The Benevolent Liar/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
The prospector was himself again before the fall months slipped away, and, absorbed in work on the mine, laid in abeyance his quest, which had become a double one, for he was now intent not only in solving the facts concerning the Horseshoe clean-up, but in learning who had shot him, and taking the sort of vengeance that his personal law demanded. The Lady Edith was sufficient for the time being, inasmuch as it proved highly profitable, and there was much to do. By the spring season it had become' a “regular mine,” with a small stamp mill, hoist, and picked staff of men, and the partners worked long hours. They still dwelt in the little cabin they had come to regard as home and from whose door they could see the rolling smoke from the boiler stack that peeped above the rocky wall of the glen. Tom, to the prospector's disgust, announced that his first ten thousand dollars should go to the insurance company that had paid Vance's loss, as a “conscience fund.” And then, as spring itself was passing to summer, came news that brought Josh back to the chase. It was delivered by Specimen tersely on an evening when Josh and Tom visited the camp.
“Karluk Pete is back again. Landed here in rags yesterday.”
“Did, eh? Where is the coyote now?”
“Along the line somewhere. Got a gun?”
Specimen was evidently apprehensive of results; but the prospector snorted: “Naw! Don't need one. Just want to see if he gives himself away at sight of me. Come along.”
They sauntered into the Paradise, and there, leaning against the end of the bar and scowling gloomily, was Karluk Pete, who turned slowly as they entered the door. Not by the movement of a muscle in his hard face did he betray any emotion. He accepted a drink with the air of a man who drinks with all comers, and by no sign indicated that he had more than a cursory interest in either the prospector or his companion. He even brightened up in time, and confidentially asked the prospector to please hold the affidavit against Vance until it became necessary to use it.
“Why?” asked Josh, probing him with keen eyes under which Pete did not waver.
“Because,” declared Pete, “I don't want any row with Cash Vance till I have to have one. He's a vindictive sort of a cuss. One time I thought of asking you to hand it back, but decided to let it drop. I left the town a day or two after, anyhow.”
His manner was that of hardened frankness, and the prospector was inclined to believe that there was small use in paying further heed to his movements; but Specimen still insisted stubbornly that any one was worth watching. Josh discussed it with Tom on the homeward trail that night, but the latter was inclined to agree with. Specimen Jones that the whole world required surveillance, and shook a dubious head.
The previous habit of life was resumed again for weeks—the habit that had become fixed by Tom's industry; for now he followed rules of his own making, self-inflicted and hard laid, that demanded at least two hours' study each night. That he had long since passed the work required by a university to qualify him as an engineer did not deter him from advancing higher. His sole deviations from the regularity of twelve hours a day at the mine and in the assay house, followed by an evening's study, were on those nights when he visited Edith Barnes. Yet, curbing himself in his resolute self-discipline, he had stilled the cry of his heart. To the prospector's annoyance, he had abandoned the great chase and fixed his ambition on the “conscience fund” that was to clear the slate of his delinquency. Josh began to leave the affairs of the mine to his partner, and doggedly tried to assist Specimen. And the mine did not seem to suffer, although he was a veteran in counsel.
That the Lady Edith was becoming an extremely valuable property did not alleviate the perturbation of his mind, which had become set and indurated with the idea that he must clear up the looting of the cache beneath Pinnacle Rock, and identify the man who had tried to murder him, before his protégé would permit himself to approach on more intimate terms the daughter of Frank Barnes. And on this the prospector's wishes were fixed. And then, when hope was at low ebb, came another turn of the wheel, unexpected, unforeseen, unsurmised, so strangely does fate reward those who persist.
“Hello, Josh! Is that you and Tom?” a voice halted the partners on a June night when they were traversing the shaded main street of Shingle. Josh looked at a man hurrying across the street toward them, and in the brilliant moonlight identified Specimen Jones, the unrecognized superintendent of the Lady Edith Mine.
“Sure it is. Got anything new?” he asked eagerly.
“Not much,” admitted Specimen. “Only this. Last night I did the old stunt over again and trailed Pete out to Vance's place.”
He peered about to make certain that they were beyond others' hearing, and Josh said: “Come out on into the middle of the road. That's the safest place, always, to tell secrets.”
“I can't get a single line anywhere else,” said Specimen, in a subdued voice, when they stood in the moonlight, “but I thought it might be interesting to know what Pete was doing to Vance, and I made another trip and hung under the window of Vance's cabin. It appears that Pete's got him going. And you can't guess how! Pete says that he's got Vance because Vance tried to bribe him to do some other dirty work, as near as I can make out, and that if Vance doesn't come across he'll put somethin' up that's not barred by any statute of limitations. And Vance has lost a little of his old-time nerve. He tried to bluff Pete out, but it wasn't a good bluff, because in the end, swearing like a packmaster all the time, and telling Pete that he'd kill him yet, Vance gave in and coughed up some more money for Pete to feed to the gamblers along the line.”
Josh stood for a full minute in deep thought.
“Well,” he said, with a sigh of disappointment, “that's not gettin' what I want to know; but you keep on watchin' Pete, so's I can get the proper handhold on Vance. That's not exactly what I want, but it may help some. A feller never can tell. You're doin' all right, Specimen, but it begins to strike me you're a heap better miner than you are a detective. Anyhow, we'll try a little longer before we give up. I hate to give up on anything. I want to know who wears a foot like that print that was there by—well, by the place where I was shot.”
An hour later, having accompanied Tom to Edith's home and finding her father absent, he started to retreat; but she prevented his going alone by declaring that she felt like taking a long walk.
“Come on!” she insisted. “Let us walk clear past the town and up to where the hill drops over. Where we can look back at the camp in the moonlight, and at the hills behind, and the trees climbing up their sides, and”
“Well, we might go a piece,” consented Josh. “Only not quite so far as all that. We might go to where the road branches off to the Lady Edith, and Tom can bring you back from there.”
He was still resolved to give his adopted son an opportunity to propose marriage, but this viewpoint did not reach either the protégé or the victim; so that when, the turn toward the mine reached, they insisted on his accompanying them farther, being in a lonely mood, he yielded. They were approaching the crest of a sharp foothill when a horseman rode past them at a merciless pace, enveloped them in a cloud of dust, and went on to the top, thence swiftly dropped from sight.
“A man like that oughtn't to be allowed a pony,” the prospector declared wrathfully. And then: “Hello! Somethin' happened to him! His poor hoss stumbled, I think.”
They ran up to the sharp crest and looked over it. Evidently the fall had not been serious, for the man had re- gained his feet and was trying to catch the horse; but the animal, dreading punishment, took flight and disappeared down the long, white road. Josh nudged the others and laughed.
“Serves him good and right,” he muttered. “Lopin' a horse up a hill like that. Listen to him cuss! Let's get over here behind this rock and watch his didos.”
Almost like a boy bent on a mischievous prank, he led the way, and they climbed the rock and peered over the top-at the man in the road. The latter, after giving a final shake of his fist at his fleeing mount, came slowly toward the watchers and began picking up some white objects in the road.
“He had a mail bag that got busted when he fell,” muttered Josh, chuckling softly. “Good! I'm glad of it! That voice By gee whiz! It's Cash Vance! See his ugly mug there in the moonlight, now that he's turned this way?”
He turned to grin at Edith Barnes, and saw that she had abruptly lifted herself a trifle higher, that her eyes were very wide, her lips parted, and her whole attitude one of startled suspense. And then, as if suddenly attacked by heart failure, she gasped and swayed. He leaped to the bowlders below just as Tom, discerning her weakness, clutched a point of rock beside him and swung his arm around her. She dropped to a sitting posture as if her knees had lost resistance, and while Tom supported her, the prospector bent solicitously above her.
“Good Lord! Edie, you ain't goin' to faint, are you? Got indigestion, or somethin' like that?”
She put her hands upward hurriedly, catching an arm of each of her companions, and regained her feet.
“Josh! Josh!” she exclaimed excitedly. “That is the man—the man I saw that night from the top of Pinnacle Rock! The man that robbed you! I could swear to it! The way he stooped when he picked up the letters; the queer lift of the shoulders; the way his hat looked over his face from above! Quick! Run after him! Catch him! Don't let him get away!”
She was almost hysterical in her eagerness to act; but Josh, who for an instant had been transfixed by astonishment, now frowned, and his lips drew to a harsh line.
“No! No!” he said, very quietly. “Just take it cool! I saw his face. I know him. We've got to make sure; surer than we could be by your belief that he was the man. Steady! Wait a minute or two till he's had time to get clean off the road. The dust—the dust, don't you see, will finish all we need to know. The road is as dusty as the trail to death. Tommy, slip away and get a good bunch of dry stuff. I'll want a lot of light in a minute, because somehow I think I'm just about at the end of the chase.”
There was something ominous about him as he strode slowly out and downward toward the white, dust-laden road. He stopped, scowling down its long, clear length, to the shadowed point where it curved around a high, gray cliff and was lost to sight. It was untenanted. Vance, with his long stride, unaware that his mishap had been observed, and angry at the escape of his horse, had disappeared, cursing as he went. The prospector stood for a long time to make certain that he had gone, his face grim and impassive in the moonlight, his huge body conveying intent menace and waiting to advance.
“The fire, Tom!” he ordered quietly. “Wait! Let me see!”
He bent far forward, cautiously treading on the edge of the road and staring at the dust.
“You can light it here,” he said, in the same, quiet tone. “Right here. There's a clean track in the dust over there. And it was made by Cash Vance!”
Something about him half terrified the girl, who, with hands clenched in front of her, watched him—something so certain, so inflexible, so terribly intent on disproving a last doubt upon which a grave issue must be decided, that she could not speak. Looking at Tom, she discerned in his little movement that same terrible intensity, as he bent forward with a little pile of brush and struck a match. Its flame, rendered pallid by the light of the watchful June moon, caught a twig, gained its hot hold, spread, and swept until it took voice of its own and crackled and roared. No one spoke. It was as if the issue was too grave to be broken by words. On it a man's life hung; for there was no doubt of the deadliness of action and resolve in the quiet giant who bent above the dust of the road and slowly pulled the worn old rule from his pocket, opened it, and applied it to measurements which he had memorized.
The sense of portent was increased when he made doubly sure by taking from his pocket his carefully wrapped piece of slate and read the measurements engraved thereon. He measured again, comparing each result. He advanced to another print that lay registered in the dust of the road and clearly outlined by fire and moon, and, to make finally sure, repeated his checking with big hands that went direct and unfaltering to their task. Then, very deliberately, he folded the rule, replaced the wrapping about his tablet, put both in his pockets, and stood to his feet. He faced them, the night shadows accentuating his high cheek bones, his drooping mustache, and lean, projecting jaw, and said, as if announcing an irrefutable fact: “Well, Tommy, it's done. It's the end of the trail, just as I said. And, Tommy, as sure as there's a God in heaven, I've got him! It was Cash Vance!”