Thrice Armed

"Jimmy," said Jordan quietly, "is your brother as well as my friend."

"Ah!" said Eleanor, "don't misunderstand. Jimmy would flinch from nothing on a steamer's bridge. Still, it isn't nerve of that kind that will be needed, and Miss Merril has a hold on him."

Jordan saw the faint sparkle in her eyes. "After all, you can't hold the girl responsible for her father?"

"I do," said Eleanor, with a curious bitter smile. "At least, I would keep her away from Jimmy."

Jordan said nothing, but there was trouble in his face, for he had seen how things were going, and though he was Eleanor's lover he was Jimmy's friend. When they reached the ranch they found that Mrs. Forster had come back, and she glanced at Jordan with a smile in her eyes when he crossed the room.

"Do you know that you have split your jacket up the back?" she asked.

Jordan looked reproachfully at Forster. "Well," he said, "I almost think that your husband does."

"Then he will lend you another one while I sew it for you."

"One would fancy that Eleanor would prefer to do it," said the rancher dryly.

His wife pursed up her face. "It is possible that she may bring herself to do such things by and by. Still, I can't quite imagine Eleanor quietly sitting down and mending a man's clothes."

Jordan laughed. "It's quite likely that she'll have to. It depends on how the Shasta pleases the miners. Forster, I'll trouble you to lend me a jacket. I guess you owe it to me."

Forster promised to get him the garment, and when they went away together his wife asked Eleanor a plain question or two. It was some time before she said anything to her husband about that interview, but she appeared somewhat thoughtful until supper was brought in. Shortly after it was over Jordan, who borrowed a horse from Forster, rode away, and the rancher, who was sitting on the veranda, smiled at his wife when Eleanor walked back from the slip-rails toward the house.

"Well," he said reflectively, "though I'm rather fond of Miss Wheelock, I can't help thinking that Jordan is an unusually courageous man. It is fortunate that he is so, considering everything."

Mrs. Forster flashed a keen glance at him, but it said a good deal for her capability of keeping a promise that she contented herself with a simple question.

"Why?" she asked.

"He expects to marry her," said Forster dryly.

In the meanwhile Jordan was riding down the dusty road, and thinking out a scheme which, though he had been reluctant to adopt it in the first case, was now commencing to compel his attention. As the result of this, he spent most of the evening in certain second-rate saloons where sailormen and wharf-hands congregated, which, though he had been well acquainted with such places in his struggling days, was a thing he had not done for several years. However, he came across one or two men there who, while they were probably not aware of it, gave him a little useful information, and he had a project in his mind when he went on board the Shasta on the following morning. She was then in the hands of the ship-carpenters, for, although the treasure-seekers in their haste to reach the auriferous north would if necessary have gone in a canoe, it was evident that the Shasta Company must offer them at least some kind of shelter in view of the opposition of larger vessels. Jordan also knew that niggardliness is not always profitable, and the new passenger deck that was being laid along the beams was well planned and comfortable. He drew Jimmy into the room beneath the bridge, and taking out his cigar-case laid it on the table.

"Take one. We have got to talk," he said. "Now, the Shasta's out after money, and it 'most seems to me that Merril is going to have an opportunity for providing some of it. You don't know any reason why you shouldn't get what he screwed out of your father, and, perhaps, a little more, out of him?"

"No," said Jimmy grimly, though there was a shadow on his face; "I could find a certain pleasure in making him feel the screw in turn."

"Then I'll show you how it can be done. But first of all we'll go back a little. Merril has had to make the road to his pulp-mill, and it's costing him and the other men a lot of money. His particular share is quite a big one. Then he's saddled with an old-type steamer that can't be run economically, and, as you know, we'll have to come down in freight and passage rates now that the other people are putting on new boats. Besides, Carnforth, who was to take a big share in the concern, is going to leave him."

"How do you know that?"

Jordan hesitated for a moment. "Well," he said, "I do, and that's about all I mean to tell you. Anyway, I've cause for believing that Merril is tightly fixed for money, and can't lay his hands on it. There are reasons why he couldn't let up on the pulp-mill if he wanted. Still, there is one way he could get the money, and that is by making the underwriters, who hold the steamboat covered, provide it."

"Ah!" said Jimmy, "it wouldn't be very difficult either."

His companion smiled dryly. "I have a notion how she is insured, and, so far as I can gather, it's under an economical policy. Underwriters face total constructive loss, but don't stand in for minor damage or salvage. Well, I've ground for believing the thing is to be done by the engineer, and he is a man who has to do just what Merril tells him. You and Fleming could figure out how he will probably manage. But one thing is clear: when that steamboat's engines give out you have got to be somewhere round to salve her."

"You are sure of this?" asked Jimmy. "What makes you so?"

Jordan did not answer him for a moment, and once more there was hesitation in his manner.

"Well," he said, "that is my affair, and I've been worrying over it quite a while now. Anyway, I think it's a sure thing."

"What do you purpose if I salve that steamer and we find anything wrong on board her?"

"In that case I'm not sure the salvage will content the Shasta Company. It's admissible to break your trading opponent. As I tried to show you, Merril's tightly fixed, and while the man's quite clever enough to wriggle loose, it will be our business to see that he doesn't."

Jimmy sat still for a few moments with trouble in his face, which was hard and grim, until his comrade turned to him again.

"Jimmy," he said quietly, "that man had no pity on your father. The thing has to be done, and the Shasta Company stood by you. We have got to have that salvage, and you're not going to go back on us now."

Jimmy stood up and straightened himself in a curious slow fashion. "No," he said, "I'm with you. As you say, the thing has to be done – and it naturally falls to me. Well, though it'll probably cost me a good deal, I'm ready. When do you expect him to try it?"

"I don't quite know – you couldn't expect me to. Still, I should figure it won't be until she goes north, after the lay-off, in spring. Guess he'll hold on as long as he can. Freights won't drop much before then."

He rose and laid his hand on his comrade's shoulder as they went out. "I think I understand how you are fixed, but you have to face it," he went on. "There's another thing I want to mention. If you can, get hold of Merril's engineer, and scare him into some admission."

CHAPTER XXVIII

DISABLED ENGINES

Spring had come, and all down the wild West Coast the tall pines had shaken off their load of snow and the rivers were thundering in their misty cañons, but there was very little sign of it at sea when one bitter morning a cluster of deeply bronzed men hung about the Adelaide's engine-room skylights. They were lean and somewhat grim of face, as well as ragged and suggestively spare of frame, for they had borne all that man may bear and live through during the winter they had spent in the ice-bound wilderness. Now they were going back to civilization with many ounces of gold, and papers relating to auriferous claims, to invoke the aid of capital before they once more turned their faces toward the frozen north.

It was noticeable that although they were of widely different birth and upbringing there was the same stamp which revealed itself in a certain quietness of manner and steadiness of gaze upon them all, for these were the pick of the mining community, men who had grappled with the wilderness in its most savage moods long before they blazed a new trail south from the wilds of the Yukon. They had proved their manhood by coming back at all, for that winter the unfit had died. Still, though they had endured things beyond the comprehension of the average city man, they were glad of the shelter of the tall skylights, because the Adelaide's flush deck was swept by a stinging wind and little showers of bitter spray blew all over it. She was rolling viciously across a waste of gray-blue sea which was flecked by livid froth, and her mastheads swung in a wide sweep athwart a sky of curious dingy blue. There was no warmth anywhere in the picture, and apparently very little light; but for all that, every sea stood out from its fellows, and those back in the clear distance were etched upon the indented horizon with harsh distinctness. One of the men shook his head as he gazed at them.

"They look like the pines on the ridge did the day the blizzard struck us down on the Assiniboia Creek," he said. "It was a full-powered one. The boys who'd camped ahead of us were frozen stiff by morning. The two we scraped the snow off were sitting there like statues, and we didn't worry 'bout the others. There was ten feet over them, anyway. I've no use for this kind of weather."

One of his companions swept his glance astern toward the smear of smoke on the serrated skyline, which was blotted out next moment when the Adelaide swung her stern aloft.

"If you're right in your figuring, I'm glad I came along in this boat," he said. "Anyway, she's bigger, though I 'most took my berth in the Shasta. Seems to me we're quite a long while getting away from her."

The others agreed with him, for they had seen that smear of smoke on the skyline since early morning. Then they turned to watch the engineer, who came out of a door close by, and glanced up to weather, blinking in the bitter wind. He was a big loosely-built man in dungarees, with the pallid face of one accustomed to the half-light and heat of the engine-room, but in his case it was also unhealthily puffy. Then he slouched right aft, and stood still again looking down at the dial of the taffrail log which records the distance run, while he fumbled in a curious aimless fashion with the blackened rag in his hand.

"That," said one of the miners, "is a man I'm no way stuck on. Now, you'll most times find hard grit in an engineer, but this one kind of strikes me as feeling that there was something after him he was scared of."

"Well," said one of the others reflectively, "it's not an uncommon thing. There was a man down on the flat where we struck it who had a kind of notion that there were three big timber wolves on his trail. Kept his rifle clean with the magazine ram full for them, but one night they got him. A sure thing. Tom was there."

The man at whom he glanced nodded. "Now and then I wish I hadn't been," he said. "Lister was sitting very sick beside his fire that night. Said he heard those wolves pattering in the bush – there were thick pines all round us – 'most made me think I did."

"Well?" said one of his companions.

The miner made a little expressive grimace. "Longest night I ever put in. Sat there and kept them off him. Anyway, I tried, but he was dead at sun-up."

None of the others showed any astonishment, and the man who had asked the question glanced back toward the engineer.

"Guess the man who runs this steamboat should be getting rich by the way they strike you for a drink," he said. "I'm bringing down 'most two hundred ounces, but I wouldn't like to fill that engineer up at the tariff."

"Never saw him making a traverse, anyway. He walks quite straight," said a comrade.