Part 8 (1/2)
Patty promised, and unsaddling, picketed her horse, and joined the girl in the dusty interior of the cabin. The musty hay, the discarded garments, and the two bushels or more of odds and ends with which the pack rats had filled the cupboard made a smudgy, smelly bonfire beside which Patty paused with an armful of discarded magazines. ”Wouldn't you like to take these home?” she asked.
”Which?” inquired Microby, deftly picking a small stick from the ground with her bare toes and tossing it into the fire.
”These magazines. There are stories and pictures in them.”
”No, I don't want none. We-alls cain't read, 'cept Ma, an' she's got a book--an' a bible, too,” she added, with a touch of pride. ”Davey, he kin mos' read, an' he kin drawer pitchers, too. Reckon he'll be a preacher when he's grow'd up, like Preacher Christie. He done read outen a book when he babitized us-uns. I don't like to read. Ma, she aimed to learn me onct, but I'd ruther shuck beans.”
”Maybe you didn't keep at it long enough,” suggested Patty.
”Yes, we did! We kep' at hit every night fer two nights 'til hit come bedtime. I cain't learn them letters--they's too many diffe'nt ones, an' all mixed up.”
Patty smiled, but she did not toss the magazines into the fire.
Instead she laid them aside with the resolve that when opportunity afforded, she would carry on the interrupted education.
Microby's literary delinquency in no wise impaired her willingness to work. She had inherited none of her father's predilection toward eternal rest, and all day, side by side with Patty, she sc.r.a.ped, and scoured, and scrubbed, and washed, until the little cabin and its contents fairly radiated cleanliness. The moving in was great fun for the mountain girl. Especially the unpacking of the two trunks that resisted all efforts to lift them until their contents had been removed. But at last the work was finished even to the arrangement of dishes and utensils, the stowing of supplies, and the blowing up of the air mattress that replaced the musty hay of the sheep herder. And as the long shadows of mountains crept slowly across the little valley and began to climb the opposite slope, Patty stood in the door of her cabin and watched Microby mount the superannuated Indian pony and proceed slowly down the creek, her bare feet swinging awkwardly in the loops of rope that served as stirrups of her dilapidated stock saddle.
When horse and rider disappeared into a grove of cottonwoods, Patty's gaze returned to her immediate surroundings--her saddle-horse contentedly snipping gra.s.s, the waters of the shallow creek burbling noisily over the stones, the untidy scattering of tin cans, and the leaning panels of the old sheep corral. She frowned at the panels.
”I'll just use you for firewood,” she muttered. ”And that reminds me that I've got to wake up to my responsibility as head of the household--even if the household does only consist of one bay cayuse, named Dan, and a tiny one-room cabin, and two funny little squirrel-tailed pack rats, and me.” She reached for her brand new ax, and picking her way from stone to stone, crossed the creek, and attacked a sagging panel.
Patty Sinclair was no hot-house flower, and the hand that gripped the ax was strong and brown and capable. Back home she had been known to the society reporters as ”an out-door girl,” by which it was understood that rather than afternoon auction at henfests, she affected tennis, golf, swimming, and cross-country riding. She could saddle her own horse, and paddle a canoe for hours on end. Even the ax was no stranger to her hand, for upon rare occasions when her father had returned during the summer months from his everlasting prospecting, he had taken her to camp in the mountains, and there from the quiet visionary whom she loved more than he ever knew, she learned the ax, and the compa.s.s, and a hundred tricks of camp lore that were to stand her well in hand. Partly inherited, partly acquired through a.s.sociation with her father upon those never-to-be-forgotten pilgrimages to the shrine of nature, her love of the vast solitudes shone from her uplifted eyes as she stood for a moment, ax in hand, and let her gaze travel slowly from the sun-gilded peaks of the mountains, down their darkening sides, to the dusk-enshrouded reaches of her valley. ”He used to watch the sun go down, and he never wearied at the wonder of it,” she breathed, softly. ”And then, as the darkness deepened and the bull-bats came wheeling overhead, and the whip-poor-wills began calling from the thickets, he would light his pipe, and I would cuddle up close to him, and the firelight would grow redder and brighter and the soft warm dark would grow blacker. The pine trees would lose their shapes and blend into the formless night and mysterious shadow shapes would dance to the flicker of the little flames. It was then he would talk of the things he loved; of quartz, and drift, and the mother lode; of storms, and bears, and the scent of pines; of reeking craters, parched deserts, ice-locked barrens, and the wind-lashed waters of lakes. 'And some day, little daughter,' he would say, 'some day you are going with daddy and see all these things for yourself--things whose grandeur you have never dreamed. It won't be long, now--I'm on the right track at last--only till I've made my strike.' Always--'it won't be long now.' Always--'I'm on the right track, at last.' Always--'just ahead is the strike'--that lure, that mocking chimera that saps men's lives! And now, he is--gone, and I am chasing the chimera.” Salt tears stung her eyes and blurred the timbered slopes. ”They said he was a--a ne'er-do-well. He became almost a joke--” the words ended in a dry sob, as the bright blade of the ax crashed viciously into the rotting panel. A few moments later she picked up an armful of wood, and retracing her steps, piled it neatly behind the stove. She lighted the fire, fetched a pail of water from the spring, and moved the picketed cayuse to a spot beside the creek where the gra.s.s was green and lush. She had intended after supper to study her map and familiarize herself with the two small photographs that were pinned to it. But, when the meal was over and the dishes washed and put away she was too sleepy to do anything but drop the huge wooden bar that the sheep herder had contrived to insure himself against a possible night attack from his enemies into its place and crawl into her bunk. How good it felt, she thought, sleepily--the yielding air mattress, and the soft, clean blankets, after the straw tick on the floor, and the course sour blankets in the Wattses' stuffy room.
Somewhere, way off in the hills, a wolf howled and almost before the sound had died away the girl was asleep.
CHAPTER VI
BETHUNE PAYS A CALL
It was past noon when Patty sank into the chair beside her table and glanced about her with a sigh of satisfaction. Warm June sunlight streamed through the open door and lay in a bright oblique patch upon the scrubbed floor. The girl's glance strayed past the door and rested with approval upon the little flat across the creek where a neat pile of panels replaced the broken sheep corral. She had spent hours in untwisting the baling wire with which they had been fastened to the posts and dragging them to the pile, and other hours in chopping a supply of firewood, and picking up the cans and broken bottles and pitching them into the deep ravine of a side coulee. Also she had built a little reservoir of rocks about her spring, and had found time to add a few touches to the interior of the cabin. ”It's just as homey and cozy as it can be,” she murmured, as her eyes strayed from the little window where the colored chintz curtain stirred lightly in the breeze, to the neatly arranged ”dressing table” that she had contrived with the aid of four light packing boxes and a bit of figured cretonne. Another packing case, covered to match, served as a stool, and upon the wall above the table hung a small mirror. Four or five prints, looking oddly out of place, hung upon the dark log walls--pictures that had always hung in her room at Aunt Rebecca's, and which she had managed to crowd into one of the trunks. A fond imagination had pictured them adorning the walls of her ”apartment”
which was to be located in a s.p.a.cious wing of the great Watts ranch house. ”I don't care, I'm glad there wasn't any big ranch house,” she muttered. ”It's lots nicer this way, and I'm absolutely independent.
We prospectors can't hope to be regular in our habits--and I've always wanted a house of my very own. Ten times better!” she exclaimed vehemently. ”There won't be anybody to ask me every day or two if I've made my strike yet? And how much gold I brought back to-day? And all the other fool questions that seem so humorous to questioners and hearers, but which hurt and sting and rankle when you're sick at heart with disappointment, and gritting your teeth to keep up your courage and your belief in yourself. Oh I know! Daddy didn't know I knew, but I did--how it hurt when the village wits would slyly wink at each other as they asked their cruel questions. Even when I was a little girl I knew, and I could have _killed_ them!” Her glance rested upon the canvas covered pack that lay in the corner at the foot of the bunk. ”There are his things--his outfit, they call it here. I'm going to examine it.” The sack of stiff oiled canvas, with its contents, was heavy, but the girl dragged it to the middle of the floor and squatting beside it, stared in dismay at the stout padlock and the chain that threaded a set of grommets. She was about to search for the key among the contents of her father's pockets which she had placed in the tray of her trunk, when her eye fell upon a thin slit close along the edge of the hem that held the grommets--a slit that, pulled wide, disclosed an aperture through which the contents of the sack could be easily removed but withal so cunningly contrived as to escape casual inspection. With an angry exclamation the girl stared at the gaping hole. ”Someone has cut it!” she cried. ”He doesn't seem to have taken much, though. It's about as full as it can be.” She began hurriedly to remove the contents, piling them about her upon the floor. ”I wonder if--if he left any papers, or note books, or maps, or things that would enable anyone to locate the claim? If he did,” she muttered, peering into the empty sack, ”they're gone, now.”
One by one, she returned the belongings, handling them tenderly, now, and examining them lovingly, and many an article was returned to the sack, wet with its splash of hot tears. ”Here's his coffee pot, and his plate, and frying pan, and his old pipe--” the pipe she did not replace, but put it with the other things in her trunk. ”And here--why, it's a revolver and a belt of cartridges--like Vil Holland's! And a hat like his, too! And I thought he was a desperado because he wore them!” She jumped to her feet and, hurrying to the mirror, tried on the hat, pinching the crown into a peak, tilting it this way and that, and arranging and rearranging the soft roll brim.
”It fits!” she cried, delighted as a child, and then with eyes sparkling, picked up the belt with its row of yellow cartridges and its ivory handled six gun dangling in the holster. Buckling the belt about her waist, she laughed aloud as the buckle tongue came to rest a full six inches beyond the last hole. ”I'll look just as desperate as he does, now--except for his old jug. Daddy didn't have any jug, and I'm glad--that's where the difference is--it's the jug. But, I wish he had had one of those black horn effects for his scarf.” She knotted the brilliant red scarf with its zigzag border of yellow, about her neck, and s.n.a.t.c.hing a small pair of scissors from the dressing table, removed the heavy belt, and proceeded to bore a tongue hole at the point she had marked with her finger nail. So engrossed she became in the work, that she failed to hear the approach of horses' feet, and started violently at the sound of a voice from the doorway. ”Permit me.” The six shooter thudded to the floor, and sweeping the hat from his head, Monk Bethune crossed the room, and replaced it upon the table. He smiled as he noticed the scar left upon the thick leather by the scissor points; and repeated. ”Permit me, please.” He drew a penknife from his pocket, and picked up the belt. ”A knife is so much better.”
Ashamed of having been startled, Patty smiled. ”Yes, please do. I had no idea it was so tough, or that scissors could be so dull.”
Deftly twirling the penknife, Bethune bored a neat hole in the leather. ”There should be several holes,” he smiled, ”for there are occasions in the hill country when one fails to connect with the commissary, and then it is that the tightening of the belt answers the purpose of a meal.” Drilling as he talked, he soon finished the task and held up the belt for inspection. ”Rod Sinclair's gun,” he commented, sorrowfully. ”And Rod's scarf, and hat, too. Ah, there was a man, Miss Sinclair! I doubt if even you yourself knew him as I knew him. You must ride and work with a man, in fair weather and foul; you must share his hards.h.i.+ps, and his disappointments, yes and his joys, too, to really know him.” A look of genuine affection shone from the man's eyes as he stood drawing his fingers gently along the rims of the s.h.i.+ny cartridges. He seemed to be speaking more to himself than to the girl. His manner, the look in his eyes, the very tone of his voice, were so intrinsically honest in their expression of unbounded sympathy with his subject, and his mood fitted so thoroughly with her own, that the girl's heart suddenly warmed toward this man who spoke so feelingly of her father. She flushed slightly as she remembered that upon the occasion of their previous meeting, his words had engendered a feeling of distrust.
”You knew him--well?” she asked.
”Like a brother. For two years we have worked together in our search for the mother lode that both believed lay concealed deep within the bosom of these hills. A dozen times during those two years our hopes have risen, as only the hopes can rise, of those who seek gold. A dozen times it seemed certain that at last we had reached our goal.
But, always it was the same--a false lead--shattered hopes--and a fresh start. Those were the times, Miss Sinclair, that your father showed the stuff that was in him. He was a better man than I. It was his Spartan acceptance of disappointment, his optimism, and his unshaken faith in ultimate success, that kept me going. I suppose it is my French ancestry that is responsible for my lack of just the qualities that made your father the man he was. I lacked his stability--his balance. I had imagination--vision, possibly greater than his. And under the stimulus of apparent success, my spirits would rise to heights his never knew. But I paid for it--no one knows how bitterly I paid. For when apparent success turned into failure, mine were depths of despair he never descended to. At first, before I learned that his disappointment was as bitter as my own, his smiling acceptance of failure, used to goad me to fury. There were times I could have killed him with pleasure--but that was only at first.
Before we had been long together G.o.d knows how I came to depend on those smiles. Then, at last, we struck it--and poor Rod--” The man's voice which had dropped very low, broke suddenly. He cleared his throat and turning abruptly, stared out the door toward the green sweep of pines on the mountain slopes.
There was a long silence during which the words kept repeating themselves in the girl's brain. ”_Then, at last, we struck it._” What did he mean? His back was toward her, and she saw that the muscles of his neck worked slowly, as though he were swallowing repeatedly.
When at last she spoke, her voice sounded strangely dull to her own ears. ”Do you mean that you and my father were partners, and that you know the location of his mine?”
Bethune faced her, laying the belt gently upon the table. ”Partners?”