Part 13 (1/2)

”Lannigan, what did I tell you?”

It was obvious enough that Lannigan knew what she had told him for he immediately jerked his hands off the oilcloth, and hid them under the table.

He answered with a look of innocence:

”Why, I don't know ma'am.”

”Go out and wash them hands!”

Hands, like murder, will out. Concealment was no longer possible, since it was a well-known fact that Lannigan had hands, so he held them in front of him and regarded them in well-feigned surprise.

”I declare I never noticed!”

It was difficult to imagine how such hands could have escaped observation, even by their owner, as they looked as though he had used them for scoops to remove soot from a choked chimney. Also the demarcation lines of various high tides were plainly visible on his wrists and well up his arms. He arose with a wistful look at the platter of ham which had started on its first and perhaps only lap around the table.

Uncle Bill glanced up and commented affably:

”You got ran out, I see. I thought _she'd_ flag them hands when I saw you goin' in with 'em.”

Lannigan grunted as he splashed at the wash basin in the corner.

”I notice by the Try-bune,” went on Uncle Bill with a chuckle, ”that one of them English suffragettes throwed flour on the Primeer and--” His mouth opened as a fresh headline caught his eye, and when he had finished perusing it his jaw had lengthened until it was resting well down the bosom of his flannel s.h.i.+rt . . . The headline read:

BRAVE TENDERFOOT SAVES HIS GUIDE FROM DEATH IN BLIZZARD T. VICTOR SPRUDELL CARRIES EXHAUSTED OLD MAN THROUGH DEEP DRIFTS TO SAFETY A MODEST HERO

Uncle Bill removed his spectacles and polished them deliberately. Then he readjusted them and read the last paragraph again:

”The rough old mountain man, Bill Griswold, grasped my hand at parting, and tears of grat.i.tude rolled down his withered cheeks as he said good-bye. But, tut! tut!” declared Mr. Sprudell modestly: ”I had done nothing.”

Uncle Bill made a sound that was somewhere between his favorite e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n and a gurgle, while his face wore an expression which was a droll mixture of amazement and wrath.

”Oh, Lannigan!” he called, then changed his mind and, instead, laid the paper on his knee and carefully cut out the story, which had been copied from an Eastern exchange, and placed it in his worn leather wallet.

IX

THE YELLOW-LEG

While seated in the office of the Hinds House, with his eyes rolled to the ceiling, listening in well-feigned rapture to ”Rippling Waves” on the cabinet organ, and other numbers rendered singly and ensemble by the Musical Snows, Mr. Dill in reality was wondering by what miracle he was going to carry out Sprudell's specific instructions to keep his errand a secret.

”The great, white light which plays upon a throne” is not more searching than that which follows the movements of a possible Live One in a moribund mining camp, and, in spite of his puttees, Ore City hoped against hope that some benefit might be derived from the stranger's presence.

Dill's orders were to get upon the ground which had been worked in a primitive way by a fellow named Bruce Burt--now deceased he was told--and relocate it in Sprudell's name together with seven other contiguous claims, using the name of dummy locators which would give Sprudell control of one hundred and sixty acres by doing the a.s.sessment work upon one. Also Dill was instructed to run preliminary survey lines if possible and lose no time in submitting estimates upon the most feasible means of was.h.i.+ng the ground.

Seated in his comfortable office in Spokane, Mr. Dill had foreseen no great difficulties in the way of earning his ample fee, but it seemed less ample after one hundred miles by stage over three summits, and a better understanding of conditions. Between the stage-driver's sweeping denunciations of road-supervisors in general and long and picturesque castigations of the local road supervisor in particular, Mr. Dill had adroitly extracted the information that the twenty-mile trail to the river was the worst known, and snow-line blazes left by ”Porcupine Jim”

were, in summer, thirty feet in the air.

Mr. Dill learned enough en route to satisfy himself that he was going to earn every dollar of his money, and when he reached Ore City he was sure of it. The problem before him was one to sleep on, or rather, thinking with forebodings of the clammy sheets upstairs, to lie awake on.

However, something would perhaps suggest itself and Mr. Dill was resourceful as well as unhampered by any restrictions regarding the truth.