Kitabı oku: «The Helpers», sayfa 12
CHAPTER XXI
It is a fact no less deprecable than true that events in orderly sequence do not always lend themselves to the purposes of a chronicler who would be glad to prick in his climaxes with a pen borrowed of the dramatist. With some little labor, and the help of not a few coincidences which may fairly be called fortuitous, the march of events in the life of Henry Jeffard has led up to a point at which the fictional unities pause, confidently anticipative of a climax which shall reëcho the heroic struggle of the Spartan few at Thermopylæ, or the daring-do of the Pontine Horatius. But the facts are inexorable and altogether disappointing. With prologue and stage-setting for a Sophoclean tragedy, the piece halts; hangs in the wind at the critical conjuncture like a misstaying ship; becomes, in point of fact, a mere modern comedy-drama with a touch of travesty in it; and the unities, fictional and dramatic, shriek and expire.
This humiliating failure of the dramatic possibilities turns upon an inconsequent pivot-pin in the human mechanism, namely, the lack of courage in the last resort in men of low degree. To kidnap a drunken man or to pistol an unarmed one is one thing; to force a sky-pitched Gibraltar defended by a resolute fellow-being with a modern high-power repeating rifle and an itching trigger-finger is quite another. This was the conservative point of view of the aliased ones; and after the final futile attempt to gain the trail and the cover of the timber, the twain held a council of war, vilified their luck, and sounded a retreat.
Thus it came about that Denby and his man, riding tantivy to the rescue, met the raiders two miles down the trail Aspenward; and having this eye-assurance that the foray had failed, the promoter was minded to go back to town to await Jeffard's return. But, having the eye-assurance, he was not unwilling to add another. Bartrow's telegram had named the figure of the assay; the incredible number of dollars and cents to the ton to be sweated out of the bonanza drift. Now assays are assays, but investment is shy of them, demanding mill-runs, and conservative estimates based on averages; and pondering these things the rescuer reverted to his normal character of capitalist in ordinary to moneyless bonanzists, and determined to go on and see for himself. Accordingly, Jeffard's unexpected reinforcements pressed forward while the enemy was in full tide of retreat; and a short half-hour later the squadron of retrieval came near to paying the penalty of an unheralded approach, since it was upon the promoter and his henchman that Jeffard poured his final volley.
So much for the tragi-comedy of the sky-pitched Gibraltar, which made a travesty of Jeffard's heart-breaking efforts to fortify himself in the old tunnel. And as for the apparent determination to die open-eyed and militant behind the barricade, the unromantic truth again steps in to give the coup de grace to the disappointed unities. There is a limit to human endurance, and the hardiest soldier may find it on a field as yet no more than half won. Fastings and fierce hurryings, wounds, physical and spiritual, and ruthless determination may ride roughshod over Nature's turnpike; but Nature will demand her toll. For this cause Jeffard saw no more than the first flight of moon-arrows glancing from the face of the western cliff. Long before the Selenean archers were fairly warmed to their work he had fallen asleep, with his cheek on the carved grip of the borrowed rifle; a lost man to all intents and purposes, if the fictional unities had not been put to flight by the commonplace fact.
Behold him, then, awakening what time the volleying sun has changed places with the moon-archers. The barricaded tunnel has a dim twilight of its own, but out and abroad the day is come, and the keen air is tinnient with the fine treble of the mountain morning. The slanting sun-fire spatters the gray cliff opposite, and a spiral of blue smoke is curling peacefully above the chimney of the cabin. And in the shallows of the stream a man, who is neither desperado black or red, is bathing the legs of a horse. Under such conditions one may imagine a recreant sentry rubbing his eyes to make sure, and presently climbing the barricade to slide down the dump into parley range, question-charged.
Denby unbent, smiling. "Didn't I say that you were an inconsiderate madman? You had to sleep or die."
"But when did you get here?"
"About the time the proxies would have arrived, if you hadn't succeeded in discouraging them. It was late; much later than it would have been if you hadn't given us such an emphatic stand-off at the summit. Come across and have some breakfast with us."
Jeffard found the foot-log and made shift to walk it.
"Did I fire at you? I thought it was another charge coming. They had been trying to rush me."
"So I inferred. We camped down out of range and gave you plenty of time. You may be no marksman, but" – He finished the sentence in dumb show by taking off his hat and pointing to a bullet score in the crown of it. "A few inches lower and you would have spoiled your first chance of capitalizing the Midas. How do you feel this morning?"
"A bit unresponsive, but better than I have a right to expect. What became of the two raiders?"
"We met them riding a steeplechase toward town. You discouraged them, as I said. From Donald's count of the bullet-splashes on that bald summit you must have gotten in your work pretty lively."
Jeffard lowered the hammer of the rifle and emptied the magazine. "It's a good weapon," he said. "I believe I could learn to shoot with it, after a while. Will you sell it?"
"Not to any one. But I'll make you a present of it. Let's go in and see what Donald has found in his saddle-bags. It's a fine breakfast morning."
So they went into the cabin and sat at meat on either side of a rough table of Garvin's contriving, and were served by a solemn-faced Scot, whose skill as a camp cook was commensurate with his ability to hold his tongue. Notwithstanding the presumable urgencies the breakfast talk was not of business. Jeffard would have had it so, but Denby forbade.
"Not yet," he objected. "Not until you have caught up with yourself. After breakfast Donald will sling you a blanket hammock under the trees, and you shall sleep the clock around. Then you'll feel fit, and we can talk futures if you please."
If there were a prompting of suspicion in the glance with which Jeffard met this proposal it remained in abeyance. With every embrasure gunned and manned the fortress of this life must always be pregnable on the human side; in the last resort one must trust something to the chance of loyalty in the garrison. Wherefore Jeffard accepted the promoter's pipe and the blanket hammock, and fell asleep while Donald was pulling down the barricade at the tunnel's mouth preparatory to liberating the neighing horse stabled in the heading.
It was evening, just such another as that one three months agone, in the heart of which two men had sat at the cabin door looking a little into each other's past, when Jeffard opened his eyes. The three horses, saddled, but with loose cinches, were cropping the sun-cured grass on the level which served as a dooryard for the cabin; and an appetizing smell of frying bacon was abroad in the air. Jeffard sat up yawning, and the promoter rose from the doorstep and rapped the ashes from his pipe.
"Feel better?" he queried.
"I feel like a new man. I hadn't realized that I was so nearly spent."
"That is why I prescribed the blanket. Another day would have finished you."
Jeffard slid out of the hammock and went to plunge his face and hands in the stream; after which they ate again as men who postpone the lesser to the greater; with Donald the taciturn serving them, and hunger waiving speech and ceremony.
It was yet no more than twilight when the meal was finished; and Denby found a candle and matches in the henchman's saddlebags.
"If you are ready, we'll go up to the tunnel and have another look at the lead before we go," he said. "I have been examining it to-day, and I'll make you a proposition on the ground, if you like."
Jeffard pieced out the inference with the recollection of the saddled horses.
"Do we go back to-night?"
"Yes; if you are good for it. It has been a pretty warm day for the season, and we are like to have more of them. There is a good bit of snow on the trail, and if it softens we shall be shut in. That's one reason, and another is this: if we make a deal and mean to get any machinery in here before snow flies and the range is blocked, we've got to be about it."
Jeffard nodded acquiescence, and they fared forth to cross the foot-log and toil up the shelving slope of the gray dump. It was a stiff climb for a whole man, and at the summit Jeffard sat down with his hands to his head and his teeth agrind.
"By Jove! but that sets it in motion again in good shape!" he groaned. "Sit down here and let's talk it out in the open. I don't care to burrow."
Denby pocketed his candle, and they sat together on the brink of the dump, with their backs to the opening; and thus it chanced that neither of them saw a shadowy figure skulking among the firs beside the tunnel's mouth. When they began to talk the figure edged nearer, flitting ghostlike from tree to tree, and finally crouching under the penthouse of the tunnel timbering.
The crimson and mauve had faded out of the western sky when the two at the dump-head rose, and Jeffard said: "Your alternative is fair enough. It's accepted, without conditions other than this – that you will advance me a few hundred dollars for my own purposes some time within thirty days."
"You needn't make that a condition; I should be glad to tide you over in any event. But I am sorry you won't let me buy in. As I have said, there is enough here for both of us."
The aftermath of the getting up was a sharp agony, and Jeffard had his hands to his head again. When he answered it was to say: —
"I sha'n't sell. There are reasons, and you may take this for the lack of a better. A while back, when a single meal in the day was sometimes beyond me, I used to say that if the tide should ever turn I'd let the money go on piling up and up until there was no possibility of hunger in an eternity of futures. You say the tide has turned."
"It has, for a fact; and I don't know that I blame you. If it were mine I should probably try to keep it whole."
Jeffard went on as one who follows out his own train of thought regardless of answers relevant or impertinent. "I said that, and I don't know that I have changed my mind. But before we strike hands on the bargain it may be as well to go back to the question which you were good enough to leave in abeyance yesterday."
"The question of ethics?"
"Yes."
"I am going to take something for granted, if you don't choose to be frank with me."
"It will be safer to take nothing for granted."
"But the claim is yours?"
"Legally, yes; there will be no litigation."
"But honestly, as man to man." Denby put his hands on the wounded man's shoulders, and turned him about so that the fading light in the west fell upon his face. "My dear fellow, I've known you but a day, but your face isn't the face of a scoundrel. I can't believe that the man who made the magnificent fight that you did would make it to overreach his partner."
Jeffard turned aside, with a backward step that freed him from the friendly hands. Twice he tried to speak, and at the third attempt the words came but haltingly.
"It will be better in the end – better for all concerned – if you – if you do believe it. Believe it, and cause it to be believed, if you choose. I have counted the cost, and am ready to take the consequences."
Denby thrust his hands into his pockets and began to tramp, three paces and a turn, across and across the narrow embankment. A little light was beginning to sift in between the man and his mystery, but it was not of the sun.
"Mr. Jeffard, I'd like to ask a question. You needn't answer it if you don't want to. Do you know who drove this tunnel?"
"I do."
"Was it the man who raced you from Leadville to Aspen, and who shot you when you tried to bluff him by making him believe that you had already located the claim in your own name?"
"It was."
"Then, to put it plainly, you are the aggressor, after all. You have really jumped your partner's claim."
The promoter stopped and faced his man, and the skulker at the tunnel's mouth crept nearer, as a listener who may not miss a word.
"That is what men will say, I suppose; and I shall not contradict them. He has forfeited his right." Jeffard said it with eyes downcast, but there was no incertitude in the words.
"Forfeited his right? How? By shooting at you in a very natural fit of frenzied rage? I can't believe that you realize the enormity of this thing, Mr. Jeffard. You are new to the West. It is true that the law can't touch you, but public opinion, the sentiment of a mining region, will brand you as the basest of thieves."
"That is the public's privilege. I shall not attempt to defend myself – to you, or to any one. The consequences are mine to suffer or to ignore."
"You can't ignore them. Your best friends will turn upon you, and mining-camp justice will not only acquit the man who tried to kill you – it will fight for him and condemn you."
"But yesterday you said it would have given me the benefit of the doubt and lynched him. I can fight my own battle."
"Yes, I did say so; and, lacking your own evidence against yourself, it will condemn him yet. Had you thought of that?"
"Mr. Denby, I have answered your questions because you had a right to ask them. To the public I shall neither deny nor affirm."
"Then you'll have the choice of posing as a scoundrel on the one hand, or of consenting to the death or imprisonment of a measurably innocent man on the other. I don't envy you."
"It is my own affair, as you were good enough to say yesterday. Do you wish to withdraw your proposal?"
Denby took time to think about it, pacing out his decision what time the moon was beginning to silver the western snow-caps.
"No; as I have made it and you have accepted it, the proposal is merely a matter of service to be rendered and paid for; I furnish the capital to work the mine for a year for a certain portion of the output. But if you had taken me up on the original proposition, I should beg to be excused. Under the circumstances, I shouldn't care to be a joint owner with you."
"You couldn't be," said Jeffard briefly; "you, nor any one else."
"Well, we are agreed as to that. Shall we go now? Donald is waiting, and the moon will be up by the time we strike the trail."
"One moment; I have left something in the tunnel."
Jeffard turned back toward the timbered archway, and the promoter went with him. In the act a shadowy figure darted into the mouth of gloom and was seen by Denby.
"What was that?"
"I didn't see anything."
Denby stumbled over the remains of the barricade. "That must have been what I saw," he said. "But at the moment I could have sworn it was a man dodging into the tunnel."
A few feet from the entrance Jeffard felt along the wall for the crevice, found it, and presently thrust the note-book into Denby's hands.
"You may remember that I told you I should leave my will here against a contingency which seemed altogether probable. In view of what has since passed between us, I sha'n't hold you to your promise to act as my executor; but if anything happens to me I shall be glad if you will send that book under seal to Dick Bartrow. You will do that much for me, won't you?"
"Yes."
"That is all; now I am at your service."
A few minutes later the cabin and the bit of dry sward in front of it were deserted, and the whispering firs had swallowed up the last faint echoes of minishing hoof-beats. Not until the silence was unbroken did the shadowy figure venture out of its hiding in the tunnel to stumble blindly down the dump, across the foot-log, and so to the cabin door. Here it went down on hands and knees to quarter the ground like a hungry animal in search of food. Unhappily, the simile is no simile. It was James Garvin, who, for the better part of two days, had not tasted food. And when finally the patient search was rewarded by the retrieval of a few scraps of bacon and pan-bread, the broken meats of Donald's supper-table, the starving fugitive fell upon them with a beastlike growl of triumph. But in the midst of the scanty feast he dropped the bread and meat to cover his face with his hands, rocking back and forth in his misery and sobbing like a child.
"Oh, my Gawd! – ef I hadn't hearn it out'n his own mouth … and me a-lovin' him thess like he'd been blood-kin to me! Oh, my Gawd!"
CHAPTER XXII
It was rather late in the autumn, too late to admit of a rush of prospectors to the shut-in valley, when the fame of the new gold-bearing district in the Elk Mountains began to be noised about. As bonanza fame is like to be, the earlier bruitings of it were as nebulous as the later and more detailed accounts were fabulous. Some garbled story of the fight for possession found its way into the newspapers; and since this had its starting-point in the resentment of the Aspen newsgatherer who had been so curtly sent to the right-about by Jeffard, it became the basis of an accusation, which was scathing and fearless, or covert and retractable, in just proportion to the obsequiousness of the journalistic accusers.
In its most favorable rendering this story was an ugly one; but here again chance, in the form of reportorial inaccuracy, was kind to Jeffard. From his boyhood people had been stumbling over his name; and with ample facilities for verifying the spelling of it the reporters began, continued, and ended by making it "Jeffers," "Jeffreys," and in one instance even "Jefferson." Hence, with Bartrow as the single exception, no one who knew Jeffard identified him with the man who had figured as the putative villain-hero in the fight for possession.
Bartrow read the account of the race, the shooting affray, and the subsequent details of the capitalizing of the Midas, with Denby as its promoter and Jeffard as sole owner, with judgment suspended. It was not in him to condemn any man unheard; and Jeffard had put himself safely out of reach of queryings, friendly or otherwise, by burying himself for the winter with the development force which the promoter had hurried across the range before the snows isolated the shut-in valley. Later, when he had to pay the note in the Leadville bank, Bartrow had a twinge of dismay; but again invincible fairness came to the rescue, and he lifted the dishonored paper at a time when he could ill afford to, promising himself that this, too, should be held in solution; should not even be precipitated in confidence with any one.
This promise he kept until Constance Elliott plumbed the depths of him, as she was prone to do when he gave evidence of having anything to conceal. The occasion was the midwinter ball of the First Families of Colorado; and having more than one score to settle with the young miner, who had lately been conspicuous only by his absence, Connie had arbitrarily revised Bartrow's programme, – which contemplated a monopoly of all the dances Miss Van Vetter would give him.
"Well, catalogue 'em – what have I done?" demanded the unabashed one, when she had marched him into that particular alcove of the great hotel dining-room which did temporary duty as a conservatory.
"Several things." Stephen Elliott's daughter was in the mood called pertness in disagreeable young women. "Have you quite forgotten that I stand in loco parentis to the giddy and irresponsible young person whose card you have covered with your scrawly autographs?"
The idea was immensely entertaining to the young miner, who laughed so heartily that a sentimental couple billing and cooing behind the fan-palms took wing immediately. "You? you chaperoning Myr – Miss Van Vetter? That's a good one!"
"It's a bad one, where you are concerned. What do you mean by such an inconsistent breach of the proprieties?"
"Inconsistent? I'm afraid I don't quite catch on."
"Yes, inconsistent. You bury yourself for months on end in that powder-smelly old tunnel of yours, and about the time we've comfortably forgotten you, you straggle in with a dress-coat on your arm and proceed to monopolize one of us. What do you take us for?"
It was on the tip of Bartrow's tongue to retort that he would very much like to take Miss Van Vetter for better or worse, but he had not the courage of his convictions. So he kept well in the middle of the road, and made the smoke-blackened tunnel his excuse for the inconsistency.
"It isn't 'months,' Connie; or at least it's only two of them. You know I'd be glad enough to chase myself into Denver every other day if I could. But it is coming down to brass tacks with us in the Little Myriad, and I've just got to keep my eye on the gun."
Whereupon pertness, or the Constance Elliott transmutation of it, vanished, and she made him sit down.
"Tell me all about the Little Myriad, Dick. Is it going to keep its promise?"
The Little Myriad's owner sought and found a handkerchief, using it mopwise. Curious questions touching the prospects of his venture on Topeka Mountain were beginning to have a perspiratory effect upon him.
"I wish I could know for sure, Connie. Sometimes I think it will; and some other times I should think it means to go back on me, – if I dared to."
"Isn't the lead still well-defined?" Constance dropped into the mining technicalities with the easy familiarity of one born in the metalliferous West.
"It is now; but two months ago, or thereabouts, it pinched out entirely. That is why I hibernated."
"Was the last mill-run encouraging?"
"N-no, I can't say that it was. The ore – what little there is of it – seems to grade rather lower as we go in. But it's a true fissure, and it must begin to go the other way when we get deep enough."
For a half-score of fan-sweeps Connie was silent. Then: "Is the purse growing light, Dickie? Because if it is, poppa's is still comfortably fat."
Bartrow laughed in a way to indicate that the strain was lessened for the moment. "I believe you and your father would give away the last dollar you have in the world. But it hasn't come to a fresh loan with me yet."
"When it does, you know where to float it."
"When it does, I sha'n't rob my best friends. If I have to borrow more money for development, I'm afraid the loan will be classed as 'extra hazardous.' But you said there were several things. What else have I done?"
"The next is something you haven't done. You haven't written a line to Mr. Lansdale in all these weeks, – not even to thank him for taking your foolish telegram about the Margaret Gannon crisis seriously. And he tells me he has written you twice."
"I'm a miserable sinner, and letter writing isn't in me. Is Lansdale here? I'll go and square myself in the most abject formula you can suggest."
"He isn't here. He is out at Bennett on a ranch."
"On a ranch in midwinter? Who on top of earth told him to do that?"
"One of the doctors. I wanted to dissuade him, but I hadn't the heart to try. He is so anxious to live."
"Naturally." Bartrow eyed his companion in a way which was meant to be a measure of the things he knew and would by no means tell, but Constance was opening and shutting her fan with inthought paramount, and saw it not. Whereat Bartrow was brutal enough to say: "Is he going to make a go of it?"
"Oh, I hope so, Dick! It is such a pathetic struggle. And he is like all the others who are best worth keeping alive: he won't let any one help him. Just fancy him working for his board on a dreary prairie ranch! The monotony of it is enough to kill him."
"I should say so. Lamb ranch, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"Then I can imagine the hilarity of it. Up at all sorts of hours and in all weathers feeding and watering. That isn't what he needs. A wagon trip in summer, with good company, lots of outdoors, and nothing to do but eat and sleep, would be more like it. If he pulls through to spring, and the Myriad will let up on me for a month or two, I don't know but I shall be tempted to make him try it."
"Oh, Dick! would you?" There was a quick upflash of wistful emotion in the calm gray eyes. Bartrow set it down to a fresh growth in perspicacity on his own part that he was able to interpret it – or thought he was. But the little upflash went out like a taper in the dark with the added afterthought. "It's no use, Dick. The Myriad won't let you."
"Perhaps it will; though I'm bound to admit that it doesn't look that way at present. Now, if Jef – "
From what has gone before it will be understood that any mention of Jeffard for good or ill was the one thing which Bartrow had promised himself to avoid at all hazards; wherefore he broke the name in the midst, coughed, dragged out his watch, – in short, did what manlike untactfulness may do to create a diversion, and at the end of it found the unafraid eyes fixed upon him with mandatory orders in them.
"Go on," she said calmly. "If Mr. Jeffard" —
"Really, Connie, I must break it off short; my time's up. Don't you hear the orchestra? Miss Van Vetter will" —
But Connie was not to be turned aside by any consideration for Bartrow's engagements or her own; nor yet by the inflow into the alcove-conservatory of sundry other fanning couples lately freed from the hop-and-slide of the two-step. Nor yet again by the appearance of young Mr. Theodore Calmaine, who came up behind Bartrow and was straightway transfixed and driven forth with pantomimic cut and thrust.
"Myra will have no difficulty in finding a partner. Don't be foolish, Dick. I have known all along that you have learned something about Mr. Jeffard which you wouldn't tell me. You may remember that you have persistently ignored my questions in your answers to my letters, – and I paid you back by telling you little or nothing about Myra. Now what were you going to say?"
"I was going to say that if Jeffard were like what he used to be, he would do for Lansdale what I shall probably not be able to do."
"What do you know about Mr. Jeffard?"
"What all the world knows – and a little more. Of course you have read what the newspapers had to say?"
"I have never seen a mention of his name."
"Why, you must have; they were full of it a month or two ago, and will be again as soon as the range opens and we find out what the big bonanza has been doing through the winter. You don't mean to say that you didn't read about the free-gold strike in the Elk Mountains, and the locomotive race, and the shooting scrape in the hotel at Aspen, and all that?"
The steady eyes were veiled and Connie's breath came in nervous little gasps. Any man save downright Richard Bartrow would have made a swift diversion, were it only to an open window or back to the ballroom. But he sat stocklike and silent, letting her win through the speechlessness of it to the faltered reply.
"I – I saw it; yes. But the name of that man was – was not Jeffard."
"No, it was Jeffers, or anything that came handy in the newspaper accounts. But that was a reporter's mistake."
"Dick," – the steadfast eyes were transfixing him again, – "are you quite sure of that?"
"I ought to be. I was the man who helped him out at the pinch and got him started on the locomotive chase."
"You helped him? – then all those things they said about him were true?"
It was Bartrow's turn to hesitate. "I – I'm trying not to believe that, Connie."
"But you know the facts; or at least, more of them than the newspapers told. Did the claim really belong to him, or to James Garvin?"
Bartrow crossed his legs, uncrossed them, and again had recourse to his watch.
"I wish you'd leave the whole business up in the air, Connie, the way I'm trying to. It doesn't seem quite fair, somehow, to condemn him behind his back."
"But the facts," she insisted. "You know them, don't you?"
"Yes; and they're against him." Bartrow confessed it in sheer desperation. "The claim was Garvin's; Jeffard not only admitted it, but he started out on the chase with the declared determination of standing between Garvin and those two blacklegs who were trying to plunder him. That's all; that's as far as my facts go. Beyond that you – and the newspapers – know as much as I do."
"Not quite all, Dick. You say you helped him; that means that you lent him money, or borrowed it for him. Did he ever pay it back?"
Bartrow got upon his feet at that and glowered down upon her with mingled chagrin and awe in gaze and answer.
"Say, Connie, you come precious near to being uncanny at times, don't you know it? That was the one thing I didn't mean to tell any one. Yes, I borrowed for him; and no, he didn't pay it back. That's all – all of the all. If you put me in a stamp-mill you couldn't pound out anything else. Now, for pity's sake, let me get back to Miss Van Vetter before I fall in with the notion that I'm too transparent to be visible to the naked eye."
She rose and took his arm.
"You're good, Dickie," she said softly; "much too good for this world. I'm sorry for you, because it earns you so many buffetings."
"And you think I'm in for another on Jeffard's account."
"I am sure you are – now. The last time I saw him he wore a mask; a horrible mask of willful degradation and cynicism and self-loathing; but I saw behind it."
They were making a slow circuit of the ballroom in search of Connie's cousin, and the throng and the music isolated them.
"What did you see?"
"I saw the making of a strong man; strong for good or for evil; a man who could compel the world-attitudes that most of us have to sue for, or who would be strong enough on the evil side to flout and ignore them. I thought then that he was at the parting of the ways, but it seems I was mistaken, – that the real balancing moment came with what poppa calls the 'high-mountain bribe,' – Satan's offer of the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them."
