Chapter VIII: Part 8

It _looked_ like rice pudding with raisins in it! If there was one delicacy which appealed to James's palate more than another it was rice pudding with raisins in it. He arose from the bench in all the pristine splendor of the orange-colored cotton undershirt in which he worked and dined, and reached for the pudding. It was a considerable distance and he was unable to reach it by merely stretching himself over the table, so James, unhampered by the rules of etiquette prescribed by a finical Society, put his knee on the table and buried his thumb in the pudding as he dragged it toward him by the rim.

Without warning he sat down so hard and so suddenly that his feet flew up and kicked the table underneath.

"Leggo!" he gurgled.

For answer Bertha took another twist around the stout neck-band of his orange undergarment.

"I'll learn you rough-necks some manners!" she panted. "I'll git the respect that's comin' to a lady if I have to clean out this here camp!"

"You quit, now!" He rolled a pair of wild, beseeching eyes around the table. "Somebudy take her off!"

"Coward--to fight a woman!" She fell back with a section of James's shirt in one hand, with the other reaching for his hair.

He clapped the crook of his elbow over his ear and started to slide under the table when the special Providence that looks after Swedes intervened. A long, plump, shining bull-snake took that particular moment to slip off one of the log beams and bounce on the bride's head.

She threw herself on Jennings emitting sounds like forty catamounts tied in a bag. The flying crew jammed in the doorway, burst through and never stopped to look behind until they were well outside.

"Hy-sterics," said the carpenter who was married--"she's took a fit."

"Hydrophoby--she must a bit herself!" Porcupine Jim was vigorously massaging his neck.

The bride was sitting on the floor beating her heels, when Bruce put his head in the door cautiously:

"If there's anything I can do--"

Bertha renewed her screams at sight of him.

"They is--" she shrieked--"Git out!"

"You don't want to go near 'em when they're in a tantrum," advised the carpenter in an experienced tone. "But that's about the hardest one I ever see."

Jennings, staggering manfully under his burden, bore the hysterical Amazon to her tent and it remained for Bruce to do her work.

"That's a devil of a job for a General Manager," commented John Johnson sympathetically, as he stood in the doorway watching Bruce, with his sleeves rolled up, scraping assiduously at the bottom of a frying-pan.

Bruce smiled grimly but made no reply. He had been thinking the same thing himself.

Bruce often had watched an ant trying to move a bread-crumb many times its size, pushing with all its feet braced, rushing it with its head, backing off and considering and going at it again. Failing, running frantically around in front to drag and pull and tug. Trying it this way and that, stopping to rest for an instant then tackling it in fresh frenzy--and getting nowhere, until, out of pity, he gave it a lift.

Bruce felt that this power-plant was his bread-crumb, and tug and push and struggle as he would he could not make it budge. The thought, too, was becoming a conviction that Jennings, who should have helped him push, was riding on the other side.

"I wouldn't even mind his riding," Bruce said to himself ironically, "if he wouldn't drag his feet."

He was hoping with all his heart that the much discussed cross-arms would hold, for when the wires were up and stretched across the river he would feel that the bread-crumb had at least _moved_.

When Bruce crossed to the work the next morning, the "come-along" was clamped to the transmission wire and hooked to the block-and-tackle. Naturally Jennings had charge of the stretching of the wire and he selected Smaltz as his assistant.

All the crew, intensely interested in the test, stood around as Jennings, taciturn and sour and addressing no one but Smaltz, puttered about his preparations.

Finally he cried:

"Ready-O!"

The wire tightened and the slack disappeared under Smaltz's steady pull. The carpenter and the crew watched the cross-arm anxiously as the strain came upon it under the taut wire. Their faces brightened as it held.

Smaltz looked at Jennings quizzically.

"More?"

"You ain't heard me tell you yet to stop," was the snarling answer.

"Here goes, then." Smaltz's face wore an expressive grin as he put his strength on the rope of the block-and-tackle, which gave him the pull of a four-horse team.

Bruce heard the cross-arm splinter as he came up the trail through the brush.

Jennings turned to Woods and said offensively:

"Old as you are, I guess I kin learn you somethin' yet."

The carpenter's face had turned white. With a gesture Bruce stopped his belligerent advance.

"Try the next one, Jennings," he said quietly.

Once more the slack was taken up and the wire grew taut--so taut it would have twanged like a fiddle-string if it had been struck. Jennings did not give Smaltz the sign to stop even when the cross-arm cracked. Without a word of protest Bruce watched the stout four-by-five splinter and drop off.

"There--you see--I told you so! I knowed!" Jennings looked triumphantly at the carpenter as he spoke. Then, turning to the crew: "Knock 'em off--every one. _Now_ I'll do it right!"

Not a man moved and for an instant Bruce dared not trust himself to speak. When he did speak it was in a tone that made Jennings look up startled:

"You'll come across the river and get your time." His surprise was genuine as Bruce went on--"Do you imagine," he asked savagely, trying to steady his voice, "that I haven't intelligence enough to know that you've got to allow for the swaying of the trees in the wind, for the contraction and expansion of heat and cold, for the weight of snow and sleet? Do you think I haven't brains enough to see when you're deliberately destroying another man's work? I've been trying to make myself believe in you--believe that in spite of your faults you were honest. Now I know that you've been drawing pay for months for work you don't know how to do. I can't see any difference between you and any common thief who takes what doesn't belong to him. Right here you quit! Vamoose!" Bruce made a sweeping gesture--"You go up that hill as quick as the Lord will let you."

XXIII

"GOOD ENOUGH"

"Alf" Banule, the electrical genius for whom Jennings had sent to help him rewind an armature and who therefore had taken Jennings's place as constructing engineer, had the distinction of being the only person Bruce had ever seen who could remove his socks without taking off his shoes. He accomplished the feat with ease for the reason that there were never any toes in the aforesaid shoes. As he himself said, he would have been a tall man if there had not been so much of him turned up at the end.

The only way he was able to wear shoes at all, save those made to order, was to cut out the toes; the same applied to his socks, and the exposed portion of his bare feet had not that dimpled pinkness which moves poets to song. From the rear, Banule's shoes looked like two bobsleds going down hill, and from the front the effect of the loose soles was that of two great mouths opening and closing. Yet he skimmed the river boulders at amazing speed, seeming to find no inconvenience in the flap-flapping of the loose leather as he leaped from rock to rock.

In contrast to his yawning shoes and a pair of trousers the original shade of which was a matter of uncertainty, together with a black satine shirt whose color made change unnecessary, was a stylish Tyrolese hat--green felt--with a butterfly bow perched jauntily on one side. And underneath this stylishness there was a prematurely bald head covered with smudges of machine grease which it could readily be believed were souvenirs of his apprentice days in the machine shop. If indifference to appearance be a mark of genius it would be impossible to deny Banule's claim to the title.

He was the direct antithesis of Jennings, harnessed lightning in clothes, working early and late. He flew at the machinery like a madman, yelling for wrenches, and rivets and bolts, chiselling, and soldering, and oiling, until the fly-wheel was on its shaft in the power-house, and the dynamos, dragged at top speed from the river-bank, no longer looked like a pile of junk. The switchboard went up, and the pressure gauge, and the wiring for the power-house light. But for all Bruce's relief at seeing things moving, he had a feeling of uneasiness lest there was too much haste. "Good enough--that's good enough!" were the words oftenest on Banule's lips. They filled Bruce with vague forebodings, misgivings, and he came to feel a flash of irritation each time the genius said airily: "Oh, that's good enough."

Bruce warned him often--"Don't slight your work--do it right if it takes twice as long."

Banule always made the same cheering answer: "Don't worry, everything is going fine; in less than a month we'll be generating 'juice'." And Bruce tried to find comfort in the assurance.

When Bruce pulled the lever which opened the valve, and heard the hiss of the water when it shot from the nozzle and hit the wheel, and watched the belt, and shaft, and big fly-wheel speed up until the spokes were a blur and the breeze it created lifted his hair, it was the happiest moment of his life. When he saw the thread of carbon filament in the glass bulb turn red and grow to a bright, white light, he had something of the feeling of ecstasy that he imagined a mother must have when she looks at her first-born--a mixture of wonder and joy.

He had an odd, intimate feeling--a strong feeling of affection--for every piece of machinery in the power-house. He liked to hear the squeak of the belting and the steady chug-chug of the water-wheels; the purr of the dynamos was music, and he kept the commutators free from dust with loving care.

But these moments alone in the power-house were high-lights in a world of shadows. His periods of elation were brief, for so many things went wrong, and so often, that sometimes he wondered if it was the way some guardian angel had of warning him, of trying to prevent him from keeping on and making a big mistake bigger; or was it only the tests that the Fates have a way of putting humans through and, failing to break their hearts, sometimes let them win?

Important as the power-house was it was only a small portion of the whole. There was still the 10-inch pump in the pump-house with its 75 horse-power motor and the donkey engine with the 50 horse-power motor to get to working right, not to mention the flume and sluice-boxes, with their variety of riffles and every practicable device for trapping the elusive fine gold. And not the least of Bruce's increasing anxieties was "Alf" Banule with his constant "good enough."

It was well toward the end of October and Bruce, hurrying over the trail with sheets of mica for Banule, who was working on the submerged motor which had to be rewound, noticed that the willows were turning black. What a lot had happened since he had noticed the willows turning black last year! A lifetime of hopes and fears, and new experiences had been crowded into twelve flying months.

His mind straying for a moment from the work and its many problems, he fell to thinking of Helen Dunbar and her last letter. When he was not thinking of undercurrents or expanded metal riffles or wondering anxiously if the 10-inch and 8-inch pumps were going to raise sufficient water, or if the foundation built on piling, instead of cement, was "good enough," Bruce was thinking of the girl he loved.

She had written in her last letter--Bruce knew them all by heart--

I had a visitor yesterday. You will be as surprised, when I tell
you who it was, as I was to see him. Have you guessed? I'm sure
you haven't. None other than our friend Sprudell--very
apologetic--very humble and contrite, and with an explanation to
offer for his behavior that was really most ingenious. There's
no denying he has cleverness of a kind--craft, perhaps, is a
better word.

His humility was touching but so unlike him that I should have
been alarmed if he had not been so obviously sincere.

Nevertheless his visit has upset me. I've been worried ever
since. Perhaps you'll only laugh at me when I tell you that it
is because I am afraid for _you_. Truly I am! I don't know that
I can explain exactly so you'll understand but there was
something disturbing which I _felt_ when he spoke quite casually
of you. It was almost too intangible to put into words but it
was like a gloating secret satisfaction, as though he had the
best of you in some way, the whip-hand.

It may be just a silly notion, one of those fears that pop into
one's head in the most inexplicable way and stick, refusing to
be driven out by any amount of logic. Tell me, is there anything
that he can do to you? Any way that he can harm you?

I am nervous--_anxious_--and I cannot help it.

She was anxious about him! That fact was paramount. Somebody in the world was worrying over _him_. He stopped short in the trail with fresh wonder of it. Every time he thought of it, it gave him a thrill. His face, that had been set in tired, harsh lines of late, softened with a smile of happiness.

And he did so long to give her substantial evidence of his gratitude. If that machinery ever started--if the scrapers ever got to hauling dirt--her reward, his reward, would come quick. That was one of the compensating features of mining; if the returns came at all they came quick. Bruce started on, hastening his footsteps until he almost ran.

The electrical genius was driving a nail with a spirit-level when Bruce reached the pump-house and Bruce flared up in quick wrath.

"Stop that, Banule! Isn't there a hammer on this place?"

"Didn't see one handy," Banule replied cheerfully, "took the first thing I could reach."

"It just about keeps one pack-train on the trail supplying you with tools."

"Guess I am a little careless." Banule seemed unruffled by the reproach--because he had heard it so many times before, no doubt.

"Yes, you're careless," Bruce answered vigorously, "and I'm telling you straight it worries me; I can't help wondering if your carelessness extends to your work. There, you know, you've got me, for I can't tell. I must trust you absolutely."

Banule shrugged a shoulder--

"This ain't the first plant I've put up, you know." He added--"I'll guarantee that inside two weeks we'll be throwin' dirt. Eh, Smaltz? Ain't I right?"

Smaltz, who was stooping over, did not immediately look up. Bruce saw an odd expression cross his face--an expression that was something like derision. When he felt Bruce looking at him it vanished instantly and he straightened up.

"Why, yes," with his customary grin, "looks like we orter make a _start_."

The peculiar emphasis did not escape Bruce and he was still thinking of the look he had caught on Smaltz's face as he asked Banule:

"Is this mica right? Is it the kind you need?"

Smaltz looked at Banule from the corner of his eye.

"'Taint exactly what I ought to have," Banule responded cheerfully. "I forgot to specify when I ordered, but I guess I can make it do--it's good enough."

It seemed to Bruce that his over-strained nerves snapped all at once. He did not recognize the sound of his voice when he turned on Banule:

"S'help me, I'm goin' to break every bone in your body if you don't cut out that 'good enough'! How many hundred times have I got to tell you that nothing's good enough on this plant until it's right?"

"I didn't mean anything," Banule mumbled, temporarily cowed.

Bruce heard Smaltz snicker as he walked away.

The sluice-boxes upon which Bruce was putting the finishing touches were his particular pride. They were four feet wide and nearly a quarter of a mile in length. The eight per cent grade was steep enough to carry off boulders twice, three times, the size of a man's head when there was a force of water behind them.

The last box was well over the river at a point where it was sufficiently swift to take off the "tailings" and keep it free. The top earth, which had to be removed to uncover the sand-bank, was full of jagged rocks that had come down in snowslides from the mountain and below this top earth was a strata of small, smooth boulders--"river wash."

This troublesome "overburden" necessitated the use of iron instead of wooden riffles, as the bumping and grinding of the boulders would soon have worn the latter down to nothing. So, for many weary trips, a string of footsore pack-horses had picked their way down the dangerous trail from Ore City, loaded to their limit with pierced iron strips, rods, heavy sacks of nuts and bolts.

It had been laborious, nerve-racking work and every trip had had its accident, culminating in the loss of the best pack-horse in the string, the horse having slipped off the trail, scattering its pack, as Smaltz announced it, "from hell to breakfast."

But the iron strips and rods were made into riffles now, and laid. Bruce surveyed the whole with intense satisfaction as he stood by the sluice-boxes looking down the long grade. It was _his_ work and he knew that he had done it well. He had spared no labor to have it right--nothing had been just "good enough."

There was cocoa matting under the riffles of the first six boxes. Half-way the length of the sluice-boxes the finest gravel, yellow and black sand, dropped through perforated sheet-iron grizzles into the "undercurrents" while the rocks and boulders rushed on through the sluice-boxes to the river.

At the end of the undercurrents there was a wide table having a slight grade, and this table was covered with canton flannel over which was placed more riffles of expanded metal. And, as a final precaution, lest some infinitesimal amount of gold escape, there was a mercury trap below the table. While Bruce was expecting to catch the greater part of it in the first six sluice-boxes he was not taking a single chance.

Now, as he stood by the sluice-boxes looking their length, he allowed himself to dream for a moment of the days when the mercury, turned to amalgam, should be lying thick with gold behind the riffles; to anticipate the unspeakable happiness of telegraphing his success to Helen Dunbar.

Even with the tangible evidence before his eyes it was hard to realize that after all the struggle, he was so near his goal. The ceaseless strain and anxiety had left their marks upon his face. He looked older by years than when he had stood by the river dipping water into his old-fashioned cradle and watching "Slim" scramble among the rocks.

But it would be worth it all--all and more--he told himself exultingly, if he succeeded--as he must. His eyes shone with enthusiasm and he tingled with his joy, as he thought what success meant.

A sound behind him brought him back to earth. He turned to see Toy picking his way gingerly over the rocks.

"You old rascal!" he cried joyfully. "Dog-gone, I'm glad to see you, though you don't deserve it."

"I come back now," the Chinaman announced serenely. "No go way no more I think."

XXIV

THE MIDNIGHT VISITOR

Toy raised his head sharply from his little flat pillow where he lay in his tent, pitched for convenience beside the kitchen, and listened. A sound like the cautious scraping of the sagging storehouse door on the other side of the kitchen had awakened him. He was not sure that he had not dreamed it or that it was not merely renewed activities on the part of his enemies, the pack-rats, between whom and himself there waged constant war. There was a possibility that some prowling animal might push in the door, but, as the month was now November and the nights were as cold as winter, he was not too anxious to crawl from his warm nest and investigate until he was sure.

Hearing nothing more he dropped back on his pillow sleepily, vowing fresh vengeance on the pack-rats who at that moment no doubt were carrying off rice and rolled oats. Suddenly there came a fresh sound, very distinct in the stillness, somewhat like the side of a big tin bulging where it had been dented. To ease his mind rather than because he expected to find anything Toy slipped his feet into his thick-soled Chinese slippers and shuffled out into the night.

The faintest gleam of light was coming through the opening in the storehouse door, which Toy himself had carefully closed. It was all of eleven o'clock and the men, Toy knew, had been in bed for hours. He stepped noiselessly inside and stared with all his eyes at Smaltz. Smaltz was about to extinguish the candle which he had been shielding with his coat.

"What you do? What you gittee?"

Smaltz whirled swiftly at the shrill demand with a startled look on his impudent face.

"Oh--hello," he said uncertainly.

"Why you come? What you want?"

"Why--er--I wanted to see if they was any more of them eight-penny nails left. I'll need some to-morrow and bein' awake frettin' and stewin' over my work I thought I'd come up and take a look. Besides," with his mocking grin, "the evenin's reely too lovely to stay in bed."

"You lie, I think." Toy's teeth were chattering with cold and excitement. "Why you come? What you want?"

"You oughtn't to say those rude, harsh things. They're apt to hurt the feelin's of a sensitive feller like me."

"What you steal?" Toy pointed a trembling finger at the inside pocket of Smaltz's coat where it bulged.

"You wrong me," said Smaltz sorrowfully in mock reproach. "That's my Bible, Chink."

After Smaltz had gone Toy lighted a candle and poked among the boxes, cans, and sacks. He knew almost to a pound how much sugar, flour, rice, coffee, beans, and other provisions he had, but nothing, that he could discover, had been disturbed. The nail kegs and reserve tools in the corner, wedges, axe-handles and blades, files and extra shovels all were there. It was a riddle Toy could not solve yet he knew that Smaltz had not told the truth.

A white man who was as loyal to Bruce as Toy would have told him immediately of Smaltz's mysterious midnight visit to the storehouse, but that was not the yellow man's way. Instead he watched Smaltz like a hawk, eying him furtively, appearing unexpectedly at his elbow while he worked. From that night on, instead of one shadow Smaltz found himself with two.

Toy never had liked Smaltz from the day he came. Those who knew the Chinaman could tell it by the scrupulous politeness with which he treated him. He was elaborately exact and fair but he never spoke to him unless it was necessary. Toy yelled at and bullied those he liked but a mandarin could not have surpassed him in dignity when he addressed Smaltz.

Bruce surmised that the Chinaman must share his own instinctive distrust, yet Smaltz, with his versatility, had proved himself more and more valuable as the work progressed.

Banule's sanguine prophecy that they would be "throwin' dirt" within two weeks had failed of fulfilment because the pump motors had sparked when tried out. So small a matter had not disturbed the cheerful optimism of the genius, who declared he could remedy it with a little further work. Days, weeks, a month went by and still he tinkered, while Bruce, watching the sky anxiously, wondered how much longer the bad weather would hold off. As a convincing evidence of the nearness of winter, Porcupine Jim, who considered himself something of a naturalist, declared that the grasshoppers had lost their hind-legs.

While the time sped, Bruce realized that he must abandon his dream of taking out enough gold to begin to repay the stockholders. The most he could hope for now was a few days' run.

"If only I could get into the pay-streak! If I can just get enough out of the clean-up to show them that it's here; that it's no wild-cat; that I've told them the truth!" Over and over he said these things monotonously to himself until they became a refrain to every other thought.

In the middle of the summer he had been forced to ask for more money. He was days nerving himself to make the call; but there was no alternative--it was either that or shut down. He had written the stockholders that it would surely be the last, and his relief and gratitude had been great at their good-natured response.

Now the sparking of the motors which unexpectedly prolonged the work had once more exhausted his funds. It took all Bruce's courage to write again. It seemed to him that it was the hardest thing he had ever done but he accomplished it as best he could. He was peremptorily refused.

His sensations when he read the letter are not easy to describe. There was more than mere business curtness in the denial. There was actual unfriendliness. Furthermore, it contained an ultimatum to the effect that if the season's work was unsuccessful they would accept an offer which they had had for their stock.

With Helen's warning still fresh in his mind, Bruce understood the situation in one illuminating flash. Under the circumstances, no one but Sprudell would want to buy the stock. Obviously Sprudell had gotten in touch with the stockholders and managed somehow to poison their minds. This was the way, then, that he intended taking his revenge!

Harrah's secretary had written Bruce in response to his last appeal that Harrah had been badly hurt in an aeroplane accident in France and that it would not be possible to communicate with him for months perhaps. This was a blow, for Bruce counted him his only friend.

Bruce had neither the time nor money to go East and try to undo the harm Sprudell had done, and, furthermore, little heart for the task of setting himself right with people so ready to believe.

There was just one thing that remained for Bruce to do. He could use the amount he had saved from his small salary as general manager and continue the work as long as the money lasted. When this was gone he was done. In any event it meant that he must face the winter there alone. If the machinery was still not in working order when he came to the end of his resources it meant that he was stranded, flat broke, unable even to go outside and struggle.

In his desperation he sometimes thought of appealing to his father. The amount he required was insignificant compared to what he knew his father's yearly income must be. He doubted if even Harrah's fortune was larger than the one represented by his father's land and herds; but just as often as he thought of this way out just so often he realized that there were some things he could not do--not even for Helen Dunbar--not even to put his proposition through.

_That_ humiliation would be too much. To go back _begging_ after all these years--no, no, he could not do it to save his life! He would meet the pay-roll with his own checks so long as he had a cent, and hope for the best until he knew there was no best.

The end of his rope was painfully close the day Banule announced, after frequent testings, that they might start.

During short intervals of pumping, Bruce had been able by ground-sluicing to work off a considerable area of top soil and now that the machinery was declared to be ready for a steady run he could set the scrapers at once in the red gravel streak that contained the "pay."

The final preparation before starting was to pour the mercury behind the riffles in the sluice-boxes. When it lay quivering and shining behind each block and bar Bruce felt that his gargantuan bread-crumb had been dragged almost to the goal. It was well, too, he told himself with indescribable relief, for, not only his money, but his courage, his nerves, were well-nigh gone.

Bruce would trust no one but himself to pour the mercury in the boxes.

"That looks like good lively 'quick'," Smaltz commented as he watched him at the task.

"It should be; it was guaranteed never to have been used." He added with a smile: "Let's hope when we see it again it won't be quite so lively."

"Looks like it orter be as thick as mush if you can run a few thousand yards of that there pay-streak over it." There was a mocking look in Smaltz's yellow-brown eyes which Bruce, stooping over, did not see. He only heard the hopeful words.

"Oh, Smaltz--Smaltz--if it only is! Success means so much to me!" Unaccountably, such a tide of feeling rose within him that Bruce bared his heart to the man he did not like.

Smaltz looked at him with a curious soberness.

"Does it?" he responded after a pause.

"And I've tried so hard."

"You've sure worked like a horse." There was a look that was half pity, half grudging admiration on Smaltz's impudent face.

Banule was to run the power-house for the day and complete some work inside, so when Bruce had finished with the mercury he told Smaltz to telephone Banule from the pump-house that they were ready to start. Therefore while Bruce took his place at the lever on the donkey-engine enclosed in a temporary shed to protect the motor from rain and dust, Smaltz went to the pump-house as he was bid.

When Banule answered his ring he shouted:

"Let her go in about two minutes--_two minutes_--d'ye hear?" The telephone receiver was shaking in Smaltz's hand and he was breathing hard.

"Yes," Banule answered irritably, "but don't yell so in my ear."

Smaltz already had slammed the receiver back on the hook. With a swift movement he threw in the switch and jumped for the outside. He dropped from the high platform and fell among the rocks some ten feet below. Instantly he scrambled to his feet and crouching, dodging among the boulders that strewed the river bank, he ran at top speed until he reached the sluice-boxes. The carpenter came out from his shop to take a leisurely survey of the world and Smaltz threw himself flat until he had turned inside again.

Then, still crouching, looking this way and that, watching the trail, he took a bottle from his pocket and pulling the cork with his teeth poured the contents over the mercury almost to the upper end of the first box. He went as far as he dared without being seen by Bruce inside the shed.

The pumps had already started and the big head of water was coming with a rush down the steep grade, but Smaltz had done his evil work thoroughly for wherever the mercury laid thickest it glittered with iridescent drops of kerosene.

He was thrusting the bottle back in his pocket, his tense expression relaxed, when he turned his head sharply at the sound of a crashing in the brush.

"Toy!" Smaltz looked startled--scared.

It was Toy, his skin a waxy yellow and his oblique eyes blazing with excitement and rage.

"I savvy you, Smaltz! I savvy you!" His voice was a shrill squawk. "I savvy you!" His fingers with their long, sharp nails were opening and shutting like claws.

Smaltz knew that he had seen him from the hill and, watching, had understood. It was too late to run, useless to evade, so he stood waiting while shrieking, screeching at every step, the Chinaman came on.

He flew at Smaltz's face like a wild-cat, clawing, scratching, digging in his nails and screaming with every breath: "I savvy you! I savvy you!"

Smaltz warded him off without striking, trying to get his hand over his mouth; but in vain, and the Chinaman kept up his shrill accusing cry, "I savvy you, Smaltz! I savvy you!" There was little chance, however, of his being heard above the rush of the water through the sluice-boxes and the bumping and grinding together of the rocks and boulders that it carried down.

Then Smaltz struck him. Toy fell among the rocks, sprawling backwards. He got to his feet and came back. Once more he clawed and clung and once more Smaltz knocked him down. A third time he returned.

"You're harder to kill nor a cat," Smaltz grinned without malice, but he threw him violently against the sluice-box.

Toy lost his balance, toppled, and went over backward, reaching out wildly to save himself as he fell. The water turned him over but he caught the edge of the box. His loose purple "jumper" of cotton and silk ballooned at the back as he swung by one hand in the on-rushing water, thick and yellow with sand, filled with the grinding boulders that came down as, though shot from a catapult, drowning completely his, agonized cry of "Bluce! Bluce!"

It was only a second that he hung with his wild beseeching eyes on Smaltz's scared face while his frail, old body acted as a wedge for the racing water and the rocks. Then he let go and turned over and over tumbling grotesquely in the wide sluice-box while the rocks pounded and ground him, beat him into insensibility. He shot over the tail-race into the river limp and unresisting, like a dead fish.

XXV

THE CLEAN-UP

Toy's disappearance was mysterious and complete. There was not a single clue to show which way he had gone, or how, or why. Only one thing seemed certain and that was that his departure was unpremeditated.

His potatoes were in a bucket of water, peeled and ready for dinner; the bread he had set to raise was waiting to be kneaded; his pipe laid on the window sill while his hoarded trinkets for the little Sun Loon were still hidden under the pad of the bed in his tent. His fish-pole in its usual place disposed of the theory that he had fallen in the river, and although trained eyes followed every trail there was not a single telltale track. He had vanished as though he had gone straight up.

His disappearance sobered the men. There was something uncanny about it; they lowered their voices When they speculated and all their latent superstition arose. Porcupine Jim declared that the place was "hoodooed" and as evidence enumerated the many accidents and delays. Bruce himself wondered if the malignant spirit of Slim was lingering on the river to harry him as he had in life.

Smaltz was now in the power-house doing at last the specific work for which he had been hired. To all Bruce's questions, he replied that the machinery there was "doing fine." Down below, the pump-house motors were far from satisfactory, sparking and heating in a way that Bruce, who did not know the a, b, c's of electricity, could see was not right. While the pumps and scrapers were working Banule dared not leave the motors alone.

Then, after a couple of days' unsatisfactory work, the water dropped so low in Big Squaw creek that there was only sufficient pressure to use one scraper. Bruce discharged all the crew save Smaltz, Banule, and Porcupine Jim, who labored in the kitchen--a living insult to the Brotherhood of Cooks. While Bruce, by running back and forth between the donkey-engine and the top sluice-box where the scraper dumped, managed to do the work of two men ten hours a day.

His nerves were at a tension, for along with the strain of his responsibilities was the constant fear of a serious break-down. Banule made light of the sparking motors but the bearings were heating badly, daily necessitating more frequent stops. When a grounded wire sent the leaking current through the cable that pulled the scraper, and knocked Bruce flat, he was not convinced by Banule's assurance that it "didn't amount to much." It was all evidence to Bruce that fundamentally something was wrong.

But in spite of the time lost the cut was deepening and the side walls stood up so that every scraper that emptied into the sluice-boxes was from the pay-streak. Bruce fairly gloated over each cubic yard that he succeeded in getting in, for the sample pans showed that it was all he had hoped for, and more.

If only the riffles were saving it and the tables catching the fine gold!

This he could not know until the clean-up and he did not mean to stop until he had brought in the last load he dared before a freeze. So far the weather had been phenomenal, the exceptional open fall had been his one good piece of luck. Under usual weather conditions, to avoid cleaning up through the ice he would have been obliged to have shut down at least a month before.

So the work kept on intermittently until an incredibly late date in November. The leaves of the poison oak had turned crimson, the tall tamaracks in the high mountains were gold, frost crystals glittered each morning on the planks and boards, but Big Squaw creek kept running steadily and the sunshine soon melted the skim ice that formed over night.

By this time Bruce had a fresh worry. It kept him awake hour after hour at night. The mercury was not looking right where it showed behind the riffles. It was too lively. There was something in it, of course, but not enough to thicken it as he had hoped. He could see the flakes of gold sticking to it as though it had been sprinkled with Nepaul pepper but the activity of it where it showed in quantity alarmed him more than he would confess to himself.

The change of weather came in the night. That day he started to clean-up. A chill wind was blowing from the east and the sky was dark with drab, low-hanging clouds when Bruce put on his hip-boots and began to take up riffles. A thin sheet of water flowed through the boxes, just sufficient to keep the sand and gravel moving down as he took up the riffles one at a time and recovered the mercury each had contained.

Bruce's feet and fingers grew numb working in the icy water with a scrubbing brush and a small scoop but they were no colder than the cold hand of Premonition that lay heavy upon him.

Behind the riffles at the top of the first box the mercury was amalgam--all that he could have wished for--beyond that point it suddenly stopped and all that he recovered as he worked down looked to be as active as when he had poured it from the flask.

What was wrong? He asked himself every conceivable question as he worked with aching hands and feet. Had he given the boxes too much grade? Had he washed too fast--crowded the dirt so that it had not had time to settle? Was it possible that after all the gold was too light and fine to save in paying quantities?

Hope died hard and he tried to make himself believe that the lower boxes and the tables had caught it--that there was more in the mercury than there looked. But the tension as he took up riffle after rime with the one result was like watching a long-drawn-out race with all one's possessions staked on the losing horse.

He took up riffles until it was a physical impossibility to work longer in the numbing water, his fingers could not hold the scoop. Then he went to the pump-house and told Banule to telephone Smaltz to shut down.

"He wants to know if you'll be pumpin' again?"

"Yes, after awhile. Tell him to stay there. I'm going to squeeze out the 'quick' I've taken up, but I want to get as near finished to-day as I can. You come and help me."

As Bruce walked back to the sluice-boxes with bowed head he was thinking that the day was well suited to the ending of his roseate dreams. Failure is dull, drab, colorless, and in his heart he had little doubt that for some reason still to be explained, he had failed. Just how badly remained to be seen.

Bruce had scooped the mercury into a clean granite kettle and now, while he held the four corners of a square of chamois skin, Banule poured mercury from the kettle into the centre of the skin until told to stop.

"Looks like you ought to get several hundred dollars out of that," Banule said hopefully as Bruce gathered the four corners, twisted them and began to squeeze.

"Yes, looks like I ought to," Bruce replied ironically.

The quicksilver came through the pores of the skin in a shower of shining globules.

Banule's expression of lively interest in the process was gradually replaced by one of bewilderment as with every twist the contents kept squeezing through until it looked as though there would be no residue left. It was a shock even to Bruce, who was prepared for it, when he spread the chamois skin on a rock and looked at the ball of amalgam which it contained.

Banule stared at it, open-mouthed.

"What's the matter? Where's it gone? And out of all that dirt!"

Bruce shook his head; his voice was barely audible:

"I don't know." The sagging clouds were not heavier than his heart--"I wish I did."

Banule stood a moment in silent sympathy.

"Guess you won't work any more to-day," he suggested.

"Yes; tell Smaltz to start," Bruce answered dully.

"I've got to save the mercury anyhow."

Banule lingered.

"Say," he hesitated--obviously he found the confession embarrassing or else he hated to lay the final straw upon the camel's back--"just before you told me to shut down, the motor on the small pump started sparkin' pretty bad."

"Yes?" Bruce knew that if Banule admitted it was "pretty bad" it was bad indeed.

"I'll look it over if we can stop awhile."

Bruce shook his head.

"There's not an hour to lose. It's going to storm; I must get done."

"I 'spose we can start." Banule looked dubious. "I'll try it, but I think we'll have to quit."

_Was_ there anything more that could happen? Bruce asked himself in dumb misery as he picked up his scoop and brush and mechanically went to work when the pumps started and the water came.

His feet and hands were soon like ice but he was scarcely conscious of the pain for his heart-ache was so much greater. As he pursued the elusive quicksilver and worked the sand and gravel to the end of the box all he could see was the stack of receipted bills which the work and plant had cost, in shocking contrast to that tiny ball of amalgam lying in the chamois-skin on the rock. He had spent all of $40,000 and he doubted if he would take $20 from the entire clean-up as it now looked.

How could he break the news to Helen Dunbar? Where would he find the courage to tell the unfriendly stockholders the exact truth? It was a foregone conclusion that they would consider him a fakir and a crook.

It had to be done. As, in his imagination, he faced the ordeal he unconsciously straightened up.

"Burt! Burt! come quick!" Banule was waving his arms frantically from the platform of the pump-house. There was desperation in his cry for help. He dashed back inside as soon as he saw Bruce jump out of the sluice-box. Before Bruce reached the pump-house he heard Banule ringing the telephone violently, and his frenzied shout:

"Shut down, Smaltz! Shut down! Where are you? Can't you hear? For God's sake shut down, everything's burnin' up!"

He was ringing as though he would have torn the box loose from the wall when Bruce reached the pump-house door. Bruce turned sick when he heard the crackling of the burning motors and saw the electric flames.

"Somethin's happened in the power-house! I can't ring him! He must have got a shock! Until I know what's wrong, I don't dare shut down for fear I'll burn everything out up there!"

"_Keep her going!_" Bruce bounded through the door and dropped from the platform. Then he threw off his hat as he always did when excited, and ran. And how he ran! With his fists clenched and his arms tight against his sides he ran as though the hip-boots were the seven-league boots of fable.

In the stretch of deep sand he had to cross the weight was killing. The drag of the heavy boots seemed to pull his legs from their sockets but he did not slacken his pace. His breath was coming in gasps when he started up the steep trail which led from the sand over a high promontory. He clutched at bushes, rocks, anything to pull himself up and the pounding of his heart sounded to him like the chug of a steamboat, before he reached the top.

The veins and arteries in his forehead and neck seemed bursting, as did his over-taxed lungs, when he started stumbling and sliding down the other side. It was not the distance he had covered which had so winded him, nor even the terrific pace, but the dragging weight of the hip-boots. They felt as though they were soled with lead.

He imagined that he had crawled but as a matter of fact the distance would never be covered in the same space of time again.

The perspiration was trickling from his hair and through his thick eyebrows when he reached the boat landing where ordinarily they crossed. He brushed it out of his eyes with the back of his sleeve and stared at the place where usually the boat rode. It was gone! Smaltz had taken it instead of the overhead tram in which he always crossed.

There was no time to speculate as to Smaltz's reason. He kept on running along the river until he came to the steps of the platform where the heavy iron cage, suspended from a cable, was tied to a tree. Bruce bounded up the steps two at a time and loosened the rope. It was not until then that he saw that the chain and sprocket, which made the crossing easy, were missing. This, too, was strange. There was no time for speculation. Could he cross in it hand over hand? For answer he put his knee on the edge and kicked off.

The impetus sent it well over the river. Then it struck the slack in the cable and slowed up. Bruce set his teeth and went at it hand over hand. The test came when it started up grade. No ordinary man could have budged it and Bruce pulled to the very last ounce of his strength. He moved it only an inch at a time--slipping back two inches frequently when he changed hands.

If he lost the grip of both hands for a single second and slid back to the middle of the slack he realized that he was too near exhausted to pull up again, so, somehow, he hung on, making inarticulate sounds as he exerted superhuman strength, groaning like an animal loaded beyond its limit. If only he could last!

When he reached the platform on the other side he was just able to throw an arm around the tree and crawl out while the ponderous iron cage squeaking on the rusty cable rolled back to the middle of the river, where it swung to and fro.

Bruce gathered himself and tried to run. His legs refused to obey his will and he had to fall back to a walk. He hung over from the waist like a bent old man, his arms swinging limply at his sides.

He knew from the small amount of water going over the spillway that the machinery was still running and as he drew nearer to the power-house he could hear the hiss of the 200-feet head as it hit the wheel.

He dreaded entering for fear of what he should see. He had little doubt but that Smaltz was dead--electrocuted--roasted. He expected the sickening odor of burning flesh. He had been so long in getting there--but he had done his best--the power must be shut off first--he must get to the lever--if only he could run. His thoughts were incoherent--disconnected, but all of Smaltz. Smaltz had been loyal; Smaltz never had shirked; but he never had shown Smaltz the slightest evidence of friendship because of his unconquerable dislike.

Bruce was reproaching himself as he stepped up on the wooden casing which covered the pipes and nozzles inside the power-house. There he stopped and stood quite motionless, looking at Smaltz. Smaltz's face wore a look of keenest interest, as with one shoulder braced against the side of the building, his hands in his pockets, he watched the plant burn up.

Down below, Banule had thrown out the switch and the machinery was running away. A rim of fire encircled the commutators. The cold, blue flame of electrical energy was shooting its jagged flashes from every piece of magnetic metal it could reach, while the crackling of the short-circuited wires was like the continuous, rattling reports of a rapid-fire gun.

There was something terrifying in the sight of the racing machinery, something awe-inspiring in the spectacle of a great power gone mad. The wind from the round blur that represented the fly-wheel was a gale and in the semi-dusk,--Smaltz had closed the double-doors--the leaping flames and the screech of the red-hot bearings made the place an Inferno.

For a moment the amazing, unexpected sight deprived Bruce of the power to move. Then he jumped for the lever and shut down. It was not until the machinery responded that Smaltz turned. His yellow-brown eyes widened until they looked round. He had not counted on anyone's being able to cross the river for fully half an hour.

If Smaltz had been the villain of fiction, he would have been a coward as well. But Smaltz was not a coward. It is true he was startled--so startled that his skin turned a curious yellow-green like a half-ripe pear--but he was not afraid. He knew that he was "in for it." He knew that something was going to happen, and quick. That Bruce was sitting on the wooden casing quietly pulling off his heavy boots did not deceive him in the least.

It was as still as the tomb in the power-house when Bruce stood up and walked toward Smaltz. Grimy streaks of perspiration showed on his colorless face, from which every drop of blood seemed to have fled, and his black eyes, that shone always with the soft brilliancy of a warm, impulsive nature and an imaginative mind, were glittering and purposeful.

Smaltz stood his ground as Bruce advanced.

"Why didn't you answer that telephone, Smaltz?"

In feigned surprise Smaltz glanced at the box.

"I declare--the receiver's dropped off the hook!"

Bruce ignored the answer; he did not even look, but stepped closer.

"Why didn't you shut down?"

Smaltz summoned his impudent grin, but it wavered and faded under Bruce's burning eyes even while he replied in a tone of injured innocence--

"How should I know? The bell didn't ring--Banule hadn't told me to."

Bruce paid no attention to the foolish excuse. He demanded again:

"Why didn't you shut down, Smaltz?"

"I've told you once," was the sullen answer.

Bruce turned to the telephone and rang the bell hard.

"Hello--hello--hello!" came the frantic reply.

"Can you swim, Banule?"

"Yes."

"Then take it where the cable crosses the river. Come quick." He put the receiver back on its hook and stepped to the lever. Smaltz's eyes opened wide as Bruce shoved it hard. He stared as though he thought Bruce had gone out of his mind. Then the dynamos began to pick up.

"What you goin' to do?" he shouted above the screech of the belting and the hot bearings.