The Plunderer

His face hardened instantly, and his eyes flamed, dull and defiant. The lines of his heavy jaw appeared to deepen, his shoulders lifted a trifle, as if the muscles of him had suddenly tensed for combat, and his lips had a trace of the imperious sneer.

“Oh, you’re certain of that, are you, my girl?”

“I am,” she retorted. “I was in their lower level when the Rattler’s shots were fired. I heard them.”

For an instant he seemed about to leap from his chair, and then, recovering himself, said with sarcastic emphasis, and a deadly calmness: “And pray what were you doing there? Was the young mine owner, Townsend, there with you? Was he so kind–?”

“Is there any need for an exchange of insults?” Dick demanded, taking a step toward him, and prevented from going farther only by recollection of his previous loss of temper.

For an instant the mine owner defiantly met his look, and then half-rose from his chair, and stared more coldly across the litter of papers, plans, and impedimenta on his desk.

“Then why are you here together?” he demanded. “Weren’t you man enough to come yourself, instead of taking my daughter underground? Did you want to compel her to be the chief witness in your claim? What right had you to–?”

“Father!” admonished Joan’s voice.

It served a double purpose, for had she not interrupted Dick might have answered with a heat that he would have regretted, and Bully Presby dropped back into his chair, and drummed with his fingers on the desk.

“You took the ore. You must pay. You must!” went on the dull voice of his daughter.

“But how should I know how much it amounts to, even if I do find out that some of my men drove into the Cross pay?” he answered, fixing her with his flaming eyes.

“But you must know,” she insisted dully. “I know you know. I know you knew where the ore was coming from. It must be paid back.”

For an instant they eyed each other defiantly, and her brave attitude, uncompromising, seemed to lower the flood-gates of his anger. His cheeks flushed, and he lowered his head still farther, and stared more coldly from under the brim of his square-set hat. There were not many men who would have faced Bully Presby when he was in that mood; but before him stood his daughter, as brave and uncompromising as he, and fortified by something that he had allowed to run dwarf in his soul–a white conscience, burning undimmed, a true knowledge of what was right and what was wrong. Her inheritance of brain and blood had all the strength of his, and her fearlessness was his own. She did not waver, or bend.

“It must be paid back,” she reiterated, a little more firmly.

He suddenly jerked himself to his feet, his tremendous shoulders thrust forward across the desk, and raised his hand with a commanding finger.

“Joan,” he ordered harshly, “you get out of here. Go to your room! Leave this affair to this man and me. This is none of your business. Go!”

“I shall not!” she defied him.

“I think it is best,” Dick said, taking a step toward her. “I can take care of my own and Mr. Sloan’s interests. Please go.”

The word “Joan” almost slipped from his lips. She faced him, and backed against the door. “Yours and Mr. Sloan’s interests? What of mine? What of my conscience? What of my own father? What of me?”

She stepped hastily to the desk, and tapped on it with her firm fingers, and faced the mine master.

“I said you must pay!” she declared, her voice rising and trembling in her stress. “And you must! You shall!”

He was in a fury of temper by now, and brought the flat of his heavy, strong hand down on its top, sending the inkwell and the electric stand lamp dancing upward with a bound.

“And I shall do as I please!” he roared. “And it doesn’t please me to pay until these men”–and between the words he brought his hand down in heavy emphasis–“until–these–men–of the Cross mine prove it! I’ll make them get experts and put men in my mine, and put you yourself on the stand before I’ll give them one damned dollar! I’ll fight every step of the road before I’ll lay my hand down. I’ll pay nothing!”

She stood there above him, fixing him with her clear, honest, accusing eyes, and never faltered. Neither his words nor his rage had altered her determination. She was like a statue of justice, fixed and demanding the right. Dick had rushed forward to try and dissuade her from further speech, and stood at the end of the desk in the halo of light from the lamp, and there was a tense stillness in the room which rendered every outward sound more distinct. The voice of a boy driving mules to their stable and singing as he went, the clank and jingle of the chain tugs across the animals’ backs, and the ceaseless monotone of the mill, all came through the open windows, and assailed their ears in that pent moment.

“Please let me have my way,” Joan said, turning to Dick, and in her voice was infinite sorrow and tragedy. “It is more my affair than yours now. Father, I shall not permit you to go any farther. It is useless. I know! I can’t do it! I can’t keep the money you gave me. It isn’t mine! It is theirs! You say you will not pay. Well, then, I shall, to the last dollar!”

“But I shall accept nothing–not a cent–from you, if we never get a penny from the Cross!” declared Dick, half-turning, as if to end the interview.

She did not seem to hear him. She was still facing the hard, twisting face of Bully Presby, who had suddenly drawn back, as if confronted by a greater spirit than his own. She went on speaking to him as if Dick was not in the room.

“You stole their ore. You know you stole it. Somehow, it all hurts so that I cannot put it in words; for, Dad, I have loved you so much–so much! Oh, Dad! Dad! Dad!”

She dropped to her knees, as if collapsed, to the outer edge of the desk, and her head fell forward on her hands. The unutterable wail of her voice as she broke, betrayed the desperate grief of her heart, the destruction of an idol. It was as if she told the man across the desk that he had been her ideal, and that his actions had brought this ruin about them; as if all the sorrows of the world had cumulated in that ruin of faith.

Dick looked down at her, and his nails bit into his palms as he fought off his desire to reach down and lift her to his arms. Bully Presby’s chair went clashing back against the wall, where he kicked it as he leaped to his feet. He ran around the end of the desk, throwing Dick aside as he did so with one fierce sweep of his arm.

“Joan!” he said brokenly, laying his hand on her head. “Joan! My little Joan! Get up, girl, and come here to your Dad!”

She did not move. The excess of her grief was betrayed by her bent head and quivering shoulders. The light, gleaming above her, threw stray shadows into the depths of her hair, and softened the white, strained tips of her fingers.

Bully Presby, the arrogant and forceful, still resting his hand on her head, turned toward the twisted, youthful face of the man at his side, whose fingers were now clenched together, and held at arm’s length in front of him. The mine owner seemed suddenly old and worn. The invincible fire of his eyes was dulled to a smoldering glow, as if, reluctantly, he were making way for age. His broad shoulders appeared suddenly to have relinquished force and might. He stooped above her, as if about to gather her into his arms, and spoke with the slow voice of pathos.

“She’s right,” he said. “She’s right! I should pay; and I will! But I did it for her. She was all I had. I’ve starved for her, and worked for her, and stolen for her! Ever since her mother died and left her in my arms, I’ve been one of those carried away by ambition. God is damning me for it, in this!” He abruptly straightened himself to his old form, and gestured toward the sobbing girl at his feet. “I am paying more to her than as if I’d given you the Rattler and all–all–everything!–for the paltry ore I pulled from under your feet. You shall have your money. Bully Presby’s word is as good as his gold. You know that! I don’t know anything about you. I don’t hate you, because you are fighting for your own! Somehow I feel as if the bottom had been knocked out of everything, all at once! I wish you’d go now. I want to have her alone–I want to talk to her–just the way I used to, before–before–”

He had gone to the limit. His strong hands knotted themselves as they clenched, then unclenched as he stepped to the farther side of the door and looked at Dick, who had not moved; but now, as if his limitations also had been reached, the younger man leaned forward, stooped, and his arms caught Joan and lifted her bodily to his breast. In slow resignation, and with a sigh as if coming to shelter at last, her arms lifted up, her hands swept round his shoulders, and came to rest, clasped behind his head, and held him tightly, as if without capitulation.

There was a gasp of astonishment, and the rough pine floor creaked as Bully Presby, dumbfounded, comprehending, conquered, turned toward the door. He opened it blindly, fumbling for the knob with twitching hands–hands unused to faltering. He looked back and hesitated, as if all his directness of life, all his fierce decision of character had become undermined, irresolute. He opened his lips as if to protest, to demand, to dominate, to plead for a hearing; but no sound came. His face, unobserved by either the man he had robbed, or the daughter who had arraigned him, betrayed all these struggling, conflicting emotions. He was whipped! He was beaten more certainly than by fists. He was spiritually and physically powerless. Dazed, bewildered, he stood for an instant, then his heavy hands, which for the first time in his life had been held out in mute appeal, dropped to his sides. Habit only asserted when he slammed the door behind him as he walked out into the lonely darkness of the accusing night.

CHAPTER XIX

THE QUEST SUPREME

It was twilight again, and such a twilight as only the Blue Mountains of that far divide may know. It barred the west with golden bands, painted lavish purples and mauves in the hollows, and reddened the everlasting snows on the summits. It deepened the greens of the tamaracks, and made iridescent the foams of the streams tearing downward joyously to the wide rivers below. It painted the reddish-yellow bars of the cross on the peak above the Croix d’Or, and rendered its outlines a glorified symbol. It lent stateliness to the finger of granite beneath the base that told those who paused that beneath the shaft rested one who had a loyal heart. It swooped down and lingered caressingly on the strong, tender face of the girl who sat on the wall surrounding the graves of Bells Park and “the best woman that ever lived.”

“For some reason,” Joan said, speaking to the two men beside her, “the ugliness of some of it has gone. There is nothing left but the good and the beautiful. Ah, how I love it–all! All!”

Dick’s arm slipped round her, and drew her close, and unresisting, to his side.

“And but for you and Bill,” he said softly, “it might never have ended this way.”

“Humph!” drawled the deep voice of the grizzled old miner. “Things is just the way they have to be. Nobody can change ’em. The Lord Almighty fixes ’em, and I expect they have to work out about as He wants ’em to. Somehow, up here in the tops of the hills, where it’s close to the sky, He seems a heap friendlier and nearer than He does down on the plains. ’Most always I feel sorry for them poor fellers that live down there. They seem like such lonesome, forgotten cusses.”

The youthful couple by him did not answer. Their happiness was too new, too sacred, to admit of speech.

“Now,” Bill went on argumentatively, “me and Bully Presby are friends. He likes me for standin’ up for my own, and told me so to-day. He ain’t got over that feller Wolff yet. Says he could have killed him when he found out Wolff had poisoned the water and rolled the bowlder into the shaft to pen us in. I reckon Wolff tried to blackmail him about what he knew, but the Bully didn’t approve none of the other things. That ain’t his way of fightin’. You can bet on that! He drifted over and got the green lead in the Cross, when others had given it up and squandered money. That shows he was a real miner. We come along, and–well–all he’s done is just to help us find it, and then hand over the proceeds, all in the family, as I take it. Nobody’s loser. The families gets tangled up, and instead of there bein’ two there’s just one. The Rattler and the Croix d’Or threatens to be made into one mine, and the two plants consolidated to make it more economical. The green lead’s the best ledge in the Blue’s, and ’most everybody seems to be gettin’ along pretty well. That ain’t luck. It’s God Almighty arrangin’ things for the best.”

He sat for a moment, and gave a long sigh, as if there were something else in his mind that had not been uttered. Dick lifted his eyes, and looked at him affectionately, and then whispered into the ear close by his shoulder: “Shall I tell him now?”

“Do!” Joan said, drawing away from him, and looking expectantly at the giant.

Dick fumbled in his pocket with a look of sober enjoyment.

“Oh, by the way, Bill,” he said, “I got a letter from Sloan a few days ago. Here it is. Read it.”

The latter took it, and frowning as he opened it, held it up to catch the light.