Branded Part 17

At the end of a week, after we had made two trips apiece, we had nearly $7,000 in bank. Figured as a return for our labor, killing as that was, it was magnificent. But as a war chest it was merely a drop in the bucket. Given plenty of time, we might have won out eventually by the sacked-sample route; but we knew we were not going to be given time.

Blackwell had been up twice; and the second time, Gifford, who was acting as hammerman, had to sit in the bottom of the shaft, pretending to load the half-drilled hole. Otherwise, the heavy-lidded eyes, peering down over the barrel of the windla.s.s would a.s.suredly have seen the steadily widening ore body.

On the sixth day Everton came across the spur. I think I should have known him anywhere, but he did not recognize me, though I stood and talked with him at the shaft mouth. His visit, as I took it, was not a spying one. On the contrary it appeared to be merely neighborly. After beating about the bush for a little time, he came down to particulars.

We must surely know, he said, that we were on Lawrenceburg ground, and it was too bad we were throwing away our hard work. To this he added a vague warning. Blackwell had been taking our amateur effort as a good joke on Barrett, whom he had known only as a bank clerk. But the edge of the joke was wearing off, and the superintendent, who, as it seemed, had been watching us more closely than we had supposed, was beginning to wonder why we kept at it so faithfully; and why our camp was always guarded at night.

The following day was Sunday, and Everton came again, this time accompanied by his daughter. Gifford was windla.s.s winder at the moment, and he let himself down into the shaft, swearing, when he saw them coming over the shoulder of the spur.

I left our carpenter-man busily covering up the lode while I scrambled out to meet and divert the visitors. My first sight of Mary Everton, grown, made me gasp. There had been no promise of her womanly winsomeness and pulse-quickening beauty in the plain-faced little girl with large brown eyes--the little girl who used to thrust her hand into mine on the way home from school and tell me about the unforgivable meanness of the boy who "cribbed" for his examinations.

Everton introduced me as "Mr. Bertrand," and for a flitting instant I saw something at the back of the brown eyes that made cold chills run up and down my spine. And her first words increased rather than diminished the burden of sudden misgiving.

"I knew a Bertrand once," she said, shaking hands frankly after the manner of the West. "It was when I was a little girl in school. Only Bertrand was his Christian name."

Without knowing that he was doing it, her father came to my rescue. "We haven't any near neighbors, Mr. Bertrand, and Polly wanted to see your mine," he said. And then: "Do you realize that it is Sunday?"

I led the glorified Polly Everton of my school days to the mouth of the shallow shaft. "Our 'mine,' as your father is polite enough to call it, isn't very extensive, as yet," I pointed out. "You can see it at a glance."

She took my word for it and gave the windla.s.s-straddled pit only a glance. Barrett had had his nap out and was showing himself at the door of the shack. My companion nodded brightly at him and he joined us at once. "We are quite old friends, Mr. Barrett and I," she hastened to say, when I would have introduced him; and this left me free to attach myself to her father.

Phineas Everton had changed very little with the pa.s.sing years. I remembered him as a sort of cut-and-dried school-man, bookworm and scientist, and, as I afterward learned, he was still all three of these.

Partly because I was telling myself that it was safer for me to keep my distance from the girl who remembered the boy Bertrand, and partly because I wished to draw the a.s.sayer away from our dump, I took Everton over to the shack and we sat together on the door-step. For some little time I couldn't make out what he was driving at in his talk, but finally it came out, by inference, at least. Somebody--Blackwell, perhaps--had started the story that we were planning a raid on the Lawrenceburg.

"How could that be?" I asked, remembering that, only the day before, Everton had a.s.serted that we were already trespa.s.sers on Lawrenceburg property.

"It is an old trick," he commented, rather sorrowfully, I fancied. "In all the older locations there have been bits of ground missed in the criss-crossing of the claims. Some one of you three has been sharp enough to find one of those bits just here."

"Well; supposing we have--what then?" I asked.

He was silent for a half-minute or so. Barrett had led Mary Everton to the shoulder of the spur where the view of the distant town was un.o.bstructed, and Gifford was still in the shaft.

"I don't know you, Mr. Bertrand," my seatmate began slowly, "and I shouldn't venture to set up any standard of right and wrong in your behalf. But that young man out yonder with my daughter: I've known him a long time, and I knew his people. It is a thousand pities to drag him into your undertaking."

"There has been no especial 'dragging' that I am aware of; and I don't know why you should be sorry for Barrett," I returned rather tartly.

"I am sorry because Robert Barrett has. .h.i.therto lived an upright and honest life. He had excellent prospects in the bank, and it seems a great pity that he has seen fit to throw them away."

By this time I was entirely at sea. "You will have to make it plainer--much plainer," I told him.

"I have been hoping you wouldn't force me to call it by its ugly name,"

was the sober rejoinder. "It is blackmail, Mr. Bertrand; criminal blackmail, as I think you must know."

"That is a pretty serious charge for you to make, isn't it?"

"Not more serious than the occasion warrants. You three have discovered this little sc.r.a.p of unclaimed ground in the middle of the Lawrenceburg property. You are digging; and presently, when you are down far enough so that your operations cannot be observed from the shaft mouth, you will announce that you have struck the Lawrenceburg ore body. In that event, as you have doubtless foreseen, our company will have no recourse but to buy you off at your own figure."

"Well?" I challenged.

"Your announcement, when you make it, will be a lie," was the cold-voiced reply. "You are 'salting' the crevices as you go down--and with Lawrenceburg ore."

I sighed my relief. His guess was so far from the truth that I was more than willing to help it along. If the Lawrenceburg people could only be persuaded that our imaginary coup was to be postponed until the bottom of our shaft should be out of sight from the surface, we were measurably safe.

"We may ask you to prove your charge when the proper time comes, Mr.

Everton," I suggested.

He took a small fragment of bluish-gray ore from his pocket and showed it to me, saying, quietly, "I can prove it now; this is Lawrenceburg ore: I handle and test it every day, and I am perfectly familiar with it. I picked this piece up a few minutes ago on your dump."

It is always the impact of the unexpected that sends a man scurrying into the armory of his past in search of the readiest weapon for the emergency. Recall, once again, if you will, the three years of a.s.sociation with criminals, and the fact that I was at that moment under the ban of the law as an escaped convict. I could think of nothing save the gaining of time, precious time, at whatever cost.

I shall always be thankful that the temptation did not reach the length of making me offer to buy Everton's silence. That, indeed, would have been suicidal. Yet the prompting suggestion came to me, in company with others still more ruthless. I was telling myself that the situation was sufficiently alarming to warrant almost any expedient. Though he was not yet aware of it, Everton had discovered our real secret; he knew we had ore, which--as yet--he thought we were stealing from the Lawrenceburg bins. If he should take one additional step. . . .

The thought-loom shuttled pretty rapidly for a few short-lived seconds.

If Everton should show the bit of ore to Blackwell the superintendent might believe the charge that we were stealing the Lawrenceburg values for the "salting" purpose; in which case he would doubtless swear out warrants for us. Or he might see farther than Everton had seen and jump to the conclusion that we had actually made a strike of our own in the shallow pit. Either way there was sharp trouble ahead.

"You have us down pretty fine, haven't you?" I said, at the end of the reflective pause. "May I ask what use you are going to make of your discovery?"

"I purpose giving you three young men a chance to talk it over seriously among yourselves before I take any further steps. I suppose I should have gone direct to Barrett. I know him, and I know there is plenty of good in him to appeal to. But candidly, Mr. Bertrand, I didn't have the heart to--well, to let him know that I knew."

A bitter thought swept across me like a hot wind from the desert. Was there never to be any let-up? Were people always going to take it for granted that _I_ was the criminal? I have known physical hunger and hunger intellectual, but they were as nothing compared with the moral famine that gripped me just then. I would have p.a.w.ned my soul for a bare modic.u.m of the commonplace, every-day respectability which is able to look the world squarely in the face without fear or favor--without asking any odds of it.

Everton was evidently waiting for his reply, and I gave it to him.

"Criminality is largely relative--like everything else in the world, don't you think?" I said, letting him feel the raw edge of the bitterness that was rasping at me. "In coming to me, as you have, you, yourself, are compounding a felony."

He shrugged his thin shoulders and looked away at the two on the bluff's edge.

"Properly speaking, Mr. Bertrand, I am only an interested onlooker; and I am interested chiefly on Barrett's account. What I may feel it my duty to do if you three remain obdurate will be purely without reference to your rather sophistical definition of criminality. In any event, Blackwell is the man you will have to reckon with. As I say, I am concerned only so far as the outcome may involve Robert Barrett."

"I'll tell the others what you have said," I agreed; and with this the matter rested.

XIV

Paper Walls

We held our second war council shortly after Phineas Everton and his daughter had disappeared over the shoulder of the spur on their way back to the Lawrenceburg. I gave my two partners the gist of the conversation with the a.s.sayer, briefly and without comment. Gifford oozed profanity; but Barrett laughed and said:

"Every little new thing we run up against merely urges us to let out one more notch in the speed of the hurry hoist. Everton's suspicion is an entirely natural one, and for my part, I only hope he and Blackwell will hang on to it. If they should, there is an even chance that they will watch their ore sheds a little closer and leave it to us to make the first move in the imagined blackmailing scheme--all of which will give us more time."

"That's all right; but we can't bet on the 'hang on,'" was Gifford's demurrer. "They may think they've got the straight of it now, but there's no law against their changing their minds mighty suddenly.

Suppose Everton shows up his bit of a sample, and they both take a second whirl at the thing and pull down a guess that it isn't stolen Lawrenceburg ore, after all? We've got to improve upon this pick-a-back ore s.h.i.+pment of ours, some way, and do it mighty quick."

This was the biting fact; we all accepted it as our most pressing need and fell to discussing ways and means. There was already a full wagon-load of the sacked ore hidden under the sleeping-shack, and at the rate the lode was widening we could confidently figure on getting out as much more every second day, or oftener. There was a good wagon road to town from the Lawrenceburg plant, but of course we dared not use it so long as we were making any attempt to maintain secrecy. The alternative was a long haul down our own gulch, around the end of the spur, and across the slope of the mountain-side below. Even this, the only other practicable route, would be in plain sight from the Lawrenceburg workings, once the team should pa.s.s out upon the bare lower hillside.

Moreover, we were obliged to consider the risk involved in taking at least one other man--the driver of the team--into our confidence.

Since the hauling would have to be done in the night, an honest man would suspect crookedness, and the other kind would blackmail us to a finish. Gifford spoke of this, saying that it was a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.

None the less, we were all agreed that the wagon-hiring hazard would have to be taken, and at the close of the talk Barrett went to town to make the arrangement. It was after dark when he returned. His mission had been miraculously successful: he had not only found a trustworthy teamster who was willing, for a good, round sum, to risk his horses on the mountain at night; he had also interviewed the superintendent of the sampling works and concluded a deal by the terms of which the company--as a personal favor to Barrett--agreed to treat a limited quant.i.ty of our highest-grade ore in wagon-load lots, making cash settlements therefor.