The Plunderer, Page 6

  CHAPTER VI

  MY LADY OF THE HORSE

  "It serves you right for bein' so anxious to help one of themdance-hall women; not but what I'd probably 'a' done it myself," wasthe croaking, querulous consolation offered by Bells Park as he satbeside the plainly suffering and heavily bandaged Bill that night, orrather in the early hours of the morning, in the cabin on the Cross."They ain't no good except for young fools to gallop around with overa floor."

  He poured some more olive oil over the bandages, and relented enoughto add: "All but The Lily, and she don't dance with none of 'em. She'sall right, she is. Mighty peart looker, too. None purtier than DorothyPresby, though."

  Dick, looking up from where he sat with his tired chin resting on histired hands and elbows, thought of the gruff Bully Presby with someinterest.

  "Oh, so the old Rattler owner has a daughter, eh?"

  "I don't mean old skinflint Presby!" sharply corrected the engineer."He ain't the only Presby in this whole United States, is he? He don'town the whole world and the name, even if he thinks he does. ThisPresby I'm talkin' about ain't no kin of his. He's too white. He ownsall them sawmills on the other side of the Cross peak, about fourmiles from here. Got a railroad of his own. Worth about a billion, Ireckon."

  Dick's momentary interest subsided, but he heard the old man babblingon:

  "I worked for him once, when Dorothy was a little bit of a kid. Himand me fought, but he's a white man. She's been away to some of thosefool colleges for women back East, they say, for the last four or fiveyears. It don't do women no good to know too much. My wife couldn'tread or write, and she was the best woman that ever lived, bar none."

  He looked around as if delivering a challenge, and, finding that noone was paying any attention to him, subsided, fidgeted for a minute,and then said he guessed he'd "turn in so's the water wouldn't gain onthe pumps in the mornin'."

  On the insistent demand of his partner, Dick also retired shortly, andthe cabin on the hillside was dark save for the dim light that glowedin the sufferer's room.

  They began to straggle in, the men wanted, before the partners hadfinished their breakfast on the following morning. Some of them werereal miners, and others were nondescripts, bearing out The Lily'sstatement that good men were scarce, but all were hired as they came,and the Croix d'Or began to thrill with activity.

  A fat cook--and no miner can explain why a camp cook is alwaysfat--beamed from the mess-house door. A blacksmith, accepting theready name of "Smuts," oiled the rusted wheels of his blower, andswore patiently and softly at a new helper as he selected the drillsfor sharpening. Three Burley drill runners tinkered with theirmachines, and scraped off the verdigris and accumulated dust ofstorage; millmen began to reset the tables, strip the damaged plates,and lay in new water pipes to drip ceaselessly over the powered ore.Over all these watched Bill with his bandaged face, rumbling ordershere and there, and tirelessly active. Out on the pipe line, windingby cut and trestle from the reservoir in the high hills, Dicksuperintended repairs and laid plans.

  Leaving his gang replacing sections near the power-house, he climbedup the length of the line to discover, if possible, how far the laborsof the vandal had extended. Foot by foot he had traversed it, almostto the reservoir itself, when he paused to breathe and look off at themountains spread below and around.

  The Cross, in the distance, was softened again to a miracle of dimyellow laid against a field of purple, and, like a speck, a huge eagleswept in circles round its point to come to rest on its extremesummit. He turned from admiring its flight to inspect a bowlder thathad tumbled down from the slope above and come to rest in a big dent;it had smashed in the top of the pipe. He picked up a piece of astorm-broken limb, used it as a lever, and sent the rock crashingacross the pipe to go bounding down the hillside as it gained momentumwith every leap.

  There was a startled snort, a sudden threshing of the brush, and itparted to disclose a girl astride a horse that was terrified andendeavoring his best to dismount his rider. Dick, surmising that horseand rider had suffered a narrow escape from the bowlder, ran towardthem remorsefully, but the girl already had the animal in controlafter a display of splendid horsemanship.

  "Thank you," she said, as he hastened toward the horse's head, intenton seizing the snaffle. "Please don't touch him. I can quiet himdown."

  "I am so sorry," he pleaded, with his hat in his hand. "I had no ideathat any one ever rode up this way."

  "Don't apologize," she answered, with a careless laugh. "No one everdoes, save me. It's an old and favorite view of mine. I used to ridehere, to see the Cross, many years ago, before I went away to school.So I came back to see my old friend, and--well--your bowlder wouldhave struck us if my horse hadn't jumped."

  She laughed again, and reached a yellow-gauntleted hand down to pather mount's shoulder with a soothing caress. The horse stoppedtrembling, and looked at Dick with large, intelligent eyes.

  "Ah," said Dick, remembering the garrulity of the engineer. "I believeyou must be Miss Presby."

  Even as she said simply: "I am, but how did you know? I don't rememberever seeing you," he took note of her modish blue riding-dress withdivided skirts and patent-leather boots. There was a clean freshnessabout her person, a smiling candor in her eyes, and a fine, frankgirlishness in her face that attracted him beyond measure. Sheappeared to be about twenty years of age, and was such a girl as thosehe had known and danced with, in those distant university days whenhis future seemed assured, and life a joyous conquest with all theodds in his favor. Now she was of another world, for he was, afterall, but a workingman, while she, the daughter of a millionairelumberman, would dance and associate with those other university menwhose financial incomes enabled them to dawdle as they pleased throughlife. He had no bitterness in this summary, but he sustained aninstant's longing for a taste of that old existence, and thecamaraderie of such girls as the one who sat before him on her horse.

  "No," he said, looking up at her, "you never saw me before. I havebeen in the Blue Mountains but six weeks. I am Richard Townsend."

  Her face took on a look of aroused interest, different from the casuallook she had been giving him in the brief minute of their meeting.

  "Oh," she said, "then you must be the Mr. Townsend of the Croix d'Or.I learned of your arrival last night after I came home. You arerehabilitating the old mine?"

  "Yes," he answered, smiling. "At least we are trying to. As to theoutcome--I don't know."

  "You mustn't say that!" she protested. "Faith in anything is the firstrequisite for success. That's what it says in the copybooks, doesn'tit?"

  She laughed again in her clear, mezzo voice, and then with aresumption of gravity gathered her reins into a firmer grip, and, asher horse lifted his head in response to the summons, said: "Anyway, Ithank you for volunteering to rescue me, Mr. Townsend, and wish youlots of good luck, but please don't start any more bowlders down thehill, because if you do I shall be robbed of my most enjoyable tripeach day. Good-by."

  "Don't be afraid," he called to her, as she started away. "There areno more bowlders to roll."

  He stood and watched her as she rode, masterfully seated on the blackhorse, around a crag that stuck out into the trail.

  "'Faith in anything is the first requisite for success,'" he repeatedto himself, striving to recall whether or not it was, as she hadintimated, a hackneyed proverb for the young; yet there was somethingbracing in it, coming from her calm, young, womanly lips. "That's it;she has it," he again said to himself. "'Faith.' That's what I need."And he resumed his tramp up the mountainside with a better courage andmore hope for the Croix d'Or. He was still vaguely troubled when hemade his way back past the power-house, in a sliding, scramblingdescent, his boots starting tiny avalanches of shale and loose rock togo clattering down the mountainside.

  The new men were proving competent under the direction of a bosspipeman who had been made foreman, and Dick trudged away toward themine, feeling that one part of the work, at least, would be speedily
accomplished.

  Bill was still striding backward and forward, but devoting most of hisattention to cleaning up the mill, and declared, with a wry smile,that he never felt better in his life, but never liked talking less.

  When the noon whistle shrieked its high, staccato note from theengine-house, they went up to the mess, and seated themselves at thehead of the table. As a whole, the men were fairly satisfactory. Billstared coldly down the table, and appeared to be mentally tabulatingthose who would draw but one pay-check, and that when their "time" wasgiven them, but Dick's mind persisted in wandering afield to thechance encounter of the morning.

  The men had finished their hasty meal, in hasty miner's fashion,silently, and tramped, with clumping feet, out of the mess-house tothe shade of its northern side before Bill had ended his painfulrepast. Whiffs of tobacco smoke and voices came through the openwindows, where the miners lounged and rested on a long bench whilewaiting for the whistle.

  "Don't you fool yourself about Bully Presby," one of them was saying."It's true he's a hard man, and out for the dust every minute of hislife, but he's got nerve, all right. He'll bulldoze and fight andgrowl and gouge, but he's there in other ways. I don't like him, andwe quit pretty sudden, yet I saw him do somethin' once that beat me."

  "Did you work on the Rattler?" another voice queried.

  "No," the other went on, "I worked for him down on the Placer Belle inCalifornia. It was under the old system and was a small mine. Kept allthe dynamite on the hundred-foot level in an old chamber. Every manwent there to get it when it was time to load his holes. I wasstartin' for mine one evenin', whistlin' along, when I smelled smoke.Stopped and sniffed, and about weakened. Knowed it was comin' from thepowder room down there. It wan't more'n twenty feet from the shaft,and there was two or three tons of it in that hole. Ran back and gavethe alarm bell to the engineer, then ducked my head and went towardthe smoke to see if anything could be done before she blew up thewhole works. On his hands and knees, with all that was left of hiscoat, was Bully. He'd got the fire nearly smothered out, and wecoughed and spit, and drowned the rest of the sparks from the waterbarrel. He'd fought it to a finish all alone, and I had to drag himout to the cage that was slidin' up and down as if the engineer was ona drunk, and every time it went up I could see the boys' faces, kindof white, and worried, and hear the alarms bangin' away like mad. Buthe'd put the fire out there with all that stuff around him. That tooksome nerve, I tell you!"

  "What did he do for you?" asked another voice.

  The narrator gave a heavy laugh, and chuckled.

  "Do for me? When he got fresh air in him again, up in the hoist, hesat up and opened his hand. In it was a candlestick and a snipe,burned on the side till the wick looked about a foot long. 'Who ownsthis candlestick?' says he. No one spoke, but some of us knowed itbelonged to old Deacon Wells, an absent-minded old cuss, but thedeacon had a family of nigh on to ten kids. So nobody answered. 'Somefool left this here,' Bully bellowed, tearing around. 'And that's whatstarted the fire. I'll kick the man off the works that owns thestick.' Still nobody said anything. He caught me grinnin'. 'You knowwho it was,' says he. 'Sure I do,' says I, 'but I'm a littletongue-tied.' Then he told me he'd fire me if I didn't say who it was.'Give me my time-check,' says I, and he gave it. He found outafterward I was the man that dragged him out, and sent a letter up toColusa askin' me to come back, but I didn't go. Don't s'pose he'dremember me now, and don't know as I'd want him to. Any man that worksfor Bully comes about as near givin' away his heart's blood as any onecould, and live."

  The voices went rumbling on, and Dick sat thinking of the strange,powerful man of the Rattler.

  "Three of the millmen know their business," mumbled Bill, as if allthe time he had been mentally appraising his force. "Two are rumdums.The chips isn't bad. He could carpenter anywhere, and if he's assmart a timberman as he is millwright, will make good. The engineerthat's to relieve Bells ain't so much, but I'll leave it to Bells tocuss him into line. That goes. Two of the Burley men are all right,and I fired the third in the first hour because he didn't know whatwas the nut and which the wrench. Smuts is a gem. He put thepigeon-blue temper on a bunch of drills as fast as any man could havedone it."

  Dick did not answer, but concentrated his mind on the work ahead. Thewhistle blew, and he compelled Bill to submit to new bandages,following the doctor's instructions, and smiled at his steady swearingas the wrappings were removed and the blisters redressed. They walkedacross to the hoist, entered the cage, and felt the sinking sensationas they were dropped, rather than lowered, to the six-hundred-footlevel. The celerity of the descent almost robbed him of breath, but hethought of sturdy old Bells' boast, that he had "never run a cage intothe sheaves, nor dropped it to the sump, in forty years of steam."

  Lights glowed ahead of them, and they heard hammering. The suck offresh air under pressure, vapored like steam, whirled around them ingusts, and the water oozed and rippled beside their feet as they wentforward. The carpenter was putting in a new set of timbers, and histask was nearly finished, while beside him waited a drill man and aswamper with the cumbersome, spiderlike mechanism ready to set. Thecarpenter gave a few more blows to a key block, and methodically flunghis hammer into his box and hurried back out through the tunnel towardthe cage, intent on resuming his work at the mill.

  Bill tentatively inspected the timbers, tapped the roof with a picktaken from the swamper's hands, heard the true ring of live rock, andbacked away. The drill was drawn up to the green face of ore.

  "About there, I should say," Dick directed, pointing an indicatoryfinger, and the drill runner nodded.

  The swamper, who appeared to know his business, came forward with thecoupling which fed compressed air to the machine, the runner gave alast inspection of his drill, turned his chuck screw, setting itagainst the rocky face, and signaled for the air. With a clatter likethe discharge of a rapid-fire gun, the steel bit into the rock, andthe Cross was really a mine again. Spattered with mud, and satisfiedthat the new drift was working in pay, the partner trudged back out.

  They signaled for the cage, shot upward, and emerged to the yard nearthe blacksmith's tunnel in time to see a huge bay horse, with a womanrider, come toiling up the slope. There was something familiar aboutthe white hat, and as she neared them they recognized The Lily. Beforethey could assist her to dismount, she leaped from the saddle, landinglightly on her toes, and dropped the horse's reins over his head.

  "Good-day--never mind--he'll stand," she said, all in a breath,striding toward them with an extended hand.

  Dick accepted it with a firm grip, and lifted his hat, while Billmerely shook hands and tried to smile. It was to him that she turnedsolicitously.

  "I'm glad you are out," she remarked, without lowering her eyes whichswept over the bandages on his face. "You're all right, are you?"

  "Sure. But how's that girl? It don't matter much about an old cusslike me. Girls are a heap scarcer."

  The owner of the High Light looked troubled for a moment, and removedher gloves before answering.

  "Doctor Mills says she will live," she said quietly, "but she isterribly burned. She will be so disfigured that she can never work ina dance hall any more. It's pretty rough luck."

  Dick recoiled and felt a chill at this hard, cold statement. The girlcould never work in a dance hall any more! And this was accepted as acalamity! Accustomed as he was to the frontier, this matter-of-factacceptance of a dance-hall occupation as something desirable impressedhim with its cynicism. Not that he doubted the virtue of many of thoseforlorn ones who gayly tripped their feet over rough boards, and dranktea or ginger ale and filled their pockets with bar checks to make aliving as best they might, but because the whole garish, rough,drink-laden, curse-begrimed atmosphere of a camp dance hall revoltedhim.

  Mrs. Meredith had intuition, and read men as she read books,understandingly. She arose to the defense of her sex.

  "Well," she said, facing him, as if he had voiced his sentiment, "whatwould you have? Women a
re what men make them, no better, no worse."

  "I have made no criticism," he retorted.

  "No, but you thought one," she asserted. "But, pshaw! I didn't comehere to argue. I came up to tell you that the dance-hall girl willrecover and has friends who will see that she doesn't starve, even ifshe no longer works in my place. Also, I came to see how Mister--whatis your name, anyway?--is."

  "Mathews, ma'am. William Mathews. My friends call me Bill. I don'tallow the others to call me anything."

  The temporary and threatening cloud was dissipated by the miner'srumbling laugh, and they sauntered across the yard, the bay horselooking after them, but standing as firmly as if the loosened reinswere tied to a post instead of resting on the ground. A swamper,carrying a bundle of drills, trudged across the yard to the blacksmithshop, as they stood in its doorway.

  "I sent you the best men I could pick up," The Lily said. "You did mea good turn, and I did my best to pay it back. That blacksmith is allright. Some of the others I know, but I don't know him. Never saw himbefore. You'd better watch him."

  She pointed at the swamper as coolly as if he were an inanimateobject, and he glared at her in return, then dropped his eyes.

  "I told you I didn't run an employment agency," she went on, "but ifany of these fellows get fresh, let me know, and I'll try to get youothers. How does the Cross look, anyway?"

  They turned away and accompanied her over the plant above ground, andheard her greet man after man on a level of comradeship, as if shewere but a man among men. Her hard self-possession and competenceimpressed the younger man as a peculiar study. It seemed to him, as hewalked beside her thoughtfully, that every womanly trait had beenground from her in the stern mills of circumstance. He had a vaguedesire to probe into her mind and learn whether or not there stilldwelt within it the softness of her sex, but he dared not venture. Hestood beside the bandaged veteran as she rode away, a graceful,independent figure.

  "Is she all tiger, or part woman?" he said, turning to Mathews, whoseeyes had a singularly thoughtful look.

  The latter turned to him with a quick gesture, and threw up hisunbandaged hand.

  "My boy," he said, "she's not a half of anything. She's all tiger, orall woman! God only knows!"