The Yukon Trail Part 18

"Was he cracked when you used to know him on Frenchman Creek?" countered the young man.

Macdonald shot a quick, slant look at him. The old man had been talking, had he?

"He was cracked and broke too," laughed the mine-owner hardily. "Cracked when he came, broke when he left."

"Yes, that was one of the stories he told me." Gordon turned to Sheba.

"You should meet the old man, Miss O'Neill. He knew your father at Dawson and on Bonanza."

The girl was all eagerness. "I'd like to. Does he ever come to Kusiak?"

"Nonsense!" cut in Diane sharply. She flashed at Gordon a look of annoyance. "He's nothing but a daft old idiot, my dear."

The dinner had started wrong, and though Paget steered the conversation to safer ground, it did not go very well. At least three of those present were a little on edge. Even Sheba, who had missed entirely the point of the veiled thrusts, knew that Elliot was not in harmony with either Diane or Macdonald.

Gordon was ashamed of himself. He could not quite have told what were the impulses that had moved him to carry the war into the camp of the enemy. Perhaps, more than anything else, it had been a certain look of quiet a.s.surance in the eyes of his rival when he looked at Sheba.

He rose promptly at ten.

"Must you go so soon?" Diane asked. She was smiling at him with bland mockery.

"I really must," answered Elliot.

His hostess followed him into the hall. She watched him get into his coat before saying what was on her mind.

"What did you mean by telling Sheba that old Holt knew her father?

What is he to tell her if they meet--that her father died of pneumonia brought on by drink? Is that what you want?"

Gordon was honestly contrite. "I didn't think of that."

"No, you were too busy thinking of something mean to say to Mr.

Macdonald."

He agreed, yet could not forbear one dig more. "I suppose I wanted Holt to tell her that Macdonald robbed her father and indirectly was the cause of his death."

"Absurd!" exploded Diane. "You're so simple that you accept as true the gossip of every crack-brained idiot--when it suits your purpose."

He smiled, boyishly, engagingly, as he held out his hand. "Don't let's quarrel, Di. I admit I forgot myself."

"All right. We won't. But don't believe all the catty talk you hear, Gordon."

"I'll try to believe only the truth." He smiled, a little ruefully. "And it isn't necessary for you to explain why the curfew law applies to me and not to Macdonald."

She was on her dignity at once. "You're quite right. It isn't necessary.

But I'm going to tell you anyhow. Mr. Macdonald is going away to-morrow for two or three days and he has some business he wants to talk over with Sheba. He had made an appointment with her, and I didn't think it fair to let your coming interfere with it."

Gordon took this facer with his smile still working.

"I've got a little business I want to talk over with _you_, Di."

She had always been a young woman of rather a hard finish. Now she met him fairly, eye to eye. "Any time you like, Gordon."

Elliot carried away with him one very definite impression. Diane intended Sheba to marry Macdonald if she could bring it about. She had as good as served notice on him that the girl was spoken for.

The young man set his square jaw. Diane was used to having her own way.

So was Macdonald. Well, the Elliots had a will of their own too.

CHAPTER XII

SHEBA SAYS "PERHAPS"

Obeying the orders of the general in command, Peter took himself to his den with the excuse that he had blue-prints to work over. Presently Diane said she thought she heard one of the children crying and left to investigate.

The Scotchman strode to the fireplace and stood looking down into the glowing coals. He seemed in no hurry to break the silence and Sheba glanced at his strong, brooding face a little apprehensively. Her excitement showed in the color that was beating into her cheeks. She knew of only one subject that would call for so formal a private talk between her and Macdonald, and any discussion of this she would very much have liked to postpone.

He turned from the fire to Sheba. It was characteristic of him that he plunged straight at what he wanted to say.

"I've asked to see you alone, Miss O'Neill, because I want to make a confession and rest.i.tution--to begin with," he told her abruptly.

She had a sense of suddenly stilled pulses. "That sounds very serious."

The young woman smiled faintly.

His face of chiseled granite masked all emotion. It kept under lock and key the insurgent impulses that moved him when he looked into the sloe eyes charged with reserve. Back of them, he felt, was the mystery of purity, of maidenhood. He longed to know her better, to find out and to appropriate for himself the woman that lay behind the fine veil of flesh. She seemed to him delicate as a flame and as vivid. There would come a day when her innocent, pa.s.sional nature would respond to the love of a man as a waiting harp does to skillful fingers.

"My story goes away back to the Klondike days. I told you that I knew your father on Frenchman Creek, but I didn't say much about knowing him on Bonanza."

"Mr. Strong has told me something about the days on Bonanza, and I knew you would tell me more some day--when you wanted to speak about it." She was seated in a low chair and the white throat lifted toward him was round as that of a bird.

"Your father was among the first of those who stampeded to Bonanza. He and Strong took up a claim together. I bought out the interest of your father."

"You told me that."

His masterful eyes fastened to hers. "I didn't tell you that I took advantage of him. He was--not well. I used that against him in the bargaining. He wanted ready money, and I tempted him."

"Do you mean that you--wronged him?"

"Yes. I cheated him." He was resolved to gloss over nothing, to offer no excuses. "I didn't know there was gold on his claim, but I had what we call a hunch. I took his claim without giving value received."

It was her turn now to look into the fire and think. From the letters of her father, from talks with old-timers she knew how in the stampedes every man's hand had been for himself, how keen-edged had been the pa.s.sion for gold, a veritable l.u.s.t that corroded the souls of men.

"But--I don't understand." Her brave, steady eyes looked directly into those of Macdonald. "If he felt you had--done him a wrong--why did he come to you when he was ill?"

"He was coming to demand justice of me. On the way he suffered exposure and caught pneumonia. The word reached us, and Strong and I brought him to our cabin."

"You faced a blizzard to bring him in. Mr. Strong told me how you risked your life by carrying him through the storm--how you wouldn't give up and leave him, though you were weak and staggering yourself. He says it was a miracle you ever got through."