The Plunderer Part 6

In the stillness of twilight they heard the slow, soft padding of a man's feet laboriously climbing the hill, and listened intently at the unusual sound.

"Wonder who that is," speculated Bill, leaning forward and staring at the dim trail. "Looks like a dwarf from here. Some old man of the mountain coming up to drive us off!"

"h.e.l.lo," hailed a shrill, quavering voice. "Be you the bosses?"

"We are," d.i.c.k shouted, in reply, "Come on up."

The visitor came halting up the slope, and they discerned that he was lame and carrying a roll of blankets. He paused before them, panting, and then dropped the roll from his back, and sat down on the edge of the porch with his head turned to face them. He was white headed and old, and seemed to have exhausted his surplus strength in his haste to reach them before darkness.

"I'm Bells Park," he said. "Bells Park, the engineer. Maybe you've heard of me? Eh? What? No? Well, I used to have the engines here at the Cross eight or ten years ago, and I've come to take 'em again.

When do I go to work? They hates me around here. They drove me out once. I said I'd come back. I'm here. I'm a union man, but I tell 'em what I think of 'em, and it don't set well. When did you say I go to work?"

"I'm afraid you don't go," d.i.c.k answered regretfully.

The Cross, so far as he could conjecture, would never again ring with the sounds of throbbing engines. Already he was more than half-convinced that he should write to Sloan and reject his kindly offer of support. "We've been here but a week, but it doesn't look promising to us."

"Well, then you're a pair of fools!" came the disrespectful and irascible retort. "They told me down in Goldpan that some miners had come to open the Cross up again. You're not miners. I've hoofed it all the way up here for nothin'."

The partners looked at each other, and grinned at the old man's tirade. He went on without noticing them, speaking of himself in the third person:

"I can stay here to-night somewhere, can't I? Bells Park is askin' it.

Bells Park that used to be chief in the Con and Virginia, and once had his own cabin here--cabin that was a home till his wife went away on the long trip. She's asleep up there under the cross mark on the hill.

Bells Park as came back because he wanted to be near where she was put away! She was the best woman that ever lived. I'm looking for my old job back. I can sleep here, can't I?"

His querulous question was more of a challenge than a request, and d.i.c.k hastened to a.s.sure him that he could unroll his blankets in a bunk in the rambling old structure that loomed dim, silent, and ghostly, on the hill beyond where they were seated. His pity and hospitality led him farther.

"Had your supper?" he asked.

Bells Park shook his head in negation.

"Then you can share with us," d.i.c.k said, getting to his feet and entering the cabin from which in a few moments came a rattle of fire being replenished, a coffee-pot being refilled, and the crisp, frying note of sizzling bacon and eggs.

"Who might that young feller be?" asked the engineer, glowering with sudden curiosity, after his long silence, into the face of the grizzled old prospector, who, in the interim, had sat quietly.

"Him? That's d.i.c.k Townsend, half-owner in the mine," Bill replied.

"Half owner? Cookin' for me? Why don't you do it? What right have you got sittin' here on your long haunches and lettin' a boss do the work?

Hey? Who are you?"

"I'm his superintendent," grinned Bill, appreciating the joke of being superintendent of a mine where no one worked.

"Oh!" said the engineer. And then, after a pause, as if readjusting all these conditions to meet his approval: "Say, he's all right, ain't he!"

"You bet your life!" came the emphatic response.

The applicant said no more until after he had gone into the cabin and eaten his fill, after which he insisted on clearing away the dishes, and then rejoined them in a less-tired mood. He squatted down on the edge of the porch, where they sat staring at the shadows of the glorious night, and appeared to be thoughtful for a time, while they were silently amused.

"You're thinkin' it's no good, are you?" he suddenly asked, brandis.h.i.+ng his pipe at d.i.c.k. "Well, I said you were a fool. Take it kindly, young feller. I'm an old man, but I know. You've been good to me. I didn't come here to b.u.t.t my nose in, but I know her better than you do. Say!" He pivoted on his hips, and tapped an emphatic forefinger on the warped planks beneath in punctuation. "There never was a set of owners sh.e.l.l-gamed like them that had the Croix d'Or!

There never was a good property so badly handled. Two superintendents are retired and livin' on the money they stole from her. One millman's bought himself a hotel in Seattle with what he got away with. There was enough ore packed off in dinner-pails from the Bonanza Chute to heel half the men who tapped it. They were always lookin' for more of 'em. They pa.s.sed through a lead of ore that would have paid expenses, on the six-hundred-foot level, and lagged it rather than hoist it out.

I know! I've seen the cars come up out of the shaft with a man standin' on the hundred foot to slush 'em over with muddy sump water so the gold wouldn't show until the car men could swipe the stuff and dump it out of the tram to be picked up at night. It ain't the rich streaks that pays. It's the four-foot ledge that runs profit from two bits to a couple of dollars a ton. That's what showed on the six-hundred level. Get it?"

The partners by this time were leaning eagerly forward, half-inclined to believe all that had been told them, yet willing to discount the gabbling of the old man and find content. Until bedtime he went on, and they listened to him the next morning, when the slow dawn crept up, and decided to take the plunge. And so it was that d.i.c.k wrote a long statement of the findings to his backer in New York and told him that he was going to chance it and open the Croix d'Or again until he was satisfied, either that it would not pay to work, or would merit larger expenditure.

Once again the smoke belched from the hoisting house of the Cross, and the throb of the pumps came, hollow and clanking, from the shaft below. A stream of discolored water swirled into the creek from the waste pipes, and the rainbow trout, affrighted and disgusted, forsook its reaches and sought the pools of the river into which it emptied.

Slowly they gained on its depths, and each day the murk swam lower, and the newly oiled cage waited for its freshly stretched cable, one which had happened to be coiled in the store-house. The compressor s.h.i.+vered and vibrated as the pistons drove clean, sweet air through the long-disused pipes, and at last the partners knew they could reach the antic.i.p.ated six-hundred-foot level and form their own conclusions.

"Well, here goes," said Bill, grinning from under his sou'wester as they entered the cage with lamps in hand. "We'll see how she looks if the air pipes aren't broken."

They saw the slimy black sides of the shaft slip past them as Bells Park dropped them into the depths, and felt the cage slow down as he saw his pointer above the drum indicate the approach of the six-hundred-foot level. They stepped out cautiously, whiffed the air, and knew that the pipes, which had been protected by the water, were intact, and that they had no need to fear foul air. The rusted rails, slime-covered, beneath their rubber boots, glowed a vivid red as they inspected the timbering above, and saw that the spa.r.s.e stulls, caps, and columns were still holding their own, and that the heavy porphyritic formation would scarcely have given had the timbers rotted away. Dank, glistening walls and a tremulous waving blackness were ahead of them as they cautiously invaded the long-deserted precincts, sc.r.a.ping and striking here and there with their prospector's picks in search of the lost lead.

"About two hundred feet from the shaft, Bells said," d.i.c.k commented.

"And this must be about the place where they cut through pay ore in search of another lobe of the Bonanza Chute. What thieves they were!"

He suddenly became aware that his companion was not with him, and whirled round. Back of him shone a tiny spark of flaring light, striving to illumine the solid blackness. He paused expectantly, and a voice came bellowing through the dark:

"Here it is. The old man's right, I think. This looks like ore to me."

d.i.c.k hastened back, and a.s.sisted while they broke away the looser pieces of green rock, glowing dully, and filled their sample sacks.

Three hours later they stood over the scales in the log a.s.say-house above, and congratulated each other.

"It'll pay!" d.i.c.k declared gleefully. "Not much, but enough to justify going on with the work. I am glad I wrote Sloan that I should draw on him, and now we'll go ahead and hire a small gang to set the mill and the Cross in shape."

They were like boys when they crossed to the engine house and told the news to the hard-worked engineer, who chuckeled softly and a.s.serted that he had "told them so."

"Now, the best way for you to get a gang around here," he said, "is to go down to Goldpan and tell 'The Lily' you want her to pa.s.s the word, or stick a sign up in her place saying what men, and how many, you want."

"Sounds like a nice name," Mathews commented.

"The Lily?" questioned d.i.c.k, anxious as to who this camp character could be.

"Sure," the engineer rasped, as if annoyed by their ignorance. "Ain't you never heard of her? Well, her right name, so they tell, is Lily Meredith. She owns the place called the High Light. Everybody knows her. She's square, even if she does run a dance hall and rents a gamblin' joint. She don't stand for nothin' crooked, Lily don't. She pays her way, and asks no favors. Go down and tell her you want men.

They all go there, some time or another."

He stooped over to inspect the fire under the small boiler he was working, and straightened up before he went on. Through the black coating on his face, he appeared thoughtful.

"Best time to see The Lily and get action is at night. All the day-s.h.i.+ft men hang around the camp then, and, besides that, they've got a new batch of placer ground about a mile and a half over the other side, and lots of them fellers come over. Want to go to-day?"

The partners looked at each other, as if consulting, and then d.i.c.k said: "Yes. I think the sooner the better."

Bells Park pulled the visor of his greasy little cap lower over his eyes, and stepped to the door.

"Come out here onto the yard," he said, and they followed. "Go down to the Rattler, then bear off to the right. The trail starts in back of the last shanty on the right-hand side. You see that gap up yonder?

Not the big one, but the narrow one." He pointed with a grimy hand.

"Well, you go right through that and drop down, and you'll see the camp below you. It's a stiff climb, but the trail's good, and it's just about two miles over there. It's so plain you can make it home by moonlight."

Without further ceremony or advice, he returned into the boiler-room, and the partners, after but slight preparations, began their journey.