The Plunderer, Page 5

  CHAPTER V

  THE AGED ENGINEER

  The sunlight was good to see again--good as only sunlight can be whenmen have not expected ever again to be enlivened by its glory. Theywere astonished at the shortness of the time of their imprisonment.They had lived years in dread thought, and but a few hours in reality.They had suffered for the spans of lives to find that the clock hadimperturbably registered brief intervals. They had played the gamut ofdread, terror, and anguish, to learn how trivial, after all, was thecompleted score.

  "I think that will do," said Dick, with a sigh of relief, as hestraightened up from bandaging Bill's leg. "The stitches probably hurtsome, but aside from a day's stiffness I don't think you will everknow it happened."

  "Won't eh?" rumbled the patient. "Sure, the leg's all right; but itain't bruised limbs a man remembers. They heal. You can see the scarson a man's legs, but only the Lord Almighty can see those on his mind,and they're the only ones that last. Dick, now that it's all over, Iain't ashamed to tell you that there was quite a long spell down thereunderground when I thought over a heap of things I might have donedifferent if I'd had a chance to do 'em over again. And, boy, Ithought quite a little bit about you! It didn't seem right that ayoung fellow like you, with so much to live for, should be snuffed outdown there in that black place, where the whole mountain acted as ifit was chasin' us, step by step, to wipe us off the slate."

  He stood on his feet and limped across the room to his coat in aneffort to recover himself, and Dick, more stirred than he cared toadmit by the affection in his voice, tramped out to the little porchin front and pretended to whistle a tune, that proved tuneless. Helooked at the little valley around the shoulder of the mountain at thehead of the ravine, which they had so carelessly invaded that morning,and shuddered. Inside he heard Bill moving around, and then after atime his steps advancing stiffly, and turned to see him coming out.

  "I think," he said smiling, "that we're entitled to a rest for to-day.By to-morrow you'll be all right again, unless I'm mistaken. Let'sput in the day looking over these old records."

  Bill grinned whimsically and assented. He could keep quiet when he hadto; but the day following found him again restlessly investigatinganything that seemed worth the trouble and the afternoon saw himstanding looking upward toward the same valley of dread.

  "I've got over it a little," he said to the younger man, "and do youknow I'm right curious to go over there and see how big that rock wasthat tumbled into the mouth of the old shaft. Want to come along?"

  Dick had sustained that same curiosity, so together they made theirway to the beginning of the previous day's disaster. They chilled whenthey saw how effectually they had been caught; for the bowldercompletely filled the entrance to the shaft and would have proved ahopeless trap had they tried to escape by burrowing around its edge.It rested, as they had discovered, on solid rock, and its course downthe hillside was clearly marked.

  "What gets me," said the veteran miner, "is what could have startedit. I noticed it up there when we went in. It was sort of poised onthat little ledge you see, and it didn't have to roll more than thirtyfeet."

  He began to climb up the bowlder's well-defined path, and suddenlycalled to his partner with a hoarse shout, needlessly loud.

  "Come up here," he said. "That bowlder never started itself! Some onehelped it. What do you think of that?"

  Dick hastily climbed up to his side and looked. The rock around wasbare of growth or covering, so that no footprints could be discerned;but a rock rested there that had plainly been used as a fulcrum. Thesurface beneath it was weather beaten and devoid of moisture, whichindicated that it had lain there but a short time, probably only fromthe time of its mission on the preceding day. They found themselvesstanding up and staring around at the surrounding hills as if seekingsight of the man who had attempted to murder them.

  "We'll find out about this!" Bill exclaimed. "Good thing we knowenough to look."

  He limped to the edge of the barren spot and began to circle aroundits edge, while Dick did likewise, following his example. They found afootprint at last and took the trail. It did not lead them far beforethey came to a path on top of the hill that was so well used that anyattempt to follow it was useless; but, intent on seeing where it led,they walked along it as it led straight away toward the timber.Scarcely inside the cool shadows of the tamaracks they paused andlooked at each other understandingly; for thrown carelessly into aclump of laurel was a long, freshly cut sapling, that had been used asa lever. They recovered it from its resting place and inspected it.There was no doubt whatever that it had been the instrument of motion.Its scarred end, its length, and all, told that the man who had usedit had carried it this far to discard it, believing his murderous workdone.

  "I noticed that rock, as I said before," declared Bill. "You noticedhow round it was on one side? Well, a man could take this lever, andby teetering on it until he got it in motion, finally upset it. Thechances were a hundred to one it would land in the mouth of the shaft.And it's a cinch, it seems to me, he wouldn't do that for fun."

  Dick shook his head gravely.

  "But who could it be?" he insisted. "Who is there that could want usout of the way badly enough to murder us? No one here knows or cares acontinental about us! It seems incredible. It must have been sheercarelessness of some restless loafer who wanted to see the rockroll."

  Yet they knew that the theory was scarcely tenable. They walkedfarther along the path and found that it was one used by workmen,evidently, leading at last down the steep mountain side and across tothe Rattler. They surmised that it must be one made by the timbercutters for the mine, and learned, in later months, that the surmisewas correct.

  "It makes one thing certain," Bill declared that evening when,candidly discouraged, they sat on the little porch in front of theoffice they had made their home and discussed the day's findings. "Andthat is that until we get a force to work here, if we ever do, itain't a right healthy place for us. Of course with a gang of menaround there wouldn't be a ghost of a chance for any enemy to get us;but until then we'd better watch out all the time. I begin to believethat about everything that's happened to us here has been the work ofsomebody who ain't right fond of us. Wish we could catch him at itonce!"

  There was a grim undercurrent in his wish that left nothing to words.They remembered that in all the time since their arrival they had seenno other human being, the Rattler men having left them as severelyalone as if they had been under quarantine.

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

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

  "Hello," hailed a shrill, quavering voice. "Be you the bosses?"

  "We are," Dick shouted, in reply, "Come on up."

  The visitor came halting up the slope, and they discerned that he waslame 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 ofthe porch with his head turned to face them. He was white headed andold, and seemed to have exhausted his surplus strength in his haste toreach them before darkness.

  "I'm Bells Park," he said. "Bells Park, the engineer. Maybe you'veheard of me? Eh? What? No? Well, I used to have the engines here atthe 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 outonce. I said I'd come back. I'm here. I'm a union man, but I tell 'emwhat I think of 'em, and it don't set well. When did you say I go towork?"

  "I'm afraid you don't go," Dick answered regretfully.

  The Cross, so far as he could conjecture, would never again ringwith the sounds of throbbing engines. Already he was more thanhalf-convinced that he should write to Sloan and reject his kindlyoffer of support. "We've been here but a week, but it doesn't lookpromising to us."
>
  "Well, then you're a pair of fools!" came the disrespectful andirascible retort. "They told me down in Goldpan that some miners hadcome to open the Cross up again. You're not miners. I've hoofed it allthe way up here for nothin'."

  The partners looked at each other, and grinned at the old man'stirade. He went on without noticing them, speaking of himself in thethird 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 hadhis own cabin here--cabin that was a home till his wife went away onthe 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 putaway! She was the best woman that ever lived. I'm looking for my oldjob back. I can sleep here, can't I?"

  His querulous question was more of a challenge than a request, andDick hastened to assure him that he could unroll his blankets in abunk in the rambling old structure that loomed dim, silent, andghostly, on the hill beyond where they were seated. His pity andhospitality led him farther.

  "Had your supper?" he asked.

  Bells Park shook his head in negation.

  "Then you can share with us," Dick said, getting to his feet andentering the cabin from which in a few moments came a rattle of firebeing replenished, a coffee-pot being refilled, and the crisp, fryingnote of sizzling bacon and eggs.

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

  "Him? That's Dick Townsend, half-owner in the mine," Bill replied.

  "Half owner? Cookin' for me? Why don't you do it? What right have yougot 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 beingsuperintendent of a mine where no one worked.

  "Oh!" said the engineer. And then, after a pause, as if readjustingall these conditions to meet his approval: "Say, he's all right, ain'the!"

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

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

  "You're thinkin' it's no good, are you?" he suddenly asked,brandishing his pipe at Dick. "Well, I said you were a fool. Take itkindly, young feller. I'm an old man, but I know. You've been good tome. I didn't come here to butt my nose in, but I know her better thanyou do. Say!" He pivoted on his hips, and tapped an emphaticforefinger on the warped planks beneath in punctuation. "There neverwas a set of owners shell-gamed like them that had the Croix d'Or!There never was a good property so badly handled. Two superintendentsare retired and livin' on the money they stole from her. One millman'sbought himself a hotel in Seattle with what he got away with. Therewas enough ore packed off in dinner-pails from the Bonanza Chute toheel half the men who tapped it. They were always lookin' for more of'em. They passed 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 manstandin' on the hundred foot to slush 'em over with muddy sump waterso the gold wouldn't show until the car men could swipe the stuff anddump it out of the tram to be picked up at night. It ain't the richstreaks that pays. It's the four-foot ledge that runs profit from twobits to a couple of dollars a ton. That's what showed on thesix-hundred level. Get it?"

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

  Once again the smoke belched from the hoisting house of the Cross, andthe throb of the pumps came, hollow and clanking, from the shaftbelow. A stream of discolored water swirled into the creek from thewaste pipes, and the rainbow trout, affrighted and disgusted, forsookits 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. Thecompressor shivered and vibrated as the pistons drove clean, sweetair through the long-disused pipes, and at last the partners knewthey could reach the anticipated six-hundred-foot level and formtheir own conclusions.

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

  They saw the slimy black sides of the shaft slip past them as BellsPark dropped them into the depths, and felt the cage slow down as hesaw his pointer above the drum indicate the approach of thesix-hundred-foot level. They stepped out cautiously, whiffed the air,and knew that the pipes, which had been protected by the water, wereintact, and that they had no need to fear foul air. The rusted rails,slime-covered, beneath their rubber boots, glowed a vivid red as theyinspected the timbering above, and saw that the sparse stulls, caps,and columns were still holding their own, and that the heavyporphyritic formation would scarcely have given had the timbers rottedaway. Dank, glistening walls and a tremulous waving blackness wereahead of them as they cautiously invaded the long-deserted precincts,scraping and striking here and there with their prospector's picks insearch of the lost lead.

  "About two hundred feet from the shaft, Bells said," Dick commented."And this must be about the place where they cut through pay ore insearch of another lobe of the Bonanza Chute. What thieves they were!"

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

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

  Dick hastened back, and assisted while they broke away the looserpieces of green rock, glowing dully, and filled their sample sacks.

  Three hours later they stood over the scales in the log assay-houseabove, and congratulated each other.

  "It'll pay!" Dick declared gleefully. "Not much, but enough to justifygoing on with the work. I am glad I wrote Sloan that I should draw onhim, and now we'll go ahead and hire a small gang to set the mill andthe Cross in shape."

  They were like boys when they crossed to the engine house and told thenews to the hard-worked engineer, who chuckeled softly and assertedthat he had "told them so."

  "Now, the best way for you to get a gang around here," he said, "isto go down to Goldpan and tell 'The Lily' you want her to pass theword, 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 Dick, anxious as to who this camp charactercould be.

  "Sure," the engineer rasped, as if annoyed by their ignorance. "Ain'tyou never heard of her? Well, her right name, so they tell, is LilyMeredith. She owns the place called the High Light. Everybody knowsher. She's square, even if she does run a dance hall and rents agamblin' joint. She don't stand for nothin' crooked, Lily don't. Shepays 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 wasworking, and straightened up before he went on. Through the blackcoating on his face, he appeared thoughtful.

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

  The partners looked at each other, as if consulting, and then Dicksaid: "Yes. I think the sooner the better."

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

  "Come out here onto the yard," he said, and they followed. "Go down tothe Rattler, then bear off to the right. The trail starts in back ofthe 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 thecamp below you. It's a stiff climb, but the trail's good, and it'sjust about two miles over there. It's so plain you can make it home bymoonlight."

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

  It was a stiff climb! The sun had set, and the long twilight wasgiving way to darkness when they came down the trail into the upperend of the camp. Some embryo artist was painfully overworking anaccordion, while a dog rendered melancholy by the unmusical noise,occasionally accompanied him with prolonged howls. A belated oretrailer, with the front wagon creaking under the whine of the brakesand the chains of the six horses clanking, lurched down from a road onthe far side of the long, straggling street, and passed them, thehorses' heads hanging as if overwork had robbed them of allstable-going spirit of eagerness.

  The steady, booming "clumpety-clump! clumpety-clump!" of a stamp-millon a shoulder of a hill high above the camp, drowned the whir andchirp of night insects, and from the second story of a house theypassed they heard the crude banging of a piano, and a woman's stridentvoice wailing, "She may have seen better da-a-ys," with a mightyeffort to be pathetic.

  "Seems right homelike! Don't it?" Bill grinned and chuckled. "That'sone right nice thing about minin'. You can go from Dawson to Chiapas,and a camp's a camp! Always the same. I reckon if you went up thestreet far enough you'd find a Miner's Home Saloon, maybe a NorthernLight or two, and you can bet on there bein' a First Class."

  The High Light proved to be the most pretentious resort in Goldpan.For one thing it had plate-glass windows and a gorgeous sign paintedthereon. Its double doors were wide, and at the front was a bar with abrass rail that, by its very brightness, told only too plainly thatthe evening's trade had not commenced. Two bartenders, one with a hugecrest of hair waved back, and the other with his parted in the middle,plastered low and curled at the ends, betokened diverse taste inbarbering. A Chinese was giving the last polish to a huge pile ofglasses, thick and heavy.

  On the other side of the room, behind a roulette wheel, a man wholooked more like a country parson than a gambler sat reading a thumbedcopy of Taine's "English Literature." Three faro layouts stretchedthemselves in line as if watching for newcomers, and in the rear a manwas lighting the coal-oil lamps of the dance hall. It was separatedfrom the front part of the house by an iron rail, and had boxescompletely around an upper tier and supported by log pillars beneath,and a tiny stage with a badly worn drop curtain.

  "Is the boss here?" Bill asked, pausing in front of the man with awave.

  "Who do you mean--Lily?" was the familiar reply.

  "Yes."

  "I think she's over helpin' nurse the Widder Flannery's sick kids thisafternoon. They've got chicken pox. Might go over there and see her ifyou're in a rush."

  "We didn't say we wanted to borrow money," Bill retorted to thejocular latter part of the bartender's speech. "What time will she behere?"

  "About ten, I guess," was the more courteous reply.

  The partners walked out and past the row of buildings until they cameto a general store, where they occupied themselves in making out anorder for supplies and arranging for their delivery on the followingday. The trader was a loquacious individual with the unmistakable"Yankee" twang and nasal whine of the man from that important speck ofthe United States called New England.

  When they again turned into the street, the long twilight had beenreplaced by night, and on the tops of the high peaks to the westwardthe light of the full moon was beginning to paint the chill white witha shining glow. The street was filled with men, most of them scorningthe narrow board walks and traversing the roadway. A pandemonium ofsound was robbing the night of peace through music, of assortedcharacter, which boiled forth from open doors in discordant businessrivalry, but underneath it all was the steady, dull monotone of thestamp-mill, remorselessly beating the ore as if in eternal industry.

  "Hardly know the place now, eh?" Bill said, as they entered the opendoors of the High Light. "It certainly keeps gettin' more homelike.Camp must be makin' money, eh?"

  Dick did not answer. He was staring at a woman who stood at the lowerend of the bar outside, and talking to a man with a medicine case inhis hand. He surmised that she must be The Lily, and was astonished.He had expected the customary brazen appearance of other camp women hehad known in his years of wandering; the hard-faced, combatative typeproduced by greed. Instead, he saw a woman of perhaps thirty years ofage, or in that vague boundary between thirty and thirty-five.

  She was dressed in a short skirt, wore a spotless shirt waist over anexceptionally graceful pair of shoulders, and her hair, neatly coiledin heavy bronze folds, was surmounted by a white hat of the frontiertype, dented in regulation form with four hollows.

  From the hat to the high tan boots, she was neat and womanly; yet itwas not this that attracted him so much as her profile. From thestraight brow, down over the high, fine nose and the firm lips to thefirmer chin, the face was perfect.

  As if sensing his inspection, she turned toward him, and met hiswondering eyes. Her appraisement was calm, repressed, and cold.Her face gave him the impression that she had forgotten how tosmile. Townsend advanced toward her, certain that she must be theproprietress of the High Light.

  "You are Miss Meredith?" he interrogated, as he halted in front ofher.

  "Mrs. Meredith," she corrected, still unbending, and looking at him aquestion as to his business.

  A forgotten courtesy impelled him to remove his hat as he introducedhimself, but Mathews did not follow it when he was introduced, andreached out and caught her competent hand with a hard grip. Dickexplained his errand, feeling, all the time under that steady look,that he was being measured.

  "Oh, yes, they'll be all right by to-morrow, Lily," the doctorinterrupted. "Excuse me for being so abrupt, but I must go now.Good-night."

  "Good-night," she answered, and then: "I'll be up there at threeo'clock to-morrow afternoon. Ah, you were saying you wanted----"

  She had turned to the partners again with her unfinished questionleading them on to state their mission.

  "Men. Here's a list," Dick answered, handing her a memorandum callingfor go many millmen, so many drill runners, swampers, car handlers,and so forth; in all, a list of twenty odd.

  "Who told you to come here?" She exploded the question as if it werevital.

  "Park. Bells Park."

  She laughed mirthlessly between lips that did not smile and regular,white teeth. But her laugh belied her lack of sympathy.

  "Poor old Bells!" she said, with a touch of sadness in her voice."Poor old fool! I tried to keep him from gambling when he had money,and he went broke, like all the other fools. But he loved his wife. Hemade her happy. Some one in this world must be happy. So he came back,did he? And is up there at the Cross? Well, he's a faithful man. I'mnot an employment agency, but maybe I can help you. I would do it forBells. I like him. Good men are scarce. The bums and loafers arealways easy to get. There isn't a mine around here that isn't lookingfor good men, since they made that discovery over in the flat. Most ofthem broke to the placer ground. Wages are nothing when there's achance for better."

  She had not looked at Dick as she talked, but had her eyes fixed onthe paper, though not seem
ing to scan its contents. The room wascrowded with men and filled with a confused volume of sound as shespoke, the click and whir of the wheel, the monotonous voice of thestudent--turned gambler--calling "Single O and the house wins. Alldown?" the sharp snap of the case-keeper's buttons before the farolayouts, the screech of the orchestra in the dance hall, and the heavyshuffling of feet; yet her words and intonations were distinct.

  "We would like to get them as soon as we can," Dick answered. "We haveunwatered the main shaft and----"

  From the dance hall in the rear there came a shrill, high shriek,oaths, shouts, and the orchestra stopped playing. Men jumped to theirfeet from the faro layouts, and then, mob-like, began to surge towardthe door, while in the lead, uttering scream on scream, ran one ofthe dance-hall girls with her gaudy dress bursting into envelopingflame. She had the terror of a panic-stricken animal flying into thedanger of the open air to die.

  As if springing forward from live ground, Mathews leaped into herpath, and caught her in his arms. He jammed her forward ahead of him,taking no pains to shield her body save with his bent arm, and seizedthe cover of the roulette wheel, which lay neatly folded on the end ofthe bar.

  "Give me room!" he bellowed, in his heavy, thunderous voice. "Stop'em, Dick! For God's sake, stop 'em!"

  Dick leaped in among the crowd that was madly stampeding--women withfaces whose terror showed through masks of rouge, shrieking, men whocursed, trampled, and elbowed their way to the outer air, and thewild-eyed musicians seeking to escape from a fire-trap. Dick struckright and left, and in the little space created Bill swathed the girlin the cover, smothering the flames. And all the time he shouted:

  "Don't run. What's the matter with you? Go back and put the fire out!Don't be idiots!"

  As suddenly as it had commenced the panic subsided, and the tideturned the other way. Sobbing women hovered round the door, and menbegan to form a bucket line. In a long age of five or ten minutes theexcitement was over, and the fire extinguished. The dance-hall floorwas littered with pieces of scorched wood torn bodily from the boxes,and the remnants of the lamp which had exploded and caused the havocwere being swept into the sodden, steaming heap in the center of theroom.

  Through the press at the sides came The Lily, who, in the turmoil, hadsought refuge behind the bar. The partners, stooping over theunconscious, swaddled figure on the floor, looked up at her, and Dicksaw that her face was as calm and unemotional as ever.

  "Bring her to my room," she said; "I'll show you where it is. You,Tim," she called to one of the bartenders, "go as quickly as you canand get Doctor Mills."

  The partners meekly followed her lead, pausing but once, when sheturned to hold up an authoritative hand and tell the curious ones whoformed a wake that they must go back, or at least not come ahead tomake the case more difficult. Mathews carried his senseless burden aseasily as if it were of no weight, and even as they turned up ahallway leading to a flight of stairs ascending to The Lily'sapartments, the doctor and bartender came running to join them.

  Not until they had swathed the girl in cooling bandages did any onespeak. Then, as they drew the sheet tenderly over her, they becameconscious of one another. As Bill looked up through blistered eyelids,exposing a cruelly scorched face, his lips broke into a painfulsmile.

  "Doctor," The Lily said, "now you had better care for this patient."

  She put her firm, white fingers out, brushed the miner's singed hairback from his brow, and said: "I've forgotten your name, but--I wantto say--you're a man!"