The Plunderer

BENEFITS RETURNED

Dick waited impatiently at the rendezvous, saw Joan coming, hurried to meet her, and was restrained from displaying his joy by her upheld hand, as she smiled and cautioned: “Now, steady, Dick! You know we were not to–to–be anything but comrades for a while yet.”

He was compelled to respect her wishes, but his eyes spoke all that his tongue might have uttered. In the joy of meeting her, he had forgotten the part played by her father in his surreptitious attempt to gain possession of the Croix d’Or: but her first words reminded him of it:

“It has been terribly lonesome since you left. I have felt as if the whole world had deserted me. Dad is not a cheery sort of companion, because he is so absorbed by the Rattler that he lives with it, eats with it, sleeps with it. And, to make him worse, something appears to have upset him in the last week or ten days until a bear would be a highly lovable companion by comparison.”

She failed to notice the gravity of his face, for he surmised how Sloan’s answer must have affected the owner of the Rattler, who strode mercilessly over all obstacles and men, but now had come to one which he could not surmount. He wondered how obdurate Bully Presby would prove if the time ever came when he dared ask for Joan, and whether, if the father refused, Joan’s will would override this opposition.

Studying the lines of her face, and the firm contour of her chin as it rounded into the grace of her throat, he had a joyful sense of confidence that she would not prove wanting, and dismissed Bully Presby from his thoughts. With a great embarrassment, he fumbled in the pocket of his shirt, and brought out a little box which he opened, to display a glittering gem. He held it toward her, in the palm of his hand; but she pulled her gloves over her fingers, and blushed and laughed.

“It seems to me,” she declared, “that you have plenty of assurance.”

“Why?” he insisted.

“Because I haven’t made my mind up–that far, yet, and because if I had I shouldn’t say so until the Croix d’Or had been proven one way or the other.”

She stopped, awkwardly embarrassed, as if her objection had conveyed a suggestion that his financial standing had a bearing on her acceptance, and hastened to rectify it:

“Not that its success or the money it would bring has anything to do with it.”

“But if it failed?” he interrogated, striving to force her to an admission.

“I should accept you as quickly as if it were a success; perhaps more quickly, for I have money enough. But that isn’t it. Don’t you see, can’t you understand, that I want you to make good just to show that you can?”

“Yes,” he answered gloomily. “But if I didn’t feel quite confident, I shouldn’t offer you the ring. And if I failed, I shouldn’t ask you.”

“Then you musn’t fail,” she retorted. “And, do you know,” she hastened, as if eager to change the subject, and get away from such a trying pass, “that I’ve never seen the Croix since you took possession of it?”

“Come now,” he said, with boyish eagerness. “I’ve wanted you to see what we are doing for weeks–yes, months. Will you? We can lead your horse down over the trail easily.”

He walked by her side, the black patiently following them, and told her of what had been accomplished in his absence, and of their plans. She listened gravely, offering such sage advice now and then that his admiration of her knowledge constantly increased. There were but few men in sight as they crossed the head of the cañon, and came slowly down past the blacksmith shop.

“Why, if there isn’t Mr. Clark!” she exclaimed, and the smith looked up, grinned, dropped his tongs, and came toward them, wiping his hand on his smudgy apron.

“Hello, Joan!” he called out. “You’re a bit bigger’n you used to be, when I made iron rings for you.”

“Oh, Smuts,” she laughed happily, stepping to meet him, “do you know I still have one, and that it’s in my jewel case, among my most precious possessions?”

She held out her white, clean hand, and he almost seized it in his grimy, fist, then drew her back.

“’Most forgot!” he declared. “I reckon I’d muss that up some if I took it in my fist.”

“Then muss it,” she laughed. “You weren’t always so particular.” And he grabbed, held, and patted the hand that he had known in its childhood.

“Why, little Joan,” he growled, with a suspicious softness in his voice, “you ain’t changed none since you used to sit on the end of that old-fashioned forge, dirty up your pinafores, and cry when Bully led you off. Him and me ain’t friends no more, so’s you could notice. Seven years now since I hit him for cussin’ me for somethin’ that wa’n’t my fault! But, by gee whiz, old Bully Presby could go some! We tipped an anvil over that day, and wrecked a bellows before they pulled us off each other. I’ve always wondered, since then which of us is the better man!”

He spoke with such an air of regret that Joan and Dick laughed outright, and in the midst of it a shadow came across their own, and they turned to meet the amused, complacent stare of Bill. In acknowledging the introduction, Joan felt that his piercing eyes were studying her, probing her soul, as appraisingly as if seeking to lay her appearance and character bare. His harsh, determined face suddenly broke into a wondrous warmth of smile, and he impulsively seized her hand again.

“Say,” he said, “you’ll do! You’re all right!”

And she knew intuitively that this giant of the hills and lonely places had read her, with all her emotions and love, as he would read print, and that, with the quick decision of such men, he was prepared to give her loyal friendship and affection.

They walked slowly around the plant, Dick pointing out their technical progress as they went, and she still further gained Bill’s admiration in the assay-house when she declared that she had a preference for another kind of furnace than they were using.

“Why, say, Miss Presby, can you assay?” he burst out.

“Assay!” she said. “Why, I lived in the assay-house at two or three times, and then studied it afterward.”

“Hey, up there!” a shout came from the roadway below.

They turned and went out to the little cindered, littered level in front of the door, and looked down to where, on the roadway a hundred feet below, a man stood at the head of a string of panting burros, and they recognized in him a packer from Goldpan.

“I’ve got somethin’ here for you.” He waved his hand back toward the string of burros.

“What is it?” asked Bill, turning to Dick.

“I don’t know what it can be. I have ordered nothing as heavy as that outfit appears to be.”

Perplexed, they excused themselves and descended the slope, leaving Joan standing there in front of the assay office, and enjoying the picture of the cañon, with its border of working buildings on one side, and its scattered cabins, mess- and bunk-houses on the other, the huge waste dump towering away from the hoist, and filling the head of the cañon, and the sparkle of the stream below.

“It’s for you, all right,” the packer insisted. “The Wells Fargo agent turned it over to me down in Goldpan, and said the money had been sent to pay me for bringin’ it up here. I don’t know what it is. It’s stones of some kind.”

Still more perplexed, the partners ordered him to take his pack train around to the storage house, and Bill led the way while his partner climbed back up the hill, and rejoined Joan. He was showing her some of the assay slips from the green lead when they heard a loud call from the yard. It was Bill, beckoning. They went across to meet him. One of the hitches had been thrown, and the other burros stood expectantly waiting to be relieved of their burdens.

“It’s a tombstone,” Bill said gravely. “It’s for Bell’s grave. The express receipt shows that it was sent by–” he hesitated for a moment, as if studying whether to use one name, or another, and then concluded–“The Lily.”

He pointed to a section of granite at their feet, and on its polished surface they read:

Under this granite sleeps Bells Park, an engineer. Murdered in defense of his employers. Faithful when living, and faithful when dead, to the Croix d’Or and all those principles which make a worthy man.

A sudden, overwhelming sadness seemed to descend upon them. Bill turned abruptly, and stepped across toward the boiler-house. The whistle sent out a long-drawn, booming call–the alarm signal for the mine. In all the stress of the Croix d’Or it was the first time that note had ever been used save in drill. The bells of the hoist arose into a jangling clamor. They heard the wheels of the cage whirl as it shot downward, the excited exclamations of men ascending, some of them with tools in hand, the running of a man’s feet, emerging from the blacksmith’s tunnel, the shout of the smith to his helper, and the labored running of the cook and waiter across the cinders of the yard. Bill slowly returned toward them.

“We’ll have to get you to land it up there,” he said, waving his arm toward the cross high above. “Give us a hand here, will you? and we’ll throw this hitch again.”

The entire force of the mine had gathered around them before he had finished speaking, and, seeing the stone, understood. Joan caught her riding skirts deftly into her hand, and, with Bill leading the way up the steep and rock-strewn ascent, they climbed the peak. The burros halted now and then to rest, straining under the heaviness of their task. The men of the Croix d’Or sometimes assisted them with willing shoulders pushing behind, and there by the mound, on which flowers were already beginning to show green and vivid, they laid out the sections of granite. Only the cook’s helper was absent. Willing hands caught the sections, which had been grooved to join, and, tier on tier, they found their places until there stood, high and austere, the granite shaft that told of one man’s loyalty.

Dick gave some final instructions as to the rearranging of the grave and the little plot that had been created around it, and they descended in a strange silence, saddened by all that had been recalled. No one spoke, save Bill, who gave orders to the men to return to their tasks, and then said, as if to himself: “I’d like mighty well to know where Lily Meredith is. We cain’t even thank her. Once I wondered what she was. Now I know more than ever. She was all woman!”

And to this, Joan, putting out her hand to bid them good-by, assented.

The night shots had been fired at five o’clock–the time usually selected by mines working two shifts–supper had been eaten, and the partners were sitting in front of their quarters when Bill again referred to Mrs. Meredith. High up on the hill, where the new landmark had been, erected, at the foot of the cross, the day shift of the Croix d’Or was busied here and there in clearing away the ground around the grave of the engineer, some of the men on hands and knees casting aside small bowlders, others trimming a clearing in the surrounding brush, and still others painfully building a low wall of rock.

“The hard work of findin’ out where The Lily is,” said Bill softly, “is because she covered her trail. Nobody knows where she went. The stage driver saw her on the train, but the railway agent told him she didn’t buy no ticket. The conductor wrote me that he put her off at the junction, and that she took the train toward Spokane. That’s all! It ends there as if she’d got on the train, and then it had never stopped. We cain’t even thank her.”

Dick, absorbed in thoughts of Joan, heard but little of what he said, and so agreed with a short: “No, that’s right.” And Bill subsided into silence. A man came trudging up the path leading from the roadway lower down, and in his hand held a bundle of letters.

“Got the mail,” he said. “The stage may run every other day after this, instead of twice a week, the postmaster over at the camp told me. Not much to-night. Here it is.”