XV
The Broken Wagon
The day following the Kellow incident being Sunday, the three of ussnatched an hour or so in the early forenoon for a breathing space.Sitting around the plank table in the bunk shack we took account ofstock, as a shopkeeper would say. It was apparent to all of us thatthe blazoning abroad of our secret could not now be long delayed. Anew gold strike yielding ore worth anywhere from one to twenty-fivedollars a pound was startling enough to make a stir even in the one andonly Cripple Creek, and it seemed nothing short of a miracle that wehad not already been traced and our location identified.
It was Barrett's gift to take the long look ahead. At his suggestion,Gifford, who was something of a rough-and-ready draftsman, sketched aplan for the necessary shaft-house and out-buildings, fitting thestructures to our limited space. When the fight to retain possessionshould begin we meant to strike fast and hard; Barrett had already gonethe length of bargaining, through a friend in town, for buildingmaterial and machinery, which were to be rushed out to us in a hurry atthe firing of the first gun in what we all knew would be a battle forexistence.
During this Sunday morning talk I was little more than an abstractedlistener. I could think of nothing but the raw hazard of the previousnight and of the frightful moral abyss into which it had precipitatedme. In addition there were ominous forebodings for the future. Solong as Kellow remained in Cripple Creek, danger would lurk for me inevery shadow. Since the calamity which was threatening me would alsoinvolve my partners, at least to the extent of handicapping them by theloss of a third of our fighting force, it seemed no less than a duty towarn them. But I doubt if I should have had the courage if Barrett hadnot opened the way.
"You're not saying much, Jimmie. Did the trip to town last night knockyou out?" he asked.
It was my opportunity, and I mustered sufficient resolution to seize it.
"No; it didn't knock me out, but it showed me where I've been making amistake. I never ought to have gone into this thing with you twofellows; but now that I am in, I ought to get out."
"What's that!" Gifford exploded; but Barrett merely caught my eye andsaid, very gently, "On your own account, or on ours, Jimmie?"
"On yours. There is no need of going into the particulars; it's a longstory and a pretty dismal one; but when I tell you that last night Iwas on the point of killing a man in cold blood--that it's altogetherprobable that I shall yet have to kill him--you can see what I'mletting you in for if I stay with you."
Gifford leaned back against the shack wall and laughed. "Oh, if_that's_ all," he said. But again it was Barrett who took the sobererview.
"You are one of us, Jimmie," he declared. "If you've got a bloodquarrel with somebody, it's our quarrel, too: we're partners. Isn'tthat right, Gifford?"
"Right it is," nodded the carpenter.
"We are not partners to that extent," I objected. "If I should tellyou all the circumstances, you might both agree with me that I may beobliged to kill this man; but on the other hand, you--or a jury--wouldcall it first-degree murder; as it will be."
Barrett looked horrified, as he had a perfect right to.
"You couldn't do a thing like that!" he protested.
"Yesterday I should have been just as certain as you are that it wasbeyond the possibilities; but now, since last night, it's different.And that is why I say you ought to fire me. You can't afford to carryany handicaps; you need assets, not liabilities."
Gifford got up and went to sit on the doorstep, where he occupiedhimself in whittling thin shavings of tobacco from a bit of black plugand cramming them into his pipe. Barrett accepted this tacitimplication that he was to speak for both.
"If you pull out, Jimmie, it will be because you want to; not becauseanything you have said cuts any figure with us. And whether you go orstay, there will be two of us here who will back you to the limit.That's about all there is to say, I guess; only, if I were you, Ishouldn't be too sudden. Take a day to think it over. To-morrowmorning, if you still think it's the wise thing to do--the only thingto do--we'll write you a check, Gifford and I, for your share in thebank account; and after we get going we'll make such a settlement withyou for your third as will be fair and just all around."
This put an entirely new face upon the matter. I hadn't dreamed ofsuch a thing as standing upon my rights in the partnership.
"Like the mischief, you will!" I retorted. "Do you think I'm that kindof a quitter?--that I'd take a single dollar out of the LittleClean-up's war chest? Why, man alive! my only object in getting outwould be to relieve you two of a possible burden!"
Barrett's smile was altogether brotherly. "It's the only way you canescape us," he averred; and with that the dissolution proposal wassuffered to go by default.
There were half a dozen stragglers to come lounging over the spur or upthe gulch that Sunday afternoon, sharp-set, eager-eyed prospectors,every man of them, and each one, we guessed, searching meticulously forthe mysterious bonanza about which everybody in town was gossiping. Itwas only the fact that the hills were fairly dotted with embryoticmines like our own--this and the other fact that our dump showed nosigns of ore--that saved us.
Two of these prying visitors hung around for an hour or more, and oneof the pair wanted to go down in the shaft, which was now deep enoughto be quite safe from prying eyes at the surface. I was acting aswindlass-man at the time, and I bluffed him, telling him that with twomen working in the hole there wasn't room for a third--which was trueenough. But beyond this fact there were by this time the best ofreasons for keeping strangers out of our shaft. To name the biggest ofthem, our marvelous Golconda vein had widened steadily with theincreasing depth until now we were sinking in solid ore.
It was Gifford's turn to guard the ore load that night, and after theteam got away I persuaded Barrett to go to bed. He was showing theeffects of the terrible toil worse than either the carpenter or myself,and I was afraid he might break when the fighting strain came. I hadyet to learn what magnificent reserves there were in this clean-cut,high-strung young fellow who, when we began, looked as if he had neverdone a day's real labor in his life.
Since we had never yet left the shaft unguarded for a single hour ofthe day or night, I took my place at the pit mouth as soon as Barrett'scandle went out. It was a fine night, warm for the altitude andbrightly starlit, though there was no moon. In the stillness thesubdued clamor of the Lawrenceburg's hoists floated up over the spurshoulder; and by listening intently I fancied I could hear the distantrumble of our ore wagon making its way down the mountain.
In the isolation and loneliness of the night watch it was inevitablethat my thoughts should hark back to the near-meeting with Kellow, andto the moral lapse which it had provoked. Doubtless every manrediscovers himself many times in the course of a lifetime. In prisonI had been sustained by a vindictive determination to win out andsquare accounts with Abel Geddis and Abner Withers. After my releaseanother motive had displaced the vengeful prompting: the losing fightfor reinstatement in the good opinion of the world seemed to be theonly thing worth living for.
But now I was finding that there was a well-spring of action deeperthan either of these, and the name of it was a degrading fear ofconsequences--of punishment. With a most hearty loathing for the lowerdepths of baseness uncovered by craven fear, one may be none the less ahelpless victim of a certain ruthless and malign ferocity to which itis likely to give birth. Sitting with my back propped against thewindlass and the newly purchased rifle across my knees, I found thatcowardice, like other base passions, may suddenly develop an infection.With nerves twittering and muscles tensely set, I was ready to become ahomicidal maniac at the snapping of a twig or the rolling of a pebbledown the hillside.
In such crises the twig is predestined to snap, or the pebble to roll.Some slight movement on my part set a little cataract of broken stonetumbling into the shaft. Before I could recover from the pricklingshock of alarm, I heard footsteps and a shadowy figure appeared in
thepath leading over the spur from the Lawrenceburg. Automatically therifle flew to my shoulder, and a crooking forefinger was actuallypressing the trigger when reason returned and I saw that theapproaching intruder was a woman.
I was deeply grateful that it was too dark for Mary Everton to see withwhat teeth-chatterings and reactionary tremblings I was letting downthe hammer of the rifle when she came up. For that matter, I think shedid not see me at all until I laid the gun aside and stood up to speakto her. She had stopped as if irresolute; was evidently disconcertedat finding the claim shack dark and apparently deserted.
"Oh!" she gasped, with a little backward start, as I rose from theempty dynamite box upon which I had been sitting. Then she recognizedme and explained. "I--I thought you would be working--you have beenworking nights, haven't you?--and I came over to--to speak to Mr.Barrett."
Under other conditions I might have been conventionally critical. Mytraditions were still somewhat hidebound. In Glendale a young womanwould scarcely go alone at night in search of a man, even though theman might be her lover.
"Barrett has gone to bed: I'll call him," I said, limiting therejoinder to the bare necessities.
"No; please don't do that," she interposed. "I am sure he must beneeding his rest. I can come again--at some other time."
I was beginning to get a little better hold upon my nerves by this timeand I laughed.
"Bob is needing the rest, all right, but he will murder me when hefinds out that you've been here and I didn't call him. If you want tosave my life, you'd better reconsider."
"No; don't call him," she insisted. "It isn't at all necessary,and--and perhaps you can tell me what I want to know--what I ought toknow before I----" the sentence trailed off into nothing and she beganagain rather breathlessly: "Mr. Bertrand, can you--can you satisfy mein any way that you and your two friends have a legal right to thisclaim you are working? It's a perfect--impertinence in me, to ask, Iknow, but----"
"It is a fair question," I hastened to assure her; "one that any onemight ask. With the proper means at hand--maps and records--I couldvery easily answer it."
"But--but there may have been mistakes made," she suggested.
"Doubtless there were; but we haven't made them. The LawrenceburgCompany owns the ground on two sides of us, and for some considerabledistance beyond us toward the head of the gulch; but I can assure youthat our title to the Little Clean-Up is perfectly good and legal inevery way."
"It is going to be disputed," she broke in hurriedly. "Mr. Blackwellhas talked about it--before me, just as if I didn't count. Telegramshave been passing back and forth, and the Lawrenceburg owners in theEast have given Mr. Blackwell full authority to take such steps as hemay think best. I--that is, Daddy and I--have known Mr. Barrett for along time, and I couldn't let this thing happen without giving him justa little warning. Some kind of legal proceedings have already beenbegun, and you are to be driven off--to-morrow."
"Oh, I guess not; not so suddenly as all that," I ventured to say.There were many questions to come crowding in, but I could scarcelyexpect the assayer's daughter to answer them. Her father had plainlydeclared his belief that we were stealing Lawrenceburg ore and planninga blackmailing scheme: had he told Blackwell? The query practicallyanswered itself. If Blackwell had been told that we were salting ourclaim with ore stolen from the Lawrenceburg sheds, the "legalproceedings" would have been a simple arrest-warrant and a search forstolen property. Had Everton told his daughter? This was blanklyincredible. If he had told her that we were thieves, she would neverhave gone so far aside from her childhood hatred of duplicity andwrong-doing as to come and warn us.
"I was afraid you might not believe me," she said, with a little catchin her voice; and then: "I can't blame you; after what you havesuf--after all that has happened."
If I hadn't been completely lost in admiration for her keen sense ofjustice, and more or less bewildered by her beauty and her nearness, Imight have caught the significance of what she was trying to say. ButI didn't.
"No; I didn't mean that," I denied warmly. "I do believe every wordyou have said. No one who knows you could disbelieve you for a moment."
"But you don't know me," she put in quickly.
I saw how near I had come to self-betrayal and tried to fend my littlelife-raft off the rocks.
"You will say that we have met only once before to-night, and then onlycasually. Will you permit a comparative stranger to say that that wasenough? Your soul looks out through your eyes, Miss Everton, and it isan exceedingly honest soul. I know you must have strong reasons forcoming to tell us what Blackwell is doing; and if I didn't quiteunderstand the motive at first--with you your father's daughter, youknow, and your father in the service of the----"
"I know," she interrupted. "But you lose sight of the larger things.If you have been telling me the truth about your ownership of thisclaim, a great wrong is going to be done. I couldn't stand aside andlet it be done, could I?"
Something in her manner of saying this recalled most vividly the littlegirl of the long ago, hot-hearted in her indignation against injusticeof every sort.
"No, I am sure you couldn't: I don't believe you know how to compromisewith wrong of any kind. But you ought not to take my unsupported wordabout the matter of ownership. Let me call Barrett."
"It isn't necessary. If you say that you three have an honest right tobe here, I believe you implicitly. And what I have done is nothing.My father would have done it if he hadn't--if he didn't----"
"You needn't say it," I helped out. "Your father thinks we are tryingto hold the Lawrenceburg people up, and I don't blame him. When he wasup here the other day--the day you were both here--he thought he caughtus red-handed. It wasn't so; he was quite mistaken; but for reasonswhich I can't explain just now I couldn't very well take the onlycourse which would have undeceived him."
"I--I think I understand," she returned, guardedly. "You--you haven'tbeen stealing ore from the Lawrenceburg sheds?"
I laughed and said a thing that I wouldn't have said to any otherliving human being on earth at that stage of the game.
"If we can manage to hold our own for just a little while longer,Robert Barrett will be a very rich man, Miss Everton. May I venture tohand you a lot of good wishes before the fact? I know this is only avery old friend's privilege, but----"
Her embarrassment was very charming, and, as I saw it, most natural.
"I--indeed, I wasn't thinking any more of Mr. Barrett than I was of--ofyou and--and Mr. Gifford," she faltered. "I simply couldn't bear tothink of this terrible thing dropping upon you out of a clear skyif--if you hadn't been doing anything to deserve it. Can you defendyourselves in any way?"
"We can try mighty hard," I asserted. "That is what I meant when Isaid that we were not going to be driven off to-morrow. Possession isnine points of the law. We have our little foothold here, and we shalltry to keep it. I'll tell Barrett when he wakes, and we'll be readyfor them when they come. Now you must let me take you back home. Youreally oughtn't to be here alone, you know."
She made no objection to the bit of elder-brother-ism, but half-way upto the summit of the spur she had her small fling at the conventions.
"I don't admit that I ought not to have come alone; neither that, noryour right to question it," she said definitively. "You protestbecause you are conventional: so am I conventional--but only so far asthe conventions subserve some good end. There are situations in whichthe phrase, 'it isn't done,' becomes a mere impertinence. This is lifein the making, up here in these desolate hills, and we who are takingpart in the process are just plain men and women."
"That is true enough," I rejoined; and other than this there was littlesaid, or little chance for saying it, since the distance over the spurwas short and she would not let me show myself under the Lawrenceburgmasthead electrics.
I did not know, at the time, of any reason why I should have returnedto resume my lonesome watch at the shaft's mouth like a
man walkingupon air, but so it was. There are women who keep the fair promise oftheir childhood, and we admire them; there are others who prodigiouslyand richly exceed that promise, and they own us, body and soul, fromthe moment of re-discovery.
Throughout the long night hours following Mary Everton's visit I wasfar enough, I hope, from envying Barrett; far enough, too, from thethought that I might ever venture to ask any good and innocent youngwoman to step down with me into the abyss of unearned infamy into whichI had been flung, largely through the efforts of another woman who wasneither good nor innocent. None the less, the delight which was halfintoxication remained and the night was full of waking dreams.
The dark shaft beside me sent up its dank breath of stale powder fumes,and the acrid odor was as the fragrance of a fertile field ripe for thesickle. In this reeking pit at my elbow, gold, the subtle, the potent,the arbiter of all destinies, stood ready to fight for me. The libertywhich I had stolen, but which had first been stolen from me, wouldshortly find a defender too strong to be overthrown by all theprejudice and injustice which are so ready to fly at the throat ofhelplessness. The reinstatement, which I had been unable to win as amendicant ex-convict, I could buy with gold in the open market; andwhen it should be bought and paid for, all the world would clap andcry, Well done!
Barrett had gone to bed exacting a promise that I should call him attwo o'clock. But I let the hour go by, and another, and yet another,until the stars were paling in the east when I got up, stiff in everyjoint, to meet Gifford as he came up the gulch. He was haggard andweary, trembling like an overworked draft horse, and he had to lick hislips before he could frame the words which were to be our alarm signal.
"It's all over," he croaked hoarsely. "The wagon's broke down a coupleof miles below, right out on the open mountain-side. We've beenworking like hell all night trying to drag the load down to some placewhere we could hide it, but it was no good. Dixon's gone on to town toget another wagon, but the mischief is done. Come daylight, everybodyon this side of Bull Mountain will know what's in that wagon, and whereit comes from."
The carpenter was practically dead on his feet from the night of fiercetoil, and in addition to his weariness was half-famished. He had comein while it was yet dark to get something to eat, and was planning togo back at once. I aroused Barrett promptly, and together we trampedout to the crest of the spur overlooking the Lawrenceburg workings andthe mountain-side below. In the breaking dawn, with the help ofBarrett's field-glass, we could make out the shape of the disabledwagon on the bare slope hundreds of feet below. Early as it was, therewas already a number of moving figures encircling it; a group whichpresently strung itself out in Indian file on a diagonal course up toour gulch. The early-morning investigators were taking the plainlymarked wagon trail in reverse, and Barrett turned to me with a brittlelaugh.
"That settles it, Jimmie. The secret is out, and in another half hourwe'll be fighting like the devil to keep those fellows from relocatingevery foot of ground we've got. Let's go back and get ready for them."