A Damaged Reputation

Saxton took a drink of whisky. "Well," he said, meditatively, "I guess I can trust you, and I'm not going to worry about letting you off the deal. You have too many fancies to be of much use to anybody. There's just another thing, and it has to be said. It's business I have on hand, and life's too short for any man to waste time he could pile up dollars in, trying to get even with a partner who has gone back on him. In fact, I've a kind of liking for you – but you'll most certainly get hurt if you put yourself in my way. It's a friendly warning."

Brooke laughed. "I will endeavor to keep out of it, so far as I can."

Saxton nodded, and then looked at him reflectively.

"Miss Heathcote's kind of pretty," he said.

"I suggested once already that we should get on better if you left Miss Heathcote out."

"You did. Still, when I've anything to say, it is scarcely a hint of that kind that's going to stop me. I guess you know she has quite a pile of dollars?"

Brooke's face flushed. "I don't, and it does not concern me in the least."

"She has, anyway. Devine's wife brought him a pile, and I heard one sister had the same as the other. Now, you ought to feel obliged to me."

Brooke straightened himself a trifle in his chair. "I don't wish to be unpleasant, but you have gone quite as far as is advisable. Can't you see the thing you are suggesting is quite out of the question?"

Saxton surveyed him critically. "Well," he said, reflectively, "I have seen better-looking men – quite a few of them, and you're blame hard to get on with, but there are women who don't expect too much."

Brooke's face was growing flushed, but he realized that nothing short of physical violence was likely to restrain his visitor, and he laughed.

"You will, of course, believe what pleases you," he said. "Are you going to stay here to-night?"

"No," said Saxton. "When I'm through with this whisky, I'm going right back to Tomlinson's ranch. I wouldn't like Devine to run up against me, and he nearly did it on the trail a little while ago."

Brooke looked up sharply. "He recognized you?"

"No," said Saxton, drily. "He didn't. It wouldn't have suited me. When I come to clinch with Devine, I want to be sure I have the whip-hand of him. Still, it wouldn't have been a case of pistols out and getting behind a tree. It's quite a long while since I had any, and, though you don't seem to think so in England, nobody has any use for a circus of that kind now. I don't know that the way they had in '49 wasn't better than trying to get ahead of the other man quietly."

Brooke made a little gesture of resignation. Saxton, he realized, had sufficient discretion not to persist in a useless attempt to hold him to his compact, but he was addicted to moralizing, and Brooke, who lighted another cigar, listened, as patiently as he could, while he discoursed upon the anxieties of the enterprising business man.

XXI.

DEVINE'S OFFER

Evening had come round again when Brooke called at the ranch, in response to a brief note from Devine, and found the latter sitting, cigar in hand, at his office table.

"Take a cigar, if you feel like it, Mr. Brooke. We have got to have a talk," he said.

Brooke did as he suggested, and when he sat down, Devine passed a strip of paper across to him.

"There's your cheque for the tramway. I'll ask you for a receipt," he said. "Make up an account of what the dam has cost you to-morrow, and we'll try to arrange the thing so's to suit both of us."

Brooke appeared a trifle astonished. "It is by no means finished, sir."

"Well," said Devine, drily, "I'm not quite sure it ever will be. The mine no longer belongs to me. It's part of the Dayspring Consolidated Mineral Properties. I've been working the thing up quietly for quite a while now, and I've a cable from London that the deal's put through."

Brooke, remembering what he had heard from Saxton, looked hard at him. "You have sold it out to English company promoters?"

"Not exactly! I'm taking so many thousand dollars down, and a controlling share of the stock. I'm also the boss director, with full power to run operations as appears advisable at the mines. How does the deal strike you?"

"Since you ask for my opinion, I fancy I should have preferred a good many dollars, and very little stock."

Devine glanced at him with a curious smile.

"You believe Allonby's a crank?"

"Other people do. On my part, I'm not quite sure of it. Still, it seems to me that the men who spend their money to prove him right will run a tolerably heavy risk, especially as, so far, at least, there appears to be no ore that's worth reduction in the mine, so far as it has been opened up."

"How do you know what is in the Dayspring?" and Devine looked at him steadily.

Brooke made a little gesture. "I don't think that point's important," he said. "You, no doubt, had a purpose in telling me as much as you have done?"

Devine did not answer for a moment or two, and Brooke was sensible of a slight bewilderment as he watched him. This was, he knew, a hard, shrewd man, and yet he had apparently permitted Saxton to beguile him into buying a mine in which nobody but a man whose faculties had been destroyed by alcohol believed. He was also, it seemed, willing to risk a moderate competence in another one which was liable to be jumped at any moment. The thing was almost incomprehensible.

Then Devine made a sign that he desired attention. "When I told you this, I had a purpose," he said. "We are going to spend a pile of dollars on the Dayspring, and my part of the business lies in the city. Wilkins stays right at the Canopus, and while Allonby goes along with the mine it's too big a contract to reform him. That brings me to the point. I want a man to take charge at the Dayspring under him, and though you were not exactly civil when I made you an offer once before, we might make it worth your while."

Brooke gasped, and felt his face becoming warm.

"I have very little practical experience of mining, sir," he said.

Devine nodded tranquilly. "Allonby has enough for two, but he lets up and loses his grip when the whisky comes along," he said. "Still, I guess you have got something that's worth rather more to me. You couldn't help having it. It was born in you."

Brooke sat silent for a space, with an unpleasant realization of the fact that Devine's keen eyes were watching him. He had come there with the intention of severing his connection with the man, and now that astonishing offer had been made him in the very room he had not long ago crept into with the purpose of plundering him. Every detail of what had happened on that eventful night came back to him, and he remembered, with a sickening sense of degradation, how he had leaned upon the table where Devine was sitting then and permitted the startled girl to force her thanks on him. Then he raised his head, as Devine, turning a little, looked at him with disconcerting steadiness.

"You have more reasons than the one you gave me for not taking hold?" he said.

Suddenly, Brooke made up his mind. He was sick of the career of deception, and had already meant to put an end to it, while he now seized upon the opportunity of placing a continuance in it out of the question.

"I have, and can't help fancying that one of them is a tolerably good one," he said. "You see, you really know very little about me."

"Go on," said Devine, drily. "I'm generally quite willing to back my opinion of a mine or man. Besides, I have picked up one or two pointers about you."

"Still," said Brooke, very slowly, while his face grew set, "you don't know why I came here to build that flume for you."

Then he gasped with astonishment, for Devine laughed.

"Well," he said, drily, "I guess I do."

Brooke, who lost command of himself, rose abruptly, and stood looking down on him, with one quivering hand clenched on the edge of the table.

"You know I meant to jump the claim?" he said.

"I had a notion that you meant to try."

Then there was a curious silence, and the two men remained motionless, looking at one another for a space, the younger one leaning somewhat heavily upon the table, with the crimson showing through the bronze in his face, the elder one watching him with a little grim smile. There was also a suggestion of sardonic amusement in it at which the other winced, as he would scarcely have done had Devine struck him.

"And you let me stay on?" he said at length.