Читать книгу The Golden Foundling - Alan Sullivan - Страница 4

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DOLPH, left to himself, spent a full quarter-hour in solid reflection, then rode back toward the new camp. It appeared to him that this affair must have been meant, because it came just at the time when his affair with Jennifer was distinctly out of joint.

Quite deliberately, he compared these two. Jennifer was cool, unpassionate, unresponding. She had had many attentions from many men, but he himself was the first to make any impression. Even when he was accepted, the acceptance lacked enthusiasm, and no engagement had ever been announced. They both thought it wiser.

Julianna in her wise, quiet way had tried to explain her sister, arguing with Dolph that she really felt deeply, but it was out of her power to express how much she felt. Some girls were like that. They loved, but any abandonment of love was foreign to them. One had to wait for that till afterwards.

This had left Dolph rather cold. To him the expression of what one felt came as naturally as breathing. It was like breathing. As to Jennifer, he had reckoned that the mountains, this solitude, all this beauty and glamour and mystery would awaken her—if anything could. But it had not. Only the day previously he had taken her in his arms, trying to ruffle and rumple her too perfect calm, and rouse the electric spontaneous answer he craved. But all that happened was that she looked at him as though asking whether he considered this sort of behaviour the privilege of an engaged man. Secretly she was rather pleased, though it was not Jennifer’s way to show it.

Now, by a mountain stream, he had found the spirit of the mountain in tears. Not only that—but one who was hungered for life, and, he guessed, not afraid to live. He was still disturbed by her unhappiness, still thrilled by the touch of her lips. She had nothing. He in comparison had everything. Pirrie-Pirrie! he repeated. What a wonderful name. He had never heard it before.

He rode into a glade higher upstream where Glacier Jim and his men were making camp, the white walls of the tents rising but a few paces from the hurrying water. Behind them stood unbroken ranks of pine and hemlock. Mr. Martin was stretching his stiff legs, Jennifer busy with her sketch book, and Julianna fitting her rod together. She waved a hand at him.

“Lots of trout here, Jim says, and we’ll have some for supper. Isn’t it a lovely spot?”

“Good—I’ll help. What a ripping pool!”

“Dolph,” she said, lowering her voice, “why don’t you talk to Jennifer? She’s missed you.”

“I don’t flatter myself to that extent.”

“But she has—really, and is rather miserable. Is anything wrong?”

“N-no.”

“Which means there is, so perhaps you’d better not talk to her now. Where have you been?”

“Downstream a mile or so—near the mine.”

“Did you see it—or anyone? You look—well——”

“Like something new and strange?” he laughed.

“Yes, rather. Who did you see?”

“A young lady called Pirrie, also a young man called Hugh. I was talking to her when he came along.”

Julianna, knowing his proclivities, gave him an oblique look, then spent some moments selecting a fly.

“Pirrie what?”

“Stevens; her father owns the mine. She lives there, and is—er—a bit fed up.”

“And you were consoling her when the young man appeared,” said Julianna with startling intuition.

“Oh, I say!”

“Well, weren’t you?”

“It might have been something like that, but nothing happened, and we’re all going to see them presently, and, Jule, please don’t be an ass.”

He strolled off and spent the next half-hour in personal adornment, involving a new khaki shirt, clean riding-breeches and highly polished leggings. Julianna observing him emerge in glory, landed her trout, and took occasion for a chat with the head guide.

“Jim, it’s a Mr. Stevens who has the mine?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Has he a family?”

“There ain’t any Mrs. Stevens, I guess she’s dead, but there’s Pirrie.”

“What a funny name. Girl or boy?”

“Best-looking girl north of the Fraser River. I ain’t never been south.”

“As good-looking as all that?”

“Well, miss, mountain girls are reckoned to be that way where I come from. I ain’t seen her for a year, but she was a peach then, and there’s a big fish on the other side if you can get a fly that far.”

Ten minutes later a three-pounder was flopping at her feet, and Jim wiped his fingers.

“This here Miss Pirrie,” he said reminiscently, “I guess she ain’t Stevens’ daughter at all. They say he adopted her in the mountains when she was a kid, and she’s been with him ever since. Then there’s a young fellow who put his money into the mine. He’s there yet—so’s the money.”

Julianna laughed a little. “It’s that kind of a mine?”

“You can’t exactly tell, can you? Stevens swears by it, but I guess he can’t hold on much longer. All going out and nothing coming in.”

“Would he mind our going to see it?”

“Gosh, no! And Miss Pirrie’d be tickled to death.”

Julianna asked nothing more, and went on with her fishing so successfully that at five o’clock the camp was pervaded by a very appetizing odour. At six, the three younger members of the party started off, Dolph in the lead. They went on foot.

Jennifer was rather silent, even for her, since Julianna had disclosed just enough to make her think very hard. But she was not anxious. The adopted daughter of a miner, probably as wild as a deer, and certainly with no finish. It was silly to be worried.

Then along Pirrie’s trail till Stevens’ Hope came in view on a slow rise of the foothills. Long low buildings, heavy walled, thick roofed, with hewn benches outside and small deep set windows. There was the shaft headgear, a sloping dump of quartz, the hoist house, the smithy, all the paraphernalia of a mine.

The visitors were making for the nearest building when a girl came out, advancing swiftly, and at sight of her Jennifer caught her breath. Absolutely unexpected she was, in a short skirt, leggings, soft shirt open, showing a smooth and lovely neck tanned a delicate brown. The set of her shoulders was strong and graceful, her eyes like blue mountain lakes, her hair like the gold for which Stevens burrowed so deep. This girl needed no art whatever. Jennifer admitted it at once.

It was a queer gathering, and Julianna missed nothing of its undercurrent. Hugh, still hot with anger and jealousy, did his best to be civil, yet had eyes for none but Pirrie. He felt threatened where she was concerned.

Pirrie herself was full of bubbling, irrepressible curiosity. She noted the other girls’ clothes, their boots—the product of Jermyn Street,—their hats, their manner of casual poise, the level inflection of their voices. Especially Jennifer. She had never seen anyone quite like Jennifer before. And what struck her most forcibly was that these girls looked cared for to an astonishing degree. It was all very absorbing. Presently Dolph managed to get Pirrie to himself.

“Tell me, was there an awful row?”

“No row at all. Why?”

“Didn’t your husky young friend want to kill me?”

“He was very foolish and surprised. He had no right to be on that trail. It’s mine.”

“Yours!”

“Yes, my sanctuary.”

“Had he any right to be angry?” ventured Dolph. “Are you engaged?”

Pirrie tossed her yellow hair. “No, indeed.”

“That’s queer,” he murmured. “I say, Pirrie, there’s something I forgot to tell you this afternoon.”

She glanced at the little group at the shaft-mouth, and her eyes rested thoughtfully on Jennifer. Had anyone else, she wondered, any right to be angry over this affair.

“What is it?” she asked very dubiously.

“That you’re the loveliest, most wonderful thing I ever saw in my life.”

She coloured hotly, then stared at him in utter confusion.

“Please—please—you mustn’t. And it isn’t true.”

She took it so differently from other girls to whom he had confided sentiments not dissimilar that he was more fascinated than ever. This time he really did mean it.

“It’s perfectly true—and what about to-morrow?”

Her lips quivered—and steadied. “To-morrow will be another fine day,” she said, glancing into the west.

“You darling—that’s not what I mean. What are we going to do?”

Her heart was beating riotously, and she experienced a delicious and totally novel kind of fear. But he must not see that.

“For my part, what I always do: try samples in a gold-pan, a bit of cooking, a bit of reading if I can find something I don’t know word for word, and—and——”

“What else?” he demanded.

“A little wondering what’s going to happen to me and the mine.”

“Why do you couple yourself with the mine?”

“Because if nothing happens underground, nothing will happen on the surface.”

“Is it as bad as that?”

She nodded.

“Then we must meet somewhere to-morrow. We must!”

She looked at him rather gravely. His face was eager, his expression very honest. She did not ask herself whether she would be safe with him, because, curiously, she did not want to be too safe. Nothing interesting ever happened to people like that. Nor did she wish to be put down as prim, countrified and unused to modern life. So why not meet him—the most interesting person she had ever found. And she very much liked something in his voice when he called her “darling.”

“You’re evidently not afraid of being killed,” she said lightly.

“He’ll have three days for the job—if he’s keen on it. We’ll be moving on then.”

Moving on! She sent him a wistful look that he only half understood. But it made his pulse jump. And they might never meet again.

“Where shall we meet—and when?” she asked in a low voice.

“At the end of your trail at eight—I’ll bring lunch. Will that do, you darling.”

“Yes,” she whispered, wondering if the end of that trail was to prove the beginning of another.

At the shaft-mouth they were received by Jennifer in a manner there was no misreading. She seemed not to see Dolph at all. Young Purdey’s jaw was thrust out, and he made no attempt to conceal his vexation. It was Julianna, as usual, who came to the rescue.

“Miss Stevens, do you really go underground every day? Aren’t you nervous?”

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. Won’t you put on some old clothes, and go yourself?”

Julianna shivered a little involuntarily. And at the moment she was wearing what were her oldest clothes. Almost disreputable, she thought. This made her distinctly sympathetic, and there were a lot of things of her own in camp that she would have liked to offer to this girl, were it possible.

“I—I’d like to very much.”

“And you?” said Pirrie with a straight look at Jennifer.

“Certainly I’ll go.” The voice was a shade chilly.

“Then you take them, Hugh.”

Hugh nodded rather sulkily, and just at that moment there came from deep in the shaft the twitching slap of a signal wire. The steel cable began to swarm up. Far, far down grew a tiny spot of yellow flame, till they made out the ascending bucket. In it stood a big man, a lighted candle fixed in his miner’s cap. The bucket halted, and he stepped out, face streaked, hands gritty with quartz sludge.

“Visitors, Dad. They’re camped higher up the creek.”

Stevens gave the smile of a weary man, nodded, spread out his soiled palms in explanation, and listened intently till in lower blackness sounded three solid thuds. Then he nodded again.

“You young folks trail-riding alone?”

Jennifer told him about the others.

“Well,” he said heartily, “it’s a great thing for Pirrie to have a little company, but there isn’t much to show you.”

“There’s something quite new. Mr. Purdey’s going to take us underground to-morrow.”

“Well, all right, but look out for that bad spot in the shaft, Hugh.”

“Is it really dangerous?”

“Not yet, but it will be.” He paused, glancing into the west. “I don’t want to hurry visitors, but it will soon be dark, and if you’re not used to the woods, why——”

“Yes, we ought to be off. Will you come and lunch to-morrow? Father is interested in mines in South Africa.”

Stevens grinned at her. “Pleased to hear it, and, miss, we don’t exactly lunch in these parts. Maybe I’ll drop over for a smoke.”

The three struck off for camp in the failing light, and the gleam of Jim’s fire through the trees was very welcome. Then the two girls sought their tent, where springy mattresses of young spruce boughs made beds fit for the weary. Julianna had settled comfortably in hers, and was deep in rather disturbing thoughts, when Jennifer spoke.

“Did you think that girl very pretty?”

“Yes—a new type, and very striking.”

“I think she’s perfectly stunning. You saw it, of course?”

“Saw what?”

“Dolph and her! I’m not blind, and neither are you.”

“I wouldn’t worry, Jen.”

“But you know Dolph as well as I do.”

“I wonder,” said Julianna patiently.

“If I ask you something, will you tell me—honestly?”

“If I know the answer—yes.”

“Then can I do anything I’m not doing to hold him?”

This was a hard question. Jennifer being Jennifer made it difficult to say what more she could do—and remain herself. She loved—no doubt of that—but in a fashion that frowned on any outbursts, any extremes. Julianna, knowing this, wondered what she might safely say.

“I don’t believe you can, Jen.”

“Then I’ve got to sit still and watch this sort of thing going on. I hate it.”

“But we’re only going to be here for three days.”

“Anything may happen in three days—with Dolph.”

“Then, if he’s like that, do you really want to hold him?”

From the other spruce bed came a stifled little sob, and Julianna put out her hand.

“Jen, dear, it’s awfully difficult, but in spite of everything, he really does love you. He doesn’t know himself yet how much he cares, but he’ll find out. Just now he’s got the idea of romance, and a few bumps won’t do him any harm. For him to marry that girl would be a mistake, but she’ll have to demonstrate that—not us. Don’t you see?”

“I see that I don’t occur to him while he’s with her. Of course they spent the afternoon together.”

“Part of it,” admitted Julianna, “but in four days from now there won’t be a thought in his head about her. The thing works both ways.”

“Perhaps—but what about to-morrow?” The voice was quieter, but still very dubious.

“We’ll all be together mostly, and when we’re not I’ll take him fishing.”

“You’re rather a trump, Jule. I wish I could do something for you.”

Julianna sighed a little, but inaudibly. She wished so too. But what could anyone do for a girl who had no complexion, a blunt nose and indeterminate features.

“Don’t you worry about me—and go to sleep. Aren’t these beds heavenly?”

They did not wake till nine, and then only at the musical rhapsody produced by Jim when he beat a steel triangle with a small steel rod. That sound meant worlds in the wilderness.

“Keep it hot for five minutes, Jim,” said Julianna, putting out a drowsy head. “Isn’t Mr. Hudson up yet?”

“Reckon he is, Miss. He lit out most an hour and a half ago, and took a snack of lunch with him. Said he’d be back round sundown. As fer that lunch, I never seen bread cut that thin in all my life.”

Young Purdey went underground with Stevens next morning at seven, and swung a hammer with vicious certitude before he said a word. Then he put the hammer down, and wiped a sweating brow.

“Tough rock to-day,” grunted Stevens, glancing at the seamed quartz.

“And worth only eight dollars a ton!”

“That’s what Pirrie reckoned.”

“What’s the matter with Pirrie?” The tone was very blunt.

“Guess she’s a little excited over the visitors. Nice folks! What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m wondering when we’re going to get out of this hole—if ever.”

“God knows! I thought we’d have struck it before this. The vein was a lot better on the surface.”

“Danks made any more trouble?”

“Yes—it’s the wages—and I can’t blame him either. I haven’t got it.”

“Well,” said Hugh, “I’m broke too. Why not drop it, and clear out? We can find better stuff somewhere else, and what’s the point in banging out our souls here for nothing?”

Stevens looked grave. The same thought had been stirring uncomfortably in his own mind for weeks past, and the weight of this back-breaking, spirit-breaking grind lay heavy upon him. To-day, the end seemed farther off than ever, and he felt older with every sun that set. But always when he reached this stage there came to him the shining hope—the secret, non-understandable assurance that hiding somewhere in this solid defiant rock lurked ultimate fortune if he would but cleave to his purpose. It was that blind faith, that will-o’-the-wisp of a golden future that nerves every true prospector, and fills his dreams with glittering visions.

“That’s been in my own head,” he said sombrely, “but you’ve sunk all you’ve got here, and so have I.”

“I know it, but—well—what about Pirrie? How much longer has she got to stick?”

This struck home. What about Pirrie? Hugh’s money was in the mine—and for Pirrie’s sake. This was understood by both. But it seemed now that Stevens’ Hope was becoming a millstone about the necks of them all.

“Have you and Pirrie fixed it up?”

“I thought we had—till yesterday. Then I found that fellow with his arms round her.”

“Eh!” blinked Stevens.

Purdey exclaimed. “See why we’d better get out of this?” he added.

There was a silence in which they heard the drip of water, and the clatter of the bucket hoisting rock from Danks’ level farther down. Stevens hardly knew what to think, this being the sort of thing in which he had no experience. He had one fantastic idea, but put it away as out of the question. No such luck for Pirrie.

“What do you make of it yourself?” he countered.

“Simple enough! Rich young fellow comes trail-riding along—finds pretty girl in the dumps—starts making love to her. Then in a day or two he rides on. Look out, Stevens—it’s dangerous.”

That sounded reasonable enough, and Stevens started for the shaft. “I’m going to talk to her now.” In twenty minutes he came back, looking greatly disturbed. “She’s not in camp, Hugh. What next?”

Purdey’s eyes took on a quick dark light. “Where’s she gone?”

“Dunno: she left before eight, and said she wouldn’t be back till sundown. Look here, what can I do?”

“Pull out of this before it’s too late. That’s all there is to do!”

“One month—can you stand a month more?” He frowned at the face of quartz behind which fortune must be hiding—somewhere.

“And then?”

“Pull out if we don’t strike it. Danks is the only trouble.”

“I’m for that, and if Danks will take an interest instead of cash, why not offer it.”

This was a new idea. It seemed just possible, so the two descended eighty feet of slippery ladders. Half-way down, Stevens held his candle against the shaft wall.

“Bad spot there—I don’t like it.”

To any miner it would have looked a bad spot, though the novice would have seen nothing unusual. The wall was fissured, and round a great leaf of rock ran a crack. The leaf weighed many tons, and was wedged in precarious balance. It might stick—if there were no more blasting underground it would stick—but there was always the chance that the whole vast weight might become detached and wreck the shaft in its titanic plunge. And that would mean disaster to Stevens’ Hope.

“Ugly, isn’t it?” said Stevens again.

“Damned ugly—but it will last out our time.”

Stevens tapped it gingerly, and descended farther. There was something ominous about this gigantic sword of Damocles. It typified impending ruin, and he pictured it crashing down, carrying death and destruction. It would be wiser, he decided, that neither Pirrie nor her visitors come here at all. Then they found Danks and his Swedes at the breast of the second level. The clink of hammers ceased, and Stevens drew Danks aside in the dark.

“Want to talk to you a minute.”

“Well,” said Danks with unconcealed insolence, “I was going to talk if you didn’t. I can’t hold these fellows any longer.”

“I know.” Stevens’ voice was patient. “That’s just the point.” He went on, explaining the situation, dwelling on his faith in the mine. If these men deserted him now, Stevens’ Hope must close forthwith. And one could not sell an abandoned property.

“That’s how it stands, and the stuff is here if we can only find it. And we’ve grub and explosives for another month.”

“Men won’t work without pay—not in a mine,” said Danks sullenly.

“I’ll give you a third interest between you for another month.”

Danks stood irresolute. He had worked in many mines, and this one had puzzled him from the start. Gold was here. All the conditions were favourable. He knew that. He could hold the Swedes, under this offer. He knew that too.

“Suppose we strike nothing in thirty days, do we shut down?”

“That’s it.”

Danks scratched his head and pondered the matter. “I’ll talk it with the rest, and tell you at noon.”

He went back to work, his brain very busy. Now was the season when wandering engineers, in search of promising properties, were apt to happen along through the mountains, and the odds were that one would turn up at Stevens’ Hope before the month was out. If this came about, he should, given ordinary luck, be able to do something very practical in the way of aiding a sale. He had done it before, and with considerable success, but avoided that part of the country after the transaction took place.

They were of the same breed, he and Stevens, both adventurers, both men who had starved, suffered, rejoiced and hoped, both animated by the restless spirit whereby the seemingly impossible is often accomplished. In all this there was no difference between them. The real difference lay in the fact that Stevens was as honest as daylight, while Danks in his wandering life had turned many a tricky corner.

Beggars cannot be choosers, and when young Purdey learned that the matter had been arranged he turned to an even more important question.

“Pirrie!” he exploded. “What are you doing about her and that fellow?”

“Dunno that I can do anything much. She’s twenty-one. I can’t blame her for being interested, and it isn’t as though you——” he broke off uncomfortably.

No mistaking what he meant. Hugh was in no position to take care of Pirrie himself. And one could not buy the girl by sinking three thousand dollars in a mine that might prove to be worth nothing.

He would have been even more anxious were he able to read Stevens’ thoughts at this moment. They were queer and unexpected. Would it not be a waste if Pirrie did marry this hotheaded young miner? He might be rich some day—but to-day he was poor. And if he stayed poor, it would be the long hard trail again for Pirrie. No life for a woman, that.

Stevens was suddenly filled with new ambitions for this girl of his—this waif of the Caribou Trail. All she had now was his love—the love of a prospector past his first youth. That was no asset. He aspired that she should move on, and up. He pictured her living as other girls did, dressing as they did, making friends, receiving attention and admiration. Finally she should marry some man of money and position. He found himself wanting a thousand things for her.

With this in mind he gave Purdey a sidelong glance, and seemed to see him in a distinctly disadvantageous light. What real right had he to Pirrie?

“I can’t tell her she’s not to do this or that,” he said, trying to sound entirely unbiased. “She’ll marry the man she wants to marry. Her sort always does. And she’s grown up, Hugh, she’s grown up.”

“Got your eye on the English trail-rider?” snarled Hugh.

Stevens put a gnarled hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Takes two to make a quarrel, son, and you can leave me out. I guess I know how you feel. It’s my experience that life is like this quartz vein. You hammer at the blasted thing till you’re heartsick. Where you expect it to be barren, it’s sometimes good: other times when by all the signs it ought to be good, it turns out rotten. You’ve got to reckon that the rich spot is just ahead and work for that. If it ain’t there at all, it’s no use squealing. If it is, you’ve got to keep your head, and not get lit up. And if some other fellow strikes it instead of yourself, well, you just wish him luck, stick out your jaw, and move on. That’s life as I see it.”

This might be sound enough, but it didn’t reach Hugh. He was too much in love, too inoculated with jealousy. All very well for a middle-aged man who hadn’t an idea in the world except prospecting; but Stevens had forgotten how one felt when young blood is hot, and young arms stretch out, empty, in the dark.

Thus there was set up in the booming levels of Stevens’ Hope the first latent antagonism between these two; Purdey convinced that something better than himself was desired for Pirrie; Stevens anxious only that the girl be happy, trusting her judgment as never before, and sick at heart at the chance of losing her. Any man, he reckoned, should fight things out for himself, but a girl needed all the help one could give.