The Collected Westerns of William MacLeod Raine: 21 Novels in One Volume

by Unknown

  "I know only what the evidence shows," he cut in, warily on his guard. "He may or may not have been one of my attackers. From the first blow I was dazed. But everything points to it that he hired--"

  "Oh, no!" interrupted the Irish girl, her dark eyes shining softly. "The way of it is that he saved your life, that he fought for you, and that he is in prison because of it."

  "If that is true, why doesn't he bring some proof of it?"

  "Proof!" she cried scornfully. "Between friends--"

  "He's no friend of mine. The man is a meddler. I despise him."

  The scarlet flooded her cheeks. "And I am liking him very, very much," she flung back stanchly.

  Macdonald looked up at the vivid, flushed face and found it wholly charming. He liked her none the less because her fine eyes were hot and defiant in behalf of his rival.

  "Very well," he smiled. "I'll get him out if you'll do me a good turn too."

  "Thank you. It's a bargain."

  "Then sing to me."

  She moved to the piano. "What shall I sing?"

  "Sing 'Divided.'"

  The long lashes veiled her soft eyes while she considered. In a way he had tricked her into singing for him a love-song she did not want to sing. But she made no protest. Swiftly she turned and slid along the bench. Her fingers touched the keys and she began.

  He watched the beauty and warmth of her dainty youth with eyes that mirrored the hunger of his heart. How buoyantly she carried her dusky little head! With what a gallant spirit she did all things! He was usually a frank pagan, but when he was with her it seemed to him that God spoke through her personality all sorts of brave, fine promises.

  Sheba paid her pledge in full. After the first two stanzas were finished she sang the last ones as well:--

  "An' what about the wather when I'd have ould Paddy's boat, Is it me that would be feared to grip the oars an' go afloat? Oh, I could find him by the light of sun or moon or star: But there's caulder things than salt waves between us, so they are. Och anee!

  "Sure well I know he'll never have the heart to come to me, An' love is wild as any wave that wanders on the sea, 'Tis the same if he is near me, 'tis the same if he is far: His thoughts are hard an' ever hard between us, so they are. Och anee!"

  Her hands dropped from the keys and she turned slowly on the end of the seat. The dark lashes fell to her hot cheeks. He did not speak, but she felt the steady insistence of his gaze. In self-defense she looked at him.

  The pallor of his face lent accent to the fire that smouldered in his eyes.

  "I'm going to marry you, Sheba. Make up your mind to that, girl," he said harshly.

  There was infinite pity in the look she gave him. "'There's caulder things than salt waves between us, so they are,'" she quoted.

  "Not if I love you and you love me. By God, I trample down everything that comes between us."

  He swung to a sitting position on the lounge. Through the steel-gray eyes in the brooding face his masterful spirit wrestled with hers. A lean-loined Samson, with broad, powerful shoulders and deep chest, he dominated his world ruthlessly. But this slim Irish girl with the young, lissom body held her own.

  "Must we go through that again?" she asked gently.

  "Again and again until you see reason."

  She knew the tremendous driving power of the man and she was afraid in her heart that he would sweep her from the moorings to which she clung.

  "There is something else I haven't told you." The embarrassed lashes lifted bravely from the flushed cheeks to meet steadily his look. "I don't think--that I--care for you. 'Tis I that am shamed at my--fickleness. But I don't--not with the full of my heart."

  His bold, possessive eyes yielded no fraction of all they claimed. "Time enough for that, Sheba. Truth is that you're afraid to let yourself love me. You're worried because you can't measure me by the little two-by-four foot-rule you brought from Ireland with you."

  Sheba nodded her dusky little head in naïve candor. "I think there will be some truth in that, Mr. Macdonald. You're lawless, you know."

  "I'm a law to myself, if that's what you mean. It is my business to help hammer out an empire in this Northland. If I let my work be cluttered up by all the little rules made by little men for other little ones, my plans would come to a standstill. I am a practical man, but I keep sight of the vision. No need for me to brag. What I have done speaks for me as a guidepost to what I mean to do."

  "I know," the girl admitted with the impetuous generosity of her race. "I hear it from everybody. You have built towns and railroads and developed mines and carried the twentieth century into new outposts. You have given work to thousands. But you go so fast I can't keep step with you. I am one of the little folks for whom laws were made."

  "Then I'll make a new code for you," he said, smiling. "Just do as I say and everything will come out right."

  Faintly her smile met his. "My grandmother might have agreed to that. But we live in a new world for women. They have to make their own decisions. I suppose that is a part of the penalty we pay for freedom."

  Diane came into the room and Macdonald turned to her.

  "I have just been telling Sheba that I am going to marry her--that there is no escape for her. She had better get used to the idea that I intend to make her happy."

  The older cousin glanced at Sheba and laughed with a touch of embarrassment. "Whether she wants to be happy or not, O Cave Man?"

  "I'm going to make her want to."

  Sheba fled, but from the door she flung back her challenge. "I don't think so."

  CHAPTER XX

  GORDON FINDS HIMSELF UNPOPULAR

  Macdonald kept his word to Sheba. He used his influence to get Elliot released, and with a touch of cynicism quite characteristic went on the bond of his rival. An information was filed against the field agent of the Land Department for highway robbery and attempted murder, but Gordon went about his business just as if he were not under a cloud.

  None the less, he walked the streets a marked man. Women and children looked at him curiously and whispered as he passed. The sullen, hostile eyes of miners measured him silently. He was aware that feeling had focused against him with surprising intensity of resentment, and he suspected that the whispers of Wally Selfridge were largely responsible for this.

  For Wally saw to it that in the minds of the miners Elliot in his own person stood for the enemies of the open-Alaska policy. He scattered broadcast garbled extracts from the first preliminary report of the field agent, and in the coal camps he spread the impression that the whole mining activities of the Territory would be curtailed if Elliot had his way.

  In the States the fight between the coal claimants and their foes was growing more bitter. The muckrakers were busy, and the sentiment outside had settled so definitely against granting the patents that the National Administration might at any time jettison Macdonald and his backers as a sop to public opinion.

  It was not hard for Gordon to guess how unpopular he was, but he did not let this interfere with his activities. He moved to and fro among the mining camps with absolute disregard of the growing hatred against him.

  Paget came to him at last with a warning.

  "What's this I hear about you being almost killed up on Bonanza?" Peter wanted to know.

  "Down in the None Such Mine, you mean? It did seem to be raining hammers as I went down the shaft," admitted his friend.

  "Were the hammers dropped on purpose?"

  Gordon looked at him with a grim smile. "Your guess is just as good as mine, Peter. What do you think?"

  Peter answered seriously. "I think it isn't safe for you to take the chances you do, Gordon. I find a wrong impression about you prevalent among the men. They are blaming you for stirring up all this trouble on the outside, and they are worried for fear the mines may close and they will lose their jobs. I tell you that they are in a dangerous mood."

  "Sorry, but I can't help that."

  "You can stay around town and not go ou
t alone nights, can't you?"

  "I dare say I can, but I'm not going to."

  "Some of these men are violent. They don't think straight about you--"

  "Kindness of Mr. Selfridge," contributed Gordon.

  "Perhaps. Anyhow, there's a lot of sullen hate brewing against you. Don't invite an explosion. That would be just kid foolhardiness."

  "You think I'd better buy another automatic gat," said Elliot with a grin.

  "I think you had better use a little sense, Gordon. I dare say I am exaggerating the danger. But when you go around with that jaunty, devil-may-care way of yours, the men think you are looking for trouble--and you're likely to get it."

  "Am I?"

  "I know what I'm talking about. Nine out of ten of the men think you tried to murder Macdonald after you had robbed him and that your nerve weakened on the job. This seems to some of the most lawless to give them a moral right to put you out of the way. Anyhow, it is a kind of justification, according to their point of view. I'm not defending it, of course. I'm telling you so that you can appreciate your danger."

  "You have done your duty, then, Peter."

  "But you don't intend to take my advice?"

  "I'll tell you what I told you last time when you warned me. I'm going through with the job I've been hired to do, just as you would stick it out in my place. I don't think I'm in much danger. Men in general are law-abiding. They growl, but they don't go as far as murder."

  Peter gave him up. After all, the chances were that Gordon was right. Alaska was not a lawless country. And it might be that the best way to escape peril was to walk through it with a grin as if it did not exist.

  The next issue of the Kusiak "Sun" contained a bitter editorial attack upon Elliot. The occasion for it was a press dispatch from Washington to the effect that the pressure of public opinion had become so strong that Winton, Commissioner of the General Land Office, might be forced to resign his place. This was a blow to the coal claimants, and the "Sun" charged in vitriolic language that the reports of Elliot were to blame. He was, the newspaper claimed, an enemy to all those who had come to Alaska to earn an honest living there. Under indictment for attempted murder and for highway robbery, this man was not satisfied with having tried to kill from ambush the best friend Alaska had ever known. In every report that he sent to Washington he was dealing underhanded blows at the prosperity of Alaska. He was a snake in the grass, and as such every decent man ought to hold him in scorn.

  Elliot read this just as he was leaving for the Willow Creek Camp. He thrust the paper impatiently into his coat pocket and swung to the saddle. Why did they persecute him? He had told nothing but the truth, nothing not required of him by the simplest, elemental honesty. Yet he was treated as an outcast and a criminal. The injustice of it was beginning to rankle.

  He was temperamentally an optimist, but depression rode with him to the gold camp and did not lift from his spirits till he started back next day for Kusiak. The news had been flashed by wire all over the United States that he was a crook. His friends and relatives could give no adequate answer to the fact that an indictment hung over his head. In Alaska he was already convicted by public opinion. Even the Pagets were lined up as to their interests with Macdonald. Sheba liked him and believed in him. Her loyal heart acquitted him of all blame. But it was to the wooing of his enemy that she had listened rather than to his. The big Scotchman had run against a barrier, but his rival expected him to trample it down. He would wear away the scruples of Sheba by the pressure of his masterful will.

  In the late afternoon, while Gordon was still fifteen miles from Kusiak, his horse fell lame. He led it limping to the cabin of some miners.

  There were three of them, and they had been drinking heavily from a jug of whiskey left earlier in the day by the stage-driver. Gordon was in two minds whether to accept their surly permission to stay for the night, but the lameness of his horse decided him.

  Not caring to invite their hostility, he gave his name as Gordon instead of Elliot. He was to learn within the hour that this was mistake number two.

  From a pocket of the coat he had thrown on a bed protruded the newspaper Gordon had brought from Kusiak. One of the men, a big red-headed fellow, pulled it out and began sulkily to read.

  While he read the other two bickered and drank and snarled at each other. All three of the men were in that stage of drunkenness when a quarrel is likely to flare up at a moment's notice.

  "Listen here," demanded the man with the newspaper. "Tell you what, boys, I'm going to wring the neck of that pussyfooting spy Elliot if I ever get a chanct."

  He read aloud the editorial in the "Sun." After he had finished, the others joined him in a chorus of curses.

  "I always did hate a spy--and this one's a murderer too. Why don't some one fill his hide with lead?" one of the men wanted to know.

  Redhead was sitting at the table. He thumped a heavy fist down so hard that the tin cups jumped. "Gimme a crack at him and I'll show you, by God."

  A shadow fell across the room. In the doorway stood a newcomer. Gordon had a sensation as if a lump of ice had been drawn down his spine. For the man who had just come in was Big Bill Macy, and he was looking at the field agent with eyes in which amazement, anger, and triumph blazed.

  "I'm glad to death to meet up with you again, Mr. Elliot," he jeered. "Seems like old times on Wild-Goose."

  "Whad you say his name is?" cut in the man with the newspaper.

  "Hasn't he introduced himself, boys?" Macy answered with a cruel grin. "Now, ain't that modest of him? You lads are entertaining that well-known deteckative and spy Gordon Elliot, that renowned king of hold-ups--"

  The red-headed man interrupted with a howl of rage. "If you're telling it straight, Bill Macy, I'll learn him to spy on me."

  Elliot was sitting on one of the beds. He had not moved an inch since Macy had appeared, but the brain behind his live eyes was taking stock of the situation. Big Bill blocked the doorway. The table was in front of the window. Unless he could fight his way out, there was no escape for him. He was trapped.

  Quietly Gordon looked from one to another. He read no hope in the eyes of any.

  "I'm not spying on you. My horse is lame. You can see that for yourself. All I asked was a night's lodging."

  "Under another name than your own, you damned sneak."

  The field agent did not understand the fury of the man, because he did not know that these miners were working the claim under a defective title and that they had jumped to the conclusion that he had come to get evidence against them. But he knew that never in his life had he been in a tighter hole. In another minute they would attack him. Whether it would run to murder he could not tell. At the best he would be hammered helpless.

  But no evidence of this knowledge appeared in his manner.

  "I didn't give my last name because there is a prejudice against me in this country," he explained in an even voice.

  He wondered as he spoke if he had better try to fling himself through the window sash. There might be a remote chance that he could make it.

  The miner at the table killed this possibility by rising and standing squarely in the road.

  "Look out! He's got a gat," warned Macy.

  Gordon fervently wished he had. But he was unarmed. While his eyes quested for a weapon he played for time.

  "You can't get away with this, you know. The United States Government is back of me. It's known I left the Willow Creek Camp. I'll be traced here."

  Through Gordon's mind there flashed a word of advice once given him by a professional prize-fighter: "If you get in a rough house, don't wait for the other fellow to hit first."

  They were crouching for the attack. In another moment they would be upon him. Almost with one motion he stooped, snatched up by the leg a heavy stool, and sprang to the bed upon which he had been sitting.

  The four men closed with him in a rush. They came at him low, their heads protected by uplifted arms. His memory brought to him a pi
cture of the whitewashed gridiron of a football field, and in it he saw a vision of safety.

  The stool crashed down upon Big Bill Macy's head. Gordon hurdled the crumpling figure, plunged between hands outstretched to seize him, and over the table went through the window, taking the flimsy sash with him.

  CHAPTER XXI

  A NEW WAY OF LEAVING A HOUSE

  The surge of disgust with which Sheba had broken her engagement to marry Macdonald ebbed away as the weeks passed. It was impossible for her to wait upon him in his illness and hold any repugnance toward this big, elemental man. The thing he had done might be wrong, but the very openness and frankness of his relation to Meteetse redeemed it from shame. He was neither a profligate nor a squawman.