by Max Brand
She looked at Ben Thomas, sitting opposite her, big, burly, immovable as a rock, in spite of any discomforts of body or soul, and he gave her a brief salute. Weariness did not show in his face. The lines of life had already been run too deeply there to show the fatigue of a single night, or the effect of a single act, she thought.
John Wilson was saying: “You’re thinking of something.”
“Yes,” she said. Suddenly she turned and looked straight at him. After all, she felt that he was a kindred spirit and that there was in him a certain depth of kindliness. “I was thinking of what Speedy said,” she answered.
“About you?” he said. “Oh, that was only a joke.”
“It wasn’t a joke,” she answered. “And I wasn’t thinking about that, either. I was remembering what he had said about you.” She was sorry, that moment, that she had spoken as she did, for she was remembering the exact words of Speedy as he told Wilson that there had been fear in his life and that his strength was greater than he thought. She was sorry because the proud face of Wilson was drawn with pain instantly.
But he answered at once: “You’re right, and he was right. Fear. That’s it. Fear. I . . .” He paused, and locked his jaws together.
A great pity awoke in her, reached her lips, and stopped there. A moment later it came again, seeing him sitting with a face of stone, and she touched his arm.
“More strength than you think. He said that, too,” said the girl quietly.
He did not look down at her. He did not need to, for she felt the tremor that ran through his body. The rock that was in him had been stirred, at least.
Then there were things to occupy them other than the contents of their minds, for the stage driver began to make his grand entrance into Trout Lake, which consisted in whipping up his six horses to a full gallop and taking the stage through twenty sharp curves and corners on the lower part of the road into the mining town. The trees rushed beside them in a solid blur. The cold air of the morning leaped at their faces in a strong gale, numbing them to the bone. They clung to the sides of the coach and smiled faintly, with frozen lips, as though they were striving to enjoy this dangerous adventure.
She looked askance at big John Wilson and saw that his eyes were still abstracted, looking into the future. If there was fear in him, it was not the sort of fear that was fed by the danger of six maddened horses rushing around the bends of a half-made mountain road. Again she changed her mind about him, suddenly and completely. There was finer metal in him than she had thought. What was the mystery about him? Into what danger was he passing? Into what danger was she, also, moving? Or had the prediction of Speedy been mere foolish words of the professional fortune-teller? She did not think so. She had heard from Ben Thomas, by this time, the gist of his conversation with the prospector, and Speedy became a figure of even more consequence in her mind’s eye.
At last, they rushed with the thunder of hoofs into the rosy gold of the sunrise and down the main street of Trout Lake. It was like a hundred other mining towns. It was built of logs, boards and, above all, of canvas. It was a huddling mass of lean-tos, looking as though a single strong blast of storm would blow down each house of cards.
Men were already moving about the streets. A sixteen-mule team was laboring through the deep dust, and two wagons, behind the animals, rocked among the ruts as the stage itself was rocking. Everything was rough, but everything was purified with hope and the sweetness of the mountain air that went to the bottom of the lungs with every breath.
They dismounted. They were taken into the warmth of the single hotel and seated at a long board, where they ate venison steaks, and corn pone, and drank powerful black coffee, all at a prodigious price.
Her father’s friend, “Uncle” Ben Thomas, seemed pleased by all of this, but the face of John Wilson had not altered, except to grow more and more like pale stone, with a supercilious, meaningless smile engraved upon it. He certainly felt that he was closer to some hour of trial. What could the trial be?
After breakfast, Ben Thomas hired a pair of saddle mules.
He and the girl mounted and were off, up the valley, with the clangor of work beginning and the sound of men’s voices singing here and there, among the trees, near at hand and far off.
“It seems,” she said suddenly to Ben Thomas, “as though nothing but good could be in the air, doesn’t it, Uncle Ben? And yet . . .”
He filled in the pause. “You’re thinking about that fellow Speedy, eh? Aw, forget about that. He was only playing a game.”
“Do you think so?” she asked, but not as one who can be easily convinced.
“Well, look-a-here,” said Thomas heartily, “you don’t believe in the doggone’ crystal ball, do you?”
“Well, I suppose not,” she said.
“Answer one way or the other. D’you or don’t you believe?”
At this, she finally shook her head. “No,” she admitted. “I don’t really believe any of that.”
“What’s left then?” asked Ben Thomas.
“I don’t know,” said the girl. “Unless he were a sort of mindreader.”
“What mind did he read to find you dead, Jessie?” asked the other roughly.
“Yes, that’s true,” she answered. Then she shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she said.
“Just a lot of rot, and that kid, that Speedy, he knew how to do his tricks, and make it seem something real. That was all,” said Ben Thomas, dismissing the whole idea. “Now, you take this . . . hello, there’s the place . . .”
“The two black rocks and the pine between ’em!” cried the girl. “That’s it! That’s it!” She hurried her mule into the lead down the trail, and at the same time a tall man in ragged clothes came out from behind one of rocks, and sent his cry of welcome ringing down the valley toward them.
Chapter 6
The tall man was Oliver Fenton, big and gaunt, as gray as one of the huge mountains about them, and he carried in his face a look that was partly savage and partly sad. For three years he had been a hunted man because the death of Henry Dodson had been laid to his account. Pursuit by manhunters for three years is enough to whiten a man’s hair and line his face. But he was illumined with happiness as he held the girl close to him, with one great, brown hand smoothing her hair.
He turned from her to grip Ben Thomas by both arms, making him shake and tremble in the force of that grasp.
“There was nobody in the world that I could turn to, Ben,” he said, “but I knew that I could trust you. And I was right. She’s here, and you’re with her, and it’s the first happy minute I’ve had in these three years. But get into the trees as fast as you can. Nobody has found the diggings yet. Hurry, man, hurry! There’s a horse coming up the trail, now. Hurry, will you? I heard a horse neigh right down the trail.”
They pushed on past the two black rocks, and then turned sharply aside among the trees. Instantly they were climbing over the most difficult sort of path. For the pine trees were set almost at random, here and there, in earth, upheld by the great boulders. They had to dismount, then sweat and toil up the ragged surface, leading their mules.
For half an hour, at least, they struggled on up the mountainside, keeping their breath for the climbing, rather than for talk, although Oliver Fenton was ever turning back, as he led the way, to watch his daughter overcoming the obstacles right gallantly and making a wonderful effort to keep up with the men. He nodded, and smiled, and gloried in her.
Then, at the end of the climb, they came out into the flattened shoulder of the mountain, to a small natural clearing. There the trees stood back from a little trickle of water that widened into a pool two steps across. The heads of the pine trees and the blue of heaven, crossed by a shining white cloud, were reflected in that tiny pool.
“This is the place,” said Oliver Fenton. “This is the place, Ben. I’ve been watching over it like a miser all these weeks since I wrote to you. I knew when I tried the stuff that it was a fortune. I knew when I wash
ed the first pan that it was like another Klondike. Look. Here’s a pan. Washed out some of that black stuff here . . . right here . . . yes, or anywhere along the creek, if you’re to call that runlet a creek.”
Ben Thomas, frowning to disguise his eagerness, caught up the pan. Digging in the soft black clayey soil required no great effort. With the pan, Thomas scooped out some of the earth and washed it rapidly in the runlet. There remained in the pan, when Ben Thomas had finished, a little heap of golden grains and dust. Thomas sifted it into his hand; it made a respectable little pyramid. “That’s about eight or ten ounces,” said Thomas, considering. He was like a man in a dream, looking before him, seeing wonders.
“Nearer to ten ounces, I take it,” said Oliver Fenton. He was smiling and nodding, not looking toward Thomas, but at his daughter, and she kept her own gaze fixed on Fenton as though all this matter of the gold were a small thing to her. She studied him, pitied him, grieved over the leanness and the savagery that had come into his face.
“Take one long day of work,” muttered Ben Thomas, “and a man, he could wash out the price of my whole ranch, and the cows that’re on it . . . I mean, with the mortgage considered and all.”
“A man could do that, Ben,” agreed the fugitive.
“Look,” said Thomas huskily. “I’ve been and worked all my life, since I was a kid. I’ve worked hard, and I’ve worked honest, ain’t I?”
“You’ve always been a hard, honest worker,” agreed Fenton.
“And look at what I’ve got,” said the rancher. “Nothin’ but a bit of no-good land and a couple mangy cows.”
“You’ve got a good place, man,” argued Fenton. “You’ve made a living out of it for a long time.”
“I could’ve made a living breaking rocks, too,” said Thomas. “I could’ve made a living out of a blacksmith shop, too. It’s been the sweat of my brow that’s made the money, not the land. And here . . . here you take and wash the price of that doggone ranch out of the mud in one day.” He dragged down a great breath.
“Why, Ben,” said Fenton generously, clapping his hand upon the powerful shoulder of the other, “you can give up ranching now, if you’re tired of it. You can give it up, man, and you can live in a town, if you want to. You don’t need to think that I’ll forget that, in the pinch, I could turn to you? No, no, Ben. I’m going to make your fortune for you, along with ours. I’m going to make you rich, Ben. We’ll split the thing three ways. One for Jessica, one for you, and one for me.”
Ben Thomas did not seem to hear. He lifted his rugged face, and a splotching of sunlight and thin shadow fell over it, so that the eyes seemed to blaze like polished metal. “What kind of Providence is there that they say watches over things?” he asked. “What kind of Providence is there, I mean to say. I go and work hard and honest, half a life, and here you come and wash out a fortune in a day. That’s the kind of Providence there is. That’s what they mean by Providence.”
“Uncle Ben,” said the girl, protesting. “Didn’t you hear? You’re to have a full third share in it. Look. It means millions, I suppose.”
“No, it won’t mean that, hardly,” said her father. “I’ve washed up and down this creek. It’s a mighty rich patch, but the gold is all pooled in this shoulder, do you see? It’s a rich pool, but there’s nothing higher up and there’s nothing lower down than this little plateau. Not millions. Maybe half a million. Well, maybe a whole million, too. But at any rate there’s enough for all three of us.” He turned to the girl, and his eyes drank her in slowly, luxuriously. “You’ve had a bad time, Jessica,” he said. “Your mother’s had a bad time, too.”
“It hasn’t been so bad,” she answered.
“Not bad?” he exclaimed. “You working out, washing, sewing, teaching music, anything to keep soul and body together? And you say that you haven’t had a bad time? Your mother, too, making a slave out of herself and your name disgraced by me? You say that isn’t a bad time? Oh, but I’ve groaned for you.”
“We’ve never doubted you,” replied the girl. “And the rest was nothing.”
“I’ll clear myself one day,” answered Fenton. “One day I’ll show that my hands are clean, after all. But now I can do something for you, in a way. Here it is, in the ground, and you go down to Trout Lake and file on this ground. File the claim. Ben, take her down with you, will you? You know the way, now. Stake it, and go down to Trout Lake. I can show you the best places here. Stake for her, and stake for yourself. Naturally you can’t stake for me. Ah, I’ve had nightmares, waiting here and watching. Every day I heard voices somewhere near. They’ve prospected the whole side of the mountain, I reckon. They’d’ve come here, except that the run of water doesn’t go on down the slope. It ducks into the rocks, out of sight. But every day I’ve been seeing the nightmare of some other man coming here, trying this ground, washing a handful of it and seeing . . . why, I’ve thought that I would be guilty of murder, if that happened.” He turned to Thomas. “You’ve found the place, Ben. We’ll stake it, and then you start, will you? Start fast. We haven’t any time to waste. Listen.”
He held up his hand. Far away they could hear the stir of voices coming faintly through the thin, pure mountain air.
Ben Thomas aroused himself from a trance and turned to the others. “I’m ready,” he muttered. And he added to himself, under his breath: “Half a life of slavin’ . . . and then this . . . just blundered onto.”
“And no one has seen you here?” the girl was asking her father anxiously.
“Nobody. I’ve lived here like a wildcat in the shadow,” he answered her. Then he urged them on. “Quick! Quick!” he exclaimed. “I’ll be staying here in a sweat until you come back again. Stake it out, Ben. Here, I’ll help. I’ve got everything ready. Here’s the description written out, locating it. I know enough surveying for that. This is a description that will fit to a T. Hurry along. I’ll take you down as far as the trail.”
He escorted them away, a hand on the arm of the girl, a hand on the arm of his friend.
As they disappeared, among the shadows along the bough of a great pine that bordered the clearing, another shadow stirred, moved, sat erect—a man. He was on the lowest bough and had been stretched there, face downward. Now he climbed down, a considerable distance, with nothing to aid him but shallow finger and toe holds in the roughness of the bark and in knotty projections, here and there. But he came down with such surety, it seemed that he was possessed with claws, like a cat. At the bottom, he sat down on one of the great roots that projected like the coil of a brown python from the ground and pulled on the shoes that had been slung about his neck. Then he stood up, dusted his hands, took out a small pocketknife, and with the edge of the blade carefully removed a small shot of brown resin that adhered to his trousers leg. After that, he stepped out of the shadow into the patch of sunlight that broke through the foliage above him. Carefully he moved, never stepping upon the soft soil, but only from projecting rock to rock, until he came to the edge of the runlet. There he stooped, scooped out a palmful of the earth, washed it with a rapid and gentle trundling motion, and looked down curiously at the glittering yellow grains of gold that remained in the wrinkles of his cupped hand.
“Gold,” murmured Speedy. “Yes, and murder, too. I guessed it before, and I know it now. Murder . . . red murder . . . the air’s full of it.”
His voice, as he spoke, was not at all in keeping with the solemnity of his words, for there seemed to be a bubbling cheerfulness about him, and he had a half smile about his lips, as though from amusement or from sheer happiness and content with this world as he found it.
With quick glances he noted down the spot and the guiding headlands that appeared, looming through or above the trees. When he had finished that quick survey, he could have found his way to this place even through the thickest darkness, so long as there were a faint foreshadowing of any of the neighboring mountains through the heavy gloom.
He was still lingering at the spot, when he heard other voi
ces approaching from the side, and at this he drew back as silently as a shadow that moves beneath a cloud across the surface of the earth. The trees received him; the big trunks swarmed and thickened between him and the clearing, and so he moved back and back until he was at a sufficient distance to give over his caution and to stride boldly and freely away among the forest aisles. He did not walk, however. Walking was not for him at such a time as this, for there were vital miles between him and Trout Lake, where he had much to do.
He broke into a run, an easy and light striding as the run of a Navajo Indian, those matchless desert runners that can put one hundred miles behind them between sunrise and sunset, and in a week outmarch the toughest mustang. So, weaving among the trees, he sloped away across the mountainside, and still, as he ran, he was smiling.
Chapter 7
When Ben Thomas reached Trout Lake, his mind was entirely made up. He had been turning various possibilities over in his thoughts during the journey back, and his decision, he believed, was entirely practical. The moment he got to the town, therefore, he started to act on it with the fine, quick decision of a man of affairs.
He dropped the girl at the hotel, merely saying: “We have to hurry, Jessica. You have the mules put up . . . here’s money to pay for ’em. I’ll hurry over and arrange things at the bureau, so that there’ll be nothing for you to do except to sign your name when it comes to filing the claim. I’ll be back here in a few minutes . . . maybe a half hour. Will you be ready?”
“Ready?” said the girl. “I’ll be waiting on pins and needles. Do you know what it means to me?”
“It means a fortune in hard cash, or soft yellow gold, any way you look at it,” suggested Ben Thomas with a grin.
She shook her head. “It means that there’ll be enough money to hire one good lawyer, and I know that one good lawyer will be able to clear Father before the world.”
