Part 20 (1/2)

”Wolff, you've heard,” said the old millman, with solemnity. ”If you've got any messages you want sent, we'll send them. If you want time to pray, this is your chance. There's nothing you can say is going to change it. You are as good as dead. Boys, some of you get one of those beams that's tore loose there at the side, fasten the rope around the end, and shove it over the edge of the wall above the canon there for a few feet. He shall hang above the dam he dynamited.”

Wolff knew that they were in earnest. There was something more inexorable in their actions than in a court of law. At the last he showed some courage of a brute kind, reviling them all, sputtering forth his hatred, and interlarding it with a confession and threats of what he wanted to do. They silenced him by leading him to the wall and adjusting the noose. Once more Rogers besought him to pray and then, when he again burst into oaths, they thrust him off. The fall was as effective as ever hangman devised.

”In the morning, boys,” said the smith, ”a half-dozen of us must be up early and come back here. The hound is at least ent.i.tled to a half-way decent burial. I'll call some of you to come with me.”

That was their sole comment. They had neither regrets, compunctions, nor rancor. They had finished their task according to their own ideas of justice, without hesitation.

At the Croix d'Or the partners, worried over their problems, and somewhat astonished at the non-appearance of the force, sat on the bench by the mess-house, smoking and silent.

In soft cadence they heard, as from the opposite side of the gulch, the tramping of feet. Swinging along in the dusk the men came, shadowy, unhalting, and homeward bound, like so many tired hounds returning after the day's hunt. Their march led them past the bench; but they did not look up. There was an unusual gravity in their silence, a p.r.o.nounced earnestness in their att.i.tude.

”Well,” called d.i.c.k, ”what did you learn?”

It was the smith who answered, but the others never halted, continuing that slow march to the bunk-house.

”We got him.”

”Where is he, then?”

”Hanging to a beam across the dam he blew up,” was the remorseless response.

He started as if to proceed after the others, then paused long enough to add: ”It was that feller that used to be watchman here; the feller that tried to shoot Bill that night. Found him in that old, deserted cabin near the Potlach. Had the shoe on him, and at last said he did it, and was sorry for just one thing, that he didn't get all of us.

Said he'd 'a' blown the bunk-house and the office up in a week more, and that he'd tried to get you two with a bowlder and had killed your burros--well, when we swung him off, he was still cursing every one and everything connected with the Croix d'Or.”

He paused for an instant, then came closer, and lowered his voice.

”And that ain't all. He said just before he went off--just like this--mind you: 'I'd 'a' got Bully Presby, too, because he didn't treat me fair, after me doin' my best and a-keepin' my mouth shut about what I knew of the big lead.' Now, what in h.e.l.l do you suppose he meant by that?”

CHAPTER XIV

”THOUGH LOVE SAY NAY”

”Of one thing I am sure,” said d.i.c.k on the following day, when they began to readjust themselves for a decision, ”and that is that if we can find work for them, there isn't a man on the works that I don't want to keep. They are too true and loyal to lose.”

”We could drive into the blacksmith's tunnel,” Bill said; ”and I've an idea we might strike something when we pa.s.s under that hard cone just above--well, just about under where Bells is. I saw it yesterday when we were up there for the first time. That would give the millman and his gang something to do. Some of 'em can take out the rest of the green lead, and after that drift see if it comes in again. And the others that can't do anything underground, can turn to and build up the dam, with a few masons to help, and, when a new wheel comes, the millman will know how to set that all right again. So, you see, we don't have to lose any of them that has stood by us, so long as Sloan is ready to take his gamble and the hundred thousand lasts. Before that's gone, we'll just have to make good. And somehow I feel we will.”

As if to add to the mental trials of the half-owner of the Croix d'Or, but another day elapsed after this decision and adjustment before he received a letter from a Seattle broker offering him a price for his interest in the mine. Thus wrote the agent:

”My client has the timber and water rights of your property in view more than anything underground, which, on the advice of experts who have visited the property in previous years, he seems to regard as worthless. He informs me that you are, to all intents, representing not only your own interest, but that of the other partner, who places implicit confidence in you. I presume that you will therefore be amenable to doing all you can to save from the wreckage of the dead property all that is possible in behalf of that partner as well as yourself, and am authorized to make you the extremely liberal offer of sixty thousand dollars for the full t.i.tle to the property.”

The price was ridiculously low, and d.i.c.k knew it; yet if the mine produced nothing more, and was, as the experts were supposed to have reported, worthless, the amount was extremely liberal. But for Bill he would have hesitated to decline such an offer. That worthy, however, threw his head back and roared derisively.

”Sixty thousand? Sixty thousand! What does that idiot think men who have dropped a quarter of a million in a property would quit for? Does he think that sixty thousand is any saving from a wreck like this has been? Tell him to chase himself--that the tail goes with the hide, and you'll quit clean whipped, or not at all.”

But d.i.c.k was loath to refuse any offer without consulting his superior in New York, and accordingly wandered off into the hills to think. It was late in the afternoon, and he mechanically tramped over the trail to the pipe line, where, when hope ran higher, he had dared to dream.

The whole situation had become a nerve-racking tragedy of mind and action. His desperate desire for success after his self-acknowledgment that he loved Miss Presby, and then the blows that had been rained on him and the mine, the failure of the green lead to hold out when it had at least promised and justified operation--all c.u.mulated into a disheartening climax which was testing his fort.i.tude as it had never been tried before. He was not of those who lack either persistence, determination, or moral bravery; and it was this last characteristic, coupled with a certain maturing caution, which made him question the honesty of proceeding to lay out, perhaps, the entire hundred thousand volunteered by Sloan, with such little certainty of returns. Had the money been his own, he would have taken the chances uncomplainingly; but his judgment told him that, had he been sent to the Croix d'Or as an expert to pa.s.s an opinion on the justification of putting a hundred thousand into the ground, under present conditions, he would have advised against it.