The Highgrader

by Raine, William MacLeod

  He began to talk to himself in a rambling sort of way. Sometimes he would try to justify himself for highgrading in jerky half-coherent phrases, sometimes he argued with Peale that he had better let him out. But even in his delirious condition he stuck to his work in the tunnel, though he was scarce able to drag himself about.

  As the sickness grew on him, the lightheaded intervals became more frequent. In one of these it occurred to him that he had struck high grade ore and he filled his pockets with samples taken from the cave-in. He spent a good deal of time explaining to Moya patiently over and over again that the business of highgrading was justified by the conditions under which the miners lived. There was no sequence to his thoughts. They came in flashes without logical connection. It became, for instance, a firm obsession that the pipe running through the tunnel was a telegraph wire by means of which he could communicate with the outside world if the operator would only stay on duty. But his interest in the matter was intermittent.

  It is suggestive of his condition that when Moya's answer came to his seven taps he took it quite as a matter of course.

  "The son of a Greaser is back on the job at last," he said aloud without the least excitement. "Now, I'll get that breakfast I ordered."

  He crawled back to the foot of the shaft in a childish, absurd confidence that the food he craved would soon be sent down to him. While he waited, Jack fell into light sleep where he lost himself in fancies that voiced themselves in incoherent snatches of talk.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CAPTAIN KILMENY RETIRES

  A voice calling his name from the top of the shaft brought Jack Kilmeny back to consciousness. He answered.

  A shout of joy boomed down to him in Colter's heavy bass. He could hear, too, the sweet troubled tones of a woman.

  "Hurry, please, hurry.... Thank God, we're in time."

  "Got that breakfast with you, little neighbor," Jack called up weakly. He did not need to be told that Moya Dwight was above, and, since she was there, of course she had brought him the breakfast that he had ordered from the Silver Dollar.

  "Get back into the tunnel, Jack," Colter presently shouted.

  "What for?"

  "We're lowering someone to you. The timberings are rotten and they might fall on you. Get back."

  "All right."

  Five minutes later the rescuer reached the foot of the shaft. He stood for a moment with a miner's lamp lifted above his head and peered into the gloom.

  "Where away, Jack?"

  The man was Ned Kilmeny. He and Lord Farquhar had returned to the hotel just after dinner. The captain had insisted—all the more because there was some danger in it—that he should be the man lowered to the aid of his cousin.

  "Bring that breakfast?" Jack snapped, testily.

  "Yes, old man. It's waiting up above. Brought some soup down with me."

  "I ordered it two hours ago. What's been keeping you? I'm going to complain of the service."

  The captain saw at once that Jack was lightheaded and he humored him.

  "Yes, I would. Now drink this soup."

  The imprisoned man drained the bucket to the last drop.

  Ned loosened the rope from his own body and fastened it about that of his cousin. He gave the signal and Jack was hauled very carefully to the surface in such a way as not to collide with the jammed timbers near the top. Colter and Bleyer lifted the highgrader over the edge of the well, where he collapsed at once into the arms of his friend.

  Moya, a flask in her hand, stooped over the sick man where he lay on the grass. Her fine face was full of poignant sympathy.

  Kilmeny's mind was quite clear now. The man was gaunt as a famished wolf. Bitten deep into his face were the lines that showed how closely he had shaved death. But in his eye was the gay inextinguishable gleam of the thoroughbred.

  "Ain't I the quitter, Miss Dwight? Keeling over just like a sick baby."

  The young woman choked over her answer. "You mustn't talk yet. Drink this, please."

  He drank, and later he ate sparingly of the food she had hastily gathered from the dinner table and brought with her. In jerky little sentences he sketched his adventure, mingling fiction with fact as the fever grew on him again.

  Bleyer, himself a game man, could not withhold his admiration after he had heard Captain Kilmeny's story of what he had found below. The two, with Moya, were riding behind the wagon in which the rescued man lay.

  "Think of the pluck of the fellow—boring away at that cave-in when any minute a million tons of rock and dirt might tumble down and crush the life out of him. That's a big enough thing. But add to it his game leg and his wound and starvation on top of that. I'll give it to him for the gamest fellow that ever went down into a mine."

  "That's not all," the captain added quietly. "He must have tunneled in about twenty-five feet when the roof caved again. Clean bowled out as he was, Jack tackled the job a second time."

  Moya could not think of what had taken place without a film coming over her eyes and a sob choking her throat. A vagabond and worse he might be, but Jack Kilmeny held her love beyond recall. It was useless to remind herself that he was unworthy. None the less, she gloried in the splendid courage of the man. It flooded her veins joyously even while her heart was full to overflowing with tender pity for his sufferings. Whatever else he might be, Jack Kilmeny was every inch a man. He had in him the dynamic spark that brought him smiling in his weakness from the presence of the tragedy that had almost engulfed him.

  There was a little discussion between Colter and Captain Kilmeny as to which of them should take care of the invalid. The captain urged that he would get better care at the hotel, where Lady Farquhar and India could look after him. Colter referred the matter to Jack.

  "I'm not going to burden Lady Farquhar or India. Colter can look out for me," the sick man said.

  "It's no trouble. India won't be satisfied unless you come to the hotel," Moya said in a low voice.

  He looked at her, was about to decline, and changed his mind. The appeal in her eyes was too potent.

  "I'm in the hands of my friends. Settle it any way you like, Miss Dwight. Do whatever you want with me, except put me back in that hell."

  After a doctor had seen Jack and taken care of his ankle, after the trained nurse had arrived and been put in charge of the sick room, Captain Kilmeny made a report to Moya and his sister.

  "He's gone to sleep already. The doctor says he'll probably be as well as ever in a week, thanks to you, Moya."

  "Thanks to you, Ned," she amended.

  "He sent to you this record of how he spent his time down there—said it might amuse you."

  The Captain looked straight at her as he spoke.

  "I'll read it."

  "Do. You'll find something on the last page that will interest you. Now, I'm going to say good-night. It's time little girls were in bed."

  He kissed his sister and Moya, rather to the surprise of the latter, for Captain Kilmeny never insisted upon the rights of a lover. There was something on his face she did not quite understand. It was as if he were saying good-by instead of good-night.

  She understood it presently. Ned had written a note and pinned it to the last page of the little book. She read it twice, and then again in tears. It told her that the soldier had read truly the secret her anxiety had flaunted in the face of all her friends.

  "It's no go, dear girl. You've done your best, but you don't love me. You never will. Afraid there's no way left but for me to release you. So you're free again, little sweetheart.

  "I know you won't misunderstand. Never in my life have I cared for you so much as I do to-night. But caring isn't enough. I've had my chance and couldn't win out. May you have good hunting wherever you go."

  The note was signed "Ned."

  Her betrothed had played the game like the gentleman he was to a losing finish. She knew he would not whimper or complain, that he would meet her to-morrow cheerfully and easily, hiding even from he
r the wound in his heart. He was a better man than his cousin. She could not deny to herself that his gallantry had a finer edge. His sense of right was better developed and his courage quite as steady. Ned Kilmeny had won his V. C. before he was twenty-five. He had carried to a successful issue one of the most delicate diplomatic missions of recent years. Everybody conceded that he had a future. If Jack had never appeared on her horizon she would have married Ned and been to him a loving wife. But the harum-scarum cousin had made this impossible.

  Why? Why had her roving heart gone out to this attractive scamp who did not want her love or care for it? She did not know. The thing was as unexplainable as it was inescapable. All the training of her life had shaped her to other ends. Lady Farquhar would explain it as a glamour cast by a foolish girl's fancy. But Moya knew the tide of feeling which raced through her was born not of fancy but of the true romance.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XXIV

  TWO IN A BUCKET

  Jack heard the story of his rescue from India. He surprised her alone in the breakfast room by hobbling in one morning after the rest had gone.

  She popped a question directly at him. "Did the doctor say you could get up?"

  "Didn't ask him," he answered with a laugh, and dropped into a seat across the table.

  Shaven and dressed in a clean freshly pressed suit, he looked a different man from the haggard grimy vagabond Captain Kilmeny had brought back with him three days earlier. The eyes were still rather sunken and the face a bit drawn, but otherwise he was his very competent and debonair self. His "Good mornin', India," was as cheery and matter of fact as if those five days of horror had never existed.

  "Don't believe it will hurt you." Her bright eyes were warm in their approval of him. "You look a lot fitter than you did even yesterday. It's awfully jolly to see you around again, Cousin Jack."

  "I'm enjoying it myself," he conceded. "Anything of importance in that covered dish over there?"

  "Tell me all about it," she ordered, handing him the bacon. Then, with a shudder, she added: "Must have been rather awful down there."

  "Bad enough," he admitted lightly.

  "Tell me." She leaned forward, chin in hand.

  "What's the use? Those fellows put me down. Your brother took me up. That's all."

  "It isn't all. Ned says it is perfectly marvelous the way you dug that tunnel and escaped from being crushed, and then dug it again after it had caved."

  "Couldn't lie down and quit, could I? A man in the hole I was can't pick and choose." He smiled lazily at her and took a muffin from a plate handed him by the waiter. "My turn to ask questions. I want the full story of how you guessed I was in the west shaft of the Golden Nugget."

  "Haven't you heard? It was Moya guessed it—from the tapping on the pipe, you know."

  "So I've been told. Now let's have the particulars." His eyes went arrow-straight into hers and rested there.

  India told him. She knew that Ned would make a safer husband for Moya than this forceful adventurer. It was quite likely to be on the cards that he cared nothing for her friend. Indeed, his desperate flirtation with Joyce indicated as much. Moreover, Moya would not marry a man whom she could not respect, one who made his living by dishonest practices. But in spite of all these objections Miss Kilmeny told her cousin how Moya had fought for his life against ridicule and unbelief, regardless of what any of them might think of her.

  He made one comment when she had finished. "So I have to thank Moya Dwight for my life."

  "Moya alone. They laughed at her, but she wouldn't give up. I never saw anybody so stubborn. There's something splendid in her. She didn't care what any of us thought. The one thing in her mind was that she was going to save you. So Mr. Bleyer had to get up from dinner and find out from the maps where that pipe went. He traced it to the old west shaft of the Golden Nugget."

  "And what did you think?" he asked, watching her steadily.

  "I admired her pluck tremendously."

  "Did Verinder—and Bleyer—and Lady Farquhar?"

  "How do I know what they thought?" flamed the girl. "If Mr. Verinder is cad enough——" She stopped, recalling certain obligations she was under to that gentleman.

  "Why did she do it?"

  She flashed a look of feminine scorn at him. "You'll have to ask Moya that—if you want to know."

  He nodded his head slowly. "That's just what I'm going to do."

  "You'll have more time to talk with her—now that Joyce is engaged and daren't flirt with you," his cousin suggested maliciously.

  Though he tried to carry this off with a laugh, the color mounted to his face. "I've been several kinds of an idiot in my time."

  "Don't you dare try any nonsense with Moya," her friend cried, a little fiercely.

  "No," he agreed.

  "She's not Joyce."

  He had an answer for that. "I'd marry her to-morrow if she'd take me."

  "You mean you...?"

  "Yes. From the first day I met her again. And I didn't know it till I was down in that hell hole. Shall I tell you something?" He put his arms on the table and leaned toward her with shining eyes. "She was with me down there most of the time. Any time I stopped to listen I could hear her whisper courage in that low, sweet voice of hers."

  "You know about her and Ned?"

  "Yes."

  "He's a better man than you are, Jack."

  "Yes."

  "But you won't let him have her."

  "No, by God, not unless she loves him."

  "She would have loved him if it hadn't been for you."

  "You mean she loves me?"

  "She won't marry you. She can't."

  "Why not? Because I don't belong to her social set?"

  "No. That would be reason enough for Joyce or me, but I don't think it would stop Moya."

  "You mean—highgrading?"

  "Yes."

  Joyce interrupted further confidences by making her usual late appearance for breakfast. At sight of Kilmeny her eyes brightened. Life always became more interesting for her when a possible man was present. Instantly she came forward with a touch of reluctant eagerness that was very effective.

  "I'm glad to see you up again—so glad, Mr. Kilmeny."

  In the pretty breakfast gown which displayed her soft curves and the ripe roundness of throat and arm she made a picture wholly charming. If Jack was overpowered he gave no sign of it.

  "Glad to meet you, Miss Seldon."

  Her eyes rained sweet pity on him, a tenderness potent enough to disturb the serenity of any young man not in armor.

  "We—we've been so worried about you."

  He laughed, genially and without resentment. "Awfully good of you. Shall I ring for the waiter?"

  India rose. "I'm going riding with Ned and Moya," she explained.

  Alone with the Westerner, Joyce felt her blood begin to quicken.

  "Are you quite ... recovered?" she asked.

  Their eyes met. In his there was a faint cynical smile of amusement.

  "Quite."

  She understood the double meaning in his words. Her lashes fell to the soft cheeks, then lifted again. "I thought perhaps there might be ... that you might still be...."

  He shook his head vigorously. "It was only a dream. I can laugh at it now—and at myself for taking it seriously."

  Joyce bit her lip with vexation. There was something not quite decent in so prompt a recovery from her charms. He did not appear to hold even any resentment.

  Nor did he. Kilmeny had been brought too near the grim realities to hold any petty pique. He found this young woman still charming, but his admiration was tinctured with amusement. No longer did his imagination play upon her personality. He focused it upon the girl who had fought for his life against the ridicule and the suspicions of her friends. It was impossible for him to escape the allure of her fine sweet courage so gallantly expressed in every look and motion.

  But Moya let him severely alone. Her pride was suffering because she had
showed to all her little world too keen an interest in him. In her anxiety to repudiate any claim he might think she felt she had upon him the girl was scornfully indifferent to his advances. Almost rudely she rejected his gratitude.

  "The man does not owe me anything. Can't he see that honors are easy?" she said impatiently to Lady Farquhar.

  Jack Kilmeny was no quitter. He set that lean jaw of his and would not accept repulse. In four days now the Farquhar party was going to leave Goldbanks and he made the most of his time.

  Moya never saw him coming toward her without having her pulses stirred, but her look met his always quietly and steadily. Not once did she give him a chance to see her alone. Even Lady Farquhar, who had been a severe critic of her vagaries, commended now her discretion. Jack rebelled against it in vain. He could not find a chance to speak. It was characteristic of him that he made one.

  By shrewd maneuvering he arranged an expedition to the Silent Sam mine. The property itself was of no particular interest. The attractive feature was a descent in ore buckets from the shaft-house, perched far up on the edge of a precipitous cliff, to the mill in the valley below. This was made by means of heavy cables to which the buckets were suspended. After Jack had explained how the men rode back and forth by this means between the mill and the mine India was seized with the inspiration he had hoped for.

  "Let's go down in the buckets, dear people."

  Lady Farquhar protested and was overruled by a chorus of votes. The miner assured her that it was entirely safe. Reluctantly she gave permission for her flock to make the trip if they desired.

  They rode on horseback to the mill. Jack paired with India, making no attempt to ride beside Moya, who brought up the rear with the captain. The Westerner, answering the questions of his cousin, was at his debonair best. Occasionally there drifted back to the couple in the rear fragmentary snatches of his talk. He was telling of the time he had been a mule skinner in New Mexico, of how he had ridden mail near Deming, and of frontier days at Tombstone. Casual anecdotes were sprinkled through his explanations to liven them. He spoke in the slurring drawl of the Southwest, which went so well with the brown lean face beneath the pinched-in felt hat and the well-packed vigor of the man.