The Helpers

"That is why I prescribed the blanket. Another day would have finished you."

Jeffard slid out of the hammock and went to plunge his face and hands in the stream; after which they ate again as men who postpone the lesser to the greater; with Donald the taciturn serving them, and hunger waiving speech and ceremony.

It was yet no more than twilight when the meal was finished; and Denby found a candle and matches in the henchman's saddlebags.

"If you are ready, we'll go up to the tunnel and have another look at the lead before we go," he said. "I have been examining it to-day, and I'll make you a proposition on the ground, if you like."

Jeffard pieced out the inference with the recollection of the saddled horses.

"Do we go back to-night?"

"Yes; if you are good for it. It has been a pretty warm day for the season, and we are like to have more of them. There is a good bit of snow on the trail, and if it softens we shall be shut in. That's one reason, and another is this: if we make a deal and mean to get any machinery in here before snow flies and the range is blocked, we've got to be about it."

Jeffard nodded acquiescence, and they fared forth to cross the foot-log and toil up the shelving slope of the gray dump. It was a stiff climb for a whole man, and at the summit Jeffard sat down with his hands to his head and his teeth agrind.

"By Jove! but that sets it in motion again in good shape!" he groaned. "Sit down here and let's talk it out in the open. I don't care to burrow."

Denby pocketed his candle, and they sat together on the brink of the dump, with their backs to the opening; and thus it chanced that neither of them saw a shadowy figure skulking among the firs beside the tunnel's mouth. When they began to talk the figure edged nearer, flitting ghostlike from tree to tree, and finally crouching under the penthouse of the tunnel timbering.

The crimson and mauve had faded out of the western sky when the two at the dump-head rose, and Jeffard said: "Your alternative is fair enough. It's accepted, without conditions other than this – that you will advance me a few hundred dollars for my own purposes some time within thirty days."

"You needn't make that a condition; I should be glad to tide you over in any event. But I am sorry you won't let me buy in. As I have said, there is enough here for both of us."

The aftermath of the getting up was a sharp agony, and Jeffard had his hands to his head again. When he answered it was to say: —

"I sha'n't sell. There are reasons, and you may take this for the lack of a better. A while back, when a single meal in the day was sometimes beyond me, I used to say that if the tide should ever turn I'd let the money go on piling up and up until there was no possibility of hunger in an eternity of futures. You say the tide has turned."

"It has, for a fact; and I don't know that I blame you. If it were mine I should probably try to keep it whole."

Jeffard went on as one who follows out his own train of thought regardless of answers relevant or impertinent. "I said that, and I don't know that I have changed my mind. But before we strike hands on the bargain it may be as well to go back to the question which you were good enough to leave in abeyance yesterday."

"The question of ethics?"

"Yes."

"I am going to take something for granted, if you don't choose to be frank with me."

"It will be safer to take nothing for granted."

"But the claim is yours?"

"Legally, yes; there will be no litigation."

"But honestly, as man to man." Denby put his hands on the wounded man's shoulders, and turned him about so that the fading light in the west fell upon his face. "My dear fellow, I've known you but a day, but your face isn't the face of a scoundrel. I can't believe that the man who made the magnificent fight that you did would make it to overreach his partner."

Jeffard turned aside, with a backward step that freed him from the friendly hands. Twice he tried to speak, and at the third attempt the words came but haltingly.

"It will be better in the end – better for all concerned – if you – if you do believe it. Believe it, and cause it to be believed, if you choose. I have counted the cost, and am ready to take the consequences."

Denby thrust his hands into his pockets and began to tramp, three paces and a turn, across and across the narrow embankment. A little light was beginning to sift in between the man and his mystery, but it was not of the sun.

"Mr. Jeffard, I'd like to ask a question. You needn't answer it if you don't want to. Do you know who drove this tunnel?"

"I do."

"Was it the man who raced you from Leadville to Aspen, and who shot you when you tried to bluff him by making him believe that you had already located the claim in your own name?"

"It was."

"Then, to put it plainly, you are the aggressor, after all. You have really jumped your partner's claim."

The promoter stopped and faced his man, and the skulker at the tunnel's mouth crept nearer, as a listener who may not miss a word.

"That is what men will say, I suppose; and I shall not contradict them. He has forfeited his right." Jeffard said it with eyes downcast, but there was no incertitude in the words.

"Forfeited his right? How? By shooting at you in a very natural fit of frenzied rage? I can't believe that you realize the enormity of this thing, Mr. Jeffard. You are new to the West. It is true that the law can't touch you, but public opinion, the sentiment of a mining region, will brand you as the basest of thieves."

"That is the public's privilege. I shall not attempt to defend myself – to you, or to any one. The consequences are mine to suffer or to ignore."

"You can't ignore them. Your best friends will turn upon you, and mining-camp justice will not only acquit the man who tried to kill you – it will fight for him and condemn you."

"But yesterday you said it would have given me the benefit of the doubt and lynched him. I can fight my own battle."

"Yes, I did say so; and, lacking your own evidence against yourself, it will condemn him yet. Had you thought of that?"

"Mr. Denby, I have answered your questions because you had a right to ask them. To the public I shall neither deny nor affirm."

"Then you'll have the choice of posing as a scoundrel on the one hand, or of consenting to the death or imprisonment of a measurably innocent man on the other. I don't envy you."

"It is my own affair, as you were good enough to say yesterday. Do you wish to withdraw your proposal?"

Denby took time to think about it, pacing out his decision what time the moon was beginning to silver the western snow-caps.

"No; as I have made it and you have accepted it, the proposal is merely a matter of service to be rendered and paid for; I furnish the capital to work the mine for a year for a certain portion of the output. But if you had taken me up on the original proposition, I should beg to be excused. Under the circumstances, I shouldn't care to be a joint owner with you."

"You couldn't be," said Jeffard briefly; "you, nor any one else."

"Well, we are agreed as to that. Shall we go now? Donald is waiting, and the moon will be up by the time we strike the trail."

"One moment; I have left something in the tunnel."

Jeffard turned back toward the timbered archway, and the promoter went with him. In the act a shadowy figure darted into the mouth of gloom and was seen by Denby.

"What was that?"

"I didn't see anything."

Denby stumbled over the remains of the barricade. "That must have been what I saw," he said. "But at the moment I could have sworn it was a man dodging into the tunnel."