Thurston of Orchard Valley Part 36

"You have probably heard nothing that makes this visit particularly welcome," answered Millicent, bitterly, and the elder lady smiled.

"I guess folks are apt to make the most of the worst points in all of us," she observed. "But that is not what we are going to talk about.

You are an old friend of a man we are indebted to, and, just because I believe there's no meanness in Geoffrey Thurston, you are very welcome to the best that we can do for you. I will ask him over to meet you."

Millicent flushed. Under the circ.u.mstances she was touched by the speaker's sincerity, and grateful for the way she expressed herself.

Perhaps it was this which prompted her to an almost involuntary outpouring of confidence.

"I am the woman who should have married him," she said simply.

Mrs. Savine merely nodded, and dipped her needle somewhat blindly into the embroidery on her knee before she replied: "I had guessed it already. You missed a very good husband, my dear. I don't want to force your confidence, but I imagine that you have some distress to bear, and I might help you. I have seen a good deal of trouble in my time."

Millicent was unstable by nature. She was also excited and feverish.

Afterwards she wondered why a kindly word from a woman she knew so slightly should excite in her such a desire for advice and sympathy.

In spite of her occasional brusqueries, it was hard for anyone to say no to Mrs. Savine. So Millicent answered, with a sigh:

"I know it now when it is too late--no one knows it better. You do well to believe in Geoffrey Thurston."

Mrs. Savine looked at her very keenly, then nodded. "I believe in you, too. There! I guess you can trust me."

Millicent bent her head, and her eyes were misty. A raw wound, which the frost had irritated, marred the delicate curve of her upper lip.

It became painfully visible.

"It is only fit that I should tell you, since I am your guest," she said, touching the scar with one finger. "That is the mark of my husband's hand, and I am leaving him forever because I would not connive at Geoffrey's ruin. Geoffrey is acting as trustee for my property, and I cannot leave for England without consulting him. So much is perhaps due to you, and--because of your kindness I should not like you to think too ill of me--I will tell you the rest. To begin with, Geoffrey has never shown me anything but kindness."

Mrs. Savine gently patted the speaker's arm, and Millicent related what had led up to her journey, or part of it. When she had finished, the elder lady commented:

"You are doing a risky thing; but I can't quite blame you, and if I could, I would not do it now. You will stay right here until Geoffrey has fixed up all plans for your journey, and you can trust me to be kind to you. Still, there's one favor I'm going to ask. I want you to let me tell my niece as much of what you have told me as I think desirable. Remember, Geoffrey has been good to you."

For a moment Millicent's face grew hard, and her eyes defiant. She smiled sadly as she answered: "It is his due, and can make no difference now. Tell her what seems best."

Meanwhile, Geoffrey was busy in the canon camp. With Black and Mattawa Tom beside him, he stood holding as symbol, both of equality and authority, a bright ax in his hand, while driller, laborer, and machine-tender, wondering greatly, were pa.s.sed in review before him.

Black had been boarded with a trust rancher some distance from the camp. At last a certain rock driller pa.s.sed in turn, and Tom from Mattawa explained: "He's a friend of Walla Jake, and as I told you, the last man we put on."

"That's the blame reptile who backed up Shackleby's story at the Blue Bird mine," cried Black, excitedly. "If there's anyone up to mischief, you can bet all you've got he's the man."

"Stop there, you!" Geoffrey's voice was sharp and stern. "Cut him down if he feels for a revolver or tries to make a break of it, section foreman. Come here, close in behind him, you two."

After a swift glance over his shoulder the man who was summoned advanced, scowling darkly. He sullenly obeyed Geoffrey's second command, "Stand there--now a few steps aside," leaving his footprints clearly outlined in a patch of otherwise untrodden snow.

"Good!" observed Geoffrey. "Lay your template [Transcriber's note: corrected from "templet"] on those marks, Tom." After the foreman had produced a paper pattern which fitted them, Thurston added:

"We're going to make a prisoner of you, and jail you ourselves, until we can get a formal warrant. What for? Well, you're going to be tried for conspiracy among the other things. You see that pattern? It fits the foot of a man who went out one night with a spy Shackleby sent over to see how and when you would play the devil with our work in the canon. It even shows the stump of the filed-off creeper-spike on your right boot. There's no use protesting--a friend of yours here will help us to trace your career back to the finding of the Blue Bird mine.

Take him along and lock him into the galvanized store shed."

The prisoner was taken away, and Geoffrey turned to his foreman.

"He was in the drilling gang, Tom?"

"Juss so! Working under the wall bed of the canon."

"That lets some light on to the subject. You can dismiss the others.

Come with me, Tom."

Twenty minutes later Geoffrey stood among the boulders that the shrunken river had left exposed near the foot of a giant cliff which, instead of overhanging, thrust forward a slanting spur into the rush of water, and so formed a bend. It was one of the main obstacles Geoffrey, who wondered at the formation, had determined to remove by the simultaneous shock of several heavy blasting charges. To that end a gang of men had long been drilling deep holes into the projecting spur, and on the preceding day charges of high explosives had been sunk in most of them with detonators and fuses ready coupled for connection to the igniting gear. Geoffrey stood upon a boulder and looked up at the tremendous face of rock which, rising above the spur, held up the hill slope above. The stratification was looser than usual, and several mighty ma.s.ses had fallen from it into the river. There were also crannies at its feet.

"You've seen all the drilled holes. Anything strike you yet?" inquired Mattawa Tom.

"Yes," was the answer. "It occurs to me that French Louis said he couldn't tally out all the sticks of giant powder that he'd stowed away a week or two ago. I think you foolishly told him he couldn't count straight."

"I did," admitted Tom from Mattawa. "Louis ain't great at counting, and he allowed he'd never let go of the key to the powder magazine."

"I fancy a smart mechanic could make a key that would do as well,"

remarked Geoffrey. "It strikes me, also, after considering the strata yonder, that, if sufficient shots were fired in those crannies, they would bring the whole cliff and the hillside above it down on top of us--you'll remember I cautioned you to drill well clear of the rock face itself? Now, if coupled fuses were led from the shot holes we filled to those we didn't, so that both would fire simultaneously, n.o.body afterwards would find anything suspicious under several thousand tons of debris. I'm inclined to think there are such fuses. Take your shovel, and we'll look for them."

They worked hard for half an hour, and then Geoffrey chuckled. Lifting what looked like a stout black cord from among the rubble where it was carefully hidden, Mattawa Tom said: "This time I guess you've struck it dead."

"Follow the thing up," Geoffrey commanded.

This was done, and further searching revealed the charges for which they were searching, skillfully concealed in the crannies. Geoffrey's face was grim as he said:

"It was planned well. They would have piled half yonder shoulder of the range into the canon if they had got their devilish will. Pull up every fuse, and fix fresh detonators to all the charges. Change every man in that gang, and never leave this spot except when the section boss replaces you, until we're ready for firing. Thank Heaven that will be in a few more days, and my nerves may hold out that long. I've hardly had an hour's sleep in the last week, Tom."

While Geoffrey was acting in accordance with the warning she had delivered, Helen was on her way back to the ranch with his a.s.sistant as her escort. Helen had not forgotten that it was her remonstrance which had originally obtained a humble appointment for English Jim. He had several times visited the ranch with messages, and was accordingly invited to enter when they reached the house. He recognized Mrs.

Leslie at once, but he could be discreet, and, warned by something in her manner, addressed no word to her until he found opportunity for a few moments' private speech before leaving.

"You remember me, I see," Millicent said, and English Jim bowed.

"I do; perhaps because I have reason to. Though most reluctant to say so, I lost a valuable paper the last time I was in your presence, and that paper was afterwards used against my employer. Pardon me for speaking so plainly; you said you were a friend of Mr. Thurston's."

"You need not be diffident," replied Millicent, checking him with a wave of her hand. "Suppose it was I who found the drawing? You would be willing to keep silence in return for----"

It was English Jim who interrupted now. "In return for your solemn promise to render no more a.s.sistance to our enemies. I do not forget your kindness, and hate the painful necessity of speaking so to you, but I am Thurston's man, soul and body."

"I ask your pardon," said Millicent. "Will you believe me if I say that I lately ran some risk to bring Mr. Thurston a much-needed warning? I am going to England in a day or two, and shall never come back again. Therefore, you can rely upon my promise."

"Implicitly," returned English Jim. "You must have had some reason I cannot guess for what you did. That sounds like presumption, doesn't it? But you can count upon my silence, madam."

"You are a good man." Millicent impulsively held out her hand to him.

"I have met very few so loyal or so charitable. May I wish you all prosperity in your career?"

English Jim merely bowed as he went out, and Millicent's eyes grew dim as she thought of her treachery to Geoffrey.

"There are good men in the world after all, though it has been my misfortune to chiefly come across the bad," she admitted to herself.

Darkness had fallen when Thurston rode up to the ranch. He pa.s.sed half an hour alone with Millicent and went away without speaking to anyone else. After he had gone Millicent said to Mrs. Savine:

"I start for England as soon as possible, and Mr. Thurston is going to the railroad with me. I shall never return to Canada."

Pleading fatigue, she retired early, and for a time Mrs. Savine and Helen sat silently in the glow of the great hearth upon which immense logs were burning. There was no other light in the room, and each flicker of the fire showed that Helen's face was more than usually serious.