Chapter XV: The Broken Wagon

The day following the Kellow incident being Sunday, the three of us snatched an hour or so in the early forenoon for a breathing space. Sitting around the plank table in the bunk shack we took account of stock, as a shopkeeper would say. It was apparent to all of us that the blazoning abroad of our secret could not now be long delayed. A new gold strike yielding ore worth anywhere from one to twenty-five dollars a pound was startling enough to make a stir even in the one and only Cripple Creek, and it seemed nothing short of a miracle that we had not already been traced and our location identified.

It was Barrett's gift to take the long look ahead. At his suggestion, Gifford, who was something of a rough-and-ready draftsman, sketched a plan for the necessary shaft-house and out-buildings, fitting the structures to our limited space. When the fight to retain possession should begin we meant to strike fast and hard; Barrett had already gone the length of bargaining, through a friend in town, for building material and machinery, which were to be rushed out to us in a hurry at the firing of the first gun in what we all knew would be a battle for existence.

During this Sunday morning talk I was little more than an abstracted listener. I could think of nothing but the raw hazard of the previous night and of the frightful moral abyss into which it had precipitated me. In addition there were ominous forebodings for the future. So long as Kellow remained in Cripple Creek, danger would lurk for me in every shadow. Since the calamity which was threatening me would also involve my partners, at least to the extent of handicapping them by the loss of a third of our fighting force, it seemed no less than a duty to warn them. But I doubt if I should have had the courage if Barrett had not opened the way.

"You're not saying much, Jimmie. Did the trip to town last night knock you out?" he asked.

It was my opportunity, and I mustered sufficient resolution to seize it.

"No; it didn't knock me out, but it showed me where I've been making a mistake. I never ought to have gone into this thing with you two fellows; but now that I am in, I ought to get out."

"What's that!" Gifford exploded; but Barrett merely caught my eye and said, very gently, "On your own account, or on ours, Jimmie?"

"On yours. There is no need of going into the particulars; it's a long story and a pretty dismal one; but when I tell you that last night I was on the point of killing a man in cold blood--that it's altogether probable that I shall yet have to kill him--you can see what I'm letting you in for if I stay with you."

Gifford leaned back against the shack wall and laughed. "Oh, if _that's_ all," he said. But again it was Barrett who took the soberer view.

"You are one of us, Jimmie," he declared. "If you've got a blood quarrel with somebody, it's our quarrel, too: we're partners. Isn't that right, Gifford?"

"Right it is," nodded the carpenter.

"We are not partners to that extent," I objected. "If I should tell you all the circumstances, you might both agree with me that I may be obliged to kill this man; but on the other hand, you--or a jury--would call it first-degree murder; as it will be."

Barrett looked horrified, as he had a perfect right to.

"You couldn't do a thing like that!" he protested.

"Yesterday I should have been just as certain as you are that it was beyond the possibilities; but now, since last night, it's different. And that is why I say you ought to fire me. You can't afford to carry any handicaps; you need assets, not liabilities."

Gifford got up and went to sit on the doorstep, where he occupied himself in whittling thin shavings of tobacco from a bit of black plug and cramming them into his pipe. Barrett accepted this tacit implication that he was to speak for both.

"If you pull out, Jimmie, it will be because you want to; not because anything you have said cuts any figure with us. And whether you go or stay, there will be two of us here who will back you to the limit. That's about all there is to say, I guess; only, if I were you, I shouldn't be too sudden. Take a day to think it over. To-morrow morning, if you still think it's the wise thing to do--the only thing to do--we'll write you a check, Gifford and I, for your share in the bank account; and after we get going we'll make such a settlement with you for your third as will be fair and just all around."

This put an entirely new face upon the matter. I hadn't dreamed of such a thing as standing upon my rights in the partnership.

"Like the mischief, you will!" I retorted. "Do you think I'm that kind of a quitter?--that I'd take a single dollar out of the Little Clean-up's war chest? Why, man alive! my only object in getting out would be to relieve you two of a possible burden!"

Barrett's smile was altogether brotherly. "It's the only way you can escape us," he averred; and with that the dissolution proposal was suffered to go by default.

There were half a dozen stragglers to come lounging over the spur or up the gulch that Sunday afternoon, sharp-set, eager-eyed prospectors, every man of them, and each one, we guessed, searching meticulously for the mysterious bonanza about which everybody in town was gossiping. It was only the fact that the hills were fairly dotted with embryotic mines like our own--this and the other fact that our dump showed no signs of ore--that saved us.

Two of these prying visitors hung around for an hour or more, and one of the pair wanted to go down in the shaft, which was now deep enough to be quite safe from prying eyes at the surface. I was acting as windlass-man at the time, and I bluffed him, telling him that with two men working in the hole there wasn't room for a third--which was true enough. But beyond this fact there were by this time the best of reasons for keeping strangers out of our shaft. To name the biggest of them, our marvelous Golconda vein had widened steadily with the increasing depth until now we were sinking in solid ore.

It was Gifford's turn to guard the ore load that night, and after the team got away I persuaded Barrett to go to bed. He was showing the effects of the terrible toil worse than either the carpenter or myself, and I was afraid he might break when the fighting strain came. I had yet to learn what magnificent reserves there were in this clean-cut, high-strung young fellow who, when we began, looked as if he had never done a day's real labor in his life.

Since we had never yet left the shaft unguarded for a single hour of the day or night, I took my place at the pit mouth as soon as Barrett's candle went out. It was a fine night, warm for the altitude and brightly starlit, though there was no moon. In the stillness the subdued clamor of the Lawrenceburg's hoists floated up over the spur shoulder; and by listening intently I fancied I could hear the distant rumble of our ore wagon making its way down the mountain.

In the isolation and loneliness of the night watch it was inevitable that my thoughts should hark back to the near-meeting with Kellow, and to the moral lapse which it had provoked. Doubtless every man rediscovers himself many times in the course of a lifetime. In prison I had been sustained by a vindictive determination to win out and square accounts with Abel Geddis and Abner Withers. After my release another motive had displaced the vengeful prompting: the losing fight for reinstatement in the good opinion of the world seemed to be the only thing worth living for.

But now I was finding that there was a well-spring of action deeper than either of these, and the name of it was a degrading fear of consequences--of punishment. With a most hearty loathing for the lower depths of baseness uncovered by craven fear, one may be none the less a helpless victim of a certain ruthless and malign ferocity to which it is likely to give birth. Sitting with my back propped against the windlass and the newly purchased rifle across my knees, I found that cowardice, like other base passions, may suddenly develop an infection. With nerves twittering and muscles tensely set, I was ready to become a homicidal maniac at the snapping of a twig or the rolling of a pebble down the hillside.

In such crises the twig is predestined to snap, or the pebble to roll. Some slight movement on my part set a little cataract of broken stone tumbling into the shaft. Before I could recover from the prickling shock of alarm, I heard footsteps and a shadowy figure appeared in the path leading over the spur from the Lawrenceburg. Automatically the rifle flew to my shoulder, and a crooking forefinger was actually pressing the trigger when reason returned and I saw that the approaching intruder was a woman.

I was deeply grateful that it was too dark for Mary Everton to see with what teeth-chatterings and reactionary tremblings I was letting down the hammer of the rifle when she came up. For that matter, I think she did not see me at all until I laid the gun aside and stood up to speak to her. She had stopped as if irresolute; was evidently disconcerted at finding the claim shack dark and apparently deserted.

"Oh!" she gasped, with a little backward start, as I rose from the empty dynamite box upon which I had been sitting. Then she recognized me and explained. "I--I thought you would be working--you have been working nights, haven't you?--and I came over to--to speak to Mr. Barrett."

Under other conditions I might have been conventionally critical. My traditions were still somewhat hidebound. In Glendale a young woman would scarcely go alone at night in search of a man, even though the man might be her lover.

"Barrett has gone to bed: I'll call him," I said, limiting the rejoinder to the bare necessities.

"No; please don't do that," she interposed. "I am sure he must be needing his rest. I can come again--at some other time."

I was beginning to get a little better hold upon my nerves by this time and I laughed.

"Bob is needing the rest, all right, but he will murder me when he finds out that you've been here and I didn't call him. If you want to save my life, you'd better reconsider."

"No; don't call him," she insisted. "It isn't at all necessary, and--and perhaps you can tell me what I want to know--what I ought to know before I----" the sentence trailed off into nothing and she began again rather breathlessly: "Mr. Bertrand, can you--can you satisfy me in any way that you and your two friends have a legal right to this claim you are working? It's a perfect--impertinence in me, to ask, I know, but----"

"It is a fair question," I hastened to assure her; "one that any one might ask. With the proper means at hand--maps and records--I could very easily answer it."

"But--but there may have been mistakes made," she suggested.

"Doubtless there were; but we haven't made them. The Lawrenceburg Company owns the ground on two sides of us, and for some considerable distance beyond us toward the head of the gulch; but I can assure you that our title to the Little Clean-Up is perfectly good and legal in every way."

"It is going to be disputed," she broke in hurriedly. "Mr. Blackwell has talked about it--before me, just as if I didn't count. Telegrams have been passing back and forth, and the Lawrenceburg owners in the East have given Mr. Blackwell full authority to take such steps as he may think best. I--that is, Daddy and I--have known Mr. Barrett for a long time, and I couldn't let this thing happen without giving him just a little warning. Some kind of legal proceedings have already been begun, and you are to be driven off--to-morrow."

"Oh, I guess not; not so suddenly as all that," I ventured to say. There were many questions to come crowding in, but I could scarcely expect the assayer's daughter to answer them. Her father had plainly declared his belief that we were stealing Lawrenceburg ore and planning a blackmailing scheme: had he told Blackwell? The query practically answered itself. If Blackwell had been told that we were salting our claim with ore stolen from the Lawrenceburg sheds, the "legal proceedings" would have been a simple arrest-warrant and a search for stolen property. Had Everton told his daughter? This was blankly incredible. If he had told her that we were thieves, she would never have gone so far aside from her childhood hatred of duplicity and wrong-doing as to come and warn us.

"I was afraid you might not believe me," she said, with a little catch in her voice; and then: "I can't blame you; after what you have suf--after all that has happened."

If I hadn't been completely lost in admiration for her keen sense of justice, and more or less bewildered by her beauty and her nearness, I might have caught the significance of what she was trying to say. But I didn't.

"No; I didn't mean that," I denied warmly. "I do believe every word you have said. No one who knows you could disbelieve you for a moment."

"But you don't know me," she put in quickly.

I saw how near I had come to self-betrayal and tried to fend my little life-raft off the rocks.

"You will say that we have met only once before to-night, and then only casually. Will you permit a comparative stranger to say that that was enough? Your soul looks out through your eyes, Miss Everton, and it is an exceedingly honest soul. I know you must have strong reasons for coming to tell us what Blackwell is doing; and if I didn't quite understand the motive at first--with you your father's daughter, you know, and your father in the service of the----"

"I know," she interrupted. "But you lose sight of the larger things. If you have been telling me the truth about your ownership of this claim, a great wrong is going to be done. I couldn't stand aside and let it be done, could I?"

Something in her manner of saying this recalled most vividly the little girl of the long ago, hot-hearted in her indignation against injustice of every sort.

"No, I am sure you couldn't: I don't believe you know how to compromise with wrong of any kind. But you ought not to take my unsupported word about the matter of ownership. Let me call Barrett."

"It isn't necessary. If you say that you three have an honest right to be here, I believe you implicitly. And what I have done is nothing. My father would have done it if he hadn't--if he didn't----"

"You needn't say it," I helped out. "Your father thinks we are trying to hold the Lawrenceburg people up, and I don't blame him. When he was up here the other day--the day you were both here--he thought he caught us red-handed. It wasn't so; he was quite mistaken; but for reasons which I can't explain just now I couldn't very well take the only course which would have undeceived him."

"I--I think I understand," she returned, guardedly. "You--you haven't been stealing ore from the Lawrenceburg sheds?"

I laughed and said a thing that I wouldn't have said to any other living human being on earth at that stage of the game.

"If we can manage to hold our own for just a little while longer, Robert Barrett will be a very rich man, Miss Everton. May I venture to hand you a lot of good wishes before the fact? I know this is only a very old friend's privilege, but----"

Her embarrassment was very charming, and, as I saw it, most natural.

"I--indeed, I wasn't thinking any more of Mr. Barrett than I was of--of you and--and Mr. Gifford," she faltered. "I simply couldn't bear to think of this terrible thing dropping upon you out of a clear sky if--if you hadn't been doing anything to deserve it. Can you defend yourselves in any way?"

"We can try mighty hard," I asserted. "That is what I meant when I said that we were not going to be driven off to-morrow. Possession is nine points of the law. We have our little foothold here, and we shall try to keep it. I'll tell Barrett when he wakes, and we'll be ready for them when they come. Now you must let me take you back home. You really oughtn't to be here alone, you know."

She made no objection to the bit of elder-brother-ism, but half-way up to the summit of the spur she had her small fling at the conventions.

"I don't admit that I ought not to have come alone; neither that, nor your right to question it," she said definitively. "You protest because you are conventional: so am I conventional--but only so far as the conventions subserve some good end. There are situations in which the phrase, 'it isn't done,' becomes a mere impertinence. This is life in the making, up here in these desolate hills, and we who are taking part in the process are just plain men and women."

"That is true enough," I rejoined; and other than this there was little said, or little chance for saying it, since the distance over the spur was short and she would not let me show myself under the Lawrenceburg masthead electrics.

I did not know, at the time, of any reason why I should have returned to resume my lonesome watch at the shaft's mouth like a man walking upon air, but so it was. There are women who keep the fair promise of their childhood, and we admire them; there are others who prodigiously and richly exceed that promise, and they own us, body and soul, from the moment of re-discovery.

Throughout the long night hours following Mary Everton's visit I was far enough, I hope, from envying Barrett; far enough, too, from the thought that I might ever venture to ask any good and innocent young woman to step down with me into the abyss of unearned infamy into which I had been flung, largely through the efforts of another woman who was neither good nor innocent. None the less, the delight which was half intoxication remained and the night was full of waking dreams.

The dark shaft beside me sent up its dank breath of stale powder fumes, and the acrid odor was as the fragrance of a fertile field ripe for the sickle. In this reeking pit at my elbow, gold, the subtle, the potent, the arbiter of all destinies, stood ready to fight for me. The liberty which I had stolen, but which had first been stolen from me, would shortly find a defender too strong to be overthrown by all the prejudice and injustice which are so ready to fly at the throat of helplessness. The reinstatement, which I had been unable to win as a mendicant ex-convict, I could buy with gold in the open market; and when it should be bought and paid for, all the world would clap and cry, Well done!

Barrett had gone to bed exacting a promise that I should call him at two o'clock. But I let the hour go by, and another, and yet another, until the stars were paling in the east when I got up, stiff in every joint, to meet Gifford as he came up the gulch. He was haggard and weary, trembling like an overworked draft horse, and he had to lick his lips before he could frame the words which were to be our alarm signal.

"It's all over," he croaked hoarsely. "The wagon's broke down a couple of miles below, right out on the open mountain-side. We've been working like hell all night trying to drag the load down to some place where we could hide it, but it was no good. Dixon's gone on to town to get another wagon, but the mischief is done. Come daylight, everybody on this side of Bull Mountain will know what's in that wagon, and where it comes from."

The carpenter was practically dead on his feet from the night of fierce toil, and in addition to his weariness was half-famished. He had come in while it was yet dark to get something to eat, and was planning to go back at once. I aroused Barrett promptly, and together we tramped out to the crest of the spur overlooking the Lawrenceburg workings and the mountain-side below. In the breaking dawn, with the help of Barrett's field-glass, we could make out the shape of the disabled wagon on the bare slope hundreds of feet below. Early as it was, there was already a number of moving figures encircling it; a group which presently strung itself out in Indian file on a diagonal course up to our gulch. The early-morning investigators were taking the plainly marked wagon trail in reverse, and Barrett turned to me with a brittle laugh.

"That settles it, Jimmie. The secret is out, and in another half hour we'll be fighting like the devil to keep those fellows from relocating every foot of ground we've got. Let's go back and get ready for them."