Kitabı oku: «The Helpers», sayfa 20

CHAPTER XXXIV

It is the gray dawn that lifts the curtain, and in the little glade where the two men slept there are three figures, dim and ghostly in the morning's twilight. Two of them are afoot, heavy-eyed and weary, tramping a slow-paced beat on the margin of the tumbling stream. The third is a still shape lying blanket-covered beside the wagon.

"Tell me about it, Denby," says one of the watchers, and his voice breaks in the saying of it. "I think I can bear it now. How did it happen?"

The master of men shakes his head. "I can't tell you anything more than the bald fact, Jeffard. I rode down the trail ahead of Higgins, and should have forded the creek here, only I didn't want to disturb you two. I went on to the bridge, and in the act of crossing he ran down the bank on this side, calling to me to go back. It was too late. I had barely time to get free of the stirrups when we were into it, – the two of us and the horse. It isn't more than three or four feet deep, as you know, but I knew it meant death if we went into the mill tail below. I lost my grip and was gone when he grappled me. I don't know yet how he came to save my life and lose his own."

"It was to be," says Jeffard, brokenly. "When I reached you he was holding you up with one hand and clinging to the bridge stringer with the other. His weight and yours with the rush of the water had pushed the timber down, and his head was under."

Two other turns they make, and then Jeffard says, with awe in his voice, "He knew about it beforehand, Denby," and he tells Lansdale's dream.

Denby hears him through without interrupting, but at the end of it he says, gently: "It wasn't a dream. Higgins was overdue with the team from Aspen, and I went out to see what had become of him. I passed here on my way up the trail about nine o'clock, and you were both asleep then. I had crossed by the lower ford and found it pretty bad, so I turned back from here and rode down to see if the bridge was all right. He saw me and heard me."

Jeffard's gesture is of unconvincement.

"That accounts for part of it," he says; "but I shall always believe he foresaw his death and the manner of it."

After that they pace up and down in silence again, treading out the sorrowful watch until daylight is fully come, bringing with it a team from the mine and men to do what remains to be done. The two stand apart until the men have done their office, falling in to walk softly behind the wagon on the short journey down the valley to the mine settlement. On the way, Jeffard accounts for himself briefly.

"He was one of the two best friends I had in the world," he says. "I had him out on a camping holiday for his health, and he was gaining day by day. We were counting upon dropping in on you this morning, and now" —

"I know," says the master. "He gave his life for mine, and it gets pretty near to me, too." And thereafter they keep step with heads bowed and eyes downcast, as those in whom sorrow has murdered speech; and the bellowing stream at the trail-side thunders a requiem for its victim.

The setting sun is crimsoning the eastern snow caps while they are burying him on the plateau above the mine settlement. An hour later, the master of men and the master of the mine are met together in the log cabin opposite the great gray dump; in the cabin builded by Garvin, but which now serves as the office of the superintendent of the Midas. Sorrow still sits between, and Denby would give place to it.

"Put it off till to-morrow, Jeffard," he says. "Neither of us is fit to talk business to-night."

"No, it mustn't be put off. I gave him my promise, and I mean to make it good while time serves. Have you any one here who is competent to witness a legal document?"

"Yes; Halsey is a notary public."

"Good. Sit down at that desk and draw up a writing transferring my interest in the Midas to Stephen Elliott and Richard Bartrow, trustees."

"What's that? Trustees for whom?"

"For James Garvin."

The master of men leans back in his chair, his eyes narrowing and the little frown of perplexity radiating fan-like above them.

"Jeffard, do you mean to say that you are going to step aside in favor of the man who tried to kill you?"

"You may put it that way, if you choose. It would have been done long ago if I had been able to find the man."

"And you stepped into the breach a year ago and secured his property for him because he had put himself out of the running and couldn't? You've touched me on the raw, Jeffard. It's my business to size people up, and you have fairly outflanked me. A blind man might have seen the drift of it, but I didn't; I thought you had robbed him. Why didn't you give it a name?"

"I had no thought of concealment until you warned me. Garvin was a criminal in the eye of the law, and the least I could do for him was to turn the tide of public opinion in his favor."

"Well, you did it; but just the same, you might have passed the word to me. It wouldn't have gone any farther, and I should have felt a good bit easier in my mind."

"Perhaps; but you will pardon me if I say that I wasn't considering you in the matter. I knew better than to defeat my own end. If I had told you the truth at the time, you would not have believed it; you would have struck hands with your own theory that Garvin had attempted to rob me, and you would have talked and acted accordingly."

"What makes you say I wouldn't have believed the truth?"

"It would have been merely a declaration of intention at the time, and you would have said that it didn't square with human nature as you know it. Bartrow knew, and he went over to the majority. But that is neither here nor there. Will you draw up the writing?"

Denby goes to the desk and writes out the transfer, following Jeffard's dictation. When it is signed and acknowledged, Jeffard slips his final anchor.

"I presume you will want to make a new operating contract with the trustees, or with Garvin, and in that case you will want to cancel the old one. I haven't my copy of it with me, but I'll mail it to you when I get back to Denver."

Denby is making a pretense of rummaging in the pigeonholes of the desk to cover a small struggle which has nothing to do with the superintendent's files. When the struggle is fought to a finish, he turns suddenly and holds out his hand.

"Jeffard, that night when we wrangled it out up yonder on the old dump I said some things that I shouldn't have said if you had seen fit to be a little franker with me. Will you forget them?"

Jeffard takes the proffered hand and wrings it gratefully. "Thank you for that, Denby," he says; "it's timely. I feel as if I'd like to drop out and turn up on some other planet. This thing has cost me pretty dear, one way with another."

"It'll come out all right in the end," asserts the master; and then: "But you mustn't forget that the cost of it is partly of your own incurring. It's a rare failing, but there is such a thing as being too close-mouthed. You've made out your case, after a fashion, and I'm not going to appeal it; but your postulate was wrong. Human nature is not as incredulous of good intentions as the cynics would make it out to be. You might have told a few of us without imperilling Garvin."

"I meant to do it; as I say, I did tell Bartrow that morning when I raced Garvin across the range and into Aspen. But he and every one else drew the other conclusion, and I was too stubborn to plead my own cause. The stubbornness became a mania with me after a time, and I had a fit of it no longer ago than last night. I let Lansdale die believing that he had argued me into promising to make restitution. We were coming down here to-day to set the thing in train, and, of course, he would have learned the whole truth; but for one night – "

"For one night you would let him have the comfort of believing that he had brought it about," says Denby, quickly. "That wasn't what you were going to say, but it's the truth, and you know it. I know the feel of it; you've reached the point where you can get some sort of comfort out of holding your finger in the fire. Suppose you begin right here and now to take a little saner view of things. What are your plans?"

"I haven't any."

"Are you open to an offer?"

"From you? – yes."

"Good. I'm unlucky enough to have some mining property in Mexico, and I've got to go down there and set it in order, or send some one to do it for me. Will you go?"

Jeffard's reply is promptly acquiescent.

"Gladly; if you think I am competent."

"I don't think, – I know. Can you start at short notice?"

"The sooner the better. I said I should like to drop out and turn up on some other planet: that will be the next thing to it."

From that the talk goes overland to the affairs of a century-old silver mine in the Chihuahuan mountains, and at the end of it Jeffard knows what is to be done and how he is to go about the doing of it. Denby yawns and looks at his watch.

"It's bedtime," he says. "Shall we consider it settled and go over to the bunk-shack?"

"I have a letter to write," says Jeffard. "Don't wait for me."

"All right. You'll find what you need in the desk, – top drawer on the right. Come over when you get ready," and the promoter leaves his late owner in possession of the superintendent's office.

Judging from the number of false starts and torn sheets, the writing of the letter proves to be no easy matter; but it is begun, continued, and ended at length, and Jeffard sits back to read it over.

"My dear Bartrow:

"When this reaches you, you will have had my telegram of to-day telling you all there is to tell about Lansdale's death. You must forgive me if I don't repeat myself here. It is too new a wound – and too deep – to bear probing, even with a pen.

"What I have to say in this letter will probably surprise you. Last night, in our last talk together, Lansdale told me that you know Garvin's whereabouts. Acting upon that information, I have to-night executed a transfer of the Midas to yourself and Stephen Elliott, trustees for Garvin. By agreement with Denby, I cancel my working contract with him, and you, or Garvin, can make another for the unexpired portion of the year on the same terms, – which is Denby's due. You will find the accrued earnings of the mine from the day of my first settlement with Denby deposited in the Denver bank in an account which I opened some months ago in the names of yourself and Elliott, trustees. Out of the earnings I have withheld my wages as a workman in the mine last winter, and a moderate charge for caretaking since.

"That is all I have to say, I think, unless I add that you are partly responsible for the delay in Garvin's reinstatement. If you had trusted me sufficiently to tell me what you told Lansdale, it would have saved time and money, inasmuch as I have spared neither in the effort to trace Garvin. I told you the truth that morning in Leadville, but it seems that your loyalty wasn't quite equal to the strain put upon it by public rumor. I don't blame you greatly. I know I had done what a man may to forfeit the respect of his friends. But I made the mistake of taking it for granted that you and Lansdale, and possibly one other, would still give me credit for common honesty, and when I found that you didn't it made me bitter, and I'll be frank enough to say that I haven't gotten over it yet."

The letter pauses with the little outflash of resentment, and he takes the pen to sign it. But in the act he adds another paragraph.

"That is putting it rather harshly, and just now I'm not in the mood to quarrel with any one; and least of all with you. I am going away to be gone indefinitely, and I don't want to give you a buffet by way of leave-taking. But the fact remains. If you can admit it and still believe that the old-time friendship is yet alive in me, I wish you would. And if you dare take word from me to Miss Elliott, I'd be glad if you would say to her that my sorrow for what has happened is second only to hers."

The letter is signed, sealed, and addressed, and he drops it into the mail-box. The lamp is flaring in the night wind sifting in through the loosened chinking, and he extinguishes it and goes out to tramp himself weary in the little cleared space which had once been Garvin's dooryard. It is a year and a day since he wore out the midwatch of that other summer night on the eve of the forthfaring from the valley of dry bones, and he recalls it and the impassioned outburst which went to the ending of it. Again he turns his face toward the far-away city of the plain, but this time his eyes are dim when the reiterant thought slips into speech. "God help me!" he says. "How can I ever go to her and tell her that I have failed!"

CHAPTER XXXV

The news of Lansdale's death came with the shock of the unexpected to the dwellers in the metamorphosed cabin on the upslope of Topeka Mountain, albeit no one of the three of them had ventured to hope for anything more than a reprieve as the outcome of the jaunt afield. But the manner of his death at the time when the reprieve seemed well assured was responsible for the shock and its sorrowful aftermath; and if Constance grieved more than Bartrow or her cousin, it was only for the reason that the heart of compassion knows best the bitterness of infruition.

"It's a miserably comfortless saying to offer you, Connie, dear, but we must try to believe it is for the best," said Myra, finding Constance re-reading Jeffard's telegram by the light of her bedroom lamp.

Constance put her arms about her cousin's neck, and the heart of compassion overflowed. "'For unto every one that hath shall be given, but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath,'" she sobbed. "Of all the things he had set his heart upon life was the least, – was only the means to an end: and even that was taken from him."

"No, not taken, Connie; he gave it, and gave it freely. He did for another what his friend was trying to do for him."

At the reference to Jeffard, Constance went to stand before the crackling fire of fir-splinters on the hearth. After a time she said: "Do you suppose Mr. Jeffard will come here to tell us about it?"

Myra's answer was a query.

"Does he know you are here?"

"No, I think not."

"Then he will be more likely to go to Denver."

Connie's gaze was in the fire, and she swerved aside from the straight path of inference.

"He will write to Dick," she said. "I should like to read the letter when it comes, if I may."

Myra promised, and so it rested; but when Jeffard's letter came, and Bartrow had shared its astounding news with his wife, Myra was for rescinding her promise.

"I don't know why she shouldn't read it," said Dick. "She has always been more or less interested in him, and it will do her a whole lot of good to know that we were all off wrong. Jeffard's little slap at me hits her, too, but she won't mind that."

"No," said Myra; "I was thinking of something else, – something quite different."

"Is it sayable?"

They were sitting on the steps of the extended porch. The night-shift was at work in the Myriad below, and the rattle and clank of a dump-car coming out postponed her answer. When the clangor subsided she glanced over her shoulder.

"She can't hear," said Bartrow. "She's in the sitting-room reading to Uncle Steve."

"I'm not sure that it is sayable, Dick. But for the last two days I've been wondering if we weren't mistaken about something else, too, – about Connie's feeling for Mr. Lansdale. She is sorry, but not quite in the way I expected she would be."

"What has that got to do with Jeffard's letter?" demanded the downright one. His transplantings of perspicacity were not yet sufficiently acclimated to bloom out of season.

"Nothing, perhaps." She gave it up as unspeakable, and went to the details of the business affair. "Shall you tell Garvin at once?"

"Sure."

"How fortunate it is that he and Uncle Stephen came in to-day."

"Yes. They were staked for another month, and I didn't look for them until they were driven in for more grub. But Garvin says the old man is about played out. He's too old. He can't stand the pick and shovel in this altitude at his age. We'll have to talk him out of it and run him back to Denver some way or other."

"Can't you make this trusteeship an excuse? If Garvin needed a guardian at first, he will doubtless need one now."

Bartrow nodded thoughtfully. Another car was coming out, and he waited until the crash of the falling ore had come and gone.

"Jeffard knew what he was about all the time; knew it when he wrote this letter just as well as he did when he shouldered the curse of it to keep a possible lynching party from hanging Garvin. That's why he put it in trust. He knew Garvin had gone daft and thrown it away once, and he was afraid he might do it again."

"Will he?" asked the wife.

"I guess not. I believe he has learned his lesson. More than that, Jim's as soft as mush on the side next the old man. If I can make out to tie Uncle Steve's welfare up in the deal, Garvin will come to the front like a man."

"Where is Garvin now?"

"He is down at the bunk-house."

Myra rose. "I suppose you want to get it over with. Let me have the letter, if you won't need it."

"What are you going to do?"

"Carry Connie off to her room and keep her busy with this while you and Uncle Stephen fight it out with the new millionaire," she said. "I don't envy you your part of it."

Bartrow laughed, and the transplantings put forth a late shoot.

"Come to think of it, I don't know as I envy you yours," he retorted. "She's all broke up about Uncle Steve's health and Lansdale's death now, and she'll have a fit when she finds out how she has been piling it on to Jeffard when he didn't deserve it."

It was an hour later, and the day-men smoking on the porch of the boarding-house had gone to bed, when the husband and wife met again midway of the path leading up from the shaft-house of the Myriad to the metamorphosed cabin. Bartrow had walked down to the boarding-house with Garvin, and Myra's impatience had sent her down the path to meet him. Dick gave her his arm up the steep ascent, and drew her to a seat on the lowest of the porch steps.

"Where is Connie?" he inquired, anticipating an avalanche of questions, out of which he would have to dig his way without fear of interruption.

"She is with her father. Begin at the beginning, and tell me all about it. What did Garvin say? Is he going to be sensible?"

"There isn't so much to tell as there might be," Dick said, smothering a mighty prompting to tell the major fact first. "Garvin took it very sensibly, though a body could see that the lamplight was a good bit too strong for his eyes. He had to try three or four times before he could speak, and then all he could say was 'Thirds, Steve, thirds.'"

"'Thirds?' What did he mean by that?"

Bartrow hesitated for a moment, as a gunner who would make sure of the priming before he jerks the lanyard.

"Did it ever occur to you that any one else besides Garvin and Jeffard might be interested in the Midas?"

"Why, no!"

"It didn't to me. I don't know why, but I never thought of it, though I knew well enough that Jim never in all his life went prospecting on a grub-stake of his own providing. He didn't that summer three years ago when he drove the tunnel on the Midas."

Myra's lips were dry, and she had to moisten them to say, "Who was it, Dick?"

"Who should it be but our good old Uncle Steve? Of course, he'd forgotten all about it, and there he stood, wringing Garvin's hand and trying to congratulate him; and Jim hanging on to the back of his chair and saying, 'Thirds, Steve, I say thirds.' Garvin made him understand at last, and then the old man melted down into his chair and put his face in his hands. When he took it out again it was to look up and say, 'You're right, Jim; of course it's thirds,' and then he asked me where Jeffard was."

Myra's voice was unsteady, but she made shift to say what there was to be said; and Bartrow went on.

"After a bit we got down to business and straightened things out. A third interest in the Midas is to be set apart for Jeffard, to be rammed down his throat when we find him, whether he will or no. Uncle Steve will go back to Denver and set up housekeeping again; and Garvin, – but that's the funny part of the whole shooting-match. Garvin refuses to touch a dollar of the money as owner; insists on leaving it in trust, just as it is now; and made me sit down there and then and write his will."

An outcoming car of ore drowned Myra's exclamation of surprise.

"Fact," said Bartrow. "He reserves an income to be paid to him at Uncle Steve's discretion and mine, and at his death his third goes, – to whom, do you suppose?"

"Indeed, I can't imagine, – unless it is to Connie."

"Not much! It's to be held in trust for Margaret Gannon's children."

"For Margaret, – why, she hasn't any children! And besides, he doesn't know her!"

"Don't you fool yourself. He knows she hasn't any children, but he's living in hopes. I told you there was something between them from the way Garvin turned in and nursed the old blacksmith before Margaret came. You wouldn't believe it, because they both played the total-stranger act; but that was one time when I got ahead of you, wasn't it?"

"Yes; go on."

"Well, I made out the will, 'I, James Garvin, being of sound mind,' and so on; and Uncle Steve and I witnessed it. But on the way down to the bunk-shanty just now I pinned Garvin up against the wall and made him tell me why. He knew Margaret when she was in the Bijou, and asked her to marry him. She was honest enough even then to refuse him. It made me want to weep when I remembered how she had been mixed up with Jeffard."

Myra was silent for a full minute, and when she spoke it was out of the depths of a contrite heart.

"I made you believe that, Dick, against your will; and you were right, after all. Mr. Jeffard was only trying to help Connie's poor people through Margaret, though why he should do that when he was withholding a fortune from Uncle Stephen is still a mystery."

"That is as simple as twice two," said the husband. "Didn't I tell you? Garvin had no occasion to tell him who his grub-staker was in the first place, and no chance to do it afterward. Jeffard didn't know, – doesn't know yet."

Myra went silent again, this time for more than a minute.

"I have learned something, too, Dick; but I am not sure that I ought to tell it," she said, after the interval.

"I can wait," said Bartrow cheerfully. "I've had a full meal of double-back-action surprises as it is."

"This isn't a surprise; or it wouldn't be if we hadn't been taking too much for granted. I tolled Connie off to her room with the letter, as I said I would; and she – she had a fit, as you prophesied."

"Of course," says Dick. "It hurts her more than anything to make a miscue on the charitable side."

"Yes, but" —

"But what?"

"I'll tell you sometime, Dick, but not now. It is too pitiful."

"I can wait," said Bartrow again; and his lack of curiosity drove her into the thick of it.

"If you knew you'd want to do something, – as I do, only I don't know how. Isn't it pretty clear that Mr. Jeffard cares a great deal for Connie?"

"Oh, I don't know about that. What makes you think so?" says the obvious one.

"A good many little things; some word or two that Margaret has let slip, for one of them. How otherwise would you explain his eagerness to help Connie?"

"On general principles, I guess. She's plenty good enough to warrant it."

"Yes, but it wasn't 'general principles' in Mr. Jeffard's case. He is in love with Connie, and" —

"And she doesn't care for him. Is that it?"

"No, it isn't it; she does care for him. I fairly shocked it out of her with the letter, and that is why I oughtn't to tell it, even to you. It is too pitiful!"

Bartrow shook his head in cheerful density. "Your philosophy's too deep for me. If they are both of one mind, as you say, I don't see where the pity comes in. Jeffard isn't half good enough for her, of course; he made a bally idiot of himself a year ago. But if she can forget that, I'm sure we ought to."

"I wasn't thinking of that. But don't you see how impossible this Midas tangle makes it? He won't take his third, you may be very sure of that; and when he finds out that Connie has a daughter's share in one of the other thirds, it will seal his lips for all time. People would say that he gave up his share only to marry hers."

Bartrow got upon his feet and helped her to rise. "You'll take cold sitting out here in the ten-thousand-foot night," he said; and on the top step of the porch-flight she had his refutation of her latest assertion.

"You say people would talk. Doesn't it strike you that Jeffard is the one man in a thousand who will mount and ride regardless? – who will smile and snap his fingers at public opinion? That's just what he's been doing all along, and he'll do it again if he feels like it. Let's go in and congratulate the good old uncle while we wait."