Kitabı oku: «A Damaged Reputation», sayfa 5

VII.
ALLONBY'S ILLUSION

The shanty was draughty as well as very damp, and the glass of the flickering lamp blackened so that the light was dim. It, however, served to show one-half of Allonby's face in silhouette against the shadow, as he sat leaning one elbow on the table, with a steaming glass in front of him. Brooke, who was stiff and weary, lay in a dilapidated canvas chair beside the crackling fire, which filled the very untidy room with aromatic odors. It was still apparently raining outside, for there was a heavy splashing on the shingled roof above, and darkness had closed down on the lonely valley several hours ago, but while Brooke's eyes were heavy, Allonby showed no sign of drowsiness. He sat looking straight in front of him vacantly.

"You will pass your glass across when you are ready, Mr. Brooke," he said, and the latter noticed his clean English intonation. "The night is young yet, that bottle is by no means the last in the shanty, and it is, I think, six months since I have been favored with any intelligent company. I have, of course, the boys, but with due respect to the democratic sentiments of this colony they are – the boys, and the fact that they are a good deal more use to the country than I am does not affect the question."

Brooke smiled a little. His host was attired somewhat curiously in a frayed white shirt and black store jacket, which was flecked with cigar ash, and had evidently seen better days, though his other garments were of the prevalent jean, and a portion of his foot protruded through one of his deerhide slippers. His face was gaunt and haggard, but it was just then a trifle flushed, and though his voice was still clear and nicely modulated, there was a suggestive unsteadiness in his gaze. The man was evidently a victim of indulgence, but there was a trace of refinement about him, and Brooke had realized already that he had reached the somewhat pathetic stage when pride sinks to the vanity which prompts its possessor to find a curious solace in the recollection of what he has thrown away.

"No more!" he said. "I have lived long enough in the bush to find out that is the way disaster lies."

Allonby nodded. "You are no doubt perfectly right," he said. "I had, however, gone a little too far when I made the discovery, and by that time the result of any further progress had become a matter of indifference to me. In any case, a man who has played his part with credit among his equals where life has a good deal to offer one and intellect is appreciated, must drown recollection now and then when he drags out his days in a lonely exile that can have only one end. I am quite aware that it is not particularly good form for me to commiserate myself, but it should be evident that there is nobody else here to do it for me."

Brooke had already found his host's maudlin moralizings becoming monotonous, but he also felt in a half-contemptuous fashion sorry for the man. He was, it seemed to him, in spite of his proclivities, in the restricted sense of the word, almost a gentleman.

"If one may make the inquiry, you came from England?" he said.

Allonby laughed. "Most men put that question differently in this country. They talk straight, as they term it, and apparently consider brutality to be the soul of candor. Yes, I came from England, because something happened which prevented me feeling any great desire to spend any further time there. What it was does not, of course, matter. I came out with a sheaf of certificates and several medals to exploit the mineral riches of Western Canada, and found that mineralogical science is not greatly appreciated here."

He rose, and taking down a battered walnut case, shook out a little bundle of greasy papers with a trembling hand. Then a faint gleam crept into his eyes as he opened a little box in which Brooke saw several big round pieces of gold. The dulness of the unpolished metal made the inscriptions on them more legible, and he knew enough about such matters to realize that no man of mean talent could have won those trophies.

"They would, I fancy, have got you a good appointment anywhere," he said.

"As a matter of fact, they got me one or two. It is, however, occasionally a little difficult to keep an appointment when obtained."

Brooke could understand that there were reasons which made that likely in his host's case, but he had by this time had enough of the subject.

"What are you going to do with the ore I brought you?" he said.

Allonby's eyes twinkled. "Enrich what we raise here with it."

"It is a little difficult to understand what you would gain by that."

Allonby smiled suggestively. "I would certainly gain nothing, but Thomas P. Saxton seems to fancy the result would be profitable to him."

"But does the Dayspring belong to Saxton?"

Allonby emptied his glass at a gulp. "As much as I do, and he believes he has bought me soul and body. The price was not a big one – a very few dollars every month, and enough whisky to keep me here. If that failed me, I should go away, though I do not know where to, for I cannot use the axe. He is, however, now quite willing to part with the Dayspring, which has done little more than pay expenses."

A light commenced to dawn on Brooke, and his face grew a trifle hot. "That is presumably why he arranged that I should bring the ore down past the few ranches near the trail at night?"

"Precisely!" said Allonby. "You see, Saxton wants to sell the mine to another man – because he is a fool. Now the chief recommendation a mine has to a prospective purchaser is naturally the quality of the ore to be got out of it."

"But the man who proposed buying it would send an expert to collect samples for assaying."

Allonby's voice was not quite so clear as it had been, but he smiled again. "It is not quite so difficult for a mine captain who knows his business to contrive that an expert sees no more than is advisable. A good deal of discretion is, however, necessary when you salt a poor mine with high-grade ore. It has to be done with knowledge, artistically. You don't seem quite pleased at being mixed up in such a deal."

Brooke was a trifle grim in face, but he laughed. "I have no doubt that, considering everything, it is a trifle absurd of me, but I'm not," he said. "One has to get accustomed to the notion that he is being made use of in connection with an ingenious swindle. That, however, is a matter which rests between Saxton and me, and we may talk over it when I go back again. Why did you call him a fool?"

Allonby leaned forward in his chair, and his face grew suddenly eager. "I suppose you couldn't raise eight thousand dollars to buy the mine with?"

Brooke laughed outright. "I should have some difficulty in raising twenty until the month is up."

"Then you are losing a chance you'll never get again in a lifetime," and Allonby made a little gesture of resignation. "I would have liked you to have taken it, because I think I could make you believe in me. That is why I showed you the medals."

Brooke looked at him curiously for a moment or two. It was evident that the man was in earnest, for his gaunt face was wholly intent, and his fingers were trembling.

"It is a very long time since I had the expectation of ever calling eight thousand dollars my own, and if I had them I should feel very dubious about putting them into any mine, and especially this one."

Allonby leaned forward further, and clutched his arm. "If you have any friends in the Old Country, beg or borrow from them. Offer them twenty per cent. – anything they ask. There is a fortune under your feet. Of course, you do not believe it. Nobody I ever told it to would even listen seriously."

"I believe you feel sure of it, but that is quite another thing," and Brooke smiled.

Allonby rose shakily, and leaned upon the table with his fingers trembling.

"Listen a few minutes – I was sure of attention without asking for it once," he said. "It was I who found the Dayspring, not by chance prospecting, but by calculations that very few men in the province could make. I know what that must appear – but you have seen the medals. Tracing the dip and curvature of the stratification from the Elktail and two prospectors' shafts, I knew the vein would approach the level here, and I put five thousand dollars – every cent I could scrape together – into proving it. We struck the vein, but while it should have been rich, we found it broken, displaced, and poor. There had, you see, been a disturbance of the strata. I borrowed money, worked night and day, and starved myself – did everything that would save a dollar from the rapidly-melting pile – and at last we struck the vein again, and struck it rich."

He stopped abruptly and stood staring vacantly in front of him, while Brooke heard him noisily draw in his breath.

"You can imagine what that meant!" he continued. "After what had happened in England I could never go back a poor man, but a good deal is forgiven the one who comes home rich. Then, while I tried to keep my head, we came to the fault where the ore vein suddenly ran out. It broke off as though cut through with a knife, and went down, as the men who knew no better said, to the centre of the earth. Now a fault is a very curious thing, but one can deduce a good deal when he has studied them, and a big snow-slide had laid bare an interesting slice of the foundations of this country in the valley opposite. It took me a month to construct my theory, and that was little when you consider the factors I had to reckon with – ages of crushing pressure, denudation by grinding ice and sliding snow, and Titanic upheavals thousands of years ago. The result was from one point of view contemptible. With about four thousand dollars I could strike the vein again."

"Of course you tried to raise them?"

Allonby made a grimace. "For six long years. The men who had lent me money laughed at me, and worked the poor ore back along the incline instead of boring. Somebody has been working it – for about five cents on the dollar – ever since, and when I told them what they were letting slip all of them smiled compassionately. I am of course – though once it was different – a broken man, with a brain clouded by whisky, only fit to run a played-out mine. How could I be expected to find any man a fortune?"

His brain, it was evident, was slightly affected by alcohol then, but there was no mistaking the genuineness of his bitterness. It was too deep to be maudlin or tinged with self-commiseration now. The little hopeless gesture of resignation he made was also very eloquent, and while the rain splashed upon the roof Brooke sat silent regarding him curiously. The dim light and the flickering radiance from the fire were still on one side of his face, forcing it up with all its gauntness of outline, but the weakness had gone out of it, and for once it was strong and almost stern. Then a little sardonic smile crept into it.

"A fortune under our feet – and nobody will have it! It is one of Fate's grim jests," he said. "I spent a month making a theory, and every day of six years – that is when I was capable of thinking – has shown me something to prove that theory right. Now Saxton wants to swindle another man into buying the mine for – you can call it a song."

He poured out another glass with a shaking hand, and then turned abruptly to his companion. "Put on your rubber coat and come with me," he said.

Brooke would much rather have retired to sleep, but the man's earnestness had its effect on him, and he rose and went out into the rain with him. Allonby came near falling down the shaft when they stood at its head, but Brooke got him into the ore hoist and sent him down, after which he descended the running chain he had locked fast hand over hand. The level, as he had been told, was close to the surface, and while Allonby walked unsteadily in front of him with a blinking candle in his hat, they followed it into the face of the hill. Twice his companion stumbled over a piece of the timbering, and the light went out, while Brooke wondered uneasily if there was another sinking anywhere ahead as he lighted it again. He knew a little about mining, since he had on one or two occasions earned a few dollars assisting in the driving of an adit.

Finally, Allonby stopped and leaned against the dripping rock, as he took off his hat and held the candle high above his head. Then he turned and pointed down the gallery the way they had come.

"Look at it!" he said, thickly. "Until we struck the ore where you see the extra timbering, I counted the dollars every yard of it cost me as I would drops of my life's blood. I worked while the men slept, and lived like a Chinaman. There was a fortune within my grasp if those dollars would hold out until I reached it – and fortune meant England, and I once more the man I had been. Then – we came to that."

He swung round and pointed with a wide, dramatic gesture which Brooke fancied he would not have used in his prosperous days, to a bare face of rock. It was of different nature to the sides of the tunnel, and had evidently come down from above. Brooke understood. The strata his companion had been working in had suddenly broken off and gone down, only he knew where. He sat down on a big fallen fragment, and there was silence for a space, emphasized by the drip of water in the blackness of the mine. Brooke was very drowsy, but the scene, with its loneliness and the haggard face of his companion showing pale and drawn in the candle-light, had a curious effect on him, and in the meanwhile compelled him to wakefulness.

"You know where that broken strata has dipped to?" he said, at last.

Allonby, who laughed in a strained fashion, sat down abruptly, and thrust a bundle of papers upon his companion. "Almost to a fathom. If you know anything of geology, look at these."

Brooke, who unrolled the papers, knew enough to recognize that, even if his companion had illusions, they were the work of a clever man. There was skill and what appeared to be a high regard for minute accuracy in every line of the plans, while he fancied the attached calculations would have aroused a mathematician's appreciation. He spent several minutes poring over them with growing wonder, while Allonby held the candle, and then looked up at him.

"They would, I think, almost satisfy any man, but there is a weak point," he said.

Allonby smiled in a curious fashion. "The one the rest split on? I see you understand."

"You deduce where the ore ought to be – by analogy. That kind of reasoning is, I fancy, not greatly favored in this country by practical men. They prefer the fact that it is there established by the drill."

Allonby made a little gesture of impatience. "They have driven shaft and adit for half a lifetime, most of them, and they do not know yet that one law of Nature – the sequence of cause and effect – is immutable. I have shown them the causes – but it would cost five thousand dollars to demonstrate the effect. Well, as no one will ever spend them, we will go back."

He had come out unsteadily, but he went back more so still, as though a sustaining purpose had been taken from him, and, as he fell down now and then, Brooke had some difficulty in conveying him to the foot of the shaft. When he had bestowed him in the ore hoist, and was about to ascend by the chain, Allonby laughed.

"You needn't be particularly careful. I shall come down here head-foremost one of these nights, and nobody will be any the worse off," he said. "I lost my last chance when that vein worked out."

Then Brooke went up into the darkness, and with some difficulty hove his companion to the surface. They went back to the shanty together, and as Allonby incontinently fell asleep in his chair, Brooke retired to the bunk set apart for him. Still, tired as he was, it was some little time before he slept, for what he had seen had made its impression. The shanty was very still, save for the snapping of the fire, and the broken-down outcast, who held the key of a fortune the men of that province were too shrewd to believe in, slept uneasily, with head hung forward, in his chair. Brooke could see him dimly by the dying light of the fire, and felt very far from sure that it was a delusion he labored under.

When he awakened next morning Allonby was already about, and looked at him curiously when he endeavored to reopen the subject.

"It is not considerate to refer next morning to anything a man with my shortcomings may have said the night before," he said. "I think you should recognize that fact."

"I'm sorry," said Brooke. "Still, it occurred to me that you believed very firmly in the truth of it."

Allonby smiled drily. "Well," he said, "I do. What is that to you?"

"Nothing," said Brooke. "I shall, as I think I told you, be worth about thirty dollars when the month is out. What is the name of the man Saxton wishes to sell the mine to?"

"Devine," said Allonby, and went out to fling a vitriolic reproof at a miner who was doing something he did not approve of about the windlass, while Brooke, who saw no more of him, departed when he had made his breakfast.

VIII.
A BOLD VENTURE

It was a hot morning shortly after Brooke's return to the Elktail mine, and Saxton sat in his galvanized shanty with his feet on a chair and a cigar in his hand. The door stood open and let a stream of sunlight and balsamic odors of the forest in. He wore soil-stained jean, and seemed very damp, for he had just come out of the mine. Thomas P. Saxton was what is termed a rustler in that country, a man of unlimited assurance and activity, troubled by no particular scruples and keen to seize on any chances that might result in the acquisition of even a very few dollars. He was also, like most of his countrymen, eminently adaptable, and the fact that he occasionally knew very little about the task he took in hand seldom acted as a deterrent. It was characteristic that during the past hour he had been endeavoring to show his foreman how to run a new rock-drilling machine which he had never seen in operation until that time.

Brooke, who had been speaking, sat watching him with a faint ironical appreciation. The man was delightfully candid, at least with him, and though he was evidently not averse from sailing perilously near the wind it was done with boldness and ingenuity. There was a little twinkle in his keen eyes as he glanced at his companion.

"Well," he said, "one has to take his chances when he has all to gain and very little to let up upon. That's the kind of man I am."

"I believe you told me you had got quite a few dollars together not very long ago," said Brooke, reflectively.

The smile became a trifle plainer in Saxton's eyes. "I did, but very few of them are mine. Somehow I get to know everybody worth knowing in the province, and now and then folks with dollars to spare for a venture hand them me to put into a deal."

"On the principle that one has to take his chances in this country?"

Saxton laughed good-humoredly. "Well," he said, "I never go back upon a partner, anyway, and when we make a deal the other folks are quite at liberty to keep their eyes on me. They know the rules of the game, and if they don't always get the value they expected they most usually lie low and sell out to another man instead of blaming me. It pays their way better than crying down their bargain. Still, I have started off mills and wild-cat mines that turned out well, and went on coining dollars for everybody."

"Which was no doubt a cause of satisfaction to you!"

Saxton shook his head. "No, sir," he said. "I felt sorry ever after I hadn't kept them."

Brooke straightened himself a trifle in his chair, for he felt that they were straying from the point.

"Industrial speculations in this province remind me of a game we have in England. Perhaps you have seen it," he said, reflectively. "You bet a shilling or half-a-crown that when you lift up a thimble you will find a pea you have seen a man place under it. It is not very often that you accomplish it. Still, in that case – there is – a pea."

"And there's nothing but low-grade ore in the Dayspring? Now, nobody ever quite knows what he will find in a mine if he lays out enough dollars looking for it."

"That," said Brooke, drily, "is probably correct enough, especially if he is ignorant of geology. What I take exception to is the sprinkling of the mine with richer ore to induce him to buy it. Such a proceeding would be called by very unpleasant names in England, and I'm not quite sure it mightn't bring you within the reach of the law here. Mind, what you may think fit to do is, naturally, no concern of mine, but I have tolerably strong objections to taking any further personal part in the scheme."

"The point is that we're playing it off on Devine, the man who robbed you, and has once or twice put his foot on me. I was considerably flattened when I crawled from under. He's a big man and he puts it down heavy."

"Still, I feel it's necessary to draw the line at a swindle."

Saxton made a little whimsical gesture. "Call it the game with the pea and thimble. Devine has got a notion there's something in the mine, and I don't know any reason why I shouldn't humor him. He's quite often right, you see."

"It does not affect the point, but are you quite sure he isn't right now?"

"You mean that Allonby may be?"

"I shouldn't consider it quite out of the question."

Saxton laughed softly. "Allonby's a whisky-skin, and I keep him because he's cheap and it's a charity. Everybody knows that story of his, and he only trots it out when he has got a good bottle of old rye into him. At most other times he's quite sensible. Anyway, Devine doesn't want the mine to keep. He has to get a working group with a certain output and assays that look well all round before he floats it off on the English market. If he knew I was quietly dumping that ore in I'm not quite sure it would rile him."

Brooke sat silent a space. He had discovered by this time that it is not advisable to expect any excess of probity in a mining deal, and that it is the speculator, and not the men who face the perils of the wilderness (which are many, prospecting), who usually takes the profit. A handful or two of dollars for them, and a big bank balance for the trickster stock manipulator appeared to be the rules of the game. Still, nobody can expect to acquire riches without risk or labor, and it seemed no great wrong to him that the men with the dollars should lose a few of them occasionally. Granting that, he did not, however, feel it warranted him in taking any active part in fleecing them.

"Still, if another bag of ore goes into the Dayspring you can count me out," he said. "No doubt, it's a trifle inconsistent, but you will understand plainly that I take no further share in selling the mine."

Saxton shook his head reproachfully. "Those notions of yours are going to get in your way, and it's unfortunate, because we have taken hold of a big thing," he said. "I'm an irresponsible planter of wild-cat mining schemes, you're nobody, and between us we're going to best Devine, the biggest man in his line in the province, and a clever one. Still, that's one reason why the notion gets hold of me. When you come in ahead of the little man there's nothing to be got out of him, and Devine's good for quite a pile when we can put the screw on."

Again Brooke was sensible of a certain tempered admiration for his comrade's hardihood, for it seemed to him that the project he had mooted might very well involve them both in disaster.

"You expect to accomplish it?" he said.

"Well," said Saxton, drily, "I mean to try. We can't squeeze him much on the Dayspring, but we want dollars to fight him with, and that's how we're going to get a few of them. It's on the Canopus I mean to strike him."

"The Canopus!" said Brooke, who knew the mine in question was considered a rich one. "How could you gain any hold on him over that?"

"On the title. By jumping it. Devine takes too many chances now and then, and if one could put his fingers on a little information I have a notion the Canopus wouldn't be his. I guess you know that unless you do this, that, and the other, after recording your correct frontage on the lead or vein, you can't hold a mine on a patent from the Crown. Suppose you have got possession, and it's found that there was anything wrong with the papers you or your prospectors filed, the minerals go back to the Crown again, and the man who's first to drive his stakes in can re-locate them. It's done now and then."

Brooke sat silent a space. A jumper – as the man who re-locates the minerals somebody else has found, on the ground of incorrect record or non-compliance with the mining enactments, is called – is not regarded with any particular favor in that province, or, indeed, elsewhere, but his proceedings may be, at least, perfectly legitimate, and there was a certain simplicity and daring of conception in the new scheme that had its effect on Brooke.

"I will do what I can within limits," he said.

Saxton nodded. "Then you will have to get into the mine, though I don't quite know how we are going to fix it yet," he said. "Anyway, we've talked enough for one day already, and you have to go down to the settlement to see about getting those new drills up."

Brooke set out for the settlement, and slept at a ranch on the way, where he left his horse which had fallen lame, for it was a two days' journey, while it was late in the afternoon when he sat down to rest where the trail crossed a bridge. The latter was a somewhat rudimentary log structure put together with the axe and saw alone, of a width that would just allow one of the light wagons in use in that country to cross over it, and, as the bottom of the hollow the river swirled through was level there, an ungainly piece of trestle work carried the road up to it. There was a long, white rapid not far away, and the roar of it rang in deep vibrations among the rocks above. Brooke, who had walked a long way, found the pulsating sound soothing, while the fragrance the dusky cedars distilled had its usual drowsy effect on him, and as he watched the glancing water slide by his eyes grew heavy.

He did not remember falling asleep, but by and by the sombre wall of coniferous forest that shut the hollow in seemed to dwindle to the likeness of a trim yew hedge, and the river now slid by smooth and placidly. There was also velvet grass beneath his feet in place of wheel-rutted gravel and brown fir needles. Still, the scene he gazed upon was known to him, though it seemed incomplete until a girl with brown eyes in a long white dress and big white hat appeared at his side. She fitted the surroundings wonderfully, for her almost stately serenity harmonized with the quietness and order of the still English valley, but yet he was puzzled, for there was sunlight on the water, and he felt that the moon should be shining round and full above her shoulder. Then when he would have spoken the picture faded, and he became suddenly conscious that his pipe had fallen from his hand, and that he was dressed in soil-stained jean which seemed quite out of keeping with the English lawn. That was his first impression, but while he wondered vaguely how he came to have a pipe made out of a corn-cob, which cost him about thirty cents, at all, a rattle of displaced gravel and pounding of hoofs became audible, and he recognized that something unusual was going on.

He shook himself to attention, and looking about him saw a man sitting stiffly erect on the driving seat of a light wagon and endeavoring to urge a pair of unwilling horses up the sloping trestle. They were Cayuses, beasts of native blood and very uncertain temper, bred by Indians, and as usual, about half-broken to the rein. They also appeared to have decided objections to crossing the bridge, for which any one new to the province would scarcely have felt inclined to blame them. The river frothed beneath it, the ascent was steep with a twist in it, and a small log, perhaps a foot through, spiked down to the timbers, served as sole protection. It would evidently not be difficult for a pair of frightened horses to tilt a wheel of the very light vehicle over it.

Still, the structure compared favorably with most of those in the mountains, and Brooke, who knew that it is not always advisable to interfere in a dispute between a bush rancher and his horses, sat still, until it became evident to him that the man did not belong to that community. He was elderly, for there was grey in the hair beneath the wide hat, while something in the way he held himself and the fit of his clothes, which appeared unusually good, suggested a connection with the cities. It was, however, evident that he was a determined man, for he showed no intention of dismounting, and responded to the off horse's vicious kicking with a stinging cut of the whip. The result of this was a plunge, and one wheel struck the foot-high guard with a crash. The man plied the whip again, and with another plunge and scramble the beasts gained the level of the bridge. Here they stopped altogether, and one attempted to stand upright while Brooke sprang to his feet.

"Hadn't you better get down, sir, or let me lead them across?" he said.

The man, tightening both hands upon the reins, cast a momentary glance at him, and his little grim smile and the firm grip of his long, lean fingers supplied a hint of his character.

"Not until I have to," he said. "They're going to cross this bridge."

Brooke moved a few paces nearer. It was one thing for a rancher accustomed to horses and bridges of that description to take pleasure in such a struggle, but quite another in the case of a man from the cities, and he had misgivings as to the result of it. The latter, however, showed very little concern, though the near horse was now apparently endeavoring to kick the front of the wagon in. Then Brooke sprang suddenly towards them as both backed the wagon against the log. He fancied that one wheel was mounting it when he seized the near horse's head, but after that he had very little opportunity of noticing anything.