The Gold Trail Part 45

"Well," he continued, "we'll get to the point of it. It's kind of easy finding a gold-mine when you've a friend of my kind to put you on to it, but it's quite often a blame hard thing to keep it. Now, you'll have men from the cities wanting to buy you up, offering you a few hundred dollars for the claims you've struck, and if you're fools you'll take it. If not, you'll hold off until the Grenfell Consols go up on the market and then give us first call on buying the lot. If we can't take the deal you'll get six or eight times as much in Vancouver as you would if you let go now."

One of the men who had spoken broke in again.

"Boys," he said, "when Saunders makes a proposition of that kind it's because he sees how he's going to get something out of it. But for all that, I guess it's sound advice he's giving you."

There was a little consultation among the men, and then one of them asked a question that evidently met with the favor of his companions.

"How are we going to live in the meanwhile?"

"That's quite easy," said the storekeeper, with a smile. "I'll supply you with pork and flour, drills and giant-powder, at bed-rock figure, while you get in your a.s.sessment work, and while you live on your ranches afterward until you make a deal. All I ask is that you won't sell until the Grenfell's floated, and that you'll give us first call then. It's a cold fact that if I had the money I'd buy you all up now."

There was truth in his last a.s.surance, which was at the same time a highly diplomatic one, for it occurred to most of the audience that if there was anything to be made by waiting they might as well have it as anybody else; and after a further consultation they gave him their promise. Then they trooped away to prepare their dinner, and Saunders turned to Devine with a contented smile.

"I guess," he said, "we've headed those company men right off this lode, and, what's most as much to the purpose, the boys will have to trade with me if anybody comes up and starts another store. Just now I'd feel quite happy if I knew how Jim was running things."

He was soon to learn, for he had scarcely risen from a meal of salt pork, somewhat blackened in the frying-pan, and grindstone bread indifferently baked by Devine, when Jim and several strangers plodded into camp. He was very ragged, and apparently very weary, but he displayed no diffidence in accounting for his presence.

"It was kind of lonesome down there, and I figured I'd come along," he said.

Saunders gazed at him for a moment in mute indignation before his feelings found relief in words.

"And you raking in money by the shovelful!" he gasped.

"No," said Jim, decisively, "I wasn't quite doing that. Anyway, it was your money. I got only a share of it; and you didn't figure I'd stay back there weighing out flour and sugar when there was a gold strike on?"

Saunders contrived to master his anger, and merely made a little gesture of resignation. He was acquainted with the restlessness which usually impels the average westerner to throw up ranch or business and strike into the bush when word of a new mineral find comes down, though much is demanded of those who take the gold trail, and, as a rule, their gains are remarkably small.

"Whom did you leave to run the store?" asked Saunders.

"n.o.body," said Jim. "Except two Siwash, there was n.o.body in the settlement; and, anyway, the store was most empty when the boys came along." He indicated the strangers with a wave of his hand. "As they hadn't a dollar between them I told them I'd give them credit, and they could pack up with them anything they could find in the place."

Saunders appeared to find some difficulty in preserving a befitting self-restraint, but he accomplished it.

"What did you do with the money you'd taken already?" was his next question.

"Wrapped it up in a flour-bag," said the man from Okanagan, cheerfully. "Then I pitched the thing into an empty sugar-keg. Wrote up what the boys owed you, and put the book into the keg too. Anyway, I wrote up as much as I could remember."

Saunders looked at Devine, who stood by, and there was contempt beyond expression in his eyes.

"That," he said, "is just the kind of blamed fool he is."

Then he turned to Jim.

"If I were to talk until to-morrow I couldn't quite tell you what I think of you."

Jim only grinned, and, sitting down by the fire, set about preparing a meal, while Saunders, who appeared lost in reflection, presently turned again to Devine.

"I guess I'll go down this afternoon," he said. "We'll have a fresh crowd pouring in, and they'll want provisions. Anyway, I've headed off those company men, and if it's necessary I can go through to the railroad and get hold of Weston by the wires."

Devine admitted that this might be advisable, and Saunders, who was a man of action, took the back trail in the next half-hour. He had held his own in one phase of the conflict which it was evident must be fought before the Grenfell Consolidated could be floated, and it was necessary that somebody should go down to despatch the specimens to Weston.

They were duly delivered to the latter; and the day after he got them it happened that he sat with Ida on a balcony outside a room on the lower floor, at the rear of Stirling's house. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon and very hot, but a striped awning was stretched above their heads, and a broad-leafed maple growing close below flung its cool shadow across them. Looking out beneath the roof of greenery they could see the wooded slope of the mountain cutting against a sky of cloudless blue, while the stir of the city came up to them faintly. Weston had already, at one time or another, spent several pleasant hours on that balcony. They had been speaking of nothing in particular, when at length Ida turned to him.

"Have you ever heard anything further from Scarthwaite?" she asked.

Weston fumbled in his pocket.

"I had a letter only a few days ago."

He took it out and handed it to her, with a little smile which he could not help, though he rather blamed himself for indulging in it.

"As you know the place and met my sister, you may enjoy reading it.

Julia's unusually communicative. It almost seems as if I were a person of some consequence to them now."

Ida took the letter, and her face hardened as she read. Then she looked at him with a suggestive straightening of her brows.

"Isn't that only natural? You have found a mine," she said.

"The same idea occurred to me," laughed Weston; "but, after all, perhaps I shouldn't have shown you the letter. It wasn't quite the thing."

"Still, you felt just a little hurt, and that I could respect a confidence?"

Ida looked at him as if she expected an answer, and it occurred to Weston that she was very alluring in her long white dress, though the same thought had been uppermost in his mind for the last half-hour.

"Yes," he admitted, "I suppose that was it."

He could have answered more explicitly, but he felt that it would not be safe, for it seemed very probable that if he once gave his feelings rein they would run away with him; and this att.i.tude, as the girl naturally had noticed on other occasions, tended to make their conversation somewhat difficult.

"What are you going to do about one very tactfully-worded suggestion?"

she asked.

"You mean the hint that I should make a few shares in the Grenfell Consolidated over to my English relatives? After all, considering everything, it's not an unnatural request. I shall endeavor to fall in with it."

Ida's face did not soften. The man was her lover, for, though he had not declared himself, she was quite aware of that, and she was his partisan and very jealous of his credit. It was difficult to forgive those who had injured him, and these people in England had shown him scant consideration, and had spoken of him slightingly to her, a stranger. He noticed her expression and changed the subject.

"I have fancied now and then that you must have said something remarkably in my favor that day at Scarthwaite," he said. "I never quite understood what brought up the subject, but Julia once referred to a picture."

Ida laughed softly.

"I'm afraid I wasn't very tactful, and I shouldn't be astonished if your people still regard me as a partly-civilized Colonial. Anyway, there was a picture--a rather striking one. Do you remember Arabella's' making a sketch of you with the ax?"

"I certainly do. She wasn't complimentary in some of her remarks. She called me wooden. But the picture?"

"Would you like to see it before you go?"

Weston glanced at her sharply, and she nodded, while a faint trace of color crept into her face.

"Yes," she said. "I have it here. I made Arabella give it to me."