The Silver Horde Part 9

CHAPTER V

IN WHICH A COMPACT IS FORMED

Now that he had committed himself to action, Boyd Emerson became a different being. He was no longer the dispirited cynic of yesterday, but an eager, voluble optimist athirst for knowledge and afire with impatience. On the homeward drive he had bombarded Cherry with a running fusillade of questions, so that by the time they had arrived at her house she was mentally and physically fatigued. He seemed insatiable, drawing from her every atom of information she possessed, and although he was still hard, incisive, and aloof, it was in quite a different way. The intensity of his concentration had gathered all feeling into one definite pa.s.sion, and had sucked him dry of ordinary emotions.

In the days that followed she was at his elbow constantly, aiding him at every turn in his zeal to acquire a knowledge of the cannery system. The odd conviction grew upon her that he was working against time, that there was a limit to his period of action, for he seemed obsessed by an ever- growing pa.s.sion to accomplish some end within a given time, and had no thought for anything beyond the engrossing issue into which he had plunged. She was dumfounded by his sudden transformation, and delighted at first, but later, when she saw that he regarded her only as a means to an end, his cool a.s.sumption of leaders.h.i.+p piqued her and she felt hurt.

Constantine had been sent for Balt, with instructions to keep on until he found the fisherman, even if the quest carried him over the range. During the days of impatient waiting they occupied their time largely in reconnoitring the nearest cannery, permission to go over which Cherry had secured from the watchman, who was indebted to her. The man was timid at first, but Emerson won him over, then proceeded to pump him dry of information, as he had done with his hostess. He covered the plant like a ferret; he showed such powers of adaptability and a.s.similation as to excite the girl's wonder; his grasp of detail was instant; his retentive faculty tenacious; he never seemed to rest.

"Why, you already know more about a cannery than a superintendent does,"

she remarked, after nearly a week of this. "I believe you could build one yourself."

He smiled. "I'm an engineer by education, and this is really in my line.

It's the other part that has me guessing."

"Balt can handle that."

"But why doesn't he come?" he questioned, crossly. A score of times he had voiced his impatience, and Cherry was hard pushed to soothe him.

Nor was she the only one to note the change in him; Fraser followed him about and looked on in bewilderment.

"What have you done to 'Frozen Annie'?" he asked Cherry on one occasion.

"You must have fed him a speed-ball, for I never saw a guy gear up so fast. Why, he was the darndest c.r.a.pe-hanger I ever met till you got him gingered up; he didn't have no more spirit than a sick kitten. Of course, he ain't what you'd call genial and expansive yet, but he's developed a remarkable burst of speed, and seems downright hopeful at times."

"Hopeful of what?"

"Ah! that's where I wander; he's a puzzle to me. Hopeful of making money, I suppose."

"That isn't it. I can see he doesn't care for the money itself," the girl declared, emphatically. She would have liked to ask Fraser if he knew anything about the mysterious beauty of the magazine, but refrained.

"I don't think so, either," said the man. "He acts more like somebody was going to ring the gong on him if this fish thing don't let him out. It seems to be a case bet with him."

"It's a case bet with me, too," said the girl. "My men are ready to quit, and--well, Willis Marsh will see that I am financially ruined!"

"Oho! So this is your only 'out,'" grinned "Fingerless" Fraser. "Now, I had a different idea as to why you got Emerson started." He was observing her shrewdly.

"What idea, pray?"

"Well, talking straight and side-stepping subterfuge, this is a lonely place for a woman like you, and our mutual friend ain't altogether unattractive."

Cherry's cheeks flamed, but her tone was icy. "This is entirely a business matter."

"Hm--m--! I ain't never heard you touted none as a business woman," said the adventurer.

"Have you ever heard me"--the color faded from the girl's face, and it was a trifle drawn--"discussed in _any_ way?"

"You know, Emerson makes me uncomfortable sometimes, he is so d.a.m.n moral,"

Fraser replied, indirectly. "He won't stand for anything off color. He's a real square guy, he is, the kind you read about."

"You didn't answer my question," insisted Cherry.

Again Fraser evaded the issue. "Now, if this Marsh is going after you in earnest this summer, why don't you let me stick around here till spring and look-out your game? I'll drop a monkey-wrench in his gear-case or put a spider in his dumpling; and it's more than an even shot that if him and I got to know each other right well, I'd own his cannery before fall."

"Thank you, I can take care of myself!" said the girl, in a tone that closed the conversation.

Late one stormy night--Constantine had been gone a week--the two men whom they were expecting blew in through the blinding smother, half frozen and well-nigh exhausted, with the marks of hard travel showing in their sunken cheeks and in the bleeding pads of their dog-team. But although a hundred miles of impa.s.sable trails lay behind them, Balt refused rest or nourishment until he had learned why Cherry had sent for him.

"What's wrong?" he demanded of her, staring with suspicious eyes at the strangers.

As briefly as possible she outlined the situation the while Boyd Emerson took his measure, for no person quite like this fisherman had ever crossed the miner's path. He saw a huge, barrel-chested creature whose tremendous muscles bulged beneath his nondescript garments, whose red, upstanding bristle of hair topped a leather countenance from which gleamed a pair of the most violent eyes Emerson had ever beheld, the dominant expression of which was rage. His jaw was long, and the seams from nostril and lip, half hidden behind a stiff stubble, gave it the set of granite. His hands were gnarled and cracked from an age-long immersion in brine, his voice was hoa.r.s.e with the echo of drumming ratlines. He might have lived forty, sixty years, but every year had been given to the sea, for its breath was in his lungs, its foaming violence was in his blood.

As the significance of Cherry's words sank into his mind, the signs of an unholy joy overspread the fisherman's visage; his thick lips writhed into an evil grin, and his hairy paws continued to open and close hungrily.

"Do you mean business?" he bellowed at Emerson.

"I do."

"Can you fight?"

"Yes."

"Will you do what I tell you, or have you got a lot of sick notions?"

"No," the young man declared, stoutly, "I have no scruples; but I won't do what you or anybody else tells me. I'll do what I please. I intend to run this enterprise absolutely, and run it my way."

"This gang won't stop at anything," warned Balt.

"Neither will I," affirmed the other, with a scowl and a dangerous down- drawing of his lip corners. "I've _got_ to win, so don't waste time wondering how far I'll go. What I want to know is if you will join my enterprise."

The giant uttered a mirthless chuckle. "I'll give my life to it."

"I knew you would," flashed Cherry, her eyes beaming.

"And if we don't beat Willis Marsh, by G.o.d, I'll kill him!" Balt shouted, fully capable of carrying out his threat, for his bloodshot eyes were lit with bitter hatred and the memory of his wrongs was like gall in his mouth. Turning to the girl, he said:

"Now give me something to eat. I've been living on dog fish till my belly is full of bones."

He ripped the ragged parka from his back and flung it in a sodden heap beside the stove; then strode after her, with the others following.

She seated him at her table and spread food before him--great quant.i.ties of food, which he devoured ravenously, humped over in his seat like a bear, his jaw hanging close to his plate. His appet.i.te was as ungoverned as his temper; he did not taste his meal nor note its character, but demolished whatever fell first to his hand, staring curiously up from under his thatched brows at Emerson, now and then grunting some interruption to the other's rapid talk. Of Cherry and of "Fingerless"

Fraser, who regarded him with awe, he took not the slightest heed. He gorged himself with sufficient provender for four people; then observing that the board was empty, swept the crumbs and remnants from his lips, and rose, saying:

"Now, let's go out by the stove. I've been cold for three days."