure, alike, and the same careless clash of the breakers.

Bill came hurrying down the trail to meet him, waving his hat, and shouting a welcome. Up at the yard the smith held a black hand and muscled arm up to shade his eyes from the last sunlight, and then shook a hammer aloft. From the door of the engine room the man who had been Bells' a.s.sistant bawled a greeting, and the fat cook shook a ladle at him through the mess-house window. It all gave him an immense and satisfactory warmth of home-coming, and the Croix d'Or, with its steadfast, friendly little colony, was home in truth!

"We're in sixty feet on the seven-hundred-foot," Bill grinned, with the air of one giving a pleasant surprise, "and say, boy, we've hit the edge of ore. You were all right. The green lead is still there, only she looks better to me than she did before, and I know rock, some."

There was nothing wanting in the pleasure of his return, and the last addition to that satisfactory day was a note he found, lying on the very top of other letters awaiting him. It was from Joan Presby, and Bill, starting to enter the office, saw his partner's face in the light of the lamp, smiled affectionately, and then tiptoed away into the darkness, as if to avoid intrusion at such a time.