A Damaged Reputation

"I did. It was plain you couldn't hurt me, and there was a kind of humor in the thing. I had just to put my hand down and squelch you when I felt like it."

Brooke recognized that he had deserved this, but he had never felt the same utter sense of insignificance that he did just then. His companion evidently did not even consider it worth while to be angry with him, and he wondered vacantly at his folly in even fancying that he or Saxton could prove a match for such a man.

Then Devine made a little gesture. "Hadn't you better sit down? We're not quite through yet."

Brooke did as he suggested.

"Still – " he said.

Devine smiled again. "You don't quite understand? Well, I'll try to make it plain. You make about the poorest kind of claim-jumper I ever ran up against, and I've handled quite a few in my time. It's not your fault. You haven't it in you. If you had, you'd have stayed right with it, and not let the dam-building get hold of you so that you scarcely remembered what you came here for. You couldn't help that either."

To be turned inside out in this fashion was almost too disconcerting to be exasperating, and Brooke sat stupidly silent for a moment or two.

"After all, we need not go into that," he said. "I suppose what I meant to do requires no defence in this country, but while I am by no means proud of it, I should never have undertaken it had you not sold me a worthless ranch. I purposed doing nothing more than getting my six thousand dollars back."

"You figure that would have contented the man behind you?"

Brooke was once more startled, for Devine's penetration appeared almost uncanny, but he remembered that he, at least, owed a little to his confederate.

"You think there was another man?" he said.

Devine laughed. "I guess I'm sure. You don't know enough to fix up a thing of this kind. Who is he?"

"That," said Brooke, drily, "is rather more than I feel at liberty to tell you. I have, however, broken with him once for all."

Devine made a little gesture which implied that the point was of no great importance. "Well," he said, "I guess I've no great cause to be afraid of him, if he was content to have you for a partner. The question is – Are you going to take my offer?"

"You are asking me seriously?"

"I am. It seems to me I sized you up correctly quite a while ago, and you have had about enough claim-jumping. Now, I don't know that I blame you, and, anyway, if you had very little sense, it showed you had some grit. As the mining laws stand, it's a legitimate occupation, and you tell me you only figured on getting your dollars back. Well, if you want them, you can work for them at a reasonable salary."

Brooke was once more astonished. Sentiment, it appeared, counted for as little with Devine as it had done with Saxton, and with both of them business was simply and solely a question of dollars.

"Then you disclaim all responsibility for your agent's doings?" he said.

"No," said Devine, drily. "If Slocum had swindled you, it would have been different, but you made a foolish deal, and you have got to stand up to it. Nobody was going to stop you surveying that land before you bought it, or getting a man who knew its value to do it for you. I'm offering you the option of working for those six thousand dollars. Do you take it?"

Brooke scarcely considered. The money was no longer the chief inducement, for, as Devine had expressed it, the work had got hold of him, and he was sensible of a growing belief in his capabilities, while he now fancied he saw his opportunity.

"Yes," he said, simply.

Devine nodded. "Then we'll go into the thing right now," he said. "You'll start for the Dayspring soon as you can to-morrow."

An hour had passed before they had arranged everything, and it seemed to one of them that it was, under the circumstances, a somewhat astonishing compact they made. What the other thought about it did not appear, but he was one who was seldom very much mistaken in his estimate of the character of his fellow-men. Then, as it happened, Brooke came upon Barbara in the log-walled hall as he was leaving the ranch, and stood still a moment irresolute. Whether Devine would tell her or his wife what had passed between them he did not know, but it appeared very probable, and just then he almost shrank from meeting her. It did not, however, occur to him to ask himself how she happened to be there.

"So you are not going out on the trail that leads to nowhere in particular, after all?" she said.

Brooke showed his astonishment. "You knew what Devine meant to offer me?"

"Of course!" and Barbara smiled. "I don't even mind admitting that I think he did wisely."

"Now, I wonder why?"

Barbara laughed softly. "Don't you think the question is a little difficult, or do you expect me to present you with a catalogue of your virtues?"

"I'm afraid the latter is out of the question. You would want, at least, several items."

"And you imply that I should have a difficulty in finding them?"

Brooke had spoken lightly, partly because the interview with Devine had put a strain on him, and he dare scarcely trust himself just then, but a tide of feeling swept him away, and his face grew suddenly grim. The girl was very alluring, and her little smile showed plainly that she had reposed her confidence in him.

"Yes," he said, a trifle hoarsely, "you would have the greatest difficulty in finding one, and I am almost glad that I am going away to-morrow. Such a man as I am is scarcely fit to speak to you."

Barbara was, though she did not show it, distinctly startled. She had never heard the man speak in that fashion, and his set face and vibrant voice were new to her. Indeed, she had now and then wondered whether he ever really let himself go. Still, she looked at him quietly, and, noticing the swollen veins on his forehead, and the glow in his eyes, decided it would not be advisable to admit that she attached much importance to what he had said. He was, she fancied, fit for any rashness just then.

"I suppose we, all of us, have moods of self-depreciation occasionally," she said. "Still, one would not have fancied that you were unduly morbid, and one part of that little speech was a trifle inexplicable."

Brooke laughed curiously, but the girl noticed that one of his lean, hard hands was closed as he looked down on her.

"There are times when one has to be one's self, and civilities don't seem to count," he said. "I am glad that I am going away, because if I stayed here I should lose the last shred of my self-respect. As a matter of fact, I have very little left, but that little is valuable, if only because it was you who gave it me."

"Still, one would signally fail to see how you could lose it here."

Brooke stood still, looking at her with signs of struggle, and, she could almost fancy, passion, in his set face; and then made a little gesture, which seemed to imply that he had borne enough.

"You will probably understand it all by and by," he said. "I can only ask you not to think too hardly of me when that happens."

Then, as one making a strenuous effort, he turned abruptly away, and Barbara, who let him go, went back to the room where her sister sat, very thoughtfully.

Brooke in the meanwhile swung savagely along the trail, beneath the shadowy pines, for he recognized, with a painful distinctness, that Barbara Heathcote's view of his conduct was by no means likely to coincide with Devine's, and he could picture her disgust and anger when the revelation came, while it was only now, when he would in all probability never meet her on the same terms again, he realized the intensity of his longing for the girl. He had also, he felt, succeeded in making himself ridiculous by a display of sentimentality that must have been incomprehensible to her, and though that appeared of no great importance relatively, it naturally did not tend to console him. When he reached his tent Jimmy stared at him.

"I guess you look kind of raised," he said. "Where's your hat?"

Brooke laughed hoarsely. "I believe I must have left it at the ranch. Still, that's not so very astonishing, because, even if I didn't do it altogether, I came very near losing my head."

Jimmy again surveyed him, with a grin. "Devine," he said, suggestively, "has been giving you whisky, and it mixed you up a little? That's what comes of drinking tea."

Brooke made no answer, though a swift flush rose to his face, as he remembered his half-coherent speeches at the ranch, and the astonishment in the girl's eyes, for it seemed probable that the explanation that had occurred to Jimmy had also suggested itself to her. Then he smiled grimly, as he decided that it did not greatly matter, after all, since she could not think more hardly of him than she would do when the truth came out presently.

XXII.

THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS

It was already late at night, but the mounted mail carrier had not reached the Dayspring mine, and Allonby, who was impatiently waiting news of certain supplies and plant, had insisted on Brooke sitting up with him. It was also raining hard, and, in spite of the glowing stove, the shanty reeked with damp, while there was a steady splashing upon the iron roof above. Now and then a trickle descended from a defective joint in it, and formed a rivulet upon the earthen floor, or fizzled into a puff of steam upon the corroded iron pipe which stretched across the room. The latter was strewn with soil-stained clothing, and wet knee-boots with the red mire of the mine still clinging about them.

Brooke lay drowsily in a canvas chair, while Allonby sat at the uncleanly table, with a litter of burnt matches and tobacco ash as well as a steaming glass in front of him. His eyes were bleared and watery, and there were curious little patches of color in his haggard face, while the gorged, blue veins showed upon his forehead. He had been discoursing in a maudlin fashion which Brooke, who had endeavored to make the best of his company during the last three months, found singularly exasperating, but he moved abruptly when a stream from the roof suddenly descended upon his grizzled head.

"That," he said, "is one of the trifles a man with a sense of proportion and a contemplative temperament makes light of. The curse of this effete age is its ceaseless striving after luxury."