The Spoilers of the Valley
by Robert Watson · English · Gutenberg #29588 · 625,596 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Spoilers of the Valley
Author: Robert Watson
Release date: August 3, 2009 [eBook #29588]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPOILERS OF THE VALLEY ***
Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
THE SPOILERS OF THE VALLEY
ROBERT WATSON
THE SPOILERS OF THE VALLEY
By ROBERT WATSON
Author of "The Girl of O. K. Valley", etc.
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers--New York
Published by arrangement with George H. Doran Company
Printed in U. S. A.
COPYRIGHT, 1921,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
A LADY CALLED NAN
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Man Hunt 11
II The Wolf Note 19
III At Pederstone's Forge 36
IV Wayward Langford 44
V The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing 58
VI A Bird to Pluck 67
VII Wild Man Hanson Goes Wild 74
VIII Like Man, Like Horse 89
IX The Doings of Percival 101
X Jim's Grand Toot 122
XI Sol Wants a Good Wife--Bad 140
XII The Dance 148
XIII The Big Steal 165
XIV The Round-Up 176
XV Sol's Matrimonial Mix-Up 190
XVI The Breakaway 203
XVII Wayward Langford's Grand Highland Fling 224
XVIII The Coat of Many Colours 240
XIX Ranching De Luxe 258
XX A Breach and a Confession 273
XXI A Maiden, a Lover and a Heathen Chinee 302
XXII Fire Begets Hot Air 320
XXIII So Deep in Love am I 338
XXIV The Landslide 355
XXV The Bank Robbery 372
XXVI The Dawn of a New Day 382
The Spoilers of the Valley
THE SPOILERS OF THE VALLEY
CHAPTER I
The Man Hunt
Up on the hill, high above the twinkling lights of the busy little
ranching town of Vernock, at the open dining-room window of a pretty,
leafy-bowered, six-roomed bungalow, a girl, just blossoming into
womanhood, stood in her night robes and dressing gown, braiding her
dark hair. She was slight of form, but health glowed from her
expressive face.
She was dreamily contemplating the beauties of the night.
Below her, stretching like a fan, was the Valley upon which was built
the merry, happy-go-lucky, scattered little town she loved. Everywhere
around were the eternal, undulating hills, enclosing the Valley in a
world by itself. The night had just lately closed in. The sky was
clear and presented a wall and a dome of almost inky blue. Away due
south, right over the peak of a hill, on the wall of blue hung a great
star, bright and scintillating like a floating soap bubble, while a
handspan straight above that again a thin, crescent moon lay coldly
on its back sending up a reflection of its own streaky, ghostly light
from the distant lake which was no more than visible through a rift in
the hills.
As the girl drank in the delights of the peaceful panorama spreading
away right from her very feet, she was aroused sharply from her
meditation. She heard, or fancied she heard, a distant shot, followed
by the sound of excited voices and the barking of dogs. She went to
the door, threw it open fearlessly and peered down the hill; but all
was silent again save for this barking which travelled farther and
farther away all the time, being caught up and carried along in a
desultory fashion by the dogs of all the neighbouring houses and
ranches.
She stood for a moment, looking about her, then, shivering slightly
with the cold, she threw a kiss to the Valley, closed the door again
and turned slowly toward her bedroom.
Her fingers were upon the lamp to turn down the light, when three
short peremptory raps at the back door caused her to start nervously.
She took up the lamp and tiptoed into the kitchen.
"Who's there?" she called.
The rapping was repeated; this time with a much greater insistence.
"Quick,--quick! For God's sake let me in!" came a hoarse, muffled
voice which sounded strangely tired.
The girl set the lamp on the kitchen table and went cautiously forward
to the door.
"Who's there?" she repeated, her hand on the door fastenings.
"Let me in!" came the voice in desperation. "If you have a heart,
please open."
"I cannot until I know who you are. I am a girl. I am alone."
A groan escaped the man on the outside, and the anguish of it struck
into the bosom of Eileen Pederstone. Once more the voice came
pleadingly:--
"And I am a man! I am hunted,--I need help."
The girl shot back the bolt, threw wide the door and stood back with
bated breath.
A masculine figure, panting and dishevelled, staggered in, blinking in
the lamplight.
Eileen slowly pushed the door shut, keeping her frightened eyes upon
the incomer who tottered weakly to the wall and leaned against it for
support.
Dirty from head to heel, he was dressed only in a pair of ragged
trousers and a torn, mud-stained shirt. His stockingless feet were
partly hidden in a pair of broken boots. Several days' growth of beard
made it hard to guess him young or old. But his blue eyes, despite
their tired and bloodshot appearance, betrayed, as they gazed in
wonder at the girl, many characteristics of a youthfulness not yet
really past.
While the two stood thus, the far-away sound of voices floated up the
hill from below.
The fugitive's eyes roved like those of a hunted animal. He braced
himself as if ashamed of his momentary show of fear. He tried hard to
smile, but the smile was a dismal failure.
"Sorry," he panted, "but--but----" His voice sounded harsh and
hoarse from exposure. "Is there anywhere--any place where you
could hide me till they pass. They were only--only a little behind me.
Guess--I--shouldn't--shouldn't have got you mixed up in this. They
are coming this way. They want to take me back--but I can't--I
won't go back there. Ah!"
He clung with his fingers against the wall to prevent him from
collapsing.
In a moment, anxious and all alert, Eileen searched the kitchen
for a place of safe hiding. She thought of the cupboards, the
clothes-closets in her own bedroom, even her bed of spotless linen;
but none of these afforded security. At last, her ready eyes found
what her nimble mind was seeking.
"Quick--here!" she cried, turning to the huge box in the corner which
she used for holding the short firewood for her stove. "Help me unload
this wood. The box is good and big. You can get inside; I'll pile the
wood on top of you. They'll never guess."
The girl, although slight in appearance, set to with a vigour and an
agility that carried a swift contagion. The man was by her side at
once. He gave a little crackle of a laugh in his throat, and shot a
glance of admiration at her. In sixty seconds more, the box was
emptied of its contents. The man clambered inside and crouched in the
bottom of it.
It was only then that the girl noticed his very great physical
weakness.
"Oh, what shall I do?" she cried in sudden alarm. "I can't leave you
this way. You have been hurt. There is blood on your shirt. The
cowards!--they've shot you."
"Never mind me--hurry! It is nothing at all--only a scratch! Quick!"
he gasped.
"Wait a moment then!" she whispered.
The man raised himself on his elbow and watched her as she ran to the
tap in the pantry and filled a tumbler to the brim with water.
Greedy hands clutched the glass from her, and the contents were
swallowed in great gulps. The man sighed like a tired child. He smiled
slightly, showing teeth of delightful regularity.
"Water's great--isn't it?" he said childishly.
And as Eileen looked into his eyes she saw that they were young eyes;
eyes filled with tears, and eyes that were ever so blue.
"Quick! They're pretty nearly here."
Eileen commenced cautiously to pile the wood on top of him.
"Don't mind me!" he whispered huskily. "Tumble it in. I'm--I'm only a
runaway convict."
She worked fast and furiously, and had just turned away from the
innocent-looking, well-piled box of split wood in the corner, when she
heard the excited voices of hurrying men at her front door.
They tapped sharply.
She took the lamp from the kitchen table, carried it with her to the
door, shot the bolt back again and threw the door wide open.
Three men stepped into the semi-circle of light. All were tall and of
agile build.
"Poor boy!" was Eileen's first thought. "What chance has he against
these?"
One of the men carried a rifle. She knew him. Everybody in Vernock
knew him. She had known him ever since his coming to the Valley five
years before.
She had marked with childlike wonder--as others had done--his meteoric
progress in wealth and power. He was a man, disliked by some, feared
by many, and obeyed by all; a land-owner; a cattle breeder; a grain
dealer; a giant in body as well as will; and--the new Mayor of
Vernock.
The other men were strangers to the girl.
All three walked straight through to the kitchen. The one nearest to
Eileen addressed her.
"Sorry miss, for intrudin' so late, 'specially as we hear your dad's
at Enderby and you're all alone to-night. But we're after a man--a
convict--escaped from Ukalla jail. Saw your light! Thought we saw
your door open!"
He peered about suspiciously. "Didn't see anything of him--did you?"
Eileen looked away from the ferrety eyes that searched hers.
"I was just going to bed," she answered nervously. "I--I fancied I
heard voices and a shot."
"Wasn't any fancy, miss!"
"I--I opened the door and looked out, but didn't hear anything more,
so I closed the door again."
"Hum!" put in her interlocutor, rubbing his chin. "You didn't see any
signs of our man when you looked out?"
Eileen shivered, for she did not know how much these men knew or how
much they had really seen.
"Yes or no, miss!" he snapped.
"No!--most certainly, no!" Eileen shot back at him in defiance. "How
dare you talk to me in that way!"
Tears of vexation sprang to her eyes; vexation that she should have
had to lie, although it was forced upon her unless she meant to betray
the man who had trusted himself to her safe-keeping.
"Easy, officer;--easy! Miss Pederstone is all right," put in the man
with the rifle. "What she says you can bank on."
"Oh, pshaw!--you don't have to teach me my business," retorted the
detective.
"Maybe not; but you can stand some teaching in manners," returned the
other.
"See here, sir!" came the quick answer, "if you don't like this, you
had better get down the hill and home. You village mayors give me a
pain."
The man with the rifle bit his lip and remained silent.
"You don't mind me having a look round, miss?" inquired the officer a
little bit less brusquely, but starting in to search without waiting
for her permission.
He threw open the cupboards and the closets. He examined every room in
the house. He even went into Eileen's bedroom. She followed him there,
carrying the lamp. He looked into her bed and searched under it. He
examined her clothes chest.
At last both returned to the kitchen.
The moment she got there, Eileen's heart stood still. She gave vent to
a startled exclamation, which, however, she quickly covered up by
stumbling slightly forward as if she had tripped on the rug and almost
upset the lamp.
The second officer, who all along had remained silent and simply an
onlooker, was seated on the top of the wood box, rapping his heels on
the side of it and whistling softly to himself with a look on his face
which might have been taken for one of blissful ignorance or secret
knowledge, so bland was it.
"All through, Barney?" he asked.
"Ya!"
"Satisfied?"
"Ya!--come on!"
The second officer turned to the box upon which he had been sitting.
"Some box this!" he exclaimed, kicking it with his foot. "Guess we'd
better see if there's anyone under the wood pile."
He got down and commenced to throw a few pieces off the top.
Eileen's heart stopped beating.
The detective at the door came over with a look of supreme contempt on
his face. He lifted the lid of the stove and spat some tobacco juice
into the fire, then he went over to his companion.
"Say, Jim!--are you a detective or a country boob on his vacation?"
"Why? What's the matter with you?"
"Aw, quit! Can't you see the lady wants to get to bed! Why don't you
look inside the teapot?"
"Oh, all right!" replied the other, dusting off his hands. "This is
your hunt:--if you are satisfied, so am I."
Eileen's heart thumped as if it would burst through her body, and she
feared for the very noise of it.
Slowly the second detective followed the other two men out.
CHAPTER II
The Wolf Note
At the door, the man carrying the rifle came close to Eileen. He
caught her hand in his and tapped it lightly.
"Don't worry, little girl! I tried my best to keep them from
disturbing you," he said in low tones, "but you know what these
fellows are like."
"Thank you! You are very kind," answered Eileen quietly. "Father will
thank you, too, when he comes back."
The Mayor wished her good-night, raised his hat and followed the
others, who were already well on their way down the hill.
Eileen waited at the door until they were no longer within sight or
earshot. Then she closed and bolted it. She ran over to the wood-box.
She tossed the chunks of wood about her in frantic haste, whispering,
almost crooning, to the man underneath, who did not hear her for he
was lying there crumpled in a senseless heap.
With a cry she freed him and bent over him. Her supple young arms went
under his shoulders. She raised him, half dragging, half lifting,
until she had him stretched upon the floor in front of the stove. She
ran for a basin of water, cut some linen into strips and, on her knees
beside him, she bathed and dressed the raw, open wound in his side,
where a bullet had ripped and torn along the white flesh.
When she finished, she raised his limp head and bathed his brow with
cold water.
The fugitive groaned and opened his eyes.
He smiled a wan sort of smile through a grimy, unshaven mask, as he
looked into the sweet face above him. Then he closed his eyes again,
as if he feared the picture might vanish.
"Oh, brace up!" Eileen whispered tearfully, almost shaking him in her
fear. "You must brace up. They've gone. But they may come back. If
they do, they'll be sure to get you."
Gathering his scattered senses, the man on the floor raised himself
with an effort on to his elbow. He struggled to his feet and swayed
unsteadily. He passed his hand over his eyes and made an involuntary
movement as if to thrust his fingers through his hair. As he did so, a
pained expression crossed his face, for his fingers encountered
nothing but a short stubble of hair close cropped to his skin.
Eileen lent him her support, as he tried to brace himself. She set him
in an armchair, then brought him bread, butter, some cold meat and
fresh milk from the cupboard, placing them on the table before him.
Only his eyes expressed thanks, but they did it eloquently. Ravenously
he turned to, while his young hostess watched him in curiosity and
wonder, for never before had she seen one really famishingly hungry.
When not a morsel remained, the man pushed back his chair and turned
to the young lady apologetically.
"You'll excuse me if I forgot my table manners, but--but that was my
first food for three days."
He rose.
"I guess I will be able to make it now. I feel all right;--thanks to
you."
"No, no!" exclaimed Eileen, "you mustn't go just yet. You must rest
if only for a few minutes. I was anxious before these men were clear
away, but they have gone. The rest will do you good."
"No!--I must go. It--it would mean trouble for you if they found me
here."
"You shan't! Sit down!" she commanded. "You may require all your
strength before morning."
She set him in the chair again, and he obeyed her helplessly and with
a sigh of weariness.
"But----" he protested feebly, raising his hand.
"Trouble for me!" she interposed; "I am not afraid of trouble."
"You are indeed a Good Samaritan," he said in a voice which sounded
less forlorn. "If I wasn't a jailbird, I'd thank you in my prayers."
He smiled crookedly. "You know, convicts' prayers don't seem to rise
very high, miss--don't seem to reach anywhere. We haven't got the
stand-in with the Boss that others seem to have," he said in some
bitterness.
"Hush!" she whispered. "You must not say that, for it isn't true.
Those men might have caught you,--but they didn't. But, but," she
added seriously, "surely you are not a convict; not a criminal, I
mean?"
He turned his hands outwards with a shrug.
"You don't look like one who loved doing wrong. If you have ever done
wrong, I am sure it was done in a moment of rashness; maybe
thoughtlessness." She clasped her hands in front of her. "You would
never do it again."
He shook his head.
"No,--never, never again!" But his voice had no sound of contrition in
it.
"When you are free--really free--you will try to be what God meant you
to be; a real man; good, honest and earnest."
He moved uneasily, then he got up once more, went over to the window
and looked out into the night. He remained with his back to her for
some time, and she did not seek to break into his thoughts.
Finally he turned, and, as he leaned against the wall by the door, he
gazed at her curiously.
"They nick-named me 'Silent' in jail, because I wouldn't talk," he
said in a husky tone. "God knows!--what inducement had a man to
talk--there?"
"Maybe I shouldn't talk now--but I might feel better if I did, and you
cared to listen."
"Yes, oh yes!--please tell me," replied the girl earnestly.
"I have never committed any crime against anyone. The only wrong I
have done is to myself. Like a fool, I took the blame to save the
other fellow, because, oh, because I thought I was better able
to--that was all. But that other fellow skulked away, deserted
me;--the low coward!"
The man's voice rose in the quiet of that little bungalow upon the
hill where the only other sounds were the ticking of the clock and the
quick breathing of an anxious listener.
"God help him when we meet!"
"Hush!" cautioned the girl again.
"When I took on his troubles," he continued, more quietly, "I did not
think of anything more than a few months in prison, but, Great God!
they gave me five years:--FIVE YEARS!"
His eyes widened at the awfulness of the thought and a look of agony
came into his face.
Eileen Pederstone gasped, and her lips parted.
"Five years," she whispered.
The man continued in bitterness.
"Yes! five years in hell--buried alive--away from humanity--from
light--air--freedom; from the sunshine, the hills, and the valleys;
from the sea, the wind, and, and, the higher things--literature,
music, art: truth--love--life:--buried from the combination of all
these, from God himself."
He shuddered. He almost wept in his frailness. "And now the very
sunshine hurts like an electric shock, the open spaces make me feel
lost and afraid; make me long for the confinement of a cell again."
He stopped suddenly and brushed his eyes with the back of his hand.
Eileen went over to him, laid a hand tenderly on his torn shirt-sleeve
and led him over to the chair again, for he still showed signs of his
physical exhaustion. He sat back and closed his eyes. When he opened
them again, Eileen spoke to him.
"And you ran away? Why, oh, why did you do that? Couldn't you see that
it would mean recapture; more imprisonment? And you were probably so
near the end of it."
Her whole soul was speaking compassionately.
"Near the end!" he said bitterly. "It was the end. I broke prison
because they had no right to keep me there any longer."
"But why? How could that possibly be?" she asked, closing her hands
nervously.
He gave expression to a sound of surprise at her innocence.
"You don't know them, miss. Anything, everything is possible in there.
They are masters, kings, gods. My conduct was good. After three years
and eight months I was due to get out in one month more. But I was
useful to them in there. I had education. I was the only accountant;
the greatest book-lover in jail. To keep me from thinking--for the
thinking is what drives men mad--I worked and slaved night and day.
They had no one to take my place. I was trusted. I did the work of
three men.
"One day I interfered in behalf of a fellow prisoner--a horse
thief--who was wrongly accused at this particular time of breaking
some trivial prison law. My good conduct sheet was cancelled. I was
told that I must serve my full time. That's what I got for trying, for
the second time, to help my fellow-man." He laughed. "That--and a
peculiar-sounding word which that strange little jailbird gave to me,
on condition that I would never sell it, stating it was all he had and
that it might be useful to me some day if I ever had the handling of
horses.
"Yes!--I should have been wise that time. It was my second offence of
helping my neighbour. Three years and nine months in jail for a kindly
act! Fifteen months more in hell in exchange for a word! What
bargains!"
He grew bitter again.
"The hell-hounds!--they thought I didn't tumble to their little
game."
He stopped again, closing his mouth tightly as if inquiring of himself
why he should be telling this young lady so much.
"Please--please go on," Eileen pleaded, divining his thoughts.
"Why?" he asked bluntly, surveying the slight, lissom figure before
him.
"Oh, because--because I am interested. I am so sorry for you and for
so many others like you," she said.
"Well!--I served my full time--five years--three years with 365 days
each and two leap years with an extra day in them,--1,827 days and
nights, 43,848 hours; 2,630,880 minutes; 157,852,800 second strokes on
the clock. You see I remember it all. Great God, how I used to figure
it out!
"Eight days ago my time was up. I asked them regarding my release. And
simply because I inquired instead of waiting their good pleasure, they
told me I had two weeks more to serve. The damnable lie! As if I
didn't know, as if every jailbird doesn't know the day and the very
minute his release is due!
"Two weeks more!" he went on, his face flushed with indignation and
his breath coming in short jerks.
The clock on Eileen's mantelshelf struck midnight, slowly and
clearly.
The convict looked at it and gasped. When it stopped striking, he
turned to Eileen and his eyes twinkled for a second.
"The Governor of the prison has a little clock just the same as that
in his private room," he said. "Do you know, I'm afraid all the time
that I'm going to wake up from this and find myself back there."
He jerked his torn garments together.
"Guess I'd better be going, though. I've stayed far too long already.
I feel rested now."
"Won't you finish your story first?" pleaded Eileen. "I think you are
safer here--for a while longer--than you would be outside. It won't
hurt to let those horrid, prying, suspicious creatures get well away
from here."
"I have already said more than I intended to," he remarked.
The pair presented a strange contrast as they sat opposite each other
in the lamplight; the one, wet-eyed, sympathetic and earnest; the
other, gaunt, indignant and breathless as he gasped out his story with
the hunger of one to whom sympathy was a rediscovered friend.
"Where was I at?" he asked. "Ah, yes!
"The Governor's dirty-worker wouldn't listen when I tried to explain.
He ordered me back.
"At work in the office next day, I took advantage of a warder's
slackness and broke clear away.
"I didn't care what happened then. I was crazed. An old lady in a
cottage--God bless her!--fed me and gave me these clothes--her son's
castaways--and three dollars; all the money she had.
"I walked twenty miles without stop or let-up. After that I slept
during the day and walked at night. Three days after my breakaway, I
got on to a freight train and stole a ride as far as Sicamous. I slept
overnight in a barn there. Next morning I tried to bribe a boy to get
me some food at the grocery store. I gave him a dollar. He never came
back. I heard some men talking at the door of the barn about a
suspicious character who had been seen skulking about. That decided
me. I got out when night came and slipped under an empty fruit car
which was being shunted on the siding. I got off yesterday, slipping
away between a little village up the line and here. The engineer got
his eye on me and stopped the train. He let some men off: they were
two detectives, I think. They had been riding in the caboose. They
came after me. I fell exhausted somewhere in the bush. When I came to
it was broad daylight and the men were gone."
He looked up at Eileen suddenly.
"There isn't much more. Early this morning I managed to get into a
barn by the railway tracks. I got in through a skylight in the roof. I
went to sleep among the straw there. Soon after, the sound of a key in
the padlock outside woke me. I scrambled up and through the skylight
again, and away. There were three men--one with a rifle. They hunted
me, finding me and losing me several times. The devil with the rifle
got a line on me down the hill a short time ago.
"When I got to your door I was all in." He smiled. "You're a real
sport. You didn't give me away."
He got up and threw out his hands. "Oh, what's the good anyway! All
jailbirds tell the tale and shout their innocence."
Eileen's heart was moved. Tears welled up in her eyes. She was at a
loss to know what to do or say.
As the man turned from her, his elbow struck something hanging on the
wall. He caught at it quickly as it was falling.
It was an old violin of very delicate workmanship.
"Sorry!" he exclaimed, handing it to her. "I am clumsy in a house.
Haven't been in one for so long. Glad I didn't smash it."
"I almost wish you had," said Eileen enigmatically.
"Don't you like music?" he asked.
"Oh, yes!"
"Violin music?"
"Yes!--but not from that violin. It is not like other violins: it has
an unsavoury history."
"Do you play?"
"Not the violin," said Eileen, standing with her back to the table,
leaning lightly there, clad in her dressing gown, her plaited hair
hanging over her shoulder and her eyes on her strange visitor in
manifest interest.
"My father is very fond of scraping on a violin. The one he plays is
hanging up there."
She pointed to another violin beside the mantelshelf in the adjoining
room.
"And this one?" he queried curiously, pointing to the one she had laid
on the table.
"This one is several hundred years old. It has been in the family for
ever so long. The story goes with it that the member of our family
who owns it will attain much wealth during his life, but will lose it
again if he doesn't pass it on when he is at the very height of his
prosperity. My father says it has always proved true, and he is hoping
for the day when its promise will be fulfilled in his case, for he
longs for wealth and all it brings; and he has striven all his life to
get it."
"I hope that he has his wish and is able to tell when he gets to the
highest point of his success, so that he may get rid of the violin in
time."
Eileen smiled.
"Daddy says that has been the trouble with our forefathers, who always
got wealthy but never seemed to be able to hold it when they got it.
That is my daddy over there."
She pointed to framed picture on the wall.
"He is big and brawny, and not afraid of anybody. He is--oh, so good.
He is the best in all the world."
The young man gazed at her as she expressed her admiration.
"He isn't here to-night?" he remarked.
Eileen turned her eyes on him sharply, as if she had sensed something
of a suspicious nature in his query. But she shook the thought from
her and laid her mind bare.
"No!--daddy was called away this afternoon. He won't be back until
to-morrow, noon.
"This violin," reverted Eileen, as if endeavouring to interest her
guest and keep his thoughts away from the misery of his own condition
as long as possible, "was the last work of a very famous Italian
violin maker, who disappeared mysteriously and was never heard of
afterwards. It has a most beautiful tone, but for one note, and that
one note is hideous. Ugh!--I hate it."
She shuddered. "I would have destroyed it long ago only my father
prizes it as a great curio and as an heirloom."
The convict showed deep interest.
"Isn't it strange that a beautiful instrument like this should have a
discordant note in it that no one seems to be able to explain away?"
she asked, as they stood together near the window, losing themselves
in their interest.
"Yes,--it is strange," returned the man, examining the violin closely.
"I have read of something similar somewhere. The discord, I think, is
called the _wolf note_, and it is well named. I believe its presence
is difficult to explain, and such an instrument has occasionally been
produced by the best violin makers. They usually destroyed them, as
the discord is unalterable, making the instrument, of course,
unmarketable as a music producer."
Eileen remained in thought for a while, then she held out her hand for
the violin, took it from the man and went to the wall where she hung
it up, as if dismissing a distasteful subject.
Back to the young man's face came the hopeless look of remembrance. "I
had almost forgotten myself," he remarked. "Thank you! I must be off.
I should not be here. I--I should never have intruded."
"One moment!" said Eileen. "The air is chilly and you have nothing but
that thin, torn, cotton shirt on your back. Get into this! It is an
old sweater of mine; it is loose and big. It will keep the cold out."
"No! You have already done more than I can ever hope to pay back. I
might get caught with it on----"
"But you must," she put in imperiously. "I have several of them. This
is the oldest of those I have. You are not depriving me of anything,
and you will be glad of it before the morning, for it is cold up here
at nights."
He took it from her with reluctance, pushed his arms into it and drew
it over his head and shoulders.
"Thank you!" he said in a quiet voice. "I was sick and in prison--I
was anhungered--I was thirsty--I was naked. I don't know exactly how
it goes," he apologised, "but it is something like that and it
certainly does apply to you, miss."
His mood changed. He turned up part of the sleeve of the sweater and
put it to his lips.
Eileen's face took on a flood of colour despite herself.
A smile flitted across the unshaven face of the man, disclosing his
regular, clean teeth.
Eileen drew herself up stiffly.
She went to the door and opened it to allow him to pass out of her
life as he had come into it. But as he turned to go, he started back
at a sound in the dark.
The tall, athletic figure of a man loomed up, blocked the way and
stepped into the kitchen beside them.
Eileen gasped and clutched at her bosom in terror.
"Mr. Brenchfield," she cried in sudden anger, "what do you mean?
You--you have been watching. I didn't think you were a spy, although
after all, possibly I did, for I intentionally held back the man you
are after."
Brenchfield ignored her remark and pointed with his finger at the
fugitive, who came forward, his eyes staring as if he were seeing an
apparition.
"Great God,--you!" exclaimed the young man. Then with a catching sound
in his throat, he sprang at the burly, well-fed man before him.
Brenchfield was taken completely by surprise. He staggered against the
side of the door, as thin claw-like fingers found his throat and tried
to stop the vital air. The fingers closed on his windpipe too tightly
for comfort.
Eileen cried out and tried to go between, but she was thrust aside.
The men swayed together, then Brenchfield's hands went up, catching
the other by the wrists in a firm hold. There was a momentary
struggle, the runaway's grip was broken and he was flung to the
floor.
Brenchfield turned to Eileen.
"Miss Pederstone, have you gone crazy trying to hide this man? Don't
you know he is a runaway; a dangerous convict? The police--blind
fools--didn't tumble to your nervousness, but I caught on. I knew you
had him hidden in the wood-box."
The hunted man rose slowly from the floor and staggered forward,
gasping for breath. He gave Brenchfield a look of loathing.
"Graham," he said brokenly, "may the good God forgive you, for I never
shall."
He threw out his thin arms and looked at them, while tears of
impotence came into his eyes. He clenched his hands and grit his
teeth. "And may the devil, your friend, protect you," he continued
threateningly, "when these grow strong again."
Brenchfield looked him over with indifference.
"My good fellow, you'll excuse me! You have wheels in your head. I
don't know you from a hedge-fence. Damn it!" he suddenly flared
angrily, "I don't want to know you. Get out; quick! before I help you
along, or put you in the hands of your friends down the hill who are
so anxious to renew your acquaintance."
The young man stared fearlessly into the eyes of Graham Brenchfield,
wealthy rancher, cattleman, grain merchant and worthy Mayor of
Vernock. Then his lips parted in a strange smile, as he threw up his
head.
He turned to Eileen.
"Guess I've _got_ to go now. I have my marching orders."
"Come on;--enough of this--git!" put in Brenchfield roughly, stepping
up in a threatening manner.
The fugitive ignored the interruption.
"Good-bye, Miss--Miss Pederstone--and, remember this from a convict
who doesn't count:--as surely as there is a wolf-note in some violins,
so surely is there a wolf-note in some men. Strike the wolf-note and
you set the devils in hell jumping."
In the next moment he passed out at the door and down the dusty
highway leading to Vernock.
Graham Brenchfield stood looking after him until the night shut him
out.
Eileen Pederstone stared in front of her with eyes that saw no outward
thing.
At last Brenchfield broke the silence.
"It was rather unwise--foolish--harbouring such a man as that; and
your father from home."
"Yes?" queried Eileen, with a slow intonation of resentment.
"Unprotected as you were!"
"We girls would have little need for protection if you men were all as
gentlemanly as he was. He seemed to be an old acquaintance of yours.
Who is he?"
Brenchfield shrugged his shoulders.
"Pshaw!--that kind would claim acquaintance with the very devil
himself. You don't suppose I ever met him before. He is a dangerous
criminal escaped from Ukalla."
"He told me so," put in Eileen, as if tired of the interview, "and he
seemed quite annoyed when I refused to believe the _dangerous
criminal_ part."
"But the police tell me he _is_. It was only for your sake that I let
him go."
Brenchfield tried to turn her to the seriousness of her misdemeanour.
"For the sake of your good name, you had no right admitting him. You
know what Vernock is like for gossip. You know the construction likely
to be placed on your action."
Eileen drew herself up haughtily.
"You'll excuse me, Mr. Brenchfield! When did you earn the right to
catechise Eileen Pederstone?"
He changed suddenly and his peculiarly strong and handsome face
softened.
"I am sorry. I did not mean it in that way, Eileen. And this is no
time to speak, but--but I hope--some day----"
The girl held up her hand, and he stopped.
He was tall, full-chested and tremendously athletic of figure and
poise, with dark eyes that fascinated rather than attracted and a
bearing of confidence begotten of five years of triumphal success in
business ventures and real-estate transactions; a man to whom men
would look in a crisis; a man whom most men obeyed instinctively and
one to whom women felt drawn although deep down in their hearts they
were strangely afraid of him.
He held Eileen with his eyes.
"There is something I wish to ask you some day, Eileen. May I?"
"Nothing serious, I hope, Mr. Brenchfield?" she returned lightly, for
she at least had never acknowledged any submission to those searching
eyes of his. "And please remember, it is past midnight. My father
isn't here."
"Serious!--yes!" he returned, ignoring her admonition, "but some day
will do."
"It is an old story;--some day may never come, good sir!"
He smiled indulgently.
Eileen, despite her apparent unconcern, placed her hand over her heart
as if to stay a fluttering there.
Mayor Brenchfield was a young man, a successful man; to many women he
would have been considered a desirable man.
He professed friendship with Eileen's father. He put business her
father's way. He was of the same political leanings. He had met Eileen
on many occasions. Brenchfield was a tremendously energetic man; he
seemed to be everywhere at once.
Eileen, like other women, could not help admiring him for his forceful
handling of other men, for his keen business acumen, for his almost
wizardly success.
He had many qualities that appealed strongly to the romantic in her
youthful nature; but, girl-like, she had not stopped at any time to
analyse the feelings he engendered in her.
And now, up there on the hill, in the chill of the night air, under
the stars that hung so low and prominently that one felt one might
almost reach up and pluck them from the heavens,--now there came a
sudden dread.
It was this inexplicable dread that set her heart athrob.
Brenchfield took her hand from her bosom and patted it gently.
His touch annoyed her. She drew away imperiously, and she shivered.
"Why, little woman!--you are cold and it is very late. How thoughtless
of me! Good night, Eileen!"
"Good night!" she returned wearily, closing the door.
The moment he heard the bolts shoot home, Brenchfield's whole nature
changed. An oath came to his lips. He crushed his hat down on his
head, leapt the fence and rushed headlong by the short cut down
through the orchards--townward.
At the Kenora Hotel corner his low whistle brought two men from the
saloon.
The three conversed together earnestly for a few moments, then they
separated to different positions in the shadows but commanding a full
view of the road leading down the hill from the east of the Main
Street of Vernock.
But of all this Eileen Pederstone--alone in the little bungalow up on
the hill--was blissfully ignorant.
CHAPTER III
At Pederstone's Forge
Pederstone the blacksmith--or, to give him his full name which he
insisted on at all times, John Royce Pederstone--was busy on his
anvil, turning a horse shoe. His sleeves were rolled up almost to his
shoulders and his lithe muscles slipped and rippled under his white
skin in a rhythm of harmony. His broad chest was bare as his arms, and
his chubby apple-red cheeks shone with perspiration which oozed from
his every pore. He was singing to himself in happy unconcern about his
being a jovial monk contented with his lot. Two horses were tied
inside the shop waiting to be shod, chafing and pawing in their
impatience.
Pederstone's right-hand man, Sol Hanson, a great chunk of a bachelor
Swede, was at the back door swearing volubly because an iron tire
refused to fit the wooden rim of a cart wheel to his satisfaction.
Horseshoes, ploughs, harrows, iron gates and cart and buggy wheels of
all kinds were lying about in disorderly profusion.
The noonday sun was pouring in aslant at the front door, while at the
back door, away from Hanson, a Russian wolf-hound was stretched out
lazily gnawing at a bone which it held between its fore paws.
The furnace fire was blazing, and Pederstone's anvil was ringing
merrily, when suddenly the melodious sounds were interrupted by a deep
growl and then a yelp of pain from the hound as it sprang away from
the spurred boot of a great, rough, yet handsome figure of a man of
the cowboy type, who came striding in, legs apart, dressed in
sheepskin chaps.
"Say, Ped!--ain't you got that hoss o' mine shod? Can't wait all day
in this burg!"
The smith stopped suddenly and glared at the newcomer.
"None of that Ped stuff, you untamed Indian! Mr. Royce Pederstone to
you and your kind; and, if you don't like it and can't wait your turn,
take your cayuse out of here and tie her up at the back of the hotel
for an hour or two. You're not half drunk enough yet to be going back
to Redmans Creek."
"All right, Mister-_Royce-Pederstone_--but I ain't Indian, and don't
you forgit it. The fact that I git all the booze I like from Charlie
Mac settles that in this burg."
It was a sore point with the newcomer, for at least three-quarters of
him was white, and part of it first-class white at that.
He took off his hat.
"Ever see an Indian with hair like that?"
He pushed a tousled head of flaring red hair under the blacksmith's
nose. He struck his chest dramatically with his fist.
"Donald McTavish McGregor, that's my name. And I'm off to take your
advice, but you can keep the mare till she's shod."
He swaggered out.
At the door he had to side-step--much to his disgust--to get out of
the way of one, Ben Todd, who was not in the habit of making way for
anyone but a lady. Todd was the Editor and Manager of the _Vernock and
District Advertiser_, the man behind most of the political moves in
the Valley. He was a hunchback, with a brain that always seemed to
have a "hunch" before any other brain in the country started to wake
up.
"Hullo, John!" shouted Todd.
"Fine day, Ben!" returned Pederstone.
"See the Government's turned down the new Irrigation Scheme!"
"What?" shouted Pederstone. "The mean pikers!"
"Guess it's about time we had a new Government, John!"
"Yes!--or at least a new member for the Valley," returned the smith.
"Well,--there's truth in that, too. And, as you're President of the
Association, why don't you get the boys to change their man? The one
we've got has been too long on the job. Seems to think he's in for
life."
"The trouble is, Ben,--who could we get that would be an improvement?"
"Why not have a try at it yourself, John, at the coming election?"
suggested the editor as a feeler.
"What!--me?" exclaimed the smith in surprise, viewing the serious look
on the face of the bearded hunchback.
"Sure!--why not?"
"It isn't a question of why not," laughed Royce Pederstone, "but
rather one of WHY."
"Because we want you," returned the editor. "You're one of us, and you
know what this Valley requires better than any other."
Royce Pederstone was silent.
"Would you run if we put you up?" pursued Ben Todd.
"Might," grinned the smith, "but I won't say where I'd run to."
"But straight goods?"
"No, siree! Not for me! A bit of ranching and my work here in the
shop keeps me busy enough. In fact, I've been thinking lately that I
would like to give up this strenuous labour in the smithy."
Ben Todd was about to pursue the subject further when they were
interrupted by the approach of a horse, which pulled up abruptly at
the front door. A beautiful, full-blooded mare, of tremendous
proportions, reared high in the air, then dropped to a stand-still as
docile as a lamb.
Mayor Brenchfield, groomed to perfection in leggings and riding
breeches, slid to the ground, thrust his reins through a hitching ring
and stepped inside, thus providing the third side of an interesting
triangle for conversation.
They had been talking for some fifteen minutes, when the conversation
veered to the subject that had been uppermost in everyone's mind in
the neighbourhood of Vernock for many weeks past.
"I see the Assizes have got through with their work at last," put in
Ben Todd.
Brenchfield's eyebrows moved slightly.
"Yes?"
"Loo Yick, the chink, is to hang."
"You bet,--the yellow skunk! Imagine a fine girl like Lottie Mays
being done to death by that; and every man that ever saw her just
crazy for her."
"Well!--Lottie and her kind take chances all the time. Somebody
generally gets them in the finish," put in Royce Pederstone. "She
wasn't content with her price, but stole his wad as well. The town
would be better quit of the bunch."
"Guess you're right," agreed Brenchfield. "But it does seem a pity we
can't cut down in the number of Chinamen we have in the Okanagan."
"Yes!" put in Todd, "but you know who brought them here. You fellows
with the ranches, looking for cheap help, did it."
He laughed. "And, by God, you got it with a vengeance; and all that
goes with it. They're likely to rout us out of house and land before
they're through with us. You will have one _high-U_ time getting them
out,--believe me."
"And Pierre Qu'appelle got sent down for ten years."
"Guess that ends the wholesale thieving that has been going on around
Vernock these last five years."
"Hope so!" exclaimed the Mayor. "But you can't always sometimes
tell."
"Pierre didn't have the ghost of a chance; caught with the goods on
him," remarked Todd.
"Seems funny to me that he should play a lone game, though," said
Royce Pederstone.
"Not when you know the bunch he gangs with," remarked Ben Todd.
"They're generally all in it, and one man takes the risk and the
blame. He'll get his share kept for him till he comes out again.
"Morrison of the O.K. Supply Company says he has had over seven
thousand dollars' worth of feed and flour stolen from his warehouses
inside of six months. The Pioneer Traders never give out what they
lose."
"You, yourself, have lost quite a bit, haven't you, Brenchfield?" put
in Pederstone.
"Yes!--from time to time, but I could never lay my finger definitely
on the shortage. My records have been faulty in the past, but I'm
going to keep a better watch on it for the future."
"Well!" returned the smith, "the fewer of Pierre Qu'appelle's thieving
kind we have in the community, the better for all of us."
"We pretty nearly had a newcomer of the same brand when you were at
Enderby, John."
"So I heard! How did it finish, Ben? I heard they got him. How did
they manage it?"
"Better ask the Mayor," said the editor guardedly. "He ought to know
how these things finish. Who was the man, Graham? How did the chase
end?"
"Oh!" muttered Brenchfield, "it was some runaway from Ukalla. He
landed in here under a freight train, and the detectives were riding
in the caboose and he didn't know it."
Todd laughed.
"Pretty good copy! What else?"
"He gave them the slip. They got in touch with me later. We set off on
a hunt. Found the fellow in a barn. But he got out at the skylight
window and made a run for it."
"The poor devil! He deserved to get away after that," remarked the
editor.
"Pretty nearly did, too! One of the detectives winged him on the B. X.
Road," lied the Mayor. "He beat us to it for a time. I went home to
bed after a bit, but I heard later that they fell in with their man
looking for food in Chinatown in the early morning. He led them
another chase up over the high road and down the Kickwillie Loop to
the lake. He got into a rowing boat and made out into the middle of
the water. The detectives got into Murray's gasoline launch and were
soon within hailing distance of him. But the beggar was game, although
he must have been half-dead by that time.
"When he saw it was all up, he took off the coat, or sweater, or
whatever it was he was wearing, wrapped it round the little anchor in
the boat, undid the rope and plumped the lot into the lake."
"What on earth did he do that for?" asked Pederstone.
"Oh, I guess he got the clothes from someone up here and didn't wish
to implicate them."
"By gosh! but he was game," put in Ben Todd. "Darned if I wouldn't
like a shake of his hand for that!"
The editor turned, and his expression changed. He raised his hat.
"Eh,--excuse my language, Miss Pederstone. I,--I didn't know you were
there."
The talk stopped abruptly, as Eileen Pederstone came forward into the
centre of the shop.
"Hello, Eilie, dear!" cried her father. "Dinner time already? and my
work miles ahead of me, while we gossips are going at it like old
wives at market. Why,--what's the matter, lass?"
The girl's face showed pale in the light of the forge fire and her
eyes were moist.
She pulled herself together.
"Nothing, daddy! I was just feeling sorry for that poor young fellow
Mr. Brenchfield was telling about."
"Tuts!" exclaimed Todd, "don't waste your sorrow, Eileen. Why,--he
wasn't a young fellow. He was an old, grey-haired, cross-eyed,
yellow-toothed, dirty, wizened-faced, knock-kneed specimen of a
jailbird escaped from Ukalla. Look up the Advertiser Thursday, you'll
see."
"Oh no, he wasn't; he--he,--Mr. Brenchfield----" Eileen stopped.
"Didn't I hear you say he was a young man, Mr. Brenchfield?" she
asked, endeavouring to cover up her confusion, turning her big eyes
full on the Mayor.
"Why, eh--yes! I did mention something about him being young,"
gallantly agreed Brenchfield.
"Did--he--get--away?" inquired Eileen desperately.
Brenchfield busied himself adjusting his leggings. Eileen put her hand
on his arm.
"Did he get away, Mr. Brenchfield?" she asked again.
"Better finish the yarn, Graham!" said Royce Pederstone. "Eilie is
like others of her sex; you can't shake her once she gets a grip."
"Well!" resumed Brenchfield uneasily, "as far as I can learn the man
jumped out of the rowing boat as the launch came up on him. He tried
to swim for it. He evidently knew how to swim, too;--but he was weak
as a kitten. The detectives played him. When he was thoroughly
exhausted, they let him sink."
"The beasts!" exclaimed Eileen, her body aquiver with sudden anger.
"Guess I had better stop this stuff!" said Brenchfield.
"No, no! Don't mind me. Go on!"
"He came up--and they let him sink again. Next time he came up, they
fished him out, because he might not have come up again.
"The fellow came to after a bit. You see, that kind won't kill. So I
guess he is now safely back home, in his little eiderdown bed, getting
fed with chicken broth;--home in Ukalla jail, where he belongs.
"Little boys always get into trouble when they run away from home, eh,
Ben!" laughed Brenchfield.
The coarse humour didn't catch on.
Eileen Pederstone laid her basket on the smithy floor, threw a look of
contempt into the youthful Mayor's face and walked out with her head
high.
"One for his nobs!" laughed Ben Todd. "And, damn it!--you cold-blooded
alligator!--she served you rightly."
CHAPTER IV
Wayward Langford
While the foregoing was taking place in Pederstone's smithy at
Vernock, a scene of a different nature was being enacted in the
Governor's private office at Ukalla Prison.
Phil Ralston, somewhat refreshed from a scrubbing, a good sleep and
two prison meals, had just been ushered into the presence of the man
who held power almost of life and death over every unfortunate
confined there.
Phil expected no mercy. His feelings were blunted by what he had
already gone through, so the worst that might happen now did not worry
him; for, when hope of relief entirely goes, what one has to face
loses most of its terrors.
The well-fed, strong-jawed governor leaned over his desk and looked at
his prisoner.
"Ay, Ralston! So you were a naughty boy and ran away!"
The young fellow did not reply.
"Look up, man! I'm not going to eat you."
Ralston's eyes met his calmly.
"Why did you run away?"
"Because my time was up, sir!"
"Of course it was! Hang it all!--that's why I can't understand your
behaviour."
The governor smiled in a manner that was meant to be reassuring--for,
after all, he knew he had exceeded his limit and, if it were known, he
might have difficulty in squaring himself.
"But you told me, sir, that I had still two weeks to serve."
"What? I told you that? Why, man, you're crazy. Wake up! You foolish
fellow, don't you know that the moment you made off, your discharge
papers were lying on my desk all ready?"
"And you _didn't_ say I had two more weeks to serve?"
"No, damn it, no! How could I? Why, Johnston there had already been
sent to the storage room for your belongings.
"Isn't that so, Johnston?"
"Yes, sir!" nodded the chief jailer emphatically.
"Didn't I tell you number three hundred and sixteen was due out that
day?"
"Yes, sir! Remember distinctly, sir."
Phil's lip curled contemptuously, and, although he was in no mood for
arguing under such conditions, he could not resist one more query.
"Why then did they go after me and bring me back, sir?"
"Why did they! Why do you think, you young fool? Do you imagine
breaking out is the way to leave Ukalla Jail? What kind of an
institution do you think we are running here? Do you fancy we are
going to stand still to that kind of thing? What kind of respect have
you for my good reputation anyway? You selfish bunch are all alike!
"Of course we went after you! Of course we brought you back, just to
teach you manners, same as a school teacher calls back a scholar to
shut the door he has left open.
"If you got your deserts you would be back there for a few months
longer. If you don't watch yourself when you get out, you'll be back
here again. Eh, Johnston!"
"Yes, sir! They generally do come back, sir," grunted that echo.
"Seem to like us; can't stay away, sir!"
"Now, Ralston! Here is your discharge. You're free to go when you
like. But Johnston will open the gate for you this time."
In an overflow of weakness, Phil reeled at the unexpected news. He
staggered against the Governor's desk as he clutched at the paper.
That official smiled benignly. "Here is a present from the government,
a cheque for fifty dollars for your faithful services--never absent,
never late," he grinned. "Johnston has your two grips in the hall with
your stuff in them that they found in your shack at Carnaby."
He held out his hand.
"Good-bye, Ralston! You've been a good lad here but for your one bad
break fifteen months ago, and this one. Don't come back."
In half an hour, Philip Ralston was breathing the air of freedom in
the inter-urban tram speeding toward Vancouver.
It was the spring of the year. His worldly wealth was fifty dollars.
His clothes were some years behind the latest model, but they were
decent enough, clean and serviceable.
He put up at a third-rate hotel on Cordova Street and spent one
glorious week sleeping, eating, strolling the busy streets and
lounging in the parks and on the beaches. He spoke to few, although he
had of a necessity to listen to many. At the hotel in the evenings,
several transients told him their story, hoping thereby to hear his
own as a time-chaser, but Phil, true to the sobriquet he had earned at
Ukalla, remained silent.
At the end of a week, after paying his bed and board, his fifty
dollars had dwindled to thirty. He knew he could not afford to let it
go much lower, otherwise the detectives, who seemed forever spying on
him, would be arresting him on a vagrancy charge. Vancouver was
chuck-full of detectives, many of whom Phil knew by sight, while the
others he sensed. And he loathed and abhorred their entire breed.
Too many were the stories he had heard from fellow prisoners at
Ukalla, who had tried honestly to take up some definite occupation
after leaving jail, only to be hounded from position to position by
these interfering sleuths who fancied it their duty to inform the
erstwhile employer that the man who was working for him was an
ex-jailbird and consequently should have a keen eye kept on him for a
while. The inevitable, of course, followed; for what employer could
afford to have an ex-convict on his staff?
And so, Phil did not attempt to secure work in Vancouver. He had a
horror of the rush and buzz of the city anyway.
Policemen were everywhere; on the sidewalks watching everybody and
everything; at the street corners directing the traffic.
Self-consciousness made Phil feel guilty almost. These men gave him
the creeps, innocent of all guilt though he was. His one desire was to
get as far away from them and all things connected with them as was
possible.
He sat on a seat in the park one afternoon, trying to decide his
future.
He thought of Graham Brenchfield, now Mayor of Vernock, evidently
wealthy beyond Phil's wildest dreams. He remembered the old
partnership pact and the five hundred dollars he paid for it--five
years, a pool and a straight division of the profits. He put his hand
in his pocket, took out his money and counted it over;--twenty-four
dollars and fifteen cents.
He laughed. But his laugh was void of merriment, for he had vowed
solemnly to himself in prison that some day he would get even with
Graham Brenchfield. And, so far as Brenchfield was concerned, the iron
was still in Phil Ralston's soul.
As he sat there, the vision of an angel face came back to him; the
picture of a girl of small frame, fairy-like, agile, bending over him
as he lay faint and wounded on the floor of her little bungalow up on
the hill overlooking Vernock. And it settled his mental uncertainty.
He would go back there! It was a free and bracing life in that
beautiful Valley, and, God knows! that was what he required after five
years of confinement. He could pick up his strength while at work on
the farms, or among the orchards, or on the cattle ranges. Lots of
things he could do there!
No one would know him,--no one had seen him before but she and
Brenchfield. She would never recognise him--shaved and clean--for the
broken, ragged wretch whom she had befriended. As for Brenchfield--he
would know Phil anywhere, in any disguise, but Phil knew how to close
his mouth tighter than a clam.
Besides, there was the settlement to be made between Brenchfield and
himself.
Yes!--Vernock was the place of all places for Phil Ralston.
He went back to the hotel, dressed himself in the best clothes he had,
paid his score and packed his grips. And that night he was speeding
eastward.
On the following afternoon he landed at the comparatively busy little
ranching town of Vernock, where he had decided to try out his
fortune.
He left his grips at the station and sauntered down the Main Street.
There were few people about at the time and all were evidently too
intent on their own particular business to pay much attention to a
new arrival. He passed a commodious-looking hotel, built of wood,
typically western in style, with hitching posts at the side of the
road, a broad sidewalk and a few steps up to a wide veranda which led
into an airy and busy saloon.
For want of anything better to occupy his attention, Phil strolled in.
He called for a glass of beer at the bar. While waiting service, he
took in his surroundings.
Several men were lounging at the bar talking loudly, smoking, spitting
carelessly and drinking. At a table, near the window, a long-legged,
somewhat wistful-looking young man, with prominent front teeth and a
heavy mop of auburn hair, was sitting in front of a glass of liquor,
gazing lazily into the vacant roadway. From an adjoining room off the
saloon rough voices rose every now and again in argument over a poker
game which was in progress there between a number of men who appeared
to be in off some of the neighbouring ranches.
As Phil surveyed the scene, a man galloped up to the hotel entrance,
tossed his reins over his horse's head and jingled loudly into the
saloon. He was clean-cut, dark-skinned and red-haired, and walked with
a swinging gait. He shouted the time of day to the bar-tender, as he
kept on into the inner room where the card game was in progress.
Phil guessed him for the foreman of the cattlemen inside and
conjectured that he had been giving them some instructions regarding
their departure, but passed the incident from his mind as quickly as
it had cropped up: and he was still slowly refreshing himself when
half a dozen rough-looking men tumbled out of the card-room.
"Come on fellows! Drinks all round, Mack! Don't miss a damned man in
the room. Everybody's havin' one on me."
The speaker hitched up his trousers, blew out a mouthful of chewing
tobacco and waved his arm invitingly.
The counter loungers gathered round in expectation, as the proprietor
and his assistant busied themselves filling the welcome order.
"Hi, Wayward!" he continued, shouting over to the long-legged man
sitting by the window. "What-ya drinkin'?"
There was no answer.
"Oh, hell!--he's up in the clouds. Take him over a Scotch and soda,
Pete."
Phil looked up in time to intercept a wink between the speaker and one
of his gang.
"Hello, stranger! Just blowed in?"
"Yes!" answered Phil. "I am just off the train."
"Stayin' long?"
"Possibly!"
"All right,--what's your poison? It's my deal and your shout."
"Nothing for me, thanks!" replied Phil. "I've all I require here."
The broad-shouldered, clean-limbed fellow came over closer to Phil.
"Say, young man,--'tain't often Don McGregor stands drinks all
round, but when he does 'tain't good for the health to turn him
down. You've got to have one on me, or you and me ain't goin' to
be friendly,--see."
Phil looked him over good-naturedly and smiled.
"Oh, all right; let her go!" he answered. "I'll have a small
lemonade."
"What?" exploded the man who called himself Don McGregor.
A shout of laughter came from everyone in the bar-room.
"Didn't you ask me to name my drink?" put in Phil.
"Sure!"
"Well--I've named it."
"No, you ain't! Lemonade ain't a drink: it's a bath."
More merriment greeted the sally.
Phil flushed but held down his rising temper. He had had five years'
experience of self-effacement which stood him in good stead now.
"You're not trying to pick a quarrel with me?" he inquired quietly.
"Me? Not on your life! I ain't pickin' scraps with the likes of you.
But, for God's sake, man,--name a man-sized drink and be quick. The
bunch is all waitin'."
Phil immediately changed his tactics.
"Thanks!" he answered. "I'll have a Scotch."
"That's talkin'."
The bar-tender came over with a bottle in his hand. "Say when!" he
remarked to Phil.
"Keep a-going," put in Phil. "Up,--up!"
McGregor stood and gaped.
"That's 'nough!" said Phil easily, as the liquor was brimming over.
The bar-tender pushed along a glass of water. Phil pushed it back.
At a draught he emptied the liquor down his throat. It burned like
red-hot coals, for he was unused to it, but he would have drunk it
down if it had cremated him.
McGregor had made a miscalculation and he appeared slightly
crestfallen as he turned from Phil and talked volubly to his
comrades.
While they conversed, McGregor backed gradually, as if by accident,
until he was almost touching Phil. Finally he got the heel of his boot
squarely on Phil's toe, and he kept it there, pressing harder and
harder every second, still talking loudly to those around him and
apparently all oblivious of his action.
Even then Phil had no definite notion that it was not merely the
clumsy accident of a half-intoxicated cowboy.
At last he poked the man in the back.
"Excuse me," he said, "but when you are finished with my foot I should
like to have it."
"What'n the--Oh!" exclaimed the red-haired man, grinding his full
weight on Phil's toe as he got off. "Was I standin' on you? Hope I
didn't hurt you!" he grinned maliciously.
The pain was excruciating, but still Phil forebore with an effort,
accepting the man's half-cocked apology.
Suddenly a new diversion appeared in the shape of a half-witted boy of
about twelve years of age, who slouched in evidently on the look-out
for any cigar ends that might be lying about the floor.
The boy was clad raggedly and wore a perpetual grin.
"Hullo, Smiler!" cried one of the men. "Come and have a drink."
The boy shook his head and backed away.
McGregor made a grab at him and caught him by the coat collar. He
pulled the frightened youngster to the counter and, picking up a
bottle of whisky, thrust it under the lad's nose.
"Here, kid;--big drink! Ginger-beer;--good stuff!"
The boy caught the bottle in his hands, tilted it and took a gulp.
Then he coughed and spluttered, and spat it out, almost dropping the
bottle as McGregor, laughing hilariously, laid hold of it.
"Come on, Smiler!--you got to finish this. Say, Stitchy,--let's make
him drunk. Here!--you hold him."
The boy made that inarticulate cry which dumb people make when seized
suddenly with fear.
Only then did it strike Phil Ralston that the lad was dumb, as well as
half-witted.
The man whom McGregor addressed as Stitchy caught the boy and held him
securely by the arms, tilting his head backward until he was unable
to move. McGregor brought the bottle and was on the point of forcing
the helpless Smiler to open his mouth, when the bottle was sent flying
out of his hands and he staggered back against the counter from a blow
on the side of the face from Phil's fist.
"Leave the boy alone!" he cried angrily, his face pale as he laboured
to stifle his excitement.
He had refrained from interfering as long as he could, well knowing
his present physical weakness and what a mix-up might mean to him if
the police happened along, but this ill-treatment was a little more
than he could stand, despite all possible consequences.
The moment Smiler was released, the boy ran to the door and away.
Meantime, McGregor pulled himself together and began to laugh as if
from his stomach.
"I guess that means a scrap," he grunted.
"Not that I know of," put in Phil. "But I like to see fair play. The
youngster wasn't hurting you."
For answer McGregor unbuckled his belt and handed it to his friend
called Stitchy, spitting noisily on the saw-dusted floor.
The hotel proprietor jumped over the counter and interfered.
"There's going to be no rough-house here. If you fools want to fight
get out on the back lot where there's plenty of room. Come on,--out
you go! The whole caboodle of you!"
He and his assistant--both burly men--cleared the bar.
Phil was among the last to leave, and, in a faint hope of avoiding
trouble, he turned aside, but McGregor sprang after him and laid
hold.
"Not by a damn-sight!" he cried. "Here, stick them up!"
He feinted round Phil, then ran in on him. Phil had no alternative. He
put up his arms, jumped aside and dealt the cattleman a stiff blow on
the mouth.
The crowd gathered round and made a ring. For a time, Phil more than
held his own, getting in blow after blow, while McGregor tried his
best to come to grips.
"Don't ever let him get his arms round you," cautioned a friendly
voice, the owner of which Phil had no time to note.
The stout-chested cattleman had no science, but he possessed an
unlimited amount of vital energy and strength. Phil had science, but
nothing else to back it up.
The ultimate issue was beyond all question and Phil knew it, for five
minutes had not gone ere he was gasping for breath and had black
specks floating in hundreds before his vision. He sprang aside and
circled time and again, trying to avoid his antagonist's determination
to get to grips, but at last, just after a particularly close escape,
someone pushed him suddenly from behind and, before he was aware of
it, two great arms were round him crushing the life out of him. He
struggled frantically, but felt like a puppy-dog in the paws of a
grizzly. He was whirled round and round till he grew dizzy. He was
crushed and hugged until he became faint. When his bones were cracking
and the very life seemed oozing out of him, he felt himself suddenly
catapulted somewhere in glorious release, then his senses gave way and
he remembered no more for a time.
When he came to, he was lying on the bar-room floor. Someone, whose
face he recollected, was bending over him, holding up his head and
mopping his brow with a wet cloth. He looked into the face and
remembered it. It was the long-legged man with the mop of wavy, auburn
hair, whom he had noticed sitting by the window in abstraction a short
time before.
"Getting better, old man?" said the young fellow good-naturedly,
grinning and showing his great, strong, prominent teeth.
Phil muttered a few inarticulate words of thanks and tried to rise.
The lanky man helped him up, led him over to a bench, set him down and
then sat down beside him.
"Sorry I didn't interfere sooner. Might have saved you that rough
handling," said the stranger. "But to tell you the truth, I thought
you were going to eat Rob Roy McGregor up. Guess you could, too, for
you handle your fists better than any man I have ever seen;--but
you're just as weak as a half-drowned kitten. What's the matter; been
boozing?"
"No!" replied Phil. "I seldom drink."
"Lucky you!" put in the big fellow. "Sick then?"
"Yes!--I--I'm just recovering from a severe illness," answered Phil,
for want of a better excuse.
"Just come into town?"
"I came in off the noon train."
"Any friends?"
"No!"
"Say!--you don't mind me cross-examining you this way, old man? I--I
kind of like your looks."
A big smile went over the face of the stranger, wrinkling and
puckering it amusingly.
"What's your name? Mine's Jim Langford. They call me Wayward,--because
I am. I'm a B. Sc. of Edinburgh University; a barrister, by profession
only; lazy; fond of books and booze; no darned good; always in
trouble; sent out here for the good of my health and for the peace of
mind of the family, after a bit of trouble; had ten thousand dollars
to start with; spent it all before I woke up. I get fifty dollars a
month to keep away from the Old Land.
"Have you a place to sleep to-night? Got any baggage?"
"No!" said Phil, in answer to the second last question. "I haven't had
time to look around yet. My baggage is at the station."
"Come then! Let's get your stuff. My landlady has a spare room. I
guess she'll be glad to let you have it. She's a decent sort, too."
Phil hesitated a moment.
"If you haven't got the money, that won't matter."
"I have a little;--a very little,--enough for a few days. I'm up here
to find work."
"Well,--come along with me for the time being," said Langford.
"All right!" assented Phil. And the two walked up Main Street
together, up toward the railway tracks, past the barn Phil had hidden
in on his first, unofficial visit to Vernock.
"How,--how did you manage to beat off those cowpunchers?" asked Phil.
"Easy as breathing! I once punched the heart out of that rotter
McGregor. Beat a man once, good and plenty, and it isn't hard beating
him again. And that doesn't only refer to fighting, either. But say!
if I didn't know you were a stranger hereabout, I would have said Rob
Roy's picking on you was a put up job."
A pang shot through Phil at the suggestion, and it set him wondering.
"First thing you've got to do, young fellow, is to get up your
strength and go back and lick the stuffing out of that scum. If you
don't, your life won't be worth living in Vernock."
Phil laughed.
"That's straight goods!" returned Langford, his Scottish burr turning
the Western phrase strangely.
"Well--I don't mind if I do," said Phil.
They called in at the railway depot, and Phil got his two grips.
"Ralston!--what kind of business do you follow? Hope you aren't a
pen-pusher, because pen-pushing isn't for you for some time to come.
What you need is something out in the open. You seem to have played
merry hell with your constitution. I'm skin and bone myself, but I'm
not the fattening kind. I'm built for speed. Now your frame's made for
muscle and flesh, and you haven't a pick of meat on your entire
carcass."
Phil smiled in an embarrassed kind of way.
"Don't mind me," continued Langford. "You'll get on to my way after a
bit. What's your line of trade?"
"Well, to be honest," said Phil, "I haven't any. I came out here to
try anything. I'm an M.A. of Toronto University; have substituted in
school; can clear land if I get my own time to it; have a pretty fair
knowledge of accounting; but haven't done much of anything so far. I
used to be a good athlete."
It was Langford's turn to smile.
"Another poor, hand-fed chicken out of the University incubator, who
can do everything but what he is meant to do--lay eggs, golden ones.
Say, Ralston, the world is full of us and we're little or no damned
good. We know too much, or think we do, to be contented with the pick
and shovel game, and we don't know enough--because we think we know it
all already--to get down to the steady grind year in and year out, at
some business that might ultimately bring us to an armchair job. So we
go along with our noses to the ground snuffing for a convenient hole
to crawl into.
"Oh, well!" he exploded, "who the devil wants to be tied up body and
soul to some corporation all his life, for the sake of making a little
money that somebody else is going to go to the dogs over after you
have gone?"
CHAPTER V
The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing
Far enough up the hill to view the blossoming orchards all over the
Valley and the distant blue of the lake between the hills, Langford
stopped at a large, two-storied dwelling house set in expansive
grounds and almost hidden among shade trees.
He walked right in, and Phil followed him.
A matronly woman, of portly dimensions, met them in the hallway.
"Mrs. Clunie," cried Langford, "I've caught you a new, live lodger
fresh off the train to-day. He will just fit the spare room over the
way from mine."
Mrs. Clunie looked her prospective tenant over critically.
"Mrs. Clunie,--Mr. Ralston," continued Langford.
Phil bowed, and Mrs. Clunie nodded in a strictly non-committal way.
"His father is Lord Athelhurst-Ralston of Ecclefechan, Mrs. Clunie. He
has come out here for his health."
"Mr. Langford,--that'll do," said the landlady severely. "There
was no' a Ralston in the whole o' Ecclefechan let alone a Lord
What-ye-call-him Ralston, when I left twenty years syne, and I
ha'e my doots if there's one there noo. Don't be makin' a fool o'
the young man.
"Where do ye come frae, laddie?"
"I come from Campbeltown, Mrs. Clunie."
"What?--Campbeltown on the Mull o' Kintyre,--then you must ha'e left
there before you were shortened," she returned quickly.
"Campbeltown, Ontario!" corrected Phil.
"Oh,--ahee!--You're sober, respectable, law-abiding, and attentive to
your work?"
"I hope so."
"As upright as Mr. Langford?"
"Oh, yes!" laughed Phil, remembering Langford's autobiography as he
had heard it a short time ago.
"I hope so," she returned pointedly, repeating Phil's own words.
"And he can say the Shorter Catechism and repeat the Psalms of David
by heart," put in Langford sonorously.
"Mr. Langford,--that'll do. Scotsmen shouldna be flippant ower such
serious subjects," the goodly Mrs. Clunie chided.
"Come up stairs and I'll show ye your room."
She showed Phil into a comfortable little place, fixed a price that
suited his scanty purse, collected a month's rent on the spot--lest
haply Phil might run into temptation by having that much more money in
his possession--and left the newcomer to his own devices.
Half an hour later, Langford shouted to him from the hallway.
"Come on over, Ralston, if you're awake."
Phil obeyed.
"We've all had to go through what you did," said Langford, "but Mrs.
Clunie is worth it;--she's a crackerjack. How do you like the
lay-out?"
Phil was busy taking in the physical features of Langford's room.
But for the bed and the bureau, the room was more like a study than a
bedroom. It contained bookcases from floor to ceiling, packed with
literary treasures.
"My pals," said Langford, pointing to two of them containing the
classics of fiction, poetry and essays.
"My enemies," he continued, nodding at the third bookcase, packed with
books on law.
"Friends of mine," he went on, pointing to a pen and inkwell on a
small writing table.
He went over to one of the trunks that graced the window as seats. He
raised the lid. It was filled to overflowing with rolls of paper,
loose sheets and scraps, all closely written upon.
"My babies," he laughed. "Behold in me the most prolific mother in all
literature!"
"What are they?" inquired Phil.
"The offsprings of fancy," returned Langford, grandiloquently;
"essays, short stories, dramas, poems--all of no financial value. Dime
novels worth fifty dollars a time, but all cashed. Advice to the Love
Sick--five dollars a column--alas also unconvertible."
Phil stood before him a little nonplussed, while Langford grinned and
smoked on.
"I suffer continually the mental pangs of literary childbirth."
He sat in a chair and lounged dreamily as he puffed out clouds of
smoke, his long legs sprawling out in front of him.
"You're lucky to have such a talent," put in Phil at last.
"Lucky! Talent!" exclaimed Langford.
"I always understood literature was a lucrative pursuit."
"Pursuit,--yes;--but lucrative! Ye gods!
"You see, Ralston, I suffer with my thoughts until I relieve myself by
getting them down as best I can on paper, then I bury them in my
trunk along with their elder brothers. I know I ought to burn them,
but I haven't the heart to murder my children born in such travail.
Some day, however, it will have to be done, otherwise they'll crowd
their father-mother out of house and home."
"Don't you try to market your work?"
"I did once--many times once--but they would have none of my
high-faluting flights, although as Captain Mayne Plunkett, the writer
of penny dreadfuls for the consumption of England's budding pirates
and cowpunchers, I am not without a following, and I have a steady
contract for one per month at fifty dollars straight. To a New York
girls' journal, I am not unkindly thought of as Aunt Christina in the
Replies to the Love Lorn column,--five dollars per--."
He laughed reflectively.
"But don't you work?" asked Phil innocently.
"Work! Lord, isn't that work a-plenty?"
"Yes, but work that pays in real dollars and cents."
"Ah!" Langford's eyes swept the ceiling. "Meantime, I am what you
might call Assistant to the Government Agent. God knows how long he
will suffer me. He is a real good sort, and doesn't expect too much
for his money either in time or in ability. I knock about fifty
dollars a month out of him when I work, and that, with the fifty with
which my old dad so benevolently pensions me, together with fifty for
every 'penny horrible' I write, I contrive to eke out a scanty
living.
"You've got to work, too, Ralston; haven't you?"
"Work or starve!" answered Phil.
"I hate to think of any man having to work," mused Langford, "but if
starve is the only alternative, why, I guess you've got to find a job.
Got anything in view?"
"No!"
"Particular about what you tackle?"
"Not at all!"
"All right! I've to be at the Court House at five o'clock. Kick your
heels around this little burg for a few hours and I'll try to scare up
something for you. But don't get into mischief."
He rose, knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the heel of his boot at
the stove, and put on his hat.
He turned at the door.
"Say, Ralston! It won't be any pen-pushing job, mark you. You have to
get your muscle up, for there's something I want you to do when you
are good and fit."
"And what is that?"
"Tell you later. So long!"
A few minutes later Phil got his hat from the hall-rack and strolled
leisurely out, taking the road down the hill toward the main street of
the town.
He passed a red brick building which bore the aristocratic title on a
large painted sign over the doorway, "Municipal Hall." He looked at
the windows. Hanging on one of them, in the inside, was a black card
with gilt letters, "Mayor Brenchfield."
Phil's under lip shot out and his brow wrinkled. His hand travelled to
his hip pocket, as a nervous man's does when he sees a sign in a
railway station, "Beware of Pickpockets."
He swung on his heel and walked up the wooden steps into the main
office, as calm and collected as could be.
"Is the Mayor in?" he asked one of the officials.
"Yes! Wish to see him? What name, please?"
"Oh, just tell him it's an old friend."
The office man went into the inner room and soon returned.
"He is very busy on some special work. Would you mind calling in
again?"
"Anybody with him?"
"No!"
Phil brushed past the man and walked straight into the Mayor's office,
closing the door behind him.
Brenchfield was sitting in an armchair, behind a desk, smoking a huge
cigar and blowing clouds in the air; the very picture of municipal
overwork.
"Thought it might be you! Heard you were in town. Sit down, Phil!"
"Thanks, no!" returned Phil brusquely.
Brenchfield reached over, opened a cheque book, took up a pen, dipped
it in an inkwell, turned his cigar savagely to a corner of his mouth
and looked up at his visitor inquiringly.
"How much do you want?"
Phil smiled on him, half-pityingly. Physically, he was tremendously
weak, but he despised the man before him so much that it gave him
courage and strength.
"How much have you?" he asked.
"None of your damned business!"
"Oh!--I guess you've forgotten that our five years' partnership is
up:--a pool and a fair divide, wasn't it? Share and share alike!
Well,--there's mine!"
He threw a few bills and a little silver on the table.
Brenchfield pushed back his chair.
"So that's your game, you poor miserable--you know the name!"
"Poor and miserable, all right,--like the fool I was. But I'm not a
fool any more. I know you. I know the world just a little better than
I did five years ago."
"Shut up, man! Do you wish the whole town to hear?"
"What if they do hear? I've nothing to hide;--I'm not like you."
"And you'll be getting a little more of what you have already had, if
you don't go easier than you are doing. See here!--I'm busy, but I'm
willing to start you off. What's your price to get out of here for
good and forget you ever knew me, and to forget me for all time to
come?"
"One-half of all you have, and interest to date,--I to stay here as
long as I please."
The Mayor looked at Phil as if he were looking at a lunatic, then he
smiled and started in to fill up a cheque.
"I owe you five hundred. I've tacked on a thousand more. There! The
train leaves at 3:15 P.M. to-morrow. You get out on it. Do you
understand?"
"Thank you!--but this place suits me. I like it and I'm going to
stay."
"You are,--eh! If you don't get out with to-morrow's train you'll go
out the day following, in a box, feet first."
"Yes! Judging from what happened early this afternoon, I daresay you
are quite equal to that kind of thing," said Phil quietly. "But I'm
going to stay all the same."
"You won't get a job within twenty miles of Vernock. If you do, you
won't hold it, for every man in the district will know you for what
you are,--an ex-jailbird."
"Who will tell them?"
"I will."
"No, you won't!"
"Won't I? Try it out and I'll show you quick enough."
Phil went over to Brenchfield's desk.
"I suppose you think your tracks are pretty well covered up after five
years."
"I have none to cover," retorted Brenchfield. "I don't know you
personally; never did know you;--don't want to know you. I do know you
by reputation for an escaped jailbird and a would-be blackmailer, who
will be back where he belongs before he is much older. Get that?"
"Yes,--I got it," answered Phil, desperate, and almost beaten, when an
imp in his mind set him busy.
"I'm going to stay here, Graham, and you're not going to try to
prevent me or say a word that would injure my standing. If you do,
then God help you."
Brenchfield laughed up at the ceiling.
"Five years ago," went on Phil, "you wrote a little note in cypher and
left it with me when you turned tail and ran away. Maybe you have
forgotten about that note. Well,--written things have a habit of
turning up."
Brenchfield's bravado oozed away. His hard face grew pale.
"You're lying. You burned that note."
"Did I?"
"If you didn't, it would have been found and would have come out in
the evidence."
"Perhaps!"
Phil put his hand in the inside pocket of his jacket, as if to bring
out the paper, then he appeared to change his mind, for he desisted
and made as if to leave.
Brenchfield jumped up quickly, sprang for the door and stood with his
back to it.
"Damn you! How much do you want?"
"Nothing!"
"Name your price and give me that note."
"It is priceless."
"Good heavens, man!--you need money. You're a pauper. I can make you
comfortable. I can get you a position that will make you secure for
life."
Phil slowly picked up his own money that he had thrown on the desk and
put it in his trouser pocket.
"Much obliged!" he remarked, "but I have no intention of remaining a
pauper for long. I wouldn't insult my conscience by taking any
position you could find for me. Do you mind letting me out?"
For answer, Brenchfield was on him like a wild-cat. Phil wriggled, but
the Mayor got behind him, with an arm pressing his throat and a hand
over his mouth. With a quick movement and without the slightest noise
he bore Phil backward full length on the thickly carpeted floor. He
moved his grip and, half strangling him with one hand as he knelt
heavily on Phil's chest, he went through Phil's inside pocket.
The pocket was empty.
Phil could not cry out, and would not have done so had he been able.
Slowly Brenchfield searched every pocket in turn. He failed to find a
document of any kind.
He released him at last, rose and brushed the dust from his trousers,
breathing heavily.
"Damn you!--I knew you lied."
Phil got up also.
"Guess you take me for a fool such as I used to be," he panted. "I
don't carry my valuables with me now when I visit your kind. I have
more sense. Now, do you mind letting me out?"
Brenchfield made as if he were going to strike Phil in his anger.
"If I thought you had that paper, I'd kill you for it."
"And, if you thought I hadn't, you'd hound the life out of me.
Well,--do your darnedest."
"The money offer still holds good," said Brenchfield in a more
conciliatory tone. "Keep your mouth shut and I'll do the same. Let me
know when you are ready to name your price for that paper."
"When I need the money, I'll let you know," replied the other.
Brenchfield opened the door, and smiling an urbane mayoral "Good
afternoon," that all in the main office could hear, he ushered Phil
out.
CHAPTER VI
A Bird to Pluck
As he walked down Main Street toward the Kenora Hotel, where it was
his intention to have a bite to eat, Phil congratulated himself
inwardly, on the one side, on the more than ordinary success of his
gigantic bluff--for he knew that so long as he was able to hold this
bogey of a confession as a club over the head of Brenchfield, he was
safe from open interference:--on the other side, he cursed his arrant
stupidity and childlike simplicity in destroying a document which,
even if he never used it, proved beyond the shadow of a doubt his
innocence of the crime for which he had been imprisoned.
He tried hard to recollect exactly what had happened that fatal
morning after Brenchfield had left the shack on the side of the road
at Carnaby, but all was more or less hazy and indistinct. He
remembered deciphering the note and crumpling it up in his despair and
worry. Later, he recollected gathering up the loose papers and other
material evidences of Brenchfield's guilt, stuffing them into the
stove and setting them alight.
As he walked along his musings were brought to an abrupt stop, as his
eye caught sight of a tall, straight, picturesque-looking individual
coming toward him. The man was dressed in what at one time had been an
immaculate sporting suit, but which, in its now battered and tattered
state, gave the wearer the look of a bookmaker who had been dragged
through a mud puddle and then hung out to dry.
The man's wide sombrero was battered, his stock around his neck was
dirty, the brass buttons on his robin-redbreast waistcoat were dull
and tarnished, his riding breeches and leggings seemed sworn enemies
of brush and polish. But despite all this, one could not get away from
the fact that everything the man wore was of the very best and most
expensive materials.
He stepped up in front of Phil apologetically. His voice was
attractively musical and exceedingly English.
"Excuse me, old chap! I'm a stranger here. I'm deuced dirty and
devilish hungry. Do you mind directing me to a good hotel where I
could get a wash and a jolly good tuck in?"
"Certainly," said Phil. "I think the Kenora's all right. I'm going
that way myself for a snack, if you care to come along."
"Thanks! Jolly decent! Don't mind if I do!"
He turned with Phil, and as they went on together he took a little
silver case from his pocket and handed a card to Phil.
"My name! What's yours?"
Phil scanned the card and smiled.
Percival DeRue Hannington
The Oaks Mount Raeburn
Hants
"Sorry I haven't a card," he said. "My name's Ralston, Phil Ralston."
"Don't mention it, old chap! They don't cotton much to cards out here,
I notice."
He wrung Phil's hand heartily.
A little cord was hanging round Percival Hannington's neck and led to
a top pocket of his vest. Phil felt positive it terminated in a
monocle and, as the stranger's fingers wandered down the cord, Phil,
in his dread of what was about to happen, laid his hand restrainingly
over the travelling fingers.
"Don't!" he pleaded. "They don't cotton to that, either, out here."
The stranger flushed a little.
"By jove,--you're right. Thanks! Habits are beastly things, you know.
Better rid myself of all my old ties if I'm to start afresh, eh!"
He pulled out the monocle, jerked the cord from his neck, snapped the
glass between his fingers and tossed the lot into the roadway.
Something in the spontaneous act went to Phil's heart and he felt from
that moment that here was a man he could like despite his strange
exterior.
They passed through the bar of the Kenora, which was the only way one
could get admittance to that hotel unless by the back door among empty
cans and kitchen garbage. The strange apparition of the Englishman
reduced everyone in the saloon to funereal silence. Phil bravely led
the way, however, without mishap, except for a distant shout of
laughter which reached them at the dining-room.
Phil spoke to the hotel clerk, who shouted for the bell boy.
"Follow that boy," said Phil. "He will fix you up."
"Thanks! If you don't mind, I should like to have my bite with you,
old chap. I won't be a jiffy."
And off he strutted after the grinning boy, while Phil sat in five
minutes' dreamy contemplation.
Back came Percival DeRue Hannington, spick and span as far as a
clothes-brush and soap and water could make him.
"By jove! It's a corker how much dirt can stick to a fellow without
falling off," he remarked. "What are you having?"
Phil named something light.
"That all?" asked Hannington. "I'm hungry as a blooming hawk. I
haven't had a decent bite for three months.
"Everything on the blessed calendar for me, miss, frills and extras
included," he went on, addressing the waitress, who went away with the
end of her apron in her mouth.
"You know, Mister--Mister----"
"Phil Ralston!"
"Ah, yes! Mister Phil----"
"Just plain Phil!"
"Phil--yes, excuse me! You know, I came out to this bally country on
false pretences, as it were. Oh,--the country's all right! Don't
misunderstand me. It's a regular ripper, but, damme, I got done, you
know."
The soup came along, and DeRue Hannington fumbled for his monocle but
suddenly seemed to remember that it was no longer a part of him. He
blundered awkwardly a while, as if he had suddenly been deprived of
one of his active members.
"It's this way, Mister, eh, Phil. The guv'nor thought I was going the
pace too hard and becoming a bally rotter, so he said I had to go out
West and be a rawncher. He said it just like that,--as if being a
rawncher was as easy as being a rotter.
"Are you a rawncher?"
"No! It takes money to be that."
"You're a foreman, or a cowboy, or something?"
"No,--I'm not anything yet," smiled Phil. "I'm just starting in. I've
lately finished my college training."
The irony in his voice was lost on DeRue Hannington who was too full
of his own troubles to worry about those of anyone else.
"Well, you see,--when the dad and I had that tiff, I just took him
on.
"I saw an advertisement of a rawnching chap in a London journal,
offering to take on an Englishman as an apprentice and teach him
everything about rawnching for three years for five hundred dollars a
year. I just cabled that fellow and got his answer to come right away.
And here I got three months ago."
All the time he was speaking, Hannington was eating ravenously but
with the ease and daintiness of one whose table manners were an
eternal part of him.
"The rawncher met me at the station with two horses. Not a blessed
wagon or a thing to carry my luggage did the bounder have. It is lying
at the station yet;--at least it was last time I called in there. The
fellow took my five hundred dollars, then took me twenty miles up over
these everlasting hills. A thousand miles in the bally wilderness!
"Of course, you know, Phil, I will admit I was deuced raw."
Phil laughed. DeRue Hannington's good nature asserted itself and he
laughed, too.
After a while, he went on.
"This rawnching Johnnie's name was Duff. You don't happen to know
him?"
Phil shook his head.
"Well,--he put me in the charge of Mrs. Duff, and she set me to paring
potatoes, washing the floors, scouring pots and pans, wringing clothes
and all that sort of rot; till, one day, I just said to Duff that I'd
come West to rawnch, not to skivvy.
"Of course, I'll admit, I didn't know an apple tree from a cauliflower,
but, damme, I was game to learn, Phil. Don't you think I did right to
jolly-well remonstrate?"
"You certainly did!"
Thus encouraged, DeRue Hannington continued:
"He then put me to digging, and digging, and digging, till the cows
came home, then to weeding, and weeding, and weeding, miles and miles
of rows and rows of beastly carrots and things until I can't look an
honest carrot in the face or a potato in the eye without feeling
faint.
"I really didn't seem to be learning anything, but I stuck it gamely
until three days ago, when Mr. and Mrs. Duff went off to visit a
neighbour five miles up the Valley. They left me to look after the
blooming squawking baby. That just got me real mad, so when it started
in to bawl, I sat down and wrote a note saying I was through. I pinned
it to the baby,--and, here I am.
"Don't you think I did the right thing?"
"You bet!" answered Phil, striving hard to suppress his bubbling
merriment.
"They cawn't make me serve my three years out, can they, Phil?"
queried DeRue Hannington, anxiously.
"Not they! Why, all they wanted was your five hundred dollars. They'll
be glad to be quit of you."
The Englishman perked up.
"They're welcome to the money. But I'm not through rawnching, you
know. You see I've got the worst over now and I'm feeling quite a
Westerner. You don't happen to know anyone who has a good rawnch for
sale?--one with a decent sort of a house and stables, and lots of
fruit trees on it. I've got the money in the bank, you know, and could
pay cash for it. I really think I could run a rawnch now."
"No,--I haven't the slightest idea!" returned Phil. "But it shouldn't
be a hard job getting a ranch, if you have the money. There are always
lots of people ready to sell goods for cash. Take my advice, though;
don't be in too great a hurry."
Phil rose to go.
DeRue Hannington followed him to the saloon, where Phil shook hands
and left him.
As he passed out at the door he heard the voice of the stranger raised
above the general conversation of the saloon.
"Excuse me, but have any of you good fellows any idea where a chap
could buy a good rawnch for cash?"
Phil threw up his hands in despair and walked on, knowing that
Percival DeRue Hannington had still a lot to learn about ranching and
about those who had ranches to sell.
CHAPTER VII
Wild Man Hanson Goes Wild
Jim Langford was waiting for Phil at Mrs. Clunie's.
"Where the Sam Hill have you been, Phil? I've been looking for you
everywhere. Got a job yet?"
"No,--not even the scent of one!"
"Want one?"
"You bet!"
"Hard work and start to-morrow?"
"Sure thing! Where is it? what is it? who is it? Tell me quick! I'm
aching to work for real money, for more reasons than one."
"Royce Pederstone, the blacksmith, is quitting being an active
blacksmith any more. He is putting Wildman Hanson in charge, and
Hanson's job is going a-begging."
"Wildman Hanson! That sounds good for a start, Jim."
"And it's as good as it sounds, too, young fellow, my lad. I'm not
going to tell you anything about his 'wildman' tricks. You'll find
that out for yourself in good time. But he's a crackerjack blacksmith
and can show you all of the trade that is worth showing."
"I haven't the strength to be a smith."
"Not now;--but you have the frame and you've got to build on it.
"The job's worth twenty dollars a week to start, and it's yours for
the taking. I did the asking from Hanson this morning. Are you on?"
"Of course I'm on."
"All right!--six o'clock to-morrow morning at Pederstone's shop, one
block down the hill and two blocks to the left."
Langford chuckled.
"What are you grinning at?" asked Phil.
"Oh,--just thinking what you'll be able to do with that rusty-headed,
son-of-a-gun McGregor after a month or two under Hanson."
"Thanks! I've had some McGregor, and I'm not greedy. I'm not at all
anxious for more."
"What? See here, Phil,--you've got to beat that lobster stiff if it
takes you a year. It took me all I knew to turn the trick, and I had
to keep off drink for six months to do it, but there was something
inside of me that just wouldn't stay quiet till I licked the stuffing
out of him. He's a bully. He's the craftiest, sneakiest, most
underhand skunk in the Valley. He's at the bottom of most of the
trouble with cattle and feed hereabout, but he's too damned wary to be
caught.
"I'm surprised at the Mayor having anything to do with him. But, of
course, the Mayor's a cattleman himself, and, give Rob Roy McGregor
his due, there isn't a better man on stock this side of Calgary."
"And I've to go blacksmithing with the set purpose of eating this
fellow up?"
"No, you're going blacksmithing for the purpose of setting yourself
up, you rickle of bones! Licking McGregor can be your side line. When
you beat him, you'll know you are in pretty good shape."
"All right,--I'm on!" agreed Phil. "But who is this Royce Pederstone?
Why is he giving up his work?"
"Who? why? and wherefore? At times you're a regular bairn for asking
questions, but when you're wanted to talk you're as silent as the
tomb.
"Royce Pederstone has been here since the flood. He's a good
blacksmith, only he never finishes a job. If he is making a gate, he
stops at the last rivet and Hanson has to drive it home. If he is
shoeing a horse, he forgets a nail. If he is making a fish hook, he
omits the barb. It is the same with his land deals; he buys land and,
for the time being, forgets he owns it so far as selling again is
concerned. Then he buys some more whenever he has the ready cash. It
is all working for him,--so he says. He owns more earth than he has
any idea of. He doesn't know how much stock he has; doesn't even knows
what happens to his farm implements once he pays for them; in some
cases doesn't know if they have been delivered to him. Often he finds
some of them when the snow goes away in the spring time. There are
many things he doesn't know; all the same it isn't safe to take too
many chances on what he passes up."
"Then he has got too rich for blacksmithing?"
"Not he! Royce Pederstone is not that kind of a man, Phil. He is just
too busy. He is going to be the next member of parliament from the
Valley. Watch and see!
"The new election comes off in three months' time. Last week the
Association met to elect their representative. Some were for
Barrington of Armstrong, others for Brenchfield the Mayor. They
couldn't agree. Royce Pederstone was chairman of the meeting. At
midnight they were as far off a decision as ever. Someone proposed
John Royce Pederstone, and it carried without a dissenting voice.
"He's a cracking good man, is Pederstone, on the platform. He is
straight, honest and more or less of a farmer. Ben Todd, the editor,
is hand and glove with him, so he will have _The Vernock and District
Advertiser_ at his back.
"The old government is sure to be kicked out of office, if only to
give the people a change; so, who is going to keep Royce Pederstone
from being the Valley's representative at Victoria, I should like to
know?"
"And that's why he's stepping out of the blacksmith's shop?" put in
Phil.
"Yes!--that's the why, boy."
Next morning at six o'clock Phil, in the company of Jim Langford,
presented himself at Pederstone's forge.
"Hullo!" cried Jim, "that's funny. Not open yet!"
The front door was heavily barred across. They went to the back
entrance. It also was firmly secured.
Langford shielded his face with his hand and peered through the
narrow, barred windows.
"Well, I'll be darned!" he exclaimed. "And on your first morning, too!
Hard luck, Phil!"
"Why,--what is it?"
"Oh, nothing much! Only I fancy you're going to see why your new boss
is called Wildman Hanson.
"Look in there."
Phil did so.
"What did you see?"
Phil puckered his face in disgust.
"Not much wildman there," he remarked. "As far as I can see Hanson is
sound asleep on a pile of coke. There are two empty bottles at his
side. Seems to me he might be dead drunk."
"That's what he is, too."
"Then let's go in and throw a bucket of water over him and wake him
up."
"Not on your life! Then there _would_ be a funeral. I guess you had
better postpone your start till to-morrow. Only one man in Vernock can
handle Hanson after he's had a night of it, and that man's the Mayor.
Man to man, Hanson has him shaded. With a rope in his hand, the Mayor
is the best man."
Voices behind them made them turn round.
Royce Pederstone and Mayor Brenchfield were riding down the side road
as if on some definite bent. They were equipped as for a round-up.
"How do, Jim! Is this Hanson's new apprentice?" asked Pederstone,
bending over his horse and shaking hands genially with Phil.
"Glad to meet you, young man, and sorry this has happened on your
first day. Hanson only goes on the toot once in a long while. You must
just forget what you are going to see in a few minutes and think later
only of what he shows you of blacksmithing."
Brenchfield completely ignored Phil's presence.
The two men got off their horses.
Royce Pederstone turned the water on at the tap at the trough, to
which a hose was already attached. He directed the nozzle through a
broken window pane, squirting a thin, strong stream directly on the
upturned face of the open-mouthed and heavily-breathing Swede.
With a grunt the huge fellow spread himself.
The Mayor jerked off the water, then he and Royce Pederstone sprang on
their horses and took up positions at different sides of the yard.
Jim and Phil in curiosity kept their eyes glued to the dirty window.
Growling fiercely, Hanson scrambled to his feet. His usually handsome
and childlike face was contorted with rage and horrible to see. His
eyes, bloodshot and bleared, stood out wildly in his head, his teeth
showed like the teeth of a snarling puma and a foamy lather slithered
from his mouth down on to his huge, hairy, muscle-heaving chest. He
stood over six feet--a man of gigantic proportions, with every inch
of him tuned and in perfect symmetry.
But he seemed madness incarnate.
With a fierce oath, he wiped the water from his face. He staggered and
bumped into an anvil, striking his knee against the metal. He swore
again and, in his mounting anger, he seized the anvil in his great
hands, lifted it bodily from its stand and heaved it into a corner--a
feat which four strong men, at any time, would have experienced
difficulty in performing.
"Great Cæsar!" whispered Phil in awe.
"After a booze, he's as strong as a railway engine," returned Jim,
"and he goes plumb daffy. Murder or anything else doesn't matter a
hill of beans to him at a time like this."
"That sounds exceedingly pleasant."
"Pshaw!--you needn't mind. You'll know in lots of time, for he's happy
and gentle as a lark when he's really boozing. It is only when he
wakes up the morning after--after a ten hours' sleep--that the fun
begins.
"He killed a horse once with his bare hands. Got on its back and
strangled it somehow. He half-killed the old Police Chief. He got a
year in jail for that. They were going to send him to an asylum
afterwards, but he was such a fine workman and so decent at an
ordinary time, that Royce Pederstone and the Mayor gave their
guarantees and promised to attend to him any time he tried his
monkey-doodle business again."
Meantime, Hanson walked over to the front door and tested it. Then he
came toward the back one.
"Run!" shouted Langford, suiting prompt action to his word.
Phil remained a moment or two longer, trusting to his nimbleness of
foot for emergency.
He saw Hanson stoop and pick up a great, heavy, sledge, then spring
madly to the back door, swinging the big hammer above his head. With a
shivering crash the woodwork splintered.
Phil turned to run.
Another great crash and the whole door and its fastenings tumbled
outward, and that giant piece of infuriated humanity stood looking
about him, framed in the broken woodwork.
Phil heard a warning shout, as he rushed headlong.
But his toe caught on an iron girder and he came down heavily on his
face. As he sprang to his feet again he heard further shouting all
about him. He turned his head. Hanson was springing toward him and
making on him with a speed Phil could not realise in a man so weighty;
a speed he could not begin to emulate.
The great hairy hands were almost on his coat, when something
happened.
He staggered, balanced himself and stood up sheepishly.
Hanson was on the ground, struggling, cursing and kicking viciously at
a rope which Royce Pederstone had cast smartly round his left foot.
Pederstone tugged with all his strength, and his horse lent her
weight, but together they could do no more than hold their own with
the fallen Vulcan. Hanson brought out a clasp-knife from his clothes,
opened it and slashed at the rope. He had it almost cut through, when
Brenchfield, who had been sitting on his horse an inactive and silent
spectator--in response to Pederstone's urgent call, whirled his rope
around his head several times and dropped it deftly over Hanson's
shoulders, pinning his arms helplessly to his side.
Brenchfield then tugged in one direction and Royce Pederstone in the
other, each tying the end of his rope tightly to a stake at his side
of the yard, with the result that the madman was half hamstrung and
reduced to impotence.
Langford came round the side of the building with fresh ropes. These
were quickly bound round Hanson, until he was unable to move hand or
foot, although he still struggled violently, the veins in his neck and
head standing out in blue knots, the perspiration running over his
shapely forehead and the frothy slither again oozing from his lips.
"Say, Graham!--what went wrong? Why didn't you rope him? Thought you
said you would take first throw."
"Did I?" asked Brenchfield calmly.
"Sure you did! It might have been a serious accident. It isn't often
you make a forget like that, old man."
"Oh, pshaw!--what's the odds anyway? Everything was all right."
"Was--yes! But it might have been all day with the new man."
"No chance! I had that cinched. Anyway, he had no right dawdling at
the window as long as he did."
"Here, you two scrapping schoolboys--forget it!" interposed Langford.
"I fancy Phil knows how to look after himself without either of you."
On the instructions of Pederstone, the four men carried the trussed
Hanson into a nearby stable, where they made him fast with fresh ropes
to some heavy stanchions.
When all was secure, Hanson was left to regain his normal, Pederstone
turning the key in the lock for further security.
"Guess that's all this time, Ped," said Brenchfield.
"All through--thanks, Graham!" returned Pederstone, and Brenchfield
rode off in deep thought. As a blacksmith, the Mayor felt that Phil
was easy and safe for him, although he did not like the intimacy that
seemed to have sprung up so soon between Phil and Jim Langford, for
Langford was a strange composite, capable of anything or nothing;
clever; altogether an unknown quantity, but one well worth the
watching closely.
"Do you want Phil to-day now this has happened?" asked Jim of Royce
Pederstone.
"Sure thing!--if he hasn't changed his mind about working?"
"Not me!" answered Phil.
"All right!" said Jim. "Me for the Court House. I'm only a couple of
hours late now. See you later, Phil!"
Royce Pederstone went into the forge, doffed his coat, rolled up his
sleeves and put on his leather apron.
Phil followed suit with an apron of Hanson's, and soon the doors were
wide open, the fires blowing and the anvil ringing, drowning the
groans and shouts that came from Hanson as he lay like a trussed fowl
in the adjoining stable.
"I'm sorry this has taken place on the first day of your apprenticeship,
young man, but it has been pending for some time. After this is over,
you won't be afraid to be left with Hanson, I hope. He'll be all
right in a few hours, and very much ashamed of himself you will find
him."
"I'm not afraid," said Phil. "I am just beginning to discover that
fear is the greatest devil we have to contend with and that the less
we worry about it the less real and the more a mere bogey it
becomes."
"True for you, Phil. And the older you grow the more you'll realise
the wisdom of what you say.
"Well, it is just a year since Hanson had his last drinking bout. I
was beginning to think he had got completely over it. He is not likely
to break out again for ever so long."
"What is it exactly that gets him?" asked Phil.
"Oh,--likes drink once in a while, but drink doesn't like him;--that's
all. It goes to his brain somehow. Do you think you could manage him
if he took you unawares?"
"I could try," answered Phil.
"That's the way to talk. And you've got the frame to work on, too. Can
you throw a rope?"
"I used to when I was a kid. I guess, with a little practice, I still
could do it pretty well."
"Well,--practise in your spare time. It is handy to be able to throw a
rope in this Valley. And it doesn't cost anything carrying the ability
about with you. Can you use your fists?"
"Yes!--tolerably well."
"Good for you! Now all you need is to be able to use your head and
everything will be O. K."
All that day, Royce Pederstone worked like the real village blacksmith
he was; shoeing horses, repairing farm implements, bolting, riveting
and welding; showing Phil all he could in the short time he had with
him, telling him--because it was uppermost in his mind--just a little
of his electioneering plans and what he intended doing for the
Okanagan Valley in the way of irrigation, railroads and public
buildings; instilling in his apprentice an enthusiasm for his new work
and making for himself at the same time another friend and political
booster; for Phil was quick to appreciate the kindliness of this
sturdy, pioneering type of man and he felt drawn to him by that
strange, attractive sub-conscious essence which flows from all who are
born to lead, an hypnotic current which is one of the first essentials
of all men who can ever hope successfully to carry out any good or big
undertaking for, or with, their fellow men; the ability with the
triple qualities--to interest, to attract, to hold,--making one feel
that it is good to be within the dominant influence, if only for a
time.
And all day long, in the barn at the rear of the smithy, Wildman
Hanson kept up his groaning, and moaning, and cursing; shouting at the
top of his voice that he was being murdered, and threatening a
separate strangling to half a dozen men whom he called by name,
talking to them as if they were by his side.
Towards closing time, a brilliant burst of evening sunshine flooded
the smithy, and with it came one whose radiating charm made the sun
for a moment slide back to second place.
"Hullo, dad!" she cried. "I thought you weren't going to work here any
more?"
"Hullo, Eilie! I thought so, too, but----Oh, Eileen, this is Phil."
Eileen Pederstone looked in admonishing surprise at her father.
"I beg pardon! Mr. Ralston, our new man,--my daughter, Miss Eileen!"
The young lady bowed sedately to Phil, who was standing a mere dark
silhouette against the glare of the furnace fire. But Eileen was in
the full glow of the flames and, as Phil looked into her face, he
gasped for breath and his heart commenced to thump under his open
shirt.
It was the face of the good samaritan, the good fairy that had of late
so often been pictured in his mind in the day-time, the face that
smiled to him at night through his dreams.
In a flash, he saw himself again; bearded, unkempt, ragged, faint and
hunted, groping for support against the wall of the little kitchen in
the bungalow up on the hill; the sweet vision of the fearless maid
whose heart had opened in practical sympathy to his broken appeal for
succour, her ready response and----
But he pushed his crowding thoughts away, for he was standing before
her--pale, mute and almost foolish.
He bowed, not daring to raise his eyes to hers lest she should
recognise him. But he need not have feared on that score, for to her
he was merely the clean-cut outline of a shadow;--but even had it not
been so, the difference between the young, beardless man before her
and the haggard, broken convict whom she had befriended that night was
greater by far than Phil even could have imagined.
Fortunately for his peace of mind, a sudden cry from the stable burst
in on the momentary quietness.
Eileen turned her head quickly, then she ran over to her father
anxiously and held his arms.
"Dad,--what is that?"
"Hush, dearie!--it's Hanson."
"But--but where is he?" she asked.
"In the barn, tied up good and tight,--quite safe."
"But it isn't right, daddy, to tie a man up like that. He's not a
beast, and he's a kind-hearted decent fellow when he is well."
"When he is well, Eilie,--yes! But he isn't well. Better for him that
we tie him up for a day every once in a while, than confine him in a
lunatic asylum for the term of his natural life. That is what would
have to be otherwise."
"Don't you think he might be better now, daddie?" she pleaded.
"Yes!--I guess he is getting pretty nearly wised up now. He has
stopped his swearing and yelling. That's a good sign. That last cry of
his was the first for half an hour. You run along home, girlie, and
Phil and I will go in and see how he is."
"You won't keep him tied up there all night, dad?"
"Not unless I can't help it, Eilie."
She pouted and stamped her foot impatiently.
"I just won't go home till you tell me for sure. I couldn't sleep if
I thought a man was roped up all night like he is now."
Her father smiled indulgently.
"Foolish little woman! You sleep other nights, yet every minute of the
days and nights you live there are men all over the world who, both
literally and metaphorically, are chained, and roped, and lashed, and
dungeoned; men whose lives are a racking agony, to whom day and night
are alike--all night--men who have no prospect of relief to-morrow,
whose only release is death, and the release they long and pray for
seems never to come. And many of them are men who have done no wrong,
unless it be wrong to offend a potentate, to have an opinion of your
own, to have the courage to express it; to object to laws and customs
which should have been scrapped a thousand years ago.
"Hanson there knows his weakness. He has asked and begged us, in his
sober moments, to be sure to do this very thing to him as a personal
kindness. To-morrow his heart will be flooding with gratitude to know
that he has got through with it without doing anyone any harm."
"Yes, daddie, yes! But won't you go to see if he cannot be released
to-night?" she pleaded.
"Sure, girlie, if it will please you. Wait here!"
The sturdy smith took down the key from a nail in the wall and went
out.
Eileen switched her attention to Phil.
"Have you been long in the Valley, Mr. Ralston?"
Phil was afraid of his voice, so he answered in a deeper intonation
than was his usual.
"Just a few days, miss."
"And you're a blacksmith?"
"Not yet, Miss Pederstone!" Phil grinned to himself and felt slightly
more confident. "I hope to be, some day."
Eileen seemed surprised.
"Haven't you been blacksmithing before? Why, my father started to
learn his trade when he was fourteen years old."
"Do I seem so terribly old then?" asked Phil.
"Oh, no!--not that exactly, but old to be starting in to learn a
trade. Sol Hanson isn't so very much older than you can be, but he has
been a journeyman smith ever since I have known him." She stopped.
"Oh, I don't know----You mustn't mind what I say, Mr. Ralston. I guess
I am a bit of a silly. I let my foolish tongue run away with me at
times. I just say what I feel; just what comes to my mind."
"If everyone did that," remarked Phil, "we should have less dissension
in the world."
"And we would make lots of enemies," she put in.
"We might offend those we think are our friends, and we might alarm
each other by mirroring our tremendous deficiencies, but, in the
finish, it would make for sincerity and truthfulness--two qualities of
nature sadly in the background nowadays. Don't you agree with me?"
"Of course you are right!" said Eileen, "but you talk so earnestly one
would almost imagine that you had suffered at some time through the
insincerity and untruthfulness of one you had trusted."
This was getting too near home for Phil.
"None of us have to live very long to do that. I have often thought,
though, that if, when we looked into the mirror, we could see our
natures as well as our reflected features, our conceit would suffer a
severe shock."
"A woman, maybe!" said Eileen, "but nothing can ever cure mortal man
of his conceit."
"You think a man more conceited than a woman?"
"Assuredly!"
Phil laughed, and the laugh rang in his own natural tone.
Eileen Pederstone stopped. Her brows wrinkled as if some little chord
of memory had suddenly been struck.
Phil also dropped back into an awkward silence.
A noise outside roused both of them, and Royce Pederstone crossed the
yard, followed by Hanson. The latter refused to come inside when he
knew Miss Pederstone was there.
"Better run home, Eilie,--out the front way!"
"Is he all right, daddy?"
"Yes,--back to normal."
"Oh, I'm so glad. You won't be long?"
"Fifteen minutes!"
"Good night, Mr. Ralston!" she said, scrutinizing him in slight
perplexity.
"Good night!" returned Phil, still keeping to the shadows.
CHAPTER VIII
Like Man, Like Horse
With the passing days, Phil found Sol Hanson a man of rugged
simplicity, as full of fun and frolic as a child; a man strong as a
lion, an excellent blacksmith and, what was more to Phil's advantage,
a kind and unselfish teacher who was willing to impart to his willing
pupil--as John Royce Pederstone had been--all he knew of his ancient,
noble and virile calling.
Phil, with a natural aptitude and a delight in at last doing work
of a practical nature, was soon able to shoe a horse, temper and
weld iron, bolt and rivet a gate and mend broken farm implements with
considerable skill, much to the open-minded and childlike Hanson's
pleasure and astonishment.
Phil gloried in the knowledge of returning vigour and in the steadily
increasing size and power of his biceps. His bones no longer showed an
anxiety to burst through his skin. The tired ache, after a little
exertion, was no longer with him. His chest broadened by inches and
his body took on the buoyancy and elasticity that were his real
birthright, but of which the close confinement of Ukalla had almost
robbed him for good.
Jim Langford delighted in this physical change even more than did Phil
himself. He insisted on sparring and wrestling with Phil in the
evenings; and, when the latter began more and more to hold his own,
Jim chuckled and chuckled to himself in anticipation of some amusing
future event he knew was sure to come along sooner or later. When
these amusements palled, they threw their latent energies into the
roping of a post in the long-suffering Mrs. Clunie's orchard, and
later the moving and more elusive objects on the ranges.
All this time, Phil saw little or nothing of Mayor Brenchfield, for
his were busy days, and Brenchfield's fields of operation were seldom
within the confines of the blacksmith shop.
Only once had Eileen Pederstone visited the forge since her father had
gone on his electioneering campaign, and that was one afternoon during
Phil's dinner hour when she had run in hurriedly to have her horse
shod. She was just mounting to ride off as Phil returned, Hanson
having attended to her needs. But her bright smile of remembrance and
the wave of salutation with her riding crop left something pleasant
with Phil that lingered near him till closing time.
The next day he heard casually that she had joined her father on his
tour of the Valley. And he heard something else that disturbed him
more; although, why it should do so, he could not really understand,
for it was no affair of his. He heard that Mayor Brenchfield had been
invited--and had accepted the invitation--to attach himself to the
Royce Pederstone party in order to give the candidate the support of
his fluent tongue and widespread influence.
Somehow Phil resented Brenchfield's apparent friendliness with the
Pederstones. To his mind, Eileen Pederstone was too trusting, too
straight, and honest, and pure-minded to be even for a little time in
the company of a man of the stamp of Brenchfield.
He often wondered at the tremendous wall of protection which
Brenchfield seemed to have raised about himself, and he puzzled as to
where the breach in that wall might be--for of a breach somewhere he
was certain. He wondered who would be first to find it, when it would
be likely to be widened and carried. And after his wondering came the
hope and the determination that he would be there to lend a hand at
the storming of the stronghold.
But these were not consuming desires with Phil. He had a life of work
ahead of him; he had lost time to make up; he had ambitions to fulfil;
great things to do; there were fortunes to be won by determination,
shrewdness and ability, and he was not going to be behind in the
winning of one of them.
That was the day Sol Hanson was called out to repair some machinery
belonging to The Evaporating Company, leaving Phil alone to run the
smithy as best he could.
He had been only a few hours at work when Mayor Brenchfield flung
himself from his gigantic thoroughbred and came forward into the shop,
smiling amiably.
"Well, Phil!--so you're learning to be a blacksmith. Pretty hard
work--isn't it, old man?"
Phil stopped and looked across at him.
When Brenchfield was most pleasant, he knew that was the time for him
to be most on his guard.
"It is more honest than some work I could name."
"Poof!--any fool can be a smith. Why don't you get into something
worth while?"
"This suits me!"
"You're devilish snappy, Phil. What the hell's the matter with you,
anyway? Can't you be civil to Royce Pederstone's customers? Do you
want to turn away business?"
"Stick to business and it will be all right. There is nothing outside
of that that I want to talk to you about."
Brenchfield threw out his bulky chest and smiled, as he walked toward
the back door. Suddenly he wheeled round, put his fingers into his
vest pocket and pulled out a piece of blue paper.
"Phil,--aren't you going to let bygones be bygones? I'll make it well
worth your while. There's going to be big things doing here and I can
put you wise."
To show how little he thought of the suggestion, Phil commenced
hammering on his anvil and so drowned Brenchfield's voice.
The latter came over and laid his hand on Phil's arm.
"If you can't stop being foolish, you might at least be mannerly," he
commented.
"Yes?"
"Here,--take this!"
"What is it?" asked Phil.
"Look and see!"
Phil took the paper and opened it out. It was a cheque for fifteen
hundred dollars.
"What's this for?"
Brenchfield threw out his arm casually. "Just to let bygones be
bygones!"
"No other tags on it, eh?" asked Phil dubiously.
"Not a damned tag!"
Phil held it in his hand as if weighing the matter over, while
Brenchfield watched him narrowly.
"Here's its twin brother, Phil!"
He handed another cheque over. It was for fifteen hundred dollars
also.
"And this one? What's it for?"
"That's to get out of here on to-morrow's train and to stay out."
"Uhm!" answered Phil. "That makes three thousand dollars."
Brenchfield's face took on a little more confidence. He knew the
temptation proffered money held for the average man. Only, he forgot
that he was not dealing in averages with Phil Ralston.
"I've one more--a sort of big brother!" he remarked, handing over
cheque number three.
Phil opened it up and whistled.
"Pheugh! Seven--thousand--dollars! Coming up, eh? This must be the
price of suicide or a murder, Graham."
The Mayor frowned, but he held rein on his temper.
"That's for a little piece of paper in cipher. It is more than you'll
save all your life."
Phil put the three cheques neatly together, folded them up and went
over to the furnace. He placed them between some glowing coals and
pushed them home with a bar of iron.
He swung round just in time, for Brenchfield was almost on him.
The latter grinned viciously for a moment, then let his clenched hands
drop to his sides.
"I can make or break you; and, by heavens! you've made your own
choice. I'll break you till you squeal,--then there will be no ten
thousand dollars. It will be get out and be-damned to you."
"Go to it," replied Phil easily, "it's your move."
Brenchfield walked to the door.
"Come out and have a look at my horse!" he shouted over his shoulder.
"She wants shoeing all round."
Phil followed to where the sleek, black animal was securely tied to
a hitching post. Phil had heard of this particular horse of
Brenchfield's. She was the fastest piece of horseflesh in the
Valley. She was a beauty, but as vicious with her teeth as she was
treacherous with her feet. She had the eye of a devil. No one had
been found who could ride her save Brenchfield and no one could
groom her but her owner. Several had tried; one had been killed
outright, one lamed permanently and others gave up before they were
compelled to.
"So this is Beelzebub?" asked Phil.
"Yes!"
"Guess you had better bring her back to-morrow when Hanson is here."
"Can't you shoe a horse?"
"Some horses!"
Brenchfield laughed sarcastically.
"Tie her up in the frame then," said Phil, "and I'll do it. Hanson
told me she always has to be shod in that way."
Brenchfield laughed again.
"A bright blacksmith you are!" he grunted.
The young smith's face flushed angrily.
"All right!" he retorted, "leave her where she is. There isn't any
horse or anything else belonging to you or connected with you,--and
including you--that I can't put shoes on."
Phil went over to look more closely at the animal, as the Mayor went
to her head and stroked her nose.
"Sure you're not scared? She's a heller!"
Phil walked round her without answering. He was at her rear, closer
than he should have been, when Brenchfield suddenly reached and
whispered a peculiar, grating, German-like, guttural sound in the
mare's ear.
Like lightning her ears went back, her eyes spurted fire, a thrill ran
through her body and her two hind feet shot into the air. Brenchfield
shouted warningly.
Phil, only half alert, sprang aside. The iron-ringed hoofs flashed
past him, one biting along his cheek and ripping it an eighth of an
inch deep. Phil staggered to the wall, as the horse continued to
plunge and rear in a paroxysm of madness. Her owner tried to pacify
her, but he made little headway with the job.
"Good Lord, man! as a man working among horses don't you know better
than to hang around the flanks of one of her kind like that? If she
had hit you, it would have been all day with you."
Phil pulled himself together.
"Do you think so?" he remarked in a much more casual tone than he
felt.
"It looked for a minute like a bad accident."
"It looked to me like attempted murder," retorted Phil.
Brenchfield frowned, but ignored the opening.
"She's a vicious devil. She takes turns like that occasionally when a
stranger is near her."
"You mean _you_ give her turns like that occasionally?" put in Phil
suggestively.
At that moment, Jim Langford sauntered round the smithy building into
the yard.
"Hullo! A love-feast going on! What's the argument, fellows? What have
you been doing to your cheek, Phil?"
The Mayor growled.
"This blacksmith pal of yours thought he could shoe Beelzebub. She's
got a mad streak on and pretty nearly laid him out. Now he blames me
for rousing her, as if she needs any rousing."
"And so you did! I'm not blind or deaf. I saw you and heard you as
well."
Brenchfield laughed and tapped his forehead significantly to Langford.
But Langford did not respond.
"You mean, Phil, that the Mayor knows what they call 'the horse
word'?"
"He seems to possess _one_ of them, at any rate," replied Phil.
"So there are two of them?" laughed Jim.
"There ought to be, if there are any at all;--just as there is hot
and cold, day and night, right and wrong, good and bad, positive and
negative."
"That sounds reasonable enough, too," answered Jim, who turned
suddenly to Brenchfield as the latter was frantically endeavouring to
quiet the plunging Beelzebub.
"Now then, for the land's sake, Graham Brenchfield _Lavengro_, why
don't you use that other word? What's the good of creating a devil if
you can't keep the curb on him?"
Brenchfield commenced to belabour the horse in his irritation, but the
more he struck the more nervous and vicious she seemed to grow.
The sight set Phil's thoughts awandering. A little door in his brain
opened and he remembered the queer little wizened-faced horse rustler
in for life at Ukalla Jail, whom he had befriended and who in return
had given him a word which he said might be useful some day, as it was
guaranteed to quiet the wildest horses. At the time, he had grinned at
it in his incredulity, but now the thought came, "What if there might
be something in it?"
He had not noted that little word, and now he had a difficulty in
recalling it. But, as he reviewed the scene at Ukalla Jail in his mind
once more, it came to him. He was not quite certain, but he fancied he
had it. What if its strange power were true? It was a queer, soft,
foreign-sounding word.
There could be no harm in giving it a trial and, if by lucky chance it
proved successful, what a triumph he would have over the arrogant
Mayor of Vernock, and over Jim Langford as well.
He smiled to himself now at his credulity, as he had done once at his
incredulity over the same peculiar word. Then recurred to him that
wonderful little saying of Will Shakespeare's:--
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt
of in your philosophy."
Encouraged by the quotation and angered by Brenchfield's cruelty, he
decided to take a chance. He sprang to the mare's head.
"Let the horse alone, man," he cried. "Can't you see you are only
making her worse?"
"What the devil do you know about horses? She'll eat you alive, you
fool of a tenderfoot."
"I'm willing to take a chance. Stand back and see what I know."
Brenchfield gazed at him in surprise, but, ever ready to be
enlightened, he stepped back.
"Jim,--go to the other end of the yard; take him with you,--and
watch."
Langford, anxious at all times to be amused; Brenchfield grinning in
derision; both went some thirty yards out of hearing, while the horse
continued to kick and plunge.
Holding out his hand, Phil drew nearer to the mad animal.
Quietly he murmured the three-syllabled word which he had so dearly
earned from his convict friend. The soft and soothing effect of its
vowels surprised Phil himself. Time and again he repeated the word,
going closer and closer.
Beelzebub stopped her plunging. She cocked forward her ears, straining
and listening intently. Phil kept on--as a slow tremor passed over the
horse. Slowly the wicked gleam died from her eyes. Phil's hand reached
out and touched her nose. He stroked it cautiously--gently. He reached
and whispered the word close in her ear. She sighed almost like a
woman. In a moment more Phil's left hand was on her sleek neck and
running over her back. She whinnied, then her nozzle sought his arm
and rubbed along it to his shoulder.
She became as quiet as the proverbial lamb.
Langford and Brenchfield came forward, blank amazement showing in
their faces.
"By jiminy!--where the dickens did you learn that? Did I mention
Lavengro. Lavengro's a _has been_, in fact, a _never waser_ alongside
that."
He slapped Phil's shoulder. "Good old Phil!"
Surly as an old dog, Brenchfield loosened the reins from the hitching
post.
"I'll give you five thousand dollars for that word," he said, turning
suddenly to Phil.
"You're mighty free with your money to-day. You must have a lien on
somebody's fortune."
"Five thousand dollars," repeated the Mayor.
"Not on your life!" answered Phil. "It was given me strictly on the
understanding that it was not to be sold."
"Well then,--I'll give you my 'word' in exchange for yours."
"Your 'word,'--yours? No, Mister Mayor, I haven't any desire to know
your 'word.' Keep it,--it fits you. The two words are just about the
difference between you and me,--and, God knows, I'm no saint."
Brenchfield laughed in his easy, devil-may-care way. He jumped on to
the back of his horse without touching her with his hands.
"Aren't you going to let me shoe her?" asked Phil in assumed
disappointment.
For answer, the Mayor touched the horse's side with his spur, trotted
round the end of the building and away.
"Phil, old man, where did you learn to subdue horses?"
"I got the word from an old horsey-man whom I befriended once."
"Did you ever use it before?"
"No! I just rethought of it a moment or two before I tried it out."
"Lordy! I shouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own
eyes. You know, Beelzebub is positively the worst mare in the Valley.
Sol Hanson will throw a fit of delight when he hears about this.
"I've heard some queer things about horses, Phil. I once knew an old
horse dealer in the East of Scotland. He owned a famous Clydesdale
stud stallion. He used to travel with it all over the country. Old
Sommerville, they called the man, was a terrible booze artist. He was
drunk day and night. But never so drunk that he couldn't look after
himself and his stallion. You know, just always half-full of whisky.
Well,--there wasn't a paddock that could hold that stallion. It had
killed several men and had created tremendous havoc time and again in
stables. If it had not been for its qualities as a perfect specimen of
a horse, the Government would have ordered its destruction. A special
friend of old Sommerville's died, and, on the day of the funeral,
Sommerville swore he wouldn't taste liquor for twenty-four hours. He
didn't. That night he was taking the stallion from one village to
another. He failed to turn up at the village he intended making for,
and next morning the stallion was discovered miles away, while later
in the day a farm-hand came upon a mass of bloody bones and flesh
pounded to mince meat among the earth at the side of a road."
"I quite believe it," said Phil, "because I have heard before
somewhere that a horse--no matter how vicious it may be--will never
interfere with a man smelling of liquor."
"Well,--I guess the horse had more sense than some of us have," said
Jim.
"Sound horse sense, I suppose," laughed Phil.
"But say!--you and Brenchfield don't seem to love each other exactly.
What is it, Phil?"
"Oh!--we don't pull together, that's all."
"Anybody can see that. Did you ever meet him before coming here?"
"Yes!" answered Phil shortly.
"Well, old chum, it isn't any of my business, but the Mayor's an
oily-tongued rotter and well worth the watching. I'm lying in wait for
him myself. He doesn't love me any more than he seems to love you, so
if I can help you out any time, let me know.
"He's got the nerve of the devil. He is setting up to little
Eileen Pederstone too, the hound. I hope to God a fine woman like she
is doesn't have such putrid luck as to marry such a miserable
son-of-a-gun. But it is generally that way though, and that coyote
nearly always gets what he goes after. He seems to be making money
hand over fist. His stock is the largest and best in the Valley.
They say he owns half a dozen mines up north and more ranch land in
the Okanagan than he can ever use.
"Eileen Pederstone has gone after her dad campaigning, and I heard up
at the Court House this morning that Brenchfield is going off in a day
or so, invited by the Party to join Royce Pederstone and help along
his election with his influence and his glib tongue.
"If Pederstone gets in--as he is sure to do--the next thing we will be
hearing will be the Mayor's engagement with Eileen.
"Honest to goodness!--I think I would plug him full of bullet holes on
a dark night if that happened."
CHAPTER IX
The Doings of Percival
When Hanson returned that afternoon, his round face was beaming. His
big blue eyes stared right into Phil's.
"Say,--by yiminy,--you some kid! You quiet Brenchfield's she-devil!"
"And what about that?"
"What about it! That no good for Sol Hanson. I know all about him.
Somebody tell me. By yiminy! you make damn good blacksmith. Some day
we put up signboard, 'Hanson and Ralston, General Blacksmiths.' We get
all the trade in this damn Valley."
"Who told you about she-devil, Sol?" asked Phil curiously.
"Oh, somebody! He not speak very much but he say plenty when he be
good and ready. He watch round corner. Brenchfield make she-devil
wild. You speak to her and she get quiet."
"It wasn't Jim Langford who told you, Sol?"
"Langford,--no! Langford's mouth all stitched up. He say nothing at
all. You wait!"
Sol put his fingers in his mouth and whistled.
In a second, the half-witted, ragamuffin Smiler bobbed his grinning
face round the door post. Hanson waved him in and when the youngster
saw that only Sol Hanson and Phil were inside he raced round and round
Phil in sheer delight, like a puppy-dog round its master. He rubbed
his hand up and down Phil's clothes, and he kept pointing to himself
and to Phil. Phil could not make out his meaning.
"He says you and him good pals," interpreted Hanson.
"You bet we are, Smiler!" said Phil, patting the boy's matted hair.
"Smiler and me make a deal. We going to live together after this,"
said Sol. "Smiler he got nobody. Smiler hungry most all the time;
dirty, no place to sleep; just a little mongrel-pup. I got lots of
grub, nice shack, good beds. Smiler get lots of bath. Smiler and me we
going to be pals. What you say, Smiler?"
The boy grinned again and gurgled in happy acquiescence.
"But the kid can't talk?"
"Oh, he talk all right; you bet! He talk with his head, and his eyes,
his feet and his hands; talk every old way only you don't savvy his
kind of talk."
As soon as work was over, Phil hurried up the hill home. He had had a
trying day of it one way and another and he was longing for a
refreshing bath and a clean-up.
He popped his head into Langford's room, but Langford either had not
come or had been in early and had gone out again.
Whistling softly, he went into his own. His whistle ended abruptly,
for his bedroom looked as if it had been struck by a cyclone.
Everywhere, in wild confusion, lay shirts, collars and clothes; books,
papers and personal belongings. The drawers of his bureau were pulled
out and the contents scattered. Someone evidently had been in on a
thieves' hunt and had been neither leisurely nor nice about the job.
Phil could not, for the life of him, imagine why anyone would want
specially to ransack his of all the choice of rooms at Mrs. Clunie's.
He had nothing worth stealing, while many of his landlady's boarders
were fairly well endowed in the matter of worldly possessions.
He leaned over the bannister and called excitedly for Mrs. Clunie.
"Guid preserve us a'; what's wrang?" she exclaimed, pulling her dress
up in front and hurrying up the stairs.
Phil showed her into his room without a word. The moment she saw the
state of it, she threw up her hands in amazement.
"Goodness sakes, Mr. Ralston! It looks as if there had been thievin'
bodies here."
"Have any strangers been in the house?"
"Not a soul, Mr. Ralston, except the man you sent wi the note to let
him ha'e your spurs that were in the bureau drawer."
"But I didn't send any man, and I didn't write any note!" put in
Phil.
"You didna? Oh, the slyness o' him! As sure as my name's Jean Clunie,
he was the thief."
"Well!" said Phil ruefully, "he has made a deuce of a jumble of my
clothes. But he came to the wrong room if he came for valuables."
"I was busy and I told him to run up and get them. Oh, the cunnin'
de'il. Is there nothing missing?"
"Nothing that I know of; certainly nothing valuable, for I don't own
any such!"
"Bide a minute till I get that note," exclaimed the perspiring and
excited landlady.
She returned in a minute with the paper.
Phil read it over. It was written in a rough hand, in pencil.
_Mrs. Clunie_,
Please allow bearer into my room to get my spurs for me. He will
know where to find them.
PHIL RALSTON.
Phil scratched his head.
"Well, that beats all!"
"And you never wrote it?"
"Not I!"
"But he took your spurs, for I saw them in his hand."
Phil glanced about him.
"Yes!--I guess he has taken my spurs."
"My, but I'm the foolish woman. I never heard tell o' the like o' it
before. This place is gettin' as bad as the ceety o' Glesca."
"What was the man like, Mrs. Clunie?"
"Oh, just a wee, short kind o' a rough lookin', dirty kind o' a
mannie, wi' a horse."
"What kind of a horse did he have?"
"To tell ye the truth, I didna pay muckle attention to the beastie,
but I think it was brown coloured, wi' a white patch on its e'e. Oh,
ay! and it was lame, for when he went aff I could see it hobblin' on
its fore legs as it galloped doon the road."
"All right!" said Phil. "If you send Betsy up to put the room in
order, everything will be O.K."
"I'm right sorry I wasna more parteecular, Mr. Ralston, but I didna
think for a minute except that you would be anxious for your spurs. A
letter like that would deceive the very Lord himsel'."
"Don't you worry now! I paid only a dollar and a half for the spurs,
and I have had that much wear out of them, so they don't owe me
anything."
At the same time, Phil himself worried considerably over the matter,
for closer inspection betrayed the fact that his little box of private
papers and letters had been burst open and examined; also that his
leather letter-case--in fact everything likely to contain documents of
any kind--had been scrutinised.
As he bathed and dressed himself, he still worried, until it occured
to him that this might be some of Brenchfield's doings. He wondered,
and then he laughed to himself at the chances the would-be thief had
taken to get--nothing.
Once more Phil lost patience with himself, as he thought of his
foolishness in getting rid of that confession of Brenchfield's; and
yet, in destroying it he had merely acted up to the feeling and good
intentions he had had at the time.
He took a turn outside. At the top of the hill, at the corner, little
Smiler, with a cleaner face than usual, ran out from the end of a
house and stood up in front of Phil.
"Hullo kiddie! What's the good word?"
Smiler just grinned.
"Smiler!" inquired Phil, "you see a little man to-day on a brown horse
with a white eye?"
Smiler looked as serious as was possible for his permanently crooked
face, then he nodded intelligently. He pointed to his leg and went a
few steps limping.
"Yes, yes!" exclaimed Phil, "horse got a lame leg!"
Smiler nodded.
"Where did you see him?"
Smiler pointed in the direction of the hill.
"Up near my place?"
The boy nodded again.
"Where did he go?"
Smiler shook his head this time.
"Too bad!" exclaimed Phil.
"If you see him again, anywhere, Smiler, run in and tell me, will you?
I'll be at the Kenora for a bit."
Smiler nodded, delighted that he was going to have a chance to be of
service to the big man he had taken such a fancy to.
"Here!" Phil handed him twenty-five cents, and the boy ran off in the
direction of the Chinese restaurant.
Phil continued down the street, knowing that if the little man on the
lame brown horse with the white eye was still in town, it would not be
long before Smiler would have him wise to it.
He strolled into the dining-room of the Kenora and ordered his
lunch. And, as he waited, in came an old acquaintance in all his
high-coloured and picturesque splendour--Percival DeRue Hannington.
Hannington spotted Phil at once and strutted over. He shook hands with
vigour and set himself down opposite.
"By gad! old chap,--but this is quite refreshing. I've often thought
about you and your good advice not to be in too big a hurry to buy a
blooming rawnch."
"Why?" inquired Phil. "I'm glad you took it and it did you good."
"But I didn't take it;--worse bally luck. Don't you know, I thought
you might be trying to put me off the chawnce of getting into
something good. Everybody warned me when I came out here that I wasn't
to take everything I heard for gospel. The beastly trouble seems to be
to distinguish between the gospel and the tommyrot."
Phil laughed, and it made him forget his own troubles.
DeRue Hannington ordered dinner also, and, as he refreshed himself he
became reminiscent.
"So you did buy a ranch?" started Phil.
"I paid for one," said Hannington, "and, if that isn't jolly-well
buying one, you've got to search me, as the Johnnies out here say.
"You see, when you toddled off that day, I was in the saloon asking
three fellows if they knew of anyone who had a rawnch for sale.
"One Johnnie said he had a good one I could have cheap, for cash."
"What was the man's name?" asked Phil.
"Barney, Barney something-or-other; oh, yes! cawn't forget it;--Barney
Douthem. He _did me_, the rotter.
"Do you know him, Mister--Mister Phil?"
"I have heard of him. He left here some time ago for the other side of
the Line."
"I fawncied so," said Hannington. "I'm looking for that miserable
thieving josser.
"Well, I hired a horse and went out with the Barney fellow to see the
rawnch, right away. A jolly nice place it was, too--just ten miles
out. The Barney chap lived there with a Chinaman who did his
housework. It was a twenty-acre place on the side of a hill, with a
decent sort of a house and stables. There was a beautiful view of the
lake and the Valley, and a fine fishing stream running right through
the property. One could fish out of his window, lying in bed. A
positive duck of a place!"
"Yes!" remarked Phil, "but a rancher can't live on scenery and by
fishing in bed. What kind of fruit trees did the place have?"
"Deuced good trees, Phil! At least, they seemed all-right. Of course,
I'm not a bally expert on fruit trees.
"The Douthem chap said he could recommend it and I could have it for
five thousand dollars cash. I gave him a cheque right off the reel. He
gave me his receipt for the money, and the deal was closed there and
then."
DeRue Hannington stopped, as if the memory of it was somewhat
painful.
"Not exactly closed, Phil! because it sort of opened up again, two
days ago, just three weeks after I was done by Douthem, and he had
cashed my cheque and jolly-well beat it, as they say out here.
"It was like this. I was sitting on the veranda, enjoying a smoke and
admiring my property and the view, when a collector Johnnie came up
the road and asked me where Douthem was. I told him Douthem was gone,
and I was now the proprietor.
"'Didn't know they had changed tenants,' said he. 'I've called for the
rent.'
"Do you know, Phil, I fawncied the silly owl had gone balmy, but he
insisted that he had to collect thirty dollars a month rent.
"Of course, I showed the fellow my receipt for the place, proving I
was the owner of it. But he just looked at it and said:--
"'Say!--who are you making a kid of? This might be all right for a
bunch of groceries, or electric light, or a ton of coal, but it isn't
all right for a rawnch.'
"'Why!--what's the matter with it?' I asked. 'Doesn't it say, Received
from Percival DeRue Hannington the sum of five thousand dollars for
one ranch of twenty acres, with house and barns, situated ten miles
from the city of Vernock and called Douthem's Ranch?'
"'Sure it does,' said the chap. And he was devilish rude about it
too."
By this time, Phil had all he could do to keep from shouting with
merriment. He did not dare to look at DeRue Hannington, so he kept
religiously to his food.
"Well,--he told me the rawnch belonged to some other people; that
Douthem only rented it, and that one had to have a deed and register
it when one bought property. The blooming upshot was I had to pay the
collecting fellow his thirty dollars and get out. So I landed back
here to-day.
"I daresay, Phil, a man has to pay for his experience, but you know it
looks as if a fellow had to do so much paying that when he does finish
up by really owning something, he will have paid such a beastly lot
for it that he'll never be able to make it up again."
Phil showed impatience.
"Good heavens, man!--don't you know that land is not exchanged without
an Agreement for Sale, or a Deed?"
"How should I know?" answered the innocent. "I never bought land
before. If I pay the price for an article, it should be mine,
shouldn't it?"
"If the man you pay is honest," replied Phil, "but he isn't always
honest, hence Agreements and Deeds.
"Next time you buy a ranch, Mr. Hannington, take my advice and hire a
lawyer to see the deal through for you."
"No more bally rawnches for me, Phil. And it is possibly just as well
I lost this one, because I have learned that one has to grub and mess
among caterpillars and all those dirty little insects and worms they
call bugs, which keep getting on the fruit trees, eating up the bally
stuff you are trying to grow. I simply cawn't stand the slimy, squashy
little reptiles, you know!"
"I am afraid you are destined to meet them in other places besides
ranches," remarked Phil.
"I have found them on my dinner table before now!"
"How disgusting!" exclaimed the horrified Englishman.
"What are you going to tackle next? Don't you think you had better get
a job for a while, working for wages, until you get acclimatised; and
so conserve your money until you have had the necessary experience?"
"Not so long as my old dad is willing to foot the bills! The least he
can do is to keep me going here. It is cheaper for him than letting me
gad about between London, Paris and the Riviera. Besides, my mother
would die of shame if she fawncied her boy Percy was working for
wages like a common labouring bounder."
This was a species of maternal niceness Phil had never run up against,
consequently he did not feel sympathetic toward it.
"They tell me oil-wells are a jolly good thing to get into. That
fellow Rockefeller made a lot out of them, didn't he? You don't know
of any likely places around here, Phil?"
"No! I don't think this is much of an oil country, Mr. Hannington.
What we hear about oil here is more or less bunk. Better leave it
alone!"
"You know,--I did meet a fellow on the train coming across. He had a
jolly good thing. He was a water-diviner;--could tell you where the
water was for a well just by walking over the land with a twig in his
hand and doing a kind of prayer. Seemed to listen for the water, the
same way as a robin does on the lawn when after worms."
Phil laughed. "Yes!--I have met a few of that water-divining species,
and some of them were pretty good at it, too. They seemed to strike it
right fairly often."
"Aw, yes, Phil!" continued DeRue Hannington, wiping his mouth with his
napkin and leaning back in his chair, "but this fellow did have a good
scheme. He said, you know, if a man could divine water, there was
nothing to prevent him from divining oil too. So he was going to the
oil-well district in California to test himself out with his idea,
then he was coming back to Canada to start up oil-wells all over the
bally country."
"He's going to let me in on it too. That's what I call one of my
_futures_. Just a speculation, old chap! I gave him two hundred and
fifty dollars on his note. He required it to pay his way to the Oil
Wells. Don't you think it might be a real good thing, Phil?"
"It might!--but I don't think I would tell many people about it," said
Phil quietly.
"Why?--Oh, yes, I see! I oughtn't to give the chap away before he
elaborates his plans. Might spoil them. Silly I didn't think of
that!"
"Just so, Mr. Hannington!"
"Meantime, though,--I intend buying a house here and settling down. I
do like this Valley. It is so deuced picturesque, you know, and rural.
When I'm properly established, I can go in for mining. On a hilly
country like this, there ought to be good mining properties; gold,
silver, etcetera. Don't you think so, Phil?"
"There might be, if one could only hit them. I've never had enough
time or money myself to take the matter up as a hobby."
DeRue Hannington rose slowly from the table.
"Well, Phil, old top!--I've enjoyed our talk. I hope to see you again
soon. Come and have a cocktail before I go!"
Phil got up, and they went into the bar together, where a number of
Vernock's seasoned bar-loungers were following their usual bent.
DeRue Hannington kept harping on his various money-making schemes, in
his high drawling voice, which could be heard all over the saloon.
Suddenly his eye fell on one with whom he seemed to be casually
acquainted; a foppishly dressed, smooth-tongued rascal who dealt in
horses, cards, bunco real-estate, insurance and anything else that
brought a commission without much work. He was called Rattlesnake Jim
by those who knew him, but Mr. Dalton by those who didn't.
"Excuse me, Phil, but I would like to have a word with Mr. Dalton."
Phil knew at once that Hannington was one of those who didn't know
Rattlesnake Jim.
The Englishman called Dalton over.
"Say, old chap,--have a drink!"
Dalton had one.
"What about that horse, Dalton? Have you sold her yet?"
"No siree! I'll sell her when I get my price. I ain't in no hurry."
"Well, you know I offered you two hundred and fifty for her."
"And she's yours for five hundred bucks."
Phil interfered.
"Oh, come off the grass! What do you take my friend for?"
"Do you know the horse we're talking about?" asked Dalton.
"Sure I do!--the white mare. She's a good enough horse, a beauty to
look at, but there aren't any millionaires around Vernock going to
give you five hundred dollars for her. A hundred and fifty is plenty
for a good riding horse these days."
"Say!--whose horse is it, anyway?"
"Yours,--I presume!" said Phil.
"Who's buying the horse?"
"Not me!"
"All right,--keep out!"
Phil smiled.
Dalton twisted up his face and turned to Hannington.
"Well, boss,--is it a go?"
Hannington demurred, then he showed a little decision, which Phil was
beginning to think he was entirely devoid of.
"No!--I'm dimmed if I'll pay that much for her. I want the horse
because she's white all over and there isn't another like her in
colour about the bally town. I like things different, by gad! But I
simply won't be put upon. No, dim it, dim it all,--I just won't!"
Dalton walked away without a word, then he whirled on his heel and
came slowly back.
"Want a mine--a gold mine?"
Percival DeRue Hannington, ever ready to nibble, showed interest.
"Say, Rattlesnake, forget it! Darn it all, do you think you are
talking to a crazy man?"
"See here, Ralston!--why don't you live up to your pet name and keep
your trap shut? Butt out!" exclaimed Dalton, curling his upper lip in
evident disgust.
"It's an honest-to-goodness gold mine, Mr. Hannington, and I hold all
the rights to it."
Phil addressed his friend.
"Don't be foolish now. Everybody in Vernock knows about Dalton's mine.
He can't give it away."
"Say, Ralston! if I was big as you and as ugly, I'd knock your face
in. Mind your own dirty business and keep out. Mr. Hannington is a
man-sized man, with a man-sized bean-pot and doesn't need a wet nurse
with him. He knows whether he wants a mine or not," said Dalton
sourly.
Phil's eyes flashed anger.
"Now, Phil, please!" put in Hannington. "Really you mustn't
quarrel. And you never know, you know;--there really have been old,
good-for-nothing mines and things that have turned out wonderful."
Phil shrugged his shoulders.
"Go to it!" he said. "It's your funeral."
"Oh, come now! Don't be playing the bally Dead March over me because
of a silly mine.
"Mr. Dalton, what name does this gold mine go by?"
"The Lost Durkin Gold Mine!"
Hannington's face lit up as he caught an inward glimpse of himself as
the owner.
"Lost Durkin! Deuced romantic name, you know! Isn't it, Phil?"
Phil failed to respond.
"But why Lost Durkin, Mr. Dalton?"
"It's like this: Durkin and another guy were the discoverers of this
ere mine. It panned out,--well!--nobody knowed for sure certain how it
panned out; only Durkin and his pal always had lots of nuggets and
dust. Durkin's pal went away and Durkin worked it all by hisself. They
say he struck it rich in a vein and went batty over it. Anyway, he
acted queer for a time. One day his hat was found in the tunnel, and
no sign of Durkin from that day to this.
"Durkin's pal, Don Flannigan, without ever comin' back, sold out the
mine to Jem Grierson. Grierson sold to me. It ain't been worked to
speak of since Durkin tried it out. The gold might be lyin' there just
for the pickin' up."
"Oh, say, Rattlesnake!--come off," interposed Phil.
"Why, Hannington,--every hobo that has come to this Valley is open to
have a go at it any old time he likes."
"Not on your tin tacks! I hold the mining rights to it, and nobody
else. Just let somebody try it on!" put in Dalton.
"But there must be some gold in it, Phil!" remarked Hannington.
"Sure,--about four dollars a day hard working!"
"By jove!--if there's that, there might be more, you know."
"Yes, and there might not!"
"If the gold was absolutely sure, Phil, you know nobody would sell.
Would they? A man has got to take a chawnce.
"What do you want for the bally thing, Mr. Dalton?"
"One thousand plunks," remarked Dalton without a tremor.
"Plunks?"
"Yes, plunks,--bucks!"
"Bucks?"
"Yes,--plunks, bucks, greenbacks, In-God-We-Trusts, D-O-double
L-A-R-S."
"Two hundred quid!" figured Hannington roughly, who, for the proper
realisation of actual values still had the habit of converting his
dollars into English coinage.
"Tisn't much for a gold mine, Phil,--is it now?"?
"I could get you a dozen for that."
"Oh, now, Phil!"
Rattlesnake Jim was getting impatient.
"Say, mister--if you're interested, come outside and talk. No use
trying to make a deal, with this old man of the sea out playin'
buttinsky."
"Don't be a fool now," interposed Phil. "Stay where you are!"
But DeRue Hannington was in the toils again, and the fever was in his
blood.
Dalton walked slowly to the door.
Hannington hesitated, looked sheepishly at Phil, then exclaimed over
his shoulder:
"Eh, excuse me, old chap,--won't you!" And he hurried alongside the
owner of The Lost Durkin Gold Mine.
"Couldn't you come down a bit in your price, old dear? Your figure
seems deuced steep where mines seem to be so beastly plentiful," Phil
heard Hannington say.
At the door Dalton stopped.
"One thousand for the mine, and just to show you that I'm a real sport
and playin' fair, I'll throw the white mare in for luck."
Hannington gasped, then slapped Dalton on the shoulder and grabbed
his hand in ecstasy at the overflow of generosity on the part of the
mine owner.
"Done,--done! It's a bally go!"
And the two disappeared outside in head-to-head conversation, to the
accompaniment of a round of loud laughter from some old timers in the
saloon who had overheard part of the talk and who knew that once more
a sheep was about to be shorn of its wool.
Phil swung round with his back and elbows on the counter. He surveyed
the crowd dimly through the haze of smoke in the bar-room.
Just then Jim Langford came in by the swinging doors.
Phil went over to him directly, led him to a table in the corner, and
told him in a few, quick sentences of the thieving visit that had been
made to his room at Mrs. Clunie's.
"There's more in this than you think," said Langford, after Phil had
concluded. "Haven't you heard the news of the other thieving in
town?"
"No,--where was it?"
"A gang must have been working on the O.K. Supply Company's premises
last night. Three days ago, Morrison unloaded two carloads of feed and
flour in his No. 1 Warehouse. They haven't sold a nickel's worth, and
this morning there aren't fifty sacks left."
"Was the place broken into?" asked Phil.
"Must have been, but every bolt and bar is secure, so are all the
padlocks. It's a mighty queer thing.
"I had it on the inside that the Pioneer Traders were shy last week,
but they gave out no report; and Mayor Brenchfield, whose Warehouse
and stables lie between the Pioneer Traders and the O.K. Supply Co.
lodged a complaint with Chief Palmer this morning that he had lost
forty bags of bran and oats from his place. Of course, his loss isn't
a patch on the loss of the other two.
"You know, this darned thing has been going on for several years.
Somebody is getting fat on it. The O.K. Supply Company have lost sixty
thousand dollars' worth in four or five years. They have put new locks
and bolts on, but all to no purpose. The Pioneer Traders must be
considerably shy, too.
"The Police don't do a thing, and everybody seems scared to act for
fear of being got back at in some way.
"The Indians are being blamed for it; so are some of the wilder
element who have cattle ranches and lots of live stock to feed. Easy
way to fatten your animals, eh, Phil!
"If we could lay the man by the heels who ransacked your place, we
might be able to get a clue to the others."
Phil shook his head. "No,--I don't think so!" he answered.
"Well, old man Morrison of the O.K. Company is a decent head and these
continual robberies are bleeding him white. He told me all about it
this morning.
"I have made arrangements to quit the Court House for a while and take
a job with him as warehouseman, just to see what I can fasten on to."
"Won't they get suspicious if they know you are on the job?"
Langford laughed. "Good Lord, no! I have been in a dozen jobs in this
town in as many months. Besides, nobody ever thinks of me as a
Sherlock Holmes. I'm just languishing for a little excitement
anyway."
"You won't forget then to call me in to lend a hand if there is any
scrapping going?" said Phil.
"Would you really come in on it?"
"You bet!"
"All right! This old burg will have something to wake it up one of
these days."
Their attention was distracted by the rattle of gravel on the window
at which they were sitting. Langford shook his fist at a disappearing
figure.
"Who was that?" asked Phil.
"Don't know! Looked like Smiler, the dummy kid. Queer little devil!"
Phil jumped up.
"Maybe he's got some information for me. Wait here! I'll be back
directly."
Phil went outside slowly and round the corner of the building to the
back-yard. Sure enough, as soon as no one was in sight, Smiler darted
up to him. He was all excitement and kept pointing to a clump of trees
down a side road.
"Did you find the man with the lame horse?" Phil asked.
Smiler nodded and grinned with pleasure, catching Phil by the coat and
leading the way cautiously to where stood the brown mare with the
white patch over her eye. She was tethered to a tree, well hidden from
view of the road.
Phil examined her legs and saw at a glance that she favoured her left
fore foot. A look showed him that some gravel had worked up into an
old sore.
Phil pulled the strings of a bag that hung from the saddle. The first
things he came across were his own spurs. He took possession of them.
Meanwhile, Smiler was watching with deep interest.
"Where's the man, Smiler?" asked Phil.
The boy grinned and nodded his head, as if to say:--"Come along,--I'll
show you."
He led Phil through the back lanes to Chinatown, stopping in front of
a cheap, Chinese restaurant. He pointed inside. Phil made to enter.
He encountered, of all people, Brenchfield coming out.
The suddenness of the Mayor's appearance caused him to catch his
breath. In Phil's mind it solved the problem at once.
Brenchfield stopped and stared at Phil, then he glared at Smiler who
turned tail and ran off as if for his very life.
The Mayor appeared to be in one of his most sullen moods. He turned
again and looked angrily at Phil, his eyes travelling from the young
smith's face to his boots, then back to his left hand in which he
still held his recovered spurs.
Phil jingled them suggestively, and kept on into the restaurant.
Brenchfield remained on the sidewalk in front of the door.
Phil knew quite well that he was taking chances, but he risked that.
There was nothing of any moment taking place in the main dining-room.
Several diners were on stools at the counter. Others were at tables. A
Chinese waiter was serving, while the cook was tossing hot cakes
beside the cooking range. The door of the adjoining room was open.
Some Chinamen were at a table, deeply interested in a game of
chuckaluck. In a room still farther back, some white men were playing
poker.
Phil strolled in there. No one paid any heed to him.
His eyes travelled over the players. He did not know any of them. But
it did not take him a second to settle in his mind which was the man
he was after.
A little, stout, narrow-eyed fellow, who did not seem to have been
shaved or washed for months, was seated at the far corner, chewing
tobacco viciously. Evidently he had just resumed his game, for Phil
heard one of the players exclaim:--
"Aw!--get a move on, Ginger! What'n the deuce do you want to keep us
here all day for, waitin' for you and that blasted Mayor to quit
chewin' the fat?"
None worried about the new arrival: they were all too engrossed in
their game.
In the middle of it, Phil went up close.
"Men,--I hate to butt in, but I want that dirty little fellow over
there." He pointed suggestively at his man.
"Yes,--you Ginger!" he shouted, as the little man gaped.
"Aw,--get back on your base!" was all he got for answer, for the man
had no idea who had challenged him, and drunks had a habit of
interfering at cards, ultimately to find themselves thrown out into
the street. He took Phil for one of those and left it to the man
nearest to the intruder to settle the account.
With a quick movement Phil threw his body over the table, catching
the little fellow smartly by the neck-cloth and shirt in a grip that
there was no gainsaying. By the sheer power of his right hand and arm,
he pulled the astonished Ginger--before his more astonished
partners--right across the table, planting him on his feet in front of
him.
The little man gasped for breath and struggled, but finding his
struggling merely meant more strangling, he commenced to feel at his
hip as if for a gun.
Phil struck him on the side of the head, sending him staggering
against the wall. As Ginger recovered, Phil held his spurs under the
man's nose and jingled them.
"I guess you know these?"
The fellow's narrow eyes opened wide. He let out a guttural sound and
sprang for the door. Phil shot after him. But the little one's speed
was accelerated by his fear. Phil's boot was all that reached him and
it did its work uncommonly well. A nicely planted kick, just when he
reached the door-step, sent Ginger in the air and seated him on the
plank sidewalk. He jumped up almost before he touched the boards and
tore down the road as if the devil himself were behind him.
Brenchfield, who had been a silent spectator of what had taken place,
came into the main room of the restaurant, where a crowd of low whites
and curious Chinese had gathered.
"Look here, young man!--you don't want to be doing much of that in
this town or you'll find yourself locked up."
Phil shook his spurs in the Mayor's face.
"And _you_ don't want to be doing much of _this_, or you'll find
yourself my next cell neighbour."
The Mayor had no idea how far his opponent was prepared to go, and
evidently afraid to risk a scene, he turned his back on Phil with an
oath.
"First time I catch that damned, sneaking little rat I saw you with
I'll thrash him within an inch of his miserable little life."
"You just try it on,--and, God help you,--that's all," retorted Phil.
CHAPTER X
Jim's Grand Toot
As Phil knocked the dust from his clothes and wiped the perspiration
from his face, it suddenly struck him that Jim Langford must have been
waiting fully half an hour for him at the Kenora.
He hurried through Chinatown and down toward the hotel. When he
got there, he found Jim in lazy conversation with some passing
acquaintance, whom he immediately left.
"Did you finish what you were after, Phil?"
"You bet!"
"Tell me about it. I wish to size the thing up."
With the exception of his encounter with the Mayor, Phil recounted all
that had happened. He preferred keeping to himself that little bout he
had had with Brenchfield, for he knew Jim already had suspicions that
he and Brenchfield had some old secret antagonism toward each other.
Some day, he thought, he might feel constrained to unburden himself on
the point to Jim, but the time for that did not appear to be ripe.
"Darned funny!" remarked Langford, when Phil concluded. "I can't
recollect the man from your description and there doesn't seem to be
any connection between him and the flour and feed steal. But--what the
devil could that fellow be after, anyway?"
Suddenly, as was his habit, he dismissed the subject and broke in on
another.
"Say, Phil,--know who's in the card-room?"
"No!"
"An old pal of yours!" He commenced to sing a line of an old Scot's
song:--"Rob Roy McGregor O."
"Yes!"
"How's your liver?"
"Don't know I have one--so it must be all right!"
"What do you think about paying off old scores?" Mischief was lurking
in his eyes.
"Oh, let's forget that, Jim! It is too cold-blooded for me."
"Cold-blooded nothing! The dirty skunk didn't look at it that way when
you were as weak as Meeting-house tea and hardly able to stand on your
two pins."
"That's no lie, either!"
"And he'd do it again if he thought it would work."
Phil looked at Jim.
"I guess you are right,--and I feel mad enough to scrap with
anybody."
"Right! Let us work it as near as we can the way he worked it on
you."
They went over to the table near the window and rehearsed quietly
their method of operation, and it was not long before a noise in the
back room signalled the break-up of the card game. Half a dozen
rough-looking fellows from Redmans Creek followed one another out to
the saloon, headed, as usual, by McGregor, straddling his legs and
swaggering, looking round with a cynical twist on his handsome face.
They went over to the bar.
McGregor pushed himself in at the far end, brushing an innocent
individual out of his way in the operation. The man who followed
McGregor wedged himself in next. McGregor slid along and two more
harmless men at the bar gave way. It was an old trick and they knew
how to perform it. Still the McGregor gang pushed in, one after
another, until the entire counter was taken up by the six, who stood
there, legs and elbows sprawled, laughing and jeering at the men they
had displaced and at their lack of courage in not endeavouring to hold
their own.
They stood in this fashion for possibly five minutes, blocking the
counter and not allowing anyone else to get near it.
Suddenly Phil jumped up from his seat and walked over to the bar.
"Say, fellows! Come on all and have a drink on me!" he shouted.
The six at the bar swung round to look at the speaker.
"Come on,--ease up, you ginks!--unless you've hired the Kenora saloon
for the night."
No one moved, so Phil caught the man nearest to him by the belt and
yanked him out deftly. Langford, who was immediately behind Phil,
caught the next one and repeated the performance.
There was a scramble and some of the more aggressive bystanders joined
in to Phil's and Jim's assistance. Then the more timid followed, with
the ultimate result that five of McGregor's gang were dislodged, as a
dozen men crowded alongside and around their champion. McGregor still
held his place defiantly, elbows and legs asprawl as before. Phil was
close up to him, with Jim at Phil's left hand.
"Guess you think you're some kid!" McGregor remarked, spitting a wad
of chewing tobacco on to the floor.
"Quit your scrapping," returned Phil in assumed irritation. "Have a
drink!--it's on me. It isn't often I stand treat. Name your poison!"
"Well,--if that's all you're up to, guess I might as well," he
answered, in reluctant conciliation.
"Come on, fellows! This hell-for-leather blacksmith wants to blow in
his week's wages on drinks. We ain't goin' to stop him."
The bar-tenders served as fast as they could. Phil paid the score,
then turned to have a fresh look at McGregor. The latter was watching
him closely out of the corner of his eyes. He took up his glass.
"Guess you think you're puttin' one over," he snarled. "Well,--you've
got another guess comin'."
He put his tumbler up against Phil's jacket, tilted it deliberately,
sending the contents trickling all the way down Phil's clothes right
to his boot. He looked into Ralston's eyes with a sneer on his face
and slowly set his tumbler on the counter, watching every movement in
the room through narrowed eyes.
Phil's temper flared out and he swung on McGregor with tremendous
quickness.
To his surprise, quick as he was, his fist fell on McGregor's wrist.
In a second, they were in the centre of the room, tables and chairs
were whirled into corners as by magic, and the two were in a ring
formed by a wall of swaying bodies and eager faces, for more than a
few of them had witnessed the previous encounter between the pair and
had been wondering just when the return match would take place.
Phil waited with bated breath for the bull-like rush which he
expected, while Langford's voice could be heard high over the hubbub,
shouting in the Doric to which he had risen in his excitement:--
"Mair room! Gi'e them mair room. Widen oot, can ye no!--widen oot!"
But instead of the rush for grips that Phil anticipated, he found
himself faced by a man, strong as a lion, with arms out in the true
pugilistic attitude. He guessed it for a ruse and a bit of play-acting,
and sprang in. He struck three times for separate parts of the
cowpuncher's body, but each time he struck he encountered a guarding
arm or fist. This more than surprised him, for it was well known that
McGregor's strong and only point was his brute force.
In order to give himself time to think the matter out, Phil sprang
away again.
McGregor's face was sphinx-like in its inscrutable cynicism.
They circled, facing each other like sparring gamecocks of a giant
variety.
Phil, determined on having another try, jumped in on his huge
opponent.
He struck, once--twice. He was about to strike again, when he
staggered back as if he had been hit by a sledge hammer fair on the
chin. The saloon swung head over heels in a whirligig movement. Phil's
arms became heavy as lead and dropped to his side. His legs sagged
under him.
In a state of drugging collapse, he felt himself seized and crushed as
into a pulp; a not unpleasant sensation of swinging, a hurtling
through the air and splintering,--then, well,--that was all.
When he came to, he was being carried up the stairs to his bedroom, to
the accompaniment of Mrs. Clunie's repeated regrets, in broad Scotch,
that it was a pity "weel bred young chiels couldna agree to disagree
in a decent manner, wise-like and circumspectly, withoot fechtin' like
a wheen drucken colliers."
This did not prevent that good lady from washing and binding Phil's
numerous but not very deadly cuts and bruises.
It was two days before he was able to be out of bed, and during these
two days he heard a number of stories, through Mrs. Clunie, of what
had happened at the Kenora Hotel after his hurried exit through the
window. These stories he refused to believe, for his faith in Jim
Langford's ability was too strong to be easily shaken. But one thing
he had to give credence to was, that Jim had not shown face at Mrs.
Clunie's since the night of the trouble.
Mrs. Clunie complained that half a dozen times she had chased "that
hauf-witted, saft sannie o' a daftie, ca'ed Laugher, or Smiler or
something," from the back door, and she was sure he was "efter nae
guid."
On the morning of the third day, Phil, stiff and a little wobbly, set
out for the smithy, where big Sol Hanson welcomed him back with an
indulgent grin.
Hanson had learned all about the affray, as everyone else in town
seemed to have done.
"But has anyone seen Langford?" asked Phil in some concern, as they
discussed the matter.
"Oh, Langford go on one big booze," laughed Sol. "He turn up maybe in
about one month, all shot to hell, then he sober up again for long
time."
"But doesn't anyone know where he is?"
"Sure, sometimes!--maybe at Kelowna, then Kamloops. Somebody see him
at Armstrong, then no see him for another while. Best thing you leave
Jim Langford till he gets good and ready to come back. Only make
trouble any other way. Everybody leave big Jim when he goes on a big
toot."
"Well," said Phil with some decision, "I'm going after him anyway, and
I'm going to stay right with him till he's O.K."
"All right, son--please yourself! We are not so busy now, but I
tell you it no damn good. I know Jim Langford, five, maybe six
year,--see!"
Phil set out to make inquiries.
At the Kenora he heard of someone who had seen Jim the day before at
the town of Salmon Arm, between thirty and forty miles away. He took
the stage there, only to find that Langford had left presumably for
Vernock. Back again he came, and it was late at night when he got to
town. On dropping off the stage, he ran into the faithful Smiler.
"Hullo, kid! You see Jim Langford?" he asked.
Smiler nodded.
"Know where he is?"
He nodded again excitedly, hitching up his trousers which were held
round his middle by a piece of cord.
"Might have known it," thought Phil, "and saved myself a lot of
running about.
"Lead on, MacDuff!" he cried. "Show me Jim Langford and I'll give you
two-bits."
Smiler led the way in the darkness, down a side street into the
inevitable and dimly lit Chinatown. Smiler stopped up in front of the
dirty, dingy entrance of a little hall occasionally used for Chinese
theatricals. He pointed inside with a grin, refused Phil's proffered
twenty-five cents, backing up and finally racing away.
A special performance in Chinese was being given by a troupe of actors
from Vancouver and all Chinatown who could were there.
Phil paid his admission to a huge, square-jawed Chinaman at the
pay-box, and pushed through the swing doors, inside.
The theatre was crowded with Orientals, who, for the most part, were
dirty, vile-smelling and expectorating.
About half-way down the centre of the aisle, he took a vacant seat on
the end of one of the rough, wooden, backless benches which were all
that were provided for the comfort of the audience. The place was very
badly lighted, although the stage stood out in well-illuminated
contrast.
Phil's first anxiety was to locate Jim. He scanned the packed benches,
but all he could see was stolid, gaunt-jawed, slit-eyed Chinamen.
There did not seem to be another white man in the place.
Someone nudged him on the arm. He turned. A sleek Chinaman, whom Phil
had often seen on the streets--the janitor, Phil remembered, for The
Pioneer Traders,--grinned at him.
"You tly catch Missee Langfod?" he whispered.
"Yes!" nodded Phil.
"He down there, flont seat."
Phil looked in the direction indicated and, sure enough, there was
Jim--alone, in the middle of the foremost and only otherwise
unoccupied bench in the hall--all absorbed in the scene that was being
enacted on the platform.
Contented in the knowledge that he now had his friend under
surveillance, Phil directed his interest to the stage, for he had
never before been present at so strange a performance.
The opera, for such it appeared to be, was already under way. The
lady, the Chinese equivalent of a prima-donna--dressed in silks
emblazoned with gold spangles, tinsel and glass jewels, with a strange
head-dress, three feet high, consisting of feathers and pom-pons--was
holding forth in what was intended to be song. It occurred to Phil
that he had thrown old boots at tom-cats in Mrs. Clunie's back-yard
for giving expression to what was sweet melody in comparison.
The actress's face was painted and powdered to a mere mask. Her finger
nails were two inches longer than her four-inch-long feet. She rattled
those fingers nails in a manner that made Phil's flesh creep, although
this action seemed highly pleasing to the audience in general. The
lady, Phil learned from the Chinaman at his side, was a famous
beauty.
The scenery required no description, being merely a number of plain,
movable partitions, draught-screens and chairs. There was no
drop-curtain, and the scene shifters worked in full view of the
audience, removing furniture and knocking down partitions with hammers
during the vocal rendering of some of the thrilling passages of the
opera. On another platform, behind the stage, the orchestra was making
strenuous, and at times, very effective attempts to drown the squeals
of the Leading Lady, who did not seem to mind it a bit. The conductor,
in his shirt sleeves, was laying on, alternately, to a Chinese drum
and what looked like two empty cocoanut shells, whacking out a species
of rag-time all on his own, while the two other members of the band
were performing on high-pitched Chinese fiddles, determined evidently
on keeping up the racket at all costs.
Phil noticed no evidence of sheet music, so familiar in a white man's
orchestra. These were real artists and they played entirely from
memory.
In an endeavour to be enlightened, Phil touched a Chinaman in front of
him--for the familiar one at his side had slipped quietly to some
other part of the hall.
"John,--what all this play about--you know?" he asked.
Without turning round, the Oriental sang to him in a top-storey
voice:--
"Lu-wang Kah Chek-tho, chiu-si. Tung-Kwo chi Ku-su. Savvy?"
Phil did not "savvy," but another Chinaman, more obliging and more
English, who introduced himself as Mee Yi-ow, told him the gist of the
tale in pigeon English, up to the point where Phil had come in, so
that he was able to follow the performance with some intelligence,
from there on.
Away back in the middle ages, a bold, bad, blood-thirsty brigand
chief kidnapped the only daughter of the Empress, because of that
young lady's irresistible beauty and charm and because of his own
unquenchable love for her. He, in turn, was trapped and captured by
the Royal Body Guard, who brought him--manacled in chains with cannon
balls at the ends of them--before the haughty Empress. He was
sentenced to death by nibbling--a little piece to be skewered out of
him every two hours, Chinese time.
The Brigand Chief, on the side, was a hand-cuff expert. One day he
managed to slip out of his chains and away from his tiresome cannon
balls. He made a daring dash for liberty, disarming and killing a
sentry. Boldly, he sought out the Captain of the Royal Guard and
fought a very realistic duel with him before the Empress and all the
members of her retinue who came out from the wings specially to
witness the sight.
The rank and file of the Royal Bodyguard--with emphasis on the
_rank_--also stood idly by enjoying the spectacle.
At last, the Brigand Chief slew the Captain of the Guard, and the
latter, as soon as he had finished dying, rose to his feet and walked
calmly off the stage. Then, amid the rattle of drums and empty
cocoanut shells, accompanied by fiddle squeaks, the Royal Guard rushed
upon the Brigand Chief, overpowering him and loading him up afresh
with his lately lamented chains and cannon balls.
A number of influential people--Princes, Mandarins and things,
including the recently kidnapped only daughter of the Empress--pleaded
for the gallant fighter's life.
But,--up to closing time that night--the Empress remained obdurate;
this being absolutely necessary, as the play continued for six
successive evenings.
Throughout the most intensely dramatic incidents, Phil failed to hear
a hand-clap or an ejaculation of admiration or pleasure from the
sphinx-faced yellow men about him. Yet they seemed intensely
interested in the performance.
Cabbages and bad eggs, so dear to the heart of the white actor, would
have been preferable to that funereal silence.
Phil was just thinking how discouraging it must be to be a Chinese
actor, when, by some signal, unintelligible to him, the play ended for
the night. He rose with the audience, made quickly for the only exit
and took up his position on the inside, there to await Jim's arrival.
When the greater portion of the audience had passed out, Jim rose from
his seat in front, picked up a white sheet from a corner of the stage
and whirled it about him, throwing an end of it over his left shoulder
in the manner of the ancient Grecian sporting gentlemen.
From his looks, he had about three days' growth of whiskers on his
face. His eyes, big and dark-rimmed, glowed with an intense inner fire
that would have singled him out from among his fellows anywhere.
Jim was well-known and respected among the Chinamen, the more so
because of his vagaries.
Suddenly, he raised his arm in a rhythmic gesture of appeal. He
uttered one word, arresting and commanding in its intonation:--
"Gentlemen!"
There were not very many gentlemen there, but each one present took
the ejaculation as personal. The little crowd stopped and gathered
round, gazing up with interest at the erect figure in the aisle, white
robed, with hand still outstretched.
After a moment of tense silence, he commenced to recite Burns'
immortal poem on brotherly love.
Never had Phil heard such elocution. The intonation, the fervour and
fire, the gesticulation were the perfect interpretation of a poet, a
mystic, a veritable Thespian. On and on Jim went in uninterrupted,
almost breathless silence. Phil was anxious for his friend's
well-being, but he stood at the door listening spellbound, as did the
Orientals about Jim, and the low whites who had straggled in toward
the end of the Chinese performance, half-drunk and doped.
Vigorously, Jim concluded:--
"Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth o'er a' the earth
May bear the gree, and a' that.
For a' that, and a' that,
It's coming yet, for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er
Shall brothers be for a' that."
When he finished there was a round of applause, in which the Chinamen
joined most noisily--an unusual thing for them who had sat throughout
the entire evening's play of their own without the slightest show of
appreciation.
Phil had heard somewhere that Scotsmen and Chinamen understand each
other better than any other nationalities on the globe do, but this
was the first time he had had a first-hand ocular demonstration that
the Chinaman appreciated the Doric of Robbie Burns, when delivered
with the true native feeling.
Langford bowed his acknowledgement in a courtly manner, as Sir Henry
Irving might have done before a royal audience.
Some of the maudlin white men shouted for an encore.
Nothing loth, Jim laughingly consented, and a hush went over the
crowd again, for there was a peculiar hypnotism coming from this
erratic individual that commanded the attention of all his listeners.
A little, old, monkey-faced Chinaman, carrying a parcel in his hand,
was standing close by. Langford caught hold of him gently and stood
the bashful individual before him. In paternal fashion he placed his
hand on the greasy, grey head and started impressively into the
farewell exhortation of Polonius to Lærtes, out of Hamlet:
"And these few precepts in thy memory.
Look thou to character. Give thy thoughts no tongue
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar"...
On he recited, oblivious of all but the charm of the words he uttered,
careful lest a single phrase might pass his lips without its due
measure of expression. He finished in a whisper; his voice full of
emotion and tears glistening in his deep-set eyes, much to the
amazement of the monkey-face upturned to him.
"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
Deep silence followed, until the squeaky voice of little monkey-face
broke through:--
"Ya,--you bet,--me savvy!"
It shattered the spell that was on Langford. He laughed, and grabbed
the parcel from the hand of the little Chinaman. He pulled the string
from it and the paper wrappings, exposing a bloody ox-heart which was
destined never to fulfil the purpose for which it was bought.
Throwing off his sheet cloak, Langford became transformed into a
figure of early history. He held the ox-heart high in the air with his
left hand and struck a soldierly attitude.
He was now the famous Black Douglas of Scotland, fighting his last
fight against the Moors in Spain, with the heart of his beloved dead
monarch, Robert Bruce, in the silver casket in which he had undertaken
to carry it to the Holy Land.
Parrying and thrusting with his imaginary sword, gasping, panting in
assumed exhaustion, staggering, recovering and fighting again, then
feigning wounds of a deadly nature, he threw the ox-heart over the
heads of his gaping spectators toward the door, where it fell at
Phil's feet.
"Onward, brave Heart," he cried, "as thou wert wont to be in the
field. Douglas will follow thee or die."
Then, casting his audience on either side of him, like falling
thistles under a sickle, he sprang toward the exit. When he reached
his objective, he stooped to pick up the ox-heart.
Phil smartly placed his foot on it.
Slowly Jim unbent himself, his eyes travelling from the foot that
dared to interfere with his will, up the leg, body and chest, until at
last they stared into the familiar eyes of his friend, who returned
his stare with cold questioning. Thus they looked at each other for a
moment, then Jim's eyes averted. He turned quickly away and passed
into the darkened roadway.
Phil followed, a short step behind.
Jim heard him and quickened his pace. Phil did likewise. Finally he
broke into a run. Phil responded. He ran till his breath began to give
out, but try as he would, Langford could not shake his follower.
There was no sign of any recognition; no word passed between them.
Three or four times they circled Chinatown in this way. Langford
next dropped into a long, swinging stride and started up toward the
railway tracks and out on to the high road of Coldcreek. Doggedly,
limpet-like, Phil kept closely to him.
On, on he walked, mile after mile, untiring, apparently unheeding,
looking neither to right nor left. And on, on, after him, almost at
his side, went his determined friend.
In an hour, Jim cut down a side road and commenced to circle back by
the low road, past the lake and once again toward the fairy, twinkling
lights of Vernock.
The Post Office clock chimed the first hour of a new day, when they
got back.
Jim stopped up in front of a stable, pushed his way inside--for the
door was ajar--tumbled down in a corner among some hay and,
apparently, was soon fast asleep.
Phil dropped down beside him, but did not close his eyes.
And glad he was of it, for, about an hour later, very stealthily Jim
rose on his elbow, looked into Phil's face, and, evidently satisfied
that he was unconscious, rose and made softly for the door.
But when he turned to close it behind him, Phil was right by his
side.
Without a word, Jim changed his mind and went straight back to his hay
bed on the stable floor; and this time he tumbled into a deep sleep.
Phil must have dozed off too, for when he awoke the light of an Autumn
sun was streaming through a dirty window on to his face.
He started up in consternation, but his fears were soon allayed for
Jim Langford was still sleeping peacefully, dead to the world, with an
upturned face tranquil and unlined, and innocent-looking as a baby
boy's.
The work horses in their stalls were becoming restless. Phil examined
his watch. It was six o'clock.
He knew that the teamster would soon be on his job getting his beasts
ready for their day's work, so he roused Langford, who sat up in a
semi-stupor, licking his lips with a dry, rough tongue.
He gazed at Phil for a while. Phil smiled in good humour.
"Man, but I'm a rotter!" said Jim.
"Of course you are!" agreed Phil. "We're both more or less rotters."
"But that son of a lobster McGregor knocked you cold," he pursued,
starting in where he had left off several days before.
"He did, Jim, and threw me through the window to wind up with."
"And I'm the man that knows it, too. Lord!--but I'm as dry as if I had
been eating salt fish for a week."
"And you can have a nice, big drink of fresh water at the trough
outside whenever you are ready."
"Water, Phil! Have a heart!"
"Sure thing! Good fresh water!"
"'Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink,'" he quoted.
And sitting up, there among the hay, a strangely assorted pair they
seemed as they conversed familiarly.
"Well,--I fancy I've had about enough this trip."
"You certainly have!"
"Ay, Phil,--but think of that big shrimp knocking us soft."
"_Us_, did you say?" put in Phil. "Then it is true, after all?"
"What?"
"That he finished you off after he put me to sleep!"
Langford tried to spit in disgust, but despite the greatness of his
disgust his mouth and salivic glands refused to function.
"Oh, man!--it makes me sick. The big, long-legged, red-haired devil
has been learning to box on the quiet. And to think that he had that
up his sleeve, and was just waiting for us!"
"Tell me what happened after I got mine, Jim. I haven't heard it right
yet."
"Everything happened. I went out and picked you up. I got some of the
boys to take you home after I knew that you weren't really booked for
'The Better Land.' Then I went back to lick the stuffing out of Rob
Roy. He was in there, grinning and throwing out his chest like a
pouter pigeon."
"'You want the same dose?' he asked.
"'That's what I came for,' said I. And, Phil, between you and me,
that's just about what I got.
"We fought in the bar-room for three-quarters of an hour. I never hit
him worth a rap, for he had a defence like the Rock o' Gibraltar. He
didn't hit me very often, either, but when he did,--Oh, Lord! Well, to
make a short story for a thirsty man, we had to quit, both of us, from
sheer exhaustion. When we could hardly stand, the Mayor came in and
separated us. He sent McGregor and his gang slap-bang home to Redmans.
And after that--well, they filled me up to the neck. Oh, I was quite
ready to be filled, Phil, for my pride was sorely humbled. And--I've
been filled up to the neck ever since.
"What day is it, Phil?"
"Wednesday!"
"This week, last week or next week?"
"This week!"
"Is that all? And it happened only last Saturday. Man!" he cried,
springing up, "if that's the case, I've only started."
"You have finished," said Phil decidedly, "finished good and plenty,
now and for all."
"But man,--think o' my reputation. I always have a month of it."
"Not this time!"
"But I've done it for years. Think o' tradition!"
"Tradition be-darned! If you do, I'll have a month of it, too."
"That's pure blarney, Phil. You're not that kind."
"No, but I shall be. See if I won't, if you don't quit."
Jim looked into Phil's eyes and he saw a determination in them that he
knew he could never shake, and, knowing his own weakness, he would
have killed Phil rather than see him in the same plight.
"Man!" he exclaimed in perplexity, "I do believe you would."
"Try me and you'll soon find out."
They sat silently for a time. Suddenly Phil broke in.
"Come on,--what is it to be? Back into decency or a month of hell?" he
asked.
Jim Langford got to his feet.
"Lead on, old chum," he said. "Me for a bath, a shave, a good
breakfast and--honest toil."
CHAPTER XI
Sol Wants a Good Wife--Bad
Phil was busy in the forge one morning, all alone. Sol Hanson, for
some unknown reason, had failed to put in an appearance, and his
assistant was not a little troubled over his absence. Before starting
out to make inquiries, however, he decided to work away until noon,
for it was the day after the Provincial Election, and the results were
expected any minute and were anxiously awaited.
He felt quite confident within himself that John Royce Pederstone
would be elected, for the candidate had received a splendid reception
at all his meetings throughout the Valley, with the solitary exception
of the hometown of his opponent. Furthermore, rumour had it that
Pederstone's party was sweeping the country, so, if there was anything
at all in indications, Royce Pederstone's election was a foregone
conclusion.
Phil had noticed that the nearer the election day had drawn, the more
serious, nervous and unsettled Sol had seemed to grow, as if he
dreaded the possibility of his old master's defeat and was taking it
to himself as a personal matter.
At noon time, Phil went out, took a hurried lunch, then strolled down
to the office of the _Advertiser_, where a crowd was gathered reading
the results from the various constituencies as they were posted up on
the notice-board outside.
Just as he got there, Ben Todd came rushing out of the office, his
eyes jumping, his little hunched body quivering with excitement, and
his long arm
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