The Helpers

CHAPTER XXXIV

It is the gray dawn that lifts the curtain, and in the little glade where the two men slept there are three figures, dim and ghostly in the morning's twilight. Two of them are afoot, heavy-eyed and weary, tramping a slow-paced beat on the margin of the tumbling stream. The third is a still shape lying blanket-covered beside the wagon.

"Tell me about it, Denby," says one of the watchers, and his voice breaks in the saying of it. "I think I can bear it now. How did it happen?"

The master of men shakes his head. "I can't tell you anything more than the bald fact, Jeffard. I rode down the trail ahead of Higgins, and should have forded the creek here, only I didn't want to disturb you two. I went on to the bridge, and in the act of crossing he ran down the bank on this side, calling to me to go back. It was too late. I had barely time to get free of the stirrups when we were into it, – the two of us and the horse. It isn't more than three or four feet deep, as you know, but I knew it meant death if we went into the mill tail below. I lost my grip and was gone when he grappled me. I don't know yet how he came to save my life and lose his own."

"It was to be," says Jeffard, brokenly. "When I reached you he was holding you up with one hand and clinging to the bridge stringer with the other. His weight and yours with the rush of the water had pushed the timber down, and his head was under."

Two other turns they make, and then Jeffard says, with awe in his voice, "He knew about it beforehand, Denby," and he tells Lansdale's dream.

Denby hears him through without interrupting, but at the end of it he says, gently: "It wasn't a dream. Higgins was overdue with the team from Aspen, and I went out to see what had become of him. I passed here on my way up the trail about nine o'clock, and you were both asleep then. I had crossed by the lower ford and found it pretty bad, so I turned back from here and rode down to see if the bridge was all right. He saw me and heard me."

Jeffard's gesture is of unconvincement.

"That accounts for part of it," he says; "but I shall always believe he foresaw his death and the manner of it."

After that they pace up and down in silence again, treading out the sorrowful watch until daylight is fully come, bringing with it a team from the mine and men to do what remains to be done. The two stand apart until the men have done their office, falling in to walk softly behind the wagon on the short journey down the valley to the mine settlement. On the way, Jeffard accounts for himself briefly.

"He was one of the two best friends I had in the world," he says. "I had him out on a camping holiday for his health, and he was gaining day by day. We were counting upon dropping in on you this morning, and now" —

"I know," says the master. "He gave his life for mine, and it gets pretty near to me, too." And thereafter they keep step with heads bowed and eyes downcast, as those in whom sorrow has murdered speech; and the bellowing stream at the trail-side thunders a requiem for its victim.

The setting sun is crimsoning the eastern snow caps while they are burying him on the plateau above the mine settlement. An hour later, the master of men and the master of the mine are met together in the log cabin opposite the great gray dump; in the cabin builded by Garvin, but which now serves as the office of the superintendent of the Midas. Sorrow still sits between, and Denby would give place to it.

"Put it off till to-morrow, Jeffard," he says. "Neither of us is fit to talk business to-night."

"No, it mustn't be put off. I gave him my promise, and I mean to make it good while time serves. Have you any one here who is competent to witness a legal document?"

"Yes; Halsey is a notary public."

"Good. Sit down at that desk and draw up a writing transferring my interest in the Midas to Stephen Elliott and Richard Bartrow, trustees."

"What's that? Trustees for whom?"

"For James Garvin."

The master of men leans back in his chair, his eyes narrowing and the little frown of perplexity radiating fan-like above them.

"Jeffard, do you mean to say that you are going to step aside in favor of the man who tried to kill you?"

"You may put it that way, if you choose. It would have been done long ago if I had been able to find the man."

"And you stepped into the breach a year ago and secured his property for him because he had put himself out of the running and couldn't? You've touched me on the raw, Jeffard. It's my business to size people up, and you have fairly outflanked me. A blind man might have seen the drift of it, but I didn't; I thought you had robbed him. Why didn't you give it a name?"

"I had no thought of concealment until you warned me. Garvin was a criminal in the eye of the law, and the least I could do for him was to turn the tide of public opinion in his favor."

"Well, you did it; but just the same, you might have passed the word to me. It wouldn't have gone any farther, and I should have felt a good bit easier in my mind."

"Perhaps; but you will pardon me if I say that I wasn't considering you in the matter. I knew better than to defeat my own end. If I had told you the truth at the time, you would not have believed it; you would have struck hands with your own theory that Garvin had attempted to rob me, and you would have talked and acted accordingly."

"What makes you say I wouldn't have believed the truth?"

"It would have been merely a declaration of intention at the time, and you would have said that it didn't square with human nature as you know it. Bartrow knew, and he went over to the majority. But that is neither here nor there. Will you draw up the writing?"

Denby goes to the desk and writes out the transfer, following Jeffard's dictation. When it is signed and acknowledged, Jeffard slips his final anchor.

"I presume you will want to make a new operating contract with the trustees, or with Garvin, and in that case you will want to cancel the old one. I haven't my copy of it with me, but I'll mail it to you when I get back to Denver."

Denby is making a pretense of rummaging in the pigeonholes of the desk to cover a small struggle which has nothing to do with the superintendent's files. When the struggle is fought to a finish, he turns suddenly and holds out his hand.

"Jeffard, that night when we wrangled it out up yonder on the old dump I said some things that I shouldn't have said if you had seen fit to be a little franker with me. Will you forget them?"

Jeffard takes the proffered hand and wrings it gratefully. "Thank you for that, Denby," he says; "it's timely. I feel as if I'd like to drop out and turn up on some other planet. This thing has cost me pretty dear, one way with another."

"It'll come out all right in the end," asserts the master; and then: "But you mustn't forget that the cost of it is partly of your own incurring. It's a rare failing, but there is such a thing as being too close-mouthed. You've made out your case, after a fashion, and I'm not going to appeal it; but your postulate was wrong. Human nature is not as incredulous of good intentions as the cynics would make it out to be. You might have told a few of us without imperilling Garvin."

"I meant to do it; as I say, I did tell Bartrow that morning when I raced Garvin across the range and into Aspen. But he and every one else drew the other conclusion, and I was too stubborn to plead my own cause. The stubbornness became a mania with me after a time, and I had a fit of it no longer ago than last night. I let Lansdale die believing that he had argued me into promising to make restitution. We were coming down here to-day to set the thing in train, and, of course, he would have learned the whole truth; but for one night – "

"For one night you would let him have the comfort of believing that he had brought it about," says Denby, quickly. "That wasn't what you were going to say, but it's the truth, and you know it. I know the feel of it; you've reached the point where you can get some sort of comfort out of holding your finger in the fire. Suppose you begin right here and now to take a little saner view of things. What are your plans?"

"I haven't any."

"Are you open to an offer?"

"From you? – yes."

"Good. I'm unlucky enough to have some mining property in Mexico, and I've got to go down there and set it in order, or send some one to do it for me. Will you go?"

Jeffard's reply is promptly acquiescent.

"Gladly; if you think I am competent."

"I don't think, – I know. Can you start at short notice?"

"The sooner the better. I said I should like to drop out and turn up on some other planet: that will be the next thing to it."

From that the talk goes overland to the affairs of a century-old silver mine in the Chihuahuan mountains, and at the end of it Jeffard knows what is to be done and how he is to go about the doing of it. Denby yawns and looks at his watch.

"It's bedtime," he says. "Shall we consider it settled and go over to the bunk-shack?"

"I have a letter to write," says Jeffard. "Don't wait for me."

"All right. You'll find what you need in the desk, – top drawer on the right. Come over when you get ready," and the promoter leaves his late owner in possession of the superintendent's office.

Judging from the number of false starts and torn sheets, the writing of the letter proves to be no easy matter; but it is begun, continued, and ended at length, and Jeffard sits back to read it over.

"My dear Bartrow: