Part 31 (2/2)

Elliot read this just as he was leaving for the Willow Creek Camp.

He thrust the paper impatiently into his coat pocket and swung to the saddle. Why did they persecute him? He had told nothing but the truth, nothing not required of him by the simplest, elemental honesty. Yet he was treated as an outcast and a criminal. The injustice of it was beginning to rankle.

He was temperamentally an optimist, but depression rode with him to the gold camp and did not lift from his spirits till he started back next day for Kusiak. The news had been flashed by wire all over the United States that he was a crook. His friends and relatives could give no adequate answer to the fact that an indictment hung over his head.

In Alaska he was already convicted by public opinion. Even the Pagets were lined up as to their interests with Macdonald. Sheba liked him and believed in him. Her loyal heart acquitted him of all blame. But it was to the wooing of his enemy that she had listened rather than to his.

The big Scotchman had run against a barrier, but his rival expected him to trample it down. He would wear away the scruples of Sheba by the pressure of his masterful will.

In the late afternoon, while Gordon was still fifteen miles from Kusiak, his horse fell lame. He led it limping to the cabin of some miners.

There were three of them, and they had been drinking heavily from a jug of whiskey left earlier in the day by the stage-driver. Gordon was in two minds whether to accept their surly permission to stay for the night, but the lameness of his horse decided him.

Not caring to invite their hostility, he gave his name as Gordon instead of Elliot. He was to learn within the hour that this was mistake number two.

From a pocket of the coat he had thrown on a bed protruded the newspaper Gordon had brought from Kusiak. One of the men, a big red-headed fellow, pulled it out and began sulkily to read.

While he read the other two bickered and drank and snarled at each other. All three of the men were in that stage of drunkenness when a quarrel is likely to flare up at a moment's notice.

”Listen here,” demanded the man with the newspaper. ”Tell you what, boys, I'm going to wring the neck of that p.u.s.s.yfooting spy Elliot if I ever get a chanct.”

He read aloud the editorial in the ”Sun.” After he had finished, the others joined him in a chorus of curses.

”I always did hate a spy--and this one's a murderer too. Why don't some one fill his hide with lead?” one of the men wanted to know.

Redhead was sitting at the table. He thumped a heavy fist down so hard that the tin cups jumped. ”Gimme a crack at him and I'll show you, by G.o.d.”

A shadow fell across the room. In the doorway stood a newcomer. Gordon had a sensation as if a lump of ice had been drawn down his spine. For the man who had just come in was Big Bill Macy, and he was looking at the field agent with eyes in which amazement, anger, and triumph blazed.

”I'm glad to death to meet up with you again, Mr. Elliot,” he jeered.

”Seems like old times on Wild-Goose.”

”Whad you say his name is?” cut in the man with the newspaper.

”Hasn't he introduced himself, boys?” Macy answered with a cruel grin. ”Now, ain't that modest of him? You lads are entertaining that well-known deteckative and spy Gordon Elliot, that renowned king of hold-ups--”

The red-headed man interrupted with a howl of rage. ”If you're telling it straight, Bill Macy, I'll learn him to spy on me.”

Elliot was sitting on one of the beds. He had not moved an inch since Macy had appeared, but the brain behind his live eyes was taking stock of the situation. Big Bill blocked the doorway. The table was in front of the window. Unless he could fight his way out, there was no escape for him. He was trapped.

Quietly Gordon looked from one to another. He read no hope in the eyes of any.

”I'm not spying on you. My horse is lame. You can see that for yourself.

All I asked was a night's lodging.”

”Under another name than your own, you d.a.m.ned sneak.”

The field agent did not understand the fury of the man, because he did not know that these miners were working the claim under a defective t.i.tle and that they had jumped to the conclusion that he had come to get evidence against them. But he knew that never in his life had he been in a tighter hole. In another minute they would attack him. Whether it would run to murder he could not tell. At the best he would be hammered helpless.

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