The Plunderer Part 25

The daylight came, and with it the boom of the night s.h.i.+ft setting off its morning blasts, and clearing the way for the day s.h.i.+ft that would follow in sinking the hole that must inevitably betray the dishonesty of the stern mine master at the foot of the hill. d.i.c.k had not slept, and turned to see a shadow in the door.

"Don't you get up, d.i.c.k," Bill said. "Just try to rest. I heard you tumblin' around all the night. You don't get anywhere by doin' that. A man has to take himself in hand more than ever when there's big things at stake. Then's when he needs his head. You just try to get some rest. I'll keep things goin' ahead all right, and there ain't no call to do nothin' for a week or ten days--till we get our feet on the ground. After that we'll find a trail. Don't worry."

Through the kindly tones there ran confidence, and, entirely exhausted, d.i.c.k turned over and tried to sleep. It came to him at last, heavy and dreamless, the sleep that comes beneficently to those who suffer. The sun, creeping westward, threw a beam across his face, and he turned restlessly, like a fever-stricken convalescent, and rolled farther over in the bed.

The beam pursued him, until at last there was no further refuge, and he sat up, dazed and bewildered, and hoping that all had been a nightmare, and that he should hear the cheery note of the whistle telling him that it was day again, and calling the men of the Croix d'Or to work.

It was monstrous, impossible, that all should have changed. It was but yesterday that he had returned to the mine with finances a.s.sured, confidence restored, and the certainty that Joan Presby loved him, and could come to his side when his work was accomplished.

He looked at his watch and the bar of sunlight. It was four o'clock, and the day was gone. Everything was real. Everything was horrible. He crawled stiffly from his bed, thrust his head into the cold water of the basin, and, unshaven, stepped out to the porch and down the trail.

The plumes of smoke still wreathed upward from two stacks. Bill was still driving downward unceasingly. The mellow clang of the smith's hammer, sharpening drills, smote his ears, and the rumble of the cars.

The cook, in a high, thin tenor, sang the songs with which he habitually whiled away his work. Everything was the same, save him!

And his air castles had been blown away as by the wind.

In a fever of uncertainty, he stood on the hillside and thought of what he should do. He believed that it was his duty to be the one to break the harsh news to Joan, and wondered whether or not she might be found at the tryst. He remembered that, once before when he had not appeared, she had ridden over there in the afternoon. Perhaps, expecting him, and being disappointed, she might be there again.

He hurried down the slope, and back up across the divide and along the trail, his hopes and uncertainties alone rendering him certain that she must be there, and paused when the long, black line shone dully outlined in its course around the swelling boss of the hill. He experienced a thrill of disappointment when he saw that she was not waiting, and, again consulting his watch feverishly, tramped backward and forward along the confines of the hallowed place.

At last, certain from the fresh hoof marks on the yielding slope, that she had come and gone, he turned, and went slowly back to the mine. He had a longing to see his partner, and learn whether or not Mathews, with that strange, resourceful logic of his, had evolved some way out of the predicament. But Bill was nowhere in sight. He was not in the office, and the mill door was locked. The cook had not seen him; and the blacksmith, busy, stopped only long enough to say that he thought he had seen the superintendent going toward the hoisting-house.

"Have you seen Bill?" d.i.c.k asked of the engineer, who stood at his levers, and waited for a signal.

"He's below," the engineer answered, throwing over an arm, and watching the cage ascend with a car of ore.

It trundled away, and d.i.c.k stepped into the cage. The man appeared irresolute, and embarra.s.sed.

"He'll be up pretty soon, I think," he ventured.

"Well, I'll not wait for him," d.i.c.k said. "Lower away."

The man still stood, irresolute.

"Let her go, I said," d.i.c.k called sharply, his usual patience of temper having gone.

"But--but----" halted the engineer. "Bill said to me, when he went down, says he: 'You don't let any one come below. Understand? I don't care if it's Townsend himself. n.o.body comes down. You hold the cage, because I'll send the s.h.i.+ft up, and 'tend to the firing myself.'"

For an instant d.i.c.k was enraged by this stubbornness, and turned with a threat, and said: "Who's running this mine? I don't care what he said. You haven't understood him. Lower away there, I say, and be quick about it!"

The rails and engine room slid away from him. The cage slipped downward on its oiled bearings, as if reluctant, and the light above faded away to a small pin-point below, and then died in obscurity, as if the world had been blotted out. Only the sense of falling told him that he was going down, down, to the seven-hundred-foot level, and then he remembered that he had no candle. The cage came to a halt, and he fumbled for the guard bar, lifted it, and stepped out.

Straight ahead of him he saw a dim glow of light. With one hand on the wall he started toward it, approached it, and then, in the hollow of illumination saw something that struck him like a blow in the face. The hard, resounding clash of his heels on the rock underfoot stopped. His hands fell to his sides, as if fixed in an att.i.tude of astonishment. Standing in the light beyond him stood Joan, with her hands raised, palms outward.

"Stop!" she commanded. "Stop! Stay where you are a moment!"

Amazed and bewildered, he obeyed mechanically, and comprehended rather than saw that, crouched on the floor of the drift beyond, his partner knelt with a watch in his hand, and in a listening att.i.tude. Suddenly, as if all had been waiting for this moment, a dull tremor ran through the depths of the Croix d'Or. A m.u.f.fled, beating, rending sound seemed to tear its way, vibrant, through the solid ledge. He leaped forward, understanding all at once, as if in a flash of illumination, what the woman he loved and his partner had been waiting for. It was the sound of the five-o'clock blasts from the Rattler, as it stole the ore from beneath their feet. It was the audible proof of Bully Presby's theft.

"Joan! My Joan!" he said, leaping forward. "I should have spared you this!"

But she did not answer. She was leaning back against the wall of the tunnel, her hands outstretched in semblance of that cross whose name was the name of the mine----as if crucified on its cross of gold. The flaring lights of the candles in the sticks, thrust into the crevices around, lighted her pale, haggard face, and her white hands that clenched themselves in distress. She looked down at the giant who was slowly lifting himself from his knees, with his clear-cut face upturned; and the hollows, vibrant with silence, caught her whispered words and multiplied the sound to a sibilant wail.

"It's true!" she said. "It's true! You didn't lie! You told the truth!

My father--my father is a thief, and may G.o.d help him and me!"

CHAPTER XVIII

THE BULLY MEETS HIS MASTER

The ache and pain in her whole being was no greater than the colossal desire d.i.c.k had to comfort and s.h.i.+eld her. He rushed toward her with his arms reached out to infold, but she pushed him back, and said hoa.r.s.ely: "No! No! I sha'n't let you! It would be an insult now!"

Her eyes were filled with a light he had never seen in them before, a commanding flame that held him in check and stupefied him, as he tried to reason why his love at that moment would be an insult. It did not dawn on him that he was putting himself in the position of one who was proffering silence for affection. All he knew was that everything in the world seemed against him, and, overstrained to the breaking point, he was a mere madman.

"You brought her here?" he hoa.r.s.ely questioned Bill.

"I did."

"And told her that her father was under us?"

"Yes."

"And that I was to be kept above ground?"

"Of course, and I had a reason, because--"

He did not finish the sentence. The younger man shouted a furious curse, and lunged forward and struck at the same time. His feet, turning under a fragment of rock, twisted the directness of his blow so that it lost force; but its heavy spat on the patient face before him was like the crack of a pistol in that underground chamber.

Bill's hands lifted impulsively, and then dropped back to his sides, hanging widely open. The flickering candlelight showed a slow red stream emerging slowly from one of his nostrils, and running down across the firm chin, and the pain-distorted lips. In his eyes was a hurt agony of reproach, as if the knife of a friend had been unexpectedly thrust into his heart. d.i.c.k's arm, tensed by the insane anger of his mind, was drawn back to deal another blow, and seemed to stop half-way, impotent to strike that defenseless face before him.

"Why don't you hit again, boy? I'll not strike back! I have loved you too much for that!"

There was a world of misery and reproach in the quiet voice of the giant, whose tremendous physical power was such that he could have caught the younger man's arm, and with one wrench twisted it to splintered bone. Before its echoes had died away another voice broke in, suffused with anguish, the shadows waving on the walls of gray rock twisted, and Joan's hands were on his arm.

"d.i.c.k! d.i.c.k! Are you mad? Do you know what you are doing?"

He shook her hands from his arm, reeled against the wall, and raised his forearm across his eyes, and brushed it across, as if dazed and blinded by a rush of blood which he would sweep away. He had not noticed that in that staggering progress he had fallen full against a candlestick, and that it fell to the floor and lay there between them, with its flame slowly increasing as it formed a pool of grease. For the first time since he had spoken, the huge miner moved. He stepped forward, and ground the flame underfoot.

"There might be a stray cap around here somewhere," he said.

His voice appeared to rouse the younger man, and bring him to himself.

He stepped forward, with his hands behind him and his face still set, wild and drawn, and said brokenly: "Bill! Bill! Strike back! Do something! Old friend!"

"I cain't," came the reply, in a helpless monotone. "You know if it were any other man I'd kill him! But you don't understand yet, and--"

"I made him bring me here," Joan said, coming closer, until the shadows of the three were almost together. Her voice had a strange hopelessness in it, and yet a calm firmness. "He came to talk it over with me, on your account. Pleading your cause--begging me that, no matter what happened, I should not change my att.i.tude toward you.

Toward you, I say! He said your sense of honesty and loyalty to Sloan would drive you to demanding rest.i.tution even though it broke your heart. He said he loved you more than anything on earth, and begged me to help him find some way to spare--not me, or my father--but you!"