Читать книгу The Plunderer - Norton Roy - Страница 9

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By easy stages indicating competent engineering and a lavish expenditure of money, the road led them downward to a barricade of logs, in an opening of which swung a gate barely wide enough to pass the tired burros and their packs.

“You’ll find Presby over there,” said their unwilling guide, pointing at a group of red-painted mining structures nestled in a flat lap in the ragged mountains.

They surmised that this must be the Rattler camp, and inspected its display of tall smokestacks, high hoists, skeleton tramways, and bleak dumps. Before they could make any reply, the gate behind them slammed shut with a vicious bang that attracted their attention. They turned to see the watchman hurrying back up the road. Fixed to the barricade was a sign, crudely lettered, but insistently distinct:

No one allowed on these premises, by order of the owners. For any business to be transacted with the Croix d’Or, apply to Thomas W. Presby.

37

“Curt enough, at least, isn’t he?” commented Townsend, half-smiling.

“Curt!” growled his companion, frowning, with his recent anger but half-dissipated. “Curt as a bulldog takin’ a bite out of your leg. Don’t waste no time at all on words. Just says: ‘It’s you I’m lookin’ after.’ Where do you reckon we’ll find this here Thomas Presby person?”

“I suppose he must have an office up there somewhere,” answered Townsend, waving his arm in the direction of the scattered buildings spread in that profligacy of space which comes where space is free.

“These mules is tired. It’s a shame we couldn’t have left them up there,” Mathews answered, looking at them and fondling the ears of the nearest one. “You go on up and get an order letting us into your mine, and I’ll wait here. No use in makin’ these poor devils do any more’n they have to.”

Townsend assented, and followed a path which zigzaged around bowlders and stumps up to the red cluster on the hillside above him. He was impatient and annoyed at the useless delays imposed upon them in this new venture, and wondered why his father’s partner had not informed him of the fact that he would find the 38 mine guarded by the owner of the adjoining property.

A camp “washwoman,” with clothespins in her mouth, and a soggy gray shirt in her hands, paused to stare at him from beneath a row of other gray and blue shirts and coarse underwear, dripping from the lines above her head.

Two little boys, fantastically garbed in faded blue denim which had evidently been refashioned from cast-off wearing apparel of their sires, followed after him, hand in hand, as if the advent of a stranger on the Rattler grounds was an event of interest, and he found himself facing a squat, red, white-bordered, one-storied building, over whose door a white-and-black sign told the stranger, or applicant for work, that he was at the “office.”

A man came to a window in a picketed wicket as he entered, and said briskly: “Well?”

“I want to see Mr. Presby,” Dick answered, wasting no more words than had the other.

“Oh, well, if nobody else will do, go in through that door.”

Before he had finished his speech, the bookkeeper had turned again toward the ledgers spread out on an unpainted, standing desk against the wall behind his palings, and Dick walked to 39 the only door in sight. He opened it, and stepped inside. A white-headed, scowling man, clean shaven, and with close-shut, thin, hard lips, looked up over a pile of letters and accounts laid before him on a cheap, flat-topped desk.

Dick’s eyes opened a trifle wider. He was looking at the man who had defied the mob at the road house, and at this close range studied his appearance more keenly.

There was hard, insolent mastery in his every line. His face had the sternness of granite. His hands, poised when interrupted in their task, were firm and wrinkled as if by years of reaching; and his heavy body, short neck, and muscle-bent shoulders, all suggested the man who had relentlessly fought his way to whatever position of dominancy he might then occupy. He wore the same faded black hat planted squarely on his head, and was in his shirt-sleeves. The only sign of self-indulgence betrayed in him or his surroundings was an old crucible, serving as an ash tray, which was half-filled with cigar stumps, and Dick observed, in that instant’s swift appraisement, that even these were chewed as if between the teeth of a mentally restless man.

“You want to see me?” the man questioned, and then, as if the thin partition had not muffled 40 the words of the outer office, went on: “You asked for Presby. I’m Presby. What do you want?”

For an instant, self-reliant and cool as he was, Dick was confused by the directness of his greeting.

“I should like to have you tell that watchman over at the Croix d’Or that we are to be admitted there,” he replied, forgetting that he had not introduced himself.

“You should, eh? And who are you, may I ask?” came the dry, satirical response.

Dick flushed a trifle, feeling that he had begun lamely in this reception and request.

“I am Richard Townsend,” he answered, recovering himself. “A son of Charles Townsend, and a half-owner in the property. I’ve come to look the Croix d’Or over.”

He was not conscious of it then, but remembered afterward, that Presby was momentarily startled by the announcement. The man’s eyes seemed intent on penetrating and appraising him, as he stood there without a seat having been proffered, or any courtesy shown. Then, as if thinking, Presby stared at the inkwell before him, and frowned.

“How am I to know that?” he asked. “The 41 Cross has had enough men wanting to look it over to make an army. Maybe you’re one of them. Got any letters telling me that I’m to turn it over to you?”

For an instant Dick was staggered by this obstacle.

“No,” he said reluctantly, “I have not; that is, nothing directed to you. I did not know that you were in charge of the property.”

He was surprised to notice that Presby’s heavy brows adjusted themselves to a scowl. He wondered why the mine owner should be antagonistic to him, when there was nothing at stake.

“Well, I am,” asserted Presby. “I hired the watchman up there, and I see to it that all the stuff lying around loose isn’t stolen.”

“On whose authority, may I ask?” questioned Dick, without thought of giving offense, but rather as a means of explaining his position.

“Sloan’s. Why, you don’t think I’m watching it because I want it, do you, young man? The old watchman threw up his job. I had Sloan’s address, and wrote him about it. Sloan wrote and asked me to get a man to look after it, and I did. Now, you show me that you’ve got a right to go on the grounds of the Cross Mine, and I’ll give an order to the watchman.”