Part 21 (1/2)
Hicks--we carried him thus on the pay-roll, though he himself spelled it ”Hix,” for short, as he said--left us to go back to town for his dunnage, and Gifford, knowing that I had been on watch all night, urged me to turn in. But that was a game that two could play at.
”I'm no shorter on sleep than you are,” I told him. ”You were up all night with the wagon.”
We wrangled over it a bit and I finally yielded. But first I told Gifford about the Lawrenceburg threat for the day, omitting nothing but the source of my information.
”So they're going to jump us, are they?” he said. ”All right; the quicker the sooner. Does Barrett know?”
”Not yet. I thought we'd all get together on it this morning. Tell him when he comes back; and if anything develops before he gets here, sing out for me.” And with that I made a dive for the blankets.
Between the two of them, Gifford and Barrett let me sleep until the middle of the afternoon. I could scarcely believe the evidence of my senses when I turned out and saw the miracles that had been wrought in a few short hours. While I slept, the transformation of the Little Clean-Up from a three-man prospect hole to a full-fledged mine had taken giant strides. Machinery and material were arriving in a procession of teams laboring up the gulch; a score of carpenters were raising the frame of the shaft-house; masons were setting the foundations for the engine and hoist. I had slumbered peacefully through all the din and hammering and the coming and going of the teams; would doubtless have slept longer if the workmen had not put skids and rollers under the shack to move it out of their way.
Gifford, now thirty-odd hours beyond his latest sleep, was too busy to talk; but Barrett took time to bridge the progress gap for me.
”There was nothing you could do,” he explained, at my protest for being left for so many hours out of the activities. ”Gifford will have to knock off pretty soon, but the work will go on just the same. Take a look around, Jimmie, and pat yourself on the back. You are no longer a miner; you are a mine owner.”
”Tell me,” I said shortly.
”There isn't much to tell. I caught that first car to town this morning and got busy. You're seeing some of the results, and the ready money in bank is what produced them. But we've got to dig some more of it, and dig it quick. Blackwell has begun suit against us for trespa.s.sing upon Lawrenceburg property, and as you know, every foot of ground all around us was relocated by the early-morning mob that trailed up from our broken-down wagon.”
”I ought to have told you about the Blackwell move this morning before you got away, but there was so much excitement that I lost sight of it,” I cut in. ”I knew about it last night.”
”How was that?”
”Somebody who knew about it before I did came here and told me.”
”In the night?”
”In the early part of the night; yes.”
”Was it Everton?”
”Not on your life. It was some one who thinks a heap more of you than Phineas Everton does.”
”You don't mean----”
”Yes; that's just who I do mean. She came over expecting to find you.
She wanted to ask you if we had a sure-enough, fire-proof, legal right to be here. She asked me, when she found you were in bed and asleep.
I told her we had, and succeeded in making her believe it. Then she told me what was coming to us--what Blackwell had up his sleeve.”
”That explains what Gifford was trying to tell me, but he didn't tell me where it came from,” said Barrett.
”He couldn't, because I didn't tell him. It's between you and Polly Everton, and it'll never go any farther. I shall forget it--I've already forgotten it.”
In his own way Barrett was as scrupulous as an honest man ought to be.
”I wish she hadn't done it, Jimmie. It doesn't ring just right, you know; while her father is still on the Lawrenceburg pay-rolls.”
Right there and then is when I came the nearest to having a quarrel with Robert Barrett.
”You blind beetle!” I exploded. ”Don't you see that she did it for you? But beyond that, she was perfectly right. She saw that an unjust thing was about to be done, and she tried to chock the wheels. The man doesn't live who can stand up and tell me that her motives are not always exactly what they ought to be. I know they are!”