Part 31 (1/2)

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

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

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

Paget came to him at last with a warning.

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

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

”Were the hammers dropped on purpose?”

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

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

”Sorry, but I can't help that.”

”You can stay around town and not go out alone nights, can't you?”

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

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

”Kindness of Mr. Selfridge,” contributed Gordon.

”Perhaps. Anyhow, there's a lot of sullen hate brewing against you.

Don't invite an explosion. That would be just kid foolhardiness.”

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

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

”Am I?”

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

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

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

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

Peter gave him up. After all, the chances were that Gordon was right.

Alaska was not a lawless country. And it might be that the best way to escape peril was to walk through it with a grin as if it did not exist.

The next issue of the Kusiak ”Sun” contained a bitter editorial attack upon Elliot. The occasion for it was a press dispatch from Was.h.i.+ngton to the effect that the pressure of public opinion had become so strong that Winton, Commissioner of the General Land Office, might be forced to resign his place. This was a blow to the coal claimants, and the ”Sun”

charged in vitriolic language that the reports of Elliot were to blame.

He was, the newspaper claimed, an enemy to all those who had come to Alaska to earn an honest living there. Under indictment for attempted murder and for highway robbery, this man was not satisfied with having tried to kill from ambush the best friend Alaska had ever known. In every report that he sent to Was.h.i.+ngton he was dealing underhanded blows at the prosperity of Alaska. He was a snake in the gra.s.s, and as such every decent man ought to hold him in scorn.