Part 27 (1/2)

”Relics of past greatness,” Helen replied smiling. ”A remodelled gown that was my mother's. One good street suit at a time and a blouse or two is the best I can do. I am merely a wonderful bluff in the evening.”

Bruce felt that it was a sore spot although she was smiling, and he could not help being glad, for it meant she needed him. If he had found her in prosperous circ.u.mstances the success or failure of the placer would have meant very little to her. He _must_ succeed, he told himself exuberantly; his incentive now was to make her life happier and easier.

”If everything goes this summer as I hope--and expect--” he said slowly, ”you need not be a 'bluff' at any hour of the day.”

Her eyes widened.

”What do you mean?”

Then Bruce described the ground that he and Slim had located. He told of his confidence in it, of his efforts to raise the money to develop it, and the means by which he had accomplished it. Encouraged by her intelligent interest he talked with eager enthusiasm of his plans for working it, describing mercury traps, and undercurrents, discussing the comparative merits of pole and block, Hungarian and caribou rifles. Once he was well started it seemed to him that he must have been saving up things all his life to tell to this girl. He talked almost breathlessly as though he had much to say and an appallingly short time to say it in.

He told her about his friend, Old Felix, and about the ”sa.s.sy” blue-jays and the darting kingfisher that nested in the cut-bank where he worked, of the bush-birds that shared his sour-dough bread. He tried to picture to her the black bear lumbering over the river bowlders to the service berry bush across the river, where he stood on his hind legs, cramming his mouth and watching over his shoulder, looking like a funny little man in baggy trousers. He told her of his hero, the great Aga.s.siz, of his mother, of whom even yet he could not speak without a break in his voice, and of his father, as he remembered him, harsh, silent, interested only in his cattle.

It dawned upon Bruce suddenly that he had been talking about himself--babbling for nearly an hour.

”Why haven't you stopped me?” he demanded, pausing in the middle of a sentence and coloring to his hair. ”I've been prattling like an old soldier, telling war stories in a Home. What's got into me?”

Helen laughed aloud at his dismay.

”Honest,” he a.s.sured her ruefully, ”I never broke out like this before.

And the worst of it is that I know with the least encouragement from you I'll start again. I never wanted to talk so much in my life. I'm ransacking my brain this very minute to see if there's anything else I know that I haven't told you. Oh, yes, there is,” he exclaimed putting his hand inside his coat, ”there's some more money coming to you from Slim--I forgot to tell you. It isn't a great deal but--” he laid in her hand the bank-notes Sprudell had been obliged to give him in Bartlesville after having denied finding her.

Helen looked from the money to Bruce in surprised inquiry:

”But Mr. Sprudell has already given me what Freddie left.”

”Oh, this is another matter--a collection I made for him after Sprudell left,” he replied glibly. It was considerable satisfaction to think that Sprudell had had to pay for his perfidy and she would benefit by it.

The last thing that Helen had expected to do was to cry, but the money meant so much to her just then; her relief was so great that the tears welled into her eyes. She bit her lip hard but they kept coming, and, mortified at such an exhibition, she laid her arm on the back of the worn plush sofa and hid her face.

Tears, however embarra.s.sing, have a way of breaking down barriers and Bruce impulsively took in his the other hand that lay in her lap.

”What is it, Miss Dunbar? Won't you tell me? If you only knew how proud and happy I should be to have you talk to me frankly. You can't imagine how I've looked forward to being allowed to do something for you. It means everything to me--far more than to you.”

Bruce remembered having seen his mother cry, through homesickness and loneliness, softly, uncomplainingly, as she went about her work in the ugly frame house back there on the bleak prairie. And he remembered the roars of rage in which Peroxide Louise had voiced her jealousy. But he had seen few women cry, and now he was so sorry for her that it hurt him--he felt as though someone had laid a hand upon his heart and squeezed it.

”It's relief, I suppose,” she said brokenly. ”It's disgusting that money should be so important.”

”And do you need it so badly?” Bruce asked gravely.

”I need it if I am to go on living.” And she told him of the doctor's warning.

”You must go away at once.” Brace's voice was sharp with anxiety. ”I wish you could come West,” he added wistfully.

”I'd love it, but it is out of the question; it's too far--too expensive.”

Bruce's black eyebrows came together. His poverty had never seemed so galling, so humiliating.